Still in Exodus and that whole detailed law thing. Today I was thinking, not only were they given this to make them separate but also to teach them how to honor God. Surrounded by nations filled with false worship, they (and we) probably needed instruction on how to live holy. Specifically reading about the detail of the clothing and how the turban of the priest should be decorated, etc. That is a lot of detail. And it also I imagine, reflects what is going on in Heaven with the tabernacle and all. And I wondered if that was where Islam came up with the waashing of hands and feet before prayer. Anyway, enjoying yet another run through Exodus. Not advocating we need to do all of those things.
Good morning. Half-words again today. Reading psalms in a slightly different version made me look up some phrases to see how they compared. One change was the word loved used where other versions use mercy at the end of Psalm 23. I wondered why the change and which is more accurate. I haven’t looked deeper into the Hebrew, however, myself. Always something new to learn.
K, the Hebrew word for mercy in Psalm 23 is hesed, and essentially signifies benevolent ardour. It is often translated kindness, such as in Ruth 3:10. It can mean love, more in the sense of I Corinthians 13 agape.
Good morning, all. I’m about to get on a Zoom call for Bible study. Not sure if Miss Bosley will stick around once the ladies all start talking on my speaker phone. Have a good morning, and please don’t require Chas and Mumsee to have to resort to harsh discipline. No waterboarding!
Mumsee, the high priest for us is Christ, and he is clothed in a greater glory that earthly embroidery and jewels can make. It is his blood that makes us clean to approach God in prayer (Hebrews 12:18-24). To observe a ritual cleansing before prayer would dishonour his completed work (Galatians 5:4). Christ’s willingness to identify with and touch and be touched by the ceremonially unclean shows, as he said to the Pharisees, that it is a sinful heart that defiles humans, not their physical state (Mark 7:1-23). My online church is going through the Gospel of Mark, drawing together the narrative, and a couple of weeks ago it was pointed out how Jesus even touched the tongue (something we consider totally gross) of a Gentile man to heal him ( Mark 7:31-35).*
In West Africa, I had to learn to stay alert as I walked through the city and village streets, as at any moment I could come across a man doing his prayers in front of his shop or booth. As a woman, if I passed in front of his prayer mat, I would render him unclean again and he would have to wash again and begin his prayers again. So I had to walk behind, not because I believed it was true, but as much it depended on me, I wanted to keep peace with everyone (Romans 12:8). But, if there were any object in front of the man, even just a pot or a shoe, then I could pass by in front of him. Discrimination is built into ceremonial purification, because women are always considered unclean. In the Temple complex of Jesus’ day, they couldn’t pass beyond the court of the women, and most of the village mosques in West Africa did not have a court for the women, so they couldn’t go there for Friday prayers. Islam is in many ways, Judaism (which is no longer Abraham’s faith, since it rejected Christ) for Gentiles.
*Decapolis, where he healed the deaf and dumb man, was a mainly Gentile region on the east of Galilee and Jordan, where once the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh had settled but had been the first to be destroyed and taken away – the country of the Gadarenes, where the demoniac was healed, is in the northern part of the Decapolis. The reason why Jesus fed the multitudes twice become clearer. The first was to a Jewish multitude with 5000 men (Mark 6:34-44). The second was in the Decapolis to a mainly Gentile multitude of 4000 (Mark 8:1-9), and in that second miracle, he was demonstrating that there were more than enough crumbs for the Gentiles at his table (Mark 7:24-30, 8:10-21).
I was just reading yet another article about how we’re all going to DIE if we’re not 100% vaccinated in our respective countries.
This is what happens when so many of us (raising my hand here) get out of science and math classes by taking five quarters of foreign languages instead.
A vaccine doesn’t mean you NEVER get the disease, it merely means if you do, you won’t get as sick. As in flattening the hospitalization curve way, way down to almost nothing.
Note: one of our outlaws–a distant outlaw I only met once–was fully vaccinated in January, was exposed, ended up in the hospital, and died.
He was over 90 years old–which means he was vulnerable.
The family–which includes a science person who told me about it last night–is agitated. See? You still have to be careful.
Of course you do, but Mr. COVID points out every time you get into a car your risk of dying is higher than it is of dying from COVID.
That’s it. I have to clean my house before the housekeeper arrives . . .
Michelle, this is something that in the anxiety to stop the decimation of nursing homes, was not widely mentioned: at over 90, the vaccine is far less likely to provide protection. The reason for that is the older we get, the more our potential to develop permanent immunity disintegrates. Our T-cells, which are our permanent immunity cells, are made in the bone marrow, but they mature in a little named gland called the thymus gland. It lies just behind the breastbone. In children this gland is quite large and active, but it shrinks and calcifies in adulthood. This means that there are a limited number of T-cells in the body of an adult and fewer and fewer with time. That is why childhood vaccines and the development of immunity in childhood is so important, and why chemotherapy is so devastating, because it wipes out prior immunity.
I still have a huge problem ,scientifically , with putting something in my body which has had no long term testing. I am not arguing that they are not effective, but that we have no knowledge of long term effects. I have to remember from pharmacology that thalidomide was an approved drug that worked very well to control nausea. Long term effects did not come to light until it had been used long term. They were bad. It changed the approval process to keep medications from being rushed onto the market just because they seem to be effective.
Roscuro, note my last sentence. Yes, Christ is our salvation, there is no other. Just thinking on the details God gave and why that might be. Certainly did not save them. But perhaps to teach them that He is not like the false gods of the neighborhood.
Anyway, meditation from the walk this morning. Praising God for Who He is and then praising Him for His creation, including me and letting me be a tiny part of His glorifying. And I was thinking that if He is as big as the universe (and I believe He is) than I am as small as a grain of sand, or a molecule of sand or an atom of sand or smaller, in reflecting His glory. And I was reminded of Cheryl’s tiny flower picture (a flower I know and love here in my yard) and how tiny it is but it too contributes to the beauty of His creation and glorifies its Creator. And so do we.
Hi rkessler, how did it go? Glad to have you back!
My daughter, the RN, still declines the vaccine because of that. And there is talk that it is not known how the vaccine effects fertility. And she would like another child.
I am still deciding. I am hoping it would not effect mine and make me what I am no longer. Not ready for another baby just yet.
At one point every vaccine was untested. Smallpox (1798) vaccination involved scraping pus from the cowpox rash on one person’s arm onto another person’s. Rabies (1885) vaccine used the dried spinal cord material of an infected rabbit to save those bitten by rabid animals, as there was a 100 percent chance they would have died the most agonizing death if they were infected. Diphtheria (1924) took the bacteria’s own disinfected and heated toxin to create immunity. The effects of such diseases were so devastating – no one remember now how diphtheria literally choked children to death, but terrible descriptions of helpless parents and doctors watching children turn blue from the infection abound in old medical literature – that anything that prevented them from happening was welcomed. We see similar levels of devastation in those countries whose health systems are too weak to ventilate all those who need it and who have not yet been able to vaccinate. Ontario, which had delays in delivering the vaccine, has only narrowly escaped having to implement triage protocols that decide who is ventilated and who is not – it wasn’t lack of materials on our case, but lack of personnel. If the vaccines prevent hospitalizations, that is well worth it, because in India, people are suffocating in the streets because there is no oxygen available in hospitals.
