Who Wants the Flu?

 
Cold and flu season is here again and nobody wants a cold or the flu.  Here are some tips to help prevent the spread of cold or flu and some ways to help you feel better if you get sick.

 
Symptoms of cold and flu are similar. You may have some or all of these symptoms. 

• fever *Not everyone with the flu will have a fever.
• cough
• sore throat
• runny or stuffy nose
• body aches
• headache
• chills
• fatigue
• sometimes diarrhea and vomiting

A flu vaccine protects against the three viruses that research suggests will be most common.  This year’s vaccine has only been moderately (62%) effective in preventing the flu so it is important, whether you have had the vaccine, or not, to follow these tips to help prevent getting the flu.

• Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.  This is the NUMBER ONE way to prevent the spread of infection.  Teach children to wash their hands.  

Clean hands prevent the flu:

 

• Clean and disinfect surfaces and objects that may be contaminated with germs like the flu.

• Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth. Germs spread this way.

• Try to avoid close contact with sick people.  If someone is coughing or sneezing, try to stay at least 6 feet away from them.

 

If you are sick with a cold or flu, prevent the spread to others.

• The CDC recommends that you stay home for at least 24 hours after your fever is gone except to get medical care or for other necessities. (Your fever should be gone without the use of a fever-reducing medicine.)
• While sick, limit contact with others as much as possible to keep from infecting them.
• When you sneeze or cough, cover your nose and mouth with a tissue or sneeze/cough into your elbow (not your hand). Throw used tissues in the trash after you use it.

 

Remember: Colds and flu are viruses and antibiotics will not help you unless you have a bacterial infection on top of the viral cold/flu infection.

Care for yourself when you are sick:

• Get plenty of rest, give your body time to recover.

• Eat lightly and keep hydrated, you may have a poor appetite, that is normal when you are sick. It is important to drink and keep hydrated.  Hot tea with honey and lemon are helpful if you have a sore throat and/or cough.

• If you are congested it may be helpful to avoid dairy which increases mucous production

There are medicines available, over the counter, to treat fever, cough and congestion.  Read labels carefully and follow directions.  Do not take more than the recommended dosage.  Pay particular attention to "cold medicines" that have multiple ingredients.  Example: If a cold medicine has acetaminophen, don't take additional acetaminophen (Tylenol) you can overdose and damage your liver.  I prefer to treat the symptoms and use medicine for each symptom.  Yes, you will be taking more medicine, but you will not be taking more dosage of each medicine and you will customize your medicine to only those symptoms you have.  You will not be taking medicine for symptoms you don't have.  Example: if you don't have a cough, there is not reason for you to take something that has cough medicine in it.  

If symptoms persist or get worse, see a doctor.
 

Certain people are at greater risk of serious flu-related complications (including young children, elderly persons, pregnant women and people with certain long-term medical conditions) If you are in a high risk group and develop flu symptoms, it’s best for you to contact your doctor. Remind them about your high risk status for flu.

CDC Emergency warning signs:

In children

• Fast breathing or trouble breathing
• Bluish skin color
• Not drinking enough fluids
• Not waking up or not interacting
• Being so irritable that the child does not want to be held
• Flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough
• Fever with a rash
  

In addition to the signs above, get medical help right away for any infant who has any of these signs:

• Being unable to eat
• Has trouble breathing
• Has no tears when crying
• Significantly fewer wet diapers than normal
  

In adults

• Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
• Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen
• Sudden dizziness
• Confusion
• Severe or persistent vomiting
• Flu-like symptoms that improve but then return with fever and worse cough

This video is was made for healthcare workers, but it's fun for everyone to watch:

Long Walks in Heaven

A few weeks ago, my beloved dog, Stormi, passed away. He was a black Labrador retriever, 12 years old when he died. 

We got him as a puppy shortly after the passing of both my mother and the dog we had.  I always thought that my mother would have loved him as she had a special place in her hearts for black labs after she became very attached to our black lab, Echo, we had growing up. I’m sure she was looking down and enjoying watching us and I’m sure that she, Echo and Stormi have found each other in heaven and also my father who loved him, waiting for the day we will all be together again.

