Infected Related Quotes

Escherichia colia O157:H7 is a relatively new strain of the common intestinal bacteria (no one had seen it before 1980) that thrives in feedlot cattle, 40 percent of which carry it in their gut. Ingesting as few as ten of these microbes can cause a fatal infection; they produce a toxin that destroys human kidneys.

Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of "good" and "evil" as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending on circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of hundreds of thousands, could be good or could be bad. It all depends on class ideology. And who defines this ideology? The whole class cannot get together to pass judgment. A handful of people determine what is good and what is bad. But I must say that in this respect Communism has been most successful. It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil. Today, many people apart from the Communists are carried away by this idea.

The biggest guns and the heaviest industry with its relatively high living standard are not enough to check the psychic infection spread by religious fanaticism.

...The CDC has also said that it’s virtually impossible to tell a murder victim killed by a shot to the head or spinal column from an infected individual put down legally in the same fashion. What is your answer to critics of the relaxed gun control laws who hold that gun-related violence has actually increased, but has been masked by the postmortem amplification of the Kellis-Amberlee virus?

You think of love as dizzy electricity. You think if you aren't in this heightened state, that the relationship is failing. This is a lie, an infection you contracted from popular music and fantasy reels, that doomed all your short romances in the academy, like with poor Sri. The bonded support you and Kodiak feel for each other isn't about skin skin skin, though it's related to that. It isn't the heat of his body against yours at the bottom of the water tank. Instead, it's the fact that you two are together at the bottom of the water tank.

That substance was a paralytic poison called saxitoxin that can be extracted from infected shellfish. It is related to the algae that cause red tide and other waterborne infections. In a highly concentrated dose, like the one compounded at Fort Detrick, it can kill within seconds.

Yes, yes, it ended in my corrupting them all! How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood. Oh, at first perhaps it began innocently, with a jest, coquetry, with amorous play, perhaps indeed with a germ, but that germ of falsity made its way into their hearts and pleased them. Then sensuality was soon begotten, sensuality begot jealousy, jealousy—cruelty . . . Oh, I don't know, I don't remember; but soon, very soon the first blood was shed. They marvelled and were horrified, and began to be split up and divided. They formed into unions, but it was against one another. Reproaches, upbraidings followed. They came to know shame, and shame brought them to virtue. The conception of honour sprang up, and every union began waving its flags. They began torturing animals, and the animals withdrew from them into the forests and became hostile to them. They began to struggle for separation, for isolation, for individuality, for mine and thine. They began to talk in different languages. They became acquainted with sorrow and loved sorrow; they thirsted for suffering, and said that truth could only be attained through suffering. Then science appeared. As they became wicked they began talking of brotherhood and humanitarianism, and understood those ideas. As they became criminal, they invented justice and drew up whole legal codes in order to observe it, and to ensure their being kept, set up a guillotine. They hardly remembered what they had lost, in fact refused to believe that they had ever been happy and innocent. They even laughed at the possibility o this happiness in the past, and called it a dream. They could not even imagine it in definite form and shape, but, strange and wonderful to relate, though they lost all faith in their past happiness and called it a legend, they so longed to be happy and innocent once more that they succumbed to this desire like children, made an idol of it, set up temples and worshipped their own idea, their own desire; though at the same time they fully believed that it was unattainable and could not be realised, yet they bowed down to it and adored it with tears! Nevertheless, if it could have happened that they had returned to the innocent and happy condition which they had lost, and if someone had shown it to them again and had asked them whether they wanted to go back to it, they would certainly have refused. They answered me: "We may be deceitful, wicked and unjust, we know it and weep over it, we grieve over it; we torment and punish ourselves more perhaps than that merciful Judge Who will judge us and whose Name we know not. But we have science, and by the means of it we shall find the truth and we shall arrive at it consciously. Knowledge is higher than feeling, the consciousness of life is higher than life. Science will give us wisdom, wisdom will reveal the laws, and the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness.

Activist organizations have managed to infect much of the information that is available relating to both gender and biological sex. Any research studies that are not in agreement with this agenda are ignored as though they never existed. Whether it’s health websites, research publications, or media articles, it really is a jungle out there. If what you are looking for is basic, foundational information, anything older than ten years old is probably safe. Anything published in the last few years is questionable.

Guilt cannot, in fact, express itself, except in the indirect language of "captivity" and "infection," inherited from the two prior stages. Thus both symbols are transposed "inward" to express a freedom that enslaves itself, affects itself, and infects itself by its own choice. Conversely, the symbolic and non-literal character of the captivity of sin and the infection of defilement becomes quite clear when these symbols are used to denote a dimension of freedom itself; then and only then do we know that they are symbols, when they reveal a situation that is centered in the relation of oneself to oneself. Why this recourse to the prior symbolism? Because the paradox of a captive free will - the paradox of a servile will - is insupportable for thought. That freedom must be delivered and that this deliverance is deliverance from self-enslavement cannot be said directly; yet it is the central theme of "salvation

The 2003 flu season started early in North America, with the first cases showing up in the fall. By Thanksgiving doctors were seeing the usual flu-related pneumonias. As always, the most severe cases resulted from secondary bacterial infections in flu-congested lungs.

For some reason there is a tendency to assume that one wild animal is a suitable model for another related species, whereas similar evidence would not be acceptable in human or veterinary medicine. For example, Shulaw etal. (1986) developed a serologic test to detect antibodies to Mycobacterium aviumssp. paratuberculosisin white-tailed deer, but determined the validity of the test “in deer” by using samples from infected sika and fallow deer. It is doubtful that a test developed to detect disease in humans would be accepted for use in public health circles, if its validity had been established by using squirrel monkeys and baboons!

From the ecological point of view an outbreak can be defined as an explosive increase in the abundance of a particular species that occurs over a relatively short period of time.” Then, in the same bland tone, he noted: “From this perspective, the most serious outbreak on the planet earth is that of the species Homo sapiens.

The mind is more comfortable in reckoning probabilities in terms of the relative frequency of remembered or imagined events. That can make recent and memorable events - a plane crash, a shark attack, an anthrax infection - loom larger on one's worry list than more frequent and boring events, such as the car crashes and ladder falls that get printed beneath the fold on page B14. And it can lead risk experts to speak one language and ordinary people to hear another. In hearings for a proposed nuclear waste site, an expert might present a fault tree that lays out the conceivable sequences of events by which radioactivity might escape. For example, erosion, cracks in the bedrock, accidental drilling, or improper sealing might cause the release of radioactivity into groundwater. In turn, groundwater movement, volcanic activity, or an impact of a large meteorite might cause the release of radioactive wastes into the biosphere. Each train of events can be assigned a probability, and the aggregate probability of an accident from all the causes can be estimated. When people hear these analyses, however, the are not reassured but become more fearful than ever. They hadn't realized there are so many ways for something to go wrong! They mentally tabulate the number of disaster scenarios, rather than mentally aggregating the probabilities of the disaster scenarios.

Now it happens that both master and man have just enough argument on their respective sides to make it difficult for them to understand each other. The Negro dimly personifies in the white man all his ills and misfortunes; if he is poor, it is because the white man seizes the fruit of his toil; if he is ignorant, it is because the white man gives him neither time nor facilities to learn; and, indeed, if any misfortune happens to him, it is because of some hidden machinations of "white folks." On the other hand, the masters and the masters' sons have never been able to see why the Negro, instead of settling down to be day-laborers for bread and clothes, are infected with a silly desire to rise in the world, and why they are sulky, dissatisfied, and careless, where their fathers were happy and dumb and faithful.

when we spend time with toxic people, difficult people, narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths, and/or assholes. it is not good for us. It erodes our self-esteem, infects us with self-doubt, increases the likelihood of stress-related illnesses, and makes us less efficient, because we spend our time walking on eggshells and trying to protect ourselves against their careless, mindless, and sometimes downright cruel words, actions, and manipulations.

There really isn't a good way to tell a relative stranger that you think dead people are trying to tell you something. It's personal information. It's like telling someone you just met that you have a yeast infection. It might be true, but it's not the kind of thing people want to know about you. Plus, you know that every time they see you after that it will be the first thing they think about: There she is, the girl with the yeast infection/ghost problem.

The desire to possess is marked by an unceasingly growing, voracious element that manifests itself in the simple desire to have more, but also in the growing dependency on consumerist habits that people do not want to give up. The ego loses its benign distance from things to be used and is ruled by the urge to possess them. This rapidly infects other aspects of life. Like objects that one wants to have available, partners, relatives, and friends come to he seen as having to he possessed.

If you’re a fly, you keep flying and being a nuisance. If you lived in Linares at that time, you could never stop going out to the fields or ranches to tend to your crops or animals. You might close the store for a few days because of the initial shock, but you would open it again because, even if your relatives were sick or dead, your needs and the needs of others—those who sold to you and those who bought from you—persisted. If you lived at that time, you could not avoid having to go out to buy food, and not a day could pass without washing diapers or underpants, even if you sent your mother to the cemetery two hours earlier. In the midst of this crisis, you had tooth decay, infected toenails, and stomach upsets—slight or severe—that you put up with for a while before having to seek help from a doctor, if you could find one. Others went out to sell goat milk, or whistles, yo-yos, and spinning tops in the square, in the hope that there were still children alive to buy them.

decadence that infected Florence during its period of relative peace, when Leonardo was a young artist there: “The youth having become more dissolute than before, more extravagant in dress, feasting, and other licentiousness, and being without employment, wasted their time and means on gaming and women; their principal study being how to appear splendid in apparel, and attain a crafty shrewdness in discourse. These manners derived additional encouragement from the followers of the duke of Milan, who,

Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses. For excellent reasons related to Darwinian survival, child brains need to trust parents, and elders whom parents tell them to trust. An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot know that ‘Don’t paddle in the crocodile-infested Limpopo’ is good advice but ‘You must sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, otherwise the rains will fail’ is at best a waste of time and goats. Both admonitions sound equally trustworthy. Both come from a respected source and are delivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands obedience. The same goes for propositions about the world, about the cosmos, about morality and about human nature.

To take the simplest example: a boy, having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter; and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, describes himself, his condition before the encounter, the surroundings, the wood, his own light-heartedness, and then the wolf's appearance, its movements, the distance between himself and the wolf, etc. All this, if only the boy, when telling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived through and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what the narrator had experienced, is art.

