This is why. Move Over Hydroxychloroquine

Are you shitting me?  This is all our ER facilities need right now- treating the pulmonary aspiration of paients who inhaled Clorox or trying to figure out how to remove a string of Christmas lights from some stupid bastards asshole.  I know Trump defenders will say he wasn’t serious about this.  But he was.  Watch the video.  He actually thinks we should start investigating ways to implement these brilliant ideas of his for treating infectious disease.  What have you got to lose?  Possibly your lungs and a few twinkling icicle bulbs.  There are people out there that believe anything this man says. Chalk one corpse up to a misinformed individual who thought it was a good idea to treat his corona virus symptoms by ingesting a fish tank cleaner containing chloroquine.

This is dangerous.  This man is becoming a threat to public health.  And to compound the problem, the few experts Trump has are constrained knowing full well anything he interprets as criticism is bound to be met with retribution.  We are a country in crisis, being led by an incompetent ignoramus.

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The preceding I wrote last night.  What follows I began jotting down a few days ago.  Sort of reverse chronology.  The reason why is, who would have thought the president of the United States would say something so ridiculous. My bad.  Below is stuff you already know.  What I saw last night supprised me so much I wanted to lead off with it before I forgot about it.  That’s the world I live in.  I am afflicted with a compulsion to journal thoughts and events, and the political topics, with this administration, are so boundlessly available and confusing it is difficult to keep up with them. You think about something presently, and forget tomorrow there likley will be something just as bazaar. So what I am saying is, my point is basically made above.  If you are bored, read below.  I imagine you have time on your hands at the moment.   

OK.  We are all frustrated and anxious.  Being cooped up all day is taking a toll.  Well actually I’m not doing anything a whole lot different than what I have been doing the last 7 years.  I’m retired, and my perspective of the world pretty much pivots around the narrow space where my ass meets my recliner.   That doesn’t mean I’m not staying informed.  Did you know some lions and tigers at the Bronx Zoo got infected with covid 19 from a zoo employee? So many questions here. So zoo animals are getting tested but I can’t?  I just had my annual Medicare funded physical and I’ve had some unfamiliar aches I was concerned about but my doctor said tough shit I don’t qualify for any covid-19 testing.  Is that fair?

Then there’s all those stay-in-place protests going on at various municipalities.  People losing it because they’re losing their jobs, they are discovering haunting things abouth their spouse, they have permanent images burnt into their retinas from Netflix binge-watching. That all sucks, sure.  But geezuz man, cover those holes in your face.  And when you do, choose something that’s half way effective rather than that thing you retrieved from your rebellious teen ager’s stash of Halloween costumes.  And I know turn out was disappointing at a few locations, but keep in mind though you couldn’t actually see them, members of the coronavirus family were in attandance and cheering you on in significant numbers, like in the order of 10 to 20th power. I gotta ask though, is it really necessary to lug around an assualt rifle?  I appeciate the fact that you feel insecure at this moment, but you can spray fire all you want, you’re not going to bring down the coronavirus.  You know what works?  STAYING HOME!

Stay home, as much as possible.  Let’s not congregate in unecessary  gatherings.  The president said so.  It’s right there in his own guide-lines.  Oh shit.  I forgot.  I guess the president said there are three states out there where it’s ok to go flouncing about.  If you have a Democrat for a governor, go right ahead.  See.  It pays to have a Democrat in the state house.  Now who are you going to vote for?

God damn it.  Is this really real?  A president of the United States inciting civil disobedience? And to disobey his very own directive? Does that make sense?  Does that seem responsible, presidential, normal?  Is this guy off his rocker?

