Sometimes Nothing Is the Best You Can do

Just so you know, if you weren’t paying attention: There’s something weird going around. By which I mean there’s soemthing weird going on in the disease department.

I mean my coming back from Portugal sick isn’t a big shock. I catch everything I come in contact with, or even things that just wave passing by. No, the shock here is that Dan caught it too, and it took him three weeks to be okay. He never catches URIs. Period.

And then the reports kept coming, from friends and relatives. No, not your average flu but something that lingers. Also has a disturbing tendency to go pneumonia fast, etc. BUT responds to antibiotics.

Now can I prove anything? No. But there is this feeling at the back of my head that this is the new horror being tried out to create a panic in early January, so they can shut things down and… heaven knows what else they plan, except another attempt at the great reboot they dream of.

Look, they did it before. They — as far as they can reason — got away with it. It hasn’t worked since, but has that ever stopped them trying again.

I figure with Trump having already announced he’s going to pull us out of the authority of China-puppet WHO and Biden having given over our authority to them, they’re going to make one last pass.

Or not. But that’s not the important thing right now.

The important thing is that they’re making sounds about bird flu and how lockdowns might be needed.

ESR on twitter said that if they try it, they’ll find out how not funny it is. And he was right.

But the answers came back immediately, of course, insisting that we “can’t do nothing” and that “sooner or later a pandemic will come along, and what should we do?”

Will a pandemic come along? Possibly. Sooner or later.

What will it be like? Well, likely like a really bad flu year. Maybe a bit worse.

Yeah, we might have something much much worse. It happens. But–

Look most of the really bad plagues in history had to do with things like poor hygiene and crowding on a massive scale. And sure, I know what you might think about the present age, but it is nothing like that. Also, we are better fed than practically all our ancestors, ever.

Even the great flu epidemic 1918 had the help of a war and concurrent food shortages, etc.

Now, does it mean the entire world is equally proofed against a pandemic? No. But even world wide, the nasties that have arisen lately seem to have had a limited run.

But sure, something could arise in China. Particularly if there are funny labs doing their work.

But let’s suppose the absolute worst could happen and we had, as someone was floating in the comments, a disease that kills 10% of the population. Let’s suppose it actually comes here, and kills in those numbers.

What, oh, what should we do about such a terrible occurrence?

I’m going to say it right now: nothing. Absolutely nothing. I mean, sure, put out commercials telling people to wash their hands, not French strangers and cover their sneezes. It never hurts.

But after that, leave it alone.

If a virus is that strong that it’s going to kill 10% in the best fed, most naturally socially distanced country in the world, this is going to happen any way. All the government can do, with lockdowns and mask mandates and vaccine mandates is destroy our economy, our freedoms, and the future of our children. But none of these materially affect the chances of reducing mortality.

They don’t really.

Instead, what they do is give the impression that people can do something and that they can stop something like a massive pandemic, or —

Well, you know all the people trying to destroy civilization to keep the weather the way they think it should be? Or the crazy people who blame things like meteor showers on global warming?

It is all in the name of looking like we can do something about everything.

But sometimes we can’t. Yes, the Earth climate will change. It has changed before us. It will continue to change. We can’t stop it, no matter how many carbon indulgences we buy.

Yes, though we have some fairly decent tracking systems, it’s possible for us to get sucker punched by a rock from space. No matter how many DEI programs we institute, that will be a likelihood, until our technology progresses.

And yes, unlikely though it is, it is somewhat possible that a pandemic will sweep through the Earth and hurt us badly.

But if something is that lethal and cautions and careful hygiene won’t stop it, we certainly can’t stop it with government mandates.

All governments can do in that case is make it worse. And ultimately kill more people.

So, let it come, the pandemic with all its fears.

We will not be locked down again. And they can shove their mandates where the sun don’t shine.

Funny only once.

240 thoughts on “Sometimes Nothing Is the Best You Can do

  1. I’m getting over this right now. I never comment on the internet as it’s bad for my health, but I gotta tell everyone that the same FLCCC protocol that works for the COVID works for this. Stock up at AllMed pharmacy in India and be ready. I found out what “death warmed over” feels like on Monday and today I’m going to work a full day.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I have a “flu box” with the FLCCC protocol stuff, including instructions. They work for the coof, influenza, and… RSV. I’m glad you’re feeling better.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Especially after he wants AI to censor anybody who has the nerve to question the various not-Vaxxes or his special brews of vaccines.

      Can we get a quartering, too? Asking for a friend.

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        1. I recall a slightly different take on drawing. I think it was in Philip Jose Farmer’s “Lord of the Trees”? Where ‘Tarzan’ cuts the antagonist’s ass out, picks him up, and throws him 30 feet while holding onto his anus, gruesomely disemboweling him in the process.

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            1. Man, that would be awesome. It would make all the gratuitous violence of The Game of Thrones look tame. I always liked Farmer’s take on Tarzan and Doc Savage.

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      1. Yeah, it thoroughly amused my “black-pilled” little heart to watch all the cheering as Elon pointed Grok at the 1500+ page CR and plucked out all the hidden “nuggets”.

        Guess what, folks? AI will do an excellent pattern scan on your verbiage too. And some people think that’s cool with no warrant, as long as corporate does the first run for any old FBI that wants it.

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          1. And I’ve been saying this here and elsewhere since 2012. Grok is just the latest example.

            You must be very new here.

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              1. As usual, you and several others mistake “recognizing reality” for “black-pill”. This tech had massive potential for abuse when introduced, and we’ve watched Biden and crew amply fulfill that potential. That potential has only gotten bigger.

                Yet no one seems to want to do anything to check that, other than rely on laws that aren’t equally applied and the innate goodness of people.

                AGAIN, this is only the latest example of what IS being done. We have a limited window to address it. The first step in addressing it is limiting its’ use to punish people by algorithm.

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                1. I fail to see how this has anything to do with using Grok to summarize bills. I agree that the tech can and is being abused, but that’s an issue with the law and how it’s applied, not the tech itself. People using new tech to hold the government accountable is an unequivocal win.

                  The black pill isn’t in recognizing that censorship and warrantless search are threats. It’s in letting that color everything else.

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                  1. I fail to see how this has anything to do with using Grok to summarize bills.

                    I’m sorry. I’ll use smaller words.

                    • Grok is an AI. It is not the only AI.
                    • Grok processed a 1500 page bill quickly enough to allow Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action.
                    • Even crowdsourcing, as in butts in chairs at screens, couldn’t have done that because of coordination challenges, including producing a coherent analysis.
                    • I use coherent deliberately, since correct is in the eye of the reader. How many language issues get discussed in this community?
                    • That was a discrete set of data, yes.
                    • So is the list of cell phones (whether by number, MAC address, etc.)within 2 miles of the arena where your political opponent is speaking.
                    • That list can be purchased by anyone who can afford it, with no restrictions.
                    • The tool isn’t the issue; the use and misuse is.
                    • We have seen both. Maybe someone should be thinking about guardrails.
                    • Or not.

                    Liked by 1 person

                    1. I agree with everything except the part where we shouldn’t celebrate using Grok to read the bill. It’s a big win for representative government and only a marginal increase in the capabilities of bad actors. I don’t see how that adds up to a net negative.

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                    2. Because the negative has been there all along, and while this is a win, it’s not the massive win it’s being portrayed that balances all the negative impacts we’ve already been hit with.

