Life in Perspective
Paul Rolland, Night Watchman, Night Watchman Ministries:
2022 was a tough year for many peoples, tribes, tongues and nations. War in the Ukraine, Covid in China. Monumental natural disasters just about everywhere.
I’m blessed to say that I just survived a hospital stay with Pneumonia and a 104 temp. I haven’t a clue how I got it or where. I barely leave my house. No one else got sick. Odd. It is what it is. Seven (7) days, December 24th to December 31st. I’m mending enough to be able to think and analyze and return to my ministry.
As with any major medical health issue, it is a reminder of how very fragile human life is. We exist and ‘live’ by God’s grace. As for billions of people of during the tribulation this will be in short supply. I’m thankful for the very caring and professional staff. I’m thankful for the antibiotics, fluids and medicines provided. It took a lot of resources to get me back on my feet and alive again.
The bible tells us that there will pestilences (plural).
So why do people think that these pestilences will just be able to be combated by current methods? ‘Get a bug, get a jab and get going.’
From a medial perspective, consider what the rapture/harpazo will do to those ‘left-behind.’
Millions of highly skilled, caring and trained medical professionals will have ‘disappeared’ and not show up for work. Doctors, nurses, care aids, food preparers (assuming there is food), lab techs. You name it. Covid has shown the world a bad case scenario where millions of people chased a finite health care system. In my estimation, this didn’t work well for very obvious reasons.
In the tribulation, it will be geometrically worse.
- Supply chain chaos, worse than now.
- Pharmaceutical shortages or complete absence of medicines.
- Deaths due to ‘waiting’ on whatever staff is available, assuming there is any.
- ‘Drink Plenty of Fluids.’ What if there is no fresh water or water bottles in a still working refrigerator.
I’ll cut the list here. You get the idea.
Part of the responsibility of a ‘watchman’ is to warn. Yes, I am being alarmist. As with God’s warnings in the bible, mockers and deniers will say this scenario is impossible. Or, they will ignore the warnings and go to a physical and spiritual eternal death, if unsaved by Christ due to their refusal of His Word and offer of salvation. I can’t state this anymore simple or complete.
China’s Covid wave threatens another snarl of U.S. medical supply chain
https://news.yahoo.com/china-covid-wave-threatens-another-180452565.html
Up to 500 dying every week from a severe flu outbreak because of UK hospital delays – physician
Britain’s National Health Service is currently grappling with the effects of strikes and a severe flu outbreak
1 Jan, 2023 17:10 Rt
Delays in British emergency departments could be causing between 300 and 500 deaths each week, Royal College of Emergency Medicine President Dr Adrian Boyle has told Times Radio.
According to data from NHS England, 37,837 patients waited more than 12 hours to be admitted to emergency departments in November, up from 10,646 in November 2021. Although figures for December have yet to be released, Boyle told the Times that he’d be “amazed” if they weren’t the worst on record.
“What we’re seeing now in terms of these long waits is being associated with increased mortality, and we think somewhere between 300-500 people are dying as a consequence of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care each week,” he said, in remarks quoted by multiple British media outlets on Sunday.
“We need to actually get a grip of this,” he continued. “We need to increase our capacity within our hospitals, we need to make sure that there are alternative ways so that people aren’t all just funneled into the ambulance service and emergency department.”
While hospitals are typically more crowded in winter, this season saw strikes by nurses and ambulance staff in December, and a virulent outbreak of influenza in recent weeks. According to NHS data, 3,746 people per day were hospitalized with the flu in the week leading up to Christmas, up from 2,088 per day a week earlier.
While cases of Covd-19 remain low throughout the UK, staff absences due to the virus were up more than 47% in December compared to November, the Guardian reported.
‘80 Percent of Patients Have Differing Degrees of Pneumonia’: Chinese Doctor
By Sophia Lam December 31, 2022 Updated: December 31, 2022 Epoch Times
While the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) top health body announced a downgrading of China’s COVID-19 management measures and renamed the Chinese term for COVID, Chinese doctors posted online that the virus has severely impacted the lungs of most of their COVID patients.
A respiratory and critical care medicine physician from The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University posted on Weibo on Dec. 28 that among the 60 patients he saw in the outpatient clinic, “80 percent had pneumonia of differing degrees.”
“Almost all of them were positive for COVID, and most of them have the characteristics of viral pneumonia from the scanned images. ‘The novel coronavirus pneumonia’ is true to its name. The disease cannot be regarded as the upper respiratory tract infection of the novel coronavirus ‘flu,’” the doctor wrote.
His post was removed from China’s social media platforms.
The Epoch Times wasn’t able to contact the doctor.
