Sunday, June 30, 2019

Sunday Music: If I Can't Have You



Virtual one-hit wonder and gorgeous island girl Yvonne Elliman pounded this Bee Gees tune all the way to #1 in 1977 as part of the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. She had a few lesser hits before and after, but never returned to the rarified air on top of the whole circus. And allegedly, she kind of freaked out with the success of this song, and more or less withdrew from the music scene afterwards, settled down, and had kids.

I'm glad she cut this track first.

Saturday, June 29, 2019

Have A Caturday

























Learn from the wisdom of Whiskers.
Seriously, turn the computer off. Have a Saturday.
Sleep in. Have a nice leisurely breakfast. Watch cartoons and good old movies on the tube. Go outside and play in the sunshine. Take somebody to the shooting range. Play with your kids. Take a lazy nap in the shade. Go enjoy the lake, river, or beach. Just GO.

It's summer.
Five days a week is enough doom and gloom.
It'll be right where you left it come Monday morning.
Trust me on that.
I swear, if you skip it until then, you'll never miss any of it.

Friday, June 28, 2019

Pin The Tail On The Actual Jackasses Responsible

h/t Phil











Your state's fucked up?
Tough shit.
Wanna blame "Californians"? (That would be, by actual count, about 49 other states).
Self-fornicate.
(I can make that plainer if necessary, for the Common Core grads.)

If actual "Californians" had f**ked up all the states people claimed, the population here would now be zero. Trust me, we're nowhere close.

Your states got f**ked up by the exact same toothless, banjo-playing gypsy liberal kinfolk from 45 other states to the east that screwed Califrutopia up, and their illegal alien gardeners and housekeepers.

And someone who screws things up here for a couple of years, then migrates to your patch is no more "Californian" when they leave here than they were when they got here: i.e., Not A Bit.

Pin the tail on the jackasses where it belongs: you're getting screwed by the same liberal idiots who left Back East after they'd ruined it, to come out here and sh*t on everything they found. They're universally from St. Louis, Chicongo, Detroitistan, NYFC, Bahstun, Foolidelphia, and of course, the Baltimorons. And the 30M illegals they all let in because they didn't see them as a problem until they moved all the way to there (for any value of "there" including anywhere up to and including Portland, Maine) and then started breeding like rabbits and bringing up their 57-person extended families.

And you know this is true because nobody born in a state where it's shorts weather and 72° year around moves away from that to states where it snows in winter, or rains 360 days a year. Only people who were raised on 12' of snowfall annually do something like that.

QED

But I'll tell you what:
I'll pay you a $1 for every actual native Californian who moved to your state, if you pay me a nickel for every transplant from anywhere else, and you'll buy me a Ferrari for cash just on my profits from that deal.

I've met far more liberal idiots down here driving around with OR and NV license tags than I ever heard of people I grew up with who were born here, who then moved to either place. (And to further illustrate the point, license tags don't make them Oregonians or Nevadans either; such people are invariably malcontent gypsies in all cases.)
It's easy to blame CA, but someone who comes here from BFE, tags up, and moves to your patch is no more "Californian", than Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gray Davis, Barbara Boxer, or Nancy Pelosi.

You could look it up. ;)

And at the end of the day, it's simple:
Sooner or later, you're going to have to burn your problem children out.
Nothing less will suffice, and it's the only thing they really understand.
So it's either that, or get used to being screwed over forever.

Meantime, quit blaming the Imaginary Boogiemen from Califrutopia for your problems.
It simply ain't so, it's demographically and mathematically impossible for it to be so, and anyone who got past 4th grade would know that if they looked at it for two minutes. Your problems came from 40+ contiguous states east of you, and twenty countries south of San Diego. Like always.

Sorry if that reality stings where it landed, but that's how it goes. Own your own butthurt.

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Allow Me To Summarize:

























Thank you, and good night.
And the second night is a rerun of the first.

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Just Another Day On The Job: Reality Edition

h/t Daily Timewaster

















If this picture isn't in the front hall of the Aviation Boatswain's Mate "A" School HQ, it's criminal.

That right there is some righteous deck rigging.

You may be good, but are you chaining-a-squadron-of-fighters-down-to-withstand-40°-rolls-in-a-typhoon good?



(To be fair to today's Absolutely Fabulous Rainbow Navy, this was back when not running into everything else afloat was seen as par for the Bridge Officer's & Watchstander's course 24/7/365, rather than something to earn you an efficiency "E" on the superstructure. And they didn't have any 85# female ABs. So don't feel bad about yourselves. You've been hobbled by institutional stupidity. But get out before there's a shooting war, I beseech you.)

