typhoon report 2

Kuya says that the unharvested rice was flattened by th wind and probably will be a loss for us and the other farmers. This will be a major disaster for local folks. 

For some reason, the price of rice is low (cheap imports under pricing local farmers? I am not sure why) And the low price for rice means that those who sold it won't have a good profit, and those like us who store it to sell lare when demand is up might also lose out income.

Kuya reports a lot of trees were toppled and trees and debris blocking the roads. The electricity remains out, because of tree damage to power lines, although the maid said it went on in her part of town this morning.

A lot of tin roofs were blown off here in town and in the nearby farm areas.. Our bodega at the farm lost its roof so we may lose part of the stored rice there. Our maid's home hhad the roof blown off so I gave her 20 dollrs for plywood etc for a temporary roof. Parts of town were flooded near the river, and Joys friend in Marikina, in Manila, said their house is under water (that area is below sea level and the surveyers had imposed a no build zone there years ago, but their warnings were ignored and corruption allows middle class houses ti be built there).

And in other bad news...a tree fell on our breeding hen turkey. 

The good new? She was delicious...

........

UPDATE

The 30 foot high Christmas tree in the plaza blew down. The ferris wheel looks ok. Some of the food kiosks on the end collapsed. Lots of downed or sagging wires in the street. The mango tree across the street was having it's cracked branches removed and the edges of the street is full of debris  

But the streedt itself is now clear.

..........

Update 2

Electricity is back on. Thank you to the electric company

typhoon report

The typhoon went thru last night. The city turned off the electricity at midnight as the winds got bad ...the eye of the typhoon passed over us at 4 am, and the winds after it passed was worse than before...pat of our roof blew off, and rain flooded the dining room.  We had lots to clean up but except for a small leak in the bathroom ceiling the bedrooms were ok.

The banana trees in the front yard all were blown down but the palm trees and other trees were ok

No electricity but we turned our generator on at 4 pm after the rain had stopped and the hole in the roof was covered with a tarp.

At 4 pm Kuya drove to the farm to check the stored rrice and to see if the rice in the 2 small fields that havent been harvested yet were destroyed. Hopfully the roads will be cleared of debris so he can get there.

I think this is the 4th major typhoon that hit us since I moved here 15 years ago...not the worst one...and this is the second time the eye went over our town.

The bad news: Another typhoon. The Good news? a vaccine is coming

 Another day, another typhoon. LINK

we are signal one, and the typhoon is expected to hit way south of here, meaning we will be hit mainly with rain...unless of course it turns north.

another report here.(ManilaBulletin)

it should hit us early Thursday so the news is subject to change.

-------------

 and in other news, as expected a covid vaccine will soon be available: of course, it's just a coincidence that the announcement was released shortly after the election.... Silly me, just because Pfizer lied that they were not part of the operation warp speed (they were) doesn't mean they might delay the release to please their political allies.

the bad news? the Pfizer vaccine requires refrigeration, so that is a problem for poorer tropical countries.

But of course, this won't be the only vaccine that will be quickly available: not just from the USA but from other countries.

he notes that 47 vaccines are also due to be released/approved in the next few weeks.

Duterte is planning to borrow 300 million dollars to buy the vaccines from the US or from China to stop the epidemic here... but does note that countries will use the vaccine for their own folks so it might be a wait for us to get some.

This is good news, since the economic shutdown is literally killing people in the third world (from malnutrition, from other diseases not being treated properly because people are afraid of going to the hospital) and if the economic problems continue, of course, there is a danger of revolutions.

and note the good doctor mentions that we still face a problem this winter, before the vaccine has been give to enough people to stop covid while the usual winter influenza will probably be killing folks too as it does every year. So hospitals will remain busy.

==========

The press is all pushing Biden won, and here it is assumed to be true.

But there are lots of stuff being questioned including why the MSM declared victory before the counting was finished, or when the numbers were too close to call. Instapundit has a lot of links on their site (Libertarian site). but the real news is that Real Clear politics has an article declaring the election should not have been declared so early. LINK

Under the contentious circumstances of this election, the traditional media’s decision to declare a victor before the official process had run its course has diminished the confidence of Trump voters in the announced result. Even if the declaration of a Biden victory is found to be accurate, the call was premature, and it will make the effort to unify our nation far more difficult.

sounds about right. And the censorship of stories questioning the accuracy of these stories are being censored by the MSM and the big social media.

...

don't ask me: I can't keep up to date with the kerfuffle.

 our internet is still going off and on during the daytime,  either because kids are overloading the lines doing school work or because PLDT is busy replacing aging lines with fiberoptic cables in our rea.

and Joy is now using a Huawei modem so she can do her zoom calls. She does the business outreach part for us and for an organic coop of farmers in nearby Bulacan.

(Kuya does the farming and is at the farm most of the day trying to get the rice crop in, and dried between typhoon rains. If the crop is not dried properly, the quality of rice goes down so we can't sell it as our gourmet produce, although we can sell it for a lower price as lower quality white rice).

the usual way to dry rice is to spread it on the ground and let the sun dry it; if it rains you have to use a rice drier, and the line at the rice merchants is often long so you might have to wait.

so the repeated heavy rains from nearby typhoons is not helping things.

Me? I'm just busy reading books since the internet is not available during the day.With the rain, often I don't get my afternoon walk with the dogs, so am using Lolo's exercize bike.

