Fuck, bro. That’s so dildos.
Good luck on the gi test. Vomiting blood sucks, and I’ve only had to for a few days once. Ugh.
Glad to hear you’ve got some time, though. Are you on a transplant list yet? The sooner the better. Do you know if a partial liver transplant is an option?

Tell your friends and family, just like I’m telling Videosift readers right now, donate blood, plasma, or platelets. You may need them some day. I know they put more albumen in you, and I’m sure you’ll need more. Know your blood type?

Stay optimistic. Wishing you well.

Only AFTER trump changed the numbers, the CDC has repeatedly announced the horrible truth only to have to retract it for political reasons, meaning Trump insisted and put their jobs on the line, and fired many that wouldn't ignore results to spread his propaganda.
The CDC has been politicized by Trump and is no longer a good source for information, only propaganda until Trump's temporary sycophantic administrators are removed and professional administrators can be confirmed. That's why doctors and scientists are fleeing the organization. That's why they said 400000+ dead by new years then retracted, it's why they said 6' isn't enough indoors, then retracted despite there being no new data or conclusions. Flu season starts soon, and we sit in the worst position possible for that, still wave one and it's accelerating again.

200000 dead/7million cases =....can you do that 2nd grade math?
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It's an overall death rate of 2.8% Bob. Not .003%, not .02%, not way less than the flu (.1%) like Trump lied to America, but exponentially, up to 50 times worse like he admitted in private Feb 7 (now 30 times worse). 2.8% after we got an idea how to treat them.

That doesn't count deaths from complications, like going into a coma, surviving the virus in that coma, then dying from the damage it did to your brain and lungs. That's not in the covid death number I give you, neither are permanent disabilities like brain deaths, needed lung transplants, neuropothies, heart damage, etc.

Republicans said anyone over 65 would have a death panel decide if they were worth treating, a flat out lie, and miles away from suggesting maybe we wouldn't authorize a heart and lung transplant for 90 year olds, or other multimillion dollar procedures...of course nothing would stop them from paying for the procedures themselves. Now, under republican leadership, death panels are what's happening by necessity in Texas.

I guess the rest of the world is Democrats, because the rest of the world shutdown, but really shutdown not a voluntary minimal social distancing 1/2 ass shutdown where most businesses and public spaces stayed open. Where shutdowns actually happened, Covid was quickly under control. Where they weren't or where they were lifted, Covid is exploding....like America and Brazil.
150000 dead Americans citizens and counting is a nothing burger. 4 dead in Benghazi calls for shutting the government down until we lock her up.

I'll tell my politicians to follow at least minimal health guidelines and not open until two weeks of serious declines, and to make masks mandatory with large fines and jail time for repeat offenders.

If Trump had closed down and told his morons to wear masks, not incited them to gather in large groups without masks over and over, he could have been a hero, but instead he ignored the problem and encouraged the worst, most unsafe, guaranteed to extend shutdowns behavior and so we have the worst death rates on earth, with India closing fast.

Biden is good, but even he can't solve the Trump virus crisis in two months now...if he were president in Jan 2020, yeah, two months is about right.

Now can we talk about poop transplants?

For about 10 years now i've had severe stomach problems, to the point of sometimes being all but housebound. At some point in my attempts to try and find some resolution, i came across the idea of a gut flora transplant.

I never did it because you've got to find someone healthy with a great diet and i suppose bowel regularity, which is difficult in itself because those people are rare and the subject is embarrassing.

But if you're crippled with stomach aches, woken up 7 times a night going to the toilet (and then not even doing anything), then putting someone else's shit into your own bum is nothing. As Terry Pratchett once said about Alzheimer's - it's a desperate situation, and he'd eat the rotting arsehole out of a dead mole if it meant a fighting chance.

For anyone interested, i stopped eating gluten for a while and had minor improvement. When i ate gluten, i'd get feverish and flu-like, joint pain, headaches, sweats and excruciating stomach pain. I figured it was coeliac disease and hoped i would fully recover before long. I didn't, but 2 weeks ago i also cut potato (nightshade vegetable) from my diet and i have been stomach ache free since (that is, 75%+ of the time my stomach feels painless). Apparently lectins are problematic.

