WE'RE BACK

 Florida is back baby! Yup, once again numero uno in the nation in new covid cases.  So let's go over the numbers as per the CDC: 

21,683 new cases Friday. WE"RE #1! (previous high was 19,334 on January 7). 

Average of 15,818 new cases a day last week. WE'RE #1!

409 covid deaths last week. WE'RE #1!

70,000 new cases a day in the US last week, and Florida, one state out of fifty is responsible for more than 20% or those. 

COME TO FLORIDA =SEE IT AS A NATIVE!

When the CDC recently recommended that all children returning to the school in the fall wear masks, Governor De No Science Santis IMMEDIATELY signed an executive order preventing school districts requiring school children to wear masks. Because if Covid is killing (which it is again) and the pandemic is raging (ditto) then science sucks in Florida! 

"No scientist is going to tell me what to put in mah arm and that makh kid should wear no damn mask to school" is what Mr. and Mrs. Yahoo in Two Egg Florida say to each other as they pull into the Piggly Wiggly to buy chips and beer for breakfast. "What do they all knows anyhow?"

Well, true, the immunological experts  did not stop at a HS equivalency degree. And true, they don't work three gig jobs and load boxes for Amazon. Just ten years of schooling and ten years of post grad work in virology, but why should anyone listen to someone who has spent a life time studying a subject?

We first identified this phenomenon when POTUS 45 was President-elect. He was at a rally somewhere in the middle of the country and he had just decided to nominate James Mattis as his secretary of defense, mostly because he liked the nickname "Mad-Dog." Now, outside of Rumpole and the military establishment, no one really knew that James Mattis was an aesthetic monk-warrior, who spent his life time committed to the military and lived a simple lifestyle surrounded by books. 

Yet when POTUS 45 announced to the crowd he was picking "Mad-Dog Mattis" as the new secretary of defense, they paused for a moment, because not one damn one of them knew who he was, but then someone started yelling and clapping and then more and more and soon the crowd was screaming  in ecstasy over someone they had never heard of, but because the President Elect thought he would shake things up, they were going to scream in joy.  Because people are reveling in their ignorance and they want to be led. Angry at only being smart enough to obtain a minimum wage job, they are some how forming a belief that intellectuals caused their problems. So, when an ignorant anti-intellectual becomes their leader, they buy into the anti-expert tirades. 

There is a certain unexplainable joy dumb people have in being told to disbelieve their eyes and that the experts do not know anything. 

Covid spreads almost entirely through respiration. SO DO NOT WEAR MASKS!

A covid vaccine is 95% effective in stopping infections, and almost 100% effective in stopping serious side-effects from infections. SO DO NOT GET THE VACCINE (cue the unwashed masses in Florida cheering for their governor.)

Now here is the thing about No Science De Santis and we told you first- he is 100% running for president regardless of what POTUS 45 does. And he has POTUS 45's playbook. If an expert says to do this, he says do not do it! If common sense tells you to wear a mask, do not do it. You are an American. You have a god-given right to not listen to experts. 

When your appendix bursts- go to the gas station not the ER. Who says a surgeon is best qualified to remove a burst appendix? Only experts and we know not to believe them.

When you get in an airplane, ask a passenger to fly it NOT the pilot.  Who says a pilot can fly a plane better than anyone. They crash all the time, right? 

Why should teachers teach from history books? The South did NOT lose the civil war. Fake news. 

And on and on and on, with appeals to conspiracy theories like 5G causes cancer and covid, and that the people who attacked the capitol on January 6 "were regular tourists" (this was actually said by a Republican Congressman in Congress last week). 

So. Do Not Wear a Mask. DO NOT get vaccinated. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars, but come to Florida, the land of ignorance. Get Covid (just a small cold) and go to a freaking 7-11 when you get sick and ask the counter person to treat you. 

Then drop dead.  Good riddance. 

TRUTH IS STRANGER THAN FICTION

In America 2020 there is a disconnect between science and populism. This disconnect did not always exist. In the 1960's the triumph of American ingenuity and science was celebrated as the United States landed men on the moon. To be an intellectual, a learned man or woman of science was a celebrated profession. Scientists and Engineers were admired. They promised an almost unimaginable future of a life made easier by  computers and technology. Young boys named Jobs, Allen, and Gates became obsessed with computers. They ordered kits and built them in their garage. From their  passions, indeed their obsessions, Silicon Valley was born, and another American technological revolution led the world into the digital era. 