But the good news is that since the internet works at night we can still watch our KDramas. Yeeah!

-------------

update: we are now on a signal 3 warning... rain but no wind yet. Typhoon should his in early am.

learning from Hello Garci

Biden puts the Hello Garci scandal to shame.

https://www.phillife.co/hello-garci-scandal/

The hello garci scandal was about rigging an election with illegal votes, but soon was diverted into arguing ig the tapes were altered to make it look like the votes were altered. By changing the subject the boxes of illegal ballots and who cooperated in the fraud was ignored.

One result was a push toward electronic voting machines.

Another result was those helping out thought they were above the law.

https://www.bulatlat.com/2011/08/07/what-happened-to-the-hello-garci-protagonists/

The press here reported the story even in the face of a strict libel law and the knowledge that they could be murdered.

The US press however does not have those excuses, although they could lose their jobs for badthink

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-times-opinion-editor-resigns-amid-fallout-over-op-n1227081

Here is a short summary of irregularites, many of which (like watergste) are reported by reporters who cover local stories.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/wait_just_a_minute_some_very_good_news_may_be_coming.html

But where is the free press? 

Why are the tech companies censoring people who aren'f following the party line.

And I suppose it is just a matter of time until non pc blogs are taken off the internet instead of just not appearing in google searches.

And where are religious leaders who pretend that their members and institutions won't be forced to comply with government policies or else so are staying silent? 

As a physician I will bring up one important story...Euthanasia and abortion will probably forced on catholic hospitals and hospices as is being done in Canada and some Europen countries...

and if Biden doesn' t mandate it in the way Obamacare has let officials persecute the Little sisters of the poor for refusing to pay for birth control and abortifactant pills, the mandates will come from packing the Supreme court to make these things into law similar to the Abortion and gay marriage was mandated with the idea you are not allowed to ignore or modify their rulin. And the MSM will cheer them along, while the complacent catholic bishops will remain silent, as did Mc Carrick back them.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/catholic-hospital-in-nova-scotia-required-to-offer-assisted-suicide-euthanasia-63605

Biden is now being lauded  for saying he plans to heal a divided Americs

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1358105/time-to-heal

An example of the bias other countries are reading.

And what was left out of the story?

Plans calling for reeducation of those with bad think (Robert Reich). What could go wrong?

or blacklisting those who voted wrong (Aoc and the Trump accountability project)

https://www.trumpaccountability.net/

The old Biden could reach out and get unity. Instead he is obeying his masters which is why the blue collar voters turned on him.

And if you are really patanoid, you would see this as part of the great reset.

https://www.weforum.org/great-reset

And don't dare to let anyone differ with you.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-times-opinion-editor-resigns-amid-fallout-over-op-n1227081

Cardinal Vigano warned us about this.

https://taylormarshall.com/2020/10/archbishop-viganos-open-letter-president-trump-great-reset.html

Not just Vigano and not just this election. I am reading Cardinal Sarahs book which warns of the same thing.

https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/cardinal-sarahs-warning-to-the-west/

And Cardinal Ratzinger saw the philosophical and spiritual collapse of europe and the west as leading to this many years ago.

https://b-ok.asia/book/2739214/e27b03?dsource=recommend&regionChanged=&redirect=37837368

Its not about Trump, you know. If Biden truly believed in god, he could unite the country. But never mind.

https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/please-explain-the-significance-of-this-quotation-332002  

Volcano factoid of the day

http://www.vesuvius.tomgidwitz.com/html/5__eyewitnesses.html

Mt Vesuvius was observed erupting by Hannibal, and of course the eruption that destroyed Pompei was described by Pliny the Younger, and the as killed his uncle Piny the Elder who went there to try to rescue friends.

But I didn't know that Sir William Hamilton's observations resulted in his bein called one of the first volcanologists.

Hamilton is best known today for his wife who later became the mistrss of Lord Nelson, and was played by Vivian Lee in this classic film (her then husband, Lawrence Olivier, played Nelson.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Hamilton_Woman

https://youtu.be/mN1ZjanTr_c

Overseas citizens and military are disinfranchised, and why I don't rely on the internet

 I just got an email from Democrats Abroad in Manila to tell me to insist that they count our ballots.

Actually I haven't voted since moving here: Partly because my last voting address was Oklahoma and the Republicans there would overwhelm my little vote, and partly because I am not up to date to vote on local candidates there, but mainly because the mail is so slow that even if I send it in early, it might arrive late. 

My latest mail to the USA took 3 weeks to get there, but the latest letter from the US to me was posted in late August. But even in good times, (pre covid) it took 2 to 3 weeks for "snail mail" to arrive. Much of the delay if from Manila to our town, which takes 7 to ten days on average. 

But the worse delay was a pension check mailed in February that arrived damaged and unreadable in late July. 

So the DemocratsAbroad. are correct in worrying that ex pats (overseas Americans) and others (especially military votes) will not be counted.  

No link, but I sort of remember in 2000, when they were arguing about "hanging chads" in Florida, that at the same time lots of military ballots were never counted because they arrived too late.

