Thank Those Horrible No Good White European Cultures and The Doctors They Produced That You Haven’t Died from Pneumonia or Tuberculosis

Posted: October 26, 2022 by datechguy in culture, medicine
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As I sit on my couch on the 4th day of antibiotics for Pneumonia coughing up interesting green patterns I found myself contemplating how people handled the disease prior to antibiotics.

I did some searching and it didn’t take me very long to figure out just how damn lucky I am to have been born in 1963 rather than 1863.

I looked up Pneumonia, it’s been known since early Greek Civilization and discovered that one in four used to die from it. In fact from 1917 to my mother’s death in 2012 a Mass was said on the feast of St. John the Baptist by my family in payment of a vow made by my grandmother for the recovery of my infant Uncle John from the disease

Fortunately for the world those horrible terrible no good imperialistic White European scientists were on the case:

A novel technique called antiserum therapy soon began, and by 1913, anti-pneumococcal serum therapy, if given early in disease progression, was able to reduce mortality from 25% to 7.5%. However, this treatment method was slow, costly, and time-consuming.

On Sunday my Nurse practitioner had quipped that Pneumonia had been going around and most of the people she saw that weekend had caught it. I thought about the people I saw coming and going from Urgent care that day and imagined one if four doomed to die from it.

In the 1930s, the first antibacterial agent,. Although sulfapyridine gained a lot of notoriety when it was used to treat Winston Churchill’s bacterial pneumonia in 1942, this agent was quickly set aside upon the discovery of the antibiotic penicillin in the early 1940s.

By 1977 a vaccine was introduced by 2000 a 2nd which could protect against even some antibiotic resistant strains was created. While people still die of Pneumonia today particularly in third world countries for a person like me in America while I have to deal with the cough and aches my biggest worry barring complications is if I have enough vacation and sick days left to cover the time I’m off.

Of course if in the days of my grandparents all born in the 1800’s Pneumonia boasted it was the “Captain of the men of death” Tuberculosis could turn to it and say: “Hold my beer”

TB known also as consumption till about 100 years ago like Pneumonia is an old disease. There were indications of the disease in Egyptian mummies and written records from China, India, and Ancient Israel. In Ancient Greece the disease was well known and even if you lived in an empire where the sun never set in the mid 1800’s it didn’t mean much to TB

In 1838-39, up to a third of English tradesmen and employees died of TB, whereas the same proportion decreased to a sixth in the upper class

Just a reminder in 1838 England was the most developed nation in the history of the world and one sixth of their ELITES died from Consumption.

It ravaged populations an example:

By the beginning of the 19th century, tuberculosis, or “consumption,” had killed one in seven of all people that had ever lived. Victims suffered from hacking, bloody coughs, debilitating pain in the lungs and fatigue

Run that through your head for a moment.

For thousands of years TB slaughtered populations, but fortunately for the world those horrible terrible no good imperialistic white European scientists were on the job:

The famous scientist Robert Koch was able to isolate the tubercle bacillus. Using the methylene blue staining recommended by Paul Ehrlich, he identified, isolated and cultivated the bacillus in animal serum. Finally he reproduced the disease by inoculating the bacillus into laboratory animals.

Robert Koch presented this extraordinary result to the Society of Physiology in Berlin on 24 March 1882, determining a milestone in the fight against TB

In the decades following this discovery, the Pirquet and Mantoux tuberculin skin tests, Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin (BCG) vaccine, Selman Waksman streptomycin and other anti-tuberculous drugs were developed. Koch contributed also to the elucidation of the infectious etiology of TB and for his scientific results, he was awarded the Nobel prize in Medicine in 1905

Despite the efforts of these horrible white people and the vaccines and treatments they and their successors developed, TB, while not thinning the world’s herd dramatically as it once did , is still a danger killing 1.5 million each year but there is some good news:

Around five percent of the 9.5 million people who contract TB each year are resistant to commonly-prescribed antibiotics, making them difficult to treat. ​Until recently, “the situation with drug-resistant TB was horrible,” Spigelman said. ​Patients were forced to take five to eight pills a day, and often a daily injection, for up to two years, with horrible side effects and a cure rate of just 20 to 30 percent. ​But a new drug regimen BPaL, first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2019, consists of just three pills a day for six months, and has far fewer side effects and a cure rate of 90 percent, Spigelman said. ​”I think it’ll really be an amazing game-changer.”

