Covid-19 in 2022 (In Omicron We Trust)

The first news report I heard about the Omicron variant (the evening of Thanksgiving, if I'm not mistaken), hit like Lawrence Taylor in his prime: this new South African variant has a massive increase in the number of spikes and was as ever present as a Freddie Mercury meme. The end seemed to be neigh: the virus would affect more and more people worldwide as it increased in complexity. It felt like Covid-19 had finally taken the dreaded next step and was now on its way to being the mass extinction event that we'd be so paranoid about for the last year and a half. 

Soon enough, though, the news turned out to be pretty good: Omicron is more transmissible than previous variants of Covid but quite a bit less deadly. A month later and the real good news is that no one even remembers the initial bad news. The South African data, still the fullest and richest available, suggest that not only is this version far less dangerous but even the majority of the hospitalized patients didn't discover their Covid until after they'd been hospitalized, meaning the Covid was not their primary problem. Finally, Omicron is the embodiment of what we should have realized ages ago: Covid is a secondary concern to your general health. 

But in USA, the media is still trying to shill for the death cult, portraying the spread of Omicron as more ominous than ever before--when, in fact, the spread of Omicron is good news! It means that the pandemic is just about done! Covid-19 has (theoretically) finally found its optimal form: an extremely transmissible but vastly less deadly version that is here to stay but really no worse than the common cold or flu (*). But Americans are weird people: as much as we rely on "news", we just as easily shrug it off (cognitive dissonance is a pretty standard feature of American life), so while the Media is still trying to make us believe the spread of Omicron is bad, we are living the hopeful side even while still trying to hold on to the paranoia. 

Does this mean that the Biden administration will change its course? I don't see how it can. The best bet to defeat Donald Trump in 2020 was to remind everyone that Covid was dangerous and Trump fiddled while hundreds of thousands of Americans died. The rhetoric of paranoia is a good one for ambitious politicians and Biden kept it going once he got into office, promising mandates that would socially remove those that felt like the vaccine was unnecessary for them. Moving on from the threat of Covid sounds like a good idea for a POTUS, but then the population will have even more time to see that the rest of his presidency is kinda awful. And as Covid recedes as a clear and obvious danger, then we'll have more time to investigate what the actual danger was (hint: more than the virus, it was the overreaching idiot gov't, awful Trump at first, then even more awful Biden). 

2020 was about the virus but 2021 was about the vaccine and though vastly more Americans have died since then, we're still expected to believe that the vaccine is our only savior and spending massive amounts of public capital is necessary--indeed, patriotic! But really even that was about firmly manipulating the cleavage in public opinion so as to create an us-vs-them mentality to keep the Democrat faithful plugged in to the notion that they were the superior moral creatures for taking the vaccine and for condemning those who did not. In the end, the real lesson to be learned is that social media remembers all and the things people said/wrote that seemed pretty mainstream at the time will be recalled as utterly disgusting and mean-spirited bile in the near future. Liberals think they are immune from this, but that is because they have hitherto had short memories, whereas digital memories just go on and on. 

If Omicron is what we think it is--and it looks more and more every day that it is--than the bullshit has finally been exposed: the virus doesn't kill you, your horrible habits kill you. And for the vast majority of Americans, the vaccine didn't save them, it merely gave them an excuse to be arrogant assholes in the face of potential tragedy. If the powers-that-be were really concerned with "public health" they would be telling you to quit smoking and cut needless carbs out of your diet, they'd be imploring you to get more exercise and sunshine, they'd be pointing out that vitamin D deficiency is a cause--not an effect--of serious Covid reaction (**). I don't recall President Biden giving any speeches on our patriotic duty to take our vitamin D supplements...did I miss that? And all that talk of diet and exercise in the State of the Union address....hmmmm....don't remember any.

We have known for well over a year--well before the 2020 election--that this virus was extremely dangerous to the elderly, the obese, and those with hypertension and other pre-existing respiratory conditions...and not to anyone else. (***) It has been clear for well over a year that the best way to avoid the virus is social distancing (not the vaccine) and the best way to survive the virus was to live a life of good diet and exercise and hygiene (not the vaccine). The emphasis on the vaccine was never about public health and always about political rhetoric. If you believe the reason Lebron James is not on a ventilator right now is because he took a vaccine jab six months ago, then you have simply lost all sense of what health is. Science will study how Lebron James has preserved his body long after the world has forgotten what basketball is. If you think the only thing keeping him alive is gov't mandated medicine...then I don't what to tell you, man, you have given up your brain.

In USA we have turned medical procedure on its head, forcing everyone to get medicine that only a few people need. And not only without a second opinion but without a first one! We have expended massive amounts of public capital to enrich a handful of pharmaceutical companies, stuffing vaccines into the arms of children that are at virtually zero risk of having an adverse reaction to the virus (indeed, much more likely to have an adverse reaction to the vaccine than the virus!), while actual needy people around the world still wait for the vaccine that may be the difference between life and death. We have purged the nurses and cops and school teachers that didn't vote for Joe Biden and if you were trying to convince to me that would make a better world, I'm eager to hear that argument; instead, we've been told this was necessary for public health, which was a bad faith argument at best and now proven to be a downright vicious dirty lie at worst. (How many times do you have to hear the phrase 'breakthrough case' before you realize that they're actually pretty ordinary?)

For what it's worth, I was never against the vaccine. I think vaccines are wonderful and that this vaccine in particular is a really good thing for millions of people around the globe. But instead of giving it to the millions of people around the globe who need it, Americans kept over-stuffing into themselves and their children and pro athletes and all sorts of other people that don't need it--and called those that wouldn't waste medicine alongside them as "selfish". Only Americans can conceive of not wasting life-saving vaccines as "selfish"! Fucking unbelievable--and they're still out there pumping their smarmy superior nonsense even though we've known conclusively at least since last summer that the vaccine doesn't stop the spread of the virus. *smh*

Even to this day, there are still those out there trying to convince others that getting the vaccine means they can't get the virus. Are you nuts? Google the phrase "NBA health and safety protocols" and just know that all of those dudes that tested positive and had to miss games are vaccinated. Kyrie Irving never tested positive until he started out hanging out with vaccinated NBA players! (****) If the vaccine doesn't keep you from getting and spreading the virus, then where is the public health argument for mandates? The unpleasant next step is to go back and compensate all the people unfairly thrown out of their jobs for "public health" reasons when those rationales have been thoroughly shown to be fraudulent. 

And what does "misinformation" mean, again? There was something about public health in there initially but "misinformation" seems to mean anything other than Democratic Party talking points (so the vaccine and student loans). The power of social media platforms to dictate how the citizenry speak to each other is the real revelation of this pandemic period. Adults are too stupid to figure it out, but the kids now know that they cannot trust the phones in their hands--and that may well be the best realization for Humanity. 

As of January 1, 2022, the best way to avoid the virus is to socially distance (just like March 2020). If you are going to be around others, then you should wear a mask. And if you want to survive the effects of the virus, the best course of action is to take care of your health, make the virus overcome your strong body. If these options are unavailable to you or still not good enough, then you would be a candidate for the vaccine. The vaccine is at best the 4th best way to protect yourself from the effects of the virus. Blaming the unvaccinated is rude, mean-spirited and absolutely not based in any fact. And, worst of all, it gives the vaccinated a false sense of security, as if they are bullet proof because of the jab. (*****) The vaccine was never the best way to avoid the virus or to avoid getting sick from the virus. It was merely a symbolic totem of "not my fault" and now that the vaccine is clearly incapable of keeping people from getting the virus or passing it on, then the emperor suddenly looks pretty pasty. How on earth can you mandate the 4th best option, while pretending it was the only way, and then act like you've saved anyone's life?

But how could we have known all this? Dude, they already knew before any of this happened! Check out this clip of Mark Cuban from February 2020.

