Right hand, left hand

Express Scripts handles prescription drugs for my wife and me, through Tricare for Life and Medicare. Express Scripts is not the easiest firm to do business with, far from it.

In 2016, Express Scripts had revenues of $100.752 billion. I do not expect good customer relations from any organization with that kind of money running through its little corporate hands in one year.

This post, though, does not concern Express Scripts’ user unfriendly, but correspondence that made me wonder whether one part of the business knows what another part is doing.

A few months back, Express Scripts sent me an email stating the company would no longer fill generic Zantac, as a part of the drug was a carcinogen. The email said I might want to talk with my doctor about prescribing another drug that would replace generic Zantac. I did just that.

Not too long after discussing a Zantac replacement, I got a refill for the generic Zantac. "Wait a minute,” I thought. “Express Scripts first tells me it will not refill any more generic Zantac, and now it has done so.” Whatever, I decided, and continued taking the drug.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Express Scripts stating the company had contacted my doctor concerning refilling prescription *****2959, but had not received a reply from my doctor. Perhaps, Express Scripts said, I might contact the doctor and have his office send a prescription refill order.

I had not done that before receiving another email stating the same as the one from several months ago, that Express Scripts would no longer refill prescriptions for the generic Zantac and, therefore, would not refill prescription *****2959.

I think I will just get over-the-counter famotidine. Same drug, less hassle.

If journalists from today interviewed FDR on 7 December 1941

Why do you insist on calling it “the Japanese attack” on Pearl Harbor?

You’ve had years to prepare. Why wasn’t our Navy ready?

Do you feel guilty for all the sailors we lost today?

Many say your oil embargo on Japan led to war. Is there blood on your hands?

What about the sailors trapped on the Oklahoma? What are your plans for getting them out?

Will you resign because of this attack?

What is your exit strategy from this war?

Then and now, and what about later?

The 35-month Spanish flu infected 500 million people and killed somewhere between 17 million and 50 million. The world population in 1918 was less than 2 billion. Many more people lived outside cities then. And, the world had been at war since August 1914. Crowded military camps, crowded battle lines and crowded cities contributed to the spread of what was called “the Spanish flu.” Governments locked down information and made inaccurate, propagandist statements about the flu, when any mention was made at all.

Now, there are many more of us, 7.8 billion by most estimates. The majority of people live in cities, many crowded beyond our imaginations. We think we know what a crowded city looks like, but search for satellite pictures of the world’s largest cities, and you will find your imagination limited in its belief about crowded.

In no way is this round of sickness as deadly as the World War I variety. More might be infected, but there are around 6 billion more people that in 1918. Determining an infected-to-killed percentage is not possible, given the range of estimated dead from the 1918 flu.

Upon first reading, several years ago, that scientists had dug up bodies of Spanish flu victims from permafrost areas, I was of the “Wait a minute, you don’t know what’s going to happen” thought. Researchers assured us that their methods of research guaranteed none of the virus would be released.

Just like operators of the Chinese labs?

Stuff sticks around.

“Well, somewhere out in the wild there is a pocket of smallpox or something similar, just waiting to be picked up by some explorer and brought back to a population that has never been exposed to it or vaccinated for it, ever. The CDC, in answer to an e-mail I sent them about it several years ago (because I had the vaxx twice, once in infancy and once again in boot camp, and they both took), responded with ‘both of them fade after XX years’. In plain English, nothing lasts forever, including immunity. I didn’t ask CDC about the polio vaxx, but we got that at school as soon as the Salk vaccine was available, once as an injection and again (twice) with the sugar cube version.

“Nothing lasts forever.” -- valorguardians

44 suspected Boko Haram found dead in Chad jail cell

Men were captured in operation in late March.

Prisoners had been denied food and water for two days, human rights group says.

From The Guardian

“A group of 44 suspected members of Boko Haram who had been arrested in Chad during a recent operation against the jihadist group have been found dead in their prison cell, apparently poisoned, Chad’s chief prosecutor has announced. Speaking on national television on Saturday, Youssouf Tom said the prisoners were found dead on Thursday.

“Autopsies on four dead prisoners revealed traces of a lethal substance which had caused heart attacks in some victims and severe asphyxiation in others, he said. The dead men were among a group of 58 suspects captured during a major army operation around Lake Chad launched by the president, Idriss Déby Itno, at the end of March.

