I really don’t want to overload your inbox, certainly not with coronavirus material, which you’re inundated with constantly. But I keep getting e-mail from people who are not taking the threat seriously. Who are leaving the house and visiting with other people.
Let me make it simple… When you get together with somebody, you’re getting together with everybody who ever came in contact with them. Sure, they might not have left the house, but did their housekeeper come? And did the housekeeper drive him or herself or did they take the bus?
Of course you cannot totally immunize yourself from personal contact, you do need food delivery, which is done by humans. (As for the hoarding, this is positively insane, there’s plenty of food, I’d link you to the “Wall Street Journal” story but you either believe me or not. And when you’re hoarding, other people who might need the item you have in bulk have no access to it. You can’t buy distilled water, yet people with CPAP machines need it. As for toilet paper, I’ve heard a few good jokes, you probably have too. 1. If the people are that scared shitless why do they need toilet paper? 2. Trump is so full of shit the country ran out of toilet paper.)
So the story that had the most impact upon me today was this:
I’ve got to ask you, do you feel lucky? Because those are terrible odds. In other words, you’re more likely to get the coronavirus than not. And sure, not all young ‘uns are gonna die like the 34 year old above, but he did. As for oldsters, you’re in the target group.
Now the country at large is clamping down. Florida mayors closed the beaches when the governor refused to, but as the day wore on the governor got on board, well, sorta. My point being that what’s permissible, just outside the lines today, is taboo tomorrow.
Vail, Colorado, a tourist town, is inundated with coronavirus cases. Last I checked, Eagle County, which Vail is part of, had the most coronavirus cases in Colorado. Anyway, the hospital issued a memo today saying how long it’s taking to get test results (3-5 days and getting worse), and the imminent threat of running out of hospital beds
Of course the video is funny, but what is vastly more interesting is the WaPo taking a side, no longer employing false equivalencies. Suddenly it’s about what is right as opposed to doing your best to appear fair when there’s no fairness at all.
Don’t commit a crime, there are cameras everywhere.
And don’t try to deny what is already out there, when footage exists.
But please, do not leave the house unless it’s to buy necessities, i.e. groceries and gasoline, your life depends on it.
Musician, writer, producer…listen to hear stories of Dave’s upbringing in Sunderland, his band Longdancer’s tenure with Elton John and Rocket Records, how he met Annie Lennox and how they borrowed money to make the first Eurythmics album, how he wrote the chorus of Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More” and how Dylan called him and they made movies together and…
A subscriber sent me this video from Italy. Remember that old TV show wherein they took kids to prisons, entitled “Scared Straight”? You’ll be scared straight into self-quarantine after watching this. It’s just under four minutes. I know, I know, people are sending you articles all day long, you’re eyes are glazed over from info, but this is the most dramatic thing I encountered all day yesterday:
And speaking of video, you’ll wince and get a chuckle out of these inane spring-breakers, are they even smart enough to go to college and go on spring break? I know people canceling weddings, but meanwhile these nitwits can’t miss out on a bit of partying?
And there’s this fiction that the United States can go it alone, that we don’t need other countries. But the truth is that ship sailed years ago. Corporations are multinational and so is the supply chain. You’re aware that your Mac is made in China, but are you aware the swabs used in coronavirus testing are made in Italy?
The swab cannot be made out of wood and it must be synthetic, not cotton.
“The main manufacturer of the swabs, Copan, is an Italian company whose manufacturing plant is in Northern Italy, a region that has itself been hard hit by the coronavirus outbreak. It says it has ramped up manufacturing to deal with the extraordinary demand for an otherwise unassuming product to which many doctors gave little thought, until now.”
This makes me crazy. The left says to bring manufacturing back to America, not realizing prices would go insane and our lifestyles would go down. The right believes it can go it alone. And Trump believes by starting trade wars he’s improving conditions in America. But just ask the farmers, who depend upon exports. We’ve always been in this together, maybe the coronavirus will teach us this.
If you’re unaware of Larson, he recreates real life stories, frequently ones you were unaware of. However, his books have no arc, they don’t build, they’re relatively flat, and so far, “The Splendid and the Vile” reads like a paste-up job, but still I’m intrigued, to learn so much about history I did not know. When I went to school teachers did not teach recent history, they’d lived through it and thought you knew it, when you did not.
