Tag: COVID-19

Fridaz Wandering Political Thoughts

Oh no!

Moms for Liberty lost elections on Tuesday. That’s good news for the United States. Looky how Wikipedia describes them:

Moms for Liberty is an American political organization that advocates against school curricula that mention LGBTQ rights, race and ethnicity, critical race theory, and discrimination.[6] Multiple chapters have also campaigned to ban books that address gender and sexuality from school libraries.[2][7][8] Founded in January 2021, the group began by campaigning against COVID-19 responses in schools such as mask and vaccine mandates.[2] Moms for Liberty is influential within the Republican Party.[9]

Out of 31 elections, Moms for Liberty won zero.

Moms for Liberty Shut Out Nationwide with Every Candidate Losing in 2025 Elections

Such a shame.

Meanwhile, in news that doesn’t surprise anyone with a few brain cells, Meta has been making money off dodgy ads and scams.

Meta is making billions from scammy ads, leaks to Reuters show

Given the great rate of Facebook enshittification over the past several years, it’d be a surprise to learn that they weren’t making money off of scammy ads. I don’t go on FB much these days, as I felt like I was drowning in the enshittification on that site.

Locally, Jackson County, Oregon, declared a state of emergency over the loss of SNAP benefits.

Jackson County commissioners declare state of emergency amid ongoing food scarcity

Sadly, this is a bit of FAFO. While my little city of Ashland went for Veep Kamela Harris for POTUS in 2024, Trump carried Jackson County by over five percent. What, they’re not blue voters? Why no, Sleepy Donny, they’re not:

Some 47,000 Jackson County residents who receive food benefits — nearly 14,000 of which are children or individuals living with disabilities — have been facing uncertainty since the announcement of suspension of SNAP benefits, previously known as food stamps, Oct. 1.

These are your people, Sleepyhead Trump, your base. It was clearly evident during 2024, as Trump flags flew in lawns and on trucks. But as we the blue knew, you didn’t really give a crap about them. You just wanted their votes. Now that you won, you turned your back on them.

As we knew you would.

Finally, measles outbreaks are surging anew.

Map shows more than 1,600 measles cases across U.S. as outbreaks grow

The number of cases in Texas alone grew to over 760 before the state declared it officially over in August, while total cases nationwide have topped 1,500, with infections confirmed in at least 39 states.

Measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, and in some cases, can cause severe infections in the lungs and brain that can lead to cognitive issues, deafness or death. But doctors and health officials say the vaccine, which is normally given as part of the combination measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, is highly safe and effective.

While most people’s symptoms improve, about 1 in 5 unvaccinated people who get measles will be hospitalized. About 1 out of every 1,000 children with measles will develop brain swelling that can lead to brain damage, and up to 3 of every 1,000 children who become infected will die, the CDC says. 

So much winning, right?

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T&P

Daily writing prompt
How do you practice self-care?
View all responses

For my personal self-care, I turn to America’s political leaders. Yes, just like DC’s elected denizens when disasters strike our nation, whenever something goes wrong with my health, I quickly turn to thoughts and prayers for my solutions. It’s wonderfully effective and doesn’t cost me anything! Although, there are sometimes complications. Like, when I broke some verterbrae in my neck. Despite all my thoughts and prayers, I ended up going to the medical clinic. They apparently didn’t have much faith in my thoughts and prayers, either, because they put me in a ‘halo device’ for the summer.

Other than that, oh, and when I had blocked bladder. Although I furiously prayed that my pecker would do its duty soon and gave it almost every minute of thought, I ended up in an emergency room where they fed me some meds and thrust a catheter in me. That relieved the problem, although I’ve remained on Flomax ever since.

Which was good, because I needed to turn my thoughts and prayers elsewhere. Thoughts and prayers were called for a year later when I broke several bones in my left arm. More thoughts and prayers were required for my ultra high blood pressure and then surviving COVID. Fortunately, medical authorities were there to augment my thoughts and prayers both of those times, along with when I needed surgery last year for a ruptured tendon in my ankle. I’d been tending it with plenty of thoughts and prayers but they surprisingly did very little. It does cause me some wonder about how they’re so successful with thoughts and prayers in Washington, D.C.

