Teetering

News blues

What happens when a health-care system crumbles?

At first, there’s just a lot of waiting. Emergency rooms get so full that “you’ll wait hours and hours, and you may not be able to get surgery when you need it.”
When patients are seen, they might not get the tests they need, because technicians or necessary chemicals are in short supply. Then delay becomes absence. The little acts of compassion that make hospital stays tolerable disappear. Next go the acts of necessity that make stays survivable. Nurses might be so swamped that they can’t check whether a patient has their pain medications or if a ventilator is working correctly. People who would’ve been fine will get sicker. Eventually, people who would have lived will die. This is not conjecture; it is happening now, across the United States.

Read more >>
This article is specific to the US where medical care is very expensive, not easily dispensed, and geared towards generating and supporting high medical insurance premiums. The medical system in South Africa – with a quasi-infrastructure overall and shaky medical care in general - serves the vast majority without medical insurance.

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Notes from the Covid front lines:

…health care workers are not superhuman or robots, and are subject to human feelings and emotions just like everyone else. Never before have I endured such resentment and cynicism at unvaccinated patients and their reckless, selfish choices. Choices that enable this pandemic to propagate and destroy lives and families. Thus, it is only natural that throughout the country we are seeing widespread staffing shortages across all health care disciplines.

Read “I'm An ICU Doctor in Rural Ohio. This Is the Horror I Face Every Day Due To COVID-19.” >>

On the same topic:
An incoming tide of patients is slowly drowning UMass Memorial Medical Center, and the US military's National Guard is working to plug the gaps. In wave after daily wave, the emergency crews pull up to the ambulance bay, dropping off patients for which there is no room. 

Read more >>

And, 

Ambulances in Kansas speed toward hospitals then suddenly change direction because hospitals are full. Employee shortages in New York City cause delays in trash and subway services and diminish the ranks of firefighters and emergency workers. Airport officials shut down security checkpoints at the biggest terminal in Phoenix and schools across the nation struggle to find teachers for their classrooms.
The current explosion of omicron-fueled coronavirus infections in the U.S. is causing a breakdown in basic functions and services — the latest illustration of how COVID-19 keeps upending life more than two years into the pandemic. “This really does, I think, remind everyone of when COVID-19 first appeared and there were such major disruptions across every part of our normal life,” said Tom Cotter, director of emergency response and preparedness at the global health nonprofit Project HOPE. “And the unfortunate reality is, there’s no way of predicting what will happen next until we get our vaccination numbers — globally — up.”
First responders, hospitals, schools and government agencies have employed an all-hands-on-deck approach to keep the public safe, but they are worried how much longer they can keep it up. 

Read “Omicron Boom Spurs Breakdown of Vital Services Nationwide. Disruptions are evident in everything from health care to public transit to air travel.” >> 

And, confused by the CDC’s new isolation guidelines? You’re not the only one. America’s COVID Rules Are a Dumpster Fire >>

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The South African government has decided to take a more pragmatic approach while keeping an eye on severe COVID and whether or not health systems are imminently under threat. This reflects acceptance that governments will increasingly be looking for ways to live with the virus cognisant of the detrimental indirect effects that restrictions have been having on the economy, livelihoods and other aspects of society. This is particularly pertinent in resource constrained countries such as South Africa.

Read more >>

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The Lincoln Project: Seb/Ted  (0:37 mins)
Our own Trevor Noah and the Daily Show comment on, Ted Cruz: The Booger on the Lip of Democracy  (0:45 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Who knew? 

Actually, I knew. It’s tough not to know when, each day in the office, one makes a cup of coffee with a high-end Keurig delivering coffee with a one-time-use plastic pod, along with two or three one-time-use plastic crème pods, a one-time use sugar packet and, if one doesn’t bring along a reusable ceramic mug, a one-time-use polystyrene cup. 

I also knew our office was one of dozens of similar offices on one floor – and millions across America - with Keurig coffee makers. Worry spurred these photos I took to record my ritual cup of joe.
Now, huge surprise! NOT!

The millions of machines that require single-use plastic coffee pods are not, after all, great for the environment, not even close. Finally, Keurig is roasted and, one hopes, toasted (as in burned, not celebrated).

