Germ Free
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have confirmed what public health officials have been saying for some time. The Swine Flu, pandemic H1N1, is unusually deadly for young people in the United States.
Younger people are at greater risk of catching swine flu, with most cases occurring in teenagers, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
What This Tells Me
Squinting in the sunshine Phil.
Two things came to mind when I read these stories;
- Kids today are raised without a full compliment of germ exposure.
- Our newspapers are United States Centric.
Germ Exposure
Flowers bloom in Dorothy's flower bed. 10/20/09
The last time we tried to sanitize our lives was when breast feeding was discouraged, and babies were kept away from dirt. This resulted in a polio epidemic.
Children were not given the thousands of years worth of immunities from breast milk, and they became sitting ducks for polio.
It looks like we have done it again. Only this time, the likely culprits could be anti-bacterial soaps, cleaners, wipes, and the sterilized foodstuff we have fed our children. Now children are sitting ducks for swine flu.
Small World
The first headline is from the San Francisco Examiner, the second from the Philippines. The Examiner is just about the United States, while the Philippine article concerns the whole world.
Our country's news outlets do not give us the big picture. This is nothing new, except that now we have the internet, and those people who take advantage of this worldwide source of information can develop a greater sense of the Earth and what is happening on it.
A bit of snow on Lassen from the recent rainstorm.
Dead Battery
When I got into the Buick this afternoon to go to the store, I heard something ticking. It seemed to be coming from the glove box, so I opened it up to see what it might be. The tone changed, but the ticking remained. I figured it must be something attached to the firewall. I wondered if it had anything to do with the battery being low. I closed the glove compartment, put the key in the ignition, and turned it.
Click. The dreaded sound of the last of the juice pushing the plunger in the solenoid, announcing that the battery was too far down to turn over the engine.
Oh well, no problem. I would just call AAA and they will send someone out to give me a jump. I went back upstairs to my apartment and got out my AAA card. Before I made the call for service, I checked the expiration date because I didn't remember receiving a bill this year. July 2008! Oops. How did that slip by?
I called India to talk with a woman about my membership and it had indeed expired. They didn't have my current address and the bill was sent to an old P.O. box I had 3 years ago in Carmel Valley. The woman in India gave me a nice, heavily accented, sales pitch and was prepared to accept my Visa or Mastercard over the phone to reinstate me, but I said I would prefer to go to my local AAA office and pay by check. I wonder, with the state of my economy, if I can justify that expense?
Justifiable Expense?
$400 a gallon. That's what a recent report concluded it costs to put gas in the vehicles used by the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan. If that doesn't startle you, the Marines burn $320,000,000 worth of fuel every day we continue this war against an enemy that lives in caves and mud huts!
How much more is it going to cost us to "get even" with those guys who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center?
