Welcome to the last Friday in February. It’s the 27th of the month, and I’ll be glad to see that month go. It’s also National Polar Bear Day, celebrating Ursus maritimus, the world’s largest land carnivore. Here’s a photo I took in the Arctic at about 82° N last year, showing the world’s largest land carnivore dining on the carcass of the world’s largest sea carnivore, a sperm whale whose body somehow found itself atop an ice floe. (The photo was touched up by Mark Richardson):
It’s also National Kahlúa Day, National Protein Day, National Strawberry Day, and The Big Breakfast Day. I like a shot of Kahlúa in my coffee on a chilly day, but drinking that after noon will keep me awake at night. I just found this in Wikipedia, though:
Since 2004, the alcohol content of Kahlúa is 20.0%; earlier versions had 26.5%. In 2002, a more expensive, high-end product called “Kahlúa Especial” became available in the United States, Canada and Australia after previously being offered only in duty-free markets. Made with arabica coffee beans grown in Veracruz, Mexico, Kahlúa Especial has an alcohol content of 36%, has a lower viscosity, and is less sweet than the regular version.
I wonder if the Especial is available around here.
Oh, and there’s an old Jesus and Mo “Friday flashback”, called “track”, showing the bigotry of soft expectation:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 27 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Oy! A Cuban patrol boat, in a firefight with a speedboat from America, killed four people and injured six (all people in the speedboat). The Cubans claim the boat was carrying terrorists who wanted to infiltrate the island. Shades of the Bay of Pigs! (Article is archived here.)
The speedboat was less than a nautical mile off Villa Clara province on Cuba’s northern coast Wednesday morning when Cuban border agents approached and asked for identification, the ministry said earlier. The men on the speedboat opened fire on the Cuban vessel, the ministry said, wounding its commander.
The Cuban forces returned fire, the ministry said, killing four men aboard the speedboat and wounding six. The wounded were evacuated to receive medical attention.
The Washington Post could not independently confirm Cuba’s version of events. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was traveling in the Caribbean, said earlier Wednesday that the United States would conduct its own investigation rather than rely on the account of the Cuban government.
“We will verify that independently as we gather more information,” he told reporters in St. Kitts and Nevis, “and we’ll be prepared to respond accordingly.”
In response to a reporter’s question, Rubio said no U.S. government personnel were involved.
“Hopefully it’s not as bad as we fear it could be, but I can’t say more because I just don’t know more,” Vice President JD Vance told reporters Wednesday.
The Cuban ministry said Wednesday the border agents acted in defense of the nation. “Cuba will defend itself with determination and firmness against any terrorist and mercenary aggression that seeks to affect its sovereignty and national stability,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said in a post to X on Thursday.
As you can see from this photo in the Post (author at bottom), the boat was right off the coast:
We need more information, of course, but it seems likely that the Cuban version is reasonably accurate given the surprised reaction of the American families of those on the speedboat. But what a stupid move if this is true! How can ten men infiltrate Cuba and do any damage. Even Castro’s infiltration that ultinmately succeeded involved 82 men on a boat. Sadly, Cuba is a state in decline, and is worse off because the U.S. is preventing oil from getting to the country. I’d love to visit but Americans can’t just up and go there without a professional reason.
*Clickbait from Commentary by Seth Mandel, “Get used to saying it: ‘Israel was right again’.” Yes, it’s about our old friend, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), friend of Gazan terrorists:
In June 25, 2024, a man named Fadi al-Waddiya was killed by a strike in Gaza. Doctors Without Borders immediately claimed him as their own. He was “a medic, a physiotherapist, and a father of three children.” He was just trying to help people, and Israel “assassinated” him.
“This attack is yet another brutal example of the senseless killing of Palestinian civilians and health care workers in Gaza,” the group, also known by its French acronym MSF, thundered. Waddiya was killed “while on his way to provide vital medical care to wounded victims of the endless massacres across Gaza.”
Except Waddiya was the deputy head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s manufacturing unit. Israel posted about Waddiya’s less-than-humanitarian day job. MSF was unmoved. So Israel provided evidence to the group, which said it “had no prior knowledge of Al-Wadiya’s alleged involvement in military activities” and “would never knowingly employ people engaging in military activity.” It demanded “full transparency.”
This week, Palestinian Islamic Jihad included Waddiya on a list of commanders killed during the war. There’s no reason anymore to pretend, nor does PIJ have any incentive to continue protecting Doctors Without Borders’ reputation.
There is added importance to this story. After the cease-fire, Israel moved to tighten vetting requirements for NGOs seeking to continue operating in Gaza. Considering recent history, MSF should have welcomed the regulations in the interest of “full transparency,” not to mention the safety and security of the actual civilian doctors who work for the group. A simple “thank you” would have sufficed.
