Tag: Pandemic

Government, Health

Let Me Say It Louder

The administration is indicating that there’s an updated covid vaccine about to come out and we should all get boosted. Additionally, there’s lots of talk about mask mandates making a comeback. The appropriate answer to both of these is not just no, but HELL NO. We’re not going down that road again.

The vaccine/mask thing is one of the things I’m really angry at myself for. In the beginning I was all-in for the vaccine. I praised President Trump for finding a way to test in parallel to accelerate the release of the vaccine. I believed in our health agencies and in science. As an RN, I honestly believed the CDC, NIH, and WHO all had the best interests of public in mind. After all, they were scientists and healthcare professionals, right?

When the vaccine was just about to be released for frontline workers, I talked to one of our neurologists about it. He felt very confident in its safety and how they went about testing it. I was all in. I’d already been working the covid floors every week, so having an additional layer of protection seemed appropriate. I got the shot the first week it came out for healthcare workers.

When masks were mandated for workers in the hospital, we were in the midst of the supply chain crisis and zero masks were available. We were issued one mask every three days. Wearing the same mask for a 12+ hour shift was gross. It was downright nasty to wear it for two more days. It was quickly obvious that forcing us to wear masks was for show only. Most of us let them dangle around our ears or kept them pulled down to our chins and we’d quickly pull them up if hospital administrators walked around.

Note: working the covid floors was different – we wore proper fit-tested N95’s, face shield, and used good PPE don/doff procedures when in a room with a covid patient. After all, we’d been working in rooms with highly contagious and airborne diseases for years prior to covid. This was not new for us. I did not know of a single nurse that contracted covid from a patient.

Soon, the mask thing in the public got crazy. The administration and Fauci were pushing “masking” like it was the holy grail that was going to save us from the pandemic. It still boggles my mind that people actually thought wearing some sort of nasty bandana around their face was really doing anything. I’d go hiking and get yelled at because I wasn’t wearing a mask. As a society we collectively lost our minds.

Here’s the part that makes me mad at myself. I went along to get along. I was already being forced to wear a mask by my employer to keep my job. I wanted to go to the grocery store, Costco, get on an airplane, etc… it was easier to just wear the mask than make a big stink.

I called myself a Contrarian. I was sure I’d be the one to resist government overreach and public hysteria. Nope. I folded like a wet blanket. It was easier to just comply so I could participate in society. So much for principles.

Meanwhile, the vaccines weren’t working. In fact, we made things worse by forcing a non sterilizing vaccine on the public and thwarting any sort of herd immunity. And then the side effects and health problems started arising from the shot. My hospital was firing any RN’s who refused to take it. Many of the nurses let go were younger women concerned about long term, unknown reproductive health questions. Keep in mind, we were desperately in need of nurses. At the time we were surviving only with government FEMA nurses and travel RN’s. The hospital administration thought firing nurses who refused the vaccine was the right thing to do… forgetting that they had no problem sending us in to work the covid floors pre-vaccine and with reused PPE and masks.

The long term damage the federal and local administrations did to the reputations of the scientific and health communities is incalculable. I no longer have any faith in anything the CDC or NIH says about anything. Sadly, I will question the efficacy of most new medical/pharmacology “breakthroughs” moving forward. The profit over safety pipeline has become crystal clear.

But more than anything, I’m frightened how easily all of us just went along with something so we could fit in to society. I knew masks were stupid and pointless, yet I did it anyway so I could go to Starbucks. We are sheep. It shows how easily we’ll give up our freedoms for the illusion of a little safety. That scares me.

So, you can take your mask and shove it where the sun don’t shine. I will not comply.

Government, Politics

You Don’t Need To Know

While there may be some exceptions, for the most part I don’t believe people in power are inherently evil. I honestly don’t think politicians and CEO’s have malicious intentions. I do think that people in power become so wrapped up in their own bubble and authority they lose sight of the big picture.

For example, take the mayor of my little city. At the beginning of the pandemic, public officials were panicking. For that I don’t blame them. The “experts” were publishing dire information and basically we were all going to die. Our mayor never actually made any tough decisions, only echoed whatever the state and CDC did. Three or so weeks after shutting down all private businesses, the grumblings from the citizenry started. The cities economy was cratering and job loses were huge. On several occasions, via an online forum, I asked the mayor what metrics the city would use to open back up? I received two answers. The first was “the city will follow the guidance of the health district, state, and CDC”. The second was “all our data is posted to the heath district’s web site” (it wasn’t).

Two complete non-answers. So either the mayor had no idea, or she didn’t want to be held to specific numbers in a rapidly shifting scenario. Either way, as a person in a position of authority she decided that as mere citizens we didn’t need to know what the governments plan or thought process was. She single handedly shut down private businesses and then wouldn’t be transparent about when they could open back up again. I think it’s easy for people in positions of power to get all wrapped up in the feeling of we’re doing what’s best for the public, so they don’t really need to know the details. Like parents telling a ten year old “because I said so, that’s why”.

The ultimate example is to watch any president’s press secretary give a briefing. Every single word is parsed and nuanced. Nothing is said that doesn’t advance the political messaging. The people rarely get to see or hear anything resembling reality. Are these people evil? No. But they are so caught up in their power and authority they’ve completely lost sight of the fact that they work for us. Or that’s the theory anyway.

