Trump Voters: Time to Pick Who in Your Family Dies.

One of the biggest criticisms of Donald Trump has been the lack of any clear national plan or stategy for dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic.  Supporters of the President have always countered by saying the President is a genius who has a plan,  and the rest of us just don't understand his strategy  and how great it is.

It turns out supporters of Donald Trump are right about one thing.   The President DOES have  plan.  The “new” strategy the Trump Administration has for dealing with the Covid pandemic was revealed by the President at the ABC News town hall. Donald Trump said when we achieve a “Herd Mentality” (Population Immunity) the virus will “go away” even if there is no Vaccine.

Sigh… I wish this was “fake news” but this is actually what Trump is doing.  

 You know what? Okay, fine. Let’s go with this. 

To achieve the level of population immunity that Trump says will make the virus go away, you will need to infect nearly 70% of the US Population,  and then that 70% will need to have developed antibody immunity to the virus, meaning they can’t be re-infected.  So to be clear. Donald Trump’s PLAN is for 215,000,000 Americans to get Covid 19, and that will solve the problem.  

So 70% of the population need to be infected with a virus that has a  fatality rate  of 2.97% . 

What that means is, Donald Trump’s ACTUAL PLAN is to KILL SIX MILLION THREE HUNDRED EIGHTY-FIVE THOUSAND, FIVE HUNDRED AMERICANS. 

You know what? Lets be generous! Lets say all the wild unscientific, proven to be false claims by Trump are actually true. 

• Let’s say that hydroxychloroquine and Convalescent Plasma are treatments for the Virus.     (They aren’t).
• Lets say that the fatality rate is less than HALF of what is really is.                                             (It isn’t, it really IS 2.7%)
• Let’s say that to achieve population immunity you don’t need to infect 70% of the population. (You do). 
• Let's also say that everyone who gets covid and survives is now immune to getting it again.  (They aren't).

Giving Trump all those HUGE fact free assumptions, what would his “Plan” for herd mentality (Immunity) look like?   Let's do the math...

So here is the  question;  If you support Donald Trump,  who in your community has do die?   Seriously, give me names.   Because  the FACTS are  under Donald Trump's  plan some people you know are definitely going die . It's not politics, it's math.  So lets take a totally random US City, like.. say...  Pensacola Florida.

Pensacola Florida is a beautiful place on the Gulf Coast of Florida. the 58th largest city in Florida and the 757th largest city in the United States with a population of 52,411 people. So under Donald Trumps  genius plan,  34,067 people will need to get infected with Covid-19 and under the rosiest of scenarios taking as true  ALL of the optimistic and fact free assumptions on treatments, antibody immunity and a low death rate;  we are  still looking at over a thousand people dying.  

Given the relatively low population and geographic size of the city, and Trump's claim that masks "might be bad", and everything should just reopen;  if you live in Pensacola, Florida the statistical  probability of someone you know being among those more than a thousand dead is around 50%

So go ahead, make a list of all your family and friends,  Then take 65% of them,  then take 1% of those names.   Then for everyone on that list,  flip a coin.  Heads they live, tails... They die.    THAT is what a vote for Donald Trump REALLY is a vote in support of.    But hey,  some sacrifices  have to be made for Donald Trump's plan to work, right?

So Keep America Great!  Oh, and  start picking your names.   

A Look Back... My life beyond borders.

 As we all deal with the confinement and limits of a world in the grips of the  Covid pandemic,  I  look back across the last  three decades of my life,  and a quote from the late, great  Douglas Adams comes to mind:

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I needed to be."

Remembering That September Morning...

 (The following is an updated repost  of an entry from Sept. 11th, 2011)

Today the media, and the blogosphere will undoubtedly be full of all sorts of remembrances and commentary around what is the 19th  anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001.

To be honest I really don't like to dwell on the topic. Not out of any sense of personal pain, but more out of respect, for those people I know who were far closer to the events of that day than I was. My experience that day was a somewhat surreal one.

