Showing posts with label covid-19. Show all posts
Showing posts with label covid-19. Show all posts

Sunday, November 17, 2024

Triumph of the Swill: TrumpWorld Edition

 


Once a long time ago, I wrote about the Triumph of the Swill.  We are right back here, swilling it again. Did you know that Russia did disinfo HARD on matters regarding anti-vaxx? The exact thing that RFK Jr., who was put up to it by Mike Flynn, would entirely be about if in office? Because I have to know that.--I am letting you know that. Also, did you know that Lil' Miss supposedly anti-war Tulsi Gabbard thinks Russia had to address the lying ass biowarfare sites bullshit that was obviously all made up? 

Of all the things that piss me off about TrumpWorld, it is that too many people stand ready to absorb absolute nonsense shot directly at their faceholes through altogether stupidly transparently dumbass fake news outlets. 

We've been under attack for a good long while. Someone like Elon Musk, who really does not want anyone to consider whether he's got any foreign influence, seems to have spread disinfo to affect the US election. 

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

No, I Never Did Hear of "Supply Change".

 


I've heard of the "supply chain" and so has everyone else. We heard about it especially when it was broken during COVID shutdown when you couldn't find toilet paper or rubbing alcohol or Lysol.  Does Trump really misremember the phrase as "supply change"? As in, we changed from when we could find things in the store to where we could not find things in the store? 

Trump's economy was stupid and not great. It really wasn't what we were promised. His only success was inherited.  The story of his life. 

Maybe he thinks this is a phrase he invented, like when he invented "priming the pump". Trump is the Edison of prevarication--he's always inventing things. Sometimes he Columbuses stuff people have known since forever and asks if they've heard about it, like he's a pioneer. This is because the guy who can't remember people's names, even now, always tries to cover up for his lapses. He's covering up for one of his major lapses right now--he forgot to secure the border during his first term. He could have made it a priority since he ran on it, but he forgot and only shut down the government when he lost the midterms. 

And couldn't get his wall money because Mr. Art of the Deal had no leverage. And shutting down the government didn't help anything. It was costly and dumb. His immigration policy was meh at best. And abusive of human rights at worst. 

Sunday, October 30, 2022

TrumpWorld Isn't About Democracy: UPDATED

 

Here's Scruffy McBedbugSores announcing that he really feels like Bolsonaro needs to not concede a lawful election, because surprise of all surprises! He isn't a fan of elections that don't turn out the way he wants. So much like the 2020 elections in the US where he thought Trump should just declare victory.  Damn the consent of the governed--because one side will most assuredly be more aggressive. And he assumes it's the RW side. The macho guys. The fascists. And why does it even matter to Bannon, who doesn't live there? 

Because of a movement against democracy, and for authoritarians, where jumped-up know-it-alls who enjoy the smell of their own gas prevail.  Bannon has opinions about what a lot of countries should do. He's playing a game of Risk where other people are doing normal folk things like voting in their self-interest. Or trying to. And he thinks he knows better.

And Bannon has been off-gassing for a long while. He should be declared a superfund site and get cleaned up by professionals. I do not understand his appeal. I do understand why Brazil was a bit fed up with Bolsonaro--he rejects the law and science, and during Covid and the fires in the Amazon was like Nero. He was for himself. That is somehow not a good thing for most people. He was exhausting. 

Like Trump lost in 2020 because he blew off Covid and was exhausting. He wanted people to rake the forests to prevent wildfires and had weird ideas about windmills. Maybe flipperheaded fucknuts have no business in elected office. Just a thought.

UPDATE: It looks like Bolsonaro is doing something a bit more responsible to Brazil's future than Trump had done.  I know folks like Ali Alexander are going to be mad, and like, ok? I know I have a strong opinion about Meloni in Italy because part of my family lives there and my husband sometimes talks about us retiring there. What's Alexander's or Bannon's strong opinion about? It seems like a demonstration that elections are just bad and wrong. I get that people vote for wrong ones sometimes--(2016 in the US, anyone?) but that doesn't mean people having the choice itself is wrong. It's the disinfo, the fuckery, the threat of violence, that make the process bad when it goes bad. It's people letting their short term grievances over things like inflation and fuel prices or propaganda against immigrants foul up their ideas about the long-term consequences of bad, corrupt, or ideologically bent leaders. 

