Ranting Rex

As with any crisis, there are winners, whiners, losers and delighters.  Much of my day job is crisis management.  You can guarantee that during a crisis, dozens of little hatchlings gather around the cube of the most ill-informed individual in the organization and begin drawing wildly far-fetched conclusions.  My job is to look at the entire picture and not just the latest event.  I always look at the how, and the why, so I can ensure that any decisions made are the correct decisions based on accurate data, and not kneejerk reactions that can crash a system. 

Current events are a perfect example of the problems I deal with on a daily basis.  We have a reporting community that thrives on chaos.  Their goal is not to provide clarity.  To be clear, it’s not to cause confusion either.  It’s to do neither.  Their goal is to make money.  The only way to do that is to have their readers and viewers riled up enough to review their content.  They are doing exactly what they are designed to do.  It’s up to the reader to determine if the information they are providing is helpful. 

The President, the only other loud voice in the room has an agenda as well.  His agenda is to get re-elected, and to keep the market booming.  He has failed on the latter and will likely win on the former.  For him it’s not about solving problems but about optics.  He wants to look like he is the leader of the boat.  He is the perfect example of someone who says “Where are my people going?  I must find out so I can lead them?”

So, with all that I’m going to dig into the numbers to provide some facts around all the noise.  Before I get into the three countries that are making it into the news, let me start by showing the numbers for the world.  See below:

According to this there have been 15,418 deaths world-wide with almost 1/3^rd recovered in a population of 7.8 billion souls.  But rather than getting into the fact that more people die in the US in one year from heart disease (640,000) than are sick world-wide, let’s work through the individual country numbers.  In the end, that’s where the information lies.

China (GINA for you Republicans)

China is recognized by EVERY…SINGLE…EPIDEMOLOGIST as the epicenter of this disease.  In fact, it has been the epicenter of every Coronavirus ever including SARS, and MERS.  No amount of liberal attempts to distort that fact are going to change its existence.  The idea that Trump uses it to shore up his base is just a feature.  However, the unbelievable poor health standards of public markets in China gave us a disease that crossed species and invaded human populations.  Again, nothing the conservatives say is going to change the fact that humans are just animals. 

So, let’s look at the numbers for China:

So what do the numbers mean?  First of all Wuhan China was the epicenter of the pandemic.  The Chinese government was incredibly slow to react and did their level best to downplay any health threat.  This meant that in the land of a 1.39 billion people, the virus spread.  That’s right, 81,093 out of 1,039,000,000 people have contracted the virus in China today.  So, what’s the threat to the general population in China?  Not much according to the numbers.  The country has very poor health systems and can’t really respond to a crisis like this especially in the smaller provinces.  Still, if you take the population of China 1.39 Billion and divide it by the number of deaths of infected then your risk of contracting the disease is .008% today.  If you get the disease then your chances of dying are very low if you are healthy, and slightly higher if you are not.  On average the percentage is 3270/81093×100 = 4%. That’s not huge, but I’d still rather be here than there.  That’s 4% with a miserable health system. 

It is also important to note that the total cases in China have flattened and they now have fewer new cases than there are people getting well.  In fact the daily new cases have gone down dramatically.  It’s also important to note that this happened in two months with February 13^th being the worst day.  The number of active cases has taken a dramatic dip since the height of the disease in China.

China is a good example of what happens when you don’t wash your hands and you have zero health standards in the food industry.  On the upside, they will put you to death in China if you lie about company profit, so at least there’s that.

Italy

Italy is an entirely different scenario than China when it comes to viruses.  They currently have 63,927 cases 6077 deaths and 7,432 recovered.  So why so many deaths in Italy?  It turns out that most of the people in Italy are by far older than most other countries, and the majority of deaths are patients in their 80s and 90s.  Also, the country is culturally different in that the young interact a lot more with the elderly than they do in other parts of the world.  So, when most people kick their kids out of the house when they are 18, in Italy, junior is hanging out with grandma until he’s well into his 40s.  I have no doubt that when the younger kids got sick their grandparents and parents helped care for them and then died for the effort.