                      Even if we have one King Tiger, there’s still a swarm of T34s to deal with, and we’ve allowed them to get too close.

                      Again, it’s a win but is it enough?

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                    3. It’s a win. It stops the strategy of creating bundled bills that must be passed before artificial deadlines. “You’ll have to pass it to find out what’s inside” is no way to run a country.

                      Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

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                    4. Agree. Huge legislative process win. Calls out those acting in bad faith. If something can not stand the light of day, it does not belong in the bill. Short of line item presidential veto, closest we are going to get.

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                    5. To quote Sarah: ^^THIS^^

                      Just because a tool, AI is a tool, can be misused (by bad people, or just misguided people) does not mean it is a bad tool (firearms).

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                  2. Exactly. Just because the tech can be used illegally, or by government overreach, does not mean using the same technology to legally search public documents is a bad thing. The document in question is public, available to search (or was, since now DOA – dead on arrival). Anything can be abused.

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                    1. As long as We The People have equal access (physically and financially) to the tools, there are enough of us to keep tabs on The Swamp. It’s keeping tabs on each other that is often the problem.

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      1. What you want is the Short Drop, usually done by having the recipient stand on an item, tighten the rope until tight, then kick or remove whatever the person is standing on. Enough to choke them, not enough to snap their neck. Lots of feet kicking and slow deathing.

        Or the Pull. Have recipient stand, toss rope over a convenient arm, spar, tree, something, then around the neck. Then pull the rope, slowly, until person is not able to touch the ground. For special fun, only pull far enough to have the person stand on tippy-toes. Like the Short Drop, enough to choke, not snap, slow way to die.

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        1. Trebuchet launches at castle walls, it’s kind of Jackson Pollacky in an artsy kind of way, snicker.

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        2. For those curious about “HOW slow?”, witnesses to the execution of H. Wirz said that movement only stopped after SEVENTEEN MINUTES. (There was a drop, but insufficent to break his neck.)

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              1. Rome as a power lasted over 1500 years; the Empire over 1300. Think they may have been doing something right? :twisted:

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      2. ISTR that, in one of his CoDominium stories, Jerry Pournelle mentioned the idea of sentencing someone to be hanged in low gravity. There are several ways to make that an Impressively unpleasant way to go.

        I would be tempted to go with a very long drop (think several hundred meters in lunar gravity), with an uncertain length of rope. Instead of a dirge, this would be an appropriate musical sendoff for the guest of honor, because of the chorus:

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      3. I’ve always been of the mind that, if you are going to kill someone, get it over quickly. Drawing it out is for the amusement of the crowds. If you like that kind of entertainment stay home and watch “Ow, My Balls.”

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    2. I can understand why various replies to this have gone into varying degrees of detail about making the execution method tortuous, but I disagree with all of them.

      Not because I hold any particular love for Fauci, Gates, or the rest, but because it seems to me that it’s a giant waste of time, good only for satisfying “feelz”.

      Does a slow and/or painful death for any of them bring back to life anyone who had died directly or indirectly from what those individuals supported#? Does it reduce even one single day of illness for those who didn’t die, or make anything cheaper?

      If they are to be executed, after a fair trial, just throw the switch, chuck them in the hole, and be done with it. Anything else is just ghoulish and a waste of time.

      # Which includes my mom, for the record. The WuFlu wasn’t listed on the death certificate as the cause of death, but it did put her in a position where she caught what did ultimately kill her.

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      1. Pardon my (possibly, but unlikely to be fully correct) French, but it’s “pour encourager les autres”.

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        1. Does it, though?

          History is loaded with examples of people who have decided, no matter how many others have previously been arrested, crippled, or even killed as the consequences of attempting any given task, that they won’t face any negative consequences of their actions because unlike those other schmucks who have gone before they have more resources, are smarter, faster, more prepared, or just plain luckier.

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          1. Executions deter recidivism – but quick and painless works as well as slow and tortuous.

            OTOH, our courts make far too many mistakes for me to be happy with the death penalty in general. There are exceptional cases where there is no question of guilt, but no reason to expect that politicians and judges wouldn’t lie about that if we allowed it.

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      2. I figure it’s a good sorting mechanism.

        Anybody who’s busy waxing poetic about causing horrific death shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near having the authority to engage in it.

        On purely practical grounds. As Terry Pratchett pointed out, pray you’re caught by a bad man. He’ll try to kill you slow, and you might escape. A good man will just kill you.

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        1. That would be from Men at Arms.

          Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat.

          They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.

          So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.

          (I had to look it up. I knew of the quote but haven’t actually read all of any Pratchett, other than his collaboration with Gaiman on Good Omens.)

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I started with “Small Gods”, which I liked quite a lot. “Soul Music” or “Moving Pictures” would also be good introductions. Or you could just start from the beginning, though pterry’s style wasn’t nearly as polished in the earlier books.

            And “Hogfather” was turned into the *other* other totally-not-Christmas movie.

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        2. Those of us who know we would never have that authority may feel free to consider horrific consequences on people like Fauci. There’s close to a zero percent chance he would get a federal trial in SW Oregon, and the courthouse is a day’s journey from home, so even sitting on a jury is fanciful.

          Personally, I’d love it if Fauci’s protection team is as capable and competent as those who had the duty to protect DJT in Butler, PA last July. Let Anthony contemplate that.

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          1. “love it if Fauci’s protection team is as capable and competent as those
            who had the duty to protect DJT in Butler, PA last July. Let Anthony
            contemplate that.”

            Um. Ouch.

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      3. Yep. Night Walker in the Ringo “Black Tide Rising” series had it right: If they found the one who started the plague, just put one in the back of his head; nothing they could do to him would be a patch on what he did, so just eliminate him and move on.

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      4. This. Get it over as quickly and as smoothly as possible. Then get on with the business of living. Turning death into a spectacle for the crowd did not work out well for the Roman Ludi and it won’t work out well for Americans.

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        1. Britian made hangings a public spectacle but pick-pockets made a “killing” among the people watching the hangings. [Twisted Grin]

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        2. In one of H. Beam Piper’s “Fuzzy” books (either Fuzzy Sapiens or Fuzzies and other People) he had a character put it in a way I agree with: They don’t execute people for committing crimes, but for being the kind of people who commit them–a sanitation measure, like shooting sick cattle.

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          1. If you mean Big-Voice, pretty sure that was Fuzzy Sapiens.

            A loudmouth, always telling the other Fuzzies what to do, disagreeing with other Fuzzies even when they’re right. Led to Very Bad Things Happening.

            Afterward, the Fuzzies decided Big-Voice had to go. Life was hard enough already; they couldn’t afford to keep somebody around that caused so mucn trouble and didn’t make any positive contributions.

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              1. Oh, that book is Fuzzy Bones. In which they discover the wreck of an ancient Fuzzy starship, explaining why Fuzzies live on Zarathustra despite being not at all compatible with the planet.

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                1. A lot of people like that better than the actual third Fuzzy book, which was discovered after his death (hence a few repeated phrases from prior books.) I personally find it a bit too pat, in that it tries to wrap up everything in a neat bow.

                  There’s also the fact that Piper was intensely interested in the judicial process, especially in this series, and Tuning just sort of waves off the trial set up in the previous novel with, essentially, “found guilty and executed.”

