Canadian truckers have decided not just to inconvenience everyone, but to cost themselves money, and to risk the lives of their neighbors, and to risk their own lives, and to cost Canada billions, if not trillions — all to demonstrate, with abject stupidity, that they either don’t accept the word of doctors or don’t like obeying laws.
My advice to the truckers is: If you get COVID, don’t see a doctor. See a trucker. They must know more than the doctors.
The problem with stupid people is they are too stupid to understand that they are stupid. No truth penetrates. They are incapable of differentiating fact from conspiracy, so they get their information from such grotesque lie disseminators as QAnon, Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Fox News, and proven psychopath, Donald Trump.
The stupids refuse not only to protect themselves with a vaccination, but they refuse to protect others, not because they are mean-spirited, but because they, very simply, are stupid.
They want to arrest Dr. Fauci for telling them to protect themselves with vaccines and masks (How dare he!)
When you see videos of the attempted coup, which continues even today, remember that the stupids say it was “Legitimate political discourse.”
And, notice the American flags among the Trump flags. Those Stupid Party fools actually believe waving a flag makes them patriots.
Sorry, but being a flag-waver (or hugger) doesn’t make you a patriot any more than holding up a bible in a photo op makes you religious.
Barely a day passes without some prominent Republican doing or saying something stupid. Here is a message a GOP Presidential hopeful has promulgated for more than eight months.
DeSantis sells anti-Fauci t-shirts as Florida Covid death toll hits 38,000
July 14, 2021: Florida governor Ron DeSantis has released a new range of merchandise with slogans targeting Anthony Fauci, as well as requirements for face masks.
Two drink koozies and a t-shirt featuring the words “Don’t Fauci My Florida” and “How the hell am I going to be able to drink a beer with a mask on?” are among the items on sale.
This is what passes for clever humor in stupidland.
“You don’t want to miss out on this,” the DeSantis campaign wrote on Twitter on Monday.
“Shop the store and support your favourite freedom-loving Governor NOW”.
Freedom to die, apparently, as Florida has seen more than 66 thousand people die of COVID and an above-average rate per thousand. Compare that with the outrage about the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed about 3 thousand people.
If you were the governor of a state that had lost 66 thousand of its citizens, wouldn’t you do everything possible to protect their lives? Not stupid DeSantis.
DeSantis, like Trump, directs his lies to the least intelligent among us, the real stupids who believe everything nonsensical, so long as it contains a modicum of liberal bashing.
He’s not only outlawed mask mandates and discouraged vaccines, but he hired a stupid, mask and vax denier, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who sets a perfect example for Floridians by refusing even to say whether he himself has been vaccinated.
This dummy even refused to wear a mask in Sen. Tina Polsky’s office, though she is trying to recover from breast cancer, and must avoid infection. Why won’t he wear a mask when she asked him to? He just didn’t want to, and didn’t care that he was risking her life.
Would you act that way in a sick person’s office?
And he’s a doctor!!!
Fauci has been one of the sane voices in this entire calamity. So, of course, the Republicans want to fire him, or arrest him, or do something more awful to him, just because he’s tried to speak truth to them.
(There’s nothing a Republican hates more than truth. See: What you need to know about Trump’s weekend of election lies and January 6 whitewashing)
And then there’s this bit of stupidity from the leader of the stupids and America’s #1 traitor and rabble-rouser
Fascism: Trump vows pardons for Jan. 6 seditionists, calls for nationwide protests if indicted
Trump: “If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt. They’re corrupt.”
Trump is not angry at the people who committed mayhem in attacking Congress and threatened its members. He’s angry at the Committee that is trying to uncover the facts. They are the ones who are “radical, vicious, and racist.” Stupid.
And when even butt-kissing Lindsey Graham said, the rioters should “not be forgiven,” Trump (who was hiding safely in Mar-a-Lago during the attempted coup) called Graham a “RINO.” (That’s Trump’s favorite word for anyone who disagrees with him.)
Sorry, Lindsey, but you forgot the 6 rules of Trump. Rule #2: Eventually, Trump will stab you in the back.
