Via WRSA.

I have just had a conversation with an upset midwife in a large 8000+ births per year hospital delivery unit.

They have had a cluster of babies this month who have been born seemingly healthy, but died within 48-72 hours from pulmonary haemmorhage….

— Dr Scott McLachlan (@Dr_ScottMc) October 20, 2021

The American Prospect.

At a glance, Americans appear to have a variety of ammunition companies to choose from: Remington, Winchester, Speer, CCI (Cascade Cartridge, Inc.), Federal Premium. Winchester bills itself as “The American Legend” and has been in business for over 150 years, while Remington has been making guns and ammo for over 200 years and states that their company is as “boundless as the American spirit.” These companies associate their brands with freedom, independence, and toughness. What most customers do not know, however, is that they are all owned by the same two entities: Olin Corporation and Vista Outdoor.

This consolidation in the small arms ammunition market by corporations and private equity firms is hurting businesses, consumers, and workers. And it’s producing a massive shortage, just as demand for ammunition picks up. It looks like the problem could get worse, not only in the commercial shooting market, but where it really matters: for our national security.

He goes on to talk about the ability of the FBI, DHS and others to get ammunition, something I don’t care one whit about.  I’d prefer they have none.

But due to consolidation within the industry, only a couple of incumbent companies have that ability to make it through low-demand periods. When demand surges, they are no longer forced to produce, but can focus instead on “efficiencies.” They can raise prices and generate shortages, knowing that no one else exists to meet the demand that they cannot or will not fill.

Such refusals to invest in increased capacity can clearly be seen as Vista’s plan over the last few years. According to their annual reports, Vista is focused on “long-term shareholder value,” and when they have influxes of cash, they acquire more companies that “deliver top-line growth … within one year of purchase.” They do not build more plants, even though they project more long-term increased demand; building a plant to increase capacity is a long-term project, one that does not return a profit in a year, much less a quarter.

[ … ]

Remington’s story involves some twists and turns and financial engineering. In 2007, private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management bought the then-thriving Remington, using it as a piggy bank. To execute the buyout, Remington borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars it immediately handed over to Cerberus, which meant that Cerberus would make money on the deal no matter whether Remington succeeded.

Initially, Cerberus made “hundreds of millions of dollars” from Remington, due to high gun sales during the Obama years. But when demand decreased after Donald Trump’s election, Remington was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2018. The firm restructured its debt and continued operating under new creditors, but due to continued mismanagement and lawsuits, Remington filed for bankruptcy again in 2020. Vista Outdoors bought Remington’s ammunition brand later that year.

Winchester’s story is more straightforward. Chemical producer Olin Corporation bought Winchester in 1931 and is now “a leading U.S. manufacturer of ammunition.” Olin’s most recent annual report revealed that Winchester sales increased from $665.5 million in 2019 to $927.6 million in 2020. This increase is reportedly due to “higher commercial and military sales, which included ammunition produced at Lake City, and higher commercial ammunition pricing.” Olin won a $28.3 million, ten-year contract to operate the Department of Defense’s Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in September of 2019. It also won contracts with the Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, and the FBI.

It’s certainly the case that the proliferation of law enforcement entities in America is one of the causes of ammunition prices.

On the whole, I think consolidation is a very bad thing.  I did when Cerberus bought Remington (they set their sights on others as well), and I do now.  I think it’s better to have many medium size and small companies.

This ensures competition and innovation, despite the fact that a large corporation can bring financial resources to bear on R&R.  Corporations rarely focus on their employees, R&D or building.  Rather, they focus on stock prices, dividends and returns.

Business Insider.

Dr. Marc Harrison, the CEO of Intermountain Healthcare, has multiple myeloma. Powell, the former secretary of state, also had the blood cell cancer before his death earlier this week.

Powell’s family said he died of complications from COVID-19, but that he was fully vaccinated.

Both the cancer and the immune-system-suppressing drugs that treat it likely made Powell more vulnerable to a severe COVID-19 infection.

Harrison said on Monday, according to The Salt Like Tribune: “For people with blood cancers – lymphoma, leukemia, multiple myeloma – only about half of them respond to an mRNA vaccine.”

Harrison said about people who are immunocompromised: “Somebody is giving them COVID. Somebody is killing us. The surest way to decrease that is for people to get their vaccinations.”

Okay so let’s get this straight.  Mr. Harrison has a form of cancer.  His immune system is probably much worse off for taking the vaccine than would be otherwise (also make sure to see this utterly stunning interview with a doctor who did a full blood panel on a pre- and post-vaccination patient).

Those who do not have the disease cannot spread the disease.  But it’s the fault of people who do not have the disease that he has cancer and is susceptible to Covid.

Got it.

And this guy is CEO of a healthcare company.

Or so he seems to think.  Via Vox Day.

