disease

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Self-Care: What is it and Why Aren’t You Doing It?


Self-care is a very simple concept. As it says, it is all about taking care of yourself. But most Americans, and probably others around the world, are not do much.

To be in good health is that you are doing three things: a mind not cluttered, a body in good health, and a spirit that thrives.

You would think the first thing would be the easiest, but it is not. Many people do not get an annual physical. Young people are especially guilty of this. They think they will live forever and since they feel good then everything must be good. Not true. First, you must look at your family history and see if there is any medical or psychological history of disorder. For example: my father had heart disease which killed him at a young age, 57. At age 49 I nearly had a heart attack too. But did I even consider it before that? No! In fact, after I left the army, I was guilty of not having physicals. I was most fortunate on the day of my “almost” heart attack, I was very close to Massachusetts General Hospital. That ended in surgery, a cardiac catheterizing when a stent was place in the problem area. Since that incident, I have had a physical every year and seen a cardiologist regularly. Two years ago, I needed a second surgery and last year a third. My heart is strong and heathy.

You say you are 20-somthing and what could be wrong? Cancer, heart disease, kidney issues, lung issues, and other problems which show up in simple blood tests. All doctors who are in primary care always want your history and that of your family. It helps them when they consider possible issues.

If there is a history of mental illness in your family, make sure that you are in strong psychological health. Simply put, if you have periods of depression, that is not normal. If you have fears you find impossible to overcome, that is not normal. These too are things to discuss with your primary care physician. Oh, you must get a primary care physician.

Do you find your mind racing? Do you feel weighted down by problems? This is something which needs attention. Sometimes talk it out with a friend will do the trick. But many times, it is time to call in a professional of some kind. It could be a financial professional, a lawyer, or even a psychologist. There are times when we have lived with some feeling that is uncomfortable, we come to believe it is normal. It is not. If you are known to say or thing that you have no friends, it is time to get help.

Finally, there is the spiritual portion of your life. Spiritually is not owned by churches or synagogues, it is a state of being when you are comfortable with yourself, know how to deal with your own problems, know how to reconcile with people in your past where harsh words were exchanged. This calls for a personal inventory. It is simple in concept but difficult in execution. You have to go through your whole life, look at your shortcomings, look where you have wronged somebody, and focus entirely upon what you have done to people or institutions, and not what they have done to you be it real or imagined.

You can be neither too young nor too old to start doing these things. It all comes down to desiring a better life. If you think your life is as good as it is going to be, do the things about and you will probably find that your life could be better.

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Are You Happy? Why Not?


Unless you live in a country that is repressive, you have no reason to not be happy in general. We all go through times of sadness, death in the family, losing a job, sickness, and other unplanned occurrences. But those are things of limited time, things which will pass in time. And in those times, you can still find happiness.

We human beings are wired to be happy. Most of us are born to loving parents and have a good childhood. And even those who have experience less than that, they manage to find happiness, so why don’t you?

Our entire life experience, starting with childhood, is controlled by certain portions of our brain. But our brain needs to be trained. Too many people train their brains to think in a positive way. Instead of saying “why me?” why not simply accept the situation at hand and move on. As parents we are responsible for teaching our children these positive reinforcements for our children. And then we need to train ourselves the same way.

I so often hear someone say, “it’s just not fair.” What are they talking about? They are talking about their home being devastated by a tornado, a child who has leukemia, a parent who dies suddenly, and so many other things. I bring out these things because if you look at them, each is because of the forces of nature and not those of many. I always say, they are entirely fair, miserable as they are, but disease and weather do not pick out individuals and bring pain upon them! It is just a natural course of events. This is the universe, inexorably moving along, a power bigger than any of us, and, unfortunately, bringing pain to our lives. The only things that can possibly be unfair is the action of one or a group of people who cause us pain. It is only a human being who can bring about the condition of being “unfair” to us.

To feel happy you must think happy. As I said in my previous post, there is beauty all around us, we just need to take notice. There are wonderful people everywhere but we must find them. Their are people beyond our family who will support us in hard times, but, including our family, we must stay connected to such people.

