Oot and aboot

WordPress altered my ability to post video, but here is a link to see last nights finale. Open it in another tab and listen while you read. Then watch it again.

After Emma’s Surgery, Dr. Lavu gave her a timeline of how her recovery would go, week by week. He said she would probably be out and about by the sixth week. With his Indian accent it sounded more like “Oot and aboot,” and Emma’s favorite television show (Southpark) often made fun of Canadians by having their lines sprinkled with “Eh”s and oddly pronounced words. Emma locked onto the phrase, and about six weeks out we walked down to the convenience store at the end of the block. It was snowing, but she wanted ice cream and Tasty Cakes cherry pies. She looked up at me from the freezer with wide eyes and said “Blake, I’m oot and aboot!” with the most beautiful smile. We walked home laughing.

Janice and I went out last night, a number of friends have a very special band, “In The Pocket.” The venue was the Ardmore Music Hall, a small (600 people capacity) club, previously known as 23 East or Brownie’s. This is our first close contact outing since quarantine, and we took every precaution (double masks, one N95 and the other cloth with filter insert, fully vaccinated).

What pleasantly surprised us were the precautions the venue had in place. All staff wore masks at all times, and everyone had to show proof of vaccination. Mine threw the guy a bit, I have three entries. He had never seen someone who had received the booster before, and looked a bit confused. I just said “Booster” and everything clicked. To be fair, boosters had only been released the day before. The mask policy was “at all times,” which meant you moved it to drink and then put it back. Between sips. People who did not replace theirs masks immediately received a refresher on policies by one of the staff. It took a while for everyone to figure out how to do it, what worked best for me was to grab the chin and pull down. A quick smoothing of the mustache so it didn’t get soggy, and then pull up from the top, which drags across the mustache so it rests in an upward position.

The facial hair causes a number of issues, the first being that it prevents a seal of the mask to the face, so air could move in that space. The styling gets messed up by the mask and because the beard makes the face larger, the straps sometimes fold my ears.

But anyway, the band was fabulous. Lead by David Uosikkinen, drummer for The Hooters, the lineup is flexible. Before he moved to Arizona, my friend Buddy Cash played with the band often. Last night’s lineup was Kenny Aaronson who played with everybody in the 70’s and 80’s starting with the band The Stories. Ben Arnold, Richard Bush of the A’s, Steve Butler from Smash Palace, Tommy Conwell of The Young Rumblers, Alexis Cunningham, Greg Davis of Beru Revue, Joey DiTullio, Charlie Ingui from Soul Survivors, Cliff Hillis, Wally Smith from Smash Palace, Kenn Kweder (who had an Ozzy moment at the bar, “I’m Kenn F%#&ing Kweder, dammit), ZouZou Mansour of Soraia, Greg Maragos from Smash Palace, Don Van Winkle, and Jay Davidson holding the horns together, “plus special guests.”

Eric Bazilian was one of those guests, I’m pretty sure Bob Beru was up there, and of course a number of faces I am not familiar with. Everyone performed as if they had been locked away in quarantine for a year and a half. You will notice in the clip above (if I can get this to work), someone was playing a “hooter” during “And We Danced.”

It was wonderful to see everyone again, the mood was relaxed. Maybe that is because of the Covid precautions. Everyone present had been responsible enough to get the vaccine. They were prepared to be masked all evening. It seems that the same people who deny vaccines and mask wearing are the same people who cause problems at events. Not always bar fights, but just irritation, their credit card is rejected and they hold up the line. Just a thought.

I’ve been spending less time worrying about the antivaxxers and such. Sixty percent of Americans have been vaccinated, the suicide cult is getting smaller by both conversions and losses. They’re not sociable, so Society won’t miss them.

Respect

As I muddle through trying to understand the Covid-19 suicide cult, AKA “antivaxxers,” it occurred to me that the leading cause of frustration today is the lack of respect.

