No, I am not watching the Harry and Meghan soap opera on TV.
Poor them.
I am reminded of my oldest son who started reading a book about a rich Hong Kong family written by the middle girl, the youngest of the first wife, who felt she was neglected by the family and who related a lot of small things that hurt her feelings, such as the family wouldn't pay for expensive meals at her fancy school so she was stuck with ordinary food.
My oldest son was adopted from Colombia as a young teenager, and his comment: why is she complaining so much? She had enough to eat...
One feels the same way about these two poster children of narcissitic parents. They abandoned their job, fled to a nice area of Canada, and when they decided to move back to Hollywood, complained they were essentially homeless and no one would pay for body guards so Tyler Perry had to come to their rescue. Hmmm... I thought Harry had a net worth of 60 million, so don't ask me to feel sorry for him.
Don't they realize that a lot of people are hurting, all over the world, and the covid epidemic made things worse?
Here in the Philippines, we worry because the price of diesel and ferilizer is making cost of growing rice go up, and of course later this means that people who eat rice will have to pay more. (meaning that poor people might not be able to afford rice next year).
The government does help the poor with subsidized rice, But if an emergency such as an accident or illness hits, it can cause severe financial problems.
True, the city has a free hospital for major illnesses, and a free medical clinic for kids. That helps. But they still have to buy the medicine.
we have a couple people a day coming here for help with medical expenses. I mean, 7 dollars for a rabies shot for a kid bitten by a street dog, or five dollars for antibiotic for your kid with bronchitis, etc. This is not a lot of money, but it is in a country where the minimum wage is under ten dollars a day. And the farmers are usually short of funds because they are between grows (after selling the last harvest, which was poor due to a typhoon, money is tight because they need that money to replant, so cash is short for luxuries like medicines and school supplies).
Sigh.
The way people support themselves here is extended family and friends.
So when many lost their jobs in Saudi or other middle eastern countries due to covid, a lot of families hurt.
Things are improving now: yes, I know. Lots of anti Qatar articles about the mistreatment of their foreign workes, but you have to realize that the alternative is starving and no way to improve your life in beautiful eco friendly traditional lifestyle beloved by elite wealthy green types, but seen by the rest of us as a life of poverty and back breaking work.
How do people survive?
The families here in the Philippines care for their own.
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This is not just in the Philippines you know: I worked in poorer rural areas in the US for 30 years, and we saw people caring for their families nearly every day.
22.3% of adults reported providing care or assistance to a friend or family member in the past 30 days. 24.4% of adults aged 45 to 64 years are caregivers ...
If you are tired of superhero/heroine movies, or (worse) the cookie cutter plots of Hallmark films where good looking rich people find romance over age 30, try watching Sam and Kate about two over 30s caring for their aging parents.
No cliches here. And probably too realistic to be a hit.
And unlike Hallmark movies where romantic happy ending with Mr/Ms Right is the aim of the plot, the people here have ordinary problems, and the family members take responsibility for their elders.
And unlike the religionless Hallmark films, they actually quietly attend church as just part of their routine life...(which is where the two families meet, when Hoffman and son offer Spacek and daughter a ride home).
The children are played by the actual Children of the leads (Dustin Hoffman and Sissy Spacek).
So not a happy film per se, but does show the reality of American life, and unlike too many modern films, shows the goodness of ordinary people who are caregivers
Been there, done that.
And now, after that bout with Dengue fever, I find that I was the one who neded to be cared for by family here in the Philippines.
YEONCHEON, South Korea--Jin, the oldest member of K-pop supergroup BTS, was set to enter a frontline South Korean boot camp Tuesday to start his 18 months of mandatory military service, as fans gathered near the base to say goodbye to their star.
Six other younger BTS members are to join the military in coming years one after another, meaning that South Korea’s most successful music band must take a hiatus, likely for a few years.
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..Here is one of their hits:
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quite a few K drama/Kpop celebrities have served in the militay there LINK
...Americans used to have to serve a mandatory military service, but the fraud in the rich getting deferments and controversy over Vietnam made the government change to a voluntary army.
So outside of IceT and Gal Gadot, it's hard to find any modern pop star under the age of 70 who has done military service.
But in the past, that was not how it was; the most famous draftee way back when was... Elvis.
They even made a film about it (a loosely disguised retelling of Elvis' stint in the USArmy):
Twitter lifted its ban on COVID misinformation—research shows this is a grave risk to public health
My take?
That by not allowing discussion, the only place you can find this information is on distorted conspiracy sites, and when people actually see or read of sudden adult death syndrome in the young, they take the problem out of context and exaggerate the risk: and since the experts deny any problem, the end result is that they stop believing in experts.
For at least thirty years I have wished that there were medical discussion on the internet so docs could bring up these questions: But alas we were stuck with slow "letters to the editor" to bring up the questions and of course often these letters never got published.
I don't know if things improved: After Lolo died, I have stopped reading the journals etc. and of course our medical organizations have pretty well be taken over by the woke. I have written about racism in medicine in the past, but the woke i.e. Marxist ideas will probably only make things worse: because they are training you to see a straw man who fits into the marxist ideological box instead of a real person in front of you, a person with flaws and strong points who needs your help.
