Articles by Herschel Smith

At a recent post by Glenn Reynolds, one commenter wrote “I suspect when the history of this virus is written this is going to be one of the very ugly chapters – the resistance to using the HCQ drug cocktail early in the process. The number of lives it would have saved will be staggering.”  Another commenter wrote “As most know, the media/Democrat politicians/FDA want the use of the hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin/zinc combination to be restricted until late in the course of the infection, when the patient’s infection is well-advanced.  As a physician, this baffles me.  I can’t think of a single infectious condition — bacterial, fungal, or viral — where the best medical treatment is to delay the use of a anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, or anti-viral until the infection is far advanced.”

There is much more at the link.  The comments are well worth the time to study them.  Indeed, the chapter on this will be ugly, and will likely end in lawsuits, political consequences, and unnecessary deaths.  I’ve had email exchanges with trusted readers on this issue, medical professionals, who are concerned about side effects for certain morbidity indicators.  True enough, any medication must be administered by qualified personnel, but we know enough now to understand that it is a safe drug, and effective for the purpose of prophylaxis in this case.

Here are some of the links I’ve supplied on this.

Why Hydroxychloroquine Works

Another Win For Hydroxychloroquine

The Effectiveness Of Hydroxychloroquine: A Note To Dr. Zack Moore

The FDA Death Toll And Use Of Off-Label Medications

Promise In The War Against Covid-19

There is more.

Doctors Urge Earlier Use of Hydroxychloroquine

Henry Ford uses hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 symptoms, says benefits outweigh risks

There is actually much more than that, but you get the point.  There is copious evidence of its effectiveness and relative safety.  My daughter (surgical and ER NP) told me this long ago.  There are certainly side effects for all medications, but of the many she has had to prescribe, this one is way down on the list of medications of concern.

But the bureaucracy still resists?  Is there no prior evidence of its effectiveness and safety?  Why yes, there is.

Chloroquine, a relatively safe, effective and cheap drug used for treating many human diseases including malaria, amoebiosis and human immunodeficiency virus is effective in inhibiting the infection and spread of SARS CoV in cell culture. The fact that the drug has significant inhibitory antiviral effect when the susceptible cells were treated either prior to or after infection suggests a possible prophylactic and therapeutic use.

This is a conclusion statement by a NIH study on Coronavirus (Covid-19 is SARs, Bat-SARs + some proteins that mimic HIV).  This study, entitled “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread,” was completed and published on August 22, 2005, a study of which Dr. Fauci is certainly aware.

The truth about this effective and safe medication is far more sinister.  For political reasons, the administrative state is opposing the very prophylaxis they recommended in 2005 for this disease.

The same bureaucracy is still selling the snake oil that this virus is zoonotic.  The two videos below show, based on both genetic analysis and paper trail, this virus has an extremely low probability of being zoonotic.  This virus has been studied at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in Canada, Harvard, and at the Wuhan institute.  Actual biological material was stolen from the study in Canada, and the Obama administration actually stopped the funding for the study (apparently too late) when they saw the supercharging of the SARs virus that the researchers were pursuing – with the same visiting collaborating Chinese researcher in all instances.

The oath to “First, do no harm” apparently means little to nothing when it comes to the comparison of hatred for Mr. Trump.  That oath will mean much more when they enter eternity.

Update: Welcome to Instapundit readers (thanks to Glenn for the link), and welcome again to WRSA readers.  To readers, I appreciate your patronage.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Herschel_Smith

News from Kentucky.

HILLVIEW, Ky. (WDRB) — The pastor of a Bullitt County church says he won’t comply with an order to self-quarantine while he and his attorney discuss their next steps.

Troopers with Kentucky State Police arrived at Maryville Baptist Church on Easter Sunday morning to record license plate information of churchgoers who attended a mass gathering during the coronarivus pandemic.

Pastor Jack Roberts and his allies have argued they have a constitutional right to continue in-person church services, and Sunday, dozens of families attended the Easter service at the Bullitt County church despite an executive order from Gov. Andy Beshear that prohibits mass gatherings in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. Beshear said Friday that anyone who participates in mass gatherings of any type during Easter weekend will be required to self-quarantine for two weeks.