Smiling Young Lady from Niger Dept. ...

h/t Irish



Monday, June 24, 2019

Rules For Life











People who don't try, don't do.

Sunday, June 23, 2019

Rules For Life























Never ever.

Sunday Music: Baba O'Riley



The Who's gift from 1971: the rock anthem of rock anthems.

It, along with the rest of The Who's Greatest Hits, has been in regular rotation on Aesop's drum kit for the last 4 years. Sadly, the original drummer is long gone, but if Roger and the boys ever decide to try one last tour, I'm fully prepared to pick up my sticks and ascend to the Keith Moon Spastic Piledriver Of Rhythm Throne, and crank this one out every night for as long as needs be, with fidelity to the original performance.

This piece is why your amp should go to 11.

Saturday, June 22, 2019

Rules For Life

























If you're going to be that Huckleberry, do it right.
There's no second place.

Friday, June 21, 2019

Rules For Life

























But stock up on popcorn and beverages.
Uproarious laughter is thirsty work.

Movie Review: Shaft












Not one minute of PC (unless to mock it) in the entire movie. Notable for that, alone.
Samuel Jackson's Shaft is a fantastic throwback to 2000, at that. Other than the backstory intro, we don't even get him for about half an hour, but he's worth the wait. Usher pulls off being his estranged millennial offspring with just the right mix of skinny jeans OREO snowflake, and chip off the old block. And when you finally get Richard Roundtree, direct from 1971, they didn't trot him by for just a cameo, they bring him back to be m*****f****n' SHAFT. Solid.

The plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end, it gets from A to Z with the right mix of harsh and humor, and it's fun to watch. Overall, I give it a solid B. Not a B+, not a B-. In a year-plus that's been a desert of D- and F movies, that's saying something.

And as a warning, this movie is as un-PC as anything Mel Brooks ever did in his prime. Thank the maker. It's rated R, meaning it's not for any kids, ever. Trust the MPAA on that one. If your kids are in late high school, it's nothing they haven't heard. If they're in middle school or younger, leave them home. Unless they're Simpson kids living in Springfield, or kindergarteners from South Park, or you tick all the human trash parenting boxes in Jeff Foxworthy's signature monologue section,this flick is not for them.

You want to wait for this on cable or the shelves as a BD, I get it. I've never been very good about that.

My rating: that Shaft is still a b-a-a-a-d mo(shut your mouth!)




And I'd tell you about MIB International in upcoming days, but Silicon Graybeard has already done that on his blog. Go read SiG's review instead of waiting for mine. I doubt I'd disagree anyhow.

Thursday, June 20, 2019

Time Off For Good Behavior




As a reward for suffering through an all-day IT class, I think I deserve a trip to the movies.
Talk amongst yourselves.
There may be a review later on tonight.

Rules For Life



And no one will feel sorry for you. Nor should they.
But they will laugh. A lot.

Gonna Be A Light Posting Day...



At least early. Because I'll be spending quite a bit of it getting officially trained on the things I've used for the last year. Not too cranky about that, since it's paid time and there's a bare possibility I might learn something I didn't know, slim though that chance is. But it's still killing most of a day. And in daylight, so there's a non-zero chance that if stricken by sunlight, my lifelong night-shift self might burst into ashes. And it's so darned bright out there in the daytime.


Wednesday, June 19, 2019

Rules For Life


 
 
True in journeying. True in Life.

Because



Because you can't undo 90 years of communism in this country in just half a term.
Because there's so much more to do.
Because you're not ready for what happens under another Dumbocrat presidency.
Because...
Because...
Because.

He wasn't my guy in 2016. He's not, and never was, an actual conservative.

But he's governed more conservatively than any president since Coolidge, including Reagan, and that ain't nothing. I don't care what you say, I care what you do.

The NeverTrumpTards and other lunatics will want to carp about him in comments.
A) Don't. It'll be blasted to the ether the minute I see it. I'm all out of patience with that level of idiocy and stupidity. Ride your convictions right into the ground, and STFU here.
B) You think you have reasons. Consult what we got in 1993 as a reward for "punishing Bush(41)" for his awful "No New Taxes" flip-flop disaster. The Clintons are like herpes. We'll never be rid of them until their entire pustulent line finally dies out. And now you'd take a chance on giving the country genital warts or AIDS too? Yeah, no.
So just don't go there. Srsly.

