Tag: Limericks

How to make misleading headlines while presenting facts, an example from PEW Research. A Limerick

A misleading headline from PEW

will fool you, and yet it is true.

If it’s stated as fact

it will make you react

if said without hullabaloo

The chart explains beautifully how the death rates have come down in Democratic districts and been more stable in Republican district.

Another, more descriptive headline would be: The death rate from COCID-19 in Democratic districts is improving. In mid April it used to be 3.7 times worse  than the death rate in Republican districts. It is now only 2.4 times worse.

Both statements are true, and both are partisan.

The PEW Research Center prides itself of being non-partisan. Here is their mission statement: We generate a foundation of facts that enriches the public dialogue and supports sound decision-making. We are nonprofit, nonpartisan and nonadvocacy. We value independence, objectivity, accuracy, rigor, humility, transparency and innovation.

A stunning result for HCQ +Az treatment for COVID-19 patients in Qatar! A Limerick.

The HCQ test made in Qatar

is stunning, that is all I can utter

For the death rate is low

A great fearmonger blow

Ignore it! The media mutter.

Qatar is an interesting country. It hosts America’s biggest Air base in the Middle East. With a population of only 2,8 million people it has 45,465 people that tested positive for the coronavirus, or 1.58% of the population, the highest in the world reported so far, bur only 26 deaths so far, only 0.009%, and there are nearly 400 recoveries for every death, the highest in the world.

How can that be? Does Qatar have a very unusual population profile? Yes, indeed

but it is not because of many children, no, over half of the population is working age males, nearly all guest workers. This explains a lot, but even that is not the main cause.

No, they have done a nearly universal medical protocol for all that test positive for the COVID-19 virus. All will get Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin , but a random sample will be selected for a small, double blind study. It started April 14 and ended May 14. The results will be published May 30 of so, but we don’t have to wait for the results of that test to verify the effectiveness of this medical treatment if begun as soon as symptoms materialize. To have the highest infection rate and the lowest death rate in the world is sufficient reason for me to advocate HCQ + AC for all eligible testing positive. Maybe if you include Zinc in the protocol the results would be even better, but we cannot wait for all the results to come in. Let us save lives now!

Appendix: Some were not be eligible for this study. The exclusion criteria were:

Ages Eligible for Study: 18 Years and older   (Adult, Older Adult)
Sexes Eligible for Study: All
Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Patient is in HMC facility for low-acuity, Covid-positive patients being quarantined.
  • Positive Covid test on qualitative assay used during routine care (i.e. not as part of Q-PROTECT (that is: victims given the placebo to make it a true random test)
  • Age at least 18

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Treating physician judges patient not appropriate for study participation for any reason
  • Age <18
  • Breastfeeding or pregnancy (patient-reported pregnancy status is sufficient)
  • Hypersensitivity to chloroquine or HC or AZ
  • History of or known QT prolongation
    • EKG required before study entry and on each visit during the subject’s first seven days on pro-tocol, during the time period HC is being taken
    • Baseline QTc >480 if QRS width normal; QTc >510 if QRS >120
  • Known G6PD deficiency, porphyria, or retinopathy (eye exam prior to study entry)
  • Known hepatic or renal disease (or abnormality on liver or renal function testing at study day 1)
  • Low magnesium or low potassium (by testing on day 1)
  • Current (pre-study) therapy with antimalarial or dapsone
  • Current (pre-study) therapy with antiviral agents (e.g. oseltamivir)
  • Tisdale36 score exceeding 6 as tallied below (based on ACC recommendations)*
    • 1 point each: age>67, female sex, or being on loop diuretic
    • 2 points each: serum potassium <3.6, QTc>449, acute myocardial infarction
    • 3 points each: sepsis, heart failure, QT-prolonging drugs

Earth day 2020, the 150 year birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a.k.a. Lenin. A Limerick.

We celebrate Lenin’s old birth day

in what is now renamed the Earth Day.

