Is Trump Working for the Russians?

It’s unclear to me clear if Donald Trump is unwittingly adopting Russian propaganda, knowingly doing the bidding of the Kremlin, or is an out-and-out controlled secret asset of the Russian intelligence services. All are sordid. Even former FBI acting Director Andrew McCabe answered, “I think it’s possible” when asked if President Trump might be an asset of Russian intelligence.

The more I think about everything this man has done since the start of 2020 the thought indicated in this picture doesn’t seem so farfetched.

Donald Trump ignored the pandemic long enough for his cronies to get their money out of the stock market before it crashed, approved drone strikes in Iran, stopped funding for the WHO, gave Hong Kong up to China, shrugged off allegations that Russia offered bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan. He cites violence, praises white supremacists, fired 4 inspector generals, is attempting to control social media and the internet… the list goes on and on.

He has many potentially exploitable vulnerabilities. He is greedy, has lax morals and shame, isn’t particularly patriotic, has a difficult time with right and wrong, and is easy to manipulate.

However, he would be essentially impossible to control. His narcissism, poor memory, and ego would make it all but impossible for him to follow directions and keep a secret. He blathers about things he doesn’t understand, never admits that he is not an expert, is loathe to admit mistakes, lies constantly, and is barely intelligible.

Bottomline: agent or not, Donald Trump certainly doesn’t act like a president that wants the best for the American citizens.

                     Could be true, might be true, I have heard it mentioned

How Dare You Not Take Covid-19 Seriously

I agree… how dare you. I didn’t write this and I’m not sure who did, but it’s exactly how I feel and I am sure many of you do too 🦠😷☠️👏😷

Chicken pox is a virus. Lots of people have had it, and probably don’t think about it much once the initial illness has passed. But it stays in your body and lives there forever, and maybe when you’re older, you have debilitatingly painful outbreaks of shingles. You don’t just get over this virus in a few weeks, never to have another health effect. We know this because it’s been around for years, and has been studied medically for years.

Herpes is also a virus. And once someone has it, it stays in your body and lives there forever, and anytime they get a little run down or stressed-out they’re going to have an outbreak. Maybe every time you have a big event coming up (school pictures, job interview, big date) you’re going to get a cold sore. For the rest of your life. You don’t just get over it in a few weeks. We know this because it’s been around for years, and been studied medically for years.

HIV is a virus. It attacks the immune system, and makes the carrier far more vulnerable to other illnesses. It has a list of symptoms and negative health impacts that goes on and on. It was decades before viable treatments were developed that allowed people to live with a reasonable quality of life. Once you have it, it lives in your body forever and there is no cure. Over time, that takes a toll on the body, putting people living with HIV at greater risk for health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, bone disease, liver disease, cognitive disorders, and some types of cancer. We know this because it has been around for years, and had been studied medically for years.

Now with COVID-19, we have a novel virus that spreads rapidly and easily. The full spectrum of symptoms and health effects is only just beginning to be cataloged, much less understood.
So far the symptoms may include:
Fever
Fatigue
Coughing
Pneumonia
Chills/Trembling
Acute respiratory distress
Lung damage (potentially permanent)
Loss of taste (a neurological symptom)
Sore throat
Headaches
Difficulty breathing
Mental confusion
Diarrhea
Nausea or vomiting
Loss of appetite
Strokes have also been reported in some people who have COVID-19 (even in the relatively young)
Swollen eyes
Blood clots
Seizures
Liver damage
Kidney damage
Rash
COVID toes (weird, right?)

People testing positive for COVID-19 have been documented to be sick even after 60 days. Many people are sick for weeks, get better, and then experience a rapid and sudden flare up and get sick all over again. A man in Seattle was hospitalized for 62 days, and while well enough to be released, still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Not to mention a $1.1 million medical bill.

Then there is MIS-C. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. While rare, it has caused heart attacks and deaths.

This disease has not been around for years. It has basically been 6 months. No one knows yet the long-term health effects, or how it may present itself years down the road for people who have been exposed. We literally *do not know* what we do not know.

For those in our society who suggest that people being cautious are cowards, for people who refuse to take even the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and those around them, I want to ask, without hyperbole and in all sincerity:
How dare you?

How dare you risk the lives of others so cavalierly. How dare you decide for others that they should welcome exposure as “getting it over with”, when literally no one knows who will be the lucky “mild symptoms” case, and who may fall ill and die. Because while we know that some people are more susceptible to suffering a more serious case, we also know that 20 and 30 year olds have died, marathon runners and fitness nuts have died, children and infants have died.

