PRINCIPAL

A TOOTHACHE AND COLLAPSE

Publicado el 26/08/2021.

Published on 08/24/2020 in spanish by Felix Moreno.
Translated with deepl 08/26/2021 from spanish.

One of the most agonizing pains that almost all of us have gone through at some time in our lives is a toothache. It is a pain that prevents you from thinking, which is usually caused by a cavity that has in turn produced an infection (if any dentist reads this please excuse my ignorance to be more specific).

The thing is that I have chosen this pain because if there is any pain that you remember for the rest of your life is a toothache.

 Grandmothers will tell you that there are natural remedies like .....

 Gargle with water and salt. ...
 Apply ice.
 Floss your teeth. ...
 Chew parsley. ...
 Apply clove oil. ...
 Put on a black tea bag. ...
Use garlic. ...
Keep your head up.
 

But the thing is, if it really is a toothache due to a bacterial infection, the only really effective thing to do is to visit a specialist and get antibiotics.

Antibiotics are one of those things that we have, we use, sometimes inappropriately, but we don't give much importance to, but... what if for whatever reason they are not available at that moment?

Just imagining a toothache for a few more hours, a day, or a week makes something inside me shudder thinking about the insufferable pain I would suffer.

In the collapse universe it is common to think about things like, the future system of government, how to grow food, how to manage waste and things like that, but just as they do not think about what will happen to technology, something that has brought me no few discussions with decrescentists who think they will have cell phones and laptops in the collapse...many less think about what will happen to medicines, or medical services that we enjoy today.

But the fact is that until a generation ago, people died of many things that now are just a passing nuisance, a toothache, a finger infection, or any herpes virus that caught you with low defenses, and you died after painful days or hours of pure suffering throughout the nervous system.

It is curious that when one analyzes the universe of medicines one does not expect something similar to happen in the universe of technology, although if you think about it both are within the same system and the same spiral of concentration, profit and economy of scale that from my point of view will bring us not a few problems in the future.

That is to say that every day more and more companies are absorbed by other larger ones that are creating de facto monopolies and that end up deciding which drugs are manufactured and which are not, not according to the needs of sick people, but according to their profitability when mass-produced, this ends up generating shortages of certain drugs simply because not many people will buy them.

But the question is, will there be shortages in the future? Which brings me to the next question... Is there already a shortage of drugs?

Well, maybe you already know, sometimes it has been said in the press, although it usually goes unnoticed by the average consumer, but at present there are shortages of many drugs.

In Spain in 2020, before the coronavirus, there were already 1649 drugs in short supply, something that has been growing over the years, for example in 2009 there were only 137 shortages.

To give an example, the famous Aspirin of the multinational Bayer has been in short supply for 2 years, pharmacies order 20 units and they get 5, there must be a problem in the manufacture of this compound that by the way, one may think that it is manufactured in many places in the world, but in fact according to Bayer the only factory of the current principle of aspirin for the whole world is in La Felguera (Asturias).

The reasons are usually varied, logistical problems, natural disasters, and many of the pharmaceutical companies complaining that in some countries the price is too tight and they do not let the free market decide. Other more serious problems are a lack of raw materials for whatever reason, or an excess demand.

These drugs are not hidden in obscure sections of the administration, but are obviously open and useful information for pharmacies to know what they can dispose of and what they cannot. In 2019, the Drug Supply Plan was created to try to combat this problem. More info on these lists and the plan here.

However, something is happening so that there are more and more drugs that are not available, year after year.

From my personal and non-transferable point of view, it is obvious that in a scenario of decrease, more and more medicines will disappear, until we begin to miss some important ones such as ibuprofen, paracetamol, etc. Although for now these important ones do not seem to have problems, but just thinking about them makes my soul shudder jiji.

On the other hand, I wonder in a shortage scenario, what would happen if a state like the United States does the same as with face masks and buys all the paracetamol available, leaving the rest of the planet without medicines for a few months?

A question that 1 years ago would have sounded totally fantasy, tin foil hat, and that after the coronavirus epidemic is something totally probable, and that is already happening with the coronavirus vaccines, in which the West will already have priority over other countries, especially the United States and Europe that have already bought the possible production for months of the doses leaving other countries with nothing.

For the time being, most of the time a drug can be replaced by another with the same active ingredient, but the problem is when some essential drugs are in short supply or cannot be replaced by similar ones.

Right now the shortage has an explanation depending on who you ask, a lot of whining from private companies complaining about what the public administrations are squeezing, but there are also many doctors who warn that we are really in a phase of underproduction, sometimes wanting to put pressure on the countries and their prices, but probably due to a real decrease in the productive capacity due to the reduction of investments for less profits year after year. However, all these are my speculations and opinions that must be accompanied by data, data that for now tell us that every year more and more drugs are becoming scarce or inaccessible.

In the future, in a war scenario, or a pandemic like the present one, where the countries that manufacture certain compounds have problems to supply, it will generate much suffering, more than not having computers or cell phones, although for some this is the worst punishment. A world decreasing in medicines is going to be a world of much pain that should be taken into account when designing a sustainable future, much more important than having citizen wifi networks.

And of course be able to manufacture at least the compounds that help for pain, such as paracetamol, acetyl acid or ibuprofen, and please refrain those who want a future of traditional medicine, seriously when the collapse comes and have the first toothache will send the traditional to where I know me.

To finish in our Relatos Colapsistas forums at https://t.me/relatoscolapsistas, comrade M. Casado has commented on a topic that I think it is necessary to comment here. This probable or possible decrease of medicines in a moment of collapse will make infectious diseases run rampant, thus feeding back the collapse generating many deaths, which I think may be the determining factor in the decline of the population, even more than deaths in wars, especially in countries more accustomed to an excess of hygiene and use of antibiotics and antivirals and that will make us weaker to this type of infections by reducing hygiene or non-vaccination.

 

26/08/2021
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