It’s a globalist plot;

it’s the climate change: Not!

It’s capitalism besmirch day.

When I came to the U.S. as a green card immigrant  from a beautiful, clean Sweden in the spring of 1968 I was horrified at what I found. In Sweden they were worried about the fact that some lakes were fertilized four times more than the agricultural fields, acid rain killed the trouts in the already acid lakes and  seeds laced with Mercury as a preservative killed off most of the eagles and owls. None of this seemed to bother the Americans. Coming in to Rochester in N.Y the stench from the dead fish washing up on the shore of lake Ontario was strong, I read of a river catching on fire in Ohio and the smell of coal burning power plants without scrubbers was bad, almost as bad as in the coal and steel region of Germany. It was also the height of the Vietnam wars, and people were protesting. Many of the protestors were communists at hart, and they also turned to pollution. The aerosol pollution led to a decrease in global temperatures, so the mantra was: The ice age is coming! The worst prediction I read was that the global temperatures would be then degrees Fahrenheit lower by the year 2000! Most predictions were not that wild, but they all pointed down, ice age, here we come! The urge to clean up the pollution grew stronger and the Earth Day movement was formed, but they had to find just the right day to have the first. Since this was to become a global movement they decided on the birthday of Lenin, his 100th, very fitting for a globalist movement.  That was 1970 in Philadelphia, featured Ira Einhorn (The Unicorn Killer) as master of Ceremonies.

Now fifty years later the mantra has changed to climate change, specifically carbon pollution and carbon footprint. As the scientists were wrong then, the ice age is coming soon, so they are wrong now. The rise in CO2 causes climate change all right, and it would be really bad unless something else also changes as the CO2 concentration changes. Water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas, much stronger than CO2, and they both add to the greenhouse effect, but only at temperatures below freezing. In the tropics there is 50 times as much water vapor as there is CO2, so the tropics is not affected at all by rising CO2 levels. In the Arctic the situation is quite different. Water vapor is also a condensing gas, and forms clouds in the atmosphere. Clouds cool by day and warm by night, but the effect of cooling by day is much larger than the cooling by night, so clouds act as the major temperature regulator on earth. That is why the temperature was about the same as now when the CO2 level was over 10000 ppm, 25 times as large as now hundreds of millions of years ago. There is zero risk of overheating, there is no “tipping point” on the warm side, the clouds tale care of that. On the other hand we know that because we have too little CO2 in the air we will have a new ice age. When will it come? Not in the next thousand years, in fact, by increasing the CO2 levels we will delay the onset of the next ice age. What will happen at the Poles? There will be less cold in the winters, it will snow more but the summers will be about the same, melting more snow.

As to the corona virus the scientists predictions have so far been way off the mark, which just goes to show that making models before all facts are known produces faulty predictions every time. As Yogi Berra once said: “’It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future’” “… never make predictions – especially about the future”.

 

Why did the Michigan Governor prohibit promising treatment for COVID-19. A Limerick.

The Governor’s Trump hate in Lansing,

from science advancement distancing.

She would let people die,

valid treatment deny

to stop Donald Trump’s reelecting.

The Detroit News’ Kathy Hoekstra reports that Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) has sent a letter to all physicians and pharmacists in the state warning of “professional consequences” if they prescribe or dispense hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine to treat coronavirus patients. Hoekstra writes that “beyond the rational recommendation against hoarding as production of this medication needs to be ramped up, the letter deviates into open threats of “administrative action” against the licenses of doctors that prescribe hydroxychloroquine.” It also orders pharmacists to “ignore physician orders for this medication.”

There must have been a reason why Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued this threatening letter. She could have heard President Trump being excited about a promising study that offered a remedy, or, which is scary, she believed it was dangerous because a husband and wife ate spoonfuls of aquarium tank cleaner which contained chloroquine phosphate, and one of them died. What made this unbelievable story the news of the day in the mainstream media was the dying man’s words:  “Look, this is what Trump recommended, why don’t we try it?” Little did they know that 2 grams is a deadly dose, but it is perfectly safe to take an appropriate dose under a physician’s supervision. It has been taken safely for over 50 years to combat malaria.