How dare you behave as though you know more than medical experts, when those same experts acknowledge that there is so much we don’t yet know, but with what we DO know, are smart enough to be scared of how easily this is spread, and recommend baseline precautions such as:
Frequent hand-washing
Physical distancing
Reduced social/public contact or interaction
Mask wearing
Covering your cough or sneeze
Avoiding touching your face
Sanitizing frequently touched surfaces

The more things we can all do to mitigate our risk of exposure, the better off we all are, in my opinion. Not only does it flatten the curve and allow health care providers to maintain levels of service that aren’t immediately and catastrophically overwhelmed; it also reduces unnecessary suffering and deaths, and buys time for the scientific community to study the virus in order to come to a more full understanding of the breadth of its impacts in both the short and long term.

I reject the notion that it’s “just a virus” and we’ll all get it eventually. What a careless, lazy, heartless stance.

~Author Unknown

Pig Cat

What in the world kind of pig cat eats like this? 🤣

Can You Be Medically Exempt from Wearing a Face Mask?

The tight-fitting N95 masks filter the air you breathe and protect you from inhaling small particles like dust or germs that cause disease. Those respirator masks do add some resistance to breathing in and some people with severe lung disease may find breathing more difficult while wearing one. The average person shouldn’t be wearing N95 masks, these are for healthcare workers.

Looser fitting masks, like surgical masks or fabric face masks, however, block some of the air you breathe out. If you are infected with a contagious disease like COVID-19, a surgical mask limits how much you might spread the disease. That also means surgical and fabric masks do not add resistance while inhaling.

Essentially, this means even people with respiratory illnesses—asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and other lung diseases—can safely wear either surgical or fabric masks in public.

Finding a mask that fits well or a face covering with a fabric that is soft will help you stay comfortable while you help keep your family, friends, neighbors, and community safe from COVID-19 and other contagious diseases.

There are no medical conditions that would preclude someone from wearing a simple surgical or cloth face mask, because both masks have no effect on respiratory mechanics. However, if you are having trouble breathing while wearing a cloth or surgical mask, you may not be wearing it correctly. If you feel like you’re sucking air through the mask, you are wearing the mask too tight. Simply look for a mask that has some stiffness to it, so that you don’t suck it into your mouth while breathing.

Bottomline: if your respiratory status is truly that tenuous that you’re not able to breathe through a cloth face covering, you should stay home and not expose yourself to any risk. If you are truly that fragile, a COVID-19 infection could be a death sentence.

Read full article here

 

Be part of the solution, not part of the problem

I have had enough of all the BS the Trump lemmings and the conspiracy theorists are saying about masks causing people to get sick from breathing in their own exhaled CO2 or that it causes hypoxia or any of the other ridiculous illogical explanation they tout as reasons not to wear a mask.

Hundreds of thousands of doctors, dentists, nurses, scientists, factory workers, etc all over the world wear facemasks for hours everyday for their entire working careers. None become ill, pass out, or die. If they did facemasks would not be part of their PPE. If they are safe for healthcare workers, they are safe for everyone.

Let’s begin here by putting those scare tactics to rest!

Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. 😷

Conspiracy theories are rooted in mistrust

It’s hard for people to imagine that a “flu-like” illness could be so destructive given medical advances in the form of preventative vaccines and antiviral medications. No one has natural immunity to this coronavirus, leaving us all threatened and looking for information to make sense of the world. In a crisis event, one thing people do is engage in sense-making — seeking out facts and coming up with explanations. It’s a way of psychologically coping with the uncertainty. And that’s where conspiracy theories come in.

Some people continue to discount the risk of SARS-CoV-2 even now that there has been information from a multitude of global sources, like the WHO and the CDC, warning us that we should be very concerned. Part of the denial can be explained by the fact that such information was initially contradicted by some political leaders who suggested it might be a hoax or just a flu. People have lost faith not only in institutions of authority, but in the very concepts of truth and trust.

Conspiracy theories are rooted in mistrust. When people don’t trust authoritative sources of information—based on personal experience, political affiliation, or whatever—they are then vulnerable to misinformation. The conspiracy theories are endlessly more creative than the most detailed efforts to debunk them. As far as truth is concerned, it is a lost game. People who have decided to believe the theory of the day will just not change their minds, no matter how detailed and compelling evidence to the opposite might be. It appears as if they need another reason for the cause of covid-19 to be there, and they will have it there whatever the cost. Instead of looking at the facts, they bring up alternative facts.

