Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Just Keeping Y'All In The Loop




















In Califrutopia, Los Angeles County has over 10M residents; Orange County has more than 3M residents.
They are, respectively, the 1st and 6th most populous counties in the entire United States, comprising 1 person in 25 of every person who lives in the U.S. 
Combined, they have over 120 different hospitals, which is one third of all the hospitals in the whole state.

As of 6AM this morning, Los Angeles County had only 50 ICU beds still available. 
Orange County had zero. {Update:Same story for Imperial County. Fresno County. San Bernardino County. Santa Cruz County. And on and on. As of four days ago, it was reported there are no ICU beds at all in the entire San Joaquin Valley, which runs the length of the center of the state.}

I've only been doing this for 30+ years, and it's never happened before, not even once, nor even come close at any time in my career. Nor, frankly, in my entire lifetime, or yours.*

Keep telling yourself this is a "scamdemic".

















Meanwhile, the secret magic to avoid it is so hard, it's only been common knowledge since the late 1800s:

Wash yer gorram hands!
Wear a mask to cut down on germ spread.
Wipe down commonly used surfaces and objects with a disinfectant.

That's all we're doing in the hospitals, and it works just like it did in the Crimea, or the Civil War, and every time since.

People keep asking me about vaccines, particularly: "Are you gonna get it when it comes out?"

1) I may very well not have a choice in the matter, unless I aspire to live under my shopping cart henceforth, with all my wordly goods and chattels contained therein, as I travel from dumpster to dumpster seeking sustenance.

2) How it should be administered is 
a) extremely strongly suggested for anyone 65 and over, strongly suggested to everyone over 55, and everyone over 35 with any number of co-morbidities that predispose you to dying from it, if they want to get it.
b) all first responders (EMS, firefighters, cops, doctors, nurses, etc.) who want to get it
c) anyone else that wants it.
In that order of priorities.

3) After that, it should be like a pneumonia shot: when you hit 55 or so, it should be recommended.
Unless you have strong reasons for getting it (a,b,c, above), they should tell anyone under 40 and healthy to stay the hell away from it.

4) My rationale is, just as with all new vaccines, we have no idea what the long-term effects will be.  People over 65, frankly, have lived a life, and they're the meat on the table for who this kills most. If it succeeds wildly, you wipe out the death rate, and it's less of a problem than deaths from rabid chickens and being trampled by wildebeests, as an annual cause of death likelihood. And at that point, the excuse for all the unconstitutional horsesh*t we've endured ceases, overnight.

If there are side affects, you're better off finding out with those in their 70s and 80s than if you gave it to all your cops, firemen, doctors, nurses, etc., and after it's too late to suck it out of their arms. Because it takes another 20 years to make more of them. People with little chance of serious illness nor death from this - i.e. almost everyone under 40 - should probably stay the hell away unless they have either a high-rish occupation, or a high-risk health profile.

5) If you decline the shot, and subsequently get infected, and then pass it on to others, especially those susceptible to serious illness or dying, however, you should be dick-punched for forty days non-stop, and then flogged around the fleet a couple of times, before being allowed to mingle in society again just like every other @$$bag f**ktard who brings their crud to work, or sends their kids to school, when they're sick, and they know it.
In lieu of flogging, if a suitable whipmaster is unavailable, I would accept staking the miscreant out naked between fire ant hills, slathered with fresh honey every other day, for not less than a week.

6) That said, even if it's not mandatory for my job, I'd probably still get the vaccine (I like the Moderna non-GMO one more than the Pfizer sub-zero version), because while I'm not in the critical zone, I'm near enough, and for ten months now, I'm working with actual ragingly infected Kung Flu patients daily at bad breath distance, and the opportunity to block getting sick or dying, and cancelling out stupid people's dumbass lifestyle choices, with a couple of shots, looks like a pretty good tradeoff. Once I'm immune, all y'all can be the biggest dumbasses on the planet once it doesn't affect me, and at that point, IDGAF. Which is a pretty good reason for anyone who wants the vaccine to get it, once they have the opportunity.















But now you hopefully can see what I was talking about with Ebola five years ago.

If this outbreak had been Ebola (60-90% CFR), or any number of diseases far more deadly than Kung Flu (3% CFR, worst day), the death toll would have been into 8 or 9 figures. (Common Core grads, that's 10M-100M dead). And just like I told you (and @$$clown Idiot-In-Chief-Fauci lied about):

1) We aren't prepared for major communicable disease outbreaks. Seriously, look around.
2) They will get here. Every damned last time.
3) We can't handle them.
4) We don't have a plan.

An Inconvenient Truth
























5) First World healthcare doesn't matter with a population of low-80-IQ Gilligans and Turd World scientific illiterates driving the bus, every stinking time.

Just read some of the comments, even here, if you want to see the level of intelligence you'll be dealing with from some of your neighbors.

So if you're serious about preparedness, you'd better make provision for the next time something like this gets loose. There will be a next time. And another.  And another.

And that doesn't just mean having a 10-year supply of Charmin sh*t tickets pre-hoarded.

Get your pandemic preps in order. You will see this material again.



