Archives for category: corona virus

Ruminating Darkly

September 9, 2020 //
11

One of the things I’ve wondered about is the big picture regarding Covid-19. Somewhere out there, people are calculating the “savings.” But I’ve seen nothing of it in the press. It must have occurred to others that the target population for Covid mortality is largely the Social Security crowd. Retirees. I ran some numbers–it’s easy. You can do it in just a couple of minutes.

Assuming that we’re probably at 200,000 deaths now (the official numbers are a bit lower, but there’s a nodding acceptance that we’re not including all the Covid deaths.) Figure about three quarters of them are seniors…with complications and co-morbidities. Those folks are collecting Social Security and they’re on Medicare.

If they average $1,000 per month in SS benefits (again, I’m picking a lower number, intentionally), then it’s 150,000 times $1,000, times 12 (for an annual number.) Do the math. It’s staggering. That number doesn’t address the savings in Medicare (which must be amortised to first cover the averaged $46,000 expense per Covid case.) And that’s for immediate deaths, so far. Estimates on senior Covid fatalities indicate that, on average, they’d have lived another 9 years, but for the pandemic.

Experts are saying our mortality numbers could easily double if we don’t take social distancing and hygeine protection (masks and hand-washing) seriously. Honestly, I don’t see evidence that the general population is taking adequate precautions. Many others will survive the actual illness, but ultimately die earlier, because of the damage done to lungs and hearts. One wonders if the government has dragged it’s feet, not out of incompetence (though there’s plenty enough of that) but leveraging the savings and relief from the burdens of supporting an aging population.

I’m not a conspiracy kind of gal, but I read a lot about Covid-19, and I am curious that no publication has noted the potential budget-balancing “upside” of the pandemic. Not one. Is this the Social Security solution?

What’s up with that?

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Categories Aging, corona virus, Covid-19, failure, governance, Health Care, Politics, public policy, Uncategorized

Who gets it

March 21, 2020 //
6

We’ve been practicing social isolation, but that is a lot like our rural lives in any event. As we watch from the sidelines, it is increasingly frustrating to observe behaviors that endanger us all. And I’m not talking about the idiots who insist that it’s all a hoax and refuse to adjust to new conditions. After all, those idiots got their information from other idiots–idiots in power.

Yes, it’s the idiots in power that have me frustrated. Folks who were told this would be bad–and instead of preparing, instead of educating the populace, they denied it all, and called it a hoax, blamed others and, in some particularly despicable cases, kept it all hush while they dumped their stocks on the market. Yes, while they should have been making preparations, some were making profits. (Worse yet, some actually invested in sectors that would be benefit from the tragedy.)

This virus is the gift of globalism. Brought to us in America by wealthy tourists and business travelers. In a more perfect world, we’d have been diligent. We’d have been ready to treat the afflicted before this got into the general population. Part of the surprise is in who gets it. Most epidemics are bottom up. They fester in the undernourished, the poor and those forced into crowded conditions. But corona virus is well-named–the crown. It came to us on the heels of international travel, not exactly the bailiwick of the unwashed masses. And those who’ll suffer the most are older people, with a particular emphasis on men. Go figure. You’d think that, with odds like those, the folks in power would sit up and take notice. In this country, this viral infection is the ultimate (and perhaps the only) ‘trickle down.’ Over time, we’ll all be exposed. But wealth may well determine who gets the testing, the ICU beds, and the ventilators.

Don’t get me wrong. In the end, we’ll all pay for it, in suffering and deaths and taxes. Even as we should be focusing on solutions, our government is proposing bail-outs to big business. Not that we don’t need to cushion the blows to the economy, we do. But once again, it’s about who gets it. Who reaps the rewards of the pandemic. While the true victims pay with their lives, the folks in power are parceling out the benefits to their friends and patrons. Believe me, I get it.

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Categories challenge, corona virus, governance, Health and Medicine, Health Care, Politics, trickle down, Uncategorized

Roll Call

March 14, 2020 //
10

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I woke up early, just in time to hear the start of the gunfire. While that sounds alarming, it’s not that unusual–we live about a half mile from a local gun range. What is disconcerting, but oddly normal, is how every adverse news event these days triggers a serious uptick in the use at the gun range.

A stock market drop can do it. Any one of our flavor-of-the-week mass shootings will do it. Political instability can do it. So you just know that the threat of corona virus has them all out blasting away at the range. After all, they may need that firepower if they run low on toilet paper.

I went grocery shopping two days ago. This was not some desperate, Mad Max, dash for supplies; it was my regular grocery day. I’d heard the toilet paper stories–with some mirth. But things were not so light-hearted at Costco. They had employees guarding the bathroom tissue, to ensure that the one-to-a-customer rule was enforced. Sheesh!

But what was of real concern was that it is clear that people are hoarding food. There were no bananas, no organic lettuce, no ground beef (regular or organic), no organic chicken and only a smattering of regular chicken. I actually found a package of organic chicken drumsticks, mixed in a section of chicken wings. I was holding it, looking for more, when a woman next to me tersely demanded to know where I’d found it. She looked tense, and her eyes were locked on my find.

I did find one package of “utility chicken”–cheap cuts that we buy to supplement the kittens’ food. I added that to my cart. In the canned goods department, people were filling their carts. It’s all a little disconcerting. When I got home, the utility chicken was not in with my groceries, nor on my receipt. Apparently somebody lifted it from my cart as I shopped. Sheesh. I spent far less than intended–but it’s a false savings, as it will require a second trip.

Yesterday they closed the schools and public facilities. We’ve had to cancel, or maybe postpone, our Beginning Beekeeping Class. I’m sad about that, but believe that caution is the best plan in these things. If most of us stay home for a bit, hopefully we can knock down this viral head of steam enough to preserve medical resources for those who’ll need them. It’s called flattening the curve. It’s not alarming, it’s just good sense.

But in the meantime, I wish those fools would lay off on the target practice. In the context of the rest of this, it is a bit unnerving.

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Categories challenge, corona virus, Politics, shopping, Uncategorized