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The reported homicide rate described for Jamaica is about the same as the rate for Chicago in the summer, i.e. corrected for weather.

Jamaica is described as having 65 homicides in January (which is warm in Jamaica), and a population of 2.8 million. 2.3 per 100k.

Chicago has about 2.6 million people, and had a (lower than previous years) 59 known murders in July 2023. Rounds up to 2.3 per 100k.

Not at all true. A surgeon who is fixated on running up bills may expose the patient to more surgical, anesthetic, and other side effects, up to and including death. Even just pretending to do a procedure (for billing purposes) while not actually completing the procedure (as described here:

https://www.bookofjoe.com/2006/04/behindthemedspe_6.html

Can have dire consequences.

I will say that the VAST majority of female surgeons I’ve met (and I’ve met a lot) seem to be native born Americans, with a very few Europeans mixed in.

I’ve also noticed that the VAST majority, and perhaps all, of physicians I’ve seen who view their patients only as cash cows, who perform (or at least bill for) whatever tests / procedures have the highest believable billing codes rather than what is best for the patient, appear not to be from quite the same background as most female surgeons.

This study may be confounded by other factors that affect what cultures in the US produce female surgeons.

At least part of the rise in reported home sale prices is probably due to the rise in mortgage rates.

Low and mid range buyers who need a mortgage are priced out by mortgage payments. Likewise for would be low and midrange sellers who would need a new mortgage were they to move ... so they don’t move and don’t sell.

High end real estate is less affected by mortgage rates. High end real estate is more likely to be bought and sold in cash. No mortgage. Buyers who have enough cash to buy houses outright tend to be well off, and to buy higher end properties.

So while the total number of sales drops, the sales that do occur tend to be high end, so the reported average sale price goes up.

This has been the case before previous real estate drops / corrections / capitulations, and therefore may precede a future real estate price drop for those low to midrange properties bought by people who need a mortgage.

Re:”Russia has a history of mass murdering their own people”

Yeah, a lot of Americans believe that. It’s certainly true that the Soviets were in the running for the biggest mass murderers of all time.

Thing is: while the Soviets controlled Russia, and are generally associated with “Russia” in the minds of many, the Soviets, at least the people in charge, were NOT RUSSIAN.

With the partial exception of Lenin (partially Russian at most), none of the famous evil Soviets, from Stalin, to Trotsky, to Felix Dzerzhinsky, to Lazar Kaganovich, to Genrich Yagoda, et cetera et cetera, were Russian. Even Brezhnev and Khrushchev were not Russian (those last two were Ukrainian, which is interesting given current history).

The huge mass slaughters in Russia in the 20th century were not “Russia mass murdering their own people,” but non-Russians mass murdering ... well, everyone in the area, including Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Chechens, Ingush, and more.

If what I just wrote is true ... and I think it is ... then perhaps that puts a slightly different spin on Russians and Russia. There’s a case to be made that Russians were the most numerous victims of foreigners who, by means which included trickery, deceit, and questionable “elections,” took over the lands in which the Russians lived, then wantonly slaughtered huge numbers of Russians. Along with lots of others.

Maybe there’s a lesson there for contemporary Americans.

Is it the “pause” button?

Explanation for non-pilots: airplanes do not have a “pause” button, no way while in the air to pull over, stop, and check things out. SIMULATORS, OTOH, do have a “pause” button, and it’s used a fair amount, especially in early training. Many is the pilot who has wished for such a button in his or her real cockpit.

Maybe delayed the “inevitable” at least until the rapist was older, had less testosterone, muscle,speed, motivation, and fewer remaining “opportunity days” left.

Until the “inevitable” became the “impossible.”

In any case, more delay would have been better for the latest victim.

Don’t know that it really matters. I believe they have no significant cross-reactivity, they each have a benign side effect profile when used properly, and they are both cheap. Many people just take both, along with vit C,D, and other OTC substances.

