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Coronavirus (COVID-19): If you are a skeptic, Part 1

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Do you think that the economic price the United States is paying for closing businesses and limiting everyday activity to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus is too high?    If you do, consider this: How many lives have we really lost in the U.S. due to COVID-19? Some might argue that although at least 180,000 American lives have been lost to COVID-19 (as of August 2020), many more lives have been saved by reductions in commuting and travel (lower accident rates), reduced exposure to flu, and other changes in behavior that have accompanied lockdowns and working at home.  To understand the true effect of COVID-19 on American loss of life, it is helpful to look at the excess mortality rate in 2020....  How many people have died in 2020 above and beyond what is considered normal? Through August of 2020, the number of excess deaths in the U.S. is about 213,000 people (adjusted for increases in population year-to-year).  Put simply -- In America, we have lost 213,000 more people tha
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Coronavirus (COVID-19): If you are young...

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If you are a high school or college student living in the U.S. or are otherwise delightfully young (15-24 years old), 190 of you died of COVID-19 between February and July of 2020 while 14,810 of you died overall (from COVID-19 and all other causes).  That amounts to a 0.00044% COVID-19 mortality (death) rate for all 42.97 million of you in the U.S.  Roughly, your age group accounted for a meager 0.15% of deaths due to COVID-19 in the U.S. If you are aged 25-34, 935 of you died from COVID-19 in that same time period while 30,885 of you died overall.  That amounts to a 0.002% COVID-19 mortality rate for all 45.7 million of you in the U.S.  Your age group accounted for a mere 0.72% of deaths due to COVID-19.  If you are young, you are doing a lousy job of dying from COVID-19.  In some circles, that may justify hanging out in bars, going to large parties, hitting the nightclubs several times a week, strolling through the grocery store with ease... all without a face mask or face covering.
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Coronavirus (COVID-19): If you are a college student.... Part 2

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If you are a college student, you likely had one odd and unforgettable spring this year.   Maybe, you struggled to get up on time for class, sleeping in a little later every day.  And, even though your class started after noon, it was still hard to log on to Zoom on time.  You may have reasoned that your professor surely wouldn't be taking the time to scroll through all the participants to see who was and was not attending on a particular day.  After all, you could always watch the recorded lecture later... Maybe, you had trouble finishing your homework. Despite the fact that your courses had all of the same deadlines as before COVID-19 struck, those deadlines seemed distant and seemingly irrelevant as the whole world went online.   Maybe you were unusually frustrated, because before the pandemic, you relied heavily on study groups, just hanging out and working through homework and preparing for exams together.  And during the pandemic in the spring, you did your homework alone, ta
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Coronavirus (COVID-19): If you are going to church ....

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In the time of COVID-19, simple decisions have become harder.  While I used to be in autopilot on Sunday morning to roll out of bed, stumble into the car, and head off to church, that decision is no longer easy or simple. If you are thinking of going to church while COVID-19 is still raging across the United States or if you are part of a church leadership team trying to decide how and when to offer services, I hope that the information in this blog is useful. At church,  one of the highest risks of spreading COVID-19 comes from those who are singing or speaking, particularly those who are doing so for any significant length of time.  While the risk of spreading COVID-19 from singing or speaking is minimized by wearing a mask, the reality of the situation is that masks tend to muffle speech and distort singing, so the temptation for singers and speakers to remove their masks while singing and speaking will be high.  Even in a church that requires face masks for everyone, exposure risk
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Coronavirus (COVID-19): If you are a college student.... Part 1

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If you are a college student,  how does this virus endanger you? The latest interpretations of the data by the media tell us that COVID-19 is not going to kill you and not many of you are going to get it. In the United States, over 85% of the deaths due to COVID-19 are among individuals over 50 years old, and in Washington State (the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak), 2% of verified cases are among individuals between 0 and 19 years old and 7% are among those 20-29 years old.  In the nation hardest hit by COVID-19 to date (China), the death rate among those aged 10-29 is 0.2%.  The death rate represents how many individuals who become infected with COVID-19 die from the virus.  For comparison sake, overall deaths related to the flu run between 20,000 and 60,000 in the United States for each of the past ten years.  Approximately 10% of the U.S. population of 330 million gets the flu every year, which amounts to an annual death rate of between 0.06 and 0.18% among those who get the
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Does Talcum Powder cause Cancer?

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What's the Bottom Line? Mixed.  Some scientific studies suggest that the use of talcum powder near the genital area leads to increased risk of certain types of cancer (ovarian, endometrial).  Other studies fail to demonstrate such a connection between talc use and cancer.  Johnson and Johnson faces mounting legal battles over a potential link between the perineal (near the genitals) use of talcum powder among women and increased risk of ovarian cancer.  The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified the perineal use of talcum powder as possibly carcinogenic to humans  based on limited evidence from scientific studies that show a statistically significant link between the exposure and the cancer.  While Johnson and Johnson continues to appeal and fight these cases in court, scientific research striving to prove or disprove the dangers of talc (baby) powder also continues.  The combination of litigation, scientific studies, mixed results, and missing kn
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Are the video games your friends play affecting you?

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The large majority of research on violent video games focuses on the impacts of the user -- the individual who is actually playing the game.  Does playing violent video games make you more aggressive?  Does doing so make you more likely to commit violent crimes?  What's the connection?  The long-standing debate over whether violent video game exposure can lead to violence in the real-world rages onward as some scientific research shows clear links between the two forms of violence and other research demonstrates weak, inconsistent, or nonexistent links. Are violent video games good, bad, or irrelevant? Today's article focuses not so much on the individual who is actually playing violent video games but on the friends (and social network) of that individual.  Do friends suffer consequences of their friends' choices to play violent video games? Let's Take a Look.... Today's Article Greitemeyer, T. (2018).  The spreading impact of playing violent video g
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