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

[moon_custafer]

A pandemic is not a morality play; consequences are not confined to bad actors.

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*

[sovay]

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.”

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.

[davidgillon]

(Points at the 1918 ‘flu, which we know came in at least two waves, the second far deadlier than the first. Whistles innocently.)

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."

[sovay]

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."

Good for Scotland and Wales!