• The #coronavirus will last longer, cost more & kill millions more people worldwide.
• @FoxNews's #disinformation efforts have proven to be more effective at misleading people than our government has been at leading them.
• Unchecked #misinformation and #socialmedia have been integral to developing the failed rhetoric on the vaccination effort.
• Media companies like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times publish anti-worker OPINION articles.
• These opinion articles spend entire pages indicating how much better the nation will be economically as people return UNSAFELY to the workforce.
• No one seems capable of determining what safe ultimately looks like.
• No one in government wants to assume responsibility for protecting workers.
• The underlying reason for both of these is the effort to make people safe during a pandemic is NOT easy or profitable.
• Our government won't admit the price of returning to work is the sacrifice of #EssentialWorkers."
• Equally devastating the loss of medically-trained professions who are dying on the job.
• 115,000+ medical workers have already died worldwide.
• THIS WILL CONTINUE.
• Meanwhile, the #DeltaVariant continues to conquer the world, unchecked, trailed by Lambda and other Variants of Concern.
• Increasing fears as #breakthrough infections, which were expected, make the issues of safety more significant and the return to work, questionable.
• Worse, with hundreds of millions of infections around the world, the chance of more #lethal#variants increases daily.
• But governments attempt to sooth fears with: "Breakthroughs happen. But there is nothing to worry about. You will get sick, but you won't die."
• Children, thought immune are now succumbing to the variants, making conversations about the interwoven nature of school, childcare, & work more difficult to navigate.
• In the wings, the time-bomb of ending moratoriums, unemployment support and social programs draws near.
• We refuse to acknowledge the #virus deniers in our government, both in office and out.
• We refuse to acknowledge the true numbers of dead in our prisons, our old folks homes and in the population in general.
• This masking keeps #tourism growing despite the pandemic.
• What will happen to the tens of millions relying on those moratoriums & programs in the United States?
• There will be an explosion of homelessness as landlords and eviction courts further disenfranchise people who are not working with a year or more of back rent.
• Finally, we are loathe to admit this undeniable truth: WE DON'T KNOW SHIT.
• Eighteen months later, and four million souls later, we are frustrated to admit that we are STILL learning and every pronouncement of success is met with a more terrifying update a few days later.
• Science and technology has made great strides providing us with vaccines capable of making us safer.
• But the failure has not been science. It has been a social failure. It is the existence of greed, selfishness and cruelty which expanded this epic disaster.
• Around the world, the virus moves almost unchecked in India, South America, Indochina and Africa.
• Billions worldwide have nothing to depend upon except overwhelmed governments unable to arrest the virus due to a lack of available vaccine.
• New variants are inevitable.
• But go on back to your picnics, your barbecues, your sports outings and vacations.
• You will be wearing a mask for the foreseeable future.
• If we're really unlucky, a new Variant more dangerous than the previous is just around the corner.
• A new #variant so deadly, it'll make us long for the good old days when the SARS-CoV-2 betacoronavirus was novel and could have been stopped by an effective government that gave a damn about its people.
ULTIMATELY:
• Maintain your mental health.
• Physically distance & keep washing your hands.
• Good habits may save your life.
• Stay informed.
• Wear a #mask until the #WORLD is vaccinated.
By the time we understood, they drank us, a thousand lives a month, nonstop; by the time they achieved perfection at their apotheosis, we died in the millions.
The recombinations continued. New keys into newer locks.
(Art by Nathan Wyburn)
We could do nothing but watch. We had the knowledge. The Apple had given us everything. What we lacked was time.
We weren't ready.
We had been warned. We ignored the legends, the visceral loathing built into our very genome. We feared them, intuitively.
Everywhere I look, I see #companies complaining about a lack of #workers.
Their solution: Blame the workers because they don't want to rush back into the #workforce.
Can't say I blame them, since technically, the workforce threw them to the wolves at the start of the pandemic.
Didn't whole industries (let go, furlough, lay off, or outright fire) their staff at the start of the pandemic if they couldn't do their work remotely?
Didn't they let them go without any concern with how they were going to pay their bills, maintain their healthcare & the like?
Companies just said: "Bye, Felicia," like it we were breaking up at summer camp, not entering a worldwide pandemic which we were not ready to navigate, lied to by our government, and lacking a dedicated healthcare system, ill-prepared to weather.
The thing killing them is initially what made them rich in the first place: Work for hire.
Creative independents who own their properties will be the force which will put them in the ground.
Before this flame-war begins know I don't make this pronouncement lightly. I say this with a heavy heart. I LOVE COMICS. They helped me save my son and may have saved my life once or twice as well.
I am the Answer-Man and I must voice my displeasure with Disney's decision to NOT recast the Black Panther after Chadwick Boseman's untimely death.
The explanation was: 'No one could replace Chadwick in the role.'
And no one will. Instead, let a new actor step into the role.
As someone who has spent the bulk of his life enjoying different interpretations of my favorite heroes in the hands of different writers and different actors over decades, I don't see this as ANY different than any other recasting.
Why can the legendary heroes of #Batman and #Superman be recast again and again, both in face and in voice, and no one says: "This depiction of the character buries him for anyone else to consider playing. We just don't see any future for this iconic character."
In the beginning was the Seed. Cast into space by the Last Ones, they knew their time was at an end. The world broken, ravaged, the people dying, they saw the cataclysm would be the end of all things.
They created the Seed, filled with the potential of a cross-realm Index.
Launched into space, the Last Ones sent it into the heart of the cataclysm, the rain of asteroids upon the world and in its birth throes, it created gravity and dragged the raining death toward itself.
Each asteroid added to the Seed, making it larger and more massive.
Soon, the storm of asteroid slowed. The Seed sat above its homeworld, now almost dead, it began to transform. And it took Root. The size of a moon, the Seed sprouted and its hidden cargo, placed as coded instructions, began to evolve.
As intriguing as this article appears, it does a disservice to claim California is uniquely affected by climate change. I dare say every state in the nation suffers from the same root ailments as California in regards to the topic of climate change. You just have to look closer.
California's primary challenge is based on infrastructure failures brought about by insufficient spending due to insufficient taxation. This is not a uniquely California problem. Given that every state has its own challenges environmentally speaking, everyone is on thin ice.