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            1. No, it was one of the humans talking about the folk who had held Diamond and some others in bondage, training them to burgle the sunstone vaults at the CZC, slavery and faginy being capital crimes.

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      5. If you’re killing them to improve the safety of the community, or eliminate a threat to the community, if you want to put it a different way, then like all pest control, you do it as quickly as possible. Drawing out the pain is merely another form of torture, and people who employ torture for any reason lose a bit of their soul every time they do it. Those who actually ENJOY torturing, are already totally lost.

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  2. At first glance I thought this post would be our host getting enough sleep and rest. :P

    There does seem to be something going around, but considering the time of year, the weather, the influx of people, the damage done by the medical community and the amplification of “Doom! Doom!” by TPTB, I’ve ignored it as overly parnoid awareness like UFO/Drones and kept on with my normal semi-hermit routine.

    No idea what TPTB have planned, if I were them, I’d enjoy my loot overseas in one of my 4 or 5 estates. Or a bunker. Still waiting for the useful idiots to flee the US or drive their car off a cliff. Sod off you f’ers! Film the wreck for the likes!

    The 1918 Flu proved that masks didn’t work and “new” medication can be fatal. US health and food community is corrupt and needs to be gutted and rebuilt for real results instead of maximum profits.

    In addition to washing hands and not licking doorknobs, getting rest, controlling diet, and having the right supplements and protocol medications really helps. Allowed us and others to stop and prevent many severe colds and flu. Also not over reactioning to the intentional stress and propaganda helps.

    Don’t discount Team Volcano for climate issues just because space rocks have the same PR firm as the tree rats with fancy tails. Or just consider orbital and solar dynamics over time. Climate “experts” tend ignore the long term geology and astronomy in favor of that sweet grant money.

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  3. In regard to the 1918 epidemic, the number of young soldiers that died was directly related to the Army being terribly enthusiastic about a new drug called “aspirin”, so enthusiastic that they dosed their charges not 325 mg/6 hours but as much as 8 or more (some times a LOT more) GRAMS per day, at which level aspirin is fatally toxic, and those overdoses were responsible for many, if not most of the deaths. As bad as the FDA is, was, has been, and will be, at least their creation meant frankly toxic doses of medication are usually discovered before the bodies start piling up. One of the adages of forensic scientists is “The dose makes the poison” meaning almost anything (including water) can be toxic if taken in high enough quantities.

    Are the forces who want to reduce the human population to 500 million trying again? Of course, but their chosen methods are resulting in the selection of the most contrary and least compliant of us rather than the easily controlled. Will that backfire? I certainly hope so.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I think it’s interesting to note that stores are carrying a smaller selection of aspirin lately.

      Sure, you can get Bayer, and several types of low-dose aspirin, but it’s getting harder to grab a big bottle of plain old 325mg tablets in some places.

      Lots of the various brand name NSAID drugs, but not so much the old standby.

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      1. I don’t do aspirin, but the first time I tried to get my standard 1000 count Ibuprofen supply (I take one morning and bedtime. Ain’t arthritis fun?), the store-brand was out of stock. OTOH, Acetaminophen was in stock (had been short early in the year), and the next week, the Ibuprofen was back in stock.

        So far, no problems in getting prescription medications.

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        1. Hubby does the same, bruising, nicks bleeding more, in addition kitty scratches bleed a lot too. To bleed all he has to do is bump something wrong. Thin skin, and medications.

          Me? Not looking forward to being the same. I’ve always bruised easily. Age isn’t making it better. But not on problematic medications, yet.

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      2. Interesting. For the last couple of years, I’ve often been unable to find 81-gram aspirin without going from store to store until I get lucky. Everyone has plentiful supplies of 325s.

        Might be a regional thing. And “supply chain issues” are still a big thing where I live, where shortages of everything from foodstuffs to hardware are still common.

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    2. I don’t remember who first said this, but if aspirin was invented today, it would be available only by prescription.

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  4. I see where tax payers are no longer on the hook to pay faucit-face’s “security” bill to the tune of ~$15Mil. (this for a guy with a $500K pension after having been responsible for unknown millions of deaths around the world).

    Perhaps one of the private security people he hires will have lost some loved one to his covid and will decide to “Mangione” him – not that I would wish ill on anyone. . . Buuut they made/showed us the rules and we’re more the fools if we don’t play by them.

    Sarah – I realize this post may be a little harsh for your blog, so I’ll understand if you choose not to publish it.

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    1. I’ve realized that although a good person wouldn’t do it and a polite one wouldn’t admit to it, I DO wish ill upon some people, and that evil little homunculus is definitely one of them. I’m not dumb enough to try preemptively delivering it, and I don’t pretend to know what that human-shaped pile of excrement actually deserves, but when he’s no longer breathing the free air, I’ll be glad. Birx and a couple others too, whose names I can’t recall at the moment. May they all rot in hell.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I generally leave it to Karma, she’s almost as much of a bitch as Mother Nature, two sister if I am not mistaken.

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        1. So totes hypothetically, this is for a fiction story, yeah, that’s it, a story…

          Per the Supremes Burdick decision, accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt, and positing a Joe ”signed” pardon for Anthony the Wisest is forthcoming and accepted.

          Say a totally hypothetical totally fictional State Governor character were to decide that a Presidential Pardon operates along the same lines as those annoying-to-the-left amendments in the Bill of Rights, constraining Federal actions (yes, yes, incorporated via the 14th, but I’ve seen nothing that that covers criminal stuff), but not State actions. And posit that admittedly-guilty-of-the-crimes-for-which-he-was-pardoned Anthony the Wisest walking around free cashing his humoungous pension checks.

          Said totally hypothetical totally fictional State Governor character decides to charge capital murder in state court against Anthony the Wise.

          Does that admission of guilt from accepting the Federal charges pardon demand a guilty plea in state court?

          Asking for a friend.

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          1. I offer an alternative scenario. What if a civil action were brought against Fauci? Those have a lower burden of proof to begin with: recall how O.J. Simpson was found not guilty criminally, but liable in the civil suit Fred Goldman brought. I should think a confession on the criminal level would prove so dispositive at the civil level that the finding of liability could be assumed, and the trial would move straight to the penalty phase.

            The humongous hitch in my short but beautiful fantasy is that any pardon offered would be of the blanket variety. You couldn’t pin it to any specific act. So much for a presumptive conclusion of guilt, but at least you would have a different way of holding Fauci to account. Sadly, it would convince about as many people of his true guilt as the Simpson civil verdict convinced of his true guilt. And Fauci would probably dodge paying out the damages as well as Simpson dodged paying his.

            Oh well. Maybe he’ll visit New Jersey and a drone will crash on his head.

            Republica restituendae.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Well, at minimum Anthony has a publicized source of guaranteed income which could be the target of collecting any award. IIRC that was OJ’s dodge, that he spent it all. Anthony can’t use that one since it’s a future income stream rather than a lump sum, so he can’t claim he spent it on hookers and fast women, and wasted the rest.

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    2. pretty much all the comments on this topic are harsher than Sarah’s usual posts. It’s a topic that infuriates an awful lot of people.

      my grief will be quite limited on the day that fauci leaves.

      (Gritting my teeth, remembering that I need to try harder to live up to my principles, I hope fauci repents before that day.)

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      1. I believe that the comment, “I wouldn’t light him, but I wouldn’t spit on him if he were on fire” is appropriate.

