Auld Lang Syne

“Auld Lang Syne” – which roughly translates to “times gone by”– was written by Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1788 and is thought to have been based on a Scottish folk song. And with that every year many drunkenly or not so drunk fumble through the words as a way of acknowledging farewell to the previous year.

I am not sure when I recall first hearing the song, singing it or even remembering it. I do recall watching New Years Eve broadcasts and it was always the concluding number after midnight usually done by the Guy Lombardo Orchestra which as I grew older was replaced by Dick Clark’s Rockin New Year’s Eve. ** I have posted the history of NYE below for those curious** We have many variations today and with that equal amount of performances and ways to acknowledge the new year, of course the most famous is the one directly across the river at Times Square and the infamous ball which drops at midnight and the revelers that were there all day do the kiss and then vacate after a long day of standing in what ostensibly is pens. Yes folks are corralled in pens with no ability to leave. Sounds great.

Many have their favorites, I used to love Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper on CNN, then she was terminated due to a poorly done photo of Trump, and his BRAVO friend, Andy Cohen took his place. The roster was covered by additional CNN hosts, my personal favorite as always was drunk Don Lemon and his cohort Brooke Baldwin. I think that is what made Don Lemon so popular and people forget that he began on the network late Saturdays and was even then a fascinating train wreck which over time became just frankly too political and he is now on the AM show and apparently doing well. I have actually watched CNN of late as it is less talk more news and with that they decided to stop the drinking between the two AC’s. MISTAKE. Neither man is actually funny, Andy Cohen is a misogynist and a mean drunk which tells you what he is like in real life, and Anderson doesn’t drink but is just a giggly girl who reminds one of the Prom Queen drunk on Seltzer and might actually let loose. I managed an hour, missing talk that concluded with how Iran brings in the New Year by hanging criminals. Okay then. Bring it on.

But I missed the other alternatives, NYE in Nashville (sorry I lived there and with that trigger warnings) and the Dolly Parton/Miley Cyrus show that included oddly David Byrn which was from what I can tell fascinating to watch. While I could imagine ringing in the New Year with David that is not how I would have. But okay then. Bring it on.

As I ended my new year doing what I have promised myself in the forthcoming year to do less of, attend Theater. The recent performance of Death of a Salesman had an Audience member so drunk and out of control that Wendell Pierce had to stop, break the fourth wall and ask her to leave and offer to refund her money. This is not surprising as this is the new Theater audience, either entitled and feel they can police and monitor behavior, or the insane who have no sense of behavior and personal boundaries. They sort of overlap on the Venn Diagram of Audience with the sing along crowd, the illicit taping or photo taking, and of course the lack of comprehension of the subject and are there as they are the FOMO crowd and truly don’t ‘get it.’

Theater is a crapshoot and again very objective, what one likes another can loathe. Again the Met Opera and the woman who screamed at me at the Subway in a full state of tears regarding the opera, The Hours, “IT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN MADE.” Or the two men on the way out ranting that it was horrid and they wished they left during the Intermission. Which one? The first or the second during the three hours plus long opera? Again I wonder why they hated it and with that I have bad news it is being brought back for next season, fully the same cast as the entire run was sold out. Yet I met not one person who liked it? For the record it will be sold out the next time too with many going again. Me no. But I did not hate it, I just found it lacking that cohesion that desperately needed a connection to explain the three women’s stories. I knew it but let’s assume many do not. It was based on the book, not the movie and with that I have met few who fucking read, let alone that book so I can understand the frustration. The hate no.

And with that even how bad the two pieces I saw on Friday, 1776, the Musical and Des Moines, the last play by the late Author, Denis Johnson, both with interesting casting choices, could not overcome the overwhelming weakness of script. The former simply dated and despite the “woke” casting of Women/Women of Color and Trans Women it seemed campy and much like a Drag Show send up. Des Moines was an unfinished work which the Author knew was incomplete and needed revisions but had established that it could not be done posthumously. And with that the cast did its best to make it work and I admit I went to see Michael Shannon who is on Showtime right now doing a poor imitation of the late Country Music Star, George Jones, but who I have a massive crush on. That ended not because of the play as I saw him prior to the show walking to the theater, lumbering as if he was lost or dazed and much like many old men I see attending theater and like the same men, like I did, left 1776 at Intermission. See that is how you do it. I just left and when I did I stopped in the restroom I realized one of the Men was heading in that direction, he then walked into the Ladies room and was in the stall next to me. I looked down his feet facing forward so I was not sure as he was masked but he could be a Man, be Trans or just “identify” as a woman. He raced out without washing his hands and was heading for the door. All of it just screamed weird. Irony that earlier the Ladies room was packed so I used the Men’s room, and when I went in I yelled “Anyone here?” Then as I was in the stall I heard the voices and told the women that I was the only one in there and to come in so they did. I should have definitely done the same, as while I was not unsafe in any sense I simply don’t get it. If you are a man or have become one be one, use the right restroom out of respect of those who simply don’t get it or because guess what you forfeited that right once you changed. Or here is plan, convert them all to have a single use one that locks to prevent the dilemma. This is why we have a problem right now, we simply cannot disagree in a healthy manner. I have zero problem with trans but I was sure that it was a man next to me.. why? Irony again as I left I checked the men’s room was again empty. Des Moines I managed to make it to the last 20 minutes and suddenly when the stage/theater went dark I took that to make my leave and slipped out of what was again a largely empty theater. Needless to say that was why my crush on Michael Shannon ended, I could not discern the character from the man I saw on the street; One review said he lumbered along the stage, well that is not far from what I saw, so Old Man and See Ya!

And with that we have a problem with how we express ourselves or share our experiences. When I said to the Women outside the men’s room, “come in there is no one in here so don’t worry or be afraid” they felt the need to correct that. And there is truth to that; but again if you identify or are transitioning you need to embrace it. I would have no problem with a Woman who I often call a “Big Girl” as she is a Woman now and should be acknowledged and treated as such. But once you are on one side or the other, stick with it. I get it. One it that there are urinals and no one wants to see that, I suspect men don’t either, but that is a personal issue just like watching me pee or take a shit. Some of this can simply be resolved by having one bathroom, no urinals and floor to ceiling locking stalls. They exist and I have used them and have no problem with that and it does stop the idea of doing what I did, lean down to check feet positioning, etc. But for fuck’s sake figure this shit out.

And with the need for inclusion and access, the MET Opera has commissioned finally works to include more by Women and POC. Better late than never but the reality is that it will never be enough or that they only started now. Fuck off, take it for a win and let it go or let them do it and accept it for bad or worse. Hey it can only open more doors, like toilets which apparently were the initial battleground I guess. And with that taking a dated Musical that we can say needs to stay in the graveyard such as 1776, casting it with POC, Women and members of the LGBQT community are not going to make a shitty thing not smell. It was a relic past its time so here’s an idea – WRITE YOUR OWN. Create a piece that addresses the issues of Women, Natives and of course Slaves. Gosh that would be hard! Okay, then. Why bother? But figure it out.

And that is where we are taking relics and redoing them to make them woke. Funny that very little was done to Death of a Salesman other than cast Black Actors and expand a role, enable a scene that permitted some music to accommodate the talents of two Actors who do sing, and yet it made perfect sense and there it was. Why the woman went nuts, I have no idea, but it is clear that again the theater crowd is of late a hot mess. I was relieved that in both plays I saw this weekend I had the rows to myself, I felt utterly relieved. I am so over it. Well in 1776 they insisted we all wear the provided masks and yet no rows behind us needed to. WTF? I have one play left and one musical (Moulin Rouge) both on a Wednesday and I am optimistic as the crowds dissipate in January and I hope for the best. I still have a lot of Opera, Comedy and Music on the calendar but they too have been largely absent of crowds and the ability to move seats is always there. I am just not sure anymore how I feel with regards to theater in the future. And I don’t feel I am not missing anything. That may be a good message for most to follow this coming year. Miss less.

Now how about a cup of auld lang syne.

From the Chicago Tribune:

While Ryan Seacrest now has the spotlight duty of guiding the New Year’s Eve festivities from New York City’s Times Square, it was Dick Clark — until his death in April 2012 at age 82 — who did the same for a 35-year span. Prior to Clark, it was bandleader Guy Lombardo as the best known personality for almost a half-century of live New Year’s Eve broadcasts from 1929-1976 on radio, and later TV live from New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel ballroom. It was 40 years ago when Lombardo signed off for his final broadcast on Jan. 1, 1976. And this year marks the 40th anniversary of when he died at age 75 in November 1977 and Clark took over the annual broadcasts.

In addition to our tradition at the farm for watching the New York countdown to the new year, there’s also other favorite folklore we follow about our New Year’s traditions. Here are some of my favorite facts and fun tips for starting the new year off right according the lore and legends passed along throughout the centuries.

Making the date — New Year’s celebrations have been observed since prehistoric times. However, only within the past 400 years has Jan. 1 been the widespread observed holiday. The Romans, in 153 B.C., were the first to use Jan. 1 to mark the beginning of the new year.

Cease to Caesar — Roman Emperor Julius Caesar tried to change the New Year date from Jan. 1 to a later date. Though he was voted down by the Senate — to make the ruler happy — the month of his birth was named in his honor: July.

A noisy night — Some of the most familiar trademarks of New Year’s parties are noisemakers, masks and paper hats. This tradition began many centuries ago as an effort to “hide your identity” while making noise to “drive away evil spirits” from hampering the new year. In China, firecrackers are used as “the loudest noisemakers around.”

Weather or not — Dating back to the times of ancient Babylon, it is believed the weather on New Year’s Day is symbolic of what the weather will be like for the rest of the new year. For example, sunny, rainy, cold, warm … Some people even believe each of the 12 days before New Year’s Day are symbolic of what the weather will be like for each of the 12 months in the new year. Many believe a windless New Year’s Day means a dry summer; windy means floods; and breezy indicates summer rainfall.

Presidential party time — George Washington, our country’s first president, is credited for holding the first public reception and presidential inauguration. According to his diary entry for New Year’s Day 1790: “Many came between the hours of 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. to pay the compliments of the season to me, and in the afternoon, a great number of ladies and gentlemen visited Mrs. Washington on the same occasion.”

Mum’s the word — The Swedish and English who settled along the Delaware River began the tradition of the “Mummers’ Parade of Philadelphia,” which is still held each New Year’s Day. Groups dressed in fancy costumes sing and present plays along the streets while “mumming,” which means begging for money, food, drinks or belated Christmas gifts.

Flower power — The most famous New Year’s Day parade for most people is “The Tournament of Roses Parade,” held each year in Pasadena, Calif., which features more than 70 floats constructed from and covered with flowers. Originally meant to celebrate “the ripening of oranges in California,” it now has come to mean the opening of The Rose Bowl football game, which first began in 1902, when the University of Michigan defeated Stanford 49 to 0. Ouch!

