Meanderings, 29 June 2024

Good morning!

Photo by Magdalena Danaj on Unsplash

What about that six-foot rule and COVID?

Then in the newly released transcript of a congressional hearing from earlier this year, Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that the 6-foot rule “sort of just appeared” and “wasn’t based on data.”

Those who never liked the idea of physical distancing were thrilled! Ha ha, CDC was wrong! …

[but] Did they just pull "6 feet" out of a hat?

The idea behind the CDC recommendation was that putting space between yourself and others was a way to avoid pathogens exhaled by people with COVID.

Was 6 feet just a made-up number? After all, the World Health Organization only suggested 3 feet as a safety zone.

A kinda weird (and relatively ancient) history lesson may offer up a clue.

In the late 1800s, scientists asked people to rinse their mouths with bacteria (editor’s note: yuk) and then just … talk. Crazy!

And what happened? “They saw bacteria landing on plates up to a distance of about 6 feet away,” says Linsey Marr, an aerosols expert and professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech.

“But, if they waited longer — several hours -- to collect the plates, allowing time for respiratory particles to drift around the room and settle, they saw bacteria landing on plates much farther than 6 feet away," she adds.

So yeah, 6 feet is not a magic number for avoiding airborne pathogens.

It’s not like if you go one inch further you’re suddenly in a danger zone. It’s more like a speed limit, suggests Dr. Abraar Karan, a infectious disease fellow at Stanford University. “There’s no data to say 55 mph is significantly safer than 56. But you have to have a cutoff that’s reasonable.” …

Here’s the thing: Even with this revised understanding of the spread of COVID, the closer you are to the person with COVID, the higher your risk of catching it.

“As you get farther away from the infected person, aerosols become more diluted, so the chance of inhaling [particles] usually goes down with distance,” says Marr.

If you haven’t seen these exceptional and fair-minded responses by Andrew Bartlett and Terran Williams, here’s the link.

Gut microbiome and stress — they are related: (so more fiber, more whole foods)

The gut microbiome — the ecosystem of tiny organisms inside us all — has emerged as fertile new territory for studying a range of psychiatric conditions and neurological diseases.

Research has demonstrated the brain and gut are in constant communication and that changes in the microbiome are linked to mood and mental health. Now a study published this month in Nature Mental Health finds distinct biological signatures in the microbiomes of people who are highly resilient in the face of stressful events.

“The accuracy with which these patterns emerged was really amazing,” says Arpana Church, a neuroscientist at UCLA’s Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center who led the new study.

The research is a jumping off point for future human studies that some researchers believe could ultimately lead to treatments. It may also point the way to biomarkers in the microbiome that can help tailor decisions on how to use existing therapies in mental health. …

For their analysis, Church and her team separated 116 adults without a mental health diagnosis into two groups based on how they scored on a scale of psychological resilience.

Next, they sifted through a huge amount of data gathered from brain imaging, stool samples and psychological questionnaires and fed that into a machine-learning model to find patterns.

This analysis of gene activity, metabolites and other information came up with several key associations in the high resilience group. In the brain, there were increased features related to improved emotion regulation and cognition.

“Think about the cognitive part, or the frontal part, of your brain being like the brakes,” says Church. “The highly resilient individuals had really efficient brakes, and less of this hyper-stressed response.” 

Then they delved into the microbiome, looking not only at the abundance of different microorganisms, but also at their genetic activity to see what they were actually doing.

Two major patterns emerged in people who were more resilient to stress: The activity in their microbiome was linked to reduced inflammation and to improved gut barrier integrity.

This tracks with previous research that has shown patients with a variety of psychiatric conditions have a balance of gut bacteria that includes more of certain pro-inflammatory bacteria and less of those with anti-inflammatory effects.

Church notes the gut barrier absorbs nutrients and keeps toxins and pathogens from entering the bloodstream. When that becomes more permeable, or “leaky,” the resulting inflammation acts as a stress signal to the brain that all is not well.

