Hoax vaccine coming soon!

 

Look to the skies!

            The Trump coronavirus task force has decided that a vaccine isn’t needed after all. Essential oils are going to be distributed to the entire population including bitty small children. It’s going to take a combination of English Leather, lavender, sandalwood, frankincense, WD40, musk, Old Spice, essence of Trump steaks, myrrh, and some proprietary oily stuff that comes off car windows that have been sitting in the sun for years. Some herd mentality chanting will be involved in order to attain maximum effectiveness.

Plan 9.

            The coronavirus is a hoax but Tweety Trump is going to deliver a vaccine for the hoax coronavirus at a cost of several hundred million dollars paid to some bigly rich Big Pharma CEOs so that he can be the savior for the virus that never was and that his devotees won’t take anyway because that would be too controlling and cost them their freedom to be American and holy as the founding fathers intended when they created a nation of slavery that continues until today because Black Lives Don’t Really Matter to them unless they’re getting ready to move into low cost housing and bring down their property values since there will be unstoppable rioting, looting and marauding moved into their neighborhoods with only the mighty Tweety Trump to save us as he’s the only one that can do all these things because the President is all powerful and above the law as are all those that cover for him and commit any illegal acts that he never knew about except hearing that the witch-hunting Dems were after him again at the behest of their behind-the-scenes unknown handlers who are in all likelihood malicious interdimensional travelers like Bob Woodard which doesn’t matter to the probably big surly that will come to Trump with tears in their eyes saying, “Sir, here’s the vaccine that only you could have made possible”.

God Bless America.

Anybody that wants a vaccine can get a vaccine.

            Remember when < Trump said that >, “Anybody that needs a test gets a test”? Said that in March. Wasn’t true then. Isn’t true now. He also said that the tests were perfect. They weren’t. Six months into a pandemic and the nation is still hobbled with inadequate testing.

            Not only that, his administration has cut back on testing support that wasn’t adequate in the first place. Widespread testing for anybody that needed it didn’t happen any more than the travel ban. Trump just says whatever he thinks is selling at the time. People wanted to hear that widespread testing was available so he said that it was. But it wasn’t.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_XwC9IQKBc .

He really doesn’t care.

            It’s immaterial to Trump whether the vaccine works or not. He’s saying it to get re-elected. If it isn’t ready it will be somebody else’s fault anyway because the buck stops anywhere else but with him.

            It’s immaterial to his cult members as well. Good grief, they won’t wear a mask; does anyone really think that they’re going to stick a needle in their arm to get a vaccine for a virus that’s a hoax? These people are a textbook example of what not to do during a global pandemic. They are the zombies of the apocalypse. Their job is to spread the virus while making fun of people. They really don’t care either.

Do you?

Deliverance captured.

It will be ugly.

        ^ I do NOT blame President Trump for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. I also do NOT blame him for the crashed economy. Both would have happened regardless of who was in the White House or Congress. I do blame him and them for how he and they handled dealing with the virus and how they handled the economic fallout. I also blame them for how they are botching the next wave that is coming our way. AND it is coming one way or another.  AND it will be ugly.

Success story.

        ^ Whether people like it or not (and in fact, whether he likes it or not) the President is responsible when something like this happens on their watch, especially when it is on a global level. This pandemic isn’t a state’s rights or personal liberty issue. It’s about survival. The President is to be blamed just as any other President in his expensive shoes would be blamed if they:

Ω Ignored the warnings.

Ω Lied about the threat.

Ω Lied about treatments.

Ω Lied about testing.

Ω Just lied and lied and lied and then lied some more.

Ω Abdicated responsibility.

        ^ But the most egregious lie that he told is when he called it a hoax and millions of his cult of following fawning supporters believed him. Millions. And by the thousands they have died and will die. They spread the virus because of ignorance and believing in false prophets. The prophets died as well. The followers of prophets died. SARS-CoV-2 does not care about any affiliation.

        ^ Nobody deserves that for believing in someone even if that someone was always nothing but a con artist. It isn’t right or even just. Incompetent buffoons should never be in positions where they can kill so easily. Yet it happens time and time again in history. It’s happening right now.

