Today’s read is from the king of the lists, John Hawkins.
His grouping of five includes “We’re all snowflakes now. …we’re looking awfully soft as a society.”
Month: April 2020
She’s from Illinois. She’s an attorney. And she’s really sharp.
I stumbled across the following from a Facebook friend of Jennifer’s. The comments are those of Melissa Maye who lives in Yorkville, Illinois. Maybe has her own law office. Good stuff ahead.
In what universe is a virus that has a 99% survival rate a “pandemic”?
What I want to know is: what about all the OTHER people who are facing medical conditions that are not Covid-related? What about that person who can’t get a hip replacement and has been in excrutiating pain for the past five weeks? Or that woman who can’t get a mammogram, even though she’s found a suspicious lump? Or that guy who can’t get a pacemaker or a stent who’s facing dying from a sudden cardiac event? What about that diabetic who just realized he’s been trailing blood across the carpet because he has a wound on his foot that isn’t healing? What about those people who can’t get psychiatric treatment while they are isolated and facing losing their homes and businesses?
Don’t THEIR lives matter???
I read an article recently about a guy who called the police, asking if he should report a group of teenagers who were playing volleyball.
Seriously?
If you are the type of person who has to ask permission from the government to snitch on your neighbors, you don’t deserve liberty.
NY NJ MA PA CA MI IL LA CT MD:
Population: 104.8 million
Covid Cases: 571,161
Covid Deaths: 34,626
TX FL OH AZ TN IN MO SC AL OK:
Population: 103.1 million
Covid Cases: 97,150
Covid Deaths: 2,626
Dr. Ngozi Ezike, head of the Illinois Department of Health, reported on April 19, 2020, that the 1,290 reported deaths were based upon a “very simplistic” death calculation, “which means that if an individual dies “with” Covid-19, the State reports that the person died “of” Covid-19. Dr. Ezike explained that “Even if you died of a clear alternative death, [you] would still be listed as a Covid death.” She went on to explain “Everyone [sic] who was listed as a Covid death doesn’t mean that was the cause of death.””
Clearly, the only inference we can draw from the above data is that people who live in GOP-run states have stronger immune systems than people who live in Democrat-controlled states.
You have the same chance of dying from covid-19 as from dying in a terrorist attack.
All death is 100% for the person who dies. This is called “reality,” and the fact is, nobody gets out of this life alive.
It is both cruel and fundamentally dishonest to take a picture of a garden lizard, call it Godzilla, and convince everyone that it is proof that we’re all going to die a horrible, choking, lonely death.
I listened. I self-quarantined. I gave them the benefit of the doubt. But the fat emperor has no clothes and he has shown us all his true colors. It was not about health. It was not about safety. It was about power, fear, control, and money.
Their credibility has been shot in the ass for the last time. I, for one, will never trust the media or the government’s pencil-necked geeks, so-called “experts,” and policy wonks ever again.
In 1966 Dr. Anthony Fauci graduated first in his class with a medical degree (laudable.)
In 1968 he accepted a job working for the National Institute of Health (commendable).
In 1985, he became the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (impressive).
He’s been an advisor to every president, Republican or Democrat, since Ronald Reagan was in office (admirable).
Look, no one is saying he’s not smart. But he’s an ivory tower bureaucrat. This guy hasn’t seen an actual patient since Lyndon B. Johnson was president. We need to hear from young guys, ER docs, who are on the line, fighting this disease with actual patients. You know what they will tell you?
Go outside. Have a beer with your friends. Eat some dirt.
Where is the science that says it’s okay to go to Home Depot but not okay to go to your hair salon? Where is the science that says it’s okay to go to Costco but not okay to go to a restaurant for lunch?
Something is behind the decisions made in this pseudo-lockdown, but I guaran-damn-tee you it’s not “science.”
Just give us the news
If I know the TV people I bet they just hate doing this.
This one’s from Channel 4. Nowhere near as annoying as sickening Channel 58.
Friday is May Day
I’m all for it.
