Reflection #12 on the Coronavirus (COVID19) Pandemic
March 25, 2020
2.2 trillion dollars.
$2,200,000,000,000.
Where in the hell did this motley collection of ill-credentialed strange people get hold of 2.2 trillion without much complaint by anybody at all? How is it that this kind of money is going to be distributed with almost no structure to its dissemination or construct to the organization it will take to distribute the funds.
Three weeks for the first checks to go out. Those to people who paid their taxes electronically, and then overpaid and got a refund back by direct deposit to their accounts. Those people might get some sort of immediate check deposited to that same account. No mention is made of people getting direct deposit of social security or veterans or other retirement funds. How long did it take to distribute the money that was taken in to be paid out to 911 relatives and survivors? Years. And there were only a few thousand of them.
How in the hell is this mess of a broken government, leaders not believing that veteran bureaucrats are functional, can expect to pay out trillions to everyone?
Better set aside about ten years to get whatever you think you might have coming. How much is Two point Two Trillion Dollars?
If it was presented and then stacked as new one-dollar bills the stack would pile 154,000 miles or about three-fifths of the way to the moon. What is that amount of money, distributed directly out in the economy going to do? We live in interesting times.
Strauss, you amuse me. You see from your side of the street, and I see from mine.
My side began a few years before yours when my Bedonkohe Grandmother sat me at her knee and explained I could live among the White Eyes, but I could never live with them. She taught me well and as I grew and tested her lessons she was right.
You’ve walked the path between the white lines the Great Foulups in Washington painted for you to stay within and now you’re wringing your hands over the “Draconian” events in play.
Have you noticed the numbers for Flu 20?
You and I survived the same childhood years, Mumps, Measels, Chickenpox, Polio, Asian Flu, Hong Kong Flu, and others. We grew up in the slice of time when Public Health stopped hanging the dreaded red Quarantine signs on front doors with tacks because tape that stuck didn’t yet exist. I’ve lost count of the years of the traveling Flu, there have been many.
For 19 years I shared table with a woman neck deep in the small world of Infection Prevention. Those were some very interesting conversations including SARS and MRSA and Legionella and she damn well would be going to Toronto with the B team from here for the SARS mess Toronto got itself into.
I chose to learn and remember while you appear to have ignored and forgotten. Isolation works when done at the right point in time. It works with communicable disease and power grids and 100 other situations.
When last I ventured among the White Eyes for supplies, I wasn’t shocked watching an obese woman inside the cooler climbing over 50 gallons of milk to get to the second rack with a longer use by date. I wasn’t shocked to see the paper shelves empty, but I was pissed no bagels were available and rolls were. I’ve been watching the White Eyes for many decades. They are nothing but conditioned interchangeable labor units. Let them have guns and ammunition, Robin Williams made a movie called The Survivors in 83 depicting what will happen.
COVID 19 is just the next step in the long chain of viruses we shall endure. The yapping turds called “Media” were all at the bottom of the basket and only got into J School by holding up cash.
99% couldn’t report a horse stepping on their foot. The 5 Ws of journalism are long lost. Adapt & move ahead or die in place. Such is the nature of the world. The house peddlers have already perfected ways of peddling collapsing hovels via Internet sans inspection or even viewing.
I am most happy to amuse you.
I am very close to the Santa Domingo tribe in New Mexico and have a long history there.
So, I’m not your average ‘white eyes,’ although I really have no objection to being referred to in that fashion.
I have never said one written that isolation does not work.
In fact, total isolation (like in an Admax federal prison) allows for almost no human contact…but do you want that kind of ultimate security?
Of course, isolation works. It’s simple logic. My point, however, remains valid.
What is the cost in mortality and morbidity to implementing this period of isolation the country has just entered into?
The potential for that isolation for death and damage would seem to overwhelm whatever the virus might end up doing.
The number one killer of human beings on this planet is not war or disease. Never has been. It’s starvation and exposure.
I loved Robin Williams and particularly that movie. I am not a prepper or a survivalist.
I have more positive motivations for the success of my species than that would allow for.
And, I have no latent desire to await or, in fact, hurt people who might be coming to me for assistance in a dire situation of need.
I also have this really deep and rotten feeling that we are all about to see most of what we knew of as the
American way of life is about to go the way of the cuckoo.
Maybe that looming tragedy is even greater, inside me, than the fear of the mortality from the Coronavirus.
Thanks for the depth of your comment and I’m truly sorry this nation swept in and not only took your relative’s land but then
compounded that time after time…right up until now.
Semper fi,
Jim
Well, James, I am alive – just been oblivious to your journals on COVID-19. By choice I do not receive automatic updates to new material. I do check several times a day for new posts to 30 Days and to the Cat. Today I noticed something different about the page header – and here I am.
My guess is many of your readers are in a similar situation. How about I post about this on 30 Days and you reply thereby pushing folks this way?
By choice my primary source of news is the BBC website. IMO it provides a more balanced view of the world lacking in domestic news. I get the flattening of the curve argument after reading of Italian medical staff having to triage patients over who gets the use of a ventilator or not. Those who need one and don’t get it die. Spread out the course of the disease and more have the chance of surviving. Seems as if NYC is having a major case of “Incoming!!”
/side stories/ There’s a critical valve used in ventilators that can only be used for one patient. Move the ventilator to a new patient and a new valve is required. Hospitals in Italy are running out of valves. The manufacturer is unable to supply them. So a small company working day and night reverse engineered the valve and used a 3D printer to produce about 100 copies. They donated them to the hospital. Now if the manufacturer is smart they will make them subcontractors.
Doctors in Minnesota and engineers at MIT are designing “good enough” ventilators that potentially could be mass produced.
My point is that folks are stepping up to the plate to find out of the box solutions.
Will we come together as family to take care of one another? I believe it depends on the local situation. In the UK a call went out to the public asking for volunteers to assist the National Health Service with small tasks. The hope had been for 250,000. 405,000 signed up the first day. I live in a rural area. Things can work out here. I’m not so sure about major cities.
I believe this is a time for inner reflection and growth – healing old wounds – plus finding joy in the sound of birds and a sunny sky. We were too busy for that just a few short weeks ago.
I can yammer on; but better to close. When this pandemic has run its course the world will be changed. Whether for better or worse remains to be seen. I hope for the best.
Blessings & Be Well
As usual, Dan, you write deeply and poignantly about life and your encounters with it.
Yes, I believe people are going to step up too although I don’t have a clue about whether that will be enough.
The nation cannot survive if this goes on too long.
The changes it will bring, the economic part will be so profound that I do not believe we can come back like we were before.
Also, when people cannot feed their children then there will be violence and there’s never been as a country this size where such violence,
and the capability for it to be delivered, has been so huge.
I fear and I hope that such will not come to pass. I had hoped against hope to leave all that back in the A Shau Valley.
Semper fi,
Jim