Second Inning: Still a Shut Out.

4) Wearing of caps and masks not necessary during cardiac catheterization

Abstract:

Although cardiac catheterization-related infections are rare, caps and masks are often worn to minimize this complication. However, documentation of the value of caps and masks for this purpose is lacking. We, therefore, prospectively evaluated the experience of 504 patients undergoing percutaneous left heart catheterization, seeking evidence of a relationship between whether caps and/or masks were worn by the operators and the incidence of infection. No infections were found in any patient, regardless of whether a cap or mask was used. Thus, we found no evidence that caps or masks need to be worn during percutaneous cardiac catheterization.

Aesop summary: Cardiac catheterization involves sticking a long catheter into your groin (or upper arm), and following the vessel to your heart. The area of skin puncture is about the size of the letter O in this sentence. Nonetheless, with no idea how many, if any, of those 504 uninfected patients had their catheterizations performed without caps and masks (perhaps none), it's equally valid to assume that the reason for no infections was caps and masks. 

This is an NFI survey. I.e.: Is it valid? No Fucking Idea. How many surgeries were performed with masks, versus without? No Fucking Idea. What in blistering Hell does any of this have to do with the efficacy of surgical masks to stop the spread of aerosolized viruses, since that was never under investigation by this study? No Fucking Idea.

Yet another worthless data point, in service of proving somebody never read a single one of these studies before burping them up as if they mattered to the topic at issue.

Four down, only 47 more piles of shit to wade through. Oh, joy.

5) Is use of surgical caps and masks obsolete during percutaneous cardiac catheterization 

Exact same pointless point, studied 13 years after the previous study, this time in Denmark. Oh, I can barely contain my anticipation at what they found!

Extract:

Introduction: Despite the lack of scientific evidence, surgical caps and masks are worn routinely by many physicians and nurses in the catheterisation laboratories to avoid local and generalised infections. When we changed our practice, we performed a randomised study to assure the quality of our routine.

Material and methods: All patients undergoing left- or right-sided cardiac catheterisation were randomly allocated to our five laboratories. About two months after the procedure, the patients were sent a questionnaire concerning signs and symptoms of possible inflammation or infection after the procedure.

Results: Of 1,034 patients, 855 (82.7%) responded to the questionnaire. Although 25 patients in the caps and mask group vs 19 patients in the other group (6.1% vs 4.3%, ns) had complaints from the procedural access site in the groin, none of these could be ascribed to definite infection.

Discussion: The use of caps and masks during percutaneous cardiac catheterisation procedures is based on the concept that the infection rate of patients is reduced. The size of the catheter used, procedure time, and the use of caps and masks by both the surgeon and the assisting staff are discussed.

Conclusion: The routine use of caps and masks does not seem to have that much beneficial impact on the occurrence of procedure-related inflammations or infections in the cardiac catheterisation laboratory.

Aesop Summary: This has nothing to do with the effectiveness of masks to stop the spread of aerosolized viruses. Total waste of time. Incidentally, adds nothing to the discussion of what they were looking at, either. This is what doctors masturbating in a circle looks like.

The conclusion is the clincher: "The routine use of caps and masks does not seem to have that much beneficial impact..."

FFS, wingnuts, you just surveyed 852 people, and the best weasel word you can come up with is "seem"?!? Do they work or does it matter?? Jesus H. Christ, get enough data, and reach a fucking decision point. In Harry S Truman terms, shit or get off the pot!

"I don't want to believe. I want to KNOW." - Carl Sagan

Meanwhile, zero input on anything related to mask efficacy with regard to aerosolized virus spread, or prevention. Upon which some part of this wild goose chase supposedly had some bearing. 

This is now 10% of the pointless "studies" reviewed, and Nurse Claire has already dropped to a B+, and that only happens if she nails it out of the park with the next 46 studies in a row.

6) Post-operative wound infections and surgical face masks: a controlled study

Abstract:

It has never been shown that wearing surgical face masks decreases postoperative wound infections. On the contrary, a 50% decrease has been reported after omitting face masks. The present study was designed to reveal any 30% or greater difference in general surgery wound infection rates by using face masks or not. During 115 weeks, a total of 3,088 patients were included in the study. Weeks were denoted as "masked" or "unmasked" according to a random list. After 1,537 operations performed with face masks, 73 (4.7%) wound infections were recorded and, after 1,551 operations performed without face masks, 55 (3.5%) infections occurred. This difference was not statistically significant (p greater than 0.05) and the bacterial species cultured from the wound infections did not differ in any way, which would have supported the fact that the numerical difference was a statistically "missed" difference. These results indicated that the use of face masks might be reconsidered. Masks may be used to protect the operating team from drops of infected blood and from airborne infections, but have not been proven to protect the patient operated [on] by a healthy operating team.

 Aesop summary: 

A) WHO "reported a 50% decrease"?? 

B) If that's true, how come your survey revealed only a "statistically insignificant" decrease?? I'm going with an error variance range of somewhere around ±25% means you're both full of shit. Call me crazy, but if my paycheck was ±25%, I'd be in the HR office every payday.

C) WHICH bacterial species were cultured from the wounds? 

D) Are ANY of those bacterial species transmitted via oral mucosa vectors? Or are NONE of them thusly transmitted? If it's the latter, the only thing you've done is highlight that you have a bigger problem, and it has nothing to do with masks or no masks. And you're looking in the wrong place. Are the post-operative infections coming from sloppy dressing changes? Sloppy post-op procedure by staff? Dirty instruments? Infected relatives? Dirty underwear? Patients finger-banging the site with their dirty booger hooks, after scratching their own asses? You have no fucking clue. 

