A Case We Should Be Curious About
I know, I must be causing a serious shock by not doing something political, but I felt that this was something we should all know about. If you’ve been keeping up with the news even just a little bit in the last decade or so, you’ve probably heard of drug resistant bacteria and viruses. Well, say hello to Candida auris, an antibiotic resistant strain of fungus that is as tenacious and infectious as a virus. For the “Lord of the Rings” fans out there, this strain is like the Uruk-Hai of infectious diseases: it does not know pain, it does not know fear, but it does know how to evolve to get around drug treatments. It will taste manflesh, and indeed already has, as it has taken the life of a man at Mount Sinai hospital. What’s making them so effective is partly a good old fashioned combo of human pride, ego, fear, ignorance, even more old fashioned, as old fashioned as you can get, evolution. Firstly, apparently simply even observable by the numbers alone, we overprescribe antibiotics in a lot of major fields, most notably in general medicine and agriculture. This is not to say that antibiotics aren’t important or that they haven’t been instrumental in saving lives, but that many medical researchers and insiders have agreed that doctors and hospitals tend to be too eager to hand out Z-Paks and such to people who don’t necessarily need them, and farms and slaughterhouses tend to spray their crops and douse their meat in swaths of antibiotics and other pathogen killers as an easy way and cheap way to kill disease in their products. This has helped a lot of would-be preventable agents by putting them in a constant environment of having to adapt to survive, which microorganisms can do at a vastly accelerated rate compared to multicellular organisms. Hence, why with in years time we now have a strain of fungus so contagious that when contracted by a patient they had to not only deep clean the room, but tear out parts of the ceiling and tiling. It also doesn’t help that hospitals all over don’t want to admit that they have had these outbreaks, for fear of being considered disease vectors, just sitting Petri dishes. It’s born out of a combined sort of fear of loss of respect and trust by the medical community and loss of foot traffic, and thus business, in a world where a lot of medicine is still privatized, gods help us all. They don’t want to necessarily share with the public for fear that they won’t understand and panic. This isn’t entirely unfounded, as even surviving patients of Candida have declined to be named or considered for further study for fear of being associated with the disease, thus also being considered a walking disease vector. I think this article takes a bit of a step over something that is probably helping it grow so well right here in the U.S., our rampant ignorance, and worse, often blatantly knowingly misinformed ideas about medicine. There’s such a climate in this country, especially surrounding medicine and treatment, of personal belief over medically proven facts, no matter how many professionals get behind them. I hate to say it, but when it comes to knowledge about health in this country, the old adage about assholes and opinions becomes very poignant. We wouldn’t have to worry about hospitals trying to cover up or deny their outbreaks if more people understood the nature of disease and how simple it is to take precaution. We wouldn’t have to be so anxious about overprescription of antibiotics if basic health information were better disseminated to people so they would understand when something is viral or bacterial and needs to be fought off, and what the body can fight on its own. Their also shouldn’t be a stigma placed on those who are, have been, or have been around those who have been ill. I mean for the sake of the gods, this is the 21st century, you’d have think we’d gotten past attitudes that had seemingly died out with the plague. Then again, that’s the problem, isn’t it? We’ve allowed our society to be so ignorant and so blasé in the face of medicine and its certainties that even the freaking plague has come back. I wish that was a joke.
-Mike R.
Making a Difference
Meet Matt Nelson. He really loves dogs.
In 2016 he started a Twitter account in which he rated dogs based on their cuteness. If you’re part of the Twitter community you have probably seen his tweets more than once on your timeline.
Fast forward to three years later and Matt’s account is a growing social media sensation with over 8 million followers. Matt doesn’t only bring warmth to the Twitter-sphere with these wholesome tweets, but he uses his platform to help dogs in need.
In the middle of 2016, Matt came across four dogs, in which three were pugs and one was an older yellow lab, who would always get dressed up for every holiday. He later learned that the older yellow lab was in the need of a doggie wheelchair but his owner didn’t have the funds to buy one. Since Matt has shared pictures of the dog in the past, he took it upon himself to help out. He shared the GoFundMe page the dog’s owner had created and was able to raise $700 in the matter of a few hours. Ever since then, Matt has continued to share GoFundMe pages for dogs in need, and each time he does he is able to reach every goal.
In September of 2018, Matt received a message on Twitter about a sweet dog named Cricket. Cricket took a bit of a tumble while he was playing at the park and tore his ACL and meniscus. The surgery and recovery process overwhelmed Cricket’s owner so they created a GoFundMe campaign with the hopes of taking away some financial stress. In less than three hours, $4,000 were raised for Cricket and his surgery thanks to Matt. For all those wondering, Cricket is doing wonderfully well now!
Over the course of three years, Matt was able to raise over $500,000 for over 80 different campaigns. Matt tells GoFundMe: “At the end of the day, I’m just elevating someone’s story by putting my own voice behind it, and everyone can do that. They may not have the same audience I do, but they can still contribute. It doesn’t always have to be dollars. It can be time. It can be effort. It can be a response. I have a follower who writes a poem for every dog. Support is not always monetary.”