The troopers placed notices under cars’ windshield wipers that say, in part, “This vehicle’s presence at this location indicates that its occupants are present at a mass gathering prohibited by Orders of the Governor and the Cabinet for Health and Family Services. As a result, this vehicle’s occupants, and anyone they come into contact with, are at risk of contracting COVID-19, a respiratory illness that can be severe and lead to death, particularly for older adults and those with underlying heart, lung, kidney and immunity issues.”

According to Beshear, the license plate information will be forwarded to local health departments, which will then present orders to self-quarantine for 14 days at the car owners’ homes. Failure to comply could result in further enforcement, the notices say.

They did this in spite of a federal court order against it.  AG Barr has made noises of coming to the assistance of congregants like this.

“During this sacred week for many Americans, AG Barr is monitoring govt regulation of religious services,” Kupec tweeted. “While social distancing policies are appropriate during this emergency, they must be applied evenhandedly & not single out religious orgs. Expect action from DOJ next week!”

This statement means nothing.  “Evenhandedly.”  “Not single out religious orgs.”  There is nothing in that statement explaining that the constitution cannot be suspended by orders of anyone.

These are very troubling signs, all of the indicators of opportunistic totalitarianism.  But useful nonetheless.

Take a look at the cops in the picture.  You’ve heard it a thousand times.  “We LEOs believe in the second amendment, and we would never obey orders to confiscate firearms.”

And now you know.  If the Kentucky state police will suspend the right to free association and public worship, they will collect firearms from peaceable men.  Because orders.  Good men in Kentucky should remember this, forever.  Those troopers are not good men.

The Kentucky State Police Commissioner is Rodney Brewer.

Ammoland.

Through the first half of the Twentieth Century, military rifle cartridges were all between 6.5mm and 8mm (25-31 caliber), in order to achieve an acceptable rifle/ammunition compromise that balances:

• Adequate range
• Adequate penetration
• Accuracy
• Manageable recoil
• Weight
• Bulk
• Durability
• Overheating
• Barrel length
• Barrel life
• Magazine capacity, and
• Terminal effect

Those twelve issues represent competing, unavoidable trade-offs confronting weapon and ammunition designers. It is not possible to “adjust” any one of those without affecting all the rest. Go too far in any one direction, and you immediately run into deal-busting troubles!

That weapon design is a perpetual tradeoff is certainly true.  There is no debating that point.

In the first half of the Twentieth Century, horse-mounted cavalry units persisted, although mostly obsolete by the end of WWI.

However, with cavalry still a military consideration, “adequate terminal effect” implied an ability to take-down a horse with one shot!

In our modern era, with horses no longer a consideration, 5.5mm (22 caliber) bullets (5.56×45 NATO, 5.45×39 Soviet, 5.7×28 FN) have emerged and are considered (by some) appropriate chamberings for modern, military main-battle rifles, but there is far from “universal agreement” on that!

Inadequate penetration and inadequate range have been persistently (since the 1960s) cited as critical failings with this modern generation small-caliber military cartridges.

Interminable technological attempts to address these two issues have failed to silence critics, including me.

And so the point of the article was what – that Farnam is still an opponent of the 5.56mm cartridge?  We needed to be reminded of that?

So just to float the same point I’ve made before, Farnam leaves out the most important point in the discussion, and that is military doctrine.  Doctrine leads to or produces tactics, and tactics produces weapons design, not vice versa.

There is no point in rehearsing the doctrinal changes that occurred to bring about the advent of the 5.56mm cartridge.  But it is sufficient to say: that the use of fire and maneuver tactics (e.g., squad rushes), the reliance on crew served weapons for longer range combat (because more than 80% of enemy killed occurred throughout military history from crew served weapons, not rifles), and the reliance on DMs for even longer range shooting (those who have been specifically schooled in that science, and have been issued the weapons and gear for it), is legitimate military doctrine.

Farnam’s objections not withstanding.  In a perfect world in which Soldiers and Marines didn’t have to wear body armor because they were never shot at, they were in perfect shape, they didn’t have to leave the line at 100 pounds of kit, and the U.S. military had unlimited resources, time and money, everyone could carry rifles that weighed twice as much and carry ammunition that weighed twice as much.

My only comment is that trigger break weight will be a function of where you put your finger because the trigger itself is a lever arm.

David Codrea.

“There is no constitutional right to immediately buy or sell guns,” Brady Campaign President Kris Brown whined to NBC News, where it was dutifully picked up by other megaphone wielders like the UK’s BBC for global consumption. “And there certainly is no right to spread coronavirus while buying or selling guns.”

