#Shipley treatment

[goetiae]

Leeches were largely popular in the medical field during the Victorian era both in Europe (primarily England and France) and America. The 19th century saw progression of the academic study of leeches as used in medicine that was conducted prior and laid basis for the modern application of anticoagulant in medical practice.

At the time, many famous Englishmen found leeches fascinating: zoologist Arthur Everett Shipley, for instance, wrote papers marveling at the beauty and functionality of a leech. This fascination often grew personal. Lord Thomas Erskine, a lawyer, underwent a successful bloodletting, afterwards taking with him two leeches; later naming them Home and Clina. According to the memoirs of Sir Sam Romilly, Erskine's friend, he took great care of making sure the leeches "knew him".

In France, the obsession with leeches took drastic turns as well. François-Joseph-Victor Broussais, a notable surgeon of Napoleon's army, was known to possess a certain infatuation with leeches.

Leeches were in growingly high demand in the 19th century Europe. France imported leeches in terrific quantities equating up to dozens of millions a year.

Overall, bloodletting for medicinal purposes is not strictly unique to the 19th century Europe. Like many other medical methods, it has its roots in Ancient Egypt and Greece where bloodletting via cutting veins was often practiced by the followers of the method described in the Hippocratic collection of the 5th century BC. The medicinal use of leeches dates back to 1500 BC and is not a recent invention. However, it is only in 1884 that Haycraft learned why leeches are so efficient in bloodletting: their saliva contains an anticoagulant hirudin (hence hirudotherapy). These observations are listed in Haycraft's work, On the Action of a Secretion Obtained from the Medicinal Leech on the Coagulation of the Blood. For this property, leeches are still in high medicinal demand.

During the Victorian era, leeches were used for all kinds of medical treatment: from headaches to hemorrhoids, from fatigue to nymphomania. Sir William Henry, for example, writes that bloodletting is far beyond any other medical treatment in helping many diseases.

Albeit, the effectiveness of such treatment is a matter of much questioning as often leeching only weakened the fragile state of those being treated. Some patients were, unsurprisingly, allergic to the treatment and either suffered reactions to leeches, larger loss of blood than intended, or even died during treatment.

Leeches and bloodletting were studied with much attention: physicians wrote books on the physiology and medical benefits of leech usage, and a very detailed description of leeches was added in the 1880 edition of Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia.

The curiosity for leeches found its way into much earlier publications as well. For example, J. R. Johnson released multiple medical studies on leeches in the very beginning of the 19th century. His A Treatise on the Medicinal Leech (1816) and Further Observations in the Medicinal Leech (1825) dwelled on the precise details of leech usage and preservation.

From Johnson's studies mentioned above, we learn that he worked with cocoons of different sizes which he received from other leech enthusiasts. He recorded that leeches are to be kept in an enclosure with a stream of fresh water coming in and turf placed conveniently so that the leeches could "retire in a shady spot". He also studied leeches' detailed anatomical structure.

Such academic interest centered around leeches in England roots within earlier academic research done by the scientists of the 18th century - for example, an apothecary by the name George Horn who published his An Entirely New Treatise on Leeches: Wherein the Nature, Properties and Use in 1798. Interestingly, even this early into the studying of leeches, he mentions the dangers of infections if leeches were to be attracted by walking bare-legged into a river (as was done in India, according to him). Instead, he promotes the English method of agitating the leech-infested waters until the animals come up to the surface to then be caught by the nets. Overall, prior to Horn's manual not many spoke in favor of leeching: William Buchan in his study from 1769 speaks on leeches as unreliable and inefficient as it's unclear how much blood is taken per use.

Horn describes four species of leech (two of which are found in England) and dwells on their peculiar anatomy:

no eyes but a teeth-filled mouth

lips to catch blood from escaping

lack of a proper stomach

presence of the so-called "bags" across their body that "get saturated when leeches receive nourishment"

Based on the gathered information, one can claim leeches were awakening more and more scientific curiosity among the English apothecaries and physicians even at the end of the 18th century.

The medical treatment of patients with the use of leeches is described by Horn as well, though he tends to recommend additional treatment - usually mixtures of milk and syrup with herbs - to be given to the patient alongside bloodletting. This as well as other studies of the late 18th century certainly became the basis of medicinal usage of leeches in the upcoming 19th century and far into the 1910s.

It is impossible to speak of leech therapy of the early 19th century in England and beyond without mentioning the influence of François-Joseph-Victor Broussais, a surgeon of immense medical fascination with leeches who employed them vastly in his treatment of Napoleon's soldiers. Broussais used around fifty leeches a time per patient and was thus called "the vampire of medicine" for his fascination with bloodletting. He claimed, among other things, that all "fevers" had the precisely same origin: inflammation. Letting out "bad blood" was thus a plausible solution to the issue.

Women wore embroidery in colors inspired by leeches' dim, soft shades. A whole sort of fashion - à la Broussais - was born out of this unusual fascination. The notable traits of this fashion, according to Michel Valentin who wrote a large biography of Broussais, were purple garnitures - embroidery, trimming - and top coats that resembled leeches' colors.

This conclusion was, of course, the result of the "humoral theory", which was widely supported in Europe. Rooting from Greece, it centered around the idea that the human body held inside four types of liquids: two kinds of bile, phlegm, and blood. Each humor was associated with two qualities, either hot or cold, and either wet or dry. Having one of the liquids "in excess" was associated with certain conditions (for blood, it was any that caused redness, for example), hence bloodletting was a naturally sought out practice.

The leeches were placed “inside the nostrils, on the inside of the lower lip, on the chest, and on the side, sometimes by four at a time.” Leeches could access otherwise inaccessible parts of one's body (such as perineum) and were often used for treatment conditions that were believed to be connected to genitalia - for example, "nymphomaniac" states. To apply a leech, one would hold a small leech-containing vessel filled with water to the desired spot, wait until it bites, and then gently remove the container; tubes could be used as well.

A whole industry related to leeches was established in the 19th century: propagating leeches rose to the state level of importance and leech keeping became a popular activity. Leeches were, in fact, nearly hunted to extinction in some European countries in the 19th century, including England. Containing leeches started to become complicated: leeches only needed meals once every six months (and thus were not suitable for frequent use) and required specific conditions of containment. Thus, the mechanical leech quickly became a popular invention. The first prototype of 1817, called bdellomètre, is credited to French doctor Jean-Baptiste Sarlandière.

Transactions of the Pharmaceutical Meetings (1855) notes some statistical numbers regarding the "leech hunt" of the 19th century: in imports alone England received 8 million leeches annually, besides the large numbers collected within the country. The practice of using mechanical leeches (two types for different purposes) is mentioned as "ingenious" and discussed as a great opportunity to keep the natural leech healthy. The book tracks down purchases of various vessels for fresh water used as leech enclosures.

Actual preservation and propagation of leeches are described in various books of the time, though the peak of such publications in England comes around in the 1850s. In 1855, Specification of Nathaniel Johnston: Breeding, Rearing and Carrying Leeches is published. Johnston, whilst in Paris, invented an apparatus for keeping and breeding medicinal leeches: a complicated water vessel to keep leeches at the perfect temperature and humidity for the breeder - the inventor titled these containers hirudinieres. A similar invention was marked by another author in Specification of George Lifford Smartt: Vessels for Preserving Leeches and Fish Alive.

There was a lot of thought and effort put into keeping leeches healthy and vital - either for medicinal purposes or out of personal fascination.

[muffinworry]

Roman Republic Reading List

@hortensius : Hope this is helpful!

Comprehensive Exam, Major Field: Roman History, c. 400-100                        

Preliminary Reading List--Updated

General

Rosenstein, Rome and the Mediterranean (2012) [general survey]

Steel, End of the Roman Republic (2012) [general survey]

Flower, Roman Republics (2010)

Lomas, Roman Italy 338 BC-AD 200 (this is a sourcebook with introductory discussions)

Farney/Bradley, Peoples of Ancient Italy (2017) (a reference handbook)

Early Republic

Cornell, Beginnings of Rome (1996)

Forsythe, A Critical History of Early Rome (2006)

Armstrong, War and Society in Early Rome (2016)

Lomas, Rise of Rome (2018)

Smith, The Roman Clan (2009)

Armstrong, War and Society in Early Rome: From Warlords to Generals (2016)

Raaflaub (ed), Social Struggle in Archaic Rome, 2nd ed. (2008)* [edited volume with a lot of good chapters, especially Raaflaub, Cornell, Richard, Mitchell, Lindferski]

Terrenato, The early Roman expansion into Italy. Elite negotiation and family agendas (2019)

Middle Republic: Imperialism

Earlier period

Hölkeskamp, “Conquest, competition and consensus: Roman expansion in Italy and the rise of the nobilitas,” Historia 42 (1993) 12-39

Raaflaub, "Born to be Wolves? Origins of Roman Imperialism," in E. Harris & R. W. Wallace (eds.), Transitions to Empire in the Graeco-Roman World, 360-146 B.C. (1996) 273-314.

Terrenato, Early Roman Expansion into Italy (2019)

Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage (2011)

Motives, nature of Roman Expansion (the “Harris debate”)

Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome (1979)

North, Development of Roman Imperialism (review of Harris), JRS 71 (1981) 1-9

Sherwin-White, Rome the Aggressor? (review of Harris), JRS 70 (1980) 177-181

Rich, Fear Greed and Glory: the Causes of Roman War Making in the Middle Republic, in Rich/Shipley, War and Society in the Roman World (1995) 38-68

Eckstein, Senate and General (1987)

Eckstein, Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome (2007)

Griffin, “Iure Plectimur. The Roman Critique of Roman Imperialism.” In Brennan and Flower (eds) East & West. Papers in Ancient History Presented to Glenn W. Bowersock (2008) [gives insight into why Roman historians give speeches to enemies of Rome, which could tie into presentation of captives]

Riggsby, Caesar in Gaul and Rome: War of Words (2021)

Provincialization, also response to Harris

Richardson, Hispaniae (1989)

Gruen, Hellenistic World and Coming of Rome (1986)

Kallett-Marx, Hegemony to Empire (1996)

Diaz Fernandez, Provinces and Provincial Command in republican Rome (2021)

Roman Political Culture (middle and late RP, and the democracy question)

Feig Vishnia, State, Society, and Popular Leaders in Mid-Republican Rome (2011) [possibly get rid of one of the older Gracchi treatments]

Hölkeskamp, Reconstructing the Roman Republic (2010)

Hölkeskamp, “The Roman Republic : government of the people, by the people, for the people ?,” Scripta Classical Israeilica 19 (2000) 203-223

Munzer, Roman Aristocratic Parties and Families (trans. 1999, orig. 1920)

Hopkins, Death and Renewal (1985) pp. 31-119

Lintott, Democracy in the Middle Republic

North, “Democratic Politics in Republican Rome,” Past & Present 126 (1990) 3-21

Millar, Crowd in Republican Rome (2002)

Millar, Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic, JRS 74 (1984) 1-19

Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republican (2007)

North, Politics and Aristocracy in the Roman Republic, Classical Philology 85 (1990) 277-287

Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome (1999)                           

Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate (1972)

Archaeology/Topography and politics:

Davies, Architecture and Politics in Republican Rome (2017)

Russell, The Politics of Public Space in Republican Rome (2015)

Roman magistracies

Brennan Praetorship in the Republic (2000)

Beck, Duplá, jehnem Pina Polo (eds), Consuls and Res Publica: Holding High Office in the Roman Republic (2011)

Pina Polo, Quaestorship, Quaesorship in the Roman Republic (2019)

Wilson, Dictator: Evolutionof the Roman Dictatorship (2021)

Roman Religion/Religion and Politics

Beard, North and Price, Religions of Rome v. 1 and v. 2

Orlin, Temples, Religion and Politics

Rosenstein, Imperatores Victi

Gruen, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (various chapters on Magna Mater an Bacchanalia)

Stek, Cult Places and Cultural Change in Republican Italy

Beard, Roman Triumph (??)

