Blog Archive

21 March 2020

Pinholes Copper pipe



Pinhole leaks with pitting initiating on the exterior surface of the pipe, can occur if copper piping is improperly grounded or bonded. The phenomenon is known technically as stray current corrosion or electrolytic pitting. Pin-holing due to poor grounding or poor bonding occurs typically in homes where the original plumbing has been modified; homeowners may find that a new plastic water filtration device or plastic repair union has interrupted the water pipe's electrical continuity to ground, when they start seeing pinhole water leaks after a recent install. Damage occurs rapidly, usually becoming obvious about six months after the ground interruption. Correctly installed plumbing appliances will have a copper bonding jumper cable connecting the interrupted pipe sections. Pinhole leaks from stray current corrosion can result in high plumbing bills and require the replacement of the entire water line. The cause is fundamentally an electrical defect, not a plumbing defect; once the plumbing damage is repaired, an electrician should promptly be consulted to evaluate the grounding and bonding of the entire plumbing and electrical systems.
The difference between a ground and a bond is subtle. See Ground, for a complete description.
Stray current corrosion occurs because 1) the piping system has been connected accidentally or intentionally to a DC voltage source; 2) the piping does not have metal-to-metal electrical continuity throughout its length; or 3) if the voltage source is AC, one or more naturally occurring minerals coating the pipe interior may act as a rectifier, converting AC current to DC. The DC voltage forces the water within the piping to act as an electrical conductor (an electrolyte). Electric current leaves the copper pipe, moves through the water across the nonconductive section (a plastic filter housing, for example), and reenters the pipe on the opposite side. Pitting occurs at the electrically negative side (the cathode), which may happen to be either upstream or downstream with respect to the water flow direction. Pitting occurs because the electrical voltage ionizes the pipe's interior copper metal, which reacts chemically with dissolved minerals in the water, creating copper salts; these copper salts are soluble in water and wash away. Microscopic pits eventually grow and consolidate to form pinholes. When one is discovered, there are almost certainly more that have not yet leaked. A complete discussion of stray current corrosion can be found in chapter 11, section 11.4.3, of Handbook of Corrosion Engineering, by Pierre Roberge.[9]
Detecting and eliminating poor bonding is relatively straightforward. Detection is accomplished using a simple DC voltmeter, with test probe leads placed in various locations in the plumbing. Typically, a probe on a hot pipe and a probe on a cold pipe will tell the user if there is improper grounding. Anything beyond a few millivolts is significant, and potentials of 200 mV are common. A missing bond will show up best in the area of the gap, as the measured electrical potential dissipates over distance. The missing bond is usually located near the cold water inlet to the building, as filtration and treatment equipment are usually added there, but pinhole leaks can occur anywhere downstream or upstream from the interruption of electrical continuity.
Correcting the problem is a simple matter of either purchasing a copper bonding jumper kit, composed of copper cable at least #6 AWG in diameter and two bronze ground clamps for affixing it the plumbing. See NFPA 70, the U.S. National Electrical Code Handbook (NEC), the section on bonding and ground for details on selecting the correct bonding conductor wire size.
A similar bonding jumper wire can also be seen crossing gas meters, but for a different reason.[further explanation needed]
However, if building occupants are experiencing shocks or large sparks from plumbing fixtures or pipes, it is more serious than a missing bond. Larger voltages may be caused by a live electrical wire bridging to the plumbing, and improper or missing plumbing system grounding. Such a situation poses an electrical shock hazard and potential fire danger; an electrician should be consulted immediately.


20 March 2020

Copper - COVID-19 pandemic




Here is a truth that can set you free of various viruses!
 The Truth will set you free. John 8:32
This scripture states that all those who sin or have sinned in this life can by accepting the 
" Truth of God's Word " through The Lord Jesus His Son, all those believers can be set free from their sins!




Health

Copper Destroys Viruses and Bacteria. Why Isn’t It Everywhere?