Today’s highly interesting read (04/29/20): Governors Are Protecting Prisoners from COVID-19 With No Regard for Citizens
There’s a tremendous push to release prisoners due to the coronavirus.
CNN, not surprisingly, published a puff piece sympathetic to those poor prisoners in Wisconsin.
Last month WI Governor Tony Evers stopped all new admissions into Wisconsin’s prisons in an attempt to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. Meanwhuile he didn’t just maintain he extended his stranglehold on Wisconsin’s economy, virtually killing the ability of small businesses to survive.
That brings us to today’s read from columnist John Dempsey. Please rwad this clip before clicking further down for the entire column to get the full context and information.t
Where is the justification for releasing felons “for their safety” who have not satisfied their sentences back into society? The answer is simple: there is not a reason.
There are not enormities in prisoner deaths due to the coronavirus. If anything, we see they are less affected by the illness.
Today’s highly interesting read (04/28/20): The paranoid style in COVID-19 America
Photo: The Milwaukee Independent
Today’s read is from one of my favorites: Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of “The Diversity Delusion.”
As usual, the obligatory tease before we link to the entire column that you should read from stat to finish:
The public health establishment is fighting desperately to maintain this degree of hysteria in the populace, in order to prolong its newfound power over almost every aspect of American life.
Death will erupt if the lockdowns are lifted, the experts warn every few minutes on the cable news networks, to the angry approbation of the anchors. ‘It’s going to backfire,’ Dr Anthony Fauci warned on April 20. Even as evidence keeps mounting that the virus is magnitudes less deadly than was advertised, the public health professionals are hardening their economy-killing prescriptions, rather than loosening them. David Kessler, a former head of the FDA, claims that Americans will need to eliminate two-thirds of their social contacts for a year or more until a vaccine is developed. The federal government should commandeer private factories to produce the millions of test kits that will be required on a daily basis before anyone can be ‘fully free’, he says.
To cancel most of the country’s economy for a problem, however tragic, that is highly localized was a devastating policy blunder that must be immediately corrected.
There’s more. Please check it out.
MacIver Institute
Do you see the irony…
In this photo?
Good question
Just where is the American flag on the outside of the state Capitol building in Madison these days?
Now let’s get our parks and playgrounds back
Thirty-four (34) closed Wisconsin state parks and recreational areas will reopen Friday, but their bathrooms will remain closed to try to prevent the spread of the coronavirus by limiting enclosed spaces where the disease could be more easily transmitted.
Gov. Tony Evers had closed 38 parks and recreational areas on April 10. Evers says numerous changes including reducing park hours, temporarily closing some of the most popular parks if they become overcrowded and keeping the bathrooms closed will make state parks safe to re-open.
Playgrounds are still closed under the extended stay-at-home order.
All Franklin playgrounds have been closed since March 22nd. Playground equipment should not be used at this time. Park green spaces and trails can still be used, but the city of Franklin has asked people to practice social distancing, keeping at least 6 feet between others. Kayla’s Playground in Franklin now sits idle. Even before the shutdown bathrooms were cleaned only once per day and were not guaranteed to be sanitized or stocked.
Progress is being made and it would be beneficial to the public to get local playgrounds and parks open once again. Even Gov. Evers concedes, “Outdoor recreation is important for both physical and mental health, and I know how important it is to Wisconsinites to get outside and enjoy Wisconsin’s natural resources and spring weather.”
According to freelance journalist and researcher John Surico parks play a more significant role. They’re lifesavers.
Surico recently wrote on CityLab:
“…parks have become stages for collective joy, anxiety, and social-distancing infringement crackdowns. The multiplicity of benefits parks have always offered us — physical and mental health relief, community building, and free public open space in tight, increasingly privatized urban quarters — seem not only like an added bonus right now, but rather, a critical lifeline for cities and their residents.”
Surico’s focus may be specifically on larger cities, but he raises the general issue of reawaken interest in parks and open spaces, as he calls for a more robust effort to support parks that doesn’t include a significant burden on taxpayers.