Stormi was kind and loving.  He didn’t know how big he was, thinking he was a small lap dog, my LAPrador I’d call him. He’d love to climb into your lap, sometimes it was only the front end that made it. He was a people person and was always nearby, usually sitting somewhere in the way, like the middle of the kitchen floor or in the hallway or outside the bathroom, waiting to trip you up.  He’d whine if you were outside and he was in.  He loved to give you big, slobbery kisses and hugs and sometimes would nibble your nose.  I don’t know why, but he loved to nibble noses.

Stormi loved our other animals, and he pretty much let them walk all over him.  When he had a treat and the other dog stole it, he never tried to get it back.  I don’t think he ever growled at anyone or anything in his life.  He loved playing with the grey cat, Smoki, especially when they were both young.  Stormi would chase Smoki around the house.  We always knew when Stormi caught Smoki because his hair was slobbered up in a funky mohawk from Stormi's kisses. In later years the chasing stopped and they became good friends. 

Stormi loved to play and go on walks, the latter became a routine after he tore his cruciate ligament in his knee several years ago and had to have surgery and 2 plates put in his leg.  We first had to walk him with a sling to prevent pressure on the leg so that it would heal.  Once he was allowed to put pressure on it he wasn’t allowed to run.  We couldn’t let him go in the back yard without a leash on because he loved to run.  He and the dog next door, Max, would run back and forth along the fence separating the yards.  So we leashed him.  Then we were given instructions to walk him and keep on increasing the distance.  This is when we started taking him on daily walks, it became a routine and something he loved to do, so much so that he went for a walk his last morning on earth even though he really wasn’t up for it.

Stormi is gone, but not his hair, he shed so much that we will forever be finding it. We used to be constantly sweeping it up.  Sometimes after sweeping we’d have a whole other dog made of hair.  This was even with furmanating him. There’s a brush called the furmanator, it works well, but Stormi had so much hair.

Shortly before he passed, Stormi had been slowing down, his vision failed, he was bumping into things, he was still his loving self, but we knew his time was short.  We prepared our kids, who are grown, for the inevitable. 

I had to go on a week-long trip for work, I hated leaving him, and I hoped he was still with us when I returned.  The day I was to return home I got a call that Stormi had lost much of his energy, but he was still doing ok.  By the time I returned home, though, he was barely moving but enthusiastically wagged his tail when he saw me.  We immediately took him to the emergency vet.  By this time he wasn’t moving at all.  The vet suspected he had lymphoma, a type of cancer, because his all his lymph nodes were swollen as were his eyes. I don’t believe he would have survived much longer and attempting any treatment would have been cruel.  We did the kindest thing we could and we put him to sleep.  I stayed with him petting him and talking to him as he passed. 

As we have done with all our departed pets, we had him cremated.  A little side note, my father had wanted to be cremated and when he passed we complied with his wishes.  We were deciding on what type of container.  We didn’t want an urn or box that screamed “dead person here” so we opted for a plain wooden box.

There is a wonderful pet crematory that all the vets in the area use and we have used before.  What I didn’t know is that they had improved the service they provided.  Their service was excellent.  Our pets had Included was been returned to us in a lovely, heavy duty cardboard box, with a card, very nice.  I was absolutely shocked at what was returned to us, shocked in a good way.  Stormi was returned to us in a beautifully finished cedar box with a name plaque.  They also sent a mold of his paw print, a card and wild flower seeds to plant in his memory.  Never before had I seen anything like this.  It was wonderful. The only problem is now Stormi is in a better box than my father! I think dad’s ok with that though, he loved Stormi.

There is an empty place in our house, but Stormi will always have a special place in our hearts.  We miss him now, but we’ll see him, and all our loved ones, again.  Until then, Stormi and my mom and dad are taking long walks in heaven.

Curosity Lands on Mars, America Celebrates It Together, With the World, Via Twitter

Watching the Curiosity Rover land last night, via Curiosity Cam on Ustream, reminded me of when I watched the United States moon landing.  This time, however, I was able to celebrate it with people around America and the world via twitter.

What is Curiosity? Here 'Actor William Shatner narrates this thrilling video about NASA's Curiosity rover, from its entry and descent through the Martian atmosphere to its landing and exploration of the Red Planet in NASA's hardest planetary science mission to date.'