Of course, Trump doesn’t consider Congress to be as important as a statue. He wrote:
“I have authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the U.S. with up to 10 years in prison, per the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act, or such other laws that may be pertinent.” Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 23, 2020
Trump’s followers stupidly agree that a statue of a Confederate general (a traitor on a horse) is far more important to democracy and America than are Congress and the Presidential election.
Then there’s the GOP’s Sen .Ron Johnson who continues to set records for stupidity by disseminating false information about virtually everything: He said he trusted the MAGA domestic terrorists over Black Lives Matter protestors, and while spreading Russian disinformation, is lately is being laughed at for his false claim about how Greenland got its name.
He may be America’s most stupid Senator, but he’s in a close match with Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas., who claims with zero evidence or expertise that COVID is a Chinese communist plot.
And let’s not forget Olympic champion of stupid, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.), who claimed the violent mob of Donald Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, just wanted to talk to their representatives. (She also said Hitler’s secret police were “the gazpacho.”)
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention former Democrat, now Republican Sen. John Kennedy, who after becoming a Republican, has delivered tons of truly stupid bull manure including this doozy: After retracting his false claims about Hunter Biden in Ukraine, he went on CNN, and claimed Ukraine was the real country meddling in the 2016 election.
And then there is who might be not only the most stupid man in Congress, but the most stupid man who ever has been in Congress, Republican Sen. Rand Paul. Here is just one example of his dopiness:
“With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician.
“That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery.
“It means that you’re going to enslave not only me, but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses.
“I’m a physician in your community and you say you have a right to health care. You have a right to beat down my door with the police, escort me away and force me to take care of you?
“That’s ultimately what the right to free health care would be.”
That is what a prominent Republican, a man Republican voters support, says: Your having healthcare will enslave him.
This post could be 100 times its current length, and still, it wouldn’t begin to cover the rampant stupidity in America, today. We like to view with derision, the stupidity exhibited by the populace in some banana-republics, or even in Europe or Asia.
We always have puffed up our chests and claimed we are the “most” and the “greatest,” and everyone should follow our example.
Well, guess what folks. We now have joined the most stupid with the greatest stupidity, and it seems we are setting a perfect example for the world.
Or . . . are the Republican pols engaged in something even worse than stupidity?
The ostensible purpose of a government is to improve and protect the lives of the populace. the
But that is not the goal of today’s Republican party. This is not the party that gave you Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, the Civil Rights Acts, the Voting Rights Acts, food stamps, unemployment insurance.
The Republican party is bereft of ideas that benefit the populace. Instead, the Republicans focus on two goals:
- Benefitting the rich at the expense of the middle and the poor
- Winning elections by taking advantage of America’s peculiar minority-rule laws.
Of the last six Presidential elections, the Republicans have won the popular vote in only one (George Bush).
In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, but won the election. He did even worse in 2020, when he lost by 7 million votes, but whines that he really won and falsely claims the election was “rigged.”
During Trump’s four-year term, his major accomplishments were:
- Failure of his dozens of attempts to repeal Obamacare (which continues to grow in popularity).
- Overturning many Obama-era regulations that protected the populace (Example: Ended an Obama regulation that prevented coal-mining companies from dumping debris and waste into nearby streams. Rolled back financial disclosure requirements for energy firms. Gave states the ability to drug test recipients of unemployment benefits, repealed an Obama rule prohibiting the mentally disabled from purchasing firearms.
- Major tax cuts for the rich
At this point, you may believe that I have described the stupidity of the Republican Party. If so, you would be wrong, for I believe the GOP has been quite clever, though in a evil way.
For historical reasons, having to do with compromises necessary to get the original states’ agreement to join the United States, America does not use majority-rule election systems.
Cities, counties, states, and even the federal government, including the President, are elected by complicated methods that award extra power to numerical minorities of voters.
Gerrymandering, Senate rules, and the electoral college system have resulted, for instance, in the Supreme Court being 2/3 right-wing, despite the nation being slightly left-wing.
