10:27 – We’re doing the usual Sunday stuff. I need to fill a couple more batches of bottles so that I can build more biology kits tomorrow. Otherwise, I’m writing.
Sunday, 26 October 2014
22 Comments and discussion on "Sunday, 26 October 2014"
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Frist post!
So sorry, dude; Dr. Bob always gets the first post. You is only second-rated. Not awesome today. I just checked with Mrs. SteveF and she confirms.
Mrs. OFD also confirms that I am not awesome and probably fifth-rate. Oh well, can’t win ’em all.
She is off schlepping HRH and a friend back to Montreal after they had the Saab convertible all week up there.
Fifth-rate drone OFD has another interview tomorrow afternoon for a “network admin” job, whatever that really means. And I fired off an application/resume to Big Blue again as they’re now hiring again; evidently Global Foundries was paid $1.5 billion to take the IBM Plantation and chip fab ops off their hands but some kinda deal musta been struck to keep the current 4k employees, probably “transitioning” to GF from IBM; wonder how much they’ll keep for salary, bennies and retirement bundles…
So now they’re undoubtedly scurrying to back-fill positions, which they were already doing with manufacturing ops; now it’s IT’s turn. We shall see.
A sys admin these days, by the way, is expected to do *everything.* Soup to nuts, from fixing printers and stringing Cat5 and fiber under the floors to writing scripts and programming and making biz cases to the manglers. OFD in his dotage and decrepitude remembers that sys admin was a step up from “operator” and now those drones who used to be operators are sys admins and do the operator *and* sys/net/security/dabase/programming stuff. Also, manglers expect any issue or problem to be fixed within five or ten minutes, tops. And if there is any sort of matriarchy on the premises we’re expected to show up enthusiastically for all their enforced socialization bullshit. Plus, I’ve noticed more and more places seem to be buying into the so-called Lean Management” paradigm and all that Agile and Scrum stuff, yet another mangler fad.
OFD just needs a steady paying gig for a couple more years while he gets the other operations underway here.
“The best way to protect us is to stop the epidemic in Africa, and we need those health care workers, so we do not want to put them in a position where it makes it very, very uncomfortable for them to even volunteer to go,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Forget destroying the economy! That’s no longer important! A travel ban would destroy the medical community!
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7db363a65faa4eff8a109140de5f7c06/fauci-quarantine-can-have-unintended-consequences
At the same time the returning nurse forced into quarantine and forced into submitting to the tender ministrations of other nurses declares:
Meanwhile, Kaci Hickox, the first nurse forcibly quarantined in New Jersey under the state’s new policy, said in a telephone interview with CNN that her isolation at a hospital was “inhumane,” adding: “We have to be very careful about letting politicians make health decisions.”
While I do agree with the second part of her statement–I’m sure for different reasons than her–as regards politicians, I find her attitude to be in the best form of “It can’t happen to me! I’m a professional! I’m special!”
Right, young lady. Your co-worker Dr. Craig Spencer had the same attitude as he went galavanting all over New York City in his efforts to keep all of that city’s inhabitants safe from ebola.
“I want to be treated with compassion and humanity, and don’t feel I’ve been treated that way.”
If following the directives of other doctors and nurses is “inhumane”, perhaps you should look at this as a learning experience and an opportunity to improve your own bedside manner.
I hope her lawsuit is thrown in a n ebola laden NYC trash can. Ooo I have to stay in a tent for 3 weeks and it’s LIKE A PRISON. Geez. She’s getting a paycheck for sitting on her ass.
Love another quote from the above article:
Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who is on a trip to West Africa, said returning U.S. health care workers should be “treated like conquering heroes and not stigmatized for the tremendous work that they have done.”
Sorry, (no I’m not) but I do not consider a spoiled brat who is only concerned about their own personal desires over the safety of others to be a hero.
I will reserve that hero pedestal for the health care worker who returns and demands to be held in quarantine until it is proven that he is safe to be released into the general populace.
BTW, Ms Power, before returning from west Africa you might want to give some thought to the politically incorrect fact of life that diplomatic immunity is not the same thing as disease immunity.
MrAtoz said:
“Ooo I have to stay in a tent for 3 weeks and it’s LIKE A PRISON. “
On the bright side, it’s a lot roomier than your average casket…
Mrs. OFD’s late husband (DOA 1992) and her current husband (DOA TBD) both had/will have to have specially built caskets. I may just absolve family of having to deal with all that and simply request a plain shroud and the traditional six feet under, preferably in an old, semi-abandoned or abandoned colonial-era boneyard out in the woods somewhere. With the traditional slate headstone bearing the winged skull.
All Hallows Eve beckons…I’ll be dipping into some of my Lovecraft stories this coming week…
OFD also has some real-life tales of the supernatural for y’all…
I don’t think the new quarantines are dehumanizing enough. Anybody that wants to go to the Afreaka Ebola area, ought not to be let back into the country, citizen or not. If you want to live here, do not go there. Period.
