This was originally published in The American Thinker on January 12th,2022. It has been slightly edited from that article

We are now officially entering the third year of the Wuhan surprise. We are experiencing a brand-new SARS co-V2 variant, Omicron, which is sweeping through the population like a lot of nasty winter respiratory infections. Except that we test for it. And we know its name. 

As of early January, the Omicron makes up roughly 95% of cases in the Northeast (CDC data). In my state of Pennsylvania, for instance, our peak case numbers were triple what they were last December. Our hospital, and ICU occupancy so far however is slightly lower than last year, attesting to the more benign nature of this particular bug. 

I was looking through the hospitalization data, on the Johns Hopkins site.  As a former critical care specialist, two things are curious to me. Number one is that the total number of ICU beds in the country has fallen from 91,000 in January 2021 to 80,000 now. I’m sure that a portion of that decrease is due to acute illness of ICU personnel, given Omicron’s infectivity, and vaccine avoidance. I do wonder however how many of those beds were lost due to the firing of ICU staff due to their vaccines status. 

The second strange data point is that in the US as a whole or Pennsylvania in particular, there are said to be roughly 20% of ICU beds unoccupied. In my experience over the years, intensive care units tend to be full, and we accept new admissions only by transferring out the least ill. If I was running a 20 bed ICU and had 4 open beds, I’d be feeling pretty comfortable. Maybe this data is wrong, but if it’s not, this is hardly a crisis. 

As of January 2022, a majority of the population has been coerced into multiple inoculations, with spike protein-producing mRNA. Despite this, we are seeing record numbers. How could this be? 

Data from Britain suggest that roughly 50% of coronavirus patients in the hospital, were admitted for something else. In the United States, those numbers fall between 30% and 60% depending on the locale. In our hospital, there has been an obvious reduction in acuity for patients that carry the Covid diagnosis, given the benign characteristics of Omicron. 

It has become rather clear that natural immunity and/or vaccination/booster status are irrelevant in the current surge. In fact, in the case of vaccination, there is data from Iceland and Denmark suggesting that the population most prone to Omicron are those who have had the full original course of the vaccine. Here’s the data from Iceland, where the population is 91% fully vaccinated. If you look at infections per 100,000 people based on vaccine status, the fully vaccinated, have the highest prevalence of infection. Now in the same data set, it’s clear that the vaccinated have less severe disease, which we have been saying for some time, In the case of Omicron, for most people, that point is moot, given the mild nature of the syndrome. 

Again I say, if you’re interested in being vaccinated or boosted, that’s your choice. But given Omicron’s obvious vaccine resistance ( which is likely to persist in future variants), the strategy of forcing a monovalent vaccine on the population during a pandemic has clearly failed. 

Data out of Israel suggests efforts there with a fourth Pfizer booster have been ineffective in preventing the spread of Omicron.

In my circles over the last month, I’ve had a fairly large group of friends and acquaintances, who have been infected. These include the vaxed and boosted, the group formerly known as fully vaccinated, the unvaccinated, and those like me with natural immunity. All of us, at a variety of ages, have had a roughly 3 to 4 day viral upper respiratory syndrome, of little consequence. I know from my practice, that this is also being seen more broadly in the community. 

Another thing I have noticed is that given their cold-like illness, people that suspect they have omicron are reluctant to be tested, so as not to be inconvenienced by having to isolate. This may be contributing to spread, but also signals a change in attitude towards this illness among many people. 

In a sensible world, given this data, public health officials would quietly back away from the insistence on mass inoculation, and begin to feature therapeutics in their approach to Covid. I wouldn’t actually expect them to admit failure, but perhaps only to change their emphasis. Instead, they are doubling down. 

In my former life as a doctrinaire practitioner, I would’ve been loath to consider the wild claims of medical conspiracy theorists. Some talk about the vaccine containing graphene, and other nanoparticles meant to monitor and control. I certainly don’t believe in these theories. But the escalating efforts to penalize the unvaccinated by their governments seem so irrational, that it is not unreasonable to wonder: what the hell is going on? 

