[John Day]

Oh, the Ivermectin and other medicines from India came in from Germ’s friend. They arrived in Texas last week, but we just saw the delivery attempt notice yesterday, so I went to the post office and waited a really long time, but they couldn’t find them until I said “international”. Say “international”.

[John Day]

I have jst finished reading the kind comments from Thursday, October 14.

Thank you all.

To those who want me to fight within the legal system, I understand that, but I have limited resources, time and life force, and I think events are about to leapfrog our established systems. The other side is lawyered-up, and has been proceeding as advised. They are prepared for a counter-attack from me, which will not come. I wish them well in the times we have entered.

@TT4TW: I have been reading what you include. I have long considered the elite position. The lack of compassion in the ruling elites allows them to be apex-predator over the rest of the humans, except some of us who choose to be sheepdogs, not wolves. This is a critical juncture we have entered.
We need to devise a new and non-predatory living ecosystem for the world, where human are stewards of life on earth. Maybe we can. It will allow life to flourish as much as is possible, but we will have to cooperatively finesse the overgrowth problem. The divine provides guidance to those who sincerely seek it.
That’s “natural”, too…

[John Day]

Go Down Gardening https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/10/go-down-gardening.html

Precariously Supported,

Yesterday was an odd day in several aspects. I had worked a long Friday at the clinic again, which did not go badly. I left nothing unfinished.
We drove to the Yoakum homestead Friday night and got a good night of sleep.

Somehow, I felt very heavy and slow on Saturday and Sunday, so I trudged through three to four hours of pushing the little Honda mower, and did work in the garden, but ploddingly. I planted garlic for the winter/spring season, and tended the garden.

I continued to feel a weight of unease, and as we started the drive back to Austin, Sunday afternoon, I had a sense that I should really buy winter veggies to put in at the clinic garden, which I started in 2016, and tend for my coworkers. Putting things off until the end of the month, in my last two weeks of work there, seemed awkward.

We picked up a lot of winter greens and salad starts in little pots on our way into Austin, some for our Austin kitchen garden, but most for the clinic garden.
I did a last harvest of the blackeyed pea row, then cut down the vines, and took them to some chickens that a friend of Jenny’s raises.

Yesterday (Monday) morning I worked in our kitchen garden again, preparing the beds for fall and winter, cleaning up the summer debris, and also planting an orange seedling in the bed in front of the house, where the February freeze had killed the one fruitful tree.

After eating, I went over to the clinic with an orange seedling, to replace the two that the February freeze had killed, and all of the winter salad and cooking-green seedlings to fill a couple of rows. I went through the entrance, put on a mask, and went through to the garden in the break area, with shovels and clippers, saying “hi” to a few people and smiling with my eyes. I went out through the garden gate, and brought in the orange tree, then the veggie starts.

The orange tree needed to go in the large bed, which has a Mexican avocado seedling tree, and a banana plant that actually survived February. Mainly it has a lot of sweet potatoes.It’s a fairly large bed, and this has been a very good year for sweet potatoes. I filled the three gallon bucket that the tree was in with sweet potatoes, from just a few square feet that I cleared and dug up, before planting it, maybe one percent of that bed.

While I was digging up the sweet potatoes and digging the hole to put the orange tree in, my flip phone rang. I figured it was Jenny. I brushed some of the dirt off my hands and answered it. It was the nice and very well-mannered youngish man, who is currently Director of Human Resources, telling me that my last day of work had been changed from the last Friday of October to the Friday just passed, which was different from what I had been told last week, when the reason for my firing was changed from vaccine-mandate non-compliance, to all of the wrongs I have committed in the period of time since that mandate was announced.

It was a lousy spot for him to be put in, and he seemed uncomfortable having to put it into polite words.He had been trying to call me while I was working on our home garden, but I had not been carrying the phone. I told him that I was at the clinic garden, putting in some things for winter, and that he could talk to me in person. My presence in the garden was unanticipated, though I have worked on my day off frequently in the past couple of months.

We talked as I planted the orange tree and put the big sweet potatoes in the pot, handing it over to a couple of nurses taking their lunch. They had helped dig sweet potatoes last year, and I knew they wanted some. He politely explained that I was not to re-enter the building, and that my desk would be cleared out and boxed for me. The explanation was so polite that I sought clarification.I did negotiate that I could pick up a few notes at my desk with his presence and supervision, which we then did. My badge didn’t let me in this time. He had to use his. As we walked through the clinic to my desk, most people had their eyes down. A few coworkers looked me in the eyes, and I smiled with my eyes. I was comfortable in myself, and emanated that (I think).

We grabbed a few boxes and made short work of the packing-up. I got everything, and we carried the three boxes to my little twenty four year old Ford Ranger pickup truck together. We went back to the garden and break-area through the gate, He thought it best that I just leave without planting the vegetables, but I prevailed upon him to keep his agreement to let me clean out the rows and do the planting.

He actually had a fair number of gardening questions, which I answered as I cleared the rows and planted for winter.
I worked expeditiously, taking about twenty to thirty minutes, as I explained the quality of the soil, and how building soil is one of the main objectives in successful gardening. If you don’t have enough garden to out produce what the squirrels, birds and other critters can eat, they will eat it all.
You need a big enough garden patch.

We walked back to the truck with shovels and clippers, talking about what’s next. The clinic will still pay me for these last two weeks of October, but my patients who are scheduled will not get to see me for a last visit. I have been doing everything possible to avoid leaving loose ends, and to write thorough chart notes, so it will be easy for the next doctor. I have tried to make suggestions for which doctor or practitioner might best match the needs and personality of each patient. I passed my list to give to the Director of Adult Medicine, who has been working hard and well on this transition. It’s not a complete list…

I am left to wonder why the clinic took surprise action to remove me from patient-care, while still paying my salary for two weeks. I suspect there was free-floating anxiety about what I might say or do. I had been informing people of the actual circumstances of my leaving, being fired for non-compliance with mandatory vaccination. The management has been consulting with attorneys the whole time, and somebody else is contesting her firing for non-compliance with that mandate, I am told. Governor Abbott did say that vaccine mandates are not tolerable in Texas, Monday of last week. I suspect that my being fired-for-cause, other than non-compliance with COVID vaccination might be more plausible when the date of my firing is moved forward from the prior date of my termination for non-compliance

I do not intend to contest my firing through recourse to the law. The only law I am really, currently concerned with is the Law of Karma, and I am very concerned with that law. I am constantly aware of the implications of Karma as we wade further into this rip-tide of history.