You’re just living a normal life — never been sick, never been unhealthy, and all of a sudden you are fighting for your life. And this is happening to individuals every day,” Thomas said. The infection went to her blood stream and bone marrow and caused septic shock and organ failure. After undergoing multiple surgeries including a bone-marrow transplant and a “never-ending cycle of antibiotics,” she survived the ordeal.1​➔​ Thomas survived relatively intact. Some don’t, losing limbs in a desperate bid to stop the infection from spreading and then living permanently debilitated lives. Others aren’t even that “lucky.” Denis

The media squabble over Shchepotin’s final day at the Cancer Institute, and the doubts it raised over the motivation of all concerned, were appropriate, because the most corrosive aspect of corruption is the way that it undermines trust. When corruption is widespread, it becomes impossible to know whom to believe, since the money infects every aspect of state and society. Every newspaper article can be criticized as paid for, every politician can be called corrupt, every court decision can be called into question. Charities are set up by oligarchs to lobby for their interests, and those then provoke doubts about every other non-governmental organization. If even doctors are on the take, can you trust their diagnoses? Are they claiming a patient needs treatment only because that would be to their profit? If policemen are crooked, and courts are paid for, are criminals really criminals? Or are they honest people who interfered in criminals’ business? Not knowing whom to believe, you retreat into trusting only those closest to you—your oldest friends, and your relatives—and that reinforces the divisions in society that corruption thrives on. It is impossible to build a thriving economy, or a healthy democracy, without a society whose members fundamentally trust each other. If you take that away, you are left with something far darker and more mercenary.

Entomophthora fungus carries around a type of virus that infects insects, not fungi. The lead author of the study reported it to be “one of the whackiest discoveries” of his time in science. What’s whacky is the implication: that the fungus uses the virus to manipulate the mind of insects. It’s still a hypothesis, but it’s plausible. A number of related viruses specialize in modifying insect behavior. One such virus is injected by parasitic wasps into ladybirds, which tremble, remain rooted to the spot, and become guardians for the wasp’s eggs. Another similar virus makes honeybees more aggressive. By harnessing a mind-manipulating virus, the fungus wouldn’t have to evolve the ability to modify the mind of its insect host.

These statues have a complex history. They were not erected to honor the Confederate dead following the war or even at the end of Reconstruction. Most appeared in the early 1920s to send a message that the race-relation liberalization that happened between 1880 and 1900 would not return. The progress and normalcy would be replaced by a racist/statist/“progressive” movement rallying around new eugenic laws, zoning, white supremacy, forced exclusion, state segregation and so on—policies supported not by the people but by white elites infected with demographic fear and pseudo-science. This is when a movement started putting up these statues, not to honor history but as a symbol of intimidation and state control of association.

A few scrapes, my ass,” she muttered, wringing her shaking hands. Constance shoved a bulb of garlic at her. “They’re Highlanders, dear. They’ll get themselves stabbed, dragged through a briar patch, thrown over a cliff, and punched in the face all before breakfast and call it ‘a fair interesting morn’.’ Now, peel those and put the cloves in the hot water.” The older woman nodded toward the steaming kettle a maid had deposited on the hearth. “Garlic water cleans wounds better than plain water and keeps infection away.” She latched onto the competence Constance radiated. While calming her with brisk assurances that all would be well, the older woman deftly deployed a small army of castle servants on various missions relating to “doctoring a bone-headed Highland husband.

Imagine that you could visit a planet where everyone has a different kind of emotional mind. The way they relate to each other is always in happiness, always in love, always in peace. Now imagine that one day you awake on this planet, and you no longer have wounds in your emotional body. You are no longer afraid to be who you are. Whatever someone says about you, whatever they do, you don’t take it personally, and it doesn’t hurt anymore. You no longer need to protect yourself. You are not afraid to love, to share, to open your heart. But no one else is like you. How can you relate with people who are emotionally wounded and sick with fear? When a human is born, the emotional mind, the emotional body, is completely healthy. Maybe around three or four years of age, the first wounds in the emotional body start to appear and get infected with emotional poison. But if you observe children who are two or three years old, if you see how they behave, they are playing all the time. You see them laughing all the time. Their imagination is so powerful, and the way they dream is an adventure of exploration. When something is wrong they react and defend themselves, but then they just let go and turn their attention to the moment again, to play again, to explore and have fun again. They are living in the moment. They are not ashamed of the past; they are not worried about the future. Little children express what they feel, and they are not afraid to love. The happiest moments in our lives are when we are playing just like children, when we are singing and dancing, when we are exploring and creating just for fun. It is wonderful when we behave like a child because this is the normal human mind, the normal human tendency. As children, we are innocent and it is natural for us to express love.

Thus every individual category is subject to contamination, substitution is possible between any sphere and any other: there is a total confusion of types. Sex is no longer located in sex itself, but elsewhere - everywhere else, in fact. Politics is no longer restricted to the political sphere, but infects every sphere economics, science, art, sport ... Sport itself, meanwhile, is no longer located in sport as such, but instead in business, in sex, in politics, in the general style of performance. All these domains are affected by sport's criteria of 'excellence', effort and record-breaking, as by its childish notion of self-transcendence. Each category thus passes through a phase transition during which its essence is diluted in homeopathic doses, infinitesimal relative to the total solution, until it finally disappears, leaving a trace so small as to be indiscernible, like the 'memory of water' .

If you can imagine this, perhaps you can understand that someone from another planet who came to visit us would have a similar experience with humans. But it isn’t our skin that is full of wounds. What the visitor would discover is that the human mind is sick with a disease called fear. Just like the description of the infected skin, the emotional body is full of wounds, and these wounds are infected with emotional poison. The manifestation of the disease of fear is anger, hate, sadness, envy, and hypocrisy; the result of the disease is all the emotions that make humans suffer. All humans are mentally sick with the same disease. We can even say that this world is a mental hospital. But this mental disease has been in this world for thousands of years, and the medical books, the psychiatric books, and the psychology books describe the disease as normal. They consider it normal, but I can tell you it is not normal. When the fear becomes too great, the reasoning mind starts to fail and can no longer take all those wounds with all the poison. In the psychology books we call this a mental illness. We call it schizophrenia, paranoia, psychosis, but these diseases are created when the reasoning mind is so frightened and the wounds so painful, that it becomes better to break contact with the outside world. Humans live in continuous fear of being hurt, and this creates a big drama wherever we go. The way humans relate to each other is so emotionally painful that for no apparent reason we get angry, jealous, envious, sad. To even say “I love you” can be frightening. But even if it’s painful and fearful to have an emotional interaction, still we keep going, we enter into a relationship, we get married, and we have children. In order to protect our emotional wounds, and because of our fear of being hurt, humans create something very sophisticated in the mind: a big denial system. In that denial system we become the perfect liars. We lie so perfectly that we lie to ourselves and we even believe our own lies. We don’t notice we are lying, and sometimes even when we know we are lying, we justify the lie and excuse the lie to protect ourselves from the pain of our wounds.

I want you to imagine that you live on a planet where everyone has a skin disease. For two or three thousand years, the people on your planet have suffered the same disease: Their entire bodies are covered by wounds that are infected, and those wounds really hurt when you touch them. Of course, they believe this is a normal physiology of the skin. Even the medical books describe this disease as a normal condition. When the people are born, their skin is healthy, but around three or four years of age, the first wounds start to appear. By the time they are teenagers, there are wounds all over their bodies. Can you imagine how these people are going to treat each other? In order to relate with one another, they have to protect their wounds. They hardly ever touch each other’s skin because it is too painful. If by accident you touch someone’s skin, it is so painful that right away she gets angry and touches your skin, just to get even. Still, the instinct to love is so strong that you pay a high price to have relationships with others. Well, imagine that a miracle occurs one day. You awake and your skin is completely healed. There are no wounds anymore, and it doesn’t hurt to be touched. Healthy skin you can touch feels wonderful because the skin is made for perception. Can you imagine yourself with healthy skin in a world where everyone has a skin disease? You cannot touch others because it hurts them, and no one touches you because they make the assumption that it will hurt you.

329 Leisure and Idleness. - There is an Indian savagery, a savagery peculiar to the Indian blood, in the manner in which the Americans strive after gold: and the breathless hurry of their work- the characteristic vice of the New World-already begins to infect old Europe, and makes it savage also, spreading over it a strange lack of intellectuality. One is now ashamed of repose: even long reflection almost causes remorse of conscience. Thinking is done with a stop-watch, as dining is done with the eyes fixed on the financial newspaper; we live like men who are continually " afraid of letting opportunities slip." " Better do anything whatever, than nothing "-this principle also is a noose with which all culture and all higher taste may be strangled. And just as all form obviously disappears in this hurry of workers, so the sense for form itself, the ear and the eye for the melody of movement, also disappear. The proof of this is the clumsy perspicuity which is now everywhere demanded in all positions where a person would like to be sincere with his fellows, in intercourse with friends, women, relatives, children, teachers, pupils, leaders and princes,-one has no longer either time or energy for ceremonies, for roundabout courtesies, for any esprit in conversation, or for any otium whatever. For life in the hunt for gain continually compels a person to consume his intellect, even to exhaustion, in constant dissimulation, overreaching, or forestalling: the real virtue nowadays is to do something in a shorter time than another person. And so there are only rare hours of sincere intercourse permitted: in them, however, people are tired, and would not only like " to let themselves go," but to stretch their legs out wide in awkward style. The way people write their letters nowadays is quite in keeping with the age; their style and spirit will always be the true " sign of the times." If there be still enjoyment in society and in art, it is enjoyment such as over-worked slaves provide for themselves. Oh, this moderation in "joy" of our cultured and uncultured classes! Oh, this increasing suspiciousness of all enjoyment! Work is winning over more and more the good conscience to its side: the desire for enjoyment already calls itself " need of recreation," and even begins to be ashamed of itself. " One owes it to one's health," people say, when they are caught at a picnic. Indeed, it might soon go so far that one could not yield to the desire for the vita contemplativa (that is to say, excursions with thoughts and friends), without self-contempt and a bad conscience.-Well! Formerly it was the very reverse: it was "action" that suffered from a bad conscience. A man of good family concealed his work when need compelled him to labour. The slave laboured under the weight of the feeling that he did something contemptible :- the "doing" itself was something contemptible. "Only in otium and bellum is there nobility and honour:" so rang the voice of ancient prejudice !

