This week's Xcargo: Biowar

 Hey, everyone,

So just to let you know, I post to my Xcargo column at least once a week, usually on Mondays, usually first thing in the morning. As you know, the new address is https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/blog

 Yesteray's column was titled "biowar," and in it I asked if the Trump insurrection will be the first revolution in history to wage biological war against itself.

 Check it out. It's both text and a video: https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/post/biowar

 cheers

mjt 

 

 

 Covid's no joke. Get vaccinated!

There Is Blood On His Hands (And Ours)

So according to the last numbers I’ve seen, over 100,000 Americans have died of Covid-19. Oh, and almost certainly that vastly underestimates the actual numbers because lots and lots and lots of people are getting sick and/or dying out of sight, because we don’t have the test kits, the trained personnel, and the hospital beds required to determine if they have (or, tragically, had) the disease.

Doubtlessly, that number will be even higher by the time you read this.

And none of it had to happen. If we had prepared...even on the most basic level...we could have saved thousands of lives. If Donald Trump and his Trumplicans (the former GOP) had not eliminated our national capacity to respond to pandemics... if he and they had reacted promptly when it became clear that a deadly disease was spreading from China...and if he and they exercised decisive leadership as soon as Covid-19 showed up on our shores…then many of those people would be alive today, our medical facilities wouldn’t be strained to the breaking point, and our economy would not be on the verge of collapse.

Alas, he, and they, did nothing productive. Now, at best they look like fools, and at worst like a cruise ship crew who abandoned their vessel and its passengers the minute they heard the hull scrape against the reef. And either way, they have blood on their hands.

And here’s the thing. The people who voted for Trump in 2016 do not have blood on their hands. Not at the moment. They didn’t know what they were doing when they put him into office. But they can’t claim ignorance any longer. Now they know perfectly well what sort of man (or un-man) he is, and the kind of monsters they are. 

But if they vote for him again...in 2020...they will have blood on their hands. They will vote knowing what he has done, what the GOP has done, and what he and they are likely to do in future. They will be as guilty as he, and as much at fault as they.

And lest we on the Left become complacent and self-congratulatory, let us recall that many among us declined to vote in 2016. Or, if they did, they threw away their votes on Third Parties or write-ins who had no chance of winning. And, so, they passively supported Trump.

If they do so again, if such people elect not to vote or vote for third parties...because “Republicans and Democrats are just alike,” because Biden “is not really a progressive,” because of whatever reason ranging from insufferable self-righteousness to inexcusable laziness...then they, too, will be guilty. They, too, will have blood on their hands.

So, let us not allow that to happen. For God’s sake, let us vote and vote blue. After all, the life we save could be our own.

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

I Couldn’t Give Blood

Funny what seems important in the midst of a crisis.

I had kind of a bummer of a morning this a.m. Nothing serious. Just a mild downer.

What happened is that I couldn’t give blood, or, more precisely, platelets. I originally got started doing this because I may have had Covid-19 back in February. If so, I’d like to donate blood to the various programs that are experimenting with “convalescent plasma therapy.” That’s where doctors take plasma from someone who has already recovered from a disease and inject it into people who are still sick from it. The antibodies in the donated plasma then fight the disease -- in this case Covid.

I would like to do that, but the antibody tests are just not available yet, and the way we’re going, may never be.

Still, my local blood bank, WeAreBlood.org, suggested instead that I donate platelets. These are the components in the blood that help with clotting, and it turns out there’s always a need for that sort of donation, and it also turns out that my blood type, AB+, is uniquely valuable for platelets.

So, last month I started donating them. Truth be told, it isn’t particularly fun. It doesn’t hurt much. But it does take a long time--about two to three hours. And afterwards, I feel lightheaded and a little ill. In fact, between the process itself, and my state of mind afterwards, I basically lose an entire day.

Still, this morning, off I went. Martha drove me down. I checked in at 10:30 am. Then, next thing I knew, I was on the bed and they had the needle in my arm. A machine next to me whirred into life and everything was in process.

