Domain

Explanation

Infectious? … thought fashion is infectious

• Fashion is attractive
• But,
• Diseases can be infectious
• Infectious in that some diseases can be passed on or transmitted from one person to another

Diseases?

• Diseases are enemies to good health in that:

1. They disrupt, deteriorate or terminate normal bodily functions
2. They can be transmitted to others to continue these disruptions

• Diseases can be grouped by:

1. Origins: inorganic environmental factors, plant origins, animal origins (Mad-Cow disease from cows; Nipah disease from bats; Ebola disease 90% fatality from primates; Foot-and-Mouth disease from pigs; HIV & SARS), human origins
2. Causes - living organic intrusion: microbes, bacteria, viruses, parasites, neoplasms
3. Causes – non-living inorganic intrusion: environmental toxins, pollutants, contaminants, pathogens, carcinogens, hazardous chemicals, industrial wastes, radioactivity
4. Causes – bodily interactions with intrusions: interactions
5. Body diseased locations
6. Effects, signs & symptoms: temporary, permanent & body by-products due to disease: mucus, pus, tumour
7. Infection mechanism: rate of infection, genetics
8. Environment: favourable to diseases

• Diseases that are both lethally strong & highly infectious are especially frightening to the individual & damaging to society
• A disease is damaging to the body if the body immune system is not able to handle, contain & destroy the harmful diseased cells à weak body
• A disease is infectious to the body if the body immune system does not recognise the disease initially or is not able to separate the diseased cells from those of the healthy ones à confused immune system, entirely new disease to the body
• Note that although all modern humans belong to the same species of homo sapiens (there are many other branches of humane species, but are all extinct by now), so theoretically, we should be all the same?
• Actually, any engineer knows no two elements are entirely the same,
• The same goes for human bodies: there is diversity within unity
• Externally, we are different in races, geographic locations, way of living, cultures, foods we eat, environment we live
• Internally, we are different in our body nature (by birth), genetic compositions (different even from our parents & siblings), our body growth (by nurture), by our immune system, by our health (some are weak in some aspects, some are strong in other aspects)
• The diseases seek to create a favourable niche for them to grow rapidly & spread to other organisms by exploring & exploiting these differences between different humans & other organisms
• Disease groupings with the parameters of damage strength and infection intensity:

1. Low damage strength, low infection intensity: disease is not very harmful to the body with minimal chances of infection to other people; hence most healthy people bodies' immune system can handle the disease; might feel discomfort, but no danger to life & limited spread of disease to other people close by; e.g. sore throat, red eyes, rashes
2. Low damage strength, high infection intensity: disease is not very harmful, but it spreads very easily & fast, especially in crowded close-contact favourable conditions of low hygiene & maintenance where germs strive easily; such environment includes visible ones like garbage silos, toilets as well as less visible ones like cinemas, office, public places, transport & even labs; e.g. common cold, influenza, chicken pox
3. High damage strength, low infection intensity: the disease is very harmful & often fatal, but luckily not highly infectious & does not spread too easily or quickly; chances of containing the spread of disease, control by separation (quarantine), observation (to understand disease if little known) & treatment (for already known); e.g. Ebola (90% fatal) in Africa before it suddenly disappears twice, the infamous HIV-AIDS (infectious only under very close contacts & transfusion & intercourse); often termed the onset of the super-virus; according to research findings, such types of super-viruses would be more common in the near future
4. High damage strength, high infection intensity: disease is frightening harmful & at the same time, spreads extremely easily, quickly & mutates continuously; the body does not recognise the disease & is unable to handle the disease by itself; very serious consequences to the infected individual & the society at large; with the current globalisation, remote societies cannot be sparred the danger of contracting such diseases from highly-mobile diseased societies; Ebola in Africa is largely contained due to the relative remoteness of Africa; AIDS affects those who have very personal contacts with the infected & no influence on those who remain frugal; the damaging & infectious disease would need to be rapidly forecast, contained, researched, treated & prevented to curb its spread & cut its roots; e.g. foot-and-mouth, mad-cow, Nipah and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), atypical pneumonia mutant strain

Principles of infection

• There are 3 aspects to infectious diseases:

1. Disease: 8 classified groups, as the invaders
2. Body as the defenders
3. Interactions between invaders & defenders

• To see the interactions between disease & body,
• Take the analogy of human exchanges
• Through history, humans have come together to form societies or split outwards into other areas, like migration
• When different & separate human societies & cultures come together for whatever reasons,
• There are bound to be interactions which can be statically or dynamically fluctuating between the following 3 scenarios:

1. Harmonious unity: the incoming (invading) & host (defending) societies take to each other; mutually supporting & nurturing, as each has their own niche
2. Neutrality: neither support nor destroy
3. Conflict: destructive interactions, as the invaders & defenders try to annihilate each other

