It's evidently going to be a full day of this sort of happy horsesh*t, cleaning up after a whole weekend worth of silliness.
We cheerfully announce yet another brilliant sub-80-IQ Biff Tannen Make Like A Tree™ award-winning meme/post*:
We have just a couple of questions for PatriOsareinLackOfRectalContrOl
(FIFY, slick, given your propensity to shit all over yourself like this):
1) Please inform the class regarding health statistics from Haiti as having been considered accurate and reliable since...when, in recorded human history, exactly? Please show all work on this.
2) You have noted a large expat Chinese population on that half of the island of Hispaniola, and copious numbers of potentially-infected outsiders arriving into that accursed Caribbean sh*thole, have you...?? Again, show all work.
So maybe, after staring at the chalkboard until someone sneaks up on you with the 2x4 of Knowledge and cluebats you back into reality, take a shot at explaining a couple dozen other possible explanations for this imaginary "Haitian COVID miracle". You tripped over it at the start: "This is absurd." Then you picked yourself up and stumbled off and over the Cliffs of Insanity.
RFK is a functional retard at many things. So, evidently, are you.
Best wishes on finding a crowbar to pry your head out of deep up your own ass, and enjoy your Biff Tannen "Make Like A Tree" Award™, with our profoundest compliments. And thanks a pantload for nailing down the left side of the IQ bell curve, soopergenius.
The photo ID assuring all and sundry of your prize-winning intellect can be obtained after wiping up and before flushing, at any men's room stall in the nearest municipal transport station.
*(Strictly speaking, the massive brainfart-in-question began its life as a post on X/Twatter/whatever. But once it gets screen-shotted and posted standalone, it becomes a meme, thus eligible - in this case, overqualified - for consideration for the BTMLAT Award. -A.)
{ALCON: Blogger yanked this back in July (7/5/24 to be exact.). To be fair, it was only about the second post in the history of the blog they killed. I think one of their hall monitors was just feeling butthurt about reality that day. Just testing the algorithm today by reposting it. -A.}
We have happily disagreed with Denninger when he has tiptoed into medical waters over his head, which has been frequently, and we will likely do so again, but this post is not any of those times.
In so many words, two judges out of three at the 9th Circus have ruled that the COVID-19 mRNA shots are not vaccines, and therefore there is no basis under U.S. law by which they may be required as a condition of employment nor any other compelling rationale, and that any such requirements necessarily constitute a violation of the individual's personal right to make medical decisions for oneself.
You are heartily encouraged to hie thee hence and RTWT, as this decision affects not just the Death Jabs, but pretty much every other so-called vaxx currently in existence.
Any injection which, unlike the smallpox vaccine (no longer given since that disease was eradicated in humans decades ago), does not prevent acquisition and transmission of a disease is merely an elective medical treatment, and as such, entirely within an individual's sole personal right to accept or reject all by themselves, solely as their own counsel and conscience dictate.
1) Giving TPTB the middle finger is now back in style.
2) The lawsuits for damages for employers who held to the contrary are now green-lighted, and are going to be a growth industry for the next 80 years, including against former military service members vs. the DoD, and anyone else terminated for their refusal to take the Jab.
O frabjous day! Callou! Callay!
The case will likely end up in front of SCOTUS because of the DoD component when someone files and cites this decision (which was on behalf of LAUSD education employees), but it's unlikely to be reversed at any level.
Meaning countless employers who went all Gestapo in 2020 are about to take it right up the ass, sideways, with a rusty chainsaw, and deservedly so.
Mandated medical treatment just had an oak stake driven through its heart.
And the court just ruled what we've said all along:
NOBODY ON THE PLANET HAS BEEN VACCINATED AGAINST COVID-19.
Never. Not once.
And in case no one clued you in, no one's looking for a vaccine, either. At least, no more than OJ was ever out looking for "the real killer".
Think about that.
The government's medical authorities knew everything the 9th Circus ruled was true, years ago.
So ask yourself, that being the case, why they pushed the Jab button so hard, for so long.
From where I'm sitting, it looks like the Suddenly™ Effect was intended as a feature, not a bug. And that five year timeline to developing pericarditis kicks in starting next year. I hope not, because I don't like to think about work without 2/3rds of my colleagues. But choices have consequences, and some mistakes in life you don't get to make twice.
There could be an awful lot of "Help Wanted" ads coming soon. Pay close attention. Time alone will tell.
According to Miss Manners' etiquette guidelines, for a very small faux pas, you let the defaulter off with "Excuse me." For something like ripping a monstrous fart and shitting in their pants, you pretend it never happened, and avert your gaze. Which was why I didn't say anything about this particular pantload of stench soup until now.
Spoiler Alert: The title is spot-on. Most of what Kirsch does is a steaming pile of cow-plop, and this is definitely the biggest mound he's thus far compiled. Which doesn't recommend the rest of his efforts too highly either.
Request, because considering the source, I didn't bother prior, nor would have ever, as I expected it not to amount to anything anywhere close to what was claimed. This is because Steve Kirsch has been an outspoken loudmouth with dubious accuracy throughout the pandemic. Not that he lies outright, but he is, shall we say, "economical with the truth". By which I mean he lards on stupendous claims, with dubious association with actual reality, and even less documentation, and puts the truth on the lardball with a thin veneer of icing.
Consume at your own risk.
Occasionally, he stumbles over noteworthy facts, but generally, he's so busy Chicken Littling grandiose mountainous claims out of molehills of fact that he generally picks himself up after such accidental forays, and carries on with his originally-planned Chinese Fire Drill and self-dick-stomping party.
Let's look no farther than his "Executive Summary":
Key points of the interview include:
Hospitals were actually empty when the press told us they were full.
90% or more of the COVID deaths were actually caused by the treatment protocols dictated from above, not the virus. There were both early treatments as well as inpatient treatments available that reduced the COVID death rate by over 90%.
The COVID vaccines increased all-cause mortality in hospitals by up to 80% according to one ICU doctor I spoke to who worked in the same hospital as Gail and made meticulous notes on patient outcomes.
One of the potential reasons people believed that there was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” is that the EMR systems were programmed to default all COVID cases to unvaccinated and nurses weren’t told how to change it.
After the vaccines rolled out for an age group is when the hospitals started seeing very unusual things they’ve never seen or rarely seen before for that age group.
Doctors are still afraid to speak out.
All of this arm-waving based entirely on purely anecdotal evidence from one nurse and one anonymous doctor.
Now let's go to the videotape, and get down to the rat-killing.
The nurse in question worked at the time at the Kaiser hospital in Santa Rosa, located in Sonoma County.
