Quarantine Blues

The latest from our governor (Governor Death) Polis implies that gun ranges should shut down.

Trump has declared that all firearm businesses including ranges are "essential services" so there's an argument for keeping them open. Matches, however are a voluntary gathering of some arbitrary number of people, probably greater than the arbitrary numbers declared locally to be "too large" so they could legitimately be cancelled.

Both of my ranges have been shut down until Apr 30. I have written the management to open them for individual use but no organized matches during that time.


Note that the burning of "Old West Incense" (I use Titegroup) can be considered as a prayer to Buddha (or someone) and is far more efficacious when done outdoors or at least in a place with a better ventilation system than our basements afford. Not to mention how much calmer our spouses remain.

QOTD - Possibly Of The Decade

From Sara Hoyt:

TO BE FAIR IF COLORADO HAD IMPLEMENTED A STAY IN CALIFORNIA PROGRAM SOMEWHERE IN THE EARLY OUGHTS, WE WOULDN’T BE IN THIS FIX. SO ANY EXCUSE WILL DO: Rhode Island does not welcome you.

Actually this attitude has been pretty common here for the last 40 years that I remember. What's funny is that the Californians take it up about 10 minutes after crossing the state line. Oddly, they continue to vote for the same policies they were fleeing. Immigrants from Eastern Europe seem to vote against these ideas.

Kung Flu - The End Is In Sight

Getting past all the bloviating going on right now, here's what we know.

If you show any symptoms of the Kung Flu, a 5-day regimen of Hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin*, and maybe a zinc supplement will erase the symptoms and put you back in circulation. Scott Adams is referring to this pill combo as the Trump Pills in no small part to avoid having to remember the rather lengthy names involved.

At the same time, ventilators for the most severely affected are in short supply although American ingenuity has trotted out several cheap and easy to make versions. There are a couple of problems with this, first of all being the FDA who won't approve of the manufacture or sale of a medical devise without a long and detailed study for safety and efficacy which typically runs about 2 years if you include the review process. This means that anyone needing one of these ventilators will be long dead before they are allowed to use one, and by the way, the survival rate for people reduced to using a ventilator seems to be about 5% so you'd probably be dead soon enough even if you got one. To me this suggests that ventilators are probably the wrong tree to be sniffing up.

Doctors can prescribe pretty much anything for any purpose as long as the rewards outweigh the risks. As of right now, the evidence suggests that the Trump Pills (O.K. I hate spelling all that out even with cut-and-paste) are a sovereign solution to the problem, and side effects are well known and so insignificant that the stuff is sold over the counter in areas where Malaria is more common than the common cold. So how many do we need, and where are they?

Statistics from the Diamond Princess petri dish suggest that with little isolation, about 25% of an exposed population will catch the disease. The U.S. population is 330M give or take a few. That means we would have 82.5M people developing symptoms and needing treatment. The standard regimen so far has been to prescribe 200mg HOCQ and one of the others for 6 days to be cautious. HOCQ seems to come in 100mg tablets, so 12 pills times 6 days, times 82.5M is 990M pills. That's a lot of pills for something that heretofore has not been all that commonly used.

HOCQ is a synthetic chemical which means you need some precursor chemicals, and at minimum likely the major components of a brewery to mix and cook them. There are 2 companies in the U.S. that are currently making the stuff and I seriously doubt that they have the capacity to quickly crank out half a billion pills each in the next 2 weeks so there's the bottleneck as of today. India has a large population, is in the earths Malaria belt, and so uses a lot of the stuff. They have politely informed us that notwithstanding the prospect of someone making a LOT of money in a hurry, they will not be shipping us 100,000 Kg of it. At least not right away.

A number of companies worldwide make the HOCQ for human consumption. The link is to a list. AMRI company in the U.S. is a maker of the HOCQ. I have emailed them as to how hard the process is compared,say, to brewing beer. When I hear back from them, I'll add the answer.

*The antibiotic, azithromycin, seems to be related to penicillin so some people will have to use something else. The application in this case is pretty generic as the virus renders the body unable to deal with common bacteria which then take advantage of the break and attack with little or no resistance. It looks at this point like pretty much any antibiotic suitable for use against airborne bacterial infection would do the job. Antibiotics we can find.

