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What If You Never Get Better From Covid-19?
New York Times article, January 24 2021
A very poignant article in the New York Times over the weekend from which the above headline was taken, illustrates not only the cost in physical and mental illness the current pandemic has and potentially will have, but of interest similar scenarios that occurred in the past but were not taken seriously. An under current to the article was that the consequences of certain illnesses and/or epidemics have possibly occurred through our own body’s over-stimulation of disease fighting protocols that carry on unabated following the initial infection, or perhaps as was also suggested, to combat vestiges of infection that follow the initial infection. Unfortunately no solution was proffered, but the article did indicate that we should take these symptoms seriously in order to look for an effective treatment or treatments. This spectre for future physical and mental wellbeing that could be subsumed in the wake of the vaccine inoculations brings to mind the consequence of previous ignorance of PTDS symptoms in Vietnam-era veterans and what they went through in order to have formal recognition of their plight.
Pandemic Fallout the next PTSD?
The sheer enormity of the fallout of the COVID pandemic, in the death toll but also as per the article in the ongoing effects are consequential in their implications for societal and healthcare structures. To add further gravity to that commentary was a coincidental frontpage article in the Times dealing with a surge in teenage suicides in a Las Vegas school district related potentially to the consequence of school closures. Who would have thought going to school was a social necessity, but apparently so?
So what is the connection between these two pieces of dire information other than the negativity associated with reading negative news? It is suggested that we should be more cognizant and attentive to derivative effects following inoculations that hopefully will stem the tide of immediate pandemic deaths. Perhaps we are looking at the next stressor based form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) variant? Where PTSD is a psychiatric syndrome that traditionally has been related to exposures to terrifying and life-threatening events, we don’t yet know whether the psychological and physiological effects of the pandemic could in themselves result in PTSD-like symptoms with long-term cognitive effects. According to a study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health that discusses the interplay between emotions and cognitive process in PTSD, it is stated that PTSD symptoms “involve alterations to cognitive processes such as memory, attention, planning, and problem solving, underscoring the impact that emotion has on cognitive functioning.” The connection is that we need to be on the lookout for ourselves and others that exhibit emotional states or behaviours arising from this pandemic, that are out of the ordinary or PTSD symptomatic. Upon discovery of any of these latent symptoms, we need move quickly to obtain assistance from qualified medical practitioners, before it may be too late!
Puzzle
Find the missing number? – HINT: Series is not literal
Skills
Logical Thinking, Pattern Identification
Answer
The missing number is 42 being a number between two consecutive primes of 41 and 43, as are the other numbers in series. e.g. 3-4-5, 5-6-7, 11-12-13, 17-18-19, 29-30-31, 59-60-61, 71-72-73, 101-102-103.
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