I don’t feel like most of us have accepted how bad this is going to make life, nor how many lives it will end. The vaccines are working well at individual protection—but the scale of direct harm & collateral damage of what’s coming is almost as unfathomable as it was preventable.
Vaccines work best at a population level by making them encounter viruses so infrequently, they have fewer chances to breakthrough.
What we have is runaway community spread — like pointing a fire hose at someone wearing a water resistant jacket & expecting them to stay dry.
The good news, such as it is, is that the percent of cases leading to overall hospitalizations and death is much lower than it would have been pre-vaccine; the bad news is that sheer volume is SO MUCH HIGHER than it ever was pre-vaccine—and it's still rising.
The rate of cases was always going to go up whenever we began coming together indoors more. But, with better ventilation + govt supplied tests & masks + TARGETED, PAID stay-at-home stints as needed, we could have kept the virus level at manageable, then declining, levels.
If THIS CHART existed under Trump, it would only graphic you saw on MSNBC.
I doubt we will hear Symone Sanders blaming...herself for creating the conditions that led to this
So many people, me included, feel beaten down and depressed. This is bc as we start year 3, we are yet again tasked w the impossible: Carry out difficult, alienating, individual tasks which are doomed to never be enough bc they require a state response that isn’t happening.
So many people feel ashamed to be depressed, like they’re a failure bc they struggle to teach online or they feel privilege guilt for mourning a 3rd birthday w/o their friends.
It’s not you. There’s little any of us can do. It’s the system. And it is ok to feel broken by it.
A friend asked me how to help donate better masks. And it’s not something we can really do beyond a bit of harm reduction. The state needs to produce and distribute masks and tests. It won’t do it, so unless we can force it to, any “charity” will be crumbs. There aren’t enough
1. Extremely proud of our journalism students at Northwestern, and the courage they have to fearlessly report on an institution which has so much power over the grades, housing, food, medical career and futures
SCOOP: Today on MSNBC, Symone Sanders interviews her former boss, VP Kamala Harris, abt the Democrats' plan to win the midterms by doing—nothing!
SCOOP: Today on Fox, former Trump Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders interviews her former boss, former President Donald Trump!
SCOOP: Today on NBC, Jenna Bush Hager interviews the woman who took over the job last held by her mother—First Lady Michelle Obama! today.com/video/watch-mi…
I will never understand how news media can hire people who were working like YESTERDAY to spin the news media, give them the microphone, then turn around and say "Why doesn't the public trust us?"
Symone Sanders announced her departure from the White House a month ago. It is likely she was negotiating her new job at MSNBC while she was working for the people. How is that ethical? Ppl get angry at workers becoming lobbyists right after leaving govt—how is this better?
Yup. Legislators sell their govt expertise off to the highest bidding corporation after short stints in govt. It is BARELY regulated. But I don't think there is any regulation or oversight of spokes ppl leaving for lucrative talking head gigs at all.
1. Today I was supposed to meet my dear friend, who is an FDNY chaplain, for an outdoor lunch. She had to cancel at the last minute, when she rushed off to a fire.
2. My friend had found me a safe place to live when, in 2018, the radiator in my East Village walk up had exploded, spewing boiling water across ceiling, walls, floors. So much hot water scaled the ceiling before the FDNY arrived, part of the ceiling collapsed.
3. Had I been asleep when that had happened, I'd have been badly scalded or possibly killed.
It happened because may landlord didn't do a safety check before turning on the heat that winter.
My landlord was a well-known repeat offender of a landlord.