Why insist, that an increasingly ineffective immunization be given again and again, at shorter intervals, to the entire human population, including children who tend not to be severely affected? And how can we force injections with products that are still officially investigational, and not FDA approved? And why, as these vaccines have the highest rate of adverse effects by far, according to the CDC’s VAERS data, do we insist? And by firing reluctant healthcare workers, who have a fairly high rate of vaccine hesitancy (I wonder why?), we are stripping the healthcare system of talent we now claim to desperately need. 

None of this passes any test of common sense. More and more I think people are beginning to realize this, and are growing skeptical. Even elements of the press are starting to ask questions like: “how many more boosters will we be expected to take?”  

There is an alternate way, as shown by countries as diverse as India, Mexico, and Japan. We need to encourage early treatment, with cheap safe, and proven antiviral therapy such as hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, in protocols that have already been developed. Pfizers new drug Paxlovid may be useful if further studies confirm safety and efficacy. If people wish to be vaccinated, fine, but only with products approved for use by the FDA (Pfizer’s Comirnaty). This would mean patients would have legal recourse if they were to suffer a devastating side effect. 

We have a right to expect competency, not corruption from our public health officials. 

Seems to me, they have been a big disappointment.  

As always, I’d be honored if you’d share

It is been a year and 5 months since the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the last week, the false promise of vaccination fed to us by government health officials have been proven to be a lie. And who is the whistleblower? It is none other than the “Dean of gain of function” Dr. Anthony Fauci himself. And he accomplished this with one statement which has gone on to have multiple impacts.

The good doctor had been trying to explain the CDC’s recent update on masking, reintroducing the practice. He made this statement in an interview with NPR:

“The fact that you have a high level of virus in the nasal pharynx of an infected person who has a breakthrough, namely was vaccinated but had a breakthrough infection, and is now capable of transmitting that infection to an uninfected person, that is the thing that is a bit alarming in the sense of triggering the change in the guidelines that the CDC.”

This has multiple implications. It is true the current vaccinations reduce somewhat people’s chances of contracting COVID-19. But the delta variant may be more resistant than previous strains.

There are and were always going to be breakthrough infections. After all, this is a coronavirus, and for the most part, people get re-infected multiple times during their lives. What the vaccine consistently seems to do, is to protect us against severe disease and keep the infection minimally symptomatic, like a cold. Well, that is certainly useful.

But we have been harangued by the government, that we must obtain the vaccine for the good of humanity; to stop the pandemic and prevent the spread to our fellow man. We now have both governmental and private entities demanding that you be vaccinated if you are to go to their school, work at their facility, or even patronize their business. All of this is said to be for the greater good.

Pardon my French, but given Fauci’s statement, that is total bullsh*t.

If there is a significant breakthrough of this newest variant (between 10 and 40% of new cases), then that concept is now dead. The virus admittedly reduces new infections but does not in any way eliminate them. It’s beginning to look like the main benefit of the vaccine is to the vaccinated person only. It facilitates a mild infection which can lead to more complete natural immunity. In the process of that, however, the breakthrough cases can still spread the virus to others.

Thus, the decision to get “the jabs” is really no one’s business but one’s own. If vaccinated patients can get high titer infections often enough to require re-masking, then there is really no public health issue.

And of course, multiple studies show that vaccinating those with natural immunity confers no benefit. Still, our leaders insist.

There is another interesting twist to Dr. Fauci’s statement. In the months surrounding the vaccine release, I watched a podcast featuring a molecular biologist who was being interviewed. As I recall she was extremely well credentialed and talked about 2 potential problems with the proposed vaccines. She discussed the potential for autoimmunity for which there was a fairly widespread concern. She also discussed a phenomenon that can occur after taking the vaccine that could actually make your next infection worse. Because it was a single source, I did not write about this but filed it in my memory.

When Dr. Fauci described high nasopharyngeal titers in both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients alarm bells went off for some in the virology community. Enter Dr. Robert Malone, a physician/pathologist, and vaccinologist who apparently was involved in the development of mRNA vaccine technology. Speaking on Steve Bannon’s podcast he explained that Fauci’s statement was very concerning.

