Public Health

If you rely on the CDC for information regarding Covid that is your first mistake, the second is not wearing K95 masks indoors after a 15-30 minute time frame exposure. Did I get that from the CDC, no, I got that from a study done by the Wall Street Journal and from numerous other Biology and Science sites that cover virus exposure. That was the presumption in 2020 and that has not changed. The spread has it was believed 1:3 but now it is presumed 1:4 which is equivalent to Whooping Cough. Will you find that on the CDC website? No. What you find is an ever changing time frame and info guide that has since I contracted Covid on Sept 9, has said that from time of contracting Covid and getting a booster should be six months or four months or now three months. Okay which months? The guide should be have an antibody test at 3 then from there until there are none present to act as a natural immunity factor, for which it appears there is none. Or is depending upon the variant and if you are a breakthrough case. What.ever. At some point they are sure to have some consistency and with that it explains Fauci doesn’t it and his ever changing barometer of precautions. But in the nascent days of Covid he seemed “wise.” Yeah okay. A Bureaucrat with an MD is not someone who is reliable as we have turned our back on Birks and Redfield who were marginalized early on and with that Birks did more than Fauci ever did, going on a road trip state to state to meet local Health Directors to discuss the Covid protocol, which at that time was just hide. It clearly failed. Today we are averaging 400 deaths a day so no the pandemic is not over and we are in the same dark we were three years ago when it comes to understanding Covid. My God the shear stupidity of some of the bizarre decisions still rankle me – Curfews, only outdoors for limited time, closing parks, schools and failure to test anyone showing any symptom of Covid unless they met a certain set of parameters. What a joke. I need to go wash my door handle. Remember that? And masks not needed? Yeah that is the first and most simple defense today that would work and yet it is the most political. So let’s keep blaming Trump shall we?

The reality is that we have no funding, no central authority, a piecemeal of laws and regulations and a reality that we are shitty at public health. We can put that down to systemic institutional racism as we have always believed that hard working boot strap folks have jobs with insurance, good medical leave plans and of course access to affordable health care. Yeah right.

A few days ago I received a text from the State saying this number was tied to a positive Covid result. I deleted it. The reality is that they needed data to track and trace all my contacts that I had prior to confirmation to ensure they are tested. Well that is a four day late time frame. The time frame from exposure to symptoms has always been 72 hours but you will not find that anywhere on the CDC site as no one seems sure of that data. Really I knew instantly by my behavior and where I was three days prior, it fit perfectly. I immediately knew on Thursday I was not feeling well but I chalked that up to travel but by that night I knew for certain without a test as I had a fever and cough. Friday an at home test confirmed it and with that I immediately went for a PCR test. Those days I was masked the time I went to the store, the drugstore and my storage unit, limiting my contacts and already beginning to isolate with the plan it was coming. On Saturday morning when the confirm results came in I immediately went on Paxaloid and went to the drug store alone, with a mask and quickly returned home. I made no stops and with that I informed my front desk that yes I was POS and anyone who did get near me the next few days when I went to get my paper or mail to wear a mask in my company. I was responsible so anything the State was going to do I knew was not, they were going to harvest my data to find something to do nothing. I contracted it out of state and my contacts were limited to one and one alone that I could have transmitted Covid, the massage spa. The Masseuse was a bitch and she really harmed me, and I left a 20 buck tip knowing I would never be back. With that I have no idea if she contracted Covid or if in fact she was the only other one who could have transmitted it to me so with that we are done. The State got nothing as there was nothing to give. But you can see why reading the article below how and why they do need the data. We are fucked folks without monkeypox.

‘Very Harmful’ Lack of Data Blunts U.S. Response to Outbreaks

Major data gaps, the result of decades of underinvestment in public health, have undercut the government response to the coronavirus and now to monkeypox.

By Sharon LaFraniere The New York Times Sept. 20, 2022

ANCHORAGE — After a middle-aged woman tested positive for Covid-19 in January at her workplace in Fairbanks, public health workers sought answers to questions vital to understanding how the virus was spreading in Alaska’s rugged interior.

The woman, they learned, had underlying conditions and had not been vaccinated. She had been hospitalized but had recovered. Alaska and many other states have routinely collected that kind of information about people who test positive for the virus. Part of the goal is to paint a detailed picture of how one of the worst scourges in American history evolves and continues to kill hundreds of people daily, despite determined efforts to stop it.

But most of the information about the Fairbanks woman — and tens of millions more infected Americans — remains effectively lost to state and federal epidemiologists. Decades of underinvestment in public health information systems has crippled efforts to understand the pandemic, stranding crucial data in incompatible data systems so outmoded that information often must be repeatedly typed in by hand. The data failure, a salient lesson of a pandemic that has killed more than one million Americans, will be expensive and time-consuming to fix.

The precise cost in needless illness and death cannot be quantified. The nation’s comparatively low vaccination rate is clearly a major factor in why the United States has recorded the highest Covid death rate among large, wealthy nations. But federal experts are certain that the lack of comprehensive, timely data has also exacted a heavy toll.

“It has been very harmful to our response,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, who leads the White House effort to control the pandemic. “It’s made it much harder to respond quickly.”

Details of the Fairbanks woman’s case were scattered among multiple state databases, none of which connect easily to the others, much less to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency in charge of tracking the virus. Nine months after she fell ill, her information was largely useless to epidemiologists because it was impossible to synthesize most of it with data on the roughly 300,000 other Alaskans and the 95 million-plus other Americans who have gotten Covid.

Those same antiquated data systems are now hampering the response to the monkeypox outbreak. Once again, state and federal officials are losing time trying to retrieve information from a digital pipeline riddled with huge holes and obstacles.

“We can’t be in a position where we have to do this for every disease and every outbreak,” Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said in an interview. “If we have to reinvent the wheel every time we have an outbreak, we will always be months behind.”

A Covid Data Pipeline Riddled With Holes and Obstacles

State and local health departments have struggled to combine data from disparate sources and pass it along to the C.D.C. This flow chart shows how Covid case reports are typically handled in Alaska.

Test results provide the basic case count, but to better track the pandemic, they must be combined with information from other data sources.

Staff members attempt to use other sources to add more details to each case, but with high volume, missing information and systems that inhibit data sharing, records are mostly incomplete.

Though missing fields in many cases, the data is used to power a public dashboard and is sent to the C.D.C. Frequently, little beyond age, sex and county of residence is sent.

The federal government invested heavily over the past decade to modernize the data systems of private hospitals and health care providers, doling out more than $38 billion in incentives to shift to electronic health records. That has enabled doctors and health care systems to share information about patients much more efficiently.

But while the private sector was modernizing its data operations, state and local health departments were largely left with the same fax machines, spreadsheets, emails and phone calls to communicate.

States and localities need $7.84 billion for data modernization over the next five years, according to an estimate by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and other nonprofit groups. Another organization, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, estimates those agencies need nearly $37 billion over the next decade.

The pandemic has laid bare the consequences of neglect. Countries with national health systems like Israel and, to a lesser extent, Britain were able to get solid, timely answers to questions such as who is being hospitalized with Covid and how well vaccines are working. American health officials, in contrast, have been forced to make do with extrapolations and educated guesses based on a mishmash of data.

Facing the wildfire-like spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant last December, for example, federal officials urgently needed to know whether Omicron was more deadly than the Delta variant that had preceded it, and whether hospitals would soon be flooded with patients. But they could not get the answer from testing, hospitalization or death data, Dr. Walensky said, because it failed to sufficiently distinguish cases by variant.

Instead, the C.D.C. asked Kaiser Permanente of Southern California, a large private health system, to analyze its Covid patients. A preliminary study of nearly 70,000 infections from December showed patients hospitalized with Omicron were less likely to be hospitalized, need intensive care or die than those infected with Delta.

But that was only a snapshot, and the agency only got it by going hat in hand to a private system. “Why is that the path?” Dr. Walensky asked.

The drought of reliable data has also repeatedly left regulators high and dry in deciding whether, when and for whom additional shots of coronavirus vaccine should be authorized. Such decisions turn on how well the vaccines perform over time and against new versions of the virus. And that requires knowing how many vaccinated people are getting so-called breakthrough infections, and when.

But almost two years after the first Covid shots were administered, the C.D.C. still has no national data on breakthrough cases. A major reason is that many states and localities, citing privacy concerns, strip out names and other identifying information from much of the data they share with the C.D.C., making it impossible for the agency to figure out whether any given Covid patient was vaccinated.

“The C.D.C. data is useless for actually finding out vaccine efficacy,” said Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration. Instead, regulators had to turn to reports from various regional hospital systems, knowing that picture might be skewed, and marry them with data from other countries like Israel.

The jumble of studies confused even vaccine experts and sowed public doubt about the government’s booster decisions. Some experts partly blame the disappointing uptake of booster doses on squishy data.

The F.D.A. now spends tens of millions of dollars annually for access to detailed Covid-related health care data from private companies, Dr. Marks said. About 30 states now also report cases and deaths by vaccination status, showing that the unvaccinated are far more likely to die of Covid than those who got shots.

But those reports are incomplete, too: The state data, for instance, does not reflect prior infections, an important factor in trying to assess vaccine effectiveness.

And it took years to get this far. “We started working on this in April of 2020, before we even had a vaccine authorized,” Dr. Marks said.

Now, as the government rolls out reformulated booster shots ahead of a possible winter virus surge, the need for up-to-date data is as pressing as ever. The new boosters target the version of a fast-evolving virus that is currently dominant. Pharmaceutical companies are expected to deliver evidence from human clinical trials showing how well they work later this year.

“But how will we know if that’s the reality on the ground?” Dr. Jha asked. Detailed clinical data that includes past infections, history of shots and brand of vaccine “is absolutely essential for policymaking,” he said.

“It is going to be incredibly hard to get,” Dr. Jha added.

New Outbreak, Same Data Problems

When the first U.S. monkeypox case was confirmed on May 18, federal health officials prepared to confront another information vacuum. Federal authorities cannot generally demand public health data from states and localities, which have legal authority over that realm and zealously protect it. That has made it harder to organize a federal response to a new disease that has now spread to nearly 24,000 people nationwide.

Three months into the outbreak, more than half of the people reported to have been infected were not identified by race or ethnicity, clouding the disparate impact of the disease on Black and Hispanic men.

To find out how many people were being vaccinated against monkeypox, the C.D.C. was forced to negotiate data-sharing agreements with individual jurisdictions, just as it had to do for Covid. That process took until early September, even though the information was important to assess whether the taxpayer-funded doses were going to the right places.

The government’s declaration in early August that the monkeypox outbreak constituted a national emergency helped ease some of the legal barriers to information sharing, health officials said. But even now, the C.D.C.’s vaccine data is based on only 38 states, plus New York City.

Some critics say the C.D.C. could compensate for its lack of legal clout by exercising its financial muscle, since its grants help keep state and local health departments afloat. But others say such arm-twisting could end up harming public health if departments then decide to forgo funding and not cooperate with the agency.

Nor would that address the outmoded technologies and dearth of scientists and information analysts at state and local health departments, failings that many experts say are the biggest impediment to getting timely data.

Alaska is a prime example.

Early in the pandemic, many of the state’s Covid case reports arrived by fax on the fifth floor of the state health department’s office in Anchorage. National Guard members had to be called in to serve as data-entry clerks.

The health department’s highly trained specialists “didn’t have the capacity to be the epidemiologists that we needed them to be because all they could do was enter data,” said Dr. Anne Zink, Alaska’s chief medical officer, who also heads the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

All too often, she said, the data that was painstakingly entered was too patchy to guide decisions.

A year ago, for instance, Dr. Zink asked her team whether racial and ethnic minorities were being tested less frequently than whites to assess whether testing sites were equitably located.

