it's TEOTWAWKI time again

and the Olympics doubled down on anti religious blasphemy by presenting a diabolic closing ceremoney.

Sigh.

Stories to worry about

 WTF is going on in the Ukraine?

the US press is rejoicing that (presumably Ukrainian) drones are bombing Moscow. 

uh, isn't this excalation? And if the drones were provided by the USA, isn't this essentially an act of war by NATO against Russia?

But the possibility of a nuclear accident in that area might be the real danger. Russia is in control of Ukraine nuclear plants, but if one was destroyed (by Russia in revenge, by the Ukraine in a false flag incident, or because of an accident/carelessness), well, that could be a bit of a problem for Europe.

I am old enough to remember Chrernobyl, and so is Dr. C. who now risks being banned by Youtube etc. for mentioning it could be a problem.

Dr. C reports from a public health standpoint: Buy Iodine tablets.

and there are rumors in pro Russian blogs that there could be a release of pathogens from those US funded biolabs in the Ukraine. (is this true, or just a threat, or propaganda to cover a release of biological weapons by Russia).

the only good news coming out is that the agreement to let the wheat from the Ukraine be exported might continue. This wheat feeds people in the Middle East.

..........................................

In other news: Anti religion actions in China that is usually ignored by the MSM in the USA.

here is the China show about how China is erasing Islam. Note: There are two major Muslim groups there: one is the Uighars, a Turkish ethnic group, where a genocidal fight against them is going on with little notice (except that the propaganda film by disney, Mulan, that was made with the help of the guys jailing the Uighars). 

But there is another Muslim group: the descendents of the Muslim traders who married local girls, and they are called Han Muslims. 

Well, now the China show reports that this group is being erased too, and there have been riots against it. (first half hour in the video discusses this; the rest is about AI and propaganda methods in general)>

China has already arrested now retired Cardinal Zen for helping pro democracy demonstrators who were arrested, withoug any complaints by the present guy who is pope, while the new Cardinal of Hong Kong actually defends the take over of the church there. (letting the government chose bishops and then the Vatican has permission to approve which ones they want... except now the Chinese government is appointing bishops without bothering to ask the Vatican).

what can go wrong?

The question behind this is if the church is a puppet of the state, or should be independent of the state (Separation of church and state, Render to Caeser the things that are Caesar)  Pope Gregory VII fought against this, and it is the reason that Thomas Beckett was killed, and later was the reason that the Pope refused to let Henry VIII run the church. So it's not like the Catholics are not aware of the problem.

for background, you have to realize that religion has been seen as a danger to the state for a long time... not just Christians, but Buddhists, Muslims, and various sects. Lots of rebellions were inspired by religion, (the Taiping rebellion killed as many people as World War I) so they do have a reason to see religion as a source of independent thought that can endanger the emperor.

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finally, the US and the multinational corporations are increasing their push to have other countries normalize the gender/promiscuity is good for you agenda.

Well, now multinationa corporations are pushing gay themed commercials in Asia. Not much of an outcry yet, but give them time.

This does not make the USA popular in societies that recognize traditional laws that protect the family, which in poorer countries is the main protection of the sick, the poor, women and children.

One example of pushback against what is seen as western imperialism is the passing of an over the top law outlawing homosexual acts in Uganda. Biden is threatening that country for doing this, because unlike Iran or Saudi, Uganda is a weak country. But don't ask about the cultural reasons of why that country did it. 

Gays (and trans) in much of Africa, like Gays here, often are married with kids and are part of the family. Their proclivaties are not approved of, but hey they are family, and the fact they are baclas or tomboys or gays doesn't change that: because tolerating them does not threaten the instution of the family.

 But the US, the EU, and now the multinational corporations have started to push perversion as normal and good and teaching this to young children instead of teaching the morality of their parents religious beliefs. And much of this hints that normal people are bad, biology is unimportant, and that families are bad because traditional families are supported by the idea of the yin/yang of sexuality.

But the disgust of this type of gay activity is easier to understand if you know the history of Africa: Slave trade, POW rape, sexual abuse of employees and students....So what the average American sees as a human right issue is seen as removing laws that protect people who lack power, and a way to allow sexual abuse of children/students/employees or the exploitation of street kids by sexual tourists or rich expats.

And anyone reading the MSM from the USA can see how quickly the "let gays marry in peace" idea has evolved to pushing trans to first graders as normal, and not just denying there is a difference between men and women, but denying that there is any reality in the link between biological sex and marriage and children. (trans is about one's desires, not about living peacefully in a family, as was the argument for gay marriage)... ...update:V

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finally, I didn't watch it, but the miniseries Mrs Davis posits a world where AI (the computer Mrs Davis) controls everyone and makes them happy. The plot, which is a fantasy about the grail, is nonsense, but the world of peace with everyone hooked into AI echoes what some people are worried about.

Some crazy sites are proposing AI is the new anti christ, or the beast that can talk (something about this in the Bible if I remember correctly).

Elon Musk is worried about it LINK.. like most new inventions, it mixes good and bad depending on who is in control.

Sigh.

Hunger is coming. Does anyone care?

 Hunger is coming. and it will make the covid crisis look like child's play.

