Yes, it certainly is troubling. Recognizing distractions, misinformation and in many cases, downright lies, causing confusion and angst in the Covid-19 situation is a BIG issue. But what bothers me more than questionable media reporting on BOTH sides is the source of the stupidity.
It bothers me that a qualified, knowledgeable person such as Dr. Birx gets stuck being a Trump apologist. It bothers me that a POTUS jokes about matters of life and death. It bothers me that governments at all levels feel playing games with people’s lives seems to be a popular sporting activity in governance these days.
But what bothers me the most about our current national crisis is the rising death toll amid ongoing incoherence, and increasing politicization. It really bothers me that science plays 2nd fiddle to stupidity these days.
The Cocksuckers and Christian Fuck-Asses are making us sick and robbing us blind.
Informed people understand how the Gov/Pharma/Christian bloc of economic and political control freaks torpedoed Cannabis research for decades. Will SARS-CoV2 be the big Wake-Up call?
Israel leading the way.
With Trump still touting things like household cleaners as recently as yesterday, I suppose we can only pray to their non-existent Gawds.
I imagine we are lucky the stay home pandemic situation has affected us very little. Michelle and/or Redneck Trailer has been deemed essential, and I’m just a retired, old stoner with a wrecked body, so the terms “going out” and “recreation” have new meaning for me now.
But yesterday was 4/20, the weather was perfect (calm) and I had a nice campfire ready. So MIchelle joined me for a couple hours doing one of my favorite things last evening. We sat by the fire drinking a beer, listening to music and I toked a fat, half gram joint of newly acquired Hell’s OG for old times sake. Here’s a new reason weed is great.
Right wing talk radio (Limbaugh, Hannity, et al) is a pox on society. It is used to spin alt-right bullshyt, simply because it is the easiest way to lie to millions of people. You can’t see their face, and there is no opposing position. Whenever some idiot like Rush Limpdick starts by saying “It looks like…” Standby for industrial strength stupidity.
These cocksuckers have been spreading bald-faced lies. Conservative congressman have gone to the podium selling obvious, de-bunked conspiracy theories. Weaponizing the virus against the people and/or Trump is a political con intended to keep them in power. Let’s hope it doesn’t start a war, and with any luck at all, Limbaugh’s cancer treatment will fail soon.
Take note of how many times you hear Trump and anyone in his administration comment to the effect that “our healthcare system has not been overwhelmed.” That is exactly what Pence said yesterday – before we are even starting to come out of this. It’s just another step in the ongoing GOP gas-lighting program. The refrain making the Fox News rounds is “nobody died because they didn’t have a ventilator!” So they were all properly treated right up until they died. Brilliant.
I made a comment to the nice lady attempting to have a disabled vet sign some insurance paperwork at Rocky Mountain Regional the February morning of my fusion surgery two months ago. She stated “we need to make sure you understand the insurance implication of your surgery in case the authorization does not go through,” as she slid the paper across the desk towards me. I replied “I understand one thing about the healthcare system in this country today – it is in the crapper,” as I slid it back to her and got up to limp out.
“LIBERATE MICHIGAN! … LIBERATE MINNESOTA! … LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
We’ll have a MAGA demonstration at the Denver commons demanding liberation as well this afternoon. Despite the grievous outcomes expected, I am starting to hope they get their way and gen it up again, even as the 2nd wave of outbreaks is beginning in China. They keep harping on the economic consequences, but fail to recognize one of the many simple lessons from this debacle. I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard someone lamenting “the economy is not designed for this!” Maybe this is not the economy we need.
“The president is fomenting domestic rebellion and spreading lies — even while his own administration says the virus is real, it is deadly and we have a long way to go before restrictions can be lifted.”
Said the Washington State governor, Jay Inslee. Sometimes the only way to deal with willful ignorance is to just let it run it’s course. Were I a healthcare worker, I’d be observant of anybody coming into the ER wearing a MAGA hat, and put them at the bottom of my personal priority list, like the VA does with Cannabis users.
Trump encouraging rallies he himself won’t attend?
When quick, decisive action is called for, what does Trump do in the midst of the worst global health crisis in decades? Cut funding to the WHO – the one organization positioned to help. It’s just insane.
Has cutting off your nose to spite your face ever been more political?
But for the lack of Federal government action, after repeated warnings with months wasted, thousands of U.S. citizens have died with many thousands more expected to meet their fate in coming weeks.
