What Are The Hospitals Doing?

 As a childhood connoisseur of hospitalization for respiratory and digestive tract issues, I've begun to wonder about the recent round of hospitalizations for the Wuhan Flu. Consider these:

• The thing is a virus, so you don't treat it with massive doses of antibiotics.
• The patients aren't struggling to keep things down, so they could force fluids orally, at home.
• Being in a hospital bed sucks. It's not restful. You'd get better rest at home, in your own bed, watching Claude Rains movies or playing Bubble Blast 2.

So just what is the hospital providing? Why are they so impacted with patients for the Omnicorn round? It's an upper respiratory virus which means it's not life-threatening like pneumonia.

In the comments, Tim makes a typically cogent point. "The COVID makes them susceptible to pneumonia, and then the pneumonia is what finishes things. It looks like the dominant forms of pneumonia are the bacterial forms, which most certainly are treated with antibiotics." That would explain the hospitalizations, at least in some cases.

Here's my hypothesis. Thanks to media and government hysteria, many people, perhaps most, are in a state WuFlu paranoia*. That's produced a strong bias towards testing and going to the hospital. Once you arrive at the hospital, malpractice insurance gives them a strong bias towards admission. If they send you home and you croak, they could face lawsuits. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm coming at this from a layman's point of view, but I just can't see what good it does to go to the hospital with Omnicorn.

Bonus Thoughts Which Contradict My Original Thoughts**

So how about this: The massive, localized jumps in hospitalizations are due to a combination of Chinese math infection rates and lost staffing due to infections. Omnicorn's most endearing feature is its short, sharp infection spike. That is, it infects a ton of people all at once, but only for a short period of time. A very small percentage of a large number of people, i.e. a small subset requiring hospitalization of a huge number of infected, is enough to wipe out the safety margin of hospital beds.

Add to that a significant number of nurses and doctors out of action due to their own Omnicorn cases and you get a perfect, if very temporary storm.

I think my original analysis was wrong. It's not paranoia plus lawsuits, it's simply Omnicorn doing what it does best - infect everyone, all at once.

* - Yes, the thing can be very dangerous, but only to a very well-defined subset of the population. 

** - Remember, this blog is here to work through ideas, not defend bad ones.

Workout Month Five

In August of last year, I blogged about being diagnosed with arthritis in my right knee. I was limping so badly that wife kitteh took to calling me Stumpy after Walter Brennan's character in Rio Bravo.

Figuring I had reached my last chance in life at weightlifting, I started to hit the gym in earnest. I'm at month five now, so I thought I'd share a summary of the results.

If you're on the fence about doing this sort of thing, I hope I can encourage you to give it a try.

Benefits: I've noticed some serious gains. Many shirts that used to be loose are now tight around my arms. Middle son kitteh, who used to row and lift weights, said he can really notice the definition in my muscles. Most importantly, wife kitteh likes the results.

The Knee: I no longer limp. I have no pain at all in the knee. I had not anticipated that. I began this workout regimen as a lost cause sort of thing, doing it just to defy aging. Instead, it's been total success, particularly knee-wise.

Schedule: Currently, I'm going to the gym 5-6 days a week. I lift for an hour a day and do about 20 minutes of cardio on the treadmill. I do abs every day, roughly 300 crunches. The end result is that my abs are constantly painful. Doing some research today, I discovered I'm totally overworking them and maybe the rest of my body as well.

Muscle Grouping: I'm using a 3-day cycle. I start every day with an ab workout of 3 exercises, 4 sets each, 20-40 reps, depending on the machine. That is complete overkill. I haven't been deliberately resting at all. Instead, it works out that there are usually 1-2 days per week that I can't make it to the gym. 

Here's the day grouping. Working out 6 days a week would mean I hit each of these twice.

