As we sequester ourselves in our homes, a lot of us are with our family and secretly plotting their death. Being in close proximity to those you love can cause an enormous amount of stress in the best of times. When you’re sitting there waiting for the next guy who didn’t wash his hands to come knocking at your door to infect you and your family, then nerves get a little on edge. With me it’s a little different. I love being with my wife, and our two dogs. She is my lover and my best friend (you’re singing Rod Stewart right now…you’re welcome).
The problem now is that we are not together. Every year on Halloween weekend, my wife leaves me to go trick or treating with her grandkids and then sequesters herself to a beach condo in Ventura County California until Memorial Day. That means that with all this craziness my wife and I are separated. While everyone in the world is complaining about spending too much time with their family, I’m in the opposite boat. I’m not spending enough time with mine. My family is my wife, and our girls, and I miss my family.
I absolutely adore my wife. I miss her dearly, and I want her to come here where it’s safer. It’s really easy to benefit from social distancing in an area that has hundreds of square miles of wilderness area. A city outside of L.A., not so much. However, she’s a bit stubborn, and really hates snow, and the weather here was 32 degrees this morning. So, listening to the sound of the waves, getting some Yolanda’s Mexican food, and chillin with her oldest grandson even if you can’t walk on the beach is more important to her than me and the cold.
I guess what I’m saying is that if you are stuck in a house with your family, consider yourself lucky. I’m over a thousand miles away, alone in a house with nothing more to keep me company than the sound of my own breathing. I do love my alone time, but I always look forward to getting back to see my wife. In the entire time we have been together I have never come home and wished she wasn’t there. I have always taken for granted that she will want to go out and see a movie and eat popcorn, even if she’s stuffed to the gills with whatever we had for lunch or dinner.
That’s why very shortly I will be taking a trip to California. I need to see my wife. I need to know she is OK, and I need to make sure she is safe, because in the end if she wasn’t there, I’m not sure I’d know what to do with myself. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to clean the kitchen right, mop the floors right, or well…do anything right. I’d be lost. I love you my girl. In spite of you thinking I only want to be alone. Well…you’re not wrong. I do want to be alone. I just want to be alone with you.
As with any crisis, there are winners, whiners, losers and delighters. Much of my day job is crisis management. You can guarantee that during a crisis,
dozens of little hatchlings gather around the cube of the most ill-informed individual
in the organization and begin drawing wildly far-fetched conclusions. My job is to look at the entire picture and
not just the latest event. I always look
at the how, and the why, so I can ensure that any decisions made are the correct
decisions based on accurate data, and not kneejerk reactions that can crash a system.
Current events are a perfect example of the problems I deal
with on a daily basis. We have a
reporting community that thrives on chaos.
Their goal is not to provide clarity.
To be clear, it’s not to cause confusion either. It’s to do neither. Their goal is to make money. The only way to do that is to have their
readers and viewers riled up enough to review their content. They are doing exactly what they are designed
to do. It’s up to the reader to
determine if the information they are providing is helpful.
The President, the only other loud voice in the room has an
agenda as well. His agenda is to get
re-elected, and to keep the market booming.
He has failed on the latter and will likely win on the former. For him it’s not about solving problems but
about optics. He wants to look like he
is the leader of the boat. He is the
perfect example of someone who says “Where are my people going? I must find out so I can lead them?”
So, with all that I’m going to dig into the numbers to
provide some facts around all the noise.
Before I get into the three countries that are making it into the news,
let me start by showing the numbers for the world. See below:
According to this there have been 15,418 deaths world-wide
with almost 1/3rd recovered in a population of 7.8 billion
souls. But rather than getting into the
fact that more people die in the US in one year from heart disease (640,000)
than are sick world-wide, let’s work through the individual country
numbers. In the end, that’s where the
information lies.
China (GINA for you Republicans)
China is recognized by EVERY…SINGLE…EPIDEMOLOGIST as the
epicenter of this disease. In fact, it has
been the epicenter of every Coronavirus ever including SARS, and MERS. No amount of liberal attempts to distort that
fact are going to change its existence. The
idea that Trump uses it to shore up his base is just a feature. However, the unbelievable poor health standards
of public markets in China gave us a disease that crossed species and invaded
human populations. Again, nothing the
conservatives say is going to change the fact that humans are just animals.