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  5. The chronic malnutrition in Europe after October 1914 did not help matters. The US was a bit better off, because of not going to rationing so soon, and having better weather in much of the country (the drought of ’17 was horrible in Texas, NM, and adjacent, but again, was relatively local). The winter of ’16-’17 was called “the turnip winter” because everything else rotted in the ground in Germany, Austria, and the neighboring areas.

    Better sanitation, better nutrition, better knowledge of disease transmission*, antibiotics, and not living in such cramped quarters makes a huge difference.

    *I’m leaving out deliberate propaganda and information withholding for political reasons (see “HIV is not transmitted by sexual contact” when that first appeared.)

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      1. That we know of. I’m waiting for the full unauthorized biography of the guy. I would like to know what he did before getting into FedGov power.

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        1. Fauxi has been in the government for 50 years. Straight out of med school, most likely. Has never seen an actual patient, worked in a hospital or interacted with real doctors and nurses, only sales reps for big drug companies.

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  6. My grandmother came down with the 1918 flu, along with her sister. In the evenings, my g-grandfather would sneak upstairs and give them two tablespoons of whisky. They both survived, though they were very sick for weeks.

    On the other side of the family was a great uncle who was a soldier in a train car, and they all came down with the flu within hours. They had a bottle of whisky, which they shared around. They, too, survived.

    Biologist sister says that this is anecdotal, but also that alcohol is food and when you can’t eat a bite, that whisky might have made the difference.

    So when I get sick I ceremoniously take a shot of bourbon, and toast to my grandmother Dolly, and nameless great uncle, who survived the 1918 flu. Does it work? Ahem. Hell yes.

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    1. sings gently under his breath

      “Let your quacks and newspapers be cutting their capers
      ‘Bout curing the vapors, the scratch and the gout
      With their medical potions, their serums and lotions.
      Upholding their notions, they’re mighty put out;
      Who can tell the true physic to all that’s pathetic
      And pitch to the divil cramp, colic and spleen;
      You’ll know it, I think, if you take a big drink
      With your mouth to the brink of a jug of poitín.

      So stick to the craythur, the best thing in nature
      For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys;
      Oh what botheration, no dose in the nation
      Can give consolation like poteen, me boys.”

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      1. It’s true. There’s a reason that cough syrup used to be full of alcohol — because it’s an active ingredient, as well as containing and preserving good things.

        Hot water, lemon juice, and whisky is very good for you. So is Irish coffee. So is hot wine or cold beer with spices, albeit a stronger alcohol kills more germs.

        And if you have a stomach/intestine flu and won’t throw it right up, alcohol kills germs in the innards, pretty helpfully.

        Guinness is good for horses, no doubt at all, as long as it fits into their diet.

        Obviously the dose makes the poison, and some people shouldn’t be drinking alcohol at all. But for a lot of us, it does us good.

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        1. Oh, and of course honey and whisky, or sugar and bourbon, is a sovereign remedy against coughing jags. The problem is that bourbon is really expensive now, and whisky isn’t cheap.

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        2. Maybe that explains why my mom’s second dose (after Pepto-Bismoll) for the 24-hour bug was a slug of paregoic. I can still taste it – it was awful. And it never did a bit of good, but she kept trying it. After the paregoic came back, she’d settle down to ginger ale or coke, which also came back.

          Yick.

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          1. My mom favored having us drink ginger ale, when we were sidelined with stomach flu and the like – because it tasted OK if and when it came back up. I was very fortunate in my family because I was the one who either didn’t get sick when the seasonal crud/flu/cold came around, or would get the lightest case. (My poor younger sister usually got sick the worst. I’d have a mild temperature, she’d be delirious.)

            I think that my immune system is still in pretty good nick. My daughter and I both eventually caught Covid, but would have bounced back OK if it hadn’t developed into Covid pneumonia. Once the pneumonia was knocked out, we were over and done with it, although there has been lingering weariness and lack of energy.

            We both categorically refused the Covid shots, and fortunately employment didn’t depend on us getting the experimental jabs, either. I will not routinely wear that stupid mask again, nor will I quarantine when perfectly well. Nope. Not happening.

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            1. I missed 30 days,of first grade, 28 days of second grade, and only four days of third grade. Apparently by third grade I’d had it all (but mumps. I never had mumps).

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              1. I’d had everything except the mumps, and chicken pox, before I started first grade. Mumps, chicken pox, were both summer illnesses. Then we managed to get the flu/bad-cold winter break, usually starting Christmas day (after huge extended family gatherings Christmas Eve, Christmas day was smaller gathering). Otherwise if I could stay away from strep throat (ha ha, never) …

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          2. When the Reader was in southern Spain as a kid, his parents got a quart of Paregoic stockpiled to deal with really bad cases of the runs. It tasted terrible, but it worked.

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        3. I like a mug of hot chocolate (lots of whole milk) with a shot of brandy in it when I’m feeling under the weather. Lemon tea with honey and some rum works good for sore throats too.

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      2. since its conception no doctor’s direction can cure the complexation like poteen my boys… now when the AI censorship gets started we can both be banned and arrested for unlicensed medical advice.

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  7. I am 74 which means I have lived through at least 3 or 4 pandemics and some were worse than others but of late the government and our so-called betters have been in the Chicken Little and the sky is falling mode for what at worse can be described as a bad flu year. The 1918 Spanish Flu killed so many primarily because we had no idea how to deal with it and the war shut down communication so we didn’t even realize it was happening but conditions in the trenches were the worse possible scenario for it’s spread.

    And of course the vaccine was a huge experiment that screwed our population especially the young healthy ones permanently.

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  8. Our son came home sick from management training Monday. HIs variety sounds like flu – body aches, headache, fever and general fatigue – but it’s not a URI, it’s intestinal.

    Of course he’s been commuting 90 minutes one way to the restaurant where he and his assistant are getting trained, and it’s a restaurant off the interstate, so lots of contact with people passing through. OTOH, we splurged and took a cruise in southwestern Florida, so we’ve had plenty of chance to pick stuff up too. We’ll see. (We started it by going to visit my parents’ and brother’s graves, then confirming the family house is gone. So having a few days of rest and pampering afterward was a relief. Even if I did manage to lock myself in a security office).

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Embrace the power of AND. Maybe you both picked up stuff and are doing the in vivo recombination dance.

      There’s always talk in medicine about what the viral load is required to actually transmit between hosts. But considering individual patients, that either requires multiple identical recombinations in patient zero to reach the transmission threshold, or it only requires one recombination to start the snowball and avalanche. And a threshold of one isn’t really a threshold.

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  9. Several weeks ago I found myself spontaneously adding the Congo to my prayer list. No reason, no idea why. Learned a week or so ago they’re having an outbreak of something, nobody knows quite what, in the back of beyond. The article was citing the poor nutrition and general poverty of the area as a factor, also note – even with poor nutrition, this bug is running a 7-8% death rate. Mostly, I am sorry to say, children.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. That’s just an average Bush Fever attack. Killing young and old. Not even scary like Ebola.

      Nice thing, for levels of ‘nice,’ about African viruses is they usually burn out quickly, leaving stacks of dead bodies lying around and a lot of unanswered questions.

      The real (natural origin) viruses to worry about are the ones that come from Western China. Those buggars are persistent, slow to act but infectious for a long time. Like the Black Death.