He explained that it is difficult to create vaccines against certain viral types including RSV, the dengue virus, and coronavirus. One of the issues is something called “antibiotic-directed enhancement”. This is a process that apparently occurs particularly when the vaccine effects begin to wane (as may be happening with the Pfizer product). The patient contracts the illness, but only a modest number of antibodies then attach themselves to the virus. This is followed by so-called killer cells (monocytes and macrophages) which attach to the antibodies and destroy the virus. Here’s a very detailed and balanced look at this effect (written this January, before Delta).

If, however, ADE occurs, then the virus can actually invade the monocytes and macrophages, reproduce within them, and destroy their functionality. This leads to much higher viral titers and a much more severe illness. Dr. Malone is concerned that the fact that vaccinated patients having such robust viral loads could mean that this is occurring with the Covid vaccines.

This process can be confirmed by measuring the serum viral titers in groups of vaccinated and unvaccinated patients to check for this “enhancement” effect in the vaccinated. If this is indeed a problem, he claims that the use of the products involved should be discontinued. This has occurred in the past in both human and veterinary vaccine trials.

There has always been a cheaper, and more elegant way to “herd immunity”. There is more and more data to confirm the efficacy of inexpensive, safe, repurposed medications such as hydroxychloroquine and particularly Ivermectin to decrease the morbidity and mortality of COVID-19. Using these drugs in protocols to treat patients could potentially have significantly reduced hospitalizations and saved many lives. It also would’ve led to more durable and complete immunity for our population.

Unfortunately, though, it would’ve interfered with Big Pharma’s bottom line, so we, the people lose.

It’s time for everyone to examine the facts and think for themselves. Our government officials are now flailing around in their own web of ignorance and lies.

Be your own best advocate.

As always, I’d be honored if you would share.

Header image: August on the Nescopeck( Samsung Galaxy S20 5G UW)

Smartphone fine art photography? After two months with my Samsung Galaxy S 20, I have to admit it appears to be a real option. Though I am not sure, that all of my work qualifies as “fine art” I would say that in 2021, a state-of-the-art phone camera module is no longer severely limiting.

I’m writing this follow-up article to demonstrate what I’ve been able to capture with my new phone.

First, let me say that these images are not all intended to be jaw-droppers. Some of them were shot rather specifically to reveal the sensor’s abilities/limitations. Others were shot with somewhat higher aspirations Hopefully, they are somewhat pleasing.

In 2015, Samsung introduced a brand-new line of cameras called the NX series. It was Samsung’s first foray into a mirror list interchangeable lens camera, and it hit the market with a splash. It was beautifully constructed, extremely well-featured, and came with very fine newly designed lenses.

Most interestingly, it also featured a Samsung-manufactured, very high-quality 28-megapixel sensor. This was shockingly competitive with sensors made by the dominant manufacturer’s Sony and Canon. It was for a time, highly promoted. Samsung hired a number of very well-known photographers for this purpose. I shot with a loaner camera at a photo expo in Seattle and was very impressed.

Then suddenly, the Samsung NX series was no more. Apparently, Samsung decided that cameras “weren’t their bag” and they dropped the product line rather abruptly. It’s actually a shame because there was clear potential for this product.

Apparently, they didn’t forget how to make sensors. As you saw perhaps in the last article I wrote about the S20 weeks ago, despite the diminutive size and tiny pixels, it can produce very high-quality files. Given this, I decided to keep it in service.

For the most part, I shot it entirely in raw which is available in “pro” mode. Shot this way the camera produces a .dng file in a 4/3 format and a wide format JPEG. The latter is processed by the phone’s software. Very typically the results of the processing are fairly pleasing and pleasant to look at on the small screen. Details in the JPEG files are definitely smoothed out by the processing and don’t appear useful for anything beyond digital display.

In early March my wife and I spent a week in the Adirondacks. I brought my typical travel kit including my Fujifilm X100V and my XE3 with a variety of lenses. I never got them out of their bags. When skiing or snowshoeing, I would merely take my small Manfrotto tripod and the smartphone mount, and shot with the Samsung exclusively. I have been doing that ever since, in part with this article in mind.

I have to say that I didn’t really miss my Fujis. Part of this, however, is that I’ve been photographing the high peaks region in early March for so many years, it’s hard to find novel scenery. This was thus an interesting new challenge.

Once home, I continued with the exercise playing with the bleak, early spring scenery as our snow finally melted away.