Roscuro, I wish that all you have posted about vaccines, etc, could be put into one paper so I could send it to everyone who floods me with conspiracy theories (not saying that of RK or others here, her views are quite valid). But that would just be wrong because I would be doing it with wrong motives 🙂 Instead I just snooze them all for 30 days and if it starts up again when they return, then I block them. My life is much happier 🙂
I wasn’t sure quite what to do when my son’s MIL started sending me stuff on FB. Gah. I love her and didn’t want to alienate her at all.
Mumsee, over 60,000 pregnant women have been vaccinated in the US. They follow those women, and healthy babies are being born with their mother’s antibodies. The vaccine is being proven safe with pregnancy. The rumour that it could affect fertility was deliberately fabricated by a vaccine skeptic, long before the vaccines were actually used: https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210112/why-covid-vaccines-are-falsely-linked-to-infertility. This person claimed that the spike protein the virus uses is similar in shape to a protein in the placenta and, so, claimed this person, causing a person to produce antibodies against the spike protein could cause those antibodies to confuse the placenta protein for the spike protein and thus cause miscarriages.
The reasoning was totally specious, first, because the spike protein if the virus and the placenta protein are only similar and if the human body cannot distinguish between similar things our own immune systems would have killed us long ago. Second, if the claims were true then every woman of child bearing age would need to be kept in an ivory tower until this thing is over, because infection with COVID-19 also causes antibodies to be produced against its spike protein. If this skeptic’s claims were true, infection with COVID-19 would render survivors infertile, and considering that the entire world population is vulnerable to COVID infection, that would mean mass infertility and population extinction. In any case, there were tens of thousands of people who were involved in the vaccine trials, and the women involved in those trials last year were screened for pregnancy before getting the vaccine, because scientists were uncertain of the effects. A number of those women, although advised to avoid pregnancy during the trial did in fact become pregnant.
Mumsee, being infected with COVID and getting the vaccine both produce immune antibodies to the virus’s spike protein. So if it were true that the immune system could confuse the human placenta protein with the spike protein of COVID-19, then infection with COVID would be an equal risk of infertility as getting the vaccine and every woman wanting to get pregnant would have to avoid both infection and the vaccine. But the vaccine has already been shown not to prevent pregnancy, so that scare tactic is untrue.
Kare, I sympathize. Youngest-in-law’s mother keeps sending similar emails. My father, who has had his first dose, watched one link – they always seem to be videos, because one can speak nonsense but getting it published is a different matter – the other day. He came away snickering, because the talking head claimed that COVID only infected lung tissue and because the vaccine is injected into the bloodstream it would actually cause more effects than an infection would. Well, it was long ago established that COVID could infect any area of the body where ACE2 receptors are located, which is why COVID causes strokes and heart attacks and one in five COVID infections produce blood clots. But what was most laughable was this so-called doctor had said the vaccine was injected into the bloodstream. No vaccine is injected into the blood – it is injected into the muscle, and a real doctor would know that.
I have a friend, now 8 months pregnant, who got vaccine #2 last week and was very sick.
Her reasoning, made with the obstetrician, was she had opted NOT to get the flu vaccine while pregnant with her last child. She got the flu, went into premature labor, and delivered a small, but fundamentally healthy, boy at 8 months. She didn’t want to risk it again at 40 with her fourth child, and only daughter.
She’s fine now and the baby isn’t here yet. 🙂
I think every case needs to be weighed, based on your best medical advice for your particular health. I have an underlying condition, so did that 90+ year-old outlaw.
My 91-year-old uncle, who has a foot-thick medical record including hemophilia, got COVID and came through fine. I think he’s had the vaccine now, for what it’s worth. He was laughing about chickens yesterday. 🙂
It’s God who ordains the number of our days. I’m going with Him–and common sense– for me. 🙂
But, the fundamental problem for so many is fear of death.
It’s just another call to share the Good News where and when we can. The world is lost–and they’re screaming it loud so we can’t miss it.
Michelle, for many it is not about the fear of death. I worked with patients all last year without being vaccinated. Yes, we screened and asked people to stay home to avoid infecting other patients if they were sick. But we knew perfectly well that our questionnaire was wholly dependent on their honesty and their ability to remover. Yet we had patients who were addicts who would place themselves at risk for the sake of supplying their addiction and wouldn’t be honest about it, and patients with cognitive impairment and patients with dementia who might not fully understand the questions and not understand the risks they took or remember where they had been. Yet if they answered no to the symptom and contact questions, we had to see them. So, we worked with the possibility of infection every day. It is not fear, but a desire to stop the spread, to ensure that everyone who becomes critically ill with this is given a chance of survival. A lot of people like to claim that only a small percentage will die and that’s true, but as India demonstrates, between one to three people dying out of a hundred adds up to a lot of people dying. The mortality rate is around 3.4 percent, but this is a new, ever shifting virus, rendering the whole world vulnerable. 3.4 percent of the world population is 265 million people. By comparison the 2004 tsunami in the Indian ocean killed 224 thousand, and that was considered a horrible tragedy.
I will get the vaccine I suppose because it will make for a happier marriage. I don’t want to get it because I got the flu vaccine when I was nursing BG thinking it would pass on to her and protect her. I still wonder if that somehow caused some of her health issues. I don’t know. DIL is choosing not to get it because she eventually wants to have another child. I gave her my opinion on only children (DON’T HAVE ONE IF YOU CAN HELP IT) but also told her that if you achieve perfection the first time you really don’t have to do anything else.
We shall see.
Just noticed another of those interesting correlations between passages after writing about the feeding of the five and four thousand. Jesus questions his disciples when they don’t understand his warning about the leaven of the Pharisees:
‘They were discussing among themselves that they did not have any bread. Aware of this, he said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact you have no bread? Don’t you understand or comprehend? Do you have hardened hearts? Do you have eyes and not see; do you have ears and not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of leftovers did you collect?”
‘“Twelve,” they told him.
‘“When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets full of pieces did you collect?”
‘“Seven,” they said.
‘And he said to them, “Don’t you understand yet?”’ (Mark 8:16-21)
The twelve baskets of leftovers from the feeding of the five thousand always seemed significant to me, as it correlates to the twelve disciples/Apostles. But I never saw any significance to the seven baskets of the feeding of the four thousand. Then today, as I was thinking about the four thousand being more Gentiles, my memory kicked in where else the number seven and being fed correlated . Acts 6:1-7:
‘Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”
‘And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.’
Kim, there is a very low likelihood the vaccine would have caused BG’s health problems. All she would have got was antibodies, not the vaccine. The antibodies your own body produced in response to the vaccine are what would go into the breast milk – the vaccine went no further than your arm muscle. Antibodies break down over time in the body and babies do not keep immunity derived from their mother’s overtime. Furthermore, every other disease antibody which you carry would also have either crossed the placenta or been given in breast milk, so any influenza infections you previously had would also have produced antibodies in your system. After the passively acquired immunity wore off, BG was undoubtedly infected several times by influenza in her childhood and would have produced her own antibodies. The whole purpose of vaccines is to trigger the immune system to produce the same antibodies that actual infection with a disease would produce, without causing the serious illness that infection causes. So when people speculate that antibodies produced by a vaccine might have detrimental effects, those same detrimental effects, if one’s own antibodies were really that dangerous, would happen with actual infection.
As someone who is exposed daily to positive pts, fear if getting or not getting covid is not the driving force for getting or not getting vaccinated
The majority of the nurses in our unit have elected to not get the vaccine due to not knowing the long term effects rather than conspiracy theories. We see those in respiratory distress daily. We all feel societal pressure to be vaccinated, but each person has to make those decisions for themselves. I can foresee myself getting the vaccine in 4 or 5 years, when i see what the long term effects are.
