I think a lot of people are feeling a sort of mental and emotional paralysis lately as the Trumparian cult commits one atrocity after another. But I have to pick one so I'm going to the Resident ordering the CDC to change the guidelines on Covid-19 testing, so that testing of people who are known to have been exposed is no longer recommended. This was done of course because the Great Pumpkin has the idea stuck in his pea-sized brain that if fewer people are tested, the number of reported cases will be lower.
I should not have to explain why this is idiotic. People who do not have symptoms can transmit the virus to others. Oh, by the way, we weren't sure about this before but now it's pretty well accepted that about 60% of infected adults will develop symptoms, just to debunk another stupid lie. Anyway, the point is, obviously, that if people are exposed you want to test them so that they can self-isolate if they are infected. That's the whole idea of containment, that's what the countries have done and are doing that have successfully suppressed the pandemic. If you don't do that, you may miss some asymptomatic cases but as a result there will ultimately be more symptomatic cases and more deaths.
In the United States, the responsibility for testing and contact tracing belongs to local public health authorities. And they are pissed off. The National Association of County and City Health Officials has sent a letter to Robert Redfield, the butt kissing toady who has destroyed the international reputation of what was one the world's most respected national public health agency, and beclowned himself in the process. Read the whole thing because it is informative as well as emotive, but I'll pull a couple of key paragraphs:
We have seen over the months of the response the politization of public health, with local health officials and staff being blamed for taking the necessary steps to keep the public safe, being physically threatened with violence, and in some cases, fired for standing up for the public’s health. By removing the national recommendation and putting the decision-making squarely on individual leaders, it allows for skeptical elected officials and members of the public to again blame the individual public health leader who is simply trying to protect their health and safety. It may also lead to enhanced clashes with the health care system, as this type of guidance gives providers incredible leeway to make a clinical decision that may be supported by an individual patient’s situation, but not by the needs of the public’s health. We need to be clear and consistent. The new guidance is neither of those things. . . .
Rather than empowering public health professionals and moving our nation forward in a cohesive way to address the pandemic, this abrupt change has caused confusion, consternation and undermined the credibility of the agency with public health professionals and the public alike. This revision and its resulting impact is adding yet another obstacle for public health practitioners to effectively address the pandemic. The lack of data supporting the change and the lack of communication about the change sows seeds of doubt in the public’s eyes and undercuts the dedicated career staff who are working day in and day out to support the response. This haphazard decision-making process is bad policy. It costs lives and livelihoods and impacts the standing of health officials across the country. Therefore, we urge you to pull the revised guidance and revert back to the previous consensus policy where people who may have been exposed to COVID-19 are encouraged to get tested, know their status, and do all they can to physically distance and stop the spread.
They literally don't care if they kill you. And yet 40% of the people say they plan to vote for this murderous insanity to continue. No, I cannot explain it.
5 comments:
Sure we can explain it; it's easy to explain why 40% of people would vote to kill themselves.
It's called the Thanatos urge. Freud talked about it. I have my own spin. But basically, it's the same urge that caused people to follow Jim Jones ... and Marshall Applewhite ... but they never had a bigger megaphone. Hitler did. People followed him.
We'are always seeking to CONNECT. Plants ... flowers ... animals ... all turn toward the sun. As Joseph Campbell said, our parents are our first gods. So many of these "gods" beat and humiliate and rape their children. It's endemic in American society ... like my friend in Arkansas whose father killed animals, beat the shit out of an automobile in front of her, for crissakes ... and beat the shit out of her, until she cut her wrists at 18, telling him she'd kill herself before he could touch her anymore.
Child rape and incest is common, alcoholism rife (my neighbors across the street), physical beatings, emotional abuse. People grow up without actually "growing up." They think--without being aware of it--that this is "normal," that this is just how people are and act.
Along come Republicans of the '90s, telling lies about what they'll do, couching all their language in lies ("Clean Air Act," "Contract for (on) America," etc. People buy it. All the people to whom abuse and victimization are "normal." Fast-forward to 2015. People see a presidential candidate that preaches abuse, hate, violence. It feels like "home" to all those people whose issues are unresolved. It's Comfortable, it's Home, it's What They're Used To. It's what feels "Right" because our society and our country are so sick, in so much pain.
Combine all this with a national lie--that we believe in "liberty and justice for all" even though to so many of these Trumpites, people with brown skin are just n______. Immigrants, to them, are scum. These people, like SHITLER, know how to take 0% responsibility for their lives, only able to blame others, to hate--like they were hated, with the twisted "love" that their abusive parents gave them. It all blends together in a toxic mish-mash of projection and self-loathing.
It combines to stew and season into the Thanatos urge--the drive toward death, because life itself seems to painful. Life, as these people know it, has brought them great pain, untreated pain. They will believe and listen to people who treat them like daddy and mommy did. The beefy-cheesy-fart-blowing-orange-abomination=and-bigot-and-sexual-abuser that I call SHITLER comes along and these people see their first gods. And they must obey god, lest they surpass him, which is not allowed.
I'll close this morning's sermon with a quote from Marianne Williamson:
"Out deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Out deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us."
Nothing's changed since Aristotle and Plato and the Cave. People who support SHITLER are scared to realize that they're looking at shadows; they are afraid of the light. They'd prefer to go on "living" a lie without really being alive, because facing the pain of their upbringings is just too damn painful; they are afraid of feeling their feelings, of mourning, and really living. They'd rather go on dulling their pain. Hence, addiction, alcoholism, Trumpism. It's the 500-lb. man who knows he's dangerously, morbidly obese--but until the pain of that becomes greater than the pain of living a lie, he'll say, "Pass the Oreos and the Coke."
I have to disagree. I tried it and Trump's idea works!
I just bought a new SUV, and the gas gauge dropped like a rock when I drove it. So I smashed the gauge.
My mileage has been great since then; the needle hasn't even moved!
That all said, we all now will have the horrible, harmful "privilege" of being subject to the mainstream media's horse race. Like the Republicans, they're "in business," having rejected all claim to legitimacy, and it's all a game to them; life doesn't matter. They have to "make it a contest" by constantly reporting polls, talking about the "tightening race." This is going to lead us to--incredibly--the potential for one more "close call," in which case SHITLER will have advantage on his side because the government and Supreme Court is controlled by Republicans that will do whatever it takes to grant him a salutary victory. And that will be the end of the United States of American.
I don't say that assassination or a candidate contracting COVID-19 are real, acceptable, viable solutions. But in a country that has abandoned all pretense of justice, exactly what viable answers to this coup do exist? Does anyone at all in the government--with a shred of power--have a game plan in case the coup is consummated? Is the appearance of observing the rule of law more important than the actual rule of law itself? How are a maniac and the obsequious, power-hungry minions supporting him stopped if a country doesn't have the unfettered power of the vote? Print this, Cervantes. We are in deeper-than-deep shit. So many of the citizens who had common sense and decency are either dead or in assisted living and nursing homes. We are up to our ears in ignoramuses.
Of course I am concerned about what will happen in November. But I believe that people are trying to prepare. The usurpers don't have the military on their side, for one thing. It is not yet time to despair.
However, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is saying he won't allow the US military to intervene if the Democrats and Rapscalliacans have different opinions about a dispute election, or some such nonsense.
What the hell does that mean? Are election results, too, now open to debate along with the rest of reality?
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