1. Two Types of Booby
I recently returned from the land of the placid blue-footed boobies, namely, the Galápagos Islands, only to return to the turbulent land of the red-hatted booby, namely, the United States.
The Orange Mad Hatter has many red-hatted followers; the birds were created by chance mutations; the red-hatted ones came from destructive mutations in thinking, little gods who entered a mythical world from the foam of their own blather.
My wife and I had traveled at the right time. Travel seems less inviting to us now; we're seniors, in a high-risk group for suffering serious complications from the virus, which has since risen to pandemic levels.
The call of the wild encouraged us to travel to Ecuador; the call of a child, e.g. "There are fifteen cases; it will soon go down to zero," encourages us to plug our ears and hide--something we refuse to do.
The orange red-hatted booby has been a "Maulheld" that is, a "mouth hero," his entire adult life. (Fact checkers have determined that he has lied over 16,000 times since taking office.) His good and our bad luck is that he has gotten away with it. Until now.
2. Semper Unparatus
President Trump addressed the nation last night regarding the Covid-19 pandemic. At least he is beginning to take the crisis seriously, the optimist in me thought. The pessimist replies, Don't you know that man yet? The focus of the speech was wrong.
The pessimist has a point. The president spoke of containment, while he should have spoken about management of a crisis that is already here.
First of all, the lack of access to health care by all citizens is a major barrier to mitigation of viral spread. We are alone among the major industrialized countries in this chosen predicament. Obamacare could have easily been improved by a responsible president. Instead, Trump has done his very best to destroy it, no matter the consequences, that is, without a replacement. Even now, adjudication to declare Obamacare illegal is supported by the booby's administration.
Persons without health coverage tend to avoid visits to the doctor or to the emergency room. Proper surveillance dictates diagnosing cases as early as possible.
Secondly, Trump's immigration policy discourages undocumented immigrants from visiting the doctor and from visiting emergency rooms as well. This adds to the difficulties of obtaining an early diagnosis, crucial to management of the disease. (Many undocumented cases of Covid-19 will not be isolated under present conditions and will spread that very contagious disease.)
Thirdly, the nation is unprepared. The lack of the ability to test for the virus is a national scandal. The CDC refused to accept an effective test available from the World Health Organization. The former's testing kits turned out to have a problem. Still, the CDC refused to allow local labs to develop tests. The situation may well be resolved in a few days, but at the time of this writing only a total of about 5,000 tests have been done in the United States. This means that the total number of documented U.S. cases, a little over a thousand, are grossly inaccurate and not comparable to the number of cases reported in China as well as in Europe. How can we surveil a condition when we don't even know the extent of its presence?
In addition, hospitals are not prepared to deal with a large number of patients ill from the coronavirus. Many will need respirators; There aren't enough of them. If you were a doctor treating two persons in need of mechanical ventilation and you had only one respirator, what would you do? Such a dilemma is far from unthinkable. One can easily imagine that emergency departments will soon be overwhelmed.
In China, many critically ill patients have been effectively treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). We lack the ability to meet the demand for this procedure, if our heath system is overwhelmed, which is a distinct possibility.
Angela Merkel recently stated that it is quite possible that 50-60
percent of the German population might well become infected. Contrast this with Trump's speech. Extrapolate that figure to the United States and there will be 150,000,000 Americans affected. Since the virus is thought to be ten times more fatal than the flu, the total deaths from the virus would be 1,500,000--A nightmarish possibility.
Trump's speech, presumably written by Trump's Mephistopheles, Stephen Miller, identifies Covid-19 as a "foreign virus." The Orange Red-Hatted Booby has tweeted that the wall is going up fast--another lie; and that it is more needed now than ever --yes, another lie. These destructive examples of Trump's xenophobia and racism are not who we are, red-hatted boobies, a lot of them anyway, excepted.
3. A Visit to the Shakespeare Theater
Shortly after our return from Ecuador, my wife and I traveled to Washington, D.C. to see a play. Oblivious to the extent of the crisis while we were away and unable, due to a lack of surveillance, to comprehend its extent, we, like mad dogs and foolhardy Americans, went out into the spring-like sun. The Amtrak parking lot was nearly empty. Baltimore's Penn Station was as populated as a field with four-leaf clovers. The Marc train to Washington was about as full as the belly of a polar bear on an ice floe. The theater, usually replete with seniors like ourselves, was anything but. After the performance we headed to our favorite Chinese restaurant. Except for us, it was completely empty during our entire meal. We felt like we were eating Ma Po Bean Curd while negotiating a tightrope over an abyss.
People are staying home. Since the economy is largely consumer-driven, I am convinced that the stock market has much farther to fall. This would likely make Trump's reelection, his main concern, shakier. One thinks of the words Goethe put in Mephistopheles's
mouth: "I am a part of that power which always wants to do Evil and always winds up doing Good." Do we have to wind up that way only after doing so much harm? Surely we're better than that.
Trump's lack of empathy was again in full evidence when he said that he thought the exhausted people quarantined on the cruise ship should stay on the cruise ship, so that the number of cases in the U.S. would not increase, an increase which he would find detrimental to his chances of reelection.
We had a concert to attend this Sunday. Canceled. I was supposed to lecture at a local college. Canceled. Further plans to travel: Canceled. I involuntarily thought of a dreadful poem someone showed me years ago, which referred to the death of an inhabitant of Prague as a Canceled Czech.
The virus is immune to the booby's tweets; even though mindless, it can easily outfox Fox News. It is, however, unconsciously clever, even though, as a virus, it is only half alive. Will it prove to be smarter than us?
If the Orange Red-Hatted Booby isn't defeated in November, the answer is, unfortunately, yes.
