It Is Only A Mask

I have gone out more in the last two weeks than in the previous two months and quite frankly I think I need another break.  I had to pick up a prescription at Kroger, so I decided why not grab a few things we need while there.  So as I walked down a handful of aisles I found about half the people not wearing masks and the most interesting thing was a mother with her child.  The child having her mouth on the shopping cart handle.  Now this isn't a good idea in the best of times but in a pandemic I would think this is a risk not worth taking if I knew better, she didn't, but some are doing things just as bad and should know better.   

I thought a lot about that child this week as I watched people outraged by being asked to wear a mask to enter into private businesses.  It seems this child's actions would be suited for a small child but it reminds me of the actions of many adults I have seen and heard of on the internet.  Only the child's innocent abandon and mouthing of the cart can be excused.  Those who seem to be trying to suggest that they don't need to follow public safety rules can't.  They are horrible people and a threat to many.  The current rate of escalation and nonsense is disturbing and I fear could lead to some serious results. 

I don't understand the anger of those asked to wear a mask into a store.  Some have taken to coughing or even spitting on the employee who asked them to put one on.  This is criminal assault and I hope some District Attorney brings a charge of attempted murder on these people or at least assault with a deadly weapon.  I truly believe their lives should be made miserable for doing stuff like this.  It is sickening.  I also wonder how this would play out if the person being spit on is armed in a stand your ground state.  

One thing I keep hearing is that forcing a mask on someone in a store violates your rights.  This is pure nonsense.  Requirements to enter both private and public buildings that restrict your actions are almost never a violation of your rights.  Private businesses for sure can require all kinds of things from dress codes to appropriate language.  Public buildings make you surrender weapons.  In the case of masks, it is no real difference to requiring shirts and shoes because this is a public health issue.  Your right to go shirtless as well as without a mask extends right up the property of the business.  Then the public good and the property rights come into play.

Some people argue that if a baker has to serve gay people (or a lunch counter black people) then how can they require a mask.  This is not a fair comparison.  Denying a public accommodation because of a trait of a group of people violates the law.  Requiring a behavior is not the same thing.  Again, blatant discrimination is different from maintaining health and safety standards in a public setting.  

There are those arguing that wearing a masks gives them some kind of toxic build-up of CO2.  Cloth and disposable surgical masks won't do this and any CO2 build up would be mild.  Since once away from people you can remove the mask, except for those doing long shifts in hospitals the idea that a mask will make you sick in nonsense.  Some claim a respiratory problem makes wearing masks difficult, well I would suggest staying home since you have the very comorbidity that will likely mean if you get Covid 19 you will at least be in the hospital for months, if not the morgue.

There are more and more videos of people either saying that the Americans with Disabilities Acts (ADA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) laws requires stores to let people in without a mask and cannot ask what medical condition they have.  First the ADA requires appropriate accommodations, offering to shop for a person who says they can't wear a mask meets that standard.  As does curbside pick up and ordering online.  While it is not always clear what ADA requires, I do know that it doesn't require that every public place do what the customer asks.  For example, people with PTSD can't stop public fireworks displays nor gun shots in plays.  Besides, like noted earlier, someone with a serious enough breathing condition to make a mask dangerous probably shouldn't put themselves at risk.  As for HIPAA, that is simply a garbage argument.  HIPAA doesn't apply here at a grocery store.  I don't think I can go into just how dumb this argument is, so I won't.  What I can say is that it is dangerous to many people to try to use these two important laws in a weaponized fashion because of one's own arrogance and ignorance.  The ADA has opened the world to many people with disabilities that had been shut out.  Nonsense claims like this that could result in frivolous lawsuits could have businesses simply not looking to comply if everything that people want is challenged.  HIPAA is a law that has saved people because it keeps people with access to sensitive information about a medical condition from getting to people who can use it to harm others.  Making these kinds of claims muddies the water and makes it less likely that people will support such laws and their needed renewals in the future.  

Finally, there are those who keep saying that wearing a mask makes you a sheep and scared.  I am not sure how to say this but wearing a mask is not about protecting myself.  I do other things, like washing my hands, avoiding touching my face, avoiding large crowds, and following guidelines even as they change.  I wear a mask because I could have a disease that is deadly to many people and not know it.  A mask, while not perfect, does create an additional barrier to the virus reaching another person.  You wear a mask to inhibit the spread of the disease.  It may not be perfect but for the person standing next to you who might have a lung issue or diabetes the fact that your mask may stop enough virus to not infect them could save their life.  And one more thing, yes exposure to bacteria and viruses do give your body an opportunity to create anti-bodies to fight future infection.  People who say they want to build up their immunity basically saying they want to get exposed to the disease.  So I suggest if that is what they want to volunteer at a hospital then isolate yourself for a while until the virus has run its course.  If you live then we can test to see if your theory worked.  But not wearing a mask isn't there to protect you so your argument is silly.  

