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Come screaming for tribute, go out on your back
I haven't slept for two days because I am in the kind of pain that could be amended if it were possible to visit my PT, but it's not. If our statewide infection numbers are just now beginning to plateau, I feel like May 18 is a very optimistic reopening date indeed. I was really enjoying not having to yell at my governor on the regular, but I don't understand why he thinks a week and a half of mandatory masks will be enough of a game-changer. We don't yet have comprehensive testing and tracing in place; we may be at the forefront of antibody research, but that doesn't mean we have the data in hand. We need weeks of steadily downward trends, not days. I hope the pro-infection astroturf ("LARPing ammosexuals") is not factoring into Baker's calculations: they are a falsely boosted minority and I am sick of my right to survive counting less than others' right to destroy. Frankly, I'm expecting a bloom from all those bare-faced people screaming in front of the state house. A pandemic is not a morality play; consequences are not confined to bad actors. Death dances away with all in the end, but there are some people I wish would cut to the head of the line. Meanwhile the man in the White House shoots craps even with the lives of his supporters because he can't get reelected if the economy tanks, whereas mass murder of his own citizens is much more negotiable. When I said in February that I was afraid of a Holodomor, it wasn't a request. Vampires of capitalism is such an obvious metaphor and such a tricky one to get right (anti-Semitism is a popular failure mode), but what else am I supposed to think when the rich offer up the poor to a plague to maintain themselves at the top of the food chain? It's an insult to nosferatu, is what it is.
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Oh, no! :(
Much empathy and much solidarity!
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*hugs*
Thank you. Some quite serious medical stuff has also been on hold since the beginning of this pandemic, but the non-fatal thing is the really painful one and it just feels unnecessary.
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Sympathy and solidarity right back at you!
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I hope that what we'll get on the 18th is more information on what a reopening might look like (which businesses, or will it be statewide?) and another extension of the stay-at-home order. I thought we were supposed to be coordinating with New York, but Gov. Cuomo is talking about starting to reopen some areas of that state on the 15th.
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I would love for our public health to be stable so soon, but just numerically, I don't see how it can be.
I can't find the story about the Massachusetts plan right now, but I did find one for New York: if they follow the CDC guidelines that would include "sustained declines" in indicators like deaths and new cases, and adequate hospital capacity, tests, PPE, and contact tracers.
Thanks for looking; that makes sense to me. I hope we have something similar and that its benchmarks are realistic, not wishful.
I thought we were supposed to be coordinating with New York, but Gov. Cuomo is talking about starting to reopen some areas of that state on the 15th.
I thought we were, too, and I don't like the idea that the regional coalitions are already breaking down. They were one of the few developments to give me hope that there were maybe some adults in the room after all.
I just don't understand why everyone is behaving all of a sudden as if this pandemic is over. We don't have a vaccine. We don't even have effective treatments. The nationwide numbers are still rising. Nothing has changed except the economy has been deemed a protected species and people expendable and I don't want my state to buy into that fiction, essential to the American mythos though it may be; so are a lot of other things that kill people.
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You are a true friend.
*hugs*
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But I fear that it's always been in the crueler oligarchs' plans from 2015 onward. They were just waiting for some kind of cover. And the nosferatu have a right to feel insulted.
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That's what I mean: mass murder by convenient catastrophe. And so many people who aren't oligarchs are going along with it. It is maddening to watch and it has been for months and I hate it.
And the nosferatu have a right to feel insulted.
If this were a half-decent horror sci-fi novel, we could enlist their assistance.
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*hugs*
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I was a little surprised that California was reopening at all, honestly, but I am glad to hear it is being done carefully. It just feels like everyone's pretending that something has changed and all that's changed is the number of the dead.
(Did the chiropractor help?)
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Hugs to you.
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Then I hit my head on the cast-iron freezer door of our ancient and janky refrigerator which swung open above me as I straightened from putting away groceries. It even hurts when I wince. Today has just been a scratch.