In the past, docs often were trouble makers because we were a reality based profession. But now we are supposed to fill in the boxes to get paid, and there is a lot less patient continunity, so the patient might not have the same doc for every visit. Indeed, those visits for minor things (which are now often pushed off to nurse practitioners) were the time we got to know our patients with small talk: and so when a major medical problem happened, they knew us and we knew them.
No more, of course.
An GPs who notice strange patterns are told that Medicine based on anecdotal observation is often false, where what actually happens is that we know the multifactorial reasons behind our observation.
Now it seems we have to fill in the blanks and follow the experts or else.
but when there is a filter to stop inconvenient questions in published papers, and the advice by experts is based on a flawed method of analyzing what has already been published, you see there might be a problem.
The experts gather all the studies (both good and poorly done) and then pretend they are all accurate studies, and then make guidelines based on the average of all of these studies, it makes one wonder if the experts know the phrase "GIGO" garbage in garbage out.
Statistics are complicated.
The statin studies of the 1990s were an example.
So a study reporting, say, a 25 percent reduction in heart attacks if you use X medicine leads to people thinking everyone sould take an anti cholesterol pill... this ignores that these numbers come down to an actual tiny number of cases stopped in the general population... and those studies shows no difference in death rates from all causes (since the treated group had higher incidence of deaths from (one study) cancer or (another study) violence/suicide.)
Docs just scoffed at the news that we should put eveyone on these medicines, but hey we were under pressure to use the medicine for the good of our patients. And the advice kept lowering the cholesterol where we should start treatment. We see a similar exaggeration in lowering blood pressure so far, to the point that our elderly patients are falling down and breaking their hips.
When it comes to covid, there is even more confusion.
Dr. C again risks youtube banning by interviewing an expert in statistics.
I post this partly to listen to it a second time because it is a bit dense, but it does bring up some points one dare not raise.
Main point: what do we mean by absolute risk and relative risk?
To avoid covid hysteria, I am posting this video which predates covid
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It would have been so nice if real experts had been able to point these things out without the danger of being banned.
Elon Musk is hinting that he might open the twitter files to see how people got banned etc because they went against the so called experts.
And I would welcome a twitter where people could actually discuss and put their two cents in.
True, anecdotal medicine often gets things wrong, but you know, a lot of medical breakthroughs come from docs who notice something and report it.
Dr. Malone call your office. You might be allowed to give your opinion soon.
...(Musk) doesn't feel mysterious to me at all. It sounds almost exactly the way I feel. So my hypothesis is that he's liberal, he's spent a lot of time around liberals and lefties, and he's got endless problems with the way they've betrayed what, it seems, should be their true values.
I get annoyed when the anti vax hysteria seems to condemn all public health officials and all vaccines.
Sheesh. Maybe they need to live in the third world, where epidemics kill folk, but public health and vaccines saves lives.
StrategyPage has a long essay about the various tribal wars in Central Africa/DRC area, and how a Russian mercenary group is looting gold and diamonds to sell via the UAE.
But they do have this good news in their report:
November 30, 2022: In western Uganda, the Ebola outbreak that began in September has seen a decline in cases because of rapid medical response. Reported cases have declined but despite that decline, Uganda has closed schools nation-wide in an attempt to curb the spread of the Ebola virus. In November eight children died from Ebola in Uganda. The spread of Ebola to neighboring Congo seems to have been halted.....
Andrew Wefwafa had a series of videos about this
.....this was caused by the Sudan variation of the Ebola virus, and the problem is that the vaccines that helped stop the previous epidemics in central Africa were for a different strain.
Just recently, a new experimental vaccine for this Ebola strain has been sent there. LINK
The doses are from the Sabin Vaccine Institute (SVI), according to Reuters. The SVI vaccine is a modified chimpanzee adenovirus (ChAd3) vector vaccine.
note: The adenovirus vector is the technique that was used to develop the british AZ vaccine for covid, and it was also used to develop previous Ebola vaccines .
Health officials had earlier cleared plans to study three candidate Ebola Sudan vaccines. The others are from Merck and Oxford University.
In the middle of November, a WHO working group recommended that ring vaccine trials prioritize the Merck candidate first, owing to the safety and efficacy of the VSV-EBOV platform used for the Zaire Ebola vaccine, followed by the SVI vaccine, then the Oxford vaccine.
A sharp decline in Uganda's Ebola cases presents an obstacle to ring vaccination trials. '
essentially the disease was stopped by isolation etc. so they will not be able to prove the vaccine works.
/sarcasm.
Actually from a scientific point of view, this means that they can't prove it works, but in serioius diseases, when the choice means saving lives, usually the saving lives is more important than purity in scientific experimentation.
There are also ways to stop the spread of disease, such as masks (which keep you from spreading infected saliva when you talk or sneeze), isolation, hand washing etc.
And if you don't want to vaccinate everyone, or if there is not enough vaccine for everyone, you use the "ring vaccination"procedure.
