Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Pandemic RDP


        ^ Every day when I wake up I find that a part of me wants to believe that President Trump is privy to some secret inside information and knows something that means this will truly be over soon.

Then he starts talking.

        ^ Then I do as many others are doing and look at the unfiltered world. I continue to hope, not pray, that I’m wrong. The reason that I added ‘not pray’ is because too many have already died and continue to die. People like us. People that just went about their lives without even knowing they had COVID-19 and that their future was already written. I just pray for the best outcome now.

(The picture used online at the top of this essay is of the police in Seattle in 1918 wearing masks provided by the Red Cross.)

The Art of Killing People

First to go.
        ^ The first deaths to gain serious media coverage came from a nursing home. Nursing homes, like hospitals, need Personal Protective Equipment. People working in them are begging for supplies just like those on the front lines in hospitals. Nursing homes though are at the bottom of the list. As of 4/7/20 there remains a critical shortage of protective equipment.
        ^ Making old people die by everyone going back to work was never going to save the economy. The leadership of the Republican Party already knew that. It was already too late. The novel coronavirus had already spread. Old people were already dying. Old people already had COVID-19 as did the very young and everyone in between.

Messaging from the Administration.
    The President is doing a great job. Congratulate him at every opportunity.
    Media is lying, causing panic and hysteria. (Except for Fox Pravda and except for when even they are truthful.)
    The Democrats are making the Pandemic political.
    The President is doing a great job.
     There has been plenty of testing available.
    This will be over soon and we can get back to work.
    The Governors that don’t support the President are wrong.
    There’s too much negativity.
    The President has always done a great job.
    Only a relatively small number of people will die.
    The media and Democrats are making more of this than it is.
    Denial. Denial of responsibility of anything but a GREAT VICTORY!
    The President is doing a great job.

Poverty kills
Living on the edge.
        ^ Poverty has been stalking generations in this country for centuries. Yes, centuries. Yes, from the very beginning. When a pandemic such as this hits people living on the edge it crosses them over.
        ^ There are 40 million people living in poverty in this country. This number stays fairly much the same whether Democrats or Republicans are in charge. We have multi-generational poverty. Tens of millions more are just above the cut, generation after generation.
        ^ They can’t afford to stock up on food and supplies. They can’t stock up on disposable diapers. They don’t have health insurance. So a lot of the poor are in this pandemic with underlying and untreated health issues. Sometimes as simple as not being able to afford medications. If masks were available they wouldn’t be able to afford them in the quantities that they need.
        ^ Thank you President Trump for delivering on your promise to have the greatest of insurance available to replace Obamacare!
        ^ The poor will die at a higher rate simply because many of them don’t have the advantage of staying home. They are the “essential” minimum wage workers like the cashier checking out your groceries. But again this isn’t really a problem for Republicans. There are 40 million people living in poverty in this country so there will be plenty of low wage replacements for those “essential” workers that lose their lives.
        ^ They also don’t all have smart phones or internet access to stay in touch and know what’s going on in the nation at the same level as those that do. If they’ve only been watching Fox News Pravda they’re already at risk. They may have already exposed themselves to the coronavirus.
        ^ None of this is really new. Poverty kills people and has been for decades whether administrations are Democrat or Republican. The differences of emphasis of the two main political parties are magnified in certain areas. Lack of health care kills. Poverty kills.

They are expendable.
        ^ The medical field is also staffed with low wage workers. (I’m not talking about the doctors and nurses in this instance but rather all the support staff that a hospital needs to operate. It’s like in combat where it takes 10 people to support 1 person actively engaged in combat.)  These people right behind the front lines of combatting the disease are often doing so at minimum wage. That’s asking a lot of people. But they keep doing it. They keep showing up to take care of the sick. They aren’t going to get hazardous duty pay.

A story
        ^ My dad was a WWII vet. He was in the Battle of the Bulge. He was a mechanic for a piper cub. They were usually close to the front lines but not on the front lines. He said generally they were a couple of miles behind the front lines until one morning they woke up and were no longer behind the front lines. They were in front of the front lines.
        ^ That’s when my dad got awarded a bronze star for fueling up their Piper Cub and getting it in the air and safely away while under direct fire from a German 88. The mission and his lieutenant came first. He spent 6 months under fire. Six months under fire is stressful to the physical human body. It was during this time that his heart problems started but they didn’t catch up with him until his later years.

Same o same o
        ^ It’s the same thing for those working in the medical field. They are going to spend months under fire. There will be long term physical and mental costs for their service to the nation and their fellow citizens.
        ^ They end up in front of the lines and somehow catch COVID-19. Doctors and nurses can do everything right and somehow still contract COVID-19 and they aren’t expendable. They don’t have a ready replacement waiting behind the lines to jump right into their place and carry on. They have expertise in dealing with COVID-19.
        ^ And they don’t have the right equipment and enough supplies to do the job properly and protect themselves and their patients. AND it isn’t their fault!
        ^ They are dying because of the incredible lack of response from the Federal government across the board. They are dying because the President and his court jesters have taken government apart. They are dying because when they should have already been staying in their homes the President and his jesters were telling them that everything was okay and they went about their lives. It was a hoax by the Dems! The President was still holding rallies and golfing even though he said that he knew how dangerous the pandemic was from the very beginning.
        ^ In other words they were killing people and Fox Pravda was with them every step of the way.
        ^ While the President tweets people are dying.
        ^ While the President is telling the country what a great job he’s doing people are dying. Those brave souls on the front lines still don’t have what they need and we’re not close to peaking yet as a nation.

