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Grasp Historical Initiative

Aug 092023
 
 August 9, 2023  Posted by at 5:10 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  20 Responses »


M.C. Escher Fish and Boat 1948

 

 

An article by our good- and longtime friend, John Day, family doctor in Texas, until he got canned for refusing the clot shot. Sometimes you think: did that really ever happen? It seems so weird.. But it did, and not that long ago. We lost thousands of qualified and highly capable doctors and nurses for…. well, nothing at all really, other than some people’s petty power games. We lost a lot of lives to those same games too. John looks ahead, rather than back:

 

 

John Day:

 

Western Civilization is at a tense point in history. The current economic arrangements are heavily parasitized, running low on feedstocks like cheap oil, and can’t grow any more, are in irreversible contraction within the current paradigm, legal and bureaucratic structures. The Henry Ford inspired industrial capitalism of the postwar years, where workers could afford the Fords they made, succumbed to the imperative to support the value of the $US, over the actual industrial economy of the US, after America’s vast hoard of gold ran out, draining into the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

In 1971 America’s production of “conventional” oil peaked as previously predicted, and Nixon was forced to default on gold support for the $US, because the gold ran out. The UK got the last of what there was, which was about 40% of what they claimed for the dollars they were handing over.The value of the $US had to be supported somehow. Nixon and Kissinger made the deal with King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, an expansion of the deal FDR made with the Saudis to provide security in return for respecting US/UK interests, and starving the Axis countries. Under the newer deal, the House of Saud could charge any price for oil, but it would be denominated in $US, and excess funds from sales would be invested in US Treasury securities.

The world would need to hold $US to buy oil, supporting the trade-value of the $US. The investment value of the $US also needed to be supported. Interest rates had to be high enough to provide a real return on investment, returning modest, secure profits, whether that was good for the American productive economy or not. After the $US price of oil tripled in the early 1970s, for political-economic reasons (Yom Kippur War, Arab Oil Embargo) there was a corresponding decline of relative $US valuation to that commodity, causing inflation, and a self reinforcing inflationary wage-price rise cycle.

 

Paul Volcker was appointed Fed. Chairman, as inflation was turning global investors away from the $US as a reserve currency. The dollar suddenly fell from 86% to under 60% of global financial reserves. Volcker raised the interest rates paid on $US (20%) until nobody doubted getting good return on their $US investments, even with inflation. That crushed industry, especially industrial investment, and worker’s wages. No honest man/industry could pay that kind of interest, so borrowing for factories stopped. Financial investments became extractive of real value at high interest rates. Real wages of workers have never again risen from that time. The minimum wage in the US now buys half of what the minimum wage bought in 1968.

This extraction of wealth from workers and industry has supported the value of the $US, and has funded American wars of empire abroad. Government borrowing has funded an increasingly meager form of welfare state within the US. At the same time the productive economy has been made uncompetitive and is increasingly outdated, as the artificially high $US valuation hurt American exports (too expensive) and no honest industry could pay going real rates on investments in US-based production.

Some semi-monopoly industries could be profitable, like aerospace, supported by American military spending. American weapons industries could be profitable, though over time quality fell, while systemic corruption and inefficiencies kept increasing prices. Global customers can now see the price-competitiveness and absolute performance of American weapons-systems in Ukraine. They cn also see how slowly American industry responds to increased demand for supply of munitions during a crisis.

 

These many decades of paying to support an empire by borrowing and extracting value from the world have hollowed out the value-production chain within the US, and have rewarded parasitic extraction schemes from the productive economy. Hard-squeezed farmers are being strip-mined to support the dollar, but they are now old, and there are just a few of them. America has been sold to investors and rented back to Americans, who are struggling to keep paying rent and bills. Europe is in a similar situation, having taken a somewhat different, but convergent path.

Most nations of the world have had falling prosperity per capita since 2008, or before, due to organizational-complexity, debt, and the rising price of energy products, especially oil. Global “conventional” oil peaked in 2005, causing price rises, and contributing to the 2008 financial crisis (as did other factors). Productive economic growth since then has been minimal, in a system which sees creating a loan and creating a car as equal positives in GDP calculations. Vast borrowing from the future has supported the workings of the system, as investors blithely expect to be paid the promised returns on their loans some day.

“Smart money” is buying real estate, railways, oil and gas wells, power plants and nuclear weapons factories. Manufacturing in countries with low overhead, like Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand attracts value-investors like China. When the western financial Ponzi scheme breaks down, who will be holding something solid? Will there be competing claims on it? Who will be holding the bag of a lot of unpayable debts? How will this be managed? War is the usual management technique to force cooperation under duress. There are CBDC schemes, Build-Back-Better, Own-nothing-and-be-happy, etc.

