General

General posts about various matters.

There are 67 posts filed in General (this is page 2 of 7).

Public health insurance and my COVID experience

I’m not sure which variant of COVID I got. For past two weeks, I’ve been experiencing worst feelings I’ve ever known. I was/am constantly tired, full of pain and unable to taste or smell stuff. I’ve been hospitalized for past four days and it’s the first day I’m off of hospital.

I’m better now. I got Remdesivir as medical treatment and doctors took a good care of me. Currently, I get tired after few minutes of activity but doctors say it’s normal. They ask me to drink liquids a lot, specially juice and water, and get Vitamin C.

They also asked me to get rest a lot and eat food (even if I’m not hungry because of the virus) because it’s essential to regain my energy.

One thing that helped me a lot during this time was my health insurance. My previous insurance was expired starting this year (Persian Jalali calendar) and I was not insured. The previous one was from family company but starting this year I was not eligible for it and I forgot to get public insurance until I was about to get hospitalized.

However, lucky us, there’s a great insurance system in this country. Every person is eligible to get medically insured by government. There are different types of insurance and people can choose between them, paying different fees based on your need but the basic plan which covers all public hospitals is free.

I signed up for the basic plan the day before I went to hospital and my insurance started the day I went to the hospital. All my bills were covered by government and I paid only 20% of the costs because of the insurance. The treatment was expensive and I would’ve face some difficulties paying all the bills without insurance.

Many people are facing a lot of difficulties during these times. The economic situation in whole world is pretty messed up and many are unemployed, facing trouble to live a normal life yet to be able to pay for expensive treatments for COVID.

I always advocated for public health insurance from government. I don’t care how some rich people may oppose it or how some people throw shitty “economic” reasons in the conversation but everybody deserves health insurance and nobody should be forced to pay a lot of money to get taken care of in hospital. Nobody should be full of stress about whether one can pay for one’s health or not.

I am proud that I live in a country with public health insurance and I will encourage everyone to vote for such system if there’s none where one lives. It’s basic human right and it’s needed for all.

Why I don’t support cases against vaccines

I read a post on Bill Gates’ blog about polio. It talks about how vaccines helped us survive the disease and easily walk. Thousands of people were infected with polio during time and lost ability to walk or even stand. The suggested cure for polio was a metal tank, an iron lung, a mechanical respirator.

Polio attacks the body’s nervous system, crippling patients. In the worst cases, the disease paralyzes their respiratory muscles and makes it difficult for them to breathe, sometimes resulting in death.

Using changes in air pressure, the iron lung pulls air in and out of a patient’s lungs, allowing them to breathe and stay alive. During the height of the polio epidemic in the U.S. in the 1940s and 1950s, rows of iron lungs filled hospital wards to treat thousands of polio patients, most of them children.

Pictures from gatesnotes.com (copyright)

Today, we don’t need iron lungs anymore as there’s an effective vaccine for it. Every person now gets vaccinated against polio and, since 1988, the world decided to eradicate the disease. Polio cases dropped since then by nearly 100 percent.

Before vaccines, more than 350 thousand people were infected in a year, facing horrible consequences and difficulties in their life but now there’s fewer than 200 cases yearly only in two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, in which extremists force people to avoid vaccines using religious propaganda.

Today, some people are spreading false information about vaccines claiming a vaccine is a conspiracy to turn people to something other than a human or vaccines are tools to impose surveillance on people. Of course some vaccines are not effective, we’ve seen them, but to induce that vaccines in general are harming people, that makes no sense.

I’ve seen the effect of vaccines on people. From influenza to polio to tetanus and Meningococcal vaccines, I’ve seen how they help people live and be healthy and I’ve seen how without them people are harmed and face difficulties, even death.

I’m not yet vaccinated against coronavirus (COVID-19) but I will be when it’s time for people my age. My grandparents and some relatives are vaccinated. They didn’t face any aftereffects. One of my relatives was vaccinated while his family were not, and I’ve seen how all of his family members got sick but he were OK. All of them recovered, happily.

Vaccines are results of scientific works, and I believe in science. People say science is always changing and is not reliable but that’s one reason I support it. Science always changes and gets updated for better. That’s why I rely on it. When it comes to vaccines, science is proven to be always working to get better, from iron lungs to polio vaccines, it’s always working to help people.

Part of this post is taken from gatesnotes.com. Check their terms of use/copyright notice.

Not everything is about improvement or skill

One time I told a friend that I enjoy editing photos, and his response was “Oh yeah? Are you any good?” and I was stymied in the moment.

I just realized today why. Pretend instead of photo editing, I had said “I really enjoy going on walks” and then he had responded “Oh, are you a pretty skilled walker?” What? That doesn’t follow.

People go on walks to feel good, not to be good. Not everything is about improvement, or skill. If I wanted to be good at photo editing I’d have to worry about composition, color theory, texture, taking care of my tools, instead of just opening random program or using a random color pen that I find in one of my glasses on my desk.

I’m bored just listening that crap, let alone doing it. If I had to be good, I would quit. I edit photos because it takes me out of myself. The end result doesn’t even really matter.

I’m sure some of you relate. That’s why we get along.

I’m gonna take some distance from social networks

There’s an update to this post.

I decided to take some distance from social networks. I’m feeling that social networks are taking too much of our lives and make us more dependable on people’s acceptance. Social networks are generally running on numbers and I’m not OK with that.

Number of followers, following, date of registration, etc. are some stupid factors that are somehow important for many people and I’m very uncomfortable with this.

So I decided to take some distance from them and only use them once in a while, not everyday. To do so, I deleted the Tusky app from my phone, which I used to send toots to my Mastodon account, and I also deleted apps I had on my desktop computer.

Now, only way I can be active is to use the web-based application they have. I’m expecting that this makes me think less about social networks and make me less active on them.

This way I can focus on my blog and make it my personal and ultimate home on internet and web, which I believe is much better. I won’t delete my accounts as I think they are not inherently bad, but somehow can and may have bad effect on me.

New year but not new me

I don’t celebrate the Gregorian new year as I was born in a Persian country with Persian celebrations. Our new year starts at Farvardin 1st, which is around March 21. It’s the start of Spring called Nowruz.

However, the world is running with the Gregorian calendar therefore it is important. My blog dating system is also set to Gregorian calendar.

I really like the term “new year new me” as it is used to express the feeling of need for changing the bad habits and replacing them with good ones. However, I think human beings, such me myself, are always trying to be better and a new year, in this matter, is just working as an mental empowering thing.

But aside from that, I think I don’t want a new me. I hope in the new year I keep fighting for justice and I keep providing what I can for the benefit of all. I hope I don’t change much and if I change, it’s for the better of all, not just me myself.

I hope my fundamentals don’t change. Human beings grow and a sign of that is that our ideas change but for now, I don’t wish a new me as my ideas and ideals are pretty great, in my mind at least.

So new year, not a new me; hopefully.