Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

Yesterday, as I was finishing my epic kitchen clean up, I started getting phone calls.  The first one was from a friend who confused me with my husband (seriously. He doesn’t even have an accent!) and because my phone doesn’t tell me the name of the person calling, I assumed it was a telemarketer.  When things cleared up I found out Rush Limbaugh had read substantial portions of my article on PJMedia.

Because I’m lazy — which for Sarah-speak means “I actually have other stuff I need to do/finish.” — I’m just going to put links to the article, to Rush Limbaugh’s show, and to a video.

AND THEN I’m going to make a few pithy observations.
So, if you’re ready, here it goes:

This is the article:  Modeling COVID-19 and the Lies of Multiculturalism.

This is Limbaugh’s show: The COVID-19 Models Can’t Account for Culture.

AND this is the video:  If it doesn’t take you there, skip to 1:19:45 

For the record, I’m honored, but it’s perhaps too much of an honor as I still haven’t processed this.

I first started hearing about Rush in 91.  I only listened to bits and pieces of his show, ever, mostly because ADD.  I guess, if I’d had bluetooth headphones, as I do now, I’d have developed the habit of listening to him while cleaning, all over the house. But back then, you know, with a toddler, my life was never precisely silent enough to listen while doing other things, and I have trouble sitting still and listening.

That said, I’ve read Rush Limbaugh. A lot. And I admired him madly, as I was deep in the political closet, because he was out there. He was speaking out. He was saying things that needed to be said, things that at least half the country was thinking, but which had no voice in mass media, ever.

He was one of the first breaks in the wall of false consensus that kept pushing the Overton Window further and further left.  He was in many ways the beginning of “fighting back.”

He took an outdated medium, because it was the only thing they allowed us, and he turned it into a megaphone.  And he changed the culture. Which is important, because politics is always and forever downstream from culture.

And for those who will say “but he got rich from it.”  Sure. He did. OTOH a) it was a counterintuitive bet.  No one goes into right-of-center anything for the money.  Because right of center is anti-establishment. And establishment has ways of slapping you down from stepping out of line. Everyone who is right of center and manages to make a living, much less get rich, has to be 1000 times better than anyone spouting the “approved” leftist pap.

So, whether you realize it or not, standing up for the establishment cost him monetarily. It also cost him in psychological and stress issues, I guarantee. Why? Because the minute you step out of line, there are legions of brain dead establishment drones who devote their lives to attacking you, reviling you and wishing you ill.  I, myself, have a few of these Renfields who devote their lives to twisting every word I ever said to make me sound either stupid or insane or perhaps criminal.  It’s amazing that they devote so much time to this.  To be fair, I have no idea who half of them are, unless the mental cases really intrude on my life in some way (and there’s always mental cases. Including those who go after you financially. At one point I was attacked on Facebook by someone who used to work for one of my publishers, and who screamed at me how horrible it had been to work with me.  I had no clue who this person was. By asking, I figured out she’d copyedited Draw One In The Dark.  So, her experience working with me was going over a completely apolitical book, back in the days when I wasn’t even out of the political closet.  Also, that book was one of the more trouble-free copyedits I had. Mostly she’d moved commas around, and since I was out sick when they taught punctuation, I just assume the copyeditor is right.  I don’t even remember any disputes.  But because I disagreed with her politically this person had made that nothingburger interaction into some horrible experience, and is probably maligning me all over traditional publishing.)  Most of the time I find out these people have written about me because some fan tells me.  And the number of times I’ve clicked through to see their ravings is zero.

BUT I have dedicated Renfields, working for the establishment and trying to pound me down, because I’m the nail that sticks up.  Imagine if you will what kind of crap Rush puts up with.  And yet he persists.

Which is why I admire him immensely, and was moved to tears seeing him receive the presidential medal of freedom during the State of the Union.

I’ve said before I would never have come out of the closet without Breitbart.  I probably wouldn’t even have thought of it without Rush.  So, there it is. My little mite, such as it is, should be to his credit.

Meanwhile, while my close friends told me that because I was read by Rush on air, I was no longer respectable, and were joking — particularly as they said I’d no longer be bought by traditional publishing. Which is a forgone conclusion, and also, seriously? I’m not sure there will be a traditional publishing after this house arrest stunt. Their one advantage was placing paper bricks in bookstores. That might be gone now — there were comments elsewhere on social media that said that and were serious.

By having one of my pieces read on air by an icon of right of center media, I was beyond the pale.

My answer to that is what Portuguese fisherwomen did — and I never figured out what it meant, and mom still won’t tell me, so I suspect it’s obscene — which is holding one hand palm up and hitting it with the BACK of the other hand.  That for your respectability!

If respectability consists of endorsing the Marxist thinking that has killed a hundred million (and probably more) across the world over the last hundred years, I want no part of it.  You go on and be “respectable” all you want.

I’ll stand with the people like Rush, who are building a world where the individual counts for something, and where killing half of your population in a planned famine, or working them to death in work camps isn’t the laudable, done thing.  Not to mention a world where no sane human being would collaborate with the Chicoms.  (And btw, what makes me sick about the establishment working for and with the Chicoms is that I have a gut feeling it’s not even for money. They’re just that twisted.)

Anyway, if this is no longer being respectable, I don’t want to be respectable. Besides, us bad girls are always fascinating…

And now I’ll go work.

Sarah out.

When I was going insane in 08, (because whenever communism or its slower, but just as lethal sister, socialism, with or without happy fun hats threatens, my PTSD rises up, and the back of my brain starts spinning so that I can’t write) Jerry Pournelle gave me as advice “If you can’t do anything else, make things very clean.  It won’t hurt, and in the long run might help, because when you get off the panic mode, it’s one less thing to worry about.”

So I did.  I spent what must have been months scraping and waxing the floors of the previous house.

I’m mostly angry right now, and hopefully the idiocy doesn’t last that long, because, you know, I’m ….. well…. I suppose I could replace the carpet with wood.  Which needs to be done, as well as a lot of touch up and refinishing.

Anyway….

The reason this post is so late is that I woke up the day after a big family holiday meal (the holiday meal was big. The family remains smallish.) to a kitchen in upheaval, since I’d taken out large cooking implements I use maybe once a year, plus a lot of good dishes that DO NOT get washed in the dishwasher.  Plus the floor of the kitchen was a mix of chocolate (I made low-carb chocolate bunnies. They went over well….) and marinade, and heaven only knows what.

It’s snowing really hard out.  When the weather predicted snow only yesterday, I had planned to go to the home improvement store today and spend most of the day refinishing the front door, which has taken a beating from the weather these last four years since we moved.  I also planned to do some repainting inside, and plant two trees.  (Squints out the window at the flying blindness of snow.)  So, that isn’t happening.  in fact, this is one of those times that Colorado would be shut down even without our governor being a concentrated blot of leftist insanity.

But I said I’d start the journey back to normal today.  And so, I did.  I’m on the third load of dishes, and the kitchen looks like a  place human beings might cook and eat in.

And you know, Jerry was right. (Yeah, I SHOULD be surprised. Not.) Because there is something inherently therapeutic in taking a confused mess with blobs of stuff spattered all over and making it into a shining, clean space.  It gives you a feeling you have some control. (More on that later.)  It doesn’t stop the panic — nor should it — but it gives you a sense that you’re not adrift in chaos and powerless to impose your own desires on your personal environment.  And when you’re done, you are rewarded with things looking and feeling better, too.

Meanwhile I was informed (three times. LOL) that Rush Limbaugh read part of my PJM post on why culture makes a big difference in the transmission of any disease, and why OF COURSE NYC has a different risk than the rest of the country.  (BTW, you’ll find if you look on line that they say population density is something like 22k people per square mile.  That’s wrong.  Husband spent way more hours diving into the numbers on all this (He’s now obsessed, and as normal when it’s numbers, all I can do is let him finish his research and then, hopefully, use it in a post.) It is only 22k people per square mile because they include Staten Island in the count. If they don’t, it’s 77k people per square mile.  Compare that to, say, New Mexico, which has at best 2 people per square mile, and you see how irrational it is to model the entire country the same.)  I’m very flattered.  I’ve never listened to Rush, though most of my friends did, back in the day, mostly because I had untreated ADD (actually ADHD because I fidget, can’t sit still, and can only concentrate on something auditory while doing something else.  Which is why I listen to audio books while cleaning.)  Now it’s treated, but I still don’t listen to things very often.  I have however read him, and am aware of the genius of the man.