The plots to be sprung upon hapless humans appear to be held in waiting while the economic system still works. As corrupt as it is, global economy can still deliver the widest variety of goods, services and real-returns-on-investment ever seen. No gambler can stop while the game is still in play. People who are not “players” can take the initiative to act in this historical moment of pause. Each of us can act historically as we understand the context of the inevitability of crisis and upheaval, and the reason for the calm before the storm.

 

One might get out of debt and get out of all risk assets, maybe hold physical cash, food, water, propane, a camp-stove, and invest in a safe place in a small town, with mixed local industry, good soil, and a long, peaceful agricultural tradition. Having a good water-well with a solar-powered pump is a remmarkaby practical investment. [I think planning to rely mainly upon firearms is delusional.]

We are social beings. Figure that you will entertain family and maybe friends for extended stays when the financial system breaks down. Understand your regional economic stressors, and how they would flex under duress, like power going out and internet going down, even water, gas and sewer. No trash pick up for a few weeks is something many urban dwellers have experienced. A lot of things morph unexpectedly. How might we live and sustain ourselves in our new economic system? Will the weather try to kill us? Can we devise a low-input lifestyle, and hold a buffer of necessities?

Will forms of civil-war or gang/cartel war come to our area? Is there enough loose wealth to attract those predators? Do we look like prey? There are other strategic forms of initiative which one can take. I had long wondered how to spot the Holocaust, Bolshevik Revolution, Cultural Revolution or “killing fields” early enough to get away in time. We taught our kids about this recurring human pattern. We didn’t know what the definitive sign would be, but I stayed vigilant. When I saw the sign, which was the creation of a human underclass, without rights to bodily autonomy, employment, travel, or even speech, I knew that the dangerous time had arrived.

Paradoxically, I knew that I should not run, but that I should stand firmly and openly as a good example, to help keep history from revisiting the “killing-fields”. All of the historical cases we had studied as a family on our travels had already happened, so our focus looking back was to get away, because we were looking back upon an epoch which DID already happen, and which anybody should have fled.

 

When the future is uncertain, and you see two directions it might take, you might want to invest with your life or livelihood in the better direction, if you see it clearly enough. All of the other practical investments will serve you in any case, but turning history away from an event where groups of people are dehumanized is always a worthy investment. I wonder what would have happened in Texas if there had not been a significant minority of medical professionals who refused COVID vaccine-mandates and willingly lost their jobs. It was not that many people, but it was public, and selfless and principled, so society did take note. People did discuss it, and it did not just go away.

These sacrifices are still being made in the US. Even though the societal-terror has abated, doctors like Pierre Kory MD and Paul Marik MD, who treated people effectively with ivermectin and other life saving therapies, and spread knowledge about how to save lives this way, are now being decertified by their medical specialty boards. The Board of Internal Medicine just decertified them. Their hospitals and the Med Schools where they taught already renounced them to maintain federal funding. The Board of Family Medicine also decertified me early this year, for the same offense of “advising patients against COVID-9 vaccination”. Informed consent for dangerous medical interventions has always been ethically required. “Informed consent” is still legally required, but “I don’t think it means what you think it means”, as the saying goes.

How are we influencing history as it continues to develop and form? Where will our new paths carry us into these uncharted times? Will we look back with regrets? It is hard to know. As it turns out, I am relieved to have avoided the physical harms of the mRNA and viral-vector DNA injections. At the time I had to decide what to do I only thought of myself as not-a-candidate. I did know that ivermectin-based treatment worked very well, especially when started early, which I was prepared to do at home.

You can know yourself to be a historical actor at this pivotal moment. You can act strategically in your own interests, and for your family. You can help friends who will listen, and we can help blaze the historical path which we will trek as a human society.

 

 

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How America Treats Its Doctors

Oct 202021
 
 October 20, 2021  Posted by at 12:19 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


George Bellows The Lone Tenement 1909

 

 

Our resident physician John Day in Texas comes with an update on his situation. It seems his clinic no longer seeks to fire him for refusing to be vaccinated, they now claim it’s for cause (it’s not). A doctor who has been free to decide medical treatments for and with his patients for many years, all of a sudden cannot decide that for his own body.

And of course it’s not just America, and it’s not just doctors, it’s also pilots and nurses and soldiers and police men and women, and vaccine mandates are being introduced in many countries. That will deprive many fields in our societies of their leaders, and leave them occupied by followers only.

