The preferred way to sanitise your hands is to wash them with soap and water. A sanitiser should only be used if soap and water are not readily available. People who keep a sanitiser bottle next to their home main doors - maybe not such a good idea.
(This also applied to non pandemic situations. Parents who carry around a sanitiser and liberally give it to children after play and before meals - don't do that. Make your critters walk to the washroom and properly wash their hands.)
Nilay: What's your favourite font?
Kavin: I don't have one.
Me: Nilay beta say typeface, font is too middle class.
Nilay: How can you not have a favourite typeface? Which is the typeface you use the most?
Kavin: Arial
Me: 🤮
We spent the next ten minutes discussing the etymology of the word typeface. We being me and Nilay; nobody talked to Kavin after this. He chimed in at one point to say that he found the Caps Lock key useful. Uff, such lack of culture.
Government school education works. If it is allowed to work. Fund schools. Defund flyovers and fancy VIP airplanes.
I felt so positive reading this document first thing in the morning 🙂
https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/pdf_upload-382788.pdf
Even as democracy collapses all around us, some things seem to be going in the right direction. The order also highlights the value of the constitution and our fundamental rights.
1 in 5 Covid recovered patients in the 18 to 34 age group continue to experience debilitating issues months after testing Covid negative. This ratio only goes up as the age of the patient increases. Our health care system simply isn't geared to deal with these issues.
75 lakh Covid cases in India so far, more than a lakh deaths. This means 15~20 lakh so called recovered patients out there, who are unable to go back to work. Many can't even take a bath independently. With over 60,000 new Covid cases a day, our government and private hospitals are barely able to cope with Covid. There is zero investment in post Covid research.
Ten years of topping the list of most polluted places in the world. And yet Delhi/NCR has just over a 100 pulmonologists. Can a hundred doctors take care of the 60,000 (and rising) Covid recovered patients with lung issues just in Delhi? Healthcare systems cannot be run without planning. You can't let the market decide how many pulmonologists and ventilators you're gonna have in the country.
We need tremendous investment in public healthcare. There is simply no other solution. One in every hundred Cubans is a doctor. One in every 200 people in Austria and Denmark are doctors. All three countries have universal publicly funded healthcare.
Economists and bureaucrats can take their PPP health insurance cards and shove them where the sun don't shine. Ayushman Bharat had covered the treatment of only 32,000 Covid patients by September. If it did cover 50cr people as its proponents claim, then it should have paid for the treatment of 29 lakh patients so far. It is operating at only 1% efficiency.
Highest life expectancy in the world - Hong Kong. Universal public healthcare in this mecca of capitalism, not government sponsored treatment in private hospitals like Ayushman Bharat. 17% of all government expenditure in HK is on running the public healthcare system. All countries with high life expectancies have universal public healthcare.
Most governments spend between 6 to 10% of their country's GDP on public healthcare. In India this figure is an abysmal 1.28%, lower than much poorer countries. The US sports a completely privatised healthcare system - the US government spends 16% of US GDP in supporting that system, and gets poorer outcomes than HK spending 6%. Ayushman Bharat copies this failed US model of healthcare. Sigh.
Anyway. Point is, for good health outcomes, we need to pour money into our government hospitals and clinics. Stop the privatisation of health education and pour a ton of money into government medical colleges. Without centralised planning, we cannot prepare for pandemics and shit. And we surely cannot treat post pandemic complications. (Most of the research output on post Covid complications is coming from countries with high life expectancy and public healthcare, like HK, Italy, etc. Yes, I read Covid medical research papers for time pass.)
PS: AB website says 50cr somewhere, 12cr somewhere else. Even with 12cr beneficiaries, they should have paid for the treatment of about 7 lakh Covid patients, but in reality only treated 32,000. Useless. 5% efficacy. Worthless. Find the morons behind this harebrained scheme and whip them. Don't just blame the government. When something this fanciful goes down, you can usually trace the lineage to clowns in the World Bank.
Nilay: Instead of putting Lithium ion batteries in phones etc, why don't people put a tiny bit of Uranium in them? Like a tiny nuclear power plant in things.