So why was President Trump so excited about the french study he was shown? Here are the results:

This was a non random test of 80 people, and one person died, a 70+ year old woman with underlying conditions. They took a chance on her because she was within hours of probable death anyhow, but she was too far gone. The other 79 recovered.

This is no time for double blind large clinical trials. They sometimes take years to verify, and the enemy, the COVID-19 virus works on a time-frame of 3 days, so the only choice is to work with incomplete and uncertified data.

To make matters a little more complicated, China has stopped export of one of the ingredients in making this medicine, and they are the only source, until we have started up production of our own. We have to do it in days, not weeks.

Why did China stop this medical export? There are at least two possibilities, either they are lying through their teeth about the COVID-19 cases and they need it for their own consumption but didn’t tell us, or, which is even worse, they do want to maximize the damage in the rest of the world.

 

 

Nevada governor Sisolak, in a snit of Trump-hate forbids the use of two promising treatments for covid-19, later recanted. A Limerick.

An intrigue in old Carson City

Gov. Sisolak showing no pity

For his Trump-hate is great

but the virus won’t wait

no time to delay and be snitty.

Nevada’s governor has signed an emergency regulation limiting the use of two anti-malaria drugs to treat coronavirus patients, the same medication that President Donald Trump has touted as possible treatments.

Trump has said that using chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatments for coronavirus could be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine,” and said the drugs had been approved for a long time in the treatment of malaria.
Here is a result from a French non-randomized test. This is no time for randomized tests. They may be scientifically perfect, but they take a long time to complete and are very inefficient. Better save lives now!
U.K. and now India is blocking export of these substances, so we must make our own, and fast. FEMA has appropriated all available stockpiles of  Hydroxychloroquin and is distributing to medical doctors as needed to prevent hoarding.
To be fair, Governor Sisolak in a later tweet indicated  that he will not forbid a licensed medical doctor to administer whatever he/she deems necessary for treatment of a patient, in other words, render his executive order moot. But it  captured the headlines.

 

Yes, there really is a patron Saint for pandemics! And her name is Saint Corona! From Northern Italy, no less. A Limerick.

Her body is buried in Anzu;

Corona, a Saint who has fans who

really prays for her aid;

in pandemics afraid.

Fear not! But it is a bad Kung Flu!

This is really true! The Roman Catholic Church seemingly has a patron saint for everything. They even have a patron Saint for pandemics! And her name is Saint Corona! And her body is buried in the little town of Anzu, in Northern Italy, the new epicenter for the Corona virus!

Saint Corona is thought to have lived in 2nd century Syria under Roman occupation. She was only 15-years-old when she professed her Christian Faith during the persecution of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

According to legend, Saint Corona was arrested and tied by her feet to the tops of two palm trees which were bent to the ground. When the palms were let loose she was torn apart.

It is reported that Saint Corona is especially venerated in Austria and Bavaria as the patron saint against epidemics. Her mortal remains are now housed in the city of Anzu in northern Italy, the epicenter of the recent outbreak of Coronavirus in Europe. Her feast day is May 14.

Do airplane contrails cool or heat the earth? A Limerick.

The contrails we see in the sky

are bad they all say. I ask: Why?

For the contrails reflect

the sun’s rays. That effect

cools more, kiss the greenhouse goodbye.

Are airplane contrails contributing to the warming the earth?

Contrails are the condensation clouds that are formed under certain conditions,

and at certain altitudes, from jet engines.

It is true that the contrails act as another cloud, trapping the greenhouse gases under it. But that is not all there is. It matters at what time of day or night the contrails are formed. Pilots, as a rule prefer to fly by night, but people prefer to be flown by day, so most flights occur during daytime.

This is a fantastic 24 hour visualization of all flights. Most notable is that the vast majority of airplane flights occur during daytime, and occur over continental United States and Western Europe.