It could destroy norovirus, MRSA, virulent strains of E. coli, and coronaviruses—including the novel strain currently causing the COVID-19 pandemic.

by Shayla Love
Mar 18 2020, 06:00

In 1852, physician Victor Burq visited a copper smelter in Paris's 3rd arrondissement, where they used heat and chemicals to extract the reddish-brown metal. It was a dirty and dangerous job. Burq found the facility to be "in poor condition," along with the housing and the hygiene of the smelters. Normally, their mortality rates were "pitiful," he observed. 
Yet, the 200 employees who worked there had all been spared from cholera outbreaks that hit the city in 1832, 1849, and 1852. When Burq learned that 400 to 500 copper workers on the same street had also mysteriously dodged cholera, he concluded that something about their professions—and copper—had made them immune to the highly infectious disease. He launched a detailed investigation into other people who worked with copper, in Paris and cities around the world. 

In the 1854 to 1855 cholera epidemic, Burq could not find any deaths of jewellers, goldsmiths, or boilermakers—all those who worked with copper. In people in the army, he found that musicians who played brass instruments (brass is partly copper) were also protected. 

In the 1865 Paris epidemic, 6,176 people died of cholera, out of a population of 1,677,000 people—that’s 3.7 people out of every 1,000. But of the 30,000 who worked in different copper industries, only 45 died—an average of around 0.5 per 1,000. 

After visiting 400 different businesses and factories in Paris, all of which used copper, and collecting reports from England, Sweden, and Russia on more than 200,000 people, he concluded to the French Academies of Science and Medicine in 1867 that “copper or its alloys, brass and bronze, applied literally and pregnantly to the skin in the cholera epidemic are effective means of prevention which should not be neglected.”

Today, we have insight into why a person handling copper day in and day out would have protection from a bacterial threat: Copper is antimicrobial. It kills bacteria and viruses, sometimes within minutes. In the 19th century, exposure to copper would have been an early version of constantly sanitizing one's hands.
Since then, studies have shown that copper is able to destroy the microbes that most threaten our lives. It has been shown to kill a long list of microbes, including norovirus, MRSA, a staph bacteria that has become resistant to antibiotics, virulent strains of E. coli that cause food-borne illness, and coronaviruses—possibly including the novel strain currently causing the COVID-19 pandemic.

If copper were more frequently used in hospitals, where 1 in 31 people get healthcare-acquired infections (HAI), or in high-traffic areas, where many people touch surfaces teeming with microbial life—it could play an invaluable role in public health, said Michael Schmidt, a professor of microbiology and immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina, who studies copper. And yet, it is woefully absent from our public spaces, healthcare settings, and homes.

“What happened is our own arrogance and our love of plastic and other materials took over,” Schmidt said of the cheaper products more frequently used. “We moved away from copper beds, copper railings, and copper door knobs to stainless steel, plastic, and aluminum.”