“’Following the fighting around Lake Chad, 58 members of Boko Haram had been taken prisoner and sent to [the capital city] N’Djamena for the purposes of the investigation. On Thursday morning, their jailers told us that 44 prisoners had been found dead in their cell,’ Tom said, adding that he had attended the scene. ‘We have buried 40 bodies and sent four bodies to the medical examiner for autopsy.’

“A security source, speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP that ‘the 58 prisoners were placed in a single cell and were given nothing to eat or drink for two days’”.

“Mahamat Nour Ahmed Ibedou, secretary general of the Chadian Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (CTDDH), made similar accusations.

“Prison officials had ‘locked the prisoners in a small cell and refusing them food and water for three days because they were accused of belonging to Boko Haram,’ Ibedou told AFP. ‘It’s horrible what has happened.’

“The government denied the allegations. ‘There was no ill-treatment,’ Chad’s justice minister, Djimet Arabi, told AFP by telephone.

“’Toxic substances were found in their stomachs. Was it collective suicide or something else? We’re still looking for answers,’ he said, adding that the investigation was still ongoing.

“One of the prisoners was transferred to hospital on Thursday, but he was ‘faring much better’ and had rejoined ‘the other 13 prisoners still alive and who are doing very well,’ the minister said.

“The military operation against Boko Haram killed more than a thousand of the group’s militants and cost the lives of 52 soldiers, a Chadian army spokesman said. The operation ran from 31 March to 8 April.

“It was launched in response to a devastating attack on Chadian troops on 23 March on a base at Bohoma, in the Lake Chad marshlands, which killed 98 soldiers. It was the largest-ever one-day loss suffered by the army.

“Idriss warned his allies in the region that Chad’s army will no longer take part in operations outside the country.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/18/44-suspected-boko-haram-members-found-dead-in-chad-prison

Story first found at timesofisrael.com.

Well, maybe

“Quote of the Day”

“Carry a 25 if it makes you feel good, but do not ever load it. If you load it you may shoot it. If you shoot it you may hit somebody, and if you hit somebody, and he finds out about it, he may be very angry with you.”
– Col. Jeff Cooper

https://gunfreezone.net/page/2/

I have never fired or even held a .25. It probably makes a loud noise. Sometimes noise will send your attacker running. For that matter, there are many incidents when the mere sight of a defense firearm sent running the potential attacker. In order for the pistol to make noise, though, the operator must pull the trigger. That action sends a slug somewhere. Your target is the preferred place to put the slug.

There are many, many studies and writings on the best defensive caliber and weapon, from .22 lead to 12 gauge slug or shot. Every caliber and every firearm has its defenders and its detractors.

What it comes down to, you want: a particular pistol that fits your hand and your needs; a pistol that will fire, eject and chamber every time you pull the trigger; a pistol with which you can place lead in a specific target at least 80% of the time, preferably 100% at distances less than 50 feet; a pistol you are ready and willing to use.

So carry a .25 if that is your choice. And, learn to use it. Learn to use it properly.

A different Russian traffic video

 All by his lonesome, a St. Petersburg driver sends his speeding Hyundai slamming into the guardrail. Russian construction worked in this incident, since only steel and concrete went into the river. The Hyundai caught on the steel. Police pulled the driver from his car and sped him off to jail.

https://www.rt.com/russia/486210-street-chase-river-russia/

Red River

My friend Jim Clark lives close to the Red River, on the Texas side. The river is the northern border of his land. Jim’s family first moved into Red River County before there was a county by that name, before there was a Texas. His great-great-great grandfather, James H. Clark, and great-great-great grandmother, Isabella, were members of the Wavell Colony.

The Red is known for its floods, not as many as before the Lake Texoma Dam went in, but still some good ones now and then. It gets low during summer, too. Drive across any bridge in the summer and you will see long sandbars.

Jim said the Red went down so low one year that even he got surprise one day. “I went out and there was a place, must have been a thousand musket balls in the sand.”

The sand was too wet to get out in at that time, Jim said. “And then a little while later, we got a rain and that part was covered with water again.”

There is also a story about a paddle wheeler that hit a snag one day in the late 1800s. All passengers and most of their luggage got off the steam boat before it went down. Not rescued were barrels of whiskey, said to be several hundred or a thousand, depending on the story teller.

That boat has been seen at least three times since it sank. But water always came back up before anybody could rescue the barrels of whiskey. One story says a finder got a barrel from the wreckage, and shared the whiskey with friends. When they sobered up, not a one could remember where the boat was.