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I have an essay in the NYT Sunday Review on socioeconomic class, stress, and health. The gist: the lower one ranks in society, the more stressed, and the worse one’s health. Many see the yawning divide between the haves and have-nots as a public health issue, and even as an economic problem. (How better to save money on healthcare costs than to prevent disease in the first place?) Nothing about microbes in this

Although professionals may bemoan their long work hours and high-pressure careers, really, there’s stress, and then there’s Stress with a capital “S.” The former can be considered a manageable if unpleasant part of life; in the right amount, it may even strengthen one’s mettle. The latter kills. What’s the difference? Scientists have settled on an oddly subjective explanation: the more helpless one feels when facing