Fourteen Trillion

$14 trillion. That's what Covid + lockdown cost us. "Workplace absences, and sales lost due to the cessation of brick-and-mortar retail shopping, air travel and public gatherings, contributed the most. At the height of the pandemic, in the second quarter of 2020, our survey indicates that international and domestic airline travel fell by nearly 60%, indoor dining by 65% and in-store shopping by 43%. . . . The toll we estimate that it took on the nation’s gross domestic product is twice the size of that of the Great Recession of 2007-2009. It’s 20 times greater than the economic costs of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and 40 times greater than the toll of any other disaster to befall the U.S. in the 21st century to date." 

COVID-19’s Total Cost to the U.S. Economy Will Reach $14 Trillion by End of 2023 – USC Schaeffer 

And how do you put a price tag on stealing our young people's youth and what they might have learned in school?The mental depression. The drug use. They were the least likely to get Covid yet they may have paid the biggest price.

So much of this was unnecessary. Too many ignorant people were given an enormous amount of power. What can we do to prevent it from happening again.

Fentanyl poisoning

It's not an "overdose," or an "addiction," it is poisoning and some people should be held accountable.. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, and up to 50 times more potent than heroin. Even tiny doses, as little as two milligrams, the size of two grains of salt, is a fatal dose for most people. Teen don't have a fully developed brain for the problems of risk taking, and are accidentally poisoned. And the origin is China, just like Covid. Why does the president not act?

https://www.rand.org/blog/2019/09/tackle-fentanyl-like-a-poisoning-outbreak-not-a-drug.html

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/teens-tragic-tales-meet-some-of-children-who-died-from-fentanyl-poisoning

https://www.foxnews.com/us/fentanyl-poisoning-deaths-double-30-states

Fentanyl, Covid-19 and Public Health   https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wmh3.355

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on 19 Months of COVID with Hoover Institution

What we (Fauci and friends) did wrong: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on 19 Months of COVID with Hoover Institution's Peter Robinson. Public Health agencies said we can't lock down only the vulnerable because that would be too difficult, and instead locked down the entire country, causing unimaginable damage to the young and to the economy, especially the low income. Wealthy people were hardly affected at all.

https://youtu.be/zG7XZ2JXZqY

Recorded on October 13, 2021: From the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has been on the front lines of analyzing, studying, and even personally fighting the pandemic. In this wide-ranging interview, Dr. Bhattacharya takes us through how it started, how it spread throughout the world, the efficacy of lockdowns, the development and distribution of the vaccines, and the rise of the Delta variant. He delves into what we got right, what we got wrong, and what we got really wrong. Finally, Dr. Bhattacharya looks to the future and how we will learn to live with COVID rather than trying to extinguish it, and how we might be prepared to deal with another inevitable pandemic that we know will arrive at some point.

Take away for me (paraphrasing Dr. Bhattacharya):  The liberals' concern for the poor, for the working class, for children was all lip-service as soon as Covid hit--then it all became ideological.  It was about power.

Excess deaths from Covid lockdowns

The media want us to focus on the deaths from the current virus--about 80% of them in people who were overweight or obese. But the excess mortality was greater among those in the 15 to 54 age range, not the elderly. And the cause wasn't the virus, but the lockdown. These victims weren't the laptop, snowflake types like journalists, scientists, and politicians, but the lower income and minority households. In actual numbers those grieving families are white people, but the media will make it a racism story (rate) rather than a lockdown story which they encouraged because fear brought them profit.

"The deadly impact of lockdowns will grow in future years, due to the lasting economic and educational consequences. The United States will experience more than 1 million excess deaths in the United States during the next two decades as a result of the massive “unemployment shock” last year, according to a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins and Duke, who analyzed the effects of past recessions on mortality. Other researchers, noting how educational levels affect income and life expectancy, have projected that the “learning loss” from school closures will ultimately cost this generation of students more years of life than have been lost by all the victims of the coronavirus."
https://www.city-journal.org/death-and-lockdowns  

There was far more support for lockdowns among Democrat governors and mayors than Republicans. And much of it was about politics, not public health. Anything to ruin the economy and President Trump; anything to ramp up the charges of racism; anything to grab the brass ring of green. Hate from the Left has killed Americans and will destroy several generations.
And still no evidence that lockdowns have saved any lives.

