BMEWS
 
Sarah Palin knows how old the Chinese gymnasts are.

calendar   Friday - March 20, 2020

Things Have Changed

I could have written this short post pretty much at any time over the past 5 years, but I’m doing it now because today was the worst of it I’ve ever seen.

We have one grocery store in town. We used to have 2, but the A&P went out of business.

I had my first real job, actually my first real career path, in the grocery industry. I started out as a cashier, eventually went full time, became a manager, and spent 13 years there.  But when I was a cashier, way back in 1977, we had to be fast. And I was the fastest. There were no scanners; you pretty much learned the prices of everything, even though in those Carter days of wild inflation they changed constantly.

Now there seems to be a rule that whoever is the slowest, most dimwitted, most nearly dead employee they can find becomes the Express cashier. WTH?

~~~~

We raced in to the grocery store to get a card because her sister is getting married this afternoon. That’s another FUBAR I don’t want to go into, but there have been tears, yelling, phone calls, constantly changing plans and venues ... and the bottom line is, that wedding will take place on the deck in their backyard with just a couple guests, because you can’t have even a small crowd not even in a church, the Justice of the Peace is closed over at Town Hall, and the preacher they did manage to get at the last second is having and Abundance Of Caution and won’t even go in their house. And us, the other 2 guests, but with my wife’s coworker out sick and waiting for EIGHT DAYS now on her coronavirus test results from CDC, neither of us knows if we were exposed. And her dad will be there and he’s in his 80s with various medical conditions. Oh yeah, it’s been so much fun here. A regular stress factory for over a week, with the dial turned up to 11 24-7.

So we’re in the grocery store, got a card and a few things while we’re there, and we go to get on line. But there’s a line director (!!!) who shunts us off to the back of the remote line. Which starts in the dairy aisle, wraps across the frozen food zone, down the far side, across the back, up the other side, back out of the dairy zone, and then all the way down the nearly empty bread and toilet paper aisle. Had to be at least 100 customers, all doing Social Distancing. We’d be there for hours. And the front end has just 3 registers going and no baggers. Because it’s 1:30 in the afternoon and that’s the slack time usually.

To Hell with this.

So I was a good former grocery store boy and put the meat back. We left the rest in the cart and went across the lot to Walmart. Which wasn’t very busy because 1) they have almost no food in their mini-grocery area, and 2) while they had NO cashiers on duty, they’ve converted the front end to have about 16 Self Check stations. She got the exact same card and was out in 3 minutes.

And now the rumor is that NJ is going to shut down the liquor stores like PA did yesterday. What fun!!

At least I have time to grab a shower and get my clothes through the dryer. Then we can drive an hour, go watch the ceremony while wearing masks and gloves, toast the bride and groom from a distance, and then drive home. In rush hour.

[ hours later ] And we’re back. Actually we were there for 4 hours. It was very nice. The sun came out and the weather was perfect. We had a couple of pizzas delivered for the wedding feast and washed it down with champagne. It was just the 5 of us, and we had a great time talking - well, nearly yelling - as we all stayed a good distance apart on their large deck. And J and G are now happily married, so three cheers for them. We got back, changed clothes, and took a nap.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/20/2020 at 01:12 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily LifePandemic Pandemonium •  
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calendar   Thursday - March 19, 2020

Pat Lets It Fly

To quote Pat

Nobody’s feelings were consulted during the making of this video. Anyone who has a problem with that can drop dead.

Does he mention how much of our media is owned by China? Oh, we all saw a couple months back how they own the NBA, and we all know the MSM has been soft on commies since 1925, but it’s rather in-your-face at this point.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/19/2020 at 10:21 PM   
Filed Under: • CHINA in the newsCommies •  
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Oh Yeah, I Remember Her

Tulsi Gabbard Officially Drops Out Of Dem Race

Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has suspended her long-shot campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

She made the announcement in a video posted to Twitter on Thursday. The move comes as former Vice President Joe Biden consolidates support in the party and builds a massive delegate lead over his only remaining rival in the primary race, Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Gabbard, in the video, offered her “full support” to Biden.  But Gabbard also praised Sanders.

Gabbard, who backed the populist senator’s 2016 White House bid, said: “I have great appreciation for Senator Sanders’ love for our country and the American people and his sincere desire to improve the lives of all Americans.”

Gabbard – a four-term congresswoman who in 2012 became the first Hindu elected to Congress – launched her presidential campaign in January of last year.

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1240650484546859008


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/19/2020 at 03:26 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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A new leader emerges

Oh GAK. OTOH, young people are influenced by influencers, so maybe they might listen to this bilious billionaire bint. OR maybe they’ll all come home from Spring Break tanned, pregnant, with fresh STDs and a nice friendly killer virus in them. YOLO, so no FOMO.

Kylie Jenner: The Social Distancing EXPERT America Needs!!!!

