by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus
Health Crises
[Ars Technica, via Naked Capitalism 3-13-20]WORTH REPEATING: In 2018, Trump fired the entire US pandemic response team.
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 3-12-20]
These were the experts with decades of experience dealing with precisely the kind of situation we are in today.
Trump did not replace them.
He eliminated the positions.
Snopes: TRUE – The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs.
[Snopes]
Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer abruptly departed from his post leading the global health security team on the National Security Council in May 2018 amid a reorganization of the council by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Ziemer’s team was disbanded. Tom Bossert, whom the Washington Post reported “had called for a comprehensive biodefense strategy against pandemics and biological attacks,” had been fired one month prior.
It’s thus true that the Trump administration axed the executive branch team responsible for coordinating a response to a pandemic and did not replace it, eliminating Ziemer’s position and reassigning others, although Bolton was the executive at the top of the National Security Council chain of command at the time.
What we are seeing right now is the collapse of civic authority and public trust at what is only the beginning of a protracted crisis. In the face of an onrushing pandemic, the United States has exhibited a near-total evacuation of responsibility and political leadership — a sociopathic disinterest in performing the basic function of government, which is to protect its citizens.
Things will get worse from here. According to a survey of epidemiologists released yesterday, the coronavirus outbreak probably won’t peak before May….
Trump is, of course, the last man in the world you would want in charge right now. In an extremely illuminating interview with Gabriel Debenedetti published this morning, Obama’s Ebola czar Ron Klain described his response to that threat, which he suggested was a relatively good model for how the U.S. might have responded to this one. That response began with 10,000 public-health workers sent to fight and investigate the disease. This administration has sent none, which means it has been, practically speaking, flying blind about the nature of the coronavirus and the challenges it represents to public-health systems. In fact, it’s worse than that; for all intents and purposes, the administration hasn’t been flying at all, spending the last three months sitting by entirely idle and indifferent, rather than scaling up testing regimes, issuing protocols, and preparing for a major surge of patients by developing contingency plans to expand hospital capacity around the country wherever it became needed.
“The Dismantled State Takes on a Pandemic”
[The New Republic, via Naked Capitalism 3-13-20]
Conservatives won their war on Big Government. Their prize is a pandemic.
Lambert Strether of Naked Capitalism pointed to this amazing passage:
“As a clinician like yourself,” [Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] said in his answer, “I guess I anticipated that the private sector would have engaged and helped develop it for the clinical side.” He finished his response with more bewilderment: “I can tell you, having lived through the last eight weeks, I would have loved the private sector to be fully engaged eight weeks ago.”
Lambert Strether continued:
Here were two men wondering aloud why reality had failed to conform to their ideology. Where was the private sector, exactly, during these eight weeks? How odd that these companies, whose only responsibility is to their shareholders, had failed to make up for the incompetence of this administration.
This is a remarkable parallel to this exchange between Alan Greenspan and Henry Waxman in 2008 after the Crash:
“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” Greenspan said. Referring to his free-market ideology, Greenspan added: “I have found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”
Back to the New Republic article, “The Dismantled State Takes on a Pandemic”
“This is how conservatives govern now, and even eight years of comparatively competent management by a liberal presidential administration was not enough to stem the larger trend of private negligence and public disinvestment. In its 2019 annual report on American public health funding, Trust for America’s Health calculated that ‘the CDC’s budget fell by 10 percent over the past decade (FY 2010–19), after adjusting for inflation.”
Lambert Strether noted: “Neatly overlapping with the Obama administration, and an (almost) open admission that liberals are as complicit in dismantling government as conservatives.”
Continuing with the New Republic article, “The Dismantled State Takes on a Pandemic”
Indeed, a lot of the conservative project of corrupting or starving government agencies depends on an almost touching belief in the resiliency of the institutions liberalism built in the twentieth century. Even the people dismantling the government probably believed, at some level, that the CDC could effectively address a massive public health crisis even though its new director was unqualified and its budget had declined for years. Despite its grip on power, the conservative movement cannot adapt to the circumstances created by its victory over the state. It didn’t occur to the right that a more terrifying series of words than “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help” would turn out to be “I’m from the government, and I guess I anticipated that the private sector would have engaged.”
Matt Gaetz Wore a Gas Mask to Mock Coronavirus Concerns. Now He’s in Quarantine. Mother Jones, via Naked Capitalism 3-11-20]
….estimated 11 million people in the country who are “undocumented”.
No US citizenship means no US health insurance. Even the language of Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act makes it very clear that undocumented immigrants are excluded….
“Being undocumented it’s hard to get medical attention. There’s the aspect of presenting yourself to the legal system at medical facilities and that runs the risk of deportation,” he says. “My family may not be criminals, but they sure are undocumented and seeing a doctor scares them.”
For everyone in the US, whether they are undocumented or not, there is also the huge expense involved in even just seeing a doctor.
More than 27 million people in America have no medical insurance at all, a number that has been growing dramatically during the Trump presidency…. But there are tens of millions more who are classed as being “underinsured” – having basic insurance that often only covers a fraction of the cost of any check ups or treatment.
[Twitter below, via Naked Capitalism Links 3-11-20]
China is emerging as a global public goods provider as the US proves unable and unwilling to lead.This is an important development, and if the trend continues, it’s one with potentially serious consequences for the US role in the world. twitter.com/vkjudit/status…
[South China Morning Post, via Naked Capitalism 3-14-20]
To encourage participation, testing is free for anyone referred by a doctor or displaying symptoms after recent contact with a confirmed case or travel to China. For anyone simply concerned about the risk of infection, the cost is a relatively affordable 160,000 won (US$135). Testing is available at hundreds of clinics, as well as some 50 drive-through testing stations that took their inspiration from past counterterrorism drills and can screen suspected patients in minutes.
“This country has a universal health-coverage system for the whole population and the economic burden for testing is very low,” said Kim Dong-hyun, president of the Korean Society of Epidemiology. “Tests are conducted for free if you have proper symptoms.”
[Twitter below, via Naked Capitalism Links 3-12-20]
Last night, @JoeBiden expressed concern over the potential cost of Medicare for All & the security of people’s health plans. I recognize these arguments because I helped craft them when I ran PR as an insurance exec. As a result, I feel obligated to set the record straight. (1/5)
Replying to
First, VP Biden suggested Medicare for All would cost an extra $35 trillion. That’s not right. A new peer-reviewed Yale study found that it would *save* U.S. taxpayers $450 billion annually by eliminating waste & industry greed. You can read it here
(2/5)
What Do We Do When the Coronavirus Bankrupts the Health Insurance Industry
Industry lobbyists successfully blocked attempts this week to include language in the $8.3 billion emergency coronavirus spending bill that would have threatened intellectual property rights for any vaccines and treatments the government decides are priced unfairly.
Drug companies’ power to dictate terms as Congress struggles to address the growing U.S. outbreak is another sign of the uphill battle that likely awaits any broader bipartisan drug-pricing legislation. Both Democrats and Republicans have tried and failed in recent months to advance bills that would crack down on costs.
The pharmaceutical industry not only killed the intellectual property provision in the coronavirus package, but it got language added into the bill that prevents the government from delaying a medicine’s development over concerns about its affordability.
The classification of coronavirus planning meetings was first covered by Reuters, which noted that the decision to classify was “an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion.” Reuters further noted that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, and his chief of staff had “resisted” the classification order, which was made in mid-January by the National Security Council (NSC), led by Robert O’Brien — a longtime friend and colleague of his predecessor John Bolton.
Following this order, HHS officials with the appropriate security clearances held meetings on coronavirus response at the department’s Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility (SCIF), which are facilities “usually reserved for intelligence and military operations” and — in HHS’ case — for responses to “biowarfare or chemical attacks.” Several officials who spoke to Reuters noted that the classification decision prevented key experts from participating in meetings and slowed down the ability of HHS and the agencies it oversees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to respond to the crisis by limiting participation and information sharing.
