I’m asking for myself. I’m a bit dizzy and out of breath for all the laughing at the death of a human being, and I feel a little ashamed of that. Phil Valentine, a conservative talk radio host, has died of COVID-19. His brother has spoken up about his illness.
Valentine’s brother, Mark Valentine, also spoke on the radio after his brother’s condition began to deteriorate, saying that Valentine was, “regretful that he wasn’t a more vocal advocate of the vaccination,” according to AP. “For those listening, I know if he were able to tell you this, he would tell you, ‘Go get vaccinated. Quit worrying about the politics. Quit worrying about all the conspiracy theories.'”
Wait a minute…”regretful that he wasn’t a more vocal advocate of the vaccination”? He wasn’t an advocate at all! He used his platform to spread misinformation and actively argued that people shouldn’t be vaccinated.
Prior to his diagnosis, Valentine voiced skepticism about the coronavirus vaccines.
In December of 2020 he tweeted “I have a very low risk of A) Getting COVID and B) dying of it if I do. Why would I risk getting a heart attack or paralysis by getting the vaccine?”
He also recorded a parody song titled “Vaxman,” which mocked the vaccine, according to WTVF.
Prior to his hospitalization, Valentine said on the radio that he was “taking vitamin D like crazy” and that a doctor agreed to prescribe him an anti-parasite drug called ivermectin, according to the Associated Press. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said not to take the medication to treat or prevent COVID-19.
Oh well, there’s the problem. He was a conservative radio talk show host and he was taking a drug that kills worms, botfly larvae, and other parasites. He poisoned himself!
When this pandemic is over, if it ends, I predict that all these rabid anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, the ones who survive anyway, are going to come out and piously belittle their own actions, claiming that they just regret being a weak advocate of all the things they right now strongly oppose.
But seriously, don’t drink horse de-wormer or sheep drench. People who resisted getting the vaccine because their body is a temple and they were not going to taint it with untested, unholy Science are instead rushing out to ingest toxic agricultural chemicals.
I wonder if H. Scott Apley now regrets that he wasn’t a more vocal advocate of vaccination. He’s the Texas Republican who was quite vociferously against anything to do with stopping the pandemic.
Apley is a staunch conservative and devout Christian. But based on his social media activity, Apley didn’t believe COVID was going to affect him or his family.
In May, Apley posted an invitation for a “mask burning” being held at a bar in Cincinnati, commenting, “I wish I lived in the area!” A couple of weeks earlier, he posted a news article about giveaways and incentives meant to encourage people to get vaccinated, writing, “Disgusting.” Apley also railed against so-called vaccine passports, which restrict high-risk activities, such as indoor dining, to the fully vaccinated.
Recently, he suggested that mask mandates in Germany were akin to Nazism. And when former Baltimore health commissioner Leana Wen celebrated good news this spring about the Pfizer vaccine’s efficacy, a seemingly outraged Apley called her “an absolute enemy of a free people.”
Ooops, he regrets nothing, because he is dead now of COVID-19.
Had to google ‘schadenfreude’ LoL!
…at least he died doing something he loved.
As an ICU nurse I’m finding the current wave especially distressing as these deaths are mostly avoidable. And it’s a vicious, slow and terrifying way to die. Most anti-vaxxers and covid-deniers seem to moderate their views quite a bit once they hit the intensive care unit.
But yeah, if a prominent denier gets ill and dies then hopefully it’ll change a few minds and save some lives. People like Valentine have blood on their hands.
If the rapid anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers ever come around, experience suggests that they wont’ really be regretful of their past world view. They will simply reverse and continue on thinking that they are always the good guys.
Well, it is so delicious it should be fattening.
Dying slowly in an ICU unit is not something I would wish on my worst enemies (although I am willing to make an exception for the tobacco- and fossil fuel lobby. They have caused millions to die this way).
They eschew a treatment made by science to support a treatment…made by science. Behold the power of tribalism.
Sheep Drench is a great name for both a cocktail and a band
How the hell do they choose these random ass drugs they think will help? First anti-malaria hydroxychloroquine and now this shit? How did they get this fixated on random anti-parasite drugs?
