Author: InsideMyMind

Processing The Loss Of My First Dog

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Cooper was our first family dog. I remember how excited I was when my parents finally folded and said yes to a dog. My brother and I were harassing them for about a decade until they agreed it was time to bring home an adorable little brown puppy. Cooper was a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. I remember people always assuming he was a chocolate lab, but any Chessie owner will be quick to correct you. Not because they are offended, but because they are drastically different dogs, with drastically different temperaments. That breed is not for the faint of heart and they require rigorous training due to their stubbornness. Sometimes you have to rationalize their bad behavior by saying something like, “I swear he never does this,” when in fact, he always does that. Chessie’s are tough, resilient, and hard headed creatures. Cooper would swim in ice water ponds in the winter time and cry when we told him it was time to go home. He would spend most of his days outside exploring the woods, smelling all the smells nature had to offer. He was infamously known for having an orange ball in his mouth at all times, somewhat like a pacifier, to soothe him when his brain was not being stimulated. Cooper would run into a burning building to retrieve that ball, drop it at your feet, and wait for you to throw it back into the burning building. Through and through, he was a rugged dog. 

The reason I bring up his toughness is because Cooper had been dealing with a chronic autoimmune disease that was attacking his lower GI tract. For the last few years he had been in immense pain every time he had to use the bathroom. Most days, he would be scared to even go outside because he knew he would have to endure significant pain. If you saw what he was going through, you would be surprised he made it this long. 

I am telling you this is because I have been mentally preparing for this day for years, yet for some reason, it still hurts as if it was a sudden surprise. When you lose your first pet, memories rush your mind. You reminisce all that they observed. Coop watched me turn from a child into a man. He saw me graduate high school and college. He saw me fall in love and endure heartbreak. He saw me sad, tired, angry, and happy. My life went through ups and downs before Cooper, and it will go through ups and downs after him, but the moments in between, he provided a level of emotional support that I truly can’t put into words effectively. 

People get annoyed with their dog. They are hyper when you are tired, they bark when you want to sleep, and they chew things they shouldn’t. But in moments like these, that is not what you remember. You remember what they looked like when they first learned to swim, the way they rested their head on the warm radiator in the winter, or the snarling smile the Chesapeake Bay Retrievers are famous for. 

Your first dog teaches you responsibility, how to be patient, and most importantly what unconditional love feels like. Many people are attached to their pets and treat them like family because they are the only ones who don’t need to speak your language to understand what’s going on. In fact, they don’t even need to know the problem to show you the support you require. It’s just built into their DNA. 

So today is a bittersweet day. While I know he can finally be pain free, I know that I will not be. I will be going through a tough time, and he won’t be there to support me like he has been for the last 12 years. He will never greet me at the door again with that orange ball in his mouth, he won’t be laying next to the fire when I am watching a movie, and he won’t provide the comfort I need to deal with his passing. But the memories that I have with him will last forever. Cooper was an important part of my life and there will never be a dog like him. But if you already lost your first family dog, and understand what I am going through, just know that Cooper is in doggie heaven trying to steal their favorite toy away from them right now. And for that, “I swear he never does this.” 

[Guest Writer] My Thoughts On Afghanistan As A Member Of The US Military

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I’ve decided that in light of the current atrocities happening across Afghanistan, I need to write this informal blog to get some things off my chest about the American Experience in the Middle East. I will start by saying that none of the things I am about to say represent the views and or beliefs of any branch of the Armed Forces that I am affiliated with or have been affiliated with in the past.

Now with informalities out of the way. What in the absolute hell? What has transpired over the past week or so across that country is just short of mind boggling. Day after day the Taliban has launched an offensive that could have rivaled the Blitzkrieg across Europe during the Second World War. It feels like almost moments after the current U.S. administration announced our complete withdrawal, the cities began to fall back into the hands of the Taliban. The way things have unfolded should make every American sick to their stomachs. Maybe you don’t care about the people over there and what they’ve endured and that’s a matter of a moral compass. But for the last 20 years you’ve watched your young men and women go over there and die to try and make the idea of a “Free Afghanistan” work. We’ve spilled trillions of dollars’ worth of equipment and training to try and help these people be able to help themselves. More importantly, we’ve spilled the blood of thousands of Americans and Afghans alike.

