I'll admit that the latter hyperbole came from the press rather than the AMA, but that was essentially what everyone on the left wanted the message to be: not only was President Trump stupid for suggesting that an anti-malarial drug be used to treat the thing, but utterly irresponsible, and grossly negligent to the point of basically being responsible for PERSONALLY MURDERING EVERY COVID-19 VICTIM IN THE WORLD!!!!!111oneone
Now that the electoral college votes have been cast, though, the AMA says that HCQ is not deadly and may even be beneficial in treating COVID-19. Exactly as had been said, time and again, throughout the earliest stages of this horseshit. Because COVID-19 was so similar to SARS, and because SARS had been successfully treated with HCQ. And story after story came out talking about how HCQ had been used to treat people who recovered handily, but they were all dismissed out of hand as "unscientific" because there was no double-blind study done, so how can we say that it actually helps, and that it's not the placebo effect?
--of course they could say, without a double-blind study, that HCQ was probably going to kill you, even though it's been on the market for literal decades.
Because if the medical establishment said that HCQ works, it would be prescribed to a lot of people, and it would improve their odds of surviving the virus, and then the left wouldn't have a club to hit President Trump with. The Democrats couldn't pull their electoral fuckery if there was a ready cure for COVID-19 that relied on easily manufactured, cheap, abundant drugs.
No vaccines needed, no lockdowns, no masks, none of the horseshit. Get a cough, go get your HCQ and stay home for a couple of weeks. PANDEMIC OVER.
* * *
Arse Technica hasn't gotten around to editing this article yet, though.
On Tuesday, the US Senate's Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will host a hearing on treatments for COVID-19. The four witnesses all have MDs, and three of them work at hospitals, suggesting that this is a case where the Senate will be receiving information from people with relevant expertise. It's the fourth witness, however, that suggests some of the testimony may go completely off the rails and raises further doubts that US politicians are taking a raging pandemic seriously.Of course, their "out" here is that they're talking about chloroquine, not hydroxychloroquine, right?
Jane Orient has an MD and is the head of a serious-sounding organization called the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). But a quick look at the group's history shows that it has adopted positions--such as promoting chloroquine and opposing government vaccination programs--that make it a questionable source of COVID-19 information.
So using HCQ is not so questionable after all, Arse Technica. Gonna fix this?
* * *
Meanwhile, I note that absolutely no one in the media is admitting that Trump's assertion was correct, that we'd have a vaccine within the year. "Impossible!" they said.
Of course they are going to try to say that Biden had something to do with it, when all he did was hide in a basement all year.
* * *
Googe is censoring text messages now. "Desperation shows it's ugly face in many ways/no one can escape the times we live in."
* * *
When I went on that rant about HP not standing by its products, this was the kind of example I was thinking of when I talked about a company that stood by, and supported, its products.
The bunker is going to need new patio doors one of these years. Maybe I'll buy Pella.
* * *
So the Chinese virus might have deleterious effects on male fertility. As I said at the beginning: if this thing was a bioweapon that got loose, I have no doubt it was meant to be something that wouldn't sicken Chinese very much but definitely would go after other races. And what better way to make sure your grip on the world is permanent than by releasing a virus that causes the genocide of every other race on the planet?
* * *
They're communists. I put absolutely nothing past them.
* * *
Czar of Muscovy says Biden could do well as president so long as he does as little as possible but of course his masters in China won't have any of that.
* * *
NFL ratings are so bad, TV companies have to shell out money to make good on their ad contracts.
When you buy ads on TV, the tv station quotes you a price with a certain guaranteed minimum of a rating. If the show the station sold advertising for fails to make that guaranteed minimum rating, the station has to make the ad-buyer whole through "make-goods." Usually just giving the advertiser free ads on other shows to make good for the promised, but undelivered, ratings.And where does this lead? Eventually, if it continues, it leads to the NFL not being shown on TV as much, if at all.
Usually. The networks don't want to actually return the filthy money they've collected.
