The looming threat of long Covid: Vale P.J O’Rourke

The whole fabric of society will go to wrack if we really lay hands of reform on our rotten institutions. From top to bottom the whole system is a fraud, all of us know it, laborers and capitalists alike, and all of us are consenting parties to it.

— Henry Adams, born in 1838

Corruption On A Grand Scale (And Explaining Inequities)

Like a Tammany Hall-type of administrative corruption but on a national or even international scale, key actors representing political regimes and multinational corporations conspire to change the rules to protect special interests with the most wealth in financial as well as symbolic terms. - Aeon

Help for taxpayers and tax professionals: Special filing season alerts

IRS: “During this tax season, taxpayers face a number of issues due to critical tax law changes that took place in 2021 and ongoing challenges related to the pandemic. The IRS continues to share updated information for people filing tax returns this filing season as well as those who have previous year tax returns awaiting processing by the IRS. This page will be updated with special alertscovering a variety of information and developments for people preparing their tax return, awaiting processing of a return or refund and the latest updates on IRS letters, or notices. Newer updates will be placed at the top of this page; the IRS will also provide critical updates through social media

A 12-year-old boy has reportedly died a few days after being given the Pfizer vaccine against Covid-19 in Austria.

Investigation into 12-year-old boy's death days after Covid vaccine

Covid Patients May Have Increased Risk of Developing Mental Health Problems

The New York Times: “A new, large study found that in the year after getting Covid, people were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with psychiatric disorders they hadn’t had than people who didn’t get infected. The study, published Wednesday in the journal The BMJ, analyzed records of nearly 154,000 Covid patients in the Veterans Health Administration system and compared their experience in the year after they recovered from their initial infection with that of a similar group of people who did not contract the virus. The study included only patients who had no mental health diagnoses or treatment for at least two years before becoming infected with the coronavirus, allowing researchers to focus on psychiatric diagnoses and treatment that occurred after coronavirus infection. People who had Covid were 39 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression and 35 percent more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety over the months following infection than people without Covid during the same period, the study found. Covid patients were 38 percent more likely to be diagnosed with stress and adjustment disorders and 41 percent more likely to be diagnosed with sleep disorders than uninfected people…”

The looming threat of long financial Covid FT

Mysterious Link Between Vitamin D And COVID-19 Reaffirmed in ‘Striking’ New Findings Science Alert

Study – World’s Rivers Rife with Drugs

The Scientist: “Levels of pharmaceuticals considered unsafe for aquatic organisms were found at more than one-quarter of sampling sites. A study of more than 1,000 sites in 258 rivers on all seven continents finds that pharmaceutical pollution is a pervasive problem worldwide. The work, published today (February 15) in PNAS, surveyed sites in 104 countries, including 36 countries not previously examined, and is the largest and “first truly global” study of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) pollution, according to the Global Monitoring of Pharmaceuticals Project, which conducted the research. The findings demonstrate that “pharmaceutical pollution poses a global threat to environmental and human health,” the authors write.

The researchers focused on 61 of the commonly used measurable pharmaceuticals—leaving thousands of others untested—as current technology only allows for 50 to 100 APIs to be measured in each sample. In addition to whether the APIs were detected at each site, the researchers noted whether the levels were above those believed to cause ecological harm, including effects like altering behavior, changing gene expression, and feminizing male fish. The actual ecological risks could be higher than predicted in the study, the researchers write, as APIs could have toxic interactions that aren’t incorporated into the analysis…”

MEdia Dragon: Vale “P.J. O’Rourke, Conservative Political Satirist: 

• The New York Times’ Neil Genzlinger with “P.J. O’Rourke, Conservative Political Satirist, Dies at 74.”

RIP … P.J. O'Rourke was America's greatest satirist and coolest conservative. 

 Many people, including Jake Tapper and Piers Morgan, are mourning the death of conservative humorist P.J. O'Rourke.

The author and satirist, known for such works as Don't Vote It Just Encourages the Bastards and How the Hell Did This Happen?, passed away Tuesday morning at the age of 74, according to the Associated Press. The Daily Beast has reported his death was due to complications from lung cancer. After word of his death spread and became widely known, many took to social media to pass along their condolences and share their thoughts and feelings about the longtime writer.

Jake Tapper, Others Mourn Passing of Conservative Humorist P.J. O'Rourke

P. J. O’Rourke, who has died at the age of 74, once hosted a small New Year’s party at his apartment in Washington. The year was 1990. He’d just returned from Germany, where he had covered the fall of the Berlin Wall

P.J. O'Rourke was America's greatest satirist and coolest conservative 

• P.J. O'Rourke, R.I.P.
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MEdia Dragon 🐉 enjoyed reading PJO’Rat the NSW parliamentary Library And linking to him on the blog

  

The writer served as foreign-affairs desk chief at Rolling Stone and wrote for numerous publications

One of the best essays I have ever read is P.J. O’Rourke’s “The Death of Communism:  Berlin, November 1989” from his essay collection Give War a Chance. O’Rourke was the foreign correspondent for Rolling Stone in the late 1980s and early 90s and reported from many Cold War hotspots.

West Germans are tall, pink, pert and orthodontically corrected. With hands, teeth and hair as clean as their clothes and clothes as sharp as their looks. Except for the fact that they all speak English pretty well, they’re indistinguishable from Americans. East Germans seem to have been hunching over cave fires a lot. They’re short and thick with sallow, lardy fat, and they have Khrushchev warts. There’s something about Marxism that brings out warts–the only kind of growth this economic system encourages.

P.J. O’Rourke on the Fall of the Berlin Wall