Well, America, it’s come to this. U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams has called on Kylie Jenner to help our nation weather the storm of the coronavirus pandemic. That’s not even a joke. And it’s not all that far-fetched, since it turns out that the cosmetics mogul has quite a bit of experience with social distancing.

“What I really think we need to do is get our influencers out — Kevin Durant, Donovan Mitchell,” Adams said on Good Morning America Thursday. “We need to get Kylie Jenner. We need to get our social media influencers out there in helping folks understand that look, this is serious.”

Adams said this in response to the videos and reports coming from Florida, where young people are defiantly partying for spring break, even as the rest of the country sits at home in isolation to flatten the curve of COVID-19’s spread.

In fact, Jenner had already been urging her followers to stay home, as she has been doing for over a week.

“Another reminder to take this social distancing serious and self quarantine,” she wrote on her Instagram Stories on Wednesday. “I’m on Day 8. My pregnancy prepared me for this. I didn’t leave the house for months.”

In case you’ve forgotten, Jenner stayed hidden from the world while she was pregnant with Stormi, choosing to have a rare time of privacy. “My pregnancy was one [journey] I chose not to do in front of the world,” she said after giving birth.

So there you go. Somebody young, beautiful, popular, and richer than Pharaoh is now an “expert” at staying home ... because she’s been off the front pages of the gossip magazines for EIGHT WHOLE DAYS.

Ok Snowflake. 


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/19/2020 at 12:37 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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As Expected, Trump Makes It Happen

President Trump: Move Forward With Plaquenil Right Now

President Trump announced Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is making experimental drugs—including those used for treating malaria -- available as part of the ongoing effort to tackle the spread of the coronavirus.

Trump announced at a White House press briefing that chloroquine, a drug designed for use in malaria, has been FDA approved and will be made available by prescription “almost immediately.” He said it was one of a number of antiviral therapies to limit the symptoms of the virus that the administration is trying to get to Americans as quickly as possible.

“I have directed the FDA to eliminate rules and bureaucracy so work can proceed rapidly, quickly and fast,” he said. “We have to remove every barrier.”

Addressing potential safety concerns, Trump noted that it had been used previously in treating malaria, “so we know if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.” He said it had shown “very encouraging” early results.

He also said another drug, remdesivir, would be made available to Americans as well by the process of “compassionate use.” He said it would remain to be seen whether it would help combat the crisis.

So while the President did actually specifically say “chloroquine”, it’s pretty much a guarantee that he meant hydroxychloroquine sulfate, which is the common drug Plaquenil. To us laymen, it’s all chloroquine, although there are two forms of it, and the new NIH study did indicate that HCQ was much more effective. See yesterday’s posts.

U.S. researchers, following the lead of scientists in other countries, have launched studies to see whether widely-available, low-cost generic drugs can be used to help treat the illness caused by the new coronavirus.
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... a 1,500-person trial, led by the University of Minnesota, began this week to see whether malaria treatment hydroxychloroquine can prevent or reduce the severity of COVID-19. Two other trials are studying the blood pressure drug losartan as a possible treatment for the disease.

The malaria drug, also being tested in China, Australia and France ...

Besides having a direct antiviral effect, hydroxychloroquine suppresses the production and release of proteins involved in the inflammatory complications of several viral diseases.

There was a report out of China recently that a test of 100 ailing subjects given Kaletra showed barely any positive effects (1 in 100), and bad reaction to that HIV medicine’s combination of lopinavir and ritonavir forced 13.8% off the mediction. Remdesivir is not the same as ritonavir.

This is most likely part of the WHO’s worldwide guinea pig large scale in-situ test of multiple solutions

The World Health Organization is taking the drug-testing approach that helped stifle Ebola’s latest resurgence and using it against the new coronavirus.

At least 10 countries including France, Spain and Switzerland agreed to join a trial called Solidarity that the global agency is coordinating, simultaneously testing four therapies by pitting them against each other.

The strategy is designed to speed up a process that can take years as doctors scour laboratories for promising treatments against the new virus.
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In the Solidarity trials, researchers will test four therapies, some of which are already used in people, to treat Covid-19: Gilead Sciences Inc.’s experimental remdesivir, AbbVie Inc.’s Kaletra (used to treat HIV infection), Kaletra with an anti-inflammatory treatment called interferon-beta, and the malaria drug chloroquine.

China has included chloroquine in treatment recommendations for Covid-19. Ongoing studies showed that Kaletra, a combination of the drugs lopinavir and ritonavir, gave little benefit, according to early results published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Additional medicines may be added and some of the original treatments may be cut out as the trial progresses.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2020/03/19/fox-interview-malaria-drug-to-treat-n2565260


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/19/2020 at 12:06 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicinepandemic and epidemic diseases •  
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calendar   Wednesday - March 18, 2020

