Wednesday - June 03, 2020

That’ll leave a mark

Some pity and outrage generator on social media today. Some young woman was attending a protest - these are spectator events, right? - and got shot in the face with a rubber bullet. In Lexington. Supposedly. She’s all busted up, got a chunk taken out of her forehead. Yikes.

Thing is, Lexington cops say they don’t have rubber bullets and thus didn’t use any.

But there’s her video. Sure looks like some LEOs were shooting something. Pepperballs?

Whatever. I’d say the best place to be during a protest that just might turn into a riot is ... at home.

10 minutes on FB showed me again who the super Libs are among the people I’ve friended.

So anyway, you know me, Mr. Engineer. So I looked up rubber bullets. And while pictures of these things on DisgraceBook might show something the size of a cannon shell, the real ones are quite a bit smaller.

We’re talking about a 40mm diameter projectile that weighs 41-51 grams (632 -787 grains) launched at 200mph (~~ 290fps). It’s about as aerodynamic as a wall (BC ~= 0.1) so it loses speed really quickly, and the things are fairly squishy. But don’t confuse “less lethal” with “non lethal” or assume it means “annoyingly painful but not that bad”. Getting shot with anything, anywhere, can mess you up big time.

So I got to thinking ... maybe a tennis ball gun would be better? Or would that be too pathetic to garner any respect? A tennis ball weighs about the same, 58 grams, is half again larger in diameter, 66mm, and with the fuzzy surface has even worse aerodynamics. So even at the same initial velocity, air drag slows them down faster. If you fired them at 300mph, they’d sting like heck at 100 yards, and probably hurt like a mutha at 20 yards. But a tennis ball has a sectional density (mass/square of diameter) less than half of one of these rubber bullet things, and about 1/9 that of a varmint bullet.

I don’t have the answers here.

The less lethal you can make a projectile, perhaps the higher likelihood it will be used, and with less provocation? And perhaps the less respect and fear/aversion it will get? “Hey, let’s go riot; the cops are only allowed to throw My Pillows™ at us, underhanded” vs “Um, count me out. They’ve got heavy machine guns and flamethrowers.”

A truth is, that if you use violent methods to disperse a crowd, well duh, people are going to get hurt. That’s not right. But if your crowd is rioting, already being violent? Then maybe all (or most) bets are off.
What if the crowd is merely being disobedient, having decided that their right to assemble defeats the local gov’s power to demand permits, impose curfews, impose social distancing and so forth?  Respect for duly appointed authority is one thing, kneeling down before tyranny is another. And somewhere in between is your willingness to “do the right thing” for this pandemic emergency that we’ve all suddenly forgotten about. ( hey, if it’s ok for crowds of thousands to protest and riot for days, why do I have to stay 6 feet apart wearing a mask in the half-empty-by-decree grocery store for 10 minutes?)

In a better world, people would have the sense not to riot in the first place. It doesn’t prove your point or address your grievances. It merely makes you the enemy.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/03/2020 at 09:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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   Tuesday - June 02, 2020

Good Writing

I found City Journal this morning after thinking of the “four boxes” relative to this national rioting thing, (the four boxes being the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box, ) which made me think of Kim Dutoit, the patron saint of so many right leaning blogs, and knowing that he is once again writing although I rarely visit anymore, I clicked over and found the gist of the post I made earlier. OK, I snagged a lot of it. Samizdat-ism. Afterwards, I started reading some of the essays at City Journal, and linked to the States’ Rights one below. 

POINT: Here’s another one, about the rioting and the breakdown in law an order, and how it’s been a long time coming, excused or not ...

On the other hand, the Civil War analogy seems too linear, too coherent, too automatic—a cliché, even. The current outbreak of protests and riots feels like something else—like a sudden, comprehensive event of physics or meteorology, a perfect storm of perfect storms, multilayered and interpenetrating and simultaneous.

The motives at work in the disturbances are mixed and contradictory. So are the moods—a wind-shear of psychologies and attitudes: hysteria, grief, anarchy, frolic, spectacle, revolution, a fest of selfies against a backdrop of flames. Anarchists out of Joseph Conrad’s Secret Agent trade germs with angry blacks and young whites on skateboards or $1,900 bikes. The deadly serious and the deadly unserious appear side by side in the performance.

Unfortunately, a crowd on the march does anger better than it does grief. An angry crowd tends to become a mob, and a mob tends to smash windows, to loot and burn. If that happens, whatever blameless emotion may have prompted the protest in the first place is corrupted into mere power. A mob, turning abusive, will, ironically, imitate the abuse of power that the demonstration was called to protest in the first place. On the other hand, if your intention is to destroy American society, then what’s the problem?