Our individual happiness depends first upon our own state of mind and then by the bridges we have built.

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We are Forever Changed — COVID-19 Just Started It All


The reason it is called “COVID-19” is that the 19 refers to the year in which is was discovered and that would be 2019. I believe it was in November. The Chinese discovered it. And everyone wants to lay blame of some sort at their feet but the Chinese scientists were at that time grappling with what they had discovered. People need to remember that just because science discovers something does not mean they immediately and fully understand exactly what they have discovered. To the contrary, most scientific discovered take decades to fully explain and sometime longer, much longer.

No one knew this would become the pandemic is has. No one knew and most still grapple with what the immediate and long term effects of this disease are and will be. The best immunologists and epidemiologists are working very hard to get the arms around this virus but to get it right they need time. It is almost a shame that Dr. Fauci informed us that it would take at least 18 months to get a vaccine for this disease. He has told us that such would be the case if everything went right and we got it on the first try. He has also said that it is unlikely those things will happen. But no one seems to be hearing what he is saying. I am not in the medical field but I remember from the one microbiology course I took in college that the professor told how a virus is the most difficult of all maladies to remedy because of the way it exists.

Let’s take AIDS as an example of the above difficulties. We first new of AIDS is the early 1980s. It is a virus. Problematic to it is that it mutates hence the finest minds have yet to create a vaccine 40 years later! What does this have to do with COVID-19? Two things, first, COVID-19 is a virus that the Chinese believe has already mutated as they are having new outbreaks of this disease. Second, the best way to prevent the spread is through personal protection. My personal experience in traveling from Boston to Montana, Wyoming and Idaho is that people in these states are not taking this virus seriously and are not wearing masks. That will change.

I fear we will suffer with this disease for the next 2 years which will cause states to close down again, hospitals to become overwhelmed and more people dying. This may well be one of our new realities for some time to come. I hope I am wrong.

COVID-19 has already forever changed the way businesses will run. Those business who had never done work from home have been forced into it and have discovered it to be a very effective way to do business. Businesses have been forced to change the way they do business or die. And I read this morning where it is expected that 1/4 of all small business will not reopen. I expect business schools will be changing their curriculum to accommodate the new business models that will inevitably come out of this pandemic.

Additionally, the way we look at response to health crises has already changed and will change more. We simply were not prepared for this pandemic in large part because our belief systems had not allowed for such an occurrence.

We have a new phrase in our language, “social distancing.” Will this be temporary or long-lasting, possibly a new standard?

Amid the Pandemic and new ways of doing business came the policeman who murdered a black man by asphyxiation. First it forced police forces around the country to reconsider apprehension techniques. Then another black man was killed just because three white men thought he was a wanted man when in truth he was just out for a jog, something he had done regularly for a long time and finally there was the policeman who shot and killed a black man in the back because he was resisting arrest.

I knew America was still ways to racist for my liking, but to the extent it has suddenly reared its ugly head was surprising. These events caused demonstrations against racism across America. When it was discovered in the black community that some of them were taking advantage of the situation to cause property damage and looting, black leaders took it upon themselves to call out these thugs and remind both them and America that the protests are to be peaceful. In a number of demonstrations it was police mishandling of the protests that cause them to turn violent. But maybe, just maybe, out this will come a more widespread intolerance for all forms of racism. We can only hope.

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We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us.


That title is a quote actually. It came from a comic strip many years ago called “Pogo.”