Hide the Tide detergent — Some people believe whatever a person does on New Year’s Day will indicate the type of year that awaits. If you do laundry on New Year’s Day, you will have a hard year of work ahead and a death in the family. (Gulp!) Washing clothes on Jan. 1 is said to represent “washing someone out of your life!” Also, forget about sewing. It is said if you sew on New Year’s Day, you will be sewing a shroud (a cloth used to cover a dead body for a funeral) by the end of the year!

Look who’s there — Should the first visitor to your house on New Year’s Day be a female, bad luck will follow. If the first visitor is a man, expect good luck. Many visitors at one time indicates good fortune. Also, nothing should be taken outside the house unless something is brought back in, in exchange.

The Times Square New Year’s Eve trademark is the 6-foot lighted ball that descends 70 feet on a pole to the ground to symbolize the arrival of the New Year. The first “glowing ball” was built in 1907 built by Russian immigrant and metalworker/signmaker Jacob Star, after the city outlawed fireworks on New Year’s Eve.

Eating answers — Your New Year’s menu can be very important if you believe our ancestors. To gain wealth in the new year, eat cabbage or sauerkraut. Cabbage, and it’s green tint, is said to represent paper money. Germans believe eating herring (a strong-flavored fish often served in sour cream or vinegar) will bring good luck all year round. In Italy, pig’s feet or pork and lentil beans are eaten. The lentil beans symbolize “coins” to bring wealth in the new year. People are told to eat pork and poultry on New Year’s. The reason for this is because chickens scratch backwards (symbolizing a return to the old) and pigs root with their noses forward (symbolizing moving on to the new year.) Black-eyed peas are another favorite for good luck. And always make sure your salt shaker is full on New Year’s Day “to ensure you will prosper all year long.”

Broadway Blues

I have written about how I feel currently about the state of American Theater as it plays out on Broadway. There are two camps of theater goers: The ones who love it and Tourists. They are often parallel and can be very similar in tone and like when it comes to seeing the current productions on Broadway. Some have been playing so long they are woven into the fabric of the street and are always packed with audiences that come from far away or even near to share that experience of joy when the house lights go down. That would apply to many long standing hits that have long passed the Tony Awards, the stellar famous casts that have tread the boards in that production and have been filmed or even closed, and returned as many often do. Think Phantom of the Opera is one such example but there are always more waiting stage left.

Today there was an article in the New York Times about the struggles on Broadway, and with that a picture of the empty seats at The Girl for North Country I immediately purchased a seat for the final performance on Sunday. I had cancelled my Opera tickets for this past Sunday due to concerns of weather and frankly I am still but I have every intent of making it to the show as it deserves respect. The musical is a transcendent piece with the song catalog of Bob Dylan in which to move the story along in ways that are remarkable. Not forced nor deliberately altered during the pandemic, it stood the test. Many productions felt that the need to change the story and/or casting to meet the new pressure to acknowledge people of color, both in front of the stage and behind the curtain leading to many shows being put on that had not had out of town try outs in which to build and craft the story and at times it showed as they have not lasted long. But even those with a built in audience and rotating talent that can quickly transition in are having difficulty finding their footing and in turn their audience. The juke box musical Ain’t too Proud to Beg is one and the other was Jagged Little Pill. They had gone out of their way to alter the story and attempt to make it more relevant, had a cast rotation set in place as one Actor had given birth and wanted to job share, but ultimately it did not find an audience. Is is a sing along rouser or a play with music. That is Girl from North Country, and Pill is despite the pedigree of a Hollywood writer, a Juke Box Musical. As for Plays I saw the Lehman Trilogy, twice and it was a limited run, and sold out as it had prior to the Pandemic with solid reviews and tickets that were in the triple digits. A cast change had little effect and it closed on time without any cancellations or alterations. I have several plays booked ahead and I wonder what the end result will be as we go forward.

I have commented that New Yorkers are a scoldy lot, entitled and arrogant with it and that gives it a reason many feel New Yorkers are rude. No, they are not but there is a “type” just like in the South that carried a behavior set that was both offputting and truly a stereotype. And I will leave it at that. Note the end of the article when a young woman, from Brooklyn, making her a New Yorker went to both Girl and Six and she loved the latter. Why? She whooped it up and sang and danced along. And don’t tell the Theater crowd that, they will be appalled. And with that this is why Broadway struggles, as the prices limit attendance and the expected etiquette no longer applies. Do not complain is another, try that assholes. Just being polite and allowing people to get up and go to the bathroom and arrive late is now the norm. I have not been to a production yet that has not done as such. So there you go, first rule already eliminated. So New York shut your mouth, focus on you and ignore the rest. If you find it that untenable, leave, ask for your money back and go home. You are not really there to support the theater or you would go to the shows that are not always on the must see. And you would admit that shows that often are are not all that and a bag of chips, Caroline and Change comes to mind.

Take 2 Call Me in the Morning

The pandemic has been very very good to the Medical Industrial Complex. This is contrary to the public messaging that had Governor’s daily scolds as a way of reminding us Covid is killing the world and that once you get Covid, hospitals will be overrun and you will not get care because they cannot help you. The news put story after story showing crowded waiting rooms, hallways filled with patients and the daily count rising as if at any moment Covid will come through the door and kill you like a home invader.

Meanwhile smaller hospitals on the brink of closing for lack of funding did just that, close. Hospitals outside major cities were overrun while others were not. Tents were erected, special boats sailed in, larger public arenas were commissioned to be overflow sites and then within weeks they packed their tents, sailed away and the arenas closed awaiting a new use as a massive injection site. The Javitz Center was open and closed in a week for such use, much like a badly reviewed Broadway play as there were simply not enough vaccines available in which to run such a massive scale operation that was to run 24/7. They should have tried slot machines.

Much of the political jockeying and manipulation was based in truth as Hospitals that are run by major corporations were ill prepared for this virus. They had insufficient PPE and of course space and equipment needed to handle a major uptick in admissions. The lack of information, consistent data and of course actual understanding of Covid and how to treat it led to many Medical Personnel overworked, utterly confused and abandoned as they tried to piece together everything from their own PPE to how to treat a virus that seemed to manifest itself as a different disease with each admitted case. Sounds like AIDS in the nascent days but then again media and news on that plague was centered slightly differently.

But to put it in perspective this was Hudson County the largest densest county in NJ where I live. And this was the info at the worst at three hospitals:

These CarePoint Health hospitals have admitted one of the highest rates of COVID-19 cases, approximately one out of every 82 positive cases in the country, according to CarePoint Health. Out of the more than 95,000 positive cases in New Jersey, the three hospitals had nearly 1,200 admissions through April 18.*** this works out to .12 of cases.. not 12.. 0.12. That is not as overwhelming as one was led to believe during the height of pandemonium.

And the same said for staff related Covid illness. As they found in one with 1,100 staff only 14-15 tested positive. Meaning again 0.1 percent. And yes the health care workforce were unprepared and lost workers and some to suicide which also crossed into the other fields of care. But this mental health issue is not one they faced alone. And the total of Covid deaths by healthcare workers was 3,000 in 2020. By December 26, 2020 the total deaths recorded by the CDC from Covid was 22,574. Total deaths 81,394. So that was 0.27 percent of deaths from Covid. And we can agree that the secondary totals that included death from Covid related causes increases that count and we will never have fully accurate numbers. That again parallels AIDS as many died from the secondary illnesses that were the result of contracting HIV. Again putting this in perspective: The Institute of Medicine report estimated 98,000 Americans were dying annually due to medical errors. Estimates of annual patient deaths due to medical errors have since risen steadily to 440,000 lives, which make medical errors the country’s third-leading cause of death.

So we applauded these workers as heroes. As many went out nightly to honk horns, bang pots and clap for the front line workers, the back of the house was cutting staff, closing doors and cashing checks. The bailout was a money maker and many wealthy hospitals found themselves cashing in on that as if the slots had finally pulled a winner.

This from The Washington Post discusses how many facilities turned this nightmare into gold thanks to the Cares Act bailout. The idea was intended to offset all costs of treating infected patients, including purchasing ventilators, masks, gowns and other personal protective equipment. Congress further authorized hospitals to use the money to compensate for a drop in revenue when they shut down elective surgeries and non-emergency treatments to prepare for the anticipated deluge of covid-19 patients. The money, referred to as the Provider Relief Fund, helped many poorer hospitals avert cash crunches, layoffs and bond rating downgrades. And many hospitals did close as they had already received negative ratings by Moody’s prior to Covid; however, the idea was that in fact, this lifeline was to prevent it. And what resulted was even with the targeted aid, recipients included well-endowed academic medical centers and major urban hospitals. Only $14 billion took profitability into consideration, HHS documents show. HHS restricted those payments to hospitals with 3 percent or lower profit margins.

Wealthy hospitals also benefited because HHS used a broad definition of lost revenue. If a hospital earned less than in the year before, or simply less revenue than it had budgeted for, it could chalk up that difference to the pandemic and apply the relief funds to it. The implications garnered little attention at the time as they were overshadowed by the concerns about how HHS was doling out the money rather than how it could be used.

And then we have today and testing issues that still have to be addressed as with contact tracing. Those two issues are again in the new stimulus package but it has not prevented hospitals for well doing what they do best – overcharging. And this article from The New York Times found that many hospitals are charging excessive fees for the basic Covid test even within themselves. Say you are getting one from your Physician or their own Urgent Care within the building but the ER facility will process said test and the costs then double down. Or in this case in New York, Lenox Hill, one of the city’s oldest and best known hospitals, repeatedly billed patients more than $3,000 for the routine nasal swab test, about 30 times the test’s typical cost.

And this is not uncommon as the Times has found out. They has been asking readers to submit bills so that we can understand the costs of coronavirus testing and treatment. So far, more than 600 patients have participated. Their bills have revealed high charges and illegal fees, as well as patients who face substantial medical debt for coronavirus treatment. State-run testing sites in New York do not charge patients or collect health insurance information for the coronavirus nasal swab tests. A study published last year found that a swab test at a hospital can run from $20 to $850. Some independent laboratories have charged more, billing $2,315.

And while it appears that may be the case across the country, it is not one consistently applied across the country. Emergency room fees are common in the American system but rare in the world of coronavirus testing. At The Times’s request, the data firm Castlight Health analyzed insurance claims for 1.5 million coronavirus tests.

It found that less than 4 percent of coronavirus tests are billed through emergency departments. The vast majority of those tests are associated with large claims that have many charges, suggesting the nasal swab was incidental to a more complex visit.

