Oct 9, 2021
How will we know the pandemic is over? Just as there was no formal announcement of the pandemic’s start, it is unlikely that there will be an announcement of the pandemic’s end.
At first, the Sickness was completely local: trouble in far-off China in a B-List city; an Elvis sighting not to be concerned about. Then the virus was in the State of Washington, a local concern, nothing to be concerned about. Then a wild break-out in rural Italy in towns whose name no one longer remembers; still nothing to be too worried about. Then an Iranian health minister collapsed at a press conference.
Then the Sickness was everywhere; the response no longer local. National governments sounded their strategies in cacophony; some calming, reassuring; others welding doors to keep people at home. Scientists contradicted each other. Physicians contradicted each other. With no trust in the government, amateur epidemiologists conducted their own research, their findings amplified by the Internet, while the real scientists continued to contradict each other. There was no time to conduct the years’ long studies they demanded.
The closing of schools started slowly but soon all doors were shut. Parents who didn’t know a numerator from a carburetor were assigned the task of home schooling their children. At best, also these unqualified new teachers could do was point to the television, the Internet and their children’s unread schoolbooks before giving up.
Flying an airplane was dangerous, the recirculated air could carry the Sickness. Business trips were canceled, hotels closed, vacations were impossible. AirBnB built its business on home sharing, but to take a possibly infected stranger into your home was unthinkable. Before the first half was over, the number of the new dead rivaled the number lost in horrible wars.
There were no vaccines. There were no treatments. Ventilators were desperately needed and in short supply. People could only hope that the virus would burn itself out. TV scientists had no answer and people amused themselves blaming China. Others, egged on by their new like-minded Internet friends, denied that the Sickness even existed, or if it did exist it was just the flu. And the mortality factor was low. And the R Number, a term in fashion, like 2000’s “hanging chad” was such that soon we would have “herd immunity,” another fashionable term soon to return to disuse.
The only subject the world’s governments could agree on dealt with popular nomenclature. Calling the virus the Wuhan virus invited acts of violence against Chinese citizens. A new variant that arose in India could incite violence and prejudice, not to mention cautionary distancing from the Desi. Before HIV was isolated, Haitians were thought to be a vector of that disease in official announcements which did the Haitians no favors. Greek letters were chosen instead. The Wuhan flu became Alpha, the Desi variant Delta. Only the Greeks complained, pointing out that there were other alphabets that could have been chosen.
Delta is more contagious and affected younger people more than Alpha. Before long, talk of herd immunity started to fade. In August, 2020, the first international tests of a Chinese vaccine were conducted. By the end of the year, there were more vaccines coming on-line and squabbling about the merits of each. Alpha was no longer the problem. The old rushed to be vaccinated ignoring the pseudo-scientists who warned against inoculation without FDA approval. The same people who when young had no trouble swallowing an unknown white pill to dance the night away warned against new vaccine technologies.
By March, 2021 the end was in sight. Alpha was in decline, vaccinations were increasing, ventilators were sitting unused, and president who was all but personally responsible for the spread of the virus—so they said—was out of office. The airlines announced a return to summer travel. Lockdowns and restrictions eased. Soon things would be back to normal.
Delta didn’t cooperate. Numbers were quickly back up to where they had been a year before. Lockdowns were re-imposed. Once again, there was no uniform response. Fourteen hundred school boards issued contradictory decisions about masking, social distancing and school openings. If local officials made an unpopular decision it was easy to point to a different approach taken somewhere else and accuse the local official of being a terrorist, communist, anarchist or other ‘ist’ de jour.
The new American president begged the country to get vaccinated, claiming that the continued restrictions were due to the stubbornness of those who refused to get vaccinated, with the MSM helpfully pointing out that these belonged to the president’s opposing political party.
What the government could not do, the private sector is doing. Companies began to require vaccinations as a condition of continued employment. School boards will add Covid-19 vaccinations to the list of required vaccinations as soon as the FDA approves, on a temporary basis, the vaccination of children and adolescents.
Some State governments resist this tide. No matter. Vaccination will be the norm. Unless a variant worse than Delta comes along, the world will slowly crawl out of this pandemic hole.
There will be no formal announcement. No “Mission Accomplished” photo opportunity. No newspaper printing a photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square. Instead, fewer people will wear masks, except those coughing or sneezing and no one will be surprised that they didn’t stay home. The number of remote workers will decline but will not disappear. Fewer days in the office may become the norm. Working from home will no longer be the anomaly it once was.