And We Have A Cure?

Breaking News, Kind Of

Claim: Plaquenil and Z-Pack Cures COVID-19 100% In 6 Days

Study done via NIH, released a couple days ago finds that hydroxycholorquine much more effective in vitro than choloroquine:

According to the study, the researchers tested the pharmacological activity of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine using SARS-CoV-2 infected Vero cells. They then implemented physiologically-based pharmacokinetic models (PBPK) for both drugs separately by integrating their in vitro data. Using the PBPK models, hydroxychloroquine concentrations in lung fluid were simulated under 5 different dosing regimens to explore the most effective regimen whilst considering the drug’s safety profile.

Based on PBPK models results, a loading dose of 400 mg twice daily of hydroxychloroquine sulfate given orally, followed by a maintenance dose of 200 mg given twice daily for 4 days is recommended for SARS-CoV-2 infection, as it reached three times the potency of chloroquine phosphate when given 500 mg twice daily 5 days in advance.



[ Splitting hairs here. It turns out that the “coronavirus” we’re all going crazy about not only is just one of thousands of coronaviruses, but it is also a variation of the SARS virus. Specifically, the disease is the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and COVID-19 is the illness/symptoms created by the virus. For all of us normies, the terms are interchangeable. ]

Meanwhile in France ... a preliminary?? study of 40 patients ... (although the Chinese, South Koreans etc have been using this for awhile)

BREAKING: New controlled clinical study conducted by doctors ​in France shows that Hydroxychloroquine cures 100% of coronavirus patients within 6 days of treatment

a recent well controlled clinical study conducted by Didier Raoult​ M.D/Ph.D, et. al in France showed that 100% of patients that received a combination of HCQ and Azithromycin tested negative and were virologically cured within 6 days of treatment.

In addition, recent guidelines from South Korea and China report that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are effective antiviral therapeutic treatments for novel coronavirus.

A therapeutic agent that prevents infection with novel coronavirus is highly desirable–especially for persons with high-risk exposure (e.g healthcare professionals) as well as persons with comorbidities (heart disease, diabetes, etc) and compromised immune systems. Ground-breaking in vitro studies demonstrate potential efficacy of hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic for novel coronavirus infection in primate cells.

Note: Hydroxychloroquine (brand name Plaquenil) is an inexpensive, globally available drug (tablet) that was approved for widespread medical use since 1955. It is commonly used today to treat malaria, systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis.

The study is part of the initiative from an independent group of scientists and physicians working on an open-data clinical trial for prevention of COVID-19, through the use of hydroxychloroquine in combination with other therapeutic agents. The group is now calling on President Trump to allow Americans to use the drug.

HCQ is hydroxychloroquine, the pill called Plaquenil, and Azithromycin is the antibiotic commonly known as the Z-pack. Z-pack hit the market 29 years ago as a respiratory treatment antibiotic, but has proven very effective against many other illnesses too.



I am thrilled to hear this, and even more thrilled to hear that a cheap common RA drug combined with a cheap common antibiotic appears to be highly effective; while other reports have shown that HCQ along with the (very expensive, >$500) HIV combo drug Kaletra (Lopinavir and Ritonavir)

HCQ also appears to be very effective at keeping you from getting this damn thing in the first place.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/18/2020 at 09:09 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicinepandemic and epidemic diseasesPandemic Pandemonium •  
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Here Come The Big Gibbs

Hey, throwing piles of money at everything is the Democrat solution, so they can’t complain if Trump does it, right? Besides, what’s another trillion or two in debt?

Trump To Inject Massive Green To Heal Ailing Economy

Because just 10 days ago everything was super wonderful. And then??

Ahead of an expected surge in coronavirus cases, President Donald Trump on Tuesday moved to blunt the impact of the pandemic on a U.S. economy fundamentally altered by a push for the nation to stay home.

As the global markets fluctuated amid fears of a recession, the president conferred with tourism executives as well as restaurant leaders, retailers and suppliers. His administration was expected to propose a roughly $850 billion emergency economic stimulus to address the free-fall, including considering the sending of checks to American workers trying to make their way in the deeply unsettled economy.

U.S. businesses large and small were reeling from shutdowns, cancellations and public fear about the virus as the number of cases rose nationwide. Stocks moved higher on Wall Street on Tuesday, a day after plunging to their worst losses in more than three decades.

And in an instant they all line up with their hands out ...

NYC MTA wants $4B to keep empty subway cars running. Um, what??

Retailers want debt payment pause and billions in cash.

Hotels and BnB are hurting and needful too. Bigly, with everyone staying home.

$1000 for everybody? And $50B for the airlines

As the coronavirus begins to take its toll on the economy, the federal government on Tuesday said it was working to put cash directly in the hands of Americans.

“We are looking at sending checks to Americans immediately,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters. “Americans need cash now and the president wants to get cash now. And I mean now, in the next two weeks.”

The cash infusion would be part of an $850 billion stimulus package that Mnuchin is discussing with Senate Republicans — $50 billion of that which go to the embattled airline industry.




