COVID Culpability

Our strains of virile enmity

manipulate this dread contagion 

as strains of lethal Covidity

mount a viral invasion.

 

Politicians fling out accusations

of who’s and so’n’so’s to blame

when really the Covid causation

slumbers in risky scientific games.

 

Big Cheese says China this and Wuhan that;

but we were partners in that venture

when yankee NIAID and Wuhan bats

concocted crowned-up Wuhan misadventure.

 

DNA mutates into many versions

through nucleotides of A and T and C and G;

but how does a 12-tide insertion

show up so improbably?

 

So if Covid critters escaped some batty Wuhan woohoo

surely our ecohealth and yankee dollars shared

some culpability in that gain-of-function yoohoo

as Covid strains through danger games were paired.  

 

Now when potus flings forth some virile tweets

of Wuhan woe and Chinese blame

let us not overlook our own laboratory feats

in Ecohealth and NIAID gain-of-function games.

 

Just sayin’.

 

Glass Chimera

Republeo and Demjuliet (Prologue)

William Sheepsheer hath undertaken a new play,

which will be performed by us from day to day.

Nowadays as we shelter, bumps on a Covid log, 

Cousin Will presents his play’s prologue:

Two polarities, both alike in indignity,

in fierce America, where we destroy our dream,

From political grudge erupteth Covid enmity,

Where pandemic vitriol renders sanitized hands unclean.

From forth the Covided  extremes of these two politicos

A host of vilifying fanatics whip up their rhetorical strife;

Thus do these locked-down, distanced foes

With their hostility destroy our national life.

The fearful spreading of this dread contagion

As the fierce infection of these factions’ rage, 

Which, made more lethal by our polarized ragin’

Is now the two months’ traffic of our national stage. 

And yet, if we with moderation could attend,

What the politicos do screw up—we shall strive to mend.

Our play will be acted by yon citizens in the land of the free;

It appears to be a tragedy, but needeth not to be.

To be or not to be—that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in our nation to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous politics,

Or to wear masks against a mist of Covid,

and by cooperating end it.

Glass Chimera

Through Faith and Patience

I would like to remind my fellow-Christians, we serve  a Savior who did not insist, nor fight for, nor allow his right-hand man to fight for, his constitutional rights.
Rather, he bore the punishment of a cruel civil .gov backed up by a band of religious zealots.

Jesus Christ did not argue with Herod, nor Pilate, nor Caiaphas. He already knew that his ultimate victory was assured, because. . . while allowing their bloody conspiracy to totally defeat his body, they were unknowingly setting the historical stage for the greatest human victory of all time—our triumph over death itself.
His world-class demonstration of how to prevail over adversity advances the purposes of God on this earth.
He did not nit-pick about his right to gather on Sunday or maintain any semblance of religion. In fact, on one occasion he ran the religious folks out of their temple.

He was telling them to get their priorities straight.
His most ardent spokesman later reminded us, through a written legacy, that  faith and patience would be the basis of our inheritance.
Not the promises of man . . . nor our legal right to get together on any particular day and play church. while the rest of the world is engaged in a life/death struggle.
We now have in the world a life-and-death situation that will ultimately demonstrate, like Jesus’s own ordeal, the power of our God to deliver us from evil, amen.
So let’s not cloud the issue by trying to split hairs over traditional religious whoodoos like what they think about what we can or not do on Sunday.

They cannot defeat us.
They can’t defeat the ongoing presence the risen Messiah in this world. His greatest life-affirming act was remaining obedient unto death . . . a death that erupted as Resurrection and changed the world forever. He was a man unjustly executed, but then he lived to tell about it.



And get this: they will never defeat his followers.
His victory was a world-changing event that greatly outweighs our power to quibble over freedom of assembly issues during a life-threatening pandemic.
My dear brothers and sisters, they cannot beat us. That’s been tried already, multiple times through multiple ages.
But they can still join us.

You can't beat down a man who survives death.

