Health and Sanity category archive

The Roanoke Times editorial board minces no words. A snippet:

. . . how can we explain the nearly 100 people who showed up at the Bedford County Board of Supervisors last week to oppose Gov. Ralph Northam’s latest restrictions on crowd sizes as a way to slow the spread of coronavirus? Among them was Isaiah Knight, who is challenging incumbent Kathy Byron for the Republican nomination for the House of Delegates. He brought a “no shutdown” resolution for the board to adopt that, according to The (Lynchburg) News & Advance, called for arresting Virginia state troopers and health officials who enforce the governor’s order.

“Today, we’re on a razor’s edge between liberty and tyranny,” Knight said. “Fear isn’t the only thing that’s contagious, though. Courage is contagious. Be courageous. Defend the Constitution. The time is now that we the people take back the power and restore Virginia to her rightful place as a bastion of liberty.”

What utter nonsense.

And it gets better from there.

Sam Seder, Emma Vigeland, and Dr. MarkAlain Dery discuss the failure of the Trump administration to address the current pandemic.

A doctor recounts how the pandemic is overwhelming his hospital, located in a less prosperous area of Chicago, and its staff. A snippet:

To build resilience, my global health team teaches local front-line health care workers about the principles of dealing with limited resources in war-torn countries such as Syria and Yemen, and fragile states such as Sierra Leone and Bangladesh. The austere environment is the rule, not the exception, in some of these regions. I never imagined that we would be using the same principles in my hospital in Chicago.

Follow the link for more.

Putting the cart before the mask:

Via C&L.

(Syntax error fixed.)

AL.com carries a round up lies being spread on “social” media about COVID-19 vaccines.

We are a society of stupid.

David runs the numbers. (Warning: Short commercial at the end.)

Pandemic frolics.

Writing for The Roanoke Times, Llewellyn King marvels at the malice. A snippet; follow the link for the rest.

When a nation goes to war its first step to survival is to protect the homeland against invasion. . . .

We are on a war footing against COVID-19. It has invaded our homeland, and it is slaughtering us. Nearly 300,000 are dead and the vast hospital network in the United States is overwhelmed.

(snip)

The first line of defense against this common enemy, this indiscriminate killer, is a simple piece of layered cloth or paper held over the nose and mouth by cloth or elastic strings. It is a face mask, the simplest of defensive weapons.

But there is in the United States a tribe that has lost its head, reminiscent of Nicholas Monserrat’s great novel of 1956.

An outdoors store in northern Idaho temporarily closed after 25 to 30 customers entered and refused to put on masks when asked by the store’s staff.

Tri-State Outfitters in Moscow (Idaho–ed.) closed for several hours on Thursday after an organized group of mask-less customers entered, company President and CEO Joe Power said.

According to the full story at the link, these maskless marauders apparently thought they the were somehow helping a store suffering from financial difficulties in these viral times. The company’s CEO says too many of his employees have been sickened or quarantined due to the pandemic to want this kind of help.

We are dealing with not one, but two pandemics: One is COVID-19; the other is the stupid.

Those who deny science are condemned to experience it.