Category: Uncategorized

Who doesn’t remember Ray Parker Jr.’s 1984 song, “Ghostbusters” from a movie by the same name? I do not recall ever seeing the movie although  I often find the song cascading through my brain. Even though the melody was catchy and you could dance to it, the lyrics of the song were somewhat nonsensical:

“If there’s something strange

In your neighborhood

Who you gonna call?

Ghostbusters!”

Or

“If you’re seeing things

Running through your head

Who can you call?

Ghostbusters!”

I queried as to why the refrain of this song (“Who you gonna call.”) came  into my mind today. Intuitively … it’s all about Covid these days. 

As there are multitudinous questions concerning Covid, “who are the American people gonna call” for Covid answers?

In essence a recent survey asked this same question.

“When it comes to information about COVID-19, which of the following sources would you say you trust?”

“Your doctor” was the clear winner, with more than 60 percent of people selecting it. That’s in line with a recent Gallup survey that found 64 percent of Americans trusted their doctor’s advice, which was a 6 percent dip from 2010. However, fewer than 20 percent selected President Joe Biden and the news media in the NewsNation survey.

Dr. Anthony Fauci received support from a little less than one-third of respondents in the NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ poll, which is far below a December 2021 Gallup poll that found 52 percent of people approved of the job he was doing.

So “who are you gonna call” to find info about Covid … not Fauci,  certainly not Joe Biden and the news media.

1/17/22

In accordance with my recent tradition, on Sunday, I devote the entire piece to an individual who is deserving of our praise. 

According to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office on 1/9/22 in a suburb of Denver four juvenile relatives, ages 4 to 11, were playing on a frozen pond when three of them fell in.

A neighbor, 23-year-old Dusti Talavera, watched the horror unfold from her window.

“Before I even realized it, I was out there in the middle of the pond pulling two kids out,” she said during a press conference. “And that’s when I fell in.” 

Talavera managed to pull out a 4-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy from the water but struggled to rescue the third child, a 6-year-old girl. The girl’s 16-year-old male cousin arrived and helped Talavera pull the girl out of the water. 

“I tried to hold her head up, I tried to hold my head up, the pond was really deep. A young man threw us a rope. He pulled us out,” Talavera said.  

Arapahoe County sheriff’s deputies and South Metro Fire Rescue (SMFR) officials were on the scene within minutes. The sheriff’s office said the 6-year-old girl was not breathing, not conscious, and had no pulse. They said she was “cold to the touch, and her clothes were soaked.” Sheriff’s deputies performed CPR on the girl until SMFR took over the situation. 

The girl was taken to a local children’s hospital. The girl has since been released from the hospital, reunited with her family, and is in good health. 

Talavera told deputies she “wasn’t concerned for her safety because they were babies and they needed help.” 

Spoken like a true hero … and Dusti Talavera is indeed a real hero.

1/16/22

One of my favorite sayings is from Ben Franklin, who said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Just this week the Supreme Court chose ‘liberty’ when it struck down Biden’s vaccine mandate. This choice between liberty and safety is the overwhelming categorical dispute in today’s Covid world, not only in the U.S. but in what I had thought were “free” countries. 

In Australia they have what amounts to Covid concentration camps, and now there is continuing hub-bub and vacillation concerning Novak Djokovic’s visa and his vaccination status in light of his recent documented Covid infection.

Similar things are happening in Canada … which I had always considered a free country. However, a few things that I recently read is doing a lot to destroy that apparent myth. A recent headline from the BBC:

“Canada: Unvaccinated father loses right to see his child”

From that article:

“A Canadian father who has not been vaccinated against Covid has temporarily lost the right to see his 12-year-old child.

A judge ruled his visits would not be in the child’s “best interest”.

It followed a request by the father to extend his visiting time during the holidays. The judgement is the first depriving a parent of access rights on immunisation grounds. The judge’s decision, made at the end of last monthin Quebec province, suspends the father’s visitation rights until February, unless he decides to get vaccinated.

The judge said it was not “in the child’s best interest to have contact with their father” due to the recent increase in Covid cases in French-speaking Quebec.”

Also from Canada … from True North:

“A young Kelowna family says it is being evicted from Ronald McDonald House (RMH) in Vancouver where their 4-year-old son is fighting leukemia because they don’t have COVID shots.