My point is this: Don’t be enslaved by fear of man. Don’t be enslaved by the fear of breaking ranks with ideological allies. The old name for this is peer pressure. You are free.

You have considered the risk of COVID as you watch hundreds of thousands of people die.
You have considered the short- and long-term risks of the vaccines as you watch millions get the shots.
You have compared the frequency of hospitalizations and deaths of those with and without vaccines.
You have thought hard about the implications of fetal cell lines in the production and testing of the vaccines.
You have rejoiced at the increasing evidence that natural immunity, developed after recovering from COVID, is as effective as vaccination immunity.
You have pondered the likelihood and unlikelihood of conspiratorial conjectures.

Your conscience is increasingly clear. It says, “Get vaccinated.” But there is this niggling fear of looking left wing, or progressive, or Democratic, or compromised, or woke!

So, my message to such folks is this: “The children are free!”

Yes.  It’s just that simple.  Don’t worry about the “implications” of the use of aborted babies (he calls them fetal cell lines).  The term fetus is Latin for baby.  It’s enough to say that you’ve “thought hard” about it.

It’s one thing to say you didn’t know.  It’s entirely a different thing to know and say merely that you “thought hard” about it.

I thought hard about it too and came to an utterly different conclusion.  I am also free.

Zero Hedge.

Aspirin is one of those drugs that has been around forever. It is commonly used as a pain reliever, anti-inflammatory, and blood thinner. Surprisingly it may also have benefits in treating COVID.

A paper in Anesthesia and Analgesia published last spring titled, “Aspirin use is associated with decreased mechanical ventilation, intensive care unit admission, and in-hospital mortality in hospitalized patients with coronavirus disease 2019.”

This was a retrospective, observational study of adult patients admitted to multiple hospitals in the U.S. between March and July 2020, in the early days of COVID. The primary outcome addressed by the researchers from George Washington University was the need for mechanical ventilation, which then, and still now, carries an extremely high chance of never leaving the ICU alive.

This was not a gold standard randomized prospective clinical trial. That would not be feasible in this situation since study patients were already hospitalized and critically ill. Remember in the early days, one needed to be extremely ill before even being admitted to the hospital rather than being sent home until sick enough to return and go straight to the ICU.

But the results were impressive. As reported last week by the Jerusalem Post,

The team investigated more than 400 COVID patients from hospitals across the United States who take aspirin unrelated to their COVID disease, and found that the treatment reduced the risk of several parameters by almost half: reaching mechanical ventilation by 44%, ICU admissions by 43%, and overall in-hospital mortality by 47%.

Why would aspirin be helpful for COVID, a respiratory disease? What if COVID is more than simply a lung disease or pneumonia? COVID is actually thought to be a microvascular disease causing blood clots, as described in the medical journal Circulation,

Although most patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) present with a mild upper respiratory tract infection and then recover, some infected patients develop pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, multi-organ failure, and death. Clues to the pathogenesis of severe COVID-19 may lie in the systemic inflammation and thrombosis observed in infected patients. We propose that severe COVID-19 is a microvascular disease in which coronavirus infection activates endothelial cells, triggering exocytosis, a rapid vascular response that drives microvascular inflammation and thrombosis.

Note the thrombosis aspect, blood clots forming in the lungs and elsewhere in the body. Aspirin, as a blood thinner, reduces the risk of blood clots, explaining its potential benefit for COVID.

[ … ]

How did aspirin get its start? Over 3,500 years ago, willow bark, known as “nature’s aspirin,” was used as a painkiller and antipyretic by ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and in a chemical synthesis by a Bayer chemist in 1897.

Aside from pain relief, it was found to have anti-platelet and anti-cancer effects. It’s also on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines, along with another familiar drug, ivermectin. The Harvard-based physicians’ health study in the 1980s found that low-dose aspirin reduced the risk of heart attack by 44 percent.

A recently published Israeli study found, “Aspirin use is associated with better outcomes among COVID-19 positive patients.” This included a lower likelihood of infection, disease duration, and hospital survival. In other words, aspirin works as both a preventative and as a treatment.

Reader and TCJ correspondent Jeremy sends this my way.

Leave it to FedGov and their mouthpieces in the media.  Interestingly, the top comment at Zero Hedge is this.

“I just visited relatives in small town New England for a few days.  Every single ******* person I ran into told me breathlessly that they had just found out that baby aspirin was bad for them.  People who had taken it for decades without any ill effect were going to give it up; a few had already called their doctor, and of course in each case the doctor had told them to discontinue.  I guess the media feel that not enough trusting old people have been ventilated.”

Aspirin has been around since before I was a baby, and my pediatrician prescribed it many years ago.  It’s safe, folks.

It’s safe, cheap and effective, which is why the system doesn’t want you to have it.