"Just like there's a flu season and we know to get the vaccine for the flu season, there will be a corona season." This was entirely predictable: this virus wants to be a regular seasonal affliction and eventually we will develop a vaccine for the Omicron that will be modulated on a seasonal basis. The idea that the initial vaccine was 'the one' was always overly optimistic. Obviously Omicron can mutate again (oh, it certainly will), but the danger with Covid was always that it has a second act. Seems like the second act is perpetual but mild cold symptoms. Well....okay....could be worse. The real hysteria was the one we inflicted on each other through Media. 

The Media encourages us to be at each other's throats. And in times of crisis, the Media will just get louder, not more helpful. And the idea that anyone in the Media (or Gov't) has all the answers or science on their side is preposterous. Ideally, we have all learned that now....right?

For now, we will move on to testing. The Biden White House is eager to make tests available (after several months of not making tests available), but what's the point of that now? Way back in the Spring of 2020, I thought testing was the most important thing and I couldn't understand why we weren't doing more of it. Well, it would've led to a lot of false positives (and negatives) and early on may well have been more trouble than it was worth. The real reason we didn't get them was Trump didn't want to know what was actually going on--nor did Biden after him (or Xi Jinping before him). Politicians craft narratives and when the facts are invisible, it leaves more room for the craftsmen. 

But at this point the tests serve no purpose but to keep riling everyone up. Omicron looks to keep all Humans testing positive forever....and what good will that knowledge do? The spread of Omicron looks to touch literally every Human on earth by the end of 2022. And if it remains mild, then this should be a better outcome than continually deadly variants or endless vaccinations--indeed, a pervasive mild version of Covid is the only conclusion to the pandemic and we should all be hoping that Omicron is it. But what are we testing for? 

The Media has shown itself to be antagonistic to human health. The Gov't has shown that money is all it has and when given the chance, it will spend more than it has (******). Science has shown that it is willing but that it takes time--an it needs unfettered access to data and capital. Democrats have shown they're worse than Republicans; Republicans have shown that they're way out of touch and useless in a crisis.

The grim prediction: after the Republicans take back the House and Senate in November, you can bet that January 2023 will see a lot of Congressional committees lining up to treat the Biden White House like war criminals. And they'll be going after social media companies for deciding who gets to speak "Truth" and who doesn't (*******). And we'll get a deep dark dive into the stories of vaccine reactions that the mainstream media has hitherto ignored (though they'll happily dole it out when the time is right). And the CEO's of pharmaceutical companies that are riding high at the moment will get hung out to dry Mussolini-style. (And, frankly, it might not even require a Republican takeover to get Congress back into the lab leak hypothesis, China may look like big ol' tasty scapegoat once we no longer have the unvaccinated to kick around)

Oh, and all those out there who suggested unvaccinated people shouldn't be allowed to go to hospitals...your day is coming. You thought it was safe to openly ridicule the un-cool kids in the lunch room, but your words are spray painted in 1's and 0's for all time. So how are you going to explain yourself when "science" finally gets a grip? And are you going to shift to pointing out that obese people are the real menace? Or smokers? Or sedentary people? Are you ready to suggest none of them deserve emergency room care? (********) You've shown the world you're built to throw needy people under the bus for no good reason, you played yourselves. 

I've never been a big fan of Democracy, truth be told. I find it just leads to elections. And as for the two party system, it has its merits (I am convinced that in the long run it minimizes social strife even if it looks like it does the exact opposite), but both of these parties can go fuck themselves. The Democrats used to respect free speech and due process but they've shown that in a crisis, those are expendable. And the Republicans used to have a sense of fiscal discipline but there's no reason to think that's ever coming back in the post-Covid phase of American history.

I'm pleased that the pandemic is almost gone. There's so much I wish it would take with it when it goes. 

(*) People die of the common cold and the flu, they always have and they still will. But we don't much care about that, do we, because we've lived for so long with those maladies that they seem like old friends. Indeed, the common cold is pretty firmly in Humanity's DNA at this point. Omicron Covid-19 seems destined to be just another layer of winter illness to kvetch about at Xmas dinner. 

(**) "It is our opinion that (vitamin D) supplements would offer a relatively easy option to decrease the pandemic." Check the date: July 2020...a year and a half ago. A year and a half of languishing in the "misinformation" bin. 

(***) January 1, 2022 South China Morning Post: 288,195,686 confirmed Covid-19 cases worldwide; 5,436,581 confirmed deaths worldwide. Roughly 1.8% of those that get Covid-19 die of Covid-19. I must concede that the vaccine has lowered that rate a little bit, but not much. From the very beginning the death rate was never more than about 2%, now it is firmly under 2%. If we'd given the vaccine to the people that needed it instead of just giving it to everybody, we may have been able to bring that number even lower. But we'll never know because we're too busy congratulating ourselves for saving people that were never at risk (like Andrew Wiggins).

(****) Brandon Knight, Isaiah Thomas, Alfonzo McKennie are three players off the top of my head that were brought in as replacement players that only tested positive for Covid after being around vaccinated teammates. And why does the NBA punish unvaccinated players for the same crime vaccinated players are committing all the time? Because American society has settled on the unvaccinated as the available scapegoat. 

(*****) To be fair to the vaccine itself, there was never any reason to believe that the vaccine would literally keep you from getting the virus. Indeed, the vaccine doesn't do its job until you get the virus! The whole point of the vaccine is to keep the virus from doing horrible things to your lungs, not to keep the virus completely out, that's just not a function of this vaccine. It never was, it was never meant to be, regardless of how much "information" you were given. Repeat: the vaccine only works when you encounter the virus. If you never encounter the virus then the vaccine hasn't done anything. So to think that getting vaccinated is how to avoid the virus is just illogical to the extreme--especially if getting the vaccine means you stopped social distancing or wearing the mask. 

(******) You know as long as we're still obsessed with Democracy, there is a problem unique to that particular form of gov't that we should go ahead and address: Democracy has a propensity toward deficit spending, which is not typically found in other forms of gov't. The democratic system pretty well flushes out politicians pretty quick, so spending as much as fast as they can is all they can do to look like they've achieved something. The money goes out and by the time anyone misses it, that politician's career is over. I'm not advocating that we let politicians stick around longer, merely that we should rein in their ability to waste public moneys. 

(*******) Ever heard of Mission to Moscow? During WWII, the FDR White House (supposedly) asked Warner Brothers to make a film that valorizes our erstwhile ally, the USSR. After the war, the House Un-American Activities Committee used this as a way of suggesting Hollywood's sinister commie underbelly. Do you see how this works? The gov't giveth and the gov't taketh away. (Going further back, have you ever wondered how USA got Florida?)

(********) Seriously, you assholes are the fucking worst. You should be ashamed of yourselves for spouting such hateful bullshit just because you thought it was popular. 

Covid-19 in the Autumn of 2021 (part 1)

I'm not a researcher, that is not the point of this blog. But I went on a bit of a deep dive on USA's recent "crisis" in intensive care units across the land and felt like I had to post about it. 

The healthcare industry is in an all day, every day fight to manage the cleavage between supply and demand. In healthcare (unlike most other industries), optimally there will always be more supply than demand; but (just like every other industry), oversupply is wasteful and undersupply diminishes revenue. So how do we correct for undersupply? 

I wanted to see what an ICU "crisis" looked like before our current period of pandemic. I'd say it mostly looks exactly the same. And I can more or less sum up all of these papers, articles, abstracts, etc., in two phrases: we need more beds and we need more nurses. That was true in 2000, 2006, 2011, 2016 and today. 

Check them out for yourself. 

Millbank Quarterly: "The Transition from Excess Capacity to Strained Capacity in US Hospitals" (June, 2006)

"After many years of concern about excess hospital capacity, a growing perception exists that the capacity of some hospitals now seems constrained. This article explores the reasons behind this changing perception....we observed that adjustments to the supply of hospital services tend to be slow and out of sync with changes in the demand for hospital services. Those hospitals reporting capacity problems are often teaching hospitals, located near previously closed facilities or in population growth areas. These findings suggest therefore that approaches to dealing with capacity problems might best focus on better matching individual hospitals' supply and demand adjustments."