[Update: I should have added this the minute CA linked this post on WRSA, but I include it now as part of the public service, for the special ed. snowflakes who want someone to spoon feed them sugarplum fairytales:











FTR, I spend $0/mo for this blog since ever, and receive ten times that amount in pay from readers and subscribers. (Common Core grads, that would also be $0.) I don't run ads, or pimp any products that enrich me so much as a red cent. I'm happy to point you to those that do, who give value for the money. I post what I know, and what I think, and I tell you why I think what I do. If you've got better information, feel free to share. But if all you can conjure up, when reality rocks your world or truth with the bark still on it rubs you the wrong way in your gentler bits, is butthurt and whinging retorts, rub a dab of the above emollient onto the affected area, and click your whiny ass back to whatever short bus you stumbled off of, and spare us the waste of bandwidth. Better yet, get your own blog (they're actually free on Blogger) and feel free to peddle your version of reality, and/or sniff your own farts. I promise, I won't miss them here. Really. You're entitled to your own opinion. You do not, however, get to make up your own facts.]







* In fairness, there are three categories of hospital arrivals.
ALS, which is Advanced Life Support. Those are people the paramedics bring in.
BLS, which is Basic Life Support. Those are people brought in by EMTs, and also family or friends, for less serious medical problems.
BS is the last category, which stands for exactly what you think it stands for.
I have no hard data nor even SWAG on what the ratio is of ALS/BLS calls, but 50% of all ER visits, 24/7/365/forever are BS runs.
0% of the people in ICU are there from BS runs.

Take a hint: We're in a mother-effing horrible pandemic in much of the country. If you're not dying faster than the rest of us, either go to Urgent Care or your doctor, or stay your @$$ home, and learn how to cope with life with a box of bandaids, Neosporin, some gauze, and some tape. If whatever you've got could have been treated by your momma with that, Pepto Bismol, Tums, Benadryl, or breathing into a paper bag, do yourself, the hospital staff, and every sick person in Creation a favor by not being the dumbass who comes to the hospital when all the ICU beds are full, for a bump on your toe the Urgent Care could deal with for $40 cash. Or we'll kick you out so fast you'll get vertigo.

48 comments:

Rhea said...

BuT I wAS TOld iT woULd gO AwaY aFTer tHE ELecTiOn!!!! /sarc

At this juncture we appear to be in a holding situation around these parts. It's so far not getting drastically worse (the place doesn't look like NYC - yet) but it's not really getting any better either. I am hearing a lot more reports of people I know getting it, or whose family members I know are getting it. There but for the grace of God...

Local hospital has locked down again, banning visitors except in extreme circumstances. Honestly I am surprised that the state government hasn't enforced a bunch more restrictions on us, given how high the infection rate has gotten.

Regarding the vaccine, hmm, who do I trust more, the vaccine providers or everyone else I have to deal with who are bent on spreading this to every corner of the state because being told to wear a cloth over their mouth gives them a self-induced case of hysterics?

Hmmm, decisions, decisions.

~Rhea

FredLewers said...

I remember Ebola... That shit popped up in Dallas, that hospital is less than an hourfrom my house. Including walking from the parking garage. Scared the crap out of me that time. I wasn't ready and I knew it. Rona has been a learning curve. Thank God it turned out like it did. Could've been worse. Next one probably will be.
But starting with basic common sense and decent personal hygiene goes a long way.

Dave Bagwill said...

I found this to be very interesting, and even encouraging. (Apart from the political shenanigans):

"However, on page 18 of a recent AMA memo, issued on October 30, (resolution 509, page 3) the organization officially reversed its stance on HCQ, stating that its potential for good currently may supersede the threat of any potentially harmful side effects.

So, there we have it. HQ could not be approved before the election, because President Trump had recommended it. Meanwhile, with an 8o +% reduced risk of having to be admitted to the hospital if administered with Azitromycine and Zinc as soon as testing positive or symptoms occurred, many (70000+) lives could have been saved."
From North Carolina Renegade blog
Dave Bagwill, Medford, Oregon

RandyGC said...

Question.

You stated that over 55 should get the pneumonia shot. My GP says to get it when I turn 65.

Typo or is there some difference of opinion in the medical field?

Robin Datta said...

Indian COVID-19 packs:
https://youtu.be/qySpzhQ2Wwk?t=19m13s

UK and US COVID-19 deaths per million population:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&country=BGD~IND~USA~GBR~IDN~NGA~THA&region=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=daily&hideControls=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc

Robin Datta said...

1. Face shield: incoming for eyes, incoming and outgoing for mouth & nose.
2. Hand wash: with each instance of potential contamination.
3. Surface clean: with each instance of potential contamination.

Robin Datta said...

HTML to touch & go:
COVID-19 death rates per million

John said...

Deaths are certainly down (as an overall percentage of cases) when I look at the data - it looks like either care has improved, or fewer older people are getting it.

Or both? What's your observation?
-JW

Nick Flandrey said...

Aesop and ebola are the reasons I was so well prepped up for this go round. Thanks again.

Here in Houston we are seeing the increase in hospitalization, but what we're not seeing, and I think the timing is such that we SHOULD BE seeing, is a spike from Thanksgiving. We are seeing increases as I said, but the curve is smooth. Seems like there should be a spike.

WRT more people I know getting it, found out today that my tenant had it, but his co-habitating fiance never got it. Three weeks in the same household under quarantine, he has symptoms and a positive test, she has two negative tests. Two of my elderly aunts got it, one in a care home died. The other got it at a party in Key West and was nursed thru it at home (by daughter who is in fact a nurse). Family friend in Michigan got a bad case, hospitalized for 3 or more weeks, several co-morbidities and he got through it and came home. He'd had a massive heart attack, massive stroke, and was overweight, but had recovered as much as he was ever going to before getting the 'rona.

There must be some additional factor involved, and maybe interaction with the different strains, that we still aren't seeing, or can't identify. It would be very useful to understand why it sometimes strikes down the young and healthy, and sometimes spares the guy with the hat trick of co-morbidity.

n

5stonegames said...