Pedilla Peralta, Divine Institutions: Religions and Community in the Middle Republic (2020)

J. Mackay, Belief and Cult: Rethinking Roman Religion (2022)

Glinister, “Reconsidering ‘Religious Romanization’” YClS 33 (2006) 10-33

Diluzio, A Place at the Altar (2017) [on priestesses]

Middle Republic: Second Century/Lead-up to the Gracchi

Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (1981), esp. pp. 1-95

Rosenstein, Rome at War (2004)

Cornell, Hannibal’s Legacy: the effect of the Hannibal War on Italy, in Cornell/Rankov/Sabin, Second Punic War: a Reappraisal (1996)

Stockton, the Gracchi (1979) [older, “standard” treatment]

Earl, Tiberius Gracchus a Study in Politics (1963) [another old one; consult some of the reviews, e.g Brunt in Gnomon, Scullard in JRS, Crake in Phoenix)

Toynbee, Hannibal’s Legacy: the Hannibalic War’s Effects of Roman Life (1965) [very long; minimally understand the arguments and read reviews]

Brunt, Roman Manpower 225BC-AD14 (1971, republ. 1987) [very long]

There is a fair amount of archaeological work on second-century BC Italy.

Roman Italy, Romanization, Roman conquest of Italy:

Keay/Terrenato, Italy and the West (2001), just part 1 on the republic

Dench, From barbarians to new men: Greek, Roman, and modern perceptions of peoples from the central Apennines (1995)

Lomas, Rome and the Western Greeks (1993)

Bradley, Ancient Umbria: Stated Culture and Identity (2001)

Terrenato, Romanization of Italy: Global Acculturation or Cultural Bricolage, in Theoretical Roman Archaeology (1997) 20-27

Terrenato, Tam Firmum Municipium: the Romanization of Volaterrae and its Cultural Implications, JRS 88 (1998) 94-114

Terrenato, Early Roman Expansion into Italy (2019) [listed above]

Fronda, Between Rome and Carthage (2010) (intro section only)

Roselaar (ed), Processes of Integration and Identity Formation in the Roman Republic (2012) [lots of great chapters, especially by Roth, Rosenstein, Roselaar, Lomas, Patterson]

De Giorgi, Cosa and the Colonial Landscape of Colonial Italy (2019)

David, La Romanisation de l’Italie (1994) [= The Roman Conquest of Italy (1996)]

Glinister, “Reconsidering ‘Religious Romanization’” YClS 33 (2006) 10-33

Roth, Styling Romanization (2007)


Salmon, The Making of Roman Italy (1982)

Roman-Italian elite connections

Patterson, “Contact, Cooperation and Conflict in Pre-Social War Italy,” in Roselaar, 215-226

Patterson, “The Relationship of the Italian ruling Classes with Rome,” in Jehne/Pfeilschifter, Herrschaft und Integration? Rom und Italien in republikanischer Zeit (2006) 139-153.

Terrenato, "Tam firmum municipium: the Romanization of Volaterrae and its cultural implication" JRS 99  (1998) 94-114.

Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate

Late Republic: the Italian Question and the Social War

Brunt, “Italian Aims at the Time of the Social War,” JRS 55 (1965) 90-109

Dart, The 'Italian Constitution' in the Social War: A Reassessment (91 to 88 BCE) Historia 58 (2009), 215-224

Pobjoy, “The First Italia,” in Herring and Lomas, The Emergence of State Identities in Italy 187-211

Mouritsen, Italian Unification (1998)

Keaveney, Rome and the Unification of Italy, 2nd ed. (2005)

Howarth, Rome, the Italians, and the Land, Historia 48 (1999) 282-300

Nagle, “An Allied View of the Social War,” AJA 77 (1973) 367-78


Dart, The Social War, 91 to 88 BCE: A History of the Italian Insurgency against the Roman Republic (2014)

Late Republic: From Sulla to the Fall of Republic

Gruen, Last Generation of the Roman Republic, revised (1995) plus read reviews since this was not well received.

Piacentin, Financial Penalties in the Roman Republic (2022)

Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (outdated: find reviews to understand the main arguments)

Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political power in the Late Republic (2008)

Rosillo Lopez, Political conversations in Late Republican Rome (2021)

Rosenblitt, Rome after Sulla (2019)

Pina Polo, The triumviral period: civil war, political crisis and socioeconomic transformations (2020)

Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome (1999)

Kelly, A History of Exile in the Roman Republic (2006)

Riggsby, Crime and Community in Ciceronian Rome (1999)

Augustus’ ‘Revolution’

Syme, Roman Revolution (1939) (a classic)

Raflaub/Toher (eds), Between Republic and Empire (1993)* [edited volume, excellent introductory chapter by Galsterer, plus other good historical chapters: Meier, Eder, Luce, Gruen]

Zanker, Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (1990)* (another classic)

Roman Military

Pfeilschifter, “The allies in the Republican army and the Romanization of Italy,” in Roth and Keller, Roman by Integration: Dimensions of Group Identity in Material Culture and Text (2007) 27-42

Jessica Clark. Triumph in Defeat: Military Loss and the Roman Republic. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014

Rosenstein, Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic (1990)

Keppie, Making of the Roman Army: from Republic to Empire (1998) [survey introduction]

Goldsworthy, Roman Army at War 100BC-AD 200 (1998)

Armstrong and Fronda (eds), Romans at War: Soldiers, Citizens and Society in Republican Rome (2020)

Daly, Cannae: Experience of battle in the Second Punic War (2003)

Slavery and Captives (starter bibliography)

Hopkins, Conquerers and Slaves (1981)

S. Joshel, Slavery in the Roman World (2010)

K. Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World, 140-70BC (1989)

K. Bradley, Slaves and masters in the Roman empire. A study in social control (1989)

K. Bradley, Slavery and society at Rome (1994)

K. Huemoeller, “Captivity for all ?: slave status and prisoners of war in the Roman Republic,” TAPA 115 (2021)

Henige, “He came, He Saw, We counted: the Historiography and Demography of Caesar's Gallic Numbers,” Annales de démographie historique (1998)

Lowe, "Prisoners, Guards, and Chains in Plautus, Captivi" AJP (1991)

Marshall, The Stagecraft and Performance of Roman Comedy (2006)

Richlin, Slave Theater in the Roman Republic (2017)

Scheidel, "Human Mobility in Roman Italy II: the Slave Population,” JRS (2005)

Scheidel and Harper, "Roman Slavery and the Idea of Slave Society" in Lenski/Cameron (eds) What Is a Slave Society (2018)

Scheidel, "The Roman Slave Supply" in Bradley/Cartledge (eds) Cambridge World History of Slavery (2011)

Thalmann, "Versions of Slavery in the Captivi of Plautus" Ramus (1996)

[follow-up-news]

Authorities are searching for a member of the Proud Boys extremist group who disappeared days before his sentencing in a U.S. Capitol riot case, where prosecutors are seeking more than a decade in prison, according to a warrant made public Friday. Christopher Worrell, 52, of Naples, Florida, was supposed to be sentenced Friday after being found guilty of spraying pepper spray gel on police officers, as part of the mob storming the Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors had asked a judge to sentence him to 14 years. The sentencing was canceled and a bench warrant for his arrest issued under seal on Tuesday, according to court records. The U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., encouraged the public to share any information about his whereabouts. Worrell had been on house arrest in Florida since his release from jail in Washington in November 2021, less than a month after a judge substantiated his civil-rights complaints about his treatment in the jail. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth found Worrell’s medical care for a broken hand had been delayed, and held D.C. jail officials in contempt of court. His attorney William Shipley declined to comment. Phone numbers listed for Worrell and the woman named as his custodian during his house arrest were not functional.

[meditation-practices]

The Big Surprise!

The next morning, my wife and I had another helpful conversation with Sara Huang. Once again, she was emphasizing the possibility of saving my bladder, but we were predisposed to think about surgery. Then came our consultation with Dr. Gullion who had the tumor board results from early in the morning. To our shock, amazement and surprise, the tumor board came to the decision that I could take my…

[evanisoline]

Cephalonegativity: On the Theater of Decapitation (Apocalypse Party, 2021)

A collaborative play written w/ multimedia artist/writer Mike Corrao.

Purchase HERE and HERE.

On Goodreads.

"Fully exploiting the Gogolesque conceit of a cephalophore whose body and head go their own separate ways, Cephalonegativity reads like Beckett’s Play (with M reprised as an even more slippery version of himself) or Not I as if performed by the secret society of Acéphale. Archaic turns of phrase and elision combine with post-cinematic headlessness to produce a stage play that plays with stages and stages play, a lesescenario from the velveteen tongue of an heretical zealot, its phrases as if slurped up off an abattoir floor, or off the rotted walls of a theatre-cum-poisoned-amniotic-sac where the performers have all become kuroko. Read out loud, at speed, in honour of its progenitors, the words turn into “chunks of hot pomegranate meat” in your mouth-turned-anus, with your gills agape, your mutinous soma exsanguinated, levitating above you, your head on fire singing like litel clergeon from the catacombs."

—​Gary J. Shipley, author of 30 Fake Beheadings

"In pursuing a theatrical treatment of the Self's head and body and self-selves, through a Bataillean notion of headlessness, through typographical humor and rupture, through a Dada-esque document of volatile mirror-pages and chorus, Cephalonegativity makes of itself a gaping gesture: a neck-stub that is a mouth that is singing out and commenting on the ritual of being present. The reader dials in via "a rotary anus" and watches a body hanging as a tail in its coprolalic spooky plastic underwater gloom psychedelia cum outer space inside of a mouth cum cult orgy. "DO/ YOU SEE THE END OF TIME? THE APPROACHING/ WALL? WHEN THE THEATRICAL BECOMES THE/ APOCALYPTIC? ENACTING A DISTORTED REALI-/ TY AS THIN LAYERS OVER THIS ONE?" This text is a porous fabric through which we might perform the wound of the stage as we watch it rot."

—​Olivia Cronk, author of Womonster

[commissioningengineers]

Water Treatment in Shipley #Water #Balancing #Systems # #Shipley https://t.co/DHJW33Rbhj

Water Treatment in Shipley #Water #Balancing #Systems # #Shipley https://t.co/DHJW33Rbhj

— Commission Engineers (@hvacengineersuk) November 3, 2020

[janepwilliams87]

Iowa GOP Lawmaker’s Psilocybin Decriminalization Amendment Defeated In Floor Vote

An Iowa Republican lawmaker introduced an amendment to a budget bill last week that would have removed psilocybin and psilocyn from the state’s list of prohibited substances, but it was shot down.

Rep. Jeff Shipley (R), who previously filed legislation last year to legalize psilocybin mushrooms and MDMA for medical use, said during a House floor debate that his new measure would remove the threat of criminal penalties for people interested in exploring these psychedelics for therapeutic purposes.

Another lawmaker said that while he appreciated Shipley’s “zest” and “zeal,” he questioned the germaneness of including the amendment as part of a budget bill. The presiding officer agreed and said the measure “is not germane” before allowing a vote on a motion to suspend the rules and move the amendment.

The House ultimately rejected the proposal in a 17-76 vote.

“The broad bipartisan support of both rural Christians and inner city progressives proves that psilocybin is the issue that can heal our politically fractured society,” Shipley told Marijuana Moment on Monday. “These reforms are needed immediately to create the healing our country is desperate for.”

During his speech on the amendment, the lawmaker said he was introducing it because “our world is hurting. Humanity—our collective pain, generational traumas, are oozing and festering across our globe.”

“I suspect this could be, in part, because the fact our governing institutions have outlawed, prohibited, naturally occurring healing tools,” he said. “In this chamber, we’re great at writing laws, adding new sections of code—rarely do we eliminate laws or revisit laws that we’ve passed.”

Via Iowa legislature.

“Psilocybin, I sincerely believe, could open up Iowa to a whole new world of health and healing, revolutionizing our healthcare, revolutionizing mental health, where right now we have a system of treatments where a person has to take a pill, a synthetic pharmaceutical for an indefinite period of time, maybe for the rest of their life,” he added. “These treatments, at best, make a person’s symptoms manageable.”

