Thursday, January 27, 2022

Thursday, January 20, 2022

The Cost Of Doing Business

How have we come to accept thousands of deaths every single day as just an additional cost of doing business in a pandemic? 

I'll guess it's years of practice ignoring the death and destruction the US perpetrates worldwide to keep our gas tanks full of cheap gas, the military industrial complex humming, the stock market soaring, the stadiums full?

It's just a few more voices in the churning ambient chorus of suffering we already tune out, much like with gun violence or unnecessary deaths due to the cost of healthcare or the thousands our military kills around the world. Many of us, even the “good ones” like you and me, already do that in a way or else how would we manage to function on a daily basis? How do you get up and measure out the coffee and heat up the water and poke your stupid face into the fridge for a nice piece of fruit every morning without pretending if at least for a while that no one is dying just beyond your doorstep?

Sunday, January 2, 2022

They ALL Lie

“[E]very passing day suggests that the administration is failing to keep up with COVID’s mutations. Though it is spending a lot of money, when it assumed power, it failed to prioritize cheap, accessible tests open to anyone who needs them, left too much basic data gathering to scholars or the media, and made at best half-hearted pushes in favor of improved ventilation, air filters, and other obvious steps that would minimize indoor COVID problems, especially in schools. It also did essentially nothing to put reliable face masks in the hands of the population and failed even to set standards for advertising and sales of facemasks, leaving a vast market to charlatans. It still has no program in place for large scale random testing that can swiftly identify new variants and it has failed to create an effective national set of statistics with public dashboards anyone can access. Essentially it has staked everything on vaccines that will need regular, costly updates in a country with no national healthcare system. It is obvious that the administration’s hopes for an end to the COVID nightmare are premature.”

Contrasting performance — “Despite vaccines, the U.S. has lost more lives to Covid this year than last” — and promises. Biden, in debate: “And so folks, I will take care of this, I will end this, I will make sure we have a plan.”

They ALL lie.