Mister Roboto
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@zerosum: Welcome to the late stage of the Age of the Barbarism of Reflection.
Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance Statement on Recent Washington Post Story about the use of Ivermectin to treat Covid.
Wow, Hunter Biden really fell down into the depths of some pretty severe depravity. I will admit to doing a pretty poor job of showing up for my life when I was a young man due to the fog of ego-fantasism and social maladjustment in which I mentally lived at the time, but I take some small comfort in knowing that I at least managed to avoid being the sort of hurricane of fuck-uppery that Hunter Biden became.
WRT to the facemask article on the NIH website: Seeing Is Not Necessarily Believing
JHK (whom I almost never bother to read anymore, but the blog-post title was just too click-baity to resist):
Is there not some larger — very large — question as to how this Manchurian Candidate with failing mental capacities, seemingly run by other figures in the shadows, came to be installed at the head of our government? The USA will not survive as a nation unless we seek to find out.
There are so many ways the USA might and probably will do itself in at this point that the melodramatic question at the end is likely moot.
The news about Prince Philip mostly serves to remind me that when QE2 finally kicks the bucket, I really expect things to start seriously “going south”, because it will be a major signifier of the end of an era.
The USA and Canada could control the virus also the exact same way. But mRNA jabs are not enough to eradicate it. This requires the restoration of good governance and national public health systems.
The USA, take public health seriously??? Never! We’ll let the country burn to the ground first! (As indeed our plutocratic class is doing and has been doing for a long time.)
@a kullervo: I was going to say “Shades of Countess Elizabeth Bathory” in response to that, but the Wikipedia page about her says that accounts of her vampiric activities such as bathing in the blood of young women to preserve her youth, are most likely apocryphal.
The Guardian article was an interesting read, and I find myself in a mindset similar to Ana. I think Covid is very real and very serious, I just don’t think the lockdown strategy is a long-term formula for success in dealing with it. I’m just not very vocal about that because it’s just too easy to end up getting lumped in with all these extremist weirdos. And the fact that the medical establishment is apparently refusing to even consider treating Covid-afflictees with Ivermectin, and the press actively propagandizes against doing so, really has to make you wonder what else might be going on.
I am increasingly of the mind that Covid is something the post-modern world will have to live with for quite a while, as smallpox (a much nastier customer) was for the world of old. I just can’t help wonder just how much more craziness the world will have to go through before the mass of people are ready to accept this unpleasant truth? Maybe one reason they’re militating and propagandizing against the use of Ivermectin is that using it would probably make people calm down a lot more about the pandemic.
The Florida policy has drawn sharp criticism from Fauci, who said it “opened up too quickly” in July. However, the infection control results to date look remarkably similar to California’s, and in some ways better. Through March 28, 9.5 percent of Floridians have been identified as COVID cases. Once we account for the fact that Florida has one of the oldest populations in the country and California has one of the youngest, the death rates with COVID through March 28 are lower in Florida than in California. In fact, the COVID death rate for the under-65 population and the over-65 population are both lower in Florida than in California.
Some think of lockdowns as the only possible way to protect the population from exposure to COVID risk. In reality, the lockdowns in California and elsewhere have served to protect only a portion of the population—the rich.
I am not surprised to learn any of this. Covid is just too contagious, and if lockdowns do anything, they only delay the inevitability of letting nature take its course. I know how cold-hearted that sounds, as nature is often as mean as a rattlesnake, but I think going for such a long time without a major war, famine, or pandemic has made us “go soft” about the harsher realities that are involved in living in this world.
Even countries that strive for the laudable goal of supporting their locked-down citizens with government money probably won’t be able to keep that up for very much longer. Even MMT states that if the government mints too much money in proportion to the amount of economic value being created, there will be inflation. And lockdowns by definition mean less value being created.
Approving HCQ or Ivermectin would have prevented everyone else from getting their vaccine approved and laughing all the way to the bank.
Yep, and those are the dirtbags who should be reviled for “trying to kill grandma”.