So let's do some background, to put her input in perspective.
1) Sonoma County is mostly rural wine country, with a density of 311 people per mi². (For reference, the population of San Francisco County, some 20 miles and two counties away, is 19,180 people per mi². Just a wee difference.)
The population there consequently trends above-average in income, compared to the state as a whole. Its population of around 450,000 ranks it 17th (of 58) among California counties, coming in at just about 1% of the state's population. The more populous 16 counties, for reference, comprise 84%. Santa Rosa ranks behind 27 bigger cities just in California, behind such urban hotspots as Oxnard, Elk Grove, and RanchoCucamonga. Sonoma County is, IOW, about as representative of California as Hooterville and Pixley are, somewhere between the Shady Rest Hotel and the Douglas farmstead.
The county, looking at the Johns-Hopkins COVID dashboard, is also 75% white, and 95% medically insured, both hugely aberrational compared to Califrutopia numbers overall. The J-H COVID dashboard also tallies a blisteringly small 119,546 total COVID cases in Sonoma County throughout the entire three-year period of pandemic, and only records 556 deaths, a fatality rate of 0.46% of those infected, or about 4 times worse than annual flu, and only half the fatality rate of the state overall, which was 0.83%. For comparison, Los Angeles County had a fatality rate of 0.96%, twice as high. In Sonoma County, 1 person in 1000 died. In L.A., it was 1 in 300.
The overall U.S. numbers are a COVID fatality rate of 1.1%, nearly three times as bad as Sonoma County, and a similar 1-in-300 death tally as Los Angeles experienced.
2) It gets better. Sonoma County in total boasts a grand total of 9 hospitals. (For reference, in Los Angeles County there are 80.) The Kaiser there is only a distant third place in size, with a modest 173 beds. If you live in BFEgypt, that may be impressive. In California, there are 111 hospitals smaller than that, and most of those are either in literal one-horse towns, or are surgical and specialty centers, not actual hospitals in the way you'd think of that term. Of the hospitals that claim more than 0 actual beds, the other 223 hospitals in the state are all bigger than the uber-small Kaiser in Santa Rosa.
3) Kaiser hospitals are unique in CA. Nine out of any ten of them have no ER, by design, because of EMTALA. This is because lacking an ER lets them turn away anyone who doesn't have Kaiser insurance, which avoidance of large swaths of homeless losers and indigent illegal aliens keeps the entire chain from going bankrupt. The Santa Rosa Kaiser is a rare exception, in that it's a Kaiser hospital with an ER, so they have to take anyone they get, regardless of insurance. In one of the smaller cities in the state, with a negligible homeless population, in a more affluent and more rural county.
4) Looking at the number of ICU stays, that hospital averages a crushing (not!) tally of 5 ICU patients on any given day. (For reference, 5 ICU patients/day is what my hospital routinely has stuck in just the ER, because the ICU is full 24/7/365.) And less than 20% of their patients there in the ER are ever serious or critical; over 80% are moderate or less, and fully half are basically urgent care patients too lazy to go to one, because urgent care asks for the payment up front. So that hospital isn't exactly being hammered under the horrendous load of critical patients.
5) She was a part-time employee, obviously with an axe to grind, who got fired by the hospital in question (which tiny tidbit is only revealed a third of the way into a 1 1/2 hr. interview!), who only worked MedSurg, which is the lowest acuity patients anywhere other than the ones we kick-da-fuq-out same-day, and wasn't even there 3x more than normal. So she's talking out her ass based on no critical care hands-on experience, and is only talking about things she only knows about second- and third-hand, from the only hospital in her county doing things that way, in a chain that routinely under-admits and over-discharges all patients to save $$, as seen by one fired part-time nurse, from Tinyville, in Whitebread County, working in Teeny Weeny General hospital, in a hospital seeing a few patients in the ICU per day, telling you "how it was" during COVID.
Okay.
So this is like getting the straight poop on what it was like in WWII from fighter pilot George Gobel.
As to the "Executive summary"?:
1) "The media" never reported "all hospitals are full". They reported that hospitals were being overwhelmed early on in New Orleans (true), then Atlanta (also true), followed by those in NYFC (true again). So Kirsch trying to conflate media reports from places where COVID was demonstrably blowing up, with "everywhere", is pure grade-A rose fertilizer, and he knows it, and Kirsch milks this line of bullshit for all it's worth.
Some places got hit hard. Sonoma County Kaiser was never one of them. Things didn't blow up in Califrutopia until after the early lockdowns were belatedly relaxed, <i>after Labor Day 2020</i>, and then the pandemic did what pandemics do, because people are idiots. But Hooterville in NorCal never saw any serious impact, because the population density there was closer to being Kansas than what most people think of when they hear "California".
2) There was unquestionably monkey-business regarding treatment options dictated by know-nothing idiots in D.C., especially regarding medication usage. But in point of fact, the only treatment protocols were discovered on-the-job. There were literally none at the outset, and doctors everywhere were doing medicine by Braille, feeling their way to what worked and what didn't, and passing the answers around in real time on blogs, Reddit substacks, e-mail and Bookface posts, etc. I watched that in real time, nightly, for months on end. Guesstimating the statistics with unpublished and unverified numbers and 20/20 hindsight is flatly asinine. On Day Zero, nobody, including Dr. Anonymous Sumdood, knew fuck-all about how to treat COVID, or how many were "killed by the protocols", and anyone who claims differently is full of more shit than a Christmas goose on the topic.
There's no argument that the CDC and FDA finger-banging doctor's decisions and monkey-wrenching on-the-spot trial administration of things like hydrochloroquine (HCQ) and Ivermectin should have been ended, with a flamethrower, on Day Two, and doctors told to practice medicine according to their own best judgement, and share their findings in real time, but the iron law is that bureaucrats never give up power, even when they kill people, and this was no exception.
Extrapolating that into "doctors and hospitals were under orders to kill people in secret" which is what Kirsch and Nurse Fullashit allege, is a steaming turd so monstrous it's usually only excreted by blue whales with diarrhea. And then she burps out mystery stats from out of her ass, from units she never worked on, and spins pure bullshit, anecdotal hearsay, and unsupported speculation, which Kirsch treats as gospel. Well-played. This is to actual information as is a bad call-in segment on voodoo and witchcraft on Coast To Coast with George Noory.
