Tag Archives: Corona virus

Political Rants

Death and taxes.

Anyone who’s been reading this blog and listening to my podcast Strange Sound for any length of time knows that I’m a sometimes harsh critic of the institutional Democratic party. That same anyone would be aware that I am even more critical of the Republican party. The reason for this is fairly simple: whereas the Democratic party has some individuals within it – albeit a minority – who are principled progressives who want to make a difference in people’s lives, the Republican party is now literally a death cult that wants to cut rich people’s taxes. This week we exceeded 300,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, and you would barely know it by listening to GOP lawmakers or their idiotic president. (And yes, he is their president, lock, stock, and cracker barrel. I’m of the opinion that Trump is the purest expression of Republican values – selfishness, ignorance, bigotry, and self-aggrandizement.)

I know both parties have a lot to answer for, but frankly, Republican politicians are almost universally out of their minds. As I write this on a day when more than 3,400 people died of this virus across the country, we’ve seen further evidence that the administration was explicitly pursuing a strategy of “herd immunity” with regard to the Coronavirus. As reported in Politico, part-time Canadian college lecturer Paul Alexander was helping to press the CDC into adopting a strategy of having everyone become infected … or as many people as possible. This was the crack-head notion they shared with Dr. Atlas that somehow everyone getting the disease was a good thing. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how “herd immunity” should work – the idea is to keep people from getting a disease by inoculating large numbers of them against it. Infecting people to prevent disease is like jumping off a building to avoid falling. These people are seriously cracked.

I can’t quite work out why Trump would choose to align himself with these people and take the hands-off approach he took to this virus when to do the opposite – investing heavily on safety and prevention – would possibly have made him a much more popular president and perhaps earned him re-election. The only thing that seems likely to me is that he thought the emergence of this novel Coronavirus was just unfair, and that like a five-year-old he didn’t want to accept it. And of course, because he is, as president, the head of his party, Trump set the tone for everyone else. But make no mistake – the Republican political class would have gone there anyway. As I’ve said before – every time they come back, they’re worse. Reagan was worse than Nixon, Bush Jr. worse than Bush Sr., and Trump worse than them all. Each one of these presidents was backed up by a party that supported practically every move they made.

With all of the challenges we are facing, we need to keep them out of power. We can no longer afford to play defense on these terminal issues.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

The expendables.

Sounds like a Bruce Willis movie from 1987, right? Well, it might as well be. The president appears to be okay with the notion of thousands upon thousands of us impaling ourselves on the altar of a boom economy; this after he left the door wide open to COVID-19, taking cues from the likes of Mick Mulvaney and John Bolton and other reactionary conservatives bent on shrinking the administrative state to a size that can be easily drowned in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist was fond of saying back when he was relevant-ish. Congratulations, America! Guess what? You’re all warriors now! Time to take a bullet for President Little Lord Fauntleroy, whose idea of sacrifice is taking uncomfortable questions from a relatively supine White House Press Corps.

Seriously, does anyone want to die for Donald Trump? Does anyone want to sacrifice a parent, a sibling, a child, a grandchild, an aunt or uncle, a neighbor … anyone for the betterment of Trump’s political fortunes? Because make no mistake about it – COVID-19 kills, and there’s no telling who it will kill next. You might be spared … or you might not. We simply do not know this virus very well yet. If we listen to the President and some of these red state governors and force people back to work (on pain of losing their unemployment benefits), more and more people will get seriously ill, the hospitals will be quickly overwhelmed (particularly in more rural states, where there is even less excess capacity in terms of ICU beds), and thousands more will die. Judging by the degree to which people are avoiding those establishments that have reopened, I would say that most people understand this dynamic fairly well.

Of course, we all know who is particularly expendable in the minds of our leaders. Elderly people in nursing homes? They’re expected to die at regular intervals – this much I know from experience. But the true expendables are the folks who take the crappy jobs – the meat packers, the farm workers, the restaurant workers, etc. People of color, mostly, and a lot of women. They are being compelled to return to work because the establishments they work for are being told to start up again, or because their bosses are getting impatient, and practically none of these companies are inclined to invest in protection gear or protocols that would keep their workers safe and well. Wealthier, whiter knowledge workers can work from home, no problem. Meat packers, not so much. There’s a greenhouse in a neighboring county to where I live – they tested their employees for COVID and more than 100 of them were carrying it. That’s an enormous number in a rural area like this. Multiply that by thousands and you’ll get some idea of what we’re looking at.

Trump wants to keep the cheeseburgers rolling. Trouble is, when you force meatpackers back to work, it’s likely that they’ll get sick. And when they get sick, they can’t work, so you’re right back to where you started from. We can either address the public health problem, or we can expect a massive level of disruption from here on out. Up to us.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

At the COVID Hilton.

Spent most of the week in the belly of America’s healthcare beast. And it started with something in my belly. Suffice to say, I needed an ambulance ride to the ER and emergency surgery for something totally unforeseen, unrelated to but in the midst of the current COVID crisis.

I will tell you that the nurses, orderlies, custodial and food workers were all kind and dedicated professionals, and I couldn’t be more grateful to them. But there were some truly bizarre moments, and I want to share one of them with you.

I’m lying on a gurney in the ready room at the COVID Hilton, my gut scrubbed and primed for incision. The bemasked surgeon enters the room and asks the nurse attending me, “Where is the other doctor?”

“Jeremy is here,” she says, tapping away at the roll-away laptop next to my bed on wheels.

“Jeremy,” the surgeon repeats, looking around. He turns to me and asks if I’m ready. I say something vaguely affirmative, but he’s distracted. He sits down at a desk across from me and takes out his phone.

The surgical nurse arrives, introduces herself to me, then starts helping the attending nurse with her data entry. “You can’t confirm the post op care plan because it hasn’t been entered yet,” she’s says. “See? They haven’t done it.”

“Where is the second doctor?” the surgeon barks into his phone, his legs up on a chair.

“Scroll down,” says the surgical nurse. The accounting system is giving them an argument. “It won’t let you confirm until you put something in here,” she says.

“When the patient dies, who’s going to call the family?” asks the surgeon.

Another guy in scrubs and hairnet arrives. The surg nurse hails him. “Jeremy! Where did you come from?”

“My mother,” Jeremy says. “Always.”

It seemed we were ready. On the way into the operating theater, the orderly sang, “We’re off to see the wizard!”

When I was discharged on Thursday, I was asked to sign an agreement that, if I were to return to the hospital with any additional problems related to this health issue, I would need to do so by noon the next day or it would be considered a second incident and, therefore, be charged separately (i.e. not be covered by insurance). This is America’s health care system in a nutshell. (As it turned out, I went back the next day at 4am. Plenty of time!)

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.