INTERESTING TIMES

 I realize I don't post a lot.  I came to DW because I became convinced that LJ was going to have trouble....but it hasn't, and my people are still there.  I feel a little bit isolated here as I've not built the same community I have there so I think I'm going to go back to posting there instead of here then letting it crosspost.  It makes better sense for me because if I don't log in there,  I don't see what my friends are up to.

Maybe I'll do more journaling there.  I still keep a paper journal but life seems so overfull that I don't use it like I used to.

Life is overall fine.  The pandemic hasn't really changed my life much except for having to wear a mask at work, and shrinking my social circles.  I'm OK with the shrinkage.  Being an intravert the little bit of extra space I get from social distancing is a relief.

Summer is here and with it a long series of river trips.  Two trips to Idaho and one Grand Canyon trip launching 8/30.  I guess I'm a little despressed or jaded maybe, because none of it excites me very much.  But once I get out the door I always enjoy it.

My mom in TN has gotten rebellious and is at very high risk of dying from the virus.  She's started going out.  She's an extravert and staying at home with my sister all the time makes her mad.

That's it!  Come join me on LJ if you want to keep in touch.

Back in the Old Great Depression young people moved back to their families.  They could not afford rent, so they went where the roof over their head was paid for.  They took care of their elders, scrounged for food and supplies, and did whatever they could do to keep the households afloat. 

A similar process is of returning home is happening now.  Many college age kids have returned to nests recently emptied.  Older children area also returning home, or staying home instead of setting out into the world.  They settle into a spare room, use the internet, eat the food.  Some exert themselves to take care of their parents or grandparents or siblings who are less able, and do the work that needs to be done around the house.  The richer and more entitled ones hunker down with gaming or other internet pursuits and refuse to even grocery shop.  The internet is the difference.  Back in the Old days our best avoidant distractions were books, now in the New it is the bottomless pit of sex and violence and disinformation that is the internet.  A mind-corrupting abundance of dopamine hits.  Back in the Old days the youth still had a work ethic that included the possibility of picking up a rake or a hoe or a hammer.  Now in the New days the youth think they should have gotten rich and famous somehow but they didn't, and now they don't know what to do.

Granted, the distancing requirements and loss of employment are especially hard on young people who are just getting their feet wet in the world.  But I have to put it out there that there are things worth learning and exploring at home.  Elders have things to teach.  Knowing how to build a wall, fix a pipe, or grow a vegetable garden, these are valuable skills.  Sure, you grew up in a time when your parents hired someone else to build and repair the house, and you got your groceries wrapped in plastic from a grocery, or already prepared from a restaurant.  But food grows from the earth, you too can grow it.  Animal food has to be butchered--are you ready to kill your meat?  This is your chance to learn some things that have been progressively more forgotten over the last 5 generations in America.  It's a good time to be able to subsist.

Back in the Old Great Depression, people got happier.  Several different studies noticed this change.  I have lots of theories about why this was true.  I suspect that being forced to work out differences with your families helps people grow up.  Instead of remaining a petulant child who has it your way but lives alone, you can learn to live with others and understand and respect their point of view.  I think that growing up takes us to a happier place.  I think that having honest, real, loving relationships with the people you know best is the strongest foundation of happiness.

During the Old Great Depression businesses closed but there was no pandemic.  In the New Great Depression we know that when the virus finds our ailing and elderly relatives, they will die.  This is a very hard thing.  I am mourning already for people that I talk to every day.  I know that someone dear to me will die, it is only a matter of time.  Back in the Old days people were dying at a normal rate.  Now we are dying by the thousands and we're nowhere near done with that yet.  The deep sadness is pervasive.

It turns out that Strep super-infection may have killed many of the victims of this pandemic flu.
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE5146PD20090205?feedType=RSS&feedName=scienceNews&sp=true

Keith Klugman of Emory University in Atlanta and colleagues looked at what information is available about the 1918 flu pandemic, which killed anywhere between 50 million and 100 million people globally in the space of about 18 months.

Some research has shown that on average it took a week to 11 days for people to die -- which fits in more with the known pattern of a bacterial infection than a viral infection, Klugman's group wrote in a letter to the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

"We observed a similar 10-day median time to death among soldiers dying of influenza in 1918," they wrote.

People with influenza often get what is known as a "superinfection" with a bacterial agent. In 1918 it appears to have been Streptococcus pneumoniae.

"Neither antimicrobial drugs nor serum therapy was available for treatment in 1918," Klugman's team wrote.

EDIT 5/2010
ASPIRIN ROLE IN FLU OF 1918 per Dr Blake
Bayer tried to patent aspirin
big lawsuit in teens to maintain patent, lost in 1917
then people can make aspirin at home
1917 everyone starts making generic aspirin
minimum toxic dose: 8g
during flu epidemic they were giving 5-8grams
new wonder drug given to soldiers, taking too high doses
soldiers die of pulmonary hemorrhage
news talks about how wicked strong the flu is but maybe the aspirin was killing

I've been reading Flu; The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It because it was the first one of the recommended books on the list that I could find in the NCNM library. It's very interesting. The first half of the book is a history of the 1918 flu, which I knew had happened, but I had not realized how many people died. In the US 1/2 million people died in about 3 months. Worldwide the numbers are less certain, but somewhere between 20 and 100 million. The author of this book, Gina Kolata, seemed to suggest one time that she thought the number of deaths worldwide was more like 40,000.
( more )