Perspective from The New England Journal of Medicine — What Covid Has Taught the World about Ethics
— Read on www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2210173
Wondering why everything to do with the pandemic triggered controversy? This article sums up most of the ethical am moral dilemmas.
Why do our heads get stuck in books long after the story has ended? I set out to find some answers to the book hangover phenomenon.
— Read on bookriot.com/psychology-of-a-book-hangover/
oh my God. Someone finally names this. I feel so much better. 😄😄😄
Here a few patterns from my portfolio for the nature photo challenge. The bigger challenge was using my iPad to import the photos.
Why do our heads get stuck in books long after the story has ended? I set out to find some answers to the book hangover phenomenon. — Read on bookriot.com/psychology-of-a-book-hangover/ oh my God. Someone finally names this. I feel so much better. 😄😄😄
I recently came down with a bug 🐜 of some kind. It might have been food poisoning or it might have been norvovirus. It’s the first time I have been sick since 2018 and it’s the first time I have had a stomach bug since living in North Africa in 1975. So it took me…
I’ve had quite a few volunteer experiences since I retired in 2017 and I am here to report on them all. I did a post on volunteering when I first retired. Nothing like real life experience to see how things work. Baby boomers are not your grandparents volunteers who beavered away at rummage sales and…
Reviews of ancestry and DNA websites. My initial curiosity in ancestry was tweaked by a search for a great grandparent who was a notable person in New Brunswick, according to stories from my family. I then discovered a family tree in Geneanet that detailed some of my ancestor’s life. From there, I become curious about…
Ages ago, I used Goodreads to track my reading. Then, I decided it wasn’t working for me and closed my account. I had a spreadsheet and that was all … Book Tracking Apps
New publications serve up classics and more, with flair! I don’t know about you, but I am one of those people who loves to read a cookbook from cover… Constantly Cooking’s 2022 cookbook gift guide Another bloggers pick: https://thebackfenceblog.wordpress.com/2022/09/10/373-cookbooks-and-counting/ The cookbook of the month club. Recipes tested by friends: https://cookbookamonth.wordpress.com A review of Mediterranean cookbooks:…
It seems like the year has Zoomed by, and I mean that literally and figuratively. I just Zoomed off a French language meet-up as I couldn’t understand. But I have been able to understand the DuoLingo conversation groups I have been attending every Wed for the past year and half and I have met many…
I recently tried to upgrade to cellular blinds in my condo. These blinds are marketed as being able to block heat from the outside and keep heat inside. This was an opportunity to replace the broken cord on the mail order blinds from Select Blinds. I contacted Home Depot and they sent someone out to…
Here are 400+ great reads from 2022 handpicked just for you by NPR staff and trusted critics. — Read on apps.npr.org/best-books/ This book list has the ability to open a link to your local library and you can borrow or put a book on hold including Ebooks. Or there are links to AMAZON. This is…
I recently came down with a bug 🐜 of some kind. It might have been food poisoning or it might have been norvovirus. It’s the first time I have been sick since 2018 and it’s the first time I have had a stomach bug since living in North Africa in 1975. So it took me by surprise. It was brutal. 7 days later I am feeling normal again. Why am I sharing this? Because I did not find information on line to be helpful. The information I read said it would be over in 2 or 3 days.
Here’s what I found to be helpful in order of helpfulness. The vomiting passed after about 8 hours and the diarrhea after 12 hours leaving me totally drained
Pepto Bismal while active vomiting and diarrhoea
Sleep. All day if necessary. For the whole week
Take Tums, especially in the evening.
Electrolyte replacement tabs lime flavour as I didn’t feel like eating anything for about 3 days. Nothing appealed to me. But the taste of these were tolerable. Even tea, coffee or soft drinks didn’t appeal to me. I did find a berry blend fruit juice that became appealing by day 4.
My first meal was 2 Coffeecrisp that I had in the fridge. Very satisfying.
Day 3 start eating with porridge… I was given cream of wheat as a child.
Day 4 Move up to plain toast and jam. I felt well enough to do a social outing for a few hours.
Day 5 try some tomato soup with crackers or some mashed potatoes and gravy with a little bit of roast beef
By day 6 I could tolerate regular cereal and more roast beef and mashed potatoes.
By day 7 I could tolerate soft drinks and a bit of coffee, more tomato soup and some sourdough bread. By day 7 I could stay awake all day and do a long walk. My sleep last night was disturbed by a homeless person who was smoking in a stairwell of the parkade and set off the fire-alarm. Such a waste of everyone’s time and energy, but this situation is not going away anytime soon here.
I did get out for a walk almost every day that was beneficial to get some air in my lungs. I was cold all week so I turned up the heat and used an electric blanket on the sofa during pm naps. I probably had a slight fever but not according to the thermometer. My heart rate was above 70.
