Angela Merkel got it right. Slow the spread of the virus so the health system has a chance to save our lives. Of course they have a real health care system in Germany, unlike the US.#
I've been reading about and hearing from friends in Italy. My fellow Americans think panic is the problem. They've been trained by terrorism, where it is. This is different. The faster you grok the danger, the less danger there is.#
Instead of listening to podcasts about the virus I started listening to a great audiobook today -- James Taylor's memoir. The audiobook is the way to go because he plays his guitar while he's narrating. Many of his famous songs are all autobiographical. And his story is surprising. I didn't know anything about him. (Hold on. It's an audio memoir. There is no written version. Makes total sense.)#There is only one god, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: not today. #
The bigger the landslide, the greater the optimism, which is what the recovery will be built from, not mere votes in Congress. Whoever wins should create a bond with the electorate that lasts past the election. Not a fake bond, a real one.#
A reader wrote, wanting to use LO2, but lacking a Twitter account. Asked if I could produce a version that didn't require it. I said yes, but it would take about a month during which I did nothing else. On the other hand it would take you about five minutes to create a Twitter account only for this purpose.#
BTW, you can read this blog without using Twitter. I try to make sure of that. But imho it is way better if you do use Twitter. I see this as expediant. I could clone Twitter, and wait for everyone to use it, and I might end up waiting forever. And I don't have that much time. Or I could just use Twitter. It's like driving my car with Exxon gas. I'm sure some of the gas I put in the car actually comes from a hated company. But what the fuck. I can't fight every battle. #
We have to slow transmission of the virus. The sooner we change our mindset the more people will be able to get help when they’re infected.#
Four years later, after watching the 2020 campaign, I think I finally understand why we didn't have a woman president the last four years. No surprise -- of course it is because of our attitude toward gender, and the way it forms women's public personalities. I don't know how it gets better, but first imho you have to understand the problem. Here's the story from my point of view.#- I supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, so I noticed things from a woman's point of view that I normally wouldn't. In debates, Bernie Sanders yelled over her or waved his hands in her face. She couldn't respond in kind. I wanted the moderators to put a stop to it. She couldn't respond in kind because who would tolerate a woman who behaved like that. Exactly why we shouldn't tolerate a man behaving like that.#
- When I hear people say they hate Hillary Clinton, I remember when I hated her too. I remember exactly the moment that changed. Listening to an incredibly smart and well-spoken women being interviewed on NPR and stopping the car and waiting to find out who it was. Hillary Clinton. This was in the 90s when she was First Lady. Ever since I've challenged my assumptions on why I hate a public figure. I think about it, and decide whether that's correct. #
- The source of the hate was resentment. Who was she to have such a public voice. The bug was that of course she had earned a public voice. As wife of the president, she wasn't as she said the kind of woman who stays home and bakes cookies. She was very much part of the presidency. #
- So, Hillary Clinton eventually became a Senator then a Secretary and then a candidate for president. Of course I supported her. Over the years I had come to appreciate her intelligence, hard work, thoughtfulness, all the qualities you want in a president. But one. She often lacked confidence. She was incredible of course, I could not do what she did, that's not the point. You can feel confidence in another person, and hers was fragile, a surface-level thing, it's where the sense she wasn't "authentic" came from. #
- When she was finally coasting to victory, the wind at her back, you could feel it, she could feel it, all of a sudden it comes crashing down, with another bogus attack, the kind she had been suffering her whole life, the process that knocked her confidence down so thoroughly. She collapsed. You could see it in every speech, every interview. She was doing a great job of trying to hide it, but it couldn't be hidden. She was defeated. #
- HRC had been going through this all her life. It scarred her. She tried to do something that in her time proved to be impossible. There's no shame in that, but that is imho why she isn't president. #
- I know pretty much everyone who reads this blog probably loved math in school and won't need a refresher in how exponential growth works, but just in case.#
- 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288, 1048576.#
- That's 20 steps. We started out with two cases of Covid19, and after 20 weeks, assuming a doubling of cases every week, we're at over a million. And I'm sure you can go on from there. It isn't very long until everyone on the planet has had the disease. No one is immune.#
- It kills a fair number of those people, even if they are hospitalized. But at some point, say the 15th week, we will have completely used up all the hospital beds, and then the death rate will go way up. Maybe you don't get killed, but some large portion of your friends and family do. Even if you survive, you may wish you hadn't.#
- We're venturing into the unknown. Life is always like that, but at most times we can hide it from ourselves, we go on with our usual routine. Most days are pretty ordinary. We have a hard time understanding that sometimes the comfortable daily humdrum can break. #
- In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, I went there, to see what a post-apocalyptic American experience was like. I knew the city well because I had gone to college there. What I saw was a city that would never recover from what happened. It would continue, that was obvious, but it would never again be the city I knew. #
- There are smart things we can do, and unfortunately in the United States, we aren't doing them. Of course. We're too stupid to think these things through. Our government sees this as an opportunity to shovel more money to themselves and their cronies. No thought is put into easing the strain on the health care system. On making it easy for every sick person to get the care they need, hospitalization, or the ability to stay home when sick so they don't infect others. To increase the survival rate, and slow the spread. We still haven't gotten the message that we all lose when people among us who are sick go untreated, especially when with a viral infectious disease for which no one is immune. #
- The smart thing to do right now would be to quickly replace our government with one that is immersed in the math and logic of virality. To get Sanders off the campaign trail and in Washington to plead the case for single payer health care now, for everyone. He, unlike most Congress people, has the attention of the press. We need to close down every opportunity for the virus to infect masses of people, and treat and isolate those who do get infected. #
- The mayor of New York, supposedly a smart person, has yet to cancel the St Patrick's Day parade. No doubt it will be canceled, but the idea that at this late date it hasn't, tells you someone in authority who is not insane (unlike our president) hasn't figured out how this works. #
- We're now paying the price for the dumbing-down of our country. As one of the more vulnerable people (not the most, but close) I am sad that my fate is in the hands of such incompetence. I'm doing what I can to spread the information that we're wasting the gift of time we were given, we can learn from the experience of Italy, Iran and China. But of course, we aren't. #