First, note that in 2006 there was no particular pandemic problem in USA. Also, note that this article is not about "strained capacity" as it is the "changing perception" of capacity. Problems aren't merely problems but the "perception" of problems. Supply and demand ebb and flow, knowing how to stay ahead of them is the fundamental task of healthcare. 

"One particular concern has been the growing number of emergency department diversions, in which ambulances are instructed to bypass particular hospitals, especially because this could have a domino effect in the community (California HealthCare Foundation 2002; Shute and Marcus 2001). Evidence of the rising rates of emergency department diversion was found in round 3 of the Community Tracking Study (CTS), which was conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change in 2000 and 2001. The CTS researchers reported that hospitals frequently were bypassed because they could not admit emergency patients due to the lack of medical/surgical floor beds or intensive care unit (ICU) beds (Brewster and Felland 2004; Brewster, Rudell, and Lesser 2001). A study of emergency room overcrowding by the General Accounting Office (2003) yielded similar findings, suggesting that strained capacity in various hospital units led to backups in emergency departments. "

Notice that strained emergency rooms were frequent occurrences in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Not a function of global pandemcis, merely a function of supply and demand.

"Two CTS issue briefs examined emergency department diversions and how their occurrence and severity had changed over time (Brewster and Felland 2004; Brewster, Rudell, and Lesser 2001). Bazzoli and her colleagues (2003) looked at the degree to which specific hospital services were viewed as constrained and what contributed to these problems. They found that those service areas perceived as highly strained were the emergency department, medical/surgical ICU beds, and general medical/surgical beds. The main contributing factors reported by the CTS respondents were nursing and other personnel shortages and an insufficient supply of beds."

The solution in 2006: more beds, more nurses. 

Biomedical Central.com: "Working With Capacity Limitations" (August 16, 2011)

"ICUs are faced with nearly the same throughput and capacity problems as the companies in our examples. The vast majority of critical care costs are fixed, resulting in substantial revenue increases with each additional patient [7]. ICUs also frequently operate at or near capacity, with subsequently large waiting times for admission [8]. Simply expanding capacity is not feasible due to space limitations within hospitals, workforce shortages, and government regulations [9]. Neither is expanding capacity necessarily desirable. As the above examples teach us, in the face of variable demand, expanding capacity can ultimately result in higher fixed costs, excess capacity, and long-term inefficiencies."

2011: Not uncommon for ICU's to be at/near capacity because there are is a latent and permanent and constant need for more beds and more nurses.

"The next step is to apply queuing theory to mathematically formulate the current process and determine the point on the utilization curve that will maximize responsiveness and productivity. Increasing capacity might be necessary to achieve optimal throughput, or might only result in excess resources. Sometimes these results can be surprising. For example, an empiric analysis of ICU readmissions in the cardiac ICU at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital found that an aggressive early discharge policy resulted in an increase in overall capacity, even accounting for the increase in readmissions [10]."

But plans for emergency overflows have already been formulated and ready to put into practice, (although sending patients home early is one of the suggested strategies).

Realias Media: "ICU Capacity Strain" (May 1, 2016)

"Intensive care in the United States accounts for nearly 1% of the gross domestic product, and it is forecasted that there will be increasing demand for this type of care in the future as the population ages.1,2 Given current projections that the supply of ICU staff and beds will be constrained rather than expand to meet this increasing demand, ICUs will be faced with the challenge of continuing care delivery under conditions of increasing strain.2 Thus, there is growing interest in studying ICU capacity strain, defined as the temporally varying influence on a given ICU’s ability to provide high-quality care for patients who are or could be cared for in that ICU on any given day.3"

Decreasing, rather than increasing, the amount of beds creates more potential revenue. And dealing with that forced decrease is the mission of future (as of 2016) health care professionals. (Wow! ICU accounts for 1% of American GDP? Is this true in other countries as well?)

PLOS.org: "Perspectives on Strained ICU Capacity" (August 22, 2018)

"Interpretation: Strain is perceived as common. HCW believe precipitants represent a mix of patient-related and operational factors. Strain is thought to have negative implications for quality of care, HCW well-being and workplace environment. Most indicated strategies “outside” of ICU settings were priorities for managing strain."

The "strain" here refers to health care workers (HCW) themselves reacting to conditions of caring for ICU patients. "Burn out" in the health care industry is the dragon that must be slayed and we've known this for years. 

North Carolina Rural Health Research Report (March, 2020)

There's a table of data about rural and urban hospitals that I found eye opening. 

In the USA (as of March, 2020, presumably) 2,169 rural hospitals and 2,367 urban hospitals. Okay, slightly more urban than rural but not a huge disparity. 

Avg. daily census: in rural hospitals is 36,615 and in urban hospitals is 350,452. Uhh...that's not even close. The urban hospitals have 10 times more daily traffic?

Total acute care beds: in rural hospitals is 99,942 (37% occupancy) and in urban hospitals is 562,492 (62% occupancy). 

The lesson here is skip the big city hospitals and go find a hospital out in the middle of nowhere--which is probably not what people in the middle of nowhere would tell you to do. But it is the urban hospitals that have the most traffic and presumably would be the most backed-up during a period of "crisis".

Fact Check.org: Hospital Payments and the Covid-19 Death Count" (April 21, 2020)

"It is true, however, that the government will pay more to hospitals for COVID-19 cases in two senses: By paying an additional 20% on top of traditional Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients during the public health emergency, and by reimbursing hospitals for treating the uninsured patients with the disease (at that enhanced Medicare rate). Both of those provisions stem from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act.

The CARES Act created the 20% add-on to be paid for Medicare patients with COVID-19. The act further created a $100 billion fund that is being used to financially assist hospitals — a “portion” of which will be “used to reimburse healthcare providers, at Medicare rates, for COVID-related treatment of the uninsured,” according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

As the Kaiser analysis noted, though, “it is unclear whether the new fund will be able to cover the costs of the uninsured in addition to other needs, such as the purchase of medical supplies and the construction of temporary facilities.”

Either way, the fact that government programs are paying hospitals for treating patients who have COVID-19 isn’t on its own representative of anything nefarious."

"Berenson said revenues appear to be down for hospitals this quarter because many have suspended elective procedures, which are key to their revenue, forcing some hospitals to cut staff. He surmised that potential instances of patients being wrongly “upcoded” — or classified as COVID-19 when they’re not — are “trivial compared to these other forces that are affecting hospital finances.”

It further indicates that if a “definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate as ‘probable’ or ‘presumed.' If we think it’s presumptive … we can go ahead and put down COVID-19,” Jensen said, “or even in some situations, even if it’s negative.” He pointed to the example of a 38-year-old man in Minnesota whose death was attributed to the coronavirus even though he tested negative."

So hospitals have an incentive to call everything Covid-19. And Covid-19 causes them to hold off elective procedures (the real moneymaker for hospitals), which also causes them to cut staff. So the more Covid-19, the more hospitals...cut staff?

Also, these gov't programs that overpay hospitals to cutback on staff are really about the uninsured, right? So shouldn't we be condemning the uninsured rather than the unvaccinated? (Seems like its time to deny the uninsured service, right? Isn't that how we do things now?)

CBC: "Why Ontario Hospitals Are Full to Bursting Despite Few Covid-19 Patients" (November 2, 2020)

"The data suggests many hospitals have returned to the overcrowding levels seen before the pandemic, when CBC News revealed hospitals filled beyond capacity nearly every single day, with patients housed in hallways, conference rooms and cafeterias not as exceptional cases, but as a matter of routine."

"We're back to where we were pre-COVID with the risk of hallway health care. And you can't have hallway health care in a pandemic because of the need for infection prevention and control.""

"The increased funding to add bed capacity does not necessarily mean hospitals will hire more nursing staff to care for the additional patients, said Vicki McKenna, a registered nurse and president of the Ontario Nurses Association."

