Coronavirus in the United States
In this episode of Positively Pedestrian, we discuss Coronavirus in America and how in this case, probably not the type of Exceptionalism we would like to be known for as Americans. We look at why America is particularly vulnerable to pandemics and why Covid-19 has been particularly deadly for us. Going further, we address lessons not learned and how perhaps constant waves of novel pandemics may very well be the new normal, we and the world may be facing. Unless we are ready to make major changes in land use, our relationship to animals, and address deeply embedded cultural and moral failings, the suffering and death will continue and even intensify! Plus, we look at who and what is to blame.
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Full Transcript
Let me in. So I wanted to, start just by saying why the idea behind Positively Pedestrian was, like, kind of the idea. Positively pedestrian. Tod guy. Right? Sounds cool, but also because, like, while we're walking, you know, that that makes sense. And then, I guess another another good reason is that, you know, this kind of idea, that kind of know my own limitations.
I'm only can be so smart. And so with all there is to know, like, I'm not even pedestrian in my understanding of the world. And I was up that and then, I mean, we both agreed to try to be positive in our approach. Be positive in approach. Right. So yeah, it all it all comes together is a pretty fitting name for what we're doing.
Yep. Good wordplay. Yeah. Good wordplay for for for for a pedestrian. For one with the destory and understanding. So I was I wanted to tell you about this thing like that happened to me is I logged into Google on my phone line, in Google on my computer. And, you know, I'm pretty good about piracy and, history, browser history and all this kind of stuff.
But I suppose, like somewhere along the way, I authorized Google to start, like, cross-device saving my searches and stuff. Oh, sure. And, so, you know, we're back and turn that off. But for a little bit of time, my search history is on my phone, like, kind of coming up. When you open up the browser. Yeah. And, you know, my kid and my wife will grab my phone and search something up real quick, right?
And, you know, my browser history is fine. I mean, if if, I mean, mine gets a little weird sometimes. Yeah. I mean, my mind doesn't have anything like, you know, that I'd be indicted over, but I just don't want to have to answer questions, you know? Right. I mean, every now and then, I get an itch, and I don't have any qualm searching for whatever the hell I decide.
I want to figure out. Yeah. So, like, I sent you the, that image of the of the swastika because, you know, we're talking about it from a Hindi perspective, or how the swastika was used, like, you know, it's not just not just a Nazi symbol, but it's kind of a little of, enlightenment understanding. Yeah. And so but the Nazis pretty much, you know, did a co-opted.
There's no right. And so it's like, pretty hard to to bring that symbol back into the, into the mix. Right. Like it's kind of it kind of means something new. Now. So, but you know, that was in my history. And so that's not something I want my wife to see. And, you know, I just don't want to have to answer question.
It was like, why were you looking up swath? Yeah. And yeah, there's exactly. Yeah. So, Yeah, just just wanted to throw that out. Those kind of like, one of the weirder things in my history recently was I was looking up, baby cages in the 1930s in New York. Yeah, we were talking about that. Yeah, at the bottom.
And, you know, so some were to see that they'd be like, you know, this guy doesn't have kids, or what is he doing? You know, like, why does he want to see babies in peril? You know, why do you want to see kids dangling over a busy city street? Why was that a search? Why did he search that?
Yeah. So maybe some maybe the browser history. Like, even though, you know, overall it's not really. You could go ahead and explain away, you know, all the, all the things that are there. Yep. But, you know, why have to be. Right, right. Just keep that stuff gone. Like, deleted. Yes. It if it's in a shared environment.
And for the most part, I don't once I've searched something, I don't need to go back and search it, saying totally. Yeah. So, you know, and also about that, though, is that. Oh, that's all up. You know, to some extent, I was kind of proud of my history, as revealed on my phone because like, I, you know, I was looking up mostly like cerebral things.
I wasn't just like, you know, where can I find the latest Pokemon or some shit like that? I, you know, I was actually looking at mostly, you know, somewhat somewhat intellectual things. Somewhat. That's good. I mean, there was some stupid shit. Yeah. But I yeah, it's best to just delete. That's the point. All right. So let's get to our topic.
Coronavirus in the United States. Hey, I'm Fred Cole. This way. Yeah, this. So, Yeah, you start because you have more experience. All right. Well, I guess it's about one that, ultimately, somewhere around my sense of time is shit. Let me just say that. But around 7 or 8 months ago. I, I ended up in the hospital.
