Tag: Donald Trump

Pandemic Diary: October 4th, 2020

I have been spending this weekend working on various projects for my full-time paying job as an academic librarian for my university library system, and doing the dishes and the laundry in my apartment (I have a kitchen counter piled high with unwashed dishes, even though I have a dishwasher). I barely leave the apartment, usually only to throw out the trash and to go for brief walks in the sunshine to top up my Vitamin D.

To give you an idea of how infrequently I have been leaving my apartment, I filled up the gas tank on my car on March 15th, 2020—and it lasted me a whole six and half months! I have been taking out my car, on average, less than once per week. I never even took off the winter tires this year!

In my off hours, I have been binge-watching various TV shows and movies on Netflix and on Apple TV+ (I got a free one-year subscription to the latter when I purchased my iPhone 7 last year).

I just finished watching season one of For All Mankind, an alternate-history TV series on Apple TV+ that examines what would have happened to the space race if the Russians had been first to set foot on the moon, instead of Neil Armstrong. It’s the little details, like Teddy Kennedy becoming president and pardoning Richard Nixon for Watergate, that make it so enjoyable! (In this alternate timeline, the Chappaquiddick scandal never happened, but Teddy does get himself mired in a later sex scandal with Mary Jo Kopechne while president, putting him at risk of losing to Ronald Reagan in the next election.)

For All Mankind: In this alternative timeline, Richard Nixon responds to the Russians putting the first woman on the moon by recruiting the first class of female astronauts

I have also been busy picking up free store credits in Second Life for my small army of alts (more details here and here). Between Addams, Bumblebee, Scandalize, and Seniha, there are L$1,750 in free store credit or gift cards available, which is a goldmine for us freebie fashionistas in Second Life!

The lag at the Scandalize store is just absolutely horrendous, with transactions timing out constantly, and even occasionally locking my avatar account out of the store credit collection panel until a certain number of days have passed. All this hassle makes me wonder why I even bother with this nonsense in the first place, but Second Life is one of those hobbies that helps keep me sane and distracted during the pandemic, so I persevere.

I picked up this beautiful Azahara ballgown for free, using the recent gifts of free store credit at Scandalize (complete styling details here). You can never have too many ballgowns in Second Life! 😉

And I actually got fooled in Second Life, something which happens rarely to me with my almost 14 years of experience in SL. I have an alt named Artist Scientist and when I teleported into the Seniha store sim to get their store credit, I got this message immediately:

{ Greenies } MoneyGrabber: [Redacted Name] stole 80L$ from Artist Scientist

I check my total balance and it’s at L$1. Even worse, I can’t remember if it was higher than that before I teleported in! The episode led to a rather lively discussion thread on the official Second Life community forums, where the culprit turns out to be a harmless prankster’s attachment for sale on the SL Marketplace.

I would flag it, but it appears to be permissible, since it does not actually steal any money; I lost no Linden dollars. Lesson learned! So now you know, if you should encounter it (and a reminder that you will see something like the following strong warning whenever anybody or anything tries to take money from your account outside of an actual sales transaction (see image, right).

And I have still been actively avoiding all social media (except for a few subReddits to follow coronavirus news and the myriad editions of RuPaul’s Drag Race) and the news media. In fact, I only learned that Donald Trump had contracted COVID-19 from a meme somebody posted to the RuPaul’s Drag Race subReddit community! But so far, my strategy appears to be working overall, and I plan to continue with it.

I have heard through the grapevine of many people who have, like me, decided to quit Facebook to avoid the toxic dumpster fire currently taking place there, where misinformation and conspiracy theories are spreading like wildfire. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Stay sane and stay healthy! May you find hobbies and pastimes to help you cope with the stress of the coronavirus pandemic, much as I have with Second Life and other virtual worlds and social VR platforms and the RyanSchultz.com blog!

Image courtesy of 1920s Berlin landlady Jo Yardley (source)

UPDATE 4:04 p.m.: The following message has been posted to the Scandalize group in Second Life:

Scandalize sim, it will be closed for a while, due to maintenance. We will be back soon.

I’m not surprised; it has just been hammered with avatars trying to get in. I really do think that the more popular SL stores need to rethink how they handle these sorts of events in future. For example, do you really need to be holding a hunt, and putting up several dozen popular lucky boards, at the same time as giving away free store credit? The Scandalize sim is already crowded due to one thing, so why combine three things to make the situation even worse?