Thanks for the update.

FWIW I wear my stupid mask and have washed my hands and avoided my face for a long long time. Influenza is nasty business much less this bio-war bug.

Now a functional society would realize that they shouldn't trade with low trust cultures like China as we have enough reckless ninnies of our own hellbent on playing God with the fundamentals of life.

Our is not a functional society and as such the best thing anyone can do is batten down the proverbial hatches as we slide into best case scenario, the second and eventually the third world , that is assuming 2021 isn't the year of the inevitable Boog and Collapse or Both.

Also buy ammo, there are going to be attempted bans and lawsuits galore to dry up the supply even when the panic buying and hoarding lets up. Guns you can make. Ammo is much harder.

A complaint though. If wash my hands (I do this anyway) clean up spaces and wear a mask was all that was being asked, this would be fine, it isn't and it doesn't look like its going away even with the vaccine or after rigged elections.

Also States don't need to operate with any sense so long as the Feds can bail them out and the Chinese use it is a market subsidy there is no reason not to keep the economy closed. This way the elite get rich , we get miserable which they like and everyone gets a metaphorical slave collar.

The way I figure it the lockdown is killing our society worse than the COVID worse case scenarios 3% lethal would have been and empowering wannabe tyrants on top of that.

On top of that given the high masking compliance and the fact that the spread isn't slowing anywhere near enough maybe there is not a damned thing anyone can really do and we'd be better off supporting hospitals and letting nature or well Chinese bio-engineering take its course rather than pissing away our society further.

Oh last to Rhea's point. The maskless are just people who want to be left alone to live as they always have and mean you no harm.

If you trust an untested or poorly tested for profit rushed vaccine for any reason other than you are at great risk of dying you are a damned fool. Vaccines can be beneficial but they carry real risks.

Aesop said...

@Dave B.,

Of course HCQ works. It's been around for decades, safely, and the only opposition was political-based, not scientific. All officials sources are biased/"woke". Bear that in mind for any "official" report, and 110% of MSM.

@Randy,
65 is fine. I got it much earlier than either age, b/c health care worker.
All I'm saying is COVID vaxx should treated like pneumonia shots:
older, and/or more at risk: recommended.
Younger/healthy? Skip it.

@THE John Wilder,
Shenanigans.
They're counting infections versus number of tests, ignoring the obvious fact that some people have been tested 3/5/8/eleventy times.
If I test for it weekly, and get it once, that does not make it 1/52 as likely to infect, but then these are reports from the same people who think that Biden won with 137% of the votes counted.
We are a small bit better about treating it, but given that you don't come into hospital (because we won't admit you) until you're pretty effed already, which only happens in <10% or so of cases, most people will be doing fine, and most of the people we get will still recover. Versus the beginning, when we knew nothing, where most critical cases died.
There's also the consideration that the ones most susceptible to dying were the low-hanging fruit culled in the early days, although for 45 states, that fruit still hasn't been harvested. Which is why the death toll is going up faster this time than last spring, because Gilligans.
Darwin always gets the last laugh.

@5stone,

"high masking compliance"...
I don't care who you are, that right there was funny.

People with their noses out.
People who pull the mask down to cough and sneeze.
People who dig inside the mask with unwashed hands to rub their nose, mouth, or rub their eyes.
People with it on upside down, inside out, or both.
And masks are only the tip of the iceberg of infection prevention.
When you touch everything, then your phone, then your keys, then your food you're stuffing in your mouth, washing nothing and disinfecting never, you don't need a mask. You should also pee on electric fences and lick handrails and stripper poles.
That's the "high mask compliance" I'm seeing out and about, 24/7/365 throughout this, it hasn't improved a whit since Day One, and it's even worse in the states that didn't get the sh*t kicked out of them back in April and May. I've seen it firsthand. And there's a reason that society's poor dumbasses (homeless, non-English speaking, under-educated, and science-averse (which is 98% of all college-age kids not in the actual STEM fields) are the hotspots of every infection bloom. Everyone is a dumbass until after 25, which is simple physiology.

The pundits arguing that wearing masks hasn't worked are ignoring the yuuuuge number of Gilligan @$$hats who never did it right, and never will, because sub-80 IQ.
I'm pretty sure the polarization in national politics would coincide with a polarization of intelligence, with one lump pushing the curve over right of 100, and an equivalent population hump skewing leftwards towards retard status, but it's just a hunch.

I'm also fine with people who don't want to wear a mask because they want to be left alone, with only two conditions:
1) They stay at home.
2) They may mix in public areas unmasked, provided they don't exhale.
Fair is fair.

Hiddenhollow said...




Central NY: Wife says they are considering double bunking in ICU. Staff numbers are down because they are getting it from family members or friends. Isolation PPE works(plus A LOT of cleaning). If you are positive but have no symptoms they want you to work anyway. Going to get worse before it gets better here.

Eainsdad said...

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/24/map-where-are-the-intensive-care-beds-in-california-the-u-s/
This article indicates approximately 7500 ICU beds in California.
https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/
This article indicates there are about 3200 ICU patients suspected of having Covid.

"The number of hospitalizations due to confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases in California reached a total of 15,198, an increase of 620 from the prior day total. The number of ICU patients due to confirmed and suspected COVID-19 cases in California reached a total of 3,193, an increase of 115 from the prior day total."
In the entire state of California.
3200 ICU patients.
This is not a pandemic.

Borepatch said...

The biggest problem coming out of this pandemic is that The Powers That Be (especially CDC) have not show themselves to be trustworthy. Questions of politicization won't go away, and they have demonstrated that they have far too much self-confidence that repeatedly leads them to switch directions 180 degrees over and over ("Don't wear a mask, it does no good! "Wear a mask or you'll die").