Not because I'm a blatant tober denier, but rather I had yet to get vaccinations, and, I thought I was being careful enough. Well, some vector or another Covid, and, I didn't realize that. I didn't know that you're late to get the vaccine. Yeah. No shit. Okay. Sorry. And, ultimately, yeah. It hit me pretty good.
I, went to the hospital first three days, and I was fine. I didn't have a pulmonologist on the team. They're like, you have some mild pneumonia. We'll keep you here for a little bit. Then I just fell off a cliff. Oh my gosh. And, ultimately ended up spending about a month in a hospital. Muscle atrophy, therapy ensued, and,
I wasn't a they think, like 25% lung capacity, but they aren't sure to the machine to go that low. I don't. So, basically almost died. Yeah. Oh, well, so I was apparently hours for me intubated. Wow. And, so they worked out back from that, right? Right. Apparently not. Something to the effect of 80 to 85% of people do not survive.
ICU and intubation. So you're like that close? Yeah. Down. And, you know, it was work willpower. And, I guess being willing to bust my butt when it came to therapy. But, regardless, that's one of the that's the that's one of the driving forces for us to talk about this today. And, Yeah.
I guess that brings up where I'm coming from. The conversation, perhaps. Yeah. No. So the so the break before, I mean, you contracted it. What what were you thinking about as far as, like, what was going through your mind about not getting vaccinated and all that? Well, what was the oldest was ever opposed to vaccination? Gotcha.
I just. I hadn't done it because it's typically, I don't get a flu shot. I don't I say worry so much about this stuff. I kind of just hole up and healthy. Healthy seasonal infection passes and I wasn't really sure what was going on. I kind of. When it comes to doing things to take care of myself, I wasn't so great at it.
So there was no malicious intent. There was no hatred toward it. It was more like, apathy, apathy and indifference to taking hold. And with a healthy dose, if I'm scared and don't know what to do. So I did nothing. Gotcha. Gotcha. Also, what do you think? Do you think you had, like, some preexisting conditions going in?
Oh, I had to. I had to have no doubt a laundry list of comorbidities. One is, considered. I was definitely considered then. I probably still I am now considered morbidly obese. So that was a contributing factor problem. So that's definitely a contributing factor. You know, do you have any idea about how you actually got it?
I or I have an idea like you have, like, what's your best guess? My best guess is Sam got it while he was, either at a gas station or at work. Okay. And then close quarters. Naturally. Yeah. Gadget. Because those are the only two places he had got. And I had gone nowhere. For about a I hadn't been anywhere for, like, a week in advance.
Where we got it. Gotcha. I had,
Yeah. It's so funny. I had a week of vacation that I had to take. It was about to expire in March. And, so I took it. And a day in, Sam finds out he's got Covid. Yeah. Crazy. Yep. And so it's like, well, hopefully I'll be done with it not too long after my vacation. And then, I took a second week.
Yeah. And that's where I ended up having to go to the hospital about 6 a.m.. And I hadn't been breathing so great. I had a pulse oximeter, checking out. I couldn't get it to go above, like a 92. I think it was. Oh, damn. So no matter what I did, you know. Yeah. So I called the fire department.
They showed up. I been running around trying to secure the dog, trying to make sure everything was out of the way. And then I was ready to go. So, when I get there, I guess from all the activity, my oxygen is actually up a little more. You know, I guess it opened up my lungs. All that.
But, it still won't go above and 93 down. And so. And they have the same pulse oximeter I have, which was funny. It's like this $20 model from inside. And, they're like, well, we'll put you we'll get you ambulance. So, yeah, get an ambulance. The guy in the ambulance who's trying to keep me cool and calm and all that, he gives me his business card because he has a cousin who lives in the same town.
My grandparents do. Awkward. Yeah. Unusual. It was, Owensboro, Kentucky. So he, he was like, you got to let me know how you do it after this, because we never get to hear back. And people I did really, like two and a half months later. Wow. What was his response? So I leave surprised that you. He couldn't believe it.
He's like, well, you can believe that. What happened to you here, that you actually got back to bull. So he said no one ever gets back to him. Probably hands out like 60 cards a year. And then he said he can't. He said after because I. He asked me to tell him everything, and I gave him, like, this 30 minute breakdown.
