Dec
7
Trial and error, from Big Al
December 7, 2022 |
Watching Victoria via PBS Masterpiece sub, and it's shown that, during the 19th century, one treatment for syphilis was basically a mercury sauna, inhaling the vapors - yikes!
The history of syphilis is an interesting case for seeing how quack medical treatments, such as mercury, were applied and killed people even more quickly. Of course, one shouldn't judge too harshly as they were treating things of which they had no understanding.
The relevance to trading is that humans have an impulse, when confronted with challenges they don't understand, to resort to superstition and to believe anything that is claimed with great confidence.
Penny Brown notes:
Flaubert took the mercury treatment for syphilis and as a result his tongue turned blue.
Laurel Kenner adds:
Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of China, drank mercury-infused wine to attain eternal life. Rivers of mercury surrounded his burial chamber, a depiction of China. Qin died at 49.
Gyve Bones writes:
We saw examples of that in the recent pandemic. At first "masks don't work. Don't wear masks." then… "Everyone must wear a mask at all times, even alone outside or in a car." Then "The virus stops dead in the vaccinated person, who will not get Covid, and won't spread it to others." then… "Anthony Fauci contracts COVID three times, but is certain it would have been worse had he not been quad-jabbed."
Now there's this disturbing study which shows the effects on infant cord blood and their immune systems from mothers who have been infected with COVID.
Henry Gifford comments:
The early instruction for people to not wear masks was so that security cameras could see people’s faces. The police seem to really love security cameras with an enthusiasm that strikes me as going above and beyond any usefulness to “fight crime”.
There was the time a landlord in NYC put a camera outside a tenant’s door to prove if the tenant was using the apartment as a “primary residence”, and would therefore still be entitled to rent protection or not. The tenant’s boyfriend put bubble gum on the lens and was promptly hunted down and arrested and charged with every crime the cops could think of, with an enthusiasm certainly not caused by anyone’s love for a NYC landlord.
Not being seen clearly on security cameras was, if I remember correctly, sometimes even stated as the reason to not wear masks, which made me wonder – if they think masks work, more people dying is OK as long as people can be seen on cameras?
Pamela Van Giessen responds:
Henry — There exists decades of research that show that masks do not reduce transmission. I have yet to see meaningful evidence (research or real world) that shows that they do work. The current situation in China would seem real world validation of the lack of mask effectiveness. Lockdowns don’t seem to work much either. Most people don’t die from covid either. They don’t even get very sick.
Henry Gifford writes:
I tend to believe things if they can be measured, if the measurements can be repeated by others, and if they can be explained by the laws of physics. I tend to not believe anything not meeting these three criteria. As the owner and fairly regular user of over fifty measuring instruments, the measuring part often means measured by me.
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