Motherhood and Mortality

I do respect those individuals who elect (at this time they still can sorta) to become Mothers. Many I think believe or feel that they can be good Mothers, whatever that means. Many Women do not certainly elect Motherhood I hope thinking it will be fine, they will fake it till they make it nonsense. I want to believe that Women are aware you cannot have it all. You cannot. You have to make a huge sacrifice the minute you decide to pursue Motherhood. That means your personal happiness, your own health, your financial security can be at risk and your own Marriage may also collapse with the weight of Parenthood. It is not for the faint of heart.

The United States has an appalling mortality rate regarding lives of both Mothers and Children. This also depends on where you live in the United States, your access to Health Care and Health Insurance. According to the March of Dimes that In the United States, about 6.9 million women have little or no access to maternal health care. And again the most single contributing factor is Race.

The CDC breaks down infant mortality and its causes to Five Factors. The NIH explains it as such here. And the current stats are not good as we enter year three of Covid.

This according to the CDC:

The number of women who died of maternal causes in the United States rose to 1,205 in 2021, according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics, released Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s a sharp increase from years earlier: 658 in 2018, 754 in 2019 and 861 in 2020.

That means the US maternal death rate for 2021 – the year for which the most recent data is available – was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with rates of 20.1 in 2019 and 23.8 in 2020.

The new report also notes significant racial disparities in the nation’s maternal death rate. In 2021, the rate for Black women was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, which is 2.6 times the rate for White women, at 26.6 per 100,000.

The number is rising and it is not good, particularly for Women of Color. But it is overall not good for any Woman.

According to the Commonwealth Fund, as well as the World Health Organization, The US has the highest maternal death rate of any developed nation. While maternal death rates have been either stable or rising across the United States, they are declining in most countries.

“A high rate of cesarean sections, inadequate prenatal care, and elevated rates of chronic illnesses like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease may be factors contributing to the high U.S. maternal mortality rate. Many maternal deaths result from missed or delayed opportunities for treatment,” researchers from the Commonwealth Fund wrote in a report last year.

The Covid-19 pandemic also may have exacerbated existing racial disparities in the maternal death rate among Black women compared with White women, said Dr. Chasity Jennings-Nuñez, a California-based site director with Ob Hospitalist Group and chair of the perinatal/gynecology department at Adventist Health-Glendale, who was not involved in the new report.

“In terms of maternal mortality, it continues to highlight those structural and systemic problems that we saw so clearly during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Jennings-Nuñez said.

“So in terms of issues of racial health inequities, of structural racism and bias, of access to health care, all of those factors that we know have played a role in terms of maternal mortality in the past continue to play a role in maternal mortality,” she said. “Until we begin to address those issues, even without a pandemic, we’re going to continue to see numbers go in the wrong direction.”

So the reality is that we have a rising tide no boats just Moby crashing his tail against the water to insure the waves drown us as we thrash along in the water. And here we are about to make it harder for Women to manage their own reproductive choices. Good idea says the White Man in the Judicial Robe.

I have been noting the deterioration of mental health particularly among children as they come of out the Pandemic. This generation born during the time it began in 2020 and those who were still in K-12 schools are the new generation and they are really fucked up. Do I think it matters if schools were open or closed? No it is larger than that. You cannot Teach and cannot learn in a world and an environment that surrounds you which is in chaos. Sorry you cannot put yourself in a bubble or Island to prevent the world that is outside waiting for you to emerge. Going to school everyday I believe did no more or less than those who remained online. You are kidding yourself if you believe otherwise.

I truly believe any Woman who CHOSE to become pregnant during Covid lockdowns was either incredibly selfish, bored or utterly oblivious. Denial perhaps but there is a type of arrogance that ignorance allows those so unaware of what was happening in hospitals and in medicine overall that I have little or no respect of. Your kids like you Lady are fucked up. Again I point to 946 as my Karen in that room. She is batshit crazy and that is contagious.

I reprint this from the New York Times to understand how serious this issue is. I know I am harsh but I have that luxury and I never wanted Children so that has to be taken into account. I knew early on it was not for me. Not one regret there. But I do support Women’s Reproductive Rights and with that the choice to have a child. I support public health care, public education and tax credits for children and families as well as better wages and work environments for those who care for children, but I do not support stupidity. And those are the Women who think that it is not a massive sacrifice for at least two decades worth of life. Get over yourself you are not special. I am talking to you Karen.

Covid Worsened a Health Crisis Among Pregnant Women

In 2021, deaths of pregnant women soared by 40 percent in the United States, according to new government figures. Here’s how one family coped after the virus threatened a pregnant mother.

By Roni Caryn Rabin The New York Times March 16, 2023

KOKOMO, Ind. — Tammy Cunningham doesn’t remember the birth of her son. She was not quite seven months pregnant when she became acutely ill with Covid-19 in May 2021. By the time she was taken by helicopter to an Indianapolis hospital, she was coughing and gasping for breath.

The baby was not due for another 11 weeks, but Ms. Cunningham’s lungs were failing. The medical team, worried that neither she nor the fetus would survive so long as she was pregnant, asked her fiancé to authorize an emergency C-section.

“I asked, ‘Are they both going to make it?’” recalled Matt Cunningham. “And they said they couldn’t answer that.”

New government data suggest that scenes like this played out with shocking frequency in 2021, the second year of the pandemic.

The National Center for Health Statistics reported on Thursday that 1,205 pregnant women died in 2021, representing a 40 percent increase in maternal deaths compared with 2020, when there were 861 deaths, and a 60 percent increase compared with 2019, when there were 754.