Yes, I know: the Pearl Harbor attack was December 7 but here in the Philippines it was December 8.
Lolo was a young teen, and when they heard that war had arrived, he helped his mom and cousin walk to the farm (which is four miles from town) and they stayed there for a few weeks.
Since the Japanese decided schools should teach Japanese, essentially all the schools were shut down, so Lolo didn't return to school until after the war.
He was a kid, and the only stories he related to me about those times was that one of the local Japanese soldiers would give the street kids candy. ..but he also related how a "spy" was executed on the street in front of their house.
Many elites in Manila hoped that the Japanese would give them independence, but that didn't happen... but I wonder if this is why there isn't a lot of rememberance of WWII heroes in the culture. Our town plaza has memorials to both those who fought for independence against the Americans and also one in honor of those who fought in WWII...
ironically, our family, who had a history of supporting Philippine independence against the Americans, (both Lolo and Kuya were named after Rizal's btother) joined the anti Japanese resistance: Lolo was too young but his older brother and cousin were part of the resistance, hiding in the nearby mountains.
His Cousin was killed, and his aunts still had a shrine in their house to his memory, with his photo and the letter from Harry Truman thanking him for his service.
Sigh.
The surviving Philippine veterans didn't get a pension until recent years (mainly because of fraud: too many lied about it). Lolo's brother, who fought as a guerilla for several years, was long dead so his family didn't get any of the pension, and Lolo, who only joined at the end of the war and never actually fought, (he mainly did patrols of the local area with his brother) was given a Pension from the Philippine government and help with his tuition for school, but was not eligible for the US funding.
One trivia fact: Probably more civilians were killed by the Japanese who were fleeing Manila than were killed in Hiroshima. wikipedia estimates 100 thousand were killed, some were killed by errant shelling during the battle, but most killed in revenge when found by the fleeing Japanese.
MacArthur promised the Filipino people he would return (and liberate them from the Japanese). So when the higher ups wanted to bypass the Philippines and just hurry to invade Japan, MacArthur refused, because of that promise.
Most of the history books stress the US military in all these stories, and ignore the Philippine soldiers and civilians were doing a lot of the fighting.
And of course, the western (and anti western culture Marxist) history taught in schools never teach such things.
Heck, when Ruby and her American cousins visited Bataan during their stay last month, she had to fill them in on the details.
MacArthur was hated by many Americans, even those who fought under him, because essentially he was a snob. But growing up in Asia he understood Asian culture, which included obeying superiors and "utan na loob", keeping one's promises. Manchester's biography called him an "American Ceaser" but one would like to see a biography putting his personality and actions (both here in the Philippines and in Japan) into the context of East Asia culture rather than western culture or the Marxist interpretation of history (read US BAD) that often contaminates recent history.
The trouble with conspiracy theories is that often they are exaggerated and paranoid. But sometimes there is a core fact behind the theories, and this fact was censored or ignored by the MSM.
But now a lot of those conspiracy theories are turning out to be true, or partially true: never mind that the original story was not as bad as the conspiracy story: the coverup essentially made things a lot worse than if they had just allowed freedom of speech on the social media and MSM.
one rumor that was going around the conspiracy sites was about sudden deaths in young people after getting the covid shot: especially after getting booster.
Myocarditis and rare events of sudden cardiac death are now being linked to the mRNA vaccine by autopsy findings of localized myocarditis.
The trouble? By censoring the story, it allows rumors and conspiracy theories to abound, and these conspiracy theories are often exaggerated the number of deaths, and spread by those who distrust science, and in the long run causes mistrust of the medical community.
Dr. C discusses youtube threats to censor his reports:
When it comes to the covid vaccine: Common sense would say: For elders and those of us with medical problems, we need to get boosters.
But since the omincron and cross immunity from mild omicron or other covid viruses is widespread, (see second video I posted) it doesn't make sense to give repeated boosters to the young.
Now, will I be axed from blogger for saying this?
another conspiracy theory that has been found to be true in recent weeks: That the Covid2 virus was probably a lab leak, which China tried to cover up.
Well, duh. But by banning any talk of this, it allowed rumors that this was germ warfare, not an accident... and of course, there are rumors that the US went along with the cover up because the funding of the Wuhan lab came from the US Government via a third party.
Place anti CIA/anti American comment here (so is the US funding aspect true, or is a disinformation rumor spread by Russian Bots?)
The overblown shut down policy to covid is now not needed, so is now pretty well finished, except in China.
But most cases in China are the omicron varient,
The US has a new shot that works against this, but China refuses to use it: no, not because of side effects but out of national pride: They don't want to admit that their vaccine doesn't work.
Covid2 is infectious, especially the omicron varient which seems to be behind the epidemic right now in China. But the Omicron varient is more infectious (via the air, at a distance), so isolation and masks are of limited value. Which means China is overreacting by their strict isolation policy, while they are refusing the newer vaccines and of course not using anti viral medicine to prevent the spread.
uh, follow the science? No, obey big brother...and now the protests are so big they are being noticed outside of China.
