How things come home...

Remember all the colds we used to catch before this? It's all gone now. Looking back, there used to be only two ways something came home.

 - couple days after a trip, I start feeling something in my throat or nose, becomes a cold, everyone gets it. 

 - one of the kids fall sick first, then everyone gets it. 

No travel, no school, no colds! 

Our small school district has around 7000+ individuals including students and staff. That 7000 could go back directly to anywhere from 14,000 to 35,000 people depending on how many kids from a household are in school, how many grandparents live around here etc. And the population of our city is 40,000. That's how schools connect people! 

 

The 2nd Wave

The initial outbreak in Wuhan was so tightly clamped down that we never got to know how it was managed. But back in June, there were big headlines everywhere about a  a "2nd wave in China".

What happened with that?
Nothing!

This time the information flow was not restricted and we can look back and see what was done. Beijing is a city of 20 million people.

After the initial Wuhan outbreak time lock-downs, cases in Beijing went down to zero. Everything opened back up. They had a 55 day streak with 0 new cases. Then 35 new cases were found on the first day of this outbreak.
 - it was very easy to identify the source - a wholesale sea food market.
 - neighborhoods using the market were put in lock-down.
 - everyone was tested quickly using batch testing (more on batch testing below).
 - based on test results, further targeted lock-downs were imposed while everything else was back open to normal business
 - total cases in this outbreak - 335!

This is one place where fundamental democracy vs. authoritarian styles may come into play. Both USA and India are doing a pretty bad job with virus management. India at least has the ability to perform China style lock-downs, but that definitely will not work in the USA.
 - Both USA and India opened everything back up just as cases were going up in most places and never got under control.
 - We cannot do batch testing in both places because again we never got to the fully controlled state  and positive rates are very high.

Batch testing example: 

 - you take all the samples from an apartment block and do a single test. If negative, move on.

 - if positive, test floor by floor samples in a single test...etc.

The Fake News Cycle

Back in April. Found myself longing for some DD News in the midst of all this COVID coverage overload....and it was exactly like it used to be..20 minutes of what happened on the day, and you are done...well, maybe a little government propaganda mixed in...but you do know it when that happens :)

That kinda got me thinking....We used to read newspapers, which was maybe 8 pages of what happened the previous day and one or two pages of opinion columns. There was enough time to get to know what happened before consciously going to the middle page and reading someone else's opinion, and you knew their background and where they were coming from before you took in that opinion.

Somewhere along the way we went into a 24 hour news and breaking news cycle. And then it became opinion pieces of the person on TV, while the real news slowly disappeared to the scroll at the very bottom. We are told what to believe, and we may or may not happen to read the 'real' news events scrolling below.

And then we went to social media. Now we read our friends and families opinions first, maybe see some opinion pieces on the news, and we never really hear the actual events that happened or take a break to think for ourselves..no touch with reality!!

Wonder what will come next?!

Talking Sense....

What these doctors say are based on their individual experience and probably 100% true. We (both federal and many states) have huge stockpiles of HCQ created at the beginning of the pandemic and there is no restriction on any doctor who believes in it to prescribe it. Things have moved on from initial HCQ days and they have much better outcomes observed with other drugs like Remdesivir and simpler treatment protocols like oxygen for lung issues which have already shown improved survivability in current hospitalized patients. While officially there are no treatment protocols yet (none scientifically proven), CDC points to most current research on this for interim management and it is always updated with new findings. You can go see the actual results from early HCQ trials in NYC and every drug they tried there on the NIH page.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/therapeutic-options.html
https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/whats-new/

If we step back and look at it there are two very different issues here that I feel we should not mix. The vaccine and The Cure.

1. the vaccine - lots of folk are working on it, it will come some time in the future, hopefully this year, maybe next, worst case 2 years down. I find it best not to worry about it for now. It is a preventative measure. Daily news on vaccine trials and hope do not really help. This will be a big money maker for whoever wins that race.

2. The cure - this has two parts to it. Am summarizing as a very simple average math here - not exact percentages.
part a - about 90/100 folks get better with no intervention.
part b - about 10/100 get hospitalized. Out of the 10, about 9 survive and 1 dies.

For the 10 people hospitalized, we are seeing much better outcomes with current treatment protocols as opposed to initial days (March) where at one point almost every single patient hooked up to a ventilator in both UK and NYC were dying. These protocols will get revised whenever someone tries something new, and enough numbers are behind it to support a recommendation.

Given that 99 out of 100 make a recovery, this is where I believe claims come in. For a doctor seeing patients at clinic, they could be prescribing anything they believe in, and they saw 100 or 500 and there is a good chance all of them recovered. This does not become sceintific basis that the treatment was the cause of the cure. But overall, NIH and others around the world are monitoring the numbers and if there is a statistical significance in a treatment, it will get updated. 

Gajar ka Halwa & Malpua

Gajar ka Halwa was a big disappointment in my life! Growing up, you see in almost every Hindi movie the Maa tell her Beta that she has made Gajar ka Halwa. And suddenly the entire atmosphere of that scene changes from one of confrontation to peace...or sadness to bliss or something along those lines...

Now this is not today's day where you could just go out, find a restaurant who made a North Indian dessert, and try it out. Even something as basic as wheat was just starting to make it's first appearance into South India and folks where experimenting with their first chapatis.

So finally on my first trip out during college, I did try this miracle dessert. And it was disappointing....don't get me wrong...it was not bad at all to taste...but it wasn't the magical elixir I expected from watching all those movies....!!

Anyway...now that am obsessed with this 'aaj se teri...' song from Pad Man, am starting to sense a similar feeling about a Malpua. Never heard of it before. But it seems to be able to right every wrong as long as "Bas mere liye tu maalpuve....Kabhi kabhi bana dena...."

Good People!

I think you and I, we belong to the 'good people' category. We are mostly happy, but then we get mad once in a while at folks we know and folks we don't (commute anyone?)and we get the blues once in a while....

Look at the breakup of gun related deaths and you can see how having easy access to a gun while one is at the height of one of those emotional rides pans out.

Suicide tops, followed by homicide of someone you know.

Am totally cool with that. These are personal choices. This is a free country.

HOWEVER....

Fact 1: 18% of Americans have reported some sort of mental illness.
Fact 2: There are 3 million plus public school teachers in this country.

Now if someone is thinking about arming 3 million people locked every day in a classroom full of kids that are not even theirs, I have to call BULL on that!

A cultural queue jump!

Had a 3 hour connection in Narita. Inbound flight was 2 hours and change delayed. We barely had 45 minutes to get to the next gate. Boarding had already started. Got out of the aircraft and looked around to see if anyone was there to assist. And sure enough, there is a lady holding up a HOUSTON sign.

Walked up to her, showed her my boarding pass. She told me what I knew already 'your flight is in 45 minutes. You have about 30 minutes to get there before they close the gate'. The something encouraging 'wait here, let's get all the Houston passengers and I will take you there'.

Another 5 minutes, and 4 of us are following our guide through the airport. We get to the security check. There is a long line. She goes 'We cannot let you cut the line. But you are free to do what you want. This is where I leave you. Best of luck!'

HUH?!!

Figured later it was a cultural thing. Anyway, we were let in by other passengers closer to the x-ray machine and made the flight!

You could have just let us go on our own though!  :)