Bosco-d-gama

According to the BBC the WHO has designated Europe as the new epicenter of the covid pandemic. So ‘perhaps’ we’re doing better here than we understand. We’ll just have to wait it out. We’re having a mini-blizzard here in the Pacific Northwest so staying home is simple enough.

Once lived in close proximity to the Marine Corps Air Station, El Toro and watched them fly the phantoms. They’d practice ‘touch-n-goes’ and jeesh those things were so loud and so low. We’d wave at the pilots...... none waved back, guessing they were busy.

The pock marks were from smallpox vaccinations.

Polio terrified the country but in actuality the worst cases of polio were a very small percentage of any outbreak. Less than 5% of polio victims experienced any level of paralysis. Less than 2.5% required some level of ventilator support due to paralysis and most of those recuperated enough function to wean. Roughly 0.05% died from polio. Their paralysis was so severe that little could be done to support them. Most polio victims experienced nothing worse than a bad cold. But the shear numbers of infected meant that a lot of people required a lot of help. But if you look at typhus and diphtheria, etc they were insanely lethal. Up to 60% of untreated typhus sufferers died. It would wipe out entire generations of kids. Infectious disease was and remains really awful. Yes, we have most of it under excellent control and modern science will tackle new diseases expeditiously. Hopefully we’ll get this covid virus corralled up in short order. But there’s always the next new pathogen and as we have witnessed several times recently not every country manages diseases well....... or at all. Never become complacent about disease.

I decided to buy tons and tons of #4 coffee filters. They were easy to find, I won’t run short of coffee and I can wipe with them if need be.👌🤪

It is humbling to watch the world marshal such a comprehensive response to this disease. Now we are all reminded of the fragility of life. Now we sense the same disease fears humanity faced prior to vaccinations. Hoping the very best to you all.

You went through ‘desensitization’ therapy. They identified what you were allergic to and slowly conditioned your body to stop ‘over’ responding to those allergens. When out in the cold ........ use a snood and/or any material placed in front of your mouth/nose. That will capture your exhaled heat/moisture and help heat and humidify the next inhaled breath. The goal there is to minimize cold stressing your airways. Lastly....... ‘good’ scotch. We all know that the authorities use breathalyzer tests to measure blood alcohol levels. So, yeah - we ‘off gas’ alcohol fumes in proportion to our BAC. Well...... some asthmatics respond to these exhaled fumes. Alcohol is not a normal part of our breathing and those fumes can result in inflammation and/or spasms. It may no be this way for you...... just an FYI.

“Catastrophe medicine” - this is what Italy has imposed on its overburdened healthcare systems - all of them. It is war time triage. There, with roughly 15,000 cases of covid 19, so many are critical that the docs are now required to choose who gets life saving care..... and their government announced their triage guidelines. So if you get critically ill or compromised in any way, by any disease or trauma your level of care will depend on these guidelines. In essence only the strong will be allowed access to critical care. People will now die from other ailments, from trauma, from any lethal situation because their systems are plugged up with too many covid sufferers. THIS is why we ALL “MUST” do our utmost to slow the spread of this disease. Our health systems have their own limits which can get filled quickly. You could get covid and survive because of your age and health status........ then dump your motorcycle and require some fast and serious care - nope, not available. Too busy, too full.... too bad - so sad. This is not the flu. There is zero immunity to this and it spreads easily. If you happen to experience a bad case for whatever reasons you are seriously ill. Stop looking at how many die and ask how many are deathly ill and can we deal with that?

....and they have a chant........OOOooooooohm!

The Chinese physician who 1st recognized this virus and several of his colleagues attempted to sound alarms in China. The group of doctors were gathered together, told they were wrong and censured for causing a public panic. At least one of those doctors died from this disease.

