Category: COVID-19
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COVID-19 Day 33: Fear is a Motivator
When I lived in Hawaii, my wife and I were fortunate enough to attend a ghost tour lead by historian Glen Grant. We stopped in front of Iolani Palace where Glen told the story of Queen Lili’uokalni’s ghost. She was imprisoned there, after a coup d’étet overthrew her kingdom and handed Hawaii over to the…
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COVID-19 Day 32: Gin and Tonic, the Original Quarantini
Sequestered at home in social lockdown for weeks because of COVID-19, many have turned to hosting virtual cocktail parties. Cooking and Lifestyle websites have shared various “Quarantini” recipes. But many don’t remember the original quarantini: gin-and-tonic Gin traces its origins all the way back to the middle ages. Its name comes from the Dutch word for the juniper tree, “genever”. Juniper…
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COVID-19 Day 31: The Batshit Crazy Story of Chloroquine
When President Trump began touting the use of chloroquine as a possible treatment for COVID-19, many people thought he was “batshit crazy.” That statement might be closer to the truth than they realized. It appears that President Trump heard about a tweet by Elon Musk on March 16. Elon linked to a paper describing promising results from chloroquine trials in…
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COVID-19 Day 29: A Good Friday for Vaccine Research
COVID-19 Research in Isreal About 2000 years ago today, a Jewish rabbi was crucified for trying to save the world. Today Israeli scientists are being virtually crucified by conspiracy nuts for trying to do the same. Early in March, a Facebook meme was being circulated claiming to show a vaccine being mass-produced in Israel that would…
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COVID-19 Day 28: Socialism, where’s the fire?
In an interview with Congressman Dan Crenshaw, Joe Rogan challenged him on his stance against Bernie Sander’s Medicare-for-All. “Isn’t the fire department Socialism?” Joe asked, “Don’t we already do that with firemen, the policemen, with the schools?” Crenshaw seemed to struggle to come up with a metaphor for Joe that would offer an explanation of how public…
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COVID-19 Day 30: In Defense of Chicken Little
The final death toll currently “looks more like 60,000 than the 100,000 to 200,000” said Dr. Anthony Fauci on NBC’s Today Show. Similarly, The Imperial College in London radically lowered its fatality estimates from 500,000 to 20,000. Under normal circumstances this news would be greeted with relief. Fewer deaths are our primary goal in our battle with COVID-19. But these dramatically lower numbers…
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COVID-19 Day 27: The Forgotten Pandemics
The virus arose in China. Quietly infecting dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, before jumping across borders on airplanes to the rest of the world. As bodies filled hospitals with a mystery contagion, the news media only started to sound alarm after the first cases were identified in Europe and America. In a matter of months, millions would be dead. But this wasn’t…