Human Horticulturist

[John Day]

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered United Airlines not to place workers seeking an exemption to the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on unpaid leave.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/judge-orders-united-airlines-not-put-workers-seeking-vaccine-mandate-exception-leave

​Texas House bill 155 Would make individual choice of whether or not to accept vaccination the law, and would override any employer mandates.
Texas lawmakers consider ban on vaccine mandates for private employers
​ ​The House State Affairs Committee heard more than four hours of public testimony on House Bill 155 on Wednesday, which creates a de facto ban on COVID-19 vaccine mandates by allowing individuals to claim an exemption to a vaccination requirement based on numerous factors, including “reasons of conscience.”
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/state/2021/10/14/texas-vaccine-mandate-ban-private-companies-covid-19/8445028002/
https://legiscan.com/TX/bill/HB155/2021/X3

​Everything Solid Melts Into Air, Charles Hugh Smith​
​ ​We know we’re close to the moment when Everything Solid Melts into Air when extraordinary breakdowns are treated as ordinary and the “news” quickly reverts to gossip. So over 4 million American workers up and quit every month, month after month after month, and the reaction is ho-hum, labor shortage, blah, blah, blah, toy shortage for Christmas, oh, the horror, blah, blah, blah.
These are large numbers. Over 10 million job openings and 6 million hires and 6 million “separations,” i.e. layoffs and the 4.3 million voluntary quits.
​ ​The happy story promoted by the corporate media is that this enormous churn is the result of shiny, happy people moving up the work food chain to better paying jobs. We know we’re close to the moment when Everything Solid Melts into Air when every breakdown is instantly reworked into a happy story in which everything is getting better every day, in every way.
​ ​The reality nobody in power wants to acknowledge, much less address, is that millions of workers are opting out or burning out and they’re not coming back.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct21/solid-air10-21.html

[John Day]

​ ​The top Catholic official in the US military has declared that soldiers have the right to opt out of Covid vaccine mandates on the basis of “conscience,” after some branches were accused of trying to discourage such exemptions.
​ ​In a statement issued on Tuesday, Timothy Broglio – Archbishop for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for Military Services in the US – argued that while the Vatican has determined that none of the Covid-19 vaccines in use are inherently wrong due to a tangential link to aborted fetal cells, soldiers still have the right to decline the vaccine if they believe it would “violate [their] conscience” for whatever reason.
​ ​“Notwithstanding the moral permissibility of these vaccines, the Church treasures her teaching on the sanctity of conscience,” Broglio wrote. “Accordingly, no one should be forced to receive a Covid-19 vaccine if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience.”
https://www.rt.com/usa/537308-pentagon-archbishop-vaccine-mandate/

​Chicago Police Union Head Urges Members to Defy Vaccine Mandate, Warns Force to shrink 50% This Weekend
​ ​“Do not fill out the portal information,” Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said in a video to officers posted on YouTube.
“I’ve made my status very clear as far as the vaccine, but I do not believe the city has the authority to mandate that to anybody—let alone that information about your medical history.”
​ ​According to Catanzara, the police union is preparing a lawsuit against the city if Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration attempts to enforce the mandate, which requires city workers to report their vaccine status by Friday or be placed on a “no-pay” status.
​ ​“It’s safe to say that the city of Chicago will have a police force at 50 percent or less for this weekend coming up,” Catanzara said
​https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chicago-police-union-head-calls-members-defy-vaccine-mandate-warns-chicago-police-force

[John Day]

The Spirit Moves https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/10/the-spirit-moves.html

Yesterday at clinic, while I was finishing work at my desk, the Medical Director, a good guy, who I have known for 15 years, came by with an envelope.
I anticipated that the clinic would need to side with federal payments over a state order against vaccine mandates. That’s the case. Some uncertainty has been inserted into the system by Governor Abbot’s order. There is a bill in the legislature to bolster that. We will see how it fares.

I was dismayed that the position of the clinic administration is that I am being fired for cause, other than refusing to accept mandatory experimental vaccination.
The last 7 weeks, since the clinic announced the mandate, and I made my position clear, that I must stand with the under-class of un-vaccinated, has had more discord.
I was told that I must stop prescribing ivermectin-based treatment for COVID, with any link to the clinic, after over a year of doing so, and to good effect.
I was written up for prescribing ivermectin based treatment to the 17 year old son of a coworker, without an office visit, or writing it up in documentation.
That was true. I have prescribed for staff and some family members since spring 2020, and have maintained my open offer to do so.

I have continued to advise patients who have recovered from COVID against receiving vaccination, on the grounds of all-risk-and-no-benefit. I have discussed the shifting risk profiles where the vaccinated become more prone to catch COVID than the unvaccinated (Public Health England data is especially clear.)
This comes as the clinic is ramping up vaccine events, and is vaccinating children whenever parents will consent.

My approach to treatment of each patient, using my best judgment and giving my best medical advice, has become directly at odds with the policies of the clinic, lately a Federally Qualified Health Center. The clinic follows recommendations, policies, and incentives (for vaccinations), which come from the federal government.
It is appropriate that the clinic and I part ways, if we cannot share the same approach to patient care.
It is apparent that we cannot.

Of course I feel personally wronged in this, but there is not much to be done for this progression of the organization.
I was once mainstream. I’m about the same as I was then.
It has been awhile, and the change has been gradual, and not brought to a crisis until now. I am not the only one departing soon. Yesterday three competent people told me they had handed in their resignations for November and December. I already knew of another. These are people who accomplish critical tasks.
I know there are others who are now keeping their eyes out for jobs elsewhere. The first four are leaving with no new job, “taking some time off”.

This is my small world experience. There are a few in the hallway who glare and will not meet my eyes since I sent out the email last month likening the unvaccinated now to the Jews in WW-2 Germany. I sought to explain my sincere position of standing with the underclass, but it was not something that some people could consider.
I was reprimanded, and twice disparaged in administrative emails for my communication.
I was asked not to respond to those reprimands, and I had no intention to do so. I only wanted to explain my position once.
I had explained.

Today I have a few stories about how this is playing across America, as people of conscience say “No” and stand their ground.
I have no predictions how this will play out, or how long it will be in play, but the people who are firm in their convictions are an important sampling of society.
These people are able to make decisions and take action upon them. That’s not universal these days. That’s actually a talent-pool.

[John Day]

“Artificial Tyranny” was the title of yesterday’s news blog, which added some story links to the essay you saw here.
https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/10/artificial-tyranny-project.html

I got a visit and a letter after work yesterday that I am still being fired at the end of the month, but not for failure to accept COVID vaccination, but rather for my bad behavior since the mandate was announced at the clinic. In July, I had been much better, and was given the maximum 5% merit raise.

Yes, I’m being kind of snarky. Positions are clear. I will be paid my PTO as discharge, and my modest retirement is mine.
This is actualy all for the best. It seems to be particularly grating that I have been telling people who recovered from COVID to avoid vaccination, all risk and no benefit. I tried to talk about the “negative efficacy” in England as time from vaccination progresses, and the efficacy of ivermectin, but that could not be heard.
What began in 1970 as “The People’s Free Clinic”, and I will part ways for the last time, at the end of this month.
I discovered yesterday that 3 of the nurses I work closely with, who get a lot done, and have real expertise in the healthcare system, will be leaving in December, handed in their resignations.
It’s not just me feeling the death of the old spirit.