1. Back and biceps. 5 exercises, 4 sets, ~12 reps per set for the back. 4 exercises, same plan for the biceps.
2. Legs and shoulders. 4 exercises for the legs, 3 for the shoulders. I know the legs are hugely important, but as I have to use machines to provide my older body with stability, I run out of machines in the gym after 4 exercises. Shoulders are such a small muscle group that only doing 3 exercises doesn't bother me.
3. Chest and triceps. 5 exercises for the chest, 4 for the triceps.

Weight Loss: I wanted to lose 20#, dropping from 227 to 205. I'm around 216 now and pretty happy with the results. I've discovered that I've lost my taste for almost all sweets and fried food. For example, after about 6 French fries, I've had enough. Potato chips are out of the question. Thick coatings on fried chicken or fish are out of the question.

Supplements: I drink a whey protein shake, the one from Costco, every day. I also do a Danani yogurt each morning in addition to my normal meals. Those add about 30g of protein to my diet. It's not enough, from what I've read. I'm not very disciplined taking vitamins, but we eat a lot of fresh food, so that's probably not a big deal. I'm going to look into recovery supplements, but I'm skeptical of their utility.

6-Pack Abs: One of the sites I read today said that everyone has abs, it's just that almost all of us have a layer of fat hiding them. As far as the abs are concerned, weight loss will be more important going forward than an insane workout regimen for them.

Changes Coming: I've got to give the abs a rest. I'm going to skip the next three days and then only do the abs on leg day. The rest seem to be working out just fine. Yesterday was back and biceps and today my back is pretty sore. I know from experience that in two more days it will be fine and ready for another workout.

Success Metric: In a month, my goal is to be down around 212# and be working out 5-6 days a week without prolonged soreness like I've got right now. Looking at myself in the mirror, it's the weight loss, particularly around the abs, that will make the most difference.

Anywho, I didn't mean this post as a self-congratulatory piece, but more as encouragement for you. I was fat and flabby when I started and really disliked the way I looked. It's taken a bit of self-denial to do this, but it's all been worth it. There are still days when I really, really, really don't want to go to the gym, but when I get there, I enjoy it. 

Usually. ;-)

A Real Insurrection

 Dig this sequence of tweets from today. You can see the full thread here.

Keep hearing of train burglaries in LA on the scanner so went to #LincolnHeights to see it all. And… there’s looted packages as far as the eye can see. Amazon packages, @UPS boxes, unused Covid tests, fishing lures, epi pens. Cargo containers left busted open on trains. @CBSLA pic.twitter.com/JvNF4UVy2K

— John Schreiber (@johnschreiber) January 13, 2022

How are they accessing the cargo cars?? They aren't locked?? And if they are locked, the locks are that flimsy??

— Amy Catherine (@lilamyg817) January 14, 2022

With modern tools it's virtually impossible to stop someone breaking into a container or a house or a car etc... They have to not stop or move faster.

— Brad Buster (@BradBuster2) January 14, 2022

More on the implications in a second, but first, here's the scoop on how easy it is to break into a shipping container on a railcar.

They don't lock them. They seal them with a cuttable bolt. You can't put a lock with a key on every container that crosses the country or sea. They have to be opened by the delivery location easily and without a key.

— Jeremy Winter (@jeremywinter) January 14, 2022

An Insurrection

This is what a real insurrection looks like. You've lost control of important nodes in your shipping lines to the enemy. That recommendation, "They have to not stop or move faster" is the sort of thing you tell convoys driving through guerrilla-controlled territory.

To all the people who said that a civil war would be over quickly and the blue, Federal forces would use air strikes to crush the red rebels, take a good, long look at that video. That's reality. Just what will you strike with your F-15s? How will you target the enemy?

Too Many Places To Defend

When a modern army moves into enemy territory, one of the things they have to do is occupy a chain of hills in order to give them places to put their line-of-sight (LoS) communications nodes. LoS comms have the highest bandwidth. SATCOM is all well and good, but there are often too many users for too little aggregate bandwidth. Drones can be used as relays, but you need to have them in the sky 24/7.