And he's like, talk to him on the phone. Yeah. Cool. And he goes. He goes. I can't believe he made it. Totally. He's like, you know, I said, well, you know, it was it was luck. And, it had to be some kind of collective willpower, almost. So, yeah. So beyond blaming yourself, where do you actually start to place the blame on, you know, the fact that you got it and, you know, meaning, like, if you, if you kind of look large about the whole issue, you know, well, okay, I look large about the whole issue and I extend it out beyond the group of people that got it, which was my
roommate. And it's all planned to myself. Oh, okay. Yeah. Perfect. You know, they expanded out from that, and I bring it to a more societal issue. I personally blame the, I blame not the local administration. The local government. I think they did a great job. In essence, I'm not 100%. So we could have done something about it on the federal level, but I my my initial thinking is we could have we could have handled it better.
One not disbanding the group that had handled previous pandemics also effectively like, you know, murders or, SARS or, you know, avian flu or swine flu, you know, something burnt out quickly by themselves, like, what? Oh, goodness. You can answer now. I am, and.
So. Right. So, like, you know, as far as blame goes, you know, like saying from a societal level and from a just, yeah, collectivism kind of idea. So we have like this global community now. Right. And we which we are undeniably a part of an attempt to be leaders of. Yeah. Isn't that far. And, you know, we have this kind of interplay between animals and humans that is kind of unprecedented.
We have things like meat markets and Wuhan and, you know, sure, we have like this, you know, meat consumptive, agricultural that's known to be very inappropriate in the concept of zoonosis, transfers of disease from humans to animals. Well, it's a two way street. Yes. And that's now well known that disease can transfer most animals. And then, you know, it, mutate from there.
Yeah. And they inevitably get to humans. And now we have these very bizarre and hard to deal with viruses. That's a that can then spread super easily because we have the global transportation network. Right, right. And so, because it is a global world. Yeah. You know, not only and, you know, I can't help but feel like in the modern world, at least, there's probably more ideas and goods moving than people.
Yeah. Which is good. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, there's there is some good things about it for sure. But then there's this kind of idea that the West is leading the world. You know, the United States is a big leader, and a lot of people in the world want to have the kind of lifestyle that we have, even though because the glorified.
Yeah. And well marketed. That's it. You know, you know people and that's it's it's the hey, so many people feel like our, our streets are paved with gold. Some speak. Yeah. And our, you know, our, our, our bellies are lined with rings of fat and all kinds of sclerosis and, you know, obesity, indulgence related diseases, cirrhosis and fatty liver disease.
Yeah. All this, like, fun stuff. Diabetes. One thing I another two epidemic proportions in our country. And then the whole world is trying to become like that, right? Yeah. And, you know, like, they want they want the lifestyle, but they don't understand the trappings of that lifestyle or the mansion. And so what we're talking about right now is the potential collateral.
You know, from that lifestyle might be the actual cause of the might be the actual cause of these things. Right. So, you know, the actual the actual collateral effect of this Western lifestyle, Western diet may actually be now in this, you know, ever increasing global connected world, one pandemic after another, after another, after another. Well, it is definitely going to leave us vulnerable, and it's definitely going to leave us at a lower collective health.
And, you know, more susceptible to these pandemics, to these problem. So we can we can maybe with some degree of, you know, certainty, start keeping some of the underlying, you know, blame. Okay. One look at we look at what happened through the Black Plague and other epidemics and pandemics. Societal change was needed to put the nail in the coffin.
Sure. And then when they finally, finally that nice, nice tie in there because a lot of people all the time rejected science and they turned to the church. Yeah. The answers, you know, and and that is what we were doing now. And that was treat God, as you would call it. Yeah. More or less a kind of kind of like cult of personality.
Church, church of trunk. Right. Or same thing. Well, yeah, there's that. But then there's also layered on top of that, the, the God will take care of this idea that God will protect me and my family. To quote you directly from that article you wrote. Yeah. And, you know, if someone, someone says, Jesus, take the wheel and then finds himself in the ditch and is surprised they got a mental issue, right?
Right. I mean, I, you know, all right. Self-Determination is the word of the day here. You know, you've got to protect, you've got to have some self-governance. Fair enough. You've got to, take it upon yourself to understand the least, on the barest of levels with science and protective measures, you've seen takes what's fair enough. Really, once you understand, it's up to you to evangelize it, popularize it, and make sure those in your sphere of influence are doing it as much as possible.