Only in the affluent West can the desire for vaccination be described as being due to societal pressure. For the rest of the world, it is a chance for survival.
RKessler, we also do not know the long-term effects of getting Covid-19. That would seem to me to be at least as relevant, since we do know of “long-haulers” with Covid-19 who keep symptoms for several months. What if those effects last their entire lives?
I haven’t gotten the vaccine because I’m in strict isolation and the vaccine would be only in case of emergency if I got it. (If I were to break my leg and need to go to the hospital, I would have already been vaccinated.) But if I were out and about and interacting with people, I’d be more concerned about the effects of the virus than of the effects of the vaccine.
COVID infection has long term effects. We have several times discussed chickenpox and shingles on here. Chickenpox virus, with infection, has the ability to go latent, resting in the nerve roots of the central nervous system, only to reemerge as shingles during a time of immune stress, but a chickenpox vaccine prevents shingles from ever recurring. Viruses have that capability, of lurking or just lingering for long periods after an illness, in some part of the body where the immune system has difficulty reaching. The vitreous humor of the eyeball, the synovial fluid of the joints, even the epididymis of the testicles – survivors of Ebola had the virus linger for months in those areas, and developed rheumatoid-like arthritic symptoms in their joint. It has long been suspected that auto-immune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, are originally triggered by infections causing prolonged immune responses. My mother is the only one of her sibling to have inflammatory arthritis, and the sibling often wonder if it was the rare and deadly virus she survived in childhood that none of the rest of them ever got that was the trigger for her current pain and inflammation. Those with chronic fatigue syndrome say that the symptoms that sufferers from long COVID describe sound exactly like chronic fatigue. Then there is the heart and lung damage being seen with COVID, which will have permanent effects. As a community nurse, I deal with the effects of cardiovascular and chronic lung disease daily – the leg ulcers that take up so much time and energy to wrap are a result of such diseases, and frequently a warning sign that the condition is disintegrating. The worse the condition, the longer it takes to heal the ulcers, and sometimes it may never fully heal. Vaccines prevent the long term damage that infection produces, because the virus never infects the body and thus can never hide away in the hard to reach areas.
Thanks for the vaccination info and clarifications, roscuro.
Of course, one can still “get” Covid, but as was pointed out, the vaccine, in the vast majority of cases, should prevent hospitalization and/or death from the virus.
I also recall reading that those of advanced age would not benefit much by it; I have a friend in Denver, a retired RN, who asked about it but her doctor advised against it as she’s now in her 90s.
What’s being done to make sure vaccine supplies are getting to some of these other countries? I’m unclear about that. But hopefully progress can be made (though in so many cases it’s too late for too many people).
Yep, this thing will probably be bouncing around, with all its various variants, for a while somewhere in the world, including in the West.
It’s always going to be a risk vs benefit call when it comes to new vaccines. This was an easy call for me, personally, but I realize for others not so much, for whatever reasons.
Talked to my 35-year-old ‘teen-aged’ neighbor yesterday who said he got the first shot but hasn’t gotten the 2nd one yet. Just hasn’t gotten around to it …
Tree guys come tomorrow to check out the dead tree and provide me with an estimate — they said they’d give me credit for the $300 (?) I’d spent last fall on the treatment in hopes that would work.
While they’re here, I can ask them about what they’d suggest I plant in place of the tree (another tree of some kind is my plan) – and how to deal with that section of soil where the painters dumped all their toxic junk (which is a possible cause for why the pine tree failed after being established for so many years),
As for their estimate, I’ll compare it to what the gardeners would charge, I actually like to throw money their way when I can and they’re very competent. But I’m sure the landscaping company would argue that they are much more equipped to do the job. Still, money, as always, is an object in my world.
DJ, it is hard for countries like Brazil and India to conduct the same vaccine campaigns, and it isn’t just supplies and personnel that is lacking. The kind of refrigeration needed for the mRNA vaccines is a lot harder in countries with much warmer climates and much less reliable electricity. So they tend to gravitate toward the vector vaccines like AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson. There are also vaccines coming from Russia and China, but in Brazil, the Chinese vaccine seems unreliable and there is very little data on the Russian vaccine. For all the reservation that gets expressed around Western vaccine development, everyone has to admit that companies in the West are far more transparent about the process than Russia and China. I understand that the US has offered the AstraZeneca doses it has to India, since the US never got around to FDA approval of them. India has vaccine manufacturing capability, but there was a shortage of materials to manufacture them, so the US is also releasing those materials apparently – something had caused a delay in export. The EU has sent oxygenation supplies I know, and so has Canada, but the EU is still struggling with vaccine supply themselves, as is Canada. There has been some talk of petitioning for international release of intellectual property to allow for more widespread manufacture of vaccines, but that is a huge issue of law that probably won’t get dealt with in a timely fashion.
Mumsee, the article is reporting of those who got COVID, survived but still had prolonged symptoms, and then had the vaccine, and that 46 percent, in one survey, noticed that their symptoms improved or even disappeared after the vaccine. As suggested in the article, it could be because the vaccine helped clear away any lingering presence of the virus, which I previously noted is possible, but no one knows for sure at this point. It is a point of study at this point, but it being studied will teach us more about the immune system. As for your different question about getting the vaccine and then getting COVID, the vaccine studies showed a reduction in hospitalization rates for those who got infected after vaccination. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is primarily for the purpose of reducing hospitalization, as it has a low rate of preventing infection. The Pfizer and Moderna have a much higher prevention rate. AstraZeneca is better at prevention than Johnson and Johnson despite being another vector vaccine, possibly because it is two shots instead of one.
Break from vaccine talk: Sixth has developed the attitude of Eeyore. When he gets disciplined, he wails that no one likes him. A couple of weeks ago, he freaked me out because I told him not to climb on the furniture, so he wailed that no one loved him and he was going to run away. He then took off in the direction of the front door. I was still quite disabled at that point, and was actually reclining in a chair, so, knowing that I couldn’t run after him, I caught hold of his arm as he ran past, and held it until I could learn where exactly he was going. Today, after his nap, he has been wailing that the things he wants to happen will never happen. I wonder if he is feeling insecure because he knows another little one is on the way. My mother used to say that three was the age when children most felt and feared any kind of separation, and I think Sixth has enjoyed being the baby – I used to say the world was his oyster, because he was so confident and happy all the time.
I can confirm Roscuro and RKessler’s assertion that the long term effects are very real. I still have breathing issues and need an inhaler. The bouts of fatigue, short term memory issues, and muscle fatigue still come and go.
I’m not yet vaccinated, but probably will soon. And like I’m sure RKessler is, I’m very concerned about how the vaccine will effect those still lingering effects. I don’t want Covid again, don’t know if I could survive another incident as bad as the first was. But I’m still leery of the vaccine, especially since I know people who had some pretty severe symptoms of Covid after being vaccinated.
So for now I limit contact, social distance, and wear a mask in public while I continue to mull over it. Just like I been doing anyway.
and how is Roscuro’s recovery going?
Morning all.
I am laughing as I got another secure message from my health insurance. it is so secure that I cannot log on to get the message. What a way to communicate.
Sometimes I wonder what my dog (or cats, for that matter) thinks when I am praying out loud or talking to myself or on the phone. They know that talking is our form of communication, I think, so I wonder what they must think when we are apparently talking to no one. 😀
Kizzie, I have told Miss B that God is all around and loves us. I move my head all around when I say the name God thinking she may imitate me by looking all around and understand in some sense. I tell her that God gives her food because He loves her. I know it probably seems silly, but she is with me all the time and knows I have a voice I use to speak to God which is reserved for Him. She has no deep understanding, but she has to be aware God is Someone who is unseen but can hear.