QOTD - Guns

Found at onlygunsandmoney.com

Gun Culture 2.0@gunculture2pt0

"Unprecedented demand" is a reason to deny people the ability to exercise their RKBA? Like if too many people showed up to vote we could just suspend the election? https://twitter.com/WRALMikaya/status/1242536428329938944 …

This in response to

BREAKING NEWS: Wake County Sheriff's Office just suspended ALL pistol permit applications due to "unprecedented demand for weapons." They will not reopen applications in Wake county until APRIL 30th. They say they've seen a 250% increase in demand.

Virus Update 2 - Private Effort

I'm fighting off fever with 2 4oz doses of tonic water per day. Today there was no tonic water on the shelves, so I bought DIET tonic water. Think about that for a bit. I'm surprised it wasn't dehydrated diet tonic water.
 

I'm sure our government, on both sides of the U.S. Iron Curtain, are doing their level best to address the virus problem. That not much seems to be getting done, and at a snails pace confirms to me that the government is on this problem at full force. If they were to try any harder, I don't doubt that everything would come to a complete halt and any relief we got would be the result of our own efforts including those expended avoiding arrest for doing something without the proper permissions.

Scott Adams asked if a ventilator could be ginned up that used the efforts of the younger, healthier folks to run it instead of some external power. Visualize a teeter totter, with an office seat ball under one end, and a virus sufferer under the other, connected by a piece of 2 inch flex hose. Now visualize 2 kids going up and down alternately inflating and deflating the ball and the patient. See? Easy solution and minimal cost.

Imagine a set of these, and the adults offering an attractive prize to the team whose patient lives the longest (dies last). Boggles the mind and incentivizes the rest of us to take all possible precautions to avoid winding up under a teeter-totter. Be FDA compliant by putting an equal number of the afflicted on gurneys along side, but with no breathing assistance. Keep careful notes and find someone with a PhD of some sort to act as the author of the ensuing paper to include a grant application to reproduce this study on a Caribbian island with a warmer climate and several cases of Corona on hand.


Further research is indicated.

Virus Update

A doctor in New York is reporting a 100% success rate using Hydroxychloroquine with a Zinc supplement without the antibiotic that's usually used. Pretty impressive results although his methodology doesn't quite meet the FDA standards in that no control group with placebos was included, thus no stack of dead bodies was included in the results.

Meantime, in the Ummah, imams are encouraging the kind of behavior that worked so well in the 1300's against the Black Plague.

In Iran the official line seems to have moved slightly from attributing the virus to the Jews (default) to attributing it to the Americans, and discouraging the population from accepting any help from Israel or the U.S. as it would probably be tainted with something. Also possible is that this discourages the peasants from noticing that some $1B in health measures aid, given to the Iranian government to help the Iranian people, seems to have miraculously vanished.

To conflate all this, I fully expect at least some Imams to begin preaching that the medication test, having been conducted by an Orthodox Jew, is of no value to Muslims and that no true Muslim would thus avail himself of the drugs which are a part of a Zionist plot.

QOTD - The Senate

This from the floor of the Senate during debate on the proposed economic relief bill from Sen. John N. Kennedy (R-LA):

“You know what the American people are thinking right now?” Kennedy inquired rhetorically. “They’re thinking that the brain is an amazing organ. It starts working in a mother’s womb and it doesn’t stop working til you get elected to Congress.”

Nailed it, Senator.

Fun With Headlines - Sick, Sick, Sick!

Perusing Drudge this morning and noted this story:

Alone no more: People are turning to dogs, cats and chickens to cope with self-isolation

Well, O.K. then, then I found this one a bit further down:

‘Naturally antibacterial:’ Sex doll companies trying to cash in on coronavirus

Slowly the small bulb over my head began to glimmer. The ghost of notorious cheapskate Jack Benny arose and pointed out that for the price of one of those fancy dolls, you can buy a lot of chickens....

QOTD - Presidential Wannabes

Slow Joe actually said this:

“They tell me there’s ways we can do teleconferencing via us all being in different locations,”   Joe Biden

And this fellow wants to be President of the U.S. and de facto leader of the free world?

Shutting Down Almost Everything

Gov Polis is setting Colorado up to become the Bernie Socialist Utopia by closing down all private businesses until they go broke or until the Kung Flu is officially declared extinct. At that point I suppose he'll either "nationalize" the then defunct businesses or buy them out at pennies on the dollar. I just can't wait to see who he appoints to the State board Of Tattoo Artists.

OTOH, has anyone at all seen a governor or Mayor offer to shut down the public transit system?

Winter Sucks

So the 2.5" that was predicted 2 days ago has grown a bit.