The count includes deaths of women who were pregnant or had been pregnant within the last 42 days, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy. A separate report by the Government Accountability Office has cited Covid as a contributing factor in at least 400 maternal deaths in 2021, accounting for much of the increase.

Even before the pandemic, the United States had the highest maternal mortality rate of any industrialized nation. The coronavirus worsened an already dire situation, pushing the rate to 32.9 per 100,000 births in 2021 from 20.1 per 100,000 live births in 2019.

The racial disparities have been particularly acute. The maternal mortality rate among Black women rose to 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2021, 2.6 times the rate among white women. From 2020 to 2021, mortality rates doubled among Native American and Alaska Native women who were pregnant or had given birth within the previous year, according to a study published on Thursday in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The deaths tell only part of the story. For each woman who died of a pregnancy-related complication, there were many others, like Ms. Cunningham, who experienced the kind of severe illness that leads to premature birth and can compromise the long-term health of both mother and child. Lost wages, medical bills and psychological trauma add to the strain.

Pregnancy leaves women uniquely vulnerable to infectious diseases like Covid. The heart, lungs and kidneys are all working harder during pregnancy. The immune system, while not exactly depressed, is retuned to accommodate the fetus.

Abdominal pressure reduces excess lung capacity. Blood clots more easily, a tendency amplified by Covid, raising the risk of dangerous blockages. The infection also appears to damage the placenta, which delivers oxygen and nutrients to the fetus, and may increase the risk of a dangerous complication of pregnancy called pre-eclampsia.

Pregnant women with Covid face a sevenfold risk of dying compared with uninfected pregnant women, according to one large meta-analysis tracking unvaccinated people. The infection also makes it more likely that a woman will give birth prematurely and that the baby will require neonatal intensive care.

Fortunately, the current Omicron variant appears to be less virulent than the Delta variant, which surfaced in the summer of 2021, and more people have acquired immunity to the coronavirus by now. Preliminary figures suggest maternal deaths dropped to roughly prepandemic levels in 2022.

But pregnancy continues to be a factor that makes even young women uniquely vulnerable to severe illness. Ms. Cunningham, now 39, who was slightly overweight when she became pregnant, had just been diagnosed with gestational diabetes when she got sick.

“It’s something I talk to all my patients about,” said Dr. Torri Metz, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at the University of Utah. “If they have some of these underlying medical conditions and they’re pregnant, both of which are high-risk categories, they have to be especially careful about putting themselves at risk of exposure to any kind of respiratory virus, because we know that pregnant people get sicker from those viruses.”

Lagging Vaccination

In the summer of 2021, scientists were somewhat unsure of the safety of mRNA vaccines during pregnancy; pregnant women had been excluded from the clinical trials, as they often are. It was not until August 2021 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came out with unambiguous guidance supporting vaccination for pregnant women.

Most of the pregnant women who died of Covid had not been vaccinated. These days, more than 70 percent of pregnant women have gotten Covid vaccines, but only about 20 percent have received the bivalent boosters.

“We know definitively that vaccination prevents severe disease and hospitalization and prevents poor maternal and infant outcomes,” said Dr. Dana Meaney-Delman, chief of the C.D.C.’s infant outcomes monitoring, research and prevention branch. “We have to keep emphasizing that point.”

Ms. Cunningham’s obstetrician had encouraged her to get the shots, but she vacillated. She was “almost there” when she suddenly started having unusually heavy nosebleeds that produced blood clots “the size of golf balls,” she said.

Ms. Cunningham was also feeling short of breath, but she ascribed that to the advancing pregnancy. (Many Covid symptoms can be missed because they resemble those normally occurring in pregnancy.)

A Covid test came back negative, and Ms. Cunningham was happy to return to her job. She had already lost wages after earlier pandemic furloughs at the auto parts plant where she worked. On May 3, 2021, shortly after clocking in, she turned to a friend at the plant and said, “I can’t breathe.”

By the time she arrived at IU Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, she was in acute respiratory distress. Doctors diagnosed pneumonia and found patchy shadows in her lungs.

Her oxygen levels continued falling even after she was put on undiluted oxygen, and even after the baby was delivered.

“It was clear her lungs were extremely damaged and unable to work on their own,” said Dr. Omar Rahman, a critical care physician who treated Ms. Cunningham. Already on a ventilator, Ms. Cunningham was connected to a specialized heart-lung bypass machine.

Jennifer McGregor, a friend who visited Ms. Cunningham in the hospital, was shocked at how quickly her condition had deteriorated. “I can’t tell you how many bags were hanging there, and how many tubes were going into her body,” she said.

But over the next 10 days, Ms. Cunningham started to recover. Once she was weaned off the heart-lung machine, she discovered she had missed a major life event while under sedation: She had a son.

He was born 29 weeks and two days into the pregnancy, weighing three pounds.

Premature births declined slightly during the first year of the pandemic. But they rose sharply in 2021, the year of the Delta surge, reaching the highest rate since 2007.

Some 10.5 percent of all births were preterm that year, up from 10.1 percent in 2020, and from 10.2 percent in 2019, the year before the pandemic.

Though the Cunninghams’ baby, Calum, never tested positive for Covid, he was hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. He was on a breathing tube, and occasionally stopped breathing for seconds at a time.

Doctors worried that he was not gaining weight quickly enough — “failure to thrive,” they wrote in his chart. They worried about possible vision and hearing loss.

But after 66 days in the NICU, the Cunninghams were able to take Calum home. They learned how to use his feeding tube by practicing on a mannequin, and they prepared for the worst.

