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Women and Children First

Steve Carlson — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:57:24 +0000

The second wave of the H1N1 flu was washing across the country before the vaccine arrived this fall. Government told us that only designated high-risk groups would receive the first shots, the rest of the population would have to wait their turn. I didn’t dwell much on this preferential treatment until a friend, who is a medical doctor, surprised me one day with his comment about this government directive. He told me that the process was “unfair” and that everybody should have had equal access to the vaccine when it was first released.

Yesterday I did what I often do during a long drive — let my mind wander over subjects that seriously bother me. Driving is boring and somewhat depressing, so I wasn’t long in reaching one of my more galling issues: how our provincial leaders have pushed the Ontario economy from have to have-not status. Thinking for me can be quite visual so the images invoked were of a sinking ship. A full Titanic scenario. The massive ice berg of a changing world economy, the breached hull of tight money and more taxes, the great ship floundering under the weight of businesses too big to fail. All right, so my visions can be a shade melodramatic, but the sinking of the Titanic on its maiden voyage exemplified the nautical arrogance of the builders who, just like our politicians, were certain their design could handle any emergency.

On that icy night in 1912, the bravery of many of the passengers and crew to save the women and children first was an amazing act of personal courage. The ship’s owners had placed those courageous souls in an impossibly “unfair” position by not providing enough lifeboats. And that was when my thoughts segued to the “unfair” reference made earlier by my medical friend. What he was referring to by “unfair” was not just the preference given to one group over another, but the ineptitude of the politicians who had made queuing necessary. If government’s emergency planning had been successful, there would have been enough lifeboats and everyone would have had equal access to inoculation.

Our governments have a monopoly on our healthcare system so they are accountable. Only lately have some family doctors even been provided with the vaccine for their patients in Toronto. Now inoculation clinics are reducing their hours and starting to close. Many people have still not been vaccinated against this pandemic which for some is proving to be a life or death issue. And here’s the frightening truth — I have been told that a third wave of the H1N1 flu is coming in the New Year. If for just one minute queuing is re-instated, the government be damned.

Classic, But Still In Style

Steve Carlson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:34:12 +0000

When the mighty oak sheds its last leaf and I have to use a scraper to remove frost from my windshield that can mean only one thing — flu season is in full swing. And what a bang it’s made in the media this fall. Swine flu is pandemic. Athletes and boards of directors jumping the queue for inoculation. Strident voices screaming at politicians for botching the emergency measures supposedly in place to protect us citizens.

But I can handle all of it, even the politicians. What I can’t take, however, is a message that I keep hearing pushed by Health Canada. It’s a reflection of all the other half-assed solutions I have come to expect from government. You’ve seen the message if you own a television set. It’s the one that tells you if you are going to cough or sneeze, do it into your sleeve.

How delightful! You’re riding on the subway. People around you blithely sneezing all over their sleeves. Or, if seized by a coughing fit, they alternate between one arm and the other just in case the material on one of their arms starts to drip from their violent discharges. And you, compressed tightly in the standing crowd rub arms with them as Toronto’s ‘Better Way’ burps, bumps and lurches from station to station.

There is a more sanitary device to address this problem. Anybody raised in the ’40s and ‘50s, like myself, knows all about it. It’s called a handkerchief. Generally, about fourteen inches square for men, this handy device can be purchased for a modest sum unless your delicate proboscis demands the softness of a fine, Egyptian cotton.

As a kid, I always carried one in my pocket. Some of my friends then could be forgiven for using Kleenex®, since Kimberly-Clark was the only industry that kept our home town alive. In those days, we were taught not even to spit — use your handkerchief instead. I’ve always assumed this bit of wisdom was a carry-over from the days of the Spanish flu when Canadians died by the thousands. People tried desperately then to stop its spread any way they could.

