The traffic was bad today, and the evening commute took 2.25 hours. I didn't get a live, attenuated flu vaccine, and the reason is basically that I decided not to try to sweet-talk my way into getting one. I'm not very good at that. The high-risk categories that the CDC has created are really problematic and have just really been defined in a nebulous way. The categories give the impression that a person needs to be quite ill to qualify, if one isn't 24 years old or younger. Of course, the "24-year-old" cut-off is totally arbitrary and has not a smidgen of credible evidence to support its validity. I think someone heard it in a folk song, passed down through the generations, as part of the oral storytelling tradition. The categories seem inclusive of a lot of sick people, but, as one looks at the illnesses included in the "high-risk" category, one realizes that a sick person is likely to be left wondering if he or she is actually sick enough to qualify. The person might think, "I have x disease, but I'm more or less healthy. Maybe I'm not sick enough. Maybe I should 'let a sick person have my vaccine,'" or some such thing. Of course, the sick person isn't going to get it, either. The people who thought up this type of approach seem to have no understanding of psychology, when one thinks about it. Who wants to think of himself or herself as being someone who's sick enough to get a complication from influenza? What doctor ever discusses the risks of influenza complications with his or her patients, especially those that are "sick" with those conditions? The person might think, "What am I going to have to tell the person, in order to establish that I'm sick enough to be at risk of complications? What's the actual procedure? Is the person going to flash the "shark eyes" at me, the blank stare? That's a little joke, but there are so many factors that are conspiring to decrease the likelihood that a person is going to get one of these early vaccines. If someone doesn't make the big decision to scrap this absurdly restrictive plan and hold a big press conference that no reporters may even attend, now that some of the decision-makers at the CDC have lost whatever credibility they might have initially had, then no one's going to get any vaccines this winter.
I was thinking about the educational system, and it's not even that the professors who teach science classes are not really good. The science professors I've had have been really articulate and terrific (although I've found that the professors in the humanities and rhetoric/writing classes surpass the science professors and are obviously superb), but the science textbooks and curricula are stuck in the 1950's or something, in terms of methodologies. It's almost as if it's the fact that the methods for teaching science haven't kept pace with the degree of complexity and vastness of the subject matter. One aspect of that problem is that one doesn't really learn much of anything, even when one gets an A or a B in a class. If one is told to memorize a fact, one can do it and answer questions about that fact. But, in most cases, one isn't going to remember it after the test is over, and the fact may, in actuality, be objectively incorrect, according to many of the different sets of standards by which one might evaluate the objective accuracy of the statement. For example, if I'm told to memorize that a hormone is usually released with such-and-such a serum-concentration-dependence, in response to x and y as stimuli for the hormone's release, I might remember that. But there may well be 500 articles calling that fact into question, and the sheer mass of information that contradicts that "textbook fact" will basically cause the statement in the textbook to be incorrect. There just isn't any purpose that's served by memorizing something, in the sciences, that's given such a superficial and lacking-in-subjective-nuance treatment in a textbook. It's like something out of 1920 or something. I'm exaggerating with that, but it gets to be upsetting to see. I always find writing to be a valuable use of my time, and it doesn't matter what things I'm writing, in many ways. It's always beneficial. But writing incorrect questions and answers on note cards, as a way of remembering material from a science textbook, is not beneficial and can...leave...a bad taste in one's mouth. If I were able to actually get a sense of the reality of the area of science, I...might "not get a bad taste" from the information. "Remember that, 'boy.' Now, go wash them @#%^&#$ hands, too, and don't take too long with the disinfectant, because I used to get sick and found that it helped warm my @#$%&$$ bones up in the wintertime--you hear--I say I sh-sh-sh-shivered me timbers, by jumpin' jehosaphat."
Anyway, the other point is that "virions" can be transferred, for example, from a contaminated surface to one's hands and then to another, non-contaminated surface and could, after "the transfer," conceivably survive for days and infect one with something like influenza. If one supposes that the "5-minute-survival" estimate [Collignon and Carnie (2006) mentioned that in the article I cited in a past posting: Collignon and Carnie, 2006: (https://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/185_10_201106/col10881_fm.pdf)(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17115953)] is likely to not be written in stone and that the estimate may be incorrect by as large a factor as the "surivival-on-porous-surface" estimate was for influenza A [Collignon and Carnie (2006) estimated 6-12 hours for that, if I remember correctly, and Thomas et al. (2008) found the survival time, on a porous surface, of 17 days: (http://hardcorephysiologyfun.blogspot.com/2009/12/another-rambler-on-influenza.html)], then influenza might be able to live on one's hands for as long as [17/0.25 (as in the time of 6 hours that's the lower limit of the estimate for the survival on a porous surface) = 68, and 68 times 5 minutes = 340 minutes] 5.67 hours. That's about the length of time the rotavirus can survive and remain infectious for, I think. I would personally assume that influenza can survive for longer than 5 minutes on one's hands. But it doesn't really matter, as far as the issue of surface-to-hand-to-surface transfers go. Anyway, I just think this type of concept can be alien to a lot of people, and it doesn't hurt to practice thinking about these things. It's an "unreasonable" type of consideration, but I guess viruses have never been reasonable. It's easy to see that controlling some types of infections of patients in hospitals is unlikely to ever be possible, with all of these people running all over the place. I remember reading that the tv remotes (commonly, according to some research) in hospital rooms and stuffed animals passed out to patients can transmit the infectious particles that ultimately kill them, and that's sort of a concept that's almost "hostile" to human social interaction and is just hard for me and, presumably, a lot of other people to be cognizant of and also be a "reasonable" human. It basically seems like it would create something akin to cognitive dissonance, as if a person might think, unconsciously (I'm obviously exaggerating with this), "A good person wouldn't allow potentially lethal infections to be transmitted via a remote control or stuffed teddy bear, and a reasonable person wouldn't even think that that would be a reasonable possibility. The viruses couldn't do that and simultaneously be reasonable, but I know, from my readings, that viruses can be made to behave in reasonable ways, in the context of medicine. I need to think of myself as being a good person, and, therefore (here's the little "tweak" that fixes the dissonance), since I know I am a good person, the viruses must not be that unreasonable." I mean, that's the type of thought process that sometimes crosses my mind. "Now, let's see, here. I've got some crisp papers with information on pathology and horrors, and, over here, I've got some lethal viral infections and calculations of viral transmission. Alll right, now, this looks interesting..."
