LIFE, like jazz, is riffs, improvisations, seemingly unrelated but all coming together in the end.
That’s how Moi rolls, it keeps the uninitiated confused. Plus, it is a clever way to condescend.
“Dolomite watch” seems to be mainstream media’s main preoccupation these days. Will it wash out? Will it not? Really, it is now akin to national security.
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A P1-billion budget for an office with no official function except to wait for the President to be incapacitated or die.
This P1 billion will buy a lot of rice as Leni Robredo is fond of saying. But what is it with rice? People love to eat pizza and pasta, too.
Leni Robredo, drop the faux colegiala accent. You’re too old for that. Besides, you were never a colegiala and for your information, true colegialas don’t speak like that. They speak in proper English. Only Kris Aquino speaks like that and like her, it has gone passé.
I have a better idea. Instead of buying rice with that P1 billion budget for the Office of the Vice President, buy beer and pizza and distribute it to all the households in the country as far as it will go. I’m sure a lot of the natives will be happier and drunk. At least it’s a better alternative; rice is really boring.
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For those trendy social-climbing Frappuccino-infused so-called millennials who just woke up and are fond of dropping “assault on press freedom” and “democracy is dead”, what comes out in the newspapers, on radio and television is not controlled by the government but by the publishers of newspapers and owners of radio and television stations.
Even social media is no longer “free press”. Your post on Facebook or twit on Twitter only comes out if it conforms to their so-called fact-checkers’ biases.
That has always been the case since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press and not because Rodrigo Duterte is the President of the Philippines. Really, don’t be shy about it. You just find it trendy and fashionable to shout “Oust Duterte”.
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As they say, “blood is thicker than water”. Of course it is, literally. We’re not talking about relationships, however, but why your blood type matters in the time of COVID-19. Here are excerpts from the Oct. 15, 2020 report on CNN:
People with blood type O may be less vulnerable to COVID-19 and have a reduced likelihood of getting severely ill, according to two studies published Wednesday. Experts say more research is needed.
The research provides further evidence that blood type (also known as blood group) may play a role in a person’s susceptibility to infection and their chance of having a severe bout of the disease. The reasons for this link aren’t clear and more research is needed to say what implications, if any, it has for patients.
A Danish study found that among 7,422 people who tested positive for COVID-19, only 38.4% were blood type O – even though, among a group of 2.2 million people who were not tested, that blood type made up 41.7% of the population.
By contrast, 44.4% of group A tested positive, while in the wider Danish population that blood type makes up 42.4%.
In the other study, researchers in Canada found that among 95 patients critically ill with COVID-19, a higher proportion with blood type A or AB — 84% — required mechanical ventilation compared with patients with blood group O or B, which was 61%.
The Canadian study also found those with blood type A or AB had a longer stay in the intensive care unit, a median of 13.5 days, compared with those with blood group O or B, who had a median of nine days.
Both studies were published in the journal Blood Advances.
It could be explained by people with blood type O having less of a key clotting factor making them less prone to coagulation problems in the blood. Clotting has been a major driver of the severity of Covid-19.
Other possible explanations involve blood group antigens and how they affect the production of infection fighting antibodies. Or it could be linked to genes associated with blood types and their effect on receptors in the immune system.
A separate study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in June, found genetic data in some Covid-19 patients and healthy people suggesting that those with Type A blood had a higher risk of becoming infected, and those with type O blood were at a lower risk.
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Of course, it does not mean that if you’re Type A, you should start panicking or if you’re Type O, it’s time to party.
I look at it this way: if you’re Type O, the risk of catching COVID-19 has been minimized./PN
