So I missed my first blog post since spring yesterday, as I had to go on my tour of Northwest Georgia's finest medical facilities and greet all my fans in the Radiological. Administrative, Nursing, Scanning, and various other departments that I have had to deal with this week. I've had a ton of X-rays, an MRI of my neck, a radiological scan of my bones in Nuclear medicine, I had a lo-Dose Cat Scan of my lungs checking to make sure I don't have any apparent lung cancer (I don't thank god!), and CAT Scan of my abdomen and pelvis. I am poked and prodded and scanned and X-rayed and Magnetized and done with that crap finally, at least for a time. It is not only time consuming but annoying and you feel as if you are just a peg in the pegboard of the process. You go through all that crap and pretty much nobody can tell you anything.
Oh, I'm wrong, I did find out my kidney function is good.
I have a blast making sound effects like the screeching sound of going around a corner in the wheelchair while somebody else is pushing it. I do that to amuse myself and see if I can get the bored medical person (titles schmitles) to giggle. It usually works to some extent. It's always better when my wife or daughter is there and can be a floor show if I brought PJ. One or two funny things happened, One was a medical student who came to get me from the waiting room to take me to a scanner, and he says "ok let's go, its this way", and sorta turns around and begins to walk away. Then he noticed that I wasn't with him, he stops, looks back sort of puzzled, noticed I haven't moved and says "Do you need me to push you?"I just giggled and said, "If you want me to go with you, yes!" I mean, the scanner room is several hundred feet away down the corridor and around a couple of corners and it's not like it is one doorway to the right, pretty close to me. I could not have moved the wheelchair that far if I wanted to.
Later on, in the scanning room, I was messing with him and said "You did notice I was sitting in a wheelchair right? and that I am handicapped, I mean disabled?", He was embarrassed and admitted he was distracted. It was a giggle. Another time, a nurse came out of a set of double doors that were behind me and to the right of me, behind a wall that was obstructing my view. She came out and called my last name, and I yelled back "Yes?", and she waited. Then she said my name again, "I said "Yes", again and then she came into view from around the little corner we were behind, saw I was sitting in a wheelchair, and apparently was embarrassed and told me to hold on and rushed back into her doors. I didn't have the heart to say "Where do you think I am going to go?", but she came back with all of the blood draw equipment she needed and took my blood sample right there. It is amazing to me that even in a hospital, people are taken aback and a little unprepared for a person who doesn't walk. I'm used to it everywhere else I go, but even in a hospital, it happens. The best part is my wife. She just rolls her eyes and ignores my silliness and goes back to her book.
Anyway, It was a blast, Trust me.
So moving on, my observation today is to say out loud "We are living in very weird times, Bro". I really never thought that I would be a part of a society that seems so intent on tearing itself apart. Ideologically people who have differing opinions from each other are enrolled in the biggest character study I have ever seen.
It's a study in the denial of reality actually.
I watch perfectly normal-seeming rational people argue about some of the stupidest crap I have ever seen and sometimes I have to hit the mental replay button to make sure I heard what I thought I heard. People who I know personally, for example, that I know have absolutely no scientific training whatsoever, and who are good mechanics and great fabricators have formed opinions about scientific subjects that make either no sense or have absolutely no facts behind them. It is sorta stunning that they will believe five or 6 youtube videos made by some wacko presenter but anything actually made by scientists or people who have expertise in the subject being discussed are labeled as "Fake news" or liars, and the sole ONLY reason for this pronouncement from them is because they do not understand what is being said and because of that they don't believe it. Amazing. Just think if they didn't believe that Advanced mathematics was real.
Our leadership doesn't help the situation at all either. I am not talking about one person or party though, because this problem lands squarely on and belongs to each individual, without regard to their political party or their elected position. They all seem to be intent on not coming to grips with dealing with what is happening at ground level. All of them act like we aren't really in the middle of, for example, a pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people. I have seen comparisons that make no sense and don't have anything to do with each other be used as the basis for what I can only call dipshit announcements.