If anyone has ever had severe pain for a very long time, they'll know the utter relief and joy of being pain free. It's hard to describe, but for a few days to a week, it's a euphoric feeling.

@CrushBug -- Very good arguments in favor of absorbing the cost, even IF hormone therapy / gender reassignment is paid for by the military / government.

@entr0py -- Links that I've read from conventional news outlets claim that hormone therapy and gender reassignment were covered by military healthcare IF a doctor signed off on them as being medically necessary. An article I read about Chelsea Manning specifically stated that the hormone therapy was definitely paid for by the military, but that it wasn't 100% clear who paid the bill for her gender reassignment. I can't find that exact article, but here's another one from 2015 that suggests the same things:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/12/chelsea-manning-hormone-therapy/23311813/

Another article I read said that Obama issued an order / proclamation / whatever that the military would pay for those things if they were deemed medically necessary, which was a change from the former system (not covered). Not sure when/if that went into effect, but I think it must have. I'll look and see if I can find a link to that one.

I'm not saying that my info is right and yours is wrong, but it seems unclear. They (gender reassignment and hormone therapy) definitely weren't covered for a long time, but it seems like the hormone therapy was for sure at least in Manning's case.

Again, just to my personal opinion, I think the old system of "welcome to serve but we ain't paying for that stuff" was fine (ideal?). CrushBug presents a good argument for the military absorbing those costs since they are such a tiny fraction of the military budget (even though trans soldiers are arguably also a tiny fraction of the total).

Strangely enough, I'd pretty happily agree to those services being covered (if deemed medically necessary) as part of single-payer universal health care available to ALL CITIZENS. That would still be paying for them with tax dollars, but not tax dollars earmarked for military, which seems better to me somehow.

And again, I think Trump is 100% in the wrong for barring trans people from service simply for being trans. I agree that he's really just trying to rile up his base and trigger their righteous indignation. But, I do still basically think that the military paying for those services (or viagra / hair transplants / botox / cosmetic stuff, etc.) out of their budget is wrong. Even if amounts to a drop in the ocean that is military spending.

I have no interest in defending Trump.

...Yeah, you smell it coming. BUT:

Budgetary concerns for telling trans people "thanks but no thanks" regarding desire to serve in the military might possibly be defensible and comparable to other conditions / states / whatever.

Manning was in jail (whether you think that deserved or not) and got ACLU assistance to be provided with hormone therapy and eventually gender reassignment surgery, because it was deemed psychologically damaging to withhold them. That's some pretty expensive treatment. Paid with tax dollars.

Perform a thought experiment and replace barring trans people from military service with some other group that would similarly require expensive medical maintenance. There's a pretty good example available: Type 1 Diabetes, requiring insulin. And guess what -- diabetics are barred from military service. If you develop diabetes while in the military it isn't grounds for discharge, but if you have it beforehand and want to join up you're SOL.

Back to trans. Do I personally think that they should be barred from service? No, not based purely on that. But if somebody feels that they need hormone replacement and/or gender reassignment surgery, I think they should be paying for that themselves, not on government / military dime.

I'll admit that I see those things not as necessary, but elective. Maybe that's unfair, but at what point does it become ridiculous? Can bald soldiers get hair transplants? Botox? Breast implants?

Trans people want to serve and either A) don't need hormone replacement / gender reassignment or B) are willing to pay out of pocket for them? Sign 'em up. Otherwise, it becomes murky. If that seems insensitive / bigoted, sorry. But plenty of things beyond your control can make you ineligible for military service.


**edit:
Oh, forgot to mention. Do I think Trump really had that sort of argument in mind when he made this decision? HELL NO. He's a spiteful prick. He probably did it for a combination of trying to curry favor with prick GOP congressclowns and just to prod.

It's like the doctors have given you second and third opinions and told you your liver is failing, you have to stop drinking or you'll die. You won't die the next time you have a beer, but every beer takes you farther over the edge. You can say the bartender who knows this is blameless for serving you, because others gave you the alcohol that destroyed your liver and it took longer than one night, or you can work from now and realize that he's intentionally killing you in hopes of a tip before you stumble outside and keel over.
Working from today, our planet's liver is failing, there no transplant, and Trump just reopened the bar and is serving everclear. Chances are he can't accelerate things so much that Florida submerges in the next 3 1/2 years, that doesn't mean he can't make things be far worse, beyond the point of possible mitigation.