3) [Addendum for Common Core grads: Stupid people who aren't good at reading comprehension, PAY ATTENTION to this point] The Not-A-Vaxx examples were all disastrous, beyond any further discussion. An actual vaccine was highly unlikely, and we still don't have one to this day. What we got palmed off on us was a Franken-slurry of death, exactly as multiple vaccine researchers told people would happen, which government idiots (but I repeat myself) roundly ignored, in their ceaseless quest to "do something". None of this is further proven nor informed by unverified and anecdotal allegations. And no one wants to talk about it, nor research it properly, because the march of people with torches and pitchforks on TPTB would make Robespierre's Reign Of Terror with Madame Guillotine look like a church social by comparison.
And they still have it coming.
4) Newsflash, Hirsch: This was ALWAYS a pandemic of the unvaccinated. IT STILL IS.
a) Because for a solid year after the initial outbreak, you witless jackass, THERE WAS NOTHING PASSED OFF AS A VACCINE ANYWHERE. You could look it up, FFS.
b) Because what was passed off after a year wasn't a vaccine either. EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET IS UNVACCINATED, you incredible dipshit. Millions to billions of people have been jabbed, some multiple times, but no one at anytime has EVER received an actual vaccine for COVID. Hirsch knows this too, but it doesn't serve his caterwauling screeds to admit what's obvious, even to Stevie Wonder, from space.
Total evidence for any of that truth contained in Kirsch's video: ZERO. Oopsie.
And while we're up, Shitforbrains, Epic is but one among at least 6-10 EMR systems used nationwide, it only accounts for about a quarter of the market, and you could fill entire encyclopedias with what features and procedures average users, let alone part-time flunkies like Nurse Fullashit, don't know how to do on it, or on any other one of them. (I've used 10 different systems since 2010; ask me how I know this to be true). This is like finding one flat Goodyear tire, and concluding thereby that all tires on all cars are defective. No points, and you're still full of shit.
5) And for the second time in this 6-point barrel of hogwash, we get the classic horse-and-chicken soup (at a ratio of "half and half" - one horse to one chicken) recipe of some truth, along with the bullshit. Yes, absolutely, the COVID Jab was the undeniable and proximate cause of metric fucktons of adverse reactions, more than all other actual vaccines combined in recorded history, including the novel diagnosis of Died Suddenly™. Yet again, this elephant in the room is visible from space with the naked eye.
But those torch-and-pitchfork-toting mobs aren't going to dissipate themselves if the obvious truth is revealed so soon.
6) Doctors are not "afraid to speak out". Hirsch himself and this pile of unsubstantiated speculation is proof of the opposite. Some doctors have been spineless chickenshits, like always with everyone. Some doctors have been forthright and courageous in whistle-blowing about this. That's how we know the military has crippled 1/4 of its total pilots, and injured for life unknown swaths of their entire ranks. The dam hasn't broken yet, but they can't stop the signal. You can never stop the signal.
But the message isn't served by half-baked, half-assed horseshit buffets like this load of drivel, missing only anything remotely resembling factual data. But Kirsch doesn't peddle data, he peddles clickbait and confirmation bias. As ever. He's the guy you most want to STFU, and stay off your side, if you're trying to get any respectability on the topic, but he tickles the bias of the Dumbshit Brigade, and for that, he'll have their undying loyalty.
The pandemic wasn't imaginary, and rank-and-file practitioners didn't kill people in lockstep obedience to idiots from on high.
But the country, collectively and individually, abandoned a healthy distrust of "Washington experts" (oxymoron alert) like Anthony Fauci, whose professional quack status we've decried, just on this blog, since only 2014.
The problem is, articles like this from Kirsch aren't much better, and they're nothing but a scientific laughingstock. This interview was the medical equivalent of Phil Donhue and Jerry Springer, but with even less credibility.
TL;DR Rating: If you thought this was a smoking gun, these aren't the droids you're looking for. Move along.
Let's try a slightly more accurate "executive summary" of this wagonload of cobblers:
Nurse who was fired from Kaiser for not getting The Jab, was only in the least acute section of the hospital, not the COVID ward, and only part-time, nonetheless managed to get COVID despite exposure protocols, who has no critical-care experience nor any direct hands-on patient care of critical patients, speaks out on things about which she has no direct knowledge, but brings metric fucktons of unsourced hearsay, wild assumptions, leaps of fantasy far beyond her scope of professional knowledge, experience, or practice, barrels of unsupported allegations, a total dearth of anything like data, documentation, or anything even vaguely resembling evidence, yet holds forth on everything she doesn't know, because feelz and butthurt.
This is sketchier than getting brain surgery advice from homeless meth-head schizophrenics living in cardboard boxes in an alley behind the liquor store. Or stopping at the White House to ask for directions from Emperor Poopypants.
Kirsch would have more credibility if he borrowed Biden's Christmas attire.
IOW, pretty much what Kirsch has been peddling since Day One.
His "Most Important Interview EVAR!" is the most fact-free eructation of pure bull-squeeze on the 'net since Biden's last press conference.
It's now four years along, kids. Can we please agree that unless you see Fauci and the CEOs of Pfizer, J&J, et al issue a mea culpa on national TV, culminating in them pulling pistols and performing a long-overdue auto-da-fé and act of contrition by suck-staring said pistols live, that anything less than that, from any source, is probably and overwhelmingly bullshit, from either side, only propagated to confirm your biases in either direction, utterly devoid of merit or facts, and thus merely clickbait that's entirely a waste of bandwidth and time to even lift the lid off the chamber pot to look at?
Please: STOP EATING OUT OF THE CHAMBER POT. IT'S NOT A PUDDING CUP.
COVID has mutated now to being just the annual flu. Rejoice in a healthy immune system, wash yer grubby mitts, stay your ass home when you're sick, and just get over it.
Or, like the Usual Suspects and Anonymous trolls, fulfill all my expectations, and come share your scorching butthurt at Kirsch's richly-deserved fisking in Comments. Our claws aren't going to sharpen themselves.
{UPDATE: For those who just stumbled in here because of a link, and missed the epic week-long ass-walloping we just gave, especially like one commenter already, maybe you want to set the Wayback Machine to last week, and catch yourself up a tad, before you walk into a movie at the final scene. Maybe.
Because if you do, you won't be the Baby Duck who just woke up, plopped down here, and shit all over yourself because this discussion is completely new to you.
Just saying. We now continue with our program, already in progress...}
___________________________________________
So, how do we tell the difference between her epic bullshit, and actual information?
Just like with currency: When you handle actual bills, the counterfeit ones stick out instantly.
"We identified seasonal human coronaviruses, influenza viruses and rhinoviruses in exhaled breath and coughs of children and adults with acute respiratory illness. Surgical face masks significantly reduced detection of influenza virus RNA in respiratory droplets and coronavirus RNA in aerosols, with a trend toward reduced detection of coronavirus RNA in respiratory droplets. Our results indicate that surgical face masks could prevent transmission of human coronaviruses and influenza viruses from symptomatic individuals."