        ^ I’ve often wondered how people deal with causing the death of an innocent. It’s hard because I know people that have done it. How does a person deal with causing the death of thousands?

Graphing loss.

        ^ When you look at graphs or hear that the daily total of new cases is going up, that will be going on for quite some time. It’s new cases being admitted into hospitals. The graph of the numbers of people being tested will also continue to go up as more people are being tested every day. Testing was and is the key to managing the virus. And we aren’t even close to where we need to be.

        ^ There is a difference between confirmed deaths and estimated deaths. The CDC provides estimated deaths. The graphs and projections will be changing within the next week or so as new totals and new estimates start coming in. Republicans are now trying to undercut reporting to lower the daily totals. That isn’t going to stop people from dying.

        ^ In the 2018-19 flu season there were just over 7,000 deaths attributed to the flu. The CDC took these deaths and provided an estimate of 26,000+ to 52,000+ deaths for that same flu season. The flu season technically lasts for 7 months. They give estimates because the number of deaths from the flu aren’t reported because all deaths aren’t tested for the flu. This country will reach 70,000 actual confirmed deaths from COVID-19 within a couple of days. Actual. Confirmed. Deaths. It only took 2 months to get there. 10 times worse in two months.

        ^ At the new higher actual rates 100,000 deaths can now be anticipated happening by the first of June. The upper limit of 250,000 deaths may be readjusted. The graphs should follow a few days decline followed by a few days up upticks. Graphs. Graphs of life and death.

Deliverance.

        ^ Had President Trump actually delivered on his promise of everyone being able to get tested early on, the history of how this virus spread and the number of people that died would be entirely different. But he didn’t. Just as he didn’t deliver on his promise of better health insurance for everyone and that was a major promise of his that he talked about continuously throughout his campaign. He talked about that on par with Mexico paying for the wall. (They didn’t.) Had he delivered on health care that would also have made the current situation better, well, at least for all the working poor that have ended up being considered essential workers. But he didn’t. He’s just the quintessential-politician-telling-people-what-they-want-to-hear-self-aggrandizing-opportunist that he has always been. None of how he has acted is new or different. He’s the same punched-his-music-teacher-person that he has always been. (The story that he denies happening came right from the book he wrote.)

        ^ Congress is going to demonstrate what all of us could have had in order to get the nation back to life. Adequate testing. Testing and results within minutes. Yes, the millionaires of Congress will have that. They’ll just slip off quietly and get tested. The President has that. He has testing in spades. Fifteen minutes and results! All those surrounding him have that. The elite of the country either has that kind of testing or will have it shortly.

        ^ Your life just isn’t all that important to them. You need to get back to work. The lives of your loved ones and friends hasn’t been and isn’t that important to them. The lives of those living in poverty and the aged are at the bottom of the concern list when it comes to saving lives.

Where’s the love?

        ^ What did they say? Oh yes, they love old people. It’s a tough to say goodbye kind of love. It’s ‘a what have you done for me lately’ kind of love. It’s a ‘sad to see you go but you’ve had your run’ kind of love. 

        ^ It’s an ‘I didn’t want to but you made me hurt you’ kind of love.

Pandemic Contact Tracing

Full circle

        ^ Years ago and by years I mean decades. We’re tripping back to the late 50s and early 60s. One of the couple that the folks played cards with was a nurse. Her job was to track down cases of sexually transmitted diseases.

        ^ I wasn’t old enough to be a part of this conversation. I was however old enough to find a place to listen in on the conversations of adults without being detected. Many small children possess this ability so parents be wary. (I had discovered a medical reference textbook that parents had and read way above my age group so I was technically knowledgeable way beyond my years.)

        ^ Anyway, the nurse was relating the culmination of a contact tracing that had taken months. (No she didn’t use names even then.) It started with one guy that she interviewed that had contracted syphilis. She got the names of who he had sexual contact with and then visited them. Then she found out who they had contact with and visited them. And so on and so on. She ended up talking with 180 people that had contracted the disease starting from just the one guy. The sad news. She ended back up with him. That’s right. The same guy that started it all ended up catching it again. One. Guy. One. Hundred. Eighty. People.

