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kitty-kat-ty · 4 years ago

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Please, help a friend out

Hello everyone, as we all know 2020 was a tough year for all of us in a way or another.

Most of us saw how the situation went out of hands when pandemic started and it's still dragging on till this year.

I can't tell it's gonna end anytime soon, but I wish that were the case. All we can do now is being careful and respect others by using mask and washing hands regularly.

Last year, on December, was my turn to go through what most of people went through with their families on hospital. First it was my granny, and no far apart from three weeks it was my father's turn.

Sadly medical system in my country sucks, it was very basic, medicines ran out pretty fast and medical attention was poor, as most doctors were afraid to even see the patient they were treating.

The only ones allowed to 'take care' of my father were nurses, none of his children could go in and visit him even if we pleaded them.

They said he was suspicious to have Covid as the side of his family which lives in the county where he was hospitalised have, but my father was negative to it in the two exams which were done to him.

I remember hearing the nurses saying: "those are family from the patient with Covid, don't come near to them", but he didn't have it, he suffered from high blood pressure, was admitted in the hospital because he fainted when he was in their house, the side of his family which hate us, his sister said he got angry with someone, but she refused to say whom was it.

As far as I know people with high blood pressure tend to be susceptible to alterations or get angry easily, and that could cause cerebral damage in case they get on their nerves. My granny had the same problem, and she ended up with paralysis due to it.

Then my father was kept away in a room without ventilation, no air conditioning, no windows, during summer season, as December is the start of summer in the South.

All because his nephew, a dude whose was the doctor's friend told him to do so.

I'm still angry at how health care works in my country and everything moves faster when there is money involved but that also can make things worst.

My father could have gone back home, but doctor refused to do so after the call he got as that dude offered him extra money if he kept my father hospitalised.

He was restricted from eating and they barely kept him hydrated as nurses just fed on him only twice a day.

We couldn't stay the night as apparently it was forbidden, so we don't know what they did to him during that time.

Sadly medical system in my country sucks, it was very basic, medicines ran out pretty fast and medical attention was poor, as most doctors were afraid to even see the patient they were treating.

The only ones allowed to 'take care' of my father were nurses, none of his children could go in and visit him even if we pleaded them.

They said he was suspicious to have Covid as the side of his family which lives in the county where he was hospitalised have, but my father was negative to it in the two exams which were done to him.

Then three days after being hospitalised he was discharged, not because he got better, but because he stopped breathing, the oxygen was on 50 liters when they gave us the news. My father couldn't exhale, then they even refused to use defibrillator to help him reanimate. Saying clean the machines was gonna be expensive.

They didn't even tried to help him, blaming the virus, but they couldn't even confirm it.

Then they brought him to a cold room and put him in a plastic bag, that's where people whose dies there goes taking off all of his clothes.

The irony of the story is what the one who gave the order to kept him there hid his face right after my father passed away, didn't want to collaborate with funeral costs saying he didn't have money, when he works in the financial department of the county where he lives in.

We had been into so much trying to get my father's body to rest were he wanted to as his last wish was being buried in the city where his children live in.

But the hospital thinks as my father's nephew has money they thought we also do. So they asked for a bunch of exams to be done so we can do his last will.

We've been seeking help from a lawyer to get all those legal documents done, but although we found one which isn't too expensive cover their honoraries isn't cheap.

Taking into consideration my brother was working with my dad doing some random jobs to get money in this pandemic now my brother can't even do that as his nephew started to saying everyone around that we, my family, have Covid too because we stayed with my father after he was officially declared dead.

So we have kinda been shunned out from society at least from jobs.

I know all goes around comes around, I'm a firm believer of karma and I know all good or bad you do in this life is paid back. So I just wanna keep at bay from having contact with them.

All we want is my dad can rest in peace if possible in the same graveyard where my granny is or close by.

So any help you can give us is welcome, even sharing this post with friends so we can reach our goal as soon as possible so his soul can rest in peace.

We will be eternally grateful whatever you decide to do. All good deeds will be rewarded in this life.

Thank you for reading this story, if you can click on the link and support us. Or just spread the world.

The picture on Gofundme link was taken by my father, as it was one of many pictures he had on his camera.

Thanks in advance.

And if you feel like you need something in exchange I'm gonna be opening commission for drawings, writing or anything what help us to reach our goal faster.

#personal #gofundmehelp #sad story time #help a soul rest in peace and his family to accomplish his last wish #help a friend out #help #support us #for a good cause #during hard times a helping hand is always welcome

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kramlabs · 4 years ago

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So You Want To Believe The So-Called 'Experts'?*

By Karl Denninger

Let's go down the list.

This virus was newly discovered in January of 2020. FALSE; Judicial watch has now proved that Fauci and the NIH knew that Covid-19 was diagnosed no later than December 2nd 2019 in Wuhan. This was deliberately concealed under confidentiality agreements between China and the NIH. In short Dr. Fauci and the NIH knowingly and repeatedly lied about the time of first discovery and diagnosis and it is documented that this was known in February and early March and not disclosed. We also now know with scientific certainty that the virus was in the US no later than the second week of December of 2019 because antibodies were found in about 1.5% of blood donations from that time. This, along with the sequencing back-computation I performed in early 2020 places the latest the virus entered the US as sometime in October of 2019 and from the blood bank data it is scientifically proved it had infected about 1.5% of the population, or roughly 4 million people in the US, by the second week of December 2019. This in turn means that we had widespread disease which was blamed on something else. Indeed we handled all 4 million of those cases just fine up until the hysteria started, didn't we? You didn't even know those 4 million sick people, and those who died of it, existed prior to the hysteria being ginned up.