Me: 😱
Nilay: What? It's a good idea. You don't appreciate.
Maybe he has secretly been reading the Foundation trilogy. I mean, imagine everyone walking around with ²³⁸Pu next to their ears. As if the electromagnetic radiation from your phone wasn't bad enough.
(Did you know that there was a dictum in science fiction, that stories ought to be postulated on scientific concepts extrapolated from existing data/science. The Universal Speed Limit was a particularly inconvenient scientific law to obey. How would heroes travel from star system to star system at warp speed within their lifetimes? Asimov, while imagining science and technology in his fiction that would later be discovered/created in reality, more or less stayed true to this dictum.)
Nilay: When we went to Barefoot, there was this guy, your friend Tarun's friend. Any time someone squeezed his belly, he let out a toot.
Me: You squeezed Nethaniel's belly 😮
Nilay: No, other people did it and he farted.
Me: And I needed to know this at bedtime?
In other news, people stop meeting my kids, because they record every embarrassing detail, and relay them to me after half a decade.
Kavin: Why can't we just take photographs with our eyes?
Me: Do you, like, remember this stuff through the day and spill it out when we hang out? Or are you constantly making up all this content?
Kavin: I just thought of this.
Me: 🤦🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️
Everybody from movie actors to sportsperson are selling us tuition and coding services. Even when these people never benefited from formal education.
Why don't they just inspire us with the truth about their lives. "It is your passion that counts, not your marks". "Find your dream and follow it". Whatever is their truth. I'd love to hear it.
But it breaks my heart to see Aamir peddling after school coaching classes. That's not what made you who you are, man. C'mon man.
Does Covid Spread Through Surfaces?
If you have the time, read: https://www.aba.com/news-research/references-guides/confronting-covid-analysis-surface-contamination-risks
If you are (an elderly high risk person) isolating at home, you are not at risk. To be extra cautious, wash your vegetables and dairy packages in plain water, and leave non perishables untouched for 24 hours.
"It is very difficult to became infected with SARS-CoV-2 via contaminated surface transmission."
"It is possible to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 through indirect transmission, but it appears to be exceedingly rare, and a whole series of factors must occur to make it happen."
"If it is a standard mail or courier shipment, the risk is de minimis and should be considered safe."
"If it is a same-day delivery, it is still likely safe, and if left to sit for 12-24 hours at room temperature the risks become de minimis as well."
"Items brought home such as groceries and office supplies are likely safe. If you are concerned you can wipe down your groceries, but for non-perishable items, letting them sit at room temperature for 12-24 hours or longer brings the risk to near zero."
A lot of folks isolating at home are obsessing about cleaning packages and food deliveries. No use. No point. Even if you miss a package here or there, don't fret over it - remember, stress reduces your immunity, so not stressing is more important than cleaning 100% of your packages.
So, focus all of your energy on one thing - person to person contact. Putting all your energy into avoiding touching packages, while getting your face within a meter of a delivery guy while you're not wearing a mask - that's not smart. Stuff is not toxic; people can be.
When you get a delivery, ask the guy through your closed maindoor to drop off the packages outside your home. Once he has left, pick them up and drop them off in a holding area in your house. Then just wash your hands. Don't worry about the bags infecting you. Don't worry about the virus lingering in aerosols outside your house once the delivery guy has left.
Outside of your home, it is possible to catch Covid from high touch surfaces in public areas like malls. But you'd have to touch an obviously messy surface like a bathroom door knob, then rub your hands over your face before you've had a chance to wash your hands. If you read through the article, you'll realise that's fairly unlikely, given how we are all wearing masks, avoiding touching our faces, and washing/sanitizing hands frequently.
We have to focus on the thing that is causing 99%+ of the infections - people to people contact. Trying to minimise that <1% transmission happening thought surfaces and aerosols will just give you stress, not results.