Over 90% of the bill is not related to Covid

 

President Trump and the opioid crisis

• President Trump launched an Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse and Reduce Drug Supply and Demand, introducing new measures to confront the driving forces behind this crisis.
• The President signed the landmark SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, the largest and most comprehensive legislative package addressing a single drug crisis in history.
• The President helped secure a record $6 billion in funding to fight the opioid epidemic.
• The Administration provided more than $2 billion in grants in 2018 to help States, territories, tribes, and local communities prevent and treat opioid abuse.
• The Administration pursued scientific solutions to prevent and treat addiction through the Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative.
• The President launched a national public awareness campaign about the dangers of opioid addiction and youth opioid usage.
• Last year, President Trump created a Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, which recommends ways to tackle the opioid crisis.
• The Administration declared the opioid crisis a nationwide Public Health Emergency in 2017.
• President Trump is working to cut off the flow of deadly opioids into our country and to disrupt the networks that distribute them to our communities.
• The Administration secured first-ever indictments against Chinese nationals for fentanyl trafficking.
• The Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a surge to target fentanyl and heroin dealers in the districts with the most severe overdose death rates.
• The DOJ formed a Joint Criminal Opioid Darknet Enforcement team and shut down the biggest Darknet distributor of drugs.
• Last year, the DOJ announced the largest healthcare fraud takedown in history, arresting more than 120 defendants with opioid-related crimes.
• The President launched a Safer Prescribing Plan that seeks to cut nationwide opioid prescription fills by one-third within three years.
• The Administration has led four National Prescription Drug Take-Back Days, collecting a record-breaking 1,837 tons of expired and unneeded prescription drugs.

https://710wor.iheart.com/featured/mark-simone/content/2019-03-09-the-list-of-president-trumps-accomplishments-so-far/

How to read the new nutrition label

This is the final week of programming at Lakeside, and the director of education uses our own Lakeside "experts" who present fine programming. Yesterday was Wendy Stuhldreher a retired professor of nutrition and public health explaining the new labeling for food (she used a one page FDA graphic issued Jan. 2018 which I've been unable to find). My take away was, "just eat your vegetables." She said it many times, especially at Q & A. Her point was that although vegetables may not be high in protein or calcium, they perform with other nutrients as an orchestra, and all play their part.

She also stressed that vegetarians must find compensatory nutrition because they don't eat red meat. The audience was definitely in the osteoporosis/bone loss age group, so she also stressed calcium, but added that it was an investment we needed to make when we were young because the body starts making withdrawals from the bank of our bones by middle age. For a cheese good for protein and calcium, she recommended cottage cheese.

My mother's generation started that 2% and 1% milk trend (she was 5'1" and always watched her weight), and now my generation is probably low on the calcium reserves that needed the fat content for our bones. I think I continued with the 1% and skim until a few years ago.  Don't give young children skim milk as a replacement for whole.

When I first decided to attend Wendy’s lecture, I thought I knew how to read a label, but there have been significant changes, and we found out why, like Vit. D is now listed, but Vit. A & C have been removed because deficiencies in those are rare. Sugar is sugar on the new label. Fat is fat, and "calories from fat" has been removed. Potassium need has been added. (You can't get enough by eating a banana, which most of the audience believed).

The public health concern about sun damage and advertising about sunscreen has been so successful, we now don't get enough Vit. D and today's children don't play outside as much as the boomers and Gen-Xers. She gave the new thinking on sodium/salt--because more of us are eating out, we're not eating as many vegetables--and it's not the sodium, it's the lack of vegetables.  One woman (very thin) in the audience commented about addiction to sugar, and Wendy said that has not been proven and commented on the difficulty of using control groups for nutrition studies.  But one she did recall concluded sugar was less harmful than other sweeteners.

I know how we all love to read those organic and health food websites, but when doing an initial search, I add USDA or FDA to check the research, aka bibliography/footnotes.

If they don't drink enough water, why is it my fault?

I've been blamed for the 18th c. slave trade, for the KKK, for Jim Crow, for segregated schools, for income gaps, for health outcomes from asbestos in old buildings in the inner cities, and now because blacks and hispanics don't drink enough water, all because my German and Irish ancestors arrived here without a penny to their names before the Revolutionary War.

"Non-Hispanic Blacks and Hispanics were 40% more likely to be inadequately hydrated compared with non-Hispanic White adults, the researchers found. People with lower incomes were 20% more likely to be inadequately hydrated compared to those with higher incomes. Tap water intake, which was lower among Blacks, Hispanics, and those with lower incomes, partially explained the racial/ethnic differences in hydration status."

Harvard Public Health Chan Newsletter, July 25 https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/significant-racial-ethnic-income-disparities-in-hydration-found-among-u-s-adults/

The missing Public Health Service Corps

The U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps is an elite team of more than 6,800 full-time, well-trained, highly qualified public health professionals dedicated to delivering the nation's public health promotion and disease prevention programs and advancing public health science. Instead of sending them to Africa, Obama is sending the 101st Airborne, who are not trained in anything medical. Why? The Corps is trained and equipped to respond to public health crises and national emergencies such as natural disasters, disease outbreaks, or terrorist attacks, both here and overseas. Obama is apparently having a hissy fit because the Senate (his guys, btw) won't approve his anti-gun nominee for Surgeon General, who is the head of the Corps. Of course, there is an interim Surgeon General, Rear Admiral  Boris D. Lushniak, M.D., M.P.H. , but maybe Obama is doing this deliberately--putting our troops at risk.