“Modern pharmacology only alleviates and masks symptoms, rather than actual healing,” he said. “This amendment to decriminalize psilocybin would offer an actual cure to diseases afflicting society and give people freedom from a life dependent on synthetic pharmaceuticals.”

While Shipley is unique as an advocate for psychedelics reform in that he’s a Republican legislator, he’s not alone. There’s a growing movement at the local, state and federal levels across the country to change policies governing entheogenic substances.

In Congress, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) filed an amendment aimed at spurring research into psychedelics such as psilocybin and MDMA, but it was rejected by the House. The congresswoman later said she plans to introduce additional psychedelics reform legislation.

In the year since Denver became the first jurisdiction in the U.S. to decriminalize psilocybin��a move that was followed by a unanimous Oakland City Council vote to make a wide range of psychedelics among the lowest law enforcement priorities—activists in more than 100 cities have expressed interest in pursuing similar reforms.

In May, a New York lawmaker introduced a bill to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms by removing the main active ingredient from the state’s list of controlled substances.

Activists in Oregon recently submitted signatures for an initiative to legalize psilocybin for therapeutic purposes that they hope will make it on the November ballot. In Washington, D.C., a campaign to decriminalize a wide range of entheogenic substances is also collecting signatures to put the issue before voters.

Feds Expose Religious Discrimination Against Marijuana Consumers In Other Countries While Ignoring U.S. Policy

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Mushroom Observer.

The post Iowa GOP Lawmaker’s Psilocybin Decriminalization Amendment Defeated In Floor Vote appeared first on Marijuana Moment.

from Updates By Jane https://www.marijuanamoment.net/iowa-gop-lawmakers-psilocybin-decriminalization-amendment-defeated-in-floor-vote/

[lauramalchowblog]

COVID-19 Update: A Message From Concerned Physicians

By HOWARD LUKS MD, JOEL TOPF MD, FACP, ETHAN WEISS MD, CARRIE DIULUS MD, NANCY YEN SHIPLEY MD, ERIC LEVI MBBS, FRACS, BRYAN VARTABEDIAN MD

“EVERYTHING WE DO BEFORE A PANDEMIC WILL SEEM ALARMIST. EVERYTHING WE DO AFTER WILL SEEM INADEQUATE”

—Michael Leavitt

Last updated 3/18/2020.

Why are we writing this? 

The COVID-19 pandemic has reached a point where containment is no longer possible. The COVID-19 threat is real, and rapidly getting worse. Many of you are very nervous, some are unsure of the validity of the information you are reading. As physician leaders, we felt it was important to craft a resource you can rely on as being scientifically accurate and one which contains as much actionable information and guidance as possible. 

Accurate, actionable information during an epidemic can save lives. Physicians are on the front line of this epidemic. Not only are we treating the sick, but we are also cringing at the misinformation spread through both traditional broadcast and social media. Evidence matters. Unfortunately, evidence is often slow, methodical, and boring and has a tough time against clicky headlines and exaggeration. We believe that an accurate representation of the current COVID-19 pandemic followed by a set of actionable steps you, your loved ones, politicians and local officials can utilize is of paramount importance and ultimately could save tens of thousands of lives. 

COVID-19 isn’t just the flu? 

COVID-19 has been described by some as “just a cold”, or just like the common flu. COVID-19 is not the common flu. COVID-19 is an order of magnitude worse than the flu. The fatality rate is approximately 10 times worse than the flu.

The flu spreads from September through April in the US, and June through August in the Southern Hemisphere. Yes, it does cause severe illness in many, but it does so over a longer time course. Time is a variable that is working against us during this COVID-19 outbreak. COVID-19 victims will be presenting to a hospital in need of critical care at a rate that is far higher than occurs with the flu.

In addition, these patients will be requiring hospital treatment over the course of a few weeks rather than the 3-4 months of a typical flu season. The healthcare system in the USA is not ready to handle tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people over a short time frame. In Italy, the healthcare system buckled under the strain and the healthcare teams are now forced to make horrible life and death decisions. 

There are only 2177 cases … why is everyone so worried?

If only a snapshot in time had relevance, then perhaps stating that only there are “only” 2177 cases (March 14, 2020) [3,000 cases 3/15/20, 6 AM ET; now 3,774 cases 3/16/20 6AM; now 4300 at 5 PM, ET; 4700 cases 3/17/20, 6AM; 6496 cases 3/18/20, 6AM ET.] would be relevant and somewhat comforting.  Italy had 15,000 cases March 14, 2020, today (March 18, 2020) they have 31,506 cases — they only had a few hundred cases a 10 days ago. Stating that we only have 2177 cases today is absolutely irrelevant in the face of a pandemic virus spreading under exponential conditions.  We will help put the term exponential spread into context down below.

 Video Attribution: CC by SA 4.0 , Created by: Goh Kok Han 

Immunologically naive populations: 

Viruses have been circulating around the globe for millennia. One family of viruses that have been circulating are referred to as Coronaviruses. About a quarter of common colds are caused by Coronaviruses. Our bodies form antibodies to foreign invaders such as bacteria or viruses. If we have antibodies from a previous exposure then we can rapidly ramp up the production of those antibodies if we are infected by that same virus at a later date. This is why you only get Chicken Pox and the Measles once. The first episode generates protective antibodies so you can’t get infected a second time. For other infections, previous exposures do not make you immune to future infections but it does make subsequent exposures milder. 

COVID-19 is a severe respiratory illness caused by the virus named SARS-CoV2. It is a novel virus, which means that no one in the world has antibodies to it because no one has ever been infected by it before. As such, when the COVID-19 virus invades our body we do not have antibodies. We do not have a template to utilize from a previous exposure to rapidly create a defense against the virus. Because no one has antibodies, everyone is at risk for catching the virus, becoming ill, and spreading the virus so that it can infect those around you. 

Exponential spread: 

Exponential math is very hard to grasp.  Every person with the COVID-19 virus infects approximately 2 people. Some less, some more.

The doubling time of COVID-19 that is widely quoted is 6 days. Some scientists are saying it may be as short as 2–3 days (unpublished first-hand information).

Let’s say the infection rate doubles every 3 days.   That means that if 50,000 people have the virus today, then in 3 days 100,000 people will have it. In another 6 days it’s 400,000 and less than 10 days later it’s over a million people.  We have 330 million people in the US. The experts expect that 40-70% of people will be infected. Exponential growth does not take that long to get to those scary high numbers. Every 3 days we delay the mitigation measures we will discuss,  the number of infections double. This YouTube video does a great job of explaining this.

Is it time to panic? NO. 

This document is trying to help you to understand the situation at hand and not to terrify you. We want to make sure you understand the facts and understand what is at stake. This is a Pearl Harbor moment for our country. We are facing a real threat and we need to face it with all of our resources. When people decry the seriousness of this moment they are steering our country off a cliff, we need everyone to understand that this is important and if we work together to slow the spread we will get through this as we are learning from Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and China. 

The effectiveness of our healthcare system to deal with a sudden tsunami of respiratory illness is what is at risk. If our healthcare system buckles under the strain of tens of thousands of patients then we could be looking at a catastrophe. 

Personal risk vs Systemic Risk

When we talk about risk, there are many different elements to consider. Naturally, we are concerned about ourselves and our loved ones. This is an example of personal risk. By and large, your personal risk is low. The overall fatality rate for COVID-19 appears to be around 0.6%-6%. The lower bound (0.6%) comes from the South Korea data. But the fatality rate could potentially be as high as 6%. Why? Two reasons.  First, once healthcare resources are strained it is impossible to offer a high level of expert care to everyone.  Second, deaths occur up to 6 weeks after the onset of the infection.  The most severe complications appear to arise after 3-4 weeks after the onset of symptoms.  It is that lag that makes the fatality rate appear lower than it really is. 

As we will discuss later, certain populations with certain diseases carry an increased risk of a serious life-threatening infection. 

What we as physicians are most concerned about is systemic risk. Complex systems, such as our healthcare system, function because all the moving pieces fit together and interact with one another in such a way that the system functions under normal loads, lower than normal loads, and slightly higher than normal loads but may break down under the very high loads we anticipate with COVID19. We have watched in horror at what is taking place in Italy where their healthcare system is failing. The healthcare system was overwhelmed by a flood of people requiring critical medical care all arriving too close together in time. Italy does not have enough ICU beds, ventilators (mechanical breathing machines), and medications to manage all the patients that needed it. Physicians in Italy are judging who gets an ICU bed and critical care and who does not because there is not enough supply to take care of everyone. We do not want to see this happen here. This should be very clear:

This will happen here, and it will happen soon – possibly in one to two weeks – if we do not take very bold steps at this time.

Who’s at risk?

The bottom line is, we are all at risk. The elderly and those with medical issues such as hypertension and diabetes appear to be at higher risk of a severe disease course and death. Children may be spared the consequences of severe disease, though they can be asymptomatic to minimally-symptomatic carriers of the virus – placing those who are vulnerable at higher risk. 

South Korea, which has reported the lowest coronavirus death rates, has a COVID-19 death rate more than eight times higher than that of the flu. Mortality rate reported in South Korea increases by age brackets from 0.4% in the age group 50-59 to 8.23% in those above 80 years old.

If our healthcare system fails then we will all suffer. If the hospital is choked with COVID-19 patients, people with appendicitis, heart attacks, broken ankles and so on will not be able to be treated. This is the picture of systemic risk. Everyone is at risk if there is a systemic failure of our healthcare system, not just those with COVID-19.

The challenge is this: By following the appropriate recommended social isolation measures, you will be saving lives of not just those at increased risk who are infected, but also those who need other critical healthcare services, including potentially yourself. You will be saving the lives of people you will never meet. 

Who should follow our suggested social isolation measures?  EVERYONE.  If you do not need to go out for a mission-critical purpose, do not.  Again, you WILL be saving the lives of at-risk members of your own family, as well as people you will never have the pleasure of meeting. 

What SHOULD we do? — The Importance of Social Isolation. 

Containment of COVID-19 is no longer possible. The virus is already in the country and is currently spreading. We need to slow the spread. Mitigation is the best current strategy. It involves strict social isolation. If 50% of the US population becomes infected, 5% of infected people will need a ventilator in an ICU, and if we have only a limited number of ventilators available in the country, you can quickly see the issue at hand. 

This is an extremely time-sensitive and serious issue that needs to be addressed now. We can’t simply manufacture the number of ventilators necessary. We need to slow the spread and decrease the overall rate at which people will be coming to the hospital. 

We use the description: We must Flatten The Curve. That means that we need to slow the rate of infection so that the number of people who need hospital services remains in the range that our healthcare system can supply. With mitigation efforts we are no longer trying to contain the virus, we merely are trying to slow the rate of infection to keep the healthcare system from collapsing. In reality, we cannot flatten the curve enough to prevent many thousands of people from becoming ill. But every single one of you who stays indoors and follows strict isolation measures will save countless lives. Many of the lives you save will be folks you will never meet.

Who should follow our suggested social isolation measures? EVERYONE. If you do not need to go out for a mission-critical purpose, do not. Again, you WILL be saving the lives of at-risk members of your own family, as well as people you will never have the pleasure of meeting.

All of you can save lives starting now. 

The actions you take starting today will save the lives of people you will never meet. 

Support the #CancelEverything and #SocialDistancingWorks movements.   

Mitigation Measures For COVID-19

Support your schools’ decisions to close: Proactive school closings save more lives than reactive school closings. Your schools should close now… before infections are present. Closed schools do not mean playdates for children – this counteracts the social distancing the school closures are meant to create in the first place.

6 feet: The COVID-19 virus spreads through droplets. They can move 6 feet before gravity brings them to earth.  Stay 6 feet away from people if you need to go outside. 

Meticulous hand washing: Wash thoroughly and wash often. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer works well if your hands are otherwise clean.  

Do not touch your face. This is hard. This is a learned skill… practice often. 

Clean doorknobs, toilets, cellphones, countertops, refrigerator handles and so on many times each day.  The virus could live on certain surfaces for 4-72 hours. 