“Almost all the patients who came to us had fever and pneumonia. I don’t know the number of deaths, but our director told us internally that it is definitely not the publicly announced cold and upper respiratory tract infection, but purely a disease that hurts the lungs, which is terrible,” Dr. Song (pseudonym) who works at a Hospital in Qiqihar City of China’s northeastern Heilongjiang Province told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on Dec. 27.
Severe Symptoms, Massive Infections: Doctors
Dr. Song said in the interview that patients reported severe symptoms.
“Some patients have bone pain all over their bodies like an electric drill is piercing their bones. Some have intense sore throats preventing them from drinking water or eating, and they feel pain even when they breathe,” Dr. Song said.
Song said he was infected with COVID, and so were many of his colleagues.
“Many of the doctors and nurses in our hospital were infected, but we just hang in there and continue working. I can hear my colleagues coughing painfully every day,” Song said, adding that only those with persistent high fever are allowed to go home and rest.
Dr. Chen (pseudonym), from a hospital in Anshan City of China’s northeastern Liaoning Province, said that many of the patients he sees have developed lung infections.
“Patients in our emergency rooms have shadows on their lungs in their CT scans,” Chen told The Epoch Times on Dec. 27. She said that she had discussed the symptoms of her patients with a former classmate who is now working in a hospital in Japan.
“My classmate said that, even when Japan was at its worst during the pandemic outbreaks, it wasn’t like the current situation in China. He told me that it is something serious since so many people have died with white lung syndrome,” Chen said.
White lung syndrome refers to the alveoli in the lungs being filled with exudative or inflammatory cells that block the passage of rays of a CT scan or X-ray and thus show up as white areas, explained Dr. Dong Yuhong. Dr. Dong is the chief scientific officer and co-founder of a Swiss biotech company and a former senior medical scientific expert for antiviral drug development at Novartis Pharma in Switzerland.
Most of the medical staff members in the hospital have been infected, and it’s difficult for the hospital’s medical professionals who are ill to get an appointment due to the surge in the number of patients, according to Chen.
“Most of the doctors and nurses were positive for COVID with a fever, and they had to stay at home. There was a lack of medical professionals, and the authorities just pushed medical students to the frontline and asked them to replace doctors,” Chen said.
Chen couldn’t get herself in the queue for a CT scan because there were too many patients already waiting.
“The whole place was packed with patients today, and I wasn’t able to get myself an appointment for a CT scan,” Chen told The Epoch Times.
This was the second time Chen tested positive for COVID, and she had a low-grade fever of around 98.8°F for seven consecutive days, according to Chen. Her mother and her sister were also infected by COVID, Chen said.
Shortage of Medicine: Doctor
Chen blasted the communist regime for its stringent zero-COVID measures and strict control of medicines.
She said there no cure for COVID has been developed in the three years since the pandemic broke out and that even the hospital was short of medicines for COVID.
“We have run out of medicine for COVID. Our hospital doesn’t even have any medicines left for colds and fevers. I prescribed medicine for pneumonia yesterday, but it was out of stock. Two days ago, I looked for some traditional Chinese medicines, but the hospital had also run out of stock of Chinese herbal medicines, including dried ginger,” Chen said.
The Chinese authorities recommended a Chinese herbal decoction, containing dried ginger and licorice root slices, as a prevention against COVID in 2020, as reported by Laonian Ribao (Seniors Daily), a state-run daily publication for seniors published by China’s northeastern Heilongjiang Province, and reposted by Sohu, one of the major Chinese online news portals.
Unable to get any medicine in the hospital, Chen went to a pharmacy but didn’t find any there either.
“The pharmacy staffer told me that the municipal government has issued an order to limit the amount of medicine that can be purchased and they had sold out all cold and fever medicines,” Chen said.
Face masks and rubbing alcohol were also out of stock in the local pharmacies, Chen added.
“There are thousands of pharmaceutical companies in China; how come we don’t have enough medicines?” Chen blamed the CCP for its control of pharmaceutical production and sales.
“The CCP has no humanity. They’re murderers!” Chen said in the interview.
Censorship of COVID Deaths
One Twitter post revealed that a provincial authority mandated “quality inspectors of each department” should see to it that novel coronavirus pneumonia should be avoided when doctors record the patients’ cause of death.
The post doesn’t identify the name of the province.
The Epoch Times wasn’t able to verify the authenticity of the tweet.
Recent official announcements show that the CCP is working hard to play down the severity of the recent outbreak that is sweeping the country, with hospitals and crematories overwhelmed and long queues of hearses outside funeral homes waiting to deliver bodies .
Following the abrupt dumping of its zero-COVID measures in early December, the Chinese regime downgraded the management of the disease from Class A to Class B, and scrapped mandatory isolation measures on Dec. 26, according to a notice on the website of China’s National Health Commission (NHC). The NHC announced on the same day that the Chinese name for COVID-19 has been changed from “novel coronavirus pneumonia” to “novel coronavirus infection,” as the virus now only causes “a common respiratory infection” with “extremely low severe illness rate and mortality rate.”