Because that is what the antivaxxers are displaying, a lack of respect, often replaced with scorn or paranoia, for medicine and people who understand it. They “believe” rather than “know” or “they believe they know.” Despite the fact that a license to practice medicine has never been given to someone who only watched YouTube videos, they accept those videos as proof over documents from the CDC or WHO. They even consider that watching these videos makes them superior to people who “wasted” ten years becoming educated in medicine. They believe that the government has designs to eliminate the human race, but can never explain why they would do so.

I have completed research and published it. I understand the process. However, when Pfizer announces that in trials fifty percent of the doses were placebos, they interpret that as fifty percent of all vaccines are placebos. “They must have given the placebos to people during the trials, because so many people are dying now from the vaccine” is from a person who has no idea how trials (or anything) work at all.

They do not understand the difference between numbers and percentages, so they see the headline that six thousand people died from the vaccine and assume (because they know fewer than six thousand people) that “everybody” is dying from the vaccine. In reality, only 0.0018 percent (18 in one million) fatalities have occurred among the four and a half Billion people who have been vaccinated.

They believe that “all politicians are crooked” but still vote. They say “My body my choice” but still feel the need to control other people’s bodies.

I said I was not going to argue, I accepted their right to say “No,” and was greeted with dozens of their “reasons.” They really want to argue their point, which is sad because they don’t have one.



Yes I am biased. I believe in the scientific method and the English language. I am not interested in watching a video by someone who claims to be a Doctor stating that medicine is wrong, I am not interested in watching videos unless Batman is in them, actual words and documentation (Latin documentum ‘lesson, proof’ (in medieval Latin ‘written instruction, official paper’) have a greater affect. By the way, “Impact” is not synonymous to either “Affect” or “Effect,” it is used when the writer doesn’t know the difference between the two.

I had a class in psychology one year with a new teacher who wanted to be cool, so he allowed us a coffee maker and coffeecakes. By November he was shouting for the students to be quiet enough for him to teach. I believe we as a society have allowed people to believe they know things they obviously don’t, and it is well past November. We are four and a half million deaths into a virus that “doesn’t exist.” That is a number greater than the population of Panama or one hundred and seven smaller countries. More than fifty of the smallest combined.

I don’t care what their “reasons” are, they have the right to say “no,” but they don’t have the right to assault knowledge. They don’t have the right to denigrate officials whose job it is to protect them from disease. I ended a friendship of seven years because my friend repeatedly argued that his concerns were legitimate. They believe they can determine what is a legitimate concern, despite any proof to the contrary. When the concern is addressed they dismiss it as government propaganda.

When the group of people stating that the virus is a government conspiracy is almost exactly the same group which in some cases still believe Biden stole the election, it becomes apparent that we have isolated a previously unorganized group in society of the functionally ignorant who also appear to be people with no interest in anyone other than themselves, expressing sexist, racist, and homophobic qualities. They can perform their jobs (unless it requires them to be vaccinated) but they have no ideas about the workings of the universe they inhabit. Now hear this: not everyone who voted for Trump or doesn’t want to be vaccinated is ignorant. Those who continue with their rhetoric after their point was debunked months prior are.

Yesterday, the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, I saw more of these people, conspiracy theorists who believe 9/11 was “an inside job.” Clinging to disproven claims while millions grieve over the tragedy. I can’t imagine such a lack of respect, but I suppose I should get used to it. Meeting incivility with incivility does nothing, the correct response is excommunication, just leave them out of society. They are the cancer which will lead to the culling of the Human race, which may not be a bad thing. The planet was much better off when the population was under three billion.

I can’t pity them anymore, they are a threat to my existence. They have made it impossible for me to have any respect for them, and they feel the same about me.

Required 9/11 article

Twenty years ago I had one of those odd situations where I was the technician on site at Cigna, located in Liberty place, a pair of seventy story buildings in Philadelphia. I actually had a cubicle and parts room.

After completing my first call that morning, I noticed a crowd around the television in the elevator landing, I walked down to see smoke coming from the World Trade center. My friend Brandt said “Looks like a plane hit the World Trade center, they think it was an accident.” Knowing that aircraft only fly that low on landing approach, I was immediately skeptical. Just then the second plane hit, and I said “We can rule out accident” and returned to my desk to answer a call from my district manager.

