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.

Covid Chronicles – the Doom Loop

When I read the stories of families and individuals who have struggled with long haul Covid, the families who never said good bye to their loved ones and the endless struggles of medical professionals to seek answers and find resolution to the never ending slog of Covid it does not take a village to realize how we need a leader to help us find the ways of building and rebuilding all that is broken.

We have many targets of ire, from the varying Governors who tried to assert leadership and instead contributed to the chaos, the endless parade of Medical Officials who seemingly had no answers, often contradicting themselves and of course the media who seems to grab any brass ring to fill the endless hours of news time with some relevant new spin on Covid. They need a dose of STFU frankly as they seemingly make it worse.

I am going to refer to the lengthy and comprehensive piece in The New Yorker, The Plague Year, by Lawrence Wright. Simply put it is a must read and with it you will see all the mishaps, mistakes and missteps made by varying players in this Covid Theater. And one for the record is Dr. Fauci and the Surgeon General, the Director of the CDC, and the FDA, the Secretary of HHS, as well as Steven Mnuchin who also felt that closing down the country in order to save lives was (I am using my own pun here) overkill. Even Birx who I have nothing but loathing for did at one point argued strongly that he was wrong and how many hundreds of thousands of deaths will it take to alter your negative view. In this data centric world there was none only projections by varying competitive Universities and again this is not that easy to predict. But this is what we were using and all of them or none of them had it right as no one can predict human behavior.

And that is where we are now. We have reached a point like the mass shootings where we no longer feel empathy or are driven by rage to force politicians to enact change and in turn we allow a minority to rule a majority and that is what it was like for me living in Nashville, fighting odds with people uneducated over religious and utterly obsessed with money. Our federal Government reminds me of Tennessee every day, mismanaged, poor communicators and utter liars.

What it takes is patience to read and comprehend both science and math. In the article I found it interesting that Birx and a colleague went on a cross country road trip to varying states to try to cajole and encourage the varying Governors of many States to embrace mask wearing. This of course came AFTER Fauci and the Surgeon General had stated that mask wearing was not necessary. And in the beginning Fauci did not agree that Covid was spread by asymptomatic carriers. Ah the what if’s and if only. This is the Doom Loop: “Our political system is caught in a “doom loop” of partisanship and polarization, as both major parties trade long-term institutional stability for short-term political gain in what they rationalize as a fight for the soul of our country.” And the Covid Task Force was formed and did little as it was where the arguments centered on political capital and tending to a vituperative volatile President versus actually doing what is right for the public and the people. Setting up camps to ensure one’s own position than doing right. The endless doom loop of going nowhere but trapped in a circle of jerks.

The article does have heroes and none of them are the players we see in the news or hear of, a Government employee who ironically was once a reporter. And he had front row to the greatest seat in the theater of the absurd as he watched one moron enter the room only to leave followed by another. Matt Pottinger, the deputy national-security officer whose brother was a Physician in off all places Seattle, a former Marine, who spoke Mandarin and had massive contacts in Asia as the outbreak began. He knew day one we are on ride to hell and while the idiots spun their tops he tried to figure out how and what to do right. And it was at the first meeting with Senators where Fauci and Robert Redfield (CDC) said at the briefing in January ” We are prepared for this.” Lie number one

The irony was that in 2019, the HHS dept. conducted a simulation called, the Crimson Contagion, which is to test the government’s response in a pandemic. It concluded that well you know the answer today. At that time nothing was done to remedy the shortcomings and issues that the test results provided.

But back to heroes who immediately began to do what the do best, dig into research and reaching out to colleagues in the field. One stands out, Dr. Barney S. Graham, the chief architect of the first authorized Covid vaccine. One of his partners in this venture is Jason McLellan who was studying HIV and that began the two to work together on the vaccine that is now being produced by Moderna. Again, if you think these are people on the money train, think again, the U.S. Government funded much of this (well so did Dolly Parton) and they own the patent rights.

Meanwhile the Doom Loop continues with another Oval Office meeting where in January Trump was warned that this was the big one, and told it would be the “biggest national security threat you will ever face.” At that same meeting Fauci said, “It would be unusual for an asymptomatic person to drive the epidemic in a respiratory disorder.” Lie #2.