She went on speaking, and he did not interrupt her, but gathered up, with an eager and sorrowful piety, the words that fell from her lips, feeling (and rightly feeling, since she was hiding the truth behind them as she spoke) that, like the sacred veil, they retained a vague imprint, traced a faint outline, of that infinitely precious and, alas, undiscoverable reality—what she had been doing that afternoon at three o'clock when he had called—of which he would never possess any more than these falsifications, illegible and divine traces, and which would exist henceforward only in the secretive memory of this woman who could contemplate it in utter ignorance of its value but would never yield it up to him. Of course it occurred to him from time to time that Odette's daily activities were not in themselves passionately interesting, and that such relations as she might have with other men did not exhale naturally, universally and for every rational being a spirit of morbid gloom capable of infecting with fever or of inciting to suicide. He realised at such moments that that interest, that gloom, existed in him alone, like a disease, and that once he was cured of this disease, the actions of Odette, the kisses that she might have bestowed, would become once again as innocuous as those of countless other women. But the consciousness that the painful curiosity which he now brought to them had its origin only in himself was not enough to make Swann decide that it was unreasonable to regard that curiosity as important and to take every possible step to satisfy it.

TOTALITARIANISM: People are interested in ants because they think they have managed to create a successful totalitarian system. Certainly, the impression we get from the outside is that everyone in the anthill works, everyone is obedient, everyone is ready to sacrifice themselves and everyone is the same. And for the time being, all human totalitarian systems have failed. That is why we thought of copying social insects (like Napoleon, whose emblem was the bee). The pheromones that flood the anthill with global information have an equivalent in the planetary television of today. There is a widespread belief that if the best is made available to all, one day we will end up with a perfect human race. That is not the way of things. Nature, with all due respect to Mr Darwin, does not evolve in the direction of the supremacy of the best (according to which criteria, anyway?). Nature draws its strength from diversity. It needs all kinds of people, good, bad, mad, desperate, sporty, bed-ridden, hunchbacked, hare-lipped, happy, sad, intelligent, stupid, selfish, generous, small, tall, black, yellow, red and white. It needs all religions, philosophies, fanaticisms and wisdom. The only danger is that any one species may be eliminated by another. In the past, fields of maize artificially designed by men and made up of clones of the best heads (the ones that need least water, are most frost-resistant or produce the best grains) have suddenly succumbed to trivial infections while fields of wild maize made up of several different strains, each with its own peculiar strengths and weaknesses, have always managed to survive epidemics. Nature hates uniformity and loves diversity. It is in this perhaps that its essential genius lies. Edmond Wells Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute Knowledge

Astrophage has a predator!” There’s a whole biosphere at Adrian. Not just Astrophage. There’s even an active biosphere within the Petrova line. This is where it all started. Has to be. How else can we explain countless extremely different life-forms that all evolved to migrate in space? They all came from the same genetic root. Astrophage was just one of many, many life-forms that evolved here. And with all life, there is variance and predation. Adrian isn’t just some planet that Astrophage infected. It’s the Astrophage homeworld! And it’s the home of Astrophage’s predators. “This is amazing!” I yell. “If we find a predator…” “We take home!” Rocky says, two octaves higher than normal. “It eat Astrophage, breed, eat more Astrophage, breed, eat more more more! Stars saved!” “Yes!” I press my knuckles against the tunnel wall. “Fist-bump!” “What, question?” I rap the tunnel again. “This. Do this.” He emulates my gesture against the wall opposite my hand. “Celebration!” I say. “Celebration!” The crew of the Hail Mary sat on the couch in the break room, each with their drink of choice. Commander Yáo had a German beer, Engineer Ilyukhina had a distressingly large tumbler of vodka, and Science Specialist DuBois had a glass of 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon that he had poured ten minutes in advance to ensure it had time to breathe. The break room itself had been a struggle to arrange. Stratt didn’t like anything that wasn’t directly related to the mission, and an aircraft carrier wasn’t exactly overflowing with extra space. Still, with more than a hundred scientists from all over the world demanding a place to relax, she had relented. A small room in the corner of the hangar deck was built to house the “extravagance.” Dozens of people crowded into the room and watched the TV feed on the wall-mounted monitor. By silent agreement, the crew got to sit on the couch.

It may seem paradoxical to claim that stress, a physiological mechanism vital to life, is a cause of illness. To resolve this apparent contradiction, we must differentiate between acute stress and chronic stress. Acute stress is the immediate, short-term body response to threat. Chronic stress is activation of the stress mechanisms over long periods of time when a person is exposed to stressors that cannot be escaped either because she does not recognize them or because she has no control over them. Discharges of nervous system, hormonal output and immune changes constitute the flight-or-fight reactions that help us survive immediate danger. These biological responses are adaptive in the emergencies for which nature designed them. But the same stress responses, triggered chronically and without resolution, produce harm and even permanent damage. Chronically high cortisol levels destroy tissue. Chronically elevated adrenalin levels raise the blood pressure and damage the heart. There is extensive documentation of the inhibiting effect of chronic stress on the immune system. In one study, the activity of immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells were compared in two groups: spousal caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease, and age- and health-matched controls. NK cells are front-line troops in the fight against infections and against cancer, having the capacity to attack invading micro-organisms and to destroy cells with malignant mutations. The NK cell functioning of the caregivers was significantly suppressed, even in those whose spouses had died as long as three years previously. The caregivers who reported lower levels of social support also showed the greatest depression in immune activity — just as the loneliest medical students had the most impaired immune systems under the stress of examinations. Another study of caregivers assessed the efficacy of immunization against influenza. In this study 80 per cent among the non-stressed control group developed immunity against the virus, but only 20 per cent of the Alzheimer caregivers were able to do so. The stress of unremitting caregiving inhibited the immune system and left people susceptible to influenza. Research has also shown stress-related delays in tissue repair. The wounds of Alzheimer caregivers took an average of nine days longer to heal than those of controls. Higher levels of stress cause higher cortisol output via the HPA axis, and cortisol inhibits the activity of the inflammatory cells involved in wound healing. Dental students had a wound deliberately inflicted on their hard palates while they were facing immunology exams and again during vacation. In all of them the wound healed more quickly in the summer. Under stress, their white blood cells produced less of a substance essential to healing. The oft-observed relationship between stress, impaired immunity and illness has given rise to the concept of “diseases of adaptation,” a phrase of Hans Selye’s. The flight-or-fight response, it is argued, was indispensable in an era when early human beings had to confront a natural world of predators and other dangers. In civilized society, however, the flight-fight reaction is triggered in situations where it is neither necessary nor helpful, since we no longer face the same mortal threats to existence. The body’s physiological stress mechanisms are often triggered inappropriately, leading to disease. There is another way to look at it. The flight-or-fight alarm reaction exists today for the same purpose evolution originally assigned to it: to enable us to survive. What has happened is that we have lost touch with the gut feelings designed to be our warning system. The body mounts a stress response, but the mind is unaware of the threat. We keep ourselves in physiologically stressful situations, with only a dim awareness of distress or no awareness at all.

When one has not known anything but becomes infected with the ‘disease of knowing’; he is a grave diseased person. What is the result of knowing? One stops playing with the ‘tops’ [living as the relative-self] and starts playing with the Self [lives in the realm of the Self, The Soul]. The diseased one simply does the ego of knowing.

Self-centeredness—that toxic residue from the fall—spills beyond the boundaries of Eden to infect us all. What can we expect, then, when two fallen persons enter into the intense closeness of marriage? Preference collides with counter-preference; desire with desire; ego with ego. Habit, routine, style, taste—even relatively neutral qualities such as these—find their sovereignty challenged when one person enters a relationship with another. Marital conflict comes not because two fallen persons have come together, but because the fallenness has come between them. Allies become enemies. If either husband or wife forgets their common origin and ailment, and is not pursuing personal repentance, each is more likely to see the tother as the enemy. Their common enemy—the devil and his elixir of self-centeredness—is forgotten as they turn against each other. The wild optimism with which they began their union gradually devolves into a gloomy posture of self-preservation.

By April 23, 2014, thirty-four cases and six deaths from Ebola in Liberia were recorded. By mid-June, 16 more people died. At the time it was thought to be malaria but when seven more people died the following month tests showed that was the Ebola virus. The primary reason for the spreading of the Ebola virus was the direct contact from one person to the next and the ingesting of bush meat. Soon doctors and nurses also became infected. On July 2, 2014, the head surgeon of Redemption Hospital was treated at the JFK Medical Center in Monrovia, where he died from the disease. His death was followed by four nurses at Phebe Hospital in Bong County. At about the same time two U.S. health care workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and a nurse were also infected with the disease. However, they were medically evacuated from Liberia to the United States for treatment where they made a full recovery. Another doctor from Uganda was not so lucky and died from the disease. Arik Air suspended all flights between Nigeria and Liberia and checkpoints were set up at all the ports and border crossings. In August of 2014, the impoverished slum area of West Point was cordoned off. Riots ensued as protesters turned violent. The looting of a clinic of its supplies, including blood-stained bed sheets and mattresses caused the military to shoot into the crowds. Still more patients became infected, causing a shortage of staff and logistics. By September there had been a total of 3,458 cases of which there were 1,830 deaths according to the World Health Organization. Hospitals and clinics could no longer handle this crisis and patients who were treated outside died before they could get help. There were cases where the bodies were just dumped into the Mesurado River. The Ivory Coast out of compassion, opened carefully restricted humanitarian routes and resumed the previously suspended flights to Liberia. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the president of Libera sent a letter to President Barack Obama concerning the outbreak of Ebola that was on the verge of overrunning her country. The message was desperate, “I am being honest with you when I say that at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us.” Having been a former finance minister and World Bank official, Johnson Sirleaf was not one for histrionics however she recognized the pandemic as extremely dangerous. The United States responded to her request and American troops came in and opened a new 60-bed clinic in the Sierra Leone town of Kenema, but by then the outbreak was described as being out of control. Still not understanding the dangerous contagious aspects of this epidemic at least eight Liberian soldiers died after contracting the disease from a single female camp follower. In spite of being a relatively poor country, Cuba is one of the most committed in deploying doctors to crisis zones. It sent more than 460 Cuban doctors and nurses to West Africa. In October Germany sent medical supplies and later that month a hundred additional U.S. troops arrived in Liberia, bringing the total to 565 to assist in the fight against the deadly disease. To understand the severity of the disease, a supply order was placed on October 15th for a 6 month supply of 80,000 body bags and 1 million protective suits. At that time it was reported that 223 health care workers had been infected with Ebola, and 103 of them had died in Liberia. Fear of the disease also slowed down the functioning of the Liberian government. President Sirleaf, had in an emergency announcement informed absent government ministers and civil service leaders to return to their duties. She fired 10 government officials, including deputy ministers in the central government who failed to return to work.