COUNTERPOINT:

The extent to which high elected officials in New York City are willing to excuse the mobs burning and looting the city, and attacking its police officers, is shocking. Even Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is taking enormous heat from the Left for his supposed hard line on policing the “protesters,” makes a point every time he opens his mouth of embracing their demands for “change” and acknowledging their “deep pain.”

Enough already. Peaceful protesters have had several days in which to make themselves and their concerns heard about the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. The Antifa hooligans firebombing police vehicles, and the looters gleefully grabbing sneakers, are not only not in mourning, they are having a party. This is a perverse holiday for them, one to which the liberal leaders of our city pay obsequious deference.

...

New York City’s political class is up in arms today—but not because criminals and arsonists are holding the city hostage. Instead, they’re alarmed because President Trump has pledged to restore order. Any New Yorker who wants safety and order must see de Blasio and the rest of the city’s leadership as abject failures during this crisis. Those who believe, on the other hand, in the transformative potential of chaos should be grateful for his leadership.

[ PS Mark Levine is a two faced hypocrite. ]

There’s many paragraphs more at the links.

Other essays there point out that voting Progressives into office leads to all kinds of problems, from increased crime, to homeless camps full of drugged out street poopers, to frustration in the police departments, to pandering socialist attitudes, to rioting and looting. What we are seeing today is what they have worked a generation to build.

Good writing is always worth a read and a think, whether you agree or not. Which implies it’s worth talking about too. Check it out, talk it out.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/02/2020 at 10:17 AM   
Filed Under: • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Disasters •  
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Relearning History

Here’s a very interesting essay from 6 years back on States’ Rights, the understanding and use thereof, during the early to mid 19th Century.

Certainly a lot of what is written here can be debated, but the essay has one amazing thesis: slavery was defended by federal legislation and power, whereas a large amount of States’ Rights efforts went towards limiting and eliminating it. 

That’s certainly a new twist on things ... except it’s likely an un-twist, a reminder of how, like so many other things, like “gay” and “liberal” for example, the very concept of States’ Rights was long ago turned inside out by certain elements.

My take-away is two part.
First, given the Constitutionally explicit limitations on the federal government, and given the 10th Amendment, and given the somewhat common belief in nullification of the era, it was the duty of the States to ignore, nullify, or eliminate extra-Constitutional acts and laws passed by the feds.
Second, there is ample proof that supporters of slavery used federal power and provisions to support their beliefs and actions, in contravention of many state’s laws and public attitudes against it.

Yes, it was a 83 year power struggle, 1783 - 1865. But the cudgel of States’ Rights was wielded at least as much by the forces of emancipation and freedom as by the forces working against those.

Lesson? History is complex, subject to convenient revision, and can not be crammed into a little nutshell or onto a 5 word bumper sticker. Philosophies built upon bumper sticker grade understandings are a house of cards supported by hot air that has a distinct barnyard aroma.

Tannenbaum, if you’re still out there somewhere, I’d love to have one of your well thought out and professorial comments on this one. 

Posted by Drew458     on 06/02/2020 at 09:35 AM   
Filed Under: • FREEDOM • History •  
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It’s A Riot Out There

“If you value your life, they probably shouldn’t do that in Polk County. Because the people of Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns, and they’re going to be in their homes tonight with their guns loaded, and if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I’m highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns. So, leave the community alone.”

Damn straight Skippy.

Also:

Savagery is spreading with lightning speed across the United States, with murderous assaults on police officers and civilians and the ecstatic annihilation of businesses and symbols of the state. Welcome to a real civilization-destroying pandemic, one that makes the recent saccharine exhortations to “stay safe” and the deployment of police officers to enforce outdoor mask-wearing seem like decadent bagatelles.
...

This pandemic of civil violence is more widespread than anything seen during the Black Lives Matter movement of the Obama years, and it will likely have an even deadlier toll on law enforcement officers than the targeted assassinations we saw from 2014 onward. It’s worse this time because the country has absorbed another five years of academically inspired racial victimology. From Ta-Nehisi Coates to the New York Times’s 1619 project, the constant narrative about America’s endemic white supremacy and its deliberate destruction of the “black body” has been thoroughly injected into the political bloodstream.
...
Once the violence began, any effort to “understand” it should have stopped, since that understanding is inevitably exculpatory. The looters are not grieving over the stomach-churning arrest and death of George Floyd; they are having the time of their lives. You don’t protest or mourn a victim by stealing oxycontin, electronics, jewelry, and sneakers.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/suv-plows-through-buffalo-police-2-seriously-injured

https://www.foxnews.com/us/george-floyd-protests-rioters-police-shot-hit-and-run

https://www.foxnews.com/us/looters-make-off-with-20g-in-booze-upstate-new-york-liquor-store-owner-says

https://www.foxnews.com/media/gabriel-nadales-antifa-radical-failed-socialist-ideology

and on and on and on. 

