Category: Coronavirus

Stuck in the Midst of a Pandemic

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So at this moment, I should be in post-surgical pain. I had elective surgery scheduled for this past Tuesday. But, on Monday afternoon as I was preparing my convalescent room with supplies, I received a call from my surgeon’s office saying they needed to delay my surgery for two weeks. I asked whether it was due to COVID, but all the surgeon’s representative would say is that he would not be performing surgery on the day I was scheduled. I can assume the delay was indeed COVID-related. Here in West Virginia, we are late to everything, including the Omicron variant. Watching the daily numbers, I see the exponential rise in case numbers as it was at the beginning of the pandemic. It is irrelevant whether my postponement is due to a lack of beds due to COVID, or a lack of staff due to contracting the illness. It truly does not matter. What matters is that I am still in a state where those who are vaccinated are almost in the minority. We still have nearly half of the population who have not availed themselves of the readily-available vaccines.

There is no doubt those who refuse vaccination are prolonging the duration of the pandemic. And many of those who refuse to be immunized have the audacity to insist upon their right to treatment via monoclonal antibodies. Imagine. For someone who has done their research and chosen not to inject themselves with a preventive serum, they seem to insist a course of transfusion via IV is preferable? Of course, they can now claim to be discriminated against, since one of the criteria used for determining suitability of treatment is supposedly race. The Republicans, led by Governor DeathSantis now can combine two of their favorite complaints, anti-vax sentiment conflated by racial animus. Thus the realization that the monoclonal antibodies Florida relied upon, no longer work against Omicron landed upon the Governor’s deaf ears. It’s all a plot, politically motivated, part of the globalists work aimed at getting rid of the true Americans and replacing us all with – wait for it – other humans.

It is more and more apparent that the true motivation for much of the Republicans in this nation is racism. That is why they are so dead set against any sort of program designed at fostering equity. It doesn’t matter whether it is equity in medical treatment access, or equity in economic programs, by gum we elected a black man as President and all semblance of racism in this nation vanished immediately. So why do we insist upon talking so much about it now? All the resentment stored up in the Archie Bunker minions is being released now, and what’s more, that group has the fire power to overwhelm those of us who don’t seem to acknowledge the existential threat felt by white conservatives.

If only those who claim to be conservative actually fit that mode. But hypocrisy trumps political belief, and thus you have those who can claim to be offended by one comment calling a Fox reporter a dumb son of a bitch, exclaiming that statement is the worst example ever of dealing with the press, and ignoring the thousands of examples of the former President calling all of the press “The enemies of the People.” Meanwhile somehow all of the evangelical Christian community cling to the vision of seeing their savior on earth easily passing through the eye of a needle. Who needs camels anyway? So my surgery is to be postponed for two weeks. Maybe by that time, the surge in caseload will finally ease, and I can slip into and out of the hospital without acquiring a viral coating. Maybe it is a blessing I do not have to go into an environment saturated with virus. But I really feel for those who don’t have an option, those who have emergency conditions. At a minimum they will find themselves waiting longer than they should until they can have their condition treated. The worst case, and you see those cases daily, is they end up dying from a condition that could have been treated if the hospitals were not crawling with those who have insisted upon their right to bodily integrity, regardless of the effects on others. Let me just say. The effect on others is additional death and suffering. Seems acceptable to you? Of course, if you’ve gotten this far, you have an attention span greater than that of a fruit fly, so you probably are not the person who this screed is complaining about.

Human Evolution in Real Time

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One of my projects has been to make it through Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Even though I am not finished with it, I can appreciate what I am seeing in society at present. I am seeing evolution in action within the human race. In the response to COVID, it is apparent that humanity is divided between those who believe in science, and those who steadfastly deny science. The ones who believe in science are those who have accepted the medical miracle of mRNA vaccines, and are current with their inoculations. Those who deny science are the portion of humanity who refuse to accept a vaccine, even when a close family member is in the ICU on a ventilator due to COVID infection.

As such, we should expect differences to show up in the death rates between the two sides of the debate. Those who are vaccinated should have a lower rate of death than those who have failed to avail themselves of the opportunity. And so, humanity will have a slight tendency towards favoring the reproductive success of those who believe in science. Evolution has been captured in real time.

Of course, many of those who do die of the virus are past their reproductive period in life. The disease still overwhelmingly kills those who are older. But when you hear about someone being taken in the prime of life, someone with young children, then it is possible that the genes of those who deny science won’t proliferate as much as they would have.

Within the US, the sentiment towards vaccine refusal is highly correlated with other traits. Apparently those who object to mask mandates in schools also believe in the infallibility of the American story. We as a nation can do no wrong, we have never done wrong, and those who would indoctrinate our precious children with uncomfortable facts that contradict this set of beliefs are evil, and must be opposed vociferously. Thus it is we see school board meetings becoming contentious, and efforts are made to elect those who have the right political perspective. After all, children should be shielded from anything that might make them think. They must swallow the snake oil nostrum of American superiority, and manifest destiny. But I digress.