“Economists conclude that Medicare for All (M4A) could be considerably less expensive than the current healthcare finance system”
“We believe the available research supports the conclusion that a program of Medicare for All (M4A) could be considerably less expensive than the current system, reducing waste and profiteering inherent in the current system, and could be financed in a way to ensure significant financial savings for the vast majority of American households…. Compared with the current system, Medicare for All would achieve considerable savings on administration and by reducing payments to monopoly drug companies and hospital networks. Within a few years of operation, M4A could save hundreds of billions of dollars per year from these sources. Additional savings will come when a rational healthcare finance system allows needed investments in coordinated care and preventive care, as well as reductions in fraudulent billing. …. Most important, Medicare for All will reduce morbidity and save tens of thousands of lives each year.”
Now look at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s demands for treating COVOD19. Here’s the greatest irony, soon to be tragedy: if Pelosi and the Democrat Establishment had passed #MedicareForAll when they had the chance, all the measures she calls for would already be in place.
Corey Robin tweeted, the lack of a competent public health response is the result of “generations of concerted disinvestment and comprehensive disrepair… That is a bipartisan world, and it needs to go…. Radicalism is the most realistic program.”
Payments on mortgages to be suspended across Italy after coronavirus outbreak
Strategic Political Economy
Klein: “The “shock doctrine” is the political strategy of using large-scale crises to push through policies that systematically deepen inequality, enrich elites, and undercut everyone else. In moments of crisis, people tend to focus on the daily emergencies of surviving that crisis, whatever it is, and tend to put too much trust in those in power. We take our eyes off the ball a little bit in moments of crisis…. The shock really is the virus itself. And it has been managed in a way that is maximizing confusion and minimizing protection. I don’t think that’s a conspiracy, that’s just the way the U.S. government and Trump have utterly mismanaged this crisis. Trump has so far treated this not as a public health crisis but as a crisis of perception, and a potential problem for his reelection. It’s the worst-case scenario, especially combined with the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have a national health care program and its protections for workers are abysmal. This combination of forces has delivered a maximum shock. It’s going to be exploited to bail out industries that are at the heart of most extreme crises that we face, like the climate crisis: the airline industry, the gas and oil industry, the cruise industry—they want to prop all of this up. … In The Shock Doctrine I talk about how this happened after Hurricane Katrina.”
The Carnage of Establishment Neoliberal Economics
[Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, via The Big Picture 3-10-20]
Young Americans say billionaires do more harm than good, study shows
[Washington Post 3-13-20]
…Anand Giridharadas, author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.” But the Pew data, he says, suggest that young Americans are concluding that billionaires have amassed their wealth “through their rigging of the tax code, through legal political bribery, through their tax avoidance in shelters like the Cayman Islands, and through lobbying for public policy that benefits them privately.”
The financial situation of young Americans also explains some of their suspicions toward the ultrawealthy. In 2016, the median household headed by a person younger than 35 had a net worth of about $11,000, which is lower, in real terms, than the net worth of a comparable younger generation in the 1980s. Those smaller nest eggs are due, in part, to things like massive student loan debt owed to the people and institutions at the opposite end of the financial spectrum.
“The billionaire class is ‘up there’ because they are standing on our backs pinning us down,” Giridharadas said.
How Working-Class Life Is Killing Americans, in Charts
[New York Times, via The Big Picture 3-9-20]
Enemy Actions
“A New Conservative Think Tank Challenges ‘Market Fundamentalism’”
[National Review, via Naked Capitalism 3-11-20]
“Oh My God, It’s Milton Friedman for Kids”
What interested me a lot was the fact that Packard actually came up with the Choose Your Own Adventure idea in the 1960s and took it to publishers, but nobody thought it was a good idea! They all said, “This is weird. It’s a game, not a book.” Then 10, 12 years later, when he did it again, all the publishers said, “This is amazing, you’re a genius.” So clearly, something deep changed in American culture….
I don’t usually write about Choose Your Own Adventure [laughs]—what I usually write about is the history of economic thought. Anyone who studies economists like Milton Friedman and other neoliberal economists who exploded in popularity around that time knows that for them choice is everything, it’s the only thing. The world is just individuals floating around, in an ahistorical space. Reading this, I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s like Milton Friedman for kids.”
Michel Lind [The American Conservative, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 3-9-20]
“Worst of all, three of these schools of thought seek to respond to working-class populist rebellions by offering workers the chance to become something other than workers, as though there were something shameful and retrograde about being an ordinary wage earner. Many champions of education as a panacea want to turn wage earners into professionals. Advocates of universal capitalism want to turn wage earners into investors. Antimonopolists want to turn wage earners into small business owners.”
Predatory Finance
Treasury Market Turmoil At Most A Symptom — Brian Romanchuk
[Bond Economics, via Mike Norman Economics 3-14-20]
There has been major disruptions in Treasury market liquidity, with it being very difficult to sell off-the-run bonds. My initial reaction to these stories is that this is the typical complaining you get from people in any overly-specialised field when something slightly atypical happens. My argument is the worst case interpretation is that this is a reaction to one or major entities’ balance sheets blowing sky high. Alternatively, this is just what happens when too many people take finance academics too seriously, and build their entire business model around the premise of markets always being liquid and orderly 24/7. That was always a stupid assumption, and so this is just reality intruding on that fantasy.
Since the Fed began its repo loan operations on September 17, the tally of the Fed’s cumulative loans to Wall Street’s trading firms comes to more than $9 trillion (using the Fed’s own Excel spreadsheet of the data; you have to manually remove the Reverse Repo dollar amounts.)
According to the Fed audit conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), from December 12, 2007 to July 21, 2010, a period spanning more than 31 months during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the Fed’s cumulative loans to Wall Street tallied up to $16.1 trillion. (See chart below from the GAO audit.)
And here we are today, when everyone from Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to bank analyst Mike Mayo is telling the public that the banks have plenty of capital and yet the Fed has pumped out 56 percent in six months of the amount it funneled to the Wall Street banks over 31 months during the 2008 financial crisis.
This is how America and Britain are maximising coronavirus deaths
[Medium, via Mike Norman Economics 3-12-19]
If you search on the web for the term ‘coronavirus bloodbath’, you’ll notice that the headlines are not about the mass deaths of vulnerable people that are inevitable on the sort of bungling business-as-usual trajectory adopted by the likes of President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The headlines are about stocks. Shares. Wall Street. The economy. Oil. Growth. Business. Banks. Finance.
Climate and environmental crises
Fact Sheet: Fossil Fuel Subsidies: A Closer Look at Tax Breaks and Societal Costs
According to this article, subsidies to the fossil fuel industries provided the cheap energy which grew our economy so well for over a hundred years. They now say that fossil fuel companies no longer need the subsidies but renewables still do.
“Ride-hailing trips on services such as Uber and Lyft create about 70 percent more pollution on average than the trips they replace, according to the analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists. ‘In communities across the country, ride-hailing is increasing vehicle travel, climate pollution, and congestion,’ the authors write. Since Uber’s debut a decade ago, the ride-hailing and sharing industry has grown explosively around the world. These services are making it easier than ever to keep your car at home or not buy one in the first place. But they are a climate problem for two reasons, the report states. One is that they increase the number of car trips overall, by steering people away from walking, biking, taking public transport, or just skipping the trip. The other reason is that ride-hailing increases the number of miles a car travels to get from place to place between passengers.”
Information Age Dystopia
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 3-9-20]
Welcome to the future…The Met Police set up live facial recognition cameras in east London. One passerby who didn’t want to have his face scanned and so covered up his face was issued a £90 fine.#bbctbq
A Botnet Is Taken Down in an Operation by Microsoft
[New York Times, via The Big Picture 3-11-20]
Microsoft organized 35 nations on Tuesday to take down one of the world’s largest botnets — malware that secretly seizes control of millions of computers around the globe. It was an unusual disruption of an internet criminal group, because it was carried out by a company, not a government.
