Dealing with pain

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Around a decade ago, scientists identified a gene called SCN9A – which plays a key role in transmitting pain signals up the spinal cord – and found that people with a mutation of this gene barely experience pain. Now, in experiments on mice, scientists at the University of San Diego in the US have discovered that by using a variant of the gene editing technique Crispr, they can temporarily disable SCN9A, and so block its pain-inducing effects.

If this technique can be applied to humans, it could lead to the development of new painkilling treatments that are more effective, and much safer, than existing ones. Currently many of the millions of people who suffer from chronic pain are reliant on opioids – which are addictive, have unpleasant side effects and are highly dangerous. In the US, tens of thousands of people a year die of overdoses from painkilling narcotics, and around two million are addicted to them. The San Diego team hopes to start human trials next year.  (The Week, 18 January 2020).

 My comment:  I write as someone with constant, if low level, back pain, like so many my age.   I have exercises to deal with it, but resist taking painkillers, if possible, and absolutely won’t succumb to opioids.  So this  news is potentially good news.

Undertakers now suffering

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Oslo

Norway’s response to the pandemic has been so effective, the country’s overall death rate has actually fallen – and six firms of undertakers have had to apply for state aid as a result. Erik Lande, a funeral director from the town of Lyngdal, said he’d normally expect to organise 30 funerals a month in the spring, but after lockdown was imposed in March, that fell to ten. Not one of those deaths was from Covid-19. “It not only broke the back of the coronavirus, but other viruses too,” he said. “So much so that some of the old and sick people who would have died in normal circumstances are still around.” Norway has recorded just 255 Covid deaths. Overall deaths were down 6% in May, and 13% in June.  ( The Week, 20 July 2020)

My comment:  Sorry for the  Norwegian undertakers ( hint: move to the US.  Whoops!  Sorry, take that back. The US government won’t let you in.  Can’t have foreigners come and take our jobs!).  But nonetheless, we could benefit from the clever Norwegians who have done such a stellar job looking after public health.  Regrettably, too many Americans do not value or respect well organized government.  It’s all about “liberty” to do whatever you want, regardless of its effect on others, including their deaths-by-virus. Unfair remark?  Wish it were!

Police violence Is enabled by massive spending

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The Black Lives Matter protest movement shows again why America needs to defund bloated and militarized police departments.

The brutal videotaped killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, has pushed Americans to the limit of what they will tolerate from police.  While many of the problems can be laid at the feet of the current administration, which abolished the modest Obama police reforms, the current status quo of accepting and encouraging racist and murderous policing has been a largely bipartisan project at the federal, state, and local level.

Both political parties have had many years to rein in the culture of police brutality.  Apparently, huge efforts to reform the LAPD resulted in only the mildest changes. The liberal city, dominated by Democrats, continues to have the largest number of police killings nationwide, and the black female district attorney, Jackie Lacey, has refused to prosecute a single officer during her tenure.  The demand that those who violate rights should be held legally accountable has gone unmet. Like the LAPD, the NYPD has enjoyed the protection of a largely liberal and Democratic political landscape.

Obama’s federal oversight of police departments through court-ordered consent decrees was a start, but in his last act as Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions undid the Obama-era consent decrees.  The flow pf military equipment and weapons to local police departments then resumed.   

Now, as mass protests are taking place all over the nation, the images of well-armed and flak-jacketed police facing off against protesters and violently subduing them while remaining encased in protective gear stands in stark contrast to our desperately under-equipped health care workers who have been vainly trying to save as many lives as possible during the coronavirus pandemic.

Police are clad head to toe in high-tech gear, face shields and body armor, with no shortage of plastic handcuffs, rubber bullets, and tear gas canisters. The optics of these modern-day gestapo-like forces roaming city streets, bashing in heads and firing tear gas into the faces of unarmed protesters are a reminder of just how many federal and state-level resources we have poured into law enforcement over the years at the expense of health care, education, and other public needs.

Even as the economic collapse triggered by the pandemic threatened to devastate public school systems, in the liberal havens of Los Angeles and New York City, law enforcement budgets remained unscathed. California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed big cuts to schools to compensate for massive budget shortfalls at the same time that LAPD officers were receiving $41 million in bonuses. 

