There’s No Need To Panic…But Don’t Be Stupid

Ebola is some scary stuff.  It turns your immune system into an internal ‘self-destruct’ mechanism, can be contracted from animals (fruit bats are its natural host…and they fly) and most of the time, 55% in the latest outbreak, it’ll kill you (compare: the 1918 Flu Pandemic had a death rate under 20%).

I’d call the healthcare workers going to West Africa to deal with the Ebola outbreak heroic…maybe a little crazy, but definitely heroic.  But when two of those heroes who’d contracted Ebola were brought back to America for treatment, I got a little anxious.  If one drop of infected blood gets on one un-quarantined person, in 2 to 21 days the disease is introduced to the American population.  And it wouldn’t be the first time Ebola laden blood has leaked on American soil.

Human Ebola hasn’t been a threat here in the US, but back in 1989 one-hundred Crab-Eating Macaques flew from their origin in the Philippines, through Tokyo, Taipei, Amsterdam and New York City, to a Government primate quarantine facility in Reston, VA.  Within a month all one-hundred of the monkeys were dead.

A vet performed several necropsies on the dead animals, concluded Simian Hemorrhagic Fever Virus (SHFV) and sent frozen samples wrapped in foil to the U. S. Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease at Fort Detrick for confirmation.  By the time the samples reached the level-4 biohazard facility, complete with its  multiple airlocks, biohazard suits, top level security clearance and plenty of paranoia, they’d thawed and were leaking.

As the big boys at USAMRIID were analyzing samples, other monkeys back at Reston were dying.  The tests showed it wasn’t SHFV but Ebola that’d killed the macaques.  What’s more, the monkeys now dying had had no exposure to the Pilipino monkeys except through the ventilation system.  Reston-Ebola, though not a human pathogen, appeared to be an airborne (Ebola strains affecting man have been associated with direct-contact transmission only).

All remaining monkeys were euthanized, the facility decontaminated (using vaporized formaldehyde), one of the monkey handlers was hospitalized with a heart condition and another with high fever and nausea but presumable not from Ebola.  Had this strain affected humans, families, friends and passing strangers would’ve been exposed before its danger was realized.  An unsuspecting America would have been smacked with deadly repercussions and a body count.

Probably because of its quick contact-to-death timing and (currently) direct contact only transmission method, human pathogenic forms of Ebola don’t threaten a pandemic.  But viruses evolve.  A non-human form has already shown a probability of having gone airborne. 

In the latest outbreak the ‘index case’ (first human to get the disease) appears to be a 2-year-old in Guiana.  The child, a sibling, the mother and grandmother died before the virus escaped to a healthcare worker and then on to a couple thousand others.  The toddler probably got it from contact with a fruit bat but not necessarily from direct contact, maybe from droppings or consuming a piece of fruit a bat had eaten on; or from any number of animal species (many are vectors).  It’s tragic but it’s not a first.  As you consider public safety, there’s no need to panic…but don’t be stupid.

God Told Me To Mow Your Yard

My first house, a Tudor style, 2-story in the Texas panhandle, was dirt cheap, hadn’t had an occupant in five years and needed a lot of TLC.  Moving in, 11:00 AM, a man, mid-40’s, scruffy, possible hangover (never judge a book, right?) on a riding mower showed up and said, “God told me to mow your yard.”  Awesome! God had sent an angel to welcome us to town.

His next words were the price needed to carry out God’s direction.  I was pretty sure God didn’t require compensation for a blessing but the yard needed a trim…or baling, and I had a lot of work to do so a deal to mow struck.  For the next hour the hum of a mower accompanied moving in. 

Noonish, the in-laws arrive to take us to lunch.  Reluctant to leave my ‘angel’ who had maybe a fourth of the mowing to go, he assured he’d finish in the next thirty minutes, before we returned, and knowing in a town of 2600, were there any problems with the job, I’d see him again, I paid in advance and went to lunch.

We returned to a ¾ mowed yard.  Optimistic, I decided he might’ve had to get more gas, eat lunch, buy trimmer string or been abducted by aliens.  It must have been aliens because I never saw the dude again. 

It’s a lesson I’ve been taught a couple more times since: if someone uses God as a reference it’s because nobody else is willing to vouch for them.  It’s a subsection in the ‘Buyer Beware’ rule.  And one that stands in the face of the ‘Always Assume the Best’ tenet (a well-meaning decree made by trusting people that don’t deal with actual humans).

I picked up another subsection of the ‘Buyer Beware’ rule this weekend (well, over the past few months), a statute I knew existed but can’t find a way to effectively implement, the ‘If It Sounds Too Good’ edict.

It started with a phone call about an AAU basketball team for my son.  The coach stressed discipline, humility, accountability and hard work.  That’s what I value and want my son to experience so we committed.

There were signs, an excellent assistant coach quitting early-on, scheduling and roster promises being broken, the “transparency” of finances becoming blurry, but the boy was improving and it was, so to speak, the only game in town.

This weekend the flickering fuse hit the dynamite.  The leader of the organization (the guy with the promises) with the help of a crazy 2^nd (or 3^rd or 4^th, not entirely sure) wife exploded into full blown idiot.  Without going into too much detail a cookie birthday cake for one of the players lead to the coach attempting to assault his 1^st marriage derived teen son in a scene worthy of Jerry Springer…and counter to his early statement to parents, “I don’t do drama!”

The silver lining is the rallying of the players and parents to keep the team together, support a young man in a tough situation and make lemonade with lemon juice squirted in their eye.

