Anne Barschall

Thursday, March 17, 2022

My car pool fantasy

I would like an app, for instance Google Maps, that would dynamically deploy car and van pools in response to trip searches.

Participants could be pre-screened for safety and credit.

There could be a mileage charge & toll charge that would be used to reimburse drivers for gas & tolls. Perhaps drivers could get credits at a local gas station for miles driven.

We need to protect the environment and reduce dependence on foreign oil. We've got to stop being beholden to Russia and Saudi Arabia.

One of the problems with existing public transportation systems is that they generally take much longer than driving. I live in Westchester County NY. I once interviewed for a job in Murray Hill, NJ. I found that it took one hour & fifteen minutes to drive there. When I checked the public transportation, it was 3 hours one way. Driving was manageable. Spending 6 hours in public transportation was not.

With today's artificial intelligence, we should be able to do better with public transportation, by having routes be determined dynamically, rather than once every few months. We should be able to approach the transportation time that we would expect with a car.

#ClimateChange #CarPool #VanPool #ForeignOil #ArtificialIntelligence

Sunday, January 9, 2022

COVID-19: conflating absence of evidence with evidence of absence

I started noticing this issue when I started blogging about masks in the spring of 2020, when I wrote a blog asking why the virus was innocent until proven guilty. https://annebarschall.blogspot.com/2020/04/why-is-virus-innocent-until-proven.html

That was after I started the blog in March of 2020 saying we should use masks -- and was frustrated at how long it took for that to become a public recommendation -- until July -- 4 precious months where we might have stemmed the spread of this virus https://annebarschall.blogspot.com/2020/03/argument-for-requiring-masks-even-if.html

It wasn't until November of 2020 that I saw someone with a platform condemning the medical community for the same pattern of behavior. She called it conflating absence of evidence with evidence of absence https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-failed-to-use-common-sense-early-in-the-pandemic/

It's still happening. I was just having an argument with my cousin on Facebook, arguing about the need for eye protection. This is what I said

In fact there has been totally inadequate study of the role of the eyes in contagion. This whole pandemic has been cursed with making the virus innocent until proven guilty.

They had to prove it was airborne, even tho similar viruses were known to be airborne -- delaying mask recommendations for months -- and therefore allowing the pandemic to spiral out of control. I blogged about this back in March of 2020. I had extensive arguments with a friend who is a doctor who kept insisting that masks were not necessary — changed her tune a few months later.

They claimed they had to prove that children could spread the virus, even tho there haven't been other viruses that adults could spread and children couldn’t. When the proof finally arrived, it turned out that children were more contagious than adults. The widespread statements implying that children could not spread the virus — in the absence of evidence -- also helped the pandemic spread.

They alleged for the longest time that people couldn't catch it from animals, even tho it was generally believed that the virus initially jumped from animals to people. Now they're finding it endemic in various animal populations — and they’re concerned about it. White tailed deer are now suspected vectors. https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/covid-rampant-deer-research-shows-rcna10181 White tailed deer routinely kill off competing species by spreading disease that they’re able to live with, but other species can’t. Why should they be surprised that COVID-19 would be in the same category? Yet it had to be proven. Some scientists are now even suggesting that Omicron developed in mice — which may be a good thing, as it may be milder, but that wasn’t the obvious result of it having spread to rodents.

The lack of recommendations regarding eye protection, despite the clear communication of the eyes with the nose, is in this vein. The virus hasn't been scientifically proven to be transmitted through the eyes, so, despite the widespread empirical experience in emergency rooms, no eye protection recommendation is given.

This innocent until proven guilty attitude towards the virus is really an appalling. It has resulted in millions of deaths.

In fact, my personal experience with common colds is that they ALWAYS start in the eyes. First, the eyes itch. Then I get the scratchy throat. Then the cold develops. If you look at the configurations of the orifices of the face, the eyes are most exposed. The nose points downwards. The mouth has saliva, which has been shown to kill many coronaviruses. The eyes are just sitting there — sitting ducks.

Here's an article about the possible role of the eyes in infection https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00040-9/fulltext It's really only a matter of time before they "prove" that the eyes are important in infection with respiratory viruses. In the meantime, people die.

Thursday, December 16, 2021

Recent selfies

Recent nature pix

These are some pix that I took recently that I thought came out well

Plus some more posts on instagram

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I hope this embed code will let you scroll through the several videos and photos on this post

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Saturday, July 17, 2021

Creating a new commercial reel

Here's my current version of my commercial reel. What do you think?

Ads included or excerpted:

TeePublic
Jägermeister Cold Solutions
Fine Fixtures -- Concealed Tanks Nebula™ Collection
Access Self-Storage
Saudi Telecom
NY Project Hope
Visiting Nurse Service of New York

Here are some stills from the reel

Tuesday, July 6, 2021

That weird cold I had in late February & early March 2020

On the news the other day, I heard that people saying that the Delta variant is being characterized by some unusual symptoms. In particular they're talking about it seeming like a bad cold.

It surprised me that they would think that was a new symptom. Back in January 2020 the Chinese told us that many people experienced COVID-19 as a bad cold ab initio.

So I had a bad cold. I remember when I caught it. It was February 25, 2020. I went to do an equity audition in New York City. I waited in very crowded areas to participate in this audition. A day or two later I got a scratchy throat. And then a day or two after that my nose started running

We knew that Covid was an issue at that point. I didn't think I had Covid. It was a cold. My nose was running. At the time, the media was saying that COVID wouldn't include a runny nose. I never had chest involvement and I never had a fever of over 99°F.

