Day: April 27, 2020

People here in Southern Illinois are suing Governor Pritzker for extending his stay-at-home order that’s based entirely on the situation in Chicago (or, rather, what the situation in Chicago was weeks ago) and is destroying the downstate economy where we have very low COVID numbers.

Pritzker responded by saying counties with the highest per capita numbers of deaths are located right here in Southern Illinois, and he’s trying to protect us from dying.

The counties he named have 2 and 10 deaths respectively. All but two of them in nursing homes.

He didn’t lie because per capita the numbers are, indeed, higher than other extremely low numbers we have state-wide. (We have 50 deaths per day for the whole state). But the half-truth is obviously extremely manipulative.

And here’s the kicker. I know people who are college professors who didn’t even think about checking what he said. They are now bleating all over social media that the situation in Southern Illinois is dire and we are all about to diiiiiiiieeeeee.

I guess the biggest revelation to me in this whole thing was how blindly Americans trust the authorities. I’m from the USSR, so for me there’s no such thing as trusting a politician. If a politician says “good morning,” I’ll triple check to see if it’s actually morning and will conclude that the darn bastard us lying anyway.

Cautionary tale for all those jails/prisons that are reporting low (or no) #COVID cases w/out actually testing. This NC prison just tested all 700 people incarcerated. 444 of them tested positive. 90% had no symptoms. COVID is ravaging the incarcerated.

https://t.co/TpTgbkx4P6

People don’t even notice how ridiculous they sound any more.

Doctors are getting fired, and patients aren’t getting treated or diagnosed:

In a usual April, we would normally see around 30,000 people diagnosed with cancer. I would be surprised if that number reaches 5,000 this month.

Coronavirus will steal the headlines, but cancer kills 450 people a day in the UK – there is no peak and the numbers aren’t coming down. Unless we act urgently, that number will rise. A group of oncologists, including myself, estimate that 60,000 cancer patients could die because of a lack of treatment or diagnosis.

People with other illnesses are in the same situation. I know somebody who is a physical therapist who got fired last week because there are no patients. People are afraid to go to the hospital to get physical therapy because they were led to believe that hospitals are filled with coronavirus patients. That’s not true but everybody believes the fantasy scenarios from early March and all these lies about people buried in mass graves in New York.

Of course, physical therapy is not the same as cancer but if you need it and don’t get it, your quality of life is down the drain.

This novel, which is a debut by a New York Times Magazine journalist, is the perfect quarantine read. It’s so incredibly clueless, the characters are so contemptible, their problems are so ridiculous, and the author is so elitist that the whole thing ends up being a lot of fun.

Fleishman Is in Trouble is a midlife crisis novel, which already tells you that it’s going to be stupid. The characters are New Yorkers of the kind that think a yearly salary of $285,000 means a person is a total loser. The protagonist is called Toby Fleishman, and he’s the loser with the tiny $285,000 salary. As part of his midlife crisis, he gets divorced from his wife Rachel. Rachel is a victim of patriarchy that prevents her from living up to her potential and making good money. That’s why she only makes 15 (as in fifteen) times more than Toby. Which is a pittance, obviously.

The extreme suffering Rachel experiences as a woman of such a limited income living in the midst of the evilest of patriarchies is described with such earnestness one begins to suspect Brodesser-Akner was wearing her pink pussy hat while writing.

Nobody in the novel ever comes across any normal people and experiences any normal problems. This is something to be grateful for because it’s become fashionable among today’s authors to include in their novels an encounter between their ultra-sensitive patriarchy-fighting characters and evil, disgusting, flyover plebs that wounds their already strained sensibilities with its lack of appreciation for the protagonists’ suffering in the clutches of patriarchy.

If you think, however, that Toby and Rachel are the worst this novel has to offer, you’ll be mistaken. There’s also the narrator, Libby. Her entitlement and snowflakery are such that the rest of the characters look downright sweet and homey in comparison. And guess what? She’s also a victim of patriarchy.

There is no trace of irony in the treatment of these characters. This is not a parody of the elitist rich people. It’s all completely serious, and that won’t surprise you if you read The NYTimes Magazine.

The novel got nominated for a feminist award because, obviously, feminism is all about rich snowflakes and their bouts of pouting. It’s also being turned into a TV series.

The only thing that bothers me about this whole thing is that all of the characters are Jewish, and we* don’t need any more stereotyping as rich, obnoxious elitists than we already get.

Other than that, the novel is extremely enjoyable in its utter stupidity.

*I’m Jewish on my father’s side.

As of now, there are 4 healthcare workers I personally know who have been fired from the large local hospital because of coronavirus.

All of these bullshit memes about how healthcare workers are our heroes and support healthcare workers are such a lie. There’s talk of the local hospital not being able to survive several months with no patients.

In his daily press conference on Sunday, April 26, Pritzker was asked about the possibility of individuals beginning to not follow guidelines under the stay at home order.

Pritzker said his office has discouraged police from charging those in violation of the order with a crime.

“If they refuse and if they repeatedly refuse, there is the ability by the police officers to charge them with reckless conduct and take them into custody,” Pritzker said. “Though again, we have discouraged police from doing that because we believe that people will, in general, follow the rules.”

And you have no idea how many subservient idiots here in Illinois are praising him as the best governor ever.