Dr. C actually has a video about it: Like myself, he has worked public health in poor countries and knows the relationship between hunger/ malnutrition and health. 

What happens in the Ukraine will affect the world's ability to feed itself (that wheat goes to much of the Middle East, and has done so for over two milleneum). And then there is the potash/ fertilizer problem. And of course, Russia supplies LPG for much of Europe, who, thanks to green policies, shut down their own nuclear and coal plants, and stopped fracking or pumping to use their own petroleum resources.

The reporting about the war in the Ukraine is full of propaganda and rah rah rah by folks who up to two years ago were anti war. 

But even (ex banker/writer) Spengler notes it was an un necessary war. link

voting would have allowed a peaceful separation from the Ukraine, and Russia could have gotten back the areas that were never part of the Ukraine.

and now that the adverse effects are finally being seen by the world, we see Kissinger and now Biden  saying huh maybe we should make peace.

Yup that sounds about right.

but will they settle it before Turkey and Egypt have a food crisis?

for us here in Asia, the problem is that another pull back/war failure by Biden will be seen as weakness by China, who will probably move on Taiwan (although the perception of a Russian victory might stop them from claiming Siberia for a couple of years).

This will of course affect the Philippines.

But right now the problem is our economy: unemployment, inflation, the lack of fertilizer (and what is available is much more expensive... even organic fertilizer prices have skyrocketed) and of course there has been a huge increase in the price of petroleum products.

Let me fill you in on what is happening in our rural area, which is one of the major rice growing areas here.

We are preparing the fields to plant the rice crop, and money is short.

We grow organic rice and sell it under our our product name, but with the problem of shipping it to Manila during the epidemic, we also planted some regular rice and sold it to a rice dealer to insure we had some income.

In the past, she was reliable, but for the last (winter crop) harvest, her check bounced, so we are left without about one third of our income from last year. 

The rice business is complicated because the Philippines is not self sufficient in rice and imports a lot: and alas a lot of what is imported is cheaper than what the local farmers grow, so local farmers can't make ends meet. 

The same problem occurs with onions, which are a big crop in our area, 

and we also ran into problems when we raised broiler chieckens: imported chicken was cheaper, so we barely made ends meet, so when a typhoon destroyed our chicken houses a few years ago, we simply didn't rebuild them.

in other words, globalization hurts us, and it doesn't help that some businessmen/politicians can make a lot of profit importing cheap stuff that destroys local industry and farms.

Sigh.

We are preparing the fields for the next rice crop: and since much of our product (i.e. the organic rice) is subcontracted to local farmers, that means we lend them our handplows and/or fix what they have, and also lend them money to buy diesel to run the farm equipment.

The problem: Diesel, gasoline, and LPG prices have gone up, meaning the farm machinery will be more expensive to run, and although usually the rain is sufficient for the summer crop, if irrigation is needed, they will have to buy diesel to run the pumps.

https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Philippines/diesel_prices/

then there is basic problems of transportation. No, not gas guzzling SUVs but farm trucks and tricycles.

Sir Mervs from Metro Sta. Rosa, Philippines - daily overload..

Locals in our area usually go around with motorcycles with side cars: aka Tricycles. For longer trips, they use buses and jeepneys. And so when the price of petroleum products go up, so does the cost of commuting to work, school. shopping, etc.

and for cooking, most people use LPG (aka propane) gas, and that price has gone up from 580 to almost 900 pesos for about a month supply. Electric rates have also gone up. 

So you can see that inflation is hurting folks, and unless the economy starts up (including jobs for overseas workers) there will be problems. 

Which is one reason that BongBong Marcos won: because his opponant was echoing the green agenda and the sexual policies pushed by the Yankees. And the stupid Catholic bishops here backed her: they are so busy worshipping Pope Francis'and his green agenda they don't see how this policy will push millions of working class folk back into poverty.

Shit, the bishops even told people not to invest in fossil fuels because global warming. Never mind that this merely means the prices of (imported) petroleum products will go up, and the poor will suffer. And of course, China will happily take over our petroleum resources in the West Philippine sea (although I suspect Bong Bong will make them allow us to keep a pittance of the profit).

Sigh.

in the meanwhile, while the press was full of the latest criminal mass murder and the kerfuffle of two narcissistic movie stars suing each other, Davos man is planning to take us over.

ZeroHedge, which many call a conspiracy site, has a summary of what is being said there.

and they are not then only ones who notice that these unelected elites plan to tell us how to live.

 

 hmm... is it fake news to actually quote what these bozos say?

j,,// os ot....

From Chicken lady with love

 the bat lady from Wuhan is at it again... or maybe we should call her chicken lady:

The latest WAGD news article:

A scientific journal published by top Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers shared studies appearing to engage in gain-of-function type research, a controversial method of studying pathogens that can increase their lethality.

I copied the PDF and posted some of it (sans illustrations) on my medical blog webpage to make it easier to read.

Headsup LegalInsurrectionBlog.

no, she isn't trying to make a bioweapon: She just was changing the virus and giving it to animals to see what makes it worse. 

Such mutations occur in nature, of course, but given the poor safety record of her level 3 lab, it does make one wonder.

-Bird flu naturally spreads via migrating birds, and since the Philippines is not on a usual migration path, we were bird flu free for years, until somehow they found some infected birds.