Obviously at the end of the day, it sickeningly was all for naught. As we saw in the Vietnam experience, you cannot force someone to be willing to die for their freedom. That has to be something they are willing to do on their own. I want to focus less upon the reasons democracy failed in Afghanistan and more on how our government failed us and failed the people in the Middle East. This mistake spans several administrations so the blame game bullshit needs to stop. It’d be fantastically refreshing for a politician to say “Hey, we fucked this away. Not only did we fuck it away, but we realized we were in the process of fucking this away about 10 years ago and just continued fucking it away under the guise of helping Afghanistan become a democracy.” But instead, they are going to talk to the American people like we are a bunch of complete idiots because we let them. We let them pull the roll over our eyes time and time again. Vietnam was literally less than 60 years ago. We just decided “That didn’t work in South East Asia, let’s try this idea in an even more challenging religious and physical climate!” At the risk of getting a bit off track, we need to focus on where this started.

After the absolute devastating attack in our country’s history on 9/11/2001. We all remember it. Hell I joined the service in 2012 on September 11th because I was still angry and wanted my piece of the bad guys. I was able to participate in 2 deployments that directly supported free Afghanistan elections from the skies above and also facilitate the escape of innocent Afghan civilians from the clutches of ISIS, which is a completely different story.  There are thousands of other servicemen and women with the same sentiment. In 2001, we got punched in the mouth, and if you know anything about history, you know we weren’t going to just lay down. So we went after the guys who we thought orchestrated the heinous attacks on the World Trade Center. Mix in some never to be found WMD’s in Iraq and a personal family vendetta against Saddam that extended back into H.W. Bush’s Presidency, and things got cloudy fast. It changed quickly from “finding the bad guys” to “we need to usher in democracy into an incredibly unstable region.” Wait….. I’ve heard this one before!

Fast forward to present day. I’m not sure how the intelligence communities and the defense department failed so miserably at gauging this withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it’s of monumental proportions. Take the fall of Saigon and multiply it by 100. There was never going to be a time when we were going to be able to completely pull the plug on this whole thing without risking what has happened the past week. Think our occupation in South Korea since the Armistice. Probably what needed to happen in the Middle East as well if we truly cared about keeping Afghanistan free. But if we were going to pull the life support it should’ve been done with a lot more thought. Maybe, you know, get the people evacuated first before announcing “Hey, We are getting the fuck out!”

Now we are getting ready to send 9,000 troops back just to un-fuck this situation that has been fucked for 20 years. Not to mention the images of people clinging for their lives to the side of U.S. Airforce C-17s as they take off ultimately ending in an untimely death.

After getting this stuff off my chest, I just can’t help to continue to sit here and ask “Why?” The lack of explanation and silence from our Politicians in Washington is louder than any IED that’s gone off or any bomb that’s been dropped throughout this 20 year nightmare of a war. Although I’m not surprised. It’s similar to the way a child reacts when they’ve made a mistake. Silence. To all the gold star families and anyone who has sacrificed over the past two decades for this war effort, I’m sorry it turned out the way it did, because I know you’ll never get that apology from Washington. The failure falls on the politicians. Not on anyone who gave their blood sweat and tears to the cause. 

By Outlaw

Dedicated to the great men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice fighting the “Lost War” God Bless America.   

The Bright Side Of Pediatric Oncology

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Whenever I tell people that I worked in Pediatric Oncology, I always get the same response. “That’s so sad. How could you do that?” Childhood cancer obviously has its moments that are heartbreaking; some more obvious than others. You have days when you find out that a patient has passed away, but the message isn’t delivered through words. There is this unexplainable, palpable feeling of sadness that diffuses throughout the clinic. Outside of closed doors, you won’t see sadness on anyone’s face because the job doesn’t stop when unfortunate events happen. You still have to go into more exam rooms and see patients that might be facing a terminal diagnosis as well. Even in those settings, you don’t have to read the patient’s chart to understand what’s going on. It’s evident in the parent’s sleepless and doleful eyes. Eyes that drastically contradicts those of their happy and energetic child who is often unaware of their own prognosis. 

Surprisingly, the most impactful part of the job doesn’t come from losing a patient. It comes from telling those aforementioned parent’s that their child no longer has cancer. The first time I witnessed that moment was something I will never forget. The entire staff comes into the room and sings a song to the patient, celebrating their last day of chemotherapy. To this day, I still don’t know the lyrics, but it never prevented me from clapping along with the team. Those are the types of moments when you realize life is much bigger than yourself. While there are sad days in the clinic from time to time, most days are filled with singing and dancing. 