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Many of the microbes that make us sick can live on hard surfaces for up to four or five days. When we touch those surfaces, the microbes can make it into our bodies through our nose, mouth, or eyes, and infect us.
On copper surfaces, bacteria and viruses die. When a microbe lands on a copper surface, the copper releases ions, which are electrically charged particles. Those copper ions blast through the outer membranes and destroy the whole cell, including the DNA or RNA inside. Because their DNA and RNA are destroyed, it also means a bacteria or virus can’t mutate and become resistant to the copper, or pass on genes (like for antibiotic resistance) to other microbes.
Before people even knew what bacteria and viruses were, they knew that copper could—somehow—ward off infection. The first recorded medical use of copper is from one of the oldest-known books, the Smith Papyrus, written between 2600 and 2200 B.C. It said that copper was used to sterilize chest wounds and drinking water. Egyptian and Babylonian soldiers would similarly put the shavings from their bronze swords (made from copper and tin) into their open wounds to reduce infections. A more contemporary use of copper: In New York City’s Grand Central Station, the grand staircase is flanked by copper handrails. “Those are actually anti-microbial,” Schmidt said.
The copper smelters were, ostensibly, exposed to less of the cholera bacterium because their surroundings included a lot of copper that bacteria couldn't live on. That and they potentially were covered in copper particles. If metallurgy doesn't call to you, there are now some products that are advertised as "copper hand sanitizers," but they work only if you can expose every surface of your hands to the copper for at least a full minute—essentially transferring any microbes to the copper surface to be killed. It could be difficult to get to every part of your skin's surface, so having copper surfaces in your environment paired with handwashing would be the ideal combination.
Schmidt said that using copper along with standard hygiene protocols has been shown to reduce bacteria in health care settings by 90 percent. A study from 1983 found that hospital door knobs made of brass, which is part copper, barely had any E. coli growth on them, compared to stainless steel knobs which were “heavily colonized.” This is significant because of how rampant healthcare-acquired infections are: In the U.S. alone, there are about 1.7 million infections and 99,000 deaths linked to HAIs per year, which cost between $35.7 and $45 billion annually, from the extra treatments people need when they get infected.
Microbes that live on surfaces in patient rooms and common spaces in hospitals play a role in getting a HAI—and this is where copper could help. And during this pandemic, when there is serious concern about the spread of the novel coronavirus via contaminated surfaces, a virus-killing substance seems worthwhile indeed.
A study from 2015 found that a different coronavirus, human coronavirus 229E, which causes respiratory tract infections, could still infect a human lung cell after five days of being on materials like teflon, ceramic, glass, silicone rubber, and stainless steel. But on copper alloys, the coronavirus was “rapidly inactivated.”
In a new preprint on SARS-CoV2, the strain that causes COVID-19, researchers at the National Institutes of Health virology laboratory in Montana sprayed the virus onto seven different common materials, reported MIT Technology Review. They found that it survived the longest—up to three days—on plastic and stainless steel, suggesting that surfaces in hospitals or steel poles on public transit could be places where people pick up the illness. Just a single droplet from a cough or sneeze can carry an infectious dose of a virus.
Bill Keevil, a professor of environmental healthcare at the University of Southampton in England who has previously received funding from the Copper Development Association, said that if copper surfaces were put in communal areas where many people gather, it could help reduce the transmission of respiratory viruses, like coronavirus 229E and also SARS-CoV2. Other than hospitals, he thinks the ideal locations for copper are public transportation systems, like buses, airports, subways. But he doesn't stop there: He would also like to see copper used in sports equipment in gyms, like weights, along with other everyday objects, including shared office supplies, like pens.
In the preprint, SARS-CoV2 "liked copper least," Antonio Regalado wrote in MIT Technology Review. "The virus was gone after just four hours."
In 2012, Schmidt and his colleagues ran a clinical trial in three hospitals, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, Medical University of South Carolina, in Charleston, and Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Administration Medical Center, also in Charleston.
First, they figured out which items closest to a patient were the most contaminated with microbes—those were the bed rails, the nurse call button, the arm of the visitor chair, the tray tables, and the IV pole. Enveloping these items in copper reduced the presence of microbes by 83 percent. As a result, HAIs were reduced by 58 percent, even though the researchers had introduced copper to less than 10 percent of the surface area of the room.
We have other methods of killing bacteria and viruses to mitigate HAIs, including ultraviolet light and hydrogen peroxide gas. But both require a hospital room to be empty, and once sick people re-enter rooms, surfaces can easily be contaminated again. “Copper is continuously working 24/7 without supervision, without any need to intervene, and it never runs out,” Schmidt said. “As long as the metal's there, it's good to go."
So given how well it could work, for hospital infections and for health more generally, why isn’t copper everywhere? Why isn’t every door knob, every subway rail, every ICU room, made of copper? Why can we easily buy stainless steel water bottles, but not copper? Where are the copper iPhone cases?
It doesn't seem like we'll run out of copper in the near future, according to the World Copper Factbook from 2019. Copper is one of the most recycled of all metals—nearly all copper can be recycled and not lose any of its properties.
Doctors and healthcare workers might not be aware of its properties, as Keevil wrote in The Conversation: “When doctors are asked to name an antimicrobial metal used in healthcare, the most common reply is silver—but little do they know that silver does not work as an antimicrobial surface when dry—moisture needs to be present."
There might also be a perception that copper is too expensive, Schmidt said, despite the fact that the numbers indicate it would ultimately save money. One of Keevil and Schmidt's studies from 2015 did the math: The cost of treating an HAI ranges from $28,400 to $33,800 per patient. Installing copper on 10 percent of surfaces cost $52,000 and prevented 14 infections over the course of the 338-day study. If you take the lower end of the HAI treatment cost ($28,400), then those 14 prevented infections saved a total of $397,600, or $1,176 a day.
Even when factoring in how much the copper cost initially, you'd make that money back in savings within two months, Schmidt said. And considering that the copper never loses its microbial killing abilities—hospitals would quickly be saving money (and lives).
"Your payback is literally in less than two [prevented] infections,” he said. “I really struggle with this. Since 2013, I have been literally begging, groveling, pleading, with any and all concerned to make a completely copper encapsulated [hospital] bed."
He recently did convince a company to invest, and said they’re in the process of testing it to show that it could reduce infections even further than 58 percent.
Another reason copper may have been passed over for steel, plastic, or glass is that it can easily tarnish and requires a lot of cleaning to remain shiny. “But copper is antimicrobial regardless of how grody it looks, if it turns green on you, it still has the ability to kill bacteria and viruses and fungi,” he said.
Some places around the world have started to use copper. In Chile, a theme park called Fantasilandia, replaced a lot of its commonly touched surfaces with copper. At the Atlanta airport, 50 water bottle filling stations are now made with copper. But Schmidt believes it should be more widespread.
He said that one of the reasons scientists are worried about the current coronavirus is how infectious it is, and a major way people might be getting it is from touching contaminated surfaces. He thinks it's possible that the pandemic could raise awareness for copper—if it motivates anyone to start using it. Imagine, he said, if our hospitals and public spaces already had copper in place—it’s impossible to say for sure, but it’s likely that transmission would have been affected.
“I have great confidence that it would work because bacteria or viruses are the ones causing the infection," he said. "If their numbers go down, common sense would tell you: you should have fewer infections.” 