What I didn’t find helpful: ginger tea. What I didn’t use: Gatorade. I don’t like sweet drinks.
I hope no one get this bug but apparently Novovirus is going around. It could have been food poisoning as I had my third serving of my home cooked chicken. However there have been no reports of food outbreaks so I am assuming novovirus. Since I haven’t had COVID I assumed I was invincible. Now the question is where could I have picked up norovirus? The mystery continues.
I’ve had quite a few volunteer experiences since I retired in 2017 and I am here to report on them all. I did a post on volunteering when I first retired. Nothing like real life experience to see how things work. Baby boomers are not your grandparents volunteers who beavered away at rummage sales and church teas. Many BB’s had responsible jobs and know how to manage people and things. BB’s have more knowledge and expertise than those who are hiring them as volunteers. This can be intimidating for young volunteer managers.
Clinical Trial at UBC
My first volunteer gig was being part of a clinical trial at UBC. The idea was to test an iphone App called BrainHQ to see if it improved your memory. There were already many studies on this app so I am not sure what was new about this study. The study involved two groups, one that used the app and one that did not. Sadly I was in the group that did not get the app until the end of the 6 week study. Of course you want to know the results but so far they have not published the results. There were many cool things about this volunteer gig. If you are interested in participating in clinical trials, some are online. Here is the link.
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BC Science center tried to recruit me to stand in the lobby and click a clicker to count the people coming through. You much be joking.
ESL tutoring
The next volunteer gig was assisting at English as a second language classes at Mosaic in Vancouver which is a huge organization. I have recently recertified as a teacher in British Columbia so I thought I could get some recent experience. I was supposed to be a teachers assistant to the real ESL teacher. I was assigned to a class with about 10 people who had close to no English comprehension and were from multiple different countries and from ages 20 – 90. One elderly person was deaf and cognitively impaired. Another person had some learning disorders. There were about 5 people who had potential to learn English. My job was to help students when they were doing small group work. This will rank as my worst volunteer experience ever.
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Review of the literature on non- symptomatic Covid 19.
I volunteered for this as my real job had involved a lot of health care research and it thought this would be a good use of my talents. I was assigned and the question and wrote a paper on the topic for a group at UBC. This was early 2019 and there were not many papers on the topic so it was rather a short job but interesting. I have been very interested in the whole COVID 19 process. About 2 years later a received a lovely thank you letter from UBC that I am thinking about framing. I was invited to an online think tank on Zoom but there were about 30 people talking over each other.. OMG. Won’t do that again I said to myself. So I decided I had had enough of this project. It was overwhelming. It was my first experience with grandstanding.
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Immunization clinics
Fast forward to Covid 19. I volunteered at the immunization clinics for Vancouver Island Health Authority in Courtenay. I was responsible to herding people through the lines to the nurses and making sure everyone was feeling comfortable with the process. Then I would site in the after care space chatting with people. I feel that this has paid all my debts to society. It was very well organized. I was hard to stand for 4 hours. But I enjoyed chatting with the wide variety of people coming through the clinic. The big surprise at the end was the goody bag given to all the volunteers at the end include many gift cards and a bottle of wine. Who knew????
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Habitat for Humanity online auction
I volunteered to research objects donated to the Restore to see if they are valuable enough to put in their online auction. This involved going into a dark and dusty closet can pawing through cartons of old stuff. Stuff included pseudo vintage snow shows, copper tea post, vintage figurines and other strange things that I could not identify. Since this was a new job, I set up a process to do the online search and set up a file with the results. The Restore is a busy spot and space it at a premium. It was interesting to see why kind of thing people donate. This was a surprisingly time consuming activity. I went to a few meetings. Not my cup of tea.
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While on Hornby Island I did some shifts sitting in the courtyard among the businesses selling tickets for a quilt raffle. This is the ultimate meet and greet job. You get to chat with everyone passing through Hornby Island for all over the world. What could be more fun?
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So what lessons have I learned?
artwork is by ALPIN KELLEY on Hornby Island
This gallery contains 9 photos.
Reviews of ancestry and DNA websites. My initial curiosity in ancestry was tweaked by a search for a great grandparent who was a notable person in New Brunswick, according to stories from my family. I then discovered a family tree … Continue reading
Ages ago, I used Goodreads to track my reading. Then, I decided it wasn’t working for me and closed my account. I had a spreadsheet and that was all …
New publications serve up classics and more, with flair! I don’t know about you, but I am one of those people who loves to read a cookbook from cover…
Another bloggers pick: https://thebackfenceblog.wordpress.com/2022/09/10/373-cookbooks-and-counting/
The cookbook of the month club. Recipes tested by friends: https://cookbookamonth.wordpress.com
A review of Mediterranean cookbooks: https://deleciousfood.com/6-best-mediterranean-cookbooks-of-2022-healthy-food-cookbooks/
So what are your favourite cookbooks?
or have you given up on cookbooks in favour of on line recipes?