Finally realizing that publicity turns science into politics, physicians and epidemiologists will try to keep treatments between themselves and their patients. As the number of the ill goes down, the Sickness will be just another condition of human existence. Annual Covid-19 shots will become the norm. The vaccines will get better. The treatments will become more effective. In time, the pandemic will only become a feint memory before being entirely forgotten.
But expect no announcement.
Oct 6, 2021
Test after crash.
Sep 18, 2021
It’s interesting (at least to me) how different systems or professions address the issue of truth. How do we know if an assertion is true?
- Anecdotal: True if there’s some comment about it somewhere
- Arabic: If no one saw it, it didn’t happen
- Cruentation: The victim’s body will bleed in the presence of the murderer
- Islam: Two male Muslim witnesses are needed, except for adultery, when four eyewitnesses are required.
- Journalism: True if two independent sources say the same thing
- Journalism 2: Any sound reverberating in the MSM’s echo chamber
- Kavanaugh: Any assertion must be corroborated by more than one witness
- Law: Whatever 12 strangers agree on after being presented with partial information at a performance
- Literary Criticism: Whatever you can publish with a lot of footnotes.
- Medicine: Any treatment based on any kind of evidence (this is actually a step up from the previous standard, set forth below)
- Ordeal: God will perform a miracle to save the accused if innocent
- Religion: If you believe it or were told to believe it
- Science: Whatever a paid journal publishes on the advice of two or more reviewers, until superseded by another article published and reviewed by two other reviewers.
- Witchcraft: Whatever works even if it didn’t work before
- Zerolis: Greenland may not exist, I haven’t been there.
What can be added to this list?
Sep 15, 2021
In a very real sense, I grew up with Vietnam. The war the Vietnamese call the “American War” was on television every night. The movie The Green Berets instilled us with the righteousness of the American cause. It was America’s duty to fight godless Communism, though the fact that the Vietnamese were far from godless—we saw the monks immolating themselves on the news—was somehow glossed over.
We were too young for the draft but watched the growing protests with interest. The underground newspaper, the Chicago Seed was not easily accessible to white boys from the suburbs, but we rode the train downtown and got copies there. The war wasn’t going anywhere. There was no talk of winning and no one even knew how to win. In a few years we would be facing the draft ourselves. We wanted no part of it. Saigon was not an option. From Chicago, Canada wasn’t far away. It was a four or five hour drive to Detroit and from there we could cross to Windsor.
As usual, my friend Penis, the third baseman on our church softball team, had a solution. He had an old Encyclopedia Britannica, the 1911 edition. Even though we were only in the 8th grade we had to prepare. We looked up the maps of Vietnam and they looked nothing like what they showed on the news. Of course, there was nothing about the draft and nothing about the draft dodgers who had escaped to Canada. Further research was required.
Somehow Penis got a hold of the Canadian immigration rules. To become a landed immigrant, in other words, to get to stay in Canada and not get turned back, you needed thirty points. Penis explained that you got one point for each year of education you possessed. As we were in the 8th grade, this led to arguments about whether we would be given credit for kindergarten. George had to repeat kindergarten anyway. “I was red-shirted!” he protested. This was because his parents had moved in the middle of the year. None of us really knew what it meant to be red-shirted, but it sounded very sophisticated so we accepted George’s explanation.
”What is kindergarten,” George asked, “if not education?”
We decided to calculate without counting kindergarten. No one was drafted before age 18, so we would—hopefully—finish high school before we had to head east. By then we would have twelve years of education and twelve points. Canada granted five points for the ability to speak English. Most of us, we figured, would get the full five points, but Tommy would probably only get four since he slurred his words and hardly spoke much at all. But for the rest of us, we would be at 17 points. Penis would study French in high school and claimed that his partial fluency would give him at least three points. I had some doubts about that because Penis hadn’t done all that well in Mr. Pantellis’ 7th-grade French class, which met only once per week and didn’t teach us all that much because Mr. Pantellis couldn’t speak French himself. The little we knew started Penis on the path to his final nickname because we knew that if we put the word “le” before any word, it sounded French; hence “Le Richard.” I figured I might get a point for knowing how to say “hello.” You didn’t get any credit from the Canadians for Spanish, unfortunately.