United States

OK folks, let’s look at the United States where folks who have a raspatory threat go out and buy massive amounts of paper towels and toilet paper.  That’s like buying a pool cue to go snow skiing, but who am I to judge?  Anyway currently in the United States there are 43,449 total reported cases of Covid-19, 545 deaths and 295 people have recovered.  That’s a death rate of around 1.3% for those infected.  Your chances of actually getting the disease are .01%.  To be clear we are on the upswing of cases.  Still, the percentages are greatly lower during the same timeframe as Italy and China.  Why is that?  Well, we have better healthcare for one, and we got a nice leg up on warning.  In fact we should have been much better off had the government done more earlier.  During the Obama Administration we had H1N1 and the response was nothing like the ridiculousness we are seeing today.  Still, the the world is still not coming to an end. 

The graph below shows the upswing we are in right now.  If we follow the trend of South Korea, which is very likely we will reach the peak in another week and things will start to trend downward.

Now, for fun let’s look at the number of flu cases in the United States last year.  For 2019.

There were 13,000,000 flu cases and 900,000 hospitalizations.  Of those 80,000 died, 180 Children.  The flu also doesn’t really care much if you are young or old, however, having multiple comorbitities can pose a problem.  Now if you are paying attention there were more flu cases in the U.S. last year than Covid-19 cases world wide.  In fact, THERE WERE 34 TIMES MORE FLU CASES IN THE US LAST YEAR THAN COVID CASES WORLDWIDE!

So, why all the hubbub?  Who knows?  There are many factors if you think about it.  If I were a man subject to conspiracy I’d say the biggest reason is profit.  It turns out that several prominent politicians divested themselves in hotels and other companies that were going to be hurt by the an economic crash caused by this disease and invested heavily in healthcare companies supporting the health efforts.  In addition, the bail out packages by Republicans is in the billions for businesses, and a few hundred or a thousand for individuals.  You can bet if politicians gamed the system, so did a few millionaires and all the billionaires. That could be part of it.  However, I think the following is more likely:

The U.S. government did not create this crisis.  Trump had no part in it, nor did any of his cabinet.  However, Trump and his clan are certainly capitalizing on it.  So are all the news organizations.  Everyone is making a ton of money off of this and they’re not going to stop until they have drained the last nickel out of this crisis.  In fact it is so obvious that I will predict now that Trump will be re-elected in 2020 by a complete landslide.  Why?  When’s the last time you saw something about the Democratic candidates in the news?  Two weeks ago, they were all the rage.  Now it’s Trump, Trump, Trump, and Covid, Covid, Covid.  If you ask me, he’s made the perfect play.  Have all his decisions been correct?  Nope, but he’s got his face out in front, and he did a pretty good job of determining where his people were going, and started leading them.

This disease won’t kill many of us, but another eight years of shit for brains certainly will.  Now…go wash your fucking hands, and quit whining like a little bitch.

Rex

Flu data provided by CDC.org. All other information from worldometer.info/coronavirus

It’s been about a week since everyone lost their ever lovin minds.  Things are starting to settle a little bit now and people are getting used to the “new normal.”  That’s an interesting term “new normal.”  What’s interesting is that people think this is all new, as if something changed.  Like when Trump got elected and every white person with a brain and a miniscule of integrity figured out that half the country was racist.  Nothing has changed one damn bit.  The only thing that’s changed is you now get to see how unbelievably selfish we all are.

I spent the first week of this enormous cluster fuck in Florida, visiting Kennedy Space Center, Disney World, and Universal.  Up until the Friday before they all announced they would close on Monday (I mean why kill the weekend), no one down there got the memo that anything was remotely wrong.  Life was pretty normal.  No one was wearing masks, people were just their normal, sweaty and rude selves.  When I got to the airport to come home I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was just the normal travel Monday with a packed airport, and a packed plane.  The only eventful experience was that I was in first class with a reclincing seat and a foot rest for my four hour flight back to Denver.  Every flight should be like that!