You may hold that theory, but climatologists disagree. We are past, but still near the tipping point, and every ton of CO2 takes us farther from a survivable rise. It's ridiculous to think that we're already past holding at 3.5 degrees global rise (edit: the maximum assumed to be survivable by civilization), so we might as well make it 5 degrees.

Island nations, people who live South of New Orleans, and millions of others are already being displaced. It only takes one high tide (edit: or one extended drought) to wipe out low lying farmland permanently, and erosion has become an unstoppable force.

Trump is moving towards raising the level of multiple greenhouse gases we produce, Obama had us lowering those levels. Time can only tell what that actually means in tonnage, but 180 degree turnaround is awful enough. I agree, we also didn't do enough under Obama.

? Reversible means it can be reversed, not that it's easy. I don't know where you get that idea. Irreversible in this context means sending the temperature trend the other way before civilization becomes unsustainable. Eventually the planet should normalize unless we really follow Trump's lead wholeheartedly, then we might go full Venus. There WAS a magic bullet, being responsible with our atmosphere, but we argued over climate change until it was useless.

If, before it reverses (which it may not do at all, btw) the planet becomes inhospitable to humans, then for humans, it's irreversible. In 4 years we can do enough damage to 1) make the effects longer and harsher enough to make long term survivability impossible and or 2) go beyond the next tipping point where feedback loops reinforce each other, leading to a Venus like runaway greenhouse effect. We're damn close to massive methane releases (already happening) and if we don't avoid that, nothing will save civilization.
All that said, Clinton probably wouldn't do enough to avoid disaster either, but at least she accepted the science and agreed we should make efforts to mitigate the coming damages.

I'm definitely a pessimist, mostly because I understand the systems and human nature, and so I think we're totally hosed as a species.

I'm surprised he had to wait that long. Children waiting for transplants tend to be pushed to the front of the waiting list.

I hope the new heart lasts him a good while, preventing rejection is getting better and better all the time.

What they left out is, now, all those people have become assholes themselves.

No rectum transplant? Somebody missed out on a demigod level pooper.

I live in Austin, Texas. Unfortunately for my Bahn and Pho addictions, Austin is sort of a high priced area for Vietnamese food. Back in the 90's, you could could get it cheap and plentiful in the few locations that served it; now with the foodies and all the transplants there are tons of places, but they are all expensive.

Houston is still pretty cheap because it is saturated, so when I am down there I can score good, reasonably priced Vietnamese food.

Wait @harlequinn take a step back from the borders of advanced theoretical physics back to practical stuff like geometry and astronomy and measuring time and heating stuff and using other sources of power than slave labour.

Religion did not get us far in many areas.

If science had to start all over again maybe quarks and strings would look different, but steam engines would be the same. Heart transplants would be very similar. Other parts of medicine might not.

Right, so you're basically advocating shutting down the federal government to get your way. Sorry, elections have consequences. The GOP lost control of both houses in Obama's first two years. They could have had positive influence on Obamacare, but they decided to claim instead it was a socialist takeover of health care, intended to kill grandma. That's the Republicans' fault for getting their butts handed to them in the election. That wasn't because they backed down.

Obamacare wasn't shoved down your throat. You had a vote like everyone else. Boo hoo, your side lost. Do you see me saying everything the Republicans and GWB did was shoved down my throat, even though I didn't like a lot of it? Nope.

Your sister has Crohn's. I never said she didn't. My wife had diabetes for most of her life and recently went through years of dialysis before having a simultaneously kidney and pancreas transplant, which she's still dealing with the anti-rejection meds.

Your sister's medical condition doesn't make your BS story true about what Obamacare did to her premiums. I laid out EXACTLY how Obamacare would work in her situation, and you introduced nothing that proves what I said wrong. Instead, you thought you'd claim the righteous indignation ground and assumed that my immediate family didn't have very serious medical conditions to deal with as well, and then resorted to name calling.

Just remember, your friendly neighborhood HeroPsycho told you Clinton will crush Trump in the electoral college. You can try and ignore reality all you want, but the inevitable is coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.