L is for Liter

There are only three countries in the world that use the English system of weights and measures. It was called the British Imperial System.

Most common are the weight in the pound divided into 16 ounces (oz) and the ounce into 16 drams.

The basic unit of length is the yard (yd); fractions of the yard are the inch (1/36 yd) and the foot (1/3 yd), and commonly used multiples are the rod (5 1⁄2 yd), the furlong (220 yd), and the mile (1,760 yd). The acre, equal to 4,840 square yards or 160 square rods, is used for measuring land area. For liquid measure, or liquid capacity, the basic unit is the gallon, which is divided into 4 quarts, 8 pints, or 32 gills.

The three countries still on the English system – the U.S., Liberia and Myanmar – still (mostly or officially) stick to the imperial system.

The rest of the world has adopted the metric system and there is a reason. It functions like the decimal system much like the United States dollar. Ten pennies equal a dime. Ten dimes equals a dollar.

We just bought a new trash can that came in a box marked “10 L.” Further examination I determined it has a 10 liter capacity. We also buy 2 liter bottles of soda (pop).

The biggest reasons the U.S. hasn’t adopted the metric system are simply time and money. That is the excuse that is provided by Encyclopedia Britannica and repeated on other internet sites.

None of these countries did not offers excuses. They simply made the switch including Great Britain (United Kingdom) at the end of 1994 under a directive of the European Union.

There is a US Metric Association but it was founded in 1916. As the United States has become ever more reliant on goods from other countries. That new trash can says the USA will join the world on weights and measures.

(In the US) Why is soda sold in liters while milk and other drinks sold in gallons? By coincidence, the large plastic soda bottle was invented right around the time that the US was seriously flirting with a conversion to metric. So it was introduced in a 2 liter size instead of a half gallon size. My 16.9 FL. OZ. bottle of water is 500 ml.

Metric is coming to America. It’s not a plot and it’s not part of an invasion.

The Impact of Jews in the Year 2020 – It’s More than a Happy Hanukkah!

This makes my heart burst with pride as Moses led our people out of bondage these scientists are going to lead the world out of the pandemic. Happy Hanukkah!

http://Embed from Getty Images

Feeling good about the info below, I thought you might be interested –

Mikael Dolsten, Chief Scientific Officer at Pfizer, is Jewish. He grew up in Halmstad, Sweden, the son of a Jewish father with prewar roots in Sweden and a Jewish mother who escaped Austria in the early days of WWII. He visited Israel several times as a youngster and did a year of his doctoral work at the Weizmann Institute. There he learned cutting edge immunology which led him to pharmaceutical science. Dolsten has referred in interviews to rising anti-Semitism in Sweden.

Pfizer CEO Albert Borla is a Sephardic Jew from Thessalonika, Greece, a city whose Jewish population was almost completely wiped out during WWII. The Borla family’s history in Thessalonika goes back 5 centuries, and Borla visits his remaining family members there yearly. He now lives in New York City.

The Chief Medical Officer for Moderna, a Cambridge, Mass.- based company, is an Israeli immigrant named Tal Zaks. Previously, he served as head of Global Oncology at Sanofi Pharmaceuticals. Zaks received his M.D. and PhD. degrees at Ben Gurion University and conducted post-doc research at the NIH.

The scientist responsible, with a colleague, for the pioneering breakthroughs that allowed the development of an mRNA vaccine (the novel approach used by Moderna and Pfizer for dealing with COVID-19) is University of Pennsylvania’s Drew Weissman. A Professor of Medicine at Penn, he received his BA and MA degrees at Brandeis and MD/Microbiology and PhD at Boston U. Weissman once worked with a fellowship at the NIH under Dr. Fauci.

Final related notes: President-Elect Joe Biden this week named his new head for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”): Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Professor Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Chief of Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital. She works as a physician at a Jewish camp for a week each summer. Also in the clan is Jeff Zients, who will be Biden’s overseer for the entire federal coronavirus response. Zients led the successful effort to fix the government’s Health.gov website when it became damaged during the launch of the Affordable Care Act.

And remember that we are less than 2% of the US population.

Metric System Vs. Imperial (British) System

One of the age-old arguments a majority of the world has with the United States is why the country insists on staying with the imperial system of measurement. Aside from Liberia and Myanmar, the rest of the world, as you can see by the gray masses, use the metric system.

In America’s defense, they can actually blame the British on the unit of measurement. Hundreds of years ago, when the British colonized America, they brought with them the imperial system. Ever since, Americans have used that system. Great Britain developed that Imperial system of measurement. A formal UK government policy to support metrication was agreed by 1965.

But change is slowly happening in the United States.

Some U.S. consumer products come in rounded metric sizes. This appears to be increasing because of the international nature of manufacturing, distribution, and sales. Many items are produced in rounded metric quantities and some manufacturers opt to display the metric quantity first or more prominently (e.g., Oral-B Glide dental floss is available in 35-, 40-, and 50-meter packages).