The COVID-19 is new but neither unknown nor unpredicted. Corona is a cousin to the MERS and SARS epidemic. This is what the NIH had to say about these three: “NIAID COVID-19 research efforts build on earlier research on severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which also are caused by coronaviruses. MERS is a viral respiratory disease that was first reported in Saudi Arabia in September 2012 and has since spread to 27 countries, according to the World Health Organization. Some people infected with MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV) develop severe acute respiratory illness, including fever, cough, and shortness of breath. From its emergence through January 2020, WHO confirmed 2,519 MERS cases and 866 deaths (about 1 in 3). Among all reported cases in people, about 80% have occurred in Saudi Arabia. Only two people in the United States have tested positive for MERS-CoV, both of whom recovered. They were healthcare providers who lived in Saudi Arabia, where they likely were infected before traveling to the U.S., according to the CDC”

And so who is at fault in the U.S. for its spread here? We all are! People blamed when AIDS was first identified and called it a “gay disease” when in fact it originated from heterosexual people in Africa. People panicked when Ebola came to our shores in 2014. It was quickly dealt with and forgotten.

And there is the key word, “forgotten.” In history we say, those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Hopefully this pandemic will put a stop to that sort of thinking where disease is concerned.

COVID-19 may have been unavoidable but the extent that it has spread was very avoidable. Epidemiologists study this very thing and long ago identified the means of disease transmission. The two most common sources of virulent disease are bats and mosquitoes. When in the 1960s the United Nations set out to eradicate malaria it issued a postage stamp with the picture of a mosquito on it.

How we get and distribute our food and water is very well defined. A very large portion of the world’s population drinks disease laden water. As we now know in China “we markets” are popular but are also a breading ground from the spread of diseases, more than just COVID-19.

China has pledged to shut down these wet markets but its follow through is what will really matter. And China is not the only country with wet markets. They are popular all over Asia and other parts of the world as well.

The wealthy nations of the world can no longer afford to stand by and watch disease spread in 3rd world countries and say, “that is their problem.” It should be obvious now that it is a universal problem. Disease knows no borders and moves via ignorance and complacency.

Our hedge against the spread of disease is the World Health Organization (WHO) and “doctors without borders.” Both organizations are underfunded and undermanned. Getting nations to buy in to a standard for food and water will be difficult but not impossible. But it has to happen.

SARS, MERS and COVID-19 all happened in a 17-year period. This should be warning enough that highly infectious diseases are on the rise and unless we learn from these disease and act, we will see and cousin of COVID-19 arise that will be more virulent and much more deadly. Must we go through this again?

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It is God’s Will! Really?


I really and truly hate the expression, “it was God’s will.” Really? How do you know? To be fair, the overwhelming majority of people living in the United States were brought up on one of three basic belief systems: Jewish, Christian, and Islam. Each of those general religions loves to use the expression in question. But my question to any of them is, “how do you know?” If you nail any of them down they will probably refer to some ancient religious text which supposedly gives weight to their contention.

But don’t each of these religions refer to God as a “father” meaning, of course, a family member.   And each contends that God is also the epitome of love, kindness and understanding. Great! Then how can you call it God’s will when an earthquake strikes a region and kills thousands of people? Are you telling me that either God wanted those people dead? As a father I believe it a part of my job to protect my children from any sort of harm. This actually makes God sound like some sort of sadistic being rather than the all loving purported.

Another of my favorites is when a person comes down with a deadly form of cancer and that somehow is God’s will. Again, really? God favors kind and loving people with deadly diseases as some sort of test of their love for Him? It makes it sound like He lacks love for the person involved. Which, as a side note, brings up another of my annoyances: unfairness. People love to say how unfair it is when someone is visited by some life altering, or worse, life ending disease while they are young. No! It is entirely fair! Diseases and disasters do not go around picking out individuals if affect. Fairness exists entirely in human interaction, that is, how one human treats another human. Diseases and disasters simply do not have the capacity to care.

If the basic claims about God of these three religions are to be believed then God could only want for our happiness, good health, and long lives. God does not punish nor reward any living being but saves such things for the afterlife. God does not take the side of one nation over another in a time of war, or for that matter, in any sort of human contest, conquest or endeavor. If God so favored any group of people does it not make sense that He would have protected people against the likes of Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Adolph Hitler or any of a long list of evil persons? But He did not which means His is an entirely hands off position. What happens to us here on earth is always the result of our own actions, or lack of action, or of natural phenomena. And that is my universe. If tomorrow I am told I have some sort of stage 4 incurable cancer I will not look upon it as God’s will or even bad luck. It will simple be the end result of a long string of natural events, and sometimes, many times, we humans are incapable of putting together all of those events or even explaining them. I accept my situation as it is. I promise myself to be as kind, courteous and thoughtful as possible. In the end, after all, is that not what each of us is evaluated on, by those who know us and God?