The Competition Bureau, a regulator in Canada tasked with snuffing out deceptive business practices, said Keurig Canada will pay a $3 million penalty for not being transparent about the recyclability of its products. The bureau said that it and the company had voluntarily reached a settlement to pay the penalty plus give an $800,000 donation to an environmental charity and cover $85,000 in Competition Bureau expenses….
Keurig was investigated for claiming customers could recycle its pods by removing the aluminum foil lid and dumping out the coffee grounds. The bureau found the instructions to be insufficient for the pods to be widely accepted into recycling programs and noted that Quebec and British Columbia were the only provinces recycling K-Cups.

Read more >>

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Howick Falls reaching flow capacity.  (Previous post with photos.) 

Midmar Dam is a huge man-made water reservoir serving Kwa Zulu Natal.

With all the rain falling in KZN – and predicted to continue – in the area, Midmar Dam, too, is beginning to overflow . (At about minute 1:50 of this clip, Howick Falls. - 2:27 mins)
And a clip of streets flooding in the province’s legislative capital >> 

Previous posts describe my attempts to address the largely blocked stream that flows through the bottom of my mom’s property. It overflows with too much rain and floods the garden, then water rises toward the house. One of the two culverts designed to drain water under a service road is totally blocked. The other culvert drains at less than 20 percent capacity. I’ve attempted to engage the local municipal department responsible for such maintenance. I describe their response at my temerity to request service as uninterested, inconclusive, in a word, incompetent. A shrug as equipment is driven away.
Property taxes up the wazoo; Thanks very much for continuing to pay. Alas, service unavailable. (One supervisor told me workers cannot complete the work because “too many snakes.” I advised I’d taken a close look at the blockage and, in 2 years, never seen a single snake. Another shrug before entering her car and driving away - never to  return.)
With the amount of water falling and flowing in the area, I’m both worried about the property.
I’m also worried about traveling to SA and, after 30 to 36 hours of traveling, finding the area too flooded to allow safe transit to the house.
Africa. Continent of surprises.

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The latest news on international travel: airline for New Zealand was awarded first place "due to its excellent incident record, number of cockpit innovations, pilot training and very low fleet age." "Air New Zealand is a leader in this field with comprehensive retraining." 
Air New Zealand doesn’t service South Africa from the US.
Etihad Airways – UAE – in second place.
Qatar Airways came in third, with Singapore Airlines and TAP Portugal achieving fourth and fifth place respectively.
Australian carrier Qantas is missing from the top five despite holding the title of world's safest airline from 2014 to 2017, as well as 2019 to 2021 (no clear winner could be found in 2018). Australia's flag carrier takes seventh place this time due to a "slight increase in incidents coupled with the fleet age” after a Qantas Boeing traveling from the Australian city of Perth to Adelaide in Western Australia was diverted due to a fuel imbalance, in an occurrence classified as a "serious incident."
Of these carriers, only Qatar serves the US. This means up to a 24 hour layover in Doha. Am I up for it?
Enquiring minds wanna know….

Bay Area, California:
Sunrise: 7:24am
Sunset: 5:08pm
The good news? Sunset happening one to two minutes later each day. Weather, still cold although sunny for part of the day.
Howick, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:09am
Sunset: 7:03pm
Still raining …with more rain predicted for the next 10 days. The vulgar South Africanism that describes my consternation, oh, gats!

Vaccine realities

News blues

Dr Fauci on where things are vis-à-vis vaccine, vaccination programs, booster shots.  (From an American perspective but globally applicable. 10:55 mins)

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Good to know: COVID vaccines help produce antibodies ― and trigger another immune response that also fights the virus.

Much of the research regarding immunity against COVID-19 (which can be achieved either through vaccination or natural infection) has looked at antibodies. These little fighters go after the coronavirus and prevent it from binding to cells in our body and creating an infection. Some lab studies have found that antibodies don’t do as good of a job fighting variants, which has raised fears that the vaccines might not be able to keep us safe.
But antibodies don’t tell the full story. … The immune system is very complex, and in addition to antibodies, there’s a whole other aspect, known as the cell-mediated immune response, that’s just as important…. This part helps create something called T-cells, which are crucial to preventing infections. The COVID-19 vaccines don’t just generate antibodies; they also prompt your immune system to produce T-cells.
“T-cells are the main line of defense against the virus,” said Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist with UCSF. T-cells can identify many different parts of the coronavirus (some studies say up to 52 parts) and get rid of any cells that are carrying the virus. The cell-mediated immune response can also help our systems produce new antibodies if need be.
Mutations or not, T-cells will still be able to detect the virus and jump into action. …
So, why aren’t we all talking about how awesome T-cells are? They’re really hard to measure… [but] findings are exciting.
For one thing, all of the vaccine clinical trials found that participants produced strong T-cell responses after vaccination…
There’s also evidence that the variants probably aren’t going to have a very meaningful effect on the immunity we get from being fully vaccinated. Two recent studies found the T-cell response was unaffected by variants, and another paper found that while some antibodies diminished against variants, our T-cell response held up just fine.
When it comes to COVID-19, a robust T-cell response is the difference between a mild infection and serious disease, research shows. The cells can’t always prevent an infection, but they may be able to clear it out quickly so you don’t get badly sick.