The private sector is no different. I’ve been watching an interesting development with a YouTube channel I subscribe to. This channel has half a million subscribers and suddenly was removed from the partner program, which means it can no longer monetize the videos. No explanation, no warning, nothing. The channel creator has no idea why his channel was removed. The worst part is that once removed from the partner program you also lose all means of contact with YouTube. He has no way to actually contact them to try and find out what he’d done wrong. Now, Google is a private company and they can do whatever they want. But it is certainly the ultimate in power and authority when a company has the opinion they can treat their customers any way they want and feels no obligation to offer any explanation. I’m sure they justify it internally under the guise of “protecting” us vulnerable members of the public from something harmful. (see also, Twitter) Irony in full bloom from the company who’s slogan once was “Don’t be evil”.

I have little point to this other than to remind you that you probably shouldn’t accept anything the government, experts, or most authority figures tell you at face value. Timothy Leary in the ’60’s had it right with his slogan “Question Authority”. As this last year has proven time and time again… they are most likely wrong, lying, obscuring, or hiding the truth. But it’s ok – it’s for your own good.

Daily Life, Government

It’s Either One, Or The Other
  • The other day Tucker Carlson went on the air and made some crazy, outlandish, QAnon fueled statement about the Covid vaccines. The high priest of Covid, Dr. Fauci, immediately ran to CNN and expressed confusion as to why Tucker would be pushing conspiracy theories like that. CNN offered a helpful headline stating “Carlson suggested Covid-19 vaccines are not effective”. Except that’s not what he said. He asked a very simple question which you should also be asking. Either the vaccine works and we no longer need to wear masks and keep businesses shut down, or the vaccines don’t really work and so why is the government continuing to push them? It’s a pretty simple binary question. They can’t both be true. So which one is it? Most thinking people realize that vaccines do work. So why is Fauci and everyone in the Whitehouse continuing to wear masks? For god’s sake, Fauci and Biden double mask most of the time. Why? I’ve said it before… it’s an easy answer if you think about it. Mask mandates, social distancing, and keeping schools and businesses shut down can’t be enforced if you allow vaccinated people to be free. Anyone can just say they’re vaccinated and not wear a mask and we have no way to prove that. Oh, wait. What if we had some sort of paper people could carry around proving they’ve been vaccinated? Almost like a passport of some sort. Why do we continue to put up with this crap? This is doublespeak in it’s truest form.
  • Also on Tucker last night was one of his best monologs. I’d highly encourage you to watch it. He raises the question of unequal treatment in police shootings. On Jan 6th Ashli Babbitt was shot in the throat, from behind, by a Capital police officer. She died. She clearly wasn’t an imminent threat to anyone and was actually moving away from the officer who shot her. In the video you see a handful of SWAT officers just standing there, so they clearly weren’t concerned about their safety. The person who recorded the video had his door kicked in several days ago, all electronics seized, and he was arrested. The DOJ announced they’ve cleared the officer in the shooting, no charges will be filed. They still won’t release the officers name. Why? Meanwhile in Minnesota, an officer accidently pulls her service weapon rather than her taser and kills a young black man. Her name and picture are instantly plastered all over the news, mobs are at her house, manslaughter charges are filed, and the predictable riots ensue. Why the unequal treatment? Why is the Capital police officer seemingly exempt from the same treatment as the Minnesota officer? Where are the mainstream journalists asking these questions?
  • (Vice) President Harris has been put in charge of the migrant/border problem. Wait, not the actual current problem but the broader long term problem. Whatever. The good news is that she immediately had a press conference to discuss her plans for addressing the issue. Oh wait, no she hasn’t held a press conference since her appointment as long term border crisis mitigation czar. She did announce that she has no plans to visit our border. But Harris did tell reporters Wednesday that she was “looking forward to traveling, hopefully as my first trip, to the Northern Triangle,” with stops in Mexico and Guatemala planned. She said she would go as soon as possible, depending on restrictions put in place for the pandemic. A responsible leader always follows pandemic restrictions. Since she won’t be traveling abroad, she has some time on her schedule which she filled with a trip to a “woman owned yarn store”. I’ll leave you with a quote from the Washington Post, written by an actual reporter. “When Vice PresidentĀ HarrisĀ visited a woman-owned yarn shop in Alexandria last month, she mentioned a little-known fact about herself that left the fiber arts community a bit giddy. The new vice president is a crocheter.” Hold me, I’m swooning. I wish I could say this was satire.
  • The new ginormous motorcycle is due for it’s first 600 mile service. On my old bike I did all my own maintenance. But just like with older cars vs newer ones, this bike has more electronics than the space shuttle. I wouldn’t even know where to start. So, it’s off to the dealership for service. Except that the service department is booked out for a month. Sigh. Yet more evidence that my little town is exploding in population exponentially. I know it’s inevitable and you can’t stop it, but it’s still sad to see.
  • This post has been entirely negative, so I may as well keep up with the theme. I present you instructions on how to disable the robotic police dog that is starting to be used by several departments, including NYPD. Robotic police dogs. What could possibly go wrong?

Song of the day: Marilyn Manson – The Beautiful People (Official Video)