Considering the amount of foul First Ward language you’re about to “hear,” you might want to hide the children and gird your loins before proceeding. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Oh! And it’s gonna be another goddamn long one, too!
What? A new variant? No!
Oh, holy fuck! While we’ve regularly discussed how any number COVID variants will be popping up for the duration, the rest of the planet is losing what little’s left of their unremarkable minds over the emergence of the omicron variant.
The talking heads’ heads exploded, the markets tanked, the French bathed, and new travel restrictions abounded. As if travel restrictions ever put a dent in any pandemic anywhere at any time. Fuckin’ idiots!
Worse yet, the singular reason we’re seeing new and potentially more contagious and lethal variants is the generally worthless global mitigations serve only to forestall the required herd immunity and needlessly prolong the plague.
Anyone with two connected brain cells already knows, by virtue of any virus’ inherent mutational drift, that an artificially prolonged pandemic simply provides the pathogen with a myriad of opportunities to evolve and outsmart any vaccine along the way.
And the omicron variant is all the proof of that reality you really need. It won’t nearly be the last variant, either.
There is no miracle plague panacea
But that hasn’t stopped Democratic and pandering progressive leaders from persistently pledging that all we have to do is follow their mitigation lead and the plague will stop dead in its tracks. It’s essentially the same stupid “magic” promise Donald Trump made when COVID first hit here.
The duplicitously fascist Fauci still foments this fantasy as does Illinois’ own insipid pediatric patronage Department of Public Health hire Ngozi Eziki. That’s right! What could possibly go wrong with a pediatrician – who got her “medical degree” in Nigeria – leading our state’s pandemic response? By the results, pretty much everything!
Bu what continues to baffle me is, two years into this still-worsening proposition, the sheep still somehow believe if we continue to wear masks, social distance, refuse to attend gatherings, and avoid travel, it’ll somehow be the end of it.
No, it won’t!
The best that any mitigation strategy can do is slow the disease’s down because nothing short of a major asteroid strike can stop a pandemic – and even that might not do the trick. The hard, and mostly ignored, truth is we will all eventually catch a variety of COVID before herd immunity finally sets in.
Doubt me? Researchers continue to find genetic traces of the 1918 Spanish Influenza in the most recent annual flu bugs. The point is to be vaccinated and boostered by the time the pathogen comes a’knockin at your door!
The only effort that can put an end to this pestilence is to somehow convince the vast majority of the American people be inoculated, but that ain’t about to happen now because Democrats and progressives have foolishly chosen to politicize the plague every step of the way.
Please read on!
“Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me!”
To quote that preeminent philosopher Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine.
As you already know, I’m exceedingly pro-vaccine because the overwhelming evidence is they work with virtually no side effects. The Moderna, Pfizer and J&J offerings may well be the most successful pharmaceutical rollout in human history. But now, with the end of the plague in sight, just like those vintage Chicago Cubs teams, we’re bent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Yes! There will always be those urban hillbillies who think the vaccine will make them sterile, magnetic, or pregnant. But I’ve spent the last month speaking with a slew of generally intelligent friends and acquaintances who refuse to get the shot on principal and their decision has nothing to do with politics or partisanship.
And I have to say I’m having a difficult time disagreeing with them.
Their first problem is with the “experts” persistent flip-flopping – the Great Oz Fauci in particular. If you recall, Fauci kicked his bullshit off with don’t wear a mask/oh, you absolutely have to wear a mask” back in 2020. Then, just last month, he told the press there was absolutely no possibility of a fourth wave only to reverse himself a scant week claiming.
So, if he can’t make up his mind, why should we trust anything he says?
Then there’s the continuing capriciousness and downright stupidity of the Illinois “mitigations.” You couldn’t go to a local bar, but the horde could descend upon Wal-Mart. Liquor store checkout clerks were deemed “essential workers.” Oh! And my personal favorite, you have to wear a mask the ten yards to be seated at a restaurant, but then you can take it off to enjoy a meal with ten of your best friends.
Who knew COVID germs were allergic to tables?
While all of that bullshit played into their decision, the final straw in their Morello-esque rebellion was the vaccine mandates. They’d already been ordered to wear worthless masks, social distance, endure their children’s remote learning, and stay home themselves, so by the time we got to the shot it was a bridge too far.
And as pro-vaccine as I am, this rebellious soul generally gets their logic. The government shoulda kept their powder dry until it really mattered.
What those patently self-important and self-destructive nanny-staters don’t begin to understand is their incessant and unprovoked nagging creates exactly the reality they fervently believe they’re trying to avoid.
So, when are Hospitals gonna finally step up?
As is par for the nanny-stater course, with the omicron variant looming large, we’re starting to hear that same old tired mantra Illinois politicians have been spewing at us for the last two years, “We must take these necessary steps to prevent our hospitals and health care providers from being overwhelmed.”
But why does the onus always seem to fall on we regular folks to make all of the adjustments? Why do we perpetually let our for-profit hospitals off the hook? They’ve had two fucking years to adjust to this reality they’ve irresponsibly avoided that possibility like the plague.
We’ve covered it before! American hospitals employ an airline paradigm where an empty seat (bed) is considered to be a liability, so they keep the number of beds to an absolute minimum. Hospitals would much rather perform elective surgeries and provide expensive outpatient services for chronic diseases like cancer than serve the sick.
Their bottom line is, in the words of the great Randy Newman, “it’s money that matters!”
I may have previously mentioned that, prior to the plague, the “non-profit” Delnor Hospital routinely made a 200 percent annual profit. That’s not too terribly difficult to believe when you consider that these are the same fine folks who will happily charge you $15 per Tylenol tablet.
So now, two years down the pandemic road, we – and particularly our not-at-risk but perpetually masked children – are still being ordered to save local hospital administrators from themselves.
They haven’t added a significant number of beds. They’ve made no real effort to raise salaries to attract more workers and take the pressure off their abundantly overburdened frontline staff. In fact, they’ve done so little to improve the lot of their current nurses and doctors that many of them have walked away exacerbating this downward spiral.
Don’t give me that bleep about hospitals doing newspaper advertising for new hires, either. The fact that you’ve polished a turd makes it no less of a turd.
I certainly sympathize with the stellar nurses and doctors who’ve faced down the plague from the beginning, but I have absolutely no sympathy for our hospitals and the greedy and single-minded jerks who run them. They’ve had plenty of time to make the appropriate adjustments, but in the name of protecting profits they’ve refused to do so.