[John Day]

Thanks for putting this up with the leaning tower of Pisa, Ilargi Thanks for the news finds, Germa and friends.

I was handed a letter from the clinic today, explaining that I’m still being fired at the end of the month, but not for failure to accept a COVID vaccination. In the 7 weeks since the mandate was announced, and I explained my reasons for standing with the untermenschen,
I have committed a lot of wrongs in that time period, which are detailed in the letter. I have also advised patients who already had COVID to avoid the vaccines, since they provide only risk and no benefit. I even put that in writing on their charts. That is not explained in the letter, but was brought up to me by the Chief Medical Officer, who is a good and caring guy, and forbade me to prescribe ivermectin using the clinic’s address or software last month, after I had done so for over a year, already.

In all fairness, I was a much better person and a much better physician as recently as July, when I was awarded the maximum 5% merit pay increase.

I’ve really let myself go since then…

[John Day]

Monday night I was heartened to hear that Texas Governor, Greg Abbott had issued an executive order forbidding any entity within Texas from having a COVID-vaccine mandate. I did not see this as being against private businesses deciding things, but as being supporting of individual humans having the right to make their own, personal medical decisions, with somewhat less coercion.
This does go against existing federal policies to withhold payment from Nursing homes and medical facilities that do not enforce COVID-vaccine mandates. It seems that the federal government can choose to withhold such payments, which will kill those businesses if they don’t comply.
That category includes the public health clinic, for which I work until the end of the month. The board decided to declare a vaccine mandate around the time that the nursing home vaccine mandate was announced by the feds. The writing was on the wall, but the official position is that it was to protect people. It elicits less cognitive dissonance to tell oneself that one is acting virtuously, rather than being coerced. That comfortable position is now superficially challenged by Governor Abbott. His executive order is now a thing, not an expected-soon thing. It is ahead of the proposed OSHA recommendations in time.
One of the fundamental assumptions in the OSHA draft is that mass vaccination is the best protection against COVID. What if it increasingly appears to be worse-than-nothing after about 6 months, and offsetting-penalties before that? People are clearly more susceptible to catching COVID in the 13 days immediately following vaccination, and the Public Health England data shows that the vaccinated are more prone to catching COVID (negative protection rate) after about 6 months, now in all ages above 30.
I am heartened by Governor Abbott’s order because it is an action against tyranny, an action in support of individual freedom and personal bodily autonomy, medical autonomy. It comes at a time when the primacy of vaccination-only policy is openly decaying, because everybody can see that they don’t work very well. Not everybody does see that, but it’s apparent to many people who are not even really scrutinizing things.
Tyranny craves absolute control of each person, each action, and increasingly, of each thought and perception, which might lead to actions. Tyranny must control all circumstances, so that no actor can choose non-compliance. Using artificial intelligence to shape “consensus” on social media, through advancing posts that fit the narrative, retarding or deleting posts that do not support, or contest the narrative, and salting in some snide “bot” attacks to publicly demean any new post that challenges the narrative. 2-3 of those makes people afraid to comment in favor, but the negatives have to be there right away. That’s do-able…
Freedom of choice requires groceries, water, shelter, food, fuel and companions. Tyrant-types need to own all of that. They need to be able to keep the essentials of life away from dissidents. People need to remain completely focused upon compliance, in order to avoid insecurity. The specter of insecurity must be always present to remind people to not miss a payment, or a paycheck.
I have long wondered how there might ever be a societal shift away from the micro-control which has come to be so pervasive in my world these days. We seem to be seeing it in the squeezing-too-hard-too-fast edicts coming from the tyrants and petit-tyrants as they experience insecurity themselves.
What is happening, as a result of this fast and tight squeeze is a separation out of people who are more independent of thought and action, who have also kept open some options for themselves, and who are at least suspicious of this power grab over their bodies. Many people who solve difficult problems in human society might be in this class. Many who already got COVID vaccines, especially early-adopters, can still have deep misgivings about what they now see happening, the totalitarianism of vaccination in places like Australia.
Why? It does not make sense as presented. It seemed to make sense that way up through May or so…
I think we can see the position of big pharma, wanting to control the narrative that pumps money to it.
The answer to a vaccine that makes you catch COVID after 6 months is boosters every 3 months, each at full price. Just don’t look at the 2 weeks after the shot. It’s not fair to count that. Don’t look at heart attacks after COVID vaccination. Don’t. No! Don’t look at all-cause-deaths. No!
Another good thing about mandatory vaccination is that it allows for the removal, the shunning of the non-compliant from all of the things which support their lives, “the economy”. This dovetails into electronic transactions through smartphones. Each transaction can be approved or denied. Accounts can be deleted. China is leading the way with this technology.
From my personal point of view, I want to turn my brothers and sisters in a direction away from that. I have to start walking away from it myself, and I have been wandering, trying other little trails, like buying things with cash more. Credit-shopping online is so easy… Getting home improvements done in Yoakum works better with cash, except it is easy to leave a credit card with the hardware store…
This is really a complex life-support system and it is owned by the control-freaks who control the rest of us through controlling our access to the necessities of life, and to our communications with each other. They control us while we comply. They threaten our existence, but they also feel their existence threatened. They grasp us so tightly that they squeeze some of us out between their fingers.
Those most capable of doing something new, making parallel economic support structures, are being squeezed out of the current structure by the insecure, control-freak “owners”, who are the “owners” as long as the rest of society sees them to be the owners, and the economy holds them in that rank.
The first steps for those of us who would build an alternate economic support system are parallel steps. We can’t just leave. Getting out of debt, riding bikes, growing vegetables, storing food, water and fuel, having reliable vehicles, and being helpful to other human friends, family and neighbors are things we should all be doing already.
Each day brings me new questions. I meditate, then do my best to contribute to the good of all.
The insecurity of the current “owners” drives them to act against the interests of the humans who are members of the societies, upon which they rely for their own support. Let’s help them out by gently relieving them of duty. Nope, I’m not sure how that works, but not by becoming like them…

[John Day]

Oxymoron and Windlesham, You are doing the right things, I think.

[John Day]

@Veracious Poet: I’ve been thinking about you, Brother. I’ve been thinking about you favorably and constructively. There, that’s better, on my bike ride to work and my bike ride back, today.

Sure there are “Us” and “Them” in a game -theory kind of way. It’s clearly the case in that context.
What is “reality”, though? None of us has the information access or the processing capability to know that, though we all generate working hypotheses and adjust them sometimes.

