Category: learning curve

Day 549 – Jupiter

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There is an entire internet’s worth of information out there if you know where to look. There’s actually no excuse for not knowing stuff now if you have a device and a connection. Look at Friday evening for example.

There, up in the Eastern sky (near the top) was Jupiter. I knew this because I’d wondered what the shining star in the East was over the weekend, and I’d looked it up, before looking up at it.

As a bit of a demo, we got the tripod out, aimed and shot, hoping to get the four Galilean moons in the picture. It’s a quick and dirty image: I suppose I could have Googled for the best settings for this sort of thing, but as I say, this was a quick post-braai thing, and – much as I knew that the moons might be there – I picked the settings from my experience, rather than finding a site on the net.

Here’s what we got:

It’s not going to win any awards, other than maybe the one for demonstrating the four Galilean Moons of Jupiter to a few kids (and a couple of adults) after an early evening braai.
If I had tried harder or had more time, I could have done better, but that’s really not this was about. This was “That one there is Jupiter. Let’s see if we can see its moons and then get back to standing around the fire before I fall asleep.”

But then come the questions: How far away is that? How long will the light take to reach us? Which moon is which?

I can do a medium-rare rump over the coals and I can manage some functional camera settings, but I had to turn to the internet for these answers.

Currently, (current to when this was taken) Jupiter was 627.85 million kilometres away. That’s over four times the distance to the sun. I did a rudimentary calculation and that means that with light traveling (as it does) at 300000km per second, the light from Jupiter takes 35 minutes to get to us.
We’re essentially looking at a snapshot of Jupiter as it was just over half an hour ago.

But which moon is Io, or Europa, Ganymede or Callisto?
Well, surely there isn’t a site that can tell you that for any given moment?

Of course there is.

All I had to do was to pop in the date and time that the image was taken, allow for our longitude, and make sure they knew I was using an Erect System (stop it).

So, from the top down on our photo are: Callisto, Europa, Io, Jupiter and Ganymede. All taken from a well-lit suburban back garden, with a basic camera and lens, and all informed by the internet.

It’s not just there for being shouted at by anti-vaxxers.
Some of it is quite useful.

Day 544 – Misinfo, disinfo

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The pandemic has brought with it an equally* horrific wave of misinformation on social media. If there is one plus side to all this, it’s that it’s become more clear who is spreading the misinformation and why they are doing it. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say, and so you can now identify these people more often and challenge, ignore, pity or ridicule them as you so desire.

The first sort are undoubtedly the most dangerous. They are intelligent enough to know what they are sharing is wrong, but they do it because it suits their agenda and it gives them a sense of power. More often then not, these will be wealthy, white, Christian women in America (or their SA wannabe counterparts) or they will be middle-aged men who have a podcast or radio show on some unknown mid-West radio station like KayEnOhBee or some such. Or maybe they’re a writer for a website with a name like “Freedom News” or “Rebel Dispatch” (they always are).
They are being nefarious in spreading their bullshit, because they know it’s not incorrect and morally wrong, but they do it anyway.

Then there are the ones that don’t analyse stuff, because it suits their chosen narrative. Ivermectin stats, Covid deaths, Vaccine side-effects. They see it being posted by their pseudo-celebrity heroes and they just hit SHARE. If they had the inclination to delve a little deeper and get past their biases, they might understand that it wasn’t actually true, but they don’t want to be bothered with that much effort when there’s a Retweet button to be clicked right there. Just lazy.

And then there are the lowly third group. So utterly thick that you could put them together and make one long plank. They are so deeply unintelligent, so completely down the rabbit hole and so far up the arses of the first lot that they don’t have a clue what’s real and what’s not anymore. They think that the sky is making them sick and that the earth is flat. Easily manipulated and radicalised, they are the foot soldiers of the movement, undyingly paranoid and loyal to causes like ‘5G killed my poodle’ or ‘Space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement’.

And the stuff they are posting is so easily disprovable. Look at this, shared just two days ago:

Yeah. That looks pretty bad, until you take into account a couple of things. Like the death rate from Covid-19 in the Western Cape, which has been higher than that worldwide figure just about every day for the past couple of months.

