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The Duration: Things of Which I Am Mightily Tired
Snippy self-satisfied pundits who tweet out news stories with prissy little swipes referencing something said three weeks ago by someone they hold in superior contempt. Just post the gad-dang story without preening your feathers.
Masks.
People who don’t wear masks.
People who wear masks walking the dog, making you feel stupid for not wearing a mask, but c’mon, man
People who were tweeting three weeks ago about how this was basically Ebola-TB-HIV-Norovirus that would turn every hospital into a stinking morgue because we had six, maybe seven ventilators in the country, and are still striking the same apocalyptic tone on a day when this happens:
The inexplicable disappearance of my favorite TP brand. It just ceased to exist. Same with Purell. Did they reset the Matrix and someone forgot to load certain brands?
Plastic shields at store checkouts. We all wonder if those are up for keeps now.
Busybody news stories about the things we shouldn’t be doing, as if we should all be riding stationary bikes for an hour every day while watching self-improvement documentaries about “self-care strategies.”
Morose news stories about how we shouldn’t feel positive, because everything sucks, which would be more compelling if the author hadn’t been preaching the gospel of Miserabilism before this struck.
Broad assertion of powers over everyday life in the name of Science, because we all know Isaac Newton was one of the authors of the Constitution and slipped the “Trust the Models” clause in somewhere in invisible ink, and it has absolute authority.
Anything having to do with Joe Biden, which seems like a review of a play that has been running on the East End since 1967.
TV shows full of people living ordinary lives as we knew them, because they seem like documentaries of Jazz-Age Flappers doing the Charleston a week before the crash of ’29.
And so forth. In short:
“Call Me sequestered.”
Anybody predicting anything about the disease’s future progress or effect on the economy. Nobody knows yet how long this will last or how quickly the economy will come back. In particular, journalists and political pundits, who as a group are terrible at math, should not be predicting this stuff, which is all about the interplay of so many different statistical curves (cases, deaths, etc.) and can be swung wildly by unforeseen events (such as the potential effectiveness of remdesivir). I haven’t even heard a compelling theory as to what metric or combination of metrics will ultimately tell the tale, much less a convincing evaluation of trends in those metrics.
It’s throwing darts at a board at this point. Take your guess if you want, but don’t pretend you’ve figured it out.
“We are doing this together”. No we’re not.
But we are. We are all together…in doing this apart.
It’s the people whose dog is also wearing a mask that really complicate my mood.
Newsflash: Disease control experts from the world over are now converging on Yemen. Yemen has reported one case of Covid-19 and no fatalities. The world awaits with bated breath the great wisdom that wise Yemen has to share with the decadent West.
Not from CNN or MSNBC, but it well could have been.
Dr. Fauci; the Phil Rizzuto of virology
Holy Cow, Phil at least would have supported reopening all the good seafood restaurants on the other side of the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, so he’d have someplace to go for dinner on the way home from the Stadium.
I’m mightily tired of ………….latest stories (popping up on Drudge which I won’t click on) about the Obamas getting back into the WH somehow? This is as bad as the Clintons trying to get back in – bolt the doors!
Wow. I haven’t heard that yet. How’s that work? Obama as Biden’s Veep? Michelle replacing Biden on the ticket?
The idea seems to be Michelle as Veep. How that would work out for Joe and Jill, I’m not sure, because if you did that, the dynamic would either be that Biden is going to cede Michelle a significant amount of authority if he’s elected president, or that Biden is either going to be a lame duck from the moment he takes office, and be replaced by Michelle in 2024, or Biden’s not even going to make it through the term, and will either step down (or be forced out) before ’24.
That would make wacky-but-lovable Uncle Joe the weakest president in terms of authority at least since Gerald Ford, and possibly going all the way back to Andrew Johnson (and could set up the situation where Team Obama and the media want Biden to give up the job for Michelle and suddenly start obsessing on his mental gaffes, while Doctor Jill goes into full Edith Wilson mode and starts trying to do some of her husband’s job for him without being elected, in order to remain in the White House).
I wonder what Barack would do while they work all these things out.
He’ll be busy with his job as a Supreme Court Justice after RBG resigns on Jan 21st.
Not much — he enjoys being the God-king emeritus of the Democratic Party too much to really get his hands dirty other than hinting at what he wants. It’s why he hinted at not wanting Bernie to be the nominee (because he didn’t think he could win), but at the same time never endorsed Biden until there were no other candidates in the race. Commitment to a specific sector of the Democratic Party (other than his wife) risks losing the adulation of the other sectors of the party, including some who might even after the temerity to note Obama’s failings as president, as the loss of down-ballot office-holders by the Democrats at the time.
He only openly targets Republicans and even when he does that, he wants the entire Democratic Party to have his back before he acts.
Every company, no matter how unrelated to anything, must publicly announce, in sober tones, their “Response to COVID-19“. Do we all need to have a personal response, also, to keep up with the preeners?
Even worse is to see the pundits’ barely concealed glee at breaking the milestone.
What I like are reading comments like “This county had a 300% increase in cases over the last week!” but what they don’t tell you is that last week there was only 1 case.
That’s how they made South Dakota “the newest hotspot” (with fewer than 1000 cases confirmed and 6 deaths).
I think you can buy the use of a one-time mailing list so you can mail yours out to as many people as possible.
I see people driving with masks on — and they are alone in the car. Why!?
They have been properly trained by those who wish to rule over us.
Never put a Doctor in front of a tv camera
Never put a doctor in front of a tv camera