I just got the update on what I think is Winter Storm Gerri. The National Weather Service has now upgraded this catastrophe in our area to a Blizzard Warning.
Iowa is getting a one, two punch from winter storms Finn and Gerri. We hardly got a break from Finn’s left hook before Gerri’s right cross connected.
This morning we scraped off less than an inch of new snow that fell last night. We might get from 8-12 inches of new snow. Wind gusts could be up to 50 mph with dangerous wind chills over the next several days. The party gets started late tonight.
If you want to drive anywhere, I suggest a Big Wheel race around your living room.
Okay, we got about 14 inches of snow from Winter Storm Finn, but that doesn’t begin to convey the human meaning of it.
I’m going to call digging out from all that snow a Sisyphean labor. You don’t hear that term much, but it means a chore that never seems to end while you’re doing it. The short story about Sisyphus comes from Greek mythology.
Sisyphus was the king of Corinth. Just to be clear, it generally doesn’t snow in Corinth. One day, King Sisyphus saw a splendid, mighty eagle carrying a beautiful maiden to a nearby island (where it also does not snow). A river god named Asopus told him that his daughter had been abducted, but not by extraterrestrials. Sisyphus suspected Zeus, who had never seen a snow shovel, if you can imagine that. Like a fool, Sisyphus asked Zeus to help him find her. Because Zeus hated nosy mortals who aren’t supposed to know what the boss god is up to, he banished Sisyphus to Hades where he had to roll a giant rock uphill which always rolled back downhill (Hamilton, Edith. 1942. Mythology. New York: Little Brown and Company).
Anybody who knows what it’s like to try to shovel walks and driveways during a horizontal snowstorm knows that for every shovelful of snow you remove, twice that amount refills the space you empty almost immediately. You’d have to stay out in the snowstorm forever to keep up. It’s the definition of a Sisyphean labor.
And that’s why Sena and I left about a third of our driveway uncleared last night because we were exhausted. We’d been out in that storm shoveling all day since early morning. We ached everywhere and didn’t have much to show for it.
This morning we were up early again, anticipating trying to clear the driveway and again shovel all the walks, the curb ramp, the trees and whatnot.
The driveway had been cleared, probably sometime during the night, by a good Samaritan we’ll probably never know for sure. We could tell by the telltale friction wheel tracks, and the perfectly circular mark of the machine’s turning radius. A path to our curbside mailbox had also been cleared.
We are grateful. The only big job left was to clear the curb ramp, across which was a hip high mountain range of snow left by the city plow. It was also blocked by a large pickup truck. The driver must have seen us and he hurried over from where he was working with a crew building a house. He was more than happy to move it—although I was not so happy when I found out how hard we had to work to clear the curb ramp. If you start from the top, the snow spreads out over the mountain. If you start from the bottom, the snow from the top falls down. I would call that Sisyphean labor.
Anyway, we’re waiting for the next disaster, which I think the meteorologists are calling Winter Storm Gerri. They’re promising 4 inches of new snow by Friday. It almost sounds like light duty.
Holy horizontal, heavy, wet, driving snow. At least you could make great snowballs for juggling! I got up around 4 in the morning to shovel. Sena came out a little later and we took shifts a couple of times. I still had to run back out again in the mid-afternoon to clear away what’s probably going to turn out to be better than a foot of snow.
The plows plugged our driveways whenever they felt like it. But we took a break so I could make the best snowballs ever and juggled them. I wore a balaclava which got all twisted on my head so that I ended up able to see out of just my right eye—the one I had surgery on for a torn retina.
Iowa City has web pages for the rules on snow removal by the city plows and by residents.
You can see the pdf of the map for residential street priorities for snow removal.
Shoveling snow or using a heavy snow blower can be hazardous to your health. There is guidance from the National Safety Council about how to remove snow. On the other hand, there are definite rules about clearing snow from your sidewalk.
There are no rules against juggling snowballs that I know of.
The National Weather Service has a Winter Storm Watch out for several counties in Iowa, starting Monday evening, January 8, 2024 through Wednesday evening. There’s a possibility of 8-13 inches of snow and blustery winds.
I finally watched the movie “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” the other night. It was released in 2005 and based on Douglas Adams’ book of the same title. In fact, he co-wrote the screenplay. A lot of it was not in the book. I thought a couple of scenes were noteworthy and pretty funny. I made connections to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. annual observance, which is this month.