Try as he might, President Trump is having a hard time plastering the blame for his failings on others.  The scapegoats so far are the media, Democratic governors, Joe Biden, China, government watchdogs, the World Health Organization, and of course, Barack Obama.  As we know by now Trump sheds responsibility like a collie sheds hair.  For me it is the worst of his character flaws, but then as a supreme narcissist he has many.  His denials and deflections are infuriating, but his personal failings  in dealing with this pandemic are well documented Our Modern Day Nero

He should have seen this coming.  Typical of his vacilation and confusing statements, on the one hand he said “Who could have known this would be this bad,” and on the other is his claim that he knew all along a pandemic was headed our way. Which is it?  He says he is all powerful, declaring himself to be a wartime president, then informs state governors it’s on them to fix things.  One day he is supportive of the governor of Georgia’s decision to open up state businesses, but the next day reversing himself completely (a decision undoubtedly influenced by poll numbers that reveal 80% of the country supports sheltering in place).  What kind of schitzo are we dealing with here?  Where is my Excedrin Migraine?  Shit.  Target is out of it.  You can’t get it anywhere.

If he is, as he has always boasted, the only guy who can fix everything, he should have seen this coming. Putting  aside all the articles you can google about Trump’s ineptness, if he had paid any attention at all in any basic U.S. history course he should have been exposed to in his life, he should have seen this coming.  It is a NOVEL virus.  Maybe he thinks the word “novel” means he might have to read a book about it or something.  Ok.  Then go ask Jared.  He can explain it.  It was a series of viruses and bacteria that was novel to indiginous Americans that wiped out over 90 percent of their population.  What is keeping the covid 19 virus from taking a similar toll now is that we have an understanding, now, of viral transmision that Native Americans did not have.  This virus is new to the entire world. It will be awhile before we know how to frame its virulency.

Beating a dead horse, what we understand about this type of viral transmision is mitigating it with social separation is about all we have until a vaccine and treatment therapies are developed.   But we can gradually extend out social contact, when we have enough testing available.  But not until then.  It is around this issue that Trump is so infuriatingly out of touch, inconsistent, and dangerous by misinforming the American public.

We are in urgent need of diagnostic and antibody tests. Contrary to what the president keeps saying, every health expert I have heard says we need to be testing at a rate 5 times what we are doing now,  and we will  need to be testing more than that if we intend to lift social bariers.  By fall, we will need to test in the tens of millions.  Trump keeps saying health experts are overstating the need for testing. Sometimes he says the tests are out there.  To some extent that might be true.  But they are so scattered, have different diagnostic methods and require different equipment and adjunct components, and the stability and time it takes for results varies,  not to mention some are not very accurate. Lab capacity needs to increase. We need to be able to identify the effectiveness of newer procedures and promote those tests that are uniformly the best.  It is a capitalistic clusterfuck that requires  central, federal, supervision and coordination.  And this applies to PPE for medical staff as well.  When states end up competing with each other and the federal government, and driving up prices, it’s a clear indication market economics needs some intervention.

We need one guy in charge. A leader, and a leader who actually knows how to surround himself with the best people.  We really need that now, not the president’s son-in-law mucking things up with more confusion and very probably personal conflicts of interest. Re-wording the mission statement of HHS’s Strategic National Stockpile website just to suppress Jared’s feelings of incompetence is an exercise in incompetence itself.

Look at the countries that have had the most success in mitigating this pandemic- Germany, S. Korea, Vietnam, Singapore and Taiwan.  All have federal systems that assign the national government to a coordinating role.  They trust their government to relay the facts, and have a high degree of social trust.  They don’t rely on private companies to process the vast number of completed tests.  Instead, labs at public universities and hospitals have taken the lead. And they all ramped up test production and instituted agressive contact tracing.  S. Korea was so effective at mitigation they were able to isolate infected people without imposing sweaping lockdowns.  Germany developed the first Covid 19 diagnostic test, acing out even China, and now are conducting the first nationwide antibody testing.  Why aren’t we number one?  And it’s wartime.  There are all those German scientists out there just waiting to be snatched up. It’s just a hunch, but between you and me, that seems like something Trump might actually be quite good at.

