Tag: health

Thanksgiving Tradition

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I saw Arlo and Pete on June 30, 1985, when an estimated 50,000 people descended on Hartwood Acres to see them. People abandoned their cars along the road to walk to the site, and neighbors complained for years afterward.

I also and saw Arlo and his daughter at Deer Path Park in Flemington, NJ a dozenish years later.

Going back before Hartwood Acres I’ve always associated Alice’s Restaurant Massacre with Thanksgiving. The best way to hear it, for me, is to be driving around somewhere at 9am, noon, or 3pm on Thanksgiving Day and to listen to it playing on the radio. As late as 2004, it was easy to find multiple stations playing at those times. After that, I quit cars and radios for a good while, and these days, I go to Youtube.

Around a month ago, a friend shared a Facebook post from Arlo called Gone Fishing in which Arlo described his mini-strokes, dating back to April Fools Day, 2016, and his more recent decision to stop performing.

And so this is the first Thanksgiving after the Arlo’s last performance.

Stay Home for the Holidays

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After big Thanksgiving dinners, plan small Christmas funerals or better yet choose an alternative plan, like:

  • focus on freedoms that are strong enough to withstand masks,
  • listen to pandemic experts when deciding how to react to a pandemic, and
  • avoid having dinner inside with people who live in different houses.

And seriously, if this is about your "freedom" then you need to learn what that word means. You are free to act until you are hurting others. Covidiots are clearly hurting others.

It’s possible that all of your relatives have really strong constitutions. But consider that Herman Cain beat the odds (30%) after he was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer, that spread to his liver. He beat cancer, but Covid-19 killed him in 40 days. Maybe your Grandma’s stronger than that, but … probably not.

Science is real. The virus is real. It’s ten times more deadly than the flu, and we’re only starting to learn about "blood thickening" and other bizarre side effects, at least some of which appear to be long-lasting.

Please, Stay Home for the Holidays

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Covid before China?

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The President of the United States is fond of spitting out the word "China" when he talks of Covid-19, but there are now signs that the virus was in Italy for months before it was in China.

The Zika virus was first reported in some Pacific island countries, but is believed to have originated in Uganda. And the 1918 flu pandemic, which was first reported by the Spanish government and labelled the Spanish flu, had its earliest recorded outbreak in a military base in the US state of Kansas.

A variety of questions remain. Could Sars-CoV-2 have developed from similar viruses in Italy, and could that explain why early cases in Italy seemed less prevalent? How was it transferred to Wuhan?

Ultimately, it helps us all to understand this virus more, including its origins. We can also hope that the evolving discoveries undercut some of the anti-Chinese racism that has stemmed from the US President and others.

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Voting for Drugs

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For those struggling with the uncertainty of last night’s election, last night’s election might provide your answer.

Among the more certain outcomes are that Montana, New Jersey, Arizona and South Dakota voters legalized recreational marijuana. In fact, one in three US Americans now lives in a state where recreational marijuana is legal.

Oregon and Washington, D. C. pushed further last night, opening the way to psychedelic mushrooms. Oregon also decriminalized small amounts of heroin and cocaine

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More active cases than ever in the US

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Just a quick reminder that even if you’re "bored" with Covid, dealing with reality means accepting that there are more active cases of Covid-19 in the United States today than on any other day ever. And again, that’s active cases … discounting all of the people who have recovered or died, there are more active infections today than ever before … just like almost every day since we allowed this thing to run uncontrolled throughout the country.

If you think that what we’ve done is working … that we’re "rounding the corner" … you’re just plain wrong.

And if you’re now thinking "herd immunity", we still have a ways to go before 3% of the population has been infected, and most estimates for herd immunity require that we get well into the 40% to 80% range — so it has to get 10 to 20 times as bad, and we’ve already killed the equivalent of 75 September 11th attacks.

And you know what else, even if we never got a vaccine, masks alone might be enough to beat this thing. Or maybe not, but while masks alone might not end up being the single silver-bullet, they absolutely help … without starving you of oxygen or whatever other ridiculous ideas people are bandying about these days.