“From everything they told us, he was going to have developmental delays and be really behind,” Mr. Cunningham said.

After her discharge from the hospital, Ms. Cunningham was under strict orders to have a caretaker with her at all times and to rest. She didn’t return to work for seven months, after she finally secured her doctors’ approval.

Ms. Cunningham has three teenage daughters, and Mr. Cunningham has another daughter from a previous relationship. Money was tight. Friends dropped off groceries, and the landlord accepted late payments. But the Cunninghams received no government aid: They were even turned down for food stamps.

“We had never asked for assistance in our lives,” Ms. Cunningham said. “We were workers. We used to work seven days a week, eight-hour days, sometimes 12. But when the whole world shut down in 2020, we used up a lot of our savings, and then I got sick. We never got caught up.”

Though she is back to work at the plant, Ms. Cunningham has lingering symptoms, including migraines and short-term memory problems. She forgets doctor’s appointments and what she went to the store for. Recently she left her card in an A.T.M.

Many patients are so traumatized by their stays in intensive care units that they develop so-called post-intensive care syndrome. Ms. Cunningham has flashbacks and nightmares about being back in the hospital.

“I wake up feeling like I’m being smothered at the hospital, or that they’re killing my whole family,” she said. Recently she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Calum, however, has surprised everyone. Within months of coming home from the hospital, he was reaching developmental milestones on time. He started walking soon after his first birthday, and likes to chime in with “What’s up?” and “Uh-oh!”

He has been back to the hospital for viral infections, but his vocabulary and comprehension are superb, his father said. “If you ask if he wants a bath, he’ll take off all his clothes and meet you at the bath,” he said.

Louann Gross, who owns the day care that Calum attends, said he has a hearty appetite — often asking for “thirds” — and more than keeps up with his peers. She added, “I nicknamed him our ‘Superbaby.’”

The Annus Horribilis

This is the last post of the year of the blog and with that it takes on a new meaning from when this phrase became a member of the popular lexicon, thanks to the Queen of England during a speech at Guildhall in 1992 to remark upon the “Family’s” year. Irony she could whip that one out right now with regards to the Royals, but let’s keep this about what matters most – me.

The pandemic enters year three as it was in 2019 we became aware of the Wuhan Flu, the Kung Flu, the Covid-SARS like virus that was or was not happening in China that year. By 2020 it was unmasked (pun intended) and in the new global economy it faced no supply line shortages to cross borders internationally and changing the way we all lived and in many cases, died. And it appears that 2022 will be much like 2021 with anger, rage, misplaced anger, Covid vaxx resistance, Booster embracing, testing woes like in 2020 only now with people demanding them in the same way they were refused them the first time, a shortage. Remember those days when you had to meet a standard that was akin to a small quiz that you inevitably failed. And with that we added a new phrase to our lexicon “super spreader” and not in a fun porno way. And currently in my new lab, aka bathroom, I have a collection of tests, from nasal swabs to spit collection that are sent to labs, as well as many types of quick tests I could get my hands on. I paid for some, some were free and some paid by insurance. Irony that on the 23rd I received a bill from RJ Barnabas Health a bill for a pharmacy visit. The only time I went to said facility (a public hospital literally a block away) was for my Covid vaccines in March and April of this year. With ID, Insurance Card and Cell phone in hand (all required or requested by them check their website) to get said Pfitzer shots I was assured that I would be fine to return to get my booster when that became available. And what was believed at the time to be approximately 10 months became a couple of months sooner and I had scheduled said follow up for next month. And then the bill arrived. Yes folks I got a bill for 60.01 dollars with a $20 adjustment, making the total bill $40.01. The bill said SINCE YOU ELECTED TO SELF PAY NO INSURANCE please pay make full payment or call us at a toll free number if you need to make arrangements. Really I did? And I do?

The Covid 19 Relief Bill passed in Congress in 2020 authorizes the Federal Government to pay for any testing and in turn amended to include vaccines and avoid any balance billing for Covid related costs in treatment, among other acts to support families and businesses affected by Covid. But the idea is that regardless of insurance, all Covid testing and vaccines are FREE. That treatments costs are debatable and there are many stories that I have written about that negate that issue but when it comes to the tests and vaccines we are sure that they are free. Again not so as I paid for several so I assume that they fall in a tax deduction in my case, but as of now my costs are minimal and my first at home round came back negative, so far so good. But it was preferable than waiting in endless lines surrounding by what I assume are sick people! Thought that then and still think that only now I am more sure of this and more concerned than I was two years ago.