I was thinking about the educational system, and it's not even that the professors who teach science classes are not really good. The science professors I've had have been really articulate and terrific (although I've found that the professors in the humanities and rhetoric/writing classes surpass the science professors and are obviously superb), but the science textbooks and curricula are stuck in the 1950's or something, in terms of methodologies. It's almost as if it's the fact that the methods for teaching science haven't kept pace with the degree of complexity and vastness of the subject matter. One aspect of that problem is that one doesn't really learn much of anything, even when one gets an A or a B in a class. If one is told to memorize a fact, one can do it and answer questions about that fact. But, in most cases, one isn't going to remember it after the test is over, and the fact may, in actuality, be objectively incorrect, according to many of the different sets of standards by which one might evaluate the objective accuracy of the statement. For example, if I'm told to memorize that a hormone is usually released with such-and-such a serum-concentration-dependence, in response to x and y as stimuli for the hormone's release, I might remember that. But there may well be 500 articles calling that fact into question, and the sheer mass of information that contradicts that "textbook fact" will basically cause the statement in the textbook to be incorrect. There just isn't any purpose that's served by memorizing something, in the sciences, that's given such a superficial and lacking-in-subjective-nuance treatment in a textbook. It's like something out of 1920 or something. I'm exaggerating with that, but it gets to be upsetting to see. I always find writing to be a valuable use of my time, and it doesn't matter what things I'm writing, in many ways. It's always beneficial. But writing incorrect questions and answers on note cards, as a way of remembering material from a science textbook, is not beneficial and can...leave...a bad taste in one's mouth. If I were able to actually get a sense of the reality of the area of science, I...might "not get a bad taste" from the information. "Remember that, 'boy.' Now, go wash them @#%^&#$ hands, too, and don't take too long with the disinfectant, because I used to get sick and found that it helped warm my @#$%&$$ bones up in the wintertime--you hear--I say I sh-sh-sh-shivered me timbers, by jumpin' jehosaphat."
Anyway, the other point is that "virions" can be transferred, for example, from a contaminated surface to one's hands and then to another, non-contaminated surface and could, after "the transfer," conceivably survive for days and infect one with something like influenza. If one supposes that the "5-minute-survival" estimate [Collignon and Carnie (2006) mentioned that in the article I cited in a past posting: Collignon and Carnie, 2006: (https://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/185_10_201106/col10881_fm.pdf)(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17115953)] is likely to not be written in stone and that the estimate may be incorrect by as large a factor as the "surivival-on-porous-surface" estimate was for influenza A [Collignon and Carnie (2006) estimated 6-12 hours for that, if I remember correctly, and Thomas et al. (2008) found the survival time, on a porous surface, of 17 days: (http://hardcorephysiologyfun.blogspot.com/2009/12/another-rambler-on-influenza.html)], then influenza might be able to live on one's hands for as long as [17/0.25 (as in the time of 6 hours that's the lower limit of the estimate for the survival on a porous surface) = 68, and 68 times 5 minutes = 340 minutes] 5.67 hours. That's about the length of time the rotavirus can survive and remain infectious for, I think. I would personally assume that influenza can survive for longer than 5 minutes on one's hands. But it doesn't really matter, as far as the issue of surface-to-hand-to-surface transfers go. Anyway, I just think this type of concept can be alien to a lot of people, and it doesn't hurt to practice thinking about these things. It's an "unreasonable" type of consideration, but I guess viruses have never been reasonable. It's easy to see that controlling some types of infections of patients in hospitals is unlikely to ever be possible, with all of these people running all over the place. I remember reading that the tv remotes (commonly, according to some research) in hospital rooms and stuffed animals passed out to patients can transmit the infectious particles that ultimately kill them, and that's sort of a concept that's almost "hostile" to human social interaction and is just hard for me and, presumably, a lot of other people to be cognizant of and also be a "reasonable" human. It basically seems like it would create something akin to cognitive dissonance, as if a person might think, unconsciously (I'm obviously exaggerating with this), "A good person wouldn't allow potentially lethal infections to be transmitted via a remote control or stuffed teddy bear, and a reasonable person wouldn't even think that that would be a reasonable possibility. The viruses couldn't do that and simultaneously be reasonable, but I know, from my readings, that viruses can be made to behave in reasonable ways, in the context of medicine. I need to think of myself as being a good person, and, therefore (here's the little "tweak" that fixes the dissonance), since I know I am a good person, the viruses must not be that unreasonable." I mean, that's the type of thought process that sometimes crosses my mind. "Now, let's see, here. I've got some crisp papers with information on pathology and horrors, and, over here, I've got some lethal viral infections and calculations of viral transmission. Alll right, now, this looks interesting..."
No comments:
Post a Comment