      Liked by 1 person

  10. Ugh, I think some idiot on Twitter, in response to someone saying no to shut everything down again made the usual idiot query: “What is YOUR plan?!”

    I mean, if the plan is basically kicking a jar of nitroglycerin across the room I don’t think any objectors need a “plan” to tell them it’s a bad idea.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Gee, how about “wash your hands, and stay home if you’re feeling crappy”? Like the recommendations for flu outbreaks in the pre-COVID years…

      Liked by 2 people

      1. And so naturally the “solution” is to revoke all the work from home, and cram people into cubicles who have been told that if they don’t show up they’ll be fired.

        Liked by 1 person

  11. my colleagues in pulmonary medicine report mycoplasma pneumonia was off the charts this year. It would respond to antibiotics. Often referred to as “walking pneumonia”.

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    1. Yep. My doctor when I came dragging in said “So, this is everywhere. Let me give you some anti-biotics.”
      The double ear infection and bronchitis I acquired just because I’m SO extra ;)

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  12. Sarah, you got rid of the cat!

    I have a feeling there’s going to be a furry uprising at your house when they find out. We may see if Indy’s engineering skills extend to hacking your website and restoring old images.

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      1. I think I’ve figured out what’s going on. At the homepage, the cat is on the banner image. When I go to the comments for this entry, the article image gets the banner. (For me, at least. Maybe everybody else’s mileage is varying.) Something’s gotten cross-wired.

        I suspect this is one of those WPDE moments, but I will let others figure that out. Who knows, maybe this is Indy’s doing after all.

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  13. IMHO covid was the start to vaxx everybody, vaxx reduced natural immunities, give it time to work, bam, new virus that easily compromises those with the screwed immunity from the vaxx, voila, the elites get the mortality they wanted

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  14. Flu is running through the grade schools, again. In other news it is the day after Christmas. …. Seriously. Christmas day in the ’60s through New Year’s Eve was 3 little girls sick. Every single Christmas for a decade. Usually the flu. Not just sniffles and coughs either.

    Regarding this round? Again, watch the homeless addicted population. If they underfed, unprotected, are not dying in the streets (they did not with Covid) it isn’t a pandemic.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. THIS. To add to it, a coalition of several hundred “experts” gave the BLM people express permission to crowd together by the hundreds and thousands everywhere and do all the things that were assuredly going to kill the rest of us, and it didn’t kill either us or them, nor did it have any obvious effect on transmission of the plague.

      Either BurnLootMurder is the most powerful antiviral ever and we should be doing it en masse every flu season, or the pandemic was a nothingburger and the government’s response to it was a crime.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. By April 2020 it was already apparent to anyone willing to look at the numbers that COVID-19 was _almost_ a nothingburger. It killed up to 5% of the most vulnerable groups and left many more sick for a long time, but the Diamond Princess numbers showed clearly that it was less dangerous than a bad case of a flu to anyone of any age that was healthy enough to take a cruise. And unlike influenza and most other diseases, it was the least dangerous to children.

        They should have quarantined nursing homes and a few others most at risk, and continued life as normal for everyone else. But the _brilliant_ people running our governments did just the opposite. Several states forced nursing homes to accept infectious COVID-19 patients, causing many more deaths _from_ COVID. Meanwhile, lockdowns massively increased stress-related illness, suicide, and crimes including murder. Due to the policy of classifying deaths _with_ COVID as COVID deaths, we can tell there was a substantial increase in the death rate, but not how many were due to COVID as compared to due to the lockdowns, defunding the police, and the media and politicians encouraging lawlessness by the groups that were already responsible for most murders.

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    2. I was going to say something about the druggie bums having enough alcohol in their systems to kill just about any bug, but I don’t know if that’s true anymore.

      Do they bother with alcohol anymore, or just the street pharmaceuticals?

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      1. It doesn’t work that way. Half a percent blood alcohol (0.50%) is generally considered lethal, although some seriously habituated (physically addicted) to alcohol might survive to nearly 1%. But viruses aren’t even affected by alcohol, and most bacteria will survive several percent alcohol concentration. It’s impossible to drink enough alcohol to kill them in your bloodstream – unless you’ve discovered a way to keep drinking after you are dead.

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  15. Something people forget is not everyone gets sick, even in a pandemic.

    In retrospect, I should have remembered this in 2020, because I lived through two outbreaks of intestinal crud earlier. One, at the University of Florida in the mid-70s, affected about 25% of the student population. So, one in four got sick. (I was one of them. We never knew what it was; the only comment in the student paper was, “Authorities have said it’s not amoebic dysentery- they say this hurts worse.” And let me add, it did hurt).

    The second was Pennsic 13. I spoke to the doctor in charge afterwards, who told me we made the CDC report, with between 10 and 15% of the population affected. That meant between 400 and 600 people down with intestinal crud in a campground heavily dependent on porta-potties. It was, indeed, memorable.

    But in both cases, the outbreak was noticeable. You’d see empty desks in class, or in one case the teacher was out. Or in camp you’d notice Ethelbert was holed up in his tent while Mathilde was moving slowly around, trying to build her strength back up. Covid wasn’t like that, not in our small town.

    So locking everyone down makes no sense, and never did.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Ah… Pennsic Plague. Gee, what to expect when people from all over converge in one spot and often share water bottles and such. Yehaw. Been there, avoided that by the simple rule of “My lips don’t touch anything someone else’s lips have touched.”

      At Gulf Wars in Mississippi, the water bearers work very hard to sanitize all fighter-support stuff, which usually cuts down on the spread of Gulf Guts and such.

      Here in Gainesville, the murdering bug was the winter flu that hit in January 2002 that pretty much filled every hospital bed with seniors who were either surviving or dying. That ‘seasonal flu’ was far worse in killing and disabling than Covid 19. Funny, though, the way it was handled was to treat the secondary infections and do fluid replacement as soon as possible, which was denied most Covid 19 sufferers.

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      1. Where we now camp (when we get to go) Camp Mom is fanatic about keeping the kitchen clean and the dishes washed in hot soapy water followed by a bleach rinse. Ironically, during the Pennsic Plague we had a health inspector in camp. (Different camp). I escaped the plague, but I was seneschal at the time and the stress did me in for a night.

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        1. Three basin wash setup is how we taught the BSA troop camping skills. Didn’t happen on backpacking but then everyone only used their own dishes except for hot water heat. Basin was is: 1) Hot soapy water wash, 2) Hot bleachy water rinse, 3) Hot water rinse off bleachy water. Only exception was the cast iron, that was hot water wash and rinse only.

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  16. I had that. I think it’s eaten more than 2 months, all in all. I’m still recovering, in that I am going to bed earlier and sleeping later. It’s a bad cough that lingers for a long time. There are many cases of walking pneumonia, also in young people. It has been going around here; the local pharmacy is sold out of sudafed and most cough medicine.

    Fortunately, I have not heard of anyone dying from it. At this point, I think our local region has “herd immunity,” in that it has been so widespread.

    The irony about the lockdowns is that they had studied what to do in the case of a bad flu epidemic, then panicked and did not follow the experts’ plans. Those plans had been developed at great expense over years. Only Sweden followed the plans.

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    1. Pretty sure I’ve got the same crud. Woke up this morning coughing so hard my throat started bleeding. Not fun, but I’ve been sicker before. We seem to keep passing it back around the house like a hot potato; I got it on the second go-around. May it be the last!