For example, Here is just one stupid one of many, there was a health department questionnaire, that was created (and since withdrawn) in South Dakota, was given to returning Smithfield meatpacking workers who were coming back to work after the plant had been temporarily closed were asked varying questions. Several questions asked things like; Have you been exposed to or worked with someone who has had any of the symptoms such as a runny nose, a high temperature, someone who has been off sick due to the COVID-19 virus, has anyone in your family had the virus, and etc. It seemed that the questions were designed to look for connections between workers who may have been sick. That seemed perfectly reasonable until you read the bottom statement that said something like "If any of the above answers indicate positive then that employee is not eligible for COVID-19 testing".
WHAT? That's right, if you have been exposed, you don't get tested, because the government says testing potentially exposed workers could cause a panic, and meatpacking is an essential industry. Dipshit announcement.
I guess because the virus isn't toppling skyscrapers and leaving big gaping holes in the ground then the facts that 120,000 people have died aren't real enough to matter all that much. I see comparisons made all the time that are just dumb too. People say things like "Hell 50,000 people die from the flu every year and it sparks millions of hospital, doctor and treatment visits so why is this any different?" Well, for one thing, we know how to combat the flu. People die sure for all kinds of reasons like they don't seek treatment, but without treatment and vaccines and intervention millions more could and have died.
The point is we are aware of how serious the flu is and this virus is much more serious because if it takes over your system, we have no real or effective way to treat you. The Covid-19 virus deaths are statistically on top of the deaths from everything else. It doesn't take the place of the flu, hell you could survive the flu and this thing could still kill you. You could get the virus, recover from it, get the flu, and recover from it and then get the virus and still die from it anyway.
This thing is a monster and it kills in a way that we haven't really ever seen before. It destroys the lungs. Once it has destroyed your lungs, if we could do it, the only way to treat you and reverse the damage is to do a lung transplant. Once it has destroyed your lungs you are circling the drain and are a goner. So why do we ignore it and treat it so blase`? In some areas, it seems like the more you drill down into the data, the more you look and the more you target the areas to look at, the dumber our response looks. The ultimate loss of freedom is to lose your existence, but people are worried about wearing a mask. Dumber than shit. I guess that is our right, but you are still acting stupidly without regard to how you feel about the actions taken by the other political party.
We have talked about there being a flattened curve, about the need to see new cases fall off so that we were moving in the right direction and all of that. In a lot of cases, people are talking like there has been a falling curve and the truth is a few places that have done a lot of work have seen a fall-off but most places haven't changed all that much and at least 21 states are increasing. Yet, everything in the state is opening back up and guidelines are lessening and the restrictions are going away. The virus is in full swing, hospitals all over the place are out of ICU beds, and the casinos are open. Smooth we are, Yoda said.
The curve has nothing to do with the decisions being made, but the politics do. Politics are playing a huge part in what is going on. The Republicans are opening everything back up because this is an election year and they are trying to hold on until after the election to react, and the Democrats are trying to close everything up, but not really to save lives. They want to win the presidential election and the best way to do that is to make the President look weak and responsible for this mess. The truth is the leadership of both parties sucks and they are both at once responsible for the increasing cases and not responsible for the viral outbreak in the first place. It is maddening to try to explain this to most reasonable people.
Somehow we deem segments of our society as "too important" to close or to restrict. I understand the argument that closing the country hurts more people in the long run with job losses and unemployment and so forth, however, I have a tough time saying "Grandma , I'm so sorry but you have to die so we can still gamble." It is a ludicrous proposition and makes no sense because there has been no leadership that has been demonstrated by either party on either side at any level. If closing the economy does wider damage than the virus does at full steam, then why do we want anyone to wear a mask at all, without regard to the particularly dumbass opinion that it somehow impinges on your freedom to not wear a mask?
Why bother with social distancing at any level, why not just get some big assed bulldozers and dig a shit load of big ass ditches and open everything up to full steam ahead, so every theme park, every cruise line, every theatre, every ballpark, every sports league, open everything and let us have at it. Anybody that DIES gets crumpled up and crammed in the ditch and to hell with them. That way, the all-important economy will not suffer and even the funeral segment will see a rise because we will see a bunch of new purchases of funeral services. That is the inevitable conclusion of the dumbass argument for no masks, no restrictions and let me do what I want that all you morons are crowing all day long on social media. Makes a lot of sense huh?