The notice, signed by Senior Director of Family Services Leslie Louie, adds that families already staying at RMH have until Jan. 31 to get their first COVID shot.

The father, Austin Ferguson in a seven-minute-long video posted to Facebook. In the video, he tells RMH staff that the COVID shots do not stop transmission and that his family’s eviction was an affront to the country’s national anthem.

In the Facebook video, Furgason tells RMH staff that his family has all their other immunizations but decided not to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Furgason reiterates that his family are not “anti-vaxxers” and that he is most concerned about the safety of the recently approved vaccine for children.”

Wow! Unless one lives in the made-up world of U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, just about everyone realizes the extremely small risk that Covid poses to children. I have to assume that that this small risk is no different in Canada. Apparently that Canadian judge and the Senior Director of Family Services, Leslie Louie, are not aware of the pertinent prudent saying of Ben Franklin as they stepped on the father’s visitation rights as well as the Furgason’s family’s rights in order to insure some non identifiable  concept (safety?).

[It is probably safe to assume that Canadians have not read The Keneally Chronicles by yours truly, because in that book, retired SCOTUS Anthony Keneally quotes this same Ben Franklin saying many times.]

1/15/22

In September, 2020 when a local college was starting back, the local Karens were complaining that the college kids were out at night … gathering outside in their neighborhoods. Now granted these Karens could have had some reason for concern because mostly they were not young like the “gathering” college kids. However, back then I stated that the colleges reflexively were taking the wrong approach as they cancelled  in person classes in addition to isolating Covid positive students quarantining them to their rooms. To my way of thinking, since college students were, and still are, at very low risk from Covid, why not let these young college students spread Covid amongst themselves. Anyway that’s past history, and now that same local college is back again to online classes.

I am bringing this up now because something similar is happening with college basketball. Games are being cancelled because Covid (most likely Omicron) is slowly weaving it’s way through the rosters of certain teams. These teams are either having to cancel games because they do not have the minimum number of players necessary, or they are having to play games without  a variable number of starting players because they are on a quarantine status.

Similar to college students in general back in the fall of 2020, would it not make more sense to get everybody on the team infected with Omicron at the same time. This way, a few games would be cancelled, and then the entire team would be available, all at once, once their quarantine time had ended. In a practical sense, would it not be better to have all the individual members of a team on quarantine now, rather than risk that a star player would get Covid at tournament time?

1/14/22

Is anybody else, beside me, troubled by the actions of Joe Biden and his Georgia speech on 1/11/22? Even Stacy, “you know I won” Abrams refused to show up … blaming it on a “mistake” in her schedule. (If anyone actually believed that incredibly weak excuse, I’ve got a bridge to sell them!)

By all estimates the speech was an overt disaster. It was thoroughly criticized by the typically mild mannered Mitt Romney and the usually politically correct Mitch McConnell, who said, “How profoundly unpresidential. I have known, liked, and personally respected Joe Biden for many years. I did not recognize the man at that podium yesterday.”

It was almost as if Joe Biden wanted to offend and piss off as many as possible. If that was his goal … then I would have to say, he succeeded.

What troubles me is that this obviously offensive speech comes on the heels of a recent Quinnipiac poll,which demonstrated that “Americans give President Joe Biden a negative 33 – 53 percent job approval rating.”

Hypothetically, before the speech, imagine the speech-writer asking, “President Biden, since you are significantly underwater in the polls, what type of speech do you want me to write for you?”

Can anyone fathom President Biden responding … “write an anger filled speech that will piss-off most independents. Make sure that I belittle all who may disagree with me. Compare them to Bull Conner and George Wallace. For sure, that will be a good strategy, don’t you think?”

See here’s the problem … I cannot imagine a more inept disconnected response. Even Joe, or least his wife, should instantly realize that the tone and the message of this sort of speech are antithetical to what he needs. 

Ordinarily I am not a conspiracy guy, but why would Biden give a speech like this? 

Hmmm! I am troubled … and I hope that you are too!

1/13/22

Many years ago at one point I caught part of a Rush Limbaugh radio broadcast in which he was commenting that he got very very few colds after flying. At this point in his career Rush stated that he flew quite a bit, and then related his “secret.” Note that Rush was a lot of things, but he was not a physician and never pretended to be. His advice about cold prevention was totally anecdotal, and was well before Covid. Rush’s   preventative strategy was well before Covid. He relied upon Zinc and Vitamin C.