Assholes got exactly what they deserved. We can only hope they didn’t take anyone else down with them (though it’s inevitable they did).
at the very least, they can take some comfort in just how much the pwned us libs.
It’ll end when either Biden forces them all to get vaxed, or they evolve themselves a deadlier form and kill themselves off.
@8 Depends what the rich ones had stocks in and told them was good.
What’s crazy is the republican pols who all have been vaccinated, but still run squealing for the antibody shot when they get sick after theatrically posing at superspreader events. I know no responsible doctor would do it, but assholes like Lindsey Graham and Abbot should be forced to record a brief video saying “I was wrong” to be aired while they get the antibodies. These assholes are getting great medical care while encouraging their victims to tough it out. It’s disgusting and it’s not getting enough coverage in that frame.
The Covid-19 virus deniers/antivaxxers aren’t just occasionally committing suicide by medical omission.
They are also greatly harming those around them and our society.
.1. A report in Lancet using computer modeling says that the pandemic has produced 114,000 orphans in the USA, defined as death of the primary caregiver. This couple above, both died from Covid-19 virus and left 4 children behind. That isn’t too common for both parents to die. But in the USA, a lot of children are raised by one parent or a custodial grandparent.
.2. There are all the people the Plague Rats infect before they die.
I read of one case, where an antivax woman managed to infect her entire extended family, her church, and her workplace, killing 8 people.
.3. They are also harming our economy, which effects everyone.
.4. Last but not least, they are keeping this pandemic going so that we can’t return to what we used to call our normal life. You know, movies, rock concerts, kids in school, not looking at a trip to the store as a potentially life ending adventure.
Almost all of the leadership of the GOP have been vaccinated, including those pandering to the antivaxxers and antimaskers.
This is known whenever anyone has looked for it.
Which makes sense.
They are educated, rich and powerful. And all that money and power doesn’t do them any good if they are dead or permanently disabled. They can do the risk benefit calculation and get vaccinated, without thinking too hard about it.
Mark Dowd @8, there was one small study published that proclaimed ivermectin works on COVID, and so Fox News and the like took it up. The study was retracted, of course, when it was discovered that all the data was made up and the introduction plagiarized.
Hannity has proclaimed the downright lie that ivermectin is being used “in many countries” to treat COVID, and that the government is banning it here just for spite. So, all his followers are trying it.
I give my cat ivermectin (it’s prescription-only, even for cats) to kill heartworms. Of course it’s a tiny dose, applied to the skin, but whenver I happen to get a drop of it on my hand, it makes me feel very sick. Which might also be the carrier solvent: people never think of all the additional chemicals mixed in the products, inactive ingredients.
The hudroxycholorquine got started as an early desparate attempt by doctors in China to treat COVID: they noticed that, in their selection-based, small sample set of hospitalized patients, there were few that had lupus. They theorized that, since lupus patients are prescribed hydroxycholorquine, that might be it. So they tried it, it didn’t work, and they moved on. The COVID and mask-deniers didn’t.
It really doesn’t make sense to me that things that kill parasites might kill viruses. My very naive first idea is, aren’t parasites really big? And viruses too small? So, why would a drug that works for great big things work for a virus?
Getting really sick is not enough. They have to die to get the attention it deserves. There will be more coming…I hope.
I had noticed a tendency for denialists to latch onto comorbidities as the reason people who had COVID died. The greatest comorbidity of them all is having bad ideas. People are dying from stupidity.
I thought Ivermectin sounded familiar. It is the active ingredient in prescription Soolantra cream used to treat rosacea. When it first came out a few years ago a 45g tube of Soolantra originally cost over $500. Now it is closer to $200-$300.
America’s greatest health care system! A chemical that was discovered in 1975, already being used to treat scabies, lice, etc. in humans (generics available) and is inexpensively available in vet supply. But mix it with a nice cream and use it to kill mites living in facial follicles and suddenly it becomes extremely valuable because the company is granted paperwork for that narrow use. Granted Galderma had to pay for expensive and financially risky studies to be able to claim it has been shown to be statistically better than a placebo. Noble and lofty goal that being better than a placebo is! They also had to invest in studies to develop the dosage data to maximize profit while still being able to claim effectiveness (without legally actionable side effects).