E) If masks "don't make any difference", how is it that they "may be used to protect the operating team...from airborne infections"?? You can't have it both ways, Slick. Either they prevent infections, or they don't. Bazinga!

F) If masks don't matter for "a healthy operating team", what about when someone comes to work sick? Like they do all the time. Parachutes aren't necessary for a perfectly good aircraft, either. Until you find out there's no such thing as a perfectly good aircraft.

G) The use of masks "might" be reconsidered? Weasel words are weasel words. And you had 3,088 cases upon which to make a decision. If 3,088 cases isn't enough, how many before you feel safe picking a side? 10,000? 1,000,000? Or should we just push the decision off until you retire? Or just until after your grant money for the study is deposited? Or was your survey so vague and imprecise that no logical and rational conclusion could ever be reached? Whose fault would that be, praytell?

In fairness, props where they're due: They gathered a statistically valid sample size for both groups. They looked at the data they obtained. What they didn't do, was isolate one sole variable. They attempted to do this with mask weeks vs. unmask weeks. But they have no wild idea if all, or none, of the post-operative infections came from the team's oral mucosa. Or not. Which is kind of relevant to the entire question of masks or no masks, and whether they matter for bacteriological infections. Or at all. Which was kind of the exact point they were attempting to study. So their effort was total shitburgers.

Back to our, and more specifically Nurse Claire's contentions: this says, yet again, Jack and Shit about masks' efficacy at stopping the spread of aerosolized viruses. You'd think after digging six studies deep, somebody would've noticed that. 

Three up, three down; no hits, and no runs for Team Claire. I can hardly wait to get at the next 45 wastes of time and bandwidth at this rate, and only fifteen more posts, after seeing the enormous pile of irrelevance to the topic in the first two dives into this outhouse reservoir.

But wait! There's more!

Sciency Isn't Science

h/t WRSA

You're getting this because CA at WRSA posted the link: Nurse Claire's List Of Totally Irrelevant Mask Studies, or some such codswallop. We've been over this ground before with another list, years back, but with Covidiocy preparing to spike, we decided to fisk the following list of "studies" (for some value of that word). 

CA: We changed our mind about waiting until tomorrow. But as you'll see, we've got blog-fodder for another week, at least.

Caveatum:

1. All masking policies are beyond fucktardedly stupid and pointless, because people are idiots, and won't comply with any number of common sense rules (cf. drinking and driving, playing with loaded weapons, etc.), which dooms any idea, no matter how smart or stupid, but requiring 100% compliance, to abject and total failure, by any possible measure which could be imagined or concocted. No one gives a flying fuck about anyone's Good Intentions. People are morons.

2. TPTB, at all levels, demanding the use of a policy that 90% of them were too stupid to know wouldn't work, and 10% of them knew, but demanded anyways, was alternately grossly retarded, or manifestly evil. The latter should be dug out, hunted down, and executed by flamethrower, in front of live audiences. The Merely Stupid should only be head-shaved with hedge clippers, stripped, hot-tarred and feathered, and run out of town on a rail.

3. Just because someone has degrees or credentials after their name, it doesn't make them right. Just because people in white coats, using clipboards, and working in a lab say they found something, it doesn't make it science. Just sciency. Case in point:

Which is why we're not claiming we're right because credentials, or any other fallacious and bare appeal to authority; we're taking the time to show you simply and specifically where these studies (every one of them, we suspect in advance of looking at them) are exactly the load of triceratops squeeze shown at the header. We promise you, it isn't hard to find, or see, and you don't need five minutes of college time to spot it.

4. The way you test a theory is to eliminate variables (which create uncertainty, potentially to the point of uselessness of the entire study), so that you're only testing the exact thing at issue. Ideally, you eliminate all but one. And to actually test what you think you're testing. If you don't do that, or nearly so, a) you're a moron; b) your "study" is amalgamated horseshit; c) any "peers" that reviewed it and passed it along are dumber than you are, and can't recognize shit from Shinola.

Under those ground rules, let the games begin.

1) Measuring the quantity of harmful chemicals inhaled through masks

Aesop summary: "We tested 14 different types of mask. All but a few produced negligible amounts of anything harmful. When that didn't work, for the worst offenders, we heated the masks, starting at 30° C(104° F., a point at which infants may have febrile seizures), and kept going until we got some action." Most of the masks, especially the reuseable cotton ones, showed no VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) to speak of at any temperature. The plastic-based disposable ones, especially once heated beyond body temperature, in a few instances, had some outgassing of VOCs." 

Money quote: "the concentration levels of the hazardous chemicals (VOCs) detected were very low, nearly 100-1000 times less than the recommended exposure limits set by NIOSH".

Damn. That'll leave a mark. The survey authors just shot themselves in the head, right there in front of you.

Conclusion: This tells you nothing about mask safety, let alone the contention that they do not work to stop the spread of aerosolized viruses - which was only Nurse Claire's entire point - except that disposable masks should be disposed of, and you probably shouldn't wear them a lot if you're in a desert - like the Sahara - on a sunny day.

One idiotic study down, 50 more to go. Get a cold beverage, and order takeout. We'll be at this all day week.