When I landed in Denver it was no big deal either.  I had seven phone messages and 228 emails from my office from people who needed answers to various questions, or just trying to justify their jobs.  This was normal. Then when I did my 90 minute drive to Colorado Springs and stopped at the grocery store, that’s when I saw it.  Everyone had lost it!  The first thing I noticed was that every paper product, down to coffee filters was gone from the shelves.  There was no milk, bread, beef, or cheese either.  

What I determined from all this is that you all eat like shit!  It’s no wonder the country is so fucking fat!  I had my pick of fish, chicken, vegetables, and healthy choices were everywhere.  What was goine was all the sugary cereals, fatty foods, and processed EVERYTHING.  It made me wonder why any of you are worried about his invisible virus.  You’re all dying before you’re 60 anyway from heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other co-morbidities associated with poor food choices.  In fact I’m surprised any of you made it this long.

Oh, and what the hell did you people think before you started washing your hands?  Seriously…I need to know.  I myself have been in more than one men’s room and walked out of the restaurant when I saw the cook leave the bathroom after wiping his ass to go prepare food.  Did you not know that you needed to wash?  Is this something you just learned?  Did you spend all these years wondering why you had the shits?

The last thing I can say is that I am completely confused as to why, during a crisis, people think they need 17 cases of toilet paper and paper towels.  What is going on in your little brain that you think “hey…a crisis is coming…I may not be able to breath in a couple of weeks, I need some Charmin!  Seriously…I wouldn’t rely on any one of you in a crisis.  When the Titanic finally does go down, I’m launching the first lifeboat with my wife and just gonna sit by and wait until you idiots reorganize the deck chairs.

Rex

To be clear…I don’t have a job, I have a career. What’s the difference? When you have a job, you go home at the end of the day and focus on your family and personal life. When you have a career, you never, ever, at any point, get to do that completely. You get emails during weddings, and phone calls during funerals (yep….happened…many times). You are expected to be available 24/7 working at all hours of the night and day making sure the business keeps running. When a disease outbreak that shuts down the entire country happens, you are still working from your car, kitchen, living room, bedroom, even in the shower, and on the toilet whether you have paper or not. You work sick, tired, depressed or happy. If you succeed, the team is the reason, if you fail, you are the reason. You are on planes, in hotels, eating bad food, and struggling to exercise in order to keep your sanity and physical health because it’s either that or you will end up with a coronary within the year. 

It is true. I chose this career. I am paid well, get good benefits, and have a lot of perks to be sure. And with all this it can all end in an instant if some CEO determines that laying off 50% of the company will raise the stock price .000000000001 of a percentage point. This is why, the first piece of advise I give ANYONE who has asked the question “what do you recommend I do for my career?” I say, focus on you, and your needs. Make sure you look out for your own personal and professional goals, your health, and your financial future. Because in the end, they will never, no matter how hard you work, no matter how indispensable you think you are, or how loyal they tell you they will be to you, they will never, ever, under ANY circumstance, love you back.

As we come to another financial meltdown that was going to happen, regardless of Covid-19. Just know that many of us will be put out on the street over the next several months. The banks won’t help, and anything the government does will be limited. I can only hope that those of us who went through this in 2007 don’t have to go through it again, and that the folks that called all the unemployed at that time deadbeats, do. Maybe then they will understand that sometimes, just sometimes, financial and health challenges are not the fault of the individual, they just happen.

Rex

a.k.a. Who was the torturous mother fucker who thought this up?

This is the second in a multi-part series of what many men will experience when they learn they have to have prostate surgery.  The goal is to accurately and with a little humor explain some of the things the physician either won’t, doesn’t, or forgets to tell you when you go through the process.  

The next step in the road to surgery is the cystoscopy.  This delightful little piece of evil is designed to be pushed directly into the end of your penis so a physician can display the inside of your bladder, not only to you, but to a group of fledgling wide eyed young students who happen to find their way into the exam room.  No one asks if you want them there, but they show up just the same.

