ilovecornfields

If my engine craps out right after takeoff the condition of the airplane for my next flight is not my concern. I pull the gear up with positive rate and if I need to land again on the runway I’ll do it with the gear up (unless I have several thousand feet left). Sorry if this upsets the underwriters but I’ve paid my premiums and haven’t had in incident in the last 30 years so I figure the plane is theirs once the fan stops.

Flying doctors around for hire is a job I would never want. You really are going to want a very capable plane and pilot(s) if you expect to ferry them around predictably in different weather conditions. At a minimum a FIKI Cessna 310 or 414? Doctors tend to be very goal oriented and time sensitive and canceling or delaying because the weather is iffy isn’t always well received. One of my colleagues went up to me a couple weeks ago and said he wanted to move to Oregon and commute to work (in CA) in an airplane “like I do.” My advice was not to do it. I never put myself in a situation where I have to fly to get to work (or home) on time. Even with a FIKI airplane and obviously superior pilot. Be careful.

I see AOPA is now part of the conspiracy, too. Maybe they get paid from the same Conspiracy Fund that I do. The fact that this “made the rounds” when it’s so clearly ridiculous is a major disappointment and a symptom of how messed up society is right now. It fit some people’s political views so it spread like wildfire, despite zero scientific merit. Oh well. Can’t wait for the next one to make the rounds so we can do this all over again.

If you’re going to Oregon for your annual why not just go to Advanced Aircraft in Troutdale?

I think you let me borrow that car once! Our student parking lot also had much nicer cars than the teacher lot. Wonder if that was a San Diego thing.

You sure that wasn’t a Simpson’s episode?

Seems like good advice. I am told people who fly pressurized airplanes usually turn it on before takeoff and off after landing. Just don't forget to turn it off after you land. @donkaye showed me what happens if you forget during my transition training.

Interesting piece. His infectious diseases colleagues at Hopkins seem to disagree with him but he certainly got some attention. https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/dan-rodricks/bs-md-rodricks-0901covid-20210831-llvxonipubfoxoit3vffalosr4-story.html

Based on my numerous interactions with healthcare administrators and politicians I favor incompetence over conspiracy, but it seems some people are more comforted by the latter.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have a close friend who works at the CDC and was involved in some of the guidance that was released by them. What her group recommended and what was published by the CDC were often quite different. There were at least a couple of times where the statements released were almost opposite of what had been recommended. The CDC used to attract some of the top scientists in the country and the jobs were very prestigious and coveted. There are some great people working there but that doesn’t mean that organizational and external pressures can’t manage to corrupt their great work. Several of my friend’s colleagues resigned during the lat couple of years, some after working there for decades. Hopefully the post-mortem on the COVID response will lead to a better CDC - one that can swiftly respond to a disease outbreak and can communicate accurate and useful information in a timely manner. I’m sure educating public health professionals about how to respond during disease outbreaks will change as well. In grad school, we spent a single day talking about this. That was clearly inadequate.

Yeah, but it won’t taste as good. You won’t get that sweet “Sugar of Lead” coating on the hot dogs that kids crave. Better stick to 100 LL. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/sugar-of-lead-a-deadly-sweetener-89984487/

At my last MAPA PPP the instructor had me fly the ILS below minimums using the green synthetic vision dot after confidently declaring “I promise you won’t hit anything.” Definitely a useful and underused tool. Seems like an engine out approach would be a perfect use for it since your glide path will be much steeper than usual. Changing winds could still get you in trouble, though

I grew up in Sandy Eggo during that time and also don’t recall any oil on the beach.

My guess is that is exactly what is going to happen and they will discontinue 94UL and switch to 100 when it is available. I’m guessing that’s part of why they’re pushing the 94 so heavily now, to get the distribution in place and offer an alternative to GAMI’s fuel. They (and the airport) probably don’t care that my plane can’t use 94UL because as far as they’re concerned they’re offering a fuel and whether or not I can use it is my problem. Hopefully the Swift 100 gets approved before 100 LL gets banned and then the market can decide the prices and market share.

