The non-Zen of making tea

The other day I was making a pot of tea, and I wasn’t really paying a whole lot of attention to the task at hand. So to speak.

Meaning, I was thinking about something not involving pouring boiling water out of a kettle and into a teapot. (I don’t have no truck with using tepid or even pre-boiling water for making tea.) Kettle in one hand with stream of extremely hot water arcing out, tab of tea bag in other (you know, so the tail doesn’t swoosh into the pot and then you have to pick it out with your fingers because you’re too lazy to go get a spoon).

So it really wasn’t a huge surprise when I overshot the pot and splashed the water onto my hand. It was kind of interesting, though, because part of me detached to observe everything that was going on.

There’s a fleeting moment—that nanosecond where you see the water careening off the exterior of the teapot and headed for your hand—when you realize that this is not going to end well, but it’s too late to do anything about it, prevention-wise. And then the very instant that the water strikes your fingers, just as the pain receptors are firing up to your brain, time freezes just long enough so you think, “You know—the time for concentrating on what’s happening was about seven seconds ago, not now.”

And then you shoot into all kinds of action—slamming the kettle on the stovetop, whipping your hand away and flapping it about, dancing around the kitchen and howling. There are also a few words that your mom might not be happy about.

I will say this—pouring boiling water on your hand turns out to be an effective method of taking your mind off back pain. However, I don’t really recommend it as a regular therapy.

Gratitude Monday: not going viral

Here’s what I’m grateful for today: I got my flu shot last week. Even with the lousiest health insurance it’s possible to pay huge premiums for, they covered the shot 100%. Because even Anthem knows that it’s cheaper for them to pay for the shot than it is to pay for prescriptions and doctor visits—possibly even a stay in hospital—when you come down with this season’s viral strain.

I get a shot every year because, as a New Military historian focused on 20^th Century conflicts, from the moment I understood the nature of influenza, I’ve been grateful that in the absence of a cure, we at least have vaccines that mitigate its effects.

More people died in the 1918-19 global flu pandemic than had been killed in four years of total war. The death toll figures range from 50 to 100 million. Dead. (Combat-related deaths came to approximately 37 million.) Since that time, scientists still don’t know how to really treat it—aside from rest, fluids and analgesics for the aches. So we’re at risk just as people were 95 years ago.

And it’s a clever bugger, flu—every year the virus mutates so that having had a previous strain doesn’t immunize you against this year’s. You have to face every one as a new enemy.

At least in the US this is generally understood—you know that when stingy insurance companies foot the bill for the vaccine, they’ve done the cost-benefit analysis and decided that this is still the cheapest way of managing health care.

When I moved to the UK, I visited my (NHS) GP around September and mentioned that as flu season was approaching, I’d better get a shot. She sat back and informed me that, since I wasn’t in a risk group (very old, very young or suffering from respiratory ailments), it wasn’t available to me. The government only ensured the production of enough vaccine to serve those “at-risk” categories.

So, on my annual trip home, I got the shot from my US internist, and then was fascinated to follow continuous news stories from November through about February, about how NHS hospitals were bursting at the seams from admitting flu patients (as in gurneys-in-corridors full), and the appalling numbers of deaths from the virus.

There was no outcry, no outrage; I was amazed. Her Majesty’s Government could run the same risk-benefit analysis as Anthem (and do it every year) and decide that a few scores of thousands hospitalized (on the taxpayers’ pounds) and a few tens of thousands dead was a better outcome than buying enough vaccine and running an awareness campaign to prevent pandemics.

So, with my historian’s perspective, and my experience of how others approach it, I’m grateful that this year’s flu vaccine has been produced to different specs than in the UK, and that even my crappy insurance company will pay for it.

Are you feeling lucky still?

As follow-up to the CBS Colonoscopy Sweepstakes story, here’s a piece from NPR: healthcare insurance companies are squawking at paying for anesthesia during the procedure.

