COVID – Science
Just a reminder that this section contains things I found interesting to help make decisions. Bringing things back to first principal minus the government propaganda and authoritarian power grab.
Here’s the latest stats for is Victoria has 5262 active cases, and NSW has 14,048 active cases.
Looking to vaccinate in Victoria? Here’s a site someone created to tell you which locations have bookings available for Pfizer.
Pfizer vs Moderna after 120 day shows that Pfizer effectiveness drops off, which would match the data coming out of Israel, but that would mean you would need boosters with mRNA vaccines. Effectiveness doesn’t drop to zero, it goes from >90% to 77%. Which would mean it’s going to be an issue for “fully vaccinated” people who find they get sick thinking they are “protected”. Israel is preparing for the 4th booster doses. These two graphs lining up seems strange.
I found the opinion of Dr Matthew Cook on Ben Greenfield’s podcast interesting. His opinion is you would want to get the Pfizer vaccine cause the mRNA doesn’t stay in your system long, and it is just there to provoke an immune system response. And from his experience the people who get the vaccine do many orders of magnitude better than those who don’t get the vaccine. Those people who have heart issue with the vaccine are people who have an over active immune system already, so we probably need a test and pre-treatment for that to dampen the immune response. It seems reasonable that you would reconsider the second dose if you had an adverse event during the first one, otherwise it feels like you are playing Russian roulette. However that makes you excluded from society from the government point of view.
This is an interesting piece about Long COVID.
It sounds like using Listerine mouth wash is a good idea. (not just for bad breath!) I guess it’s like hand sanitiser but for your mouth?
These people are metabolically sick, their common factor is NOT that they are unvaccinated, it’s the fact they need to be fat shamed. No one is talking about weight loss being an important factor of how sick you get. We have worsen people’s health with lock down and restricting people exercise. Everyone needs to do their best to not get fat. You need to make it a priority if you want to beat COVID by getting into your best fighting shape. Set aside some time to go for a run, get some kettle bells and set some time do some swing, deadlift and Turkish getup. Do some calisthenics and watch your diet. I often find the doc gives diet advice that’s not that great, so if you need to research into diet, then I suggest you hang out in bodybuilding forums and see what they do.
COVID – Politics
Gânache Chocolate – Jess’s #1 favourite hot chocolate place has closed all its retail shops forever. Yet another victim of lockdown.
Australia is spending $75mil to build a digital passenger declaration form that will allow one class of people to travel. And when you go to the airport, imagine a virus so intelligent that it knows it cannot cross this invisible line. (Remember what busy airports look like? Hard for us living under totalitarian regimes to comprehend but my mother in law is holidaying in Montenegro at the moment.). A virus so deadly that it only attacks when the camera is turned on.
Footage from the protest in Sydney. Here’s the same from Melbourne. And here from Brisbane.
Protest in Bern Switzerland against vaccine passport. The Swiss people have installed their own tables and chairs in front of bars and restaurants in protest.
Maybe Xmas this year will look like Xmas last year in Sweden, where everyone just went about their day as if it was pre-COVID days. Singapore has 80% vaccinated but life is not back to normal. Social gathering are limited to once per day. social gathering at work is banned.
Here is Joe Rogan’s COVID experience. On the topic of vaccine passport, the arguments being put forth on what we need this are
- It’s STFU, do what I say.
- You can’t do what you want to do unless you listen to what I say.
- They are using my freedom as a carrot on a stick to get me to do what I want to do.
The Israeli Ministry of Health is recorded as saying there’s no medical justification for the COVID passport, it’s just intended to pressure the unvaccinated to vaccinate.
The white house is spending time to harass Nicki Minaj on her views. Think about that for a moment and where the world is at where the white house needs to talk to a pop star. Joe Biden thinks you should get vaccinated to protect yourself from hurricanes. This lady is DONE she told Biden to go #@$# himself. Welcome to America the land of the un-free.
The world has lost its compassion when you don’t lower your mask so that a deaf person can read your lips. Trying to put a mask on a toddler is what child abuse looks like.
Extremely concerning censorship, we seem to moved away from a global view, and if UK data is mentioned in the US the big tech companies are threatening to ban the doctor making those videos, cause it goes against the narrative of the current government of that country.
Vaccine passport has been shelved in the UK after lots of pressure on the PM. There are no one sized fits all in the world of medicine, there are many nuances to providing treatment from a front-line doctor’s perspective.
Denmark has lifted all domestic pandemic restrictions. The Danes have a word called “samfundssind” which is a compound noun of samfund (society) and sind (mind), it’s the attitude they have that means we take care of each other (as in strangers), and do what’s best for society.
People are concerned, they are not anti-vaxer. Using that term create a divide and two classes of people. A me against them mentality.
