Gun Free Zone

From the unionized workers at Buzzfeed:

A little more than a year ago, we lost about 20% of our newsroom colleagues to unexpected layoffs. Going through that again — in the middle of a pandemic — would be devastating. We’re ready and eager to negotiate a better alternative.

— BuzzFeed News Union ✊ (@bfnewsunion) May 12, 2020

Losing a newsroom job now isn’t just a temporary setback. For many colleagues let go, this could be the end of their careers in journalism — all the more calamitous when the work journalists do has never been more important.

— BuzzFeed News Union ✊ (@bfnewsunion) May 12, 2020

Buzzfeed isn’t journalism.

It’s a bunch of hard-Leftist Millenial hacks spawned in a fetid pool of swamp water from a website best known for cat memes.

Nobody wants to pay for the bullshit that they are peddling because you can get the same virtue signaling, grievance-mongering, dishonesty for free on countless other websites.

That this might be the last career in journalism that these people have is arguably a good thing.

Not to mention that many of us get laid off or have other setbacks and have to reboot our careers in new fields.  I’ve done it twice.

If I were prone to writing Buzzfeed style headlines, I’d title this piece:

“Entitled asshole Acela bubble internet pundits angry they are experiencing suffering that they dismissed for millions of people in flyover country.”

Since the last recession, ~30,000 journalism jobs vanished. Journalists laid off today will likely be unemployed for months and likely, by necessity, have to find employment in other fields. A lay-off now would effectively end a career in journalism. We have to save jobs. https://t.co/rXzjQVQXv5

— Venessa Wong (@venessawong) May 13, 2020

Fuck ’em.

These people need to go pump septic tanks or dig ditches for a while.  Something useful for society that is more in line with their skill set, or lack there of.

Maybe after doing some work harder than vomiting up a piece that form fits whatever progressive, identity politics bromides they learned in school to whatever current situation they have been assigned to write about, from the comfort of their tine, overpriced apartment, they will develop some empathy.

Or they have an industrial accident and get turned into a paste by some piece of heavy machinery because they arrogantly thought they knew what they were doing.

Either is fine by me.

Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson is suffering from incurable lung condition, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The British rocker, 72, was diagnosed with the disease, which causes reduced lung capacity and leads to emphysema and bronchitis, two years ago, but has been managing the condition with medication.

However, he told Dan Rather on AXS TV’s The Big Interview he fears COPD will eventually prevent him performing.

Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson suffering from ‘incurable’ lung disease

Just a couple of nights ago, I was watching Jethro Tull’s famous concert in Tampa back in 1976 and possibly one of the (if not the) most iconic flute solos in Rock history.

I am seriously hating 2020 not because the year but because time is inexorable and my musical idols are being caught in its grasp.

New York City is a God damned shit-hole run by the most evil and incompetent human beings to ever have American citizenship.

From ABC7 New York:

Coronavirus News: 26-year-old woman dies giving birth during peak of COVID-19 pandemic

A family is heartbroken after a 26-year-old woman died during childbirth at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.

Bruce McIntyre is a new father who should be celebrating the birth of his son.

Instead, McIntyre is drowning in sorrow after the mother of his son, 26-year-old Amber Isaac, died during childbirth.

That I’d heartbreaking.  Especially because maternal mortality in the US is so low.

The reason she dies is even more heartbreaking.

Her family says Isaac’s platelet levels had been falling since February, but she couldn’t see a doctor in person even though she was seven-months-pregnant because of the pandemic.

Isaac’s family says by mid-April, her condition worsened and she was finally admitted at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.

Three days later, her family says doctors induced labor after learning that day she had developed HELLP syndrome.

She died during the procedure.

A woman suffering from pre-eclampsia is very high risk and should be under the watchful eye of a qualified obstetrician.

She wasn’t.

She sent her final tweet that day saying that she couldn’t wait to tell everyone about her experience dealing with incompetent doctors at Montefiore.

This woman was given no early treatment and poor care in the hospital because NYC prioritized COVID patients so much that a young woman with a life threatening pregnancy related condition was treated like garbage.

This death was most likely avoidable, had NYC cared about saving the lives of people not affected with COVID who were at risk of dying of something else.

So far, what we know is that NYC murdered the elderly with COVID and young people without COVID.

I have a feeling we’re going to find out that the situation there was even worse than this because of Cuomo and de Blasio.

NEW YORK – Several unions that represent police officers are asking the mayor to fire Dr. Oxiris Barbot after comments she made about the NYPD during a heated exchange with Chief of Department Terence Monahan at the height of the coronavirus outbreak.

Dr. Barbot, who regularly appears with Mayor Bill de Blasio at his daily coronavirus briefings, reportedly told Monahan: “I don’t give two rats’ asses about your cops,” after he requested 500,000 surgical masks for the NYPD, reported the NY Post. The exchange occurred during a brief phone conversation in late March.

Police unions call for ouster of NYC health commissioner

I keep saying that NYPD needs to suddenly develop a general case of Blue Wuhan* and let the place collapse. City Hall gives them the same amount of respect as the local gangbanger population.

And if the name of Oxiris sounds familiar to you, it is because you saw it here in a previous post about the mess in NYC:

I checked her creds and she is a pediatrician who has been a health bureaucrat for the past 17 years.

And that is all I am going to say.

Hat Tip to Mortar Girl Christine.

(*) Blue Wuhan sounds like a song by Linda Ronstadt. 

Divemedic shared a link from The Guardian that says: Covid-19: nursing homes account for ‘staggering’ share of US deaths, data show.

In the article, we find a link to the Keiser Family Foundation with Wuhan Virus data and how it has affected the US. Among that data, I found this:

About the only certain thing we knew about the Wuhan virus from very early was its predilection for the elderly and the sick.  Lack of preparation seems to be the norm for certain states which also include some basic bonehead moves that possibly helped with their body count.

Once this Wuhan V crap is “over”, I believe we are gonna be shocked about the amount of wasted time, money & resources we had. Just because some people in the “expert” side of things felt they needed to exercise their temporary powers.

Was a quarantine necessary? I am going to go with YES but only for about 2 weeks till we had a better picture of who was the most likely victim pool. After that, we could have gone back to “normal with adjustments” meaning we make sure the seniors and the sick were properly cared for. Economically and socially it would have been a shock, but not the disaster we are seeing right now.

And we have no idea what will be the health cost of those who were not able to go to a doctor or hospital because we shut down the health system to basically deal with one thing.

And we better learn fast because Flu season is coming.