An even more telling example is abortion, where a slight majority of Americans favor it, but the Supreme Court, most of whose members claim to be conservative (i.e. conserve existing law), have decided to be activist as well as cruel, so seem intent on changing the laws allowing abortion.
A clue to Republican strategy is seen in this chart:
The educated favor abortion. The uneducated and the religious, people who are less likely to deal with facts and more likely to obey emotions, oppose.
Major religions, despite their claims of morality and virtue, are nothing more than giant cults, where the most important factor is not fact but belief.
The rantings and fables of QAnon and Fox News are neither more nor less based on fact than are the various saints, miracles and gods of the major religions. The highly pious are tend to be accustomed to acceptance above analysis.
Thus, when Trump claims, despite all evidence, that he actually “won” and election he lost by 7 million votes, his religious followers believe with all their hearts and souls, and no amount of factual information will dissuade them.
After all, no scientific evidence will convince a believer that the virgin birth is impossible.
Trump, despite (or because of) being irreligious himself, cleverly understands this.
The Republicans, rather than developing ideas about benefits for the masses as their vote motivators, have focused on emotional motivators: Hatred and fear of “others.”
This is why conspiracy theories, which are fact-deficient, and based on intuition and emotion, find such traction among the religious right-wing, and it is why lies and craziness are not deal-breakers for those Republican voters.
One of the most puzzling social science findings in the past half century is the Easterlin paradox:
Economic growth within a country does not always translate into an increase in happiness. We provide evidence that this paradox can be partly explained by income inequality.
In two different data sets covering 34 countries, economic growth was not associated with increases in happiness when it was accompanied by growing income inequality.
Earlier instances of the Easterlin paradox (i.e., economic growth not being associated with increasing happiness) can thus be explained by the frequent concurrence of economic growth and growing income inequality.
These findings suggest that a more even distribution of growth in national wealth may be a precondition for raising nationwide happiness.
Being more concerned with power and with the happiness of the rich, rather than the power and happiness of the middle or poor, the Republicans focus on income inequality, aka Gap Psychology (the human desire to widen the Gap below you and to narrow the Gap above you).
Rather than trying to help the middle and lower-income/wealth/power groups, as the Democrats do, the Republicans execute the opposite: They cater to the rich with tax breaks and, importantly, they create anti-poor resentment in the middle, lower-middle, and even the lower-income groups by fomenting hatred of those receiving anti-poverty aid.
The Republicans effectively blame the Democrats for narrowing the Gap below the middle classes, and for widening the Gap above the middle classes. Thus, they are able to generate hatred of Democrats for supporting immigrants and lower-income ethnic groups.
The rich get money and everyone else gets outrage, a potent combination.
SUMMARY The cult-like, Republican base, being less affluent, less educated, and more religious, is accustomed to accepting myths and lies. To them, faith and belief are more influential than facts.
To them, Trump’s repetition of the lie that the election was stolen, needs no evidence. The Trumpers have faith.
Trump Republican pols are able to lie with impunity because they encounter very little blowback. Conspiracy theories abound in the GOP-world, and powerful media like FOX and Brietbart, cynically foster such belief.
Further, the Republican base revels in the notion that their “saints” help them rebel against control, which is why Canadian truckers, against their own best interests, do what they can to endanger everyone around them.
The rich segment of the Republican voters don’t care about the lies and myths so long as the tax breaks keep coming.
In the eyes of logical thinkers, the Republican myths are ridiculous (“How can the right-wing voters believe such nonsense?”), but right-wing, conspiracy theories are no more ridiculous than typical religious myths.
The Trump-Republicans (Trumplicans) cynically have learned that:
- Over the short time of elections, fear and hate are far stronger than compassion, and myths are far stronger than facts.
- Winning elections is more important than benefitting the people.
- The rich always will run America, and they will pay handsomely for the privilege.
So the GOP focuses efforts toward those most responsive to myths, toward gerrymandered voting rules, and toward the rich.
How “stupid” is that?