What should be done: Isolate the high risk folk, and let the rest of the country free. Some will get the milder omicron infection, but most will recover in a few days, but at least you will minimize starvation from a collapsed economy next year.
But to put things into perspective:
Right now the Philippines is monitoring the population and finds a high rate of infections. The positivity rate, which measures the percentage of positive cases among all those tested, remains high.
Octa fellow Guido David said the positivity rate in the capital region climbed from 11.1 percent on Nov. 26 to 12.4 percent as of Dec. 3.
1,141 new cases and 25 new deaths in the Philippines
and of course a lot of people with cold symptoms are not being tested, especially here in the rural areas, where they are busy in the fields haresting and preparing the fields for an extra grow since the last harvest was poor thanks to the typhoon flattening the almost ripe rice.
What has changed: more immunity, both natural and from shots.
Here in the Philippines, we mask indoors, but outdoor masks are optional. We no longer need a face shield, and it has been months since we needed a covid screen to travel. Essentially we are open for business (in case you want to visit the lovely beaches in Boracay, which are now open and have been cleaned up in recent years).
But the numbers of covid cases in recent months are probably not accurate since mild cases are not necessarity tested.
For example, I had three episodes of asthmatic Bronchitis since the start of the epidemic:and never was tested.
one before the vaccine, and two after I got the shot. I get asthmatic bronchitis once or twice a year, so I just did my usual self tratment: steroids and zithromax along with asthma medicine.
I was quite ill with the third episode (and had Kuya sleep in my room just in case), and added Ivermectin because WTF it might work, and I had it on hand to treat the dogs. In all cases I was better in two days.
The problem? There are other diseases out there that can make you sick.
In early November, my symptoms were fever, nausea and vomiting, so I figured it was a UTI, until I collapsed in the bathroom and literally couldn't move, so I had them call an ambulance (I thought the weakness was from electrolyte imbalance and dehydration).
Before they let you into the ER to check you, however, they test for covid, so I had to wait in the isolation area for two hours before I was seen by a doctor, muttering: please check my potassium level and start an IV...
Three days in, when the urine tested clear, my platelet and wbc count started to drop, and I got an impressive rash on my face and legs, so they checked for Dengue, which is making a lot of kids sick in our area right now..., and that was what I had. Treatment for Dengue is to prevent dehydration, but it took five days before I could eat and had the strength to get out of bed, and a few more days I wasn't allowed home because my WBC and platelets, which were dangerously low, improved.
Dengue cases are up this year (probably because people are now going outside a lot) and there have been an estimated 200 thousand cases this year, with 600 deaths. But again a lot of mild cases or asymptomatic cases never get tested, so the real number is probably much higher.
Not as fatal as Covid, of course, but many of the cases are in kids. Sigh.
I am trying to find more information but so far nothing about this on the BBC website, and the Fox news on youtube is so toxic snide and impolite that I refuse to post it.
the WH response to this was to have Hunter attend the state dinner with the French president.
BBC article on the Hunter/Ukraine and Hunter/China connection.
Good or bad? Both and neither: But what is disturbing is that this is all about power to manipulate the news and shape the future of society. I mean, if the friends of the CIA types don't do this, believe me, China and Russia will (and are doing this all the time).
But it does make one wonder about all those conspiracy theories about the Ukraine and Hunter Biden.
I mean, we are not just talking about geopolitics: We are talking about millions of dollars.
n Mexico, the illegals were, until the last few years, almost all Mexicans and others from Latin American nations. But now over a third of the illegals coming across the Mexican border are from much farther away and pay large fees to international criminal syndicates to travel long distances to reach Mexico and then across the border into the United States. Even before this Mexico had found itself unable to control the drug cartels that now are the real power on the Mexican side of the U.S. border. Anyone who wants to move illegal migrants across that border must pay the cartels for safe passage. The cartels can also arrange for easy entry into Mexico via airports or ship by bribing border and customs officials. The Mexican cartels made over $100 million a year from the fees the illegal migrants (via the groups moving them) pay to get across the border, and that does not include the lucrative fees for helping get international illegals into Mexico. The cartels make far more moving drugs but the people smuggling fees are another income source and confirm which cartel controls which segment of the border.
I have sympathy for those seeking a better life, but the dirty little secret is that there is a larger agenda behind this: Cheap labor for rich companies and cheap nannies/maids for Karens...
------------------- The conspiracy pages point out that the climate change agenda is directed from above (and the anti climate change propaganda is also directed from above).
As a driving force placing pressure on public and private sectors to comply, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) plays a key role in funneling trillions from the global economy while influencing government policies and propping up the climate hoax narrative. While IRENA is pivotal in the “no-regrets” initiative to transform the global economy, the international organization enjoys immunities and privileges which allow them to operate without transparency or accountability.
True or not true?
here is IRENA film on their policies.