Today I happened upon an article from BMJ Open from Australia titled 

“Zinc for the prevention or treatment of acute viral respiratory tract infections in adults: a rapid systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials”

The conclusion in this article was :

In adult populations in which zinc deficiency is unlikely, our review found when zinc was used for prophylaxis, there was a lower risk of contracting a clinical illness consistent with a community-acquired viral RTI (Respiratory Tract Infection). When used for treatment, zinc was found to shorten the duration of symptoms and reduce day 3 symptomatic severity, but not overall daily symptom severity. While there was an increased risk of non-serious AEs (Adverse Effects) that may limit tolerability for some, the risk of serious AEs was low.

This meta analysis review of the literature was addressing viral URIs (Upper Respiratory Infections) in general, and it was noted that it was not specifically talking about Covid, but of course, Covid is also caused by a virus.

Furthermore just today I listened to a presentation by an experienced primary care physician from Israel. In his practice he stated that he had approximately 2000 patients, and although some had contracted Covid, and a few had gone to the ER, none had been hospitalized. He attributed his success at keeping his Covid patients out of the hospital to his recommended prophylactic regime of both Zinc and Vitamin D. To all of his patients he recommends 25mg/d of Zinc and 4000IU of Vitamin D (increased dose for his obese patients).

My take on prophylactic Zinc is similar to my take on Ivermectin … a potentially effective treatment with minuscule side effects, so why not? 

I am starting my zinc tomorrow.

1/12/22

Most of the following is from an article by Mark E. Meengs M.D, a cardiologist from Michigan and a video interview of Peter McCullough M.D., a cardiologist and epidemiologist. 

What you are going to read will probably shock most of you, as it did me. Both of these distinguished physicians basically are saying the same thing, namely that the reason that both Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin are persona non grata with respect to treating Covid in the USA has much more to do with profit, or more precisely‘not making a profit.’ 

I can understand why major drug companies are not interested in doing studies on either cheap drug. Namely, lots of dollar investment with little chance for any monetary profit, as both drugs are dirt cheap. 

One might ask why these drugs have apparently successfully been used for Covid in many other countries, but not in the USA? Could the answer be related to the fact that the NIH, the FDA, and the CDC are all in America? And furthermore could this dichotomy be related to the eminent Dr. Fauci, who from the very beginning preached about ‘controlled double blind’ studies, knowing full well that these types of studies on both of these inexpensive, but potentially effective safe drugs would never, NEVER, be done. Insisting on studies that he knew would never be done, while many many people were and still are dying, is in my mind, the definition of a ghoulish hypocrite, and perhaps the devil incarnate.

By merely making both of these inexpensive and safe drugs available to practicing physicians in the U.S., could lives have been saved? At this point I guess we will never know for sure. However judging by results in Japan, Peru, and India (Ivermectin) and Iran (hydroxychloroquine), if I were to get covid, I would certainly like the chance to take either drug early on in my illness.

1/11/22

So here we are in the midst of another “surge.” This time due to the Omicron variant. As most of us are aware this variant most likely started in South Africa and from the beginning was deemed both more transmissible and less serious than prior variants.

Before going any further, let’s first hit ‘rewind,’ and look in general at past epidemics … those before the age of vaccines. Realistically back then it was quite simple. Either you were exposed to the culprit or you weren’t. If you weren’t exposed, you did not get sick, but at the same time remained vulnerable to that same culprit from then on.

If you were one of the unfortunate ones who were exposed to the culprit, basically you got sick (back then the concept of an asymptomatic infection was still in the future), and either lived or died. The culprit picked off the most vulnerable first, and continued to wreak havoc until basically the epidemic ran its course. Later we learned that the body’s defenses, mainly antibodies, B cells, and T cells were responsible for why some infected individuals had survived. Also these recovered individuals proved to be immune to subsequent infection with that same culprit.

