Thoughts of a retired physician

  In Los Angeles County , the Covid-19 numbers continue to be low. The same is true of most of the remainder of the United States . After 6.8 million deaths worldwide, over 1.1 million of them in the United States, everyone is jubilant at saying “About time!”. This doesn’t mean the pandemic is over but that a highly vaccinated population can feel better about returning to activities that were hampered for 3 years. We wear masks in settings where there are many people and ventilation is uncertain but have eaten out and traveled feeling freer than we had in ages. I came across an unusual website today after I read articles about Social Security and long-term care for aging baby boomers. As a member of the largest generation in American history, this baby boomer was fascinated to stumble upon the Real-Time US Baby Boomer Generation population Death Clock . A bit morbid, but our generation has had an immense impact (bad and good) on the United States. Over 68% of us remain alive but our a

  It’s been a little while since I posted because we have been busy with family duties (including a new granddaughter). Yesterday we did a current events presentation on police reform. As always, I learn a lot by assembling these sessions. A couple of thoughts from the presentation. The history of policing is important to understand. The United States started with using constables and sheriffs, local officials who were responsible for enforcing warrants from the courts and maintaining order. In the South, policing also took the form of slave patrols as the fear of slave rebellion was always present. As American cities grew bigger and diverse in the 19th century, police were organized along the lines of the London police department established by Sir Robert Peel in 1829. Unlike that model, however, political patronage and corruption pervaded police departments in the United States into the 20th century. August Vollmer is usually credited as the creator of the modern police department i

  Our granddaughter, born 24 February!!!

  East Palestine, Ohio is a village of some 4700 people located directly adjacent to the state line of Pennsylvania. Railroad lines have long gone through East Palestine. On 3 February at about 2100 a 150-car Norfolk Southern freight train derailed; most of the cargo was nonhazardous but 20 cars contained hazardous materials. In total about 3 dozen cars went off the tracks and 11 of these contained chemicals, some of them toxic. Tank cars containing vinyl chloride and benzene were involved as well as other flammable but less toxic materials. Fire departments fought the resulting fires but one tank car, felt to be in danger of exploding, had its cargo of vinyl chloride released and a “controlled explosion” was done. The result is here: When vinyl chloride burns, it produces hydrochloric acid (the same acid we make in our stomachs as part of digestion) and phosgene, a poisonous gas used in World War I. The plume above undoubtedly contains those chemicals and many others. I would be terr

  A few years ago I read Stephen Novella’s The Skeptic Guide to the Universe . Novella is an academic neurologist at Yale whose Wikipedia entry is a worthwhile read itself. His book is a compendium of how our brains are hard-wired to delude us as we experience the world. It consists of short chapters on a myriad of cognitive biases that all of us possess. A good example is pareidolia, defined as “ the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern ”. This is why we see such things as the man on the moon or faces on Mars, as this image captured by the Viking I spacecraft in 1976 as it flew past Mars: Our ancestors evolved as a vulnerable species on the savannas of Africa where it was better to alert to potential dangers rather than to fail to alert and become a meal. I sometimes amuse myself by peering closely at the marble countertops in our apartment and “seeing” a face in miniature peering back at me. Of course, this is all randomne

  Margan and I do a Current Events presentation every 2 weeks here at MonteCedro which is quite well attended and usually sparks a lively discussion. She is working on the next one which will look at water, specifically the Colorado River and the looming fight over the compact that deals with water rights to that stream. Despite the recent atmospheric river events that produced flooding and mudslides, those rains did not do much to dent our prolonged drought. Although an estimated 24 trillion gallons of water fell across California (rain and snow), 80% went into the Pacific Ocean quickly. We remain behind on infrastructure projects that can capture and retain water; instead, we have concrete channels from the early 20th century intended to prevent floods.  Humans have ways to change the landscape that prevent runoff. These measures include check dams, swales, and terraces and incorporating reforestation and organic farming to hold water in the ground. That water permeates aquifers whe

  A young man was murdered in Memphis, TN in early January by members of the Memphis Police Department. Officers stopped Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, for an apparent traffic violation. Pulled from his car, he was violently pushed to the ground by several officers; broke free and sprinted away; was caught and beaten severely by officers; waited for 22 minutes for an ambulance to arrive; and died three days later in a Memphis hospital. As CNN reports, there is much we know and much we don’t know at this time – but we do know a young man was beaten to death. The five police officers were also all Black men. They belonged to a special unit of the force named SCORPION (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods), in retrospect an awful acronym. The unit was created with 40 officers in 2021 as a response to the spike in violent crime in the city. The five officers were rapidly fired , then indicted, jailed, and released on bond pending prosecution.  As expected