So, like, do you feel like this hindsight guilt, because you didn't take the measures quickly, like you didn't get vaccinated early and all that? I feel it on a personal level. Right. But I don't feel like now it is my mandate to make sure others don't die, right, right, right. You're still you still have to be picking up the pieces to some extent.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, naturally. Nestle. Well, yeah. Ultimately, you know, still still trying to formulate my personal best approach to life. And health. So. Yeah. Sure. On an individual level, you know, there's a lot of things in the world, but I think on a societal level, dare I say, I think things have improved. But,
You know, you've got these people, these, you know, not all of them are necessarily black. There's a there's a gradient here. There's a continuum. Right. Everything from I'm afraid of taking the vaccine due to affects or the fact that I'm immunocompromised. Wherever. Fair enough. So there's one idea about the, you know, kind of origin of this thing was this whole interplay between animals and humans and cross-species mutation and transmission.
Right. There's this other idea that, you know, at least in some lab somewhere where a bunch of mad scientists are, you know, basically doing gain of function research, adding different capabilities to viruses with this, what seems like a noble effort, you know, let's predict where nature might go with this by enhancing this in the lab and then developing countermeasures to it if this mutation occurs in nature.
Right. And so that we can kind of like stay ahead of nature in the power curve because coronaviruses were a known thing, right, right. This research was going hand on them because there had been several there, you know. Yeah. So Middle Eastern one, the, you know. Yeah. Original SARS. Yeah. So let's splice in some DNA, something that we, you know, no, this thing might mutate into.
Right. And then see how that how that responds in live tissue and then try to create medicines against it in advance. So if and when this because there had been previous Aids research on spike proteins. And you know, we were able to get some headway there and, you know, sure. The same research that went into the vaccines themselves, you know, playing with mRNA, I mean, mRNA was discovered 60 years ago.
The the research that led up to either the creation of this virus or the mitigation of it is one in the same. Yeah, sure. So you have this like kind of scenario now where you have all these different variants being produced in a laboratory somewhere. Yeah. And then God forbid, you know, it leaks out. And then which I mean, Jesus.
Yeah, those protocols are tight, but it could happen. So, you know, that's another thing, is that if the total number of potential viruses that could be two pandemics are expanding, then you have all these new biomedical technologies to actually tinker with them, enhance them, do gain a function, you know, analysis on them. You know, you're now potentiality of leaking out and God forbid, some kind of weapon weaponization there in right.
We can have like, this whole new kind of double layer if the one layer of like happening in nature, because of the increased concentration interplay between humans and animals. Right. And then you have that second layer of nature, which is these things are mutated because of the, you know, the rate at which they spread the community, the community ability.
Right? You know, so you throw all these variables together and you start to have, like, this potential perfect storm of endless array of new, very deadly ultra, you know, hazardous pandemics. Yeah, one after the next after. And that's creating like a new normal for the globe, right? Yeah. And so then you know who better, who's who's most equipped to be on top of that.
As far as like the probability if you want to just see like so same thing with climate change. You know, when you have a nation that has resources that can do things like put in huge levees and seawalls and all this kind of crap, all right, climate change ends up becoming almost like a, you know, it's like it's almost like, I don't want to say a win, but since you're able to weather it, no pun intended, you know, you have this then natural advantage against your competitors and therefore, you know, by being the the least loser, you are by default the winner, at least for a time, turned it into an engineering problem.
Yeah. And so the same might be true of these pandemics. You know, they matter. You might have money. I'm not I'm not saying conspiracy theory here. I'm just saying looking at this part of the strategic angle, you know, if you're playing geopolitics on like, a chessboard, right, like if we were playing the board game pandemic. Yeah. You know, we have this tremendous loss of life, but, you know, when, history serving as a guide, a big loss of life is no deterrent to the people that have been in charge, at least in this country as far as playing geopolitics or loss of life is not the primary concern.
Correct. So and especially with, people who, clearly showed they had a certain calculus more oriented on the economy. Yeah. There you go. Which is like some nebulous thing, but it doesn't have a human. You know, there's no real human right in it. Is this the machinations of the economy? The the machinery set in place is set in place by man, but it's largely governed by.
Yeah, right. Other forces now. Yeah. We use the term the economy and it's been used. It's been bestowed on us so much do political dialog and all this kind of stuff. The economy itself turns into almost like a sentient thing. It's like it's a living thing, right? In the end, it kind of is. Right. Which is which is, bizarre and scary and kind of stupid.