People who think for themselves, and wish to decide for themselves (as is their right), are being put out by the curb, and by the thousands. The resulting changes in society will be devastating. Losing all those years of experience and wisdom and kindness and intelligence will make us all a lot poorer. And why? It’s obviously not about logic, and it’s not about health. John:

 

 

John Day MD: 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

 

 

 

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Make It Make Sense To Me. I Dare You.

Oct 132021
 
 October 13, 2021  Posted by at 5:22 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  24 Responses »


René Magritte Memory of a journey 1955

 

 

I thought that this, today, from our resident physician John Day in Texas deserves more attention than it gets in our Comments section. Because John is living, as we speak, the consequences of the vaccine mandates that are thrust upon doctors, nurses, pilots, etc.

You may be perfectly healthy, you may have dedicated yourself to your job, and the people you serve, for decades, but if you’re hesitant, based on your experience over all that time, about being injected with a substance that was never properly researched (can we agree on that at least?), you are now an Untermensch.

I’m just thinking: how many lives could John, and 1000s of medical professionals like him worldwide, have saved and/or made lesss stressful? How far gone must you be when you start firing the people who literally save lives, in the middle of a pandemic? What’s wrong with you?

When the only alternative you have is leaky so-called vaccines that have been proven to harm and kill many 1000s of people, and you have shunned any and all prophylactics and early treatment options? But instead you fire doctors who have made it their mission to save lives for decades?

Make it make sense to me. I dare you.

 

 

John Day MD: 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…

 

 

 

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Normalcy Migration

Oct 042021
 
 October 4, 2021  Posted by at 5:15 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  21 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Apatarao 1893

 

 

I was working on something else, check back later, and then I saw this comment by Automatic Earth resident physician John Day, about to lose his job because doctors are not supposed to have their own opinions and judgments either about medical procedures these days, let alone refuse a vaccine. Even if they’ve been working their nuts off for 30 years. Boy, do we live in strange times.

Simply thought John’s words might help someone somewhere realize they’re not alone. And it also made me realize -once more- what a great community has spontaneously grown at the Automatic Earth over the last 20 months. Where else on earth do you find that? And how can you not want to join?

 

 

John Day: When people think of Nazi Germany they typically think of 1939 to 1945, so when I liken the depersonalization of “the unvaccinated” in the west today, to how Jews and other minorities were treated under the Third Reich, I am taken to task. Today is more like 1932 than 1939, still pre-war, with the way forward not yet clear. The US is not Germany, and is not even the UK. Analogies can only be taken so far, but the process of depersonalizing a group of people, to blame them for things going bad, is a standard operating procedure.

• It has to become normal to blame the scapegoat group. Everybody has to know.
• It has to be common and accepted knowledge that this group made our current problems.
• It looks to me like this is still in beta testing with blaming the COVID-unvaccinated.

The US government today is more like the floundering Weimar republic in 1932, with divisions, and lack of a clear, guiding vision for the country. In 1932 the Weimar Republic did not have a majority in government, but it had the largest minority. Close upon its heels were the National Socialists and the Communist Party. The national Socialists and Communists were in opposition, and considered a political alliance. They did align on some things. Positions were not too different to reconcile, and the Deutschmark was not yet into hyperinflation.

With the ongoing global great depression, the Deutschmark, unmoored from gold by necessity, and based on a property bubble, started inflating away so rapidly that it was an economic crisis. People were desperate for a solution. The US is not there yet, but it looks like it is on the horizon. The world does not need to pay the US for dollars. Other global trade arrangements can be made. Dark-money trades move a lot of $100 bills around, and have for a long time, but gold works, and always has.

Gold and physical cash working as currency is a problem for global central bankers. They probably have a much better idea of how much dark-commerce is going on than we do. They launder the drug-money, for instance. They would prefer a cut of every single transaction. What central bankers openly want is global digital currency, under their control, for every participant and for every transaction. The vaccine-passports are an opportune pathway into that for Central Banking. Blaming the unvaccinated enough for COVID to enact widespread digital vaccine passports looks like a concept that needs widespread acceptance as normal, for it to be the go-to solution in the upcoming reset. If the global digital currency function of vaccine-passports were in place when the global financial system collapsed, it could be built up as a solution.

 

To me it seems that people don’t invent completely new solutions in a crisis. Rather, they press into service whatever they have that can be made to work. If cash and gold are eliminated, and only electronic transactions are possible, then global central bank digital currency can be made to look like the only alternative. Most people would prefer cash, which gives them autonomy, if they think about it.

Most people don’t have to think about it much these days. Credit cards work. In a crisis, people do think a lot more about their options and how they can protect their options and defend their resources from further predation. Before the overt crisis of global economic reset, here in the partly-contrived crisis of COVID-Pandemic-Unending, we might give careful thought to our positions in society, to how much normalcy migration we should roll-over for and permit.