Ivermectin
Here’s a overseas doctor ridiculing Australia’s position on Ivermectin. We are the laughing stock of the world, and we basically adding nothing to the understanding of the drug in the treatment of COVID. Australia’s position is
- Discourages people from vaccination. – which is wrong, we should be looking at everything that can help people survive
- Social media is getting the dose wrong. – which is wrong because who goes to a trained professional doctor to have the doctor look up the dosage of tictok.
- We running out of the drug. – Considering we can swing a deal for some submarines but can’t swing a deal for a $1 drug is just ridiculous.
How to get Ivermectin (if you are in the US), there seems to be a few videos coming up of people doing similar things.
Green light from Ivermectin to treat COVID in Japan, but that’s understandable considering one of the inventors is Japanese. A gentleman by the name of Satoshi Ōmura. They had also embrace bitcoin a few years back cause the investor was also named Satoshi.
Here we discuss the safety profile of Ivermectin. It has been called a horse dewormer by mainstream media, but the thing they miss is a lot of medicine that human use is also used by animals. Even something like aspirin. We are, after all, just another type of animal!
Finance and Economics.
Christine Lagarde called bitcoin suspicious. However remember that she was convicted and found guilty of criminal charges over massive government payout. This is a great response to Christine Lagarde’s comment that crypto currencies are not currencies.
Ray Dalio now has money in bitcoin.
Undermining dollarization is exactly the point.
Tech
Feeling sluggish while working at home? it may be that your CO2 levels in doors is too high, so you can build a air quality monitor, which will require a few pieces of equipment, coding skills, and soldering skills. Or you can just open up a window and let some air cycle around!! However it might be a cool project to do still! I recall when I was young dad use to solder stuff all the time, but I haven’t got around to trying it out yet.
If you have a faster 1000 / 50 broadband connection, probably worth looking into building your own router. It means buying a mini computer such as a Qotom from AliExpress or a Protectli from Amazon. Then you would load it with either PFSense or OpnSense. (OpnSense being preferred, because apparently the guys at PFSense are a-holes, while OpnSense is a community fork of the PFSense software with more frequent updates. However there’s more tutorials for PFSense as it’s also used in enterprise enviroments). You don’t need wireless on the router as you can plug in an access point, which gives you the flexibility to upgrade to latest wireless standard later. The main reason why you would build your own router is to get full speed and the best firewall controls out there. You would of course then run your VPN from the router. These 3 are worth trying. Mullvad, ProtonVPN, and IVPN. The advantage of Mullvad is that you don’t need to create an account linked to an email address, and you can pay in bitcoin. Why have I been looking into this? Because I’m at the limit of my router and it’s not handling the multiple rules I have setup that well.
Looking for a stand up desk? You could build your own, would be cheaper, and more customised. You would need a piece of wood at bunnings (they can cut for you). And some motorised desk legs from amazon or ebay.
Other Stuff
Here’s a short talk from 2013 about propaganda. It is super relevant in 2021 so that you learn to recognise what is propaganda, and so that you can have the mental fortitude and critical thinking to defend against it.
Be a non-conformist, don’t conform to what society tells you. Have the courage to live the life that you want..
I’ve been doing Wim Hof breathing for the last 7 days. I feel like everyone should try this, it takes about 10 mins, and you just listen to the instruction in this video. It consist of 30 breaths of breathing fully in, and then out (it is kind of like hyperventilating type of breathing). After the 30 breaths, you breath out then hold your breath for 1min to 1.30 mins, then you breath in and hold your breath for 15 seconds. You do 3 rounds of this. I suggest starting off lying down on the floor, in case you pass out from the hyperventilating bit. And don’t worry if you need to breath before the time is up, the build up of CO2 will force your body to take a breath, so just listen to your body. I can’t make it all the way to 1 min breath hold on the first round. The benefit to this is I feel so much more energy and concentration doing this daily last week.
Russel Brand talking about Wim Hof. Here someone explaining what is happening when you do the breathing. Here is Wim talking why you should be taking cold shower so that you will never get sick again. My swim coach has the same opinion on the cold, he swims in the sea all through winter, and hasn’t gotten sick in 15 years. I’ve had cold showers for years now. The best cold showers in the world has been in the Alps in France, and at a camp ground on South Island in New Zealand. The first few times it will be hard mentally to walk into a cold shower, but then your body just craves it and you never go back.
For those who don’t know, we did a click and collect and received 5 bags of onions that we never ordered. So I’ve been looking up onion recipes. At least I didn’t get 17kgs of bonus carrots. The click and collect is not that advance In Australia, in France you would have special bays you drive up to with terminals that you can a code and someone will bring your stuff out. I was surprised when we did this the first time in 2019 with my brother in law.
I’ll finish with one of my favourite speech from Steve Jobs. Have a great week all and stay hungry.
Note there maybe grammar and spelling errors!