As you know, MSF is refusing to provide a list of its staff before they’re let back into Gaza to “help.” Asking for names seems reasonable in light of its history, and Mandel adds this:
Israel’s position here is overly generous. An NGO that is, by its own implicit acknowledgement, incapable of vetting for terrorists should not be operating in a war zone, full stop. Instead of immediately banning MSF, the Israeli government is volunteering to do MSF’s vetting work for it.
But MSF won’t do it. They have nothing to lose: Israel is even checking the list for terrorists. But of course MSF has hated Israel for a long time. Their loss.
*Casey Means, Trump’s nominee for Surgeon General, revealed herself to be somewhat of an anti-vaxer.during hearings before Senators.
Dr. Casey Means, the president’s nominee for surgeon general, believes the US is a “nation with a broken heart” reckoning with unprecedented amounts of chronic illness and mental illness. But during a lengthy confirmation hearing on Wednesday, she said vaccine policy would not be her priority.
At one point, she sparred with a senator over the benefits of flu vaccination, dodging repeated questions on whether she thinks it’s effective against hospitalization and death.
Means was interrogated by senators from both sides of the dais about her positions on vaccines, abortion and contraception and pesticides. She also fielded questions about her qualifications, conflicts and even her personal use of psychedelic mushrooms.
She was an early ally of now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” campaign and has several important backers within the Trump administration.
Along with her brother Calley, who serves as an adviser to Kennedy at the US Department of Health and Human Services, Means has championed healthy eating, limited pharmaceutical use and alternative remedies. Means is also a co-founder of a health tech company, Levels, that connects glucose monitors to a health tracking app on users’ phones.
. . . Advocates and some former officials have criticized Means’ nomination because the surgeon general is typically a physician with clinical experience; Means dropped out of her medical residency program, and her Oregon medical license is inactive. Means acknowledged on Wednesday that her license is not active and she cannot write a prescription. She said she has no plans to reactivate her license.
There’s more, but it’s mostly depressing (she does adhere to the MAHA’s salubrious stance on nutrition). Surely Trump could have found someone better, but someone better would not weasel on vaccines.
As evidence, reader Paul, horrified, sent me this Tik Tok video of Senator Tim Kaine (D, VA) questioning the nominee (this is the “sparring” mentioned above). It took her three minutes of persistent questioning before she admitted, “At a population level, I certainly think that [flu vaccines could reduce risk” She is a horrible WEASEL who won’t discuss the evidence at all, It would be a crime if she is confirmed! She is almost certainly more extreme than she let slip during the hearing.
@cnn Democratic Senator Tim Kaine asked surgeon general nominee Dr. Casey Means whether she agreed with HHS Secretary RFK Jr. on his statements that there is “no evidence” that flu vaccines prevent serious disease or hospitalizations.
*Representatives of the U.S. and Iran are in Geneva for nuclear talks. The NYT also discusses what Trump has to gain by a military strike in Iran, and, in a separate article, describes the national mood in Israel as it waits for the U.S. to decide what to do.
The United States and Iran began high-stakes nuclear talks in Geneva on Thursday that could determine whether the two countries go to war or strike a deal.
Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who is mediating the talks, said the two sides were “exchanging creative and positive ideas,” and would resume again after a break. “We hope to make more progress,” he wrote in a post on social media.
President Trump, in his State of Union address on Tuesday, said he preferred to resolve the standoff with Iran through diplomacy. But he added, “I will never allow the world’s top sponsor of terror, which they are by far, have a nuclear weapon, can’t let that happen.”
Iran, however, has said it will never totally give up nuclear enrichment. “Our fundamental convictions are crystal clear: Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon; neither will we Iranians ever forgo our right to harness the dividends of peaceful nuclear technology for our people,” said the foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in a social media post.
Iran is expected to offer a proposal designed to maintain some level of enrichment while also allowing Mr. Trump to declare victory. Four Iranian officials who were not authorized to speak publicly said Iran would offer a suspension of nuclear activity and the enrichment of uranium for three to five years. After that, the country would join a regional nuclear consortium while maintaining a very low level of enrichment, 1.5 percent, for medical research.
If Iran offers to do that, it would be lying, as it always has lied about its “nuclear activity”. And it already has a level of enrichment of 60%, so it wouldn’t take long to get to the 90% needed for a nuclear warhead. Given that they are sneaky liars about their weapons program, I don’t know what Trump would accept from Iran to make a deal.
Meanwhile, as the article above notes, worried Israelis are practicing medical drills and ensuring that bomb shelters are equipped and easily accessible.
*Finally, Hillary Clinton testified in the House that she had no knowledge of crimes by either Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told U.S. House lawmakers on Thursday that she had no knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein’s or Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes at the start of two days of depositions that will also include former President Bill Clinton.
“I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein,” Hillary Clinton said in an opening statement she shared on social media.
The closed-door depositions come after months of tense back-and-forth between the former high-powered Democratic couple and the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee.
