Getting passports. Vaccination incentives.

20221130

Yesterday was a big day for our family. Edward and Zoriana’s passports had expired months ago.  The embassy was closed for the war.  I had emailed them to let us know when they were back in business.

Last week they sent a message to the effect that we could come in and renew their passports. It was quite a logistic operation. We got up at seven and got to the regional electric train  at 8:30.  We arrived early, with 45 minutes to get from the train up to the embassy. We managed to spend all that time on the path, arriving at ten of ten.

We were there until 11:40. Although applying for a passport is fairly simple per the State Department guidelines, this consulate asked for all sorts of extraneous stuff. In addition to the applications and the old passports, they wanted Oksana and my marriage certificate and the kids’ birth certificates, with copies and translations, and pictures of the kids every six months since the issue of their last passports.

They wanted me to bring a credit card to pay, which I did. They had always previously required cash. This time it was only credit card, though, I brought cash as well. One Ukrainian employee checked everything, and there was not a single piece of paper that we brought that they didn't ask for. It is fortunate that I read, and Oksana double-checked the instructions very thoroughly. Then they went away for 1/2 an hour.

There was a glitch with the credit card. They made it into three transactions, and for some reason the bank required a five-minute wait between them.

As we sat there in the lobby there were no Ukrainians there applying for visas to the United States. Prior to the war there were usually be 20 or 30. On the American citizen services side there were three interesting people. First, a 90-year-old Russian-born American entrepreneur. A longtime sea captain. He had come to Ukraine to volunteer helping repair tanks. He owns a machine tool business.

He needed to get his passport renewed so he could fly to New Zealand and sail his hundred foot yacht three months back to the United States. An interesting character – I had hoped that Eddie would find it more interesting to talk to him as his best friends Artem’s father Sasha is also a sea captain.

The second was a handsome young Ukrainian guy who spoke barely 2 words of English. He was there to register the birth of his son by his American wife. I talked to him in Russian and Eddie in Ukrainian. 

This was an interesting twist. You don’t meet too many Ukrainian men marrying American women, but this is the second this year. I admire the manliness of the guys here; nice that women do as well.

The third was a Chinese-American woman with a three month old baby whose birth she needed to register. Oksana was quick to figure that there must be a surrogate mother situation. Mom is bottle feeding and the kid didn't look Chinese.

It was stressful keeping track of wandering kids for all this while, but we got everything done. I am getting my passport renewed at the same time so that all three will expire simultaneously and we don't have to renew by onesies. I'm already scheming on what to do with Marianna, whose US passport has three years to run. Since at her age a Ukrainian or an American passport would serve about the same, my suggestion will be that when her American one is ready to expire we should apply for a Ukrainian passport for her. Probably get them for Eddie answer Zoriana as well, as it never hurts to have two passports.  Then renew Marianna’s American passport along with the other kids in five years.

I am continuing to read the book Why We Sleep. I cannot recall any book that has been more informative on aspects of life that I don't often think about. Sleep has an impact on every facet of our lives. The chapters I read today talk about the fact that that you are more likely to catch infectious diseases, cancer, and loads of other things if you don't get enough sleep. They have the studies to show it. At any rate, I think I will do this review before I do Robert Malone’s.

Speaking of Robert Malone, he has a $25 million lawsuit against Peter Breggin, one of the other anti-jab campaigners. I'm disappointed that these two truth-seekers can't work it out.

On the subject of vaccines, I came across this article today talking about the incentives that pediatricians have to make their patients get the vaccines. The long and short of it is that is worth $400 a year per kid from Blue Cross to have the kids get all their vaccines. More than that, if fewer than 63% of the pediatricians’ patients are fully vaccinated the pediatrician receives no payment whatsoever. In other words, there is a lot of incentive to push vaccines on kids.

Here is a link to the Blue Cross pamphlet, which is no longer in a place where the public can find it since this 2017 article on the incentives to physicians was published. Among other things it shows that pediatricians make money by measuring children's body mass index and other stuff, though they don't mention what they should do with the findings, and they make money from pushing statins on people on the assumption that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease.

I often read that people are coming to believe that cholesterol is part of a syndrome and that Alzheimer's is also a syndrome. Not a single cause, and the government is wasting billions of dollars looking for single causes for both when they are really lifestyle issues.

Turning back to sleep book, it says that one of the processes that goes on during sleep is your body purges itself of accumulated detritus, poisons such as amyloid plaque that is associated with Alzheimer's. If this happens during your sleep, if you don't get enough, amyloid plaque can build up. It is not the only cause of Alzheimer's, but a contributing factor. Who would've thought it was sleep? But there is a high correlation between short sleep and dementia. He recommends The End of Alzheimer’s

Obesity is also correlated with sleep. In lots of ways. Here’s a dramatic graph:

We got home to a dark house. The light just came on at three and stayed on for four hours. I had had great workouts the last three days, but yesterday I just didn't have it in me. I took the day off. I went to sleep early and woke up refreshed.

I learned something else. I could not make telephone contact with Oksana or Zoriana’s music teacher last night, so I let the appointment slide because we had no light. What I am concluding is that the cell towers depends on the same electricity as everybody else and that therefore when that electricity is out the cell phones are also out. I should come to that conclusion before. If I call via Skype, powered by our UPS, it depends only on the other party’s power.

That's the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the much ballyhooed Russian rocket attack has not happened yet. The girls are off to kindergarten, Eddie should be studying, and Grandma is, as usual, busy in the kitchen.

Graham