15 days will slow the spread. "If we all stay home and minimize contact for 15 days -- including closing businesses, schools and not traveling -- Covid will be under control and we can trace infections and stop it." FALSE and we now know impossible because the virus was already all over the country on an uncontrolled basis by that time and the NIH knew the virus had been circulating for at least a month earlier than they admitted at the time. It is true that if you immediately slam your borders shut 100% you can trace and quarantine yourself out of a transmissible epidemic -- at the cost of essentially all external trade, travel and tourism. But Fauci factually knew when we started that this was impossible because the virus had been spreading here for at least two months at the time and we hadn't done a thing about it for those two months. We were later to learn it was four months and perhaps longer.

If you give us 30 more days (remember, this is now six weeks to slow the spread) it'll work. FALSE AGAIN for the same reason; the NIH and Fauci knew there was no possible way to contain the virus when the original 15 days expired as he knew, factually, that the virus had been uncontained for at least three months.

But the lockdowns and restrictions worked to save lives! Nope; this is called the "exception fallacy" and now a peer-reviewed journal entry demonstrates it. We knew this early on too; indeed for five decades we've had "pandemic response plans" that make clear that once you have widespread community dispersion of an infectious agent attempting to lock down people or impose any other sort of non-pharmaceutical intervention is futile and causes harm. We ignored said decades of hard-won experience -- intentionally.

We don't have enough ventilators! FALSE; not one of the DPA-produced ones was ever needed; NY's Governor lied and had plenty of them, as did everyone else.

Ventilators not only are needed they will save lives. FALSE; they killed nearly everyone put on one then, and still do. We knew they didn't work in February as they killed 95% of the people put on then in Wuhan and this had been reported out by March.

This is mostly a community-spread disease in places like stores, bars, restaurants, churches, concerts and the local city street. FALSE; the CDC itself documented that more than half of all transmission was happening in homes and the next largest, and only other statistically material spread was occurring in industrial (e.g. meat packing) plants and health care settings. Nashville suppressed the fact that they could only trace about one percent of infections to social businesses such as bars and restaurants and now the CDC itself has stated that less than 1% of spread is traceable to such public venues as restaurants and bars. In other words we knew by late spring of 2020 the restrictions, including business closures, school shutdowns and masks couldn't work as that's not where the virus was spreading; we couldn't shut down the industrial plants without starving the population and destroying both energy production and sanitary services leading to an immediate societal and economic collapse. Nor could we invade every house and forcibly segment positive-tested people either; we had neither the resources nor would they get away with it without the cops and government goons being turned into swiss cheese. And when it comes to health care we could have segregated Covid-19 facilities and the people working in care homes but intentionally did not.

Asymptomatic transmission is a major risk. FALSE. Over millions of contacts traced in China not one was ever proved to be from an asymptomatic person. There has never been scientific evidence that asymptomatic spread has been material in any pandemic through history and there is no documented evidence of material asymptomatic spread for Covid-19 in the US or anywhere else. Worse, symptomatic persons least able to afford to call out sick due to lack of paid sick time or even the threat of being fired are those in low-wage and high-contact jobs such as fast food, grocery, meatpacking and other "essential" service industries never mind care home employees who are poorly paid and often moonlight in home health care among extremely vulnerable people.

We had no way to stop the nursing home deaths and did the best we could. FALSE. I pointed out immediately after Kirkland occurred that isolating the employees from all general public interaction, effectively creating a bubble, would stop nearly all of the transmission into these environments. We happened to have a lot of empty hotels at the time too. Yes, we would have had to pay significant bonuses to entice employees to go nowhere other than that hotel room and to work but we could have, and if we did it would have saved nearly 50% of those who died in the first four months. Not one so-called "expert" demanded or even suggested doing so but I was calling for exactly this in March of 2020. This, of course leaves aside the various Executive Orders that intentionally seeded the virus into nursing homes in multiple states by multiple Governors. Indeed even this winter in still-locked-down New York there was still no segregation of employees and residents were killed in size by infection brought into the care home by employees. Recent small case number spikes have been associated with vaccine distribution. How's that possible? There's only one rational explanation: The health care workers are giving the virus to the patients getting the shot! And yet we are still told that all these people are "heroes" and don't you dare forget it.

We didn't -- and don't -- have early treatment options that work. FALSE; Japan spent their effort on early treatment and keeping people out of hospitals. They have roughly a third of our population and only 8,000 dead people. Japan is far more-dense population-wise than us yet did a hell of a lot better despite having a materially older population. What Japan didn't do, in short, is spread the disease via their health care workers. In short if you went to the hospital you were likely to die; this has proved out in my own county in Tennessee with a >60% death rate. Up until we started with the panic porn -- the entire first three months of this outbreak in the US until March of 2020 -- we did fine too despite the virus being literally everywhere for months. We in fact knew of several early treatment candidate drugs, all cheap and available, in March of 2000 and exactly zero of them were investigated by the NIH, CDC or any of the so-called "public health" institutions such as Vanderbilt, IHME, Johns Hopkins and others. Those physicians and even hospital systems who did investigate them on their own were derogated, attacked and in some cases even threatened with license suspensions and other sanctions which continue to this day.