Perhaps the most common metric item sold is the two-liter bottle. Some supermarket chains also make their store brand soft drinks available in 3-liter sizes. Soft drink containers of 1 and 0.5 liters (and more recently 1.25 liter bottles) are increasingly sold alongside 12 fl oz, 16 fl oz, 20 fl oz, and 24 fl oz (355, 473, 591 and 710 mL) sizes.

The half-liter water bottle (16.9 fl oz) has nearly replaced the 16 ounce size. 700 mL (23.6 fl oz) and one-liter sizes are also common, though 20 fl oz, and 24 fl oz sizes remain popular, particularly in vending machines.

People are stubborn. 30% of the world’s population drives on the left side of the road with steering wheels on the right side of their cars. They are not likely to change their cars and Americans are not likely to give up the Imperial measurement system.

Effective Drugs

Efficacy is the ability to perform a task to a satisfactory or expected degree. The word comes from the same roots as effectiveness, and it has often been used synonymously, although in pharmacology a distinction is now often made between efficacy and effectiveness. Efficacy can be defined as the performance of an intervention under ideal and controlled circumstances, whereas effectiveness refers to its performance under ‘real-world’ conditions.

Adequate testing of any new drug is mandatory. What are the side effects and how likely are they to occur?

Pulled from the market in 1961, thalidomide caused approximately 10,000 children to be born with deformed limbs, brain defects, or other developmental deformities. In July of 1962, president John F. Kennedy and the American press began praising their heroine, FDA inspector Frances Kelsey, who prevented the drug’s approval within the United States despite pressure from the pharmaceutical company and FDA supervisors. Kelsey felt the application for thalidomide contained incomplete and insufficient data on its safety and effectiveness. Among her concerns was the lack of data indicating whether the drug could cross the placenta, which provides nourishment to a developing fetus. While thalidomide is not a vaccine the message seems obvious to me.

My own wife started taking Tumeric on advise from her doctor to ease her arthritis pain. The non-prescription drug is advertised as a potent anti-inflammatory and antioxidant and may also help improve symptoms of depression and arthritis. The doctor did not warn her about any side effects. But there are some: stomach upset, nausea, dizziness, or diarrhea. She suffered from diarrhea even after she stopped taking the medication for four months. That led to her having a colonoscopy that found nothing but an irritation to her colon.

Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, confirmed to Bloomberg on Thursday the British pharmaceutical giant was likely to run an additional global trial to evaluate the efficacy of its Covid-19 vaccine.

In our rush to obtain a vaccine for Covid-19 (Warp Speed) will side effects be known? Side effects may not be known for many months. We may want the vaccination but I will be standing at the back of the line.

La Niña may be Coming to California

The U.S. Climate Prediction Center said Thursday that La Niña — a phenomenon that occurs when the surface of the Pacific Ocean cools — has officially formed.

Between the two phases there is a neutral phase that’s neither El Niño nor La Niña — what climatologist Bill Patzert calls “La Nada.” That’s where we find ourselves at the moment — and where we expect to stay through the summer. But NOAA predicts that there’s a 50% to 55% chance of our current neutral phase shifting into a La Niña this fall and winter. Hence the watch. But there’s also a 40% to 45% chance, according to NOAA, that we will remain stuck in neutral for the fall and winter. In addition, there’s about a 5% to 10% chance of an El Niño developing.

Rain in Canoga Park has been decent the past two years. 18.47 inches in this past year and 23.23 inches the year before. Since 1997 when I started collecting rain data in my yard the lowest seasonal total was 4.53 inches in the 2001-2002 period.

President’s intelligence briefing book repeatedly cited virus threat

This is a disturbing report that was published in the Washington Post. The entire report recites Donald Trump’s dealing with the coronavirus. The complete article is here. The first 11 paragraphs are the most important and are posted, unabridged, here. Trump is reported to be a big watcher of television. If only the President’s Daily Briefing had been broadcast perhaps America’s response to the virus would have been different.

U.S. intelligence agencies issued warnings about the novel coronavirus in more than a dozen classified briefings prepared for President Trump in January and February, months during which he continued to play down the threat, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The repeated warnings were conveyed in issues of the President’s Daily Brief, a sensitive report that is produced before dawn each day and designed to call the president’s attention to the most significant global developments and security threats.

For weeks, the PDB — as the report is known — traced the virus’s spread around the globe, made clear that China was suppressing information about the contagion’s transmissibility and lethal toll, and raised the prospect of dire political and economic consequences.

But the alarms appear to have failed to register with the president, who routinely skips reading the PDB and has at times shown little patience for even the oral summary he takes two or three times per week, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.

The advisories being relayed by U.S. spy agencies were part of a broader collection of worrisome signals that came during a period now regarded by many public health officials and other experts as a squandered opportunity to contain the outbreak.

As of Monday, more than 55,000 people in the United States had died of covid-19.