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Why Is Birth Control Still a Hot Topic?


Four of the hottest topics in the history of America have all involved individual rights, slavery, rights of blacks, right of women to vote, and birth control.  Three of those are no longer hot topics but all can find their roots in the early to mid-19th Century.  Why then have we been unable to make the basic tenants of birth control something that is widely accepted so that any discussion of it has a baseline of accepted principles?  The only reason is because there are those who want it to be a part of morality.

Our country realized when it repealed the 21st Amendment, alcohol prohibition, that it could not legislate morality as was done with this amendment.  We clearly recognized that at least where drinking was concerned, whatever morals were attached to it were an entirely personal thing that governments have no business legislating.

In the early 20th Century a woman named Margaret Sanger, of poor Irish Catholic parents from Corning New York, moved to the lower east side of New York City where she set up a woman’s clinic.  As a trained nurse, and one who had aspired to be a physician, she found that the health of poor women was poorly attended to, and worse, there was no forum for the woman to be educated relative to her own body.  Such discussions were considered taboo at the time.  She had found the urban poor to suffer from an extremely high infant mortality rate.  But it was at that time she also found that many of these women desired to find a way to forestall unwanted pregnancies.  And it was on this point in particular that Sanger lead the charge.  He efforts were both criticized and condemned by early 20th century society.  When she tried to inform a larger number of women by sending sex education materials through the mail, she was prosecuted and found guilty of distributing pornography.  That was in 1917 and at the time she received a large amount of her support from the suffragettes.  But when, in 1920, women got the vote, the suffrage movement ceased and with it Sanger’s best support.  And worse for her, she had earlier allied herself with the Socialist movement in the U.S. and alienated even more people because of that.

Sanger died in 1966 failing to see what would certainly have been her greatest victory, the 1973 US Supreme Court decision on Roe vs. Wade.  The SJC decided that it was an issue of privacy and that abortion was the moral decision of a woman in conjunction with her doctor.  That should have made the issue resolved and given the American public a starting place to move on from.  Unfortunately that has not been the case.

Sanger’s inspiration was the idea of giving women the information necessary about her body to make educated decisions with regard to it.  Key to the discussion was always the word “education.”  And it is on this point which America is failing.  Our high teen birth rate, high abortion rate, and high undesired birth rate.

I find abortion to be absolutely abhorrent.  But my solution is not to ban abortion, but to better educate those who have abortions and unwanted pregnancies, teens in particular.  My challenge to the anti-abortion crowd, who euphemistically call themselves “Pro-life,” is to come up with a solution that reduces a woman’s need and/or desire to get an abortion.  It is troubling that these anti-abortion people also seem to be anti-sex education where adolescents and teens are concerned.  Their magical thinking allows that all the sex education they need they can find at home.  Ideally that would be true, but the real world tells an entirely different story.  It is not coincidental that the highest teen birth rates happens to the poorest educated.  It is also not coincidental that unwanted pregnancies happen most frequently not just to teens, but to the poor who do not have access to good medical support.

I was astonished that within the US Congress there is a movement to cease public funding of Planned Parenthood.  While the organization certainly advises women with regard to abortion, its services do not stop there.  They also deal with all aspects of women’s health and education, such as cervical cancer screening, breast cancer screening, STDs and so forth.  How can anyone in their right mind think that public funding for such a group is a bad thing?