Coming on top of CDC's Ebola Charlie Foxtrot, this means that it's hard to have a lot of confidence in what those who should be our experts say. I expect that will kill some folks graveyard dead, for which TPTB will pay absolutely no penalty for for which they will never apologize.

This will not end well.

RandyGC said...

Thanks Aesop

When it comes to Medical advice I follow my GP (been with him almost 20 years) vs Some Guy On The Internet (no offense). But I will often ask my GP about stuff SGOTI wrote. Sometimes the response is "I don't know, let me check" or "Yeah, we could do that". It's also sometimes "that's bullshit". I don't have a large sample size as I don't often ask such questions. I don't want to be That Guy with a Google MD.

So I'll get the CHICOM Flu shot when available (as advised by my GP and a certain SGOTI).

So far, a month or so after being tested positive I'm still kicking with only fatigue and coughing fits (getting fewer per day as time goes on). CINCHOUSE seems to be back to her usual self.

Take care

Unknown said...

There is also this:
https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-capacity#hospital-occupancy

Is it real, of course. Are hospitals overwhelmed? not as a whole. In certain spots, possibly.

However, keep in mind that hospitals are about money. If they are not full, they are not making money and are forced to close. 50-75% capacity is not making money. They like to run well about 75% capacity. Go check the figures. They are out there.

Hospitals are also required by law to be able to operate above 100% capacity through methods they must by law have in place for such times. Again, go do the research. It's easily found.

Bottom line, it's real, as is the flu. It kills as does the flu and many other things.

It does NOT rise to the level of fear that we have had thrust upon us and is easily, for most of us, survivable with common sense measures.

There is also the question of why are the total deaths numbers for 2020, below what has been reported for the past decade if there have been so many "additional" covid deaths? As of November the number was around 2.5 mil which is down from the even last year. Strange indeed. These are official numbers I refer to by the way. Again, do the research.

Philly TU Grad said...

Thoughts about the J&J (Jansen) vaccine which is in Phase 3 trials. My employer, major health insurer is partnering with them in the trials and their vaccine is single shot, normal refrigeration and is developed more like “traditional” vaccines. Also in the same vein as HCQ I’ve been seeing a lot about Ivermectin use in other parts of the world with some success

Hockeyjs4 said...

“ If you decline the shot, and subsequently get infected, and then pass it on to others, especially those susceptible to serious illness or dying, however, you should be dick-punched for forty days non-stop, and then flogged around the fleet a couple of times, before being allowed to mingle in society again.” Okay Karen. This is exactly the attitude that takes us down the road to tyranny. We don’t even know if masks or social distancing works. (Ref. Denmark study). So, you’re going to make me take a vaccine that is 95% successful for a disease that 99% of the population is asymptomatic? You have been propagandized. .

Aesop said...

Okay, Jackass.
No one "made you" get a shot, and your reading comprehension is clearly 0% as well.
But if you're too much of a fucktard to stay home when you're sick, and your wanton jackassery harms someone else, exactly as stated, and by the same standard of negligence in common use for millennia for every other thing, that's the road to deserving a good dick-punching. Thanks for making my point, and then underlining it in red.

Aesop said...

@Unknown,

Pencil-whipping half-assed "plans" where "in Step Two, A Miracle Happens" and putting them in the Disaster plan to CYA, are not the same thing as being able to actually handle a pandemic of jackassery for 10+ months effortlessly.

If this is news to anyone, they should get off campus and out into the real world more.

Regarding how ICUs and staying open works, which points I've made here and elsewhere in the last year times without number, read today's post.

And exactly as noted, your "certain spots" are some of the most heavily-populated counties in the state, and the country. "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

ICUs aren't full because of fear. They're full because this stuff is sickening and killing people like no pandemic since 1918, and yet there's still a tsunami of dumbasses who haven't hit the wall headfirst yet, who thus still think it's overblown.

Unknown said...

The term scamdemic would seem to indicate something that is BOTH an actual pandemic, and simultaneously a scam. That fits Covid-19 pretty well. It is very highly transmissible, and can be pretty serious for the elderly or immunocompromised. That makes it something to be seriously concerned about. I personally know two men that have died from it (both in 70s but in reasonably good health prior to Covid).

Part of the scam aspect is the fact that the media and public health authorities seem to be actively suppressing the most helpful information regarding prevention and treatment. Vitamin D, zinc, Ivermectin, HCQ, and inhaled steroids all appear to be very helpful, but the truth seems to be hidden. These products are inexpensive. Big pharmaceutical companies won't make much money off them, and the state would not be able to create and exploit the irrational fear of the masses. Without fearful masses how would they get away with the tyranny?


The the oligarchs never let a crisis go to waste, and they are milking this one to the extreme. The billionaires are on their way to becoming trillionaires. The middle class is quickly becoming the lower class.

Aesop said...

No, the term "scamdemic" is specifically intended to convey that the very idea that there IS a pandemic is a scam, and anyone unclear or unaware of that intention really isn't tall enough for this ride.

The pandemic is as real as a heart attack. Suggesting otherwise is risible and ridiculous.

Quibbling about some fraction of overstatement concerning casualties is a sideshow. The bodies piled up and moved with forklifts in NYFC outside hospitals last spring, or stacked in my own hospital's conex freezer today, weren't and aren't Hollywood SFX, and they weren't killed by "co-morbidities".

You want to go off on officialdom's mendacious perfidy, pick another word.