• Our bodies are constantly in a flux of conditions, that vary with external & internal conditions
• Disease-carrying bodies can be in any of the above 3 interaction states:
• In harmonious unity: good & beneficial infection for the body, even making the body stronger & healthier à there are plenty of bacteria within our organs that are essential for bodily processes à they are indispensable for good health à embrace syndrome
• In neutrality: no disruptive infection as the body does not care about the disease, neither does the disease care about the body; the disease or its causes remain inert inside the body à disease carriers à no conflict to body, but still can spread & transmit to others who may not be neutral
• In conflict: detrimental infection for the body; body is now under stress & goes into fight or flight syndrome; the body attacks the particles it recognizes as intruders; however, the body may not correctly identify the right intruders & may even attack its own body parts, like gout à infection symdrome
• But,
• What actually triggers the disease to infect the body?
• Take the following analogy:
• In any engineering structure, to maintain its geometry, configuration & resistance to loadings, 2 major criteria would always need to be satisfied:

1. Equilibrium: between capacity (resistance) & disturbance (loading) à if stable, would maintain, ceteris paribus; if unstable, would shift continuously until a stable equilibrium is reached (subsystem in Second Law of ReSearch); if neutral, would fluctuate between stability & instability
2. Compatibility: between deformation causes & deformation effects, where the deformation caused = deformation effects

• Hence,
• Formulating disease invaders as disturbance or loading, &
• Formulating the body as resistance capacity,
• Then,
• The following 3 scenarios would evident for infection interactions:

1. Body resistance > disease loading: the body is able to cope with the infection; able to reject transmitted infections; immune system is strong to counter the infections; white blood cells – neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, lymphocytes (recognizes & remembers using antibodies), monocytes; natural killer cells; special cells – macrophages, complement, interferons, interleukins; no need external help
2. Body resistance = disease loading: critical point where the body is struggling to cope with disease; might fluctuate; needs external help
3. Body resistance < disease loading: infection is overwhelming the body & its components; unable to reject transmitted infections; deteriorating bodily functions as person experiences decaying health, increasing pains & agony; external help is necessary for survival, by increasing body resistance & immune system through vaccines (Vaccines--How and Why?), mineral & organic supplements, homeopathy; and reducing disease loading through medicines, antibiotics (against bacteria, useless against viruses)

Principles of treatment

• Any disease infection can be: (problem-method scenarios)

1. Known & cured previously: (tuberculosis) a tutorial problem, hence use well-formed treatments; ensure all patients follow the treatments (some people are too complacent to follow treatments for their own good)
2. Known previously, but not cured: (Ebola, HIV-AIDS) frightening, people aware of infections, but are helpless as to how to identify, treat & most importantly, prevent infections à ReSearch through suprasystem approach & maintain
3. Unknown previously, but cured: re-formulate & modify current treatments & preventions to curb advance & subsequently eliminate infections
4. Unknown & not cured previously: (atypical pneumonia SARS 2003) use cautious subsystem approach with ReSearch

• Aware of the omni-presence of disease-body-environment configuration
• The conflict between disease & body is heavily influenced by the environment à if favourable, body wins; if unfavourable body might lose
• The environment can be modified to aid in treatments & prevention (before infections) by:
• Increasing body resistance:

1. Understand state of body
2. Aware of body excesses, deficiencies & balance
3. Maintain balance: yin with yang
4. Lower excesses: less toxins, poisons, saturated fats
5. Fill up deficiencies: strengthen immune system & other means like extravenous reinforcements from other people who have recovered from the infections & developed resistance towards the infections à through blood infusions (for time-critical infections), resistant antibodies towards vaccinations (for non-time-critical infections)

• Reducing disease strength & infection:

1. Understand disease attributes: 8 groups
2. Lower disease strength: either directly (using medicines or killer cells) or indirectly (reducing & eliminating conditions that are breeding or favourable to diseases)
3. Lower disease infection: maintaining & focusing on hygiene, separation, quarantine, barriers & controls

Prevention

• Prevention should be always performed, with a cautionary attitude
• Maintaining the basics of high body resistance & healthy environment that are unfavourable for infections
• Cultivate good hygiene, good sanitary, cleaning habits, regular exercise, sufficient qualitative rest, balanced diet, vaccinations & regular honest qualitative view of body with regular check-ups

A word on pneumonia

• Pneumonia is one of the most persistent tenacious ailments that keep pestering human health
• The others being tuberculosis, malaria, common cold, influenza (flu) & others
• Broncho Pneumonia: (my grandmother died from this)
• http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=cache:ylscITm1C4wC:www.stjosham.on.ca/HealthLinks/PNEUMONIA.htm+pneumonia+broncho&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
• http://www.google.com.sg/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=pneumonia+broncho
• http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=cache:YTA2Zb7rvOwC:www.lungusa.org/diseases/lungpneumoni.html+pneumonia&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
• http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=cache:wFwLiemo1c4C:kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/pneumonia.html+pneumonia&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
• http://dir.yahoo.com/Health/Diseases_and_Conditions/Pneumonia/
• Maintain focus of:
• Increasing body resistance
• &
• Promoting unfavourable conditions for infections & diseases carriers
• Although the world is becoming more mobile, where travels across countries are increasingly regular, exchanges are increasingly frequent & people are more crowded,
• Yet, technology itself offers an alternative,
• With the mobile, wireless, networking technology,
• We can be remain physically separated, but virtually connected through distance-learning, communications & exchanges
• Hence, without physical contacts, infectious diseases are less likely to spread quickly
• However, a word of caution
• Each of our bodies should be healthy & trained to be strong
• i.e. to recognise diseases & handle them properly
• This would need exposure to diseases, which the body would create antibodies that are resistant to such attacks in the future
• In short,
• We really need to balance exposure with enclosure
• Through thoroughly understanding our own bodies,
• We expose ourselves to diseases when we feel strong & confident enough
• We enclose ourselves from diseases when we are weak, tired & low-morale
• Basically,
• Maintain our composure & continuity amidst unknowns, uncertainties & risks