Anyway, one thing I don’t think I said in the article (I woke up and wrote four of them in a row, so…) is that it baffles me that other people can’t see this.  I have to consciously remember that, through accident of circumstances, I’ve changed cultures more often than most human beings, and can see how the differences translate in daily life, and therefore in risk of disease.

Our president, admirably down to Earth as he is, is after all a New Yorker, and New Yorkers have trouble understanding the rest of the country is not a sort of New York manque.  I think that is part of what has allowed him to be maneuvered into the insanity of locking down the country and destroying the economy.  Which, yes, will doubtlessly now be turned around and used against him.

But, on this snowy morning, and having just cleaned my kitchen enough my female ancestresses can stop haunting me, I’m willing to see positive stuff too:

Governors in the East — in the EAST — are talking of re-opening; the president is talking of re-opening.  Maybe the worst of the howling insanity is now passing.

And meanwhile, maybe we can explain to our slower countrymen why the economy matters; why it’s not just “money” and, in the unpleasant times we now face, why it’s always bad for a government  — ANY government — to prevent people from working and producing.

Meanwhile, like me this morning, coming into a kitchen with dirty appliances and dishes piled with very little rationality on every surface, it’s time for us to take stock of what we now face, with clear eyes and thinking mind.  There are various places now yelling about food shortages this Fall.  And yeah, what’s being destroyed/plowed under, etc, is MOSTLY what supplied restaurants, but please stop and think about it.  If people were eating half the week at restaurants (some estimates are that most people — certainly not us, btw. If we go out once a week it’s a lot — eat out one meal a day) they still need the same amount of food.  In the right “supply chain” or not, that food will be missed.  So, plan accordingly.  I need to budget SPACE to store emergency provisions.

In the same way if your job is at risk or already gone, plot your course.  Take this week or this couple of weeks to plot a way to solvency.  What is there that needs doing that you can do, and that will pay you.

What needs doing will have changed, just like my kitchen cleaning routines don’t apply to the chaos I faced this morning.  And you might find you know things you can do and fill niches no one else can.  Or at least no one has thought of yet.

And it’s time. It’s time, because otherwise the statists will take advantage of the mess they made to impose their preferred, top-down solution, which will only guarantee sooner or later this ends in blood.

So…. take stock of the mess. Decide where there is something you can do. Start planning how to do it.

Me? I have a novel to finish and have jotted down two article ideas for PJ for later today.
Meanwhile, I’ll also learn to do clothing alterations, so that I can change the clothes I want to keep to my present size.

And I should get that subscription on Amazon, so I can watch Foyle’s war and establish some kind of exercise program, if our weather is going to be as crazy as our government.

Let’s get to work and reestablish our own version of ordered chaos, the only order Americans thrive in.  Before the socialists decide the solution is to break dirty dishes and throw them away.

BUT I’m still alive.

Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it.

This one is VIP.  My code is HOYT. If you decide to sign for it, use it, please will give you a discount (and pay me a bounty.)

https://pjmedia.com/blog/the-covid-19-phony-war/

I’ll update this post as the others go up.

UPDATE, not VIP: https://pjmedia.com/blog/the-green-new-nose-under-the-tent/

And more updates:  Modeling COVID-19 and the Lies of Multiculturalism

And this one is VIP, also. Use HOYT as your discount code:

We Risk Killing Civilization in Our Panicked Fear of Individual Death

I might try to do a chapter of the current free novel later, but no promises, as I woke up and wrote four posts now cued at PJM to go up at their convenience.

This thing isn’t exactly under my control, but at least some stuff is getting written.

And I want to work on the interrupted novels.  Normally I do the chapter in the morning before I clean, but I cleaned yesterday. So today I’d like to work on other stuff that’s been hanging while there was a wall preventing me from working.

Of course I also have ALL THE COOKING to do.

We’ll see.

I am also typing this in my night clothes (I know, I know) because we had a gas leak this morning, which was just fixed.

So, yeah. It’s been 2020 all over.  And while I’d like to write a chapter on Witch’s Daughter, it’s not actually my main priority, as the books that have been stopped for months are finally coming to life, and I’d like to finish one of those…. yes, while I must start cooking because younger son (whom we haven’t seen in months) is coming home tomorrow.  Which yes, of course, means I must cook for three thousand give or take a few.

Look, if things go well, it’s the last holiday with both sons in Colorado and able to come home for it.  And if things don’t go well, it’s the last holiday when I can indulge in massive and unreasonably abundant cooking.  Maybe the last holiday to be properly and excessively American.

Not being Maudlin, but you know it’s a possibility.  In the same spirit, in the certainty that Hillary would win, in 2016 we went out to a burger joint, kicked the wheels off our diet and had burgers with buns, fries and coke.  One last great American meal.

In the event, the fat lady hadn’t sung, and the totalitarian non-lady didn’t win.

Let’s hope this holiday meal is also a prematurely maudlin “last time to be excessively American.”

Anyway, still alive. Going to shower now, and put clothes on.  Part of the issue of being low carb is that I must make all the stuff we’d normally buy, like crackers for the baked brie appetizer, and bread to go with the meal. I’ll do that and desserts today, and meats and veg tomorrow.

I also really want to finish my cyborg detective short novel, if possible.  Computer looks about to ready to be operational on Monday. (And allow me to publish.)
So probably no chapter today.  Sorry to play hooky.  I’ll try to do two next week.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

Tomorrow is what was known in the village as The Saturday of Hallelujah. Sunday is Easter. Passover night was between the eighth and the 9th.  Even though we’ll be pounded with snow this weekend, the year is turning to life and light.

And we’re stuck inside, the American economy in ruins, by the orders of our “betters” following those infallible computer models they’re so fond of. We’re subjected, every day, to more ridiculous, job-killing, wealth-destroying dictates from our lords and masters.

The latest insanity is that seeds aren’t essential, and nurseries and even the garden section of the local home improvement stores need to be closed.

Not ESSENTIAL in whose estimation?  Not essential by whose decision?  Nurseries, like many other small businesses live on a tight margin, and in this case are HIGHLY seasonal. They won’t be there next year, if they’re shut this year. Not that this matters, right? Because our betters know they’re “not essential.”

In a year when farmers are being hampered in planting (yes, I know the farmers are in the fields. DUH. If I had fields I also would be trying to save some embers from the blaze of ruin.  But farming isn’t the simple endeavor people like Bloomberg think it is. You don’t just poke seeds from last year into the ground, and voila, crop. That’s not how any of this works.  There are soil improvements that are needed, fertilizers, there are parts for machinery. Seeds need to be obtained and obtained in a timely manner. More importantly, planting and harvesting need to happen at regular times.  Oh, and your animals? They need fodder at regular times too. And if someone has decided fodder doesn’t need to be transported or isn’t essential…. well, hello losing most of your dairy herd.

Some of the stories already filtering out, despite the media doing their best to squelch them are that milk is being dumped for lack of a filter needed to sell the milk commercially.  Some of us have already seen milk getting really expensive/rationed in certain areas of the country.  And in California, produce are rotting in the fields.