But epidemiologists could not tell her because for 60 percent of those tested, the person’s race and ethnicity were not identified, said Megan Tompkins, a data scientist and epidemiologist who until this month managed the state’s Covid data operation.

Long after mass testing sites were shuttered, Ms. Tompkins’s team was culling birth records to identify people’s race, hoping to manually update tens of thousands of old case reports in the state’s disease surveillance database. State officials still think that the racial breakdown will prove useful.

“We’ve started from really broken systems,” Ms. Tompkins said. “That meant we lost a lot of the data and the ability to analyze it, produce it or do something with it.”

Boom and Bust Funding

State and local public health agencies have been shriveling, losing an estimated 15 percent of their staffs between 2008 and 2019, according to a study by the de Beaumont Foundation, a public-health-focused philanthropy. In 2019, public health accounted for 3 percent of the $3.8 trillion spent on health care in the United States.

The pandemic has prompted Congress to loosen its purse strings. The C.D.C.’s $50 million annual budget for data modernization was doubled for the current fiscal year, and key senators seem optimistic it will double again next year. Two pandemic relief bills provided an additional $1 billion, including funds for a new center to analyze outbreaks.

But public health funding has traced a long boom-and-bust pattern, rising during crises and shrinking once they end. Although Covid still kills about 400 Americans each day, Congress’s appetite for public health spending has waned.

While $1 billion-plus for data modernization sounds impressive, it is roughly the cost of shifting a single major hospital system to electronic health records, Dr. Walensky said.

For the first two years of the pandemic, the C.D.C.’s disease surveillance database was supposed to track not just every confirmed Covid infection, but whether infected individuals were symptomatic, had recently traveled or attended a mass gathering, had underlying medical conditions, had been hospitalized, had required intensive care and had survived. State and local health departments reported data on 86 million cases.

But a vast majority of data fields are usually left blank, an analysis by The New York Times found. Even race and ethnicity, factors essential to understanding the pandemic’s unequal impact, are missing in about one-third of the cases. Only the patient’s sex, age group and geographic location are routinely recorded.

Data Is Missing for Many Virus Cases

Share of C.D.C. coronavirus case surveillance records containing each type of data.

Note: Data is as of Sept. 9, 2022.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention case surveillance data

By Albert Sun

While the C.D.C. says the basic demographic data remains broadly useful, swamped health departments were too overwhelmed or too ill-equipped to provide more. In February, the agency recommended that they stop trying and focus on high-risk groups and settings instead.

The C.D.C. has patched together other, disparate sources of data, each imperfect in its own way. A second database tracks how many Covid patients turn up in about 70 percent of the nation’s emergency departments and urgent care centers. It is an early warning signal of rising infections. But it is spotty: Many departments in California, Minnesota, Oklahoma and elsewhere do not participate.

Another database tracks how many hospital inpatients have Covid. It, too, is not comprehensive, and it is arguably inflated because totals include patients admitted for reasons other than Covid, but who tested positive during their stay. The C.D.C. nevertheless relies partly on those hospital numbers for its rolling, county-by-county assessment of the virus’s threat.

There are bright spots. Wastewater monitoring, a new tool that helps spot incipient coronavirus surges, is now conducted at 1,182 sites around the country. The government now tests enough viral specimens to detect whether a new version of the virus has begun to circulate.

In the long run, officials hope to leverage electronic health records to modernize the disease surveillance system that all but collapsed under the weight of the pandemic. Under the new system, if a doctor diagnoses a disease that is supposed to be flagged to public health authorities, the patient’s electronic health record would automatically generate a case report to local or state health departments.

Hospitals and clinicians are under pressure to deliver: The federal government is requiring them to show progress toward automated case reports by year’s end or face possible financial penalties. So far, though, only 15 percent of the nearly 5,300 hospitals certified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are actually generating electronic case reports.

And many experts say automated case reports from the private sector are only half the solution. Unless public health departments also modernize their data operations, they will be unable to process the reports that hospitals and providers will be required to send them.

“People often say, ‘That’s great, you put the pitchers on steroids, but you didn’t give the catchers a mask or a good mitt,’” said Micky Tripathi, the national coordinator for health information technology at the Department of Health and Human Services.

One Case, Many Data Systems

The effort to document the Fairbanks woman’s Covid case shows just how far many health departments have yet to go.

After the woman was tested, her workplace transferred her nasal swab to the Fairbanks state laboratory. There, workers manually entered basic information into an electronic lab report, searching a state database for the woman’s address and telephone number.

The state lab then forwarded her case report to the state health department’s epidemiology section, where the same information had to be retyped into a database that feeds the C.D.C.’s national disease surveillance database. A worker logged in and clicked through multiple screens in yet another state database to learn that the woman had not been vaccinated, then manually updated her file.

The epidemiology section then added the woman’s case to a spreadsheet with more than 1,500 others recorded that day. That was forwarded to a different team of contact tracers, who gathered other important details about the woman by telephone, then plugged those details into yet another database.

The result was a rich stew of information, but because the contact tracers’ database is incompatible with the epidemiologists’ database, their information could not be easily shared at either the state or the federal level.

For example, when the contact tracers learned a few days later that the woman had been hospitalized with Covid, they had to inform the epidemiology section by email, and the epidemiologists got the hospital’s confirmation by fax.

Ms. Tompkins said Alaska’s problem was not so much that it was short of information, but that it was unable to meld the data it had into usable form. Alaska’s health officials reached the same conclusion as many of their state and federal counterparts: The disease surveillance system “did not work,” Ms. Tompkins said, “and we need to start rethinking it from the ground up.”

The C.D.C. awarded Alaska a $3.3 million grant for data modernization last year. State officials considered that a start, but anticipated much more when a second five-year public health grant for personnel and infrastructure was awarded this summer.

They hoped not only to improve their digital systems, but to beef up their tiny work force, including by hiring a data modernization director.

Carrie Paykoc, the health department’s data coordinator, texted Dr. Zink at 8 p.m. on June 22, after news of the grant arrived.

The award was $1.8 million a year, including just $213,000 for data modernization. “Pretty dire,” she wrote.

“We were hoping for moonshot funding,” Ms. Paykoc said. “We learned it was a nice camper van.”

K-Bye

Dr Anthony Fauci is retiring or not. About a month ago he announced he was “considering” retiring, then this week he confirmed that he is in fact leaving in December. What a great gig that you can announce you are thinking of retiring, then announce it and four months later do so. None of the other Pubic Health Officials left office with a six month time frame in which to continue to collect salary and benefits all while being a lame duck and ostensibly doing what? Quiet Quitting?

I have loathed Fauci for decades and I think Larry Kramer called it decades ago about who he is and what his role in Government is – A Bureaucrat with a medical title/degree. And with that I am not the only one who has issues with Fauci, as this article in Vanity Fair discusses some of the issues that surround Fauci, his secretiveness along with his love of the press. And with that he is mentioned in the book by Michael Lewis, The Premonition, which discusses the early Pandemic Team, called Red Dawn. assembled in a very ad hoc manner and with that their numerous conversations held online with Fauci listening in but not identifying himself to any of the partners. Really? In interviews he said he never paid attention to their emails. Okay then. And numerous mentions of his partaking in White House meetings not wearing a mask. Well again that goes along with his numerous contradictions and endless walk backs during the crisis. And the chaos and idiocy that resulted as a result of the politicking and overall incompetence by the White House that enabled if not provided the star making power of Fauci, who frankly I still question about the funding of Eco Health. But in those early days his constant if not omniprescent talks to media were a comfort to many. I ignored him, found a Biologist and immediately understood what was going on and early on realized the virus parallel to Whooping Cough down to 1:4 spread. So I masked inside and took care of all my own business. I did not wash things down but I was careful when out and about to wash my hands immediately after contacting public surfaces as no one was quite sure how live this was. And I watched many panic and of course fall and yes die. So I was not untouched nor unaware nor believing a word Trump had to say. I can loathe and distrust Fauci the same way I loathed Birx and Redfield, largely because they are Evangelical Christians but they too were equally inept during this time.

We may never know the origin of the virus or how it truly began to transmit outside the lab in Wuhan and with that the less said the less mended. But Fauci’s role in the that lab cannot be overlooked, nor his role with Big Pharma and consulting with all people Bill Gates in the early days about this subject. Why he consulted an man with no medical degree or science background is bizarre if not absurd. And again this made the politics and optics worse for many who believe in crazy conspiracies. That was another issue that cannot be ignored, Gates should never been consulted. But when I agree with Rand Paul that his questioning Fauci is egregious as it resulted in death threats says that Fauci feels above the law (hmm who else thinks that way?) and really anyone in Government should know that the door to that kind of bullshit is possible. Hell they do it to the morons on Big Brother, so shut the fuck up Fauci, and answer the questions with honesty and consistency, of which he has a problem. And yet that kind of behavior is met with utter acceptance and tolerance., which again makes it about politics and less about science.

I agree that we still have a Covid crisis and it has been badly handled from day one to now 907 days in. I started my timeline March 1, 2020 and this is the LA Times version. We have vaccines that are impervious to the new variants, of which I have now lost track. The CDC admits is an organization badly run and administered and with that Fauci now retiring perhaps we can actually find out what went on in the NIH that enabled him to be the most highly paid public official in Government. Really?

I have never been wrong about my feelings about Covid, the mishandling of it and even today I am not sure what is going on. I am getting my second booster as I consider it a marginal protection in the same way the Flu shot is and with that I will hope for the best, continue to mask and ventilate in the public schools as they are dumps and very little of that is frankly a healthy enviro in the best of times so at least it reduces me catching anything. I hate those schools and for the first time the kids within them so I will never stop socially distancing. Again the most misleading phrase ever, it is PHYSICALLY distancing why the rebrand? Was that Fauci?

I can loathe Fauci but then again I had resources and the ability to rely on those who were helpful and practical when I needed it. I laugh to this day the fucking asshole while I was sitting drinking coffee at the High Line and he stopped, stopped in front of me to ask if I forgot my mask. I pointed to the coffee next to me on the bench and to my mask sitting next to it; it said “Kindly Fuck Off” And with that he began to comment and I simply waved my mask at him. This was the insanity of the days of Covid where you actually believed it was transmissible by air outdoors and by touch. And then audacity to confront people which is another contradiction, it raises the bar for contraction. Keep moving folks. The panic and hysteria only fueled by the endless “follow the science” which changed more than Covid variants. Science is not a light switch. Recall the outdoor banning, the curfews at night as if during the day Covid was a lesser threat. Gosh packing people out at 8-5 on the limited streets as they also closed all the parks, golf courses and gyms was a smart idea, while dealing with the concept of public health and the need to be fit. Never been held accountable on that either.

It was insane and that Fauci who access to all the “science” seemed to not know this. In fact it was months and Fauci never commented on that CDC news dump on a Friday when the finally admitted it was airborne, but still believing it was highly transmissible once outside. Okay then. And with that we have never seen actual studies breaking down masking and effectiveness. Well I have, in of all places the Wall Street Journal and sure enough no mask among all parties, 30 minute max exposure. Which is not exceptional when it comes to virus transmission. But then they had it living for what 14 days? Now it is 5 and yet the virus has evolved so how would they know this? They don’t. Or are the rebound positives by both the President and First Lady just an anomaly? And are you still contagious? Maybe that 10 day quarantine is not a b bad idea after all or these tests are not reliable at all. Remember the false idea that you could NOT be asymptomatic and pass Covid. Hmm another false notion. And with that many lives lost as a result.