The Military Times has a similar worry. LINK and the numbers are significant if the election is close:

Overall in 2016, there were 252,574 military absentee ballots counted by all the states; and 382,896 absentee ballots from U.S. citizens overseas, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. As everyone has seen, the margins of votes in this election are changing rapidly as more votes are counted. Military and overseas citizens' votes will be counted by election officials, but the fact that some states have previously carved out later deadlines to allow for more transit times for these ballots could make a difference.

that is one of the reasons for allowing counting of late ballots.

of course, when the law allows things like this, you have to remember it also allows people to discover ballot boxes in the back room: this is especially important when they don't require postmarks to be validated, or when the late ballots hint of fraud (i.e. too high a count for one side, or when more people voted than are registered, or when they find a ballot or two registered to a dead person, which makes one wonder how many fraudulent ballots will be overlooked.

so it looks like it will be another fight to see who wins. Nothing new here, alas, but the important news is that there haven't been riots: it looks like people are still trusting the constitution to play out according to law.

The best quip about all of this is from Dilbert:

Episode 1176 Scott Adams: Even the Looters Don’t Know What to do Now.

My son swears by NPR which tells him only Trump is worried about fraud. My take? I don't have one. But I don't especially trust NPR or most of the MSM here: the rule is that if they don't get the facts correct about things you know about, don't trust them about things you don't know about. And the distortion about the Philippines news and about the covid epidemic is there, although it's hard to tell if the distortions are from opinion pieces or regular news (they need to lable the difference, since it's hard to tell the difference when you get the news on line).

I get most of my news on line. And our internet problems mean I haven't been able to keep up with the deluge of propaganda from both sides. So if I haven't written about the election, it is because I have a life, and typhoons and epidemics and worry if the rice crop will survive and get harvested sort of seem more important right now.

I just don't trust the MSM, and the censorship of the conservative voices by social media to eliminate the right wing propaganda and fake news means it's hard to find the reasonable opinions from the other side.

I suspect that there will be a breakup of the social media no matter who wins, similar to the breakup of AT&T or IBM in the past, The monopoly laws go back to Teddy Roosevelt, so don't blame Trumpieboy (or Biden) when this happens.

Nor is the fight between government and huge internet based monopolies limited to the USA: The UKGuardian has an article about Jack Ma vs Xi. 

well, anyway, I haven't been able to follow a lot of the kerfuffle in the US elections for the last six weeks.

 Our internet has been going off and on during the day (the phone company is upgrading their cable to carry the traffic from all the kids at home using the internet to  take classes, so often the internet doesn't work while they are working on the line). So the only time I know I can get on line is early in the morning, before 8 am.

To complicate matter we have had heavy rain and two nearby typhoons and brownouts.

But the main reason is that Joy is using my computer. Sometimes it is because the secretary (part time) is using it to update the books and data, and other times Joy uses my newer computer in order to do her zoom business conferences. But not just during the day: because the internet is off much of the time during the day, Joy is up late at night using my computer to do her email and business stuff late at night when the internet is working.

it is a real problem for Joy's business: Often the internet is out when she is on conference calls, so she has to link to the internet via her phone, which is expensive and slow. 

So yesterday, she signed up for Huawei internet link. Yes, it will cost a bit, but cheaper and faster for business, (G5 link? I have no idea). She has the modem in her room, but it reaches to the dining room for the rest of us to connect if we wish.

-----------------------------

update: most of the local English papers here in the Philippines (run by the oligarchy that loves the Democrats) are comparing the confusion of the USA election to Marcos trying to stop the counting of legal ballots against him. But they sort of over look that many of the mail in ballots coming in late resemble the "Hello Garci" scandal, where a certain lovely president was recorded talking to a local bigshot asking him to make sure the ballots were being done properly, which most folks here interpreted as telling him to bring out the pre filled out ballots from the back room.

That scandal was one reason the Philippines paid a lot of money to get electronic voting machines.

a lot of what is happening, from the "BLM" and "antifa" demonstrations to the Democratic DA's who refuse to prosecute rioters, to the mail in ballot scheme, are all seen by Trump and his followers as a conspiracy (many of Trump's backers are Democrats who are upset that the extreme left took over their party).

But one does see the censorship of social media against the "deplorables", and the MSM is not very curious about checking on possible cheating, so one suspects the end result will be that the most productive and hard working folks in the USA will essentially be disenfranchised again by corrupt politicians of both parties who like the status quo where they can get rich. (another story rarely reported outside of the small right wing media which has since been banished from Youtube and facebook and twitter).

Not much I can do about any of this of course: When I pray, I only get the small quiet feeling that this is a chastisement for the USA and ultimately for the world.

As for us, a Biden presidency would mean letting China get away with their shennanigans stealing our fish and our petroleum reserves. StrategyPage has a longish essay on what is going on here LINK

Cemetary time

In the USA, they celebrate Haloween, in Mexico the celebrate the day of the dead, but here they have Undas, where the family visits the graves of their loved ones, cleans up and decorates the grave, and then stays awhile and has a picnic.

Not this year, however...Here the mayor explains why the cemeteries are closed for Undas, 

.

oh well... after Lolo died, I would visit his grave almost every day the first year and after that about once a week. But since the virus hit, I haven't been there at all. I haven't been at mass either, or gone to the mall for almost a year.

But one problem with the cemeteries being closed is that funerals are also delayed: so the little old lady who lives next door had to remain unburied for 6 days.

No, not Covid: She was 90 years old and was sitting outside in the morning and felt sick and came in the house and died quietly.