In answer to the title question, “Are the Republicans really that stupid, or is it something more sinister?” it’s not the Republicans who are stupid. It’s the people who vote for Republicans; they are the stupids.
They give the charlatans their precious votes, and in return receive nothing, while the Gap above them widens every day.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell Monetary Sovereignty Twitter: @rodgermitchell Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
……………………………………………………………………..
THE SOLE PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT IS TO IMPROVE AND PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE.
The most important problems in economics involve:
- Monetary Sovereignty describes money creation and destruction.
- Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics. Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps: Ten Steps To Prosperity:
- Eliminate FICA
- Federally funded Medicare — parts A, B & D, plus long-term care — for everyone
- Social Security for all
- Free education (including post-grad) for everyone
- Salary for attending school
- Eliminate federal taxes on business
- Increase the standard income tax deduction, annually.
- Tax the very rich (the “.1%”) more, with higher progressive tax rates on all forms of income.
- Federal ownership of all banks
- Increase federal spending on the myriad initiatives that benefit America’s 99.9%
The Ten Steps will grow the economy and narrow the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and the rest.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
Vape America Great Again https://twitter.com/MagisterBracey/status/1491757291984596994 My cuckoo neighbor says he heard that Biden is buying $30 million worth of crack pipes
Sure is special seeing Confederate & Trump flags on the Canadian side of the border.
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Did your neighbor receive one of those pipes?
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A couple of items for you to consider.
The Canadian Truckers may not be who most people think they are.
Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism did a deep dive on who they are and who is behind them. It’ very much worth reading since the mainstream press has missed the boat entirely.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/thoughts-on-the-canadian-trucker-freedom-convoys.html
Fauci has not been a sane voice in the pandemic. He has lied , e.g., the “noble lie” in the beginning to preserve masks for health care workers, when we now know that the government had billions of masks in its strategic reserve and even if there were a shortage, the president could have invoked the Defense Production Act and had plenty of masks in a short time.
Fauci and other government health care leaders took well over a year to admit that the main mode of COVID transmission was by aerosols when the empirical evidence was persuasive from the beginning. They still barely mention it.
For ignoring aerosol transmission and for some of the shenanigans he pulled, like changing the goalposts on “herd immunity” when that’s not even possible with a coronavirus of any kind, deprecating Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) that would have done more to save lives than the vaccines, saying the vaccines “completely protect you” when they are non-sterilizing and vaccinated folks are getting infected as often as non-vaccinated folks, I think Fauci should have been fired a long time ago.
There are much saner voices that should have been listened to. (No, not Joe Rogan.)
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1. Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) that would have done more to save lives than the vaccines’
2. Non-sterilizing and vaccinated folks are getting infected as often as non-vaccinated folks.
I’m not familiar with these. Tell us more. Reveal sources, please.
“MORE to save lives than vaccines” ?? I seriously doubt it.
“NPIs are among the best ways of controlling pandemic flu when vaccines are not yet available.”
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NPIs are simply things like masking, social distancing, ventilation and air cleaning, quarantines, halting international travel, etc. We have been horribly inconsistent in taking advantage of these methods to reduce transmission, which, by the way, vaccines don’t do. Look at China’s zero-COVID policy. With a population about 5 times larger than ours they have about 145,000 cases and 5,700 deaths since Jan. 3, 2020. We have about 940,000 deaths and over 76 million cases.
https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51235105
Admittedly, they have given far more vaccines than we have, but their success is based to a large degree on their willingness to impose quarantines on those who are infected or exposed, as well as insisting on other NPIs. I can’t remember the name, but one of their major ports was closed down for a couple of weeks, causing major disruptions in the supply chain because a few cases were found among the port workers. The virus did not spread.
And, please don’t argue that it’s due to the authoritarian government. That’s not an adequate explanation. The US could have done many of the things China has done. New Zealand is another example. You can research that one yourself.
As far as the vaccines not being sterilizing, they were never meant to be sterilizing. They were only tested and approved because they reduced the chance of hospitalization and death. And their efficacy declines after three to six months. That’s why Israel is now pushing a fourth shot for its people.