2) The operating room environment as affected by people and the surgical face mask

Actual Abstract:

The microbiological counts were determined in an operating room suite of 8 rooms and a hallway. The bacterial counts in an empty operating room jumped statistically from 13 CFU/ft2/hr (+/- 31) to 24.8 (+/- 58.8) when the doors were left open (people in the hallways) and 447.3 (+/- 186.7) when 5 people were introduced. The wearing of a surgical face mask had no effect upon the overall operating room environmental contamination and probably work only to redirect the projectile effect of talking and breathing. People are the major source of environmental contamination in the operating room.

Aesop summary: "48 years ago, we did a study in one OR. We didn't even look at viruses, only bacterial counts. People bring germs. We didn't try the environment with and without surgical masks, because if we'd tried doing surgery without face masks in 1975 we'd have been burned at the stake for mental retardation and patient harm, so we have no wild idea whether masks help, or make no difference. So we're going with them making no difference, because we could pull that out of our asses without getting called on it by anyone smart enough to catch it. Also, we didn't look at patient outcomes; bacterial counts were arrived at by swabbing surfaces, which no one gives a flying fuck about contaminating, because they're not. the. patient!"

Conclusion: Another pointless "study" - from when Marcus Welby was still a doctor on TV! - that tells you Jack and Shit about the efficacy of masks to work to stop the spread of aerosolized viruses, and which, in fact, didn't even study viral transmission in any way, shape, or form, nor pretend to. Is Nurse Claire retarded, or just too fucking lazy to read her own "sources"? One can but wonder. You decide.

We may take up drinking if we have to do 50 more of these. As Nurse Claire evidently did before she PubMed-trolled them out of her underpants.

Post your over/under guesses in Comments about how many more  of these idiotic non-applicable "studies" we'll wade through before we get a single one with relevant information, sound methodology, real-world validity, or even street-corner common sense on the topic they're supposed to all be addressing. Nurse Claire is batting 0.000 so far.

My heart says this is a shut-out, but my head is keeping an open mind.

3) The efficacy of standard surgical face masks: an investigation using "tracer" particles 

Abstract:

To examine the efficacy of currently used synthetic-fiber disposable face masks in protecting wounds from contamination, human albumin microspheres were employed as "tracer particles," and applied to the interior of the fact mask during 20 operations. At the termination of each operation, wound irrigates were examined under the microscope. Particle contamination of the wound was demonstrated in all experients. Since the microspheres were not identified on the exterior of these face masks, they must have escaped around the mask edges and found their way into the wound. The wearing of the mask beneath the headgear curtails this route of contamination.

Aesop summary: "Forty-three years ago, we took a look at neither bacteria nor viral penetration of surgical masks, but rather applied human albumin, which is a pure liquid. We observed no penetration of the mask membrane by this whatsoever, but "somehow"(! - Magic? Unicorns pooping fairy dust? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? The Underpants Gnome? Stay tuned...), all wounds in all surgeries were contaminated. Except when full-face shields were worn outside the masks, which number we do not state, and did not specify, so when we said "all surgeries" showed contaminated, we really meant only SOME surgeries showed contamination, none of which we specify. So this is all crap, mathematically.

In a setting where surgeon's face and open wound were inches apart, 1'-2' at most, rather than the 6' during Covidiocy. And we studied exactly zero applicability of this with regard to viruses, spit, or any other thing related to COVID. Sorry about that."

Study showing mask efficacy to work to slow the spread of aerosolized viruses? O for three.

Look, I have nothing personally, for or against Nurse Claire. And I didn't lie. I'm going to slog through every last one of these pointless exercises in "has nothing to do with the topic", unless and until Nurse Claire comes on here in comments, and says "Uncle! I give up. I didn't read any-fucking-one of these studies, I just dredged them up from PubMed out of sheer laziness." Or words to that effect.

(If you did read them, and posted them anyways, you have our earnest recommendation that you go back to your school of nursing, and slap the living shit out of your instructors, particularly the ones who taught nursing research, and demand a refund of tuition. Word to your mother.)

But foisting them on our own readership here in one go borders on crimes against humanity. That, we refuse. (FFS, just looking at the first three of them is kicking my ass at the moment. But it's been a long day.)

And, what the hell, this is only the first 3 of 51 such butt-nuggets. Barely over 5% off the final score! This could turn around, it really could. There's got to be a pony under this horseshit somewhere!

We expect to explore entire new frontiers of the multitudinous ways in which so much can go wrong in so many ways with these inane "studies", without advancing the thesis one millimeter forward, or advancing the realms of medical knowledge to the tune of so little as one wet fart.

Which is why 90% of all studies are non-reproduceable (that means they're total bullshit), and why most conclusions found in them always support the party or side that funded them.

So at this rate, we'll be doing 16 more posts like this, probably one or two a day, until this horse is well and truly beaten to death, and flogged into molecules.

All masking policy has been absolutely stupid.

The only thing stupider remains the exact people running around like headless chickens, clucking "Masks Don't Work! Because SCIENCE! Buck-awk!"

Polly wants a bitch-slap? Wish: Granted. Achievement Unlocked.

But wait! There's more!

The 2024 Virus Is Coming!

Go. See Big Government's Ox Gored.

 

Read. The. Whole. Thing.

This is a magnum opus. Were one to write only this one piece, it would still merit a vote into the Hall Of Fame.

Make copies. Spread them around.

BOHICA

h/t Irish

Today on the Duh! Channel...