My advice is for you to learn the facts instead of spewing speculative and ill informed conclusions. If that holds ‘no value’ then the problem is not with me. As you say this is no ‘joking’ matter.......... which is why ‘facts’ matter. Texas has plenty of pertinent data online about its H1N1 experiences. Your initial post asks readers to ‘use their imagination’......... that is a joke when it comes to serious matters.

On the face of it, without drilling down any further - the ‘conspiracy’ concern does not hold water. If you’re going to ‘doctor’ your data you certainly would not document your actions at any visible level and this was placed in your medical records for all interested parties to witness. I suspect that your diagnosis was acknowledged on the level it represented...... it was a case of the flu but one not severe enough to warrant hospital care. Public health data is often ‘crunched’ in categories and when your case was reviewed for inclusion into a ‘sicker’ data base it was ‘disallowed’ because it did not belong there. They did not need to look further into your biometrics, etc in their efforts to better understand what sort of people were getting more seriously ill. They are doing similar things with the corona virus. They will analyze in finer detail people who died and why they may have been more adversely affected. But if you had concerns then or even now....... contact them and ask. Do not assume the worst. Believe me if they wanted it hidden - you would have never known about it.

There is no level of herd immunity for this new virus. Absolutely every person is susceptible. That means it can spread as fast as allowed in a very target-rich host community. By aggressively keeping the spread to a minimum we should keep it on a creep and not blooming through cities uncontrolled. We may get some break as the temps warm. But what is needed is the vaccination that will bring the immunity without the infection. And we need time for that. So that’s the fight. We are biding time. And thank your lucky stars that it is not some insanely lethal contagion. It could just as easily be a whole lot worse. And WHY are people hoarding toilet paper?

If they cannot contain the rate of spread our health systems will be overwhelmed. Like most industries healthcare does not maintain an excess of floor space, beds and personnel to meet ultra heavy peak demands. Once critical care spaces that serve a region get filled then they will remain that way for the course of the disease for those patients. Any incoming critical patients would need to get care in alternate settings quite likely using less qualified personnel. And every clinician that gets infected is out of the game for several weeks. What is not being stated is what lies behind the death statistics. Those are the people who died. They went through a lot of critical care prior to their demise. And there will be tons more requiring critical care whom will survive and not become a fatal statistic. We are talking about 10’s of thousands, if not 100’s of thousands who will need a hospital bed.

Same deal - different concerns. My new wife of 3 years brought into the household a Bose wave radio. We use it in the garage where we have our stained glass workshop. Essentially it’s a background sound source. But I own amps and other source equipment that is not in use........ but I do not own any speakers worth setting up when I consider where it’s deployed and my ‘elderly’ hearing. Periodically I browse around for used speakers but just can’t justify getting anything nice for the prices asked when it is just a garage system and I can’t hear all that we’ll anyway. I’ve got 2 wonderful systems indoors so there’s no shortage of excellent sound where it matters most. Get your hearing checked. Knowing is better than not knowing and you’ll have baseline data to track future needs.

The 1918 influenza event became a pandemic largely because of WW1 and the international movement of the masses involved in the event. The strain was especially tough on the younger population. I’ve read where this covid19 virus kills by initiating Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). ARDS is less of an infection and more of an overreaction by the immune system. It leads to capillary leakage that is so severe that large proteins escape into the lungs. Once this occurs osmotic balance is disturbed and fluids follow the proteins. Essentially you drown in your own fluids. ARDS has been known to become initiated by a number of things and was 1st coined during the Vietnam war among our injured soldiers. Oxygen can be concentrated using fractional distillation for bulk volumes or by molecular sieves typically used by patients for home use. As for mechanical ventilation we all recall the use of iron lungs for those who needed respiratory support for polio. The iron lung was/is a negative pressure controller, basically a single mode of ventilation that actually works pretty well for simple ventilation. Today there are over 42 modes of ventilation available to clinicians...... some of which are pretty exotic. This is why neonates survive so much better these days. Still for a knowledgeable clinician the proper ventilator choice at the right time can make a huge difference in the outcome of ARDS. What is killing the older population are their other comorbidities........ they’ve got so much ‘wrong’ with them that they cannot survive this degree of additional sickness. Understand also that such peril has faced healthcare providers since forever. They walk into the lions den of disease where wrong moves or accidents can become deadly. Think AIDS or legionaries....... critical care workers truly deserve a lot more recognition for their routine jobs...... not just when it suddenly makes headlines.