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Tagged:
bacteria
public health
copper
virus
Coronavirus
covid-19

Getting back to normal?

** Part of an article: https://www.technologyreview.com/

Tech Policy

We’re not going back to normal

Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks. It will upend our way of life, in some ways forever.

Mar 17, 2020
To stop coronavirus we will need to radically change almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our kids, take care of family members.
We all want things to go back to normal quickly. But what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet will soon—is that things won’t go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months. Some things never will.

You can read all our coverage of the coronavirus/Covid-19 outbreak for free, and also sign up for our coronavirus newsletter. But please consider subscribing to support our nonprofit journalism.
It’s now widely agreed (even by Britain, finally) that every country needs to “flatten the curve”: impose social distancing to slow the spread of the virus so that the number of people sick at once doesn’t cause the health-care system to collapse, as it is threatening to do in Italy right now. 
That means the pandemic needs to last, at a low level, until either enough people have had Covid-19 to leave most immune (assuming immunity lasts for years, which we don’t know) or there’s a vaccine.

19 March 2020

Few have read yet many still wonder?


Hebrews 7:11-28 (ASV) 

11  Now if there was perfection through the Levitical priesthood (for under it hath the people received the law), what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchizedek, and not be reckoned after the order of Aaron?
12  For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.
13  For he of whom these things are said belongeth to another tribe, from which no man has given attendance at the altar.
14  For it is evident that our Lord hath sprung out of Judah; as to which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priests.
15  And what we say is yet more abundantly evident, if after the likeness of Melchizedek there ariseth another priest,
16  who hath been made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life:
17  for it is witnessed of him, Thou art a priest forever After the order of Melchizedek.
18  For there is a disannulling of a foregoing commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness
19  (for the law made nothing perfect), and a bringing in thereupon of a better hope, through which we draw nigh unto God.
20  And inasmuch as it is not without the taking of an oath
21  (for they indeed have been made priests without an oath; but he with an oath by him that saith of him, The Lord sware and will not repent himself, Thou art a priest forever);
22  by so much also hath Jesus become the surety of a better covenant.
23  And they indeed have been made priests many in number, because that by death they are hindered from continuing:
24  but he, because he abides forever, has his priesthood unchangeable.
25  Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.
26  For such a high priest became us, holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;
27  who needeth not daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people: for this, he did once for all, when he offered up himself.
28  For the law appointeth men high priests, having infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was after the law, appointed a Son, perfected for evermore.  


