ahaagsma's blog

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing, public demonstrations for racial equality, and caring for my wife in her deep dementia, there was a lovely short pause in my life.

For the last month we had welcome daily visitors: a beautiful male Mallard duck and his beautiful but less fancy-dressed partner landed in our pool in the mornings. They had leisurely swims with rests at the poolside, often with their necks lovingly intertwined. Then for a few days I did not see them and wondered what may have happened to this couple.

Fecal immunochemical testing (FIT), part of the early screening process for colon cancer, has resumed in British Columbia after distribution of FIT kits was temporarily suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 situation. 

We are writing in response to the recent editorial by Dr Brian Day, “A constitutional solution for an ailing health system?” We are concerned about the journal’s decision to publish a piece that did not declare a conflict of interest, makes erroneous claims, and lacks adequate references.

In 165 AD an unknown condition (possibly small pox or measles) killed over 5 million people in Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. Roman soldiers brought the disease back to Rome and the Roman army itself was also decimated.

In 541 half the population of Europe was killed in the Plague of Justinian. This bubonic plague afflicted the Byzantine empire and Mediterranean port cities, and devastated Constantinople, where 5000 people died daily.

In 1927 Alexander Fleming (1881 - 1955) a Scottish biologist, physician, microbiologist, and pharmacologist, spent part of August 1928 with his family on a holiday. He returned to his lab on 3 September, finding that a stack of cultures of staphylococci left in a corner of his work bench became contaminated. Looking at the damaged cultures he was reported to have exclaimed: “That’s funny!”[1] He found that one culture was contaminated with a fungus and the colonies of staphylococci immediately surrounding the fungus has been destroyed.