The Crazy Time

Crazy as defined by Merriam-Webster:

Not mentally sound. Marked by thought or action that lacks reason.

Whole new level of crazy.

            What a time to be living in!

            Dictionaries may have to rewrite the definition of crazy. Things that would have been considered exceptionally crazy in previous years only reach the level of being average or kinda’ crazy now.

            Everywhere the world is in flux. Everywhere. Politics. Culture. Religion. Art. Climate. Humanity.

            What’s happening?

            What’s rational?

            What isn’t?

            Have we seen times like this before?

            Has the world seen events like these before?

 Stating the observable.

            We are living in a worldwide pandemic that has killed a four million people so far. (It’s probably way more than that.)

            Political upheaval is almost everywhere. Even the countries that are considered stable are affected by all those that aren’t. Most of the South and middle Americas have suffering populations. Europe is being destabilized. Putin is on the move. The Koreas are a powder keg. China is rattling sabers in Asia. Africa is Africa. The Middle East continues to be a multi-alarm fire. India is in turmoil.

            Our ex-President is now our crazy ex-President. Another first. If he wasn’t crazy evil when he went into office, he qualifies now, after killing a few hundred thousand people needlessly, attempting a coup, encouraging civil war and trying to take out our Republic through ongoing sedition.

            Climate change is making everything worse by adding to all of the ongoing chaos.

Perspective

            We have seen times like this before. So has the world. The outcomes were always costly in terms of humanity and damaging to the planet Earth.

            The Spanish flu of 1918-19 killed 657,000 Americans and 50 million globally. (Estimates) They also had their anti-maskers. They didn’t have an anti-vaccine crowd because they had no vaccine. The flu just had to run its course. Populations were smaller then so that was a larger proportion.

            In World War II, depending upon what numbers you want to use, there were an estimated 60,000,000 deaths directly related to the war and another 20 or 30 million additional deaths indirectly related to the war by famine and disease. The figures are in dispute because there are some guesses that as many as 50,000,000 Chinese alone may have died due to the war. That would dramatically increase the number of casualties. This just serves to illustrate that deaths are usually under counted. Naturally Republicans maintain the opposite in spite of evidence.

            Arguably the times mentioned were worse. But these are the times that we’re living in. And they are far worse than they need to be. We shouldn’t have done worse than the Spanish Flu 100 years ago. They didn’t even have a vaccine then. Our supposedly modern society managed to not only repeat past history but compound the ignorance.

Where to from here?

            I don’t believe things will get crazier. I do believe that they will remain just as crazy. Conservative ‘Murica is going to kill a LOT more people. The anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, Republicans, Evangelicals and just the plain old-fashioned stubbornly ignorant aren’t going to change any time soon in regard to politics of civil war or the pandemic. It’s too late to go into another lock-down and frankly it wouldn’t work any better than it worked before. Fifty different responses to a pandemic is simply not the answer.

It’s just going to have to run its course.

Lunacy

Ka-ching!

            Ultimately it all costs money. What are the costs of the pandemic? Republican leadership professes to understand money. Exactly who is paying for the lunacy of the anti-vaxxers? The easy answer is—society does (we do).

No need

            In reference to vaccines I keep reading comments where people say “Do your research!” Admittedly I did a lot of research in the beginning way back when the pandemic first hit.

            One of the best responses that I read in regards to the ‘do your research’ comment was and I’m paraphrasing: “Don’t need to!” They pointed out that by now thousands of scientists from a variety of disciplines and a few billion dollars have been spent on doing just that. Research. Not just any scientists either but the tops in their respective fields. Respected, truthful, professional, honest people who care about humanity and saving lives.

That’s good enough for me.

Tune change

            Now since it’s mostly the unvaccinated (predominantly Trump supporters) who are getting Covid-19, the Republican leadership and right wing media have decided to say that people should get vaccinated after all. When it was seniors in nursing homes and minorities being impacted the most they were okay with no masking and getting everybody back to work. Now it’s their base being hospitalized and dying.

ON THE FLY

            We’re watching in real time Republicans rewriting history. The election was rigged. News is fake. The insurrectionists were loving patriots. The pandemic isn’t real. Science is wrong. Masks don’t work. The vaccines are dangerous. Immigrants are evil. Muslims are bad. Rich people are the bulwarks of society. Poor people are lazy. (All 40 million of them.) They (Republicans) are the real victims. Up is down. The sky is not blue.

 And on and on.

            Every day throughout his entire Presidency Trump played the victim card. His entire Presidency. Now he’s playing the ex-President victim card. He will forever be the perpetual victim. That makes his supporters suffering victims as well. They are in an abusive relationship with Trump and they can’t leave their abuser.

