12 Natural Gargles For Sore Throat

As an official comeback from a very long hiatus on this blog, posts will now be every 12th of the month.

For this official return, here are the 12 natural gargles for soothing your sore throat which is relevant during this COVID-10 worldwide pandemic.

1. Salt and water - mix 1⁄4 teaspoon salt in 1 cup warm water.  Note: mix a fresh batch of gargle for every use. Better to waste a bit pouring it out than to leave it in your glass, where it might become contaminated with bacteria. Also, do not swallow the gargle; spit it out!
2. Hot sauce and water - add five shakes of ground cayenne pepper (or a few shakes of hot sauce) to a cup of hot water for sore throat relief. The capsaicin in chillies helps soothes pain and fights inflammation. Note: Don’t try this if you have open sores in your mouth. 
3. Ginger, honey and lemon - mix 1 teaspoon each of powdered ginger and honey, 1⁄2 cup of hot water, and the juice of 1⁄2 squeezed lemon. Pour the water over the ginger, then add the lemon juice and honey, and gargle. Honey coats the throat and also has mild antibacterial properties. 
4. Sage and apple cider vinegar - Sage has been used as a throat-soother for centuries. One recipe to try during cold and flu season: grind 2 tablespoons each dried sage and thyme into a mason jar with 2 cups apple cider vinegar. Leave covered at room temperature for two weeks, then strain out the herbs. When you’re ready to gargle, mix a couple of tablespoons of the sage mixture into a small glass of warm water. Another herb with cold-busting properties is thyme.
5. Turmeric and water - This yellow spice is a powerful antioxidant, and the traditional system of medicine called Ayurveda, rooted in Hinduism, has used turmeric to fight pain and inflammation for centuries. To try it yourself, add 1/2 teaspoon of the ground spice to a cup of warm water and use up to three times a day.
6. Clove tea - Add 1 to 3 teaspoons of powdered or ground cloves to warm water, then mix and gargle. Cloves have soothing properties, explains acupuncturist, Elizabeth Trattner. Plus, they also have antimicrobial properties that can help stop the growth of bacteria, according to research in Sultan Qaboos University Medical Journal. The spicy mixture can also be used as a mouthwash to help tooth pain, she says.
7. Spicy tomato juice - For temporary relief of sore throat symptoms, try this tasty gargle: 1/2 cup each of tomato juice and hot water, plus about 10 drops of chilli sauce. Bonus: capsaicin from chillies boosts circulation.
8. Goldenseal, echinacea, or myrrh and water - Gargling with these herbal anti-inflammatories can soothe swollen and sore throat tissue, says Trattner. Try several drops of herbal tinctures in a small amount of warm water.
9. Apple cider vinegar and salt - Anecdotal evidence suggests that apple cider vinegar can help a sore throat, and research does show that it has antibacterial properties. Gargle with 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and 1 teaspoon of salt dissolved in a glass of warm water; use several times a day if needed. For a gentler treatment, combine 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar and 1/4 cup of honey and take 1 tablespoon every four hours.
10. Licorice root powder and water - Licorice root may soothe a sore throat and help eliminate cough-inducing phlegm; a 2013 study of more than 200 people found that surgical patients who had gargled with a licorice solution prior to anaesthesia were less likely to develop a sore throat post-surgery.
11. Green tea - This one is actually a sore-throat prevention measure, since one health benefit of tea is the ability to fight infections. Next time you brew a cup of green tea, make a little extra and gargle with it. A 2016 review of research found that gargling with tea may have a preventative effect against the flu virus.
12. Raspberry tea - This is an old home remedy for a sore throat because of the anti-inflammatory properties. One recipe calls for pouring one cup of boiling water over two teaspoons of dried raspberry leaves or packaged raspberry tea. Steep for ten minutes, then strain and let cool a bit. Gargle while warm.

References:
Sore throat remedies: 12 natural gargles that may ease the pain
ETH Podcast #COVID–19: Try gargling!

How I Removed Mcafee Security Center in Windows 10

Uninstallation of McAfee Security Center from my Windows 10 as of 12 July 2017 which I do not need anymore since I already have another licensed anti-virus.

1. Click Settings button.
2. Select Apps.
3. Scroll down until you see McAfee Security Center.
4. Click McAfee Security Center and click Uninstall button. 
   
5. This app and its related info will be uninstalled will appear.
6. After clicking Uninstall button, an error will occur. 
   
7. Download the MCPR tool.
8. Double-click MCPR.exe.
9. McAfee Software Removal window will appear.
10. Click Next and click Agree on the End User License Agreement.
11. A security validation requiring input of characters is needed. 
    
12. Wait until uninstallation process is finished. 
    

References:

How to remove McAfee products from a PC running Windows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpOizmLBBnI
http://us.mcafee.com/apps/supporttools/mcpr/mcpr.asp

Michelangelo Computer Virus

1. March 6th 1992 was day zero for the Great Michelangelo Virus Scare, the first and probably one of the biggest computer virus scares that the world has ever seen.
2. The Michelangelo virus was first discovered in February 1991 by Australian veteran anti-virus expert Roger Riordan. Riordan, the brains behind VET, a popular anti-virus program down under, probably didn’t think that the virus was particularly special.
3. On March 6th, the virus was programmed to overwrite the first 17 sectors of every track on infected hard disks, heads zero to four. The consequence of this payload was, of course, painful – you would be hard pressed to recover your data if the virus triggered on your PC.
4. Michelangelo was one of the first computer viruses to receive a great deal of media attention, with only Datacrime from 1989 causing a comparable amount of hype. This virus was more a study in mass hysteria than virus damage. It caused a great deal of panic, but very little actual damage. Michelangelo only infected a few thousand computers making it an example of media hype.
5. It has a destructive payload that overwrites all data on the hard disk with random characters, making recovery of any data unlikely, if not impossible. It will only do this if the computer is booted on March 6 (the birthday of the artist Michelangelo, ironically, one of the vendors that sold software infected with the virus was DaVinci systems). 
6. In addition, the virus does not check if the MBR has been previously infected, therefore if a similar virus has already infected the MBR, it will move the previous virus to the location the original MBR was stored on, making recovery of the MBR impossible.
7. The Michelangelo virus triggers on any March 6.  On that date, the virus overwrites critical system data, including boot and file allocation table (FAT) records, on the boot disk (floppy or hard), rendering the disk unusable.  Recovering user data from a disk damaged by the Michelangelo virus will be very difficult.
8. Michelangelo was first recognized by the media when a company shipped 500 PCs infected with the virus in January 1992.
9. It is uncertain where the Michelangelo virus originates. Most sources say New Zealand, but Sweden and the Netherlands are also a possibility. It was discovered in 1991 April.
10. Michelangelo is mostly similar to the original Stoned Virus. In addition to infecting the sectors of the original Stoned virus, Michelangelo infects sector 28 on 1.2 megabyte floppy disks. Upon infection, the Michelangelo virus becomes memory resident at the top of system memory but below the 640K DOS boundary. Interrupt 12's return is moved to insure that Michelangelo is not overwritten in memory.
11. The virus scare certainly did no harm to John McAfee, whose anti-virus company went public in October 1992, raising $42 million in an initial public stock offering. Not bad for a business which at the time just had a couple of dozen employees, and no doubt assisted by the huge public exposure it had received just six months earlier.
12. Video of the Michelangelo virus.
    

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo_(computer_virus)

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/03/05/michelangelo-virus/

https://web.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/93/930301Arc3381.html

https://www.cert.org/historical/advisories/CA-1992-02.cfm?

http://virus.wikidot.com/michelangelo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Gx1Rs0WNnY