The collapse of startups should be no surprise. Ever since antitrust enforcement was changed under Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, small was bad and big was considered beautiful. Murray Weidenbaum, the first chair of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors, argued that economic growth, not competition, should be policymakers' primary goal. In his words, “It is not the small businesses that created the jobs,' he concluded, ‘but the economic growth.” And small businesses were sacrificed for the sake of bigger businesses.34 Ryan Decker, an economist at the Federal Reserve, found that the decline is even infecting the high technology sector. Americans look at startups over the years like PayPal and Uber and conclude the tech scene is thriving, but Decker points out that in the post-2000 period, we have seen a decline even in areas of great innovation like technology. Over the past 15 years, there are not only fewer technology startups, but these young firms are slower growing than they were before. Given the importance of technology to growth and productivity, his findings should be extremely troubling. The decline in firm entries is a mystery to many economists, but the cause is clear: greater industrial concentration has been choking the economy, leading to fewer startups. Firms are getting bigger and older. In a comprehensive study, Professor Gustavo Grullon showed that the disappearance of small firms is directly related to increasing industrial concentration. In real terms, the average firm in the economy has become three times larger over the past 20 years. The proportion of people employed by firms with 10,000 employees or more has been growing steadily. The share started to increase in the 1990s, and has recently exceeded previous historical peaks. Grullon concluded that when you look at all the evidence, it points “to a structural change in the US labor market, where most jobs are being created by large and established firms, rather than by entrepreneurial activity.”35 The employment data of small firms supports Grullon's conclusions; from 1978 to 2011, the number of jobs created by new firms fell from 3.4% of total business employment to 2% (Figure 3.2).36

People still think the Lewinsky affair was one political party making a big deal over a little extra pie on the side; it wasn’t. What Starr proved was that the president had engaged in inappropriate sexually related workplace conduct with an intern/employee, as he had with other women. Some women, such as Juanita Broaddrick, even alleged he had assaulted them. He had zero integrity in this area, and that made everything he did suspect and untrustworthy. It revealed his real character. The president of the United States believed that he was above the law. He perjured himself and convinced others to perjure themselves to try to save his carefully crafted image. He created a spirit of corruption that infected the White House, the Secret Service, the whole government. Bill Clinton endangered us all by serving himself. He dragged me through the mud for it. He raked a lot of people over the coals for it.

Tripp somehow manipulated Monica into giving her the infamous blue dress. Nel and I hadn’t cleaned up everything. The president had “deposited” somewhere besides White House towels. The biggest security leak in history was the one that Monica wore into the White House and then strutted out with—right past us. There was no way to spin it. Either the president had mysteriously gone around the White House ejaculating on people’s clothing, or he and Monica had a taxpayer-funded affair for which he committed perjury. It also proved what I damn well knew, that Monica was easily manipulated, either by the likes of a higher-up like President Clinton or a lower-down like Linda Tripp. She had no business playing in a high-stakes environment within arm’s reach of intelligence of the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, and the Department of Defense. I mean, the spook shit that moved and was approved through the White House was the most sensitive intel in existence. Actionable intel is power. How could anyone in the Secret Service be expected to do his or her job if the Americans allowed people like the Clintons to assume national leadership? People still think the Lewinsky affair was one political party making a big deal over a little extra pie on the side; it wasn’t. What Starr proved was that the president had engaged in inappropriate sexually related workplace conduct with an intern/employee, as he had with other women. Some women, such as Juanita Broaddrick, even alleged he had assaulted them. He had zero integrity in this area, and that made everything he did suspect and untrustworthy. It revealed his real character. The president of the United States believed that he was above the law. He perjured himself and convinced others to perjure themselves to try to save his carefully crafted image. He created a spirit of corruption that infected the White House, the Secret Service, the whole government. Bill Clinton endangered us all by serving himself.

When the economy of work infects one’s early morning dreams, spills over into booze-soaked weekends and reduces almost every social relation to a cold cash exchange, workers are the first to realize that life becomes evacuated, a perpetual living absence no matter how many smiley-faces dot the cubicle.

How long have you two been married?” I asked her. “One month—today!” she answered with a little smile. “Well,” I said, “you have a bladder infection. In fact, this is a fairly common problem in newlyweds. It’s called honeymoon cystitis. It’s usually not serious. We’ll start some antibiotics tonight. You’ll need to get another urine test in a few days to be sure you’re responding to treatment.” “Why is it common in newlyweds?” she asked. “Well,” I said, “when a woman isn’t used to having sexual relations, sometimes a little infection can get into her bladder.

In spite of being a relatively poor country, Cuba is one of the most committed in deploying doctors to crisis zones. It sent more than 460 Cuban doctors and nurses to West Africa. In October, Germany sent medical supplies, and later that month a hundred additional U.S. troops arrived in Liberia, bringing the total to 565 to assist in the fight against the deadly disease. To understand the severity of the disease, a supply order was placed on October 15th for a 6-month supply of 80,000 body bags and 1 million protective suits. At that time it was reported that 223 health care workers had been infected with Ebola, and 103 of them had died in Liberia.

During COVID, one challenge with conventional contact tracing is that it’s not an especially efficient use of resources, because the virus is not transmitted at the same rate by everyone who’s infected. If you get the original COVID strain, the chances are not especially high that you’ll pass it along to someone else. (About 70 percent of those cases may not transmit to anyone else at all.) But if you do pass it along to someone else, you probably pass it along to many people. For reasons we don’t entirely understand, 80 percent of COVID infections with early variants came from just 10 percent of the cases. (These numbers could be different for the Omicron variant—as I write this, we don’t have enough data to know.) So with a virus like COVID, using the conventional approach means you’ll spend a lot of time finding people who wouldn’t have infected anyone else—epidemiologically speaking, you’ll find yourself in a lot of cul-de-sacs. What you really want to do is find the main thoroughfares, the relatively small number of people who are causing the most infections.

Droplets, being on the larger side, typically contain more virus than an aerosol, which makes them a better mechanism for transmission. On the other hand, because they’re relatively heavy, they don’t make it more than a few feet from your mouth or nose before falling to the ground. The surface that a droplet lands on becomes what’s called a fomite, and how long the fomite is able to transmit the virus depends on several factors, including the type of pathogen and whether you sneezed or coughed it out (in which case it’s more protected because it’s covered in your mucus). Studies show that even though the COVID virus may be able to survive for a few hours, or even days, it’s quite rare for people to get sick from touching a contaminated surface. In fact, even if someone does happen to touch a fomite, the chances that the person will get infected are less than 1 in 10,000.

This led them to a simple equation. There will be no math questions in the quiz at the end of this book, but I thought you might like to cast your eyes upon it. Ready? Don’t flinch, don’t worry, don’t blink: R0 = βN/(α + b + v) In English: The evolutionary success of a bug is directly related to its rate of transmission through the host population and inversely but intricately related to its lethality, the rate of recovery from it, and the normal death rate from all other causes.

This includes testing for Borrelia burgdorferi (the bacteria associated with Lyme disease) and many of the co-infections. I’ll discuss Lyme disease and the related co-infections in Chapter 10. Viruses

The word 'vaccination' comes from vacca, the Latin word for 'cow'. This is a poignant recapitulation of the history of vaccines. The first vaccine properly so called had, as its active ingredient, the cowpox virus, a close relative of smallpox that however was much less likely to cause severe, disfiguring or lethal disease. Edward Jenner observed that milkmaids, who were often exposed to cowpox, suffered a relatively mild disease, but would be immune to the much more serious smallpox. In an experiment that would unlikely pass muster in the modern world, he infected James Phipps, then an 8-year-old, with cowpox. He suffered a mild and transient illness, but when he was later exposed to scabs from a smallpox patient, he proved immune. Unlike the earlier practice of variolation, which has been practised in late Song dynasty China that sought to induce the cutaneous form of smallpox, variola minor, to protect against the more severe forms of smallpox (variola major), Jenner's vaccination used a less pathogenic virus. He relied on what would later be called 'antigenic similarity', but which was at the time hardly understood.

Endeavors focused on AIDS, though crucial, must be linked to efforts to empower poor women. The much-abused term “empower” is not meant vaguely here; empowerment is not a matter of self-esteem or even of parliamentary representation. Those choosing to make common cause with poor women must help them gain control over their own lives. Control of lives is related to control of land, systems of production, and the formal political and legal structures in which lives are enmeshed. In each of these arenas, poor people overall are already laboring at a vast disadvantage; the voices of poor women in particular are almost unheard.

The head of the Los Angeles Fraternal Order of Police told CBS Evening News, “I believe that the rap music promotes, by its very language and by its very actions—promotes violence against authority and, consequently, violence against law enforcement.” The music was “infecting young people with hate and bigotry,” editor Philip Gailey wrote in The St. Petersburg Times. “No amount of government aid to the cities will be able to repair the damage the hate rappers are doing to race relations. They are as sick as any Klansman.

Unfortunately for the Inuit (and their Paleo imitators), the rest of the story isn’t so rosy. Turns out the Inuit are not healthy at all. They suffer from many chronic diseases and live, on average, ten years less than statistically matched Canadians (Choinière 1992; Iburg, Brønnum-Hansen, et al. 2001). In fact, they have the worst longevity of all populations in North America. There are many reasons for their short life expectancy: high rate of infections and TB, as well as a high suicide rate. While these may not be diet related (although more and more evidence suggests a strong connection between diet and the ability to fight of infection, and between diet and mood), Inuit also die of cancers of the GI tract and stroke, afflictions strongly correlated to diet (Paltoo and Chu 2004). Autopsy studies show they have less heart disease, likely due to their high omega-3 and low omega-6 and low-saturated-fat diet, but they are by no means free of heart disease (McLaughlin, Middaugh, et al. 2005). And there’s a possibility that autopsy statistics showing low heart disease are unreliable, based on really poor data collection (Bjerregaard, Young, et al. 2003; Bell, Mayer-Davis, et al. 1997). In fact, one of the likely reasons for their apparent low rates of heart disease and some cancers is their short life expectancy: Inuit eating their traditional diet simply don’t live long enough to demonstrate heart disease and cancer. In fact, the Westernization of their diet—adding the very foods the Paleo movement vilifies—may actually be prolonging their lives. A recent review of the literature suggests that a diet high in seafood does not lead to less heart disease and may lead to worse health (Fodor, Helis, et al. 2014)!

Many natural infections have at least one benefit in that a bout of illness confers lifelong immunity against the causative pathogen. An ideal vaccine would also offer such lasting protection, preferably with a single dose, and perhaps even protect against related threats, such as all members of the ever evolving family of human flu viruses.

