Outrageous

It’s all the outrage these days to be outraged about things. It’s driven by social media, and fuelled by the websites of the local tabloids and the brain-dead, act-first-don’t-think-later people who populate those places. It seems that people are almost going looking for things to become upset by, a sort of Münchhausen’s Syndrome for the modern generation. And the things that people are getting outraged by are getting smaller, pettier and ever more difficult to predict.

We had this over a misread price label, we had outrage over the outrage over the reaction (or lack of reaction) to the Paris attacks, we’ve had people trying (but not really succeeding) to light outrage fires, and we’re going to have outrage over something else today. Probably.

But I got thinking (foolishly) about the stuff that we haven’t had outrage over yet. Stuff that, given the current climate for instant up-in-arms-ism, you’d have thought would have set the masses off.

  • The carbon footprint of the light aircraft that flies over Cape Town during rush hour, and over Newlands during rugby and cricket matches, towing a big advertising banner behind it.
  • The company that it advertises on the big advertising banner it tows behind it 90% of the time, which is a lap-dancing club.
  • People wasting water. As the so-called “water crisis” bites harder in SA, why has no-one come up with the #watershaming hashtag yet? When we had no electricity, people were quick to point out those being wasteful. With water shortages in 4 (is it 5?) provinces already, why has the same not happened with water?
  • The police vans that push their way through the traffic on the M3 each morning, taking inmates from Pollsmoor prison to court.
  • iTunes. All of it.

And that’s just for starters.

I’m both surprised and irritated that these things haven’t been considered adequate fodder for widespread outrage. Not least because I’d like to see something done about iTunes.

Superbugs

While the events of the past few days may make the apocalypse seem to be coming via other means, I still feel that climate change and the terrorists won’t knock us off quickly enough for us to avoid death by the scourge of antibiotic resistance.

Here’s a Cape Talk interview with the WHO’s Dr Marc Sprenger on the pisspoor Kieno Kammies show this morning.

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But it seems that a lot of people simply don’t understand what a antibiotic resistance and superbugs are. Research has shown that there are two main categories of misunderstanding here. Both are bad, but you can completely understand the confusion of the 20% of people who have simply misheard the word and believe that it’s actually a “Superb Hug”. That wouldn’t be bad at all. It would be… well… superb. And a hug. Everyone loves hugs. Especially superb ones.

That’s not going to kill you.

The other 80% of those who don’t get what antibiotic resistance is, think that it’s the patient who becomes resistant to the antibiotic:

The researchers asked them about it and got blank faces in response. When probed—and here’s the bit that really shocked me—almost everyone assumed that it’s the person who becomes resistant to antibiotics, not the microbes. You take enough of something, they reasoned, and your body gets used to it and builds up a tolerance. It’s such an intuitive idea that even after they read simple descriptions that explained how bacteria become resistant, they reverted to the resistant-patient idea.

I hope his probe was properly sterilised between interviews.
The implication of this misconception is:

…a pretty serious one, because some people reasoned that if they don’t finish their courses, they’re less likely to become “resistant.” Ironically, that decision could increase the odds of developing an actual drug-resistant infection by leaving a pool of surviving microbes that have experienced and withstood the antibiotics.

Even the term “Superbugs” was described as misleading. Oh dear. I’ve buggered up the title of my post. Properly.

The issues here seem to be much greater than merely the apparent apathy over the dangers of antibiotic resistance, or, as we’re now suggested to describe it: “drug-resistant infection”.

If you change the noun to infections or germs, and make resistant the adjective, you make a huge difference to people’s ability to work out what’s going on. It’s opened my eyes to how much more research we need to be doing on public-health communication.

The problem is that people don’t even understand the concept of what they supposed to be apathetic about. And if we’re ever going to get them to be apathetic about it (and don’t worry, yes, this is merely the first step of my master plan), then we, as microbiologists and healthcare professionals, need to remedy that.

Even though, soon, we’re not going to be able to remedy anything else.

Mog’s Christmas Calamity

Just as readers in the UK (and there are several, or more) may not have been aware of Zebra & Giraffe’s new single, which I shared yesterday, so readers in SA (yes, I haz them too) might miss the Sainsbury’s Xmas ad if I don’t share it on here. So, here we go:

Aww. What a wonderful story. And what a lucky cat.

The John Lewis Man on the Moon ad which I shared last week has come in for a lot of criticism via the social media mob (see how zeitgeist I am?), namely because it set out to highlight the plight of elderly people who might be lonely at Christmas time, but it didn’t come for free. In fact, apparently allegedly, it cost £7 million to make: cue angry people telling us that the money would have been better donated to charities helping elderly people to be less lonely this Christmas. And maybe it would, but that’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works. That money belongs to John Lewis, and – maybe you need to take a seat before I reveal this next fact, folks – they can do whatever the fuck they like with it. It’s not their responsibility to make sure that old people aren’t lonely this Christmas. It’s not specifically anyone’s responsibility, (which is basically the root of the whole problem). But people in glass houses etc: What were you doing about it before the mildly creepy Man on the Moon made you realise that some elderly people might be lonely this Christmas? What are you doing about it now?

Hmm. Exactly.