Sounds lovely... but what does it mean at the grassroots level?
these NGOs pushing "Global warming" are funded by someone, and when I read that they are pushing Biden to give money to poor countries that suffer from global warming, all I wonder is: how much of this money will end up being stolen by rich politicians/businessmen and put into their Swiss/Malaysian etc. bank accounts?
and if you really want to delve into the cloudcuckooland behind conspiracy theories, just do a google about how Covid was supposedly used by the powers that run the world to push the Great Reset.
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The UN was told to bugger off when one of their organizations pressured the Philippines to push gay rights.
Gays are accepted here, and the Philippines is touted on gay sites as a place that is gay friendly to visit. Sex tourism is big here, for both lovely ladies and good looking guys.
Two problems with sex tourism: it's connections with drugs, and the exploitation of street kids.
but priorities you know: gay rights is the priority, not putting in place policies that would help people find jobs.
what would really help the ordinary folk here in the Philippines would be cheap energy: we need cheap diesel and fertilizer (we use organic, but non organic fertilizer is from fossil fuel) to grow rice, and if the price of rice goes up, poor people will not be able to afford food.
Usually the Philippines has to import rice (one of Marcos' promisese was to help the agriculture sector, which is changing as small farms are mechanizing and the kids of small farmers don't want to stay on the farm to live in poverty).
Today's headline is that the price of LPG is up. Why is this important? Because the poor use LPG for cooking. There is an alternative: Wood. But this is more polluting: I have been providing the maid with money to use LPG for years because her son had recurrant asthma/bronchitis from using wood to cook.
And of course, using wood for cooking in rural areas is a major cause of deforestation.
The Philippines has a love/hate relationship with the USA: they don't want to get in the middle of a war with China, but they also know that if Taiwan falls, Luzon is next. And the Chinese are hated here (which complicates things since Chinoy families run the economy and China is a major investor here).
But the terraine and logistical problems of invading Taiwan gets even more complicated if the country decides to defend themselves like the Ukraine.
I remember when the western powers estimated Russia would win in two weeks, and only Elon Musk stepped in quickly to help with Starlink communications during those days.
and one lesson being learned from the Ukraine: That drones (including cheap civilian drones) are part of the picture.
But now the Phil Inquirer has a AFP article that quotes Financial Times saying he is quietly living in Japan.
Much of the article sort of pretends he got in trouble because China is cracking down on internet stuff,
In recent years, Chinese officials have taken aim at alleged anti-competitive practices by some of the country’s biggest names, driven by fears that major internet firms control too much data and expanded too quickly.
for those of you outside of Asia, Jack Ma founded AliBaba, the Chinese equivalent of Amazon, that allowed rural folk to order stuff that once required you to go to the city and search the markets to find.
On an African note
“Your mission is not to save a dying world. No civilization has the promises of eternal life. Your mission is to live out with fidelity and without compromise the faith you received from Christ.”
something to remember when reading the blasphemy of the day on the internet news.
I am still recovering from dengue so blogging will remain light.
...since VP Harris is on a visit here, this aggression is especially an open confrontation not just to the Philippines but putting up a finger to the USA.
According to Filippino Navy officials, after their sailors had captured and was towing a piece of space floating rocket debris back to shore, the Chinese Coast Guard arrived and forcibly seized it, cutting the tow line...
Whether or not the Chinese took this debris by force or not, the fact remains that it existed, indicating once again that China is dropping rocket parts indiscriminately on other nations. In this case the debris probably came from either a first stage or a strap-on booster, released shortly after the launch from a low enough altitude that it doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere.
AlJ report from 15 sept discusses previous times when debris fell in the waters near the Philippines in July, and of course the story, if the corrupt US MSM covers it at all, they say hey no one was hurt, so stop complaining.
but the area is not disputed: It belongs to the Philippines, but Obama pressured then President Aquino not to stop them when they started digging up the seabed and destroying the ecology to build their militarized islands. Instead, Obama pressured the Philippines to take it to the world court, who agreed that this area belonged to the Philippines, but of course, who is going to require them to follow international law?
why is all of this important?
If the debris hits a nearby town, or sinks a fishing ship or maybe even an airplane, it could kill people. And China is aware of the problem, but just bullies it's way out of being criticized for their continued failure to control rocket part reentry.
Dr Angi had a party for them with the relatives on Saturday and kuya had a party with our friends yesterday.
No, I didn't go: I am still sleeping 18 hours a day and don't have much appetite for all that lovely food.
Yum. BBQ Talapia from our fish pond, BBQ squid, pancit, caldereta, fruit salad, etc.
I stuck with a bit of pancit, thank you, and went to bed at 7 pm.
Kuya is busy at the farm so although he supervised our party, he didn't go to the family reunion party. The good news is that it rains on and off. This is good because it means we can prepare the fields for the winter grow without paying oodles of money for irrigation. The bad news? The last crop was small due to the typhoon, and we are having trouble drying it in the sunlight, and the line to get it dried electronically at the rice mill is long and would cost more than we are willing to pay.