King of Soul

What we have Learned

(If you prefer to hear the spoken word, listen here for MP3 audio:)

What we have Learned

Now we are engaged in a great covid war, testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great media platform of that war. We have come to protect our institutions—our medical facilities and places of commerce, our recreational spaces and houses of worship, our business enterprises and residences—to assure our citizens of safety in their public paths through these gathering places. Those whose lives have already fallen under the infection of covid shall not have died in vain. Rather, let their untimely demise serve as a warning to us who remain. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Nevertheless, as we approach the end of Phase 1 of our long battle against covid, we find ourselves at a crossroads where some among us would persevere in their advocacy of dire measures to lockdown our mobile inclinations, while others of our citizenry would  demand release from them.

Yet . . .it remains for us the living, surely, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work through which these fallen do testify, by their very absence, of our need to persevere in the battle to defeat Covid-19.
The challenge ahead indicates a full-court press to oppose us— in the fateful minutes of the second half of our struggle against a teeming virus that dribbles feverishly against our most fervid defense.
At this critical moment of our offensive thrust, we find victory in the whizzing of our great  object through the last net of infection.



Thus do we celebrate the 3-pointer which, we hope and pray, shall be celebrated as our game-winner:

~ Six feet Apart—or Six feet Under!

~ Grab the Soap—Don’t be a Dope!

~ No need to Ask—Wear the Mask!

And I lay before thee  the great challenge before us in  such a time as this:
Whether by .gov compulsion, or by personal conviction,  shall we—shall we who are scattered like precious seed in the winds of time —shall we shrink from the dear prospect of adopting—whether voluntarily or by compulsion during these perilous days— these simple habits as a matter of common sense and common courtesy?
Nay, I say, nay, we shall not shrink from the task before us!

Send us your tired, your weary, your socially distanced yearning to be healed, so that healing of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth!

Glass half-Full

Time for Covidic Database

Just looking around, I notice we’re in an information age.
Everywhere you look there’s info.



The info gets stored and horded and whored in e-bundles to be harvested by humans and their bot-slaves. Then the info becomes digitally transformed into  a magic thing called data.
Now everywhere you go online, or off, there’s  a data trail that is tucked away somewhere in vast e-storage bins. Those gigabytes reside interminably in quiet isolation, until the gigs and megs are retrieved  by a dutifully wonkish  techie or faceless bot for various purposes:
Some purposes good, some bad. It’s all out there somewhere.

The system wants to serve you; the system wants to screw you. Its two sides of a digital coin or crypto coin or a capitalist dream or a socialist nightmare. Maybe its your best friend and maybe its your worst enemy.

We’ve learned that the powers-that-be open some mystical flood gates of that Big River of Idolic Desire. The powers  dangle desirable stuff and images of desirable people in front of your eyes so you’ll buy stuff you think you need to be like them, and by so doing you make yourself contented while  keeping the corporate ogres fat n happy as you become fat n happy like them.
Now many of us have begun to to discern that the data mining environment that we’ve surrounded ourselves with is corruptive.
Then Whammo!

Suddenly we have a worldwide disease that corners us into making judgements about what we must or should do to collectively  strike the disease down, or permit it to continue running rampant across our nation and the world.
Some data you know about; you can figure out what the social media operators are doing behind the scenes; other data is hidden. They say data is being gathered about you all the time in everything you do, and it is controversial because you don’t even know what it is that the wizards of data are putting together right now as we speak about you and yours and your habits and your travels and your social interactions and your blah blah blah and who cares about your stuff anyway. Maybe your mother cares about your stuff, or your boss or your partner or Boomchokka Analytica.

I don’t care about your data, although I am writing about it now in a matter-of-fact way because it does constitute a chunk of megabytes somewhere on that mega database in the sky or wherever the hell it is. You may get a call about it some time from Big Brother, although I doubt that because he likes to keep a low profile.
But I regress. As I was sayin’. . .everywhere you look, data this and data that. Database this and database that. Who cares?
Well now we’ve just found out that everybody needs to know about your stuff because of the damned coronavirus.
I mean, they don’t actually need to know about all your data stuff just . . .
whether you test positive for the COVID-19.

It’s just that simple, but now it happens to be a matter of life and death, not just a question of how much money some corporate entity can make off you.
We need to put together a database, you see, about the coronavirus so the professional health people and the doctors and the epidemiologists and the patholgists and the DHHS can make informed decisions about the best way to drive this damned disease back into the ground, instead of it floating around in droplets and vapors amongst the shoppers and the meat-cutters and the hair stylists and the movie ticket-takers and whoever else is trying to keep you satisfied while themselves  making a living in a public place in this here United States of America.