[Stratechery, via The Big Picture 3-13-20]
An insiders look at information flow on the internet, and the impossibility of securing it, and the solution found.
You can draw a direct line from this tweet thread to widespread social distancing, particularly on the West Coast: many companies are working from home, traveling has plummeted, conferences are being canceled. Yes, there should absolutely be more, but every little bit helps; information that came not from authority figures or gatekeepers but rather Twitter is absolutely going to save lives.
What is remarkable about these decisions, though, is that they were made in an absence of official data. The President has spent weeks downplaying the impending crisis, and the CDC and FDA have put handcuffs on state and private labs even as they have completely dropped the ball on test kits that would show what is surely a significant and rapidly growing number of cases.
Creating new economic potential – science and technology
Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway deploys robot to clean trains and stations
[Railway Age 3-13-20]
Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is deploying 20 Vaporized Hydrogen Peroxide (VHP) robots to deep clean trains at depots as well as stations to improve protection against the spread of coronavirus.
The VHP Robot was developed jointly by MTR and Avalon Biomedical, a Hong Kong biotechnology company. The robots are designed to automatically spray hydrogen peroxide solution, which is atomised to a specific concentration to ensure that disinfectants penetrate small gaps which are difficult to reach during normal cleaning.
Scientists Find a Way to Make Hydrogen Fuel Production 25x More Efficient
“Too many react to the present situation with self-pity when, after five decades of political marginalization, awe is more appropriate…. We should fight to the end for Bernie Sanders’s campaign, on the off chance that we might win a new beginning. And then, win or lose, we should be prepared to fight some more. As the great reformer Tony Benn put it, ‘There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.’”
Life After Bernie
[Politco 3-6-20]
DSA: “This isn’t about the success of one person, it’s about the success of a movement. Bernie is building a movement that will be able to take power back. It’s just a matter of time.”
Democratic Party Prognosis: Death by Centrism
Role of a Wall Street Law Firm in the Joe Biden Resurgence Raises Alarms for Progressives
Pam Martens and Russ Martens, March 11, 2020 [Wall Street on Parade]
…Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP… has not only been a major donor to the Biden campaign but it was simultaneously a major donor to the campaigns of the four presidential candidates who dropped out of the race and then endorsed Biden at critical moments in his miraculous resuscitation….
Donors from Paul Weiss rank as the 12th largest donor to the Joe Biden campaign with a tally of $168,412. Paul Weiss was the top donor to Senator Cory Booker’s presidential campaign, sluicing $151,102 into his campaign coffers. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who hails from Minnesota – pretty far from the law firm’s Wall Street focus – received $76,932 from Paul Weiss, making it her third largest donor in her presidential bid.
Pete Buttigieg, who was the former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana – about as far from Wall Street as one can get, received $133,261 from those generous folks at Paul Weiss, making it his seventh largest donor.
And, finally, there was presidential candidate Kamala Harris, the junior Senator from California, who received the sizeable sum of $193,873 from the folks at Paul Weiss, ranking them her second largest campaign contributor.
We refuse to talk about how President Obama’s failure to deliver transformational changes may have fed voter disaffection in 2016….
As president, Mr. Obama enjoyed extraordinarily high approval ratings among African-Americans, even as black unemployment remained high. His personal popularity notwithstanding, African-Americans’ ratings of public policy, race relations and the state of the country declined over his presidency.
In 2009, 71 percent of African-Americans thought Mr. Obama’s election was “one of the most important advances for blacks.” By the summer of 2016, that number had dropped to 51 percent. In 2012, only 20 percent of African-Americans believed that the country was “headed in the wrong direction,” but by 2016 that number had risen to 48 percent.
Finally, 52 percent of African-Americans said that Mr. Obama’s policies had not gone far enough to improve their situation by 2016, an increase from the 32 percent who said this during his first year as president.
“Biden advisers describe a Return to Normal plan — a reversal of President Trump’s unorthodox, improvisational style. Biden wants known, trusted people around him — many from the Obama years.”
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren as Treasury secretary could help unite the party.
- Jamie Dimon — chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, and mentioned over the years as a potential presidential candidate — would also be considered for Treasury.
- Anne Finucane, vice chairman of Bank of America, is another possibility for Treasury.
edmondo
I am looking forward to seeing The Biden Administration’s coordinated plan of attack on coronavirus pandemic. Because as we all know, once Trump leaves the White House, everything will be good again.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
@Edmondo: No, it won’t, because as usual, the sane people will have to spend all their effort cleaning up the mess the crazy reactionaries left.
@Mr. Robin: How can the program of radicalism be implemented when there are 50-70 million non-elite white Americans who would literally rather die, than let non-white Americans have anything from the government? (Disclosure: I’m white.)
Even more than Benedict Donald and the Treason Party, even more than Sith Tsar Putin and his ambitions to revive the Russian Empire, this is the USA’s foremost problem, without the solving of which, the other problems can never be solved:
https://i.imgur.com/hziLkUS.jpg
Willy
IBW, nonsense. Most conservatives I know tolerate things like paid emergency medical services for non-white non-citizen non-natives because those people help keep the labor prices low. I know many diehard Fox News conservatives who regularly employ illegals for a wide variety of tasks and rationalize their not paying into the system because “the government is corrupt anyways”. But God’s miracle Trump will take care of all that.
“Freedumb and liberty” unleashes badly rationalized everything.
anon
South Korea’s success with responding to the Coronavirus will never happen in the USA. As stated in the SCMP article, South Korea has universal health care coverage and carries out up to 15,000 tests each day for a small country of only 50 million people.
Americans wanting to be tested are being turned away even if they show symptoms or have been in contact with someone with the Coronavirus. We have a broken health care system and millions of people who are uninsured. The two countries are approaching the pandemic in completely opposite ways. There will be more deaths in the USA than what we saw in China and Italy because of our government’s inaction.
450.org
The legislation the Dems are trying to pass is a perfect example of the difference between Dems and Repubs. The Repubs, if they had their druthers, would just bury their collective heads in the sand and pretend none of this is happening. The Dems excoriate the Repubs for doing nothing and providing nothing and instead and in light of this propose legislation that sounds great, but in actuality is not a quarter measure but instead a tenth measure or a twentieth measure meaning it’s woefully inadequate but it allows the Dems to say, “well, at least we’re addressing the issue and doing something.” They’re both shit sandwiches (the Democrats & Republicans), it’s just that one has corn kernels and the other doesn’t.
Unemployment insurance isn’t going to help in the crisis that’s unfolding. It’s not enough to help people pay their bills — people who are living paycheck to paycheck. It’s an insult, considering. It’s the Dems pretending they’re doing something, that unlike their alleged political opponents in the Republican party, the Dems have compassion when in fact unemployment insurance in the face of this pandemic and its systemic effects is a twentieth measure which, in effect, is no measure at all.
Krystyn
I am homeless, living in my van, and on disability for a neurological autoimmune disease. Yesterday my throat started getting sore and today I have 100 degree fever. I cannot find an an AirBnB or a hotel I can afford so I just do not give a fck anymore. Well pound zinc lozenges and ride it out in my van. Nights are still kind of chilly, 42 degrees. I really do not care if I die anymore, the world treats me like sht for no reason I can determine.
The mass of people do not care in the U.S., compassion is just virtue signalling.
edmondo
Ivory Bill Pecker
@Edmondo: No, it won’t, because as usual, the sane people will have to spend all their effort cleaning up the mess the crazy reactionaries left.
LOL. Yeah, putting Jamie Dimon in charge of Treasury is exactly the kind of “problem solving” that got us Donald Trump to begin with. The Obama Restoration that Biden represents will only encourage a more insane, better equipped Republican to come out from under a rock in 2024.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
🙄 As ever, the same people insist on all or nothing, even though they invariably receive the latter.
But hey, the masses will rise up in the Glorious Righteous People’s Revolution any day now, yup, yup, yup, just you wait, all you spoilsport skeptics!
Never mind that the only serious attempt at a second revolution in the history of the USA was a right-wing rebellion–the Civil War, with its short-lived Confederate States of America.