The reactions after the 2nd shot are expected and short-lived.
What are the side effects of the second Covid vaccine?
Why does the second dose cause more side effects? Fever, chills and body aches are all normal side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine. They are often stronger after the second dose because your body’s immune response is stronger. Apr 27, 2021
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Most don’t have those types of reactions (I didn’t, but I did experience a low-grade headache and fatigue, which were gone in about 24 hours). It’s your immune system’s response. And that’s a good thing, it’s supposed to do that.
For small groups at church if everyone has been vaccinated no one has to wear a mask at tut his point. If one person is unvaccinated then everyone in the small group has to wear a mask. Since I have not been vaccinated it makes me feel like not going and making the others have to wear masks. My friends in the group want to go the way of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell because we’d all sit far apart. I still have a few weeks to decide what to do. It makes me feel a tad bit like Vax Shaming is a thing.
Jo and Kizzie, I am getting better, it is slowly becoming more easy to move. I can walk faster and without feeling the need to brace my incisions, but still can’t run. Incisions are healed over, though I can still see where they were. My muscles are still somewhat sore and weak. I was told not to squat down for 6 weeks, and I still have difficulty bending over, so I have to kneel if I have to pick anything up from the floor. Once after kneeling, I tried to stand up by pushing off with both legs, but I had forgotten that is how one stands up from a squatting position. I could feel the pressure and kind of collapsed back on the ground(I was outside). I managed to stand by putting one knee up, but for the rest of that day I felt weak. Then the day I flew my kite so high, I strained my abdominal muscles a bit too much. I was told I shouldn’t lift anything over 10 lbs for two weeks and didn’t think about the weight of the kite pulling in the wind being bit more than that. I completed my fifth week today. The way my schedule was when I left, I have another 2 weeks off at least.
Interesting about the kite and the wind adding “weight” — I would not have thought about that but it makes sense. (Saw the photo on FB.)
Glad you’re recovering and feeling better. My abdominal surgery from some years ago took some time and I remember lifting and some other things being difficult for quite a while.
My knee today is feeling much better already after the cortisones shot I received yesterday. This will last for 3+ months and we’ll see what added info the MRI next week might add to how we can better address this ongoing annoyance. It’s my 2020 knee. 😦
Janice – I wouldn’t think of it as intended to shame, but their wearing of masks would be to protect you.
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DJ – I had the same effects – a headache and fatigue. A little achy on the first day, too.
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Roscuro – May 9 will mark three months since my gallbladder surgery. My incisions have healed by now, of course, but are still evident in their darker color (which may fade, but will always be scars). Every now and then, I feel a little twinge in the longest one or another one, but it is a slight twinge, not really painful.
Since I didn’t know I would be having surgery until the night (actually, early morning) before, and then was home a little less than two days after going to the ER, I still sometimes say to myself, in almost amazement, “Wow. I had surgery.” That may sound silly, but it was not planned ahead like some surgeries, and it all happened so quickly.
I remember that waking up from the anesthesia was such a shock. I had expected to feel myself drifting off when the mask was put on my face before surgery and then gradually “come to” later. But I was out instantly, without that feeling of falling asleep, and then awoke suddenly. It seemed like it all happened within seconds. Was that your experience, too?
Kizzie, no it wasn’t actually, but my family do not respond well to medications. The anesthetist said before he gave me the sedative to put me to sleep he was going to give another injection that would make me feel weird. It did. Sound became warped and objects moved oddly – very psychedelic and trippy. Then I was out. When I came to – I know from my experience training in the OR that they bring you up out of the anesthetic in the OR – I could hear them telling that I had come through surgery fine but I couldn’t see anything. That wasn’t surprising – the only other time I experienced sedation was when my wisdom teeth were removed and my hearing returned several minutes before my sight did. I was immediately in pain when I came to – I removed crying out with it which I do not usually do – and so they gave me an opiate. I think I faded out again because the next thing I remember is being in recovery, again not able to see but able to hear. I was still in pain and given more painkiller. Then, when I could see, it was only to experience terrible vertigo. I should have known that would happen. I had surgery over a decade ago, minor enough that I didn’t need general anesthetic, but they gave me a synthetic opiate to use as a painkiller every few hours. The first one I took I was fine, but after the second dose, I went to stand up and the room spun around me. I had to lie very still and just getting up to my room caused my to vomit violently. That happened again this time around, when I tried to stand for the first time while still feeling the vertigo and I ended up vomiting, which is horrible with a new incision. The nurses figured out pretty quickly that the opiates must be causing it and stopped giving them to me. Just Tylenol and Naproxen after that and even then, after that initial pain coming out of the anesthetic, I found it bearable. My nurses were run off their feet with other patients, and so they didn’t always get my pain medication to me and that was fine. I never used the call bell. I could get up by myself once the vertigo went away and just regarded the pain as warning me to go carefully.
Kizzie, I don’t think it is intentional shaming, but it relates to my never wanting to be a bother to people. If I show up then I would be a bother to everyone in the room because they would have to put on masks. We still are told to wear masks in the sanctuary with the bigger group. I think with my church being in the vicinity of the CDC that there may be more push in my community to get vaccinated and generally make people feel out of sync if they don’t. Every community has its own nuances.
When I had surgery (many years ago now) they had me count backward from 100 and I don’t think I got far — I, too, just blacked out. When I awoke I was very nauseous and just remember seeing the clock on the wall in recovery.
Going in, they thought this would be endoscopic and I’d be out that same day. But they had to do the incision so I was in the hospital for a few days. No fun.
But nothing life threatening, thankfully. Just kind of a shock, physically and mentally, at that time!
C has decided we will get the vaccine when he’s out of the rehab hospital, as his dr has suggested it. And I don’t think he would survive another bout of covid. We don’t know how permanent the lung damage is, but he’s likely coming home with oxygen and perhaps even a wheelchair for a while at least. I was thinking like Mumsee @ 3:03. I’m concerned about the long-term effects of either, but I’m over 60 so ‘long-term’ is a relative thing. :–)
Wandering Views 
Good morning again.
Whatever else is has, I don’ know. But South Dakota has a pretty governor.
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Good morning, all.
Still in Exodus and that whole detailed law thing. Today I was thinking, not only were they given this to make them separate but also to teach them how to honor God. Surrounded by nations filled with false worship, they (and we) probably needed instruction on how to live holy. Specifically reading about the detail of the clothing and how the turban of the priest should be decorated, etc. That is a lot of detail. And it also I imagine, reflects what is going on in Heaven with the tabernacle and all. And I wondered if that was where Islam came up with the waashing of hands and feet before prayer. Anyway, enjoying yet another run through Exodus. Not advocating we need to do all of those things.
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Morning Chas and mumsee. Way past my bedtime. Trying to respond to my insurance company. An exercise in futility.
Good night.
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Good morning. Half-words again today. Reading psalms in a slightly different version made me look up some phrases to see how they compared. One change was the word loved used where other versions use mercy at the end of Psalm 23. I wondered why the change and which is more accurate. I haven’t looked deeper into the Hebrew, however, myself. Always something new to learn.
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K, the Hebrew word for mercy in Psalm 23 is hesed, and essentially signifies benevolent ardour. It is often translated kindness, such as in Ruth 3:10. It can mean love, more in the sense of I Corinthians 13 agape.
