Category Archives: pandemic

Three Years Two Months

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The pandemic started in March of 2020, and I have worked hard diligently avoiding contracting COVID-19.  My sweetie-wife and I have kept our home as a vaccinated only zone and until last week my streak remained unbroken.

After two home testes that came back negative but with a worsening respiratory issue I contacted my doctor’s office, concerned that my immuno-suppressant arthritis medication might be interfering with the simple assay. They ordered a proper PCR test on Thursday and Friday morning I awoke to a positive result. I had contracted COVID-19.

Immediately my doctor suspended all my arthritis medication. It’s unwise to suppress your immune system when you are fighting an infection and the dedicated COVID team at Kaiser put me on the 5-day Paxlovid therapy. Which, due to drug interactions, caused them to suspend my cholesterol medication.

I can report that my COVID infection has proven to be quite mild. The flu I contracted in July laide me out more than this did, but I have maintained the self-isolation directive, spending this long weekend at home, and not seeing Gojira on the big screen with 50 or 60 friends.

Paxlovid Mouth, a side effect where someone on the therapy reports an intense bitter ‘bad’ taste in their mouth did indeed strike me. If you have ever bitten into an orange rind and had the citric acid squirt into the back of your throat, that is was it tastes like. If comes out of nowhere and repeats throughout the course of the therapy. Luckily, breath mints and throat lozenges are sufficient to mask the taste.

Today I return to work only a little sniffly and with a mild irregular cough.

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What I Hate Most About Trad Publishing

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like traditional publishing, I have no real skills in marketing, layout, or cover design so it is a good thing to have paid professionals preforming those vital functions. My goal is and remains for the traditional publishing route. (And that’s no slight on those who take the hybrid or solely independent paths. In fact, it’s mad respect for managing all those skills.)

I have gotten all manner of rejections going to trad route, form cars, form emails, personalized rejections, and feedback on why didn’t work for the editors reviewing the manuscript. All of these I can take. Strangely I am rarely devastated by a rejection but move on to the next market. So, rejections cold and impersonal or detailed and inviting of further submissions I do not hate.

It is the lengthy time it takes that drives me bananas.

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary for my submission to a major SF publisher of my SF murder mystery novel. Six months since I was contacted by the acquisitions editor that it has been pulled for closer consideration. It’s waiting more than year that I find so hard to endure. (But I do for I have no real other options.)

My previous traditionally published novel, Vulcan’s Forge (A SF novel that evokes film noir) sat on my former agents desk a year unread but gloriously but sold to the first editor I sent it to. Had I not lost that year the novel would not have released the week the world went into lock down at the start of the pandemic.

Like Inigo ‘I hate waiting.’

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A Tactless Question

 

There’s no doubt in my mind that in our country partisanship has slipped fully into madness. A lethal disease, 800,000 dead Americans and rising, with new and what appears to be highly transmissible variants, is sweeping the globe and the nation, and while safe, effective vaccines are plentiful and free, the base of the country’s right-wing politics refuse to be immunized against this plague.

The data is clear, the more a district or county supports the GOP the lower is vaccination rate and correspondingly the higher its fatality rate from COVID-19. This is not conjecture it is observed fact. It is a reasonable extrapolation that throughout the nation the excess death due to COVID-19 are falling disproportionately on those most dedicated supporters of the GOP.

In the United States between Gerrymandering and self-sorting the majority of congressional are non-competitive with Urban districts solidly Democratic and rural ones solidly Republican, leaving suburban and exurban districts the battleground upon which control of the nation is determined. Small swings of voters in turn out or intention can switch control of the district between the two parties.

Question: Is the disproportionate death among the right-wing base enough to meaningfully impact electoral results among suburban and exurban districts?

I do not know the answer to that. I have neither the data not the statistical skills to derive an answer but it do not think, however tactless, that the question is frivolous.

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I’ll Take The Earthquakes

 

My family in Florida often comments that they could never live in California, terrified of the earth suddenly moving under their feet. I’ve ridden out a few earthquakes including one that sent waves rippling along the wall of a Denny’s I was sitting in and they are frightening but not as scary as the governor of Florida and willingness to slaughter the people in his quest to become the next leader of the Turd Reich.

Last year, at the very start of the year, I was planning a trip to Florida to see my family and celebrate the release of my first novel, Vulcan’s Forge. The pandemic killed those plans, my sales, and north of 600,000 Americans. Despite this Florida’s governor not only will not implement the simplest anti-covid measure but actually threatens those who do. California may have vast wildfires and earthquakes but do not elect our deadly disasters.

Yes, my current governor is subject to a specious recall and may be a Nexus 5 Replicant but he is not actively acting to slaughter me and my family.

 

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The GOP Do Over 2: Electric Boogaloo

 

18 years ago, following the dot-com implosion and rolling blackouts across the state cause my politics and not by infrastructure issues crippled California a Republican spearheaded recall election removed the Democratic governor, Gray Davis, from office. At the time and to this day I refer to this as the GOP do-over. In 2002 Davis ran and won re-election against Republican Bill Simon. It should be noted that the California GOP has last held the Governorship with Pete Wilson in the 1990 and after the anti-immigrant and arguably racist drive to pass Proposition 187 denying services to undocumented persons the Republicans have failed to win statewide offices. Simon was a particularly bad campaigner. The economic crisis of the dotcom bust, the horrid electrical supply failures, and a deeply unpopular increase in automobile registration fee gave the GOP the tools and leverage to initiate and succeed at a recall campaign. If they were unable to win a popular vote in a statewide campaign, they could possibly take the office with a mere plurality of votes in a special election. That’s exactly what happened, 55% of the voters who showed up voted for the recall, turning Davis out of office, but only 48.6% voted for the man who replaced him, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The GOP, having now even further right than before and without Arnold’s moderate stances and celebrity status they have been driven again from statewide offices, are using the COVID-19 pandemic as the crisis in their attempts to recall Governor Gavin Newsom. I have no deep well of affection for either Davis or Newsom and Newsom’s handed his political enemies numerous PR knives with which to stab him but he, nor Davis before him, has committed and abuse of office or malfeasance that warrants a recall from office. This is once again the Republicans, too far too the right to gain a majority of votes from the population, trying to secure an office that are unable to win in any general election. Reflecting the national GOP, California Republicans instead of moderating their policies and positions seek to ‘rule lawyer’ their way into power and damn the will of the people.