If only out of enlightened self-interest, because you don't have any of your sh*t in one bag as far as dealing with whatever comes next.
You and I both know: you don't.

And let's get serious: watching CNN's ratings crater, and seeing Rachel Madcow and Bill Maher cry and rant and gnash their teeth in impotent rage was pretty damned funny in 2016. Imagine seeing their heads actually exploding in 2020!

That, alone, is a platform I can get behind, wholeheartedly.

Not because electing Trump is going to fix everything.
It won't.

But anything else, and anyone, is going to be far, far worse.
We really don't need worse.

Remember the old Irish Mob prayer:
"Give us health and strength, O Lord. Everything else we need, we'll steal."

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

Facts Are Stubborn Things Dept.

h/t Borepatch

Feel free to print these as 3"x3" or so stickers, and slap 'em up around your
local supermarkets and malls. Or college or university!
Just don't tell 'em who suggested it.
 





















Source ; Meme: All mine, baby.

So if you used one bag, every day, that'd only be 54 and 3/4 years of daily use.
If you only shopped every other day, or you bought two bags, the break-even on the planet's destruction is 109 years and 6 months.

As if one bag would ever last that long.

So every cotton shopping bag you buy is killing the planet faster!
O Gaia! The horror! The horror!

That's before we consider what biological nasties would be living in those re-used shopping bags between washings (which wears them out even faster, and creates more harm to the planet!).

Geez, it's almost like Leftard tofu-slurping eco-weenies, and the government minions who enact knee-jerk laws beyond all common sense to give them a daily tree-hugging tongue-bath, are just a pack of absolute morons, or something.




ALLCON


Note to ALL CONcerned about the current Ebola outbreak in Equatorial Africa:

















No, REALLY!
Funny as it is from 8000 mi. away (for the moment) I am being absolutely serious.
It is not me being a knee-jerk iconoclast, but rather me just telling it like it is.

Remember that whenever you read about anyone in Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, etc. issuing statements about allocating resources to control this, or any other, epidemic thereabouts.

And before you get too culturally superior, ponder back and recall the proclamations from multi-degreed @$$tards at CDC and WHO about this, as well as government spokesholes, just a few years ago, or even five minutes ago.

When you start to view most of TPTB like you'd view health advice from an African witch-doctor, you'll be red-pilled as fuck, and then your education in Reality can begin in earnest.

If you cannot deal with that, take the blue pill, go back to your cubicle, and enjoy life in the Matrix.

Since You Asked





















Someone asked in comments to the various previous posts about a review of "best practices" to shelter wherever (here, there, wherever) to ride out Ebola.

Okay, here goes.

1) Go to your Happy Place.

2) Seal your perimeter (I suggest with concertina rolls, at minimum), and defend up to and including deadly force.

3) Decon anything within throwing range of that perimeter with a bottle of 1/2 gasoline, and 1/2 dish soap, with some metallic aluminum glitter mixed it as condensation nuclei. (The precocious will notice that is functionally called napalm.) Or, get yourself an XL-18. (Perhaps several!)

4) Stay inside until 40+ days beyond the last reported case. I'd probably wait 60-90 days. YMMV. And it assumes anyone will be able to tell you the last infectious date. Got comms??
(Bear in mind in West Africa, the December 2013 outbreak lasted until January 2016. 25 months. That is not a typo, anywhere.)

5) Don't come out of your perimeter for anything, and don't let anyone else in for that time.
Ever. Whatsoever. Period.

The perspicacious may notice this would have no small effect on, um...civilization as we know it. Then again, so would a pandemic and hundreds of thousands to millions of deaths. Just saying.
You pays your nickel and you takes your chances.
I'm just assuming you're a bit more concerned about the lives of you and your own family than you are about those other 7 billion souls' problems. As you should be.

That's it, easy-peasey.
The entire strategy.

(People who've thought about this stuff realize, probably long before this point in the post, that this means being able to supply yourself with food, water, power, heating, medical aid, fire-fighting and security, communications, local intelligence, and all the other necessities of life, for an extended period, with zero outside resources. Such details are far beyond the scope of a single blog post. So I'd advise those to whom this is news to get on with providing yourself those abilities, I beseech you.)

Ebola will not low-crawl under your wire and butt-rape you.
I'd be sure and screen out transit in or out by four-legged visitors too, including squirrels and such, not to mention der fleiedermaus species, on principle.

