Tag: viruses

A garden of viruses

garden-of-viruses
Virus protection graphic from Pixabay.com

Dear reader, please wear a mask and don rubber gloves before reading this none-too-subtle discourse about viruses and how little medical science knows about the common garden variety.

Since I tested negative to Coronavirus, after sitting in the car for two hours on December 28, alas, I still feel like shit. Excuse the language but there is no more apt description. Those lacking in empathy might dismiss it with “Oh it’s just a cold – build a bridge and get over it.”

Not that simple, sorry. There are more than 200 different cold viruses, and despite medical science’s skills in almost every other department, we don’t have a cure for any of them. The common cold virus lasts six to 10 days and the best advice is to stay in bed, or at least stay home until you feel better. There are many remedies which arguably speed the healing process and they include plenty of sleep, plenty of fluids, exercise (which seems counter-intuitive), and other more desperate measures like eating a raw onion and listening to jazz for 30 minutes.

I felt great on Christmas Eve, cooked pizzas for the family, tried to find something intelligent to watch on TV and failed. Went to bed early.

Christmas Day I woke with that post nasal drip thing – you know the one? Within hours my nose was running and I was going ‘ah-choo f***’, spreading germs around the house. I participated in Christmas lunch, feeling gradually worse as time went by. Boxing Day was bad.

“Perhaps you’d better go and get tested,” advised my sister-in-law, the nurse.

I did so on my return home, knowing I’d have a shorter wait than people were experiencing in Brisbane, where we spent Christmas.

While this was going on, reports were dribbling in that our Christmas lunch guest were succumbing to ‘#ahchoof***’. I got a negative test result within 24 hours so that was a relief. Or was it really?

I still felt like shit and Christmas lunch guests, including SWAGACF, were feeling equally miserable.

Cousin Alice rang to say she’s sorry she missed Christmas lunch (in isolation awaiting a Covid test), which proved to be negative. My brother-in-law started referring to me as ‘the East Coast distributor’.

As many people found out, there was something ‘going round’ at Christmas.

I chatted online to a friend who was dreading catching whatever was going through his tribe of grandchildren. Later he texted:

“I’ve got the wog – about to get a RAT test. Result in a bit. Timer on. And…Negative.”
“You were on the spot by proxy at this historic event.”

I spent much of the past week in and out of bed, binge-watching Succession and marvelling at the acumen of Shakespearean actor Brian Cox as the amoral, ruthless media baron. I also spent time wondering how I got this thing. Didn’t I wear a mask when going anywhere? Didn’t I wash my hands assiduously?

The best advice to avoid the common cold is just that – wash your hands after any contact with anyone or anything. Avoid contact with people who have the common cold. Ah, the tricky one. How do we know they have the common cold? They could be asymptomatic, as I was on Christmas Eve.

Through almost two years of dealing with a potentially deadly pandemic, it’s fair to say that the media, and medical science to a lesser degree, has been less focused on other viruses.

Having said that, researchers did note the sharp drop-off in influenza numbers in 2021. This phenomenon may well have been due to the general population taking Covid precautions.

In the August edition of  the Australian general practitioners magazine, ‘newsGP’, it was noted that a year had passed with not one single death due to influenza.

Professor Ian Barr was frank when asked if he ever imagined the current situation; just 435 notified cases (to August 2021) and no hospital admissions.
Barr, who is Deputy Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza at the Doherty Institute, said: “No. It’s amazing. Never.”

Professor Barr says the absence of influenza is a positive, although he also points to a number of other respiratory illnesses beyond the rising number of COVID-19 cases.

“I think fighting one virus at a time is quite enough for the general public. I don’t think we should get too complacent. There are other viruses circulating and depending on which State you’re in, those viruses are circulating at different levels.”

For context, in Australia there were 21,005 notifications of laboratory-confirmed influenza by August 2020 and 35 deaths. In 2019 there had been 214,377 and 486 deaths. (One explanation I read for this situation is that many deaths from influenza happen in Aged Care homes – the increasing emphasis on hygiene resulting from the Covid epidemic has had the effect of reducing the number of influenza deaths.Ed)

On January 6, 2022, Australia had 330,289 active Covid cases including  32,312 in Queensland. Before Christmas we had bugger-all.