She has lots of relatives: so delaying a funeral is not unusual... often the burial is delayed for overseas relatives, but of course, now no body is coming in from overseas because they might have to wait in quarantine for two weeks. (Latest rules are here because they keep changing).

well,l anyway, they held a wake at her home since she died, and there are a lot of neighbors and extended family coming to visit. Usually this means you come and say a quick prayer and then sit around eating snacks and socializing: Often the men play cards outside under an awning....  so it means the street is partly blocked, and we have cars and tricycles parked in front of our garage. No problem: We parked the large truck in the front garden.

Last night they had music to entertain the visitors, with a singer and recorded music. But this morning, they hired a band to play very sad music that makes me want to cry... 

usually the band accompanies the deceased to the church and then to the cemetery. However, churches are still closed, so no Mass. Father will bless the gravesite and say prayers for her there.

No, I am not going with them: to far for me to walk in procession, but the cook is going and I gave her money for a tricycle. She and our secretary will represent our family at the funeral.

The cook goes to all the funerals: She is probably related to half the people in our barangay (neighborhood) and she knows everyone and knows all the news and rumors in our town.

Joy had a rice delivery today and has to drop off some papers, and will try to pick up my renewed retirement visa papers. Due to the virus, they don't expect me to pick it up myself as I had to do in past years.

The young men accompanying the delivery arrived at 3:20 a.m. and kept ringing the bell and got all the dogs upset, so the noise woke me up. The truck and driver arrived at 4 am,.. the traffic to Manila is terrible, and although without traffice it takes 3 hours, sometimes it actually takes 5 hours and more if the inspection line is long. The road is improved from when we first moved here, but with increased prosperity it means more cars and trucks too. 

so anyway I've been up since 3:30 am and will probably go back to sleep after lunch.

Kuya harvested rice at the farm yesterday, and may finish drying it today if the sunshine continues. There is alas another typhoon due to hit the Philippines but this one is aiming at the far north, so unless it is large, we shouldn't be bothered with heavy rain.

They were very worried about Typhoon last week, but luckily for Manila and for us, it changed course south a bit and missed us... it hit a less populated rural area, and it went through quickly (meaning not dumping a lot of rain to flood everywhere).

To put things into perspective, here is a paragraph from the AP report on the typhoon.

About 20 typhoons and storms annually batter the Philippines, and the Southeast Asian archipelago is seismically active, with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, making it one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.

 and not just earthquakes, volcanoes and typhoons: Don't forget Dengue fever. There seems to be fewer cases this year, probably because everyone stayed inside due to covid.

A year after the national dengue epidemic was declared, she said reported dengue cases have dropped from 430,282 in 2019 to 59,675 in 2020... dengue deaths have also significantly dropped from 1,612 deaths in 2019 to 231 in 2020.

compare this to covid: 

the ministry said total confirmed cases had increased to 388,137, while deaths had reached 7,367. The Philippines has the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Southeast Asia behind Indonesia.

in the meanwhile, the country is making plans to use a vaccine as soon as it is available: Duterte perfers the Russian Sputnik vaccine or the US Moderna vaccine.  link2

The US moderna vaccine should have been released in September, but has been held up because of Politics, which seems crazier than usual in the USA this year. Yup. let people die because Trump. And of course the anti vaxers would let thousands die rather than risk a dozen deaths from side effects. 

and this doesn't count the deaths from malnutrition and because people aren't getting treatable diseases treated because they are afraid of going to the hospital.

Sigh.

good news the typhoon missed us

The typhoon aiming at the heart of Manila veered south, and moved quickly through the country, meaning rain damage was limited.

So very bad damage, but to rural areas, not Manila where millions live in crowded slums, and where thousands could have died instead of only a dozen people.

 and we only had rain so maybe our remaining rice can be harvested.

The bad news. Another storm due next week.

Remembering our family in heaven

 the usual Undas celebration (for all Saints day/day to remember the dead) is forbidden due to the virus, with the gates locked and armed police guarding the entrances to the various older (ungated) and newer (gated) areas. Even the funeral for our next door neighbor will have to wait five days until they allow the cemeteries to reopen. 

Of course, with the news warning us that a supertyphoon is due to hit Luzon tonite, we are staying home. But so far this morning it is cloudy and the atmosphere is heavy, but no rain or wind yet...the calm before the storm.

.....

Lolo's grave is under the floor because he wanted a plain gravesite as they do in the USA...alas no open sites were available so we had to buy a plot where there were only small houses and usually the tomb is on top of the floor, but we placed his grave under the floor as he wished, which means there is a larger area for us to party/celebrate. The grave has lights inside, which usually are stolen and have to be replaced, despite the lock on the door.

There are two other family sites: The one with Lolo's mother and our cousins, in the older cemetery, and a similar gravesite for 2 of his nephew and his father. 

In the USA, Catholics usually attend mass, but except for Mexicans, the cemetery visits are not usually done in November, but on Memorial day, where people often decorate the war dead but since it is Spring and the winter debris needs to be cleaned, often folks visit the cemeteries to clean them up and put flowers there. Alas, my parents are buried in our old neighborhood, so I only visited them every couple of years, and since their site is in an area forbidding flowers or large tombstones, we don't send flowers their (ironically, half a mile over, in the older area of the same cemetery, they do allow decorations, but that area is so crowded I can't find my way to the site of my grandmother's grave so haven't visited it since 30 years ago when I visited it with my mother).

waiting for the wind

Overcast but no wind or rain yet...the calm before the storm.