Now, this being the soon to be independent (ah!) Glorious Bear Flag People’s Republic of California under Leader For Life Gary Noisome, that could be because they’re not letting farmers get to the fields.  Or it could be because our leftists and the press (BIRM) did such a great psy-ops campaign in their attempt to crash the economy so they could win the election (worked in 08) that they convinced a lot of illegal farm laborers they were all going to die if they stayed in the US.  They stoked the fire enough that Mexico closed their border for fear we’d come back and infect them. A situation — given the disparity of our medical systems — that by itself should have told people in the US how much bullshit was being piled on us. But it didn’t. And people read uncritically stories of Mexicans defending their border against Americans trying to escape there. (Rolls eyes.)  Guys, who in hell escapes to MEXICO?  I bet you anything those “Americans” were illegals repatriating. So, that might very well be why produce are rotting in the fields in California.  (And another failure of the internationalist open borders crowd who set unrealistic goals for minimum wage and other worker compensation, and then paid illegals almost nothing, while they kept natives in idleness on welfare.)

However, be that as it may, considering California is our main food producing region, such as it is, despite its best attempt to turn itself into a desert, that’s bad news.  But there are others: for decades now, a lot of our food has come from abroad.  How many of the vegetables in the store are stamped with “produce of Mexico”?  With the disruption of international trade caused by this insanity, things were always going to be tight.

So, what sense does it make for them to ban the sale of SEEDS as non-essential? In any sane society, they’d be looking at what’s coming down the pike and going “Plant a victory garden. Hell, we’ll give seeds and fertilizers to anyone who wants them and promises to plant a victory garden.  Any HOA preventing you from plowing your lawn under and planting food is working against the best interests of the country and their powers are suspended.” Because you know, winter will inevitably come. And this winter a lot of people, if they don’t outright starve, are going to come close enough to see it. Plus those of us with restricted dietary needs will either have to forget it, and know we’re shortening our lives or just starve. (So, diabetes or starvation, say. Yeah.)

So, why are they doing the other way?  Well, maybe they’re really really stupid and unable to think through third order effects. Which is possible. Or maybe they’re malevolent and trying to accomplish “green agenda” goals by other means.  How long have they wanted to drastically reduce population in the US?

In support of that later, there’s the fact they’re touting how great it is we’re “reducing emissions” and the fact they want to push the Green New Way of Starving Deal into any relief package passed. (BTW, no real reductions in carbon, as measured, because, well…. humans don’t contribute that much. Except maybe China, which is open for business again.)

There is also the fact that in the name of COVID-19 preparedness they emptied hospitals. Suddenly, things like heart surgery and cancer treatment are “elective.”  The hospitals, btw, sit empty, because Winnie the Flu hit well below even the bed occupancy at peak flu season (except for a couple of places.)  Which means….  Well, who was it who wanted to send granny home with an aspirin?  Mission accomplished.

The execrable Pope — great time to have an Argentinian Communist in power, people. Aren’t Communists excommunicated by the by — who ain’t too bright and has more trouble than his fellow leftists keeping his mouth shut, has already given the game away by saying the virus is Gaia’s revenge or some similar rot.  Somehow, yeah, China’s dereliction comes from “Global warming.” (Rolls eyes.)

And yesterday — rumor, or not? The source was highly credible — we got word that home improvement stores will be closing their garden section (I really, really , really didn’t want to spend 2k in everything I need for the summer work on the house) and that the only paint considered essential is contractors grade in grey or white.

Oh, hello socialism and command economy.  Since when do they get to tell us what types of paint are essential?  Also, who in heavens name doesn’t realize that closing that kind of production means you probably can’t restart it for years?  AND WHY?  Do other colors increase your chance of getting sick? Does the virus love pink?  WHAT SENSE DOES THIS MAKE?

None. Absolutely none.  This is all a cosplay cross between what was done to combat the flu in 1918 (most of which measures did nothing, btw) and a crazed attempt to recreat WWII rationing.  Only this virus is not nearly as lethal as the flu of 1918, (and importantly not to the same demographics) and there is no “war production” because there is no war to produce for.  Sure, okay, yeah, we need to bring a lot of stuff that used to be made in China back home. BUT that has bloody zero to do with restricting what paint can be made, particularly the COLORS.  I mean, yeah, I can see grey. We’re going to need to paint all those injectors to fight Winnie the Flu.

Has everyone gone utterly insane?

The disconnect between all these “urgent measures” (Attention Citizens!) and the actual “emergency” such as it is has become so mind boggling that there are crazed conspiracy theories criss crossing all over.  The most common is that this is SOMEHOW connected to 5G.  My favorite is that we’re all locked in the house because the Earth is going to be hit by an asteroid. There’s nothing we can do, and this will prevent panic. No, I don’t believe it, but holy hell, it’s more plausible than the stated reason.

Oh, but don’t worry, the President is starting a task force to reopen the economy.  I have two questions: Who is holding what over the president’s head to make him act like a moron who never ran a business?  and Will it be a five year plan?

The way to reopen the economy is to reopen it.  The way to reopen the economy is to get in front of the cameras and explain, “Yeah, infections are going to continue, and there will be a surge after we open up.  That’s because this was all designed to slow the rate of infections. Turns out we have way more medical capacity than we thought, and, sorry, we can’t save people from a virus. That’s not a legitimate function of government, unless it’s the type of virus that can be traced and contained. This one can’t. We’re taking measures not to do business with nations that will hide this type of outbreak in the future.  In the meantime, it’s going to hurt, though not as much as the highly manipulated numbers seem to show.  But we’re Americans and we’ve survived far worse. Hiding in your house for fear of a virus might be the most stupid thing we’ve ever done, dumber than sending American young men to die in WWI in a dispute that truly had nothing to do with us, but it’s time to end it. Go back to work tomorrow morning.”

That’s what the president should say, but he won’t. The political risk seems to him too high.  Partly because the loud mass media has silenced everyone else.

And the governors are having so much fun implementing socialism that they won’t. EVER. They’re sure you’ll love it, if you just get to try it. They finally see their opening to put their boots on your neck forever. I mean, normally if they said you couldn’t buy seeds, you’d hit the road, and go find your local organic co-op and buy them, right? If they said you couldn’t buy paint of a certain color, a million backyard paint mixing operations would start.  But ah, you need papers to travel, and hey, they convinced everyone you’ll die if you talk to a stranger or buy anything from them.  So now they can control you, reduce the population with an “unavoidable” famine due to the virus, get Americans used to bread lines, tell you where you can travel (such a carbon reduction) and what work is essential and what isn’t.  They can postpone your wedding (no more than ten people), make sure you have no babies (well, what are you going to feed them), deny you medical treatment, shame you when you complain.  And you’ll take it.

They’re wrong of course. You’ll take it for a time, but not forever. But they don’t get that.

Here’s the thing, though, the way things are RIGHT NOW, you can rebel now or rebel later.  You can rebel now, and go back to your life, or you can rebel later, when you’ll have to shoot anyone asking you for papers or keeping you from growing beans.

If you don’t assert your rights now, you’ll have to assert them in blood, when you’re starving and sick, cold and broken in winter, when the lights go out (we’ve already been having brownouts and blackouts) when your cars are not working, when getting factories back in a state to produce anything is almost impossible, when airplanes have been taken to “graveyards” in the desert forever, when your local hospital has shut its doors and has no money to reopen.

It’s time. It’s enough. If you let them they’ll pile on restrictions forever, and the “reopening plan” will cause more damage, because NO ONE CAN PLAN AN ECONOMY. Attempts to do it always end in poverty, misery and death.

And if you think I’m exaggerating this is the kind of innumerates we have trying to “plan” the economy.

This is the kind of power-addicted lunatics we have trying to CONTROL you and me:

This has nothing to do with controlling any virus. It has to do with power and control.
And every time — EVERY TIME — a nation locks down and imposes curfews, it’s never about what it says it is. It’s always about the rulers being afraid of the people.

As they should be. Because unless we massively disobey now, we’re going to have to kill them.  And a lot of innocents besides.  And blight our national wealth and life for GENERATIONS in the process.

It’s time to get back to work.  Start planning now. See what loopholes there are to allow you back to work.  Yes, I know, a lot of the stores and factories you work at will be closed.  The economy is very interlinked, which is why it can’t be planned.