But, about fifteen minutes into things, we discovered that the needle had gone in “at an angle.” This meant the blood couldn’t be returned to my arm after the platelets had been extracted. Which meant that the whole process had to come to a complete halt. No donation that day. And I can’t do it again for another eight weeks.

I was startled by how depressed I was about it all. I had gotten myself geared up for the adventure, only to have it end in frustrating failure. I had all the negative aspects of the experience -- the wasted day, the vague feeling of lightheadedness -- with none of the satisfaction of knowing that maybe, just maybe, what I had done would be of use to someone. That is, I didn’t even have the hope that my platelets went to a patient who really, really needed them.

Though, I suppose there is a larger issue behind all of this, something I don’t necessarily think about consciously, but which is present just the same. Like most of us, I feel horribly helpless in the midst of all the bad news...the pandemic, the politics, armed protestors in Michigan and elsewhere, authorities who do not seem remotely competent, the fact that as of this date (I write this on 22, May, 2020) the United States has seen over 94,000 deaths from Covid-19...the fact that Trump doesn’t seem a damn about that...

And, well...everything...

Giving blood, or, rather, platelets was one small way for me to be of some service.

It is unpleasant to have that taken away, even if only for a time...

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

He’s Taking What?

I don’t ever post twice in a day. But...I’m going to make an exception.

I have just learned that 45 is taking hydroxychloroquine, whose usefulness in treating Covid-19 remains entirely unproven. He’s backing that up with zinc.

Okay...

Now, if he’s telling the truth (which he may not be. I’ve seen several people express their doubts on the subject), that’s pretty scary. It means that the commander-in-chief is scarfing down a drug whose exact effects remain uncertain to say the least. But, then, maybe after Adderall...

But, the other thing which frightens me is what this means for his followers. Remember, these are people who are already taking bleach. Now, when they learn their hero is swallowing hydroxychloroquine on a daily basis...

Yikes.

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

“Plandemic"

By this time, you’ll have already heard of the whole “Plandemic” scandal. But, on the off chance that you haven’t, here’s a story on it that ran a while back in The Daily Beast, and which I first found on Yahoo News, “Discredited Doctor and Sham ‘Science’ Are the Stars of Viral Coronavirus Documentary ‘Plandemic’,” by Will Sommer.

Basically, the tale is as follows. The “New-Age producer Mikki Willis” did a video, Plandemic, in which “controversial scientist Dr. Judy Mikovits, a close associate of anti-vaccine activists, weaves an elaborate tale alleging a government conspiracy to create the coronavirus, with Anthony Fauci as a kind of murderous puppetmaster behind it all. Along the way, she claims that masks ‘activate’ the virus, and that she was imprisoned as part of a cover-up.”

The video was posted on Youtube and Facebook. Fairly quickly, those two worthy companies pulled the thing for being a threat to life and limb,  but not before it had been seen by millions of viewers and embraced by anti-vaxxers, anti-quarantine activists, deplorables of every sort, and fringe figures. That wouldn’t be a problem, particularly, if it weren’t for the fact that the video and those people who endorsed it will influence many, many innocent men and women who are simply confused or frightened, and who will now fail to take the precautions necessary to protect themselves.

Meaning that some of those people, and some of the individuals with whom they come into contact, will die.

Which means, in turn, that you could argue that Ms. Mikki Willis and Dr. Judy Mikovits, along with Donald Trump, will be responsible for those deaths.

Thus, we encounter an interesting question: to wit, where does free speech end and Negligent Homicide begin?

I do not know. I cannot say. But this much I will hazard...

We are, here, far too close to murder to be at peace.

 

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

They are not well

Yesterday, I wrote about  Ohio Governor Mike DeWine who basically told a bunch of anti-quarantine yahoos to stop acting like thugs and bullies and to behave themselves. (Three cheers, Gov. DeWine!)

But you’ll recall that along with the story, I posted a video of a protesting woman who was basically abusing a local reporter. I looked at that video again, and I thought that we really all ought to give it a careful glance. Watch it now...or at least as much of it as you can before the cringe gets you.

