(Links for items mentioned in this post are at the end of it.)
Are you taking over
or are you taking orders?
Are you going backwards
Or are you going forwards?
- The Clash, “White Riot”1
Joe Biden says the pandemic is over, which should relieve the anxieties of health care workers and retail employees and epidemiologists who were unaware of the glad news, not to mention the medically shredded. He’d a done well, we think, to inform his science and health care advisers before informing the general public, but he’s never been one to hold his tongue.
Biden’s comment that the pandemic is over came as a surprise to administration officials, according to two senior health officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.2
He might ought to have told the disease too, as it seems intent on killing more than 250,000 people this year in the U.S. alone, in its dotage.3
And of course some unknown but significant number of people will have acquired one or more sets of symptoms identified with long Covid. We’re repeating ourselves here, but this Lancet post-mortem on mistakes countries have made, and keep making, in dealing with the disease is worth at least a skim. Here’s their summary of long Covid symptoms.4
Reported symptoms of long COVID include fatigue, cough, chest tightness, chest pain, shortness of breath, sore throat, abnormalities of taste and smell, palpitations, myalgia, joint pain, numbness or tingling, skin rashes, hair loss, diarrhoea, urological problems, headache, neurocognitive issues including altered memory and concentration, cognitive blunting (known as brain fog), insomnia, impaired balance and gait, and mental health problems such as anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depressive symptoms, and these symptoms can be continuous or relapsing and remitting in nature. People with long COVID often report impaired quality of life and issues with education and employment. The social and financial effects of COVID-19 also contribute to the issues surrounding long COVID, including mental ill health.
We’re long past the point where responsibility for whatever happens with Covid going forward devolved to the administration, and now explicitly to Biden. And the most vulnerable populations are, as usual, people without power in our society—the people Democrats are said to represent, in the myths, whom Steven Thrasher (proud to call him a friend) describes as the viral underclass.5
And oh, yeah: Biden has committed us to war with China in the event they invade Taiwan during his tenure. That couldn’t help but end well, could it?6
Here’s a story about Biden and U.S. Taiwan policy from July 28.7
The White House says Biden assured Xi on Thursday that U.S. policy on Taiwan hasn't changed. For decades, the U.S. has officially maintained "strategic ambiguity" about Taiwan's independence, keeping up a friendly relationship with the island, without formal diplomatic relations.
"On Taiwan, President Biden underscored that the United States policy has not changed and that the United States strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," the official U.S. readout of Thursday's call said.
“Strategic ambiguity” seems to have gone the way of the pandemic.
This isn’t at all what was meant for today’s topics. We were to explain that failure to escape the earth is fine so long as you do something interesting on the way down.
The fellow in the photos, in the wifebeater and suspenders and the 1950’s slick haircut, was the class of the Venice Beach skate park at that time. In the top photo you see him flying successfully from one bowl to the adjoining one, which doesn’t seem and didn’t look theoretically possible.
We also have a picture from a bit earlier of him not doing it, but he was still weightless and not at all glum.
The Allegory of the Skate Park, it would have been. Another day, perhaps.
(Musical contributors to this post include Gangstagrass, “No Time For Enemies;” The Clash, “The Clash';” Armik, “Esta Guitarra;” Godspeed You! Black Emperor, “G_od’s Pee At State’s End!;” and Ten Fé, “Future Perfect, Present Tense.”)
Lyrics from The Clash, “White Riot”
Covid statistics aggregated by Google News
A Washington Post review of Steven Thrasher’s “The Viral Underclass.”
A Vanity Fair story about China Hawk Joe.