It doesn’t matter. If your job no longer exists, if your boss won’t re-open the store, the factory, the restaurant, start looking around at needs.  All famines in the modern era have been failures of transportation, for instance, not of production.  Figure out which places have produce rotting in the field. For a fee, can you pick them? Drive them back? Can you arrange to sell them to friends and family, very loosely defined? (Hey, people on craigslist are part of this American family.)

I don’t know what you can do, because I’m not you.  And unlike our demented elites, I neither think I know what you can do, nor what you see in your area (physical and expertise.)

However I do know that following the American non-plan and getting to work doing what you can RIGHT NOW is the only thing that can save us.

Ignore the government at all levels. Yes, even the policemen trying to arrest you for playing ball with your kid. Point out to the idiots the courts are closed. Then point out to them you’re taking their name and badge number and bringing a lawsuit for violating your rights as soon as the courts reopen. “Orders are orders” didn’t work so well last time.

GO BACK TO WORK.  INVENT NEW WORK IF YOU HAVE TO.  Even if you were retired, find something you can do, some need you can fulfill.  GO work.
Yes, I will be writing, but I’m also trying to figure out what other needs there will be, and what I can do.  I have a new computer being built since three of mine died (yes, great time!) and once that’s up I’ll start putting books up.  I don’t know if that helps anyone, but I’ve been keeping myself sane with reading and audio books, and I can’t be alone.

After that, my abilities are limited, but I’m going to see what I can do.

Build under, build over, build around.  Ignore their plans. Their plans are not for our good.

The goal is to have everyone out of the house and doing the most productive thing they can by May 1st.

May First (Yes, I know, stealing the commies holiday is grand) is now National Hit the Streets Day.  If you can get out of the house and work, do so.  Open your shop, serve coffee on our front lawn, I don’t care. Be outside. Do something productive.  And if you can’t do something productive AT LEAST BE OUTSIDE.  Out in the street. Out in the park. Both of which are paid for by your taxes, btw.

May 1st, get out. Wear SOMETHING yellow (Hong Kong, the gillets jeunes, which though not like us also are fighting attempts at tyranny.) Snek optional.

Because we’re Americans. They govern by the consent of the governed. We don’t need their consent to exercise our natural rights.

They’re ACTING out this article, but it’s not OUR constitution (it’s Chapter 7, Article 39 of the constitution of the USSR.)

This would be the only thing that would give them the right to do what they’re doing.  BUT IT IS NOT THE LAW OF THE LAND.

All they have on their side is force. But there’s way more of us than of them.

And they can’t arrest us all.

Start now. On Monday, go to work or plan how to go to work.

May first we’ll have obeyed our last “shelter in place” illegal proclamation. Olly olly Oxen Free. Come out, come out, wherever you are!

Make it go viral. The sort of viral they don’t like.

Your intrepid reporter went to the grocery store this morning.  The intrepid part was because I’m driving again after 10 years hiatus and a couple of abortive attempts.  (Mostly my eyes.  My eyes were really bad. Turns out hypothyroidism makes your eyes dry out. Who knew?  Well, all your tissues, but it was really bad on the eyes.)

Shelves are about normal, only they only let you get two “packages” of eggs. Which is silly, but this close to Easter I kind of get it.

Fewer people out than I expect this close to Easter, but then it’s morning, and just our little grocery store.  About half the employees wearing masks. Only one shopper, looking terrified and wearing masks.

If I hear over the store loudspeaker ONCE MORE “We’re all in this together” though, I swear to Heinlein’s memory I’m going to snap.

Okay, maybe I already snapped, since I yelled up at the loudspeakers “Attention, citizens!” in my most peeved voice.  Weirdly the two people within sight first looked shocked, then grinned.  Perhaps the faux Russian accent helps.

Speaking of, you should be reading this twitter account.  Yes, he was a New York Times Reporter, but he got better.

Now, can we talk? WHAT IN THE NAME OF UNHOLY FANDANGO IS GOING ON WITH THIS NATION?  DOESN’T ANYONE PAY ANY ATTENTION TO ANYTHING, EVER?

Look, I know we’re all about convenience. I like convenience.  In fact, for my European readers: YOU HAVE NO IDEA.  Americans’ demands for comfort and convenience are part of what makes us so productive and — ignore the stupid polls that say nations dopped to the gills are happier. they use other parameters — generally happy and vital as a nation.  I know, there is a stoicism in Europe, a feeling that “we can endure anything” and “those soft Americans.”  But it’s not like that. All our convenience stuff, like being able to jot down to the stores in our own car, just make our life more productive by freeing up our time and mind-space.  Not being hot or cold. Not enduring being treated as is our time and convenience doesn’t matter.  All of this are good things.

But born-and-raised Americans are also among the most naive people in the universe when it comes to cheating.  When I first started saying that the Democrats were cheating on an epic scale, you thought I was crazy. When I said early voting and mail in voting were just vehicles for fraud, you whined that voting in person on the day was inconvenient.

It sure is. Freedom often is.

At some point I stopped getting so much push back on those items. I think the naked fraud in eighteen got people’s attention.

But you know, all you have to do is scare people with a fake pandemic, and they lose their minds again, and are now saying that they would be okay with mail in only ballots if “the pandemic is bad in November.”

Have you lost your tiny little minds? Are you out of will to live? How much do you love Venezuela? North Korea?

Look, no state that goes all-vote-by-mail ever elects anything but democrats again.  If you think that’s a coincidence, I have some swamp land in Florida.

As for “if the pandemic is bad” IT WILL BE. Because anyone who dies of anything including being beaten to death will be labeled a Wu-flu victim. They’re already doing that in NYC, why do you think they’d stop?

Do you enjoy house arrest? Do you have any idea how bad food shortages will get in the winter? (No, I’m not alone in seeing this. Apparently people are buying baby chicks wholesale.)  Is this how you want to live forever?

Make your voices known. The democrats have been stealing elections a LONG time. But this would hand them the whole lock stock and barrel forever. And let me tell you, as a citizen of Colorado, once they know they can’t lose elections, they don’t give a shit what you think.  And you know our fellow citizens assume the elections are fair and legal, no matter how STUPID the results.

Sure 2016 was The flight 93 election, but if you don’t dislodge the highjackers, and let them keep the controls, what difference does that make?

This is why they don’t mind running a zombie and (according to rumors) Knee Pads Harris, not only the most unlikable, but one of the most evil women ever to be in politics.

If you guys are going to allow this, you’d better stock up on guns and ammo.

Hell, you’d better do it anyway since AG Barr says they should “reconsider” the more draconian lockdowns in MAY.

What the actual hell is this?

How long will you tolerate this?  We’re not all in this together.  These statist assholes are putting on their boots and spurs.

Do you want to wear a saddle?

If you’re a writer, or really an artist of any kind, you might have been askew from the world in general for a long time. At least if you’re a writer or an artist worth his/her salt.  Because being creative requires standing apart from the ape band and saying “okay, you do it that way, I do it this way.”

There are gradations in creativity, and the most creative people are … odd.  The idea of the eccentric artist arose because well, it’s so often true.

With writers, there is something else that adds to the mix. We spend too much time in our own heads, in our imaginary worlds.  While there are extrovert writers, even they seem to get lost inside their heads after a while.

This is why it’s important for writers to have friends they see regularly, and to go outside every once in a while to make sure that the rest of the world is still there, and not inside their heads.

What I didn’t know, until we conducted the current, unfortunate experiment was that the oddness of writers increasing when they don’t socialize is something that happens to everyone. We’re seeing it in grocery stores and parking lots, in online conversations with people who at least up till now faked normal perfectly, in domestic disputes (fortunately not in our family…. yet) and in neighbors doing really …. strange things to their yard (not us. Son told me I can’t build a cement dragon eating its tail around the base of our tallest tree. SIGH. Kids!)

And we’re seeing it in public personalities and in politicians, some of whom should never have been public, because they suffer from “I’m a nerd and people are paying attention to me. I must make this last forever!”

Unfortunately these people have power over us, and seem to think we’re going to take their nonsense forever.

But here’s the thing… Americans are slow to anger. Very slow to anger. It is part of the same character that means we obey authorities in a legitimate emergency, by and large.