Yeah. It's, it really is our easiest example to point to of emergent behavior. It's very simple elements brought together with and a series of effects that are hard for us to fathom, even remodeled. Sure. And the United States has such a huge advantage geopolitically when it comes to like, all these different paradigms, you know? So let's say that the Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, the these companies that are, you know, predominantly U.S based, you know, at least at least in, the least headquartered in have, you know, a large number of employees and personnel.
Yeah, right. That are living in the United States. You take that into consideration in the, the massive wealth gained from those companies, you know, is a US potential boon. If you look at industrial co, I mean, if if we just point to a recent epidemic social, political, of, opioids. Yes. And we see that the same companies that would directly profit from this had no qualms profiting from an opioid epidemic that not been harmed.
Maine been killed. Yeah, the profit over people thing is obvious. And so, you know, 99% of people out there understand how that could happen. You know, some somebody in a smoky backroom somewhere making a decision to, you know, don't change, don't do that recall. Right. Because, yeah, you know, we're going to we stand to lose way more money in the recall than the wrongful deaths of the dozen people that are likely to die from, you know, the the glass in the baby food or wherever it might be.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and, you know, I mean, that's the easy one there. There have been people trying to unveil at least that angle since, you know, Fight Club. Yeah. But when it gets 3 or 4 levels deep or it becomes nuance, then, you know, well, it's not one decision, but a confluence of right and maybe even a confluence of culture and religion and and which is and what we're in now.
Right. Yeah. Culture, religion and knowledge of of, of the people and the sociology within your culture. I mean, like if all those enter into the same calculus that's so nebulous that a majority of people will never even think to look there. But that's where the real well, you know, cinemasins to your point, because it is so nebulous, there isn't as you can't storm the Bastille, right?
There's no right one, five, ten people. The blank. Right. And there's there's no real slogan that you can just put on a picket sign and go protest because it's just not obvious. Yeah, there's no way to obviously unify and protest against this, right? Sure. So. Right. So if if there's actually like this conflation of these things and that's really happening, you know, in this whole calculus of this, you know, role of this pandemic and then the subsequent vaccine for it, right, aka the cure, if you think about it like the housing crisis once, once we're past it, we're in no better shape than we were when we started.
We go right back to the same paradigm as the dust settles right? Yeah. There's no real like, okay, now that this is past and this is behind us, how do we put in these countermeasures to prevent this from happening again and again? Is there incentives to do that? There might not be much incentive to do that from a.
From some government's point of view and lots of different industry point of view and industry, and one could argue the reason the government has the point of view is because of the industry, because the one thing. Right? Yeah. AKA kleptocracy. So yeah. So when your government is a kleptocracy and there's these industrial complexes that have these massive influence over legislation, right.
And then therefore thereby, you know, downstream effects on how the actual people prosper or suffer, you know, yeah, that that kind of profit over people model at that level is, I think, almost impossible to pin down. And so you can't really protest, you can't really. Well, because work against it, because, Gosh, you know what I'm doing information are, are ways of processing that information.
All of those things are controlled and heavily influenced by things outside of us. You know, so there could be another side of this, too. Like, you know, now that this has happened, how can we leverage how can we may take advantage, how can we right, from a geopolitical standpoint, from a big industry, big pharma standpoint. So. Right.
So it's a possible that angle as well. Like tool for us that we haven't mentioned. It's very low brow. It cuts a wide swath of across society. Lots of people understand it. And it makes a lot of people pause and think what's that mockery okay. Yeah. Yep. All right. So. To get people to things, you know, a lot of times there been political cartoons in the newspaper to get people to think.
A lot of times there's been somebody up on their soapbox on the radio saying the things this person are telling are stupid, detrimental. Dare an idiot, right? Pointing these things out in a rough handed sort of way. It was funny. I was just mentioning that the, you just raised something that is, really you're saying because I was mentioning something very similar the other day.
I was saying, like, I was having a complex conversation with some with some friends, Nova Scotia people and, what came up? I came to this really bizarre conclusion, and it's really similar what you just said. And what I, what I said was, you know, I think perhaps comedy might be the actual at the end of the day.
Good morning. So we're recording right now. We're doing a show. See? Thank you. Yeah. Sorry, ma'am. We're busy.