Probably in smuggled in chickens that were infected but sold to us anyway.

The animal rights folks blame the chicken farms: but you know, we monitored our chickens closely, and they were raised inside a shelter so migrating birds could not infect them.

But free range chickens and small farmers who raise chickens are the real risk: they handle the birds personally, and might not monitor or vaccinate them. And of couse they might eat a bird who they didn't know was sick.

Eating infected chickens can give you bird flu, as can close contact e.g. those destroying infected chickens are at risk, as are those who handle fighting cocks... 

for awhile Jakarta banned having chickens within city limits: some people have a couple of chickens to provide eggs, but what is more common is men who raise a few fighting cocks in their backyards, under umbrellas or on a leash. Ironically the stray dogs avoid them: they are vicious. But of course, migrating birds who seek their food could spread the disease to these birds.

there is a vaccine for the chickens, which is used for some chicken farms that produce eggs and for fighting cocks, but it is too expensive for small farmers who only have a few chickens. And the broiler chickens, like we used to raise (until the typhoon blew the buildings over) have a short life before they are sent off to Col Sander's heaven, so they are not usually vaccinated.

so if you get it in your broiler chickens, you cull them.

Captain Trips call your office, the chicken lady has a job for you

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In another new article: Another outbreak of footandMouth disease in Indonesia.

Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo told a parliamentary hearing on Monday 20,723 head of livestock had been infected in 16 provinces as of last week. He said these provinces had a total livestock population of around 13.8 million.

Lawmakers at the hearing urged the government to investigate where the infection originated from, slamming authorities for being "careless" in letting the virus spread across the country for the first time since around late 1980s.

The infections have spread at a time when Indonesia was already facing rising prices of meat and ahead of Eid al-Adha, one of the most important Islamic holidays, where Muslims traditionally slaughter animals and share the meat with the poor. Lawmaker Anggia Erma Rini said vaccines were urgently needed to tackle the outbreak.

Wikipedia article on Footandmouth disease. 

and until the vaccines were available, they are isolating and inspecting people traveling from these areas. 

-------------------

And of course African Swine Flu is back: we have had cases on and off for the last few years, and one of our neighbors had to kill all his pigs on his small farm... one result is that we are eating a lot less pork... For the first time in ten years, we are eating beef. 

How did it get here, when pork products from infected countries are banned? Smuggling... and mislabling pork products. Probably from China. 

It's not the Chinese government per se that is the problem: it is the culture of corruption.

SNAFU: being paranoid is now normal

 Canadian humorist Mark Steyn comments on the Four Horsemen of the apocolypse.

.

...headsup from TeaAtTrianon.

Yesterday I linked to an article on the PhilInquirer about how the increase in the price of fertilizer will make food costs high and that the increase in costs of fertilizer and fuel etc might make some farmers decide to just not plant this year.

Kuya agreed: He said he is barely making enough to cover his costs, and even though most of our rice is grown with organic fertilizer, we still have some fields that use regular fertilizer, and the price of that has almost doubled, and now the price of fuel/diesel to run the farm machinery is soaring.

the increase in the price of fuel and electricity (which is also going up) will affect the second harvest the most because the second/winter or dry season harvest requires irrigation, which uses either diesel or electricity, and usually this harvest is smaller than the main (summer) harvest.

now, multiply this by thousands of smaller farmers, and you can see that maybe the price of food will go up high so the urban poor won't be able to afford it, and that if farmers don't grow food, there will be less food for people to buy,

In the meanwhile, China if hoarding food, and with war, the Ukraine wheat might not be available. What about US Farmers? They also are discouraged due to Biden's policies that make diesel and fertilzer more expensive, so will we also see some just saying forget about it and not plant, but just take a government hand out?

My Youtube channel just sent this one to my "recommended" list. It is from the University of Chicago, not a right wing fundamentalist site, and it is from 2015, so it predated Trumpieboy.

,,,,

I post this because it echoes a lot of what was discussed in the letter by Cardinal Vigano that I linked to yesterday. Western forces were pushing democracy, with the best of intentions of course.

So where does the Philippines come into this? 

we have an election, and the CIA media who has been anti Duterte for the last few years is now busy supporting Leni, as is the social media and the Catholic bishops, because the alternative is BongBong Marcos with Duterte's daughter as VP.

Now add to this the Chinese pressure and the leftist bots who automatically oppose the USA, and you see the problem

The saying is: When the elephants fight, the grass suffers.

China supplies a lot of our manufactured goods, and a lot of our medicines and even some of our food. So what happens to the Philippines when Taiwan is invaded? There goes our internet, sea routes, fishing, and maybe even a couple hundred thousand refugees landing in northern Luzon.

Sigh.

the paranoid worry about how the elites of the NWO are using these emergencies to push a long planned agenda.

I'd think that was paranoid, except that back in the late 1990s I read Robert Reich's book Work of Nations  (1992)that posited an elite that identified as citizens of the world, and that the hoi polloi of the US would have to be retrained because their low level jobs would go elsewhere. From a book review by Scott London:

"We are living through a transformation that will rearrange the politics and economics of the coming century," says Robert Reich. As we move into the borderless economy, the notion of national products, national technologies, and national corporations will become increasingly meaningless. The only thing that will remain rooted within national borders are the people who make up a nation. This shift has enormous political implications, according to Reich. It means that the traditional idea of national solidarity and purpose can no longer be defined in purely economic terms. It also leads to fragmentation, Reich argues, as "those citizens best positioned to thrive in the world market are tempted to slip the bonds of national allegiance, and by so doing disengage themselves from their less favored fellows."