 

Anyone, anywhere, claiming for any reason because of this, that "Masks Don't Work" is simply an irredeemable fucktard. That's as nice as that can be put. Reality burns people's asses like that.

Tell these folks your genius epiphany that "Masks Don't Work":

Let us know how that goes for you.

What this does merit telling people, to a metaphysical certainty, is that 

Masking As Public Policy Doesn't Work. And Never Will.

That, you should write on your palm with a Sharpie, lest ye forget.

O, If Only Someone Had Told Us This Years Ago, Before This Got All Pear-Shaped!

Oh, wait. That exact thing happened, right here, April 22, 2020, @ 8:13PM PST.

We told you why and how masks work.

We told you why masking policy would never work.

As we noted with another blogger, saying "Masks Won't Work" is as retarded as saying "Airplanes Won't Work".

Airplanes, since Orville and Wilbur Wright, obviously work.

Everyone knows this.

Masks have worked for as long, or longer.

But not everyone should have an airplane.

People get this, because they've seen people drive.

So pretty much everyone knows without a chalkboard lesson why everyone can't operate an airplane.

But the Utopians out there, particularly the fucktarded government variety, are now shocked to discover that, exactly as predicted, everyone can't operate a mask.

(Anyone who went through military basic knew why this is so, after going to the Gas Mask training course even one time in boot camp.)

Wait...People are total shitheads?!? Yes, we told you so. Most folks know that in their bones, but we tried to bring some of the slow learners along. In vain.

So, after an entire blistering pandemic of fail, even the most ardent fucktard utopian in evidence has to admit the obvious: people are too stupid, as a group, to use masks.

(Like centuries to millennia of folks drinking water they just shit in didn't reinforce the concept of human stupidity for all time.)

You may now adjust your expectations of society appropriately, for all intents and purposes.

Under those revised expectations, for The Usual Suspects:

If you ever decried the use - including citing beyond-fucktarded "surveys" - of simple surgical masks or face diapers, or wore one, to protect the wearer (including yourself*), here's your sign:

*{Triply so for anyone wearing one in the car alone, or while out walking or running by themselves in the sunshine. IQ is a constant; the world population is increasing.}

Yes, Really.

"Donated by Jane Fonda" stamped inside the cover.
Always have a hobby.

What Is The Sound Of One Buttcheek Flapping?

We ask that question, because this is the most Pollyannish, "Remain calm! All is well!" load of half-assed codswallop we've seen since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

And considering all the recokulous bullshit spewed on the topic to date, that's saying something.

Kill twenty minutes, and a few brain cells, because you'll be dumber for reading the whole thing, but take one for the team and do it anyways.

Then, maybe someone who plays over yonder could ask Armchair Warlord a few pointed questions.

1) How far short of their conscription goals did Russia's planned 300K mobilization fall?

1a) Who did they get, when some 6,000,000 draftable military-aged Russian males GTFO of Dodge last year, to Anywhere But Russia, rather than be drafted, and when report after report - with Russian MoD photographic proof - of the sick, lame, and lazy, blind, crippled, and crazy were "the best they could come up with?

2) Of the 350,000 initial total ground forces they started out with last year

a) how many of them did Russia lose, KIA, WIA, DOW, crippled for life, etc., to date?

b) of the 183 nominal fieldable battalions On War Day One, how many of those were destroyed to date in Ukraine?

c) Of those Imaginary 395 maneuver battalions AW ass-trapolated exist now, where in blistering fuck did the tanks, APCs, support vehicles, AKs, shovels, mess kits, clothing, boots, and underpants needed to increase the Russian Army by 116%, and make good all combat losses in Ukraine simultaneously, generate from, other than somewhere deep inside his own underpants? 

3) If the Russians are doing an "all of the above" refit and mobilization, where in blistering fuck are all these imaginary T80s and T-90s hiding?

3b) Granting arguendo the recockulous idea that Russia has the industrial capacity to start shitting out metric fucktons of T-80s and T-90s and that they could even make enough to cover losses, why would they even bother to undertake a 3-year refit of museum-piece brew-up-at-a-flick T-62s (obsolete when Nixon was president, FFS), rather than just crank out even more metric fucktons of those world-beating T-80s and T-90s alone, instead of more cannon fodder for anything from a LAAW on up?

[Hint: "I need so many tanks, I'm going to refit those M-4 Shermans and M-48 Pattons to fight alongside my M-1A1 and M-1A2 Abrams tanks"...said no general ever.]

4) If Putin could do all of this while getting his army's ass kicked halfway back to their start lines since August, what magical new operational art have they learned while parked, or driving in reverse for the last year? Where? When? How? This is operational art via the Underpants Gnome.

Granting some of AW's mathematics, he forgets a wee bit:

A) He's accounted for exactly 0% of Russian losses to date, which even Russia acknowledges have been prodigious.

B) He imagines the Russians, who haven't been able to find their own asses four days in a row since the first day of the invasion, now possess a resurrected Marshal Zhukov, with vast Russian hordes of troops ready to sweep across the steppes like Genghis Khan. Sh'yeah; when monkeys fly outta my butt.

C) He neglects the vastly diminished capability of Russia to lay down artillery barrages, evidenced by the steadily shrinking output of rounds from the peak last summer.

D) He hasn't explained the near total lack of Russian ability to conduct combined arms attacks, ever, in any way, pretty much once since 1946.

