Call Me "Lucky"

     Yes, Lucky.  Not only have I picked up a cold or flu, I have now got a commenter who wants me to know that since "pharma did not fix you," the obvious next step is (drumroll, please!)....

     Horse dewormer!

     Yeah, no, and here's why:

     It doesn't work.  It got serious study by serious medical types, in actual double-blind studies, and it did not work.  And do you know how we can tell that?  Because if it worked, the pharmaceutical companies would have fiddled up proprietary versions of it, patented them and sold them to you, me and everyone for big bucks.  Not because they're eeeeevil but because they are morally neutral and exist to make money, period.  And they can't make a single skinny dime from a "miracle cure" they are suppressing.  Dead people don't have health insurance.  Dead people don't write checks.

     If you've got horse worms and you are the kind of cheap-ass who values saving money over risky treatments, then by all means, take the veterinary medicine and good luck. You may find the dosage is a little high.  Your judgment may improve once you get those worm cysts out of your brain.

     As for "pharma" and the flu, every year's formulation for the flu shot represents the expert best guess about what varieties we will be facing in the coming year.  It's a gamble, and not only is there an occasional big miss, there are small misses every year, limited-circulation special editions of the virus.  I might have one of those.  I might have a bad cold.  I might even have COVID-19, though I doubt it.  Hell, maybe I'm a lunger and the TB has finally flared up so bad I won't be able to ignore it.  I will find out using a classic medical approach endorsed by doctors the world over when they haven't any "silver bullet:" The Tincture Of Time.  I'll either get better (hooray!) or I won't (boo).  If I'm not on the mend by Sunday morning, I'll inflict myself on a telecdoc of some flavor and go from there.  But it's 2024, in one of the most advanced nations on Earth, and I have access to decent care.  The odds favor getting through this with nothing more than OTC palliative relief.

     Last but not least, my clever correspondent breathlessly informed me, "kind of odd that the year of Covid was also the year of no other flu...."  Nope, it wasn't odd at all.  It was predictable.  The measures we put into place, however imperfectly (looking at you, would-be commenter) of distancing, masks, handwashing, isolation of the sick and so on are exactly what you do to control the spread of a respiratory virus -- like, for example, the flu.  It worked so well that we appear to have wiped out one strain of Yamagata Type B.  What, did you think these blind biological robots knew which ones we were trying to control, and all the rest were olly-olly oxen free?  That is not how it works.

     I can't stop you being an idiot and I wouldn't even if I could.  But all your attempted comments are going to get here is mockery -- if they get even that.

     Science works.  Medicine works.  Prescription drugs work -- they may charge you all they can get away with, but they had to prove the the stuff works or they wouldn't be allowed to sell it.*  It's not some kind of scam deal where you pick the scammer who best appeals to your preexisting prejudices.
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* In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, they got to jump the line based on promising early results and the magnitude of the threat -- but approval was conditional and they still had to keep on running the process of proving the vaccines were safe and effective.  Which they did, hooray, and yet still the idiots try to cast aspersions.