So what about those left behind? Reich says the 1990s equivalent of "learn to code". 

 from the early 2000s we also have The Pentagon's new Map, LINK2 that posits a similar tranformation (he sees the Philippines as a cheap source of trained labor. Duh). from a 2013 video

from 2016: the "Great Reset" plan has been around for awhile.

,..

start at 25 minutes...let them eat cake (on the dole it's no problem). and fuck the middle class who now lost their jobs. And they ridicule Brexit as being a Luddite populism.

Sigh.

I am old enough to remember when it was the left who held these points of view, about the evils of big business exploiting the world (Chomsky anyone?). But my opinion was that if they were correct, they also didn't consider the alternative: Poverty and stagnation.  

Things are complicated.

The introduction of robots to replace workers mean a lot of people with no meaningful work. The sexual revolution means no meaningful relationship with your family. The feminist revolution means making women into men, ignoring that they have babies and do this the best when supported by family. Heck, I remember when Betty Frieden who started the feminist revolution, was thrown out of the feminist movement because she insisted that she and most women didn't hate men or want to destroy the family, but only wanted a way to have a family but also use their skills outside the home.

But what do you do with all those out of work? I am reminded of the stories of the Irish Potato famine, that noted that afterward the inefficient small farms were replaced with more efficient methods of farming... the problem was: so where did those who were forced to leave? The Malthusian ideas were around already, and the plans to make the farmlands more efficient were already known, but it took the potato fungus to implement the plans.

Is it paranoia if you just quote them?

The Tolkien comment that maybe communism was Mordor, but that the west was Saruman, willing to use the ring of power to impose a benevolent dictatorship.

all they want to do is to Serve Man...

------------

update; GetReligion blog has had several posts on the Ukraine, from the religion and history point of view, LINK  LINK2 LINK3 and today notes about the fairly large Jewish population there.

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update: well well well: was there a coverup of Vaccine injuries?

Waiting for Dr. C to be cancaled in 1....2...3

TEOTWAWKI post of the day

 the world seems to be committing hari kari with it's overresponse to the covid virus (here in the third world, the economic shutdown and economic collapse will kill more people from hunger and poverty than any damn virus that mainly kills the elderly and sick, but never mind.)

(and I am not being sarcastic about killing the elderly, since I am at high risk here: it's just that people do die of old age you know).

so here is John Bachelor discussing a new book about who will survive a major catastrophe and how they will do it.

....................

one of my areas of interest is the Bronze age collapse in the Aegean. 

Study of Antiquity has a couple interview on their youtube site about why that happened and how folks coped. here is one:

.........and the book 1177 is classic study of this (and soon to be followed by a post 1177 book. Here is Prof Eric Cline discussing:

what will help people survive is not the lone survivalist, but communities of helping each other. 
Which is why the real sign of societal collapse in the west is the demographic crisis the the rejection of the traditional family/

here the family is still strong, but a globalism that pressures parents to work overseas to support their families is not a good thing

(because corruption prevents investments here and because it's hard to break into the oligarchy)

And I shudder to think how the same globalists who planned all of this will decide how ordinary folks should live after the "Great Reset".

and no, the globalist plans are not conspiracy theories, unless you consider Robert Reich and  Thomas Barrett, whose books described the plans 20 years ago, as conspiracy wackos.

keep cash around for emergencies

 here in the Philippines we know that typhoons, floods and earthquakes can mess up the infrastructure: The city water supply, the electrical system, our internet and cable TV. But also it can affect our bank accounts that rely on electronic communications.

Our internet was cut off for six weeks after a large earthquake south of Taiwan took out a major cable (but luckily we still had TV and radio).

Typhoons knock out the electrical system (indeed, one big one a couple years ago knocked out electricity, cable tv, internet, and the water supply for ten days.) Luckily back then cellphones worked, and all of our neighbors came to us for both water from our deep well and to charge up their cellphones. Within a day, local entrepeneurs had "cellphone charge for fifty cents/25 pesos." The roads to Manila opened after a day but it took three days to get to the farm. Most people don't keep food here, but buy it daily so this could be a problem, but hey we always have rice to eat (we store some of our gourmet organic brown rice here).

Covid caused a different problem: The internet was okay, as was the TV, electricity etc. But the mail service to the USA was essentially out for six months (a pension check took four months to arrive and was so damaged I couldn't cash it, and I had to wait two months to send it back to the USA to get a new one).Luckily electronic banking worked and I arranged wire transfer.

And with the covid, every truck had to be checked and there were huge slowdowns to get supplies: Luckily as testing became more common, you could just get a paper from the local barangay/neighborhood office that let you go through with only a temperature check.

some luxury items went out of stock, but essentially you could get routine things, including medicines: and if it wasn't in one store, they'd refer you to another. That has improved as the quarantine in our area has been partially lifte.

the local internet is slow because kids now get paper modules to do their school work and watch classes on line. The mayor arranged cheap public wifi for the poorer neighborhoods, but that means slow internet and internet going on and off as they upgrade the lines. It got so bad that Joy paid for the new Huawei internet connection (they are busy putting in 5G in our area) so she could do her business meetings etc. on line.