And FWIW, I wouldn't try to simulate Ebola infection marking, nor any other.
a) People who actually have Ebola will not be deterred.
b) People starving and desperate will not be deterred either.
c) Such marking may be used by TPTB as a means of deciding which places to burn to the ground at some point. (That'd really suck for you, to survive a pandemic, only to be wiped out by whatever follows, because of them thinking you were infected. Don't get cute about this.)
d) Sensible people might shoot you on sight if they ever saw you coming out, thinking you were still infected.
So don't do anything that stupid.
Hang your own version of  "F**K OFF!" signs, with a skull and crossbones, and that should do the trick.




Someone else asked what I'd be doing if it came to my hospital.

In a nutshell:

Ebola comes in, confirmed, and I'm going out. Then and there.
I have been in no hospital in my entire working career that's remotely prepared to do anything but get me, you, and everyone else in proximity, killed by attempting to deal with this disease.
I have no compunctions about "looking badass" in the face of a virus not impressed by half-assed measures and trying to "save face". Others can save face. I'll be saving my ass.

I can take my license literally anywhere I like, including anywhere from the Arctic Circle to Tierra Del Fuego just in this hemisphere, and I'm not worried about "looking good" to people who want to re-arrange deck chairs on the Titanic, instead of heading for the lifeboats. Heroes, in this sort of thing, become dead heroes. I don't want to die because I was stupid, in hopes maybe someone who survived, somewhere may someday carve my name on a stone monument, along with hundreds of others.

I'ma GTFO, and I'll be one of those survivors.

We get a BL-IV containment wing, and train on its use, and we can talk about me staying and playing under those circumstances. Nothing less will suffice.

Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than you. - Murphy's Laws Of Combat

That is all.

Rules For Life

























You've got to do the work, and fight to the goal, to get the rewards.

Roads Not Travelled



This recent posting popped up in my YouTube dogpile. Enjoy it for the journey. I was thoroughly intrigued. (Whether you are or not, and what perambulations this sort of thing leads to in your mind is your own affair.)

TL;DW: Four retired old farts decided to rig bicycle contraptions to allow them to travel across mostly wilderness Patagonia for several hundred miles along the antiquated and largely abandoned small-gauge railroad line running near the foot of the Andes in the southwest of Argentina.

I'm glad they had fun.
Can't believe none of them thought to learn a little Español prior to the undertaking, even a bare smattering, but that's some people for you. And with the tiniest pushing, they could just as easily have turned this travelogue into a full-fledged NatGeo episode and gotten paid to do the whole thing.

It would have been no less epic, and twice as enjoyable.

Maybe that thought will occur to them, and they can make it a twice-in-a-lifetime experience, and even more enjoyable for us internet gawkers.

Contrast that charming trip through a rural region of a Latin country, with the fate of the tofu-slurping Birkenstock-wearing buy-the-world-a-Coke millennial snowflakes who recently got shredded and diced by jihadi @$$holes in Muslim Tajikistan.

There are places in the world you can do this sort of thing in your twilight years, and others where you'd be a fool to try.

I've never been much for tourism, but were the bug to bite, this strikes me as far more interesting than gallivanting around with a bunch of fat old cityfolk in their declining years, waddling from tour bus to museum to buffet to hotel.

In fact, I'm already building the cargo-capable four-wheeled recumbent bike with adjustable-width frame in my head, for just such a thing.

A couple of tips from other world travelers I've always remembered:

Learn a little bit of the language.
Carry a deflated soccer ball or three, a hand pump, and a small jarful of inflation needles, and you'll never lack for local friends between the ages of 5 and 35.

Monday, June 17, 2019

Rules For Life


















No Thing Is Free.
Nothing Is Free.

Works both ways.

Your Monday Morning Ray Of Sunshine

While you were sleeping...


Pay Attention!:

1) This is not confirmed. Just someone with "Ebola-like symptoms." Could turn out to be a nothingburger, like dozens of similar false alarms during past outbreaks. (O please, please, please, please...)

2) Kericho Hospital in Kenya is some 400 miles from the Congo outbreak Hot Zone, clear the other side of Uganda. If, I repeat if, this case is confirmed as Ebola, that's a horrifyingly yuuuuuuuge leap outside all prior containment.

3) Obviously, if confirmed, this result would indicate Ebola is now active in three countries.
Stop me if you've heard this one before...

4) FYI, Kericho, while quite distant from Congo, is only about 80 mi. from Nairobi (pop 3.4M), with an international airport, and direct regular flights on Air Kenya from their airport right to JFK Airport, NYFC. Flights can be had for about US $700-1400, which would challenge people living in mud huts, but if they're flying there, there are people there to pay for the seats, and it's a 15h hop, direct. That's how Duncan got from Liberia to Dallas. Cheers, Big Apple!

