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Prof Neil Ferguson on CCP-inspired lockdowns, as told to The Times

December 30, 2020 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , | 3 comments

We in the West have been well and truly played in 2020.

For those who think they’re doing the right thing by obeying all the coronavirus restrictions, consider the following statement from Prof Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London, the king of lockdown, even though he violated the rules himself with his married mistress. A tip of the hat to the Daily Mail‘s veteran columnist Peter Hitchens, who lived for several years in the former Soviet Union:

I’ll have more on the interview tomorrow, but here are a few of the reactions to Ferguson’s statement.

This is an important observation re what Ferguson said about Italy (emphases mine):

Italy signing up to Belt and Road with China have any relevance?

Yep.

Here’s another:

He is complicit either fully knowingly or because he is compromised. Either way he has blood on his hands.

And another:

A year ago most would have denied they would ever allow governments to tell them who they can see at Christmas, what they wear, what they can buy or eat. Now most welcome it. They are yet to realise it is permanent, governments don’t give up power without being forced to do so.

Many Britons are shocked that the Government wheeled Ferguson out yet again:

How could Boris listen to Ferguson? Boris is old enough to know better.

Check out Ferguson’s prior predictions:

Is it any wonder that people have been suspicious of prescriptions and proscriptions that are completely antithetical to Western values?

The longer this goes on, the better for governments influenced by C C P ideas:

Tomorrow, I’ll have more from the Neil Ferguson’s interview to The Times.

Coronavirus: investigative article alleges that China used social media to push Western lockdowns

September 18, 2020 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 comments

For some time, I have suspected that China was behind the lockdowns in Western nations.

An American attorney and researcher, Michael P Senger, has been researching this topic for months.

On September 15, he reported his findings for Tablet: ‘China’s Global Lockdown Propaganda Campaign’. Please circulate the link amongst your family and friends.

Excerpts follow, emphases mine.

China’s lockdown in mid-January, Senger says, was in accordance with their national policy of fangkong:

… the same hybrid of health and security policy that inspired the reeducation and “quarantine” of over 1 million Uighur Muslims “infected with extremism” in Xinjiang. The World Health Organization’s representative in China noted that “trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science … The lockdown of 11 million people is unprecedented in public health history, so it is certainly not a recommendation the WHO has made.”

The CCP confined 57 million Hubei residents to their homes. At the time, human rights observers expressed concerns. As one expert told The New York Times, “the shutdown would almost certainly lead to human rights violations and would be patently unconstitutional in the United States.”

By the end of the month, Dr Tedros from the WHO praised China for its successful lockdown:

Yet only six days in, the lockdown—“unprecedented in public health history”—had produced no results, so Tedros was praising human rights abuses with nothing to show for them.

Then came the video clips on social media which went viral:

One video purportedly showed a SWAT team catching a man with a butterfly net for removing his mask. But in hindsight, this crisis theater is somewhat comical; in the infamous video, the “spontaneously collapsing” man extends his arms to catch himself.

The Chinese government also issued images showing they were on top of the coronavirus situation:

Official Chinese accounts widely shared an image of a hospital wing supposedly constructed in one day, but which actually showed an apartment 600 miles away.

Remember how China’s cases started declining in February?

Beginning in February, the CCP reported an exponential decline in coronavirus cases, until March 19 when they announced their lockdown had eliminated domestic cases entirely.

After that, there were no more Chinese data forthcoming.

Why anyone thought the Chinese were being truthful is astounding:

The CCP has shaped scientific narratives by consistently promoting the falsehood that “China controlled the virus.” Of course, “China controlled the virus” is a baldfaced lie. China expelled journalists in March and its infection data is manifestly forged; U.S. intelligence has confirmed China’s data is intentionally misrepresented.

Yet, from this, came the push for lockdowns worldwide — along with a campaign against hydroxychloroquine, which, if used early enough and combined with azithromycin or zinc, can alleviate the debilitating symptoms of the virus.

Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet, even gave an interview to China Central Television:

In a May interview for China Central Television, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the esteemed medical journal The Lancet, emphatically praised China’s lockdowns, saying: “It was not only the right thing to do, but it also showed other countries how they should respond in the face of such an acute threat. So, I think we have a great deal to thank China for …”

Horton’s praise is telling in light of the infamous retraction of a Lancet study on hydroxochloroquine and reports that promising journal articles on herd immunity have gone unpublished. In August, Horton doubled down in a full-throated piece that had surprisingly little to do with health:

The “century of humiliation,” when China was dominated by a colonially-minded west and Japan, only came to an end with the Communist victory in the civil war in 1949 … Every contemporary Chinese leader, including Xi Jinping, has seen their task as protecting the territorial security won by Mao and the economic security achieved by Deng.

Good grief. That explains a lot.

The WHO, not surprisingly, led the way for lockdowns, praising, in their words, the:

uncompromising and rigorous use of non-pharmaceutical measures to contain transmission of the COVID-19 virus in multiple settings

which, the organisation said:

provides vital lessons for the global response.

The New York Times, which, nearly a century ago, praised the Stalin regime, jumped on board the Chinese bandwagon:

China ‘took one of the most ancient strategies and rolled out one of the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease-containment efforts in history.’

China was ready to promote lockdown via bogus social media accounts:

Within China, the CCP has long paid hundreds of thousands of social media propagandists and also pays for posts on an a la carte basis, totaling hundreds of millions of propaganda comments each year. More recently, these activities have gone global and escalated dramatically during the coronavirus pandemic. Social media companies have proven somewhat unserious about the gravity of the problem. When the State Department provided a sample of 250,000 accounts likely involved in coronavirus disinformation, Twitter refused to take action. These activities affect countries with little say in social media governance; a recent study found thousands of inauthentic accounts still promoting Serbian-Chinese friendship after Twitter deleted thousands of others. A former Facebook employee wrote “I have blood on my hands” due to the company’s routinely discounting malicious political activity despite its “disproportionate impact.”

It should not come as a surprise that Italy was the first European nation to implement lockdown. The country has been a part of China’s expansive Belt and Road Initiative. Many Chinese work in the north making luxury goods, brand names we all know.

The Chinese travelled to Italy to advise:

Chinese experts arrived in Italy on March 12 and two days later advised a tighter lockdown: “There are still too many people and behaviors on the street to improve.” On March 19, they repeated that Italy’s lockdown was “not strict enough,” saying: “Here in Milan, the hardest hit area by COVID-19, there isn’t a very strict lockdown … We need every citizen to be involved in the fight of COVID-19 and follow this policy.”