Wait....'we're back to where we were pre-Covid'? Yeah, check out the dropdown menu in there: Ontario hospitals were mostly at above 100% capacity in January 2020, before known Covid-19 cases even got to North America. WTF is going on in Canadian healthcare if the Covid-19 "crisis" is considered a return to the good times?

Sharp.com: "What ICU Capacity Tells Us About Covid-19" (December 21, 2020)

"Additionally, there might not be enough appropriately trained providers, such as ICU nurses and respiratory therapists, to safely care for a greater number of patients.

“The safety of our patients and staff is our top priority,” Jenkins says. “We separate COVID from non-COVID units to limit exposure and conserve personal protective equipment. Patients requiring ICU care require special technology, monitoring, nurses and physicians. And while there has been a significant increase in patients, there has not necessarily been a surge of health care workers.”"

"...it has become clear that the general public’s actions directly impact case numbers, hospitalizations, ICU capacity and the number of deaths we might see in the coming weeks. As such, experts are renewing their call for everyone to do their part to reduce their chance of contracting COVID-19 and spreading it to others.

“Safe, high-quality care is always the top priority of our staff and physicians, but they have grown weary and tired,” Jenkins says. “In order to break this pattern with the upcoming holidays, we need everyone’s cooperation in following the county’s guidelines of masking, social distancing and staying away from gatherings outside of your household.”"

Before the vaccine the advice was the same...as after the vaccine: social distancing is the only way to avoid the virus and masking helps to limit the spread. 

Lexington Herald-Leader: Beshear: Covid-19 Surge Means Kentucky Will 'Be Out of Hospital Capacity Very Very Soon" (August 19, 2021)

"The governor said 21 hospitals across the commonwealth now face “critical staffing shortages,” as the number of new cases and rate of Kentuckians testing positive for the virus continues to rise. To “allow for additional help,” Beshear said he signed an order on Wednesday that grants licensed health care providers in other states permission to practice on an emergency basis in Kentucky."

More beds, more nurses. 

Physicians Weekly: Covid-19 Related ICU Workforce Shortage Projected to Push Hundreds of US Counties Into Crisis (August 31, 2021)

"For these counties, the analysis recommends implementing a variety of contingency workforce strategies, including increasing patient counts per team, using float pools, and granting overtime pay."

"In a recent Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, roughly 30% of healthcare workers reported contemplating leaving their profession, whereas in the Medscape National Physician Burnout & Suicide Report 2021, 42% of physicians surveyed reported burnout, with ICU physicians reporting the highest levels at 51%."

Yeah. More beds, more nurses, beware of burnout. Every study says the same thing, we've known this for years. Which begs the questions: are our hospitals actually enduring a "crisis" right now or is this simply the exact same perception of Intensive Care Units that we've long had? 

And is this the solution to the problem? LA Times (June 22, 2021), Washington Post (August 14, 2021), Advisory.com (August 18, 2021), Business Insider (September 3, 2021), Yahoo News (July 2, 2021). There are many more of these stories and I never even got off the first page of the Google search. The overwhelming lesson of all the reports cited above is that the "crisis" is an undersupply of nurses!

What do we value: nurses or the vaccine? What do we need to overcome this crisis: nurses or the vaccine? Whose medical opinion should we follow: nurses or the vaccine? 

I'm all for the vaccine, but why are we firing nurses for following their own beliefs in the face of a "crisis", when we know good and well that the "crisis" is not enough nurses? Why do we need nurses to believe what the mainstream media wants us to believe?

HHS Hospital Utilization (September 20, 2021) 

As of roughly 1pm, Tuesday, September 21, 2021 (*) of the 4 hospitals located within 5 miles of my current location (one of the hottest hot spots in the Commonwealth, I might add), one has 44% of ICU beds available, one has 10%, one has 19.6%, one has 62.5%. Granted, 10% available is probably the limit of what a health care provider would like to have (ideally, more supply then demand is desirable for positive health outcomes), but the other three available hospitals do not seem to be dangerously overstuffed. I can, of course, look to other hospitals in other places if I really wanted to worry myself but why would I? My paranoia is most naturally directed at my own safety and by extension the safety of those most immediately around me. And for now, the local hospitals seem to be bearing up just fine. 

(*) These stats are virtually identical to roughly 4pm, Monday, September 20, 2021, incidentally. This suggests that either nothing has changed or that this website is a faulty accumulator of data. 

My two cents: the "crisis" in hospitals is the inherent conflict between supply and demand which is more acute in healthcare than in other industries. I don't see anything different in fall of 2021 as in 2000, 2006, 2011, 2014, 2016, etc. 

And....what are we blaming the unvaccinated for, again? What is the problem they are creating? And bear in mind there is no way to ascertain (from this data) what types of maladies the ICU beds are currently filled with or the relative vaccination status of those people. You are free to use your ignorance to blame whoever you like for whatever you like. But, personally, I don't see anything out of the ordinary in our hospitals right now. 

Furthermore, the "crisis" was never the amount of patients but the paucity of staff. Hospitals are in perpetual crisis (re: more beds, more nurses) and if we can afford to fire nurses right now, then apparently everything is just fine...right?

Election 2020 (The Pre-Game)

What Joe Biden thought 2020 was gonna be: Look, kids, Bernie just isn't gonna make it, you gotta go with me. And to all the newcomers, get on board with me, there's room for all of you and none of you are ready to do it on your own so I'm your best shot. I'm the leader, I got the money, everyone knows me, Obama loves me, and I can beat Trump. Everyone just get behind me, I'll give jobs to all (most) of you and I'll get you into the White House. All you gotta do is get behind me, tell everyone how great I am and that they need to vote for me. I am the great unifier! Believe in me and we will crush this idiot Trump!

But the Democrats couldn't get over their own fine grained selfish disappointments (the epitome of white privilege) to pull together. (Beware the "inclusive": they never agree on anything) Nancy Pelosi used Biden as a puppet in her Impeachment hearing, AOC never got on board with Biden or the "normal" wing that runs the Democratic Party, the young Progressives have yet to flock to the Biden camp, Obama waited til the bitter end to throw the full weight of his support to Biden, and Biden was bullet absorber #1 in the primary debates. And even though he got smoked in Iowa and New Hampshire, Biden was comfortably in control by the third primary. The pundits would say it was only because the rest of the party couldn't build enough of a coalition against him; but I would suggest he was the only candidate the whole time. The first two primaries were a showcase for everyone/everything else the Democratic Party has to offer and it all led back to Joe Biden. No one wanted him to win and even when he did win, no one wanted to give him the credit. Biden walks ahead of the grumpiest bunch of brats in American history--and that's no mean feat.  

What Donald Trump thought 2020 was gonna be: Make a big trade deal with China in the Spring; Wall Street loves it, unemployment hovers near all-time lows; pull troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria; unveil a series of normalized relations with Israel; lure Russia and China into a tripartite arms limitations treaty. That's what he had set up in front of him. Turning China from a great enemy into a great friend, a new bigshot deal with Russia, Wall Street fat and happy, Israel gaining some significant victories, taxes lowered, (bond markets limping along), soccer moms are happy and the churches will never vote for a Democrat anyway, so everyone's happy--or at least not unhappy enough to wanna do anything about it--and pulling troops out all at the same time. He pulled off some of that stuff anyway but if that had all gone his way you gotta admit: that's not bad, at home and abroad.  And even if he did fail, it does suggest that perhaps he had much more of a broad sense of leadership in the world than we ever really got to see. (Oh...and we'd probably be in a decent size standoff with Iran...but even the fly he built into the buttermilk didn't turn out right, as even that has yet to materialize)

Then Covid-19 comes along and wrecks all of it. 