Contrails formed during daytime reflect incoming solar radiation back into space, and this reflection cools the surface of the earth much more than the trapping of greenhouse heat, which occurs both during day and night.

So, contrary to popular belief, contrails cool the earth.

It is groundhog day, and the verdict is: Early Spring and Four more years of Donald Trump, a Limerick.

It is 7.26 the morning of February 2, palindrome day, 02022020 in Punxutawney, Pennsylvania and snowing lightly. The groundhog is out and he didn’t see his shadow, but he blinked and saw something else:

Punxutawney has forecaster Phil,

and the groundhog’s prediction said: Still

four more years of Don Trump

as he tweets on the stump,

the acquittal proclaims people’s will.

_DSC1200

_DSC1202

_DSC1204

 

 

 

 

 

Breaking wind news. Do not worry about methane.

Break wind is the habit of cows,

far more than clean air act allows.

Let’s collect all their gas,

give the cows some pizzazz;

the food a methanotrop chows.

 

Gretacowbreak

 

Fear not, dear Greta: This is the solution.

On second thought it isn’t. Methane, even if it is a much stronger greenhouse gas than even CO2 when analyzed by itself , is an irrelevant gas.

Water vapor has already absorbed the very same infrared radiation that Methane might have absorbed. (You cannot absorb more than 100% of the radiation emitted in any given band)

Guest essay by Dr. Tom Sheahen

Q: I read that methane is an even worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and cattle are a big source of methane emissions. How are they going to regulate that? Not just cattle, but dairy cows as well! That doubles the worry.

Fortunately, there is really nothing to worry about, scientifically. The main thing to worry about is over-reacting politicians and another layer of unnecessary government regulations.  

To understand methane’s role in the atmosphere, first it’s necessary to understand what absorption means. When light passes through a gas (sunlight through air, for example), some molecules in the gas might absorb a photon of light and jump up to an excited state. Every molecule is capable of absorbing some particular wavelengths of light, and no molecule absorbs all the light that comes along. This holds true across the entire electromagnetic spectrum – microwave, infrared, visible, and ultraviolet.

The process of absorption has been studied in great detail. In a laboratory set-up, a long tube is filled with a particular gas, and then a standard light is set up at one end; at the other end of the tube is a spectrometer, which measures how much light of each wavelength makes it through the tube without being absorbed. (Mirrors are placed so as to bounce the light back and forth several times, making the effective travel path much longer; this improves the precision of the data.) From such measurements, the probability of radiation being captured by a molecule is determined as a function of wavelength; the numerical expression of that is termed the absorption cross-section.

If you carried out such an experiment using ordinary air, you’d wind up with a mixture of results, since air is a mixture of various gases. It’s better to measure one pure gas at a time. After two centuries of careful laboratory measurements, we know which molecules can absorb which wavelengths of light, and how likely they are to do so.

All that data is contained in charts and tables of cross-sections. Formerly that meant a trip to the library, but nowadays it’s routinely downloaded from the internet. Once all the cross-sections are known, they can be put into a computer program and the total absorption by any gas mixture (real or imaginary) can be calculated.

The many different molecules absorb in different wavelength regions, known as bands. The principal components of air, nitrogen and oxygen, absorb mainly ultraviolet light. Nothing absorbs in the visible wavelength range, but there are several gases that have absorption bands in the infrared region. These are collectively known as the GreenHouse Gases (GHG), because absorbing infrared energy warms up the air – given the name greenhouse effect.

The adjacent figure shows how six different gases absorb radiation across the infrared range of wavelengths, from 1 to 16 microns (mm). The vertical scale is upside-down: 100% absorption is low, and 0% absorption (i.e., transparency) is high.

methane_absorption_spectra

It’s important to realize that these are shown on a “per molecule” basis. Because water vapor (bottom bar of the figure) is much more plentiful in the atmosphere than any of the others, H­2O absorbs vastly more energy and is by far the most important greenhouse gas. On any given day, H2O is a percent or two of the atmosphere; we call that humidity.