It was too many cooks in the kitchen on this one. They, being the “Scientists”, know as much as they did day one, which is not much. And with that another expression comes to mind, “Too many Chief’s not enough Indians” problem. I cannot recall how many spokesmodels auditioned for the Covid Authority from local Governments and Public Health Officials that have passed through that revolving door on their way to riches and fame or just well to another office somewhere where they continue doing what they do best and that seems to rely on the CDC. The only disease that was data driven and with that it too was a massive failure due to that inconsistency factor. Fauci not the only one. The First mistake of many in this pandemic. Stop blaming Trump he is gone now and we need to start looking at this in the present tense. And that Fauci is leaving right after the fall midterms is not lost on me as I suspect another commission being held on this. Hell they do these for all kinds of bullshit such as Emails, suicides, killings or just cause they can and I feel Covid will be one one the list. And this is how careers are made or lost.

And with that Big Pharma made out well, very well. We still do not have a workable vaccine for current strains, there are few getting children vaccinated and the booster program is to say the least mildly effective. This again falls to Politics and my Liberal cohorts right now threatening to kill me in the same way the Conservative ones did over Dr. Anthony Fauci.

We allow no differentiation of thought or belief and with that we are still at March 1, 2020, confused, angry and frightened. Both Presidents have contracted Covid, as did their Wives and it appears that both survived, how they fared is the difference as since that time we have some treatments that seem to work. The quarantine time is shorter and recovery is better but for many long term Covid will be another hurdle of which we won’t knock down or fly over any time soon, given our history. I will be happy to see the back of Fauci, and he can take with him Bill Gates, Andrew Cuomo, RFK Jr and the rest who seemed to use to push a personal agenda be that financial or political. That is a disease for which there is no cure.

Trust the Science

That mantra is being repeated constantly throughout Covid and yet unlike a goal post at a football game this one constantly moves. I am not going through the litany of lists to do, not do, do, then maybe do differently and then turn around a do it all over again instructions that have plagued the pandemic from the inception, no make that realization and awareness of the virus in 2019 that began like the virus to spread throughout the world. We have been there done that and done it again. Talk about read the book, seen the movie, bought the T-Shirt, watched the Broadway adaption and the TV show; Covid drama has had way more variants than the virus itself.

From the beginning the lack of science information and true data was lacking. Who had it first? Where did it come from? What did the Chinese know and when? How was this traced and tracked? And why did we not know more from the very beginning? In other words the ultimate WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN AND WHY? And here we are today in year three of a global pandemic with fewer answers and information than when it began.

Okay so we have some stuff. We have tests but now the tests are not the best kind of test. Who is paying for them? Will they pay for them? Where are they? When can we go back to work, to school, to our lives? What about if you are blind, do they work the same? Which is the best kind? Is this going to be fair and equitable or does race and economics come into play, like all things in America? Lots and lots of who, what, where, when and more importantly why, matter in this crucial period. And when and why I have to care about what Bill Gates thinks, is certainly not how I want to end this nightmare.

One of the earliest and continual problems is the endless flow of studies and information coming out from the varying agencies and groups studying the Virus and the effects of each variant and the long term consequences as well as even the origin of SARS-Covid that arrived in 2019 via a wet market in Wuhan or a lab leak that is also in Wuhan. Either/or we know that the virus started in China and subsequently a lock down and a supression of information from China contributed the endless debate over the virus’ origins and its transmission factors. And this continues as many Scientists refuse to share data for whatever reason that stifles healthy debate and of course research. An article in the WSJ (that paywall will not allow me to link)discussed this at length and why this needs to be changed if we are ever to come to terms with finding the DNA of the virus, tracking its variations, proper cheaper vaccines, treatments and tests to stop the spread, if not even find a cure. (That last one will never happen but a girl can dream). And with this let’s note these comments from the article I linked:

Bottazzi said the reason she and her team did not patent the vaccine was because of her team’s shared philosophy of humanitarianism and to engage in collaboration with the wider scientific community. “We need to break these paradigms that it’s only driven by economic impact factors or return of economic investment. We have to look at the return in public health.”

The reality is that we have MANY sources of information and all of it is both accessible and available but the time involved to read and process the information means reading numerous sources, examining the legitimacy of said source and in turn using, and here is the most essential, the ability to critically think and analyze how this information is useful in your decision making process. I bailed early on the CDC, WHO is not much better, the FDA and HHS also seem compromised and with that I turned to Science Journals and other College papers published to see really where these Politicians and their Health Directors were getting said info. In fact at one point the Health Safety Director of Jersey City (who has ZERO credentials in health or medicine) when I asked about this decision that the Mayor had made about being outdoors and curfew, she cited Lancet, a journal I had read and it had nothing about curfews but okay then. When I informed her that I had read it, she never responded. Since that time the Mayor of Jersey City simply kicks any decisions down the road to Murphy who has made little change in his few mandates since his barely won election. Again the stop the spread, flatten the curve are two expressions long since buried with the dead of Covid. At least the Governor of New York made a universal mask mandate and the new Mayor kept the vaccine requirements in place for attendance at public events/places. We have little to none of that here and when Murphy was Cuomo’s water carrier that was a very different situation and sense of cooperation. So again, who do we listen to and why?

And there we are divided and conquered. We are not better off nor the same. I have read more articles and op-ed pieces about how families are not coping, how some are hoping to contract the virus (I have said that repeatedly that there is a strong contingent of that cohort) and how many are simply confused. One Mother spoke of her son not playing with other children because he fears they have “the disease.” Yep that is coming folks the future generation of anti social fear based children who will become adults and all decision making will center on that. And you complain about the current batch of Millennials with their cancel culture, safe spaces and their need to be validated. Just wait.

When I followed the man on Twitter on Friday raving on about Silicon Valley and how little was actually being done to build product, update and further company goals on maintaining a successful future in business, he noted the endless preoccupation with the issues that are dominating the workforce, the social justice platforms, the need to diversify and of course the move towards home work and its long term affects on building a workforce/company culture. This from the Valley of the Dolls that made work and life so co-joined at the hip there was no work-life balance at all. And with that it created a generation of self involved narcissists who have no clue how to fit in with the mainstream world and are more like the child of the parent who fear playing with others as they have “the disease.” Did no one ever watch the HBO comedy on this? Life imitating art imitating life. In that they showed the guru, the leader who is the benevolent one, of Hooli, who was bettering the world through being Hooli. So, when I read the rant of the poster I laughed as it was either taken directly from that and was a spoof or in fact just speaking about his experience and observations, now called “his truth.” As I continued to follow him his posts content and tone changed to a more aggrieved posture, the angry white male conservative, railing against Trans folks and the rest of the “Liberal woke folks” So I was out. No point in debating or arguing, we were done here and I stopped following and just moved on. We sadly are not able to do that of late. We must be right, we must not have anyone challenging our views and confusing if not contradicting them with facts. We must win the argument. Do we get a prize? Joe Rogan certainly is not better example of this. But he and the Infowars maniac, the Bogiano character and numerous other angry white men are there doing their best to ensure they are, all in rivalry for the new Knighthood available now that the true Knight of all Darkness, Rush Limbaugh, died and failed to pass the grail. And that says the same about Cable News and the generation of sycophants and sociopaths it inspired. Remember Glenn Beck he is now Tucker Carlson. Sean Hannity the new Bill O’Reilly. And so it goes.

I for a few weeks questioned my own ability to communicate and to articulate thought. First through a poorly run online writing class that just did not enable me to find my voice and care enough about those others right from the get go, to my posting on Reddit or Washington Post comment page. I realized as I read 90% of the posts they are written with a limited amount of words available( the same problem in my class), that you are providing a simple one sided opinion on another post or article that requires more than “I liked it” or “I hated it.” And that is what our dialogues have become, a minimal amount of words as to less confuse or cause thought. There is no willingness to read or even write a comprehensive thought and if someone disagrees they fault the grammar, often simple errors in spelling or punctuation, versus actual context. Then often the comments are bait and switch as if they are going to find out just who you are really? I assume this may have to do with the Bots and the endless concerns that the Russians/Chinese are putting misinformation out there. And they well may be hence the intense focus on grammar. But when all else fails, they simply rely on insults or respond with irrelevant information. Discussing masks I commented that Newark’s Mayor was a responsive one to his community regarding Covid, from vaccines, to tests to masks and with that I received: Gov Murphy mandated masks in schools. Okay thanks, I know I live here. I was speaking about how the cities in New Jersey were on their own with regards to guidance and you see that conflict in how many respond to businesses or people who choose to follow their own path, which again is often in direct opposition to another. But in real life versus online it is a very different outcome. You cannot logoff from a man or woman pushing you or yelling at you about your mask on a plane, can you? And with that I have learned to push back. My exhaustion from a lifetime of being constantly reprimanded, scolded and told what I should of done, what I should not have do, what I need to do is absurd. You do what you think is right and best in the moment and in the heat of said moment you often find yourself doing the wrong thing. That said you should not pay for this for the rest of your life. And we have become a nation of scolds who are sure it was done too late, not good enough, not smart enough and Goddamn it people won’t like you! We see that in Congress where for years good ideas have gone to die. And there are no adults in the room there, just overgrown children waiting for their allowance, only now with more zeros. So chatter on and I will continue on doing my best to find out what is the best thing I can do for me to survive this. Yeah you do walk alone Jerry. You do.

A Week of Reviews

As the Pandemonium continues, the debates over closing schools rages on. I have little more to say of this subject as a former Teacher, current Substitute I have been in many many schools, literally from the West Coast to the East Coast and the South in between. To say they are all bad is a misnomer, some are better than others and that is the same across the country. The schools that are labeled “Magnet” or some other code word, for White, continue to hold onto their position in a community district as the reason people fight to get into that school. In Seattle that was Garfield High School, a school that was segregated by color and by academics. They claimed balance was achieved by pointing to the “diversity” of enrollment. What they meant to say, “We have a ton of Black kids in the sports programs, tons of White kids in the advanced academics and then the drama and music programs integrate them” Okay then. That was the same as the other achievement school, Roosevelt in the North part of Seattle. Divided by city racial and economic lines, school integration was a success and they took it to the Supreme Court to defend it, and that is how busing ended. Seattle is a joke and farce when it comes to public education and with it that idea that Liberal people are open minded need to know that means in the mind part, the actual doing part, not so much. I could say the same about New York City across the river. The schools are one of the most segregated in the country and that will not change. The NY “scold’ is exactly the doppelganger of the Seattle scold, the city that gave us White Privilege. Yes that is where Robin D’Angelo the author is from, and where she attended a private Catholic University to devise her theory on that subject. Good place in which to do so, a city with few Black residents and most of them are working class as there are few public housing projects as there are here in the East Coast. Even Nashville had more. And that brings me to Nashville. Their one acclaimed high school is Hume-Fogg, right at the top of the epicenter of Broadway, where that one mile of street is home to the cheap beer and cover music of honky tonks that drive the economic wheel of Nashville. The rest of them were unbelievably bad in every sense of the word. I still cannot believe what I experienced, heard and saw there and with that I move onto Jersey City schools. I have been only to two. I tried to get a sub gig a the single acclaimed High School, McNair, but that was canceled. But I look forward to getting in there one day. But it is no different here in the State that is number one for educational achievement and has the taxes in which to support it, but so far I got nothing as I came in during a pandemic and cannot say if that is a part of the problem or just that it turned the rock.

