Sunday Evening Bringing You Down

If you are resting easy, a lot of other Americans aren’t.  Studies reveal that anti-anxiety drug prescription volume is skyrocketing.  (ZH Story)  New prescriptions accounted for 80% of the rise.  Sleep medication prescriptions also grew rapidly.  Just want to note that most of these drugs have side effects.  This increase is somewhat understandable as the news media and our so-called leaders have scared the hell out of people, with no good reason.  But I am also disappointed that so many people seem incapable of getting the facts for themselves.  Everything I report on here is easily available to anyone, and I am only doing basic math in any numbers analysis.  More information and less drugs would be a better prescription for anyone who is anxious.

On the other hand, if you like being anxious, the job losses are even worse than the headline numbers.  (ZH Story)   Due to definitional issues and people just plain dropping out of the work force, the real number unemployment number is closer to 25%.

But if you want some reassurance, here is a good story describing various vaccine candidates.  (Wired Story)  The bad news, as I have noted before, many of these are new, untested vaccine approaches, and all require large safety and efficacy studies before approval.  That is going to take months, if not a year or more.

And finally, to make you really anxious, think staying-at-home protects you.  According to the Governor of New York, 66% of their cases came from people who were sheltering in place (that is a euphemism for cowering in their basements).  (NY Post Story)