Happy (?) New Year Edition of Lots 'o Links

The continual onslaught of bad news makes is hard to want to celebrate, so I can only hope that 2021 is finally the beginning of more encouraging news and more optimistic statistics for hospitals, nursing homes, and patients.

This comes from Hot Air:  "At present someone in LA County dies from the virus, on average, every 10 minutes. LA’s Public Health account on Twitter has been tweeting out warnings trying to personalize the threat every 10 minutes as a way to get people’s attention." Click here to see some of the warnings.  Maybe electronic billboards could do the same thing.

Check out the links at Stephen Green's Insanity Wrap #116; Larwyn's Linx; Maggie's Farm; and Politico Magazine’s 20 Stories That Explain 2020.

"6 Quick Laughter Yoga Exercises That Access the Now"

Until this week, I had never heard of "laughter yoga" before. After seeing this video, I can easily understand why these hilarious, ridiculous exercises are good stress relievers!  If these people aren't paid, professional laughers, they should be! The facilitator, Thomas Flindt, "is a life coach and laughter instructor as well as the driving force behind World Laughter Day in Denmark."

Tough COVID Messaging Required

Every day, I see Dr Fauci and other doctors on TV, beseeching the American people to wear masks, wash their hands, and keep a social distance from others. Their appeals aren't working. Instead of begging and pleading, maybe they ought to tell the people what to do, instead of asking them pretty please. How about "You MUST wear a mask", or "If you don't change your inconsiderate behavior, more people will die.", or even "No mask? No vaccine."  

Tougher messaging is needed, and now.  And it wouldn't hurt to create billboards or posters where people could see them every day, like the one from World War II, above. There should also be frequent PSAs on TV. Why don't we have these things already?

You Can Act Like A President!

The New York Post got it right. Enough already! Stop acting like a spoiled brat and stop interfering with the incoming administration because you lost the election. It's embarrassing and unseemly. He could have become a good post-presidency ambassador for the vaccine and for mask-wearing, but it's too late for him to change his stripes now.

I never thought it'd be possible, but Trump's maneuvers actually make you feel sorry for Biden.

An Artistic Representation of the Year 2020

I came across this terrific graphic at Artnet on Instagram. It covers the year only through September; can you imagine what October through December must look like?

And here are the art memes that brought us the most joy this year.

Merry, Nostalgic Christmas!

I saw this Don Feder column last night and could identify with it, as can anyone who grew up in the 1960s.. It's called "Christmas Eve on West Main St. in Johnstown N.Y., Circa 1962", and you'll enjoy it.

Here's an excerpt: "The decorations, the snow, the music – I loved it all.  To me, Christmas Eve on West Main Street, circa 1962, represents normalcy.

"This was an America where men still wore hats they tipped to ladies, where cops were respected and obeyed, where cars had huge tailfins and gas was 25-cents a gallon, where television sitcoms were hilarious and wholesome, where an army of busy bureaucrats didn’t try to regulate every breath you took, where schools taught manners as well as academic subjects. It was a land where love of country was celebrated and religion was honored.

"It was an America where you knew everyone on your block, not just the family next-door. It was an America before hippies and urban riots, free love and R-rated movies, non-stop protests and manufactured rage. It was an America where ideas were freely exchanged on college campuses. This was an America where the grandson of immigrants --- the son of a man who grew up in a tenement and left school in the 8^th. grade – could dream of one day becoming a writer.

"Back in the day (my day) Christmas was magic – so enchanting that even some who didn’t celebrate it were touched by it."

One of the commenters wrote,  "As a little Jewish girl I learned every Christmas Carol and can still sing them today. I learned everyone of them in school."  So did I!

Christmas Day Terrorism in Nashville

That destructive blast in Nashville sure looks more like a domestic terrorist act than an "intentional act" and reminded me of Timothy McVeigh and his fertilizer-packed Ryder truck. When I heard about the 9-1-1 call, I thought maybe the cops had been lured to the area, or else it was a dry run for something even bigger.

I always thought that our vulnerability would attract terrorists, and I guess it has. Whoever and whatever this is, I hope the FBI finds them, and fast.

Lots 'o Links

Here's some good reading on this Hump Day from Maggie's Farm, Stephen Green's Insanity Wrap #112,  Politico, and Liz Sheld's Morning Greatness.