Remember when power went out in NYC (and most of the East) and everyone expected riots? Instead, people walked home. Also why everyone behaved admirably after 9/11.

However we do lose patience. Particularly when it becomes obvious that there is no legitimate emergency and that we are just being locked down to serve some agenda, like, oh, the Green New Deal. (To be fair, I think they expect to show us how much better we are when we’re not polluting, because, yes, they’re completely insane and understand nothing of the world.)

At some point during the Russia Boondoggle, while I was ranting at son that the left had gone insane, he said “Yes. Trump drove them crazy and now they’re crazy.”

This probably covers a whole lot of it, combined with their fragile ego, which must hold on to the idea they’re great, wonderful, infallible.  This is threatened by the fact most of them don’t agree with us.  Not being very psychologically developed — or stable — they now hate us for not confirming their ideas of self. They hate reality for not conforming to their dreams.  And they want to destroy both Americans and American reality.

Take that article linked above.  Dr. Fauci knows very well this virus is not a big deal. All of you — ALL OF YOU — who got very upset when we said “it’s a flu” need to get a grip. Even FAUCI the prophet of forever locked up doom, KNOWS “It’s just the flu.”

But perhaps your unaware that on March 26, Dr. Fauci himself said in the New England Journal of Medicine that “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%).”

Keep in mind, he can say that and simultaneously want to keep us locked up for a year to a year and a half, or until we find the vaccine:

Last Thursday, the scientific mastermind behind the economic carnage and spirit-crushing isolation now constituting the two main pillars of America’s ingenious new public health strategy delivered some bad news.  Dr. Fauci says we’ll have to keep living like this until the virus is eradicated.

Which given how well he did at even finding a TREATMENT for AIDS (his previous job.) could be FOREVER.

Look, he can’t be that stupid. NO ONE can, except maybe Occasional Cortex (but then she has to carry a reminder to exhale. And sometimes she forgets.)  He knows what this would do.  So why is he proposing it?

Well, a lot of doctors become enamored of eugenics. It’s a problem with their profession.  Which is why they shouldn’t be in charge of anything.

The question is, why is Trump listening to them? Is he insane? Did they finally hit his weak spot (which appears to be his germophobia?) OR is he waiting for other countries to open and prove the mad doctor wrong?

While Austria and a couple of other countries are opening up, I don’t think we can afford to wait till Fauci is conclusively proven wrong.

Tucker Carlson is puzzled as to why it’s taboo to talk of opening back again…. ever.  I’m not.

America has been a thorn on the side of dictators the world wide and for the entirety of its existence.  They finally have us where they want us. (No, I’m not including Trump in that… probably. Though he’s taking advantage of the lockdown and dem gloating to do a lot of things they’ve blocked him on before. To that extent, he too might want to prolong it and not be aware of how mad the rest of us are.)

They think they can lock us forever, not give us medical care, reduce the population and finally get their perfect communist neo feudalism, where they rule like Lords and Ladies over a populace grateful they’re even ALLOWED to get out of the house and work at all.

I’d caution them to figure out what lockdown is doing to Americans.  We’re not all hysterical children glued to the TV and crying in fear of what Dr. Anthony Fauci admits is “just a flu.”

As Trump did to them, they’re driving us insane. Beware when we finally blow up.  Beware our insanity has teeth. It bites.

“Holla, you pampered jades of Asia!”

Ҫa Irá.

Supposing our betters (ah) ever let us out of house arrest, and this is not in fact a democrat/green plan to reduce population and bring in the Green New Deal (Yes, it does sound crazy, but you know the saying “When the impossible” (that this virus is really as dangerous as painted) “is eliminated, the implausible must the truth.” things are…. gonna change.

And chill. No I don’t think this is an enviro-weeny plot, but they will be right there along with the happy fun democratic socialists, trying to take advantage of the crisis.

So we too need to know what is coming and be ready to face the wave.

I’ve told you forever that part of the mess around us is because things are changing very rapidly, and humans don’t like that. In our time, the so called progressives — how they can call themselves that without laughing — are the ones most enthusiastically trying to lead us back to the early 20th century, because that was their glory days: unions, mass producing, emphasis on race/class/nationality and a powerful and redistributive state.

This insanity of locking the world’s economies are just another battle in their war against the future.  No, I am not saying they created the virus, but boy have they tried to prolong the shut down and the misery.

This is partly because they’re completely ignorant — as in, they’d probably be less ignorant if they’d never learned anything about it, since everything they know about it is things that just ain’t true — of where wealth comes from, and are convinced it’s synonymous with money, and therefore just printing more money will take care of all the actual production lost through this time.  It won’t, of course, but on the good side, at the rate inflation is going to hit, we will resolve the toilet paper shortage with dollar bills.

Anyway, here’s the thing: like everything they’ve tried to do, because they really don’t understand people or anything related to people, including how tech influences human society, or that you really can’t put the genii back in the bottle once it escapes, this is going to blow up in their faces biggly (whether they manage to elect a dem-socialist this November with their new, shinny all vote by fraud mail initiative or not is irrelevant. THAT will just prolongue the pain and make life very interesting for a few years, but the end is the same.)

Making predictions, as I’ve said a number of times, is hard, particularly about the future, but some I can make, and they’re not what the dems ever expected from this. (their understanding of second order effects is…. lacking.)

1- We’re already seeing — sure, not for everyone — a massive turning towards work-from-home.

This was coming, anyway. It’s been coming for 20 years.  As with ebooks, people heard about it twenty years ago and had since become convinced it would never happen.  But you know, just as indie did with ebooks, this is showing people working from home is not only feasible for a lot of people, but they get more done.  Even if this is just 20% of the population who can do this for now (there will be more. I suspect the new “made in America” factories will be largely robotic, and supervisors might be states away, working from home, with perhaps one person nearby to turn off the power/whatever.  Telemedicine is accelerating through this. So many other things will go this route overtime, particularly with students learning from home, which they already are.) the reverberations will be HUGE.
So, some of what to expect:

It didn’t surprise me that even introverts aren’t finding this the paradise they expected it to be.  Why? Well, because, children, elephants and small dragons, humans are a social ape.  Even people like me like to see people. And even a lot of introverts need to see different people every day.

Don’t worry about restaurants. They’ll be fine. People working at home NEED to see people after work.

New tele-workers will — by and large. Some of ya’ll are extreme Odds — move to the middle of nowhere. They will instead move closer to town/city.  Which is why I’m not afraid of our investment. Houses in our neighborhood are already mostly work-at-home people, and they’re selling at a fast clip still. Yes, during lock-down.  (Not that we have a ton of openings.)

Personally? I think when this settles and the percentage working form home in 20 years or so, is more likely to be around 40%, the preference will go to small towns.

How do you attract people to your small town?

Restaurants are part of it, but consider that families need places to take the kiddlets, too, and —

The reason we live where we do is botanic gardens, the zoo and museums (Though museums have been getting too woke for words.)  So, interesting things for kids to do, particularly with more homeschooling, might be a thing that attracts young families.  Give some thought to that if you have to restart a business. Craft classes for the whole family? Come in and design and make a whole play? Something like dinner/murder theater but involving everyone.

I think the small cities that cash in will be one with opportunities to meet and greet and get to know your neighbors/create a strong community, without the draw backs of big city life.  Though mind you big cities will continue to grow. If they remain stiflingly leftist or not? That’s up to you and your personal associations.

In the end I think they don’t, because the left has counted on the conveyor belt of public education and that was hit hard by Winnie the Flu.

2- One of the side jokes of this time period has been UC insisting I retire from teaching early and offering me increasingly attractive packages.

Look, it’s tempting, except I’ve never worked for them. I have no clue what wires they got crossed.  I’m also on faculty emails, and that too is kind of …. mind boggling. But funny. Very funny.

Anyway, note that they’re expecting crashing in enrollment, they’re completely terrified of re-opening in Fall (and will remain so, no matter if this comes to nothing, because they think we’ll get it with another “Wave” in fall, and their own propaganda machine — well, that of their ideological friends — makes it sound like the end of the world.)

