Daily Life, Government, Politics

What To Do With All My Daylight Savings?
  • This morning we returned to standard time. Back in the days when we had actual clocks, that meant a week of discovering time pieces that you’d forgotten to set back. Now the only devices we have in our home to manually reset are the oven clock and my analog watch. Meanwhile, the twitters blow up every year declaring a national emergency and the congress needs to stop it’s important work to abolish the DST practice. Personally, I like it. We live in the northern latitudes so during the summer when the days are already longer, tacking on the extra hour DST gives you means it’s light until almost 10pm. I love having the extra time to do outdoor stuff. During the winter, the days are short anyway so why not have it light a bit earlier? Are you a pro or con DST person?

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.

G. Michael Hopf
  • President Biden claimed the other day, in an incomprehensible babble, that the supply chain problem is because Covid shut down factories and if you asked people in restaurants they wouldn’t understand it because reporters aren’t explaining very well and “When your editor says, “Explain the supply chain.”  Okay?  “Lots of luck in your senior year,” as my coach used to say.” WTF? Meanwhile our Vice President, who happens to be the chair of the national space council (whatever that is?) interrupted a NASA presentation to ask if we can track the population of trees against race. WTAF? Because, you know, space activity is climate action. I want me some environmental justice, brother. Word! As Tucker Carlson says all the time, these are not serious people. From the quote above, I’d postulate that we’re currently in the transition from weak men to hard times. And don’t get your panties all in a bunch, “men” is a colloquialism for “the population” today. Relax people.
  • A 77 year old man was confronted by an armed robber and instead of handing his things over, the elderly man pulled out a gun and shot the robber in the head and chest, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene. “Officer, where’s the victim? Oh, he’s DRT. DRT? He’s dead right there.” I love me a good DRT story.
  • Remember special council Durham? Turns out he’s still out there and released another indictment. Even if you’re a rabid anti-Trump person, you have to admit that your Russia collusion theory is getting pretty hard to defend. Whether you agree or disagree, in a normal world it would at least be considered newsworthy right? You’d think that CNN and MSNBC who devoted 90% of their time for several years on the story would at least be attempting to debunk his indictment right? Not a single mention of the story on either web site yet. Hmmm. The bad orange man was right – the media is the greatest enemy this country faces.
  • Speaking of the media and radio silence, the FBI raided Project Veritas offices and homes of a number of employees the other day. Why? They’re looking for Ashley Biden’s diary. Why? That’s very unclear. Why would the FBI suddenly be interested in a missing diary? We don’t know. What we do know is that in that diary she alleges that it probably wasn’t appropriate for her to take showers with her father as a child. The diary was stolen and the contents came out just before Biden’s first debate with Trump. Just the like the Hunter Biden laptop, the media collectively killed the story. Move along people, nothing to see here.
  • I’m most of the way through Molly Hemingway’s book “Rigged” about the 2020 election. I’d highly recommend it – even if you’re a massive lefty. Why? Even if you disagree with her assertions, she lays out how our election process really works. I had no idea how corrupt it really is. Us common people don’t have much to do with who actually gets elected, on either side of the aisle.
  • At a football game a dog scored the longest frisbee catch record – end zone to end zone. Dogs rule. Meanwhile, I’m headed out on a motorcycle ride with a friend who is a new rider and just got his first motorcycle. I think he’s a little nervous. Been there, done that. My job is to help build confidence, while pushing the envelop just enough to improve skills. It’s sort of a blind leading the blind scenario. What could possibly go wrong?

