Our only hope now is wearing face masks.

With the arrival of the highly infectious COVID Omicron variant, it becomes clear that everyone will be exposed to this pandemic. Because the molecules used by the flu virus to invade human cells have transferred to the Covid Omicron variant via the process named Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) or lateral gene transfer (LGT), it is now as transmissible between humans as the common cold.

The wonderful community of vaccine creators has already identified the targets on the Omicron variant they can use to guide their vaccines to be effective. They are confident they can create effective vaccines to combat the current Omicron, but it will take months to begin delivering the vaccine. It is a time-consuming and challenging process to manufacture the vaccines, and they will need to make over eight billion doses to vaccinate everyone with a first dose. If past progress is an indicator of the future delivery times, it will be April before any of the new vaccines will be available to the public. It will be many months after that date when the new vaccines are readily available.

Unfortunately, the new Omicron variant has a doubling time of under a week in communities where it is already present. If we assume there are already a thousand individual hot spots and double them once per week, it takes ten weeks to reach a million, another ten weeks to reach a billion, and another four weeks to reach eight billion. That’s twenty-four weeks to reach eight billion, which is the current population of humans. That’s 168 days, or Sunday, May 15, 2022, for a total exposure of everyone.

Okay, those assumptions are guesses, and the math is sloppy, but they are reasonable approximations. There will not be enough vaccinations even before the Omicron reaches its peak. But the rumors are that this Omicron variant isn’t as virulent, and fewer people are dying than with the earlier varieties. Unfortunately, the more people who have any viral disease, the more opportunities there are for it to mutate. The projections have two certain additional problems:

1. The winter flu season in the Northern Hemisphere will have ten times more people to infect compared to the Southern Hemisphere, as will the Omicron virus.
2. Flu and Covid viruses transmit via tiny droplets flying through the air and getting into noses.
3. Most people will be spending more time indoors.
4. Ordinary people have grown tired of isolating themselves and are returning to churches and other indoor gatherings.
5. The anti-vaxxers are growing increasingly belligerent.

With considerable effort, the earlier Covid virus was held in check, especially in its probable country of origin, China. Still, if any of the five things listed above functions as appears likely, the coming April Fools’ Day will be a time of sorrow.

There is one way to slow this pandemic down worldwide: wearing masks. But that is unlikely, so there will be lives lost. However, there probably isn’t an existential crisis for humanity like the Bubonic Plague in 1448. But it might be grim.

I HOPE I’M WRONG ABOUT THESE GRIM PREDICTIONS, BUT IT IS TIME TO MAKE PREPARATIONS TO STAY HOME AND AVOID PEOPLE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE FOR SEVERAL MONTHS.

What’s really important?

I was asked, “What’s really important to you?”, and that question came out of the clear blue sky. I fumbled around a bit with plausible answers, and have come back to it several times. When you read this, pause for a moment and ask yourself that question.

The problem that has plagued me since my rather abrupt departure as a pilot from the Air Force is how to save humanity from destroying itself. This blog began on January 1, 2008, and I have posted every day since that date, which adds up to 5,089 unique posts. When I click the word survival right under the title, there are a vast number of hits, followed by the word health for frequency and human aspirations. I don’t think being interested in those subjects is unusual, but it may be unusual in how many times I have written about them. All of those subjects and many others constantly address the question of the human predicament, far more than my personal problems. Of course, my problems are apparent and recurring as they must be for anyone, but my spin always seems to return to the human problem.

Even in this last month, even before that question was asked of me, I have been posting nonstop queries into that subject in the form of 33 aspirations. To begin my search at the beginning required typing in 2008/01/01// into the address bar to come up with the original title: Life Hacks for creating a better world.

Notice that title was not for me but for humanity. However, when looking at the bottom of that first post there was a link to go to my good habits list of 442 habits. That list gives a long batch of habits to be practiced several times. Which I did each day back in 2005 thru 2007. Those are examples of where I came from, what I think about and why I am the way I am, and rarely use the term “I.” Also, it was an homage to Ben Franklin and his Autobiography written about his youth, when as a teenager he made a list of habits to cultivate.

Omicron mutations

Mutations don’t typically appear in a variant of a virus from a replication error but from a piece of protein transferring from somewhere else, often another virus. That process is named Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) or lateral gene transfer (LGT). This HGT process typically occurs for viruses living in humans when an individual simultaneously has two diseases, such as flu and COVID. The greater the number of humans having COVID, the more likely individuals will have flu simultaneously. Having flu and COVID at the same time is more likely during winter months. South Africa has now departed their winter months, and the Northern Hemisphere has now entered theirs. There are 87.0% of the earth’s total human population living in the north, and therefore nearly nine times the likelihood of new variants of COVID arising over the next few months. Below are shown the changes that have occurred in the recent months on the original COVID virus, shown in gray.

