Most of the residents in the community where I live in Southwest Florida are seasonal, so we have an employee problem, particularly in the food services. This is solved mostly by getting staff during the heavy season to come up from the Caribbean, mostly Jamaica and Haiti. These are great people, friendly and good workers, and are well liked. They get housing and other benefits and the money they make goes a long way when they get back home. This year I hear that we're running into a big problem getting workers because of delays in getting passports and visas from the immigration bureaucracy.

On the other hand, almost every day I watch Bill Melugin on Fox News reporting from the southern border, showing drone videos of multiple groups of hundreds of people coming in long lines, crossing freely. They're taken in and dispersed into the country. No fooling around with silly details like passports and visas. It's now up to about 200K per month we're told, as well as untold undetected others. And along with the young Hispanics looking for the good life and adventure, as did many of our forebears, come others from all over the world, including some who wish to do us harm, and tons of fentanyl taking its gruesome toll.

This gross disregard of one of the Administration's primary functions is getting beyond even Mr. Biden's amazing capacity to deny obvious truth as if he's insulted by your even asking. The sending of busloads to Democrat stronghold big cities, as well as to the hoity-toity hypocrites in Martha's Vinyard, has made some progress in overcoming the major media blackout of the problem, but the insanity persists.

Who's benefitting, besides the Mexican drug cartels? Likely, lots of people in the Washington labyrinth. Certainly not the immigrants themselves who'd much rather come, as did my dad and grandparents, through a less hazardous, and legal, process.

Mr. Trump, whatever your judgement of him, had made significant progress on cutting back on illegal entry, a necessary first step in making sensible reforms to the system. The subsequent Democrat Congress has taken zero interest in following up. Now the Republicans have the House. Let's see if they have the guts to take the problem on.

Fwd: Tirzepatide. Something new in the diabetes world.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Anthony Perry <amperrymd@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 4:19 PM
Subject: Tirzepatide. Something new in the diabetes world.
To: <barloudes@gmail.com>, Andrea Mantione <andrea.mantione@scranton.edu>, Andy Bresko <abresko@breskolaw.com>, Art Vetter <artcvetter@msn.com>, Barbara Cawley <bacawley@yahoo.com>, Bill Glavin <bglavin1944@gmail.com>, C Smith <csmith727@icloud.com>, Cameron and Betty Fraser <radmfraser@aol.com>, Doris Hart <dkhart38@gmail.com>, Fred and Antoinette Marcell <marcellocbeach@yahoo.com>, G Trabka <gtrabka@gmail.com>, H.B. 'Corky' Devlin <hbdevlin@yahoo.com>, Janet Patti Fusaro <missymiss201@yahoo.com>, Jeff McCord <jeff.kimmccord@gmail.com>, Jerry Vezina <jerryvez33@gmail.com>, Jim Adams <elvisnow@hotmail.com>, John Foley <foley1521@yahoo.com>, Melinda Browne <mjbrowne1@gmail.com>, Michael and Louise Coront <mecoront@gmail.com>, Michelle Matta <shelleymatta3@gmail.com>, Missy Renzetti <joemissyren@aol.com>, Paul Kleinheinz <pkleinheinz44@gmail.com>, Ralph And Pat Cusimano <patc6316@optonline.net>, Richard Dommel <dommelr@aol.com>, Rick Offenbach <roffenbach.ro@gmail.com>, Ron Barakett <ron@yournaplesrealty.com>, Sheila Moore <sheila_a_moore@yahoo.com>, Skip Kingwill <earl.kingwill@gmail.com>, Susan Graham <susanwg42@gmail.com>, Terry Cooke <TFCOOKE@aol.com>, Tom Barone <Tbarone8246@live.com>, Tom Biel <tbiel@woh.rr.com>, Tom Godfrey <tomgodfrey366@aol.com>

When I see something really impressive in the diabetes realm I like to spread the word. So here goes.