The reason I love this speciality so much is that the environment on a day-to-day basis is unlike any other field of medicine. On any given day, you could see therapy dogs, have tea parties, play games, and see magic tricks from our resident clown (who isn’t scary at all, despite some people’s phobias). And the best part of it all is that everyone who works in that clinic WANTS to be there. There are many jobs where people just show up for the paycheck, but Pediatric Oncology is not one of them. It takes a special kind of person who wants to make an impact on children’s lives everyday. 

While the gloomy feeling that occasionally fills the clinic can be overwhelming, that energy is quickly cured by sounds of laughter, the feeling of Play-Doh under your fingernails, and the sight of children overcoming obstacles that many of us won’t ever face in our lifetime. I have sat in chairs much too small for both of my buttcheeks, at tables covered in board games and painting supplies, across from children who have overcome diagnoses that I couldn’t even pronounce. I have worked with great humans who truly care about others more than themselves and I have dressed up as superheroes, rocked face paint, and went home covered in Paw Patrol stickers. So when people ask, “how could you want to work there?” I always say to myself, “how could you not?”

@RyanLangdon_

Facebook is a disease.

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The Devil Critiques Expressions That Mention Him | The New Yorker

I am not a religious person. I would consider myself “Agnostic” if I had to put myself in a category. However, for the sake of my narrative, let’s assume that the biblical version of God and the Devil exists. People tend to personify things, so God and the Devil are often portrayed as these physical beings with two arms, two legs and maybe two horns if you’re feelin’ artsy. However, if you are a person of faith, I would like to propose that the Devil is manifesting himself/herself/itself in a form that is much less conventional than you might think.

It is wild to me that people can no longer be rational humans. The ability to think for oneself has ironically decreased since the access to information has increased. Only 20 years ago, if you wanted to know something, you physically had to go out of your way to learn the information; But now everything is at your fingertips. As technology advances, we as humans now use our brains less than ever. While that sounds great, I personally and wholeheartedly believe that the adverse effects greatly outweigh the benefits. Instead of opening up a book and exploring subjects in great detail, people are content with simply reading headlines.

According to multiple research studies, it is estimated that approximately 60-70% of people click ‘share’ on Facebook without ever clicking on the link to the article or video. Most people are probably skimming over this sentence as we speak. Therefore, if a headline simply matches their belief, they will share it without even thinking about the consequences or repercussions of the false narrative they may be spreading. Now, I can see how this might not be the end of the world and I’m sure you probably think I should be wearing a tinfoil hat, but there is a deeper threat than people even realize.

Oh yeah, the Devil analogy. Basically, I am saying that Facebook is comparable to the Devil. That may seem slightly hyperbolic, but Facebook totally sucks. It is a catalyst for the spread of negativity and I will explain why I am comparing a social media platform to a theological dude that lives in a fiery Hell (I didn’t read the book, but I heard it’s popular). 

People see a headline and share it without even bothering to explore the validity. And we all know Facebook loves to gather information on you. I was literally talking to my friend about kayaks the other day, and he showed me a picture of one on his phone, and the next day, I was getting ads for ‘yaks for the first time in my life. It’s a known fact that Facebook listens to your conversations, yet no one seems to really care about that, but that’s a topic for another day. Espionage is not the only way it gathers information, too. It also tracks what you share, like, and who you interact with. It processes that information and your feed is then personalized to show the things you have interests in. You ever wonder why you have hundreds of friends on Facebook but you only see the same 10-15 people on your feed?

Now that seems cool at first glance, but what this actually does is create a bubble of like-minded people. You no longer see a bunch of different viewpoints and you only see the ones that you personally believe in (for the most part). So everyday, when you open up Facebook, your beliefs are constantly being reinforced, making it appear that everyone around you thinks the same way that you do. It is completely sheltering you from opposing thoughts and ideas. If you see opposing thoughts on your feed, it’s more likely than not due to the fact that someone with similar thoughts as yourself has commented on that post. This has caused severe problems in how we interact with the world, because when you only see your viewpoint everyday, you start to think that everything else is incorrect, when that very well may not be the case. It builds this unnecessary desire to defend your point of view; which are just thoughts that have been spoon fed to you by the Facebook bubble that you live in.