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Good morning, all. I’m about to get on a Zoom call for Bible study. Not sure if Miss Bosley will stick around once the ladies all start talking on my speaker phone. Have a good morning, and please don’t require Chas and Mumsee to have to resort to harsh discipline. No waterboarding!
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Chas doesn’t do waterboarding.
But you have to look out for that Mumsee.
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Mumsee, the high priest for us is Christ, and he is clothed in a greater glory that earthly embroidery and jewels can make. It is his blood that makes us clean to approach God in prayer (Hebrews 12:18-24). To observe a ritual cleansing before prayer would dishonour his completed work (Galatians 5:4). Christ’s willingness to identify with and touch and be touched by the ceremonially unclean shows, as he said to the Pharisees, that it is a sinful heart that defiles humans, not their physical state (Mark 7:1-23). My online church is going through the Gospel of Mark, drawing together the narrative, and a couple of weeks ago it was pointed out how Jesus even touched the tongue (something we consider totally gross) of a Gentile man to heal him ( Mark 7:31-35).*
In West Africa, I had to learn to stay alert as I walked through the city and village streets, as at any moment I could come across a man doing his prayers in front of his shop or booth. As a woman, if I passed in front of his prayer mat, I would render him unclean again and he would have to wash again and begin his prayers again. So I had to walk behind, not because I believed it was true, but as much it depended on me, I wanted to keep peace with everyone (Romans 12:8). But, if there were any object in front of the man, even just a pot or a shoe, then I could pass by in front of him. Discrimination is built into ceremonial purification, because women are always considered unclean. In the Temple complex of Jesus’ day, they couldn’t pass beyond the court of the women, and most of the village mosques in West Africa did not have a court for the women, so they couldn’t go there for Friday prayers. Islam is in many ways, Judaism (which is no longer Abraham’s faith, since it rejected Christ) for Gentiles.
*Decapolis, where he healed the deaf and dumb man, was a mainly Gentile region on the east of Galilee and Jordan, where once the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh had settled but had been the first to be destroyed and taken away – the country of the Gadarenes, where the demoniac was healed, is in the northern part of the Decapolis. The reason why Jesus fed the multitudes twice become clearer. The first was to a Jewish multitude with 5000 men (Mark 6:34-44). The second was in the Decapolis to a mainly Gentile multitude of 4000 (Mark 8:1-9), and in that second miracle, he was demonstrating that there were more than enough crumbs for the Gentiles at his table (Mark 7:24-30, 8:10-21).
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I was just reading yet another article about how we’re all going to DIE if we’re not 100% vaccinated in our respective countries.
This is what happens when so many of us (raising my hand here) get out of science and math classes by taking five quarters of foreign languages instead.
A vaccine doesn’t mean you NEVER get the disease, it merely means if you do, you won’t get as sick. As in flattening the hospitalization curve way, way down to almost nothing.
Note: one of our outlaws–a distant outlaw I only met once–was fully vaccinated in January, was exposed, ended up in the hospital, and died.
He was over 90 years old–which means he was vulnerable.
The family–which includes a science person who told me about it last night–is agitated. See? You still have to be careful.
Of course you do, but Mr. COVID points out every time you get into a car your risk of dying is higher than it is of dying from COVID.
That’s it. I have to clean my house before the housekeeper arrives . . .
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Michelle, this is something that in the anxiety to stop the decimation of nursing homes, was not widely mentioned: at over 90, the vaccine is far less likely to provide protection. The reason for that is the older we get, the more our potential to develop permanent immunity disintegrates. Our T-cells, which are our permanent immunity cells, are made in the bone marrow, but they mature in a little named gland called the thymus gland. It lies just behind the breastbone. In children this gland is quite large and active, but it shrinks and calcifies in adulthood. This means that there are a limited number of T-cells in the body of an adult and fewer and fewer with time. That is why childhood vaccines and the development of immunity in childhood is so important, and why chemotherapy is so devastating, because it wipes out prior immunity.
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I still have a huge problem ,scientifically , with putting something in my body which has had no long term testing. I am not arguing that they are not effective, but that we have no knowledge of long term effects. I have to remember from pharmacology that thalidomide was an approved drug that worked very well to control nausea. Long term effects did not come to light until it had been used long term. They were bad. It changed the approval process to keep medications from being rushed onto the market just because they seem to be effective.
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Sorry. Not meaning to open a can of worms…just offering a different point of view. Can you tell I finished classes yesterday?
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Roscuro, note my last sentence. Yes, Christ is our salvation, there is no other. Just thinking on the details God gave and why that might be. Certainly did not save them. But perhaps to teach them that He is not like the false gods of the neighborhood.
Anyway, meditation from the walk this morning. Praising God for Who He is and then praising Him for His creation, including me and letting me be a tiny part of His glorifying. And I was thinking that if He is as big as the universe (and I believe He is) than I am as small as a grain of sand, or a molecule of sand or an atom of sand or smaller, in reflecting His glory. And I was reminded of Cheryl’s tiny flower picture (a flower I know and love here in my yard) and how tiny it is but it too contributes to the beauty of His creation and glorifies its Creator. And so do we.
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Hi rkessler, how did it go? Glad to have you back!
My daughter, the RN, still declines the vaccine because of that. And there is talk that it is not known how the vaccine effects fertility. And she would like another child.
I am still deciding. I am hoping it would not effect mine and make me what I am no longer. Not ready for another baby just yet.
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Went well. Waiting to get the “pass” to apply for the NCLEX. Such a relief to be done.
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At one point every vaccine was untested. Smallpox (1798) vaccination involved scraping pus from the cowpox rash on one person’s arm onto another person’s. Rabies (1885) vaccine used the dried spinal cord material of an infected rabbit to save those bitten by rabid animals, as there was a 100 percent chance they would have died the most agonizing death if they were infected. Diphtheria (1924) took the bacteria’s own disinfected and heated toxin to create immunity. The effects of such diseases were so devastating – no one remember now how diphtheria literally choked children to death, but terrible descriptions of helpless parents and doctors watching children turn blue from the infection abound in old medical literature – that anything that prevented them from happening was welcomed. We see similar levels of devastation in those countries whose health systems are too weak to ventilate all those who need it and who have not yet been able to vaccinate. Ontario, which had delays in delivering the vaccine, has only narrowly escaped having to implement triage protocols that decide who is ventilated and who is not – it wasn’t lack of materials on our case, but lack of personnel. If the vaccines prevent hospitalizations, that is well worth it, because in India, people are suffocating in the streets because there is no oxygen available in hospitals.
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Illness is an ugly thing and I am glad we have vaccines.
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Roscuro, I wish that all you have posted about vaccines, etc, could be put into one paper so I could send it to everyone who floods me with conspiracy theories (not saying that of RK or others here, her views are quite valid). But that would just be wrong because I would be doing it with wrong motives 🙂 Instead I just snooze them all for 30 days and if it starts up again when they return, then I block them. My life is much happier 🙂
I wasn’t sure quite what to do when my son’s MIL started sending me stuff on FB. Gah. I love her and didn’t want to alienate her at all.