Well, this is all routine for those of us living in rural areas: And indeed, things like periodic brownouts have improved greatly since I moved here., 

Usually in the USA one does not worry about such things: indeed, one doesn't even think things can go wrong so easily, even when Covid shuts down the economy.

What brought this up was that I was reading all the conspiracy theories on the bombing in Nashville (probably an older white guy who descended into paranoia with age). Lots of conspiracy theories out there about the internet center being the target. Early reports were that it knocked out the 911 system for locals, 

but I ran across this local report saying that the local Walgreens is only taking cash for medicine, because they can't do credit card billing.

uh oh: This could cause problems with those who need expensive medicine (e.g. the elderly) and might not have that much cash around... and if the internet is out, that means you might have trouble with insurance paying for your medicine.

And if Walgreens is out, what about the local grocery store, where many use credit cards to shop.

hmm... 

My husband always relied on cash, not credit cards, and he would carry hundreds of dollars with him (but he also had a gun in the car and in the bedstand: partly because he also carried morphine for house calls),

Even here, he would keep a couple hundred dollars in pesos in our safe, something I am now starting to do now that I supply money for the family's food and help.

why not Atm; well, the ATMs often get empty on weekends, and they shut down when the electricity is off. And of course they require the internet to get information on your account...

well, if anything good comes from the bombing, it will be that it is a "headups" to Americans about the fragility of civilization. 

There already are worries about hackers destroying the electrical, water supply, internet, etc etc. 

Right now, the US and China are at the start of World War III, and it won't be fought with nuclear weapons but with hacking and sabotage of the infrastructure.

so maybe the preppers aren't as crazy as they seem.

...................,,,,,,,,,

EMPs, the Miyake Event, and...Squirrels?

 one of the "We're all gonna die" scenerios is a solar flare: the most famous one of these is the Carrington event of 1859. when a solar flare was so strong it affected the telegraph.

One of these could shut down the power grid, all computers, and many modern appliances with the result: devastation of civilization.

But in these days of the new cold war, one does have to worry about another scenerio: the Electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear weapon that is set off in the atmosphere. (see One second After, where the cause of was an enemy nuclear attack of three nuclear weapons originating in cargo ships near the coast that were able to get under radar, causing an EMP)... both the EMP and a solar flare could wipe out computers, the power grid, the water supply, most modern automobiles, etc. and cause societal breakdown.

this would affect cities most of all: huge numbers of people would flee cities to rural areas, and the resulting death rate from hunger, disease and accidents would be huge.

Here in the rural Philippines, we still know how to use water buffalo, plant and thresh rice by hand, use manure to fertilize, and use a machete...But even here, we are close enough to Manila to be overwhelmed by refugees and might not be able to grow enough to feed everyone. And how many would die of infectious disease?

But again, it hasn't been that long since World War II when the infrastructure collapsed, and there is a memory of those days and how to survive. 

But in the USA? I'm not sure. I suspect the best place to survive would be in Mormon country, since those folks still keep a memory of their pioneer ancestors, when they were essentially on their own to survive.

well, anyway, what brought about this musing was this article, on a deserted monastery on an island in Siberia (in Tuva) that was dated due to a piece of wood with tree rings (aka by using dendrochronology), which showed evidence of a Miyake event, a proton solar flare that, if it happened today, could destroy the power grid and every computerized appliance you own.

Um, Miyake event? Yes, a new term. The article explains.

In 2012, Japanese scientist Fusa Miyake identified two spikes in the carbon-14 levels present in tree rings of known age from dendrochronological archives—one in 775, and the other in 994. These surges, now called Miyake Events, were likely produced by massive bursts of cosmic radiation and can be seen in tree rings throughout the world.

 

Fusa Miyake; Ja'Crispy/iStock/Getty Images, adapted by APS/Alan Stonebraker

 Wikipedia article on the 775 event. thought to be a solar proton event (in contrast to a solar gamma ray event). From Wikipedia:

Coronal Mass ejection 

Solar particle event

 This is outside my field, but to put it simply: Both will fry your computer chips... and it is one reason that if you want to protect your computer, you need to keep an eye on solar weather website.

lots of youtube videos on how to stick your computer into a Faraday cage to protect it (e.g. stick it into a stainless steel trash can?) but hey the real danger is damage to the electric grid.

Power grids could be destroyed a lot of things: by a simple hack job (see DieHard 4.0), by coordinated physical terror attack by crazies, wildfires (as in California) etc. 

But the most common cause of electric grid damage? the lowly Squirrel.

NEARLY FOUR YEARS ago, Cris Thomas began documenting attacks on the US power grid. The number of incidents was eye-popping; over 1700 in all, impacting nearly five million people. The perpetrators? Squirrels. And birds. Assorted rodentia. Some industrious frogs, too.

It's so serious that it even has it's own Wikipedia page. 

