Serotonin, placebo and depression: new questions

 

Infectious disease: ignore the rules if the disease is Politically correct

 

The latest monkey pox news is that someone "discovered" you could use a smaller dosage of the vaccine by giving the vaccine subcutaneously. Well, duh.

Did the US get around to importing the millions of dosese they stored in Denmark? Who knows. 

Just like no one knows why it is taboo to say it is being spread by promiscuous MSM, or that the government that closed churches for 2 years won't close raves and other places where this is being spread. 

The reason no one will shut these high risk festivals down is politics, of course: They remember when Diane Feinstein faced a recall after trying to shut down the bath houses that were the source of a local hepatitis and Syphillis outbreak.

1986 Jan. 23: Mayor Dianne Feinstein told a U.S. Conference of Mayors session on AIDS that gay organizations in San Francisco "will regret" opposing her campaign to close the city's bathhouses. "It has been established that the bathhouses contribute to the spread of AIDS and they ought to be closed," Feinstein said. She said that her two-year campaign to close the bathhouses has been blocked by courts and gay groups "who have turned this into a civil rights issue rather than a public health issue.

As for the kids who caught it: well, if you have a lesion and don't wash your hands, you can spread it to kids. 

so maybe those diagnosed with lesions, or those with lesions who suspect they might be infected, should just self isolate? 

Or should the government legally impose isolation on those who are still infectious: i.e. people with active disease, as we used to do for scarlet fever, measles, etc. and indeed do with those exposed to Covid?

Here in the Philippines, we were quite strict about isolation of covid cases during the epidemic of the delta strain over the last two years (less strict now with the weaker omicron strain)

For example, here in the Philippines, Dr. Angie had to self isolate three times last year because she was exposed to someone, and the bank had to close down twice last year fot the same reason. Ruby, on entering the Philippines, had to go into ten days of strict isolation even though she had been vaccinated in the USA. 

And yes, the Philippines isolated the person who came to the Philippines with monkey pox, and also isolated his ten contacts.

in contrast, in the USA, the CDC recommends isolation but adds:

Ideally, people with monkeypox would remain in isolation for the duration of illness, which typically lasts two to four weeks. However, if a person with monkeypox is unable to remain fully isolated throughout the illness, they should do the following:

they then list obvious things like wearing a mask for a disease that is spread by skin to skin contact. 

But of course unless there is someone checking that the patients are actually staying isolated, and this includes arresting those who break quarantine, the precautions are nonsense.

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I have pretty well been ignoring the news from the Ukraine, but apparently the danger is now about attacking a nuclear power plant.

Dr. C explains:

 Dr. C has a headsup about what is going on there: 

............

Monkeypox update

 not just an STD probably spread via orgies, but a large percentage of the victims have HIV or other STDs, suggesting that they are a subgroup of gays who are very very promiscuous.

41% had HIV median age 38 Transmission suspected to have occurred through sexual activity 95% of cases Presentation in this series 95% rash (with 64% having less than 10 lesions) 73% anogenital lesions 41% had mucosal lesions (with 54 having a single genital lesion)

Good news: Latest Ebola outbreak is gone

Well, on the medical front, the latest Ebola epidemic in central Africa is over. 

Bet you didn't even know it happened. 

 A total 11,139 (alive) and 161 (deaths) alerts were investigated; 1,076 contacts were identified and followed; 909 laboratory samples (805 blood and 104 swab) were tested and 2,037 persons vaccinated (301 contacts vaccines, 1301 contacts of contacts and 435 Health care workers).

Covid: lots of cases but not a lot of deaths

 

here, covid is still around (about 2000 cases a day but few deaths) but the real number is  probably much higher because the community surveillence numbers of random population is higher. 

The government is pushing vaccine booster, but they are not popular, so the gov't might have to throw out a huge number of out of date shots.

 I got my basic AZ vaccine, but no booster. Why? Because the original vaccine was for the original Covid virus, and it doesn't work well against mutations like Omicorn varient. 

But the good news is that this is mild and a lot fewer deaths from it. For example, no recent covid deaths: just the normal ones (and only one of the neighbors, who was dying from heart problems, tested positive). But the cases mean that some beds are set aside for covid isolation. 