Listen to her. Watch her eyes and her expression. This is not a person you would care to meet in a dark alley....or anywhere else, for that matter. This is someone who could be a real problem.

Think about her, then, when it comes time to vote. Remember, you may or may not vote...it’s your choice...but she most certainly will.

Do you really want people like her running the planet for four more years?

~~~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

They will try to kill us

Yesterday I wrote about the armed anti-quarantine protestors who showed up at the Kentucky and Michigan Capitol Buildings with the clear intention of bullying their duly elected officials. I argued that they were truly dangerous people who, deep down, just want to kill someone.

The more we learn about these people, the more I believe that. We learn, for instance, that not only are they connected to right-wing organizations, like Betsy DeVos’ people, but, indeed, to fringe groups--armed militias, white separatists, even Neo-Nazis, as evidenced by the Swastika flags on display at the protests.

And, frankly, it is clear that they brought their firearms to these anti-quarantine protests not just to show that they have a right to carry them (though how guns rights got mixed up with a virus I don’t understand), but to demonstrate to lawmakers that they will use them. Their intent, in other words, was to threaten legislators -- and anyone -- who dared to disagree with them.

The next logical step is for them to actually use those weapons, to start killing people...to move to political violence...and to wage war upon the body politic.

And given their connections...their links upwards to the White House...

Who could say where that would end?


Source: Anti-Lockdown Rallies Are Providing an Opening for the Proud Boys and Other Far-Right Extremists (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/04/27/anti-lockdown-rallies-are-providing-opening-proud-boys-and-other-far-right-extremists)

political violence

~~~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Are They Dangerous? Yes.

I am increasingly concerned by the people who are protesting the quarantine. They are, well, troubling...not because I disagree with their position (which I do) but because of the fury with which they state it.

Twice now, first in Kentucky and now Michigan, anti-quarantine protesters have entered their states’ capitols with their guns in tow. Once there, they were confrontational to the say the least.

Take a look at the images below, which come from Mr. Dan Zak’s Facebook page. Look at them closely, particularly the one of the man yelling at the policeman. Look at the hatred and rage in that face.

It has always been clear, of course, that there is a great deal more going on here than just objections to the shelter-in-place policy. The fact that the protests are being funded and organized at least partly by far right wing organizations, and that the protestors have somehow conflated their opposition to shelter-in-place policies with the Second Amendment (as though a virus cares about the Constitution, or anything, for that matter, beyond infecting cells), and that the demonstrations have taken on an anti-media and anti-foreigner tinge (“Go To China!”) show that a variety of dissatisfactions are being aired here.

But, that said, I can’t look at these faces and not think that at least some of these people seem to really, and truly want to kill somebody. And that’s all.  They just want to kill somebody. And they just want someone to give them a reason to do it.  


And that’s scary.

At the Michigan capitol building today in Lansing. Photos by Jeff Kowalsky (AFP via Getty) pic.twitter.com/Zf1QdypnNr

— Dan Zak (@MrDanZak) April 30, 2020

Mnuchin is shocked, so shocked

So I read in the Washington Post the other day that Steven Mnuchin was appalled that the The Los Angeles Lakers, a multi-zillion dollar sports franchise, had taken a $4.6 million loan meant for small businesses, and apparently planned to keep it, thank you very much, even though the plutocrats and corporations who own the Lakers need money the way that the rest of us need tooth decay. That is, not.

And Mr. Mnuchin was aghast at their crudity and greed, particularly when their actions were helping to drain a fund that other people, genuine small business owners and employees, really need.

Yet...

Come on. This is Steven Mnuchin we’re talking about. Multimillionaire. Guy who made his money doing pretty questionable things in the subprime mortgage market. And who has been a champion of unrestrained capitalism, neo-liberalism, and drowning the government in a bathtub for his whole professional life.

And now he’s freaked out by other people’s greed?

