Monthly Archives: May 2020
Are We Really All In This Together?
There seems to be more and more indications that many of the several dozen WuFlu antibody tests, especially the finger prick blood sample type like I had, are not very accurate. Which would explain I guess why, though I think I had the WuFlu, my test came back ‘No, Well, Maybe, Possibly.’
Hopefully I can come across another type of test that uses an actual blood draw.
More and more it’s looking like the WuFlu has been running around a lot longer than thought. France has now identified a patient who was treated for it on December 27, 2019, weeks before they originally thought they had their first case.
And of course we’ve already heard the same thing about California/
On the HCQ front, right now there are 41 clinical trials underway at major hospitals and research centers around the country. Hopefully this will help bring it the point that the naysayers will no longer be able to say that the favorable results are only ‘anecdotal’ with no clinical trials that prove the efficacy of HCQ.
I’m sure you’ve all seen the many PSA’s (Public Service Announcements) online and over the air proclaiming that we’re all in this together, fighting the WuFlu. But are we?
I touched on this in a earlier blog, but this is a great article talking about how those who are quarantining at home, safe and sound, are only able to do that because all the people who are still out working everyday.
People like truckers, warehouse workers, cashiers, power workers, IT people, TV workers, mechanics, doctors, nurses, janitors, delivery people and many, many, many others.
Those are the ones that are keeping civilization going during all this. And we need to thank them every day.
Do you suffer from Hypercapnia? Also known as Carbon Dioxide Toxicity, it’s what can happen if you wear your mask for too long and too tight. And the better the mask is at filtering out particles, the more likely it is to caused Hypercapnia.
That’s what seems to happened to this guy that I posted about a couple of weeks ago.
New Jersey driver crashes car after passing out from wearing N95 mask
And I’ve seen people locally driving around wearing their masks with their windows up. Take ’em off and breathe, people.
And this happened to Jan a few weeks ago in WalMart. She started feeling lightheaded and dizzy, and had to take her mask off and sit down. This is also why you see so many people walking around with their noses uncovered, just so they can breathe.
You can only breathe back in your own CO2 for so long before it gets to you.
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One Year Ago Today: We were in Passau, Germany
Passau 5/4/19
After our usual great breakfast, we were up the the gangplank and off the ship about 9:30 for our day visit to Passau, Germany, our first stop in a German city.
We had signed up for the Walking Tour of Passau, the included one for this stop. Unfortunately, so far we haven’t had many, if any, ‘driving’ tours, but I guess it helps work off all the delicious food they keep feeding us.
We started out along the Inn River, with our first stop the Schaibling or Salt Tower.
Built in the mid-1300’s, it was a fortified watch tower to protect and store, what else, Salt. Salt, necessary for preserving food, especially meat, has been a hot commodity since the Roman days. In fact, in many cases Roman soldiers were paid in salt. Hence the term, ‘Salary’.
The salt came from the mines near Salzburg, and was a favorite target of pirates and thieves, so it was protected all the way up the river and then safely stored in the tower.
Next, cutting up through an alley to get into town, we came across this sign on someone’s backyard.
The sign translates to My House, My Ball, My Family. He looks like he’s serious about all this.
Our next stop was the old town hall which was pretty non-descript on the outside, but another story on the inside. And besides the carved marble staircase
and the marvelous frescoed ceiling,
its other claim to fame was that Mozart played here for the local prince at the age of 6. Mozart, not the prince. But Mozart felt insulted when they kept him waiting for six days before hearing him play, so he refused to ever play for the prince or his family again, since they wouldn’t pay him for waiting.
A little way down the cobble-stoned street, we passed through an archway and into the square in front of the beautiful St. Stephen’s Cathedral.
There have been churches on this site since 730 A.D., with this one being built between 1668 to 1693 to replace the previous one that burned down in 1662. Designed in the Baroque style, it’s over 100 meters long, and even more beautiful on the inside than the outside.
Even the floor tiles are over 1000 years old, taken from Roman ruins and reused.
But the crowning glory is the massive pipe organ, the largest in Europe, and in the top five in the world.