And this brings me to of course my favorite target of this the biggest hero of the time, Andrew Cuomo. As more comes out about this asshole I cannot say enough about how America drank that down like a milkshake from Shake Shack. Sorry he was no better than Trump and with that, we have a crisis that transcended just the White House. Some Governor’s really stepped up and the numbers and losses prove that by just doing the work, the work gets done. We have a crisis right now, Covid is with us. There are variants in place and the sheer lack of vaccines along with testing and tracing will mean this will continue. Yesterday I watched several drunk morons board the PATH, they were unmasked and they gradually found one and then a young girl had lost hers so the idiot boy with her removed his shirt. That is when I departed the car for another one. A woman followed me as another man also was naked faced. These people are assholes and idiots. Again ignorance is not bliss it’s ignorance. I have already shared my thoughts on the non-vaxxers as my exchange with Barista Brian on Friday seemingly played out in a skit on Saturday Night Live. I found it funny, but then why should I?

Welcome to “Will You Take It?” 💉 pic.twitter.com/mecvqzMK8C

— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) April 4, 2021

Covid Chronicles – Zip it

I have repeatedly mentioned I am no fan of Dr. Fauci. I find him annoying. He has a lot of baggage and frankly its time at age 80 to retire. He has validated his creds and he is respected but of all the spokesmodels one could have to educate, inform and discuss Covid, this is the best we got? I call him the Christy Tiegen of the med world. God he needs to zip it.. and frankly does she.

As we have now a third vaccine added to the list the reality that we are coming closer to reducing the spread or to use the catch phrase – flattening the curve. Despite that there are two new variants that are “more contagious” in and of itself vague as what does that mean exactly, have seen numbers of positive cases declining. Death count is now at 500K unless Cuomo is counting so that could be less or more dependent upon the real numbers that were never tallied early on in the pandemic as they were never tested nor confirmed as POS. And we will never know the true number of Covid POS cases as many have never been tested nor confirmed either by choice or because it was again in the early days and the lack of tests and the stringent protocol criteria did not allow them to get tested and as a result they recovered or again died without true accounting of cause of death.

What is still transpiring is the endless misinformation and inaccuracies with regards to Covid and the vaccines. And what that means after one is vaccinated and how they are to proceed until we reach an appropriate level to determine herd immunity. And if Fauci is still the town crier I suspect a great deal of off switches will be used as to the right he will never be anyone worth listening to.

I read this in the Tennessean as a reflection of a year gone by and lack of listening that went down when it came to Covid response in the region. The area is ripe with religion, we know that many of the insurrectionists came from that area, fueled with lies and a lack of respect for science and fact that comes from any source other than behind a pulpit or screen. Lies are best swallowed with some sweet tea and biscuits the better to choke them down and they love their sweet tea. It is also explains the numerous health issues faced by that population so Covid and pre-existing conditions are why that region took a big death toll. That may be the morbidity issue we are trying to understand why faces of color seemed to have higher fatalities, poverty, poor health and lack of access of preventative medical care are massive public health issues in non-pandemic times.

Then let’s face the ugly truth about education, it sucks overall but in the South it is a hot mess of Covid fever. These are people whose academic level of success is largely confined to K-12 and even that is hit and miss. The largest sector of education is secular and that too means a selective approach to matters concerning Science, especially those matters surrounding Biology. It is the sex part kids that set them off. Literacy and ability to read at or above grade level is middling and few do read. There is the landscape itself with concentrated cities that are hardly world class surrounded by largely rural areas with little access to health care, education, let alone bandwidth. The social and physical isolation was long in existence before Covid and the tribalism alone contributes to further segregate people.

The rest of the country in largely rural economies also suffer from this and the Dakotas are certainly another example with a crazy Governor who is determined to be like Trump down to the deaths and destruction of communities rather than admit science may be right and while there were wrong steps made it can be righted. Nope, shame is a factor here that leads people to refuse to apologize and right wrongs. I am no less guilty.

Denial is another. The hoarding of cold and flu medicines did contribute to many who were POS spreading the virus as again getting tested for simply having a fever but no cough, having the shits. Not knowing anyone who had COVID or been in contact with one who had was impossible in the beginning and still is as there is little to no contact tracing and it turn more lies and misinformation. So why any reason, sole reason to be tested should have been enough but that like the vaccines there is never enough so we lie. And we deny and we go on as if we are fine.

Dr. William Schaffner, a prominent infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University who’d watched all year as ill-advised gatherings spread the virus over and over.

Throughout the pandemic, Schaffner gave thousands of interviews to hundreds of news publications, offering expertise that was calm, polite and peppered with the folksy charm. But by December, faced with the same questions about yet another preventable surge, he’d finally grown exhausted of repeating himself.

“We paid a price after Memorial Day. We paid a price after July 4. The same thing happened, more or less, after Thanksgiving,” Schaffner said. “I don’t know how many lessons we need. How many times do we have to do this experiment to convince ourselves of the result?”

Denial and anger seems to be perfectly demonstrated by our Congressional reps. Irony or tragedy, a North Dakota man was elected to his State’s Congress post-humously. And since that two more have died. What more do you need to know with regards to Covid? That it is a virus, it is contagious and it can be deadly. Congress had to learn the hard way being trapped in a room with deniers (not just of the election) and in turn the CPAC convention this weekend will I sure rival any prior super spreader event.

Covid has reminded more and more of AIDS with each passing day. Shame, guilt, retributions and repercussions. The shame and frustration and of course the anger about condoms is the same expressed about masks. I am exhausted from hearing the endless excuses, stories and pleas to encourage safety and health. I have been down this road before and yet we are much like the Doctor in Nashville said, just not able to learn and alter our behavior. Why is that so hard? I assume being an asshole is simply easier.

This article from The Washington Post talks about a small town in Illinois, and its awareness that Covid was not just a big city disease is just one of many as Covid ran amok across the country. The article in the Tennessean ends with this note: And the second year of coronavirus in the American South began the same as the first – with a party. (This was over the cherished hysteria over College Basketball another Southern ritual) But like anywhere in America it is not just the South that feels the need to spread cheer and with it disease.

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.

Covid Chronicles – The Holiday Edition

With about two weeks left to Christmas and the inevitable third wave or fourth depending on who is counting.. again we had Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day and Thanksgiving. We we warned repeatedly during each to stay long and distant and while Covid spiked in some places it declined in others and round and round we went bringing us all back to ground zero with the same hysterical warnings, the same threats, the increasing numbers of hospitalizations and deaths which have never stopped while all the world’s a stage and we are all players in this macabre scenario that reminds me of the Jerry Lewis telethon of my youth, with the never ending pleading, begging, and tears just to remember the ones being lost to a disease that could be cured. That is what we need America, a COVID telethon! Dolly Parton would be the perfect host as she is already a winner in the Covid Chronicles donating a cool Million to Vanderbilt one of the hospitals working with Big Pharma on the vaccine.

And that is where we are America the roll out of vaccine number one to hot spots in America. Undoubtedly Jared Kushner who really showed his talents and gifts for crisis management during the nascent days with the PPE and Ventilator distribution issues will perhaps hopefully take a backseat on this one and let professionals take over to distribute the drugs to those in need. Remember those days with naval ships arriving in ports, field hospitals being erected in convention centers and the charity tents in public parks? Good times folks as those numbers of cases handled and the outcomes are still in question and the costs have yet to be fully explained on how and why many hospitals remained under utilized while others were maxed out with portable tents in parking lots and refrigerator trucks for the dead left on side streets by dumpsters which became a rather significant marker to explain how we were handling Covid in Phase One.

We have had several months to improve and centralize communications, to figure out how to educate and operate schools, how to handle crowd control and compliance and yet we have done fuck all nothing other than posture and threaten. It is working out great, or not.

The issues of self responsibility continue as now violence has begun on the streets over the failed re-election of the Dr. Frankenstein who has no interest in the continuing crisis and once again Governors are assuming control, co-opting Igor for their own agenda and like the media whore he is he simply pipes in supportive yet cautious remarks which mean nothing except to remind everyone to mask up. I recall that same messaging from him back in the 80’s, no love without a glove or something like that. While I do respect Fauci I feel he is not who we need to reach a younger and more diverse audience especially faces of color and those who are not well into Science. This has been another of the more insidious issues using Fauci and Birx two white Seniors to somehow communicate to the Tik Tok age and find a voice in those larger at-risk groups that are not old folks. Fauci’s recent affirmation with Big Daddy Bully Cuomo to close restaurants with no data to back this up is again another issue across the country in California that evoked the same mandate. There is so little real contact tracing and tracking that few believe indoor dining is the cause and reason behind the uptick when the last stat mentioned by Cuomo was that 76% of the cases were tied to “small gatherings.” Okay so they were where? Homes or in a public place or again the big perp – Churches – where they can no longer mandate closures on thanks to the Supreme Court. Again, here is where religious leaders would be an effective messengers to talk to those about how one can still be a participant in a religious community without the need to congregate in a specific place. But nope, crickets.

So we can keep schools open despite the fact that few educators wish to keep open but the consultants and policy wonks and those parents who hate caring for their kids see otherwise. The constant citing of statements like “falling behind” or the “lost generation” have been used to somehow validate that opening schools and allowing full attendance is the key to something, that something again seems economic in value and not about health and safety of those who work inside said buildings, you know the Teachers and Admins as well as all the other back of the house players who keep schools operating. You know that village thing.

I have always thought it was odd that the only data we ever hear are the positive cases, the number of hospitalizations and deaths. We have no idea how many are tested a day, what the status of thier case was/is and the number of recovered. Europe does provide that but even ages, gender race are not given. If we had a robust contract tracking and tracing we would but we don’t. Jared get on that you must have time on your hands.

The overwhelming failure by our Government be it on the Federal or State level is quite clear and it is why there is little compliance and at times sheer confusion as to what the current protocol is to be on a daily basis with now the incoming Administration adding their two cents further confusing and infuriating the Trumptards.

As for the media they do their best to further lend a voice not needed to the din with their endless stating conflicting studies and data that have not been vetted and tested to the level that should be before reporting. Facts matter and the most bizarre story was one in The Washington Post about South Korea finding a patron who contracted Covid in a restaurant with limited exposure of a scant 5 minutes from another seated over 23 feet away. Really? Of course that story was a rewrite of an LA Times story. No mention in either about possible extenuating circumstances or full examination of the strain verifying it through DNA testing and complete tracking/tracing of all the participants movements, their exposures to others? Wow that South Korea is amazing that is K Pop level shit right there. Or not. The article had no South Korean sources other than a person NOT involved in the study.. okay then. As for the American scientists and doctors contacted had doubt, one saying this:

“The problem that you tend to have is one of missing information,” says Richard Martinello, an associate professor at Yale School of Medicine and a specialist in adult and pediatric infectious diseases.“They may know well what happened within that restaurant,” Martinello adds, “but they don’t know what happened on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. They don’t know what happened back in the kitchen at the restaurant. There are so many other aspects,” including the fact that one in five people infected with the coronavirus will experience no symptoms, but may still spread the virus. But then again there is a story there that will scare the shit out of everyone and in turn validate the latest round of closing just restaurants, but not anything else. I see said the reporter who upon examining his credentials I see his was one with regards to restaurant reviews not science or foreign reporting including failing to list the CDC’s findings on indoor dining. Good job, I like BimBap too!