Z
Krystyn,
Good luck.
Do you have medical coverage for your disability?
Z
Willy
The math.
4 more years of drumpf-burning it all down = 4 more years of burning. And then hopefully, smarter people rebuild from the ashes.
vs
4-8 more years of Centrist bullshit which hurts 1/2 of America, which then leads to 4-8 more years of more drumpf-burning it all down = 8-16 more years.
IBPecker wants the latter.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
4-8 more years means more Faux News Zombies dying off (that audience is disproportionately superannuated).
Remember, Benedict Donald lost the popular vote in 2016.
His–and his Treason Party’s–constituents tend to be old. BD & the TP needed Putin’s help to pull it off in 2016. The more time runs on, the less reactionary this country will become, until we reach the point where even Putin can’t save American
fascismconservatism.The center’s most powerful ally is Father Time. 😈
Willy
Our “centrists” are not centrists. They are whatever it takes to get the votes and then they turn their backs on the progressives, perform trival cultural favors for their moderates, and then do major favors for the 1% kleptocrats in exchange for mansion estates next to the rising sea. How does one go from community activist to multimillionaire?
Back in Nixons time “centrists’ would’ve been known as corrupt corporate conservatives.
metamars
@Krystyn
I’m sorry to hear of your plight. Please check this out IMMEDIATELY:
https://www.secondopinionnewsletter.com/Health-Alert-Archive/View-Archive/14089/This-AtHome-Treatment-Can-Knock-Out-Any-Virus–Including-the-Coronavirus.htm
I never heard of this doctor before today (that I recall), but I do know a little about hydrogen peroxide therapy. From a book I read about the subject (Hydrogen Peroxide Medical Miracle), I know that there’s been THOUSANDS of studies on the use of hydrogen peroxide. The author mostly (or exclusively) pushed intraveneous H2O2, since most of the data was with that delivery system (IIRC), and I think all his personal clinical experience was with intravenous delivery. However, he did give some tantalizing anecdotal cases for other delivery methods.
The link above is for delivery via breathing – specifically, nebulizer. You can’t buy a nebulizer (at least an official one) without a doctor’s prescription. However, cool mist humidifiers create water droplets of similar size.
I tried snorting 3% H2O2 cool mist from my humidifier just today. There was no burning sensation in my lungs, but condensation on my upper lip stung a bit. Because of an intense tickling in the nose, I was forced to sneeze. So, it wasn’t all that productive.
The link I provided is by a doctor, who, if he’s to be believed, has treating a number of conditions. And he does it with treatments of 5cc 3% H2O2, but diluted with 100 cc of saline solution. My guess is that diluting this stuff by a factor of 20 will result in zero sneezing and zero upper lip burning sensation.
Like zinc lozenges, to be very effective, they must be started as soon as symptoms commence. You may not be able to completely squash your upper respiratory bug in only 3 days, since your bug is “on it’s way”. But if you start tomorrow, I’m going to guess (I’m not a doctor) that you will avoid ARDs, and easily live long enough to fight against the unmitigated greed which pervades our medical system. 🙂
You can get a cool mist humidifier for about $50, deionized water at whole foods is 39 cents a gallon, salt is dirt cheap, and you should already have a towel to drape over your jury-rigged “nebulizer”.
I did find an “unofficial” nebulizer here: https://www.banggood.com/Portable-Ultrasonic-Nebulizer-Child-Adult-Atomiser-Respirator-for-Asthma-COPD-Ultrasonic-Mist-Maker-p-1588352.html?currency=USD&utm_source=bing_pa&utm_medium=cpc_bgs&utm_content=zouzou&utm_campaign=pa-us-bt-pc&cur_warehouse=CN#customerQA
However, it’s capacity is only 8ml (8 cc). You’d have to fill it up 12 times for each treatment.
metamars
Krystyn,
Also, give cyclic ketogenic diet a shot (maybe starting out with pure keto for a couple of months). Also, see Valter Longo’s research on a fasting mimicking diet. To reset autoimmune conditions, you will have to do at least 5 day fasts (for one of the autoimmune conditions, it’s more like 7 days. I don’t remember which one.)
Good luck!
DMC
Been to the grocery store lately? In greater DC, the shelves are stripped of not just toilet paper, but damn near anything. This may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. The Fed dumps $9 trillion into the the financial sector and it just burns up as far as anyone can tell, but there’s never enough money to take care of people in health crisis like this. People rise up when they have no other choice. We are WAY past the point where temporizing half measures are an adequate response.
Benjamin
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
“As ever, the same people insist on all or nothing, even though they invariably receive the latter.”
What you don’t get, what you will probably never get, is that we aren’t asking for ‘everything’. We’re asking for anything. We’re asking for a candidate who won’t punch us in the face.
Because that’s the choice we’ve been given over the last, shit, my entire lifetime basically. Democrat or Republican is the choice between being punched in the face or kicked in the ass. I’m sure one is probably objectively better than the other, but it’s an inherently bad decision.
You seem to think this is some sort of ‘making the perfect the enemy of the good” situation. It isn’t. Obama was not a compromise candidate who didn’t give us all of what we wanted. He was a neoliberal sleazebag who repeatedly actively betrayed the left. Obama ruled like a ‘moderate Republican’ (his words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=677elaGIsKU).
You’re also completely oblivious to the fact that you yourself are one of the ‘crazy reactionaries’. Sanders fucking terrifies you. The ‘Democratic’ Party despises the left. You hate us, you hate our policies, you hate our principles, and you never, ever stop punching us, stabbing us in the back, and undermining us at every opportunity. And then you make up excuses for why you need to do it, in your case usually while smearing large swathes of your fellow citizens.
And now you have a lying asshole of a candidate, who is clearly losing his mind and is unable to handle being challenged, as your presumptive nominee. One who has won a bunch of states that will almost certainly go red come November. This is who you, in your ‘centrist’ ‘brilliance’, have hitched your wagon to.
Trump is going to kick your fucking asses. And I’m sure you’ll learn nothing from your defeat, just as you learned nothing from 2016, and will continue being a smug moron.
Benjamin
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
“His–and his Treason Party’s–constituents tend to be old. BD & the TP needed Putin’s help to pull it off in 2016. The more time runs on, the less reactionary this country will become, until we reach the point where even Putin can’t save American fascism conservatism.”
Liberal fairy tales.
“We didn’t do anything wrong! There was nothing wrong with our strategy, or our policies. We didn’t lose the working class (who we despise anyway). It was Boris Badenov who did it!”
It’s hard to even describe how utterly clueless you are.
Benjamin
@metamars
I would very much encourage people not to follow any of metamars’s advice. Decredentialed doctors peddling woo are not who you want to be listening to, especially not for advice on how to deal with a disease that is killing 3% or more of the people it infects (which is a damn sight more than the ‘in some cases’ lie this fake physician gives).
https://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/9963256.html
metamars
Well, it sure looks like Schallenberger has screwed up. How do you suppose Schallenberger’s record squares up with that of most doctors? You can see what I’m driving at by reading “Don’t Let Your Doctor Kill You” by Schwartz, M.D.
What is your considered opinion of the thousands of studies of the use of hydrogen peroxide, that I mentioned? Are they “woo”, also?
But since we’re on the subject, while most of the treatment advice you can infer is for doctors, this Russian expert seemed to strongly recommend nasal lavage for keeping a virus infection (covid-19, e.g.) from becoming a fungal infection in the lower lungs.
See “How to treat Coronavirus infection COVID-19” by a member of the Russian Academy of Science Alexander Chuchalin.
I did not have the impression that Krystyn has access to any medical care, at all, much less top of the line medical care.
Benjamin
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
“But hey, the masses will rise up in the Glorious Righteous People’s Revolution any day now, yup, yup, yup, just you wait, all you spoilsport skeptics!
Never mind that the only serious attempt at a second revolution in the history of the USA was a right-wing rebellion–the Civil War, with its short-lived Confederate States of America.”
