Author: Kim du Toit

Another Pointless Panic

Health

Some doctor bloke has come out with a chilling warning about two everyday analgesics, taken by… well everyone except him, it seems:

Dr Dean Eggitt, GP and CEO at Doncaster Local Medical Committee, warns patients against taking paracetamol, which is also known as acetaminophen in some countries, and ibuprofen anything more than occasionally, saying that they can cause serious harm. 

He said: ‘All these simple over the counter medications can actually prove fatal in the wrong doses—and some, like paracetamol, within a week. 

‘It’s a huge problem and people just don’t recognise the risk.’

I should point out that the article also says this:

Paracetamol and Ibuprofen—used by millions daily to treat everything from headache to fevers—[are] safe when taken correctly.

No kidding.  As my good friend Doc Russia always says:  “Dosage is important.”

The whole point of analgesics is that they offer temporary relief from pain — e.g. a headache — so popping a couple for that purpose poses no problem to pretty much anyone.

But if you’re suffering from a permanent raging headache, the solution is not to pop ten pills a day ad infinitum; in that situation, you need to get checked by a doctor toot sweet because you may have a brain tumor or similar.

Excuse me for asking, but what fool doesn’t know this?

Of course, if you’re suffering from permanent crippling pain — from sciatica or some other ailment that isn’t curable by surgery or therapy — then you have a different kind of problem, and I feel terribly sorry for you.  (My own gout — since mercifully abated — made me quite sympathetic to this situation, believe me.)

But let’s face it:  overdosing on anything is going to have a bad effect on your health, whether aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen or even water.

The old saying “Everything in moderation” is as valid today as it ever was.  There’s no need for “chilling warnings” unless people are being completely stupid about the situation.

Wait…

Missing The Point

Corporate Fuckery, Economics

I’m all for POTUS putting the arm on foreign manufacturers to open their factories here in Murka, because we need more industry Over Here.  So more jobs for Murkins, even in industries where our market doesn’t especially care for the actual product.  Clearly, however, something got lost in translation with the recent Hyundai cock-up in Georgia:

Federal authorities say 475 people were detained this week in what Homeland Security Investigations called the largest single-site enforcement operation in its history.

The raid took place Thursday at the HLGA battery plant site in southeast Georgia, a joint venture between Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution, as part of a months-long probe into alleged unlawful employment practices and other federal crimes.

…and this is even worse:

According to South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun, more than 300 of the detained workers were South Korean nationals.

So in case the SouKs (and others) haven’t got the plot yet:  opening a manufacturing plant in the U.S.A. does not mean you can staff the place with a whole bunch of your own citizens not allowed to work Over Here.  You tossers.

Anyway, the illegal Koreans are immediately going to be “reshored” back in their own country instead of staying in some manky ICE detainment camp awaiting deportation.

We want the foreign factories, not the workers.  We’ve got the “worker” part covered, thank you.

And the Victory Girls have nailed it.

No Big Deal, Then

Illegal immigrants, Lies and Untruths, Plagues and Poxes

Speaking of those manky ICE detainment centers, it seems that some illegal aliens have been dying of Covid.  Of course, that’s just terrible, according to the Usual Suspects, but some smart guy at Blueberry Town has taken a look at the actual numbers, applied some appropriate statistical methods and inferences, and sucked the air right out of the narrative:

The upshot is that ICE has been testing the heck out of the detainees in its facilities. As of September 11, there are only 20,138 detainees in ICE facilities (down from an average of >50,000 in 2019), and ICE has administered more than 35,000 Covid-19 tests. Recognizing that people cycle through these facilities at varying rates, it is safe to assume that ICE has tested a solid majority of its detainees during the last six months, and possibly the vast majority.

The agency has found 5,810 cases of Covid-19, for a “positivity rate” from testing at an ugly 16.6%. That is the sort of rate that gets journalists screaming at governors, fun banned, and schools firmly virtual.