PS: I have a (conspiracy) theory that the media's focus on surfaces and aerosols is a deliberate attempt at misinformation. I think it serves the interest of governments if people think, "We don't know, we can't control how this virus spreads. There are so many ways it can spread. Isolating won't help either because it'll just jump at me from my packages. So let's get out and work, shop, spend, earn." Decades ago, it was discovered that cigarettes cause lung cancer. Tobacco companies spent millions on scientific research that said,"well there are many other causes for lung cancer too". The media carried this research without saying "but cigarettes are still the cause of 90%+ lung cancer cases". Don't be fooled by the overwhelming number of articles on surface contamination. Just focus on keeping a distance from people, wearing a mask, washing your hands, not touching your face.
Kavin: Why do we need musicians any more now that we have FLStudio (Frooty Loops)? You can play guitar, piano, whatever you want.
Me: https://youtu.be/oRdxUFDoQe0 - try to focus on just the guitar, then tell me if FL can ever do that.
Kavin (after a minute): Fine fine.
Me: Wait till 3:00 for the guitar solo.
(after the song ends)
Me: Have you been schooled?
Kavin: 🤐
Kavin: I want to travel.
Me: Why?
Kavin: Because I'm hungry. I want to go to Japan and get a tropical blueberry drink from a vending machine. Then I want to go to the US and get jelly.
Me: नवाब के बच्चे!
Please respect your doctors.
No matter how much research you do on Google, you'll find that eventually they were right and you were either wrong, ignorant, or at the very least had gaps in your understanding.
Doctors, nurses, ward staff and even the administration, everyone works very hard to keep patients alive and healthy.
Learn to manage your stress without letting it out on the first pair of collars you come across. Sometimes life turns to shit in front of your eyes and it is nobody's fault. Deal with it without making doctors a scapegoat.
[A lot of people ask me how much the hospital I was in fleeced me by. No, they didn't fleece me; they healed me. The bill was a shocker, but on closer scrutiny of the detailed 50 page bill we found nothing wrong with it. Each PPE set costs ₹1,200 to ₹5,000, depending on the variety, and they were consuming 4-5 sets per patient per day in the ICU. Government norms dictate absolutely nothing comes out of a covid ward or ICU. The amount of perfectly good stuff that gets incinerated is mind boggling - this includes vials of medicine. They even trashed all my clothes and my footwear.
If you have a problem with private healthcare profiting off of your misery, then work with your state government to dramatically improve public health in your region. Don't beat up doctors, or assume they are out to rob you. That assumption, and animosity with your care providers, will only hurt you and your health. Hospitals are making tons of money right now without even trying. They have no interest in inflating bills. As long as they keep executing on their primary goal of healing people, they have nothing else to worry about.
Don't get sick. And if you do, behave yourself and trust the team saving your sorry ass.]
Sanghis: Boycott Tanishq (because they put out the ad)
Liberals: Embrace Tanishq (because ad)
Uber Liberals: Boycott Tanishq (because they pulled the ad)
Reminds me of the ouroboros...
Wait, ParleG advertises? What for? To whom? Isn't it just a part of India's recommended dietary allowance?
I was gonna write a scientific article on why the AAP's policy to transplant trees in Delhi is absolute bunkum. But sometimes, memes just convey things better.
Just had the most interesting discussion with Kavin because he asked me what the resolution of the eye is.
I told him that the eye is a sphere. So its resolution should not be expressed in terms of 2D measures such as 4K or 8K. A good eye has the angular resolution - the power to "resolve" two objects - that are an arcminute apart - roughly 0.02° apart.
And so we looked at a printer sitting far away and how much detail on it we could pick up. But if the printer was brought very close to us, it would easily cover 45° of our field of vision, and we could easily see spectacular detail on it, such as specs of dust.
At a distance of a kilometer, an arcminute translates to 0.3m. Which means I could easily count the number of participants in a human chain a kilometer away. There is no limit to the range of view of the human eye - we can see stars that are thousands of light years away. If it weren't for the dust and heat in the atmosphere, we could theoretically see till infinity (as long as there was a bright enough object over there). I wonder what astronauts see when they look out of their spacecraft windows.
I then came across this wikipedia article, and it is simply marvellous how much power the eye possesses. The field of view of the eye is approximately a cone with a width of 175° and a height of 160° - that's almost a hemisphere. To be fair, we can only read or recognise faces in a cone at the center of our eye with an angle of 6 or 7°. But the rest of our peripheral vision can also do spectacular things - like alert us about an approaching threat.