I am not a victim, and I am sorry if I appeared to present my human experience recently in a way that made me seem that way, or seem as if I were putting on the identity-cloak of victimhood. I have intentionally decided to stand, immediately, with a scapegoated group, not least because I believe the group is right to resist conformity pressure, but because now is the time when a firm stance, before the onset of a real crisis, might be the most influential on the future course of society.

If we resist the normalization of unfair scapegoating every time it is attempted, then we resist being divided against each other by the owners. When the crisis hits in earnest, they need us to be divided against each other, in order to maintain their positions of power and ownership over us and over the physical world and it’s life forms. I am able to stand firmly against vaccine-mandates and vaccine passports because the kids are all in their careers, we own the house in Yoakum, and have low taxes there, I have vegetable gardens, and we have been practicing different life patterns, growing, harvesting, storing and preparing food.

We have modest retirement savings, no debts, and are about to get the attic insulation updated, the last major maintenance project on the homestead. The plumbing, electrical wiring, roofing, flooring, internal and external repair and paint have all been done, roughly in that order. It is a sturdy 1957 house, which has withstood every storm since then without appreciable damage. Jenny’s position as a school librarian does not appear threatened. We are able to subsist on her salary alone.

 

I am doing everything I can to ease the transition of care for my patients at what began in 1970 as a free-clinic, and what is now a largish Federally Qualified Health Center. I may or may not be employable, and I have learned better than to think I could run a business long ago. It’s not my nature. The near future is in a fog bank. Things are not usually this way. We need to not run into an iceberg while we await the lifting of the fog, and the improvement of visibility.

There is a lot that we can do each day which is productive and useful to ourselves and others. Much of it is really mundane, but it facilitates human repatterning, which is our own self-guided migration of normalcy. We can even choose to migrate towards historical normalcy. It might be a good start.

This Saturday Jenny and I experimented with the new technique of shelling black-eyed peas, which Dan and I worked out last weekend on the dried black beans, which had been very slow going for hand shelling. We harvested about 6 five-gallon buckets in June, and managed to shell 3 of those since then. Some people stomp black beans on a threshing floor (messy). The most promising technique I found online was to put them in a burlap bag, beat it mercilessly, then pour the loose beans out of it.

We experimented with that. The sharp black bean pods poked out through the burlap, spear-like. Wrong kind of burlap bag? The beans didn’t pour out so well, either, and the beating process seemed like we could do better. Dan started pounding the black bean pods in the 5 gallon bucket with an axe handle, not hard, just tap, tap, tapping. That seemed to be working pretty well. I did some hand mangling to loosen up remaining beans, and picked off a lot of the chaff from the top.

Dan had dropped the axe head down by then, which seemed to work better-still. We processed all 3 buckets pretty quickly, while working this out, then poured the buckets into a clean wheelbarrow, across the brisk wind of a fan, which blew away the chaff. We cut our processing time to about 10-20%, which made it look ok to grow black beans again, though we will experiment with pinto beans next spring.

The black-eyed peas did not respond well to the pounding-in-bucket technique. The pods seem to be more flexible, less dry and crispy. The “peas” don’t separate out easily that way, but they do separate out well by hand, just splitting the dry pod and stripping the (African) beans out with one’s fingers. The traditional way seems to be fairly efficient for low tech. Weevils mess with that. Old world beans are poorly defended against new world weevils. The wind-winnowing step works after hand shelling. They are a lot easier to hand shell than black beans are. Some pods shell easier than others. Some beans are bigger than others. Some varieties seem more resistant to weevils than others. One would desire large pods, with large beans, which shell easily, and are minimally susceptible to weevil damage.

[..] It is late in the season to judge weevil susceptibility, having planted in July (gave up on Mackey Peas). Both kinds shell readily when dried. The Purple hull peas are much larger, so the same amount of shelling get more dried “peas”. They taste fine, but the smaller Red ripper “peas” have a nice, appealing nutty flavor. We will have to see how they do against weevils next summer.

 

 

 

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OTC COVID Rxs, Azelastin to Zinc

Sep 072021
 
 September 7, 2021  Posted by at 12:10 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  34 Responses »


Laura Knight The Green Sea, Lamorna 1918

 

 

The Automatic Earth’s resident doctor, John Day MD, who’s about to lose his job for refusing to be vaccinated, has compiled a list of OTC prophylactics and treatments for Covid, and specified dosages.

 

 

John Day MD: I have gotten a lot of questions from people during the Delta-COVID peak this summer about OTC supplements and repurposed medicines to self-treat COVID, other than staying home alone and awaiting the inevitable, as is routinely advised. All of this advice applies to pregnant women. That is a group with a lot of questions. I am deeply disturbed at how expectant-mothers are being treated by the medical machine these days.

