Can I help You? I Talked To A Man Today

(Tom: This post I copied from a Facebook friend applies just as much in Australia and New Zealand and more so in Britain.

Shared by Humbled and Thankful)

I talked to an older man today…

I talked with an 80+ year old man. I asked him if there was anything I can get him while this corona-virus scare had the American people by the throat. He simply smiled, looked away and said:

“Let me tell you what I need! I need to believe, at some point, this country my generation fought for, …I need to believe this nation we handed safely to our children and their children will go on.

I need to know this generation will quit being a bunch of sissies, …that they respect what they’ve been given, …that they’ve earned what others sacrificed for.”

I wasn’t sure where the conversation was going or if it was going anywhere at all. So, I sat there, quietly listening…

“You know, I was a little boy during WWII. Those were scary times. We didn’t know if we were going to be speaking English, German or Japanese at the end of the war. There was no certainty, no guarantees like Americans enjoy today.
And no home went without sacrifice or loss. Every house, up and down every street, had someone in harm’s way. Maybe their Daddy was a soldier, maybe their son was a sailor, maybe it was an uncle. Sometimes it was the whole family, …fathers, sons, uncles…

Having someone, you love, sent off to war, …it wasn’t less frightening than it is today. It was scary as Hell. If anything, it was more frightening. We didn’t have battle front news.
We didn’t have email or cellphones. You sent them away and you hoped, …and you prayed. You might not hear from them for months, if ever again. Sometimes a mother was getting her son’s letters the same day Dad was comforting her over their child’s death.

And we sacrificed. You couldn’t buy things. Everything was rationed. You were only allowed so much milk per month, only so much bread, toilet paper. EVERYTHING was restricted for the war effort. And what you weren’t using, what you didn’t need, things you threw away, they were salvaged and sorted for the war effort. My generation was the original recycling movement in America.

And we had viruses back then, …serious viruses. Things like polio, influenza, measles, and such. But, it was nothing to walk to school and pass a house or two that was quarantined.
We didn’t shut down our schools. We didn’t shut down our cities. We certainly did not shut down our businesses! We carried on, without masks, without hand sanitizer. And do you know what? We persevered. We overcame. We didn’t attack our President, we worked together. Other elected officials didn’t try to sabotage his good works. We rallied around the flag. Thick or thin, we were in it to win. And we lost more boys in a day of combat than we lose in an entire war today.”

He slowly looked away again. Maybe I saw a small tear in the corner of his eye. Then he continued:

“Today’s kids don’t know sacrifice. They think a sacrifice is not having coverage on their phone while they freely drive across the country. Today’s kids are selfish and spoiled. In my generation, we looked out for our elders. We helped out with single moms who’s husbands were either at war or dead from war. Today’s kids rush to the store, buying everything they can, …no concern for anyone but themselves. It’s shameful the way Americans behave these days. None of them deserve the sacrifices their grandfathers made.
So, no I don’t need anything. I appreciate your offer but, I know I’ve been through worse things than this virus. But maybe I should be asking you, what can I do to help you? Do you have enough pop to get through this, enough steak? Will you be able to survive with only 100 channels on your TV?”

I smiled, fighting back a tear of my own, …now humbled by a man in his 80’s. All I could do was thank him for the history lesson, leave my number for emergency and with my ego firmly tucked in my rear.

I talked to a man today. A real man. An American man from an era long since gone and forgotten. We may never fully understand the sacrifices he saw and knew. We may never fully earn those sacrifices. But we should work harder to learn about them, …to learn from them, …to respect them.

Almost half of coronavirus patients have digestive symptoms, study finds

Almost half of coronavirus patients have digestive symptoms, study finds

Diarrhea and other digestive symptoms are the main complaint in nearly half of coronavirus patients, Chinese researchers report. Most patients with the coronavirus have respiratory symptoms, but these findings from the early stages of the outbreak show that digestive problems are prevalent in many patients with COVID-19.