During that time, China ran a social media propaganda campaign in Italy:

From March 11 to 23, roughly 46% of tweets with the hashtag #forzaCinaeItalia (Go China, go Italy) and 37% of those with the hashtag #grazieCina (thank you China) came from bots.

However, these were not automated bots, as Senger explains. They were fake accounts that were carefully managed:

Social media and analytics companies generally only detect obvious automated activity, while fake, personally managed accounts can be created with ease. This works out well for the CCP, which has always preferred the human touch.

He cites one account which was all about promoting lockdown until George Floyd’s death, at which point the account switched to promoting BLM:

On March 12, Twitter user @manisha_kataki posted a video showing Chinese workers disinfecting streets, apparently admiring China’s strategy: “At this rate, China will be back in action very soon, may be much faster than the world expects.” As The New York Times’ Paul Mozur noted, this tweet was not shocking, funny, or newsworthy, yet it was shared hundreds of thousands of times. This caught the attention of Israeli company Next Dim, which flagged the activity as likely state-sponsored.

Senger has a collage of the user’s tweets, which insulted countries that had not yet adopted lockdown.

That was not the only Twitter account. There were others, which, interestingly, also tweeted about racial division.

Hence, it was a natural progression to go from promoting lockdown to BLM:

Many of these same accounts also frequently discuss racial divisions. Later in 2020, they show strong support for Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, especially those surrounding the death of George Floyd. Racial justice is an issue of real concern to many citizens, both in America and throughout the world. But knowing that the CCP supported these protests, it’s worth pondering the likelihood that the frugal Xi would not be spending billions of dollars per year on foreign propaganda—and stepping up those activities—if he weren’t seeing results.

Although the aforementioned New York Times article by Paul Mozur caught the attention of Twitter, which suspended 170,000 accounts, Senger says that:

many of the suspect accounts are still active, and a search for hundreds of similar examples can be easily repeated with one click.

State and national leaders who were late to lock down, never did lock down or lifted their restrictions came under China’s Twitter fire via these accounts:

When South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem famously refused to issue a statewide lockdown, suspicious accounts began filling her Twitter feed with abuse and graphic language to pressure her to do so.

Kristi Noem stood her ground and never locked down South Dakota.

Georgia’s governor Brian Kemp was the first to lift a state lockdown. When Kemp honoured the late Rep John Lewis, he received a barrage of abuse on Twitter:

conspicuous, vulgar language that often invoked his anti-lockdown stance.

Senger alleges that Boris Johnson was a target of Chinese propaganda which ended up with him locking down the UK:

Initially, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also opted for herd immunity. But on March 13, suspicious accounts began storming his Twitter feed and likening his plan to genocide. This language almost never appears in Johnson’s feed before March 12, and several of the accounts were hardly active before then. Britain locked down on March 23.

I have wondered why Sweden took the wise decision not to implement a lockdown. It turns out there is a disagreement between Sweden and China:

Sweden’s skepticism toward the CCP predates COVID-19. In January, Beijing threatened Swedish trade ties over an award given to Gui Congyou, a Swedish publisher detained in China. Sweden did not back down and later refused to follow China’s lockdown model, opting for a herd immunity strategy. Thus, Sweden became a prime target of a Chinese campaign portraying it as weak against the COVID threat.

The account names and trending hashtags fit with the targeted nations to sound plausible. Italy had the aforementioned #forzaCinaeItalia. The United States had @AmerLiberal as one of the CCP-sponsored accounts:

@AmerLiberal, appears to be a model CCP propaganda account, showing strong support for China’s human rights abuses—including in Xinjiang and Hong Kong—and antipathy for China’s key rivals, India and the United States. The account strongly supports global lockdowns.

Conservative Americans have known for some time China has been funding certain US research programmes:

For decades, the CCP has co-opted scientists through its unparalleled overseas influence network, the United Front Work Department, which expanded dramatically under Xi. In June, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that 189 of its grantees had received undisclosed funding from foreign governments. In 93% of cases, including that of Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard’s chemistry department, the undisclosed funding came from China. Likewise, the National Science Foundation, a smaller organization, reported 16–20 cases of undisclosed foreign financial ties; all but two were with China.

Michael P Senger has a Twitter feed, which is also worth reading.

On the ties to China and related propaganda, here are tweets from an informative thread of his:

I had not seen that video until today. That said, in April or May, the BBC News channel ran regular reports from China around dinnertime in the UK. One young couple interviewed said, whilst smiling, that the lockdown, which had ended by then, showed that the Chinese government cared about its people and that the restrictions were for ‘health’ and the common good. Of course!

Here is a collage of CCP-sponsored tweets:

Many countries have them, including France.

Some might wonder about the severe lockdown in Victoria State, Australia, best known for the city of Melbourne. This tweet has a collage of Australian tweets thanking Victoria’s governor, Dan Andrews. Senger’s text reads:

Andrews’ long-time staffer attended a high-level CCP academy. An MP leading Andrews’ Belt & Road negotiations with Beijing lauded China’s handling of COVID.

That explains a lot, too.

Bill Gates also approves of strict lockdowns that violate civil liberties (see second tweet):

Oh. My. Word.

I rather liked this short exchange after the thread:

That means us.

So, please be sociable and circulate Michael P Senger’s links and tweets. Thank you.

Americans of Italian descent object to Christopher Columbus statues being torn down

August 6, 2020 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 comments

I was heartened to see two recent videos of Americans of Italian descent object to the tearing down of Christopher Columbus statues in the United States.

Everywhere else in the world — especially Spanish-speaking countries — Christopher Columbus is viewed as a hero.

Not so in today’s United States.

Language alert in the two powerful videos below.

First up is the actor, director and singer Robert Davi. After him, we have an anonymous American of Italian descent who also puts verbal pedal to the metal. Both are short and well worth watching:

Italians did not have an easy ride when they settled in America, which they, rightly, considered to be a land of promise. They — along with many other immigrants during the 19th and early 20th centuries — were not treated well at all.

In fact, a lot of European immigrants — not only Italians — were treated like dirt. They were considered to be too dark, too dirty, too unkempt, too odorous — all because they were poor.

They were called names, the likes of which are not repeated in polite company these days:

But, all of that has been forgotten.

A few factual reminders follow.

When European immigrants landed at Ellis Island outside of New York City for ‘processing’, it was no treat. Many feared the health inspection staff would send them back on the next ship. Their main worry was about married couples or families being separated during that time. A number of extended family members did not make the journey in the first place, because they had health conditions that could prohibit them from entering the country. If you couldn’t walk well or had visible ailments, you didn’t make the grade.