I treated this cold as I always treat colds. I used to zinc spray in my nose and throat. I rinsed my nose and gargled with salt water. I was concerned about Covid, so I stayed home. I figured that catching Covid when I had a cold would be bad.

Now I had a cold in December 2019, as well. I treated that cold exactly the same way. I washed it out within eight days with the salt water.

The second cold was quite different. Even though I rinsed with salt water three and four times a day, my sinuses were not clear for 18 days after my nose started running. Also I had a symptom that I had never had before. I felt as if I had abrasion in my sinuses. It felt like a skinned knee. There was some blood in the mucus when I blew my nose, and when I rinsed.

The bug never went into my lungs.

Later, I read some things on the Internet that said that if you had a cold that lasted more than a week it might be Covid. I've read other things that said if you had a symptom that you never had before it might be Covid. Also they said that there was frequent sinus involvement with COVID.

While I never did completely lose my sense of smell or taste, there was a taste artifact. My favorite herbal tea was always Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice. Sometime in the spring of 2020 -- I don't remember the date -- I discovered that I could no longer tolerate the taste of my favorite herb tea. My son is having to drink it for me, because I can't stand it. Since then, I haven't liked cinnamon based herbal teas. I always used to love cinnamon.

I got an antibody test in the first week of May, because I started becoming suspicious that my weird cold might be covid. The antibody test was negative. However, about the same time, the talking heads were saying that if you had a mild case the antibodies might be gone in two months.

Also, I've talked to vaccinated people who went out and started socializing immediately after getting vaccinated, and got bad calls – even though the talking heads are saying that there aren't very many colds going around.

I suspect that the bad cold version of Covid has been around from the start. I still don't know if that weird cold that I had was Covid or not -- but maybe it was.

My motivation in putting this up is that perhaps some researcher will find it and it will be useful for better understanding the pandemic.

Treatments I used: rinsing my nose and throat with saline; zinc spray (sprayed into throat. also sprayed on q-tip, which I put in my nose); stopped niraparib for a week; and ongoing use of Vitamin D3 and melatonin (300mcg)

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Covid Toes (January 2022)

Now, chilblains/pernio can be caused by cold weather. OTOH, I've never had them before, and they have been associated with asymptomatic COVID. I had only a mild sore throat with this. Some researchers are coming to believe that #CovidToes are a reaction to interferon and are indicative of a strong immune response to a virus. Others believe they are just caused by walking barefoot on cold floors. I didn't do that. I did get cold toes a few times -- but that's happened to me before and I didn't get this.

I got my 3rd vaccine in August of 2021. In September of 2021, I got an antibody test. This test was at 20 in whatever units they use. The doctor said that that lab was reporting 20, if it was over 20 as well, so I didn't really know how high it was.

I then had an anti-body test again in January of 2022. I expected the anti-bodies to be low, as it was 5 months since my booster. Instead it was 37.4, which is still quite high. I asked my doctor if that meant that I had been exposed, since the number went up, but she thought it was just the way the numbers were reported.

I got an anti-body test in February where the number was 21, which was down substantially from January, tho still fairly high. This made me feel that I must have been exposed in January, which is when I got the pernio / #CovidToes. This makes me feel also that I must have been exposed. It was during the Omicron surge.

Nevertheless, the doctor ordered an additional antibody test in March. This was the antibody test that tested for antibodies to the nucleus of the virus (nucleocapsid). This came back negative, which made the doctor think that I had not had COVID -- that my antibodies were due to the vaccination, so she strongly encouraged me to go ahead and get the second booster.

Covid toes articles

Immune System Overreaction May Cause ‘Covid Toes’ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/health/covid-toes-cause.html
Type I interferon response and vascular alteration in chilblain‐like lesions during the COVID‐19 outbreak* - Frumholtz - 2021 - British Journal of Dermatology - Wiley Online Library https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjd.20707
Type I Interferon Signature in Chilblain-Like Lesions Associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7768511/
COVID toes: where do we stand with the current evidence? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7566763/
View of COVID toes: a unique cutaneous indicator of COVID-19 | The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles https://pulmonarychronicles.com/index.php/pulmonarychronicles/article/view/845/1777
‘COVID toes’ were likely not caused by COVID-19, in most cases – NCAL Research Spotlight https://spotlight.kaiserpermanente.org/covid-toes-not-caused-by-covid/
Investigating the link between 'COVID toes' and the virus https://www.med.wisc.edu/wisconsin-partnership-program/meet-our-partners/lisa-arkin-marie-singh-covid-toes/
From Your Nose to Your Toes: A Review of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Pandemic‒Associated Pernio https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8279931/

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This article indicates that saline nasal washes prevent hospitalization with Covid. I was doing saline nasal washes or three or four times a day when I had that weird cold. That might have saved me

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220913/Saline-nasal-irrigation-after-COVID-19-diagnosis-reduces-hospitalization.aspx

Articles about covid toes

https://www.aad.org/public/diseases/coronavirus/covid-toes

https://www.news-medical.net/health/What-are-COVID-toes.aspx

This one concludes that "COVID-associated pernio results from an abortive, seronegative SARS-CoV-2 infection:"

https://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/global-literature-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/resource/pt/covidwho-20232566