Age is the primary determinant of risk. FALSE; obesity and the panoply of health conditions caused and exacerbated by being a fat-ass is the primary determinant of risk. Nations with lower obesity prevalence have a ten times lower or better risk of death from Covid-19 on a per-100,000 population basis. Obesity is in each and every instance a lifestyle choice. This was known very early on in the NY Coroner data which is updated frequently; only six persons 75 and older have died of Covid without one of a relatively short list of underlying conditions -- and over 10,500 died with one or more. Simply put most of those who died deliberately put themselves in a medically compromised condition through their own lifestyle choices just a person who drinks too much and ruins their liver decided to drink. Absent those personal lifestyle decisions the death rate from this disease, while certainly not zero, is approximately half as likely as death due to an automobile accident over a year's time. Read here -- this is exactly what I pointed out one year ago. Who's been right on this -- and who's been wrong?

Existing drugs will not work and we have no existing treatments until you're hospitalized; we must develop new treatments and vaccines. FALSE. The data is that ivermectin works, among others. A trial out of Australia conducted in Britain (they locked everything in and did not have enough people in Australia who were sick) showed Budesonide (a cheap inhaled steroid used for asthma) works if given immediately when someone becomes symptomatic. The latter trial was stopped because it was ruled unethical to not give the controls the medicine since it prevented ninety percent of hospitalizations. Ivermectin has worked in every trial run thus far except one recently reported study the authors themselves state cannot prove effectiveness as the necessary deterioration in cases to do so was violated to the downside immediately, possibly due to widespread community use of the drug. The data on HCQ says it works if used early but appears to be worthless if not used until you're in the hospital. Remdesivir, which has an EUA, was disproved -- that is, shown worthless in a very large trial called "Solidarity" (along with several other drugs) and yet is still being used as it is on-patent and expensive. No drug works 100% of the time nor should it be expected to, but we should damn well not continue to use drugs that are proved worthless just because they cost $3,000 and the FDA issued an EUA for them. Deliberately not treating people until they're choking to death is monstrous and has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, many if not most of them avoidable at a cost of a few dollars.

Masks are the best tool we have to stop the spread and, if you just wear them for a few -- 4, 6, 8 weeks -- we will have Covid under control. Stated under oath before Congress by the CDC's director in September following multiple previous statements over a two month period in the summer by the CDC and NIH which urged (and got) the issuance of mandates. FALSE and known false as Hawaii took a ten times case rate spike a month after their mandate. This was known before Redfield perjured himself before Congress. There are ZERO states which did not take a monstrous spike in the winter despite mandates including California with the most-strict lockdowns and mask mandates in the nation. Compliance via multiple surveys has been around 90% with no evidence of effectiveness anywhere against non-mandate states and counties next door. Those states including South Dakota and Florida who repudiated the mandates or refused to issue them in the first place had identical or better outcomes than the states and locales that imposed them. The CDC has now itself published a MMWR (weekly report) in which they "claim" masks work -- their definition of "work" is a shockingly tiny 1-2% decrease in deaths and this assumes you ignore the confounding elements in their study that could invalidate even that tiny impact. In other words despite the nearly year-long and continual screaming about masks even the CDC itself now states that out of the 500,000 dead only 5,000-10,000 lives were saved at best and statistically-speaking it is entirely possible zero lives were saved. REMEMBER, WE WERE TOLD IN THE SUMMER AND EARLY FALL THAT MASKS WOULD ABSOLUTELY CONTROL THE VIRUS AND IN FACT THE CDC STATED UNDER OATH THAT MASKS WERE BETTER PROTECTION THAN A VACCINE. THIS LIE WAS REPEATED FOR MONTHS AND IS STILL BEING REPEATED TODAY. This wasn't a random statement made "off the cuff" it was made under oath to Congress five months ago and has, over time and by the data, been conclusively proved to be a lie.

The new strains will cause another spike even worse than the last one. FALSE; this was stated originally in the fall and repeated in December through February and yet since then cases have dropped like a stone despite these "new strains" becoming more and more prevalent. Florida in particular has documented widespread prevalence of one of the "demon strains" that were trumpeted in Fauci's fear porn. There has been no spike. Incidentally viruses mutate all the time; within the first few months there were hundreds of distinct viral RNA strains of Covid-19 known and that was only of the infections sequenced -- a tiny minority. If our actions do lead to new strains (specifically our ridiculously-unsound mass-vaccination campaign) and viral evasion occurs you may well be more screwed if you took the vaccine due to ADE than if you did not!

The Super Bowl will cause a huge case, hospitalization and death spike in Florida due to the ridiculously crowded parties and no masks in bars and similar all over the Tampa area. In fact the mayor threatened to arrest people for exactly this reason (an empty threat as the Governor had banned enforceability of said mandates.) FALSE; there has been no spike. Look for yourself; it's been over a month and cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all falling. Where's the spike?

Texas dropping its mask order will lead to mass-disease and death. FALSE; there has been no spike at all. Biden called the move "Neanderthal thinking" and predicted disaster, as did California's Newsom among myriad others, both among political leaders and so-called "medical experts" such as Fauci. Multiple lefties claimed that "there is no limit to how far Republicans will go to kill people." The truth is that Covid-19 cases fell by 28% in the next two weeks. The histrionics were, once again, wrong.

