Novel Plan to Defeat a Novel Virus

It’s a magnificent day. It’s overcast and cool, and the bugs are not doing well. Perfect day for fixing my pool system’s slow leak, which I resisted so stubbornly, I actually bought an automatic pool-filling device.

My theory is that only one kind of person likes hot, sunny days in Florida: people who never have to work outdoors. Once you’ve spent several hours in the burning sun, swatting mosquitoes that ignore Off, with your clothes so wet with sweat they’re actually less dry than they were when you took them out of the washer, you will appreciate overcast days with low temperatures.

I should be fixing the pool, but here I am, blogging. No surprise there.

This morning, I wondered about something. I wondered about a story that has been ignored by the press. I’m talking about Dennis Prager’s bout of covid.

When Prager caught the disease, leftojournos stampeded to their keyboards to let us know. Old, fat conservative radio hosts have died from covid after making nonconforming remarks about the disease and the world’s response, and here was another one, offering himself up on the altar of dissent. Do I think they hoped he would die? Yes, I do. It’s 2021. We need to be realistic about the thick fog of hatred in which we now live. I’m sure plenty of leftists are sad when anyone dies from coronavirus, but many would be happy to hear that overweight, post-70 Prager had croaked.

I use the word “croaked” because my wife thinks it’s hilarious. They don’t use it in Zambia. American slang sometimes seems very clever to people who haven’t heard it before.

Today I rooted around on the web, and I could not find any news about Prager. Even his own site is nearly useless. You would think his crew would have let people know what was happening, either to boast of his Trump-like triumph or to lament his severe illness or death and defend his decision.

Finally, in a blurb about an October 20 podcast, I saw that Prager had tested negative. That means he was only sick for a few days.

That’s funny. Ordinarily, it would not be funny if a person got mildly ill and recovered quickly, but these are weird times. When a conservative gets covid and gets over it in a hurry, it’s always funny, because you can’t help thinking of all the long faces at Berkeley and in cubicle farms at major news outlets.

Prager’s case was particularly exciting for leftists, because he said he had striven to catch the disease. He claimed natural immunity was better than vaccine immunity. Dubious. He set himself up to become a new left-wing poster boy as soon as he died. Then he ruined everything by bouncing back fast.

The same leftists who thought it was headline news when he got sick completely ignored his recovery. Try and find mention of it on the web.

I like Dennis Prager, and I think he has wonderful intentions. He is generally right. That being said, he is not a genius. He makes mistakes. It was not bright for him to get covid on purpose, and it appears that natural immunity, all by itself, is not as wonderful as he thinks.

Here is how I see it: he wanted to protect himself from covid by developing immunity, so…he got covid. I wouldn’t jump in front of a moving car if I thought it would prevent me from being run over in the future, would you? What if you don’t survive the first time?

The best strategy for preventing yourself from catching covid is to avoid catching covid. At least it seems that way to me.

Prager is not a skinny man, and he is no spring chicken, either. He’s in a high-risk group, at least according to medicine’s admittedly broad, nondiscerning standards. A rational appraisal of his chance of dying would have put him well above 1%. I wouldn’t take ANY elective course of action if it had a 1% or greater chance of causing me to…croak.

Of course, prior to infection, there was no way to know how Prager would fare, because crude statistics applied indiscriminately don’t tell us a lot about individuals.

Modern medicine is remarkable, because a lot of it is based on statistics, as it has to be. The remarkable thing is that doctors, who are scientists of a sort, commit the best-known sin of bad statisticians: they treat correlation as though it were causation.

My 13 readers are smart, so they don’t need me to explain, but I will do it because I feel like it.

An inordinate percentage of people who live in Florida wear white loafers with matching belts fall and break their hips. This is actually true. Conclusion: wearing white belts and shoes makes you more likely to have a hip fracture. This is not true. Most likely.

There is a high correlation between living in Florida, wearing tacky leather goods, and having hip fractures, but moving to Florida and dressing like an extra on The Golden Girls will not increase your chance of breaking your hip, because there is no causal relationship.