So when you think of all the things in the world that are annoying your particularly if you are a leftist railing against microaggressions and white culture, take a moment to consider how lucky you are to be living in 2022 and if you’re really perceptive take a moment when nobody is looking to thank your lucky starts for all those horrible terrible no good imperialistic white European scientists and doctors whose work allow you to live long enough to gripe about the horror of being “misgendered” or having someone fail to use your desired pronouns in your august presence.

Closing note John Hopkins press has a book out on the subject titled Pneumonia Before Antibiotics Therapeutic Evolution and Evaluation in Twentieth-Century America by Scott H. Podolsky. If you found this post interesting you might consider it a worthwhile read.

Prager, Focus Groups and Mass Resistance and Common Ground the Dems Abandoned

Posted: October 25, 2022 by datechguy in culture, Vive L'Empereur
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Don Tomasino: Your enemies always grow strong on what you leave behind

The Godfather Part III

One of the great disadvantages of living in a bubble and censoring the narrative on social media such as twitter is that you don’t realize how out of touch with reality you might be.

Dennis Prager noted an example of this in a recent piece

In Philadelphia, prior to the evening event, I did what I do in virtually every city in which I speak: smoked a cigar at a local cigar lounge. I would not be surprised if I have visited more cigar bars than anyone outside the cigar industry.

I then took an Uber to the venue.

My driver was a black man, and as I almost always do with strangers, I engaged in conversation with him.

If you believe the left you would think a black man in Philly would be all in on the Democrat agenda, but when he told him he was going to give a talk on the collapse of western civilization he got a surprise:

“Oh, man, do I ever agree with you! This wokeness, this censorship of speech is destroying us.” He went on and on about the woke threat to America and the West so eloquently, I thought about inviting him to speak alongside me and my colleagues.

He sat him in the front row and he got a standing O.

Meanwhile CBS was putting together a focus group with a Democrat, a Republican and an Independent on issues, and came up shocked:

The discussion, moderated by anchor Margaret Brennan, started off pretty tame and predictable, with participants describing the effects of a sputtering economy, inflation, and high gas prices on their own lives. But when the topic turned to raising children in America, even Brennan seemed surprised by the level of agreement.

And that reveals something that the left has not figured out.

The woke drag queen story hour business of the left, the cancel culture the pronoun madness and the inability of people to define a woman might be big in the University, or in Hollywood or in a specific niche of supporter but among normal people this is not and has not been so.

People as a rule ignore this stuff because they don’t want to deal with this nonsense, and for years it flourished quietly but some were not silent, namely a group called Mass Resistance

While Pilloried by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and other left wing sites they pushed forward ignoring the attacks and shining a light when others ran for cover. and do so today when groups sponsored by GLSEN pushes the idea that parents are a danger to their own children and must be excluded.

 “Isn’t it better to work with parents and keep them in the loop? I don’t understand why you would want to keep secrets from parents.”

GLSEN staffer claims that parents endanger the child: The GLSEN staffer basically answered that telling the parent puts a child “at risk.” She said, “A lot of students are not living in safe situations. So you want to be affirming in the classroom so that the student is able to learn and not putting the child at risk at home.” She said that if a child hasn’t “outed” himself to his parents, then the teacher is careful not to tell the parent. This includes not using the child’s “preferred” name and pronoun in front of the parent if the parent doesn’t already support that. In other words, the teacher makes a judgment that the parent is a possible danger to the child.

Response from MassResistance mother: She immediately responded: But they are the parents! If their child is thinking about these things and is going through a “transition period,” they need to be brought in because it’s their child. They’re responsible for the child, the whole package. They’re part of the child’s world. So if you’re working with a student, you should also be working with the parent.

The lesbian teacher uses more LGBT talking points: The lesbian teacher answered by doubling down on the well-crafted (and offensive) LGBT talking points about parents being possibly dangerous to their kids.

The reality is that these folks pushing the idea that parents are dangerous to their own children is not one held by normal people, but the Democrat left having pressured corporations and taken power in their own niche bubbles came to believe that this could be pushed to parents of children without opposition of consequence because of the natural apathy of man.

That men are men, that women are women and can’t change their gender by a declaration, that kids shouldn’t be sexualized or have sexually explicit material pushed on this in schools and that kids can not consent to be spayed, surgically altered or given hormones on their own are beliefs that were so universal that they did not need to be stated aloud.

What the left hasn’t figured out if that Niche groups not withstanding among the general public of the west these views are only slightly less universal then they were 20 30, 50 or 100 years ago.

