Standard time is much better than Daylight Savings Time if the US is to stabilize its clock.

From the Local Epidemiologist on 07/22/26

Congress has gotten as far as it ever has in ending twice-a-year clock changes. The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time (DST) permanent. It now heads to the Senate. If that passes, your mornings will stay darker for longer. But if it doesn’t go through, another bill is coming right behind it that would stabilize clock time in the opposite direction, enacting permanent standard time.

Ending the clock switch is extremely popular, and science agrees stopping this madness is what’s best for our health. But nearly every major sleep-medicine and circadian-biology organization recommends permanent standard time, not permanent daylight saving time (DST), which the House just approved.

The science about why the direction of the clock switch matters starts with your body.

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The proposal coming from the US House of Representatives to make Daylight Savings Time permanent and people in the US would no longer be changing their clocks twice per year is bad for the nation's health and is not based on science.

To do away with the time changes is a good idea and seems to be popular with the American people, but it would be better if the permanent time change was to Standard Time not Daylight Savings Time based on the circadian rythms of homo sapiens.

Public health prevention vs. biomedical early detection

From The Mail in the Sept. 1&8, 2025 New Yorker Magazine:

Medical Trials

Siddhartha Mukherjee, in his piece on early-stage cancer detection, presents a convincing argument concerning the perils of screening ("Early Warnings," June 23rd). He also suggests that the bio-medical model, which finds disease, is being privileged over the public-health model, which seeks to prevent illness and can do so effectively given enough resources. Clean air and water, quality food, adequate housing, safe workplaces, education, and vaccination contribute far more to the health of a population than catching disease early. But biomedicine is where the money is, and screening brings in a significant share. Mammography alone is an eleven-billion-dollar industry.

Burden Lundgren, M.P.H., Ph.D., R.N.
Norfolk, Va.

It is much cheaper preventing disease than treating it once it starts and is detected. However, prevention, by its very nature, does not lead to the manifestation of a problem, and if there is no problem, why spend resources to prevent it from occurring in the future? "We'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it is an easier political sell than spending resources up front to prevent a problem that may not occur.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

A stitch in time saves nine.

"Be prepared!" (Old Boy Scout motto.)

Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance

All colleges in the SUNY system will require Covid-19 vaccinations to attend in person classes in the fall semester of 2021

 

This appeared in the Daily News out of Batavia, NY on 05/11/21.

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Trump disbanded the National Security Council's pandemic preparedness office back in 2017

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Covid-19 is not the flu. It's worse.