Where’s the ACLU?

Our Governor said he won’t allow churches to reopen until there’s a vaccine or no new “cases.” Which means never.

My question is: where’s the ACLU? Because this is the First Amendment. Where’s everybody who said they believe in civil liberties?

What an absolute disgrace.

Stay Home, End Lives

After weeks of barking idiotically “stay home save lives,” Governor Cuomo recognized today that’s he’s been shocked to discover that 90% of hospitalizations for COVID are of people who stay very much in. 66% were sheltering at home, 18% were in nursing homes, 1% was in jail, etc. [It’s on video. Please watch it.]

Well, at least he’s cognitively intact enough to recognize that this information exists and that he wasn’t aware of it when he established his stay-at-home policy. I’m very glad.

We aren’t that lucky in Illinois. Our governor is impervious to any information whatsoever.

Deathly Rage

Why is it stupid to say that one can die in a fit of rage? One can easily stroke out when in a rage. I know from extensive personal experience that rage makes blood pressure shoot up like little else.

I’m reading a book for review, and there’s a whole argument in it based on the idea that an 18th-century doctor was an idiot for concluding that a patient died because of a fit of rage.

Of course, the author of the book is American and she goes on and on ridiculing people from other cultures and eras for thinking there can possibly be any connection between health and emotions.

Using COVID to Self-promote

People are using COVID to self-promote in a disgusting way.

There’s an aspiring screenwriter called Bess Kalb who has attracted a gigantic number of Twitter likes and follows with a harrowing story about her father, an ICU doctor who is seeing young, healthy patients slaughtered by COVID. There’s a long and detailed story about blood transfusions, X-rays, patients dying, etc. One story in particular, about a patient getting 8 blood transfusions in a row and still dying because COVID “tore his organs to shreds,” is especially poignant.

COVID porn lovers flocked to Bess like flies to honey. And then it turned out that Bess’s Dad hasn’t been inside an ICU or administered blood transfusions in years. He’s doing telemedicine. The story is a lie, start to finish.

I knew it was a lie long before the revelations about Bess’s Dad came to light. The story sounded completely invented because I’ve been following the science. And I mean the actual science. Papers written by scholars and not media reports about papers written by scholars. This is why I knew Bess was lying because she wants to be hired to write for ER-type TV shows.

Now that the truth has come to light, Bess has offered all kinds of clumsy excuses to justify it. (“My baby is teething, I’m exhausted, leave me alone, you Nazis!”)

But there are 174,000 people by the latest count who believed Bess. Sad, isolated people who are being manipulated by the Bess Kalbs and the Neil Fergusons of the world.

This is one of many stories of COVID self-promotion. Remember the fake nurse who was actually an aspiring Instagram personality? There are many people who are going come out of this with strengthened personal brands and improved career prospects. Because we let them dupe and abuse us.

Working Days

On weekdays I can work for one hour between 5 and 6 pm. I could work after 9 pm, I guess, but mine is intellectual work, and my brain simply refuses to produce anything after a whole day of craziness.

On weekends I can work from 1 to 5 pm. Unless we have some family activity.

In total, it comes up to about 10 hours of work a week. And it’s always outside of my peak performance hours.

Also, in this entire time since March 16 I’ve had a total of 4 weekdays where I could work from 1 to 6 pm. Four days of something vaguely resembling normal work (although normal for me is 9 am to 2 pm). I should be enjoying them but I don’t. I build up these days so much in my mind and I expect so much from them that they never live up to the expectations. I turn into a neurotic, trying to save time on bathroom visits and other crazy stuff.

Houellebecq on COVID

Michel Houellebecq says everything will be the same but a bit worse after the COVID crisis:

He described COVID-19 as a “banal virus” with “no redeeming qualities… It’s not even sexually transmitted.”

But he warned that the self-distancing and “home-working that the epidemic has brought” would accelerate the technological push to isolate and atomise people.

It was a great excuse, he said, to push further the “obsolescence of human relationships”.

I think he’s absolutely right.