They are drawn to him.

$ And resources

            I have watched a couple of videos lately where the hospitalized anti-vaxxers who survived professed that if they had it to do over they still wouldn’t have got the vaccine and still won’t get the vaccine (after all, they survived!). Then there’s also the ‘if it’s my time to die—it’s my time crowd’. ‘It’s all a hoax’ also still has a huge following.

            At some point bean counters will figure up the total cost of the pandemic in dollars. There will be an average cost of hospitalizations due to Covid-19. (I’m just talking money here not the human toll. That’s incalculable.) At this point in the United States we’ve had several hundred thousand die needlessly. The ones dying now are the great unvaccinated.

Death before dishonor!

The Antis

            The antis (maskers and vaxxers) have cost society billions of dollars. It’s too early to tell if it’s tens of billions or hundreds of billions but I lean towards hundreds of billions. It takes a team of nurses, doctors, support staff and high tech equipment to treat Covid-19 patients in hospitals. That takes a lot of $$$$! Their “personal choice” is costing society in real dollars. Whether it’s insurance, the government, hospitals or individuals the costs are real. Ultimately it’s all the rest of us that pay for it.

The costs will be much higher than they needed to be, thanks to the antis.

The NEXT ONE

                                     

Are we there yet?

            Why write about the next pandemic when we’re a long way from being through the first one?

            Hundreds of thousands more lives could be lost or saved, depending upon who is in charge. With Trump and the Republicans in charge it’s practically a guarantee that we’ll lose several hundred thousand more.

            Why? Because Trump and his lackey Senators would have to acknowledge that they’ve been lying to everyone and are responsible for losing so many more lives than was necessary. They would have to admit that they killed men, women and children in order to stay in power. POWER is what’s most important to them. Republicans couldn’t agree to give working people enough money to keep a roof over their heads and feed their families but they can move within hours to get a Supreme Court justice in their pocket during a pandemic. That’s their priority.

They have health insurance and regular testing.

            200,000 lives have been lost so far by President Trump. He knows that the virus is deadly, is airborne, a killer and yet he continues to lie to the American people and encourages practices that could result in hundreds of thousands more deaths. It’s crazy that a sentence like that is now possible yet it is. Due to under-reporting of Covid-19 deaths we’re likely almost at 300,000 now. Upwards of 3 million people have lost family or close friends. And we aren’t close to being done. We have yet to reach our destination.

The pandemic spread is getting worse.

When?

            According to the as yet not completely silenced CDC, fully 90% of our population is still at risk and flu season is now upon us. Have you had your flu shot? Well guess what? Trump’s hard core science-denying base doesn’t believe in flu shots any more than they’ll get a vaccine for Covid-19.

            President Obama successfully handled 3 global health issues during his term in office. It isn’t unreasonable to think that another pandemic is waiting in the wings. Not a matter of if one will come. Only when. The one that we’re in could come back if the virus mutates like a flu virus.

            President George Bush warned of a pandemic in 2005 and started making plans. Those plans did not say that lying to the American people about a killer virus was a good approach to saving lives. President Obama tried to follow up with preparedness but Republicans shot down funding. Trump finished off any preparedness early on. And now 205,000 people have died. You might notice that’s a different number than I used a couple of paragraphs back. That’s because that many more people have died since I started writing this a couple of days ago.

Red is now winning!

            Trump and company were okay with Blue states suffering the brunt of the virus but now Red states are taking the lead. Their gamble is that they will kill more Dem voters than cult members. Originally they thought that Dem Governors would be hit hard with handling the virus since there was no federal help. That worked for a while. It’s as if all of these suits didn’t realize that they were dealing with a killer virus that state boundaries don’t stop.

            Like President Trump, Governor Parson of Missouri is doing a dismal job of dealing with the pandemic. He, like Trump, has abdicated his responsibility and left it to local authorities to try and deal with a conservative populace that thinks this pandemic is a hoax. Meanwhile the hospitals are starting to fill up.

            Governor Parson and his wife have tested positive for the virus. He has made it a point of ignoring precautions. (He and his wife tested on a regular basis.) So he caught a hoax, as did his wife. They are quarantining separately.

A joke.

            Unpopular ideas and actions can save lives. Had a nationwide shut down been taken at the very beginning along with masking and physical distancing when it should have we would already be past the middle and on the downside of this pandemic and thousands of lives would have been saved. PERIOD. Procedures would have been in place to deal with oncoming flu season. Instead, by Election Day we could have over a quarter of a million hoax deaths.

The joke is on us.

 

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?