Flu shots and Narcan
What a squeaker! But at last we’ve managed to cross the finish line, folks: This record-scorcher summer of 2023 officially enters our rearview mirror on Sept. 23, the opening salvo of fall. Anybody feeling the relief yet? Somehow, every Texan appears to have reached the same uncomforting verdict: None of us can recall any summer ever being so relentlessly unforgiving as this one. Even our native pecan trees are so dehydrated they’ve already dropped all their bounty — unripe, two months too early — solely in tradeoff just for survival.
Meanwhile, according to climate scientologists and their newest computer projection models, this July and August of 2023, globally being the two warmest months ever recorded in the history of mankind, will probably now be the mildest summer we’ll ever experience for the rest of our lives. Appears that cagey old billionaire parrothead Jimmy Buffet got out just in the nick of time.
Hopefully, though, we’ve at least now seen the last of our triple-digit temps this year. Which reminds me: All of you do know, of course, what time of year it means we’ve now entered? Uh huh, that’s right. Once again it’s fun, fun, flu shot time! So, spare Dr. Howard here your ’tude about how bothersome it is to coordinate your schedules around a needle prick, or (my favorite) how every time you’ve gotten a flu shot in the past it always caused you catch influenza anyhow. Horseshit!
Get your flu shot, bitches. Especially those of you who are nurturing legacies involving previously compromised immune systems. It won’t hurt, either, to toss in the shingles vaccination while you’re at it. Pneumonia, as well. And don’t forget tetanus — it’ll last you for 10 whole years.
Also, on a side hustle for all you seniors reading this (those 60-plus, and counting) you’ll be encouraged to know that for the first time ever, later this fall, “Triple Vax” is coming — a three-punch whammy of the flu shot, the latest newly updated COVID-19 booster and the RSV vaccine — for better dealing with our new climate’s ever-growing respiratory threats. (Should any of you just be waking up from a hyper-sleep, all the earth is afire.)
Even in normal times, the respiratory syncytial virus hospitalizes more than 160,000 older adults each year and kills up to 10,000, causing near the same amount of illness as influenza. So, step up to the plate here, people! Schedule your inoculations! Just close your eyes, hold your nose, and get it over with. Anybody can stand being a pain pig for two measly friggin’ minutes, and the only body part you need expose is one single shoulder (of your own choosing).
Alrighty then, with that said, let’s just get saving-lives right to it, shall we?
Dear Howard: I’m a college freshman this year. Call me naïve, but I’d no idea how entrenched the campus partying scene is — not just alcohol, either, or vaping or weed. My assigned roommates keep inviting me go party with them, but I’ve a family history of substance abuse issues and am leery of even experimenting at all. My older brother OD’d on some Fentanyl-laced street shit. Statistically, more than five people every minute, every day, all year long, are now dying of overdoses. I heard, though, that there’s some sort of overdose reversal stuff coming out soon you can buy over the counter, no prescription required. Is this true? — Hallulah With an ‘H’
Dear Hallu: Well, hula, hula, hallelujah, Tallulah! The FDA has done something quite magnanimous for once, finding within its heart to bring Narcan — the first opioid overdose reversal medication — easily accessible to the masses. Narcan is now on pharmacy shelves, no prescription necessary. Big Pharm’s motivation behind this milk of human kindness didn’t arise so much from altruism as it did merely from fear of further lawsuits. Kroger, alone — accused of improperly monitoring highly addictive painkillers in its pharmacies — was recently forced to pay a $1.2 billion punishment settlement for its role as a licensed narc dealer, only a fraction of more than some $13 billion in compensation settlements across the board last year. Opioid overdose fatalities last year totaled over 100,000 — for the second straight year in a row — and those statistics represent just deaths here in the United States.
So, listen up, bois & gurlz: Same as with fire extinguishers, Band-Aids and lube — every single one of your medicine cabinets and bathrooms need include a box of Narcan nasal spray, too. Admittedly, the five-step pictorial directions on the back of the box could benefit from both better visuals, and less laughable directives. And yeah, sure, just a 4 mg box of said nasal spray is gonna lighten your billfold by nearly 50 bucks. But think of Narcan as an investment, like insurance, where the whole point of owning it is never having to use it.
Dear Howard: I’m just gonna head straight down Slut Street here, man: Is there any physical giveaway to really gauge the correct size of a dude’s cactus short of pulling out a ruler when he drops his skivvies? What’s the burden of proof, if any, regarding the size of men’s hands being dependable dowsing rods? — Supertanker
Dear Little Dinghy: In the name of yesteryears’ Fire Island Tea Dances, how does this apocryphally ridiculous fist/penis corollary just never die? There’s about as much legitimacy in this as there is in, oh, Richard Gere’s gerbil and Rod Stewart’s guttural capacity for fresh semen. According to a 2001 Asian urological study, finger-length versus penis-girth are purportedly controlled by testosterone levels, with stubby index fingers corresponding to higher-than-average levels of testosterone; subsequently, a shorter index finger compared to one’s ring finger correlates to a bigger schlong. This mumbo-jumbo quackery is known as the “Second to Fourth Digit Ratio.” Yet, if you ask me, a pilgrimage over to your local gay bath house sounds a lot more scientifically credible toward determining whether any legitimate science backs such nonsense up, and you’ll certainly have a better time.
—Howard Lewis Russell
Have a spooktacular question for Howard next month, my little monsters? Well, then, you sure know who to scream “Boo!” to, at AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.