Now I think I need to lose some weight. I’m begun issuing a lot of thoughts and prayers that I’ll lose about twenty pounds. If that doesn’t work, I’ll probably see my PCP and go on a diet. Right now I’m going to eat some cheese. I pray that I don’t gain weight from it.

Time will tell.

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Sunda’s Wanderin’ Political Thoughts

As observers watch the Trusk Regime’s Great Shitstorm of 2025 and the Great Undoing, we await the Reciprocal Wave. History, economics, science, have all demonstrated again and again that for every action, there are reactions.

This is an era of networks. The age of the old factory plants have faded. What we have now are multiple assembly locations. Subassemplys are built and then shipped into other countries, where they’re added to other subassemblies. Those subassemblies are folded into a final component which is then shipped to an assembly plant for final inclusion into finished goods, such as a car. This is true not just in the automobile and aircraft industries, but in many electronics industries, medical device manufacturing, and pharmacueticals. Wasn’t governments who did this, either; this was the capitalists, although they worked with governments to make it so, often encouraged by tax breaks and subsidies.

Likewise, the farm-to-table model is a simplistic concept for much of the food that reaches our tables. While we do have local economies with organic farms and farm-to-table can happen, nature still commands where some things grow.

The Trusk Regime has issued orders. Broken treaties. Damaged alliances. Withdrawn from marketing and trade agreements. Bullied allies and threatened and launched tariffs.

Tariffs will drive up prices. History has demonstrated it. Higher prices bring inflation. Inflation causes less buying. People just don’t have enough money to buy more.

Less buying equals less retail volume. Lower volume means less income for businesses. Businesses compensate with increased prices to sustain operating and profit margins.

But less sales volume is less business. Less tax revenues at all levels.

Less sales translates to less need for employees. Job layoffs and terminations follow.

To ice the cake, the Trusk Regime has cut Small Business Administration funds. Too much DEI for them. Without those loans and grants, small businesses will close. Unemployment will climb. Fewer businesses means increased scarcity and less competition. Prices rise out of that equation.

That is just the tip of that egregious economic situation. Think of what that does to consumer confidence? Imagine the impact on the stock and commodities markets, and the strength of the dollar.

But you don’t need to imagine that. History is full of these things happening. They have been studied. The cause and effect is well understood. With less tax revenues and less Federal funding coming down, roads and infrastructure fall into disrepair. So history says. Hello, if you were paying attention, you know that was one of the things Trump 45 promised to do and failed to do. And, if you’re paying attention to your history, you know that President Joe Biden delivered on that promise with a bi-partisan infrastructure repair act.

The things you can learn from history.

If you’re willing.

Beyond food scarcity, high prices, and small businesses shuttering, visualize what that does to small towns and cities. Imagine what happens to farmers and their businesses with their markets closed to them in China and elsewhere.

There will be backlash and more reciprocal impacts. Unemployment will rise. Homelessness will increase. Begging on street corners will climb.

The Trusk Regime has already made that situation worse by shuttering the USAID. Through it, charities helped with lunch programs. Religious charities depended on money from the USAID to help communities cope with homelessness, unemployment, and scarce resources.

But Trusk cut that. That now traditional source of help will not be there. Forced into starvation and desperation, violent crimes will rise. That’s a fact right out of history. So will an attitude. What do I care if the world burns down? I have no future in it. Because they can’t afford college. Even if they can get more education, to what end would they put their degrees with businesses terminating employees. They will begin to work as part of an under-the-table gig economy. Take low paying jobs to get a meal.

Imagine the impact of increasing homelessness and growing unemployment will have on new car sales and new home sales. But you don’t have to: history has shown us the impact.

The Trusk Regime has already made that situation worse by terminating hundreds of thousands of Federal employees. You don’t think that’s not going to affect the unemployment numbers, consumer confidence, and the economy? People without jobs don’t spend much money. The Trusk Regime likes to offer a scenario where these hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed individuals go out and get a new job.

Where?

Especially since the Trusk Regime also cut government contracts. Schools, businesses, and communities were depending on those contracts. Some of them were still rebuilding from natural disasters. The money had been allocated by Congress. The Imperial Presidency said, no. So those projects have stopped.

They’re not hiring anyone.