Good job revealing how utterly ignorant you are of history. That’s about what I’ve come to expect of liberals.
In fact the US has a long history of revolts demanding change, with significant success. The Battle of Blair Mountain, the Haymarket riot, as well as movements like the Agrarian Revolt.
Much more recently, Occupy Wall Street was viewed as such a potential threat Obama had it forcibly dismantled with paramilitaries and police thugs (while liberals like you cheered).
And, yet again, FDR prevented a full scale revolution with his New Deal. He considered it a pillar of his legacy that he had ‘saved capitalism’.
You really do come across as someone who is very sheltered and utterly disconnected from the current widespread discontent in this country.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
@Benjamin:
I have heard of the Haymarket riot, but not the other two. Perhaps they were not as successful as you think?
I guess when I said “serious attempt”, I should have said, “attempt which came close enough to succeeding (that is, taking over, overthrowing, or breaking away from the existing government and social order) to be considered serious”.
No, Sanders does not terrify me. I would prefer President Sanders to President Trump, if those were my choices. Sanders may have disgustingly sung the praises of a few foreign dictators, but I don’t think he is an actual traitor to the USA, whereas Benedict Donald is. I merely suspect that enough of my fellow citizens would not share that opinion, and so I would be stuck with Benedict Donald again.
The obnoxious behavior of a certain faction of Sanders’s supporters (granted, some of them might be Russopublican plants) does not help, especially since, in the event Sanders were nominated, the Russopublican Pretty Hate Machine [h/t Driftglass (and Trent Reznor) for “PHM”] would trumpet that faction’s misbehaviors to the skies on Faux Noise, Hate Radio, Fartbook, Shitter, Instaspam, etc.
OTOH, you’re correct to disparage the woo peddlers of “alternative medicine”.
nihil obstet
@IBW
We live in a propaganda state. Of course you haven’t heard of very many serious revolts. By “serious” I’d mean those that resulted in the government calling out troops or allowing illegal private armies to engage in battles with people. Here’s a link to a mini-series of documentaries. Blair Mountain is covered in the intro:
Plutocracy: Political Repression In The U.S.A. (2019)
I’d also recommend one of the books on the battles of the summer of 1919, such as On the Laps of Gods: The Red Summer of 1919 and the Struggle for Justice That Remade a Nation. Without the armed struggle, the Supreme Court would probably continued to view the 14th amendment as protecting corporations against regulation rather than citizens against discrimination.
Armed resistance is hard and dangerous and should be a last resort, but it’s not to be sneered at. Without it, U.S. citizens would not have had the rights that they enjoyed during the middle part of the 20th c. which are once more being removed from them.
450.org
Don’t forget about Matewan in Bloody Mingo County. This is an excellent movie for those who haven’t seen it. These peeps are the REAL superheroes versus the sh*t Hollywood spoon-feeds the braindead these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt7K7ao24_4
Kurt
metamars & Benjamin,
Why would we give a rats ass about some lame discipline action from 2007 for failing to diagnose a condition, when he potentially has a cure!? You think he\’s the first doc that has ever done that… I have followed Schallenberger for years and he is brilliant in ways of naturally healing ourselves without the use of big pharma drugs, which are profit driven (way driven) over actual healing! If they could make money from this, we would have so already heard about it! We should be screaming his message from the mountain tops. People, check this out! Why not try it. It\’s cheap, natural and might just save your or a loved one\’s life!
Potential cure for Conoravirus, spread the word!
https://www.secondopinionnewsletter.com/Health-Alert-Archive/View-Archive/14089/This-AtHome-Treatment-Can-Knock-Out-Any-Virus–Including-the-Coronavirus.htm
Benjamin
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
“I have heard of the Haymarket riot, but not the other two. Perhaps they were not as successful as you think?”
No, that’s because you’re an ignorant dumbass. Maybe try learning some history about your own fucking country, if not the world as a whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
https://americanhistorytext.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/chapter-16-agrarian-revolt-and-the-farmers-alliance/
“Sanders may have disgustingly sung the praises of a few foreign dictators”
Yeah, you know what? I’m not going to play this game, which Sanders himself is playing, where we pussyfoot around this and implicitly accept the blanket vilification of foreign governments.
First of all, no, he hasn’t. He’s said positive things about positive programs, while making clear that he doesn’t approve of the lack of democracy. In regards to Cuba specifically, what he said was in fact significantly less praise than what Obama said just a few years ago.
Anyway, Castro was a good guy, who overthrew a brutal system of semi-slavery that had killed tens of thousands. Class warfare is not a metaphor. In Cuba the poor finally fired back. It’s a shame he didn’t liquidate more of the scum in his takeover; if he had Southern Florida would currently be less of a right-wing madhouse.
The Sandinistas in Nicaragua were good people, certainly a damn sight better than the terrorists the Reagan administration engaged in illegal gunrunning to fund without congressional approval, who went not to murder at least a couple hundred thousand people. They were also emphatically not dictators, holding elections from 1984 onward. If you’re going to criticize Sanders for supporting the Sandinistas, know that you are effectively siding with the Reagan administration and its ludicrously evil and illegal actions.
As for Venezuela, the reality is that the country has never been particularly socialist, regardless of the Bolivarian rhetoric. The economy remains predominately capitalist and owned by small number of elite, as is the media. Chavez, and now Maduro, never brought the hammer down like they frankly should have, after the repeated coup attempts. The current blaming of the ‘socialist’ government there for the starvation of the country is doubly absurd, since it ignores the extent to which private business refuses to sell what it already has, and because it completely ignores the US sanctions, which have killed at least 40,000 people since 2017 (and if coronavirus cuts a swath through the country, much of the blame for that will be on the sanctions as well). It’s also not a dictatorship (nor, by the way, was Bolivia before the recent US backed coup).
This is all on top of the fact that the idea that the US is opposed to dictatorships is beyond absurd. US administrations, both Republican and Democrat, are not only perfectly fine with dictatorships, they prefer them. Actual democracies are messy, and have an annoying tendency to want to put their own nationals interests before those of the American Empire. The US has zero problems with dictators. We ignore and downplay it when convenient, and emphasis and vilify when it is similarly convenient.
And before you say “well I personally don’t like dictators”, really? Because I’m going to guess that you have never once given any particular consideration to how US allies like Egypt, the Gulf States, etc, were and are ruled by unelected generals and literal kings.
Oh, and by the way, I will not suffer a fucking Hillary Clinton supporter to opine about anyone else not being kosher on the issue of democracy.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/11/hillary-clinton-and-electoral-coup-haiti
https://observer.com/2016/10/2006-audio-emerges-of-hillary-clinton-proposing-rigging-palestine-election/
I’m sure you won’t bother to read either.
Benjamin
@Kurt
“Why would we give a rats ass about some lame discipline action from 2007 for failing to diagnose a condition”
He didn’t even examine the patient before recommending ‘natural medicine’. He literally failed at being a physician. You can call the discipline ‘lame’ all you want, it was entirely justified.
Netflix claims the 2011 movie Contagion is currently one of the most watch titles. Good. I’d suggest both of you watch it. Jude Law plays a guy peddling a woo cure that does nothing, and ultimately costs lives. The character in that case is entirely earnest, and operating under a gross misunderstanding that leads to him to believe his ‘cure’ is actually effective. But mere sincerity is not a virtue.
metamars
@Kurt and Benjamin
I repeat my question to Benjamin, who seems intent on ignoring any and all evidence regarding the efficacy of hydrogen peroxide, both anecdotal and clinical.
“What is your considered opinion of the thousands of studies of the use of hydrogen peroxide, that I mentioned? Are they “woo”, also?”
I would also like Benjamin to answer my other question, in light of the following:
From wikipedia, we learn “It is estimated that 142,000 people died in 2013 from adverse effects of medical treatment, up from 94,000 in 1990.[9]” There’s about a million doctors in the US. So, roughly the equivalent of 14% of the doctor population dies from doctors, EVERY YEAR. I’d say it’s likely that, in any given 10 year period, most doctors will have killed somebody (to put it bluntly).