And if you question any of this you are labeled “histrionic” as that is the man’s way of saying to a woman, “I don’t like what you have to say, it confuses me.” Ah yes my menses is the problem, shame I don’t have menses anymore. The lack of true effective communication is a bigger problem than Covid at this point and it contributes to why few are truly grasping the urgency. And that many rely upon “social” media for information, shame that social distancing can’t be applied to that as well.

I read this report in of all things USA Today about the failures of the U.S. Government from the very early stages of this disease and how the haphazard manner of coordination and control led to what we are now dealing with. There is no way of knowing if better management could of stopped or offset this entirely but there are valid issues surrounding the death toll that clearly is related to this issue.

This says it all:

The virus shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on the United States. The world’s most powerful nation, historically among the most successful at stymieing infectious illnesses, had ample lead time during which the deadly pandemic was rampaging through Asia, and then Europe.

But in an early vacuum of leadership at almost every government level, with the message from the White House that the virus was not anything to worry about, Americans unwittingly spread the lethal virus to loved ones and strangers alike.

The U.S. squandered its early advantage. Roughly one year after the virus first came into existence, the country has suffered a loss of life far worse than any other.

I have written much about Covid and kept up with many studies, theories and stories about the virus, its transmission and the issues about vaccines and efficacy. I am over Fauci but I have been for a long time frankly and would like to see new faces (not celebrities there Cuomo but actual medical professionals) who could message more effectively than another aging white man, second wave fast approaching, January 20th. I also would like real information, better and more comprehensive data in which to understand the who/what/where/when/why. Shouting out numbers like I am in Vegas is not working for me and it is not improving my histrionics in the least. There is no cure for that apparently either.

Haste Makes Waste

The decision to do this lockdown/quarantine was done without thought, careful planning and analysis and largely some half assed duplication of Wuhan that is a city within an oppressive country that in its own way mishandled and was somewhat deceptive as to the extent of the virus spread and danger to the larger world’s health. In turn WHO failed to grasp the demands of what this meant despite a history of similar virus outbreaks in the last decade, H1N1, SARS, Zika and of course Ebola.  There were already vaccines in development and tossed aside a decade ago as not profitable and of course then we have the United States own issues with bureaucracy, the CDC and the Trump Administration that I will go to the grave believing that they saw this as a great opportunity for political gain, not fully grasping the reality of what this virus was and its aggressive persistence.  So in the haste to figure this shit out the lack of centralized competent professionals and guidance the States had to rely on their own to contain the spread and manage the chaos from the demands it would cause on the health system.  So whoever came up with the lockdown was the person who saw this in Wuhan and said, you do it too.  There was no debate, no discussion and no actual analysis done to show how this would work, for how long it would need to be done and what that it would do to the bigger picture across the board.   And lockdown it was. The histrionic daily broadcast with the lottery readings were done to somehow raise fear and encourage compliance, no Scientists were working in tandem in fact many of the models used were competing if not contradictory further adding to the confusion. Then we have the contradictions and confusion by the White House and the two Doctors whose handprints are all over some of the most egregious decisions that enabled further chaos.

Many did not agree and they were dismissed as contrarians, curmudgeons or crazy as each day another restriction, another executive order, another retraction, contradiction were added to the never ending list.  No mask, mask, no parks, open parks, curfew, no curfew, cut bus transport and then cut the amount allowed, testing, tracking and tracing, only limited to those who met a narrow criteria to then opening the floodgates to have testing.  Then the stage phased opening that was quickly retracted when other states started to have case count rises. Schools open then not and on and on and on.

I never understood any of it.  I took the personal responsibility plan which was keep the fuck out of closed in spaces, wear gloves when out (it stops you from touching your face as a great reminder), wearing masks, limiting time in grocery stores, public transport and monitoring my health daily.  As for washing hands I always did so why did I need to do it more often and longer, who knows but it is about personal hygiene that I suspect has long been an issue and is why we have had many food borne illness outbreaks of late.  Again we are nasty filthy people clearly.

But shutting doors, designating businesses as essential or not, with little planning or involvement as to why and finding alternative ways for these businesses to remain open or coming up with everything from what we currently have, curbside delivery to appointments with limited entry numbers.  This would have enabled many small vendors to accommodate this and in turn make the decisions themselves what they should and could do.  But nope the reality was this was about the lack of available testing, no clear plan for the long haul and of course the crush of hospital patients so they took over conference centers, brought in ships and tents and simply setting up a centralized communication and access to patient data and needs to move those in critical care to those not in need  to one facility over another never happened.  The lack of clear organization and well established channels to track and trace the origin of the virus spread further leant to the confusion and does to this day.   Not one Governor or Mayor clearly communicated with each other and in the case of New York literally negated each other, personal vendettas, scores and other issues were settled over the lack of actual facts and numbers plagued (pun intended) state after state with many health care leaders of States since leaving their jobs at the same rate and level as Police Chiefs.

We have no real idea of the true numbers of Covid patients, deaths and of course overall Covid positivity in any community.  We only know of them if they are tested, if they are in turn treated and the overall outcome if it is death. We have no way of knowing if they contracted the disease, from whom, how long from exposure to actually displaying symptoms to how long they carried the virus from day one to day 14.  As that seems to be the time frame but that has little to do with those who don’t have the virus and why they would quarantine for any time frame other than 72 hours when they should be tested to see if they are in fact positive but asymptomatic.  The reality being that if they are pos and then the average run is 14 days that would mean in actuality only 11 days of quarantine following that as that includes the three days prior.  But nope the endless cycle of news had one day it was waiting in a bush to catch you, another in lurked inside for hours to it can travel 16 feet. It is one fucking amazing virus.  It is blood borne, aka in the body fluids and transmits like a virus in the air under close contact where air droplets or breath are extensively exchanged for a long period. That was 30 minutes it now seems to have been cut in half with no reasoning or explanation as to why.  Now we have the single case in Hong Kong of one who has contracted Covid again.  This should be fun as the daily does it or doesn’t it game the media played for months announcing cures, treatments, histrionic fear stories.  Yes we are heading into the second wave.

I am not bothering to discuss the endless “cures” and “treatments” as that list is endless, but again the excessive need to ventilate was a panic button switch that likely ended lives sooner than necessary and that the medical community has admitted; Yet,  I have read of lung transplants and of course other drugs and treatments that have led to serious issues as having to lose limbs in which to survive that course of action.   Really are you using these people as guinea pigs as that it was it seems.   So far no single orderly process and protocol has been established so this is just throw the shit against the wall see what sticks plan.  The long term issues and problems from the health industries sheer idiocy and panic mode will lead to many many more significant health problems for decades to come. Never underestimate the incompetency of the medical industrial complex.

But what is the most egregious of it all was the sheer idiocy of the local Governments both States and Municipalities to do this shit on their own with their own posse of morons who have since left their jobs and in their wake a mass of shit.  The Wall Street Journal did an excellent article about this issue that closing it all down, not actually attempting to find a structured way of quarantining the most at risk, being aggressive with testing ALL those in work places that were the essential front liners regardless of them being in China, knowing someone in China, touching China or even eating Chinese food would have been the first thing to do. By limiting the access to testing you opened the door to spreading the virus as it did untethered and unbothered by the man made caveats to finding the disease.  The lack of coordination between the private and public sector to come up with a manageable plan regarding their workforce and how to stop or reduce the spread by altering commute times, RIFF’s that would be covered by Unemployment while trying to again to reduce pressure on public transportation and means of travel that contribute to the spread.  Immediately stopping mass gatherings but allowing facilities to cut their occupancy rates to allow them to remain functioning but with clear mandates and enabling them to work on ventilation and other issues relating to spreading a virus, such as hygiene theater and mask requirements.  And of course rapid testing.  Funny how that with months closed that no one tried a temporary school concept during this time, such as staggered days, offsite learning and  the other ways mentioned above to educate the kids, but nope, wait til the start of the school year to fuck that one up.

One of the many issues the Journal discusses is how the lockdown was an overtly blunt and economically costly too.. They are near to impossible to do long enough to actually stamp out a virus and in turn the confusion about what ultimately it was to accomplish. The words “mitigation” “suppression” and “containment” were used interchangeably and in fact they are all three different concepts.  The favorite was and still is “flatten the curve” and that really only applied to hospitals and their admissions not the virus spread itself.  If you were to lockdown the country to actually mitigate a virus we would still very much be in Stage 1 right now.  But as we have seen across the country the bending, and flattening has been largely non-existent if not impossible.  And despite the rise in numbers in California a slight decline has begun by simply limiting public gatherings and indoor contacts.    Surgeries and other “non essential” health care has resumed and of course the mask mandate has been in existence now since July.  Funny that being outdoors rather than indoors the current state of health and human services director of California, Dr. Ghaly,  has noted. And he and other epidemiologists and economists have also noted this, as we all have learned a great deal since April which was a month into lockdown.  You know like discouraging masks and yet here were are finding out just how effective they are. So it is now these esteemed intellects  are now realizing that and perhaps it was not a necessary to close and cease all business.  So this proves that in fact had they had time to actually look to other countries and discuss with them their plans, Iceland, New Zealand, South Korea, the United States might be in better shape.  But nope the idea of States doing this on their own may in fact  have lead to more deaths, rising hospitalizations and of course a shattered economy.  Good plan.

