4:41 Am
Global Infected 49,938,804 53,976,457
Increase 4,037,653
7 day average 576,807 infections diagnosed daily (1/2 a million per day)
241,447 More new Global infections than last week (Down 62,701)
Global Dead 1,252,079 1,311,942
Increase 59,863
7 day average 8,551 deaths daily (Down 1,237)
4,050 More new Global deaths than last week (Down by almost half)
USA Infected 9,861,898 10,904,891
Increase 1,042,993
7 day average 148,999 infections diagnosed daily (Up by 1/3)
308,204 More new US infections than last week
USA C-19 deaths 237,123 245,600
Increase 8,477
7 day average 1,211 deaths daily (Up by 1/4)
1,920 More new US deaths than last week
Maine Infected 7,603 8,791
Increase 1,188
7 day average 169 infections diagnosed daily
223 More Maine infections than last week (Down by 1/2 from last week)
Maine deaths 152 163
Increase 11
7 day average 1.5714 deaths daily
6 More Maine deaths than last week
A ‘Dark Fall’ has descended which leads into the ‘Black Winter’ ahead, but nearly half of America is tuning the C-19 reality out. This will make this winter even blacker. This is starkly evident in the numbers.
Over the last three weeks the Globe has been spiking in C-19 cases and deaths. Across the globe nation after nation took action. Locking down, mandating masks, increasing testing and tracing, and following the guidance of science. As a result their overall numbers are increasing at a much lower rate than they were. Here in Maine we are following the same path and our numbers are increasing more slowly than after the Trump super spreader rally. We have reacted to the on the ground reality.
Across the US this is not so. The Trump administration has taken no action nationwide as day after day we broke records for new infections, all week long. Instead of Americans using more caution, they used less.
Democratic supporters of Biden came out in droves cheering their win. Supporters of Trump also came out in droves to scream and protest their loss, falsely claiming with no evidence that the election was stolen. All of these actions will only help the virus spread, but at least the Biden supporters wore masks to reduce that.
The nation set its own hair on fire, but about half wore a hat to protect their hair and their neighbor’s hair.
This is the sense of American privilege I spoke about manifesting in real time. Overseas the actions taken to bend the curve have slowed global rates of infection, and thus deaths. In America the opposite is true. While rates decreased elsewhere, American rates increased by ¼ or more. In some areas by much more.
Current graphs of the outbreak look like a small bump (April), a bigger bump (July) and a wall (now). The increase in the USA is nearly vertical. We all recall the hell NYC went through last spring, but we did not learn from it. Instead we are copy pasting it over to all 50 states. All are increasing. Hospitals are at breaking points in 36 states and this is the beginning of the ‘Black Winter’ which lies ahead.
Instead of the being concerned about the virus Americans were, and largely are, concerned about the election. For about half of us that concern is C-19 related, for the other half it is about fear and religious ideology. Trump lost this election by a margin very similar to that of Hillary Clinton, but unlike HRC Trump refuses to accept defeat. He would rather piss all over our Democratic norms and play the victim. The ultimate snowflake.
Trump loyalist and political ‘dirty trickster’, Roger Stone, (whose name actually comes up if you google “political dirty trickster”) relaunched his ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign. He has used this organization since 2012 to contest every outcome he did not like. This organization spread the BS of fraud claims, voting machine failures and hacks, and the idea that there is some vast conspiracy out to get Donald Trump by creating dozens of FB pages, twitter feeds and endless BS on social media. Facebook reacted by taking them down, but did too little too late to stop the online spread and sharing of this disinformation.
All of that led to ten thousand or so Trump supporters and far right groups and militias to show up and protest the election in Washington. Reuters polled Americans and found that 70% accept the election and the reality that Biden won, 13% want only the legal votes to count when that is all that are ever allowed to count by law, and 3% think and believe Trump won and a vast conspiracy of half the nation is stealing his win. Ignorance, stupidity, misinformation and disinformation fuel this fire, enraging Trump supporters and engaging Biden advocates.