It fosters this hostile environment, one in which would not exist if you weren’t hiding behind a keyboard, interacting with “friends” that you have never even talked to in real life. You get more ballsy and start to say things to people that you wouldn’t say if you were face to face. It creates an online world that does not represent what is actually going on in the physical world. Everything is amplified. People start attacking grouped viewpoints instead of addressing individual issues. You no longer are forming your own opinions and you are simply using information gathered by your group without realizing that you’re lumping together multifactorial arguments. People start using “blanket statements.” I am literally doing it right now as I say “you,” assuming that every person reading this right now doesn’t agree with me.

Wanna know who fucking loves this? Politically biased news stations. Or as I like to call them… news stations. They will write headlines that don’t match the narrative of what actually happened in real life, feeding off of an already flawed Two Party System. They know that if they write, “Donald Trump says [insert literally anything here, good or bad],” then these groups of like-minded people will start to share it all over facebook and it will generate revenue. As long as the headline matches a specific point of view, it doesn’t matter what actually happened in real life. The mindset is just to get more ammunition, in the form of shares, to defeat the other “team.”

Wanna know who that helps? Absolutely no one except yourself. Your shares are not changing people’s mind and your shares are not solving real world problems. People are being pushed farther and farther apart every single day, when if you simply look at individual issues, I am confident that more people will agree on things rather than oppose them. People would much rather bash someone’s character, instead of research a contrasting point of view to see where they are coming from. And even worse, many people will bash other people’s character before they even research THEIR OWN point of view. This negative behavior is reinforced by the people in their bubble, so it seems acceptable.

Arguing in groups pushes people away rather than bringing people together to find commonalities and solutions. If we continue down this same path, a collapse in our country will inevitably happen. I genuinely believe that the world is a much better place than Facebook portrays it to be. If you just close your laptop and have coffee (and/or a beer) with someone who has different views than you, the hostility would not match what is being displayed on Facebook. 

Now I am not saying that problems DON’T exist in the physical world, because they do, and it would be ignorant to neglect that. What I am saying is that the media and Facebook are designed to silence positive news and amplify negativity, making it appear that the world we are living in is burning to the ground. Instead of sharing news based on the headlines, people need to take the time to research opposing arguments instead of “canceling” them so quickly. Deleting someone off of Facebook because you disagree with them only shrinks the bubble that your internet persona lives in. Instead of calling someone racist, educate them on your personal experiences. And instead of saying All Lives Matter, just like… literally say anything else. Too many people are fixated on riling up other groups instead of looking in the mirror and addressing their own flaws. 

There are people out there who are in the 1%, smoke marijuana, voted for Trump, believe that women should have the right to choose what they do with their body, want border security, and support the Black Lives Matter movement. You can’t just take one of those things and assume the rest of their beliefs based on the actions of group behavior. Good groups can be brought down by the actions of very few of its members… that’s why there are so many memes about how group projects suck. Sometimes people in a group differ in skills, ideas, faith, race, gender, and values. Lumping multifactorial things together only splits this country further apart and we never realize most of us are standing on common ground. 

Facebook grouped us together, reinforced our beliefs with misleading headlines, and made us believe the world is worse than it actually is. The media, perpetuated by Facebook, has valued monetary gain over bringing people together to solve legitimate problems, causing us to lose sight of all the good that is going on behind our computer screens. 95% of Facebook consists of fighting, when it should be about sharing dumb memes, pictures of puppies, and supporting the actions of people who do good in this world. I don’t know about you, but to me, that kind of sounds like the actions of… idk… the Devil.

@RyanLangdon_

Click Here for website dedicated to sharing only positive news

Some people have the inability to see faces, and it’s actually quite common.

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Have you ever gone out into public, pre-quarantine, with the fear that you might recognize someone you know? No one on this planet wants to do small talk with that dude that sat behind you in geometry class in 2009, right!? Well, what if you had the inability to recognize them? There are people in this world who have a medical phenomenon called, “Prosopagnosia,” or more commonly referred to as, “Face Blindness.” These individuals lack the ability to recognize faces of even the most iconic people. And in some of the worst cases, they can’t even recognize their own face. Although this may be new information to you, this condition is actually quite common. Some studies report that 1 in 50 people have Face Blindness to some degree. 

If you have ever seen a tv show, and they blur out the faces of bystanders in the background, then you have experienced something similar to Face Blindness. The area in the brain responsible for analyzing faces as a whole does not work the way it’s supposed to, so every single time they interact with someone, they may not recognize who they are until they hear their voice. This area in the brain is called the fusiform gyrus, and it could be damaged from trauma, stroke, or infection. It can also just simply deteriorate over time. 