I’m spending a lot of sick-bed time consulting Dr Google. If you want to minimise the chances of getting Covid, head to Tasmania. The Apple Isle and the Northern Territory have the lowest cases numbers in Australia, although at this time of year the climate is more attractive in Tassie than in the NT.

There were only 785 cases in Tasmania on Monday, increasing to 3,653 yesterday but well below the 268,787 cases in NSW and Victoria, the States you drive through to get to Tassie.

As an island State, though, one can fly directly to Tasmania, with only one border check. In WA, closed borders explains its low tally of 74 cases. The prosecution rests.

It fell to me then, viruses aside, to go on an emergency shopping expedition. I rationalised it thus: past the contagious stage, wearing a mask, washing my hands. What could go wrong?

On my last quick trip to buy juice, tissues and toilet paper, I witnessed an exchange between two customers (who apparently knew each other well enough to drop their masks under their chins).

“It’s all a bit much, eh?”

“Yeh, this flu’ll get us all eventually.”

One old bloke tendered a limp-looking ten dollar note. The (masked) checkout person picked it up in the manner of someone removing a gecko from a windowpane.

Then I went home and Dr Googled some more, finding along the way a study done in Germany which says listening to music can help heal the common cold.

Dance music, soft rock and jazz were genres most favoured to increase the levels of antibodies in the bodies of those listening to such music. (The jazz will drive me out of the room, thus achieving the aim of isolation. Ed.)

Research by the Max Planck Institute in Germany concluded that certain types of music boost the immune system and help to decrease the level of the stress hormone cortisol. Enthused by this research from 2008, latched on to by radio DJs and pop culture writers, I put together an appropriate playlist.

Our music advisor Franky’s Dad listened to the playlist and replied:

“This playlist gives an insight into the way a virus can addle the brain.”

“I see that you’ve been guided by the theme of illness & medicine,

“It’s a bewildering mix of genres though!”

FD (who also has the wog) contributed If I Could Talk I’d Tell You. Anyway, we agree – avoid listening to your favourites when unwell.

This eclectic playlist of 25 tracks – not all about feeling poorly – includes a pithy little ditty from our album, The Last Waterhole. I recommend Don’t Crash the Ambulance, not for the image it conjures, but as a piece of political history, with George W Snr advising the next president: “Watch and learn, Junior. Watch and learn.”

Germ Boy’s Mix

 

 

 

Friday on My Mind – Technology And Our Private Lives

technology-privacy
“Hacker’ image by www.pixabay.com

“Och*, technology – it’s the Deil’s work,” my Scottish Dad said in 1964, when I bought one of the early transistor radios.

Dad died in 1991, so he missed the Internet (and Windows 98, the best version). He also missed WIFI, smart phones, internet banking, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Bluetooth, video and music streaming and that nemesis of 21st century parents −  Facetime. I’m not sure what he’d make of hackers, spammers, viruses, malware, or dealing with glitch-prone software and untimely computer crashes.

As we all should know privacy risks for internet and mobile phone users include data harvesting, web tracking and government spying. Many internet security companies are now advocating the use of a virtual private network (VPN) which encrypts your data and hides your internet address. And, as this article reveals, the Internet of Things poses new cyber threats, as security is often lax or absent in domestic items like smart TVs, fridges and microwaves and other connected devices.

This week I conducted an IT security review after a sudden flood of spam emails jammed up one of our addresses (not this one). She Who Goes By Various Acronyms was extremely pinged off with the 200 dodgy emails that came several nights in succession. They were dressed up to look like emails we’d sent but had been ‘rejected by sender’.

I can’t say our Internet Service Provider (iinet) was overly helpful. They insisted that the email address had not been hacked or compromised. The support team advised me to change my password (duh) and later referred me to a service where you can report ‘new’ spam. That didn’t really help much, so I spent a good few hours doing my own troubleshooting.

