Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Update : Twitter suspended writer Alex Berenson , who  accurately reported some of the disappointing results of Pfizer's COVID vaccine trial described below. The message stated, "we require the removal of content that may pose a risk to people's health, including content that goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information." His account has been reinstated with the "misleading" label removed from the tweet. If you still think tech censorship is fine, I'm not sure what to say. The vaccine evangelists have been spreading more than the good news about sanctification through injection. The incidents of breakthrough cases in vaccinated people have piled up to the point that the CDC has gone back to recommending masks even for fully vaccinated people. If you can get COVID, you can spread COVID. Of course, nobody has spread it intentionally, and I'm not faulting anybody who got a vaccination and went...

"It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.” -John Ioannidis on lockdowns Such is the case with vaccine mandates for health care workers. California, New York City and the Veterans Administration--among the worst-run states, the worst-run cities, and the worst-run federal agencies in the US--are either requiring employees to get vaccinated or requiring frequent testing for non-vaccinated employees. No matter what your stance is on COVID vaccines, it's important to think beyond stage one before making a policy, which nobody in charge seems to have done.  The first problem is that some--perhaps many--of the vaccine records are fakes. There's apparently a big black market for forged shot records. Given how easily they could be forged--I could whip one up on the computer in five minutes--it's surprising that people want to buy a pre-printed one.  The second problem is th...

Surgeon General Jerome Adams said last year that we were about to have a "Pearl Harbor" moment. It didn't feel like World War II then, but now, I feel like I'm sipping Veuve Clicquot at Rick's Café Américain in Casablanca as the world burns. New Zealand just ended a stay-at-home order , while  officials in Australia told citizens not to even have a conversation with neighbors they come in contact with . (No, these aren't links to the Babylon Bee .) Six hundred thousand people were "pinged" in the UK and asked to stay home. Meantime, I spent part of my day at the office deciding whether to have the bison fajitas or the new beef parfait (shredded beef on mashed potatoes) at the upcoming state fair and then wondered where to stay on vacation in West Virginia. It felt decadent. Going to a fair and planning a vacation should feel normal .  State Fair. Source: Pixabay . West Virginia  is done with restrictions;  Indiana , pretty much so. But what is the ex...

Given all the warnings, terms and conditions of "Freedom Day" in England on the 19th, maybe I should have chosen this song for inspiration. Enjoy!

Magnesium Supplements Corrupted? I've finally gotten to the bottom of the diarrhea, fatigue, and pounding heart that's plagued me off and on since February: magnesium. I've taken magnesium supplements for years and was making Dr. Davis's magnesium water recipe until all available milk of magnesia contained sodium hypochlorite, also known as bleach. When I ran out of milk of magnesia, I started taking magnesium citrate tablets, which I've taken before without any ill effect. In fact, my favorite electrolyte mix contains magnesium citrate, and it had never bothered me before. I don't remember when I started taking the tablets, but I didn't associate them with the diarrhea. I wondered if my yogurt got contaminated, so I started a batch with new bacteria. I took Candibactin, an herbal remedy for bacterial and fungal overgrowth. I tried sulfur tablets. I got a stool test that turned out negative.  Then I started getting fatigue, a pounding heart and insomnia. I k...

I keep seeing the same error in the news: you're 25 times more likely to end up in the hospital if you're unvaccinated! It's due to a misunderstanding of relative vs. absolute risk.  From Pixabay . For readers who aren't familiar with the concept, I've made a visual aid based on actual figures from Indiana:  Dates: April 15, 2021 through July 13, 2021 Hospitalizations due to COVID: 4,045 Percent of hospitalized COVID patients who were vaccinated: 2% Population of Indiana: 6,500,000 Going by the high portion of unvaccinated COVID patients, it makes it sound like you're 50 times more likely to go to the hospital if you haven't had the shot. That's relative risk. If you're at a high risk of getting a bad case of COVID, that's meaningful. But if you aren't, you're reducing a tiny risk to a minuscule risk.  I didn't forget to add the first two columns--they just don't show up in the context of a population of 6.5 million. Likewise, the...

Someone asked on a message board the other day of a person who wasn't vaccinated, "What makes you think you can do anything you want?" It's a philosophical question worth answering.  The Founding Fathers believed the people had rights, through God or Nature. They described them in the Constitution and later the Bill of Rights--and they are basically rights to be left alone. I don't have the right to go cough on the person who asked this question, but she doesn't have the legal or moral right to insist that healthy people stay home or take an experimental medicine, nor is she entitled to a risk-free life.  This question made me start imagining what it might be like if the shoe was on the other foot. * * * * * Photo from Pixabay . Imagine it's April 2022. Another new variant is going around, but the vaccines aren't stopping it. In fact, everyone getting sick has had a vaccine and rumors start flying that the illness is, in fact, a long-term side effect. ...