 ===  

Here is the clear pathway how and when and where Christ became our only appointed Savior and Only High Priest forever!  

18 March 2020

a Separated life?


Naturally Holy

 

John 5:14, 'Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.'

JOHN 5:1-15

In saying this, Jesus shows that sin causes the tragedies that come into our lives. The reason for holiness in the life of the believer is that when we obey sin, we yield ourselves to Satan, the author of that sin. Yielding to sin is yielding to a person - Satan. God doesn't impute the sin to us but the devil does. Our actions either release the power of Satan or the power of God in us.
Although God is not imputing our sins unto us, we cannot afford the luxury of sin because it allows Satan to have access to us. When a Christian sins and allows the devil opportunity to produce his death in their life, the way to stop it is to confess the sin, and God who is faithful and just, will take the forgiveness that is already present in our born again spirit and release it in our flesh. This removes Satan and his strongholds.
The sins of a Christian don't make him a sinner any more than the righteous acts of a sinner make him righteous. Sin is a very deadly thing that even Christians should avoid at all costs, but it does not determine our standing with the Lord. A person who is born again is not 'in' the flesh even though he may walk 'after' the flesh.
What is the motive for living a separated life? We live a separated life because our nature has been changed. We were darkness, now we are light (Eph. 5:8). Many people argue for holiness in order to obtain a relationship with God. We need to live holy lives because of the relationship that we already have. It's the nature of a Christian to walk in the light and not in darkness. If Christians were rightly informed of who they are and what they have in Christ, holiness would just naturally flow out of them. It's their nature. It's our nature.

16 March 2020

Choosing your battle - or learning to see the real true facts


It is the worse of times and the best of times! 

 ** Choosing your battle  - or learning to see the real true facts

Says who or why? 

Well like all happenings in this earthly existence - several things govern and/or dictate who what, where, and when, certain things happen!

It comes down to knowing when and where to seek guidance and/or help! 
Most people seek family or friends first. Then going further they may go to teachers, co-workers, neighbors, and on to doctors, civic leaders and pastor/priest and others for help or directions in their search!

Most of these elements are limited in scope to help or assistance! While some help may be available - it usually falls short of any real decisive assistance or direction! So where does this lead people? 

The main element of human thinking and thoughts is the development of such through proper use of their God-Given Intelligence! To obtain the proper way of reasoning must be used in a positive and beneficial manner. This is where the brain or will power comes into play! Here is where our soul resides as part of our thinking process and developmental guiding power! We each have a soul or life force spirit with which to navigate the trauma of life! It must be used correctly and in a manner that does not distract from your main life's course! 

** Body, Soul and Spirit  - make up your whole eternal person! 

This means that while each of us has this power to control our decision making,  only by learning to use it in a beneficial manner! This is where the problem of self-centeredness and greed comes into play! The key is to seek a balance in life.

One of the key elements is the sharing and caring of others should always be in a form of love or compassion! So much of this life has been based upon the evil side of the control and the domination of others! It was never intended to be that way! Never the less - using their free choice, many have chosen to take the route of self-centeredness!  

The main and absolute Truth all the years has been with the guidance of Lord God Almighty! Love is the main plan which God purposed for all who have ever resided upon this earth!   

Upon which pathway is your life going? 












As you begin your day so goes your day!

  Many people tend to focus on " fun ' things in life, rather than the necessary items! Let's look at what you think upon and how you expect to get it?

  Most of our lives are spent in our body maintenance and upkeep. Which is necessary to a certain level of concern. Then based upon our circumstances  - we can move forward in accomplishing the necessary results desired and or needed items!

  So what should be the proper pathway and plan to gain your desired wants and needs? 

