We Have Been Brainwashed!
Saturday, January 2, 2021
We Have Been Brainwashed!
Newt Gingrich's article on the election
Newt Gingrich's article on the election. Copied and ads cleaned up from the Washington Times.
Corona Virus and American Federalism
Corona Virus and American Federalism
One of the criticisms of President Trump and his
administration is that they did not act quickly and decisively enough to stop
the spread of the corona virus in the U.S. in the early stages of the
pandemic. These critics say that the
Trump administration used our American federalism as an excuse for lack of a cohesive
national Covid-19 response plan. Without
referencing what our national, state and local federalism comprises, the
leftist democrats used the lack of a dictatorial national corona virus plan
against Trump in the election to blame him for the virus. Obviously this one of many, democrat dirty
tricks worked. The gullible public went
baa—aa, and ate it up. In the meantime,
the same unscrupulous democrats “cooked the books” just enough in the swing states,
to elect “Basement Joe Biden”.
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Baaa-aa!
Baaa-aa!
Saturday, December 26, 2020
“The Good Old Days”
“The
Good Old Days”
As American cities industrialized throughout
the nineteenth century, infectious diseases emerged as a real threat. The
introduction of new immigrants and the growth of large urban areas allowed
previously localized diseases to spread quickly and infect larger populations.
Towns grew into cities as industrialization sparked urban migration from rural
communities in both the United States and Europe. The increased demand for
cheap housing by urban migrants led to poorly built homes that inadequately
provided for personal hygiene. Immigrant workers in the nineteenth century
often lived in cramped tenement housing that regularly lacked basic amenities
such as running water, ventilation, and toilets. These conditions were ideal
for the spread of bacteria and infectious diseases. Without organized
sanitation systems, bacteria easily passed from person to person through the
water and sewage. As a result, many of America’s largest urban areas like New
York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC fell prey to a rash of infectious
diseases in the middle and end of the nineteenth century.
Large waves of immigration in the nineteenth
century, made New York City America’s largest and most diverse city, but also
its most unhealthy, as the large spike in population made it more susceptible
to disease.16 Compared to other large urban areas, such as Boston or
Philadelphia, New York’s death rate due to disease was considerably higher.17
It was not until the middle of the century that New Yorkers realized that their
poor living conditions might be the cause of the city’s poor health. By the
1840s, high rates of disease were ascribed to the housing many of New York’s
poverty-stricken immigrants lived in. Fear spread that while disease was rooted
in the polluted living conditions of New York’s poorer communities, disease
could easily spread to the more well-off citizens too. Public health officials
realized that the city’s soiled streets and polluted sewers were a health risk
to all New Yorkers.18 In the mid-nineteenth century, New York possessed a
primitive sewage system. Poorly planned sewers spanned the city, but most
citizens’ homes did not connect to these pipes. Instead, most New Yorkers
relied on outdoor outhouses and privies. These outhouses were usually poorly
maintained and covered in filth. Poorer families did not even have the luxury
of an outhouse. They simply dug a small trench into the ground outside of their
homes. Trenches and outhouses were both unsavory solutions as waste was rarely
removed from them and frequently flowed into the streets of the city.
These epidemics were particularly deadly to children. In 1840, almost two
percent of New York’s newborns failed to reach their first birthday. Especially
in the summer months, infants and children were extremely susceptible to
diarrheal diseases. These infections led to severe dehydration and, frequently,
death. Young adults also faced many health risks. Between 1840 and 1870, nearly
twenty-five percent of twenty-year-olds did not make it to the age of thirty.
People in their twenties were often the most exposed to infectious diseases
because of the long hours and dirty conditions they were expected to work in.
