Wednesday, June 29, 2022

The long-term consequences of allowing COVID to spread among children

Many years ago I had a friend who died in his early twenties, falling out a window. An autopsy found that he had a previously undetected heart condition and had had a heart attack and fallen. I don't think the CT scan technology that would have shown the defect even existed at the time. In any event, he was a healthy young man and there was no reason to think he might have had a heart defect.

We know that among the possible long-term consequences of covid are lung damage, heart damage, and kidney damage. I wonder how many of those schoolchildren who are infected with covid are going to develop unforeseen lethal or severely disabling conditions in their twenties.

This is, of course, speculation. I think it very likely that many children will grow up and turn out to have long-term consequences of covid, but I don't know that it will actually happen. But neither do the leaders who are allowing the unchecked spread of covid among children.

Prosecute Corrupt Supreme Court Justices

It looks like the Second Taney Court, er, Roberts Court is poised to blow up the administrative state tomorrow. As I wrote eight years ago, “I cannot imagine how the USA can survive with an early 19th-cenutry legal system.” They may not do it. Justice Roberts seems to prefer vast buckets of dull grey paint to the bright lines which conservatives famously advocate, but the more extreme of the Court's reactionaries seem to prefer knives, and they seem to be in the driver's seat.

The character of some of these people is so, so poor that they are actual criminals. So I say, prosecute them. Justice Clarence Thomas's wife Virginia Thomas is allegedly an insurrectionist leader, and allegedly communicated with Justice Thomas during the insurrection. Investigate them for seditious conspiracy and, if there is a case, as I believe there is, prosecute them. Justice Brett Kavanaugh is an alleged rapist. Investigate him properly and, if there is a case, prosecute him.

Lock 'em up!

Monday, June 6, 2022

On Electing Fascists

I think what the election of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and all tells us is that pretty much anyone without a conscience and a large media presence can now win elections as a fascist.

Tweet To a Sanders Hater

You don't like Sanders, sure, I get it. But part of politics is making deals with people you don't like. So stop dissing the man and his supporters and deal. You've got a better chance of getting their votes than the white suburbanites the Democrats are still courting. – tweet.

The coming overturning of Roe v Wade may shift some suburban white women, but I am not counting on it. So far, suburban white women have shown an extraordinary willingness to vote for people who hate them.

Tweets on Covid

The US health care system has returned to its pre-covid state, showing its utter incompetence at dealing with public health problems. – tweet

If covid damages your lungs, your heart, your kidneys, what-have-you - these things are not coming back. Some long covid will never be treatable short of transplants. – tweet

China has made a serious effort to control covid. For at least the next half-century, China's population will be healthier than that of any western nation. – tweet