It seems like the year has Zoomed by, and I mean that literally and figuratively.
I just Zoomed off a French language meet-up as I couldn’t understand. But I have been able to understand the DuoLingo conversation groups I have been attending every Wed for the past year and half and I have met many interesting people from all over the world. We have bonded and I even met one participant from Vancouver while she was on Denman Island and I was on Hornby Island last summer. We spent a lovely afternoon getting acquainted In Real Life in French. Unfortunately Duolingo is discontinuing these free conversation groups but one of the groups will be switching to Meetup and still continuing on Zoom.
And while we are talking about Zooming I have been practicing my mandolin on Zoom with my friend Barb who is learning the Ukulele. Lessons learned. Get the music score that includes musical notation so you can play the notes at the same time. My favourite is the Campfire Songs that has the chords for guitar, ukulele, mandolin, banjo and mandolin. I look forward to playing with more people more next year as I build up my repertoire.
When I first started blogging I did a post about all kinds of volunteer opportunities. Covid19 has made this more challenging. Nevertheless I volunteered with Habit for Humanity to help out with their on line auction. This involved going into their deep dusty closet store room and looking at all the weird and wonderful things that people have donated and doing some research on the value of the items. It was pretty interesting to try to find items in Ebay and determine the value. The best hit was a silver platter that I was able to estimate a value of about $ 1000. Looking for vintage dental equipment? This is the place!
I have been more conscious about how we are all getting older as I see friends and friends of friends passing away as well as seeing the mortality and morbidity from Covid. I have been getting my own affairs since your life can change in a nanosecond. I found a lawyer in Victoria that manages estates when you die. I have set up a Power of Attorney with a lawyer here. I found a company to manage my investments and an accountant who relieved my anxiety about loosing my Old Age Security.
I was also concerned about what would happen to me if I ended up in the ER without being conscious. After several inquires online I discovered a package called My Voice you can download from the Ministry of Health. You can designate a Responsible Person to make some decisions about your health care on your behalf. The document requires signatures by the responsible person and two witnesses. I called several notaries and they would not witness the document. I then called 3 friends and we had a signing party at the Griffin Pub. The final part of this process was a document called MOST. Medical Orders for Scope of Treatment. It is a document that your doctor signs and keeps a copy. In theory if you end up in the ER, they can access your medical records with your GP. I remain skeptical about this really happening. But all you can do is put the pieces in place. I was advised that I should put all this information on my fridge door in case EMS came and apparently this is where they look for information. I’ll believe it when I see it.
I continue to find condo living to have it challenges. Most recently I received a 63 page document for the annual general meeting. You would think that after 40 years of condo living I would have it all figured out but alas, this is not the case. No one can truly process 63 pages of legal-ese about what you have to do if you renovate. I really think that a single family dwelling might be less irritating. Some friends have opted for a rental situation and both have 4th floor units with a view. However, there are no shortage of stories of hostile neighbours in single family neighbourhoods as I found out when parking in a no parking zone in Comox. I did a short drive around looking for non condo options and there are some. But I finally decided all you can do is manage how you react to the nit picky strata council and neighbours. After looking at the alternatives around town I come back to the great river walk beside the condo where I live and decide it’s too good to move. It is different every day of the year and continues to give me solace all year round.
One of more challenging project of the year was participation in a choir. We had performances in the spring and Dec that required a lot of work and time to master the music. Here is a link to the performance from the spring on You Tube. My favourite part of Christmas is the music. I just can’t enough of it. COVID has inspired many online events including an online choir out of the UK. If this doesn’t bring goose bumps nothing will. Best wishes to all my followers for a better 2023.
Here is a 2 hour podcast of Christmas music compiled perhaps in 2020 or 2012 by departed friend DJ David Wiseman on Hornby Island.
I recently tried to upgrade to cellular blinds in my condo. These blinds are marketed as being able to block heat from the outside and keep heat inside. This was an opportunity to replace the broken cord on the mail order blinds from Select Blinds. I contacted Home Depot and they sent someone out to measure and show me samples. At the time, they told me that corded blinds were being discontinued since Health Canada was about to pass regulations in 2022 banning corded blinds because of deaths of children due to the cords. About 3 months later the blinds arrived it and they installed them. At about 6 months, the first of the 5 blinds would not longer open, so I sent it back. Then about 11 months later the same thing happened and this time I had to uninstall it, package it and mail it back to Levolor in Arizona. Home Depot agreed to cover the $ 50 in postage when I asked.
