School, school, school!
It becomes an all-enveloping environment!
One HUGE goldfish bowl outside of which it is impossible to imagine anything else going on!
Doesn't take long to get involved/absorbed in the affairs of school.
And each class has its own dynamics, rituals, codes, culture.
Each lesson seems to have a different flavour to it.
Then there is the external versus the internal.
The struggle with doubts, pain, stress, uncertainty on the inside and the co-ordination, conducting and coercion as one interacts with the class ont he "outside".
When I get home I tend to fall asleep pretty quickly!
Energy levels!
G.
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ReplyDeleteHullo Gerald and Lois! I'm a "first time blogger" so don't really know what I'm doing with this, but really just wanted to say "hullo!" and to let you know I'm here with you both. Lots of love to you and your family from the Rice family. You're doing a great job at living at the mo - keep it up!Inspirational. Arn't schools wonderful places? xoxo
ReplyDeleteAn I the only person getting increasingly tired of the media beat-up of a certain virus? A mere 8 people are known to have died from it, and in the months it's been known of, less than three dozen people have been infected in the world outside of Mexico and the USA. Yet the Herald has the gall to say it's "sweeping the world" on their front page this morning. Their front page publication of the oversized picture of it is like they're shrilly crying "Yes, there really is something to be paranoid about. It really is newsworthy."
ReplyDeleteFurther, as far as I know (I'm willing to be corrected) no one outside those two countries has been seriously affected. One guy here who is supposed to have it was not only well enough to play soccer but scored a goal too. Others who are supposedly infected are saying they have symptoms from Tamiflu but not from the virus itself. That doesn't square with the NZer in Mexico who got it and said you'd certainly know if you had it.
I think I can wait until there's something to get excited about before I get excited about it. And the paranoia just isn't right.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10569508 says that as of 6am NZT today there were only 31 cases in 7 countries outside Mexico and the USA. And yet WHO are just one step away from declaring a phase 6 full-scale pandemic. Am I missing something here?
ReplyDeleteJill, welcome to the blogsite. Jill was a student at Lynfield, a year ahead of me, and was also at my first church (Valley Rd). Are you still designing landscapes, Jill?
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, welcome aboard!
G.
Um...you may be missing something, Ian (tho I am not sure what). There are probably very strict codes for how to upgrade the level of alert on these things. If Marjan checks into this, can you let us know what the story is (Marjan, my 2nd oldest sister, writes health policy for the Government). I am just hoping things don't get too contagious, as this may affect my chemo stuff when it starts.
ReplyDeleteG.
I'd like to know what constitutes an epidemic and what a pandemic in New Zealand. The Herald this morning said an average of 100 people a year die from normal flu. Would an epidemic be 200 people a year in this country, or 1,000 people a year? If it's more on the scale of the latter, would a PANdemic be on the order of 1,000 people a month? Pandemics are serious, so I would expect a LOT of people to be dropping. WHO now rates the current virus as phase 5.1, which is less than one step away from a pandemic, yet it isn't even what I would call an epidemic yet, even in Mexico.
ReplyDeleteI guess a lot depends on population density.
ReplyDeleteThere's certainly quite a dense population in Mexico City, which has 20 million people, or about five times the population of the whole of NZ, so simply multiplying our 100 general flu deaths a year by 5 probably wouldn't give a figure high enough, especially considering the probably lower standard of health care for the poor. But anyway, if they can expect 500 general flu deaths a year in the city, the 7 confirmed deaths they've actually had doesn't sound particularly significant.
ReplyDeleteWhy are so many people getting so excited? As Jim Hopkins said in his Herald column this morning, disaster is the new pornography.
And what of Egypt, which is killing 300,000 pigs when that country hasn't had a single case of this particular virus, and it can't jump from pigs to humans anyway?
NZ still has only 3 confirmed cases. I still haven't heard that they're in the agony described as "unmistakable".
Sceptical, eh?
ReplyDeleteI will be talking to my sister Marjan tomorrow, so afterwards will share her swine flu pandemic insights with you.
Cool.
ReplyDelete...stay tuned and alert and remember to sneeze into your elbow.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm quite a fan of that, except when I'm wearing short sleeves. Then I try to sneeze into my armpit, which has its own problems.
ReplyDeleteThe latest virus news is that a(!) case of human to human infection of this virus has been found in Britain (yes, a single case), which is the first I've heard of outside of North America. Since spreading between humans in multiple countries is one of the requirements of a pandemic I expect WHO to upgrade to at least phase 5.2 tomorrow.
In China a hotel's 200 guests have all been quarantined and ordered to stay put for the next week because one of them has a cold.
Egypt is following up its slaughter of all its pigs with common flu vaccinations for the (former) pig farmers and their families. The common flu vaccine offers no protection at all against the new strain.
Meanwhile, NZ's total confirmed infections stands at four. Not four hundred or four thousand. Just four.
Today the NZ Herald web site reported "Almost all infections outside Mexico have been mild, and only a handful of patients have required hospital treatment." If I was into such activity I would bet that in the same timespan last year a handful of flu sufferers would also have needed hospital treatment. But I'm not a betting man, just a deeply cynical one.
Let the madness continue.
You don't strike me as deeply cynical.
ReplyDeleteMy sister Marjan says the level of alert depends very much on the level of contagiousness (or perceived/assessed contagiousness) of the actual virus - this one perceived to be highly contagious, therefore high alert status globally.
From the TVNZ web site: "[Mexican] Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova ... said that out of 159 files on suspected flu deaths, tests showed 58 died of other causes. He said 16 deaths are confirmed as caused by the H1N1 flu and 85 are being tested."
ReplyDeleteQuite apart from (at latest count) 19 deaths from a particular cause in the whole of Mexico over the timespan not striking me as being something to worry about, it seems it's not actually the "deadly" virus that's killing the people in Mexico. Far more are dying from something else (which might explain why most people outside of Mexico testing positive have only had mild symptoms), so it seems that it's the wrong thing being tested for! We might yet have a pandemic, and not have a clue what's causing it or how contagious it is.
Or not. The media might find something else to get excited about tomorrow, so the beat-up will die its own natural death.
In the meantime, as Gerald said, sneeze into your elbow. And wash your hands.
Another estimate/extrapolation:
ReplyDeleteMexico has an estimated total population of 109 million. Simple scaling of NZ's figure of 100 flu deaths a year means I'd expect Mexico to have on the order of 2,500-2,600 flu deaths a year, which is about 7 per day. So far this particular flu has claimed about one per day there. (That was before everyone had to stay home.)
This makes me seriously wonder if it would have stayed completely under the noise level if it hadn't been tested (in a US lab) as being new and different, with genes from two animal sources as well as human. Hmmm...
Now, Egypt is a Muslim country, right? So the pigs would all be owned by the Coptic Christians? And the government is killing all the pigs (all of them!) for no scientific reason...
ReplyDelete