Day 1170 – Part II – Hey Guess What?
Thursday April 2, 2020 – Part II
213 Days until the election on November 3rd
293 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
Last night I wrote “A Tale of Two Idiots” while watching the presidential virtual rally for his re-election called “The Corona Virus Update.”
I was not prepared for what I learned afterwards and feel I need “to stay ahead of the curve” and get this out there before too much more putrid idiocy overtakes me. (What? Unemployment at over 6 million last week? Doubling from 3 million the week before! Way to go! We’re #1. Remember when the right was upset at 635,000 and blamed Obama for W’s screwups that led to that unemployment figure? Yeah, good times.)
First off, there is the tape of Bill Gates from 2015, warning of the possibility of a global pandemic. He pretty much nailed it. (Hey, maybe that was part of what led Obama to create that Global Pandemic Response Team? Oh wait that was probably already in place. Nevermind.)
Then there was the news that the Department of Defense has ten labs that could process the Corona Virus tests, but haven’t been asked. (This I mentioned in Part I, but it was made achingly clear later in the evening.) Not only that but folks mentioned that we have the greatest logistical folks in the world. It’s called The U.S. Military. Why not use them? Nah. Haven’t been asked.
Why not use the War Powers Act to get equipment and have the stuff we need made? Other than a tweet at GM to make respirators there hasn’t been any movement.
Speaking of respirators, it was reported last night that many of those in the National Stockpile don’t work. Apparently, the Trump administration let the contract to maintain them run out and never renewed it.
Speaking of the national stockpile, it’s apparently almost depleted of masks.
Speaking of masks it was reported that on Monday of this week a warehouse got an order from overseas to ship out 230,000,000 masks. WTF? There are 230 million masks somewhere in this country and we are getting ready to ship them out? (Probably to be resold back to us at a higher price.) The supplier said no one told him not to take the order. How did we not know about all these masks? “We” being the public, the governors scrambling to find masks, the Federal Government?
In Massachusetts there’s a 4th grade girl making masks on her sewing machine. Phenomenal. So far she’s made 820 masks. Let’s see if she could make a thousand by this weekend and if a thousand others joined in we could have a million, and if there were 230 groups of a thousand all at their sewing machines making masks we could have the number of masks sitting in a warehouse right now getting ready to leave our country.
Speaking of Massachusetts, it turns out the Federal Government can be very effective. Very effective at snatching orders out from under the nose of that state. Meanwhile states like Florida and Kentucky get everything they want and more. Huh? Some wonder if it’s political. There’s no wonder. Massachusetts has Elizabeth Warren (a truly “nasty woman” I’m sure in Trump’s eyes.) Florida has Ron DeSantis, a man with his head so far up Trump’s ass it’s doubtful he’ll ever see sunlight.
But this is all back drop to the truly stunning news. Oh wait, one more bit of idiocy, it was the Governor of Georgia (you know he and who outright stole the election from Stacy Abrams by running it and not registering 50,000 voter applications, and closing polling places in Democratic strongholds, not having enough ballots in those places, and throwing people off of voting rolls ) yeah that guy, he learned yesterday that some people can have the virus and not show any signs of being sick. Amazing. (What’s amazing you ask? Me too. Is it that he didn’t know until yesterday? Or is it that he obviously can’t read or hadn’t read or been informed by his health staff? Or is it that he’s so outright lying? Hard to say.)
Okay, the most stunning bit of news, to me, came late at night. It was an interview with Robert Gallo. He was one of two doctors to figure out that AIDS was caused by HIV and he’s done lots in the field of virus research. He mentioned, just casually, almost in passing that a research journal had published an article over a year ago that stated that a corona virus could be passed to humans via a bat. Over a year ago! Think about how long it takes to get published. That means some folks knew about this one or two years ago.
Hum, Trump got rid of the Pandemic Response Team because he didn’t like the idea of people sitting around doing nothing (you know like worrying about viruses and germs, and what to do about them.) Turns out Dr. Gallo is connected internationally to virologists around the world who are part of a series of labs that study this stuff. Here’s some idle speculation for you: what do you think the chances of someone on the Pandemic Response Team sitting in on those calls? Or reading about that friggin’ bat a year ago? Or having heard Bill Gates’ 2015 warning?
One of the scientists interviewed last night said that when it comes to pandemics timing is everything. Getting out in front and jumping on this kind of thing is critically important. How has Trump’s timing been? Sucky.
The doctor who went to Africa during the Ebola epidemic, came back infected, and got better. You know the doctor that Trump criticized Obama for letting back into the country? Yeah, that doc. He’s in the middle of this pandemic in New York. He said that we missed an opportunity to get people trained. If we had sent people over to help (and not been stopped from doing so) then they would have real world training. They would be used to wearing hot protective gear all day. They would be used to seeing a person well one day and dead the next.
Well, don’t worry. They’ll get that training now.
Did you see the shot of the four (or was it five?) long refrigerator trailers parked side by side outside a hospital? Guess what they are for? Hope we don’t run out of them.
Have a nice day.
213 Days until the election on November 3rd
293 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
PS Pyramid! (Many people don’t know this but pyramids are just a pile of rocks. Did you know that? Amazing, huh? – OMG save me!)
Leave a Reply