I am still recovering from Dengue Fever, and with this epidemic causing a lot of illness in SE and South Asia, some sites are noticing a post Dengue syndrome of fatigue and achiness and brain fog in up to half of those with severe disease.
this actually is seen after a lot of viral and bacterial infections, but in the olden days it was considered common and normal so you just labored on despite the problems (or if you were a woman you took to bed: why middle class women suffer more from these things may be because of biology or maybe because we feel things more).
What you have to realize is that the Philippines is in the midst of a Dengue epidemic, but that statistics might not be accurate:
mild cases of dengue never get diagnosed because fevers are common and hey who wants to get checked for Covid and maybe go into isolation etc. when it is probably just a fever;
There are a lot of cases of Dengue locally, mainly in kids. And yes, covid is still around: One of our relatives visiting for Undas (Nov 1, when we commemorate the dead) caught it and has been in quarantine for two weeks and is now fit to go back to the USA.
So anyway, the hype and hysteria of the MSM is all about Covid, but now that someone got Dengue in Arizona expect to read lots of propaganda blaming it on global warming.
Except it's not global warming: it's the mosquitoes, and the spread via populations moving around taking the disease with them.
If you have to point a finger at someone to blame, then blame Rachel Carson who demonized DDT and essentially led to banning it's use to kill mosquitoes, because it was killing eagles, so this cheap prevention was banned.
But of course, you don't need DDT: You need to drain puddles and sitting water to destroy the larvae which are wiggling in the water but breathe air. There are several ways to do this: Fish will eat the larvae, which is why we had koi and then talapia in our water fountain, and it is why the city covered the open drainage ditches a couple years ago. And spraying sitting water with light oil (or in today's world, insecticide) will kill the larvae.
There are a lot of scary diseases out there, and some that we presume cause only epidemics in poor countries were once common in Europe and nothern USA.
So why worry about mosquitoes? Well, Dengue for one. But the same mosquito that carries Dengue also spreads yellow fever.
and it killed more soldiers in the Spanish American war in Cuba than the enemy...but after the Spanish American war, public health authorities decided the best way to stop it was to eradicate the mosquito
this article is about the history of Yellow fever.
The Yellow Fever Commission, founded as a consequence of excessive disease mortality during the Spanish–American War (1898), concluded that the best way to control the disease was to control the mosquito.
William Gorgas successfully eradicated yellow fever from Havana by destroying larval breeding sites and this strategy of source reduction was then successfully used to reduce disease problems and thus finally permit the construction of the Panama Canal in 1904. Success was due largely to a top-down, military approach involving strict supervision and discipline (Gorgas, 1915).
in 1946, an intensive Aedes aegypti eradication campaign was initiated in the Americas, which succeeded in reducing vector populations to undetectable levels throughout most of its range.
much of this was before the vaccine was developed in 1930s, and before DDT was developed in the 1940s.
A couple years ago, there was a major epidemic of yellow fever (2016) in Angola which was controlled partly from the vaccine ... eventually 25 million people got the vaccine.... and a few local Chinese workers brought it back into China, which diagnosed the cases and stopped the disease before it spread to the public.
Alas, the vaccine shortage badly affected Brazil, (2017-2018) where yellow fever hides in the monkeys of the jungle and gives them outbreaks every couple of years.
By the way, this mosquito also carried Zika.
Remember those screaming headlines showing poor ladies in Brazil and their microcephalic babies? But the dirty little secret is that the powers that run the world were exaggerating the risk of fetal malformation (which were rare in other countries with the disease) in order to pressure governments to legalize abortion, and also so they could use the newfangled genetically modified mosquitoes and other fancy methods to stop the epidemic. Yes, zika did cause fetal malforation, but some greens wonder why this was mainly true on the poorer areas of Brazil but the problem was less severe in other areas of South America, and that maybe chemical exposure was involved.
But where is the hysteria in the MSM about Dengue?
And heaven help the world if another epidemic of yellow fever gets out of control: International travelers from high risk countries are required to show they had yellow fever vaccine, but no one in the US seems to be worried about those crossing the border without papers.
In summary: Dengue (and Zika and Chikunguya fever and even Yellow Fever) are spread by mosquitoes that are not being controlled: so outbreaks of these diseases are not due to global warming: it's the failure of the public health departments that are not controlling mosquitoes.
Dengue spread started in this century, partly due to soldiers and civilian populations moving around after World war II. And it tends to be in urban areas, where it can spread from person to person and there are a lot of areas with puddles and sitting water where the mosquito can breed. And as I mentioned before, a lot of mild cases and asymptomatic cases never get diagnosed, but if a mosquito bites them it can spread to others.
Is there a vaccine? Yes, but if given to people who never had deangue, it can incrase the risk of the severe form of Dengue.
The children of the poor neighborhoods of Manila were the guinea pigs for this flawed vaccine which was given to 700 thousand children. but reportedly killed half a dozen kids who developed the severe frm of dengue as a result. NPR report here.