It’s not on It’s taken nearly twenty years but the people who were once willing to ignore this have had all they can stand, they can’t stand no more and more importantly the GOP who for years would at best follow has finally found those who might lead.

The left decided to leave normalcy behind and in two week they will find out just how strong the GOP has become by embracing it.

A wake-up call in China

Posted: October 25, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Many analysts are wringing their hands about the elevation of Chinese President Xi Jinping to an unprecedented third term as head of the Beijing government.

The United States should worry about his intentions because Xi has made it clear that he’s a bad guy. Our government has failed to see that in Chinese leaders like Xi since we have played footsy with them over the last 50 years, hoping to make friends and allowing them to steal, murder, and pillage at home and abroad.

During the four summers I traveled all over China, I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The Chinese build stuff well, particularly roads and bridges. But the country has overbuilt high rises in an investment boom, leaving many vacant apartment complexes.

I remember one Chinese guide asking me: Do you know the Chinese national bird? The crane. The construction crane.

Because of the overbuilding inside China, jobs had to be found for trained construction workers. That helped to create the Belt and Road campaign—a mixture of exporting jobs and gaining allies with massive building projects worldwide. Instead, many developing nations owe Beijing billions of dollars from loans, creating far less benefit than Xi wanted.

Many of my students came from wealthy families who made their money in the private sector. Xi has moved away from the recent trend toward capitalism, potentially alienating those with money.

Although the Communist Party holds almost absolute control over the people, few become members. Virtually all my students hated the mandatory class in the philosophy of Mao, which is required in all universities.

Although the Communist government doesn’t tolerate political dissent, there seems to be a growing resentment of President Xi, particularly after his total clampdown during COVID. Nevertheless, dissidents have become more public, particularly outside the mainland.

More importantly, Xi pushed out or passed over many influential people inside the party. It will be challenging to determine how his actions in the party may ultimately hurt him, mainly since his new economic team seems quite unprepared for the road ahead.

That lack of confidence sent the New York and Chinese markets spiraling downward within hours of Xi’s ascendance.

China also faces some internal economic woes. The one-child policy, which was only recently changed, has left China with an aging population with huge benefits and a dwindling younger population that want office jobs rather than assembly line work.

Although the Chinese military buildup, particularly air and naval, should concern the United States, China hasn’t fought a war in decades. That means no one at the top of the military food chain has experienced the fog of war. That’s a huge minus for China—one quite like what we’re seeing with Russia in Ukraine.

Perhaps most important, the United States knows China is an enemy—not a friend. That’s an important realization. We cannot depend on China for critical minerals. We cannot rely on shipments of anything from China, as we saw during the supply line crisis during COVID.

All told, the elevation of President Xi should worry the United States. But it also serves as a needed wake-up call.

Report from Louisiana: Low Water

Posted: October 24, 2022 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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Low water in the Atchafalaya Basin: all that green? That should be well under water.

By: Pat Austin

ARNAUDVILLE LA – We have been in south Louisiana this week, around the Atchafalaya Basin which is absolutely the lowest I’ve seen in years. There is dry land out there where I have never seen dry land before. It is much the topic of conversation around here; for some, the fishing is great because of this. Others lament cancelled cruises and others worry about the effects on their businesses.

It is a bit shocking to see dry, cracked land and cypress stumps that have previously been completely under water.IA large part of this is due to the ongoing drought throughout the entire country which has resulted in low water in the Mississippi River.

Everything is connected.

No rain throughout the country means water levels in the northern end of the river are the lowest since 1988. Down closer to the Gulf, it is reaching 2012 low water levels. This is all problematic because now barges struggle to get through the river. Fewer barges can go through and the barges must carry lighter loads. Barges that ignore the low-water restrictions find themselves grounded, stuck in mud. Supply chain disruptions are the result.

The USS Kidd, a WWII era destroyer and now museum and tourist attraction, sits on dry land in Baton Rouge due to the low water.

Low water in the Mississippi means low water in the Atchafalaya Basin. This affects the fishing and seafood industry, tourism industry, and much more.

There is precious little humans can do about all of this; what is needed is rain, of course. Jeff Graschel of the National Weather Service explains:

“There’s not any long-range models that are giving us any occasions for rainfall that’ll generate runoff to help and alleviate low-water conditions right now,” he said. “Obviously everybody’s watching that very closely.”

He explained that the rain would need to occur in the upper section of the river valley, such as Illinois, for the effects to be felt further south. Rain that falls in south Louisiana does not drain through the Mississippi, save for what lands directly in the river.

For now, all anyone can do is wait for rain.

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