The Clintons agreed to testify after their offers of sworn statements were rebuffed by the Oversight panel and its chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., threatened criminal contempt of Congress charges against them.
It will be the first time that a former president has been forced to testify before Congress — the latest sign that the demand for a reckoning over Epstein’s abuse of underage girls has become a near-unstoppable force on Capitol Hill and beyond.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is grasping at straws to make her believe that it will soon be warmer:
Hili: The birds are singing.
Andrzej: Maybe they can already sense the approaching spring?
In Polish:
Hili: Ptaki śpiewają.
Ja: Może już czują zbliżającą się wiosnę?
*******************
From Louvre Art Memes:
From Now That’s Wild:
From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:
From Masih, more documentation of the mistreatment of protestors:
⚠️ Violent seizure of a woman by armed, masked regime forces.
Received video with the note: “#Fardis, Alborz Province — Thu, Jan 8.”#Iran #فردیس pic.twitter.com/21fw0xatUS— Vahid Online (@Vahid) February 24, 2026
Emma explains why people with Tourette’s aren’t really racists just because they yell the n-word when they see a black person (the latest dumb controversy):
Some thoughts.
At school, people are taught that nerves are how to make your body do stuff. This typically includes agency – you choose to do that thing.
But also that your body does stuff without brain input, but that is all buried away inside as heart beats and peristalsis.… https://t.co/96GfTDUR7Q
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) February 26, 2026
From Simon via J. K. Rowling. Simon says, “True indeed,” and I second him.
Yes. pic.twitter.com/u4VPW090L4
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) February 26, 2026
From Luana, a spoof video that, she says, shows that we’re “approaching The Matrix.”
Musk, Bezos, and Altman teaming up on an ambitious business enterprise.pic.twitter.com/o3StK5IWat
— i/o (@avidseries) February 26, 2026
One from my feed: a wonder video of cat revival by someone who knew what they were doing:
Que pedazo de historia !
La mejor que verás hoyPor más corazones así 💞
Véalo hasta el final
Está es la verdadera humanidad pic.twitter.com/E8nSZX00Re
— Luis Aníbal Rincón Arguello. ® 🇨🇴 (@Rincon001A) February 25, 2026
One that I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived in Auschwitz. She was 13 years old. https://t.co/PKYQoqL7Fr
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) February 27, 2026
Two from Dr. Cobb. First, I haven’t read the paper yet but it seems that this is considered a precursor to writing. More later:
New research: Paleolithic artifacts hint at earliest protowritingGeometric shapes on 40,000-year-old bone and ivory suggest early European Homo sapiens long possessed cognitive tools for language.www.science.org/content/arti…
— Nina Willburger (@drnwillburger.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T09:47:02.483Z
Matthew and I love weasels, stoats, fishers, and other predators of that ilk. Look at this beautiful stoat photo!:
Still my fav unplanned shot as this happened quick as a flash with no time to prepare for this beautiful little stoat. Not the best details but the best memories 👌🏿Canon R5 and RF 100-500mmSS1/5000 F7.1 ISO2500
— @macro_action (@birdzandbees.bsky.social) 2026-01-26T20:02:21.014Z
Stoat is one of my favorite words. I learned it from Wind in the Willows, the weasels and the stoats.
A weasel is weasily recognized, but a stoat ‘stoatally different.
In UK news, a Parliamentary by-election has just been won by the Greens (though with a relatively low turn-out, and note that UK by-elections are often “protest vote” occasions).
First: The Greens (40.7% of the vote) used to be a fringe party opposed to GM foods and nuclear power. Now they’re a ragbag of far-left Marxist, smash-the-system anti-capitalists, along with uber-woke voters, and now Muslims who want open borders and a generous welfare state (think Zohran Mamdani, but less sensible). They campaigned with literature and videos in Urdu and with Palestinian flags.
Second: Reform (29% of the vote). Reform are a single-issue anti-immigration party. Coming second is not the breakthrough they hoped for, but this was an un-promising seat for them (Labour’s 4th safest seat, only 420th on the Reform target list, with a large Muslim population, 35% of the voters being foreign-born).
Third: Labour (25%). This is a disaster for Labour, coming third in a seat that, in the last election, had their 4th-largest majority. The big problem for Labour is that the Muslim/immigrant vote (which Labour have traditionally relied on, being the reason why Keir Starmer is so keen to brown-nose Muslims) instead went to the Greens who promise them open borders and endless immigration and generous welfare payments and subsidised housing.
Fourth: Conservatives (2% of the vote). The result is even worse for the Tories, a party that was in government only a couple of years back, now getting 2% of the vote. And surely, a viable opposition party should be flying high, mid term, with a historically unpopular government (even if this seat is far from being natural Conservative territory). All their voters have deserted to Reform since, in government, under Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, they did the exact opposite (massively increasing third-world immigration) of what their voters wanted (massively decreasing third-world immigration).