We can identify some pretty faint stuff. We can see between 5,600 and 45,000 stars in the night sky, which explains why I was stupefied as I stepped out of my tent last summer near Chitkul. In the city this number drops to only 50 stars. You can also see about 5 planets without a telescope, as well as the ISS and other man made objects. Before the telescope was invented, Tyco Brahe went about charting the entire night sky using just his eye. Not to forget, civilizations before him charted and predicted eclipses to within minutes using just the naked eye for observation.
And then comes the really interesting stuff - what the eye does in combination with the visual cortex, continually and subconsciously. You know the size and position of all objects around you, in 3D space, as well as their motion. You're calculating vectors in your brain all the time. You know if something is vertically and horizontally aligned or not - and as Kavin observed, you know that even if your head is itself tilted at an angle.
And finally, you can tell apart subtle changes in the luminosity and shades/colours of an object. We spent a lot of time staring at a multicoloured fairy light. Indeed, we can tell the period of glow of each light, and when a light glows brighter than it was glowing before, or changes colour. Amazing.
Kavin feels that this constant processing of our vision by our brain is an unnecessary drain on our energy reserves, especially now that we no longer live in hostile environments. "Those jars of dry fruits aren't going to jump out of the almirah and attack me, so why is my brain constantly assessing their motion when I'm basically just staring into infinity and thinking of something else". That makes sense. Which is why it's a good idea to shut our eyes when tired, sick or malnourished - it (hopefully) turns off the GPU coprocessor in our brain constantly crunching inputs from 126 million rod and cone cells.
Any other fascinating facts that you know about our eyes and vision system?
Got upset at a guy for calling me at 7pm and trying to sell me a postgrad degree.
He politely said that my day might be over, but he still has some time before submitting his daily report to his supervisor. He is trying to squeeze in that last bit on a bad day.
Times are tough for everybody. And now I feel rotten.
The Delhi Government speaking on climate conscious development is an insult to our intelligence.
https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiELKcW97uJM4yrx0WspqMrcsqFggEKg4IACoGCAoww7k_MMevCDDl2wE
Look at the way some other newspapers are wording this:
"Donald Trump announces new US H-1B visa rules, Indian techies likely to be hit"
"Trump administration announces new rules that restrict H-1B visa in a blow to Indian tech workforce"
No, this doesn't impact Indian tech workers. They can always get a higher degree and go find employment in the US at higher pay.
This impacts the exploitative business model of many Indian companies, who call themselves software companies but are really in the business of placing people on contract with US employers. They keep most of the money that the US companies pay. Indian workers get Indian pay and some measly stipend, usually not even enough to meet basic expenses in the US.
To keep margins high, these companies higher freshers from college, try to teach them software development in three months, then ship them abroad onto real projects where they replace people with a decade or more of experience. It brings outsourcing and India a bad name.
I hope Trump keeps tightening the noose on these people.
If you think the colonialists are done robbing the formerly colonised, think again.
100% of the idols and artefacts stolen from India and neighbouring countries, end up in colonial countries, in the hands of either private collectors or museums. Museums think nothing of buying from the black market.
If such a stolen item is identified, the Indian government then spends years negotiating with the museums, sending proof and publicly shaming them, till they grudgingly send the item back.
Once a thief, always a thief. That's colonialists for you.
Can't believe NR shared this pic. The running room at Ghaziabad is such a dump. Hard to imagine that loco pilots emerge from that shanty and then drive trains.
This is so me. I always have to ask the nurse to bring two people to hold me, before she pokes me with a needle. Otherwise, disaster.
Politicians get free world class Healthcare without even asking for it.
What the public gets, you can go down to your nearest government hospital treating covid and see for yourself.
Americans, if any of you ever refer to your President as the "leader of the free world", I'll have to personally fly down and tickle you till you apologise.
That ape is your problem. Don't make him everybody's problem. He doesn't even have a stellar record of preserving people's freedoms.
