Tag: Coronavirus

Money to Be Made

 

Garden centers around the country are very busy with the spring rush, and some may be even busier than in a normal spring on account of the many people who are staying at home due to coronavirus lockdowns and have more time on their hands than usual for gardening and home improvement projects. In most cases the garden centers can maintain social distancing through written reminders posted throughout their facilities, and by setting up physical barriers and limiting the amount of shoppers on the grounds at any one time. Social distancing at a garden center is probably most difficult to maintain in the confines of greenhouses.

 

Amanda-Tapping
Amanda Tapping, actress on the Stargate series of television programs, visited the Arctic in March 2007. U.S. Navy photo by Jeff Gossett, of the Arctic Submarine Laboratory. Note the ice crystals formed on the outside of her face mask by her humid exhalations.

Staff at garden centers may try to diligently follow an advertised policy of wiping down surfaces with disinfectants, but that is not always possible considering shortages of disinfectant supplies and the inherently dirty environment around potted plants and associated materials. Management may require staff to wear masks whenever they are dealing with the public, citing CDC guidelines for preventing the spread of the coronavirus. Many customers wear masks voluntarily, while others are encouraged to do so by posted reminders. Few garden centers or other retail establishments go to the controversial length of prohibiting customers from visiting their premises without a mask.

Social distancing and disinfecting of surfaces are reasonably effective measures in countering the spread of a virus that is only one micron wide; wearing a mask is far less effective, at least when it is the kind available to the average citizen. Yet somehow mask wearing has become the definitive symbol of the coronavirus pandemic, as if it were just as important and useful as the other two measures, perhaps more so. It has certainly become an important symbol for virtue signaling. The problem is not that wearing a mask is bad, because it isn’t; the problem is that it encourages far too many people to attribute to it nearly magical properties that the typical surgical mask simply does not possess, contributing to a false sense of security.

The reason masks have become the symbol of the coronavirus pandemic is money. Wearing a mask in public makes it possible to re-open businesses for people to visit, with consumers sure in the dubious knowledge they are not spreading the virus to others in their proximity. More importantly than its real effectiveness, wearing a mask is a sign to others that you are going about your bit as a consumer safely and responsibly. No doubt it is a good thing to get people back to work making money for themselves and their families, particularly in the case of working class people who were ill prepared to stay at home for weeks or months without income.

A brief, entertaining overview of magical thinking.

To that limited extent, the promotion of mask wearing by the CDC, probably under pressure from the White House to get the economy moving again, has been a decent nostrum. If people feel safer going out to stores when they are wearing a mask and the shopkeepers are also wearing masks, then fine, for as far as that goes. But people should not lose sight of other more effective, less publicly identifiable measures, such as keeping your distance and cleaning hands and surfaces regularly, or just continuing to stay home as much as possible. Wearing a mask does not suddenly entitle one to get up in someone else’s face, for good or ill. Wearing a mask may be helpful while shopping at a greenhouse for supplies for a coronavirus garden. Greenhouses can be tight quarters, but everywhere else at a garden center, inside or outside, that mask you’re wearing and perhaps entrusting too much with your safety and that of others is scant protection that doesn’t amount to much if you’re aren’t taking more effective, less magical measures to keep the virus from spreading.
— Izzy

 

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Quackery Daiquiri Doc

 

Here’s a punny old joke:

A doctor made it his regular habit to stop off at a bar for a hazelnut daiquiri on his way home. The bartender knew the doctor’s habit and would always have a drink waiting. But one day the bartender ran out of hazelnut extract, so he substituted hickory nuts. When the doctor arrived, he took a sip and exclaimed, “This isn’t a hazelnut daiquiri!”

“No, I’m sorry,” the bartender replied. “It’s a hickory daiquiri, Doc.”


Animal Life and the World of Nature; A magazine of Natural History (1903) (18011899630)
A Lifebuoy Soap advertisement that appeared in a 1902 edition of the periodical Animal Life and the World of Nature: A Magazine of Natural History.

