Thursday, December 16, 2021
Recent nature pix
These are some pix that I took recently that I thought came out well
Plus some more posts on instagram
I hope this embed code will let you scroll through the several videos and photos on this post
Saturday, July 17, 2021
Tuesday, July 6, 2021
That weird cold I had in late February & early March 2020
On the news the other day, I heard that people saying that the Delta variant is being characterized by some unusual symptoms. In particular they're talking about it seeming like a bad cold.
It surprised me that they would think that was a new symptom. Back in January 2020 the Chinese told us that many people experienced COVID-19 as a bad cold ab initio.
So I had a bad cold. I remember when I caught it. It was February 25, 2020. I went to do an equity audition in New York City. I waited in very crowded areas to participate in this audition. A day or two later I got a scratchy throat. And then a day or two after that my nose started running
We knew that Covid was an issue at that point. I didn't think I had Covid. It was a cold. My nose was running. At the time, the media was saying that COVID wouldn't include a runny nose. I never had chest involvement and I never had a fever of over 99°F.
I treated this cold as I always treat colds. I used to zinc spray in my nose and throat. I rinsed my nose and gargled with salt water. I was concerned about Covid, so I stayed home. I figured that catching Covid when I had a cold would be bad.
Now I had a cold in December 2019, as well. I treated that cold exactly the same way. I washed it out within eight days with the salt water.
The second cold was quite different. Even though I rinsed with salt water three and four times a day, my sinuses were not clear for 18 days after my nose started running. Also I had a symptom that I had never had before. I felt as if I had abrasion in my sinuses. It felt like a skinned knee. There was some blood in the mucus when I blew my nose, and when I rinsed.
The bug never went into my lungs.
Later, I read some things on the Internet that said that if you had a cold that lasted more than a week it might be Covid. I've read other things that said if you had a symptom that you never had before it might be Covid. Also they said that there was frequent sinus involvement with COVID.
While I never did completely lose my sense of smell or taste, there was a taste artifact. My favorite herbal tea was always Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice. Sometime in the spring of 2020 -- I don't remember the date -- I discovered that I could no longer tolerate the taste of my favorite herb tea. My son is having to drink it for me, because I can't stand it. Since then, I haven't liked cinnamon based herbal teas. I always used to love cinnamon.
I got an antibody test in the first week of May, because I started becoming suspicious that my weird cold might be covid. The antibody test was negative. However, about the same time, the talking heads were saying that if you had a mild case the antibodies might be gone in two months.
Also, I've talked to vaccinated people who went out and started socializing immediately after getting vaccinated, and got bad calls – even though the talking heads are saying that there aren't very many colds going around.
I suspect that the bad cold version of Covid has been around from the start. I still don't know if that weird cold that I had was Covid or not -- but maybe it was.
My motivation in putting this up is that perhaps some researcher will find it and it will be useful for better understanding the pandemic.
Treatments I used: rinsing my nose and throat with saline; zinc spray (sprayed into throat. also sprayed on q-tip, which I put in my nose); stopped niraparib for a week; and ongoing use of Vitamin D3 and melatonin (300mcg)
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Covid Toes (January 2022)
Now, chilblains/pernio can be caused by cold weather. OTOH, I've never had them before, and they have been associated with asymptomatic COVID. I had only a mild sore throat with this. Some researchers are coming to believe that #CovidToes are a reaction to interferon and are indicative of a strong immune response to a virus. Others believe they are just caused by walking barefoot on cold floors. I didn't do that. I did get cold toes a few times -- but that's happened to me before and I didn't get this.
I got my 3rd vaccine in August of 2021. In September of 2021, I got an antibody test. This test was at 20 in whatever units they use. The doctor said that that lab was reporting 20, if it was over 20 as well, so I didn't really know how high it was.
I then had an anti-body test again in January of 2022. I expected the anti-bodies to be low, as it was 5 months since my booster. Instead it was 37.4, which is still quite high. I asked my doctor if that meant that I had been exposed, since the number went up, but she thought it was just the way the numbers were reported.
I got an anti-body test in February where the number was 21, which was down substantially from January, tho still fairly high. This made me feel that I must have been exposed in January, which is when I got the pernio / #CovidToes. This makes me feel also that I must have been exposed. It was during the Omicron surge.
Nevertheless, the doctor ordered an additional antibody test in March. This was the antibody test that tested for antibodies to the nucleus of the virus (nucleocapsid). This came back negative, which made the doctor think that I had not had COVID -- that my antibodies were due to the vaccination, so she strongly encouraged me to go ahead and get the second booster.