Firstly, don’t use ibuprofen or Aleve. Do not use NSAIDs when sick with COVID-19. I saw information from China in February 2020, and again from France in April 2020 that NSAIDs like these worsened hospital patient outcomes. I don’t know how confirmed that is, nor do I want to await further word. It is easy to avoid them, and they interfere with the anticoagulant effects of aspirin, anyway, which matters, as will be explained.

Support the normal functioning of your immune system with Vitamin-D. Every B-cell and T-cell in your immune system has vitamin-D receptors on it and won’t work properly and intelligently if a lot of them are empty. For most people, in the long term, 5000 units per day of vitamin D-3 (the kind you can buy) is a good dose, and will get people into the normal range. Exceptions to that are people who absorb it poorly and metabolize it poorly. Those people are the ones who still have a low level after months of taking 5000 units per day. You have to do the test to know you need more. People with a lot of body fat distribute their dose into a larger fat volume, and often need more.

A person who has a body weight over 100 kg (220 lb.) might do better to take 10,000 units per day. Checking a blood test after at least 3 months would help confirm what is best. Taking 10,000 units per day for the first month or 2, in order to normalize blood level is good. What is the ideal one time dose of vitamin-D to normalize one’s blood level, assuming a low starting point? A lot of effort has gone into answering that question, and it can be found here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC4128480/#R34

Vitamin D3 doses >300,000 IU were similarly effective in patients with 25(OH)D concentrations >20 ng/mL; all 3 studies (29,34,39) observed mean concentrations >30 ng/mL at 4 weeks, though the results peaked at day 3 (reaching 67.1 ± 17.1 ng/mL from 21.7 ± 5.6 at baseline) in the study of Rossini et al (34). Sanders et al (29) showed long-term efficacy of a 500,000 IU dose; the 25(OH)D concentration remained >30 ng/mL at 12 weeks and was significantly increased at 1 year in a cohort of women with osteoporosis.

That dose, 300,000 International Units of vitamin D3, by mouth, corresponds to #60 pills of 5000 units, a month’s worth of taking 2 pills per day. The level peaked at mid-normal in 3 days, and stayed in the normal range at 30 days. An even higher dose, a whole #100 pill bottle of 5000 unit vitamin-D pills produced a 12 week blood level that was still normal. People are very, very reluctant to take that many vitamin-D pills at once, even when they are sick with COVID. I’m sure of that. People give me feedback. “Trust the science”, or something. All I can do is give my best advice, with references.

Here is a flashback to “Vitamin-D Christmas”: https://www.johndayblog.com/2020/12/vitamin-d-christmas.html

 

Jumping to Z-for-zinc, this paper is the Gospel of Zinc, which has been shown effective against coronavirus “common colds” since 1996, reducing severity and shortening duration of illness. Zinc is clearly good, but it needs to get inside of the cells in order to directly interfere with viral replication. It is nice to have zinc adequacy when you get inoculated with COVID, but you can sure increase your dose when you get a positive test result. In most cases, prophylactic zinc supplementation was more effective than therapeutic proceedings (106–108, 111). Up to 30% of the everyday respiratory infections, briefly named “common cold,” are due to infections with coronaviruses (112).

Studies showed reduced symptom severity, reduced frequency, and duration of the common cold after zinc administration (99, 100, 113, 114) depending on dosage, zinc compound and the start time after initial symptoms (115)…..Zinc supplementation improves the mucociliary clearance, strengthens the integrity of the epithelium, decreases viral replication, preserves antiviral immunity, attenuates the risk of hyper-inflammation, supports anti-oxidative effects and thus reduces lung damage and minimized secondary infections…
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.01712/full

What is the optimum preventive-dosing of zinc? The prophylactic dose needs to assure zinc adequacy, without crowding out the absorption of copper. 12 – 25 mg per day seems to be an agreed recommendation. Not exceeding 50 mg/day prophylactically is also broadly agreed. (We get about 12 mg/d in a supplement and eat lots of fresh vegetables.)

What about taking zinc when you are sick with coronavirus? What should be done differently? This gets fancier, and includes quercetin, a plant polyphenol found in foods from onions to green tea. Quercetin acts as a zinc-ionophore and helps zinc get into human cells, including human cells infected with coronavirus, where it inhibits viral production. Taking quercetin together with zinc during active infection has been advised in treatment protocols since at least June 2020, when I first saw it. I was having difficulty prescribing hydroxychloroquine, because of the medical politics which had arisen after President the-Donald had advocated for it.