That’s what Project 2025 and the Trusk Regime wholly ignore. We experienced all of this things and built networks of state, local, and Federal government with rules, regulations, and experts to deal with these problems. The Trusk Regime decided it was fraud and waste and took a chain saw to it.

Now we wait. The Great Reciprocal Wave is coming. Its form is uncertain. Could be open warfare. Massive rioting. A military coup. Other factors of the Great Undoing will come into play. Like health crises. Say avian flu. Flu, RSV, and COVID-19. New diseases. So it could be another pandemic.

This is all just a tiny piece of it. Natural disasters will begin. Tornados will tear through towns. Wildfires will start burning. Flooding. Places will be evacuated. Productivity will fail more. Scarcity will increase. Tax revenues will plummet. The economy will sag. The fires will burn on with no to little help from the Trusk Regime. They don’t think those federal agencies were useful.

Hurricane season will begin. Storms will wreck whole areas. Scarcity will increase. So will demand. Inflation will rise. Tax revenues will plummet. Homelessness will increase.

What do you think that will do to the insurance companies? Not sure? Ask the good people of Puerto Rico, Oregon, California, Florida, Texas, and other states affected by natural disasters in recent years. They’ll give you a history lesson.

While you’re talking to them, ask, too, what it did to their health and their healthcare systems. Ask them what it did to their local economy and local inflation. Ask them what it did to their state of mind.

The Trusk Regime thinks that cutting federal agencies like FEMA is a good move. They think local citizens ‘on the ground’ in those locations will be able to ‘make better decisions’.

Yes, because the people of Asheville, NC, for example, have such a deep familiarity with recovering from disasters. *head shake*

Making decisions about how to help communities is only a small element of what FEMA does. They keep stockpiles of emergency food and water supplies on hand. They keep emergency housing on hand in the form of trailers that can be moved in to solve the housing problems for a while.

Those stockpiles will still exist. But with FEMA cut or its personnel cut, who will manage those inventories? Who will ship those supplies?

And we know that this will happen.

Because history taught us. You can learn a lot from history, if you’re willing. Just cast your mind back to 2005, Hurricane Katrina, and New Orleans. Twenty years ago. Pause to remember Michael D. Brown of FEMA fame and the disastrous job he did because he didn’t have experience. “Heckuva job, Brownie,” President Bush told him.

So you can learn from history. But right now, instead, voters decided to fuck around and find out. They were willing to take an ax to all of these programs, agencies, federal employees, alliances, trade agreements, and expertise.

Well, here it comes, brothers and sisters. You’re about to find out.

Here comes the Reciprocal Wave. I’d tell you to brace yourselves but do I need to?

History has already told us.

9

Sa’day’s Theme Music

Mood: Grrrrumpy

It’s raining again. Alexa notified me at 8 PM (or 2000 hours if you prefer) that it was going to start raining near me, starting around 12 AM and going intermittently until 8 PM. About 1.3 inches of rain was expected.

I was listening to the rain hitting the roof, pinging off the vents, splattering the windows, and asked, “Is it raining now?”

“Rain is expected to start at 9:30 PM.”

“Alexa, feedback. It’s 8 PM and it’s raining now.”

Rainy, gray, it’s warmish again, 50 F with a high of 52 F suggested and a low of 46 F. The gray light slanting in through the windows does nada to brighten my mood. Fog swirls around mountain pines and peaks. Dark and pretty in a tragic “Wuthering Heights” sort of fashion.

A perusal of news headlines has me opimistic for 2025. (Yes, that was snark.) Things like the costs of owning and driving a car are jumping. This was a California story. The average price paid for a new car was over $47K. Now it’s jumped to over $52K. And insurance is climbing as well. Again, it’s California, but what happens in California usually ripples out. And, this is before any PINO Trump tariffs are issued.

Then a jolly story covered how the Alum Rock school district is closing or consolidating schools. Oh, boy, let me quit reading that.

Another story told me eggs, already pricy, are going up because of the bird flu. And a related news article informed me that animals were dying from being infected with the bird flu from eating tainted meat.

Next came a recounting that those anti-vaxxing efforts in Louisana are having an effect. Louisana is seeing cases of the flu climb. Surprised? No. They’re one of two states in a ‘Very High ILI’ category. The other state is…Oregon.