I now await, with some anticipation, those same individuals going after Sainsbury’s, whining that they could have spent their advertising budget on buying smoke alarms for apparently otherwise fairly well-off households in middle England. Or that the Ad Wizard should have saved his travel budget and not rented that casino, instead providing a Slovenian dancing girl and a bottle of budget brandy to everyone in Struisbaai, or some equally random SA village. (Obviously, while I disagree with the reasoning behind this argument, I’d actually love to see the results were it actually to be done) (as opposed to the smoke alarm thing, which would be dull.)

Whatever. I tire of this constant requirement to find fault with anything and everything.

Why can’t we just enjoy these ads for what they are: Mog’s Christmas Calamity for being a wholly implausible but eventually rather endearing story of community spirit at Christmas time, and Man on the Moon for being a rather dodgy looking, apparently undead pensioner spying on a young girl with a hugely powerful optical device?

Future patients of UCT medical student “totally fine” with his exam preparation techniques

The future patients of a UCT medical student have declared that they are “totally fine” with the wacky way that he prepares – or rather doesn’t prepare – for his end of year exams.

While most students have their heads buried in textbooks in the lead up to the examination period, Thandani took to social media platform Twitter and shared the exciting news that wasn’t ready for any of the three examinations he took earlier this week. Indeed, for his final exam, he “literally didn’t touch any of the work”, instead choosing to rely on a helpful bye from a higher power, after a quiet word from his mother.

Fullscreen capture 2015-11-11 103213 AM.bmpHowever, potential future patients of Thandani who we interviewed suggested that they were “totally fine” with his apparent disregard for their health and well-being. Around half of them said that when visiting Dr Thandani in the future, they would go in hoping that GOD would perform a miracle for them, while the others merely suggested that they would check his recent timetable and avoid consulting him on any of the work his class had covered this semester, “just to be on the safe side”.

We spoke with a senior lecturer at UCT and she seemed confused by our attitude to Thandani’s apparent nonchalance:

“Well of course we tell students not to study. GOD will carry them through their exams, as long as they pray hard enough. It’s standard procedure in the department.”

When we expressed our alarm at the way medicine was being taught at UCT, she told us that we had actually ended up in the Theology Department:

“No, don’t worry. That often happens. Easy mistake to make. Medicine is just along the corridor – third door on the left. They do proper studying and stuff down there. All a bit technical for me.”

Sadly there was no-one available from the Medicine Department to speak to us as they were all at a homeopathy seminar. We are still trying to contact them, so please expect some future revision to this post.

Which is more than you’ll get from Thandani.

Ban #SlideTheCity? No.

OK. Long story short:

  1. There’s an event coming up this summer in SA called “Slide The City”.
  2. It makes use of some really long (300m+) inflatable slides for people to slide down streets in various cities.
  3. It uses water to make the slides slippy.
  4. We don’t have huge amounts of water in SA right now.

If you look at the facts above, then Slide The City (STC) – while still sounding like a whole lot of fun – doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, does it? And that’s why there are not one but two online petitions calling for it to be banned. I’m not helping you out by linking to them, but I will share the fact that one of them is called: Stop the City of Cape Town From Allowing Slide the City Events During a National Water Crisis. All the facts, all in one catchy title. Perfection.

Except that Cape Town and South Africa have issues with potable water. And STC doesn’t use any potable water. Here’s city spokesperson Priya Reddy:

“Non-potable spring water is being provided. Forty kilolitres charged at the applicable tariff will be transported to the organisers’ holding pool by tanker. Treatment of the spring water will be performed by the organisers on site.

We applaud the public’s rightful concern over the prospect of wasteful consumption of our most precious resource, but would like to assure them that the use of drinking water for this event was never contemplated.”

40 kilolitres isn’t actaully a lot of water, either. It’s about what one average household uses in a month. I’m not saying that we should waste 40 kilolitres just for the sake of it, but I can’t help but think that there might be better ways of saving water than going lumbering after a single event in Cape Town.
A single event which re-circulates its water so as not to waste any, and then gives it back at the end of the day:

In Cape Town, Johannesburg, Nelspruit, Knysna, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth, the water is put through the filtration system and then put into tankers and delivered to the municipality to be used where they need it most.

Could it… could it really be that someone hasn’t actually done any homework before launching an online petition?
Could it?

As someone wise commented earlier:


Still, online lynch mobs petitions can sometimes carry a disproportionate amount of weight, so maybe the City of Cape Town will take note. Once they’ve removed the large plank from their own eye, that is:

Fullscreen capture 2015-11-10 110658 AM.bmp   Fullscreen capture 2015-11-10 110802 AM.bmp   Fullscreen capture 2015-11-10 110742 AM.bmp
Just a sample of their twitter feed this morning. And I’d happily wager that any of these burst water pipes wasted more water than any Slide The City event.

Not that I am suggesting the just because water is being wasted somewhere, that makes it ok to waste more. Not at all. In fact, the fact that so much water is being lost to burst pipes and naughty people should encourage each of us to use water more sparingly.

But going after Slide The City, who are providing entertainment for literally thousands of people at a very, very limited cost to the environment? I’m sorry, but that just smacks of an ill-informed, cheap points scoring exercise.

Disclaimer: 6000 miles… has no affiliation with Slide The City. I just wish people would actually think before they sign online petitions.

UPDATE: Slide The City duly cancelled.