~~~~

Meanwhile, the stock market takes another dive, oil drops to lowest price since 2003

U.S. equity markets plunged in the opening minutes of trading, gutting a rebound on Monday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1,268 points, or 5.9 percent, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were lower by 5.4 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively. Trading is halted if the S&P 500 falls by 7 percent.

The early selling comes as the Trump administration and Congress hammer out the details of a $1 trillion stimulus package designed to prop up the most harshly pummeled sectors of the U.S. economy and give cash to those out of work.

Looking at stocks, Boeing shares were rocked as the company called for a $60 billion bailout for aerospace manufacturers.

Airlines, restaurants, hotels and casino operators remained under pressure as the Trump administration weighs assistance for the industries hit hardest by the pandemic.

Meanwhile, plunging oil prices hammered energy giants ExxonMobil and Chevron and weighed heavily on Hess Corp. and Continental Resources. West Texas Intermediate crude oil was down 8.1 percent at $25.10 a barrel, its lowest in 17 years.



~~~~


And just for fun, Canada and US are closing the northern border, except for essential traffic.

Canada relies on the U.S. for 75 percent of its exports. Much of Canada’s food supply comes from or via the U.S., and 98 percent of its oil exports go to the U.S. About 18 percent of American exports go to Canada.

Trudeau is currently in self-quarantine after his wife Sophie tested positive for the virus.

Future plans for the southern U.S. border remain in development.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/18/2020 at 09:11 AM   
Filed Under: • Border SecurityEconomicsPandemic Pandemonium •  
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calendar   Tuesday - March 17, 2020

Give Us Your Blood (to test, and later when you’re recovered, to share with others still sick)

Plasma From Recovered COVID Patients May Help Those Still Sick: China Testing It, WHO Agrees

This is on the news tonight, but has been out there online, buried under the hysteria, for a month now. Gee, I wonder why?

You get sick, your body makes antibodies, you get well. Those antibodies are in your blood. Filter the blood cells out of blood and you’re left with plasma. Which has the antibodies ... which may not be personally unique to each patient? Your antibodies will cure me? A lot of the time, this works. Plasma therapy is nothing new; it’s been done for quite some time now.

SHANGHAI/GENEVA (Reuters) - Doctors in Shanghai are using infusions of blood plasma from people who have recovered from the coronavirus to treat those still battling the infection, reporting some encouraging preliminary results, a Chinese professor said on Monday.

A top emergency expert at the World Health Organization (WHO) said later that using convalescent plasma was a “very valid” approach to test, but that it was important to get the timing right to maximize the boost to a patient’s immunity.

...

There are no fully licensed treatments or vaccines against the new coronavirus, and the process of developing and testing drugs can take many months and even years.

Convalescent plasma has been proven “effective and life-saving” against other infectious diseases, including rabies and diphtheria, Dr. Mike Ryan, head of WHO’s health emergencies program, told reporters in Geneva. “It is a very important area to pursue,” Ryan said.

“Because what hyperimmune globulin does is it concentrates the antibodies in a recovered patient. You are essentially giving the new victim’s immune system a boost of antibodies to hopefully get them through the very difficult phase.

“So it must be given at the right time, because it mops up the virus in the system, and it just gives the new patient’s immune system a vital push at the time it needs it. But it has to be carefully timed and it’s not always successful.”

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Testing, testing, testing

Acceptably Accurate 15 and 10 Minute Tests

[ February 17 2020 ] Chinese scientists have created a new diagnostic method using blood serum that can produce accurate results in 15 minutes and greatly reduce the exposure of medical workers to ill patients.

The new test kit is called novel coronavirus IgM antibody, and it has finished preliminary evaluation in lab and clinical tests, the State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease in Guangdong province said.

[ March 17, 2020 ] COVID-19 IgG/IgM Rapid Test Device by Caming Pharmaceutical, sold by Watson International

COVID-19 IgG/IgM Rapid Test Device is a rapid chromatographic immunoassay for the qualitative detection of IgG & IgM antibody of COVID-19 IgM in human whole blood , serum, or plasma as an aid in the diagnosis of COVID-19 infections.