“Wisconsin’s largest city normally has 180 polling places on Election Day, but Albrecht said on Tuesday it will be down to five for the entire city.”
Fuck the virus, fuck the people – we have a government in need of more corruption!
Walmart workers are dying, for chrissakes! It goes right along with the everything is essential concept. It aligns with the impeachment show trial. The Republican message is “we will do as we wish, and fuck you very much.” This illustrates beyond any reasonable doubt, exactly what the conservative leaders of this society really care about. It is one thing, and one thing only: Stay in power. They are playing with fire. Fire spreads any way it likes. Pendulums have a way of swinging.
“The things they had in there were crazy,” President Trump complained on Fox & Friends, referring to the Democratic proposals to encourage mailing a ballot to every American this fall. “They had things—levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
Politics aside, with religion as one of it’s primary drivers, clergy across the country are stepping up to demonstrate their disregard for external influence of any sort. In 2020 U.S. pandemic suppression terms, it represents the gold standard in willful ignorance. I just cannot figure out what is wrong with these people.
Biggest moron in the state of Louisiana.
“Satan’s trying to keep us apart,” said one Texas pastor. I got news for you, mutherfucker: Satan’s trying to kill your ass. Never let a good crises go to waste, right? I suppose it’s probably an overall evolutionary plus in the grand scheme of things, if more of the devout depart this life sooner than expected.
Rehab from the fusion surgery moved into a new phase last week. Here’s the current update:
“31 MAR 20: Overall improvement continues at a steady, slow pace. Uptime increase to an hour or more with the back brace now achievable. Imposing lumbar and hamstring flexibility loss drives increasing rehab effort. Strong nerve damage muscle tensing focused at the lumbar continues stressing the erectors, obliques, glutes and ilials. Most discomfort and pain from the job site is resolved. There is a sense of something missing there, I suspect akin to the feeling an amputee has for a lost appendage. I can sense there “was” something there, but it doesn’t hurt any more, with the old connections to it faintly sparking like downed power lines.”
Over the past couple weeks I’ve felt the entire right side of my body unwinding from over a year’s worth of struggling with an untreated back injury. The right leg and hip took a particularly hard beating. It’s gonna take a little work to get things properly re-oriented, but I can see a future on my feet now.
As a retired military member, I probably have a little better understanding of the “disaster” thing. That is after all, pretty much the military’s whole reason for being: creating violent disasters of the most unimaginable kind, and attempting to protect themselves from the same. With modern medical and airlift technology, evacuating and caring for the wounded was never a really big problem ever since the Korean war. Messes get cleaned up, life goes on – for the survivors.
But knowing the potential for unacceptably high levels of disastrous consequences was what kept people trained, supplies stocked, equipment tested and chains of command communicating and working together. I am quite certain it still does to this day, in the military. Today, New York sends the National Guard looking to collect ventilators across the state, while administrators bid for them on the open market. N95’s are going for 10x their normal price. It’s a fucking travesty.
So nobody in the healthcare industry saw the potential for a disastrous pandemic? More to the point: Who is going to accept responsibility for not preparing? We are talking about paper gowns, masks and rubber gloves. No storage space? Not enough in the budget? Should be interesting reviewing the plans in a few months. Wonder if they will comply with the subpoenas?
Healthcare suddenly became a scarce commodity when it literally ran out with their fingers buried deeply in the insurance co. cookie jar. We as a citizenry have paid the highest prices anywhere for the best healthcare available. Too bad it only comes on a pay-as-you-go basis. Now we employ questionable re-use sanitizing practices in tents as the price goes up REAL high. Has penny-wise and pound-foolish ever rang more true? Healthcare is no longer taken for granted. It is laid bare for what it is under the weight of the biggest pandemic in modern times: A ponzi scheme run by the Pharma co.’s and HMO’s.
Funny thing about this one is you only see how much you’re paying in from the pay stub. So now we have a new negative economic stimulus to go along with a run on the banks, and a run on the stores: A run on the hospitals. Consider the numbers assuming a 2% mortality rate, because numbers really are the the bean counter’s main concern, right? WTF have we been investing in all these years? Too bad parts of the problem are extremely lucrative, with practical solutions written out of law and corporate governance.
This is the country’s COVID-19 bow wave.
Just when you thought things in Corporate America couldn’t get any worse, Muilenburg’s deeds or lack thereof, now seem trivial in comparison.
On my way to stand in line at the grocery store, I heard one of the local talking heads rattle off a list of “essential” businesses remaining open this week. They should have made a list of stuff NOT open. Seems like government and eateries are the only things shut down. Traffic was light, but not enough.