One thing apparent is the lack of people to understand and accept uncertainty. Their expectation is that experts should be required to have absolute answers at all times as this pandemic unfolded. Their resistance received a boost when the experts at the CDC changed their recommendations over time. You still hear that the experts were against mask usage at the start of this pandemic, and therefore we should still not wear masks. Never mind that the CDC experts were trying to ensure masks were available to health care providers, and due to neglect of the public health over the decades, inventories of protective equipment at the beginning of the pandemic were tragically low. Our worship of low inventories and just-in-time delivery left us woefully unprepared to deal with the surge in demand for basic PPE (as a chemical plant employee, I was aware of Personal Protective Equipment. Most in society had never even considered such matters). So when the CDC took stock of inventories after the initial surge, it was apparent that masks would be available to most of the population. They changed their recommendation to wear masks in public places. However, the die had already been cast for many folks. They insisted that professionals were against masks initially, and therefore masks were of no use.

Similarly, as we learned of the nature of COVID, we learned transmission is mainly through airborne exposure. The fanatical trends towards decontaminating anything from outside the home slowly went away. There are still remnants of this in the public space. Condiments are still unavailable at many restaurants due to the fear of cross-contamination from an infected individual. And it is also obvious that in public facilities, the long-term trend towards energy efficiency made it more difficult for buildings to meet the air exchange recommendations in schools and other public buildings. Most schools built in the past 50 years don’t even have windows that can be opened, so making HVAC systems more robust will mean energy costs for these public facilities will increase.

Many of those who have resisted vaccines care not at all for any of these issues. In fact, many resisters still insist the entire concern about this novel coronavirus is not merited. After all, most colds are coronaviruses, and we don’t shut down the economy for colds, do we? For those who are so withdrawn from reality, it is not possible to realistically convert them away from their beliefs towards new ones that contradict their entrenched positions.

So instead what we are seeing is a slight tendency towards higher survival for those who are more accepting of advances in science. If you continue this trend for several generations, maybe in the 24th century mankind will be more accepting of advances in science instead of insisting God provides all of the natural immunity anyone needs. One can hope that something good can come from the tragedy we’ve all been living through.

And If Elected, I Promise To ….

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My career choices have expanded exponentially. All I have to do now is lie unashamedly and the future is mine as a Republican elected official. It is amazing, you don’t even need to worry about those videos showing your deeds and words, all you need to do is, say, recast those events into more flattering versions of the truth. And to be sure, your version of the truth has just as much merit as any other version that just happens to be backed by video and audio.

So instead of acknowledging the medieval violence perpetrated by those in the vanguard of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, you can portray those inside of the Capitol building as normal tourists, even managing to draw (stay) inside of the lines as they took selfies desecrating congressional spaces. Why, it is impossible for white citizens to have evil intent. We all know it is those others from BLM and Antifa who were the real terrorists. Those Proud Boys and those 3 Percenters? Just patriotic tourists who happened along and shared hugs and kisses with the Capitol police.

If those mean ole Democrats propose any changes to the taxation structure of this country, thereby risking reversal of 40 years of pandering to the rich? Just portray them as unrepentant socialists, who are working at implementing redistributionist policies, taking money away from the hard relaxing billionaires whose spending keeps so many of the little people employed.

If businesses have difficulty hiring people at starvation wages, expound ceaselessly on the dignity of work, and state that America has lost its work ethic. Never worry about the lives of those who have risked their existence by working during this pandemic, just define those who are using what little power they have (their labor) as morally corrupt for not wanting to exchange an hour’s work for 8 federal reserve notes. Of course, we who hold millions of those federal reserve notes have proven our moral integrity and should never be chastised.

Yes, I can lie with the best of them. I can claim no one has ever seen this virus everyone is scared of, and all of the hospitalizations are just efforts at getting the highest reimbursements from our socialized medicine providers. I can claim that since the advice from the scientists has changed from what was given 18 months ago, then all advice from scientists should be ignored, and my anecdotal evidence about efficacy of horse dewormer out trumps your peer reviewed massive trials. I have my rights and you are not about to infringe on them by pansy-assed pleas to consider the public good.

I can even lie about what is going on all around us. Sure, we never used to have these massive fires in Australia, Greece, Portugal, and the US west coast. But it cannot have any relationship to the increase in temperatures we’ve seen across the globe. And those flooding rains we seem prone to now? Has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that higher dew points induced from a warmer climate allows for higher rainfalls. But God would never allow for his infallible creatures to be capable of inflicting harm to the environment. Therefore, all who worry about the coming climate crisis can just go on with their lives (and the campaign contributions of the vested interests keep on rolling in).