So when I went online and posted my bill, I was called a liar repeatedly and told I was being taken for a ride among other verbal abuses that made me laugh. Yes folks we have come to the place in time where when something happens to us, it happens to everyone in the same way no matter where they are, who they are, you are right, they are wrong and nothing is different regardless. And with that I contacted Barnabas regarding the bill, the agent seemed surprised and started a dispute; HOWEVER, that still means I must pay in the interim. I contacted my insurer and in turn they had no record of billing or even that I had been vaccinated but as they had no bill they could not intervene or assist but they confirmed that yes, all Covid vaccinations were not part of conventional billing nor applicable to co-pay or deductibles. That said, effective Jan 1, 2022 any Covid treatments outside of testing and vaccines now fell under standard deductibles and copays. Good to know. And with that wrote the check to Barnabas, enclosed a copy of the law, my insurance information that they seemed to have misplaced and Priority Mailed it to them so that my booster shot would not be affected. Then I promptly went next door to my local pharmacy asked if they did booster shots, do they bill for them and how much they cost and could I do Moderna over Pfizter as I was mixing and matching. They informed me yes on the latter and no they don’t regarding the former. They had no idea what I was talking about and I showed them the bill. They were confused as wondered if I had used the Barnabas pharmacy that day for say another reason while there. Nope and the promptness of billing was odd as again, December when I was last there in April also seemed strange. And with that I made an appointment with them and canceled Barnabas. Why risk it. Then I went to coffee and my local Barista informed me her Grandmother had been billed as well and they auto deducted it from her bank account as she has an arrangement with them when it comes to her medications. Apparently Covid vaccine – her medication. With that I gave the kids the HHS site on filing a complaint as I had done only a few moments earlier after canceling my Booster shot. If I am one there are more than one others who are being billed these odd moderate amounts, paying with or even with question and those can add up quite nicely to fund a hospital. What is still interesting is why anyone does not believe me and are sure I am lying. To you I go, thanks for reminding me that America is full of morons and you are doing nothing to dispel that belief.

The year began when I threw down my Tarot Cards and the theme of the year was CHAOS. And as they say in New Orleans, TRUE DAT. I have been on the roller coaster through the rough rides, the climbs and the drops and with the last few days of the year coming to a close I am looking forward to a full stop. I am back working part time in the schools, the endless Covid notices, the now daily shootings here in Jersey City where the Mayor is oblivious, despite having immense time on his hands thanks to testing POS for Covid a few days ago. Maybe he could work on that or on the billion dollar infrastructure improvements needed to make this city safe from flooding and further damage due to his insatiable need to build testimony’s to big dicks in the sky that the developers love to do. As I live in a Kushner building I laughed when the company put out a full page WSJ ad thanking the banks for 41 Million dollars in lending to them to buy up existing apartment buildings in the South and SE to turn into expensive slums. Nothing says slum lord better than a Kushner building. They failed to mention the loans gained during Jared’s tenure in the White House. And this also includes the federal lending program of Freddie Mac, so yes we all pay for this. And this is why I refused to tip or do anything beyond my normal thanking behavior, which includes coffee, a treat or some such item that I buy or make to the staff here. Sorry, not sorry, after the major fuck up in my building over their mishandling my rent check. I was told repeatedly by the Mangeress of this building and her stooge assistant that they will help resolve this as a “courtesy.” Really you pieces of shit, doing your job is a courtesy? Well tipping is a courtesy so fuck that, I don’t enable a group of individuals nor compensate them for your failure to pay them a living wage or provide hazard pay during the early days of Covid. And failing to tell tenants that they were exposed by both residents and staff who had contracted it. Sorry, not sorry. Take an add out in the local paper on that one.

I feared what would happen did once the vaccines became available and with that the divisiveness and rage would permeate and the anger and fear that went unaddressed and untreated is now in full bloom. The inability to communicate rationally has only expanded as we see the issues still being faced with the January 6th Commission as more is revealed to the extent of how many elected officials participated and still do in some ways about overturning the election and threatening Democracy. Four Hours at the Capitol is a much watch HBO MAX documentary to see new footage and hear some new narratives when it comes to this issue. With that the New York Magazine did an excellent profile on three participants and their road taken since their journey to the capitol that fateful day.

And the year continues as it begun, with a new term of elections in the fall there are new people taking office and with that a new storm of events that will depend on where you live how well you will weather said storms. The great protests of 2020 seem long gone, along with some of the voices that were thought of calms during that storm are as well. The Cuomo brothers might say that 2021 was their annus horribilus as well in that they seem to show how the tides have turned. The reality is that the Police are back to killing without recourse, despite two trials that for those officers did provide some solace and sense of accountability, but those are two out of over 1,600 victims a year – three a day that die at the hands of Police.

And lastly it brings me to the other issues that we spent the year debating, Dave Chappell, Ghislaine Maxwell, Kyle Rittenhouse, Elizabeth Holmes and of course, Donald Trump. We will never stop talking about him and he loves that. That is all he cares about and yet we still pander to that asshole, why? So with that I hand it over Dave Barry in the Washington Post , he does an excellent recap of the year that for a week is still in the present.

I spent the better part of the last few weeks looking for charities that defined me. My love of theater was easy and then I looked to my other loves – animals, the environment, reading, being a woman and of course food. I donated to my local shelter and they called me to thank me and sent me the most adorable personalized card I donated more. The State of Kentucky that despite it all stood out and they too got a check, they are not all hicks and idiots. They are representative of the best and worst of us. I finally found a woman’s charity through all things a clothing line, they too took my first donation as I will never give one dime to RAIIN or any other rape or sexual assault organization as NONE helped so I cannot forgive and forget but I know that we have to put aside differences and build bridges and with that Joyful Heart got a check.

And while I have ended my year as I began this one, in anger and doubt, I still have a suspension bridge in use. I take a moment to find joy in what matters and share that with those in need. I have listed my favorites and I hope that you find time to do just that, build a bridge, open a door, a mind or a heart to someone somewhere you do not know. A stranger is just a friend you have not met – yet. Open a wallet and give it to the beggar on the street for one day you too may need a hand so why no proffer one. To the end of the year I say thank fucking Sky Daddy or God or whatever you want to call him/her. And look forward to a new year of health and wealth and finding the road you want to travel.

MTC (theater)

Salvation Army

The Whitney Museum

MOMA (Museum of Modern Art)

KNKX (Seattle Jazz Station)

WNET/PBS

High Line

The Met Museum

Governor’s Island

Human Rights Camp.