Song of the day: Lo Fidelity Allstars – Battleflag

Cool, Daily Life, Health, Travel

I Like Pickles
  • This week Mrs Troutdog and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary. It’s still a mystery how she’s managed to put up with me for that long. An even greater mystery is how I managed to hide my love of pickles for this many years. As part of our anniversary celebration we flew down to Palm Springs to play some golf and see the in-laws. On day one of our visit I discovered a giant Costco tub of pickles in her mom’s fridge. I spent the next few days diligently working my way through the giant vat of pickles. At one point Mrs Troutdog declared, “all these years and I had no idea you liked pickles so much?”. My secret is out. I guess I have to confess. I’ve been hiding pickles to eat when she’s not there. I’ve been sneaking out of bed to visit late night pickle stores. If we can get through the shock and shame of my pickle secret, I’m pretty sure we can make it through another 29 years of marriage.
  • While looking stuff up for my pickle story, I discovered that there are a ton of pickle of the month clubs. Who knew? I never would have guessed that the pickle community was large enough to support monthly deliveries of pickles. So, if any of you are looking to buy me a gift… now you know.
  • If I ever become super-woke and feel compelled to list my pronouns, I’m going with… rib/eye. Stole that from twitter. Not sure why that amused me so much.
  • Speaking of Palm Springs, we played a couple of days of golf at some high-end courses. I tend to be a local muni-course type of player. I bring my own water, walk the course whenever possible, and expect to see the condition of the fairways and greens as… “variable”. These Palm Springs courses are not that. You pull up to the clubhouse and dudes run out and put your clubs in the cart. They supply tees, wet towels, water, and divot repair tools. The greens and fairways are perfectly manicured. You truly feel bad taking a divot on the fairway. It’s honestly intimidating if you’re not much of a golfer. I was a bit worried leading up to the trip. Spent a bunch of money on travel bags for the clubs, dealing with checking them in at the airline, and the super expensive green fees – last thing in the world I wanted to then play horribly. It got in my head leading up to the trip. This is why I could never turn pro. Well, that and that whole lack of coordination thing. But, I played really well (for me). It was a fun experience and I look forward to our taking more golf trips. Except how do I now go back to regular people courses where you have to load and unload your own clubs from the car?
  • There was a political bloodbath last night. Shockingly, it turns out that when the economy is tanking and crime is through the roof people stop caring about frivolous topics. First and foremost people want safety, security, jobs, and a working economy. In times of scarcity, climate change, race, race, race, race, race, race, and socialist spending are not high on peoples list of concerns. It will be interesting to see what the democrats do in response. At the moment the progressive wing is claiming the problem was that they didn’t go hard enough on progressive demands. We’ll see how that works out.
  • COP26 has wrapped up and the end result was… nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. Not a single accomplishment. Oh, how will the climate survive? The two biggest greenhouse gas emitters chose not to attend. Too busy building out coal fired electrical power plants I suppose. The African countries did make it clear that they’re pissed though. Why? We’ve reneged again on the 2009 pledge to pay them 100 billion a year to “cope with climate change”. Clearly John Kerry wasn’t on top of his game this year. But hey, at least he got to take his private plane out for a spin again. Along with 400 others carbon spewing planes, 85 car caravans, and massive gala dinners (where I’m sure they at least used paper straws).
  • This trip we took was the first time I’ve traveled out of state since the pandemic started. My state is mostly anti-mask and I haven’t had to wear a mask anywhere (other than work) for a long time. Traveling to California is different… mask mandates everywhere, vaccine cards required to eat inside restaurants. Masks in the airport and on the plane. And all of it is just theater. Wearing a mask to walk twenty feet into a restaurant only to take it off at the table is absurd. Sigh… and the plane – both Mrs Troutdog and I were scolded by flight attendants several times for letting our masks drop. Until food and drink service arrived – then yay! Everyone can eat, drink, talk and cough. The ‘rona is smart enough not to spread while you’re eating and drinking. I still cannot grasp that our public officials continue to push this nonsense. If you had told me two years ago that the entire country would soon think it was normal to walk around outside with a mask on your face, I would have sworn you were smoking something.
  • Speaking of smoking something, California is one of the states who has legalized the ‘herb. It was odd to see marijuana dispensaries on every corner. I could care less. I do wish there was a test or definition for what “under the influence” was, but otherwise each to their own. It may or may not be true that the bottle of vitamin gummies that came back no longer contains “vitamins”. The challenge at our age is remembering to grab the right bottle when taking the morning vitamin regime.

Song of the day: Macka B Legalize the herb

Solving the wrong problem

Let’s Trust The Science

The other day I rambled on a bit about a question I had – can you name an actual harm that Trump did to the nation? Not mean tweets harm, but real identifiable harm. Well I was shocked to find out that someone actually read my post, and not only that but took the time to comment (which I appreciate, good or bad). The comments pointed out that Trump took some actions to remove or modify environmental policies from the previous administration. Clearly that would cause harm, wouldn’t it?

You’d think this would be an easy answer. We have climate. We have smart people studying things. We’ve been measuring this for a long time. Simple, right? And the answer is… it depends on what data you choose to believe. Sigh.

But, but, these are scientists man. Science is always objective, right? Not when there’s billions of dollars in funding at stake. Oh come on, these are experts. They wouldn’t push science that wasn’t proven. Really? Please point me to any county, state, or country that can show any clear correlation between implementing a mask mandate and a lowering of covid case counts. We have a year and a half of clear data on this. The correlation signal should be pretty easy to spot. I’ll wait. Hint, you won’t find it. Yet the experts continue to yammer on and on about masking. We’re creating an entire generation of kids who are afraid to go outside and play without a mask on. Yet nobody can actually point to any real “science” to this other than “the experts say”.