Aesop summary: They took 246 people, 123 of whom had actual viral illnesses, including 111 with seasonal corona virus. Had them cough for 30 minutes at a virus collection machine (actually named the Gesundheit-II). Counted how many viral copies were captured. Then repeated the experiment, exact same conditions, but with the actual infected individuals wearing a variety of masks.
Results: No mask = 10¹ to 10³ viral droplet particles collected. (For Common Core grads, that's 10-1000.)
10³ to 10/4th (sorry, there's no superscript 4) viral aerosol particles collected. (Common cores, that's 1000-10,000)
Wearing surgical or simple face masks = 0 to 10º viral particles collected. (For Common Core grads, that would be one. Not 1%. Just 1. Down to zero.)
For reference, via nasal swab samples prior to the experiment, the average person with corona virus had between 10,000 and 10,000,000,000 viral copies (that's 10 billion with a B) present on a single swab of the nasal mucosa. And always more in the nose than the throat. (See if you can guess why we think so poorly of lackwit idiots sticking their schnoozes out of their masks...)
Conclusion: With the average social distancing, having people wear masks provides a reduction in viral transmission 10x-10,000x or more better than wearing nothing. And as noted by actual study data, prevents any viral transmission onward from respiratory vectors.
BTW, the face masks did better with seasonal corona virus than they did with flu and cold viruses.
They didn't use test media, they used actual virus from infected people. They measured exposure for 30 minutes. They actually tested the masks' performance, they didn't test the infection rate for people who might be licking stripper poles or living with plague-monster rug rats, absent any protection at home. Not being total morons, they also didn't bassackwardsly test to see if the masks protected the wearers.
In short, they narrowed the test down to one variable: putting on a mask.
And that's all visible there, at the study link. You could look it up.
Blackjack for the dealer. QED
AFAIK, this is the only such test of actual face mask performance done, before, during, or after COVID, and Covidiocy. (If you can link to anything similar, please do so.) Like the lack of studies of hydrochloroquine or Ivermectin when it mattered, you can decide why that would be so.
We've already shown you 51 or more examples of how not to test what you're supposedly looking at. (Starting with the maxim: "Read the goddam study first!")
Now you see one example of how to do it right, using "Science, bitchez!"
That's why all the bullshit ceases, and unless you conduct the same test, and can't replicate it, and no one else can either, you have to STFU about whether or not "masks work". (Unless you're a moron. Which is punishment enough for one life.)
We repeat for The Usual Suspects from the short bus:
Masking Policy doesn't work, because people won't follow it. Children certainly won't, but also adults acting like children, or with the intellectual ability of a two-year old, in most cases.
For the hardcore fucktards, whose memory is shorter than their pecker, to a metaphysical certainty:
You weren't told to mask to protect yourself. If you heard that, or believed it, you're the idiot there. Don't feel bad: 20% of medical professionals, actual doctors, are thereby idiots too.
You weren't masking to stop all transmission of the disease. See the above if you thought otherwise.
You were wearing them to protect everyone else from you, because then, now, and always, we don't know who the asymptomatic spreaders are, so everyone is guilty until proven innocent where infection is concerned.
You were told to mask up when out and about amidst people indoors or in crowds (anyone wearing or enforcing wearing in bright sunshine, or travelling in cars, while alone, or in deserted places, is beyond fucktardedly stupid), to drastically slow the spread enough that a novel virus, with a worst-case 3% CFR, (which meant 97% of people would be just fine, as we told you, and told you, and told you) would not overwhelm all health care in the country, or any one region of it, simultaneously, while still allowing people out and about for necessary functions, like getting food.
It worked when people did it, but it was carried out for far too long, and it was an abysmal failure as a semi-permanent policy, both for reasons of sheer human cupidity and stupidity, and for a host of larger reasons, esp. when coupled with lockdowns of everything in perpetuity, starting with sheer economics, and moving to undermining the republic, and curtailing personal freedoms indefinitely.
Bitch about that to Heaven. It's true, and eminently and demonstrably bitchworthy.
But save the horseshit about "masks don't work". That's a fucktard's fuckwit line. Don't be one.
If you disagree, back it up with valid firsthand proof of what you're claiming; otherwise your confirmation bias and/or innate stupidity is yanking the bell on your Dunning-Kruger gene, and trying to drive the bus from the back row.
Masking policy depends, and depended, on near 100% compliance. One asymptomatic Gilligan being a Special Snowflake fucks the whole idea up for everyone, and did. And always would. And always will. Which is why it never will and never could work.
In any pandemic, you're at the mercy of your own ability to self-isolate, times the number of Gilligans in society trying to fuck things up 24/7/365, because that's what Gilligans DO.
COVID showed that last to be about 50% of the population for any given day or place. Babies with a case of live grenades couldn't have fucked things up any better.
And TPTB were either criminally stupid for not knowing that would be the case, or criminally evil for knowing it and doing it anyways, because the worse they could jack life up for everyone, the better for stealing an election, and putting their boot on everyone's face forever.
The third- and fourth-order consequences of COVID are still fucking up everyone's life, day after day, and all the lava chunks from the initial explosion still haven't all landed. Starting with the biggest pieces of horseplop it inflicted upon us all, currently sitting in the Oval Office, and just down the hall from it.
Stop throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and focus on the actual realities, and biggest problems. Walking around with your underpants on your head and chanting "We're morons! We're united!" isn't getting anything useful accomplished.
Kindly knock that stupid shit off. You're mainly just pissing off people smarter than you, and sounding stupid while doing it.
a) they understate the actual COVID CFR by a factor of 1500% (which is what happens when you shoot your mouth off six months into a three-year pandemic)
b) their sources for masking info are YouTube videos. No, really.
c) They claim that wearing a mask for one minute is toxic and incapacitating, despite literally millions of surgeons and OR staff over a literal century to prove exactly the contrary
They make a few good points on policy, and if they'd only confine their bloviation to their forte of economic, legal, and philosophical arguments, they wouldn't sound like jackasses out of their depth every time they try and make medical pronouncements.
What they either know, or can prove, about the utility of masks could be written inside a thimble with a Sharpie, and their papers haven't aged well, unless they were printed on 4"x4" squares of perforated tissue.
Open Letter's informative value in this discussion: nil.
Do original research, or go back to class, kids. This is like reading the newspaper and calling it "medical research". Just because you found 5, 10, or 200 people who failed to prove something, you don't get to take a vote, and elevate them to being Oracles of Truth. Maybe (usually) they're just lackwit fuckups who publish to justify a rent check.