This kit uses immunochromatography. The test card contains: 1) colloidal gold-labeled recombinant new coronavirus antigen and quality control antibody gold markers; 2) two detection lines (G and M lines) and one quality Control line (C line) of nitrocellulose membrane. The M line is immobilized with a monoclonal anti-human IgM antibody for detecting a new coronavirus IgM antibody; the G line is immobilized with a reagent for detecting a new coronavirus IgG antibody; and the C line is immobilized with a quality control antibody.

All a tech needs to do is add a few drops of blood and 2 drops of buffer solution to the simple disposable device. It’s like one of those early pregnancy test things, but with serum instead of urine. It tests both antibody lines and has a control test to show if the tech screwed up. Results in 10 minutes. So it’s really fast. It’s 100% accurate on healthy people, and 90.5% - 96% accurate on infected people. Not perfect, but a damn site better than nothing, and a LOT less invasive than the older test that needs a lung fluid sample. For susceptible people the test is 70 - 74.5% accurate, whereas the older test isn’t even applicable (0% accuracy). Testing in China shows the false positive rate for this group to be extremely low.

The current CDC test uses a swab from upper and lower respiratory tract.

A laboratory test produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently being used for COVID-19 testing in the United States. This test requires a swab from the patient’s nose or throat and lungs and is available at CDC-designated locations in the United States and qualified international laboratories.

There are two main elements to a COVID-19 test, according to interim guidelines shared publicly by the CDC to clinicians.

The coronavirus is a respiratory disease, so the test kits take specimens from both the upper and lower respiratory tracts.

Tests in the lower respiratory tract include a branchoalveolar lavage, a minimally invasive procedure in which the clinician places a bronchoscope through the patient’s mouth or nose and into the lungs. A sterile fluid solution is squirted into a small part of the lung, and a specimen is collected for examination.

The patient then produces a sputum sample: “Have the patient rinse the mouth with water and then expectorate deep cough sputum directly into a sterile, leak-proof, screw-cap sputum collection cup or sterile dry container,” the CDC’s instructions read.

In the second test, for the upper respiratory tract, the clinician will swab the patient’s nostril as well as the throat. The test also collects a 2 to 3 milliliter specimen following a nasal “wash” or aspirate, which involves a soft, flexible tube in the nose.

These specimens are refrigerated until they can be shipped to the CDC for testing.

The kit is to be stored at 35-46 degrees Fahrenheit and kept at that temperature using an ice pack or dry ice as it is shipped to a CDC lab.
...
The CDC does not specify the time frame for which results should be expected, but its guidelines call for the samples to be shipped overnight.

In the case of the patient being treated at UC Davis Medical Center, the positive diagnosis appears to have been received about three days after testing.

And when they’re swamped with tests, it’s going to take a lot longer than 3 days to get the results. So a 10 minute test is one helluva improvement.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/17/2020 at 08:57 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicinepandemic and epidemic diseases •  
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PA joins the lockdown

I missed this one yesterday. PA Governor Tom Wolfe has issued a lockdown of businesses in Pennsylvania that is at least as strong as the ones issued by NY, NJ, CT, MD the previous day.

Gov. Tom Wolf announced a statewide shut down. That means all non-essential stores, bars and restaurants will close effective at midnight. This is expected to last for 2 weeks. Gov. Wolf said there are no plans to shut down any pharmacies, grocery stores or medical facilities and he urged people to continue their normal shopping trips.

This is similar to the order issued by Allegheny County over the weekend. In that order, all childcare facilities, senior centers, community and recreation centers, gyms, salons, spas, casinos, bars, concert venues, theaters, social clubs, sports facilities and more. This does not apply to carry-out and delivery only services.

Unlike those other states, right now it is the PA plan to do this for just 2 weeks, instead of “as long as this order remains in effect” as they have done.

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And even though NJ has shut down a) all gatherings of 50 or more people, and b) all gyms and fitness centers/classes, while c) making all non-essential recreational businesses close by 8pm for the mandatory voluntary curfew, our bowling alley remains open with no plans to cancel bowling league, which runs from 6:30-9ish on Friday night and has 48 members just on the lanes we use. I just talked to the alley folks on the phone, and they’re open. Oh sure, the attached bar is closed, and the restaurant is only doing take out (wonder if you can take it out of the restaurant and eat it in the bowling alley?). Go figure.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/17/2020 at 11:42 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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I was thinking of calling it Joe Biden bread