5) Just a reminder that the method - the only method - they're currently using to screen for Ebola at airports and ports of entry is elevated temps, and as we've noted, and the WHO confirmed in print, publicly, last October, fever is completely absent in 50% of confirmed Ebola cases in the current outbreak.

6) This shows the impact the mere possibility of this epidemic disease's spread is having on surrounding countries and populations. Kudos to local officials for taking this seriously, and taking due diligence precautions.


If it's just one of 57 other tropical diseases with similar symptoms, and not Ebola, be happy. Be very happy. This time.
If it's confirmed to be Ebola, sphincters will puckering in Nairobi, Geneva, D.C., and pretty much anyplace with a jet airport, not to mention the next 20 closest countries to the outbreak. Good times all around.

Either way, the underlying truth remains: this thing is leaking out, and there's probably going to be a further spread, to a horrible likelihood.

We may know definitively which way this breaks within the day, and certainly within 48-72 hours.

So, how are you doing on your food and water stockpile, sanitary accomodations, concertina rolls, and 12 ga. buckshot supplies?
Just curious.

And if you were interested, there are some great options out there for emergency decon:

Buying three or more gets a volume discount!

Happy Monday.

(And I should mention: when the posts on this start writing themselves again, and I can't swing a dead cat without hitting the next three stories, this outbreak has officially jumped the shark, and it's going to land in a smoking hole on the ground. Like that napalm above.)

UPDATE: NO Ebola. Ducked a bullet there. This time.
Hopefully they will tighten up border checks. But with people there travelling in and out of the DRC Hot Zone all the time, we'll see how long before they get hit.
I doubt this luck today will last.

Sunday, June 16, 2019

Dunning-Kruger: Why The Dumbass Next Door Will Get You Killed

Despite this meme, and the posted Comments policy
on the right sidebar, today's post was brought to you
by the letters "M", "O", "R", and "N", and the IQ "40".

[I was saving this post for tomorrow, but I finished my appointed rounds early, and maybe I'll take tomorrow off, and just leave this up instead.- A.]

Generally, I appreciate Comments to posts I make. Otherwise I'd just sit in the den and mumble to myself. Good ones add to the discussion, on the theory that None Of Us Is Smarter Than All Of Us, editorial accountability, etc.

On the other side of the scale is the boot camp wisdom delivered by one of my drill instructors:











Truer words have never been uttered.

There's also the 24K gold assessment by Mssrs. Dunning, and Kruger, regarding the regrettable human failing where the less people actually understand about something, the smarter they think they are on that topic.

I tell you plainly, all I know about Ebola is what I've read.
Which is everything I can get my hands on.

Other people read one blog post, can't grasp the basics of even that, and conclude they must therefore be the Smartest Guy In The Room.

Which brings us directly to today's example of That Guy:
Anonymous said...
350,000,000 people live in the U.S.
We have, perhaps, 15 beds available to treat Ebola patients safely. As many as 50% of whom would live and survive the infection. 75% if you're really lucky.
So your best odds in an Ebola outbreak if you become infected, are a 1 in 35,000,000 chance of survival.


I'm to sure [sic] how you did the math there, but it's very very suspect.

We tried, patiently, to explain where the wheels went off his tricycle.
 
Then you're suffering from dyscalculia, but I'll explain it anyways.

There are 350,000,000 people in the U.S., give or take.
There are 15 staffed BL-IV beds.

15 people will get those beds.
Everyone else will get Jack, and Shit.
(That would be 349,999,985 people, if you're keeping a tally, who will be told "Best wishes" along with such sage medical advice as "Wash your hands" and "Cover your cough".)

Once you get into a BL-IV bed, historically you have a 50-75% chance of survival.
Let's split the difference and call it 66%.
66% of 15 is 10. (But it could range from 7-12, historically.)
You thus have 10 chances out of 350,000,000, which reduces to a 1 in 35,000,000 chance of getting into one of those beds, and surviving.

This is called fractions.
It's generally covered for most people in third or fourth grade.

Unprotected and untreated, 80-90% of Ebola victims die.
Horribly.
"Surviving" for the other 10-20% isn't anything to write home about either.
Read up on [post-]Ebola Virus Syndrome.

Short answer, don't get infected.
Stock up, and bunker in.