Roundabout Theater

Metropolitan Opera

WGBO (Jazz Public Radio)

Lincoln Center

Water Festival

Brooklyn Museum

ProPublica

KEXP (Seattle Radio)

WETA (Wash DC Public Classic radio)

City Center

Southern Poverty Law

God’s Love we Deliver

NOW – National Org. Women

Central Park Conservator

League Women Voters

NJPAC (Newark Theater)

Cherry Lane Theater

Planned Parenthood

World Kitchen

World Wildlife Fund

Trevor Project

Woodland Park Zoo

BAM (Brooklyn Arts Music)

St. Ann’s Warehouse (Theater)

Classic Stage Company

Actors Fund (AIDS Theater Charity)

Park Amory

National Geographic

York Street Project

City Harvest

Room to Read

Ctr Reproductive Rights

SavetheMusic

92nd St Y

Kentucky Relief

Joyful Heart

Liberty Humane Society

Amnesty Intl

Center Culinary Culture

Charities I donated to this year.

Meet the Morons

I no longer have time pretending to understand the anti-vaxx crowd. The reality as a Teacher I saw first hand and experienced the reality of what it means to have an epidemic in a school and the damage it causes. From the onset of Covid the poor communication and the inconsistency in communication with the ever moving goal posts of what to do versus not has also contributed to the underlying frustration and confusion. And with that we have of course the divide of politics that have been the biggest chasm with regards to the pandemic. But I have to say that the issue surrounding one’s own personal well being coupled with those whom you work or live should matter, apparently it doesn’t.

I live in a Kushner building, the irony not lost, where we have to my knowledge at least two staff members absolutely refusing to get vaccinated. I have tried with the young man to encourage to seek out medical counsel and find a way to become vaccinated as a way of ensuring his safety. He has come out with a multitude of excuses and yet we have a public site literally at the corner doing J&J and the pharmacy in the building doing Moderna. We live a block away from a large public hospital where I went to get Pfizer and yet today another saga and excuse was made in which he has decided to not. His mother is in the hospital with an eye problem, he alluded it was the vaccine but then he backpedaled as she is well past the zone of side effects but he has not spoken to her Physician or anyone treating her as to what is wrong with her and why she was admitted. I suspect she was not but again the need to obfuscate truth here is a big role in the anti vaxx crowd. The other is another Concierge who is a Black Woman with two children. She doesn’t get into it with me as she is well aware of my position on the matter and her friend has tried to somehow justify and explain her reasoning to also explain that she a Child Minder of an Autistic kid should also be not vaccinated is beyond idiotic. Imagine a child who has problems communicating and he ends up having Covid thanks to her. I got nothing on that except that I always remind myself that I vote on the backs of women willing to go to jail, be abused, and have feeding tubes put down their throat and with that, I get vaccinated for the same reason as over 500K Americans have died and many who stepped up and were willing to be human guinea pigs to end this nightmare deserve my respect. What many of these morons don’t realize that the key to the vaccine was over 20 years in the making and thanks to modern methods of science and the sharing of data that took time to develop, manufacture, and test has been sped up. You know in that same way we can magically talk on a 3×5 card to anyone anywhere. Americans are stupid.

I try to do my best and I gave up on one, the other I did today as the kid is too stupid to reason with. When you don’t talk to a Doctor about your own Mother and her needs what is the lesson here? You are a fucking selfish idiot. Or a liar or both. I can be polite but I can also be bored out of my skull trying to reason with idiots and with this I am done. I was not sure about moving in October and still am not as frankly I would like some time to join the living but this is taking its own toll. As I wrote in the last post, I am alone, very alone and while I would enjoy a friend or someone to hang with I will not compromise in which to do so, it serves no point.

So when I came upstairs and read this article I busted out laughing as the idiots interviewed did little to disprove my point. When you are a moron you will always be one and what I love was one was a 73-year-old former nurse with a sick husband. What the flying fuck? And to say it is a gut reaction means it is based on emotions, not rational thought, critical thinking or actual information. So let’s call it what it is – IGNORANCE. What.ever. Meet the Morons.

Vaccine Skepticism Was Viewed as a Knowledge Problem. It’s Actually About Gut Beliefs.

Identifying those psychological traits may help health officials convince the sizable minority of Americans who don’t want a coronavirus vaccine. Simply sharing information hasn’t worked.

By Sabrina Tavernise The New York Times Public Health April 29, 2021

For years, scientists and doctors have treated vaccine skepticism as a knowledge problem. If patients were hesitant to get vaccinated, the thinking went, they simply needed more information.

But as public health officials now work to convince Americans to get Covid-19 vaccines as quickly as possible, new social science research suggests that a set of deeply held beliefs is at the heart of many people’s resistance, complicating efforts to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control.

“The instinct from the medical community was, ‘If only we could educate them,’” said Dr. Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, who studies vaccine skepticism. “It was patronizing and, as it turns out, not true.”

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About a third of American adults are still resisting vaccines. Polling shows that Republicans make up a substantial part of that group. Given how deeply the country is divided by politics, it is perhaps not surprising that they have dug in, particularly with a Democrat in the White House. But political polarization is only part of the story.Commencements in 2021 Over a year into the pandemic, and with vaccinations on the rise, many colleges are planning in-person commencements, frustrating those whose campuses’ commencement will remain online.

In recent years, epidemiologists have teamed up with social psychologists to look more deeply into the “why” behind vaccine hesitancy. They wanted to find out whether there was anything that vaccine skeptics had in common, in order to better understand how to persuade them.

