Post 21 - April 1, 2020
Day 21…
End of the third week.
We are heading into our fourth week of this.
All of these NUMBERS.
That’s all we are looking at all day.
A steady stream of numbers and graphs.
Any time of the day or night you can turn on the TV and that’s what you get.
Numbers.
Yesterday, the White House claimed that the best-case scenario for the US would be 100,000 - 240,000 deaths.
They then blamed NY for its “slow start” as a reason for the issues we are facing here.
As recently as February 28, just a month ago at a rally in South Carolina, the President was still referring to the coronavirus as a hoax.
He received the first warnings about the virus from the Intelligence community in January.
By the end of January and beginning of February, the Washington Post reported that the majority of Intelligence included in the President’s daily briefings was about the virus.
That means that for many weeks, knowing what was actually going on, he was still proclaiming the virus a hoax.
On February 7 - long after he had been warned about this virus coming here - the US State Department facilitated the delivery of 17.8 TONS of PPE supplies to China - masks, gowns, gauze, respirators and other materials.
He is now blaming the delay in responding to the crisis on the distraction his impeachment trial caused.
He was acquitted on February 6.
The first case of the virus in NY was reported on March 1 - just two days after Trump had publicly declared the virus a non-existent Democratic ruse.
Right after that, Governor Cuomo called a crisis meeting with what he called “a SWAT team of government officials”.
He had a three-page memo that he’d drafted that outlined a basic plan.
At that point, the Governor pushed legislation that gave him unilateral executive powers for any declared state emergency. Before this, he did not have the power to order home quarantines or mandate testing etc. Now, because of that bill, he does.
Early on, the President was keeping cruise ships from porting because he wanted to keep the US virus numbers down. He dragged his heels on testing for the same reason. It wouldn’t LOOK good. Cuomo wanted the opposite. He wanted the numbers to reflect what was actually going on. When the President was reluctant to declare a state of emergency, Cuomo declared one in the first week of March - just a few days after NY’s 1st case.
The President is lying.
He is lying about almost everything.
He makes up facts and figures, spews this nonsense out, then denies he’s said it.
He denies saying things that there is camera footage from just the day before confirming that he did.
He is continually trying to deflect blame for anything he does onto other people - often the people who are doing the most.
New York’s “slow start”?
Fuck you.
We all need to STOP listening to this sorry excuse of a man.
He is dangerous.
He is out for himself and ONLY for himself.
History is going to excoriate him.
We can’t wait that long. We need to stop paying attention to him NOW.
The JERSEY BOYS company took over a week to get off the NCL Bliss and head home.
It turns out that they were extremely lucky.
There are many ships out there STILL floating around with not only their crews still on but also their passengers.
Today, the U.S. Coast Guard has directed all cruise ships to remain at sea INDEFINITLY.
They directed the cruise lines to send any severely ill passengers to the countries where the ships are registered. For most of the major U.S. lines, that means the Bahamas.
The Bahamas have still not recovered from last year’s hurricanes.
Cruise ships register in places like the Bahamas (NCL), Panama and Malta purely to avoid paying US taxes. Those countries give them tax breaks in exchange for a much smaller fee than the US would exact. The Cruise companies get to keep a massive amount of their profits as a result. Well, now we are experiencing the downside to that.
Bottom line, because of this practice, these aren’t US ships.
From a humanitarian point of view, I fully believe that the passengers and crew on these ships should be offloaded immediately at their point of departure and put into quarantine for 14 days. I believe that should have happened WEEKS ago. The delay has only made the situation far worse.
I also believe that the US should be welcoming refugees who are seeking asylum from other countries.
That’s not what this current Administration believes.
It is US and THEM.
These cruise ships registered in other places are THEM.
Bummer that there are Americans on board.
Sorry, but we don’t want to drive up our numbers here.
The first case in the Bahamas was reported on March 15.
If NYC is being overwhelmed by this virus what is going to happen in Nassau?
Here is a good number:
Over 6,000 people suffering from coronavirus in NY hospitals have been discharged and sent home.
For the vast majority of people who get this virus, they will get sick to varying degrees and recover.
Completely.
Many people who get the virus will NEVER have any symptoms.
They may never know they’ve had it.
All of the numbers that we are being barraged with on a daily basis are hugely anxiety provoking.
We are looking at graphs where the lines are going up, up, up.
They are just numbers.
We can’t control them.
We can’t personally do anything to change them or “fix” them.
Except, of course, what we are doing now.
Staying home.
Staying away from each other.
If we all TOGETHER follow those guidelines, we will TOGETHER see those lines slowly flatten and those numbers slowly going down.
TOGETHER we can affect these numbers and effect change.
Let’s concentrate on that.
Not the idiocy coming out of the White House.
Not the stuff we can’t control.
Let’s concentrate on what we can actually do for each other.
At the moment, that’s simply to stay away.