Tag: trump

On Trump and Tylenol

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In an opening paragraph dripping with sarcasm, as the Marmalade Moron and his brainworm-addled side gimp gave us the answers to autism yesterday (see below), I was reminded of the other times that grifting politicians had helped out humanity by miraculously discovering causes and cures for well-known ailments.

OK, it’s mainly HIV and Covid, but still…

How could we forget Manto Tshabalala-Msimang – our ex-Health Minister, and now also ex-alive – who claimed that HIV could be prevented by a diet of beetroot, garlic, lemons, olive oil and African potatoes?

President (not then and thankfully not now) Jacob Zuma who did have relations with that woman, but then took a shower to prevent infection with HIV.

Let’s not omit Yahya Jammeh, ex-despotic leader of Gambia and all-round bastard:

whose only positive contribution to society was curing people of AIDS using herbs and prayer.
On Thursdays. Seriously.

Amazingly, despite all of these interventions almost 20 years ago, the spread and impact of HIV seems to have been best controlled by the rollout of ARVs and PrEP.

Weird that.

Bringing things a little bit back to the present, Covid brought all the weirdos back out of the woodwork.

Let’s stay in Africa with Tanzania’s ex-President John Magufuli and his plan to get rid of Covid by inhaling steam, and using herbs and prayer.

“You inhale while you pray to God, you pray while farming maize, potatoes, so that you can eat well and corona fails to enter your body. They will scare you a lot, my fellow Tanzanians, but you should stand firm.”

Didn’t really work for him, as he allegedly contracted Covid-19 and died from heart complications a couple of weeks later, but that’s not to say he was wrong.

Well, it is.

Trump told us to use Hydroxychloroquine to combat Covid, but then again, he also said that we should inject bleach to rid ourselves of the virus. Is there really anyone so stupid as to actually do that, though?

Yes, of course there is.

And then there’s his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. What a goon.

He despises “Big Pharma” while still punting Ivermectin (made by… er… “Big Pharma”) as the cure for everything (it’s not). And he studiously ignores the ills of “Big Supplement” and “Big Snake Oil” while repeatedly and completely dismissing “Real Science” – including denying that HIV is the causal agent of AIDS and suggesting that 5G masts are being used to control our behaviour.

In which case, could someone please switch him off?

But back to that theatre show last night, hinted at by the Tangerine Twat over the weekend:

“Tomorrow we’re going to have one of the biggest announcement[s] … medically, I think, in the history of our country,” he said. “I think you’re going to find it to be amazing. I think we found an answer to autism.”

A whole 5 months of no research have got them further than every other scientist ever. These guys are superhuman. So it turns out that it was Tylenol all along, then? That’s slightly differnt to RFK Jr.’s previous assertions that it was vaccines and/or environmental toxins, but hey, the facts really don’t matter here.

They never have.

As Trump said yesterday:

“It’s not that everything’s 100% understood or known, but I think we’ve made a lot of strides.”

Oh, I think that there are a few things that we can 100% understand and know. And one of those is that literally whatever these two clowns state as the truth is completely the opposite. Once again, it’s the experts versus the grifters.

I’m really not sure what the Salmon Shithead and his sidekick stand to gain from this ridiculous “discovery”. I’m sure that there will be money in it somewhere for them. Because it surely can’t be the fame in being the guys who rid the world of autism, given that nothing they have said is going to make the slightest bit of difference to those diagnoses.

And as we noted above, time will tell and history will judge – and ridicule – their ongoing nonsensical, alleged “scientific” triumphs.

Sadly, in the meantime, there will be more complications in pregnancy as mothers-to-be avoid a completely harmless medication and instead choose to “fight like hell” (his words) to only take it in cases of extreme fever.

“There’s no downside”

said Trump, being wrong yet again. Because:

“While you’re pregnant, experiencing uncontrolled fevers or some of the side effects from pain, such as high blood pressure, will be a lot more detrimental to a developing baby and a mother than paracetamol will be,” said Dr Monique Botha, who studies bias in autism research at the University of Durham.

My advice?

Listen to the experts, none of whom were the ones talking bullshit at the White House last night.

Politician’s election promise actually comes true

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I know. I know! A politician’s election promise coming true. Incredible scenes.

Politicians are known for being somewhat dishonest and duplicitous at the best of times, but when there’s an election coming up, it’s easier just to take everything they say with a large shovel of salt. Especially when they are unlikely to win the election, and therefore don’t have to deliver on the fanciful promises that they made in the run up to the vote.

The recent US election was actually very close (until it wasn’t), with wild pledges and assurances being flung around by everyone concerned.

[An aside: there are numerous examples of people believing election promises (or believing that those election promises didn’t apply to them) on this subreddit. So many heartaches, so much schadenfreude.]

But how about this? One of the surely more outlandish claims from the eventual losing candidate has actually come to pass! She didn’t make an election promise for herself to deliver upon, though. She told us what the other guy was going to do. And the right-leaning press said it was nonsense:

Yeah, I mean, it does seem a bit much.

But then what we think of as reality has been horrifically skewed and rearranged over the last few months.
And yesterday, the orange shitgibbon said this:

He then went on to praise the National Guard for restoring order in LA before they’d even got there:

I love the line “For those keeping track”, because to be fair, a lot of people have understandably given up on that right now.

But then they did get there:

…fulfilling Harris’ election promise.

I know. I know! A politician’s election promise coming true. Incredible scenes.

On Tariffs

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I’m not an economist. But I know some people who are.
And they don’t seem very impressed with Trump’s tariff plans:

Oof. But I am a scientist, so I know how a graph should look, and perhaps more importantly, how it shouldn’t look. That there isn’t a good look. If this was a patient, they’d be on their way to ICU.