They borrowed a concept from social psychology — the idea that a small set of moral intuitions forms the foundations upon which complex moral worldviews are constructed — and applied it to their study of vaccine skepticism.

What they discovered was a clear set of psychological traits offering a new lens through which to understand skepticism — and potentially new tools for public health officials scrambling to try to persuade people to get vaccinated.

Dr. Omer and a team of scientists found that skeptics were much more likely than nonskeptics to have a highly developed sensitivity for liberty — the rights of individuals — and to have less deference to those in positions of power.

Skeptics were also twice as likely to care a lot about the “purity” of their bodies and their minds. They disapprove of things they consider disgusting, and the mind-set defies neat categorization: It could be religious — halal or kosher — or entirely secular, like people who care deeply about toxins in foods or in the environment. Your Coronavirus Tracker: We’ll send you the latest data for places you care about each day.

Scientists have found similar patterns among skeptics in Australia and Israel, and in a broad sample of vaccine-hesitant people in 24 countries in 2018.

“At the root are these moral intuitions — these gut feelings — and they are very strong,” said Jeff Huntsinger, a social psychologist at Loyola University Chicago who studies emotion and decision-making and collaborated with Dr. Omer’s team. “It’s very hard to override them with facts and information. You can’t reason with them in that way.”

These qualities tend to predominate among conservatives but they are present among liberals too. They are also present among people with no politics at all.

Kasheem Delesbore, a warehouse worker in northeastern Pennsylvania, is neither conservative nor liberal. He does not consider himself political and has never voted. But he is skeptical of the vaccines — along with many institutions of American power.

Mr. Delesbore, 26, has seen information online that a vaccine might harm his body. He is not sure what to make of it. But his faith in God gives him confidence: Whatever happens is God’s will. There is little he can do to influence it. (Manufacturers of the three vaccines approved for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration say they are safe.)

The vaccines have also raised a fundamental question of power. There are many things in Mr. Delesbore’s life that he does not control. Not the schedule at the warehouse where he works. Or the way he is treated by the customers at his other job, a Burger King. The decision about whether to get vaccinated, he believes, should be one of them.The Coronavirus Outbreak ›

“I have that choice to decide whether I put something in my own body,” Mr. Delesbore said. “Anybody should.”

Mr. Delesbore has had many jobs, most of them through temporary agencies — at a park concession stand, at an auto parts warehouse, at a FedEx warehouse, and at a frozen food warehouse. He is sometimes overcome by a sense that he will never be able to get beyond the stress of living paycheck to paycheck. He remembers once breaking down to his parents.

“I told them, what am I supposed to do?” he said. “How are we supposed to make a living? Buy a house and start a family? How?”

Like many people interviewed for this article, Mr. Delesbore spends a lot of time online. He is hungry to make sense of the world, but it often seems rigged and it is hard to trust things. He is especially suspicious of how fast the vaccines were developed. He used to work at a factory of the drug company Sanofi, so he knows a bit about the process. He believes there is a lot that Americans are not being told. Vaccines are just one small piece of the picture.

Conspiratorial thinking is another predictor of vaccine hesitancy, according to the 2018 study. Conspiracy theories can be comforting, a way to get one’s bearings during rapid change in the culture or the economy, by providing narratives that bring order. They are finding fertile ground because of a decades-long decline in trust in government, and a sharp rise in inequality that has led to a sense, among many Americans, that the government is no longer working on their behalf.

“There’s a whole world of secrets and stuff that we don’t see in our everyday lives,” Mr. Delesbore said. “It’s politics, it’s entertainment, it’s history. Everything is a facade.”

The moral preference for liberty and individual rights that the social psychologists found to be common among skeptics has been strengthened by the country’s deepening political polarization. Branden Mirro, a Republican in Nazareth, Pa., has been skeptical of nearly everything concerning the pandemic. He believes that mask requirements impinge on his rights and does not plan to get vaccinated. In fact, he sees the very timing of the virus as suspicious.

“This whole thing was a sham,” he said. “They planned it to cause mass panic and get Trump out of office.”

Mr. Mirro, who is 30, grew up in a large Italian-American family in northeastern Pennsylvania. His father owned a landscaping business and later invested in real estate. His mother battled a yearslong addiction to methamphetamine. He said she died this year with fentanyl in her bloodstream.

From an early age, politics was an outlet that brought meaning and importance. He has volunteered for presidential campaigns, watched inaugurations, and gone to rallies for Donald J. Trump. He even went to Washington on Jan. 6, the day of the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

He said that he went because he wanted to stand up for his freedoms, and that he did not go inside the Capitol or support the violence that happened. He also said he believed that Democrats have been hypocritical in how they responded to that event, compared with the unrest in cities last summer following the murder of George Floyd.

Democrats, he said, used to fight for things that were good. He has a picture of John F. Kennedy up on his wall. But they have become dangerous, he said, “canceling” people and creating racial divisions by what he sees as a relentless emphasis on racial differences.

“This isn’t the country I grew up in,” he said. “I have a love for this country, but it’s turning into something ugly.”

Vaccine skeptics are sometimes just as wary of the medical establishment as they are about the government.

Brittany Richey, a tutor in Las Vegas, does not want to get one of the vaccines because she does not trust the drug companies that produced them. She pointed to studies that she said described pharmaceutical companies paying doctors to suppress unfavorable trial results. She keeps a folder on her computer of them.

Ms. Richey said that when she was 19, she was put into a line of girls waiting for the HPV vaccine, which protects against cervical and other cancers, after a routine doctor’s appointment. She said she did not fully understand what the shot was and why she was being asked to get it.