Zhao Fenghua and Hong Ning contributed to this report.
8 infectious diseases that made a comeback in 2022 unexpectedly — and illnesses that could surge in 2023
Hilary Brueck Fri, December 30, 2022 at 3:49 PM ES Insider
- 2022 was a banner year for infectious diseases, due to a wide web of complex factors.
- Mpox, cholera, polio, and the measles all turned up in places where they hadn’t been seen in years — or, ever.
- Some of the outbreaks were short lived, while others will likely continue well into 2023.
Polio re-emerged in the UK and the US after nearly a decade of no cases, paralyzing at least one unvaccinated New Yorker.
Polio, a deadly virus that used to disable hundreds of thousands of children a year in the early 20th century, only circulates in Pakistan and Afghanistan these days, thanks to near-universal vaccination that extends to almost every corner of the world.
Health workers and security guards in those two countries still risk their lives and are routinely gunned down traveling to remote areas and battling outlandish anti-vaccine conspiracy theories to deliver oral polio vaccines to children.
“If we do not manage to eradicate polio, it is not going to stay in Pakistan, Afghanistan — it will always come out,” Oliver Rosenbauer, a communications officer with the World Health Organization’s Global Polio Eradication Initiative, recently told Insider, alluding to the modern pace of global travel and how infectious diseases spread irrespective of borders.
“Countries will always run the risk of being reinfected, and that is what we’re seeing with New York and London,” where unvaccinated people now run the risk of infection and paralysis,” Rosenbauer added.
“That’s one thing that keeps surprising me, actually, is how good this virus is at finding unvaccinated individuals.”
He expects polio “will continue to spread” until the virus is eliminated.
“The goal of achieving a polio-free world is not going to be won or lost in New York or London, it’s going to be won or lost in Pakistan,” he said.
Scarlet fever killed at least 25 children in the UK, who had a nasty version of strep.
In the US, too, cases of invasive group A strep, the infection that causes scarlet fever, are up according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — but no deaths have been recorded stateside.
Fortunately, group A strep is a bacterial illness, which means it can be easily treated with one of many different antibiotics, including amoxicillin or cephalexin.
Dr. Anthony Flores, chief of pediatric infectious diseases with Memorial Hermann Hospital and UTHealth Houston, recently told Insider that “we still have a long winter respiratory virus season to go,” so it’s likely that the hefty load of strep cases we’re seeing now could continue into the first months of 2023.
Measles is spreading fast among unvaccinated children in Ohio — at least 32 have been hospitalized.
No measles deaths have been reported in Ohio this year, but 82 measles cases have been recorded, and nearly half of those patients (32) were hospitalized.
So far, only unvaccinated kids have been infected (though four patients have an “unknown” vaccination status.) The CDC says measles vaccine coverage has “steadily declined since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,” both in the US, and around the globe.
In Minnesota, a few states further west, at least 22 measles infections have been recorded in 2022 — after three years of no cases — all in families with unvaccinated children. Seven of those patients have been hospitalized.
Because measles is one of the most contagious viruses humans get, “even a small drop in the immunization coverage rate means there are thousands more children who could be vulnerable to disease,” Jennifer Heath, the immunizations program coordinator for the Minnesota Department of Health, said in September.
Heath recently told the Washington Post that a big part of the reason why more parents are shifting their stance on routine MMR vaccines for their kids is because of “a disconnection to the primary care provider — the human being who’s telling you that vaccines are important.”
The World Health Organization and UNICEF say a “perfect storm” has been brewing for more measles outbreaks around the world, spurred on by both pandemic declines in vaccination, and more vaccine hesitancy. Disease experts expect areas of the world without 95% of their population vaccinated against measles may see more outbreaks in 2023.
Mpox, a virus which had rarely spread outside of endemic countries in central and west Africa before, roared across the globe, with thousands of infections diagnosed across six continents.
In a span of less than six months starting in May, more than 83,500 cases were confirmed, and at least 25 people died worldwide.
The virus, which was called monkeypox before the World Health Organization recently renamed it, appears to be in retreat, after layered interventions including vaccines, treatments, and community prevention measures were quickly adopted and embraced.
After surveying more than 800 men who had sex with men, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found around 48% reported reducing their number of sexual partners over the summer of 2022, when the outbreak was peaking, and 50% said they slowed down on one-off “sexual encounters.”
“Given the low number of cases today, HHS does not expect that it needs to renew the emergency declaration when it ends on January 31, 2023,” US Health Secretary Xavier Becerra announced December 2.
Babies and toddlers have been bearing the brunt of a nasty respiratory illness season, with skyrocketing cases of RSV, parechovirus, and other infectious diseases.