And furthermore, as it turns out now in this life and death situation of Covidic ruin, that mega database in the sky needs to get some real facts about how many deceased have actually met their demise because of Covid—not because of some other disease.
I just hope that the data-geeks can pull all this stuff together in a useful way without generating a hornet’s nest of privacy doowop flipflops.
We need to get some of these statistics straightened out so that discontented folks with gun-totin’ public tantrums can’t get out there in the public square and confuse uninformed citizens about how many folks actually died of  Covid and how many died of some other causes.
Just the facts—that’s what we need now. Read ‘em and weep.

Therefore we could theoretically make good use a Covid-infection database, so statisticians can project accurately and responsibly about how many people will likely catch the disease in the days and months ahead. . .
and to what extent public and commercial spaces ought to be opened up and made available again for common use so we can move  reasonably, safely beyond the socially-distanced construct under which we presently strain.
You see, just now when we are, as a human race, aspiring to survive and prosper on this planet in spite of the Covid destruction, we now hear reports of protests bustin’ out in the town squares and on the net, exerting pressure on whoever’s in charge to renew the openings and operation of this, that, or the other business, because so-and-so is fed up with the lockdown and Billy Jo is tired of the social distancing and Peggy Sue wants to get her hair done and Arnold wants to go work out in the gym and blah blah blah and mainly . . .

People want to get back to work.
We can understand that.
But We find ourselves in a nationwide conundrum because so many folk are getting  stir-crazy and they wanna push the envelope while others are goody-to-shoes politically correct and wanna play by the rules when we don’t have any rules yet about whether the covid numbers are political hype to impose political control on the clueless masses, or. . .
prudent practice for the defeating of Covid. . .
 whichever the case may be.

But really, this whole big baileywick comes down to answering this very important question:
Who has the Covid-19 inside of them? and
Who has not?

So it makes sense (does it not?) to test everybody.
A testing campaign on a national scale and beyond, on a world scale, would not only provide a workable database for informed decision-making by medical doctors and pandemic-preventers but also
such a project as this would generate a whole lot of new employment opportunities for a lot of people. . . especially
Good training for new trainees in the profession of public health. They may be battling this disease for a long time. . . long after I'm dead and gone after 68 years of watching this amazing world cruise by.
Public health becomes more and more of a problem to-be-solved, as covid creeps through the mire of our excessive abuses and misuses.
A reliable Covid database would become an expanding industry during this time of suddenly massive unemployment.
It would require lots of people to be hired to gather information about who got infected and who did not. . . who died of the covid disease and who died of some other dysfunction.

We need to know.
So Get tested today.
It’s your patriotic duty.
It’s that simple: get tested for Covid. Then we can get on with our lives.

Glass half-Full

Liberty or . . . Death by Covid?

Some people have to work for a living.

This reality does not just go away. In the next few months, we will see every shade of compliance and non-compliance with pandemic prohibitions and practices.
In a free nation, we should get used to the fact that not everyone is in agreement about strategies to strike a balance between defeating Covid and preventing a new epidemic of poverty.
Remember too, strategies vary, state by state. It just so happens that the New York Covid epicenter is also the media capital of this continent. Stringent restrictions for defeating Covid have been admirably initiated and administered by Gov. Cuomo in New York State. Media mouths and talking heads headquartered in the Northeast reflect the urgency of that region's life-or-death struggle with coronavirus.

New York — especially the City — is a special case due to the extreme density of population there and the widespread use of mass transit.
In other states, however, especially southern states in which mass transit is not as highly developed, population is more widely spread out. There is far more space already existing between people, towns, suburbs, institutions, retail outlets, public parks, etc. Governors in these states, including many in the west and southwest, will have— regarding their policy responses and timetable — more flexibility in their judgements. Every Governor, every public official is now involuntarily sucked into an unprecedented, massive public problem: how to balance public policies to accomplish the defeat of Covid vs. preserving what is left of economic viability.