No one with any amount of sense can possibly take seriously the quack nostrums for coronavirus floated by the Snake Oil Salesman-in-Chief at the propaganda rallies and petty grievance sessions otherwise known as his press conferences. And it’s difficult to feel sympathy for those of his cult followers foolish enough to swallow his advice along with his every word, as mean-spirited and spiteful as are the words spewed and the behaviors exhibited by many of them. The ones who deserve our sympathy when they gullibly believe the irresponsible suggestions made by Clueless Leader are the naive, the innocent, and the truly stupid.

Who could have imagined a time when the national leader of this country would behave so irresponsibly that children and the mentally incompetent members of the populace should be shielded from him lest they act upon his remarks and harm themselves, and possibly others. It’s not just his medically unqualified suggestions for attacking the coronavirus that can lead people astray, but things he has said in the past encouraging violence and continues to say to this day. He is a threat to public health and well-being on many fronts.



There is a long history of quacks and snake oil salesmen having their moments of holding a portion of the public within their spell, and that will surely continue because enough people are willing to believe almost anything, and to back up their beliefs with their money. To have such nonsense emanating from the leader of a wealthy, powerful nation, however, is dangerous and disheartening, even sickening. Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil may be morons, and they are certainly capable of giving bad medical advice in the interest of bettering their television audience ratings and swelling their pocketbooks and egos, but neither of them is capable of swaying a significant minority of the populace to hit the streets in an armed insurrection, or to swallow or inject poisons. That kind of influence has always been exercised by cult leaders, and not by mere quacks or by responsible national leaders.
— Vita

 

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I.C.U.

 

The surgical masks many people are wearing in public now are less effective at preventing coronavirus infection than they probably realize. The cloth masks and bandanas are even less effective. What’s the point of wearing them then, if they do almost nothing and social distancing and hand washing are far more effective measures? It comes down to signaling in a number of ways.

Use of Cloth Face Coverings to Help Slow the Spread of COVID-19
Guidance* from the CDC. Odd that the person in the illustration has no eyes. The mucous membranes of the eyes can be an avenue for the coronavirus into the body. As in the illustration, the masks most people wear do not cover their eyes.

In East Asian societies, where conforming for the sake of the greater good is the usual practice, wearing a mask during a public health crisis signals to others that you care enough not to pass along to them your potentially toxic exhalations. In Western societies, wearing a mask more often signals the opposite, which is that you do not want to catch anything from someone else’s infectious effluvia. However you look at your reason for wearing a mask, the ultimate effectiveness of the typical mask is minimal, though preventing yourself from infecting others puts it to better use because it stops most droplets you produce by sneezing and coughing from getting into the space of others.

Wearing a mask when almost everyone else is wearing one signals you are in on the latest information from the public health service. You know and understand everyone has to do their part in preventing the spread of the coronavirus. Never mind that wearing a surgical or cloth mask is not an important defense against a virus that is one micron in size, tiny enough that thousands of them can flow through the gaps in the material as well as around the laughably poor seal at the edges of the typical mask. It’s not rational to expect much from these masks, but people wear them either out of ignorance or because they want to signal they are considerate of others in the public space.

Another kind of signaling that comes with wearing these masks is being done by companies that are still open for business and dealing with the public more or less face to face, such as in retail establishments. Some companies have started requiring their employees to wear masks, and some even require customers to wear them if they want to do business inside the store. The owners and managers no doubt mean well, and there is no reason to expect they would be any wiser to the relative ineffectiveness of the masks than the general public, but there is still a taint of virtue signaling in their new policies. They say they are merely following Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines, and so they are. Meanwhile it doesn’t hurt their bottom line to trumpet to consumers the safety measures they have undertaken on their behalf, even though one of those measures – wearing masks – is almost entirely cosmetic.

From the 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan Demme, Talking Heads guitarist and singer David Byrne and bassist Tina Weymouth perform “Heaven”, with backup vocals by Lynn Mabry offstage.