I made up another batch of that bread, and baked it this morning. It still seemed overproofed, or at least lacking in body height, but the crust and browning were much better, and the taste is pretty intense.

This iteration was doubly retarded. Hence, Biden bread. It didn’t start out to be that way; I was following the instructions I found in that comment. But 5 hours into the immediate retarded bulk ferment (mix it and stick it in the fridge) I realized that her description did not mention any kind of first rise or second rise. So, pissed off, I took the dough out of the fridge, got it warmed up, and gave it 6 or 7 hours of rise time. Then it got shaped, went into the banneton for forming, and went back in the fridge overnight. And this morning it has risen fully. Too fully perhaps, because it again baked up flat.

One benefit to a retarded ferment is that the flavors develop better. With two periods of chilling out, this bread is strongly flavored. 22 hours start to finish. Sourdough is slow, but I bet that a 4 hour warm bulk, shaping, banneton for an hour, and then into the fridge may have been better.

On the downside, today’s loaf had the same height and crumb that the last one did. I did get better openings on the scores, which indicates that this one was less overblown. But not less enough! Next time I will really keep a finger on things, doing the poke test to judge ripeness, and get that sucker in the oven before it peaks. I may never get a really tall loaf since it’s such a high hydration recipe, but I should be able to get a more open crumb.

[ someday the photo will get here from my cellphone ]

Aha. I may have learned something. This recipe is 1/3 starter. That’s quite a bit. It’s also 75% hydration, which is also quite a bit. And the flour is autolysed, which breaks it down even more. And it has rye flour in it, not known for lots of gluten. So this recipes has 4 difficult aspects to it, 5 if you count sourdough itself as a challenge compared to plain yeast breads. Master level stuff maybe. So the rise time may be quite short overall if not made in a fully retarded manner. And like I said, this loaf is very full flavored ... which means pretty sour sourdough, which is a symptom of overripe dough. But there has to be a balance: I followed her method - straight into the ice box - and after 5 solid hours the dough hadn’t lifted at all. Not a millimeter.

Maybe try it yet again with NO retarded ferment, just to see how long it takes the normal way, then to figure out how much of that can be modeled by the cold ferment. 5 to 1? 4 to 1?  The nice part is, this is a tasty recipe, so it’s worth making again and again. And it’s just a little loaf, which we’ll eat up in a day.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/17/2020 at 09:29 AM   
Filed Under: • Bread •  
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A glimmer of hope? Or mabye 3 of them?

Inexpensive readily available malaria pills may prevent/slow/cure COVID-19

HIV meds might do the job too, or work with the malarial for a stronger curative

UPDATE: Chloroquine is actually Hydroxychloroquine, the same as hyrodxychloroquine sulfate, and is the common drug called Plaquenil or Quinprox. Aside from being a malaria treatment, Plaquenil is used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Extremely high doses can mess up your eyesight, causing retinopathy.

[ news today: ] Recent guidelines from South Korea and China report that chloroquine is an effective antiviral therapeutic treatment against Coronavirus Disease 2019.  Use of chloroquine (tablets) is showing favorable outcomes in humans infected with Coronavirus including faster time to recovery and shorter hospital stay.  US CDC research shows that chloroquine also has strong potential as a prophylactic (preventative) measure against coronavirus in the lab, while we wait for a vaccine to be developed.  Chloroquine is an inexpensive, globally available drug that has been in widespread human use since 1945 against malaria, autoimmune and various other conditions. 

“Data from the drug’s [chloroquine] studies showed ‘certain curative effect’ with ‘fairly good efficacy’ … patients treated with chloroquine demonstrated a better drop in fever, improvement of lung CT images, and required a shorter time to recover compared to parallel groups.  The percentage of patients with negative viral nucleic acid tests was also higher with the anti-malarial drug… Chloroquine has so far shown no obvious serious adverse reactions in more than 100 participants in the trials… Chloroquine was selected after several screening rounds of thousands of existing drugs.  Chloroquine is undergoing further trials in more than ten hospitals in Beijing, Guangdong province and Hunnan province.”