Is it possible that the present Covid pandemic will turn out to have a similar course? Certainly in the beginning this pandemic, in general, killed the most vulnerable … the elderly, the sick, and the obese. Then came the miracle vaccines. However as many months went by, it became apparent that these vaccines were merely a way to flatten the curve, meaning that they did not prevent future infection with this virus forever, but merely delayed one’s susceptibility to what are now called breakthrough infections, which for the most part were less severe, especially for the vaccinated. In response to these breakthrough infections, next came the boosters(B), and now individuals are “breaking through” the boosters. Hypothetically will the next step be boosters for the boosters (B2), and will subsequent breakthroughs to B2 lead to B3? A purposely unanswerable question! Nonetheless what is happening now with this omicron variant is that more and more individuals are getting infected, and thus developing their own acquired immunity. Is it possible that this variant will actually provide the potential exit door to this pandemic?

Is it possible that getting the less severe Omicron version could be a good thing?

I was double-vaxxed and boosted … and got Covid anyway. Now while well on the road to recovery, I am becoming more convinced that my recent infection will turn out to be a good thing for me.

1/10/22

Today is Sunday and so per recent policy, I am devoting this piece to a single individual. Reed Charles O’Connor (born June 1, 1965) is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas. 

Why would I choose a judge to be recognized in my Sunday piece? After all judges have sworn to uphold the Constitution, and so when they do just that … what’s the big deal? As many of us are becoming more aware, there seems to be a cadre of “feel good judges” who seem to be pushing the Constitution into the background when they make their decisions. Not so, Judge Reed O’Connor, who issued a stay in response to a lawsuit filed by First Liberty Institute in November on behalf of 35 active-duty SEALs and three reservists seeking a religious exemption to Biden’s vaccine mandates. 

“The Navy service members in this case seek to vindicate the very freedoms they have sacrificed so much to protect. The COVID-19 pandemic provides the government no license to abrogate those freedoms. There is no COVID-19 exception to the First Amendment,” O’Connor wrote in his ruling. “There is no military exclusion from our Constitution.”

O’Connor’s ruling comes as potentially thousands of U.S Marines face potential discharge for refusing the vaccine after the Department of Defense’s mandate on all active-duty service members went into effect for the Marine Corps on Nov. 28.

O’Connor criticized the Navy’s 50-step process for evaluating religious exemption requests, writing that “the first fifteen steps require an administrator to update a prepared disapproval template with the requester’s name and rank. In essence, the Plaintiffs’ requests are denied the moment they begin.”

“The Navy provides a religious accommodation process, but by all accounts, it is theater. The Navy has not granted a religious exemption to any vaccine in recent memory. It merely rubber stamps each denial.”

O’Connor went on to say that it is not the duty of the court to decide whether these religious objections are sincere.

When asked about Judge Reed O’Connor, liberals will likely comment that he is a shill for conservatives, whereas I would instead say that he is a shill for the Constitution.

1/9/22

One would expect judges would at least have modicum of intelligence or at least a modicum of common sense. And furthermore this should hold true in spades when one is talking about a Supreme Court Justice. We are all aware that certain Justices have a liberal bent and that others have a conservative tendency. Perhaps naively, I had assumed that all of the Justices, at least, enter each case with an open mind … that was before I read some of the statements made during the 1/7/22 hearing about the constitutionality of President Joe Biden’s Wuhan coronavirus vaccine mandates for private companies with more than 100 employees.

For instance:

During questioning, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a number of false statements about the vaccine’s ability to prevent transmission of the virus. While it may protect against death or hospitalization, the vaccine does not prevent transmission. (Speaking about vaccines CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in an interview with CNN over the summer, “But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”)

But Justice Sotomayor wasn’t finished proving that she was not the smartest person in the room, when she falsely claimed the Omicron variant of the virus is just as deadly as the previous Delta version. (Everyone who can read realizes that this is blatantly false back from omicron’s beginning in South Africa.)

Subsequently Justice Sotomayor went for the trifecta when she said, “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators.” (According to the data from the CDC, children are still at little risk for serious illness or death from the disease. The current national pediatric COVID census per HHS is 3,342.)

Not to be outdone:

Justice Breyer said there were 750 million new cases yesterday. (Considering that there are about 330 million people in the U.S, Breyer’s inane statement would imply that each person in the U.S had it twice!)

Come on, SCOTUS! Is it too much to expect even a modicum of intelligence from you?

1/8/22