Now if you want to go on a Larson kick, start with “The Devil In The White City,” which makes the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 come alive, while a serial killer…
If you like that, then read “In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin.” It’s the story of America’s ambassador to Nazi Germany, but what makes it so interesting is his not yet divorced daughter comes along with him and has a relationship with seemingly every major Nazi. Read this if you’re going to Berlin, if we can ever travel again. I was stunned to drive by parks and other landmarks in the city after reading this book.
Anyway, back to “The Splendid and the Vile.”
Churchill becomes prime minister. According to Larson, this is not what the entrenched wanted. Because Churchill was a man of action, and they thought his actions were unpredictable.
So one of the first things Churchill does is to hire this guy Lord Beaverbrook, who made his fortune in newspapers, to boost airplane production, which he does, dramatically! Just like in the job-seeker’s bible, “What Color Is Your Parachute,” skills are transferable. Beaverbrook keeps hearing no, but he doesn’t back down. He steps on toes to get the job done, he stands up to the bureaucracy, goes outside his purview, all in an effort to achieve the result. They call this the “can-do spirit.” America used to revel in it. But somewhere along the line, we lost our way. They’re talking about Ford, which has stopped making automobiles, making ventilators. What about all these techies? Elon Musk, who won’t shut down his Tesla production line, someone must be able to ramp up production of test kits and ventilators!
Churchill was a leader.
Then again, he was famous for writing and reading, just like our President today, HA!
The answer is never in the scuttlebutt, change always comes from the outside, leaders take us into the unknown, they just don’t manage the existing world. Change happens, leaders anticipate it and deal with it. Information is king. Analysis is king. These are skills that have been put on the back-burner ever since college was turned into a glorified trade school. We need the liberal arts Steve Jobs always talked about. We need to teach people how to think. The situations change, the ability to analyze remains.
So I was out driving last night and I tuned into Fox News…
It was after dark, I was going out hiking, I was not near anybody nor do I plan to be.
Howard Stern is on vacation, I hear he’s coming back next week. And I’m sick of the news, but I can’t quite bring myself to listen to music in the car, not that I’ve been in the car much.
So on SiriusXM they’ve got the news channels, Fox, CNN and MSNBC, as well as the BBC and Bloomberg. I usually start with MSNBC…which is seemingly only good when Rachel Maddow is on, because she analyzes the news as opposed to just bloviating on it. CNN is oftentimes featuring a different story, so I check that out, and I always go to Fox to see what the enemy is going on about.
China.
It’s all China’s fault.
If you’ve been following the news, it’s Tucker Carlson who convinced Trump to pivot and take the coronavirus seriously. Tucker was the lone wolf at Fox talking about the problem. But now Hannity and Ingraham have pivoted. I tuned in when Laura Ingraham was on.
She couldn’t stop blaming China for the coronavirus. And the problem was the Democrats, since they did business with the country, you know, the usual suspects, like Bloomberg.
I winced and laughed simultaneously. I was not expecting a mea culpa, but I was expecting a focus on the real problem, which is infection in America. But Ingraham just had to find a new bogeyman, while laying the blame at the feet of the Democrats. Fox News was bad when Roger Ailes ran it, but now it’s gone completely off the rails.
In today’s world you oftentimes think you’re the only one watching, or listening, but I was stunned to open my WaPo app this morning and find:
Yes, I’m calculating the days from last Thursday. Trump spoke on TV Wednesday night, and then the freak-out began on Thursday, escalating every day until…
Yesterday.
Up until yesterday, every day was a new story, you stayed glued to the news, noting the conflicting opinions, trying to find answers to feel safe and then we found out none of us are safe. Which brings me to this story:
Watt is 29, his doctor said “there was no way he could have COVID-19 because he hadn’t left the country and only goes to the studio and straight home.”
You think you’re immune, you think it won’t happen to you, you think the only reason to self-quarantine is because you’re protecting the oldsters…but you could get it, and you could die from it.
This is the problem, people who are not taking self-quarantining seriously. Which brings me to the next article:
This is the best article on the coronavirus I’ve read in days. It’s a bit dry, but you should read it. Bottom line: Unless everybody takes self-quarantining seriously it will have no effect.
