Category Archives: pandemic

Blue America and Plague America

 

When it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic there are clearly two Americas, Blue America where vaccination rates are high and Red American where they are low.

Red America, that land where refusing to wear a mask of a symbolic gesture to show that you ‘do not live in fear’ but going everywhere armed is merely judicious judgment, has climbing cases of COVID-19 and still they refuse to get vaccinated.

This chart from the New York Times shows the absolutely clear relationship between vaccination rates and death from COVID-19.

Conservatives who would be excited beyond measure if the U.S. Supreme Court declared that ‘Constitution Carry’, the ability to carry a firearm conceal without any permitting requirements, and pack pistols before the ink was dry on the decision because they live in total terror of crime still refuse to get vaccinated. In rough figures because the data is not yet fully compiled there were about 20,000 murders in the United States last year and to date the pandemic has killed 30 times that number at more than 600,000 people. More that the US lost in World War II and Vietnam combined. Clearly saving their own lives and that of their families is not the reason that would prefer to pocket a pistol before taking the vaccine.

It is a clear indication of the madness that has taken over the conservative movement that its member would rather deal death than prevent it.

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A Bad Year

 

One year ago my planned book launch event at Mysterious Galaxy had already had its attendance limited to the growing pandemic and we were just one day before California and very quickly following the United States and the world shutting its doors and going into lockdown.

My novel Vulcan’s Forge was released from Flametree Press March 27th, 2020 and I can speak with some authority that having your debut book hit the shelves the week the world goes into lockdown is terrible for sales. IT sort like if a sprinter at the starting gun discovers after hitting the ground with his face that someone has ties his laces together. Yeah, you’re in the race but you are not going to win it.

Of course, things were going to get worse. The lockdown shuttered all of our social lives and in June of 2020 my friend of 40 years died of COVID 19. here in 2021, we have lost in the United States alone more than half a million people to this pandemic and in the scale of such disasters poor book sales are less than inconsequential.

Still, I recognize that things could have been worse for me. I never lost an hour of employment and my wife and I have not contracted the disease and are now vaccinated against it.

The year did not have to be this disastrous and it is now upon us to rebuild our lives, rebuild our communities, and honor those who were cruelly taken from us.

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Second Pfizer Dose

 

Yesterday, now about 23 hours ago, I received the second dose of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine for COVID-19. I count myself extremely lucky that workers in the health care industry, though I do not directly interact with patients or people receiving care, I am eligible to get the vaccine. I have to say that my employers and my union have done an excellent job providing care to our members and patients while protecting the staff and workers throughout our facilities.

As far as adverse events I seem have suffered quite few. I took the day off from work and that was the right call. By late afternoon I experienced muscles aches and possibly a fever but nothing more than that at the time. I was still able to get just over 1000 words down on my novel and attend the virtual meeting of my writers’ group.

This morning I awoke to a minor headache, enough to be annoying but not enough to compel the heavy-duty migraine medication or that I remain home. In about fifteen minutes or so I will leave for work, I am among the few that are working in the office versus working from home, and I expect today to be fairly routine. In one week, I should be at full immunity and be able to relax a little while mourning my dear friend who passed from this pandemic last year far too soon gone from our lives.

 

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Three Days Post Vaccination

 

Friday, because I work in the healthcare industry as my day job, I received my first does of the Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine.

First let me complement the nurse, Amanda, for her excellent skills handling the syringe. Despite this being an intermuscular injection vs a subcutaneous one I really did not feel the piercing at all. Well Done!

Onto side effects, or as they are known in the industry, Adverse Events.

On Saturday I had muscular soreness and fatigue in the arm that received the injection but no where else. This was not an effect from the needle, I inject medication every week for other conditions and I am quite familiar with injection site pain. This was sort of like a flu muscular ache but restricted to the upper arm that received the vaccine.

Also by late Saturday, despite having gotten a good night sleep with my replacement CPAP machine, my energy levels plummeted and a strong lethargy permeated me.

Bu Sunday both of these effects dissipated away and I felt fine.