      My oldest brother got that, then Covid a couple months ago; he’s finally recovering. My friends got it a few days before I did and seem to have mostly recovered – but they don’t have a history of heart and lung problems like my family does. At no point have I felt nearly as dramatically ‘sick’ as I have been some other years, but I’m exhausted for sure, and REALLY tired of coughing. It’s only been a little over a week, though.

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    1. Hubby and I got the first two shots too. His (in retrospect) was a mRNA variety, mine was not. Our son never got any. We’ve all 3 had covid. Son and hubby barely felt a thing. I barely got out of bed for 2 weeks and coughed for weeks longer. None of us have any known long term consequences.

      OTOH my *aunt just lost her husband after a 4 year heart based illness directly caused by the covid vaccine, per his **doctors. They were big travelers, and elderly (she’s almost 70, he was 72 1/2 when died). So get shot or not travel. (In fact she is still joining her son, DIL, and baby, in Costa Rica in February, and his son and family in Hawaii later this spring, that he and she paid for, that the kids were looking forward to.)

      (*) Dad’s younger brother’s ex wife. After 25+ years of marriage she is still aunt.

      (**) She is taking all his medical paperwork and detailing everything out. Not sure she’ll trigger anything, but if she can find research that someone is, she’ll contribute the documentation to the cause. Been there, done that, and won.

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  17. The study just came out, that showed people in the UK who were vaxxed were much more likely to die of COVID than the unvaxxed. Much. Like 1/3 or more.

    Of course, to be minimally fair, they vaxxed all the vulnerable people. But still.

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    1. From what I’ve seen on after-action reports, a lot of people who died in the hospitals did so because they were treating COVID like a cold/flu when it should have been treated like a blood disease. For instance, intubation is something that should absolutely be a last-ditch resort, and some medical professionals said that they were intubating people who did not meet the symptoms for intubation. and if you’re treating breathing when you should be treating blood, you’re not actually treating the symptoms.

      There’s also poor standards of care, such as when NYC sent the positive COVID cases to nursing homes.

      I saw one set of researchers who did a meta-analysis and suggested that it was something to do with bradykinin (which I remember because it sounds like a trendy name.) I never saw if anyone followed up on that, which is a pity, because if it was, they mentioned that there were FDA-approved drugs already on the market to treat that specific problem.

      Anyway. Most people with COVID (but not all) may have been better off away from the hospitals. It got to be a right mess.

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      1. The thing I saw was all the COVID people in hospitals who were not given blankets, because the hospital wanted them not to have a fever. Wow, what a great idea. Let’s encourage elderly people with pneumonia-ish symptoms to freeze in hospital A/C.

        Heating pads. And those seed pads that are waterproof and low temp, if the person has thin skin and can’t use a heating pad. And electric blankets. You can always put something cooling on a person’s head, if they need it.

        Hospitals are too cold, I’m just saying.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. The best course of action against the Covid 19 was to treat early, by attacking the secondary effects, and keeping the patient warm and hydrated. Key word there is ‘early.’ Making people stay home with no medical support until they were critical was a foul and evil thing to do.

        Liked by 2 people

    2. The thing to check is whether the study took the age of the individual into question. That information should be one of the data points that was available to the people putting the study together.

      I remember reading an article back in 2021 on why a US study and an Israeli study came to opposing conclusions on the usefulness of HCQ against Covid-19, even though they both used the same data set for their respective studies. The difference apparently came down to the fact that the Israeli study factored for the ages of the patients, while the American study did not.

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  18. Of course, it’s only an old wives’ tale; but I seem to remember hearing that hanging witches and burning plague-bearers were things at one point in time.

    Would I be out of line to suggest the mind virus is a plague?

    Wait! No! I’m not suggesting we defile lamp posts, trees, or dumpsters. I was just recalling history and making a random word-association.

    In fact, I don’t have guns, knives, pointed sticks, 16 ton weights, or even a bowl of raspberries; but I wouldn’t recommend trying to scare the children in most areas, even those who may have voted for the hag… even the worst parents are a trifle upset these day.

    We saw what Biden’s peaceful refugees are capable of doing to women in their sleep. And the reaction to leftists trying to spin that story is already aging like rotting mutton.

    “Can’t we all just get along?”

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  19. 5 persons since the bird flu has started have been hospitalized with bird flu. All old, all with comorbidities, all livestock keepers. One death, see previous sentence. You and the Huns are also getting older. And an indeterminate number of us had to get jabbed to stay working. Spit. The. Black. Pill. Out. Jolie LaChance KG7IQC

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    1. I am getting older, but no, none of this.
      Not black pilled. I don’t think a plague is a great probability. Thank heavens the gengineers are incompetent.
      I’m saying they’re going to try to scare us into locking down again.

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        1. On 20 January, Trump will stick his hand in the air, the other on the Bible, and repeat after the Chief Justice.

          Which will essentially moot those arguments.

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        2. There’s an actual difference in perceptions.

          I have no idea what is going on with the left.

          But, they have seen what the right appears to have done, and are having update their models (wrongly I think), and are hard into cope.

          We shall see.

          Liked by 1 person

        3. Which will go over like a lead balloon. Hairgel is already trying it over the bird flu and getting the constitution shoved up his…

          Think of that, the constitution is back in play.

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  20. I’ve already had some kind of flu and some kind of viral sore throat, and now I’m onto a second bout of sore throat except that it feels different. This bout seems a lot lighter, too, although I stayed home from Christmas and from today’s work to make sure of that.

    I ended up falling asleep for hours and hours, so I think that was a good call. Also I think I may have missed a big computer problem at work, so I’m not crying about that.

    I ordered a big giant serving of soup from one of the near Mexican restaurants. This one is chicken and vegetable, and I might need to get some of their spicy potato sometimes in the next few days. Anyway, the general concept is that eating a whole bunch of any soup will make you feel more human and hydrated, but a lot of ethnic restaurants will have all kinds of good stuff in their soup.

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    1. True this. Real ingredients, real veggies that never got dried out. It makes for tasty food that’s good for you.

      Now I want to make some chickenpocalypse stew. Doofus will be over the moon. It’s got chicken, potatoes, stewed tomatoes, a half dozen different kinds of peppers, carrots, onions, honey, sweet corn, random pasta noodles, and a bit of olive oil to cut the thickness. Good stuff.

      Liked by 1 person

  21. You know a transatlantic flight approximates poor sanitation, poor hydration (cabin altitude about a mile for many hours dries you out fast plus folks don’t wanna hydrate to avoid plane WC) and favors contact spread of disease. Perhaps a tramp steamer voyage would be healthier.

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  22. Explaining my…let’s go with “concerns” about the lockdown, especially after the stories of the people in charge here in California deliberately doing things that would get the common person in trouble very quickly started to come out.

    But what really set me off was…a lack of Sarah McLaughlin.

    Lemme explain.

