The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-01)

E4 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, MARCH 1 , 2022

INSPIRED LIFE

BY CATHY FREE

R

estaurant owner Stela Borbas was on her way to work in downtown Mi- ami after yoga class when she came across a startling sight. A car was stopped in the middle of busy South Miami Avenue during morning rush hour, and a distressed couple and their daughter were standing at the side of the road with an older woman. The younger woman’s bare legs were covered in blood. As she watched other drivers speed by the scene at about 8:30 a.m. on Feb. 7, Borbas decided to stop. Her yoga instructor’s words were fresh in her mind. “He told me that my intention was to do good for someone that day,” Borbas, 29, said. “I figured, ‘Okay, this is my opportunity.’ It was clear these people needed some help.” There was nowhere to park next to the curb, so she pulled up behind the family’s car. That was when she discovered what was happening. The woman was in active labor. Her water had broken and she was apparently bleeding because her baby was about to make her entrance into the world, Borbas said. The couple didn’t understand English, but they spoke Spanish. So did Borbas. “But I was so panicked when I saw that she was pregnant and about to have a baby, that I suddenly couldn’t remember a single word,” she said. “All I could think of was to call 911.” The couple was with a neighbor, who spoke limited English and was driving them to a morning appointment with immigra- tion authorities, Borbas said. They were Haitian immigrants who had recently been in Chile and then come to Miami. The neighbor had panicked and stopped the car at about 8 a.m. in the middle of the road when the woman started bleeding and it was obvious that she was in labor and severe pain, Borbas said. Borbas called 911, and as she began to speak into her phone, she realized that the couple’s 4-year-old daughter was screaming. “I asked the neighbor to take her away from the scene a little bit so I could calm down the situation and hear the 911 operator,” Borbas said. She assumed that she would wait with the family until an ambulance arrived and the mom could be rushed to a hospital to safely give birth. But that’s not what happened. “The 911 operator told me to take a deep breath,” Borbas said. “She told me, ‘I need you to deliver this baby.’ ” Borbas is a mother of two children, ages 6 and 4, and had given birth naturally both times, she said. “So I knew what that was like,” she said. “But deliver a baby? On a street curb? I told the woman helping me on the phone, ‘Wait! I didn’t even sanitize my hands.’ ” There wasn’t time, said the operator, who informed her that the ambulance was still five or 10 minutes away. “The woman was now lying on the side of the road with her head in her husband’s lap,” Borbas said. “She was in pain, but not screaming. I was the only one who was panicking.” The 911 operator asked her if she had something in her car that the woman could lie on to give birth, and Borbas suddenly re- membered that she had a yoga mat. It was a limited edition Lululemon mat. “It has little sayings on it, like

‘Live in the moment.’ ‘Be Grate- ful.’ ‘Be Kind,’ ” she said. “So I guess it was entirely appropri- ate.” Borbas fetched the mat and also found some freshly laun- dered rags in the back of her car from the all-day breakfast cafe she’d opened 21 / 2 years ago, Chick- en and the Egg. “I wrapped some of the rags around my hands, and by that point, the baby’s head was already showing,” Borbas said. “The operator told me to encourage the mom to keep pushing, but I could tell she was fading a bit,” she added. “She wasn’t very responsive, and I was afraid she was going to pass out.” To keep her awake, Borbas said she slapped the woman’s legs and screamed, “Keep pushing, Mom! C’mon! You’ve got this!” She didn’t notice whether any- one driving by was watching, and she didn’t care, she said. “I was screaming like crazy and she kept pushing, and all of a sudden the baby landed perfectly in my hands,” Borbas said, noting that the official time of birth was 8:45 a.m. When the baby girl didn’t cry, Borbas gently moved her up and down and was relieved when she let out a wail, she said. “She was a miracle yoga mat baby,” said Borbas, who immedi- ately started crying when she looked at the baby’s tiny, perfect face. Seconds later, the ambulance arrived and paramedics cut the baby’s umbilical cord and whisked her and the mother away to Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital. “The dad was all smiles and thanked me, and we decided to exchange phone numbers,” said Borbas, who then drove on to her cafe to scrub the blood off her hands and arms. “I wanted to follow up to see how they were doing.” Two days later, she visited the mother and baby in the hospital before they were discharged. “I was happy to see they were both doing well,” she said. “The baby is beautiful — her name is Darlie and she weighs 5.2 pounds.” Borbas learned that the couple, Roche and Tatie, had been in Miami since Christmas Day last year. They agreed to be inter- viewed on the condition that their last names would not be used because of their immigra- tion status. The couple left Haiti for Chile with their daughter to look for a better life because it was difficult to find work during the pandemic, Borbas said. When coronavirus cases kept rising in Chile, they decided to make their way to the United States via bus and on foot over three months, she said. The family was robbed on their journey multiple times, said Bor- bas, who has started a GoFundMe account for the family. “They have relatives in Miami, but they’re now staying about an hour and a half from the city, renting a small room,” she said. “They were going to the immigra- tion office that day because they want to stay here, where there are more opportunities.” The couple is unemployed, she added. In a brief interview with The Washington Post interpreted by Borbas, Tatie said she will forever be thankful that Borbas took the time to help that morning. “Nobody else stopped or called 911,” she said. “They just kept driving. We believe that God sent Stela to help deliver our daughter. She not only delivered our baby, she is helping us to build a better life for both of our daughters.” “There is no doubt that Stela is our friend for life,” Tatie added.

