The standoff

You know how people, when driving, never quite know how to react when four cars come together at the same moment at an intersection where every direction has a stop sign? There's those precious few seconds where everyone is eyeing everyone else, waiting. Then one guy creeps up at the same time as another, so they both stop. Finally everybody is waving everybody else through, and it all snowballs until someone decides to hell with it, I'd rather crash my car than sit here being polite. With one car gone there is an audible sigh of relief from the other three, as now there's a reference point and everyone can go about their business. You know how that is, right?

Thanks to the corona virus (don't fret, I'm not going to rant about t today per se) I had the experience of such an instance while walking this morning. With social distance and what all, I have learned to watch ahead for other walkers, joggers, and those who have their dogs on a morning constitutional, and cross the street well ahead of time to avoid each person, as even near contact means certain death to us (okay, I'll rant a tiny bit). Others apparently do that for me too. Although I do realize that they tended to cross the street ahead of me before the virus struck, now that I think about it.

Anyway, that all works well. Until today. Today I had the experience of four of us coming from each direction about to meet at a corner. At that point the car stop scenario came into play.

Initially I began to slow my gait, intent on waiting for the others to pass. Yet each seemed to be doing that exact thing for me and the other two as it were. We all slowed until facing each other from four corners at Commonwealth and Warren Avenues. And we stood. And we stared.

The glances were next flying about as four sets of eyes (actually six as one young woman had her dog) studied the all others, none of us with any real clue what to do. We weren't masked and that's too bad. We might have seemed like a recreation of the O.K. Corral or an old west bank robbery if our faces were half covered.

Someone broke and took a step precisely before someone did. That caused them each to stop and take a turn back. The dog looked about as though we were all stupid. The staring, the watchful glances, began anew.

I finally did what a car cannot do easily. I turned around and went back from whence I came. I still had a few blocks to go to make my quota anyway.

The sigh of relief from behind me was indeed audible as I retraced my steps, the remaining three happy to have an exit strategy with an open corner available. And I'm going to get back to starting my walks at 6:30 when there ain't so many people about.

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.

Midnight rant

Well, there he goes again. Marty's going to talk all serious and stuff. He's gonna rant.

You know what the trouble is in this old world? When something goes bad or something bad happens, we don't really know what to do, who to believe, or what the actual truth is about what's going on.

So what do we do about BIG SPECTACULAR PROBLEM? We watch news and news shows for information. But here's the rub: I'm not going to believe shrill Chris Cuomo and you're not going to believe shrill Tucker Carlson. That said, I'm not sure any of us should believe shrill anybody. Maybe we should all take a pill and calm down when talking about serious matters. Shrill doesn't help. I'm inclined to say it usually hurts, as it seeds rancor and not harmony. Rancor stymies truth and understanding.

But more than that. We all have our sources we trust and those we don't trust. But can we know who or what to trust?

The recent corona troubles I think highlight this problem. I say reporting is wrong, you say it's not, but where can we find data which reasonably demonstrates who's right? Masks bad, masks good, the virus lives on stainless steel forever but then not so much, social distance good unless you're protesting, blah blah. It all seems to change rather suddenly. And I can't help anyway noticing a certain obvious hypocrisy involved.

Tests are reliable except when they're not. Cases are added and subtracted all the time, and why? On what grounds? Florida testing appears tragi-comically skewed (it was done either through attempting to influence action a certain way or is a result of spectacular ineptitude, and I personally lean towards an attempt to influence policy yet in a particularly stupid manner; how's that for combining points?) and there are issues within Texas about how accurate their counts are. And those are only two states offering, ah, uh, I'll say conflicting information just to be kind. What's a fella to think?

We're told it's a national crisis, yet nearly half of all fatalities have been in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Shouldn't that raise a flag? Please notice I have not yet gotten to questions of political action or incompetence yet. It may be simply that the population there is so dense that transmission is too readily accommodated. Yet political actions must play a part, musn't they? And that after months and months of being told (shrilly) that it's all going to end badly for us IF WE DON'T ACT IMMEDIATELY IF NOT SOONER. That won't entice the political wizards into doing something, just anything, will it? Particularly as they tend to be some of the ones feeding whatever the crisis of the day is.

I believe in a certain thing called common sense (yes, it exists). It is very, very rare that anything requires the immediate and unquestioning extreme actions which corona has caused. Common sense dictates that things almost never are or ever will be as bad as leaders (governmental or societal) insist they will be IF WE DON'T ACT NOW. Please. That exact attitude destroys any real chance common sense might have. Sudden, knee jerk reactions tend not to end well for anybody involved. And I think that's a clue to the real problem here: we want all bad things ended right now kapow. Life don't work that way. It never has and it never will.

Demanding that action, any action, be taken immediately generally only makes the problem worse. We almost never have to make decisions post haste. When we do make such hasty choices, things tend to go south pretty quickly.

The answer? Try as best we can to get good information to act on and then act on it. If we can. I personally would leave a lot more problems to individuals acting cooperatively to figure out as best they can on their own without government getting in the way, because government (and the media) tend only to make things worse. The corona scare I will argue illustrates this point ideally. Shrill sells papers and wins elections. That's all.

This means if you have a health problem go to health care professionals in the private sector because they're the ones truly interested in your health. Their livelihoods depend, directly and immediately, on making you healthy. Personal relationships develop where they care, person to person, about you. There is no personal relationship between you and Dr. Fauci. Government bureaucrats ultimately only care about what influence they can have and how they can keep their cushy job. A job almost certainly without censor if they make a mistake. Even though your life can be ruined when they're wrong.

That's it, I quit. See what you get when Marty wakes up suddenly at 1 AM?

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.