MaxRedline

Illnesses

They told us that this years' flu vaccine was a rootin'-tootin' sure thing. Yeah, about that:

Outbreaks of influenza are getting an early start this year in part because of cold weather gripping much of the USA and low efficacy associated with this year's flu vaccine.

"It's just one of those years where the CDC is seeing that this strain of flu is only somewhat covered by the vaccine that was given this year," said Jennifer Radtke, manager for infection prevention at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville. "They're seeing that it's anywhere from 10% to 33% effective, so any time there’s a mismatch between the vaccine and the circulating strain of the flu, you’re going to see more cases."

Peak flu season usually hits in February, so stock up now and stay away from the stores later. It's just one of those years....

Subway's not feeling so well either: over 900 stores closed this year, and a third of the remainder aren't turning a profit. That whole Jared thing hit them hard, but they're also having quality control issues, among other problems:

Last week, the New York Post reported that roughly 400 franchisees were protesting the chain's plan to bring back the $5 footlong deal. On Monday, Subway's head of North American marketing, Karlin Linhardt, resigned from the company.

And traffic has fallen 25% over the past five years, the Post reported, citing an internal memo it obtained.

I can see why all the Radio Shacks around here have disappeared, as you can buy most of what they used to peddle almost anywhere, today. But you've really got to be screwing up to lose food customers like Subway's been losing them.

 

Florida Man

Hey Mikey!

Michael Wilson, 32, is accused of trying to kill his wife after he attached electrical devices to the inside of the deadbolt lock and the door handle of their Palm Coast home, according to a charging affidavit. The ploy, which could have easily led to her death, was to have her insert the house key and then grab the handle, completing the circuit and sending a jolt of electricity through her arm, chest and heart.

Palm Coast is in the Daytona Beach area, and Mikey's wife is pregnant. Looks like he didn't want either of them around, but his cunning plan failed.

He got caught before anyone got hurt, but an officer described it as the most bizarre domestic violence case he'd ever seen. Kind of too bad Florida retired Old Sparky; this guy seems like a perfect candidate.

 

Happy Squirrels!

Semi drivers really need to learn that the Terwilliger curves on I-5 weren't especially well designed. Lots of wrecks happen there, and it's more often than not an overturned semi that clots everything up. Today, it was a truckload of trail mix. It seems we don't have quite enough squirrels in the area (or maybe they've learned to stay off the freeway), so ODOT went in to clean up the 50 pallets of trail mix. A lot probably went downhill into squirrel habitat, though. They'll be dancing in the trees tonight!

 

“Global Warming Provides A Marvelous Excuse For Global Socialism.” - Margaret Thatcher

Elizabeth Warren‏Verified account @elizabethforma 22h22 hours ago

I’m going to say something really crazy: I believe in science. Climate change is real and we have a moral obligation to protect this Earth for our children and grandchildren.

 

Cool. Now she can bone up on the science of fetal development, and then the science of genetics as it applies to gender. And ethnicity, as she claimed to be of Cherokee heritage in order to advance her career. On the other hand, when has she said anything that wasn't really crazy?

 

Of course, her tweet was in response to one by President Tweet, who said: “In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record,” Trump said in a tweet Thursday. “Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!”

 

By the way, Thresher sharks have been washing ashore on the east coast:

 

“Working with Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and NOAA Fisheries Service, the AWSC team was called out to two thresher shark strandings along the Cape today,” the statement read. “Both of these male sharks were nearly the same size and likely stranded due to cold shock. Morphometric data, organs, and tissue samples were collected to be examined (once they thaw).”

 

No wonder they're calling it "climate change" now. It's not about "global warming" or (as back in the 1970s) "global cooling". It's about controlling you. You are Bad for the Planet; they can jet around the globe to give speeches at "conferences", but you're supposed to walk or ride a bicycle. And don't forget to recycle!

 

Remember, whether it's cold or hot, it's All Your Fault. That's why it's so important for politicians to fly down to Brazil and back, or over to Paris and back, in order to solemnly discuss the severity of the problems that you are creating.