China goes back to being an enemy, to blame for all the ills of the world (literal and metaphorical). Russia is more estranged than ever--and breaking off arms treaties without actually doing the follow up isn't necessarily a great idea. Turns out the Israeli lobby isn't as powerful as the conspiracy theorists would have you believe. Europe never did develop any fondness for Trump, nor did Canada or Latin America. But if he'd pull off his vision, it would have worked....but this just shows why entrusting so much power to shape the future in the hands of a single POTUS is something we should take more seriously than ever having someone like Trump to be considered. He walked us into a trade war with China with the intention of pulling his punches going into the election, turning a concocted crisis into a generational victory, then throwing down a 'peacemaking' kinda deal for Xi and Putin and pleasing Wall Street, the generals and America's allies all at once....except that Covid-19 kept him from completing his vision, so now everything's half-finished right when he suddenly needs support (and he's left his presumed successor with a pile of god awful tariffs on China that Trump himself probably meant to get rid of). Trump is such a fucking cursed dude--how the fuck did we ever let him get elected? 

Trump's potential for reelection was based not on anyone liking Trump but on Trump being so successful that the world would have to acknowledge it. Unfortunately, that's not how American politics works. You have to be liked, not respected. Nobody really gives a shit what you accomplished--and most 'accomplishments' are just phony baloney positioning anyway. And Trump is not well-liked--least of all by the 'Trumpists' (*). And whatever the state of his 'plans', Covid-19 came along and upended all that.

I believe it was Jamelle Bouie who pointed out that a crisis like Covid-19 would be a godsend for most politicians. All you gotta do is look solemn and talk like you're in church at Xmas time. A scared captive audience that just wants to hear some soothing words is what most politicians dream of because that such a moment requires the blandest possible human to speak. A nice haircut with some harmless platitudes and everyone will be reassured and tell you how caring you are. But Trump is incapable of even that basic political opportunism. So instead he treats Covid-19 like it's Tuesday night at Wrestlemania and he'll defeat the disease but ridiculing its white trash girlfriend. 

But the complaint that Trump bungled the coronavirus is itself pure cynicism: what Trump bungled was his chance to make himself look like a nice guy. The idea that the POTUS is going to stop a viral pandemic is delusional, there was little for Trump to do except self-aggrandize--he failed at his best chance to win unparalleled support! The coronavirus was a states' issue not a federal one (**), I suggest there was very little for the POTUS to do and not much different from any other POTUS in the same position (although most any other POTUS would've handled the self-aggrandizement with more grace). And...wait...isn't Trump going on TV and telling everyone what to do exactly what we're supposed to be afraid of...and that's precisely what he did not do when the time arose...?

To me, the disgusting part of Trump's response was the severe lack of testing, which is something I think he could've been at the forefront for encouraging people to seek out and enforcing localities' ability to offer. I don't know what the POTUS can actually do but at least his bully pulpit could speed up the market mechanisms for more testing, more evaluation, etc., to properly understand how the virus was moving and its effects, to separate the spreaders from the at-risk population. But he seemed to think testing would merely make him look bad--it probably would, but that's no reason not to do the right thing anyway. Trump made it clear that getting reelected was more important to him than America. And no was surprised by this. 

Then when the George Floyd protests took over in May/June, Trump's powerlessness was as big as the great outdoors and he showed that POTUS has little control over situations like what happened to George Floyd or the response to what happened to George Floyd. There was nothing Trump could do but try to weather the storm, which looked impossible at the time. But the protests which started off with such force and such mainstream support actually accomplished...not much. The calls for police reform morphed into an attack on statues and a bizarre thrust toward the "Karens" of the world and then just sorta melted away into ordinary summertime frustrations, as the People shook off the coronavirus and went back to their lives. 

Americans: easy to incite but impossible to satisfy, so even rioting in the street bores them. Though I would say Americans looked more likely to register and vote and do all that shit more than usual and that's probably just the way of things now: more divisiveness will likely bring more voters into the electorate, which is the first step to modernizing the process. 

As for Biden, he was able to loll the summer away in his basement doing very little campaigning, instead relying on Trump to self-combust, which was pretty much the correct strategy. Biden brought in Kamala Harris as a running mate, which was the obvious move: at this time last year she struck me as every Democrat's second favorite choice, making her a virtual lock for the VP slot no matter who the candidate turned out to be. Biden has taken on Buttigieg to his team but has more or less ditched all the other comers that chose to attack him (rather than fall in behind him) back in Iowa. To my mind this shows that Biden never really had any more faith in the next generation of Democrats than they had in him--if he did, he'd be holding Kamala up for Attorney General rather than Vice President! He'd be telling you Cory Booker is gonna be a great Secretary of Housing or Beto O'Rourke is our next UN Ambassador or Stacey Abrams will be our new VP, but he's not doing any of that. And all those non-Biden candidates are mostly all just gone. Yeah, Democrats, you may hate Biden but he's easily the best you got and that was always true. 

The Democrats hate Trump but they've done nothing but attack him since he arrived and frankly I think their attacks have come up wanting. They suggest only one thing: Democrats don't like Donald Trump. Yeah, I get that...is there more to this? They were wiretapping General Flynn before the inauguration and tripped him up with the sort of ticky-tack nonsense that federal prosecutors do all the time. They spent two years on an FBI-driven investigation that yielded...some Russian Facebook accounts (are those even illegal?). They impeached him without even bothering to prove a crime. I'm no fan of Trump but do you honestly think the engine of our gov't is solely built for rival politicians to wage war on each other? 

And...wait...if they don't like Joe Biden, then what's the point? They hate Trump but really what they're saying is they want a president to be likable. They need to like the POTUS but then their nominee is a guy they don't even like....? So the Dems didn't want to vote for Hillary in 2016 and they don't want to vote for Biden in 2020 and really all they want is a president that they like. When you realize that the "Trumpists" only like Trump because he riles up the people that hate Trump, then the vacillations of the Democrats becomes, to my mind, all the more unforgivable. They've done nothing but attack Trump as hard as they can and yet they still can't get excited about their own guy...what do they want? 

They're gonna hate-vote Trump back into office because they love hating him so much. And they'll continue to hate him and read his Tweets hourly after he's out of office, so its not like this is even an attempt to get rid of Trump. Just a chance to hate on him a little louder than usual. 

Personally I couldn't give a shit about the POTUS being likable--indeed, I think it's weird to wanna like your leaders! If this summer has taught us anything it is that liking your leaders simply means future generations will tear down their statues. (And why the fuck do we build statues of people that ruled over us, anyway?)  I am suggesting that Trump does have a larger sense of his image that goes beyond his twitterings and that being hate-followed can be very lucrative (shit, man, got Trump all the way to the White House, there's really no reason why that should've happened). 

Trump is an unlikable a human being as I think I've ever seen. He goes way above and beyond most assholes and I understand completely why the left/liberals/Democrats don't like him. I get that, I understand...I just don't care. To me the fact that Trump is unlikable is a meaningless detail. I don't care that I don't like the POTUS and I don't understand why anyone needs to. And even though Biden seems like a much nicer guy, that does not instill me with any greater desire to vote for him. 

Rather than reminding me of 2016 (when Hillary (***) was such a sure thing to beat Trump that Democrats didn't even bother to vote for her), this reminds me more of 2004: George W. Bush was exceedingly unpopular and John Kerry seemed a shoo-in to wrest the Presidency away from him...but then forgot to win the election. Trump is so uniquely unpopular that this scenario might not play out, but I wouldn't be surprised. If all Biden has to offer is that he's not Trump, that doesn't mean much to me. It doesn't mean anything at all really. 

Democrats have attacked Trump from Day One (well, before Day One actually) and all they've done is remind everyone that Trump is an asshole, which we already knew. Even the relative corruption they've uncovered is really just the clumsiness of an unskilled politician--which suggests his corruption is actually less than average! They've done nothing to establish a different way of running the gov't, merely that they'd prefer someone more in line with their cult of personality. But hating on Trump is all the Left has to offer and it is no better than it was on Election Day 2016. Trump makes everyone him around him stupid and the Democrats have only gotten dumber in the last four years. 

Covid-19 has turned everything upside down. And what we're just now realizing (right?) is that it hasn't even happened yet. The Fed and Congress have been over-promising since March, which has forestalled economic turmoil for this year (though I would expect end of the year profit-taking to be pretty severe this December). But January 1st is a whole new ball game and if the infections are rising again, then more lockdowns, more mask turmoil, and more volatility in the markets, all that stuff. So at best, we've pushed off til next year the true economic impact of the coronavirus; at worst, we've done the same thing with the virus, too. 