Anyway, back to global warming. Yes, I said global warming because that’s what this was about until the “experts” decided it needed to be re-branded. It’s now called CLIMATE CHANGE. Convenient, because any weather abnormality can now be attributed to CLIMATE CHANGE. The last few years we’ve tacked on EXTREME WEATHER. Because, of course, EXTREME WEATHER is naturally caused by CLIMATE CHANGE. It’s just science, man.

This is such an enormous topic, it’s virtually impossible to boil it down to easy, bullet point, talking points from any side of the argument. Have we experienced global warming? Yes. Somewhere between 0.3 and 0.7 degrees centigrade in the last century. The global warming hypothesis that started in the late 80’s is that there will be about a 1 degree increase in temperature for each doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere. The kicker that Al Gore capitalized on is that the claim that greenhouse gases would cause a positive feedback loop, adding another 2-4 degrees of warming and eventually causing a tipping point that was unrecoverable. Throw in a scary hockey stick graph, some images of polar bears stranded on melting ice flows, and voila – we have a crisis!

The challenge with any hypothesis is that your findings have to be independently reproduced to have any credibility. Mann’s hockey stick graph used cherry picked data and code that turned any inputs into a hockey stick. The projections the IPCC uses year after year to predict gloom and doom are based upon models that have been laughably wrong. Not just by a little bit but by massive amounts. And wrong year, after year, after year.

But, but, what about the wildfires every summer? And the hurricanes? And the melting ice caps? And increased numbers of hot days? And rising sea levels? And polar vortexes? OH MY GOD, THERE’S EXTREME WEATHER EVERYWHERE!!

Burn acreage is down massively. Hurricane frequency is way down. Artic ice reached above normal levels this year. The number of hot summer days is actually down. Sea level isn’t rising. And on, and on, and on. Can you find a particular data point and extrapolate from that some causation? Sure. But when you take multi-decadal trends (which is what climate is), any changes seen are mostly… meh.

Unfortunately people cherry pick and alter the data. What? Yes, the temperature data is altered. Half the US weather stations are “zombie” stations – they don’t actually exist anymore. Their data is computer generated from a model/algorithm. Weather stations that 40 years ago were in a field are now surrounded by asphalt parking lots and building exhaust vents, a.k.a the urban heat island effect. Most scary graphs start from the 1960’s/70’s. Why? It was a very cold period – remember they were predicting in the 70’s we were heading into a new ice age. It’s not convenient to start your data points earlier than that due to the extreme global heat of the 1930’s (the dustbowl).

It goes on and on. Our data collection is a mess. And unfortunately scientists actually do lie. Remember climategate? Emails showed they were conspiring to find a way to “hide the pause”. We’d had a 17 year pause in any signs of warming at that point. A very inconvenient truth. So yes, count me as a skeptical when it comes to experts making any extreme global warming claims.

And the cherry on the cake is the UN/IPCC climate treaties. The US was correct to pull out. They achieve nothing except massive wealth transfer from the US to other countries, while not actually requiring other countries (CHINA) to do anything. China is building out coal fired plants as fast as they can go, meanwhile the US and Europe doom themselves to voluntary CO2 restrictions that cripple our energy production. Here’s a perfect example of looking at the data – we had a near complete shutdown of the world a year ago. A more extreme version than any UN agreement could have hoped for. And what happened? Atmospheric CO2 didn’t budge in the slightest. Zero change. So tell me again how any UN agreement (costing gazillions of dollars) is going to “fix” global warming when a global shutdown didn’t make any impact?

The global climate is ungodly complex. Solar impacts, ocean currents, equatorial winds, and yes even manmade issues… there are so many factors impacting the climate. We’re still in the infancy of understanding the impact of things like solar cycles and ocean currents. I think it’s foolish to think we can point to just one possible cause with all its associated faulty data, politics, and agendas and say conclusively – ah ha, that’s the issue.

So, did Trump cause harm by pulling out of the Paris Agreement? Since none of the previous four UN climate summits achieved anything… I’d argue it made zero climate impact. The effect of substituting Obama’s Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy rule will depend upon which side of the global warming/greenhouse gas side of the coin you’re on. If you think, like the green new deal zealots that the world will end in 12 years if we don’t do something NOW!… then yes it caused harm.

My position is that when you strip away all the politics, media hype, and academics jockeying for the next round of funding – we honestly don’t really know. Lots of hypothesis, very little reproducible findings that conclusively prove correlation/causation. And with the frightening rise in fuel and energy costs (and the associated rise in the costs of all goods) happening right now, I’m going to be a skeptic when it comes to making changes that will make things economically worse for the planet.

Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006 and claimed we only had 10 years left before we reached the point of no return. And 15 years later… the polar bears are thriving. The west coast isn’t under water. We’re not wearing shorts in the arctic. I’m pretty sure we don’t need to panic. My prediction? At the current rate of change it will take about 100 years before we’ll see a clear enough signal in the data to show if we’re really warming or not vs one or two year abnormalities. Climate is measured in decade and century time scales. And in a century from now, I’m reasonably confident we’ll have alternative energy sources we currently haven’t thought of. Our technological advance is going to happen independent of global warming fears. It’s our human nature.