I do have one small quibble with the tone of condemning Ivermectin as a covid treatment. It shouldn’t be condemned because there is no apparent rationale for how it would be effective, it should be condemned because there is no scientific studies to back up claims of effectiveness.
He was also a fervent climate change denier and even made a movie about it called “An Inconvenient Truth”. Anti-science to the core.
I saw an article yesterday about Trump, at a rally in Alabama, (mildly) urging those there to get vaccinated. They booed him.
So even when Republican “leaders” come out and say the sensible thing, they’ve so conditioned their followers that the followers won’t do what makes sense. If only there was a way to confine infections to the willfully stupid and stubborn…
The Republicans have accidentally created a kind of neutron bomb that selectively kills the gullible.
Unfortunately, wiping out the entire Republican voter base is something not even I would condone, and I am an evil SOB.
Yes! Schadenfreude is deadly!!!
But… send me $379 (cash or money orders only, please) for a tube of my secret formula, apply it exactly as directed to your body’s energy nodes, and I will guarantee you survive any degree of dangerous Schadenfreude (prior existing conditions excepted). And it comes in a pleasing mint flavor!
@18 Yeah ,coming to the UK any day now ,bastard ,bastard ,bastard tories .
it should be condemned because there is no scientific studies to back up claims of effectiveness.
There are studies that show it is ineffective.
[jama]
There comes a time when schadenfreude (which, as we all know, ist die schonen freude!) doesn’t cut it. It wears off after a while. What gets left in its place is a hard, stainless-steel kind of grim satisfaction. You don’t laugh at them, you just go “Good” very quietly and in spoken italics, if you can imagine that.
garnetstar: unfortunately, it is a true fact that ivermectin is pretty widely used for COVID. Same as chloroquine was, desperate people will grasp at anything. Peru has the highest COVID mortality rate in the Americas; they used a lot of ivermectin when things were at their peak.
The ivermectin thing came out right after HCQ fell out of favour. I’m surprised it’s come up again all the sudden.
It’s an undeniable fact that Ivermectin causes your body to become magnetic, and Bill Gates has infused it with microchips. Spread the word before it’s too late.
I used to think unvaccinated adults should have to pay for their own medical care – no cash, no treatment. My dad said no medical care period. I now agree with my dad.
The nuts are literally trying to kill themselves, their own children, and us.
I am a bad person – I wish them a painful death.
American style health care i mean .
I have never wished ill health, much less death on anyone. But in the past couple of months, I’ve begun to think the best way to deal with many U.S. problems is to encourage Republicans NOT to get vaccinated. That way, by 2024, the odds of Trump or any other Repub becoming president will be very low. That will have the beneficial effect of forcing the Democratic Party leadership (whom I regard as being mostly Republicans themselves, just not as bat guano insane as the self-confessed Repubs) to actively support candidates with serious policy proposals, not candidates whose campaign slogan boils down to: Yes, I’m evil, but I’m not as evil as the other party candidate.
I know it’s a fantasy, but sometimes a person needs to enjoy a little nasty fantasy before returning to the real world. Sighhhh …
There’s a subreddit with new stories like this every day. They were following the Valentine situation from go, with many merry horrible yuks along the way.
On a side note: It’s telling that they think the ones issuing mask mandates are akin to Nazis when the only party opposing those and regularly protesting any measures is the one that consists of the far right and outright Neonazis (AfD).
I do not understand how rich conservatives manage to have doctors that will just write a scrip for whatever they are asked for, while the rest of us struggle with insurance and generics and “lets try this thing that we know won’t work first, because your insurance won’t pay for the stuff that will work until we do” and all that crap.
“When your doctor is prescribing for you what you tell him to, doesn’t that just make him your dealer.” — Bill Maher (in the only joke/line of his I actually like, as he’s an anti-vax idiot himself).