------- just for fun:

The next virus: Monkeypox?

 while checking StrategyPage for updates on Central Africa/DRC, to see how their Ebola epidemic is going on (112  cases, 25000 vaccinations to stop the spread), and a Covid outbreak in a refugee camp (not much detail given), I noted this observation.

September 9, 2020: In Congo medical authorities reported a monkeypox outbreak in the has so far infected 141 people and killed ten. All 141 cases are confirmed cases. Monkeypox has symptoms similar to the small pox virus, though far less severe.

I never saw this disease in Africa, but I remember reading about it when there was an outbreak in the USA back in 2003, due to imported animals from Ghana... actually these imported animals gave the MP to prairie dogs, and the people who bought prairie dogs for pets got infected, usually via cleaning the cages when you had a small wound for the virus to enter, or by being bitten by the Prairiedog.

in other words, you can get it not just from monkeys but from small rodents.

However that epidemic was not spread person to person.

there was also an outbreak in the UK from patients who caught it in Nigeria back in 2018, that spread to a health care worker who got it because of inferior quality protective gloves.

and last year there was one case in Singapore, brought in from Nigeria. The article includes this nice illustration about the disease:

CDC discusses the ongoing epidemic.

. Usually only spread via close contact with infected animals, although a few cases of human to human transmission have been reported in those in close contact with someone with lesions or maybe from close contact from respiratory spread. There is treatment, but usually prevention by small pox vaccination is the way to stop transmission... 

ironically, since smallpox has been eradicated, people no longer receive small pox vaccine, so now are vulnerable to smallpox's weaker cousins in the pox family. This might explain why the public health authorities are seeing periodic outbreaks of money pox in various African countries.

so how many cases are we talking about?

OutbreakNews says over 2500 cases since July.

presumably this is not going to cause a major outbreak, but it does show how diseases can move from animals to humans and spread quickly if not stopped.

Personally, I'm more worried about bird flu, (H5N1 avian influenza virus) which has killed a couple hundred people in Asia who were in close contact with chickens etc., but luckily has not taken the last step that makes it possible for human to human transmission.

and all the conspiracy types who think that because a "war game" simulation was done for a covid type virus last year, that this was related to the covid outbreak: 

well, all I can say is that a similar "war game" was done about bird flu a couple years ago. And bird flu is a lot more dangerous and has a higher mortality. 

And for all the hysteria and conspiracy theories on covid, the dirty little secret is that it is too weak to be a deliberate bioweapon release, since the morality is low, not to mention it killed quite a few Chinese (how many? who knows. They are keeping it secret). 

However, the good news about covid is that it has given the world expertise on how to handle the next outbreak, so if a lethal disease should again jump from animals to human, people will be prepared.

Wuhan virus? under estimated?

just links to discussions.






so just an ordinary mutant virus from bats/snakes, or should we believe conspiracy theories?








this last podcast by Bill Gertz is really scary: 

Bill Gertz (@BillGertz), in re: The source of the Wuhan coronavirus: now clearly (according to The Lancet) not the wet market, so where? The Chinese governmental biolab smack in the middle of Wuhan city? And the first documented sick person seems not to have been in December, but in October. ..  a study by 29 Chinese scientists says: the first victim was on 1 Dec, and naught to do with the seafood market.

Most of these viruses (in the past) have originated in Guangdong; why is this one from the middle of the country?

But don't worry: The Chinese plan to spread disinformation that it was caused by the USA to deflect blame. 

The Communist regime is steeped in deception; rumors were circulating on the Chinese Net that the US was the origin!

and politics have made Beijing reject US help in fighting the virus: 

... The Director-General of WHO had a presser in Geneva today: “I will not allow any Americans in with the team” [even though US researchers are perhaps the best].

and the worst might be yet to come: 

It's now going from Hebei to Xinjiang. God help the million-plus Uyghurs and Kazakhs being held in concentration camps there. Unknown currently how lethal this is, but said to be at least as lethal as the 1919 pandemic.

Lancet article dated Jan29 PDF

Lancet link2
includes this graph:

the problem? Not all the early cases were in contact with the seafood market. LINK

UK Mail summary.

a lot of countries are shutting down travel, but not the Philippines, although travel visa from the Wuhan area are being stopped.

And there are some arrangements to bring home the OFW in Wuhan.\

BBC SUMMARY.

and since China has a lot of their workers in Africa, one shudders at the possible death rate when it reaches  countries with high rates of malnutrition/

The UKMail reports it already has reached Sudan


Me? I figure it's just as bad as ordinary flu (remember, 80 thousand folks in the USA died last year of ordinary flu), and hey, maybe it could be like the 1918 Spanish flu with 20 million dead (in an era without antibiotics and when a lot of people were malnourished from the war).

 Who knows?

and that is why folks are so hysterical about this.

and one geopolitical fallout from the virus:

WUHAN flu

this year is bad for influenza: there are two influenza bugs out there, and alas the vaccine this year only works for less than half the strains.

I seem to remember a similar problem back in the late 1990s, when we almost lost two children who had flu and then developed resistant staph pneumonia and had to ship them to Minneapolis for treatment (they both lived, thank God).