The high death rate for children and young adults also had an impact on how
nineteenth-century parents planned their families. Urban families realized that
most likely at least one of their children would not reach the age of five. It
was even more unlikely that parents would have most of their children survive
their twenties to have children of their own. As a result, many working-class
families adopted a sense of fatalism and planned on having large families so
that at least some of their children would survive.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century,
people sought to better understand and manage infectious diseases. A large part
of this process was the widespread acceptance of germ theory.25 It was evident
that poor living conditions—polluted water, overcrowding, spoiled food,
etc.—were contributing to the spread of disease, but the science behind this
could not be explained. It seemed that the only way to solve New York’s health
problems was a massive investment in social programs for better housing and
sewage systems, but also an expressed emphasis on personal hygiene. By
stressing personal hygiene, however, responsibility for sickness was placed on
the individual. This caused many people to blame the poor and infected for
spreading their diseases.
It was not until the 1870s and 1880s that Americans began to realize that an
individual was not entirely to blame for the spread of disease. As scientists
analyzed transmission patterns of infectious diseases, they began to understand
how specific pathogens were the causes of specific diseases. At first, many
doctors doubted that something as small as a single bacterium could cause such
deadly diseases. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, germ theory
gained widespread acceptance in the medical community. The work of scientists
such as Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch helped convince doctors and the public
that the ideas proposed by germ theory were in fact true. Their work focused on
testing the spawning of infections from bacteria, proving that specific
pathogens were the causes of specific diseases. Convinced of the science behind
germ theory, doctors and public health officials began testing water, food, and
blood samples for traces of specific diseases. Using this data, government
officials scrapped the old plan that emphasized simply ridding cities of waste
and introduced a new strategy based on germ theory. Highlighting that diseases
were often spread by individual contact, the new public health strategy focused
on educating people on how they could prevent the transmission of diseases.
These practices included recommendations as simple as frequent hand washing and
ensuring that food was fully cooked before serving. The introduction of germ
theory shifted the focus of public health and disease prevention away from
citywide waste control towards an emphasis on personal contact and the
individual spread of disease.
“Typhoid Mary”
The most infamous case of germ theory at work
is the story of “Typhoid Mary.” Typhoid fever was a common problem in many
nineteenth-century urban areas. A water- and food-borne bacteria, the disease
spread easily and caused about a ten percent fatality rate. Typhoid typically
struck hardest in cities without proper water sanitation systems, such as New
York. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, when most American cities
had built water treatment facilities, typhoid fever was still an issue and public
health officials did not understand why. The answer was that many people
remained typhoid carriers, without showing symptoms of the disease. Carriers
showed no signs of illness themselves, but were host to the typhoid bacteria
and could spread the disease to others.
What horses left behind in the 19th century city
Without the estimated 170,000 horses pulling street
cars and delivery wagons at any given time in the late 1800s, the city would
never have become an economic powerhouse.
But all those equines created a filthy mess.
Each horse produced several pounds of manure and more than a quart of urine a
day—much of it deposited on city streets and sidewalks.
Then there was the problem of working horses
dropping dead in the street. “When a horse died, its carcass would be left to
rot until it had disintegrated enough for someone to pick up the pieces,” wrote
Rosner. “Children would play with dead horses lying in the street.”
[photo at right: the last horsecar run in the
city, July 1917, on Bleecker Street at Mercer]
The 1918 Pandemic
The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most
severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of
avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the
virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. In the United States,
it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918. It is estimated
that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became
infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50
million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.
Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65
years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the
20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic. While the 1918
H1N1 virus has been synthesized and evaluated, the properties that made it so
devastating are not well understood. With no vaccine to protect against
influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections
that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide
were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine,
good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public
gatherings, which were applied unevenly.
So, think about it. Notwithstanding the
politics, and the nonsense barraged at us daily, we can truly be grateful that
we live in our modern 21st century. Even 100 years ago, the Spanish Flu
Pandemic killed 50 million people world-wide and 675,000 in the U.S. No Trump
‘warp speed” vaccines or antibiotics or therapeutics then. People just died.
And 150 years ago, 15 years before Gottlieb
Daimler invented the automobile, if we wanted to travel somewhere, we got
our buggy whip, hitched the horse to a buggy, and off we would go through the
smelly, horseshit covered streets.
So much for “the good old days”.
Thursday, December 24, 2020
Hillbilly Elegy
Hillbilly Elegy
Monday, December 21, 2020
The China Virus as a Weapon?
The China Virus as a Weapon?