Thing is, like Apley, Valentine wasn’t really anti-vax in and of itself or for the reasons he spouted on the air (he just pulled those from a misinformation web page when it was convenient). He only went anti-vax because of politics and applause from his target audience. He didn’t die for being anti-vax. He died as a martyr to the cause of “the government and the libs want me to to do this, so by god I’m not going to”.
And that is such a stupid sword to fall on.
Such a stupid sword to kill your kids with, too.
Do we know what’s next in the crank COVID treatment pipeline? I have some money in my mattress and want to know where to invest when ivermectin falls out of favor.
raven@13
More info: The whole family contracted COVID-19 after a week-long church camp. (emphasis mine) Lucky for them, the children were asymptomatic.
Another tale of multiple bad decisions.
In these times, the word “camp” should probably be replaced by “superspreader event”.
msinger @ 19
You mean “An Inconsistent Truth.”
“An Inconvenient Truth” was the Davis Guggenheim movie that followed Al Gore on the lecture circuit, a very good film that was widely mocked by denialist trash.
If you ask me (and nobody did, but that won’t shut me up) climate and vax denialists are on the way to being responsible for more death and destruction than any group of fuckwads in history, and for their efforts are being treated with kid gloves at best.
Attributed to Clarence Darrow: “I have never actually killed a man — though I have read many obituaries with great satisfaction.”
And here’s the thing: up in Canada, after a slow start, we’ve been vaxxing double-vaxxing very well. We’ve got excellent coverage, we’re maintaining (barely) our medical system, we’re coping reasonably well with the Delta, despite some loons in small parts of the country (I’m looking at Kelowna, BC). But . . . . we’ve just opened our borders to plague rats, I mean, Americans (pardons to all you who have vaxxed), and the American border is still closed to Canadians!
The histories written of this situation will very thick!
If Mr. Valentine and Mr. Apley qualify for Darwin Award nominations, then Mr. Valentine’s should be for a Premier Darwin Award. He sacrificed not only to improve the human gene pool, but also to stop endangering others in spreading misinformation and discouraging vaccinations.
Bravo! Encore!
stroppy:
climate and vax denialists are on the way to being responsible for more death and destruction than any group of fuckwads in history
Not even close to the christians. And wait ’till the climate change die-offs and everyone realizes how badly imperialism and free market capitalists fucked over everyone.
I’d argue that the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha/Queen Victoria’s family were responsible for both WWI and WW2. That was, what, 100mn? The anti-vaxxers have a long way to go if they want to be as bad as monarchists.
Marcus Ranum @12
What’s crazy is the republican pols who all have been vaccinated, but still run squealing for the antibody shot when they get sick after theatrically posing at superspreader events.
The superspreading vaccinated Republicans want to prevent an economic recovery on Biden’s watch. By getting as many people as possible sick, for as long as possible.
Yikes, I messed up the tags.
Marcus Ranum @12
The superspreading vaccinated Republicans want to prevent an economic recovery on Biden’s watch. By getting as many people as possible sick, for as long as possible.
By now, over 2.5 billion people have been vaccinated worldwide.
Over 200 million in the USA alone.
So, not exactly ‘untested’, and if they were ‘dangerous’, we would know by now.
As for whether they’re effective… well, we know that too.
Really, there’s no good excuse left for people without actual medical contra-indications.
Marcus Ranum @ 38
Yeah, I was lumping denialists together given crank magnetism. Admittedly it would be difficult to tease out, categorize and quantify all the threads of causality and varieties of stupidity going back to the dawn of history.
I won’t be around to see the final tally for global climate change, which I think is a uniquely delimited mindset fed by some of the very things that you mention; but any way I look at it, my dark imaginings don’t paint a pretty picture. Factor in that climate change is a multiplier for all sorts of nastiness to come, including war, and you get where I’m coming from. Their handiwork is far from done.
@#38, Marcus Ranum:
James Lovelock’s predictions about climate change are, so far, pretty accurate, and his long-term estimate for climate change is for humanityto have a maximum population of — IIRC — 200 million. If that happens, it would mean that climate change denialists would be responsible for at least 7.4 billion in excess mortality, making them the all-time record-setters.