The end result is lots of angry, upset Americans endangering themselves and others to scream about BS created by political hacks for political purposes. It is driving this spike to all our detriment. The left fears a ‘slow moving coup’ and the right thinks the election itself is a coup. The majority in the middle are forgotten, drowned out by the loud shouts from both extremes.
Although this blog is nonstandard and unadvertised I do have a few real time readers. Those readers are not my audience, our grandchildren and great grandchildren are. Nonetheless I occasionally get a response, a comment or query. This week someone commented they had something they just ‘had to’ share with me, that somehow the record of these events would not be complete without it. They wanted my email.
So I had my son set up a disposable email so they could inform me of their concern. They then linked me to a patent for C-19, with their misunderstanding of that as, “America patented Coronavirus! Therefore America designed and released it upon the World!” The very type of disinformation/misinformation I was just talking about. No one has any way to determine who is talking online, are they a fearful American, or a Troll, or a Bot from a foreign actor?
Of course C-19 is patented, probably a dozen or so times, once by every company working on a vaccine or treatment as they all use either dead virus or a genetic modification of a dead virus. Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Polio are all also patented, or were when the vaccines were developed. This is a normal course of events in viral research.
People want someone to blame, something they can point at, and the ‘deep state’ makes a fine target. It is faceless, nameless and undefined, a boogeyman for the modern age. The nature of this political climate has half the nation pointing at and blaming the other side. Demonizing the other side in an angry response, Jon Voight, whose acting I admire and whose politics I detest, went on a rant online.
“There will be a price to pay. The ones who are jumping for joy now are jumping toward the horror they will be in for, I know the promises being made from the left to the American people will never come to be. My friends from all colors, races and religions, this is now our greatest fight since the civil war. The battle of righteousness versus Satan.”
So you’re either with Trump or with Satan? Half the nation is now Satanic? This response from Mr. Voight highlights the insanity from the evangelical aspect of America. Televangelists from all over were losing their grip this week, screaming or laughing maniacally at the idea of a Biden presidency, praying in tounges and calling angels from Africa to change the election.
These acts highlight their own hypocrisy via Dogma. If God is all knowing and all powerful and everything under the sun is in his plan, then a Biden win is also in that plan. For four years they have said God uses imperfect vessels, and thus downplayed and disregarded anything Trump did, every unchristian act he undertook, as ‘God’s will’.
But somehow Biden is Satan incarnate? Outside of that same God’s plan? If everything is in God’s perfect plan, so too is C-19, and flesh eating bacteria, and childhood cancers, and the Bot fly laying eggs in the eyes of children.
In my view all of this is sour grapes. In 2016 all they had to say to distraught Dems was “elections have consequences”. I think they need to take their own advice here and realize what is good for the goose is good for the gander, elections still have consequences and we do not all get our own way.
All this makes Putin smile, it has set American against American, dividing the nation to the point that some think ‘you’re either with me or with Satan’. That is dangerous thinking, it is how we dehumanize others. It is how we make humans into targets and a central aspect of every conflict ever.
This is all fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of a differing ideology. Fear of the virus misdirected onto something people can see, someone they can shout at or shoot at. All of this is makes dealing with the pandemic exponentially more difficult.
While all this screaming about the election was ongoing we averaged 150,000 new cases of c-19 per day. While Idiotcracy reigned another 1,042,993 Americans became infected. As good news was revealed about potential vaccines another quarter of a million Americans died of Covid-19.
Be smart. Avoid crowds and gatherings, if you have to go out into the Covid, wear a mask. Some protection is better than no protection. Human holidays and customs are not a cease fire for C-19, the virus will use these holidays as the North Vietnamese used Tet. We must stay on point, focused against the virus, and ready to fight the virus, not our fellow Americans.
Splinters from a fractured mind 