The second most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2), which (on a per-molecule basis) is six times as effective an absorber as H2O. However, CO2 is only about 0.04% of the atmosphere (400 parts per million), so it’s much less important than water vapor.

Now it’s necessary to scrutinize the figure very carefully. Looking across the wavelength scale at the bottom, H2O absorbs strongly in the 3-micron region, and again between 5 and 7 microns; then it absorbs to some degree beyond about 12 microns. CO2 has absorption bands centered around 2.5 microns, 4.3 microns, and has a broad band out beyond 13 microns. Consequently, CO2 adds a small contribution to the greenhouse effect. Notice that sometimes CO2 bands overlap with H2O bands, and with vastly more H2O present, CO2 doesn’t matter in those bands.

Looking at the second graph in the figure, methane (CH4) has narrow absorption bands at 3.3 microns and 7.5 microns (the red lines). CH4 is 20 times more effective an absorber than CO2 – in those bands. However, CH4 is only 0.00017% (1.7 parts per million) of the atmosphere. Moreover, both of its bands occur at wavelengths where H2O is already absorbing substantially. Hence, any radiation that CH4 might absorb has already been absorbed by H2O. The ratio of the percentages of water to methane is such that the effects of CH4 are completely masked by H2O. The amount of CH4 must increase 100-fold to make it comparable to H2O.

Because of that, methane is irrelevant as a greenhouse gas. The high per-molecule absorption cross section of CH4 makes no difference at all in our real atmosphere.

Unfortunately, this numerical reality is overlooked by most people. There is a lot of misinformation floating around, causing needless worry. The tiny increases in methane associated with cows may elicit a few giggles, but it absolutely cannot be the basis for sane regulations or national policy.

So, dear Greta, go back to school and learn some physics, some chemistry, and learn how nature really functions. Then you would not be as worried any more. There is a great temperature regulator, called water vapor. Yes, water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, and without it the earth would be so cold that no life would be possible. Not only that, but water vapor is a condensing gas, and it forms clouds, which are the main regulator of temperature here on earth.

Have you ever noticed that it is cooler in the shadow?

And by the way, what are methanotrop bacteria?

Methane-utilizing bacteria (methanotrophs) are a diverse group of gram-negative bacteria that are related to other members of the Proteobacteria. These bacteria are classified into three groups based on the pathways used for assimilation of formaldehyde, the major source of cell carbon, and other physiological and morphological features. The type I and type X methanotrophs are found within the gamma subdivision of the Proteobacteria and employ the ribulose monophosphate pathway for formaldehyde assimilation, whereas type II methanotrophs, which employ the serine pathway for formaldehyde assimilation, form a coherent cluster within the beta subdivision of the Proteobacteria. Methanotrophic bacteria are ubiquitous. The growth of type II bacteria appears to be favored in environments that contain relatively high levels of methane, low levels of dissolved oxygen, and limiting concentrations of combined nitrogen and/or copper. Type I methanotrophs appear to be dominant in environments in which methane is limiting and combined nitrogen and copper levels are relatively high. These bacteria serve as biofilters for the oxidation of methane produced in anaerobic environments, and when oxygen is present in soils, atmospheric methane is oxidized. Their activities in nature are greatly influenced by agricultural practices and other human activities. Recent evidence indicates that naturally occurring, uncultured methanotrophs represent new genera. Methanotrophs that are capable of oxidizing methane at atmospheric levels exhibit methane oxidation kinetics different from those of methanotrophs available in pure cultures. A limited number of methanotrophs have the genetic capacity to synthesize a soluble methane monooxygenase which catalyzes the rapid oxidation of environmental pollutants including trichloroethylene.

Sounds excitig, doesn’t it. Harvesting methane, put it into warm water (about 45C) and let the bacteria do their job, producing fish food. It may even be profitable.