The LoS comms nodes all must be defended and supplied. As you invade, you keep having to drop off units behind you to protect your communications and ever-lengthening convoy routes. Each unit left behind is a unit not available for fighting at the front.

Now instead of an invasion, solve those same problems in the US where some of your cities are effectively in revolt.

When that thought first popped into my head - some of our cities are in revolt - it felt like the ravings of a conspiracy nut. Then, after a little thought, I thought it apt. In SanFran, Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore and NYC, we have books and books and books of laws, but many of them are unenforced, thanks to progressive district attorneys. Shoplifting and carjackings are out of control. Chicago is solving about 1 in 6 of its murders. That means you can kill with near impunity. How about this gem from Philly?

Check out the places where the cops can't defend you: residential driveways, parking lots and garages and gas stations. If they can't protect you there, just how are they going to defend the railyards? In the bump and run scenario, the only safe place is a police station.

Fort Apache, the Bronx, indeed.

John Adams For The Win

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams.

When we allowed the left to destroy the family, all of this was set in motion.

It's Ugly, Stupid And Useless, But Is It Art?

For the life of me, I can't figure out what it is that the folks in the CDC, just to use one example out of thousands, think they're preserving when they jammed absolute rubbish down our throats in the past and now backtrack and tell us what many of us knew at the time. Dig this.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky acknowledged that over 75% of COVID deaths were people “who had at least four comorbidities” and were “unwell to begin with.”

Walensky made the remarks during an appearance on Good Morning America.

“The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities,” said Walensky. “So really these are people who were unwell to begin with.”

Clay Travis at Outkick pins the tail on the donkey, but that still doesn't help me explain why.

The CDC director just said over 75% of “covid deaths” occurred in people with at least four comorbidities. Since Biden can’t shut down covid, suddenly all this data is getting shared publicly. pic.twitter.com/NKvproy3lx

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 10, 2022

Update: Some have claimed that her statements were taken out of context and only refer to vaccinated deaths, but the general data show almost the same thing - heaps of deaths with comorbidities. Panicking the general population was unwarranted.

The dementia patient we have as president is floundering and when the election heats up, the airwaves will be full of this supercut.

His promise was clearly stupid at the time, but the CDC and others rallying to his defense only deepens my confusion.

Just what is it that they're defending? Inflation? $30T of debt? Record-setting murder rates in 12 of our large cities? I could go on and on, but I think that's enough to make the point. I can understand the instinct to fight for your blue team, but when the blue world is crumbling all around you, why keep up the charade?

I've written before about our ultra-progressive, modern Nazi friends who have sworn off their Mecca, San Francisco, because it's such a disaster. Now they've decided to change their minds about the transgender mania because it's happening to some of their young relatives and they can see the damage. Reality is having its say and these proggiest of progs are recoiling at the results.

Fair enough. We're watching them get red pilled in real time. They're complete racial justice maniacs, so maybe the ultimate red pill will be to realize that they've supported the slaughter of half the black population through abortion all these years. After all, what difference does it make if half of all black babies are killed in the womb today or born and shoved into gas chambers when they're five? It's all the same. Dead is dead.

Going back to that interview with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, she's clearly fighting a rear guard action, defending the regime. By regime, I mean the whole Gramscian-trampled progressive power structure including the government, the massive corporations, the media, the universities and the entertainment and education industries. But why? What is it that she's actually defending?

This is from Amsterdam, but it could be from anywhere. The people are asking to be allowed to go back to their normal lives of work, school and recreation. The police are beating and using attack dogs to suppress them. For what? Omnicorn blows right through masks and vaccines. What are the cops defending? What is the CDC defending? When they incite violence in protests with planted agents, what is the FBI defending? When it's all said and done, what will they have?