I will have to work on my ability to cry crocodile tears at the opposing political party for insisting that we take responsibility for our actions in the past at increasing the deficit. Just as long as I can feign concern for our debt when I didn’t care about increasing deficits as long as the favored classes made out from our tax cuts. I’m not really good at naked hypocrisy, so my acting skills need a little brushing up before I can stand in front of cameras and wail about the reckless spending taking us over Niagara Falls without even a barrel to shield us from the rocks below.

I can if I wish start at the state level. I can say that I’m going to change human nature, and eliminate all rapists from the streets while I prohibit any possibility of abortions. I can insist that all who inhabit our penal systems are deserving of every bad thing they get, and once someone has made a mistake, they forfeit all rights forevermore. I don’t care about offering any rehabilitation programs in prisons, all those who find themselves there are unworthy of anything other than white bread and bologna sandwiches. Bring back Joe Arpaio! He had the right ideas.

Of course, only those who see things the way I do deserve to be placed in positions of public trust. Therefore, I must manipulate the electoral system so that only I and my fellow travelers can win elections from now on. I must pick any remnant of the liberals from my clothing in disgust, so I can remain pure and unblemished.

I can hardly wait. The next election cycle is upon us, so I must hurry so I can establish myself in the minds of those we allow to vote.

I Want To Do My Own Research

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 One of the greatest gifts I received from my education in mathematics was how to determine uncertainty. I actually learned the practical aspects of that on the job, as I worked with PhD chemists to run experiments on chemical processes. I learned what it means for something to show statistical significance, and how to run an experiment to clearly answer the question of which set of conditions is better.

This appreciation of statistical uncertainty has helped me in many aspects of life outside of my former work. Recently, the knowledge about tests helped me understand the results from the vaccine testing done by pharmacological companies for COVID. I know what is needed to show effectiveness, especially with a virus that infects only a few percent of the population. And that is one reason why I had no qualms in accepting my own doses of the vaccine. I took my dose from a perspective of knowledge, rather than blind acceptance of statements from other experts.

Which is what has driven me crazy in hearing these explanations from the vaccine “hesitant”, who are obviously eager to demonstrate their ignorance of all things scientific and mathematical. They often say, “I want to evaluate the testing myself”. I would be surprised if one in a hundred of these people have the mathematical knowledge to truly evaluate the test results. Instead, these people want to provide the impression they are open to reason, they only want more testing done. And that they are fully capable of making this determination themselves, they don’t need experts to guide them.

The hubris this shows then allows them to glom onto anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of ersatz remedies such as ivermectin. Look, when you have a virus where the survival rate is 90+%, a large number of people may take a folk remedy and not die. This by no means demonstrates that the folk remedy was responsible for the cure. It takes a carefully crafted study to show a difference in treatment efficacy, and those studies are being run, but are not completed. Yet for these mathematically ignorant people, anecdotal evidence is good enough for them. It is only the greed of the pharmaceutical companies keeping these inexpensive remedies out of the hands of the public. To them, I say hogwash.

I also despair when I see people say there is no epidemic, all of this talk about an epidemic is cover for the New World Order implementation. Of course, in order to implement a New World Order, the population of the world must be culled first. And it is the vaccine which is the tool to accomplish this. According to these true believers, all of us who received mRNA vaccines will die horrible deaths caused by immune system failures within 1-2 years after we first received a vaccine. Those who refuse the vaccine, in the minds of these delusional people, will be the only ones left. They and those of the illuminati who got the word ahead of time, and made sure their injections were of saline so they could fool the unwashed masses.

What is obvious to me is that the human mind is not capable of understanding uncertainty.  Humans are impatient, and they expect absolute answers instantly. Real science does not work that way. So we have many people who believe they know more than the experts, and they try to force their beliefs on the rest of society. They are the ones who scream at school board meetings about the harm masking does. They pretend to be scientifically literate by knowing the particle size of an isolated virus, and are certain all virus particles escape capture from fabric or other masks. Nowhere is it acknowledged that the masks are aimed at capturing respiratory particles, where viruses hitch a ride on globs of moisture and phlegm. Since they know masks cannot capture single virus particles, masks therefore do no good and they harm the self-esteem of our poor innocent children who are forced to wear them.

I do not know how to increase scientific and mathematical literacy in the general population. Many people insist that since they have never used algebra in their work, it is of no importance. So many people cannot deal with abstract concepts. And now, since expertise is sneered at, all facts are good and you cannot prove me wrong. Or at least, that is the impression I receive from science deniers who either do not want to learn the math to do the real validation themselves, or those who do not want to change their lifestyle based upon the scientific results.

Let me just say I am fed up with the ignorance of those who claim to be influencers. I am also upset with those who are more willing to accept some literally cockamamie story about swollen testicles from a vaccine dose than understanding the reality behind vaccines. We’ve come just about as far as we can as a society with a population who see nothing different between science and magic. Arthur C. Clarke famously said that sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. When we as a society decide to follow magic rather than to follow science, we deserve the bad consequences which will come crashing down on all of us.