Now we have politicians advancing and the folks who follow them parroting another stupid idea. The idea goes something like this "Do not do so much testing and you won't have so many cases. Simple. Slow down the testing. Fewer tests, fewer cases. Problem solved." Do you immediately see the failure in this logic as I did? Finding too many cases is not what is stressing out the medical systems, it is not what is filling ICU beds, It is not what is leading to more admitting to the hospitals. Testing doesn't kill you. You could do ZERO tests and the same amount (or more) of people would still die.
As you drill down from the national leadership to the more local level, what you generally find are points of view being expressed that model very closely the national parties and decisions that are made based upon politics and not science. That is until you ignore politics altogether and look at medical leadership and medical professionals instead. The one thing that medical people say with one voice is that more testing leads to more negative cases too (And I don't believe I even have to say that), however, you look at it however the same #'s of people still die. Without behavior changes, people die. That is something all medical people agree on and we are not listening.
That is something I will never understand. I am not advocating a return to a locked-down society. I am not saying we need to stay at home all over again and all the stores need to be shut down. Even if this is the very best option, it is not something that is likely to happen because we do not have any interest in it due to our lack of national leadership and because the common man is so confused by our collective stupidity, he doesn't believe it will help. So what to do, what to do?
Well, for a start we could demand a source of information that is not political and is not bowing and scraping to the president, begging to stay funded. Right now if you say something he doesn't like, he will fire your leader and cut your funding and some guy that ran a dry cleaner last week will be in charge of your laboratory operations and reporting. We need an unimpeachable source of medical news. Can you believe we don't have that at present?
We could have a set of national guidelines that make sense and that everybody could agree on? Instead, we got a real estate meeting run by Jared and Chaired by the ex-talk show host from Indiana that doesn't make any sense and doesn't listen to medical people. Great. If only there was a national organization that was run by scientists that could develop something like that. Can you believe we don't have that at present either?
What we do have is a mish-mash of public health policy made up on the fly by ordinary people who have no scientific training and who do not know SHIT about public health or public health policy. Quite a few of them could sell you a used car, some property, or file your divorce for you. That is the make-up of our coronavirus task force.
Some much of what we do have our leaders telling us is just about as strange as the old "Duck and Cover" advice I was given when I was a child about hiding under my desk in case there was a nuclear attack. I'm pretty sure that was so the burning of our bodies would be complete and there wouldn't be as much pain and it may make it easier to identify the ash piles based on where we used to sit.
We could have used an example or two about what kind of mask to wear or how to wear it instead of leaving that to the internet meme-makers who point out the helpful advice on that back of the N-95 mask that tells you it doesn't prevent the coronavirus from infecting you if worn improperly or if you don't follow all the instructions. A medical professional explaining all of this would have been nice. But No, why waste time and money on that because Instead, I get to see Bruce the painter show me his nostrils filled with paint because he wore his N95 like a painters mask and it didn't stop the paint from getting inside his nose so how can it stop a little germ??? Trust me, that was really extremely helpful, thank you for forwarding that 10,000 times yesterday alone. It did a world of good.
Something that would have really useful would have been a public demonstration of how to help yourself to stay healthy from our leadership, like the proper way to wear a mask. Hell, they missed a great opportunity for some real MAGA marketing if somebody would have just thought to make red MAGA masks and hand them out at his rallies. He would have been the corona King and would have been the leader on this issue. Instead, we get Buffo the clown saying "What mask, we don't need a mask ", and Baldy the life long Democrat Puking up his BLM bullshit in a kente cloth in a black face mask and saying exactly JACK SHIT NOTHING and trust me, both of you are really helpful fellas.
So really nothing has happened to help us. Neither side has taken the lead, We are all still dying, we are all still sucking worse than we did yesterday and no one has a clue that we are lemmings being led over the edge.
That's great. I love it.
As a result; (From the CDC yesterday)
2,203,302 Cases of the virus
120,333 Deaths
740,000 Recovered
Thank God
BigMike
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