This is a really good sensor. Many of these images you will note, were shot into the sun with prominent shadows. Better digital sensors have several qualities. One of them is dynamic range, which in part feeds into their true resolution.

Dynamic range describes the ability of the sensor to capture very bright scenes, and deep shadows, but still retain detail when the images are edited. Small pixel phone sensors have traditionally been terrible at this. This sensor handles it brilliantly, certainly as good as for instance my 2009 vintage Panasonic GH1, a much larger sensor interchangeable lens camera (also 12 megapixels).

Another attribute of a good sensor is tonality. This describes the subtle gradations shades of gray, and of color. Earlier technology recorded shades in discrete steps makes the image look more like a painting than a photograph, especially when viewed in detail. More sophisticated sensors have much more subtle gradations. I would say this Samsung sensor does surprisingly well in this regard.

I’ll offer one more thought. No one really talks about the lenses in these tiny camera modules, but in the case of this Samsung S20, there is little to criticize. There is some lens flare, and given the lack of any lens shading, but it is pretty well controlled. And if there other lens distortions that can be measured, they are well hidden in normal usage

At any rate, I think I’m done with this experiment. I’m going back to my more serious gear as the Spring season presents more photographic opportunities.

But it’s nice to know I’ll have the Samsung just in case.

As always, I’d Be honored if you’de share.

Header image: Wind and Snow( Samsung Galaxy S20 EW 5G)

A reluctant

It was a Friday afternoon in the Adirondacks. I had been out with some friends cross-country skiing on a snowy afternoon. After skiing, on the way back to town, I made a few phone calls to home. I stopped for gas, then we proceeded to a nearby brewpub to enjoy some of the local libations.

After some sampling the pub’s offerings, I dropped my friend off at his home and proceeded to mine. Reflexively I patted my clothing searching for the familiar rectangular density of my Galaxy S8. Failing to locate it, I searched the car, including all the little crevices, for the device. No luck.

In my living room, I opened my laptop and went to the Verizon locate app. This usually works like a charm, and usually find that my phone is somewhere nearby. Unfortunately, on this occasion, the app could not connect.

Uh oh.

I ended up returning to the brewpub and was assured that no phone had turned up. I called my friend, who confirmed he had not taken it by mistake.

Oh, crap.

As near as I can tell, I dropped it at the gas station but given the snow cover, I never heard the thud. I suspect I then drove over it on the way out.

Driving the 350 miles home the next day without a communications device was really odd. Arriving back in Pennsylvania in midafternoon, I made a beeline to the local Verizon store to acquire a new device.

Now I’m typically a cheap, refurb kinda guy. But as there were none on hand, I was forced to purchase new. I have always liked the Samsung Galaxy phones and was aware that a new phone, the Galaxy S21 was to be introduced in slightly more than a week. There was no way I was going to wait that long. I purchased one of the current flagship models, the Galaxy S20 5G UW.

So as much as I was unhappy to buy a new phone, the situation offered an opportunity. The Samsung I purchased is known to have a very high-performing camera module, competitive with the other flagship phones. So at least this purchase gives me the opportunity to find out whether smartphone photography has advanced to a point where it can produce interesting image files.

So how about the phone? In general, it works great and has a beautiful screen with snappy graphics. It’s responsive, slightly more so than my previous device. It’s made of metal and Gorilla Glass 6, so it is presumably pretty rugged. It has a very long battery life compared to my old phone which is certainly convenient.

I noticed that external sensors, such as heart rate and oxygen saturation have been eliminated. Thoughtfully, they are now available on a Galaxy Watch 3 which one can purchase for roughly $400 more. Thanks, Samsung.

So, in summary, it’s a nice phone, but damn expensive. I understand that Samsung understands this and that the S21 will be further de-contented and significantly less expensive. Hopefully, this phone will last me a long time.

But then there is the camera module. The S20 appears to share similar if not identical photography capabilities with the newer S 21. in this case, this device is 3 generations more advanced than my previous Galaxy. I was obviously curious to assess the improvements.