PLAY-SEE-BOW. It’s Right For You!

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Slimey’s home

I was surprised to see my old friend, Slimey, sitting on a park bench apparently deep in thought over the piece of paper he held in one of his clawed hands. Slimey, as you may remember, is the 8-foot tall reptilian life form I encountered first coming out of the Tidal Basin early on in Trump’s administration.

I walked over to him, clearing my throat so as to alert him to my presence. It was a smart thing to do, since his reflexes were so much faster than mine, and he is capable of evisceration when startled. Those claws are sharp!

“Friend” he called out. “Come over here. Maybe you can help me with a marketing problem.”

I came over and sat at the opposite end of the park bench. I could see that the piece of paper Slimey held had several proposed names on it for some sort of pharmaceutical. Slimey pointed to the paper.

“I’m trying to come up with a name for my new COVID medicine. I’ve narrowed it down to two: PLAY-SEE-BOW, or Bug-Be-Gone. Which one do you think will be better?”

I must have looked dumbstruck. “You have a COVID medicine? How did you develop that?”

Slimey looked up, and though his jaws were fixed as always (only when he was going after food would those jaws move), it appeared he was wearing the expression of a smile. “I tried to think of the one thing those people who refuse the vaccination would lap up. And I came up with this.” Slimey held gently in his clawed hand a small vial, similar in size to one of those energizer drinks.

“What’s in it” I asked.

Slimey answered in a bit of a round-about way. “I saw a report that the virus couldn’t survive in water. So I got myself a bit of the water from down my way.” Here he turned his head towards the Tidal Basin and to the swampy expanse of the Potomac. “I added a little bit of hydrogen ions, and some chloride ions, bottled it, and here it is.”

“So let me get this straight. You bottled some Washington swamp water, and added hydrochloric acid to it?”

Slimey nodded in agreement. “The little bit of acid killed anything bad in the water, and gives it a bit of a kick. I just know it’ll give COVID a knock-out”

I shook my head, unable to believe the scam about to be perpetrated on the American public. “When do you go live with this?”

Slimey turned his massive forearm till he could see the watch. “Supposed to have our first ads go on Tucker’s show tonight. That’s why I need a name, and soon.”

I pondered for a bit, then said “I think PLAY-SEE-BOW is your best shot. I think that describes your product perfectly. How are you planning to sell it?”

Slimey said, “A four pack of bottles will sell for $15.99. I can see us putting it up at the cash registers of feed stores, and at your corner bodegas, and of course we will sell it direct. I’ve been trying to work a co-marketing strategy with Mike Lindell, but I’m afraid that’s fallen through. Seems he thought we weren’t supportive enough of his position. Well, it’s his loss.”

I tried to take this all in. Seems we were just about to undergo a massive advertising campaign for this new product. I could see it now, the TV and Facebook ads where a beautiful person begins to cough. Up comes their savior, with a bottle of PLAY-SEE-BOW, and says to the cougher, “Try this.” The cougher unscrews the cap, then takes the whole dose in.

“Wow. That’s got a kick. What is it?”

“That’s PLAY-SEE-BOW. We can’t get the FDA to approve it, so you know it works.”

The cougher smiles, and says, “I can tell it’s working. COVID doesn’t have a chance.”

Voiceover says, “PLAY-SEE-BOW. For when you get that first inkling something might be wrong.” And of course the usual list of side effects has to be enunciated, only in this case the side effects would be unusual sexual attractiveness, excessive muscular development, and reversal of all aches and pains. If ever there were a can’t-miss product, this was going to be it.

I asked Slimey, “Do you need anybody to invest in this? I think you’ve got a winner here.”

Slimey shook his head, no. He said, “We’ve got the seed money for this from Fox and the RNC. They wanted to take a piece of this real quick. We might even get the Cyber Ninja’s to go out and sell this for us when they do their next audit.

I got up from the bench, and made my adieus from Slimey. For once, he had something that just couldn’t miss. Knowing his audience as well as he did, all I could think about was what was he going to do with all of the money he was about to get. After all, there was a huge untapped market for PLAY-SEE-BOW, and I could feel proud to have been there at the beginning of it all.

American Taliban? You Decide

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It’s an ill wind that blows from outside. The wind that brings disease and death to those it encounters who are not armed against it. The wind that causes schisms within towns and families, as it dismantles inhibitions for those who adamantly believe in the other side’s evil. The wind emanating from the new phenomena of the internet, with its ability to connect huge crowds only to give them faulty information to share among the most rabid.

In the end, the wind comes from ourselves. We are the ones who keep the falsehoods and lies alive through our incessant need to be proven right. We are the ones who end up yelling at each other as we encounter those who won’t follow our correct protocol. Look, I received much scientific and mathematical training during my years of schooling. I know which side of the faith / science divide I land on. It is certainly not the side of those who expound their faith that natural immunity given by God will protect them from this virus they don’t even believe exists.  It is on the side of those who believe God gave man the intelligence to assert dominion over even the lowliest near-life forms we share the planet with.