To quote James Stock, a Harvard University economist who, with a Harvard epidimiologist, Michael Mina, realized that you can avoid a surge in deaths without a deeply damaging lockdown by simply being disciplined.  Simple policy mandates, simple communication and coordination and yes clear leadership would have offset much of this.  But nope we had to play Good Trump Bad Trump. Again I believe that while Trump is inept much of his staff and the CDC are equally inept and our local Governments are not much better they just play better on TV.   This lockdown bullshit was never part of the pandemic playbook and it was not used in the 1918-19 flu epidemic nor in the one in 1957. It was copied from the Communist playbook, hmm interesting. And even when Italy did it there were few in the European Union that agreed with that and it was only again until the modeling capabilities of another player, the Oxford University, further elevated the fear factor in Britain did Johnson then go into lockdown; however, he had handled it in the beginning like Trump so this is not surprising and his medical committee is one that is secretive in the best of times making Igor and the Bride seem  chatty and honest.  Uh those two are about as ethical as the rest of their community of pols.  We should, coulda, followed SE Asia but the CDC botched the testing kits, the rollout and as a result limited the testing and countless infections went undetected for months.  So we pay the price.  And while we trashed or tried to with regards to Sweden, their death mortality rate rose as it would with a highly infectious disease but not to the point requiring the lockdown and in turn their economy is less damaged. Shocking, I know. Not really. And their current death rates and infections are on par with the rest of Europe so while herd immunity may have been an ideal they were willing to comply and cooperate with a change of behavior. Again that requires a massive amounts of personal discipline.  That is not America nor Americans in the least.  But we are paranoid motherfuckers that much is certain. Just watching the RNC proves my point, scared shitless of black people but a killer virus fuck that we got this. Yeah ask Herman Cain about that.

Covid Chronicles Episode 5

We end, begin, whatever another week in the State of the Union of Covid.  We are now deep into the halfway point of the Corona Era which will likely close out around this time next year if we are lucky. And it is luck at this point nothing else as even science has thrown the towel into the wind and found that it flies six feet, sixteen feet or just stays afloat like the Matrix awaiting to land upon its next victim.

We have another miracle cure or not with plasma. Just this last week over coffee with a friend we discussed the whatever happened to Plasma as it was a big issue in New York as the Gay Elite (aka Andy Cohen) who had recovered from Covid cannot donate blood as the law requires gay men to not have sex six months prior to any blood donation. This is a hangover of AIDS and once again proving that Covid is the new AIDS meets Herpes only we are all getting fucked. So Andy this weekend took to Twitter to complain about that despite the fact that the supposed cure was well not and that demon seed is the new drug of choice so spit or swallow folks, at this point what is left. We have run through Hydrochlorine, Bleach, Hand Sanitizer, Blue Light. Now add to the list, HEPA filters, Prayer, leeches and electroshock.

Yes folks the schools, gyms and any other indoor facility are adding HEPA filtration to the HVAC units with some belief it will suck Covid out of the air like a hooker in hell sucks demon seed cock. Well it swallows about 10% and as a woman I say good enough! The blue light cleanings of course are part of hygiene theater as we are fairly certain touching unless immediately after an infected person has sneezed, coughed, sang, talked and wiped their asses or mouths with their hands touch the same doorknob, package, catsup container or has fucked on the desk right before you got there then maybe you can catch it, if you touch, wipe your face, hands and then just act as if it was fine then fuck you are getting that shit. WASH YOUR HANDS folks and when out and about in crowded areas, even outdoors, wear a fucking mask. I carry paper ones know for the walks to toss the second I am inside and the cloth ones for buses, stores and other sites where I can keep distance and wash the second I get home. This weekend I went with the germs, whoops I mean people, to Governor’s Island and when I got home I stripped down so fast and washed all my clothes and took a shower and cleaned my nasal passages with a antibiotic to make sure I was sanitized. The reality of this is we have no reality so you do what you do.

The kids are back in school or not as immediately one college in North Carolina said, see you kids later now get the hell out. I suspect more to follow given what we are seeing in the colleges regarding the behaviors of our best and brightest. If anyone says to me, the future is our children, need to go work with children and realized we are fucked with our without dinner or Covid. I read this in the New York Times and my first thought: I know your parents, the entitled, the liberal and the conservative who are sure they have somehow raised a kid to be responsible and adult. Yeah, that rape problem on campuses the last few years seems quaint in comparison to this. Right here when I read this incident I wondered what this girl was looking for, a date or a case of Covid/Herpes:

On Monday night, he said, he helped a student get back to her room, reminding her that she was supposed to be quarantining. But when he saw her wandering twice more in the next hour as he was posting health signage, he just stood and stared, speechless.

“I hated it,” he said, “but after that first time, my thought was, ‘What are you doing? Why are you out?’ And then, ‘Is your mask on? Am I sufficiently distanced?’ The third time? I just rerouted. I told myself it would be better to just post those rules.”

This is the pandemic police state where we are to stop, scold and bust anyone not following rules or violating protocol. The irony is that few read any of the science let alone the news as in read it, process it and then follow up on it like the issue with plasma when it was first touted three months ago as a potential treatment only now to find out that well its okay. Yet here was Andy Cohen whose best friend is Anderson Cooper but go figure, tweeting hysterically about donating Plasma. Hey but what about the dude on Fire Island who knowingly had Covid and party downed. What happened there? Oh that narrative doesn’t suit. But we have had a wedding that turned into a super spreader event in fact killing one person not even in attendance. So again did she receive a package or a contaminated invitation? No one of the guests came home with a special gift not left behind.

Now the South in its quest to prove that idiocy comes with the territory, literally, continues to be Covid Central. Mississippi once again tops the list which is a change or not if you are looking to where that State stands with regards to anything. It tops the bottom ten for education, voting, income and poverty. Yes it is America’s own third world state. Visit and see for yourself. Drive through the rural parts and it is akin to things I saw in the West Indies. Two places I will never go again as it is simply too heartbreaking as the people are not the problem, the leadership, or lack thereof is. It is the deep South and the racism and classism rule in ways that explain it all. Status and quo go out of its way to meet.

Planning a last minute getaway, go ahead the quarantine rule by the CDC has been lifted. It is supposedly in place here in New Jersey and New York and of course the reality is that it is utterly unenforceable and that there is no contract tracking/tracing in place or if it is it is dysfunctional so again that falls to you to figure out what to do. If anyone believes an “enforcement patrol” is tracking you to your hotel and checking in or requiring the hotel to monitor you, get real.  That is laughable if not pathetic as many are now closing down permanently due to this so the last thing they are going to do is ycall the 311 number on a paying gues. This is more Covid theater and posturing by the Three Stooges of NY and NJ.

 What it means  and always has, is this falls to personal responsibility,  but that is not how we do things here clearly, see the College kids for proof. You can be afraid, very afraid, you can be aware and do your part or you can go fuck it and hit the road. Whatever. I again have a rule: I take care of myself and don’t presume anyone does so I do my best to avoid any situation that could put me at risk and then when I do something like go to Governor’s Island I quarantine for 72 hours to see if I have symptoms as again that is the reality of most viruses… this 14 day window I have never understood as again that would have required tracking, tracing the person’s footsteps to the point of contamination, pin pointing the source and the date this happened. This 14 day thing is just a cover to allow for the testing which “coincidentally” takes what – 14 days. I did the same after the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens and anywhere I go with another person as I have no clue what the deal is with them and I assume they are fine but I am careful. Its really why I hate doing anything with anyone at this point and will again go out of my way to not, see the Wedding for clues on that one.

And once again Europe relies on science to test theories and threw a concert to see what spreads. This I find interesting as in reality we are nowhere near here in America opening any closed theaters for Broadway, Symphony Halls or concert stages anytime soon. The Museums that are opening are doing a hell of job and even the Governor’s Island required timed tickets but the reality is we were crammed in lines and on boats where we could distance but I would never go on a weekend again until wintertime. Sorry but no. It is all about close contact, length of time of contact and one’s own immune system and protections from contraction. Those masks really aren’t cutting it but they do offer some console in the case of going to Museums etc. I am going next week and my goal is to keep moving. Anyone within three feet (as again that goal post has changed so much that it is pointless but I go with that) I move away from. I really should be thinner with all this moving but the booze is a calming agent and well without gyms and instructed exercise it is not the same. That is my second loss of time being able to go to Yoga, the gym, Barre Classes and dance. This is all really boring times ten and talking to others is not an exercise that I am finding useful in the least as most people believe what they choose to believe, not what they actually know which requires time, investigation and research. I was surprised this weekend by companion to the island had never heard of furloughing or what that was, job sharing or that New York is NOT a right to work state as is Tennessee. He seemed certain it was and I pointed to the numerous unions that sway power over the area and that if they are telling you you can be fired without just cause that is an employment agreement but it is not the law and likely would get tossed in court if challenged over a termination. Again few really know shit about much and I spend most of my day after a conversation hearing, “I have learned so much from you.” I miss that FROM KIDS. I NEVER heard that once in Nashville, another city on the skids thanks to Covid.

This economic fallback is about how states and cities budget and their revenue stream. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have been covering these issues as they note the migration out of the city and the state now with more companies having work at home orders in place through next year. The reality is that tax revenues that come from property taxes is one source that will be evident next year but the more immediate sources of sales taxes and income taxes are already showing their underbelly. Hence Nashville is finally admitting that they have a deep problem and its bookend, Seattle, will as well. Both cities run on the most regressive tax policies ever and this will destroy their funding for schools and defund the police regardless, without federal intervention and rescue. Yes folks red and blue states are fucked, as I like to say that is Covid, the Herpes and AIDS of the 80s and 90s, we are all getting screwed this time without actual penetration. So much for safe sex. Glove up, Mask up folks. And keep moving.

Crashing and Burning

Currently the state of the world now seems as if it is crashing and burning into a wall of Covid. There are few havens of safety and in turn places that seem to have handled this crisis well.  Well, not true as many countries have been successful in stomping Covid transmissions but this walk in the woods is not over yet and the sun is setting and its not getting brighter anytime sooner.

A great deal of success seems to center on Women leaderships and how they approached their response to this in both political and social ways.  Those two issues are essential for a buy in to gain the cooperation and more importantly the collaboration of those in communities to uphold the demands placed upon them.   We can look at each approach and realize that to compare New Zealand to Taiwan is a relative easy one as they are small in size and have a smaller populations to manage.  Then we have Sweden the outlier in the idea they did nothing but ask those to be careful with the idea of herd immunity as the ultimate goal. It did not work as planned, and they faced serious deaths but in the process I have never heard from one single person in Sweden with regards to how they felt about it.  We here in America have never stopped opining on that. Well funny there was a survey on that and it was the cohort more at risk and older who responded favorably to the Government’s plan.   And if you recall when Texas’s Lt. Governor said that old people would be willing to be sacrificed to get the economy going he may have well been right with regards to Swedish people but  I am 60 and no, no I’m not.  But in turn Sweden’s populace has greater respect and trust in Government which few Americans do and given the dopey Grandpa in office that is not surprising.