“Reality” is different for a squid, a hawk and a monkey.
“Objectivity” is not possible, but it’s a special kind of cold-blooded “reality” model.
The reality-models employed by our sociopathic owner class are not the best in every situation, though the models work fine for them most of the time that they just need to maintain an overwhelming power-and-information advantage over the proles.

Newton, the originator of mechanics, and of calculus (shared with Leibnitz) was an alchemist. He was really good at modeling, but did not seem to absolutely believe a given model, merely to assess it’s situational utility. I think our sociopathic elite owners have a really big blind side when it comes to non-Newtonian models of “reality”. I think that puts them at a big disadvantage when theinherent level of chaos is high, and they don’t have good “objective” data, and don’t have an overwhelming power advantage. They lack an inherent guidance system, like “Principle” or “conviction”.

I think it goes farther than that. I think there is Karma. If there is Karma, then the world cannot be fundamentally mechanical. I experience the mechanistic world every day. I experience Karma about as often, but Karma has a big WHOOSH to it that can suck your breath out when you see it at work.
Maybe I’m just wired to experience this. Maybe it’s not.
I used to test Karma. I quite a long time ago.

I have been working on compassion-meditation. It makes me empathetic, empathetic at a distance. I get premonitions, too. I’ll be up doing spirit-work with feelings and deep rumblings the night before some big thing happens that I “didn’t know about”.

What I’m writing about is my experience of non-Newtonian “reality”. I am pointing a finger in that direction. The finger ain’t the thing. Wishing my enemies “well”, but not the “well” that they wish themselves may be a better tool than seeing them as they see me, or as they see other, or as they see anything, because their vision is so limited by their lack of empathy, lack of transpersonal-awareness.

That’s enough words from me. I’m pretty good in a fist fight, but I don’t need to hate at all.

[John Day]

It’s just such an awkward and squirmy position for the politically-correct administration to suddenly be stuck in. They have been rather PC-high-and-mighty with me on my way out.
How can they possibly live with having to keep me, after what they have said about me at this point?
I’m just gonna’ be a worker be, a dedicated physician serving my patients.
I’ll keep a straight face. I have nothing to retract.

🙂

I should now meditate on not taking pleasure in the suffering of others.
Indeed, this is just their work, which they have laid out for themselves, and I will not make it harder for them to do.

[John Day]

oops, how’d dat happen?

[John Day]

Greg Abbott makes executive order outlawing vaccine mandates in Texas (no jail time)
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/11/texas-greg-abbott-covid-19-vaccine-mandate/

So my clinic has to break this executive-order “law” or give up federal funding.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/11/texas-greg-abbott-covid-19-vaccine-mandate/
I’m smiling.
I have nothing to do with this particular battle.
I went and tended the garden at the clinic for an hour before lunch today.
How can the clinic administration possibly back out of my announced firing at this point?
What a squirmy-spot!
I’m sayin’ nuttin to nobody…
🙂

[John Day]

Greg Abbott makes executive order outlawing vaccine mandates in Texas (no jail time)
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/11/texas-greg-abbott-covid-19-vaccine-mandate/

So my clinic has to break this executive-order “law” or give up federal funding.
I’m smiling.
I have nothing to do with this particular battle.
I went and tended the garden at the clinic for an hour before lunch today.
How can the clinic administration possibly back out of my announced firing at this point?
What a squirmy-spot!
I’m sayin’ nuttin to nobody…
🙂

[John Day]

@PhoenixVoice: You seem to be ready to write a featured essay, girl!

@Doc Robinson: Thanks, Man. Points are taken for ongoing consideration, but the Governor of Texas just launched a flank-assault on every vaccine mandate in Texas, so I’m going to enjoy watching this until Halloween.

@Veracious Poet: Context. PhoenixVoice and you both have correct and valid MODELS of the Tao, which cannot be the Tao. 🙂

[John Day]

@Zerosum: I can’t work as a doctor without a vast, ongoing compliance overhead and employees to run it, and software rentals, andhardware, so I cannot practice medicine at all without being “intermediated”.

[John Day]

Bill Gates is a Wanker Song (“Protected political speech”, as I understand it.) Thanks P.D.
I can’t keep from smiling when this video plays. 🙂

Little Guy pictured with growing banana plants
https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/10/again-why-shortages-are-permanent.html

[John Day]

The filter just won’t let the J.Post link in, the one showing that 81 mg per day aspirin saves lives, when people taking it catch COVID, and it even helps them not catch it as much.

Second to the last item…
https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/10/again-why-shortages-are-permanent.html

[John Day]

The pop-up comment says I already submitted it, but it never took it…

Piecing it out…
Merck Asks FDA For Emergency Approval Of New COVID Drug Despite Safety Concerns​
The $700 course of the pill is meant to be taken at home as four capsules twice a day for five days, constituting a total of 40 pills.​ (It costs 13 cents in India.)
​https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/merck-asks-fda-emergency-approval-new-covid-drug-despite-safety-concerns

[John Day]

Comment entries are just not posting this morning. It’s pretty spotty.

[John Day]

Any doctor in New Delhi would take ivermectin based treatment these days. They are completely familiar with it.​
NEW DELHI, Oct 8 (Reuters) – Merck & Co’s (MRK.N) experimental antiviral drug molnupiravir has not shown “significant efficacy” against moderate COVID-19, a source with the Drug Controller General of India said.​..
​ ​Aurobindo Pharma Ltd wants to discontinue a late-stage trial of molnupiravir in moderate COVID-19 patients, the regulator’s expert committee said on Friday.
“There is no significant efficacy against moderate COVID and the effective efficacy is towards mild cases,” the source said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the discussions.
​https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/merck-drug-less-effective-against-moderate-covid-india-regulatory-source-2021-10-08/

Ivermectin is so much safer than Tylenol.
​ ​As it turns out, all the scientists and doctors who insisted that Merck’s “revolutionary” COVID drug molnupiravir is extremely safe weren’t faithfully adhering to “the science” after all. Because according to a report published Thursday by Barron’s, some scientists are worried that the drug – which purportedly cut hospitalizations in half during a study that was cut short – could cause cancer or birth defects.​ ​
​ ​Dr. Shuntai Zhou, a scientist at the Swanstrom Lab at UNC, said “there is a concern that this will cause long-term mutation effects, even cancer.”
​ ​Zhou says that he is certain that the drug will integrate itself into the DNA of mammalian hosts. “Biochemistry won’t lie,” he says. “This drug will be incorporated in the DNA.”
​ ​Merck hasn’t yet released any data from its animal studies, but the scientists believe that it would take long-term studies to show that the drug is truly totally safe.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/proceed-caution-your-own-peril-mercks-covid-super-drug-poses-serious-health-risks

[John Day]

You’ll own nothing, have no privacy and be happy…
“Programmable Digital Currency”: The next stage of the new normal?The war on cash’s endgame is here: money replaced by vouchers subject to complete state control.
Building on the bitcoin model, central banks are planning to produce their own “digital currencies”. Removing any and all remaining privacy, granting total control over every transaction, even limiting what ordinary people are allowed to spend their money on.