And as the rock turns, so have the numbers of students enrolling in College. The numbers are down in most places and have been declining for years, despite the push as well let’s face it, most cannot afford it. This week came the news that lender Navient, one of the nation’s largest student loan companies, has entered into a $1.85 billion settlement with a coalition of state attorneys general to resolve allegations that it steered borrowers into costly repayment plans and predatory loans. With that, let’s add another story about the Cartel of Ivy League schools that went all Varsity Blues on enrollment qualifications and admissions to favor the rich and privileged. Wow isn’t that shocking? No, not really. And of course we cannot not talk about Colleges without talking about their sports and teams and the costs of doing business with regards to higher education. This is a story about a College town where the Athletics Department make the money and the rest of the school and students get by on way less. Not shocking it is the South, they drive that machine like it is a chance to redo the Civil War and once again it is to the detriment of the Poor and those of Color.

Next up on the hysteria list is the Omnicom variant, what is now version 4.0 of Covid-19. Well entering year three has only ratched up the rage and divisiveness now over Boosters and how often we need them, along with the shortage of testing sites/kits and type of masks and access and affordability of them both. Well if you got the money I got the time and in my bathroom a nice stockpile of tests and types (lab vs rapid) and a variation of K95 masks that I use interspersed with regular surgical or cotton depending upon the type and length of use. Again I read voraciously and have found out that once again not wrong, you have about 15-30 minutes with and without masks before risk of infection occurs. So just fucking mask up properly, and that means covering your nose. Folks that is the entry point and that seems to be part of the problem. That and the insatiable need to push the envelope by going on cruises, vacations, large parties and hanging out in bars. The thought of delayed gratification and careful parsing out of risk oriented behaviors that you can choose from seems to be oblivious to many. There is a middle ground between a monastic life and one full tilt boogie.

What is sad. Tragic. Grim. Pathetic (yes folks I know those are fragments which I use as a literary device) is that the idea of boosting oneself every four months to somehow offset the effects of a disease that morphs more times than a creature in science fiction is going to do the trick of saving the world. And of course this directive is all coming from Big Pharma who have no skin in the game at all, right? And with that here is where I may agree with some who say the science is not all there. I am not sure that putting my aging white cells into overdrive every few months will do a body good and that does concern me. I will stick with the masks and monastic life thanks and just be willing to do so twice a year as Covid is not like a flu with a seasonal life span. But then that is it, I already paid for one set of vaccines and is the government going to continue picking up the tab for the next three years until I turn 65? Then they have to.

So we make changes and adapt, like Covid, but even I have met some tests to make me wonder how long I too can go on like this. I live a fairly altered life with some theater and opera as my one source of activity that I still pursue. But even that is beginning to take a turn and as I have tentatively nine shows left on my schedule I am not sure I am all that thrilled to go. The audiences are highly stressed and the theaters are packed and yet it seems as if we are all there to not get entertained and enjoy ourselves but to prove a point or still get a FOMO moment in. That may be why I am seeing productions close early and others altering or delaying productions. Mrs. Doubtfire had mixed reviews but is the kind of show that draws families and tourists. It was shut briefly over Covid, re-openend but to small houses. I read numerous complaints on a Reddit site about the audience having kids and that they were loud and annoying. Well kids don’t go on Thursday night and if you want to help them go then not at a matinee. Then with that, to Kill a Mockingbird is going on a hiatus and opening up at a smaller theater in June at The Belasco; this theater is the home of one of the most transcendent musicals I have seen this year, The Girl from the North Country. A seatmate looked at me during the intermission and was amazed at the quality of beauty of this work set to the catalog of Bob Dylan. They hope to reopen later. I doubt it and yes it opened prior to the pandemic had rave reviews but see times and tastes changes and the limited shows are packing houses as they fill the MUST SEE classification and that is not just something sustainable. It is time to examine pay-per-view, or live stream to enable theater to continue. I have done both and they are fine ways to see the performances, particularly the two I saw from here. Clyde’s, which is “amusing” but not 100 buck amusing. And the other was a British play with Dominic Gleeson and to say weird would be insufficient and not worth the hour commute to Brooklyn, so the cost was significantly less and in both cases I can wear PJ’s and have a glass of wine, two things I cannot do on Broadway. Even the wine is gone now. So the last thing I need is a scolding glaring New Yorker admonishing me or others for singing along, dancing or other things that inspire audiences. Jagged Little Pill was another casualty for just that, a moderate type of juke box musical with a way better story line also closed. And more have also followed despite reviews but are just not the type that can be supported by the “theater crowd.”

And lastly the idea that we are going to come out of this whole is an utterly absurd notion. We are not. We have a media blaring on about inflation, with the great resignation myth still pumping up the volume, and the days of hoarding are back and may explain some of those grocery shelves bare. I recall the early days of Covid and this again is way too similar. Wages have to increase we are clear about that and there are more pushes to Unionize in Starbucks and again at Amazon. Stores are altering hours and yes restaurants are closing. I still believe that part of the CDC decision that quarantining for only 5 days came out of the idea of workers shortages due to the virus spread being back, but there was no science to defend the idea of first 14, then 10 and now 5. I remember it all and still want to know exactly the length of time one is contagious from point of infection. They have also changed the idea of contraction to infection to 12-24 hours. They actually peddled the idea at one point it was up to 14 days. Folks I never heard of anyone getting sick two weeks later after exposure, I did hear of it within days, I assume and believe 3, a common feature among most viruses. But with the lack of contact tracing and tracking it just was another throw this out there til we figure it out. Clearly three years in we have not.

As for the supply chain woes there are multiple factors here. China for one is still on Covid zero with them locking down entire cities as they prepare for the Olympics in February. And with that manufacturing is down, shipping has been struggling with a lack of containers clearing blocked ports, leading some retailers to develop their own direct line to handle this. Tesla is a good example of running your own chain of command as they have had none of the problems American automakers have faced. But we need to also examine this obsessive nature to have and buy things constantly. I hate my sofa it was a bad purchase but I live with it and when the time comes I will replace it. I can do that with clothes as well I need to have things that fit but I know that in reality I can do without 5 black turtlenecks. We are bored, I get it, I really do but like eating out and traveling I am trying to find some reasonable balance.

We have no idea when this will end, we have little willpower and more importantly a lack of clear leadership and effective communication that enables people to make rational decisions, to take clear action and willing to sacrifice some privileges in which to at least adapt and develop better courses of actions in which to accommodate a virus that is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Give No Fucks

I decided to have that made into business cards and simply pass them out anytime I have an encounter that crosses the line into aggression. I am exhausted trying to please, pretend, ignore or avoid the endless stupidity, rudeness and lack of tolerance by others. This was always a part of society but the pandemic put the accelerator on full when it comes to the issue of public versus private. We can assume that when we are in public settings there are protocols and expectations but those are often not mutually agreed upon, have differences between cultures and can be hard to maintain when again you are not all in agreement about said behaviors and expectations. A good example is walking down the street, it used to be said to walk to the right and watch at corners for crossing lights, traffic etc. The birth of the magical 3×5 card has made that a complete non-existent rule and is why now I see on corners literally pasted on lights, notes on how to cross. Are you fucking kidding me? This is taught in grade school, reinforced by parents and well over time etched into one’s brain. Now I frequently cross against lights but that look both ways guide plays into that and that I boogie regardless, I do not leisurely cross a street, ever.

But today we also have a narc or cancel culture that has crossed the line to obsessiveness. Watching or caring about others behaviors seem to some to be a full time job and I wonder how you are “living in the moment” when you are monitoring everyone else’s behavior. This is why even before the pandemic I rarely subbed in Elementary Schools, the need to tattle to be the hall monitor among the little people is deeply annoying. I know that in fact is a way of reinforcing and cementing what they have learned about expectations and rules but to an Adult who is not in the business of teaching those it is annoying. I was telling the Barista at the coffee shop about how I see children, like annoying co-workers whom I have to tolerate on a daily basis. They just happen to change out like the great resignation where you barely know them and then they quit but a new crew of equally annoying ones are just outside waiting to come in. Kids are annoying and germ carrying and despite all the bullshit about schools being safe, they are not in so many ways when it comes to transmitting disease. Funny how now schools are the lifeblood of the community when a few years ago they were responsible for ignoring bullying and of course violence that became school shootings. Have not heard one single word about that last one? No cause then it cancels the message that schools are safe. Are they? The perpetual conundrum, it is like living in the South where they say one thing, promptly ignore that and do an completely different thing. No it is not hypocrisy to them, it is a way of life. I never got used to it and never will. If anything I am a straight shooter, no pun intended.

Then we have the new Covid protocols and rules which seem to change on a daily basis, thanks to the ineffectual messaging of the CDC. The one thing certain regardless of the Administration in charge, this is one agency determined to remain utterly useless. And yet I hear so many citations and quotes you would think it is Moses come down from the Mount every time Fauci speaks. I have been quite clear in my distaste and distrust of this man since the days of AIDS and he has done little to change my mind. But to white people he seems to be their deity. There are others, you just have to turn off the TV and read some.

So far I have not been wrong yet about Covid. Again this comes from being in schools, teaching seventh-grade science enough you learn a thing or two. Virus have different R Factors and different times of airborne lifespan. In the early days the CDC was certain it was only droplets that led to the spread and that they could travel six feet. I went to a production of Assassins (an oddly prescient musical by Stephen Sondheim that addresses gun violence and the need to be infamous over preserving Democracy…hmmm) and there I could literally see the spit, droplets coming from the mouths of the cast. They flew about a foot. Try spitting let me know. But right there in a small theater for over one hour and half that would have been a close call for superspreader event for all the cast and those sitting in the front row. Again liquid turns into gas that becomes what? Airborne. But the issue is how long does it survive in air? And finally a study was made, it breaks up in about 5 minutes. There is something to know! I was row two and I recalled the Teacher who transmitted Covid, maskless to her students all in the front row during story time. And then the virus (via the now newly infected students) moved literally down row by row. And that again is easy, that happened over the course of the day, through the biggest event of children in a school day – lunch. A table of four children in a cafeteria, one student is pos, the other three will follow. And with this new variant that is a given. 1:4. Old covid 1:3.5 and kids shed faster thanks to smaller nasal passages. And then they go home and share away. One mother in the Washington Post told the story of her son and how he brought home a special treat from school. The entire family of 4 had covid and he was the only one not vaccinated but he like his family were lucky. Note that schools are safe. Sure they are… not.

But regardless of where I sit now in theater I wear a KN95 mask which has a 2.5 hour staying time for infection contraction if NO ONE is wearing masks and the theater require those so I assume they are all garbage and go from there. That is all I need to know and the type of mask and the length of time in presence of an infected person is 15 mins for no mask up to 25 hours in KN95. So if you are running to the store and you are masked even in cloth and the room is varied in type or lack of mask, you have 30 minutes to complete your task. Again type and time matter. That has never changed. In the beginning I went everywhere in a cloth mask with a 30 minute clock to finish the job. And I kept moving. I have changed that now with the theater but the mask has changed. I wear KN95 in schools and I keep windows open as that ventilation issue has not changed either. And now in the gym with others I avoid it but windows if possible or a K95 but frankly working out at three am is fine by me. That has NOT CHANGED.

I am fortunate I don’t live with anyone and my largest risk is where – in the schools. Mask wearing inconsistent, vaccines inconsistent, ventilation inconsistent and the number of bodies roving in and out, constant. And with that being in the public settings. I don’t congregate and find a bar or restaurant where it is me and few others. and yes they exist. I had a Champagne at the Wolfgang Puck’s the other day and it was me and a man seated on the far other end of the bar. That is the way I like it. How long was I there? Less than 30 minutes that much I am certain.