To repeat my other question,
“How do you suppose Schallenberger’s record squares up with that of most doctors?”
As for efficacy, note that the Bibliography of “Hydrogen Peroxide – Medical Miracle” begins with:
“For doctors and scientists interested in verifying the material in this book we recommend the following references:
1. Oliver TH, Cantab BC, and Murphy DV: Influenza1 Pneumonia: The Intravenous Injection of Hydrogen Peroxide. Lancet 1920; 1: 432-433.”
The author, in fact, has over 100 references in his bibliography.
Finally, when Schallenberger writes,
“There are only two problems with Dr. Farr’s therapy. First, it’s cheap. And worse than that you can’t patent it because H2O2 is a naturally occurring compound. That means that Big Pharma is not interested. And, since most doctors get all their information from Big Pharma, most of them have never heard about it. Second, it’s an intravenous therapy. So you have to see a doctor to get it. But as long as you have a doctor who knows how to administer the treatment properly, you can literally knock out any viral infection you will ever get.”
that is only TOO plausible. I can relate a relevant personal experience of mine. It’s anecdotal, but quite real. Some people might call it “woo”, but that their problem, more than mine.
Half a lifetime ago, I was playing and practicing basketball quite seriously. I developed a plantar wart, and it was right on the ball of my foot. As a very fast guy of average height, that effectively negated my biggest strength.
A podiatrist was seen. He would apply some kind of acid, after shaving off a thin layer of wart that had been treated the previous week. Unfortunately, this would take months!
But not to worry! He could also remove it all at once, with laser surgery.
I opted for the surgery.
Later, a relative of mine visited from Greece, who was a doctor. He told me in Greece, they would simply put a few drops of liquid nitrogen on it, and freeze the wart into submission. He didn’t say, or I don’t remember, exactly what they would charge, but it was pennies on the dollar.
I recently posted about a highly accurate calcium artery screening process, mandated by NASA for astronauts, which American ‘health’ insurance companies won’t pay for. It costs a few hundred dollars. They will, however, pay for stents, of dubious survival value, that can run you $30,000 for getting installed. Same dynamic at work – UNMITIGATED GREED. For a given profit margin, the higher your medical bills and premiums are, the more they make. They don’t want you to have inexpensive care.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Every woo medicine peddler and acolyte on Da Intertoobz can find “scientific studies”, which seem to support the woo, in the eyes of the credulous and/or desperate.
Of course, if we had universal health care, there would be fewer desperate people, and so, a smaller target population for the con artists and gullible true believers who promote woo medicine.
Hence, as ever, it’s a rotten shame so many of my fellow non-elite white Americans prefer to live without a social safety net, than to have a net which people whom they don’t like get to use as well. (How do I know that about them? By their years-long patterns of voting, and/or not bothering to vote.)
https://i.imgur.com/hziLkUS.jpg
Never forget, non-elite whites started to abandon the Democratic Party in 1968, BEFORE the economy started to go south for non-elite white Americans. They started abandoning it not because of economic distress, but rather, because they wanted to punish those uppity women and uppity n****rs and uppity hippies and uppity you-name-thems.
metamars
“Every woo medicine peddler and acolyte on Da Intertoobz can find “scientific studies”, which seem to support the woo, in the eyes of the credulous and/or desperate.”
You just pulled that out of your rear end, didn’t you? If I search for claims of “scientific studies” of anti-virals such as healing crystals, lemon water, or even a lucky rabbbit’s foot, will I really find such studies? And in peer-reviewed scientific literature, no less?
A better argument – at least for the shallow – is that on the “Intertoobz”, much of the evidence for any given proposed treatment will be anecdotal, and lack gold standard, double blind, placebo controlled experiments. Experiments that must be $paid$ $for$, BTW.
For example, there’s a largish amount of testimonials for another oxygenating approach, called MMS. Here’s the website: https://mmstestimonials.co/
This link is also of interest, but not least because it doesn’t deal just with the pro/con of whether MMS works. https://jimhumble.co/videos/#red_cross_cured_malaria_with_mms In this case, it deals with a (presumably) high status ancillary organization – the Ugandan Red Cross – which co-ran the test, with 100% success. (Sample size was 154). However, the Ugandan Red Cross not only refused to announce the results, after some months, they claimed to never have been involved in any clinical trials with MMS, at all.
The video evidence says otherwise. It’s clear the Ugandan Red Cross is lying through it’s teeth. However, such lies must be of great comfort to the casual, intellectual better, of what is “woo”. It makes it even easier for them to just dismiss things of which they know nothing, or else very little.
Benjamin
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
As with pretty much everything you say, your views of the southern ‘deplorables’ are objectively incorrect.
https://policytensor.com/2019/11/05/when-did-democrats-lose-the-south/
But please, continue to regale us with your wisdom of American history, huge amounts of which you’re very clearly utterly clueless about.
Dumbass.
Benjamin
@metamars
Oh god. You’re pushing the MMS scam? You thundering moron. You absolute fucking muppet. It’s an industrial bleach, you dumbass. At best it’ll just give you diarrhea, and more likely have even worse effects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZU7OL5MRHI
Jim Humble is a scumbag; an actively terrible human being. And so are you if you’re pushing this insanity.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Very well, Benjamin, what is your explanation for why non-elite white Americans (NEWAs, hereafter, for convenience) started abandoning the Democratic Party for the Treason Party (fka GOP–granted, they were not yet traitors then) back in 1968?
Remember, the economy had not yet started going sour for NEWAs in 1968.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Sorry; I wish I could edit comments in this format; then I would not need to double-post.
To Mr. Welsh: It impairs the credibility of your blog to allow pushers or acolytes for the lethally toxic “Miracle Mineral Solution” (MMS) to post their criminal nonsense on your blog.
Just a word to the wise…
metamars
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
“To Mr. Welsh: It impairs the credibility of your blog to allow pushers or acolytes for the lethally toxic “Miracle Mineral Solution” (MMS) to post their criminal nonsense on your blog.”
P-f-f-f-f-t. I have been spending literally hours going through both the debunker video, as well as the originals it claims to debunk. I should have a response tonight.
In the meantime, note that the debunker/videographer doesn’t deny that the Ugandan Red Cross was on the scene. I’m still going through things, but it looks like he doesn’t deny that the Ugandan Red Cross actually picked the location (Luuka) in Uganda; again, I’m still going through things, but it appears he didn’t attempt to contact the doctors who signed off on the post-treatment microscopic examination of malaria, either. One of the narrators describes their experiment as a “field test”, and considering the lack of documentation provided, the Ugandan Red Cross may technically be correct in not considering the experiment to rise to the level of a “clinical trial”.
If it makes you feel any better, the narrator does, in fact, incorrectly specify 2 lines on the screening test as 2 types of malaria. Actually, one of the lines must be the control line. There are other malaria tests which do admit of 2 simultaneous lines (indicating more than 1 type of malaria) other than the control line, but AFAICT, not the one shown.
Score one for the debunker! You must be so proud of him!
In the mean time, you should try justifying “lethally toxic”, in light of the numerous testimonials. You know, try and get a sense of all the deaths from MMS, COMPARED TO all the benefited individuals (which you can’t know, exactly, but you can derive a minimum from the testimonial site I linked to). Then, compare that to a typical range for common drugs, which are still on the market.
metamars
I have to leave my station in 10 minutes, won’t finish tonight. This is rather tedious, including transcribing….