I call them lies as at this point anyone in science and research should know there are no clear facts, no clear black and whites unless it has been studied, analyzed and verified. At that point in late January there was little to no information about Covid as China was covering its tracks and downplaying it globally while simultaneously locking down and shutting down anyone doing otherwise than keeping quiet. Even at this meeting the Kudlow idiot that Trump has an econ adviser thought it was not serious as apparently the stock market would somehow know this and reflect it. He asked if the money was dumb and then said, “Is everyone asleep at the switch. I have a hard time believing that.” He does not recall that remark. Lie #3

But another crackpot Trump adviser, Peter Navarro was the first to call for borders to be shut, equating it with a black swan event. And he was the odd man out.. not the first time but the first time he was actually right. His posture on this led him to be banned from future meetings. More crimes and misdemeanors follow.

And from this more began to devise the strategy to become what we know now, the quarantine lockdown. And the name, flatten the curve, came when Dr. Markel and a CDC director, Marin Cetron, devised while looking at a mass of Thai noodle takeout. There you go, inspiration in all forms.

By the end of February the reality that the virus was here and moving across the globe and the United States made a sense of urgency that required money, diligence and of course cooperation. Three things that our Government in its current state of the doom loop make such a challenge if not an impossibility. And again of all people Peter Navarro devises a budget for 3 Billion dollars to cover costs of an accelerated vaccine process, PPE equipment and other therapeutics. This passed muster with Secretary Azar but the access to the door via the “acting” chief of staff Mulvaney, was shut upon arrival. He gave an 8 Million pass as enough. And this begins the denial that fuels the jet for Trump to continue to equate Covid with the flu. Lie #4

By March the warnings were out and we know that in some states the emergency bell was ringing but here in New York, Mayor DiBlasio was encouraging people to eat out. Okay, then. Where do you suggest, Bellevue Hospital cafeteria?

The chaos that follows is all part of our current memory and is our recent history which is our current present. The idiocy, the lies presented by Trump alone are in double if not triple digits. His enablers and cult followers have continued to live in the river of denial that they float on the passenger ship to hell. The Governors who cruised their ships into ports of shit and bullshit are still pretending to helm the vessel with no more knowledge or skills that even the most green of Bosun’s on Bravo’s Below Deck possess. The reality is that much of this could have been, should have been, might have been prevented if not reduced had anyone gotten out of the circle of jerks and the doom loop. We can talk about the Nursing Home patients sent back Covid positive to infect others and themselves die, or how about the Veteran Homes such as the one in Massachusetts, so badly understaffed and underfunded, that aging Vets were shoved into single wards, not monitored, isolated nor cared for. Even in New York many patients so overwhelmed the system that one a Broadway director was shoved into a hall, where he soiled himself and was not given food nor water for 12 hours. Maybe he should have gone to the Javitz Center they had all of a 100 folks. Our health care system was as disabled and fractured as the patients they treated.

And here we are a country at risk with a President trying to jigger votes, find conspiracies where there are none and a coalition of Congress men and one idiot woman (from Tennessee, Marsha Blackburn) trying to pander to this pathological liar. Covid is not going away, you cannot swipe right and rid yourself of it. This is the long haul, only without delusions, endless fevers, pain, breathing challenges, it is by far an easier one to truck. We have to wear masks, avoid small congregations and poorly ventilated spaces, such as bars and restaurants. Once again in Nashville, home of morons, I read where they are sure if the Mayor allowed the bars to stay open to 1 a.m that the spread of Covid would be reduced: “I think it was a mistake by the Health Department to not allow bars to stay open until 1 a.m.,” said Barrett Hobbs, chair of Metro’s hospitality recovery committee and owner of several downtown businesses. “The science shows that people gathering in homes is the largest viral spreader.”

Now this moron is well first a Tennessean, second a bar owner and third a white man. The biggest of all the liars in the lying world. For the record guess what? Wrong again.

The hospitalitysector’sprotestsaround the world over bans on their activities, limiting them at best to selling takeaways, contrasts with the scientific evidence: well-meaning restaurant and bar owners insist they have complied scrupulously with health and safety measures, but there is no getting away from the fact that a business where people must remove their masks in order to eat or drink, has increased infection rates.