As part of a usor emptor security review, I reset my WIFI router to its default settings, and then re-installed it with a complex admin password and a new WIFI password. Tedious, yes, and the tediousness extended to relaying the new WIFI password to every device that shares the same router. As a result, we slowed the spam to a trickle and now it has stopped altogether. (Yay, techy Bob-Ed)

In the early days of starting a WordPress website, my weekly posts were inundated by what is known in blogger world as ‘comment spam’ – most of it from Russia. We slowed the onslaught by installing an effective anti-spam plugin (Akismet) and stopped it by limiting post comments to 14 days.

I began to wonder about spam; who distributes it and why. Do they want to sell you stuff or are they just creating mischief? What they want more than anything is for you to click on the inevitable malware-ridden attachments. Do so at your peril.

I discovered that a sudden flood of spam can (a) bury messages you did need to find and (b) sometimes they are phishing emails. These are emails that purport to be from one of your legitimate service providers. You can usually detect them by the stilted use of English and also by the fake email address

Later, I forwarded the bogus email to iinet support and complained. Since then, I have had other attempts by swindlers to milk credit card details by forging emails. It is beyond me why a large ISP (iinet, now owned by TPG), can’t put a stop to this. I’m told scams like this are commonplace, no matter which ISP you use.

There’s a lot of it about. As you may have read recently, cyber crooks impudently set up a facsimile of the MyGov website, which holds an enormous database of tax, medical and social security detail.

Many of my Facebook friends are currently complaining about nuisance calls, phishing emails, spam or hacking of their ‘Messenger’ app. These scams are becoming so prevalent it behoves us all to put another layer of security in place. Many banks and institutions (including MyGov), use a ‘dongle’ or some form of two-step verification (a time-sensitive pin sent to your mobile).

There is a certain amount of sales-driven hysteria promulgated about the ability of ‘Russian hackers’ to covertly take control of your computer and start delving into your private details. Some swear by online password managers, but I favour an in-house, two-step method. It is tedious but safe, provided you don’t fall into the trap of allowing your web browser to save logins and passwords. Surely you don’t do that?

The anti-virus programme I uninstalled this week was quite good at doing what it is supposed to do, but it kept alerting me to potential threats and PC performance issues. Solving these supposed threats and issues meant upgrading to one or more ‘premium’ programmes.

Hassles aside, when technology works, it can be a joy to all. Last week I compiled a short video to send to my Auntie in the UK who was turning 100. My sister and her daughter sent me a video on Messenger as did my nephew. We recorded our own video greeting on the veranda at home, complete with kookaburras in the background. I called my other sister in New Zealand and recorded her audio message and then edited the clips into a 10-minute video and slideshow. I then uploaded it to YouTube with a privacy setting. My cousin in the UK said it came up great when cast to the big screen TV.

That milestone occasion got me musing about my teenage years (Auntie outlived her sister (my Mum) by 52 years. Technology sure has changed from those days as a rugby-mad teenager in New Zealand. I bought the transistor radio for one purpose; I’d set the alarm (a clock with two bells on top), and get up in the middle of the night to listen to (e.g.) the All Blacks play England at Twickenham.

Dad (left) had no interest in sport, but as a volunteer member of the St John’s Ambulance, he spent many a cold Saturday afternoon on the rugby sidelines, first-aid kit at the ready.

He’d have probably credited the ‘Deil’ with this 2019 example of electronic surveillance of professional athletes. When professional rugby players run out onto the field, a small digital gadget is tucked into a padded pouch on the back of their jumpers. The GPS tracker relays performance information to the coaching team (and, apparently, to rugby commentators). From this wafer-thin tracker they can upload data and analyse the player’s on-field movements. This is how Storm winger Josh Addo-Carr was proclaimed the fastest man in the NRL. He set a top speed of 38.5 kmh chasing a scrum kick down the left touchline in the round five match against the North Queensland Cowboys in April. He’d still get run down by a panther or a tiger, but it’s pretty darned fast.

While the top 10 stats look thoroughly impressive, I doubt the general public will get to hear about the half-fit players slacking off in the 63rd minute.

Fair go, as we say in Australia, as if it isn’t intrusive enough going into the dressing sheds and interviewing sweaty blokes in their underwear.

*general interjection of confirmation, affirmation, and often disapproval (Scots)