Posted by Drew458     on 06/02/2020 at 08:43 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime • CULTURE IN DECLINE • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • REALLY WORTHLESS and PUTRID PEOPLE •  
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   Monday - June 01, 2020

I Saw A Sign, Plus Rule Of Thumb Math

I was down in South Plainfield yesterday afternoon doing my cleaning. And the steam sanitizing. Which is a lot of slow but easy work. It doubles my time on the job site.

Anyway, I stepped outside to put some stuff back in the car, and I heard a somewhat loud rumbling sound. I recognized it immediately as a jet plane. I haven’t heard one or even seen a contrail in the sky in months.

It’s a sign of life beginning to get back to normal. Oh happy day. A very small sign; the airlines are still just about shut down. Usually there are so many jets low in the sky there that it’s noise pollution. Out where we live in Clinton, jets are these silent microdots that crawl across the clouds leaving their steam trails behind them.

South Plainfield is on the landing path for Newark airport, just 16 miles away NE. So I looked up and there was a 747 coming in low and slow on early approach, wheels not yet out and in a slight bank. Totally cool.  I held up my arm and stuck out my thumb and a bit over half my thumb covered the plane.

It was pretty close. Not right on top of me, but still, pretty close.

~~~~

Math problem: A typical 747-8 is 250 feet long. I measured that much subtending thumb as 1.5”, and my thumb was 22” from my eye. How far away was the 747?

This is not as hard as you think. It’s actually quite like the way hunters use the thickness of the crosshairs in their scopes to judge distance.

At first I figured I’d need all that SOHCAHTOA stuff from math class, along with arctan and a full featured calculator. But then I realized I should use the KISS principle, which made it much easier. A simple calculator does the job.

The angle formed by my thumb and the length from my eye - the opposite and adjacent sides of a right triangle - is the same angle as one made by the length of the airplane and it’s distance from me.

250 feet is 3000 inches.

So (using tangent’s opposite/adjacent concept) 1.5/22 = 3000/X ... 1.5 = 22*3000/X ... 1.5 = 66,000/X ... 1 = 44,000/X ... X = 44,000 inches… 44,000/12 = 3666.67 feet ... 3666.67/5280 = .69 miles.

So the jet was about 2/3 of a mile away. I can only guesstimate the vertical angle of my arm as a bit over 45°, so I’d guess the 747 was about 1/2 mile up in the air. These are really big airplanes.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/01/2020 at 09:49 AM   
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   Sunday - May 31, 2020

Breakfast Loaf, Media Arrogance

I made my standard 4 flour sourdough last night, left it to rise, then got up early this morning and baked it. Came out great.

No, I don’t want to write right now about Social Media censoring President Trump for his Tweet about the rioters that “glorifies violence”. Which it doesn’t. Looters get shot. Rioters get shot. Ever actually read the Riot Act? That’s exactly what it’s about. Cease and desist, or pay the price.
But oh noes, Resident Dump is glorifying violence because he wrote “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. I’d call that law and order. ( he didn’t say he’d call for using lead bullets. There are rubber ones, and tazers too. The non-lethal approach. Plus teargas. Nor did he say anything like “I can’t wait to start shooting those stupid darkier down by the thousand!” which would actually be racist and glorifying violence. )

To me, the real story is that Social Media had the unmitigated gall to hide, edit, and/or censor the President’s words. Which, according to the New York Times Daily Briefing that shows up on my cell phone every morning somehow, is something they’d been working on for ages, with the full expectation (ie waiting with bated breath) that they’d have to use it. Gleeful little douchebags.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-minneapolis-protests-george-floyd-third-day-trump-tweet-20200529-c3vyh35wn5g2jekccvwcanhwja-story.html

https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/twitter-restricts-access-trumps-threat-shoot-minneapolis-protesters/

Doncha know that Trump jus be soo raycis ... because he mentioned protestors, not any race or gender. What a crock. As if we don’t know who is doing this (niggas, hired thugs, antifa jerks, brain dead socialist college kids).

So back to more important things -

and now it’s time to go play in the garden. I bought her all sorts of flowers for her birthday, so now we have to plant them.

And then I can go do my steam cleaning at office #2. Woo hoo!!

Posted by Drew458     on 05/31/2020 at 10:39 AM   
Filed Under: • Media-Bias •  
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   Saturday - May 30, 2020

And then a miracle occurred

Our condo sits just 20 feet from the edge of a steep ravine. The land falls off almost vertically, and drops 30 feet or so down into a gulley. It’s very naturally wooded down there, with loads of broken sharp branches, downed trees, a soggy slough from the little creek that goes through, etc. And it’s quite remote, even though it’s only a couple dozen yards from the road that runs behind us. If you fall down there and get hurt, you’re going to die, because no one will ever see you or hear your screaming.

