It's Silly Season Folks!

Long time reader, part time blogger Tuna here.  Yes, it’s been a couple months or more.  My creative juices have been suppressed by my schedule and an overall desire to just hunker down and try to tune out all that’s happening in the country.  I couldn’t really ignore it, but I did choose to not angrily write about it here.

The Silly Season.  I first heard that term when I was more closely following NASCAR, which has its own definition, but the true meaning from Webster’s tome is:  

For the purposes of NASCAR it has to do with its lack of an off-season.  Unlike other sports that have a long period between seasons, and have deadlines for free agency and trades, the NASCAR “silly season” is a 365-day-a-year cycle where team owners can and do hire or let go drivers at any time.  An additional aspect is the team sponsors often weighing influence – including extra cash – to get the driver they want.

Let me sum up-  the media focusing on illogical activity and cash influencing what happens.  Hmm, is that happening here in the good ole US of A?

I think both those definitions have merit for why I’m calling this particular time in our history the silly season.  First off, we have COVID-19.  I don’t know if the Spanish Flu or Polio grabbed a hold of the world's psyche like this particular coronavirus, but it has definitely grabbed us...by the balls.  The world was shut down for a few weeks, until we learned that 14 Days to Defeat the Virus was nothing more than a well-intentioned slogan.  Then everything was cancelled- from graduations to weddings, surgeries to funerals.  The infection rates continued to climb, as did the rhetoric and criticism of the federal response.  We had a ban on travel from China, which was immediately branded as racist.  And now the same detractors are complaining that we didn’t have a complete travel ban like New Zealand, which has eradicated the virus.  That’s all well and good, but the Kiwis live on an island, have a population barely more than San Diego County, and paid their residents 80% of their salary to stay at home.  We just don’t have the social safety net that NZ and European countries have.

Germany has done pretty well with their numbers too, which why I’ve read that our response pales in comparison to the Teutons. 

Germany has confirmed more than 200,000 cases of Covid-19 and more than 9,000 deaths in a population of more than 83 million. Germany’s mortality rate per 100,000 is among the lowest in Europe. By way of comparison, the U.S., with about four times the population, has had more than 3.8 million cases and 140,000 deaths.      Source

The article where that quote came from is supposedly praising them for acting on the strong leadership exhibited by Angela Merkel, but how we acted at the beginning of this is not much different.  While there are some differences in our responses, some of the positive aspects were done here as well- lock-downs, ramping up additional medical support (beds, MASH-like hospitals, respirators, ventilators, supply chains), listening to expert medical advice (Fauci is mentioned in the article in comparison), use of homemade masks, access to tele-medicine, etc.  We shared negative aspects as well including an N95 mask shortage.  However, they have a far more generous benefit plan for employees who received a larger portion of their salary than our unemployment benefits provide.  They also have a healthier population, had a better ramp up of testing, and a more accepting attitude towards being tracked and told what to do.  I think they also benefit from not having a media that is as vitriolic towards their Prez as we have.  He and the CDC are putting out the same info that the Germans are, but I think they just don't hate the messenger like some Americans do.

While their numbers are to be envied, I still don't know what to believe as far as the numbers go since we are financially incentivizing the diagnosis, and health agencies have admitted to BS COVID-related deaths.  I've also read reports of positive results for people who were never even tested.  My wife was sick early on in this pandemic and through tele-medicine was diagnosed as COVID-presumptive.  The doc wouldn’t order the test until her symptoms became worse or more persistent, which they didn’t, but with that supposed diagnosis, I couldn’t go into the office.  So I took her up to the Naval Hospital for a test, which came back negative.  And the fact that neither me or my daughter got sick led me to believe the Navy’s test was correct.  Her doc quickly ruled that as a false negative.  I only found out later that her office was reimbursed by Tricare at more than twice the rate of a normal illness.  Same thing for all these city and county health departments who are claiming a car accident victim, who happens to have been tested post-mortem for COVID, as a COVID-related death.  Follow the money.  It's skewing the numbers.

 

What else is silly about all this?  The news loves to talk endlessly about COVID of course, which is understandable, at least to some extent.  Every news broadcast opens with the current statistics, mainly only the new infections.  Deaths are mentioned, but briefly.  Total people recovered?  Not that I’ve seen.  These stories don’t mention though that asymptomatic are very unlikely to spread the virus; That the young, who are the majority of the newly infected, have a better chance of being struck by lightning or being hit by a car than to die from COVID;  That the overall mortality rate is very low and deaths aren’t climbing in comparison.  The news also had a grand time of pointing out the spiking numbers in the early open (and red) states of Florida, Texas, and Arizona, supposedly tying their rates to their GOP governors and blaming the supposed cuing from Trump.  They completely ignored blue states of NY, NJ, and California who had rates far higher than those others, and whose governors don’t give a damn what Trump says.  The media is fueling our fears.

Source

Finally, it’s election season, and anything goes, as long as it will hurt the opposition.  Journalism used to be referred to as the Fourth Estate, due to its independence from the influence of politics, business, and any other special interest.  Now, that independence has been completely abandoned so any COVID story that can be skewed to make Trump look bad flies freely, with no attempt to cover any other side.  Wouldn't it be nice to see some investigative stories about ANTIFA, their organization, their funding, etc?  How about interviews with police departments or small businesses that are affected by the rioting?  How about asking the BLM organizers if they support the violence, the damage to private businesses, and the looting?  A tally of damages to these cities would be informative.  With regards to COVID, they should compare on the number of heart attack, domestic violence, and suicide victims before the shutdown, and now. 

Before all this started we had a booming economy with the lowest unemployment rate in history for every minority.  The Blexit movement was slowly gaining steam as some in the Black community were waking up to the fact that 30 years of democratic rule had done nothing to improve their schools, their job prospects, their poverty rate, or the black on black crime rate.  Then a career criminal was killed by a white cop in Minneapolis which was just enough to re-stoke the fires of anger and hatred, fanned by the financially backed ANTIFA thugs, and fueled by BLM.  BLM donations go right to the DNC to keep putting liberal politicians in office, the same ones who have done nothing for those Black Lives for decades other than talk a good game and reaffirm their status as a supposed subjugated race.  The Democratic party was on the verge of losing the black vote due to the economy and the truth, but both those were suppressed by COVID and violent protests.  The absolute silence from the left on the violence is possibly going to backfire on them though.  Liberal is one thing, left is another, but the DNC is now a party of lawless communism due to the Defund movement and demands for free everything and every other issue* that ignores the constitution, fairness, and personal responsibility.  Those don’t play well in fly-over country for sure, but not in a lot of the rest of the country as well. 

So we have the perfect storm of COVID and racial tension being politicized, monetized, and sensationalized.  The upcoming election, which is essentially only three months away, puts us squarely in silly season.  I have a prediction on the election, but with google data manipulation (video above) and “Dead Man Walking Voting” I’m not so confident.  If Trump does defeat Biden, I’m sure the silliness will continue as the left will just make up something else to remove him from office.  If somehow the election goes the other way, at least COVID will magically disappear!

*No bail, free college, slavery reparations, disruption of the nuclear family structure, divestment in jails and laws that imprison black criminals, collective ownership of the economy