One of the most important developments in the treatment of type 2 diabetes over the past decade or so has been the introduction of the "incretin" agents. Incretins are hormones produced in the small intestine at mealtime that help in glucose metabolism. They have several effects but importantly they increase insulin output by the pancreas at mealtime and also signal satisfaction of hunger to the brain. Medications with these effects are marketed as weekly injections and 2 common ones are Ozempic and Trulicity, (although there are other similar ones) which usually work well to improve blood sugar and produce weight loss.

In the last couple of years diabetes experts have been excited by a new and improved variation known by the scientific name of tirzepatide, and just recently put on the market by Lilly Co. as Mounjaro so expect to see ads.

In clinical trials tirzepatide does even better than the previous agents in controlling blood sugar and reducing weight. Higher doses even seem in some cases to cause weight loss in the range of that produced by obesity surgery. So experts are thinking of it as a possible additional help in the battle against the obesity epidemic that is gradually being thought of as the major public health problem worldwide, a problem with far, far greater health implications than the Covid 19 pandemic that so dominates our news.

For the science minded among you – there are 2 main incretin hormones produced in the small intestine, GLP-1 and GIP. The former agents produce the effect of GLP-1 but tirzepatide stimulates the body's receptors for both GLP-1 and GIP. The most important side effects of all these agents are nausea and sometimes diarrhea, but given judiciously most people tolerate them well.

I'm trying to be brief, but let me know if you want to know more and I'll tell you what I can.

Thoughts on the Texas School Shooting

The almost immediate response of my liberal friends to the recent unspeakable evil was "gun control". Our political leader, Joe Biden, who started off OK in his response, morphed into a tirade against the "gun lobby" as his big solution, the only one he mentioned, and made himself into an irrelevancy.

 

I'm not a gun guy. I never owned a gun and never plan to. The only time I ever shot one was in obligatory ROTC in college. I was allowed to opt out when I was in the Medical Corps during my Army time. So, I'm middle of the road on this issue. I'm willing to listen to restriction ideas if they sound practical, but I get the desire of the average law abiding person who wants to have one for whatever.

 

Emily wants to have an age limit on buying guns, and that sounds OK. After all, we have age limits on tobacco and alcohol. But at the same time kids get tobacco and alcohol – no problem. And the average kid isn't the problem. As we're told by experts, a demented 18 year old determined to kill will find a way.

 

So, if you're talking "gun control" I want to hear the specifics. Just what laws do you want to be passed and how effective will they be. I'm not interested in something just to make us feel like we've done something. From 1994-2004 we had a federal assault weapons ban which had zero effect on gun violence. It seems to me like the usual "one-stage thinking" that Thomas Sowell talks about. Somebody kills a bunch of people with a gun so we do "gun control". It's like stopping poverty with giving people welfare payments.

 

What is the answer? Armed guards and restricted access in all our schools? We've got about 100,000 public schools. It's doable but how discouraging. After all I remember when we used to just walk onto the airport gate, but we've all become accustomed to the present insanity. Maybe there should be a lot more interest taken in evaluating and helping off-beat kids. Easier said than done I guess, but these blossoming psychopaths all have some interaction with the school system where they're observed for a time.

 

But to me the problem seems a lot more complicated. Our society has a problem with its soul. Generally, there's increase in violence, murder, drug addiction and overdose, suicide. And we just accept it. Increasingly we walk in the streets of a big city and go around people sleeping on the sidewalk or shooting up and it's just part of the scene.

 

I think we have a soul problem folks. We all tend to sugar-coat the past, but I kind of long for the time when there was some sort of moral sense that everyone accepted. Not even the mafia would take out their problems on little kids. Without going into detail, the stuff the major media and present social and political talking heads are pushing as morality today strikes me as part of the corruption. The polls say that ¾'s of us feel that the country is headed in the wrong direction so I'm not alone.