America first has to come to terms with the fact that it needs to educate their children with what is happening to their bodies as they enter puberty.  And that education needs to continue, in the public forum, for as long as they are in school.  It is far less expensive, in all respects, to educate our children with regard to sex than it is to have them pregnant when they have not yet stopped being children.  To do this Americans must stop thinking of sex, where education is concerned, as being private, taboo, or too embarrassing.  And also because sexually transmitted diseases, to include AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis, etc. put us all at risk.

To anti-abortionists I say, support those things that help women from getting pregnant in the first place.  Make it a given that all young girls and women will have equal and unobstructed access to birth control methods.  Make a part of that education the actual costs, both financial and psychological, of bringing a child into the world.  Make a world where abortion is only a last resort, not a convenience, or measure of desperation.  There is no substitute for a well-educated and well-informed public.

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What Do Government Employees Do?


There are three levels of government; federal, state, and local.  I am going to focus on the federal level as that is where my experience of 30 years is, 11 years on active duty in the Army and another 19 years for the Department of Transportation.  The group of employees I am addressing are the civil service workers, not the political appointees.

Every member of the military is a government employee and I do not think that needs any explanation.  But behind them, in the Department of Defense, are tens of thousands of civilian employees who support them.  This sort of employee exists in every federal agency.  They are managers, engineers, lawyers, inspectors, researchers, office assistants and a host of other jobs.  The overwhelming majority of federal lawyers spend little to no time in the court room.  Theirs is the world of assuring that the various activities of the particular agency they work for are proper and legal.  They are the overseers of contracts, employment activities, interagency agreements, agreements with the private sector, and anywhere else their agency’s business takes them.  One of the largest portion of the Defense Department’s civilian employees are support services.  These are people assist in the development and fielding of equipment that our troops must use.  They are engineers, inspectors, supply experts, logistics experts, etc.

There are at least two places that the entire American public relies upon on a daily basis.  All food and medications are inspected by employees of the Department of Agriculture.  Because of this we have the safest food supply in the world, and this includes our water supply.  Everyday there are inspectors who go around checking to see that the food entering our stores meets certain federally mandated qualities.  They make sure the medications we buy at the drug store, not just prescription medications but over-the-counter as well, also meet certain high standards.  In this our country is also second to none.  When epidemic possible diseases are detected it is the federal government in the form of its employees who are on the front lines figuring out what those diseases are exactly and what we can do about them.

Every time you get in any sort of vehicle on any public road the standards for those roads and the vehicles that cover them, are set by the federal government.  Government inspectors are constantly inspecting large trucks and the roads they travel over.  In this same vein, all of aviation falls under the purview of the federal government.  The regulations that cover every commercial aircraft, and their inspections, are federal mandates.  So strict are these mandates that if the same standard we used on our private cars, a large portion of the public could not afford to own the vehicle.  The federal government maintains a database of every aircraft in the air today, of every pilot, of every commercial airline regardless of the sort of business they do, and holds each to a very strict level of standards.  It takes a lot of people, government employees, to complete such work.

One of the false notions that people have about government employees is that they have it easy and do not do much work.  I can assure you that at the federal level, at least, nothing could be further from the truth.  Most government workers work in excess of 40 hours of work but most do not get overtime pay for their efforts.  Furthermore, government employees pay 50% of the medical insurance, pay into their retirement, and pay social security medicare taxes as well.

The federal government employs approximately 2.5 million people full-time, and another 250,000 part-time.  If there is fault to be found in these numbers, that is looking to reduce those numbers, people must consider from which department the reductions are going to come.  If, for example, people do not understand what the Department of the Interior does and want reductions to start there, they need to know that all National Parks come under the Interior and it is those people you are looking to reduce.  Anyone who works at a military research facility is part of Defense.  And so it goes.

You may think you do not know any federal employees, but chances are you do.  But even if you do not, you count on their existence for your personal happiness and safety.   Most government employees are very well-educated and dedicated people who work hard and turn in a full day’s work.

