Month: May 2020

Viral Load

Disaster, Health

…or, as I called it a few days back, dosage, gets a more technical examination here (the linked article, by the way, is very dense reading, but I urge everyone to plow through it anyway.  You may learn something that prevents you from getting infected).  A sample:

What evidence do we have that viral load matters?

Three classes of evidence seem strong.

The first is that we have a strong mechanism story we can tell. Viruses take time to multiply. When the immune system detects a virus it responds. If your initial viral load is low your immune system gets a head start, so you do better.

The second category is the terrible outcomes in health care workers on the front lines. Those who are dealing with the crisis first hand are dealing with lots of intense exposures to the virus. When they do catch it, they are experiencing high death rates. High viral load is the only theory I know about so far for why this is the case. Their cases are presumably handled at least as well as others, in terms of detection, testing, treatment and what the infected do themselves. The only other issue I can think of is that they might be reluctant to rest given how urgently their help is needed.

The third category is historical precedents.

Parents infected their children with what they hoped was exactly the minimum dose [of smallpox] required to get them sick enough to develop antibodies and gain immunity. Sometimes this went wrong and the child would get sick. Thus this form of inoculation was dangerous and 1%-2% of patients died. But of those who got smallpox infections in other ways, 20%-30% of patients died. Those rates are well established.

I should point out that Doc Russia, who as an ER doctor has been treating Chinkvirus patients almost daily, fully expected to catch the virus himself, but so far [crossing fingers]  hasn’t.  All I can think of is that because his hospitals (he works in several) don’t have that many infectees compared to those in, say, London or New York, his aggregate exposure is low;  that, his age outside the at-risk group, plus his fanatical adherence to commonsense protective measures, has probably kept him well.  Which leads to the other major point in the above linked article:

The default model is that the longer and more closely you interact with an infected person, especially a symptomatic infected person, the larger your viral load.

In-household infections are presumed to be high viral load, as in the case of measles. So would be catching the infection while treating patients.

Most out-of-household infections that aren’t health care related are presumed to be low viral load. Anything outdoors is probably low viral load. Most methods that involve surfaces are probably low viral load. Infection via the air from someone there half an hour ago, to the extent this is a thing, is low viral load. Quick interactions with asymptomatic individuals are probably low viral load.

I should point out that the above are observations based on admittedly-poor data, but as we know that the level of dosage/viral load is critical in other diseases (measles, smallpox, SARS etc.), it’s not a bad deduction to assume that it’s true also of the Chinkvirus.

As with all decisions in life, the key to decision-making is risk assessment and odds-calculation.  Use all the above accordingly, as you plan your daily life.

Replacement Judges

Legal Stuff

I see that SCOTUS libjudge Ruth Ginsburg is in hospital again.  I’m not going to do what the Left does, and start gleefully death-wishing her, but at the same time we need to be cognizant of the fact that at some point we’re going to need a replacement for the old Trot.  But I am heartily sick of judges who appear conservative, but who when appointed to SCOTUS suddenly turn into Ginsburg Lite (e.g. Roberts and Kavanaugh).

So to add to the list of whomever God-Emperor Trump has on his prospect list, allow me to add these thoughts on the qualified candidates.

  • I want a fire-breathin’, gun-totin’, huntin’ and fishin’ red-blooded judge who doesn’t care much for modernity.
  • I don’t just want him to be a Constitutional constructionist — I want him to think that most Constitutional Amendments with a number greater than 10 should be fair game (especially the fucking 16th and 17th).
  • When listening to lawyers debate any People vs. [government] or vice versa cases, I want the first question put to the government’s lawyer to be:  “Show me where in the Constitution it says the government can do exactly that.”
  • I want his guiding principle to be the question:  “What would Jefferson, Adams or Washington think of this situation?” and direct his clerks to find the relevant writings to support the answer.

Feel free to add your proposed litmus tests to the above.

Sensible Enough

Travels

I note that some of the Euro airlines are going to mandate that passengers wear face masks for the entire journey, which seems somewhat excessive given that they’ve (finally) got round to installing HEPA air filters to clean the recirculated air.

The main danger of infection is not through the air, but in touching the surfaces inside the aircraft — given how shoddily these are typically cleaned, if at all.

Based on thousands of hours imprisoned in these winged cigar tubes, I would suggest that what people really need to do is carry many sterilized wipes with them, and clean as thoroughly as possible areas like seatbelt buckles, tray tables and armrests — the places that people touch with their filthy hands and (yes) feet.

Oh, and ALWAYS bring your own food, especially on long-haul flights (I wrote about my choices here).  That way, you’re assured of eating exactly what you want and not being compelled by hunger to eat airline food [pause to let the nausea go away]  and even have emergency food if you’re stuck on the plane or in the airport for longer than expected.

If you have to fly, that is.  I don’t see myself doing so until next year.  (Mr. Free Market has hinted at a high-bird shoot in Dorset in Fall 2021…)

No Business Sense

Business, Marketing / Advertising

Here’s a situation which left me scratching my head:

The managing director of a plant wholesaler said his firm has lost more than £2.5million-worth of business in the last three months after garden centres were forced to close as part of the coronavirus lockdown.  Adrian Marskell, who runs The Bransford Webbs Plant Company in Worcester, in the West Midlands, has had to begin throwing away around 100,000 flowering plants which cannot be sold.  Shocking photos show mountains of de-potted plants waiting to be composted, with others sitting in colourful rows, all destined to be thrown away.

