Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 7

Norse Religion

Interesting post on Norse beliefs. 

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Who Talks Best?

Plenty of podcasts out there where people get good conversations going. And I'm not hating on that. It can be a very interesting way to just discuss things, but sometimes it's a little too friendly and the ones I've seen don't have that much pushback or attempt to dig deep, you know? 
But Bad Faith has been tip top in that sense (though even then, you have a gaslighter, like a certain pro-Ukrainian war liberal and she pushed back, but not enough IMO) and is the best in the game that I've seen. Worth a view:

She has some good points, in that the tech companies do give the boom stick to anti-est conservatives, but by way of daily business seem to be anti-left. Worth thinking on. 
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immune theft

So even I had the idea that with masks etc, it might be that we're not giving our immune systems enough "practice" and thus when we take them off we're weaker. Apparently, the immune system is not like a muscle that has to be exercised. It simply remembers. 
Huh, interesting:

A metaphor that I have been using imagines our immune system as a photo collection. It takes a snapshot of every pathogen it encounters so that it can recognize the bad guy for next time. This is how our immune systems fight back. The photos don’t fade because they aren’t looked at for a few years; they just sit there until they are needed. When a virus mutates, it’s trying to disguise itself to evade detection. But, with Covid, the virus is also punching holes, fading or wearing out the photos—making them less and less useful as tools for identifying other viruses. Instead of immunity debt, we should be thinking about immunity theft.

Huh, though I wonder if it means that a mask means we take less photos in that time? well, you know my take. I've heard of masks and studies showing it hasn't been effective in reducing those who contract covid. Fine. but with something as crazy infectious as Omicron, I wonder what the hospitalization (vs age vs vaxxed or not etc) rates are. After all, initial viral load makes a difference, right?
Nevertheless, the fact that Covid is suppressing immunity is kinda crazy and something to think about. (need more studies and the likes of Pfizer etc should be made to make them over and over with all the billions they have). 
Still read the article. We need more evidence, but that Covid is making us weaker is nuts to think about:

There have been studies looking at the way Covid causes T-cell exhaustion. We now know that the virus can directly infect T cells (the guardian cells that spot infections and help defend the immune system), which we didn’t know before. There was also a study conducted by a group of pediatric specialists at several American hospitals where they looked at three groups of babies. The first group had RSV and Covid at the same time with very high viral loads, which sounds bad; the second group had RSV and Covid at the same time with low viral loads, which sounds less bad; the third group was babies who had RSV and had previously recovered from Covid. It was this last group that was by far the sickest—the ones that had to be ventilated. But it was a small study. You need more participants in order to get a consistent result. And of course it could be a giant coincidence, but it is frighteningly in keeping with this idea of immune system harm.

Shame that it seems all public officials are going bonkers, liberal or GOP (it's just the presentation as it were). I do think we just need more studies on all of this. And that should allow us to move to "normal" in a much easier fashion. 

That being said, that doesn't mean covid messes with T-cells, so we'll have to wait and see about what studies show in the future. 

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Covid et al

Still killing more people via covid. And in their infinite wisdom Dem centrists and the GOP decided, in the wake of a pandemic that costs a million+ lives etc to unilaterally disarm and also they made sure that our future readiness for pandemics was as close to null as possible. Note, that they thought thousands of things (military spending etc) were better for the country despite all available evidence. Even some staring us right in the face. IOw you know that they only care about their own pocket books and nothing else. 
So while we get headlines about China and how badly off they are, we rise up to 600 deaths a day. Again, that's a lot and even the war in Ukraine would be affected. Hospitalizations looks to be going down, so that's good (assuming it tracks like before), but the more the virus churns out there, the more variants we get. Guess we'll see. 
Our elites still trying to point elsewhere so that we don't see how bad we're doing here. So besides the covid deaths in China they're now talking about population numbers. As Dean Baker says, they have no basis for that analysis. The only thing I can think of is that they turn into a gerontocracy like our country and start making horrible decisions just like us. 
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Not a shock

here it is, though one has to think it's even worse than that. 
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The Vaccines were impressive.

And saved lives, no matter how you cut it, but damn stuff like this. Gov helped them get it online, but now it appears that privatize the profits and socialize the costs is going full speed ahead. 
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JFK & Conspiracy Theorists

On JFK and who killed him. Plenty of people tell me it's no biggie, and only conspiracy theorists would think otherwise. But I'm of the mind that if that were so, then why not release all the classified material on it. 
And right now, in the mediasphere, the likes of the right (Tucker Carlson) are the only ones saying as much (an odd right wing hatred for the services, which if true, means that we should use it to clip these services for real and not just use it as political capital like Trump did), apparently. And I have no love for the man, especially since he's against an immigrant like me, but that doesn't mean a broke clock isn't right twice a day (so just being against what he's for isn't the way, just as he had sense at the start of COVID). 
So with all the evidence I think it does point to a CIA/Deep state assassination that they are still scared about letting us know. The questions is, right or left, will it lead to actual reforms to make sure that power is never held by such types? Or will it just be a political ploy? Very important IMO. 

Well, damn then there's Parenti (chomps up Chomsky broad day and everything):



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China.

I'm sure there will be more yellow peril articles by our MSM, since our elites would never decide to improve things for scientific researchers (corporations, and sending money upwards, sure) once this gets around. And just like the fact that China has surpassed us in PPP and, more importantly, in life expectancy, I'm sure we won't hear anything about that and instead of actually spending on the people, to, you know, develop human capital, we'll just get screams about TikTok etc. Watch it, people, and write your congresspeople to focus on the US. People still need help here. 
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Covid, with a new variant.

Not clear if it will be horrendously infectious (in that it would cause a surge of hospitalizations that would be bad for the health of society. It will, however, win the evolutionary race (and if so, the experts claiming there was some divergence in variants are wrong). 
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Self Criticism.

Some notes and thoughts from Norman Finkelstein on self-criticism. I'm guessing that, on many levels,  even I need to be cognizant of my human frailties. 

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