So, let’s look at the numbers for China:
So what do the numbers mean? First of all Wuhan China was the epicenter of the pandemic. The Chinese government was incredibly slow to react and did their level best to downplay any health threat. This meant that in the land of a 1.39 billion people, the virus spread. That’s right, 81,093 out of 1,039,000,000 people have contracted the virus in China today. So, what’s the threat to the general population in China? Not much according to the numbers. The country has very poor health systems and can’t really respond to a crisis like this especially in the smaller provinces. Still, if you take the population of China 1.39 Billion and divide it by the number of deaths of infected then your risk of contracting the disease is .008% today. If you get the disease then your chances of dying are very low if you are healthy, and slightly higher if you are not. On average the percentage is 3270/81093×100 = 4%. That’s not huge, but I’d still rather be here than there. That’s 4% with a miserable health system.
It is also important to note that the total cases in China have flattened and they now have fewer new cases than there are people getting well. In fact the daily new cases have gone down dramatically. It’s also important to note that this happened in two months with February 13th being the worst day. The number of active cases has taken a dramatic dip since the height of the disease in China.
China is a good example of what happens when you don’t wash
your hands and you have zero health standards in the food industry. On the upside, they will put you to death in
China if you lie about company profit, so at least there’s that.
Italy
Italy is an entirely different scenario than China when it comes to viruses. They currently have 63,927 cases 6077 deaths and 7,432 recovered. So why so many deaths in Italy? It turns out that most of the people in Italy are by far older than most other countries, and the majority of deaths are patients in their 80s and 90s. Also, the country is culturally different in that the young interact a lot more with the elderly than they do in other parts of the world. So, when most people kick their kids out of the house when they are 18, in Italy, junior is hanging out with grandma until he’s well into his 40s. I have no doubt that when the younger kids got sick their grandparents and parents helped care for them and then died for the effort.
United States
OK folks, let’s look at the United States where folks who have a raspatory threat go out and buy massive amounts of paper towels and toilet paper. That’s like buying a pool cue to go snow skiing, but who am I to judge? Anyway currently in the United States there are 43,449 total reported cases of Covid-19, 545 deaths and 295 people have recovered. That’s a death rate of around 1.3% for those infected. Your chances of actually getting the disease are .01%. To be clear we are on the upswing of cases. Still, the percentages are greatly lower during the same timeframe as Italy and China. Why is that? Well, we have better healthcare for one, and we got a nice leg up on warning. In fact we should have been much better off had the government done more earlier. During the Obama Administration we had H1N1 and the response was nothing like the ridiculousness we are seeing today. Still, the the world is still not coming to an end.
The graph below shows the upswing we are in right now. If we follow the trend of South Korea, which is very likely we will reach the peak in another week and things will start to trend downward.
Now, for fun let’s look at the number of flu cases in the United States last year. For 2019.
There were 13,000,000 flu cases and 900,000 hospitalizations. Of those 80,000 died, 180 Children. The flu also doesn’t really care much if you are young or old, however, having multiple comorbitities can pose a problem. Now if you are paying attention there were more flu cases in the U.S. last year than Covid-19 cases world wide. In fact, THERE WERE 34 TIMES MORE FLU CASES IN THE US LAST YEAR THAN COVID CASES WORLDWIDE!