Fast forward to 2020. A pandemic burns throughout the world. The 79 year old American doctor of epidemiology and virology who has trained his whole life for this moment- Dr. Anthony Fauci- is marginalized and ridiculed. Doctors and scientists who are the leading experts in their fields of viruses and pandemics are criticized if they make common sense suggestions like social distancing, testing,  and wearing a face mask to prevent infections. You do not need a PhD in epidemiology to understand that staying apart and wearing face mask (and ideally a face shield) stops the spread of the virus. But these days, to understand that concept you apparently need to be anyone other than an American. Well that's not entirely fair. You need to be anyone other than an American who is a Republican. 

How and when did conservatives abandon the mind? When did being smart and well trained become inconsistent with other conservative values like capitalism and rugged individualism? 

In her magnum opus Atlas Shrugged, written in 1957, the philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand depicted a dystopian United States of the future where liberals attacked men of achievement (for all her genius, Rand's writings exclusively used the masculine pronoun). The philosophical concept and plot of the novel was that the liberal views on property rights and altruism that held that a person's ability and production belonged to the collective would slowly strangle innovation. Working for the good of everyone would produce the good for no one. In Atlas Shrugged men of production and achievement in various fields from engineering to finance to production to  music "go on strike" and disappear from society. They give up and thus show the world what happens when people scorned for their ability stop working. In the penultimate scene, New York City loses electricity and the experts needed to repair the problem are missing. 

In America 2020 the people of production and achievement have not (yet) gone on strike. But they labor in the shadows. Dr. Fauci works behind the scenes because at Republican presidential rallies "Fire Fauci Now" chants routinely breakout. The President trashes the CDC and withdraws from the World Health Organization. 

Let's take a look at two different states. Florida opened early. The Governor refused to require people to wear masks in public. The results has been a week of 10-11,000 new Floridians a day becoming infected. ICU beds are at 95% of capacity. And as Dr. Fauci recently pointed out, the death rate- low at this point- is about to explode because it takes Covid19 about 2 to 4 weeks to kill. Florida is teetering on the edge of chaos and destruction. And in the face of this scientific evidence, the governor says everything is fine rejects the advice of intellectuals and scientists that increased testing and masks will help stop the spread of the virus. 

In an almost unbelievable display of illogic,  the president and most conservative politicians argue that increased testing only leads to increased NUMBERS of people who are infected. If you do not test then the virus numbers are low (sadly, our own FDC has also adopted this philosophy, telling our federal judges every Friday that everything is fine because the virus numbers are very low. Meanwhile the first inmate just died of  Covid19).  The logic behind this belief is staggeringly dangerous. If accepted, it could be applied to cancer, pollution, gun murder rates, domestic violence, you name it. Stop reporting cancer deaths, and cancer is cured! Right? (Unless you die of cancer-but for everyone else, it's party time.)

In Rhode Island, Governor Gina Raimondo had a different approach from Governor DeSantis. She asked the federal government for help in testing and they told her to go pound salt. So she formed a partnership with CVS (which is headquartered in RI) for testing. 25% of Rhode Island citizens have been tested. The positive rate is under 2%. Florida's positive rate is in the teens. Governor Raimondo mandated masks in public, limited public gatherings, and cajoled the company Salesforce to develop a contact tracing app for free. Infosys was tasked with deploying a location tracking feature, and Survey Monkey was assigned to monitor symptoms. Rhode Island is only one of four states labeled "low risk level" by the CDC. Five people a day or less are dying of Covid19 in RI, 50 people a day or less are newly infected. That's less than the daily rate in Hialeah. 

Rhode Island was uniquely situated to be severely damaged by the virus- it has the nation's second densest population and the ninth oldest population. The virus struck quick and hard at the beginning. But testing, contract tracing, masks in public, a public/private partnership, and listening to the health experts resulted in the virus being beaten down. Rhode Island did not invent this playbook. New Zealand, Thailand, South Korea, all have done the same thing. 

But here is the problem. Governor Raimondo is not a right wing conservative. She listens to experts and deployed companies with expertise to work with her and devise a strategy to succeed. She employed a NASA 1960's "lets listen to the experts" philosophy with the resulting success that makes right wing anti-intellectuals furious. 

We have some of the smartest, well trained experts in the world to help us defeat this virus. Rhode Island has given us a roadmap. And mark our words, what they did will be rejected by almost every Republican politician in the country. 

We know where we are at- Intellectuals are dangerous. Scientists who speak the truth are bad. Scientific testing leads to bad news so just stop testing. Experts are idiots and must be ignored. The Constitution enshrines the right not to wear a mask in public and drink at a bar (The murky third amendment we believe). 

What we do not know for the life of us is how we got here and how Ayn Rand, more than 63 years ago, got it right.