And anyone operating out of fear is quite simply an idiot.
The media, for the most part, have been nothing but useful idiots for decades.
Anyone operating out of informed understanding of what's actually at risk is neither.

docfromjerusalem said...

Re:RandyGC /If a person is 6-8 weeks post-infection with antibodies, does SGOTI recommend vaxx, after all?

Unknown said...

Maybe "scamdemic" is not the proper term, but covid is clearly both a pandemic and a scam. People are dying and we as a society are being lied to, ripped off, and fucked over.

Compared to the 1918 flu, Covid is far less serious (at least to this point). On a per capita basis, the death rate from that pandemic was vastly higher. In addition, it killed the young and healthy at far greater rates. Losing young mothers hurts more than losing the aged.

Dave Bagwill said...

Look, I'm asking the following in order to help me understand the situation, not to argue. Ok?
What is an intelligent layman supposed to do when faced with this type of report, which is only one of many. Do you disagree/agree with these findings? Inquisitive minds need to know.

Here is the link; the article is probably a bit too long to quote verbatim:
https://swprs.org/face-masks-evidence/

Unknown said...

I work at a 300 bed hospital in NorCal. We also full, but that is normal for this time of year. In our county the C19 infection rate is 0.02 and the death rate is 0.0003. This is similar to the annual flu bugs every year. You know what kills more than, C19 every year in this county? Cancer! 8 times more deadly!! Cardiac disease 6 times. The great Covid scare is meant to control society. All disease is Covid, all death is Covid, there is only Covid destroyer of worlds.



John said...

There are just under 2,500 patients with Covid 19 hospitalized in LA County
with a population of 10 millions.
I cannot find an ICU total beds in existence count online so I'll extrapolate.
There are only about 100 unfilled ICU beds left.
Assuming that ALL of the Covid patients are in ICU beds (2,500) and 100 beds remain
open, it means that there is aproximately 1 bed for every 4,000 persons in LA County.
If there is a real pandemic with an announced increase long expected, why was that extremely low number of ICU beds not increased appropriate to the awaited increase?
This certainly looks like a purposeful shortage to create panic.

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

What honestly would have at least undercut some of this (not all, but some) was if governments had acted sensibly instead of moving directly into dictator mode. That provoked a reaction that could have easily been avoided.

RandyGC said...

docfromjerusalem: The advice from my GP on the CHICOM Flu vaccine was based on his estimate that I would not be getting it until sometime next spring.

Which, given the current roll out schedule I'm seeing locally is about right. (I am not a responder of any type, having left my EMA position due to disability a couple of years ago, nor am I any type of medical or other essential worker).

That conversation took place as part of a follow up telecom towards the end of my quarantine period.

Aesop said...

@Unknown 4:00PM, Agreed. The @$$hats making stuff up out of their back end has been the most ridiculous part of the whole dumpster fire.

@DB,
1) The fact that it's just one random aggregation, with no actual facts or information, means it's probably worth what you paid for it.
2) The repeatability of most so-called "studies" is approaching 0%, because most of them are rent-seeking justifications for grant money, or advocacy by interest groups, neither of which has anything to do with anything like science.
3) Without reading whale-choking amounts of pure bullshit, it's highly unlikely that they controlled for 20 other variables. So unless you can pay my day rate, I'm not going to wade through reams of bullshit just for Ss & Gs.
4) For two examples of how recockulous those "studies" are:
#6 "cloth face masks offer little to no protection in everyday life"
In other news, neither do ceremonial Maori headdresses, putting octopi or bat guano on your head, nor smearing your body with candied yams.
The point is that cloth face masks aren't to protect you from everyone else, they're there to protect everyone else from you.
So a) they're already looking at the gun by pointing the barrel at their head, pulling the trigger, and then wondering why their head hurts
b) by going at this assbackwards, they're ignoring that airborne inhalation is only one means of disease vector transmission, without controlling for 2000 variables like kissing your infected family members, sharing toothbrushes, glasses, and utensils, or sticking your own goddam dirty fingers in you eyes, nose, and mouth, no matter what mask you wear on your face out in public.
#8: if mask use isn't supportable, why then recommend it for anyone, anywhere, for any reason? {Hint: because they know they're full of sh*t.}
This is the level of jackassical pseudo-science being practiced on you by such "studies".
That's why those studies are all horsesh*t, with a caramel candy horsesh*t coating.

I've mentioned this before:
1) Name the hospital(s) that bans the wearing of surgical masks by doctors and nurses in surgery, because "they don't work".
2) Show me their 10-year HAI rate data.

I've had zero takers, nor will I any time this century.

For bonus points,
A) A sneeze sends particle droplets up to 30 feet, at up to 300MPH.
A cough sends them up to 10' at 100MPH
B) Tell me what those numbers are for those wearing a face mask.
C) Explain how B is no different from A, controlling for all other variables other than mask wearing.
D) Show your work.
I'll wait.

@Unknown 5:18PM,

How many of your cancer patients in BFE coughed and sneezed cancer onto others, and killed them as well? How many caught cancer because someone coughed or sneezed it onto them? Would that be 0??
I'm leaving your nonsense for everyone to see, so that people will understand why apples & oranges comparisons are always a fallacy, and exactly as dumb as they sound.

Aesop said...

@John,

There aren't 100 beds left, there are less than 50 (at least as of yesterday).
That's one bed per 200,000 out of a population of 10M, not one per 4,000.
On average in CA, there are about 2.3 ICU beds per 100,000 people.
There are about 7800 ICU beds in CA.
Since there are 1/3 of all hospitals in the state in LA and OC, let's just SWAG that 1/3 of those 7800 ICU beds are in those 2 counties as well, split 66.6 and 33.3, just to be sporting and appropriate.