The immensity of this epidemic’s destruction is unprecedented in the history of our nation . . . except perhaps the dire destruction and loss of life of the Civil War, and the 1918 wartime war against a flu epidemic.
Official responses in states with low population density will not be as extremely restrictive as in high-density states; nor will such prohibitions extend as far into the months ahead. Balancing Covid-control against this unexpected 1930's-ish poverty wave will be no walk in the park. Our entire nation--indeed the whole world--has been blindsided by this epidemic.

As Governors and other officials respond according to their states’ respective needs, so will the citizens therein be reacting in a wide variety of strategies,with some citizens acting much more cooperatively in the public space than others.
Many Americans still take quite seriously the words of Patrick Henry in 1775:

“Give me liberty or give me death.”

Liberty does not come cheaply. The cost is dear.  Back in the day. . . 1970ff, Crosby Stills Nash Young Gilmour sang out a dirgeful reflection of just what this life comes down to. . .
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-Y0SMitMpk

“Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground."

Do not expect all the citizens of this free nation to agree on all the strategies for controlling Covid while preserving freedom. Many will die, but many will not. The best you can do is be an example in wearing your PPE and mask while ardently exhorting others to do so, for as long as this damned disease requires.

Let's not forget, though, that freedom of assembly is a Constitutional right. Public declarations in that realm are not too be taken lightly. Ultimately such restrictions are subject to the 1st Amendment assurance of our shared liberty.
So don’t expect that all Americans will agree with the myriad of public prohibitions and practices that are provoked by the spread of this disease; do expect that you will hear about, read about, and surely encounter in public places . . . unmasked citizens who are not wearing the politically correct mask and/or PPE. Pshaw! on them.

Also, get used to the fact that our showman President is clueless when it comes to speaking publicly about this very large problem. In his public persona, the man is too obsessed with interpreting every development in terms of whether those persons are for him or against him. If you don’t like what he does, vote for Joe.
As for me, I don't care who is President next year. I care about defending my family and our households against this disease, while upholding the freedoms we are entitled to as Americans.
We sincerely hope that whatever measures our President initiates, implements, advocates  . . . will effectively reinforce the efforts and precautions undertaken by all Americans to slap this dreaded disease back down into the ground.

Lean on your state .gov and local officials for guidance.

As for me and mine (my ICU nurse wife). . . we wear the mask and use hand sanitizer while visiting enclosed places in our Appalachian town.
And remember: not every masked person you meet is a bandit.

Glass Chimera 

COvidConfusionCantioAudio

Yesterday's stubborn poem about a stubborn disease has now been rendered to audio version:

COvidConfusioCantioAudio

Glass half-Full

COvid Confusion

COVID conveys
Confusion, by intrusion,
Contending against our
Contemporary illusions. This damned
Corona thing prevents people from
Congregating, cuz social distancing
Cockamamie
Constricts us to
Collaborating in
Convoluted ways. So we must let ourselves
Commiserate over the loss of
Conventional
Collaboration. But hey!
Coincidentally, we can
Conclude:
Connecting online
Can take the place of the old face-to-face
Conversing like we used to do before this
Cockamamie commotion
Came along, to
Collide with our former
Conductions of
Community-oriented
Cooperation. But this
Collapse of our real
Convening capabilities
Compels us to somehow find new solutions to old
Conundrums. I know this seems a little
Convoluted, but maybe we
Could please try a little harder to
Coordinate our
Collective tactics for the
Continuation of life under these
Confounded
Conflummucks! these
Constrictive
Conditions! Dam! hey we’ll just have to
Conjure up some
Confidence in our public health officials who
Could contrive some strategy and
Concoct some solutions, hopefully better than
Chloroquine, cuz too much of this
Cockamamie
Cwuarantine
Confinement gets them
Contrarian
Confederates all
Conflagrated and
Coiled up like friggin'
Cobras with a
Conniption fit, like, like
Contending, like:

Could we please get this
Cockamamie Covid Contusion
Concluded?! like the
Ckid in the
Car-seat who
Cried out about
COVID Conclusion:
Are we there yet?
but hey I say
Nolo Contendera with
CDC's strategy of
COvid agendera. Just please
Conclude. You
Copy that? If not,
Elude!

