Russian agents pollute social media

A few weeks ago, I shared my long-held skepticism about the effectiveness of influenza vaccines and was pleased to see a friend chime in in agreement. My skepticism of flu shots is based on science – that the effectiveness of the mass-produced vaccine is abysmal and has been for years. My friend’s skepticism is based on something less reliable, it seems, because she shared a post from the dubious news site, YourNewsWire.com. It quotes an unnamed CDC doctor:

A CDC doctor has warned this year’s “disastrous” flu shot may be responsible for the deadly flu epidemic sweeping the country.

“Some of the patients I’ve administered the flu shot to this year have died,” the doctor said, adding “I don’t care who you are, this scares the crap out of me.”

“We have seen people dying across the country of the flu, and one thing nearly all of them have in common is they got the flu shot.”

Scientists were worried this year’s flu season was going to be rough and their fears have been proven well founded. The flu season is off to a record-breaking start, with the CDC reporting widespread flu activity from coast to coast. Many health officials believe that 2018 will ultimately be the worst flu outbreak that we have experienced since 1918.

The CDC doctor’s experience of patients dying of the flu after receiving the flu shot is sadly not uncommon. Eight Santa Barbara County residents have died from the flu in the last fortnight. Seven of them had the flu shot.

This seemed like a pretty radical claim, so I searched the Internet for it and … nothing. The unnamed doctor obviously does not exist. YourNewsWire is the place Russian trolls work to perfect their craft.
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I feel the need … the need for speed

Optimizing MarkTurner.Net

A few days ago I was playing with Pingdom’s Website speed test and shocked to find how long it was taking MT.Net to load for my legions of website visitors. There were several things slowing it down, earning my site a grade of a gentleman’s “C.”

After digging through some of Pingdom’s suggestions and carefully pruning my WordPress plugins and settings, I’ve managed to whittle down the load time from an average of over 3 seconds to just a hair over one second.

While there’s probably a little bit more performance I could squeeze out this is far better than it was. Enjoy!