The specifications are certainly interesting. This camera has 3 sensors. The main camera has a 12-megapixel chip and an F1.8 fixed aperture lens. The native focal length however appears to be equivalent to a normal lens unlike the default wide-angle focal length seen in most earlier cameras. This makes it much more useful in my style of photography. There is another 12-megapixel sensor for an ultra-wide lens. Both of these sensors were apparently redesigned with larger pixels, which will reduce noise, and improve low light performance (there is a “low light” mode).

The third sensor is a 64-megapixel sensor serving a telephoto lens. Though it has 30 X combined optical and digital zoom capability (digital zoom is generally a bad thing) It has 3x lossless zoom. This is, it retains a full 12 megapixel of data up to a 3X magnification. This really opens up possibilities for photography on a smartphone. The S20 also shoots raw images in the Adobe proprietary .dng format which simplifies processing in their software.

There also seems to be a capable video section, with a 4K resolution. I don’t shoot much video, but I did capture some footage that looked significantly better than anything seen on previous cameras. This camera appears to have stabilization though I’m not sure whether it is electronic or mechanical (sees probably the former).

I tried the low light (Night) mode. It’s a jpg-only mode and lets the shutter speed drift pretty slow. This was shot in my dark workshop with my lights off but minimal window lighting.

My initial landscape efforts looked pretty promising. The images, at least on screen actually appeared to have enough dynamic range and micro-contrast that it occurred to me that I might want to get more serious.

Now, I find shooting images with a smartphone extremely awkward as they are difficult to hold, and it’s hard to trigger the shutter without camera movement.

I found a possible solution on Amazon. I purchased an inexpensive cell phone holder with threads for a tripod puck. Included in the package was a simple Bluetooth remote with a lanyard allowing it to be permanently attached to the mount. This was simple to connect to my phone, allowing me to take shake-free images, and truly explore this camera’s potential.

Another nice improvement in the new phone regards the treatment of raw (.dng) files. I preferentially shoot this format in my cameras because of the flexibility it gives you in editing. It was available on my previous phone, but the files were difficult for Photoshop to read. It requiring me to import the files to the computer before they could be sorted and edited. This phone allows Photoshop to read them directly, and records and displays them in a 4/3 format rather than the wider format JPEG’s, so they can be quickly identified. This is also a more photographic format in my view.

So I begin carrying the S20 alone, without any backup camera gear on my outdoor outings. At first, I had the settings wrong, and the camera only took jpegs. These look promising on the screen.

Back at the computer, however, Samsungs processing algorithms are revealed. They feature high contrast, over-sharpening, and at the same time smoothing of details. This may be great for an 18-year-old’s cleavage squeezing puckered-up selfie shot, but it’s lousy for landscape.

But then I set the camera up on the tripod, and put it into Pro mode, shooting raw files. Suddenly things were different. I took these two shots one in .jpg, one in .dng both on the tripod to assess the difference. For reference, I then mounted and shot my pocket camera, the Sony RX100 Mark III which is not the most current model of the camera and has more resolution than the Samsung ( 20 megapixels versus 12). I processed them as closely as I could in Adobe Camera Raw.

The “pro mode” shoots with the main sensor and lens, there are no zoom capabilities. It allows you to adjust, shutter speed, iso, white balance (the aperture is fixed. Because of the small sensor, the depth of field is significant, even at an open aperture. As you can see above, the issues seen in the jpg files go away, and the results are impressive, approaching those of the much more sophisticated Sony. This is a much better result than was achieved by the S8 which I tested in a similar fashion some years ago.

I wanted to see how much adjustment flexibility, the Samsung .dng files would have given that one of the main that we shoot in “raw” modes is to have the flexibility to adjust them later in Photoshop. The image below I’d like to say was deliberately overexposed. The native file was completely blown out with no detail particularly in the snow, but it recovered nicely upon processing.

So what does it all mean? Basically, the Galaxy S20 sports pleasant jpg image quality for small screen viewing but suffers from over-processing when more critically evaluated. Shoot in “pro mode” and image quality is much improved, but you must deal with the fixed focal length and aperture. Still, the “normal” field of view is useful and because of the small sensor, the depth of field is probably a good compromise.

Am I going to stop carrying my Fujifilm equipment?…no.

Am I going to play with this some more? …absolutely.

As always, I would be honored if you would share this with your friends.

Header Image: Clearing the Storm ((Samsung Galaxy G20 UW 5G)