It took a couple weeks, but we’ve got a BRAND NEW scandal!

How did they ever come up with this one?  The creativity is just astounding.  Are you ready?  RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA!  You’ll never believe it, but it’s all happening.  That’s right.  Russia is already in the process of stealing the next election because Trump is Putin’s little puppet.  How is it possible that Russia is interfering again, after 17 “intelligence” agencies dedicated over three years and incalculable “resources” to ferret out the truth, IMPEACH the President and get him out of the White House?  Such dedicated public servants, risking their lives to rid us of this menace.

Except they didn’t, and they won’t.  Our time and trouble have been wasted on this nonsense, of which they never had anything close to proof.  Apparently lacking a fresh strategy, they’ve doubled down on their unmitigated and embarrassing failure, having failed to notice what fools they made of themselves.  We noticed.

If you thought Adam Schiff’s eyes were bulging before, they’re probably coming completely out their sockets over this NEW revelation.  We’ll probably have hearings with second-hand witnesses, expressing their deep emotional distress over the depths of Trump’s seditious behavior.  He’s undoubtedly mistreated some innocent government employees and caused them tremendous pain, you’ll see.

Or maybe not.  It turns out, once again, that the proof of this nefarious plot is classified.  It’s so diabolical they can’t tell us any details.  But people much, much smarter than any of you, dear readers, are up to speed and we’d be crazy not to take their word for it.  Try a cable-news channel if you dare.  It’s all Russia, all over again.

By now you’d think we could concentrate on the real problems facing our nation and the world.  You know them well.  Drug cartels operating freely in our cities; opioid deaths off the chart; Muslim terrorists infiltrating the population; weird viruses with no treatment or cure coming from filthy dietary practices in far-flung places; a flood of third world, poverty-stricken aliens dreaming of life on the American government dole; China’s building of military bases all over the world.  And that’s just scratching the surface of concerns that deserve attention.

But no.  We’ve got legions of people throughout the media supporting any and all of those who think they’ve still got a chance of deposing the President, preaching like evangelists about the “existential” (oh how they love that word) threat of “climate change.”

For years now we’ve likened it to a religious belief, and now the pope is removing all doubt.  Not only has he made it all but a plank of Catholicism.  That, and of course respect for homosexuality.  The pope is inviting “representatives of all the Earth’s inhabitants” to the Vatican to sign on to the Global Compact on Education.  That ought to shut us up!  The goal is to “educate” all the world’s children to the dangers of the invented “crisis of climate change.”

But he knows, just like all the network evangelists that it’s as phony as Russian collusion.  The media intends to force-feed us more nonsense for the foreseeable future, even though they know we’re not buying it.  They’re own network and think-tank polls, skewed as they are, still show that we’re just not buying into this nonsense.  It’s colder than…whatever we said as kids, just like every year this time. Snow still falls in the usual locations, contrary to the predictions of those who were trying to push this canard on us fifteen or twenty years ago.  They said we’d need video, photos and long explanations to explain what snow was like to the next generation.  Instead, we just take them skiing.

There are freak weather events, and there always have been.  It’s the weather after all, and we see anomalies from time to time.  But we’re getting a little tired of being told we have to be afraid, very afraid if there is no all-powerful government to force compliance with its dictates.  As one of my favorite personalities recently said, “All the free stuff sounds great to kids who’d rather not work for a living, but somebody should tell them it comes wrapped in an iron fist.”

The pope is all about socialism, “global warming,” open borders and apologies to “gay” people who aren’t even happy.  It’s the new religion and it requires a serious if not angry demeanor.  Yeah, thanks anyway.  The world may regard God’s Laws as bondage, we don’t.  Observing those things we’ve been given as reminders of His creation and His intervention at critical times in human history is wonderful, and we enjoy them.

We’re content in the realization that we’re in His Hands so far as the climate is concerned, weather events and all.  We’re thankful for freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, and we intend to exercise all those freedoms for as long as possible.  And to those that demand that we fervently worry about their fake concerns?  Tell them to have a nice day.  We’re going to.  It’s the Sabbath, the day God rested after He finished this fabulous creation.  It’s what we call the pursuit of happiness.

Mark

PS. Mr. Terry Gooch is doing well and seemed to be in great spirits earlier in the week. Thanks to all who remembered him in prayer. The next monthly letter has gone to the printer and it’s more fun than the Update!  Our next issue of 21^st Century WATCH is also complete and off to be printed.  It’s a beautiful day in this neck of Texas, but colder than “global warming” should permit.  We’ll try to survive!

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 21 February 2020 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The scope of the opioid epidemic is tallied in increasingly grim death counts. Twenty years in, the crisis has claimed more than 400,000 lives. Each of those lost left behind a family now grappling with grief and shame, relief and regret.