The worst part of requiring employees to wear masks at all times when dealing with the public is that it may increase the workers’ chances of becoming sick with the coronavirus. It is one thing for a shopper to don a mask for half hour or hour stints, and quite another for a worker to wear a mask for an entire eight hour shift. A mask is often uncomfortable and requires frequent adjustment, leading the wearer to touch their face more frequently than they might if they wore no mask at all. Unless a worker exchanges their mask daily for a fresh one, the result can be unhygienic to the point of defeating any purpose to its use. The cloth masks and bandanas can be especially bad unless they’re washed or exchanged daily. Go ahead and wear a mask if it reassures you and others you encounter in these troubled times, just don’t harbor any delusions about its effectiveness, leading you to neglect the crucial measures you can take to stay healthy, like washing your hands frequently and keeping your distance from those others you’re trying to signal.
— Ed.

* Update: This news story illustrates how the CDC has bent to the political winds blowing from the White House, to the detriment of the health of all Americans as well as the CDC’s outstanding reputation.

 

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Spilt Milk

 

“Oats. n.s. [aten, Saxon.] A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”
— from A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson.

The detrimental effect on the dairy industry of lockdowns state governments have instituted in reaction to the coronavirus could have long term consequences, tipping the balance abruptly toward greater production of plant derived milks, butters, and cheeses. Traditional dairy has been losing market share to plant derived dairy for decades, with losses getting larger especially in the past decade. Now loss of revenue due to coronavirus lockdowns of schools and restaurants could mean bankruptcy for many dairy farms and a long term shift toward lower production as traditional dairy transforms into a lesser role.


There will no doubt always be demand for traditional dairy products, but if supermarket shelf space is an indicator of what consumers want, then plant derived milks have taken the largest chunk of shelf space away from traditional dairy, while butters, and particularly cheeses have been less competitive. The consumption of animal milk products has always been a peculiarly human practice. The desire for milk and associated products is so great that people will go to great lengths to produce and consume ersatz milk derived from nuts and grains. It is beyond the scope of this article to investigate why that is; it is enough merely to point out that consumption of milk fulfills for many people a deep-seated need, a need met for all other mammals in infancy, and then forgotten.

 

Hafermilch aus dem Bio-Supermarkt
Different brands of oat milk available in a German organic supermarket in September 2015. Photo by Fretdf.

“Milk. n.s. [meelc, Saxon; melck, Dutch.]
1. The liquor with which animals feed their young from the breast.
2. Emulsion made by contusion of seeds.”
— from A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson.

It follows then that animal milk production for human consumption is an artificial activity, consequently involving some pain and suffering by the animals, both mothers and their artificially weaned young. We have done these things for so long, for centuries going back ten thousand years or more to the beginning of agriculture, that we think the activities are natural. They are not. The closest parallel in the rest of the animal kingdom can be seen with how ants tend to aphids in order to secure for themselves the aphids’ honeydew secretions. Those secretions are not intended for consumption by the aphids’ young, however, but are merely a byproduct of their ingestion of plant juices. The relationship is closer – but not entirely the same – as our relationship to honey bees than it is to our relationship with dairy animals. The relationship we have with dairy animals is mere exploitation, closer to that of vampire bats with their prey, or to bloodsucking insects with their victims, or even to a virus with its host.
— Izzy

 

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All Lines Are Busy

 

Filing an unemployment claim online is the modern way, and few people bother about calling to file their claim. At least they don’t bother until they reach the last step of filing online when they may be confronted by a request from the unemployment office to call them in order to answer some questions for clarification of their claim. By the way, the claim is not complete and official until the applicant makes that call. *CLICK*

Jobless Men Lined up for the First Time in California to File Claims for Unemployment Compensation - NARA - 7716670 (page 1)
Jobless men lined up for the first time in California in 1936 to file claims for unemployment compensation under the Social Security Act of 1935. Photo for the Social Security Administration by Dorothea Lange (1895-1965).