You could get up to ten points if you had a job in Canada, but we had no illusions about that. None of us had experience and except for George, none of us had ever held down jobs. I had been fired from the one job I had, working in the pro shop at the golf course due to an accident with a golf cart. They didn’t have mirrors so how was I supposed to see what was behind me? And yes, so what if it was a building, that doesn’t mean there were mirrors on golf carts. “Could happen to anyone,” I explained, but unfortunately it had happened to me.
You would think that we would work harder on our French in school to get more points, but we knew that wasn’t going to happen. None of us even knew anyone who could speak French. They wouldn’t draft you, even if you were 18, if you were still in high school, so getting held back a year would help and leave you with 19 points. The danger was that by playing dumb you would get expelled and then it was Saigon here I come.
So we needed to at least fake enough French to get two points. Maybe there was an exam, we could cram for that, wouldn’t they give us one or two points for our earnestness? We assumed therefore, that despite our linguistic ignorance, we could do well enough on the test to score at least two points. If we crossed at Windsor we probably wouldn’t get a French-speaking immigration officer and we might just be able to fake it. That would give us twenty.
But we were still ten points away from safety and a life in Canada. Then Penis found out that the immigration officer could award “discretionary” points, up to ten of them.
All we had to do was look, act and sound like we belonged. Fortunately, Chicago had one of the original National Hockey league teams. Becoming hockey fans wasn’t enough, we had to learn how to skate and be fans of a Canadian team and for some reason we picked the Montreal Canadiens. Whenever the Blackhawks played a Canadian team, both national anthems were sung. We listened to the anthem that didn’t sound familiar and figured out that this one was the Canadian anthem. The lyrics were in the Britannica. We figured one verse was enough—after all, it was an anthem and who knows more than one verse of an anthem? Penis learned to play it on the piano so we belted it out as if our lives depended on it, and in a way they did.
They play enough hockey in the Northern suburbs of Chicago so that part was easy. We learned how to skate on hockey skates; that was all they had—for boys at least. I didn’t know how to skate with figure skates, the steps at the beginning of the blade were confusing. I almost ended up being held in contempt of court years later because I had rented figure skates, fallen and broken my arm. But that was much, much later.
When I was still in high school my father asked me what I was going to do about Vietnam. “I think I’m up to 30 points,” I told him. “So it’s Canada.” For this insolence he punched me in the face. I was confident of Penis’ calculations. George had even half-convinced me that I could get kindergarten credit. “Where is kindergarten?” George asked, “in a school right? So if it’s in a school, it’s education.” He had a point, but would the Canadian immigration officer give us that point?
El hombre propone, pero Dios dispone. We were prepared for emigration but God had other plans. The year I turned 18 was the last year anyone was drafted. A few years earlier, to quell student protests, Selective Service had instituted a lottery based on the date of your birth. If your number was higher than 100, you had little to worry about; if your number was higher than 200 you had nothing to worry about. My number was in the mid-200’s. I put my draft card to use for other purposes.
Two years after that, Saigon fell and Vietnam was reunified. Penis went to law school, became a personal injury lawyer and married a woman from Vietnam. I wonder if she taught him any French. He died at age 45 of a heart attack.
Throughout the years, the Canadian national anthem stuck with me, never to be forgotten, as did the immigration rules of Canada, as interpreted by Penis when we were all in the 8th grade. Years later, I went to work for a Canadian law firm. At an Irish saloon on Yonge Street in Toronto, a television showed hockey pregame warmups. The patrons started singing the Canadian national anthem. The boozers stopped their drinking to show respect.
Of course, I joined in.
Sep 1, 2021
John Delorean
I feel for those whose surnames include a ‘de, di, la’, an ‘al-’, ‘el’, ‘ben’ or ‘ibn.’ Or ‘von’. And of course, anyone who has the misfortune to have an apostrophe in their name. I feel for you.
John DeLorean (not De Lorean, which would put him in this select group) was on trial in federal court in the Eastern District of Michigan during a time when I had several cases in the same building. Every now and then I’d stick my head in–you didn’t get a sense of how tall DeLorean was when you saw him on television, but in the courtroom with his height and shock of prematurely white hair he was perhaps the most distinguished looking defendant I had ever seen. He had a car company in Ireland–no stranger to the apostrophe, he–and I couldn’t help that the Michigan venue was chosen to punish Mr. Delorean as much for having the gall to compete with American car companies as anything else.
