coronavirus – aliciajoseph

Save America

The presidential election is less than four months away. This country has been through so much scandal, investigations, corruption, and incompetence these past three and a half years, it’s beyond a relief that the time we can put an end to this chaotic and lawless administration is merely months away.

And November can’t come soon enough.

I don’t know if the pandemic is making the time go by slower or faster. My days seem to melt together because they’re pretty much the same. Does this make the days feel shorter or longer? Shorter because Wednesday can slip into Thursday or longer because Thursday can still feel like Wednesday? I don’t know, but I’ve been quarantining since mid-March, until about a month ago when I started making weekly trips to grocery stores.

I’m a writer, and luckily I’m able to do that at home, but I used to go to places to write some pages like, my local public library, the Morton Arboretum, coffee houses, and my late-night favorite, IHOP. But these days I’ve been writing at home and I’ve used the quarantine time to finally finish the novel I’ve been working on for the past two years. That feels great.

I’m an introvert at heart, so quarantining probably hasn’t been as hard on me as has been for all the extroverts out there. Aside from writing, I like to cook, read and was always a movie buff. So add three more activities to the “things to pass the time” list.

As I write about quarantining, the news is swarming about the skyrocket rate of new Coronavirus cases in the U.S and I’m aware not everyone is taking this virus and the need to quarantine seriously. With over 130,000 Americans dead and no sign that U.S cases are going to slow down, please stay home when you can, and if you have to go out, wear a mask.

If we had a decent president in this country, wearing a mask in public wouldn’t be considered political. Under a competent president, wearing a mask in public during a global pandemic would be considered the sensible thing to do. But, sigh, we have neither a decent nor a competent president.

But you can help to change that. If you’re stuck at home, and are neither a writer, nor a reader, nor a movie buff , nor a cook, and you are looking for something to do to help pass the time, I have a suggestion for you – postcarding.

If you want Trump out of office as much as I do, postcarding is a great way to help get people out to vote. There are ten states considered to be swing states that both parties need to win in November. If you have the time, please consider writing postcards to constituents of these states and urge them to get out and vote.

Every vote matters.

You can pick which swing state you want to send your postcard to. Postcards will be sent to you at no charge, with a pre-written message that you write on each card, but you do have to supply the .35 cent postage.

The ten swing states are, Arizona, Iowa, Maine, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Kansas, North Carolina, and Montana.

Click on the link below:

https://postcardstoswingstates.com/

Every single one of us needs to do all we can to get this narcissistic and authoritarian maniac out of the White House.

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Get Ready to Vote

It’s hard not to get political these days as 24-hour news channels, with nonstop talking heads, argue for their side of the political spectrum. So a certain amount of political partisanship is expected over issues like healthcare, the national budget, gay marriage, abortion, and social security. But political partisanship over a highly contagious virus that infects people with no regard to party affiliation sounds counterintuitive to me.

I’ve stopped watching the White House coronavirus briefs because I can only take so much of an insecure narcissistic patting himself on the back for a job well done, as 81,199 Americans have died from COVID-19, and these are just the numbers from people who died in hospitals. There is no count of people who are dying at home from this virus.

Donald Trump has politicized every aspect of this virus. He has blamed lack of testing on Barack Obama, even though COVID-19 wasn’t around when Obama was president. He has blamed the lack of medical stockpile, like masks, ventilators, and PPE on Obama, even though in February of this year, the State Department sent 17.8 tons of medical supplies to China. But even if it were true that Obama left the stockpile bare, why didn’t Trump do anything to replenish it? He’s been president over three years. Seems like that should be sufficient enough time to order ore supplies, I mean, he certainly found time to golf.

Trump has encouraged this country to become even more politically divided over this virus. He has used his Twitter account to agitate his followers. As Democratic governors have issued shelter-in-place orders, Trump tweeted for those states to “liberate” themselves, and people protested with guns, nooses, and Confederate flags.

Just a few days ago, the Wisconsin Supreme Court overruled the Democratic Governor’s shelter in place order, and within hours bars were packed with patrons crowded close to each other, sans masks or any kind of social distancing.

What could go wrong?

Back in April, Trump estimated the death total by August could be 80,000, and here it is mid-May, and we’ve already surpassed that.

I wonder how differently this pandemic would have been handled if we had a competent President, with an uncorrupted administration, in charge.

But we don’t have that, so all we can do right now is wonder, at least until November. Then we can vote.

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Our Idiot President is Dangerous

Other than walks with my dog, today was the first time I left my house in eleven days. I drove my mother to get a blood test. We pulled up to the facility, and a nurse wearing a mask and gloves came to the car door. After taking my mother’s name, the nurse pricked her finger. She secured the sample, thanked us, and walked away. The whole process took less than five minutes.

I then went to the post office for stamps. There was a sign at the entrance instructing all people to stand at least six feet apart. Only four people stood in the wrap-around line that would normally fit at least twenty people, yet I couldn’t move much past the door. The person in front of me stood at about six feet. No one tried to enter the post office as I stood there, but if they had, they wouldn’t have been able to come in. They would have had to wait outside the door until the line moved up.

These are the times we’re living in. Staying home, drive-thru blood tests, closed bars and restaurants, and six feet of separation are the new normal. But it’s all worth it. People are dying and it appears things are going to get worse. We’re not even at our peak of infections and death, and already the idiot president in charge is talking about opened business and packed churches—in the middle of a fucking pandemic.

Being home twenty-four hours a day, with twenty-four hour news channels of constant Coronavirus coverage, as well as social media, can be overwhelming. I am overloaded with news, and most of it fills me with anxiety. I no longer watch Donald Trump’s news conferences because I’m sick of being lied to.

Here is a president who was briefed on the severity of Coronavirus in January, yet spent two months publicly downplaying the virus’s threat in the States. Trump refused test kits offered by the World Health Organization in January because he didn’t want to know the numbers for fear that they’d hurt his re-election chances. So he spent two months lying to the American people (he’s actually spent his entire presidency lying to the American people) while telling us that the virus was contained and it would all go away in April with the warmer weather and in two weeks we’d be down to zero cases.

The lies continued into March, even as Trump finally decided to take this virus serious. He told us everyone who wanted a test could get a test. That wasn’t true. Then he said there’d be a millions tests available at the end of the week. That wasn’t true either. The next week he said there’d be over four million test kits available. There weren’t. Hospitals were running out of masks. Trump said there were millions available. Yet another lie.

The next three weeks will deliver us more deaths, but Trump’s main concern will be the Stock Market and his re-election.

God help us all.

Now is Exactly Why We Need Healthcare For All

I’ve always believed that every person, regardless of how little money they may have in the bank, deserves to go to the doctor when they are sick so they can get better. If there is treatment and medicine available to ease their ailment, as a basic right, a person is deserving of that treatment. My sentiment has consistently been that we are all interconnected in this life. We are a much more stable and functioning society when everyone is as healthy as they can be, and good health begins with a right to good and affordable healthcare.

If you’ve ever played a sport, sang in a choir, or been a part of anything where your success depends on another’s performance, you know you are only as strong as the weakest person on your team. So to assure your success, you build that person up and help them to be at their very best, because it’s for the common good of everyone involved.

That’s how I feel about healthcare. We don’t live in an isolated world. Our personal health can depend on how well the maker of our favorite sub sandwich is or the stranger we high five at a baseball game.

As I write this, the first American to die from the coronavirus has just been reported. We have yet to realize how fast this virus will spread in the States, but there is not a more telling time than right now that demonstrates just how dependent we are on the health of others.

It is to the benefit to us all that people who are sick can go to a doctor and get better.