USA has avoided the rising tide of viruses and pandemics over the last 20 years or so but Covid-19 hit us squarely in the crotch. You're free to believe that your gov't is gonna save us from that but I don't see any reason to believe the gov't has that power (or inclination). Viruses have bedeviled humanity since before it looked anything like humanity, governments are much more recent by comparison. As the population rises and the temperature rises, seems like we should be having pandemics a lot more often, so social distancing and wearing masks will likely be long term effects. And elections will come and go--each the most important of your lifetime!

Meanwhile, Congress this year has passed multiple trillion dollar spending bills. The Fed has tripled its debt load!

The Congress/Fed tandem is vastly larger and more influential than the POTUS. That is our future, regardless of who wins the election. And there's still no arms deals with Russia, nor trade deals with China, and Brexit guarantees you pretty much gotta re-do Europe, too. Oh, and war with Iran can break out at a moment's notice. And we just had our single highest day of new cases of Covid-19.  

The good news as we go to election day: look, man, I know it seems like everything's falling apart but actually I think the noise itself suggests more participation by individual people, the People are more powerful than ever. And that is the great leap forward for Humanity, not the outcome of any particular election. The fact that there is complaint in the world is a result of more people being heard. Complaint is not mitigated by growth because there is always someone that wants more and will voice that desire; complaint never goes away regardless of how secure/rich everyone becomes. Indeed, as lives become better and more numerous, the amount of complaint should skyrocket. The scary images you see on the TV would be a lot scarier if the doomsayers were actually right.   

Truth be told: I'd prefer four more years of Trump. Because I love Trump? No, good lord, what's to love? It is that I fear what comes after Trump more than I fear Trump. And term limits allow us to have Trump serve his time and leave rather than being vanquished and giving his successors a mandate they shouldn't rightly possess. Also, I kinda hope that four more years of Trump will show us that the power of Twitter is greater than the power of the Presidency and perhaps we will properly bring ourselves in line with the real power (re: social media) instead of the endless exhortations of piddling politicians. Social media allows the People to rule (for better and for worse). 

I don't dislike Joe Biden--that is, I seem to like him better than most Democrats do! But I don't have any great faith in his snake oil and the fact that he's a nice guy means nothing to me. More than any election of my lifetime this is a referendum on the deep bench of the parties in that I think it's extremely possible that both Trump and Biden are dead four years from now. So you're really betting on the supporting cast as much as the main players. (I've seen more of the Democrats, therefore I like them less)

I think the main player is Twitter. And the supporting cast is the People. Merely a matter of waiting for the People to realize how much social power they already have--and how little political power is worth in an age of tripled debt loads and a viral pandemic that we still haven't stopped. 

It's the economy, stupid. It always was, it likely always will be. What a gov't does is collect taxes from a citizenry and then provides services (or more accurately, the assurance of services, not the actual services). We can argue about the color of our skin or our hair or our shoes or our bandannas or our favorite politicians or commentators. Or we could acknowledge that the gov't doesn't do any of that stuff, that all of that shit is a product of political media and not a product of gov't itself. Instead of having the substantive public debate about infrastructure spending (and raison d'etre), politics encourages cultural mudslinging between the hippies and bluenoses, a story as old as off-Broadway theater. What a gov't does is collect taxes from a citizenry in promise of providing certain amenities to enhance the productivity of the populace.  

Economic productivity is the point of gov't service. It wants us to make more money (re: create more value) and what Covid-19 has done has tripled (at least!) our commitment to this way of life in the form of Fed promises to keep interest rates unnaturally low if need be and Congress's quest to spend more and more on "relief" (****). But who the POTUS is...has never mattered less to me than right now. More than ever the POTUS is a channel I can change whenever I like. 

(*) There are no "Trumpists". This is something that Left wingers say because they need icons, they need cult of personality to sway their passions. Conservatives do not. Liberals need a movement, conservatives do not. Liberals have things they want done, conservatives have things they don't want done. The Left needs personalities and acolytes, the Right does not need any of that stuff. The Right basically wants nothing and nothing doesn't require any activity, any movement, any anything. The Left needs movements and it thinks in terms of movements because as a natural minority, it needs a swirl of passions to create enough volatility for them to find success; the Right needs nothing at all, wants nothing at all and will live with nothing at all if that is what is offered. The "Trumpists" like Trump for his ability make Leftists lose their minds...and nothing else. As long as Leftists gladly lose their minds over Trump, he is dangerous to them but as soon as the Left figures out to ignore him....Trump will be gone.  *poof*

(**)  For the federal gov't as a whole 2020 will simply be an anomalous year in taxation income. Nothing more. It won't even be a significant blip in terms of population. Yet another reason why expecting the federal gov't to do...anything...is unrealistic. It's too fuckin' big to notice your piddly problems. (200,000 dead is a 'piddly problem', you ask? Yes. To a gov't that was here when you were born and will be here when you die, 200,000 dead means nothing. Waiting for it to solve your problems is like waiting for the sky to give you rain: it'll do so when it god damn feels like and not until)

(***) A weird counterfactual on the nature of power to ponder: Personally I think Biden could've/would've beaten Trump in 2016. I think he had a better chance to hold together Obama voters than Hillary Clinton did. I think Biden could've peeled away some of the white voters that went to Trump, whereas Hillary thought her advantage among women and African-Americans was enough. Okay. Now think of it this way: if Biden had won in 2016, he would likely be looking pretty good going into 2020, and what if Hillary had stayed Secretary of State? What if Hillary had seen the State Dept as her fortress and dug in?  She stays all 8 years under Obama and then potentially has another 8 years under Biden...what could a single individual accomplish in 16 years of running the State Dept? She could've had a major effect on USA's foreign policy leading into the entire 21st century. Instead "power" meant running for President, even though the coalition wasn't actually there and she bungled all forward progress for her party. What is political power? Does 16 years in the State Dept equal 8 years in the White House? Can owning the State Dept have a wider, deeper effect than just being another ol' POTUS?

(****) I'd like to leave off with something like good news...here's my best shot at it. I've longed believed that the next great global economic downturn would pull countries down together in such a way that the subsequent economic boom would be of astronomical proportions. The 2007-8 crisis wasn't uniform enough worldwide to tug down on all economies in a similar way. But Covid-19 is. The entire global economy is getting pulled like a sheet and when it straightens back out, it'll grow and grow and grow like a fuckin' beanstalk....at least, I hope it does because the alternative is not worth pondering (think Weimar Germany but with fewer night clubs). The spring 2020 moves of the Fed and Congress will either snap the American economy in half or it'll be the catalyst of the next giant leap of the global economy. I'm betting on growth--because the other side is not at all appetizing. 2021 will suck, it might suck real bad. But think about it: by 2022 USA, China, Europe, Russia, the Arab World, India, the Pacific Rim, Africa, Latin America and everyone else that I left out will all be on economic upswings that will swell like no other economic surge ever in history. I'm talking decades of worldwide growth. Or that's the hope anyway. I've been waiting for it and I think this is it. 

Covid-19 (The re-opening)

A while back I wrote that June 5 would be the day when we could re-examine our nationwide condition vis-a-vis Covid-19. Okay, that was yesterday, so where are we? Uh....we still don't know, but I think we've more or less given up on caring about the coronavirus for now and--who knows?--perhaps that is a step forward.

I heard the other day that in the USA we have performed 19 million Covid-19 tests so far. In a nation of 320 million people that has been enduring this virus for at least 12 weeks now, 19 million tests is barely a beginning. Until we do the tests--and keep doing them--we'll never know what's really going on.