 

 

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Trudeau, the Truckers and Covid mandates

Justin Trudeau has handled the trucker's demonstrations and civil disobedience tactics with harsh police and economic repression. He had a much more reasonable alternative. The truckers are correct. There is no scientific basis for the government imposed mandates to which they were objecting. They are normally law-abiding hard working citizens who kept on the job to keep the goods flowing throughout the pandemic. They deserved a hearing and conciliation early on. Mr. Trudeau thinks like a big government leftist and chose the course of repression. Hopefully Canadians will come to their senses and he will come to regret his choice.

Below is the Covid death trend in Canada during the recent surge. The idea that this had anything to do with government activity is nonsense. This virus is not going away because of government mandates which have done far more harm than good. It's time to end them.

 

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Oil Prices, Chuck Schumer and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Chuck Schumer and some of his Democrat allies are now calling for relieving our gas price inflation by drawing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves. What the hell is wrong with the thinking of these people?

The Strategic Petroleum Reserves is for just what it says it is, a reserve oil supply to be available in case of some emergency international disruption. What's going on now is self-imposed. We've gone from energy independence to oil mendicants in a few short months of the present administration. The cause is not mysterious. Joe Biden, to fulfill his dream of becoming a noteworthy figure, has taken on the fanatical ideology of "climate change" and from his first day dramatically turned his back on all the energy production policies of the previous administration. So now, instead of producing our own, which was not only a source of national income but also an energy insurance policy for ourselves and our allies, we have gone to begging OPEC and Russia to increase their oil production so as to make up for the loss of our previous domestic supply. Can anyone tell me what sense that makes, even for the apostles of "renewable energy"?

Our leaders want to treat the Strategic Petroleum Reserves as they do the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, as a source of ready money for their social schemes. So now, instead of collecting interest on those funds, our treasury is paying it out. But tapping our Strategic Petroleum Reserves is a much more ominous action which could cripple us badly in a time of real emergency.

The relatively more severe oil crisis of the 1970's with its long gas lines, was resolved almost overnight by removing government oil price controls resulting in a dramatic increase in domestic oil production and a reduction in our dependence on OPEC. There could not have been a better demonstration of government being the problem instead of the solution.

Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer have come face to face with the reality that a decline in fossil fuel supply equates to a big decline in our standard of living, most especially for those of lower income. The government cannot lower prices by printing more dollar bills. Some day in the future we may reach the nirvana of having a source of low cost energy from the sun and the wind or from something else, but for now it's time for good old amiable Joe and his friends to get out of the way.

 

 

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Mr. Biden's Vaccine Mandate is not Really Totally "Scientific".

President Biden and Dr. Fauci are fond of telling us to "follow the science" so let us review the science regarding the issue of the vaccine mandate.

To begin with, the vaccines we have are a dramatic testament to the great capability of our often-reviled pharmaceutical companies as well as to the ingenuity of the businesslike Trump administration. Indeed, the MRNA vaccines were ready for use in July 2020 rather than in December when they were released by the FDA. Were it not for the bureaucratic process they could have been tried and used to great effect in the fragile nursing home patients who made up 40% of the nation's deaths at the time. Ironically, during the presidential campaign, both Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris expressed reluctance to accept the results of Mr. Trump's efforts.

That being said, we now understand from multiple scientific studies that immunity from natural infection is dramatically broader and more prolonged than that from the available vaccines. It appears, also from scientific studies, that at least 15% of the public has had the disease with mild or no illness and without vaccination and probably at least as many of those vaccinated had the virus and recovered before getting the shot. Furthermore, as effective as they are in warding off serious illness, we now understand that the vaccines do not prevent contracting and spreading the virus. Finally, science now tells us, particularly in light of the large animal reservoirs, that this virus is here among us to stay and that we're likely all to be exposed to it. From the public health standpoint, we cannot vaccinate our way out of the problem but presumably as a population will become adapted as we have to the various other coronaviruses in our environment.