But in reality that is why he was elected, to drain the swamp and of course he was the greatest swamp dweller of them all in his private life so why would that change in the present.  The Federal Government became a divisive mess of partisan politics with the arrival of the swamp king from Louisiana, Newt Gingrich.  Now given that Newt was from Pennsylvania originally, it seems fitting that he found his tribe in the place where marshes and swamps dwell.  He is the one man who turned Congress into a blood sport and that is being carried on with another Southerner, Mitch McConnell.  Between those two enablers of Trump (for the record Newt in the early days was Trumps back up surrogate) it explains much of the bizarre contradictory behavior.  I have often thought Trump was from the South, given his idiocy, his pretentiousness and his overwhelming raging temper and racist leanings.   Again, I cannot stress enough that racism is not a Southern “thing” but the arrogance, the moral superiority, is built in the DNA and in turn racism is just a part of that but it is not mutually inclusive.  Racism is fear of the outsider and with the current state of America that has now been turned towards the Immigrant.  This is largely directed to those of Latin origins but this includes anyone not white.  And yes this means Africans, Indians, Middle Easterners and anyone not Christian.  The South really loathes those not Christian, so Jews, Russians or Greek Orthodox, Hindus, etc.  are not going to be any more welcome.  However they may be more tolerated as they are again not of a color that that is black or brown.  For the record folks from India, the founders of Caste system are often respected as they are ultra conservative in politics and attitudes.  Funny how that works out. I have said had anyone talked to any Latinx family they too would be surprised, they are conservative and religious but it is Catholic and again I have met many Evangelicals who suspect Catholicism as a faux religion. Again religion and money rule in that region over race.

Right now in Tennessee they are a hot mess, they are in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Texas and the rest of the alignment that defines the South. It appears that for all show and tell, Tennessee is expecting a rash of financial failures.  For all the lists they loved to claim they were on, the failed to mention the most in debt.   And look at the bankruptcy filings by State and reconcile them as per capita as New York makes sense given the size and scale of businesses/people here, but that top ten list is regarding Commercial lending. What is interesting is that States much smaller in scope and size,   the amount of debt on the personal level and the South is right up there in both. Surprised? No. I have never lived anywhere where I have seen means and ends not meet and denial is the river that runs smack through Nashville its just called the Cumberland.

As for Southern men, they  are a unique breed. I have repeatedly given the women the moniker of cum dumpsters, and that is largely a way they are raised as worth comes from the vagina, to attract the right kind of man an in turn breed.  But again, here is the conundrum,  men are not raised by men, they are usually raised by their Grandmother, the Matriarch in the family.  It is she who instills in them the whole notion of heritage and manliness all while not facing the truth that their own children have dumped them with another generation to raise, so they toughen their children to match their skin, rough, worn and scarred from the abuse, physical and mental, they endured themselves over their years.  It is a cycle that is very much the beauty parlor philosophy – lather, rinse, repeat.

And when you look at the leadership of this area, all white, and all male they are children in search of a  Mother and of course the resentment that in fact that is what they want – Mama.  One’s Grandmother is not the same as a Mother and it instills the Misogyny and distrust of women that dominates the Southern mentality.  Obsessed with sex they fear Homosexuality as that is the ultimate in male power,  the ability to fuck without recourse or that women can be happy without men.  As for Transgender folks that just is too much, it simply confuses them and frightens them more. If you can be a man then how can they be their own man?  Competition is the rule and the honor code is the game.  Almost all violence centers on sex and money. That is the twinset of Southern rules. And it explains that for the last decade the same states have gravitated to the businessman as leader or retaining it in family dynasties, which is another Southern thing.  We have that here right now with Cuomo,  but the cities and states across the country are largely helmed by professional legislators/career politicians or as Trump calls them “swamp dwellers.”  Ask Ohio about Mike DeWine.

Again folks I don’t hate the South, I just get it.  It wants to be someone else, anyone else but it also wants to be loved as it is.   Think of a 10 year old child who just wants you to love them as they are but they are angry, stubborn and selfish and just won’t play nice. That is the South.   Who else does it sound like?   That is the only difference between Trump and some of the other Southern elite, he was raised WASP and spoiled by a Scottish mother and abused by a Teutonic father.  But the end results were the same, childish, abusive, spoiled, stubborn and retaliatory.  Welcome to the South!

As I watch what happens in Tennessee it makes sense as you see it throughout the rest of the region, a businessman elected Governor (a Trumpolyte) , a lack of communication, an agenda, blurred lines about personal and professional obligations, an obsession with the Church (real or imagined), focus on money while eschewing the reality that most of the state and its constituents are laden with debt while professing fiscal responsibility.  The best part is the overwhelming cases in Alabama with a woman Governor whom Trump has not vilified despite her own issues and failures but hey its the South and they want women to fail too!  You can see the constant contradictions that I call the reality of the South, the wishing to be one thing while being that which you hate.  And all the Covid idiocy has been from the Governors of the region, its a dumb off down there clearly.  Ah the conundrum that plagues all of the area and that crosses color lines. I read today about the meltdown of Andrew Gillum of Florida and thought, “Where have I heard and seen this before?”  Oh yes Ray Nagin, the former Mayor of Orleans who was complicit in some of the most horrific racist bullshit during Katrina and well documented in the book with the same name.  Ah the white power brokers never stop marginalizing the black man and that time in that place in history is an utter atrocity that shows how money can do more damage than even a hurricane could.

And while South Carolina and Louisiana have both elected Governors of Indian heritage, Nikki  Haley has tried desperately to remain relevant even after leaving a job in the Administration of which she was vastly under qualified for and Bobby Jindal, is well nowhere to be found after his own idiocy was  revealed, only continues to prove to me that when you are a face of color in the South you are a convenient shield from which to hide behind. For it is the faces behind the door who are controlling it all  and they are anything but of color, and of any gender other than male.

I have seen this repeated throughout history, by putting faces of color in jobs that are high profile, Clarence Thomas comes to mind, and enabling them to do little more than simply protect that job and using boring tropes and myths to somehow justify how they earned their way with the whole bootstraps bullshit.   I have not seen nor heard of Thomas helping young faces of color excel nor move forward in the legal field or mentor anyone of import.  I am aware the Obama’s are doing so but at this time I can  understand why that is not as active as it should be, but Thomas has been in his gig a long time.   And his wife is another Trumpian who has no interest in mentoring anyone nor doing anything but putting forward policy that is to say racist and elitist.  I would also mention Ben Carson, who for a brain surgeon neglects to have a functioning one. Again the caste system is alive and well in America.

And there is no irony that in the most liberal bastions of Seattle and Portland that black vans and unmarked cars, conveniently rented from Enterprise Car Rental are sweeping young and largely white protestors up and dumped later with little information as to where they were taken and held during that time.  Are these the same facilities used by ICE? I suspect so.  And again this is not new behavior but like the Moms who marched, they too have a role in history over Civil Rights. But when white folks do it its as if its a new shiny toy in which to play with.

As for my new home State, New Jersey, well its New Jersey, and we swing in more directions that a Trump golf club, from Christie the fatty swampiest one to the business elite Murphy, we just have no clue and this is a State where  we are even more corrupt and sexist than the South and no one seems to care.  And with that I suspect Murphy is history come next election as many in most States will find themselves at the end of the line.  Irony that it appears New York State is going to be the most liberal political state in America.  Once again proving that I was right to come here when I did and not one day goes by where I thank myself for that decision. God, not so much, as I have never thought he was real other than being a good invisible friend to talk to.  As for Jersey,  we seem to be outliers and I love it here for that very reason, no one gives a flying fuck about anything here.  We may do it first, we may do it worse, we may do it better, but hey it’s New Jersey so fuck it.    But one thing is that none of our streets burned during all of this and those that did were quickly put out.  No black vans, no massive press coverage, just handled without histrionics.

 Just one PATH stop away is Newark, the other Manhattan, and both saw protests and unrest. It was non existent in Newark as their Mayor was front and center, while in Manhattan it was a week of unrest but the protests have been ongoing.  However right now is the summer of violence and  we have a new plan, as the Cops who have decided to give us a preview of what it will be like when the Police are defunded.  Apparently they will not be there when children are gunned down in the streets in broad daylight, or are shot crossin the street, at a  BBQ, or in a playground.  But a murder of a wealthy tech entrepreneur is solved within a week. Well money talks.  And to add more mystery to irony the tech dude was Indian, the alleged killer, a young black male who used to work for him.  Or did he? Again there will be a story as all crimes have history and a past. We live in the past now in the present.

As for us here on the East Coast the reason why there are no black vans here – MONEY. We are the financial center of the world and Trump’s family still have interests here.  The adage goes, follow the money and so I do. That and Fox news is in Manhattan and they can’t be having shit in front of their studio so guess where they target? The West Coast.

And that is why in the South, the riots in Kentucky continue but without interference as that is home to Mitch McConnell.  Where Covid is running rampant there is no Governor screaming on TV daily as ours did to demand accountability and in turn try to do something versus nothing.  And the Governors of Washington and Oregon are of course not as vocal and posturing in their demeanor as Cuomo is and that has a lot to do with also what is happening.   Cuomo is a bully and that is well known among anyone in the area and I suspect that throw down would do nothing for Trump so pick on the easy targets, as Oregon’s Governor is a woman and Inslee of Washington State is well, Inslee.  Seattle’s Mayor a woman and Portland’s Mayor who tried to join protests, Trump gleefully proclaimed he “got his ass beat.”  This is Trump, he is the Southern President right down to racism, elitism, sexism, and of course the bullying tied to the honor code.  And yet perhaps one of the most dignified and beautiful memorials occurred this weekend, with the late John Lewis, making the last trip home.  Again if this was about those whose faces are Black, the issue is not about color but about race and again about poverty.  It is always about money first in the South and when you have fame, success, and recognition then color is not an issue unless it serves to be one.  It is a complicated dynamic.

The critical element here is allowing if not forgiving the South for slowly realizing Confederate flags, Statues and other memorabilia dedicated to the Civil War is less about heritage and more about racism and suppression than recognition of what amounts to loss and ostensibly war crimes but hey one thing at a time!  The New York Times did this piece on a town that centers almost solely on Civil War icons and how does and can it change? The idea that you can erase this history and who these people are is perhaps the worst idea ever.  If that was the case why do we teach about Hitler? Stalin or any other despot or individual capable of hideous acts?  To perhaps not repeat history?  I do think that there should be a Civil War Museum dedicated to the Confederacy, to contain the statutes, the letters and other items that enable a teaching moment to put context and understanding to the complicated issues that surround the Civil War.  In the same vein that Tom Cotton is in histrionics about the 1619 Project, it is just another tool in which to use to offer perspective. Again I recall the People’s History of the United States being controversial at some point, and today I wonder if anyone has ever heard of it or if it is still used?   If all curriculum was left to the ed reformers it will strictly be STEM and that would remove any of the icky sticky shit like English, History and PE that nerds never did wellin anyway. Right Bill Gates?  And that is why subjects like Music and Philosophy and Civics are barely taught if at all as they cannot be tested to a metric that takes away the objective versus the subjective. Yes I can ask you names and dates but the nuance, the actual long term affects and effects of an act or deed that went beyond the moment in time is in fact interpretational.  We can say Columbus was a man who destroyed a peoples but in turn he is a respected individual in history and a man of respect in the Italian community.  Who wants to wrestle with that one? Not me.  Just keep it basic, simple and allow those to take from it a full and realized portrait, warts and all.   You can sill look at a Picasso and see the beauty beyond the artist and yet there is no beauty without the artist.  It’s never going to be easy and that is why we don’t want to teach it or do we? Or more importantly how?  No one will like it regardless and yes someone will be offended and that is how life is. But not today, we cannot have that today. Grow the fuck up, we are not perfect, not ever will be and that is what makes us all better for it.  We crash and burn and we get up and heal. And yes you do heal, you are not the same but maybe that is the point.  Times change and we can be persuaded to do the right thing in the right way.