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Mumsee, over 60,000 pregnant women have been vaccinated in the US. They follow those women, and healthy babies are being born with their mother’s antibodies. The vaccine is being proven safe with pregnancy. The rumour that it could affect fertility was deliberately fabricated by a vaccine skeptic, long before the vaccines were actually used: https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210112/why-covid-vaccines-are-falsely-linked-to-infertility. This person claimed that the spike protein the virus uses is similar in shape to a protein in the placenta and, so, claimed this person, causing a person to produce antibodies against the spike protein could cause those antibodies to confuse the placenta protein for the spike protein and thus cause miscarriages.
The reasoning was totally specious, first, because the spike protein if the virus and the placenta protein are only similar and if the human body cannot distinguish between similar things our own immune systems would have killed us long ago. Second, if the claims were true then every woman of child bearing age would need to be kept in an ivory tower until this thing is over, because infection with COVID-19 also causes antibodies to be produced against its spike protein. If this skeptic’s claims were true, infection with COVID-19 would render survivors infertile, and considering that the entire world population is vulnerable to COVID infection, that would mean mass infertility and population extinction. In any case, there were tens of thousands of people who were involved in the vaccine trials, and the women involved in those trials last year were screened for pregnancy before getting the vaccine, because scientists were uncertain of the effects. A number of those women, although advised to avoid pregnancy during the trial did in fact become pregnant.
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So, if I get the vaccine I don’t need to worry about getting pregnant?
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Mumsee, being infected with COVID and getting the vaccine both produce immune antibodies to the virus’s spike protein. So if it were true that the immune system could confuse the human placenta protein with the spike protein of COVID-19, then infection with COVID would be an equal risk of infertility as getting the vaccine and every woman wanting to get pregnant would have to avoid both infection and the vaccine. But the vaccine has already been shown not to prevent pregnancy, so that scare tactic is untrue.
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Kare, I sympathize. Youngest-in-law’s mother keeps sending similar emails. My father, who has had his first dose, watched one link – they always seem to be videos, because one can speak nonsense but getting it published is a different matter – the other day. He came away snickering, because the talking head claimed that COVID only infected lung tissue and because the vaccine is injected into the bloodstream it would actually cause more effects than an infection would. Well, it was long ago established that COVID could infect any area of the body where ACE2 receptors are located, which is why COVID causes strokes and heart attacks and one in five COVID infections produce blood clots. But what was most laughable was this so-called doctor had said the vaccine was injected into the bloodstream. No vaccine is injected into the blood – it is injected into the muscle, and a real doctor would know that.
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I have a friend, now 8 months pregnant, who got vaccine #2 last week and was very sick.
Her reasoning, made with the obstetrician, was she had opted NOT to get the flu vaccine while pregnant with her last child. She got the flu, went into premature labor, and delivered a small, but fundamentally healthy, boy at 8 months. She didn’t want to risk it again at 40 with her fourth child, and only daughter.
She’s fine now and the baby isn’t here yet. 🙂
I think every case needs to be weighed, based on your best medical advice for your particular health. I have an underlying condition, so did that 90+ year-old outlaw.
My 91-year-old uncle, who has a foot-thick medical record including hemophilia, got COVID and came through fine. I think he’s had the vaccine now, for what it’s worth. He was laughing about chickens yesterday. 🙂
It’s God who ordains the number of our days. I’m going with Him–and common sense– for me. 🙂
But, the fundamental problem for so many is fear of death.
It’s just another call to share the Good News where and when we can. The world is lost–and they’re screaming it loud so we can’t miss it.
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Michelle, for many it is not about the fear of death. I worked with patients all last year without being vaccinated. Yes, we screened and asked people to stay home to avoid infecting other patients if they were sick. But we knew perfectly well that our questionnaire was wholly dependent on their honesty and their ability to remover. Yet we had patients who were addicts who would place themselves at risk for the sake of supplying their addiction and wouldn’t be honest about it, and patients with cognitive impairment and patients with dementia who might not fully understand the questions and not understand the risks they took or remember where they had been. Yet if they answered no to the symptom and contact questions, we had to see them. So, we worked with the possibility of infection every day. It is not fear, but a desire to stop the spread, to ensure that everyone who becomes critically ill with this is given a chance of survival. A lot of people like to claim that only a small percentage will die and that’s true, but as India demonstrates, between one to three people dying out of a hundred adds up to a lot of people dying. The mortality rate is around 3.4 percent, but this is a new, ever shifting virus, rendering the whole world vulnerable. 3.4 percent of the world population is 265 million people. By comparison the 2004 tsunami in the Indian ocean killed 224 thousand, and that was considered a horrible tragedy.
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I will get the vaccine I suppose because it will make for a happier marriage. I don’t want to get it because I got the flu vaccine when I was nursing BG thinking it would pass on to her and protect her. I still wonder if that somehow caused some of her health issues. I don’t know. DIL is choosing not to get it because she eventually wants to have another child. I gave her my opinion on only children (DON’T HAVE ONE IF YOU CAN HELP IT) but also told her that if you achieve perfection the first time you really don’t have to do anything else.
We shall see.
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Just noticed another of those interesting correlations between passages after writing about the feeding of the five and four thousand. Jesus questions his disciples when they don’t understand his warning about the leaven of the Pharisees:
‘They were discussing among themselves that they did not have any bread. Aware of this, he said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact you have no bread? Don’t you understand or comprehend? Do you have hardened hearts? Do you have eyes and not see; do you have ears and not hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of leftovers did you collect?”
‘“Twelve,” they told him.
‘“When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets full of pieces did you collect?”
‘“Seven,” they said.
‘And he said to them, “Don’t you understand yet?”’ (Mark 8:16-21)
The twelve baskets of leftovers from the feeding of the five thousand always seemed significant to me, as it correlates to the twelve disciples/Apostles. But I never saw any significance to the seven baskets of the feeding of the four thousand. Then today, as I was thinking about the four thousand being more Gentiles, my memory kicked in where else the number seven and being fed correlated . Acts 6:1-7:
‘Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, “It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”
‘And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.’
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Kim, there is a very low likelihood the vaccine would have caused BG’s health problems. All she would have got was antibodies, not the vaccine. The antibodies your own body produced in response to the vaccine are what would go into the breast milk – the vaccine went no further than your arm muscle. Antibodies break down over time in the body and babies do not keep immunity derived from their mother’s overtime. Furthermore, every other disease antibody which you carry would also have either crossed the placenta or been given in breast milk, so any influenza infections you previously had would also have produced antibodies in your system. After the passively acquired immunity wore off, BG was undoubtedly infected several times by influenza in her childhood and would have produced her own antibodies. The whole purpose of vaccines is to trigger the immune system to produce the same antibodies that actual infection with a disease would produce, without causing the serious illness that infection causes. So when people speculate that antibodies produced by a vaccine might have detrimental effects, those same detrimental effects, if one’s own antibodies were really that dangerous, would happen with actual infection.
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As someone who is exposed daily to positive pts, fear if getting or not getting covid is not the driving force for getting or not getting vaccinated
The majority of the nurses in our unit have elected to not get the vaccine due to not knowing the long term effects rather than conspiracy theories. We see those in respiratory distress daily. We all feel societal pressure to be vaccinated, but each person has to make those decisions for themselves. I can foresee myself getting the vaccine in 4 or 5 years, when i see what the long term effects are.
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Only in the affluent West can the desire for vaccination be described as being due to societal pressure. For the rest of the world, it is a chance for survival.
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RKessler, we also do not know the long-term effects of getting Covid-19. That would seem to me to be at least as relevant, since we do know of “long-haulers” with Covid-19 who keep symptoms for several months. What if those effects last their entire lives?