“That’s not informed consent, that’s coercion,” said Ms. Richey, who is now 33.

Ms. Richey is also worried about the ingredients of the vaccines. She is trying to get pregnant, and she knows that pregnant women were excluded from vaccine trials. She does not want to risk it.

A portion of those who are hesitant will eventually get vaccinated. According to Drew Linzer, the director of the polling firm Civiqs, fewer people are unsure about the vaccines now than in the fall, but the percentage of hard noes has remained fairly constant. As of last week, about 7 percent say they are unsure, he said, and about 24 percent say they will never take it.

Mary Beth Sefton, a retired nurse in Wyoming, Mich., who is a moderate conservative, is not opposed to all vaccines: She usually gets a flu shot. But she worries that the Covid-19 vaccines were developed so quickly that there might be side effects that have not surfaced yet. So she has not gotten a vaccine yet despite being eligible for several months.

Ms. Sefton, who is 73 and describes herself as a person who “doesn’t like being told what to do,” says the politicization of the virus has made it hard to find information she trusts.

“The polarization makes it much harder to figure out what is real,” she said.

She thinks she might eventually get a vaccine. Her husband is bedridden and she is his primary caregiver. And she would be cut off from some in her family if she remains unvaccinated. But she is nervous.

“I still feel exceedingly cautious,” she said. “It is a basic gut feeling.”

You are not alone

If I hear that expression one more time I am going to go Derek Chauvin on someone and pin their head to the ground with my knee and draw the life out of them. That is how sick I am of that here on day 413 of social isolation. For me I don’t see that changing anytime sooner than later but the move to open NYC by July 1 on one hand, means the other hand of Cuomo once he extricates it from a throat or a boob he is fondling (with him it is hard to know) means that at least I will have some level of flexibility and freedom that I currently do not. As for now we must schedule an appointment to go to a Museum, walk the High Line, or go to the gym. It grates and wears you down to the point where going seems more a chore versus a pleasure.

I spent the better part of the pandemic enjoying the odd single sense of being and freedom which I still appreciate but it has become boring and monotonous. The weather has been horrific with few days of actual pleasure in which to wander and to seek at least moderate adventure. Today is International Jazz Day and so I do what I do everyday, listen to Jazz. But I decided that the pajama day and lockdown was needed to avoid the endless confrontations I seem to have of late. This week I found a note to my door that said this:

HI THERE, WE TRIED KNOCKING BUT MUST HAVE MISSED YOU. UNFORTUNATELY, WE CAN HEAR EVERYTHING FROM YOUR APARTMENT. IT HASN’T REALLY BEEN AN ISSUE UNTIL NOW., AS OUR DAUGHTER IS ONLY 12 WEEKS OLD. SHE GETS WOKEN UP EVERY MORNING BY NOISE AROUND 5/5:30 AM. WE ARE HOPING YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO LIMIT ANY LOUD ACTIVITIES UNTIL ABOUT 7 AM. THANK YOU.

What is find distressing is that they claim to hear EVERYTHING. Really? I live above them, so what are they hearing exactly. I know for one they are hearing my washing machine as I do laundry at that time. I go to the gym at 4 am and work out until 5, shower and wash all the clothes from that and the day before. I have a small apartment and few towels so it requires laundry more often than normal. So they can hear everything and wait until day 409 to let me know. One of them is a Police Officer so that may explain the X-Ray hearing. Did he hear me fall off a step ladder and nearly break my nose? Did he hear me one day rage and cry for hours when my depression got the best of me? Did he hear me laugh outrageously over King Kong v Godzilla? Or my stumbling to bed one night where I drank myself into a stupor only to get up at 3 am and start all over again? What does he hear? I responded that it was l likely the laundry and I would discontinue that but other than that what did he suggest I do to eliminate any noise that is clearly been disrupting him and his family all of these 409 days? I never heard back.

The next was the 31 year old boy at the wine store, I am a good customer there as well aside from working out at 4 am, drinking is the other hobby, and in turn for the past 400 days he worked there I never spoke to him to my recollection until the week of my first vaccine March 23. He then asked me if we could “hang out.” I did not think anything of it other than he was bored too and thought he she seems nice so better than no one.. well I was wrong. Within a few hours the texts began requesting he come over drink wine and have light eats. Then when I said no, he suggested taking that to Liberty Park across the way and doing so. When I said no and suggested we have coffee he offered to get some at Starbucks and we go there to drink it. Did I mention he wanted to do that after he got off work at 10 pm at night?