I now have 7" on my car and more now predicted overnight. It's the heavy wet stuff and I had to hand shovel a path down the drive before I could run the blower (4.5hp!) down it and then I could only take about a 3" cut on each pass.

You can tell it's global warming because if this had been the usual fluffy stuff, it would have been 2 ft deep.

Official Notice: 2020 Cancelled

This from D'Wifes relatives down under:

Works for me. The election would be over with the expected outcome and none of the hassle.

Virus Music - Music Going Viral?

Some have suggested calling the virus the Chi-Com Virus in honor of its outbreak point. OK then here's some music to go along with that:

C.C. Virus

I said C., C. C. Virus
Oh see, what you have done
(Yea yea yea)

I said C. (C. C. Virus) C. C. Virus (C. C. Virus)
Oh see, (C. C. Virus) what you have done
(Yea yea yea)

Oh girl, you made me love you
Now, now, now, now your loving man has gone
(C. C. Virus) Girl what'd I say (C. C. Virus)

Well, I'm going away, baby
And I won't be back 'til fall
(Yea, yea, yea)
And I'm going away baby
And I won't be back 'til fall
(Yea, yea, yea)
If I find me a good cure
I won't, I won't, I won't be back at all
Girl what'd I say, I said C., (C. C. Virus)
C. C. Virus (C. C. Virus)
Oh see (C. C. Virus) what you have done
Yea, yea, yea
I said C. (C. C. Virus) C. C. Virus (C. C. Virus)
Oh see, (C. C. Virus) what you have done
(Yea yea yea)
Oh girl, you made me sick now
Now, now, now, now your healthy man has gone

Play it JB,
(C. C. Virus)
(C. C. Virus)

(Yea yea yea)

(Yea yea yea)

Who, hear what I say
I said C. (C. C. Virus) C. C. Virus (C. C. Virus)
I-Oh see, (C. C. Virus) what you have done (Yea yea yea)
I said C. (C. C. Virus) C. C. Virus (C. C. Virus)
Oh see, (C. C. Virus) what you have done (Yea yea yea)
Oh girl, you made me sick now
Now, now, now, now your healthy man has gone
Well what I say
Now I said C., (C. C. Virus) C. C. Virus (C. C. Virus)
I said C., (C. C. Virus) C. C. Virus (C. C. Virus)
I said C., (C. C. Virus) C. C. Virus (C. C. Virus)
I said C., (C. C. Virus) C. C. Virus (C. C. Virus)
I said C., (C. C. Virus) C. C. Virus (C. C. Virus)
I said C. (C. C. Virus)

Virus Question

Why does the government's recommendation that people limit gatherings to no more than 10 not seem to apply to the legislature?

Oh yeah, stuff like that only applies to the little people.

Ventilator Shortage? Improvise!

Scott Adams is repeatedly harping on a perceived shortage of ventilators to serve Covid-19 patients. He suggests we come up with a low-cost DIY supply to cover the shortage. OK then. I don't have the parts right now, but let's try this:

You need an aftermarket intake assembly from some squirrels Honda Civic, the motor and blower assembly from a Kirby vacuum cleaner, some hose, a waste gate from a Subaru WRX, and a plastic bag and rubber band.

All this is controlled with a cheap Arduino microcontroller from MEI Micro. Air is drawn through the air filter (K&N of course) by the vacuum, and pumped in to the plastic bag which is placed over the patients head and sealed with a rubber band.

The supply is controlled with the waste gate which is opened and closed by the Arduino controller to drive an inhale/exhale sequence to the patient. For extra effect, instead of spraying the air filter with filter oil, spray it with Lysol disinfectant.

Here's the general layout for Billlls emergency Redneck ventilator. The Arduino and waste gate could be replaced with a 303 can and a soup can with 3 or 4 windows cut in them, the soup can being turned inside the 303 can by a barbecue rotisserie motor to develop the inhale/exhale function. Now you coal miners don't need to learn to write code to save Grannie.

Someone find the parts and string them together. It'll make a great YouTube comedy short.

C-virus and Social Media

Friend of mine sent me this note:

B. W. Carlin (@BaileyCarlin) tweeted at 11:00 AM on Thu, Mar 12, 2020:
I have been informed by a relative who is a middle school teacher that students are now referring to coronavirus as the “boomer remover”
(https://twitter.com/BaileyCarlin/status/1238147875143647234?s=03)

Sure, kids. Look here, I have it from an unimpeachable source who wishes to remain anonymous, that the Chinese have discovered, by experimenting on Uighur prisoners, that a complete blood replacement from middle school age kids into a boomer will render the boomer immune from the C-virus. This requires 3 MS age donors for each boomer treated. The MS-age donors blood is replaced with blood removed from the boomer being treated. The donors susceptibility goes up 3X post treatment, but since it was small to begin with, the increase is effectively not noticeable.