From France24 web site.

From CoVariants.

From CoVariants.

Today, it is being reported that the Omicron variant is highly contagious but not particularly virulent, but that may change with the scenario just presented. COVID may turn into a killer like the “Spanish flu” did a hundred years ago.
I should mention that a year and a half ago, I posted An improvement on Covid killing using Baby Shampoo. I have been ridiculed whenever I mention this technique, but as the soap bubbles, created with one drop of soap to a cup of water, will stay inflated in a bottle, it is obvious that the soap molecules retain their tension. This molecular tension remains in the nostrils and prevents the COVID viruses from entering the person’s body’s cells after they have inhaled some of those virus particles.
The COVID disease continues its journey from one person to another by moving between the nearby people’s nostrils, where it could be most easily defeated. That would be true with the Omicron and all of the previous COVID varieties and probably will remain valid for future ones. However, that thought brings the late-night comics’ audiences into fits of laughter, and 5.2 million people have died laughing. So I’m the only one in the whole world to rinse my nostrils twice a day for about five seconds with dilute baby shampoo.

What are our existential threats?

From Wikipedia, I got this list of world deaths by cause.

World Health Organization (WHO) was the source of the list below for high-income countries. It is very different from the one above for the whole world.

The two charts above are dealing with large numbers of people, and therefore one would think there would be nearly identical findings. Cardiovascular disease comes in number one as the greatest threat to human life, but cancer is usually identified as the second great killer worldwide, but in the lower chart dementias are second in richer countries.

That observation about dementia being so frequent would not have been noticed by me a few days ago, but yesterday I had three totally independent conversations with people who clearly had serious dementia. All of them had been successful in their employments and were now well into retirements at about seventy. They are much younger than I in years, although I look much younger and healthier than each of them. They had all had strokes from which they recovered but with some serious physical impairments. They were all fun to talk with about things they had done, except when I asked about details that seemed relevant about times and how to find the locations. They all described the buildings and details of what places looked like, up close, and landmarks for getting there, but on a map, or particular items there was nothing. They would talk about people in a distant city like I knew them, or was supposed to know them.

I enjoy their company as filled with delightful stories, and respond with stories of my own.

What needs concern after blood pressure?

Yesterday’s post was “Seeking ideal blood pressure,” which addresses cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the world. The second is cancer, which struck me as pertinent because while writing that I was being tested for breast cancer. Yes, men do occasionally have breast cancer, and I had prostate cancer two years ago and along with radiation was treated with the antiandrogen medication bicalutamide. That is a standard treatment that might stimulate breast growth. I had felt a slightly painful lump in my right breast and went in for a mammogram. It was a benign problem of male gynecomastia, which turns out to be a common problem for older men. With that in the back of my mind when I began this post, I clicked my Dictionary of New Epigrams – Death and discovered this poem at the top.

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I lived well. I do not need to live again.

I brought children into the world. I brought laughter and good feelings to my friends. I helped people, many unknown to me, find a better way through their life.  I helped dying people find comfort in their departure from their lives, and I departed my own life when I chose to, and I returned to the cosmos from which my being arose.

I lived well, I do not need to live again.

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I thought it was written by Kelsey Collins of Sisters, Oregon, who had spoken to me a week earlier about suicide. We had an abstract and distant conversation about her family, but I was shocked when she had taken her own life. I was equally shocked a few minutes ago when I realized that I had written those lines above for an obituary eulogy.

Seeking and finding the ideal human blood pressure.

The search for ideal blood pressure is fraught with a mixed bag of well-cooked spaghetti. There is a lot of documented science, and yet the subject is chaos. It is more than the difficulties seen in reading ECG heart charts, where there are many evolved traits for survival that have saved lives but complicate the problem. It would seem that a single subject like blood pressure would come to two numbers, systolic and diastolic, and each of them could be adjusted to an ideal. But that isn’t what happens. If you try to read all the charts and data, it becomes a turbulent mass that comes to a single suggestion. Get blood pressure below systolic 120 and diastolic below 80; how far below isn’t well defined, but systolic should be above 90.

I decided to find what would be so near to the ideal systolic/diastolic number that it wouldn’t matter if it were precisely correct. And then state that single number as “near the ideal.” The statement is general but precise. For example, the number 110/70 isn’t ideal for everyone all the time. Still, it is so near to the ideal that it would be impossible to define something to improve the individual’s vitality or life expectancy. The ideal numbers turned out to be the blood pressure of a ten-year-old. The chart below is color-coded, with green being the zone of best health. To the left side in red numbers are the ages of average Americans’ systolic pressures, and on the right side in red numbers are the ages for diastolic pressures of average Americans. Systolic grows with age as plaque builds up in people’s arteries, and diastolic goes up until about fifty as strength grows and then declines.