“Clinicians must bear in mind that digestive symptoms, such as diarrhea, may be a presenting feature of COVID-19, and that the index of suspicion may need to be raised earlier in these cases rather than waiting for respiratory symptoms to emerge,” wrote the investigators from the Wuhan Medical Treatment Expert Group for COVID-19.

However, the finding showed that patients with digestive symptoms had a longer time from symptom onset to hospital admission than patients without digestive symptoms, 9 days versus 7.3 days.

This suggests that patients with digestive symptoms sought care later because they didn’t yet suspect they had COVID-19 due to a lack of respiratory symptoms, such as cough or shortness of breath, the researchers explained.

Patients with digestive symptoms had a variety of problems, including loss of appetite (nearly 84%), diarrhea (29%), vomiting (0.8%) and abdominal pain (0.4%).

Seven of the patients in the study had digestive symptoms but no respiratory symptoms.

As the severity of the disease increased, digestive symptoms became more serious, the researchers found.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-digestive-symptoms-diarrhea-almost-half-of-patients/

Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now

Hubei Timeline

With everything that’s happening about the Coronavirus, it might be very hard to make a decision of what to do today. Should you wait for more information? Do something today? What?

Here’s what I’m going to cover in this article, with lots of charts, data and models with plenty of sources:
How many cases of coronavirus will there be in your area?
What will happen when these cases materialize?
What should you do?
When?

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

Leave it to the Irish….!

I found myself in a pub in Cork, Ireland. A group of American tourists came in.
One of the Americans said, in a loud voice, “I hear you Irish think you’re great drinkers.
I bet $5,000 that no one here can drink 20 pints of Guinness in 30 minutes.”

The bar was silent, but the American noticed one Irishman leaving.

No one took up the bet.

40 minutes later, the Irishman who left returned and said, “Hey Yank, is yer bet still on?”
“Sure” said the American, “20 pints in 30 minutes for a bet of $5,000.”

“Grand, ” replied the Irishman, “so pour the pints and start the clock. “

It was very close but the last drop was consumed with 2 seconds to spare.

“OK Yank, pay up.” said the Irishman.

“I’m happy to pay, here’s your money” said the American.

“But tell me, when I first offered the wager, I saw you leave. Where did you go?’

“Well sir”, replied the Irishman, “$5,000 is a lot of money to a man like me. So I went to the pub across the road to see if I could do it.

How Soap Works

How Soap Works

At the molecular level, soap breaks things apart. At the level of society, it helps hold everything together.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/health/soap-coronavirus-handwashing-germs.html

A sunshine and fresh air lesson from the 1918 influenza pandemic!

Spanish Flu Ward

(Tom: I am reproducing the article in its entirety so if the link gets broken you still have the data. To add to the recommendations of the good doctor I would add thet it has been found advisable to take vitamin K2 with the D3 to prevent hardening of the arteries by the D3.)

Throughout his career Dr. Eisenstein looked for way to protect his patients from infection and chronic illness. For the last years of his life his first in line prescription was consistently the same Vitamin D and Probiotics. Below are his recommendations.

Vitamin D Recommendations

 1. Adult (and children ........................... 5,000-10,000 IU daily.
 2. Children's maintenance: <100lbs.......... 1,000IU/25lbs. daily.
 3. At the first symptoms of a cold or flu
                           1,000IU/ lb. daily for 7-14 days.

Examples:
50 lbs. daily……….50,000IU daily.
100 lbs. daily………100,000IU daily.

Probiotic Recommendations CFU (Colony Forming Units)
Adults………………………. 20 billion CFU per day
Children………………. 5 billion CFU per daily
At the first symptoms of a cold or flu
Adults……………………… 50 billion CFU per day 7-14 days
Children…………………………….. 20 Billion CFU per day 7-14 days

By Danish Hameed
When new virulent diseases emerge, such as SARS and Covid-19, scientists and labs begin to find new vaccines and treatments for those affected. As the current crisis unfolds, governments are enforcing quarantine and isolation and public gatherings are being discouraged. Health officials took the same approach 100 years ago, when influenza was spreading around the world. Though the results were mixed, records from the 1918 pandemic suggest that a few things proved quite helpful while dealing with influenza. Some hard-won experience from the greatest pandemic in recorded history could help us in the weeks and months ahead in view of the COVID 19.