That means LA starts with 1730 ICU beds, countywide, total. So all those COVID patients aren't in the ICU. But the ones that are have sucked up almost every empty ICU bed in existence.

I'm going to guote this one in its entirety, just out of sheer gobsmacked wonder:

"If there is a real pandemic with an announced increase long expected, why was that extremely low number of ICU beds not increased appropriate to the awaited increase?
This certainly looks like a purposeful shortage to create panic.
"

Bless your heart. There's a tear at the corner of my eye. No, really.

Well, since it takes 2-4 years to make a new nurse from scratch, and another 1-2 years to train them, for a total of 3-6 years lead time to train them to work in ICU, which gets you 1-2 additional beds per nurse trained, and this has been going on for less than one year, see if you can figure out all by your ownself, with no prompting from the studio audience, why there aren't more available ICU beds already, ten whole months later.

(That's spotting you the average $500k-$2M@ it costs a hospital to build the additional space, before we even get into the availability and time to train more intensivist MDs, additional capacity of ancillary services and staff, and construction time, from first idea to finished building, that meets county, state, and federal regs for hospital construction.)

You might as well have asked why Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny haven't simply squatted and shat out entire hospitals, overnight, nationwide, while you're up.

This is the real world, not SimCity or Minecraft.

Aesop said...

@ThbB,

Absolutely. The number of jackholes "never letting a crisis go to waste" because they want dictatorial control and hate Trump, and America, is absolutely a factor in how effed up things are.

The bigger problem is people supposedly on our side who're too stupid to throw out the bath water of all that, without dumping the baby of medical reality at the same time.

They literally cannot conceive of the idea that governors and mayors can be flaming @$$holes, and we could still have a major medical emergency, all at the same time.

My hunch is that's because for some folks, the windows on the short bus taste too good not to lick, and it's free.

Steady Steve said...

Aesop, you seem a bit more testy than usual. Perhaps it's "battle fatigue" from the current situation that is affecting those who work in health care.
If the fools in .gov had any sense they would allocate funds to bring in workers from areas less affected to those getting hit hard. That way there could be people to rotate in and give relief to those now overworked. But then that makes too much sense for politicians to grasp.

Hockeyjs4 said...

You keep on telling yourself this won’t be mandated. Airlines, hotel chains and concert ticket sellers are already jumping onboard the vaccine certification in order to participate in commerce. It won’t be long until other vendors could significantly restrict our purchasing on a daily basis and it’s exactly the “dick punching” comments that perpetuate this movement toward further restrictions. Many of us have lost family or friends to Covid. That’s not my point. Eventually we will get past this pandemic, but I’m afraid at the expense of losing our freedoms. Last time I looked, we lived in a constitutional republic and not Venezuela. Would I want to be responsible to protect those around me if I were sick? Hell yes. Does that mean I have Covid? You tell me when Elon Musk has four tests in one day - two of them test positive and two negative. The WHOs recommendations for PCR cycle threshold is upwards of 35-40. Hell, I could get a potato to test positive at those levels. Do a web search for Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR. He states that PCR was never meant to be used to detect viruses in the body. Realize that hospitals have been financially incentivized to register a Covid diagnosis on the ICD 10 codes to receive more money per patient and tell me that the numbers we are seeing right now are accurate. Why are the flu “diagnosis” rates down so far this year? Are they being misdiagnosed? Why are overall mortality rates for all causes not up this year from last? A major problem I have is that we are racing toward conclusions based on unsettled science. Don’t believe me? Let’s see if Fauci contradicts himself again next month. So, my question is “Are my symptoms from a cold, the flu or Covid since all three have overlapping similarities in symptomotology?” And “ Are you going to dick punch me now not knowing which one I have when you weren’t calling for that a year ago.

Aesop said...

1) Show me where and when I said this won't be mandated. I'll wait.

2) Last I looked, businesses owned their property, and are free to set conditions for entry as they see fit. Are you against that?

3) If governments try to do that, they have to meet a certain legal bar that will hold up in court. if it doesn't, take them to trial. If it does, vote in better idiots, or overthrow them. Dealer's choice. Whining is a poor third place alternative.

4) You haven't been keeping up, but as of Friday last, SCOTUS has ruled that we do live in Venezuela.

5) Bitch about the tests all you want; most of them are little more accurate than employing monkeys to throw darts at a board, or tossing a coin. Literally.

6) There are abuses in any system. They are the exception, not the rule. Hospitals are registering patients as Covid because they have Covid. It's clinically provable with one chest Xray in about 4 minutes flat with no Covid testing whatsoever. In a pandemic, that's not hard. Insurance companies' utilization review, and malpractice attorneys are still operating, and if you don't think medical decisions are second- and third- and fourth-guessed forever, and lawsuits filed, I have a bridge to sell you, cheap, along with ocean-view beachfront property in the Dakotas.

7) We test everypone with possible Covid for flu, exact same way, same time. Since September, we have seen 2 - TWO - flu-positive tests. In four months. Normally by now, that would be 400-1000, or more. Almost like washing your hands, using hand sanitizer, and covering your mouth from coughs, sneezes, and a lot of random droplets works or something, just as if Pasteur, Lister, and Semmelweis were onto something 150 years ago with that whole germ theory thingie, huh? Who knew? I mean, besides everyone.

8) Eleventy reasons. Traumas, for one example, all but disappeared during lockdown hereabouts. Almost like 20M people not driving everywhere nor being out and about would decrease auto accidents, shootings, and stabbings, because everyone was at home. Again, who knew? Besides everyone, I mean.
(cont.)

