So? How bad?
And how come nobody is giving me an update when I’m on bedtime duty and can’t follow.
I had a dream tonight that I was sitting at a table outside and trying to persuade young people who were passing by to vote for Bernie.
Also, completely off the topic of the election and the coronavirus. Is anybody else out there feeling that year 2020 is beating them up like a motherfucker?
I’ve seen a bunch of total idiots complete dumbasses blethering fools not extremely well-informed people say on Twitter that “Russia has no coronavirus because it has strong borders.” First of all, Russia officially has 168 cases as of this morning. And that’s with almost no testing even in Moscow, let alone in the areas with overwhelmingly Chinese population.
As for the “strong border,” folks, it’s ok to be stupid but you can’t be that stupid. Russian nationalists detest Putin because he’s a globalist. He’s refusing to institute even the most perfunctory visa regime with the former Soviet republics to the East. Putin imports large numbers of completely unassimilatable manual workers from those republics who drive down labor costs, create sky-high crime rates, and expose Russian women to extremely high rates of sexual assault.
In terms of the Russian border with China, it’s not only open. It’s fluid. This means that there are many areas where nobody is entirely sure if Russia or China is in control. There are many people who make their living by crossing into China and back daily.
It’s kind of shameful to be this ignorant and still try to opine. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to chew more and speak less.
People are saying (because they don’t have any bigger worries right now) that I’m too hard on Putin. But it’s not all bad! He’s found a very inventive way of dealing both with the economic crisis and with the coronavirus.
In a month, Russians are invited to the polls to vote on whether they agree to discount Putin’s previous five hundred presidential terms and let him stay in power until 2036.
Most people who vote in Russia are elderly. They’ll head to the polls, get sick, die, and the Russian economy will get a great relief from having to pay retirement benefits.
If that’s not brilliant, I don’t know what is.
Mnuchin is proposing to send cash directly to people to help during the coronavirus outbreak.
I’ve resisted saying this for years but Mnuchin is a genius. He’s been a real badass on the economy.
It’s two days into the university moving operations online and I’m already discovering how much of academic life is dedicated to meaningless meetings and activities. And I’m one of the few academics who has ironclad resistance to busywork in normal times.
I normally hate Twitter but it’s proven great for getting information on the coronavirus. I read it every day now, only coronavirus posts, and I never comment because I’ve got nothing of value to say on the subject.
In about a month of doing that and not looking for any information other than on the WuFlu, I came across 5 people who have been destroyed by the cancel culture: a graduate student, a feminist, a scientist, a writer, and a lesbian activist. All of them are quite left-wing. Each story is more egregious than the other.
Mind you, I’m not looking for these stories. Somebody I’m following on coronavirus would make a comment on their threads, and I’d catch a glimpse of it.
If you think it can’t happen to you, you are dumber than my acquaintances who are vacationing in a corona epicenter.
I’m kind of stunned right now. Some people I know here in town – two couples in their mid-thirties with kids – left on a Florida vacation yesterday. They will be joined by two more local couples on Thursday. I googled the place they are staying. It already has some coronavirus cases.
Then these folks will come back to our town. Which hasn’t had any cases yet.
These are not rubes from Rubesville. These are VERY educated people. Not academics. People with really great careers. Super progressive, driving me nuts with wokey talk.
Then another acquaintance – again, a mega educated person in HEALTH SCIENCES – told me yesterday that everything I’m reading about quarantines in Italy and Spain is a hoax. This is somebody who is a few years younger than me, extremely cosmopolitan, etc.
Unbelievable.