For example, why do some people seek to establish a link between 5G and the coronavirus? In the first place, why is it so difficult for them to see the absurdity of the question? Is it ignorance? Is it because of sloppy reasoning?

People that believe in conspiracy theories are not convinced by factual information, they are ruled by emotions, not rational thought. They all contend they are searching for truth, if facts cannot help, they will be ignored, and alternative facts will be sought out. There is plenty of misinformation out there and plenty of places where conspiracy theories flourish, especially online. There’s the idea that there’s some hidden truth behind world events and fictional descriptions are often more tantalizing than the mundane truth or the reality that things, and especially terrible things, often happen for no apparent reason.

The real truth is that COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate between believers and non-believers. We’re in this crisis together. And we need to trust experts — epidemiologists, doctors and scientists — because they’re all we’ve got.

I’m Proud of Canada’s PM

This is how a real leader acts… supporting the cause by joining the protest, not calling on the military to dominate the protesters, not shooting rubber bullets, no tear gas.

Even if this was for a photo op, he was there with the protesters. “I’d rather him take the knee than have him gas peaceful protesters, hold a book he never reads, in front of a church he never attends, for the media,” my sister said when someone complained that Justin Trudeau only did this for the media.

And, he wore a mask.

Proud of my PM 🇨🇦

Why do people fall COVID-19 conspiracy theories?

The oddest 5G conspiracies — that COVID-19 is caused by cellular towers, or that COVID-19 is an elaborate government ruse devised to confine us to our homes so that they can install more 5G towers unopposed and unnoticed — have so little basis in reality that you wouldn’t expect them to be taken seriously by anyone but the already delusional.

But conspiracy theorists have crawled out from the internet’s least credible recesses into the mainstream and even the wildest fantasies of nefarious intrigue may be embraced by millions as clandestine, sovereign truth.

Across the United States and Canada, ordinary civilians are flaunting their exaggerated skepticism. Lurk in the comment sections beneath coronavirus articles for any length of time and you will encounter the hearty disbelievers: COVID was invented by Fauci and Bill Gates. The infected rates and death tolls are phoney.

These theories have a charmingly self-corroborating quality. No reputable newspaper, magazine or website will affirm any of these claims, because even a modicum of investigation or reporting would disprove them and because by nature they are impossible to substantiate. Skeptics get around this by simply insisting that reputable newspapers, magazines and websites are party to the same conspiracies, and have a vested interest in suppressing the truth. The news media, naturally, are fabricating stories on behalf of the state. You would have to be naive to believe what you read in the New York Times.

These mysteries of perception can of course be explained, easily, by science. But science can be complicated and some people won’t admit that they don’t understand the science. And such people want — crave — an answer they can readily comprehend. They don’t want to defer to others or accept that perhaps some things are too complex for the layman to grasp. Real research involves diligent, dedicated study and the assiduous scrutiny of peer-review. How much easier, how intoxicatingly simple, to scroll through memes on Facebook, or delve into YouTube and watch a video.

This kind of thing always produces in the conspiracy theorist a kind of defensive superiority. Those of us foolish enough to accept facts at face value — those of us who listen to medical professionals and leading experts in medicine and epidemiology and accept their wisdom — are mere sheep, passively receiving indoctrination like the proverbial lamb led to slaughter.

Never mind that men and women who have studied medical science for decades probably do know a lot more about infectious disease than us, and that a certain amount of deference to credible authorities is a hallmark of intelligence. The conspiracy theorist insulates himself against criticism with self-righteous hostility. Do your own research — by which means watch an hour-long rant on YouTube. Don’t trust experts. Make your own expertise.

Black Lives Matter

To say All Lives Matter right now is passively racist.

White people aren’t being targeted, looked at with suspicion, treated like criminals they way black people are. When a group of people are being treated so differently just because of their skin colour, it is wrong.

The movement Black Lives Matter means black people need to be treated exactly the same way as white people, to have the same opportunities and for anyone not to understand that, they are either down-right stupid or racist.

Vaccines Save Lives despite what the anti-vaxxer’s say

Smallpox is one of the deadliest & most contagious diseases known to man. The virus killed over half a billion people in the twentieth century alone—three times the number of deaths from all of the century’s wars combined. On 8 May 1980, the WHO announced the eradication of smallpox. This was an unprecedented event in history, signaling the first and only annihilation of a human disease.