Delorean was acquitted, an extremely rare occurrence during the past half-century. The criminal rules of procedure are slanted heavily towards the prosecution in federal court, but this is not the time to write about that unfairness. This is about an apostrophe.
BCCI
Few know that the many-tentacled criminal case against the Bank of Credit and Commerce International first went to trial in Detroit. I represented one of the defendants. BCCI was a bank founded by a Pakistani mystic and had branches in America, Europe and Asia. The bank did not have a license to do business in Saudi Arabia, but an expert witness later noted the fact that many members of the Saudi royal family had accounts at the branch in Riyadh and reported that the banking laws were mostly cosmetic.
The main allegation in the American criminal prosecution of BCCI was that they laundered drug money. My case involved the owner of a truck that allegedly was the vehicle used to deliver ten kilos of cocaine to a group of Chaldeans (the term then used for Iraqi Christians in Detroit) who sold it from their bodegas.
Most people don’t realize how local the practice of law is. Lawyers in every state, and sometimes even within the same state, raise barriers to lawyers from out of state. I was coming from Miami, a snowless city three hours away by airplane. I was suspect. These not-so-warm feelings extended to the local judges, who were promoted from the same pool of suspicious lawyers. It is only when judges join the multistate federal courts of appeal that these ill feelings start, only start, to dissipate. They never disappear entirely.
Thus, if I can be admitted to practice locally, I’ll always fill out the paperwork and pay the fee in an attempt to avoid the local prejudice. Sometimes this works, but more often than not, it doesn’t. The Clerk’s office in Detroit would admit me to practice for a ten dollar bill and I would get a pretty engraved certificate that I could put up on the wall in my office, the one with the picture of the red jeep I brought from Panama, the one with the DoT safety exemption, though they did make me get rid of the split rim tires.
When I returned to Miami, I put the beautiful new certificate of my eligibility to practice law before the judges of the Eastern District of Michigan in a glass frame and hung the frame on the wall. Were most of my clients not already in jail, they surely would have been impressed by this official document. Every now and then I would clean the dust off the glass if the accumulation made it hard to read.
The Broken Frame
The criminal justice system is a process. Arrests are the intake, then the poor accused journey through the federal system until they are convicted and sent to federal prison. The system waits for no one. A client, arrested in Detroit on another case, asked me to represent him. I prepared a document of representation, called a “Notice of Appearance” and sent it by Federal Express to the Detroit courthouse on West Lafayette Boulevard, to the attention of the same Clerk’s office that a few months before had been happy to receive my ten dollars.
A few days later, I received a call from the judge’s clerk. He told me that the judge had prepared an Order and wanted it read to me personally, so that I could not claim that I had not received it. The Order said, “This Cause having come before the Court sua sponte (that is, at its own initiative) in the matter of Michael O’Kane’s filing of a Notice of Appearance in this matter, a rule to show cause is hereby issued why he should not be held in contempt of court for attempting to file a Notice of Appearance while not a member of the bar of this court, *a full inquiry into the books and records of the Office of Clerk of Court having been conducted which show that he has never been admitted to practice in this court. Done and ordered in chambers, in Detroit, Michigan, this 10th day of September, 19XX.”
I tried to tell the judge’s clerk that I was admitted but he cut me off. “There’s not point in arguing,” he said, “you will have” to make a formal application to the court. Federal judges can put you in jail and in a criminal case–which this technically was–they can send the Marshals to pick you up anywhere in the country, even in Guam. I imagined the 30 hour bus ride to Michigan, sitting with shackles around my ankles behind an iron grate behind the driver and two men with shotguns. Prosecutors call this “diesel therapy.” I had made no more enemies in Detroit than I had in other new cities, so I had no illusions: the judge would be happy to send me to jail as a warning to others.
What stood between me and stint in federal prison–there’s one near the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor–was a pretty certificate behind a glass frame on the wall. I had no other proof.