“Programmable Digital Currency”: The next stage of the new normal?

How is the Davos World Economic Forum involved in the coronavirus pandemic?​ …
​ ​First, the WEF was, together with the Gates Foundation, a sponsor of the prescient “Event 201” coronavirus pandemic simulation exercise, held in New York City on October 18, 2019 – the same day as the opening of the Wuhan Military World Games, seen by some as “ground zero” of the global pandemic. China itself has argued that US military athletes may have brought the virus to Wuhan.
​ ​Second, the WEF has been a leading proponent of digital biometric identity systems, arguing that they will make societies and industries more efficient, more productive and more secure. In July 2019, the WEF started a project to “shape the future of travel with biometric-enabled digital traveler identity management”. In addition, the WEF collaborates with the ID2020 alliance, which is funded by the Gates and Rockefeller foundations and runs a program to “provide digital ID with vaccines”. In particular, ID2020 sees the vaccination of children as “an entry point for digital identity.”
​ ​Third, WEF founder Klaus Schwab is the author of the book COVID-19: The Great Reset, published in July 2020, which argues that the coronavirus pandemic can and should be used for an “economic, societal, geopolitical, environmental and technological reset”, including, in particular, advancing global governance, accelerating digital transformation, and tackling climate change.
​ ​Finally, the WEF has been running, since 1993, a program called “Global Leaders for Tomorrow”, rebranded, in 2004, as “Young Global Leaders”. This program aims at identifying, selecting and promoting future global leaders in both business and politics. Indeed, quite a few “Young Global Leaders” have later managed to become Presidents, Prime Ministers, or CEOs (​Hey, there are lots of neoliberal prime ministers on that list, names we know, and Bill Gates, too​).

The WEF and the Pandemic

[John Day]

​ I opened with these two pieces because​ where we might go and how we might get there seem to be questions that I should personally work on, at street level, not a lofty perch. Right now, for the next 3 weeks, I am perched in a public health clinic, a Federally Qualified Health Center, which began in 1970 as “The People’s Free Clinic” in a church basement across the street from the UT campus. I remember going by there as a student, and seeing people waiting outside the basement steps for their friends. A friend of mine at the co-op where I lived, Sam, was proud to go there. There is a black and white photo of the volunteer staff in that basement one day in the 1970s, with some of their kids and babies; one fellow not wearing a shirt that day. I knew some of those people, and I know one of the babies. She’s a Nurse, now.
The clinic, now in a very expansive, open and expensive new building, is effectively an arm of the federal government, and compliance is far more important to the survival of the clinic as an entity, than is taking care of any particular patient. It has become incorporated into a nationwide compliance bureaucracy, even as it has professed it’s earlier ideals, with earnest countenance..
There is no way out of this kind of success, not that I can see. It is what has happened to medicine. I cannot go see people for free, or what they can pay, because I would make about what a teacher makes, or less, and I would be breaking so many laws and regulations, that I would be a criminal for my efforts. I did something like this with support from Luling, Texas from 1992-1994. It was the hardest I ever worked. They paid 2 office employees and gave me half a mobile building for a clinic. I did hospital and ER work and delivered babies and did c-sections, and made what Jenny had made as a first through third year teacher. Texas Medicaid reliably paid me $19 per clinic visit and about $560 per baby delivered. Individuals and most insurance (Medicare and commercial) typically just failed to pay me.
Those were the good days. They are over. I’m older, too.
I am about to work the last 3 weeks before the vaccine mandate takes effect November 1, 2021. I am not seeing any job postings for unvaccinated doctors, and any place that is hiring now is in the “intermediation” business, and needs doctors to crank patients through the line, one-problem-per-visit, as if that’s how people’s needs are met. I’ve never been able to do that, and I’m sort of an old-dog at this point; unlikely to learn that trick.
Jenny is still working as a school librarian. I have vegetable gardening, the Yoakum homestead, meditation/prayer and am assessing and chronicling the patch of history we are navigating together. I’m a good doctor, but without a format in which to legally practice medicine.
I’ll see if a practice opportunity presents itself I’ll work on vegetable gardening systems for central Texas, and on “the economy” at a personal and local scale, with as little “intermediation” as possible.
Cash is going to work better than digital central bank currency, at least for the persons, not for the central banks. Vote with your cash transactions.

[John Day]

Disintermediation Project Garden pic included. (Hey, what happened to all our comments?)
https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/10/again-why-shortages-are-permanent.html

Why Shortages Are Permanent: Global Supply Shortages Make Fantastic Financial Sense, Charles Hugh Smith
The era of abundance was only a short-lived artifact of the initial boost phase of globalization and financialization.
Global corporations didn’t go to all the effort to establish quasi-monopolies and cartels for our convenience–they did it to ensure reliably large profits from control and scarcity. Not all scarcities are artificial, i.e. the result of cartels limiting supply to keep prices high; many scarcities are real, and many of these scarcities can be traced back to the stripping out of redundancy / multiple suppliers of industrial essentials to streamline efficiency and eliminate competition. Recall that competition and abundance are anathema to profits.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct21/scarcity-permanent10-21.html

John Michael Greer is very much in his element here. Here are some of his insights.
That Untraversed Land
If you want people to put up patiently with long hours of drudgery at miserably low wages, subject to wretched conditions and humiliating policies, so that their self-proclaimed betters can enjoy lifestyles they will never be able to share, it’s a really bad idea to make them stop work and give them a good long period of solitude, in which they can think about what they want out of life and how little of it they’re getting from the role you want them to play. It’s an especially bad idea to do it so that they have no way of knowing when, or if, they will ever be allowed to return to their former lives, thus forcing them to look for other options in order to stay fed, clothed, housed, and the like.​..

​ So there’s a labor shortage, and it’s concentrated in exactly those jobs that are most essential to keeping the economy running. These are also the jobs most likely to have lousy pay and worse conditions. This isn’t accidental. It unfolds from one of the most pervasive and least discussed features of contemporary economic life: the metastatic growth of intermediation.
​ ​Let’s unpack that phrase a bit. The simplest of all economic exchanges takes place between two people, each of whom has something the other wants. They make an exchange, and both go off happy. If what one of the people brings to the exchange is labor, and the other person brings something the first person wants or needs in exchange for labor, we call that “employment,” and the first person is an employee and the second an employer, but it’s still a simple exchange. So long as there’s no overt or covert coercion involved on either side, it’s a fair trade.
​ ​What happens as a society becomes more complex, however, is that people insert themselves into that transaction and demand a cut. Governments—national, local, and everything in between—tax income, sales, and everything else they can think of. Banks charge interest and fees on every scrap of money that passes through their hands. Real estate owners drive up the cost of land so that they can take an ever larger share of the proceeds in rent and mortgage payments. Then you have a long line of other industries lobbying government for their share of the take.​..