From the Matt Stoller article:
The answer to addressing the problem of thinned out supply chains is to recognize that hyper-efficient globalization inherently carries the downside of unpredictable shortages, geopolitical tension, and supply disruptions. And then redesign our global trading order to make it less efficient and more resilient.
Probably most people who are regulars here know this, but a lot of people don’t realize that efficiency and resiliency are always a trade-off. Efficiency tends to be popular in eras such as ours where available-energy is declining and so owners and upper-management are looking for easy ways to increase short-term profitability. But eras of declining energy-availability also make the shocks a system must periodically endure even more intense, and this effect will be magnified by taking away from resiliency by enhancing efficiency over every other priority. That’s exactly why we found ourselves not always able to buy our preferred brand (indeed, if any brand at all) of toilet paper, facial tissues, and paper towels during the “panic” phase of the onset of the pandemic.
For those who didn’t want to RTFA about the Evergiven: It would appear they have “refloated” it (meaning it’s no longer firmly wedged in the sand), but it might be another week before they actually get it sailing again, and that’s the extremely optimistic estimate.
About the Swiss Policy Research Institute according to MediaBiasFactCheck.com:
Right Bias
These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy.
Pretty much what I expected.
Doctors who prescribe (hydroxy) chloroquine or ivermectin against covid-19 will now receive a fine of up to 150,000 euros imposed by the inspection. This may also include other medications that are prescribed outside the guidelines.
Wow, things certainly aren’t getting any better, are they?
The big giveaway is how the top medical establishment has ignored, shoved aside, fraudulently sabotaged, and outright lied about effective treatments.
It really is. When you see a situation like that, you really have to ask, “Cui bono?” (“Who benefits?”) And the answer is almost always, “Wealthy and powerful people who certainly don’t have our best interests at heart.”
Chris Martenson over at Peakprosperity.com remains my “go-to” for coronavirus information. And I’m at least willing to give Dr. Malcom Kendrick a listen when it comes to skepticism about the conventional wisdom around the pandemic (because I agree with Adlertag that much of this skepticism on the Internet is just pure ideological trash being churned out by the authoritarian-nationalist faction of the Deep State [that would be the one that supported instead of opposing Trump] and, yes, the Russians to at least some extent).
I really hope the Covid situation doesn’t have to become as bad everywhere as it is in Brazil before the “first world” medical establishment stops turning up its nose at Ivermectin.
A link to the Detroit Free Press article from which I obtained the statistic on Michigan Covid hospitalizations. I think it’s at least possible that the emergence of more infectious Covid variants might have something to do with this.
I think this LSD group are pretty much just a bunch of professional (and probably well funded by far-right think-tanks) denialists. I read on Twitter yesterday that hospital admissions in Michigan for Covid are up 600% for people in their thirties and up 800% for people in their forties.
And the sad thing is, if I were to ask my Democratic-Party-supporting mother about what she thought about the Prez’s first presser, I’m sure she would all but rave about what an all-time great performance it was. :-/
While watching Biden’s press-conference, some rakes on my Twitter feed were saying “Uh-oh, the adderall is wearing off!”
WRT India daily death-rate Covid graph: One gets the impression that the medical establishment in India is actually serious about treating Covid. Kudos.
The article about the UK shows us why it’s not a surprise that Covid hit so hard there. Covid seems to hit the hardest populous countries that have a large gap between the rich and the poor. Contrary to what Dr. D seems to think (and his comment makes me wonder if he even RTFA), if it weren’t for the NHS, the UK would probably have a per-million death-rate from Covid that would equal or surpass the USA.
So Ivermectin works for long Covid (which is the main thing that demonstrates that this is seriously not “just the flu, bro”), too? That’s certainly nothing to sneeze at. Nonetheless, I’m sure the mainstream media paid lapdogs are getting their boxes of kleenex ready as we speak.
What a fall from grace.
When was Sydney Powell ever in any sort of grace outside of Trumpster-dumpster fantasyland?
@V Arnold: I suspect that Covid’s real damage will lie in the micro-shocks it delivered to an already very fragile and brittle global system. The powers that be chose to make this effect worse by employing the lockdown strategy thinking they could use it to their advantage.
The White House is punishing staffers who have admitted to past cannabis use, according to The Daily Beast.