Glass half-Full

Those vague Covid-deaths statistics

Pertaining to the dreaded COVID-19, what I am wondering about is:

Reports in the last week or two about “protesters” in several states indicate that patience with restrictive measures is wearing thin in more citizens, as the days roll by. This development is, if you think about it, really no surprise, especially here in the land of the free. Associated with this discontent is a new idea that does legitimately merit some investigation and consideration.

The idea is based on numbers — numbers of people who actually die from Covid after being infected by it. Some are seeing that the death ratio is actually very low among the large number of persons infected. Associated with this report is that the “numbers” of persons infected is actually much, much higher than generally reported.

This discrepancy over mortality percentage is due, to some extent, to the very fact that we have very few numbers about actual Covid cases to begin with. . . which also gets to the fact of having so few “tests.”

My wife is an ICU nurse. She is 62, working in a small town hospital in a North Carolina with very low infection numbers, as reported by our NC Dept. Health and Human Services. She has completed ~~15 or so~ shifts of 12-hour duration since this pandemic took hold of everything.

She has yet to be tested.

The buzz going round among people who are itching to get back to normal is: many, many more people have actually contracted Covid than we think, and it only makes a small percentage actually sick, and only a small percentage of those infected actually die.

So what about this? Is there any verity to this quasi-widespread interpretation of “the numbers” ? which says a) there are many more people than we think, walking around already infected with Covid, but they don’t even know it, and b) the damned disease doesn’t really make you very sick unless you have co-morbidities associated with old age or some other pre-existing health problem.

Somebody who has reliable information on this popular report — please clear this up, or send a test kit to every citizen in these United States.

Glass half-Full

Turn to your Governor

What we need now is: 

50 working Governors. . . each one taking charge of their respective domains.

And those same Governors must agree—while leaving polarized party politics in the dust of social media mass confusion—to solve the problems, small and large, as they arise — in each state. 

Each state is unique, with its own factor of population density, and its own percentage of citizens whose jobs depend on travel (potentially spreading the disease), and its own ratio of citizens who can actually “work at home” instead of having to “go to work” in the morning.

Governors taking charge — this is the true “federal” of federalism. The .gov in Washington — the so-called Federal government — must function, in this pandemic emergency, as a resource for the various states, as they are better equipped to solve their own problems.

But they do need — and will need for a long time — help from the national .gov, the chief executive of which is Donald Trump.

We need this strategy because each Governor is closer to the ground . . .

 “the ground” being a metaphor for . . .

 that  unique strategy policy required for the recovery of his/her own state, for which he/she has been elected to govern and protect. . .

To govern and protect, by: 

~ defeating Covid, according to the unique vulnerabilities of that state’s population distribution and demographics.

~ replenishing the economic opportunities and needs as an appropriate response for the unique conditions in that State.

Eventually, 

Each Governor will be accountable to the citizens of their own state, as citizens express, in the next election,  their appreciation or disapproval of that governor’s proficiency in responding to the Covid challenge of 2020.

The Governors need to get together and corner Trump into being their resourceful servant, instead of the other way around.

Glass half-Full

Ironic: Unity requires Separation

This is the great irony of our present pandemic situation: Unity of purpose compels us to stay apart.
How you appreciate that unity of mission is probably related to your social identity.
The old argument about progressive vs. conservative congeals now around our present controversy over individual movement vs. lockdown.

What this writer has noticed is:
Progressive citizens seem to be enthralled by the newfound collective purpose of defeating Covid.
Conservatives generally want to do whatever is necessary, but they emphasize individual responsibility, preferring  to minimize official restrictions on public behavior. 
In public space, we find that collective obedience gets confronted with rugged individualism.
The respective advocates of each strategy ought to honor each other’s choice as compliantly as possible. Be a team player!

In the months ahead, we shall see how this all plays out.
The speed of Covid-spread seems to be directly proportional to these two factors:
~ Density of people
~ Travel 
 The disease spreads rapidly in large cities where millions of people are perpetually coming and going somewhere.
The disease spreads farther afield whenever any infected person travels from one place  to any other place.
Urban populations should be required, appropriately, to minimize their movements as mandated by official restrictions.



