General Wellness

The Omicron variant, the one now raging throughout the world, the most infectious variant to date, has now given rise to 3 new variants of its own. Present in significant numbers in a few countries like Denmark and India, at least one of those sub-lineages is even MORE contagious than its predecessor, Omicron. Why they have not given them their own designations with a Greek letter is not clear. Probably to avoid confusing the already bewildered and stressed out public. It’s obviously still very early for definitive information, but so far, despite its greater contagiousness, it does not appear to result in more hospitalizations. Not yet, anyway.

Despite a sense out there that Omicron is less severe and that in some areas, infections and hospitalizations may be trending downward, that may just be smoke and mirrors. It’s all about the numbers. And they are high.

As some areas in the US are having declining numbers of infections, many others have yet to hit their peak. In addition, complicated by a healthcare workforce down 20% because of their own infections, hospitals are packed. In my own facility, elective surgeries have been curtailed once again to leave room in the hospital for Covid patients. Wait times in the ER are in excess of 10 hours. The numbers of hospitalizations nationally are higher than during the peak last winter!

Complicating the accuracy of the numbers is the availability of home tests. The numbers of infected are vastly underestimated since those positive home tests don’t get reported. In some ways this is good, because it means that the number of hospitalizations relative to infections is significantly lower than last year.

That having been said, this last week, the US averaged 2400 deaths a day, making it the second deadliest surge since the pandemic began. What’s worse about that is that the deadliest surge occurred when vaccines were not even available for the mass population yet. Covid is the leading cause of death in the US, surpassing cardiovascular deaths (1900/day) and cancer (1650/day).

Pandemic of the unvaccinated? It depends on what you are talking about. If you are looking at just infections, both groups are affected, although vaccinated people still get infected, they do so at half the rate of unvaccinated people. If you are talking about hospitalization and death, the risks of dying from Covid are 20x higher if you are not vaccinated. Even more significantly, if you are boosted, AKA fully vaccinated by today’s standards, your risk of getting infected at all is 4x less and the risk of death is 97x less than that of unvaccinated people. There is no treatment in all of medicine which boasts such protection! And after almost 10 billion doses worldwide, its safety profile is robust. It IS safe. If you are going to argue that you don’t know what the long term side effects of it are, then you have no business asking for monoclonal antibodies or antivirals when you are sick and in the hospital, since those drugs are brand new, newer than the vaccine, and we don’t known the long-term side effects of those drugs either!

Sadly, we lag behind 60 other countries when it comes to the percentage of fully vaccinated people! The rankings are even worse when you take into account those who should get the booster.

As far as relying on getting one of those newer Covid treatment medications if you get sick, which by the way I think are also amazing, good luck getting them if you really need them. You first of all need a positive PCR test. You either pay $225 for one of those, at least that’s the going rate in our area, or get in line and maybe you’ll get one. After that, you need to find somewhere they are available and those places still have to have them in stock. Don’t count on them!

Count on not getting sick by vaccinating and following practical protection measures.

PLEASE get vaccinated, and if you are 6 months out, get boosted. If you were unfortunate enough to have gotten sick, get boosted also. It’s the best combination.

MASK up. They work, assuming you are wearing a good one, properly.

DISTANCE and VENTILATE

HYGIENE. Flu is also still out there, along with all the other seasonal viruses.

GET HEALTHY! 

• Eat more plants (yes, healthy vegan diets are the healthiest and most protective)
• Move more!
• Love more. We NEED each other.
• Stress less. As the Buddhists say, “you should meditate every day. If you don’t have time to meditate once a day, you should do it twice a day”!!!

I will be off for a few days next week and will be off line.

Have a great weekend.

Stay safe and be well.

AC

animal agriculture position paper – Climate Healers
— Read on climatehealers.org/the-science/animal-agriculture-position-paper/

FYI, at least 87% of greenhouse gas emissions annually are produced by the animal agricultural industry!

Although CO2 levels are important in the global warming discussion, and human burning of fossil fuels is the biggest contributor to CO2 production, it’s only one of many gases which is causing global warming and climate change. For example methane is 25x more potent than CO2 in trapping heat in the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide, NO, is 300x more potent than CO2. The most important one however is methane, and we barely talk about it. 

Why don’t we talk about it? 

Because the animal agriculture industry is by far the greatest producer of methane.

Why is methane the most important one to discuss?

Because it is the one we can immediately do something about and reducing it will have an immediate positive impact on lowering both methane, CO2 and even NO levels, reducing global warming and maybe stopping what is turning into runaway climate change. We accomplish that by stopping producing and eating meat and dairy. Or at least, drastically reduce it.

It is insane to me for there to be discussions about measures we can take to address climate change and reducing production and consumption of animal products is not at the top of the list. Why would you not want to do the simplest and fastest thing to fix a problem? 

You can recycle “till the cows come home” (excuse the pun), but it is a drop in the ocean when it comes to reversing climate change.

In fact, by reducing fossil fuel burning and not addressing methane, global warming will actually get worse. In addition to CO2, burning fossil fuels also produces SO2, sulfur dioxide, which actually has a cooling effect in the atmosphere. It’s a toxic compound and causes lots of health issues, but it is at least mitigating some of the CO2 effects.

And in addition, reducing animal product consumption will significantly improve our health and we will end a system of torture and violence which annually kills upwards if 90 billion land animals alone, let alone the aquatic life which we are also devastating. Karma is a bitch.

Previous accepted estimates of greenhouse gas production by feeding, raising and eating animals was 15%. The linked paper is quite compelling and explains where that figure 87% of greenhouse gas emissions annually comes from.