Yiddish & The Coronavirus

In Harold Ticktin's December 11 Yiddish Vinkl, he chose the word eyngeshparter, which means a stubborn person.  The definition he used reminded me of a certain president: "An eyngeshparter is a person who is protesting to end the shutdown before it’s safe, still not wearing a mask and claiming the pandemic is all a hoax”. 

That definition is from an article titled "These 10 Yiddish words will get you through quarantine", which you'll enjoy.

Oh Well!

From the always-reliable and compellingly-written STAT:  "A ‘duty to warn’: An ER doctor, shaped by war and hardship, chronicles the searing realities of Covid-19."

It makes you sick and angry to read these stories day after day. But nobody seems to care. They just shrug and continue on with their selfish behavior. Look here: "Tennessee now leads the country in cases per capita, thanks in part to Thanksgiving gatherings that spread the virus. 'If we have another surge over Christmas, it will break our hospitals,' the state's health commissioner warned Sunday. Nevertheless, Gov. Bill Lee (R) has refused to order a mask mandate." 

So between the governor and the Christmas shoppers and celebrants who are ignoring the warnings, the worst is yet to come, and I can only hope it's worse for them than it is for the rest of us.

Two Views of COVID

I read two Washington Post articles recently that made me angry. The first was about the shocking surge of COVID cases in California: "Coronavirus cases in California are surging to record highs and hospitals are overrun. At St. Mary Medical Center, a hospital in the desert town of Apple Valley, the ICU has burst its capacity. Patients undergo triage in a parking lot tent, and the hospital’s lobbies and hallways have become makeshift covid wards. Exhausted staff fear the worst is still to come." See the accompanying video here. 

The other article was titled Minnesota bar sued by state over indoor dining ban refuses to close: ‘We want to let freedom ring’. "Over the TV sets playing at Alibi Drinkery on Wednesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) announced that his state would continue to ban indoor dining in its battle against the coronavirus. But inside the sports bar, the crowd of people watching his address had a different idea. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they sang along as Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” blared from the speakers that night. In a since-deleted video posted by co-owner Lisa Monet Zarza, customers at the Lakeville, Minn. watering hole raised their fists and Bud Light bottles in defiance."

By the time I finished the second article, I was wishing those bar patrons could be locked up in St Mary Medical Center and forced to see where their reckless unconcern leads.

Why Aren't Idiot Americans Listening to COVID Warnings?

We're in the midst of the dreadful post-Thanksgiving surge, just as predicted, and yet Americans are still going to travel for Christmas! What's wrong with these people?  How are they still so cavalier about the pandemic, and practically suicidal, when there are charts like this one from The COVID Tracking Project: Americans currently hospitalized.

And get this: "Using an analysis from the University of Minnesota's COVID-19 Hospitalization Tracking Project, NPR has created a tool that allows you to see how your local hospital and your county overall are faring. It focuses on one important metric — how many beds are filled with COVID-19 patients — and shows this for each hospital and on average for each county."  Who could ever have imagined there'd be a need in our country for such a tool?

The horrendous daily statistics don't seem to affect them at all. 

Thanks to these incredibly selfish, stupid people, our hospitals and medical staffs are now overloaded and overwhelmed, and I can only hope there are no beds left for them.

Hooray for the COVID Vaccine!

It's definitely been a great week and "a great day for humanity", and some of the most encouraging news of the year.  Here are some newspaper headlines celebrating the vaccine in the UK, with more to come here at home.

Chuck Yeager R.I.P.

I liked this sentence from a tribute to Chuck Yeager by John Avlon titled "Goodbye to the cowboy in the sky":  "Yeager was a direct connection to an American ethos that we've lost sight of -- one before the narcissistic need for attention, the shallow materialism full of phony tough bluster and the fetishization of victimhood took hold and began to define our country, from the Oval Office on down".  

He's referring to  Trump here, but the tiresome "me generation" and victimhood mentality in our country have been around long before Trump became President.

How Trump Can Redeem Himself Somewhat

Everyone's been talking about getting a COVID vaccine administered on live TV, the way Elvis did with the polio vaccine.

How about Trump taking the first vaccine on live TV here?  He's shown no interest so far in slowing or stopping the disease, and he's leaving office looking even worse than Nixon.  At least he can try to convince his followers to get the vaccine.