I urge everyone to get the vaccine. It is the primary way we are going to end the pandemic that has claimed nearly half a million American lives. You may hear in various news sources about the vaccine not being one hundred percent effective possibly and even less so against new variants of the disease. This true in that it doesn’t stop 100 percent of all infections, but it does stop death. No one in the 75,000-person trial of the Pfizer vaccine died from COVID-19 and very few had any serious illness. Those 5% form whom the vaccine was ‘not effective’ suffered a mild form of the disease much like a weak flu. Getting vaccinated is literally the difference between living and dying, get it.

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This Did Not Have to Happen.

 

In just a few minutes I will be leaving to receive the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. This has been a really rough year for all of us and the vaccine is one step in trying to reclaim our lives.

Sadly, more than 400,000 people in America cannot reclaim their lives; COVID-19 took them. The current total as I write this is 423,645 COBID-19 deaths in the United States and for comparison in the Second World War the USA total losses, military and civilian were 418,5000.

This pandemic has been exposed the utter failure of a disengaged government. National emergencies and disasters require a coordinated national response but when the chief executive is more concerned with image and appearance than results and his party quakes in fear at the ignorant fearful and raging base that they cultivated disaster is the only result.

 

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Good Riddance to a Rubbish year

It is the last day of the year for 2020 and in just a few hours we will begin the first year of a new decade. I need not remind anyone that the year 2020 has been an unholy trash fire with few redeeming elements.

Personally, my year started off fairly well. I was optimistically looking forward to the publication of my debut novel Vulcan’s Forge from Flametree press and in February I spent the day with a dear friend at Disneyland pre-celebrating that novel’s release.

Early March saw me nervously preparing for my book launch event at the unparallel book seller Mysterious Galaxy, and signed copies of my novel are still available there. Then the world shut down.

Lockdowns, first here in California but very quickly across the country and around the world as people scrambled to deal with the emerging global pandemic.

At my day-job the staff were quickly given computer systems and monitors and sent to work from home while I volunteered to be one of the few office-working staff. We weathered the transition well and while there were bumps and issues, we continued to meet the needs of our member/patients and unluck so many people in worse situations fully employed. The wall calendar at my work where people record their upcoming time off still displays March 2020.

Vulcan’s Forge launched in the first week of lockdowns and naturally the sales were hammered like Thor beating on Thanos.

In June the pandemic took my dear friend of 40 years. We shall never see his like again.

Ealy fall I submitted a proposal for a second novel to my editors who professed great excitement at the story but the publisher, working from the pitiful pandemic slammed sales numbers of my first book declined any more novels from me.

That book that is already 60,000 words written and I’m quite happy with it so either through traditional publication or self-publication it will very likely see the light of day.

November brought the election of a sane non-corrupt man to the office of President of the United States and we can begin the very long process of rebuilding our nation’s reputation.

The final month of the year gave us not one but two vaccines utilizing new technologies to fight this scourge that had killed more than 300,000 thousand in America, 1 in every 1000, and so we have reason to see light in 2021 but that new dawn is still faint the there is much darkness to endure before we are warmed that that new day.

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The Worst is NOT Behind Us

Four years ago, Trump won the presidential election and that decision, not only unregretted by the millions that voted for him but by more who added their support this year, is going to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The visceral hate for Trump and his administration is not grounded in a repulsion to his ‘personality’ but to his utter disregard for the office of president, any American who doesn’t fluff his ego, and his rampant, naked corruption but perhaps nothing justifies loathing Trump and his entire blood and political families that his mismanagement of the pandemic.

Under a sane and competent administration this would have been still a terrible year, the disease cares not for your feelings, your economic desires, or your political preferences, it is airborne, it is contagious, and it is lethal. Around the globe cases increasing as winter descends on the northern hemisphere and the best prepared nations are fighting another front but America, divided by a tantrum throwing president and millions who followed to ‘own the libs’ and ‘drink liberal tears’ is plunging over the cliff and into a winter chaos and death.

The recent vaccines news that two different vaccines are showing potentially above 90% efficacy is fantastic but for most Americans those vaccines are months and months away, most likely spring or even summer of 2021 but the virus is here now. The virus is spreading like an uncontrolled wildfire now. The virus is killing more than a thousand every day now. Here are the current cases, hospitalized, and daily deaths.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are all tired of this. We are all exhausted by the never-ending pandemic but it is on each and every one of us to save lives, to hold on a little bit longer, to restrain our pent up desires for a few months more and save our fellow Americans from lonely, painful, death.