If you can work from home, work from home. 

No tournaments, no sports events, no soccer, baseball, dance, volleyball, softball, gymnastics, concerts, martial arts, etc.  We don’t care how much they claim they will clean the equipment.

Cancel vacation travel. We know you planned this for a long time.  You will be saving many lives by doing so… perhaps someone you know. 

Cancel weddings/ Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, birthday parties and so on. Help other people live so they can celebrate future events too.  

If you are over 60 years old you should stay home. You should only go out if there is a critical need. 

If you have parents/grandparents in a nursing home you should consider moving them home for now. 

Do not congregate in a restaurant, bar, etc.  Again, you will save the lives of people you will never meet.  

If you feel sick stay home. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel too sick. Going to work will put countless other people at risk of suffering or dying. 

Cancel all business travel.  Your life and the lives of others are more important. 

Possible supply chain issues: Work with your doctor to try to get a 3 month supply of medication. 

Many grocery stores have order ahead options with either pick up or delivery. There are online grocery delivery services available in many areas. Wash your hands thoroughly after unpacking groceries.

Reliable news sites:

Stat news 

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

Your local health dept.

CDC: fact sheets

WHO

A worthy read: Gnawing Anxiety and Under Reaction

An Open Letter from physicians to Mike Pence. 

The physician authors include Howard J. Luks, MD @hjluks, Joel Topf, MD FACP @Kidney_Boy, Ethan J. Weiss, MD @ethanjweiss, Carrie Diulus, MD @Cadiulus, Nancy Yen Shipley, MD @_NancyMD, Eric Levi, MBBS FRAS @DrEricLevi, and Bryan Vartabedian, MD @Doctor_v. This article originally appeared on the HJLuks site here.

The post COVID-19 Update: A Message From Concerned Physicians appeared first on The Health Care Blog.

COVID-19 Update: A Message From Concerned Physicians published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[kristinsimmons]

COVID-19 Update: A Message From Concerned Physicians

By HOWARD LUKS MD, JOEL TOPF MD, FACP, ETHAN WEISS MD, CARRIE DIULUS MD, NANCY YEN SHIPLEY MD, ERIC LEVI MBBS, FRACS, BRYAN VARTABEDIAN MD

“EVERYTHING WE DO BEFORE A PANDEMIC WILL SEEM ALARMIST. EVERYTHING WE DO AFTER WILL SEEM INADEQUATE”

—Michael Leavitt

Last updated 3/18/2020.

Why are we writing this? 

The COVID-19 pandemic has reached a point where containment is no longer possible. The COVID-19 threat is real, and rapidly getting worse. Many of you are very nervous, some are unsure of the validity of the information you are reading. As physician leaders, we felt it was important to craft a resource you can rely on as being scientifically accurate and one which contains as much actionable information and guidance as possible. 

Accurate, actionable information during an epidemic can save lives. Physicians are on the front line of this epidemic. Not only are we treating the sick, but we are also cringing at the misinformation spread through both traditional broadcast and social media. Evidence matters. Unfortunately, evidence is often slow, methodical, and boring and has a tough time against clicky headlines and exaggeration. We believe that an accurate representation of the current COVID-19 pandemic followed by a set of actionable steps you, your loved ones, politicians and local officials can utilize is of paramount importance and ultimately could save tens of thousands of lives. 

COVID-19 isn’t just the flu? 

COVID-19 has been described by some as “just a cold”, or just like the common flu. COVID-19 is not the common flu. COVID-19 is an order of magnitude worse than the flu. The fatality rate is approximately 10 times worse than the flu.

The flu spreads from September through April in the US, and June through August in the Southern Hemisphere. Yes, it does cause severe illness in many, but it does so over a longer time course. Time is a variable that is working against us during this COVID-19 outbreak. COVID-19 victims will be presenting to a hospital in need of critical care at a rate that is far higher than occurs with the flu.

In addition, these patients will be requiring hospital treatment over the course of a few weeks rather than the 3-4 months of a typical flu season. The healthcare system in the USA is not ready to handle tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people over a short time frame. In Italy, the healthcare system buckled under the strain and the healthcare teams are now forced to make horrible life and death decisions. 

There are only 2177 cases … why is everyone so worried?

If only a snapshot in time had relevance, then perhaps stating that only there are “only” 2177 cases (March 14, 2020) [3,000 cases 3/15/20, 6 AM ET; now 3,774 cases 3/16/20 6AM; now 4300 at 5 PM, ET; 4700 cases 3/17/20, 6AM; 6496 cases 3/18/20, 6AM ET.] would be relevant and somewhat comforting.  Italy had 15,000 cases March 14, 2020, today (March 18, 2020) they have 31,506 cases — they only had a few hundred cases a 10 days ago. Stating that we only have 2177 cases today is absolutely irrelevant in the face of a pandemic virus spreading under exponential conditions.  We will help put the term exponential spread into context down below.

 Video Attribution: CC by SA 4.0 , Created by: Goh Kok Han 

Immunologically naive populations: 

Viruses have been circulating around the globe for millennia. One family of viruses that have been circulating are referred to as Coronaviruses. About a quarter of common colds are caused by Coronaviruses. Our bodies form antibodies to foreign invaders such as bacteria or viruses. If we have antibodies from a previous exposure then we can rapidly ramp up the production of those antibodies if we are infected by that same virus at a later date. This is why you only get Chicken Pox and the Measles once. The first episode generates protective antibodies so you can’t get infected a second time. For other infections, previous exposures do not make you immune to future infections but it does make subsequent exposures milder. 

COVID-19 is a severe respiratory illness caused by the virus named SARS-CoV2. It is a novel virus, which means that no one in the world has antibodies to it because no one has ever been infected by it before. As such, when the COVID-19 virus invades our body we do not have antibodies. We do not have a template to utilize from a previous exposure to rapidly create a defense against the virus. Because no one has antibodies, everyone is at risk for catching the virus, becoming ill, and spreading the virus so that it can infect those around you. 

Exponential spread: 

Exponential math is very hard to grasp.  Every person with the COVID-19 virus infects approximately 2 people. Some less, some more.

The doubling time of COVID-19 that is widely quoted is 6 days. Some scientists are saying it may be as short as 2–3 days (unpublished first-hand information).

Let’s say the infection rate doubles every 3 days.   That means that if 50,000 people have the virus today, then in 3 days 100,000 people will have it. In another 6 days it’s 400,000 and less than 10 days later it’s over a million people.  We have 330 million people in the US. The experts expect that 40-70% of people will be infected. Exponential growth does not take that long to get to those scary high numbers. Every 3 days we delay the mitigation measures we will discuss,  the number of infections double. This YouTube video does a great job of explaining this.

Is it time to panic? NO. 

This document is trying to help you to understand the situation at hand and not to terrify you. We want to make sure you understand the facts and understand what is at stake. This is a Pearl Harbor moment for our country. We are facing a real threat and we need to face it with all of our resources. When people decry the seriousness of this moment they are steering our country off a cliff, we need everyone to understand that this is important and if we work together to slow the spread we will get through this as we are learning from Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and China. 

The effectiveness of our healthcare system to deal with a sudden tsunami of respiratory illness is what is at risk. If our healthcare system buckles under the strain of tens of thousands of patients then we could be looking at a catastrophe. 

Personal risk vs Systemic Risk

When we talk about risk, there are many different elements to consider. Naturally, we are concerned about ourselves and our loved ones. This is an example of personal risk. By and large, your personal risk is low. The overall fatality rate for COVID-19 appears to be around 0.6%-6%. The lower bound (0.6%) comes from the South Korea data. But the fatality rate could potentially be as high as 6%. Why? Two reasons.  First, once healthcare resources are strained it is impossible to offer a high level of expert care to everyone.  Second, deaths occur up to 6 weeks after the onset of the infection.  The most severe complications appear to arise after 3-4 weeks after the onset of symptoms.  It is that lag that makes the fatality rate appear lower than it really is. 

As we will discuss later, certain populations with certain diseases carry an increased risk of a serious life-threatening infection. 

What we as physicians are most concerned about is systemic risk. Complex systems, such as our healthcare system, function because all the moving pieces fit together and interact with one another in such a way that the system functions under normal loads, lower than normal loads, and slightly higher than normal loads but may break down under the very high loads we anticipate with COVID19. We have watched in horror at what is taking place in Italy where their healthcare system is failing. The healthcare system was overwhelmed by a flood of people requiring critical medical care all arriving too close together in time. Italy does not have enough ICU beds, ventilators (mechanical breathing machines), and medications to manage all the patients that needed it. Physicians in Italy are judging who gets an ICU bed and critical care and who does not because there is not enough supply to take care of everyone. We do not want to see this happen here. This should be very clear:

This will happen here, and it will happen soon – possibly in one to two weeks – if we do not take very bold steps at this time.

Who’s at risk?

The bottom line is, we are all at risk. The elderly and those with medical issues such as hypertension and diabetes appear to be at higher risk of a severe disease course and death. Children may be spared the consequences of severe disease, though they can be asymptomatic to minimally-symptomatic carriers of the virus – placing those who are vulnerable at higher risk. 

South Korea, which has reported the lowest coronavirus death rates, has a COVID-19 death rate more than eight times higher than that of the flu. Mortality rate reported in South Korea increases by age brackets from 0.4% in the age group 50-59 to 8.23% in those above 80 years old.

If our healthcare system fails then we will all suffer. If the hospital is choked with COVID-19 patients, people with appendicitis, heart attacks, broken ankles and so on will not be able to be treated. This is the picture of systemic risk. Everyone is at risk if there is a systemic failure of our healthcare system, not just those with COVID-19.

The challenge is this: By following the appropriate recommended social isolation measures, you will be saving lives of not just those at increased risk who are infected, but also those who need other critical healthcare services, including potentially yourself. You will be saving the lives of people you will never meet. 

Who should follow our suggested social isolation measures?  EVERYONE.  If you do not need to go out for a mission-critical purpose, do not.  Again, you WILL be saving the lives of at-risk members of your own family, as well as people you will never have the pleasure of meeting. 

What SHOULD we do? — The Importance of Social Isolation. 

Containment of COVID-19 is no longer possible. The virus is already in the country and is currently spreading. We need to slow the spread. Mitigation is the best current strategy. It involves strict social isolation. If 50% of the US population becomes infected, 5% of infected people will need a ventilator in an ICU, and if we have only a limited number of ventilators available in the country, you can quickly see the issue at hand. 

This is an extremely time-sensitive and serious issue that needs to be addressed now. We can’t simply manufacture the number of ventilators necessary. We need to slow the spread and decrease the overall rate at which people will be coming to the hospital. 

We use the description: We must Flatten The Curve. That means that we need to slow the rate of infection so that the number of people who need hospital services remains in the range that our healthcare system can supply. With mitigation efforts we are no longer trying to contain the virus, we merely are trying to slow the rate of infection to keep the healthcare system from collapsing. In reality, we cannot flatten the curve enough to prevent many thousands of people from becoming ill. But every single one of you who stays indoors and follows strict isolation measures will save countless lives. Many of the lives you save will be folks you will never meet.

Who should follow our suggested social isolation measures? EVERYONE. If you do not need to go out for a mission-critical purpose, do not. Again, you WILL be saving the lives of at-risk members of your own family, as well as people you will never have the pleasure of meeting.

All of you can save lives starting now. 

The actions you take starting today will save the lives of people you will never meet. 

Support the #CancelEverything and #SocialDistancingWorks movements.   

Mitigation Measures For COVID-19

Support your schools’ decisions to close: Proactive school closings save more lives than reactive school closings. Your schools should close now… before infections are present. Closed schools do not mean playdates for children – this counteracts the social distancing the school closures are meant to create in the first place.

6 feet: The COVID-19 virus spreads through droplets. They can move 6 feet before gravity brings them to earth.  Stay 6 feet away from people if you need to go outside. 

Meticulous hand washing: Wash thoroughly and wash often. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer works well if your hands are otherwise clean.  

Do not touch your face. This is hard. This is a learned skill… practice often. 