There was no welfare state at that time, either. So, immigrant men and boys had to find work — fast. Lodging was another issue, especially for families. Some had sponsors — relatives — in other parts of the country, e.g. the Midwest or the West Coast. Sponsored immigrants had to find the money to travel further, if they did not have it already.

So, there was no welfare provision for public housing, food or medical care.

NOTHING.

You provided for yourself and your family or you went back where you came from:

The Irish were treated poorly in the Americas even further back, starting in the days of the Thirteen Colonies:

The two groups can combine forces to fight off today’s Marxist revisionism:

The institution of Columbus Day by President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 was a national apology for the lynching of 11 Italian immigrants by bigots in New Orleans on March 14, 1891.

Even now, that is still the largest number of people lynched on a single day in the United States. Yes, they were Italian.

The statues of Christopher Columbus in the United States were a further way of apologising to Italian immigrants who had been badly treated during their early years in the United States:

The revisionists do not know enough history of North America.

If they did, they never would have come out with their nonsense:

Christopher Columbus has a lot of support, even in Canada:

A few Britons also replied to Robert Davi’s tweet, moved by his video.

For those who never learned the history of immigration over a century ago, please try to become better informed before accusing everyone else of evil.

Most immigrants had a very hard time settling in, but they worked very hard for what they earned. They also passed those values of hard work and patriotism on to their descendants.

Coronavirus: the controversy over hydroxychloroquine and ventilators

May 13, 2020 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 comments

We have been told that our coronavirus lockdowns will not end until a vaccine has been successfully developed.

Meanwhile, in France, Professor Didier Raoult has been successfully using chloroquine, where suitable, on his COVID-19 patients at the IHU Méditerranée Infection facility, where he is the Director.

Professor Raoult is also a physician. A number of his fellow doctors oppose his use of an anti-malarial drug, which is cheap as chips, to treat this novel (new) coronavirus, said to have no known remedy, much less cure, at this time.

Raoult describes himself as a ‘renegade’ physician. Other doctors in France certainly agree. They doubt his claims. Now they want to suspend him from France’s national medical association, l’Ordre des Médecins (The Order of Physicians).

On Saturday, April 25, Geopolintel (French language, translated below) reported that the ANSM (French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety), INSERM (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) and the biopharmaceutical drug company Gilead are out to get Raoult.

The article is an open letter to Raoult’s critics:

The Covid-19 crisis shows the destructive ideology of your policies as well as that of the health institutions of our country.

Given the sums of money involved, it takes any and all costs to transfer the professor from Marseille for the generalized vaccination agreement between Macron and Bill Gates to be realized.

Censors, you have lost public opinion and you cannot regain it by threatening Professor Raoult with suspension by the Order of Physicians.

He makes fun of your stories of cash and corruption, unlike you, he treats and does not bear responsibility for death by organized shortage.

What displeases you in him is his indifference to lobbies and sirens of glory and as a professor, researcher and doctor; he cares while you polish your the seats of your trousers on the leather armchairs of the circles of initiates who have done nothing in their lives other than lying and earning dirty money.

There have been major pharmaceutical scandals in France in recent years, yet the establishment is going after Raoult, who has provided patient relief in an inexpensive prescription anti-malarial drug available at pharmacies. The medical establishment has accused the professor of employing ‘illegal medical research protocols’:

Regarding the “illegal clinical research protocols” which are attributed to Didier Raoult, what about the scandals of the Pick (Médiator), Depakin and other drugs approved in the so-called respect for randomized trial protocols?

As for his possible suspension by the Order of Physicians:

The Council of the Order of Physicians threatens Professor Raoult with immediate suspension of activity, because his clinical trials “do not comply with official procedures”, and he risks up to a year in prison and 15,000 euros in fines.

Yet, President Macron visited Raoult in Marseille recently to find out more about the doctor’s success with his COVID-19 patients. About this, the article says:

As a reminder, Professor Raoult presented Emmanuel Macron with the results of his work on 1,061 patients.

Almost 92% of patients cured in ten days,
Nearly 5% of patients cured “late”
Less than 5% of “patients with complications”.
Or 31 patients hospitalized for more than ten days,
10 transferred to intensive care,
and 5 deaths. On 1061: do your accounts and compare to the rest of France…

The abstract and summary table of the data in our article on the treatment of 1061 patients are online!
The abstract and the summary table of our paper on the treatment of 1061 patients are online! https: //t.co/mTWj6aGpTk https: //t.co … pic.twitter.com/PLdygNolxG
– Didier Raoult (@raoult_didier) April 10, 2020

These are the full results of Raoult’s study:

The article concludes:

The first reaction of the simple man that I am, in the delusional French context that I observe from afar, is this: Raoult heals while the profession flounders. It has no response, no treatment, adding the humiliation of the mandarins to the resentment of the rascals. In short, Raoult must be suspended. It is urgent: he risks treating even more people.

Now, it must be said that chloroquine doesn’t work on everyone. Nor does a similar drug, hydroxychloroquine, often combined with azithromycin (which contains zinc), in COVID-19 treatment. The latter is the treatment that President Trump has been championing for weeks.

Both should be used with caution and under medical supervision. They can harm patients with certain types of heart ailments. Never self-medicate!

As is true in France, the American medical establishment is eager to pour cold water on Trump’s claims.

On April 16, 2020, MedRxiv published an abstract of one such study: ‘Outcomes of hydroxychloroquine usage in United States veterans hospitalized with Covid-19’, which ends as follows:

CONCLUSIONS: In this study, we found no evidence that use of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin, reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in patients hospitalized with Covid-19. An association of increased overall mortality was identified in patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone. These findings highlight the importance of awaiting the results of ongoing prospective, randomized, controlled studies before widespread adoption of these drugs.

Yet, nearly half of America’s 50 states are stockpiling the drug, as Axios reported on April 25 (emphases in the original):

At least 22 states and Washington, D.C., are building up stores of the anti-malarial drug President Trump previously touted as a possible solution for the novel coronavirus, AP reports.

Why it matters: The Food and Drug Administration advised doctors Friday against prescribing hydroxychloroquine or the related drug chloroquine to coronavirus patients as it appears to be causing some serious and potentially life-threatening side effects.

    • ‘The warning comes as doctors at a New York hospital published a report that heart rhythm abnormalities developed in most of 84 coronavirus patients treated with hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin, a combo Trump has promoted,” AP notes.

What they’re saying: “While clinical trials are ongoing to determine the safety and effectiveness of these drugs for COVID-19, there are known side effects of these medications that should be considered,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said.

The state of play: Some health experts worry the public could misuse the drug if it is made more widely available.