 

NASA Employs Curiosity by Paul-Gregory Matuszak, @pavelgregory on twitter, explains the Curiosity mission

full article here.

At 1:32 am ET, Curiosity landed in the Gale crater on Mars, just as planned. A few minutes later Curiosity began sending pictures:

The world watched and shared it together via twitter:

My favorite:

 Yes, I was excited:

Later this week Curiosity's Mastcam will be active and bigger, better, color pictures will be sent.  You can follow @MarsCuriosity on twitter and via Ustream Curiosity Cam updates.



Does Research and Statistics Support Gun Control?

Author’s note: I reached out to a respected expert on gun control statistics, Dr. Gary Kleck, professor of criminology at Florida State University.  He was kind enough to send me the chapter The Great American Gun Debate:What Research Has to Say  from The Criminal Justice System, 10th edition, Edited by George F. Cole and Marc G. Gertz. Wadsworth. (Published January 2012). [Note: this paper had been hacked at one point and nasty, unrelated stuff added, I'm working on a new link.]   He also sent me a copy of National Vital Statistics Reports Volume 60, Number 3  which is the final report for 2009 which he says “provides the most recent final mortality data, showing numbers of deaths from all causes, with separate counts for gun deaths.”

Update: 11/21/14 (revised 10/4/15 and 6/12/16): The problem isn't guns, it's mental health, insane people will do insane things. Criminals don't follow laws. If someone is going to commit murder, a crime that has the death penalty/life imprisonment, do you really think gun laws will deter them? The way to prevent these types of incidents isn't to regulate or ban guns, it's to help identify and treat those with mental illness who are a danger to themselves and others.  The people are the problem, not their weapons of choice. 

"Mental health is still not adequately diagnosed or treated in the United States, and especially not among young people...not delivered in a very effective manner.”

In fact,  a Connecticut state review panel has concluded "Medical professionals and school staff missed multiple opportunities to help Adam Lanza with his severe emotional and psychiatric disorders."


Updated: 1/1/13: At the risk of making this insufferably long, I have added one more video that I think needs to be here. It is found underneath #6.

Updated 12/21/12:

Last week we witnessed the horrible shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. I am deeply saddened and brought to tears by the deaths of the 27 people including 20 small children.  While I would prefer not to speak about gun control while people are mourning the loss of their loved ones, there are those who immediately and disgustingly took advantage of the situation to politicize it and tout their gun control agenda.  Therefore, I must respond to them with what I know is true:

1. Gun control doesn't work.  Connecticut has strict gun control laws and that did not prevent the tragedy in Newtown.

2. Guns are not the problem, evil is the problem and evil is what we must fight, not guns. Everyone has a propensity for evil. There are ways to minimize (not eliminate) the ability of vil to take a foothold.

3. The public school systems are failing our children. Schools don't know what to do with smart kids who don't fit the social 'norms' even though they are required, by law, under The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) , to identify and "provide early intervention, special education and related services to infants, toddlers, children and youth with disabilities." This includes not only those with physical disabilities, but also mental and emotional disabilities.  School systems are failing to do this.  

4. Most importantly, our children must not be left unprotected.  Parents are calling for students to be protected by armed security/police as is the case in Orange County, FL.  It is not feasible for police to be posted permanently at schools.  What is feasible and what would be the best way to protect our children is volunteer teachers/school staff properly trained and armed like they do in Israel.

Israeli Elementary School

We train teachers and staff how to perform first aid/CPR and use an AED to save kids, why not train them to use firearms? this is just another way to protect our precious children.

5. I abhor the term "assault rifle." Anything can be used in an assault. There is a specific type of rifle that is called an "assault rifle," it is fully automatic illegal for most people other than military or police and a few select people to possess.  Media, either intentionally or because they are ignorant, mistakenly call rifles used in the recent crimes "assault rifles."

The department of Defense has long defined assault rifles as “fully automatic rifles used for military purposes.”

Here is an explanation:

Some have included semi-automatic weapons that are capable of switching to automatic in the definition of "assault rifle" but they all have the characteristic of being able to fire automatically.  Guns that are strictly semi-automatic are not "assault rifles."  Some people also confuse "assault rifles" with "Assault Weapons" which are something completely different.