2020.exe Has Stopped Working

Ryan pokes his nose outside of the self-imposed news blackout of his pandemic bunker…

Looks at today’s reporting on the Twitter/Facebook/Zuckerberg/Trump dumpster fire:

… and Ryan hurriedly retreats back into “social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse”, slamming the door shut behind him, until at least 2021.

UPDATED! SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Update: March 9th, 2020 (And Why the Coronavirus Is Donald Trump’s Chernobyl)

Well, my regular go-to statistics dashboard of COVID-19 outbreaks by Johns Hopkins University suddenly decided to break down their Canadian statistics by province instead of by city (how dare they!?!!), so I have been forced to use this dashboard instead, which still indicates which communities have had outbreaks (note that on this particular map, there is no difference in the size of the circles to indicate the number of cases; each red circle indicates at least one case of COVID-19):

So, as you can see, the closest that the coronavirus has come to me in the blessed frosty hinterlands of the Canadian prairies (so far) are 7 reported cases of people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Edmonton and Calgary, and 2 cases in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. There’s still a reassuring empty space around me on this map with no red circles, but I know full well that this situation can change abruptly.

Among the news on this truly extraordinary day:

Unable to sleep early this morning, I sent the following text messages to my brother and his family in Alberta:

(Actually, I only know of confirmed community spread in Vancouver, but the Toronto area now has so many cases that it is likely that human-to-human community spread of SARS-CoV-2 is happening there now, too. A Canadian who picked up the coronavirus in Las Vegas spent three days using TTC public transit with symptoms, before testing positive for COVID-19.)

(*have 110,00 cases, not “gave”…actually, now it’s over 113,500)

O.K. I am going to live-blog Donald Trump, who just took the podium. (God, the things I do for you people! I should be getting hazard pay.)

  • Trump announced possible help for hourly wage earners so they won’t miss a paycheque if they get sick (I’ll be extremely surprised if this gets passed in the “every man for himself” version of American capitalism.)
  • Wow, he actually kept it brief. Now VP Pence is talking. Let’s see how he responds to reporters’ question.
  • Pence said state labs are now up and running in all 50 states, and that something like a million tests will be sent out by the end of the week (yeah, right). South Korea has done over 200,000 tests, while the U.S. has only done about 6,000 so far. This is a major, undeniable fuck-up; the United States essentially wasted the six weeks that the draconian lockdowns in mainland China gave them. And you can’t say how bad things are until you implement widespread, free testing for COVID-19 in all areas of the country, to figure out how many people are infected—so stop comparing it with regular seasonal influenza!!!!

My already-high blood pressure goes up just watching Trump on CNN. He said there would be another press conference tomorrow afternoon on economic responses. He refused to take any reporters’ questions.

I feel truly sorry for you Americans saddled with this sad excuse for a president, and I dearly hope Trump pays the price for his inept, pathetic response to this growing public health crisis in the 2020 election.

UPDATE 8:20 p.m.: Today, Brian Klaas wrote a damning editorial for the Washington Post, titled The coronavirus is Trump’s Chernobyl:

During crises, ideology kills. Protecting myths, rather than people, is deadly.

The rapidly worsening coronavirus outbreak is President Trump’s Chernobyl. By putting dangerous myths above objective facts, Trump has turned the crucial early phases of government response into a disaster. Some public health experts in government have undoubtedly kept quiet, having seen repeatedly what happens to those who publicly contradict this president. And Trump himself, along with those who surround him, has tried to construct a reality that simply does not exist.

Those lies will kill.

Two weeks ago, today, Trump tweeted that “The coronavirus is very much under control in the United States … Stock market is starting to look very good to me!” At that point, there were a small number of cases, but public health experts clearly stated that the number was likely to spike. Nonetheless, Trump accused his critics of perpetrating a “hoax” and said their concerns was overblown. He said that the number of cases — 15 at the time — would soon be “close to zero.”

Today, there are more than 500 cases. There will soon be thousands. Yet every new infection was viewed through the prism of political self-interest. Every warning was dismissed as media hype. Crucial hours and days ticked by without the urgent action that was needed.

…

So far, Trump has been able to glide through crises of his own making because his base of support has often believed him over reality. When fact-checkers expose Trump’s lies, many of his supporters distrust the fact-checkers, not the liar.