At the aggregate level, the first study to portray the obvious correlation between restaurant openings and the spread of COVID-19 was published in June by Johns Hopkins University, using data on credit card spending by 30 million customers in the United States and correlating it to the evolution of the pandemic in each state. The relationship was clear: the more spending on restaurants, the greater the number of infections.

That study was followed by another, carried out by Stanford University and published on November 10. Using a very different methodology, the outcome was nevertheless the same: researchers tracked the smartphones of more than 98 million people between March and May, taking into account the number of times their subjects went to restaurants, gyms and hotels, and concluding that if restaurants were authorized to open at full capacity, they would be responsible for more than 600,000 infections in a city like Chicago, and that, in addition, the distribution was irregular and impossible to predict: 10% of the premises were responsible for 85% of the expected infections.

And yesterday I finished an article in the The New York Times Magazine about going forward with College Football and its role of spreading Covid while the same State leaders who were demanding a total lockdown capitulated on this one issue. Mike DeWine of Ohio is perhaps the biggest hypocrite in that crowded field.

They found this: The week the season resumed, the mayors of 11 of the 14 Big Ten cities wrote to the conference expressing their concern that football games would encourage people to congregate. “It’s a normal tradition on game day that you watch with other people,” Dr. Mysheika Roberts, the health commissioner for Columbus, told me. “And we’ve seen our cases go up. Since the first game, our cases have exploded.” When we spoke the week I visited Columbus, Roberts seemed confident that Ohio State’s football players could remain safe. They were motivated by both the carrot of being able to continue playing and the stick of a season potentially shut down if they helped foment an outbreak. She was less optimistic about Buckeye fans around the city and across Ohio. “We’re trying to change the behavior of all those people,” she said. “But what’s their motivation?”

Well it apparently is this….

At halftime, I left Ohio Stadium and headed to a party on West Lane Avenue, a few blocks from campus. By the time I arrived, Fields had thrown for another touchdown; I saw the replay on a television that someone had carried out to the lawn. At the time of the Rutgers game, the incidence of positive tests in Columbus approached 11 percent. Private gatherings were capped at 10 people. But these fans seemed to have created an exemption for themselves. Perhaps 50 people were gathered outside the multiunit brick building, which housed mostly students. Plastic cups of beer were being distributed from a wooden table. Nobody I saw wore a mask.

When Ohio State’s season finally started, several students told me, it was as though the party animals had been released from their cages. Football, said Kaleigh Murphy, a sophomore I talked with, “gave people a reason to get up on a Saturday and go to a frat and start drinking.” For Murphy, part of Ohio State’s allure was the spectacle of a football weekend. During the previous season, her group of friends would gather in the stadium parking lot before home games. Maybe they would eventually go in, maybe they wouldn’t. With no fans permitted this season, they moved their festivities elsewhere. “If people aren’t going to parties,” she said, “they’re at the bars.”

Later that night, I drove to the Short North neighborhood near downtown. At Seesaw, a restaurant and bar on the corner of East First Avenue and High Street, I saw revelers partying as though 2020 had never happened. There were five televisions on the ground floor and more upstairs. The bar was crowded with patrons, one for nearly every seat. Most seemed to be shouting. Two were kissing in a corner. Five were jammed around a table meant for four, playing a drinking game. Only the bartenders wore masks. It was Saturday night. “A football Saturday night,” the bouncer checking IDs at the door said.

Two days later, on Monday, Ohio’s 9,750 new coronavirus cases broke its existing record by more than 1,500. The state’s governor, Mike DeWine, addressed the crisis. He described the virus as a “runaway freight train.” He asked families to scale back their plans for the coming holiday season. Yet in terms of the impact across the state, every Ohio State game might as well have been its own Thanksgiving, just with different catering. DeWine was clearly mindful of the popularity of the Buckeyes among his constituents, which may explain why he wasn’t willing to try to curtail those weekly gatherings. When I asked him about it, his answer was blunt: “I can’t impact who you have over to eat pizza and watch the Ohio State game.”

So you see that all of this blustering and posturing and fear mongering accomplished only so much and we are where we are. We are in a perpetual doom loop. Hunker down as we still have a long winter left.