As in 90+% of all research, especially medical.
The fact that they had to dig through 804 studies to find 6 they could call "qualified" should be a major cluebat up against the back of their pointy heads.
No thought given to likelihood of transmission outside of school. Or from family. Or out and about away from school. This is like basing the effectiveness of seatbelts on a survey of "highway deaths" that includes fatalities of motorcyclists, pedestrians in crosswalks, and people on busses who died of heart attacks.
See if you can guess why something so patently retarded can't get peer review.
Applicability to mask effectiveness: nil.
Well, butter my ass and call me a biscuit! A total of 51 studies examined.
Total that shed any light on "Nurse Claire's" central thesis:
ZERO.
Thus not only fulfilling our exact expectations from before we started, but indeed, far surpassing them, with study conclusions that directly contradicted "Nurse Claire's" hare-brained prounouncements about masks, and in a highlight, one of which was already revoked and disavowed years before she linked to it.
Total test score awarded, based on accumulated points for this examination:
ZERO.
Total number of these links she's probably ever actually read in her life:
ZERO.
Total IQ it takes to point to things you've never read, when some of them flat-out contradict what you're claiming is so:
We tell you again, if you're going to listen to things on the Internet, either find trustworthy sources, or do your own damned homework.
When somebody spams out 51 links to total bullshit and hyperbole, and calls it "evidence", grab your wallet, and hold onto your ass, because one or the other, if not both, is directly at risk.
If Nurse Claire is actually any sort of nurse, she should get back to the veterinary clinic in haste, before the puppies miss her, or else return to her actual school of human nursing, and punch all her instructors in the dick and/or throat, and refuse to leave until she secures a full refund of all tuition paid.
Or just come clean, and admit profound retardation, to end this farce.
We spent our own time to dig through this enormous pile of shit purely for the satisfaction of telling you the truth, so you don't have to. You're welcome.
But we gave you the links and the quotes to enable you to see for yourself both the accuracy and validity of our complaints against the misapplication and propagation of this kind of bullshit as if it were useful information.
It turns out they don't do what they never intended to do: protect the wearers. But wearing them makes stupid people feel better about not getting sick, which makes the MD feel bad, because it doesn't help.
Why this wandering dribble got published in a medical journal is anyone's guess (maybe the publisher is his uncle or something), but there's a dearth of anything beyond feeling bad supporting any of it.
It makes me feel bad for Canada's medical expertise, is this is the level of discourse in their supposedly scholarly journals.
"Findings: From October 13 to 17 in 2013, October 2 to 6 in 2014, and September 22 to 26 in 2015, 7,687 adult participants from 318 tents were randomised to facemasks or no facemasks; 3,864 participants from 149 tents were assigned to the Facemask group and 3,823 participants from 169 tents to the Control group. In the Facemask arm, respectively 27% and 51% participants used facemasks daily and intermittently, 22% did not; in the Control arm, respectively 15% and 38% participants used facemasks daily and intermittently, 47% did not."
And based on the haphazard, half-assed, slap-dash inshallah version of masking, what did Dr. Fuckhead and Dr. Shitforbrains conclude?
"Interpretation: Facemask use does not prevent clinical or laboratory-confirmed viral respiratory infections among Hajj pilgrims."
I can't make up pseudo-science this retarded out of thin air. Apparently, you have to go to medical school to have a gallon of shit pumped into your head to substitute for brains.
That The Lancet would publish such total fecal material tells you everything you need to know about the skill behind the Britistani National Health System.
Non-shocker for everyone not living in Switzerland: passing a law doesn't mean 100% compliance.
And the plural of bullshit is still not "data", no matter how many other people's invalid and poorly-constructed "studies" with methodological gaps big enough to drive a pandemic through you wave around as if they were factual information.
Another amalgamation of bullshit masquerading as scholarly effort. 279 possible choices were whittled down to only 12 possibly applicable studies, many or all of which we've already eviscerated in earlier installments.
This is all diarrhea from the same bad burrito. There's nothing new to see here.
"METHODOLOGY: The flow
rates through the masks ranged from a constant
value of 5 to a constant value of 100 L/min, thus
simulating the different physiologic workloads
that result in a wide range of instantaneous flow
rates during respiration."
Point Of Order, Slick: 100 L/min??? The human lungs hold, on average, 6L of volume, but the volumetric tidal volume amount of the average human breath is only about 500mL (half a liter). Any respiratory therapist can tell you that. The average respiratory rate is 12 to 20/minute. Meaning the upper end of normal respiration is around 10L/minute. NOT 100L/min.
100-yard sprinters aren't even sucking and blowing 100L/minute at the finish line, FFS! They'd have to be breathing full breaths at 200 times/minute to achieve that, which is physiologically impossible.
So, in short, the study designers tested masks designed for normal human respiration at an air movement rate that's approximately the same as strapping it to a hole in the car windshield, and driving at 100mph.
I cannot imagine how anything could fail to penetrate the mask filter with that level of stupidity running the testing, up to and including songbirds and large insects.
Color me shocked, at the 10L (i.e. actual human level) end of the scale, penetration was minimal.
Second Point Of Order: They were measuring penetration at the surface of the filter. Unless someone's doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation right up against the mask, they could be expected to be two to several feet away, even in surgery. By which time all those theoretical penetrating particles fall to earth.
Third Point Of Order: If you're testing mask penetration in surgery, as claimed, then to be accurate according to real-world conditions, the testing of aerosols or particles should be done from the other side of a second mask, several feet away (at least two), to simulate the person on the other side of the OR table you're worried isn't being protected by mask worn by the first person, shouldn't you? Oopsie, they weren't doing that at any point in the testing process.
The engineering technical term for doing this sort of jackassically incorrect test is "screwing the pooch".
This sort of pure horseshit is virtually every test we've seen or heard of in regard to mask testing, since ever, and it only got worse during Covidiocy.
Team Claire: 0 for 46. Max possible score still available: about 10%. Which, as we mentioned in the last post, is far lower than a moron score on the SATs if you just left the damned thing blank and walked out.
In aeronautical terms, this is what it looks like when you invent a helicopter that screws itself into the ground when you attempt takeoff.
Having apparently run out of random PubMed bullshit studies with no applicability to anything to point to, Nurse Claire's List Of Total Horseshit now delves into Sumdood's opinions for authoritative scientific and medical information.