But after these deaths were reported, the distrust of any vaccines led to parents skipping their baby's routine shots, so we had measles and polio cases...
and this is one reason that the public health authorities of the Philippines, who were offered thousands of doses of the mRNA vaccine in January 2021 never signed off on the papers to get it early. The problem was that the DOH had to agree to lift liability for side effects of the shot and they didn't quite trust the drug companies. As a result, the public covid campaign was delayed for months (although some people were getting the Chinese vaccine privatly, and some mayors were importing the shots, the public vaccine outreach was delayed: I got my Astrozeneca shot in August, and the mRNA wasn't available here until later in the year.)
Yes, Covid was real, and we knew young and old who died of it, but now, despite a large number of cases in public health surveys, the death rate remains low, while people are dying of other diseases, like undiagnosed cancer, untreated high blood pressure and diabetes, etc.
as for the anti vax hysteria against the covid vaccine: what you need to know is that the original covid killed a lot of high risk folk, so the initial push to give the high risk folks vaccine saved lives.
But now most cases are of the milder omicron strain of covid, where there are lots of cases but few deaths. And I wonder if Dengue is now surging in Asia is because the public health department was busy fighting covid with tests, masks, vaccines, and isolation, they don't have a lot of money left over to stop the mosquitoes.
But despite this, some big shots insist on giving shots and boosters galore to everyone: Not just to elders and high risk people but also to kids and young adults, who are not at high risk. To make things worse, there is some suspicion that numerous boosters (not a single shot) might be behind the epidemic of myocarditis and clots in young people...,
So no, I am not anti vax: But the anti vax hysterics do have a point that the response was excessive and the hysteria pushing shots to low risk folk at a time when the covid strain going around is much weaker than the original one means this response might now be a bit overblown.
But the real problem was the shut down of society, which is causing a recession.
Flatten the curve: makes sense. But for two years? And after they had given the vaccine to high risk folks?
To make things worse, the powers that seem to be running the world are busy pushing global warming, knowing that hey their propaganda to make people obey them worked in the epidemic, so let's expand our power to get rid of fossil fuel.
Dirty little secrwet: between the economic shut down and the anti fossil fuel hysteria of the powers that run the world, we here in Asia are facing a huge famine in the next year or two: and it is man made and preventable.
The anti fossil fuel policies such as being pushed by the Biden and Trudeau administrations, (plus Russian aggression against the Ukraine) are the real reasons that the world is facing a major famine in the next year or two.
Here in the Philippines, farmers (like our family) rely on disel and gasoline to run farm machinery to irrigate, harvest, mill and dry the rice crop. (we still plant by hand, but those machines are commonly used in other Asian countries and they too need diesel to run).
Then there is the huge increase in the price of fertilizer (including organic fertiizer which we use for our organic rice crop). This is a world wide problem.
Add to that the price to transport or import rice to feed the poor in the cities.
We probably won't make a profit this year thanks to the increase price of diesel and the huge increase in the price of fertilizer.
I was flat on my back in the hospital during the election kerfuffle. But now that things have settled a lot of stories have been discovered and publicized, a few days after the election of course... if publicized a month ago might have changed things.
The crypto currancy debacle for one: And the fact that both the press and many politicians were essentially bribed by them, and a lot of their investor's money went to change the election. EdDriscoll at Instapundit has the latest.
So did the FBI raid their offices? And what about the politiicans who were bribed by them given campaign contributions?
Don't ask me.
But the FBI has been busy raiding the real dangerous folk in the USA:
if you are bored with superheroes, hit men/women portrayed as heroes, and Hallmark movies where attractive young women in their 30s who find the handsome articulate man of their dreams then I have a suggestion for you.
The movie, the Lost King, is a quiet story behind the finding of the remains of King Richard III, told from the point of view of the person who doggedly pushed the idea that his body could be found, and his reputation rehabilitated from the fake news pushed by the Tudors.
....
yes, that's Paddington Bear's mom (Sally Hawkins) playing Phillipa Langley, a quirky amateur behind the search to find where he was buried. She raises money and gradually gets the city's permission to dig up the car park where the now destroyed abbey was probably located. And while working with professionals, she was eventually sidelined by the experts, who after all had all those lovely credentials.
The UKGuardian has this article about her and her search for the Lost King:
The Lost King isn’t really about Richard III at all. I think it’s about Langley and the intensity of her fascination. She is brought vividly – and quite stressfully – to life by Sally Hawkins...To stick my neck out further, I think the film’s deeper philosophical inquiry is about the wisdom we gain collectively from people who are obsessional and tenacious.
As a film, I give it a three out of four stars.
here is a short interview with Philippa Langley, the woman portrayed in the film.
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compare and contrast:
this is an official (boring) documentary, about the search for the remains of Richard III.
linked to watch at my leisure. I am still recovering from dengue so will have to watch and think about these when I recover.
Peter Kreeft is interviewed by Jordan Peterson
........I often post Dr. C because he analyzes the data and makes it easy to understand (then he provides links to check the data). But he has been warned by youtube censors.
The problem? Science is not a religion that can't be questioned, but is about evidence, and he is pointing out the censorship about the covid problems... ..........
I am too old to figure out cryptocurrancy stuff, but a recent collapse of a major company is making ripples in the financial world but not getting a lot of publicity.