So, why all the hubbub? Who knows? There are many factors if you think about it. If I were a man subject to conspiracy I’d say the biggest reason is profit. It turns out that several prominent politicians divested themselves in hotels and other companies that were going to be hurt by the an economic crash caused by this disease and invested heavily in healthcare companies supporting the health efforts. In addition, the bail out packages by Republicans is in the billions for businesses, and a few hundred or a thousand for individuals. You can bet if politicians gamed the system, so did a few millionaires and all the billionaires. That could be part of it. However, I think the following is more likely:
The U.S. government did not create this crisis. Trump had no part in it, nor did any of his cabinet. However, Trump and his clan are certainly capitalizing on it. So are all the news organizations. Everyone is making a ton of money off of this and they’re not going to stop until they have drained the last nickel out of this crisis. In fact it is so obvious that I will predict now that Trump will be re-elected in 2020 by a complete landslide. Why? When’s the last time you saw something about the Democratic candidates in the news? Two weeks ago, they were all the rage. Now it’s Trump, Trump, Trump, and Covid, Covid, Covid. If you ask me, he’s made the perfect play. Have all his decisions been correct? Nope, but he’s got his face out in front, and he did a pretty good job of determining where his people were going, and started leading them.
This disease won’t kill many of us, but another eight years of shit for brains certainly will. Now…go wash your fucking hands, and quit whining like a little bitch.
Rex
Flu data provided by CDC.org. All other information from worldometer.info/coronavirus
It’s been about a week since everyone lost their ever lovin minds. Things are starting to settle a little bit now and people are getting used to the “new normal.” That’s an interesting term “new normal.” What’s interesting is that people think this is all new, as if something changed. Like when Trump got elected and every white person with a brain and a miniscule of integrity figured out that half the country was racist. Nothing has changed one damn bit. The only thing that’s changed is you now get to see how unbelievably selfish we all are.
I spent the first week of this enormous cluster fuck in Florida, visiting Kennedy Space Center, Disney World, and Universal. Up until the Friday before they all announced they would close on Monday (I mean why kill the weekend), no one down there got the memo that anything was remotely wrong. Life was pretty normal. No one was wearing masks, people were just their normal, sweaty and rude selves. When I got to the airport to come home I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was just the normal travel Monday with a packed airport, and a packed plane. The only eventful experience was that I was in first class with a reclincing seat and a foot rest for my four hour flight back to Denver. Every flight should be like that!
When I landed in Denver it was no big deal either. I had seven phone messages and 228 emails from my office from people who needed answers to various questions, or just trying to justify their jobs. This was normal. Then when I did my 90 minute drive to Colorado Springs and stopped at the grocery store, that’s when I saw it. Everyone had lost it! The first thing I noticed was that every paper product, down to coffee filters was gone from the shelves. There was no milk, bread, beef, or cheese either.
What I determined from all this is that you all eat like shit! It’s no wonder the country is so fucking fat! I had my pick of fish, chicken, vegetables, and healthy choices were everywhere. What was goine was all the sugary cereals, fatty foods, and processed EVERYTHING. It made me wonder why any of you are worried about his invisible virus. You’re all dying before you’re 60 anyway from heart disease, diabetes, and a host of other co-morbidities associated with poor food choices. In fact I’m surprised any of you made it this long.
Oh, and what the hell did you people think before you started washing your hands? Seriously…I need to know. I myself have been in more than one men’s room and walked out of the restaurant when I saw the cook leave the bathroom after wiping his ass to go prepare food. Did you not know that you needed to wash? Is this something you just learned? Did you spend all these years wondering why you had the shits?
The last thing I can say is that I am completely confused as to why, during a crisis, people think they need 17 cases of toilet paper and paper towels. What is going on in your little brain that you think “hey…a crisis is coming…I may not be able to breath in a couple of weeks, I need some Charmin! Seriously…I wouldn’t rely on any one of you in a crisis. When the Titanic finally does go down, I’m launching the first lifeboat with my wife and just gonna sit by and wait until you idiots reorganize the deck chairs.
To be clear…I don’t have a job, I have a career. What’s the difference? When you have a job, you go home at the end of the day and focus on your family and personal life. When you have a career, you never, ever, at any point, get to do that completely. You get emails during weddings, and phone calls during funerals (yep….happened…many times). You are expected to be available 24/7 working at all hours of the night and day making sure the business keeps running. When a disease outbreak that shuts down the entire country happens, you are still working from your car, kitchen, living room, bedroom, even in the shower, and on the toilet whether you have paper or not. You work sick, tired, depressed or happy. If you succeed, the team is the reason, if you fail, you are the reason. You are on planes, in hotels, eating bad food, and struggling to exercise in order to keep your sanity and physical health because it’s either that or you will end up with a coronary within the year.
