I remember the story of "9-enders" (aged twenty-nine, thirty-nine, fifty-nine) who are much more enthusiastic to run their first marathon. In many ways, the left-digit bias reinforces our tendency to categorize continuous variables on the basis of the left-most numeric digit.
The susceptibility of our brains to fall into the trap of heuristics or hard-wired mental shortcuts is common. It can affect many of us. And we (and by we I mean runners, customers, parents, and doctors) tend to be affected without being aware of the cognitive biases.
Hey, I just found out doctors are also making clinical decisions with left-digit bias. For those of you who think high-tech physicians are awesome in calculating the risk-benefit trade-off to manage patients with acute heart attack, go and read the recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Based on data of patients who were admitted to hospital with acute myocardial infarction over six years, those admitted in the 2 weeks after their 80th birthday were significantly less likely to undergo bypass surgery than those who were admitted in the 2 weeks before their 80th birthday.
The creepy reason of your being turned down for a life-saving heart surgery, in short, could have simply been the way you're categorized as being "in your 80s" rather than "in your 70s", and that, in turn, is a matter of few weeks' difference in your birthday.
Amen.
Friday, February 28, 2020
Sunday, February 23, 2020
Marathon
First, a disclaimer. After reading this blog, you don't have to follow my type of "workouts."
Entertaining the thought of prescribing the same training intensity for runners, as I have recently learned from reading Hansons First Marathon, is the surefire way to let old injury rear its ugly head. Overzealous goal means taking two steps back for every step forward.
Yes. I asked myself question to get a clearer handle on my natural abilities. That's going to differ for individual. Let me say, with all the moderation I can summon: I am destined to work with minimal requirement of calories and drinks.
That is a crucial reason for my natural proclivity to work in the hospital high-risk areas where patients with suspected or confirmed coronavirus infection are staying. To handle the outbreak, doctors working with these patients are advised to wear the protective N95 masks. They're designed to protect both healthcare workers and patients, but are now in short supply. When I wear the N95 mask, I don't have to discard it after seeing each patient as long as it isn't contaminated or soiled. With little personal need to eat or drink during working hours myself, I have not much need to replace the mask. The truth is, I worked for almost ten hours yesterday with one single N95 mask.
This is not to say, of course, that we should be frivolous about infection control. Nor is my story meant to suggest that we permit hazardous working environment. Rather, this reminds us that each and everyone of us can check how to contribute in his or her own manner.
Know yourself. At your own pace. Don't force others to follow.
Entertaining the thought of prescribing the same training intensity for runners, as I have recently learned from reading Hansons First Marathon, is the surefire way to let old injury rear its ugly head. Overzealous goal means taking two steps back for every step forward.
Yes. I asked myself question to get a clearer handle on my natural abilities. That's going to differ for individual. Let me say, with all the moderation I can summon: I am destined to work with minimal requirement of calories and drinks.
That is a crucial reason for my natural proclivity to work in the hospital high-risk areas where patients with suspected or confirmed coronavirus infection are staying. To handle the outbreak, doctors working with these patients are advised to wear the protective N95 masks. They're designed to protect both healthcare workers and patients, but are now in short supply. When I wear the N95 mask, I don't have to discard it after seeing each patient as long as it isn't contaminated or soiled. With little personal need to eat or drink during working hours myself, I have not much need to replace the mask. The truth is, I worked for almost ten hours yesterday with one single N95 mask.
This is not to say, of course, that we should be frivolous about infection control. Nor is my story meant to suggest that we permit hazardous working environment. Rather, this reminds us that each and everyone of us can check how to contribute in his or her own manner.
Know yourself. At your own pace. Don't force others to follow.
Sunday, February 9, 2020
Ventilation
Has the thought ever crossed your mind that you might have been ruled by a government getting every opportunity to fracture the relationship with the citizens? Me neither. Not until now.
The city I grew up in had been smashed.
I do not remember since when we'd been having a dreary and oppressive sense of being suffocated by tear gas. Nothing ever had been tried to restore the order and trust - except you count closing things. The government closed train and traffic service. Next, they closed their eyes. And then ears.
That's smart, and you'd be fine … if you're kept in the dark. Unfortunately, the government have closed almost everything except the border checkpoints. When a deadly coronavirus is circulating in Wuhan, our government closes everything - ears and eyes included - except complete closing of traffic from China to minimize the risk of spreading coronavirus.
One might think that a government should work endlessly to safeguard the citizens' rights, rights that belong to them, rights to live, rights to live without fear. But not here. Not even when the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has gone up more then tenfold in a week. Not even when thousands of medical workers went on strike in an attempt to force the border closing.
To this day I have no idea how all these could have happened to us.
Trust in one's government, after all, is the worst to lose, is it not?
The city I grew up in had been smashed.
I do not remember since when we'd been having a dreary and oppressive sense of being suffocated by tear gas. Nothing ever had been tried to restore the order and trust - except you count closing things. The government closed train and traffic service. Next, they closed their eyes. And then ears.