I haven’t gotten the vaccine because I’m in strict isolation and the vaccine would be only in case of emergency if I got it. (If I were to break my leg and need to go to the hospital, I would have already been vaccinated.) But if I were out and about and interacting with people, I’d be more concerned about the effects of the virus than of the effects of the vaccine.
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COVID infection has long term effects. We have several times discussed chickenpox and shingles on here. Chickenpox virus, with infection, has the ability to go latent, resting in the nerve roots of the central nervous system, only to reemerge as shingles during a time of immune stress, but a chickenpox vaccine prevents shingles from ever recurring. Viruses have that capability, of lurking or just lingering for long periods after an illness, in some part of the body where the immune system has difficulty reaching. The vitreous humor of the eyeball, the synovial fluid of the joints, even the epididymis of the testicles – survivors of Ebola had the virus linger for months in those areas, and developed rheumatoid-like arthritic symptoms in their joint. It has long been suspected that auto-immune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis, are originally triggered by infections causing prolonged immune responses. My mother is the only one of her sibling to have inflammatory arthritis, and the sibling often wonder if it was the rare and deadly virus she survived in childhood that none of the rest of them ever got that was the trigger for her current pain and inflammation. Those with chronic fatigue syndrome say that the symptoms that sufferers from long COVID describe sound exactly like chronic fatigue. Then there is the heart and lung damage being seen with COVID, which will have permanent effects. As a community nurse, I deal with the effects of cardiovascular and chronic lung disease daily – the leg ulcers that take up so much time and energy to wrap are a result of such diseases, and frequently a warning sign that the condition is disintegrating. The worse the condition, the longer it takes to heal the ulcers, and sometimes it may never fully heal. Vaccines prevent the long term damage that infection produces, because the virus never infects the body and thus can never hide away in the hard to reach areas.
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Phos: That is true of lots of things.
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Chas, yes, I learned the greater value of vaccines in developing countries firsthand.
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As someone living with long term effects of covid….i still need to see the science of long term effects related to the vaccine.
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Thanks for the vaccination info and clarifications, roscuro.
Of course, one can still “get” Covid, but as was pointed out, the vaccine, in the vast majority of cases, should prevent hospitalization and/or death from the virus.
I also recall reading that those of advanced age would not benefit much by it; I have a friend in Denver, a retired RN, who asked about it but her doctor advised against it as she’s now in her 90s.
What’s being done to make sure vaccine supplies are getting to some of these other countries? I’m unclear about that. But hopefully progress can be made (though in so many cases it’s too late for too many people).
Yep, this thing will probably be bouncing around, with all its various variants, for a while somewhere in the world, including in the West.
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It’s always going to be a risk vs benefit call when it comes to new vaccines. This was an easy call for me, personally, but I realize for others not so much, for whatever reasons.
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https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210317/some-with-long-haul-covid-see-relief-after-vaccination
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Is various variants redundant? It’s hard to say so it must be – lol
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Maybe it’s just stuttering.
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My concern is long term effects of either. Though at my age, having outlived every female in my line but one, it is almost not an issue.
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Talked to my 35-year-old ‘teen-aged’ neighbor yesterday who said he got the first shot but hasn’t gotten the 2nd one yet. Just hasn’t gotten around to it …
Tree guys come tomorrow to check out the dead tree and provide me with an estimate — they said they’d give me credit for the $300 (?) I’d spent last fall on the treatment in hopes that would work.
While they’re here, I can ask them about what they’d suggest I plant in place of the tree (another tree of some kind is my plan) – and how to deal with that section of soil where the painters dumped all their toxic junk (which is a possible cause for why the pine tree failed after being established for so many years),
As for their estimate, I’ll compare it to what the gardeners would charge, I actually like to throw money their way when I can and they’re very competent. But I’m sure the landscaping company would argue that they are much more equipped to do the job. Still, money, as always, is an object in my world.
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I am leaning toward getting the vaccine, actually, because of my dad.
So, if a person gets the vax, and then gets the virus, would they potentially get long haul covid?
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DJ, it is hard for countries like Brazil and India to conduct the same vaccine campaigns, and it isn’t just supplies and personnel that is lacking. The kind of refrigeration needed for the mRNA vaccines is a lot harder in countries with much warmer climates and much less reliable electricity. So they tend to gravitate toward the vector vaccines like AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson. There are also vaccines coming from Russia and China, but in Brazil, the Chinese vaccine seems unreliable and there is very little data on the Russian vaccine. For all the reservation that gets expressed around Western vaccine development, everyone has to admit that companies in the West are far more transparent about the process than Russia and China. I understand that the US has offered the AstraZeneca doses it has to India, since the US never got around to FDA approval of them. India has vaccine manufacturing capability, but there was a shortage of materials to manufacture them, so the US is also releasing those materials apparently – something had caused a delay in export. The EU has sent oxygenation supplies I know, and so has Canada, but the EU is still struggling with vaccine supply themselves, as is Canada. There has been some talk of petitioning for international release of intellectual property to allow for more widespread manufacture of vaccines, but that is a huge issue of law that probably won’t get dealt with in a timely fashion.
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Mumsee, the article is reporting of those who got COVID, survived but still had prolonged symptoms, and then had the vaccine, and that 46 percent, in one survey, noticed that their symptoms improved or even disappeared after the vaccine. As suggested in the article, it could be because the vaccine helped clear away any lingering presence of the virus, which I previously noted is possible, but no one knows for sure at this point. It is a point of study at this point, but it being studied will teach us more about the immune system. As for your different question about getting the vaccine and then getting COVID, the vaccine studies showed a reduction in hospitalization rates for those who got infected after vaccination. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine is primarily for the purpose of reducing hospitalization, as it has a low rate of preventing infection. The Pfizer and Moderna have a much higher prevention rate. AstraZeneca is better at prevention than Johnson and Johnson despite being another vector vaccine, possibly because it is two shots instead of one.
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Break from vaccine talk: Sixth has developed the attitude of Eeyore. When he gets disciplined, he wails that no one likes him. A couple of weeks ago, he freaked me out because I told him not to climb on the furniture, so he wailed that no one loved him and he was going to run away. He then took off in the direction of the front door. I was still quite disabled at that point, and was actually reclining in a chair, so, knowing that I couldn’t run after him, I caught hold of his arm as he ran past, and held it until I could learn where exactly he was going. Today, after his nap, he has been wailing that the things he wants to happen will never happen. I wonder if he is feeling insecure because he knows another little one is on the way. My mother used to say that three was the age when children most felt and feared any kind of separation, and I think Sixth has enjoyed being the baby – I used to say the world was his oyster, because he was so confident and happy all the time.
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roscuro, 3:17, thank you, that explains much
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Anyone else get a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield on a class action settlement?
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Yes, a card — don’t think it applies to me, though our work insurance had Blue Cross for a while which may be how I got on their list?
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Kim, did I miss your report on the success of the surgery?
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I can confirm Roscuro and RKessler’s assertion that the long term effects are very real. I still have breathing issues and need an inhaler. The bouts of fatigue, short term memory issues, and muscle fatigue still come and go.
I’m not yet vaccinated, but probably will soon. And like I’m sure RKessler is, I’m very concerned about how the vaccine will effect those still lingering effects. I don’t want Covid again, don’t know if I could survive another incident as bad as the first was. But I’m still leery of the vaccine, especially since I know people who had some pretty severe symptoms of Covid after being vaccinated.
So for now I limit contact, social distance, and wear a mask in public while I continue to mull over it. Just like I been doing anyway.