The entire point of science is to question. Question the data. Question the findings. Question the methods. Question the motivations. Question, question, question. And when you run out of questions and can’t find fault with the results, you’ve arrived at a solid scientific theory. With climate, we’re still at the very beginning. Questioning isn’t denial, it’s what we’re supposed to do.

Back off, man, I’m a scientist.

 Dr. Peter Venkman

Government, Solving the wrong problem

A Return To Chaos

In about a week we’ll be watching the most consequential election of our times… according to the news. It’s for the governorship of Virginia. I’m sure there’s other elections going on in the country, but for some reason all the smart people believe the outcome of this one will signal the how the rest of the elections will go for the next four years. Whatever. The democrats are apparently worried and have brought out the heavy hitters to help campaign. No, not Brandon but Obama. And yesterday the former and current acting president said something during his speech that caught my ear.

“We’re not going to go back to the chaos that did so much damage” said Obama. Hmmm. Just exactly what damage is he referring to? That’s a serious question. I’m not talking about the four years of hysterical teeth gnashing and wailing brought about by Trump Derangement Syndrome. That’s entirely an issue brought about by the left and fueled by the “media”. Madonna and Ashely Judd wearing pink pussy hats and caterwauling like scalded cats about blowing up the white house and being nasty women perfectly encapsulates the TDS that started right after the election and grew steadily for four years. While annoying, that’s not destruction.

So what exactly did the bad orange man destroy? The economy? Jobs? Gas prices? Border security? A rapid vaccine development in the face of a pandemic? Trust me, there’s plenty not to like about the guy but I can’t think of any actual harm that happened or was exacerbated on his watch other than triggered snowflakes devastated by mean tweets.

It must be really painful for the left right now, as evidenced by the complete radio silence about this president. Nobody is even attempting to defend anything the administration is doing. CNN spends its time covering ani-vaxxers, an actor shooting someone, and never ending analysis of the Laundrie murder. MSNBC still covers the devastating capitol insurrection 24×7. Meanwhile kids, pull up a chair and lets think about the achievements under the current administration:

  • A disastrous Afghanistan pull out that got US solders and marines killed, droned a car full of kids, and left behind hundreds of Americans. Oh, and gifted the Taliban $80 some odd billion dollars in military hardware. Tens of thousands of unvetted Afghans have been brought in as refugees and released into the country.
  • Rapidly accelerating inflation, gas prices, food costs, and a worker shortage that nobody can explain.
  • A supply chain crisis the likes of which we’ve never seen before. Hundreds of ships anchored offshore with no way to offload. Store shelves are empty, manufacturing is shut down, and consumer goods like cars and appliances are non-existent. Meanwhile the transportation secretary who was already AWOL on this issue, goes on paternity leave (and nobody in the media even notices).
  • A mishandling of public health messaging that’s so inept it’s causing reasonable people to question vaccines simply because they no longer trust the governments message. Public health officials demanding you “follow the science” while actually ignoring the science. Our covid czar Fauci is caught lying about funding gain of function research in, wait for it… Wuhan. A president to actually believes millions of people should lose their jobs if they don’t submit to the jab.
  • An unimaginable border crisis that grows by the day. A record 1.7 million unvaccinated and unvetted people intercepted and released into the country. Hundreds of thousands more that snuck in without detection. New caravans of thousands are heading to the border at this moment. Secret flights are sending folks to cities across the country in the middle of the night. The Vice President, appointed as the border czar is… simply AWOL. But dammit, we will investigate the border patrol riding horses. The public imagery is horrific!
  • From a foreign policy standpoint, we’ve managed to piss off the French, provoke the China/Taiwan issue and North Korea is back to launching missiles. Straight out of the gate our secretary of state attempted to lecture Chinese officials and got his ass handed to him. Speaking of China, they’re now actively posturing and provoking militarily on the sea and in the air.
  • Crime and murder are at all time highs across the country. Meanwhile the attorney general appears to be more concerned with parents attending school board meetings.

In times past, any one of those issues would be enough to hamstring a president for the duration of their term. All of this and we’re not even a year into this administration. The growing list of crises is causing actual damage, with no relief in sight. There doesn’t appear to be anyone in the administration even attempting to get out in front of any of this. All efforts appear to be solely on getting the two, five, seven, ten trillion (I’ve lost track of what it is now) in new spending passed. Because printing new trillions of dollars during inflation/stagflation is clearly sound economic policy.

No offense, but I preferred the previous chaos and damage.

