Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "Institute of Human Anatomy" channel.

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  2. One thing in common with influenza and COVID is, both utilized the same general method of infection, via different receptors. Both invaded phagocytes, essentially infecting the very alert and first response system of the immune system. Both resulted in eventual cytokine storms that were triggered essentially by the body "noticing" that the infection wasn't being properly addressed and switching to a cytokine storm based "scorched earth" attack on the infected cells, which by then were fairly ubiquitous and beyond just phagocytes. Initially missed, in part due to some faulty reporting, cytokine storms were initially denied and hence, went unaddressed, causing the worst and most lethal of the infection's symptoms. Once realized, the storms were blunted with steroids and that became the first route of intervention. In the 1918 influenza pandemic, the mere existence of the virus was theorized and considered a wild theory that had absolutely no evidence in support of it. Cytokines were utterly unknown. We'd barely managed to develop vaccines against h. influenzae, a bacterial infection and those were actually developed in some physicians own personal laboratories! One researcher that was well respected had authored a paper proclaiming h. influenzae was the cause of the 1918 pandemic, which lead many researchers down the merry path to nowhere, but it wouldn't have helped had they been aware of the actual cause, as viral research didn't exist, there was no way to visualize the virus, no means of comprehending viral replication, it wasn't until 1931 that the electron microscope was invented, It wasn't until 1933 that influenza A was finally isolated from swine! So close, yet so far! Interestingly, in 1910, Dr Wu Lien-teh had been dispatched to manage and treat an outbreak of pneumonic plague in Manchuria and Mongolia, which ultimately claimed 60000 lives. He'd performed, unusual at the time and location, an autopsy and ascertained that it was indeed airborne and developed a filter mask, the first in use to prevent infection of its kind, which was highly successful. A French physician was dispatched to replace him and refused to use the mask, compounding that with some ethnic slurs and died within days of pneumonic plague. The doctor then insisted upon cremation of the bodies to halt the plague's spread, which was adopted and the plague swiftly ended. It took quite a lot of additional time to eventually trace the animal vector of the infection. Reports of his filter mask were widely distributed and by the 1918 influenza pandemic, were well known and most of the arguments against surrounding COVID and masking, well heard and disproved at that time, with liberty and freedom arguments, etc long exhausted and well, a hell of a lot of folks just went with masking and kept doing that not dying thing. Yet, we still managed to turn an argument over well established medical science on filtering droplets out with a simple mask into a political argument, to the detriment of all. But, it's been said, the two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
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  44. I dunno, I've said repeat a few times over the radio. The indirect fire eventually makes an impression. ;) I tend to prefer to refer to explosions visual and audible effects as "thunder, fire and brimstone". It gets the point across reasonably well. Hmmm, ignored by Hollywood? Blast cavitation injuries, avulsions from the same, hollow organ ruptures, shrapnel injuries (even on the rare occasions they hint at it, it's tiny wounds, not missing limbs, half of a head, seeing through a thorax, evisceration... Then, there's shake and bake, Willie Pete and HE quick, everyone will try to bunker in for HE, but when WP comes to visit, try to keep up with the old SOB! Movies and bullets, a bullet hits, it always goes straight. It also always has to come out to fix a problem, which is bogus, as anything needing the bullet removed also means repairing blood vessels and bones, otherwise, if it isn't damaging anything, leave it the hell alone and not injure the patient even more. Circling back to explosions, MASH did one scene well. Hawkeye was operating on a patient with a bone jutting from his body. He remarked, "Well, he doesn't need this", a nurse queried if the damage was that severe or something similar, he remarked, "No, it's not even his". Someone stepped on an antitank mine and one of his bones from his leg impaled the patient. It was a true story. Or the Afghanistan case, where an RPG round was impaling a patient. The surgeon evacuated the OR, only volunteers worked on him to remove the round from his body, just in case it detonated and killed everyone present. Next, in military situations, an explosion sends all manner of shrapnel, both from the device and whatever is nearby. Service member gets some of the shrapnel, but escapes significant injury from the blast itself. Fortunately, his body armor prevented any penetrating injuries, the ESAPI plates did need replacement and the fractures beneath were treated and healed uneventufully. Rib fractures suck, but sucking chest wounds suck even more.
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  46. I remember the nitrogen levels and protein becoming a major legal and public health matter and scandal in 2008. Milk collection locations at the time were entirely unsupervised by the PRC government and to boost product output as demand increased, unscrupulous management directed the milk be diluted and melamine added to boost nitrogen content, which would fool protein level testing. The problem being, melamine breaks down in a way to produce kidney stones, in this case, large, destructive kidney stones and oh yeah, a lot of that milk went into baby formula. "On 1 December, Xinhua reported that the Ministry of Health revised the number of victims to more than 290,000 with 51,900 hospitalized; authorities acknowledged receiving reports of 11 suspected deaths from melamine contaminated powdered milk from provinces, but officially confirmed three deaths." That's just in China, the milk was also exported and true numbers difficult to find, as it went to many developing nations. Many of the children require dialysis to survive. 17 went on trial over it, with one life sentence, two executed, the rest getting 19 years, commuted to 15 years and change. For those unfamiliar with melamine, it's used as a fire suppressant, in making plastic dinnerware (I ate from melamine plates as a kid), dry erase boards and more. Note how it's not used as a food ingredient. It's not soluble in water, so they had to add another chemical, such as formaldehyde to it (in low quantities, still not a biggie, the body makes that as well whenever it's making DNA) and they added maltodextrin, a carbohydrate to emulate milk sugar.
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