Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Tonight I got rid of my pandemic hair.  I'd only had three haircuts in two years. I'd been going to a Korean salon where they did a great job, but the stylist didn't speak English. Sometimes the owner spoke to me in Korean until she realized I had no idea what she was saying, then repeated herself so I could understand her. After a few months of social distancing, working from home and a month-and-a-half-long quarantine, I wanted a stylist I could make human contact with. I went to another salon and got a good haircut. When I went back months later, a 90-year-old German emigre cut my hair while we had a good chat. I called the salon months later, but they'd gone out of business.  A year after my second pandemic haircut, around Thanksgiving last year, I went to a Mexican salon down the street. We yukked it up while the stylist cut my hair in a chunky and asymmetrical style that I did my best to fix when I got home.  This month, my hair was so long it didn't fit in my

Indiana's attorney general sent me this email today: Your information has been identified as a part of the [GiveSendGo Freedom Convoy 2022] breach. The information breached included donors’ names, zip codes, emails, donation amounts, and donation messages. It became publicly available as a result of the hack, even if the donation was given anonymously. The investigation into this breach is ongoing. If this data is used to dox, harass, or otherwise harm you, it may be considered identity deception under Indiana criminal law. If your information is used in an unauthorized manner, please click here  to file a complaint with my office. Below are some steps you may wish to take to make sure your identity stays secure: If applicable, change your password for the GiveSendGo website and any other websites where you may use the same or similar passwords. Contact your credit card company for the credit card used in your donation to either receive notifications of payments being made or t

Have You Been Pwned? If you donated to the Canadian truckers via GiveSendGo, your personal information might have been compromised by hackers who attacked the site. No bank information was apparently compromised, but names, emails and locations were hacked and in some cases publicized. To find out if you were a victim, go to  https://haveibeenpwned.com . If you were pwned, make a complaint to your state's attorney general. To be safe, protect your accounts. One way is to put a freeze on your credit so that nobody can take out a loan in your name (IIRC, this is a free service with the credit reporting agencies). You can also use a fee-based service like LifeLock, which monitors your credit and accounts opened in your name. Ivermectin Study from Malaysia This randomized, controlled study didn't find that ivermectin had any effect in older people with comorbidities who had COVID. In fact, the ivermectin arm did a little worse than the placebo group as far as severe illness (the pr

The convoys have continued and caught on. In the middle of winter in Canada, droves are driving to be in conga lines, carry jerry cans, bounce in bouncy castles, and blockade the border. If many more crossings are blocked, the US-Canada border will be closed. As an American, I feel slightly rejected.  But the protestors are winning. Alberta and Saskatchewan have dropped, or will drop, their mandates and Quebec dropped its plans for a unvaxxed tax. Crowds carrying jerry cans (fuel cans) showed up in Ottawa after police threatened to arrest anyone bringing fuel. GiveSendGo, the protestors' crowd funding platform, thumbed their nose at a Canadian court order to block payments to the protestors. More convoys are happening around the world and there is supposed to be one scheduled for Washington, DC. I won't be going. I support the convoys, but it's not my fight: life is normal here at Cafe Americain and it's hopping at work. Dropping everything to go to Detroit to sit in

The young woman in this video shows several signs of being in a cult : submission, persecution complex, isolation with her group, cognitive dissonance, and appearance standards. How many like her will need to be deprogrammed after the two-year fear campaign and demonization of much of the population? I've watched a few hours of live streams from the Ottawa protest and kept up with events there. So far, the only violence I've heard of is a hit-and-run of four pedestrians. The suspect that Winnepeg police charged is a member of Antifa .  I wrote the other day that masks would soon look ridiculous and apparently they already do in downtown Ottawa. I don't want anyone to be harassed for their sartorial choices (though the photo in the video doesn't quite convey that to me). I'd rather see a comedy made about the Canada convoy when it's over. It has all the ingredients of a funny movie: pompous authoritarians: check. Snooty busybodies: check. Wily, fun-loving underd

 At last, the state of Indiana put out a useful tweet: People with weakened immune systems are at greater risk if diagnosed with #COVID19 , but there are treatments that can help prevent serious illness. Learn more at http://tinyurl.com/C19treatment The link goes to the state's page on COVID treatment, which includes the monoclonal antibody Sotrovimab . It's available, has emergency use authorization and effective against Omicron.  The clinical trial participants were at high risk of COVID progression due to age, obesity, diabetes and other risk factors. This was a phase 3, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. From the  study : In this prespecified interim analysis, which included an intention-to-treat population of 583 patients (291 in the sotrovimab group and 292 in the placebo group), 3 patients (1%) in the sotrovimab group, as compared with 21 patients (7%) in the placebo group, had disease progression leading to hospitalization or death ( relati

Government officials are starting to treat COVID-related junk science like a mask they've sneezed in: quietly dropping it, trying not to be noticed. Here's the White House press secretary saying the Biden administration never supported lockdowns. (They just wanted you fired for not taking an experimental injection.)  🚨 #BREAKING : | Press Secretary Psaki responds to Johns Hopkins Study that says lockdowns had little to no effect on curving Covid mortality. “We are not pushing lockdowns, we’ve not been pro-lockdown — most of the lockdowns actually happened under the previous President.” pic.twitter.com/iOKAFciOwX — El American (@ElAmerican_) February 4, 2022 Here's the State of Indiana obliquely saying that vaccination doesn't prevent spread . Note that the top of the isolation and quarantine flow chart says "regardless of vaccination status."    Confused about how long to isolate?⌛ Get an exact timeline of your isolation with our Isolation and Quarantine