I had measles and chickenpox simultaneously at age five. My freaked out mother quarantined me for two weeks. I think that caused my parents some grief with the elementary school. Thankfully my parents did not subscribe to the infect and forget thesis and prevented me from infecting others. This was 67 years ago.
I too got a visit from shingles. Luckily I realized that my skin lesions were not yet another encounter with poison ivy (the New York state plant) and got a proper diagnosis at an urgent care. The anti viral prescribed worked wonders in about a day.
I then got the shingles vaccination. That particular vaccine was not particularly effective. The new two installment one is highly effective. I got it. The transitory side effects are not pleasant but pale to those of full blown shingles.
I am amazed that the NHS does not provide this vaccine to any adult with a previous case of chicken pox.
To accompany our terrific correspondent, Nate Bear, I heartily recommend reading "Racing to Extinction: Why Humanity Will Soon Vanish" by Lyle Lewis. I wish he had employed an editor but as a retired wildlife biologist with extensive experience his observations are extremely cogent. It certainly will not impart you with the tl;dr malaise. It will reinforce everything Nate writes about in the biological realm.
Excellent post, thanks. And in addition to your fine analogies, beginning with Varicella zoster, here's one that always blows my mind: it's the numbed expression on the faces of my acquaintances when I explain that a huge factor in the deterioration of public health outcomes can often be traced back to the toxic chemical soup with which our economic structures have flooded the Biosphere for 200 years. PFAS, endocrine disruptors, etc. Another example of: "What happens to our world is not a coin toss, not a rabbit from a hat".
Such an excellent piece...even if chilling. The trouble with being old is there's such a lot of these "it seemed like an okay idea at the time" examples to look back on...Right now, though, I'm just looking back four months, when I voted Liberal in the Canadian federal election. And kicking myself in the head (or trying to...)
I hesitate to tell you this, Jasmine, but you didn't need to take that vaccine. I didn't have C. pox as a kid either (plenty of us; you were not unique by any means; folks sometimes tend to forget that they have an immune system). No C. pox, no latent virus, no shingles, no need for that vaccine, which although improved from the original, still has side-effects -- see the suck of sorrow's comment. Unless you expected to be heavily exposed to people with C. pox, whatever medical professional advised you to get vaccinated had their head firmly implanted. Sorry.
Another fine post - had shingles a year or so ago - bloody miserable.
In the case of Bin Laden etc – the die was cast on that with the discovery of oil in “Saudi” Arabia. The problem was/is Wahabism – innocuous albeit nasty (like chickenpox/shingles) what transformed it into a threat was oil money – which allowed it to be exported ref the Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan teaching/training the Taliban etc. One can apply the same logic – as you did to Gaza – in the making for 70 odd years - & couple that to an Israeli-jewish education system that tells Israeli jews that non-jews are at best servants, at worst, untermensch. Notice in both cases: education (grooming?) is used to great (& evil) effect.
We humans it seems never learn. We pile stupidity upon stupidity and wonder why things are as bad as they are. The litany of stupid is endless and growing exponentially.
"The UK’s terrorism legislation is a good example. Passed without much controversy in the 2000s to stop suicide bombers, the law is now being applied to arrest grandmothers in wheelchairs on suspicion of terror offences."
They knew perfectly well what they were doing at the time, as did the architects of the so-called "Patriot Act" back in the US.
A Scary Enemy is always a necessity.
1. To justify why we can't have nice things. Healthcare? Infrastructure? Education? We don't have time for that now, don't you know we gotta fight Saddam/Milosevic/Bin Laden/Saddam again/Ghadaffi/Assad/ISIS/Putin/Hamas/Houthis/ad nauseam.
2. To give the rubes a cause to rally around, rather than ask awkward questions.
3. To unify political factions around a common enemy, justify the division of spoils and explain why we can't have nirvana right at the moment, we'd really like to but the Scary Enemy is stopping us and don't you know we gotta focus on this fight, right now!