    If the Crow Flu was as bad as everybody kept saying it was, who would be the first groups hit?
    People in nursing homes? Fatality numbers went up, but you’re also dealing with people with all sorts of comorbidities that even a bad flu season could result in more dead bodies.
    People on cruise ships? There’s always been issues with cruise ships, not the least of which is the average age of people going on a cruise. Think “nursing home” ages and you have a good idea.
    (There’s also cleaning issues-lot of employees from places that “looks clean is clean” not “clean is clean”.)
    People in prison? Should have been a virgin field epidemic, but nothing happened.
    People in basic training and similar? That I can understand, they’re often under a lot of stress and fatigue and that lowers your immunity.
    But the two other big groups that would get hit first? People living in very tight circumstances such as illegal immigrants (and some legal ones, especially in Silicon Valley around here) and the homeless/”unhoused”/people living in their RVs. Both tended to have poor hygiene and did things that made them vulnerable to plagues.

    What we had was a distinct lack of things happening with them.

    There was a distinct lack of homeless encampments being cleared out of dead bodies in bulk.
    There was a distinct lack of mass body removal from low-income apartments and such.
    There was a massive lack of news stories on CNN, with Sarah McLaughlin’s Angel being played over the sadder scenes as heroic social workers took traumatized dogs and cats away and dug through trash-filled RVs for any information on the owners of the vehicles.

    And it was that lack that got me thinking, more than anything else.

    (Yes, I know of other losses, but those seemed like outliers of one kind or another.)

    And pointing this out got people saying that I was an anti-vax denier of some kind.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I still get this from certain people who know me well — ought to know me well enough to know that I’m very good at extracting information from written sources, evaluating the accuracy and logic of an argument, and comparing sources to each other — but who have decided that The Experts…The Authorities…MUST know something we don’t, because they wouldn’t lie like that and couldn’t possibly have been wrong about all that. Never mind that we can SEE them pulling stuff out of their ass and calling it “the science” in contradiction of decades of data and observable reality. It’s absolutely crazy-making.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. I lost my trust in TPTB when my doctor assured me that I could not possibly have had COVID in March 2020, because the first official case in the county wasn’t registered until mid April. Symptoms for $SPOUSE and me were spot on for the coof, and when I failed the flu tests, the (different, and damned good) doctor who read the test said they had two people in hospital, but the state had not allocated any test kits to our (conservative) county.

      The eau d’ RLF was quite strong when I talked to Doctor Mengele. He never persuaded me to take the clot-shot. After the side-effects hit mainstream media, he quietly dropped all attempts to get me to take the shot. I’m skipping flu shots, too. Ain’t gonna beta test an mRNA not-vaxx for anything.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. I got sick in the middle of March 2020, right after working at a huge convention. 50,000 people from all over the world.

        Symptoms were spot-on for mild COVID, but they couldn’t even test for it.

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        1. There was also a run, about mid-to-late December at the time, of a “death flu” that people got that had a lot of the same symptoms as the Crow Flu. People got miserably sick, then were well afterwards.

          Honestly thought it was “flu season came early,” instead of what happened a few months later.

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          1. For some reason, the medical complex had gone all in for flu testing & response that year. The old clinic building (seceduled for demolition later that year) housed a dedicated test facility, and they set up a triage tent outside the ER. All by early March*. If memory serves, they started drive-by COVID testing after the officially recognized case, but they were remarkably prepared for a really bad flu season. Curious, that.

            ((*)) I was in Medford towards the end of February. No official announcements, but the Hilton changed cleaning policies to “towels only if you ask for them”. Since I was a frequent customer, the difference was quite noticable, but I couldn’t figure it out at the time. When I did my next medical trip a few months later, they’d closed the food service, and I switched to the suites hotel next door. Haven’t gone back, either.

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      2. I had some kind of con crud in November of 2019. I was hacking a lung at Youmacon (my last ever — they got weird in 2020, read something into an online post that never was in there, and decided I was no longer welcome), and was still coughing the next week at Grand Rapids Comic Con (my last convention until InConJunction in July of 2021). It was about as bad as the ghastly crud I caught at Indiana Comic Con in 2015, and left me barely functional the next week at ShutoCon (the last ShutoCon we ever did).

        I’m thinking the November 2019 crud was COVID, but nobody realized it then. I doubled my Vitamin C intake and took echinacea, so I got over it before Thanksgiving, and didn’t give it a thought at the time. But now I’m wondering if the con crud that was going around at ICC 2015 might’ve been a similar coronavirus that might’ve helped my immune system the second time around.

        Like

        1. I had something in November 2019 that ended up having all the symptoms of the Wu. I had been in contact with a friend who had just come home from Italy at the beginning of the month. He came down with it, too. We compared notes in about late March 2020 and decided we’d both had it. It was about two weeks for both of us.

          I believe our Hostess had the Wu early on, also.

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      1. Yes. Something went through the office full of IT contractors (about 250) where I worked in January and February 2020… We were all sick and used up multiple cases of “kleenex”. Fortunately, were were all “laptop class” so we could work from home, but it was greatly discouraged.

        We had folks from India, China, Nepal, and Singapore in that office. And, just after the holidays, a lot of folks had traveled back and forth from Asia. Probably sharing microbes with people from Wuhan.

        I never tested positive for covid, a year or so later when we got the test kits; but my wife did once. For about 3 days. We never got the jab because my cancer doctors said it could harm me because of the chemo I had undergone (kidneys still not 100%).

        God will judge them. We don’t need to do so. But do you remember what happened to Herod the Great after he killed the children of Bethlehem? Fournier’s gangrene. Please do NOT look it up. Let’s just say God’s vengeance is far beyond our poor capacity.

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    3. Exactly – which reminds me again of how I thought at the time that the homeless encampments should be absolute charnel houses, with dead bodies by the cartload, everywhere.

      The only part-way explanation for this not being the case was hospital ER staffers saying that they were so exposed so often to all kinds of stuff that their immune systems were like super-charged. The denizens of the homeless encampments were likewise exposed to so much contagion that they also had similar degrees of immunity.

      Didn’t explain how the death rates from the Diamond Princess were so low, what with so many senior citizens among the passengers.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. You see my skepticism about the Crow Flu here.

          Didn’t NYC have to return at least one or two of their mobile morgues for the “thousands of deaths” because they didn’t have any need for it? I know that they pulled one of the hospital ships out after docking it in New York for lack of business.

          Liked by 1 person

              1. Samaritan’s Purse sent a field hospital and someone was specifically telling people to avoid them because they were evangelical Christians.

                Liked by 1 person

  23. There is just the visual of all of the towed RVs that will never have their owners return sitting in some parking lot. A drone overflight to show-like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark-just so many things that have been lost in a massive warehouse…

    If there were so many people dying, our visual- and narrative-obsessed politicians would have put this on TV every hour of every day and had The View start out with it every single day.

    Liked by 1 person

  24. So updating from the Hair Gel People’s Bear Flag Republic, currently under State of Emergency as declared by Hair Gel hisself for Avian Flu:

    As of about an hour ago eggs are over $14/doz, with one house brand, sourced more locally, at the local supermarket over $16/doz.

    The SoE declaration is the best guess me and the checkout lady came up with on wth is going on.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I just looked at Fred Meyer’s ad. Bog-standard Kroger large eggs are $7/dozen, and $10.40 for 18 count. The brown eggs hit $9.50 a dozen. Oregon is also cage-free (I wonder if that makes the birds more susceptible to the flu…) so any closed eggeries will have similar problems replacing the stock. (The big independent sells Willamette eggs, a big regional producer, for a somewhat lower price. Last buy was Monday, $8.88 for 18.)