Mrs. OFD’s late husband (DOA 1992) and her current husband (DOA TBD) both had/will have to have specially built caskets.
I believe they make some nice ecologically sound ones nowadays. May say Whirlpool on the side.
I won’t need a specialty casket, or any casket. Assuming I ever die, not a safe assumption, and that the universe doesn’t end when I do, likewise, I want my carcass to be filled with explosives and then catapulted nude into a live volcano.
This is not nice. I listened to a BBC podcast earlier in the week, while on the road. It seems that a very, very large portion of Lehman debts were sold off for 30 cents on the dollar. Those who bought them, then proceeded to collect MORE than was due to Lehman. Guess who was not repaid in this little escapade? Right — all the people Lehman owed money to.
So, it appears that we taxpayers bailed out Lehman, so they could pay their debtors pennies on the dollar, but instead of Lehman — or some escrowed collector for Lehman — getting the money owed to Lehman, those who bought the debts were made rich. In effect a little transfer from us taxpayers. The program said — in final analysis — Lehman could have collected all the money owed to them, including interest on the debt, had it not been sold off to others.
Government is just totally and completely irresponsible these days.
Note that Kaci Hickox, special little princess that she is, is not exactly some faceless nurse who got caught up in an inhumane system. She works for CDC and has a “history of left-wing activism”. She wrote her opinion piece for the Dallas paper, but seems to have forgotten to mention her employer. Odd, that.
Any chance for libs to bash Christie. He did the right thing.
As this article states…
Hickox has access to a computer, her cellphone, magazines and newspapers and has been allowed to have takeout food, New Jersey Health Department officials said.
What’s wrong with being safe?
Again from the AP story:
The Obama administration considers the policy in New York and New Jersey “not grounded in science” and has conveyed its concerns to Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.
I would hazard to guess that hundreds of years of empirical evidence since the Black Death contribute absolutely zero to scientific evidence that quarantine works.
Turning plague ships away must never have saved any population from whatever disease the ship was carrying.
Similarly, local health departments forcing people to stay in their homes when they had the flu or measles never kept any outbreak from turning into a pandemic during the years immediately following the pandemic after World War I where quarantine was not enforced until too late.
If I were cynical, I would be tempted say our fine current administration defines “grounded in science” as being equal to “studied to death in Congressional committee not headed by the opposition party”.
One nagging detail puzzles me, though.
Since she is an American diplomat does Samantha Power’s diplomatic immunity apply in America to prevent Governor Cuomo from slapping her into the same quarantine other Americans returning from west Africa are thrown into?
Does it matter?
I’m pretty sure that if mean ol’ anti-science Governor Cuomo or Governor Christie or any other anti-science state governor slaps her and/or her plague ship into quarantine, Obola will just whip out his magic pen and sign yet another executive order for their release.
Rank doth have its privileges, you know.
Found a site I’m sure the administration considers to have a bedrock solid grounding in science!
http://grist.org/series/skeptics/
Haters.
Skeptic!
There does seem to be a mentality problem with some health care workers. I dunno about over there, but here we see this every year when flu shots become available. There is plenty of evidence that the flu is most dangerous to the elderly, to the very young, or to people who are already weak or ill. In other words, to lots and lots of patients.
Nonetheless, doctors and nurses refuse in masses to get inoculated against the flu. They apparently believe that – because they are health care professionals – they are somehow magically immune to getting sick. So they get sick, and infect the very people they are supposed to be caring for.
Apparently, the same mentality applies even to Ebola. Indescribably stupid.
Nonetheless, doctors and nurses refuse in masses to get inoculated against the flu.
Please note that there are 20? 30? varieties of the flu and that the flu shot only covers the 3 or 4 of these that the CDC feels has the most chance of infecting the populace. My son while in the USMC got experimental yearly and deployment flu shots with all the varieties covered. They spent the next week cursing the doctors.
That said, I got my flu shot. I am now considering getting my shingles shot.
Sure, true enough. Still – it’s a lot better than nothing. After my last bout of the flu turned into viral pneumonia, I get the shot religiously. Better 80% or 90% protection than nothing…
I once had flu turn to bronchitis and then to pneumonia, not a good time, about sixteen years ago. How’s this for stress factors: I’d just gotten married for the second time, to a widow with two kids; I’d just moved from MA to VT; I’d started a new job; we’d just bought a house; and my dad had just died.
I don’t get the shots and am thinking about it this year; almost every late fall into winter I get some kind of bronchial asthma thing and have to go to inhalers for relief. I’ll consult with my VA MD’s, I guess. And Mrs. OFD, the public healthcare pro.
Nonetheless, doctors and nurses refuse in masses to get inoculated against the flu.
The nurses at my FIL’s nursing home XXXX rehab center are required to get the flu shot to keep their jobs.