So, anyway, I have no idea. So, anyway, I can I can continue right back is. No, I don't I could is that my mind back to where I was. So what? I was actually in the main conclusion was that, you know, hey, comedy at the end of the day, might actually be kind of like the only answer because the, the level of detail and the sophistication and the clandestine thing of so many systems and subsystems there in is so complex and so hard to unwind and untangle, to bring it forward into like a legitimate.
Here's how we can change this scenario. Maybe all you can just do is fall back on your laurels and laugh at the absurd and just say, this is not what I'm proposing, Chris. Let that be a first step. Yeah, you might have something to it because for one.
Comedy has always served a function in society to indeed. Oh, like, okay, Archie Bunker is the easiest example to point to. Sure. A mechanism for social take, is there? No. Right, right. Well, I mean, because it makes light of the practices that we do of the ruts that we're in, you know, the, the mental habits, we've developed it, it helps us see outside of them.
It gives us an objectivity without guilt. Right, right. And so therefore just an in consumptive mechanic, you can you get the spirit of what's being happening. Like the actual spirit is that this person who's racist derogatory or, you know, older stuck in their ways. Yeah. Right. Although they have value, they have this, you know, power position. That's that's totally atrocious.
Yeah. And there's, there's reason to be revolted by it, you know, to be revolting. But at the same time, there's there's this epitome of charm, right, that, that carry up through the culture. And then you can take that revulsion that you see to the overall, you know, character does he does this just he doesn't say such despicable things.
Right. Yeah. He can then like sit back and realize that, wait a minute. This how we undo the charm of that by being revolted by it. And then we we then go back and reflect at the character and what happens in a minute. But how we get to collective grief holes in comedy through comedy, right? Right. So it's definitely a, valid tool.
We should do a whole talk about that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we really could do several talks about that, right? What? Yeah, I ultimately, I mean, we're on the same page here that you want people to think. We want people to consider. We want people to take ownership of this situation. Fair enough not to say, oh, the Big Daddy government will take care of it.
Or, you know, Big Daddy, Big Daddy fix to the I. God the sky daddy will take care of it. Whatever. Right? Right. So so we have this, to me, we have this kind of perfect storm situation where we have all these, comorbidities of society, if you will, all, you know, that that set us up for, pretty big failure when it comes to dealing properly with these pandemics, right?
Right. And so on. When if government was actually being responsible and really was bringing the cure, if you will, forward. Right, right. So if government was actually, tuned in to making sure this doesn't happen again. Yeah. Or when it happens again being way better prepared so we don't have such great loss of life. That was a true of this land.
Yeah. We're we're basically ice skating down an icy sidewalk, which is a whole lot of fun is better here. Oh, it's okay, I'm good. I'm. I'm fun. Kind of.
So really, like, kind of what I'm saying here song is that, you know, hey, if you look at this thing from the big picture, government is clearly, literally not in the, in the role of trying to solve this for future pandemics. Well, I think, but they sure did a great job in reaching tremendous amounts of, you know, billions and billions, if not trillions already into these, you know, pharmaceuticals.
Oh, yeah. And we can't miss the fact that they've used the same opportunity to enrich themselves. Yeah. And so here we go again with this theme in America of socialism for the rich, brutal market capitalism for everybody else. Yep, yep. They're like, hey, you know, free market. It'll take care of itself. No. Really wanted to do is create a we've learned what it does is create a hole in the middle.
We've learned that it's hard to exist outside of the bottom. In the top. We've learned that really it creates a consumer cheer and then a wealthy ruling tier. Yeah, right. Wealthy and politically connected wealth, you know tier. So social club, it's their, social social system of socialization literally I'm saying socialism for the rich in return in terms of preserving their wealth.
Right. And then brutal free market capitalism, everybody deals. I mean, yes, absolutely. And that two tiered system is just amplified. And so basically the way I see it is this virus comes along regardless of the source, whether it be a hybrid source, gain of function research that leaked, whether it be, you know, this whole thing with too many animals, you know, overconsumption, poor land user, bad intermix between humans and people.
I mean, I personally yeah. So I know this is like anybody is organized enough to have unleashed it upon the world. I feel like it's probably, all of those other things that were in there was clearly a mistake one way or the other. Right? It really doesn't matter where it came from. Well, yeah, I think it matters, but but I mean, not one point or the end of day.