I urge everyone in this state to do as I am doing and voting ‘No’ on this recall.

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Quick Hits

 

Just a few unrelated thoughts and observations this morning.

 

COVID-19: Well, this is fucked. We could have been well on the way to controlling the pandemic in the US and then turning our considerable resources to helping the rest of the world, but no, our fascist-adjacent party insists on throwing their tantrum modeled upon their orange god-king and screwing it up for everyone.

 

New Novel: I’ve started act break work on my new novel about alien ‘non-contact.’ I’m hoping within a week to have an outline and to be ready for actual scene writing.

 

Marvel’s What if …: the new series an anthology of animated alternate versions of MCU stories, the premier being what is Agent Carter got the super solider serum instead of Steve. It worked but I wasn’t blown away.

 

 

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What Happened to My Mask Tolerance?

 

Last year when it was recommended that everyone wear face masks when out in public, I adopted the habit straight away. While many people complained about the discomfort of wearing that cloth over your face, I never found it all that troublesome.

Oh, there were issues learning the correct placement to keep it from fogging the lenses of my eyewear but actual, ‘I can’t breathe’ or ‘This is stifling’ reactions I simply did not have. Not in the spring nor in the heat of the summer. And I went out a lot in those masks. I was one of the few people at my day job that remained an in-office worker carrying out essential tasks that could not be completed remotely. (My choice, management made it very clear if I wanted to work from home like the rest of my team I could. No pressure, no inducement. It was entirely up to me.)

This year, this summer, I have found that I have very little tolerance for my masks. Short trips in the summer heat to my car and from the car to the officer are barely tolerable, causing me to rip the thing off and get air blowing across my face as quickly as possible.

I still wear it. The Delta variant is dangerous and highly contagious so even with my vaccinated status I am taking every possible precaution. But still I wonder, where did my tolerance for masks go?

 

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Returning to Our Winter of Discontent

 

COVID 19 cases continue to rise alarmingly fast. The United States has sufficient quantities of vaccine to immunize every single adult in the country. The right’s base, following decades of anti-science and anti-expertise propaganda follow their orange god/king with the fever of fanatics foregoing vaccination even as their elite take the shot along with their followers money.

This is the current situation in America and though last week so half-hearted and weak attempts my ‘conservative’ elites to urges their base to get vaccinated those efforts has evaporated and case rates and death continue to rise.

This is summer. People are out and about in the open air lessening the spread and still the rates are climbing fast. When winter comes and people remain indoor sharing their breathing air over and over it may be very very bad.

“Break through’ infections, infection among the vaccinated, are happening but those who have been vaccinated even if they get COVID are not winding up in the hospital or the morgue. We will lose more people, a lot more people, all the flatter a thin-skinned lying narcissist about an election he lost.

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GOP Anti-Vaxx Did Not Start with Trump

 

I am running late this morning and so this post will be shorter than most.

While (hat tip to Stephen Colbert and his writing team) The Turd Reich has certainly accelerated and amplified anti-science and anti-vaccine ideology within the GOP he did not instigate or create that movement.

Long before that terrible entrance down the tower’s escalator many within the GOP had already begun swarming to the anti-vaccine message.

Michelle Malkin championed the idiocy because the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer in women might *gasp* encourage sexual activity in girls. Better they die painfully and slowly of cancer that enjoy sexual pleasure not approved of by conservatives and the church.

Senator Rand Paul, a doctor for god’s sake, played with vaccines cause autism as a political ploy and then when called on it demanded that you believed him over the actual taped evidence.

The Delta variant, a far less entertaining variant thank any Loki, is spreading fast through the counties and districts of the country dedicated to the orange god/king and when winter arrives, I would not be surprised to see hospital in those area overwhelmed. Of course, the elites of the Turd Reich are vaccinated, they will survive the next waves like taxes it’s only little people that will die of COVID this winter.

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Stunned by Evil

 

The currently political conditions are beyond stupid, or corrupt, or evil incompetence and are transgressing into the territory that can only be called evil.

An entire political movement, devoted to a thin-skinned, orange, tantrum throwing god/king has forcefully and utterly placed itself against science, common sense, and the health and lives of its base all in the name of ‘not doing what liberals are doing.’

This pandemic has killed over six hundred thousand in the United States and despite several vaccines, produced not by miracles or divine intervention but by the hard work brilliance and education of scientific heroes, infections and deaths are beginning to against rise due the conservative crazy.

The Governor of Florida is selling campaign merchandise celebrating resistance to vaccination. Tennessee republicans have sacked the head of the health department and suspended outreach to all adolescents for ALL vaccinations, not just the COVID ones, to appease the ravenous ignorant monster of a base that they have created with decades of dedicated anti-science, anti-expertise campaigning.

All of this, this disease and death, to support what? That Former Guy who’s a cheat and swindler? To lower taxes on the uber-wealthy? To loosen gun regulations? A pistol will not save you as you die on a ventilator with your lungs shredded by a virus.

NO matter what they say, no matter what they promise, we must turn out and vote and deny the modern GOP are hint or taste or any political power or authority.

 

 

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