That’s long-term planning I could get behind. But for now I’d like the locks on parks and playgrounds removed ASAP.
UPDATE: Today’s highly interesting read (04/27/20): Assuming a fetal position and failing to live one’s life
The update:
Some reactions to the blog on Facebook:
That was an outstanding column. It articulated what I was feeling today but did not have the words to say what was on my mind. I stopped by school to pick up some things from my classroom. I stood alone in a silent music room that should have been filled with students. I saw all the instruments they love to play. My classes are all about making music together, improvising and creating and never knowing quite what is going to happen. Sometimes it sounds great, sometimes not so great, but it’s a living and ever changing dynamic that you just cannot get communicating with students online, all separate in their houses.
I am awesome at what I do. Not bragging, just saying that teaching elementary music is my thing and my students LOVE my class. Now that interaction and all that learning is taken from me and from them.
It is so huge a loss I’m not able to cry about it yet. It is too big. My students and I were asked to sacrifice something that was precious to us. And I am not really sure it was necessary. Those in power should damn well make sure sacrifices like that are necessary.
The article says it better than I can. But it acknowledges the magnitude of my loss and my grief and gives it dignity.
Every time someone reminds me that I need to “stay the F home” to save lives that takes away my dignity as a human being and completely disregards all my students and I have given up for others. Kids rarely get COVID.
Ruth Young, West Allis, WI
Great article! I am a retired Peds ICU nurse and chronically ill. I will not let fear enslave me! Life is fatal….😕
Jolynn Myers, Mount Horeb, WI
Once again, Ruth Young
I have been feeling that these lock downs are not so much an attack on the virus as an attack on our way of life. I kept thinking I was being irrational. Now I feel validated.
I’m a bit of a risk taker myself and I’ll admit that has bit me in the butt at times, but it definitely makes it hard for me to relate to people who are cowering in fear over this virus. I have lived such a rich and full life because I embrace risk:
I shoot fireworks professionally in the summers (not this summer.) If I were afraid of that risk I would have missed some of the best experiences of my life.
I started a new career in physical therapy in 2008 and worked per diems in places all over the state, jumping in to cover for therapists so that I might have 12 brand new patients and a new computer system plus the layout of the building to learn on the fly. If I had been too scared to possibly fail I never could have done that. And of course, working as a physical therapist assistant helping people to walk there was always the chance someone could fall. Especially when you had to back off and see if they could really do what they needed to do to be able to go home. So much risk but they couldn’t go home if someone had to be holding onto the gait belt every move they made.
I went back to teaching and taught in inner city schools before ending up in the burbs. There were no guarantees I could reach those kids and no guarantee on any day that that wasn’t the day a couple kids were going to get into a fight in my room, but I was there for them every day, come what may. If I was too risk averse I couldn’t have walked into that school to try to teach them and help them.
I’m not saying we should all act like this virus is not here and take stupid risks like all piling into Milwaukee’s city busses and ride around to see who gets Corona first.
But without at least a little tolerance for risk you just don’t have any life at all. And for me, almost every the time, the more tolerance I have for it the more amazing things happen for me.
People are literally terrified to go outside right now even though getting fresh air and sunshine is the very best thing they could do.
Other comments
“But people will die.”
Response: Life is for the living. I have a Right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness. You do you. I’ll do me.
Richard Smith
Interesting article, like politics we all take sides. While I understand many have fallen sick and have died fighting this virus, I also understand that with precautions in place we should be able to move forward with life. We did not shut the country down with HIV, SARS, Ebola or Influenza. We learned, we adapted, we grew and we moved forward.
Let’s get the “new normal” guidelines listed and move forward. (I.e. restaurants seating tables of 8 or less 6 feet apart, large gatherings will need permits, pro sports will have less seating, mass transit will need to check temps/mandate masked riders only, schools will alternate homeschooling with classroom allowing smaller class sizes…) the point is we need to move our country forward, we cannot continue to spend money recklessly without a thriving economy to support it! There has to be a happy medium….
AnKel Ro
This Just In... From Franklin, WI 