It was already in fairly wide use by that time. One good thing about HCQ is that it is a zinc ionophore, so I was looking for alternate zinc ionophores, and had heard that quercetin was the main one, especially the available one. I did not get a good idea of how long quercetin persists in the bloodstream after ingestion. That would be expensive to study…

What has been studied is quercetin absorption from the gut, which is poor, but helped by taking it with a meal. It turns out that taking a little lecithin with your quercetin can increase absorption by up to 20 X. They call the mix of 250 mg quercetin + 250 mg sunflower lecithin, in a gel-cap, “Quercetin Phytosome”. We ordered some after seeing this article: Other benefits of quecetin against SARS-CoV-2 are also postulated. They didn’t give zinc, just “quercetin phytosome”.

Results: The results revealed a reduction in frequency and length of hospitalization, in need of non-invasive oxygen therapy, in progression to intensive care units and in number of deaths. The results also confirmed the very high safety profile of quercetin and suggested possible anti-fatigue and pro appetite properties.
https://www.dovepress.com/possible-therapeutic-effects-of-adjuvant-quercetin-supplementation-aga-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-IJGM

Ground-laying research about the highly-bioavailable formulation, “quercetin phytosome”, mixed with lecithin, and readily available in the retail market.
Quercetin (3,3′ ,4′ ,5,7-pentahydroxyflavone) is a natural flavonoid compound widely found in vegetables, fruits, and nuts. Major dietary sources of quercetin are apple, onions, tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce, and black and green tea… increasing the water solubility of quercetin would enhance its oral bioavailability…

A more soluble formulation of quercetin based on lecithin, Quercetin Phytosome, has recently been developed, and was found to facilitate the attainment of very high plasma levels of quercetin -up to 20 times more than usually obtained following a dose of quercetin- when the novel formulation was administered orally in human volunteers, and it did not have any notable side effects .
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6418071/

 

COVID has 2 phases , which the Chinese already explained in early 2020. The first week of symptoms (which begins about 5 days after exposure/inoculation) and the second week, where the person either improves with the antibody response the body makes, or gets deathly ill from it. In the second week the battlefield against the virus, and virus-producing cells, lays waste to organs like the lungs, kidneys, blood vessels and heart.

People with inflammatory conditions, like diabetes and obesity, are prone to get hit much harder in the second week. This is the time that people crash fast and get put on high dose steroids and blood thinners in the hospital, to reduce the collateral damage, the “Cytokine Storm”. Those treatments are not over-the-counter. There are some accommodations you can make in anticipation of that. You might decide to take a 325 mg aspirin or two per day, and 1000 mg of vitamin-C three times per day before you get to the second week. The potential benefits outweigh the risks for those with hypertension, diabetes, and obesity..

The more inflammation-prone should take 2 X 325 mg Aspirin per day, to get full benefit of the anticoagulant effect. All the inflammation makes micro clots through the circulation of lungs and kidneys, even brain and heart, and sometimes big clots, too causing overt occlusion of blood supply to heart, lungs and brain.

Vitamin-C has a benefit to cleaning up the oxidative damage and debris where the immune system is fighting the virus, and blasting infected cells with little oxidative-bombs. 1000 mg of vitamin-C 3 times per day is a modest dose in this context. It has been used up to 10X that dose IV in hospital studies last year.

 

(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

Famotidine (Pepcid) was found to reduce COVID-19 progression, severity and deaths last summer. It likely inhibits cytokine storm effects, but that is not certain. The dose I heard the best reports on was 60 mg 3 times per day, more than cited in the range here: 20-40 mg twice per day should work to full effect..

Impact of Famotidine Use on Clinical Outcomes of Hospitalized Patients With COVID-19
   Famotidine use in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 is associated with a lower risk of mortality, lower risk of combined outcome of mortality and intubation, and lower levels of serum markers for severe disease in hospitalized patients with COVID-19…

  Famotidine was administered orally in 83% of cases and intravenously in the remaining 17%. Dosing for oral administered famotidine was 20 mg/d in 95.2% of cases and 40 mg/d in the remaining 4.8% of cases. Intravenous famotidine was administered as a 20 mg/2 mL solution in all cases, For inpatient famotidine use, the median total dose was 80 mg (range 40–160 mg) and was received over a median of 4 days (range 2–8 days).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7473796/

  You might well take 10 mg Zyrtec (cetirizine) twice per day with your Pepcid.
A more recent cohort study used cetirizine and famotidine in hospitalized patients with severe to critical pulmonary symptoms. This study confirmed beneficial reductions in inpatient mortality and symptom progression , probably by minimizing the histamine-mediated cytokine storm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7833340/

  This article is sparse on details, but the Pepcid + Zyrtec combination might be what they used to treat long-COVID.