I know some states are talking distance only learning next Fall.

It’s insane, but it’s also the acceleration of the inevitable.  Bringing the kids home will blunt or put an end to a lot of the indoctrination and insanity.

Indoctrination ONLY works if you take up the kids’ day and expose them only to what you tell them. Even if the kids are learning online from the public school site, and from home only?  Yeah.  They’re still with parents, who will say things like “no, I don’t think it’s that way. I lived through this.  Tell them what they want but this is the truth.”

Fifty percent of kids will get almost no education of any kind, of course.  This, weirdly, might make it better than now. Because it’s long been my contention letting the kids waste their time might teach them more than our failing inner city schools.  And maybe some of you can find a way to provide a place for kids to be while they learn? And supplement/value add to this?

But again, the kids and the adults will want to socialize after school/work. HUMANS ARE SOCIAL APES.  This will probably mean that everywhere, pretty much, neighbors will get to know each other, and a lot of things will become more neighborhood-based.

This isn’t bad. We’re going to see the mass-media lose a lot more power at the end of this tunnel.

3- All of this will lead to more self-sufficiency, and to a linking of effort and outcome. Remember that these are things that don’t favor the left.

Also when models and “scientific expert governance” blow up in their faces, there will be a general souring of their favorite boondoggles.  Climate change?  yeah, we’ve seen pretty graphics before.  Etc.  This won’t end well. For them.

Already the money feeding their grifty “foundations” is drying up.  It’s going to be very tough come next winter. But that’s just a price to pay for sanity returning.

I’m still wondering what happens when China money dries up, and how many more masks will fall.

4- Illegal border crossings are at an all time low, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  All border crossings are at an all time low, and somehow I don’t think that will change greatly.

The future is very much one with borders.  The EU might limp nominally a few more years or decades, but it’s now functionally dead.  People have seen the insularity behind the “open borders” crowd, and the risk for everyone.

This very much spells the end to international socialism.  Not national, but that — well, that has to be dealt with.  We’re not out of danger, but the internationalist insanity is fading, and with it the culture of the West should return. Or at least sanity should return to it.

Yeah there are large unassimilated populations in every Western country, and vast, not to say painful, insanity left over from indoctrinating the last 3 generations on political correctness.

But the next winter will be hard, and hardship restores sanity like a cold bucket of water restores sobriety.  The problem is it will get ugly.  Very, very ugly.

Stay with it. Work with it, so we don’t fall into the — leftist — insanity that only genetics count.  Work to make sure people understand Fit In or Fuck Off.  In America, work to be American.  In Europe, I don’t know.  Europe was always blood and soil….. it’s going to get massively ugly.

5- Remember the enemy gets a vote.

It’s been obvious the left has already ordered their Hugo Boss uniforms for the new police state for a while now, and it became worse during the shut down.
Don’t let them.  Sure, talk and work against unconstitutional restrictions and debasement of individual rights, but above all, ignore them.

There is a vast wave of change about to crash down on the entire world.  For a lot of countries this is very, very, very bad.  A lot of countries in the third world are going to be in horrible shape, and we’re going to be too busy with our own issues to help.

Yes, there will be wars and millions of lives lost because the first world lost their minds and decided hiding under their beds for fear of a virus was a good idea.

But the world after that is not all bad. One thing we know about the “progressives” is that they can’t deal with change or with being the stick-out individualist.

The rest of us, though?  Experts at it.

This is your time.  Build under, build over, build around.

Prepare for the tsunami of change to hit. And be not afraid.

In case you were wondering I do feel guilty and upset at myself when I swear at long-time readers and call them Vichy. In my defense, the reader hadn’t bothered to take in what I was saying about the clusters of the virus, or to address them honestly, and instead tried to hector me with supposed superior knowledge, never considering whether I knew anything about it/had read extensively about it.

So, pull up a rock and let’s talk through this, okay? Your fears, my fears. And why I’m suffering from PTSD and the other day cried while driving through Denver to pick up food at our favorite place, because I felt all that was left behind was the shell of the only city that ever felt (truly) like home.

Let’s begin with: Nobody knows anything.

I’ve said before that we’re going into an increasingly ignorant age.  Not because data collection is impossible, but because our society is so complex and dispersed we each know only a very small part of what can and will influence our lives or perhaps completely destroy them.

It was always like that, of course.  Big, flourishing cities pre-Black-Plague didn’t know their end was coming.  But in a way they had it easier. First, because they didn’t think EVERYTHING was knowable.  Only G-d knew everything, and ultimately their fate was in the hands of G-d.  As a society, they knew/believed that this world was a transitory place, and what mattered was their eternal faith.  And over that they had full control by their behavior.  (Which in turn descended into a lot of legalistic stuff about doing all the right things, even if those things were external and small.)
Regardless of personal faith, society as a whole does not believe that any longer. Society believes, rather in living as long as possible, because as individuals we’ve lost our moorings in the world/time.  We no longer feel that our lives don’t matter so much — maybe — but we’re part of something bigger than ourselves that will continue long after we’re gone, and to which our contributions matter.

On top of that, we have some idea of the vastness of the world, our smallness in it, and that someone across the world having bat soup a la mode can mean we and ours will die without being able to do anything to prevent it.

This is a situation designed to induce madness, particularly when all our news apparatus is trying its best to drive us to panic fear, because they think they can use it to then panic us into socialism.  Destroying the economy is a plus value in this, as then we’ll need (they think) socialism.  Socialism never really fixes such situations, but it is often something people embrace when desperate (before they get defeated and starve.)

The problem here is REALLY nobody knows anything.  It seems like every other day a new theory about what this virus is comes out. The latest onne is that it de-oxygenates the blood itself, rather than merely making it hard to acquire oxygen.  Look, it’s possible. It’s just not PLAUSIBLE and the person expounding it lacks the credentials.  OTOH Medium took it down, which these days is almost a sign of its making sense.

If that’s true, btw, transfusions, not ventilators are the needed thing.

But then again…. Take the bilateral “ground glass” x rays.  Do they mean anything?  I don’t know.  I know that when I was dying of pneumonia, a nurse tried to stampede me into a biopsy (they really wanted to give me one, even though they ADMITTED it would probably kill me) by saying I had “bloody holes” in my lungs.  I didn’t. She didn’t know how to read an X-ray.  I’ve heard from professionals that the pattern is just “bilateral pneumonia.”

The low oxygen and still breathing fine was how I presented when I had intercellular pneumonia (That what I was told later. It makes no sense to me) X-rays didn’t detect it, though you could hear it, and eventually a highly skilled radiologist pointed out I did have signs of pneumonia in the x-rays. Before that, except for my low ox they’d have thought I was hypocondriac.

It is that illness, more than anything that makes me doubtful of almost everything we hear.  You see, medicine is more art than science.  We tend to think “Oh, you take a test, and you know for sure.” but that’s not true.  I hear we have a test that’s accurate in 85% of the cases, but it is not in wide distribution. Our best right now is 70%. Which means Winnie the Flu is being diagnosed on a ton of things, but ultimately it’s being diagnosed the way it was in China: if you present at the hospital with bilateral pneumonia and with a host of symptoms that change every day and with every whisper out of the medical community, they assume it is Winnie the Flu.

And I keep remembering that experience and thinking of three doctors screaming at each other in my room (my husband says I was being treated by committee)  each convinced I had something completely different.  The candidates were: a disease from a fungus that grows in Brazilian caves (later it emerged this doctor thought that Portugal was right next to Brazil. A not uncommon error.) An hereditary disease of Russian Jewish MALES (note this doctor never asked me if my kids were biological, but really!) An auto-immune attack.

These were all brilliant people, good in their specialties. They had tested me for everything under the sun. And they had no clue what was going on.