Miami restaurant owner

on way to work stops to

do delivery — a baby girl

she says, adding: “I haven’t lost it
since.”
Smartphones are ubiquitous.
It’s rare to see someone in public
who isn’t scrolling, texting or
talking on one. Most of us already
know their risks and annoyances:
distracted driving and walking,
meal interruptions and the irrita-
tion that comes from hearing a
persistent ringtone during a con-
cert, play or film. Research also
has found that we tend to suffer
cognitively when our phones are
nearby — we do better on tasks
when we aren’t tempted to use
them.

A deep personal connection

But scientists studying the re-
lationship between people and
their smartphones also have
come up with additional insights
in recent years about how people
behave when using them, includ-
ing discovering that people can
draw needed comfort by their
mere presence.
Individuals hold a deep per-
sonal connection with their
phones, according to researchers.
This leads phone users to express
their views more freely when us-
ing their phones, often in exag-
gerated ways, and with more hon-
esty, disclosing personal or sensi-
tive information, for example,
compared with laptops or tablets,
experts say. They are portable and
they have haptic properties that
stimulate our sense of touch. And
we regard them as much more
personal than computers, which
are closely associated with work.
“Smartphones allow people to
be themselves,” says Aner Sela,
associate professor of marketing
at the University of Florida,
whose ongoing research suggests
that people communicate with
more emotion on smartphones
than with other devices, seeing
them as a safe space to do so.
“When we are engaged with our
phones, we feel we are in a pro-
tected place. You feel like you are
in your own private bubble when
you use them. We get into a state
of private self-focus, looking in-
ward, paying attention to how we
feel, and less attuned to the social
context around us.”
Kostadin Kushlev, assistant
professor of psychology at
Georgetown University and di-
rector of its Digital Health and
Happiness Lab (the “Happy Tech

PHONES FROM E1

Lab”), which studies the role of digital technology in health and well-being, agrees, adding that he can easily see how smartphones can become pacifiers for grown- ups. “What might be going on? We don’t know, but one theory that makes sense to me is that they represent that we have friends,” he says. “It’s a reminder that we have friends, and knowing we can reach them, even remotely, is comforting. Also, they are very personal devices, more so than any other device, and with us all the time. From that perspective, we see them as an extension of ourselves.” The phones also serve as a repository for all the details in our lives, from banking and en- tertainment, to tracking the whereabouts of our children, and getting us from one location to another. “They are the holy grail for convenience,” says Jeni Stolow, a social behavioral scien- tist and assistant professor at the Temple University college of public health. “It’s someone’s whole world in the palm of the hand. That is really appealing because it can make people feel in control at all times.”