This condo park was built in 1979. There’s never been a fence there, or even any significant brush that would keep anyone from falling over the edge. The landscape guys go zooming up and down the narrow bit of grass between our patio and the edge with their giant mowers. The winter before last some little kids were visiting the neighbors, and were out there sledding in the snow on those little round disc sled things. The ones you can’t steer or stop.

I’ve been after the Association to put in a fence since we bought this place almost 9 years ago. With the new manager, someone actually finally came out and took a look, and went “gosh, this is steep and could be dangerous.” No kidding. Anyway ... 6 months later, and I noticed mark-out paint on the grass the other day, and Friday, 3 of the landscape guys came with a truckfull of posts, and spent about 4 hours digging holes and putting it in.

It’s a split rail fence, parts direct from Lowe’s. It runs 7 sections, so it’s got to be at least 70 feet long. It looks a bit raw, but I’m glad it’s finally in. And now we’re buying potted plants to hang from the rails, and climbing flowering vines to cover it over. Just for a bit more privacy. And some more green.

And it might even make the deer take a different path. Assuming they don’t eat the thing.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/30/2020 at 09:54 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life •  
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Protest BS

Another Day Of Disruption, Burning, Looting

Because the entire country is fed up with police brutality, in the instance of ONE man, so this justifies riots from sea to shining sea? I do not effing think so.

Protests continued Saturday as more demonstrations erupted in cities nationwide following the death of Minneapolis man George Floyd.

In some cities, authorities issued curfews in light of the at-times violent protests and destruction taking place.

Police and protesters clashed in Brooklyn Saturday night resulting at least 200 arrests and “countless” officers hurt and in the emergency room.

NYPD vehicles windows were broken and set on fire.

One person was arrested near the 79 Precinct with loaded .380 semi-automatic pistol.

Two women were reportedly arrested for throwing a molotov cocktail at an NYPD van that had four officers inside.

Thirty-seven patrol cars have been vandalized so far, according to reports.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms established a curfew starting Saturday at 9 p.m. following a night of disruptive and at-time violent protests.
An Atlanta Police Department vehicle burns during a demonstration against police violence, Friday, May 29, 2020 in Atlanta. The protest started peacefully earlier in the day before demonstrators clashed with police. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

An Atlanta Police Department vehicle burns during a demonstration against police violence, Friday, May 29, 2020 in Atlanta. The protest started peacefully earlier in the day before demonstrators clashed with police. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Protests continued Saturday and police arrested demonstrators that were purposefully blocking traffic.

Security officials surrouned Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s house as crowds of protesters gathered around the massion. A brick was reportedly thrown at one of the police officers.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms denounced the riots and said in a Saturday press conference, “When you run it down the street with a Gucci bag, that’s not about black people dying in America. That’s about killing ourselves when we do things like that.”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced a curfew Saturday night after 500 people were arrested and five police officers were hurt after protests turned violent.

I’ve had enough. Bring out the water cannons, the mace, the dogs, and the rubber bullets. And warm up the MRAPS with their machine guns.

It’s time to grow up, or die. And I don’t give a flaming shit which one you choose.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/30/2020 at 09:37 PM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Jack Booted Thugs • Justice - LACK OF • Politically Correct B.S. •  
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   Friday - May 29, 2020

Trump Dumps Who? WHO !!

President Trump announced Friday that the U.S. is “terminating” its relationship with the embattled World Health Organization (WHO) over its failure to enact reforms in the face of concerns over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic and its pro-China bias.

“Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs,” Trump told reporters at a Rose Garden event.

In the course of the same statement, Trump announced a number of measures aimed primarily at China in response to its conduct on a number of fronts including trade, the coronavirus and its recent crackdown on Hong Kong.

“The world is now suffering as a result of the misfeasance of the Chinese government,” Trump said.

Trump announced last month that the U.S. would freeze froze funding to the WHO, and threatened to make the freeze permanent if the organization did not enact “major substantive reforms.” The U.S. had been the top contributor to the agency to the tune of approximately $450 million a year. China meanwhile pays approximately $50 million a year—although Beijing had recently announced a $2 billion injection of funds.

Good. Now dump the UN too. I seriously doubt if the USA benefits a dime from either organization. All we do is pay into them, and they’re all corrupt tyrants and Marxists. Let the rest of the world pay for this BS.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