The frequency with which the coronavirus was mentioned in the PDB has not been previously reported, and U.S. officials said it reflected a level of attention comparable to periods when analysts have been tracking active terrorism threats, overseas conflicts or other rapidly developing security issues.

A White House spokesman disputed the characterization that Trump was slow to respond to the virus threat. “President Trump rose to fight this crisis head-on by taking early, aggressive historic action to protect the health, wealth and well-being of the American people,” said spokesman Hogan Gidley. “We will get through this difficult time and defeat this virus because of his decisive leadership.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for the PDB. In response to questions about the repeated mentions of coronavirus, a DNI official said, “The detail of this is not true.” The official declined to explain or elaborate.

U.S. officials emphasized that the PDB references to the virus included comprehensive articles on aspects of the global outbreak, but also smaller digest items meant to keep Trump and senior administration officials updated on the course of the contagion. Versions of the PDB are also shared with Cabinet secretaries and other high-ranking U.S. officials.

One official said that by mid- to late January the coronavirus was being mentioned more frequently, either as one of the report’s core articles or in what is known as an “executive update,” and that it was almost certainly called to Trump’s attention orally.

The administration’s first major step to arrest the spread of the virus came in late January, when Trump restricted travel between the United States and China, where the virus is believed to have originated late last year.

Doctor Trump’s Idea to Disinfect Lungs Leaves Medical Experts Aghast

“I’M JUST HERE TO PRESENT IDEAS,” President DONALD TRUMP said to WaPo’s PHIL RUCKER when Phil posited, quite accurately, that “people tuning in to [the White House] briefings, they want to get information and guidance and want to know what to do. They’re not looking for rumors.”

Earlier in Thursday’s briefing a presentation about how disinfectants kill germs including the coronavirus Donald Trump followed up thanking the presenter Bill Bryan, an undersecretary at the Homeland Security Department and said “Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside?” He said it would be “almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on the lungs.”

Doctors say that people should absolutely not use disinfectant in their lungs, or inhale or ingest it in any way. Bleach is a toxic chemical, and inhaling it could be damaging and dangerous.

“Inhaling chlorine bleach would be absolutely the worst thing for the lungs,” said John Balmes, a pulmonologist a Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, and a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco. “The airway and lungs are not made to be exposed to even an aerosol of disinfectant.”

On Friday morning, the maker of Lysol and Dettol, Reckitt Benckiser Plc, issued a statement that “under no circumstance” should its disinfectant products be administered into the human body, through injection, ingestion or any other route.

Citing deaths, FDA issues warning against antimalarial drugs touted by Trump

Still, there are those who blindly respond to every word Donald Trump speaks. Emergency rooms need to prepare for another category of visitors.

Heat Storms in Los Angeles are the New Normal

You should stay indoors due to record-breaking heat in Southern California, officials warned today.

While other parts of the world experience tornadoes, heavy rain, hurricanes, and snow storms, Los Angeles is facing another kind of storm that has been coined as “Heat Storms.”

Weather reporters on television in this city are constantly reminding viewers that Southern California has a Mediterranean climate that provides the coastal area with moderate temperatures throughout the year.

Unfortunately the climate has changed continuously over at least the past 30 years or more. Snails and slugs were prevalent in my garden in the early 80s but disappeared entirely by 1990.

This month we have already experienced eight days of 90 degree plus temperatures including a 108 and 104 degree temps. Unfortunately it has been even hotter in the inland valleys of the city. Temperatures have exceeded 100 degrees seven times in the San Fernando Valley this month. One day in the Valley the temp reached 117 degrees. The forecast is for at least another four more days of this current heat storm.

The consequence of the very hot temperatures has been the death of at least one postal worker among others.

A USC study of weather patterns for Southern California confirms my suspicions. The study is titled HISTORICAL TEMPERATURE TRENDS IN LOS ANGELES COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

Departure from average for mean temperature, minimum temperature, and maximum temperature for the South Coast Region in the State of California. The bold line is 11-year running mean and the thin line is the departure from the mean for a region between Point Conception and the Mexico border. Source: Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/monitor/cal-mon/index.html)

The super hot days starting July 5 of this year were called a Heat Storm by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. 29,350 customers out of LADWP’s 1.5 million total customers lost power during that storm according to the DWP.

A Los Angeles Times article dated July 12, 2018 confirms my observations.

The record-breaking heat that baked Southern California and prompted mass power outages last weekend was just a taste of what is to come. Summers in SoCal have already been getting hotter over the last century. Climate change is expected to produce more frequent and more blistering heat waves in the coming years that will put unprecedented stress on the electrical grid and challenge utilities to keep the power on.

Los Angeles, apparently, isn’t ready for the new normal. The demand for electricity Friday, Saturday and Sunday overwhelmed the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s aged system, prompting power outages that affected more than 80,000 customers. The unluckiest people went 48 hours without electricity; they and many others had to evacuate their homes in search of air conditioning elsewhere.

The solar panel industry will be booming as we all receive our summer bills.