*hugs*
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Since the fridge came with the apartment, I doubt it. We had real trouble with the landlord when our oven broke the first time.
Re-opening
Re: Re-opening
It's relevant in the sense that it's a potential vector of infection that has been blocked, which I appreciate. Thanks for letting me know.
The 18th is too soon, but we're not budging until then, at least.
Unless a medical miracle occurs, I hope we don't budge afterward, either, and I will be calling my governor's office to say so.
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Argh. What the hell is so important about golf?
I have no idea what the rules will be here.
"Hit the ball, drag Harry . . ."
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I believe your answer, but also pthbbbbbbt.
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*hugs back appreciatively*
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I do love "LARPing ammosexuals" as a description (even if I can't follow the link - it blocks Europeans). I've personally been nurturing a theory that they're so dedicated to the Second Amendment because it's the only way for them to expose their sexual fetishes* in public.
*Fetish in the physical rather than psychological sense.
ETA: In googling to see if I could find another link, I did come across someone describing them as "Y'all Qaeda", which is almost as good.
Survey on what UK government priorities should be post-pandemic:
Invest more in the NHS: 39%
Pay key workers more: 18%
Continue with Brexit: 17%
Invest more in the social care sector: 5%
(a third of coronavirus deaths have been in care homes)
Reduce taxes on businesses 5%
Reduce taxes on the wealthy 3%
Hold another Brexit referendum 2%
From which I conclude that 17+2% have lost all sense of proportion, and 5+2% could teach Nosferatu a thing or two.
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Thank you. It has actually improved somewhat as of this afternoon, but I am happy to accept those hugs.
*hugs*
I do love "LARPing ammosexuals" as a description (even if I can't follow the link - it blocks Europeans).
Region-coded home media is nonsense enough; region-coded newspapers are just stupid. Context is a group of chefs in Greensboro, North Carolina inspired to cook for COVID-19 health workers as a way of showing their appreciation, especially after witnessing the aggressive behavior of a reopening rally:
"'I was furious,' [Matt] French told YES! Weekly. 'Heroes putting their lives on the line were being verbally assaulted by LARPing ammosexuals and shrieking Haircut Hannahs.'"
They call it the Stone Soup Project, which I also like.
From which I conclude that 17+2% have lost all sense of proportion, and 5+2% could teach Nosferatu a thing or two.
Yikes.
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So do I. And good for them!
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It’s not a perfect analogy, but I can’t remember now at what point I realized that the ending of the fable about the boy who cried wolf was highly inaccurate, because it was the boy himself who suffered, and not a dozen or more innocent people in the surrounding area who got eaten because everyone used this one kid as proof that “wolves are a hoax.”
I just don't understand why everyone is behaving all of a sudden as if this pandemic is over.
(Points at the 1918 ‘flu, which we know came in at least two waves, the second far deadlier than the first. Whistles innocently.)
All sympathies for the pain; apart from everything else it makes it so hard to *think*
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Perhaps it originated at a point in time when conspiracy theories were less ubiquitous, but I agree with you that that would totally happen nowadays, which sucks.
(Points at the 1918 ‘flu, which we know came in at least two waves, the second far deadlier than the first. Whistles innocently.)
Yeah, you know, totally unrelatedly, that has also been crossing my mind.
All sympathies for the pain; apart from everything else it makes it so hard to *think*
Thank you.
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I looked at the news yesterday, and thought "Yep, second wave, now guaranteed."
What's disturbing here in the UK is that the right wing newspapers, both broadsheet and tabloid, appear to be trying to bounce the government into a much greater loosening of lockdown. Fortunately the government seems to be getting cold feet, helped by the devolved governments in Scotland and Wales saying "You can re-open schools if you like, but count us out."
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Good for Scotland and Wales!
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Thinking of you.
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It's not radioactivity. (We know more about radioactivity!)
Thinking of you.
Thank you.
*hugs*
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*hugs*