This is a little off-topic but some might find it useful. Basically, it was an “ah ha” moment for me. In January I had a pretty bad cold. A little fever at first, sore throat high up in the back of my sinuses, and very congested for two weeks. I don’t think I’ve ever had a cold that lasted two weeks before. Anyway, for most of my life, over-the-counter cold medicines always worked and provided temporary relief. This time, none of them provided any relief at all. What I eventually learned is that the ingredients of over-the-counter cold medicines in the US changed sometime around 2006. In the past, the ingredient that provided relief was pseudoephedrine. Nowadays, you can still get cold medicine with that ingredient but you have to to ask for it. Drug stores have it behind the pharmacy counter (no prescription needed, but you must ask for it). Once I figured that out, I got cold medicine that worked and finally got some relief. Moral of the story is this. If you find yourself with a nasty cold and your cold medicine seems worthless, it probably contains phenylephrine instead of pseudoephedrine, so be sure and ask for the good stuff behind the counter.

It bugs me when there is a headline in the news like “2500 cases of coronavirus in the US”. That’s just the number of positive test results which seems kind of meaningless when there is so little testing in a country of 350,000,000 people. Why does the media report the number like it’s an accurate total number of cases, then compare it with the totals in other parts of the world? So stupid. I’m guessing millions of people believe it too.

Better than cactus I guess