The FDA has authorised use of hydroxychloroquine under the following conditions, summarised on page 4 of their guidelines:

The hydroxychloroquine sulfate may only be used to treat adult and adolescent patients who weigh 50 kg or more hospitalized with COVID-19 for whom a clinical trial is not available, or participation is not feasible.9

South Dakota is the first state to participate in a trial of the drug:

Kudos to their governor, Kristi Noem, who ignored calls for lockdown. South Dakotans rewarded her with a parade:

But I digress.

Health Feedback is a site that debunks current coronavirus remedies or possible cures. Another is Poynter. Both must be busy.

There has been much talk of using ventilators on ICU patients with COVID-19. However, in some cases, ventilators do not always work and, in some instances, have worsened patients’ outcomes.

On March 20, Cleveland Clinic published an explanation of the damage that COVID-19 can do to the lungs, leading to the need for intensive care and, likely, a ventilator. Excerpts follow (emphases mine):

Although many people with COVID-19 have no symptoms or only mild symptoms, a subset of patients develop severe respiratory illness and may need to be admitted for intensive care.

In a new video, lung pathologist Sanjay Mukhopadhyay, MD, lays out in detail how the lungs are affected in these severe cases. The 15-minute video walks through how COVID-19 causes a “dangerous and potentially fatal” condition known as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) while providing stark images that underscore the severity of the damage that condition can cause to your lungs.

As Dr. Mukhopadhyay explains, Chinese researchers have linked COVID-19 to ARDS. Their study examined risk factors for 191 confirmed coronavirus patients who died while being treated in two hospitals in Wuhan, China.

The researchers found 50 of the 54 patients who died had developed ARDS while only nine of the 137 survivors had ARDS …

If you have ARDS, you’ll have symptoms like sudden breathlessness, rapid breathing, dizziness, rapid heart rate and excessive sweating.

But the four main things doctors will look for are:

    • If you have an acute condition, symptoms that started within one week of what they call a “known clinical insult,” or new or worsening symptoms.
    • If your shortness of breath isn’t explained by heart failure or fluid overload.
    • Having low oxygen levels in your blood (severe hypoxia).
    • Both lungs appearing white and opaque (versus black) on chest X-rays (called bilateral lung opacities on chest imaging) …

There might have been other articles like this circulating recently, ones that mention hypoxia.

Hypoxia has been mentioned often in online discourse and in some online articles, such as one from April 5, posted on Medium, ‘Covid-19 had us all fooled, but now we might have finally found its secret’, written by a non-medic whose Medium account has since been deleted.

That article has appeared all over various fora over the past few weeks.

It does sound really plausible, even though Poynter and Health Feedback have both debunked it, which I’ll get to below.

Not being a medic or have anyone in the family who is, I’m just going to throw these excerpts out there.

As such, I wonder if this is accurate, i.e. something that front line physicians will mention a year from now. Anyone with a medical background reading this should feel free to leave a comment below.

The author explains why ventilators don’t always work on COVID-19 patients. This is what caught my eye:

There is no ‘pneumonia’ nor ARDS. At least not the ARDS with established treatment protocols and procedures we’re familiar with. Ventilators are not only the wrong solution, but high pressure intubation can actually wind up causing more damage than without, not to mention complications from tracheal scarring and ulcers given the duration of intubation often required… They may still have a use in the immediate future for patients too far to bring back with this newfound knowledge, but moving forward a new treatment protocol needs to be established so we stop treating patients for the wrong disease.

Then the author quotes someone in the medical profession who published a paper that seems to have gone nowhere (see below). Unfortunately, there is no reference to what or whom he quotes, which is this:

The past 48 hours or so have seen a huge revelation: COVID-19 causes prolonged and progressive hypoxia (starving your body of oxygen) by binding to the heme groups in hemoglobin in your red blood cells. People are simply desaturating (losing o2 in their blood), and that’s what eventually leads to organ failures that kill them, not any form of ARDS or pneumonia. All the damage to the lungs you see in CT scans are from the release of oxidative iron from the hemes, this overwhelms the natural defenses against pulmonary oxidative stress and causes that nice, always-bilateral ground glass opacity in the lungs. Patients returning for re-hospitalization days or weeks after recovery suffering from apparent delayed post-hypoxic leukoencephalopathy strengthen the notion COVID-19 patients are suffering from hypoxia despite no signs of respiratory ‘tire out’ or fatigue.

I only found the Medium article last week, but I have many COVID-19 links bookmarked, including this one from April 10:

The article is behind a paywall, but you can read it here in its entirety. The doctors the Telegraph interviewed seem to be saying the same as the Medium author does: no ARDS, no pneumonia, therefore, no ventilator, which can do more harm than good:

British and American intensive care doctors at the front line of the coronavirus crisis are starting to question the aggressive use of ventilators for the treatment of patients.

In many cases they say the machines, which are highly invasive and require the patient to be rendered unconscious, are being used too early and may cause more harm than good. Instead they are finding that less invasive forms of oxygen treatment through face masks or nasal cannulas work better for patients, even those with very low blood oxygen readings.

Dr Ron Daniels, a consultant in critical care at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, on Thursday confirmed reports from US medics that he and other NHS doctors were revising their view of when ventilators should be used.

At the heart of the issue was the “bizarre” and “frankly baffling” phenomenon of Covid-19 patients presenting with catastrophically low blood oxygen levels but few other ill effects.

The Telegraph says that this new protocol goes against prior received wisdom on the unknown COVID-19. Prime Minister Boris Johnson had been in intensive care that week, released back to a general ward on the evening of Maundy Thursday, April 9:

The initial recommendations from doctors in China and Italy were to ventilate Covid patients early and aggressively, with the so-called “PEEP” pressure on the machines turned up high so their lungs did not contract when they exhaled.

“The initial message was treat as if you were treating for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) with a high PEEP,” said Daniels. “But now we are becoming braver. We are tolerating much lower blood oxygen levels and using lower pressures. We are learning as we go along”.

The alternative to mechanical ventilation is oxygen treatment delivered via a mask or a nasal cannula or via a non-invasive high flow device. This is the sort of treatment the Prime Minister Boris Johnson is said to be receiving in an intensive care unit at St Thomas’s hospital London. His blood oxygen levels are not known.

Increasingly doctors in the UK, America and Europe are using these less invasive measures and holding back on the use of mechanical ventilation for as long as possible …

Doctors in Italy and Germany wrote to the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine last week making a similar point. They urged other doctors to be “patient” with Covid patients, arguing for “gentle ventilation” wherever possible …

It is not known why Covid-19 allows some patients to tolerate such low blood oxygen readings without air hunger or obvious confusion. One clue may be that patients are still able to exhale carbon dioxide – a toxin – through their lungs even if they are having difficulty absorbing oxygen.

