Category: Health
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Psychological Treatment and Understanding Depression and Anxiety
An inhabitant of the variegated landscape of experience is pain. Within this landscape, physical pain has location, distribution, coloration, brightness, sharpness, intensity, duration, and slope. Physical pain has texture and flavor. Pain signals injury, damage, threat, imbalance, dysfunction. Pain informs attention and correction of the cause of pain through feedback. The mitigation of pain guides…
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What’s next with Covid-19?
My prognostication that Covid-19 infections would abate by early November was wrong. The prediction assumed that herd immunity required 40 to 60 percent of the population to be immune for the virus to find fewer hosts and trail off. The estimate assumed that some groups would be affected less than others due to self-quarantine and…
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Light at the End of the Covid-19 Tunnel
The US Covid-19 pandemic may soon abate. A typical pattern of deaths from Covid-19 within a confined geographic/demographic boundary is characterized by rapid increase of deaths during a 4 to 6-week period followed by gradual decline during a 12 to 14-week period to near baseline. Deaths follow infections from 2.5 to 4-weeks, so rising infections…
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The Covid-19 Debate
Americans are divided over the distribution and severity of the Covid-19 virus. A wide swath of Americans view the virus as a variant of flu with its dire effects greatly overstated. On the other hand, mainstream public health officials and establishment media emphasize the dangers and risks of the virus and its threat to health…
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Covid-19 Present and Future Prospects
Public health recommendations to limit the spread of Covid-19 are social distancing, avoiding crowds, reducing exposure to closed spaces with recirculation, hand washing, and wearing masks. These are all good. However, often absent in recommendations is an important variable that bears upon the importance of these measures. The variable is the frequency of current infections…
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Some Survival Guidelines for Covid-19
Recent Covid-19 research and news has been mixed. The US Covid-19 death rate has fallen to roughly one percent from the previous 2 to 3 percent due to better treatments, increased testing, and a younger population. That’s good news. However, follow-up of recovered persons reveals about half with long-term damage to lungs, heart, kidneys, blood…
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How I stopped smoking…
I managed to inveigle my first pack of cigarettes when I was twelve years old from my Grandfather. During the summer months prior to Eisenhower’s first term for the presidency, “Eisenhower for President” and “Stevenson for President” cigarette packs in colors of red, white, and blue could be purchased at tobacconists. I told my grandfather…
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A way forward from the Covid-19 morass
The likelihood is Covid-19 is not over and done with at the end of May or June. The curve may be flattened, but unless new cases are identified through testing followed by contact-tracing, the US will be buffeted by the continuing emergence of hotspots. The most likely places for new hotspots are the same heavily…
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Masks Unmasked
No sooner than the impeachment soap opera to besmirch Trump ended, the coronavirus came galloping. Following his victory, Trump was elated, but elated may have become inflated. Trump sued news outlets, rearranged White House personnel, adlibbed at rallies, and thumped his chest over “the greatest economy ever”. One must admire his energy. But where Democrats…
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Nincompoops
During my childhood, my grandmother’s greatest delight was to leave our bungalow in the Hispanic neighborhood of Rosewood to visit the old Spanish settlement centered at Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles. There we would eat enchiladas and tacos, and I learned how to fold tortillas, so that the butter would not run. My grandmother…