[ damn. I was trying so hard to find something to post about that wasn’t COVID related. Hey, Minneapolis and now Atlanta are burning, as the schwoogies use any excuse to riot, destroy, and steal. White House locked down. DC and NYC seething. CNN Atlanta office destroyed. The cops up there in Minnesota killed a guy as they were arresting him. George Floyd. That’s bad. Really bad. Huge amount of excessive force? And now the officer has been arrested, charged with murder, and the others fired. So, case closed, right?

Oh hella no.

Let’s get this party started! Burn, steal, loot, assault! Woo hoo, this is more fun than a flash mob at the mall! Let’s make it nation wide!
Now we’ve even got race hustler Al “Tawana” Sharpton complaining that the rioters had the audacity to torch and rob black owned stores!! How dare they!! Crivens, what a total racist ... and nobody will say a word against him, ever.

How many blacks have been shot or killed by other blacks since this happened Monday? A couple hundred? 40+ just in Chicago last weekend. How many since. So I don’t buy that BLM mantra. It’s BS too. Blacks don’t give a flying fart about other black lives, unless they can use it as an excuse. We seen it a million times before. And I’m sick of posting it. And just because they behave like rabid feral animals doesn’t excuse any of it. The laws apply to all of us. ]

Posted by Drew458     on 05/29/2020 at 07:53 PM   
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Fighting The Good Fight

Dr. Zelenko prepares for the final battle.

I have been preparing for the final battle in this war. The major counteroffensive is beginning. The whole world will hear us and be turned upside down.

Just released today, this 20 page medical document might be one of the nukes he’s planning to drop.

Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis
Abstract:
More than 1.6 million Americans have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and >10 times that number carry antibodies to it. High-risk patients presenting with progressing symptomatic disease have only hospitalization treatment with its high mortality. An outpatient treatment that prevents hospitalization is desperately needed. Two candidate medications have been widely discussed: remdesivir, and hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin. Remdesivir has shown mild effectiveness in hospitalized inpatients, but no trials have been registered in outpatients. Hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin has been widely misrepresented in both clinical reports and public media, and outpatient trials results are not expected until September. Early outpatient illness is very different than later hospitalized florid disease and the treatments differ. Evidence about use of hydroxychloroquine alone, or of hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin in inpatients, is irrelevant concerning efficacy of the pair in early high-risk outpatient disease. Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy. Hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin has been used as standard-of-care in more than 300,000 older adults with multicomorbidities, with estimated proportion diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmias attributable to the medications 47/100,000 users, of which estimated mortality is <20%, 9/100,000 users, compared to the 10,000 Americans now dying each week. These medications need to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe.

I read the whole thing. You have to open the .pdf link at the above site to get to it.

Pointed out in this paper is the deeper truth that while Dr. Zelenko may have seen 1456 patients that were symptomatically declared to have COVID, he actually used his HCQ treatment plan on “only” 405 of them. The rest were so mildly ill that they didn’t merit treatment.

Here are a few parts I found noteworthy. The original document is unedited, tending towards run-on sentences and a rather high level of insider terminology and acronyms. Well duh, it’s a medical research paper, not a news story in USA Today.

[ on the MSM pushed fear of HCQ causing irregular heartbeats therefore heart attack danger!! ] This arrhythmia issue is a real, physiologically measurable effect of the use of these combined medications (HCQ+AZ), but fatal arrhythmia outcomes are so rare that they are of much lesser clinical significance than the hospitalization and mortality that the drugs prevent.  This fact is also clear from the lack of any cardiac arrhythmia events or arrhythmia mortality noted in the 405 Zelenko patients or the 1061 Marseilles patients or the 412 Brazil patients.Patients were not enrolled in these studies if they had known histories of QTc prolongation.  History of cardiac arrhythmia or other possible contraindications for use of HCQ orAZ or doxycycline is a normal part of workup and clinical judgement in physicianchoice to use these medicationsand how to monitor the patients

....

[ the Oxford study looked at more than 600,000 patients who had taken HCQ over the years ] The maintenance HCQ dose in the Oxford study patients, 200 mg/day, gives as large or larger plasma drug levels as five days of HCQ at 400 mg/day, the recommended dose for outpatient Covid-19.  These very small numbers of arrhythmias, as well as the null results in this very large empirical study should therefore put to rest the anxieties about population excess mortality of HCQ+AZ outpatient use, either from cardiac arrhythmias, or as mortality from all causes.