The Burden of Proof
The certificate eventually came out from behind the glass only partially defaced, because a corner had fused to the glass. The solution was to break the glass, like you might do to get an axe in case of a fire. I have always wondered what you would do with an axe, standing in the middle of a burning building. Start vandalizing burning walls? What good would that do? What good is an axe against metal doors, anyway? But break the glass I did, in an effort to put out this judicial fire. I had to make a photocopy of the certificate; bits of glass reflected the light while on the glass platen giving the effect of glitter. I tried to send a fax to the clerk’s office but they informed me they did not take faxes from out-of-state attorneys. I explained that I was a locally-admitted attorney who was out of state and they simply repeated that out of state attorneys were not allowed to send faxes. They did offer the helpful suggestion that I call the judge’s chambers; but the helpful suggestion turned out to be less than useful when I reached an answering machine.
I thought that all I needed to do was send a copy of the certificate to the judge, but I was not to get off so easy. The clerk might misfile the certificate or not know what to do with it. After all, the Office of the Clerk had already reported, after thorough search no less, that the pretty certificate did not exist. Given that there was an official finding that the certificate did not exist, the fact that I held it in my hand was irrelevant. The judicial finding controls.
Pleading
To file the a copy of the certificate, with its glitter and all, I had to prepare a pleading describing what had happened. As I didn’t know what happened except that the certificate in my hand was deemed not to exist, I had to argue that it did exist after all. But I had to do so in a polite way, apologize for any inconvenience that I had caused the court and opposing counsel–the fact that I had made no mistake did not excuse me from the need for an apology for the lack of an apology would weigh heavily on appeal given the presumption of correctness of a lower court’s findings, especially after thorough inquiry. I made five copies, included a self-addressed stamped envelope to receive a stamped copy of the pleading and went to the Federal Express office at the kiosque on 27th Avenue and US 1, just across the street from the Shell gas station.
We Don’t Make Mistakes
Officially, I never heard the end of it. There was no ruling from the judge finding that the pretty certificate in fact existed, no order quashing the rule to show cause. I wasn’t satisfied. I asked a friend to visit the Clerk’s office on my behalf in an effort to try to figure out what had happened. A few days later, he called. “It’s the apostrophe in your name,” he said. They alphabetized it as if it were a letter, so that O’K comes before OK. But the clerk that searched went right to the K’s and didn’t look at the apostrophes. Your name didn’t come up, so they told the judge who had asked if a certain Miami lawyer was admitted. They couldn’t admit their mistake because if they did; then every time the Clerk’s office made thorough inquiry lawyers could claim that a mistake had been made, “just like in the O’Kane apostrophe case.” So the best course was to say nothing more, do nothing more and hope that the matter would be forgotten. Yes, I was out of pocket the cost of Fedex and long distance calls and I had spent a worried afternoon drafting the pleading, but so what? I should be happy I wasn’t dragged to Michigan by the U.S. Marshal and forced to sit shackled behind the two marshals with shotguns. There was no order, so there was nothing to appeal. And no, I shouldn’t expect an apology. “We don’t make mistakes.“
Aug 25, 2021
“Is Ivermectin safe?
When used for the current indications, at the currently approved doses, Ivermectin is a very safe drug. To date, more than three billion treatments have been distributed in the context of the Mectizan Donation Program alone with an excellent safety profile. Most adverse reactions are mild, transitory and associated with parasite death rather than with the drug itself.
Does ivermectin have anti-viral properties?
Yes. Ivermectin has been proven to inhibit the replication of several RNA viruses such as:
Dengue—Zika—Yellow fever—West Nile—Chikungunya—Venezuelan equine encephalitis—Semliki Forest virus—Sindbis virus—Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus , and recently SARS-CoV-2.
Unfortunately, ‘there is very limited evidence about the safety of ivermectin at higher doses.’ ” Read more: https://www.isglobal.org/en/healthisglobal/-/custom-blog-portlet/questions-and-answers-about-ivermectin-and-covid-19/2877257/0
According to the National Institutes of Health, “it is generally acknowledged that praziquantel is highly effective and safe with no serious adverse reactions.” Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780935/
In the US, Ivermectin is not available except by prescription and doctors are generally prohibited from or reluctant to write prescriptions for the medicine. Anyone can bypass the system by buying veterinary formulations. The above Ivermectin product is popular among horsemen in Texas and has been used by many Covid-19 patients. The dosages are low compared to the study reported on the Isglobal website, but the presence of praziquantel is a wild card, though it too has been found to be safe. I do not know if there is a veterinary formulation that only consists of Ivermectin.
Note that the FDA’s warnings relate to “Ivermectin *products*” and not Ivermectin itself. Ivermectin itself at prescribed dosages is very safe in humans.