As for New York handling the Covid surge? As they always did, oblivious. Now the spread is rising in the wealthier areas as they believed that rule that they made up that they were impervious to the disease and the vaccine protected them. Sure, whatever. The Cognitive Dissonance exhibited by many New Yorkers, largely the wealthy and white is astounding. They have a sense of entitlement that belies a privilege that enables them to live in one of the world’s expensive cities and regardless of their own net worth they exude an arrogance that Southerner’s would be proud to call their own. They are just missing that level of ignorance that the South has cornered. You cannot live in a major urban city and be that bereft of some intellect but New Yorker’s are not exempt from that at all. That is why the city is often attributed to being the rudest. And yet Southern Hospitality is not all that either but few have lived in both and with that I have this thing called perspective and with that I call it as I see it. So the cards on are on the way and it will save time in trying to have a conversation that leaves me lacking. I recall that from my days in Nashville and I have no desire to repeat them here. For what it is worth I am glad to be living here versus anywhere else.

We Blow and Suck (and not in a good way)

I have from day one never understood the response and the way the Covid pandemic was handled. From massive closures to testing and vaccine requirements we really fucked this up but good. True you could say I am not a Scientist nor expert in any field related to this; however, no one was. And yes I include Fauci in this as his conflicts of interest, his mishandling of AIDS and his constant fluid responses that veered on hilarious and fueled the distrust on the part of the right that leads to today is all part of the problem. Messaging was a true failure and yes we can blame Trump and company. I want to point out that Kushner and Pence were utterly in over their heads and were heads of said “task force.” Let me assure you living in a Kushner owned building tells me quite a bit about that family and their management practices.

As I finish the book, A Premonition, one of the best and earliest ways we could have controlled, studied and understood Covid was when we quarantined Americans in Oklahoma. They could have been tested, monitored and taken samples of the virus to compare to the ones taken in already diagnosed cases in the states, namely the patient in Seattle who had returned from Wuhan and contrast that with the teenager who had not and lived miles away. But nope we did nothing valid or even remotely essential in which to manage a pandemic and its origins. Again you can come to your own conclusions about all of this but folks a lot of this shit was random from the get go, including how the virus was transmitted and how long it sheds before it is no longer contagious to any and all of symptoms and other issues regarding Covid that might have enabled hospitals to better prepare. But nope. We fucked it big time.

I have posted below another excellent editorial about the failures of our Government, both federal and local, in which they handled and mismanaged the virus. Look locally to your own Mayors, your Governors and their Health Department Agents who seemed to contradict, misinform and of course outright lie when it came to facts and knowledge about the virus. See Andrew Cuomo on that one, but he is not alone. The federal agencies were not much better and yes the mainstream media seized on the click bait, the talking points and laid it on thick like cream cheese to a bagel in which to reiterate the lack facts and misinformation they peddled to somehow scoop the competition. Is a fucking pandemic a competition now? Well in ways it was as America endlessly compared itself to China, to Sweden to any other country and its pos rates, its death rates, its testing capabilities and of course vaccine rollouts. It fucked that up too. And the lack of ability to do math helped enable the fear to keep coming and the rage to keep rising.

The debate of origin is still ongoing and I must read day after day how a place found “Patient Zero” in their community who was the first to contract Covid. Believe it or not they are finally coming to terms with that in China, where they have bent over backwards like an Olympic gymnast to hide those facts. The confusion about the origin has led to interesting showdowns in Congress with Rand Paul challenging Fauci about the NIH and their funding of the Wuhan lab and their role in this outbreak, including what is called “gain of function” research in said lab. Read what that is and realize how insane that is. Wow, I agree with Rand Paul on something. But this again is about politics and not about transparency and ethics. Sadly that is the lost message in that debate.

Another is the lab leak theory which will never be resolved unless a Deep Throat comes forward. Scary thought there but in reality early on the supposed signed document by dozens of Scientists disclaiming that has since been amended. And the origin of that is from Zoologist, Peter Dasak, who has many a conflict of interest and competing interests in his role at EcoHealth. He has since amended many an accusation but questions remain and always will. I feel this article in Vanity Fair explains much of the challenges of the issue and Covid’s origin. The journal, Lancet, that it was first published in has its own issues as it was the same journal that published the now false study about how vaccines cause Autism. And we come full circle to that and again the role of politics and vaccines. Just ask Robert Kennedy Jr, a total idiot, on that one. (Bobby turns in grave going but the Ivy League is so great!!)

As I smash liberal icons and totems right and left I cannot stress enough that the GOP and their odd rhetoric is disturbing given that many of them also attended an Ivy League or prestigious institution in which to gain a degree or two and yet they espouse values and thoughts that seemingly contradict facts, knowledge about basic science and any logic or truth about well anything. This too has led to many a fight and more misinformation to dominate the social media landscape. Again, I utterly find social media a morass of morons but hey you be you and go for it. Every book, every journal and every newspaper that goes unread, a smart butterfly earns its wings and will fly away leaving less beauty in its place.

I will one day stress that despite it all somethings good came out of this pandemic and then in turn was lost thanks to the endless violence and guns that resulted washing away any good that may have finally led to real change when it comes to the Militarized Police and their own role in contributing to said violence. But there is the role of the worker, the push and pull of unionizing, raising wages and benefits and other issues surrounding health care and access to it. Even drawing attention to the role of public education and its overwhelming challenges has been something I am thrilled to see. Will it last? Fuck no. But hey you never know. I also think work will change, to perhaps the four day week, to less bullshit about hours and time spent in office and the role of Women, People of Color and the issues about diversity may change that dynamic. So yes some good things did come out of it. But as for a Renaissance no, I have seen little creativity or imagination that supports that. Really Taylor Swift remakes a decade old album and it is highly acclaimed and received? And Travis Scott a Kardashian baby daddy is a superstar? Have you listened to him? But I do think we are moving into a revitalization of an Industrial age where we return to manufacturing and building our own materials and goods. That supply chain block may do some good after all.

So read this essay and ask yourself, could we build back better? I fucking hope so as we really fucked up this pandemic.

After a Pandemic Failure, the U.S. Needs a New Public Spirit

Nov. 18, 2021 The New York Times

By Zeynep Tufekci

No one knows when the pandemic will end. But the worst of it may be over for the United States after this winter. For good reasons — growing vaccine eligibility, boosters and new antiviral treatments — and bad — high levels of prior infections — it’s possible the ongoing Delta surge could be the last major spike in hospitalizations and deaths for the United States.

That does not mean Covid-19 is going away. Cases will likely increase in the winter, when more people are gathered indoors, and persist wherever there are pockets of unvaccinated people who had not been exposed. While there will continue to be spikes and drops — cases are beginning to tick back up — the pandemic in the United States will eventually peter out, possibly in the spring or early summer, its long-term fate subject to viral evolution.

But right now, in the United States over 1,000 people continue to die each day, and over 750,000 American lives have been lost so far — one of the highest Covid death rates in the world.

Americans are sharply divided on how to act. There are highly vaccinated areas with few cases where some people remain unsure if they can let down their guard at all and other areas with low vaccination rates and high community transmission where people are living as if it were 2019.

The pandemic has proved to be a nearly two-year stress test that the United States flunked, with an already distrustful populace exposed to a level of institutional failure that added fuel to the angry battles over how to respond. Dr. Martin Cetron, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention veteran of battles against Ebola in Africa, described people’s losing confidence during an epidemic as a “bankruptcy of trust.” Right now, America is bankrupt.

It once seemed that if the United States ever faced a viral pandemic, it would be more than up to the challenge. Just weeks before the first Covid-19 cases were reported in China, the United States was ranked No. 1 out of 195 countries in pandemic preparedness by experts convened by Johns Hopkins University, The Economist and others. After all, the C.D.C. is one of the most respected public health institutions in the world, and the United States is home to many of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies and academic research institutions.

The fact that the United States fared so poorly, despite all the seeming advantages that dazzled those experts, is a profound sign of how decayed our institutions and capacity have become. To understand how we fell so far short and to navigate a second full Covid winter and future pandemics and challenges requiring collective action, it’s important to review the outbreak’s early days to see why the United States — once considered the global leader in public health — is floundering in mistrust, paranoia and exhaustion.

One of the most dangerous things about Covid-19 is not necessarily what it does to any given person who is infected by the coronavirus but that someone can be contagious and not even know about it for days — if at all. The disease can spread before symptoms start and sometimes even without any ever appearing.

At the start of the pandemic, this meant that the number of people who needed to be tested would be far, far greater than the number of people who were visibly sick after suspecting that they came into contact with the virus. This was the first major test for the Food and Drug Administration and the C.D.C. — develop a test and deploy it at scale — and it was one they resoundingly failed.

Their delay in developing a sufficient number of reliable tests and in systematically collecting surveillance data meant that health responders didn’t have a clear sense of where the virus was spreading as it started to rip across the country. But even if they didn’t necessarily know where the virus was, there were simple precautions that officials could advise anyone to take, such as wearing masks. This was another critical test the United States failed. The C.D.C. didn’t advise people to wear masks until April 2020, when more than a thousand people a day were dying from Covid and many thousands more were infected.

Yet another failure is America’s approach to rapid at-home tests. Here, they are expensive, the supply is fickle, and the public remains confused about their use. The home tests can’t detect the minute levels of virus that the lab tests can find but do return positives when viral loads are high. That means they can alert people within minutes when they are likely to be most infectious. With frequent and widespread use, they can help dampen spread. While many countries have embraced at-home tests as a way to have a more normal daily life — in Britain you can get a pack of tests free, and other countries sell them in vending machines — the United States only recently started increasing their availability and working to reduce their costs.

For too long, F.D.A. officials authorized only a few tests and required a prescription for them. Experts argued tests that failed to detect all infections would give people a false sense of confidence. It was similar to the argument made by officials who initially said masks would make people ignore other public safety measures: The public wasn’t to be trusted. Instead, regulators denied people crucial, if imperfect, tools rather than educate and empower them.

That distrust of the public could not have enhanced the public’s trust in officials, which was so vital, and so lacking, when the government urged people to get vaccinated. This is true across the political spectrum. When it was reported in September 2020 that some vaccines might be available by early November, it was often Democrats and liberals who expressed great skepticism about the speed and suspected the Trump administration was pressuring regulatory agencies to take shortcuts with safety.

Nonetheless, the vaccines were approved in record time, produced on a significant scale and distributed via a sizable public-private effort that included everything from sprawling National Guard sites to the aisles of pharmacies.

But despite having one of the earliest and most abundant supplies of vaccines, the United States has a vaccination rate that isn’t in the top 50 in the world — lower than many, many other countries that started much later.

Some of the reasons for our relatively low vaccination coverage trace back to the dysfunctions of our medical system. The United States is the only developed nation without universal health coverage, and our medical system continues to disproportionately fail people from minority backgrounds; such shortcomings don’t help develop the necessary trust.

But there is another dynamic. Many Republican politicians and pundits have chosen to pump hostility to vaccines and public health institutions as a platform for their supporters to rally around. Some of their claims are outright false or wildly misleading, but as with such demagogy historically, sometimes they capitalize on existing failures.

All this finds a ready home on online platforms designed to optimize for how much time and effort we spend on them. Even before the pandemic, doctors were begging tech platforms like Facebook and YouTube to take action about the rampant vaccine misinformation on their sites that not only existed but thrived. Leaked internal documents show that Facebook’s own researchers were worried about how rampant vaccine misinformation was on the platform during the pandemic. The public has even less insight into YouTube, but it only recently pledged to ban all vaccine misinformation on its platform — a step taken almost two years into the pandemic. This information environment fuels tribalization and demagogy the way warm water intensifies a hurricane. This, in turn, further degrades the capacity for mending our dysfunctional governance.

Given all the missteps and whiplash, it’s no wonder so many Americans are frustrated and confused — even the ones who have been doing their best to follow official guidelines.

So what now?