Clean doorknobs, toilets, cellphones, countertops, refrigerator handles and so on many times each day.  The virus could live on certain surfaces for 4-72 hours. 

If you can work from home, work from home. 

No tournaments, no sports events, no soccer, baseball, dance, volleyball, softball, gymnastics, concerts, martial arts, etc.  We don’t care how much they claim they will clean the equipment.

Cancel vacation travel. We know you planned this for a long time.  You will be saving many lives by doing so… perhaps someone you know. 

Cancel weddings/ Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, birthday parties and so on. Help other people live so they can celebrate future events too.  

If you are over 60 years old you should stay home. You should only go out if there is a critical need. 

If you have parents/grandparents in a nursing home you should consider moving them home for now. 

Do not congregate in a restaurant, bar, etc.  Again, you will save the lives of people you will never meet.  

If you feel sick stay home. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel too sick. Going to work will put countless other people at risk of suffering or dying. 

Cancel all business travel.  Your life and the lives of others are more important. 

Possible supply chain issues: Work with your doctor to try to get a 3 month supply of medication. 

Many grocery stores have order ahead options with either pick up or delivery. There are online grocery delivery services available in many areas. Wash your hands thoroughly after unpacking groceries.

Reliable news sites:

Stat news 

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security

Your local health dept.

CDC: fact sheets

WHO

A worthy read: Gnawing Anxiety and Under Reaction

An Open Letter from physicians to Mike Pence. 

The physician authors include Howard J. Luks, MD @hjluks, Joel Topf, MD FACP @Kidney_Boy, Ethan J. Weiss, MD @ethanjweiss, Carrie Diulus, MD @Cadiulus, Nancy Yen Shipley, MD @_NancyMD, Eric Levi, MBBS FRAS @DrEricLevi, and Bryan Vartabedian, MD @Doctor_v. This article originally appeared on the HJLuks site here.

The post COVID-19 Update: A Message From Concerned Physicians appeared first on The Health Care Blog.

COVID-19 Update: A Message From Concerned Physicians published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

[greatnorthbikeride]

New trial for rhabdomyosarcoma patients With the support of the Chris Lucas Trust, Professor Shipley’s lab at the ICR has already developed a genetic test to better classify rhabdomyosarcoma patients into low and high risk groups that decide treatment intensity. This year marks the planned opening of a new international clinical trial for rhabdomyosarcoma patients in the UK and other countries – incorporating some of the lab’s research findings funded by the Chris Lucas Trust. The lab is working to identify new ways to treat young patients with more aggressive disease. This includes examining drugs that are currently used to treat other types of cancer, to see if they could also be used to treat children and young people with rhabdomyosarcoma. Professor Shipley, who leads the Sarcoma Molecular Pathology Team at the ICR, said: “Last year, I joined the Great North Bike Ride to show our huge appreciation for the incredible support we have received from the Chris Lucas Trust over the years. It has been truly inspiring and very humbling to know and work with Lynn and Lynn, who have been tireless in their efforts to raise money for our research into rhabdomyosarcoma, the disease that led to the tragic death of their son Chris. I hope I can in some small way give back to the Chris Lucas Trust, which is dedicated to raising as much money as possible to make a difference and find better treatments to combat rhabdomyosarcoma.” #cancer #rhabdonyosarcoma #sarcoma #chrislucastrust https://www.instagram.com/p/B8MXEarAPsw/?igshid=179vuwdjaflpv

[wbwest]

New Post has been published on WilliamBruceWest.com

New Post has been published on http://www.williambrucewest.com/2017/08/25/west-week-ever-pop-culture-review-82517/

West Week Ever: Pop Culture In Review - 8/25/17

  In movie news, there was quite the controversial casting this week, as the color lines blurred for some comic book adaptations. First up, it was announced that English actor Ed Skrein would be portraying Japanese character Ben Daimio in the upcoming Hellboy reboot. Now, according to what I’ve read, Daimio’s Japanese heritage heavily influences the character, so this whitewashing of the character doesn’t seem to be in the best interest of the character. I mean, after the problems with whitewashing in Doctor Strange, Ghost in the Shell, Aloha, The Great Wall, and Ni’ihau, you’d think Hollywood would avoid shit like this. Yes, movies are made to make money, but it’s not like Skrein is a bankable star worth slotting into the role, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Usually this is done for the film’s STARS. Damon, Johansson, Stone. This is a secondary character, so it really wouldn’t have hurt them to seek out an Asian actor. Normally I’m just like “Well, Hollywood’s gonna Hollywood”, but this decision just doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Next up, 24: Legacy’s Anna Diop has been cast as Starfire in Warner Bros’ Titans series, slated to air on DC’s upcoming digital service. Some folks are saying they should’ve cast a Latina, but she’s gonna either be painted or CGied in orange, so it’s not like it’s gonna matter at the end of the day. Personally, if they wanted authenticity, I think they should’ve cast an actual orange alien princess. Right now there are just too many unknowns for me to get excited about this. I mean, DC announced the digital service without a lot of information. What’s gonna be on it? What will it cost? How much of the DC library will be available to be housed on it? As for Titans, this is the show TNT passed on. Ya know, the home of such illustrious shows as The Librarians and The Last Ship. I mean, they’re basically just about a notch up from what we got in the 90s from Universal’s Action Pack lineup. If Titans couldn’t fit anywhere on that schedule, then it probably just isn’t “ready for primetime” yet.

Speaking of aimless Warner Bros decisions, they announced 2 different Joker movies this week. First up is an origin tale, directed by Todd Phillips of Old School fame, and produced by Martin Scorsese. Hmm, one of those things is not like the other. I mean, why would Scorsese touch something helmed by the dude who gave us Road Trip? And who even WANTS a Joker origin story? First of all, it’s reportedly not even going to be part of the DCEU, so why confuse the audience with a story that won’t even really “count” in the grand scheme of things? Nobody needs a standalone origin of a take on a character they’ll likely never see again. This is just as foolish as Sony’s Don’t-Look-For-Spider-Man-To-Appear Venom movie. Next, the guys behind This Is Us (SO hot right now!) and Crazy, Stupid, Love are working on a Bonnie & Clyde-style Joker and Harley film, with Jared Leto and Margot Robbie reprising their roles from Suicide Squad. Since this would sort of negate the empowerment that Harley gained by the end of Squad, it’s believed that this actually means that the planned Gotham City Sirens film, also slated to star Robbie, is now dead. Honestly, I could do without either of these movies. I found Leto’s take on Joker to be…interesting, but Less is More with that character. Plus, I don’t really think the DCEU would be strengthened by this sort of movie. It’s not the world-building they need to be doing right now, as they haven’t even figured out the core of their star characters like Batman and Superman yet.

In TV news, Christopher Sebela’s comic Heartthrob has been optioned as a TV series by Felix Culpa – a production company launched by actress/Elvis’s granddaughter Riley Keough. Now, comics are optioned every day, and the final product never comes to fruition, but I hope this series sees the light of day. I’m actually a big fan of the comic, which is published by Oni Press. Set in the late 70s, it focuses on Callie, who’s received a heart transplant while the process is still in its infancy. Given a new lease on life, but still told she’s basically living on borrowed time, she decides to change her life when she meets Mercer, a charming guy with a shady side. She immediately falls for him, and he teaches her how to be bad, like rob banks and commit other crimes. She gets off on the rush. Pretty soon, however, she realizes that Mercer isn’t real. No, he’s actually the ghost of the guy whose heart is now in Callie. So, it’s a Bonnie & Clyde story where Clyde’s calling the shots from the afterlife. The book is published in “seasons”, so the first 5-issue miniseries wrapped up back in early 2016, while season 2 is hitting stores now. If you’re looking for a new comic not from the Big Two, I highly recommend it.

In music news, Taylor Swift did a whole social blitz to announce that her next album would be called Reputation, and would be released Nov 10th. On top of that, the first single was released last night, with rumors that the video will premiere at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards. Ya know, the same awards hosted my Taylor’s enemy Katy Perry. Yeah, that should be pretty interesting to watch. Anyway, the new song is called “Look What You Made Me Do”, and I’m not too impressed. It lacks a real hook, while the chorus itself is basically spoken. I feel like it has all the ingredients for a great song, but it’s not living up to its full potential. If this is an indicator of what to expect on Reputation, though, I’ll admit I’m curious. It can’t be worse than Perry’s Witness.

Speaking of Katy Perry, we got the premiere of her video for “Swish Swish”, which was reportedly her diss track against Taylor Swift. After a lot of backtracking and sucking up, though, it seems Katy wants to put that feud behind her. That’s why this horrible video does everything it can to take the bite out of a song that was never really that biting to begin with. I mean, just look at it – Molly Shannon? Terry Crews? Even Nicki Minaj was clearly CGied in, as I’m sure she didn’t wanna be anywhere near this shitshow. The sad thing about the Perry/Swift feud is that Katy bailed on it the minute she realized the Swifties were a more powerful lobby than she had thought. Nobody was feeling her SNL performances, and Witness didn’t exactly fly off the shelves. She realized that she can’t really survive by making enemies, so suddenly she became conciliatory to save her ass. Plus, it’s kinda lame that this blood feud started just because Taylor stole a few of Katy’s dancers for her tour. Anyway, you’ll never get those 6 minutes back. You’re welcome.

I had the pleasure of joining my buddy Zac for his new podcast, The Zac Shipley Show. He’s treating these first few episodes as pilots for ideas he’s wanted to try, so our ep was called Streaming Pile, where we talked about the worst things we could find on streaming services. I talked about a Star Trek: Voyager episode where formerly perky pixie Kes returns all middle-aged and bitter. You should check it out, and give a listen to his other episodes while you’re there!

Song of the Week

I’ve been a big Maren Morris fan since she released “My Church”, and I was really into her next single, “80s Mercedes”. With this song she continues not to disappoint, as I love the groove on this thing. Listen to the bassline. It’s not a dance song, yet you can do a MEAN two-step to it. Hell, I think you could even do a casual version of The Hustle to it. This will definitely go to #1 given time.

Things You Might Have Missed This Week

NBC’s planned reboot of Xena: Warrior Princess – which would’ve featured a full-on lesbian relationship between her and Gabrielle – is officially dead, as they said “it didn’t warrant a reboot”. Man, if only other studios would realize this about some of their projects…

Director James Gunn mentioned in a Q & A session that the 3rd Guardians of the Galaxy film would set up the next 10-20 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yup, you’re just now realizing your own mortality. I’ll give you a minute to deal with that.

Speaking of Gunn, he’s attached to write the pilot for (and possibly direct) a reboot of 70s series Starsky & Hutch. This adaptation is supposed to be similar in tone to CBS’s upcoming S.W.A.T. and not comedic in tone like the 2004 Ben Stiller & Owen Wilson movie.

Surprising every critic in Hollywood, Netflix has renewed the maligned comedy Friends From College for a second season.

Known for controversial publicity stunts, Alamo Drafthouse is reportedly organizing a Clowns Only screening of the new adaptation of Stephen King’s It.

We got a new poster for Thor: Ragnarok. So many colors!

Michael K. Williams has reportedly been cut from the Star Wars Han Solo film, as Ron Howard’s reshoot schedule conflicted with another role that Williams had accepted.

There are, like, 8 different Knight Rider reboot treatments floating around Hollywood, but the latest rumor is that one of those productions is looking at John Cena as Michael Knight, with Kevin Hart as the voice of K.I.T.T. Of course, it would be a comedic adaptation, a la the popular Jump Street franchise.

Super Troopers 2, the sequel to one of the most overrated films I’ve ever seen, will hit theaters April 20th, 2018.

Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson will star in Nasty Women, which is a female-led reboot of the Michael Caine/Steve Martin classic Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Independence Day: Resurgence‘s Jessie T Usher will star in Son of Shaft, with Samuel L. Jackson potentially reprising his role as John Shaft (from the 2000 reboot film), the nephew of the original John Shaft, played by Richard Roundtree, who is also in talks to join the movie. Man, that gave me a headache.