Aesop said...

(cont.)
9) Money quote for your fund of wisdom: "Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.
In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There's no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus.
" - Michael Crichton, Caltech Michelin lecture, 2003.

"Settled science" is an oxymoron. The essence of science is experimentation and evidence.
Settled science said we can't go faster than the speed of sound. It said the Earth is the center of the universe. Settled science says everything evolved from nothing, extraterrestrials exist, and that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real. Those are religions, not science. If you have misconceptions about what science is, you won't know what it isn't when you see it.

10) Fauci is a buffoon, a jackass, and a quack. I've said that, explicitly, on this very blog, for only the last 6 years. You could look it up. I can't help people who don't listen to the obvious truth, but I've been giving you clear proof of the concept since at least 2014.

11) Your question is irrelevant. And I wasn't calling for that a year ago, because stupidity wasn't generally killing so many innocent bystanders as much as it has been the last year.
What you should be asking yourself is "Since I'm symptomatically ill with something contagious, why O why didn't I keep my ass isolated, instead of spreading my infectious shit around to family, friends, co-workers, and strangers, and thus totally deserving a thorough dick-punching for doing that?"

When you ask the right questions, you get the right answers.
Happy to help you out there.

Aesop said...

@SteadySteve,

It's not "battle fatigue". Nothing like, in fact.
Let's be clear: I make my living off of the continued stupidity of the human race. Business is always good.
It's just that lately (late January-present), they want medals for it too, and approbation for virtue-signaling their stupidity, and that's where I draw the line. It's not in my portfolio to subsidize the delusions of dumbasses and fools. I can tell people gravity works. I cannot, however, tell them the rocks at the bottom of the cliff will not hurt when they jump anyways. That's actually unethical, not to mention sociopathic. I am neither.

Malcolm said...

THIS article follows on from my original piece in The Conservative Woman last week which discussed a large number of concerns which I have with the precipitous UK rollout of the Pfizer vaccine. This follow-up stands on its own, but is best read after the first article.
Pfizer have no idea if the vaccine can prevent symptoms or transmission

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/more-serious-questions-about-the-pfizer-vaccine/

Aesop said...

Nothing I have heard about the Pfizer vaccine makes me any fan of it, nor likely to receive it.

Hockeyjs4 said...

I suspect you and I agree on much more than we disagree. But we disagree on one very important point.

I am keenly aware of Covid research and Covid’s effects on the healthcare system and the devastation it’s caused. It has also been highly politicized and there are powerful entities manipulating us behind the scenes.

And yes, I understand the implications of the SCOTUS decision and that IS precisely my point. When judges absolve their duty to protect individual rights then the constitution is dead. Right now it has a very faint pulse. Then what do we have when it is gone? Tyranny of the majority or dictatorship, which always ends up in the oppression of one class or another and genocide WILL be the ultimate outcome. My comments were never about Covid, per se. They were about mob rule and if your dick punching attitude gains traction for those of us that decline the vaccine then we will be the next persecuted class- relegated to the vile whims of those who disagree with us. Then feel free to marginalize us in a separate class once we’ve been targeted. The words “whites,” “Christians” and “conservatives” are already spoken with distain amongst certain groups in this country. I know how this will go. We will be labeled as “Covid Killers.” Let’s check back in a year and see if I’m not right. Just reading Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky or Weizel’s NIght will tell you all you need to know about what one man can do to another. History may show that many more people were persecuted and killed because they didn’t march in “Lock Step” with governmental and societal edicts during this pandemic than ever died of Covid.

Aesop said...

If someone tries to kill you, by all means, you try to kill them right back, It's your God-given right.

However, unless you can discover the hitherto non-existent right to infect others as you wander to and fro hidden somewhere in deep amongst the Constitution and BoR, requiring you to wear a mask in public amongst others during a pandemic is no breach whatsoever of your rights, howsoever much you feel inconvenienced.

Which pretty much kills any hope of prevailing on that end of the subject.

Dick punching is also a pretty good fit between punishment and the crime of knowingly infecting others. No one dies on either end in most cases, but the trespasser gets to share the pain in a way calculated to alter such behavior in the future. Punishment and rehabilitation in one go is a rare judicial two-fer, so I'll take it. Especially since the easiest way to avoid the punishment in the first place is to not be out spreading virus like the love child of Johnny Appleseed and Typhoid Mary, and staying home until you're not infectious.

Jurisprudential hat trick, right there.

Hockeyjs4 said...

You make it sound so simple. “If you’re sick, stay home.” Nothing in life is simple. If you want to talk about symptoms, I can think of five drugs of the top of my head that can cause a cough, let alone numerous other causes. A fever? ANY infection can cause a low grade fever. Anosmia, or the loss of smell? Another five possible causes. None of which are related to Covid. I could go on, but you get my point. In medicine the process of differential diagnosis is used to rule out conditions. That is why it is called “practicing medicine.” So, your going to tell a single mother of three on an hourly wage to “Stay home if your sick!” Even if she might lose her job? Yeah, like she’s going to listen to you. She has mouths to feed. Is she going to kill someone by doing this? I don’t know? When she left that morning to drive to work, did she think she would kill someone with her car? The American middle class has sacrificed and stayed home for the last nine months trying to stop the spread. Where has that gotten us? Has that stopped the spread? Two weeks to flatten the curve has turned into nine months with no end in sight. This has destroyed the American middle class which has been the economic engine affording Americans the best healthcare system in the world for decades. Lose the middle class and we lose our healthcare system and “govment” takes over. Good luck with that. But that’s what they wanted in the first place. Americans are sick of people telling them what to do. Eventually, we will reach herd immunity. West Nile virus being a perfect example. No one talks about it now, but it caused death and severe neurological damage to many people 15 years ago. Did we shut down the country then? How about Zika? I will come back to my origin comment about “dick-punching” people who don’t stay home when they’re sick-that type of mentality is exactly why people just “love” Newsom, Whitmer and Cuomo so much. That type of comment belies an oppressive, punitive “playing checkers” or “Wack-A-Mole” mentality with this pandemic. Let’s start playing chess.