With Fauci having lost credibility and vaccines politicized, it is unfortunate that there are no trustworthy organizations which can provide timely advice on treatment. Physicians argue among themselves and laymen have no way to judge beyond a guess.
Aug 22, 2021
As it turns out, university tuition is tax-deductible for seniors who return to school to obtain additional credentials which will make them more marketable despite their advanced age. Let’s not kid ourselves: there’s no way you are going to find a job at age 70, but that shouldn’t stop you from lifelong, tax-advantaged learning. This is yet another vote in favor of the “School for Seniors” plan.
Consider the Dutch city of Groningen, a university town voted the most livable city center in Europe. English is widely spoken in Holland. Tuition is cheap. Marijuana is legal and available to soothe the aches and pains of old age.
In Ireland there is a ballyhoo over plans to build student housing, which at €1000/month is considered too expensive. Several operators are already in business and have had difficulty finding tenants. I don’t know if you’ve checked Dublin real estate prices lately, but a thousand per month rental is a steal. Americans will have only minor language difficulties in Ireland. The locals speak English and even Americans can make themselves understood.
Sign me up. Sure beats Century City.
Aug 22, 2021
The US Department of Transportation has extended the federal mask mandate to January, 2022, requiring passengers to wear masks aboard civilian aircraft and so insuring that American bad behavior will be on display for all throughout the holiday season.
Aug 21, 2021
The trial of R. Kelly on federal racketeering charges is being held on a semi-virtual basis: the jurors are not in the courtroom. Supposedly this is for health reasons; but if everyone else is in the courtroom safely, what is the justification for the novel approach of excluding the jury?
For the past thousand years, common law criminal trials took place “in the presence of the jury,” a requirement that was mandatory, the language almost incantantory, ritualistic and somewhat supernatural in nature.
The ability of the jury to observe and make credibility determinations was based, in part, on that language and that ritual. Removing the requirement without statutory–perhaps Constitutional authority—in the interests of expediency is a denial of due process. The Constitution mandates a “trial by jury,” not a television show of a trial.
Nevertheless, R. Kelly will be convicted and this precise point will be raised on appeal. The appeal will be rejected because “pandemic, you know” and “R.Kelly’’s a bad guy, you know.” The precedent will be used to open the path to simultaneous, mass trials, another consequence of the Sickness, and one that will not go away even if a cheap, effective cure is found.
Jul 28, 2021
I’ll go out on a limb and say that much of the civil strife in the United States is between Republicans and those who do not identify themselves as such. Since all you can really do is moan and complain about those who do not agree with you, the only way to publicly express your affiliation (other than wearing a MAGA hat and sporting an AR-15) is to wear, or not wear, a mask.
At the beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci complicated matters by proclaiming that masks were not required. He later said that he was not truthful—no one likes the word lie—because he was afraid that supplies for medical personnel would run out. I have a different view—he said that they were not required because that is the message the Trump White House wanted to get out. Fauci knew that if he did not go along, he would lose his job. As an experienced bureaucratic in-fighter, Fauci knew how to play along.
As people realized not to take medical advice from someone whose last science course was high school biology, even though he held the nation’s highest office, Fauci backed away from his original dissembling and now advocated mask use, even going so far as to appear before Congress wearing two masks. Presumably the supply chain issues had all been resolved to the point that were the entire nation to double its mask usage, there would be enough to go around.
Those who stand with Trump, at least prior to falling to the illness, display their maskless faces as a sign of political will. The CDC conveniently flip-flopped, announcing that wearing masks was basically optional, though there are occasions when you should mask. Once Biden was installed as commander in chief, the military issued guidance that masks were not necessary. Not even Trump had dared to give such an order.
Elbowing your airplane seat mate in the ribs, not as a conversation starter but as a prelude to demanding mask donning became widespread, to the point that even the FAA realizes that this situation is out of control. The Red vs. Blue battlefield is on either side of the airplane aisle, where true believers duke it out with the socialist enemies of the Constitution.
The Delta variant is grounds for masking. The socialist enemies of the Constitution—so called—claim that the rise in the number of cases is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and beseech everyone to get the jab.
The virus ignores all of this political blather, obeying laws that are not fully understood. The only way to conquer the Sickness is by joint action. Personal choice has no place here. This is not about politics. Sickness and Death do not care about politics.