And then we started to get influenza in our nursing home. That year, the influenza shot (for epidemic type b) worked, so we figured this was the usual type A influenza that lurks around all the time. After almost losing two patients, we stopped all visitors and I put everyone on Symetrel, which treats and prevents type A flu (this was before Tamiflu). No more cases, whoopie! The bad news? I messed up our pharmacy budget.

So, as I noted, it's a bad year for flu.

But I also remember SARS: the Chinese kept it secret how bad it was, and it spread to Hong Kong and then to Toronto. Luckily it stopped, mainly due to old fashioned quarantine (and screening airline passengers for fever) but that was scary, because it seemed to have a high mortality.

Mortality is hard evidence of a disease, but doesn't always give a clue to how many cases are actually around, since many mild cases never see a physician. (e.g. Dengue is probably under diagnosed since ordinary folks don't see doctors unless they are very sick because they can't afford it. )

So now, on top of ordinary flu, we have Wuhan flu. As suspected, the Chinese underestimated the cases and now there are cases all over Asia and perhaps in the USA: we have a few cases here in the Philippines.

Apparently it has a long "incubation period" which means you aren't sick right away so don't get sick until days later. (CDC says to check for it if your patient has been in Wuhan or in contact with another peson with the disease in the last 14 days, meaning the infected people could travel quite a distance before they got sick).

China finally has decided to stop flights from Wuhan to stop people from leaving the area, to stop more cases from leaving, but it is a bit late.

And the bad news: Some of the nurses etc. have caught it, meaning it spread person to person in close contact.
the treatment (like SARS) is "supportive", meaning oxygen, nutrition, isolation, antibiotics if a secondary infection occurs, and maybe put on a respirator if it gets bad.

the patient needs to be put in a private room, preferably one with respiratory protection (we use this in TB patients so the air with the germ doesn't get blown out to infect other patients: In SARS it spread via air ducts, but it's not known if this will also). Docs and nurses should wear special masks and even eye shields.

Luckily, the death rate isn't high, (China only reported 9 deaths so far, but of course, the bad news is that they lie and there could be more cases they are covering up).

But it does kill people, and with Chinese New Year coming up this weekend, it means everyone will be visiting family, (meaning traveling in crowded trains, buses and airplanes where viruses can spread easily) and so there is a big worry it will spread all over the world quickly.

Sigh.

The news changes from day to day, and there is a big meeting coming up to discuss the problem. However, China, as usual, has it's priorities intact: they pressured the World Health Organization to keep out scientists from Taiwan, because China hates Taiwan and thinks it should be part of China, whereas the Taiwanese don't, and politics is more important than people dying.

Here is John Bachelor's show discussion of the disease.



of course, the news is changing fast so it might already be out of date.

the latest CDC report is here. 

This article worries that the Wuhan flu could be more bad news for China's economy, which is already hit by Trumpieboy's trade negotiations. 

We have cases in the Philippines, but none in our district yet. Chinese new year is big in Manila, but not so much here in the rural provinces, and our fiesta season is pretty well over. But we are close enough to Manila that it could spread here quickly.

In Asia, they wear masks in flu season: The bad news? The heavy masks are already out of stock since people used them to breath after the volcano Taal put ash in the air (the gov't said a wet cloth would work better than the wimpy masks). I have a wimpy surgical mask here, just in case, but my personally fitted HEPA mask (which was used when we went into rooms with folks with TB etc) was left at home.

Sigh.

----------------------
update: Did you know Wuhan has a lab that studies "dangerous pathogens" (aka germs)?

From Nature (Feb 2017):

Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world's most dangerous pathogens
 Maximum-security biolab is part of plan to build network of BSL-4 facilities across China...

 Some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping, and the addition of a biological dimension to geopolitical tensions between China and other nations.

italics mine

But Chinese microbiologists are celebrating their entrance to the elite cadre empowered to wrestle with the world’s greatest biological threats....

and later in the article is this:

But worries surround the Chinese lab, too. The SARS virus has escaped from high-level containment facilities in Beijing multiple times, notes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Tim Trevan, founder of CHROME Biosafety and Biosecurity Consulting in Damascus, Maryland, says that an open culture is important to keeping BSL-4 labs safe, and he questions how easy this will be in China, where society emphasizes hierarchy. “Diversity of viewpoint, flat structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important,” he says..

again italics mine.

headsup Bigleaguepolitics via FR

Yes these two sites are fake news/conspiracy type sites, but hey, when Nature Magazine (which is one of the top scientific journals) has an article about the Wuhan facility, why hasn't this been in the news?

Yes, I know: given the lack of hygiene in low end markets, it's probably started from animal contact, but still, when possible sources of a disease like this aren't mentioned in the MSM, it leads to people believing in conspiracy theories....

luckily, after the SARS and MERS outbreaks, the Infectious disease folks at Johns Hopkins did hold a "war game" (i.e. simulation) of such an outbreak a few years ago. LINK.  the simulation was called Event 201 and they do have a website.

This is not pushing a conspiracy theory: these are practice simulations to plan how to repond and they make recommendations.

Right before 911, a really scary simulation was about a bioweapon attack with smallpox release called Dark Winter. And the site has held other simulations: CladeX  about a pandemic of an influenza type disease (I suspect they were inspired by birdflu cases that jumped the species barrier about that time), and Atlantic storm that posited a bioweapons attack causing an outbreak.