Fifth: Lib Dems (2%). The traditional minnows of UK politics, they’ve only ever been a protest vote, but now the protest votes are going to the Greens and Reform.
Independent observers are also reporting very high levels of “family voting”, which is a euphemism for Muslim patriarchs accompanying wives and other family members into the closed polling booth (which no-one is supposed to do).
Thanks, Coel.
Sadly I am not surprised. The UK has committed suicide.
It hasn’t. Don’t believe the endless far-right propaganda that has swamped X and other platforms.
Cultural suicide. It is ongoing. I don’t follow X at all, and the sites I read are liberal ones. Further I don’t consider it “far right” to oppose the ultra-far-right supremacist ideology of Islam. I am a Bill Maher type liberal and always have been. And true liberals oppose Islam when it conflicts with secular liberal values.
Re: Kahlúa. It is an essential ingredient in a White Russian. And it just so happens that we are exactly one week away from the Day of the Dude!
I have no dog in the vaccine fight. I get the flu shot every year. Sometimes I get the flu, mostly I don’t. The term “anti-vaxxer”, though, strikes me as one of those terms thrown around to stiffle discussion and frighten those who question orthodoxy with being labeled. For my part I think it foolish not to question anything that politicians and bureaucrats want us to do, especially the things that are mandatory and put money in other people’s pockets (like pharaceutical companies).
It’s not politicians and bureaucrats who recommend vaccines, it’s doctors and scientists. And for all of the wailing about how much money vaccines allegedly make for “Big Pharma”, the money that the diseases resulting from the lack of vaccinations generates dwarfs the money vaccines make for Big Pharma by orders of magnitude. Vaccine-preventable diseases make money for Big Medicine, Big Pharma (in terms of drugs used to treat viral and bacterial illnesses), Big Law (for when Big Medicine and Big Pharma get sued), and Big Funeral Industry (when patients die of Measles, Pertussis, Flu, Covid, etc).
With all due respect, it’s a bit naive to think that lobby groups and other groups, including policymakers, don’t have an outsize influence on what vaccines get approved. And doctors can’t recommend anything until it’s approved. I live in DC and according to many of my friends here, including those in the medical policy field, “Big Pharma” is the most powerful lobby in town. There are all sorts of decisions being made against the wishes of experts due to outside and/or political pressure. Here’s a blog about just one of the stories that are well-known but (not surprisingly) unreported in the mainstream press: https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/did-the-fda-rush-to-license-pfizers . And here’s a X/Grok summary: https://x.com/i/grok/share/d0b82f47ea8c46129eac0e5e581d8614
And here’s an interview with Robert Redfield admitting to problems with the rush to get vaccines out, including the fact that many people suffer from the side effects of these vaccines: https://wwsg.com/speaker-news/ex-cdc-director-says-its-high-time-to-admit-significant-side-effects-of-covid-19-vaccines/
DrBrydon is on point. I saw a bit of Dr. Means’ hearing, and her bottom line is use your own common sense in consultation with medical professionals. That has worked for me. For the most part I avoid pharmaceuticals to give my body a chance to heal itself. I never took a flu shot until I hit age 65. I have asthma and was borderline obese during COVID and took every recommended vax and would do it again. Eighteen months ago I started to exercise and changed my diet along the lines of what the Means recommend. Now, I’m 25 pounds lighter, blood pressure is normal as is my blood sugar. Medical professionals and researchers are not infallible. But for me, their expertise combined with common sense has proven invaluable.
The medical profession is evolving. My father, bless him, has an entire pharmacy in his medicine cabinet and this has been the case since he was in his late 40s. Every health issue was treated with a pill at the behest of his doctors.
I am now middle-aged, and I only take one medication to ward off high blood pressure. The minimum dose. This is consistent with my doctor’s advice.
Also, I weight train consistently, usually quite heavy. I successfully came back from a very bad back injury using heavy deadlifts..when I did this 12 years ago my doctor told me it would make things worse and that “you will always have a bad back now, take it easy.” Now, I see loading that back progressively with weight training has made its way into the literature as a legitimate rehab protocol.
What made you choose deadlifts over your doctor’s recommendation?
A background in Olympic weightlifting and Starting Strength. The former gave me some familiarity with pulling a barbell from the floor so I didn’t have to learn the movement from scratch.
The latter is a barbell training protocol (and network of gyms) that for many years now has seemed to specialize in keeping older people independent. They have 80 year olds deadlifting impressive weights. I figured if a 55 kilo 75 year old woman with arthritis can deadlift 80 kilos, I should stop babying my injured back.