QOTD - The Democrats

The Democrats are now the party of the Pumpkin IPA-sampling hipster, the woke tech tool, the militant diversity consultant, and the cat-fancying public school teacher whose husband went out to get her some Diet Coke when she was 48 and never came back.
                             Kurt Schlicther

Public Health Action

Rep Jerry Nadler is claiming that restricting foreign travel will not help the public health. Who knows, he may be right. I, after all am not a doctor. Let me suggest this then:

President Trump should appoint a blue ribbon congressional committee to investigate this. Consisting of Jerry Nadler, Schiff, Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Chuck Schumer, and probably a few others whose names escape me at the moment, this august committee should immediately embark on a European tour to investigate the effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the Kung Flu. Destinations should include Milan, Italy and Tehran, Iran, and possibly others if anyone proves willing to let the tour plane land.

The committee should meet with government officials to hear their take on the pandemic, and of course some of the victims to confirm that they are being well cared for.

Upon return to Area 53, an even less well known spot in Nevada, the entourage will be quarantined for 45 days, and the plane burned and buried. While in quarantine, a report will be prepared describing the findings, and blaming everything on the President.

Firearms Exchange Program

Anyone who turns in a firearm to me will be given a roll of toilet paper. No questions asked.

Australian Gun Laws

I read with some interest an article noting that the Police Minister from NSW practicing with a submachinegun seemed to send Green and Labor MPs into a state of high dudgeon. First off a bit of background might have smoothed the ruffled feathers. As we all know, when you rise to or above certain levels of political status, the laws no longer apply to you, at least not in the way they apply to the peasantry. As was noted in the article, laws disarming the public do not apply to the military or the police.

Secondly, weapons laws are decidedly NOT there to protect the public. Quite the opposite. They serve primarily to protect the political classes from their constituents, and as an unintended consequence, they protect the criminal classes as well. This works in the politicians favor as when violent crime rates go up, as they invariably do, the pols can pass even more draconian weapons laws against the victims.

In the end, you get the ruling class living in gated communities with armed guards at the gates, and everyone else living is a Mad Max environment, armed with improvised weapons in self defense. If the penalty for getting caught with a submachine gun is the same as that for possessing a club, one may as well go for the sub gun as it provides better protection for no greater risk. Ex: London.

STATE OF EMERGENCY!

So get out there quickly and stock up on beer, or whatever your favorite cold remedy is.

The article at the link is very short and summarizes the advice to "Don't Panic!" nicely. Also highlights why the bastards in office need to be removed, post haste.

Disturbing Lack Of Faith

And from Ireland, of all places, renowned for its faith.

Todays news:

■ Ireland canceled all St. Patrick’s Day parades, including Dublin’s, as the outbreak affected plans for cultural and sporting events around the world.

Even with possession of one of the better known remedies for whatever ails you.

Tinkering And Puttering

Tinkering with the little red motorcycle, discovering that some sand-like stuff had gotten past the fuel filter somehow, and was opening the carbs for a cleanout. Remove one screw, a very special screw, peculiar to Mikuni downdraft carbs, and dropped it.

Search the garage floor and find it under the wifes car. There is also a washer that goes with this one, and not just any washer but a very special brass job made to very special specs. That one had disappeared. Checked fit and determined the size. Turns out it matches the back end of a 9mm bullet case. Drill out the primer hole to 5mm and cut it off at the groove, and Voila! the new washer is easily identified as the specialty Mikuni carb part by being prominently stamped "9mm Luger".

Works fine. And yes, after the wife went out for some errand and I got a chance to sweep the floor, I found the original washer, so now I have a spare. Making the new one took less time than finding the old one. Of course.

NICS Checks - Another Record As Expected

OK the Feb numbers are in and to no surprise, we set another monthly record. Or maybe we just increased at pretty much the expected rate. With the Bloomberg states, led by VA, OR, and WA passing gun control laws as fast as they can be rammed through, and the primary sponsor of said laws spending godzillions of dollars to get himself elected, there may be some panic buying going on here.

2020 is starting off slightly ahead of the infamous 2016 which was led by the widespread expectation of a Clinton presidency. It's way too early to be calling this but at the rate we're going it looks like we might see 30M total checks this year.