“The patients in front of me are unlike any I’ve ever seen,” one American doctor working in a Brooklyn hospital told the specialist health publication STAT this week. “They looked a lot more like they had altitude sickness than pneumonia.”

Dr Daniels agreed that there were similarities with altitude sickness, itself a potentially fatal condition. “We’ve seen a lot of headache and dizziness”, he noted …

You might have heard of Drs Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi, whose two-part press briefing in California was removed last week from YouTube. The two went against the received wisdom of the WHO. I watched both videos when they came out at the beginning of April. In the second video, they warned against the aggressive use of ventilators when treating COVID-19.

Therefore, the Medium article might not be either wrong or fake news with regard to ventilators.

It has an explanation of what might be happening whereby blood gets starved of oxygen through COVID-19, and it is this which has proven to be controversial with physicians:

Your red blood cells carry oxygen from your lungs to all your organs and the rest of your body. Red blood cells can do this thanks to hemoglobin, which is a protein consisting of four “hemes”. Hemes have a special kind of iron ion, which is normally quite toxic in its free form, locked away in its center with a porphyrin acting as it’s ‘container’. In this way, the iron ion can be ‘caged’ and carried around safely by the hemoglobin, but used to bind to oxygen when it gets to your lungs.

When the red blood cell gets to the alveoli, or the little sacs in your lungs where all the gas exchange happens, that special little iron ion can flip between FE2+ and FE3+ states with electron exchange and bond to some oxygen, then it goes off on its little merry way to deliver o2 elsewhere.

Here’s where COVID-19 comes in. Its glycoproteins bond to the heme, and in doing so that special and toxic oxidative iron ion is “disassociated” (released). It’s basically let out of the cage and now freely roaming around on its own. This is bad for two reasons:

1) Without the iron ion, hemoglobin can no longer bind to oxygen. Once all the hemoglobin is impaired, the red blood cell is essentially turned into a Freightliner truck cab with no trailer and no ability to store its cargo. It is useless and just running around with COVID-19 virus attached to its porphyrin. All these useless trucks running around not delivering oxygen is what starts to lead to desaturation, or watching the patient’s spo2 levels drop. It is INCORRECT to assume traditional ARDS and in doing so, you’re treating the WRONG DISEASE. Think of it a lot like carbon monoxide poisoning, in which CO is bound to the hemoglobin, making it unable to carry oxygen. In those cases, ventilators aren’t treating the root cause; the patient’s lungs aren’t ‘tiring out’, they’re pumping just fine. The red blood cells just can’t carry o2, end of story. Only in this case, unlike CO poisoning in which eventually the CO can break off, the affected hemoglobin is permanently stripped of its ability to carry o2 because it has lost its iron ion. The body compensates for this lack of o2 carrying capacity and deliveries by having your kidneys release hormones like erythropoietin, which tell your bone marrow factories to ramp up production on new red blood cells with freshly made and fully functioning hemoglobin. This is the reason you find elevated hemoglobin and decreased blood oxygen saturation as one of the 3 primary indicators of whether the shit is about to hit the fan for a particular patient or not.

2) That little iron ion, along with millions of its friends released from other hemes, are now floating through your blood freely. As I mentioned before, this type of iron ion is highly reactive and causes oxidative damage. It turns out that this happens to a limited extent naturally in our bodies and we have cleanup & defense mechanisms to keep the balance. The lungs, in particular, have 3 primary defenses to maintain “iron homeostasis”, 2 of which are in the alveoli, those little sacs in your lungs we talked about earlier. The first of the two are little macrophages that roam around and scavenge up any free radicals like this oxidative iron. The second is a lining on the walls (called the epithelial surface) which has a thin layer of fluid packed with high levels of antioxidant molecules… things like ascorbic acid (AKA Vitamin C) among others. Well, this is usually good enough for naturally occurring rogue iron ions but with COVID-19 running rampant your body is now basically like a progressive state letting out all the prisoners out of the prisons… it’s just too much iron and it begins to overwhelm your lungs’ countermeasures, and thus begins the process of pulmonary oxidative stress. This leads to damage and inflammation, which leads to all that nasty stuff and damage you see in CT scans of COVID-19 patient lungs. Ever noticed how it’s always bilateral? (both lungs at the same time) Pneumonia rarely ever does that, but COVID-19 does… EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Poynter says this is clearly wrong:

The claim that COVID-19 causes hypoxia because the causative virus binds to hemoglobin in red blood cells is unsupported. For starters, no scientific evidence demonstrates that SARS-CoV-2 can enter red blood cells. The claim that the virus binds to hemoglobin is founded on the conclusions of a single pre-print, which solely involves computational analysis, without experimental verification or peer-review. The mechanism proposed is also inconsistent with clinical evidence from COVID-19 patients.

Health Feedback posted their refutation on Wednesday, April 15. It is lengthy and thorough. Excerpts follow:

Scientists told Health Feedback that the claim was not supported by experimental and clinical evidence. “There is no direct biological evidence that SARS-CoV-2 proteins interact with hemoglobin. The claim is based on a single study performed purely in silico without proper wet lab validation,” explained Victor Tseng, pulmonologist and assistant professor of medicine at Emory University. Eva Nozik-Grayck, clinician-scientist and critical care specialist at the Children’s Hospital Colorado, stated that “without any experimental evidence, it is dangerous and misleading to make these claims.”

David Irwin, associate professor at the University of Colorado Denver, who studies hemoglobin and hypoxia, questioned the conclusions of the ChemRxiv pre-print that served as the basis for the claim. “The authors show no convincing data to suggest that the [viral] proteins of interest, such as Orf8, etc., actually bind heme other than in modeling theories. Most troubling is that there is no way that we know of to suggest that the virus accesses hemoglobin in red blood cells to attack the heme as described in the manuscript,” he said.

A Medium article authored by Matthew Amdahl, a clinician-scientist and hemoglobin researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, details the numerous problems with [Medium author] Gaiziunas’ hypothesis. Notably, he pointed out that SARS-CoV-2 is larger than the entire hemoglobin protein, but according to Gaiziunas’ hypothesis, would somehow manage to fit into “a space barely large enough for two-atom molecules like oxygen (O2)” in order to eject iron from hemoglobin and bind to porphyrin:

“To put it charitably, this would be an entirely novel and seemingly impossible sort of chemistry, and there is absolutely no scientific evidence that supports such a possibility. It’s this seemingly impossible interaction that forms the foundation of the blog post’s entire argument, and so the remainder of the conclusions drawn by the blogger simply don’t carry any weight.”