Studies have shown that vaccinated and unvaccinated people carry about the same viral load in their nose and throat and can transmit the disease equally well. I don’t have the time to find them right now, but Naked Capitalism has been publishing links to COVID studies since the beginning of the pandemic, usually in their daily Links post.
For a good overview see this comment by a doctor who is in the middle of all this and has connections throughout the country to other doctors on the front line.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/01/during-a-covid-19-surge-crisis-standards-of-care-involve-excruciating-choices-and-impossible-ethical-decisions-for-hospital-staff.html#comment-3656832
There are also other drugs that have been shown to be effective in treating COVID. The most prominent of which is the drug-that-cannot-be-named, Ivermectin. India has shown that it is a very effective treatment if it is given soon after onset of symptoms. But, G-d forbid anyone talks about that on social media, they are likely to get banned. It’s not just “horse paste”, it’s a treatment for parasitic diseases and over 3 billion doses have been administered, mostly in Africa, without many serious side effects. The developers won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for its discovery.
The reason for this is kinda obvious. The vaccines were approved under an Emergency Use Authorization which is based on there being no other effective treatment. If Ivermectin is effective then the EUA is invalid and Big Pharma wouldn’t be able to gouge the government and the public.
It’s an absolute shitshow in the US and our incompetent government carries most of the responsibility for over 940,000 deaths to date.
I could go on, but I think that’s enough for now and I have to go make my dinner.
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I don’t get the anti-vaccine implications. Yes, masks help reduce transmission. In fact, I’ve written dozens of posts advocating masks. I even created a sign you can use (https://mythfighter.com/2020/06/12/mask-up-suitable-for-printing-displaying-mailing-emailing-and-texting/)
But I don’t understand why people would rather search for out-of-purpose cures when vaccinations work so well. We have been using vaccinations for decades, and now, because an idiot President (who has been vaccinated) decided that COVID is no big deal (except when he went to the hospital) his idiot followers have decided to avoid vaccination.
Every time someone demeans vaccines for not being the perfect answer, and instead promotes some drug that worked for his cousin’s uncle’s cat, a dozen more fools will use that as an excuse not to be vaccinated.
Take all the ivermectin you wish. Use it as a gargle or an enema. But for heaven’s sake, don’t demean vaccination. You’re killing people.
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I am not demeaning vaccines. I’m just being realistic, and “following the science”. I am in no way anti-vax, have had mine, and recommend them for everyone who can take them, but they are not a magic bullet. C’mon Rodger, do a little more research and stop promoting the mainstream propaganda.
Yes, we have used vaccines for a long time, but the ones we have been using are sterilizing and prevent the targeted disease. COVID vaccines are not, and they have not been tested as extensively as the others in current use. It usually takes years for a vaccine to receive FDA approval, not months.
Those hospitalized with COVID are about evenly divided between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. IM Doc’s comments at Naked Capitalism document this from the front lines. I linked to one of his comments above, but you can search NC for others that give a very clear picture of what we are facing.
And, demeaning treatments, such as Ivermectin, that have been proven to be effective isn’t a good idea either. We need to use all of the mitigation strategies that are available to us, including vaccines.
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“Those hospitalized with COVID are about evenly divided between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.” Evenly divided, huh? Really? What is the point of that statement? That there’s no reason to take the vaccine? Really John, what exactly is your point?
Or do you only mean that the vaccine isn’t 100% perfect (and no one claims it is.) And I suppose you and Trump believe Fauci should be fired for telling people to get vaxxed? And to wear masks? Or should he be fired for changing his recommendations as new information poured in?
Should every doctor who changes his recommendations based on new information be fired?
Have you had a flu vaccine? They don’t work as well as the COVID vaccines. But they prevent some illness and deaths. But they aren’t a “magic bullet.”
The polio vaccine wasn’t perfect. (See: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1957/02/how-good-is-the-polio-vaccine/303946/) Not a “magic bullet.”
The measles vaccine isn’t perfect (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/measles/index.html) Not a “magic bullet.”
