When it Comes To COVID don’t monkey around.
And just like that…it’s 2020.
Not only are we still talking about Donald Trump and Roger Stone’s smarmy face is still assaulting us on the news, but like a bad re-run of a horror show we have seen before, or a nightmare we just can’t seem to wake up from, COVID numbers are spiking through the roof.
Lines to get tested are snaking around the block, with hours-long wait time. Hospitals are overcrowded. Shows are closing. Businesses disrupted. Schools are going back online. Like riding a bike, social distancing skills are once again being brushed off and put to practice
It’s COVID deja vu all over again.
Those familiar feelings of uncertainty and foreboding are resurfacing. Though they never really went away, many of us began to slowly venture out into the greater world, empowered by a booster shot. For a touch o’ normalcy, we tentatively began eating in restaurants, going to the theatre, movies, gathering with friends. But those fearful feelings lay dormant, lurking just beneath the surface ready to pounce at an opportunistic time.
And it has. Just like the virus.
Just in time for the holidays, another Coronavirus wave here. And it is very worrisome. Omicron infects 70x faster than previous COVID Strains. Breakthrough COVID cases are rising.
It is positively frightening.
In my own state of New York, we are having a massive surge in positivity. The county I live in has not seen such a spike since January, and in N.Y.C. COVID positivity rates have doubled in three days as omicron spreads.
It is deadly serious.
This is no time to monkey around. Get your vaccines. Get your boosters. Wear a mask and stay safe.
The world is racing to get control of omicron and yet some Americans are acting less like monkeys and more like jackasses.
Some still refuse to do the right thing even as the U.S. topped 800,000 deaths this past week.
What are these monkeys not seeing and refusing to hear? Somehow these anti-vaxxers view science and facts as evil. Covering their eyes in fear, they choose not to see, they choose not to hear, they speak no evil which to them is science.
Conspiracy Crazies
Now Omicron is spreading as fast as the conspiracy theories.
Anti-vaxxers are already attributing omicron to conspiracy theories proof positive that the pandemic is orchestrated by powerful interests and new variants of the disease are part of this shadowy plan. Omicron is just the next step of a global conspiracy!
Crackpot theories range from believing that the vaccine caused the omicron variant. Another is the variant is being pushed by the government and big pharma to undermine ivermectin an anti-parasite drug that vaccine skeptics claim treats COVID.
Another kooky claim says the timing of the variant suggests government officials are trying to distract people from following the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell who is accused of helping Jeffrey Epstein traffic underage girls. This is just coo coo.
This strain of information is dangerous and harmful and the spread of false information continues. Don’t turn a blind eye to this danger. Listen to the warnings of science, don’t keep spreading lies.
Do the right thing. For yourself and for others.
Or just like that…you could die.
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Envisioning The American Dream 
Sally, it boils down to people making an issue political to cover for the failure of a former president to actually be a leader when he so easily could have been. The ball was on the tee for him to lead and he whiffed.
A historian and epidemiologist noted that the first thing to do in an epidemic is to tell people the truth. Yet, that is not in the former president’s wheelhouse. He admitted in an interview on February 7, 2020 with two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward, that he knew COVID was dangerous, yet he had multiple pep rallies later that month, without telling his most ardent supporters that they were in danger. In fact, he called it a Democrat hoax and naysayed the severity.
Yes, he took a few good steps, yet for the large part, his naysaying and controlling the narrative, creating a culture of his supporters of making the issue political to rationalize his negligence. Even today, there are people who are refusing to do the necessary things to protect themselves and their families and friends. It would have been so easy for him to be a leader on this, something he craved. Yet, he wanted to go to pep rallies and hear applause than do the right thing.
And, now many more have died that possibly could have been saved if we acted sooner with purpose. Keith
LikeLiked by 2 people
That science has become so politicized is criminal and now lethal. Trump began seeding the doubt, but now it is firmly planted and growing like wildflowers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sally, I think the doubt preceded Trump. He has only added gasoline to that fire as he knew he could use that fear of science to sell himself (remember he said he alone can solve our problems, as he said at the convention in 2016). One of the reasons I left the GOP around 2008 to become an independent was a tendency for the GOP to make things up, aided and abetted by Fox and Rush Limbaugh. Botn sides lie, but it is not a normal distribution, being heavily weighted to the right. That was 2008. Now, it is far worse with the GOP so adrift, untethered to the truth or lawfulness. When the truthtellers are vilified and the liars celebrated, it is not a very good sign for the GOP. Keith
LikeLiked by 2 people
I hope people will heed the warnings and play it safe. The numbers do not lie.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I don’t know what else they need to take action. It is very alarming.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I admit it: I don’t think I’d read an article or watched a news report in months. Maybe some snippets on the car radio on the way to work, but that’s about it. After the burnout of the Dump years, I kinda ebbed and flowed about being informed (and down in the dumps depression wise) over the past year. I hate it, but it’s true. I’d tune in for a bit, let off for a few weeks, get back on and inform myself… but other than screaming blame games and more pandemic confusion, nothing’s come up that I could see, so I’d retreat and just try to keep to myself.
Now I wonder what’s been the more depressing activity the past week: opening tabs and trying to re-educate myself on pandemic issues (and not get frustrated) or mulling over what I learned after finally watching the whole “Chernobyl” mini-series? Agendas, misinformation, ignorance, outright lies, incompetence, greed… just damn. Real life is scary as hell when all this comes together, in both instances.
Probably no wonder I’m having a tough time improving my outlook in therapy. I’ve been stuck trying to answer the question of “what’s the point?” the past few weeks: what’s the point of trying new things or making changes when no one’s gonna care or some idiot’s gonna get me infected and killed before I have a chance to succeed in anything? That’s been the thought from this past weekend that I’m trying to shake off… might just make some progress there if I think on it some more (therapy assignment, too, anyway–hee hee).
Our society has such a short attention span and such a short window for it, and we fail miserably because we hope things can be a quick fix, but when it’s not quick enough, we give up and don’t bother adapting or implementing changes or looking out for others anymore. It’s demoralizing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I don’t think you are alone in your struggles. I know many who are burned out after the tumult of the Trump years , that linger still, and have just shut off the news. It is depressing, disturbing and can leave you feeling agitated and helpless. I have found myself trying to wean away a bit, but like any junkie, I keep coming back.
LikeLiked by 2 people
One hopes against hope some days that the Trump nightmare will fade away. He’s always on the verge of meeting justice and getting his custom orange suit, then nothing happens. “Go away, nightmare!” I scream in my head but it sticks there, apparently as tenacious as the COVID-19 pandemic and just as virulent.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What doesn’t help is I still see some Dump election flags up in front of people’s homes down here, some updated to 2024 and some a little weathered from the 2020 collection. It worries me that enough people would want him back and that we’d be dumb enough as a nation to let it happen, and not just for 4 years, either because it feels more and more likely that Billy Joel had it right: “only the good die young.” I think those reminders that won’t go away have kept that depression festering longer than it should have, because it reminds me too much of the anger and hate that tore up my life pretty well the first time around.
Good thing I visit the therapist tomorrow. Maybe she can help me figure out how to deal and get through it, among other things.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I live in a county where 77.2% of all registered voters voted for him. I feel stressed out most of the time myself.
LikeLiked by 1 person