Democracy, at its best, is the corrective solution for getting the bastards out, even at the risk of occasionally letting some bastards in. This is why, warts and all, I think it is worth preserving. And why I think the TrumpWorld strongman model, which too often elevates people who pose as strong when they are intellectually low-wattage and would necessarily attract feeble, craven, toadying jerkwagons to their retinue is so dead wrong. 

UPDATE:  Ali Alexander spells it out--a stolen election is any one whose results he doesn't like:



As if we did not know. 

 

Tuesday, April 19, 2022

The Vandals

 


The funny old thing about American individualism and "freedumb" and so on is that people who were sitting on crowded planes cheered the decision when advised they could take their masks off as if they had won something. They didn't. What really happened is that they received confirmation that they were no longer obliged to do the least thing to protect themselves and those around them, and it felt like freedom.

Judge Mizelle's decision to strike down the mandate is a small act of vandalism. Putting her on the bench to make dodgy decisions and partisan decisions for decades, was a big act of vandalism.


UPDATE:

 


Some people think she misunderstood public law regarding the definition of sanitation, and it's very possible she deliberately misunderstood.  The dual function of undermining public trust in the law and the expertise of health professionals alike is at play in this decision--but the stupid thing is not even being sure this person is capable of foreseeing that ramifications beyond this one decision, now that she's made a precedent, obtain. 


Saturday, April 2, 2022

Ivermectin is Useless for COVID-19 and Vaccinations Are Good

 

These are just some important things that were sorted out by science recently: So, long story short, if you want better protection from COVID-19, get some kind of vaccination if you haven't already. Things being what they are, I will treat myself to a second booster for my 50th birthday.

Also, as many people who understand the difference between parasitic worms and viruses could have told you, ivermectin, a favorite elixir of crackpots, doesn't do a thing. This isn't supposed to be an "I told you so" kind of thing, but more like an "every reasonable person told you so and the ones who didn't weren't anyone you should have paid attention to" sort of thing. I know my readers are probably already aware--but send the link to a friend who needs the facts.   
 
Also, too:
COVID-19 infections are more dangerous to the heart than getting any of the available vaccines. The folks who want to swear up and down that the vaccinations are deadly and that pharmaceutical companies would want to kill people off on purpose are barking insane--why would anyone want to kill off customers

It just doesn't make any sense. (I hardly need to add, that for the people who fear they will be microchipped, that there is a microchip shortage right now. It doesn't make sense, and even if it did, it would be wildly cost-prohibitive and impractical. Vaccines do what it says on the label--offer some protection from severe illness and/or death.) 

In other news, I'm posting about how science is getting it right because I'm worried about how we're getting it wrong--I'm still looking a bit warily at the "stealth Omicron" situation, I want to think that the US isn't going to see another wave, but I'm bracing myself, 

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

It's Probably A Million.

 

I think I've been a bit remiss about posting regarding the pandemic, because we were going to be loose as a goose and go fuck a duck if actual infection and whatever else figures suggested we need mask up and whatever again, But in real-space, it looks to me like  BA.2 or "Stealth Omicron" is entirely a thing. It's fucking up China, and that means US coastal cities will be feeling it in 3,2, 1....because airports exist. And in actuality, I'm triple vaxxed and masked at work because I don't trust any damn thing. I experienced post virus bullshit from mono and don't want to know what post Covid is like. 

I think we might have lost a million people to Covid-19 given what we know about excess deaths. I think it would be incredibly stupid to pretend Covid isn't a regular feature of our near-future. Go think about the one million probable Covid-19 deaths--and consider what the future government that can better  manage it might look like.

We would need a stronger government protocol about preventing infection in the first place and that means masking. We would need vaccine research that thought about tackling variants and persistently educated people that vaccination is always a correct protocol for avoiding the worst that a virus could do. These things can happen--

They just won't. I think RW tropes are persistent above and beyond functional civic protocols. People are dying because one party doesn't care and the other party isn't fighting back.


TWGB: It's Raining Shoes!

  It certainly has been a minute, hasn't it? So, what brings me out of self-imposed blogging exile, if not something very relevant to my...