The build-up of plaque in the arteries means that children should begin a healthy cardiovascular habit routine as early as possible and stay with it all their lives. Unfortunately, plaque that calcifies is nearly impossible to remove from the arteries. Perhaps there will soon be a way to correct the problem, but not now.

A chart locating a near-ideal blood pressure goal for all ages of humans.

I have been seeking the ideal blood pressure for all ages of people and finding that “near 110/70” is the most desirable position.

Even an older person can reach those numbers because I am presently 86 years old and have reached 113/58 and held it for over a year.

Covid Logarithmic Chart 2021-11-30

I have been considering ending this style of presenting the Covid pandemic because it doesn’t show the large fluctuations as well as a weekly vertical bar graph. Then this week comes Covid Omicron which has the authorities and the stock market in a tizzy. So I will go on for a while with the logarithmic. However, even if it doubles the number of cases and deaths by April, there won’t be much of a change of the trajectories’ slope.

To see details click the chart above as it is an expandable gif.

COVID pandemic – November 30th 2021.

Searching for an ideal Human Blood Pressure

In late August, I posted a chart related to searching for ideal human blood pressure (BP). However, that chart never appealed to me, even though it was based on many different blood pressure studies and graphs based on those studies. The data was too diffuse to make precise statements.

The definition of good blood pressure has varied greatly even in the last twenty years. The long-accepted generalization was that good systolic blood pressure was a subject’s age plus one hundred. Thus, a healthy five-year-old would have had a BP of 105, a fifty-year-old 150, and a hundred-year-old 200. I had a 96-year-old friend whom I took for doctor visits occasionally, who had a BP of 196, about which her doctor told her she should be happy as she was perfect. Ten years ago good BP was under systolic 140, briefly; that was changed to 130 and is now set at under 120. My problem with that statement is that a systolic of 90 is under 120, but it is associated with dizziness on standing up from a sitting position and occasional fainting. However, some current charts have 90 in the green zone along with 129.

Approaching this problem from an evolutionary perspective would mean that individuals would survive best who were best adapted to their time and place, and that would show up in carefully done large studies of current populations. The effect would be visible up to the end of reproductive age. There is a flat area in the diastolic curve of the 50th percentile for children from age 8 to 13, also seen in the systolic, from age 7 to 10, but not so pronounced. The implication is that the blood vessels are in place for the remainder of the person’s life, but are subject to wear and tear in the form of plaque buildup.

https://edren.org/ren/handbook/unithdbk/blood-pressure-and-cardiovascular-disease/blood-pressures-in-children/?print=print

In the chart below we see the systolic has a nearly straight ascent from age 18 to 80+, probably due to consistent plaque build-up in the arteries. The diastolic is probably most affected by the strength of the arterial walls, which grow until the age of 40 and then have a slow decline to age 80 and beyond.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Blood-pressure-and-age-In-men-and-women-and-in-all-ethnic-subgroups-systolic-blood_fig2_10994677

Those are assumptions based on what might be the forcing factors for the shapes of these curves. I make these assumptions because I haven’t encountered any other proven ones or even suggested ones. However, because of those observations, it seems reasonable to choose blood pressure observations during these flat periods age 7 to 13, averaged to age 12, the take-off point to be an evolutionarily chosen best option point. Therefore, that would be the evolutionarily chosen ideal blood pressure being sought by our experienced human history. That number would be close to 108/61 pp=47. Of course, that is a bit arbitrary because the data and the assumptions are not perfect, but it is probably nearer an ideal point than just asserting 100 plus age or a number picked out of thin air like 140, or the almost as arbitrarily proposed below 120 with no bottom point officially suggested. With that in mind, I am going to redraw the Ideal Blood Pressure Chart with adjustments.

The new ideal is wildly different from the former chart that I made linked in the top line. The problem arose from the reported numbers and graphs posted in supposedly reputable sources being very different. When writing this post the thoughts seemed reasonable, but after making this graphic nothing fits together. And yet a BP of close to 108/61 seems reasonable even for older adults. Unfortunately, at this time there are no reliable ways to remove years of plaque build-up in the arteries so a person could return to the suggested youthful blood pressure. If that could be done, human life expectancy would take a huge jump.