      OTOH, Tina the Unfortunate Surnamed Governor (D-teriorated, OR) hasn’t echoed Hair Gel’s SoE. There might be some political clout from the big egg operations, saying: “You feeling lucky, Gov?”. Dunno.

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        2. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        3. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        4. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        5. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        6. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        7. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        8. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        9. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        10. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        11. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        12. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        13. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        14. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        15. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        16. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        17. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        18. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        19. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        20. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

        21. Never let a crisis go to waste and all that.

          Sister was baking bread for people we knew the weekend before Christmas and we had to do specific runs to get eggs and some other stuff because Newsom has a restriction in place.

          Morons.

          Like

      1. Iowa is where a lot of those birds grow up, and we’ve been hit by a couple of rounds of bird flu.

        I know some folks really want it to be “stupid safety precautions, killing off birds,” but usually they identify that the flock has bird flu because a bunch of them are dead, and it becomes “contain before it hits any of the other barns.”

        Like

      2. Here in Michigan, Meijer (store-brand) “cage free” large eggs are $4.79/dozen. (Extra-large are $5.05, so I’m getting those if they don’t run out.) So I guess Oregon added about $2 to the cost; I’d have expected it to be more.

        Like

    2. There’s also some sort of food poisoning going on right now with Costco eggs in five states. The FDA has gotten involved. I can’t remember which states off the top of my head, but California isn’t one of them.

      Like

      1. It’s Salmonella again. This is difficult to avoid. In birds poop, pee, and eggs all come out of the same opening, so a trace of poop always gets on the egg. Salmonella spreads through chickens more easily than the common cold spreads through a 3rd grade classroom, and if you fail to keep the hens completely salmonella-free, the eggs come out coated in it.

        I wonder if completely cooking the eggs (like hard-boiling or fried over hard) kills it?

        Like

    3. On the other side of the country, eggs are about $5 per dozen. Cage free, organic, can bump the price up a bit.

      Locally, there are lots of backyard farmers who have chickens. So the going rate is about $5.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Could be worse.

        There could be no eggs. At any price. Like, say, under communism.

        Eggs might be expensive, but at least there are plenty of them. Stacks and stacks of egg cartons for us to grumble about how much they cost.

        Like

      2. I just looked up some local egg groups in Sacramento and at the moment, local growers might well have the better pricing at $6/dozen and thereabouts.

        Like

      3. Willamette Valley, Fred Meyer 18-ct $10.99 eggs.

        Don’t know what Costco 2-doz pack is going for.

        Used to have free eggs courtesy of hubby golf buddy (“first come first get”) who had backyard chickens. We’d save the commercial packages from when we bought for him. Problem is he took off to Idaho when he retired to be closer to family. Dang it.

        Like

  25. I’m going to say it right now: nothing. Absolutely nothing. I mean, sure, put out commercials telling people to wash their hands, not French strangers and cover their sneezes. It never hurts.

    Federally ban truancy enforcement, and do PSAs on how teleworkers aren’t spreading the flu at work.

    Most of my sick days at school were because of the gal who had perfect attendance. Even if she should’ve been in the hospital.

    Liked by 1 person

  26. There will always be “something going around” this time of year.

    Onset of winter favors spread of some types of illness. Various natural reasons.

    Several well timed holiday seasons, from various countries, cultures, and faiths. Thus anyone extended traveler season.

    Cheap travel, easily available to the masses.

    Several well-established cyclic infectious diseases, with frequent rapid mutation, that line up with the above.

    Viruses generally don’t mind sharing infected cells, thus frequently cross paths with others, with the potential for gene swapping at random.

    We now have a 24/7 news cycle that has to fill up much blank time with more clickbait drama !!!! thus the “always the impending doom” approach. Thus news stories about the otherwise unremarkable Traveler Trots / Holiday Hack / Plane Plague.

    Protect your health. Don’t be surprised by predictable. Don’t be stampeded by stupids. Don’t be demoralized by would-be masters. Wash your hands. Keep your hands off your face. Stay home and heal when sick. Be of good cheer and keep on being Free.

    Remember: only you can prevent collectivist b(HONK!)t.

    And they really get annoyed when you are happy and free.

    Like

    1. I saw a Yoo-Toob video by a doctor, saying that ‘flu season’ is really ‘low vitamin D season’. The days are short, the sun is low in the sky, and you’re bundled up against the cold. Doesn’t make for a lot of UV-catalyzed vitamin D synthesis. Low vitamin D plays hell with your immune system.

      Which is why during COVID the Democrats wanted to place vitamin D under the controlled substances rules, like morphine and fentanyl. Can’t have a safe, effective remedy on the loose, oh no.

      Like

  27. I’ve had the creeping crud for the last four days. Is it different? Not really, but some feel that if you ever had influenza, reinfection will not cause as severe of an illness. Was it influenza? I don’t know, but it was more than just a cold. My fever was 101.8 at the highest, and feeling like hammered crap is a better description than “malaise”. I’m at the phase where the cough is productive, I still need to rest and I’m ready to feel better. Unlike when I had a severe case of influenza when I was younger, I didn’t have the fear of not dying, and the suffering to continue for an extended period of time. Over the counter medications did the job, and I didn’t need to go to urgent care.

    I don’t trust the medical profession. I trust some doctors, but their minions (nurse practitioners and similar) operate with the same mantra given to them by insurance companies, government bureaucrats, and the pharmaceutical industry. The lies, failure to use modern medicine to the best advantage, and outright greed tainted a profession that once demanded to not do any harm.

    Like

  28. My son has been sick with this “cold” (?) since 12/22 and I developed the same symptoms on 12/24, tho mostly mine have been more muted. Cough but not aggravated, runny nose, variable fever – less than 2º range. Higher than usual heart rate (we both wear Fitbits so this was quickly obvious.)

    No appetite and some things tasted off. I needed to force myself to eat a single slice of brioche for my breakfast with milk and vitamins. A feeling of being totally wasted and a craving for sleep. Worst symptom for me has been muscle aches, especially in my legs, which interfere with the sleep, and make me stagger like I’m inebriated when I try to walk around the house. My son is just now getting those aches. Nothing severe enough to consult a doctor, and Acetaminophen works on the muscle aches for a few hours. 

    This evening when I got up from yet another nap I realized I was feeling a good bit more alert, and I actually ate a small but respectable meal, the first such in three days. However, the energy did not last and I had another nap before taking my evening dose of acetaminophen.

    My son is also starting to feel better – he has had to work with this, but as it seems that everyone else has already gone thru it, it isn’t that bad.

    I am mentioning the symptoms because it appears that whatever this is it isn’t severe enough to be flu or woo-flu. The last time I had a URI was over Thanksgiving, 2019. That was a severe cold or possibly the woo-flu? who knows – I never got tested. Also we have never been jabbed. 

    My preventive regimen for years has included vitamins C and D, magnesium, Quercetin and zinc, among other things. This is the first time in five years that I have succumbed to any kind of transmissible illness, and it has not been a fun four days at all. Hopefully I will feel even better tomorrow.

    May all of you continue to get healthier also! 

    Liked by 1 person

      1. There have been two deaths in the WHOLE COUNTRY. Both of them very elderly people, who would die from anything. And I think SIX cases. California declared a state of emergency.
        This is farcical.

        Like

        1. Yeah, I’m waiting for the Elon / Gavin cage match when Gavin tries to tell him that he’s got to allow work from home to slow the spread…. 😇

          Like

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