It is true. I chose this career. I am paid well, get good benefits, and have a lot of perks to be sure. And with all this it can all end in an instant if some CEO determines that laying off 50% of the company will raise the stock price .000000000001 of a percentage point. This is why, the first piece of advise I give ANYONE who has asked the question “what do you recommend I do for my career?” I say, focus on you, and your needs. Make sure you look out for your own personal and professional goals, your health, and your financial future. Because in the end, they will never, no matter how hard you work, no matter how indispensable you think you are, or how loyal they tell you they will be to you, they will never, ever, under ANY circumstance, love you back.
As we come to another financial meltdown that was going to happen, regardless of Covid-19. Just know that many of us will be put out on the street over the next several months. The banks won’t help, and anything the government does will be limited. I can only hope that those of us who went through this in 2007 don’t have to go through it again, and that the folks that called all the unemployed at that time deadbeats, do. Maybe then they will understand that sometimes, just sometimes, financial and health challenges are not the fault of the individual, they just happen.
a.k.a. Who was the torturous mother fucker who thought this up?
This is the second in a multi-part series of what many men will experience when they learn they have to have prostate surgery. The goal is to accurately and with a little humor explain some of the things the physician either won’t, doesn’t, or forgets to tell you when you go through the process.
The next step in the road to surgery is the cystoscopy. This delightful little piece of evil is designed to be pushed directly into the end of your penis so a physician can display the inside of your bladder, not only to you, but to a group of fledgling wide eyed young students who happen to find their way into the exam room. No one asks if you want them there, but they show up just the same.
Painful method of torture chosen by your Urologist
Before they insert this garden hose with a camera on the end into your urethra, they go ahead and ask you to wear with the same non-garment with the rear opening similar to what you wore for the CT. They will then leave the room for what seems like hours while you lie there waiting for someone to bring you a blanket. It will be cold. I recommend bringing a sleeping bag and an electric heater. This will prevent you from having to lie down in a very cold room, half dressed, with your genitals visible for anyone how might happen into the room. If the automatic lights go off, just take a nap. They can wake you when they’re ready (yes…this happened to me). When someone finally shows up, sometimes the cleaning crew, they will notify the nurse that you’ve been left in the room. It might be that day, or maybe the next but eventually they’ll show up.
In fact, a very bright, and extremely cheery nurse, will waltz into the room and grab what is now your incredibly shrinking penis that, if you forgot the sleeping bag, is likely partially frost bitten from the cold and without much warning grab the end and shoot a numbing agent into your urethra. She has to do this without warning because it gives her time to get out of the way as you shoot three feet off the table, kicking out in all directions with a response similar to “what the fuck was that!?!” She will then leave the room, and you will be able to settle down for another nap. If the cleaning crew shows up again, just ask them if they found my keys yet.
When the Urologist finally makes it into the room, they will turn a TV screen in your direction and begin to insert this medieval torture device. The numbing agent does its job…to a point. However, once the scope makes it past the prostate into the bladder, all bets are off! To make matters worse, he will turn and twist this thing inside your body, all the while giving you full color images of things you really weren’t meant to see. One of them might be an eight-centimeter ball at the base of your bladder that’s not supposed to be there. It is at this point the doctor will yank the scope out of your body, urine will spill out all over you, the table, and the floor, and you will be thankful your pants and shoes are safely on a chair in the corner of the room.
The doctor will then tell you to get dressed because the fun for the day is almost over. The next thing he needs to do is tell you that you have to have surgery. Upon mentioning surgery, you will be completely incapable of comprehending all the things he’s saying, because you’re still focused on the fact that you have to have surgery. I suggest bringing a friend who can tell you later all the things that were said. They should be able to do shorthand at about 220 words per minute because the doctor talks like an auctioneer. If they can’t though, not to worry. He’s kind enough to send you home with a brochure because let’s face it, what surgery needs is four color tri-fold handouts.
