March 2020 - STAND UP TO STIGMA - Peer Presenters and Mental Health Education

Yesterday I challenged folks to stop bitching about Trump and, for that matter, all worthless political noise … just set aside partisan bullshit and focus all energies on helping your community instead.

To this solution, my physicist friend and I (a geochemist) have been developing a renewable personal filtration mask that can be easily constructed using everyday consumer items … items that haven’t been wiped out in panic buying and items readily available and items difficult to wipe out in panic buying.

Heck, I can mine one item from a quarry ten miles from me. And it’s ready to use straight from the ground.

We have three really great ideas, the most viable being one that relies upon a microwave oven and a rotating collection of reusable hydratable tectosilicates.

Here’s the objective:

1.) Identify a strained community need.

2.) Create the solution.

3.) Share.

We’re calling this “The MacGyver Challenge.”

What are some other community needs?

– Childcare for working parents while the schools are closed.

– Food and supply delivery for those who are self-quarantined for their health and safety.

– Entertainment!

– Opportunities for people to connect because isolation is dangerous for many.

– Ways to keep our community economy strong.

It’s important to understand my mate and I are doing our project open source. What’s the point of a community pandemic solution that isn’t altruistic? If you know the advocacy stuff I do, this makes perfect sense. Same idea.

My friend and I have our solution underway. The MacGuyver Challenge awaits one and all!

P S. – My physicist friend is 80 years old. My Dad is 80 years old. My friend hates Trump. I nothing Trump.

Rock on.

Opinion: Is it fair to compare Suicide to Coronavirus?

by Steve Bringe

Circulating the past few weeks are a number of comparisons of the death tolls from suicide versus COVID-19 (coronavirus). This is an unfair measurement. Let me explain why.

COVID-19 is a novel infectious virus identified less than three months ago. If anything, the comparison is of DEATH RATE and not BODY COUNT.

But COVID-19 hasn’t run its initial infectious course. More people are surely to die from COVID-19 in the coming weeks if not months. How many people and how quickly? The current data populations cannot project either death rate or body count.

The only useful metric of COVID-19 is the ever-evolving R-naught which has no equivalent suicide metric.

The COVID-19 R-naught is 3.0, up from an early value of 1.2. This is highly infectious, at least as infectious as its coronavirus cousin, SARS. And thus far, the number of deaths from COVID-19 is outpacing SARS in its first three recorded months.

Right now, it’s premature to use COVID-19 as a side-by-side similarity for suicide rates and totals. This data on COVID-19 doesn’t exist and any quantitative claim of how much worse suicide is compared to COVID-19 isn’t accurate or possible. This comparison of suicide to COVID-19 is providing misinformation that lessens the true by-the-numbers impact of suicide.

Too many peoole die by suicide. I’ve tried myself. Unquestionably, advocacy and education about suicide is crucial. It’s just there are other more useful and more valid ways to continue bringing awareness to the tragedy of suicide without piggybacking on a highly visible – and highly disparate – ongoing public health concern like COVID-19.

Image: CDC.gov

Reprinted with kind permission of Steve’s Thoughtcrimes.