Doctors tell us weighing a lot for your height–having a high Body Mass Index or “BMI”–makes you a candidate for early death, simply because there is a correlation among millions of people studied. That’s poor logic. Lean, muscular people who have perfect diets and rigid weight and cardio routines often have higher BMI’s than flabby, sedentary people who eat Pop Tarts twice a day while smoking cigarettes.

Many people with great health have complained about doctors blindly adhering to the BMI myth. It’s bizarre. A doctor looking at an individual should consider things like diet, blood pressure, activity level, body type, tobacco use, and family history, but a lot of them just think about the number.

Doctors tell us the fat, old, and sick are more likely to die from covid. This is true of the group as a whole, but some of these people are naturally immune to it from birth (All or nearly all contagious diseases work that way.), others can only get asymptomatic cases, and still others can only have mild symptoms. Being fat and old (sorry for the blunt language, Mr. Prager) will not necessarily make you highly susceptible to covid problems.

Jeremy Clarkson is definitely fat and old, and in 2020, he said he reckoned he had smoked 375,000 cigarettes. He was afraid of covid. Then he got it, and it was like a mild cold. People in their 90’s have had asymptomatic cases. When doctors say fat, old, and sick people are more likely to die from covid, they’re making a very coarse projection that doesn’t allow for individual variation. Why? Because they have absolutely no solid way to predict that one fat, old, and sick person will die and another one will skate.

Doctors can’t predict whether this or that fat, sick, and/or old individual will have major problems with covid. All they can do is wave at the group and say they should all watch it. They don’t understand the means of causation. Correlation is all they have, so they rely on it because it’s a lot better than nothing. If the vast majority of people with problem covid are fat, old, and/or sick, and that’s all you know, it makes sense to caution all people in these three groups.

Where am I going with this? I’m not sure. I just find it interesting. Doctors don’t know how covid works, so they can’t give individuals solid information about how covid will affect them. I like pointing this out, because the medical/press/government combine seems to want to convince us that THE SCIENCE knows all.

Even though it’s true that doctors are still in the dark, fat, old, and/or sick people should avoid getting covid, because nearly all of the people who are at risk are fat, old, and/or sick. Doctors couldn’t predict how Prager would react, but neither could Prager, and the best information he had suggested he was taking a big chance.

I think he made a very obvious mistake that happened to work out well. He didn’t prove alternative treatments or even conventional treatments were reliable. Maybe the conventional treatment he received helped him, maybe the unconventional treatments he also received worked, or maybe he was never among the people who respond badly to covid. Maybe he was not treated at all. Maybe it was never possible for him to get very sick.

If he were a towering intellect, he would know this. I think he’s just pretty smart.

Wow, I just found a Slate article admitting Prager had recovered. A lonely little voice.

Prager is currently in trouble for saying this:

During the AIDS crisis, can you imagine if gay men and intravenous drug users, who were the vast majority of the people with AIDS, had they been pariahs the way the non-vaccinated are? But it would have been inconceivable.

Of course, leftists are saying AIDS target-group members WERE treated like pariahs.

So where is the truth? Somewhere in the middle.

I was around when the revolting, behavior-driven venereal disease known as AIDS hit the world. It quickly turned people into tumor-covered, diarrhea- and vomit-spewing, demented living skeletons. I remember how people reacted. I think it’s safe to say most people were skittish about being close to gays. We either didn’t know how hard it was to get AIDS, or we were reluctant to trust the medical establishment, which, to be honest, had been wrong about many, many important things in the past, just as it has been wrong about coronavirus.

People were afraid gays might sneeze near them or somehow get viruses on their hands from bodily fluids and then pass them on to others. It was not a completely unreasonable fear, given how little time science had spent studying the disease.

Another factor: the press dishonestly worked to convince us that AIDS was a preference-blind disease. They tried to make us think we were all in grave danger. Why? So we would support research to make the disease go away. We did support research, so it wasn’t necessary to resort to scare tactics, but journalists used them nonetheless.

