Merry Christmas

[Ed_P]

Merry Christmas everyone.

I hope you are safe and warm and are having fun with family and friends with another Covid Christmas.

[M. Eerie]

Be safe and surtout , avoid arguing with your brother-in-law about COVID, freedom, vaccines and such...

[Rava]

Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

I wish you good health above else, including mental health.
I know of all my aquaintances and relatives I spoke to about that after 2 years of CoVid at approx 20 months of CoVid more-or-less restrictions to daily lives, and from morning to late at night every radio or TV mews is CoVid this and CoVid that and all people are sick an tired of the issue, therefore: coring for one's mental health is now an important matter even for the previously mental sane persons since the ongoing global situation is putting a severe strain on all of us.


As a gift of sorts, have some shots by me from yesterday when I was on the Via ferrata Höhenglücksteig in the Franconian Switzerland (more precisely, the Herbruckian Switzerland):

https://abload.de/img/20211225_19nkne.jpg
The start of the 3rd part of the Via ferrata Höhenglücksteig - the black thingy on the lower left is one of my hiking shoes, and the carabiner is part of my via ferrata set since at the time of that shot I am hanging approx 10 meters above ground on the thumb thick steel cable.

https://abload.de/img/20211225_2ucj97.jpg
Shot take from the very same spot than the shot above, I just turned myself around by 180° and am facing away from the rock face towards the lower ground and the snowy trees.

https://abload.de/img/20211225_3khjwg.jpg
As you can see on that little bridge, my footprints are the only ones in the snow.
Yesterday there was only a bit of snow, and on my way back to my car my previously footprints all have still been very visible. I presume at least for the afternoon I was the only one on the Höhenglücksteig that day. And even in winter that is a rare occurrence, the Höhenglücksteig is a very popular via ferrata.

avoid arguing with your brother-in-law about COVID, freedom, vaccines and such...

Sounds like you speak of own experiences…

[M. Eerie]

Sounds like you speak of own experiences…

Haha! Not really. My "cuñado" (brother in law) is a very nice person and renowned radiologist.

"Cuñado" is also an expression used here to denote a know-it-all guy. The one who can iron an egg or fry a tie for you. The one who is up to date with the latest technological advances and at the same time, is an eminence in COVID.

That been said, I would like to take this opportunity and sharea message of hope with all of you.

While we were enjoying the after-dinner conversation, my nephew (also a physician) told us about a statement made by a pulmonologist at Mount Sinai Hospital.

The reasoning is that the omicron variant spreads so fast and will infect so many people, that (paradoxically) it could be the end of the pandemic.

Certainly at this point, having a guru come along and preach his theory sounds overly pretentious, but we began to explore and put everything in context. Omicron infections have grown exponentially beyond the limits of previous waves. And yet, hospital pressure is noticeably lower. ICU stays are shortened and symptoms are hardly those of a common cold. There is no loss of smell, for example. Also, in South Africa the infection curve is notoriously downward.

True, there are still those who react negatively to the vaccine as they would to a bee sting because the remedy does not guarantee 100% effectiveness for 100% of the population, but it is unquestionable that the number of deaths due to a vaccine is insignificant compared to the number of people whose lives it has saved.

On the other hand, the naysayers and messengers of (their own) freedom are getting vaccinated by the Omicron in an unexpected way and without charging the costs to the health care system. Isn't it comical?

Isn't it poetic that Omicron has arrived from Africa, the cradle of the third world, providing a global solution to a global disaster that we ourselves have caused? Isn't it a slap in the face to the stupidity of governments that have even preferred to waste vaccines rather than send them to poor countries?

Great life lesson from Mother Nature who takes care of us in spite of everything. It is so beautiful that it is hard to believe. And so cruel that most imbeciles would still not draw the right conclusions and not appreciate the role of those who have spent hours and hours in silence to develop a remedy trying to win the battle in a fight against the clock until a variant arrives that vaccinates us completely and makes us immune.

So there we have it. We could be getting an unsuspected glimpse of the end of all this. Everybody happy with themselves. Congratulating themselves for being right.

Centuries later, there are those who still have no idea who Dr. Fleming or Charles Darwin are.

I wonder what would have become of us, if instead of descending from sapiens, we had descended from ignorens.

Let us dream and hope.

[Rava]

we began to explore and put everything in context. Omicron infections have grown exponentially beyond the limits of previous waves. And yet, hospital pressure is noticeably lower.

Funny you said so, on a forum that is frequented by very intelligent and intellectual people (it is mainly a languages forum) I wrote in the ongoing CoVid thread that past experiences told us that a mutation can do 3 things:

● not alter the medical issue of the virus or bacteria at all since the part that mutated is related to other issues
● make the virus or bacteria even more problematic or deathly
● make it much less problematic

There was only one reply, and he said that he rejects the possibility of the virus mutating into a much less severe one due to a random mutation - and his reasoning why? Because that would have proven the vaccine sceptics right on that one account, and that is a reality he cannot accept.
So, he being overall unlogical and irrational, because of his perceived unlogical and irrational arguing of the vaccine sceptics he despises. What a "funny" thing.

I stopped arguing since medical layperson not even gets it right when it comes to being less ill-making for a virus.
They think a virus is more efficient the more individual targets it can infect and the more it multiplies, usually that translates into making plants, animals or humans sick.

But medicine and biology tells us a very different story: much more bacteria and viruses just exist and multiply, but in a very reduced style so as to not make plants, animals or humans sick, just enough to be able to live on and multiply.

Ask anyone fit in microbiology or virology and that person will affirm what I just wrote.

And as proof: Corona viruses have been known since the 1950th, and we can be sure they existed for tens of thousands of years prior their discovery, and they have not created any severe issues from the 1950th until the end of 2019 - only the random mutation made them into a problematic virus.

Meaning: Coronavirus had no issue existing without creating due health issues in the past, and why should it not revert to such a state once again like it seems to do with the omicron variant?

[M. Eerie]

So, he being overall unlogical and irrational, because of his perceived unlogical and irrational arguing of the vaccine sceptics he despises. What a "funny" thing.

Speaking of slap in the face... That's what she said...

Meaning: Coronavirus had no issue existing without creating due health issues in the past, and why should it not revert to such a state once again like it seems to do with the omicron variant?

Meaning: That's how we evolved, I'd say.

[Ed_P]

Merry Christmas (Post by M. Eerie #86303)

A very off topic but an incredibly interesting posting M. Eerie. I do hope the conclusion holds true.