Some interesting stories regarding remdesivir:

https://www.science.org/content/article/very-very-bad-look-remdesivir-first-fda-approved-covid-19-drug

https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-recommends-against-the-use-of-remdesivir-in-covid-19-patients

TLDR: In general, your your chance of getting the disease again is low in the next 8 months.

More detail:

Possibly the most accurate guess regarding the chance of getting the disease twice is in this paper:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v1

And specifically in supplemental data table S6 here:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v1.supplementary-material

Just look up your age and previous injection status and time since infection or injection, and you’ll see the chance in 100,000 person days that you’ll be reinfected in a given timeframe, at least within the 8 month period after infection or injection presented.

Of note, if one looks at the bottom of Table S6, they may find that getting the vaccine BEFORE getting the actual disease is associated with:

a statistically significant almost doubling

compared to either getting the vaccine after getting the disease or of not getting the vaccine at all

of getting the disease for a second time

at the 6-8 month point

for persons in the 16-39 year old age group.

Other age groups and other times show a similar effect, but not statistically significant.

And, of course, there does not seem to be significant evidence, in this paper or anywhere else, that the jabs greatly alter the incidence or prevalence of getting the disease the first time. All we know pretty much for sure right now is that getting the injections before getting the illness is associated with a persistent increase in getting Covid twice.

A concern is the possibility that whatever mechanism makes jab recipients more likely to get Covid a second time may also make jab recipients more likely to get some more deadly disease that we may not even have identified yet (maybe that more deadly disease has not yet been released).

TLDR: In general, your your chance of getting the disease again is low in the next 8 months.

More detail:

Possibly the most accurate guess regarding the chance of getting the disease twice is in this paper:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v1

And specifically in supplemental data table S6 here:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.04.21267114v1.supplementary-material

Just look up your age and previous injection status and time since infection or injection, and you’ll see the chance in 100,000 person days that you’ll be reinfected in a given timeframe, at least within the 8 month period after infection or injection presented.

Of note, if one looks at the bottom of Table S6, they may find that getting the vaccine BEFORE getting the actual disease is associated with:

a statistically significant almost doubling

compared to either getting the vaccine after getting the disease or of not getting the vaccine at all

of getting the disease for a second time

at the 6-8 month point

for persons in the 16-39 year old age group.

Other age groups and other times show a similar effect, but not statistically significant.

And, of course, there does not seem to be significant evidence, in this paper or anywhere else, that the jabs reduce the incidence or prevalence of getting the disease the first time. All we know pretty much for sure right now is that getting the injections before getting the illness is associated with a persistent increase in getting Covid twice.

A concern is the possibility that whatever mechanism makes jab recipients more likely to get Covid a second time may also make jab recipients more likely to get some more deadly disease that we may not even have identified yet (maybe that more deadly disease has not yet been released).

Re: “The mRNA is destroyed in the process of its decoding by the cell...”

Start pedant mode

Just as a point of information: RNA, including mRNA, generally lasts until it’s broken down by specific enzymes. In general, until the RNA is actively broken down, it just sticks to the local ribosomes, guiding those ribosomes to continue making proteins. The mRNA doesn’t wear out by this process any more than a punch card wore out in the control of a an automated loom.

It sorta has to be this way, as mRNA is generally about an order of magnitude physically larger than the protein for which it codes. The reason it’s more efficient to make protein from mRNA rather than to just inject the protein directly is that each individually large mRNA makes many many many copies of the individually small protein, so that the total mass of protein made is much larger than the total mass of mRNA utilized in the process.

End pedant mode

Yeah, no public discussion of the data is a problem.

Worse is: no actual collection of long term data.

These new jabs just came out, so long term efficacy / safety data is literally impossible to have. Worse, the dats that we do have strongly suggests that, for most people, the risk of the jabs may be worse than the risk of not getting the jabs.

Sure, there’s guesses and wishful thinking, but those are not the same thng.

The “spike protien” (actually, it’s three protiens twisted together, but whatever) like all linear objects, has a “cis” (near) end and a “trans” (far) end.