[Da roolz indicate I have reached my credit limit on comments]
You’ll have your own answer to Rick’s question. From the doctor’s side, it’s because we doctors admit we don’t really know anything much about what we call “mechanical” low back pain. Most of the complaints patients bring to primary care MDs are things that we don’t learn about in medical school because they aren’t physiologically interesting — there’s no there there to teach — and back pain is one of those. Most of what we do know is about how to spot the “red flags” that indicate the rare causes of back pain that need medical or surgical treatment, often urgently. (I’m not going to list them because if I left anything out, someone who had that symptom might think he was OK and not seek attention when he should have.) If you don’t have any of those red flags, you aren’t very interesting to doctors because we don’t have any medical interventions that will help and are tempted to meddle extemporaneously. “How am I going to get this patient out of my office so I can see the next patient?” The answer is usually a prescription for something, or an order for an MRI.
We wish patients would come to see us only when they have actual diagnosable diseases. Failing that, we wish they would go away happy upon being told, “Don’t worry. It’s nothing I can fix but at least it doesn’t indicate anything seriously wrong that will shorten your life.” But no, even when we can’t fix it, they want us to fix it. So we make shit up. Managing customer expectations is important in every business.
Medical/physical treatments for low back pain, including what are often described as “injuries”, come in and out of fashion and none survive randomized trials against “activity as tolerated.” Most gets better by itself. Avoid narcotics, bed rest, and weight gain as those do more harm than good. Have a life goal. Don’t get depressed. It is bad manners for us to diss chiropractic, so I won’t. It really helps recovery A LOT if you don’t have an insurance/worker’s comp file open and will lose your benefits if your “disability” improves to where you can work gainfully. Human nature is a bitch.
So do what you think helps if it doesn’t hurt and keeps you active on your feet. I’m delighted that you took responsibility for your own health and got rid of your pain from deadlifting (and got stronger in the bargain.) A lot of people wouldn’t have had the courage.
Re: the flat earthers….why do they seem obsessed with NASA, as if nobody knew the Earth was round until 1960? Do they not understand that the shape of the Earth is practical knowledge, and has been for centuries?
As in, our entire shipping and transportation industry is based on the correct understanding of the shape of the Earth. Meaning, if airlines and shippers thought that the Earth was round when it is in fact a disk, and the continents and oceans were therefore arranged differently, nothing would get to where it is supposed to go!
Humans have been moving stuff around on sea and land for at centuries, and over air at least a century. Stuff and people consistently gets to where it is supposed to go. Therefore these companies and institutions involved in transportation must have the CORRECT understanding of the shape of the Earth. And, no company or institution involved in transportation over vast distances has ever claimed that the Earth is a disk.
So there are only two possibilities*:
The Earth is not a flat disk OR
It is a disk, but every company or institution, every airline or shipping concern, involved in transportation over the last 500 years is lying about this fact, for unknown reasons. And somehow, this conspiracy, which must involve thousands of organizations and 100,000s of people, spread out over many countries and cultures, has been maintained.
If you believe the second possibility, you are genuinely stupid. Not merely ignorant, or uninformed, but truly and utterly of low intelligence. If we had competency tests for voting, these people would be excluded.
*A third possibility is that the flat earth model has the continents arranged exactly in the same way as the round Earth model. So shippers are accidently getting it right. But I don’t think any flat earth model has the continents arranged in the same way as a globe, and this might even be impossible even in theory.
It took me a while to figure out to what you were referring. I finally saw the picture of the truck. I suppose they object to NASA propagating the lie with fake pictures. Bad NASA 🙂
In fairness to the Luddites, what NASA has accomplished over the years HAS been pretty unbelievable. Had I not grown up in a NASA house during the 50’s and 60’s and observed the day by day process, and taken a classical mechanics course in college, hell, I might not believe it either.
No kidding. One of the things I love about NASA is their fearlessness. Not the bureaucrats, it’s the enginerds and scientists who think up what they do. For a long time people were saying, “you know, a good way to prevent an asteroid from killing us all might be to shoot something at it and knock it off course. But that’s just sci-fi” to which NASA replied; “hold my beer”. I love that attitude.
They have robots diligently doing science on another world, 140 million miles away, long after their warranties have expired. I’m lucky if my coffee maker makes it a month past the warranty. They put telescopes in space that can see back to the dawn of time, take close ups of a Kuiper Belt dwarf planet like it was in the back yard, they’ve sent spacecraft, still talking to us, out of our solar system and they fly spacecraft into the sun’s atmosphere. And that’s just what I could come up with while typing this, FFS
NASA gets some bad press for its bureaucracy, but man they do stuff that I’ve thought since I was ten are the coolest, most amazing things there are.
Thank you. Well said! About engineering achievements working past warranty, i recall a congressional hearing where a congressman dressed down a nasa guy for over-building and overspending on a robot that lasted several years longer than it was supposed to. Somedays you just cant win!