 

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Pandemic Programming: Staged

The Global COVID-19 pandemic in addition to killing more than a million people with over 210,00 of them here in the dysfunctional United States of America, has also wreaked havoc on the entertainment industry. Beyond the shuttering of exhibition houses and live theater around the globe production has foundered on the rocks of this disease. Film and television sets are cramped, crowded affairs with buffet style craft services to keep everyone fed and little ability to engage in social distancing with the results being that making new programing a risky enterprise.

However, a few creatives are finding ways to still give us the entertainment and joyful diversion we desperately need in the dark days and the one I am enjoying best is Staged.

Starring fan favorites David Tennant and Michael Sheen Staged centers on the two actors playing fictionalized and exaggerated versions of themselves as they are trapped in their homes by the pandemic and via Zoom calls attempt to salvage a theatrical production being helmed by a novice and weak first time director played by the program’s creator, director, and writer, Simon Evans.

In addition to Tennent and Sheen their real-life spouses, Georgia and Anna are supporting and engaging characters along with a few guest stars also contributing to the socially distanced project.

Selected scenes are available on YouTube and work quite well on their own but the full half-hour episodes laying on Hulu are the real joy. If you are in need of laughter fueled escape, I couldn’t recommend Staged any higher.

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Voting is Done

Here in California Voting by mail while not universal has been gaining greater and greater acceptance as the nominal method for participating in each election and during a deadly pandemic it makes even more sense. For several election cycles my sweetie-wife and I have been voting by mail simply for the convivence.

One of the advantages of mailing your ballot is the comfort of doing the research at home, making all your notes at home, and then completing the ballot without notes or other aids. It was also a bit of a hassle to carry into the polling location some sort of written guide for all the down ballot offices, judges, schoolboards and the like as well as the lesser known initiatives but statewide and local. Yes the state provides a sample ballot that you can mark ahead of time and that does work, but while standing at the plastic stations where you fill out the ballot I have always felt a time pressure to fill out and submit my ballot and at home no one is waiting to use my desk after me.

So, election 2020 is now in my personal rear-view mirror. I have voted against Trump, Trumpism, and all so have lent it even the barest of support. It is now in the hands of everyone else.

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Was The Cold War Just Over Tax Rates?

From the post-World War II period through to 1991 the United States of American and its allies engaged in a deadly game of brinksmanship utilizing nuclear bombers, middles, and artillery, with the Soviet Union and its allies for the fate of the world. We were assured that this was a war that pitted democracy, with the First World, the USA and its allies, against the tyranny Second World, the USSR and its allies with humanity’s future balanced on the knife’s edge. The USSR’s collapse ended the conflict and revealed a corrupt, monstrous system if lies, propaganda, and murder.

And the American Republican Party can’t let the war go.

In any two-party system each of the two major parties are a coalition of interests ideally with a few unifying themes or goals and for the second half of the 20th century what unified the GOP was a dedicated stance against the USSR and communism. Bereft of that binding force the GOP floundered for compelling arguments for its election and finally settled on culture war issues that satisfied its religious wing, energized it racist elements, and the business elements provided the control rods required to keep the entire pile from going super-critical and melting down. Beginning in 1994 more and more of those control rods were removed until 2016 provided the final crisis, sent the entire stack critical, and released the rampaging nuclear monstrosity that is Donald J. Trump.

And now we have reached a point where a majority of the GOP finds more than 170,000 pandemic deaths ‘acceptable,’ and in order to retain their minoritarian grip on power our votes are being undermined, the Post Office is sabotaged, and very concept of democracy is under assault. So, what was that Cold War victory for? Was it just to preserve low taxes for the wealthy? Was the entire conflict about biblical literalism?  It must have been because it seems the only charge the GOP knows to deploy is to point at their opponents and with mouths agape like the 70s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, scream ‘Communist!’ And like that movie it is an idea out of time and out of place with the moment.

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