4. To justify crackdowns on civil liberties. You and your namby-pamby Bill of Rights, you hate our freedom! What, are you on the side of the fascists/communists/Islamicists/Russians/ ad nauseam?
Hope you're feeling better soon Nate. I had shingles in my mid-30's, brought on my extreme stress, it can be quite miserable and painful.
It is wild watching so many people "just sick all the time now" with absolutely no willingness to connect the dots to covid. If they were to understand that, they would have to admit they were wrong, and humans will do anything to avoid admitting they were wrong about something so dire. Many will go to their early graves refusing to accept the truth.
The health issues in my extended family are significant, two sudden heart attack deaths, two serious strokes, and another with aggressive stage 4 cancer, all in the last 18 months, none over the age of 75. A cousin's wife was in the hospital for almost 3 months with covid in 2023 and almost died; she has not fully recovered, they don't talk about it, but she is clearly not well. No one wants to talk about covid, and no one masks (except me at family events). The insanity.
With respect to Gaza and its consequences - about 400,000 people have been killed and murdered by the Israelis (using weapons from the USA & Europe). The writer is correct to think there will be consequences. The form of these consequences is uncertain - but we can be very certain that many many thousands of Gazans will want revenge against both Israeli jews and those that armed them. Frank Herbert wrote a novel "The White Plague" in which a scientist's wife is murdered by a bomb. In his grief he devises a virus that kills only women. The novel was written back in the 1980s - the tech was not there then for such "novel" viruses. It is now. I am very concerned that somebody somewhere decides that it would be nice to unleash something very unpleasant. There are a range of other options - but I have no intention of outlining them here. Suffice to say - the presence of European and American settlers in the middle east is asking for trouble & it will come - for them and us & frankly, we have only ourselves to blame for thinking that the middle east was terra nullis.
I had measles and chickenpox simultaneously at age five. My freaked out mother quarantined me for two weeks. I think that caused my parents some grief with the elementary school. Thankfully my parents did not subscribe to the infect and forget thesis and prevented me from infecting others. This was 67 years ago.
I too got a visit from shingles. Luckily I realized that my skin lesions were not yet another encounter with poison ivy (the New York state plant) and got a proper diagnosis at an urgent care. The anti viral prescribed worked wonders in about a day.
I then got the shingles vaccination. That particular vaccine was not particularly effective. The new two installment one is highly effective. I got it. The transitory side effects are not pleasant but pale to those of full blown shingles.
I am amazed that the NHS does not provide this vaccine to any adult with a previous case of chicken pox.
To accompany our terrific correspondent, Nate Bear, I heartily recommend reading "Racing to Extinction: Why Humanity Will Soon Vanish" by Lyle Lewis. I wish he had employed an editor but as a retired wildlife biologist with extensive experience his observations are extremely cogent. It certainly will not impart you with the tl;dr malaise. It will reinforce everything Nate writes about in the biological realm.
Really, read the book!
If you can, donate to Nate!
Excellent post, thanks. And in addition to your fine analogies, beginning with Varicella zoster, here's one that always blows my mind: it's the numbed expression on the faces of my acquaintances when I explain that a huge factor in the deterioration of public health outcomes can often be traced back to the toxic chemical soup with which our economic structures have flooded the Biosphere for 200 years. PFAS, endocrine disruptors, etc. Another example of: "What happens to our world is not a coin toss, not a rabbit from a hat".
Thanks, yes. A post for the future. Truly frightening what lies in our air, soil and water
And in us, too.
Microplastics, anyone?
Such an excellent piece...even if chilling. The trouble with being old is there's such a lot of these "it seemed like an okay idea at the time" examples to look back on...Right now, though, I'm just looking back four months, when I voted Liberal in the Canadian federal election. And kicking myself in the head (or trying to...)
Once again, nail on the head. Thanks for joining to dots. I hope you feel better soon, Nate.
Thanks Amanda appreciate that
I got my chicken pox vaccine as an adult because they didn't have one when I was a kid. Amazingly enough, I never caught chicken pox.