In a society where social media is most commonly known to be toxic, it is nice to have people like Matt who use their platform to enrich this world with kindness and positivity. Though we may not have 8 million followers as Matt does, each person on social media has a platform. It is important to use your platform to spread light and use it to inspire others. If you are able to touch at least one soul then that it is all that matters.
– Sam
An Outcry for Bail Reform
While it is dubbed “The Department of Corrections,” it does very little to “correct” behavior—and instead opts for the path of punishment. The current system is effective at one thing: punishing the poor and rewarding the wealthy, regardless of crimes committed. Believe it or not, the majority of people in New York State jails are awaiting their trail. You have 70% of inmates who have yet to be convicted of any crime, rotting away in jail cells—as the pretrial process can span months, or even years in some cases. Why are there so many individuals in this situation? The answer is simpler than it may seem—they can’t afford to pay bail. With inmates unable to pay bail while they await trial, they are exposing themselves to a snowballing of negative consequences that are now out of their control—everything from losing their jobs, eviction from their homes, and even losing custody of their children. The “cash bail system” has become a pretty name for “extortion.” Detainees are left with little options but to take any plea deal that comes their way—whether or not they are guilty of said crime. Taking a plea deal opens an entirely new arsenal of issues for them however—as they are now faced with a tainted record that will affect their job opportunities and options in life for years to come (and not to mention the exorbitant fines that come with a conviction). We have become a country where our citizens are guilty until proven innocent—leaving no one safe. Until a reasonable resolution is reached for reform, we head down an increasingly darkening path.
-D.Y.
The World is Not a Bad Place
There is a lot of good in the world and there is a lot of kindness. But despite our best individual efforts to be good people, hatred will always scream the loudest. I do not believe the world is a bad place, but I believe that anger and hurt are louder than love and it is our collective purpose to counteract it. The reason I bring this up is because this Saturday morning, there was another attack on a synagogue. I remember the last attack. It was on a Saturday morning in October, claiming the lives of eleven Jews attending a Shabbat service at the Tree of Life synagogue in California. I remember walking to the Hillel behind campus and seeing a table of photographs with the victims’ faces and lit candles. I remember being devastated, not because I knew any of them, but because it was such a needless tragedy, I remember feeling grateful that the shooting was not in my synagogue. And then I remember feeling fear, that it could have been. And slowly time passed and their portraits were removed from the Hillel and I forgot. But on the morning of April 27- six months to the day after the Pittsburgh shooting- a man opened fire on Chabad of Poway.
The gunman, John Earnest, came into the synagogue yelling anti-Semitic slurs and wielding an automatic rifle. He killed one woman and injured three others. The attack happened on the Shabbat of the last day of Passover- ironically, a holiday which celebrates Jewish freedom. But the truth is, Jews will never be free as long as anti-Semitism persists. No person is free in a world where they are so hated their lives are at stake. This goes beyond Jews- this is true of all persecuted people. A country’s laws may protect a group from persecution, but hatred passed down through generations will always jeopardize those people’s lives. The attack on the Chabad of Poway has been one in a recent string of many incidents of violence in places of worship. The shooting in the New Zealand mosques and the bombings in the Church of Sri Lanka were just the most recent and most publicized of these attacks.
The attack in the Chabad of Poway was a hate crime. John Earnest screamed that Jews were “ruining the world” as he stormed into the synagogue. Forty to sixty people were in the room, including Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein who was shot first. The rabbi scrambled to take the children in the congregation outside and continued his prayer while they waited for reinforcements, recalling a time during the Holocaust in which Jews were gunned down and giving the people courage to be strong. In a statement to the New York Times, Rabbi Goldstein said: “I guarantee you, we will not be intimidated or deterred by terror: Terror will not win.”
For me, the synagogue is a place of family and closeness. I have never been a religious person, and I have never felt a particular kinship to God- but in our local synagogue I have felt the overwhelming sense of family and oneness. To think that something like this could happen to my family is horrific. To think that something like this could happen to anyone, anywhere is terrifying. To understand- and I mean truly understand, not acknowledge in a detached way but to deeply and sorrowfully understand- that hatred for those unlike ourselves runs so deep it could bring one to murder is the saddest reconciliation I have had to make. There is nothing spectacular about this this story. It has happened before and it will happen again. It will happen anywhere at any time and we are powerless to stop it. There is little we can do but hope- always hope- that we will not be the ones to fall victim. But while we cannot stop these hate crimes, we can make a personal effort to reject the prejudices that we hold on to. We can be kind to each other and open-minded. We can recognize when others are hurting and reach out to help. We can teach our children to be better and hope that they will teach their children to be better. We can plant the seeds in our lives for generations of love and acceptance. We can be brave and we can fight- at the most individual level- and can connect despite our differences. If we really make an effort to overcome our individual prejudices, we can begin to build a world where terror does not win.
-Sophie
The Junction Journal 