Divemedic

RSV, Influenza, and COVID

Joe asks in comments if I have heard anything about this article referencing a “tripledemic” of RSV, COVID, and Influenza.

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, is a common respiratory virus. It usually causes mild, cold-like symptoms. RSV usually strikes children before the age of 2, and is also known to have a severe effect on those over 65 and with weakened immune systems. In the United States, nearly all children have been infected with RSV by age two. This virus has a season, and in the United States, Florida and Hawaii’s season begins in mid September, with the rest of the country’s RSV season beginning by mid-November. The incidence of RSV peaks each year by mid-winter. It is an airborne virus that can also be spread by fomites.

A fomite is a surface that is contaminated because a virus that can live for a time outside of its host is on the fomite’s surface. A person touches the fomite and then touches their face. The average person touches their face 4,000 times a day. Kids even more so. This is why frequent handwashing can be effective in preventing illness.

Influenza also has a season, as we all well know. It also strikes the immunocompromised and the elderly.

Until 2020, patterns for RSV in the United States were predictable. The patterns of RSV and other common respiratory illnesses have been messed up since the lockdowns in 2020. The number of RSV infections began to rise in the spring of 2021 and peaked in July. Why? I mean, this is usually a winter virus.

In 2020 and into 2021, there weren’t many cases of seasonal illnesses because kids were largely kept out of school during the peak RSV and flu seasons during the winter of 2020-2021. In most states not named Florida, the same happened during the 2021-2022 season, so all of the kids who would have brought the virus home to their younger siblings weren’t in school to do so. That means all of the kids born in 2019, 2020, and 2021 have not been exposed to RSV and this will create a heavier than usual RSV and flu season. It makes total sense.

The same is true of the flu. This year, the season appears to be starting a bit earlier than usual, but that is not surprising, considering what I discussed above. The past couple of years have been unusually light for the flu, and I think that we are going to have a rebound year.

So what does this mean? Nothing. Most people who get it have a bit of a cold and then soon recover.

As far as COVID: granted that this is anecdotal, but we don’t seem to be seeing any more COVID than we have been seeing for the past year, at least not in my hospital. It’s just a constant background now. I have had it twice, and I don’t even bother to wear a mask when I treat COVID patients any more. The CDC is not really reporting a high number of COVID cases right now.

I don’t think that there is anything to make a big deal out of right now. That may change, but for now I don’t think it’s anything to get in a lather over.

By Divemedic, ago

Clean Getaway

The following states mail a ballot to every single registered voter: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Washington, DC. Most other states have voting by mail, but they are absentee ballots and require that the voter request the ballot.

Picture that you are a nurse’s aid working in a nursing home. You are responsible for the care of 200 patients with dementia. You have access to their names, dates of birth, and social security numbers. You register them to vote on the state website, and list the nursing home’s address as their home. You know, to help your residents vote. It’s their right, after all.

The ballots arrive by mail. You fill them out and mail them in. They all voted a straight Democrat ticket.

In the unlikely event that it is ever investigated, there isn’t a single one of them that can testify against you. They won’t remember a thing, at least not well enough to ever prove anything.

This is how the “register online” and “vote by mail” systems are ripe for voter fraud.

By Divemedic, ago

Scary, Indeed. That’s why I am redundant

The Biden administration is openly talking about making people who believe in free speech into enemies of the state by declaring them to be a threat to US security. Jonathan expressed concern that this blog could be shut down by simply revoking my domain name. I have taken steps to make this site more resistant to being cancelled.

  • This blog has multiple domain names that are all registered with different registrars. The different registrars are either known to be friendly to the right, dedicated to free speech, or are located in other countries. The sites are: areaocho.com, sectorocho.com, and divemedic.xyz Each of those web addresses lead to this blog.
  • This site is hosted on servers in Europe and Asia. The servers are owned by overseas companies that are known to be defenders of free speech and in countries that do not support censorship, especially by US authorities.
  • If THOSE fail, I have access to an emergency server that I can point any of those addresses to. If I need that one, we have real issues.

As a SCUBA diver, you learn from the early days of your training that your gear is your life support system. You wear backup gear. You dive with a buddy, who is also a source of backup gear. As I became more experienced, I began to push the limits. As with any dangerous activity that relies on mechanical devices, I experienced equipment failures. I learned to make my gear more robust, less prone to single point failure, and more redundant.