Much is based on how we think and consider the proper execution - balanced with proper dedicated actions. Because just the fact that you want something does not necessarily mean that you can or will get it! This is where many people jump the tracks of life and go into either Depression or Disappointment! 
 Better known as going from rack to ruin!

** Check back on post at both Kermit's Korner blog and My unusual of life -
 By Kerminator




























































How do we get it wrong?


My Unusual Road of Life....
by kerminator


** How do we get it wrong - When millions heard it?

On July 20, 1969, an estimated 650 million people watched in suspense as Neil Armstrong descended a ladder towards the surface of the Moon. 

As he took his first steps, he uttered words that would be written into history books for generations to come: “That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.”
Or at least that’s how the media reported his words.
But Armstrong insisted that he actually said, “That’s one small step for a man.” In fact, in the official transcript of the Moon landing mission, NASA transcribes the quote as “that’s one small step for (a) man.”
As a linguist, I’m fascinated by mistakes between what people say and what people hear.
In fact, I conducted a study on ambiguous speech, using Armstrong’s famous quote to try to figure out why and how we successfully understand speech most of the time, but also make the occasional mistake.

Our Extraordinary Speech-Processing Abilities

Despite confusion over Armstrong’s words, speakers and listeners have a remarkable ability to agree on what is said and what is heard. 

When we talk, we formulate a thought, retrieve words from memory and move our mouths to produce sound. We do this quickly, producing, in English, around five syllables every second.
The process for listeners is equally complex and speedy. We hear sounds, which we separate into speech and non-speech information, combine the speech sounds into words, and determine the meanings of these words. Again, this happens nearly instantaneously, and errors rarely occur.
These processes are even more extraordinary when you think more closely about the properties of speech. Unlike writing, speech doesn’t have spaces between words. When people speak, there are typically very few pauses within a sentence. 

Yet listeners have little trouble determining word boundaries in real-time. This is because there are little cues – like pitch and rhythm – that indicate when one-word stops and the next begins.
But problems in speech perception can arise when those kinds of cues are missing, especially when pitch and rhythm are used for non-linguistic purposes, like in music. This is one reason why misheard song lyrics – called “mondegreens” – are common. When singing or rapping, a lot of the speech cues we usually use are shifted to accommodate the song’s beat, which can end up jamming our default perception process. 

It’s not just lyrics that are misheard. It can happen in everyday speech and some have wondered if this is what happened in the case of Neil Armstrong.

Studying Armstrong’s Mixed Signals

Over the years, researchers have tried to comb the audio files of Armstrong’s famous words, with mixed results. Some have suggested that Armstrong definitely produced the infamous “a,” while others maintain that it’s unlikely or too difficult to tell. But the original sound file was recorded 50 years ago, and the quality is pretty poor. 

So can we ever really know whether Neil Armstrong uttered that little “a”?
Perhaps not. But in a recent study, my colleagues and I tried to get to the bottom of this.
First, we explored how similar the speech signals are when a speaker intends to say “for” or “for a.” That is, could production of “for” be consistent with the sound waves, or acoustics, of “for a,” and vice-versa? 

So we examined nearly 200 productions of “for” and 200 productions of “for a.” We found that the acoustics of the productions of each of these tokens were nearly identical. In other words, the sound waves produced by “He bought it for a school” and “He bought one for school” are strikingly similar.
But this doesn’t tell us what Armstrong actually said on that July day in 1969. So we wanted to see if listeners sometimes miss little words like “a” in contexts like Armstrong’s phrase.
We wondered whether “a” was always perceived by listeners, even when it was clearly produced. And we found that, in several studies, listeners often misheard short words, like “a.” This is especially true when the speaking rate was as slow as Armstrong’s. 

In addition, we were able to manipulate whether or not people heard these short words just by altering the rate of speech. So perhaps this was a perfect storm of conditions for listeners to misperceive the intended meaning of this famous quote. 

The case of the missing “a” is one example of the challenges in producing and understanding speech. Nonetheless, we typically perceive and produce speech quickly, easily and without conscious effort.
A better understanding of this process can be especially useful when trying to help people with speech or hearing impairments. And it allows researchers to better understand how these skills are learned by adults trying to acquire a new language, which can, in turn, help language learners develop more efficient strategies. 