Furthermore, clinical evidence from COVID-19 patients contradict Gaiziunas’ hypothesis. Firstly, supposing that the virus did bind to hemoglobin and ejected iron from red blood cells, this would have produced a modified form of hemoglobin that has an altered ability to bind to oxygen, which can be detected by measuring the oxyhemoglobin dissociation constant …

In summary, while scientists have not ruled out a potential link between changes in red blood cell physiology and hypoxia observed in COVID-19 patients, the mechanisms proposed by Gaiziunas are founded on little to no scientific evidence, are highly implausible given what we already know of hemoglobin and the virus, and are contradicted by clinical evidence in COVID-19 patients.

We might find out more about hypoxia in COVID-19 patients in a year’s time.

For now, I can’t help but wonder if this type of hypoxia explains why hospitals have been refusing more ventilators for COVID-19 patients.

In the meantime, returning to Prof Didier Raoult, it seems that renegades are never in vogue with the establishment.

More power to him for successfully trialling on his coronavirus patients an inexpensive, prescription anti-malarial that has been on the market for decades. Well done. Millions of us support him in his work.

Thoughts on Holy Week 2020

April 6, 2020 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 5 comments

On April 15, 2019, Monday of Holy Week, Notre-Dame Cathedral was ablaze until the early hours of Tuesday morning.

This year, because of coronavirus, few Christians are allowed to go to church during Holy Week. Similarly, our Jewish friends are not allowed to attend synagogue for Passover.

Hmm. Two years of disrupted Holy Weeks.

Never mind, because, even during lockdown, abortions are allowed to go ahead and off-licences (liquor stores) are still open.

As Brother Alexis Bugnolo put it at From Rome:

The real reason behind the Corona Stunt is something much more than simple control. It has a purpose. Here in Italy, most every activity is prohibited other than those who work in necessary sectors of the economy …

At the supermarket, no one is afraid that in exchanging coins or bills, that they will catch Coronavirus. But we are told that the Catholic Mass is a possible source of contagion, so distribution of the Eucharist must be suspended?

Mammon is O.K. to handle? But the Eucharist is dangerous and unhealthy?

Something does not add up.

On Palm Sunday, April 5, he posted that Bill Gates recommends that churches remain closed for 18 months (video at link). Emphases in the original:

Ominously, at 17:40 in this Video, Bill Gates implies that the Catholic Religion will remain outlawed until all can be certified to have received a vaccine, if even then! …

I know there has always been speculation about Bill Gates’ name having the ASCII value of 666, but his comments above are more ridiculous, they are diabolic!

Melinda Gates is a Roman Catholic, and Bill and Melinda have raised all their children as Catholics. However, I some how think there is something big missing in their lives, if they think like this: God.

This is what St Peter’s Square looked like yesterday:

It’s not only Catholics who cannot go to worship with fellow believers but all Christians and Jews.

Those of us living through Holy Week 2020 will remember it for the rest of our lives. The unthinkable — closing houses of worship — happened across the world in a trice.

In such circumstances, we should persevere in our prayers and meditations this week:

We have many people to pray for — those affected by coronavirus around the world.

I am grateful that President Trump called for prayer yesterday:

On Saturday, I posted the Gospel readings for this year and a brief sermonette on Pontius Pilate, who arrived in Jerusalem the same time that Jesus did.

One of my readers, Scoot, responded with a poem about Palm Sunday, which sums up the two entries into Jerusalem perfectly:

The poem “The Conquerors” by Harry Kemp is apropos, given the processions of Jesus and Pilate.

Begging your pardon in advance, here it is quoted below:

I SAW the Conquerors riding by
— With trampling feet of horse and men:
Empire on empire like the tide
— Flooded the world and ebbed again;

A thousand banners caught the sun,
— And cities smoked along the plain,
And laden down with silk and gold
— And heaped-up pillage groaned the wain.

I saw the Conquerors riding by,
— Splashing through loathsome floods of war —
The Crescent leaning o’er its hosts,
— And the barbaric scimitar, —

And continents of moving spears,
— And storms of arrows in the sky,
And all the instruments sought out
— By cunning men that men may die!

I saw the Conquerors riding by
— With cruel lips and faces wan:
Musing on kingdoms sacked and burned
— There rode the Mongol Ghengis Khan;

And Alexander, like a god,
— Who sought to weld the world in one;
And Caesar with his laurel wreath;
— And like a thing from Hell the Hun;

And, leading like a star the van,
— Heedless of upstretched arm and groan,
Inscrutable Napoleon went
— Dreaming of empire, and alone. . . .

Then all they perished from the earth
— As fleeting shadows from a glass,
And, conquering down the centuries,
— Came Christ, the Swordless, on an ass!

On his website, Scoot also posted a prayer for these dismal days:

Prayer in Times of Pestilence

Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, an answer to our hearty supplications; and, Thy wrath being appeased, turn away from us this pestilence, that the hearts of men may know that these scourges proceed from Thine anger, and cease by Thy mercy.

Amen

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is currently in hospital with coronavirus. He has been running a fever for several days. His fiancée, Carrie Symonds, also has coronavirus and with a fever. She is expecting their child. Please include them in your prayers. We need Boris as Prime Minister.

These past posts of mine might be helpful in our private meditations during Holy Week:

Monday of Holy Week

Readings for Monday of Holy Week

The righteous anger of Jesus towards the money changers

Jesus and the money changers

Tuesday of Holy Week

Readings for Tuesday of Holy Week

Contemplating the withered fig tree (2017)

The High Priests plot against Jesus

Epistle for Tuesday of Holy Week — 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 (2016)

Spy Wednesday

Readings for Wednesday of Holy Week — Spy Wednesday

Judas offers his services

More on Spy Wednesday

More on Judas

Holy Week — the story thus far

Gospel reading for Wednesday of Holy Week — John 13:21-32 (2016)

Wednesday of Holy Week — Spy Wednesday (2017, Henry and MacArthur on Judas: bad hombre)

None of us knows what long-term effects coronavirus will have on our civil liberties around the world.

What follows is an American perspective from MorningStar Ministries, but let’s not forget that the Magna Carta was signed in England in 1215 (emphases in purple mine):

Our Founders feared the tyranny of the mob as much as they feared the tyranny of a king. The same crowd that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem declaring “Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” were crying “Crucify Him!” just five days later. The Founders were devoted to establishing a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but also one that could ride out the wild swings of public opinion. These swings can create a social turbulence that tears a nation apart.