In the absence of trust in their leaders and peers, people will likely continue to deal with the virus the way they have been, by keeping themselves bubbled or ignoring it altogether. Even within my social circle, which is fully vaccinated, some people’s dispositions toward the virus remain unchanged from the summer or even before, no matter their personal risk level or changing conditions. Some remain highly cautious, while others have practically tuned out the pandemic.

Such constancy despite changing circumstances is not necessarily a good sign. While certain precautions need to remain, especially when transmission is high, it’s reasonable for fully vaccinated Americans to stop living as if they were in a prevaccine era (but also be ready to adjust if the conditions change). But such flexibility requires deep trust in timely guidance.

Meanwhile, not even a rate of 1,000 deaths a day has been enough to motivate all eligible people in high transmission areas to get vaccinated and stop arguing over simple courtesies like wearing a mask indoors in public places. More should also be done to protect employees who cannot work from home; vaccine mandates have been effective, and measures such as free workplace testing, better ventilation standards and paid sick leave can help.

I’ve made peace with the idea of getting an eventual breakthrough infection myself — my risk for severe outcomes seems low and similar to other things I do in life — but I would hate to pass Covid-19 to someone else. I’ve been using rapid tests, especially before meeting people to spend time with them indoors, despite their outrageous price of around $12 or more a pop. I’ve urged everyone I know who is higher risk to get a booster. My workplace mandates vaccines for everyone working in the office without an exemption, and masks indoors where social distancing is not possible. I wear surgical masks in offices, stores and restaurants nowadays, but if I felt spooked about conditions somewhere, I’d put on my N95.

So Thanksgiving is on, and this year even the youngest at the table will have had a first shot, and the few higher risk people have had a booster. Yes, I’ll be breaking out the rapid tests, and I have an appropriate-size HEPA filter in my house.

But you can see how individualized this all is. It’s based on my working conditions, the tests I can afford, HEPA filters I know how to buy and can pay for and vaccines abundant in the country where I live.

My household may be the exception, not the norm.

When the pandemic is finally over, what will remain is not only 800,000 or more Americans dead but also a country too riven to appreciate our survival and a world where even the more privileged are surrounded by avoidable death and suffering.

In her book “March of Folly,” the historian Barbara Tuchman describes civilizations that collapsed not because of insurmountable challenges but because “wooden-headedness” took over: Those in charge were unable to muster the will and vision to make the necessary course corrections in the face of difficulties.

But that’s not the only possibility.

After the horrors of World Wars I and II and the Great Depression between them, there was rebuilding of democracies, including constructing a public sphere geared toward preventing the rise of fascism, an expanded safety net and great reductions in income inequality. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t what you’d guess would come next, looking at the smoldering ruins of 1945.

Arguably, it’s our successes that have lulled us. Few remember all that or what it was like to fear polio or smallpox. Covid-19 was a reminder that humanity’s upper hand on infectious diseases was an illusion.

Fixing all this requires an interconnected effort that unleashes a virtuous cycle. Rebuilding the public health infrastructure and creating a sane, sensible health care system in which we don’t keep spending more than any other developed nation for poorer results will help restore trust and improve our lives. Fair taxation policies would reduce income inequality and generate resources to execute these measures. We can investigate what went wrong, with an eye to actually fixing it instead of simply finding scapegoats. Regulation and oversight can better align the incentives of social media platforms with that of a healthier public sphere. We’ve done that before with transformative technologies.

There’s been significant underfunding of public health in the United States, along with other parts of our national infrastructure, but the problem is deeper than just lack of resources. Former officials frequently end up working for the very companies they oversaw, often helping them stave off regulation or acting as lobbyists writing laws to benefit their companies.

Many politicians from both parties are unwilling or incapable of reining in this process; it’s reasonable to assume that’s at least partly because they are cozy with powerful interests that help them get elected.

Beyond this bipartisan back-scratching, Republicans, who are particularly averse to regulatory oversight and strong government spending, currently wield power disproportionate to their share of voters. Cushioned from electoral accountability, some Republican politicians have taken an attitude toward the pandemic that borders on nihilism: whatever fuels or entrenches the tribal anger.

So necessary ambitions can likely be blocked by those in power who prioritize their short-term interests. Maybe they will think their wealth will let them live out their lives in compounds, isolated from the deterioration around them.

But they will soon realize that even a first-class ticket on the Titanic is still a ticket on the Titanic.

We need a new public spirit: more people willing to recognize things aren’t going to get better unless we fight for it. It’s not easy, but we have nothing to lose but a lot of wooden-headedness and the next catastrophic failure. If this path could be taken, we already have everything we need — wealth, science, technology, know-how. It might not mean the end of pandemics, but it could mean there’s not another one like this.

Take me to your leader

This is the new excuse, explanation or reasoning behind well anything but particularly vaccinations. There are the Celebrity endorsements which seem to have as much meaning as the question, “Do you want fries with that?” As either you do or you don’t and the offer is not so much one as a reminder. Then we have of course the politics of allegiance whatever that means and lastly the trauma of a tale either told or known that for some reason has been associated with having a vaccine that could protect your health and those around you. Yes we know that having an anal wart removed was tough but what has that got to do with this?

As the cries of help resound through the universe from medical staff who cannot find the services and treatments available to the newly hospitalized, going “Oh shit this is real man” to the families who have lost members as they were just waiting to see if anyone else died, not from Covid but from the vaccine, to only find out that people were still dying from Covid, so whoops my bad!

Two essays yesterday resonated with me that discussed the hyper hysteria over vaccines, one from a woman in Kansas who knows that they quit believing in OZ a long time ago and how this divisive an issue is one that really has no reason to be. I recommend reading What To Do with our Covid Rage as again this is not an issue where there is one right way or wrong way, there is just no way to reconcile the rage that the vaxxed and the unvaxxed have for one another. This is no longer about politics it is about personhood and control.

The other from one of my favorite contrarians and skeptics about how Covid has been handled from the outset, Zeynep Tufekci, The CDC Needs to Stop Confusing the Public. There is so much misinformation and contradicting data and much of it coming from the CDC and the NIH spokes daddy, Fauci, that I quit listening to them a long time ago. Well I never did but I did read it and then used it to fact check and double check from other sources with regards to their analysis that it enabled me to make the decisions I needed to adapt my own behavior. I have attended quite a few events and most all require vaccines and the outdoor ones that haven’t are well outdoors. I don’t congregate in packed bars and restaurants unless I feel that comfortable with the ventilation or the actual vax status of the region. So thanks RI for being heavily vaxxed! But in all honesty we are back to ground zero when it comes to handling the pandemic and that quarantining and curfews will do nothing to stop the spread. Do they even use that idiotic expression anymore?

When the leadership has handed over the messaging to a beleaguered institution there is a problem as it will not be any better overnight with a new messenger and frankly the overturn of medical health professionals across the country have proven that yes you can shoot the messenger. Mask, no mask. Booster, no booster. Variant transmission, no and then yes. Well I really think Provincetown is a great test study for how to not party. This happened last year on Fire Island and what have we learned here? That Gays and viruses are magnets. Boys, please don’t be boys be men and mask up everywhere.

Did they check the Lallapalooza event, the Newport Folk or Jazz Festival? I am going no with that as I attended one and heard nothing so if there was an outbreak they should of as they had our data and our vaccination info. So we are on our own as again there is no fucking contact tracking/tracing and never was. It was a private citizen in Provincetown who did it and again the Gay community has a well established protocol of this type of action and duty when it comes to tracking virus spread. I wonder how many were also on anti viral drugs like Prep and did that have an affect? Again we will never know shit about Covid and why it seems to do more damage to faces of color and to Gays (yes that is a fact) than to aging white fucks who think they are invincible. Yes, I had that discussion too in RI where a man claimed ALL the deaths were with those who had preexisting conditions. I assume living was one said “condition.”

So who are the experts one turns to when seeking advice rergarding the vaccine? The Media? Politicians? Doctors? Scientists? Teachers? Celebrities? Religious Figures? All of the above? When I read this article I was shocked it took several deaths before intervening. Better late than never I guess.

Florida church reeling after six members die within 10 days amid spike in cases

By Maria Paul The Washington Post August 8 2021

Florida church hosts vaccine drive after six of its members die of covid-19 in 10 days

For George L. Davis, a bishop at Impact Church in Jacksonville, getting vaccinated against the coronavirus was an act of faith. He says that he believes in divine creation, and that the shot is a miracle — a sign of God guiding scientists in their attempts to curb a devastating virus. Yet, for his nondenominational congregation, the provenance of a lifesaving tool was not as obvious.

The hesitancy was clear from the beginning. When cases surged, some of Davis’s congregation, which numbers more than 6,000 parishioners, had a different idea of the pandemic’s effects. One spat back false information to the pastor. Others did not trust government and health officials. Davis said he tried to bridge the gap — enacting safety measures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, encouraging vaccinations when doses were made available, and discussing the virus on social media.

Still, he said, some did not listen. Six of the church’s members, Davis said, died of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, in 10 days. Four of them were healthy and younger than 35; all were unvaccinated.

“It’s very frustrating knowing that these were avoidable deaths,” he said. “You also don’t want the loved ones who are left behind to feel horrible and don’t want to seem like I’m putting guilt onto them, but the reality is, I know that these people would still be here had they gotten the shot.”

It was the devastation that “emboldened” Davis to organize a vaccination drive after each of Sunday’s three services, he said — an unusual move for a Black pastor when the pandemic has divided people across spiritual, ideological and racial lines. While Florida is among the states with the highest infection rates during the new virus surge, Davis’s attempts underscore widespread vaccine hesitancy and the ongoing debate between science and some religious leaders — one that has been especially exacerbated by the pandemic.

In Davis’s experience, medicine and faith are two sides of the same coin.

When doctors diagnosed sickle cell disease in his daughter when she was an infant, they said she was probably not going to live long. Davis and his wife, who is a senior pastor at Impact, prayed, fasted and took Communion every day for two years. At the same time, they researched procedures that could help their baby.

Now, after a bone-marrow transplant, she’s 19.

“The miracle is no less of a miracle if medical science has to kick in to finish it off,” he said. “For me, that’s a little bit of a turning point, because I’ve seen God do it with no medical help up until a point and then finish it off with medical help. And that’s what I [see] in this virus, too.”

Since the pandemic began in the United States, Davis’s sermons have urged protection and emphasized the coexistence of science and faith. For Davis, the need to care for one another led him to another role: a trusted adviser in a church where about 75 percent of parishioners are Black, a demographic that struggles with a legacy of distrust in medical institutions.

The Tuskegee Study from the 1930s to the ’70s — a secret experiment conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service to research the progression of syphilis in Black males without treatment — is one major reason health officials’ outreach in Black communities has suffered, Davis said. Many of his parishioners refused to get vaccinated at a government-run vaccination center in front of the church, prompting the pastor to organize a campaign in March.https://0341bd6a096d40f17258a9cead25cede.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

“My pushback was, ‘I promise you, we’ll get you a good turnout because there are a lot of people who are more comfortable coming to their church for a vaccine than they would be going to a government-run health location,’ ” he said. “And it turned out to be true. Some 1,000 people registered and 800 showed up.”

Davis’s observation is consistent with a March study by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute. It found that about 36 percent of Black Protestants who are vaccine-hesitant said faith-based approaches would make them more likely to get vaccinated. About 70 percent said they would turn to a religious leader for information about vaccination.

The success of Davis’s first vaccine drive, combined with devastation about the deaths of parishioners, inspired him to organize a second one for Sunday, when a panel of University of Florida experts was present to answer questions, he said.

More than 200 people were vaccinated, and 35 percent of them were teenagers.

“Several people who told me out of their own mouth, ‘I wasn’t comfortable doing this, but because I’m here in my church, because I’ve heard my pastor talk about it, I’m more comfortable doing it,’ ” he said. “And it isn’t just the elderly folks. It was a lot of young people, who are also being affected by it.”