All these considerations strongly suggest that the sensible approach to handling the epidemic in our country is to strongly encourage the vaccination of those who are at significant risk of serious illness and leave the rest to their individual discretion. Indeed, this is the opinion of a large number of respected scientists highly knowledgeable in the field.

Mr. Biden thinks differently and favors universal vaccination such that he is, on questionable constitutional grounds, willing to use his authority to force those who do not wish to be vaccinated to do so at the risk of loss of their and their family's livelihood. He tells us that he has lost patience with those who do not accept his line of thinking, suggesting that he looks at his fellow citizens as if they were his subjects. Mr. Biden is our President, with large but temporary and strictly constitutionally restricted powers. He is not our king, and it is not his place to lose patience with us.

 

 

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Did The FDA Procedures Cost Thousands of Lives.

It's beginning to look as if what was called a racist Trumpian conspiracy theory that the pandemic virus was "made in China" rather than a natural occurrence is true after all. Even more disturbing is the idea that a panicky close-mouthed Chinese Communist Party clamped down on the true story and let their problem spread worldwide. For months, the U.S. and the WHO public health establishments reassured us that the man-made conjecture couldn't be true, an opinion echoed vigorously by the major media. To say otherwise was grounds for blackballing by the social networking fact finders. There's a strong taint of political ideology mixed up in this whole mess which allowed the devastation of 2020 to be worse than it could have been. But it's not all China's fault. A big part of death and economic destruction in our country may have been our own damn fault.

What do I mean by that? Well, from early January until early March of 2020, it was very unclear what was going on even though in retrospect the virus was spreading exponentially. We were getting mixed overly optimistic messages, not only from the politicians of both parties but also from the public health authorities right down to the man in charge, Dr. Fauci. What was missing during this period was testing, which would have allowed us to realize that most cases had either no or insignificant symptoms but could nevertheless spread the germ and were doing so at a rapid rate. What was the problem with testing? Labs all across the country had been able to come up with accurate tests within a couple of weeks after the genome was worked out in early January. But regulations prohibited their use of the tests without FDA approval. The CDC devised a test for the government which proved to be inaccurate and finally, after much arm twisting, the FDA gave emergency approval for outside testing which then ramped up dramatically through private, hospital and state labs. Through all this we missed out on 2 months of accurate information which. as it turns out could have been lifesaving.

Once we got the real picture it was way too late for the standard public health measures of case finding and contact tracing. It appears now, from comparing the outcomes of the disease in the various states, that lockdowns and arbitrary designations of essential and non-essential commerce for the most part caused more harm than good, and that mandated masking and social distancing have been of limited value. What is now clearly saving the day are the dramatically effective vaccines, finally released in December, once again with the FDA being pushed to expedite their approval process.

But hold on, that's not the whole story. The RNA vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna had been prepared, tested in humans and found to induce neutralizing antibodies with no obvious short term serious toxicity as of July 2020. But to get FDA approval the standard procedure was to require Phase 3 testing in larger numbers of healthy people and that's what was done over the subsequent 6 months. Mind you, however, that we were in the height of a rampant pandemic that was mostly benign but lethal for specific groups which had been identified. Could not the vaccines, which appeared to be effective and safe at least in the short term, have been tried not on healthy people, but on willing nursing home and other chronically ill patients for example, for whom the benefit to risk ratio would have been so dramatically favorable? I'm not the only one asking this question.

We've been told so often that our response to the problem should be to "follow the science". But science is not the same thing as authoritative pronouncements from government health agencies or even consensus of scientific experts and hidebound processes. The scientific method involves a hypothesis, a testing of the hypothesis and an analysis of the results. But the testing must be designed to be appropriate to the situation at hand and not simply the following of standardized procedures. And there must be free interchange of ideas with give and take from multiple sources. There is no such thing as "settled science".

In retrospect it appears as if in this pandemic our reliance on centralized control cost thousands of lives. Those who think we would have been better off to rely on the federal bureaucracies to run the show should reconsider.

 

 

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