Excessive chemicals eventually inhibit your immune system (the defence against infections and illnesses) making you vulnerable to viruses of every shape and size. They will lower the production of serotonin (making you feel listless and joyless as in depression) and can eventually, if they remain virulent, cause heart disease, hardening of the arteries, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. Inadvertently stress will destroy you both mentally and physically unless you change the way you think about it and relate to it. With

In order to override Type i processing, Type 2 processing must display at least two related capabilities. One is the capability of interrupting Type 1 processing and suppressing its response tendencies. Type 2 processing thus involves inhibitory mechanisms of the type that have been the focus of recent work on executive functioning= But the ability to suppress Type 1 processing gets the job only half done. Suppressing one response is not helpful unless there is a better response available to substitute for it. Where do these better responses come from? One answer is that they come from processes of hypothetical reasoning and cognitive simulation that are a unique aspect of Type 2processing.6 When we reason hypothetically, we create temporary models of the world and test out actions (or alternative causes) in that simulated world. In order to reason hypothetically we must, however, have one critical cognitive capability-we must be able to prevent our representations of the real world from becoming confused with representations of imaginary situations. For example, when considering an alternative goal state different from the one we currently have, we must be able to represent our current goal and the alternative goal and to keep straight which is which. Likewise, we need to be able to differentiate the representation of an action about to be taken from representations of potential alternative actions we are trying out in cognitive simulations. But the latter must not infect the former while the mental simulation is being carried out. Otherwise, we would confuse the action about to be taken with alternatives that we were just simulating.

DENGUE FEVER (BREAKBONE FEVER) Dengue fever is a viral infection found throughout Central America. In Costa Rica outbreaks involving thousands of people occur every year. Dengue is transmitted by aedes mosquitoes, which often bite during the daytime and are usually found close to human habitations, often indoors. They breed primarily in artificial water containers such as jars, barrels, cans, plastic containers and discarded tires. Dengue is especially common in densely populated, urban environments. Dengue usually causes flulike symptoms including fever, muscle aches, joint pains, headaches, nausea and vomiting, often followed by a rash. Most cases resolve uneventfully in a few days. Severe cases usually occur in children under the age of 15 who are experiencing their second dengue infection. There is no treatment for dengue fever except taking analgesics such as acetaminophen/paracetamol (Tylenol) and drinking plenty of fluids. Severe cases may require hospitalization for intravenous fluids and supportive care. There is no vaccine. The key to prevention is taking insect-protection measures. HEPATITIS A Hepatitis A is the second-most-common travel-related infection (after traveler’s diarrhea). It’s a viral infection of the liver that is usually acquired by ingestion of contaminated water, food or ice, though it may also be acquired by direct contact with infected persons. Symptoms may include fever, malaise, jaundice, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. Most cases resolve without complications, though hepatitis A occasionally causes severe liver damage. There is no treatment. The vaccine for hepatitis A is extremely safe and highly effective. You should get vaccinated before you go to Costa Rica. Because the safety of hepatitis A vaccine has not been established for pregnant women or children under the age of two, they should instead be given a gammaglobulin injection. LEISHMANIASIS Leishmaniasis occurs in the mountains and jungles of all Central American countries. The infection is transmitted by sand flies, which are about one-third the size of mosquitoes. Most cases occur in newly cleared forest or areas of secondary growth. The highest incidence is in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. It causes slow-growing ulcers over exposed parts of the body There is no vaccine. RABIES Rabies is a viral infection of the brain and spinal cord that is almost always fatal. The rabies virus is carried in the saliva of infected animals and is typically transmitted through an animal bite, though contamination of any break in the skin with infected saliva may result in rabies. Rabies occurs in all Central American countries. However, in Costa Rica only two cases have been reported over the last 30 years. TYPHOID Typhoid fever is caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated by a species of salmonella known as Salmonella typhi . Fever occurs in virtually all cases. Other symptoms may include headache, malaise, muscle aches, dizziness, loss of appetite, nausea and abdominal pain. A pretrip vaccination for typoid is recommended, but not required. It’s usually given orally, and is also available as an injection. TRAVELER’S DIARRHEA Tap water is safe and of a high quality in Costa Rica, but when you’re far off the beaten path it’s best to avoid tap water unless it has been boiled, filtered or chemically disinfected (iodine tablets). To prevent diarrhea, be wary of dairy products that might contain unpasteurized milk; and be highly selective when eating food from street vendors.

Suppression is no better than self-indulgence. If the soul silences the flesh by an act of violence, the flesh will take revenge upon the soul, secretly infecting her with a spirit of revenge. It is an error to suppose that spiritual life is a mere negation of matter. By the magick of Thelema everything we have to offer – mind body and soul – is to serve the Great Work through its intimate relation with the 93 current of love under will.

When a nursing mother encounters infectious agents in her gut and lung—the main routes of human infection—the antibodies that she forms will travel to her breasts and will be transferred to the baby via breast milk, giving specific protection against infections that the baby is, or will soon be, exposed to. A breastfed infant receives a relatively high dose of maternal antibodies: up to 1 gram per day via breast milk, compared to a total of 2.5 grams produced daily in the body of an average adult.

In the context of our particular family or group or congregation, to present the kingdom of the heavens will mean that we must teach about the nature of belief (which is the same as faith) and how it relates to the rest of our personality. And then we must study our friends and associates to see what they really do believe and help them to be honest about it. We understand that our beliefs are the rails upon which our life runs, and so we have to address their actual beliefs and their doubts, not spend our time discussing many fine things that have little or no relevance to their genuine state of mind.12 Then we must be very fair and thorough in examining those beliefs and considering to what extent they are or are not justified. There must not be the least effort to be unfair in this examination or to pooh-pooh genuine problems, for that will weaken and infect everything we try to develop thereafter. One cannot build discipleship to Jesus by dodging serious issues or not doing justice to honest doubts about him and his teachings.

You keep talking about killing in relation to the test subjects, Helen,” Caldwell says, didactic by default. “I’ve told you this before. In most cases, brain function stops a few hours after infection, which meets the clinical definition of death as far as—” Justineau turns around and punches Caldwell in the face. It’s a hard punch, and it hurts her hand a lot more than she expects, the shock travelling up her arm all the way to the elbow. Caldwell

The hungry she caught is still moving sluggishly, despite the horrific damage the door mechanism has done to the muscles and tendons of its upper body. Seen from this close, the size of the head in relation to the body suggests that it may have been even younger at the time of initial infection than Caldwell had previously estimated. But

It worries the flu scientists because they know that H5N1 influenza is (1) extremely virulent in people, with a high lethality though a relatively low number of cases, and yet (2) poorly transmissible, so far, from human to human. It’ll kill you if you catch it, very likely, but you’re unlikely to catch it except

He says the virus was highly adapted for infection of humans from the start, unlike earlier natural zoonoses, and that its infectious trigger – the furin cleavage site – isn’t found anywhere in related betacoronaviruses in its class, and thus he argues couldn’t have come from a natural recombination, but has been repeatedly included in viruses by laboratory scientists including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. “Since 1992, laboratories have been putting furin cleavage sites into viruses that didn’t have them – 11 different laboratories, 11 different experiments, including previous Wuhan Institute of Virology experiments, and every single time it makes it more virulent, more transmissible and more lethal,” he says. The end result, Dr Quay says, has always been supercharged viruses.

This table only counts physical health effects due to disruptions that took place in the Illusion of Control phase. It considers both short-run and long-run effects. Each of the claimed effects is based on a published study about that effect. First on the list is the disruption to vaccination programs for measles, diphtheria, cholera, and polio, which were either cancelled or reduced in scope in some 70 countries. That disruption was caused by travel restrictions. Western experts could not travel, and within many poor countries travel and general activity were also halted in the early days of the Illusion of Control phase. This depressive effect on vaccination programs for the poor is expected to lead to large loss of life in the coming years. The poor countries paying this cost are most countries in Africa, the poorer nations in Asia, such as India, Indonesia and Myanmar, and the poorer countries in Latin America. The second listed effect in the table relates to schooling. An estimated 90% of the world’s children have had their schooling disrupted, often for months, which reduces their lifetime opportunities and social development through numerous direct and indirect pathways. The UN children’s organisation, UNICEF, has released several reports on just how bad the consequences of this will be in the coming decades.116 The third element in Joffe’s table refers to reports of economic and social primitivisation in poor countries. Primitivisation, also seen after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, is just what it sounds like: a regression away from specialisation, trade and economic advancement through markets to more isolated and ‘primitive’ choices, including attempted economic self-sufficiency and higher fertility. Due to diminished labour market prospects, curtailed educational activities and decreased access to reproductive health services, populations in the Illusion of Control phase began reverting to having more children precisely in those countries where there is already huge pressure on resources. The fourth and fifth elements listed in the table reflect the biggest disaster of this period, namely the increase in extreme poverty and expected famines in poor countries. Over the 20 years leading up to 2020, gradual improvements in economic conditions around the world had significantly eased poverty and famines. Now, international organisations are signalling rapid deterioration in both. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) now expects the world to have approximately an additional 100 million extremely poor people facing starvation as a result of Covid policies. That will translate into civil wars, waves of refugees and huge loss of life. The last two items in Joffe’s table relate to the effect of lower perinatal and infant care and impoverishment. Millions of preventable deaths are now expected due to infections and weakness in new mothers and young infants, and neglect of other health problems like malaria and tuberculosis that affect people in all walks of life. The whole of the poor world has suffered fewer than one million deaths from Covid. The price to be paid in human losses in these countries through hunger and health neglect caused by lockdowns and other restrictions is much, much larger. All in the name of stopping Covid.

This is useful as a research tool and for diligent scholars of philosophy who are serious about studying Žižek’s theory of freedom. I try to condense difficult material and zero in on key passages in Žižek’s writing in order to distill a functional, serviceable philosophy of power and ideology and how it relates to freedom. Tis also means that there is no way to reify a concept such as “freedom” (because doing so would negate that which is free by trapping it in some kind of form); and also because Žižek’s work has taken so many twists and turns that it is impossible to encapsulate every single thesis he makes in the space of a single book. It would be absurd to think that I can encapsulate a thinker as wide-ranging as Žižek. A thinker and activist-philosopher, who calls himself a madman, who is not trying to be domesticated or grounded, and yet claims that he grounds his thought in “Hegel” and “Lacan.” People miss the mark as to why he does this, mistaking that there is some affinity towards the personage of a once-living corporeal being called “Hegel” or “Lacan”—rather, these are interesting historical figures because they were unique inventors of radically new methodologies. Hegel as forwarding the methodology of the dialectical process. Lacan as utilizing psychoanalysis to reveal the process of the shifting tides of desire as the ungrounded ground of truth rather than forwarding any kind of “truth” that can be stabilized in the form of propositional logic. Even these two points of reference are not enough, as most people approach Žižek’s work through these two entryways—whereas what I want to do is to show that there is something radically undomesticated about this work. When forwarding a criticism of “ground rent,” for example, he does so as a communist who totally understands that ground rent is a delusion of capitalist ideology, rather than as some so-called “Marxist”- infected economists who study ground rent try to understand it through their own reified consciousness as an actual “thing,” rather than as the force of law imposing a “stratigraphic superimposition”33 (an ideological superstructure) atop of the commons as the a priori condition of land as a thing-in-itself.

