Monday, February 22, 2021

Looks Like I Was an Optimist

 Last March, in a conversation with a coworker, I predicted that there would be a half-million deaths in the US due to COVID-19 before we got this pandemic under control, and it looks like I was a bit optimistic... we have hit the 500,000 dead mark, with no end in sight for months.  Upon hearing my prediction, my coworker countered, "I think it will be a million deaths."  Yeah, he's even more cynical than I am.

Back then, I really didn't foresee the anti-mask movement, nor did I know the extent of the anti-vaccine movement.  It really seems as if a sizable minority of people in this country are objectively pro-pandemic.  At the time, I also didn't predict that the Occupant of the White House would be the largest source of disinformation regarding the pathogen and the pandemic.  I knew the man was trash, but I didn't realize that he was quite that bad.

The sick joke of it all is that the right-wing malinformation complex will now go into overdrive in an attempt to pin all 500,000 COVID-19 deaths on Joe Biden.  Right-wingers are comfortable with cognitive dissonance, so they will simultaneously claim that the pandemic is a hoax, that COVID is no worse than the flu, and that President Biden is a mass murderer.  I may have been too much of an optimist when it came to predicting the COVID-19 death toll here in the United States, but I don't think I'm too much of an optimist when it comes to predicting what righties will attempt to do.

4 comments:

StringOnAStick said...

I agreed with you here how many months ago that half a million dead was not going to be the final number. I'm fairly sure part of Jared's plan was to let the blue states simply die, especially once it was known that it was affecting POC disproportionately; they considered that a bonus.

Remember when Jacob Wohl and his buddy tried to get a young woman to claim Fauci had sexually harassed her so they could get him fired? She reported that he's said that it was only killing minorities so her helping make the pandemic worse via their plan to get Fauci was a "cleansing".

Word has it that Covid can cause sterility. Add that to how wearing a mask is only something liberals do and of course the general rate of mortality and long term disability caused by Covid leads me to think that their desire to "own the libs" isn't the greatest long term plan for growing their numbers. Anti-adaptive, in evolutionary terms.

Marc McKenzie said...

I remember telling a close friend in early March of 2020 that I thought that there would be several hundred deaths due to COVID. I was being too optimistic.

500,000 dead. The number just...boggles the mind, shuts it down. How can we even begin to process this, much less the fact that the President who was in office at the time this pandemic broke in the US just...let it get out of control? And that his party was and still are fighting efforts to give Americans relief to deal with the upheavals caused by the pandemic?

And sadly, yes, the GOP and the Right have already started blaming Biden for COVID deaths--even though Biden has signed EOs for mask mandates, gotten enough vaccine doses for the country, has a massive relief plan ready for the country, and has put a plan together on how to deal with the pandemic and get millions vaccinated. Cases and deaths have fallen, but things are not going back to normal anytime soon.

Back when Trump was elected in 2016, I feared that there would be a major catastrophe that he would make even worse. I was told that I was a fool for worrying about that because, after all, Hillary would have been worse. Hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires...Trump's awful handling of those was no match for how badly he dealt with COVID. Now 500,000 are gone, and millions will be dealing with the long-term effects. And yet, the GOP still dismisses mask wearing, refuses to support aid to the people, and the far Left run around howling about how Biden is worse than Trump because he hasn't passed Medicare for All or forgiven all student loans.

Fuck all of that. Biden is focusing on dealing with COVID, and I'm glad that he is doing that.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Remember when Jacob Wohl and his buddy tried to get a young woman to claim Fauci had sexually harassed her so they could get him fired? She reported that he's said that it was only killing minorities so her helping make the pandemic worse via their plan to get Fauci was a "cleansing".

That's the problem with biological warfare, you just can't contain it.

Back when Trump was elected in 2016, I feared that there would be a major catastrophe that he would make even worse. I was told that I was a fool for worrying about that because, after all, Hillary would have been worse. Hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires...Trump's awful handling of those was no match for how badly he dealt with COVID. Now 500,000 are gone, and millions will be dealing with the long-term effects. And yet, the GOP still dismisses mask wearing, refuses to support aid to the people, and the far Left run around howling about how Biden is worse than Trump because he hasn't passed Medicare for All or forgiven all student loans.

It's a death cult. As a New Yorker, I've known Trump's reputation for years, I knew he'd fuck the country up in a Big League way.

Richard said...

We are still here. It will be months before any help will arrive, if it ever does.
To protect ourselves we wear masks. That is all we have.
They say it comes from being close to people and breathing with them. That's what we do. We do that.
We are wearing masks and hoping for the best.
It is the library and the gatherings i miss the most.