Matthew Benjamin Profile picture
"Blessed is he who knows the causes of things." (Vergil) "A difficulty is a light. An insurmountable difficulty is a sun." (Valéry)
Dec 11, 2021 6 tweets 3 min read
Good time as any for an update thread on some OTC pharmacological interventions against C19.

Niclosamide inhibits viral replication in human bronchial epithelium with an IC50 at orally hittable (~1g b.i.d.) concentrations.

journals.plos.org/plosone/articl… For references on niclosamide oral hittability see also:



Pulverized, it may even be possible to hit the IC90. Routinely taken at doses up to 2g and very well tolerated for short spans of time.

OTC in Europe & Asia, or online at niclosam dot com.
Dec 11, 2021 6 tweets 1 min read
I have been toward the pessimistic end of the scale in my 'rona takes, and mostly borne out. But here is an incomplete list of things I never would have guessed would be true at T+2 years in: 1) That IPAC people would still be die-harding in denial about airborne spread.

2) That millions of people would continue to voluntarily die rather than take a vaccine.

3) That virologists would still be spouting bosh about evolution toward mildness and T cell protection.
Oct 17, 2021 6 tweets 2 min read
I can confirm from a non-programmer perspective that this point generalizes: working as a cook I went from neophyte dishpit recruit to sous-chef in the span of a few years because I spent more effort than 95% of my peers on optimizing frequent tasks for speed. As an apprentice electrician (~2yrs exp) I'm now trusted with journeyman-level work and have been told by multiple people that I'll be running jobs the moment I've got my red seal, for exactly the same reason: high (speed * accuracy) factor. It's one of the most portable skills.
Oct 16, 2021 14 tweets 3 min read
Lordy, the quantity theory of money just needs to die already.

On the one hand PQ ~ M is necessarily true, but the way it's presented always implies that it is M that drives P and not the other way around. Wicksell showed that was wrong in 1898 and the case has not improved. If you never bother to inquire into the mechanism by which M changes, you might believe this; once you discover that M is determined completely by bank loans, and ask what determines the volume of bank credit, it becomes obvious that PQ drives M.