Always on the cutting edge, here’s Sesame Street’s parody of 2017’s song of the summer, “Despacito”

According to the creators, the Netflix series Stranger Things will most likely end after its fourth season

The actress formerly known as “Andrea Zuckerman”, Gabrielle Carteris, has been re-elected to a 2-year term as the President of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)

Ryan Gosling will host the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, with musical guest Jay-Z, on Sept 30th.

Jamie Bell is developing a Jumper TV series, based on the 2008 film about teleporters

Suicide Squad 2 is reportedly being fast tracked, but I hope they fast track it right into the garbage. I mean, I enjoyed the first one, but I don’t need a sequel.

I like Nick Kroll, even though I never saw even a second of Kroll Show. Anyway, he’s got a new animated series about puberty called Big Mouth coming to Netflix and after watching this teaser I am ON BOARD!

We’re a month away from the premiere of Star Trek: Discovery, and it was revealed that it will be rated TV-MA, for Mature Audiences. Now, it doesn’t mean there’ll be tits and phasers, but it does mean they can tell more complex stories. That said, I still feel like they don’t truly understand the source material.

After a scathing essay from his ex-wife went public, accusing him of adultery and other generally shitty behavior to women, Joss Whedon went underground and the fan site, Whedonesque, shut down after 15 years.

We got a new teaser for Netflix’s The Punisher. With the rate I’m getting through these Marvel shows, I’ll probably get to it just before Evie goes off to Hogwarts.

There was a national solar eclipse this week, which was the first occurrence since 1918. I’m sure you might’ve heard something about it. It was kind of a big deal. Folks were pimping out special cardboard glasses on Craigslist for insane amounts of money, and the American President made news by looking directly into it. It seems that it had a strange effect on different folks. For example, Netflix viewership went down 10% as people went outside to view the phenomenon. Not everyone understood what was going on, bless their hearts. At work, a frantic parent called in and said “Y’all watching the news? You hear about this eclipse? Is it serious?!” Apparently she thought it posed some sort of danger to her kids and the school. No, ma’am. It’s just a beautiful sky ballet. Anyway, the eclipse was EVERYWHERE. I didn’t get to see totality, but it was still nice to stand outside for a bit on a nice day. What am I saying? I hate the outdoors! Well, it was nice to not have to work for a few minutes. You couldn’t escape the Eclipse Fever at the start of the week, so that’s why the Solar Eclipse of 2017 had the West Week Ever.

[meditation-practices]

I Don't Want Abominable Surgery!

I Don’t Want Abominable Surgery!

Friday morning, I had to have a sonogram for my gall stone. Aside from the long wait, it went fairly smoothly. When I finished, my friend, T. R. was waiting for me. We had breakfast together and talked about my options. After T. left for work, I joined a cancer support group at Marin General led by Leslie Davenport. She had worked with my wife the previous year doing guided imagery for her hip…

[paul-s-walks-uk-blog]

Walk 3: South Brent to Broad Falls

‘I first noticed how the sound of water is like the talk of human voices, and would sometimes wake in the night and listen, thinking that a crowd of people were coming through the woods’.

Freya Stark

It was time to go camping. And it was time to camp by a water. The chatter and the bubbling of running water, or the steady lap of waves on a rocky beach work a peaceful charm. It’s not quite sailing off over the oceans, but as Ishmael says ‘It’s a way I have of driving  off  the spleen’

This walk visits three waterfalls along the River Avon. The falls at Lydia bridge. then the first of the series of falls at Shipley, and finally a campsite at Broad falls, where the young Avon, barely three kilometers. from it’s miry sauce, leaps down a rocky outcrop on it’s way to Avon Dam. I had passed by this last several times, but had not yet camped there.

see pictures from this walk by clicking this link

Walk data

Distance: Approximately 7 miles, 11 km (14 miles, 23 km if  not camping but returning  by the same route)

Grade: moderate, some sections would require map and compass work in low visibility. If you are not going to camp, but instead return the same day, this would be a strenuous walk, and would not be advisable outside summer due to daylight hours.

Start Point: South Brent Tourist Information, which is in the Old Toll House, 3-6 Church Street, approximately SX697601: A picture of it is here to help locate it

End Point : Western bank of the River Avon, near Broad Falls, approximately SX652670

Facilities: Supermarkets, pubs, restaurants, coffee bars, tourist information are all to be found in South Brent. Public toilets and (if you are lucky) an ice cream van, at Shipley Bridge Car Park

Transport: By bus: From Torquay, Paignton or Totnes, catch the Stage Coach West Gold bus bound for Plymouth. From Plymouth, the same bus, bound for Torquay. From Exeter, the only direct bus is the Stage Coast West X38 (from Exeter Bus Station). There are only five of these per day. There are other routes involving changes, consult Traveline South West

Map: Essential, as is a compass. Ordinance Survey Explorer OL28. The coordinates used here are in reference to this map

Walk overview

The trail starts with a fair amount of road walking and some public footpaths through woods. Then, from Shipley Bridge, moorland. Mostly following an clear path through tussocky grass, with some boggy patches. After the Sky Tip, there is  section open moorland to cross, with possibly very boggy areas. The very last section is over rocky ground 

Route Map

Click on sections to see route map

Stage 1 : South Brent to Shipley Bridge

Stage 2 : Shipley Bridge to Red lake

Stage 3 : The Red  Lake to campsite

Woods near Shipley Bridge

Stage 1:South Brent to Shipley Bridge

This is primarily road walking, with some stretches of country footpaths. The roads are not busy (except in the holiday season).

The walk starts at the Old Toll House in South Brent, which is now a tourist information center. South Brent is either a large village, or a small town, depending on how you look at it. It is not generally a tourist attraction, which gives it an attraction of it’s own. The street are busy with local shoppers and farmers.There are plenty of traditional Devon buildings to look at, mostly Victorian, but some clearly dating from the sixteenth century or earlier. 

From the Old Toll House head towards and past the church, where a footpath takes you under the railway bridge. There is a very nice walk along the banks of the Avon, which ends with a set of granite steps leading up to Lydia bridge (click here to see a photo).

Turn right and cross the bridge. The first of the waterfalls on this trail are on the right side of the bridge. Here the river thunders down over a steep and surprisingly boulder strewn drop. It makes a churning sound like great wheels turning. The banks are green with thickly growing trees.

Since most of this section is road walking, I have built in a little detour, but you can stick to the road if you wish, the detour rejoins the road art Avon Cott, about a third of a mile (half a kilometer) along. There is a public footpath to your right soon after crossing the bridge. This takes you over some fields and through a small, but delightful patch of woods, before rejoining the road. It has been a warm winter and even though it was January, the woods were still in their autumn browns and oranges, and the leaves still crunched underfoot.

After passing Avon Cott (the building has a sign  with it’s name on the wall, so it is easy to see), you come to Binnamore cross. Take the right fork and follow the road. There are a couple of junctions, but ignore them, The directions to Shipley bridge are well signed. On reaching Shipley Bridge then turn left into the car park. If you are very lucky there will be an ice cream van, selling clotted cream ice creams. Try one for a proper Devon treat.

There are public toilets at the bridge, but no other facilities.

The car park at Shipley is the site of two distinct and defunct industrial enterprises on this part of the moor. Stage 2 of the walk takes you past the relics of both of these.

The first was the extraction of naphtha from peat which was taken from diggings near Red Lake. Naphtha was used in Victorian times to make candles. The material was transported to Shipley Bridge along a tramway to where the car park now is. The wagons were dragged by horse and manpower and it must have been back-breaking work. The tramway will be followed in stage 2 of this walk. Nothing else remains of this industry which ceased working after only a few years. But the tramway was reused by the second industry.

The second enterprise was china clay extraction. This is still done on the moors to the south east near Shaugh Prior. The clay was dug at red lake, and dried here at the car park. The clay extraction lasted until 1880, when it was abandoned.

Stage 2: Shipley Bridge to Red Lake

This stage ends at Red Lake on the south eastern end of Green Hill on the open moor. The entire length follows the Victorian tramway, which is easy to follow.

Head from the car park along the road towards the Avon Dam. On your right the River Avon runs in a little rocky valley. If it has rained on the higher moors, the river here can be a loud torrent, and the air is full of spray. Usually it rolls merrily down and there are little beaches of flat rock where you can stand and listen to the gurgling and splashing of the water

There are several falls along the way to the Dam, especially at this end of the road, where the land descends suddenly. This walk follows the road for only a couple of hundred meters, past the fall seen below.

The River Avon at Shipley

After a few minutes you will come to a white sign on the left that points to the Avon Dam and ( unromantically) to the Water Treatment Works. Follow the sign left to the Treatment Works, up a steep section of concrete road. This soon levels out a bit and bears to the right and passes the  Works. Leave the road, keeping the wall of the works to your left. This is where the tramway departs from the Water Works road. Initially it does not look like any sort of tramway, there is a rocky section, overhung with the branches of tall gorse bushes, but this soon opens out.

The tramway was made of wooden sleepers bolted to granite blocks. The sleepers have long since been reused by local farmers, but the granite blocks remain,covered in moss and grasses, sometimes obvious, sometimes not. The builders tried to keep the tramway (more or less) level, so sometimes it forms a ditch beside the path (the bottom of the ditch is generally soggy) , and sometimes it is raised a little higher.

The trail follows the contour lines of a wide valley. To your left, at the bottom of the valley runs the Bala Brook. On the far side the hills are scarred with the cuttings made by miners, to the right Brent Moor rises in gorse covered slopes. Once out on the moors the tramway bears northwards and after a while turns again north-eastward. As it does you will see the hill ahead crowned with what can only be described as a nipple shaped structure. This is Eastern White Barrow. It will be visible for most of the rest of the trail. (see the picture below)

Eastern White Barrow from the Tramway

The barrows are the sites of bronze age burials. Huge piles of rock were piled over the graves of chieftains.The bodies of the chieftains have long since dissolved in the acidic peat, and over the ages any treasure buried with them have been plundered, but the barrow still remain. Someone at some time built a cylindrical structure on the top of Eastern White Barrow, giving it it’s distinctive shape.

Eastern White Barrow is now behind your right shoulder, almost hidden by the upper slopes of the hill. A single tall stone will be seen standing rather forbiddingly on the moors. This is a boundary marker, one of many found on Dartmoor, defining the borders between different parishes

Ahead, past the boundary marker is another barrow. The is Western White Barrow (SX653654). It is close to the track an worth a visit. This is not a very tall barrow, and the reason soon becomes clear. The Victorian mine workers have hollowed out the middle and made it into a small house. The roof has long gone, but there are still stout walls, and the rectangular remains of a chimney place, This makes a perfect seat for getting out of the wind, and making a cup of tea, if you have a stove on you. On top of the barrow stands Petre’s Cross. It has stood here since the middle ages. The Victorian miners, clearly not superstitious, cut the arms off and made it the backing for their fireplace in the hut. Someone has since rescued it and put it back on top of the barrow. There it stands, looking maimed and sad, through heat and rain and snow. (see picture below)

Petre’s Cross on Western White Barrow, with the Sky Tip in the distance

From the barrow you can see in the distance what looks like a little mountain, standing by itself on the moor-side. This is called ‘The Sky Tip’. It is the spoil tip from the china clay diggings. Red lake sits at the bottom of the sky tip, and it is there that this section of the walk is heading.

On the other side of the track, just past the barrow, you can see a small cylindrical  stone structure. If you go and look at it you will find that next to it two strange constructions, like elongated horse-shoes (click here to see a picture). These are settling tanks. Here the clay slurry was washed under high pressure. The heavier particles, containing the china clay would settle to the bottom, and the other material would be washed away. The cylindrical structure would have housed a pump.

From here the path goes down hill and soon you can see it joins a wider track. This is the Puffing Billy track, where once a small railway carried workers and material from the clay works to near Ivybridge on the southern end of the moors.The path soon joins this track (SX649660) and leads to Red Lake. This part of the track is often waterlogged and you may need to climb at times to the higher, tussock covered banks to avoid getting wet feet (the right side is best). Take care, as there are hidden holes and gullies among the grassy mounds.