On self-control:

It feels like every week a new church leader announces a “moral failure.” When I see a new headline reporting some form of sexual sin from a leader, it turns my stomach; I can’t read the stories. I know they are important to hold individuals and institutions accountable, but they turn my stomach. There’s so much evil in this world. So many people who we ought to be able to trust have and will abuse their authority to fulfill their own selfish desires.

I understand that there are power dynamics and deep psychological issues at play with these stories, but it seems to me that one significant cause of moral failure is a lack of self-control. This is true for church leaders and lay members. Whether it is a major sexual abuse scandal or a private porn addiction or even the choice to gaze lustfully upon someone, there is a choice point where the individual decides to indulge their desires. Again, I know that in the case of leadership scandals there are often other dynamics involved, but that does not negate the reality that someone has to make a choice. Someone failed to have self-control.

As a society, I believe we have very, very poor self-control. Self-indulgence is cultivated in us from an early age through both practices and ideology. Our consumer economy teaches us by practice that we have a moral obligation to fulfill our desires so long as our credit holds up and no one is measurably harmed. All things are available to us to purchase and enjoy. All desires are on offer. Millions of people are posting thirsty, seductive photos and videos of themselves to elicit our attention and affirmation. It is a licentious age, a culture where we are invited to say “Yes!” to our heart. Even our technology wears down our self-control. We indulge in mindless distractions on our phones over and over and then wonder why we have no willpower to resist temptation when it inevitably arises.

In addition, ideologically we are told that we should follow the deepest desires of our hearts. If that means leaving a spouse and children to follow a new sexual identity or start a life with a new partner, so be it. If that means pleasuring yourself to pornography when your spouse is sexually unavailable, so be it. To deny that desire would be to betray yourself, and you must always be true to yourself. Your self is the most sacred thing in this life, so to be inauthentic to yourself is a form of blasphemy. And of course, if you are your own and belong to yourself, that logic makes perfect sense. Only you can ensure your own happiness; why sacrifice happiness in the one life you get? As one recent Substack writer put it:

This is the point of our one wild and precious life: to live it so that we don’t have regrets at the end. The most common deathbed regret among the dying? According to palliative care experts, it’s that they didn’t live a life that was true to them.

This was in a piece praising middle-aged women who left their “nice” husbands to pursue personal pleasure.

So whatever our natural sinful inclination to self-indulgence might be, that inclination is being nurtured, cultivated, trained, and ideologically supported by our society. We are taught to give in and then surprised when so many people in our churches are viewing pornography. Our culture’s influence on our self-indulgence is demonic.

Self-control is a Fruit of the Spirit, which means that we depend upon God’s grace to receive it, but we can’t be passive. Self-control is a discipline, too. It is a muscle we exercise or we don’t. We each have an obligation to mortify our flesh and resist sinful temptation in all forms. Given the powerful currents of our society, we must be intentional about practicing self-denial. Chastity is a virtue, even (especially?) in marriage. A beautiful marriage does not mean you will have all your sexual desires fulfilled. You won’t. You will have to practice self-control. Over and over again.

I will be following this story:

JerusalemCNN — 

Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the government to draft ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military, delivering a blow to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that has the potential to unravel his ruling coalition.

The court also ordered the government to withdraw funding from any religious schools, or yeshivas, whose students do not comply with draft notices.

“The government wanted to distinguish at the level of law enforcement between individuals based on their group affiliation,” the court said in its ruling. “It was determined that by doing so, the government seriously harmed the rule of law and the principle according to which all individuals are equal before the law.”

Ultra-Orthodox (or Haredi) Jews have, for all intents and purposes, been exempt from national mandatory military service since Israel’s founding (Palestinian citizens of Israel are also exempt.) Ultra-Orthodox men spend much of their early lives out of the workforce, entirely devoted to religious study. They view yeshivas as fundamental to the preservation of Judaism, as important to Israel’s defense as the military.