In La Quinta, Calif., there is nothing left to do, no more frantic phone calls to make, no begging or fighting that can fix this because the worst thing that could happen already has, so Doug Biggers settles into his recliner and braces for his daughter’s voice to echo through his head.

“Keep going, Daddy,” she’s saying.

It’s been months since they knelt over his 20-year-old son on the bedroom floor. But in these quiet moments, those words haunt him.

“Don’t give up,” Brittaney had said as he thrust down on his son’s chest — his skin already blue, his hands already clenched. The 911 operator counted out compressions, so he’d pushed and pushed, trying not to cry or be sick, trying not to imagine his son as a little boy, before his addiction turned their lives into a series of crises like this one: sheer terror and futile thrashing to save him.

The paramedics arrived and shook their heads. Brittaney glanced at the clock on the stove to record the moment hope was lost: 11:43 a.m. on Nov. 21, 2017.

Landon Biggers became one of 70,237 Americans dead from overdose that year, most of them killed by opioids. As the crisis barrels into its third decade, opioids alone have claimed more than 400,000 lives. Each left behind a family like this one.

OVER IN AN INSTANT

In an instant, the years long cycle of treatment centers and jail cells, late-night phone calls, holes punched in walls, emptied 401(k)s — it was all over. And a father, mother and sister were left to torment over what they should have done differently or better or sooner.

There are hundreds of thousands of families like them, and dozens more made each day, as the country continues struggling to contain the worst drug crisis in its history. They suffer in solitude, balancing sorrow with relief, shame with perseverance, resentment with forgiveness.

“I couldn’t save him,” Doug cries now, four words he’s repeated again and again.

His wife, Mollie, is on the couch, watching a video of her son shouting at her just to hear his voice again. Brittaney, 28, flops down next to her, having just worked up the will to get out of bed, a hopeful step because some days she can’t.

Brittaney used to worry that her father would die from the stress of Landon’s addiction. Now she worries he will die from grief. For months after Landon died, Doug sat mostly silently, staring at the box of his son’s ashes they store on a shelf above the television, so he’d be here with them.

“I’m scared to lose you,” Brittaney would tell him.

“I’m not going anywhere, sweetie,” he’d say.

The family had thought for years that they must be the only ones living this nightmare. Mollie dreaded her own house. She’d turn the corner into their subdivision and her throat would be on fire. She swallowed antacid tablets by the handful. So much had happened that anything seemed possible.

There were arrests, car accidents and armed drug dealers that broke into the house. Landon had punched and fought when he was desperate for drugs, so they installed locks on their bedroom doors. He stole from them, so they bought a safe. They tried psychiatrists, medications. Their mission to save him had been so all-consuming, they realized only after it ended that they were just one part of a disaster unfolding all around them.

EIGHT DEATHS

Brittaney stormed into the house one recent morning. She’d just learned that another friend had overdosed and died, and now she has to count on her fingers how many people she’s lost. Her brother, seven friends.

Doug imagines those parents staying up all night, like he did, desperately trying to manage a system that seemed incomprehensibly broken.

“Any other health crisis that had this many people dying from it, this entire country would be up in arms,” he says. “But so many people still view addiction as a moral issue: You’re not strong, or you don’t have self-control.”

“Or you have bad parents,” his wife moans.

Now he reads everything he can find about the epidemic, and his shame is morphing into anger. He can’t watch the news, because it reminds him that the world is marching on in the face of calamity. The vastness of it overwhelms him, but it also provides cold comfort: They aren’t alone, not even close.

Doug had a dream one night that jolted him out of bed. They were all at the beach. Landon was sitting on the ground, facing the water. He kept calling Landon’s name, but he wouldn’t turn around. He never saw his face.

Was he forgetting his own son?

He realized when he awoke that his great fear is that Landon is nowhere, just gone, doomed by his addiction to leave no legacy.

“I can’t keep doing nothing,” Doug thought, and he climbed out of bed that morning and started searching the internet. He called Denise Cullen, who runs an organization called GRASP, for parents of the dead from addiction. He said he needed to do something so that his son’s life might not be meaningless.

This deep into the opioid crisis, Cullen gets dozens of these calls each week, as grieving parents start looking for a new purpose now that their old one — saving their child — has failed.

LONG WAIT FOR HELP

Cullen told Doug he’d have to wait; her organization doesn’t let parents begin support groups for at least a year after losing a child. Her own son died 10 years ago, and for that first year after she sat alone in the dark, just staring. It’s usually not until the second year that parents realize how bad the grief can get, she says.

As this past Nov. 21 approached, they dreaded going from the first after to the second. They struggled over what to call it. “Anniversary” seems celebratory.

They considered going out of town but chose instead to pretend it was just another day.

