1918-1919. An epidemic of Spanish Flu spread around the world. At least 20 million died, although some estimates put the final toll at 50 million. It`s estimated that between 20 per cent and 40 per cent of the entire world`s population became sick
I recently ran across a Smithsonian blog created in 2017 for a special report “The Next Pandemic”. It’s an interesting lookback to “How the 1918 Flu Pandemic Revolutionized Public Health”. Points brought up included realizing that disease does not respect borders, so WHO was created; and creating disease reporting systems. The impact of 2% of the planet dying to disease left holes, and passions to make sure those holes did not reoccur for future generations.
COVID has killed about 1%, although the hidden damage left behind from COVID likely is claiming a lot of people before their time, but not officially from COVID.
How will COVID change society? Studying the 1918 Flu Pandemic and it’s society impact can help indicate changes we might see in psychology, medical fields, political, and sociological. Besides, the Smithsonian Magazine is always a cool blog to follow.
Spinney, Laura. “How the 1918 Flu Pandemic Revolutionized Public Health.” Smithsonian Magazine. 9/27/2017 – https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-1918-flu-pandemic-revolutionized-public-health-180965025/ – last viewed 1/2/2023.
Twisted science happens when politics drives the results. Makes the truth go to the dark side.
But what is a scientist to do when their funding comes from a corporation, person, or political organization?
Fiddle with the statistics, of course. Because if you fiddle enough, maybe, you get the results your benefactor/captor wants.
The most recent example of this comes from Florida and is related to COVID, where the Florida Surgeon General released an analysis claiming “an increased risk of cardiac-related death among men 18-39” who take the COVID vaccine. To get that result, six different statistical analysis were run, with a lot of relevant information dropped between drafts, until the Florida governor and his Surgeon General got a result of “vaccination bad”. Your Local Epidemiologist released an article on 27 April 2023 on the “Evolution of Florida vaccine analysis.” It’s fascinating and frightening.
A stark reminder that while trusting Science is a good thing, reviewing the behind-the-scenes politics may also be required. From “herbal remedies” to “diet science” to “four out of five…,” truth gets twisted from the basic research. If, indeed, the research was even done according to the scientific peer-review method.
Fear, funding, and freedom all impact what science can reveal.
Bibliography
CDC.gov. “Flu Season.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (undated) . – last viewed 4/27/2023.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. “The Roses of Success”. (1968)
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Movie Poster from Internet Hive Mind
Photography has been a white person game for a long time. The film for photos and film was optimized for light skin. When computer special effects came around, CGI illumination of skin likewise concentrated on the melatonin levels found in the layers of Caucasian skin. CGI hair mimicked either clumped animal hair or straight Caucasian hair.
Time for change.
Quick background – really, lighting for film concentrated on making white people to look good. It’s hard to make someone look good when the tools aren’t even on your side. For example
“Shirley cards” used by film-makers to calibrate skin tones and light, only featured Caucasian models until well into the 70s (and only changed because of complaints from photographers trying to advertise chocolate or wood furniture). (Latif, 2022)
During the creation of Shrek, animators discovered skin looked more real when created with layers of reflection.
If you shine a laser pointer on a wall you’ll see just a small spot of light. But shine it on your hand and you’ll see a blob of red light because the light is spread around,” said Stephen Marschner, a professor of computer graphics at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. (Onion, 2005)
To get skin to look real, the CGI character models needed layers to the outer shell replicating light interaction with skin. The programmers in the early oughts (00s) tapped research in the medical community studying skin for cancer and to find the difference between young and old skin to create their algorithms. (Secondary Rabbit Hole: The medical community used light refraction to study the difference between old and young skin, by analyzing “the skin between the thumb and the first finger of 400 Caucasian women ranging in age from 10 to 70.” (Onion) – and some of the discoveries are really cool and will impact makeup and health for decades to come. Note the studies used to create the algorithms were from Caucasian subjects.)
Change was needed when Wakanda Forever wanted to do underwater scenes with people of color, both Mexico-born and African heritage. Not only did they need to redo algorithms to account for different melatonin amounts in different levels of the CGI character model layers, but also deal with the underwater light diffusion.
Then the Wakanda Forever programmers had to start all over with the CGI algorithms for hair. Aquaman came first, and those movie makers said that the CGI effects for hair were tough. (Failes, 2018) Unlike Aquaman, Wakanda Forever did a lot of wet shooting and discovered something. Curly and kinky hair captures air – bubbles happen. Not only does kinky hair flow different underwater, but if reproducing people who recently went underwater, air bubbles need to be taken into account.
The science of filmmaking is worth geeking about, especially as inclusion and representation pushes technology boundaries, even in the CGI algorithms. If you are interested in photograph or filmmaking or CGI animation, I highly recommend diving down this rabbit hole.
Also check out a third rabbit hole on the hair styles for Wakanda Forever (Cummings, 2022)).
Three and a half years into the pandemic, now also endemic, first shot and a couple boosters (thank you universe for human ingenuity to quickly identify and create a vaccine), COVID-19 aspects continue to prove its Novel aspect.