Most Israelis believe ultra-Orthodox men should serve in the military, according to recent polls, but Haredi parties have been staunchly opposed to efforts to rescind the draft exemption. Netanyahu’s fragile government coalition relies on two Haredi parties – United Torah Judaism and Shas – to govern. He has for weeks been trying to advance legislation through Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, that would enshrine in law a draft exemption for Haredi men.

The decision comes at a critical time for a country at war for nearly nine months, and a prime minister whose far-right government lost its veneer of wartime solidarity earlier this month when Benny Gantz, an opposition leader, left Netanyahu’s war cabinet. And although Israel’s military chiefs publicly decry manpower shortfalls, this ruling is unlikely to result in large numbers of ultra-Orthodox men joining ranks anytime soon.

Medical debts are out of control:

Los Angeles County supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to buy up and forgive millions of dollars in medical debt as part of a comprehensive plan to tackle a $2.9 billion burden that weighs on almost 800,000 residents.

The measure, authored by supervisors Janice Hahn and Holly Mitchell, allows the county to enter into a pilot program with Undue Medical Debt, previously known as RIP Medical Debt, a national organization that relieves patients of what they owe by purchasing their medical debt for pennies on the dollar then retiring it.

“Medical debt is largely out of people’s control, but it is devastating families across L.A. County, especially for people living on the brink of poverty,” Hahn said before the vote. “Luckily for us, this is low-hanging fruit. I think we have a moral obligation to seize this opportunity.”

The debt purchase measure is part of a larger county initiative that includes efforts to prevent the debt from accumulating in the first place, such as boosting hospital financial assistance programs and tracking hospital debt collection practices….

Hahn’s office estimates the county’s $5 million public health investment will help 150,000 residents and eliminate $500 million in debt. The public health department said it hopes to launch the pilot in the coming months and provide Angelenos relief this year. According to Mitchell’s staff, more money could be allocated in the future if the pilot goes well.

Health care debt burdens 4 in 10 adults in the U.S., according to a KFF Health News investigation, and disproportionately affects people of color, low-income people, and families with children. In January, LA County found such debt weighed on 785,000 adults in 2022 and at least doubled the likelihood that patients would delay or forgo health care or prescriptions. The county labeled it a public health issue on par with diabetes and asthma.

Lead poisoning for Beethoven:

Ludwig van Beethoven was a prodigious composer. He’s credited with 722 individual works, including symphonies, sonatas, and choral music — creations that pushed the boundaries of composition and performance, and helped usher in the Romantic era of music. But away from the fortepiano, Beethoven’s life was plagued by deafness, debilitating gastrointestinal troubles, and jaundice.

A little more than a year ago, scientists announced that they’d sequenced Beethoven’s genome from preserved locks of his hair. They found genetic risk factors for liver disease, but nothing else terribly conclusive.

But some researchers have long wondered whether some of the answers lay beyond his genes — specifically, whether toxicity from heavy metals might have had something to do with his many ailments.

Now, after testing a few more strands of the composer’s hair, a team of scientists suggest in the journal Clinical Chemistry that Beethoven was almost certainly exposed to lead — and that it may have contributed to the health issues that were such a feature of the storied composer’s life. …

When someone is exposed to lead, some of the harmful metal gets deposited in their hair. This means that even without a blood sample, scientists can use someone’s hair to determine their lead levels posthumously.

So the owner of two separate locks of Beethoven’s hair put something like two or three dozen strands in a special collection kit and shipped it to the Mayo Clinic — where Sarah Erdahl, Technical Coordinator at the Metals Lab, received it.

“I used tweezers,” says Erdahl, who said she felt zero temptation to touch the composer’s hair with her bare hands. “My heart was fluttering and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, this is so significant.’ When you have that small amount of hair, every strand counts.”

Jannetto agreed, adding that this approach is one that extends to the lab’s customary, living patients.

“Behind every sample — whether it’s blood [or] hair — is a person,” he says. “And that’s why it’s precious and we handle it with care.”

I was sent a link to this article, which is quite the story of the origin of words in a hymn.