No surprise there that carriers are looking for ways to cut costs wherever they can. I’m just wondering if CBS will fork over for the anesthesia if you win the sweepstakes?

I'll drink to that (for medicinal purposes only)

Okay, I understand that it’s early days, yet, and they haven’t run, you know, extensive clinical trials on this and everything, but evidently there’s some scientific support for the idea that “moderate” drinking in women may lower their risk of stroke.

I really don’t have time to comment. I have to open a bottle of wine.

Cheers.

Pandemics & politics

This current quasi-pandemic of swine flu is a prime example of George Santayana’s dictum that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

A mere 90 years ago, the “Spanish influenza” pandemic of 1918-19 killed more than 40 million people world wide. That’s more than were killed in four years of total war across Europe.

In the US Woodrow Wilson was afraid of his administration appearing weak, so despite medical and public health professionals frantically trying to get governments to order people to stay inside, avoid assembling in public places, cancel concerts, close schools, etc.—Wilson actually encouraged the populace to “carry on as usual.”

The butcher’s bill for that policy was a death toll of more than 500,000 Americans.

The thing about the flu was that it struck the young and healthy—they dropped like flies while the elderly or youngsters carried on. It made no sense, and epidemiologists still haven’t quite got it figured out. In some respects it was like the Black Death of the 14th Century: you could wake up healthy in the morning and end the day dead.

Now while governments are taking action—in Mexico they’ve banned all public meetings, gracias a Dios—the fact of the matter is that we’re still wrong-footed. There have been outbreaks in several US states, and now Europe. We don’t have a vaccine developed for this particular strain, and supplies of treatment drugs are limited (and the pharmaceutical companies will therefore charge through the nose for them).

You can expect to find a brisk black market in bogus Tamiflu and Relenza shortly.

Apparently the news has sent the stock market into a spin. Quelle surprise.

“But, Bas Bleu,” you ask, “where’s the connection to Santayana?”

Ah, mes chers enfants—it’s that Obama had included $900M in pandemic preparedness funds in the economic stimulus bill only a couple of months ago. And the Republicans in Congress (a group notorious for denying and therefore reliving history) whacked that out with liberal (if I may use that term) amounts of outrage and umbrage.

In the context of $13.4B going to GM, which is about to enter bankruptcy, and $700B going to banks that lent themselves into bankruptcy, $900M hardly seems extravagant to, you know, save lives.

That’s not quite $2 per death from the 1918-19 pandemic here in the States.

Now, of course, even if this money had been approved back in February, there wouldn’t have been enough accomplished in two months to make a real difference.

But just keep that in mind when you start fighting the symptoms, can’t get an appointment with your doctor and it turns out the “antidote” you bought from a friend of a friend is saline solution. There could have been plans and budget in place for dealing with similar eventualities; but there aren't.

People still marvel that anyone could get upset over “just the flu”. They equate it to a sore throat and the sniffles. Check the comments to any announcement of cancellation of a sports event—you’ll find plenty of “what the hell—you cancelled that for the flu?” statements.

Forty million deaths just 90 years ago; and hundreds of thousands of them every year since. It's real, it's deadly, and (thanks to the GOP) we don't have a plan.

Santé

As is only proper this time of year, Eric Felten writes about the history of hangover cures. I have to say I don’t think much of his offering; but then I’m not much of a raw-egg fan. Unless it’s in Hollandaise.

This got me thinking, so I had a little root around the Web. A quick Google turned up 749,000 results on “hangover cures”, 517,000 on “hangover remedies” and 424,000 on “hangover cures that work”.

Obviously it’s a subject of great interest to the masses.

Wikipedia gives the overview on causes, symptoms, chemistry and some cures. Evidently enough of Wall Street’s high flyers have post-pissup constricted capillaries that Forbes has weighed in. There is more than one site with prophylactic as well as remedial suggestions such as these. And there are apparently even green cures.

Well, whatever.

Me—I believe Robert Benchley’s dictum (and there was a man who knew from hangovers): “The only cure for a real hangover is death.”