Fifty years ago, humanity was changed when Neil Armstrong took those first steps on the Moon. But he probably didn’t realize that his famous first words could also help us better understand how humans communicate. 

*** From:
Melissa Michaud Baese-Berk is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Oregon.

15 March 2020

More truth - Should humans eat Meat?


 It is good to understand what we can eat is available based upon the Bible!
Note on Genesis 1:29
The human was created to be vegetarian. However, the Scripture clearly teaches in 1 Timothy 4:1-5
  1 Timothy 4:1-5 (ASV)
1
 But the Spirit saith expressly, that in later times some shall fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons,
2  through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron;
3  forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by them that believe and know the truth.
4  For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected, if it is received with thanksgiving:
5  for it is sanctified through the word of God and prayer.

that it is a doctrine of devils to preach that we should not eat meat.
In Genesis 9:3, 
 Genesis 9:2-3 (ASV)
2  And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the heavens; With all wherewith, the ground teems, and all the fishes of the sea, into your hand, are they delivered.
3  Every moving thing that liveth shall be food for you; As the green herb have I given you all
.
 the Lord told Noah and his family that He had given them the beasts of the field for meat.

Andrew Wommack's Living Commentary.

13 March 2020

This is not Singapore’s first epidemiological nightmare



This pandemic—the new disease Covid-19, the virus SARS-CoV-2—is not Singapore’s first epidemiological nightmare. In 2002 and 2003, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the original SARS, tore out of China and through Asia, killing 33 people in Singapore and sparking wholesale revisions to the city-state’s public health system. “They realized they wanted to invest for the future, to reduce that economic cost if the same thing were to happen again,” says Martin Hibberd, an infectious disease researcher now at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who worked in Singapore on SARS.
So Singapore instituted new travel controls and health infrastructure. Then, in 2009, it got hit again—with H1N1 influenza, the so-called swine flu. “Pandemic flu came from Mexico, an Americas event, and Singapore tried to put in place in 2009 what they learned with SARS,” Hibberd says. “But flu was much more difficult to contain than SARS was, and they realized what they thought they’d learned didn’t work. It was another lesson.”
When Covid-19 came around, Singapore was, it seems, ready. Along with Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, Singapore instituted strict travel controls and protocols for identifying sick individuals—to get them help as well as to find the people they’d been in contact with. The Singaporean government posted detailed accounting for how many people had been tested for the virus, and the locations and natures of those people’s social contacts. All these governments instituted strict social distancing measures, like canceling events, closing schools, and telling people to stay home. As a result (at least in part), all have lower numbers of infected people and lower fatalities than China or Italy, proportionately. They “flattened the curve,” as public health experts now say—lowering a probable spike of infections, perhaps pushing that surge of seriously ill people further out in time so that health care systems don’t get overburdened.
Illustrated woman, speech bubble, virus cell

What Is the Coronavirus?