If we social distance and wear masks we will buy enough time for the vaccines to be developed and approved. FALSE. The case and hospitalization rate on a national basis peaked and was falling before the first jab went in the first arm. That which you do after something happens cannot be the cause. Simply put the vaccines did not stop any of the death; despite the lack of testing and rushed approvals they came too late.

The only people who count for "herd immunity" are those vaccinated. FALSE; never in history has such a lie been propagated for any disease, ever, anywhere. The CDC by its own estimates puts the lower boundary of persons infected and recovered at over 1/3rd of the nation and that's their lowest estimate. By more-reasonable belief the number is over half. Those people have immunity and absolutely count. Further, we knew in the first months that a material percentage of the population has pre-existing resistance to some degree, likely due to previous infection with other coronaviruses. This is why the case rate peaked before fully-vaccinated persons existed in the US; there is no other possible explanation.

Even if you've had the disease and recovered you should get vaccinated. There is zero science behind this claim. If you've had the measles or Chicken Pox would you take a vaccine against either? I certainly would not and have not; that would be pointless and stupid. The claim that there is no durable protection once infected is nothing more than conjecture; note that coronaviruses circulate among us all the time and while immunity may not be perfect (e.g. eventually you may well get it again) the odds are extremely high that if you do it will be a mild case and of no clinical or personal significance. Suggesting that you take the risk of an experimental vaccine if you were previously infected is wildly inappropriate; there is no such thing as a drug without risk and there is zero scientific evidence that your acquired immunity will not protect you against serious disease.

Even if you've been vaccinated or had the disease and recovered you should wear a mask and distance from others. FALSE, unless you believe the vaccines are worthless. If you believe the vaccine protects the person who takes it then you no longer need a mask or to distance and since others can choose to take a vaccine or not you have no reason to wear a mask or distance for allegedly protecting others either. If you do not believe the vaccines are effective protection then why did you take it? In short you either believe that you gain immunity by vaccination or infection or you do not; if you do then there's no reason for you to take any measures beyond either recovery or completion of the vaccination. Further, if you don't believe infection and recovery provides meaningful and durable protection then neither will the vaccine so the same scenario applies to both cases and if you do not then believe the shots are protective then you are stupid for accepting them.

These are the very same people folks -- the NIH, the CDC, State Departments of Health, Fauci, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, IHME, Vanderbilt and many more who now tell you after a solid year of unbroken lies and falsehoods that the vaccines are both safe and effective while at the same time our government has provided a 100% waiver of all liability to the pharmaceutical companies that developed and manufactured them.

I note that unlike the other common vaccines that are safe and effective, and which took 10+ years to so-prove, the mechanism of action of these shots are wildly different; they use only part of the virus and rather than introduce it into your body they hijack your cellular metabolism to produce the spike protein exactly as would a replicating infection with the virus, but since only the "spike" is there rather than the entire virus the hypothesis is that hijacking your cellular metabolism in this fashion will not hurt you. While for other vaccines the immunity produced is metabolically identical to infection because a killed whole virus that cannot replicate is used in this case the shots deliberately cause replication in your body of only one part of the virus, the spike protein. This is not identical to the broad immunity provided by natural infection because it can't be with this approach; if the entire virus was used you'd get the disease and it would be systemic in every case instead of localized to your upper respiratory tract. Further, unlike a killed virus vaccine that cannot replicate in your body at all these shots all cause production of the spike protein by your cells exactly as would an infection and that production is systemic since it is given by injection and thus circulates through the body.

The safety of this approach is unproved and in fact the rate of deaths closely associated with these vaccines is wildly higher than that associated with any of the other routinely given vaccinations including flu and chicken pox. The intermediate and longer-term effects of this approach including the possibility of long-term or even permanent damage as a result of systemically hijacking your cellular metabolism to produce that foreign protein are unknown.

Unlike a mask you can remove you cannot un-take a shot and the litany of those previous lies killed over 400,000 Americans who otherwise would not have died.

What if their statements are false this time, specifically on safety? What if viral evasion shows up as did during early trials for a SARS vaccine in animals, trials that were abandoned and not performed for these preparations? It typically takes ten years to know if a candidate vaccine produces unacceptable side effects including lifetime disability due to immune dysfunction, never mind exactly how effective it is and for how long. Further, the media and these people continually claim that nobody has been killed by these vaccines yet VARES, the CDC's own reporting data which is public, shows roughly two thousand associated deaths. The number of associated deaths with the annual flu shot from last year's flu vaccination which shipped roughly 170 million doses, was twenty-six.

That means the Covid-19 shots are associated thus far with roughly seventy five times (7,500%) as many deaths as last year's entire set of flu vaccines! Remember that we give flu vaccines to old and morbid people just like the first priority for Covid-19 vaccines, so these should produce similar "associated" rates of bad events if they are similarly safe.

VARES reporting is voluntary and thus always under-reports vaccine-associated events. Association does not establish causation but a pattern of 75 times as many deaths as are associated with another commonly-given vaccine in the same population group damn well ought to raise anyone's eyebrows; to claim that such does not represent a "safety signal" is a flat-out lie.

I remind you that the false statements of alleged facts outnumber, by a wild margin, the true ones particularly when it comes to things you were told to do that "would work" to stem the spread of this virus. Every single one of those claims has been proved false over time.

In short you're now being exhorted to believe a cadre of people and government agencies who are proved repeated liars and to trust them with your life after their previous lies killed your mother.

The facts are that Covid-19 basically burned itself out before the first shot went in the first arm and that none of the mitigating factors prevented net deaths from occurring; in fact all these mitigations, from mask orders to lockdowns to closing businesses and others caused more deaths due to ODs, suicides, avoidable heart attacks and strokes not screened for and other maladies by a wide factor than the mitigations, even using fatally flawed claims taken on faith by these very same agencies, could have possibly saved. The actions we could have taken to actually reduce death, specifically as regards care home and other medical facilities we deliberately refused to do and we knew those actions would save lives. Instead of protecting the most-vulnerable while those least-likely to be seriously harmed were naturally infected and built a wall of population immunity we deliberately refused to protect those older and sicker people from infection via the health care system and they died.

Given this record of falsehoods, actions and intentional refusals to act you're willing to bet your life they're telling the truth this time?

Even without full testing there may be reason for certain people to accept the vaccine, particularly those at specifically-high risk who have not had the virus. However, on the data if you are not specifically morbid in known ways the risk of death from Covid-19, by the CDC's own data along with that of the NY coroner, is approximately 3/100,000. From the associated deaths in the CDC's own VARES system it appears the vaccines are approximately as dangerous to materially more dangerous than the disease in non-morbid individuals and that is without having any data on intermediate and longer-term effects which can only add to those risks. Further, if you've already been infected with Covid-19 you already have broad immunity and there is zero scientific evidence that vaccination can be of any value to you whatsoever.

When do we stop allowing people like Fauci, the CDC, Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Governors along with various health departments to lie through their teeth about virtually everything related to this virus?

Is not your dead Grandmother enough reason to put a stop to this horse**** -- and all who support it?

Original article has hyperlinks. Link: https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=241875

#karl denninger #sars-cov-2 #global pandemic of stupidity

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animeraider · 3 years ago

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I get a lot of flack from anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, and other fuckwits about my words on the COVID-19 Pandemic and in particular the response to it in the US. I pull no punches about it, I believe firmly that the previous administration and ANYONE who enables them and their policies are complicit in the deaths of all of these people. They belong in prison.

I'm not going to fucking apologize for believing that. The fault for all of this belongs directly in the laps of the Republican Party. If you believe otherwise, you're WRONG. I can bring the receipts.

I've been pretty isolated during all of this. I went into lockdown on March 11, 2020 and I'm technically still there. I now work from home, and even though I've been fully vaccinated for two months now I still go out masked. I may never eat at a buffet again. Sorry Sizzler, but I've learned how to make your cheese bread.

I ripped a tendon in my left knee in May of 2020. I had to go to the hospital, but I was out in a few hours with crutches. I would joke with people that I'm now out of hinged joints to break.

But in July my cough returned with an attitude, and I picked up an infection. Not Covid, but it all made me pretty sick. So that you understand, I have what's called "Chronic Cough Syndrome". I've had it since I was 8. No one knows the cause or the cure. Believe me, we've looked. I just start coughing, and after a few months, I stop. It can be treated but I just have to live with it until someone comes up with something we haven't tried before.

Doctors have gotten into fistfights over whether or not I have Asthma. I don't, but sometimes Asthma medications work for a bit. To be honest, I've had this for so long that sometimes I don't even notice when I cough. It's just part of the wonder of being me.

I took the Pandemic seriously. I stayed home, I socially distanced, I got real familiar with teams, bluejeans, and zoom. I did a LOT of cooking. Started making bread. Watched the country fall apart at the seams and commented on it from my own little pocket of safety. I contributed a new song to a fund-raising effort for nurses. I did my part to stay safe, but my cough had other ideas.

Anyway, this time my coughing got pretty severe and I finally agreed to go to the hospital. As stated above, turns out I had picked up an infection. Combine that with my cough and I showed all of the symptoms of a severe case of COVID-19.

I'd been careful, but the hospital staff were all very cross with me. If I had COVID, I just exposed all of them, and the main nurse who tended to me had already been quarantined that same month for a different exposure. When the test came back negative the tension in the emergency ward calmed down immensely and everyone treated me kindly and professionally - I was a patient with something they knew what to do with and didn't bring plague into their house.

I spent 4 days in the hospital but the worst part, scariest part, was the wait to move from the Emergency Room to a private room. I came to the hospital in the late afternoon. I finally got my bed nearly 12 hours later, a good 8 hours after my test for COVID had come back negative.

I needed to be hospitalized, and needed a bed, and there weren't any. I had to wait for someone to either be discharged or to die.

I got my bed at 4 in the morning. Someone had died. Musical chairs was played and I was finally moved out of the Emergency Room.

It's really hard to understand how sobering that is without experiencing it. Many years ago, before we even knew about AIDS, I had the honor of donating blood and seeing it get used in a surgery mere minutes later. I became a regular blood donor at that moment - I felt so happy and alive that my blood had been used to save a life mere minutes after I had donated it (I'm O Negative) that I became a life-long believer. I donated every time I was eligible from that moment forward until a blood infection disqualified me from ever donating again 20 years later.

This was just the opposite. The guy with a cough and a treatable infection had to wait for someone on a ventilator to stop breathing. Someone with COVID died so that I could get a bed. They never knew this had happened, and I never learned who they were. Some random person died so that I could get better.

Try sleeping after that realization hits you. I couldn't. I barely slept the entire time I was there.

Despite the fact that I wasn't in the "COVID Ward" I got to see the effects first-hand. The newly disinfected bed and room I had was previously occupied by someone moved up to the Covid Ward. They in turn had moved up there after a ventilator was taken away from a patient who died. Staff rotated through different wards on different shifts. My first nurse was rotated into the Covid Ward. My next day nurse had just rotated out. I have never in my life seen a group of people look so haunted by their day to day lives.

A well-liked member of their staff was on a ventilator. So was a priest who worked in the hospital. I had never seen in person a "Code Blue". There were six of them my first day. There is also a "Code Black". It's much worse.

My wife and daughters weren't allowed to visit me. When your daily soundtrack is nothing but medical staff talking about the good and the bad, terrible television and the moaning/screaming of your new neighbors getting that visit from family is a huge stress relief. It wasn't available this time. I didn't see my family again until I was discharged. There was no outside world.

I admit that being in hospital during all of this, even though I myself didn't have COVID, shook me. When you're in hospital mostly what you deal with is yourself and your own condition, and getting the hell out of there as soon as you can. This time I was not only aware of the people around me, their conditions, their suffering and their recoveries, but I was also aware that a whole section of the building was dedicated to people who were going to die, and that the people who were treating me were also treating them.

This was as close as I got to the Pandemic. When I got home I fucking STAYED THERE. I went to the grocery store and the pharmacy and that was it. That was life for MONTHS.

Our grocery store was fantastic - they enforced social distancing and masks with gusto. They cleaned EVERYTHING. It had been a 24 hour store but converted to shorter hours so that the down time could be spent cleaning. Aisles were made one-way.

The first time I saw someone in the parking lot without a mask I have to admit that I lost it. I screamed at them (a white couple about my age), "PUT YOUR FUCKING MASKS ON YOU FUCKING MORONS!" Understand, I'm a fairly large man with a deep voice and have been a professional singer for decades and have played sax even longer. I'm loud and imposing. Everyone within 50 feet turned and stared at the couple. Okay, me first then the couple.

It's possible they didn't speak English. They exchanged a few words in Russian to each other and then masked up.

I've been known to let my temper show. I try not to because I know it's there and I know it's terrible. I've worked for decades to keep it in check and I just let it all out, screaming at a couple of rando Karens 20 feet away from anyone else who hadn't put their masks on yet. I had to acknowledge that this affected me profoundly. I'm dealing with that.

I've lost friends to COVID. One of my neighbors spent almost 3 months on a ventilator and survived it. Some of my friends have lost family. It hurts. It all hurts. It has changed me.

Some of you have noticed that I've been pretty productive in 2021 in terms of music, after not releasing material for over a decade. This whole experience has changed me, changed my perspective. I was already an angry liberal but I'm far angrier and much more liberal now than I was. The album I worked on forever essentially no longer exists. The person I am now couldn't make that album. I am excising demons and allowing the new to come in and take its place.

And you know what, so far, I'm okay. I'm still here. I intend to stay. In fact, what I intend to be the first song from my next album in its own way deals with the fact that I don't understand depression - I've never experienced it.

But I have to admit that I'm grateful to have family and friends in my life who accept me as I am, who provide unconditional love and support and I hope I do for them. I have the occasional doubt that I'm as good a friend/family member as I can be. I can be an ass sometimes.

(A couple of my long-time friends have just done spit-takes. "Sometimes????")

Because the scariest thing about what we've all been through - what I've been through - is that we have changed so much that I'm not sure that the people who know me best would be my friends if they met me as the person I am now. I am changed.

And the odds are pretty good that you have too. This is something we're all going to need to deal with, or we're lost.

Please, don't be lost.

And because it still needs doing, because the pandemic is still going strong as ever among the anti-vaxxers, the science deniers and the Republicans, please support our nurses. Here's the album I'm on that is still to this day, long after falling off the charts, raising money for them:

#Spotify

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transienturl · 3 years ago

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Humans are good at seeing patterns that aren't inherently obvious, right? Like, we have object permanence. We can take actions based on things we think we know without them being right in front of us at that very instant. Pretty useful, that skill is. Couldn't do a whole lot of anything without it. So it makes sense that, biologically, we enjoy that, right? We believe in stuff. It's more fun to follow sports when part of you believes in destiny and miracles and all that stuff. It's more meaningful to pray when some part of you believes that good things will happen if you're earnest and modest in your prayer. It's more challenging to overcome the negative or intrusive thoughts that come from mental illness when part of you believes they're true. It makes sense to me that, unrelated to how valid or invalid these beliefs actually are, some part of our feelings towards them can reasonably be attributed to the idea that we are evolved to want and look for and find them. I've tried to apply this idea to morality before, but while I mostly understood the concept I was getting at, I don't think I quite managed to word it understandably. I had the idea just now to begin with the object permanence thing first, and here's an attempt at that. So, moral beliefs are kind of like any other beliefs, right? Except that they sort of *only* exist in the object permanence sort of way. If I'm put in a scenario where, say, my family is in danger directly in front of me, or where I'm offered something lucrative with consequences for others, my direct reaction to it is probably pretty emotionally driven, right? That doesn't define my moral viewpoint. I can feel things or do things that I think in the moment or later on are morally questionable or wrong. A system of morality is something you have to believe in, a pattern you have to put together for yourself out of experiences and tales. So, my question is, like... what, exactly, is the root of the idea that morals are inherently consistent? It's an idea that feels, to me, pretty impossible to question. But it's possible to imagine, thinking of things like this, that our moral beliefs are "just" the patterns we best managed to discover from our experiences and how we felt about them, and that doesn't make them any less valid... but I could imagine a world where, biologically, my brain were more incentivized to look for contradictions in an otherwise highly ordered world, and my moral views being completely different given the same feelings about the same things, and that's pretty damn weird. Anyway, let me speak of an example: my personal moral belief is that the suffering of people I don't know well or don't relate to is equally heartbreaking and worth minimizing as the suffering of those I'm close to and cannot help but share the emotions of. Normal. And for this reason and others, there's a mismatch between how much I feel for someone emotionally and how much I feel for them morally. All super normal; I bet there's essentially no human for whom this is not in any way true. So how do I justify this? I think one of the ways I justify this is that I feel like I have the understanding, from my life experiences and from stories, that the more you come to understand someone, the more you understand their pain as well as their happiness. This is a pattern that I noticed and that I assumed and continue to assume would be true, and I don't have to actually check if it's still there. I assume that if I were to meet with or watch a documentary about victims of Covid-19, and come to truly understand how they feel, and if I were to do the same with anti-mask and anti-vax protestors, I would ultimately feel extremely strongly on a direct and emotional level that we have to do everything we can to prevent the suffering caused by the disease and that the protestors' concerns are understandable but misguided, and crucially, I think those feelings would feel correct. So I chose to act as closely as I can to how I think I would if I felt so strongly that I had no other choice. I can't actually logically

justify this, all the way down, besides by saying that on some level I feel like consistency has to be correct, and I can't actually justify that statement in any meaningful way. Like, what prevents us from thinking that, morally, selfishness and greed are good? Sure, we live in a society in which they are almost always counterproductive anyways, and we try and design our social norms and societal systems so cooperating is best for each person, but most(?) arguably-well-adjusted people, I assume, generally think causing the suffering of others for you own personal gain is at least a bit morally bad (unless they 'deserve' it, which is a whole 'nother thing). Why, exactly? My only answers are "because we feel a bit bad when we do that, and we notice that pattern" and "because we observe our role models feeling that way." Both are biological. And if someone either didn't experience that feeling or didn't notice the pattern and didn't have any role models express it... well... I guess they wouldn't feel that way. Most of this still sounds pretty obvious, I think, so clearly I haven't managed to distill the interesting part down yet. But I think it's interesting to consider scenarios like abortion, with all this in mind. Or adoption, say, or... crap, really good examples of strong emotions we feel for hard-to-define reasons are hard to enumerate. I was going to use "why we would feel bad about the lunar rovers getting destroyed" as an example originally. But um... yeah. I think it's entirely uncontroversial to state that most people who are strongly *morally* anti-abortion have that stance because thinking about the idea of abortion makes them feel an intense negative emotion, which I understand, and that they can't help but conclude that something which makes them feel a strong negative emotion is a strongly negative thing, which... I mean, a) you have a duty to educate yourself to see if your emotional response is different with more understanding and b) you have a duty to recognize that that correlation isn't actually always true and find counterexamples in your life until you convince yourself of this point, but it's not like I don't see where the idea is coming from! And like, we as a society obviously have to move people towards understanding that the experiences of the people whose lives things effect are more important than how they make unrelated parties feel... ...but, you know, can I actually justify that statement? Does it make sense for me to personally morally believe that my feelings about a situation are less important than the feelings of the people involved? Can I be sure that I am not the sole arbiter of right and wrong in this world? (Answer: Yes! Why? I've seen people fail at that, and I find it distasteful, and so if I were to fail at it myself, and I were clever enough to be self-aware, I would find my own behavior distasteful, so that would be wrong! Yet, I recognize that I was taught to feel this distaste through example and through story, and through those people being idiots, and without those lessons, I might not have such morals, and I might think of myself as the center of the universe. And I want that reality to be inherently less correct than this one, but I haven't yet figured out a reason why.) I guess, though, that more than anything my brain is a puzzle solver. My dad likes to say that the best part of being given a puzzle is being told that a solution definitely exists, because eventually he'll figure it out. I guess I like math puzzles where I'm told there's a way, and I like video games where it's designed such that there's a way, and computer programming in which I'm confident there's a way... but in the question in life of "is there something unambiguously right or true, on which you can base your judgements without question," I have no idea if there actually is a solution. Some people's minds see a pattern to answer that one, and I guess... I don't yet, and am double checking all the other ones I see to see if I missed it.

#long post

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40sandfabulousaf · 3 years ago

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Hihi all except warmongers, 大家好! Catching up with Grace and Douglas was 1 of the highlights of last weekend. Meatball was in the mood to play and he kept calling out to me, smiling, laughing heartily and being very interactive. He also discovered a makeup hack for when you run out of eyebrow pencil. We couldn't stop laughing.

Ok Grace decided to feed him some purple dragonfruit. We turned our attention back to catching up and when we turned back to Meatball, he had juice stains all over his face 🤣 SO adorable! He ended up feeling so sticky that his parents had to give him a bath. Kids are just the cutest bunch of laughs when they get up to mischief!

Dunno about you guys. Here, the China-US talks in Tianjin are riveting. Being bilingual has its advantages, since I'm able to grasp the deep essence of what is reported rather than rely on translations. Geopolitical discussions about this meeting are just as irresistible; in spite of being mentally exhausted after work, I still tuned in and listened to them.

youtube

Some light-hearted WFH photos of....... FOOD! I had a craving for braised lamb shank so I ordered that AND a huge bowl of mackerel and veggie soup. The huge hunk of meat came with veggies and mashed potatoes. There were plenty more mixed veggies in the soup, so nutrition certainly isn't lacking 😅

New COVID-19 infection rates are still alarming at the mo although as more people get vaccinated, we'll start focusing on hospitalisations and deaths more. For now, I don't think any government or anyone, for that matter, has the right to tell us what we should be concentrating on. The risk associated with only zooming in on hospitalisations and deaths is, we might neglect the possibility of new variants emerging because we think high infection rates are the new normal.

As we know by now, the India variant is extremely resistant; even the fully vaccinated have been infected in some countries who keep track of statistics and it is not only happening in the US. The good news is, so far, it prevents severe COVID-19 symptoms although I do believe in prudence given the findings from Israel. Israel has since reverted to a mask mandate. This does not, in any way, imply that vaccines do not protect us; they do. I simply value my life and that of my loved ones, thus I've been reminding them about masks like a broken tape recorder.

Whilst WFH at my parents', the KN95 or surgical masks do not come off unless I'm eating or drinking. Yes, I understand personal freedom. At the same time, I understand filial piety, as well as responsibility and love for others. There're times I place myself first. A pandemic is not the time for that. I'll have to live with lifelong guilt if I cause harm to the people dear to me and I'd rather not. Maybe it's just our culture.

Till the next time, 下次见!

#Youtube

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lockmedown2021 · 4 years ago

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Shoot Day One - 20th April

After months of preparation, castings, and meetings, we've finally begun shooting!

We met at the shooting location and began set dressing, sticking up the newspaper and arranging furniture. We were not able to do this yesterday as it is a flat which is currently lived in and we did not want to cause too much disruption. We were also all able to meet our cast for the first time in person, and they were able to meet each other. Whilst we were set dressing and arranging the cameras ready to begin shooting, Will (playing Ryan) and Marisa (playing Beth) signed production the releases and paperwork, exchanged notes on their characters and the script, and generally got to know each other, which was important as they were going to have to believably convey a strong bond on screen :

The call sheet for today lists the shots needed, and the expected sunrise/sunset times, and was distributed to everyone via Whatsapp yesterday :

The shoot began well, we got all of the shots for the montage scenes with relative ease, and Will and Marisa had both brought enough outfit changes to provide variation and a sense of change in time between the shots. We were also able to film the post interception scene, adapting it for the lack of a post box on the front door and working creatively to fit all our crew into quite a cramped space in the corridor!

However, not everything went so smoothly as the first few shots. When it came to using the gimbal for the scene in which Beth takes a phone call, we were completely unable to operate the gimbal. For an unknown reason it would not stop jittering and spinning on its axes, rendering itself completely unusable. We tried finding help videos, consulting manuals, setting it up how we had done the day before but there was nothing that seemed to be working. This was frustrating, as I did not want to come across as unprepared or unprofessional to my fellow crew members or to our cast, but at the same time we were working on a time limit and couldn't afford to be wasting precious time (and daylight) on trawling through the internet looking for a solution. In the end we decided to just keep the camera handheld, attempting to keep it as steady as possible, mounting it on to the tripod if necessary. This worked, but I plan on researching the gimbal when we finish shooting this evening, so as to hopefully fix this problem tomorrow.

Me trying my hardest to hold the camera steady

Because of the several hours spent on working out the gimbal difficulty, our schedule for the day had been thrown off a bit. This meant that we had to prioritise the outdoor shoot of the shopping scene whilst we still had daylight, and move the interior scenes of the diary scene and first announcement to later in the day. It therefore meant that our finish time was going to be later, but we made this aware to the cast and ensured that they had food and rest, and were happy to continue shooting.

What was difficult about filming the outdoor shot was that, whilst COVID restrictions have been long over in the world of our film they were very much not over in real life. This meant that we had to film from angles that would not show people wearing masks or display any sort of pandemic-related notices in the backgrounds of our shots, which is tricky when filming around a supermarket in the city centre, as both masks and notices are required to be everywhere. We found a way around it though, shooting from ground level near the shop and only shooting faces as we were further away. We cleared it with the shop's security guard, and ensured we weren't getting any members of the public in frame, so as to protect their privacy, even when a crowd of enthusiastic first years requested to wave for us!

What was also causing issues was the battery life of the small camera batteries we booked. They can only hold charge for about 30 minutes when filming at the definition and capacity that we were filming at, and so we were constantly having to rotate them on charge. The battery we had to work outside with was our last one with charge whilst more were charging, and so we were working under time pressure, having to get the right shots before the battery died. Fortunately, due to good communication and efficiency, and Will and Marisa being wonderful cast members, we were able to get the shots just in time.

Once we returned to the flat we were back on course, putting the small battery on to charge and moving on to the first of our large battery packs so as to continue shooting. The announcement scene went well, and we were able to use the lighting strip that we thought would emulate a laptop screen accurately. After that we only had the diary reading scene left to go. It was getting quite late by this point and we were pretty tired, but we managed to get it done, packed up the equipment so as to keep it safe and minimise disruption to the flat's residents, and made our way home ready to film again tomorrow.

All in all, I think that today went quite well. The gimbal trouble threw us all a bit, but we managed to pull it back and I am going to research a solution to the problem so as to avoid this tomorrow. However, I am proud of the way we responded and adapted to the issue, and managed to continue to work well and stay on target.

#production

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