Nosocomial infections are infections which are a result of treatment in a hospital
or a healthcare service unit, but secondary to the patient's original
condition. Infections are considered nosocomial if they first appear 48
hours or more after hospital admission or within 30 days after
discharge. Nosocomial comes from the Greek word nosokomeion (νοσοκομείον) meaning hospital (nosos = disease, komeo = to take care of). This type of infection is also known as a hospital-acquired infection (or more generically healthcare-associated infections)
-- Wikipedia
So I'm driving to pick up my daughter from her friend's house, and two women are on the radio. One is impersonating a nose. The other pretends to be a pair of eyes, presumeably on the same face. They tell of a fabulous new allergy medication (some name that ends with 'air') that treats both of them at once - a medical threesome.
Allergy medications are not allergy medications of course. They only treat the symptoms. You know, itchy watery red eyes (says she) and drippy cloggy sneezy nose (says she, nasally). And as usual they get to the list of side effects. We're all used to this but I didn't expect to hear glaucoma, cataracts and nasal fungus. Nasal fungus? Then the capper - they actually say 'please don't spray it in your eyes'.
I am reading up in Amity Shlaes, who has already earned the great emnity of the Left by publishing her book 'The Forgotten Man'. It's a very useful history for me and of course it's controversial because she likes Herbert Hoover (so far) and Wendell Willkie. I am coming to appreciate, among other things, how contentious was the matter of rural electrification and the the nature of the battles over public utilities. But ultimately I expect to find from Shlaes those actions and reactions in the wake of the Crash of '29 that were cures worse than the disease. I'm trying to understand how the excess of politics gives us the prospect of a medical threesome which ends up as nasal fungus and cataracts. Which then of course must be treated with medical marijuana.
I expect that my sister, whom I'm trying to integrate into the blog somehow, might be able to tell me in her spare time what is so fabulous about the medical system in Cuba that she's fond of. And so as I spend a tiny bit of time understanding those KPIs, I'll keep my eye out for the nosocomial infections. While I'm not so cynical that I think the whole world is polluted beyond reclamation, I don't doubt that we Americans are particularly susceptible to buying into foolishness. In attempts to be pain-free we jump out of Teflon coated Calphalon into the stainless Bertazzoni cooktop. We may be stupid, but we do it with style. Heaven forbid we walk around with itchy eyes sounding nasally.
Something about this sort of consumer desperation reminds me of my lunch with the Scandinavian journalist in Long Beach several years back. He was visiting for a tech conference and we happened to meet and speak. I bought him a drink with my blue debit card and explained how everybody in America knows that gold credit cards are a more impressive way to spend the exact same amount of money than with a blue debit card. He happened to have been raised on lentil soup. Every day that's what he ate as a youth. I recall my old toast 'Top of the food chain!', and I'm certain we had appetizers (appetizers!) from all over the world set before us. Even the waiter who serves us will respect us more if I use this card instead of that.
It is a sense of constant amazement with which I find human interest in the semiotic offerings of life. PT Barnum was correct of course, and more of us are suckers than we care to admit. You can, for a while, pull an economy out of a hat. So there is a market for medicines that don't heal, for securities that are insecure, for policies that are just talk all with great downside risks. It is unnerving to me as a scientific professional. It is alluring to me as somebody who would like a faster class of automobile. It is tragic to me as a moral individual. I shrug in my commentary. Human nature is what it is.
To be fair, most people do not die from dealing with the deadly. They only die. Our attention is drawn to the oddment of the side-effect gone horribly wrong. Terror twinkles and our vision takes us towards such flashy ugly things. It is an evolutionary feature and we'll never get over it. But I think there's a creeping up here. I hope that I am merely becoming more aware as I age and that my own fear is such an evolutionary feature. I hope that it is not the case that the world is going to Hell in a cloud of nasal spray.
Is that hope I can believe in?
-- Wikipedia
So I'm driving to pick up my daughter from her friend's house, and two women are on the radio. One is impersonating a nose. The other pretends to be a pair of eyes, presumeably on the same face. They tell of a fabulous new allergy medication (some name that ends with 'air') that treats both of them at once - a medical threesome.
Allergy medications are not allergy medications of course. They only treat the symptoms. You know, itchy watery red eyes (says she) and drippy cloggy sneezy nose (says she, nasally). And as usual they get to the list of side effects. We're all used to this but I didn't expect to hear glaucoma, cataracts and nasal fungus. Nasal fungus? Then the capper - they actually say 'please don't spray it in your eyes'.
I am reading up in Amity Shlaes, who has already earned the great emnity of the Left by publishing her book 'The Forgotten Man'. It's a very useful history for me and of course it's controversial because she likes Herbert Hoover (so far) and Wendell Willkie. I am coming to appreciate, among other things, how contentious was the matter of rural electrification and the the nature of the battles over public utilities. But ultimately I expect to find from Shlaes those actions and reactions in the wake of the Crash of '29 that were cures worse than the disease. I'm trying to understand how the excess of politics gives us the prospect of a medical threesome which ends up as nasal fungus and cataracts. Which then of course must be treated with medical marijuana.
I expect that my sister, whom I'm trying to integrate into the blog somehow, might be able to tell me in her spare time what is so fabulous about the medical system in Cuba that she's fond of. And so as I spend a tiny bit of time understanding those KPIs, I'll keep my eye out for the nosocomial infections. While I'm not so cynical that I think the whole world is polluted beyond reclamation, I don't doubt that we Americans are particularly susceptible to buying into foolishness. In attempts to be pain-free we jump out of Teflon coated Calphalon into the stainless Bertazzoni cooktop. We may be stupid, but we do it with style. Heaven forbid we walk around with itchy eyes sounding nasally.
Something about this sort of consumer desperation reminds me of my lunch with the Scandinavian journalist in Long Beach several years back. He was visiting for a tech conference and we happened to meet and speak. I bought him a drink with my blue debit card and explained how everybody in America knows that gold credit cards are a more impressive way to spend the exact same amount of money than with a blue debit card. He happened to have been raised on lentil soup. Every day that's what he ate as a youth. I recall my old toast 'Top of the food chain!', and I'm certain we had appetizers (appetizers!) from all over the world set before us. Even the waiter who serves us will respect us more if I use this card instead of that.
It is a sense of constant amazement with which I find human interest in the semiotic offerings of life. PT Barnum was correct of course, and more of us are suckers than we care to admit. You can, for a while, pull an economy out of a hat. So there is a market for medicines that don't heal, for securities that are insecure, for policies that are just talk all with great downside risks. It is unnerving to me as a scientific professional. It is alluring to me as somebody who would like a faster class of automobile. It is tragic to me as a moral individual. I shrug in my commentary. Human nature is what it is.
To be fair, most people do not die from dealing with the deadly. They only die. Our attention is drawn to the oddment of the side-effect gone horribly wrong. Terror twinkles and our vision takes us towards such flashy ugly things. It is an evolutionary feature and we'll never get over it. But I think there's a creeping up here. I hope that I am merely becoming more aware as I age and that my own fear is such an evolutionary feature. I hope that it is not the case that the world is going to Hell in a cloud of nasal spray.
Is that hope I can believe in?
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