But it is a reality that the other belief system does exist, and those who adhere to this belief system cannot see the virtues of the opposing arguments. In fact, many of those people believe that the vaccine is a tool for mass depopulation by the evil ones who are inspired by Satan. It is evil these people believe they are facing down as they encounter those who favor public health measures.

In a way, it is like the belief systems exhibited by the Taliban, as they re-impose their will upon a people resistant to their beliefs. They know they are right, and if the entire rest of the world disagrees with them, they know their heavenly reward is guaranteed through their actions. At some point, folks who have a rational bone in their body would realize the rest of the world might just be right, not those few who yell the loudest and grab the most attention.

So the difficulty with defeating the viewpoints of those who deny both the virus and the vaccine is similar to changing the minds of those who adhere to the beliefs of the Taliban. Both are utterly convinced they are the only ones who are right, and they will ignore all contrary evidence in front of their faces. Thus we have the local politician who attends an anti-vaccination rally mere days after the death of his wife from COVID. Thus we have the fanatics in Afghanistan enforcing their version of Sharia law while the society they conquered falls apart around them.

Maybe we need to call the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers the American Taliban, since they seem to exhibit the intolerance of the Afganistanian group. Both groups wish to take society back in time, to where there is no need to acknowledge anything other than the magnificence of God. It is God who governs all actions, and vaccines subvert God’s will in that they prevent God from culling those who should be culled.

In my previous writings, I discussed various existential threats facing human civilization. One of those is the rise of Willful Ignorance. As I look back at this piece of writing now three years old, it is amazing how many of those threats we are facing right now. Certainly we have seen how vulnerable we are to the risk of infectious diseases. A plague that kills only 1% of those it infects is capable of grinding economic activity to a halt. Add to that the growth of Tribalism and Denialism, and you can understand the reaction of many governments to the pandemic. After all, in their opinion, the plague is caused by outsiders, not by true citizens. And then add willful ignorance to the brace of problems we face. What I did not anticipate was the pride that those who are willfully ignorant take in their ignorance. There was no way I could expect a group of people to self-identify who wear their maskless faces as badges of honor, and view anyone who exercises caution by wearing a mask as threats and cowards.

Those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a developed country do not realize the gifts we have been given. We live lives unimaginable to the vast majority of humanity through the millennia who never could enjoy adequate (or excessive) food, comfortable living quarters, personal transportation at our beck and call, treatment for most acute diseases, and instant world-wide communication available in our hands. Many in our world today would trade places in an instant themselves, and to see our civilization ripped asunder by those who refuse to take advantage of yet another of mankind’s advances, a new vaccine therapy, leaves many throughout the world wondering about the sanity of the inhabitants of the US. Count me in their number. I too question the sanity of those who insist upon taking horse de-wormer as a way of treating this disease that in their opinion is supposedly no worse than the flu.

In the end, we will either wear down this virus through mass exposure of the population, or through sufficient vaccination to cause it to seek new vulnerable hosts in vain. Letting the virus course through the population invites still more death and disability. It also enables new variants to develop and sooner or later, one will come about that laughs at our previous vaccines while ripping through the population at a pace that even the most fervent deniers will be unable to reject the evidence of their eyes. When human powered carts roll through our streets, with someone calling out to “Bring Out Your Dead”, then maybe those who have pooh-poohed this virus will finally admit we have something to be worried about. But by then, it may be too late for this civilization to fix the problem, and our descendants will find themselves living lives much like peasants in medieval times. Only with cell phones.

Fool Me Once? Shame on You. Fool Me 156 Times?

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How many times must Charley Brown have the football pulled by Lucy before he gets wise and takes his football home? Apparently, this is something Sisyphean that keeps on looping forever, like a GIF. Since Peanuts is on eternal reruns, Charley Brown will never learn his lesson.

Democrats are the equivalent of Charley Brown. They keep expecting Republicans to be rational and to accept the proffered hand of bipartisanship, since getting things done is obviously more important than partisan politics. And time after time, Lucy in the form of the Republican party pulls the football away, showing where the Republican priorities are. If you can envision Mitch McConnell as Lucy, it humanizes him (slightly).

So now we are in the waning days of the greatest pandemic the world has seen since the flu epidemic of 1918. At least, waning in this country as we have rolled out vaccines early here, a byproduct of our affluence. Now all those who are freeloading off of the reduced transmission of the virus (freeloading via their refusal to get vaccinated) will feel emboldened to proclaim that the whole incident of the pandemic was an overwrought hoax, and certainly did not call for the abridgements of freedoms that wearing a mask represented. Those poor snowflakes on the right were completely undone by having to wear a flimsy cotton or paper covering on their faces.