But this year, they have to do just that.
Because NFL ratings are garbage.
And I'd laugh my ass off.
* * *
This is long and I'm too tired to read it with any kind of comprehension, but holy crap it's a road map of how Trump can still win this thing. 100% constitutional and by the book.
* * *
This sentence gave me chills: "In six days, I believe that Donald Trump intends to settle all American family business."
Again, I skimmed it, but what I got from that light exposure--whoo!
* * *
Even if they did, it won't be Firefly, damn it. Firefly was what it was in part because of when it was made. Could they use the same actors? Probably not--and so the chemistry would be different. Would they use the same writers and producers? Again, probably not.
What we would get out of this effort, should it go forward, is a 2020s-style wokefest, something that is decidedly not the Firefly we all loved. Okay? The same way Star Trek: Discovery is an unmitigated shitfest, so would be the new version of Firefly.
So I have no interest in it, even if they manage, somehow, to revive the series. All they'll do is shit on the extant story.
* * *
Today I found out how big the data pipe leading into the plant was, and what the company pays for it, and I was really, really disgusted. I'm not at liberty to discuss the particulars, of course, but I will say that the data pipe that serves something like fifty users is smaller than the data pipe I had coming to my apartment in Cedar Rapids twenty years ago. They get away with that with data shaping and some other clever tricks, and it helps that 90% of the traffic is intermittent--things like email and such, and even web browsing is mostly waiting for user input between downloading pages. The only things that make for constant use are streaming or downloading big files.
And the price they pay? Remember that this is a Lim100% reliable data line with guaranteed data rates etcetera, critical-need, business line, leased line and so forth, so it's understandable that the price is as high as it is, but even so, one month's worth of network service would pay for more than a year of very high-speed home service. Which, itself, would be many, many times faster than the fastest data rate their setup gets.
I'm not kidding. The home internet service I have right now makes the plant's data service look like two cans and some string. Not that I think corporate network service is the same as domestic net service--but of course, the guy in charge told me dismissively, it's more complex than home internet!
Now, you could fit what I know about business internet in the period at the end of this sentence, and still have room left over, but I still feel like what the company is getting--for what it is paying--is not a very good deal. I feel like the rate they're paying ought to get Internet service so fast, it finishes downloads before you start them.
Certainly we should not have users complaining (self included) about how slow everything is.
Okay, that big file I had to download last week? Took a guy at another site about nine hours, compared to my fifty.
The guy in charge of all this says that our site has approximately the same level of internet service that other sites do, but that it's just being used more heavily than other sites, and if the general manager of the site wants faster internet service he has to justify the expense.
Meanwhile, the people in charge use current usage statistics to justify what they're saying even though this problem has been ongoing since at least June, when no one was in the office because of COVID-19. Meanwhile, every time I would point something out (in the email thread discussing all this) those same people would act dismissive and treat me like some kind of dumbass.
I suggested that we blacklist the offending service and then open it up only to users who need it, but the guy completely misunderstood what I was saying and--of course--dismissed it. I started to write an explanation, but decided it wasn't worth it.
When the general manager of the site asked me for my opinion, instead of making a sarcastic comment echoing the infrastructure guy's arrogance about how it was more complex than home internet (how complex could it be?) I acted like an adult and pointed out that we'd had a site survey done by a major telecommunications company, and asked what had come of that.
Anyway, it's all pretty f-ing stupid, IMHO. Ultimately it doesn't hurt me for the site internet to be slow; I'm paid by the hour, and if I have to wait fifteen minutes for something to download which would download in seconds at my house, then so be it. Now that I've spent part of my Tuesday afternoon being talked down to, though, the next time someone asks me why the site internet is so slow, I can give them an authoritative answer. Something better than, "I'll kick it upstairs to the network team."
I'll just use the explanation that guy gave me. Minus the attitude, of course.
* * *
Anyway I have a few chores to deal with before I can play WoW, so, off I go.