What? My state. WTF? Chasing that down, I learn, gosh, vaccinations for COVID-19, RSV, and the flu are trailing data from last year, which was already trailing data from the year before. So the flu, etc., are up.

Grrrrrreat. Yes, that is sarcasm.

I got out of the news before I turned to the national and international scenes. Mood was cratered enough, thanks.

The Neurons already had music picked out and going in the morning mental music stream (Trademark sagging). “Forty Days and Forty Nights” is a 1956 blues number by Muddy Waters. The Neurons had it in my head solely on the line, “Sun shinin’ all day long, but the rain keep falling down.” Yes, it hasn’t been forty solid days if I judge on empirical evidence; it just feels like it to the wife, me, and others who engage in conversations about the weather. The ground is saturated. Rivers and creeks are up. Flooding is possible. On the possy side, our drought seems over for our part of Oregon. Other parts of the state remain abnormally dry.

Could be worse, I remind myself. We are not snowbound, etc.

The Forty Days version I selected was a Steppenwolf cover. Mom bought me the album, Steppnwolf 7, for Christmas in 1970, when the song and I were both fourteen. It has sentimenal attachments to me, see.

Okay, coffee and I have worked out an arrangement for this morning whereby I’ll brew it and pour it into my mouth and swallow. Seems like I’m doing all the work here, but I benefit from it. I don’t think coffee gets anything except perhaps some emotional satisfaction from helping me through the day. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Floobating

Floobating (floofinition) – Arguing with an animal even though you speak different languages. Origins: Internet, circa COVID-19 Pandemic.

In Use: “Jessie would raise her voice to make her point floofbating with Spanx but it wasI no damn use because the cat would just get even louder until Jess finally gave up.”

In Use: “Many dogs begin floobating and employing nonverbal language whenever their humans suggest showers or baths.”

1

Sunday’s Theme Music

Mood: Confloofeed

The world has dropped a Sunday bomb on Ashlandia, emphasis on sun. Little wind stir the heat. We’ll travel from our current relative pleasant found in 69 degrees to the upper eighties. Cooler than yesterday, not as hot as that endured by those under the skillet lid in the eastern U.S. Today is June 23, 2024. Next Sunday will be June’s final day. This means that almost half of 2024 has slipped by the surly calendar.

In bad news, a friend sent me stats on COVID-19, showing that it’s risin’ agin’. He saved me some time. I’d planned to look into it because eight friends reported they had it in June. Their experience was a few days with mild cold symptoms followed by two to three weeks of poor energy of any kind. One reported, she sit down with a book and go right to sleep.

I spent the morning texting with sisters. One is teaching her sixteen-year-old to drive as her newly adult high school grad takes on adulting as he preps for college this fall. She’s going down to Georgia to vacation with our oldest sister tomorrow. Meanwhile, texting me, the older sister tells me she’s had a couple strokes without elaborating on what kind. She’s always had back problems and now there’s stenosis and they want to fuse five of her vertebrae together. She’s also diabetic and has chronic kidney failure, a byproduct of her meds, she tells me.

Then there’s my middle younger sister. She and her family drove down to the Carolina coast yesterday. They’ve rented a beach house with a pool. They’re all hard workers and mo’ def’ deserve and need a vacay. Hope they’re able to relax and chill.

Meanwhile, my mind is floating around calling Dad to get an update on him and calling Mom to get an update on her and pass the update along about Dad. I’m not quite up to that yet. More coffee and some writing, first.

We had a net outage the other night. Actually, two nights in a row. This frequently happens when the heat jumps into the upper nineties. I mean degrees, not years, decade, or period.

With the net out, we read but then I surfed the television offerings. Since I cut the cable back in 2010, we survive on over-the-air digital broadcasts. We receive the big four networks, along with PBS, and the networks’ sub channels. Like NBC is channel 5.1, then there are three other networks broadcasting old shows or documentaries on channels 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4. X-Files, Two and a Half Men, Seinfeld, along with Green Acres and Hogan’s Heros, and several police/hospital/fire department-based dramas from past decades.