If you look at the picture to the left, it is kind of difficult to recognize who you are looking at. The brain has difficulty identifying the image because that is not how faces are normally processed in the brain. However, when it’s flipped, it becomes fairly obvious who we’re dealing with here. It’s not that they can’t recognize faces because they are blurry, as seen in vision disorders like Macular Degeneration. They just physically can’t process the image in their brain. While this condition is extremely fascinating, it can be quite detrimental to these individuals. 

People with this condition have reported feelings of anxiety, embarrassment, and social exclusion due to their diagnosis. People with a severe form of Prosopagnosia could be given a picture of themselves and not know who they are looking at. So, going out into public could create some awkward moments. If someone waves to you while you are at the grocery store, no matter how close, you may not know who they are. While at times I wish this was an excuse I could use to avoid social interactions, this can have great effect on forming meaningful relationships with new people. 

There isn’t a treatment for this condition either. The best way to deal with Face Blindness is to find coping mechanisms. For example, individuals with Face Blindness usually recognize people based on their hair style. While the face is unfamiliar to them, they still have the ability to process hair, or lack thereof. In an interview I watched, a person with Prosopagnosia was shown a picture of just a person’s face. Naturally, the subject did not recognize who it was. Little did they know, the face they were looking at was the person who was showing them the picture, sitting right in front of them. Im sure the majority of you could recognize at least 4 of these people, however, people with severe Prosopagnosia wouldn’t know any of them.

As I stated before, this is quite common. It appears to be a spectrum and some people can go their whole life without even knowing they have a mild form of this. But on the flip side, it can be extremely severe. Imagine going your whole life without ever knowing what your own face looks like to other people. The brain is an extremely complex organ and the more we study it, the more insight we will get on the behavior of our own species. 

@RyanLangdon_

Hydroxychloroquine has become less about the PATIENTS and more about the POLLS

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I hold no political affiliation. I feel like it is important that I make that message clear before I begin. I think the far left and the far right are equally absurd and to choose one political agenda over the other, without even CONSIDERING that both sides can each have good ideas and bad ideas, is wildly closed minded to me. But that’s not the point of my message here. This is less about my affiliation with politics and more about my affiliation with the science community. It is something that I have chosen to dedicate my life to because I am attracted to its quest for the unbiased truth.

That being said, the way that politics has used Hydroxychloroquine as a campaign tool is sickening. Science will do their job with the drug. If it works, they will figure that out. If it doesn’t work, they will still figure that out. But the political community has skewed the minds of people who know literally nothing about science by publishing biased articles to support their own agenda. It went from being a drug that could potentially help save millions of people and it has turned into a tool to achieve political gain.

People are so brainwashed by politics, that people think it’s acceptable to talk like this to people who are greiving.

Honestly, the drug may work. The drug very well could be curing 100% of people, but we don’t have unbiased proof of that yet; things take time. All the stories about the drug are just reports from doctors tinkering around with their treatments on the fly. Coronavirus doesn’t have a definitive treatment plan because it’s a brand new mutation, so doctors on the front lines are being forced to experiment in the field. Hypothetically, a doctor gives Hydroxychloroquine to a patient and they get better. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it was solely the drug that made them recover. The majority of the people are getting better anyways, so who’s to say that the prayers that they have been sending aren’t curing them. I’m not saying either one is right, we just genuinely don’t have the controlled studies to support it. 

In no way do I think that doctors should stop using Hydroxychloroquine in clinical practice either, but science has and always will do their best to answer important questions. Arguing about it at the political level is only halting the momentum of the research because large media outlets on both sides of the political spectrum are pushing biased stories to help their case in this upcoming election. This medication is used for other health conditions like chronic Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis. It is used because it’s risks vs. benefits have been tested in clinical trials by people who have really big brains. So asking, “what do we have to lose?” completely neglects the fact that we could run out of the medicine and then the people who really need it, the ones it has actually been tested for, may not have access to it. So if this drug ends up being tested and it’s determined that it doesn’t work as well as other options, many people’s lives could be negatively affected by this political push to put all of our eggs in one basket. 

Like I said, I hold no political affiliation, and I am not rooting for whether the drug works or not, I just think we should all shut up about it, and let science do their job behind closed doors like it’s been doing for the last billion years. I am fearful that we are going to neglect potentially better options if we determine efficacy based strictly on empirical findings. 

