I file every year and I had one year where the IRS miscalculated my taxes twice on an older return. I got the first notice which was ok and they requested me to respond, which I did. The 2nd notice they recalculated what I owe and said I owed more than the original notice and said if I didn't pay in the next 1-2 months I owe tens of thousands of dollars plus interest. I ended up calling them and getting someone who needed help from someone else. She ended up laughing and hanging up the phone. I called again and got an old lady who immediately knew they made a mistake and I ended up with a $0 balance. If you get the right person, it is ok. I was kind of scared I would have to owe all this money I already paid and then some. It ended well but I lost sleep for days thinking about it.
I have seen this in many, though. Diet cures a lot of diseases of affluence, but once you start thinking it is a cure-all, you will start seeing enemies everywhere.
I stay far away from the raw vegan community in my town for that reason. I enjoy the food and recipes from time to time, but once COVID struck a not insignifiy chunk of them became intolerable to a boil-head like myself.
It made for diverse groups clumping together under one flag. Far-right, back-to-stone-age climate fighters, raw vegans and general conspiracy theoreticists demonstrating together against public health policy.
A couple of nazi salutes, juice cleanses, coffee enemas and 5g shielding cures covid, who would have thunk.
The LYMErix vaccine caused similar autoimmune reactions to the disease in some people. There was a lawsuit, and it was pulled from the market. Hopefully the new one does not do that.
You’re inadvertently proving their point: try to find a citation for that and you’ll end up with stories circulated by anti-vaccination groups and lawyers hoping to cash in.
This was extensively studied and there’s a summary here:
The other factor conspicuously left out is the question of what happens without a vaccine. People still get Lyme and chasing the vaccine off the market is a net loss if more people catch the disease than would have had significant complications. Those numbers don’t appear to be even close and human impact on the environment means that more people are exposed to Lyme every year.
The article you quote directly supports GP's claim that the vaccine caused autoimmune disease in certain individuals:
> These findings suggested that, in patients with the DR4+ genotype, an immune response against OspA could translate into a cross-reactive autoimmune response. By implication, an OspA Lyme vaccine might result in autoimmunity in these genetically predisposed individuals. Although causality proved difficult to demonstrate, one study reported four male patients with the DR4+ genotype who developed autoimmune arthritis after receiving LYMErix™ vaccine [34].
Will electric cars change the health issues related to living near freeways? I know we are a long way away from replacing most of the vehicles with electric.
As a cyclist my primary concern is diesel trucks with scant emissions controls belching particulate and other combustion byproducts. I see little movement to get these off the road.
For anyone else curious, I googled it and it looks like a delete-pipe, (aka muffler delete, cat delete) is basicly a muffler/catalytic converter bypass device. Some do it for performance, some for the noise, some explicitly to "piss off tree-hugging liberals".
Oh yeah, we get plenty of them out here in the rural parts. Friggin stupid.
We've got a little '81 tractor that's a 3-cyc 1.4L diesel and if the wind blows the wrong way you definitely don't want to inhale too deeply. I'd love to convert it to Tier IV but there just aren't kits made for it.
I've seen one person riding with something that looked like a gas mask. It appeared to have a "bane" like square filter near the mouth. Not just a simple N95 mask.
It's a point I don't think I've ever seen made, for some reason.
In a stylized argument, someone hypes electric cars as eliminating the pollution that comes from gas cars. Then someone points out that the pollution isn't eliminated, it's just moved away from the process of running the car into the process of generating electricity.
But regardless of whether there's less or more pollution after switching to electric cars, it seems like a big win for all the pollution to be off at the power plant instead of hanging over LA.
> Will electric cars change the health issues related to living near freeways?
Electric cars don't emit chemicals, or the atmospheric fine particles born from the condensation "sticky" hydrocarbon chemicals from the car exhaust fumes.
But the fine particles originating from the wear of tires, road surface and brakes will still remain with electric cars. (The utilization of the electric motor in braking could reduce the fine particles originating from brake pad wear, though.)
True, but those risks can be isolated to an area 100 miles away from a major population mass. With fuel burning cars, the risks can't be shuffled outside of the city and the larger your city, the worse it gets.
Yes, some is still coming from coal but the energy mix is changing.
Coal is now more expensive than natural gas, which is why the coal mines are now shutting down.
In addition, even natural gas is going to have to fight the renewable energy sources as the costs will continue to go down for them.
So I'd rather have the system's efficiencies improve in a few places instead of the tens of millions of cars that would have to be changed in the long run.