Read more  >> 

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Tracking Covid-19:

• Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide 
• South African experts to follow for up-to-date and accurate Covid information… 

Healthy planet, anyone?

The helping hand strikes again. Or overkill leads to overkill…
Trying too hard, UK retailer Marks & Spencer’s “do good for the environment” effort backfires. Turns out, releasing 30 million honeybees into the British countryside is not helpful to the environment – more likely, this effort “could damage ecosystems and deprive wild pollinators of valuable food sources.”

[M&S] placed up to 1,000 beehives on 25 farms to produce single-estate honey for customers as part of its five-year Farming with Nature programme. The bees are in cedar beehives, many made in the 1930s, with plenty of nectar nearby….
But the announcement has been met with dismay by some bee experts and conservationists. “Such and [sic] opportunity missed M&S, this is greenwashing or beewashing at its most blatant,” tweeted Gill Perkins, chief executive of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.
Critics say M&S should focus on restoring native habitats instead of releasing millions of honeybees, which are just one of the nearly 270 bee species in the UK, many of which are in sharp decline. “They are actually ending up doing something that may damage the environment,” said Matt Shardlow, head of the conservation charity Buglife.

Read more >> 

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Then, entirely missing an essential truth of the current pandemic – humans are stressing our planet to extremes, ignoring and disrespecting nature, developing wild spaces, over-developing domestic spaces, forcing human and non-human species into too-close contact - global economies are forecasted to pour stimulus money into fossil fuels as part of Covid recovery.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency has warned,  the IEA, and one of the world’s leading authorities on energy and climate, warns carbon dioxide emissions are forecast to jump this year by the second biggest annual rise in history…. The leap will be second only to the massive rebound 10 years ago after the financial crisis, and will put climate hopes out of reach unless governments act quickly.
Birol said, “This is shocking and very disturbing. On the one hand, governments today are saying climate change is their priority. But on the other hand, we are seeing the second biggest emissions rise in history.”

Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

My daughter and I visited the community’s weekly Karkloof Farmers Market, purchased goods – goat cheese and blue cheese for me, locally crafted shoes for her – then sat outside for a cup of rooibos tea. All visitors to the market wore masks.
After that, breakfast at the Yellow Wood Café. The café, one of my favorite local historic sites, was hand built from local stone and reminds me of my childhood in a similar era building. My mother’s old place, largely hand built in local stone by my grandfather, was torn down to make room for industry.
A screen shot blurb for the Yellow wood Café website: 

 

Wildebeest

With the Howick Falls in the background, we watched a wildebeest leap over a fence to graze with the café’s domestic animals – donkeys, Shetland ponies, sheep, and pigs. Howick Falls in the background.

Howick Falls was once a tourist destination of note. Ditto the Howick Falls Hotel and the various historical buildings nearby and across the road. These days, tourist buses seldom appear, tourists are rare, even tourist-centric craftspeople are thin in the ground. The area, generally, presents an atmosphere of desperation and depression.

 
An information structure near the foot of the observation platform displays a poster titled “Howick Facts and Figures.” 

 A closeup of the facts and figures, however, lists a litany of deaths and suicides over the years! 

Hmmm....

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Day by day, dark and darker in the southern hemisphere…
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 16: sunrise 5:59am; sunset 6:13pm.
March 22: sunrise 6:03am; sunset 6:05pm.
April 1: sunrise 6:09am; sunset 5:54pm.
April 14: sunrise 6:14am; sunset 5:43pm.
April 22: sunrise 6:22am; sunset 5:32pm.