In a natural virus, the cis end is buried in the viral envelope, with the trans end sticking out. The trans end comes across something (a vunerable cell portion) on the host to which it can stick, it (the trans end) then sticks to that thing. In nature, the covid spike protien then folds, moving the virus body towards the soon to be infected cell, priming the virus to inject its nucleic acid into the cell.

The synthetic spike proteins are almost the same. They have apparently been engineered to not fold, and their cis end isn’t already in a virus. Both of those differences can be worked around. All you need is a virus with a specific receptor for some part ... any part except the trans end ... of the “spike protein,” and no receptors for mammalian tissue. Now you’ve got a virus that can’t directly infect a mamalian cell. This has already been demonstrated with rabies virus.

Introduce pre-existing “spike proteins” and now you have a situation in which the virus sticks to some part of the pre-existing spike protein, and the trans end of that pre-existing spike protein then sticks to a mammalian cell, thus anchoring the virus to the cell. From the virus’ point of view, this is a bit more kludgy than just carrying around its own spike protien which can directly attach to a mammalian cell. The requirement that the host provide the spike protien in order to enable the virus to infect the cell means that a virus can be engineered to infect only those with specific pre existing spike proteins.

That’s the “magic” part of the “magic bullet.” Spreading horrible diseases is pretty simple, but runs the risk of infecting you and your allies. Spreading horrible diseases that only affect people who have been biochemically primed to be infected ... now THAT has military potential.

Well, thanks for trying, I suppose. If you have some actual reference which indicates that PEG coated nanoparticles have a short half life in vivo, I’d like to see it.

The mRNA and spike proteins may have a short half life. Neither I nor the reference I provided not the reference you provided contradict that point.

The polyethylene glycol coated nanoparticles are PROTECTIVE CARRIERS of the mRNA. It is THOSE that are are resistant to breakdown or excretion. That’s their main purpose ... to resist breakdown or excretion so the mRNA can continue to be exposed to cells for an extended period of time.

Once those PEG coated nanoparticles are in you, they are likely there for life, similar to, for example, the ink particles in a tattoo. The reference you provided includes this line: “Vaccines mostly remain near the site of injection (the arm muscle) and local lymph nodes.”

Even if the nanoparticles do eventually break away from whatever local tissue they attach to and make it to the general or main lymphatic circulation, the key point remains: the PEG coating blocks biochemical and hepatic breakdown, and the nanoparticles are too big to go through the kidneys. Sure, there’s GI excretion and respiratory exhalation, and maybe even sweat ... nut none of those are likely to be significant means of excretion of these nanoparticles. Like a tattoo (prior to the advent of laser tattoo breakup) one you have those nanoparticles, you, as certain as anything can be in biology, you have them for life.

The nanoparticles themselves may have some minor toxicity, but that’s a different topic. It’s the nanoparticle contents mRNA) that are biologically active and thus going to have effects until those contents run out. The time for that running out to end is unknown.

That is one of the better outcomes. As posted elsewhere:

I think not enough people have considered that the mRNA nanoparticle jabs, whether on purpose or not, make an absolutely excellent part one of a binary biological weapon.

The polyethylene glycol (PEG) coated nanoparticles are almost certainly going to be in the jab recipients for life. In previous models, similarly sized PEG coated nanoparticles were too big to be filtered out through the glomerulus, and the PEG coating was resistant to hepatic breakdown. The nanoparticles just stuck around.

The nanoparticles of the jab in question will, as certainly as anything is certain in biology, stick around and continue to elute their contents. This will cause the jabbed patients to continue to make “spike proteins,” until the mRNA contents of the nanoparticles run out. Could take years, could take decades. No one knows yet.

If there are 10 trillion copies of mRNA in each Moderna jab (that’s almost certainly correct within an order of magnitude) then even a tiny fraction of those 10 trillion being released in any given week — even many years after the initial injection -— could easily cause the expression of a significant number of “spike proteins.”

Thing is, the “spike protein” is the interface structure between a virus and a host cell.