At this point I wondered if I was losing my mind or were we all. I informed him that I would prefer a daylight adventure and he countered with a day trip to the Jersey Shore. I thought about how fun and agreed. Then again it got weird. He said I could meet him there at 3 pm after he got off work early one day. I asked what we would do and he thought well we could walk the boardwalk and if we wanted we could come back or not. I thought, well if we are going that late I get the staying over, but if we are going at different times I would get a hotel room he could meet me for dinner and if he needed to I would get a double bedroom or a sofa pull out so he would not have to drive back. That seemed to confuse him and finally, I had to after he continued to press on when this trip was to occur, I told him no. Honestly, why would I go alone and then have him drive two hours down to eat a meal with him and then be slumber pals? Are you fucking kidding me? I am twice his age and this was absurd since I told him that I was 61 not interested in any type of romance, sexual encounter, or anything remotely like that with a man his age nor frankly any man at this point given the pandemic. He threw a temper tantrum and walked out of the shop. Days later he suggested a true day trip and then days later informed me that there were shift changes and he did not think he could do it. Well, that saves that. He then continued to go on about going to a Gay Bar with him so he could see the one a customer just opened. Thanks, I want to be your beard. So I said, “Hey that drink and light eat a thing, wanna do it tonight?” He refused as he was going to explore the area and the bars in the hood. He did not invite nor ask if I would like to join him, so I assume he found a date of his own age. The word “platonic” he must have repeated to me several times and at one point I thought he was convincing himself that is what we are. We are not even that. We are not friends and we have no future of being so. But I tried but this comes after I had made the decision that I had to stop compromising, stop capitulating to make friends, and be one. Women are constantly being marginalized, gaslight, and exposed to micro-aggressions that exhaust you. It is hard being Black, yes I get it I really do. Have a pussy? It is largely the same thing. Being white doesn’t give me a free pass at all. It may have but with age that has been canceled quite a while ago. I have no value other than my checkbook at this point and as for the 31-year old I seriously could not believe that he thought that my pussy was that valuable either since I was clear with the comment “My pussy like my checkbook is closed for business.” Again this is a white man and they don’t get the message. And this includes the very well worn – no means no – which I also texted him. White men are big dicks with little ones attached in which to poke, prod and bore us to death.

So in the last encounter when I did what I did best, push buttons and see how far they will go I knew that he would once again prove me right. I said that during this entire pandemic I was alone, I had no friends, family, any place to go or to be that mattered or would recognize me if I wasn’t there. That I spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 407 days at that point totally without true human connection, and that where I go on my own is not exactly a treat for me to go with someone else. If I can and have why would I with you? My birthday and Christmas went without a card or an email from anyone I knew and the one person I had been good too, is now some anti-vaxx lunatic and I have cut off all communication with that individual so again, why would I go to Liberty Park or a Gay Bar with you when they are the places I go to without? So yes folks I am very much alone. And when a Police Officer tells me in a note he hears my comings and goings, my first thought is: Fuck what is next, a Breonna Taylor?

The last week I have read several articles about how friendships will evolve and to this, I doubt anyone can say that it will be a significant realization that most people pair off with partners. Their friendships are all based on the power of the pussy or dick and for many, this is whom they identify as their “best friend.” I never knew that sucking or fucking was a pre-requisite to being a friend but alas I confused sex with well sex and friends as those who did not require inserting an object into my body to define it. Watching the current Gaetz scandal in Congress play out that again shows how white men define friendship, by fucking and sucking together the same girls found online; however, I will give them credit they at least paid for it.

I found this interesting as again it shows that we truly don’t know who we are until we do and then we celebrate it. Celebrate yourself, you are worth it.

If You Don’t Want to Go, Say No

Most social obligations would be best left in the Before Times.

By Jesse Grosse The New York Times April 29, 2021

When I was in my early 20s, my friends started calling me “The Bailer.” I was infamous for making plans and then canceling the day before. Even at the time, I knew this was irritating and ungenerous behavior. But I made the plans with the best intentions: I love my friends! I want to see their faces! That spoken-word event in a dank, low-ceilinged bar sounded like fun when you told me about it three weeks ago!

About 24 hours before many social outings, I would start to feel sweaty and inert. After a long day’s work at an office, I would often feel drained from human contact and all I would want to do is buy an enormous burrito at the spot near my apartment, get home, take off my pants and eat it in privacy while watching reality television. After a few years of disappointing my friends last minute, I learned that it’s much kinder and less stressful for everyone involved to be honest with myself — and my friends — about what I would actually show up for.

I began to evaluate what I really enjoyed doing and what I valued about interactions with friends. I did not like standing for prolonged periods of time, for almost any reason. I did not like waiting in line for food. I did not like anything that included the word “networking.” I did like getting drinks or dinner in a place where we could really talk, or lounging in someone’s living room, or going to a party if there were going to be lots of people I knew there and ample seating room.

Having children at 30 was a great excuse for being the hermit I naturally am, and it also helped clarify my socializing needs even further. I was both more tired but also more starved for grown-up conversation. I opted for even more socializing in small groups without my daughters, and when I was with them, I experienced the joy of raucous dinner parties with a separate kids’ table. I learned the valuable skill of continuing conversations through multiple interruptions.

During the pandemic I added a few more types of socializing to my repertoire, including outdoor walk-and-talks, like I’m some jerk in an Aaron Sorkin TV show. Though some pandemic behavior comes easily to me, because I do hate leaving my house, this year of enforced isolation has been depressing, and even a shut-in like me has been missing human contact with people I am not related to.

That does not mean I will come to your spoken word performance in the future. I am still short on time on this mortal coil, and I imagine I will return to my previous socialization preferences.

While obviously there are some obligations you show up to because you love and honor your friends and family even if you don’t want to attend, I invite you to figure out what you actually like about seeing people in the “After.” Especially now that people are making plans with frenzied abandon, saying yes to all manners of activities without a second thought because they are so starved for socializing. Yes to that group sound bath! Yes to the wine-cooler tasting! Yes to the early morning rave! Oh honey, no. No. No.

Be honest with yourself. If you like the energy of a big crowd, say no to that intimate coffee and parry with a trip to a concert. If you hate going out, invite people to come over.

Tell people the real reasons you’re saying no for things you say no to. This has two benefits: it will give you deeper intimacy with friends who will know you for the true crank you really are. And it will mean that they stop inviting you to things that you really don’t like to do. My friends no longer call me The Bailer, because now I always show up.