A poem about quiet

This has never seemed more appropriate:

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still

for once on the face of the earth,

let's not speak in any language;

let's stop for a second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines;

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea

would not harm whales

and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about...

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

- Pablo Neruda, from Extravagaria

Malcom Nance: The Plot to Betray America

Not only is Malcolm Nance a former Naval Intelligence officer, not only can he speak five or is it six languages (including Russian) but he was driving to the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 the day the terrorist attacks happened.

I got chills at the 30 minute mark.

Just the fact, ma'am

Morbidity and mortality are NOT the same thing. Not even close. It's used in medicine and economics. There's morbidly obese and there are comorbidities. For example, a patient can have cancer and heart disease at the same time. The morbidity rate in a population is NOT the same thing as the mortality rate aka the rate of death.

 The greatest fear the CDC and WHO have is because we have no national healthcare in America (unlike every single post-industrial nation on earth, including Mexico and Costa Rica) there are a lot of Americans with comorbidities. We have for-profit healthcare just like we have for-profit education. Americans are expected to pay for everything from congenital heart disease to a fractured leg, even if it bankrupts them.

Viral load refers to the amount of viruses needed to infect someone. Simply put, the more you are around someone who has an active case of Coronavirus, the more likely you are to develop it. SARS, which sickened 5,300 people in China in 2002-2003 had an extremely low viral load. Viral load has been the focus of hundreds of medical papers over the years.

Novel. In virology the most frightening word is novel. In medicine novel means new. It means: we don't know what it will do inside the human body. Virologists don't yet understand why some patients who never smoke, are 30 years old, jog five times a week, eat healthy food, etc. may develop pneumonia and die from Covid-19 but a 50 year old who is sedentary never does. Novel is scary. Novel means, despite initial gene mapping, they still don't know why children under 12 are highly unlikely to develop any symptoms at all.

Recently, our Orange Führer allowed his boyfriend, Vladimir Putin to perform a publicity stunt ... in the middle of a pandemic. Putin sent a cargo jet of "supplies" to Kennedy International. A Russian oligarch who has bragged about poisoning and murdering people sent us "supplies". This same Russian mobster sent members of his FSB to "help" Italy while they suffer through a plague that has killed 16,400 Italians so far. In case you don't know, FSB is the re-incarnation of the KGB. FSB sent money to Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and a bunch of other GOP jackasses via the NRA. That's right, money travelled from Russian mobsters through the National Rifle Association directly to elected American politicians.

So two things are really scary right now. One is the word novel. The second is Russia. If you think the Cold War is over then you have never heard of Richard Preston or read The Demon in the Freezer. 

Hoarding guns, bombing down the street in your gas sucker, and hating your neighbor because he's brown is exactly what Vladimir wants you to do right now. Now you're truly vulnerable.