Yesterday the US FDA felt they had to tweet for people not to use ivermectin for covid, literally saying “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
https://twitter.com/us_fda/status/1429050070243192839
We’re witness to an instructive moment in American history where, were the question posed: “What’s the harm of capitalism?”, we can easily point to all this bullshit and say, “All of this.” All of this ongoing, entirely avoidable death because American oligarchs are afraid that any proper, scientific approach to contain and eradicate SARS-CoV-2 would put a dent in their profits. They know what they’re doing when they let welfare and unemployment benefits run out. They know what they’re doing when they “open up the economy” and force children back into the plague pits that are our schools. More human grist for the mill.
@43 Vicar
Well, if we’re talking long-term, a lot of that death is baked in from human overpopulation beyond the carrying capacity of Earth in the first place, though I won’t try and gloss over the magnitude of suffering resulting from climate change speeding that process along.
imback@44–
The FDA didn’t quite hit the target with that tweet. It should have read “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. COVID is not a parasitic worm.”
The biggest problem with ivermectin is not that it’s for cows and horses — after all, it’s used in humans too. Having said that, if the FDA finds it necessary to warn people (mostly 50-100 kg) not to take a dose for cows (mostly 300-400 kg), then maybe those people are too stupid for this world.
John @ 41
From https://thalidomide.ca/:
“Thalidomide was marketed in 1956 by Chemie Grünenthal in Western Germany, first as an anti-flu, then in 1957, as an hypnotic drug…Thalidomide was described as a miracle drug. Thousands of samples were distributed to doctors, who were encouraged to prescribe it to pregnant women in order to alleviate pregnancy nausea. Everyone was told that this drug represented no risk at all for pregnant women.”
…
“As early as 1960, unsuspected side effects on the nervous system started to be attributed to thalidomide by some doctors. The first concerns about teratogenic hazards were raised in Western Germany in October 1961.”
That makes me somewhat leery of most new drugs. They also mentioned this: “What the public did not know is that Grünenthal had no reliable evidence to back up its claims that the drug was safe.”
It’s reassuring that the FDA is taking time for approval.
aronymous,
Reassuring for some; for the dead and the suffering, not-so-much.
Notably, that non-FDA approval was used as a fig-leaf by PZ’s university to avoid mandating it.
Also, if the FDA has not yet approved the vaccines, how come 200M+ vaccinations have been already done in the USA?
(Oh yeah, link for my previous: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations)
I grant that, technically, a vaccine is a form of ‘drug’. But, as I noted, over 2.5 billion vaccinations have been administered already. And we know quite well just how they work, by activating the immune system.
(Which itself is a bit of a misnomer — should be the ‘resistance’ system, not the ‘immune’ system)
In passing, (and not directly on-topic) this: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext
Some of the conservative politicians’ reactions are objectively hilarious. Tweet from U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R):
“Phil Valentine was a visionary for the conservative movement, and he made an enormous impact on the lives of many Tennesseans,”
He sure did! For instance, he helped many of their lives become shorter!
@John Morales 48
The 200M+ vaccinations have largely been delivered under emergency use authorizations, not FDA approval. They’re different standards, especially in terms of degree of confidence in terms of side effects – which vaccines absolutely can have, and which we’ve seen with several Covid vaccines (hence the 2 week cessation in J&J use in the US, and the shift in much of Europe around who gets the AZ vaccine). Only now are the vaccines beginning to meet normal FDA approval standards, and under circumstances where Covid was a relatively rare endemic disease the FDA would almost certainly be taking the more cautious approval process and just now phasing them in.
It’s just that in the context of a fucking plague that underwent exponential fucking growth despite heavy protective measures without a vaccine and that’s so fucking virulent that even with a vaccine and other safety measures it still outbreaks and which spits out new and worse variants regularly the standards are a fair bit lower for acceptable risk, given the alternative (i.e. goddamn plague). Hence the EUA. It’s also not a great analog to other cases with higher acceptable risks (e.g. cancer drugs or blood thinners prescribed after strokes/heart attacks); a lot of this is based less on the innate danger of Covid and more on the current chance to catch it, on account of it being a massive global plague. The EUA as a stopgap under plague conditions while more research comes in to establish vaccine safety under post-plague conditions with attached FDA approval is a pretty reasonable move under the circumstances.
