Bits ‘n pieces from east, west and beyond

East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:

Even though they have reserves of $100 billion, 60 of the U.S.’s largest hospital chains snagged $15 billion from the federal CARES Act, according to a report in The New York Times.

Ready or not, elections just became more complicated. Political videos are now easily doctored to entirely misrepresent a candidate. Tactics include clipping out crucial portions of dialogue or slowing speech to create the appearance of intoxication. The Washington Post predicts that Russia will not hesitate to inundate social media with these realistic computer-generated videos.

While saying they don’t support Joe Biden’s entire presidential platform, former members of George W. Bush’s administration formed a super PAC to support the one-time senator’s campaign, The Hill said.

In 1990 the U.S. had 66 billionaires. Today there are 614, and their net worth has grown 23 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Americans for Tax Fairness.

As of last summer, 99 percent of bailout money for farmers went to white farm operators, according to The Counter, a nonprofit newsroom that focuses on the food industry. Most of that aid has gone to the wealthiest 10 percent of farmers. The 2019 farm bailout cost $19 billion and was larger than the auto industry bailout during the Great Recession.

“If American health care were its own country, it would be the fourth largest in the world by gross domestic product,” according to a New York Times editor. She said the U.S spends an average of $3.5 trillion annually on health care, “more than Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K., Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and Australia combined.”

Yet for all that expense, she added, the U.S. loses more people to preventable and treatable medical conditions than the aforementioned countries.

The birth control pill’s occasional failure may be due to the finding that some women metabolize estrogen and progesterone found in the pharmaceutical more rapidly than most, making them at risk for pregnancy, according to a study report in Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Researchers at Georgetown University calculated that, spanning a decade, $1 trillion for infrastructure would create more than 11 million jobs. Four years ago, President Donald Trump promised $1 trillion for infrastructure, which has not yet fully materialized.

According to Joseph Black, founder of the Made in the USA Foundation, the U.S. is not the richest country in the world; it is the 13th richest, based on per capita income. Those countries that are richer are Ireland, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore.

Recreational use of drones in national parks has been prohibited for six years, but the message either hasn’t gotten out or is ignored, reflected by the thousands of recorded illegal drone incidents since then. Drone problems include spikes in heart rates for some species, Sierra magazine said, as well as interruption of the pristine wilderness experience. Recreational drones are also a collision risk for other aircraft. Still, drones are proving valuable for scientific research, mapping, fire management, search-and-rescue, and monitoring geological events, like landslides.

A recent Bits ‘n Pieces column stated that costs for hospitalization for COVID-19 could run as high as $1 million. But The Seattle Times said that a 70-year-old man was billed $1.12 million. His room was $9,736 per day; in the 181-page billing, a quarter of it was for drug expenses.

Blast from the past: The Black Death, thought to be a bacterial plague that began in 1347, destroyed up to 60 percent of the human population — 200 million people. Historians for a time believed that the bacterium came from fleas carried by rats on a sailing ship. That has since come into question. But the illness caused aches, vomiting, and pus and blood-filled sores in armpits and groins.

Socioeconomically, since so many skilled workers died, there was a labor shortage, allowing peasants leverage for demanding better working terms, possibly hastening the end of serfdom.