Yes, electric cars eliminate the vast majority of the concerns mentioned. (Zero tailpipe emissions, significantly less brake pad emissions, significantly less noise, etc).
Brake regeneration is a large part of the braking force for many EVs when the brake pedal is pressed, so the brake pads in some EV cars are actually smaller than their gas siblings.
Brake regeneration also avoids using the brake pedal altogether in many cases because an EV slows down significantly when the gas pedal is released.
With electric power, smaller brake pads, and less need to use them, I'm surprised the article believes there is only a 1% reduction in overall particle pollution for EV's vs. gas cars.
Plus, a typical EV is a small and modern 0-2 year old car compared to the gas vehicles out there, such as a 7-year-old, inefficient, v8 engine SUV.
This small reduction of particle pollution was the result of a very old study. At that time, there was no brake regeneration and the car was very heavy. I guess there is no recent study because the result would be obvious.
"Electric-powered vehicles, of course, have no exhaust emissions. However, because they’re 24 percent heavier on average, the study found that EVs shed more particulate matter from tires and brakes, and also kick up more particulate matter from road surfaces."
If the brake pads are smaller and aren't required to slow down in many cases, the EV should win, especially when the average EV on the street is likely similar in weight compared to an average non-EV vehicle.
As far as kicking up existing particulate matter, EV's shouldn't be penalized for kicking up dust on the road which came from others cars, which are almost entirely non-EV cars and 18-wheelers.
I bet there are other more significant factors to derive impact on pollution from EVs than brake dust, such as the source of electricity used to charge them.
I'll try to look at the study later to see how the 1% difference between road pollution between gas and EV vehicles was calculated.
> "However, because they’re 24 percent heavier on average, the study found that EVs shed more particulate"
That's a pretty misleading statistic too. EV's are 24% heaver than the average subcompact. But most people are already driving cars significantly heavier than the lightest subcompacts.
According to the EPA, the actual average personal vehicle weight was 3,977 pounds in 2012. That is heavier than most EV's -- it's heavier than any Chevy Bolt, Volt, or Nissan Leaf ever sold.
For example, a 2017 Volt is lighter than a similarly-priced 2017 Avalon, even though the Volt has a 18.4kWH battery in it, does 53 miles zero-emission electric, and gets an extra 15mpg when using gasoline.
The Lyme Disease diagnosis is used to encompass more than Lyme Disease sometimes. Some people use it to refer to being infected with the bacteria Borrelia Burgdorferi. Others use the Lyme Disease label to refer to the bacteria and the other co-infections that you can get when being bitten by a tick. Such as Babesia, Bartonella, and Erlichia. I prefer to call them Tick Borne Diseases (TBD).
I got bit July 2010 at the age of 27 either in Northern Nevada or Folsom, CA (I drove from Nevada to Folsom, but noticed the bite in Folsom) and saw a doctor immediately since my ankle swelled up so much I couldn't walk on it. I was given 7 days of bactrim and went home. Symptoms came on slowly. Loss of sleep, loss of energy, loss of libido, head pressure, heart palpitations, parts of my body feeling numb and shaking, and severe brain fog. I thought I was going to be bed ridden. Over 2 1/2 years after I got bit and 8 doctors later, I tested positive for Lyme Disease (Borrelia Burgdorferi) and Babesia. Borrelia Burgdorferi is a spirochete similar to Syphilis and Babesia is a protozoa similar to Malaria. The Babesia strain that I tested positive for is the WA-1 strain (Babesia Duncani) and is more difficult to treat vs Babesia Microti.
I was diagnosed over 2 years ago. I am still treating Babesia now. My life is so much better, but I still have many of the symptoms. I make quinine from ground up Cinchona bark and make a tea since my doctor won't prescribe quinine to me because he thinks the quinine side effects are too severe. If I stop taking quinine, my brain fog returns, I lose sleep, and my hands start to shake like crazy. I also take Alinia and Azithromycin. The cinchona bark has really helped me get through the day at work. I am seeing a new doctor next Monday, but my journey still continues. This is the craziest thing that ever happened to me and I never heard of it before I was diagnosed.
My suggestion is if you ever get bit, is to request 4 weeks of Doxycycline. Otherwise, if the tick carries these diseases, it could cost you at least 5 figures out of pocket and change your life dramatically. Many people who get sick lose their jobs, their spouses, and friends. Many doctors in Northern California don't believe that the disease exists in California. Sonoma County has tested the ticks in their area since the 80s and have found ticks carrying the Borrelia Burgdorferi bacteria all over. Unfortunately, not all doctors are informed of that.