As for FDA non-approval being used as a figleaf, sure, it absolutely has been. There’s no reason to think it couldn’t be effortlessly substituted with something else. Cowardly administrators bending to political pressure from anti-vax idiots then switching tack once ignoring a plague was a worse look isn’t exactly a surprising phenomenon. Neither is them finding a flimsy justification somewhere so they can pretend they had any basis other than bending to the political winds when the direction changed. Similarly, the people claiming they haven’t gotten a free vaccine during a plague because it was under an EUA and not approval aren’t being harmed by the EUA. They’re finding a pretext to launder their anti-vax opinions to sound more respectable. There are other pretexts they could use, and fuck if they aren’t good at finding them.
Knabb, good comment.
Presumably, the main issue is longer-term effects and low-probability effects, but otherwise, the due-diligence is similar.
(I like to hyphenate!)
Indeed. As with most of the world, it’s been found to be justified.
Then, there are the, um, more intransigent countries.
https://www.devex.com/news/the-countries-that-don-t-want-the-covid-19-vaccine-99243
(So, the USA is not the worst, by a fair way. Obs, not the best, either)
The extent of your ignorance, and willingness to advertise it, is truly amazing.
The Vicar@43,
Which Lovelock predictions were you thinking of? He’s changed his mind more than once, and actual climate scientists say he misrepresents the science.
Lovelock is a professional contrarian and brilliant self-publicist, but his expertise is in engineering, not climate science or anything close to it. He discovered that CFCs were accumulating in the atmosphere, and as a result is often credited with saving the ozone layer – although he initially thought they were harmless and even when it was discovered by others that they were damaging the ozone layer, advised a “bit of British caution” in opposition to early calls to ban them. He spread the canard that a “ban on DDT” (which never happened) cost millions of lives in a book in which he failed to source this and other pronouncements, and his “Gaia hypothesis” is pseudo-scientific waffle. In short, nothing he says about climate or other environmental issues should be taken seriously.
Orac’s series on ivermectin is useful for its description of the coordinated campaign to promote it, which appears to be a simple repurposing of the campaign to promote hydroxychloroquine – the same people, same organizations, same web sites, same media, same claims, same rhetoric.
Here’s the first piece: “Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19.” Click on the ivermectin tag for the rest of the series.
(His recent post “The violent rhetoric of the antivaccine movement, antimask COVID-19 update” is also worth reading.)
Oh, as long as we’re talking about schadenfreude-causing deaths: Turning Point USA co-founder dies of coronavirus-related complications.
@#54, KG:
In a certain sense, that’s irrelevant to the point. If you try to estimate the maximum population of a post-climate-change Earth and your estimate is more than, say, 20% away from the current population, then by definition climate change denialists are going to end up being responsible for more deaths than any other group.
(Let’s be honest: climate change is not only happening — as already evident — but it’s going to be as bad as possible. The denialists have effectively already won. We can’t escape full-blast climate change without the US getting on board, and even the “good” people in the US can’t be bothered to hold anybody responsible for anything that’s already happened, let alone something unproved about the future. Stopping climate change will take more coordination and moral resolve than holding the people who supported GWB’s Iraq war responsible, or kicking the people who supported Trump’s SCOTUS nominees out of office, and the supposedly left-leaning party in the US can’t even be bothered to do either of those things, and even went the other way and nominated 3 Iraq war supporters for President in the last 18 years. The Biden administration just urged OPEC to produce more oil, in case anybody thinks I’m being too pessimistic.)
Another attack on a vaccine provider site.
This is at least the third one lately.
Eritrea is the only country remaining without a vaccination program. Madagascar began in May, Tanzania started at the end of July, and Burundi announced at the same time that they will be accepting covax donations.
The hesitancy in Eritrea may be influenced by a very low infection rate; as of the end of July, about 6500 cases and 35 deaths.
Today the FDA gave full approval to the Pfizer vaccine. Hopefully Moderna will follow soon.
imback #60, the Pfizer vaccine paperwork appears to be 3-4 weeks ahead of the Moderna paperwork. Hopefully Moderna approval by the middle of September.