It's Back! Yo Ho Ho!

I'll be home for Christmas...

Mother in-law found out yesterday that her cancer has returned; no wonder she felt so run-down on Christmas. I'm guessing they'll go with radiation this time around, but at her age, I doubt that she can take as much as I did - I got "dual-beam" treatment, which I thought meant they'd bring a couple of folks in to stand around and grin at me, but that was not the case: it means they give you double the dose they'd direct at, say, a breast-cancer patient - and they hit you from the top then from underneath. In my case, as the sarcoma was in my arm; it burned all of the skin out of my armpit before I was halfway through the treatments. You learn to walk differently, as otherwise your shirt sticks to the bare tissue in there. Really hurts to take it off if you let that happen. So I was monkey-man for a while.

Think the old "Tarzan" flicks, where the chimp is always running around with one arm in the air.

Haven't heard yet what they have in mind for her, but I suspect it'll be radiation at a lot lower dose. I doubt that'll be nearly as effective. Another issue for her is that she lacks anything resembling my sense of humor: when I finished my radiation stuff, I gave everybody there a "Get out of hell free" card. And before the surgery that followed, the lead on the team came in and spent half an hour telling me all about the things that could go wrong. You could die. You could lose use of your arm. And so on.

When he finished, he asked if I had any questions for him. So I said, "Ordinarily, it would never occur to me, but the folks on TV keep saying I should ask my doctor." He got a serious look on his face.

"Is my heart healthy enough for sexual activity?" It took him a minute, then he burst out laughing. Later he asked my wife if I'm always that way. When she replied affirmatively, he said "That's what's going to save his life!"

When I came to after surgery and they moved me from recovery to a hospital room, I noticed a dozen or so small tubes in my arm. A nurse came in to ask how I was doing, and I said I guessed I was fine, all things considered, then pointed to the tubes: "I didn't realize you were going to hook me up for fiber-optic Internet; when do you finish, and how do I turn it on?"

Made her laugh. She told me those were catheters for more radiation treatments. That one spread across the floor - every time someone came in to bug me for a blood sample or something, they always mentioned fiber-optic internet.

I'm the only person with that kind of aggressive sarcoma to have survived more than two years after diagnosis.

There's something to be said for weird humor, which unfortunately the mother in-law lacks. That will make her fight much more difficult. It sets you up for failure.

So many people tend to freak when they get the news. Get depressed, complain to doctors and nurses. What good does that do? Nothing. I go the other way. Humor may not cure you, but it does set you free - and easier on the care-givers as well.

Pharma Bro's Lawyer Convicted Of Fraud

A New York corporate lawyer who once advised Martin Shkreli was convicted on Wednesday of charges he helped the former pharmaceutical executive steal millions of dollars from a drug company to pay back investors in two failed hedge funds. Evan Greebel, who was outside counsel to Shkreli’s former company Retrophin Inc, was found guilty by a federal jury in Brooklyn of charges that he conspired to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, the U.S. government said.

They are shocked, shocked, I say, by the verdict and vow to fight it. Smarty Marty is hanging out in jail, awaiting sentencing at present. He and his former lawyer are both looking at perhaps 20 years in prison. Don't know about the lawyer, but Marty has what appears to be an eminently punchable face.

Another Winner In Astoria, Oregon

Astoria police said officers went to North Tongue Point to investigate reports of a man possibly trespassing on boats. They found Timofey Erofeeff, 27, who they learned was on parole for offenses in Deschutes County. He is from Scotts Mills.

Scotts Mills is a small town of about 400, located along Butte Creek in the Willamette Valley. It seems rather likely that Timofey is one of many Russians who located in the area over the past few decades. In a lot of cases, they don't seem to have any respect for societal norms. A number of them moved onto PGE property at Austin Hot Springs, along the Clackamas River, some years back, where they proceeded to trash the place - tossing dirty diapers into the river and generating mounds of garbage. It got so bad that PGE closed the place, but they just cut down the gates and moved back in.