Aaand, it’s disproven. That really wasn’t so hard, was it?

But how can that be? Is the figure above incorrect? No. The figure above is from (as you can see in the bottom corner) 8th March 2020. Before the pandemic really got started. You can’t apply that to now. Things change. That’s like making a calculation of how many people have died from planes crashing into buildings in New York, but choosing to look at it on September 10th 2001.

World War 2 wasn’t so bad: only 68 people were killed… (in the first two days).

Because Covid-19 comes in waves and hits various countries at various times, the daily death rate also varies, but the daily average since March 2020 is well in excess of that TB figure at the top of the chart.

[Can we agree to just ignore the outlier?]

And while I’d certainly rather that it didn’t, I can see how an extra 10,000 deaths each day might affect the world economy.

And the guy who shared the table about ‘crashing the world’s economy’?
I would have popped him in the middle lot I described above, but then to make what is basically a hundred-fold mistake on the widely publicised death statistics seems more than lazy, it seems criminally stupid or entirely deliberate.
So… you decide.

* not really

Day 539 – Vaccine boosters? Yes, please!

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There’s lots of chatter at the moment about Covid vaccines, waning antibody counts, natural immunity and the need (or not) for booster jabs.

I’m fully vaccinated, but when the time comes, if I need a booster jab, I will get a booster jab.
And if I need two booster jabs, I will get two booster jabs.
And so on.

Here’s why.

Despite being very, very careful, I got Covid. And by very, very careful, I mean that I was applying my laboratory safety training and standards to everything I could. I got Covid simply because I couldn’t control some environments that I ended up in.
Like Checkers in Constantia. Well, specifically Checkers in Constantia, to be honest.

But let’s not get bogged down in the details: the fact is that I did everything I could to avoid getting infected, but I still got infected.

I had a mild case of Covid. Thankfully, I avoided a severe case. I avoided supplementary oxygen, hospital, ICU, a ventilator and death. And sadly, we all know how that awful chain of attempted medical intervention proceeds, because we all know people who have ended up at every point along that pathway.

Our Covid-19 vaccines aren’t perfect yet. This is a new, rapidly evolving pathogen and until things settle down and find their natural balance, we’re always going to be playing a bit of catch up. But the vaccines are an incredible weapon against the disease. They’re our best chance. They’re your best chance.
There are plenty of data which tell us that vaccines limit your chances of ending up with a severe case of Covid-19. And to be honest, that should be enough for anyone to get vaccinated, because surely reducing the likelihood of ending up in hospital and all that comes with it is just common sense.

There is also plenty of evidence that being vaccinated means that you are less likely to get Covid at all, less likely to be sick with it and less likely to pass it on.
But perhaps you think that you’re not going to get a severe case of Covid-19 anyway. And sure, looking at the stats, even if you do get Covid, you’re more likely to have a mild case than a severe one.

So let me tell you about my mild case of Covid-19.

I was unable to get out of bed for over a week. I couldn’t even move.
I lost more than 10% of my body weight.
I have myalgia, arthralgia and headaches every morning until my medication kicks in.
I have had to have two chest x-rays.
I still can’t smell or taste anything, 9 weeks on.
I have tachycardia and palpitations.
I have had to have tests on my heart to check for cardiac damage.
I have insomnia and tinnitus.
I’m constantly tired all day; I can’t stay awake after 9pm.
I have had 67 separate blood tests.
I can’t remember people’s names. I can’t think of words. I can’t do simple quizzes anymore.
I used to run 20km a week. For six weeks, I couldn’t even walk up the stairs in my house without taking a break.
I’ve spent thousands and thousands of Rands on tests and drugs.
I’m still taking 12 different tablets every morning.
I’ve had malaria, influenza, Salmonella and meningitis in the last 20 years. This was far worse than any of them.
I can just about manage to walk a kilometre now, but running is a pipe dream.
I have other ongoing symptoms I don’t want to tell you about. (It’s better for both of us.)

It’s completely changed my life. And not in a good way.

You might not get it as badly as I did.
Or you might.

