Come screaming for tribute, go out on your back

[sovay]

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.

Comments

[redbird]

I'm looking at this, perhaps hopefully, as May 18th being the earliest possible date for reopening, and that the decision is going to depend on public health. 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.

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.

[sovay]

I'm looking at this, perhaps hopefully, as May 18th being the earliest possible date for reopening, and that the decision is going to depend on public health.

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.