We pulled our workers and stick from a trade fair in Manila a day early because we wre afraid the roads would flood and they would be stranded.

An elderly lady who lives next door with her granddaughter died suddenly of a heart attack, so lots of tricycles and cars will be blocking our garage if they hold the wake at her house.

Over the last month we had one storm or low pressure area after another...alas we haven't harvested all the rice yet because too few dry sunny days and the harvester thresher we rent hasn't gotten down their list to us yet. 

In other news Kuya is hoping to persuade his 80 year old mom to move here since she is in a nursing home and will be at risk this winter from flu or covid. However if she needs dialysis here she would have to pay fot it herself, since Medicare doesnt pay for care here. But my house is wheelchair friendly and caregivers available, and I can move upstairs to our Bnb apartment that isnt being used due to quarantine discoutrages travel.

family news

We went through a minor tropical storm, then got hit by the edge of a typhoon that hit south of here, then got rained on by a low pressure area.

 Main problem was rain rain rain.

Now we are expecting a typhoon to hit Sunday night.

The big worry is quarantine for people evacuating to shelters. Sigh. But the next typhoon looks like it might get stronger before it hits us.

We are only in partial lockdown...everything is open with masks and distancing, and no elders allowed in church or the mall. Restaurants are takeout, and although quite a few are closed, a new Korean restaurant is opening up the street. The problem? Only a few Koreans live here.The strrets are full of traffic, and the mail is being delivered again...I just got a check sent Aug 24, so its pretty slow.

Nov 1 is All Saints day, when folk visit their loved ones graves, clean up the area, light candles and place flowers then sit around and picnic. Alas, with the virus that is forbidden...Joy and the maid cleaned up Lolos grave and put flowers there, but I stayed home...only 2 allowed at a time.

Haloween is not a big thing here, altho the malls in Manila celebrate it. And we are already preparing for Christmas...the mayor has started putting up the lights.

Tell the experts: Medicine is still an Art

 In the evening, the family gathers in my room (I have the large TV) to watch movies. We have several movie channels (HBO, Fox movies) but too often they seem to be violent and nihilisitic, or else superhero nonsense, so instead I cast films from my computer, either from K drama sites or from Youtube, where you can actually watch a story with a plot and normal people.

Well, anyway, Joy loves "Hallmark" type movies, so last night we watch one of the Jean Oakes sagas, this one about a lady doctor. 

Big mistake: I rarely watch medical oriented shows, since they tend to be either so realistic that they bring back hard cases I treated, or more commonly ,they get medicine so wrong that I curse and shout medical advise at the screen.

This film was one of the latter: There is an epidemic in town, and the attractive lady doc looks down the throat of a sick child and immediately diagnoses Cholera.

Cholera? well maybe they left the part out about diagnosing it from the odor on entering the room and she was checking for dehydration, but the medical part went down hill from there: all those cholera patients being treated without her getting her fancy dress dirty. (and falling in love with a handsome cowboy of course). Yecch.

Poor Joy: she was quite startled after I cheered the town folks when they burnt down the orphanage which was the locus of the epidemic (although I suspect it was the orphanage outhouse contaminating the town water supply that caused the problem)...and after the film, I put this up to show her what was wrong with the G rated movie: 

Here is Dr Claire Frazer from Outlander confronting a similar epidemic on a British navy ship (actually the epidemic was typhoid, not cholera but you get the idea: Neither disease is pleasant to treat if you are a delicate lady trying to keep your dress attractive), and is more realistic.

go Claire!

Well, in a related subject, I just finished a book by Dr. Abraham Verghese "Cutting for Stone" about growing up with Indian physician parents in Ethiopia. Why did I enjoy it? Because I have worked in Africa, (albeit Liberia not Ethiopia, and 40 years ago), and found the description of overwork with limited resources and very very sick patients accurate... there is even a section about the fight to repair vesical vaginal fistula that is not for the faint hearted.

 But it's not just about the practice of medicine: It's the human story of those at the hospital: The nun who got pregnant, the physician parents who adopted her sons as their own, and were good and loving adoptive parents. The boys not only learned science and medicine,  but the parents also had time to teach them to dance and enjoy music and books. Then the plot changes when revolutions start, and the one son had to flee the danger because he knew someone who was on the wrong side of the revolution.

The son then flees to America and takes a residency program in a slum area that can't find many American physicians to work there, so hires doctors from India (been there, done that too, although most of my fellow residents were Filipinos and Iranians). and then an emergency: Fulminant hepatitis B requiring a transplant...

Oh yes: And he finds his birth father and reconciles with him: The father had fled into medicine as an escape from life, and became so enmeshed with medicine that he had no time to raise his son.

Yup. I've seen that too: Indeed, the first lecture that we medical students were given was about not making medicine a way to flee life, because being human is an important part of the art of medicine.

Yes, the art of medicine: Not just filling in blanks to get paid, not just asking the questions to satisfy the billing office, not being so engrossed in technology and the scientific approach to medicine that you don't sit down and get to know the patient.