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Never Kill a Spider


My wife, and a lot of other people, see a spider and the first thing to go through their mind is how to kill it.  Now I do understand the desire of people to have spider-free homes but I do not agree with their techniques of ridding themselves of them.  You probably think I am some sort of tree-hugging liberal.  I do not hug trees.  I used to climb them but have never hugged one, nor do I have any desire to hug one.  But I have a principle that says “never kill anything that removes pests you do not like.”  Spiders feed on flies and mosquitos, two insects I have no problem killing.  If I could speak to a spider I’d say to her, “listen, you take care of those  pests on the outside and I will take care of them in here.”  Anyway, I take a paper towel, very loosely bunch it up, and gently remove it from the house to the outdoors where it can do some good.

People need to remember that the biggest pest in the entire animal kingdom is the human.  No animal, rats included, are dirtier.  I am sure you think I am crazy now because I included rats.  Not at all.  Zoologists point out, when asked, that the disease rats carry almost always is because of humans.  Rats are natural scavengers, and they go where the easiest food supply is.  Ergo, find where humans live and you will find a ton of “food” for the rat.  Take that very same rat, put him far out in the wild, and what you will find is an extraordinary neat and clean animal.  That includes the “rat’s nest.”  A squirrel’s nest, the rat’s cousin, is never thought of as being a dirty place even though he builds his house almost exactly the same way.  Now, as to killing rats, not a problem.  Their disease carrying tendency is why, unlike the poor spider which carries no diseases at all.

rat nest

squirrel nest

If you compare the two nests above you will find little difference between them.  In the wild the only difference is, squirrels nest in trees and rats nest on the ground.

I have absolutely no fear of snakes, nor do I look upon them as being evil. Many snakes feed on something we could do without, rats. Snakes are curious animals. Lacking teeth, they eat their prey whole and slowly digest it. Snakes are no in the least bit interested in living in close proximity of humans, anymore than most people are of them. When I lived in Italy, a couple of friends of mine came across a snake in the grass. Not fearing him I reached down and picked him up. Fortunately I knew about picking a snake up behind its head. Unfortunately, I picked him up about an inch too far behind his head. The snake whipped around and tried to sink his fangs into my thumb. Fortunately, for me, all he got was my thumbnail. I quickly dropped him but one of my friends, in spite of my protestations, stomped him to death. That was entirely unnecessary. The snake was rightfully protecting himself and had I left him alone nothing would have happened. The point is, to find a snake you generally have to be somewhere in the wild. There are exceptions, people who live in desert areas will tell you of encounters in their backyards with rattle snakes and others. But even so, we need to remember, it is we humans who have invaded their territory and not the other way around.

We human beings are supposed to be pretty smart but there is a wealth of information that tells a very different story. There is no better example of man’s insensitivity to the natural inhabitants of an area than in Southern California. There are few places in the world where man’s invasion has done more to hurt indigenous animals. The condor of California almost went extinct because of such human infestation and insensitivity. Californians complain about the coyotes and other desert dwellers who roam their backyards. Hey, they were there first! Time to learn to live with them. Even more, it is time to accommodate them.

California condor

California coyote

Hawaiians have an interesting way of looking at a reptile that likes to wander into their houses, the gecko. They claim geckos are good luck in your house and warn against killing them. Good for them! They do not bite and if you want them out, remove them but do not kill them.

gecko

One thing is a constant in the animal kingdom, except for those who think they are smart. Animals give very clear signals of their intentions. They are, if you take time to understand them, very easy to deal with, as a rule. Give a snake a wide berth, he will not bother you. Do not corner an animal, he will not likely attack.  If you stay away from a mother who is caring for her young, she will allow you to pass in peace.  Remove a spider from you house into the great outdoors, and he will do you a huge favor by killing a mosquito that might have bitten you or by killing a fly who might have landed on some of your open food.

Killing ants, cockroaches, hornets, bees and termites in your house is understandable.   But if you find that a squirrel has taken up lodging in your attic or wall you can be assured he found a defect in your roofing or walls.  Thank him for it and find how he got in.  Get someone out to your house who knows how to draw him out without killing him, it is possible.  Extermination should always be your last resort.