Aside from the use for which the handkerchief was designed, I would like to give you a few other reasons for carrying one if you don’t do so already. First, for the outdoorsman, a hankie is a great protection from biting insects. Simply knot two adjacent corners of your handkerchief together and place the loop formed on top of your head and under your hat. (If you’re in insect country, you will be wearing a hat.) This action will make you look exactly like a member of the French Foreign Legion with the back and sides of your head and neck protected from both mosquitoes and the sun. If your handkerchief is on the small side, tuck the bottom edge under your collar. Spraying or soaking the handkerchief first in bug repellent is the pièce de résistance. Nothing will come close, not even your friends.

A handkerchief is great for medical emergencies. One weekend when I was about 10 years old, I was given my first jack knife. The condition that my father set down was that under no circumstances was I to take it to school. In those days you weren’t strip-searched and handcuffed if the teacher discovered you were carrying a knife — my father just wanted to keep an eye on me for safety’s sake. Naturally, on Monday morning I sneaked the jack knife into my pocket. Opening and closing the blade as I walked to school, I got only a few blocks from home before I accidentally closed the blade over my left forefinger. (I still have the scar.) Blood poured out of the cut but fortunately I was able to get it stopped before I got to school by tightly wrapping my handkerchief around the cut.

“Child’s play,” you say. OK, how about this? One summer I had a college friend home for a fishing trip. Miles up the Kenogami River, we were dragging our canoe over a logging boom when the outboard motor which I had raised out of the water to clear the boom, dropped. My finger was under the motor’s mount which acted as a guillotine for one of my fingers. Fortunately, the bone stopped this appendage from being completely severed. As I steered the canoe back to town, I never did completely stop the bleeding with my handkerchief. That took our local doctor and four or five stitches.

No, I’m not prone to cutting myself with sharp objects. I have handled axes all my life and to this day I still thank my lucky stars that, touch wood, I still haven’t buried the blade into my leg or foot. (One friend of mine buried a hatchet blade into his knee cap.) I’m afraid handkerchiefs won’t work for those sorts of accidents. A shirt or light jacket is needed.

Finally, for all you Young Turks who might be reading this post, a handkerchief is a wonderful opportunity to display your chivalry. For this to happen you must always keep your handkerchief neatly folded in your pocket. In fact, your handkerchief must be kept pristine, so on any given day if you think you might use it yourself, keep a second one handy in your other pocket. This event will only happen, at most, a few times in your life so be ready.

The day will come whether you’re riding public transportation, walking in the park, dining at a restaurant, or at work when you will encounter a gorgeous young woman alone and quietly sobbing to herself. The kleenex clutched in her fingers will be a sodden mass. Approach her slowly and quietly extend your pristine handkerchief to her. If at first she declines to take it, gently insist that she can keep it or return it to you later.

Now, the main reason gorgeous young women sob to themselves in public places is because of a broken romance. When she finally returns your handkerchief, cleaned and pressed, you will never have a better opportunity to talk or ask her out. If my fading recall is correct, this has happened to me only once and that was a lifetime ago. The young lady had recovered when she returned my handkerchief and she turned out to be wonderful but I’m afraid I’m not willing to share those details.

Healthcare, Not Global Warming

Steve Carlson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:12:17 +0000

This article originally appeared on inciteHEALTH in February, 2009, coincidentally just weeks before the H1N1 flu began to appear in the news. Bill Carrol on Newstalk 1010 only hours ago described government handling of this pandemic as a “complete and utter travesty”. In light of the upcoming Copenhagen Conference on global warming next month, a fresh posting of this article seems appropriate.

Countries have different opinions about exactly which pending apocalypse they should be forestalling with vast sums of money or other resources. The hands-down favourite world-wide catastrophe for many nations, particularly those in North America and Europe, is Global Warming. Other countries, such as China and certain developing African countries, apparently think their top priority lies elsewhere. The government of the former is afraid of mass uprising, the population of the latter faces mass starvation — both attributes of the apocalypse, Totalitarianism, a much more “now” cataclysm.