It’s as if the new administration is systematically trying to alienate anybody who voted for them for any reason.
A little while back I saw one of the local marginal evangelical Xtians holding a sign at bus-stop that proclaimed “LESBIANS RUN AMERICA! I wasn’t able to bring myself to believe that, because if the lesbians were actually in charge, I really have to think we wouldn’t be in the royal mess we’re in right now.
The most heretical book recommendation I could possibly make around here: The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton.
MWAHAHAHAHA!
That the virus seems so highly predisposed to evolve into more virulent variants is another thing that makes me strongly suspect that it was created in some sort of biological laboratory facility.
A tweet from Caitlin Johnstone yesterday: It’s crazy how the US was all ‘Yeah we’re shutting down all the jobs cuz of Covid so you won’t have any money. Uhhh… good luck I guess.’
I have only read the introduction to the “vaccination monster” article so far because it looks like a long and thinky piece and I’m going to have to start getting ready for work here pretty soon. But while I am mostly pro-vaccine, I also like to think that I have a certain if very limited amount of psychic intuition or “sixth sense”. There’s just…something about the idea of vaccinating our way out of Covid the way it is being planned that just makes that sixth sense scream “NO!” Perhaps this article will provide a more rational and conventional explanation for these intuitive misgivings of mine.
Boogaloo: Ever since the Trumpsters decided to make masks into a cultural signifier, that pretty much guaranteed that the science would go right out the window. Here’s how that science works: When we respirate, we exhale a significant amount of moisture. That is why you “see” your breath when it’s very cold outside. In the case of an airborne respiratory virus such as Covid, there are bound to be a lot of the virus in the moisture we exhale. When everyone is wearing masks, the extent to which this moisture is sprayed into the air is dramatically curtailed. Not only that, but the mask does afford something of a barrier between one’s own nose and mouth and whatever breathed-out moisture particles are floating around in the air (though not enough to make a difference if you are indoors and the only person wearing a mask, the mask is more about protecting other people with an enhanced vulnerability to becoming infected and very sick).
That way, the amount of virus you breathe in will be rather reduced so that it’s a lower innoculum. Because the amount of virus you are taking in is a lot less likely to overwhelm your immunological response when everyone is wearing a mask, your immune system is a lot more likely to be able to build up a defense against coronavirus. If your immune system is successful, hopefully that means if you do breathe in an excessive innoculum at some point down the road, you’ll be able to handle it without getting terribly sick.
@John Day: I can relate to what you’re saying about Austin. I went to school at the UW in Madison in the late eighties, and I have since visited Madison in person and through Google Streetview. The downtown/ campus area is so hyperdeveloped that it hardly seems like the Madison of my fond old memories anymore. And it isn’t just university buildings, it’s also expensive high-rise student housing. You can always pick out the new residential structures by this weird, puzzle-boxy look they have.
About lockdowns: I was kind of on the fence about lockdowns when the pandemic started, because I had no living memory of living through any sort of pandemic either major or minor. But the longer it goes on, the more apparent it is that this approach is just too antithetical to normal human life. Not to mention the fact that we have very readily available means for treating this virus that for some reason we’re not using, and the establishment press can be counted on to do hacky hit-pieces on those means. A whole year of this, and you really have to start wondering if something else is going on here.
My dubiousness about lockdowns probably began when the effect of them made the financial economy go into the toilet so dramatically that the Fed had to essentially “socialize” the financial markets, and all those unemployment numbers just went right through the freaking roof. And it’s not that I care more about money than about people’s well-being, it’s just that people’s well-being is to a very large measure maintained by the economy being able to function in a certain way.
I think Gail Tverberg might have been on to something in positing that the real idea behind the lockdowns was to apply the breaks to a complexity-fragile and overheated economy that was in danger of demanding more fuel than could be reliably supplied indefinitely. Only when they did this did it become apparent that the at least some broken pieces of the pre-Covid economy might not be so easily glued back into place, on account being too broken.
All these stories I see about “Russian disinformation” always crack me up. As though the US and the UK haven’t been doing the same thing all over the world ever since before I was even born?