Our first contestant in the Shit Some Bloggers Spew sweepstakes is apparently Leo Goldstein. The title itself is a trick question: mask wearing has never been universal, for any value of that word, which truth even Leo stumbles over:
"Some people position their mask to cover only their mouth but not their nostrils, though nostrils have higher viral concentration, see Leung et al. below. Some people frequently remove and replace their masks. When removing their masks, some people fold or roll masks so that the interior and exterior sides come into contact. Some people drop their masks into a purse, pocket, or glove box only to use them again at their next stop. After a few cycles, the masks’ interior and exterior become interchangeable."
So, having shot his own thesis, and himself, right in the ass by the middle of what would be the second page, Goldstein wanders all over the map, pulling together random papers (most of them already discounted specifically or in general in our earlier notes) without explaining or examining them ("I'm a blogger; Trust me!") to make whatever point at which he's whacking away, at any given moment in his Splatter-gories train of thought.
It's kind of like kitten on the keys, but with science pronouncement macros.
He does a whole lot of leaping to conclusions and circular reasoning, cherry-picks sentences to support his point, and skips a lot of things like actual links to the relevant referred-to articles. At the end, he lists 26 selected references, including that bastion of scientific accuracy, the LATimes, and even references his own butthurt refused comment rejected by JAMA. Fisking his pile of codswallop would be another two weeks day and night, and I respectfully decline undertaking another such romp in the swamp, unless someone want to pay me for the effort.
This one, at least, from someone with some bona fides in medical research, albeit appearing in everyone's first choice for medical news, the website of the American Institute For Economic Research, a right-of-center economic thinktank/lobbying shop, in the heart of America's bastion of free enterprise and liberty, Massachusetts. {/sarc}
In order, they
1) quote themselves as an authority
2) Note that face masks don't protect the wearer (!)
3) Refer to a Pew poll as if straw counts equal science
4) Try to spin the idea that COVID is primarily oro-fecal transmission (we can point to the shit in that idea, but it's not coming from the COVID-infected)
5) Quote Ioanniddis (which is like calling Karl Marx for an impartial view of economics) and cite his wildly inaccurate guesstimates from the early stages of the pandemic as though they were authoritative, then, now, or ever
6) Understate the actual IFR of COVID-19 by 100%-600% (even spotting them that this was a year into the pandemic)
7) try to spin this as "just the flu", when it was no such thing then, and is only so now, two years and any 5, 10, or 20 mutations later, since that point
And that's just them "carefully reviewing" virtually no actual scientific evidence.
They then go into a lengthy diatribe against lockdowns and school closures, as that end of public policy is more their bread-and-butter concern. Nonetheless, it's done with cherry-picking and a lot of hand-waving and somersaulting. Science is not a gymnastic exhibition, so when laser light shows and pyrotechnics make an appearance, you're watching a magic show, not listening to a medical lecture.
That's all well and good, and we probably even agree with some of their points, but they leapt over any cursory look at scientific evidence to get there. Knee-jerk freedom is certainly better than knee-jerk socialism, but only just barely if you're going to claim scientific and medical basis for you claims. Either do science, or don't, but don't anally rape the concept and then claim it was a dinner date.
If we're going to make this a philosophical discussion, we'd rather hear from the likes of Kurt Schlicter, Victor Davis Hanson, Thomas Sowell, Bill Whittle, or Jordan Peterson, rather than someone whose expertise is in medical research, but aspires to be Aristotle rather than Hippocrates. Stay in your lane.
They then wander around masking, yet again focusing on the fact that neither simple face masks nor surgical masks protect the wearer (exactly as they've never been intended to do nor claimed to do, for 120 years).
In short, this is simply the work of earnest morons in service of an agenda, trying to serve up some red meat to knee-jerk idiots to justify their own prejudices. As if there's a shortage of that in the world, let alone on the internet.
The entire piece, like the preceding blog burp-out, would require multiple days to fisk in detail, as they spew bullshit at the speed of light, paragraph by paragraph. We decline the opportunity, as most of their bullshit has been overtaken by events, but their prejudice is all they bring to the table, and they shed no light on the matter, or the evidence, evidently preferring to simply crap on it, and then walk away contented.
"Our findings on facemasks or coverings are perhaps counterintuitive especially given the strong debate on their use. In a recent systematic review we concluded that the evidence in favour of face mask use outside the hospital was weak."
The citation links not to any such review (yet another survey of other people's work, applicable or not) but to a Reuters newswire article. They have just cited their own quote in the newspaper to prove their point! Mirabile dictu! Who needs evidence? Just get a newspaper to print your bullshit, and quote yourself. Pure genius!
"On the other hand, a recent modelling study concluded that community face mask use could reduce the spread of COVID-19."
IOW, "Hold the phone, but according to actual scientists, we may be full of shit."
"Our results on face coverings should be considered preliminary because the use of coverings was recommended or required only relatively late in the epidemics in each European country."
"All you dead people in Europe...sorry about that."
"The results for face covering are too preliminary to inform public policy but indicates face covering as public policy merits close monitoring."
IOW, "We appear to have been totally full of shit on masking. Please ignore everything we said earlier. And now, having taken both sides on this policy, no matter which way the consensus breaks, we can tell you we told you so."
I cannot imagine how such mealy-mouthed double-talking mendacious bullshit failed to obtain peer review, and get published in the UK's medical journals, instead of winding up in their medical urinals.
Well-played! Pad the stack with irrelevant bullshit. Nothing says "Serious science" like finding 99 crisp slips of blank paper banded under every real $100 bill in the briefcase.
"...the pooled analysis suggested a relative risk reduction of 22% in the face mask group..."
"There are no major adverse effects of face mask use."
"RECOMMENDATION:
Face masks worn by asymptomatic people are conditionally recommended in severe
epidemics or pandemics, to reduce transmission in the community. Disposable, surgical
masks are recommended to be worn at all times by symptomatic individuals when in
contact with other individuals."
"Knowledge gaps: There are important gaps in our knowledge of the mechanisms of person-to-person transmission of influenza, including the importance of transmission through
droplets of different sizes including small particle aerosols, and the potential for droplet
and aerosol transmission to occur in different locations and with different environmental
conditions. Additional high-quality RCTs of the efficacy of face masks against laboratory-confirmed influenza would be valuable."
"Acceptability: Likely to be acceptable, but not appropriate in
some circumstances and the adherence and
compliance is low."
Aesop summary: the studies are shit; wear masks; most people are idiots.
Need we remind you that this, yet again, proves that "Nurse Claire" never read a word of any of the sources she shat out from a cursory Google search?
Because whenever I want internet information on a scientific or medical question, my first stop is a D.C. lawyer with no medical or scientific training or background whatsoever.
The author correctly states the politicization of the issue, and the suspect nature of any conclusions promulgated after that point.
