Celebrate World Kindness Day early with National Day Calendar, Central Valley Today, and KHOU 11

An early Happy World Kindness Day to my readers!* I begin today's slightly premature celebration with National Day Calendar's World Kindness Day on November 13.

On November 13th, as part of World Kindness Day, we are encouraged to spread kindness like an infectious cold. We want to share it more than usual because studies show when others observe kindness in action they are more likely to carry out an act of kindness, too.

So, imagine if you head out for the day and your neighbor’s garbage can has tipped over. Instead of ignoring it and letting the wind make a mess, you pick it up and return it to the corner. Three other neighbors notice and give you a smile and a nod on their way to work.

One of those neighbors notices a stranded driver on the side of the road on his commute to work. He remembers your thoughtfulness and offers assistance to the stranded driver. Several passersby take notice.

At a business office, a woman struggles with a paper jam. She’s had a horrible day. The customer has been waiting, but she remembers the stranded driver she passed earlier in the day. The customer lets the office worker take her time. Anyone can have a bad day, but this prevents it from getting worse and may even make it better.

Today isn't the only day dedicated to being kind. A search of National Day Calendar's YouTube channel for "kindness" retrieved National Random Acts of Kindness Day on February 17, National Do Something Nice Day | October 5, and National Good Samaritan Day - March 13 as other days to do kind things for others. I might add one of them to my list of holidays I observe here.

World Kindness Day is a good day to teach kids kindness, as Fresno's KGPE CBS 47 and KSEE 24's shared morning program noted in Central Valley Today! World Kindness Day.


Of course, adults can do kind things, too, as KHOU 11 described in Ideas for observing World Kindness Day.

Nov. 13 is World Kindness Day! Here's how you can celebrate.

I appreciate the suggestion to be kind to the planet, which we should do every day. Finally, "there's always tomorrow" — especially since World Kindness Day is tomorrow!

*I'm observing the day early because Dave Chappelle is hosting Saturday Night Live tonight, so I'm posting a "Saturday Night Live" highlights post tomorrow instead. Stay tuned.

COVID-19 and diabetes for World Diabetes Day 2021, a pandemic update

For World Diabetes Day, I'm re-examining why coronavirus is more dangerous for diabetics, the topic of the eighth most read entry posted during the tenth year of this blog. I begin with Reuters explaining COVID and diabetes: How the pandemic laid bare America’s diabetes crisis from August 2021.

COVID-19 has torn a particularly lethal path through the one in 10 Americans with diabetes, including many who never caught the virus. That's because when the pandemic hit, people with the chronic disease were already in worse shape than in years.

If I hadn't kept up my diabetes treatment regimen, I could have been one of these three unfortunate people. Their stories help explain why there have been so many excess deaths not attributable to the disease during the pandemic. They also serve as examples for two of Commoner's Laws: Everything is connected to everything else and there is no free lunch. All of the systems in our body are connected to each other and what we do to or for one system will have effects on the rest. Also, isolating ourselves to protect us from the pandemic comes at a price, which we have to pay one way or another, either in continuing our treatment during the pandemic, which I did, or the death and disability described by Reuters.

The three subjects of the Reuters report suffered indirectly from the pandemic, as they didn't catch the disease. KHOU in Houston reported on the effects of catching COVID-19 on diabetics in Keeping diabetes under control during COVID-19 pandemic last December.

Data show diabetics have more severe cases of COVID-19. Doctors say it's more important than ever to keep your diabetes under control.

My wife mentioned how dexamethazone increases blood glucose just last night, so seeing it being mentioned in this video made an impression. Again, there is no free lunch.

Dr. Philip Orlander described how some COVID-19 patients developed diabetes after their infections. Bloomberg Quicktake: Now described that more fully in Doctors Find That Covid Spurs Diabetes: Study from May 2021.

Among Covid-19’s many ripple effects, the worsening of the global diabetes burden could carry a heavy public-health toll. The underlying mechanisms stoking new-onset diabetes aren’t clear, though some doctors suspect the SARS-CoV-2 virus may damage the pancreas, the gland that makes insulin which is needed to convert blood-sugar into energy. Sedentary lifestyles brought on by lockdowns could also be playing a role, as might late diagnoses after people avoided doctors’ offices. Even some children’s mild coronavirus cases can be followed by the swift onset of diabetes, scientists found.

Yikes! That's a frightening example of "everything is connected to everything else." The more I learn about SARS-CoV-2, the scarier the virus becomes!

I close by wishing my readers a safe and healthy World Diabetes Day and telling them to stay tuned for America Recycles Day.