The White House wants Americans to believe that a patient who doesn't even need supplemental oxygen needs Remdisivir and the very experimental drug REGN-COV2. The latter isn't even FDA approved for safety. What's the crisis here?
I wouldn't take an unapproved drug unless I was dying. This is a President. So fishy.
How to improve your immunity?
Don't smoke.
Eat a diet high in fruits and vegetables.
Exercise regularly.
Maintain a healthy weight.
If you drink alcohol, drink only in moderation.
Get adequate sleep.
Try to minimize stress.
This is the medical advice on how to improve your immune system - that system which manufactures the T cells and IgM and IgG which eventually kill Covid-19 and any other infection that invades you.
You can either believe the doctors who are curing everyone with more than mild symptoms. Or you can believe your random neighbour aunty and swig all the green tea you want.
Rest. Relax. Exercise. Eat well.
It's that simple. If you think you can continue to work 12 hours a day, worry about work and home, not exercise, be on the heavier side, and then just eat some pills or potions and boost your immunity, you're dead wrong. (I was dead wrong 😊)
PS: Yoga is not exercise. Exercise involves moving around, sweating, burning calories, stressing the lungs and heart. Sitting around and twisting your body about, or breathing in different ways, does not constitute exercise. If you're only doing yoga, you need to also start exercising.
“Over 60% of patients are reporting at least one symptom at every visit, with weakness, shortness of breath, headaches, muscle aches, joint pain, and psychiatric symptoms being among the most common.”
60% of corona recovered patient, including those who healed easily at home, report problems in follow up studies. This is the stark reality of Covid - your body isn't healed just because you've tested covid negative during recovery.
So wear a mask
Maintain distance
Stay at home
Stay away from covid
The kids named my phone Patata. That's Spanish for potato.
They also call me Patata.
So my phone is Patata's Patata.
They never get tired of saying Patata's Patata, as if it weren't a tongue twister. "Kavin, have you seen the wallpaper on Patata's Patata today?"
Of course I was a little doubtful about being called a potato. But with time, and kids, you get used to anything.
"Universities have been conscripted as the arbiters of opportunity, as the dispensers of the credentials, as the sorting machine," warns a Harvard political philosopher, in a new interview in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "The Insufferable Hubris of the Well-Credentialed." https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-insufferable-hubris-of-the-well-credentialed
The meritocratic hubris of elites is the conviction by those who land on top that their success is their own doing, that they have risen through a fair competition, that they therefore deserve the material benefits that the market showers upon their talents. Meritocratic hubris is the tendency of the successful to inhale too deeply of their success, to forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. It goes along with the tendency to look down on those less fortunate, and less credentialed, than themselves. That gives rise to the sense of humiliation and resentment of those who are left out...
Our credentialing function is beginning to crowd out our educational function. Students win admission to these places by converting their teenage years — or their parents converting their teenage years — into a stress-strewn gauntlet of meritocratic striving. That inculcates intense pressure for achievement. So even the winners in the meritocratic competition are wounded by it, because they become so accustomed to accumulating achievements and credentials, so accustomed to jumping through hoops and pleasing their parents and teachers and coaches and admissions committees, that the habit of hoop-jumping becomes difficult to break. By the time they arrive in college, many find it difficult to step back and reflect on what's worth caring about, on what they truly would love to study and learn. The habit of gathering credentials and of networking and of anticipating the next gateway in the ladder to success begins to interfere with the true reason for being in institutions of higher education, which is exploring and reflecting and questioning and seeking after one's passions.
Edit: I didn't write this post. I've just quoted the article here.
My kids have already outgrown their imaginary friends. Who he waving to?
To those who doubt if caste is a dominant force in India - please see this video and explain it to me.
Do you have a favourite dead tree?
If not, then what is the point... of having lived, and died?
People seek the meaning of life. But it is this, right here. Having a favourite dead tree. Or that slab of stone which forms your favourite perch. That corner in the world where you could always retreat to read a book.
Live. Live now. Because dying is too easy.
Are the farmers still protesting?
Did the workers even get to protest the dilution of their rights?
You would want society to focus on one issue and fix it before moving on. But contemporary India is such a shit show, what can one do?
