Popular Comments

In the past 7+ years, I've had my share of societal challenges and stigma to deal with regarding my TBI. Did you know that over 1.5 million TBI's occur in the U.S. each year? There are many people you know that have some degree of brain injury since the odds of that incrementally increase by about a 1 in 222 chance each year just in the U.S. Probably more but for now I'll just use 1.5 out of 334 million. Maybe you might think about that before you go disparaging someone you don't think measures up to your estimate of your own intelligence and cognitive skills.

A quick search for that stat comes up with this report from 1999.

https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/pubs/tbi_report_to_congress.html

That, by the way, doesn't include brain injuries from strokes, AVMs, benign or malignant cancers, anoxia (like from rescued drowning, carbon monoxide poisoning, or cardiac arrest), or infections such as the different forms of meningitis or encephalitis. MS, Parkinson's disease, prion disease, Lewy-body dementia, and others are also included in the list of things that **** with your mind.

One key aspect of brain injuries is that the person often looks like they always did before whatever caused their injury. Trying to navigate the world under the influence of that injury even though you "look just fine" is difficult, especially when the people you meet can be quite ignorant about it. 

Another thing about them is the fact that it is hard to know exactly how a person with their own unique personality and intelligence has been injured. A snarky way to say this would be "When you see one brain injury, you've seen one brain injury."

By the way, if you're at all interested in my short science career before I changed paths and went into medical software development you can go here. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Wick%2C+PF

Be warned though - those manuscripts have been known to cause drowsiness. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery after reading them. I know this from a limited clinical study involving my wife. If she was unable to get to sleep she would ask me to talk about G-protein coupled transmembrane receptors or calcium channels and it would work like a charm.

Anyway, this is getting way off topic since someone said we should really be discussing the new variant of COVID-19 here.

While the work for my doctorate focused on the Ca2+-dependent mechanism behind regulated secretory granule release and my postdoctoral fellowship was spent studying the role of the dopamine D4 receptor in a model of schizophrenia, I do have sufficient background to comment on this line of work. At the very least, I have the background necessary to make responsible commentary on scientific reports.

It isn't just neuroscience where I'm conversant. I have experience lecturing in clinical pharmacology. I also have clinical pharmacotherapeutic practice experience, particularly in the elderly and those with long-term health conditions. To round out my toolset, I'm now learning about those issues from a social worker's point of view, with a focus on assisting those in the brain injury survivor community,

During this COVID experience, I opted to switch to using my real name here, especially since I found myself engaging in discussions about it all. I stand by the comments I make with my name, not an alias. I've worked in the public health efforts to combat COVID-19 in 3 different capacities. My comments about the potential hazards the omicron variant may present harkened back to the troubles we had adjusting to having to cut back on so much of our everyday activities in the late-winter-spring of 2020. We didn't truly know then how COVID-19 behaved so making tremendous efforts to clean surfaces as well as wearing masks (if you could find them) was vital until we had more scientific knowledge.

I really do hope I'm wrong about the possible challenges (and I only mentioned one) the many new mutations in the omicron variant could bring. I hope it doesn't spread like the delta variant has but travel has opened back up and that may have allowed this variant to spread. As Dave mentioned, the authorities made a strong move to isolate people carrying it. Let's hope similar efforts are taken with an abundance of caution to curtail omicron's possible threat.

And what was it you said, redfruit, when someone had a witty remark?

Don't hurt yourself.

galileo said:

Thank you Peter Wick for all your knowledge. MOL is lucky to have you as a contributor.

Thank you. I wish I had better things than this to talk about. Occasionally I do find opportunities elsewhere on MOL but I get too worked up if I spend much time in some spots. At least I've managed to stay politics-free for the most part.

I was away from MOL for quite a bit after 2014. Coming back to the land of the living after a traumatic brain injury isn't easy. I've been unfathomably lucky in so many ways. However, a guy in his late 50's isn't going to be hired in any scientific or computer technology realm after so many years out of the job market but I tried to find something once I was doing well in my rehab job at HD. Nope. So instead of just continuing to volunteer, I decided to see if I could get a professional credential and get back to meaningful work.

Redfruit said:

sprout said:

Redfruit said:

as I said, this is not a story for you to play reporter on. It’s too serious a subject.  Just Copy and paste your findings.  Don’t interpret them. 

You're trying to make a lot of limiting rules for this thread. 

Research and science is all about interpretation and attempts at prediction. You guess (create a hypothesis), and test your guess, etc....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

look, since you’re new here, Peter Wick had a head injury and now thinks he’s a scientist.

I have known Peter (bikefixed) since before the head injury, and he is a Ph.D. scientist.

(And since you keep forgetting (and you don't have a head injury?), I've been here since 2004).

Thank you Peter Wick for all your knowledge. MOL is lucky to have you as a contributor.

When history looks back on the covid pandemic it will be the people who actively fought against the virus who will be the heroes.    These include real scientists and doctors, nurses, health care workers, and public health workers, elected officials, business leaders, and all the people who understood the danger and got vaccinated to protect themselves and family and communities.    The naysayers and those who refuse to get vaccinated will be seen as the foolish obstacles to stopping the pandemic.   

After all this time and nearly 800,000 deaths in the US, there are still way too many people sticking their heads in the sand and denying the harsh reality of this virus.   So, kudos to all who have actively fought this virus.  Do not let the trolls get you down.   

I have a Jewish friend who has made himself a paper star to wear to signify his disapproval of all vaccine/covid pronouncements. He’s a convert and is totally personally unaffected by Shoah history.
Yet he wears the full beard and sidecurls, and the full prayer kaftan dating back to Babylonian captivity days. He goes overboard in his observance of dietary and work/non-work rules. Confusing, no?

Mtierney, you’re old enough to remember when your children were small/school age, if had had baulked at them having their milestone vaccinations, or their TB & polio vax, their tetanus shots, you would have been called a poor parent and people would have gossiped. Without tetanus, hep B, anti-STDs, TB booster shots, flu shots, and much more, people can’t work in construction, law enforcement, health, aged care and many more industries. Their names are circulated, so employers know.  If you don’t have a whole host of important inoculations, you can’t travel to other countries - so there go your careers in tourism, military, oceanography, fashion modelling, etc. 

How about people recognise that living in modern society entails responsibility as well as rights?? (Isn’t that what you say, when decrying crime and ‘progressivism’?)

So basically just another variant that shows mild symptoms among vaccinated populations.  We (the G-20 / wealthy nations) need to get more vaccines to African nations asap.

Today, canal across from Frenchtown.

Alexandrea Twp.