Because if you get it, and you're Case #16 or higher, you're not going to be treated, just farmed out to a death center, where you will die, and then incinerated.
Being dead already, you won't mind that last part.

QED

One might think that such a painstaking explanation might have soothed the confusion in the mind of such a mentally challenged chowder-head, but no. He had yet to spread his wings to full peacock-fan proportions.
Delete
Anonymous said...
Aesop,
So the bush people in subsaharan Africa somehow manage a fifty percent survival rate, but if it makes it to the US we're looking at a survival rate of essentially zero. If everyone in the US is infected, only ten people will remain on the continent.
That sound about right to you?

15 people will get those beds.
Everyone else will get Jack, and Shit.


I have a magical formula that will double the number of those beds. Roll more into the isolation rooms.
There are also things called tents...marvelous inventions.
Good grief.

That, gentle readers, is bag-of-hammers breathtaking stupidity of such epic proportions as to raise a blister on boot leather.
So yet again, we remonstrated, albeit less generously in Round Two.
 
Delete
Fucking brilliant!

And can you also squat and shit out double the number of trained personnel to care for them? Doctors, nurses, ancillary staff, lab techs, clean up crew, everyone? And also shit out twice the supplies necessary to care for them? Another eight tons worth of exposure suits alone, just for 15 more patients? Not to mention medicines, IV fluids, tubing, bedding and linen, and so on?

No...? Can't do that?

Did you figure they were going to treat themselves?
Or that the isolation room magically cures people?

So much for that great idea.

Bush people in sub-Saharan Africa infected with the virus manage a 10-20% survival rate, not 50%. So will we, with similar levels of medical treatment options for the other 349+M people.

So if it infected everyone, only 280,000,000-315,000,000 people here would die outright.

The rest of the survivors, all 35,000,000-70,000,000 or so, would only have [post-]Ebola Virus Syndrome, which side affects include eventual blindness, along with perpetual headaches, joint pain, and a host of other debilitating problems.

And they'll have 280,000,000+ corpses to dispose of.
But highway traffic will be lighter, so there's that.

Ebola will also probably become endemic to wildlife species on this continent as well, so we could look forward to additional regular outbreaks, forever, without having to wait for another batch to get imported from Africa.

You're going to fix that with tents?

Genius, pal. Call the Pentagon, and tell 'em you've cracked the whole problem, all by yourself, because all we needed to do was pitch more tents all along.

I've only posted somewhere in the neighborhood of 200+ blog posts on this problem in the last 6 years.
You've skimmed one, and hurt yourself trying to digest it.

Stop thinking now, before you sprain your head.
That was really the most embarrassingly stupid pair of posts anyone has ever put up here, in the history of this blog.

No, really.

Walk tall.
And please, keep your thoughts to yourself.
Entertaining as it will be to people for days afterwards, I really don't like kicking the retarded kids; it just looks bad.

Now we come to a conundrum: Duelling Anonymous @$$tards.
Because the wonders of Blogger, and the similar low double-digit IQs involved make it hard to tell if we now have two retards, or one, posting twice.
 Anonymous said...
If you look at the population charts of countries hit by ebola in Africa, ebola was barely a blip.
So asserting the odds of living on if the US is struck by the virus are 1 in 35,000,000 just undermines your own credibility.
The problem with such absurd assertions about the sky falling and world ending is...the next time people take them less seriously. And the next even less.
Until they stop worrying and become cavalier.
Your information, though largely correct (like: isolation precautions in medical facilities leave a lot to be desired, and ebola is very very very bad), is filled with half truths and hyperbole that push it into the land of the absurd.

@$$tard #1: Reading comprehension for everyone but you is still a thing.
Nota bene that at no time did we assert that "the odds of living on if the US is struck by the virus are 1 in 35,000,000". (Scroll up, if you doubt this.)
We said, and in carefully italicized language (Common Core grads, do not dive for a translator; italicized means we did this, it doesn't mean we spoke in the language of the Popes and Caesars.), that
"if it infected everyone, only 280,000,000-315,000,000 people here would die outright."
For those, like Anonymous here, who are manifestly too stupid to comprehend basic English grammar, logic, and rhetoric, I cannot help you. That wisdom represents the Trivium, considered by the ancients to be 3/7ths of a proper education, and a lack of which I cannot remedy in mere blog posts. I urge you to return to the grade school that passed you on to middle school, punch the teachers who failed you in the face, and demand an immediate refund.