Societal aspects

• Everyone of us lives in certain society, i.e. any group of people living in close proximity to one another
• Many live in urban societies, some in rural societies & the rest in aboriginal societies
• Urban societies have more people-people interactions as well as extraneous rules & regulations that are strictly not essential for personal bodily survival, but nevertheless needed in urbanised environments
• The higher frequency & intensity of interactions enable infectious diseases to have more opportunities & niches to germinate, transmit & mutate faster & more easily into currently-resistant strands
• Extremism begets extremism
• Urbanisation is the extreme side of living together & this presents the prefect breeding & spreading grounds of extreme diseases
• It is true that a lot of diseases have already or seem to be defeated & forgotten from our collective memories, like polio, small pox, leprosy, etc.
• With vaccinations, many previously-rampant diseases like tuberculosis (BCG), malaria, yellow fever, mumps, rubella, etc. are now relatively under control à urban society like Singapore have almost eliminated these from infants through strict enforcement of compulsory vaccinations
• Yet,
• When such diseases disappear, people start relaxing their guards & think these diseases are things of the past
• Naïve are such people who have their eyes open, but their minds blindfolded
• Research findings indicate that these diseases are able to be kept low is due mainly to vaccinations (i.e. injections of vaccines into the bodies as preventive measure)
• i.e. most people's body resistance really is not able to defend against such disease loadings on its own without the support propping of vaccines
• In other words, if people start rejecting vaccinations because it seems unnecessary or a waste of their "precious money", I'm afraid they might lose their precious lives
• Besides the level of interactions,
• The infectious diseases also exploit another side of urban societies - abuse of rules & regulations
• Rules & regulations have 2 aspects:

1. Formulation: to propose, form, modify or rectify new & existing ones
2. Enforcement: to implement & ensure the rules & regulations are followed closely

• However,
• Rules & regulations can be formulated wrongly or enforced wrongly or haphazardly, or both
• This results in much disruptions & agony à a societal disease
• Such disruptions can prove to be the deciding factor in crisis situations, creating dangerous delays in critical times
• Absolute power corrupts absolutely: when absolute power is concentrated in compassionate leaders, it is favourable for commoners; but when absolute power is concentrated in incompetent dictators, it is treacherous for commoners
• But who can guarantee that absolute power falls on the compassionate & the competent?
• The result is that under incompetent, ill-prepared, insincere, insensitive & insolvent "leaders", who insist that they are infallible,
• The commoners would suffer from the clutches of both infectious diseases & ignorant governance
• From the triple resolutions of conflict,
• Where the hearts point towards, the mind follows; where the mind thinks towards, the action follows
• The governance need to realise the power of truth
• Especially when things come to the crunch & infections are edging towards the finale
• Being truthful about finding, revealing & preparing for the infection situation is perhaps the greatest things that the leadership can strive for

Readings

TIME story

"We are not just dealing with the scientific containment, we're also dealing with the psychological effect"

Citizens of overcrowded Hong Kong were hypersensitized to the threats of a rogue virus long before AIDS or the movie Outbreak. The regional transportation hub and trading entrep??span> borders Guangdong province and has long been associated with the outbreak of new diseases. The city even has a disease named for it—the Hong Kong flu, which killed 700,000 people globally from 1968-1969, infecting 30% of the world's population in less than nine months. Since 1997, local health authorities also have been periodically quelling eruptions of the avian flu, which is one of the few deadly diseases thought to directly jump from birds to humans.

Disease history epidemics History plagues epidemics pandemics flu scares CDC

Findings

• Understanding through the 8 groupings of diseases
• Disease classification by damage strength-infection intensity & knowledge-cure
• 3 aspects of disease, body & their interactions
• 3 body-disease interactions: harmonious unity, neutrality & conflict
• 3 infection interactions: the balance between body resistance/immune system & disease strength/infection
• Using the parameters of infection knowledge & cure,
• Increase body resistance
• Reducing disease infection
• Principles of treatment & prevention à balance exposure with enclosure
• Societies must maintain vaccinations & be truthful about finding, revealing & preparing for the infection situation with open-hearted spirit
• Rules of thumb: Cultivate good hygiene, good sanitary, cleaning habits, regular exercise, sufficient qualitative rest, balanced diet, vaccinations & regular honest qualitative view of body with regular check-ups