Reuters: United States could become coronavirus epicenter: WHO Making America Great Again!
The Man Who Saw The Pandemic Coming by Nautilus is a great article. I’ve been writing about the lessons we should learn from COVID-19, the biggest of which is that we are all connected such that a virus on the other side of the globe can find it’s way to you in the United States. At the heart of this is putting our heads in the sand in the name of “America First,” which is the same mentality that existed prior to World War II and lead to World War II. As memories of the atrocities that occurred during during World War II fade we have been moving back in to an isolationist shell that puts all our lives in danger. Just because you don’t like the implications of this does not mean ignoring will cause it to go away. It’s time to wake up, put on our big boy and girl pants and deal with reality.
Second, governments and society by and large are governed by inertia. We don’t change and adapt and evolve very quickly. And we’re barely cognizant as a global society that the world we’re living in today is fundamentally different than the world our species has ever lived in. You know that old saw that if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will leap out. But if you take that same frog and put it in a pot of ambient water and slowly crank up the temperature, it will stay in that water and boil to death. It loses perspective on the changing environment around it. We’re that frog in the ambient water. We’re oblivious to the conditions that have enabled zoonotic viruses to become integrated into us.
The federal government’s response to COVID-19 makes total sense given that it’s currently lead by people who don’t believe in federal government. Another lesson we should learn from what we are going through is that there is a legitimate need for a federal government.
Right now your best chance at survival depends on how the governor of the state you live in is leading the response. It’s as if after Pearl Harbor we left it to the governor of Hawaii to deal with the response.
This in the United States of America.
Still think we are making America great?
Remember all those claims that with socialized medicine will come death panels? We do not have socialized medicine right now but the defacto death panels are coming.
Last I looked it was state governors making orders to shelter at home, not POTUS, so if Trump says we all can go back to normal next week, does that really matter?
Perhaps the most important lesson we all should learn from COVID-19 is that we are all connected. Even something as small as a tiny virus on the otherside of the globe can affect you, and thus we can no longer think and act like we are on an island. You might not be sick, and you might not have COVID-19, but we all need you to stay home and do your part because what you do matters to everyone. If you truly believe that “all lives matter” now is the time to act on that belief.
I don’t understand why people are dying, but I can follow the person who gives me a pattern for life.
From the Washington Post:
The cases coming into hospitals now are patients who were infected a week ago, and if communities wait until the hospitals are full to start their self-isolation, she said, “next week’s patients won’t have anywhere to go.”
Looking at the Michigan county map of COVID-19 cases, and to me it looks to follow along the I-75 corridor.
Something for Republicans to think about, Donald Trump could have easily assured his re-election had he taken action to prepare for and respond to the COVID-19 crisis in January. His view of the world in which everything negative is an attack on him personally prevented him from seizing an opportunity true leaders would have ran toward. You have had plenty opportunities to learn about the failures of leadership, such as how George W. Bush handled Katrina and the 2008 Financial Crisis or how Herbert Hoover handled the Great Depression.
“What American pundits misunderstand when they brandish “market choice” as a weapon against social welfare, then, is that the social safety net does not extinguish human freedom but instead acts as its very condition of possibility (philosophers have called this the distinction between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom). Indeed, the best safeguard against the novel coronavirus is the ability to voluntarily withdraw oneself from capitalism. Therein lies the problem.”
Industries that employ hourly labor make up the majority of capitalism in the United States, and most of the jobs these people fill cannot be done from home. If these people don’t get paid, they don’t have the freedom to buy. One of the main reasons for the drops in the stock market is the decrease in consumption of items being sold, not because products cannot be produced.
“Chinese Virus,” World Market via Instapaper
“Such dynamics expose a basic absurdity at the heart of our global society. It is not a system aimed at satisfying our desires and needs, at providing humans with greater amounts of physical utility. It is instead governed by impersonal pressures to turn goods into value, to constantly make, sell, buy, and consume commodities in an endless spiral.”
“Given this irrational social system of organizing wealth and value, it is no wonder that so many societies have found it impossible to contain the coronavirus by asking citizens to limit commercial activity.”
“Chinese Virus,” World Market via Instapaper
[The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What’s Coming - WIRED](https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-interview-larry-brilliant- smallpox-epidemiologist/?utm_campaign=custom_feed_subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nuzzel)
“Now that we’ve missed the opportunity for early testing, is it too late for testing to make a difference?
Absolutely not. Tests would make a measurable difference. We should be doing a stochastic process random probability sample of the country to find out where the hell the virus really is. Because we don’t know.”
This is what Republican leadership looks like. Through in how Rick Snyder handled Flint, Michigan and Donald Trump is handling COVID-19.
The number of positive test results in Michigan has jumped to 110.
I’ve learned that someone I know personally has been diagnosed as presumed to have COVID-19, they are waiting on the test results.
Today we learned of the first resident in Michigan who has died from COVID-19. The number of positive test results in Michigan has increased to 80.
Peregrine falcons have an egg at the Detroit Zoo water tower.
Hannah Arendt made [the comment that follows](Hannah Arendt made the comments that follow in 1974 during an interview with the French writer Roger Errera.) in 1974 during an interview with the French writer Roger Errera.
The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. (Emphasis added)
Consider for a moment why the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution restricts the U.S. Government from preventing a free press and from instituting a national religion. National religions and state run press were two tools of tyranny during the 17th and 18th centuries and why the founders felt important to retrict the U.S. Government access to those tools. Unfortunately, I think the far right has found a loophole to the process.