I’ve relearned something I already knew:  there are some bad assho…um, apples out there but some great people, too.  You’ll encounter both, can avoid neither and need to use sense when dealing with all.   Try to always be a blessing, never a curse and if the Lord above didn’t send you a memo, don’t believe someone saying, “God told me to mow your yard.”

 

F-ing Flies!

I’m having flashbacks to the Amityville Horror.  Flies are everywhere!  It’s the time of the year, it’s the oddly wet weather, it’s the two equine fly magnets that would rather hang out by the house than graze the pasture on the hill.  When a door opens flies are lined up waiting to enter like New Yorkers on a subway platform.

I’m not entirely sure why they want to be in the house.  We put away our food, dispose of our waste and actively avoid accumulating rotting meat.  They’re exothermic (get body heat from their environment) so the air-conditioning should be uncomfortable.  We work to kill them, even Chubs chomps and eats them with bullfrog efficiency.  I’d think indoors would be as appealing to a house fly as the arctic is to humans.  While there are humans that go to the arctic on purpose, most of us would rather avoid it’s foodless, heatless, dangerous bastion of human discomfort.

Try this little experiment: excuse yourself from the dinner table to go to the bathroom, wait a few minutes, come back to the table and lightly touch someone else’s food.  You’ll discover touching stuff, especially other people’s food, is offensive.  That’s exactly what flies do; they land on everything, leaving remnants of whatever they’d just been on (maybe poop), spreading bacteria and other crud, some of which might be pathogenic.  Sure, it’s probably nothing that’ll hurt us, that’s not the point, it’s gross. 

Have you wondered how flies, with their tiny, toothless, jawless mouths eat?  They puke stomach juice onto their food, let it dissolve it into smaller bits and then suck it up like a kid eating a milkshake through a Freddie’s Custard straw.  Shooing them off of food doesn’t get their stomach juice off your sandwich, it just cuts their lunch off early.  I’d suggest an experiment similar to the previous paragraph’s but it might cause a relationship rift that would never heal. 

President Lyndon B. Johnson had a reputation for disrespecting personal space.  He’d get so close to a person when talking they’d agree to nearly anything to him out of their ‘no fly zone’.  Flies don’t care where they fly.  They buzz within millimeters of eyes, land on noses and dive-bomb my ears.  It creates a hostile environment and throws me into involuntary bodily flailing similar to grazing an electric fence or wandering into a spider web.  There’re almost 20,000 cubic feet within the restrains of my home, I occupy maybe ten of those and like the surrounding forty for comfort.  That leaves well over 99.5% of the volume of my house to be cruised by flies…but they want my less than half a percent.

I use an aggressive program of fly swatting, fly strips and profanity to keep the populations down, but I’m losing the battle.  The floor will be littered with the bodies of the defeated, I’ll sit back for a brief break only to be pulled from my rest by the gentle annoyance of a fly on my forehead.  I hate these f-ing flies!

My People Must’ve Evolved in Air Conditioning

I sweat like a fat guy.  I’d attribute that to my being a fat guy were it not for my sons, who aren’t, but also sweat like they are.  The medical term is hyperhidrosis and it’s probably a minor malfunction of the nervous system…kinda like hoarding…and insanity...

I was one of those kids, even when I was bone thin in the early years (I fattened like a calf between third and fourth grade), that smelled like pennies and had sweaty hair six months out of the year.  I distinctly remember walking to a grocery store in my youth, on a particularly warm early spring day with my Grandma and thinking, “Crap, first sweat of the year, I’ll keep on until Fall.”

All this comes to mind because I spent half of last week (mid-July) building a pergola in Tulsa.  Four days of windless sun and humidity. I’m adapted to the ‘dry heat’ of my own home’s summers, (reasonably adapted, sweat still flows like a shower), but Tulsa in July feels like the foyer to hell.   

It was a three shirt heat.  I’d sweat through a shirt, lay it to dry in the sun, sweat through a second, lay it to dry, and then go through a third, hoping the first had dried before the last was too gross to wear.  It usually hadn’t.   I also rotated bandanas, shorts and boxers, luckily for the neighbors there was a wooden fence. 

A constant intake of water with periodic gulps of Gatorade kept things pretty much operating normally.  There was an incident involving grip release of a ratchet while screwing in lag bolts.  My left hand didn’t want to let go, but a little help from the right hand to straighten fingers, a banana for potassium and I was back to work in ten minutes.  Other than that and an occasional angry outburst at Mother Nature for being a heartless bi…well, minor dehydration and low electrolytes seem to be the only adverse physical effects.  Mentally, profuse perspiration can be a little wearing but a person gets used to it.

Hyperhidrosis can be the result of health issues like pregnancy or menopause (right age, wrong gender), thyroid problems, tuberculosis, Parkinson's disease, rheumatoid arthritis, stroke, cancer (don’t seem to be issues), diabetes or alcoholism (not in my youth, anyway).  But my hyperhidrosis is Primary Focal Hyperhidrosis (self-diagnosis…always a good idea), which just means it’s part of who I am…a gross, sweaty dude. 

There are a few cures: antiperspirant (use it…but just in the pits), iontophoresis (shock therapy), drugs (not a fan of taking medicine), Botox (deadly food poison injected on purpose) and surgery to cut the nerve that triggers the sweating (a bit extreme).  Since those all seem a touch unhealthy I’m choosing to deal with the perspiration in a more traditional fashion, ignoring it.

Much like snoring and back hair, if my wife were to really complain I’d do something about it, but she doesn’t.  As it stands, I like working outside and summertime encompasses most of my free time so the sweating isn’t likely to stop; a shower or two and several clothes changes a day will have to suffice.  But the older I get, the more I think my people must’ve evolved in air conditioning.