Normally I love Novels … but not so much in medicine as novel there means new and unprecedented. Or, really, “we don’t know what the f* is going to happen until it happens.” The brains are trying so hard, and studying so much, but the mutations and the reinfections are do a fan dance reveal, hiding all the good stuff from the scientists.
Especially for long-term COVID.
Remember at the beginning we thought COVID-19 was the typical respiratory disease with its coughing and pneumonia like reactions. The big worry was the cytokine storm killing people. Took a little time to figure out how best to care for people to prevent the storm.
But COVID was hiding what it really was when hanging out in the blood-rich lungs. Now we know it is a vasculature disease – anywhere blood flows, COVID goes. And what it really likes to damage during its house parties is the itsy-bitsy blood vessels carrying oxygen from the lungs to the brain, hence Brain Fog being one of the worst hits of this disease.
A … study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care system shows the health consequences of reinfection. The researchers found that repeat SARS-CoV-2 infections contribute significant additional risk of adverse health conditions in multiple organ systems. (Sauerwein. 2022)
Unlike glorious chicken-pox, which is pretty much a one and done, COVID can be caught more than once, and each round contributes to the damage making acute COVID more likely, long-term COVID more likely, and all the other hosts of issues. Thanks to the vast database of the Veterans Affairs, cases could be studied from initial infection through further courses of care, and a lot of reveals came out.
The small scars riddled throughout the blood system increases heart attacks and strokes.
(P)eople with repeat infections were 3½ times more likely to develop lung problems, three times more likely to suffer heart conditions and 1.6 times more likely to experience brain conditions than patients who had been infected with the virus once. (Sauerwein, 2022)
The bottom line is, COVID isn’t done and we need to avoid catching it still.
Stay safe and stay well folks. Be cautious with our new normal.
Martinez-Salazar, B. Holwerda, M. Studle, C. Piragyte, I. Mercader, N. Engelhardt, B. Rieben, R. and Doring, Y. “COVID-19 and the Vasculature: Current Aspects and Long-Term Consequences.” Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology. February 15, 2022. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2022.824851/full – last viewed 12/23/2022.
A lot of it has to do, not with work and effort, but making decisions, especially for women. If both partners are working full-time, and come home and only one is making all the decisions there, someone has two full-time jobs even if the other partner is helping out when asked. Often putting together enough energy to ask for help takes as much energy as doing it yourself.
Sit down with your partner and split the decision-making and the task work. When I had a partner, I figured out making meals (making the meal plan, creating the grocery list, shopping and stocking the food, cleaning the cooking area, cooking to schedule so all the dishes come out at the same time, setting the table, clearing the meal dishes and cooking pans, doing the dishes, and putting everything away) took as much decision-making and task energy as THE REST OF THE HOUSE COMBINED (yard work, laundry, and clearing & cleaning).
If you have a partner, find time to sit down and state how to help with various tasks. Like “I’ll do the laundry and put things in baskets by the door, and you take them and put them away when you see them out.” If cues can be set up to let the other person know when and how to help, the decision maker doesn’t need to make another decision of asking each and every time (becoming a nag). “After the last kid leaves the table, can you get it cleared immediately while I work on the kitchen, then jump in with the kids and get their homework started.”
And both sides need to say thank you.
Emma’s “You Should have Asked” – https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/ – is such a shout out to how women are buried under the combination of full-time work AND house work. And, no, it isn’t the case in every house – I know two homes where the male partner is the stay-at-home parent – but in the vast majority, it is the case and that needs to be changed. And as we know change comes only two ways – preparation (talking and planning) or disaster. Don’t wait for the person doing double-load on the decision making to collapse. Have the conversation and find out what are the hidden tasks and decisions you might not be noticing.
Men outsourcing mundane decision making to women and causing decision fatigue – meanwhile they get to preserve their brains for work. (Anne 2022)
If both are working outside the home, it doesn’t matter how “high-powered” the job is, both are constantly making decisions for work. Stocking shelves depends on which needs to be stocked when (say morning coffee needs to be out first, but school supplies by three, and dinner makings by six), how much, and where. In a partnership (marriage or living arrangement), one of the couple is not the home manager.
Okay, now to focus on the GEEKING SCIENCE part of this.
decision fatigue … is a state of mental overload that can impede a person’s ability to continue making decisions (Berg 2021)
The pandemic has made this worse for everyone. A simple run to a store now has four or five additional decisions, especially when COVID-19 started in impacting life in 2020 – mask or not mask, which store, what has the least risk, do we really need this, who is the house is best suited to go. People were exhausted learning how to zoom, work from home, deal with the home stuff – heck, how to dress for the day! Nothing was the same anymore. That first year everyone was in a haze. Most thought “shock”, but a lot of the exhausted-haze was being buried under decision-making from the lost of routines.
It used to be a joke of a woman “can’t decide what to eat.” That was because she was buried under the house-management and the day-job together and used up all her decision-making ability. During COVID, even the previously protected privileged from double-decision-management, started “binge-watching” Netflix at night … not so much from “I want to see this entire show in one sitting” as “I sat on the couch and stared at the black screen and pushed a button out of habit. I couldn’t get the energy to make the decision to turn it off and go to bed.” People started skipping meals, not because they weren’t hungry, but because they couldn’t decide TO EAT, let alone WHAT to eat, or HOW to make something to eat.
