Standard Mischief

Not here, over at New Jovian Thunderbolt’s place, his first.

My first was a yearling buck, and I nailed it with a projectile in the “over 35,000,000 grain” class, if you know what I mean. There I was, minding my own business when Bam! My first hunt ended on a successful note, with the meat already tenderized even.

A passer-by wanted it, but I parleyed a half steak^H^H^H stake into skinning lessons. After showing me where the scent glands were and removing the skin and guts, he quartered the meat with a sawzall. (This is not something I’d do nowadays because we cut right down the spine. Prions scare me, so avoiding brain and spine matter seems prudent.)

I took mine home and brined it in a few 5 gallon buckets in the fridge. That weekend, not knowing any better, I took a hunk of meat right from the tenderloin and ground it up in the Cuisinart. I mixed it about 5 to 1 with some pork sausage, and that made some pretty amazing bambi burgers.

Yea, it was taken out of season by accident, and possession of a member of the state’s herd of deer without a permit seems to somehow be illegal, but on the flip side, I’m pretty sure the state would balk at paying for the damage the deer that it asserts it owns caused against my personal property.

Besides, I already managed to take care of all the incriminating evidence.

Apparently there are shortages of the liquid version of Tamiflu, so the CDC has published a handy recipe for whipping up a batch for your kid that has issues swallowing pills.

I find this interesting because it already takes, starting from scratch, six years of study nowadays to become a pharmacist in the US. While they them may be able to technically compound at that point, I believe that many go on and take on additional training to specialize in that branch of practice.

In fact, if I had to wager, I’d bet that compounding without a licence was illegal, (but I don’t carry two lawyers around in my pocket along with the entire US and Maryland state code, so don’t take this as legal or medical advice)

The Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the Collective Compounding Pharmaceutics weigh in:

I originally got wind of this story via Lifehacker, where there’s this comment from a member of the Pharmacist Guild:

@idleuser: I completely agree. I’m a pre-pharm student that works part time as a pharm tech and there’s no way we would recommend patients make their own Tamiflu suspensions. Half the time they can’t even take the correct amount of pills. None of the chain pharmacies around our area compound though. Our store and maybe a couple other local pharmacies do regular compounding. I would urge people to find local pharmacies that can compound Tamiflu for them instead of taking risks with their health or the health of their kids.

here’s a more useful comment further on down the page:

Alot of the Tamiflu coming from pharmacies is in capsule form from the Strategic National Stockpile. These are 75mg capsules only. For most kids under age 10, 75mg is too much; so the above method doesn’t work for them.

For patients mixing Stockpile-supplied drug from home, my state’s Health Department recommends mixing the powder from a full bottle of ten 75mg Tamiflu capsules with 50mL fruit juice. This makes a 15mg/mL solution.

I’d say that if you can’t multiply 75 mg times 10 and then divide the results by 50 mL, if you were never any good at word problems and don’t have or can’t purchase something to measure liquid in cubic centimeters, then perhaps you should leave the math and mixing to a compounding Pharmacist.

Cranky Consumer

Also, someone at Consumerist is angry that a chain pharmacy didn’t volunteer information that they can actually do compounding inhouse right off the bat. I’d say the guy was lucky he was offered that as a solution at all. I once took a prescription that required compounding to a pharmacy on a Friday before a holiday weekend and was not only told they did not do the compounding there, but that the one store that they did do the that was already closed for the holiday. I was more upset at my physician that handed me a Rx that I could not read. Had I done so, I’d have asked her to allow the pharmacy to give me two tubes of ointment and a stir stick. I eventually got my ointment, and I was just charged my usual copay instead of an expected premium.

Additional link

N.J. pharmacists face shortage of liquid Tamiflu, offer alternative

Random DU comment from 5 years ago: “This may be Bush’s Waterloo!”

Kerry points to Bush on vaccine shortage

What a difference five years makes on flu vaccine shortage

And a letter to the editor of the Kansas City Star [1],

Inequity in politics of flu vaccine shortages

During the Bush administration, the Democrats seized on the shortage of the flu vaccine to accuse the administration of being unable to protect Americans — from either illness or terrorism. “If you can’t get flu vaccines to Americans, how are you going to protect them against bioterrorism?” Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, asked in an interview with National Public Radio. “If you can’t get flu vaccines to Americans, what kind of health care program are you running?”

So in view of the shortage of the H1N1 vaccine, I must ask of John Kerry and his fellow Democrats what kind of health program is President Obama and the Democrats running anyway?

And the Democrats want to take over all of our health care system and make medical decisions for us, and hopefully protect us from bioterrorism or any other terrorist act.

Scary, isn’t it? At least President Bush protected us from any terrorist attack for eight years.

Can the Democrats do the same

Hubert Anders

Gladstone

[1] Republished in full because the copyright holder is the author and not the news organization and I can be pretty sure of the author’s intent.

How many safety violations can you spot? While this looks like a “here, hold my beer and watch this…” moment, there are no famous last words spoken. He’s either got stainless steel balls or has already drunk too much. The classic line here is “..they only blow up in Hollywood”.

I understand what he’s doing, you spray a huge amount of inert CO2 liquid into the gas tank that is both heaver than air and will displace all the oxygen. The MIG welder too, also sprays out CO2 as a gas (If, of course you haven’t forgotten to turn the gas on first). If there’s no oxygen, there can’t be a fire or explosion (as long as everything works out as expected). Dave also knows what he’s doing. Note the cardboard placed beside him to keep the wind from blowing away the shielding gas.

If he wanted to score the safety violation hexfecta, however, I suppose he should forgo the welding mask altogether and just closed his eyes before pulling the trigger. I’ll confess to doing that before when I’ve only needed a quick tack weld or three. That welding mask is the only piece of equipment he isn’t misusing. Note how he carefully places the fire extinguisher completely out of reach.

I’ve got an urge to mail him some JB weld or a pair of jack-stands.

Weld fuel tank with gas in it 3:24 min.

Click here to view the video in a pop-up window | Direct link

In Montgomery county, Maryland, the supply of vaccine has been restricted to pregnant woman only. No longer can kids and adults under 25 years, or other high risk groups get the vaccine due to widespread shortages.

I’d like to remind everyone that preparation for this flu season started back during last flu season, and this is wholly a government directed program to create and distribute a government designated vaccine by private companies.

I’d also like to remind everyone that even with the knowledge that during this year the debate on healthcare would be in the forefront, officials still decided to distribute the vaccine they said we’d have plenty of via Soviet-style long lines at government run clinics.

1000 words

[h/t say uncle]