Doc and the Bimbo Posts

One of the true joys of RV travel after retirement is that you can go off route on a whim.  Our normal route to visit our daughter in AZ was from the Orange Grove RV park (Bakersfield, CA) to the Elks lodge in Needles, CA.  The night before setting out on this leg, I was looking at a map and noticed the town of Zzyzx. 

Hey Babe, want to visit Zzyzx? 

WTF is Zzyzx?

I have no idea.

Can be boon dock there?

No idea, but it is on the route to Search Light, NV.

What is in Search Light?

Casino!

Whoo Hoo.

Next day we diverted north from our planned route and found the exit to Zzyzx a few hours later.  Road soon turned to dirt with water from a nearby winter lake flowing up to and over it complete with a high water, proceed at your own risk sign.  We soon came upon a muscle car that was coming out of the area.  Asked the driver how the road was ahead, and he said he gave up on it a mile or so ahead fearing the loss of his vintage, gas guzzling POS.   After a bit of discussion, Judy I opted to go ahead as we had named our trailer “Boldly Go” for a fucking good reason.  Judy was reluctant but agreed as there was no place to turn around on solid ground.  Turned out the muscle car driver was just another chicken shit Californian, as we had no trouble making it the rest of the way to the “town”. 

There are many strange names for towns in the US.  King of Prussia and Intercourse, PA come to mind, not to mention French Lick, IN, Bowlegs, OK, and Flippen, AK.  Been to the latter.  Saw the Flippen post office, the Flippen Police Depart, the Flippen Christ of Christ, and we camped across the street from the Flippen Airport.  But Zzyzx?  Who and why would anyone in this wild world of sports name a town with three Zs, and X and a Y.  Aliens? Or maybe it was settled by some lost tribe of Israel whose language has been lost to history. Mormons?

Turns out the original name was Soda Springs.  Boring. It was a stop for Indians (with a feather not a dot) who were looking for water.  I am sure that these natives did not call it Soda Springs, but as my wife and I having lived in Oregon and Washington for our entire lives, we really tired of trying to pronounce Native American names.  Puyallup, Humptulips, and Yachats come to mind.  Soda Springs eventually became an outpost for the US Army in 1860, so that the natives would be made to suffer from dehydration.  Later there were miners and a railroad.  Why?  I do not know this, but that is what Wikipedia says so you know it must be true.

The name changed to Zzyzx happened in 1944.  A popular radio evangelist, named Cultis Howe Springer, filed mining claims for 12,800 acres. His intention was never to mine shit.  He intended to bilk Christian idiots into making him a millionaire.  Soda Springs became Zzyzx mineral springs and health resort.  Zzyzx was to be and still is the last word in the English language for health and larceny. He made big bucks in snake oil sales, sending his worthless shit all over the planet with promises to cure cancer, memory loss (opps, sorry that was Prevagin), and ED (opps, sorry that was Nugenix). Prevagin, “who would have thought that Jelly Fish would improve your brain function”, nope they don’t, because jelly fish have no brains! Springer touted the benefits of the natural hot springs, even though they were heated from a secret boiler.  “Back aches and bad knees are a thing of the past” (opps, sorry, that was Chiropractor quackery). Springer planted palm trees to enhance the oasis concept. He added a hotel an air strip and a radio station where he could broadcast his lunacy to the masses.

This insane Christian quackery went on for three decades till the US government realized that this evangelical conman had no legal claim to the land. He was eventually tried and found guilty of fraud. He was jailed for a bit and eventually died in 1985.  Justice was served in those days, unlike today where he would have been elected to Congress from a red state. The “town” is now part of the U. of California as a desert studies center.  Surprisingly, Springer inadvertently left a redeeming legacy.  He populated the oasis lagoon with Mohave tui chubs, which went extinct everywhere else.  Even fucktards can occasionally and unconsciously do the right thing.

After a few hours of wandering the site, we drove on to Search Light in the dark.  That is where my dog refined the rules of “fetch…fuck you” but that is another story.

I know a bit about science.  I have a bachelor’s in biology, a master’s degree in oceanography, a Ph. D in zoology and spent 33 years as a laboratory and field research scientist in which I published over 30 papers.  Although I am not an epidemiologist, I know something about statistics and a little about the uses and flaws of mathematical modeling.  I now write a blog and I can modestly say that I know a bit about how to communicate in this chaotic world we now live in.

When the Covid pandemic hit, I thought that I could help explain how this came about, what to do to protect oneself, presenting this information in a calm and logical manner that the lay person could understand.  Over the last year, I have spent many hours talking with friends, relatives, and commenting to perfect strangers on Facebook. Sadly, I have evolved into a Covid troll in the process. As a Christian I would like to stop doing this, try to walk in the shoes of the antivaxxers, the unmasked hordes, and Trumploidite’s who still claim that there is Democratic plot to make us into commies.  I guess I am going to hell, cause I just can’t. 