Watching Hogan’s Heros and its silliness, my wife and tried remembering what happened to Bob Crane. Was it suicide or murder? Bludgeoned to death, we rather later recalled, and then conneted it. (Yes, conneted is my word for ‘confirmed on the net’.)

My wife follows a tangent, recalling that Naomi Judd ended her own life. It’d shocked her and me; Naomi Judd, a lovely and talented person, seemed to have it all together, resulting in a life of artistic and commercial success. Naomi Judd, though, coped with many mental and physical health issues and decided, enough. Never know what’s happening in another’s skin and what’s passing through minds.

The final piece that evening was a sort of celebration of the Judds’ music, with my wife enthusing about their songs, like “Mama He’s Crazy” and “Girls Night Out”. But the one she particularly relished was “Turn It Loose” from 1988. She played it a few times once the net returned, heavily accenting her favorite lines by loudly singing along to them.

I love the slide of a steel guitar
I love the moan of an old blues harp
I love the shake of a tambourine
I love the bass when it’s low and mean
So put on your shoutin’ shoes
And turn it loose

h/t to Lyrics.com

It may surprise you that The Neurons in my head then loaded it up and sprang it on me this morning in my morning mental music stream (Trademark loose) as I was wandering around the kitchen, just minding my own business. So that’s today’s theme music.

Stay positive, be strong, and make what you can of the day. Needn’t be perfect. Just tryin’ can help. I’ve downed some coffee — the last gulp was cold as stone. Time to go write and roll.

Here’s the music. Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ_tyrhYmLs

2

Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Heard from my wife, who heard from a friend that other friends have been stricken with COVID. See, the annual Easter brunch planning is underway. We’re invited. So are the COVID couple. The wife answered the evite that they have COVID now but were hopeful they’d be better by the end of the month. She — the wife — has it worse.

Concerning, yes. As concerning are the ration of natural questions which come with COVID announcements. How’d they get it, and when? When did they test, and how are they both doing? What are their symptoms?

It’s basically the standard COVID script.

2

The Protection Dreams

My wife and I received another round of COVID=19 vaccinations yesterday. We agreed that one kicked us harder than the others.

We received them at 11 AM. Other than pain and stiffness at the injection site, all was going well. After meeting with friends for beers in the late afternoon, I returned home and exercised. Then, about 10 PM, it seemed like someone encased my body in concrete. My newfound stiffness stunned me. Reaching down, sitting down, standing up, movement of any kind was met with defiant resistance.

Next, cold invaded my body. It reminded me of being in Korea one winter. Heavy shivering gripped me. My hands and feet felt so cold, I stuck my hands down my shorts against my groin to warm them and gasped at the shock of my cold hands. I normally sashay through the house in gym shorts and a tee shirt. Now I applied additional layers, including socks. Socks! The indignation. Then came headaches and a mild fever. I woke up at one point soaked with sweat.

Meanwhile though, I dreamed when I slept. I was heading a horizon. Tall, dark walls were being erected. That’s my protection against COVID-19, I told myself. I had variations of that dream three times during the night. The walls were different each time. In the second dream, I said, “I need bigger, stouter walls, taller walls.” Someone — a male — replied, “They’re coming.”

All three of these dreams were short. They felt like they were less than a minute, and in each, it was only me, darkening skies, and protective walls.

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Her Dreams

She says that she vividly dreams all the time and tells him about two. Both were recurring. In one, she was with her ex-son-in-law. He’s in many of her dreams but in this recurring dream, she and he are in a huge house. Others are there but she doesn’t remember who the others are. The SIL says, “We’re going to bring a lot of children here, so we need to start making beds.” She thinks in response that they’re not ready and that’s going to upset her daughter.

The other recurring dream, experienced three nights in a row, was about being in a huge mansion. She said it cost over a billion dollars to build. It’s sealed off from the outside world. But she thinks, there’s no oxygen. There’s no air. She can’t breathe.

She dreamed that one while she was in the hospital on oxygen, fighting COVID pneumonia.

1

Thursday’s Wandering Thought

He has a rhythm established to deal with his illness. About every seven minutes, he gets up and pees. Then he washes his hands, followed by his face, dousing his eyes with water. Returning to his bedsit, he drinks half a glass of water and refills it, and then blows his nose.

There’s method underlying the madness. It’s all a matter of feeling better and getting better.

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