Sounds horrible, right?  Nazzo fast, Guido:

But only 6 detainees have died of the Covid. That is a case-fatality ratio of… 0.1%. Compare that number to the observed case fatality rates in various countries, which are massively higher. The Covid-19 case fatality rate in ICE detention centers is right in line with the seasonal flu. That made us curious.

There might be several explanations for this. ICE facilities might have excellent health care. Well, maybe, but that would be a narrative-buster of the first order. Indeed, a recent whistleblower has contended that at least one ICE facility has under-reported Covid-19 cases, which would suggest an even lower case-fatality rate than indicated by the dashboard.

Through the same link, there seems to be data that says that the median age of people deported from ICE facilities is 30. By comparison, the median age in the United States is about 38. The population in ICE facilities, therefore, is almost certainly significantly younger than the United States in general.

Furthermore, eyeballing that chart above, the ICE facilities seem to have very few people over the age of 70, which represents the preponderance of Covid-19 fatalities in the general US population.

There’s all sorts of other geeky goodness in the article, and I would earnestly recommend that you read all of it.  But the executive summary?

There’s not a whole lot to panic about — not on this topic anyway.

Sorry, Commies.  Find another issue to care about.

Monday Funnies

Funny Stuff

Actually, that’s going to be more like my long-suffering Lady Readers (all three of them) when they see the tone of today’s Funny Stuff.  But first, a classical reminder:

So here we go:

And just to end this off on the right note, some objectification:

And off we go into the week ahead.

Classic Beauty: Ann Dvorak

Classic Beauty

One of my favorite anecdotes about Ann Dvorak was a comment made by one of her male co-stars, who said:  “Whether on-camera or off-camera, she had a way of looking at you that was at once seductive and submissive.”  He went on to add that this made it almost impossible to concentrate when the camera started to roll.

I kinda see his point.

My favorite of her own quotes was explaining how to pronounce her last name:

“My fake name is properly pronounced ‘vor’shack’. The D remains silent.”

Here’s a bit of music from another Dvorak, this time Antonin Dvořák (his real name, but similarly pronounced).

Easy Fix

Gummint, Taxes and Theft

So there’s this little back-and-forth between various IRS employees:

A deep state Internal Revenue Service (IRS) official has been attacking President Donald Trump’s agenda after one of her colleagues was ousted for allegedly targeting conservatives.

IRS Appeals Officer Niki Wilkinson commented on a LinkedIn post and claimed Republicans were “fear mongering” when it came to the work of the IRS official whom the Daily Caller on Wednesday identified as Holly Paz.

“Wilkinson made the remarks in a comment on conservative activist Chuck Flint’s post about Holly Paz, a former IRS official who served as a deputy to Lois Lerner. Lerner was head of the IRS division responsible for the Tea Party targeting scandal during the Obama administration,” the report said.

Flint is the president of the Alliance for IRS Accountability. He was quoted in his post as saying, “Paz’s Biden-era pass-through unit is now bludgeoning conservative businesses with fines and must be disbanded. Commissioner Long is flexing his muscles on the IRS Deep State and sending a signal to rogue bureaucrats by placing Paz on leave.”

In response, Wilkinson said, “Such a farce! Interesting how Senators outside the IRS are fear mongering and falsely describing the work. They have no idea what Examiners found in those audits, which in fact exposed fraud or noncompliance in the passthrough area as for years the IRS didn’t effectively audit them — there was a history of ‘no changes’ because Examiners didn’t have the skill or the time to do the work. And Paz was not diving charge of this unit, but rather it was one of many under her umbrella as the LB&I Comm’r.”

Yeah, whatever.  As there are all these claims and counter-claims refuting each other, it’s impossible to divine the truth from the smoke.

I have a modest (Alexandrine) suggestion for a solution:  close down the fucking IRS altogether and fire all IRS employees, to be replaced at some later stage by a minuscule group of newcomers (previous employment at the IRS being an immediate disqualifier).

I don’t actually care what replaces it — 5% national sales tax, [your suggestion here] — but just get rid of these meddling, intrusive bureaucrats who seem to think they own your income when in fact it’s your money and not theirs to control.

Burn down the whole village, not to save it but to save us.