You soon come to the remains of the clay works. The building have been destroyed, but there are still concrete and stone blocks, with rusty iron support sticking from them. It must once have been very busy here, but now it is quiet and still, and the wind whistles through the grasses.

Straight ahead is the Sky Tip and Red Lake(SX645668). Climb up the white, clay path to the top of the Tip. There is a good view all round. Two other lakes can be seen, separated by a causeway, and a further smaller tip at the other side of the lake. 

Take time to sit and breathe the peat scented fresh air. Not too long, as it is often very windy at the top.

Red Lake

Stage 2: Red Lake to Broad Falls 

This is the shortest stage.

Look eastwards and you can see a wide area of moor land, and beyond it a valley. This is the Avon valley where Broad falls are. Do not head straight in the direction of the falls, as this area is extremely boggy, and you will be drenched up to the knees if you traverse it. Instead, bear slightly to the left. From the Sky tip you can see some rocky outcrops in this direction. Head on the higher ground to these, and then bear slightly to your right, down the grassy end of the valley, which is strewn with large granite boulders.

Broad Falls soon come into view. The river tumbles down between massive granite rocks. (picture below)

.

This is a seldom visited spot. You can sit here all day in peace and quiet, with very little chance of seeing anyone else, except maybe a walker or two, and on the far bank, where it is less rocky, you may see a hill farmer on a quad bike, with a sheep dog lolling around on the back.

I have not camped here before, and it was difficult to find a suitable pitching spot. The ground next to the river is damp and very rocky. But higher up there are small cliffs and there are grassy patches on top of these. I found (at last) a space wide enough about half way up and pitched my tent there (see the picture at the top of this post).

Dinner was a trekking chicken korma and tea and ginger nuts. Who could ask for more? It was now 4 o’clock and soon it would be dark. I lay in my tent with the door open as darkness fell, listening to the water below. It does indeed sound like voices. I am used to it now, but the first time I camped out alone by a river, I became convinced that there was a group of old ladies nearby, chatting and giggling indistinctly. I couldn’t work out where they could be, and eventually got up in the pitch dark to investigate. Some people say the voice of the river is telling us things, but I don’t. That is the beauty of it. It exists solely for itself, without regards to our little lives, burbling and gurgling through the granite stones. It has been doing this for millennia, chattering away as it slowly but surely carries the rocks down stream.This is the same sound that the neolithic hunters would have heard here four thousand years ago.

The night darkened to blackness and I fell asleep, waking at one in the morning, slightly damp as I hadn’t zipped the door up.

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Must-Reads Of The Week

The Friday Breeze

Want to read the best and most provocative stories from the week? Welcome to the Friday Breeze, where we compile them all — so you’re set with your weekend reading.

Our regular newsletter editor remains on hiatus, so I’m back for a second (and final) round providing highlights of all the health care news you missed if you were locked in a closet or otherwise occupied.

While New York City, the Washington metro area, California and other regions loosen their stay-at-home restrictions, coronavirus cases continue to rise to surpass 2 million domestic infections. Hospitalizations are increasing in Arizona, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. Arizona’s health director told hospitals to “fully activate” their emergency plans as the state’s biggest system, Banner Health, said its ICU bed use was nearing capacity.

Dallas County reported new daily highs of new cases, and there are outbreaks in immigrant communities in Florida. The head of North Carolina’s health and human services department told NPR’s “Morning Edition” that “this is an early warning sign for us that we really need to take seriously and make sure that we don’t forget that COVID-19 is with us.” Yet some public health officials are being harassed or pushed out of their jobs.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the coronavirus “my worst nightmare” and underscored that “it isn’t over yet.” He said that AIDS, the disease caused by HIV, was “really simple” in comparison because the coronavirus presents so differently in different people.

Oregon’s governor put on hold county applications for further reopenings, but governors in other states seem reluctant to impose or reimpose restrictions. So do some individuals. A Houston hospital CEO told The Wall Street Journal, “I have been to pools where there are 100 people crowded in, and that’s not safe behavior.”

The Friday Breeze

Want a roundup of the must-read stories this week? Sign up for The Friday Breeze today.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

Sign Up

In The Hot Spots

Journalist Sara Shipley Hiles traveled to the Ozarks for KHN to see how the tourist season was shaping up, and found it’s going bananas after a shoulder-to-shoulder Memorial Day Weekend that went viral on social media. One resident said people have been eager to get out of the house because “it’s just the nature of freedom lovers.” Health authorities discovered one such freedom lover who was possibly already infected with the coronavirus partied through an ambitious Memorial Day itinerary that included stops at Backwater Jacks, Buffalo Wild Wings, Shady Gators and the Lazy Gators pool.

As President Donald Trump’s campaign prepares to resume rallies, attendees are being asked to sign waivers that they won’t sue if they get COVID-19. Joe Biden is warning of a second wave and wants to hire 100,000 contact tracers so that workers can return to their jobs.

The federal response continues to be pilloried as insufficient as each state struggles to figure out how to expand testing and how to reopen. A fifth of nursing homes still lack sufficient personal protective equipment despite Trump’s promise to “deploy every resource and power that we have” to protect older Americans.” Instead of proper medical gowns, a government contractor has been sending homes plastic ponchos without armholes that a nursing home administrator says look like trash bags.

To find supplies on their own, health care workers are resorting to desperate measures, including parking-lot meetings to negotiate gown purchases and arrangements with “shady characters” to blend their own hand sanitizer. Massachusetts has also turned to the gray market out of desperation, inking contracts with a businessman with expertise in selfie-taking equipment and a company run out of a New Jersey home.

Chris Kirkham and Benjamin Lesser at Reuters took a comprehensive look at how already-low nursing home staffing levels, a perennial concern for residents and their families, have gotten worse during the pandemic. Nursing home nurses and aides told them staffers are quitting “in large numbers” for fear of getting sick and because of a lack of testing and protective gear, and management’s downplaying of the dangers. Katie Thomas at The New York Times found some nursing homes want employees and their insurers to pay for testing rather than pay for it themselves.

In The Hot Seat

Heeding persistent complaints that provider relief money wasn’t helping those most in need, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department announced it would send $25 billion to safety-net providers, including $10 billion to about 750 hospitals that treat the most poor or uninsured patients.

The Wall Street Journal autopsies New York City’s hospital response to the pandemic and finds plenty of blame to apportion, including hospitals that transferred patients who were so sick they should not have been sent elsewhere, changing state and city guidelines about when sick health care workers could come back, and problems in obtaining personal protective equipment. “We are not running these ICUs safely or appropriately,” a resident wrote in an email to the attending physicians at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia. “The emotional burden of working in these sci-fi-movie-gone-wrong ICUs is through the roof.”

So Young

Researchers and doctors are still trying to decipher how the virus injures children in a small number of cases known as pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome. NPR’s Peter Breslow and Lulu Garcia-Navarro reported how doctors at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., are handling the cases. One big mystery is how the syndrome afflicts children differently than adults, since a majority of the kids did not test positive for the virus but did have antibodies. “Is this acute viral? Is this post-infectious? Is it a combination? We’ve got to figure this out in our patient cohort,” one doctor told NPR. In Queens, St. Mary’s Hospital for Children is allowing one parent for each hospitalized child to move in during their stay.

Another medical mystery is why the debilitating symptoms of the virus linger for more than 60 days in some people, including younger ones in great shape. “I’m better, but the hardest, most confusing thing about this is that I’m not well,” one triathlete told The Washington Post’s Ariana Eunjung Cha and Lenny Bernstein.

Medical Advances

The first-known double lung transplant in a COVID patient, a Hispanic woman in her 20s, occurred at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Dr. Ankit Bharat, Northwestern’s chief of thoracic surgery, said he’s been contacted by health centers around the country to see if Northwestern would perform transplants on their patients, and five other patients are now being evaluated as candidates.

Researchers are looking at decades-old vaccines against tuberculosis and polio to see if they might be useful to fight COVID-19, and seeing if mosquito spit might be used to ward off all diseases spread by the insects. If the rest of this week’s crop of we-don’t–have-a-vaccine-or-treatment-but-we’re-working-on-it updates are too numerous to digest, The New York Times has a nice tracker of where individual vaccination efforts stand. The Urban Institute published a tracker of more than 100 resources summarizing state policy responses, data and other relevant information on COVID, food, income, housing and elections. This tracker of trackers — very meta! — will be updated monthly, Urban says.

Do Not Disturb

The hotel experience will be changing as chains try to provide psychological comfort that their guests will not check out with a case of “corona.” Chains such as Hilton are asking guests to use mobile apps to unlock their rooms rather than giving them key cards. Buffets are being replaced with prepacked foods, coffee stations are gone, and if you want one of DoubleTree’s warm chocolate chip cookies, you’ll need to ask for it. The Beverly Hills Hilton is using a 3-foot-tall robot named Kennedy that flashes ultraviolet light into rooms to kill germs.

Finally, the New York Times’ Modern Love column offers 18 first-person sketches of how relationships are going in pandemic isolation. The tl;dr version is: not so hot for everyone. A wife wants to scream every time her husband yells “woo” as his go-to response; a couple stuck in a studio apartment is celebrating their one-year anniversary by spending a week apart; and a 30-year-old living with her boyfriend in New Jersey declares she’s moving across the country when their lease is up. On the positive side, a grandmother is doing the swiping for her granddaughter on dating sites; two roommates, one 83 and the other 27, enjoy ogling handsome men on TV, and a couple in Florida now argue in British accents so they don’t take themselves too seriously.

Enjoy the weekend, and if you’re in the Ozarks, try to limit yourself to one gator-themed venue per day.

Must-Reads Of The Week published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[dinafbrownil]

Must-Reads Of The Week

The Friday Breeze

Want to read the best and most provocative stories from the week? Welcome to the Friday Breeze, where we compile them all — so you’re set with your weekend reading.

Our regular newsletter editor remains on hiatus, so I’m back for a second (and final) round providing highlights of all the health care news you missed if you were locked in a closet or otherwise occupied.

While New York City, the Washington metro area, California and other regions loosen their stay-at-home restrictions, coronavirus cases continue to rise to surpass 2 million domestic infections. Hospitalizations are increasing in Arizona, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. Arizona’s health director told hospitals to “fully activate” their emergency plans as the state’s biggest system, Banner Health, said its ICU bed use was nearing capacity.

Dallas County reported new daily highs of new cases, and there are outbreaks in immigrant communities in Florida. The head of North Carolina’s health and human services department told NPR’s “Morning Edition” that “this is an early warning sign for us that we really need to take seriously and make sure that we don’t forget that COVID-19 is with us.” Yet some public health officials are being harassed or pushed out of their jobs.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the coronavirus “my worst nightmare” and underscored that “it isn’t over yet.” He said that AIDS, the disease caused by HIV, was “really simple” in comparison because the coronavirus presents so differently in different people.

Oregon’s governor put on hold county applications for further reopenings, but governors in other states seem reluctant to impose or reimpose restrictions. So do some individuals. A Houston hospital CEO told The Wall Street Journal, “I have been to pools where there are 100 people crowded in, and that’s not safe behavior.”

The Friday Breeze

Want a roundup of the must-read stories this week? Sign up for The Friday Breeze today.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

Sign Up

In The Hot Spots

Journalist Sara Shipley Hiles traveled to the Ozarks for KHN to see how the tourist season was shaping up, and found it’s going bananas after a shoulder-to-shoulder Memorial Day Weekend that went viral on social media. One resident said people have been eager to get out of the house because “it’s just the nature of freedom lovers.” Health authorities discovered one such freedom lover who was possibly already infected with the coronavirus partied through an ambitious Memorial Day itinerary that included stops at Backwater Jacks, Buffalo Wild Wings, Shady Gators and the Lazy Gators pool.

As President Donald Trump’s campaign prepares to resume rallies, attendees are being asked to sign waivers that they won’t sue if they get COVID-19. Joe Biden is warning of a second wave and wants to hire 100,000 contact tracers so that workers can return to their jobs.