Health

You’re Going To Be Disappointed

Wow, that’s a very pessimistic title. I didn’t mean it to be. I also didn’t intend this post to be negative, although it is. I wasn’t trying to wallow in self loathing or pity, even though it may seem like it. I’m just trying to keep it real. To be honest. Ok enough of that, here’s the backstory.

Lately I’ve gathered quite a few new readers. That’s a good thing. But for reasons I still don’t understand, virtually all the new folks are connected in some way to health, fitness, and diet. My most liked and read posts are the ones somewhat related to diet and weight loss. How I need to diet. How I need some discipline. How I need to get back in shape. Why can’t I lose weight, diet, or get back in shape? There’s a clear theme going on. I honestly don’t understand why those are so popular? It clearly feels like what people want to read are inspiring stories about recognizing you need to make a change, starting the journey, sticking to it, and showing success.

And here’s where you new readers are going to be disappointed. I’m good at recognizing I need to make a change. Not so good at executing on those plans. For reasons I can’t identify, I have failed miserably at getting my health back on track. I probably need years of psychotherapy or possibly electroshock therapy to understand my inner demons, but I’m too cheap for that. I’ve done great in the past at making a change. When I lost all my weight the last time, I literally decided the day before a huge Christmas party to start keto. I resisted all the good food and drink at that party and never looked back. Boom, hit my goal weight pretty quickly and felt great. Same when I decided to run. I simply went for a run one day and never stopped.

And then eventually the wheels came off and I fell off the wagon, hard. Here I am back at square one. Except this time I can’t seem to get the mojo back. I’ve been starting my diet/exercise routine tomorrow – for about six months now. Sound familiar? Reminds me of the old joke – “quitting smoking is easy, I’ve done it dozens of times”. I don’t know why I haven’t been able to be like Nike and “just do it” like I’ve done previously? I’m happy. I’m in a good place with work. Been loving my hobbies and sports. Spent lots of time this summer with family and friends. I feel like I’m busy and productive in a good way. Life is good. I just can’t seem to put down the fork.

So I see new readers come on board via the health route… and I ignore what they like and instead write about political crap and vaccine conspiracy stuff. And nobody reads those posts. But how do I write about health related stuff when I’m not actually doing what I said I’d do? If I was a politician or a CNN contributor I’d just make it up. But I don’t want to do that. I actually haven’t felt like writing much about politics lately as it’s depressing and I worry it makes me sound like an angry QAnon guy. I pretty much wore out the ginormous motorcycle stories, so that avenue is limited. In a nutshell… I think I’ve run out of words.

It’s clear why the diet and fitness industry is worth a gazillion dollars. Everyone’s looking for that magic jumpstart. Just eat this one food, just do this one exercise and the pounds will melt off! I know that once I start, success builds on itself and the motivation just gets stronger and stronger. I know what to eat. I know enough exercise physiology to make the changes I want. I understand the health risk factors for covid because I deal with them every day at work. I know exactly what I need to do. I just can’t seem to start.

So, there we are new readers. You came for some sort of insightful reflections on my health journey. And got rantings on bureaucracy, motorcycles, and vaccines instead. So what’s next? Hopefully I’ll be writing a post in a few days detailing in agonizing detail my new knee pain because I’ve managed to run three days in a row. Or that I’m feeling a little woozy due to lack of calories, but my ketones are off the chart! But if you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s probably because I had to go buy new ski pants because I can no longer button the waistband on my old ones. And nobody wants to read about that.

Wait, did you hear that Susan Rice and Obama are secretly running the government behind the scenes? The way I heard it is…

“Tony Soprano: I think it’s time for you to start to seriously consider salads.

Bobby Baccilieri: What do you mean?

Tony Soprano: What do I mean? I mean get off my car before you flip it over, you fat fuck.”

Government, Health

Let’s Go Brandon

“Let’s Go Brandon!” It’s currently trending on twitter. I think it’s hilarious and an absolutely perfect representation of where we’re currently at as a country. If you’re not familiar with the phrase, stop being selfish and get yo’self plugged into the social medias. ‘Cause you ain’t gunna hear this reported in the mainstream news. Anyway… if you’ve watched any large sporting event in the last few weeks, a curious event has been taking place. The crowds, tens of thousands strong, have been erupting into long chants. And what are they chanting? “Fuck Joe Biden!”.

Pro sports, college sports, doesn’t seem to matter. Once started, chants go on for quite a while. Not sure I’ve ever seen that before for a sitting president. Not once, not twice, but every single weekend at multiple events. It seems to be gaining momentum.

