Ivermectin As A Cure For Covid? Don’t Be Daft, But…

 General  No Responses »
Aug 282021
 

There’s a bunch of idiots currently poisoning themselves by taking Ivermectin as a cure or preventative for Covid-19. Which is doubly-dumb because not only is there no real evidence that ivermectin will do anything to deal with Covid-19, but these idiots are all too frequently getting their dose from horse-worming medication because the stocks of ivermectin for people has all run out.

Yes you read that right ivermectin is an approved medication for people when the dosage is appropriate. But it is not approved for treating Covid-19; it is intended to treat parasites.

And nobody with any sense would suggest ivermectin paste intended for use on horses :-

  1. The dose of ivermectin for a 700Kg horse is way higher than for a person who typically weighs under 100Kg. And yes the weight makes a difference – LD50 is the measure of how poisonous a drug is, which is specified per kilogram of the subject’s weight.
  2. An oral preparation of a drug for a horse may well contain ingredients not suitable for people.

So taking ivermectin without checking the ingredients and adjusting the dosage is really dumb especially when taking it for something it hasn’t been shown to be effective for.

And don’t take the advice of random strangers on the Internet; some of us aren’t qualified as pharmacists. Consult proper experts.

Setting Sail

To All Those Mask Refuseniks

 General  No Responses »
Aug 062020
 

You do realise that most of you come across like particularly annoying toddlers throwing a tantrum because they let go of the balloon and it went away?

The scientific evidence for the efficacy of wearing masks is conclusive – simple cloth masks help stop the spread of droplets released when coughing (a common Covid-19 symptom), sneezing (Covid-19 hasn’t stopped hay-fever), or even breathing.

No, they’re not as effective as N95 masks, neither are they capable of stopping a virus running around on its own. But they don’t commonly do that. Viruses are commonly clumped into ‘water’ droplets and even the most basic cloth mask will stop most of those getting through – and it doesn’t have to be 100% effective (or ‘certified’) to be a good defense against the virus.

Masks are probably most effective at stopping the already infected from releasing huge clouds of Covid-19 infested water droplets wherever they go.

And even if you don’t believe in the masks, going to a place (a shop, public transport, etc.) where masks are required and refusing to wear a mask is the sign of a self-important little idiot. Either wear the mask or don’t use the relevant services.

Toward The Sea

Those Evil Pub Go-ers

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jul 112020
 

So the pubs have re-opened and our media is full of images of rowdy crowds busy drinking and blithely ignoring social distancing recommendations. And “more sensible” people are reacting by claiming that it was too soon to re-open pubs.

Well, … perhaps.

It was always inevitable that re-opening the pubs was going to be met with a bit of a major drinking session, but was it really as bad as it was portrayed? Whilst I do not have figures (and this anecdote only applies to one of many locations), I got the impression that Saturday night was much quieter than you might expect.

I live on a busy road that whilst does not have many drinking establishments (four plus four licensed restaurants), is often used by city centre drinkers on their way home. Saturday nights are usually quite lively, and special occasion Saturday nights can be quite rowdy. And this Saturday night didn’t seem as busy as an ordinary Saturday night.

What we do not see are the pictures of less controversial pub gatherings where social distancing is observed. Whilst the daft went out in droves on Saturday night, many people did not go out.

There are many different kinds of pubs – to give just two examples, there are the city centre “party pubs” and there are the quiet country pubs with a beer garden. And yes a pub can be more than one kind at different times.

Crowding into a busy city centre pub with lots of people on their way to getting quite sloshed is a relatively high risk activity; having a quiet drink with one or two others in a beer garden is a relatively low risk activity.

It is quite possible – indeed likely – that the daft people who went out on Saturday night are already participating in relatively high risk activities. So opening the pubs may only be increasing the risk of more infections only slightly.

And given the other side of opening pubs – business survival, jobs for those who work in pubs, and the ability of us all to pop into a quiet pub at the end of a long walk (or similar), why not?

It’s Not Fucking “Chinese Flu”

 General  No Responses »
Mar 152020
 

Those of a sensitive disposition may want to read elsewhere – I’m going to get a bit sweary because this gets my goat. And I’ll be using three little words (or at least one of them) that were previously used (a century ago) to refer to the learning disabled; they no longer refer to them and there is no association between my use of those words and the learning disabled. Besides what other word can you use alongside ‘racist’ other than ‘retarded’? Having said all that, let’s get to it :-

It’s not flu.

Every time you call it that, there are microbiologists banging their head against the wall in woe. And those guys have important things to be getting on with – don’t distract them by making them bang their head against the wall.

Now don’t get distracted by all the weird looking scientific names here – we’re only interested in the distance between a random flu and Covid-19. Count the connected circles between them – there’s fourteen. You are probably more closely related to a fruit-fly than a random influenza virus is to Covid-19.

Having had this season’s flu is no more protection against Covid-19 than wearing heavy boots would protect you from a poke in the eye. 

It’s not fucking Chinese.

The WHO prohibits naming diseases after locations (amongst several other prohibitions) and it is not difficult to see why.

Take “Spanish flu” (the 1918 flu pandemic) as an example – it became known as that because the first news reports about the existence of a dangerous new flu came from Spain; ignoring the fact that news stories about other outbreaks were suppressed because other European countries were busy engaged in a world war. People going to Spain to research the origins of this pandemic are off to a very bad start.

As for Covid-19, it currently seems very likely that it started in China, but what if we find out in a month or two that it actually originated in North Korea? Is it going to be renamed? Who is going to go through that many scientific papers, public health policy documents, and even more web pages to correct the name?

In addition, there are racist retards all too willing to hear “China” and start blaming the Chinese; including people who may have had Chinese ancestors but probably have never been to China in their lives – just talk to your local Chinese takeaway for examples. 

Some of the posts by internet idiots have been particularly disgusting and ridiculous – particularly accusations that the Chinese cause pandemics because they are routinely (or live) in close proximity to food animals. Half the fucking planet does exactly the same, and the other half used to. 

Epidemics happen from time to time, and no they don’t always originate in China.

So stop calling it “Chinese flu” and verbally abuse a racist retard today.