Another ballad of the Green Beret.

He was made in U.S.A.,
born in Kenya, what the hey.
this was all he had to say
He did hate the Green Beret.

Blamed Republicans each day,
They should shut up and obey.
Sign Iranian give-away
for he loathed the Green Beret.

He used blackmail every day
forcing Congress to obey.
make them do all he did say.
He despised the Green Beret.

ISIS did grow every day
everything he did and say.
Gave the Army no leeway.
Did not use the Green Beret.

He said ISIL all the day,
he did Israel betray.
The Levant is the whole bay
Useless was the Green Beret.

People still did hope and pray
for a while we went astray
Now he’s gone we did repay
and restore the Green Beret.

 

With new leadership in play

ISIS has been blown away.

Battle won, now come what may,

we still need the Green Beret.

 

For the vict’ry not yet won

and the fight has just begun.

We must choose November three

to preserve the Green Beret.

July 11, read through the Holy Bible in a year in Power-point, with comments.

Today we read the eighth chapter of the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians and the first chapter of Esther.

July 11: 2 Corinthians 8, Esther 1 (click on the chapter to begin reading)

2 Corinthians 8. The Macedonians excelled in giving but first gave their own selves to the Lord. Christ is our pattern in giving himself. The Corinthians took up a collection for the Judean saints. Titus was sent to the Corinthians.

Esther 1. A fantastic book that made it to the Holy Bible, even though the name of God is not mentioned, not even once! Yet, the hand of God is everywhere in it. Read all of it! It starts with a big, decadent feast, and queen Vashti refused to make a spectacle of herself so she was deposed. Now what do you do without a queen?

Sweden was right! No lock-down but hygiene, social separation and limited gatherings will work just as well. Herd immunity is possible to achieve.

As Europe and North America continue suffering their steady economic and social decline as a direct result of imposing “lockdown” on their populations, other countries have taken a different approach to dealing with the coronavirus threat. You wouldn’t know it by listening to western politicians or mainstream media stenographers, there are also non-lockdown countries. They are led by Sweden, Iceland, Belarus, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Surprisingly to some, their results have been as good or better than the lockdown countries, but without having to endure the socio-economic chaos we are now witnessing across the world. For this reason alone, Sweden and others like them, have already won the policy debate, as well as the scientific one too.

Unlike many others, Sweden has not enforced any strict mass quarantine measures to contain COVID-19, nor has it closed any of its borders. Rather, Swedish health authorities have issued a series of guidelines for social distancing and other common sense measures covering areas like hygiene, travel, public gatherings, and protecting the elderly and immune compromised. They have kept all preschools, primary and secondary schools open, while closing college and universities who are now doing their work and lectures online. Likewise, many bars and restaurants have remained open, and shoppers do not have to perform the bizarre ritual of queuing around the block standing 2 meters apart in order to buy groceries.

According to the country’s top scientists, they are now well underway to achieving natural herd immunity. It seems this particular Nordic model has already won the debate.

Because Sweden decided to follow real epidemiological science and pursue a common sense strategy of herd immunity, it doesn’t need to “flatten of the curve” because its strategic approach has the added benefit of achieving a much more gradual and wider spread.

This chart proves the point:

This was in May. It is now July 10, and here are the updated charts:

From a peak of 100 deaths /day and 550 cases/day Sweden is now down to an average of 4 deaths/day and an average of 435 cases/day.

Sweden is well on its way to herd immunity.

How well are the other non-lockdown countries doing?

Iceland  has a total case count of 1882 and a death count of 10, all between March 21 and April 20.  This was achieved by contact tracing and quarantine alone.

Belarus has a total case count of 64,604 and a death count of 454, and the case and death charts look like this:

Here the daily death count has not risen above 7 per day. in a country of 9.5 million.

 

Japan has a total case count of 20,371 and a death count of 981, and the case and death charts look like this:

Japan shows a unique pattern: It looked that they had beaten the coronavirus early, but then in April it started up again, and again in July, but always at manageable levels. Japan is still far away from herd immunity.

 

South Korea has a total case count of 13338 and a death count of 288, and the case and death charts look like this:

The death count rises, then stays constant for about 2 months and then declines, but slower than the new case count. South Korea took another approach than trying to reach herd immunity. They gave HydroxyChloroQuine to all people that showed symptoms as early as possible. The result is nothing short of remarkable, less than 1 coronavirus death per day in a country of 51 million people!

Taiwan has a total case count of 451 and a death count of 7. And this in a country of 24 million!

How is the United States faring compared to these countries? Is herd immunity achievable in the near future? Current cases are 3,250,705 and the current deaths are 136,158, the highest in the world/

United States has a total case count of 3,250,705 and a death count of 136,158, and the case and death charts look like this:

From a peak case rate of 31,000 cases per day and a death rare of 2,200/day the case rate has climbed to 55,000/day and the death rate has come down to about 625/day , and it seems the U.S. is lagging Sweden by about 5 weeks. In about 2 months or so the U.S. should be well on its way to herd immunity.