I recently returned from the land of the placid blue-footed boobies, namely, the Galápagos Islands, only to return to the turbulent land of the red-hatted booby, namely, the United States.
The Orange Mad Hatter has many red-hatted followers; the birds were created by chance mutations; the red-hatted ones came from destructive mutations in thinking, little gods who entered a mythical world from the foam of their own blather.
My wife and I had traveled at the right time. Travel seems less inviting to us now; we're seniors, in a high-risk group for suffering serious complications from the virus, which has since risen to pandemic levels.
The call of the wild encouraged us to travel to Ecuador; the call of a child, e.g. "There are fifteen cases; it will soon go down to zero," encourages us to plug our ears and hide--something we refuse to do.
The orange red-hatted booby has been a "Maulheld" that is, a "mouth hero," his entire adult life. (Fact checkers have determined that he has lied over 16,000 times since taking office.) His good and our bad luck is that he has gotten away with it. Until now.
2. Semper Unparatus
President Trump addressed the nation last night regarding the Covid-19 pandemic. At least he is beginning to take the crisis seriously, the optimist in me thought. The pessimist replies, Don't you know that man yet? The focus of the speech was wrong.
The pessimist has a point. The president spoke of containment, while he should have spoken about management of a crisis that is already here.
First of all, the lack of access to health care by all citizens is a major barrier to mitigation of viral spread. We are alone among the major industrialized countries in this chosen predicament. Obamacare could have easily been improved by a responsible president. Instead, Trump has done his very best to destroy it, no matter the consequences, that is, without a replacement. Even now, adjudication to declare Obamacare illegal is supported by the booby's administration.
Persons without health coverage tend to avoid visits to the doctor or to the emergency room. Proper surveillance dictates diagnosing cases as early as possible.
Secondly, Trump's immigration policy discourages undocumented immigrants from visiting the doctor and from visiting emergency rooms as well. This adds to the difficulties of obtaining an early diagnosis, crucial to management of the disease. (Many undocumented cases of Covid-19 will not be isolated under present conditions and will spread that very contagious disease.)
Thirdly, the nation is unprepared. The lack of the ability to test for the virus is a national scandal. The CDC refused to accept an effective test available from the World Health Organization. The former's testing kits turned out to have a problem. Still, the CDC refused to allow local labs to develop tests. The situation may well be resolved in a few days, but at the time of this writing only a total of about 5,000 tests have been done in the United States. This means that the total number of documented U.S. cases, a little over a thousand, are grossly inaccurate and not comparable to the number of cases reported in China as well as in Europe. How can we surveil a condition when we don't even know the extent of its presence?
In addition, hospitals are not prepared to deal with a large number of patients ill from the coronavirus. Many will need respirators; There aren't enough of them. If you were a doctor treating two persons in need of mechanical ventilation and you had only one respirator, what would you do? Such a dilemma is far from unthinkable. One can easily imagine that emergency departments will soon be overwhelmed.
In China, many critically ill patients have been effectively treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). We lack the ability to meet the demand for this procedure, if our heath system is overwhelmed, which is a distinct possibility.
Angela Merkel recently stated that it is quite possible that 50-60
percent of the German population might well become infected. Contrast this with Trump's speech. Extrapolate that figure to the United States and there will be 150,000,000 Americans affected. Since the virus is thought to be ten times more fatal than the flu, the total deaths from the virus would be 1,500,000--A nightmarish possibility.
Trump's speech, presumably written by Trump's Mephistopheles, Stephen Miller, identifies Covid-19 as a "foreign virus." The Orange Red-Hatted Booby has tweeted that the wall is going up fast--another lie; and that it is more needed now than ever --yes, another lie. These destructive examples of Trump's xenophobia and racism are not who we are, red-hatted boobies, a lot of them anyway, excepted.
3. A Visit to the Shakespeare Theater
Shortly after our return from Ecuador, my wife and I traveled to Washington, D.C. to see a play. Oblivious to the extent of the crisis while we were away and unable, due to a lack of surveillance, to comprehend its extent, we, like mad dogs and foolhardy Americans, went out into the spring-like sun. The Amtrak parking lot was nearly empty. Baltimore's Penn Station was as populated as a field with four-leaf clovers. The Marc train to Washington was about as full as the belly of a polar bear on an ice floe. The theater, usually replete with seniors like ourselves, was anything but. After the performance we headed to our favorite Chinese restaurant. Except for us, it was completely empty during our entire meal. We felt like we were eating Ma Po Bean Curd while negotiating a tightrope over an abyss.
People are staying home. Since the economy is largely consumer-driven, I am convinced that the stock market has much farther to fall. This would likely make Trump's reelection, his main concern, shakier. One thinks of the words Goethe put in Mephistopheles's
mouth: "I am a part of that power which always wants to do Evil and always winds up doing Good." Do we have to wind up that way only after doing so much harm? Surely we're better than that.
Trump's lack of empathy was again in full evidence when he said that he thought the exhausted people quarantined on the cruise ship should stay on the cruise ship, so that the number of cases in the U.S. would not increase, an increase which he would find detrimental to his chances of reelection.
We had a concert to attend this Sunday. Canceled. I was supposed to lecture at a local college. Canceled. Further plans to travel: Canceled. I involuntarily thought of a dreadful poem someone showed me years ago, which referred to the death of an inhabitant of Prague as a Canceled Czech.
The virus is immune to the booby's tweets; even though mindless, it can easily outfox Fox News. It is, however, unconsciously clever, even though, as a virus, it is only half alive. Will it prove to be smarter than us?
If the Orange Red-Hatted Booby isn't defeated in November, the answer is, unfortunately, yes.
Love this, Tom. At least the planet is getting a breather, as we humans brace for the tsunami of suffering & sacrifice ahead.
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