The victory—which saved tens of millions of lives—fulfilled the lifelong dream Edward Jenner, who first tested his vaccine on 14 May 1796. Jenner noticed that dairymaids who contracted cowpox never developed smallpox. Working from this, he developed a vaccine from cowpox. Indeed, the word “vaccination,” coined by Jenner in 1796, is derived from the Latin root vaccinus, meaning “of or from the cow.”

The prominent Scottish physician Sir Walter Farquhar advised Jenner that if he kept the nature of the vaccine a secret, it could yield as much as £100,000. But Jenner nurtured no such ambitions. In 1798, he had a hut built in his garden & christened it the TEMPLE OF VACCINIA. It not only became a beacon of hope for the poor who sought protection against smallpox, but it was also the site of the first public health service in Britain.

Photo of two children from the same classroom – one vaccinated against smallpox, the other not

Alien Skull or Something Else?

At first glance one may think this is an alien skull right out of a science fiction movie.

In reality, this is a child’s skull showing deciduous teeth (baby/primary teeth) and permanent teeth located above. Note the position of the canines in the upper jaw directly under the eye socket (hence the term “eye teeth”).

This skull dates from the 19th century and is housed at the Hunterian Collection at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

Mine, Mine, Mine

Reminds me of the seagulls in Finding Nemo 🍟🤣

Snowflakes Under an Electron Microscope

Most of us think of snow in the variety of “fluffy,” “wet” or “good packing snow” but when you get close – really close – snowflakes look incredibly complicated. Look at a single snowflake through a microscope, a magnifying glass, or even just very closely on your glove before it melts, and you’ll see a complex and beautiful design in miniature.

It’s said that no two snowflakes are alike, but that actually can’t be proven – no one’s been able to look at all the snowflakes that have fallen and compare. The amount of snowflakes that make up a single snowfall are in the trillions. Even if two ice crystals formed looking exactly the same, the tumbling and temperature changes our twin flakes would face on their way to the ground means that they wouldn’t stay identical for long.

Snowflakes have more than 80 different kinds of crystals and seeing a snowflake under a microscope reveals interesting patterns and shapes. As the snowflake freezes and falls, and sometimes melts slightly and re-freezes, all sorts of shapes are created.

In the below photo the snowflakes are highly magnified by a low-temperature scanning electron microscope.

 

My grandfather’s pet moose

I found out today my grandfather had a pet moose 😲 Why have I never heard this before? And what is the story behind said pet moose? To answer my questions I had to reach out to my relatives.

That man in the photo is my grandfather and the women is a stranger who was driving by, saw my grandfather in the yard with the moose. She stopped and asked if she could get her picture taken with the moose.

Apparently grandpa had a lot of tourists coming by to see this pet moose. Someone offered to buy it but despite being a “pet” is was still very much a wild animal.  My mother said it was aggressive with her and her siblings so her father decided never to part with it for fear it would attack someone.

My grandfather kept the gangly legged youngster in the barn at night. One morning when he went to let it outside he found it dead. Someone went in the back door of the barn and poisoned it.

Turns out to be a sad ending to what could have been a great story

Coronavirus Disaster in the USA

The United States is in the midst of a pandemic that has, so far, claimed more than 65,000 lives and infected more than 1 million people.

We have officially lost more people in four months than we did in the entire eight years of the Vietnam War, and there is good reason to believe the official counts are low. This is a disaster of unimaginable proportions.

More than half of the US will be partially reopened in the coming days. “You’re making a big mistake. It’s going to cost lives,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener.Redlener and Joseph Fair, senior fellow in pandemic policy at Texas A&M University, warned in a report that no state or city should begin to reduce restrictions until coronavirus infections have been steadily decreasing for 10 days to two weeks, and not until enough tests are available to assess just how many people really are infected.

President Trump discussed the projected number of deaths from coronavirus saying that “hopefully we are going to come in below that 100,000 lives lost.”

More. Than. 65,000. Americans. Have. Died. In. An. Epidemic. That. Was. Largely. Preventable.

Trump was warned about covid-19

More than 3 million people have been sickened by the coronavirus across the world. Globally, over 210,000 have died. The U.S. has been hit especially hard, with over 972,000 cases and 55,000 deaths.

Today the Washington Post reported that, beginning in early January, US intelligence agencies produced more than a dozen classified briefings in the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), warning Trump about the emerging threat of the coronavirus. The president rarely reads the PDB and is impatient with the oral briefings he allows two or three times a week.

During February, the virus spread across the country unchecked. On March 30, Trump told Fox News about the pandemic, “Nobody could have predicted something like this.” But the memos indicate Trump’s own advisers had not only anticipated it but tried to warn him about it.