This is also the theme of Dr. Verguese's other books: That medicine is in danger of descending into a dehumanizing mechanical approach:

......

so how does one teach medical students that the art of medicine is just as important as the science of medicine? 

by having good, humane teachers show you how to do it. And by having them learn about patients via literature and stories.

and here is an interview with him that discusses the importance of story, the importance of human connections, and especially the problem of making human contact while wearing a mask during the epidemic.

.......

sigh. Yes.

Years ago, I met the good doctor, and after his talk cornered him to say what younger doctors needed was to learn about ethics and illness by studying the classics, since too often what passed for such stories in the medical and ethical journals were closer to propaganda than reality, and what was worse these "stories" all seemed to assume the rational upper middle class individualistic approach aka "Autonomy" was the way to teach ethics. (something that is was no help for docs like me who worked with ethnic, immigrant or AmerIndian patients).

and he looked at me sadly, and said this had been done: The President's ethical council released a book using stories as a way to help students think about these problems. And indeed, I did manage to find it on Amazon.

alas, the book is out of print, and no one thought they should have made it into an ebook, but you can find excepts here. LINK

I'll use a short example: To discuss chronic pain, Emily Dickenson's poem is used:

In “Pain Has an Element of Blank,” poet Emily Dickinson shows us the problem posed by the constant intrusion of the body, in its most compelling form: pain. Pain is a direct experience that, according to Dickinson, seems to fill the present; nothing interposes itself between the poet and her pain.

 Pain has an element of blank;

It cannot recollect

When it began, or if there were

A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,

Its infinite realms contain

Its past, enlightened to perceive

New periods of pain.~

something to remember the next time you read that doctors prescribe too much pain medicine for their patients...

and don't forget: A lot of sickness is from grief, anxiety and the sorrows of life. Listening is a big part of treating that too:

as Hopkings wrote: 

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there.

Anti vax hits the Philippines

 There was a huge social media outburst here in August claiming 5 people died of covid vaccine in Tarlac.

Rappler report here.

The problem? It wasn't true. Not only wasn't it true, but the vaccine hadn't been used yet anywhere in the Philippines.

A more recent report (Oct 5) from AFP in the Japanese Times notes that not only is this disinformation about a vaccine that hasn't been used, but that the anti vax movement here in the Philippines is killing children.

The background of the problem? The Dengue vaccine scandal where an unproven vaccine caused several deaths  in children.

The problem? The children were not properly screened, and should never have received the vaccine. 

And the outrage was made worse because a lot of folks think corruption might have allowed an unsafe vaccine be used, and that the western drug company was using the Philippine people as a guinea pig.

but it wasn't the vaccine that killed a lot of kids: It was the fact that the well publicized "scandal" scared a lot of parents, so they didn't get their kids vaccinated against anything.

Childhood immunization rates have plummeted in the country — from 87 percent in 2014 to 68 percent — resulting in a measles epidemic and the re-emergence of polio last year. A highly politicized campaign that led to the withdrawal of dengue vaccine Dengvaxia in 2017 is widely seen as one of the main drivers of the fall.

as a result, as the UK Guardian reported, over 70 childen died from measles. 

(Ironically that Dengue vaccine is 76% effective, and the vaccine has since been approved for use in other countries.).

Fast forward to Covid, where the opposition to Trump, not scientific data, seems to be fueling anti covid vaccine hysteria in the USA...

But part of the hysteria is also from poor coverage by the press, but especially from short quotes on social media. These quotes are usually taken out of context, or they emphasize distrust if recommendations change, or where recommendations are based on different circumstances (e.g. masks where nuanced discussions about different types of masks, who should or should not use them, or where they should be used is often lacking).

And then there are headlines that emphasize one fact, whereas if you read the entire article, you find that the headline is false.

Clickbate anyone?

For example the death from the British vaccine trial was given a lot of publicity, but how many knew that the guy who died received the placebo, not the vaccine?

Alas, similar anti vax stuff is all over the internet, in both right and left wing fringe blogs and social media.

This is not reality, but social contagion similar to the phenomenum described in the book 

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (which was) an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, (1841) which describes the psychological basis of everything from the witch trials to the crusades to the tulip craze to why people believe in ghosts to economic fads that resulted in major economic problems when that bubble burst.

That was 1841, but now with Twitter and Facebook etc. it is easier for rumors to spread, so the paranoid delusions often spread quickly and are hard to debunk.

In the Philippines, according to the AFP article, the anti vax disinformation is spread mainly via Facebook.

I believe this, because everyone here, even the lower middle class and even our farmers, have access to a smart phone or an internet cafe, and the younger generation live on Facebook and other social media sites.

This anti vax opposition thrives on fear, and there is a lot of fear of the virus here in the Philippines.

add to that a distrust of the government,  made worse by an anti Duterte social media among the elite and students...Although outside of this bubble, ordinary folks trust Duterte (80%) on getting the vaccine, the trust of "experts" might be lower....

and ordinary folks are being overwhelmed by what they read on the social media.

What is usually lacking is common sense, knowledge of the nuances of how vaccines work (including their side effects and limitations) and especially, the cost benefit ratio: that a dozen people suffering from side effects is better than tens of thousands sick or dead from the actual disease.

Sigh.

the nuanced discussion of this is on medical sites, of course, (medical discussions recognize the cost benefit ratio and the shortcomings of any vaccine but also recognizes the huge benefits from such vaccines. These sites also include information on who should should get the vaccine, who should not, and what is a side effect and what is not related to the vaccine).

here's an example of what we docs learn: notice it's 2 hours long and full of complicated data. 