Covid toes articles
- Immune System Overreaction May Cause ‘Covid Toes’ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/health/covid-toes-cause.html
- Type I interferon response and vascular alteration in chilblain‐like lesions during the COVID‐19 outbreak* - Frumholtz - 2021 - British Journal of Dermatology - Wiley Online Library https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjd.20707
- Type I Interferon Signature in Chilblain-Like Lesions Associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7768511/
- COVID toes: where do we stand with the current evidence? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7566763/
- View of COVID toes: a unique cutaneous indicator of COVID-19 | The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles https://pulmonarychronicles.com/index.php/pulmonarychronicles/article/view/845/1777
- ‘COVID toes’ were likely not caused by COVID-19, in most cases – NCAL Research Spotlight https://spotlight.kaiserpermanente.org/covid-toes-not-caused-by-covid/
- Investigating the link between 'COVID toes' and the virus https://www.med.wisc.edu/wisconsin-partnership-program/meet-our-partners/lisa-arkin-marie-singh-covid-toes/
- From Your Nose to Your Toes: A Review of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Pandemic‒Associated Pernio https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8279931/
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This article indicates that saline nasal washes prevent hospitalization with Covid. I was doing saline nasal washes or three or four times a day when I had that weird cold. That might have saved me
Articles about covid toes
This one concludes that "COVID-associated pernio results from an abortive, seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection:"
Sunday, June 6, 2021
Some of my ads
Woobles
This was *so* much fun.
Retina Specialists
Check this link
Mystic Tycoon
This video ad for an audio podcast appears here
I'm finding that the embedded
YouTube videos here are not
showing up on my iphone.
They seem to work on the browser tho.
ElliQ
Tee Public
Fine Fixtures
Nebula Collection
Access Self Storage
Saudi Telecom
قصة stc الأمريكي! pic.twitter.com/zOuUVjnK7m
— مجموعة stc (@stc) February 27, 2020
Visiting Nurse Service of New York
(photoshoot)
My parts of the NY Project Hope Infomercials
Friday, May 28, 2021
About editing cleavage in women's high school yearbook pictures -- Bartram Trail High School, Florida
I've been involved in a discussion on Facebook about this topic. I want to try to get everything I said into one place in an organized fashion.
My unfortunately rather predictable liberal friends are having a programmed knee jerk reaction to a national news story that I disagree with. I hate this, when suddenly I have to step outside the knee jerk progressive orthodoxy -- but the take the national news has instilled in everyone is dead wrong.
First, I think it is perfectly reasonable for high schools to have dress codes.
Second, I find it distressing that fashion designers, mostly men, are progressively sexualizing women's clothing. This is not actually a choice that the girls made to reveal their bodies. It's a choice of fashion designers made. They are dupes in two ways. First, constantly changing fashion is a pink tax. Second they are being lured into allowing mostly male fashion designers to sexualize them.
I personally find it very annoying that neck lines are plunging and arm holes are getting larger. It means that I have to buy new underwear. Having to buy new underwear is another pink tax. School dress codes could put pressure on clothing designers to stop sexualizing women and to stop imposing such a pink taxes.
This business of allowing girls self-esteem to be tied to fashion it's not helping them. It's demeaning to them.
Third, I find peekaboo clothing to be much more sexually titillating than nudity. If you see a woman without a shirt, it is less sexual than seeing her with cleavage peeking out. The swimsuited boys, looking rather awkward, are not more sexual than the girls with the tight, low cut sweaters.
What if this were photos of boys wearing their pants low to show butt cheek cleavage? Would people have this same knee jerk reaction that prohibiting that was an affront to boys?
Fourth, swimsuits (aka speedos), shown on boys in this case, are functional equipment for participation in a sport. A few years ago, there was an effort to introduce swimsuits that covered more of the body. The powers that be in sports forbade these swimsuits, allegedly because they gave swimmers an unfair advantage.
We do not know, at least I do not know, from the news stories, whether there was a girl's swim team and whether the members of that swim team appeared in their team swimsuits in this yearbook. If they were not allowed to have a swim team or not allowed to appear in the yearbook with swimsuits, that would be inconsistent treatment of men and women.
The comparison of tight, low-cut sweaters to swimsuits is comparing applies to oranges.
The idea that showing cleavage is somehow a woman's right is gaslighting. Instead, what we are seeing is fashion designers sexualizing women, because they cannot visualize women as functional students and workers. Men love to convince women that they are being liberated, when actually they are being exploited, see e.g. the Nxivm cult https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/nyregion/nxivm-cult-keith-raniere-sentenced.html
#BartramTrailHighSchool #cleavage #editing #yearbook #yearbookphotos #speedos
I realized that when I was in high school there were no push-up bras, so I would never have had cleavage like this woman had. I think the invention of the push-up bra is an example of how the fashion industry tries to sexualize women. Someone sent me a blog link https://www.leaf.tv/articles/push-up-bra-history/
Monday, May 17, 2021
Professional updates 210517
Here's a commercial that I did in April that's super cute.
It's also on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/p/CPB0A7kMheo/. minus one scene
I've done 2 in person gigs since being fully vaccinated (second shot: march 9)
I've been busy during the pandemic, taking classes (film & TV studies, animation, improv) and doing online performances.
I've gotten totally obsessed with animation. Here's a blog with some examples, where I did VO singing on some (original songs on Whale Unbending Tale and Animatic)
https://barschall.wordpress.com/videos/
I also started a store to sell my art with Tee Public, the company I did the ad with. I'm super enthused about them. They have made it possible for me to share my art affordably with friendsHere's my Tee Public store, in case you're interested.
http://tee.pub/lic/8ZWNmL4JY0o
Some recent selfies
https://annebarschall.blogspot.com/2021/05/stills-from-recent-video-audition.html
Stills from a photo shoot