What’s this have to do with Brandon? At a recent NASCAR race, driver Brandon Brown won. As he was being interviewed, the crowd in the stadium broke out in an enthusiastic Fuck Joe Biden chant. The NBC reporter tried to cover for the expletive filled chant by saying “As you can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go Brandon’,” she said. LOL

I think it sums up perfectly the current mood. Literally everything this administration has done or touched has been an unmitigated disaster from day one. And it’s getting harder and harder to cover for the continuing errors, missteps, poor decisions, and incompetence. Each attempt to explain away the disaster of the day is more and more doublespeak, deflection, and finger pointing.

So “Let’s Go Brandon” perfectly fits. Of course that’s what the crowd was chanting. And if you don’t believe it, then you are clearly part of the right wing disinformation machine. And you probably watch Fox News.

Meanwhile, my digital scale indicated that I’d lost a significant amount of weight. Far more weight than the previous scale. I reject any characterization of the number displayed as being inaccurate. I’m not going to get into the technical details of the scale, I’ll refer you to the manufacture for that. I don’t want to get too far ahead of the data. Perhaps we should circle back on the topic. With this tremendous weight loss, all indications are that I can clearly afford to eat nachos tonight. Besides, I went for a run yesterday which means the calories are paid for so the net caloric cost is zero. Works for me. Let’s Go Brandon!

Daily Life, Health

Dodged A Bullet

One of the unique aspects of hospital work is the concept of being “floated”. I have my home floor where I was hired. But the hospital has the right to send me to any floor they choose in order to cover staff shortages. I guess the theory is that an RN is generic and doing nursing shit is the same on every type of floor right? Doesn’t matter that I have no idea who the providers are and many of the medications on that floor are something I’ve never seen. I have no idea what the policies are for that specialty or even how to find the supply room. Imagine being in marketing and working day after day on a particular product launch. You show up to work and your boss tells you to have to go work on a different product team today. After all, marketing is marketing, right?

Anyway, I showed up the other day and checked the schedule. The dreaded words… float to the covid floor. Sigh. Naturally nobody wants to work the covid floor, so everyone has to take a turn. Unfortunately due to the spike in cases in my area, coupled with huge staffing shortages, getting floated to the covid floor is becoming pretty common. So off I went to the hot zone.

Twelve hours of putting on a heavy plastic gown, gloves, N95, surgical mask, and face shield, going in the room to take care of business, then stripping it all off. Then doing the same in the next room. Then going back to the first room. Then the next room. Over and over and over again. These folks are sick. For the most part not much bothers me medically – but watching people struggling to breathe when there’s little I can do, is just hard. It makes for a long day.

Fast forward a few days and I woke up and just felt… off. I did a bunch of errands and then some yardwork. By early afternoon I had zero energy and a splitting headache had set in. The next morning, no change. No energy, fatigue, brain fog, and a dull headache. Classic covid symptoms. Crap! The China virus finally got me. How ironic that I’ve been writing about breakthrough cases in vaccinated people and now I’m going to be one of those statistics. In my mind I replayed all my patient encounters. Did I get sloppy with my PPE? Did I forget to wash my hands and then touched my face? I was adjusting my mask when that guy coughed on me, maybe that was it?

We have some people coming to visit and an upcoming trip, so I figured I better get tested just to confirm. Insurance will pay if you’re willing to wait 2-3 days for your results. If you need immediate results it’s out of pocket. So I plunked down my $142 and got the swab via a drive through testing center. I went home and started making a list of who I may have come in contact with so I can tell them they might have been exposed.

Negative. Negative for covid and influenza. Whew. And this morning I woke up and felt fine. I don’t know what it was. Maybe it was a cold? Too many days of poor sleep? Didn’t drink enough water? Too many nachos in one sitting? Weird.

Our world has certainly changed. I never used to think twice about feeling off for a few days. Now, the slightest sniffle and we all worry that the dreaded virus finally got us. We’ve been brainwashed into becoming a society that fears normal human interaction. Half the population endorses authoritarian/totalitarian measures of control. The other half is ready riot in protest.

I live in a weird dichotomy. I live my life as normal as possible, without fear. My odds of grave injury in a motor vehicle accident are higher than being struck down by covid. I’m going to eat in restaurants, enjoy time with friends, and see family. Yet, in the back of my mind are images that not everyone sees. A few days ago I watched a man be wheeled into his wife’s room for a few minutes to say goodbye – before we pulled her off oxygen support. Another covid statistic. That’s real. It’s not a meme on Facebook.

I miss normal.

