Marty Nemko's Blog, page 222

If I Got Corona-Cut: What I'd Do to Land a Job Fast

Amid the millions who’ve lost their job because of the economic shutdown, knowing what I know as a career counselor, my Psychology Today article today describes what I’d do.

The Joys and Burdens of Intelligence: Three musts for the high-IQ person

There’s someone I know who has a 155 IQ (99.99 percentile) and he articulated the joys and burdens of intelligence.
Even if you’re not quite as brainy, his story offer lessons that the intelligent readership of Psychology Today may find of value.

I recorded his telling of the story. My Psychology Today article today offers pretty much a paraphrase of what he said but with irrelevant details changed to protect his anonymity.

Plant Envy: Some of the world's best ornamental plants

As people are sheltering in place amid the pandemic, they’re spending more time gardening. Previously, I wrote about practical gardening: how to grow a Corona Victory Garden.  Here I talk pure pleasure. 

My Psychology Today article today describes some of the world’s most beautiful, easy to grow, and otherwise desirable ornamental plants.

Nanobreaks and Projations: New vacation options for Corona Time

We’re working at home, and work time tends to bleed into life time. Sure, there’s the standard advice to set boundaries, but there may be options better suited to some, notably, the nanobreak and the projation.  I describe them in my Psychology Today article today.

Keeping Your Business from Bleeding Out

Money is the lifeblood of any business, indeed of any nonprofit, although less so for the federal government because it can decide to print more money even if everyone’s dollars are thereby worth less.

But how can all but the strongest businesses weather the economic shutdown that promises to continue for weeks if not months, and then face a second shutdown after the predicted coronavirus resurgence? I share my ideas in my Psychology Today article today.

A Smarter Approach to the Coronavirus Pandemic?

I don’t understand the focus on coronavirus testing, spending billions of financial and human cost that could more wisely be spent or returned to the taxpayer, merely to discover prevalence — We know it’s prevalent. Testing’s ostensible additional purpose, as argued by Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA), is to quarantine the infected. He’s calling for mass testing — 60,000 to 80,000 a day and hiring and training 10,000 “trackers” to search out everyone the millions of of infected people have been in contact with. These trackers will be scouting in every imaginable locale, from Calexico to Modesto, Los Angeles to Los Banos, San Francisco to Crescent City. And if the trackers find even half of the millions infected, do you keep them all in quarantine? How do you enforce it? And the tests yield many false positives, which quarantine and worry people unnecessarily. The tests also yield many false negatives, which allow carriers to sally around infecting others.Then there’s problem that we don’t know HOW positive is positive enough to convey serious disease and in the case of the antibody test, how much immunity that confers and for how long. And you could test negative today and test positive tomorrow. Do we test millions of people day in and day out, even every month in and month out? Even in the low, low probability that all of these concerns are overblown, we’d save a relatively few lives, mainly old people with severe underlying conditions so they can live a little longer, often in a nursing home, only soon to be beset by the death-causing sequelae of one of their underlying conditions, a more horrific disease such as diabetes amputations and blindness, crushing heart attack, or vegetating stroke.

Almost as foolish is spending so many billions more on treatment and on research to find better treatment. Again, it’s mainly people with underlying conditions so severe that even putting them on ventilators and state-of-the-art drug cocktails isn’t working for 88 percent of them--they died. Huge cost and major diversion of medical resources from people with greater potential to profit.

And then there’s handing out of “stimulus” checks — Everyone has their hand out knowing that there’s minimal checking. Hey, until social shaming, even Harvard and Stanford, with their 40+-billion endowments had their hands out.

 How ‘s all this going to get paid for? Borrowing and printing more money, which at minimum, makes everyone’s dollars worth less. That $1,200 per person ends up being trivial in real dollars. Our government is robbing Peter to pay Peter. Perhaps worse, we’re increasing our already $25 trillion(!) debt, over a trillion to the Chinese! That not only increases the cost of future taxpayer-paid debt service it’s an increasingly existential threat to the U.S.

 Everyone knows you should stay six feet away and wear a mask in a store. We don’t need more millions of dollars of government effort to promulgate the universally known. Yes, in low-compliance areas, community leaders should encourage residents to follow those guidelines. (So sad that in some areas, people need that.)

 I would not shut down the economy — the short and long-term sequelae are too great: small businesses going out of business, people unable to pay rent, people’s life savings decimated in the stock market decline, countless people suffering the mental, physical, and relational costs of isolation.

 The only major area the government should be involved is to fund undercapitalized efforts to create a vaccine. Big Pharma has plenty of money. The government should support only startups with smart research avenues but little cash.

 That’s what I think is the wisest plan. Anyone want to argue with me? Agree with me?

I read this aloud on YouTube.
You can reach Dr. Marty Nemko at mnemko@comcast.net

Private Practitioner, Is it Time for a Change?

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, some private practitioners are doing just fine. But for others, the pandemic can be a tipping point: Is it time to refocus your practice: get more skills, work for someone else, change locales, even leave the profession? Perhaps my Psychology Today article today will help you gain clarity.

CoronaMusic: A source of calm amid the pandemic

It’s been said that music tames the savage beast. It also can calm the worried one, whether about the coronavirus or otherwise. To that end, My Psychology Today contribution offers a mini-concert of calming music that I play on the piano plus recommendations of others' music.

The Joy of Accepting That I'm Average

I've always striven to be excellent, suppressing the many signs that, net, I'm pretty average. Today, that truth hit me. Surprisingly, my reaction hasn't been sadness but relief. I tell the story in my Psychology Today article today.

The Gender Gap in Empathy: A path to the end of the gender war?

Eminent expert on men's issues Dr. Warren Farrell has written a guest article on my Psychology Today blog. It asserts that reducing a gender gap in empathy is core to ending the gender war.