A price for social insulation? But Kushlev wonders whether we pay a price for this social insulation. “These devices make our lives easier,” he says. “There is no doubt they complement our lives, but what happens when you introduce this amazing device into everything you do? What are

the costs of that? Every time I use my phone to find a place, maybe I miss an opportunity to ask for directions and connect with someone? Is it sometimes causing us to disconnect from our im- mediate social environment?” Adrian Ward, an assistant professor of marketing at University of Texas McCombs School of Busi- ness who studies consumers’ rela- tionships with technology, also points out that most children who grow up devoted to a security object eventually abandon it, hav- ing acquired the ability to soothe themselves. “What do we miss when we turn to our phones for comfort?” he says. “Does it give us an easy out?” Still, he acknowledges the deep attachment people have for their phones. “They represent something that is more than just a piece of metal and glass,” he says. “A rock is not going to do that. A personal memento is not going to do that.” Moreover, during these tremu- lous pandemic years, smartphones have become a lifeline, enabling isolated people to reach out to others they cannot be with in person, and to engage in other activities such as telemedicine and shopping. “I certainly found myself reaching for my phone more during this time — even though my other devices have been just as readily accessible to me at home,” Melumad says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if others found themselves doing the same thing.”

Helping smokers Melumad’s research, five studies published collectively and co- written with Michel Tuan Pham, professor of business at Columbia University, grew out of her own personal experience. As she sus- pected, the experiments showed that smartphones were soothing during stressful situations, in- cluding among former smokers trying to deal with the aftermath of quitting. In one of her studies, subjects were randomly assigned to either write a speech they were told they would have to recite later — a situation known to produce stress — or to complete a neutral task. They then were asked to wait alone. While they were wait- ing, a hidden camera videotaped them. The speechwriters were more likely than the low-stress control group to grab their smartphones first, before anything else they brought with them. In fact, they went for their phones in about 24 seconds or less, compared with those in the low-stress group, who waited about 90 seconds before reaching for their phones — if they went for them at all. In the former smokers’ study, the subjects, who had given up smoking during the past year, reported a similar degree of attachment to their phones as they did to food, the latter a well-estab- lished coping mechanism among those who have recently stopped smoking. “Consumers who are particularly susceptible to stress were more likely to show emotional and behavioral attachment to their phones, which suggests that the device may compensate for the stress relief previously afford- ed by other means, such as ciga- rettes,” Melumad says. “As such, health professionals might actu- ally encourage the use of smartphones as a means to reduce stress across a variety of con- texts.” This, in fact, may prove to be one positive impact of smartphones on mental health worth focusing on, she says. “These phones aren’t going anywhere, so why not use them for the good they can do?” Melumad says. “There are many destructive things people can do to soothe themselves but holding your phone during a moment of stress doesn’t have to be one of them.”

For many, dialing up sense of security

ISTOCK “When we are engaged with our phones, we feel we are in a protected place,” says Aner Sela, a marketing professor at Florida.

STELA BORBAS Paramedics arrive j ust after Stela Borbas delivered baby Darlie on a Miami street curb on Feb. 7. “I was so panicked,” Borbas said.

BY MIKE STOBBE

new york — This winter’s mild
flu season has faded to a trickle of
cases in much of the United
States, but health officials aren’t
ready to call it over.
Since the beginning of the year,
positive flu test results and doc-
tor’s office visits for flu-like illness
are down. But second waves of
influenza are not unusual, and
some experts said it’s possible a
late winter or spring surge could
be coming.
“The question we’re asking
ourselves now is: ‘Is this it, or is
there more to come?’ ” said Lyn-
nette Brammer of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
Covid-19 cases have been fall-
ing, leading to a decline in mask-
wearing and behaviors that may
have been keeping flu down this
winter. As people are less cau-
tious, flu or other respiratory vi-
ruses can surge, Brammer said.
Indeed, some indicators of flu
activity have inched up the last
couple of weeks: a count of flu-re-
lated hospitalizations and the
percent of specimens from pa-
tients with respiratory illnesses