However, in the spirit of truth seeking, I thought I’d post 3 named Ugandan individuals/witnesses and invite Ivory Bill Woodpecker and Benjamin to go through Benjamin’s debunking video to see what Myles had to say about them. (I think he said nothing about them.) From “Second Leaked Red Cross Video, Published Jul 1, 2013”
11:10 Hanington Segirinya / Uganda Red Cross Youth Council President – “it’s so unbelievable”
11:26 Paul Kabweru / SMCO Luuka District – couldn’t make out clearly what he was saying, but apparently some patients had lessened malaria, and others undetectable malaria / needs clarification
12:37 Vincent Okonera / URCS (Uganda Red Cross) Senior Branch Manager, Iganga – “incredible an unbelievable”
Also, at 13:40 Klass Proesmans tells us that they “report back to Uganese Secretary General”, but don’t tell us his name. That should be relatively easy to find out, for a serious debunker that is after the truth.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Anyone can pretend to be anyone else on Da Intertoobz.
“Anecdotal evidence” is an oxymoron.
Ironically, the Internet has actually impaired human knowledge, because just anyone is allowed to post whatever nonsense, or lies, they either sincerely believe or pretend to believe.
It’s a good thing that the Internet did not exist in the late 18th Century, or else the Founders might have had second thoughts about the First Amendment.
metamars
Ivory Bill Woodpecker has blessed us with:
““Anecdotal evidence” is an oxymoron.”
From the wikipedia page on “anecdotal evidence”:
Anecdotal evidence can have varying degrees of formality. For instance, in medicine, published anecdotal evidence by a trained observer (a doctor) is called a case report, and is subjected to formal peer review.[7] Although such evidence is not seen as conclusive, researchers may sometimes regard it as an invitation to more rigorous scientific study of the phenomenon in question.[8] For instance, one study found that 35 of 47 anecdotal reports of drug side-effects were later sustained as “clearly correct.”[9]
BTW, if you don’t know what hormesis is, you should educate yourself, before you further make a fool out of yourself.
metamars
Before returning to my close examination of the videos, I googled “bleach vs. mms” and “Botox”.
I’ll start with “Botox”. From the wikipedia page:
“Botulinum toxin is the most poisonous substance known.”
and Medical Uses include
Muscle spasticity
Migraine
neuropathic pain
The debunker dude APPEARS to be an ignoramus who just can’t imagine that something lethally toxic in low doses could be beneficial in sufficiently smaller doses; and APPEARS to not know what hormesis is.
Personally, my guess is he does know, and is simply a fraudulent propagandist.
Coming from a physics background, I didn’t particularly care about the explanations or theories regarding how MMS works, since they were no doubt chemical in nature, and I’m likely not to understand, anyway. However, I did run across the following, which was much more satisfying than what I vaguely remember of Jim Humble’s explanations. Humble was a miner and metallurgist (according to mmswiki.is), not a biochemist or doctor.
No Miracle, Just Wonderful Chemistry @ http://www.phaelosopher.com/2007/09/09/no-miracle-just-wonderful-chemistry/
=>> Unfortunately, this article isn’t referenced.
“Over the next few pages, I’m going to describe the MMS protocol. When followed, it will produce and distribute chlorine dioxide to your red blood cells, which is the most effective and intelligent pathogen killer known to Nature.
But first, a little background on the chemistry.
Chlorine dioxide and chlorine are not the same. Chlorine is a chemical element. In ion form, chlorine is part of common salt and other compounds, and necessary to most forms of life, including human. A powerful oxidizing agent, it is the most abundant dissolved ion in ocean water, and readily combines with nearly every other element, including sodium to form salt crystals, and magnesium, as magnesium chloride. You can’t have life without the chlorine ion. However, in the diatomic state, Cl2, chlorine is deadly.
Chlorine dioxide is a chemical compound that consists of one chlorine ion bound to two ions of oxygen.
Oxidizing agents are chemical compounds that readily accept electrons from “electron donors.” They gain electrons via chemical reaction. This is important because relative to chlorine dioxide, a broad range of pathogens are electron donors. Conversely, all healthy tissue and aerobic microorganisms are unaffected by chlorine dioxide.
Chlorine dioxide is extremely volatile. You might call it “hot tempered,” but in a very beneficial way. This volatility is a key factor in chlorine dioxide’s effectiveness as a pathogen destroyer.
The compound is literally explosive; so explosive, it’s not safe to transport in any quantity. Therefore, it is common practice to generate chlorine dioxide “on site” at the point of use. Most chlorine dioxide production is done on a scale that would prove deadly for individuals, for example, in municipal water treatment systems, where it is beginning to replace chlorine because, unlike chlorination, chlorine dioxide water disinfection produces no carcinogenic byproducts. Chlorine dioxide is approved by the Environmental Protection Agency in safely removing pathogens and contaminates like anthrax. It was even studied by the National Institutes of Health in 1982 and found to be safe for human consumption. No one was looking at, or for its medicinal value, so a study like that could be done and results published. Something very unlikely in this day and age.
In spite of chlorine dioxide’s effectiveness in large scale water treatment, the concentrations used in such applications can vary from 500 to over 6,000 parts per million (ppm), which would clearly be deadly to an individual. Using the MMS protocol you will produce chlorine dioxide in the range of 1 ppm.
…
While normal levels of oxygen in the blood cannot destroy all of the pathogens present under disease conditions, delivery of chlorine dioxide changes everything.
…
A Pathogen Terminator (including Swine Flu)
Research has proven chlorine dioxide to be much safer than chlorine, as it is selective for pathogens when used in water. Furthermore, it does not create harmful compounds from other constituents in the water as chlorine does.
Numerous scientific studies have demonstrated that chlorine – part of the halogen family of elements – creates as least three carcinogenic compounds when it enters the body, principally trihalomethanes (THMs). There has been no such evidence of harmful compounds being produced from chlorine dioxide.
This is why, in 1999, the American Society of Analytical Chemists proclaimed chlorine dioxide to be the most powerful pathogen killer known to man. It has even been used to clean up after anthrax attacks.
….
Here is how it happens.
Red blood cells that are normal carriers of oxygen throughout the body do not differentiate between chlorine dioxide and oxygen. Therefore, after ingesting the MMS/chlorine dioxide-rich solution, red blood cells pick up chlorine dioxide ions that are deposited on the stomach wall where it normally gathers nutrients of various kinds before journeying through the body.
Then, when the red blood cells armed with chlorine dioxide encounter parasites, fungi, or diseased cells that are low energy (meaning electrical value), the “aliens” are destroyed along with the chlorine dioxide ion. If no such encounters occur, the chlorine dioxide will be carried to a point in the body where oxygen normally oxidizes poisons and other harmful agents.
If the chlorine dioxide doesn’t hit anything that can set it off, it will deteriorate, and thus lose an electron or two. This may allow it to combine with a very important substance that the immune system uses to make hypochlorous acid (HOCl), which incidentally, is another oxidizer. It is not widely publicized that hypochlorous acid is produced by the human body as part of its natural immune function. Yet, corroborating information is available if one is inclined to look.
This compound kills pathogens, killer cells, and even cancerous cells. Hypochlorous acid is so important, its diminished presence in the body is described medically by the term myeloperoxidase deficiency. Many people are afflicted by this condition. The immune system needs a great deal more hypochlorous acid when disease is present. Facilitated by the MMS solution, chlorine dioxide delivers it in spades, as does magnesium chloride, but that’s another part of the health discussion.
However, seeing how important hypochlorous acid production is to proper immune system function led Humble to develop MMS2, which is simply the introduction of a small amount of calcium hypchlorite Ca(ClO)2. When ingested hypochlorous acid (HOCl) is generated as the capsules dissolve.
The most salient point to know, is that chlorine dioxide has 100 times more energy to do what oxygen normally does, and yet, due to its lower voltage, does not affect healthy cells.
By the way, if you are totally healthy, there are no ill-effects from taking chlorine dioxide. However, your stores of hypochlorous acid will be increased, bolstering your immune system.
MMS works best to destroy pathogens that may be present in the body, when 2 or 3 mg of free chlorine dioxide are in the solution at the time it is swallowed. However, the body is supplied with chlorine dioxide in a “timed release” manner lasting about 12 hours. Be aware, that before you feel better, it is likely you will feel ill.”
But, back to the videos, after a break.