E) He neglects to tell us where the vaunted Russian Air Force has been hiding since February 28th, 2022. Currently, there are more MiGs on Moscow milk cartons than there are seen in theater, and that's been true since last March.

F) The only Russians suffering more losses than Russian privates are Russian generals. That's also the only military demographic where Putin's body count has outstripped Ukraine's.

- - -

In short, rosiest assumptions to the fore, Russia might have been able to replace half their losses since this started. With even less experienced troops and officers, and older and more decrepit equipment - when they even have enough boots and rifles to issue to troops - fighting the same way that's seen them pushed back inexorably for a year.

Not construct an army two and a half times as big as the one Putin created in 30 years since the fall of the Soviet Union.

That's dorm-room bong-level bullshit.

And the single-most effective Russian unit to date was Wagner Group, which has been quite simply destroyed. It no longer exists. Their Spetznaz and airborne troops, the only other formations that rose to a level above mediocre, were erased last year trying to take Kiev and the nearby airport. Well-played.

And just because you write a new version of "Any Day Now" in red letters twenty feet high all over the Kremlin, it doesn't make it true.

The linked piece puts the "anal" in "analysis".

It should have been left up his ass, not pulled out on the end of his thumb and polished.

Sunday Music: September Gurls

 

1986 cover of the original song, stupidly never released by the Bangles' management as a single, but included on all their compilations since, with lead vocal by bassist Michael Steele, ironically now the only main member to no longer be with the band. Posted because it's beautiful, as she was, and to properly educate anyone who thinks Joan Jett or Susanna Hoffs were the only hot member of any band Steele was in.

R.I.P. Jimmy Buffett

 

A friend of mine sought Jimmy out in Key West a couple of decades ago, managed to meet him, and they had a pleasant conversation. He said Jimmy was the same guy IRL as onstage. And they enjoyed...well, listen to the song.

Passed away yesterday, aged 76, at home, peacefully, surrounded by family. Thanks for the tunes, dude.

Intelligence vs. Information

h/ts to both  WRSA and My Daily Kona

Item One: As noted in that graphic above from WRSA, Oz firm Spypaq is reportedly supplying UKR with 100 cardboard small, short-range drones/month.

Item Two: 100 drones/S2S missiles/month is roughly the entire production capability of Mother Russia.

Source

Mr. Garibaldi's original source for that is an article by Aviation Week & Space Technology. FWIW, their source and information reliability rating runs at A-1 or A-2 for 50+ years, unlike the MSM, or either side's propaganda wings in this conflict.

Obviously, a cardboard Spypaq AP/harassment drone is not a hypersonic Kinzhal by any wild stretch of imagination. We emphasize for the Usual Halfwit Suspects, we're not saying otherwise.

But by the same token, UKR is getting many other missile weapons from other sources (NATO, Turkey, Israel, et al), as well as building their own weapons, which underlines the lopsided nature of Russia's struggle to keep up with the rest of the world when they've been starved of importable tech for a year and a half. Help from China in that respect is apparently pure vaporware. Draw your own conclusions about the strength of that "alliance" in light of that reality.

Russia is struggling, and UKR has an embarrassment of riches, relatively speaking. (As the former captain of the RFS Moskva, or the admiral in charge of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol could tell you.)

And if you think Xi and ChinaInc. aren't taking copious notes of how this works in real time, with a view to how it might go for any variation of Them vs. Us over, say, Taiwan, I've got a bridge to sell you, cheap.

Each of those pieces are information.

Synthesizing them in light of each other crosses over into actual intelligence analysis.

One of these things is not like the other.

If this is news to you, you've been remiss in taking advantage of folks like Culper, over there on the right, on the blog resource list, or any number of websites where you could download for free virtually the entire unclassified assortment of current U.S. intelligence-MOS field manuals. Fix that. Adapt, or become extinct.

Remember all this when somebody tells you anything based on one article from TASS, and tries to spin it into Glorious Russian Victory, or Imminent WWIII.

Reality is quite a bit less ham-fisted, and much more nuanced.

This is why we keep telling you what we keep telling you, and it's not (and never has been) based on the latest piece of comic-book propaganda we read last.

Anecdotal Reality

 

For anyone who reads this blog, but doesn't also read Divemedic :

1) Stop not doing that. He writes an eclectic collection, and covers more things we agree on than disagree, since ever. You'll find good stuff there.

2) He's recently changed ED jobs, and posted a couple of updates on how COVID is going down Florida way at his new shop. You should read them both.

I commented there, but for anyone's benefit, here's the same info I shared from hereabouts.

From an average of zero cases most of this year, my ED in Southern Califrutopia is now seeing 3-6 new COVID cases/day over the past couple of weeks.

The youngest was a patient several weeks old. The oldest was 102.

Of the ones we've seen, we've admitted exactly Z-E-R-O cases for solely COVID signs/symptoms. We routinely do COVID tests on patients we're admitting, particularly those with URI/respiratory symptoms, or suspicious chest X-rays.

None of them had COVID symptoms serious enough to merit hospitalization; the ones admitted were for other problems almost or entirely unrelated. For some of them, their signs/symptoms of COVID were so subtle as to be non-existent.

Which means five, ten, or eleventy mutations later, COVID is now "just the flu".

Three years ago was quite simply horrific. Now, for most of the ones testing positive, it's a nothingburger.