Unvaccinated young people are increasingly among the most severe cases of the coronavirus’s easier-to-spread delta variant, Mary Mayhew, president of the Florida Hospital Association, told The Washington Post on Wednesday.

“We now are seeing healthy 25-year-olds in the hospital in intensive care and on ventilators,” she said. “The delta variant has been ripping through a younger unvaccinated population and putting them into the hospitals.”

Cities with young populations have seen significant spikes in cases. Jacksonville faced a surge representing “200-plus percent of their previous highest peak,” Mayhew said last week.

According to data from Baptist Health, the number of children admitted in July more than quadrupled from June. Across Baptist Health’s five-hospital system, 579 covid-19 patients — including 19 children — were reported Sunday. Among the 116 patients in intensive care, five were children. An unvaccinated 16-year-old with no underlying health problems died Thursday at Baptist’s Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville, the company said.

The increase in hospitalizations is not unique to Jacksonville. With 13,793 patients — a 30 percent uptick since last week — Florida is the state with the most hospitalized people in the country, according to data from The Post’s coronavirus tracker.

Hospitals statewide have been overwhelmed, Mayhew said, but not only as a result of the pandemic: Covid-19, other illnesses and a staffing shortage have made the state’s health-care problems dire.

“This is why we need people to get vaccinated,” Mayhew added.

States have offered incentives — including free doughnuts, beer and $100 savings bonds. Celebrities have lent their high-profile endorsements. Yet mistrust lingers, baffling officials.

Although a clear-cut answer may take time to find, the Impact Church pastor said the solution may have been nestled within communities the whole time.

“A lot of people look up to the entertainers and media moguls, but when it comes to trust, they trust the people in their communities,” he said. “You know, your pastors, your barbers, your friends — those folks that you know have been there with you through some real tough times after.”

Heroes Worship

For an Atheist this comes from scripture, Exodus 20:3: You shall have no other Gods before me. But there are many texts throughout the Book of Myths that discuss this issue of the Worship of False Gods, I will let you take your pick. How I see it is that we at times for those who are of faith, neglect to worship the Holy Spirit and in turn seek out another form of idol in which to vest our passions, faiths and beliefs. Again that would be the idea that we are a Monotheistic system and not say Hindu or Roman which was Polytheistic. But in that aspect we could apply this to mankind and worship idols who come from the land of entertainment – say Donald Trump. And again to point out much Christian imagery was present at the Capital on January 6th and many Evangelicals have believed he was sent from God to save “babies” “them” “America” “fill-in-the blank” and with that are still holding on to some bizarre misguided belief that he will be returning to Office to right the wrongs that came out of a free and fair election.

I would say Hero Worship falls in line with this concept, the endless hysteria of Medical Professionals who were doing their job in a field they chose to pursue during Covid was I feel misguided and nonsense. We did that on 9/11 and we loved Police and then well, moving on. And we love our sports stars and they well do human things and we turn on them. And when anyone seems to make a mistake that is not of our tribal belief we also now “cancel”them. What that means is of course vague but it usually means they are to never work again. And then what? Unclear, but I assume if -can-be-fired-for-teenage-tweets-nobodys-safe, so we walk into the desert and die. The Dog Walker of Central Park is one who needs to as well I guess and anyone who well does stupid shit, like an AP reporter who tweeted shit in college and the former Teen Vogue Editor who did as well. They are to do what again? Crawl on rocks or do a Cersai and walk naked through the village and be abused until they are forgiven? We have some real problems when it comes to serving the time and then moving back into society. Just ask real former Convicts who try to do just that. We love our moral outrage and victimization culture and this is now even more apparent with the lack of oversight and investigation into the January 6th insurrection/riot/”incident.”

I have real problems with my peers on both the right and left side of the political spectrum as they simple refuse to see and find middle ground on anything. Here is another example of good white liberal behavior gone amok with no real solution or accountability, Portland Oregon. Now I am not going to reprint the article or any today as once again when commenting on a subject I was asked where I got my information, the implication being I found it on the interwebs. When I cited The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, I was asked to summarize some of the points I had extrapolated from them. This is not the first time nor likely the last. I simply said, you can read them on your own if inclined and in turn make your own conclusions. This is where we have failed to provide a thought based educational system that enables one to read and analyze different sources and come up with some fact based reasoning in which to form an opinion. I am also from this point on when someone does ask me my opinion, I will say I have none, as if it doesn’t affect me personally I see no point. I can’t wait to hear that response!

Today the Washington Post printed a summary excerpt of the emails of Dr. Fauci during the nascent days of the pandemic. Now I have real problems with him, and the rest of the Government agencies during that time and I do believe that he and Birx were trying but at some point Politics and Bureaucracy demands dictated their abilities to render a true unbiased scientific response. Dr. Fauci, to me, became the Chrissy Tiegan of the NIH and his endless appearance and interviews were truly off putting. If he was vested in knowing about Covid, its origin, its contagion, and the rest he should be less on the screen more in the lab. I knew at one point he was a talking puppet and it was the Master of None who was the hand in his back. When I read the article there was some of the same idol worship that drove him, much like Cuomo had in that period. The man is 80 and frankly is not a person many connect to but to the left/liberals he is an idol and you cannot make even a concerned comment as then the attack dogs commence and exactly like the right, they dogpile and insult anyone who has the audacity to contradict or question their hero worship. It is at times highly entertaining when you don’t respond as they wish and at points they finally give up. But the trolling and nasty verbal diatribes are not exclusive to Conservatives by any stretch.

What I did comment on was the exchanges between Bill Gates, Fauci and Gates Foundation infectious disease specialist. No one actually provided me with any valid responses just the usual defense of Gates as the amazing “Philanthropist” he is. Again, does anyone know how to Google and find legitimate sources. Just last week there was an editorial about Gates Foundation in the New York Times. I thought Liberals were the well educated and well read ones? I guess not. So the audacity and arrogance that I often apply to the right wing and religious, can apply here as well. The only difference is that the left asks me at least to summarize and highlight the cliff notes version. Fuck off is what I really want to say.

Fauci made many errors in the early days, and fan fucking was one. But a still tongue is a wise head and at one point he should have taken a dose of shut the fuck up until the CDC, the NIH and the HHS knew something of relevance. And that is only now coming to light. I do get that Trump and the staff of incompetents were doing their best to cover, obfuscate and deny truth and facts but the competition was a fuel to that. Trump might have shut up had Fauci and Brix and the rest stayed off the news as much. Snopes made it point to debunk and find Fauci’s contradictions and there was this damming editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine with one of his co-authors, Evangelical ass/CDC Director Redfield, that well denied the idea that a pandemic was coming: This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively.² Wrong there fuckwits. And he followed this up with a podcast reiterating that and there is more, there is always more. And more. I am not sure the Nurses in this story agree with Dr. Fauci. And this explains why I have never liked Fauci, he is no Saint. And Fauci at least acknowledged their combative relationship, and again, I can respect Fauci but idolize him, no. And now as the story emerges about the lab in Wuhan once again Fauci cannot shut the fuck up.

And on that note, another “canceled” reporter, Donald McNeill, who had been covering the outbreak at the Times has written on Medium that it may be worth investigating the source and issues at the lab in Wuhan. So when a skeptic can be persuaded it may be worth finding a no comment or taking a little break like Chrissy Tiegan did from Social Media. It did not last long but hey try.

I get that emotionally and intellectually we have to vest in someone who at least seems intelligence and has a sense of the bigger picture with regards to the “all.” But if you believe or think any Bureaucrat, elected or appointed does then you need to name three that have proven and done so in your lifetime. Yes even FDR fucked up. And so has Fauci, and I am not alone in this and yes we can agree with even those we most often disagree. But on this statement, nothing rings more true: But in any event, America no longer needs a saint of the Science. The Resistance turned on and discarded every previous hero, whether it was Michael Cohen, Michael Avenatti, or even Robert Mueller. Dr. Fauci broke his own rule. He got political, and now he’s about to get into trouble.

Go figure. False Gods and Idols are just that. Knowledge is power and with that get some and feel empowered. And stay off Twitter.

A Memorial

This marks a year from the death of George Floyd, in that same year 965 others who were killed at the hands of Police, some known some not. We need to know their names as well.

And with that I will say that Police Reform in some States has moved forward while the federal reform promised has stalled as the issues surrounding the rise of gun violence, crime and physical assaults on people of color and of faith has risen as well, making everyone still angry, still afraid and still looking for answers.

I don’t think anyone in this country reads anything. I have said that my loathing of Millennials leads me to have a cognitive bias towards that Generation as they are very demanding of safe spaces and in mandating change yet few of them seem to have ever read a history book, picked up a newspaper or read a journal that covers said issues in detail. To note I was discussing Feminism and a young millennial declared Camile Paglia, her Feminist idol, (a farce given her views she is not), so when I referred her to an current article about Camille Paglia, who is now Trans and still not a Feminist, (odd) said: “That is a lot of words could you just sum it up for me with the important part.” I refused and said, “Try reading, you may learn something.” Not the first time I have had that discussion with that group, proffering articles and magazines and knowing that they are tossed aside upon my departure. The young man keen on getting into my pants was discussing this very issue of Police reform and I gave him an article from the NYT to review. He never discussed it and then wondered why I was not ever going anywhere with him. Truly what would our convos other than him touching my hair or commenting about me getting laid would we have? Oh yeah the part about what he wants on his sammie after he is done servicing me.

And with that the barometer of how I feel about sex and sexuality is my own and I would never presume, just like my own Atheism, that anyone has to agree with me nor even understand its history, but just treat me with respect and know that I have come to these places with full knowledge and time spent working through it. This folks is what is called “my truth.” And for many all of this is an ongoing learned process through encountering others not like you, reading and more importantly taking the time to do the work. Name me three millennials who do. Yeah, me neither. So the protests for George Floyd, were in my mind for all the thousands who have come before and since.

And with that we now are coming to day 438 of Covid Theater, the drama never ends even as we begin to resume to normal. There will be mass evictions I suspect and despite the demand for employees we are seeing fewer return to the work force by choice due to the low wages and crappy working conditions that existed prior to the pandemic. The exodus from the cities will continue and the debate about a centralized workplace will also be examined as this is not simply a light switch that turns back on. Even Biden is considering making some Government positions to permanently remain off site. Again he never ceases to amaze me each day.

And what about Covid itself, will we ever get the answers and the truth about the virus? Yes and no. We still have quite a large failure on the part of the Trump Administration to acknowledge their failures regarding this among many, don’t look for a January 6th commission anytime soon, so it will largely become a project I suspect for scholars to analyze with regards to the mistakes and severity of it all in decades to come. But the real truth, the origin of the virus itself is coming to light. I early on communicated with a Biology Professor who was sure that it was not Zooinotic and that it was an airborne flu-like virus that was almost random in the way it affected individuals who contracted it and at that point they were unclear as to the length and distance it traveled and remained in air. Since then we have decreased the space between people from 6 to 3 and the time frame was once considered 30 minutes now due to variants sits at 15. The CDC has finally acknowledged it is airborne and admitted well into the pandemic it was not tactile, that asymptomatic transmission is possible and yes folks being outdoors is the least likely way to contract Covid. Poor ventilation, air circulation, veracity of the virus in the host and close, prolonged contact is the source which again months spent on cleaning and other bullshit means, such as temp taking and erecting barriers did nothing to actually STOP THE SPREAD.

There is now clear information coming out that the lab in Wuhan as early as November 2019 had cases of two workers with the same symptomatic illness and in turn hospitalized. This is from Pro Publica’s research and collection of information regarding Covid.