~~~~

[ China, exactly one month ago: ] Three potential anti-COVID19 medicines have been officially announced by the Ministry of Science and Technology: Favilavir [Fapilavir], Chloroquine Phosphate, and Remdesivir. They all initially showed more obvious curative effects and lower adverse reactions in clinical trials.
...
The other one with the most potential – so far – has been Remdesivir, which Gilead had already been developing as a treatment for Ebola disease and Marbug virus infections. It has subsequently also been found to show antiviral activity against other single-stranded RNA viruses such as respiratory syncytial virus, Junin virus, Lassa fever virus, Nipah virus, Hendra virus, and coronaviruses (including MERS and SARS viruses).

~~~~

[ Australia today: ] Queensland researchers find ‘cure’, want drug trial

Some patients who tested positive for coronavirus in Australia have already been treated with one of the drugs and “all did very, very well,” researchers say.
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A team of Australian researchers say they’ve found a cure for the novel coronavirus and hope to have patients enrolled in a nationwide trial by the end of the month.

University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research director Professor David Paterson told news.com.au today they have seen two drugs used to treat other conditions wipe out the virus in test tubes.

He said one of the medications, given to some of the first people to test positive for COVID-19 in Australia, had already resulted in “disappearance of the virus” and complete recovery from the infection.

Prof Paterson, who is also an infectious disease physician at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, said it wasn’t a stretch to label the drugs “a treatment or a cure”.

“It’s a potentially effective treatment,” he said.

“Patients would end up with no viable coronavirus in their system at all after the end of therapy.”

The drugs are both already registered and available in Australia.
...
One of the two medications is a HIV drug, which has been superseded by “newer generation” HIV drugs, and the other is an anti-malaria drug called chloroquine which is rarely used and “kept on the shelf now” due to resistance to malaria.

He said the researchers want to study them in a “very meaningful way” against the coronavirus to “try and alleviate that anxiety of Australians”.


I’ve got an idea for a clinical trial: at least 180,000 people wordwide have this bug. There are millions of doses of malaria pills sitting around everywhere. A whole bottle of pills is under $10. I say go for it.

It may also be the case that cholorquine works better with the HIV drugs, which I guarantee cost a whole lot more than a mosquito pills that’s been around since the 1940s.

And then there’s the zinc supplement thing, and the selenium supplement thing, and the vitamin C supplement thing. And I’ve read that South Korea and Japan are getting good results using some pancreatitis medicine that is not FDA approved yet.

On the third hand, absolute authoritarian lockdowns seem to have done the job in China. But they aren’t saying whether or not they’re feeding the entire country choloroquine tablets.

[ 2/6/20 China trying Remdesivir: ] Doctors in Washington State gave remdesivir to the first coronavirus patient in the United States last week after his condition worsened and pneumonia developed when he’d been in the hospital for a week. His symptoms improved the next day.

A single case cannot determine whether a drug works, but a report on the Washington patient, in The New England Journal of Medicine, has nonetheless sparked excitement about the drug.

Another report published on Tuesday by scientists in China added to the enthusiasm, showing that remdesivir blocked the new coronavirus, officially known as 2019-nCoV, from infecting cells grown in the lab.

...

Gilead had stockpiled the drug, as well as the materials used to make it, for use against Ebola. The company is now using that stockpile for the trials in China and for individual patients like the one in Washington State




Remdesivir may also work against kitty cat coronavirus, which is a whole different thing.

More links to studies that say the same thing:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32164085
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15351731
https://www.healthline.com/health/coronavirus-treatment#potential-treatments
https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/comment/parallel-export-covid-19/


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/17/2020 at 08:41 AM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicinepandemic and epidemic diseases •  
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Blood Type A More At Risk?

China: Higher Risk For Blood Type A People?

Lower for type O. No mention of B or AB at this point.

People with blood type A may be more vulnerable to infection by the new coronavirus, while those with type O seem more resistant, according to a preliminary study of patients in China who contracted the disease known as Covid-19.