However, second, all of our policies relating to the monitoring and movement of and restrictions on returning health-care workers should be based on sound scientific principles and scientific evidence. A person who was without symptoms did not transmit Ebola, and one must come into direct contact with the body fluids of an acutely ill person to become infected. Returning health-care workers were well instructed to report symptoms and self-isolate the way Craig Spencer correctly did. Importantly, if a twenty-one-day quarantine was implemented across the board for all health-care workers who volunteered to care for Ebola patients, then I was certain, as were Tom Frieden and several of my colleagues who had volunteered or who were considering volunteering, that we would soon run out of people willing to care for these patients. A quarantine would mean that those of us, including myself, who were caring for Ebola patients in the United States would automatically be putting ourselves out of action for twenty-one days after taking care of even a single person.

larynx (pp. 352–354), and (2) smaller intrinsic muscles that control tension in the glottal vocal folds or that open and close the glottis. These smaller muscles insert on the thyroid, arytenoid, and corniculate cartilages. The opening or closing of the glottis involves rotational movements of the arytenoid cartilages. When you swallow, both sets of muscles work together to prevent food or drink from entering the glottis. Food is crushed and chewed into a pasty mass, known as a bolus, before being swallowed. Muscles of the neck and pharynx then elevate the larynx, bending the epiglottis over the glottis, so that the bolus can glide across the epiglottis rather than falling into the larynx. While this movement is under way, the glottis is closed. Foods or liquids that touch the vestibular folds or glottis trigger the coughing reflex. In a cough, the glottis is kept closed while the chest and abdominal muscles contract, compressing the lungs. When the glottis is opened suddenly, a blast of air from the trachea ejects material that blocks the entrance to the glottis. Sound Production How do you produce sounds? Air passing through your open glottis vibrates its vocal folds and produces sound waves. The pitch of the sound depends on the diameter, length, and tension in your vocal folds. The diameter and length are directly related to the size of your larynx. You control the tension by contracting voluntary muscles that reposition the arytenoid cartilages relative to the thyroid cartilage. When the distance increases, your vocal folds tense and the pitch rises. When the distance decreases, your vocal folds relax and the pitch falls. Children have slender, short vocal folds, so their voices tend to be high pitched. At puberty, the larynx of males enlarges much more than that of females. The vocal cords of an adult male are thicker and longer, so they produce lower tones than those of an adult female. Sound production at the larynx is called phonation (fo.-NA .-shun; phone, voice). Phonation is one part of speech production. Clear speech also requires articulation, the modification of those sounds by voluntary movements of other structures, such as the tongue, teeth, and lips to form words. In a stringed instrument, such as a guitar, the quality of the sound produced does not depend solely on the nature of the vibrating string. Rather, the entire instrument becomes involved as the walls vibrate and the composite sound echoes within the hollow body. Similar amplification and resonance take place within your pharynx, oral cavity, nasal cavity, and paranasal sinuses. The combination gives you the particular and distinctive sound of your voice. That sound changes when you have a sinus infection and your nasal cavity and paranasal sinuses are filled with mucus rather than air.

[T]he shadow is exposed to collective infections to a much greater extent than is the conscious personality. When a man is alone, for instance, he feels relatively all right; but as soon as "the others" do dark, primitive things he begins to fear that if he doesn't join in, he will be considered a fool. Thus he gives way to impulses that do not really belong to him at all. It is particularly in contacts with people of the same sex that one stumbles over both one's own shadow and those of other people. Although we do see the shadow in a person of the opposite sex, we are usually much less annoyed by it and can more easily pardon it.

In the first, two monkeys sit opposite each other on a branch, both inserting a finger ever deeper into the other’s nostril until the finger vanishes up to the first knuckle. Swaying gently, they sit like this with expressions on their faces described as “trancelike.” The monkeys are normally hyperactive and sociable, but hand-sniffers sit apart from the group, concentrating on each other for up to half an hour. Even more curious is the second game, in which one monkey inserts almost a whole finger between the other’s eyelid and eyeball. Monkey fingers are tiny, but relative to their eyes and noses they aren’t any smaller than ours. Also, their fingers have nails, which obviously aren’t particularly clean, so this behavior potentially scratches the cornea or causes infections. Now, the monkeys really need to sit still; otherwise someone may lose an eye. These games are most painful to watch! The pair keeps its posture for minutes, while the one whose eye is being poked may stick a finger into the other’s nostril. What purpose these weird games serve is unclear, but one idea is that the monkeys are testing their bonds. This explanation has also been offered with respect to human rituals in which we make ourselves vulnerable. Tongue-kissing, for example, carries the risk of disease transmission. Intimate kissing is either pleasurable or totally disgusting depending on the partner: Engaging in it thus says a lot about how we perceive the relationship. In couples, kissing is thought to test the love, enthusiasm, even faithfulness of the partner. Perhaps capuchin monkeys, too, are trying to find out how much they really like each other, which may then help them decide who can be trusted to support them during confrontations within the group. A second explanation is that these games help the monkeys reduce stress, of which they have no shortage. Their group life is full of drama. During eye-poking or hand-sniffing, they seem to enter an unusually calm, dreamy state. Are they exploring the borderline between pain and pleasure, perhaps releasing endorphins in the process?

The new underclass, so the customary reproach runs, shuns education, is work-shy and has lost its orientation to upward social mobility.139 The status anxiety of the middle class leads among other things to the economic interpretation, negative classification and devaluation of weaker groups, as shown in Wilhelm Heitmeyer’s long-term study on xenophobic attitudes among the German population Deutsche Zustände.140 To a certain degree the middle class has abandoned solidarity with the weak; it has built security by shutting itself off. Where there was previously a certain liberality, more rigorous ideas of morality, culture and behaviour have now returned. With increased fears of ‘contamination’ and ‘infection’, people seek the greatest possible distance and strict isolation from the ‘parallel society’ of the lower class.141 They are generally less inclined to accept society’s ‘encouragements to diversity’.142 The precarious middle classes, who actually experience relative downward mobility, count this as personal failure. Here individualistic and fatalistic interpretations of their own work prevail. They seek at almost any price to integrate into society by competition at work. This also has the consequence of resentment towards the weaker, the supposedly lazy or those considered less motivated.143

One of the reasons why a lot of the statistical claims about COVID-19 are controversial is that endogeneity problems abound. Early on in the pandemic, it was worryingly common, for example, to hear people take the numbers of deaths within some age brackets from COVID-19, divide that by the total population of the group, and then use the low number to conclude that people in that group are less likely to die from COVID-19 than from being struck by lightning, being a victim of a shark attack, or something else that seems a relatively tiny risk. The implicit mental model here is that becoming infected with COVID-19 is a matter of random chance and therefore the death rates observed so far represent an accurate representation of the risk of getting and dying from the disease. But this is obviously not true. Your chance of getting infected and dying of COVID-19 is influenced by both your behavior and policy. That there have been relatively higher infections and deaths in prisons or meatpacking plants does not necessarily tell us that prisoners or meatpacking workers have personal characteristics that make them more susceptible to the worst outcomes from the disease. It might simply be that they spend much time in a place that puts them more at risk of infection.

RNA viruses mutate relatively quickly, and many, like influenza, are able to undergo a process known as antigenic drift, by which the virus is able to alter the surface antigens that are the targets of our antibodies—thus evading our existing immunity. Some viruses, like measles, cannot change their genomic sequence in ways that substantially alter enough of their surface proteins, so measles remains susceptible to our vaccines or the immunity that we get from prior infection. However, for viruses like influenza, as their surface proteins undergo change, the virus is able to dodge the protective antibodies that we’ve developed from past infection or vaccination

TO STRENGTHEN OUR IMMUNE SYSTEM AND COMBAT ITS AGE-RELATED DECLINE: The peptide thymosin alpha-1 (Zadaxin): As we age, our thymus gland gradually turns into fat tissue and stops producing the robust battalions of T cells that fight off infections or eliminate rogue cancer cells. If we had to choose a single peptide to help address immunological aging, according to Dr. Lopez, thymosin alpha-1 might be the one. TA-1 has proven its ability to stimulate the immune system in both animal and human studies.

AUTHOR’S NOTE Although I had a true-life relative named Robert Stephens who died at the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida, in the 1930s, The Reformatory is a work of fiction. None of the characters, even young Robert Stephens himself, depict the lives and histories of real people. Gracetown is fictitious. I wrote this novel to honor the memory of Robert Stephens, so I depicted Redbone’s stabbing as an homage to Robert’s purported stabbing death in 1937 while he was imprisoned at Dozier. Robert’s earache reflects what University of South Florida forensic anthropologist Erin Kimmerle revealed to me about his remains, which were unearthed in 2015: he had an ear infection so severe that she could see evidence of it nearly eighty years later. I interviewed family members and survivors of the Dozier School, but no one I interviewed actually knew Robert Stephens or his parents because he died so long ago. His story in this novel is entirely fiction, including the persecution of his father, Robert Stephens, Sr. But I wanted to give Robert Stephens a happier ending. This character of Warden Fenton J. Haddock is also entirely fictitious. I created Haddock as an amalgam of a system of violence in children’s incarceration—but the truth is that no one person can explain away the reported events at the Dozier School, or the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, or the Indigenous “schools” in Canada where so many children were buried. No one person can be blamed for our nation’s current nightmare of mass incarceration. The Reformatory has a central villain, but the actual villain is a system of dehumanization.

When a troubled member of a traditional society went to the tribe’s healer, the healer didn’t open the discussion with questions like “How long have you been experiencing spleen discomfort?” or “What, exactly, is your deductible?” Instead he or she asked when the person stopped feeling spontaneous joy, stopped singing, stopped dreaming. In other words, wayfinders need to know when the sick, stuck, depressed, or failing patient stopped playing. Any confident traditional healer with access to modern medicine will gladly recommend a splint or antibiotics for someone with a broken leg or an infection, but for the soul sickness and stress-related illnesses that so bedevil many of us, wayfinders know that playing to the point of enchantment is necessary medicine.