He had called to tell me the Fax Machine at the FFA office at the airport had failed, and wanted to know if I could send mine to them (there was no time to attempt repair). I didn’t drive, he was going to have another technician pick it up. I looked out my window and traffic was already snarled. I told him nothing was moving on the street and he should use a fax from a suburban office.

I called my mother in California to let her know Philadelphia was still unharmed. While we were speaking the first tower fell, and in the most ghostly voice I have ever heard she said “There’s only one World Trade Center tower now.” We had visited there during her visits and I don’t think she knew we had an office in that building.

I called my district manager from the train station across the street and told him to remember the name, “Osama bin Laden,” I had made the jump to Al Quada (Daesh) in half an hour. I tried to get home, but all public transportation in the city was stopped. I knew if I took the subway to Upper Darby I could work with ground transportation from there, everyone else was waiting for a train that wasn’t running. It took about five hours to get home, taking the last trolley running to Sharon Hill and then a bus the rest of the way. That was when I found out about the Pentagon and Shanksville PA (although the story of flight 93 took a few fays before it was known).

I watched images of people holding hands as they had jumped from the towers, which to this day bring tears to my eyes.

I found out later that my friend Carl, who was always late, had gone to NYC to apply for a position in our World Trade Center office, his lateness saved his life, he was on the PATH train when the planes had hit. Over the year I spoke with some of the survivors from our office in the Tower, One had decided to get his coffee across the street instead of the Starbucks in the building, he stepped out of the coffee shop to debris falling from Flight 11’s impact. Another had taken off the morning to vote. Twelve people had been in the office when the building collapsed.

Our office had about a dozen people either in the air or already out of state. It took close to a week for most of them to make it back home. Knowing they were sitting in an empty hotel room in the midst of of all the confusion, unable to get home, disturbed me. A friend I took the train with everyday had been in the Caribbean, his stories of his flight home, with a crew he assumed were military (no words, throwing sandwiches to passengers instead of meals), brought some humor, as did another of our group’s stories, who worked in the PSFS building, a thirty six floor building lost in the cities skyline. “We were the obvious next target” was downright hilarious considering the other available targets.

The day I prefer to remember is 9/12/01. The day when everyone was an American, much like after the Daesh attack on a magazine in France, we were all Charlie Hebdo, and after the Daesh attacks in Paris and Belgium we were all French (I was still Belgian at that point). You couldn’t buy an American flag, they were flying from every home. Today we can’t find the unity to protect each other from a virus.

Another pleasant (to me) memory was months later, when American forces entered Tora Bora. I haven’t loved New York since John Lennon was murdered, but today, and every 9/11 I wear an “I heart NY” shirt my daughter, who served in theatre with the Air Force, gave to me.

• 

I have, over the these last twenty years, visited the sites of the four crashes and a couple of memorial monuments, the Shanksville memorial wasn’t finished, still a scar in a field. The memorial in Bayonne, NJ was a gift from Russia, pretty out of the way but beautiful.

I will never forget the unity we showed as a nation, the courage displayed by young men and women who sought to face Daesh, or the lives lost through the years.

World Trade Center, NYC


Horse soldiers monument

My Body, My Choice

In perhaps the most ironic step of the anti-vaccination crowd, the phrase that up until a week ago embodied the pro-choice movement was adopted.

Thousands of Anti-abortion people in Texas, the state that manipulated its law against abortion to be unassailable in court, are suddenly saying “My Body My Choice.” I am for the first time ashamed of the state of my birth.

On the other hand, after 4.5 Billion deaths from Covid world wide, my compassion has turned to callousness.