But coronavirus is different. Spin won’t make dead bodies disappear. Recessions can’t be warded off with a blistering tweet in all-capital letters. You can’t blame Hillary Clinton for hospital overcrowding. The Trump playbook works when everything else is working. It falls apart when the world is falling apart.

He wraps up with:

With Chernobyl, as with Trump’s response to the coronavirus, efforts to protect the big lie were always doomed. It was impossible to simply lie and cover up the nuclear disaster. But that didn’t stop the Soviet Union from trying. It is impossible to pretend that people dying in increasing numbers is a “hoax” or that an inadequate supply of testing kits is part of a “perfect” government response. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from trying.

For years, it has been obvious that having as president a self-aggrandizing liar who constructs his own reality is dangerous. We’re about to find out just how deadly it can be.

I am not going to repeat the information I posted a few days ago; you know where to find it. As I wrote yesterday on this blog:

I’m not going to repeat all the instructions I’ve posted so many times before on this blog. You can find them all here (including this one). If by now you are not convinced that there will be a pandemic that will severely disrupt both your everyday life and society around the world, then nothing I say will convince you until it’s too late. The United States is doing an extraordinarily piss-poor job of risk communication to its citizens, which means many people still don’t fully realize the implications of a pandemic the likes of which we have not seen in over a century.

Governments Around the World—Including the Donald Trump Administration—Are Making the Same Mistakes that Led to the Deaths of Millions of People in the 1918/1919 Spanish Flu Pandemic

True confession time: I no longer watch any broadcast television newscasts because every time I see Donald Trump on my TV screen, my blood pressure goes up and I have to physically restrain myself from throwing a slipper (or something heavier) at my TV set.

In my opinion, he is most definitely not the kind of President that Americans need in a time of crisis. All of his tactics for dealing with bad news/”fake news” definitely won’t help him in a potential SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Today, the Washington Post newspaper (original version, archived copy) published an interview with John M. Barry, author of The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History, which is a history of the 1918/1919 Spanish flu pandemic I have read and can recommend highly:

Now, as fears about the coronavirus spread, at least one historian is worried the Trump administration is failing to heed the lesson of one of the world’s worst pandemics: Don’t hide the truth.

“They [the Trump administration] are clearly trying to put the best possible gloss on things, and are trying to control information,” said John M. Barry, author of “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History,” in a phone interview with The Washington Post.

When the second wave of Spanish flu hit globally, “there was outright censorship” in Europe, Barry said. “In the United States, they didn’t quite do that, but there was intense pressure not to say anything negative.”

…

For the most part, the media followed the government’s lead and self-censored dire news. That made everything worse, Barry said.For example, in Philadelphia, local officials were planning the largest parade in the city’s history. Just before the scheduled event, about 300 returning soldiers started spreading the virus in the city.

“And basically every doctor, they were telling reporters the parade shouldn’t happen. The reporters were writing the stories; editors were killing them,” he said. “The Philadelphia papers wouldn’t print anything about it.

”The parade was held and, 48 hours later, Spanish flu slammed the city. Even once schools were closed and public gatherings were banned, city officials claimed it wasn’t a public health measure and there was no cause for alarm, Barry said.

Philadelphia became one of the hardest hit areas of the country. The dead lay in their beds and on the streets for days; eventually, they were buried in mass graves. More than 12,500 residents died, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Now, it is not just the Donald Trump administration in the U.S. who is muzzling public health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been forbidden to speak freely to the public since Wednesday’s press conference. For example, there have been numerous news media reports that the Iranian authorities have also clamped down on any news of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak that would make their government look bad. Some news reports have criticized China for the same reason.

Right now, people around the globe are relying on their governments and their news media to inform and guide them during a potential pandemic. It’s essential to be clear, honest, and up-front about risk communication to the general public. If governments are less than honest with the truth, history shows us that it will likely backfire, and lead to less prepared citizens, who may make ultimately fatal decisions for themselves and their families.

A virus doesn’t pay attention to a President’s tweets and speeches.

Good Sources of Information on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19

Here is my newly-updated list of good, credible, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (formerly called 2019-nCoV and now officially called SARS-CoV-2; the disease the virus causes is now called COVID-19):

If you need lists of how to prepare and what to buy in order to get your household ready for a potential pandemic, here are five suggestions:

If you want a quick, up-to-date overview of the current situation, here are three good places to check:

Stay informed, get prepared, and stay healthy!