10 Things You Should Always Discuss with Your Gynecologist – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital Your gynecologist is your partner in women’s health, and open communication is key to receiving the best care. From reproductive health to general well-being, here are 10 crucial topics you should always discuss with your gynecologist. If you’re in Chandigarh, consider reaching out to the Best Female Gynecologist in Chandigarh through Motherhood Chaitanya for expert care. 1. Menstrual Irregularities Don’t dismiss irregular periods as a minor issue. They could be indicative of underlying conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), thyroid disorders, or hormonal imbalances. 2. Contraception Discuss your contraception options to find the one that best suits your needs and lifestyle. Your gynecologist can provide guidance on various birth control methods, from pills to intrauterine devices (IUDs). 3. Pregnancy Planning If you’re planning to start a family, consult your gynecologist for preconception advice. This can help you prepare your body and address any potential risks or concerns. 4. Sexual Health Openly discuss any concerns related to sexual health, including pain during intercourse, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), or changes in sexual desire. Your gynecologist can provide guidance and offer solutions. 5. Menopause and Perimenopause If you’re in your 40s or approaching menopause, discuss perimenopausal symptoms like hot flashes, mood swings, and changes in menstrual patterns. Your gynecologist can recommend treatments to manage these changes. 6. Family History Share your family’s medical history, especially if there are instances of gynecological conditions, such as ovarian or breast cancer. This information is vital for early detection and prevention. 7. Breast Health Talk to your gynecologist about breast health, including breast self-exams and recommended mammograms. Regular breast checks are essential for early detection of breast cancer. 8. Pelvic Pain Don’t ignore persistent pelvic pain. It can signal a range of issues, including endometriosis, fibroids, or ovarian cysts. Early diagnosis and treatment are crucial. 9. Urinary Issues Frequent urination, urinary incontinence, or pain during urination should be discussed. These symptoms can be linked to urinary tract infections or pelvic floor disorders. 10. Mental Health Your gynecologist is there to address your overall well-being. If you’re experiencing mood swings, anxiety, or depression, it’s important to discuss these mental health concerns. Your gynecologist can offer guidance or refer you to specialists if needed. In conclusion, your gynecologist is your go-to resource for women’s health, addressing a wide spectrum of issues. Open and honest communication is essential to ensure you receive the best care and support. If you’re in Chandigarh, consider consulting the Best Gynecologist Obstetricians in Chandigarh through Motherhood Chaitanya for expert guidance. Your health is a priority, and discussing these important topics with your gynecologist is a proactive step toward a healthier, happier you

It’s so fucking confusing. But hate and love are so closely related. You can’t hate someone you don’t care about. Not that kind of hate. And when you love someone and they do something so horrible and terrible, the hatred infects every cell of your body and melts into you. It becomes you.

The culinary trade in such unusual wild animals, especially within the Pearl River Delta, has less to do with limited resources, dire necessity, and ancient traditions than with booming commerce and relatively recent fashions in conspicuous consumption.

Rhinoviruses infect relatively few cells, causing little real harm. So why can they cause such miserable experiences? We have only ourselves to blame. Infected cells release signaling molecules, called cytokines, which attract nearby immune cells. Those immune cells then make us feel awful. They create inflammation that triggers a scratchy feeling in the throat and leads to the production of a lot of mucus around the site of the infection. In order to recover from a cold, we have to wait not only for the immune system to wipe out the virus, but also for the immune system itself to calm down.

Further violence accompanied popular resistance to the quarantine regulations and restrictions on movement imposed by the authorities, particularly to the practice of shutting up the infected and their families in their houses. The plague, said a preacher, was of all diseases, the most dreadful and terrible;… then all friends leave us, then a man or woman sit(s) and lie(s) alone and is a stranger to the breath of his own relations. If a man be sick of a fever it is some comfort that he can take a bed-staff and knock, and his servant comes up and helps him with a cordial. But if a man be sick of the plague then he sits and lies all alone.

Further violence accompanied popular resistance to the quarantine regulations and restrictions on movement imposed by the authorities, particularly to the practice of shutting up the infected and their families in their houses. The plague, said a preacher, was of all diseases, the most dreadful and terrible;… then all friends leave us, then a man or woman sit(s) and lie(s) alone and is a stranger to the breath of his own relations. If a man be sick of a fever it is some comfort that he can take a bed-staff and knock, and his servant comes up and helps him with a cordial. But if a man be sick of the plague then he sits and lies all alone.14 When a Western traveller visits a pre-industrial society of this kind today he equips himself with all the resources of modern medicine;

In homes and apartments, citizens would be forced to live like incarcerated prisoners, afraid to mingle with neighbors, friends, or even close relatives for fear of risking infection.

Sleep doesn’t serve one single purpose. It is a complex function and directly related to our health. The multiple functions benefit both our brains and our bodies. Every single brain process and every organ in the body is enhanced by sleep or damaged by the lack of sleep. Within the brain, sleep affects our ability to learn, memorize, and make decisions. It works as an emotional reset so that social and psychological challenges are met with level-headed logic. Sleep provides the opportunity to dream in a world where painful memories are dealt with and future creativity is inspired. While in a sleep state, the body’s immune system is at work to fight cancer, prevent infection, and ward off disease. Sleep balances insulin and circulating glucose to create a metabolic balance. Appetite, weight control, and gut health are all directly tied to adequate sleep levels.

Charlie Calisher and his coauthors, besides touching on broad principles, discussed a handful of bat-related viruses in detail: Nipah, Hendra, rabies and its close relatives (the lyssaviruses), SARS-CoV, and a couple of others.

Consciousness is there in animal life. Beyond animal instincts, humans also have inherent recognition of good and evil in their conscience. Belief in deterministic justice and rewards in afterlife fulfils our aspiration to have true and fair reward for every small act of goodness and evil in afterlife. Every moment of a nurse and that of a cured or dead patient is not meaningless if one believes and prepare for afterlife by achieving excellence in morals. Imam Ghazali wrote that wealth is useful till we die, relatives till we are put in grave and only good deeds will be the currency on judgement day. If we have good deeds to take in next life, then we can have everlasting happiness that is not infected and affected by any Corona Virus.

The first step in breaking organizational culture inertia is simplification. This helps to eliminate the complex routines, processes, and hidden bargains among units that mask waste and inefficiency. Strip out excess layers of administration and halt nonessential operations—sell them off, close them down, spin them off, or outsource the services. Coordinating committees and a myriad of complex initiatives need to be disbanded. The simpler structure will begin to illuminate obsolete units, inefficiency, and simple bad behavior that was hidden from sight by complex overlays of administration and self-interest. After the first round of simplification, it may be necessary to fragment the operating units. This will be the case when units do not need to work in close coordination—when they are basically separable. Such fragmentation breaks political coalitions, cuts the comfort of cross-subsidies, and exposes a larger number of smaller units to leadership’s scrutiny of their operations and performance. After this round of fragmentation, and more simplification, it is necessary to perform a triage. Some units will be closed, some will be repaired, and some will form the nuclei of a new structure. The triage must be based on both performance and culture—you cannot afford to have a high-performing unit with a terrible culture infect the others. The “repair” third of the triaged units must then be put through individual transformation and renewal maneuvers. Changing a unit’s culture means changing its members’ work norms and work-related values. These norms are established, held, and enforced daily by small social groups that take their cue from the group’s high-status member—the alpha. In general, to change the group’s norms, the alpha member must be replaced by someone who expresses different norms and values. All this is speeded along if a challenging goal is set. The purpose of the challenge is not performance per se, but building new work habits and routines within the unit. Once the bulk of operating units are working well, it may then be time to install a new overlay of coordinating mechanisms, reversing some of the fragmentation that was used to break inertia.

People who share last names tend to be related and get together more often for meals and are less guarded about eating off one another’s plates and exchanging germs. This creates pockets of infection over weekends that soon extend to schools and work. The presence of convention centers added to the calculation.

Bacteria begins to form in wounds, even relatively clean ones, after 6 hours. All wounds should be treated as contaminated and require cleansing to prevent infection and promote healing. "Disinfectants (such as isopropyl alcohol, povidone-iodine, and hydrogen peroxide) and soaps and detergents should not be put directly into wounds because they can damage viable tissue and may actually increase the incidence of wound infection. These substances may be used to scrub around a wound prior to wound cleaning, with soap and water working as well as anything else.

Once irrigation has been accomplished, eyewear is typically not necessary, but the rescuer should still be wearing protective gloves. Remember to wash your hands before and after donning the gloves. Soap, water, and gloves are a tough trio on germs. In the absence of protective gloves, the rescuer may improvise with clean plastic bags over her or his hands. With relatively minor wounds, to prevent sharing germs, the patient may be directed in the management of his or her own wound (including control of blood loss). Contusion Bruises seldom require emergency care, but large bruises benefit from cold, compression, and/or elevation. Substantial bruises should cause you to assess the patient for damage to underlying structures, such as bones and organs. Large bruises should be protected from freezing in extremes of cold because a bruised area will freeze sooner than normal skin. Abrasions Abrasions are the exception to the rule of wound cleaning: You need to scrub within the wound to achieve adequate cleaning. A sterile gauze pad is adequate for scrubbing. Scrubbing may be enhanced by using any soap, but all soap should be carefully rinsed and then irrigated from the wound after scrubbing. Green Soap Sponges are packaged with soap and water already in the sponge, making them useful additions to first-aid kits. It is important to remove all embedded debris not only to reduce the risk of infection but also to prevent subsequent “tattooing” (scarring) of the skin. With a deep abrasion, self-scrubbing is seldom successful due to the high level of pain associated with the exposed nerves. After cleansing, abrasions can be kept moist to avoid desiccation and speed healing with microthin film dressings that can be left in place until healing occurs. Without microthin film dressings, a topical agent, such as an antibiotic ointment, can be applied, followed by a dressing of a sterile gauze pad or a roll of sterile gauze to keep the ointment in place. Tape, an elastic wrap, or some other holder may be used to hold a sterile gauze pad in place. Ideally, gauze dressings should be changed twice a day, or at least once a day, as well as any time the gauze gets wet.