The ER doctor — now I know a lot of doctors, I understand they can be very good or very bad — who was a bit of an old hippie (they too can be very good or very bad) and whom at first I thought was a nurse because he was the LEAST egotistical person I ever met and introduced himself as “just call me Johnny,” told me they were getting a lot of cases like mine in. All between 20 and 40, all otherwise healthy (yes, the chart said obese, but I was at most 10 lbs overweight. I just never fit the “skinny charts.” Current doctor has more realistic views. Things change) and all showing the same symptoms, including the fact our immune system wasn’t reacting. I.e. I had a raging infection but no fever.

He put me on (then new) IV Zithromicin and a tablet.  (We got a copy of the process at the end of it, for my SIL in Portugal to read, and I wonder where we put it in the end. I have a strong feeling the tablet was chloroquine. I hear that it’s been used for years in conjunction with Zithromicin (yes, I know I’m spelling that wrong. I am dyslexic and hate medicine names.) when doctors face a viral infection that is not responding to anything else.  Anyway, Johnny (bless him) put me on this stuff, and over the next twelve hours I started improving markedly.

Then the specialists came, assured me what I had was not an infection because I had no fever and my immune system wasn’t responding.  The antibiotic would do nothing and the other drug was “just nasty.”

After twenty four hours of non-treatment, I was found blue in the middle of the night (as in “you were a lovely shade of cyan” said the nurse who found me) and put in ICU. Where I continued to get worse, and they wanted to do surgery. Or alternately hit me with really large doses of anti-histamines, or…..

In the middle of this, after consulting by phone with SIL in Portugal who told him they were seeing the same cases over there, same age range, and that they were treating exactly as Johnny had, husband demanded they put me back on it. Doctors refused.  Husband, for first time in our entire married lives exerted the “you said you’d obey me” and ordered me to get dressed. We were driving to the other hospital in town and seeing if they did it. And if not, we were driving to Denver and hitting all the hospitals.

For perspective, I was so oxygen deprived, my heart had swelled to three times its size and I was tachycardic to the point they wouldn’t let me get up to use the bathroom. Or sit up. Or anything, really.  And honestly? I wasn’t sure husband was right. And SIL hadn’t SEEN me, and all these learned doctors were so sure (except where they didn’t agree with each other.)

But husband ordered, I had promised to obey. And I’m a woman of my word. So I sat up and — very slowly — started dressinng.

Doctors PANICKED. As I remember the words were “Fine, but you’ll see it will make no difference.”

Three days later I walked not just out of ICU but out of the hospital, under my own power.  In my last interview the Pulmonologist told me I’d be back in months, a year at most “because that wasn’t pneumonia.” I had pneumonia a couple of times after, but they were walking pneumonias and not the crazy thing that almost killed me at 33.

Now, other things came out after that/during that.  For instance, for half a day while moved from ICU I shared a room with a woman my age, who had the same symptoms but who took the “massive dose of anti-histamines” route. The infection had raged like fire on which you pour gasoline. She was suffering serial organ failure.

I later learned — through a local interest newspaper story — that there had been 40 or 45 similar cases in our small town, and that the ones who had Johnny’s seat-of-the-pants ER doc treatment had avoided ICU and walked out in two/three days.  (BTW because my case had got much worse before they put me on the treatment again, I was on THREE zpacks a DAY for a month after I got home. And I was debilitated for year.)

Okay, forgive me that long excursion. I wanted to explain why we’re getting a cacophony of contradictory symptoms. It’s not abnormal, when it’s a new virus. (BTW, we never figured out what the thing in early 96 WAS. All we know is it ran through science fiction conventions, probably explaining some of the age bias since they ran “younger” then. And I’d never been to one of them, but I was in touch with someone who had.)

So, the problem with Winnie the Flu:

Nobody knows anything. We get all sorts of contradictory reports and crazy theories.

It’s politicized.  Things are being attributed to it, both infections and deaths that almost certainly aren’t. Because under its cover, a lot of mayors/governors can get assistance with their failing budgets.

The tests suck. The tests suck like a hoover.  This leads both to diagnosing it by symptoms, and probably to some number of false positives. This in turn muddies the “treatments that work” thing.

The media has seized on it I THINK not even out of a coherent desire to oust Orange Man Bad, but because they’re giddy at their new found relevance.  They were being ignored when people had lives, but bored and scared people at home keep turning on the news, and getting sad cases and ‘certainties’ from various places and “it’s coming for you.”

I have people reporting spouses (almost always women, because were more susceptible to mass behavior. It’s just part of how we’re wired) so terrified that they refuse to leave a room in the house, demand everything sterilized and won’t let the kids play outside because the virus might get them. This is not rational behavior. It’s hysteria.

I’ve run into people suffering this, and they keep coming back to “millions will die” which is not only unlikely but — at this point — bloody impossible. So the only thing I can figure is a steady drumbeat of fear from the media is panicking everyone.  And the media is relishing it like an aging actress given one last leading role, and feeding on itself.

Speaking of feeding on itself: we’re not only suffering rule by experts, but we’re suffering rule by geeks with no perspective of anything else. I DO yield to just about anyone in my admiration for Dr. Fauci. He is a “political expert.”  I.e. a scientific expert with a talent for politics. I’m always wary of those.  His history is patchy. But dear lord, he has the limelight and he loves it, and he’ll NEVER relinquish it willingly. So never expect him to give the all-clear. He’s now saying that “hey, we will let you out when there are no more cases.” and asking us to bear the “inconvenience” which tells you he has no clue what the shutdown is doing to the economy and people’s lives.

Oh, and let’s — do — touch the psychological. Like a lot of raging introverts, I should be fine with this. It’s not even that different from normal every day life for me. We work from home most of the time, though we usually have a date night Saturday afternoon/night where I get to SEE people and interact minimally with them (like to order dinner.)  We do museums, the gardens, or the zoo, at whim.

So, why am I coming unglued? Partly because those outings, apparently, are absolutely necessary. But also because in normal times I can get a wild hair and drive to the hobby store and get some fabric or paint to try something. I rarely DO, but I can. I can go to the nursery and get roses. I rarely do, but I can.  And when I go to the grocery store there aren’t normally distancing nazis and YOUNG PEOPLE (it’s always young people) wearing masks and looking terrified. (I’m okay with anyone with white hair wearing masks. Meh. You should be responsible for yourself. Though the homemade fabric masks don’t do much. But the proportion is one white haired person to ten young and looking terrified people.)

Also, you guys know something of my history: lockdowns and curfews terrify me. I’ve never had one being about what it says it is. They’re always about controlling people, and we usually find out WHY months later.  So, yeah, the PTSD makes me less than rational.

HOWEVER most introverts are reacting as badly as I am and a friend in law enforcement says they ARE seeing the hokey-curve of deaths. By suicide.

So– What do we actually KNOW is going on:

• Something ravaged China. There are probably 10x to 16x the deaths they reported. I was tracking this through December, as were a lot of people, probably a lot of them here, and I was panicking at the hints of how bad it was.
  Because China is incredibly secretive, we don’t know what happened there, though. And the virus could be that virulent there for other reasons, including pollution or malnutrition. Or they could be using the virus to cover deaths of famine and internal purges. Who knows? It’s China.
  Keep in mind that part of the panic as we watched China is that we are used to the idea “the killing plague will come out of China.” This is true in 90% of apocalyptic fiction.
• We DO know the outbreak in Wuhan was massive. It doesn’t seem to have been that bad in the rest of China, btw. BUT the outbreak in Wuhan was bad enough that it panicked China into shutting down HARD and hurting themselves.
  OTOH see what I said above: lockdowns and curfews are ALWAYS ultimately about controlling the populace because rulers are scared of THEM not of the ostensible emergency.  And there were rumors of Hong-Kong like outbreaks in mainland China.  WAS China using the virus to hide unrest/etc? Were they shutting down because that was preferable to being unseated? We don’t know. I’m going to go with “they panicked at Wuhan blowing up out of control and assumed the rest of the country would go up too.”
• Which brings us to something else we know and have seen over and over and over all over the world: this is a virus of clusters.  It gets bad in clusters. It’s not even noticeable elsewhere.
  While all the clusters are in dense cities, not all big (or even dense) cities get outbreaks.  The favelas of Rio aren’t dead now, etc.
  So why is it bad in clusters? We don’t know. We can come up with a million excuses, but in the end WE DON’T KNOW. We can’t know. We can’t even guess.
  That guess above assumes people with higher blood ox (naturally) are less susceptible.  BUT that makes no sense, as it’s more severe on blood type A. And blood type A is NOT it for that.
• It mostly kills the elderly.  No, please, stop. IT MOSTLY KILLS THE ELDERLY.  Remember that anything pneumonia gets attributed to it. In some cities so do unexplained deaths.  So, yeah, there are — I THINK — at last count 45 “young and healthy” dead throughout the country attributed to it. It might even be true that all 45 died of it. Let’s say it is. That is so far below the number who die of “just unexplained shit” every day in the US without us shutting down completely that it doesn’t warrant worry. It certainly doesn’t mean EVERY young person, from babyhood to fifty is now at risk. They probably have a better chance of being stung to death by a bee.
  ALMOST all the dead are elderly (with co-morbidities, yes, but our elderly all have them. We’re in the uncomfortable place where the maladies of old age aren’t yet unavoidable, just survivable.)
  I’m not saying this doesn’t matter. I’m saying that this is a characteristic. So in this sense it’s a normal respiratory virus. The target population is the USUAL one.
• It has a LOT of asymptomatic cases.  I direct you to the Diamond Princess “closed study” as it were before everything went political. Most cases, something like 80% were asymptomatic.  You might not know this, but this is exactly the same as the flu. Most cases are asymptomatic spreaders, which is why we ESTIMATE flu mortality every year.  It also has a long incubation period, but here we run into those ever-moving “rumor” characteristics. The incubation period, when you feel fine but are getting ill ranges from 4 days to 21. It could be more. It could be less.  This makes it impossible to track spreaders, or even to know who’s at risk.
• Clusters don’t seem to appear randomly. They seem to be bad from the beginning (this militates to its having been here a long time, so it’s not a new infection. Yes, THEORETICALLY we could get new ones, but we’ve not seen that. The cluster-areas remain the clusters. I’ve hypothesized culture, but the truth is WE DON’T KNOW. We just know they’re clusters, and they remain clusters and other places don’t “cluster”.So, taking that into account, and also the fact symptoms are weird — I’ve spent 20 years telling people that NO, stomach flu isn’t flu, but damn it, this thing has stomach symptoms in some percentage of people. BTW, weirdly so did the one in 96 — and only hit a fraction of the sick, what do we have?
  I don’t know. I know the virus exists, because we’ve tested for it. But is it responsible for most of what we’re seen? I don’t know.  Is it horribly lethal? I don’t know. (Doesn’t seem to be, but then there’s Wuhan.)
  Honestly at this point if someone said the COVID-19 is something else completely innocuous and what causes the deaths is a virus yet undetected, I’d not be able to say “hey, this is wrong.”
  Because we don’t know anything.
  And that’s what’s panicked people. That plus the media screeching 24/7 that we’re all going to die and that the worst is ALWAYS “the next two weeks.”

  HOWEVER here’s other things we know:

• Right now, we locked up the economy put around 20 million Americans out of work, destroyed businesses, jobs and livelihoods, and are waltzing with famine this winter (yes, I know farmers are planting…. and in CA letting crops rot in the field, and being unable to find parts for machinery or buyers for their product. Milk is being dumped. Farmers are having trouble feeding their animals. The list goes on) for something that even with the dodgy diagnoses has cost round 10k to 12k lives so far.  Say that went ten times higher (HIGHLY unlikely.)  It’s still only “really bad flu season” since the estimate for the last really bad one is apparently 80k lives.
  Worse, as America is impoverishing itself, other countries are doing the same, partly because they KNOW we must KNOW something.  Not only are we going to be AT BEST really tight and poor next winter, we’re going to watch other countries in much worse straights, and we can’t help.
• Poverty and hunger, particularly sudden lead to civil unrest and war. And not just here, but all over the world. And we won’t be able to help.
• The dead are mostly elderly. The ones hit by the financial misery will be mostly young and might never be able to get the jobs/lives they need. We’re creating a lost generation to buy people another optimistically 2 years of life (most of the dead have more like 6 months expectancy.)
• We are piling on debt, which at this point we will HAVE to inflate out of.  Growing out of, which is what Trump was trying to do, is now a forlorn hope.
  Inflation kills savings and impoverishes everyone. it will hit hardest on my generation of late-middle-aged who probably — barring miracles — have seen our life expectancy curtailed from 80s to maybe mid-seventies, if we’re all very lucky.
• We’re putting the entire nation under massive stress.  We don’t know what causes cancer, but we DO know stress and psychological pressure contributes to it.MEANWHILE:
• Not only aren’t our homeless dying — and please, please, please, don’t tell me because they’re so sickly they resist this better. THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.
• One of the major foci is NOT in Rio, which held the Carnival.
• The wretched of the world, from Africa to Latin America aren’t ALL dead. And they would be if this were that deadly. They just would. Social distancing is impossible when you live on top of each other. And no, it’s not true that warm and wet weather keeps you healthy, or else why lock down FLORIDA?
• Our politicians don’t seem to be taking this seriously. As with global warming/cooling/climate change, or with the TSA, it all seems like drama and kabuki.
  If they were THAT worried that it was that bad, they’d be cracking down not on young people playing basketball or young families in parks, but in the homeless, clumping around and becoming foci of disease.
  A lot of the things being done are worse than “normal life.” Like closing schools and throwing kids into daycares (which, yes, is happening because people who work at “essential jobs” can’t stay home with them) which mix them with younger kids who spread disease more. And by closing most stores and leaving only grocery stores, it means more people are handling the same things, and crowding the same places and it’s actually impossible to keep 6 feet away in most of them.  IF the real risk was what politicians are pretending it is, we’d ALL already have died.MORE importantly, to me, we’re giving up our liberties to the WORST sort of politician without even token resistance. I’ve seen people who claim to be freedom lovers thanking their governors/mayors for LOCKING THEM UP and preventing them from work.
  Guys, once liberty is given up, it’s much harder to recover. And these people, from neighborhood snitches to Walmart nazis, to power mad mayors and governors REALLY ARE the worst sort of bully, closing parks (instead of merely issuing distancing guidelines.), arresting people kayaking int the middle of the ocean, and frankly behaving like tin pot dictators.
  At the national level we have a political class crowing with delight at “the end of Western civilization” and trying to get their Green New Deal crazy cakes environmentalism implemented on the back of this. Watch if they don’t try to keep travel restrictions in place forever!
  I’ve been through this before. Once you have a population that thinks the government is its father and its mother and can keep them “safe” and that the government does everything out of benevolence, you’ll never, ever, ever be free.

  If we’re willing to do this to avoid what will be for sure even with all the doctoring, under 20k deaths, what will happen when they tell you how many people die by driving? Or that you can avoid heart disease if you stop eating meat? or that —  It goes on.

  And this is why I have been cursing out even people who probably don’t deserve it (but who should have thought about what I was saying instead of hectoring me.)  I feel like I’m in the middle of mad people tearing down our liberty and the structures of our exceptional country, because they think they’re ALL going to die fo something that’s not that lethal unless you’re really elderly, or are in the middle of a cluster.
  BUT more importantly — were it ten times more lethal — they’re willing to surrender to despotic authority to be kept “safe” from a danger that can’t be predicted or fully understood.
  Once you take that step…  well, you’re over as a free people.
  I don’t think — I hope — we’re there yet. There are too many of us going the other way. More every day.
  But the baffling unconcern and credulity of the ones rushing to be protected has me nervous, upset and above all disgusted.

  You, most of you reading this, were born free. You have no idea how rare and amazing that it.

  TRY very hard not to sell your birthright for a mess of totalitarian pottage.
  Not only does it never end well, but the world needs America. Now more than ever.