As a firefighter, I saw and did similar things. I saw the people who suffered as a result of Katrina. I know how to make things robust. This blog and site are as robust as I can make them. If I have overlooked anything and we wind up being taken down, that is a message in itself. The message is that the time for talking is over.

The most obvious single failure point is to haul me into jail or put a bullet in me to silence me. As the Soviets used to say, VZYALI. I am a small fish. There are others who are far more visible and more likely to be disappeared than I. For that reason, I watch some of them. If they disappear or are silenced without warning, it will be time to not be where I can be found. Sound paranoid? Maybe not. Five years ago, would you have dreamed that a sitting president would call someone a threat to national security for the crime of owning a social media site?

By Divemedic, ago

He WILL be silenced, and so will you

Bide was asked by a reporter “DO you think that Elon Musk is a threat to US national security, and should the US and with the tools that you have will you investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments which would include the Saudis?” Here was his response:

I think Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries, uh, is worthy of being looked at. Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting that it’s worth, worth being looked at. Um, and uh, and uhm, that’s all I’ll say.

The left is rejoicing that they defeated fascism. Remember that as the left shuts down all opinions that they consider to be a threat to their one party rule. The only reason why this blog hasn’t yet been targeted is that my traffic is nowhere near high enough to gain their attention.

By Divemedic, ago

Election Watch

This morning we enter Election Day III: The Search for More Ballots (special thanks to Mel Brooks), Congress is still very much a tossup. In the Senate races, the two parties are in a dead heat at 48D and 49R, with a Senate seat each from Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia still to be decided. Best case I can see at this point is that the parties split Arizona and Nevada. Georgia will be a runoff. If that one goes to the Democrats, we have a 50-50 Senate and the Vice President remains the tie breaker. I still think that the Democrats will wind up with 51 seats. I hope I am wrong.

In the House, things are a mess. What should have been a clear Republican victory has degenerated into a 192D to 210R race. There are 33 seats still left to be decided.

It takes 218 seats for a majority, but remember that there are some RINOs there who will undoubtedly break from the rest of the party to give the Dems what they want. It would take at least 230 seats for the Republicans to have a firm grip on the House, and that isn’t in the cards. This is one of the reasons why the Democrats are so much more effective than the Republicans- they know how to be team players and stick together.

Both sides in this are claiming victory, but we won’t know that until we know who controls Congress. Still, people and businesses have skin in the game, and the stock market is reacting to the election. It was down yesterday as everyone knows that the Democrats are bad for business and the economy.

The left and their mouthpieces are busy claiming that there are no shenanigans even as they say that it will take weeks to count the ballots in some races. That is complete and utter horseshit. The state of Florida managed to count nearly 8 million ballots in less than an hour and a half, but California has weeks of counting mail in ballots ahead. Mail in balloting allows for a level of election fraud that is perfect if you are the party that wants to rig elections. Imagine a single Democrat operative filling out and mailing in 200 ballots for the dementia-ridden residents of the nursing home where she works as a nurse’s aid or the community organizer who fills out ballots for the 300 homeless drug addicts that frequent his shelter. This is how election officials mysteriously “find” boxes of ballots that are all in favor of Democrats days and even weeks after the election. Florida used to have the same problem, with Broward county ALWAYS finding several bags containing a few thousand Democrat votes days later. Replace a few election officials, tighten up some election laws, and create a law enforcement unit dedicated to finding this sort of criminal activity, and that problem is solved. The difference is that California and the Democrats WANT these sorts of opportunities.

The cold war, albeit with some warm spikes, between the communists and the forces of freedom, continues. Let’s hope that it doesn’t flare up into full blown warfare in the near future.

By Divemedic, ago

Nicole

As I sit here writing this post, the center of the tropical storm is to the south of us. I haven’t posted about preps for this one, mostly because Category 1 storms aren’t worth the effort, no matter how breathless the reporters get on TV. So far it’s just been a dreary, breezy day.

We’ve gotten an inch and a half of rain, and it’s been a bit breezy. Right now our winds are out of the northeast at 24 miles an hour with gusts to 32. Our highest wind today was at 4 am, 46 miles per hour. It’s a quiet, rainy day. We have been spending the morning sitting on the back porch, sipping on some coffee and enjoying a cinnamon roll breakfast.