In small town and rural populations, responsible citizens should make themselves informed of guidelines issued by local officials.
As for those citizens who who have reason to travel between areas of high and low population density—your safest--and more responsible behavior-- would require you to retain the standards of whichever travel destination has the more restrictive standards.

In other buzz:
Progressives say Trump’s antics are evidence of creeping Authoritarianism.
Conservatives say lockdowns and social distancing are creeping Socialism.
This Moderate recommends, regarding whomever you may encounter:
Be respectful.
Act responsibly.
Keep your distance.
Protect children.
Love your husband.
Love your wife.
Call your mother.
+ a Word of advice for all you unattached citizens:  this is probably a good time to cease random hook-ups.

Glass half-Full

I hear America flinging

I hear America flinging
challenges of COVID dare;



I see America stringing up a net of Covid care.
I feel America wailing, with going-viral fear:
Pleas from nurses, sending out the call for protective gear,
Journalists following every viral report they hear
Doctors attacking the dreaded virus’ lethal spread
Families mourning for—and remembering— their dead
Health Officials call forth our care-giver legions
Media transmit the message to far/near regions
Friends fling phoning nets of loving, living care
Brave RNs march into the battle as they dare
Administrators send out urgent staffing calls
  flinging open clinic doors in crowded hospital halls
Governors rush out urgent calls for public health protection
Reporters fuel the urgency of that damned fast-spread infection
Every citizen who inhabits regions far and near
   gets affected with this dreadful viral fear.
As pleadings sound forth to maintain some social distance,
you could save a life—maybe your own!—in every social instance.
Hey you! Ask not what the world can do for you, in this anti-covid call;
Ask what, together, we can do for protection of us all.

(with appreciation for inspiration from Walt Whitman and John Fitzgerald Kennedy)
Glass half-Full

The SwanSwoon of our Era

In her recent article at Social Europe,  Indian economist Jayeti Ghosh  accurately identifies a major consequence of our worldwide collective anti-COVID restrictions:

  “Supply chains are being disrupted, factories are being closed, entire regions are being locked down and a growing number of workers are struggling to secure their livelihoods. “ 

  https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-covid-19-debt-deluge

Her statement does indeed identify the crux of our economic problem right now, and the global complexity does unleash trouble on a very large, international scale.
You might say this COVID-crash is the “Crash of ’29” of our era.
Some compare this tsunami to the crash of ’08, or the blah-blah of ’87 (whatever that was.)  But it seems to me this thing is unwinding as an event historically more far-reaching than those two economic downfalls. This Covid thing can be compared to  what happened in 1929.
The Crash of ’29 exposed the vulnerability of a newly-Industrialized USA. This present Covid-crash exposes the vulnerability of a newly-Internetted World.
Ms. Ghosh is correct in her observation when she writes:

  “Today’s financial fragility far predates the Covid-19 ‘black swan’."

The black swan represents the unlikely possibility that something like this could happen . . . even though it did.

It seems to me the immensity of our present global Covid co-morbidity is indeed directly related to our newfound world connectivity in trade, travel and talk. The black swan in the background represents this unprecedented development in world history.



In that same technocratic network to which Ms. Ghosh contributes, Social Europe, Karin Pettersson posts her insightful analysis of our Covid conundrum, which includes this accurate assessment:

   “Already however, we know this: this type of disease cannot be efficiently fought at an individual level, but only as a society. It requires preparation, co-ordination, planning and the ability to make rapid decisions and scale up efforts. A strong state.
But nor is government enough. The situation demands personal responsibility, a sense of duty, concern for one’s neighbour. “ 

     https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-corona-crisis-will-define-our-era

What she writes there is so true. I agree.
 Karin goes on to pose  a question that is surely the crux of the problem for millions of earth-inhabiting workers:

   “Yet what will you do if you simply cannot afford to stay at home?”

And I’m thinking . . . because of this widespread affordability problem, the response of governments and corporations in the days ahead should reflect benevolence, not authoritarian oppression. At least I hope it will.
Karin Pettersson also presents this profound thought: 

   “I wonder if young people might come to think that authoritarian China dealt with the crisis better than the US—the land of the free.”

We shall witness, in the days ahead, how this dilemma is dealt with between China, USA, and all the other nations of this planet.