Before they insert this garden hose with a camera on the end into your urethra, they go ahead and ask you to wear with the same non-garment with the rear opening similar to what you wore for the CT.  They will then leave the room for what seems like hours while you lie there waiting for someone to bring you a blanket.  It will be cold.  I recommend bringing a sleeping bag and an electric heater.  This will prevent you from having to lie down in a very cold room, half dressed, with your genitals visible for anyone how might happen into the room.  If the automatic lights go off, just take a nap.  They can wake you when they’re ready (yes…this happened to me).  When someone finally shows up, sometimes the cleaning crew, they will notify the nurse that you’ve been left in the room.  It might be that day, or maybe the next but eventually they’ll show up. 

In fact, a very bright, and extremely cheery nurse, will waltz into the room and grab what is now your incredibly shrinking penis that, if you forgot the sleeping bag, is likely partially frost bitten from the cold and without much warning grab the end and shoot a numbing agent into your urethra.  She has to do this without warning because it gives her time to get out of the way as you shoot three feet off the table, kicking out in all directions with a response similar to “what the fuck was that!?!”  She will then leave the room, and you will be able to settle down for another nap.  If the cleaning crew shows up again, just ask them if they found my keys yet.

When the Urologist finally makes it into the room, they will turn a TV screen in your direction and begin to insert this medieval torture device.  The numbing agent does its job…to a point.  However, once the scope makes it past the prostate into the bladder, all bets are off!  To make matters worse, he will turn and twist this thing inside your body, all the while giving you full color images of things you really weren’t meant to see.  One of them might be an eight-centimeter ball at the base of your bladder that’s not supposed to be there.  It is at this point the doctor will yank the scope out of your body, urine will spill out all over you, the table, and the floor, and you will be thankful your pants and shoes are safely on a chair in the corner of the room.  

The doctor will then tell you to get dressed because the fun for the day is almost over.  The next thing he needs to do is tell you that you have to have surgery.  Upon mentioning surgery, you will be completely incapable of comprehending all the things he’s saying, because you’re still focused on the fact that you have to have surgery.  I suggest bringing a friend who can tell you later all the things that were said.  They should be able to do shorthand at about 220 words per minute because the doctor talks like an auctioneer.  If they can’t though, not to worry.  He’s kind enough to send you home with a brochure because let’s face it, what surgery needs is four color tri-fold handouts.  

Rex

I think I drank moonshine

I’d been seeing a urologist for about five years.  It’s the longest relationship I’ve had outside of marriage.  Suffice it to say he’s become quite acquainted with parts of my anatomy that up until now I had never been acquainted.  I mean who chooses that as a career?  All day long you look at assholes.  Ok, so does the kid workin’ the drive-up window at Starbucks.  However, after seeing my most recent medical bill I’m pretty sure the pain is worth it.

With that said, physicians and nurses try to educate you on what will happen during these events, but they are woefully deficient in their descriptions.  Also, they never tell you “why” you have to do some of these things. So, for the next several articles I’m going to explain my experience in great, and candid detail.  For those of you who read my blog, you likely won’t be surprised at said candor.  For the rest of you…good luck!

The CT Scan with Contrast

Dr. Google describes a CT scan with contrast as “…a noninvasive medical test. It is used to produce multiple images of the internal body organs to diagnose cancer, cardiovascular disease, trauma, musculoskeletal disorders, etc. Contrast agents, also called dyes, are used to highlight the organs, blood vessels, tissues, etc.”

What they fail to tell you is all the work you have to go through to get the test.  The first thing is you have to starve yourself.  If you get hangry like I do that’s not exactly the safest situation for for the bulk of society, especially the ones demanding money a.k.a. healthcare companies.  They then send you to a facility that does these procedures where they have you fill out documents that basically say “if you die, it’s not our fault, even if it is our fault, it’s not our fault so you need to sign these papers to hold us harmless if we mistakenly kill you, so we can look at what might be killing you.

