Update to Sunday’s Consequences post: From author John Scalzio in an interview for the New York Times Book section, May 17, 2020: “Maybe people might look at me askance for “Atlas Shrugged” [being on my bookshelf], since I’ve written about how Ayn Rand valorizes a genocidal sociopath in John Galt, and I think it’s a… [read more]
Consequences In One Long and Two Short Parts
Reading time – 5:36 . . . Part 1. Healthcare Wake-Up The Kaiser Family Foundation just reported that, “. . . nearly 27 million people will lose health insurance as a result of being laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Some will go on the ACA exchanges; the majority will wind up on Medicaid; and… [read more]
Rights
Reading time – 4:11; Viewing time – 6:20 . . . There are small mobs clogging our streets, attacking our state capitol buildings and protesting inside those buildings with menacing assault rifles in their hands. They are carrying Confederate flags and Nazi flags and they’re egged on by the President of the United States. They… [read more]
Here’s Why We Don’t Do Widespread Testing
Reading time – 3:50; Viewing time – 5:28 . . . We continue to bumble along, seemingly unable to develop a reliable test to use in large quantities throughout the country to fight this awful disease. It isn’t because we don’t have access to the needed resources. Here and here are reports on testing options… [read more]
Counting Just For Fun
Reading time – 97 seconds . . . I received a Trump fundraising letter today – no clue how I got on the Trump/RNC mail list. Perhaps they read these posts. Nah, not likely. This packet is like so many, in that it includes a clumsily skewed questionnaire designed to appeal to the confirmation bias… [read more]
Mom
Reading time – 4:12; Viewing time – 6:53 . . . My mother was a teen during the Great Depression and came of age during WW II. She was from that generation. Tom Brokaw dubbed it The Greatest Generation and the label stuck, this for obvious reasons. This was a generation without a sense of… [read more]
Absolute Power
Reading time – 4:36 . . . It’s plain to see that the President of the United States is, at best, severely dragging feet to deal with our national health emergency. He was warned repeatedly (over a dozen times) in his President’s Daily Briefs as far back as January that this pandemic would happen. The… [read more]
I Know You See It, Too
Reading time – 3:23 . . . The population of the United States makes up approximately 4% of the of the total world population. Yet we have managed to have 32.3% of all coronavirus cases and 26.7% of all coronavirus deaths on the planet. Even if all the illness and deaths in the New York… [read more]
American Death Rates For Your Consideration
Reading time – 2:14 . . . There continue to be comparisons made between the seasonal flu and COVID-19, with the apparent goal of decreasing our perception of the danger of this pandemic. After all, we suffer thousands of deaths every year from the seasonal flu and we don’t shut down the country. To put… [read more]
Potpourri v11.0 – The “How Can We Be This Stupid?” Edition
Reading time – 3:41 . . . Dr. Rick Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, has been kicked out of his post. Reports STAT, “Bright’s career has largely centered around vaccine and drug development. His work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focused on influenza viruses, antiviral drugs… [read more]
