Reflection: "What's in the Medicine Cabinet?"

  Essential workers in my opinion are health-care workers and the scientists who develop the new drugs. Physicians and nurses would face an overwhelming number of patients per day during a pandemic. They are the ones who can help. The amount of doctors is very low in Canada, about 1.9 physician/1000 people. If they get sick, who is going to treat the sick? The health care system of the country will be paralyzed, and the impact of the pandemic will be more significant. The scientists who develop the drugs should get the early treatments, too. They should be protected from the disease so that they could continue to discover new, more effective drugs that can cure people. Also, they taking the drugs would be a way to show the public that the drug is trustworthy—the people who come up with it even dare to consume it. Besides that, it could also ensure that the quantity of the drugs. Scientists themselves have to take the drugs before giving them to the public. 
  We should have amantadine and rimantadine as back-ups although they have unwanted side effects. By interfering with the viral protein M2, amantadine and rimantadine can as effectively as neuraminidase inhibitors. Plus, they are a lot cheaper than the neuraminidase inhibitors. They can somewhat suppress the pandemic. Every drug has side effects, it is unreasonable for drugs to be stopped using because of them, especially under such special conditions. The pharmaceutical companies should warn their costumers about the negative effects in advance, so it's up to the costumers to decide.  However, government should not spend a lot money on amantadine and rimantadine, they can only be used as back-ups.
  We should invest more money into stock piling than developing new drugs. Tamiflu is the best of the four currently available anti-in fluenza drugs. Also, the effects of the virus on the populations are unknown: which age group is most likely to ill, how fast is the virus would spread and how ill would people get. If there is no enough drugs, we have to prioritize the treatment groups, which can lead to ethical controversies because everyone has same right, why can one person get the protection over another because of their identity? However, if we have ample amount of drugs, this would not happen. Everyone will then could have the chance to be protected from the flu. If we spend a lot of money on developing new drugs, supposedly they are developed successfully and better than the previous, the population will still suffer because it's all too late to produce enough for everyone. For those reasons, the WHO is strongly supportive about stockpiling drugs as well. They have been using all its persuasive power to get the government place the orders now.
  

Reflection: "Brain Craze"

  People should spend some time on video games, but not the majority of time. There are some benefits from video games. They can make people think and respond quickly; they keep people interested and entertained. Also, according to the article "Brain Craze," the video game introduced by the Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima can  increase the prefrontal cortex, and it is said to be a booster for people's mental capabilities, especially for the elderly. However, there are also a lot of disadvantages of video games. First, they will decrease people's attention span. When people are accustomed to the short, attention-grabbing scenarios in the games, they will find a hard time concentrating on things that require long-term attention, such as reading. In addition, for this article, the credibility of the video games created by Kawashima for improving mental capabilities is still questionable. A lot of scientists still think  that the reason why the scores for the game can be improved over time, is because people get better at the device itself rather than actually improving mental health. In my opinion, this so called "brain age" game for training brain is merely a fad. The scores only show how well the user has learned the skill to play the game. Like playing a new sport and driving a car, if you have mastered certain techniques, along with a lot of practice, you can do well. Besides the lack of evidence to show that the video game can actually improve mental health, I'm amused by how the game gives a number to indicate brain age. It is as irrational as some Facebook app such as "To Test Your Mental Age." How do they know what a 62-year-old brain is capable to do? How do they know a 20-year-old brain can answer this many questions correctly? This video game can be absolutely be replaced by the traditional and effective way: reading and doing mathematics. In conclusion, people can spend some time playing video games only for entertainment, but should not heavily rely on them.  
  Neuroscience should be considered as an emerging area of medicine, and be given more attention and done more research on it. The nervous system is the commander of all the organ systems in the body. If we understand it better, we might find the cure for many mental diseases such as Alzheimer, schizophrenia. Also, we might know how to use our neurons maximally, instead of the less than 10% for now, so that everyone can be smarter. Add to that, it's probable to extend people's life expectancy by knowing a way to prolong the vitality of the neurons.