Doctors, nurses, and epidemiologists say there are several things at play contributing to the big viral soup — and they are wary of dismissing it with any one simple explanation, like a so-called “immunity debt” spawned by social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, says there is more of an “exposure debt” at work, not an immunity debt, meaning lots of kids who didn’t get many common childhood illnesses for two years are all getting infected with them now.
“Childrens’ immune systems are just fine,” Schaffner said during a recent Infectious Diseases Society of America press briefing. “Now that they’re exposed, they’re having to deal with this virus, and the virus has many more opportunities to spread.”
Because many different viruses and bacteria are all spreading at the same time, among kids of all ages, it’s causing drug shortages, long waits for care, and a cascade of sick kids — and parents.
“It happens every respiratory virus season,” Dr.Flores said. “But this season has been a little more intense.”
Infectious disease experts like Flores are notoriously wary of making specific predictions about what seasonal viruses will do in 2023, but it’s likely we’ll continue to see more wintery illnesses popping up over at least the next few months. Most viral illness, including flu and RSV, peak annually between December and February.
Flores also said drug shortages for medicines like children’s Tylenol and amoxicillin could last until the spring.
An out-of-nowhere outbreak of Cholera has killed more than 280 people in Haiti.
For the first time in three years, cholera is spreading in Haiti, with at least 13,672 cases and 283 deaths recorded since early October.
Insider’s Sarah Braner reported it’s possible that the currently circulating strain may be a descendant of one brought into the country over a decade ago by UN troops providing earthquake disaster relief.
Cholera is also on the rise this year in Syria, Malawi, and more than 25 other countries, a global increase prompted by more flooding, conflict, migration, and “other factors that limit access to clean water,” the World Health Organization said in a recent dispatch.
A group of concerned doctors wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine last week that this “resurgence of cholera in several parts of the world despite available tools to fight it” means “cholera control and prevention efforts must be redoubled,” with the WHO specifying that “urgent action is needed to increase global vaccine production.”
Though disease experts can’t yet say for sure what the cholera situation will be in 2023, cholera vaccines are being rationed — to one dose per person, instead of the usual two — in order to provide more people with “protection in the near term, should the global cholera situation continue deteriorating,” the WHO said.
More than three years in, COVID-19 is continuing to infect and kill millions of people — with various versions of Omicron dominating, for now.
Disease experts expect anywhere between 500,000 and 1.8 million people in China will die from COVID-19 by the end of April 2023, as the country quickly disbands its longstanding “zero-COVID” policy, in the face of widespread citizen protests.
For now, the coronavirus variants that are circulating in China, the US, and elsewhere are almost all some version of Omicron, but federal health officials in the US are worried about the possibility that the virus could morph again into another new variant that could potentially circumvent current vaccines or treatment options, as millions more people will continue to get infected in the new year.
Updated booster shots from Moderna and Pfizer fight back against Omicron specifically, and help stave off severe disease and death. The US has offered some of its vaccines to China, but the country has instead focused on trialing its own booster shots. While China’s overall COVID-19 vaccination rate is above 90%, only about two-thirds of the elderly adults over age 80 in China, who are by far the most vulnerable to severe disease and death from the disease, have been vaccinated.
But how can they call on him (Jesus Christ) to save them unless they believe in him (Jesus Christ)? And how can they believe in him (Jesus Christ) if they have never heard about him (Jesus Christ)? And how can they hear about him (Jesus Christ) unless someone tells them?” —Romans 10:14
In His Service,
Night Watchman
Paul Rolland
Night Watchman Ministries
Make Your Decision for Christ NOW!!!!!!! Time is Up!!!!!!!
Jesus Christ’s Offer of Salvation:
The ABCs of Salvation through Jesus Christ (the Lamb)
A. Admit/Acknowledge/Accept that you are sinner. Ask God’s forgiveness and repent of your sins.
. . . “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).
. . . “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10).
. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8).
B. Believe Jesus is Lord. Believe that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be; that He was both fully God and fully man and that we are saved through His death, burial, and resurrection. Put your trust in Him as your only hope of salvation. Become a son or daughter of God by receiving Christ.
. . . “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:15-17). For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).
C. Call upon His name, Confess with your heart and with your lips that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.
. . . “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10).
. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (John 1:8-10).
. . . “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (John 2:2).
. . . “In this was manifested the love of god toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” (1 John 4:9, 14-15).
. . . “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:8-10).
. . . “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23).
. . . “Jesus saith unto them, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6).
. . . “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” (Romans 1:16).
. . . “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts: 4:12).
. . . “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth for there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:4-6).
. . . “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).
. . . “But as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (John 1:12).
True Church / Bride of Christ Spared from God’s Wrath:
Romans 5:8-10. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”
Romans 12:19. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 1:10. And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
1 Thessalonians 5:9. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
Romans 8:35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Jeremiah 30:7. Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.
Revelation 3:10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.