I initially was going to post about about ‘how do flat-earther’s explain the coriolis effect, celestial mechanics and the aberration of light etc’ but I did my own research :), and I found that it’s rationalizations so far down that you can no longer see the turtles.
I am concerned about the cat revival video. Did it drown? The cat is dry. Was it run over? It was not visibly injured.
If it is fake, it seems narcissistic to produce such a thing for clicks and 10 seconds of fame. If it is real, it seems narcissistic to immediately start recording at the scene, then edit and put it to a music sound track. Again, for 10 seconds of fame.
Mark: As I usually think of a charitable explanation— a passerby called a humane organization, the *driver *filmed it, and the video was made later by a volunter, etc. But now if someone who has a more logical take and I trust questions something (you), I double-back to read the comments.
“Reported for animal cruelty video: they drug the cat to record it like that, making close-ups with the camera and editing the video when it reacts… sometimes the cat even dies from being put to sleep… be careful”
“Wait, how do you know that? That is hard to believe.”
“It’s easy, just check on Google for animal abuse to get likes, how they record them: sedated, tied up, etc. Animal rights organizations have already said not to give attention and likes to these posts… sometimes the animals have died from being sedated.”
That people might be so deliberately cruel did not occur to me.
Wow, I had not thought of that! But I’ve seen these highly emotive videos of people supposedly rescuing a drowning animal, with suspiciously well choreographed recordings, and those have made me suspicious.
Don’t trust your eyes and certainly not the accompanying soundtrack.
It seems genuine to me, the fallout for the veterinarian staff would be nasty given the subject matter, a mother cat and kittens (as extras!?)
In fact I learnt a bit of bush vet procedure from watching, just until the real deal arrived.
The rescue seems genuine. I just think the cat was poisoned for shits and giggles and I’m not convinced the first responder wasn’t the perp. Very well equipped he was for cat rescue, all ready for action. Does Spain maintain squads of people roaming around looking for dead cats? Accomplice starts filming 10 sec in. (Is that clear to everyone? That there are two people involved here?) Cat is breathing on its own at 1:06.
I’m going to guess fentanyl or heroin from the dilated pupils, just because one or the other is everywhere where drug addicts gather, and I suspect the rescuer did too, — or perhaps he knew! — giving the cat what could be naloxone to be absorbed from its airway.
The later rescuers in the clinic could well be unwitting, unsuspecting, and blameless.
In young animals (and people) cardiac arrest is usually asystole from hypoxia (respiratory arrest or airway obstruction), not ventricular fibrillation. (AEDs are located where old people congregate.) It could be intermittent, hence the intermittent chest compressions. Getting the airway open and reversing the narcotic so the animal will breathe is about all you can do to get the heart to beat, and it will if it can. That a young animal healthy enough to bear kittens would just drop dead from natural causes, and could be successfully resuscitated so quickly, doesn’t compute. Ergo, opiate poisoning.
Now, how were the two sequences, the first from the first responder and his accomplice, and the second from the clinic where they took the cat to, melded together? Do we think the first responders continued filming in the clinic as supposedly innocent Good Samaritans? Then why would they have the video of the cat and kittens eating happily? Wouldn’t the clinic staff have told them at some point, “Uh, you can take off now. We’ll handle it from here.” Or are the first responders rogue cat poisoners? The one was wearing scrubs and certainly knew what he was doing.
Whoever dunnit, this is still animal abuse.
Leslie, opioids such as heroin and fentanyl constrict the pupils. Other types of drugs dilate the pupils, e.g. stimulants, psychedelics.
Yikes, Mike is right. Total brain cramp on me. Sorry.
If the animal was apneic and the brain stem hypoxic, then the pupils would dilate. Perfusion restores the pupillary light reflexes, which does seem to be what happened here. But I was still wrong in the first instance.
Barbiturate poisoning dilates the pupils, too. But there is no antidote.
Give naloxone to anyone who’s unconscious and not breathing well. Can’t hurt.
If ever you have the chance to visit Australia, you might notice betimes the corpse of a kangaroo, killed in a collision with a car, marked with a large fluorescent cross. The cross tells other drivers that somebody has already checked if the kangaroo was carrying a joey, so you don’t need to stop.
How frequent does that happen for them to have a standard procedure for that?
I wondered that myself. The fluorescent cross was a total mystery to me until one Christmas day I called the police to shoot an injured kangaroo just outside my front gate. A policeman did the deed, and about 30 minutes later it occurred to me that the kangaroo may have been a female. It was, and she was carrying a joey, so I called animal rescue. While waiting for them to arrive I covered the cooling kangaroo corpse with a pile of old blankets to keep the joey warm. The last thing the animal rescue lady did was to spray a cross on the body.
That sounds like something new (by which I mean after I left in 1992 when I think they pulled all the roads up and turned the lights out…) hehehe
Seriously though that’s great.