The entire world has seen economic damages exceeding even the human toll of the disease. Billions have lost income, and it was only in those countries where it was possible to borrow money, that enough income could be replaced to keep the economy alive. Elsewhere in the world, economic disruption has been severe. Remember India, where at the onset of the crisis, millions of laborers had to walk back to their homes due to imposed restrictions? Even in the US, we heard about those who starved to death on these forced migrations.

So what we should have learned through this experience was how interdependent we have become. Our economy does not function if we do not have adequate child care enabling many to participate in the labor force. This is one of the new infrastructures we have constructed over the recent decades, and the latest legislative proposals reflect this human interdependence. Republicans, though, do not acknowledge the changes in the world they have brought forth. According to them, if you cannot build it, it is not infrastructure. And they would rather see bridges fall into the Mississippi River than even consider the need to raise taxes to prevent such occurrences.

Those who are unable to adjust to changing conditions will find themselves going extinct. We see this in the animal kingdom, where creatures who inhabit a small niche, are not able to withstand the disturbance of that niche.  It may be a small darter found in a single section of  stream, or a song bird using a specific tree species, or an insect battered by removal of its habitat and the onslaught of pesticides applied indiscriminately. Within humanity itself, groups who find it impossible to adjust to changing conditions, may also face extinction. Unfortunately, for humanity, those who are cornered often are at their most dangerous. This seems to be the fate of Republicans in the US where the knowledge of their upcoming obsolescence has led to an existential battle to retain the levers of political power. They use their power in state legislatures to rig the election process to give themselves an incremental boost in election results. Enough, perhaps, to overcome the demographic surge they fear so much. If they can retain enough power through this decade, then they may be able to elect a real capable autocrat who understands how power works, and this façade of democracy can finally be done away with.

The need to prevent this erosion of our liberties is why it is so critical to reform the electoral process. All Democratic Senators must understand that it is folly to expect Lucy to keep the football on the tee so they can kick it down the field. Instead, they say just enough good things to keep Charley Brown running forward, knowing full well they will pull the ball back and enjoy watching Charley Brown land on his butt once more. In this case, it is vital to reform the rules of the game so that one side cannot gain an insurmountable edge. If we don’t take advantage of the disruption caused by the pandemic, we will forever be falling on our butts in the future. And we will deserve it.

No Vaccine For Me, Please

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So now we wait for the unintended consequences. Now that the US CDC has removed the requirement for masking in most situations for those who are fully vaccinated (or vacciminatedified as my elder son says), what can we expect to see going forward? First off, those governors including our own in West Virginia will be under extreme pressure to remove any masking mandates. This has already taken place in West Virginia as of May 15. Second, we can expect non-governmental groups like my church bureaucracy to relinquish their limits on in-person services (and perhaps on singing in church as well).

But the primary consequence is that there will be a low level of severe coronavirus continuing to circulate through the population since the virus will still have plenty of unvaccinated people to attack as we go through the months and years to come. If you look at the Venn diagram of those who will not get vaccinated, and those who have resisted masking, you will see a very good overlap. So those who have not been vaccinated will not follow any guidelines from the government. As those of us who have taken the jabs celebrate our freedom from the limitations imposed by the response to the virus, we must be aware that there is no visible sign to mark the vaccinated from those who are not. Since the vaccine was supposed to be the mark of the beast, I figured there would be some visible means to distinguish those who are protected from those who are not. Alas, that is not the case.

We must all be aware that even though we in the US are fortunate enough to see falling case rates, our health system will continue to see a large number of virus patients filling our hospitals. The stressed health professionals will not be able to totally abandon pandemic status, but the reduced levels we will see will likely mean our health care system won’t be overwhelmed.

That is obviously not the case across the globe. One needs only to look at the severe effects of the virus surge in India in order to understand this is a global fight, and no one is really safe until all people have the chance for immunization. Eventually the uncontrolled spread in many countries will result in a viral mutation that will evade the existing immune response from vaccination. So we have a selfish interest in preventing the scenes of suffering we see as images from India are seen on our media.

But I fear it will be nigh unto impossible to disabuse those who insist that this vaccine is evil, and a part of the New World Order mission to depopulate the earth, and we are only waiting until the 5G signal comes that activates the self-destruct mechanism we’ve had injected into ourselves. As has been said, you can’t fix stupid. And what’s worse is that so many folks are willingly adopting these ludicrous beliefs because they’ve been persuaded by the constant drumbeat of the media of the right.

Look, the right loves to bewail the perceived intolerance of the left. Well, this partisan of the left is open, and has gone so far as to read an extensive link about gain of function research conducted at the Wuhan virology lab and sponsored by that paragon of evil, Anthony Fauci. This was a link provided by my younger son, who has been vaccinated but is also deeply suspicious of China.

