‘The Biggest Monster’ Is Spreading. And It’s Not the Coronavirus.

 We are the masters of our own destruction.

From the New York Times:

It begins with a mild fever and malaise, followed by a painful cough and shortness of breath. The infection prospers in crowds, spreading to people in close reach. Containing an outbreak requires contact tracing, as well as isolation and treatment of the sick for weeks or months.

This insidious disease has touched every part of the globe. It is tuberculosis, the biggest infectious-disease killer worldwide, claiming 1.5 million lives each year.

Until this year, TB and its deadly allies, H.I.V. and malaria, were on the run. The toll from each disease over the previous decade was at its nadir in 2018, the last year for which data are available.

Yet now, as the coronavirus pandemic spreads around the world, consuming global health resources, these perennially neglected adversaries are making a comeback.

FEAR,  They call it FEAR.  This is what we have succumbed to.  Not to the disease.  I have never in my life understood FDR's famous phrase until this year.  It is the FEAR we must fear.  Not the disease.

“Covid-19 risks derailing all our efforts and taking us back to where we were 20 years ago,” said Dr. Pedro L. Alonso, the director of the World Health Organization’s global malaria program.

It’s not just that the coronavirus has diverted scientific attention from TB, H.I.V. and malaria. The lockdowns, particularly across parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, have raised insurmountable barriers to patients who must travel to obtain diagnoses or drugs, according to interviews with more than two dozen public health officials, doctors and patients worldwide.

Fear of the coronavirus and the shuttering of clinics have kept away many patients struggling with H.I.V., TB and malaria, while restrictions on air and sea travel have severely limited delivery of medications to the hardest-hit regions.

About 80 percent of tuberculosis, H.I.V. and malaria programs worldwide have reported disruptions in services, and one in four people living with H.I.V. have reported problems with gaining access to medications, according to U.N. AIDS. Interruptions or delays in treatment may lead to drug resistance, already a formidable problem in many countries.

In India, home to about 27 percent of the world’s TB cases, diagnoses have dropped by nearly 75 percent since the pandemic began. In Russia, H.I.V. clinics have been repurposed for coronavirus testing.

Malaria season has begun in Africa, which has 90 percent of malaria deaths in the world, but the normal strategies for prevention — distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets and spraying with pesticides — have been curtailed because of lockdowns.

According to one estimate, a three-month lockdown across different parts of the world and a gradual return to normal over 10 months could result in an additional 6.3 million cases of tuberculosis and 1.4 million deaths from it.

A six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy may lead to more than 500,000 additional deaths from illnesses related to H.I.V., according to the W.H.O. Another model by the W.H.O. predicted that in the worst-case scenario, deaths from malaria could double to 770,000 per year.

Texas Deaths and Cases of Corona Virus. Time to get rid of the masks. Who are more important?

It's time to stop the stupid mask wearing.  We're past the point of them helping....if they ever did.  Two countries in Europe have gotten rid of the mask requirement: Sweden and The Netherlands.  It's time we did the same.

With the horrid "soft shutdown" we are killing people (suicide) and driving more people to alcohol and drug abuse.  

So here is a chart from the latest numbers  (August 3rd, 2020) from the Texas Health Department.  They are now listing the deaths on the correct day.  Apparently, that wasn't a thing a couple weeks ago, if you can believe it!

I used a 5 day moving average to smooth out the jig/jags.  The deaths numbers are being revised as time marches on.  But most of the revisions occur mainly at fresh data.  

To be honest, I'm not even sure you can trust the cases.  From what I've read the false positives are very high.  The chart for Cases is on the uptick, but so what?  The deaths have plummeted to almost zero.  Also, by the time people start freaking out about a FAKE "Second Wave" they'll stop, look at eachother and say: "oh....it's now the flu season".

And then....they get to freak out all over again until July of next year!!

To me, the use of masks always seemed completely pointless.  And now I am vindicated.

The total number of deaths are 7,016.  So if we doubled it, we'd have a "bad flu season".  Yep.  That's it.  All the terrible running around like our hair was on fire for an effing bad flu season.  

In the 2017/18 flu season more people in Texas died than have died so far from the CCP Virus.  Did you know that?  Did you read about it?  Oh you didn't?  Then let me fill that blank spot in your brain:

In what was considered the worst season in years, the flu and related complications killed nearly 10,000 Texans in 2017-2018, according to state health officials.

Yeah, that's a lot of people to die of the flu.  And you didn't notice?  Were you that uncaring? Of course, you aren't that uncaring.  So why the hell is it so important now?

For the CCP Virus, to understand the breakdown of deaths by age: The age group from 60- 80+ account for 80% of the deaths.  80+ yeas alone make up 34.3% of the deaths.

Yep. And again early on I suggested to friends and family (who all thought I was stupid, ignorant and uncaring) that we should concentrate on making things safe for the elderly.

Also, early on I recognized that the deaths from the CCP virus were probably overstated by 30%.  Dr. Debra Birx a couple of weeks later confronted the CDC accusing them of overstating the deaths and positive cases by 25% 

Yeah.  It's time.  And unless people are dropping like flies from whatever new Apocalyptic Pandemic heads our way, don't EVER do this again.

The one important question I ask is this:  Who are more important:  The Americans of Today?  Or the Americans of Tomorrow?

In every thing we as Americans have done we have always answered this to be "the Americans of Tomorrow".  From our Founding Fathers, and the signers of the Declaration of Independence who risked their lives, honors and fortunes along with hundreds of  thousands of soldiers walking with bloody barefeet in the frigid snowy scenes, to the bloody body-strewn fields of the Civil War to rid our country of the Curse of Slavery, the Americans of Tomorrow were most certainly more important. From the blood soaked trenches of battle during World War One and then the horrid Bataan Death March of American Soldiers and the American lives slain on European battlefields, it was always the Americans of Tomorrow that were more important.  