One of them was the Point of View Gun. It’s probably unfortunate that the main prop was a gun, but hey, it was a ray gun. It didn’t kill anyone and in fact, it caused the person “shot” with it to be able to understand the perspective of another person. It was just temporary, but for a short while it enabled persons or extraterrestrials to understand another’s point of view. It was designed by the Intergalactic Consortium of Angry Housewives to influence their husbands to understand them better.
One of Dr. Martin Luther King’s main points was how important it is to try to understand and validate someone else’s point of view.
One drawback of the Point of View gun (besides the obvious associations with gun violence) was that the effect was specific to whoever was using it. So, when the ultra-maladjusted robot Marvin mowed down a gang of Vogons (hideous and cruel extraterrestrial bureaucrats who destroyed Earth in order to make room for an intergalactic bypass), they all collapsed from depression.
The other scene I thought was funny was the Vogon planet’s slap-happy encounter between the heroes and the creatures shaped like spatulas that popped out of the ground and smacked anyone in the face who had an idea.
I didn’t think the movie was nearly as good as Adams’ book. But I wonder if you could cross the spatula creatures with the Point of View gun that would take the perspective-taking power of the gun and give it to the spatula creatures who would slap you silly whenever you failed to even try to understand another’s point of view. I could use that kind of a slap sometimes.
It’s remarkable the connections you could make between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
“National test positivity, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations for influenza continue to increase. Influenza A(H1N1) is the predominant influenza virus circulating although influenza A(H3N2) and influenza B viruses are also being reported.
RSV-associated hospitalization rates remain elevated among young children and are increasing among older adults; of note, only 15.9% of adults 60+ report having received an RSV vaccine.
National vaccination coverage for COVID-19, influenza, and RSV vaccines increased slightly for children and adults compared to the previous week and remains low for both groups.”
However, the overall respiratory illness rates have gone from “moderate” to “low” in Iowa.
I saw the JAMA article on intranasal vaccines research for Covid-19. It starts off pretty supportive of the principle. However, at the bottom of the article, the outlook looks pretty stable for injectable vaccines for at least a good long while.
It’s an interesting read. Skip to the Many Questions section:
How these experimental mucosal vaccines stack up against mRNA vaccines, considered the standard of care, remains to be seen, Beigel noted. The NIAID intends to conduct phase 2 trials that would compare mucosal and mRNA vaccines head-to-head, “so you’d know for certain what you’re trading off,” he said.
Ideally, a mucosal vaccine would generate as good a systemic immune response as an mRNA vaccine as well as a robust mucosal immune response. But an excellent mucosal immune response might make up for a bit of a decline in the systemic immune response, Beigel explained. Perhaps a vaccine inhaled through the mouth and into the lungs could provide the best of both worlds—strong mucosal and systemic immunity—but there are no data yet to support that theory, he said.
“Everyone knows we need a better vaccine and would really like it if we could get something that interrupts transmission and stops even mild disease,” Beigel said. “Whether that’s attainable or not, we don’t know.”
I’m not knocking the concept by suggesting you read the Conflict of Interest Disclosures.
Reference:
Rubin R. Up the Nose and Down the Windpipe May Be the Path to New and Improved COVID-19 Vaccines. JAMA. Published online December 06, 2023. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.0644
This is National Influenza Vaccination Week (Dec. 4-8, 2023) and the CDC word is:
“National Influenza Vaccination Week (NIVW) is a critical opportunity to remind everyone 6 months and older that there’s still time to protect themselves and their loved ones from flu this flu season by getting their annual flu vaccine if they have not already. CDC data shows that flu vaccination coverage was lower last season, especially among certain higher risk groups, such as pregnant people and children. When you get a flu vaccine, you reduce your risk of illness, and flu-related hospitalization if you do get sick. This week is meant to remind people that there is still time to benefit from the first and most important action in preventing flu illness and potentially serious flu complications: get a flu vaccine today. Check out CDC’s NIVW toolkit for more shareable resources and content.”
It’s also big news that a recent CDC co-authored study showed strong evidence for flu vaccine effectiveness. Among the university medical centers participating in the study was the University of Iowa Hospitals.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 