Brittaney went to work, and Mollie kept herself busy trying to calculate where her son’s name would fall in a chronological list of the 70,237 dead in 2017: Some 62,400 died before him and some 7,600 after. She thought if she could turn it into a math problem, maybe it might make some sense, but it didn’t.

Doug carted the box of Landon’s ashes around with him. He sat it on his desk as he worked in his home office and put it in the passenger seat as he tooled around town running errands.

“I hung out with Landon today,” he told his family, before he put the box back on its shelf, in the living room, close by.

Source: https://www.vindy.com/news/2019/jan/28/-deaths-later-families-still-struggling-/

The post 400,000 deaths later, families still struggling with US opioid epidemic first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Jonathan Mermin, MD, MPH, Director, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP), US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, shared a national perspective on this problem.

More than 600,000 Americans have died from opioid overdose since 2000, he said. Of particular concern, he added, is the interconnectedness between drug overdoses and reports of new cases of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection.

The United States has seen a steady rise in the incidence of HCV cases since 2010, including doubling of the number of reports of pregnant women infected with the virus; this surge in HCV incidence is linked to IDU with sharing of needles, Dr. Mermin explained.

“We are also seeing an increase in the proportion of HIV infections,” he said. Progress made in recent decades with respect to declining HIV rates associated with IDU is now leveling off, and even reversing, because of the opioid crisis, he noted. In addition, hepatitis A outbreaks have also become a crisis for some states, especially among adults experiencing homelessness.

Cases of syphilis are also on the rise in the United States. This includes congenital cases, said Dr. Mermin, reports of which have increased 176% since 2012. He noted that 88,000 cases of syphilis were reported in the United States in 2016. Increasing numbers and proportions of cases of syphilis in heterosexual individuals are occurring among people who use drugs, said Dr. Mermin, including among those who inject drugs.

Jay Butler, MD, chief medical officer and director, Division of Public Health, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, also shared his state-level perspective from working on the front-lines of the opioid crisis in Alaska.

In 2017, approximately 1 in 30 of all deaths in Alaska were associated with opioid overdoses, he said.

The opioid epidemic in Alaska is a very dynamic one, he noted. Although the state had made progress with respect to reducing the numbers of death associated with prescription painkillers and heroin, Dr. Butler noted that these gains have now been wiped out due to the emergence of illicit fentanyl in recent years. This epidemic is different, he said. “We’re now seeing clusters of deaths. And, many users do not even realize they are taking fentanyl—they think it’s heroin.”

The rise in infectious disease cases is an increasing challenge, too, said Dr. Butler. For example, Alaska has seen an increase in the rate of HCV diagnoses among individuals younger than 30 years since 2015. Self-injection drug use is a major driver behind the HCV epidemic, he explained.

Alaska was the second state to issue a disaster declaration on the opioid epidemic, said Dr. Butler. And statewide efforts are now underway to address the opioid crisis, he added. These center on a 3-pronged approach to managing addictions and substance-use disorders that targets: harm reduction to prevent life-threatening adverse outcomes (for example, by increasing access to naloxone and to syringe/needle exchange programs); diagnosis and treatment (including removing the associated stigma, and understanding addiction as a chronic disease of the brain); and prevention (for example, by encouraging judicious opioid prescribing and holding drug take-back events).

At the national level, CDC has taken a 5-point strategy to prevent opioid overdoses and harms, said Dr. Mermin. These focus on: conducting surveillance and research; improving state, local, and tribal efforts to prevent overdoses and harms; supporting health care provider and health systems; raising awareness about opioid use disorder and the severity of the epidemic, to empower people to make safe choices; and improving collaborations between public health officials and public safety officials.

He emphasized the importance of introducing comprehensive syringe service programs (SSPs) at the community level. These cost-saving programs prevent infections, he said, and do not increase drug use or crime in communities. Indeed, people who use SSPs are 3- to 5-times more likely to stop injecting drugs.

“Large-scale public health action and targeted, comprehensive, community-wide programs can prevent infections, reduce drug use, save lives, and save money,” Dr. Mermin concluded.

Dr. Parry graduated from the University of Liverpool, England in 1997 and is a board-certified veterinary pathologist. After 13 years working in academia, she founded Midwest Veterinary Pathology, LLC where she now works as a private consultant. She is passionate about veterinary education and serves on the Indiana Veterinary Medical Association’s Continuing Education Committee. She regularly writes continuing education articles for veterinary organizations and journals and has also served on the American College of Veterinary Pathologists’ Examination Committee and Education Committee.

Source: https://www.contagionlive.com/news/infectious-diseases-on-the-rise-amid-the-opioid-epidemic

The post Infectious Diseases on the Rise Amid the Opioid Epidemic first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.