The death rates would be reduced to less than half if the United States adopted the policy of South Korea (and at least 9 other countries) and began to administer HydroxyChloroQuine to nearly all people that showed symptoms as early as possible.

Quotes from https://www.zerohedge.com/health/why-sweden-has-already-won-debate-covid-19-lockdown-policy

The case for Thorium 13. Virtually no spent fuel problem, very little on site storage or transport.

 Virtually no spent fuel problem, very little on site storage or transport. I have been following the events at Fukushima Nuclear Power plants disaster with great interest. How ironic that one of the greatest problems was with the spent fuel, not with the inability to shut down the working units. The spent fuel issue is the real Achilles’ heel of the Nuclear Power Industry. The cost of reprocessing and storing spent reactor fuel will burden us for centuries after the reactors themselves have been decommissioned after their useful life. Molten Salt Thorium nuclear power works differently from  conventional Uranium fueled Reactors as  the fissile fuel gets generated in the breeding process itself and nearly all fuel gets consumed as it is generated. When the process shuts down, that is it. Only the radioactivity that is en route so to say will have to be accounted for, not everything generated thus far in the process. The difference is about ten thousand to one in the size of the problem. It is high time to rebuild and expand our Nuclear power generation by switching to Thorium.

The case for Thorium. 12. Atmospheric pressure operating conditions, no risk for explosions. Much safer and simpler design.

Molten Salt nuclear Reactors operate under Atmospheric pressure  conditions, no risk for explosions. Materials subjected to high radiation tend to get brittle or soften up. Molten Salt Thorium nuclear reactors operate under atmospheric conditions so the choice of materials that can withstand both high temperatures and high radiation is much greater, leading to a superior and less expensive design.  There is no high pressure gas buildup and the separation stage can be greatly simplified, leading to a much safer design. (From Wikipedia:)

The LFTR needs a mechanism to remove the fission products from the fuel. Fission products left in the reactor absorb neutrons and thus reduce neutron economy. This is especially important in the thorium fuel cycle with few spare neutrons and a thermal neutron spectrum, where absorption is strong. The minimum requirement is to recover the valuable fissile material from used fuel.

Removal of fission products is similar to reprocessing of solid fuel elements; by chemical or physical means, the valuable fissile fuel is separated from the waste fission products. Ideally the fertile fuel (thorium or U-238) and other fuel components (e.g. carrier salt or fuel cladding in solid fuels) can also be reused for new fuel. However, for economic reasons they may also end up in the waste.

On site processing is planned to work continuously, cleaning a small fraction of the salt every day and sending it back to the reactor. There is no need to make the fuel salt very clean; the purpose is to keep the concentration of fission products and other impurities (e.g. oxygen) low enough. The concentrations of some of the rare earth elements must be especially kept low, as they have a large absorption cross section. Some other elements with a small cross section like Cs or Zr may accumulate over years of operation before they are removed.

As the fuel of a LFTR is a molten salt mixture, it is attractive to use pyroprocessing, high temperature methods working directly with the hot molten salt. Pyroprocessing does not use radiation sensitive solvents and is not easily disturbed by decay heat. It can be used on highly radioactive fuel directly from the reactor. Having the chemical separation on site, close to the reactor avoids transport and keeps the total inventory of the fuel cycle low. Ideally everything except new fuel (thorium) and waste (fission products) stays inside the plant.

One potential advantage of a liquid fuel is that it not only facilitates separating fission-products from the fuel, but also isolating individual fission products from one another, which is lucrative for isotopes that are scarce and in high-demand for various industrial (radiation sources for testing welds via radiography), agricultural (sterilizing produce via irradiation), and medical uses (Molybdenum-99 which decays into Technetium-99m, a valuable radiolabel dye for marking cancerous cells in medical scans).

Mo-99 is used in hospitals to produce the technetium-99m employed in around 80% of nuclear imaging procedures. Produced in research reactors, Mo-99 has a half-life of only 66 hours and cannot be stockpiled, and security of supply is a key concern. Most of the world’s supply currently comes from just four reactors in Belgium, the Netherlands, Russia and South Africa, and recent years have illustrated how unexpected shutdowns at any of those reactors can quickly lead to shortages. Furthermore, most Mo-99 is currently produced from HEU targets, which are seen as a potential nuclear proliferation risk.

With the Mo-99 having a half-life of 66 hours and being continuously separated out from the fertile core in a LFTR, this seems to be the ideal vehicle to cheaply produce ample supplies of this valuable medical resource.

July 10, read through the Holy Bible in a year in Power-point, with comments.

Today we read the seventh chapter of the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians and finishing up Nehemiah.