Look, we are a free country, but we have always had restrictions on our freedom for the greater good.  We are in a worldwide crisis and the United States appears to be at the bottom of working to control it.  That can change.  Wear a mask, don't gather in large crowds, stay home when you can, enjoy the outdoors with physical distancing and for the love of God listen to the doctors not a President that looks into an eclipse and thinks scientific facts have two sides.  Save a life.  Humanity deserves it. 

 

 

 

Nature Abhors A Vacuum

Tonight across many networks the high school graduates of 2020 are being celebrated by members of the entertainment industry culminating in a speech from former President Barack Obama.  First proposed on Twitter a few weeks ago this came together because of the work of Lebron James and many others.  The show spoke to the class who for the last few weeks had to give up what is likely the most fun of anyone's high school years.  The celebration gives hope to a group of students whose plans for their immediate future were blown away by Covid-19 and the uncertain nature it brings.  So entertainers and others came together to give a special moment to these students.  That is a remarkable thing.  But it should have never had to happen. 

I am not saying that it should have happened.  I am watching it and listening to the former President give great advice and a pep talk to kids who I know are struggling to fully grasp what is going on.  I am saying that if we had a real leader in this country this could have been organized by our leaders. 

Imagine if the current President has said to his team to create a program like this.  Imagine if this President had the empathy to see just how devastating the last few months has been for these kids and made an effort to sooth their fear and celebrate their accomplishments.  Imagine if we could trust this President not to make a speech like this about him, playing the victim, pointing a finger and lying to the youth of America. We can't because the leader of this country does not seem to care about the average American.  But even worse, his team doesn't seem to have the ability to fill in for him. 

His entire vision of America seems to be "what can you do for me" more than what he can do to make the country better.  Just the other day he said something to the effect that testing is bad because it helps us discover cases and we don't want our case numbers to go up.  Why?  Because it makes him look bad.  He has said as much. 

The lack of leadership in this country created a vacuum that had to be filled by a former President and a basketball star.  It is sick.  While I am glad the the former President is willing to put himself out there, besides what some in the GOP are telling him, and challenge the failure of the current administration.  I am more proud that he realized that the countries future is hurting and he offered to help them feel a little better.  We may look back at our own senior year and think how trivial our thoughts were, but in the moment everything was huge.  In the moment, everything was the most important thing that ever happened.  President Obama knows that, President Trump doesn't even care to find out.  

Tonight we were treated to a celebration and I am happy that it happened, but it reminded me the current President is a failure as a leader and a sympathetic human being.  That is depressing.  

  

Lebensunwertes Leben: The Call of the Right Wing

Life Unworthy of Life was a slogan used by the Nazi regime to identify those who them deemed not suited to live and use up resources in the new society they were building.  Far more sinister than even the Untermensch appellation which deemed some as subhuman, it did not even see those they classified ad Lebensunwertes Leben as useful as slaves to their war machine.  In what may be the most evil propaganda efforts in history, the German government convinced many people to kill or have killed loved ones who were mentally ill, had debilitating diseases or just were considered inferior.  There is even a film made of a great pianist who is diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis who commits suicide for the good of the state.  Later the killings became compulsory and as the country became more comfortable with death for the greater good of the country we see the Shoah (Holocaust) as the last step.  It started with the idea that some people need to be sacrificed in order for the state to survive and thrive.  

This bone-chilling idea took hold in the modern country of Germany in the middle of the 20th century because it made sense to many who felt they were betrayed by previous government actions after World War I and the notion that outside forces were driving Germany into a perpetual depression and using its systems to support people who were not adding to greatness of the nation.  Terms like useless eaters were used to describe large numbers of human beings.  Sometimes this notion even stretched to include people who were elderly and frail.  People who could no longer work or fight for the country.  Germany created a vision that made some people should not be saved, and in fact should be gotten rid of to allow the country to grow.  

That idea seems to have returned in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Not in Germany, not in a developing nation, but right here in the United States.  Several members of the political right have stated publicly either through their own media outlets or through social media that they think the elderly and by extension anyone with a condition that could be exacerbated by the virus should be willing to die to protect the economy.  Dan Patrick, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas said that he and those in his age bracket would be willing to die to avoid passing on debt to their grandchildren.  I have heard others say such things.  I haven't seen the polling data but everyone I know over 65 is willing to stay at home and not risk death because.......they love their grandchildren and want to spend as much time with them as they can.  

Ben Shapiro, a person who voices a lot of the right wing talking points in smug podcasts and through fringe media said this:  "If somebody who is 81 dies of COVID-19, that is not the same thing as somebody who is 30 dying of COVID-19...If grandma dies in a nursing home at age 81, that's tragic and it's terrible, also the life expectancy in the United States is 80".  For Ben it appears that it fine for an 81 year old to die of this terrible and painful disease for a chance to go out to eat or get a haircut.  They say it is to keep the economy intact and I already pointed out the hypocrisy of this position while maintaining women shouldn't be allow to get abortions to protect their economic security.  But this hypocrisy goes even further.  When the ACA, commonly referred to as Obamacare, had a provision for end of life therapy being covered the right wing noise machine and their noise makers in Congress called these death panels.  Ben was always on right wing shows saying it was an attempt to ration care for the elderly and the infirm and called it evil.  Now they say things like an 81 year old should be thankful for the years, one more than expected, and should just leave the stage. 

