October 31st, 2020 falls on a Saturday. It’s far too soon to know the weather, but the fact that there’s a full moon is pretty unlikely to change. In other years, this would be a Hallowe’en-lover’s dream. And I, as you know, am a Hallowe’en lover.
This, alas, is not other years.
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(CONTINUED from Parts 1 to 3)
“Okay, fine. But why is that my fault?” I can hear you thinking this, perhaps a bit angrily, suspecting some sort of bait-and-switch. Don’t worry, it’s still your fault.
Oh, not the virus. That’s nature; that’s what nature does. There’s a reason we invented doors and windows and walls and things; it’s because otherwise nature will kill us. Plagues are just one of the more colorful weapons in its arsenal.
No, what’s your fault is that society has been continuing blithely along (more…)
(CONTINUED from Part 1 and Part 2)
The natural next step to this reasoning has dawned on some of you — the ones who are still reading, who haven’t moved on in horror and self-loathing, or alternately who aren’t so pissed off at me they’ve dropped their subscription (or would have done if only they’d not been too cheap to pay for one in the first place).
What I’m talking about isn’t a matter of fighting COVID-19 so much as it is sweeping cultural change of a sort that’s not merely necessary but long overdue. The fact that we’re in a crisis right now only makes it more obvious that our society is seriously broken; it’s not like it wasn’t broken before the virus came along.
People in the United States need to (more…)
(CONTINUED from Part 1)
In China, they halted the spread by shooting people who broke curfew. Doors were locked for months, and if you went hungry, too damn bad. It still got out because there’s a privileged upper class that habitually ignores the laws, and now there’s new outbreaks because it’s a sneaky bastard of a virus, but for a while it worked.
In New Zealand, they beat the epidemic by sealing the borders. Anyone that came in was put up in a hotel room for three weeks and tested repeatedly, and health care workers lived in quarantine. But they did well primarily through stopping it at a few dozen cases at a time.
In the United States, when we (more…)
(Editor’s Note: This is closing on 3000 words and growing, and even the best rants start losing people around the 1500 mark, so I’m chopping it into its component parts. Expect further installments.)
I have evidently been guilty of failing to express myself plainly. To be clear, then: When I say “This is all your fault”, I’m not implying that it might be someone else instead. I blame you.
I’m saying that all this is your fault. You personally. Yes, you, the one reading this right now. I know you don’t believe me, and if you’re starting to… no, it’s too farfetched, and you just think I’m nuts. Too damn bad, because it’s all your fault. You’re the one (more…)
The following is basic medical knowledge backed by science, and I’ve linked the science for you. Very little of this is new; the concepts have been around for quite a while now, and we’ve spent decades refining our knowledge. Most is not a matter for discussion; it is factual rather than opinion, and should be treated as such. (more…)
We’ve achieved corporate feudalism in our lifetimes. Congratulations.
You must have wanted it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have bought it. Now that your votes don’t matter but money does, we vote with our dollars, and what we buy rules the world. That’s why our hamburgers are extruded and why they sugar the buns at McDonald’s.
Did you know there was a time when you could get an actually good-tasting burger at McDonald’s? It had real meat and everything. Brilliant (more…)
Yes, you. You’re reading this, so I’m talking to you. And you appear to be missing some crucial information essential to interpreting the present situation.
There exist quite a few out there who are conversant with such terms as “flattening the curve”; I’m fairly sure you can explain (more…)