The mumps vaccine isn’t perfect: (https://www.cdc.gov/mumps/vaccination.html)
The smallpox vaccine wasn’t perfect. See: https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/vaccine-basics/index.html) Are you old enough to have had one?
So again, John, what is your point? Was the dreaded “mainstream” wrong about wanting to require vaccinations and masks?
Would we have had fewer illnesses and deaths if we had followed the Trump/DeSantis/Fox News advice or Fauci’s advice? Who was giving better advice?
The dreaded “mainstream propaganda” says very simply, “Take the vaccine.” Something wrong with that propaganda? I’m not sure where you’re getting your info., Trump? but here is one pertinent study showing the differences between fully vaccinated and unvaccinated.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220110/A-study-on-COVID-vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-that-required-hospitalization.aspx
and the chart
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&insightstoken=bcid_TgEvlWj.R9ADabbifgGP-Chx1AYz…..7A*ccid_AS%2BVaP9H&form=ANCMS1&iss=SBIUPLOADGET&selectedindex=0&id=-57508583&ccid=AS%2BVaP9H&exph=430&expw=600&vt=2&sim=11
C’mon John, do a little more research and stop promoting the right-wing propaganda.
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The point I was making is that the vax, vax, vax recommendation are simply not enough. And, although it’s fine to change recommendations when the facts change, Fauci and others kept changing positions when the science hadn’t actually changed. They just ignored it when it didn’t fit their purposes. It’s not a surprise that they aren’t trusted.
The government should have been recommending a layered approach from the beginning; masks everywhere except outdoors when not around crowds, adequate ventilation and Rosenthal/Corsi boxes if you can’t produce enough ventilation in a room, stopping international arrivals when transmission overseas is high, testing and quarantine, with financial support, when it’s low. New Zealand did it and Australia did it for awhile. Several Asian nations are doing it. If it wasn’t for the neoliberal insistence on markets uber alles, we could have done it, too.
To accuse me of right wing propaganda just shows me that you not only don’t know me, but you are not fully understanding what I’m saying. Besides, sometimes the right wing is correct. I have done the research, ever since February, 2020. If it wasn’t the middle of tax season I would spend the time to find the links for you. For now, I need to get back to work.
Stay safe and healthy.
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John, I do agree with one of your claims: I don’t fully understand what you are saying.
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SARS-CoV 2 [Covid-19] is deactivated just as fast as SARS-CoV 1 & MERS-CoV Skim the brief report below by a clinician in the thick of it in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Maren Eggers 2018 article is remarkably prescient being especially focused on emerging Coronaviruses. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40121-018-0200-7
Eggers et al. demonstrated the virucidal activity of PVP-I 4% skin cleanser, 7.5% surgical scrub,10% solution and 3.2% PVP-I/alcohol solution against Ebola virus and MVA and of PVP-I 7.5% surgical scrub, 4% skin cleanser and 1% gargle/mouthwash against MERS-CoV and MVA within 15 s of application [24,25]. Application of PVP-I products with concentrations of 0.23–1% for 1–2 min reduced SARS-CoV virus infectivity from 1.179106TCID50/ml to below detectable levels in a study by Kariwa et al.,although shorter contact times were not investigated [23]. Ito et al. reported a reduction in viral infectious titres of avian influenza A viruses (H5N1, H5N3, H7N7 and H9N2) to below detectable limits by incubation for only 10 s with six different PVP-I products including 0.23% gargle and 0.23% throat spray [34]. [Published April 2018]
Even good against Ebola! That Dr. Eggers (in Stuttgart Germany) wrote in 2018 about how such sprays and gargles would be a valuable tool in bringing under control any future pandemic involving a pathogen like a Coronavirus. Apparently no one bothered to read it!
Except maybe this Ears, Nose, and Throat guy in Bangladesh: https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/PMC8026810
Invokes God a few times but otherwise follows the science while trying to get the word out.