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The lessons these countries learned could be instructive for places further out on the timeline—like the United States or most of Europe, which still lags a couple of weeks behind the virus’ spread through Italy, where there have been hundreds of deaths and the hospital system is so slammed with seriously ill people that it’s beginning to institute triage measures. These places offer models for what to do next, laying out best practices for how to respond to the pandemic with fewer deaths, to get a case fatality rate closer to South Korea’s apparent 0.8 instead of Italy’s 6.6.
Detailed data can also tell epidemiologists what to expect about the dynamics of the disease, helping guide more targeted responses. “Highly detailed surveillance data will be critical for understanding the outbreak,” says Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. “It is this sort of detailed analysis that will be critical for answering key questions about the role of asymptomatic people and children in transmission.”
Here’s how those Asian countries are doing it: According to a new article in The Lancet, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore all developed their own tests for Covid-19 as soon as the genetic sequences for the virus were published, and ramped up production of the materials necessary for those tests. (That’s a sharp contrast with the US, which still doesn’t have enough tests for nationwide use, and may actually be running out of the materials necessary to make them.) Each country instituted controls over immigration (a controversial move that the WHO recommended against, but that they did anyway). They rejiggered their national financial systems to make sure people didn’t have to pay for tests or treatment. (Easier in places where most health care is already nationalized, to be sure—and in some more progressive American states like California, Washington, and New York. In fact, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo even ordered paid sick leave for quarantined people and free hand sanitizer.)
Taiwan actually combined its national health care and immigration databases to generate automated alerts based on travelers’ potential for being infected. On January 20, when China had reported only a few cases of the disease, Taiwan spun up a Central Epidemic Command Center—created after SARS—to coordinate the national effort. Among other things, the CECC put limits on the prices of personal protective equipment like masks, and deployed military personnel to manufacture more. In the US, mask shortages led the Food and Drug Administration to relax the rules on what kinds of masks health care workers can use; on January 20, Taiwan’s equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that it had “44 million surgical masks, 1.9 million N95 masks, and 1,100 negative pressure isolation rooms” ready to go, according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
People in Singapore, for now, get information from multiple government websites, frequently updated, as well as from a government WhatsApp account. People get their temperatures taken before they can enter most buildings, including businesses, schools, gyms, and government agencies, because fever is one of the main symptoms of Covid-19. (According to my sister-in-law, whose family has lived in Singapore for six years, everyone whose temperature is normal gets a sticker, and people are expected to acquire two or three stickers every day.) Hibberd, who’s in Singapore now working on the new coronavirus, says, “On every lift I ride, there’s a notice saying what I have to do. Everywhere you walk there’s information … There’s a confidence in that information, in the government and what they’re saying, and there’s an expectation you should follow it.” The country gives a bit of money to people who don’t have the kinds of jobs that support being out of work—and fines people who don’t follow the rules.
In at least one hospital, the experience of SARS led to a complete reimagining of the ways physicians deal with patients. One article from personnel in the radiology department at Singapore General Hospital describes keeping teams of health care workers separate from one another in case one has to be quarantined, and physical separations for different kinds of patients—all sorts of seemingly small systematic changes that limit the spread of an infectious disease. As one Singaporean researcher told The Guardian, “We don’t do anything different, we just do it well.”
These countries all have social structures and traditions that might make this kind of surveillance and control a little easier than in the don’t-tread-on-me United States. But then, none of those countries are China, either, with its full-on surveillance state. “Copying China would have a big impact on the economy,” Hibberd says of Singapore. “But everybody getting the disease quickly and the country panicking would also have a big impact on the economy.”
So Singapore is taking a middle path, he says. Of course, if the disease continues to spread, that approach might get more draconian. “If Covid-19 turns out not to be controllable,” Hibberd says, “then the containment process will change, to not looking for every case but identifying and supporting those cases at most risk of severe disease instead.”
Even that data will be helpful in a broader way, though. Wide-scale testing, as these countries are doing, sweeps up mild cases, people who don’t go to the hospital. That increases the denominator, so to speak. It gives a better picture of how fast and how far the disease spreads overall, which can be compared to the number of people who get sick or die, allowing for a more accurate calculation of the case fatality rate, or CFR. It’ll also bring more clarity to questions about which people are more vulnerable—so far, older people seem much more likely to suffer complications from Covid-19, but is that due to lung damage, immunological weakness, or something else? “That said, we have to be very careful not to generalize case fatality rate estimates from any one country to another,” says Maia Majumder, a computational epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. “As much as the CFR is a function of case-finding, it’s also a function of quality of care and population demographics.” Singapore’s health system is much better than, say, the one in China’s Hubei province, which got overwhelmed early, and seeing what was going on in China allowed all these other countries time to prepare.
Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea all share the characteristic of using their experiences with prior outbreaks to build a system—and then sustaining it. None of them had to deal with the fear of being a first-mover, of being the first city or country to institute seemingly severe countermeasures. Their countermeasures were already in place, waiting to be reactivated. In the United States, all the people ringing the bell the hardest for a Singapore-like approach hope they’ll be heard, and that it’ll work—and so, by next autumn, they’ll seem like fools for having been so worried.

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