NEW YORK--It took less than a week for FTX to go from the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world to bankruptcy court.
The embattled cryptocurrency exchange, short billions of dollars, sought bankruptcy protection after the exchange experienced the crypto equivalent of a bank run. ... FTX US, which originally was not expected to be included in any financial rescue, was also part of the company's bankruptcy filing.
connect the dots"?
CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried has resigned, the company said. Bankman-Fried was recently estimated to be worth $23 billion and has been a prominent political donor to Democrats.
however, there are a lot of fingers in the pie: not just in the USA.
Lots of money floating around out there which makes us wonder WTF is going on.
Internet magic money (aka crypto) billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, is the man behind FTX, a crypto exchange. He seems to have angered fellow magic money billionaire and fremeny, Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ and CEO of the rival exchange Binance. It might have to do with FTX cozying up to regulators to get the regulations beneficial to the FTX but not its rivals.
Last week, the FTX balance sheet was leaked to crypto news site Coindesk, which effectively caused a run on the exchange by exposing the financial ties between FTX and Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm also owned by SBF. The balance sheet showed that FTX’s finances were a paper tiger and ripe for plundering.
That guy is a Chinese ethnic Canadian, who as we know has nothing to do with China. (LOL)
But I thought China made bitcoin illegal last year, because the gov't couldn't regulate the money.
So is bit coin stuff a way to avoid governement interference, or is this just the latest ponzi scheme to defraud the naive?
This film is typical of western films about that tragedy: emphasizes the cathedral is part of art and culture... no, no god here, no mary and especially not a symbol of Catholic belief....
...
An older film about the cathedral is here:
this is a recent French film about the fire:<
and Netflix has a planned miniseries based on the story of the firefighters.
as best I can find, over 400 firefighters were involved, three were injured but none died fighting the fire.
...
the UKGuardian notes that the French film showed the rescue of the relics, scoffing that these were merely medieval fakes so why are people busy risking their lives rescuing nonsense instead of figuring out who started the fire.
....except of course, those rescuing the relics are not exactly experts in forensic science of fires... as Bones would say: I'm a doctor mere Catholic believer, not a member of the CSI team.
......
as for those medieval relics Here is a PBS segment about it:
......
Ironically, the attempt to dechristianize culture has resulted in more interest in the numinous/supernatural, (which can be religious or occultic) GetReligion discusses this phenomenum here.LINK
.....................
A lot of Korean dramas include their folk beliefs in ghosts, nine tailed foxes, etc. and the idea that those in a coma might have their soul becoming a ghost like pesence or even enter into a historical figure is common... Ironically, our Objbwe patients had a similar belief about the souls of those in a coma . more HERE
And of course here in the Philippines, although the elite are into either Protestantism or New age practices, here in the country, we still have shrines of Mama Mary all over, pray the rosary at night, put flowers and candles on the graves, etc. because it is part of the cultural belief system...
there are a lot of ghost stories that are believed. No, the reason we go to a restaurant after attending a funeral is because we're hungry, not because we want to confuse the ghost and keep him from following us home.
The lab leak from the Wuhan lab was censored early in the story, but now the evil Republicans in the US Congress investigated and found, uh, maybe it was an accidental leak.
Dr. C reviews their report (he is in danger for being canceled so he only quotes experts now).
Virus likely needed to circulate in an intermediate host
An animal virus must evolve to gain human infecting potential
Closest virus is in horseshoe bats residing in Southern China or Southeast Asia
Epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak Differs from Previous Natural Zoonotic Spill overs ...
Genetic similarity between the environmental samples and human viral samples,
supports the likelihood that the virus found at the Huanan Seafood Market was shed by humans...
The left usually is the one who spills the beans on such things,
Apparently they too checked the data and found it suspicious.
Vanity Fair and ProPublica downloaded more than 500 documents from the WIV website, including party branch dispatches from 2017 to the present. To assess Reid’s interpretation, we sent key documents to experts on CCP communications. They told us that the WIV dispatches did indeed signal that the institute faced an acute safety emergency in November 2019; that officials at the highest levels of the Chinese government weighed in; and that urgent action was taken in an effort to address ongoing safety issues. The documents do not make clear who was responsible for the crisis, which laboratory it affected specifically or what the exact nature of the biosafety emergency was.
The interim report also raises questions about how quickly vaccines were developed in China by some teams, including one led by a military virologist named Zhou Yusen. The report called it “unusual” that two military COVID-19 vaccine development teams were able to reach early milestones even faster than the major drug companies who were part of the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed program.
Vanity Fair and ProPublica spoke to experts who said that the timeline of Zhou’s vaccine development seemed unrealistic, if not impossible. Two of the three experts said it strongly suggested that his team must have had access to the genomic sequence of the virus no later than in November 2019, weeks before China’s official recognition that the virus was circulating.
The authors of the interim report do not claim to have definitively solved the mystery of COVID-19’s origin. “The lack of transparency from government and public health officials in the [People’s Republic of China] with respect to the origins of SARS-CoV-2 prevents reaching a more definitive conclusion,” the report says...
