Corona virus #4

Corona virus #4

It’s been over a month since I last ate or drink any provisions from a food establishment. I wonder when the last time that happened. Probably before I was in high school. But that is not tragic.

What is tragic is how republicans and their minions are making this whole mess and the government’s response to it, a political game. The POTUS has tossed sops to all of us and boons to businesses-and he wants no restrictions or over sight. History does not suggest that tycoons find largesse during times like this. It does suggest that the degree of profiteering will go up.

Potus is intent on making board members and stockholders get their due quickly and among his dubious exhortations, is an optimism that is unwarranted. He also originally appointed Mike Pence to head up the government response and Pence becomes mute. The legitimate epidemiologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci speaks after the commander in chief has bumbled and lied his way through another of his daily updates. When leadership is required this is what we get. In the Portland newspaper I saw today, an editorial by Steve Duin that makes this obvious.

When you mix science with politics you get politics and nobody but the Executive Branch, the Senate and all of their minions will throw a screen up to blur their own duplicity in this. Hopefully if the POTUS lifts quarantine bans, governors and the common man will ignore that and stay sequestered until the disease is genuinely contained.

There is also the issue of miracle cures touted by many and accelerated by many in the media and on the World Wide Web that are either not tested or inefficiently done so. I see them everywhere these days and hear people extol their virtues with only the information provided by a media talking head. You cannot make people think for themselves. They would have to break the barriers presented by authority figures like Sean Hannity. Rudy Giuliani, himself just a self-promoting huckster also sings the praises saying of the charlatan doctor Zelinko, which he is “thinking of solutions, just like the president.”

In other news there is no other news from me. Everything in my personal life is a clone of the one that occurred a week ago. That is a good thing too because in my case no news is good news. I am reading considerably and was allured by Montaigne’s essay On Experience which is much about self-quarantine during the time of one of Europe’s plagues. Here is a reference to that from TheParis Review. Lastly for today is some further details about Montaigne and this essay.