Unfortunately, other than guilt-by-association, she provides no scientific evidence in either direction. As bare-knuckles rhetoric, this is great stuff, especially if disseminated to amateurs ("boob bait for the bubbas", in Daniel Patrick Moynihan's elegant turn of phrase). As medical information, it's snake oil masquerading as curative.
Money quote:
"Ultimately, I do not have the credentials to determine whether or not –or to what extent — masks work."
But the article is here nonetheless, because the author apparently once stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.
Grunting and squeezing over the porcelain thinking chair will produce equally scientific information, which evidently is how low the bar for such at AEIR.
"CONCLUSIONS Most included trials had poor design, reporting and sparse events. There was insufficient evidence to provide a recommendation on the use of facial barriers without other measures. We found insufficient evidence for a difference between surgical masks and N95 respirators and limited evidence to support effectiveness of quarantine. Based on observational evidence from the previous SARS epidemic included in the previous version of our Cochrane review we recommend the use of masks combined with other measures."
Aesop summary: "The surveys are shit; wear a mask." We couldn't have said that better ourself.
Praise to a merciful heaven there are only 12 more of these atrocious, mendacious, and profoundly retarded items to peruse. If we stick to covering five apiece, only three more posts, all proving that thisa was exactly the nothingburger of shite we alleged from the outset.
Team Claire: 0 for 39. Maximum possible score now: 24%. F-.
On the Rotten Tomatoes Certified Fresh scale, this is "Double-rotten total shit; you should stay home".
For reference, the old SATs spotted you a score of 25%, if you just wrote your name on the test, turned it in, and walked out without filling in a single answer bubble. No, really.
Team Claire has dropped below even that benchmark. Just...wow.
A politician died, and naturally, turned up in Hell for the afterlife.
At the Infernal Gates, Satan met him, to give him a tour of the possible accommodations.
Surprised that there was any choice involved, he hurried to catch up to his host.
Behind the first door Satan opened, marked "Traditional", was a lake of pure lava fire, as far as the eye could see, with people burning all over their bodies simultaneously in unspeakable agony beyond time, in a never-ending sheer unspeakably horrific torture.
Behind the second door Satan opened, marked "Alternate Reality", was a vast space, endless to the invisible white horizon, freezing cold, near absolute zero, with millions of people sitting naked, freezing for a never-ending punishment.
But behind the third door, labelled "Lord Of The You-Know-What", Satan revealed to him a vast warehouse of people standing in the rankest and most utterly disagreeable stench imaginable, covered in steaming wet feces up to their armpits in an endless swamp sewer, but standing there drinking cups of coffee.
Despite the retch-inducing stench that never seemed to fade, the new arrival quickly indicated that he would vastly prefer the third choice, whereupon he was left there in charge of the underdemons.
As he was handed his cup, the supervising demon announced over the public address system, "Okay Losers, coffee break's over; everyone, get back on your heads!"
Which brings us to take up the fecal pile of supposed mask studies into which we are thus far slightly past halfway.
Background: Historically, surgical masks have been worn to protect patients from being infected by large, pathogen-containing aerosol droplets emitted by health care personnel. Today, emphasis has shifted from solely protecting the patient to protecting the health care worker as well. As a result of new procedures used in operating rooms and clinical areas, aerosolized hazardous agents in the submicrometer size range are being produced, posing a potential threat to health care workers.
Methods: Eight surgical masks were tested for aerosol particle penetration through their filter media and through induced face-seal leaks.
Results: The percentage of filter penetration ranged from 20% to nearly 100% for submicrometer-sized particles. In comparison, a dust-mist-fume respirator used in industrial settings had significantly less penetration through its filter medium. When the surgical masks had artificially induced face-seal leaks, the concentration of submicrometer-sized particles inside the mask increased slightly; in contrast, the more protective dust-mist-fume respirator showed a fourfold increase in aerosol penetration into the mask with an artificial leak 4 mm in diameter.
Conclusion: We conclude that the protection provided by surgical masks may be insufficient in environments containing potentially hazardous submicrometer-sized aerosols.
Aesop Summary: Test from 1993, wherein, despite the full and certain knowledge that they weren't designed to protect any wearerfrom anything, study tested 8 surgical face masks from the 1990s to see if they did, in fact provide any protection to the wearer. When that wasn't bad enough, they cut holes in the masks, to make the numbers even worse. Shockingly, under this testing regimen, all masks failed to protect the wearers against anywhere from 20% to 100% of test medium, exactly as they were not designed to do, ever, anywhere, by anyone.
In other news, jumping out of an airplane at altitude with your mother's comforter knotted in the corners does not provide an adequate substitute for a certified parachute, and leaks in a submarine's hull at crush depth can't be plugged with your finger. Stop the presses.
And someone paid these incredible fucktards real money to do this!!
And it was peer-reviewed and published!!!
In the American Journal of Infection Control, which is clearly nothing better than an in-industry joke publication. Like The Onion, or The Babylon Bee.
And Nurse Claire, probably having never read it, is referencing this study among this entire festering pile of shit, as proof that "masks don't work". This is what an 80 IQ looks like in the wild, kids. We stand agape in awe at this level of naked intelligence strutting in public. In older times, families would have kept a child like this in the basement, for life.
There are limited data on the use of masks and respirators to reduce transmission of influenza. A systematic review was undertaken to help inform pandemic influenza guidance in the United Kingdom. The initial review was performed in November 2009 and updated in June 2010 and January 2011. Inclusion criteria included randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental and observational studies of humans published in English with an outcome of laboratory-confirmed or clinically-diagnosed influenza and other viral respiratory infections. There were 17 eligible studies. Six of eight randomised controlled trials found no significant differences between control and intervention groups (masks with or without hand hygiene; N95/P2 respirators). One household trial found that mask wearing coupled with hand sanitiser use reduced secondary transmission of upper respiratory infection/influenza-like illness/laboratory-confirmed influenza compared with education; hand sanitiser alone resulted in no reduction. One hospital-based trial found a lower rate of clinical respiratory illness associated with non-fit-tested N95 respirator use compared with medical masks. Eight of nine retrospective observational studies found that mask and/or respirator use was independently associated with a reduced risk of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Findings, however, may not be applicable to influenza and many studies were suboptimal. None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection. Some evidence suggests that mask use is best undertaken as part of a package of personal protection especially hand hygiene. The effectiveness of masks and respirators is likely linked to early, consistent and correct usage.