I remember hearing that a few people die a year (like here with deer) driving into kangaroos. They’re sometimes very heavy, and they hop, see….
So they can be mid hop across a road at just about driver’s height.
D.A.
NYC
That sounds like something new (by which I mean after I left in 1992 when I think they pulled all the roads up and turned the lights out…) hehehe
Seriously though that’s great.
I remember hearing that a few people die a year (like here with deer) driving into kangaroos. They’re sometimes very heavy, and they hop, see….
So they can be mid hop across a road at just about driver’s height.
D.A.
NYC
grasshopper >
WOW! Glad you had the presence of mind to do all to save the baby kangaroo!
Can someone point me to rigorous, population-level epidemiological data and analyses showing a commensurate decline in both all-cause and influenza-related mortality corresponding with the sharp increase in elderly vaccination rates since the 1980s? I recall a surprising study from around 2005 that challenged observational claims and showed no mortality decline despite increased vaccination, but I haven’t investigated the matter since then.
I understand that even substantial reductions in influenza-related mortality might not shift all-cause mortality given influenza’s modest contribution to deaths. Still, I’m curious about long-term observed mortality patterns, not season-by-season modeling, averted death estimates, or morbidity/hospitalization data. I’m also interested in how those declines compare to the population-level declines that were seen post-1968 pandemic and prior to the uptake in vaccination rates. Appreciate any pointers to key papers or more current analyses. Thanks!
I daresay it would have been easy to find such data at the CDC site a few years ago …
Doug, this is likely the 2005 paper you refer to; 2005;165;(3):265-272. doi:10.1001/archinte.165.3.265. Part of their conclusion reads;
A more recent study from 2020 conducted in the UK concludes the same thing;
(https://doi.org/10.7326/M19-3075)
I must confess, I don’t understand the foo-for-rah about this. Neither of these papers suggest the flu vaccine doesn’t work; in fact they demonstrate that vaccinated people do have immunity to the flu, it’s just that that immunity isn’t helping this population avoid hospitalization. In population terms, they conclude that flu vaccination doesn’t decrease the rate of hospitalization in the elderly (which they define as 65 and older! I’m elderly? I resemble that remark!) and they cite a number of reasons why this is the case.
But as far as I know (I could be wrong) no one is compelled to get the flu vaccine. It works and prevents a lot of difficult illness, but in some people perhaps not the most severe. I know, for example, that in the years I’ve gotten the vaccine, when I catch flu, it is very minor compared to other years I had flu without a vaccine. I know that’s anecdote, not data, but there it is.
Are people really trying to argue that the vaccine doesn’t work? That’s foolish as there are many studies which show they do. At the population level the flu vaccine doesn’t seem to reduce flu symptoms bad enough to seek medical help. But it does reduce the severity of those symptoms. This is not surprising as immunity from vaccines can range from weak to sterilizing and the resulting disease is then a product of both viral and host factors. There are many reports in the literature that show that even when admitted to hospital for flu symptoms, the vaccinated -even the elderly (like me!?) have less severe symptoms and spend less time in ICU (here’s one from a ten year study in Spain concluded in 2019 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2023.11.009).
I guess I’m not really sure what the problem is here, but I suspect it has to do with questions put to that unqualified candidate for SG.
Good points and thanks for the citations.
It’s difficult to argue, though, that influenza vaccine “works” when it doesn’t seem to keep frail elderly people from clogging up the hospitals every winter or save their lives. That’s the only public-health argument for vaccinating them. So what if elderly recipients make antibodies to the vaccine antigens? That’s just a lab test, not a patient-centred outcome. We don’t expect any measure to reduce all-cause mortality in a population for whom this winter might well be their last, whether they get the ‘flu or not. Milder disease in hospitalized patients in Spain with less ICU admission but no fewer deaths? Retrospective study: Meh. Cherry-picked outcomes? Length of stay? They don’t say but must surely have measured it.
We wouldn’t bother vaccinating frail elderly if all it did was reduce the sniffles. If that’s all current ‘flu vaccines do do, and don’t keep them out of hospital, then we need either better vaccines or better protoplasm in the recipients.
Healthy free-living youngsters like yourself who are just 65 or even 85, probably doesn’t matter if they get vaccinated or not, from a utilitarian resource-allocation point of view that informs public health policy.
Dr. Means didn’t impress at her hearing, but Sen. Kaine was asking her about a different topic: influenza vaccination of children. Doug was asking about effectiveness in adults. Since the vast majority of influenza deaths are in elderly > 75, even if influenza vaccine totally eliminated deaths in children (which it doesn’t) it wouldn’t have any impact on population ‘flu mortality, so that’s a different question.
I think we agree influenza vaccine saves lives in children, but giving a healthy kid a shot every year is just too big an ask for most parents, and for our health system to deliver on. Only 30% of Canadian children under 18 get vaccinated (which is much lower than in the U.S.) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11188407/
Flu vaccination sounds like an ideological litmus test, a gotcha. What’s the number of healthy children needed to vaccinate, every year, to prevent one severe ‘flu case? Does Sen. Kaine know?