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Roscuro – How have you been feeling? Do you feel healed from your surgery yet?
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and how is Roscuro’s recovery going?
Morning all.
I am laughing as I got another secure message from my health insurance. it is so secure that I cannot log on to get the message. What a way to communicate.
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Sometimes I wonder what my dog (or cats, for that matter) thinks when I am praying out loud or talking to myself or on the phone. They know that talking is our form of communication, I think, so I wonder what they must think when we are apparently talking to no one. 😀
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Jo – Great minds think alike! (Your 5:39 and my 5:39)
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Kizzie, I have told Miss B that God is all around and loves us. I move my head all around when I say the name God thinking she may imitate me by looking all around and understand in some sense. I tell her that God gives her food because He loves her. I know it probably seems silly, but she is with me all the time and knows I have a voice I use to speak to God which is reserved for Him. She has no deep understanding, but she has to be aware God is Someone who is unseen but can hear.
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The reactions after the 2nd shot are expected and short-lived.
What are the side effects of the second Covid vaccine?
Why does the second dose cause more side effects? Fever, chills and body aches are all normal side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine. They are often stronger after the second dose because your body’s immune response is stronger. Apr 27, 2021
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Most don’t have those types of reactions (I didn’t, but I did experience a low-grade headache and fatigue, which were gone in about 24 hours). It’s your immune system’s response. And that’s a good thing, it’s supposed to do that.
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For small groups at church if everyone has been vaccinated no one has to wear a mask at tut his point. If one person is unvaccinated then everyone in the small group has to wear a mask. Since I have not been vaccinated it makes me feel like not going and making the others have to wear masks. My friends in the group want to go the way of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell because we’d all sit far apart. I still have a few weeks to decide what to do. It makes me feel a tad bit like Vax Shaming is a thing.
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Jo and Kizzie, I am getting better, it is slowly becoming more easy to move. I can walk faster and without feeling the need to brace my incisions, but still can’t run. Incisions are healed over, though I can still see where they were. My muscles are still somewhat sore and weak. I was told not to squat down for 6 weeks, and I still have difficulty bending over, so I have to kneel if I have to pick anything up from the floor. Once after kneeling, I tried to stand up by pushing off with both legs, but I had forgotten that is how one stands up from a squatting position. I could feel the pressure and kind of collapsed back on the ground(I was outside). I managed to stand by putting one knee up, but for the rest of that day I felt weak. Then the day I flew my kite so high, I strained my abdominal muscles a bit too much. I was told I shouldn’t lift anything over 10 lbs for two weeks and didn’t think about the weight of the kite pulling in the wind being bit more than that. I completed my fifth week today. The way my schedule was when I left, I have another 2 weeks off at least.
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I should mention that squatting and standing from kneeling and bending over are all motions I need to be able to as I regularly use them in my work.
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Interesting about the kite and the wind adding “weight” — I would not have thought about that but it makes sense. (Saw the photo on FB.)
Glad you’re recovering and feeling better. My abdominal surgery from some years ago took some time and I remember lifting and some other things being difficult for quite a while.
My knee today is feeling much better already after the cortisones shot I received yesterday. This will last for 3+ months and we’ll see what added info the MRI next week might add to how we can better address this ongoing annoyance. It’s my 2020 knee. 😦
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Jo, 5:39, how frustrating !
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Janice – I wouldn’t think of it as intended to shame, but their wearing of masks would be to protect you.
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DJ – I had the same effects – a headache and fatigue. A little achy on the first day, too.
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Roscuro – May 9 will mark three months since my gallbladder surgery. My incisions have healed by now, of course, but are still evident in their darker color (which may fade, but will always be scars). Every now and then, I feel a little twinge in the longest one or another one, but it is a slight twinge, not really painful.
Since I didn’t know I would be having surgery until the night (actually, early morning) before, and then was home a little less than two days after going to the ER, I still sometimes say to myself, in almost amazement, “Wow. I had surgery.” That may sound silly, but it was not planned ahead like some surgeries, and it all happened so quickly.
I remember that waking up from the anesthesia was such a shock. I had expected to feel myself drifting off when the mask was put on my face before surgery and then gradually “come to” later. But I was out instantly, without that feeling of falling asleep, and then awoke suddenly. It seemed like it all happened within seconds. Was that your experience, too?
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Kizzie, no it wasn’t actually, but my family do not respond well to medications. The anesthetist said before he gave me the sedative to put me to sleep he was going to give another injection that would make me feel weird. It did. Sound became warped and objects moved oddly – very psychedelic and trippy. Then I was out. When I came to – I know from my experience training in the OR that they bring you up out of the anesthetic in the OR – I could hear them telling that I had come through surgery fine but I couldn’t see anything. That wasn’t surprising – the only other time I experienced sedation was when my wisdom teeth were removed and my hearing returned several minutes before my sight did. I was immediately in pain when I came to – I removed crying out with it which I do not usually do – and so they gave me an opiate. I think I faded out again because the next thing I remember is being in recovery, again not able to see but able to hear. I was still in pain and given more painkiller. Then, when I could see, it was only to experience terrible vertigo. I should have known that would happen. I had surgery over a decade ago, minor enough that I didn’t need general anesthetic, but they gave me a synthetic opiate to use as a painkiller every few hours. The first one I took I was fine, but after the second dose, I went to stand up and the room spun around me. I had to lie very still and just getting up to my room caused my to vomit violently. That happened again this time around, when I tried to stand for the first time while still feeling the vertigo and I ended up vomiting, which is horrible with a new incision. The nurses figured out pretty quickly that the opiates must be causing it and stopped giving them to me. Just Tylenol and Naproxen after that and even then, after that initial pain coming out of the anesthetic, I found it bearable. My nurses were run off their feet with other patients, and so they didn’t always get my pain medication to me and that was fine. I never used the call bell. I could get up by myself once the vertigo went away and just regarded the pain as warning me to go carefully.
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Thankful for your report about your knee, DJ.
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Kizzie, I don’t think it is intentional shaming, but it relates to my never wanting to be a bother to people. If I show up then I would be a bother to everyone in the room because they would have to put on masks. We still are told to wear masks in the sanctuary with the bigger group. I think with my church being in the vicinity of the CDC that there may be more push in my community to get vaccinated and generally make people feel out of sync if they don’t. Every community has its own nuances.
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Thanks Janice
When I had surgery (many years ago now) they had me count backward from 100 and I don’t think I got far — I, too, just blacked out. When I awoke I was very nauseous and just remember seeing the clock on the wall in recovery.
Going in, they thought this would be endoscopic and I’d be out that same day. But they had to do the incision so I was in the hospital for a few days. No fun.
But nothing life threatening, thankfully. Just kind of a shock, physically and mentally, at that time!
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Getting sleepy. Don’t think that I can stay up to wish you all a good morning.
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oh, I got 67, the year of my high school graduation.
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I’m sorry to hear about all the trouble going around.
Maybe I have been better off holed up in this place for so long.
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Good morning. I see mumsee and Chas have held this all together in AJ’s absence.
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But Chas doesn’t know how to put up a new thread for today.
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C has decided we will get the vaccine when he’s out of the rehab hospital, as his dr has suggested it. And I don’t think he would survive another bout of covid. We don’t know how permanent the lung damage is, but he’s likely coming home with oxygen and perhaps even a wheelchair for a while at least. I was thinking like Mumsee @ 3:03. I’m concerned about the long-term effects of either, but I’m over 60 so ‘long-term’ is a relative thing. :–)
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