Bonus Bit

Here's Jake Tapper, who couldn't be more of a prostitute for the regime if he wore 3" heels, fishnet stockings and a vinyl miniskirt and stood on the street corner every night, telling us what we all knew all along. He's doing it because the narrative is crumbling. It's just one more rear guard action in defense of ... what?

CNN's Jake Tapper rips into "misleading" COVID hospitalization numbers.
"We're 2 years into this ... if somebody's in the hospital with a broken leg and they also have asymptomatic COVID, that should not be counted as hospitalized with covid, clearly." pic.twitter.com/rZhcANyYaW

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) January 10, 2022

On TikTok, Fetishes And Grilling Steak

In a comment replying to Ohioan on yesterday's post, I left a link to this Matt Walsh video where he has fun with bisexual, pansexual, asexual and other fetish-themed TikTok videos.

The thing that always strikes me about these TikTok videos is the attitude of the subject. I can't put my finger on the right word for it. Is it giddy? Smug? Superior? All of the above? In any case, there's always always a weird smile and the face is close to the camera which comes across as a dominance behavior.

Today, I finally hit on what is bothering me. You'd never act this way if you were talking to someone about anything real. Imagine discussing the proper way to grill a steak with a friend and getting right up in their face with a smug, creepy smile and making your point that nothing beats a Weber charcoal grill.

Or maybe you'd half-close your eyes and gloat in a condescending, scornful manner about using a coffee rub instead of a simple salt, pepper and garlic powder one.

Nah.

My take: Charcoal is the best even though we don't own a Weber right now. Propane grills don't get hot enough and the fire in a pellet smoker is unevenly distributed. 

I like coffee rubs and the salt-pepper-garlic one, too, but sometimes it's fun to play around sometimes and go with paprika, poultry seasoning, cayenne and more.

Mortally Stricken

As far as I can tell, I've now go the Wuhan Flu. I check off a couple of the boxes for symptoms, but not all of them. My symptoms are:

• Hair loss,
• Frequent experimental cooking failures,
• Inability to ferment tobacco and 
• Inclination to rant on topics I don't understand.

Wait, that's a different list. How about this one?

• Tired,
• Chills,
• Sore throat and
• Headache

It could also be a variant of the Short-Timer Disease or perhaps Monday Morning Flu since tomorrow is my last day at work for a while. It might also just be a cold. In any case, I'm hoping it's the WuFlu. It would be great to get the natural immunity thing going.

I'll have that going for me when I drop dead in a few days. Omnicorn is like that.

My best course of action would be to force fluids* and watch Charles Laughton movies. Sadly, that's not going to happen as I still have a few things to finish before I turn into a pumpkin on Friday afternoon. Oh well.

I have big plans for my time off. BIG plans**.

* - The science is settled - beer is a fluid.

** - Plans may be much, much smaller than they appear.

We Got An "A" For Effort

 ... but it looks like we might as well just ditch all of our precautions and go back to normal life.

As far as I can tell, the Omnicorn variant is unfazed by masks and is blowing right through any amount of vaccinations. It's crazy contagious and everyone looks to be getting the same severity of symptoms  CORRECTION: They are not getting the same severity of symptoms. Dig this thread. Key tweet:

The normal X-rays and the near normal ones belong to younger patients and vaccinated patients of all ages. There are vanishingly few pediatric cases with pneumonias.

The horrible pneumonias are seen in the unvaccinated, the immunosuppressed, and some elderly patients.

That suggests the jig is up and it's time to get back to normal lives. Get the vaccine unless you've had the WuFlu already. Other than that, it's still time to get back to our normal lives.

On the plus side, Omnicorn also seems to give much stronger immunity than the vaccines. That's a good thing.

I don't know, maybe the folks who are seriously at risk with comorbidities ought to just hide under their beds for a few weeks while it all blows over. I'm not snarking there, it really looks like the best plan to me. The unvaccinated can cope.

Of course, we could always go the other way and use attack dogs and police batons on people who want to get back to their normal lives. That might work, too.