This isn’t a pity post. I’m not looking for sympathy. And I’m not for one moment suggesting that many, many people haven’t had it much worse. Of course they have.
This is just me telling you that “mild” is a massively subjective term, and completely belittles the experience that many of us have had (and are still having) with this disease.
But if you think that you don’t need a vaccination or a booster jab because a mild case of Covid-19 is something you just brush off and get on with your life, well maybe think again.

I got vaccinated, but the vaccinations for my age group arrived in SA too late for me to avoid getting sick. And given my experience, now that I am vaccinated, I will do everything I can to ensure that I am always as well-protected against Covid as I possible can be. If I can give myself a bit more chance of avoiding death, hospitalisation or even just a mild case of Covid by getting a free injection that takes 20 minutes to administer once every six months, well, why the hell wouldn’t I do that?
And then if I have to do it again in another 6 months, I’ll be right there.

If you are hesitant about getting a vaccination, because you are worried that it’s not safe; that might make you feel unwell; if you think that you don’t need one because you won’t get Covid or if you do it won’t be that bad; if you are scared of needles, please just talk to your GP. The benefits far outweigh any possible risks or unpleasantness.

If you just need a sign: this is it.

Give yourself a better chance of avoiding all this shit. Really.

Day 536 – Frerg

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After 25 minutes of standing in the drizzle yesterday morning, I was reminded of the 1989 hit Getting Away With It by supergroup Electronic:

“I’ve been walking in the rain just to get wet on purpose”

But actually, my primary aim was to find a frog, which I eventually did.

It wouldn’t have been hard to find him if he’d been sitting on the grass like this. But he wasn’t, of course.

The Cape Rain Frogs in our area are vocal little things keep us awake all night when it rains, but they are notoriously difficult to locate because they are small (5cm long), well camouflaged and hide in tiny little burrows under the vegetation. When they’re quiet, you literally wouldn’t know that they were there. So I used the occasional croaks to home in on this little guy bit by bit, before finding him and ever so gently easing him out of his hole to meet the kids and the camera.

When he was making a noise and I was actively searching, at least anyone watching me would have know that I was doing something. For the other 95% of the time, I was just standing silently and attentively in the rain. It must have looked odd.
Fortunately(?), the rest of the family was still in bed.

After a few photos and some education, we popped him back safely in his little hole, ready to continue chatting to his local friends and to warn us of the next nocturnal precipitation.

Day 532 – Positives

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After being diagnosed with “Post-acute Covid-19 Syndrome” or “Long Covid“…

Early reports suggest residual effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection, such as fatigue, dyspnea, chest pain, cognitive disturbances, arthralgia and decline in quality of life.

Yep, all of that, and more.

…earlier this week, I was also given a battery of blood tests and another chest x-ray. I got my results back today and (aside from the actual symptoms mentioned above), I am the picture of perfect health. Every single result bang in its appropriate reference range bell curve. If you’d seen these results from a science experiment, you’d think that it was made up like all those Ivermectin trials.

And the CXR, while not being quite so perfect, did show a marked improvement from my last chest x-ray a month or so ago. So, with new drugs and a new plan moving forward, I’m feeling much more hopeful that I was last week. And even yesterday.

And – in another positive moment, I had my best meal in 2 months last night. I still can’t smell or taste anything, so any chef hoping to impress me has a pretty difficult job on their hands. But some bacon-wrapped chili poppers with BBQ sauce from the Village Bicycle had a surprising effect. While not being able to taste chili (at all), I can still get the burning effects of it (this also goes for the cooling effect of mint/menthol). And while that’s not perfect, it’s better than nothing. Because believe me, by this time, pretty much anything is better than nothing. Add in the combination of different textures within the poppers and I was having a good evening and then suddenly…

…did I just taste that BBQ sauce?

Well, no. Not really. But nearly. I did get a weird burnt orange taste, briefly. And that’s more than I’ve had in several (or more) weeks.

Add that in to the fact that I’m sitting outside editing photos* (and blogging) in the sunshine, and… well.. things finally seem to be improving and I’m totally here for it.

* yes, I’m going to have to do them all again this evening.