I think you’re correct. I guess maybe that brought some comfort to him. In my near death experiences I’ve had other priorities but I guess everyone is different. My apologies for getting the facts wrong. https://fox8.com/news/2-killed-in-new-york-plane-crash-were-from-cleveland/amp/

Yeah. Difficult 13 minutes of audio to listen to, especially when you know the outcome. I declared an emergency a few years ago for some engine problems and the first thing the controller did was clear me for a lower altitude. I told him I was going to climb instead while I still could. Seems like he didn’t realize how bad the situation was until it was too late. There was a news report that THE PASSENGER was sending group texts saying goodbye while the whole thing was going on. I wonder if at some point THEY just resigned THEMSELVES to a bad outcome. My family knows I love them - I think I would have focused on flying the plane.

I’m sorry about your wife’s friend. It is not pleasant at all and unfortunately millions of people have had similar experiences in the last few years. My wife and I both studied public health before medical school. We were shocked and disappointed by how our health system responded to this crisis. Absolute failure. From the moment the CDC told the public to not wear masks I knew this was going to be a sh*t show, I just never anticipated how bad it would get. From the get go the messaging was inaccurate and manipulative from all sides. While I understand the reasoning for the CDC telling people not to wear N95 masks at the beginning (so that healthcare workers could stay protected and stop the spread), it completely backfired and made them lose credibility. Then the denial and conspiracies started and in an effort to clear the air they made statements which were probably stronger than they should have been and only served to further destroy the limited credibility they still had. Science is not black and white. Nor is it static. As new information becomes available and further analysis is done, a true scientist modifies their hypotheses. There isn’t “proof” or “absolutes.” Even when you “disprove the null hypothesis” a scientist understands that you haven’t actually proven anything and your results might be due to chance, bias, confounding or myriad other reasons. Scientists understand this. Epidemiologists understand this. Most physicians understand it. The problem is many lay people don’t understands these issues and think that by using the language that scientists and epidemiologists use that makes them qualified to “interpret the data for myself” and when influencers decide to do this they are remarkably effective at convincing a large number of people of their conclusions, regardless of the logic and scientific merit. There are many terms that physicians and epidemiologists use that have specific meanings, often different that how the public uses these words. When I say “the flu” I mean “the influenza virus” not that stomach thing that gave you diarrhea after eating Chinese food or the cold you had last week. When the FDA says something is “safe and effective” that does not mean it carries zero risk or that it is 100% effective at curing disease (or alleviating symptoms). Most people regard Tylenol as safe and effective but a quick search shows that in one year annually there are 56k ER visits, 26k hospitalizations and 450 deaths from acetaminophen. Yet any kid can buy it off the grocery store shelf. People love to point out that the mRNA vaccines have been associated with myocarditis, but somehow ignore the fact that COVID has also been associated with myocarditis - at much higher rates, with much more severe disease and with orders of magnitude higher mortality. Is COVID safe and effective? All of these words have meaning and if your goal is to confuse people and make them scared then it’s very easy to do so by using fancy words and pointing out how your “common sense” knows better than those scheming scientists (remember the whole mosquito in the chain-link fence analogy?) As you stated - life is full of risk assessments and risk. At work, I try to give patients guidance so they can make informed choices about these risks and choose the option they feel is best for them. I recently told a patient about two options for dealing with her symptoms and she said she didn’t like either one. I told her I understood it was like asking her if she wanted to eat a day old pizza that was found on the ground or a snickers bar that someone had stepped on. She chose the snickers bar. Online forums are great ways for people to connect to a broad audience but horrible ways to have meaningful discussions. I appreciate you taking the time to read this and contribute to the discussion.