{For those curious: We use a bedside 10-minute test cassette, very similar to a home preg test. One snot swab, swished and dribbled, positive or negative. Period. Usually pops in 1-2 minutes, but the book says it's not over for 10 minutes. Whatever. Flu is a separate swab, and different test, and that one is run in the lab within an hour; it's the same one we've used for flu for a decade. COVID was never the flu, and the flu was never mistaken for COVID, now or ever.}

And the 2/3rds of staff who got double- and triple-vaxxed have all had a new case of COVID. Some of them, for the fifth or sixth time.

Of the one-third of us who refused Death Jabs, only one tested positive for COVID this time around; the rest of us are COVID-free, and have been. All the vaxxhole shit-talkers giving us endless mountains of sass for not getting the vaxx two years ago are now deeply submerged, running silent, and gone deep. 

They don't want to even mention the topic any more.

This last is completely understandable, because no one likes seconds on a shitburger.

The death rate during peak initial-wave COVID was 1-3%. Annual flu is 0.1%, since before anyone reading this was born.

If anyone is dying of COVID now, they're either extremely fragile, or someone was holding a pillow over their face to get their life insurance.

Wash your hands, and stay home if you're sick. Kids too. I still don't want your goddamned colds and flu bugs. Once school is back in session, all your mindless little juvenile spawn become petrie dishes for whatever URI crud has been waiting to spring free and sweep the nation, just like it does every year.

If you get sick, a URI virus wants rest, and fluids (alcohol and caffeine are diuretics, and make URIs worse, not better). Think water, gatorade/non-caffeinated sports drinks, soup, jello, etc. If you aren't peeing crystal clear, you're under-hydrated.

And COVID or not, unless your SpO2 reading is <90% on room air, no one cares. (Fingertip pulse oximeters to check your SpO2 go for $12 on Amazon and under $20 at the drug store, and they work fabulously well. You should have put one in your first aid kit three years ago, and/or keep one in the household medical cabinet, beside your thermometer.)

Don't come to the ED if you're not sicker than that; stay your ass home and self-treat. If you're panicky, call your family doctor for a prescription. Ivermectin is now an approved treatment for COVID, btw, and the EUA for most of the COVID experimental Death Vaxxes has been rescinded. Avoid all of them like the plague itself.

But anyone telling you to be afraid of COVID at this point is trying to steal another election. And/or has a 60 IQ. (The two are not only not mutually exclusive, they tend to be the same circle on a Venn diagram.)

And for the 12 millionth time: If you ever wore a simple face diaper mask, with the misbegotten impression that was to protect yourself from anything, you're in the same diagram circles, above. And always were. Like we told you, then and now.

That concludes your 2023 COVID briefing.

TL;DR: You have actual real issues to deal with. Bank real assets; stockpile food; and you never have enough sturdy boots, sturdy friends, and ready ammunition. Hard days are coming.

See to all that, if you please.

The unravelling of society accelerates exactly like a pandemic curve: slowly, then all at once.

Oopsie?

 

Prigozhin has appeared in a new video from Africa, where he notes that
reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated.
$64 Question: Is it live, or is it Memorex?

The video obviously could have been shot shortly before his death, and thus has been overtaken by events. Bummer for Priggie, who would thus be an ex-parrot.

But if another video pops up, some FSB assclowns are going to discover the meaning of "defenestrtration", experientially. Bummer for Vlad.

My money's on success, based on historical precedent and Putin's experience in capping his enemies. Time will tell, but it's not on Vlad's side in this. Grab some popcorn.

If he successfully nipped his Wagner problem in the bud, Vlad had better habeas a pretty damned convincing Prigozhin corpus, and do it tout de suit, or speculation on his continued incompetence is going to be the kind that moves his Makarov retirement party a couple of uncomfortable notches closer to kicking off.

A Century Of US History In One Panel

 h/t daily timewaster

Equal opportunity? Fear not.
The Republicans put the air in your bike tires.

Seek Tranquility

h/t Odd Job

Bubba Chump

h/t Irish

Nonsense, Based On A False Premise

 

Jonas Nightengale had a better grasp of Christianity in Leap Of Faith 
than most members of Congress have since ever.

Vox thinks Conservatism failed Christianity, because it "failed to conserve anything".

This is feather-headed nonsense on so many levels, including both religious and political, it's hard to know where to start.

But let's agree, arguendo, to grant the recockulous premise.

Barry Goldwater wrote Conscience Of A Conservative in 1960.

FTR, his actual walk-the-walk commitment to Christianity was virtually invisible, then or ever.

So:

A) List please, for the class, all the actual conservatives in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate, from 1960 to now, inclusive. (Hint: If you're very good, you may be able to come up with as many as 5 such, in that entire 63+-year period of time.)

B) Show which year, or years, those conservatives ever held a majority in either body, let alone both at the same time.

C) Tell which of those majorities were elected by conservative Christians, who have ever been a minority within their own faith.

D) While you're up, tell us which Christians put Kennedys in office every year from the 1950s onwards.  And which Christians elected any 57 black politicians from Shirley Chisholm and Mad Maxine Waters onwards. Which way did those politicians vote, while you're at the chalkboard? Which Christians gave you Mittens for a Senator? None of those Christians voted for any conservatives, and most never intended to do so. Let me know when the penny drops.

Once you suss out the fact that conservative Christians never elected anyone to run the country, nor ever could, tell us again who failed whom.