There is one thing I miss about living in California. There’s a wonderful assortment of playhouses that offer some pretty nice productions. There’s a lot of talent in the area. Sometimes even major actors work these smaller venues. I saw Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy perform in the play version of On Golden Pond’. There’s a lot of good theater in L.A. you simply cannot get in most cities. Is that enough to get me back there? Nope.

Thank you. It is not a simple journey. Sadly, very sadly - it is a journey way too many families have travelled.

Just so you know my other son is an aerospace executive. The ‘character’ of my own family faced challenges. Some were won and some weren’t. I do blame drug policies that fail to protect our youth regardless of location. Is it ‘worse’ in Southern California? Absolutely!

Well, actually ‘yes’ Southern California did take one of my children. You see in that arena druggies feel way too free to pursue their business because it is a light loaded ‘non-violent’ crime in the twisted minds of some. There youngsters get told that heroin is fun and those claiming it is addictive are just old farts who do not know anything. There youngsters are afforded their 1st doses for free...... y’know kinda of a ‘loss leader’ approach to the business. Soon the girls are selling themselves and the boys too. They turn to crime. 1st they steal from their families, then their friends and neighbors. Then they just steal or rob to pay for their habits. So - yeah - Mr. Braintrust...... I lost a son. Hope the same never happens to your family.

I sold a condo in Orange County California and bought a custom 3600 square foot home on a golf course in Idaho and put over $100K in the bank. You are looking at the opposite scenario, unfortunately. If it were me........ I’d buy my home in Texas and work in California. You’d get a bigger bang for you $$ and stay by family at the same time. And when you are ready to step away from California you’d be all set up. Also, if you have any kids consider that California will distort and quite likely redirect their lives in some unpleasant ways. Try to not let the Southern California ‘bling’ sparkle up your expectations.

Nancy Pelosis’ obituary: You can read what’s in it after she has died..........

As a preschooler I recall being downtown in Los Angeles and not being able to see across the street due to pollution. The closer to the beach the better. Those onshore winds blow the smog inland. It did get much better as I got older. But once you get away from that region and see unpolluted sky you realize just how smoggy the Los Angeles basis is...... and how truly blue the sky can be.

Santa Monica accommodated the homeless by feeding them, which encouraged more, and more to stay in a spectacular setting. This was decades before their now famous homeless crisis and the city became a Mecca for the indigent populations. That oft seen Santa Monica pier sign is adjacent to ocean park which is now a pretty sad sight. Like San Fran the population there is rethinking their approach to these problems. There will always be people whose misfortune is not their own fault. But there were loads of people I knew there whose free and easy circumstances were bolstered by a ‘giving’ community.

I lived in California for 40 + years through earthquakes and quite a shift in the economy and most of that in west Los Angeles. I last came through there 15 years ago. It was not the traffic, nor the costs.... it was the degradation of the community. The cities I grew up in are now human cesspools that we’re once encouraged by the liberal groups who now regret those choices. Like San Francisco where public defecation covers city streets Los Angeles has become a social tragedy. Places I once routinely frequented I’ve seen on television covered with encampments. IMHO the entire state seems ready to implode. Going to Disneyland is now $$$$$$$$. Car registration....... in the thousands per year per vehicle. Housing costs, income taxes, property taxes........ yikes. For me to visit Santa Monica where I grew up, for just one week...... and do what I used to do...... I’d guess at least $5,000.00. Maybe there’s a way you could accept the work and stay there for just the work week. Honestly it’d be cheaper to live in another state and fly home. Earn the big paycheck and use the income in a better economy.