I think we can easily say by now who the most at-risk citizens are: the elderly (especially those in group care facilities) and people with preexisting respiratory conditions. I haven't seen any evidence that we've properly locked down those facilities, though I think we have learned to not make them worse, which is a start. And we can probably predict, too, who the most likely spreaders are through contact tracing, so perhaps we can delude ourselves into thinking that testing doesn't matter. But I would still suggest that testing is all that matters.

Bill Gates is willing to pony up gajillions of dollars ($750 million was the figure I recently read) to get going on a vaccine. That's great, I'm all for it. But where are the benefactors for testing? The gov't (namely in the form of Food and Drug Administration) is too stupid to get of its own way, so we can't rely on the State to do what is right (or even obvious). But why haven't the billionaires stepped up to pave the way for the testing? Only testing will tell us how this thing spreads, how far it has spread, how much further it is likely to spread and how much we can expect future outbreaks. Without continued testing we'll never really know how the virus works or what it does once inside the body or which areas of the world are safer and which are more at risk.

The peak of death seems to have long passed, perhaps even the peak of the spread. And the fear we exhibited early on has given way to impatience. Somewhere around three weeks ago, I'd say, people started going back to their lives. We still don't have restaurants and bars or large gatherings, which seem destined to return to full scale only with a vaccine. But the rapidly rising unemployment has begun going back in the right direction and generally being out and about seems back to something like normal.

But make no mistake, we haven't learned anything yet. We don't know terribly much more than we did 12 weeks ago, we've just collectively decided we don't much care any more. We've decided that 'flattening the curve', which seemed like the only way to save civilization 10 weeks ago, is no longer important, we've moved on from it as easily we've moved on from the Tiger King phenomenon of oh so many weeks ago. But I'd say on June 6, flattening the curve is still the way to go until the vaccine arrives (a wide variety of reports, but it seems like by the fall we'll have...something). The virus is coming to get each and every one of us, perhaps fatally....that hasn't changed. 

The People led us into the lockdown and the People have led us out. Are the People better educated now? (Doesn't seem like it, they're just less fearful, not exactly the same thing) Are we just luckier now? (Warmer weather and months of better habits have helped, but for how long?) Will the people be smart enough to go back into lockdown when the coronavirus is resurgent? (Uhh....I dunno) Testing would answer all these questions but no one seems to mind being ignorant for now.

Okay, I can live with that. Frankly, quarantining only brought improvements to my life, so I can't complain if everyone else is ready to seek out the 'new normal'. But until we get testing, regular testing, constant testing, we won't really know what this thing is. Oh well, hopefully it doesn't matter.

Covid-19 (the virus)

Okay, I think I'm ready to write about Covid-19. Most of what I'm about to write is what I thought a week and a half ago but I feared writing at the time because it felt too optimistic in the face of impending tragedy. But since we're on the very precipice of that coming tragedy, I feel a little more secure about writing, a little less like I'm tempting fate. I think fate is already here now and I can speak to it eye to eye.

I think the ugliness in America is about to take off. The next two weeks will likely suck real bad. NYC, Atlanta and Denver are looking like war zones and San Francisco and Los Angeles (and why not Philadelphia and DC, too?) are getting there, too. So far the quarantine has been fun and games (our toilet paper obsession indicates we're a nation of Al Bundys, which is not heartwarming facing into a storm), but as the virus spreads we'll see more outages in food production, energy distribution and probably even basic utilities across entire zip codes. As long as the grocery stores and gas stations hold out and as long as there's internet, I feel like Americans can bunker down like no one else; but those amenities will be tested along the way and how we react will be telling. But so far nothing has deviated my original thoughts, so I'll try to recapture them.

So not quite two weeks ago (Friday, March 13) when it became apparent that quarantining was the only way to go it seemed to me we'd be on a 6-week plan, something like this: in two weeks we'd have a lot more testing done and we'd be able to replace models with data, we'd be terrified to learn that testing will (likely) show that the virus is waaaaaaay more wide spread than we anticipated and this would lead to another two weeks of quarantine. After two more weeks, the bodies would start piling up and the virus would spread a little wider and quarantine would feel even more like a necessity. After two more weeks, the deaths would taper off, the science would be better, the healthcare would become steadily more active and productive and the end of quarantining would at least be in sight.

And though many will die in that six week span, many others will be taking better care of themselves and their surroundings, they'll be eating healthier, cleaning more thoroughly, driving less, generally treasuring their happiness in a way most Americans just don't, and they'll likely emerge with a stronger sense of sense of purpose, a newly articulated desire for social interaction and a whole new appreciation of work. I don't say that as a cock-eyed optimist, I really do believe that is the likely outcome. The death rates of the virus are scary to those initially exposed to the virus, but pushing off exposure--the name of the game--will keep death rates from spiraling into Walking Dead territory (which I think is an entirely unlikely scenario). And I wouldn't be surprised to see a baby boom in the next 9-12 months, so overall death rates may well find replacement (in a species-level sense). 

What's happening is that the virus is coming for us and we will all get it. Oh yeah, that's worth remembering: we're not avoiding this, it's going to get each and every one of us. But the hope is that by pushing off that initial contact, we each give ourselves a vastly greater chance of surviving the virus because in the coming future a) we'll have a better sense of how to handle it, b) the virus itself will be weaker and less dangerous and c) the healthcare structures around us will be able to assist us rather than being overwhelmed by other virus-infected masses. At that point circulating among others will be quite a bit less dangerous, though big events will probably be rare at first.

The problem with the 6-week plan is in six weeks this will still be the same plan. Letting everybody get back to normal won't seem like a good idea if the virus re-emerges and the numbers start ticking higher again. So I would expect the quarantine to continue at least 12 weeks and in that time testing should've spread enough to target the proper locales to quarantine and which ones can ease up restrictions on movement and/or interaction. The places where the virus has spread worst should be the first places to come back from it, as more residents recover from infection, life can edge back toward normal.

None of this is really over until either a vaccine is found or the overall penetration of the virus is so deep that quarantining no longer matters. Of the former, the thought is 12-18 months; of the latter only massive amounts of testing will tell, so I'd say at least 12-18 months. So dig in, America, social distancing is is gonna be with us for a while. And destined to be one of the great days in American history is the day spreading the virus becomes the correct line of action (that's probably a few years down the road--but that day will come whether we realize it or not).

Again, I'd say 12 weeks at the absolute earliest on getting back to the new normal. I put that day at June 5, 2020. If things are as bad as they are today on June 5, then we can stop being scared because fear will just be a waste of precious time. But I do not anticipate that events will be as dire as today and that seems like a reasonable time for the powers-that-be to have formed some kind of plan for getting people back to work (or paying them to remain at home).

Can the NBA start playing again by June 5? Can we start getting summer action movies by June 5? Will museums and theaters and public parks get back to being full again by June 5? I dunno. I kinda doubt it but by June 5 we'll have a much better sense of where to go and how to get there. Until then we just gotta hope that grocery stores and gas stations can keep it going. (I think they will in America and I think they will around the globe, too;

The world will be stronger when this has passed, that is the good thing to look forward to. Viruses occur because nature is constantly testing us (re: trying to kill us) and each obstacle that does not kill us makes us stronger (one thought, for example, is that Covid-19 has shown tendencies of strengthening the arterial walls around the heart, which may be a brace for heart disease). The earth is trying to make us stronger and it will succeed (eventually) but first it will make us wait in solitude.

That the virus will pass and when it does humankind will in the long run be better off....is this too optimistic? No. Strengthening through endurance is the way of things, this has happened numerous times before (and will happen again). Stay smart, stay strong, stay alive, that's all one can do in the face of nature's tests.

Covid-19 (the politics)

I get my news through a steady diet email newsletters from a variety of industries, sources, and political persuasions. I stay in touch with developments while keeping hype to a minimum and the wide variety of viewpoints keeps me from getting too paranoid in any particular direction. I don't get on Twitter (though I'm pondering a way to craft a useful Twitter life) and I'm too boring a person for Facebook or Instagram. I look at Reddit throughout the day and that's where my political-ness comes from. During this period of quarantine I have seen no diminution in the sheer amount of political stories (er, that is, teenagers being snarky for on-line plaudits, not even because they believe their own snark) and I guess I'm not surprised: politics is a popular parlor game among the sophisticated but bored populace.