This discussion thus shows that the FDA, NIH and cardiology society warnings about cardiac arrhythmia adverse events, while appropriate for theoretical and physiological considerations about use of these medications, are not borne out in mortality in real-world usage of them. Treatment-failure mortality will be much higher, but even that pales in comparison to the lives saved. 

It would therefore be incumbent upon all three organizations to reevaluate their positions as soon as possible.  It is unclear why the FDA, NIH and cardiology societies made their recommendations about HCQ+AZ use now, when the Oxford study (41, 42) analyzed 323,122 users of HCQ+AZ compared to 351,956 users of HCQ+amoxicillin, i.e., that the combination of HCQ+AZ has been in widespread standard-of-care use in the US and elsewhere for decades, use comparable to HCQ+amoxicillin as if it just involved an alternate antibiotic choice, this use predominantly in older adults with multiple comorbidities, with no such strident warnings about the use given during that time. 

I note that since doxycycline is believed to cause even fewer cardiac arrhythmias than AZ, in patients where that is a concern(43), the long-term care-facility evidence suggests that HCQ+doxycycline likely will work about as well.

...

The extrapolation from laboratory theory to empirical use also seems to underlie resistance to the idea that combined HCQ regimens could work for early outpatient use.

...

The clash in scientific worldviews is that basic and clinical scientists seem to feel that biological and drug-development evidence for medication use in non-human and non-outpatient contexts can be extrapolated to recommendations for outpatient use without benefit of RCT [ randomized controlled trial; ie “official” and not anecdotal ] evidence but don’t accept epidemiologic evidence without RCTs, whereas epidemiologists have had career experience with laboratory and animal evidence that did not hold up under epidemiologic study, but do reason by including all types of epidemiologic study designs and derive causal conclusions in the standard way following Hill’s Aspects (26) on the basis of strong totality of evidence, sometimes even without RCT evidence.  There are contexts where each approach is valid.

...

However, it is not my point to say that remdesivir has little evidence to support its potential outpatient utility, only efficacy considerations that have not been addressed and that could lead to lack of efficacy under general use, but that HCQ+AZ has been directly studied in actual early high-risk outpatient use with all of its temporal considerations and found empirically to have sufficient epidemiologic evidence for its effective and safe employment that way, and that requiring delay of such general use until availability of additional RCT evidence is untenable because of the ongoing and projected continuing mortality. No studies of Covid-19 outpatient HCQ+AZ use have shown higher mortality with such use than without, cardiac arrhythmias included, thus there is no empirical downside to this combined medication use

...

HCQ+AZ has been standard-of-care treatment at the four New York University hospitals, where a recent study showed that adding zinc sulfate to this regimen significantly cut both intubation and mortality risks by almost half.

[ remember, any medicine works better earlier in the illness. To be intubated, you’ve got to be sick enough to be in the hospital, and then get even worse. So this is a Death’s Door kind of scenario. See her as well ]
...

But for the great majority, I conclude that HCQ+AZ and HCQ+doxycycline, preferably with zinc can be this outpatient treatment, at least until we find or add something better, whether that could be remdesivir or something else.  It is our obligation not to stand by, just “carefully watching,”as the old and infirm and inner city of us are killed by this disease and our economy is destroyed by it and we have nothing to offer except high-mortality hospital treatment.  We have a solution, imperfect, to attempt to deal with the disease.  We have to let physicians employing good clinical judgement use it and informed patients choose it.

Pretty amazing (not really) how NYU is just now finally seeing that zinc helps? WTF have you fools been??

PS - set up to fail? I read elsewhere today that the NIH suggested HCQ dosage is FIVE TIMES HIGHER than what Dr. Z and the international medical community has been doing. The likelihood of arrhythmia goes up as the HCQ dosage increases. 

The awareness of the pushback and paranoia against this treatment plan is gently mentioned in this paper. It is very apparent towards the end of one of the links I posted before about Dr. Z. And it is spelled out in no uncertain terms by the link I put up last week to WattsUpWithThat.  Ruin the world economy, let millions get sick, let millions die, all because a) OrangeManBad, and b) Global power grab by “elites” to push world Socialist tyranny.


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Somewhat related, somewhat sarcastic update: This same bunch of researchers at NYU Langone are going to try to prove a negative. They’ve got a big Official Study coming up, RCT and everything, in which they’ll try to prove whether HCQ works as a prophylactic. I want to see how that will work while being ethical. Sure, you could give half the subjects the drug, and half a vitamin pill, and then expose the whole bunch heavily ... which is the Nazi approach, and the worst No-No in medical research. “First do no harm”, right?

Clinical Trial Tests Efficacy of Common Antimalarial Drug to Prevent COVID-19 Infection