A Liberal Town Built Around Confederate Generals Rethinks Its Identity

In Lexington, Va., where Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are buried, people are reassessing the town’s ties to a legacy that symbolizes slavery and oppression.

By Reid J. Epstein
The New York Times
July 26, 2020

LEXINGTON, Va. — It’s a short drive in Lexington from a home on Confederate Circle past the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery and over to the Robert E. Lee Hotel, where locals like to stop for a drink.

There may be tourists there looking for directions to the Lee Chapel, or one of the two Stonewall Jackson statues in town. They might see a Washington and Lee University student paddling a canoe down the Maury River, named for the Confederate oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury.

If medical treatment is needed, residents can head to the Stonewall Jackson Hospital. For groceries, there’s a Food Lion at Stonewall Square, which isn’t far from Rebel Ridge Road, just up the way from Stonewall Street and Jackson Avenue.

For 150 years Lexington, a picturesque city nestled in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, has been known to the outside world as the final resting place of Lee, the Confederacy’s commanding general during the Civil War, and Jackson, whom Lee referred to as his “right arm.” They form the basis of a daily existence here that has long been tethered to the iconography of the Civil War and its two most famous Confederate generals, whose legacy has seeped into the town’s culture like the July humidity.

But Lexington is no longer a bastion of conservatism. It is a liberal college town of about 7,000 people that voted 60 percent for Hillary Clinton four years ago, and in 2018 gave 70 percent of its vote to the Democratic Senate candidate, Tim Kaine. Black Lives Matter signs dot the windows of downtown stores, and residents haven’t backed a Republican for president since Ronald Reagan.

These dueling sensibilities place Lexington at particularly delicate intersection of the national debate over Confederate monuments and emblems. As Americans protesting racial injustice have torn down statues and memorials to Confederates, the town finds itself reassessing its identity, divided between the growing imperative to eradicate symbols of slavery and decades of cultural and economic ties to the Confederates who fought to preserve it.

“When you’re surrounded by all of the symbols, it just is a way of life,” said Marilyn Alexander, 67, the lone Black member of the City Council. “It was not until recently that there was a realization for me that there was such an outcry from the community, that felt these symbols and signs needed to come down or be changed.”

City Council meetings in July have been almost entirely devoted to the question of the city-owned cemetery named for Jackson; one session lasted five hours, ending with a unanimous after-midnight vote to remove signs bearing Jackson’s name. A second meeting began with pleas from residents to put the signs back up. The council plans a session on Friday to discuss new names, with a vote possible in September.

“I long for the days of people complaining about potholes and not heritage,” said Lexington’s mayor, Frank Friedman.

Ms. Alexander said it had never occurred to her to propose taking Jackson’s name off the cemetery, believing that it would have no support from white Lexingtonians. “Most of my life I have come to realize that these are things that have just been, this is the way it is and this is the way it’s always going to be,” she said.

For decades, the names of Lexington’s Confederate forebears have mostly gone unchallenged. A 2011 City Council vote to forbid flying the Confederate flag on municipal flagpoles drew a lawsuit, eventually dismissed by a federal appeals court, from the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans; until this spring no one had proposed removing Jackson’s name from the cemetery, where a towering statue of the general rises above his family plot.

At Washington and Lee, students’ degrees still come with portraits of its two namesakes, and at the Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson taught before the war, first-year students are required to re-enact the 1864 Battle of New Market as Confederate soldiers.

Still, attitudes have started to change in recent years. Grace Episcopal Church downtown dropped Robert E. Lee from its name in 2017, and last year the local Boy Scout council changed its name from the Stonewall Jackson Area Council to the Virginia Headwaters Council.

Bigger changes are now afoot in town, which has a Black population of just under 9 percent. Carilion, the Roanoke, Va.-based health care conglomerate that owns the Stonewall Jackson Hospital, said Thursday that it would change the name to Rockbridge Community Hospital. Francesco Benincasa, whose family owns the Robert E. Lee Hotel, said Friday that it would be renamed “The Gin” starting next month.

“It’s a little hard to brand hospitality after generals,” Mr. Benincasa said in an interview.

Adama Kamara grew up in Lexington, attending preschool in a church named for Stonewall Jackson. A 2020 graduate of Emory University, in Atlanta, she had never protested the city’s Confederate memorials, but when the City Council met on July 2 to debate the cemetery’s name she called in via video conference.

“It’s not just the history that’s shameful, it’s the way the people are so committed to preserving it in this town,” she told city officials. “This preservation has caused me deep pain.”

Almost instantly, Ms. Kamara, 22, began receiving supportive text messages and emails from former classmates, teachers and longtime friends in town, people with whom she’d never before discussed the city’s Confederate forefathers. She and other young people, Lexington natives who’d gone away to college but returned during the coronavirus pandemic, began organizing to protest the city’s street names, statues and the local public school curriculum, which they said focused too much on lionizing local Confederate history at the expense of America’s Black experience.

“I don’t think we have ever been given the space to say we as Black people feel very uncomfortable about this,” Ms. Kamara said. “We have been silently thinking these things and silently compartmentalized this, but until we started hearing each other we had no idea that we all felt this way.”

It did not take long for resistance to removing Jackson’s name from the cemetery to grow.

Representative Ben Cline, a Republican who represents Lexington in Congress, wrote on Facebook: “I suppose they’ll rename it something like ‘Lexington Cemetery: Now with Surprise Inside!’ Or if they want to be more accurate, something like ‘Future Democrat Voter Quarry.’” His office did not respond to phone calls, emails or text messages seeking an interview.

Heather Hopkins Barone, a local marketer, wrote to the City Council that she had more than 2,000 names on a petition opposing the change.

“You cannot erase history because a few people are offended,” she wrote in the letter that she also shared on a Facebook page devoted to local affairs. “The affect that it will also have on the tourism industry and the Alumni will destroy this town.”

Tourism is the biggest component of the city’s revenues after property taxes, and the biggest economic drivers are the two universities, which are inextricably linked to Lee and Jackson.

In a house two blocks from a downtown shopping strip that includes the Red Hen — a restaurant briefly famous for refusing to serve then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2018 — Ellen Darlene Bane, 64, flies three flags: The Confederate battle flag, a flag that combines the Confederate emblem with the Virginia state seal and the yellow Gadsden flag that’s become associated with the Tea Party.

Ms. Bane, who lives across the street from a Black church, the Gospel Way Church of God in Christ, said she began flying the flags six years ago and has never received a complaint. She called the movement to remove Lee and Jackson’s names “crap” and predicted escalating racial tensions in Lexington.

“Everybody’s getting racist,” she said. “It’s going to be the Blacks against the whites.”

Lexington’s universities are facing their own reckoning. At Washington and Lee, 79 percent of the faculty voted on July 6 to strip Lee’s name from the school, prompting the board of trustees to announce “a thoughtful and deliberative process” to examine Lee’s legacy.

One of the leading proponents of keeping the Lee name is Lucas E. Morel, an Abraham Lincoln scholar who is chairman of the politics department. He argued that the name honors Lee’s contributions to the school — he led its revival after the war — without making a judgment about his leadership of the Confederate army.

“We can separate Lee’s generalship of the Confederacy and his symbolism as patron saint of the Lost Cause from his laudable contribution to the university,” Professor Morel said. “To remove Lee’s name is to say, ‘Thank you for the gift of saving this college, but we don’t appreciate that contribution to such an extent that we think we should continue to honor you.’’’

At the Virginia Military Institute, until 2015 all students were required to salute the statue of Jackson when passing it. A public university, the school has retained its conservative politics, well after the Supreme Court ordered it to admit women in 1996.

But Virginia’s state politics, which govern the school, have changed. Democrats control the state legislature. Gov. Ralph Northam, a 1981 V.M.I. graduate who is working to take down state-owned Confederate monuments, “has confidence that V.M.I.’s Board of Visitors will do the right thing,” said his spokesman, Grant Neely.

Jennifer Carroll Foy, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates who in 2003 was among the first group of Black women to graduate from V.M.I., said the Jackson statue should be moved to a museum.

“We can’t say in Virginia that we’re open for business but we’re closed to diversity and inclusion,” said Ms. Foy, who is now running for governor. “No child looks at a Confederate monument and feels inspired.”

David Sigler, a City Council member who graduated from Washington and Lee and works as the financial aid director at V.M.I., said renaming the Stonewall Jackson Cemetery ought to be the first move to pivot the town’s identity away from its Confederate past.

“Our small business owners, they have products to sell, meals to prepare, they want their tables filled in their restaurants,” he said. “I will feel bad if they lose one customer because we renamed the cemetery. But I think we might gain two customers for every one we might lose in the long run if we’re not so one-dimensional.”

Crush It!

As I noted in another post yesterday about Covid for some reason we think the worst is over, no its ongoing everyday.  Largely why? Because we have a Government indifferent to the reality of this, States and Municipalities trying to figure it out from Governors who are sure they have the right team, crew, input from the same afraid, ignorant or slightly more knowledgeable medical staff who for all ostensible purposes have actually never been in the field during a pandemic. And those that have been are relegated to the sidelines, not called to action, to devise a cohesive, comprehensive plan and more importantly find a clear messenger who can communicate with the public in a fashion that evokes both concern and hope that this will too come to an end.