For the benefit of these services, they then tell you that before they put your life at risk, you have to give them money.  This is kind of like bungy jumping.  It might kill you, then again it might not.  It also might just make you wet your pants.  Either way you’ll have a story to tell and some nice pictures when you’re done.  For the benefit of this process they will also ask you for anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars depending on if, or what type of health insurance you have. What type of health insurance you have depends on how broke you are, or how cheap your employer.

Once you’ve gone through all that they have you take off all your clothes, any metal, and put on some booties and a gown that’s open in the back so they can parade you through crowds of people waiting for their scans in their open robes.  It wouldn’t be so bad, but let’s face it, most of us having this procedure wouldn’t win any bikini contests, and quite a few spend too many hours training for the hot dog eating contest.  The people you’d prefer to see are young, healthy, and on a beach. This is something you can think about while you lie there half naked freezing your ass off.

Now, when they lie you down, they tell you ALL the things that can go wrong.  This is GREAT because it’s not like you’re nervous already after filling out the paperwork.  Anyway, a very sweet, kind, and FAR too young person helps you onto the table, taking great care not to notice the tattoo you got when you were 20 that has morphed into an unrecognizable blob.

Once on the table they insert an IV.  Now for me this was my first IV ever in my life!  I’ve broken 16 bones, had many illnesses, including pneumonia and to this point I’ve never needed any type of IV.  I managed to make it all this time with no more than an occasional tetanus shot, so the whole ordeal was a little disconcerting. Still, I likely would have done better if the little shit just kept her mouth shut.

Now what they tell you is that once they inject you with the die, it will feel like you wet your pants.  This likely may be true for women, who when they pee themselves everything runs out the back.  This is not true for men.  We pee ourselves down the front.  It’s an entirely foreign feeling.  The kids say you taste metal.  They’re not old enough to remember drinking water from old lead pipes.  Really…that’s the flavor.  It also feels like you took a shot of moonshine out of a rusty still and it burns down your throat all the way down to your toes.  Not a totally uncomfortable feeling, but certainly one that makes you think if you did this too often you might go blind.

It’s also a good thing you’re starving, because it is at that this point, had you just had lunch, it would be on the floor.  It’s not nausea per se, it’s more an odd uncomfortable feeling that lasts maybe a few seconds, but long enough that on a full stomach projectile vomiting might be the result.  Kind of like the reaction you might get seeing a group of elderly and middle-aged half naked people in cheap hospital pajamas waiting in a hallway.

After the scan they send you home, give you another bill, and tell you to wait three weeks for your doctor to call you.  Now, you own your medical records, and truth be told, they are legally obligated to provide you a copy, but that doesn’t keep the desk clerk from acting like you asked for the nuclear launch codes.  So, when their response is “you need permission from your doctor,” your response back should be “Then he can pay the fucking 500.00 dollars I just paid for the test.”  At least that was what I said anyway. It is at this point that you realize you really need a sandwich.  People will come filing out of offices to see the show.  Eventually however, an office manager who knows her ass from a hole in the ground then promises you a copy of the records, which by the way, you get three weeks after the physician.  Better late than never.

Now when you get this report, you don’t really read it, other than to find if you have cancer or not.  If you’re like me, that’s where you go.  You don’t read any other part of the report because that’s the only answer you need.  However, if you’re my wife, you read the entire thing and learn all KINDS of interesting things about your spouse.  Do yourself a favor, don’t Google ANYTHING.  Just ask your doctor about it.  However, I was amused at how many calcium deposits I had on my lungs, kidneys, and spleen.  Basically, all signs of previous injuries.  I told you I was active!

With me it turned out I had a three-quarter inch ball growing out of my prostate into my bladder.  This overly active prostate was affecting my ability to urinate.  More to the point, the more I had to pee, the less I was able, causing me great stress and annoyance.  Also given the fact that is was also causing me to pee blood, it was decided that another test was needed to determine exactly what that ball actually was.  Was it cancer (they still were not positive) or was it something less evil?  So, I had to have another appointment with a physician to have a cystoscopy.  A much more invasive from or torture which I will describe in the next edition of “I can finally pee like a teenager.”

Rex