Well Kaiser Bill did have an hand in it ,he was related to the Saxe mob .All the warring nations were in Pacts with each other ,if you do that ,i will do this ,then he will do that ,and someone else will do something else .
If any one person was to blame ,it’s that Serbian bloke who shot archie duke ,or even the Archduke Franz Ferdinand .
Bismarck had something called a reinsurance clause in place to prevent such a cockup as WW1 ,but bill had let it lapse .
@! Talking of wonderful German words ,a guy on the Friendly Atheist posted about this one .
“BACKPFEIFENGESICHT”
A lovely German word that translates to English as
“a face badly in need of a fist”, a quality that just seems
to run in the right wing republican evangelical tribe.
@gromflake, the crispest salute to you, out of the history of salutes, the crispest!
ICU is a rather heavy duty, our eldest has been doing her level best to avoid it after working ICU, then PICU, which eats only a few less professionals than NICU.
Had she discussed it with me, I’d have steered her well away from the latter two. Hell, I couldn’t handle that!
So, very serious and sincere respect for your service in the ICU, especially given the current tragedy of this pandemic.
And yeah, being hypoxic is beyond unpleasant. Went through that twice, once due to a faulty protective mask filter system, once from CHF from a thyroid storm. During the first wave of COVID, where I actually uttered, “Thank God it’s only CHF and not COVID” at an SPO2 of 85. It took me seeing that number on my old pulse oximeter to finally call an ambulance…
Keep safe and healthy!
I’ve been watching a fair amount of news out of Iceland these past few months (mostly because of their new volcano). In the current news video on Reykjavik Grapevine (#126), Valur Grettison does a takedown of FOX News’ Laura Ingraham for misrepresenting the effects of the very good vaccination program in Iceland (over 90% of adults). He noted that total COVID-19 death toll in Iceland has been…30. And none since May (that is, the recent surge of the Delta strain hasn’t killed anyone there).
They do have one idiot in the hospital who tried to cure a COVID-19 infection with ivermectin. Icelandic public health is warning people away from doing that.
Friendly reminder that Green energy advocates and NGOs are a bigger obstacle to fixing climate change compared to the deniers. Anti-nuclear pro-renewable advocates are just another kind of science deniers.
Gerrard, in your opinion. Which is… idiosyncratic, to say the least.
Friendly reminder that Gerrard@66 is a conspiracy theorist who regularly and grossly misrepresents both nuclear and renewable energy technologies in the service of his obsessions.
And cue Gerrard spamming us all with a bunch of irrelevant bullshit in 3…2…
Thread’s over guys!
KG.
There is no solution without lots of nuclear, and the anti nuclear advocates are a bigger problem than the climate change deniers. These are not my words. These are the words of Dr James Hansen, Dr Kerry Emanuel, and others. The IPCC reports have zero pathways without lots of nuclear, and most pathways have more nuclear than today, and I have open letters from dozens of scientists calling for more nuclear. How am I misrepresenting the science?
How many more years do we need to waste, like Germany and California, before doing something effective, like France? Prominent renewable advocates like Amory Lovins have been saying for literally 50 years that renewables are ready to replace fossil fuels. How many more years of failed predictions do you need before you recognize that they’re liars? Do you really think it’s going to be different the next time? What will it take to convince you that renewables can’t work? Another 10 years wasted? Another 10 years of increasing greenhouse gas emissions? 20 years? 30?
There is no conspiracy. One doesn’t need a conspiracy to explain a religious movement, and that’s precisely what the Green energy pro renewable anti my learn movement is. You’ve been had. You e been taken advantage of by fossil fuel money. There’s a reason all of these pro nuclear groups publish lists of their donors and groups like Greenpeace don’t. It’s probably because most if these Green NGOs are being paid for by fossil fuel money. We know that fossil fuel money started the movement, with the grant to David Browser to found Friends Of The Earth. Why is it so hard to believe that this finding has continued?
Fix
Gerrard, you were a little late on that cue. Need to work on precision if you’re going to take your show on the road.