Aesop Summary: Another pointless review of studies prior to 2012, with no original research. Six studies showed no improvement, two showed minimal effect, nine studies showed notable improvement. Studies are a dog's breakfast hash of invalid and poorly constructed garbage, exactly like 99% of available "studies"; nonetheless with a score of 9 to 6 in favor, study concludes effectiveness of masks is linked to early, consistent, and correct usage. Not having read that clinical pearl right in the open of the abstract, let alone looking at any of the study itself, Nurse Claire nonetheless points to it as evidence that "masks don't work".
We can't make up that level of profound retardation.
Results: Thirty-two health care workers completed the study, resulting in 2464 subject days. There were 2 colds during this time period, 1 in each group. Of the 8 symptoms recorded daily, subjects in the mask group were significantly more likely to experience headache during the study period (P < .05). Subjects living with children were more likely to have high cold severity scores over the course of the study.
Conclusion: Face mask use in health care workers has not been demonstrated to provide benefit in terms of cold symptoms or getting colds. A larger study is needed to definitively establish noninferiority of no mask use.
Aesop Summary: A pitifully small sample, amounting to statistical insignificance, was studied for self-reported and entirely subjective complaints, while wearing surgical face masks at work only, and living in a home with small children, and from each group, there was only one report of a cold.
In a similar study, 32 people went to the beach every day for two months, half with bathing suits, and half without, and sharks ate 1 person in each group. The study concluded bathing suits do nothing to stop shark attacks based on this data.
Bullshit like this is absolutely off the charts with regard to how pointless, invalid, and stupid it is, but yet again, it's published in what is self-evidently the house organ of scientific jackassery, the American Journal Of Infection Control. Anyone with any connection to that publication should be stripped of any professional credentials, and be issued a duck bill to wear 24/7 by law, so people will recognize utter quacks when they see them.
InterventionsOverall, 1993 participants in 189 clusters were randomly assigned to wear N95 respirators (2512 HCP-seasons of observation) and 2058 in 191 clusters were randomly assigned to wear medical masks (2668 HCP-seasons) when near patients with respiratory illness.
Results There were 1556 acute respiratory illness events in the respirator group vs 1711 in the mask group. ... In the respirator group, 89.4% of participants reported “always” or “sometimes” wearing their assigned devices vs 90.2% in the mask group.
Aesop Summary: You tested health care workers wearing masks or respirators only at work during the height of flu season, who took no precautions at home, or when out in the community at the exact season when flu and URIs were rampant, and knowing that 10% of nominal health care professionals admitted they didn't wear their god-damned masks even at work, and lo and behold, with such a gaping hole of stupidity in both study validity and methodology, let alone compliance, you achieved an infection rate of 1.6 respiratory infections per person over a 4 year period of 12-week peak respiratory infection season.
IOW, this wasn't a test of mask effectiveness, it was a test of proper and valid survey construction, and these idiots failed in droves. And BTW, while they were up, they determined the average person in health care gets a URI (cold, flu, whatever)1 time out of 3 years.
Now compare that for the average person not in healthcare, and get back to us.
To be this stupid in your own life, you'd have to construct a survey where you wore your safety glasses 90% of the time while grinding or using power tools, and then survey you for four years to determine if you ever rubbed your eyes.
Second-closest would be to survey airline passengers for wearing seatbelts during flight, most of the time, and reporting if they ever bumped their head anytime in four years, even when not on airplanes, and relating that to seatbelt effectiveness. It's that nakedly jackassically retarded, to where you can make even 4th graders get it.
In short, this test tells you absolutely nothing about mask effectiveness, which wasn't even tested. This is nothing but indirect data, second-hand, where study participants wore their masks maybe 90% of their working hours, and took no precautions whatsoever away from work, while out and about, at home, around family, friends, and relatives, etc.
Hmm, I wonder where all their URIs during cold and flu season came from...?
For all anyone knows, they're out licking stripper poles and giving mouth-to-mouth to homeless bums with 57 diseases. This "study" never looked at that.
This is the kind of idiotic shit JAMA, and Nurse Claire are trying to pass off as "data".
This is far and away the stupidest fucking shit I've seen on the internet in 15 years of blogging, and this is the cream of medical expertise.
And we stopped at what appears to be the end of the journals. Next time, we'll be reading the brain-droppings of guest bloggers on random websites.
What could possibly go wrong there, after looking at the best medical expertise on the topic?
_______________________
Notably, not even the Usual Suspects among the Brave Anonymous Trolls has seen fit to pre-read one of these steaming piles of horseshit to try and sharpshoot us in advance.
Or they did, and found the evidence so lacking it wasn't even worth the effort of a lame troll.
More to the point, Nurse Claire, with abundant obviousness, never read a single one of these links, nor had the wit to grasp how utterly and completely worthless these piles of steaming shit were in service of her ridiculous contentions.
0 for 32 out of 51, so far.
How bad is this? It's like pointing to a pile of fresh-caught tuna, while telling you nothing lives in the ocean.
It's looking at that enormous pile of triceratops poo at the header of every one of these articles, and then telling you, straight-faced, that dinosaurs' shit doesn't stink.
In short, it's a special kind of Stupid.
If you can't tell the difference between Nurse Claire's unfounded and contra-factual contentions and your own position, pull up a chair, and have another bowl of dumbass.
Not counting the news outlets or websites along the full range of accuracy and veracity, I follow multiple actual individuals' handwritten blogs. (Bot news aggregators don't thrill me.) Looking them over, many are current serving or former military and a couple are some variation of high-speed low-drag elite forces ninjas. Or just funny as all. Because life without humor is just despair. So in other words, the same folks I trusted in the military not to wet the bed, sh*t themselves, or otherwise run around like headless Nancys, are the same folks I trust on the interwebz, for demonstrating pretty much the same trustworthiness and circumspectly responsible behavior. Color me shocked.
Comments are fully moderated, due to idiots and trolls. Grown up discussion here will appear just as soon as I have the time to push it through. ANONYMOUS UNSIGNED COMMENTS WILL BE AUTO-DELETED WITHOUT MERCY, and the url added to the spam filter, or mercilessly mocked at the bloghost's sole discretion. If you're too chickensh*t to come up with an alias for online purposes, you're not tall enough for this blog. Pick a name, and stick with it, and you're good. Get cute, and you're wasting your time and my electrons, and your masterpiece will never see the light of day. No warning shots will be fired. If you can't maintain decorum and polite behavior, I won't toy with you, I'll squash you. If one of your comments disappears, YOU f**ked up. If all of them do, it's time for you to go. Disagree with the points made, on the merits, and you're good. Go after me personally, or other commenters, and your comment will never see daylight here. My tolerance for skirting the line is at absolute zero, and will remain there. Don't f**k up.