I’m not trying to come across as a conspiracy theorist when I say this, but politics has brainwashed people into “choosing a side” on the drug rather than being open minded about exploring its true efficacy. That should never, EVER happen in science. You must remain unbiased and actually determine which side is correct so we can do what’s best for our PATIENTS and not for the POLLS. This doesn’t just go for Hydroxychloroquine either. At the end of the day, the patient should receive the therapy that is the most effective for their condition, rather than the drug that has the best marketing team. As my Pharmacology professor always says, “be Y.O.D.A.” You must always be Your Own Data Analyzer, and don’t just believe everything people say on the internet. Literally… question what I am saying to you. I am challenging you to research what I am saying. You may end up teaching me something.

@RyanLangdon_

Cliff Notes Of The Coronavirus (brief summary of the COVID-19 pandemic)

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Everyday, thousands of articles regarding the coronavirus are being written. People are either downplaying the current situation or they are having a full blown panic attack inside their bomb shelter, sitting on a throne of toilet paper they have stockpiled. Regardless, I think it is important to understand exactly what is going on here. So, I have decided to trace this virus and give people an overall big picture of how COVID-19 is affecting the world and my toilet paperless bathroom. 

Before we discuss COVID-19, I think it is important to understand how novel viruses begin. Many of these new viruses are what we call, “Zoonotic Diseases,” meaning that they jump from animals to humans. One of the most infamous zoonotic diseases is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The first reported case was in 1959, when a man in Congo reportedly contracted HIV from a chimpanzee. Clearly the destruction of HIV is devastating, therefore taking zoonotic diseases lightly is simply the wrong way to go about this. Now, on the flip side, most novel viruses infect a few people at most and then fizzle out. Unfortunately, if it is highly contagious and picks up steam, it is extraordinarily difficult to stop it. 

The first case of COVID-19 can be traced back to November 17th, when a man in Wuhan, China likely contracted the disease from a bat. This is when the first major mistake came in. China originally thought that the virus could only be contracted from bat to human. They failed to recognize that human to human transmission was even an option at the time. Knowing what we know now, I think that China would have handled the situation a little differently. Unfortunately they did not, and the virus began to spread in similar ways as the Influenza virus. The city of Wuhan, China has a population of over 11 million people. Let me repeat that…. ELEVEN MILLION PEOPLE. They are all crammed in one city, therefore human interactions happen quite frequently. 

China still was in denial about the severity of the coronavirus, so the spread of it lost control. Some news sources even noted that China tried to hide the spread of the disease for quite some time before it became too big of an issue. The ability to fly from one continent to the next is an incredible tool for our society, however in situations like this, it can perpetuate the spread of infectious diseases. On January 19, 2020, the first case of coronavirus hit the United States. It was a 35 year old man who presented to the hospital with respiratory symptoms and fever. When asked if he had any recent travel, he reported “Wuhan, China.” From there, the outbreak in Washington began. 

The scariest part about the transmission of infectious diseases is that you can pass along the virus to people without even knowing you have it. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, it can take up to 5.4 days to develop symptoms from the onset of your exposure. So, if you come in contact with the virus on Monday, it is likely that you will not develop the cough or fever until Saturday. Therefore, every single person you come in contact with could likely contract COVID-19. If you are one of the people that are not taking the social distancing seriously because you are asymptomatic, you could potentially be the reason behind countless transmissions. And for some people, they could be carrying the disease and never even develop any of the symptoms. 

Originally, I admittedly was not very concerned. But the more research I did, the more concerned I became. It wasn’t until I saw what was going on in Italy until my concern level rose. There are so many cases right now that they literally do not have enough space in hospitals to treat some of them. Therefore, they are being forced to choose who gets treated or not based on moral principle. If you are younger or have children, your life would most likely be spared over someone else’s. Even healthcare workers are getting sick and are being forced to continue to work. If that happens in the United States, we are literally fucked. 

The precautions being taken may seem dramatic to many, however it is necessary. If we continue to let this virus spread and fail to follow the protocol set in place by people much smarter than you and me, then we could end up in the same situation as the Italians. This article is not meant to scare anyone, it is simply just stating facts. 

This is the trajectory of the cases in the United States. It is a scary thing to look at because it does not appear to be slowing down at all. I’m less worried about the severity of the disease itself, and more worried about overwhelming ICU’s, which can lead to many more deaths. We all need to do our part in slowing down the virus, because it can (and most likely will) become a much bigger problem than it is today. Lay down, catch up on Netflix, and help reduce the transmission while the experts work on the vaccine to help our nation reduce the spread even further. 

@RyanLangdon_