Human Adaptation Strategies versus Human Aspirations

My search for a workable wisdom theory in 2013 was a compilation called Philosophers Squared Off in Quotations. Each post on a philosopher included a COMMENTS section on ideas I found worth challenging. A couple of years later, in 2016, that morphed into A Dictionary of New Epigrams, which are my thoughts based on searches of specific words. A few years later, in 2021, I was continuing the search with Aphors list by SOURCE DATE, with the idea of creating a competitive game of clashing pairs of these labeled ideas to create extensions from the ideas and tweens (ideas between the stated ideas). Earlier this month, I finished compiling 33 Aspirations grouped into the “5” measured levels, going from idealizing +5 Exemplary people to self-centered +1 Negatively adapted people. After completing that list, it became apparent the list felt excessively judgmental and hostile toward many people. I realized that every human is born a helpless but thinking baby and that their lives developed habits based on adaptation strategies. Humans, as they exist at the moment, are a history of applied aspirations. To cope with that problem, yesterday I posted Human Adaptation Strategies – 1st Layout Attempt, which was written in an abstract, third person, present environment format.

As I begin to scan that quickly made post, Happy +1 jumps out in the first group of ten groups. “Happy +1 – People’s happiness isn’t ruined by occasional grief but by chronic bad habits.” Perhaps I could rewrite the five happy statements with that in mind, and Happy +5 would then become “People’s happiness isn’t created by occasional good fortune but by chronic good habits.” The potency in that statement is that we could choose the good habits we wish to create for ourselves if we had the foresight to know what habits would be good for us to possess.

That brings us back to the beginning of this whole series, with Ben Franklin’s teenage thoughts on creating a persona for himself, which he published and practiced his whole life. He preadapted his persona to the person he could see that he was soon to become because of his opportunities.

Human Adaptation Strategies – 1st Layout Attempt

I have been working for years on this project and in the last few months, it has morphed through several attempts to find a functional layout embodiment. Today, I will take several earlier variations and fill in as many as possible into the new Adaptation Strategies format. The order will remain the same as in my post 33 Aspirations grouped into the 5 measured levels but written in the Adaptation Strategies style, which uses an abstract, third person, present environment format.

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Happy +5 – Happiness can be found in the intense pursuit of worthwhile goals, and people can live in contentment within their life of sustained achievement.

Happy +4 – People are happy when they have worthy goals and the resources to pursue them.

Happy +3 – Many people need only seek easily achieved moderation in their life goals to make their lives meaningful and happy.

Happy +2 – People attempting to turn everything to their personal advantage don’t find happiness, because it alienates them from sustained personal relationships.

Happy +1 – People’s happiness isn’t ruined by occasional grief but by chronic bad habits.

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Health +5 – A measurable proxy for exemplary health can be found in systolic blood pressure near 110.

Health +4 – A measurable proxy for well-adapted health can be found in systolic blood pressure is between 130 and 110 or between 110 and 90.

Health +3 – A measurable proxy for normal health can be found in systolic blood pressure, and it is moderately high at 160 to 130 or low at 90 to 80.

Health +2 – A measurable proxy for struggling health can be found in systolic blood pressure, and it is too high at 190 to 160 or too low at 80 to 70.

Health +1 – A measurable proxy for unhealthiness can be found in systolic blood pressure, which is extremely high, above 190, or extremely low, below 70.

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Wisdom +5 – Foresight generates foreknowledge and that superpower gives humans the ability to accomplish deeds surpassing all other creatures including humans who don’t use that ability.

Wisdom +4 – People who can see present problems clearly and think prudently to avoid probable problems will do a consistently good job of solving them.

Wisdom +3 – The wisdom of coping with daily problems directly as they arise works well most of the time.

Wisdom +2 – Avoiding current problems by finding other things to do distracts the attention and the problems usually go away.

Wisdom +1 – It feels fantastic to find ways to rebel against the stupid constraints of society and live with exuberance of total freedom of thoughts and actions.

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Wealth + 5 –  People’s stable wealth and total acceptance of personal responsibility can be measured by a FICO score of 820 to 850.

Wealth + 4 – Those who handle money well and social transactions effectively can have a FICO score between 800 and 820.

Wealth + 3 – People who are good in their daily affairs and are okay with carrying some debt, typically have a FICO score between 620 and 800.

Wealth + 2 – People’s unfortunate relationship with money and responsibility have a FICO score between 520 to 620.

Wealth + 1 – People who choose to spend all their money and totally avoid all responsibilities have a FICO Score of less than 520.

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Existence +5 – Holding nature’s and society’s long-term stability as beautiful enhances humanity’s potentials for personal, social, and esthetic attributes to flourish.

Existence +4 – Displaying enthusiasm for discovering and adapting to natural reality helps to accomplish things that bring physical and mental health into everyone’s lives.