And while the pandemic is forcing cities to make hard choices about which public services to slash, police departments have remained immune to cuts. Democratic Party’s state and local leaders, have poured money into our domestic armed forces—the police—to fuel a war on us, and especially those among us with black or brown skin. The  police cannnot solve problems caused by poor education, health care, and jobs.  Money should be diverted into education, health care, and jobs.

My comment:  I would quote Author Alex Vitale’s 2018 book, “The End of Policing”.  It.has the following quotation: “The problem is not police training, police diversity, or police methods. The problem is the dramatic and unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last forty years, a fundamental shift in the role of police in society.  “The problem is policing itself.”. The solution, he says, “is to dramatically shrink police functions ….. We must demand that local politicians develop non-police solutions to the problems poor people face.

  (This posting is an edited-for length version of an article by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute)

A moral catastrophe: not just in the United States

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Care England, Britain’s largest representative body for care homes, reckons that by the end of April 7,500 residents may have died of the virus.  But only those who die in hospital after testing positive are included in the statistics. Elderly sufferers, unseen, disregarded, have gone uncounted. Average life expectancy in nursing homes is only two years anyway, but that’s no excuse for shrugging our shoulders. In a civilised society, defending the most vulnerable is an overriding moral duty.

The disease  spread “like wildfire” among the 400,000 residents of Britain’s care homes. In one Staffordshire nursing home, 24 died during a three-week outbreak of Covid-19. And a care home in Peterborough lost six residents – a third of its total – in ten days.

And the people looking after them get “far less protection and guidance” than those in the NHS.. Carers are “the forgotten front line”. Yet as we see, their work is just as important. The “unglamorous” tasks they undertake include washing, feeding, dressing and medicating residents, many of whom have dementia. And then there’s the emotional support that they provide. It’s work that requires “compassion and intelligence”.

 The million people who work in the sector are horribly underpaid. Half earn less than the real living wage – and they’re four times more likely than others to be on zero-hours contracts. Their plight is an index of the Government’s failure over the years to pay anything more than lip service to addressing social care. The UK’s 11,300 care homes – most of them small businesses reliant on funding from residents’ fees and councils – have long had to endure “endemic” staff shortages and budget shortfalls. No wonder they were so acutely underprepared for this crisis.

And the Government’s new immigration rules will make things worse.  A fifth of carers are migrants. But while foreign doctors and nurses working here are to have automatic visa extensions, carers have to pay to apply for theirs. Nor will we be able to replenish the supply of carers from abroad, as they don’t earn enough to qualify for a work permit and will be classified as “unskilled workers”. The people who keep our social care system afloat, “just as heroic as NHS staff”, are being treated as second-class citizens. It will take more than a shiny badge to fix this injustice.  (The Week,  25 April 2020).

My comment: the reality (and I hope I am wrong!) is that in the U.K. and the US the elderly are regarded as an expense item in the national budgets – fewer oldies, lower taxes? To compound this, there are sections of the community in both countries who resent, disregard or despise immigrants.  And yet, one day the types who feel that way may be cared for by underpaid immigrants.  Hah!

Bezos, give back!

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For the richest man in the world, $13 billion is just one day’s profit – a day’s profit that happens to be more than the entire GDP of 77 countries across the world. In one single day, Jeff Bezos makes more money than he could ever hope to spend in one lifetime and became one step closer to becoming the world’s first trillionaire.

Even if Congress passed a temporary billionaires’ tax that only taxed profits made since early March, Jeff Bezos would still be the richest man in the world, and the US would have over $560 billion to fight the corona virus. (Julia Conley)

My comment:  I don’t envy Bezos; I buy from him, sometimes two or three times a week.  His company is extremely well run, and I admire the way he has built it, relatively quickly, into a behemoth.  But with riches come responsibilities.  Decency requires him to pay decent wages.  It also requires him to contribute to the country that gave him his opportunity, and he can do that, firstly, by insisting on a tax rate that would help the country out of the appalling mess that it’s leaders have gotten it into.  Secondly, by actively giving to non-profits who help the poor, the sick, the jobless and the under- educated.  The need is huge; and yet, what he gave he would never miss (at least I can’t imagine why he would).