Hospitals and emergency services organizations hold similar simulations all the time to prepare for mass casualty situations. so forget the conspiracy theory.

Indeed, the lessons from Dark Winter were used to plan for a possible bioweapons attack with smallpox after 911 (I had to review our clinic's protocol, which thank the Lord was never used).

War and disease breaking out all over (not)

is war coming? Probably not. Just the usual local outbreaks of violence and small gangs of insurgents killing people.

StrategyPage cuts through the propaganda and analyzes what's up.



Lots of stuff about Iran, and no they don't expect war there either.

One reason I trust the site: They get things right about countries where I have first hand knowledge.

For example, they are one of the few sites that notice how corruption, not just ideology, is behind a lot of the news stories. 

The MSM ignores the corrution angle, and one problem in the Middle East is that the US thought throwing money at their problems would solve stuff: it didn't. It just made corruption worse and inspired ordinary folks to get angry at the US.

Even the radical Islamicists causing trouble all over (and in the recent past, the radical communist types who still are active in the Philippines and India) got local support due to corruption of the government.

Philippine president Magsaysay wrote the classic book about the causes and cures of such insurgencies: get rid of corruption in the government/police/ military, get land reform, and have the military reach out to locals to help them solve problems.


and here is SP/s analysis of last year's news :

\\

and here is their summary (from last year) of various problems here in the Philippines:



here, the big news is the volcano, which is still active but has calmed down (?calm before the storm?)



There is also a bit of a kerfuffle about China exporting their gangsters here: a Chinese girl was almost kidnapped for ransom, so this is about the return of the kidnap gangs, but also the drug smugglers, the food smugglers, the bribery, the manufacture of counterfeit products, legal casinos that won't hire locals (they import the personnel to do things locals could do), illegal gambling, on line pornography, etc etc which is blamed on these "visitors" or illegal immigrants.

the Chinese community is only partly assimilated so tends to keep the crime news among themselves, so the cops are developing a bureau of culturally sensitive cops to handle the increased Chinese on Chinese crime.

Filipinos tend to distrust the Chinese, and a lot of this is just politics, a way by the opposition parties to decrease the popularity of Duterte who is busy cleaning up corruption (a lot of his "critics" are the most corrupt and worried they'll be next on his cleanup list).

that part about smuggling food is important: It was suspected that someone smuggled in pork from sick pigs from China, and spread here because the meat contains active virus and the local pigs are fed discarded food.

That is how we now have a small epidemic of African swine flu in some areas, which means these farmers will have to kill all the pigs in contact with cases.

To make things worse: now we have a child who tested positive for that new Chinese coronavirus. and a few Chinese tourists in Boracay have flu like symptoms.

there is a lot of rumors saying that China is covering up the number of cases: and now there is a report that the disease is able to spread person to person.



this could be a disaster worse than SARS...

 Already the Philippines has a Dengue epidemic, and random cases of measles and diphtheria and polio partly due to people not getting their kids vaccinated thanks to the Dengue vaccine scandal.

Sigh.

the good news? 

now that they are looking for stuff from the sky, we are reading more about meteors going past the earth, or coming down as fireballs. None so far causing damage.

More good (or bad news, depending on your viewpoint): The impeachment fizzling and should disappear, because the dirty little secret is that Biden's son wasn't the only one getting rich on daddy's/mom's or a sibling's influence. 

Maybe only one who has experience with such things in the third world would notice that they aren't impeaching Trump for being corrupt (despite lots of charges and failed investigations of this) but because he dared to investigate corruption in another politician..

But as I noted above, the corruption factors are ignored by the MSM/cable TV news, so all those good honest people who trust the news don't know such things occur in Washington. 

As for Trump: he's worked with corruption in NYC for years so knows all the tricks.



Finally: the big gun rights march in Virginia didn't devolve into violence as the press hinted was going to happen hoped would happen despite rumors that trained antifa provocateurs who infiltrated it were supposed to guarantee would happen. 

Rumors on right wing sites say that the cops were in the crowd and hiding nearby in case of trouble, but the demonstration was peaceful, had "people of color" among the crowd, and like most right wing demonstrations cleaned up their own garbage.

Not my agenda: I support gun control, and refused to carry a gun when I was in the National Guard... but you know, if confronted with a bad guy, a person well trained to shoot can be life saving. 

and that, not guns per se, is the problem:

The real danger is people with a little training who think a gun will protect them. It won't: and the gun in the house is a danger for accidental discharge if you have children, and suicide if you have an unstable depressed family member.

ironically, suicide is highest in white males and especially in the elderly, whereas black on black homicide by gang members using handguns remains a problem in some parts of the inner city community. 

As for mass shootings: alas, like suicides, many are copy cat crimes, where an unstable person sees a crime and thinks: Hey what a great idea. 

Or, in the case of suicide, sees the press sympathetically covering a case of suicide as if it was a logical thing to do. Thirteen reasons why is an example of selling suicide to teenagers, who think: When I'm dead they'll be sorry, but they don't really recognize that first part, i.e. that they'll be dead.

Sigh.

Speaking of suicide: StrategyPage has a long analysis of the problem in the military and veterans but notes it is a problem among the general population.


Sigh.