Cool, Daily Life

Going To The Big House

A random round-up of random things that randomly caught my eye

  • Scrolling through my extensive sources of information (twitter) I saw this headline: “Michigan Nurse Arrested for Selling Fake COVID-19 Vaccine Cards”. My first thought was this is going to happen more and more often… bring on the electronic vaccine passports! Because, you know, security and all. My second thought was, how is a covid vaccine card even a legal document? How is it illegal to sell a randomly printed piece of paper? My vaccine card only has one of the lot numbers and no signature/site listed. Anybody could have filled it out. It’s a horrible “official” document. Naturally I had to put my mad search skills to work to see if it really is a legal document. Turns out there’s about a hundred obscure statutes that could be used to charge this person. The most likely one is:

    The unauthorized use of of the official seal of the CDC or DHHS is a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1017. This federal statute makes it a crime to wrongfully or fraudulently affix the seal of any federal department or agency to a certificate, document, or paper, and likewise makes it a crime to use, buy, sell, or transfer such a document knowing that it’s fraudulent. A violation of this statute is punishable by a fine or imprisonment of up to five years.

    So, that nurse is definitely going to the big house. (slang: A state or federal prison) And she should, if for no other reason than she was selling them via Facebook Messenger. Seriously? She’s not exactly a criminal mastermind.

  • I’ve gone to the golf driving range twice in the last week and hit really, really well. (for me that just means my shots mostly went up in the air and sorta straight) I’m convinced it’s the new shoes. I went with a natural toe box style to let my toes spread out more. They’re very wide. Plus, they’re very bright. They looked more subdued on the website pictures. There’s a definite clown shoe vibe going on. Oh well. If John Daily can dress the way he does, I can wear clown shoes.

  • Take a minute and watch this video titled “Every Sport a Bowling Ball“.

  • I just finished reading “Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic” by Dr Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the FDA. Quite a bit of behind the scenes information related to the inner workings of various federal agencies. It’s a little dry, but worth the read. The sad revelation is that it’s really pitiful how inept the US government is at doing most anything. We’re the freaking technology center of the universe and for most of the pandemic hospitals had to resort to faxing case count data to the CDC. The size, scale, and budget of the United States government is so ginormous it boggles the mind, yet we can’t get the simplest, most basic things right. Sigh…

  • If you’re not already, you need to be following Alaska’s “Fat Bear Week” contest. A weekly bracket competition to find the fattest bear of 2021. The winner will be declared October 5th. My money’s on bear 480, Otis.

  • Tweet of the day: In response to a post about why General Milley didn’t jump across the table and murder Representative Gaetz during yesterdays hearing… “Milley is 5′ 8″ and obese. The only thing he’s murdering is a plate of nachos”. I did actually laugh out loud at that one. Take a look at the picture – definitely not the same regal image the media carefully cultivates. Meanwhile, I’m going to think about nachos all day.

  • I’ve decided to abandon my idea of being a retirement lifestyle coach. I’m stealing an idea from another site and creating a “Contrarian University”. You’ll be able to sign up for classes, listen to podcasts, and receive personal instruction on how to be a Contrarian. I’ll be raking in the Quan. Just as soon as I create some content.

Song of the day: Living Colour- “Cult of Personality” Live in Auburn 1988

Government, Health

Crossing The Minefield

Because I have some time on my hands, and I’ve got my tinfoil hat shaped just right, I’m going to add an update to my previous (poorly worded) post on leaky vaccines. This one is about risk assessment. I think we’d all agree that each individual should be able to make an informed decision about the risks of getting or not getting the vaccine or booster. In a perfect world we’d see all the pros/cons and decide what’s right for your particular scenario. But what if you weren’t told all the info?

(adjusts hat) Ok, here we go. It’s starting to look like after your first dose of the mRNA vaccine you go through a roughly two week window of a highly immune suppressed state. The reasons why are not clear yet. The most likely cause seems to be that the mRNA vaccine has to turn off the toll-like receptors so the vaccine can enter the cells without being attacked by the immune system. Other options are a fall in lymphocytes and neutrophils that are seen three days post vaccine. Regardless of cause, it appears likely that you are in a highly immune compromised state for several weeks after your first dose. This does not happen after the second dose.

The impact of this is a significantly increased death rate post first dose. This was seen clearly in the Israel data and now in the Palestinian data since they are just now getting their first doses. Going back to Israel, we see the same corresponding rise in death rate following the booster.

Just to be clear, people are NOT dying from the vaccine. They appear to be briefly in a highly immune compromised state and then get covid or a cancer spreads, etc…

So to steal a brilliant analogy – we have some percentage risk by not taking the vaccine, based upon our age, comorbidities, fitness, etc… We can mitigate some of that risk by taking the vaccine, but in order to do that we have to first cross a minefield. You’d probably want to know what are the odds of stepping on a mine, right? Well, the first study on this shows a 46% increase in suspected covid during that two week period. Even the Pfizer data itself shows a 40% increase.