For awhile here in the tri-state area we had the Three Amigos, Cuomo, DiBlasio and Murphy. After a week or two I realized that they were the Three Stooges, all of them grasping to be some type of leader with their messaging that emphasized fear and compliance and if you failed you would be relegated to restrictions, the irony was we already were so at some point what more can you do?  When I began to listen to their messages and the other crackpot Mike DeWine of Ohio I learned early on that none of them had a fucking clue.  Look to the West Coast and listen to Newsom and Inslee who actually ran for President, and no loss there clearly.  The most interesting was that while all of them had varying levels of tone and advocacy to ensure the public’s cooperation you underneath realized that the message was the same – be afraid, be very afraid.  What they failed to do was actually have any real testing, tracking, tracing and treatment plan. They knew by shouting numbers, making threats and promises that it will get worse they seemed to think that being a bully was the way to somehow make Covid go away.  My favorite here was Murphy saying repeatedly, “Don’t be a knucklehead” while constantly demonstrating what that was with his rambling bullshit that could never be clearly proven, numbers that mad little sense and just the clear copying of Cuomo as the leader of the tribe.  It was as if we are living on the island of lost boys – Neverland. And well that was no utopia and there is no Peter Pan.

When you look to the countries, largely those run by women, it was a much faster progress with regards to all the elements that manage a crisis, planning, communication, cooperation and of course clear established goals in which to meet them.   I knew from looking at the way the announcements were set that regardless we had only a 90 day window, it would be “over” by the 4th of July and that in the interim lives would be destroyed and the economy crushed versus the virus.   Men do that they crush it That is a man’s way.  Never did I hear a voice from in the field sitting adjacent to these men to add resonance and personal experience.  I saw news reports that hysterical health workers fearing for their lives, crying and of course killing themselves over the stress of the failures of the same men crushing it trying to figure out how to have a well thought out plan to deliver supplies and in turn not crush them with patients.  Well they failed on that count as well.  If they believe this was a success then they also believe in fairies.   If any of these idiots are re-elected then I fear for us all.

Then the idiocy of the general public, sending food, the donation of supplies to supplement the ones they lacked, the flying of Blue Angels and let’s not forget the nightly cacophony of clapping, banging pots and making noise to show support. I cannot believe that this will end but why it was in the first place also bothered me as this is a for profit industry and the public facilities where they dumped, yes dumped, most patients were so underfunded, so badly managed and so poorly prepared that I am not sure why we are clapping any of this instead also taking to the streets to demand that while defunding the Police, fund public health. For if we did some of this death may have been prevented.  Then again that would require intelligence and planning such as establishing testing protocols for the most at risk, quarantining them first and in turn having a staggered type of work schedule, to reduce commuting, allow business to function with the limits, the ones they have now only with clear guidelines in place. What is working now would have worked then it was just that they had no way to test the population and we know that the majority of people have not been tested who never showed symptoms nor were sick at all at any time during this lockdown.  So welcome to the doll house.

Today begins the next big phase and frankly what I saw this weekend was alarming, the lack of physical distancing, the lack of PPE and of course overall behavior that made me think the protests were safer to congregate among.  And at least their messaging was clear and concise.

This is from an EMT who I think says it all and reminds us that we are not in a second wave we are in the third wave, a wave comes and goes as all do, some are more powerful and each month the waves were smaller in nature but the water is not flat, it is not calm and it is still flowing every day.  Water does that until it dries out.  We ain’t anywhere near shore yet.  Crush it? Fuck no we just dented it.

Voices from the Pandemic
‘Heroes, right?’
Anthony Almojera, on being a New York City paramedic and the injustices of covid-19
By Eli Saslow
The Washington Post
June 21, 2020

Nobody wants to know about what I do. People might pay us lip service and say we’re heroes, but our stories aren’t the kind anyone actually wants to hear about. Kids in this country grow up with toy firetrucks, or maybe playing cops and robbers, but who dreams of becoming a paramedic? That’s ambulances. That’s death and vulnerability — the scary stuff. We’re taught in this culture to shun illness like it’s something shameful. We’d rather pretend everything’s fine. We look the other way.

That’s what’s happening now in New York. We just had 20,000-some people die in this city, and already the crowds are lining back up outside restaurants and jamming into bars. This virus is still out there. We respond to 911 calls for covid every day. I’ve been on the scene at more than 200 of these deaths — trying to revive people, consoling their families — but you can’t even be bothered to stay six feet apart and wear a mask, because why? You’re a tough guy? It makes you look weak? You’d rather ignore the whole thing and pretend you’re invincible?

Some of us can’t stop thinking about it. I woke up this morning to about 60 new text messages from paramedics who are barely holding it together. Some are still sick with the virus. At one point we had 25 percent of EMTs in the city out sick. Others are living in their cars so they don’t risk bringing it home to their families. They’re depressed. They’re emotionally exhausted. They’re drinking too much. They’re lashing out at their kids. They’re having night terrors and panic attacks and all kinds of outbursts. I’ve got five paramedics in the ground from this virus already and a few more on ventilators. Another rookie EMT just committed suicide. He was having trouble coping with what he was seeing. He was a kid — 23 years old. He won’t be the last. I have medics who come to me every day and say, “Is this PTSD I’m feeling?” But technically PTSD comes after the event, and we’re not there yet. It’s ongoing stress and trauma, and we might have months to go.

Do you know how much EMTs make in New York City? We start at $35,000. We top out at $48,000 after five years. That’s nothing. That’s a middle finger. It’s about 40 percent less than fire, police and corrections — and those guys deserve what they get. But we have three times the call volume of fire. There are EMTs on my team who’ve been pulling double shifts in a pandemic and performing life support for 16 hours, and then they go home and they have to drive Uber to pay their rent. I’m more than 15 years on the job, and I still work two side gigs. One of my guys does part-time at a grocery store.

Heroes, right? The anger is blinding.

One thing this pandemic has made clear to me is that our country has become a joke in terms of how it disregards working people and poor people. The rampant inequality. The racism. Mistakes were made at the very top in terms of how we prepared for this virus, and we paid down here at the bottom.

It started around the middle of March when the call volume began to spike in the poorer neighborhoods. The stay-at-home order in New York hadn’t even gone into effect at that point. Trump was telling us he had everything under control. The mayor was saying we had great health care, and we wouldn’t get hit as bad as other countries, so we should keep on going to the movies. But for us, it was wheezing, trouble breathing, heart palpitations, cardiac arrest, cardiac arrest. This virus stresses out the heart in a bunch of different ways. I’d look at our dispatch screen sometimes and see 30 possible cardiac events happening at any one time across the city, mostly in the immigrant neighborhoods. It felt like watching a bomb go off in slow motion. You had time to see who was going to get hit and who had the ability to escape. I saw in Manhattan, on the East Side, people clearing out of the city to set up shop in the Hamptons or rent property upstate. The business class packed up their computers and went off to work elsewhere. Meanwhile, the rest of us were huddling with no ventilators, like fish in the barrel.

It got so quiet sometimes that all you could hear were our sirens. The most 911 calls we’d ever had was back on September 11th, and we broke that record every day for two weeks straight. My station is right in Brooklyn’s Chinatown, so it’s a lot of new Chinese immigrants, sometimes 10 or 12 people living in a small place. They tend not to call 911 unless its absolutely necessary, but they were calling. One woman was apologizing for bothering us while we were trying to get a pulse back on her uncle. The Dominicans and Puerto Ricans in Sunset Park got hit hard. Sometimes those families will pray over you while you’re doing CPR. The Middle Eastern neighborhoods in Bay Ridge got hit. The African American communities, where hypertension is a big thing. The nursing homes in Far Rockaway. The housing projects in East Flatbush. We weren’t carrying too many stretchers into the fancy brownstones.

I’m a lieutenant and vice president of the union, so I cover a big area, and I mostly go to the big traumas. I grew up in Brooklyn, and I know every street in this city. I can whip it. Doesn’t matter where the call is. I’m two minutes out. I had one guy with covid who was talking to me in his fifth-floor apartment. He was breathing heavy, so we loaded him on the stretcher, and by the time the elevator hit the lobby, he didn’t have a pulse. I went to another high-rise for an unresponsive elderly woman, and then I realize, two days before we were in the same place because her husband had dropped. Both of them died. We sometimes had 400 emergency calls sitting on hold. People were waiting hours for an ambulance on the more minor stuff. I pronounced more deaths in the first two weeks of April than I have in my career.

I got one call at the height of the madness, another cardiac arrest, and it was a Latin guy, young guy, unresponsive and passed out in a room with bunk beds. There wasn’t enough space to work, so we dragged him out into the living room to start giving him CPR. This guy had no pulse. That’s clinical death, but biological death doesn’t come until about six minutes later. That’s our window to bring you back. That’s why we do this job. Now this guy was 31. He was strong, healthy. His mother told us he’d just gone out. As a medic, you hear that and your eyes start to get big. It’s like, okay, maybe this is one we can save.

It was four guys and me. That’s the crew. The two EMTs were bagging him up to get oxygen in his lungs. The medics were starting to intubate and calculating the meds. Everything they can do for you in a hospital, EMS brings to you. We carry 60 medications. We hook up the heart monitor. It all happens so fast, and there’s barely time to talk. It’s scalpel, needle, put in the IV, pace it, shock it, check on the heart rhythms. It’s like a symphony, and you have to know your part.

The team kept working, and I went over to get information from the mother. There was a little girl standing behind her, 7 years old, and it turns out she’s the daughter. They told me he’d been sick four or five days, but he worked at a bodega and he couldn’t afford to take off. He’d come home from work and collapsed a few minutes later. Now I’m getting upset. Here we’re supposed to be this great society, and this guy can’t even miss one paycheck. There’s no safety net. The system we have is broken, and this 7-year-old is seeing her dad get CPR. We kept working. After a few minutes, we got a pulse back. I told the family: “He’s not out of the woods yet, but we might have a shot here.” We rushed him into the truck and over to the hospital, and then he died a while later.

I did 14 cardiac arrests that day. I didn’t save anybody.

The thing about being a paramedic is you need to have some reservoir of hope. This job is the ultimate backstage pass. It can make you believe in humanity, but it can also suck the humanity out of you. You see death, suffering — grief in its rawest forms. I’ve been shot at on this job. I’ve been beaten and cursed at. But then every year, we go to the Second Chance Brunch, and we get to meet some of the people we saved. There’s no drug on the planet like that. There’s no job that matters more. It keeps you going. But then we came into this virus, and we weren’t bringing people back. The virus kept winning. It always ended the same way.

I’d go park the truck at the beach after a double and try to calm myself down and gather my thoughts. I’ve gained weight during this pandemic. I don’t sleep well anymore. Emotionally, I’ve been feeling a little numb. They teach you as a Buddhist that life is suffering, and I believe that. You have to stay in the suffering. You can’t deny reality and turn the other way.

I’ve been in therapy for 17 years, and lately what keeps coming up is that reservoir of hope. It’s starting to feel more and more empty. Our call volume has been down for the last month, but I’m worried it won’t stay there. I don’t have that much faith in what we are anymore. America is supposed to be the best, right? So why aren’t we united at all? Why aren’t we taking care of each other? The virus is hanging around, waiting for us to make more mistakes, and I’m afraid that we will.