The best example is from the army, back in 1918. 99 of 120 basic-training camps were quarantined. Civilians could not enter and soldiers entering were quarantined and symptomatic soldiers were quarantined and entire units were quarantined if a couple of soldiers were sick. So what happened? THERE WAS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE CAMPS THAT WERE QUARANTINED AND THOSE THAT WERE NOT!
“But an Army study found no difference in morbidity and mortality between camps that did and did not follow orders, because over time most became sloppy. Further investigation found that only a tiny number of camps rigidly enforced measures.”
To make it simple:
“For interventions to work, people have to comply and they have to sustain that compliance; most of that depends on voluntary efforts and individual behavior. Army camps in wartime failed to sustain compliance, so it will be an enormous challenge for civilian communities in peacetime to do so.”
In other words, if we don’t take self-quarantining seriously, if we all don’t stay home, if we all don’t minimize contact with others, all this effort will be for nil, the virus will spread and many will become infected and many will die.
So what is the backbone of America? Does it have character? Or are we just rugged individuals who need to go our own way in an era where it’s every person for themselves and I don’t care about you, even though there may be consequences for me. This ethos always comes back to bite you in the ass. In the L.A. riots of ’92, rioters came to Hollywood, next time they’re coming to the Valley. In the sixties, the riots stayed in their own neighborhoods, not anymore. Same deal with income inequality, past is prologue, ever hear of the French Revolution? And one thing about revolutions, they happen overnight, they’re not long in the planning, like the one in France and the Arab Spring of a decade ago. Everything appears normal, and then the kettle overflows.
Meanwhile, the media is starting to change its course, false equivalencies are going out the window. On the front page of the “New York Times” today the headline is: “Saying He Long Saw Pandemic, Trump Rewrites History.” The media was never this brazen, at least not print/newspapers. In this era of life and death, finally truth is being spoken.
Dr. Drew?? Wasn’t he the guy dispensing authoritative addiction advice, not only on radio but TV? Who can trust this guy anymore?
Which brings us to two issues:
1. Trust. Without it, we’re screwed. In that article about the 1918 flu it says “Society began fraying – so much that the scientist who was in charge of the armed forces’ division of communicable disease worried that if the pandemic continued its accelerating for a few more weeks, ‘civilization could easily disappear from the face of the earth.'” We need a coherent narrative from people we trust. This is where Trump screwed up. For three years he was the President of some of the people, his base. And then when he was forced to be President of all of the people not only could he not do it, the rest of the people did not trust him, and still do not trust him as he constantly shifts position.
2. Credibility. Why should we ever trust Dr. Drew again? I certainly won’t. In an era where money is king, character has taken a back seat. But in a moment, now, where money is no longer everything, we see that character triumphs. This is also what screwed Trump. For him it was all about the stock market, but then when it crashed, today falling below the number it was at when he took office, what else has he got to say?
But we always knew that Trump was this person. But how about everybody else? Everything has been excused because of the money involved. Or the power, it’s all about team-playing. James Carville eviscerated his credibility by saying to cancel the Democratic primaries”:
I get it, I get it, you want Biden to be the candidate, but at the risk of eliminating the process? Almost no one believes that should happen, and in one fell swoop you’re alienating a ton of people, no matter who wins the nomination. But, those on TV are famous, and well-paid, and they’re essentially selling advertising, so they lose control of who they are, they make dramatic statements to shock people for ratings and when we investigate what they say when the heat dies down, it’s hogwash. Kinda like the talking heads on Fox News:
Point being, if and when they come up with a coronavirus vaccine, are these same people railing against measles shots and the rest of the vaccinations gonna refuse to get it? OF COURSE NOT! These inane anti-vaxxers are riding on the back of herd immunity, believe me, if their kid got measles they’d change their tune, the same way anti-abortion people switch their view when their daughter gets pregnant (don’t hassle me, I’ve lived through this with people I know).
And if Republicans are still reading, I point everyone to this opinion piece in the “Washington Post”:
My father died at 70, of cancer. He was stunned he made it to that age, since his father did not. I thought I’d live longer, now I’m not so sure. Somebody dies, it could be you.
So, I’m not interacting with anybody live, no way. People lie about where they’ve been, they go out to eat with people who they’re convinced are not infected. It’s kinda like sex. People get pregnant and they say they used birth control. Every time? Even when you were having your period? Well, no, because…
Because why?
People get caught up in the moment, they do not foresee the consequences of their actions. They get themselves in situations they can never get out of.