I support the right of Doctors to refuse treatment of unvaccinated people with Covid. It is morally wrong to use medical facilities to treat a preventable disease before people with actual medical emergencies, Yes, that is the level of my callousness, dying from a disease which you refused to avoid is not a medical emergency. Jumped out of a plane and your parachute doesn’t work? That’s a medical emergency, as is being hit by a car, having a heart attack, even taking an overdose. Active antivax people should inhabit another phase of triage, “Refused preventative measures.”

Where once I thought it was funny, placing Covidiots on a death watch list, I am exhausted by their “arguments.” They have the right to say “NO.” While the Supreme Court never recognized the right to die, I do. I went as far as appealing to them, on a page reserved as “A safe space for those who refuse the vaccine.”

I told them that I was not there to argue. I recognized their right. I also said that they would be better served by emphasizing their right to say no rather than touting their “concerns,” their concerns are flat out bullshit. Dozens of people thought that was a good time to share their “proof” of their beliefs, YouTube videos and misinterpreted information.

Yes, Ivermectin was approved for use in humans in 1900. There is a product for humans, which is not the same as the one approved for livestock, and Covid is not worms. Yes, studies have shown that vaccinated people are susceptible to other variants, that does not mean the vaccine is ineffective. It also doesn’t protect you from worms or any other virus, which is essentially what the variants are.

Apparently these people live in a perfect world, where nothing breaks or wears out. If it doesn’t protect you from everything forever it’s ineffective. I wonder how their yearly reviews at work go.

I need to face the fact that I have for years grossly overestimated the intelligence of some of my friends and relatives. In all fairness, I should treat them as the children they are mentally, and not attack them for their lack of knowledge and understanding. Emma used to misinterpret verses in the Bible, she thought “Vengeance is mine” meant she was entitled to vengeance, when I corrected her and suggested that the verse was actually “Vengeance is mine sayeth the lord” she said “See, he agrees with me.”

I have made my choice. I am fully vaccinated and looking forward to a booster in December. I wear a mask outside my condo, I don’t take it off in the car because any difficulty in breathing is outweighed with the difficulty of adjusting my hair every time I take off the mask. I keep proper distances from crowds, but will be attending a concert in October (if it isn’t cancelled). There is no point in arguing with someone who has made up their mind, nor is there any point in keeping that dysfunctional mind alive. They are not happy in this world, and they make intelligent people unhappy. Let evolution take its course.

As we approach the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, I miss 9/12; the day we all came together. The following days when we couldn’t help each other enough. Today, 20 months into a pandemic, the number of dead in 9/11 is matched every two days; back in January we were surpassing the dead of 9/11 every day.

Today, I want to believe that the antivax folks are driven by the desire to protect others from a poisonous vaccine, but in speaking with perhaps hundreds of them I see a desire to force their view on others and ridicule those that disagree with them. It is perhaps one of the greatest examples of the Dunning–Kruger effect, useful for determining the value of releasing information to the public using words they don’t understand.

I’ve heard “I’m not antivax, I just don’t trust this vaccine.” There are perhaps a dozen vaccines, three of which have been approved for use in America. Presently, over two Billion people worldwide have been fully vaccinated. 0.01% (one in ten thousand) of that number is twenty million people. If that many people had died from the vaccine you would have heard about it. “Thousands” of fatalities are not significant when talking of Billions of vaccinations. If you don’t trust a vaccine that is 97% effective and produces 0.0018% fatal side effects, you’re antivax. Your “legitimate concerns” have been addressed, you don’t trust science, you trust paranoia.

I have multiple sclerosis, when I was diagnosed there was no medication to control it. Since then maybe a dozen treatments have been discovered, and I tried them all. None have worked for me. They work for other people, so I don’t go around calling those treatments ineffective or suggesting other people avoid them, they may work for them. If someone wants to avoid a vaccine because at a basic level they’re afraid, fine. Just don’t tell people that they should not take the vaccine until a few years after you receive your degree in medicine.

Having MS, I appreciated the work of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, whose initial patients were victims of MS. We all have the right to die with dignity. I, personally, cannot see the dignity in exposing your lack of intelligence, but I still support your right to die on your own terms. I would like to be able to see antivaxxers as crusaders for the right to die, but oddly enough, they cling to life once they are affected. They take up medical resources that would have been used for patients with chronic diseases like MS, or people with the misfortune of a heart attack, or people who for some reason could not take the vaccine.