To safely re-open the country, it will take strong governmental leadership with the courage to nationally mobilize.  We know now that is not in the works with Trump at the helm.  By taking the position he has- voicing supreme authority while actually passing real authority to state governors- he obviously wants to look like he’s taking charge without being held accountable.  Typical Trump.  As the days go by, he gets more evasive with questions from the media.  Twice now I have seen him answer a pointed question about how poorly he has handled the pandemic by saying “A lot of people love me.”  And that is how he imagines the moment, reflecting on days gone by when he was able to stir up a crowd with invective rhetoric.  But he is not performing in front of a political rally now.  His audience at present is a more diverse cross section of voters who are intersted in answers to questions rather than doling out fervent applause.  His view of the country through a prism of economic figures obscures his vision of public health.  It is all about ratings and poll numbers and crowd size. It’s about paying homage and showing gratitude to him for his limited accomplishments in this time of crisis, and he is singularly inept at dealing with it.  What is important to Trump is only that which promotes or protects him.  That’s his reality.  It should not be ours.

It’s not all bad.  Here are some fun facts about living in a pandemic world: A barrel of oil is now worth less than an off-brand roll of toilet paper; fewer mass gatherings means fewer mass shootings; and your kids are finally washing their hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok.  It’s been a week and you’ve reached the point where you have to leave your bunker.  You’ve got no choice.  You’re out of scotch. So, will you head out the door determined to show the world you are the manly man you always wanted to be and boldly give covid 19 the finger by not wearing a face mask, or resign yourself once again to the fact you’re a big pussy who is constatnly assessing risk and strap one on. Wake up! This isn’t the time to be dwelling  on your own self awareness or protecting yourself. It’s about protecting others, which means me.  Don a face mask you stupid prick!

I know it’s confusing.  Even our healthcare experts intially said the public shouldn’t use one, and in fact would be barely useful, but that was early on when those people knew that if everyone went out and bought face masks it would further deplete our already inadequate supply that health professionals would be depending on.  Now that that is understood, most of the experts are saying essentially it’s a good idea to start wearing them. Of course knowing we can’t find any at retail outlets,  they are implying we need to conceive something of our own.

Here’s what I have come up with.  The simple solution is to grab anything available and make a bandana out of it.  Here’s a picture of me heading on over to the liquor  store.

If you google “homemade face mask” you will see there are many options people have come up with. This method is so simple even a dumb shit like you can figure it out. Simple Safety

Now if you have a nice sister-in-law who is handy with a sewing machine, she’s busy making her own version and if you’re fortunate will send a couple to your wife for her birthday.  Of course you have to have a spouse who is willing to share.  Believe it or not, all three of those tricky pieces of criteria -resoursceful sister-in-law,  cooperative wife, providential birthday- fell in place at this particular moment in the space time continuum for me. Naturally  that’s something you can not always count on. Here is a picture of the two of us about to step outside and do some yard work, appropriately adorned with gifted protective gear.  Thanks Cindy!

To underline the importance of this developement, the CDC has issued a public recommendation that we all wear face masks.  President Trump even anounced that fact during a recent press briefing.  As the president is inclined to do, he confused everyone by also anouncing he would not be complying.  It’s the kind of consistent inconsistency we have come to rely on from the president.

It should be obvious we have little at our disposal to combat this virus   We should enact a federal shut down of all non essential businesses, and initiate mandatory face mask usage and shelter in place policing.  A national program- every state- now, at the same time. However we have a  president who despite saying so still has little understanding of a novel virus.  We are sailing on a ruderless ship.  It’s up to each of us to be personally responsible.  Right now, we should all be wearing face masks.  Think about it this way, with an analogy the president himself can easily relate to   A face mask is like a condom for your head.  You don’t know where I’ve been and I sure as hell don’t know where you’ve been. You probably don’t even know where you’ve been. Don’t be such a self centered twat.  Wear a face mask!