A pleasurable reunion – The over-readiness to prescribe medications – Liz Truss, the new U.K. PM – Las Vegas takes precautions about water usage – Declining value of the euro – Biden’s unexpected repartee – Evening statistics
Yesterday I visited my friend MT, whom I have not seen for several years – months before the beginning of the pandemic, in fact. This visit gave me great pleasure, for MT is one of the few people I know whose fortunes have improved over recent years. When I last met him, he was under treatment for psychological disorders and the drugs that his physicians administered to him were attended by a host of numerous side-effects. Since that time he has gotten a new diagnosis and has switched in consequence to a regimen that dispenses with the aforementioned drugs; and the results are as surprising as they are gratifying. When I last saw him he was haggard, fretful, prone to complaining of how he was ill-used by the world in general. Now he was cheerful in demeanor, looking younger than when I last saw him (which was nearly five years earlier), the arthritis that afflicted him in the past has completely disappeared, and he has moved out of the cramped little apartment in which he had dwelt for thirty years on end – not so much out of financial necessity as that he seemed to lack the initiative, and possibly even the desire, to seek out more comfortable accommodations – into a lovely apartment with about twice as much space as he has had previously, in a setting that allows him access to numerous country trails, of which he has taken full advantage. In short, he has taken control of himself and his life: he is working in an occupation that he likes, he is exercising regularly, he is enjoying all of the amenities provided by the location to which he has moved, and he is displaying resources of cheerfulness I had never in the past suspected him of possessing. Even his new apartment reflects his altered outlook; in place of the disordered slovenliness I encountered in the previous visits, his new living quarters are admirably clean and well-kept.
There is an inference from an encounter such as this one – to me, at any rate. I cannot forebear expressing indignation at the readiness of our medical establishment to prescribe drugs as a reflex action, without any thought as to whether their side effects might outweigh their putative benefits. I may say that the physician who acted as my GP for about 35 years was generally fairly cautious in his recommendations along these lines – partly, no doubt, because he knew that my first question about any proposed medication I had not heard about before would be “What are the probable side-effects?” I indeed remember one conversation I had with him when it appeared that my cholesterol was on the high side. He tentatively suggested a certain statin – I believe it was Lipitor, but I’m not certain at this late date. I asked my usual question and he admitted that in some cases it can lead to liver damage. “OK,” I said. “Now we go to Plan B.” In short, I made it clear that I was not going to consider any alternative with attendant risks of that nature, and he agreed it probably was not necessary. He was exceptional as far as his profession goes, and for that matter I probably was not typical of American patients. Most Americans, as I believe, tend to subscribe much less readily to the idea of refusing to take medications unnecessarily. Indeed as a nation we are more eager than many others to swallow the nostrums of the “get-healthy-quick” variety.
England has a new Prime Minister. Boris Johnson, as noted earlier, has been forced out of office by his own MPs after a succession of scandals. Liz Truss, the new PM, is not entirely free of oddities of her own – she had an affair with MP Mark Field after the Tory Party appointed him as her political mentor, although eventually it terminated and her own marriage survived intact – but at the very least the British need no longer be puzzled as to many children their Prime Minister has given to the world. She will be facing a difficult time once she assumes office. The cost of living, which is quite a contentious issue here, is much worse in the U.K. Both housing and food take up a considerably larger amount of income there than here, as I myself can attest from a recent stay in England and Wales just a few months ago. Although for the most part I dined with the friends who were hosting me, on occasion I ventured into grocery stores and I was quite taken aback by the prices, which (once I translated them from pounds into dollars) were significantly more expensive for even the most common items.
I have been critical of the large cities in the West that continue to expand even though they are in the midst of a desert. But it appears that Las Vegas, at least, is taking a few measures to conserve on their water usage: banning private pools greater than 600 feet for private homes, recycling all indoor water (such as runoffs from showers and emptying water glasses at restaurants), banning grass and irrigation systems on new properties, penalizing home-owners or businesses that waste water, and funneling every drop of water that can be salvaged from the rare rainfalls back into Lake Mead. These may be insufficient on their own to prevent the cities of the West from undergoing a water crisis – Lake Mead continues to be at record low levels, despite the recent monsoons – but at any rate they show that the civic authorities are not ignorant of the issue, as I had previously thought they were, and are taking active measures to correct it.
The euro now has parity with the dollar; in fact, its value is slightly below that of the dollar, being rated at $0.99. The reason for this is that the war in Ukraine has restricted continental Europe’s access to natural gas, and as a result the European nations (and the U.K. as well) are dealing with a burgeoning energy crisis. I have long desired the American dollar to obtain a stronger valuation with respect to various currencies, and with the euro in particular; but this wasn’t the way I wanted it to happen.
Biden has generally been portrayed as a man “slow of speech and of a slow tongue”; but today, when he was heckled by a man apparently offended by his disparaging remarks about “Trumpies,” told the security guards, “Let him go. Everyone is entitled to be an idiot.” This response drew laughter and applause from the crowd, and I am bound to say that it displayed a readiness to deal to unexpected situations for which I have not, up to this point, given him credit. Today’s statistics as of 9:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 610,547,472; # of deaths worldwide: 6,504,663; # of cases U.S.: 96,641,512; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,072,978. Should I keep tracking these figures, I wonder? The number of COVID cases certainly keeps accumulating, but the numbers of deaths, at this point, are reassuringly low: less than 1000 per day globally over the past week and less than 100 per day in the U.S.