It currently has 17,794 pipes and 233 registers, and is played from six consoles, and even better, we got to hear a concert after lunch.
Or maybe I should say after ‘dessert’, since that’s what we had. Jan had the Cherry Cheese Strudel with Vanilla Ice Cream
and I had the Apple Strudel with Vanilla Sauce.
Delicious!
There are very few free toilets in Budapest or Germany, but less so in Germany. You either pay .50 € or 1 €, or you buy something in a restaurant. But this little old lady had a real scam going by setting up right in front of the ‘WC’ next to the cathedral.
Many of these have an attendant to give change, or a change machine, but this one didn’t. So if you had to go really bad, you bought a postcard or a trinket to get some change.
Nice racket!
When we got back into the church for the concert, we were warned that there was no recording allowed. But obviously someone did record it, and you can listen to the opening piece here on YouTube.
And it was all I could do to not laugh out loud on the first few notes. It was Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, probably one of the most recognizable openings in classical music, except maybe for Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
But that wasn’t the funny part. Here we are in definitive ‘Dracula’ country, and this the definitive Dracula theme song. So much so that if you Google ‘Dracula music, this piece comes up.
The organ has one pipe that’s about 2 feet across and puts out a note at 16Hz. It seems to make the air in your lungs vibrate, and you feel it as much as hear it.
They also have a pipe that’s about 1/4 inch across that puts out 16kHz, so pretty much only young kids and probably young dogs can actually hear it. I certainly can’t, but it does make my ears itch.
Dinner back on the ship was as delicious as usual, with my Angus Ribeye with double veggies, and no fries.
Gotta try to cut back somehow.
Jan got one of her favorites, the Roasted Chicken.
Next up: Regensburg, Germany
Thought For The Day:
Melk with a Side of HCQ . . .
I’m sure most of you have seen posts from people who they’re staying at home until there’s a vaccine available. But what if it takes 5 years, or even never.
Check out this article about the problems with waiting for a WuFlu vaccine.
And of course there’s all the talk about rushing a vaccine into production by the end of the year. Well, that didn’t work out all that well back in 1976-77 with the first Swine Flu epidemic. Check out this Smithsonian magazine article from 3 years ago covering the problems that can occur when you ‘rush’ a vaccine into use.
And here’s a couple of articles about how HCQ is being used to good effect in other countries.
Here’s a nice article about how well HCQ is working in India, the largest manufacturer of HCQ in the world.
In Cameroon, chloroquine therapy hailed by French expert becomes state protocol
And here in the U.S. South Dakota will be First State with a Hydroxychloroquine Statewide Clinical Trial to Help Fight COVID-19
I’ve talked several times before about how the predicted seasonal flu has just dropped off the map. Originally forecast to be worse than normal, with 65,000 to 70,000 deaths, it’s now listed as being about 24,000 and holding.
So where did it go?
Did it just fade away, or is the WuFlu now killing what would have previously been seasonal flu victims, or are seasonal flu deaths being attributed to WuFlu because of the increased government payments?
You decide.
Less than 1% of New York City Coronavirus Fatalities (0.61%) had NO Underlying Health Conditions
Remember that over 1/3 of WuFlu deaths in the U.S. are in NYC, and half of those were in nursing homes. So stay away from NYC nursing homes and you’re pretty safe.
We’ve all seen various totals for the people who are infected with the Wuhanic Plague, but have few or no (asymptomatic) symptoms. Percentages range from 20-25% of the population, (the low end range) to the one most quoted, 80-85%.
White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx told Fox News on Saturday night that the U.S. significantly underestimated the number of asymptomatic cases that existed of the coronavirus.
And in a recent series of testings at three separate federal prisons showed 95% of the inmates tested positive for WuFlu. Significant by itself, but where it really matters is when you started figuring the WuFlu’s mortality rate.
Right now we have about 1.2 million cases with 68,500 deaths, which comes out about a 6% fatality rate. Pretty high. But now what if we figure in a estimate for the few/no symptom people into the mix?