On Feb 23, Trump was sent memo warning 2 million Americans could die from Covid. But instead of heeding the February 23 warning that major investments in PPE and ventilators were needed, Trump dithered. 3 days later, Trump said, “we’re going to be pretty soon at only 5 people, and we could be at just 1 or 2 people over the next short period of time.”

Some good news: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday that the country has “won” the battle against widespread community transmission of the coronavirus, for now. The country is also dropping from Alert Level Four to Alert Level Three, as the number of new coronavirus cases continue to remain low.

Trump’s Sarcastic Trolling of the Media

Today’s news was consumed by Trump’s suggestion at yesterday’s coronavirus briefing that doctors should look into the value of disinfectants or sunlight taken internally to kill the novel coronavirus. Since that comment, he has been skewered by medical professionals and made fun of on social media.

The makers of Lysol released a statement warning that “under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion, or any other route),” and the Centers for Disease Control warned that “household cleaners and disinfectants can cause health problems when not used properly.”

When asked about the comment, Trump said: “I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen.”

Yet even people inclined to buy Trump’s “sarcasm” defense might have to admit that Trump picked an inopportune moment to make a sarcastic joke at reporters’ expense. A presidential news briefing in the middle of a national crisis in which more than 50,000 Americans have died would usually call for the most reliable information that science can provide — not “sarcastic” trolling.

 After Trump won the 2016 election, A CBS correspondent asked him why he continued to bash the media. He replied, “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”

American deaths from Covid-19 exceed 50,000. The United States has now suffered one quarter of the world’s 190,000 deaths from the virus. It appears the White House latched onto an unrealistically optimistic model in early April when it suggested we could keep our deaths at 60,000.

Trump’s Dangerous Suggestion

Today’s other big news was Trump’s suggestion at his coronavirus briefing that it would be worth studying whether injecting disinfectant into patients would kill the novel coronavirus.

“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?” he said. “Because, you see, it gets on the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that. So that you’re going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds — it sounds interesting to me.” He also suggested using heat and light to kill the virus.

@JoeBiden Tweeted: “I would trust the guy who’s one of our nation’s top public health experts, not the one who pondered injecting disinfectant into the body and looked directly at a solar eclipse.”

Doctors were horrified at his comment, calling it irresponsible and dangerous. Disinfectants are poisonous and are deadly if they are used inappropriately. Dr. Brix looked as though she wanted the floor to swallow her.

Donald Trump is a bigger idiot than we could ever imagine.

Trump Tweets “Liberate”

Deaths so far in the global coronavirus pandemic is currently at 160,717. The US has the highest toll globally, with 39,089 fatalities.

The big news for two days has been the “protests” of state governors’ stay-at-home orders and mandatory business closings to try to contain the novel coronavirus which, as of today, has taken more than 40,000 American lives. The protests started last week in Michigan, on Wednesday, April 15, when demonstrators descended on the state Capitol to protest the “statists” they say are destroying the economy and taking away their liberties. On Friday morning, Trump tweeted that people needed to “LIBERATE” Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia, all states with Democratic governors.

The protests are backed by the same conservative groups that are working for Trump’s re-election. These are not spontaneous, grassroots protests. They are political operations designed to divert attention from the Trump administration’s poor response to the pandemic.

 

It’s never Trump’s fault

The number of known coronavirus cases in the U.S. today topped 500,000, with death tolls Friday evening at 18,637.

In a briefing today, Trump again pushed the idea of “reopening” the economy in the next few weeks, contrary to the medical advisors’ advice. He insisted he has “absolute authority” to force states to end social distancing and reopen shuttered businesses. (He doesn’t. States are currently shuttered under the orders of governors and local officials.)

The shutdown was intended to buy federal officials time to develop a strategy to defeat (or at least hobble) the pandemic. Day after day, he pressures states to resume business as usual before they have a plan to keep infections and deaths under control, in some cases before they have even a plan for a plan.

There was a national plan for a plan — a 17-page document from the CDC but Trump kiboshed it. It didn’t take long before a senior Trump aide went on TV and attacked the CDC’s credibility.

Now, if he can only blame the health and economic crises on Barack Obama, who left office more than three years ago, they won’t be Trump’s fault. Trump now tries to discredit the death count. In Trump’s fantasy world, there are no deaths if they are not reported. Next he’ll decide the unemployment numbers are phony.

Photo Credit: http://sierramadretattler.blogspot.com/