Any fool, religious or not, who ever expected a bunch of failed game show hosts and used-car salesmen to accomplish anything worthwhile on the public dime, in benefit of either the culture, or any particular religious faith, is the sort of fool who'd sell the family cow for magic beans.

And if we ever, so much as once, get a conservative majority in either federal house, let alone both of them simultaneously, give a holler.

That would be noteworthy for being the first time it's ever happened in the history of the republic, 1789-ever.

Vox, like millions, is guilty of a basic error: Confusing anyone with an [R] after their name on a ballot with any sort of conservative, let alone any sort of Christian.

One can't fail to accomplish something they never had the power nor authority to undertake in the first place.

The fundamental mistake is not understanding that reality.

Sunday Music: Bad To The Bone

 

Cultural icon anthem that never charted, from 1982.

Also the marching song of the 45th president. If he somehow becomes the 47th as well, this song should replace "Hail To The Chief".

This Is The Way

The Posse Should Be Well-Mounted; And Leave The Married Men At Home...

 h/t WRSA

Ever notice...?

Plus Ça Change...

h/t  OddJob

This flat out cracked me up.
And I'm ashamed I didn't think of it first. Kudos, NTM.

This Always Bears Repeating

Best Laid Plans

And They're Gonna be Hurting For Weeks...

Who won the GOP debate last night? TRUMP.

UPDATE:

Faux News GOP debate: 12.8M views.

Tucker Carlson Trump interview: 248M views.

If you're keeping score at home, that's GAME OVER for the entire 2024 primary season.

America just wants the guy they elected the last time to get into office this time. Period.

We've seen how Fox treated Tucker, and it's about like the GOPe treated Trump.

Fox should stop the charade, and just move any future Faux News debates over to CNN or MSNBC, and have them moderated by George Snuffleupagus, or Don Lemon. If not Jill Biden.

It won't affect Fox's ratings, which went in the sh*tter the minute they fired Carlson.

It's 2025. Meet The New Boss...

Don't Get Fooled Again.

 

Putincide Strikes Again

 

Prigozhin bizjet crashes of Suddenly™, all aboard eat shit and die.

Just a week after another Russian senior general running things for the Ministry of Defense, lately jailed, also succumbed to a mysteriously coincidental case of Suddenly™.

Maybe Putin's making them all get COVID boosters. Or something.

Where they'll die of Suddenly™.

Whatever it is, if Putin's army could kill Ukrainian troops as well as Putin gets rid of Russian generals, they'd be parked around the Ukrainian parliament building in Kiev on T-90 tanks, and enjoying a late summer tan in Odessa, instead of getting pushed back in Luhansk and Donetsk, at a snail's pace, but always rearward.

And the Usual Suspects will still convince themselves that the Wagner mutiny "wasn't really a coup attempt."

Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud

 h/t Eaton Rapids Joe

Sh'yeah, Right. That'll Work...

How do you know it's a party organ?
It only plays one note.

Hilary After-Action

USS ELEANOR ROOSEVELT puts to sea to avoid getting wet and
melting, ahead of a rapidly weakening tropical hiccup
so mild that no damage was recorded anywhere in San Diego Bay.

And that about covers that.

I can guaran-fucking-tee that 2000 Marine recruits at MCRD watching the TR flee this cloudburst were even less impressed yesterday, probably doing PT and close order drill out in the rain.

As noted in Comments:

I get the underlying rationale.

But it's only sound if you accept that they couldn't tell the difference between Chicken Little's inflated doomporn, and actual actionable weather intelligence.

It's like launching nuclear missiles because someone's radar detected a squadron of pelicans incoming.

They still look like idiots, obviously they don't have any better intel than Joe Schmuck, and they fell for the vastly inflated hype, rather than actual accurate weather reports.

If they did this as a readiness exercise, they're just stupid. If they did it because they couldn't tell the difference, they're stupid morons.

They look like not just pussies, but incompetent and gullible pussies.

There's no way to salvage this for them, and they wasted metric fucktons of fuel and money for no good reason, while sharing with near-peer adversaries their total inability to tell a real threat from a fake one.

You can bet Russia and China were taking notes.

FIFY

 original from WRSA

Bluff Called: I'll pay anyone $1 for every one of them born here,
if they'll give me 10¢ for every one of them who wasn't,
and I'll buy a Ferrari for cash from my winnings on that wager.
Take your toothless banjo-playing kinfolk back home. 

Tropical Mousefart

 

2AM - Clear as a bell, dry, some very high altitude thin stuff moving up from the SE.

4AM - The softest drizzle seen in these parts in some time, not even loud enough to hear from inside the house. Light breeze, maybe 5-10MPH.

6AM - Cloudy, no rain, no wind.

Now - Barely daylight, raining almost hard enough to call rain, wind 6MPH from the NE

Updated forecast for the day: Maybe 1-2 inches of rain, wind gusts up to 30MPH, mainly 10-20. Thunderstorms possible. Your asthmatic granny could blow harder than that putting out birthday candles. Santa Ana winds gust up to 60MPH, FFS, and people are out walking in them since ever.

I'll probably sleep through this today.

Gone by Monday noon.

Yawn.

This isn't likely to hit hard enough to wash the truck.

Hurricane Hilary was already downgraded from Cat 4 to Cat 2 just from dragging along the Baja Peninsula.

Looks like another overhyped weather-pocalypse that fizzled, up here.

Mexico may be another story. We'll see.