Let’s take median between the 85% and 95%, so 90%. That means the 1.2 million cases we know about really total 12,000,000 cases. So that gives you 0.0057 or a 0.6% mortality rate, a lot smaller. In fact, now you’re starting to get into seasonal flu rates.
And finishing up, here’s another article about how important good Vitamin D levels are in fighting off the WuFlu.
As I mentioned before, Jan and I take 10,000 i.u. of D3 daily.
And now for something completely different.
One Year Ago Today: We were in Melk, Austria
“Ve Know Vher . . .
Melk, Austria 5/3/2019
Our ship left Vienna last night a little before 11pm and when we went up to breakfast this morning at 7am, it was very foggy, with castle after castle appearing out of the mist.
Even this one, that I’m pretty sure must have been home to Dracula at one time. Perched high on a mountain crag, and partially obscured by the clouds, he certainly would have felt right at home.
Especially since it looks like the only way to get up there is by bat.
And of course the many churches. Many, many churches. Just church after church after church.
It’s amazing they had time to do anything else besides build churches. And FWIW these are all in the Baroque style.
We arrived in Melk about 11am, and after lunch, we were off on our excursion to the Melk Abbey, possibly the most famous Abbey in Austria. And that’s really saying a lot since there’s a heck of a lot of abbeys over here.
And it becomes more impressive the closer you get.
Amazingly this place has been an functioning Benedictine abbey for over 900 years.
Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos inside the abbey, but obviously somebody was, or did anyway, since there are photos all over the Internet of it. So I thought I would share some of those.
It’s really hard to express how beautiful this place, almost overwhelmingly so. But two things bothered me about the visit.
First, they have added some sort of multi-media event, telling you about what you’re seeing, but mostly it seems to concentrate on the present Bishop and his background. The whole thing really clashed with the rest of the tour.
Second, adding even more to the ‘tourist attraction’ feel, is that you exit the tour . . . through the gift shop.
Getting back to the drop-off point for the 200 yard walk back to where our ship was docked, we noticed the high water marks from the Danube flooding the area.
Especially interesting was the one from August 15, 1501. Everything is OLD around here, even the floods.
And just behind this restaurant was a small RV park.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to check out the pedestals to see about the hookups, but we were running late getting back to the ship. But we’ve noticed a number of small RV parks along the river as we’ve cruised.
The Skirnir cast off about 4pm heading up the Danube to our next port of call, Passau. And it didn’t bode well that within the hour it was raining fairly hard.
Dinner tonight was with our usual group, and as usual, was delicious.
We started off with a real favorite of ours, a Wedge Salad.
And when they put bacon on theirs, it’s two whole strips, not some measly crumbles.
For the entrée, Jan had the Broiled Herb Marinated Jumbo Shrimp with Baby Vegetables,
while I got the Krustenbraten, which is Crispy Pork Loin, marinated in beer, with potato pancakes and Steamed Cabbage.
Then for dessert we both got the Lime Cake, with white chocolate and raspberry sauce.
This place is dangerous to your waistline.
You would swear that the 3 other couples at our tables, and ourselves, were all RVer’s since the staff pretty much have to close down the dining room around us because we’re having so much fun. Of course the free-flowing wine may have something to do with that.
I have become so frustrated trying to use my new laptop with only built-in touchpad, that I had been trying to find a mouse for it. When I bought it in Budapest, the dealer tried to sell me one, and I should have bought it. But I had forgotten how irritating it is to use only the touchpad.
And I hadn’t had any luck locating a computer store near any of our stops to pick one up, so I ask Guest Services if they might had a spare that I could borrow, and they said they would check.
And when I went by later, Monika, the purser, a 6 ft. tall blonde, just handed me one. When I ask if I needed to sign anything, her voice dropped from her lilting Scandinavian accent into a guttural German one as she said, “Ve know vher you live’. And then she smiled.
So I’m not taking any chances. I’m definitely be returning it before we disembark.
More Tomorrow from the Blue (grayish-green) Danube.
Thought For The Day:
I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.
~Thomas Jefferson
gh