Benjamin
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
“Very well, Benjamin, what is your explanation for why non-elite white Americans (NEWAs, hereafter, for convenience) started abandoning the Democratic Party for the Treason Party (fka GOP–granted, they were not yet traitors then) back in 1968?”
They didn’t. Which you might know if you had actually bothered to read the link. The Democrats remained competitive in the South all the way up until at least 2000. The actual abandonment didn’t start until the 90s, when the Democrats started unapologetically sneering at, and then actively betraying, these people.
Benjamin
@metamars
Have fun with your watery bleach shits, I guess. I’d suggest drinking your own urine as well, just to supercharge the healing effect.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Yes, Benjamin, I read the link.
I remain unconvinced; partly, I think, due to a philosophical difference.
I regard the social studies as less amenable to quantification than the natural sciences, in which mathematics indeed is indispensable. Rather, I think the social studies are more like the humanities, not readily quantified.
If I may be permitted the license of using “math” as a verb, I’m sure Policy Tensor Dude can math circles around me at warp speed, but I don’t think he (or you) knows my tribe as well as I do.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
“The actual abandonment didn’t start until the ’90s…”
Ah, that explains Humphrey’s victory in the general election of 1968, Jimmy Carter’s landslide victory in 1976, and his successful re-election bid in 1980.
Oopsie, my bad! None of those things happened. 😉
metamars
It’s now late, again, and I haven’t finished. I will put my debunking of the debunker on my vanity sub-reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/bad_science_culture/, when I’m done. I don’t have much content there (which I’m sure is a bitter disappointment to my single subscriber), so it could use a new entry.
I had recently panned some debunking as some telling of truths, some telling of lies (including lies of omission), and a lot of shallowness. (Not exactly what I wrote, but along these lines.)
To that, I will add “lots of nitpicks”. Finding contradictions is something debunkers, as a whole, are good at. Their lack of concern re how many are significant (i.e., nitpicks) compromises even this partially redeeming social value. That can be useful, e.g., to obscure a far more significant truth.
If I thought the Ugandan red cross video was fake, the first thing I’d do is track down the purported Red Cross employees and/or volunteers, and see a) if they’re legit (paystub, anybody?) and b) whether they say the experiment was legit.
Then, I’d look for the experimental data documentation.
I have to listen to the debunker video, again, but I don’t recall him ever trying to track down the experimental data documentation, much less the clearly identified Ugandan Red Cross people. This would be consistent with the notion that THE EXPERIMENT WAS ACTUALLY RUN BY THE UGANDAN RED CROSS, SO OF COURSE THE MMS PEOPLE IN THE VIDEOS DON’T EVEN HAVE IT. He did complain about the documentation, so it’s not like the question would not have occurred to him (if his IQ is over room temperature, which it surely is).
If I’m correct, that would speak to the debunker’s essential dishonesty, even moreso.
Now, as Leo Koehof estimates that, from Dec. 2012 to June 29, 2013, over a million children have died from malaria, I have to agree with him that the suppression of a cheap and effective cure is “genocide”, even if that’s technically incorrect. So, if a debunker sincerely believes that MMS is a useless and dangerous chemical, fine, let him/her speak their mind, no matter how ignorant they may be. But if he/she is a devious weasel, who knows they’re spewing BS to obscure the efficacy of a cure (or even effective palliative), then they are participating in genocide.
They will not enjoy “reaping what they sow”…..
Ivory Bill Woodpecker
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Miracle_Mineral_Supplement
metamars
“THE EXPERIMENT WAS ACTUALLY RUN BY THE UGANDAN RED CROSS, SO OF COURSE THE MMS PEOPLE IN THE VIDEOS DON’T EVEN HAVE IT”
By “MMS People”, I meant both Proesmans and Koehof. Apparently, I was wrong.
The following, from https://mmswiki.is/index.php/Red_Cross, implies that Klaas Proesmans has at least a copy of the research data from the Ugandan Red Cross experiment:
“Note: One of the excuses Proesmans gave to Jim Humble as to the reason for not releasing test results was his concern over side effects, even though he states clearly in the video that the use of sodium chlorite was “without any side effects.” It should be noted that the World Health Organization estimates that 1.2 million people die each year of malaria. It would seem that the side effect of death from malaria is worse than any side effect MMS could produce.”
Since it’s well known that MMS can make you nauseous, and some people get diarrhea, he clearly oversold MMS, in that regard. That, alone, is no excuse to withhold the data. As the Ugandan Red Cross is clearly lying about never having been involved in such tests, and Proesmans company is affiliated with the Red Cross, it seems likely the Red Cross read him the riot act.
While I referred to Proesman as an MMS person, I did so because he was obviously sympathetic to it’s use. However, it is Leo Koehof who was “the person who trained the Red Cross staff on the proper treatment protocol”
from https://mmswiki.is/index.php/Red_Cross
“The Red Cross staff administering the malaria treatment was thrilled by the success of the test. However, the International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies (IFRC – the parent organization) was not thrilled at all. When Leo Koehof released his version of a video documenting the same field test, the IFRC came out with a statement saying, “IFRC strongly dissociates from the claim of a ‘miracle’ solution to defeat malaria” (http://www.ifrc.org/en/news-and-media/opinions-and-positions/opinion-pieces/2013/ifrc-strongly-dissociates-from-the-claim-of-a-miracle-solution-to-defeat-malaria). In addition, weeks and months after the completion of the test, Klaas Proesmans, the narrator of the video, did everything he could to keep the results secret. Note: Proesmans is the Founder and CEO of the “Water Reference Center” which is affiliated with the Red Cross.
Since the late 90s, Jim Humble has been telling the world that MMS safely cures malaria in his books, websites, videos, etc. Many doctors have acknowledged the truth of this claim, but few are willing to say so publically for fear of losing their medical licenses. Since Humble started proclaiming his malaria cure, there has been an active mis-information campaign running to destroy his reputation and claims.
There are officially accepted treatments for malaria on the market. However, they are costly, long winded and have side effects.
It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. Those who support the Red Cross with their hard earned dollars might want to consider contacting the organization and challenging them over this whole situation.
It should be noted that the retail cost of treating one malaria case with MMS is approximately $0.15, not including the cost of a plastic cup, ½ a glass of water, the staff and the initial malaria test.”
This same page has full quotes of Red Cross personnel that were in the video.
Benjamin
@Ivory Bill Woodpecker
Also I’m loving the prospect of the an anti-FDR Democrat (spare me the protests that you aren’t) whining about Democrats not winning elections by sufficiently large numbers. The FDR and (Truman) elections are what crushing landslides look like, and when the Republicans finally did regain power, it was with Eisenhower, who viewed anyone attempting to turn back the New Deal as ‘negligible’ and ‘stupid’.
*THAT’S* what political victory looks like: you not only directly control power for an extended period of time, you force your opponents to adopt your platform. And the Republicans held to that, to greater or lesser extent, for decades. Freaking OSHA and revenue sharing Tricky Dick was substantially further to the left than anyone the modern Democrats have to offer (because as your crowd is always screeching, Sanders isn’t a Democrat. Looking at your roster, I fail to see why that’s a bad thing).
We are now living in the era of the conservative counterattack: the real legacy of Reagan is Bill Clinton and his ‘New Democrats’, who despise the New Deal at least as much as the GOP does.
I don’t actually disagree with you that there is widespread political stupidity in this country. Our culture actively enables it. Where I disagree is the notion that ‘voting against your best interests’ is somehow exclusive to the south. It isn’t. The Democratic Party is now rallying behind a guy who can’t wait to gut Social Security (maybe the fact that Biden is senile will be a blessing: he’ll simple forget that’s something he wants to do). Mainstream Liberals are as fucking dirt stupid as any caricature snaggletoothed hillbilly.
And you’re one of the morons. I reiterate that you, personally, are a fucking dumbass. Being an idiot is an activity, not a permanent condition. You could stop at any point, but I know you won’t. You’ll just keep rejecting evidence (when you can be bothered to read it at all, which is seldom).