Of course, AIDS has never been, and never will be, a heterosexual plague. It’s virtually impossible for a man to get it from a woman. Gay men get it because anuses were not designed for rough thrusting of large objects. Sodomy, an unnatural act, rips anal tissues, allowing AIDS viruses and other pathogens to enter and infect. The vast majority of women who get AIDS get it from closeted homosexual men, drug users, or intravenous drugs. Vaginas are less vulnerable than anuses, but they are still vulnerable. Look it up. Don’t believe me without checking. You’ll see it’s true.

Journalists did their best to make us panic, and a significant number of people succumbed to the propaganda.

There was also a problem with a gay mass murderer who used AIDS as a weapon. His name was David Acer, and he was a dentist. He deliberately infected patients, including a woman named Kimberly Bergalis, who later died. You can say he was never proven to be a serial killer, but that’s what he was. It wasn’t possible for six patients to be infected accidentally through dental treatment. Dental instruments are sterilized or thrown out after every use.

Some think Acer murdered his patients in order to make AIDS look like the heterosexual plague it would never be, in order to stir up concern. This is probably true. Unfortunately, defenders took up for him, and many people believed them. Once you accept the preposterous notion that Acer infected people accidentally, you have to accept another false notion: AIDS is spread easily through casual contact, even in medical facilities with trained staffs and good sterilization protocols. The people who thought they were helping gays by insisting a gay man was not a serial killer were actually contributing to irrational fear and overstigmatization.

To get back to the point, yes, homosexuals were socially ostracized to some degree, but it was never very bad, and the ostracism tapered off with time. And our federal and state governments never said they couldn’t go to restaurants or enter stores. It never tried to fire them from their jobs en masse. They weren’t prevented from publishing books and articles voicing nonconformist views about AIDS. Gays still do that. There is a well-known gay movement that claims AIDS doesn’t really exist; they say it’s really syphilis. No one censors their misinformation.

Gays were prevented from donating blood. Who could say that was unfair? In some areas, 20% of gay men died from AIDS, and early in the epidemic, blood recipients died horrible deaths because of tainted transfusions. The blood-donation ban was not unjust, at least at the start.

It wouldn’t have made much sense to enact government bans to keep gays out of stores and restaurants, because very few people have sex in grocery aisles or on restaurant tables. Prager should acknowledge that. When a person can get a disease from being in the same room with a sick person, it’s hard to fault a government for thinking restrictions are smart, at least until it knows what works and what doesn’t.

Prager’s analogy is not great, and neither are the mindless, victim-mentality rebuttals.

I just don’t think he’s brilliant. He would make better arguments and decisions if he were.

The biggest problem Prager has, though, is that he thinks reason will change America. That’s not true. Too many modern Americans are impervious to reason. Why? Because in order to be able to tell truth from untruth, you have to hear from the Holy Spirit. Generally, modern Americans reject the Holy Spirit, so they can believe anything, no matter how crazy. They can believe men have ovaries, for example.

It’s not enough to believe in God. Most Christians don’t know the Holy Spirit, so they believe stupid things. As what would probably be termed a conservative Jew, Prager is also subject to supernatural deception.

The Bible calls God a rock, and it doesn’t mean a little one you can pick up and throw. God is a vast, immovable rock. He is an anchor that can never be moved. The Holy Spirit connects us to the rock of God’s revelation. Most American Christians think homosexuality and fornication are not sins, even though the Bible clearly states the opposite. Why? No anchor.

In the Bible, sand–tiny rocks–represents the thoughts and ideas of beings that are not connected. When grains of sand are connected, they become rock. They become strong. You can build a house on rock and not worry about it sinking or falling over. When they’re not connected, the wind and rain move them around.

The Bible says people who are not filled with the Holy Spirit have hearts of stone. The hearts of all such people are like a big pile of sand. The Bible says God takes away our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh. It says God we are to write God’s laws on the tablets of our hearts. It says we are letters from Christ, written with the Spirit of Holiness on tablets of human hearts.

If the tablets of your heart are inscribed with God’s laws by the Holy Spirit, you are part of the rock, even though you are physically distant from other believers. God always tells everyone the same things. He gives us the same beliefs, desires, and motivations.