So how many people will watch the long lecture, let alone understand it. 

In contrast, a short tweet or facebook post with paranoid anger behind it will be read by many and alas believed.

To make things worse: much of this anti vax fad is associated with the idea that natural living is better, and all medicines are bad. Use an herb, not a medicine that might cure you. Natural methods are better (really? How could anyone believe that here, when people die of diseases easily treated by western medicine?) 

So (to paraphrase Monty Python): What good has vaccinations done for us anyway?

but how can calm reasoning compete with the paranoid fringe theories out there: Again from the AFP article:

"I trust vaccines 100 percent,” said Jett Bucho, from a poor neighborhood of San Jose del Monte, after her one-year-old daughter was immunized against polio. But the 26-year-old said online conspiracy theories that a coronavirus vaccine could be used to implant chips and control humans had planted a seed of doubt in her mind. “On Facebook, if you keep scrolling, you see this,” she said. “It’s scary.”

Princess Mononoke background story

 I am reading the classic (albeit now outdated) textbook the Chrysanthemum and the sword, written by Ruth Benedict in 1944 to explain to Americans that their Japanese enemies didn't see things or think the same as Americans, and that they needed to understand the culture. Book can be downloaded from internet archive.

But yesterday, Kuya mentioned some of the Japanese looked more Caucasian than Asian, and I pointed out that it isn't caucasian but Ainu and similar indigenous peoples who in the distant past may have intermarried... 

Japan is seen as a monolithic culture by the west, but actually their ancestry is a bit complicated.

.

.. I was familiar with the Ainu, who still live in the extreme north of Japan and in nearby Russian claimed islands: 

..

. but I was not familiar with the Emishi. Wikipedia article goes into the group and the history, with the controversies about the group.

...

If you haven't seen Princess Mononoke, you might want to rent it.

this explains the historical background of the fictional film, along with references to Japanese folklore.

................. Most of these things are posted here for reference for my later research, since I know little or nothing about Japanese history.

LOL post of the day

Chicken trivia

 we used to farm broiler chickens, until a typhoon flattened the chicken houses and we decided the profit we made wasn't enough to rebuild (our local chicken prices were low thanks to imports from Viet Nam... globalization anyone?)

Well, anyway, the story of how chickens took over the world as a cheap protein source is fascinating:

So where did the chicken originate? From the forest chicken of South East Asia. or maybe China or maybe India. aka the red junglefowl.

And the original chickens might have been caught to use for cockfighting: something I sort of believe, because cockfighting is a big sport here in the Philippines, where you frequently see fighting cocks outside under a small shelter in people's back yards.

However, along the way, the species was bred to become nicer (although they are still aggressive: You ever heard the Phrase "Pecking order"?) Chickens killing other chickens in a herd is alas a problem, which is why more sophisticated henhouses put hens inside a box to lay eggs and the broiler chickens bred for meat production tend to be a white chicken bred for fast growth and lack of aggression.

Heh. Wikipedia even has an article on the white broiler chicken.

blame Col Sanders and his clones.

The fighting rooster is revered as a symbol of courage, and watchfulnees/ protection here in Asia. Remember how the critics laughed at the "Trump Chicken" meme? Well, it had the opposite connotation here in Asia, especially since the meme was not a Chicken but a fire rooster of the Chinese zodiac.

A charismatic man has a stunning energy, is always in the spotlight. Leader, unquestioned authority, charming handsome - all this Fire Rooster.

There are a lot of species of chickens out there but as I noted, most of the cheaper farmed chickens are of one species.

One worry about the chicken is that this monoculture could lead to it's demise from disease: so scientists are doing lots of DNA studies to identify the chicken origin and maybe to steal some of their genes to improve disease resistance.

The problem? Chickens cross breed, so in many areas, thanks to free range chickens in villages, there are few pure bred red junglefowl out there.

which brings me to the Chicken trivia of the day.

From Nature org blog:

Curiously, one of the few remaining populations of pure red junglefowl, as reported in Audubon, is found in Georgia. About 900 junglefowl roam the streets of the town of Fitzgerald....In the 1960s, wildlife managers released the junglefowl as part of an effort to establish populations of non-native gamebirds for hunting purposes.The junglefowl never established in wild habitats, but they did colonize the Fitzgerald’s parks and backyards, where many local residents consider them a nuisance.

 -----------------------

in a somewhat related item: 

Before there was Green acres, there was the Egg and I: about a city gal whose husband fell in love with country living.

Secret churches

 Virtueonline links to an article about the newest version of Christianity in China that has revived the house churches in rural areas: Calvinism originating in Indonesia. As the rural Pentecostal house churches lose the educated young because they are migrating to cities, they want a more substantial church i.e. more emphasis on intellectual basis instead of mere emotion.

I wonder if it is because the rule oriented Calvinism has rules of conduct similar to Confucian ethics, but then I don't know enough about the subject to know if this is true.

the article also notes the persecution of Christians and the destruction of churches in China.

-------------------

I don't know if anyone outside the religious right notices the problem of closing churches. No, worshipping on line or watching TV is not the same.

Yes, virus. But when the public health authorities said hey, BLM demostrations were fine, one does wonder why pastors in the USA didn't say: well if they can gather outside during the day to demonstrate, well, we can imitate them by having worship services outside.