I will say we do need to find the animal reservoir for this virus, else the description in the link will be more likely to describe the actual origin of the virus. Regardless of the actual source of the virus, it is apparent that the initial tendency of the Chinese government was to minimize the severity of the initial outbreak. That does not justify the ethnic sniggering conducted by US government officials who were only too willing to blame an entire ethnic group for this viral dissemination. It is the words of these government officials which emboldened so many US citizens to attack their brethren for appearing Asian. What those on the right do not want to admit is that their followers take their words literally and view actions they take in support of ill-advised words as justified both legally and morally. Cancel culture from the left can result in the loss of a job, and that loss is sometimes not justified. Cancel culture from the right can result in the loss of a limb, or a life. After all, extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And when one side defines what liberty is, extremism is often the result.

So we will emerge from the pandemic haphazardly. Some countries will see greatly decreased frequency and severity of infections. Others who may have escaped the ravages of the disease to date will find themselves overrun by later surges induced by more infectious variants. Meanwhile, the host country for the Olympics is questioning the worth of holding this event in the midst of an ongoing surge in cases. Given the expenses involved in hosting an Olympic game, it seems that there will be great reluctance for future cities to vie for the right to spend themselves into oblivion. Especially if this year’s games are canceled. Maybe that’s symbolic of how the world, which once was unified by athletic competition, is now unraveling due to the overwhelming trend towards provincialism sweeping over the nations of the earth. Much like the virus has swept over the earth, totally ignorant of the imaginary lines dividing the countries on the ground. Some realities just cannot be ignored.

Vaccine, Vaccine, Vaccine, Vaccine!

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So we now in the US have more doses of vaccines available than we have people wanting to take said vaccines. In some states, available vaccination appointment times are being wasted as we run up against the recalcitrants who believe one or all of the following:

  • The virus is not a real threat, and is nothing to be concerned about
  • The vaccine was developed too quickly and horrible side effects will emerge over time
  • The vaccine contains tracking devices from Bill Gates equivalent to the Mark of the Beast
  • The Chinese are just waiting for enough vaccinations to occur before they unleash part 2 of this pandemic, resulting in depopulation. Only vaccine virgins will remain.
  • Doctors and hospitals are overstating the coronavirus toll since they have a financial incentive to call as many deaths as Covid-related as possible.

I have seen these mentioned on the internet as reasons for not taking the vaccine. It is amazing this degree of stupidity is prevalent but given the electoral history in the US in 2016, stupidity is capable of leading this nation.

Many of the issues I have seen involve the rapidity of vaccine development. Those who refuse inoculation do not understand that we have built the scientific understanding of mRNA, and we can now control its construction so it can be used instead of a killed virus particle aimed at generating immune system response. Instead of having to rely upon a vaccine that can sometimes actually cause the disease, they are scared of the latest advances in science where only the target system on the virus is attacked. People have expressed concerns about use of fetal derived cells in the culturing of the vaccine. Well, the mRNA vaccines do not use any living material at all so this cultural concern is now moot. But if folks really want a more conventional vaccine, the Johnson and Johnson version, and the Astra-Zeneca versions have a killed virus at their core. Just not the COVID virus. I’m not as familiar with the Russian and Chinese vaccines, so I cannot speak about them.

It is incredible how fast our knowledge has grown about genetics and manipulation of genetic components. Just 20 years ago I hung a poster up in my office showing the human genome. It’s only been 20 years ago since the human genome was sequenced, and that effort took over a year to complete. Now, the sequence for this virus was done and sent out to the world in a few days. This enabled scientists to design the genetic response attacking the virus, which resulted in an effective vaccine being developed in record time. The rest of the time was taken up with the clinical trials, which are a necessary step in the release of a vaccine. And indeed, the trials were held, although we do not know essential things like how long does the immune system stay protected. That’s because this virus only came about in the last year, and we’ve not had time to get long-term data on immunity.

There are those who proclaim their belief in God is all they need to protect themselves from germs. These folks would have fared well back in the middle ages with the bubonic plagues. I’d wager most of the folks who succumbed to the plague in bygone days were religious, and that did not save them at all. I just wish these folks would understand that we as humans were given the ability to understand nature, and it is a gift from God to have the knowledge to design new treatments for disease. It is not a refutation of your religious beliefs to accept this wondrous new gift enabled by our abilities provided by God. But then, I cannot comprehend how many believers in this nation were taken in by a charlatan who laughed at their religious devotion.

As I’ve said before, we have an opportunity to see evolution in action. Especially now, since it is the younger people who still can spread their genes to the world who are preferentially refusing to take the vaccines. If those who refuse to take the vaccine end up dying in larger numbers, then fewer of the next generation will have science denial as part of their genetic and cultural inheritance. It is a shame that we must take part in this experiment, because the fewer people who get immunity through vaccines, the more likely it is new variants will develop requiring a tweak to the vaccine, and subsequent booster shots. If we cannot convince folks to get a basic inoculation, then I expect much poorer compliance with subsequent boosters. But maybe it is part of the evolution of the human species causing preferential survival by those who believe in science, and those who are willing to accept the gifts coming from scientific progress.