6. What does research and statistics say about gun control?

In the wake of the Colorado theater shootings and the tragic shooting in Newtown, CT, many people have called for stricter gun control laws, while others stand by the second amendment right to own and posses guns.  Those who want stricter control believe it will prevent deaths, many gun advocates state guns help prevent injury and death.  I was interested to find out more information in two areas, the first being the comparison of guns used for violence versus gun use for protection and secondly, mortality rates related to gunshot wounds as compared to mortality rates by other mechanisms.

Choose your own crime stats:

“Perhaps what is most striking about the patterns of gun ownership in the US is that ownership is generally highest in those groups where violence is lowest.” (Kleck 1997, Chapter 3).  “It is well known that guns are used in many violent crimes in the US. [However] The best available evidence indicates that guns are used by victims in self-protection considerably more often than crimes are committed by offenders using guns.  For example, victims used guns defensively about 2.0-2.5 million times in 1993, compared to fewer than 600,000 violent crimes committed by offenders with guns (Kleck and Gertz 1995).”

 

“Defensive gun use is effective in preventing injury to the victim and property loss.  Research based on interviews with large nationally representative samples of crime victims consistently indicates that those who use guns during crime incidents are less likely to be injured or lose property than those who either adopt other resistance strategies or do not resist at all. These effects are usually produced without shooting the gun or wounding a criminal -  only 24 per cent of gun defenders even fired the gun (including warning shots), only l6 per cent tried to shoot the perpetrator, and at most 8 per cent wounded the offender (evidence summarized in Kleck and Kates 2001, Chapter 7).”

“There is also evidence indicating that some criminals may be deterred from making some criminal attempts in the first place by the prospect of victim gun use against them. Criminals interviewed in prison indicate that they have refrained from committing crimes because they believed a potential victim might have a gun, and crime rates have dropped substantially after highly publicized instances of prospective victims arming themselves or being trained in gun use, or victims using guns against criminals. (research summarized in Kleck and Kates 2001, Chapter 7).”

Information I had not even considered, “that when criminal aggressors possess guns in a crime incident, they are substantially less likely to attack and injure their victims in the first place. At least nineteen studies have found that offenders possessing guns are less likely to injure their victims than offenders with other weapons or no weapons. The explanation appears to be that possession of a lethal weapon enables aggressors to intimidate victims without actually attacking them, in crimes where the offender’s goal is not to kill the victim.” Kleck 2011

Many gun control proponents state that having stricter gun control laws that restrict who can purchase guns will prevent criminals from obtaining guns.  Studies show that most criminals do not obtain their guns from a conventional retail dealer of guns. 

Eight four percent, of 943 felon handgun owners surveyed,
did not purchase the gun from a conventional retailer.

Another question that has surfaced is: why do people focus more on gun injury related deaths? Why guns when more people have died from poisoning and motor vehicle accidents individually and followed closely by falls? There are restrictions on some types of poisons, but that didn’t prevent 41,592 deaths by poison in 2009. There are even less restrictions on motor vehicles which caused 34,485 deaths in 2009.Both of these cause more deaths than guns. All of these can be used by in the commission of murder.

According to: National Vital Statistics Reports Volume 60, Number 3 December 29, 2011Deaths: Final Data for 2009 (Table 18) in 2009, a total of 177,154 deaths were classified as injury related Four major mechanisms of injury in 2009— poisoning, motor-vehicle traffic, firearm, and fall— accounted for 75.1 percent of all injury deaths.

Mechanism	Number of Deaths 2009	Percentage
Poisoning	41,592	23.5%
Motor-vehicle traffic	34,485	19.5%
Firearm	31,347	17.7 %
Fall	25,562	14.4 %

If you want to see more statistics, you can check out the Explore the Wallstreet Journal's interactive murder database of killings committed in the U.S. from 2000 to 2010 (h/t Adam Baldwin) where can limit your search by criteria.  For example: There were 28 drowning murders in 2009.   I'm not sure how accurate the interactive database is, the database  does not include Florida.  The CDC's 2009 vital statistics report, Table 18, says 41 drowning murders in 2009. If the interactive database is correct, 13 occurred in Florida.  That seems a little high to me, but it's possible. Still the interactive database lets you get a feel for the numbers and gives you the ability to compare different categories.