I had gotten up very early and caught a flight from Chicago Midway to Houston. I was heading there for work. It was about 20 minutes into the flight, the seat belt sign had just turned off, and people where shifting about, getting comfortable. I had just pulled out my laptop to work on the presentation I was going to be giving later that day. Suddenly the seat belt sign came back on, and the crew announced that everyone was to return to their seats and prepare for landing, the flight would be returning to Chicago.

The Pilot then came on the speaker system to say that there was nothing wrong with the plane, and we were returning to Chicago because the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) had ordered the flight to return to "clear air traffic". He said that was all the information they had, and he apologized for the inconvenience.

Everyone on the plane thought the same thing. (Not terrorism.) Chicago Midway had upgraded to a new Air Traffic Control System earlier in the Summer and a few weeks prior, there had been a series of glitches that had delayed several flights.  Everyone groaned, made comments about "Government Efficiency" assuming it was yet another problem with Midway's system that was going to mess up  our day.

This  assumption that was bolstered when the captain came back on the loudspeaker  and announced  that we were not returning to Midway but rather we were diverted to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

The woman sitting next to me was happy about this thinking at least it might be easier to get on the next flight out to Houston. I nodded, and said "I hope so", thinking of how I might salvage the rest of my schedule that day and make my afternoon meetings on time.

It took us about 30 minutes of circling over O'Hare before we could land. Sitting in a window seat I watched as the line of planes waiting to land stretched to the far horizon and oddly enough, no planes were taking off. I commented on this to the woman next to me, and she said "wow Midway's systems must be really screwed up!" I laughed and said that what we get for Ronald Reagan having fired all the good Air Traffic Controllers. She laughed and said she had forgotten about that.

We landed and had to wait an additional 20 minutes to get a gate. but finally pulled up to a jetway , and we all lumbered off the plane into the gate area I was getting annoyed because people were not clearing the area in front of the door but were all standing around the televisions that were tuned to the CNN Airport Network. I was about to say a loud "excuse me!" when I happened to look up at the TV and saw CNN  replay footage from ABC of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center.

CNN then cut to live shot of a column of smoke and ash where the World Trade Center Towers were supposed to be, but weren't. I called my office and my boss told me not to come in, The area in downtown Chicago around the Sears Tower was being evacuated. I called my parents and let them know I was not in Houston, got on the CTA Blue Line and went home.   The rest of that day I did what most Americans did, watched the news, and when the images became overwhelming, I put on my roller blades and went blading along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

It was brilliant sunny day. One of those late Summer, early Fall days that you get in Chicago that make you appreciate what a beautiful city it is. As I stopped at Oak Street Beach and admired the downtown Chicago skyline, I didn't think that somehow the "world had changed". But rather I found myself thinking how the United States had  sadly, finally  joined the rest of the world.

Before that that morning, Terrorism was something that happened in other places, Israel, Lebanon London, Belfast , places far away. Even the first World Trade Center bombing for many people, didn't seem like international terrorism. After all, the people responsible were caught when they tried to get the deposit back on the rental van they had used. (How sinister could people that dumb be?)    That is what changed I think, it was the moment America lost the illusion that somehow our two oceans would keep us safe from global terrorism.

For friends of mine who lived in New York on that day,  I understand  that  today  is a much different  experience for them.   A  friend of mine is  a New York City Police Officer  who  lost an arm in the attack that day.   Another friend of mine worked  for an investment bank housed in the  North Tower,  she had a doctors appointment so she didn't go into work  that morning.   For her, today  is a reminder of  the  friends and co-workers  she lost  that day.

For the numerous friends of mine who have served, and currently serve in the Middle East  with the American and British Armed Forces, they deal with the effects September 11, 2001 on a far different level than most people ever will.

So as people all over the world will remember the events of that day, pray for those who were lost, and show solidarity and support for friends and family for whom this anniversary is far more personal than political.

God Bless America, God bless us all.