that test positive for flu. Limited data on who is testing positive for flu suggest about two- thirds are children and young adults. Children have driven flu’s spread in past years, so “it’s quite possible we could see continued increases,” Brammer said. Angela Branche, a University of Rochester infectious diseases specialist, called the flu season unusual. “I don’t have any [flu] cases in my practice this week,” she said recently. Normally, doctors in Rochester would be diagnosing 50 to 100 flu cases a day around this time of year. It seems like the current flu season is “easing to the finish line,” said William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious- disease expert. But viruses can be unpredictable. “As the flu-ologists like to say, ‘if you’ve seen one flu season, you’ve seen one flu season,’ ” he said. Last winter’s flu season was virtually nonexistent. Experts credit mask-wearing, social dis- tancing, school closures and other measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Some doctors were nervous about how things would go this winter, wondering if last year’s lull would cause flu immunity to wane. Also, fewer children and adults got flu shots this year, according to preliminary CDC data. The worry seemed to be legiti- mized by an early November flu outbreak at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where more than 700 cases were reported. The illnesses were caused by a certain version of flu — called Type A H3N2 — that traditionally leads to more hospitalizations and deaths, particularly among the elderly. Worse, many of the infected children were vaccinat- ed, and investigators concluded the shots offered low levels of protection. That strain later became the main cause of flu illnesses across the country. But this season has nevertheless turned out to be tame. That was a surprise, said Ed- ward Belongia, a flu expert at the Wisconsin-based Marshfield Clinic Research Institute. “We have occasionally seen other very mild flu seasons, but

not where H3N2 is the dominant strain. That’s what really makes it odd,” he said. The season peaked in Decem- ber, just as covid-19 cases surged, driven by the more transmissible omicron variant, Branche ob- served. Flu cases dropped as more people masked up and took other steps to prevent coronavirus from spreading, she noted. Even at its height, the flu season was not nearly as bad as some of the pre-pandemic flu seasons driven by H3N2 strains. Experts aren’t sure why. Some wonder whether the coronavirus essentially muscled aside flu and other bugs. Scien- tists say they don’t fully understand the mechanism behind that. Of course, a highly effective vaccine would help lessen the severity of a flu season. But researchers say the flu strain that’s been circulating is a mismatch for this year’s vaccine. The CDC has not yet released estimates of the current vaccine’s effectiveness but it is expected to do so next week. — Associated Press

A mild U.S. flu season is waning, but is it really over?

versity, said the discovery was the best one found in Britain since the early 1800s, when celebrated fossil hunter Mary Anning discovered many significant Jurassic fos- sils on the southern English coast. He said the fossil had “feather light” bones “as thin as sheets of paper” and it took several days to cut it from rock. The pterosaur, which has been given the Gaelic name Dearc sgia- thanach, “tells us that pterosaurs got larger much earlier than we thought, long before the Creta- ceous period when they were com- peting with birds, and that’s huge- ly significant,” Brusatte said. — Associated Press

The fossil of a 170-million-year-old
pterosaur, described as the world’s
best-preserved skeleton of the pre-
historic winged reptile, has been
found on the Isle of Skye in Scot-
land, scientists said last week..
The National Museum of Scot-
land said the fossil of the ptero-
saur, more popularly known as
pterodactyls, is the largest of its
kind ever discovered from the Ju-
rassic period. The reptile had an
estimated wingspan of more than
2.5 meters (8.2 feet), similar to
that of an albatross, the museum
said.
The fossil was discovered by
PhD student Amelia Penny during
a field trip on the Isle of Skye in
remote northwest Scotland in
2017, when she spotted the ptero-
saur’s jaw protruding from rocks.
It will now be added to the mu-
seum’s collection.
“Pterosaurs preserved in such
quality are exceedingly rare and
are usually reserved to select rock
formations in Brazil and China,”

according to University of Edin- burgh PhD student Natalia Jagiel- ska, author of a new scientific paper describing the find. “And yet, an enormous superbly

preserved pterosaur emerged from a tidal platform in Scotland,” she said. Steve Brusatte, a professor of paleontology at Edinburgh Uni-

‘ Superbly preserved’ pterosaur fossil is unearthed

STEWART ATTWOOD/ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Pterosaurs preserved in such quality are exceedingly rare,” says University of Edinburgh PhD student Natalia Jagielska, shown here with the fossil discovery at the National Museum of Scotland.

The Washington Post - USA (2022-03-01)

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