UPDATE: 1320 Local - If the media hadn't hyped this like it was going to drown the state, and there were no weather satellites whatsoever, this would have been regarded as a slight summer shower day. Like we've had half a dozen times here since Memorial Day, with several of them being orders of magnitude windier and rainier than this has been.

Oh Noes!!!

 

Cartel drones drop 33 bombs on Mexican peasantry in a gang turf dispute

Another load of rock salt in the ass for The World's Foremost Expert on using drones (COTS: Commercial Off The Shelf models, not ginormous professional models) as weapons, with the five-millionth report of somebody using them to drop explosives on soft targets, like some of us told you years ago was not only going to happen, it already had.

We also speculated that it wouldn't take much beyond the sheer will to do it that would let someone make a soda-can thermite grenade, and pay a visit to any oil or LNG storage facility anywhere in the world, and wreak havoc for a paltry couple of grand in U$D. So don't come crying to us when that happens.

Color us shocked: Bad people will find bad uses for neutral items.

We only have metric fucktons of videos proving the theorem in the years since we first warned you about this potential, against the extensive expertise of the Canuckistani Drone Maestro in crashing his RC toys while half-potted. So you can continue to believe him. Or, trust your lying eyes.

We offer Herr Dronenkapitan some balm for his ailment, as we struggle not to laugh aloud at his predicament.

Sunday Music: Steal Away

 Robbie Dupree's #6 hit from his 1980 debut album. No overproduction. No pitch-bending. Music from when you had to be good to cut a record. Ars gratia artis. Enjoy.

For Comparison

 h/t WRSA

This is Hurricane Shrillary, not Hilary.
The death toll is 186, so far, that we know about...
And as a reminder, Epstein didn't kill himself.

A Bitch Named Hilary

Windy. All wet. Over-hyped. Unwanted. Bringing nothing but misery. Stop me if you've heard this one.

Except this isn't the criminal maven of Little Rock, it's the once-per-century Cat 4 (currently) hurricane rolling up the Baja California coast and set to cross right over the most populous stretch of the CA coast from San Diego to L.A. from Sunday night to Monday morning. Bummer for Sea World and Disneyland, but that's the breaks.

Baja, especially Ensenada, looks to be going to get royally hosed. You won't hear as much about that, because they're Mexicans, but those people living in shithole shacks and on trash heaps up countless canyons down there are about to get washed away, and make 150 or so dead Hawaiian citizens look like a sorority pillow fight by comparison. I'll be amazed if it doesn't wipe out hundreds of them.

But the media, breathlessly gearing up for a real live Califrutopia catastrophe - with 48 hrs notice, unlike an earthquake - will focus on the SoCal part, where by the time it reaches us, it won't be the Cat 4 hurricane, it'll be a rapidly weakening tropical storm with 50-60MPH winds...IOW, a wet Santa Ana wind, from the other direction; and 2-6 inches of rain, which will overwhelm the flood control channels and storm drains due to rapidity, not volume, and flood some intersections and lows spots on the freeways.

The deserts to the east of L.A. are in for a rough flash flood time, more than likely.

Power may even go down in spots for a day or so.

Otherwise, a rare instance of August rain hereabouts.

I was picking up mail this morning, and the supermarket next door saw every person coming out with bundles of bottled water and batteries. BTDTGTTS. I'd make fun of them for waiting until now, but at least they're getting them ahead of time. The real idiots are the folks with nothing, who won't even make that little effort to take care of themselves beforehand.

I'll be on duty Sunday night in the ER as it crosses the border, so it'll be raining from before I head in, until the end of my shift, if the NWS has things right.

I predict a lot of nothing at work: people will stay home in droves, mostly. Probably call out sick Monday too.

But there's definitely a silver lining I can see on the horizon: any number of homeless wastrels camping in river beds washed out to sea and fed to sharks and crabs, which will cleanse the local river systems for some weeks. Expect to see dramatic news footage of some meth-head dipshit being winched to safety when his dirt island in the middle of the Santa Ana or San Gabriel or L.A. River floods away, in a stirring and melodramatic waste of taxpayer time and money. But it keeps the fire guys in practice.

We'll probably also lose some Mcmansions on hillsides where houses should never have been built in the first place, and Eyewitless News will try to tug heartstrings when millionaires who should have known better get to pay for their view, and live like common folks for a couple of weeks at the Hilton, like they do in the winter every rainy season. Boo frickin' hoo. News flash: gravity works, and adobe hills become adobe washes at the bottom, just like every year since 0.

Assuming power, I'll post an after-action Monday. Otherwise, I'm more worried about - and at greater risk from - the jackholes on the freeway to and from work than I am about the coming deluge/windstorm. Unless NWS gets it gloriously wrong, we get an actual hurricane coming ashore in SoCal, storm surge and all, and this turns into an Irwin Allen/Michael Bay wet dream. Literally.

If I wasn't working that night, I'd put on a burlap robe and Father Time beard - and a life jacket - and carry a sign that said "The End Is Coming" through downtown L.A., just to scare the bejeezus out of the weak-minded.

Dollars to donuts some local station will decide to program a showing of Evan Almighty or Noah (if not both) Sunday night. Comedy gold, right there.

Nothin' Left To Lose...

Two posts by Divemedic:

Freedom

Three Decades

RTWT. Both times.

"Busted flat in D.C. ..."

It's Exactly Like That

 h/t Chief Nose Wetter

FIFY

 h/t WRSA