Why we got problems with China when we got UP Police? They can stop anyone from crossing the line.
Had the most nerve wracking conversation with a nineteen year old.
He has done four years of coaching from Kota and given his JEE mains.
Now he wants to know what to study in order to make the best possible salary.
Notwithstanding the obnoxious nature of the question, because this is a kid, I spent a long time explaining to him that he needs to identify what he will love doing for the rest of his life. What he is willing to do undergrad, postgrad, and many decades of work in.
We kept having this verbal dance. I kept explaining that life is highly unpredictable. You can either have predictability by taking a government job, or take risks and chart your own course. Most of what is "hot" these days was considered fanciful a decade ago. Electric cars, food delivery, AI...
He kept saying that he doesn't want to leave his life to luck. He wants to make sure that whatever he studies will get him a high paying job, and then he will keep earning very well for the rest of his life.
I finally asked him if he had considered being reborn as Anand Mahindra. That guarantees success. Mostly.
Just how pathetically scared are the children we are bringing up?
Wow. Can you see how this works?
Throwback pic. बताओ कहाँ?
"Would you just shut up man" is an entire mood.
Changing topics, when is the next Mann ki Baat airing?
व्यंग्य सुनिए। खून और oxygen बढ़ेगा आपका भी 😊🤣😂
This is terrible for the environment.
Working in -40°C is terrible for the construction crews.
But with China having massive presence and infrastructure along the border, what else are we gonna do? We are under attack, our land has been captured. War is war.
If a person does not have enough work to meet their needs, do you blame
The Person
Or do you blame
Society
Economy
Industries
Government
Education System
Healthcare System (If they are sick)
Proponents of the former approach tell us that a "rising tide lifts all boats". Proponents of the latter say that they cannot rest till a single person in this world is hungry, sick or doesn't have dignified work.
Neither approach has been successful in eradicating poverty from the world. But one thing is clear - wherever there is more, there is greater inequality.
Personally, I can't bring myself to blame a poor person for their poverty, under most circumstances. And since most folks here are religious, look who all I have on my side:
Jesus: "You cannot serve both God and wealth". Jesus has often been described as the first socialist.
Islam is a religion that revolves around charity and distribution of wealth. Any Muslim would know.
Mahavira was a cut above, preaching अपरिग्रह (non attachment). Even so, his followers were the first capitalists of India.
Buddhism: The Dalai Lama says he is half Buddhist, half Marxist.
Hinduism neither believes in social nor economic justice, because whatever you have in this birth due to your caste or privilege is due to your past karma. So, oops, not on my side.
(Its a random post but I enjoyed writing it. Economics and religion have fascinated me from a young age, because they have so much power over our lives yet are so absurd.)
What better tribute for Tom Alter?
If you're interested in real news from the ground, follow these pages/people.
https://www.facebook.com/himanshukumardantewada for really stories from grassroots workers. In Hindi.
https://www.facebook.com/PARInetwork/ for indepth analysis of rural issues, and pretty pics and videos of rural life and culture.
https://www.facebook.com/FayeDSouzaOfficial/ for news and analysis in English.
https://www.facebook.com/Redfishstream/ for global news about people's movements.
https://www.facebook.com/khabarlahariya/ for news from the so-called Hindi belt, but in local dialects like Awadhi and Bundeli. No translations, no subtitles, you are not their audience 😅. But some of their videos are just amazing journalism.
Please do suggest more links to add here. Just going on repeating that media is sold out isn't helping. Let's promote sources doing good work.
Imagine. You're in the death row. And you're writing essays about some of the most profound questions of life. That was Bhagat Singh.
He threw away his life in a revolutionary act. And yet every living minute, he was living life to the fullest - reading, writing, thinking, critiquing.
The original was written in Punjabi, in the Gurmukhi script. You can access the original here: http://apnaorg.com/books/gurmukhi/main-nastik-kyon/book.php?fldr=book
Somebody give Shoaib some basic education so he can Google before writing an article.
There is no health update on Amit Shah because he is in post covid care. He isn't sick with a known disease any more. Most of the conditions that Covid causes are novel. They aren't documented or named. What will the doctors say?