Democracies are where the majority rules. Republics are where the people vote for representatives that rule on their behalf. The representatives ideally will not just try to please public opinion, which can so wildly swing from one extreme to the opposite extreme, but rather do what is best for the whole country. This is why our Founders formed a constitutional republic, not a democracy as many wrongly presume …

All three branches of government have been prone to infringe on the authority given to the other branches, as well as the authority given to the states and the people. The military calls this “mission creep”—when a commander starts adding to their specific assignment. When this happens, very often the original assignment gets muddled and sometimes forgotten. This has happened in our Federal Government. It has taken on many purposes that are beyond its constitutional authority.

To remedy this, we must recover the fact that The Constitution was written to assign specific authority to the Federal Government and forever limit it to what was specifically given to it in order to preserve the authority of the states and the people. Therefore, the assignment of any purpose to the Federal Government not specifically named in The Constitution is a violation of The Constitution. A main purpose of The Constitution was to limit the authority of the Federal Government in order to keep it from becoming what it has now become …

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.  –Thomas Jefferson

We are in a serious situation at the moment, no matter where we are in the world.

Please pray this week. We have no excuse not to do so.

Confusion over Italy’s coronavirus death rates

March 24, 2020 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 comments

It looks as if Italy might be readjusting its death rates from coronavirus.

China’s seem to have gone down. This is because they have no longer been reporting ‘mild’ coronavirus cases since February.

On Friday, March 20, 2020, Breitbart reported on the news that China allegedly had no new coronavirus cases that day (emphases mine):

The Communist Party of China triumphantly proclaimed on Thursday that it had logged its first day without a single domestic Wuhan coronavirus infection, earning the applause of gullible mainstream media outlets and its puppets at the World Health Organization (WHO).

Those celebrating, in addition to disregarding the clear signs that the claim may not be true – like reports of Wuhan hospitals turning away residents with coronavirus symptoms, or a suspicious increase in “pneumonia” death certificates at funeral homes not counted as coronavirus – have failed to note that China made a significant change in how it counted coronavirus cases in February.

That month, the National Health Commission ordered doctors not to count individuals confirmed to be infected with the Wuhan coronavirus, but exhibiting no or “mild” symptoms, in the official count of coronavirus cases.

“The changes to the classification of asymptomatic coronavirus cases emerged on Jan. 29, in a set of guidance from China’s National Health Commission,” the New York Times reported in mid-February. “Health officials said that they would reclassify patients who had tested positive for the new coronavirus but did not have symptoms, and take them out of the total count of confirmed cases.”

The Times noted that China had “closely guarded the demographic details about the fatalities, creating uncertainty about who is most susceptible.”

The National Health Commission did not define what a “mild” coronavirus case looks like, in contrast to severe cases that would count in China’s official tally. A study published in China two weeks later found that as many as 80 percent of coronavirus cases are “mild,” suggesting that Beijing had suddenly decided to document only 20 percent of its coronavirus cases, if using the same standard that the Chinese researchers did.

Cue Barry Manilow, because, to most of the world, ‘it’s a miracle’. News of this appeared in January:

The decision calls into question China’s “milestone” announcement of no new cases, one of several proclamations of victory from the Chinese Communist Party. In January, about a week after telling the world the novel coronavirus existed, Beijing claimed a miraculous drop in the number of cases in Wuhan, the central metropolis where the virus originated.

Meanwhile, Italy’s coronavirus case and death rates have been rising.

Italy looks bad, and China is capitalising on that. Be sure to read the comments following this tweet:

If so, it is worth keeping in mind that many Chinese live in northern Italy:

On Saturday, March 21, The Telegraph reported that Italy says it has overestimated its number of coronavirus deaths:

It’s unclear how accurate this report is, judging from the replies to the tweet.

One thing is for certain, however. People are now beginning to wonder if all of us were sold a pup with the coronavirus hysteria:

Did China put pressure on Italy to recalculate their coronavirus deaths? Who knows?

How many of these figures can we trust?

These reports are going to get people’s backs up. Celebrities aren’t garnering everyone’s sympathies, either:

This leads to people being unhappy with confinement, curfews and other restrictions:

I agree. Open it all up.

Message to Boris Johnson and the Chief Medical Officer’s team — please go back to the original advisories on hand-washing and social distancing. This is a farce.

What’s on Anglican priests’ minds: coronavirus and Communion

March 10, 2020 in Anglican, Catholic, history, Holy Communion, prayer, priests, Protestant | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

On the back of exploring what’s on Episcopal priests‘ minds, I am crossing the Atlantic, returning to the UK, to explore what Anglican priests are thinking about.

I will continue both series.

The Revd Marcus Walker, serving in the Diocese of London, deplores the bewilderment and criticism surrounding the recent group photograph of Mike Pence and his coronavirus team in prayer.

Note that they are not praying in public, as detractors have said. Press photographers happened to be present for the meeting.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer has such a prayer, which can be said during the Litany. Highly useful during the coronavirus scare:

In the time of any common plague or sicknes.

O Almighty God, who in thy wrath didst send a plague upon thine own people in the wildernes for their obstinate rebellion against Moses and Aaron, and also in the time of King David, didst slay with the plague of pestilence threescore and ten thousand, and yet remembring thy mercy didst save the rest: have pitie upon us miserable sinners, who now are visited with great sicknes and mortality, that like as thou didst then accept of an atonement, and didst command the destroying Angell to cease from punishing: so it may now please thee to withdraw from us this plague and grievous sicknes, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Marcus Walker later located his ‘jumbo book of State Prayers’ and noted the following shift in emphasis in them from the 18th to the 19th centuries:

Turning to the opprobrium heaped upon the American vice president and his team, this is what Mr Walker and his readers tweeted:

Nor do I.

The Revd Giles Fraser, formerly a Canon at St Paul’s Cathedral and current Rector at the south London church of St Mary’s, Newington, told the readers of his online magazine Unherd how he has changed the Communion service during the coronavirus outbreak (emphases mine):

I have a cough. I have had it for weeks. A deep hacking affair that brings up nasty thick greenish goo. It’s not the virus — I haven’t got a high temperature or any other symptoms. But it is dramatic enough to clear the seats next to me on the tube.

In church on Sunday, too, I could feel the anxiety radiate out from my coughing away behind the altar into a twitchy congregation. We have suspended sharing the peace for the time being. Instead of shaking hands or kissing, we wave at each other. So, too, we have decided to take communion in one kind only — that is, we share the bread but not the common cup of wine. And in this context, the symbolic handwashing the priest performs before the Eucharist is no longer simply a ritual act. It feels like a necessity. Cleanliness is next to godliness.

