The other day, a MAGA down Key West way put this Covid picks Trump meme on his Facebook time line. The MAGA did not care for my comment below, which led to a long back and forth between us, which I won't waterboard you with today.
The more strange my life twisted and turned, the less my father could relate to me. WW II B-29 combat aviator, life-long Southern Baptist Republican, very successful businessman, stock market and oil drilling investor, he allowed me to be raised in wealth. I had friends raised in wealth. We were hardly perfect little rich kids, but we were nothing like Donald Trump. I think were my father still alive, he would not care for Trump.
This morning, a black country Baptist pastor I play chess with called to see if I want to play today in a city park. I said, yes. He then asked, "What is your president up to?" I replied, "No good, that's a given. But, 'my president?' You have really hurt my feelings, and you will pay for it when we play chess later today. I have been railing about him since 2015 on my blog."
The pastor closed his church early this year and has not reopened it because he and his congregation don't want to catch Covid-19 and/or give it to other people. We wear masks when we play chess, after he wipes down a picnic table with disinfectant. If we catch Covid-19, we will not be so fortunate as to have the medical treatment President Trump is receiving, while telling all Americas not to be afraid of Covid-19. The pastor really does not like Trump. We play chess games in about 10 minutes. He won all but one of the maybe five games, I won the rest of the games, probably a tie overall.
Hoax news from today's New York Times morning briefing:
Good morning. Trump returns to the White House. Biden is out on the campaign trail. And we take stock of the virus. |
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Rational fear |
“Don’t be afraid of Covid,” President Trump tweeted, on the same day that the White House outbreak spread further and another several hundred Americans died from virus complications. |
The president has survived Covid-19 so far, with help from more aggressive medical care than virtually any other American would have received. But about 210,000 of his fellow citizens have not survived, according to the official death count. The real toll, based on the number of excess deaths this year, is probably closer to 275,000. |
Given Trump’s campaign to make the virus seem like a minor inconvenience, I think it’s worth taking a minute this morning to take stock of the virus: |
Only cancer and heart disease will kill more Americans this year than Covid. Already, the virus has killed more than twice as many Americans as either strokes or Alzheimer’s disease, about four times as many as diabetes and more than eight times as many as either gun violence or vehicle accidents. |
Most other rich countries have been much more successful in fighting the virus than the U.S. A chart is the simplest way to see this: |
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Outbreaks are again increasing in the U.S. The number of new cases per day has risen more than 25 percent since mid-September. “Covid-19 is spreading again across most of the U.S., hammering rural America and smaller cities and raising anxiety in New York,” Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The outbreak connected to the White House is responsible for about 30 known cases so far — more than the average daily number of new cases recently in all of Australia. |
The virus is genuinely terrifying for thousands of people. In addition to the more than 200,000 deaths — and all of the Americans mourning those deaths — many other people have spent weeks battling fatigue, shortness of breath, cardiac problems and more. |
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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