I fully support everyone’s right to die. Just keep away from me and my family, variants occur as the virus spreads from one unvaccinated person to another making my vaccination less effective. I can support your rights without any sympathy for the results that it causes.

Now stop calling me a fool for understanding medical and scientific words better than you.

Don’t Mess with Texas

I picked up my favorite Texas T shirt this morning, but decided not to wear it. Texas has just messed with America.

Overnight, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), gave an unsigned decision on the latest anti-abortion bill from Texas. As designed, they were unable to hear the complaint because the law was written in a well planned assault on the constitution.

This law was designed with a focus on responsibility, or more correctly avoiding responsibility. In order for a law to be overturned by SCOTUS, the complaint must be in the legal forum. This is done by suing the agency charged with enforcing the law. The Texas law placed the responsibility on the public, and no one has figured out how to sue the people of Texas as a group. Additionally, since the party responsible is a subset of the people of Texas, how can they be targeted?

I don’t like abortion and wish it wasn’t necessary, but it is. Abortion is necessary. Ugly, horrible, trauma inducing, and necessary.

I am also Bisexual, and as a member of the LGBTQ community I don’t like the way marriage equality was made a constitutional right. I would much rather it be a constitutional amendment and not a court ruling.

The way the Texas law works, is that citizens of the state are allowed to bring suit against anyone involved in an abortion that takes place after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually about six weeks; the point in time most women discover they are pregnant. We could sue the person who brings the suit, or maybe the court that hears the suit, but the design is for the number of suits to be impossible to confront. There were almost 60,000 abortions in Texas in 2019, which could potentially result in a quarter of a million suits. Potentially.

There is a remote possibility that Texas citizens will be repulsed by the opportunity to live the lives of KGB agents, “informing” on their neighbors. I don’t know how easy it has been made to file these suits, that might be another roadblock, but this law was well thought out and probably foresaw that. There will certainly be some suits, even though every abortion clinic in the state has cancelled all appointments for now. What if the doctor truly cannot detect a heartbeat? This will be a mess, and perhaps support groups will help fund the defendants of the suits. Perhaps not.

There will be judges who wish to make an example of defendants, and with hope some that will dismiss the cases, but the cost of defending against multiple suits would put almost anyone on the street. There will probably be anti abortion fanatics who move to Texas for the sole purpose of suing people involved in abortion. That’s the beauty of this legislation (“Beauty” in this sense refers to the architecture, the way it makes itself unassailable), the “reward” is not only monetary ($10,000 plus legal fees to the plaintiff) there will be people who do it because they believe God gave them the authority to enforce his rules. There is a reason God did NOT give them that authority; they don’t understand God’s rules.

This will all depend on the defenses to the suits, I don’t know what corroboration will be required for doctors who perform abortions if they do not hear a heartbeat, but they will still pay in time and legal fees. If a woman drives a person to get an abortion, and the heartbeat was not detectable during the trip, she remains a potential defendant.

While many groups will be enraged by the assault on abortion rights, I hope even more are enraged by this assault on the constitution itself. If laws can be designed without enforcement agencies, how far will they allow that enforcement? Will judges become moot? Will a new law allow individuals to make judgement and dispense punishments? While they are large steps, the number of steps to anarchy has been reduced.

If the “Far Right” is for protecting the constitution, shouldn’t they be against the Texas law?

This law is about more than abortion. This law is about everyone’s constitutional rights. Today abortion, tomorrow freedom of religion?

Even if the overwhelming majority of Texans refuse to be a part of this, it only takes a few dedicated haters of personal freedoms to make this law function as an absolute end to abortion in Texas. Other states will follow. We have learned from the pandemic that Americans often work counter to their best interests, sometimes to the point of death.

Despite any and all natural disasters, humanity will perish because it stopped caring about itself.