The unconnected, incohesive stone hearts of all the world’s unimproved people are like grains of sand.

People who rely on reason above God are hopeless.

Prager has said this:

My philosophy of life is easily summarized: God wants us to be good. Period. God without goodness is fanaticism, and goodness without God will not long endure. Everything I and PragerU do emanates from belief in the importance of being a good person.

Here’s the problem: Prager, not God, decides what is good. He seems to assume everyone knows what is good. We don’t. Sometimes a slap in the face is a gift, and a soft kiss can be a curse.

A psalm says, “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a blessing. And let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head.” It says that if God doesn’t chastise us, we are bastards and not sons.

Sometimes God thought it was good for the Hebrews to kill old people and children. God thought it was good to say sodomy was an abomination and that a person who commits sexual sin sins against his own body. God thought it was good for Paul to refrain from spreading the gospel in Asia, where people desperately needed to hear it.

What seems good to us is not always good. God always knows better.

In many places, God says wicked, cursed people did “what was good in their own eyes.” Not, “They chose to do what they thought was evil.”

People on Earth often fight because of evil motivations they think are good and even holy. Often, people who think they are doing right will get together to kill each other. The Revelation says people who martyr Christians will think they’re pleasing God.

Prager does not hear from the Holy Spirit. If he did, he would be telling other people to get to know him instead of spinning his wheels with useless debates that only serve to make people who disagree with him angry.

My dad hated God and Christianity, and I told him he was wrong for over 30 years. It never did any good, and it didn’t matter that I had evidence which my dad had personally witnessed. One day toward the end of his life, I put a Derek Prince video on and shut my mouth. My dad seemed to fall into a trance. Without warning, he exclaimed, “I’m on the verge!” I thought he meant he was dying. He meant he was willing to give himself to God completely. He said, “I had reservations! They’re gone!”

Decades of arguments and testimony accomplished nothing at all, but when the Holy Spirit showed up and showed my dad the truth, instantly, we were in agreement. My dad received eternal life, and he died in peace.

This is how God wanted us to change the world. He wants us to sow a few seeds, step back, and let the Holy Spirit bring the increase. Debate comes from the enemy.

Jesus said he came to bring division. He didn’t mean division among Christians. He meant division between his children and unbelievers.

Prager’s gospel, like every other ungrounded gospel, is the gospel of Satan. No other way to put it. His intentions are irrelevant. If the Holy Spirit isn’t your guide, Satan is. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Jew, Hindu, Wiccan, atheist, Jehovah’s Witness, or Baptist. There is only one truth, and every other doctrine is sin.

The other day, my wife had a dream in which she was cooking for people. She prepared meat, but it wasn’t good. The problem: no salt.

In the Bible, meat represents the difficult words of God; the things people don’t want to hear and which may be impossible to understand without divine help. Salt is corrosive, with a sharp flavor. It is used to preserve meat, which would otherwise rot.

Jesus called us the salt of the earth. A long time ago, God told me, “We are the salt of the earth, not the sugar.” I saw someone else saw the same thing a while back; God tells all his children the same things. We can’t make all our words sweet. We have to put salt in them. We have to be willing to offend.

The Bible says it’s bad to cause others to offend, but when Jesus said that, he was talking about people who said things that were not true. Jesus offended people right and left. Why do you think he was crucified? Because he was nice?

Time is short. It’s as though we were all on a sinking ship. When a ship goes down, you don’t have time to be polite. You don’t send people engraved invitations to abandon ship and board lifeboats. You say things like, “If your behind isn’t in that lifeboat in 10 seconds, you’re going to die.”

Jesus said that when he returned, he wanted to find people serving meat in his house. He didn’t mean he wanted to see people eating roast beef at church. He meant he wanted to see people teaching others deep truths with plenty of salt. The rest will be left behind.

Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?

Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.

Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.

Joel Osteen is probably the king of the American sugar merchants. I’m not sure he even adds milk. Is he “good” by Prager’s definition? I don’t know, but he’s nice. To everyone except the Holy Spirit, in whose face he slams the door.

I’m glad Prager is okay, and I hope he stops wasting his time.