Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Coronavirus: The Plague of The 21st Century?

Its even worse than that. This morning they were interviewing city and county medical administrators. Their lives were actually being threatened. Some had quit and others were sticking with it but they were very unhappy. Their homes were also being threatened and staked out. This, apparently, was about their "freedom" to kill their neighbors because its in the constitution.

If nothing else its a great example of the 'magic' of Trump. I saw him in a meeting with his virus group. The only people wearing masks were the doctors - nobody else.

I find this all very strange. If, for instance, everybody had gotten on board when this thing started, paid attention, masked up, etc. our businesses would be up and running, as would our schools. Instead we have these freedom loons that are contributing to the ongoing virus threats and its actually getting worse! New York, that did it right, is now watching its borders for the infected getting in and starting it all over.

Seems we are people with a serious number of sel absorbed loons. OH, the masking thing was ruled on, a long time ago. The law says that masks can be enforced! Goes something like; "You don't have the right to put the lives of your neighbors at risk".

"You're not my real mom and you can't tell me what to do!" said every Karen everywhere.

Here are a couple of links to MedCram Youtube videos about a way to improve our public health management of the pandemic. They are specifically about the $1 paper strip saliva tests we could give everybody every day. They are not super sensitive, but they can tell you if you are shedding enough virus to be contagious.

MedCram 98

Interview with Dr Mina

He introduces a concept that might be new to you, which is CT. This is a log number of how much virus you are shedding. When people are at maximum contagion, they shed trillions of times as many viruses as when they are getting better. A CT of 10 would be very dangerous. A CT of 40, not at all. PCR and other high-sensitivity tests will say you are positive down at 40, when there is no chance you could give it to anybody else.

The $1 spit test anybody could run each morning at home detects CTs down to about 30. You are probably not contagious if over 20. So parents could test their kids and decide if they can go to school on a daily basis. If they are CT 31 and getting sick, they would catch it the next day before they have a chance to give it to anybody else.

The PCR tests we are running right now do yield CT numbers, but labs are not allowed to report them! And the average CT for all tests is 37. So this is the tail end of the infection when people are not contagious and quarantine for no reason. We test so little and so late, that it's almost useless. And Dr. Mina thinks it is crazy they can't report the CT number. Because you could see if people were going up or down by repeating the test in a couple of days.

It also eliminates contact tracing, which is next to useless because of all the untested and asymptomatic people, since everybody would just test every morning and self-quarantine if infectious.

This test would be the missing key to opening up the schools again.

Vitamin C increase iron absorption. So cooking spaghetti sauce with fresh tomatoes in a cast iron skillet is an ideal practice.

The problem, I suspect, is that there is nothing in it for the administration. They rarely support without that little bit. Hopefully others will run with it.

I think I heard that governors are trying to put together something to start a nationwide solution instead of what is going on right now and simply bypass the white house.

Old folks who cook spagetti sauce from scratch probably don't have bad diets. Add some meatballs to it and you don't have to mess up the seasoning on your cast iron cookware with acidic foods. Add some onion and it's loaded with quercetin. Iron is readily available. Zinc is easy to get. Quercetin is in everything except meat.

But the more processed the food is the less nutritious it is. Most of the food in grocery stores today are heavily processed and that's what most of America is eating. About the same as the gruel fed to those child laborers with rickets.

I've really been enjoying a lot of pizza made from scratch lately. All my ingredients can either sit in quarantine for a few days, or be washed with detergent and hot water before going in the fridge. Fresh dough from the bread machine, bottled pasta sauce, pepperoni from Amazon, onions, and mozzarella.

Speaking of pizza (not as good as yours), we have begun making pellets from local woody biomass to be used as feedstock for the pyrolyzer/boilers, and using a Charbecue to test out their energy content. The test consists of "burning" a cylinder load of different pellet formulations at set primary and secondary air settings while cooking a frozen pizza for lunch. We monitor the kettle barbecue temperature and the duration of the burn to assess the energy content of the pellets. Also tracked are bulk density and moisture content.

You are certainly welcome to participate, if you bring some pizzas...

Always good to do real Science, while looking after staff culinary needs. When my wife worked at the County Vets office, chicken farmers would bring in 20 or so birds for herd health checks every month. If they passed (which they always did) the techs had a barbeque out back.

2nd High School Closed in Georgia

Exactly as I predicted: When they do find cases, those people have been in contact with so many others, they have to quarantine so many students and staff it isn't work keeping the school open. They are out for two weeks, then they all come back. Rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. It would not be nearly as bad if they made everybody wear masks. Also it looks like people wearing masks who do get it, have milder cases because they inhale less virus.

In-person school is not going to work until everybody does those $1 tests every morning. But the big news will be the Sturgis mass extinction event coming to fruition in about three weeks. The good news, is you should be able to get a very good deal on a motorcycle from their executors or heirs.