Anti-mask isn’t freedom, it’s free-dumb. Anti-maskers are 75 times worse (so far) than those 19 terrorists were. It’s truly one of the most selfish and sadistic movements ever.

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Schadenfreude Is Most-Seached Word

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Donald Trump mimicked a disabled reporter at the rally in South Carolina

Sympathy and empathy are important, but it can be challenging to summon them up for a person who mocks opponents when they’re sick, mimics the disabled, and who’s fallen ill from a disease that he suggested could "magically disappear" half a year earlier.

So, it’s no great surprise that Merriam-Webster shares that "Schadenfreude was our top lookup on October 2nd, by a very considerable margin, following President Trump’s announcement that he and the First Lady had tested positive for COVID-19."

“Lookups spiked 30,500 percent on October 2, 2020,”

Many questions remain regarding the President’s illness following a mostly fact-free press conference where Trump’s doctor raised questions about the timeline of the diagnosis suggesting that Trump knowingly exposed many people, including the the Bidens, to his infection before acknowledging it as he developed symptoms.

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Gesundheit II

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February 2018 photo of The Gesundheit II machine (University of Maryland School of Public Health via AP)

Just how does the virus that causes COVID-19 spread from one person to another? To help find out, people infected with the new coronavirus take turns sitting in a chair and putting their faces into the big end of a large cone that sucks up everything that comes out of their mouths and noses for analysis.

Scientists disagree about whether aerosols are contributing to the spread of the disease, but even those who warn about aerosols say current recommendations make sense.

Wearing a mask is still important, and make sure it fits snugly. Keep washing those hands diligently. And again, staying farther apart is better than being closer together. Avoid crowds, especially indoors.

Additional recommendations align with previous guidance, but suggest greater ventilation. Spread is less likely outdoors than indoors, for example.

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Choose red, you live….

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Liquorice rolls Bulk sale at a confectioner’s. (Photo by: Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

It’s a known phenomenon, but perhaps not widely known, or at least not widely enough to help a Massachusetts construction worker whose switch from red to black Twizzlers killed him.

Discussions with his family revealed he had been eating one to two “large” bags of black licorice every day for about three weeks before his heart stopped.

It’s not just Twizzlers. Licorice flavored jelly beans, and other candies, and even some Belgian beers and chewing tobaccos contain glycyrrhizic acid.

In your gut you have hundreds kinds of bacteria, as well as viruses and fungi, collectively called your microbiome. And among the bacteria are some that turn glycyrrhizic acid into glycyrrhetinic acid. In the kidneys, glycyrrhetinic acid derivatives suppress conversion of cortisol to cortisone, which regulates ion, salt, and water balances. At the end of this chain reaction, you have critically low potassium levels leading to erratic behavior by the heart and lots of other problems.

If you’re wondering why the FDA would allow even small amounts of such a chemical, remember that all rice contains arsenic, and almost all fish and shellfish contain mercury.

A spokesman for the Hershey Company, which makes Twizzlers, wrote “all of our products are safe to eat and formulated in full compliance with FDA regulations,” but also that all foods, including candy, “should be enjoyed in moderation.”

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Covid-19 often spreads through aerosols

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The 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), portrayed in an illustration created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ALISSA ECKERT, MS; DAN HIGGINS, MAM

Covid-19 often spreads through aerosols. This continues the pattern in which what we know about the virus has continued to get scarier even while much of the country chooses behavior that explicitly aids our enemy.

For months, scientists and public health experts have warned of mounting evidence that the novel coronavirus is airborne, transmitted through tiny droplets called aerosols that linger in the air much longer than the larger globs that come from coughing or sneezing.

For what it’s worth, I’m still taking precautions against transmission through contact. We have spray bottles of 70% to 99% isopropyl alcohol at various points around the house and a mini alcohol bottle filling station set up in the downstairs bathroom. It’s low effort, and might help, so … I keep doing it. However, I also continue to use KN95 masks pretty universally when anywhere near humans … or more recently smoky air.

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