And alas for Anonymous #1, I'm not too very troubled that my credibility with demonstrated morons is undermined. I write for reasonably intelligent people, and leave the rest to the tender embraces of Mother Nature and Darwinian selection.

Since I made therefore no such absurd assertions, half truths, nor hyperbole, your pejorative-laden gainsaying is an entirely gratuitous, worthless, unsupported, and putrescent load of horseshit.

Had you any substantiation, you might have attempted to illustrate your point, but as you have nothing like, it's merely the carping of the ignorant demonstrating their mental defects.
Thanks for playing, and we have some lovely parting gifts for you.
Delete
 
Now we return to another contribution certainly from the original Anonymous, who not only sticks up for his rank ignorance, but doubles down on it.
 Anonymous said...
You're going to fix that with tents?
It isn't a panacea, but it will offer more than your asserted 15 total beds in the entire CONUS capable of handling ebola patients.

Genius, pal. Call the Pentagon, and tell 'em you've cracked the whole problem, all by yourself, because all we needed to do was pitch more tents all along.
They already know. People have been handling deadly chemicals in airtight tents and hazmat suits for decades, on a regular basis (sometimes 12 hour shifts....unlike Africa they have access to cooling suits).
Anyway, done here.
I won't post again, don't worry.

Worry? You misunderstand me.
My sides hurt.
 
Look, Dipshiticus Maximus, the problem isn't the lack of beds, you ignorant simpleton fuckwit.
They sell beds online by the gross.
 
What makes BL-IV beds special isn't how many of them there are, it's how many of them come with an attached building with the capacity to provide negative airflow, BL-IV filtration and flawless virucidal handling of every cubic centimeter of atmosphere inside without contaminating the entire surrounding countryside with deadly pathogens for which there is no cure; and incineration of the metric fucktons of BL-IV waste products, from gloves to mattresses; and airlock decontamination of the practitioners; and having metric fucktons of all those supplies already on hand right effing now, oh, and like I wasn't absolutely clear on the concept, having enough goddam practitioners - doctors, nurses, techs, and ancillary staff, who take years of learning and months of BL-IV specific training to be able to competently and safely care for patients in such a hazardous and alien practice environment without spreading the disease, like the amateurs did in a Dallas ICU.
 
So if you really think just popping up a few tents fixes that, you're really too stupid to waste any further discussion on, and you probably need the following diagram in a big way.
 


All part of the service, moron.
























But even someone stupid enough to try another bite at that apple can serve as a negative example for those less stupid, so for their sake, we'll finish driving this home.

Because, Gentle Readers, they already use tents now. In Africa. Because "Ebola Treatment Center" is another misnomer, whereby TPTB have been lying to you, me, and most especially, thousands of doomed Africans with Ebola.

Because they don't do much of any "treatment" in Africa. They do "palliative care".
The centers should be called "Ebola Hospice Centers". They wipe fevered foreheads, they offer a cup of cool water, and they mop up Ebola-laden diarrhea and vomitus, until the virus kills its usual 75-90% tally.
The survivors, they send home. Or draft to work in the Ebola Treatment Centers, since
a) they're now immune, and
b) no-effing-body else wants anything to do with them, and their families are probably all dead already; and
c) everybody's working for free anyways, so it doesn't cost them anything.
 
Curiously, health care workers over here have this quaint notion that they should be paid for their labors, so that's not going to work here. Until everybody with a license to practice has left skidmarks in the parking lot. (Like by Day Two.)
 
Call me crazy, but it seems to me getting taken care of by the dumbshits stupid enough to contract Ebola to begin with, and trusting them not to spread it, is like taking your effed up car back to the guys who effed it up the first time, and then expecting they'll get it right the second time, i'n'it??
 
And, when the outbreak is over, they burn the tent and the whole treatment center to the ground.
With napalm.
Just to be sure.
 
And with only 15 actual (not "asserted", shit-for-brains; I posted the documentation, so maybe try reading for comprehension, just for the novelty) BL-IV beds available here, for actual treatment, which gets us to 50-75% chance of recovery instead of 10-20%, if they get you in early enough, everyone else infected is going to get the same African palliative care model, and die at exactly the same 80% slate-wiping genocidal rate as in Africa. There's your potential millions of deaths, because we saw how good the amateur Ebola care models worked in Dallas, five years ago.
 
(And trust me, by three cases outside of BL-IV, the staffs everywhere are going home, and they won't be back until long after this is over. Or they'll die, stupidly, listening to the same official happygas horsesh*t that infected the two nurses in Dallas. And in the course of that dying, spread the outbreak even farther.)
 