​ Ultimately, of course, employment itself becomes a form of intermediation. By and large you aren’t hired by people who want what you produce, you’re hired by a corporation that inserts itself between you and the purchaser, takes most of the money, and gives you a pittance, while directing a big share to managerial staff. Since the corporation is also subject to intermediation, other shares go to governments, banks, and a whole ecosystem of other intermediaries who insert themselves into the same transaction. In the end, you get a small fraction of the value of your work, and that fraction has been shrinking steadily with each passing year.
​ ​There’s some history behind that. The spectacular growth of intermediation in modern times became possible for two reasons. The first was that fossil fuels made it possible for the labor of a single person to produce more wealth than ever before in human history. The second was that fossil fuels also enabled the world’s industrial nations to take over and exploit more of the planet than any previous empire in recorded history, first through conquest and colonialism, and later on through manipulative economic arrangements that left other countries notionally independent while they were being drained of wealth to support the industrial nations.
​ ​The impact of these factors on economic life is almost impossible to overstate. Before the coming of the industrial era, it took on average the productive labor of ten people to support one person in an economic role that didn’t produce necessary goods or services.​..

​ The difficulty is that the torrents of cheap abundant energy that made that sort of metastatic intermediation possible depended all along on the breakneck exploitation of nonrenewable resources. Now fossil fuels are not so cheap as they once were, nor so abundant. There’s very little slack left in the fossil fuel sector—as current shortages and price spikes are making very clear—nor are renewable energy sources able to pick up the slack effectively—as current shortages and price spikes are making equally clear.​..

​ All this imposes an existential challenge to the economy of intermediation, and to the millions upon millions of well-paid jobs that depend on intermediation. That challenge first began to bite in the 1980s, and it was met by driving the working classes into poverty and misery. It bears repeating and remembering that half a century ago in the United States, one adult with a high school education and a working class job could support a family of four in relative comfort.​..

​ The difficulty, of course, is that you can only take that so far before it’s no longer worth anyone’s while to do those poorly paid jobs on which the whole system depends. Here in the United States, we’ve reached that point, and not just for employees. Go to any town in flyover country and walk down the streets, past the empty storefronts where businesses used to flourish. There are millions of people who would love to start their own business, but it’s a losing proposition in an economy in which governments, banks, and property owners demand so large a cut that most small startup businesses can’t break even. The same is equally true, of course, for employees, whose wages no longer even pay the basic costs of getting by in today’s America.​..

​ Thus the economy of intermediation is strangling the economic activity on which it survives. To change that would require the people whose jobs depend on intermediation to accept a drastic and permanent loss of status, influence, and wealth, and the number of them who will accept that loss willingly can doubtless be counted on the fingers of one foot…

​ ​But it’s the quiet dissolution of working class employment, the recognition by the people who keep the economy running that they have better things to do than prop up a system that treats them as disposable components, that strikes me as most important here and ​​now.

​ ​Many of them are finding work in the underground economy. That’s a huge economic sector these days. How many people make a living doing work outside ordinary employment and getting paid “under the table,” as the phrase is, is for obvious reasons a hard question to answer, but it’s quite possibly in the tens of millions. Working in the underground economy is an effective way to get out from under the burden of intermediation, so that both parties in an economic transaction can keep most or all of the value they exchange. That’s going to become even more significant a fraction of the economy in the years ahead.

​ ​In a declining economy, one person’s productive labor can no longer support the vast teetering structure of intermediation that’s been heaped on top of it. As decline proceeds—and as we have seen, it will proceed for many years to come—so will the contraction in what each person’s labor can support. If we’re lucky, the decline will bottom out before it gets down to the medieval level—some of our scientific and technological achievements are potentially sustainable, and might keep economic life above the sheer subsistence level if they’re preserved and deployed in time—but in any possible future, the great majority of people will be producing goods and services for their own use and for that of their neighbors, rather than laboring for the benefit of the vast and unsustainable government, corporate, and institutional juggernauts of our day.

That Untraversed Land

[John Day]

Yeah, Influenza was MIA last year. We did a lot of negative tests.

[John Day]

@Dr.D. : “Faith without works is dead”, then?

@Teri: Thank you, Sister!
(I won’t refer to you that way, never, ever… Anyway, it’s rude and incomplete. People don’t dig that it’s a fragmentary Freudian term, “anal retentive”, having to do with developing excessive self restraint and delayed gratification during potty-training. Hedonists hate you for being so GOOD.)

[John Day]

@Germ: Yeoman’s work again. Thanks for migrating your comments here and carrying so much of the workload, and for the information about obtaining dangerous livestock deworming agents from The Jewel in the Crown…

[John Day]

@Teri: Are you a benevolent form of artificial intelligentsia, something like Glenda-the-Good”
How can you do so much research and organize it so well?
@ Doc Robinson: Fine form, as usual, Sir, and all from first-principles, too!

@ Ilargi: I bet your mom is proud of you for hanging out with such a better crowd these days!

[John Day]

Thanks Veracious Poet. Blessings are more like tools than magic-carpets, I think.
The blessing gives me a lot of work to do, sometimes working all night as I lie awake.
Thursday night was blessed that way, for instance.
Jenny and I slept well in Yoakum last night and enjoyed gardening in the cooler 85 degrees and drier 85% humidity today. The sun is milder, too.

What does a “wanker’s hat” look like, I wonder…

[John Day]

@Clueless Honky:
I very much like your style. Speaking the truth politely and persistently, without invective, and with some restraint, as you only say what you can fully support.

It is not hard to make a lot more sense than the current vaccines-for-everybody-is-the-only-solution narrative. It’s good to be seen as reasonable and reliable at the point that a paradigm is breaking.

Be Walter Cronkite reporting on the Tet offensive , Honky Cat!

[John Day]

Thanks for the music video, Polder Dweller. “They all wear wanker’s hats.”
Chooch: Yes, JFK got puffy from steroids to treat his Addison’s disease.
Corticosteroids, mostly the analogs we use are used to suppress immune response in autoimmune disorders and COVID cytokine storm. It’s a regular thing, but there are so many different little arms and pathways and control loops of immune response that there is always more to learn.
Dr.D I noticed that you called me “Mr.Day” you wascawy wascaw, so I won’t answer what I’m gonna’ do. Don’t know, anyway. Waiting for the obvious-sign to pop up.

[John Day]

@Antidote and Thomasjkenne: Thank You,
Not sleeping tonight.
Big day at work today and another tomorrow. This is my month of saying goodbye and explaining, and doing everything that needs to be done.