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/03/18/democrats-lining-up-to-oppose-obamas-antigun-nominee-for-surgeon-general-n1810745

Vivek  “Murthy, who has a history of calling guns a "healthcare issue," classifying guns as a "public health threat" and of slamming the National Rifle Association, is being opposed not by just Republicans, but numerous Democrats in an election year.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/no-surgeon-general-during-ebola-in-us-2014-10

http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/about/biographies/biosg.html

http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/health/blogs/white-coat-notes/2013/11/14/obama-nominating-vivek-murthy-harvard-and-brigham-and-women-surgeon-general/eo6mit1nNtLpUxE6VrizLJ/blog.html

More wasted research dollars on social problems

Yesterday I saw a nicely dressed woman walk up my sidewalk and look at my house number and walk away. I saw “U.S. Census” on her bag. I went to the door and yoo-hooed, “Is that it? Am I counted?” “Oh no,“ she laughed. “That will be next year.” Maybe they’ll also be checking my appliances, light bulbs, plumbing and heating units for my carbon footprint. Checking my cupboard and waistline for obesity. Clocking the mileage on my exercycle. Look what Obama's been able to do to kill the economy in just 100 days. What will it be at 465 days?

“CWC (Carbon Water Climate Clutch of Ohio State) has partnered with the PHPID (Public Health Preparedness for Infectious Diseases) to fund a grant to determine "How is the carbon cycle being disrupted by human activities (e.g., fossil fuel combustion) and how can the cycle be re-balanced to mitigate Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) and its adverse effects?"

It’s important to understand that ACC, anthropogenic climate change, although never proven (climate records go back about 150 years), is a given in this study grant--don‘t apply if you think it is a hoax. To get promotion and tenure at any university you have to buy into this. Keep in mind, a “green job” has never been defined--but this would be one. I think it’s like victimhood--it’s in the eye of the beholder (grant applicant).

We (this is both federal and state money) don't need to spend money to determine footprints and meaningless surveys, but we should research how these crazy theories hurt the poor, create food and fuel shortages, shore up a few investors like Al Gore and George Soros in the cap and trade exchange (located somewhere in Europe), and destroy large segments of the economy so that we can come under global domination, most likely by the Chinese. the Big O is still laying the ground work for that.

“Specifically, the project seeks to identify the most effective ways to move the public health system to adopt strategies aimed at reducing the carbon footprint on a population scale. As ACC continues, the effects on public health are anticipated to worsen: shortages of food and water are developing and will intensify; the extent and range of disease-carrying insect vectors will broaden; destruction of coastal areas through rising ocean levels and storm-surge flooding will affect millions; and intensified summer temperature extremes will threaten, directly and indirectly, millions more.


“The "twin" issue of peak oil, or the world's reaching the maximum rate of petroleum extraction, poses different risks than ACC does — depletion of energy resources amplifies all of the previously mentioned threats by limiting societies' ability to provide resources toward ACC mitigation. These issues all devolve back to the collective carbon footprint of U.S. citizens and are potentially solvable through society-wide behavior change.


“This project will begin with a descriptive survey of U.S. state and local health departments to assess their baseline understanding of the general concept of carbon footprint and its attendant problems as outlined above. Secondly, the experimental arm of the study will be a pilot intervention project. A "tool kit" of resources will be disseminated to facilitate health departments' engagement with citizens, the business community, and other governmental agencies with the aim of enhancing public cooperation in reducing the collective carbon footprint.” Link

And here's another one that appeared in two different e-mails I received today (on behalf of my husband)

The House of Representatives will soon vote on legislation that would provide funding for undergraduate and graduate architecture and engineering programs relating to the design and construction of high performance buildings. The bill, The Green Energy Education Act of 2009 (HR 957), could be on the House floor as early as today.

The Green Energy Education Act will help educate today's college and graduate architecture and engineering students on the numerous benefits of high performance buildings by authorizing the National Science Foundation to provide grants to universities to develop curricula, laboratory activities, training practicums, and design projects focusing on green buildings and advanced energy technologies. Ensuring that today's architecture and engineering students are aware of the importance of high performance buildings is a necessary step to facilitate increased construction of green buildings in the future.

This is unbelieveable waste. The magazines and newsletters have been filled with this stuff for decades. The Ohio continuing education requirements in being green, environmentally friendly, sustainable and off the grid could fund Al Gore's HVAC bill for years.