resources – Weary Wretch

Ebola Hysteria

October 2014

Ebola

There is enough chatter about Ebola virus in the news lately to sound like a bunch of cackling hens. There are a lot of experts saying things that are just plain wrong about Ebola.

Ebola hasn’t been around that long and there have only been a few thousand cases. With a mortality rate approaching 80-90%, it is hard to find human test subjects to develop good data or vaccines. In order to understand a disease, we need hundreds of thousands of subjects from which to use data for analysis. For instance, coronary artery disease is well managed and understood because millions of subjects in many studies have provided the data over a 60 plus year time period from which we have determined the best treatment.

Catching Ebola

One thing that is glaringly obvious is that these experts are lying by omission. Respiratory transmission means that an infected and contagious individual might cough or breath hard causing microdroplets of saliva and mucous to aerosolize in the air. This contagion laden “mist” is then breathed in by a susceptible host and if that host’s immune system is thwarted, the infection is transmitted. The experts are allowing the public to think that contagion laden air just exists out there like a naturally occurring gaseous vapor.

Some idiot has spread the false concept that Ebola is not transmitted by the respiratory route. This is absolutely false. Ebola is transmitted by contact with body fluids. That means coming in contact with feces, urine, vomit, saliva or mucous (we can disregard the other body fluids for all practical purposes). Coughing is one of the symptoms of Ebola. During the cough, blood, mucous and saliva are aerosolized and spewed from the infected patient’s mouth and nose into the atmosphere and anyone standing close enough will be exposed. Now, Ebola may not be as contagious as, say, influenza, but contact with body fluids will occur in a respiratory manner to anyone in the vicinity.

Screening for Ebola

So the experts are going to “screen” for Ebola in people leaving one of the endemic areas by taking their temperature. A febrile illness (any illness where fever is a component) is not febrile every second of the illness. The fever usually occurs cyclically about every 2-6 hours for 12-72 hours of the peak of the illness. So, let us presume the unfortunate patient that recently died in Dallas was allowed to come to America because he didn’t have a fever. Well, he didn’t when they checked. But it takes 10-12 hours to get from West Africa to the US and he could have had a fever at any time during his travel. Our patient was spreading the infection to any and all of his fellow travelers.

Looking for Ebola in the US

The CDC and other “experts” are scrambling to provide health care workers, like me, with white papers on how to screen our patients for possible Ebola, so that if we have forgotten how to research an unusual disease or illness, we won’t be out there treating blindly. But, there is a problem with their offerings.

The CDC (Centers for Disease Control) and the ASPR (Assistant Secretary for Preparedness Response) have identified persons with the following as being suspicious for Ebola virus disease.

1. Fever, headache, joint and muscle aches, fatigue, diarrhea, vomiting and lack of appetite and
2. Travel to West Africa within the last 21 days

One doesn’t have to read too closely to see that those are the exact same symptoms as influenza and several other illnesses. We are told to quarantine suspect patients who have been to or been exposed to persons who have been to West Africa and have any of the symptoms of the flu. Since influenza has a penetrance of about 90% of the population, anyone that has been to or been in contact with anyone who has been to West Africa will be quarantined.

About 100-150 people per week come to the US from West Africa. They get here on an airplane that holds about 100-200 people. They walk through airports that have about 50-3000 or more people in them at any one time. They commute through cities that have populations of…

I hope you get the picture by now. Health care facilities are expected to provide private rooms with separate bathroom facilities from the moment we identify their risk. We have to provide reverse isolation for contact (and in my opinion respiratory) contagion. That means that anyone entering the room must dress in an impermeable covering of their entire body and remove this gear on exiting into an isolation container to be burned upon disposal. Every time they enter the room. It is impossible for the healthcare facilities to quarantine all these patients in any efficient manner.

You Can’t Come Here

We are being told that restricting travel among suspects with a deadly contagious disease is impossible, therefore if the contact of an Ebola patient or someone with suspected Ebola virus disease is here in the US, they will be quarantined. If the subject tries to not obey the quarantine, law enforcement will enforce the quarantine. Is that not restricting travel?

In 1918, a pandemic of H1N1 influenza devastated the population. It was traced back to 2 farm boys from Kansas that joined the Army and traveled to training camp and on to the front lines in Europe. Allowing that emigration caused the deaths of more than the entire loss to combat in WWI. There was more economic loss and imposition on every faction of life and disruption of living standards than any epidemic known to man. The death toll of the 1817 influenza epidemic was about 45%, as opposed to 80-90% for Ebola.

There are several states in the US that will not let you bring certain plants or animals into the state. California and Hawaii come to mind. I can remember being stopped at a border inspection station (California Department of Agriculture) and interrogated as to whether or not I was transporting certain contraband, every time I drove to California.

It is against the law to transport fine scotch whiskey from Scotland into the US if it hasn’t been through inspection and, more importantly, the taxing process. Somehow, the choice is not that hard for me. On the one hand, is Ebola with an 80-90% mortality and a good scotch with 80-90% chance of enjoying the hell out of it regardless of the outcome.

Bet you never thought about any of this.

From your favorite grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary

The Devil You Don’t Know

7/2017

Disclaimer: This is NOT a political comment but an example of poor financial planning and a lesson learned in life.

OK now. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I owned a 1972 Cheby Nova (spelling intentionally incorrect) with a V-8 engine. My wife would run along beside it with a gas can to make sure we didn’t run out of gas between home and the store 2 blocks away. Well maybe not really, but you get the idea.