Thanks, Leslie & Edward. I had hoped to hear from each of you.
Here was my point, Edward. Given decades of data for death and hospitalization, there is nothing reckless about a man, even an old one, skipping a flu vaccine. If he wants to spend an extra day or two in bed for the one time in five years he gets the flu, more power to him. If another old man believes that shot is going to keep him from dying, have at it, brother.
As for children, for the two flu seasons ending in 2025, CDC reports ~250 deaths per season, with the latter year being the highest non-pandemic year fatality total in 20 years. Previous modeling suggests actual deaths are roughly double reported ones, so let’s use 500 per season among a population of 73 million, for a per capita of 6.8 per million. Roughly 11-16% of the dead children were vaccinated and more than half had comorbidities. Conservative average of vaccine efficacy over those two years: 60%. Wave my hands and do the math: the number needed to vaccinate to prevent one death will be in the high tens of thousands to low hundreds of thousands range. If we restrict that to healthy children without relevant comorbidities, then we would need to vaccinate hundreds of thousands to prevent one death. Worth doing? Maybe. But it’s not high on my policy priority list. Leslie, please correct me if my WAG is wrong.
Vaccines are neither good nor bad. Absolute risk reduction matters (not just the relative VE that everyone loves to report). Individual risk factors matter. Risk tolerance, disease severity, and much else matter. The politicized condemnation and shaming of parents with healthy children who “neglect” flu vaccination borders on hysteria. It’s part-and-parcel with the group who thinks that letting my grandchildren walk alone for three blocks to the park is a crime against humanity. A healthy child is at greater risk of drowning or dying in a car accident than of succumbing to flu (or COVID). We don’t call parents reckless who have a backyard pool, and we don’t denounce them as anti-science because they take Junior with them on the drive to the grocery store every week.
But, I’m sure we will start doing so if that’s what it takes to signal “Yay, all you on my smart team!”
Sorry, but I disagree strongly with the claim “vaccines are neither good nor bad.” They are either a net good or a net bad, and You are talking about flu and not vaccines like those for polio or smallpox.
Even for flu vaccine you can in principle total up deaths and hospitalizations over the country of the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Yes, individual factors matter for all vaccinations, but to say that that makes it impossible to say whether “vaccinations are neither good nor bad” is just wrong.
Jerry, I really don’t believe us to be far apart on this matter. The military treats its members like human pin cushions when it comes to vaccination; we don’t worry about it, we aren’t shy about getting jabbed, and we get far more of them than does the average person. I used the terms “good” and “bad” in a (failed) attempt to play on the growing moral connotation of the category “vaccine.” Moreover, because something is a net “good” for society, that does not mean it is necessary or a net “good” for every member of a society. And simply because polio, smallpox, rabies, and measles vaccines are superb doesn’t mean one can recommend a COVID or flu vaccine with equal enthusiasm or comparable efficacy data. We as a society are losing the ability to draw necessary distinctions when we routinely talk about “vaccines” as a category and focus principally on population-level benefits rather than address specific vaccines given to specific patients with varying risk/benefit profiles.
I am not pushing back against vaccines. I am pushing back against treating all vaccines as though they are the same—and all potential recipients as though they are equal. And I am saying that net societal assessment is not always the most relevant or principal basis for individual decisions. That used to not be controversial.
Unfortunately, you cannot predict for ome of the vaccine whether they will be good or bad for an individual: that depends not just on an individual physiology, but also who that person comes into contact with, as well as your behaviors–like hand washing. For some jabs of little use, like an eighth COVID jab for me, well, that is the only shot I have ever refused.
Why do you refer to the Seth Mandel story about MSF as clickbait? Seems like an important and well reported story. It does not seem misleading to me.
Amazing video of the cat being revived. In CPR and AED classes that I have taken, you keep chest compressions going except when putting on the AED paddles and shocking the heart. The medic in this video only did chest compressions intermittently. My guess is that the cat was not in cardiac arrest. In any case, it was an amazing rescue!
And now Pakistan is bombing Kabul in response to the Stone-age Taliban.
The Times of Israel is reporting today that:
“US Ambassador Mike Huckabee reportedly telling (Israeli) embassy staff that if they want to leave Israel, they “should do so TODAY.””
Very happy I stocked up on popcorn at Costco the other day.
Embassy evacuations are an interesting and often unreported metric in M.E. politics (for the record, the Pentagon Pizza Index is fake).
I noted the Dpt of State recommended employees and families leave Beirut last week and (from memory) Doha in the last few days. I guess they’re staggering the orders to not attract attention. Pick up a popcorn for me, Roger.
best,
D.A.
NYC