So, Mr. Mnuchin...let’s be real here. You’re right to be appalled. But this is the world you helped create, both during and before your time in the White House. This is the society you worked for. This is the code of behavior which was your own and which you have preached to the rest of us for so very, very long.

And now you’re appalled?

There is a certain irony in that, don’t you think?

Steve Mnuchin Contemplates The Universe He Helped Create

~~~


About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Niles On Covid-19 Protestors

I am a great fan of the Frasier sitcom, though my favorite characters are actually the supporting ones -- Niles and Daphne in particular.

So I was really tickled to see this on the Frasier Reddit group.

What people say when disobeying the state shelter-in-place order: “oh pish, it can’t be a crime if it’s catered” from r/Frasier

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How Trump & Fantasy Scr@wed Us

Powerful article on Politico's site, Inside America’s 2-Decade Failure to Prepare for Coronavirus, by Dan Diamond. In it, Mr. Diamond looks at how we were warned that something like Covid-19 was coming, but the prophets were often heeded only late in the game...or not all. When Mike Leavitt, Bush's secretary of health urged Americans to prepare for Bird Flu, everyone from Right Wing pundits to late show TV hosts --among them Jay Leno-- joined in a merry game of mocking him and his "alarmist" warnings.

However, until recently, Presidents did tend to pay at least some attention to their medical experts. Trump is another matter entirely. For him, science was entirely subordinate to the fantasy he wished to project upon the universe. (Not that the Left has any business being smug on that score. After all, postmodernism--which is widely believed on the Left-- has spent several decades assuring itself and others that "reality is socially created." Tell that to someone dying for lack of a ventilator.)

But, now, Trump and his fantasist enablers, and all those billionaires who were certain that everything would be fine if we just drowned government in the bathtub, have run into a situation in which no amount of fantasy can trump (sorry) reality, and in which a government small enough to drown in a bathtub is also one which cannot protect us from serious threat of death and economic depression.

So, for heaven's sake, let us vote Trump out of office, and let us make certain that nothing like him returns there, and let us (maybe most important of all) pay more attention in future to people like Mike Leavitt and less to people like Jay Leno.

After all, the lives we save may be our own.

Pay Attention

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

I love this article...and this company

I love this article in the Washington Post, and the company, and the whole concept. This is how it should be done.

I mean, think of it, a brilliant collaboration between small business, labor unions, and state and local authorities...

Now, why can't Washington be like this?

Oh, right. tRump. Sorry. Stupid of me.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/15/how-our-factory-went-making-hoodies-manufacturing-ppe/

How it should be done...

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

Drowning Governments, Killing People

There was a powerful piece over on the Washington Post’s website the other day. “When you drown the government in the bathtub, people die,” by Dana Milbank. In it, Milbank writes that for twenty-years he has been expecting a major and deadly pandemic to strike the world. In fact, he has devoted a good part of his career to warning the Powers That Be that such a thing was going to happen eventually and urging them to get ready.

And, for a while, it seemed the governments of the world were listening. In the United States, both the George W. Bush and the Obama Administrations made preparations for something awful to happened, and put defenses into place.

But, then, we got the Small Government movement. This is the idea that government should be as small and powerless as possible. (Mr. Milbank takes his title from a famous quote by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist  who once said that he wanted a government that was so small he could “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”)

In theory, the idea behind this Libertarian, or perhaps pseudo-Libertarian theory of administration is that “less government means more freedom.” The reality is that it just transfers power from a government to a small class of wealthy men and women who no longer have any restraints on their behavior.

But, be that as it may, we had in Donald Trump the small government advocate par excellence, and we got a government that was indeed small...and which could not react to a major disaster. It might not be yet possible to the drown government in a bathtub, but thousands of Americans did drown...as their lungs fill with the fluids and debris that come with late-stage Covid-19.

As I say, this is a powerful piece. If you haven’t read it, give it a glance.

And then ask what you can do to prevent such a horror from happening again.

Answer? Vote, and vote blue.

Whatever you do and no matter who.

Vote: The Life You Save May Be Your Own

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Max Boot On Why Republicans Must Endorse Biden

Here's an fascinating piece. Max Boot, one of the more amazing of the conservatives who have decided that Trump is toxic waste, is writing in the Washington Post that if you're a Republican and if you're honorable, then you must endorse Biden.

In a word, whoa.

But good for you, Mr. Boot. Well said.

You know who...

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

Trump is a danger to the nation