"He has body pain. Lung capacity is diminished. He randomly gets fever due to an unknown infection. We don't know why any of this is happening, even though we have run every single test in our arsenal on him twice, But he is slowly getting better. There is no risk to his life. He just needs complete rest."
This information is in the public domain - that Covid causes various morbidities that come and go randomly, making patients a little sick and a lot scared after they've been discharged. Nobody knows what's going on. When I was hospitalised, ICMR guidelines required I take HCQ. In a month, they've done a new study that discredits HCQ.
Changing the subject, if you see a Healthcare professional in the street somewhere, please appreciate them. From the bottom of your heart. They are doing so much for so many, when so little is known about this disease, and the rest of us are sheltering safely at home. Health, sanitation, and all the industries that support hospitals (I've seen plumbers and IT technicians go into restricted entry covid wards at great risk to their health).
Cuts too close to the bone 😂
Have you ever wanted a partner of the same gender, just so you could communicate (or not have to communicate - because I know women seem to be able to just divine what the other woman has to say, without words)?
"What the Science Says About the Effectiveness of Ayurvedic Medicine
Few well-designed clinical trials and systematic research reviews suggest that Ayurvedic approaches are effective.
+ Results from a 2013 clinical trial compared two Ayurvedic formulations of plant extracts against the natural product glucosamine sulfate and the drug celecoxib in 440 people with knee osteoarthritis. All four products provided similar reductions in pain and improvements in function.
+ A preliminary and small NCCIH-funded 2011 pilot study with 43 people found that conventional and Ayurvedic treatments for rheumatoid arthritis were similarly effective. The conventional drug tested was methotrexate and the Ayurvedic treatment included 40 herbal compounds."
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/ayurvedic-medicine-in-depth
This is why I take care to never call ayurveda pseudoscience. Some ayurvedic medicines have gone through clinical trials and been tested scientifically for effectiveness and side effects. Peer reviewed papers have been published.
It is a travesty that the AYUSH ministry clubs it with mumbo jumbo like homeopathy, that has never passed a single clinical trial beyond the level of placebo. This even when homeopathy has had 10x the clinical trials of ayurveda.
There is more to ayurveda than cowpiss and cowpoop. I doubt if serious vaids even use any cow product other than ghee in their preparations. Hindutva followers are doing great disservice by confusing every home remedy they come across with ayurveda.
Himalaya's Liv52, is, of course, a celebrated and successful medicine, with dozens of scientific studies done on its efficacy. Here is one https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16194047/
Edit: The main challenge to ayurveda comes from untrained practitioners and people who self medicate. Which is widespread.
Sem. मगर इधर, हिन्दू खतरे में हैं 😂
Indian leaders: We want free market and foreign investment.
UPA: We will retrospectively tax foreign companies.
The Hague: One tight slap.
NDA: We will allow Indian vaccine manufacturers, almost all of whom are privately own, to independently take business decisions.
India and the world: clap clap clap.
The laissez-faire nature of the Indian market is at the mercy of our leaders.
I continue my diatribe against the WHO and various governments in India, who are only counting deaths due to Covid.
Imagine if fifty years ago people had said, "Oh but polio isn't killing that many kids. Do we really need to get worked up about it?" To judge diseases only by their mortality rate is very poor judgement.
Any time you hear that someone has any kind of cancer, you feel bad for them. You don't ask, "Are they dead yet?" That's because you know that every cancer patient suffers.
A lot of those who get sick with Covid are asymptotic, or it just feels like the average flu to them. Well guess what, there's asymptotic leprosy and latent tuberculosis too. Only 5-10% of those who contract the TB bacteria will develop the disease.
The leprosy bacteria is transmitted through droplets in the air, and will only manifest the disease in a small minority of the people it lives in. It is more likely to manifest leprosy in people who already have comorbidities. Sounds familiar?
So what's special about Covid as compared to these other diseases that we have lived with for millennia? Well, it's infectiousness. It takes a lot of exposure for Mycobacterium leprae to jump from one person to another, which is how doctors, nurses and missionaries in India serve lepers for decades without getting sick.