The federal response continues to be pilloried as insufficient as each state struggles to figure out how to expand testing and how to reopen. A fifth of nursing homes still lack sufficient personal protective equipment despite Trump’s promise to “deploy every resource and power that we have” to protect older Americans.” Instead of proper medical gowns, a government contractor has been sending homes plastic ponchos without armholes that a nursing home administrator says look like trash bags.

To find supplies on their own, health care workers are resorting to desperate measures, including parking-lot meetings to negotiate gown purchases and arrangements with “shady characters” to blend their own hand sanitizer. Massachusetts has also turned to the gray market out of desperation, inking contracts with a businessman with expertise in selfie-taking equipment and a company run out of a New Jersey home.

Chris Kirkham and Benjamin Lesser at Reuters took a comprehensive look at how already-low nursing home staffing levels, a perennial concern for residents and their families, have gotten worse during the pandemic. Nursing home nurses and aides told them staffers are quitting “in large numbers” for fear of getting sick and because of a lack of testing and protective gear, and management’s downplaying of the dangers. Katie Thomas at The New York Times found some nursing homes want employees and their insurers to pay for testing rather than pay for it themselves.

In The Hot Seat

Heeding persistent complaints that provider relief money wasn’t helping those most in need, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department announced it would send $25 billion to safety-net providers, including $10 billion to about 750 hospitals that treat the most poor or uninsured patients.

The Wall Street Journal autopsies New York City’s hospital response to the pandemic and finds plenty of blame to apportion, including hospitals that transferred patients who were so sick they should not have been sent elsewhere, changing state and city guidelines about when sick health care workers could come back, and problems in obtaining personal protective equipment. “We are not running these ICUs safely or appropriately,” a resident wrote in an email to the attending physicians at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia. “The emotional burden of working in these sci-fi-movie-gone-wrong ICUs is through the roof.”

So Young

Researchers and doctors are still trying to decipher how the virus injures children in a small number of cases known as pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome. NPR’s Peter Breslow and Lulu Garcia-Navarro reported how doctors at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., are handling the cases. One big mystery is how the syndrome afflicts children differently than adults, since a majority of the kids did not test positive for the virus but did have antibodies. “Is this acute viral? Is this post-infectious? Is it a combination? We’ve got to figure this out in our patient cohort,” one doctor told NPR. In Queens, St. Mary’s Hospital for Children is allowing one parent for each hospitalized child to move in during their stay.

Another medical mystery is why the debilitating symptoms of the virus linger for more than 60 days in some people, including younger ones in great shape. “I’m better, but the hardest, most confusing thing about this is that I’m not well,” one triathlete told The Washington Post’s Ariana Eunjung Cha and Lenny Bernstein.

Medical Advances

The first-known double lung transplant in a COVID patient, a Hispanic woman in her 20s, occurred at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Dr. Ankit Bharat, Northwestern’s chief of thoracic surgery, said he’s been contacted by health centers around the country to see if Northwestern would perform transplants on their patients, and five other patients are now being evaluated as candidates.

Researchers are looking at decades-old vaccines against tuberculosis and polio to see if they might be useful to fight COVID-19, and seeing if mosquito spit might be used to ward off all diseases spread by the insects. If the rest of this week’s crop of we-don’t–have-a-vaccine-or-treatment-but-we’re-working-on-it updates are too numerous to digest, The New York Times has a nice tracker of where individual vaccination efforts stand. The Urban Institute published a tracker of more than 100 resources summarizing state policy responses, data and other relevant information on COVID, food, income, housing and elections. This tracker of trackers — very meta! — will be updated monthly, Urban says.

Do Not Disturb

The hotel experience will be changing as chains try to provide psychological comfort that their guests will not check out with a case of “corona.” Chains such as Hilton are asking guests to use mobile apps to unlock their rooms rather than giving them key cards. Buffets are being replaced with prepacked foods, coffee stations are gone, and if you want one of DoubleTree’s warm chocolate chip cookies, you’ll need to ask for it. The Beverly Hills Hilton is using a 3-foot-tall robot named Kennedy that flashes ultraviolet light into rooms to kill germs.

Finally, the New York Times’ Modern Love column offers 18 first-person sketches of how relationships are going in pandemic isolation. The tl;dr version is: not so hot for everyone. A wife wants to scream every time her husband yells “woo” as his go-to response; a couple stuck in a studio apartment is celebrating their one-year anniversary by spending a week apart; and a 30-year-old living with her boyfriend in New Jersey declares she’s moving across the country when their lease is up. On the positive side, a grandmother is doing the swiping for her granddaughter on dating sites; two roommates, one 83 and the other 27, enjoy ogling handsome men on TV, and a couple in Florida now argue in British accents so they don’t take themselves too seriously.

Enjoy the weekend, and if you’re in the Ozarks, try to limit yourself to one gator-themed venue per day.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/friday-breeze-health-care-policy-must-reads-of-the-week-june-12-2020/

[stephenmccull]

Must-Reads Of The Week

The Friday Breeze

Want to read the best and most provocative stories from the week? Welcome to the Friday Breeze, where we compile them all — so you’re set with your weekend reading.

Our regular newsletter editor remains on hiatus, so I’m back for a second (and final) round providing highlights of all the health care news you missed if you were locked in a closet or otherwise occupied.

While New York City, the Washington metro area, California and other regions loosen their stay-at-home restrictions, coronavirus cases continue to rise to surpass 2 million domestic infections. Hospitalizations are increasing in Arizona, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. Arizona’s health director told hospitals to “fully activate” their emergency plans as the state’s biggest system, Banner Health, said its ICU bed use was nearing capacity.

Dallas County reported new daily highs of new cases, and there are outbreaks in immigrant communities in Florida. The head of North Carolina’s health and human services department told NPR’s “Morning Edition” that “this is an early warning sign for us that we really need to take seriously and make sure that we don’t forget that COVID-19 is with us.” Yet some public health officials are being harassed or pushed out of their jobs.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the coronavirus “my worst nightmare” and underscored that “it isn’t over yet.” He said that AIDS, the disease caused by HIV, was “really simple” in comparison because the coronavirus presents so differently in different people.

Oregon’s governor put on hold county applications for further reopenings, but governors in other states seem reluctant to impose or reimpose restrictions. So do some individuals. A Houston hospital CEO told The Wall Street Journal, “I have been to pools where there are 100 people crowded in, and that’s not safe behavior.”

The Friday Breeze

Want a roundup of the must-read stories this week? Sign up for The Friday Breeze today.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

Sign Up

In The Hot Spots

Journalist Sara Shipley Hiles traveled to the Ozarks for KHN to see how the tourist season was shaping up, and found it’s going bananas after a shoulder-to-shoulder Memorial Day Weekend that went viral on social media. One resident said people have been eager to get out of the house because “it’s just the nature of freedom lovers.” Health authorities discovered one such freedom lover who was possibly already infected with the coronavirus partied through an ambitious Memorial Day itinerary that included stops at Backwater Jacks, Buffalo Wild Wings, Shady Gators and the Lazy Gators pool.

As President Donald Trump’s campaign prepares to resume rallies, attendees are being asked to sign waivers that they won’t sue if they get COVID-19. Joe Biden is warning of a second wave and wants to hire 100,000 contact tracers so that workers can return to their jobs.

The federal response continues to be pilloried as insufficient as each state struggles to figure out how to expand testing and how to reopen. A fifth of nursing homes still lack sufficient personal protective equipment despite Trump’s promise to “deploy every resource and power that we have” to protect older Americans.” Instead of proper medical gowns, a government contractor has been sending homes plastic ponchos without armholes that a nursing home administrator says look like trash bags.

To find supplies on their own, health care workers are resorting to desperate measures, including parking-lot meetings to negotiate gown purchases and arrangements with “shady characters” to blend their own hand sanitizer. Massachusetts has also turned to the gray market out of desperation, inking contracts with a businessman with expertise in selfie-taking equipment and a company run out of a New Jersey home.

Chris Kirkham and Benjamin Lesser at Reuters took a comprehensive look at how already-low nursing home staffing levels, a perennial concern for residents and their families, have gotten worse during the pandemic. Nursing home nurses and aides told them staffers are quitting “in large numbers” for fear of getting sick and because of a lack of testing and protective gear, and management’s downplaying of the dangers. Katie Thomas at The New York Times found some nursing homes want employees and their insurers to pay for testing rather than pay for it themselves.

In The Hot Seat

Heeding persistent complaints that provider relief money wasn’t helping those most in need, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department announced it would send $25 billion to safety-net providers, including $10 billion to about 750 hospitals that treat the most poor or uninsured patients.

The Wall Street Journal autopsies New York City’s hospital response to the pandemic and finds plenty of blame to apportion, including hospitals that transferred patients who were so sick they should not have been sent elsewhere, changing state and city guidelines about when sick health care workers could come back, and problems in obtaining personal protective equipment. “We are not running these ICUs safely or appropriately,” a resident wrote in an email to the attending physicians at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia. “The emotional burden of working in these sci-fi-movie-gone-wrong ICUs is through the roof.”

So Young

Researchers and doctors are still trying to decipher how the virus injures children in a small number of cases known as pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome. NPR’s Peter Breslow and Lulu Garcia-Navarro reported how doctors at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., are handling the cases. One big mystery is how the syndrome afflicts children differently than adults, since a majority of the kids did not test positive for the virus but did have antibodies. “Is this acute viral? Is this post-infectious? Is it a combination? We’ve got to figure this out in our patient cohort,” one doctor told NPR. In Queens, St. Mary’s Hospital for Children is allowing one parent for each hospitalized child to move in during their stay.

Another medical mystery is why the debilitating symptoms of the virus linger for more than 60 days in some people, including younger ones in great shape. “I’m better, but the hardest, most confusing thing about this is that I’m not well,” one triathlete told The Washington Post’s Ariana Eunjung Cha and Lenny Bernstein.

Medical Advances

The first-known double lung transplant in a COVID patient, a Hispanic woman in her 20s, occurred at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Dr. Ankit Bharat, Northwestern’s chief of thoracic surgery, said he’s been contacted by health centers around the country to see if Northwestern would perform transplants on their patients, and five other patients are now being evaluated as candidates.

Researchers are looking at decades-old vaccines against tuberculosis and polio to see if they might be useful to fight COVID-19, and seeing if mosquito spit might be used to ward off all diseases spread by the insects. If the rest of this week’s crop of we-don’t–have-a-vaccine-or-treatment-but-we’re-working-on-it updates are too numerous to digest, The New York Times has a nice tracker of where individual vaccination efforts stand. The Urban Institute published a tracker of more than 100 resources summarizing state policy responses, data and other relevant information on COVID, food, income, housing and elections. This tracker of trackers — very meta! — will be updated monthly, Urban says.

Do Not Disturb

The hotel experience will be changing as chains try to provide psychological comfort that their guests will not check out with a case of “corona.” Chains such as Hilton are asking guests to use mobile apps to unlock their rooms rather than giving them key cards. Buffets are being replaced with prepacked foods, coffee stations are gone, and if you want one of DoubleTree’s warm chocolate chip cookies, you’ll need to ask for it. The Beverly Hills Hilton is using a 3-foot-tall robot named Kennedy that flashes ultraviolet light into rooms to kill germs.

Finally, the New York Times’ Modern Love column offers 18 first-person sketches of how relationships are going in pandemic isolation. The tl;dr version is: not so hot for everyone. A wife wants to scream every time her husband yells “woo” as his go-to response; a couple stuck in a studio apartment is celebrating their one-year anniversary by spending a week apart; and a 30-year-old living with her boyfriend in New Jersey declares she’s moving across the country when their lease is up. On the positive side, a grandmother is doing the swiping for her granddaughter on dating sites; two roommates, one 83 and the other 27, enjoy ogling handsome men on TV, and a couple in Florida now argue in British accents so they don’t take themselves too seriously.

Enjoy the weekend, and if you’re in the Ozarks, try to limit yourself to one gator-themed venue per day.

Must-Reads Of The Week published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/