Note: I have been writing and rewriting this piece over the past few hours. Originally, I just planned to talk about the oh-so-spontaneous protests that oh-so-mysteriously sprung up in several states attacking the shelter-in-place orders. This is what I wrote:

I read recently about the groups of people who suddenly appeared to protest the stay-at-home orders in their states. Michigan, Kentucky, North Caroline, etc., all yadnsuch gatherings.

What interests me about them is not the rightness or wrongness of their cause but rather that they have several odd characteristics. First, they all came out of nowhere. Second, the protestors were often surprisingly furious. News pictures show faces absolutely contorted with rage. Third, at least some came armed, with some rather fearsome weaponry. Fourth, all of the protests were marked by people wearing MAGA hats,  flying Trump signs, and otherwise stating their loyalty to the Trumpian branch of the GOP. Fifth, and lastly, at least some of the protestors demonstrated links to far right-wing organizations.

All of which makes me suspect that the real intent of the gatherings was not to protest shelter-in-place orders, but rather to say “fuck you, libtard,” to the whole wide world, and to support Trump in the process.

Which brings up a question. Exactly how spontaneous were these protests? How local? And might they really have been organized elsewhere, under the command of other men and women...

Say in the White House itself?

Okay, so far so good. But then this morning, I discovered that, yes, indeed, there was evidence linking none other than Betsy DeVos to the protests. So, I added this:
So there have been developments in the case of the mysteriously “spontaneous” demonstrations in several states against stay-at-home orders. It seems that, at least in the case of Michigan, there were, indeed, other hands involved. A group affiliated with Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education (who has devoted her life to shutting down public schools) was heavily involved with the demonstrations, and may have helped create them in the first place.

In other words, once again...

Evil reaches out from the Trump’s White House to infect the world.

You’d think I’d be at an end here, wouldn’t you? But, no, by this afternoon, I learned that Trump himself had been tweeting encouragement to the demonstrators, sending them tweets like “LIBERATE Kentucky” and “LIBERATE Michigan.” Meaning that Trump was involved in the affair up this beady little eye-balls. So, I added this:


Now we’ve learned that Trump was, in fact, behind the the protests. In fact, he was tweeting the protestors things that sound a bit like inducements to violence. And given that some of those people were heavily armed...

Well...

Doesn’t this all sound a bit like treason?

sources:

‘You Have to Disobey’: Protesters Gather to Defy Stay-at-Home Orders, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/coronavirus-rules-protests.html

Armed protesters demand an end to Michigan's coronavirus lockdown orders, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2020/apr/16/armed-protesters-demand-an-end-to-michigans-coronavirus-lockdown-orders-video

Trump Supporters Protest Shutdowns And People Say It Looks Like A Zombie Movie, Huffpost, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shutdown-protest-zombie-movie_n_5e97c9f6c5b6ead14007841e


“Conservative group linked to DeVos family organizes protest of coronavirus restrictions in Michigan,” Salon, https://www.salon.com/2020/04/16/conservative-grouplinked-to-devos-familyorganizes-protest-of-coronavirus-restrictions-in-michigan/


“The Usual Suspects, Including Betsy DeVos, Behind Michigan ProtestsWe saw right-wing groups fund the Tea Party protests, and now we're seeing it again.” Crooks & Liars, https://crooksandliars.com/2020/04/usual-suspects-are-behind-michigan


In Trump's 'LIBERATE' tweets, extremists see a call to arms, NBCNews, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/trump-s-liberate-tweets-extremists-see-call-arms-n1186561

He is destroying us.

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Convid Conway

So I read the other day that Trump spokes-creature Kellyanne Conway defended her master and attacked the medical authorities and doctors who dared to disagree with the Orange One by saying that Covid-19 was a late-comer. If there was a Covid-19 then there must also have been a Covid-18, and -17, and -16, and finally all the way back to Covid-1.

Which meant, she implied, that the medical and scientific establishment must have been asleep when those other diseases came along, and now it was up to our brave and heroic (albeit pumpkin colored) Father & Teacher, from whom God takes instruction once a day, to step up and save us all.

The problem? There was no Covid-18, -17 -16, etc. The 19 in Covid-19 stands for 2019, which is when the disease was discovered. Meaning, either she is dumb as a brick or she was casting about for a lie to tell the public in the service of Dear Leader tRump. And, you know, I doubt that she is an idiot.

Of course, falsehoods are something we’ve come to expect from anyone in the Trump Administration. But, I’d submit that this is of a different order than what we’ve heard from Ms. Conway before. This is genuinely dangerous. This is the kind of statement that could get people killed.  Once you begin to cast on doubt science, and medical science at that, then you begin to encourage people to not take the kind of measures that will protect them.

Or, to put it all the another way, when you begin to behave like Trump, who has repeatedly attacked science in tweet after tweet, press conference after press conference...

You become guilty of great and deadly sins.

So let me repeat...

For God’s sake, for all our sakes, vote in 2020.

And vote blue, whatever you do.

Trump And Covid-29