My surrender to the dark side started with my response to a Facebook post that stated, “mask can’t possibly work because viruses as too small to be stopped by two layers of cotton”. I responded that while technically this is true, virus do not flow through the air naked, they are carried on the much larger droplets of water or aerosols that waft through the air when you talk, cough, or speak German, and these are then absorbed onto the fabric of the mask. The result is if you are infected fewer aerosols that are released into the air and that if you are not, few is any can get into your nasal passages.  You see, dear friends, that virus when they get into your body need to reproduce before they reach the numbers that cause you problems.  Thus, a lower initial exposure will give your bodies immune system more time to respond and reduce the chance to a severe infection.

The responses I got to this thoughtful, logical, and exceedingly kind comment were varied.  “Fauchi said they didn’t work”, he didn’t.  “You are a sheep”, but I am allergic to wool.   “My sister got it while wearing a mask.”  Maybe if she had worn it over here nose or make it with a double layer of cotton fabric instead of some left-over afghan yarn, she just might have done better.  No shit, I was in Walmart last year and the checkout clerk was doing both of those things. “You build up carbon dioxide while wearing a mask and that will destroy your brain”.  Is that why surgeon’s die young?  Next time I will make sure that my doctor does not wear a mask while he is operating on my sheep brain.  SHUT THE FUCK UP AND WEAR THE GOD DAMN MASK YOU STUPID IGNORANT FUCKTARDS!

My next attempt to illuminate Facebook strangers was also a failure. There were many comments that Pfizer and Moderna were not vaccines but gene therapy.  First, I gave the definition of a vaccine.  A Vaccine is “a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, prepared from the causative agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute, treated to act as an antigen without inducing the disease”.  Then I gave them a brief overview of how these two mRNA vaccines work.  The mRNA enters a cell, interacts with ribosomes to produce a protein that looks like the spike proteins on the surface of the Covid virus.  This elicits an immune response producing antibodies which then find and kill the virus. The mRNA does not hang around in the cell for long as is eventually disintegrates.  As the mRNA does not enter the nucleus of the cell it cannot interact with your DNA which is your genetic material. Therefore, dear friends, they are vaccines and do not cause mutations in your genes.

This science-based logic once again fell on deaf ears. I was called a liar, others insulted my parentage, or felt sorry that I had fallen for the big pharma lie.  “It’s a plot by Bill Gates to depopulate the planet.” WTF. It is “made from the lungs of aborted fetuses”, really, you have got to be kidding.  It’s a “poison that in 6 months will kill you”.  Why 6 months? Why not a month or a year or 10 years. “I got the shot and came down with shingles”.  OK, if you really believe this, take the Johnson and Johnson, it is a more traditional vaccine derived from a similar but attenuated virus.  “No way, I don’t want to die from blood clots”.  Are you a woman?? Are you under 50?? And even in that case only 7 in a million were affected, I think you sir are safe from that rare side effect, unless you have had a sex change.  “My sister died after the first shot”.  I see that you are from the great state of Tennessee.  Logically your sister GOT DRUNK AFTER GIVING YOU A BLOW JOB AND THREW HERSELF IN FRONT OF A TRAIN!

Another comment goes something like this: “I am healthy, and my immune system will defeat this virus as it has only a 1% mortality rate”.   I pointed out that this means it is 10 times more fatal than a seasonal flu and that this rate increases significantly with age and comorbidities.  My wife and I might have had it a year ago. At the start of this mess, my wife attended a sewing expo in Puyallup, Washington in March 2020.  5000+ women attended, rubbing elbows and swapping aerosols. A few days later, Covid hit the area with a vengeance. Judy came down with a “bad cold”. A week later I came down with it as well.  I wiped us out for 6 weeks. I slept on the sofa for 3 weeks so that I could elevate my head.  Then the diarrhea hit us both.  We survived but if i had not been retired, I doubt if I could have worked.  6 months later Judy developed a heart condition which almost killed her.  She is now on a drug which gives her the shakes in her right arm and will likely have to remain on it the rest of her life. We are not sure that was Covid. Would you really want to take the risk?  The response, “If only her doctors had proscribed hydroxy chloroquine and zinc she would have been fine”.   How about you INJECT CHLOROX AND SHOVE A UV LIGHT UP YOUR ASS INSTEAD, I WOULD PAY TO WATCH.

But the most common argument I get to my informed Facebook replies is that “the government is not going to tell me to wear a mask, I am an American!” Ever been pulled over by a cop? Do you give him your divers license and proof of insurance? Do you pay your taxes? Nobody is forcing you to get vaccinate or to wear a mask, however, it is the patriotic thing to do.  The replies to this are chilling, calling me a commie, a fool, and unamerican. I have even been compared to the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor. The last comment was from a longtime Facebook friend.  I dropped that sonabitch with a caustic comment about him being a used car salesman, which he is.  In this country you have freedoms to choose.  You have the right not to wear a mask, you have the right not to get a vaccinated. Does that give you the right to infect and possible kill others? That is a right I choose not to have.  Exercising that right says something truly ugly about you.  So, EAT SHIT AND DIE MOTHERFUCKERS.