That last part is just a clumsy red herring coupled with a clumsier insult intended to appeal to useful idiot ignorance and gin up their contempt – hardly a feat for those whose very existence screams “mob mentality.” As for Brown’s first contention, stated properly, there’s no constitutional authority to infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and a right delayed, as Martin Luther King observed, is a right denied. Given her druthers, gun stores necessary to “the security of a free State” would remain shuttered not just indefinitely, but forever.

The entire objection is one that is possible only because of prior and current infringements.  The prior infringement is one of NICS and the necessity that the FedGov stay open for business in order to purchase a firearm from an FFL.

The current infringement is the seemingly ubiquitous executive orders by governors that businesses and churches shutter their places just because the state says so.

Without those two infringements, the entire complaint never never have even been pondered.  It’s all based on false premises.

From Wirecutter.

As you know I’ve had some ongoing issues with my blog and I had called my hosting service to get them fixed. Obviously that didn’t happen, the entire site crashed. I’ve been on the phone for hours with tech support trying to get it figured out and I’ll probably do the same today. GoDaddy screwed it up royally when they migrated it back to linux which I had requested they do because of ongoing problems.

What I’m going to do starting tomorrow sometime is start posting on my original blog as a fill-in until they get it squared away once and for all.

The formatting and design of the fill-in blog will be a little different at first until I get some time to revise it but the content will be what you’re used to. Right now it’s mostly photos, but once I start posting on it  tomorrow, you’ll find the same stuff you find on Knuckledraggin.

While the blogs have the same name, the URL is different so please bookmark it.

https://ogdaa.blogspot.com/

To my readers, happy Easter!  He is Risen!  The difficulties facing America today are nothing compared to the joy and significance of the resurrection of King Jesus, the living Christ, the ruler of the world and the only potentate, without who’s approval no king moves or decrees (Isaiah 46:10).  It was always intended by God to be, still is today, and always will be in the future, the most significant event in history, despite the juvenile attempts to rid the study of history of the terms B.C. and A.D.

I’ve said before that the CDC had one job, to anticipate, study, prepare for and respond in the case of infectious disease.   They … had … one … job.  So did the FDA.  They failed, and miserably so.

Unless … they don’t really consider that their job at all.  Perhaps they have a different one.  Via Bill Buppert.

“The CDC does not have a solution, but it also becomes the classic blocker to progress. Labs cannot act without a lengthy approval process from CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These government controls violate the principle of subsidiarity (that problems should be solved at the lowest level possible). Ultimately care is provided by local hospitals, care facilities, and labs.

South Korea’s rapid testing allowed for early treatment and containment of the virus. These test kits were created in three weeks. Many labs in the US could have solved the test kit problem but were restrained by the FDA and CDC. The South Koreans offered to help us, but was the CDC listening? Evidently not.”

The monkeys in Philadelphia dragged a man off a bus for not wearing a mask.  The monkeys in Colorado arrested a man for playing with his daughter on a playground in an empty park.  The governor in Michigan prohibited – by executive order – people from visiting others in the state or travelling from one place to another.  She also banned landscaping and the purchase of garden seeds.  Kentucky on Easter means monkeys going from car to car logging license plate number of congregants who went to church, unless a federal court has something to say about it.  In the Northwest, the farmers are throwing milk onto the ground because there are no containers to ship it.

A survey shows that an overwhelming majority of doctors would prescribe Hydroxychloroquine to a family member with wuhan coronavirus, but Dr. Zack Moore, chief epidemiologist of N.C., won’t approve it for the state.  The Nevada governor won’t approve the drug for use, but was found hoarding the drug.  The regulations that stymied Trump’s response to Coronavirus are multitudinous, but of course, that’s what bureaucracies do.

And as the economy is about to collapse, most people are scared stiff to do anything but stay home and watch horrible movies on television, waiting for the vaccine to come out from the high priests of science.

As I posed at the beginning, what if it wasn’t really the job of the CDC after all to prepare America for a pandemic?  What if it’s not really the job of the FDA after all to protect the safety and health of the public?

Guns.com.

This is a great history of pistol cartridge carbines, and they have been around for a long time, longer than I had thought.

I commend the article.

So is everyone who does business with and enables them.  Priests of science in robes, they are, worshiping themselves.