Nuclear Annihilation was what I lived with as a young man in Canada. Perestroika has now taken this as the primary apocalypse off the table, at least in my part of the world. Global Warming has been slipped in by the growing environmental movement. It probably all started with Rachel Carson and pollution back in the 1960s. Pollution was never really big apocalyptically so it was mutated with the help of Hollywood science fiction, departing species, photographs of retreating ice fields, and rafts of speculation, conjecture and computer projections.

That’s not to say that one shouldn’t be concerned and proactive facing this threat but is Global Warming really our most pressing apocalypse? Cataclysms come in many flavours from Asteroidal Collisions to Homicidal Nanotechnology. All of them are possible. But if your country is going to dig deep into your pockets and appreciably impact your way of life, you should expect that they will get the primary apocalypse right. Cash has become a most precious commodity in this recession.

Strange isn’t it, that we seem to only be able to focus on one apocalypse at a time? Yet all of them are possible. True, Alien Invasion is a remote one but from the attitudes expressed in many parts of the world on genetic modification, you would think Bad Biotechnology has excellent probabilities. Maybe we should be spreading our money around, hedging our bets on which apocalypse is most likely. But if we have to pick one, then I have problems with Global Warming.

Some of my concerns for Global Warming holding top spot include the “sensitivity” of our environment, the time frames being used, and the dismissal of additional strategies. Computer projections must assume a range of levels of environmental sensitivity to increases in the factors causing Global Warming. What if those sensitivity ranges turn out to be much lower? One hundred year time frames are popularly used for human action to save the planet. However some scientists say go slowly and more carefully now and increase our preventative actions later when we have gained the knowledge and tools to most effectively address the issue. Others say it’s already too late. Geo-engineering is adamantly dismissed as tampering with Mother Nature yet civilization has been doing that for hundreds of years.

So if Global Warming should not be our primary apocalypse, what should? I think that honour should go to the Plague. Contagious diseases have a deadly history and now they have been enhanced with modern “super bugs”. Best known of the pandemics is probably the Black Death. Mortality rates in Europe from this pandemic have been estimated as high as 60% of the population. The Black Death started about the year 1350 and by 1700 was the cause of over 100 epidemics.

If my government is going to dig deep into my pockets, then I want the primary targeted adversary to be the Plague. Global Warming is a problem because of government dishonesty. Suppose government added a dime a gallon to gasoline as carbon tax. Such taxes have been added to gasoline in the past for road maintenance only to end up in general revenues. Candidness is also not an attribute of government. In the past few months, we have been told by the feds that our banks are a model of safety and stability for the rest of the world. Yet the big banks in Canada have deemed it necessary to raise capital with new stock issues, an action for shareholders that’s tantamount to our fed cranking up the printing presses and diluting the value of every taxpayer’s savings.

We need transparency in government. With the Internet, dissemination of detailed information has never been easier. But that’s not likely to happen any time soon and for that reason focusing on the Plague makes more sense. To be prepared for an epidemic, our governments first have to improve the healthcare system. The present practice of filling hospital hallways with patients because rooms are not available, doctor shortages, long waiting times in emergency rooms, nurse layoffs and delays of months to see a specialist just don’t cut it when a country is preparing for an epidemic. The beauty of Plague preparations is that as we use the healthcare system, we can see for ourselves how well many preparations are progressing. We don’t need to rely on political drivel.

Don’t underestimate the need for immediate preparations. Fixing the system, recruiting, training, preparing and executing national emergency plans, etc., when the Plague strikes is much too late. The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19 killed 50 to 100 million people worldwide in less than six months. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians became ill. As any modern combatant will tell you, wounding is preferable to killing an enemy. Three or four troopers are taken out of combat to take care of each wounded man. A pandemic on a similar scale to the Spanish flu would bury the service providers in our present healthcare system.

Sure, addressing Global Warming is important but time frames for that disaster are measured in decades. Plague could strike next month. In 1918, the Spanish flu spread like wildfire around the world. It killed a fit and healthy adult within 48 hours. Future pandemics are a dead certainty.