Antihistamines might be effective in long-COVID
  Regarding therapeutic intervention, almost 60% reduction in symptom burden was observed in long-COVID patients treated with histamine receptor antagonists. Specifically, of 25 patients in the treatment group, 5 reported complete resolution of all symptoms, 13 reported improvements, 6 reported no change, and 1 reported deterioration of symptoms.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210608/Antihistamines-might-be-effective-in-long-COVID.aspx

 

  The media, Tony Fauci and the AMA have been beating really hard on ivermectin, the stupid people who use it and the criminals who prescribe it. 

Ivermectin is not over the counter in the US.
WARNING : If you take an ivermectin dose to deworm 50 horses, 500 times a typical human dose, you might get sick and die, maybe.

In a trial on human volunteers, doses of 60, 90, and 120 mg were included to establish a significant safety margin for administration of this drug. No central nervous system effects, using pupil size as the parameter, were detected at the maximum dose level. No adverse events were reported in subjects who received 120 mg of ivermectin, which is 10 times the proposed dose of 0.2 mg/kg for treatment of scabies . There was minimal accumulation following multiple dosing (three times per week) with ivermectin, which was consistent with the half-life in the body of about one day.

A safety margin of ten times the recommended dose sounds good, but it gets better. During a program for treating children with scabies in the Solomon Islands, an 8 mg/kg accidental overdose (40 times the recommended dose) in a child caused acute emesis, mydriasis and sedation which rapidly reversed . In a study of poisoning due to ivermectin and the related molecule avermectin, 

“Seven patients manifested severe symptoms, such as coma (7), aspiration with respiratory failure (4), and hypotension (3), after a mean ingestion of 100.7 mg/kg avermectin (15.4 mg/kg for ivermectin and 114.9 mg/kg for abamectin). One of the seven patients died, the other six recovered. This was from an average of 500 times the recommended dose rate.
https://wentworthreport.com/ivermectin-safety-profile/

Review of the Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/

Ivermectin: a multifaceted drug of Nobel prize-honoured distinction with indicated efficacy against a new global scourge, COVID-19 (We wanted to hike Machu Picchu last summer, so I was paying a lot of attention to Peru. The mountainous regions were handing out ivermectin and having very low case counts and deaths, compared to the cities. Last winter Peru got a new president, who outlawed ivermectin. Look what happened:)


 

 

 

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Update on COVID Treatments

Aug 202020
 
 August 20, 2020  Posted by at 6:43 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Édouard Manet Woman with a jug 1858-60

 

 

John Day is one of the “resident physicians” at the Automatic Earth, who posts on a very regular basis in our Comments section.

I asked him recently for an update of preferred treatments for Coronavirus/COVID19, because I noticed new treatments being discussed, in particular ivermectin/doxycycline, which appeared to be taking the place of hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin in some cases.

As per John, below, there doesn’t seem to be much difference; that is, both do fine, if and when applied in timely fashion. In combination with zinc, of course. Azithromycin and doxycycline are antibiotics.

We’ve been discussing HCQ for a long time here, and John’s been a fan since even before he started treating patients with it.

Did you notice that the first criticisms of HCQ in the US et al were all about the death risk, and now that’s totally gone, and people like Fauci only claim it’s ineffective?! And it probably is, if taken too late, or without zinc, but have you ever seen Fauci mention zinc in the discussion?

An estimated 200 million Africans were given chloroquine as a malaria drug since the 1960s, and there’s not one report I’ve seen of people dying from it. It’s still prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, no reports of significant numbers of deaths there either.

 

John provides an overview here of recent developments, reports etc., which is of necessity always in transition. Keep on checking back. Delve in deep or just scan for essentials.

Even earlier than HCQ and ivermectin, and as John again repeats, you need vitamin D, which is essential for strenghtening the linings of blood vessels and lymphatic vessels, and is sort of your first defense against a potential infection with a virus that attacks exactly those, before it happens. Boost your vitamin D levels as a precaution; it’s cheap and effective.

But I’m not the doctor, John is:

 

 

John Day: This is a lot, folks, and I did not really delve into use of high dose steroids, ventilators and paralyzing medicines in hospital treatment. We should be avoiding that whole scenario. I remember when AIDS became a disease for outpatient treatment. That was dramatic. Pills that worked made it possible.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/08/update-on-available-covid-19-treatments.html

Roger Seheult MD Discusses the role of vitamin-D in helping the body fight the effects of SARS-CoV-2 virus, with special focus on the arterial lining, the endothelium, where the battle for life is fought. Recent paper has more vitamin-D data, and it’s all the same, just more. Take 5000 units per day, or whatever it takes to get your level above 60. He recommends 50,000U initial dose for all hospitalized patients.