Hockeyjs4 said...

And before you jump on me for using West Nile and Zika as perfect examples of developing heard immunity, I need to clarify- I am not referring to mode of transmission. I am referring to our general population developing the immune system B and T Lymphocyte memory cells required to recognize the virus after initial exposure.

Aesop said...

Anything in life is simple if you have common sense and a moral compass, and aren't trying to get over on being a selfish self-rationalizing jackass. Sorry I had to make that last part blisteringly obvious, but I assumed it didn't need to be stated outright. My mistake. I thought this was the honors class, not the continuation school remediation one.

1) I'm pretty sure every company policy everywhere in Christendom now says "Stay home (and keep your kids home) if you've/they've got fever, cough, loss of smell, or any of 20 other symptoms of any number of communicable diseases, until you don't have those, not just in this pandemic, but always, before and after COVID". Like they've told employees and parents of school-aged children since, oh, pretty much EVER in your lifetime and mine.

2) There's no secret clause in any of those policies that says "unless, of course, you have bills to pay and mouths to feed, like every-damned-body else on the fucking planet, because clearly your wants and needs are superior to the desire and right of everyone else you come into contact with not to catch whatever festering pustulence you've caught".

How sure am I? I will match you paychecks on the contention that I've got it far closer to right than you do. Show your work, and collect your prize.

People being selfish shits doesn't obviate common sense. People are going to be selfish shits. That's why there's been penal codes since Hammurabi and the Ten Commandments. You could look it up.

Hence my strong suggestion of adding dick-punching (and let's be fair, I also specified Flogging Around The Fleet - you should Google that, really - and I furthermore also suggested substituting staking out naked over fire ants with frequent honey application for those for whom the primary option was difficult) as a great way to Make Stupid Hurt, and provide negative reinforcement, to break them of such selfishly shitty behavior.

That's worked since ever, too.

"Beat your sons once a week. Even if you don't know why you're doing it, they will." - Plato, IIRC

The rest of your rambling whinge is just that, and frankly too much to fisk at one sitting.
TPTB are assholes. Sick policy since ever, like Honey Badger, doesn't give a shit.

You're sick and symptomatic of communicable disease? Stay home. Period. Paragraph.
Game, set, match.

How inconvenient this is, to the sick person(s), matters not a whit.

There is little in life more simple than that.
And it's been written in blood (oh, and common law) since the plague laws back to before the time of the caesars, and in Mosaic law dating to circa 1400 B.C.

Generally, when some concept this common and widespread across civilization has been around 3400 years or more, the point shouldn't require this much belaboring.

If it's news to you, I suggest you get out and about more.
As long as you're not sick.

Hockeyjs4 said...

Shutting down businesses, wearing face masks and social distancing hasn’t done a damn thing to stop the spread of this virus. It WILL continue to spread no matter what is done short of locking everyone on the planet down in their house for two or three weeks. Cue up any apocalyptic movie of your choice after that fun experiment. Now “they” are preparing us for continued mask wearing AFTER the vaccine! They say it is because of “vaccine hesitancy” in a percentage of the population. Keep on believing that BS. This is about social control and nothing more as we merrily travel down the road toward “The Great Reset.”

“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

Benjamin Franklin

I’m done. It’s been an interesting dialog.

Aesop said...

Shutting down business is asinine, as we told you, oh, six months or so ago.
It worked initially, but cannot and should not be continued indefinitely.

Doing everything was never intended to stop the spread of the virus, it was to slow it down, which it undeniably has done.
If you misspoke, you're forgiven.
If you didn't know that, you're not tall enough for this ride.
If you knew it, but thought using the Moving The Goalposts Fallacy was a worthy strategy, the penalty flag is thrown. 50 yard penalty, and loss of possession. Nice try.

The vaccine is allegedly 90+% effective, only if one even gets it.
If you don't get it, efficacy drops to 0%.
The masks aren't to protect you from others, they're there to protect others from you.
For the 12,000th time.

You have no "right to infect others", ever, and never had one.
So the Franklin quote is irrelevant, in context.

A dialog implies you were listening in the first place, and open to logic and facts to change your mind. Instead, like a parkouring spider monkey on crack, you've jumped from irrelevancy to irrelevancy to try and make the point that you don't like masks.

That's nice, and noted, but your feeeeewings have nothing to do with common sense policy during a pandemic.

You want to make an argument that most women 18-35 (16 in Kentucky) and rating higher than a "6" on a 10 point scale should go topless in public, OTOH, and I'll subscribe to your newsletter and march in your parade.

Hockeyjs4 said...

Heaven help us if you are ever placed in a position of power. Cause this is EXACTLY what tyranny looks like.

Aesop said...

Show your work, Slick: point out the "tyranny" you see in my words, like a boogieman under your bed.

Just because you think so doesn't make it so.

But by far the scarier thought is that you vote.

You're the exact reason the Founding Fathers despised democracy with a loathing and knowing fear beyond words, and did everything possible to prevent it ever taking hold.