Then there is Jacob Wohl, a young man who is going to prison for securities fraud and who has paid people to lie about affairs with many people including Dr. Fauci was talking about the Corona virus death toll being about 1 percent.  "So what if we lose 400,000 people?  That 200,000 elderly and the other 200,000 are the bottom of society.  You have to clean out the barn. If it's real it is a good thing, for God's sake."  This is the spirit of Lebensunwertes Leben.  The Nazi idea that some must be killed for greater good of the nation.  He says it is a good thing that 400,000 people die.  

 If only they were the only voices, but more and more we hear it on radio, the internet and on at least one major television news station.  People are dying because of the incompetence of the President, and now voices are saying that is it a good thing that they are.  Covid-19 will kill people, lots of them.  Staying home and physical distancing will lower the number of deaths because we won't overwhelm the healthcare system.  We will buy time to find a real treatment and save lives.  We will eventually get to a time when it can be dealt with by treatment and/or vaccine.  But until then we shouldn't have to choose to kill people because someone can't get their hair colored or a massage or enough beef.  That is not just nonsense, it is a call we have heard before, it creates the idea that some human beings are not worthy to fight for them to live.  That is not a direction as a culture we should feel comfortable going.  That is not something we should give voice.  

 

Covid-19 May 1

So I watched 1984 last night in part thinking about dystopian societies can be really much worse that what we have today.  Watching Winston Smith's rewriting history in his cubicle at the Ministry of Truth makes you think of the press office in our current White House and the President.  It seems like many times in the last week we have heard things from the podium and on TV shows that contradict things we have on film.  It is hard to not see the comparison.  Today the new Press Secretary who is so unqualified for this job in a real administration when asked if she would lie to the press, stated emphatically she wouldn't and less than two minutes later lied.  It was this kind of news this week that made me want to write something funny to get our minds off of the complete and utter cluster that is the Executive Branch of this government.  You know like describing your Zoom (Room) 101.   But then I saw this. 








These were taken at a anti-lockdown rally in Illinois.  They should not be confused with the fake posters circulating from a Pittsburgh rally earlier.  Every indication is that these are real.  IN fact I believe a news agency spoke with the woman with the Arbeit Macht Frei one who explained "I am not racist, I have Jewish friends".  So here we are.  One person using a slogan that was meant to taunt so many as they marched to their deaths at the hands of a tyrannical government and the other protester likening a Jewish Governor to Hitler.  Both of which are disgusting on many many levels. 

First, a rule of thumb.  Being asked to stay home, to slow the spread of a disease which is literally killing people at an alarming rate, does not equate with being dragged from your home, your property seized, your clothes, shoes and gold fillings in your teeth surrendered and then put into a gas chamber to be killed, or made to dig a ditch that would become your grave.  In fact the government is providing resources to help all who are struggling during this time. 

 Secondly, carrying Nazi symbols and slogans will not win most people to your cause.  Most Americans are in favor of the measures directed at keeping people safer from the virus and if you want to convince people to change their minds you might want to use for your model something that isn't so hated. 

Now, the point of the shutdowns was to slow the spread of the virus, in part, to not overwhelm the healthcare system.  This is a highly virulent, and for a percentage of those that get it, a disease that is highly destructive, requiring intensive care and a great deal of equipment that could not handle the numbers.  Staying at home, limiting contact between people and of course making large crowds forbidden has done its job in many places.  But we aren't over the hump in those places and every rally will make it less likely that we can loosen up the restrictions.  Many people who are going to these rallies say that the models were wrong and it is not that contagious.  But it was the very things they are arguing to end that made the numbers smaller in many places.  Think of it this way. 

Imagine you are living on street that for a long time was fairly quiet but started to get busier.  At the corner there are a series of near miss accidents and then a big one that kills a family.  A four-way stop is added.  It backs up traffic, it makes people have to leave earlier for work or be late.  It slows you down getting home.  It is a nuances.  It makes life more difficult and when there is extra traffic it is infuriating by reason.  But no more accident occur.  So people start to protest the stop signs.  Instead of asking for a round-about or a traffic light they want to be free to go back like it was.  They argue that there was only one deadly accident and they are adults and work it out on their own.  This is a good analogy to what these people are asking.  They aren't looking for a way to balance safety and freedom, they just seem angry that their vision of freedom is being curtailed.  Science, facts and danger to anyone and everyone is not relevant because they don't believe them.  That is the scary thing and the President of the United States appears to have their backs.

I think this pandemic sucks on many levels.  I go out rarely,  I can't get all the things I want, I have less money for fun things, my vacation is on hold.  There are days I am scared for myself and Dianne and for so many other people.   But the alternative to staying home, missing out on fun and even some things that we might have thought essential, is not nearly as bad as being a Jew in the 1930s and 40s in large parts of Europe.  That is just privileged ignorance at the highest level. Knock it off.