Whaz Up!?! Treading Water until Festivus

Howdy y’all!

This school year is so completely kicking my ass, I stopped laughing a long time ago. I had been hustling and keeping up with blogging and teaching. Then, I was treading water and keeping my head above water with both blogging and teaching. Now, my head is dunking underwater with blogging but still treading water with teaching. Luckily, it is only two weeks until the school’s Festivus Break begins and I can do some blogging and planning.

The only significant news is that La Petite Fille got her first dose of the #COVID19 vaccine, SinoVac, the crappy Chinese made vaccine that barely has efficacy against the earlier strains of the virus and probably will have none against omicron. She’ll get her second dose just before Christmas. This summer our travel plans will be centered on getting us to a country where we can all get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. It’s the only sane thing to do. That is, if travel is still allowed this summer.

ICYMI

In This Week’s Headlines

Lots of news this week. I won’t bother telling you the big ticket items. You’re Internet news feeds read the same as mine and you’re hot takes are as hot as mine are.

But, here are the items that caught the eye of Ye Olde Blogge this week because they were interesting and of lesser prominence:

• The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is acting like a real island and supporting coastal sea life amazing scientists, creating a new ecosystem, and possibly leading to new species evolving. The byproducts of human destabilization of the earth’s biome won’t lead to the extinction of life, it’ll just lead to the extinction of people. Irony, much?
• One in 44 children diagnosed with autism! With greater awareness, more diagnosticians, and more treatment options, more children are being diagnosed. Funny how that works. There is a evening out of the diagnoses, too, with fewer racial and economic correlates occurring.

#COVID19 News

Medscape, Ye Olde Blogge’s main source of medical news, published summaries of three #COVID19 related studies. Then NBCNews had a good one on the current #COVID19 surge in the US.

• Comorbidities v Race in ICU #COVID19 deaths. In this one study of nearly 4,000 Louisianans at one healthcare provider system, race seems to be a spurious variable in predicting who died of #COVID19 in the ICU. We all know that various health concerns like obesity, diabetes, and coronary disease are correlates of worser outcomes of the disease, and Black folks have greater incidents of these comorbidities per capita. So, which caused the higher death rates of #COVID19 in the ICU for Blacks? It turns out the comorbidities did. Race didn’t shake out as an independent contributor. Hunh, something that isn’t directly due to racism but due to systemic racism.
• depression increasing during the pandemic. Everybody knows that depressive symptoms are up about three times since the beginning of the pandemic, and specific populations, like healthcare workers, have even larger increases. What’s new here is that there is a strong correlation with socioeconomic levels in that people with higher economic stresses have a larger number of depressive symptoms. Hunh. Go figure. So, the #COVID19 economic relief packages might could’ve helped people’s mental health and well-being by alleviating their economic stress.
• Mental health needs of adults continue to rise. Further findings from that same data indicates that adults 18 – 39 were particularly susceptible to mental health issues. These issues did not correlate with education, relationship status, or savings. They did correlate with income with lower incomes having a negative relationship with higher depressive symptoms. Again, supporting standards of living as in a livable minimum wage, a universal basic income, and other guarantees could, no matter how socialist, might could actually help people live happier more productive lives.
• THE FALL-WINTER #COVID19 SURGE is back, but it is being brought to you by delta, AGAIN, this year. It takes two or three days to incubate after infection, and then you’re infectious whether you have symptoms or not. Get vaccinated and get your booster, folks.

Ye Olde Blogge Rolle

We found these nuggets of wisdom and insight waiting for us in our inbox from the blogs that Ye Olde Blogge subscribes to:

• The Levine Lowdown revisits the issue of euthanasia. The Australian state of New South Wales is close to being the last state there to legalize euthanasia. Levine reviews the issues of legalized assisted dying. Well worth reading and considering.
• A monthly roundup of French stuff. Our second favorite francophone — Ma Belle Femme being the first — posts a monthly round up of interesting stuff coming out of the francoworld. Here’s some GREAT stuff here: Josephine Baker inducted into the French Pantheon, the French flag’s blue going from cobalt to navy, and La Salon du Chocolat — the world’s largest gathering of all things chocolat.
• Social skills and autism. When you ask non-autistics what autistics need, they say better social skills training, which trains autistic people to cover their autism and be more acceptable in the wider non-autistic world. When you ask autistic people about what they need, they say greater acceptance of who they actually are, which centers it in all of the greater acceptance movements we’ve seen in the late 20th and early 21st centuries for LGBTQ+ communities, communities of color, religious communities, and others facing discrimination. The Autistic Science Person gives a great run down of these issues.

Friends of Ye Olde Blogge

Ye Olde Blogge is grateful to the many blogging friends we’ve made along the way: the people who comment, share, and provide pingbacks. We try to pass the love around and give as well as we get. These blogs and bloggers have been especially generous towards us.

• Stop and smell the coffee: Robert reminds us through some effective poetry that we’ve got to pay attention to our mundane world as well as to the world around us. Visit him at Of Cabbages and Kings.
• More #covid19 tom fuckery: Tengrain gives us the low-down on that other piece of shocking #COVID19 news that came out this week: Missouri’s governor in all of his infinite wisdom commissioned a study of the efficacy of mask mandates in mitigating #COVID19. I guess he figured it would support the GQP position? Well, it didn’t, so he did what any GQP politician would do, he buried it, did the opposite of it, and when it came out claimed not to believe its findings. Find more from Tengrain over at Mock Paper Scissors.
• Induced dyslexia: Ten Bears describes our world in his own ineffable sarcastic curmudgeonly style lays another one on us, trained monkeys barely smart enough to operate equipment. What it lacks in subtlety, it makes up for in brutal honesty. It’s hard to argue that what we’re experiencing isn’t exactly what the system was designed to produce. Get more of the same at Homeless on the High Desert.
• Abortion abortion abortion: The GOP Dystopia grow and spread in state after state and assault our democracy and freedom, Burr brings us a round-up of the latest attempt to gut a basic and hard fought freedom, abortion. He provides links to many thoughtful insightful blog posts and news articles laying out the issue. Get more from him at Fair and Unbalanced.
• Scottie’s Playtime: Apparently, Scottie has not only moved his blog, AGAIN — third times the charm, amirite, Scottie? — he has renamed it, Scottie’s Playtime. Same fun loving commentary on the day’s news and op-ed cartoons. We wish him all the best at his new digs and will subscribe to the newest edition of his blog.

HUzzah!
Jack

Image Attribution

“Treading Water by Hebru Brantley” by wiredforlego is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0