So you either get the lotto-unlikely 1 BL-IV bed out of 15; or you get Ebola, and probably (80% or worse) die; or you bunker in someplace until it's over, which wee point I may have been a bit shy about pounding across in the last five or six posts since the beginning of the month. Or maybe some Anonymous jackhole commenters have cement-heads, and sh*t for brains.
 
I could give you good odds on which is likelier.






















 
And now, I'm going to hand it over to frequent commenter Nick, just in time for him to climb up the ropes, and come down with an Atomic Elbow smash on our Fucktard Of the Day.
Take it home, Nick:
In Africa, they don't have 3 million people counting on truck drivers to deliver tomorrow's groceries. Or 9 million. They don't have a large percentage who would die without daily or weekly meds, which aren't stocked locally, and can't be stockpiled by individuals. Their supply chain looks completely different.

They don't riot if their favorite sports team wins, let alone if the stores are closed for a week.

Since you sound like you work for the CDC, the patronizing attitude that the people need to be kept from panicking annoys the HELL out of those of us with better than room temperature IQ and the motivation to take care of ourselves. I suggest reading your own CDC guidelines on Business Continuity and Pandemic Flu. Ask yourself the same questions they ask, like, can your business survive with only 50 of people coming to work? Then ask if modern western society can survive if only 50% of people go to work.

Having been thru civil collapse (Rodney King riots in LA), terror attack (I was 8 miles from ground zero on 9-11), and a variety of natural disasters (Rita, Ike, Harvey)- the thread that holds our society together is thin and strained.

Airline pilots for some airlines can rightly be fired for lying to passengers about the severity of any issue. This is the way it should be. Treat people as adults. Don't lie to me. The pushback when your lies are exposed, and the CDC DID NOT COVER ITSELF WITH GLORY IN 2014, will be worse than the truth.

nick

Also, nit picking over one idea (where the reservoir is) is a great but tired tactic to distract from the bigger issue. If this gets here, we are not prepared and people will die. Let them panic! What do you expect them to do? Run out and stock up on food? Close the border? Quarantine arriving flights??? HOW IS ANY OF THAT A BAD THING?

How, indeed?

Ebola in Sh*tholia is a blip because when you're already at a Turd World nothing Stone Age status of civilization, an epidemic can't put much of a dent in things.
It's a wee bit different in the First World, in a delicately-balanced, high-trust society intensely dependent on everything working all the time.
So where does that leave us?

The odds point to this arriving here.
We've all but thrown the gates open and rolled out a red carpet for Ebola this time.

















In 2014, we were two BL-IV patients away from being West Africa.
Two.

Idiots, get that through your thick skull.
The smart people have already grasped the significance of that fact.
If Duncan had infected two more people, it would have gotten out loose in the wild.
We had no vaccine at all then.

And we have nowhere near enough now; perhaps a few tens of thousands of doses.
I've seen nothing anywhere that indicates they can ramp that up to hundreds of millions (let alone billions) of doses in even the next year. They've been vaccinating like crazy in DRC, and it's still doubling reliably, blowing right past all those mythical "containment rings" of vaccinated people, and has now spread to a second poverty-stricken Turd World Sh*thole.
Color me shocked. It's within a short bus ride of two or three megapolii, with international airports in each.

Which means it could be anywhere in 24 hours from yesterday.
And once it hits 16 cases here, they're going to be cared for by the Amateur Hour Follies, at a hospital untrained, unstaffed, unequipped, and unprepared for it. Maybe one near you. They're not going to just roll bunk beds into the paltry few BL-IV wards.

Or, mirabile dictu, it might flame out in Africa.

To this day, no one in authority, anywhere, can explain why it burned out in West Africa after only 2 years, because they never met any of their posted goals for contact tracing, containment, number of facilities, safe burials, or anything else. Not one.

I wouldn't bet the farm on that square this time around either, thanks anyways.

But if it does get here, a la a 2019 version of Duncan, you won't know for two weeks, when someone shows up at your local ER, with blood shooting out of all orifices.

It'll be a wee bit late to "make a plan" then.

No doubt Anonymous Simpleton will be trying to pitch a tent, and telling you everything's gonna be okay. And the morons at CDC will be telling you, yet again, "We can handle this! We're ready for it! First World health care! Magic beans!"


Best Wishes with that plan.

I hope my readers will understand if I choose to approach things with a bit more realistic viewpoint.

But thanks, Anonymous Simpleton(s) for providing the usual Comedy Relief.