~~~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

Blood and Dragons (and antibodies)

This is less a political essay than a diary entry. But, here goes.

I may...repeat may...have had Covid-19 already. May not have. But may.

Way back in early February, I and everyone in my family came down with what seemed to be a very bad flu or cold. I had fever, a wracking cough, and, most of all, extreme fatigue. And I mean extreme. I spent something like two weeks doing very little more than laying on the sofa and trying hard just to keep my eyes open. (Didn’t need to self-isolate because I basically...er, ah...didn’t move.)

I and everyone in my family sought professional medical help. But, as I say, this was in February. Covid-19 was just starting to become a problem in the USA. We hadn’t recently traveled anywhere overseas at that time. We hadn’t been in the company of anyone who had. So, not even our very competent medical advisors thought of coronavirus. And even if they had, there were no test kits available.

Anyway, after a month of feeling pretty awful, we were all up and running again. By that time, of course, Covid-19 was everywhere and I began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, we had had the virus and didn’t know it.

If so, then I would have the antibodies to the virus already in my blood stream. And, if that were true, then I could donate blood for use in what’s called “convalescent plasma therapy.” I hadn’t run across the term before, but as I understand it, you take blood from someone who has already recovered from a disease and inject it into someone who is still sick. The antibodies in the donor blood then go zap the bad guy viroids. (If you’re interested, here is an article on the topic.)

I would love to be able to do this. It would be so terribly cool. Sort of like being a reverse vampire. You give blood, and maybe life, rather than take it.

So, I set out to find out how I could sign up to be a convalescent plasma donor. Turns out that’s easier said than done, just yet. Several organizations are gearing up to start taking serum donations. Among the places I’ve found doing so are the Red Cross and, in my own locality, We Are Blood.

The kicker is that you need to be able to prove that you have the antibodies in your blood stream. At the moment, the sort of test required...an coronavirus antibody titer test (I’m not making that up)... is available in only a few places. And one of those places is not (alas) Texas. So, looks like I’m out of the game for a while. Though I’m hoping to get off the bench just as soon as tests show up here in the Austin-area.

Give A Gift Of Life

But if you’re interested in being a serum donor, check and see if the Covid-19 titer test is available in your neck of the woods. It would be very, very cool if we could organize a platoon of donors to be of serum service!

So when you get a moment, hop on over to Google or DuckDuckGo or where-ever and do a search for “Coronavirus titer test near me.” If you’re lucky, test kits will be available, and you’ll soon be able to start helping save lives.

In the meantime, I’ve set up an appointment to give blood in the near future -- or, more specifically, to donate platelets, which have to do with things like healing.  I’m AB+, a fairly rare group, and it turns out that us AB-babies are in demand for both platelet and plasma donations.