Looks like that infection curve will climb steeply, quickly.
At least the shelves were stocked – sort of. People were scared.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”– Isaac Asimov
I’m standing on it pretty well now, 7 weeks after the surgery. Thought I was all set for another few years of normal life after my 2nd hip replacement January, 2019. But you can’t always get what you want, and in this case I became the victim of not just malpractice, but malpractice followed by either incompetence and/or criminal misconduct. I say either and/or, because it still remains unclear whether or not they did it on purpose. I would be inclined to think doctors and their subordinates freely and actively discuss matters affecting their patients, but what do I know? Maybe the VA really is too big to fail and they are just doing their thing in a vacuum, with little effective oversight.
Here’s where it stands:
Unsure if a lawyer is really called for at this point, basing that decision on what they say. I understand these things are rarely if ever cut and dried, but this one is or should be. It’s all in the official VA medical record, with the exception of the one single important detail of what actually happened, and thus why I needed a lumbar fusion last month. Maybe they believe people are naive enough to not know anybody over the age of 60 who’s ever done a day of real work in their life has any number of benign annular tears up and down their spine. It takes an orthopedic surgeon (in this case) to rip one wide open and make it go toxic.
Senator Gardner’s staffer, Maria Secrest tells me there are lawyers working pro-bono to connect with vets at the Denver Veterans Service Center. It should be interesting to see the VA’s official response to our senators. The VA Director’s office apparently wanted more info, prompting ECHCS to attempt contacting me, which I initially rejected. I am soooo goddamned sick and tired of talking about this. Probably have to wait for the pandemic to burn out before it goes any further.
Mostly to quash science, these days. At least that is what they did in China. The first Covid-19 case turned up in Wuhan, November 2019. The Chinese doctor who sounded the alarm not long after was arrested and later died from the disease, or so they said. Healthcare workers trying to get the word out were also arrested late in 2019. Those are just a few early-on facts I am afraid have been overlooked. Many more are unknown, mostly because journalists were expelled.
The multi-dimensional stupidity practiced by authoritarian regimes including current mainland China, is historically self-evident. I have always observed the adage to not blame malevolence for that which may be explained by stupidity. In this case, it is not a huge leap to hypothesize a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) plot, sacrificing thousands of human lives to re-orient the hopeless economic disaster they have been flirting with for years. Might the easiest , fastest and least risky (to them) way to level the economic playing field be a hard reset on the whole goddamn thing?
Most pundits I’ve heard squawking about it in the past few days have pointed to the economic impact as the biggest issue. Alot of people will die from the virus, but not in Black Plague or Spanish Flu numbers. It’s easy enough for anyone prepared to simply wait for it to burn out. It certainly is difficult to fathom a conspiracy like that. The problem with big conspiracy theories is that too many people get involved. What if the people involved were just spreading a virus?
Not to take away from our own stupid, slow response, but did China very stupidly fuck it up, or did the CCP let it get very stupidly fucked up on purpose? This is not a racist rant, by any means. Stupidity knows no color. But China is at the top of the blame food chain, and that needs to be dealt with. Either way.
Oh wait – a dangerous new virus is raging across the planet in an un-unprecedented global pandemic. Now I get it. THAT’S why we need things like sick leave and robust disaster preparedness along with decent child care and unemployment programs.
Apparently that stuff was too expensive, complicated or otherwise un-doable a month ago. WTF happened? Duh. Just imagine if we had those things before the virus began spreading uncontrollably. My hindsight is 20/20. But we pay the government to have FOREsight – on things other than elections and corporate profiteering. Once again, somehow it just doesn’t seem like we’re getting our money’s worth.
To hell with conservative dogma. Those days are over. Too bad it took fear for their very own lives to get off their rich, fat asses and do the right thing for a change. Now we will wait to hear the walk-back after things clear up.
This morning’s FDA press conference was scary. I remain impressed with Trump’s ability to yammer on continuously without actually saying anything. The FDA Director’s body language and appearance was telling. I wondered if maybe we would witness a nationally-broadcast assassination attempt as he stood behind the Chump-in-Chief glaring angrily.
The CoronaVirus stance has transitioned from mitigation to suppression in many places around the world. That in itself portends very grave consequences in terms of both healthcare and economic viability, the world over. Remember the old saying “when the U.S. sneezes, Europe catches a cold?” Buckle up.