But the gov't has never been less crucial to me than this week. I've seen enough of Trump that I don't understand why anybody bothers to watch him.  What could a normal citizen possibly learn from watching this guy? He clearly doesn't get how the virus works--and why would he? Why would it matter if he did? Are you waiting for the president to cure a coronavirus? He doesn't do stuff like that, so why exactly does the population even need him to pretend like he does? Indeed, this is a States' problem more than a Federal one and each State will show different ways to react and recover that will be invaluable going forward while the Federal gov't isn't likely to do much of anything relating to the virus itself that is useful at all.

Even the quarantine didn't derive from the gov't but from the citizenry. The corporations, the banks, the insurance companies, the markets, the masses....we embraced social distancing as a means of fending off this virus and the gov't was forced to come along--even though Trump clearly doesn't like this or want any part of this. The gov't is downright hostile to the plan--so why are we looking to the gov't in this time when it is looking only to us?

It was the NBA that let the cat out of the bag: public interaction is way too much of a liability to afford to have a game. When you have 20,000 people in an arena, it is easy to assume that 2% of those people (400) have the virus and that two hours of sitting crampacked together will surely spread the disease to at least another 2% of anyone with 10 feet of the person (which might be up to 30-40 people); now if anyone dies of this virus--anyone anywhere in the world dies of this--now the NBA is potentially liable to anyone that has ever heard of the NBA. Yes, many of those cases would be frivolous but they would still cost the NBA an enormous amount just to make them go away or many cases would be cheaper for the NBA to pay off rather than litigate, which can be brutally expensive and at least implies a level of culpability, which opens the league to further claims. If the virus progresses as the spreadsheets suggest and the death rates maintain to expected levels, then the NBA becomes financially liable to potentially hundreds of thousands of claims just for a regular old Kings-Nuggets game on a Tuesday night.

Likewise with South-by-Southwest (SXSW): I suspect that at the last minute insurance underwriters came through and said something like, 'yeah, normally we charge a thousand for this but this year it's going to be a million because the rate of spread of this virus is too much to handle.' When liability balloons like that, then calling the whole thing off--cancelling out on the thousands of people and vendors that looked forward to the event every year--is much easier and cheaper than going through with the event.

Well, the logic behind the science that dictates that putting too many people together will spread the virus too quickly, applies to non-basketball games and music festivals, too. Indeed, it applies to anyone and everyone. The NBA showed us that, then the gov't jumped in to look busy.

We think of cold blooded capitalists that just want their money no matter who is injured but when the potential liability of injury is exponential then cancelling the show and foregoing the profits is a wildly cheaper move.

That's where the quarantine came from: insurance companies realizing that, in a legal liability sense, it is too dangerous (potentially too expensive) for people to be around each other. It didn't come from the gov't. The gov't was reacting to what society itself and the markets had already instinctively grasped: that 'flattening the curve' was the only hope to avoid a throttling of our health care infrastructure.

'Flattening the curve' undoubtedly came from insurance companies, not from the gov't. The gov't doesn't have a good eye for gloomy futures, politicians love to keep things rosy no matter how dire the situation truly is. But insurance companies are basically nothing but pessimism machines. And flattening the curve is the only thing that makes sense to them. Again, the gov't is reacting to the markets, not the other way around.

The gov't wasn't completely absent but are the CDC and the Federal Reserve really "gov't"? (Ehh, that's a hobby horse I'll give a ride to some other time) The gov't's initial response came in the form of the CDC sending out tests in early February to track down the spread of the virus within USA's borders. The tests were faulty, thus we lost two weeks of figuring out what was going on. Is that Trump's' fault? No. Hell, I'm not even blaming the CDC--this shit's hard, man! No one knew this virus existed three months ago, putting together a test, mass producing it, implementing it, getting the results back and then analyzing said results is a long process. And it is much easier to do it wrong (as we've seen) than it is to do it right. That's not a function of gov't, that's just how life works. Expecting the gov't to immediately and completely solve all problems (or even diagnose them) is an unrealistic expectation and though it may be fun to barb your political enemies, it does you no service as a citizen or a human being to fill your brain with unrealistic expectations.

The other early gov't action was the Federal Reserve spontaneously lowering interest rates near zero on March 3. That was about week before the virus started spooking Americans but it had already begun to hit the markets. As far back as January I saw choppy waters ahead for the stock market but I figured this was just another one of those viruses we've been getting steadily for the last 20 years (H1N1, swine flu, Mers, bird flu, SARS, West Nile, Zika, Ebola, just to name a few) and that this one would fade like the others, making an impact but ultimately moving on. When the Fed did that rate cut in the middle of the day, that caught me off guard (kinda scared me, truth be told), because that was the first indication that the powers that be knew this was going to be huge. That was the first moment that Covid-19 struck me as a coming onslaught, not merely another one of these influenzas that occasionally spooks us.

The effect of the Fed actions and Congress's subsequent economic overhauls will only become apparent over time. For now, these moves are so large as to be pretty much imaginary. Congress's newly passed $2 trillion bill is really just a giant placeholder for what will eventually be negotiated. Economically speaking it's easy to see where this is going: for now the credit card companies will pay all the bills and the insurance companies will end up with all the liability and they'll have to sit down with the gov't to whack it all out. Until then, I don't really understand why the markets would bother to go up or down: I know cash flow is a concern but in my lifetime I doubt there has ever been less cash flow in the American economy than this week (or the coming weeks) and it feels like getting by on even the shakiest credit is probably gonna work for most people.

I expect the economy to bounce back quickly. Why? Because there has been no physical deterioration of industrial production or of our supply lines. This is not like a war or a hurricane or an earthquake. What this is, economically speaking, is a labor stoppage: the physical infrastructure is just fine except that the workers are not working right now. Once they get back to work, I expect the economy to come back hard and fast. This period will be a gap down in the macro-economy, which is a godawful struggle while its happening but should be a boon to new and future growth once it has been absorbed.

When the workers get back to work, the economy will be strong again--indeed, I don't see why it wouldn't. Not everything will be the same, not everyone will emerge unscathed, it will be a while before things get back to "normal" (yeah, with quotation marks). But the larger economy has suffered only a shock to the system, nothing suggestive of overall material decline, a coma (as Larry Summers suggested). When people do get back to "normal" I think they'll get back to it hard. Workers will suddenly have a new appreciation for work and consumers will have a new appreciation for the products and services they need.

Remember the CDC was the first to act and the Federal Reserve came next (two quasi-gov't institutions, I would add). The gov't is not well-equipped to get ahead of problems: the White House steadily downplayed this as long as they could--and fought being dragged into a quarantine--and Congress only acts when it is absolutely forced to. You can blame the particular personalities in office at the moment or you can recognize that that is simply how gov't works: slowly and only when forced to act. It was SXSW and the NBA and the NCAA that made the fateful decisions that showed the public the light....not the gov't. Long live the people!

It is the citizenry, the markets, the corporations, the PEOPLE that made the move to save lives and they will bring back a new way of life when the time is right. The people have done it and the people will do more. Fuck the gov't, they're a bunch of fucking clowns. In short, Trump was forced into this. I am convinced he never wanted any of this and still doesn't. So crediting Trump or blaming Trump is just a waste of your time. Perhaps pillorying politicians is an amusement to you, in which case, well, Trump is a pretty obvious target. But in my home state of Kentucky we have a governor that's on TV every night and pummeling my inbox with spam every day and he sure wants to look like he's in charge and he is kindly, he is the anti-Trump...and I got no use for him either. What is that dude gonna tell me that's gonna make my life better?

Politicians don't create vaccines and until they do, who gives a fuck what they have to say? They are functionaries, they are fungible commodities, they are not sexy or knowledgeable or important and pretending as if they are (or are supposed to be) is a just a poor use of your conception of gov't. This nation is people, the gov't is just the gov't.