He’s killing his own.
        ^ Here’s where it gets a little twisted.
        ^ Because of what the President said and did the majority of his supporters ignored the pandemic warnings as well. Not only were they okay with him murdering someone on 5th Avenue they’re okay with him killing them. MAGA! If statistics are correct there will be a greater number of them in body bags because of their actions. At around 6 minutes he talked about losing nobody. Said it was under control.
        ^ Young people are dying too. Young workers.
        ^ The slow response from state Republican Administrations is also killing people. They are mirroring their President in order to curry his favor. These are the Republican court jesters that I talk about. Their actions or rather their lack of actions are killing people and have killed people.

God didn’t do this.
        ^ In spite of what the Evangelical Party says, God didn’t do this. We did. Mankind did. This disaster is of the physical world. The world we live in. The real world.
        ^ People can call what is happening ‘fake news’ if they want. People will continue to die regardless of what it’s being called. Democrats will make more of it. Republicans will make less of it. What’s happening is in between the two positions and the in-between isn’t pretty.
        ^ It’s a lot of dead people. It’s bodies being loaded into refrigerated trucks because hospitals are out of room and morgues don’t have the capacity to handle this many dead.
        ^ The countries that have made a difference have one thing in common. They have benefitted from decisive leadership. Leaders that made the critically right decisions at the right time. Leaders that had the correct priority. And by correct I mean leaders that put the welfare of people first not their reelection and staying in power.

Point of no return
        ^ What does point of no return (PNR) mean anyway? Well when an airplane is on a trip and can turn around and have enough fuel to make it back home then they haven’t passed the PNR. The pilot will reach a point where if they turn around they won’t have enough fuel to make it back home. They will have passed their PNR. The options for the pilot are to proceed forward to an attainable destination or to crash.
        ^ My belief is that we have already passed the point of no return. I think that we passed it last week. (Last week in March) Others believe that we still have time left to flatten the curve. I hope that they’re right. The graphs, including those produced by the White House, tell a different story.

How many?!
        ^ We are four months into this pandemic in this country and still don’t have accurate numbers provided by large scale testing for a nation with a population of 329 million people. This isn’t an accident. It really doesn’t serve the interests of a President and Party that says this isn’t that big of a deal to have accurate numbers.  Their talking points are that it’s blown out of proportion, a hoax and it’s mainly old people that are dying anyway. We need to get back to work. What’s a few more bodies?
        ^ On a national scale a huge number of conservatives still don’t believe that what is taking place is all that serious. Check Fox News Pravda and the ministers of misinformation. I would list all their names but you know who they are. They are all the talking head jesters that switched their positions 180 degrees. I would rather not give names of the killers and there are too many of their victims to be named. They will be named in quiet ceremonies across the nation. Check Rush Limbaugh: he’s got his hand on the pulse of the coronavirus. All of the above is why posts saying that the majority of people will be just fine and not affected by the virus are still being circulated. The jesters don’t want people talking about the reality of the bad news. It puts people in a bad mood instead of thanking their Ducé.

The Death Panels.

        ^ Remember back in 2009 when Republicans accused President Obama of creating death panels with the Affordable Care Act (ACA)? Irony. He didn’t and neither did the legislation of the Act.

    Five men dressed in black robes.
        ^ It seems Appropriate to start off with the five men in black robes that make up the conservative and now dominant side of the Supreme Court of the United States. Their decision to let the vote in Wisconsin go ahead will kill people.
        ^ The Democratic Governor tried to stop the vote and was overridden by the Republican Jesters (RJ) of the legislature. A lawsuit was filed and the people lost. The vote will continue. Many voting places will be closed by the lack of volunteers unwilling to jeopardize their lives to run them.
     President Trump and all his enablers.
        ^ I know that there are those that would place the President first but this is one victory that I’ll deny him and it only applies here. He has botched the handling of this pandemic from the beginning and at this stage his behavior qualifies for being a mass murderer status.
   Republican Jesters (RJ)
        ^ At all levels of government in the Federal and state legislatures that refused to act in the interests of the people and supported their “Chosen One” instead when he maintained that everything was under control.
    Health Insurance Company executives.
        ^ The lack of insurance and gutting of The ACA. by RJs is in this as well. I also include all the Democrats that have supported their lobbying efforts over the years.
    Health Care Triage
        ^ Sadly it is also going to fall upon those on the front lines when they have to make decisions affecting who gets to live and who gets to die. RJs created this as well but the fault belongs the RJs.
    Dysfunctional Federal Government.
        ^ This what you get when the President, supported by all his RJs, takes the federal government apart. They make up the head of all the other death panels that they created and sustain.
    The enablers
        ^ All those that have enabled an Administration of lies that seeks to undermine the fundamental pillars of our Republic.

In closing.
        ^ This list is dominated by all the well-dressed people in suits that set the stage for this happening. The death panels have been busily working there for years. They are why we have 40 million men, women and children living in poverty in a nation that portrays itself as a government of the people.
        ^ Currently they dominate the Senate, the Supreme Court and have the Presidency. They have crippled government. They crippled the very agencies needed to deal with a pandemic. They have left hundreds of positions unfilled across government. They got rid of the professionals. They ignored all the warnings. They don’t believe in science. President Trump didn’t know who the Inspector General was because he never appointed a replacement. They don’t believe in our form of government; it doesn’t suit their needs. They reduced or eliminated the supplies, agencies, connections and people needed to deal with a pandemic such as this.
        ^ What they didn’t count on was they got an actual honest to god pandemic. They got caught with their government down and there’s no one but themselves to blame.

The Republican Death Panels.