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.

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.

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.

Covid-19 & The Triumph Of Trump

So I had an interesting experience today, and it involved coronavirus. No, I haven’t got it, and I don’t think I’ve been exposed to it. But I have seen the power of the fear it commands.

We had gone to a local Walmart to get a few things. We found what we needed, fortunately, but then we drifted into the aisle that was supposed to contain cleaning goods. You know of course, what we found. The shelves were utterly empty. Bleach, disinfecting wipes, antibacterial sprays...all gone. All purchased and carried away in great piles by people who will never be able to use all of it, but who fought for its possession as though their lives depended on it.

It is frightening to see such fear. To see panic in all its horrid glory.

Don’t get me wrong.   Covid-19 is dangerous, and potentially deadly -- certainly, it is a threat to those of us who are over sixty. As you know, the virus seems to be sparing the young and targeting the old. (Yes, my dear Millennials, the Universe works in mysterious ways. Your vengeance on Boomers seems to be at hand.) And certainly, it is much, much more dangerous than Trump is saying.

Yet, fear, too, is like an infection. It, too, can spread and do dreadful things in the process. Thus the panic buying...and who knows what else?...in my local store.

And, strangely enough, it is Trump who is partly responsible for the great and dangerous Fear. He is making an effort to discount the threat of coronavirus. He is saying that it is no worse than the flu, and that reports otherwise are (dreadful term) fake news.

The Triumph Of Death

But there’s the rub. Even his most ardent supporters know he is lying. In a wonderful of Orwellian doublethink, they believe and disbelieve him. They mock liberals for their fear of the virus, and yet prepare themselves for the triumph of death. Recall that many of them have been eagerly expecting the end of the world for years, and have been prepping for it all this time. How heartening it must be to feel the day is here at last.

And thus Trump does the worst that he can do. He directs his deplorables to simultaneously ignore medical advice, and to over-react.  So it is that you must stand in awe of the man. He is a quadruple threat. In one fell swoop, he establishes four distinct evils...

Fever and fear. Ignorance and arrogance.

***

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.

The Hero Li Wenliang

Note: This originally appeared on 25 Feb, 2020, on LiberalResistance.net. I reproduce it here with the kind permission of the editors. 



I continue to be fascinated (albeit with a chill fascination) the spread of coronavirus in China, and from there to the rest of the world. I shudder to think what’s coming, and hope that, somehow, the virus gets stopped before it goes any further.

So far, the only thing that I find remotely positive about the disease is that it seems to be sparing children.(1) Unlike, say, the great “Spanish” Influenza of 1918, which apparently targeted younger people, the coronavirus seems to leave the young alone, while hitting those of us who are older harder. As a grandfather, that reassures me a wee bit. At least I know that I may fall, but my granddaughter may be safe. Or at least safer.

Okay, but the other thing which interests me is China’s response to the problem. Like most authoritarian regimes, it has both advantages and disadvantages in this situation. The advantage is that it can impose strict measures (like fairly brutal quarantines) that simply wouldn’t fly in a more democratic society.

The disadvantage is that it is morbidly concerned about its image, both at home and abroad. So, it tends to shut down the flow of information about the disease, even when that censorship puts lives at risk.

Maybe the most telling example of this is in the treatment of Li Wenliang, the rather heroic doctor who tried to warn his country (and the world) about the danger, and for his efforts was arrested for spreading “alarmist” rumors — which only goes to prove just how well, alas, Henrik Ibsen knew human character, particularly at its worst.

Dr. Li died of the pandemic he tried so hard to prevent. But he did get, in a sense, his revenge. According to at least some reports, his story has spread wide and far in China, in spite of the best efforts of the authorities to control it. (Seems that disease and information are equally difficult to control.)

In fact, according to one article I saw on CNN, Dr. Li’s case has very, very seriously damaged the government’s reputation with its people. (2) Thus, by trying to control its image, the government managed to injured its image, perhaps beyond any hope of recovery.  Who knows? It might even result in a genuine crisis of legitimacy. It probably won’t bring down the government all by itself, but, in combination with other problems…

Maybe there’s a lesson there, for governments, and, indeed, for us all. One of the central premises of the Enlightenment, and science, is that the free flow of information is a good thing, and that attempts to prevent that freedom — however tempting it might be — become in the end destructive…even fatal.

The Enlightenment, and science, have not been popular of late. For both Right, and yes (let’s confess), the Left, it has seem so more much satisfying to rely instead on faith, received wisdom, “alternative facts,” and sophist mumblings about “postmodernism.”

Yet, here’s the lesson of the day, as provided by the coronavirus and the martyrdom of Dr. Li:  facts may be disruptive. They may be economically inconvenient.  They may clash with your faith. They may be politically incorrect. But …they are inescapable and immutable. And when you ignore them, they bite you.

Hard.