@GeeBee, I find your arguments persuasive and probably some of the most rational and well reasoned on this site. You are absolutely correct. We don’t know the long-term effects of anything until the long term has passed. This applies to novel diseases as well as novel vaccines. No one predicted post-polio syndrome until patients who had polio as children developed worsening muscle weakness as adults. People didn’t know childhood mumps led to infertility problems until those children tried to have kids. In a time of uncertainty we have to choose between multiple unappealing options based on limited information. As an ER doctor, this is something I do every day. As an airline pilot, you probably had to do this as well. Given the choice of the vaccine or the disease, I chose the vaccine. Is it a gamble? Of course. But having seen what the disease did in the short term (and not so short term) I tried to do everything I could to reduce the risk to myself and my family. Other people, given the same information, made different choices. I have no problem with this. What bothers me is people INTENTIONALLY spreading misinformation which they know to be false for personal gain. I think that is inexcusable. People who don’t know what they’re talking about authoritatively trying to force their views on others is a close second and often seems to be more related to their political views than their particular knowledge on a subject. This is unfortunate.

The key part of that sentence was “too much.”

I originally thought this was a link to an Onion article but was disappointed to learn (that like some Onion articles) people are taking this crap seriously. I loved the “Why we (sic) sure it was the vaccine that did it” and his very scientific approach to this problem. For my mental health, I try not to argue with manipulative nut jobs on the internet (too much) but if you find his arguments persuasive then go ahead and skip the vaccine. I read 20-30 EKGs a day at work and order at least 10 high-sensitivity Troponin tests every day and have been doing so since before the first vaccine came out. I think if there was some real widespread cardiac damage from the vaccines I would have seen it (and so would have thousands of other people who do the same thing I do). But don’t believe me. I’m clearly just part of the conspiracy. “Why we sure it was the vaccine that did it There are several clues that are consistent with “it was the vaccine and not COVID”: They were quiet about it. If it was COVID, you can be public. But the vaccine is supposed to be safe. The timing. October 2022 is late for COVID. If it was due to COVID, it would have happened well before now. They can make changes every month. The vaccine creates far more injury to the heart than COVID (which creates NO added risk per this large-scale Israeli study of 196,992 unvaccinated adults after Covid infection). Anecdotally, cardiologists only started to notice the damage post-vaccine. All the sudden deaths started post-vaccine”

@jlunseth, I actually agree with most of what you said. I also used to think the CDC was credible until this whole COVID thing happened. The pandemic has been one of misinformation, both deliberate and unintentional, as much as it has been one of infectious diseases. I have a graduate degree in public health and work in the ER and I still struggled to make sense of all the “information” that was out there as it was coming out. I’m not sure you can quantity who spread more misinforming and what effects that misinformation had but it was coming from everywhere and definitely showed a monumental failure on the part of the public health establishment, government and even humanity. I had always assumed that in a global disaster we would have all banded together to find a way out of it (like in the movies) but the exact opposite happened and unfortunately those deep divisions continue today. There have been few events in my life that most certainly made the world forever sh*ttier and COVID was definitely one. With respect to the vaccine effectiveness though, the numbers you quoted seemed to be pretty accurate for the original strain. As the virus mutated the vaccines became less and less effective at preventing disease but COVID now compared to COVID in 2020 is like night and day. I can’t remember the last time I hospitalized someone for COVID but two years ago people were dying left and right. I recently got my 4th (or 5th, maybe) vaccine but it makes much less of a difference now than it did two years ago.

FIFY. 100LL was always going to get banned. It was just a matter of when.

Typo. Should have said “can’t” use it on my Ovation.

I’m curious how they’re marketing Swift 94UL given a (supposedly) superior product. I was pretty disappointed that the airport I fly into regularly just announced they’re getting the Swift product since I can use it on my Ovation and I don’t see them offering 94UL and 100UL. I get the feeling they’re just going to stop carrying 100LL and tell me I can either buy 94UL or go somewhere else. Hopefully we can count on the trusty ol’ NOTAM system to keep us updated with the information we need. No way that could ever fail us and leave us stranded with no fuel.