Ok this is not the end of the world. I suspect everyone is having similar hassles or worse. But being the inquisitive sort of person, I wanted to find out more about the ban on corded blinds because I could not believe that magnitude of infant deaths could really be justified in removing so many products off the market. So I set out to do some research on the issue, which is of course easy in todays world but very time consuming as there is a very deep rabbit hole here. And what is the point of all this dear reader?? It is more about getting it out of my brain rather than sharing my experiences with everyone. But everyone I talked to expressed irritation at the changes. I’m not going to change anything. I also wonder if the effort is justified.
Here is what I discovered:
Canada has banned corded blinds.(1)
According to the Canadian Gazette(2) “Over the next 20 years, this would mean the strangulation death of up to 26 children in Canada. It is estimated that adopting the proposed Regulations would prevent the death of 20 of those 26 children over the next 20 years, as well as prevent other non-fatal strangulation injuries. The proposed Regulations would result in a socio-economic benefit valued at approximately $1 million per year starting in the first year, increasing to almost $10 million per year once risks are fully eliminated in the tenth year and beyond. Over the next 20 years, this would provide a social benefit valued at approximately $73 million.” This document estimated 1.3 deaths due to blind cords per year in Canada but did not describe methods to calculate the rate.
“The proposed Regulations would also significantly reduce testing requirements for industry, which is estimated to be a saving of $5.7 million per year, resulting in cumulative savings of $64 million.
The total benefits of the proposed Regulations are estimated to be $138 million over 20 years (2016 price level, discounted at 7%).” The report has a detailed economic analysis of the costs and benefits based on theoretical models.
US data on infant deaths is confusing.
Several different measures were used to try an estimate deaths due to blind cords. The first approach used anecdotal information “Based on newspaper clippings, consumer complaints, death certificates purchased from states, medical examiners’ reports, reports from hospital emergency department-treated injuries, and in-depth investigation reports, CPSC staff found a total of 209 reported fatal and near-miss strangulations on window covering cords that occurred among children <8 years old from January 2009 – December 2021.” This is 16 deaths/year(3). A second source estimated 8.1 deaths per year due to blind cords.(4)The CDC reported a rate of 25.5 deaths per 100,000 live births due to accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed using the ICD 10 codes in 2020. Figure 2 A fourth source was a peer reviewed article published in 2018 found 141 blind entanglements resulted in death over 16 years, for an annual death rate of 8.8 per year.(5) This was the most thorough analysis of data I found.
Figure 1(6)
I then went to the US Mortality Data base and the ICD Code W 75 to show trends over time which have been increasing Figure 2
Figure 2(7)
ICD W 75 is Accidental Suffocation and strangulation in bed.
The range of deaths from different sources range from 8 -25 per year depending on the methods and data sources. Most deaths using the ICD 10 code accidental strangulation W75 are in children under one year of age, male, Native American or Black or living in the southern US states. A fifth source of data is the US Emergency Dept database.(8) I explored the data base but the data on deaths was not published on line. This database included a field 683 Window Shades, Venetian Blinds, or Indoor Shutter but does not specify cords.
The manufacturers of blinds published a post in 2021 about the cost of re-tooling and the potential 4,900 job losses. This was not included the cost benefit analysis above.
So, what does all this tell us?
Notes
The WHO has added new codes to the ICD 11 in 2022 PB00 Unintentional threat to breathing by suffocation from object covering mouth or nose. Object or substance producing injury E92A Roller or venetian blind or indoor shutter.
[1] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2019-97/FullText.html
[2] https://canadagazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2017/2017-06-17/html/reg7-eng.html
[4] N. Marcy, G. Rutherford. “Strangulations Involving Children Under 5 Years Old.” U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, December 2002. was widely cited in the reports but the document was not found on the WWW.
[5] Bridget Onders, Eun Hye Kim, Thitphalak Chounthirath, Nichole L. Hodges, Gary A. Smith; Pediatric Injuries Related to Window Blinds, Shades, and Cords. Pediatrics January 2018; 141 (1): e20172359. 10.1542/peds.2017-2359
[6] https://www.cdc.gov/sids/data.htm#:~:text=We%20defined%20cause%20of%20death,%2C%20(799.9%3B%20R99).
[7] https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D76;jsessionid=E2A5C8A8389056FA2E5F2DA9A781
Here are 400+ great reads from 2022 handpicked just for you by NPR staff and trusted critics.
— Read on apps.npr.org/best-books/
This book list has the ability to open a link to your local library and you can borrow or put a book on hold including Ebooks. Or there are links to AMAZON. This is the book list I have been waiting for. Now they just need a link to Goodreads.
TheUnRetired.life 