Early in the pandemic, President Donald Trump and some scientists speculated about the possibility that SARS-CoV-2 was created and accidentally released by Chinese virologists doing some sort of research. That hypothesis was quickly and vehemently dismissed by the scientific establishment, which noted that the genetic makeup of the virus showed no signs of human tampering. I encouraged several ProPublica reporters last year to poke around on a slightly different theory: What if the beginnings of the pandemic were the result of a lab accident in which scientists studying the characteristics of coronaviruses inadvertently became infected with a wild virus and spread it to others. Lab leaks are far more common than one might think and have occurred in the U.S. elsewhere. Our reporting turned up some officials who shared that suspicion. But none could offer any direct evidence that it had happened. This situation is among the least favorable arenas for investigative reporting — a debate in which all sides are drawing conclusions from minimal evidence released by a foreign government renowned for its tight control over information. The credibility of the lab leak theory wasn’t helped by the breathless coverage by Trump-supporting media outlets that took as given China’s culpability. We moved on, but, partly based on my experience reporting on germ warfare, I continued to believe that a lab accident was one possibility among many that would explain the pandemic’s origins. In the year since, theories about the virus originating in a lab have gained traction, even among those who initially doubted it. A growing number of scientists feel China was less than transparent in its recent dealings with a visiting World Health Organization team that was attempting to gather evidence on the beginnings of the pandemic. In a May 14 letter to Science magazine, 17 prominent researchers from around the world called on the WHO to look more closely at the lab theory. “We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data,” they wrote. “A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest.” Days later, Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch, one of America’s most respected epidemiologists, added his name to the letter. “There just aren’t any answers yet, one way or the other, about how the coronavirus that’s now ravaging the world began,” Lipsitch told WBUR, a Boston radio station. “What we are saying is that the existing evidence has not ruled out a laboratory origin, nor has it ruled out a natural origin. And there’s really no positive evidence, either. It’s just pretty much a lack of evidence right now.” The absence of facts fueled a frenzy of internet speculation, a fair amount of which has focused on the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a government-funded lab. To conspiracy theorists, it cannot have been a coincidence that China happened to be doing research on coronaviruses just a few miles from where the pandemic broke out. The head of the institute, Dr. Shi Zheng-li, reminded me of many of the dedicated scientists I interviewed for the book “Germs.” Press accounts portray her as someone deeply committed to the battle against microbes. After China was hit by the SARS coronavirus in 2003, Shi led teams of researchers into caves to capture and take samples from bats that might be harboring more dangerous strains of the disease. When an inexplicable outbreak of pneumonia struck Wuhan in December 2019, she worried that a coronavirus had somehow escaped her lab. She told Scientific American that she frantically reviewed records about the genetic makeup of her samples. Li said she was enormously relieved when she learned that SARS-CoV-2 was only 96% similar to its nearest relative at the institute — decades of evolution away from a match. “That really took a load off my mind,” she said in her interview with Scientific American. “I had not slept a wink for days.” The Chinese came up with the now well-known theory for the origin of SARS-Cov-2. It began in bats and jumped to an intermediate animal that was sold at a wet market in Wuhan. Questions quickly arose about that narrative. Chinese authorities had destroyed all of the animals at the wet market soon after the outbreak began, and researchers have never been able to identify the intermediary animal that transmitted the virus to humans. Then, the British medical journal The Lancet published a paper that poked another hole in the wet market theory. It reported that nearly one-third of the people initially treated in Wuhan hospitals, 13 of the first 41 patients, had no link to the market or to one another. The uncertainty about the origins of the pandemic have only deepened over the past year. More facts emerged about Shi’s training, including that she worked with scientists who spliced together coronaviruses, creating the same sort of chimera viruses the Soviet germ warriors were experimenting with back in the 1990s. The 2016 paper documenting that research is now a central element in some of the online conspiracy theories. It had what turned out to be a prescient title. “SARS-like” coronaviruses, it warned, were “poised for human emergence.” The likely source? Chinese bats. As ProPublica President Dick Tofel likes to say, investigative reporting always begins with a question, not an answer. On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal quoted U.S. intelligence reports that three members of the Wuhan institute had become sick in November 2019 and required hospital care for unspecified illnesses. The head of the institute, Shi, has said that all of her lab workers tested negative for exposure to SARS-CoV-2, a result some analysts viewed with skepticism given the prevalence of the virus in Wuhan. The history of germ weapons shows that even eminent scientists can misread the evidence. In the early 1980s, Matthew Meselson, a Harvard geneticist and molecular biologist, disproved allegations that Hmong anti-Communists in Laos had been attacked by a mysterious Soviet chemical weapon known as “yellow rain.” Meselson and a colleague’s inquiry showed it was bee feces. On the other hand, Meselson backed the Soviet cover story that an outbreak of anthrax in the town of Sverdlovsk was due to consumption of contaminated meat. It turned out to be an accident at an anthrax factory. After the fall of Communism, Meselson was allowed to investigate in Russia and concluded that it was indeed a leak from a weapons facility. So where does that leave us? As I’ve watched the theories about the pandemic’s origin wax and wane, I believe more strongly than ever that reporters should begin their research agnostic and remain skeptical as new facts come to light. No story is ever really over. Certainly not this one.

We are a long way from ever knowing the full truth behind the origins of the virus and if it was intended to be a biological weapon, but never in the history of the globe has a virus done this much damage to as many countries at a single moment as Covid has.

I was reading Salaman Rushdie in the Post and he said this: We are not the dominant species on the planet by accident. We have great survival skills. And we will survive. But I doubt that a social revolution will follow because of the lessons of the pandemic. But yes, sure, one can hope for betterment, and fight for it, and maybe our children will see — will make — that better world.

To repair the damage done by these people in these times will not be easy. I may not see the wounds mended in my lifetime. It may take a generation or more. The social damage of the pandemic itself, the fear of our old social lives, in bars and restaurants and dance halls and sports stadiums, will take time to heal (although a percentage of people seem to know no fear already). We will hug and kiss again. But will there still be movie theaters? Will there be bookstores? Will we feel okay in crowded subway cars?

The social, cultural, political damage of these years, the deepening of the already deep rifts in society in many parts of the world, including the United States, Britain and India, will take longer. It would not be exaggerating to say that as we stare across those chasms, we have begun to hate the people on the other side. That hatred has been fostered by cynics and it bubbles over in different ways almost every day.

As I wrote in the post Chrysalis, I am not sure as we emerge from our cocoon’s we are able to fully grasp the seriousness of this pandemic and for those who are still afraid they will continue to be. Those who never took it seriously, never will and so on. I am at odds with most people in the best of times so my contrarian nature found myself living my best life during the early days of the pandemic. Perhaps because I was armed with scientific facts and a knowledge of history, and a well developed sense of personal responsibility I thrived. It was only in the waning days of winter with the endless cold that I became despondent, and with that dropped my “No Compromises” mantra to try to make friends with a Millennial! What was I thinking? But today that is behind me and the light is ahead of me. I believe in the power of science but not of medicine as those are two different worlds to me. The Medical Industrial Complex once again proved to me that it is as dangerous and deadly as any virus and that they are staffed and manned by incompetents whose idea of care is charging more and making you believe that you need it. This is one thing that too must change to go forward. But we shall.

Mask On Mask Off

In the inevitable words of Mr. Miyagi

Now replace wax with MASK you get the picture, or you don’t.

The reason was inevitable as the simultaneous release of the CDC acknowledging airborne transmission of the virus with the former head of the FDA saying that masks for vaccinated people would soon be forthcoming, then by Monday, the talking point doll, Dr. Fauci came out with that promise, it soon followed.

Now of course here the Three Stooges have parted ways, with the Connecticut Governor going his own way and opening up the State entirely with few to no restrictions, given that 70% of his State has vaccinated it was not an issue. That New York and New Jersey are being reticent and not removing mask mandates until they consult with THEIR health experts I had to bust out laughing. Cuomo in the beginning had dismissed health care policy experts and kept parks opened with masks as necessary if in a congested place. Murphy in New Jersey closed them and had a mask mandate, curfew and the rest to somehow convince us his health expert knew best. They knew nothing more nor less than the CDC but the politics at the time conveyed a demand to show the idiocy of the Trump Show which frankly was not hard to do. Cuomo kept the airports opened and little was done for WEEKS well into the onset and the fourth stooge, DiBlasio did little to counter that belief. And then well the shit hit the fan and numbers don’t lie or they do, as we know that the death counts related to Nursing Homes were higher and of course the overall death counts were as well. The same I suspect with Covid POS cases and of course the truth about Covid itself is now in debate and that too will undergo an investigation with little recourse or change in the overall truth – we got fucked big time.

The anti maskers, the anti vaxx folks are not the same cohort. They may have some overlap in the Venn Diagram of Life but there are some who are simply who will do both, some one, some another. As they say it is complicated. There are of course experts who are appalled at the new mask order and the article states: In the informal survey, 80 percent said they thought Americans would need to wear masks in public indoor places for at least another year. Just 5 percent said people would no longer need to wear masks indoors by this summer.

And like all things the “what if” “and/or” is the big divider. And with that it again falls to the big issue of import – personal responsibility. I have bought my Broadway ticket for Company with the great Broadway Diva, Patti LuPone. At this point only Hamilton is requiring all cast, company and staff to vaccinate. With that they are not requiring the audience to do so. So you pack in a crowd of people not requiring vaccinations or masks you have a problem, but not maybe, sorta, kinda for the others who are vaxxed. J&J is only 75% effective and we of Pfzier and Moderna have 95% and we can ultimately decide the efficacy risk and go forth unmasked or not. I will happily wear a mask, provide a vaccination card and in turn respect that others will do the same but we know you cannot. And hence the mask, as I am not going to put myself at risk nor the great Ms. LuPone either. Neither/nor is the mandate in this situation as it is the holidays and I want to enjoy them and hope she and her cast do as well. I don’t know Ms. LuPone vaxx status and I should not need to as that is her choice and she is someone I suspect will choose wisely. I wish I could say that about others but the reality is that is not the case.

The last group who are not vaccinated are the resisters due to well, laziness. The lack of being aggressive in finding who/what/where/how and why. When I read this article yesterday in the Times, I busted out laughing.

And the excuses seemed legitimate but also vested in reality with the un-vaxxed. They all share a common trait, and it seems ignorance. Wow just wow, I had to explain to the varying door staff here how to get it and all of it seemed to challenging. The one thing they did manage was calling the one phone line and that is where regardless of internet availability that single phone line was the key. That said it was only open 9-5 and that was a factor and which again explains some of the delays, as why in the fuck if you are trying to get folks vaccinated you don’t have a 24 hour line or one that is open 8-8 to at least cover a larger swath, you have what you have confusion that then evolves into hesitancy and then into resistance. Now in the case of the two anti-vaxx assholes here they have no excuse as the mobile trailer was literally at the corner for days or just up the street two days a week. The Pharmacy next door has Moderna so again what is their explanation? Oh yeah control and ignorance. Fuck them. I am done with them. And again with any business that has not enabled if not ENCOURAGED them to vaxx up. This again is not about a lack of options but a lack of willingness. If it was required they would and if they don’t want to, well I got several million folks who want to work in a safe environment and if you are in a bar and restaurant today and the customers are unmasked with no proof of vaccine required, GET ONE. You are fucked as you are in a closed in, poorly ventilated environment. Good luck with that.

To be a warrior you need to know first your own strength and you then need to know your enemies strengths as well. But more importantly know their weaknesses. Sun Tzu knew that lesson, another great Asian warrior. Covid is a killer opponent and we can win but we can not in alone, we need an Army. Be in it or not, and you know Soldiers without the right weapons die. So which are you?