What Happens Next?

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Despair creeps in when hope is exhausted. For so many during this long pandemic season, despair has been a constant companion after the shock of the first few weeks passed. But now, along with the seasonal change, hope is returning. For some, the financial boost coming from the COVID relief package will enable them to hang on until the economy fully recovers, and they can go back to a service economy job that pays just enough to squeak by. For many others, the opportunity to abandon the prison of their home with the onslaught of vaccination, will bring back essential socialization and family interactions. Still, it is hope that is omnipresent in this time of rebirth in nature.

As a nation, we begin to crawl out of our foxholes and survey the landscape around us. Some things should come into focus, even if they were visible prior to the pandemic. Though visible, they did not register as urgent problems in the before times. Will we have the collective will to address these problems now? We will see. The COVID relief bill has taken a first step towards solving some of these problems. But it is time-limited relief, and its provisions are for only one or two years. The problems, like child poverty, have existed for far longer. It was only during the nadir of the pandemic that we realized how interconnected we all are, and how we need to solve the problems of our brothers and sisters in need, or we will be swept under the tide of humanity crying out for aid.

We had a foretaste of what can happen when we ignore these problems for too long. Demonstrations aimed at protesting excessive use of force by law enforcement, were coopted at night by those who favored direct action and anarchy. It is important to recognize that the demonstrations were instigated by acts of violence, but the economy was also a significant factor. When people do not see hope in their lives, despair can overwhelm them and it is a small step to violence. Of course, those who saw only the violence in the streets were convinced that the source of that violence was organized, and financed by an evil cabal. Then we saw what could happen when those who decried violence, decided to perpetrate violence themselves on January 6. Certainly we all were living in a state of despair at that time.

Will we learn our lessons? Will we let the siren song of substance abuse wrap its embrace of slithering tentacles around us? Will we continue to insist upon punitive actions only as the sole treatment method available to those who succumb to its fatal attraction? Will we realize that the costs of maintaining our prison complex are vastly greater than the costs of providing real treatment? That’s just one of the problems that existed long before the pandemic, yet shows up now in greater relief.

Will we be willing to invest in improved facilities for schools? In some states, the disparity between school facilities and achievement is immoral. The zip code you live in should not be the primary determinant of your educational outcome. Yet it is in far too many states. But of course it is the greedy teachers’ unions that are seen as the source of poor student performance.

Will we continue to accept that in the service economy we now have, it is not moral to allow those who look after the most vulnerable in our population to work full time for wages that do not provide enough money to live in dignity? We’ve lost many of the jobs we had in small towns, where a manufacturer could take those who did not pursue advanced education and provide them jobs where they could support a family. We may decry the global shift of labor and capital, but it will not reverse and provide those jobs in the future. Any manufacturing that returns, will use smaller amounts of labor, and require advanced education in order to control and maintain the machines that actually perform the manufacturing. We can wail and moan about this change, or we can accept it and try to fashion our real world into one where we’d like to live.

We’ve just gone through a period where we tried to squeeze out testosterone as a grease for our economy. Witness the frantic push to grab the last bit of fossil fuels out of the public lands. Because, you see, drilling for oil is manly. And we need that image of the roughneck out there in his domestic pickup, living his life out in the frontier towns of the Dakota’s, or among the tumbleweeds of Texas, showing the best of what America has to offer. Yes, doesn’t require much education to be a roughneck. Just what we need to Make America Great Again. But the investment required to keep the oil and gas flowing through the fracking fields won’t just keep coming, since it is nigh unto impossible to make money when the output from the wells declines so precipitously. So will we turn from the allure of fossil fuel towards a cleaner future?

The Texas freeze has shown us just how vulnerable our energy infrastructure is. Will we have the will to require investment in upgrading facilities and making it possible to integrate periodic sources of energy generation (i.e., renewables) into our delivery systems? The next failure may not just be in Texas, but can be global in nature, especially if we get smacked by a coronal mass ejection from the sun. Are we willing to spend money now to protect against something that may not happen for 100 years?

All of these problems (and many more) have existed for decades if not longer. The virus has shown us that we are all living on borrowed time if we expect life to continue blissfully ignorant of the risks we run. Somehow we need to change our mindset from a heedless rush for maximum profits by corporations, to a model where some of the excess profits are recycled into system improvements that ensure continuity of service. Can such a change in mindset happen without government mandates? Texas may be our canary in that a completely deregulated environment did not ensure continuity of service to cover a once in a hundred-year weather event.

Since the 1980’s in the US, we have seen government put down as being the worst enemy of true Americans. It is past time to put that phrase into our history books, as we see what that philosophy does to a society after over 40 years of implementation. You end up with massive inequality in the economy, a bulging underclass that does not share in the overall prosperity of the nation, and facilities that all depend upon that have grown increasingly frail. It is time to change our perspective and look at what can be, and work to create that future for all of us.