People who’ve gotten the mRNA carrying nanoparticle jab are all going to be expressing the same, engineered, specific “spike protein” viral interface structure for an unknown time to come. As above: could be years. Could be decades. Likely it’ll be for the rest of their lives.

Making a pathogen that binds to exactly that “spike protein,” then uses that “spike protein” to enter a cell is now pretty trivial. Such a pathogen would only infect people with the pre-existing “spike protein.” Would be a hell of a magic bullet.

That pathogen doesn’t have to be a coronavirus. It could be, for example, rabies. In approximately 100% of cases, rabies causes insanity, followed by agonizing death. As above: a hell of a magic bullet.

The research on how to remove or modify receptors on the rabies virus has already been extensively done and published, and rabies has already been aresolized.

What’s been missing is a large human population which has been modified to all express one single protein, which protein is not naturally part of the human protein repertoire.

Missing until now.

We are certainly living in interesting times.

Fraid not. The mRNA may have a short half life ... but the polyethylene glycol coated nanoparticles can’t be metabolized. That’s what the polyethylene coating is FOR ... to prevent rapid breakdown. The particles themselves, with the coating, are too big to make it through the glomerulus, i.e. to be urinated out.

Here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24929223/
is an article which states that high molecular weight polyethylene glycol generally just stays in the body.

Key quote: “High molecular weight PEGs show slow renal clearance, and consequently have a greater potential to accumulate within cells. The intracellular nonbiodegradable PEG can accumulate within the lysosome ultimately causing distension and vacuolation observed by standard histological examinations.”

Attaching the PEG to an actual particle would, of course, slow renal clearance even more, leading the nonbiodegradeable PEG, and presumably whatever that non biodegradable PEG is coating, to accumulate even more in the body.

In other words: a PEG covered nanoparticle may stay intact, slowly releasing its contents until empty.

Covid does come with the spike protien ... which it no longer makes after a covid infection has resolved. And that’s only if you get infected in the first place.

The nanoparticles with spike-protien-making mRNA, on the other hand, are going to be in the recipients for life, slowly eluting their contents until they run out. No one knows how long that running out will take. Could be years. Could be decades. Could be the rest of your life.

I think not enough people have considered that the mRNA nanoparticle jabs, whether on purpose or not, make an absolutely excellent part one of a binary biological weapon.

The polyethylene glycol (PEG) coated nanoparticles are almost certainly going to be in the jab recipients for life. In previous models, similarly sized PEG coated nanoparticles were too big to be filtered out through the glomerulus, and the PEG coating was resistant to hepatic breakdown. The nanoparticles just stuck around.

The nanoparticles of the jab in question will, as certainly as anything is certain in biology, stick around and continue to elute their contents. This will cause the jabbed patients to continue to make “spike proteins,” until the mRNA contents of the nanoparticles run out. Could take years, could take decades. No one knows yet.

If there are 10 trillion copies of mRNA in each Moderna jab (that’s almost certainly correct within an order of magnitude) then even a tiny fraction of those 10 trillion being released in any given week — even many years after the initial injection -— could easily cause the expression of a significant number of “spike proteins.”

Thing is, the “spike protein” is the interface structure between a virus and a host cell.

People who’ve gotten the mRNA carrying nanoparticle jab are all going to be expressing the same, engineered, specific “spike protein” viral interface structure for an unknown time to come. As above: could be years. Could be decades. Likely it’ll be for the rest of their lives.

Making a pathogen that binds to exactly that “spike protein,” then uses that “spike protein” to enter a cell is now pretty trivial. Such a pathogen would only infect people with the pre-existing “spike protein.” Would be a hell of a magic bullet.

That pathogen doesn’t have to be a coronavirus. It could be, for example, rabies. In approximately 100% of cases, rabies causes insanity, followed by agonizing death. As above: a hell of a magic bullet.

The research on how to remove or modify receptors on the rabies virus has already been extensively done and published, and rabies has already been aresolized.

What’s been missing is a large human population which has been modified to all express one single protein, which protein is not naturally part of the human protein repertoire.

Missing until now.

We are certainly living in interesting times.