[ April 1, 2020. Coincidence, or April Fool’s stunt? ] < a href="https://nyulangone.org/news/clinical-trial-tests-efficacy-common-antimalarial-drug-prevent-covid-19-infection">YU Langone Health researchers are co-leading a major clinical trial to determine whether the common antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine can help prevent 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infections. The drug, marketed as Plaquenil®, has attracted considerable media attention, but definitive evidence is lacking on whether it can thwart infections in people who have been exposed to the novel coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2.

The new study, which is being led by the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle in collaboration with NYU Langone, may help answer that question. “Currently, there is no proven way to prevent COVID-19 after being exposed,” says Anna Bershteyn, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone and the study’s co-principal investigator. “If hydroxychloroquine provides protection, then it could be an essential tool for fighting this pandemic. If it doesn’t, then people should avoid unnecessary risks from taking the drug.”

Hydroxychloroquine, used widely against malaria since the 1950s, is effective against autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis as well. Past research has suggested that the same drug might block the SARS-CoV-2 virus from invading human cells in a lab setting. Other modeling studies have hinted at the drug’s potential to prevent an infection or reduce the length of time that people shed viral particles and remain infectious. But these hypotheses have not been specifically tested in humans.

To do so, the new study is enrolling 2,000 adult volunteers at 6 sites. Specifically, researchers are recruiting people who lack any COVID-19 symptoms but have been in close contact with others who have a confirmed or pending diagnosis. On a random basis, the trial participants will receive either hydroxychloroquine or a placebo pill (vitamin C) every day for two weeks. Each day during the 14-day period and then again on day 28, the participants will swab their nasal passages and send the samples to researchers so they can detect any new COVID-19 infections.

I have to wonder if zinc is part of the prophylactic approach too. Good luck finding 2,000 people willing to take a 50/50 risk on getting a placebo, knowing that they’ve been exposed to a virus that can kill them. Especially now that the virus is declining. Maybe the Nazi approach is the only way to be sure ... so that means this study isn’t going to happen. Oh wait: I gather if you give them a couple dollars it becomes a “challenge trial”, and that’s now ethical?? Crivens. Maybe next week it will be Ok to dose prisoners without telling them. Or maybe use those illegals that ICE is always corralling? WTF, if you’re flushing ethics down the toilet, might as well jiggle the handle a couple times to make sure.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/29/2020 at 12:08 PM   
Filed Under: • pandemic and epidemic diseases • Pandemic Pandemonium •  
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Read Between The Lines

There is a Hasidic Jewish community called Kirya Joel just outside of Monroe NY, up in Orange County just north of the border with Rockland County NY. It’s just a few miles west of the military academy at West Point.

The COVID situation has been really terrible there. At one point this little village had most of the active cases in Orange County, and their sister community in Rockland County a few miles south in Monsey had more than half the cases in that county. Outside of New York City and Westchester County, these are the hardest hit places in the nation, as bad or worse than the nearby counties in northern New Jersey.

So, many of them were very sick. And now many of them are well now. Cured. And they’re giving back, donating their plasma in large numbers so that others can be treated as well.

Pretty cool.

Montvale NJ is in Bergen, right on the NY border, the hardest hit county in NJ. Just over the hill is Pearl River NY in Rockland County, where big pharma Pfizer R&D recently announced COVID vaccine trials.

KIRYAS JOEL - Sholem Feldman had a bad bout of COVID-19 that started in April and lingered for weeks, afflicting him with severe symptoms that left him “very weak.”

But the 44-year-old father of nine found a way last weekend to derive a benefit for others from his run-in with the coronavirus: he participated in a two-purpose blood drive that yielded both plasma for current COVID-19 patients and blood to replenish blood banks that have dwindled during the recent crisis.

Feldman, a major-appliance salesman, was one of 130 Kiryas Joel residents who drove to Montvale, N.J., on Sunday to give blood to Miller-Keystone Blood Center for a donation drive led by the village’s ambulance corps.

All the donors had recovered from COVID-19 and been tested to verify that their plasma had the virus-fighting antibodies that would help hospital patients overcome the same illness.

Feldman said Wednesday that he was grateful to be on “the giving side” after having recovered.

“We try to help each other,” he said. “The Bible says, if you revive one person from dying, it’s like you save the world.’”

For weeks, volunteers from Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and New Jersey have turned out in droves to donate plasma for coronavirus patients and now blood as well.

Berish Schoenbrun, who organized Sunday’s blood drive and earlier collections for the Kiryas Joel Volunteer Emergency Medical Service, said roughly 345 other Kiryas Joel residents donated plasma in five previous trips to Bethlehem, Pa. - where Miller-Keystone Blood Center is based - and New Brunswick, N.J.