I would have done something a little different.

Why not load up the plants in the back of a truck, then drive around all the residential streets in Worcester, depositing two or three plants at a time in front of houses, with a note attached:

“Rather than toss all these lovely plants in the skip, we’d rather they found a good home in your garden instead.  Please accept them with our compliments, and we hope to see you all when the lockdown comes to an end.”
— Bransford Webbs Plant Company

And come tax filing time, I’d write off the cost of the plants as an advertising expense.

No doubt, this being Britishland, there’s some law against doing all that.

Racial Preferences

Business, Two-Minute Hate

My first job as a teenager was as a computer operator at a large corporation, part of an expansion of the IT department’s mainframe system.  There was one other White male operator, and an Indian guy was the department supervisor.   As more operators were hired, all were Indians (coincidentally, all from the supervisor’s home city in India).

Within six months, I and the other White operator had been replaced by two Indians.

Several years ago, I knew a highly-respected senior executive at a huge multinational corporation who once attended a meeting with the IT department.  This having happened when globalism was all the rage, it will come as no surprise that almost all the people in the meeting were Indian men — and not one of them second-generation American, either:  all were recent immigrants.

Anyway, as the meeting went on, the language increasingly turned into Hindi — this in a company which insisted on English as its global language in all correspondence and conversation — and when my friend insisted that everyone speak English, the atmosphere turned hostile.  “But we understand each other better in our native language!” was the protest, whereupon my friend, not known for her tact, said, “Then you should have stayed in India, where everyone understands your home language.  Unfortunately for you, we’re in America, this is an American company, and our corporate language is English.”

Half an hour after the meeting’s conclusion, she was summoned to H.R., officially reprimanded for “cultural insensitivity”, and told to watch herself in future.

So she filed a formal complaint against H.R. for not enforcing corporate policy and (deliciously) adding that one of the men had referred to her as a “stupid bitch” during the meeting — unfortunately for him, one of the few Hindi expressions she understood — and she filed a complaint against him for sexual harassment.  He was “reassigned” to another division a week later, and the H.R. flunky was also officially reprimanded, by Legal this time.

It didn’t matter, though;  over time, the entire IT department became staffed by Indians, all H-1B visa holders.

It is a little-known fact of corporate life — not just here in the U.S., but in Britain as well, that unless checked, Indians will always hire other Indians, and if they can, they’ll displace non-Indians in order to do so.

And this is why I understand exactly what is going on in this little situation:

An Indian-run outsourcing company used Congress’s H-1B visa-worker program to systematically discriminate against American college graduates, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in New Jersey.
The company, named Wipro, “operates under a general policy of discrimination in favor of [imported] South Asians and against [American] individuals who are not South Asian and not Indian,” says the lawsuit, which was filed in New Jersey.
…
U.S. executives strongly favor outsourcing because it makes work easier for CEOs and H.R. managers, the Americans say to Breitbart News. The Indian workforces are easy to hire and fire, they don’t complain to managers, they do not make professional arguments against executives’ decisions, and they allow kickbacks via India or ancillary U.S. businesses, the Americans say.

Lovely, isn’t it?

I hope that this open secret gets whacked, and fast — and if it does, at least one good thing will have emerged from the Chinkvirus pandemic, as the massive job losses we’ve sustained have brought practices such as these to everyone’s attention.

And don’t let anyone get sidetracked into thinking that this comes from racial animus against Indians — because it’s the exact opposite:  Indians are discriminating against Whites, and as much as they might claim that this is all in the service of the great god “Cost-Cutting”, they’re lying.  It’s a way to get Indians hired, and a way to get tech expertise back to India.  (If you think I’m exaggerating, please prove me wrong by showing me the statistics proving that a large majority of Indian H-1Bs do not return to India, and go on to become U.S. citizens.  Good luck with that.)  It’s absolutely no different from the ChiComs infiltrating U.S. universities and taking expertise out of the country and back to China.

I hope that Wipro gets sued out of existence.

News Roundup

Bad News

…with even shorter commentary than usual!


…but what would really upset them would be the number of volunteers to man the firing squads.  And considering they’re all on the ChiCom payroll….


…of course we do.  So we can get lots more of this kind of thing: 
…

…and a special message to the has-beens known as the Bush Dynasty:  shut the fuck up.


…and you’ve gotta see the pic.


…because Communism is SO civilized… you murderous cocksuckers.  And:


…at a rough guess, pretty much everything they said, including “and” and “the”.


…and for the first time ever, I’m envious of the Danes.


…I always knew he didn’t kill himself.  From the funniest website since the Babylon Bee.


…LOL.  Cue Big Education’s screams of outrage as their lies are exposed, in 3… 2… 1…


…and when he recited his wedding vows,  still no one could understand what he was saying.


…hey, no fair, wait a minute:  did Republicans have a plan B when John McCain became their frontrunner?


…okay, stop laughing now, this is serious.