That's smart, and you'd be fine … if you're kept in the dark. Unfortunately, the government have closed almost everything except the border checkpoints. When a deadly coronavirus is circulating in Wuhan, our government closes everything - ears and eyes included - except complete closing of traffic from China to minimize the risk of spreading coronavirus.
One might think that a government should work endlessly to safeguard the citizens' rights, rights that belong to them, rights to live, rights to live without fear. But not here. Not even when the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has gone up more then tenfold in a week. Not even when thousands of medical workers went on strike in an attempt to force the border closing.
To this day I have no idea how all these could have happened to us.
Trust in one's government, after all, is the worst to lose, is it not?
Sunday, February 2, 2020
Marsh
“What comes after twenty-nine?”
That’s a question raised by Kya, a thirteen-year-old girl who knew more about tides, snow geese and eagles than counting to thirty.
I was reading Where the Crawdads Sing on my Portugal trip, during which we had birdwatching activity at the Tagus estuary, a wetland area similar to where Kya grew up. She learned layers of life - squiggly sand crabs, mud-waddling crayfish, waterfowl - but not a single word because she didn’t attend school.
Kya was abandoned by her mum, siblings one by one and then her dad, shouldering all chores - this little piggy went to market.
No one would take care of Kya. Except herself.
The only way she could make ends meet was to slip out with a bucket and claw knife in the wee hours, squatting in mud to collect mussels. To stay ahead of the other mussel pickers, Kya headed to the marsh by candle or moon, and even added oysters to her catch.
That’s real tough mussel money to earn. I can't imagine how I could have survived in her shoes. Oh, by the way, she walked barefoot and could not afford shoes.
Which is why most of us have a love-hate with helicopter parenting style. A matter of independence versus hyper-sheltering. Honestly, most parents never really want to be too harsh. And who wishes to raise a Kya? I don't either. And fair enough. But it's be irrevocably satisfying, perhaps even gratifying, to see my daughter waking up around seven every morning cooking breakfast during our Portugal stay.
That’s a question raised by Kya, a thirteen-year-old girl who knew more about tides, snow geese and eagles than counting to thirty.
I was reading Where the Crawdads Sing on my Portugal trip, during which we had birdwatching activity at the Tagus estuary, a wetland area similar to where Kya grew up. She learned layers of life - squiggly sand crabs, mud-waddling crayfish, waterfowl - but not a single word because she didn’t attend school.
Kya was abandoned by her mum, siblings one by one and then her dad, shouldering all chores - this little piggy went to market.
No one would take care of Kya. Except herself.
The only way she could make ends meet was to slip out with a bucket and claw knife in the wee hours, squatting in mud to collect mussels. To stay ahead of the other mussel pickers, Kya headed to the marsh by candle or moon, and even added oysters to her catch.
That’s real tough mussel money to earn. I can't imagine how I could have survived in her shoes. Oh, by the way, she walked barefoot and could not afford shoes.
Which is why most of us have a love-hate with helicopter parenting style. A matter of independence versus hyper-sheltering. Honestly, most parents never really want to be too harsh. And who wishes to raise a Kya? I don't either. And fair enough. But it's be irrevocably satisfying, perhaps even gratifying, to see my daughter waking up around seven every morning cooking breakfast during our Portugal stay.
Friday, January 24, 2020
Saga
The unpredictable and arbitrary rages of a novel coronavirus make any society, no matter how peaceful, into a potential minefield. Ours has been in bedlam even before the landing of this virus. This sounds like an extra blow of tornado during a heavy snowstorm.
The city shook.
I started my family trip two days after the news of two patients diagnosed with the China coronavirus in Hong Kong. It felt frustrating and spoke to some truth I couldn’t express: survivor’s guilt. It reminded me the most recent social upheavals coinciding with my summer Croatia vacation. And then my overseas training in Montreal when SARS struck the city more than a decade ago.
That memory of paralysing SARS could have repeatedly retuned to my colleagues over the years. I wasn’t in the battlefield and that makes the misery burn less intensely in my memory.
But our homeland is close to the heart of mine. I’m away and will be back one week later.
It will be, I knew, my turn.
The city shook.
I started my family trip two days after the news of two patients diagnosed with the China coronavirus in Hong Kong. It felt frustrating and spoke to some truth I couldn’t express: survivor’s guilt. It reminded me the most recent social upheavals coinciding with my summer Croatia vacation. And then my overseas training in Montreal when SARS struck the city more than a decade ago.
That memory of paralysing SARS could have repeatedly retuned to my colleagues over the years. I wasn’t in the battlefield and that makes the misery burn less intensely in my memory.
But our homeland is close to the heart of mine. I’m away and will be back one week later.
It will be, I knew, my turn.
Monday, January 13, 2020
Werewolf
Everyone has to talk to strangers and deal with uncertainty, and I am no different. Even if you don't frequent pubs or parties, you might have been invited to play a game Werewolf recently.