But Covid is so nasty, everybody needs full PPE to even approach a Covid patient. A single sneeze or cough from someone who is shedding the virus is enough dose to infect you. Either the sneeze/cough directly lands on your face. Or you breathe in the droplets through your nose or mouth (if you're talking/eating), because you were too close or you weren't wearing a good mask.
Summary: Covid is just like any other dreaded disease. It causes a lot of distress, not just death. There is no known cure, just like polio or HIV. Prevention is the only cure. If you think of Covid like you think of TB or leprosy, you'll know how to behave for the next one year.
Edit: Y'all nasty people who were wishing Amit Shah wouldn't come back every time he went to AIIMS. This is how nasty Covid is: Every time Shah has a fever or cough, the doctors would have just changed the antibiotic. They'll also likely try experimental cancer drugs on him to heal his organs. Medical science needs time to study diseases, and nobody has had the time yet. So for a lot of post Covid care, they're throwing stufd at the wall and seeing what sticks. (Doctors aren't like Baba Ramdev "We will now do kapalabhati, and all your known and unknown problems will magically vanish".) The most powerful man in India, is merely another guinea pig in the war again Covid.
All those people posting about toxic people on my feed
Know that wikipedia doesn't have a page on "toxic person"
So please, either put out a definition of what a toxic person is, or just stop
A worldwide pandemic has dented the earnings of 8 billion people by $3.5 trillion.
The British took $45 trillion from a nation of 150 million people.
If Covid is a virus, what were these people?
Why are these people obsessing about deaths so much?
I still can't breathe normally - that's a month away. Three weeks since I tested negative for covid and I'm still bedridden. The hospital I was in is now bursting at the seams, and ICU patients are rising. The doctors who attended to me are so busy, it isn't easy for me to make follow up visits with them.
𝗗𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝘀𝗻'𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝘂𝘁𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗱. If a million have died, dozens of millions have sustained damage to critical internal organs. Many of those may never fully heal - doctors don't even know how to heal covid created organ damage and are still experimenting with drugs and therapy.
Do lost work weeks, trauma to the whole family, and the financial cost of hospitalisation, have no value to the WHO? To just count deaths and recoveries is to deliberately spread misinformation.
Are the rats abandoning a sinking ship? First Shiv Sena, now the Akalis.
Right wingers leaving a right wing government. Kalyug, I tell you!
आज Poonawalla के घर IT raid होगी। कल (सोमवार) को DGCI Serum Institute पर छापा मारेगी और अनेक अवैध कार्य रोकेगी।
News channelओं से भी तेज़ ख़बर!
People from colonial countries come to India and feel terrible about all the poverty here. And I get it; even I feel bad about poverty in India.
And then they go back to their own countries and can't seem to see the homelessness, hunger, racism, inequity and injustice there.
Even with all the wealth they've made over centuries of labour, theft, colonialism and slavery, they've given up on providing basic dignity to their citizens. They're afraid to let immigrants in, they can't house or feed their refugees, can't even provide equity to minorities born on their own land.
SF, where untold wealth has been created, is covered in the excrement of people who desperately need deaddiction and mental health treatment, but somehow the city is unable to solve this intractable issue.
But after centuries of colonial rule, trillions of dollars of wealth looted, domestic industries and farming destroyed, millions enslaved, many more starved to death, India (and other former colonies) are supposed to "fix" poverty within decades of independence. And they must achieve this while also, simultaneously, being forced by colonial institutions like the World Bank to abandon public healthcare and education, work for food programs, farm subsidies, and other such social schemes, and adopt laissez-faire capitalism instead.
The mind boggles. The mind boggles at the sheer audacity of these people.
The more you have
The more you know that what is yours is unjustly so
The more you fear
The more you turn to superstitions to turn fate in your favour
When, in the face of imminent defeat, adversity, disease, you mumble some secret mantra, you look just as weird as her.
Does this not apply to India?
Does the police and the court not treat you differently based on your last name, the colour of your skin, the clothes on your body, the manner of your speaking.
If I and a dalit peasant would have different outcomes in the criminal justice system for the same accusation, are we then in a democracy or a hypocrisy?