It was President Kennedy who threw down the gauntlet to have us send a man to the moon.  Why?  Because it was easy?  Because...it was hard.  

And we as American are called to do the same today.  We want.....the Americans of Tomorrow to live and thrive.  And we do this not because it is easy but especially because it is hard.  

If we don't do this for them now.....

...there will be no Americans of Tomorrow.  

....and little is asked of us.  Stop the fear,  Take the mask off.  Get to work.

What Happens When A City Goes Bankrupt?

Good interview with Laurie Davies, the Mayor of Laguna Niguel in California. She was asked what are the signs of a city getting close to bankruptcy. She then spends time discussing the process the city will go through when paring back spending.

So, the question becomes: What have you noticed your city doing?

It Takes 3 Weeks to Escape Illinois. That's how long it takes to get a U-Haul

So, the Great Escape has begun.  

Why 3 weeks? That's how long it takes to reserve a one-way U-Haul outbound.

"Everyone is leaving. No one is coming," a U-Haul agent told us a few weeks ago.

 As if it wasn't bad enough in Chicago.  But we all know why Illinois is doing this.

PENSIONS.  They CAN NOT pay for the pensions.  They need to makes things so bad, so unbearable, they can finally declare bankruptcy after their tax base (aka residences of Ill) do what this family are doing: LEAVE.

I am pleased to report we loaded our U-Haul rental yesterday and I am on the road driving to our new home in Utah. 

Right now we are just a few hours  into the trip, but we have crossed the state line and are now in Iowa.

Goodbye Illinois

On February 12, Wirepoints noted If the wealthy flee, ordinary Illinoisans will be left holding the progressive tax bag. 

Yep, and we have had enough. 

We were paying about $15,000 a year in property taxes on a home now worth about $380,000 or so. We have a beautiful 1 acre lot, surrounded by 30 white or and burr oak trees 100-200 years old. 

But property values are sinking. We will sell the house for a lot less than we paid for it 20 years ago.

Property taxes are a killer and taxes in general are going to rise in Illinois. 

 

GET READY FOR CIVIL WAR: CALIFORNIA

I've been trying to figure out where the coming Fake Civil War was going to come from.  And I determined it would be California.

I say Fake because it won't be a true uprising from US Citizens.  It will be from entrenched illegal immigrants.  It will be more of a takeover, led by the CA governor himself.

Who is the Enemy? Who REALLY is the Enemy? I

I recall the story a friend told me.  It was about his father.  His father was a General Manager of a General Motors assembly plant located in Cuba.  He was well thought of by the assembly line workers.

And then Fidel Castro took over.  

A squad of soldiers walked into the plant and confronted the manager.  The manager was told that they now worked for the State.  

The manager said...."No.  I will not work for the State."

Well, word got out and the assembly line workers found out.  If Mr. Alvares wasn't going to work, we won't either, they said.  They dropped their tools and quit.

The leader of the Communist soldiers tried to convince Mr. Alvares about how good Castro was.  That Castro was for the people.  He begged Mr. Alvares to please tell the workers to go back to work.

Mr. Alvares refused.

I don't recall how it was all resolved.  But that is beside the point.

The point is that there was an enemy.  And Mr. Alvares was not him.  

Batista was not the enemy.  But for many in Cuba, there was no other enemy, except for Batista.

The epilogue to the story is that the Leader of the squadron of devout Communist soldiers, who pleaded with Mr. Alvares to tell the workers to get back to work, later became disillusioned with Castro.  

He was later arrested and executed.

He discovered who the real enemy was.

But that is very very difficult to see when there are not many choices.  In fact, there is only a binary choice: 

1) Live under Batista

2) Live under Castro

Is this really a choice?

Here are 140 reasons why I’m against the COVID-19 lockdowns

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog posted a great list of why he was against the lock down.  

Here is the intro to the list.  Go to his website and read his list.  It's pretty good.

So instead of it being about “lives vs money,” it’s really about “fewer people dying vs more people dying.”

And yet, when I bring this up, lockdown supporters either ignore it, or they accuse me of not caring about people’s lives, or they say, “better safe than sorry.”

Before I get to my main list, here are some general facts about the lockdowns:

The COVIID-19 lockdowns will end up killing far more people than they save, in the form of increased suicides, increased drug and alcohol overdoses, and canceled and postponed medical procedures. For young and middle aged people who have healthy immune systems, being and poor and unemployed is more dangerous than having COVID-19.

The lockdowns are totalitarian.

The lockdowns are based on bogus computer models.

The real fatality rate of COVID-19 is far, far lower than the bogus, overinflated rate that was used to justify the lockdowns.

The alleged purpose of the lockdowns was to flatten the curve, and prevent the hospitals from being overwhelmed. But the hospitals were never even close to being overwhelmed. On the contrary, the U.S. health care system actually laid off more than a million health care workers during the lockdowns. And yet the lockdowns continue. This is proof that the lockdowns are a scam.

States with the toughest lockdowns forced nursing homes to admit patients who had tested positive for COVID-19. This is mass murder.

Many politicians and other high ranking government officials violated their own lockdowns.

Lockdown supporters want to destroy other people’s jobs, but not their own.

Previous pandemics did not destroy the economy, because there were no lockdowns.

Fresh air, sunshine, and exercise are good for your immune system, and actually reduce your chance of dying from COVID-19.

The government is falsely overstating the number of COVID-19 deaths by including people whose deaths were not actually caused by COVID-19.