Medical researchers in China took blood group patterns of more than 2,000 patients infected with the virus in Wuhan and Shenzhen and compared them to local healthy populations. They found that blood type A patients showed a higher rate of infection and they tended to develop more severe symptoms.

While the researchers said the study was preliminary and more work was needed, they did urge governments and medical facilities to consider blood type differences when planning mitigation measures or treating patients with the virus, known as Sars-CoV-2.

In contrast, “blood group O had a significantly lower risk for the infectious disease compared with non-O blood groups”, according to a paper they published on Medrxiv.org on March 11.

Of 206 patients who had died from Covid-19 in Wuhan, 85 had type A blood, which was 63 per cent more than the 52 with type O. The pattern existed across different age and gender groups.
...
Blood type difference has been observed in other infectious diseases including Norwalk virus, hepatitis B and severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), according to previous studies.

Gao at the Tianjin lab said the new study “may be helpful to medical professionals, but ordinary citizens should not take the statistics too seriously”. “If you are type A, there is no need to panic. It does not mean you will be infected 100 per cent,” she said.

“If you are type O, it does not mean you are absolutely safe, either. You still need to wash your hands and follow the guidelines issued by authorities.”


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/17/2020 at 06:41 AM   
Filed Under: • pandemic and epidemic diseases •  
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calendar   Monday - March 16, 2020

Total Wipe Out

Are people really this stupid? Why yes, they are!!

Oregon Cops: Stop Calling 911 If You Run Out Of Toilet Paper

One police department in Oregon posted a reminder on their Facebook page, asking the public to not call for an emergency if they run out of toilet paper due to the coronavirus outbreak.

“It’s hard to believe that we even have to post this,” police in Newport, Oregon wrote. “Do not call 9-1-1 just because you ran out of toilet paper. You will survive without our assistance.”

The post then pointed out the different methods used throughout history before suggesting other items that could be used in lieu of “your favorite soft, ultra plush two-ply citrus scented tissue.”

Among their suggestions: grocery store receipts, newspaper, cloth rags, magazine pages, cotton balls and even leaves.

I can’t wait for the DIY instructionals on the turd world “scrape and wash” method. Billions of people on this planet have never used toilet paper, and they don’t walk around with crusty stank butt. Mostly. And since nobody will be shaking hands for the foreseeable future ...


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/16/2020 at 05:24 PM   
Filed Under: • Pandemic PandemoniumStoopid-People •  
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I’ll Drink To That

image



President Trump’s new guidelines. These are not YET laws or mandates, merely suggestions.

image

President Donald Trump on Monday released a series of coronavirus guidelines to slow the spread that calls for a lockdown of America, including the closing of restaurants and schools.

‘Each and every one of us has a critical role to play in stopping the spread,’ the president said in the White House briefing room.

And while his guidelines will be revisited after the initial 15 day proposal, the president warned the virus could affect American life well into the summer.

‘People are talking about July, August, something like that,’ Trump said. ‘They could be right in that period of time where it washes through.’

The two-page list, called ‘15 Days to Slow the Spread,’ advises avoiding ‘eating or drinking in bars, restaurants, and food courts - use drive through, pickup, and delivery options.’

It also calls on governors that have states with ‘evidence of community transmission’ to close schools in the affected areas.’ And it asks those states to address childcare issues as well as nutritional needs of children who use schools for their meals.

And there may be stronger guidelines to come.

‘We have taken a tough stance. We may make other decisions,’ the president said.

But that does not include a nation-wide lockdown, a step other countries have taken. France has gone on a 15-day one and Canada has closed its borders to non-citizens.

‘At this point, not nationwide,’ President Trump said,




In happy reaction to the President’s completely honest and realistic assessment, the stock market totally shit the bed. Again. Even worse than the last two record setting times in the last 2 weeks.

Dow drops 2,997 points on word coronavirus crisis could extend until August

13% Drop in one day


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/16/2020 at 05:09 PM   
Filed Under: • Pandemic Pandemonium •  
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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