 

Making that call and actually getting through to a live human presents a nearly insurmountable obstacle when tens of thousands of other applicants are trying to do the same thing at the same time, overwhelming a system that was meant to handle only hundreds of calls each day, or maybe a few thousand calls a day at best. Since Department of Labor guidelines for unemployment claims dictate that many, possibly most, applications require follow up questions for clarification, there are now hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of unemployment applicants around the country whose claims have been in limbo for weeks because they cannot get through on the phone to their state’s unemployment agency, at the agency’s request. “We’re sorry we can’t take your call at this time, as all operators are currently busy assisting other applicants. Please try again later.” *CLICK*


In the 1979 PBS television show Previn and the Pittsburgh, Miklós Rózsa conducts a suite from his score for the 1959 film Ben-Hur, performed here by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. If you’re going to be on hold with a phone call, you might as well listen to some glorious music, and particularly at this time of year if it’s related to Easter.

 

No one knows exactly how many people are trying to call and not getting through. The online claims are in limbo, and so how would anybody know? The current estimate of approximately 10 million new unemployment claims nationwide is almost certainly a low ball figure. The technology exists for handling such a high volume of online claims and the phone calls they generate, but state governments didn’t want to spend the money for technology and employees that would have been underused most of the time. State officials would have had difficulty selling preparation for the absolute worst case scenario. “The party you have reached is not taking any more calls.” *CLICK*

Rózsa’s “Overture” to Ben-Hur, recorded in 2017 using state of the art technology. For all that, music like this is performed by musicians on instruments that have changed little for centuries. Note the fellow filming the proceedings on a digital video camera no bigger than a tablet computer, which nonetheless delivers excellent optical quality and smooth motion. If you’re stuck at home for days and weeks at a time, it’s nice to have technology like this available as a compensation.

They could have come along part of the way, however, mainly in improving their ability to scale up quickly in response to a crisis. Instead, in some states like Florida, led by Republicans, officials actively undermined the capabilities of agencies, like unemployment offices, which were meant to aid workers. In times of low unemployment the agencies adequately supported the needs of claimants, but as soon as the load increased the system buckled and the agencies’ inadequacies became apparent. “Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line to speak to the next available representative.” *CLICK*

Like the infectious disease advisory boards and the equipment and facilities necessary for coping with a pandemic, the state unemployment agencies appeared in quieter, safer times to be unnecessary expenses in the view of the kleptocrats currently occupying public office throughout much of the land. But wiser heads understand these are services that, when you need them, you really need them. Dumbkopfs don’t understand and are unwilling to admit these services can’t be brought up to speed overnight to handle a crisis the magnitude of the coronavirus pandemic. Primarily they don’t care. Trumpkins do understand military defense preparedness, but then that has more to do with maintaining the gravy train of defense contract boondoggles than with the actual requirements for defending our country. They think defending our country means ripping children away from their parents at our southern border and throwing the parents and children into separate concentration camps. Trillions for defense, but no more than pennies for scientific and humanitarian concerns. “All lines are busy. Good-bye.” *CLICK*
— Techly



Finally, an analysis of Rózsa’s “Prelude” to Ben-Hur, the music that played during the opening credits. To all those who must sit and wait while technology catches up, may your call finally get through.

 

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Equal Application of the Law

 

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.”
— Matthew 6:5, from the New International Version of the Bible.

When state and local governments include churches, mosques, and synagogues in their lockdown orders due to coronavirus, it might at first glance seem to be an infringement on religious freedom, but such is not the case. It would be an infringement if government singled out particular institutions which were in almost every way like other institutions except for their religious character. In this public health emergency, however, the only concern government officials have with religious institutions is the one characteristic they share with some other institutions, which is how they typically gather together large groups of people, a characteristic more conducive to spreading coronavirus than to tamping it down.