Don’t you think it would have been good to know that you’d briefly have a nearly 50% increased chance of getting covid and massively increased odds of being hospitalized for several weeks after getting your vaccine? The tradeoff for running across the minefield is a vaccine that is eventually 56% effective (not the 95% we were sold).

Again, I’m not arguing that you shouldn’t get the vax. I think most folks 50 and older, or folks with comorbidities should. BUT, don’t you think folks should have been advised that for 2-3 weeks post first dose you need to self isolate as much as possible to reduce the risk of getting covid? I blissfully went back to work after my first dose, including working the covid floor! And why in gods name would we be pushing the vaccines during peaking cases? From a big picture, public health standpoint, you’d want to be vaccinating during lulls in case rates.

Which brings me back to the previous post. What if we’ve created a bunch of vaccinated asymptomatic superspreaders who are inadvertently causing a spike in case rates? And then in response we push/mandate vaccinations and start boosters. We just potentially put millions of people into that two week risk window with covid on the increase and superspreaders walking around… The hospitalization and death rates will be interesting follow this winter.

Come to think of it, my tinfoil hat is feeling a little snug. Time to take it off and go do something productive outside.

Government, Health

Did We Screw Up?

Sit back and relax for a minute. I have a short tale that might worry you a bit. One that, if true, would prove to be one of the greatest public health blunders in history. It’s about a vaccine. Wait, wait, don’t go… this isn’t an anti-vax tirade or a rant about mandates. It’s a story about what happens when people rush to make a decision without waiting for all the data.

A question – what happens if we created a “leaky vaccine” and pushed it out to billions of people?

Here’s the background. I follow a number of statisticians. Yes, I know I’m a geek. But I like data and charts and graphs. I admit much of the stats are above my head, but I took just enough statistics to semi-sorta understand what I’m reading. Anyway, I first heard about the idea of leaky vaccines from something that Joe Rogan said on his podcast. He, of course, was immediately blasted for pushing tinfoil hat conspiracy stuff. Which, of course, made me want to read more about it. Enter the statisticians who plot and analyze the data and ignore the politicians and media wisdom.

What you want is a sterilizing vaccine. One that creates an immune response powerful enough that it instantly attacks and wipes out the virus in the host before it can replicate and spread. What you don’t want is a “leaky vaccine” that produces an immune response sufficient to protect the host, but isn’t able to prevent a buildup of viral load or transmission. Every day it’s looking more likely that we’ve produced a pretty leaky covid vaccine. This is generally ok for you, the vaccinated individual. Your immune response protects you from getting really sick. But the population as a whole…

Here’s the worrisome part. The data is showing that when a vaccinated person is hit with covid, their viral load and shedding of virus is equal to that of unvaccinated people and lasts for days. And the best part? Because they have an immune response that starts working to protect them, they are generally asymptomatic. Are the lightbulbs starting to go off? In our mad rush to push the vaccine without sufficient testing, we may have just created a bunch of vaccinated asymptomatic superspreaders, happily walking around and infecting the unvaccinated and those unhealthy folks (vaccinated or not) who managed to dodge the bullet during the first covid wave.

Israel, one of the most vaccinated nations on the planet, got hammered with a second wave. Similarly the UK and many highly vaccinated cities in the US. The hospitals are being overrun in many cities, including my own. In many places it’s far worse than the first covid wave. We’re seeing tons of “breakthrough” cases – vaccinated folks who get covid. Unfortunately many of those folks have multiple comorbidities, which is why they got the vaccine in the first place. Their outcomes aren’t great (but still better than without the vaccine). Get vaccinated so you can safely visit your immunocompromised family and friends! We need a vaccine passport so we can safely shop and go to restaurants! The potential irony would be humorous if it wasn’t so tragic.

It’s a catch-22. The vaccine we rushed into the population is clearly good for the individual, but may be bad for society as a whole. Politicians and public health officials panicked and pushed out something without knowing the potential long term impacts. And now that we’re facing skyrocketing case and fatality rates again, the panicked response is boosters! We need boosters in every arm ASAP!

Never mind that the FDA advisory panel voted 16-2 AGAINST authorizing the booster for everyone. The CDC ignored that and did it anyway. The two top virologists at the FDA resigned over the politicization and handling of all this. Yay! Trust the science bitches.

It’s easy to be an armchair quarterback, I get that. But what makes science all sciency, is a willingness to continually examine the data, re-evaluating, questioning, and rethinking your hypothesis if results weren’t what you expected. Unfortunately politics and fear forced us to throw all that out the window. Politics and vanity will keep anyone from saying out loud, “uh guys, we might have screwed up?” Maybe this is a big nothingburger. Maybe in a couple years this will be a minor, annual flu-like annoyance. Or maybe we’ll be on booster #8 and wondering why we keep getting so many mutating variants? My tinfoil hat fits me just fine, thank you.