1) https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/11/the-coronavirus-appears-to-be-sparing-one-group-of-people-kids.html
2) https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/asia/china-doctor-death-censorship-intl-hnk/index.html

~~~

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.

The Medical Malpractice Of Rush Limbaugh

So I heard the other day that Rush Limbaugh, the radio host, has said that coronavirus is just the “common cold,” and liberals are vastly exaggerating its deadliness is a deliberate attempt to attack Donald Trump. Yet, somewhat contradictorily, he then said the virus was a thoroughly diabolical bio-weapon engineered by the Chinese. (1)

Houston, we have a problem. The disease is, or isn’t a mortal danger. Pick one.

Limbaugh’s claims are, of course, non-sense. The coronavirus isn’t the common cold. It probably isn’t a weapon. It is a real danger. It does kill people. And if the media does exaggerate its threat, then it is because scary headlines sell, not because anyone is after Trump. (Though, frankly, the media probably isn’t exaggerating the problem a whole lot. Any disease which has a mortality rate of about 2% needs to be taken very carefully.)

Oh, and special kudos, by the way, to Chelsea Clinton, who took time out of her busy schedule to call out Limbaugh. It was well done. And, unfortunately, that took courage in an age when simple truth telling is to invite abuse on a grand scale.(2)

But, anyway, this isn’t the first time that Limbaugh has spread medical misinformation. You’ll recall that he denied the dangers of smoking for years. Right up to the moment he was diagnosed with a late stage version of the disease, he was saying that there was no provable link between smoking and lung cancer. (3)

We have no way of knowing how many people continued to smoke, or took up the practice, because they heard Limbaugh say it wasn’t a problem. But we can guess that many did. And of those, many, many have suffered because of it, or will suffer in future.

Now, he has said that coronavirus is no danger.  That is a case where he may not have negatively impacted individual behavior -- no one is going and deliberately expose themselves to coronavirus because he told them to -- but it could be problematic to us all, anyway. If his audience believes him, then its members could work against the policies and individuals who could mitigate the spread and danger of the disease. Does the CDC say we have a problem and must take countermeasures? Nonsense. Fake news. The alarmist lies of libtard Eastern Elites...

And recall, already, Limbugh’s hero, Donald Trump, has done much to defund the very organizations -- like the CDC -- which could have helped stop or at least slowed coronavirus while there was still time. Trump and his administration should receive no support in continuing that policy.

My point? I have always, always been a proponent of unlimited free speech. I have always thought that people should be able to say whatever they damn well pleased. If what they said was false, well, eventually that would proven by public debate and experimentation.

This is different. This is telling millions upon millions of listeners that they may ...indeed, should! ...endanger their lives, and ours. This rates up there with Alex Jones’ Sandy Hook conspiracy theories (and, in the process, encouraging gun rights lunatics, to stalk and threaten the parents of slain children). It rates up there as well with anti-Vaxxers proselytizing dubious theories of autism, and encouraging parents to endanger their children by not having them vaccinated. 

It is, in other words, a genuine public health care risk, and should be treated as such. There should be--and it pains me to say this--some sort of consequence for people who willingly spread health care falsehoods which could all too easily threaten the entire society.

Or, at the very least, we should have legions of fact checkers -- like Ms. Clinton -- who are willing and able to oppose lies and outright ignorance, and who would be protected afterwards.

Otherwise we are left at the mercy of plagues...

Whether those spread by insects, or foul water, or contact...

Or by men and women with access to microphones, and no restraint of conscience.


***

Two updates.

First, since I wrote this, I learned that Donald Trump has, indeed, begun to say things that sound very much as if they were taken from the Limbaugh play book (4)

Second, somehow I missed the fact that Rush Limbaugh lost his hearing a while back. I didn’t know it until I saw photos of him with cochlear implants.

The other thing I didn’t realize is why he became deaf. It hasn’t been proven, but there is some well-informed speculation that it was caused by his overuse of prescription pain killers.(5) In other words, he may have deafened himself, just as his constant recourse to cigars may have caused his lung cancer.

There is something terribly metaphoric in that.




Sources

1. https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/rush-limbaugh-coronavirus-trump-023911730.html?.tsrc=daily_mail&uh_test=1_04
2. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/484603-chelsea-clinton-rips-limbaugh-for-peddling-fake-news
3. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rush-limbaugh-nicotine-addictive/
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/25/white-house-struggles-contain-public-alarm-over-coronavirus-despite-panic/
5.https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=128270&page=1

~~~

Want a free book? Check out With Luther, Tourists, and God in Santa Fe. It's partly a travel log and partly a meditation on people who actually make a difference in life.

Oh, and it is lavishly illustrated by yours truly.

It’s on Gumroad as a PDF about 52 pages long.

How to download: look at the image of the book and the text below. Scroll down until you see the words “Name A Fair Price.” In the blank space below that, type “0” — that is, a zero, because the book is free. Then click on the button below that which is marked “I want this!” After that, you should be given the option of either downloading the book and reading it at your leisure, or reading it on the Gumroad site. Either way, I hope you enjoy it!

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