Here, a couple months ago I posted about a priest in Manila saying mass on the back of a pickup truck in the poor areas of Manila.

and our churches have reopened, although elders are not allowed inside (we have to stand outside and keep our distance). Which means as soon as the hot season stops I might actually try to go back to church.

And in Africa, sometimes the priest would say mass under a tree in isolated villages.

So anyway, Father Z links to an article about the Irish sneaking out to pray at the mass rocks, where the Irish gathered to pray and have mass said during that country's persecution.

Alas,. Ireland's bishops pretty well destroyed their church over the last 30 years, so this seems to be mainly a lay effort.

here comes the storm

Actually not quite a typhoon but a tropical storm. We are signal 2.

The eye should pass us by tonite.

Heavy rain all day.

The harvested rice is dry, which is good news,..the bad news is that we have more rice to harvest...if the wind is high, the rest of the crop could be ruined.

https://youtu.be/u4D2pgu6xcc

--------------------

update: aside from broken banana and palm tree fronds we seem to be okay. Kuya will check the farm later today for damage to the crops

Stories not covered in the media:

 Michael Yon, whose reports on Hong Kong told the inside story of their protests, has now gone to report the antifa "peaceful protests" aka riots.

This dispatch points to one of the biggest problems no one seems to be reporting on: That the homeless problem is due to drugs. and it resembles the revenge of China for the Opium wars.

and during the pandemic, overdoses and suicides (which often are in those who have abuse problems) have skyrocketed.

Of course, if someone tries to do something about it, like Duterte is trying to do here, the "human rights" types will protest, because the lives destroyed by drugs and the people killed by druggies robbing them (as several older folks in our town were killed), well they don't care. 

I remember when things changed: Before the Beatles popularized drug taking, such things were not normalized in society. Then suddenly those of us who refused to go along with taking drugs were ridiculed and marginalized.

So yes, go mourn John Lennon. But remember: The guy who killed him scrambled his brains into psychotic delusions due to drug taking. In the east, this is known as Karma...

and the question no one is asking: Where the H### are the churches on this issue? Afraid to preach against drug taking because they might lose their congregations?

-----------------------------------

Joe Biden is being brought low by his kids. But hey, Twitter and Facebook etc. are trying to censor that story.

But the question no one is asking:

A lot of this is "legal" since giving money to a son/spouse/family member for political influence is not considered bribery. Ditto for family members who get lucrative business deals. But there are a lot of politicians in Washington who have become rich and no one wants to talk about it.

Which is why the well known shenanigans of Trumpieboy before he became president are shrugged off by the deplorables: 

As my husband would say: They're all crooks. 

and we know lots about Trumpieboy's business deals, (lots of "best sellers" full of these claims are out there) but not how other politicians became millionaires while serving in congress.

So where are the reporters in all of this? Well, given the death of Daphne Caruana, and the lack of interest in things like the Panama papers etc., you can see why these things are not covered very well in the press.

----------------------------------

I ran across this photo on Powerline blog.

what hit me was not the contrast between the photos, but that there are crowds at airports where Trumpieboy has landed. LINK LINK2 LINK3 LINK4

apparently he is making a lot of stops at small airports to campaign, and by calling these gathering "peaceful protests" he can point out that Antifa, feminists, BLM etc. protests are going on all the time without much outcry about the virus spread, implying that if you condemn one gathering you have to do the same for the other side.

This bring in mind another President hated by the establishment who did the same thing: Give'm hell Harry's whistle stop campaign, where Truman crossed the country on a train and gave speeches.

Whistle-Stop Campaign July - October 1948

THE TRAIN CAMPAIGN PROVED TO BE AN UNEXPECTED SUCCESS. During the tour, a new relaxed and confident Harry Truman was presented to the people — a candidate who spoke their language and understood their needs...

For his part, Truman relentlessly accused the "do-nothing" Republican Congress of failing to meet the needs of the American people, a tirade that served him well with the common voter.

" Give 'em hell, Harry " became a battle-cry for the hard-fought, uphill battle of the campaign.

Russia steps into the breech

While the US vaccine is being held up by TDS/politics, since any attempt to release it early will be opposed by Trump's opposition by calling such a move risky and based on politics, not science. Just ignore the cost/benefit ratio means that a lot more people will die in the name of "safety" by those insising there be no rare side effects.

hopefully, the vaccine will be released a day or two after the election if Biden wins (who knows when it will be released if Trumpiboy wins, since the establishment is busy trying to blame him for trying to rush the vaccine development)

But the dirty little secret is that the Philippines, and other less affluent countries need a vaccine to reopen the economy if there won't be massive starvation and economic collapse in poorer countries.

Duterte wants everyone here in the Philippines to get the Covid vaccine, both to save people's lives and to reopen the economy. And guess who is offering to provide it? Russia.......

 

Russia is even offering to open a pharmacology factory here to make the vaccine. 

............................

as I have written in earlier posts, a lot of the anti vax propaganda is Russian disinformation against vaccines, something that dates back at least two decades, as propaganda to make countries afraid of aid from western countries.

\

so far, people prefer Russian vaccine to the Chinese vaccine. 

and of course, if the US State Dept would get off their puwit and offer Duterte a deal, he'd take them up on it, even though he hates and distrusts the US SD and the CIA, because most docs here prefer the better tested US vaccine.