Baffling neurological illness affects growing number of young adults

Labor organizing is largely being driven by left-wing populism in the face of unrelenting corporate ghoulishness from the Democratic Party. Once the right went hard populist it became the meta because business interests fled to the other side and pissed them off too. And historically, high levels of populism in politics usually ends up in authoritarianism. I’m actually very sympathetic to left wing populist positions; but at the same time it’s very easy for charlatans to prey on.

This is an annoying indirection in this discussion.

Doctors working for everyone also means they work for the highest bidder. Remember the tabaco industry in the US and the doctors literally advertising it?

How about doctors near areas of chemical spills getting $£€¥ from the companies to keep quiet about them?

How about the opioid crisis that has killed thousands of Americans?

Yeah. So, if you want to bring up a misleading example, at least think of the entire cycle of the "other side" of this.

At the end of the day the thing is "interesting what happens when doctors are incentivized with capital and success is measured by how rich you are"

Which at least is good - be aware Prions are very hard to detect or categorize (and most forms of infectious prions seem incredibly hard to destroy). We don’t have a generic ‘prion’ test, and there is a non-zero chance of a different type we haven’t categorized yet.

Until relatively recently they were considered some kind of ‘wake up sweating and dismiss the nightmare as just fantasy’ type cause that should be dismissed by rational people, though there were a number of serious known diseases that no virus or bacteria could be shown identified as causing.

Not actually knowing what causes a disease is a lot more common than people think though, including for a number of relatively common diseases.

The ones we’ve shown a prior cause for had a big question mark next to them despite concerted effort. They were also generally in either remote populations that were practicing some taboo things (human cannibalism), a few families, or in animals (scrapie), and clearly fatal.

In the mid 60’s it was becoming apparent these diseases were not likely caused by the most common theory of a ‘slow virus’ or any known bacteria, as even biological sterilizing agents, viral killing agents, hard UV, and high levels of ionizing radiation didn’t stop samples from being infectious, and searches to find the actual cause started looking for more novel sources, despite a lot of skepticism.

The term prion, after decades of research, was only coined in ‘82, and only generally accepted as the actual source of the disease (instead of a red herring for a disease caused by a not-yet-isolate virus) in the late 90’s to early 2000’s. One of the most prolific researchers on the topic got a Nobel prize for his work proving they exist - but only in 2017.

A brief history [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4626585/]

So not likely, but until another cause can be isolated, best to not fully rule it out either, even if it is negative for all known prions.

With how good many of our tests actually are, it’s easy to overweight their accuracy in categorizing unknown phenomenon. Somewhat of a CSI type effect.

Nonsense. Middle class employment comes with health insurance that makes healthcare generally affordable, barring stories about catastrophic bankrupting illnesses that are actually rare.

Edit: what, am I out of touch? Is health insurance only provided to employees in the top 10%?

I'm Canadian and since living abroad I can only say how impressed I am with health care systems OTHER than Canada's. Getting a specialist appointment in Canada can take weeks to months and even then the specialist barely has time for you.

I have friends from Europe who (now) have dual citizenship and fly back to their country of origin for anything beyond a basic checkup.

In Asia I go to the hospital and I get all the results in a folder and can review them myself. There are no hidden mysteries like in Canada -- what are they hiding in Canada? I've asked for a copy of my medical file and they've looked me like I'm a lunatic!

In Canada:

"So when do I get my test results?"

"We'll call you if there is a problem."

No joke!

In Quebec I always have to pay $500 a year for medical -- I guarantee you I can get A+ coverage for that amount of money in any SEA country. So it's definitely not "free".

Canadian health care is most certainly a better financial deal than the US system if stories are to be believed. But it's most certainly not the best world wide.