$2 trillion gone in less than half an hour. Poof!

You can say many things about Trump (and people do), but you can’t knock his power. Even 80s magician David Copperfield is impressed, and he made the Statue of Liberty disappear.
Trump is just making money vanish. Well, that and actual Liberty.

Still, you can’t argue that these things haven’t been well thought out. There’s clearly been a lot of planning that’s gone on here. The penguins of the Heard and McDonald Islands are finally paying the price for their frankly heinous 20% import tariffs on American goods. Famed for exporting Elephant Seal Oil as recently as… er… 1877, it seems like the infamous H&McDI Stock Exchange would be in all sort of bother if it actually existed.

No-one has lived there for decades, but these tariffs mean that if anyone ever does live there again, they won’t be exporting much to the US.

Elsewhere, the EU (including France) gets a tariff of 20%, but Réunion (part of France and therefore also part of the EU) gets hit with 37%. But of course, French Guiana, Mayotte and Martinique (each part of France and therefore also part of the EU) get a 10% tariff on their exports to the US.

Réunion has had it too easy for too long.

The big losers in this whole thing is everyone. But if I were to be more specific, it would be St Pierre & Miquelon. This isn’t a French overseas territory: it’s a French Overseas Collective – Collectivité d’Outre-Mer.
But because of… er… reasons, their exports to the US will be charged an additional 50%. That’ll teach them for being to close (geographically, not necessarily politically) to Greenland.

Only local boys Lesotho (as far as I can see) manages to match the heady height of a 50% tariff, so Southern African

diamonds, garments, wool, power equipment and bedding

markets will be hit. And it looks like the mokorotlo won’t be part of the New York Spring 2026 Collections anymore.

It’s the clear attention to detail that makes me think that maybe these tariffs might well have been devised by a troop of circus monkeys who have been blindfolded and then instructed to throw various coloured darts at a world map.

I’m just impressed that there was anyone in America who was able to work out which countries the darts hit.

More on that thing that’s happening over there

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As a scientist, I have written a lot of stuff which is detailed, well referenced, and (I think, at least) explains things in a straightforward, step-by-step manner which can be understood by the layperson. Sometimes, I write them on the blog. Like this, maybe. However, recently, those sort of posts have been few and far between. They take a lot of research and effort and this blog is something of a hobby for me, not a job. I simply don’t have the time to lob out 2,000 words on stuff very regularly. I’m sure this is a relief to some of you and a bit of an annoyance to others, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles, much to the beagle’s delight.

Other people do write stuff for a living though, and so I’m going to piggy back on a really well-researched, really nicely written post here today. It’s from Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE), which is a sceince communication website:

Providing a direct line of “translated” public health science to you.

And they do exactly that: cutting through the big words and the jargon…

Scientists, Engineers, Lawyers and, most of all, Medical Doctors have been using unnecessary terminology to maintain their lofty positions in society for years. I hate it. One of the most important things I have learnt during my career is that presentations, explanations, even informal chats about work and technical stuff should always be pitched according to one’s audience. Sure, chat to the Prof about Extended Spectrum Beta-Lactamase producing Gram Negative Bacilli, call them ESBLs – he’ll understand. But when you’re explaining it to your mum, call them “superbugs” – and then she’ll understand too. Otherwise you’re wasting your time.

…to give a easy to understand – and so a useful and easy to learn from! – version of what’s happening in public health at the moment.

And that’s exactly what Kristen Panthagani has done here.
[PDF mirror here for anyone struggling with the Substack website]

She describes in intimate detail and open, honest language why Trump’s health policies – in the hands of the loony RFK Jr. – are based on inconsistencies and nonsense, and the huge and very real costs of getting this sort of thing wrong. Which they are clearly doing.

It’s a really great read with fundamental concepts which apply to so many other of the dodgy internet health cowboys and grifters plaguing us out there, and I’d fully encourage you to take a few minutes out to read through it and follow some of the links which support her watertight case.

I’d write more of this sort of thing if I could.
For the moment, though, please enjoy someone else’s fine work.

Today’s chuckles

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We had a lovely school concert last week (as briefly documented here), but what if school concerts were like festivals?

I mean, no offence intended, but yeah, you might think twice.

We’ve been through this one before.

Just with slightly different terminology. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

In fact, if anything, the mental images conjured up by these descriptions are actually more accurate.

Look, Climate Change is a real thing…

But don’t worry. Whoever the Big Orange Goon puts in charge of the USA’s Environmental Department will surely sort it all out. After all, President (Elect) Spanky McLiarface is doing wonderful work already, putting a rabid anti-vaxxer in charge of Health, doubling the number of wankers in charge of Government Efficiency, and putting this tosser as head of Defence:

Of course, he later claimed he was joking about that (you decide), but he’s still deadly serious about…

Women in the military:

“I’m straight up just saying, we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” he explained. “Our institutions don’t have to incentivize that in places where traditionally—not traditionally, over history—men in those positions are more capable.”

About who he thinks is going to command the military:

He wrote that “affirmative action posts have skyrocketed, with ‘firsts’ being the most important factor in filling new commanders. We will not stop until trans-lesbian Black females run everything!”

About how stupid Ivy League graduates are:

“I have a new rule, the more elite the university and advanced a graduate is, the dumber they are. If you went to an Ivy League, prove that you have any common sense at all.”

Hegseth went to Princeton and Harvard, which actually does kind of prove his point.

And about how he just wants to get along with everyone:

“Next to the communist Chinese and their global ambitions, Islamism is the most dangerous threat to freedom in the world. It cannot be negotiated with, coexisted with, or understood; it must be exposed, marginalized, and crushed,” he wrote in American Crusade.

Wait. What?