In 1918, it was recorded that severely ill flu patients nursed outdoors recovered better than those treated indoors. A combination of fresh air and sunlight seems to have prevented deaths among patients and infections among medical staff. There is scientific support for this and research show that outdoor air is a natural disinfectant. Fresh air can kill the flu virus and other harmful germs. Equally, sunlight is germicidal and there is now evidence that it can kill the flu virus as well.

‘Open-Air’ Treatment in 1918
During the great pandemic, two of the worst places were military barracks and troop-ships. Overcrowding and bad ventilation put soldiers and sailors at high risk of catching influenza and the other infections that often followed it. As with the current Covid-19 outbreak, most of the victims of so-called `Spanish flu’ did not die from influenza: they died of pneumonia and other complications.

When the influenza pandemic reached the East coast of the United States in 1918, the city of Boston was particularly badly hit. So the State Guard set up an emergency hospital. They took in the worst cases among sailors on ships in Boston harbour. The hospital’s medical officer had noticed the most seriously ill sailors had been in badly-ventilated spaces. So he gave them as much fresh air as possible by putting them in tents. And in good weather they were taken out of their tents and put in the sun. At that time, it was a common practice to keep sick soldiers outdoors.

Open-air therapy, as it was known, was widely brought into use when dealing with patients from the Western Front. And it became the treatment of choice for another common and often deadly respiratory infection of the time; tuberculosis. Patients were put outside in their beds to breathe fresh outdoor air. Or they were nursed in cross-ventilated wards with the windows open day and night. The open-air regimen remained popular until antibiotics replaced it in 1950s.

Doctors who had first-hand experience of open-air therapy at the hospital in Boston were convinced that the regimen was effective and the same technique was adopted elsewhere. If one report, that was published in this regard, is correct, the treatment reduced deaths among hospital patients from 40 per cent to about 13 per cent. According to the Surgeon General of the Massachusetts State Guard: “`The efficacy of open air treatment has been absolutely proven, and one has only to try it to discover its value.”

Fresh Air is a Disinfectant
Patients treated outdoors were less likely to be exposed to the infectious germs that are often present in conventional hospital wards. They were breathing clean air in what must have been a largely sterile environment. We know this because, in the 1960s, Ministry of Defence scientists proved that fresh air is a natural disinfectant. Something in it, which they called the Open Air Factor, is far more harmful to airborne bacteria — and the influenza virus — than indoor air. They couldn’t identify exactly what the Open Air Factor is. But they found it was effective both at night and during the daytime.
Their research also revealed that the Open Air Factor’s disinfecting powers can be preserved in enclosures — if ventilation rates are kept high enough. Significantly, the rates they identified are the same ones that cross-ventilated hospital wards, with high ceilings and big windows, were designed for. But by the time the scientists made their discoveries, antibiotic therapy had replaced open-air treatment. Since then the germicidal effects of fresh air have not featured in infection control, or hospital design. Yet harmful bacteria have become increasingly resistant to antibiotics.

Sunlight and Influenza Infection
Putting infected patients out in the sun may have helped because it inactivates the influenza virus. It also kills bacteria that cause lung and other infections in hospitals. During the First World War, military surgeons routinely used sunlight to heal infected wounds. They knew it was a disinfectant. What they didn’t know is that one advantage of placing patients outside in the sun is that they can synthesise vitamin D in their skin if sunlight is strong enough. This was not discovered until the 1920s. Low vitamin D levels are now linked to respiratory infections and may increase susceptibility to influenza. Also, our body’s biological rhythms appear to influence how we resist infections. New researches suggest that they can alter our inflammatory response to the flu virus. As with vitamin D, at the time of the 1918 pandemic, the important part played by sunlight in synchronizing these rhythms was not known.

Image source: https://thekashmirimages.com/2020/03/16/a-lesson-from-the-1918-influenza-pandemic/

Article source: https://www.prod5.com/a-lesson-from-the-1918-influenza-pandemic.html