Compare and Contrast

You have to read this op-ed titled On the COVID frontlines, we’re tired of hearing lame excuses for risky behavior, by L.A. physician Mark Morocco. Here's an excerpt: 

"In emergency rooms and intensive care units across the country, frontline nurses, respiratory therapists and doctors like me have been in danger every day for eight months. Smothered in PPE, we’re doused in coronavirus every day while we take care of the very sick, the worried well and the dying. Some of the dead aren’t patients; some are colleagues, friends and our own families.
We are furious and we are exhausted. And now we face again the flooding of our hospitals.
We’re tired of seeing patients who got the virus after their kid’s 'limited' birthday party or because they went out to a restaurant dinner with 'close friends' or flew to a celebration in a state 'that didn’t have much COVID.'
...
Stop being crybabies about a little inconvenience. We already have more than 250,000 reasons to weep — and to be thankful we are alive and can still do something about it.
...
As I put on my PPE before a shift in the ER, I think of seasick WWII soldiers, riding toward a beach as other young men on shore tried to kill them in the surf. Compared to what they faced, what I do is easy.
Then, no one knew how long the war would last or if they would survive. People back home collected rubber and bacon grease for years, gave up countless liberties and luxuries, and no one ever called the war a hoax, even if they never saw a Nazi in their backyard.
We’re eight months into COVID. World War II lasted six years and a day. The Great Depression lasted 10 years. The 1918 flu lasted two years and two months.
Are we really that soft? That careless? That selfish?"

Now contrast that stark editorial with this: Staten Island protesters rally after Mac's bar shut down for defying covid rules.  From what I could see, these bellowing fools were mostly maskless.

Then there's this: "The New York Young Republican Club held its 108th annual gala in-person on Thursday evening. 'Catch us if you can,' one attendee tweeted with a photo of over 20 unmasked guests, directing her comments to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo."

This makes me sick. If selfish, defiant people like this can't be arrested, at least make them visit the COVID ward of any hospital to see what patients and healthcare workers like Mark Morocco are enduring.

"Have You Left No Sense of Decency?"

I never thought it would come to this. Instead  of Trump fighting COVID-19 with everything at his disposal right from the start, and leaving  office with vaccines produced in record time, he is fighting the results of the election that even Republicans have to admit he lost, he has fought with rational people, and now his presidency is ending this way:

From CNN: "A Georgia election official on Tuesday condemned threats of physical violence and intimidation against election workers and officials, pleading with President Donald Trump to denounce the threats and urging both of the state's Republican senators to intervene.

'It's all gone too far,' said Gabriel Sterling, the voting systems implementation manager for the Georgia secretary of state's office, during a Tuesday afternoon news conference at the Georgia Capitol.
Sterling, a Republican, grew visibly emotional as he described an incident in which a video of a Dominion Voting Machines contractor in Gwinnett County was spread online with claims of vote manipulation. After the video circulated, the man was accused of treason and found a noose outside his house. The man's family members have received death threats, Sterling said.

'You need to step up and say this ... stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence,' Sterling said, addressing the President. 'Someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get killed, and it's not right.'"

As I watched this news conference, all I could think of was Joseph M. Welch's takedown of Joe McCarthy:  "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

In addition, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Sidney Powell,  Joseph DiGenova, Rudy Giuliani, and others   ought to think about what's left of their reputations, and just stop this "stolen election" nonsense already!

Here's Another Virus That May Soon Be Sweeping The Nation

From Hot Air:  "Over the past two months, Minneapolis police have logged more than 125 carjackings in the city, a troubling surge that authorities had largely linked to small groups of marauding teens. But an increasing number of adults have been arrested in recent weeks for the same crime.

Within a one-hour period Saturday morning, police reported three separate carjackings in southeast Minneapolis, including one where an elderly woman was struck on the head. Such attacks are up 537% this month when compared with last November.

'The numbers are staggering,” said police spokesman John Elder. 'It defies all civility and any shred of common human decency.'"

Not only the carjackers themselves but the "defund the police" supporters and the City Council should be sued and held criminally responsible for these brutal attacks. And remember, this is all happening during a killer pandemic, which makes the lack of human decency even worse. Maybe they'll all get the virus as their comeuppance.