Merry Christmas Etc.

 As usual for me for the last decade or so I'm not doing Christmas this year.  I may listen to my favorite "Messiah" a few times on You Tube to generate some Christmas mood and put its biblical message into my head, and open the usual cheery emails people always send at this time of your, but that's about it.  

Since the New Testament says the birth of Christ was attended by the announcement of angels to shepherds watching their flocks by night, we can be pretty sure that His birth did not occur in the cold winter of Christmastime, flocks of sheep not being grazed on the hills at that time of year, but since we don't have a known birthdate it's as good a time as any to celebrate it, and it has a lot of nice things to recommend it for that purpose.  Its proximity to the Winter Solstice heralds the lengthening of days towar the fruitful time of Spring which is also symbolized in the ball-shaped decorations on the Christmas tree, which represent the fruits that appear on trees later in the year.  The tree is an evergreen which helps to counter the bare feeling of most trees.  The lights are cheering and hopeful.  And there is something about a glttering lit tree in a dark room that speaks an almost otherworldly sort of cheer in the winter gloom.   All that comes from pagan winter traditions and not from Christianity but it's all been comfortably Christianized with Manger scenes and the like.  The theme of a Savior come into a dark world bringing salvation to all mankind can be found in the symbols if you want to find it.

But of course the holiday is mixed with a lot of unChristianiizable pagan and even anti-Christian elements as well.  Heres John MacArthur on that subject:

The Theology of Christmas (Philippians 2:5-11) - YouTube

Later:  Here's another MacArthur talk for the season, a shorter one delivered at his Master's Seminary, the birth of Jesus from Mary's point of view:  

The Christmas Story by John MacArthur - YouTube

Here's a Christmas themed presentation for anyone who might be interested.  The Star of Bethlehem is a lawyer's presentation of his study of an astronomy program in the light of the Bible to see if he could find the bright star in the sky that scripture says appeared at Christ's birth.  

The Star of Bethlehem - YouTube

Here's a performance of The Messiah I particularly like, with a Czech condutor, Vaclav Luks, of a Czech orchestra.

Handel Messiah -- Vàclav Luks - YouTube

Merry Christmas!

Did the AMA Lift its Warnings Against HCQ or Not?

 A week or so ago I heard that the American Medical Association had rescinded its objections to the drug Hydroxychloroquine so that now they gave it a tacit approval for use with COVID, but of course when I Google it I get a lot of naysaying instead, or the usual anti-HCQ positions held by others.  My eyes are unfortunately worse than ever and tracking down the truth is beyond me at the moment, so all I'm going to say is that I heard that and it may or may not be true.  

That leaves me with my ongoing position that ththose who have testified in its favor are the credible ones and the objectors are falling for false information.   Its supporters are highly reputable physicians who have either used the drug for COVID with hundreds or in some cases even thousands of patients with as much as 100% success when they've used it in the first few days of the emergence of symptoms, and used it with an antibiotic, usually Azithromycin, or sometimes Doxyclycline, and Zinc.  Dr. Zelenko was apparently the first to use the drug with his own patients and developed his protogocol for its use that can be found online.  The idea to use the drug came up very early on as it is one of the drugs known to be "ionophores" that means they open celles to permit Zinc, which is an ion, tol enter and destroy the virus by interfering with its replication in the cells.  This chemisty was well known long before COVID came on the scene and various ionophores were considered for us.   HCQ appeared to have the most promise and became the therapeutic of choice for many who had studied the literature.  Dr. Zelenko published its use and other MDs followed with their own reports on their own espericned of adminiistering it in the early phase of the virus with good results.  These inclue some I've rported on here such as Dr. Simone Gole, Dr. Dsaniel Wohlgelernter, Dr. Harvey Risch and Dr. Stella Emmanuel.  

The studies of the drug that led to its rejection were ill conceive4d, and one was even completelely faked.   The main problem was using it too late for it to be effective, well beyond the early stage when it should have been used on outpatients, instead using it with hospitalized patients, many of whom were already too sick for the drug to be of any use.  They also didn't discriminate between young and old  or healthy people versus those with underlying health problems, although it iw well known by now that younger and healthier people usually recover completely from the disease while it is those over sixty and seventy or with risk factors that have  severe cases of it or even die.  Administering the drug to both groups indiscriminately and then not reporting the characteristics of those who did well versus those who did not, makes the study useless as far as determining the effect of the drug goes.  Since those who have used it to good effect know that it must be given in the very early stages such studies are as good as utterly useless. 

But used as recommended by the five doctors mentioned above it is known to knock out the virus within days of the emergence of symptoms and save lives.  They re commend using it specifically with the older and higher-risk patients, the ones who contribute the most to the death statistics we keep hearing.  Although there is also good reason to believe that those statistics are not accurage since the cause of death in many cases may not be COVID even though the virus was detected on testing.

So I guess I'm not in a position to report that the AMA reversed its stance right now, but they should since the drug has been known for decades to be safe for use with all kinds of patients through its use in cases of malaria and lupus, and now has been shown by many reputable physicians to cure COVID as well.  I continue to object to the political atmophere which has prevented this drug which could have saved thousands upon thousands of lives from being used.

Although I couldn't get to  the bottom of this question because of my bad eyesight and my inability to navigate the usual obstacle course put up by the Big Tech internet providers to obscure information they consider to be politically incorrect, I hope just saying this much could lead others to the truth.