We have elders from the area die every couple of days,  But the neighborhood is upset because a neighbor's 40 year old grandson just died of a heart attack. No he didn't just get the vaccine and he didn't have covid. He had cirrhosis from alcoholism.

our main problem now is Dengue fever, the fact that a lot of kids didn't get their routine shots, and the worry about the high price of food that could cause hunger in the next few months.

The high price of diesel and fertilizer. BBM is trying to find cheap fertilizer for the small farmers, but if they can't improve things, a lot of small farmers will go broke and the crop will be smaller than usual.

On top of this, there is a bird flu epidemic in local poultry, meaning fewer chickens and higher prices for KFC /Jolibee fried chicken and balut.

Covid is still a major problem: a huge increase in cases in Asia.

Much of Asia is in the midest of an outbreak of these varients: Japan reports 150 thousand cases, which is overwhelming their hospitals, partly because the staff is sick and/or in quarantine and unable to work. But deaths? Not so much. Indeed, it's hard to find the number of deaths. For example, this article reports everything in detail but at the end says:

The number of seriously ill patients in the capital was 18 on July 20, a decrease of one from the previous day.

this website reports 135,239 new cases and 54 new deaths in Japan

So why is China locking everyone down? And what is it about their bank problems?

if one has to take the MSM of the US with a bit of scepticism, one really has to wonder what news stories are being censored in China.

THen you have a worldwide farmers revolt against the green tyrants. From the ManilaTimes

The farmers' actions in the Netherlands mimicked previous protests around the world and could foreshadow similar uprisings against government overreach. For example, the so-called yellow vest movement in France began as a protest against increased nationwide fuel taxes. Similar protests could soon happen in the UK and parts of the European Union where natural gas and energy costs are near historic levels, according to Benny Peiser, the director of the London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation. In the UK, increased prices are expected to send 24 percent of households, or about 6.5 million households, into fuel poverty.

Grooming we haz it

 article at LegalInsurrection:

Aimee’s 2019 interview with Erlich for “Mutha” Magazine, Erlich said of his videos, “time and time again, it’s a tool that doesn’t fail”:

“One time, Davon [aka Miz Jade, one of the drag queens on the show] brought his five-year-old nephew over to my apartment and we showed him the first episode of Sez Me. His nephew was raised in church and he didn’t know that Davon does drag. He was commenting out loud, like “What is it, a boy? A boy can’t wear a dress.” So he was conflicted but he wanted to keep watching and he thought it was really funny. And he would say things like “Oh, but you can’t be gay. Gay’s not good.” But he kept asking to watch more and more, and then at the end he said, “I wanna see more of it.” And we said “That’s it. That’s all we have for now.” Then he goes, “So I would need to be on it.” So Davon said, “If you want to be on it you have to talk with a drag queen,” and he goes, “That’s cool.” This kid that forty-five minutes ago had a real issue with drag queens and a boy wearing a dress, because he heard some things in church—forty-five minutes later this kid is ready to be on screen with a drag queen. So then Davon pulled out his phone and showed him pictures of himself in drag and actually kind of came out to him, and he was totally chill about it. That was the point where I knew that, time and time again, it’s a tool that doesn’t fail.”

Erlich is also the creator of the Dragtivity Book, which

“features 20 fabulous pages -‘find your own drag name,’ ‘circle your pronouns,’ and ‘match the styling objects,’ and “gives kids an introduction to the art of drag to helps them to unpack stereotypes and see beyond the gender binary in the world around them.”

[A page from Sez Me’s “Dragtivity Book”]

A video guide helps educators implement the Dragtivity lessons with their students.

Although proponents of Drag Queen Story Hour attempt to sanitize drag culture, not everyone in that community is cheering the growing popularity of these sorts of programs. For instance, a drag queen named Kitty Demure has chided parents who “might want to look like they’re with it” by introducing their children in drag culture.

Advocates of programs like Drag Queen Story Hour, Drag Brunches, and “Drag Your Kid to Pride” like to present such events merely as family-friendly ways to build confidence, empathy, and self-expression.  Yet these attempts to present an anodyne “all-ages” drag culture and claim drag has no relation to overt sexual behavior strains credulity. It requires us not only to ignore several actual instances of grooming, but also the very experiences that introduced performers like Cholula Lemon into drag culture in the first place. Many private school parents are through with being gaslit that drag culture is somehow appropriate for children.

racism