Why then are guns singled out as needing restriction or banned? Could it be, perhaps, a matter of politics? Though there are gun proponents and gun control advocates on both ends of the political spectrum, it seems as though it is mostly the liberals and progressives that want gun control and the conservatives and moderates that defend the second Amendment right to bear arms. That this topic has become entrenched in people’s political belief system, it is difficult, but not impossible, for people’s minds to be changed on the topic of gun control.

Research shows that gun control will not help prevent gun related crimes, nor will it prevent people from obtaining guns. In fact, stricter gun control would cause an increase in crime, increase gun related crime, and victim injury/death.

In response to the question:  What is the defense of those that would try to discredit this study?

Dr. Kleck responded: "I have thoroughly rebutted all of the criticisms of my and others' survey estimates of the frequency of defensive gun use in one convenient source, a chapter in the 2001 book Armed, by Gary Kleck and Don B. Kates."

Dr. Kleck stands by the data in the study. 

Thank you Dr. Kleck!

REFERENCES

Kleck, Gary. 1997. Targeting Guns: Firearms and their Control. N.Y.: Aldine de Gruyter.

Kleck, Gary, and Marc Gertz. 1995. “Armed resistance to crime: the prevalence and nature of self-defense with a gun.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 86:150-187.

Kleck, Gary, and Don B. Kates.  2001.  Armed: New Perspectives on Gun Control.  Buffalo, NY: Prometheus.

America Needs to Return to the Basics

Common sense dictates that the founding fathers were intelligent men who knew what they were doing; after all they created the greatest nation on earth. They set up the government in a very sensible way. It is, therefore, senseless to stray from the path they put us on, yet this is what has happened. Our nation no longer resembles the nation that was started by our founding fathers. It is not the nation we once knew. To repair the damage that has been done, we need to go back to the basics found in the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Bill of Rights. 

Our founding fathers stated in the The Declaration of Independence, "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," rights that are given by God and cannot be altered by law (versus inalienable rights which are subject to be changed by the laws of man) "that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This is frequently misinterpreted to mean everyone has the right to be happy. “Pursuit” is in there for a reason, everyone has the right to “pursue happiness” this does not meant that everyone guaranteed happiness.  The government is not responsible for your happiness.

The Preamble to the Constitution and article I, section 8 states "promote" (not provide) "the general Welfare." "Welfare" meaning "Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government" (Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 and is the same definition as when the Constitution was ratified). It does not mean that the government must provide everything for the people as supported by James Madison in Federalist Papers #41: "It has been urged and echoed, that… provide for the common defense or general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction."

Amendment I tells us "congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." This means national religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; The federal government should not be involved in religion, They cannot tell religious institutions what they can do or what services they provide and Congress will "make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion." Religious organizations are free to practice their religion as they see fit.

Amendment II says that "A well regulated Militia," meaning organized armed forces, "to the security of a free State," to protect one’s home, and one’s local area, and country "the right of the people," the individual, "to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed by the Government." Government cannot prevent individuals from owning arms (guns).

An outline of the responsibilities of each branch, legislative, judicial and executive is found in Articles I-III of the Constitution. No branch, including the executive branch (President) is more important than the other. Each branch has a purpose and a job to do and each is equally important. It is for each branch to fulfill its own duties. It is not the place of one branch to fulfill the job of the other or to take on the jobs of the states. The rest falls, as relayed in Amendment X, to the states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people" as clarified by Madison in Federalist Papers #14 and Federalist Papers #39 "...is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects…leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects." 

The federal government has taken over too much, pays for far too many programs that should be left to the state and local governments and to the people. Communities, should they choose to have these types of programs, would have to raise the money and provide the programs, thus taking the burden off the federal government. I guarantee they would also find a way to help the people become more self-sufficient. This would help everyone, including the federal government and their ever increasing debt problem. It is unlikely that the government would pay off the unimaginable debt it has incurred, at least not in my lifetime. Following the Constitution, as was intended, would, put the nation back on the right path.