[John Day]

I wondered what happened with “President Biden’s” UN COVID Summit last month. We got no news of it.
It happened 6 days after the FDA expert panel advised for very limited use of Pfizer boosters. The plan was to “donate” a lot of the excess to Africans to benefit their parity with wealthier countries. The potential-beneficiary countries boycotted the get-together for some reason. (Losing Control Of The Narrative, perhaps?) Thanks Eleni.
General boycott of Covid-19 Global Summit
On 22 September 2021, President Joe Biden held a virtual Global Summit on Covid-19 on the sidelines of the 76th United Nations General Assembly.
He had predicted the presence of at least 100 states and 100 organizations. In fact, only a handful of developed countries allied to the United States plus a number of assorted organizations showed up.
President Biden has pledged to distribute an additional 500 million doses of vaccines to ensure that 70% of the population in every country is fully vaccinated…
This is the first time that a meeting organized by the United States to hand out donations has been boycotted by potential recipients.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article214193.html

The Wall Street Journal Publishes an editorial with the evidence supporting the case that SARS-CoV-2 is a lab virus, and concludes that to probably be the case.
This implies to me that the dominant narrative is beginning to shift, but we do not see where the shift is going. How well is this being managed by our owners?
How does social media like it? What’s a trending escape route for the ALL-VACCINE agenda? Is there one? (Merck’s new oral drug that’s less effective and more dangerous (and unproven over time) than ivermectin-based treatment? (Note “Science” in title, first word.)
Science Closes In on Covid’s Origins
Four studies—including two from WHO—provide powerful evidence favoring the lab-leak theory.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-coronavirus-lab-leak-virology-origins-pandemic-11633462827?mod=djemalertNEWS

“Evidence based medicine” has replaced individualized diagnosis and treatment, based on physiologic understanding and clinical practice experience.
Only large , expensive trials are acceptable, and only as interpreted by experts, and only as accepted into certain journals. Pharmaceutical companies pay all the salaries, only study profitable products, and exclude other information and “lesser studies” as “not evidence based”.
Get it? Nobody “thinks like a doctor”, as I was taught to do.
Medicine is staffed by clerks and compliance-officers these days. Check only the right boxes.

Covid-19 Response and the Tyranny of Evidence-Based Medicine

Hey, this ain’t supposed to happen. I wonder if the mRNA vaccines can pull the same trick as the virus. They are a whole lot alike…
Reverse-transcribed SARS-CoV-2 RNA can integrate into the genome of cultured human cells and can be expressed in patient-derived tissues
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/21/e2105968118

[John Day]

Myocarditis after BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccine against Covid-19 in Israel​ (Pfizer)
​ Among 304 persons with symptoms of myocarditis, 21 had received an alternative diagnosis. Of the remaining 283 cases, 142 occurred after receipt of the BNT162b2 vaccine; of these cases, 136 diagnoses were definitive or probable. The clinical presentation was judged to be mild in 129 recipients (95%); one fulminant case was fatal. The overall risk difference between the first and second doses was 1.76 per 100,000 persons (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.33 to 2.19), with the largest difference among male recipients between the ages of 16 and 19 years (difference, 13.73 per 100,000 persons; 95% CI, 8.11 to 19.46). As compared with the expected incidence based on historical data, the standardized incidence ratio was 5.34 (95% CI, 4.48 to 6.40) and was highest after the second dose in male recipients between the ages of 16 and 19 years…
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2109730

​Myocarditis After COVID-19 Vaccination in a Large Health care Organization​
CONCLUSIONS
Among patients in a large Israeli health care system who had received at least one dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine, the estimated incidence of myocarditis was 2.13 cases per 100,000 persons; the highest incidence was among male patients between the ages of 16 and 29 years. Most cases of myocarditis were mild or moderate in severity.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110737

​Russian propaganda:
Sweden halts use of Moderna’s Covid vaccine for younger adults amid concerns over rare heart inflammation side effect
https://www.rt.com/news/536715-sweden-moderna-paused-covid-jab/

[John Day]

Myocarditis Spotlight https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/10/myocarditis-spotlight.html

Cardiologist Peter McCullough MD et al look at myocarditis events reported to VAERS following COVID vaccinations in children.
​ ​We used VAERS data to examine cardiac AEs, primarily myocarditis, reported following injection of the first or second dose of the COVID-19 injectable products. Myocarditis rates reported in VAERS were significantly higher in youths between the ages of 13 to 23 (p<0.0001) with ∼80% occurring in males. Within 8 weeks of the public offering of COVID-19 products to the 12-15-year-old age group, we found 19 times the expected number of myocarditis cases in the vaccination volunteers over background myocarditis rates for this age group. In addition, a 5-fold increase in myocarditis rate was observed subsequent to dose 2 as opposed to dose 1 in 15-year-old males. A total of 67% of all cases occurred with BNT162b2. Of the total myocarditis AE reports, 6 individuals died (1.1%) and of these, 2 were under 20 years of age – 1 was 13. These findings suggest a markedly higher risk for myocarditis subsequent to COVID-19 injectable product use than for other known vaccines, and this is well above known background rates for myocarditis.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0146280621002267#fig0004

My Med School housemate, Guy, sent this from his area. It’s hotly contested.
​…​When Santa Rosa police arrived at the teen’s home, they found him unresponsive in his bedroom.
“The decedent had been in good health with no medical history and had received his second Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccination approximately two days before his death,” Verilhac wrote.
The doctor determined the cause of death to be “stress cardiomyopathy with perivascular coronary artery inflammation, due to unknown etiology in setting of recent Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccination.” Verilhac then stated that, “There were no other significant conditions contributing to the death listed.”​ …​
​…​Despite the uproar, Sonoma County officials insist there is no proven link between the vaccination and the ​(15 year old)​ boy’s death.
​ ​“It’s a very sad and perplexing case, and our concern – and that of the family — is that the anti-vax community would misrepresent the facts in this case,” county spokesman Paul Gullixson said Tuesday. “The only reason that the vaccination was mentioned in the synopsis, and the only correlation to the death, was the timing.”
​ ​County health officer Dr. Sundari Mase acknowledged there have been demonstrated cases of blood clots in a small percentage of Johnson & Johnson vaccine recipients, and an even smaller set of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) reactions in young people.
“But in this case,” she said, “CDC found no relationship between the vaccine and the death.”