Existence +3 – It is easy to learn to adapt from daily experiences, and earn a nice home, car, family, and friends by seeking good experiences and avoiding bad ones.

Existence +2 – Life is a confrontational experience of coping with obstinate people with extreme ideas and emotions that make the world a dangerous place.

Existence +1 – Some people habitually reverse things like love, wisdom, and experience, which generates conflict, and loving them brings confusion, anger, and hatred.

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Family +5 – A thriving family with children brings feelings of bliss to our world and the growing possibilities for a beautiful future for spouses, parents, society, and life itself.

Family +4 – Family gives life a wonderful purpose beyond everyday living and a growing legacy for a link beyond grandchildren into a glorious future.

Family +3 – A family takes attention, time, and money but they give pleasure in their development and pride in their success.

Family +2 – Children, geriatric relatives and crazy people interfere with life and demand our attention, time and money, and making these idle noisemakers into our heirs as a legacy is annoying

Family +1 – Family, geriatric parents and children are worse than worthless as they bring trouble, and they are constantly demanding drugs and stealing things, which brings in the police.

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Character +5 – Make a habit of cultivating one’s character with honesty in every transaction, integrity with one’s self to finish what is intended to be done, and work with enthusiasm while doing those things.

Character +4 –  Sincerely treat people with emotional candor by consistently delivering to them from your heart what they hoped for and expected.

Character +3 – Treat your friends, family, and yourself properly, by routinely obeying all laws, and fitting in pleasantly with your social groups.

Character +2 – Recognize other people’s needs and help them when they ask for help when there is a personal benefit for each of you.

Character +1 – Honesty, integrity, and enthusiasm are stupid strategies because they interfere with one’s immediate pleasures and gains.

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Vitality +5 – It is prudent for human beings to support our healthy bodies by organizing a reliable community with plenty of good food, clean water, and fresh air in which everyone can thrive. 

Vitality +4 – At the public level, safety requires a cadre of lawyers, dedicated police, and military to protect us from attacks by adversaries like scoundrels, criminals, and enemy countries.

Vitality +3 – In typical daily life situations people watch for immediate problems, are attentive to threats, and avoid involvement with them.

Vitality +2 – Staying safe is a personal problem that requires vigilance against bad people, sickness, accidents, injury, bad food, water, and weather.

Vitality +1 – Our inborn reflexes protect us from physical injuries, nasty animals, and people, but we must deliberately avoid polluted water, rotting food, foul air, disease, and occasional famines.

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Nature +5 – Living within the natural world is delightful, as the sun, rain, and earthquakes create our wonderful world and offer countless ways to live and help it thrive.

Nature +4 – We must respect nature as an essential but capricious companion, for it gives us sunshine, rain, soil, and thus food for our bodies and beauty for our minds.

Nature +3 – Living within nature’s incredible provisions is a balancing of endless choices between too much of this and too little of that.

Nature +2 – Nature presents problems because its random aspects are always getting in the way and doing something unanticipated that interferes with whatever we are attempting to do.

Nature +1 – The sun gets too hot and the rain and wind too cold, and life outdoors with insects and disease is often miserable.

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Cities +5 – Societies have organized their thoughts, managed objectives, and created social stability by creating centralized locations called cities, with visual monuments to former glories, and statues of heroes.

Cities +4 – We choose to design and build monuments and statues to perpetuate our faith in our society and demonstrate to others that we are invincible and prove it by making these magnificent things.

Cities +3 – All individuals have some conflicting interests but we join together and each of us thrives because we share contiguous properties and revere the same visible structures and statues.

Cities +2 – The great buildings of a thriving metropolis attract outsiders in hopes of finding work and a better life, and once there they identify themselves with the monuments and statues and become citizens.

Cities +1 – The monuments are gaudy piles of stone and the statues are of pompous fools, but these things organize and define the city and it provides opportunities found nowhere else.

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Time +5 – The Big Bang began time and provided everything we know here in the Universe, but ultimately, Heat-Death locks up all energy, so nothing interesting can happen. However, right now, we can participate with it in recognition, gratitude, and love.

Time +4 – We understand what works and what doesn’t in the vastness of perceptible time and space. Religious stories help us feel better about the infinite things that are impossible to examine.

Time +3 – We adapt to current real-world problems, make adjustments with spiritual ideas for the untestable things, and leave unchallenged those thoughts known to us from our social group.

Time +2 – There are plenty of things to do right now, and there is no need to think about things that will not happen soon.

Time +1 –  If time doesn’t affect anything we are doing at this moment, we can ignore the future non-existence of our body and mind.