That's a popular social deduction game in which you're being assigned different identities. Everyone else becomes a stranger. Then, little by little, night by night, you will have to figure out who is who. It's when, and only when, the villagers find out the werewolves without being killed, the game ends.
The tricky part of the game is, more often than not, you won't be able to decipher the identity of strangers. And that's no small thing. Werewolf kills. Ultimately, each player is killed by the werewolf. The villagers all die, and nobody is left alive.
Nobody, that is, but werewolves. Uh-oh.
Which brings me, somewhat uncomfortably, to Malcolm Gladwell's new book Talking to Strangers.
In no way am I suggesting that I made a mistake in choosing his book. I don't, and you won't. Gladwell is razor sharp. What made me uncomfortable is Gladwell's narrative of Sandra Bland, a young African American who drove from Chicago to start a new job, but was then pulled over by a police officer Brian Encinia. The white police officer first told her that she had failed to signal a lane change, and then challenged her to put out her cigarette. It's only a cigarette. But Encinia got angry and forced her to step out of the car, without good reason. He yanked her out, slapped her, and then arrested her.
I know: that's ridiculous to arrest someone who failed to signal a lane change and was smoking inside her own car. Seriously, what kind of bully is this? But hear me out. The truth is, Sandra Bland was taken into custody on felony assault charges. Three days later she was found dead in her cell, hanging from a noose fashioned from a plastic bag.
That is what happened to one of the tragic citizens who died because the police was making no sense of a stranger.
That's a popular social deduction game in which you're being assigned different identities. Everyone else becomes a stranger. Then, little by little, night by night, you will have to figure out who is who. It's when, and only when, the villagers find out the werewolves without being killed, the game ends.
The tricky part of the game is, more often than not, you won't be able to decipher the identity of strangers. And that's no small thing. Werewolf kills. Ultimately, each player is killed by the werewolf. The villagers all die, and nobody is left alive.
Nobody, that is, but werewolves. Uh-oh.
Which brings me, somewhat uncomfortably, to Malcolm Gladwell's new book Talking to Strangers.
In no way am I suggesting that I made a mistake in choosing his book. I don't, and you won't. Gladwell is razor sharp. What made me uncomfortable is Gladwell's narrative of Sandra Bland, a young African American who drove from Chicago to start a new job, but was then pulled over by a police officer Brian Encinia. The white police officer first told her that she had failed to signal a lane change, and then challenged her to put out her cigarette. It's only a cigarette. But Encinia got angry and forced her to step out of the car, without good reason. He yanked her out, slapped her, and then arrested her.
I know: that's ridiculous to arrest someone who failed to signal a lane change and was smoking inside her own car. Seriously, what kind of bully is this? But hear me out. The truth is, Sandra Bland was taken into custody on felony assault charges. Three days later she was found dead in her cell, hanging from a noose fashioned from a plastic bag.
That is what happened to one of the tragic citizens who died because the police was making no sense of a stranger.
Saturday, January 11, 2020
Lifespan
Many friends of mine blew out the candles on their fiftieth birthday cakes this year. It'll be my turn soon.
Now that I've lived for nearly half a century, one of my birthday wishes would be having one less candle on the cake each year. I am not the only one who dreams about longevity, of course. There are lots of us aiming to stop the ticking clock.
For heaven’s sake, how?
One grows old, but never grows tired of looking up elixir or recipes of youth.
For David Sinclair, an acclaimed Harvard Medical School geneticist, we don't have to think of aging as an inevitable part of life. He remained young like Peter Pan when he wrote the masterpiece Lifespan at the age of 50.
After years of researching aging, Dr. Sinclair was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people. If there is one piece of advice he can offer, one surefire way to stay healthy longer and get younger is this: eat less.
Oh, this reminds me of a big fan of fasting. That's me. I love the recent New England Journal of Medicine review article on the link between periodic fasting (or eating in a 6-hour period daily) and extended lifespan. I thought, Wow, it's good news. Now there's a strong reason why I skip lunch proudly.
Now that I've lived for nearly half a century, one of my birthday wishes would be having one less candle on the cake each year. I am not the only one who dreams about longevity, of course. There are lots of us aiming to stop the ticking clock.
For heaven’s sake, how?
One grows old, but never grows tired of looking up elixir or recipes of youth.
For David Sinclair, an acclaimed Harvard Medical School geneticist, we don't have to think of aging as an inevitable part of life. He remained young like Peter Pan when he wrote the masterpiece Lifespan at the age of 50.
After years of researching aging, Dr. Sinclair was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people. If there is one piece of advice he can offer, one surefire way to stay healthy longer and get younger is this: eat less.
Oh, this reminds me of a big fan of fasting. That's me. I love the recent New England Journal of Medicine review article on the link between periodic fasting (or eating in a 6-hour period daily) and extended lifespan. I thought, Wow, it's good news. Now there's a strong reason why I skip lunch proudly.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