A young (to the US) upstart Japanese car company (Subaru), Jimmy (then President), and a lot of the national media strongly urged everyone to ditch their gas guzzlers for a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle. Kinda sounds familiar, doesn’t it? “You will save money,” they said.

Young and stupid was I, I traded in the perfectly functional but less than efficient Nova.

The new Subaru did indeed get better fuel mileage. When it ran. Unfortunately, it was one of the first vehicles (at least for Subaru) to have computer control of the engine. It didn’t work too well. In addition, the little 4 cylinder engine didn’t have enough oomph to make the hills of Kansas without downshifting, if there was more than one adult in the vehicle. The car was in the shop almost every week for months. Subaru finally threw in the towel and said, “We don’t know what is wrong and you are on your own. Sue us if you want.” This was before the current impotent Lemon Laws,

I ended up trading the Subaru, on which I still owed a significant amount of the original financed note, for a new Jeep Wagoneer. Loved that Wagoneer, but wish, even now, that I had the Nova and all the money wasted in finance charges, maintenance, lost equity and rental expenses for substitute vehicles. If I had, instead of following this woe-some path, invested in say Walmart, lookout Donald. I’d of been firing people on TV instead of him.

Me thinks what I am saying is consider carefully, the devil you know versus the devil you don’t know.

Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave, who didn’t fall for it the second time around.

Weary.

Wind farms and rotisserie chicken

7/2017

As I sit here contemplating my glass of iced tea, I thought of something. It came to mind that the globing-warming crowd has been predicting that the oceans are gonna rise and coastal communities are gonna go swimming. But, something is not right in this argument.

Now, I am not a physicist, but I decided to try an experiment. I filled my glass full of water and poured it into a graduated beaker (if you haven’t been to science class for a while, that is what scientists call a measuring cup). The glass held 12 0z of water. Then I filled it with ice and water and measured. It held 12 oz of ice and water. I then let the ice water warm to room temperature, i.e. I let the ice melt. Shazam, there was less than 12 oz of water after the ice melted.

OK, so I didn’t really do this experiment but it can be confirmed easily even if you don’t trust the internet for correct answers. See, water expands when it freezes as opposed to other substances that shrink when they freeze.

So, the global-warmed melted ice in the oceans will lower the oceans, not raise them.

But what about the land ice melt runoff? Huh, Uncle Dave?

Just maybe, the runoff will bring the shrunken coastline back to where it was thereby preserving the exorbitantly inflated coastal property values?

But, what if the windmill huggers are right?

To prevent global warming, as the story goes, wind farms will save the planet because it will decrease the dependence on fossil fuels. Most can see the use of wind-generated energy (actually the energy is not generated at all, it is just converted from one form to another) to reduce the dependence on fossil-fuel-generated energy, but it takes a real visionary to see the use of wind sails for personal and commercial transportation, for moving products across this great nation and for powering all those energy consuming devices still miles from any generator. Enter the law of unintended consequences and friction.

As we increase the Earth’s resistance to rotation, that is what all those windmill blades do, the velocity (speed) of the earth’s rotation may eventually slow down. As the rotation slows, the time allowed for the sun’s rays to contact the earth will increase, increasing the core temperature and causing the ice to thaw. Hence, the oceans will rise. Exactly what the wind farms were touted to prevent.

I prefer to think it in terms of the rotisserie chicken on a July 4th BBQ. If the rotisserie turns at the proper speed, you get nice juicy run off and moist perfect chicken. But, if it turns too slow, or not at all, you get dry burnt crap on one side and near raw chicken on the other.

Just what the global-warmers are offering us, half ass’ed chicken crap.

Just some more random thoughts from your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.

Unlimited Petroleum Energy

7/2017

I was listening to the CEO of Ford talk about Ford’s plans to increase the development of their line of electric vehicles. It was kinda funny as they pointed out that Ford sold about 8,000 electric vehicles in the first 10 months of 2015 (as compared to 800,000 F150 series pickups). The interviewer and he agreed that this conversion to electricity had to be done because oil is not a renewable resource.

Wrong Kemosabe! Oil is not renewable because we do not farm oil. What I mean by that is that, currently, we just take oil out and don’t put the makings back in.

If we just cut down trees and never planted any seedlings, wood products would not be renewable. But, it is because we do.

The problem, as I see it, is that we put dead people in caskets and vaults or we cremate them. Now how are we gonna get anywhere doing that? What we need is a National Program to dump dead bodies into the California tar pits (we could make other “tar pit centers” across the nation) and let nature take its course. We only think we know how long it takes to turn dead animals into oil.

We haven’t actually tried it and proven that it takes millions of years.

From your renewable-energy-conscious grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.

Rain Forest Resort

7/2017

We were talking about vacations at work the other day. I didn’t have much to offer, being the ultimate passive/aggressive recluse that I am, until someone mentioned this really cool place in the jungles of Costa Rica.

They have made an arbor-resort in the rain forest. He described these luxurious rooms, shops and restaurants in several stories in the trees. Up there high! There were suspension bridges and zip lines to get from here to there. You could spend as long as you could afford “up there” and never set foot on the ground until you left, or fell. Those who like to commune with nature, be close to trees in order to admire their majesty and return to a more primeval style of living do so and can help save the planet in the process.

A high-quality recording of chain saws working played at night at about 3 am on a windy night where the trees are swaying. That’d perk-em up right quick.

More superfluous musings from your grumpy Uncle Dave.

Weary