So, that’s pretty cool, too. And if you can’t get a Covid-19 titer test, consider just giving blood, or platelets or “double red” or whatever. 

It’s a way of being on the side of the angels, and of pissing off the Grim Reaper, at a time when so many angels and their supporters are needed...and there is way too much Death to deal with.

Onward and upward.

mjt 

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Masks Are Marvelous

So I thought I would post a link to this story, “Simple DIY masks could help flatten the curve. We should all wear them in public” by Jeremy Howard, which recently appeared in the Washington Post. It is important, because there have been some snotty articles appearing in the press lately about how Do It Yourself face masks are worse than useless and you ought to just stop trying to make or use them.

Except...that isn’t exactly true. Yes, it is accurate to say that a DIY mask can’t take the place of a hospital grade N95 mask. But, medical professionals can wear a cloth mask over an N95 and thus extend its useful life span.

Also, just because a DIY mask isn’t hospital-grade, that doesn’t mean it’s useless. As Howard notes, outside a medical facility, in public, DIY masks can do a great deal to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and other diseases. “Studies have documented definitively that in controlled environments like airplanes, people with masks rarely infect others and rarely become infected themselves,” he says, “while those without masks more easily infect others or become infected themselves.”

So, if you’re making cloth masks for others, or if you’re wearing one to go to the store or wherever, don’t stop. You could actually be saving lives...including, maybe, your own. 

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Please Don’t WIC It Away

Okay, this one is quick but urgent. Martha just pointed out to me this piece by Marissa Higgins on DailyKos, “The real reason to leave WIC-eligible grocery items on the shelf as you stock up amid coronavirus.”

WIC, of course, is the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Ms. Higgins further defines it as, “a federal program for low-income women with children under 5 years old. WIC generally covers eggs, milk, fortified foods, peanut butter, beans, tofu, fruits, vegetables, canned fish, and more. Women who don’t breastfeed are able to receive iron-fortified infant formula. People can also use WIC assistance at participating farmers’ markets to buy fresh produce.”

Which is all to say that it very, very important. For a lot of people, particularly children, it determines whether they have anything to eat...of not.

The kicker? WIC approved products are disappearing from grocery stores, along with everything else that people can scoop up in an age of panic buying. That means that those WIC approved items may not be available for people who really, really need them.

So, suggests Higgins, if you see the WIC symbol on a product, or see that it is “WIC approved,” and you aren’t yourself in the WIC program, consider putting it back. Someone else may very well need it more than you.

And that someone could be a baby...

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Government Isn’t Like A Business (you idiot!)

Fascinating piece on the Brookings Institute site this week, “Trump’s failed presidency” by Elaine Kamarck. In it, the talented Dr. Kamarck looks at the Trump administration and asks why it is coming apart so spectacularly.

Her answer? Well, you know how high-powered business executives and corporate CEOs and Hedge Fund managers will so often say that government would work “if only you ran it like a business?” Trump and his enablers believe that dictum as an article of faith. They want a government that would be efficient, profitable, and most of all, small enough “to drown in a bathtub.”

The kicker? Government isn’t like a business.  In particular, says Kamarck, a government has to be ready to deal with the unexpected. A government, she says, “...is in the business of preparing for low-probability events.” Things, that is, like wars, natural disasters, and, now, pandemics.

And in preparing for those-low probability but high-risk events, the Trump Administration has, she notes, “been especially inept ... from the beginning.” As a result, we have a modern plague that could have been prevented, or at least mitigated, but which wasn’t, because Trump et al never suspected it would actually happen.

The long-term take-away, I think, from Dr. Kamarck’s article, and from the Trump Administration in general, is that the run-the-government-like-a-business crowd is dangerous...every bit as dangerous as coronavirus itself.

For those who believe in such maxims, and who would put them into practice, suffer from too deep a faith in their own omni-competence.

Or to put it another way...from hubris.

Which goes before a fall, and makes the tragedy all too Greek.

~~~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.