July 10: 2 Corinthians 7, Nehemiah 11, Nehemiah 12, Nehemiah 13 (click on the chapter to begin reading)

2 Corinthians 7 is an exhortation to holiness, and the whole church is included. The Apostle Paul rejoiced in their sorrowing to repentance, and in the comfort  Titus had being together with the believers..

Nehemiah 11 lists the people of Jerusalem  and the people outside Jerusalem.

Nehemiah 12 lists the priests and Levites, the time had come for Nehemiah to dedicate  the wall, and the temple responsibilities were specified.

Nehemiah 13. The final reforms of Nehemiah are recorded, the temple service is given its due, and a final admonition from Nehemiah: Observe the Sabbath and don’t marry strange women.

July 9, read through the Holy Bible in a year in Power-point, with comments.

Today we read the sixth chapter of the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians and two  chapters of Nehemiah.

July 9: 2 Corinthians 6, Nehemiah 9, Nehemiah 10 (click on the chapter to begin reading)

2 Corinthians 6. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Paul gave the believers the marks of the ministry, “Do not be yoked with unbelievers“, come out from among them and be holy.

Nehemiah 9. The people did confess their sins and recited Israel’s miraculous history.

Nehemiah 10 lists the people who sealed the covenant and its content.

The case for Thorium. 11. Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors have a very high negative temperature coefficient leading to a safe and stable control.

Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors have a very high negative temperature coefficient leading to a safe and stable control. This is another beauty of the molten salt design. The temperature coefficient is highly negative, leading to a safe design enabling simple and consistent feedback. What does that mean?  It means that when the temperature of the fissile core rises, the efficiency of the reaction goes down, leading to less heat generated. There is no risk for a thermal runaway. In contrast,  graphite moderated generators can have a positive temperature coefficient which leads to complicated control, necessitating many safety circuits to ensure proper startup, operation and shutdown. Their worst failure mode is they go prompt critical, and no containment vessel can contain the explosion that would occur, so they were built without one. There have been several major accidents in graphite moderated reactors, with the Windscale fire and the Chernobyl disaster probably the best known.

The case fatality rate of COVID-19 is reduced by a factor of 2.8 if HCQ + Zinc is administered as soon as possible. 1.2 Million cases are proof enough!

President Donald Trump ripped the “Fake News” media on Tuesday for not reporting that the U.S. has the lowest COVID-19 mortality rate in the world.

The president tweeted a Washington Times article that discusses the decreasing death rate.

“We have the lowest Mortality Rate in the World,” Trump wrote. “The Fake News should be reporting these most important of facts, but they don’t!”

His press secretary Kayleigh McEnany in her press briefing posted this chart to boost his claim.

The article covers a Monday White House press conference. McEnany told reporters that the American death toll has fallen for weeks and the virus fatality rate is below France, the United Kingdom and Germany.

She said the death toll has significantly dropped from the height of the outbreak when the U.S. logged 2,500 deaths per day to 254 deaths on Saturday, according to the article.

To confirm it the case fatality rate for Germany is as of July 7: 4.59%

The corresponding number for U.S.A.: 4.33%

Is that the lowest percentage in the world?

There are more than ten countries with a lower case fatality rate. At least ten of them have one thing in common. These ten countries prescribe the use of  HydroxyChloroQuine to all people that show symptoms of COVID-19, even before a positive test is confirmed.

Turkey: 2.53%

South Korea: 2.15%

Senegal: 1.82%

Morocco: 1.64%

Russia: 1.48%

Malaysia: 1.39%

United Arab Emirates: 0.62%

Costa Rica: 0.42%

Bahrain: 0.32%

Qatar: 0.13%, but since 88% of the population are migrant workers between 20 and 60, the adjusted death rate for the permanent residents would be maybe 8 times higher, or about 1%

The total number of positive cases for these ten countries are over 1.2 million, far more than any double blind test could ever produce.

Taking the average, adjusted for the number of positive cases, the average adjusted death rate for ten countries, where people are taking HCQ + Zinc as soon as they are showing symptoms or diagnosed positive, is 1.51%.

This means that the risk of death is reduced by a factor of 2.8 if HZQ + Zinc is taken as early as possible after showing symptoms or after a positive diagnosis for corona-virus!

 

July 8, read through the Holy Bible in a year in Power-point, with comments.

Today we read the fifth chapter of the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians and two  chapters of Nehemiah.

July 8: 2 Corinthians 5, Nehemiah 7, Nehemiah 8 (click on the chapter to begin reading)

2 Corinthians 5 gives the assurance of the resurrection, and we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. In the meantime we have been given the ministry of reconciliation, and “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” This verse was inscribed in the New Testament given to me at my confirmation in Sweden more than half a century ago. I didn’t understand it then, but since I became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ it all started to make sense.

Nehemiah 7. Finally the wall was finished, and the chapter gives a list of the captives who returned to Jerusalem.

Nehemiah 8. Ezra read the Law and the returnees celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles.