Gun Free Zone

I saw two articles that have given me hope.

The first from Politico:

Senior Dems call for national plan to reopen U.S.

Several senior Democrats are now calling on Congress to create a national plan that decides when to reopen businesses and schools in consultation with agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and state governments, not just the president’s pulpit. And after the reopening, it would also require adequate testing and contact tracing to prevent a second outbreak.

There is still a lot of political wrangling in what they want to do but this is a start.

Then this article originally from FOX News:

Cuomo, northeastern governors announce ‘coordinated’ regional effort to reopen amid coronavirus

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, along with the northeastern governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Delaware, on Monday announced a regional effort to eventually reopen the economy in a “coordinated way” amid the coronavirus crisis.

During their news conference, Cuomo announced that states will begin to coordinate efforts to reopen society. As for the timeframe of reopening, Cuomo said: “It has to be weeks.”

It seems like some Democrats have gotten the news that they CANNOT shut down the economy in perpetuity because of a virus.

I listened to a little bit of Rush Limbaugh yesterday, and one caller said that he was a Las Vegas police officer and he had been furloughed.  With the Vegas Strip and casinos closed, the city is not collecting its usual tax revenue and the city is having to furlough municipal workers.

I suspect that high tax and spend blue cities and states are feeling the squeeze right now, and unlike the federal government, they cannot just print more money to stay afloat.

They might also be hearing the rumblings from the people outside of the hotspots who are pissed as hell about having to live in lockdown, not working, going bankrupt, in what was less than a month ago the best American economy in decades.

When it comes to the Coronavirus, it seems that there is a dichotomy in America.

From Miguel’s recommendation, I read Divemedic’s posts on his son’s account of what the Coronavirus is doing in Harlem.

Let me take a moment to say Divemedic’s son is a hero for volunteering to work under those conditions.

His report really seems like the stuff of a dystopian nightmare.  What you would expect to see in the opening scene of a Hollywood blockbuster about a pandemic.

But…

I went to Huntsville Hospital last week, the apocalypse week according to the models, and it was empty.  I wasn’t sick, the Hospital is where the clinic is for the physical, drug screen, and other tests that I had to take for a DOD contract job.

Nurses prowled around in PPE, taking everyone’s temperature.  I was swabbed, interviewed, scanned, and liberally doused with hand sanitizer.  The worse part was waiting because they had to clean everything in between each patient.

I will say, given what I saw, I expect hospital-based infections of everything but COVID to go down drastically during this time.  I do hope that in the return to normal, medical centers maintain the new sterility procedures and tackle the problem of patients picking up an infection like MRSA or phenomena at a hospital and dying.

Huntsville Hospital was nearly empty.  When I saw the news that it was furloughing employees, I can see why.

The difference here is that Harlem is one of the poorest urban areas in the country, has one of the highest population densities in the country, and some of the people seem to be going out of their way to avoid social distancing.

Huntsville is a moderate size city, with an average and median income above the national average and median, few large apartment complexes, and has been voted one of the best places to live in America.

The apples-to-oranges differences in living conditions have naturally led to an apples-to-oranges difference in Coronavirus outbreaks.  Harlem is a hotspot, Huntsville is not.

I know people up in Oneida and Herkimer counties in New York.  They are out of work and are not sure why, because life for them is very different than in New York City.  Yet, Governor Cuomo’s initial lockdown plan was clearly based on treating all of New York State like it was New York City.

One person I know in Utica said that if they had just stopped people from NYC from leaving to hide out with family in Utica, there probably would have been no cases of Coronavirus in Utica.

I think that what we are seeing is the realization that the entire United States is not New York City and applying a nationwide lockdown that might be useful in a high-population density urban area to much of the US did little direct health benefit and caused a great deal of economic damage.

For the naysayers out there who like to vomit up the thought-terminating slogan “not dying for Wall Street.”  I just came off of four months of unemployment and the weight I feel lifted off my shoulders from that is unbelievable.  The misery that I experienced being out of work and not sure when my finances would not be in jeopardy is not something I would ever want to experience again.

I think the worst moment came during one of our Saturday errand-running trips, where the family loads up into the SUV and we make our rounds grocery shopping and whatnot.  We had to go to Wal-Mart for some things we couldn’t get at Kroger.  I think the little girl needed clothes or something, I forget exactly.

By that time I was out of work for about 10 weeks and my severance was all used up.  We were pinching pennies to try to stretch what I had in the checking account as long as possible.  My son is five, so had no idea what unemployment is like. It was our habit, I’m not sure if it was good or bad, but if he behaved on our shopping trips, he would be rewarded with a $0.98 Hot Wheels car at Kroger.  We figured that a buck a week to get him to sit in the cart and behaved was money well spent.  Positive reinforcement.

He asked for a little toy.  Nothing expensive.  Under normal circumstances, it would not have been an issue.  I said no.  He countered that he had behaved – which he had.  At which point I lost my shit.  Not that he had done anything wrong.  It was all me.  Here I am, a fucking 37-year-old man with three fucking degrees in engineering, out of work like a fucking bum, unable to buy my son a $3 toy because I don’t have an income and I felt impotent and angry and like my fucking dignity had been stolen.

The mental anguish that chronic unemployment brings is unbelievable.  You cannot inflict that on human beings.  Right now there are 17 million people out of work, any of whom are not sure when they are going to be going back.

Is doing that to millions of people who live in counties that might have only had a few dozen Coronavirus cases worth the cost?

Probably not and it seems like a few Democrats are coming to terms with that.

We were under-prepared because China lied.  I believe that nothing short of the Western world engaging in a massive coordinated nuclear saturation strike of mainland China to cauterize the land with ionizing ration will ever be enough to make up for what they did to us.

Then we overreacted and have done an unbelievable amount of damage to the livelihoods of people who most likely not had the virus or would not have thought they had a bad cold for a couple of days.

Now it’s time we do what we probably should have done from the beginning, and take an approach that applies the proper amount of control to the local conditions.  New York City needs to be locked down.  Rural upstate New York and small-town Middle America don’t.

Don’t harass people for attending a drive-through church service.  Do ban big street fests like Marto Gras (and throw the mayor of New Orleans in prison).

I honestly believe we can probably get 15 of those 17 million people back to work in the next 30 days without causing a second outbreak.  We need to do it before the gut-clenching fear of chronic unemployment causes more death injury than the virus itself.

For some reason, I usually have some nasty transaction with a local/mom&pop shop. It is like I am gifted with the ability to pick the shitty ones.  This time around was face mask. This local tailor company was on the news showing how they managed to keep all their people by switching to the manufacturing  of fabric face masks for the local health care providers and they were selling them to the public also.

Well hell, Why not order some and that way I get to help a small bit with my wallet.  I went to their site and saw the selections (adult & children), no choice colors or anything (fine) and you could order a minimum of three (One to wear, one in the wash and the one for tomorrow) and the shipping was only $5 (local, see?)  It all came out under $40. I placed the order and with the confirmation email, I got the annopuncement that I would get an email announcing the day it shipped.

Six days later had not hearing/reading from them, I shot the a short and apologetic email wondering what was the status of my order.  The reply: We did not see this much business coming and we are 15-20 days behind. Sorry, love and kisses.

Now this is not what I expected, nor I was informed in their site that now had been updated with a banner announcing the 15-20 day delay. I decided that, with my luck, buy the time the masks finally made it, we would not be needing them. Again, another short polite email, but this time asking for a refund.

The reply? A very polite version  “Your order is being processed, we have your money and we ain’t giving it back. Sit tight and wait.” And if that was not enough, it was an automated reply, because I wrote back saying I did not care for the order, just my money and got the same reply.

I wrote them back again, this time with a bit of salt:

“At this time, your order is in process and we’re working diligently to ship.”

Which could be in the next 2 weeks, right?
Then I get to read in the Miami Herald that your company closed down because they could not keep up with the financial pressure and orders may or may not be filled.
I should have known better than buying local.

Apparently the accusation of suspicion of fraud was enough for the autoresponder to kick it up tghe ladder and I got somebody from the company wanting to talk with me on the phone and solve things. I just became boringly repetitive: I want a refund.
I got another email from another executive promising that they would  take care of it and finally got my money back… or at least a receipt saying so.

And yes, your experiences with local business is not like mine, God Bless and hope you are always lucky. Me? I can’t catch a frigging break .

He is ninja and he is wearing the pajama that proves it.

So much stupid.

You know how fanatic I am about getting to the source for info. It does not get any closer than this.

This morning’s report from Harlem has a few more interesting facts. It seems that it is still taking 5-7 days for COVID test results to come back. My son reports that test results don’t matter at this point, because they have gotten quite good at spotting COVID patients by looking that the patient’s lab results, chest xray, and vital signs. He reports that nearly every patient who comes in has COVID.

Last night saw 5 patients die in the ED of COVID.

One patient who came in had been stabbed in the arm, but had an O2 sat of 76% and a fever of over 100F. He refused a COVID test and left after being stitched up. He likely has it, but we will likely never know for sure.

more from Harlem

He’s got more and I urge you to read and go back to read past posts. The O2 Saturation was freaky to me. I had a small procedure about 4-5 years ago and the hospital “would not  allow me” to go home because my O2 was stuck under 96%.  The wife knows I dislike hospitals, dislike being ordered by medical personnel and that I can get angry after anesthesia. so she was smart enough to get me to hyperventilate and get a nurse to certify I indeed hit that number so we could go home.  I quit smoking after that.

So, knowing how skittish  are medical people about low O2 levels, reading about 76% is a bit of a shocker. And overall the post also tell us that Wuhan V accelerates maladies that are already festering the person. I have seen too many people online bitching that doctors are classifying any death as from the virus just because the person died while having Coronavirus and just to inflate the stats. A virus that affects not only oxygen saturation but even seemingly coagulation , will tip over and crash an otherwise precarious balance that a person was holding with previous conditions. So recording a death as virus-related when you die of a diabetic shock, is indeed accurate.

This is a real Tweed from the official account of The New York Times.

“Except for all that other sexual misconduct that was caught on camera that people have criticized Joe Biden for before, we have no reason to think that he ever took it just a little bit further and committed sexual assault because he’s the leading Democrat candidate.

However, if a Republican ever dud something similar, you can be absolutely sure we’d fucking destroy him.”

That’s a hell of a take.  Really.

Is there some sort of “hold my beer” challenge among Democrat governors for who can do the worst possible thing and still get re-elected?

So far the Governor of Virginia is in the lead having been re-elected after being found to have work blackface or a klan hood and refusing to confirm which one it was.

New York Governor Andrew Coumo is trying his best to beat Northam by seizing ventilators form upstate New York formuse in NYC, proving to everyone in the Empire State that the state government believes that lives of residents of New York City are more valuable than that of the rest of the state, except for the government workers in Albany.

But not to be out done, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear decided to send the Kentucky State Police to torment churchgoers on Easter Sunday for sitting in their cars listening to a pastor on a loud speaker.

KSP is here pic.twitter.com/RH6QFuUziQ

— Sarah Ladd (@ladd_sarah) April 12, 2020

Putting notices on every car, even those belonging to the press and media pic.twitter.com/2LEtzkM7zf

— Sarah Ladd (@ladd_sarah) April 12, 2020

A better look at the notice pic.twitter.com/THVmA7mDuc

— Sarah Ladd (@ladd_sarah) April 12, 2020

I can’t imag how this makes anyone safer. The KSP officers are not wearing masks as they go from car to car. But the Governor issues and order banning those services, one that a Federal judge overruled, and so Goddammit he’s going to let those Christians who want so hit in their cars in a Church parking lot on a Sunday know who the fucking big-balls boss is, but it just comes off as petty and officious.

It’s only April and the election is in November, so I expect more stupid shit to come down the pipe from Democrat governors, but bad-opticswise, this takes the lead.

As a father, I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child.  My heart should go out to a man like Dr. Griffin Dix.  His son was killed accidentally by a friend who was showing off his dad’s gun.  This is a heartbreaking tragedy.

But this is where my empathy starts to wane.  Dix responded to this loss by forgiving the shooter and then suing Beretta for not having a loaded chamber indicator, like that would have stopped a 14-year-old who didn’t know to clear the gun from shooting his friend.

Dix has become a local chapter president of the Brady Campaign and served on its national board.  Anti-gun groups are pernicious in their ability to attract and radicalize grieving parents to blame the gun industry, law-abiding gun owners, and gun rights organizations for a loss that was caused entirely by someone else.  Fred Guttenberg is just another in a long line of parents who had their pain and anger weaponized against gun owners.

Dix wrote an article for The Hill to voice his opinion as to why the Coronavirus was the perfect excuse to justify denying Americans a civil right.

COVID-19, gun sales and guns in homes

In March an astounding 3,740,688 background checks took place, according to the FBI.

While this does not correlate exactly with gun sales, it is close and tells us that more guns were sold than any time since the background check system began in 1998.

That burns them so much.  So, so much.

This purchasing of firearms is not surprising now that the COVID-19 virus is causing unpredictable health and financial disruption. People are afraid a desperate person will break into their home. President Trump has called COVID-19 “the Chinese virus” as if we were being attacked by foreigners.

Is this last part to imply that gun buyers are xenophobic racists and are buying guns to shoot Asian people because it sure feels like that.

Dr. David Hemenway, a professor at Harvard’s school of Public Health, summarized the research studies on the risks vs. the benefits of owning firearms and found, “there is no credible evidence of a deterrent effect of firearms.” Defensive gun use is rare, and “it does not appear that self-defense gun use is more effective at preventing injury than many other methods of resistance,” Hemenway found.

We know that to be absolutely bullshit.  The CDC studied that and discovered that there are upwards of three million life-saving DGUs a year.

Dix then presents the statistics that gun owners are more likely to commit suicide.  I hate this statistic because it’s not presented honestly.  The presence of a gun does not change the rate of suicidality.  With or without a gun, people attempt to kill themselves at the same rate.  The presence of a gun only increases the effectiveness of the attempt.  The way that this is presented though is that having a gun makes someone more likely to kill themselves as though the gun is some sort of magic talisman that demands human death.

He then talks about accidental shootings.  The answer to this is easy: lock up your gun when you are not using it.

He closes his article with this statement:

In order to slow the spread of COVID-19, 42 states have required nonessential businesses to close, but at least 30 of those states have designated gun shops as essential businesses and allowed them to stay open. A recent Department of Homeland Security advisory named gun shops as “essential” to suggest they can stay open. All of the above considerations strongly argue that the Department of Homeland Security’s advisory is fatally misguided. Fortunately, it is only an advisory.

Keeping gun shops open during the pandemic will not only contribute to the spread of the virus, it will increase its deadly toll. Now is the worst time to be buying a gun and bringing it into the home.

I strongly urge state and local officials to require gun shops to remain closed temporarily during this pandemic, like other nonessential businesses. Local and state authorities can still enforce their regulations. We should not let gun shops (or other nonessential businesses) re-open until the COVID-19 pandemic has ended.

A right delayed is a right denied.

We already saw in a number of states how governors have shut down Churches, and tried to shut down all religious services, on Easter Sunday.

The Coronavirus has become the ultimate excuse for politicians to control every aspect of life.  Dix doesn’t like guns so he wants to have gun stores shuttered for the duration.

This is the United States of America, I should be able to take a walk, buy a gun, and go to my house of worship.  Except that politicians have decided those activities are “non-essential” and I can’t do them right now.  No wonder some people are saying we need to stay under lockdown for 18 months, once politicians have been given the emergency powers to control people to that degree, why would they want to give that up?