County officials, social media posters spar over boy’s death

SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination-Associated Myocarditis in Children Ages 12-17: A Stratified National Database Analysis
​ ​Results​ ​ A total of 257 CAEs were identified. Rates per million following dose 2 among males were 162.2 (ages 12-15) and 94.0 (ages 16-17); among females, rates were 13.0 and 13.4 per million, respectively. For boys 12-15 without medical comorbidities receiving their second mRNA vaccination dose, the rate of CAE is 3.7 to 6.1 times higher than their 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization risk as of August 21, 2021 (7-day hospitalizations 1.5/100k population) and 2.6-4.3-fold higher at times of high weekly hospitalization risk (7-day hospitalizations 2.1/100k), such as during January 2021. For boys 16-17 without medical comorbidities, the rate of CAE is currently 2.1 to 3.5 times higher than their 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization risk, and 1.5 to 2.5 times higher at times of high weekly COVID-19 hospitalization.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v1

[John Day]

The JMG Ecosophia about people being pushed out of the over-intermediated cancer-economy is what is about to happen to me. I have wondered what the path to an alternative would be. I know it has to come from below (me) and not from above, ’cause that’s how it always has happened before.

Dr.D: Did I catch that you are a Quaker a few days ago? Just wondering. Dick Nixon was, at least raised that way… My Great Grandmother grew up in a Quaker house in Ohio that had been a stop on the underground railway before she was born, her parents house.

[John Day]

OTC COVID Rxs, Azelastin to Zinc
https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/09/otc-covid-rxs-azelastin-to-zinc.html
(Azelastin nasal spray is “approved” for OTC sales. Povidone iodine is cheap and readily available in reality.

(Astepro).​ I​ admit that I am stretching a bit to include this as OTC, but it is approved as such. I would spray it up both nostrils twice per day​ ASAP.
​ ​The 0.15% strength of azelastine nasal spray is now approved for nonprescription treatment of rhinitis – a common allergy to pollens, dust mites, mold and more — in adults and children 6 years of age or older, the agency said. The 0.1% strength remains a prescription product for younger children.
https://www.webmd.com/allergies/news/20210622/fda-approves-first-otc-nasal-spray-for-allergies

Azelastin, hydroxyzine and diphenhydramine were found to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication in cell cultures. They are available​ antihistamines​.
Among the three medications, azelastine was found to inhibit the SARS-CoV-2 virus at a dose that was smaller than the amount prescribed as a nasal spray. The other two antihistamines required higher drug concentrations than currently recommended dosing levels to achieve antiviral activity in cells.
https://ufhealth.org/news/2020/existing-antihistamine-drugs-show-effectiveness-against-covid-19-virus-cell-testing

[John Day]

Thanks Chooch. Good work!

I’m glad you included my comment for timeline perspective.
Messing with viral replication is a time-sensitive thing.
I had a lot of work to do in the Austin vegetable garden this morning.
It’s transition time, time to clean up browning vines (takes a long time to be careful with tomato vines) and plant fall/winter crops like garlic and sugar snap peas. We are still producing lots of okra and black-eyed “peas”.
Eating some okra and about to bike to the clinic, here in my last month of service.

John-in-transition

[John Day]

​”Rationalism” in US foreign policy?​ Now? “Just try not to lose the world’s leading chipmaker to the ascendant Chinese empire.”.. Thanks Eleni.
​ ​Elbridge Colby, who was in Trump’s Pentagon helping devise its national defence strategy, has a new book, The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict, making the case for a foreign policy that leaves the post-9/11 era clearly and decisively behind. The outer circle of the ‘periphery’ reduces to over-horizon, necro-tech management, and the ‘near provinces of empire’, such as Europe are dismissed as ‘sideshows’ to the main event – China. To focus on Iran or North Korea, he says, is simply misguided.
​ ​It is “a realist’s book, laser-focused on China’s bid for mastery in Asia as the 21st century’s most important threat”, Ross Douthat writes in the NY Times. “All other challenges are secondary: Only China threatens American interests in a profound way, through a consolidation of economic power in Asia that imperils our prosperity and a military defeat that could shatter our alliance system. Therefore, American policy should be organized to deny Beijing regional hegemony and deter any military adventurism — first and foremost, through a stronger commitment to defending the island of Taiwan”.
​ ​The Strategy of Denial presents a particularly unsentimental version of a rapidly consolidating Washington consensus. Biden’s speech justifying withdrawal from Afghanistan, in terms of an end to nation-building and focus on counter-terrorism – albeit more softly spoken – said the same as Colby.

The China Cold War Will Unstick America’s Glue

​”You want your cash; you can keep your cash”​ (heh, heh, heh…)
Fed Prepares To Launch “Review” Of Central Bank Digital Currency That Could Render Cash, Privacy Obsolete
​…​Chairman Powell has done his best to push for caution, arguing that it’s more important to “get it right” than be “first to market”. Put another way: who cares if the PBOC roles out the “e-RMB” first? The dollar’s role in the global financial system is much greater, which means the US is obligated to proceed with more trepidation.
​ ​Powell and others have said repeatedly that the Fed’s research so far has been early and exploratory. Powell has also pointed to the fact that many Americans still use and prefer cash. Most importantly, Powell has addressed concerns that a CBDC would effectively allow the Fed to monitor the finances of every American.​ (I’m not reassured by that statement Powell made. He didn’t say what they would actually do. He might feel uncomfortable.)​
​ ​”It’s our obligation to do the work both on technology and on public policy to form a basis for making an informed decision,” he said last month.
https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/fed-prepares-release-report-fedcoin-could-render-cash-obsolete

​What could go wrong? They’ll just patent some designer hallucinogens , make them a little addictive, and short-acting so you can get right back to work.​
The ‘Psychedelic Renaissance’ Is Entirely About Corporate Greed​,​​ Caitlin Johnstone​
​ ​“Money has begun flowing into companies intending to monetize psychedelic therapy as new research has increasingly shown that blowing one’s mind can alter it for the better,” reads a new article for the Los Angeles Times titled “Money is pouring into psychedelics. Meet the mystical hedge fund investor bankrolling the boom.”
​ ​“This scientific and commercial excitement rests on research showing that psychedelics can supercharge mental health treatment for PTSD, depression, anxiety, addiction, and other chronic ailments of the mind, enabling patients to dive deep, confront their traumas and — a rarity for mental illnesses — return healed,” the article reads. “That goes for synthetic chemicals such as MDMA and ketamine as well as plant-derived drugs such as psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms), the South American plant brew ayahuasca, and the West African root-derived substance iboga.”​ …
​ ​Terence McKenna once said, “Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”​ …
​ Psychedelics are useful not for the hallucinations they provide but for the hallucinations they remove. At the shallower end of the pool they can help dispel the psychological illusions which feed into our depression, anxiety, and PTSD. At the deep end they have the potential to remove our fundamental hallucinations about ego, mind, separation, and consciousness. The gamble appears to be premised on building a high fence to keep everyone playing in the shallow end of the pool, where they are useful.

The ‘Psychedelic Renaissance’ Is Entirely About Corporate Greed

​Experienced

[Author]

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