RECENTLY, I’VE BEEN WATCHING AN AMERICAN SCI-FI SHOW
on television that has several things going for it: good acting, interesting,
complex characters, and a back-story that doesn’t overpower the basic narrative
but builds slowly and interweaves with the main characters’ struggles and
complications. The story is set in present-day Wyoming, centred around a
ranching family, the Abbotts, and a mystery that the family’s patriarch, Royal
Abbott, discovers on his land. Or rather in his land, specifically a
hole where no hole should be. The hole is perfectly round, approximately 50
feet in diameter and seems bottomless! Somehow it has materialized in a back
pasture of his ranch, seemingly out of the blue. How did it come to be there?
Who made it? Where does it lead? And what is its purpose? These are the questions
viewers are challenged with over the show’s first season. And while we gain some
answers, with the finale having a big reveal that I won’t give away, there is
still much mystery yet to be solved.
THE DIRECTOR CREATES a slow-building atmosphere
of tension and anxiety as more and more of the show’s characters come to realize
that the world they thought they knew was becoming less familiar, less
understandable. Even strange. We witness main characters and minor ones alike reaching
the same conclusion, namely that "time is out of joint" to recall Hamlet’s frantic
cry from the first act of Shakespeare’s great play about alienation, social
disorder, and their consequences. (1.5.188)
IN OTHER
WORDS, "Outer Range" is the perfect TV show for us to watch as we sit immured
in our sloughs of despair, having lost the sense of things, along with
most of the whys and wherefores. Time, indeed, seems to be out of joint. And
with all the things in the world to talk about, with the reader's indulgence, I'll rant on a little about the
pandemic, even though these past couple of months, with the war in Ukraine, that seems so
yesterday’s news. Such a short, long-seeming time ago it was masks and
microbes that were on everyone’s lips (and faces.) Now? It’s Putin and nukes. What
a roller-coaster ride we’re on! THOUGH, I RECENTLY WATCHED an interesting vid
by Dr. John Campbell on the latest variant of Covid-19, Omicron, and how
we should treat it. He’s a retired Nurse Educator in England who puts out a lot
of interesting (and controversial at times) medical material on his YouTube
podcast, and he’s become somewhat of a go-to guy for many who are looking for clear
and concise information during this long pandemic.
FOR EXAMPLE, in this recent video he reviews studies
conducted by Johnson and Johnson for their new(ish) “Paxlovid” anti-viral
tablets, tentatively scheduled to ramp-up production in the United States and
abroad, including Canada. It’s supposed to be effective in treating
Covid-19 symptoms in high-risk patients. WHAT WAS INTERESTING about Campbell’s
video were a couple of things (and he doesn’t recommend it’s use at this time,
BTW): First was his examination of the clinical trials done by J&J, noting when
they were done (late last year) and the patient composition (who was in the study). He found both problematic
in that they were based on volunteers selected from a population (i.e., us) of several
months ago that is significantly different from today’s population (also us).
He suggests an up-to-date clinical trial needs to be done to gauge the efficacy
of Paxlovid as it would affect today's mostly anti-bodied population, and whether the harms, such as increased risk of death due to
blood clots, outweigh the benefits. He suggests that the overall
bang-for-your-buck of the drug isn’t worth it, both because of the cost (it’s expensive) and the
risks for side-effects.
NOW, MOST
PEOPLE have anti-bodies in their systems, either from vaccines or by natural immunity
acquired from having contracted the disease, and these anti-bodies are
generally effectively to combat the less virulent* but more infectious, Omicron. HIS BRIEF REVIEW of pandemic disease in general was helpful for me to better understand
our, at times, frenetic response to this novel form of coronavirus. Dr.
Campbell underscored his belief that the disease should be allowed to
spread through the population to achieve herd immunity, while at the same
time providing protection and prompt vaccinations for the most vulnerable. I
believe he feels that the vaccination regimes were helpful, but lockdowns were harmful
to our health (not to mention our economies and societies!), more so than the
disease itself. Anyway, I won’t try to detail in full his excellent commentary on Paxlovid; you
can watch the vid if you’re interested.
TO
CONCLUDE, this disease is still with us, but the “fever” has finally broken,
and now we can begin to examine how well we handled the crisis. Overall? A
dog’s breakfast, in my opinion.
IN MY OWN
NECK OF THE WOODS, probably two thirds of people who go into stores or public
spaces go mask-less now that the mandates have been mostly lifted. (Though I
understand you’re still required to wear one on city buses or if you travel by
air or rail.)
BUT IT’S
SPRING! And it’s getting warm and green again! And I had my first Ah! Day. I went down by the lake shore this morning
and realized, to my surprise, how beautiful the day was, how perfect and complete. Nothing else was needed. But, it's a feeling you can keep for only a short while, it seems. Such moments occur when you least
expect them, which is when you are most open to them. They're a gift, a temporary bounty to be cherished and ultimately returned. Of course, if you go searching for such moments, you won't find them, or else they'll be an fading carbon copy of the original. USUALLY, you’re allowed only one per
season (at least that's how it works for me), when you feel the world's changes and yourself changing with them. No dissonance. No thoughts other than those that come with your senses: the warm sun, the light breeze, the subtle perfume of growing things, the sounds of gulls and children playing, the bay's blue waters.
And it's then that things begin to make sense, if only for the briefest while, and you feel like you belong somewhere.
I HAD WANTED to talk about the Ukraine clusterfuck and other batshit-crazy goings-on
in the world, but I’ll save all that for a future post. For now, I think I’ll
go for a walk and see if I can get another hit of Ah! I doubt it, though, so I won't try too hard.
Cheers,
Jake.
____________________________
*The Black Death, caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, is still around today and is found in
wild reservoirs such as certain types of prairie dogs especially in the South West US. There are scientists who speculate that, in the future, plague will
become “endemic” within the human population, as it evolves into less virulent
strains, becoming something akin to the measles, a disease we live with,
today, but once was a deadly killer. Well, that's something to look forward to; we can't let those pesky germs beat us!
No comments:
Post a Comment