By Divemedic, ago

Where We Stand & What’s Next

As I sit and write this post on Wednesday afternoon, the election is still in doubt. There are 41 seats left to be decided in the House, with 14 looking like they are leaning Republican- but 5 of the ones leaning Republican are in California and three are in New York. The Democrats have a slight edge in 25 of those races. The Republicans need 14 more seats to control the House and the Democrats need 27. In other words, control of the House can go either way, especially since only about a third of CA precincts have reported yet. Too close to call, but the left is too good at cheating for this not to go their way.

In the Senate, the vote is split at 48 apiece, but Alaska, Arizona, and Nevada are still waiting results while Georgia will have a runoff. Arizona was one of the states that had “problems.” I expect that the Dems will end up with 51 seats and will also own the Senate.

There is every possibility that the Democrats come away controlling both houses of Congress and the Whitehouse. The left even openly bragged about this a week ago: they said that results would take days, and that the Republicans wouldn’t like it. I’m calling it now- this is open shenanigan territory. It isn’t as blatant and in your face as 2020, but the fix was still in.

Say that I am black pilled if you will, but as I said two years ago, we have already had our last free and fair election in this country.

So what comes next? There will be some base pandering- codifying Roe, some stuff like that. There will be a laundry list of new laws passed. I predict that:

  • SCOTUS will get term limits. Expect Thomas and Roberts to go first.
  • Gun control is coming. Expect a new AWB to be the first law.
  • Moves will be made to solidify the Democrat power base. Expect a “voting rights act” to be passed that makes it far easier for the Dems to stay in power.
  • There will be some sort of law passed that allows them to censor social media and/or take control of Twitter from Elon Musk.

What other priorities do you see?

By Divemedic, ago

Felon

Corionn Rodman Jones-Bentley was breaking into vacation rentals while the tourists who were staying there were asleep. In at least one case, he was caught and attacked the occupants. Deputies finally caught him and he has been charged with 9 burglaries and is suspected in 4 others. He attacked the arresting officers.

Looking at his criminal record, he has been arrested in 8 burglaries in Osceola county. In 5 of those cases, the state didn’t press charges. He was convicted in 3 of them by entering a plea agreement on all three cases simultaneously on March 3. He was given a jail sentence of 271 days, but all of that was erased with credit for time served. A total of 8 felony charges, plea guilty, get released from jail immediately. Then he resumes burglarizing homes immediately. Sounds like justice to me.

This is why we have so much crime. Our criminal justice system is a revolving door. Violent criminals are allowed to continue this behavior again and again, getting turned loose only to commit the same crimes again in a month or two.

Meanwhile, the police are out there being douchebags to people who aren’t committing violent felonies. Why is that? Well, the State Attorney for Orange and Osceola county is Monique H. Worrell, a liberal democrat. She boasts that her office is “culturally diverse” and her official website brags:

Monique was elected to bring reform to a criminal legal system that is fundamentally flawed, in order to achieve equity and to move our system towards justice.

The Osceola County Sheriff is Marco Lopez, a Democrat from Chicago. When he was elected, his priorities were increasing the diversity of the sheriff’s department, deescalation training and adding more mental health resources. Note that actually stopping crime and catching criminals was not on the radar.

I can promise you one thing. There is no recidivism if I catch a violent felon breaking into my house while I am home.

By Divemedic, ago

Lottery

I posted the following comment to Twitter:

They are having a lottery drawing tonight for $2 billion. By morning, we will know how many winning numbers there were and where they were sold for every prize, not just the jackpot. It is inconceivable that you don’t know who won an election for days.

The Democrats will go to extreme lengths to prove me wrong. They announced that, due to security concerns, the Powerball drawing will be delayed. (Yes, I know it wasn’t done to foil me, but it IS pretty funny)

By Divemedic, ago

Canceled

JK Rowling is a liberal. She was once the crown jewel of the left: a feminist, pro gay woman whose wealth in the UK was only surpassed by the Queen herself. Her books were printed into more copies than any other books, except the Bible itself.

When the movie, merchandising, and theme park money came rolling in, the numbers were incredible. Universal Studios in Orlando was selling plastic sticks labeled as ‘Harry Potter’ wands at a rate of $10k a day, more than $100 each.

Then Rowling spoke out against the trannies. That began the backlash. Even the child stars whose careers are entirely owed to Rowling and her books denounced her. Now it’s official: she has been canceled, and so has the entire franchise.

I know you are thinking, “So what?” Here is why that’s important: Warner Brothers just turned their backs on a multi-billion dollar movie franchise in order to appease a demographic that is comprised of less than 2% of the population. Let that sink in.

By Divemedic, ago