“For the previously mentioned clinical trial purpose, I had to go in close contact with COVID-19 patients for 31 days in the COVID-19 dedicated unit of Dhaka Medical College Hospital within 45 days. During nasal irrigation or spraying, patients cough on me or my team members several times. But for the grace of almighty Allah, me with all of my team members are free from COVID-19 still now.”
Much of the Rona Fiasco could have been sidestepped if people had taken the time to read a few medical journal articles about the known and verified for 40+ years viricidal effects of OTC compounds like povidone iodine (that brown shit they brush on the skin surface with a sponge just before a surgery)
At 2 squirts per nostril five or six times a day (roughly every three hours while awake) 1ml of povidone iodine diluted with 20ml of sterile water makes enough nasal spray to clear a person’s nose of the pathogen for about five days (and upwards of 80% of the viral load in the initial infection is in the nasal cavity; rest is in the throat or mouth for which an equally simple gargle or throat-spray solution does the trick). For the worst cases it gets in the lungs from aspirating tiny amounts of spit or phlegm when coughing and gagging, but if people would clear it from their nose/throat with something simple and quite cheap like diluted povidone iodine it would never have to get that far.
$20-30 million dollars worth of povidone iodine (hospitals bulk purchase it in buckets on pallets) would make enough spray for a billion people for about six weeks effectively breaking the chain of transmission on a continental scale.
One trial I read had such a spray being given to people in hospital who had tested positive but had not yet progressed to the intubation level. All were clear of the virus when retested three or four days later following the two squirts per nostril every three hours protocol.
[Note: My brother works in Emergency Medicine and his ex-wife is a virologist at one of the high security CDC affiliated labs in Atlanta.]
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Do you think you could get the #DumbTrumpers to squirt their nostrils? After all, there might be tracking chips in the squirt, or it might make one infertile. Or Tucker Carlson might reveal that Nicki Minaj’s sister’s cousin’s testicles exploded after just one squirt.
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Great info, Mark. You’re right, no one seems to have read the existing work on viruses, especially mitigation.
However, I would add one caveat. Iodine affects the thyroid and too much can have detrimental effects. Using a nasal spray several times a day seems excessive. I use it whenever I get home from being out in public, but it’s not necessary if you haven’t been exposed. In other words, use sparingly.
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I take hydroxychloroquine and bleach in a well-lit room, and call for Fauci’s firing. I plan to get vaxxed to protect myself, then criticize the current administration for wanting vax mandates. I get all my medical advice from my heroes, the Canadian truckers.
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I agree with almost everything you put out here, as usual, BUT, with regards to that smug Tucker Carlson- even though usually I disagree with his comments, to his credit, he’s the only main stream pundit that points out the injustice and questions the motives of both administrations regarding Julian Assange ‘s horrible oppressive purge. Obviously freedom of the press and real investigative journalism goes out the door if Julian is imprisoned indefinitely. Also Tucker correctly questions the US’s imperialistic war mongering , especially related to this Ukraine episode currently being bellowed by all the other media celebrities. Seems to me war kills and harms more than any other human flaw. It must be a priority to limit its horror over any political or corporate upside to engagement. I think Julian was also important in pointing out the atrocities in our imperialistic adventures. Other than that, I thank you and agree.
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Thank you, Larry, and I agree with you, too.
With regard to war, as the saying goes, “War is hell.” But it must have some evolutionary advantages since it has persisted for so many years. Perhaps without war, we never would have developed our current medicines and technologies.
I really don’t know why we are so built for war, but it must have some Darwinian purpose.
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Charles Darwin, proponent of ‘survival of the fittest’, and Thomas Malthus, proponent of fundamental inadequacy of resources, did unknowingly combine their PRE-industrial theories, Little did they know that, although correct for their times, mass production machinery gradually became the new reality. The scarcity model nevertheless persists simply because it benefits the controlling super rich who know no other way and don’t want to be bothered by us peasants whom they can’t survive without.
The move from scarcity to abundance modeling is also being hindered by natural disasters that keep prices high and inventory low. We the people hate it. But they love it. Such is the system we live in, in reality a de-system
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