As the brain exhausts its decision-making through the day, it starts doing shortcuts – impulse, avoid, procrastinate, and just don’t decide at all. One of the reasons expensive decisions should be made early in the day; shopping for food at night rather than in the morning will have a lot more impulse buys. Fast food buys happen more at night. The shopping channel sells more at night.
Doctors recommend making lists before shopping to reduce decision-making in the store. You cut out entire aisles of choices with a list in hand. (Berg 2021)
Become aware of mental load and decision fatigue. Maybe some of the New Year resolutions should focus on reducing decisions. Things like “I will create a routine of setting out my clothes at night.” and “Me and my partner will make meal decisions for the week on Saturday and post it on the fridge.”
Take care of yourselves y’all. Work together and support each other.
(Interesting side-note – Anne is Kenya and Emma is France. This is not just an American or European thing.)
Bibliography
Anne (AuDHD Electrical Engineer. @W_Asherah). “Someone has asked me what else I’ve observed. And oh boy – there’s another really messed up one. Men outsourcing mundane decision making to women and causing decision fatigue – meanwhile they get to preserve their brains for work.” twitter.com. 6/14/2022. – last viewed 12/13/2022. (see below for extra)
Since Twitter is having a meltdown, I’ve retyped the screen shots for (Anne 2022) below. (Bolding is my emphasis.)
Someone has asked me what else I’ve observed. And oh boy – there’s another really messed up one. Men outsourcing mundane decision making to women and causing decision fatigue – meanwhile they get to preserve their brains for work. Let me look for the thread (June 14, 2022)
Autism and gender. Do you have a woman in your life who knows everything, plans everything, thinks for everyone, helps solve all problems? Does everyone depend on that woman so much they would be lost without her? Her friends, family, colleagues?
Then joking about “how women can’t decide what to eat” like it’s a cutesy thing. Sir, your (insert) has been making so many decisions that her brain has shut down and won’t let her make any more. She’s literally struggling with comprehending the stuff on the menu. Help her!
The human brain doesn’t have limitless decision-making capacity – it has a bandwidth which when exhausted, someone struggles to think even the most basic thoughts. It’s why you’ll get shouted at for asking “where can I find the spoon.” That “I don’t know” is honest.
The brain, at that moment, doesn’t have the bandwidth to figure out where the spoon is – even when it’s something they put somewhere ever day. It’s super easy for Autistics to realize this in themselves because our social bandwidth is near non existent – we guard the little we have.
(next several tweets are links to articles about decision-making fatigue – some are behind paywalls, but (Berg 2021) is part of the bibliography)
If you relate with both threads – you need a mental health regroup. It’s bad bad. You need to collect yourself before you’re on several sets of antipsychotics for people reasons. If you’re already on them, see if you’re medicating the symptom and try dealing with the source.
It’s 1 pm in Kenya. Off I go.
(thread date changes to June 15)
I don’t know why anyone thinks I’m interested in debating things that impact women’s mental health. Like okay, your sensibilities have been offended and you’re emotionally hurt – learn emotional regulation, sir. I’m here talking to people who are literally breaking down healthwise
And do you know what happens when women show up sick in hospital? They are told they are anxious. They are told “it’s all in your head“. Then when we talk about things that make women anxious and affect their mental health, there’s clowns who want to center themselves.
This isn’t about me. Repeat that to yourself enough times. It’s about people who should start caring for themselves as much as they care for others. Because few people ask “how is the person caring for me doing?”. They just take and drain. And that causes health problems.
We are anxious. We are fatigued. Some are burned out. Some are severely burned out. Someone decides to tweet likely explanations to other women. You get offended because “that’s not the case in my life as a man”. Well, great. Clap for your exceptional self and keep moving.
(Retweet from OziomaOnukogue.eth: Another name for this is: Mental Load. This book by Emma explains it all. We end up making <so many> small tiny decisions that’s there’s barely space to focus on big ones. Yes, the brain freezes from overwork, just like a computer. That’s why it’s not helpful to call women multitaskers.)
Some responses (not copying the twitter tags on these)
On the verge of tears because my God all of this! I’m so tired that by the end of the day I’m literally only capable of staring at the wall.
Yes and once I get the baby to bed I just want to sit and relax but get flak from my SO for not showing interest in him. I’m so tired.
Funny, I still had to make all the decisions in my house even when I ALSO had a full time job.
I’m a single mom now and still make all the decisions. But at least no one criticizes me for them now. Somehow it’s easier. (RESPONSE: Makes sense. If he wasn’t a partner in making decisions, then without him you have one less mental/emotional dependent.)
The number of men I know who “don’t know where things go” in their own drawers/kitchen/refrigerator/house. (RESPONSE: And if you ask them to put it away anyway, they will choose the single most ridiculous, obviously wrong place for it and then do the “but you wouldn’t tell me where to put it.”
I started answering the “whatever you want” with “I want not to have to decide”