As one of my posts explained last week, the Cup can be suspended during health emergencies under a) the Doctrine of Concomitance and b) the 1547 Sacrament Act.

The Doctrine of Concomitance says that Christ’s substance in the Eucharist cannot be divided. The bread and the wine are both the entire real presence of Christ.

Giles Fraser and one of his readers helpfully tweeted about both:

Someone responded — possibly an agnostic — taking to task Christians who are panicking over the coronavirus. He has a point:

It amazes me how those who pontificate so much about life thereafter being so wonderful succumb to panic at the thought of death. Just a pause for thought. The Lord’s supposed to be our protector but only if it means it protects us from death. Come on religious people! Get a grip.

I don’t understand it, either.

On that note, and from a Catholic perspective, Dr CC Pecknold, a professor who also writes for First Things, tweeted about the plague in Venice between 1630 and 1631:

Exactly. However, that is what stubborn secularists, such as those criticising Mike Pence and his coronavirus team, refuse to understand. Christians pray for guidance and relief during troubled times.

There was more to the conversation. Someone was disappointed that the Peace had been suspended in his diocese:

How true.

In closing, after the plague had left Venice, the citizens of that city built a magnificent church in thanksgiving:

Would this happen now were, heaven forfend, the coronavirus to become an epidemic? No. Not at all.

More’s the pity.

In Italy, churches are closing their doors for the next few weeks:

This church in Rome is open but has taken additional precautions:

Meanwhile, let’s continue to pray that we may be guided in the correct practical direction during this pandemic and ask the Lord for it to harm as few people as possible.

I do think these health disasters are ‘come to Jesus moments’. Is anyone out there listening, including some notional Christians? Or are we all going to panic?

Google Camp is probably not (meant) for you

August 2, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Italy has been a popular tourist destinations for privileged Americans this week, including Democrats.

Google Camp was also there.

The privileged few flew in from thousands of miles away to discuss climate change.

As many have noted online, couldn’t they have conducted their business via Skype?

Remember, these are the same people who tell you and your family that you shouldn’t be flying … anywhere.

It’s another case of ‘for me, but not for thee’.

Veteran British journalist Andrew Neil tweeted:

His readers were not happy (language alert):

I remember the US winter of 1977 clearly. It was unpleasant.

Someone mentioned Prince Harry …

… and Greta:

Is little Greta going to row her way there?

Wouldn’t online technology have served them better?

Apparently not.

On July 30, the Daily Mail reported on the ancient Greek city Selinunte in Sicily and those attending. Brief excerpts follow, emphases mine. Check the link for photos and more. Note the use of cars and yachts, too, which are taboo for the rest of us. Errgh:

A select group of billionaire businessman, world famous pop stars, doyennes of design and Hollywood A-listers have once again descended upon the ancient Greek city of Selinunte for Google Camp.

The annual event is once again in full swing, with private planes and megayachts shuttling guests Harry Styles, Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom, Stella McCartney, Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg, Gayle King, Leonardo DiCaprio and Bradley Cooper to the Verdura Resort in Sicily.

And as per tradition, guests on Monday enjoyed dinner and a concert under the stars in the ruins of the Temple of Hera on the island.

Cars could be seen taking guests to the bacchanal bash, where Google decided to disperse Jeff Koons’ orbs throughout the ancient archaeological ruins.

Independent journalist Paul Joseph Watson tweeted from London, noting that Obama was there, too:

He received these replies, among others:

It’s hardly a surprise that members of the general public views these people with ever increasing degrees of suspicion:

Private planes, jets, yachts and cars. Do these people really express legitimate concern about climate change?

No wonder people are ignoring Hollywood and other world famous celebrities.

The Earth is in God’s hands, not ours. Yes, let’s live responsibly but let us also avoid gullibility.

If people can travel across an ocean for a climate change conference and not think a thing about it except for the party that awaits them, what other resources do they personally waste? Clothes? Food? Water? I think we should be told.

Democrats’ five-star accommodation in Venice

July 30, 2019 in history | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 comments

We all know that Democrats are the voice of the people, right?

I’m being sarcastic, but that is the image they project:

Meanwhile, the once beautiful city of Baltimore, Maryland has been in the news over the past few days. The district’s congressman, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), has been roundly criticised by residents, Republicans and President Trump for allowing it to deteriorate. He cannot take full blame, but he would do well to focus on his constituents rather than trying to impeach Trump.

This lady is a member of the Baltimore County Republican Central Committee:

While the controversy over Baltimore rages …

… Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and selected Democrat congresscritters stayed in Venice — yes, Italy — over the weekend in five-star accommodation at the Hotel Danieli (be sure to click on that link)!

Yes, Pelosi and the Democrats truly are of the people (not):

Over the weekend, various people, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), thought that Rep. Elijah Cummings was among Pelosi’s delegation, but he was not:

The Washington Examiner reported (emphasis mine):

Pelosi was joined on the trip to by several other black Democrats, including Majority Whip James Clyburn, Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Rep. John Lewis.

The Democratic delegation is visiting the U.S. Army Africa headquarters in Italy. They will also visit Ghana, a trip that coincides with the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans landing in America. Pelosi will be the first speaker of House to address the Ghanaian Parliament.

One wonders how much this junket cost and how many family members accompanied them. The mind boggles.

Meanwhile, Baltimore and other Democrat-controlled US cities are in chaos.

Helping Alzheimer’s patients: the ‘train ride’

June 24, 2019 in Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 8 comments

By chance, I saw this tweet from France 3 television about one of their documentaries:

This clip shows a French patient who has Alzheimer’s. Rose is in assisted living (EHPAD), and her facility has implemented ‘train ride’ therapy.

The video shows a room with a mock SNCF (French railway network) departure board. Rose and her therapist go into another room which is set up as a train compartment. The window is a screen showing a film of the countryside just as one might see it from a train.

There seem to be a few choices of railway scenes for patients: countryside, the sea and so on.

This therapy is used for patients who become troubled or troublesome. In this case, Rose is often on the verge of tears.

Therapists say the ‘train ride’ calms the patients down. They ask the patients what they see as they are ‘travelling’, what they are reminded of and so forth. The experience generates a conversation about what patients remember from their past. Rose’s husband used to work for the SNCF, so she would have taken quite a few train journeys during her marriage.

This a brilliant idea. The therapists interviewed say it came from Italy, where it has been implemented on a larger scale. It is said to be in use not only for Alzheimer’s patients but also other mental diseases and traumas.

I like the creativity going on here, which really seems to work. I hope this brings out more interesting types of therapy for Alzheimer’s patients.

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