If it kills me I will haunt you

Well, I did it. I made the commitment. I wasn't going to; I was going to be thoroughly bull headed and not be bullied (yes, I mean bullied, and in the worst, most repugnant sense of the word) into it. But I have an appointment for my first dose of the COVID vaccine for June 8 at ten o'clock in the morning.

People, and by people I mean society, and by society I mean all too many of you out there, play on fears. You have successfully played on mine. I don't want others to get ill because of me. Further, I do recognize the very valid argument that I should not allow pig headed spite to influence what may arguably be a rational decision. Yet I still don't believe for a moment that COVID was, is, or ever will be a serious threat to me or my family and friends. It posed the greatest threat to a small and well defined segment of the population, a segment we could have and should have easily kept protected.  Shame on you, governors Whitmer and Cuomo, for what you did with the nursing homes: you caused more death directly and immediately with COVID that I ever will or would have, all the while you sons of...mothers deigned to lecture the rest of us on responsibility. The threat to the general population was tiny, and almost certainly would have been taken care of through herd immunity. 

Yet we had to destroy a robust economy, kill numerous small businesses, cause many deaths unrelated to COVID which could have been prevented had we not panicked and made people afraid to seek needed health care for other issues, and affect an election outcome because of it. I don't give a flying...leap what you think of Donald Trump or how happy you might be that he's no longer President. You need to ask yourself: do we want elections profoundly affected by sheer and unwarranted panic? We should not.

I haven't even asked what ought to be the obvious question: now that the government (our servants, mind you, not our leaders) has seen how easily we may be cowed, how much more quickly and over how little else might they try to lock us down again? Believe me, they will try when they feel the right pretense exists. Because after all, they got away with it before. It will harder to keep them from trying it again.

So I will kowtow, I will genuflect before your almighty and self defined omnipotent will, powers that be. I will get my shots. And if I may sign off as the curmudgeon I fully mean to be here, You're Welcome.

More of a rant than I meant

Just wear the mask. I am sick of hearing it.

You want me to wear a mask, fine. Convince me that's it's the right thing to do. Do not order me to do it. We have representatives who represent us who are supposed to decide what people should and should not do. We are not supposed to be commanded from on high by any one person *cough* Governor Whitmer, *cough* Governor Cuomo *cough* several other governors who think they're God's gift. That's not how a Republic works.

And stop the shaming too, please. Because I want everyone at risk dead. I want everyone over 80 dead. I want every teacher dead and everyone on the front lines dead. There now: have you got the venom out of your system? Because if you really believe I want all that, we have a problem with one another which runs far deeper than whether either one of us ought to mask up.

My trouble with the whole mask thing is the same trouble I have with almost anything else COVID related anymore. It's been more than five months and it's patently obvious the virus isn't the terrible threat our Fearless Leaders want us to believe. It's time to ratchet down that rhetoric. One big way in which we can do that is to let the legislators do what they, not governors or courts, are supposed to do: legislate.

If you don't want that to happen because - gasp - they might not do what you think is best for the body politic, then I say with all due respect you're part of the problem. I will say, again with all due respect, you're petty little dictators yourselves. I hope you are not, because such an attitude is risking all of us getting a dictator. Pray tell, what will you then say when that dictator commands you to do something you don't like? Will he even let you speak?

At one time we may have had to tolerate it. But it's time to stop leading by executive order. The threat, such as it is, does not require it.

A question about health care

Yeah, I'm tired of all the coronavirus talk too. And yeah further, I probably shouldn't even go where I'm about to go. But hell, why should those concerns stop me?

There is a question which has occurred to me which I think needs to be asked and answered honestly but doubt very much that it actually will be on either count. And it is: exactly why were the health care systems of Italy and France and Spain overwhelmed by the virus?

There are two plausible answers that I can see. One is, yes, that the virus was so novel and spread so quickly that no health care system could have anticipated it. It makes a certain sense and is well within the realm of possibility. The other is that their state run health care systems, being notoriously inefficient and uncaring (as government systems tend to be; notice our VA system here in the States), could not have possibly handled the situation anyway. Their bureaucratic nature won't allow it.

I don't know the answer. I'm only asking the question. But it won't get seriously asked or answered anyway because it doesn't fit the narrative. The narrative is that the media in the West and the powers that be in those nations (and too many people in ours) want the government to control health care. And the idea that it can't or shouldn't is simply off the table, not subject to discussion. The idea that private systems might be better suited to respond to crises more quickly and ably is simply seen as nonsense.

The truth is that I don't believe our progressive friends want that question asked. I believe that's because they're afraid of the answer.