filling the form in.  She held up the photo and matched it with the wall, a tired, thinlooking girl looking out at her. It was set to the right of Oliver’s. They could have had them taken at the same time. She’d ask Mary.  Grace had said she had only been with Oliver — or at least that’s what the answers suggested. She’d have to ask her to make sure. It wasn’t unknown for homeless people to get into disagreements over love. When you’ve got nothing much to lose, the law doesn’t come into play when you’re asking yourself if you’re prepared to kill for someone.  Grace also admitted to being a regular heroin user and agreed to have an examination. She also said she didn’t have any diseases as far as she knew. She was the same age, too. Eighteen. Had they known each other before they’d become homeless? She’d have to find Grace to know the truth.  She went back to Oliver’s file and checked the date next to his signature. It said the seventh of September. Just under two months ago.  Jamie leafed to the next and only other page in the file. It was another shabbily photocopied sheet. Mary must have been doing them on her printer-scanner at home, creating them on her computer. She really did care. The sheet displayed a pixelated outline of the human body — no doubt an image pulled off the web and then stretched out to fill a page. The resolution was too low to keep any sort of detail, but the shape still came through okay. It was a human with their arms out, feet apart. At the top of the page, in Comic Sans, ‘Examination Sheet’ was written as the title.  In appropriately illegible handwriting for a doctor, notes had been jotted around the body. Parts had been circled with lines being drawn to the corresponding note. She read words like ‘graze’ and ‘lesion’. ‘Rash’ cropped up a few times. But there didn’t look to be anything sinister going on. The crooks of the elbows, as well as the ankles, were all circled several times but nothing was written at the sides. Those areas didn’t need explaining, though underneath, as if encapsulating the entire exam were the words ‘No signs of infection’. So he’d been relatively careful, then. Clean needles, at least. Under that, there was a little paragraph recommending a general blood panel, but overall, Oliver seemed to be in decent health. Nothing had been prescribed, it seemed.  She checked Grace’s and found it to be much the same, complete with triple circles around the elbows and ankles. Though her genital area had also been circled and the word ‘Rash’ had been written. At the bottom, a prescription had been written for azithromycin.  Jamie clicked her teeth together, rummaging in her brain for the name. Was it a gonorrhoea medication or chlamydia? She knew it was for an STD, she just couldn’t remember which. But that meant that where she’d put down ‘1’ for number of

across an unexpected finding: Alcohol consumption was associated with liver inflammation (no surprise there), but coffee consumption was associated with less liver inflammation.81 These results were replicated in subsequent studies performed around the world. In the United States, a study was done with people at high risk for liver disease—for example, those who were overweight or drank too much alcohol. Subjects who drank more than two cups of coffee a day appeared to have less than half the risk of developing chronic liver problems as those who drank less than one cup.82 What about liver cancer, one of the most feared complications of chronic liver inflammation? It is now the third-leading cause of cancer-related death, an upsurge driven largely by increases in hepatitis C infections and

But what if you’re already infected with hepatitis C or are among the nearly one in three American adults89 with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease? Until relatively recently, no clinical trials had put coffee to the test. But in 2013, researchers published a study in which forty patients with chronic hepatitis C were placed into two groups: The first group consumed four cups of coffee daily for a month, while the second group drank no coffee at all. After

Under the despotic power of one man, the number of persons who come under the corrupting influence of power and live on the labor of others is limited, and consists of the despot’s close friends, assistants, servants, and flatterers, and of their helpers. The infection of depravity is focused in the court of the despot, whence it radiates in all directions. Where power is limited, i.e. where many persons take part in it, the number of centers of infection is augmented, for everyone who shares power has his friends, helpers, servants, flatterers, and relations. Where there is universal suffrage, these centers of infection are still more diffused. Every voter becomes the object of flattery and bribery. The character of the power itself is also changed. Instead of power founded on direct violence, we get a monetary power, also founded on violence, not directly, but through a complicated transmission.

Humans use fear to domesticate humans, and our fear increases with each experience of injustice. The sense of injustice is the knife that opens a wound in our emotional body. Emotional poison is created by our reaction to what we consider injustice. Some wounds will heal, others will become infected with more and more poison. Once we are full of emotional poison, we have the need to release it, and we practice releasing the poison by sending it to someone else. How do we do this? By hooking that person’s attention. Let’s take an example of an ordinary couple. For whatever reason, the wife is mad. She has a lot of emotional poison from an injustice that comes from her husband. The husband is not home, but she remembers that injustice and the poison is growing inside. When the husband comes home, the first thing she wants to do is hook his attention because once she hooks his attention, all the poison can go to her husband and she can feel the relief. As soon as she tells him how bad he is, how stupid or how unfair he is, that poison she has inside her is transferred to the husband. She keeps talking and talking until she gets his attention. The husband finally reacts and gets mad, and she feels better. But now the poison is going through him, and he has to get even. He has to hook her attention and release the poison, but it’s not just her poison — it’s her poison plus his poison. If you look at this interaction, you will see that they are touching each other’s wounds and playing ping-pong with emotional poison. The poison keeps growing and growing, until someday one of them is going to explode. This is often how humans relate with each other. By hooking the attention, the energy goes from one person to another person. The attention is something very powerful in the human mind. Everyone around the world is hunting the attention of others all the time. When we capture the attention, we create channels of communication. The Dream is transferred, power is transferred, but emotional poison is transferred also.

The 1918 epidemic came in two waves, a mild flu in the spring of 1918 followed by the killer flu in the fall. And it seemed that the two flu strains were closely related. Infection with the first strain protected against the second

Cows can get infected with cowpox, a close relative of smallpox, and so Jenner wondered if it provided some protection. He took pus from the hand of a milkmaid named Sarah Nelmes and inoculated it into the arm of a boy. The boy developed a few small pustules, but otherwise he suffered no symptoms. Six weeks later, Jenner variolated the boy—in other words, he exposed the boy to smallpox, rather than cowpox. The boy developed no pustules at all. Jenner introduced the world to this new, safer way to prevent smallpox in a pamphlet he published in 1798. He dubbed it “vaccination,” after the Latin name of cowpox, Variolae vaccinae.

For Europe, as for other civilized lands, infections by familiar epidemic disease surely became more frequent, at least in the major ports and at other foci of communication; but infections that returned at more and more frequent intervals became, by necessity, childhood diseases. Older persons would have acquired suitably high and repeatedly reinforced levels of immunity through prior exposures. Thus by a paradox that is only apparent, the more diseased a community, the less destructive its epidemics become. Even very high rates of infant mortality were relatively easily borne. The costs of giving birth and rearing another child to replace one that had died were slight compared to the losses involved in massive adult mortality of the sort that epidemics attacking a population at infrequent intervals inevitably produce. Consequently, the tighter the communications net binding each part of Europe to the rest of the world, the smaller became the likelihood of really devastating disease encounter. Only genetic mutation of a disease-causing organism, or a new transfer of parasites from some other host to human beings offered the possibility of devastating epidemic when world transport and communications had attained a sufficient intimacy to assure frequent circulation of all established human diseases among the civilized populations of the world. Between 1500 and about 1700 this is what seems in fact to have occurred. Devastating epidemics of the sort that had raged so dramatically in Europe's cities between 1346 and the mid-seventeenth century tapered off toward the status of childhood diseases, or else, as in the case of both plague and malaria, notably reduced the geographic range of their incidence. The result of such systematic lightening of the microparasitic drain upon European populations (especially in northwestern Europe where both plague and malaria had about disappeared by the close of the seventeenth century) was, of course, to unleash the possibility of systematic growth. This was, however, only a possibility, since any substantial local growth quickly brought on new problems: in particular, problems of food supply, water supply, and intensification of other infections in cities that had outgrown older systems of waste disposal. After 1600 these factors began to affect European populations significantly, and their effective solution did not come before the eighteenth century - or later. All the same, the changing pattern of epidemic infection was and remains a fundamental landmark in human ecology that deserves more attention than it has ordinarily received. On the time scale of world history, indeed we should view the 'domestication' of epidemic disease that occurred between 1300 and 1700 as a fundamental breakthrough, directly resulting from the two great transportation revolutions of that age - one by land, initiated by the Mongols, and one by sea, initiated by Europeans.

Healthcare authorities neglect the role of psychological factors in pandemic­ related infection even though these factors are important for many reasons.

At the second hospital he was intubated to save him from suffocation. That is, a flexible tube was inserted deep into his mouth, past his glottis, and down his windpipe into his lungs, to help with breathing. This event represents another important clue toward explaining how SARS spread so effectively through hospitals around the world. Intubation is a simple procedure, at least in theory, but it can be difficult to execute amid the gag reflexes, sputters, and expectorations of the patient. The task was especially hard with Zhou, a portly man, sedated and feverish, and though his disease hadn’t yet been identified, the attending doctors and nurses seem to have had some sense of the danger to which they were being exposed. They knew by then that this atypical pneumonia, this whatever, was more transmissible and more lethal than pneumonias of the common sort. “Each time they began to insert the tube,” according to an account by Thomas Abraham, a veteran foreign correspondent based in Hong Kong, there was “an eruption” of bloody mucus. Abraham continues: It splashed on to the floor, the equipment and the faces and gowns of the medical staff. They knew the mucous [sic] was highly infectious, and in the normal course of things, they would have cleaned themselves up as quickly as possible. But with a critically ill patient kicking and heaving around, a tube half-inserted into his windpipe and mucous and blood spurting out, there was no way any of them could leave. At that hospital, twenty-three doctors and nurses became infected from Zhou, plus eighteen other patients and their relatives. Nineteen members of his own family also got sick. Zhou himself would eventually become known among medical staff in Guangzhou as the Poison King. He survived the illness, though many people who caught it from him—directly, or indirectly down a long chain of contacts—did not.

I PALE HORSE 1 THE VIRUS NOW known as Hendra wasn’t the first of the scary new bugs. It wasn’t the worst. Compared to some others, it seems relatively minor. Its mortal impact, in numerical terms, was small at the start and has remained small; its geographical scope was narrowly local and later episodes haven’t carried it much more widely. It made its debut near Brisbane, Australia, in 1994. Initially there were two cases, only one of them fatal. No, wait, correction: There were two human cases, one human fatality. Other victims suffered and died too, more than a dozen—equine victims—and their story is part of this story. The subject of animal disease and the subject of human disease are, as we’ll see, strands of one braided cord. The original emergence of Hendra virus didn’t seem very dire or newsworthy unless you happened to live in eastern Australia. It couldn’t match an earthquake, a war, a schoolboy gun massacre, a tsunami. But it was peculiar. It was spooky. Slightly better known now, at least among disease scientists and Australians, and therefore slightly less spooky, Hendra virus still seems peculiar. It’s a paradoxical thing: marginal, sporadic, but in some larger sense representative. For exactly that reason, it marks a good point from which to begin toward understanding the emergence of certain virulent new realities on this planet—realities that include the death of more than 30 million people since 1981. Those realities involve a phenomenon called zoonosis. A zoonosis is an animal infection transmissible to humans. There are more such diseases than you might expect. AIDS is one. Influenza is a whole category of others. Pondering them as a group tends to reaffirm the old Darwinian truth (the darkest of his truths, well known and persistently forgotten) that humanity is a kind of animal, inextricably connected with other animals: in origin and in descent, in sickness and in health. Pondering them individually—for starters, this relatively obscure case from Australia—provides a salubrious reminder that everything, including pestilence, comes from somewhere.