Karin’s bright insight becomes dimmed, however, when she criticizes, in the same article cited above, Vice President Mike Pence’s public act of leading scientists in prayer.
She is displeased that Pence, a former Indiana governor, had cut funding for HIV-virus research and prevention, back in the day. . .

I can understand Ms. Petterssen’s emphatic let’s fix this humanism. It is quite the de rigeur among technocrat intelligencia who would like to run the world, because they could certainly do a more equitable and better job than all those corporate 1%ers whose rabid profit-taking shenanigans have now made such a mess of things.
 Yes, Virginia, the news is bad. Read 'em and weep. . . but act, benevolently. That also  goes for all you 1%ers out there who think you're in charge of things.
But I also like to remember, and take seriously, a statement that I heard, many years ago, from a fellow who was then what I now am, an ole geezer.

  “What we need now is some damn prayer!”

So Let’s all work together harmoniously to get these problems solved. And remember that a little help from the OneWhoIs could only render our burdens a little easier to bear.

Glass half-Full

Beware the Ideas of March

Beware the Ideas of March, baby!

Evbody awoke to a manic monday in witch all of sudden them hyperventilating stocks were tanking while the black swans circled in swirls of a world wide whirlpool that no wallstreet stool pigeon would be caught dead in, all becuz the cold hard tickertape truth was unwinding plainer and plainer for all to see, or not see as the case maybe, while meanwhile the micro-droplets floated forth in the closed cabins of intercontinental flights as potent pathogens pursued perilous paths of pathogenic pandemic. yes virginia  the miniscule moana corona was erupting not  unlike moana loa spewing skyward spurts of swarmy germs squirming through the ambient air with vectors of infected droplets exacerbated through  presumptive pathogen-preventive protocols  all around us as the news of the day disclosed formerly  covert  covid was going globally overt, giving new meaning to the going-viral webspeak.
Watch out for the wuhan virus some sneaky folks uttered as if the hubei whosehoo were somehow responsible for this nefarious disease. But the truth is those unfortunate hubeis who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the dam thing broke out in the middle of the middle kingdom—they should not catch the flak for this fluke of a flu-like phenomenon.

I mean, not even Mona Carona could have stopped this thing; nor would even Jonah Carona have the wherewithal to escape being swallowed up by its deadly medley of molecules spewing forth contagion across the world.
Read ‘em and weep, oh ye citizens of the world. There is indeed no immunitive shot to be heard of around the world becuz we dont have a vaccine.
I mean, not even a  quentin quarrentino flick could deflect all the infective flak that flies now forth from the mouths of babes and the coughs of sextarian golfers and the sneezes of wheezing whodoos—its viral voodoo i tell ya!
What we need now is some damn Social Distancing! ‘cuz in this day and time if something is unlikely to happen it will  and if something is likely to happen, it won’t.
Why, why . . . even ceasar was deceived when some weird troll sisters uttered beware the ides of march altho really and truly it was the 16th of Ides when all this pent-up pandemonium came pummeling down— he, like, um,

 he had harkened not to the, like, um, warning, choosing instead to, like, um, eschew the WHOhoos test or maybe he was just wearing the rose-colored glasses that day, eschewing the media-led brouhaha as overkill,  when . . . like . . . suddenly he felt, um, the unkindest cut of all as Bernie and Biden, not unlike Brutus, slashed forth with their brash jackass stiletto speeches,  and he found himself like, um, having to cut to the chase instead of prolonging any further display of his empire’s new clothes, and it looked as if he might even go along with Nancy’s nanny-state butt-kicking demmies in the House.
But hey . . . no worries. Its all good.

And if you believe all that, I’ve got some MBS and CDOs I’ll sell ya— so’s you can hedge your bare-sterns with some leeman broohahas as a counter-strategy against the now-going-viral Mona Carona because she’s a hot number on the net .  . . I mean she’s only, like, um, 19 . . . very contagious.
But all this viral spiral did, indeed, like, hit the fan on that fateful blue monday, the day after the ides of March. By ’n by, it like, um, metastasized into the covidized Ideas of March, 2020, and that was, like, the monday that was. Who knows what will go down next? It’s a tough act to follow!



I mean like, um, who knew?
You?

Glass half-Full