I think this is great. And 9 kids. Gosh!!

What is not mentioned whatsoever in this article is anything about Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, who apparently contained the outbreak there almost single-handedly, treating over 1300 patients. He’s the original HCQ-Zinc-Zpack guy behind Trump, and these days has cut contacts with Kiryas Joel and now lives and practices from a hidden location. Because of nearly constant death threats, bad press, and a tidal wave of hate from the Left. All because he bucked the system, found an apparent solution, and told people without following the rules and obeying the hierarchy.

It would be utterly priceless if anyone had asked Sholem Feldmen if he’d been treated by Dr. Z or not.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/29/2020 at 08:48 AM   
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The New Normal

I might have to make a category for this kind of stuff. We live in a different world right now. Whether we stay there, or go back to the old way ( January ) remains to be seen.

Email from my local grocery store: we now accept SNAP payments for online orders for pick-up or home delivery.

Isn’t that nice?

Posted by Drew458     on 05/29/2020 at 08:11 AM   
Filed Under: • Pandemic Pandemonium •  
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   Thursday - May 28, 2020

yeah I built that

As part of the COVID re-opening paranoia, I have to sanitize the floors at the eye doctor’s offices where I work. Tile, linoleum, vinyl flooring, and carpet. One location is mostly hard vinyl flooring, the other location is more than 1000 sq ft of office carpet.

I bought a potent steam cleaning machine to do the job. This thing will strip paint and degrease engine blocks, clean years worth of soap scum out of your shower, scrub the BBQ until it looks new ... and also steam mop and sanitize hard floors. It comes with a couple dozen attachments including several sizes and styles of mop head. But none of these work on carpet, because the brushes and microfiber mops stick like glue to rugs. Way too much friction. And the 2 piece plastic wand is not built to be used like a shovel handle.

The Haan company sells a line of floor sanitizers, all of which cost at least double what the mcCullogh steamer I got the Doc to buy for me cost, and all their models provide a whole lot less steam, pressure, and run time. But one of their models has a carpet glide plate, and such a thing is not available for the McCullogh steamers. So I built my own.

At first I was going to glue up a few layers of foamboard - plastic cardboard - and hold that in place with some rubber bands. That idea didn’t work out. then I wondered if I could make a glide plate out of 1/4” plywood, but I’d have to find longer versions of the special screws they used that have that open thread to grip plastic parts. So that didn’t work. Then I figured I could make something out of some oak slats I’ve got out in the garage. That seemed about right, but while digging through the lumber pile I found some bullnose pine slats. Already rounded, so no grabbing the rugs. A little work with the saber saw, and a few seconds using my heavy duty craft stapler to attach them to the large brush accessory, and Wah Lah!! At least I hope.

I’ll try it out tonight. Hey, at least I can check the boxes that a floor sanitizing process is in place. I just hope I can do the job without soaking the carpets. This steam machine can throw a tremendous amount of steam. Holy cats.

Update: It works just fine. Smells a bit like hot wet wood after a bit (duh), but it didn’t fall apart, and I was able to quickly steam the carpets. Steaming the hard flooring with the large microfiber mop took me over an hour. Went through nearly a gallon of water; the advertised 120 minute run time per tank must only apply to light use at the lowest setting. Naturally. I was rather pleased to see that very little additional dirt came up. I’ve scrubbed the daylights out of that place since the pandemic started, and their new germaphobic continuous processes are keeping the place quite clean. Don’t tell anybody, but they hardly even need me at this point.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/28/2020 at 03:17 PM   
Filed Under: • Daily Life •  
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   Wednesday - May 27, 2020

what a hoser

NJ governor “Red” Murphy says he’ll allow live graduation ceremonies ... in July.

High school ends in early June.  College ends in mid May.

What a dick.

TRENTON, NJ — New Jersey school districts will be permitted to hold outdoor graduation ceremonies with social distancing beginning in July, Gov. Phil Murphy announced Tuesday.

Murphy made the announcement on Twitter, saying the ceremonies, which can begin July 6, must “comply with social distancing – ensuring the health and safety of all in attendance.”

The order permitting outdoor graduation ceremonies applies to middle school and high school graduations, as well as colleges/universities, a news release from Murphy’s office said Tuesday. Specific guidance would be released by the state Department of Education and the Secretary of Higher Education on Wednesday.

That guidance could mean multiple graduation ceremonies at different times or spread across multiple days for instances where graduating classes are “too large to accommodate a crowd within the restrictions in place for outdoor gatherings,” Murphy said.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/27/2020 at 09:27 PM   
Filed Under: • Pandemic Pandemonium •  
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