Congregating for the purpose of religious worship is no more under attack in these coronavirus lockdown orders than assembly for the political purpose of voting. This hasn’t stopped some religious leaders from loudly claiming they and their congregants are being persecuted by government in general and by the Democratic Party in particular. It hasn’t taken long for the coronavirus to become politically as polarized as everything else in our society. The virus itself has not expressed a political preference and, like past viruses, attacks everyone equally.

No one is denying religious freedom to churchgoers, only the freedom to go to church in large numbers at one time. Congregating has always been an important element of religious ritual for many people in many religions, but a public health emergency supersedes the wish of some to carry on as always at the expense of and to the detriment of the many. People can still pray, and in most places they can still gather to pray in groups of less than ten or thereabouts.


Réplique du tombeau du Christ à Pâques 2017 dans l'église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis
Replica of Jesus Christ’s tomb at Easter 2017 in the church of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, in Paris, France. Photo by Tangopaso.

Some pastors don’t see it that way. They are pastors of Southern Baptist churches, by and large. They are led in their right wing political views and gullible belief in hoaxes concocted by their devilish foes in the center and left of American politics by people like Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. For these people, churchgoing is perhaps even more a social bond than it is a religious experience. They go to see and be seen.

Church is also a place where they reaffirm to each other their political bond, which is conservative at least, and right wing more often with each passing year. Taking away their church gatherings of dozens or hundreds of people in close proximity to each other is seen by them as prying apart the social and political bonds which are more important to them than the religious bonds affirmed in regular churchgoing. Their pastors can grandstand about supposed government and leftist persecution of their religious institutions, but their real worry is loosening the social and political bonds cemented regularly in seeing and being seen by their fellow congregants.
— Vita

 

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It Hurts All the Same

 

It’s no surprise MAGA Mussolini has called the imminent danger of a coronavirus pandemic a hoax, nor is it a surprise his MAGA followers swallowed that lie and called for more. They always do. These developments have become so predictable that they no longer warrant the bother of linking to the news stories about them. All the rest of us can do, those of us who live in the fact-based world, that is, is resist the implementation of damaging policies by those who live in the fantasy world of MAGA hate-based politics.

 

J. Bond Francisco - The Sick Child - 1991.9 - Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Sick Child, an 1893 painting by the American artist J. Bond Francisco (1863-1931).

The great surprise is how well scientists and doctors have done in the past 100 years in restricting another pandemic like the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918 and 1919, which killed 100 million people around the world. The Spanish Flu came on the heels of the close of World War I, and after it had finally flamed out it had claimed more lives than that most horrific “War to End All Wars”. That was the way the balance had worked throughout history, with battlefield deaths generally being outpaced by the communicable diseases unleashed in the gatherings of large armies and refugees. The later twentieth century holds the dubious distinction of tipping that balance toward human mayhem as the major cause of death in wars.

What is most remarkable about the efficiency of modern science in preventing the kind of communicable disease pandemics which have periodically scourged humanity is that scientists and doctors have done this despite the huge increase in population at the same time worldwide travel has skyrocketed in volume and speed. More people than ever before are moving faster and more frequently from one part of the world to the next, and all the while they are sharing untold numbers of germs both dangerous and mundane with local populations.

In the taking over of the New World by European colonists only two and more centuries ago, those sorts of introductions – though at a slower pace – led to genocidal destruction of the indigenous population through their exposure to an array of unfamiliar diseases. People more often lived in lighter concentrations then than they do now. Travel was certainly far slower, and most people then lived their entire lives in the familiar surroundings of one city or of a handful of farm villages.

The great danger now is the introduction of an unfamiliar permutation of a familiar virus or bacterium. And yet for 100 years the world’s scientific and medical professionals have forestalled the disaster that could easily overtake us if they weren’t vigilant. Calling their sincere efforts a hoax helps no one, and acting on such misinformation would amount to carelessly flipping a lit cigarette butt onto dry brush.
— Vita

 

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