HIV/AIDS

        ^ Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). When AIDS came along it was widely regarded as a disease that affected gay people. Queers were deemed to be the primary target of the HIV virus. There were Evangelicals then that considered AIDS to be retribution from God. Then somebody thought to test prostitutes in Dade County in Florida and discovered that half of them had AIDS. Then people got interested.

        ^ One of the most effective PSAs that I heard then was that when a person had sex with someone they just had sex with every person that person had sex with. In other words if the person you were with had had sex with a person that had AIDS then it was possible that you could contract the disease without knowing it. Kind of sobering. AIDS is still out there. No cure has been discovered and there’s no vaccine. So there is still risk.

        ^ When I was in the service and stationed in Korea soldiers contracting venereal disease was a huge problem. At one time almost all the guys in my section were confined to base until they were cured of their venereal disease. I knew two married guys that went home with venereal disease. Yep, took it home to their wives. (BTW that wasn’t supposed to happen but it did.) My guess knowing these guys is that they would blame it on their wives. But that’s another story.

Confined.

        ^ Guys with sexually transmitted diseases were confined to base to limit their contact and spreading of the disease. Business girls that had it were banned from the enlisted club until they tested negative. Thursday was the day that “entertainers” for the EM club would get tested to be allowed to visit the EM club.

        ^ Since we were in the Army there was no expressed concerns for our Constitutional rights being violated. Uncle Sam owned us.

        ^ Quarantines are not new. They are used as a matter of public safety. The scope of this pandemic is certainly larger and more complex compounded by the incredible lack of leadership at the Federal level.

No one checked.

        ^ Contact tracing during a pandemic is a whole other ball game. Those tracking people down don’t have months to do their job. It has to be done fast and efficiently. People have to know what they’re doing and have a unique set of skills when it comes to getting the necessary information from people. They have to have their boots on the ground at the very beginning.

        ^ SARS-CoV-2 was spreading undetected and unchecked for weeks. People were spreading the disease without even knowing that they had it. There was no contact testing being coordinated nationwide. According to the President it was under control and would blow over. The disease had spread all over the globe. The warning signs were ignored. Good grief, it showed up at Mar a Lago and that wasn’t enough! I’m surprised that there isn’t a conspiracy theory tying Hillary Clinton’s emails to it.

        ^ Tests weren’t available in the beginning because it SARS-CoV-2 was new. SARS-CoV-2 is the scientific name for the virus now. The tests developed since then that are needed to detect have still not been distributed as was promised by the President early on. Widespread testing is needed for contact tracing to have success.

        ^ In the story that I shared in the beginning the guy that contracted the venereal disease was tested and came back positive for syphilis. In this pandemic people were tested and died before the results came back. At times it was days before the results were known.

“Will Circle be Unbroken?”

        ^ If the country can get to the place where adequate testing can be conducted to tell who has it and who had it without knowing then the country can begin to get a handle on it and better prepare for a second wave IF one comes. That is a big unknown. The virus can also mutate and become more lethal to a broader spectrum than oldsters and black people.

        ^ The one guy mentioned above spread disease to 180 people. One. Guy. This whole limiting crowd size to groups of 10 or less is arbitrary. Especially with an airborne virus. 10 is not some magic number that automatically confers safety upon those in the group. It still only takes one infected person to infect others. Staying 6 feet away from people is helpful but it is an airborne virus. Upwind? Downwind? Does it hang around in calm air just waiting for some unsuspecting person to walk into it? Keeping away from people as much as possible is what works.

        ^ Everybody wearing a mask would be incredibly helpful. Not likely though. Trump supporters and Republican Jesters on the whole think this is a hoax. Their primary concern is playing to their base and getting reelected.

        ^ The meme circulating that adds percentages to mask wearers versus non-mask wearers are not substantiated. However wearing masks is substantiated as reducing exposure. Obviously it can still happen. But we have the people claiming that they have a constitutional right not to do anything safe just because they don’t want to do it in their world view. Their right to not self-quarantine is more important than not killing you. It’s no different than those guys and gals that think that it’s funny to cough on people during a pandemic. They believe in the rule of law except for the ones that they don’t want to follow.

And then good people will die trying to take care of their sorry asses.