This guy, it seems, drove over to Astoria and was prowling boats when the police checked in. The idiot jumped into his truck and apparently didn't realize that what he was making his getaway on was not a road, but rather, a pier. Unable to stop, he rolled straight into the Columbia River.

When officers approached Erofeeff’s Ford F150 to take him into custody, he fled and then drove down the pier and into the water.

Well, once in the river, he bailed out of the truck and tried to swim away. That wasn't working, so he paddled back to the pier, where he was eventually fished out of the 45-degree water, treated for hypothermia, and is now residing in the Clatsop County jail on multiple charges.

The Coast Guard pulled his truck out of the river this afternoon.

I do love the way people who aren't involved in doing anything are invariably pictured wearing hard hats - governor Katie, for example, has never done a lick of work in her miserable life, but she can still put on a hard hat to tour a site where all of the work's been shut down for her photo-op.

International Funnies

Remember how China was all on board with tough sanctions for the NorKs because of their missile tests and nuke program? Yeah, about that...U.S. spy satellites have caught them offloading oil onto NorK ships at sea about ten times a month, which they're not supposed to be doing.

The NorK ship in these photos is clearly identifiable; it's amazing what we can see from space. China's been the main source of fuel for the NorKs, and they agreed in the Security Council to cut that off. Doesn't look as though they have.

And it looks as though the NorK bomb-testing could do with some safety upgrades:

SEOUL (Reuters) - At least four defectors from North Korea have shown signs of radiation exposure, the South Korean government said on Wednesday, although researchers could not confirm if they were was related to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

Oh, they were probably just playing around with uranium, like guys will.

Amusingly, while the Great Lakes area is digging out of five feet of snow, the blokes over in the U.K. have been battling two to three inches of the stuff, along with ice and winds. We get that here in Portland pretty frequently, but apparently they've never heard of things like studded tires or chains, so drivers have been abandoning their vehicles and their motorways have seen lane reductions and lengthy delays:

Stuck A14 West Bound between junctions 2-3 in Northamptonshire. Haven’t moved for over 3 hours!!

#thankgoodnessfornetflix #uksnow #weatherPity, that! Good that they don't live around here!

Living on a dead end mountain road, we don't get things like mail - or anything else - when there's snow and ice up here...forget about that whole postal service line about how neither snow nor rain, etc.; they may have chains on their little trucks, but they're not gonna come here until it melts.

 

 

Oregon Idiocy Strikes Again

We're ranked as the fifth most dangerous state when it comes to driving in the rain, but it's not because it rains a lot here. No, the Democratics who've been hamstringing the state for the past three decades are so busy spending millions on "services" to attract more homeless, free abortions for all, light rail and other pet projects that they don't bother with core functions like maintaining roads. As a result, many of them now act as catch-basins, so drivers end up hydroplaning as rain fills the grooves in the roads.

"People assume more rainfall equals more accidents," said Rebecca Edwards, the report's author. "This is false. Any rain on the road can create pooling — whether it's 2 inches or 12 inches of rain."

And an inch or two is all that's needed here.

This sort of thing only occurs because Oregonians don't send enough money to the Democratics - things would be so much better if all income went straight to government, who would then dole out what they believe you need.

Most Americans are—or should be—cheering the new tax law. Analysis from the left-leaning Tax Policy Center predicts more than 90 percent of tax filers will pay lower federal taxes under the law.

Nevertheless, Oregon governor Kate Brown described the new tax law a “monstrosity” in a fundraising email.

It'll only increase revenues to the state of Oregon by another $150 to $200 million per year.

How many public employee union members can the state hire with such piddling amounts?

 

Gun Violence

Approximately 3 million Americans carry a loaded handgun on their person daily. Another 9 million Americans carry a gun once a month. Yet the rate of violent crime has been dropping. How odd. With that many legal guns out on the streets, you'd think that what the zealots have been ranting about for years would show up in the stats. But they don't.

Sorta like AlGore's man-made global warming hysteria.

Here in Portland, there have been four people stabbed in the last four months on their vaunted light rail lines, two of which were fatal - as in murdered in the carriage. No carriage shootings. Of course, those guys were probably wielding assault knives.