Lucky!
Very!
I hesitate to tell you this, Jasmine, but you didn't need to take that vaccine. I didn't have C. pox as a kid either (plenty of us; you were not unique by any means; folks sometimes tend to forget that they have an immune system). No C. pox, no latent virus, no shingles, no need for that vaccine, which although improved from the original, still has side-effects -- see the suck of sorrow's comment. Unless you expected to be heavily exposed to people with C. pox, whatever medical professional advised you to get vaccinated had their head firmly implanted. Sorry.
Go fuck yourself😤
Another fine post - had shingles a year or so ago - bloody miserable.
In the case of Bin Laden etc – the die was cast on that with the discovery of oil in “Saudi” Arabia. The problem was/is Wahabism – innocuous albeit nasty (like chickenpox/shingles) what transformed it into a threat was oil money – which allowed it to be exported ref the Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan teaching/training the Taliban etc. One can apply the same logic – as you did to Gaza – in the making for 70 odd years - & couple that to an Israeli-jewish education system that tells Israeli jews that non-jews are at best servants, at worst, untermensch. Notice in both cases: education (grooming?) is used to great (& evil) effect.
We humans it seems never learn. We pile stupidity upon stupidity and wonder why things are as bad as they are. The litany of stupid is endless and growing exponentially.
"The UK’s terrorism legislation is a good example. Passed without much controversy in the 2000s to stop suicide bombers, the law is now being applied to arrest grandmothers in wheelchairs on suspicion of terror offences."
They knew perfectly well what they were doing at the time, as did the architects of the so-called "Patriot Act" back in the US.
A Scary Enemy is always a necessity.
1. To justify why we can't have nice things. Healthcare? Infrastructure? Education? We don't have time for that now, don't you know we gotta fight Saddam/Milosevic/Bin Laden/Saddam again/Ghadaffi/Assad/ISIS/Putin/Hamas/Houthis/ad nauseam.
2. To give the rubes a cause to rally around, rather than ask awkward questions.
3. To unify political factions around a common enemy, justify the division of spoils and explain why we can't have nirvana right at the moment, we'd really like to but the Scary Enemy is stopping us and don't you know we gotta focus on this fight, right now!
4. To justify crackdowns on civil liberties. You and your namby-pamby Bill of Rights, you hate our freedom! What, are you on the side of the fascists/communists/Islamicists/Russians/ ad nauseam?
Hope you're feeling better soon Nate. I had shingles in my mid-30's, brought on my extreme stress, it can be quite miserable and painful.
It is wild watching so many people "just sick all the time now" with absolutely no willingness to connect the dots to covid. If they were to understand that, they would have to admit they were wrong, and humans will do anything to avoid admitting they were wrong about something so dire. Many will go to their early graves refusing to accept the truth.
The health issues in my extended family are significant, two sudden heart attack deaths, two serious strokes, and another with aggressive stage 4 cancer, all in the last 18 months, none over the age of 75. A cousin's wife was in the hospital for almost 3 months with covid in 2023 and almost died; she has not fully recovered, they don't talk about it, but she is clearly not well. No one wants to talk about covid, and no one masks (except me at family events). The insanity.
With respect to Gaza and its consequences - about 400,000 people have been killed and murdered by the Israelis (using weapons from the USA & Europe). The writer is correct to think there will be consequences. The form of these consequences is uncertain - but we can be very certain that many many thousands of Gazans will want revenge against both Israeli jews and those that armed them. Frank Herbert wrote a novel "The White Plague" in which a scientist's wife is murdered by a bomb. In his grief he devises a virus that kills only women. The novel was written back in the 1980s - the tech was not there then for such "novel" viruses. It is now. I am very concerned that somebody somewhere decides that it would be nice to unleash something very unpleasant. There are a range of other options - but I have no intention of outlining them here. Suffice to say - the presence of European and American settlers in the middle east is asking for trouble & it will come - for them and us & frankly, we have only ourselves to blame for thinking that the middle east was terra nullis.