Look at 11:30 to 13:30 (the last 2 minutes) for specifics on vitamin-D in hospital by this critical care pulmonologist. This COVID-19 update series is excellent!

JCEM paper cited in lecture: https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/97/8/2792/2823373

Charoenngam/Holick paper cited in lecture: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342970598_Immunologic_Effects_of_Vitamin_D_on_Human_Health_and_Disease

This is a comprehensive aggregation of papers relating directly to Vitamin-D levels and supplementation in COVID-19 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7276229/

This much cited Indonesian study , reported in June, is included in the above analysis, and is worth its own link: https://emerginnova.com/patterns-of-covid19-mortality-and-vitamin-d-an-indonesian-study/

My general advice for people over 100# is to take 5000 units of vitamin-D daily, long term, unless you have not been taking it, in which case, take 10,000 units vitamin D3 daily until Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Years Day or something. If you weigh 80# take 4000 units per day, 60# gets 3000 units, etc.

This is the influential study from Bangladesh, reported in July, which prompted the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh to change from hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin to ivermectin/doxycycline. It explains the known antiviral mechanisms at work very well.

A Case Series of 100 COVID-19 Positive Patients Treated with Combination of Ivermectin and Doxycycline
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343305357_A_Case_Series_of_100_COVID-19_Positive_Patients_Treated_with_Combination_of_Ivermectin_and_Doxycycline

Dr Alam’s randomized, controlled follow-up trial is approved and funded and underway

Dr. Alam Gets his Randomized Controlled Trial Approved by the Bangladesh Medical Research Council

This paper explains that ivermectin blocks a transport mechanism that viral RNA and proteins need to get from the cytoplasm, into the nucleus, where the machinery for viral replication exists. Ivermectin turns the nuclear-membrane into a wall against coronavirus, and some other viruses, too. The broad spectrum antiviral ivermectin targets the host nuclear transport importin ±/≤1 heterodimer
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32135219/

Ivermectin helped sick hospitalized patients in Florida survive, especially some of the sickest ones. Conclusions and Relevance: Ivermectin was associated with lower mortality during treatment of COVID-19, especially in patients who required higher inspired oxygen or ventilatory support. These findings should be further evaluated with randomized controlled trials.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.06.20124461v2

More News on Dr. Borody’s Ivermectin proposal

More News on Dr. Borody’s Ivermectin proposal

Here is my essay on the sick husband and wife I treated with Ivermectin, zinc and doxycycline last week. She gets nauseated from the zinc, but they both got out of crisis right away. He still feels tired and coughs.
http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/08/first-good-news.html

A randomized trial of ivermectin/doxycycline, vs hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin in COVID-19 patients (I see no reason not to use both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Mechanisms of action would be complementary. It is being proposed and has been done.)
This trial found the treatments to be similarly well tolerated and similarly beneficial.(Ivermectin was better, not to statistical significance.)
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-38896/v1

A compilation of hydroxychloroquine studies treating COVID-19, and in-vitro studies, to date and summarized. Thanks Marc.
https://c19study.com/?fbclid=IwAR0hvH_xb2dsr3kvmiFnog1y57p34Ml09S5DzBxoktFpvyEncrYvseMIzM4

Hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin + zinc got more patients home from the hospital than hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin without zinc:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.02.20080036v1

Dr Raoult’s large scale and successful study of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. (Not randomized with a placebo arm, since people were dying and placebo was already known to the investigators to lead to more deaths than treatment.) Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and other regimens in Marseille, France: A retrospective analysis.

Treatment with HCQ-AZ was associated with a decreased risk of transfer to ICU or death (Hazard ratio (HR) 0.18 0.11-0.27), decreased risk of hospitalization e”10 days (odds ratios 95% CI 0.38 0.27-0.54) and shorter duration of viral shedding (time to negative PCR: HR 1.29 1.17-1.42). QTc prolongation (>60/ ms) was observed in 25 patients (0.67%) leading to the cessation of treatment in 12 cases including 3 cases with QTc> 500/ ms. No cases of torsade de pointe or sudden death were observed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315163/

Here is an ongoing prospective, randomized American study, which does assign people to HCQ/Azithromycin or clever placebo pills.
Zinc is not part of it.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04358068

Here is Gummi Bears’ “Deep Dive on Hydroxychloroquine” from last month. Scroll down 2/3 of the way and see the national responses to initiation of HCQ/Azithro treatment in Brazil, Algeria and Morocco. Deaths plateau in 10 days, while cases keep rising to a much later plateau.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1283840177497088001.html

 

 

 

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