I once a genius out of the bottle. Then you have to take it like, yeah, it matters whether arsonists started the fire or if it was a barbed wire right through that matters. But at first you had put on fire. Yes. And that's really where we're still at. Yeah. We have yet to put out the fire. And, you know, we have to we have to treat the symptoms and get an idea of the root cause.
We're doing a root cause analysis while we're trying to triage patient. Yeah. So you have this, like, what? Seems like, genuine attempts to try to help society, you know, with these lockdowns and, you know, you know, all the history that we have here in the country with the countermeasures that have been put in place to deal with, you know, coronavirus.
Right, right. But then you can't ignore the allocation of government resources to the vaccines. And of course, vaccines are, you know, well well known and well. And we have to look at some people state so they've gotten four vaccinations. Yeah. And there are countries that have not even distributed to a third of their population. Yeah. And so I think that if the government were really genuinely sincere in trying to come up with the solution, okay, what would have actually have happened was it wouldn't have been a, a thing that inevitably enriched dramatically a bunch of pharmaceutical countries.
Yeah. Well, that's a business born out of the pandemic Covid levy. Yeah, right. That's funny. So nice tie in two right? Right. Kovalev they only do Covid testing. Yeah that's hilarious. So what I'm saying is that like kind of, you know, follow the money if you will. Right. So the fact that our response collectively as a, as a country to this pandemic at the end of the day enabled, you know, a handful of really big megalithic companies to make billions if not trillions of dollars.
Right? And so regardless of how it comes, it's almost like the opportunity is here. How do you like, you know, capitalism, how do you capitalize on any given situation? Right, right. Well, when you're in the yeah, that's that's a nice that's going to be on recording. I just want to I don't want to split piers because we're hey we have an excuse.
We're walking a nice, you know, so what I'm saying, Sean, is that when it comes to the greater when when it comes to the public trust, when it comes to the public good, the government. Absolutely. You know, in my opinion, there's an actual moral and, you know, a moral and even spiritual responsibility. And I feel like it's a not turned into a business opportunity.
And I feel like in the past that was clear and that was accepted as a collective obligation of those who run the country. And I, I don't understand, obviously it had been brewing for some time, and those in power had gotten a different idea of what their mandate was, and it came to full fruition right under the last administration.
Right? Not what is sizing it. I'm trying to say. Well, one thing had been fomenting previously, and this was a pressure release valve to let people say what they were thinking, right? And what they and to do what they wanted to do. Right. So if you're if your model is a human being, it's just capitalize for your own gain, whether it be political or economic gain.
Right. That is not going to be a formula that inevitably serves the people. But then you can argue that, you know, over time, we've just come into this paradigm. Our country has settled into this paradigm. And so if you're a player in that game, don't hate the player. Hey, it's the ultimate conclusion of individual. Well. And so we definitely if, if, taken a massive toll in this case, for that paradigm for that ideology.
Yeah. Right. I mean it's definitely like not utilitarianism. It's definitely not socialism. It's not collective bargaining. You know, it's a purely if that idea of sure, anything we can't find a term for it so easily is because it's so fucking ugly in my thing. And I think it's actually contrary to our human nature. I think it's ordinary. I think it's in our human nature too.
I would agree, I think, to maintain that viewpoint and to act in that vein again and again, you have to practice it and you have to steeped yourself in it. Yeah. Because it is it natural? Sure. So inevitably, by being unnatural and not having the terrible outcomes, I think, like what we're going to what we're going to face spiritually as a country is, is a is a, you know, is a is a hit, a spiritual hit, you know, to all of our people, as a result of coming out of this pandemic, right.
So this parking spot worked out well. There's no there's no, no ticket on the window. That's a good thing.
Oh, cool. So I'm frozen. How are you? How? I'm still going. Because I gonna get the heater running, get a couple more points, and then close it out. So you're almost right, though. That's all I get on my. It's all good, though. Oh, it's not just built for good. So we're out of the wind. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, to your point, this spiritual hit, you're saying it's like.
I mean, just start with the loss of life alone. That's that's a gut punch for our energy, right? The despair in the the the hopelessness and all the things that come with, society experiencing a massive loss of my girlfriend. She's, she just had her 33 year old cousin die. He's it. Yes. It's the impact on our families, the impact on our, you know, everything, our work environment.
It's our sense of continually and and our lack of understand of the cause. Like, you know, people could have co-morbidities. They could not. I mean, I do that like, help it. Yeah. And but it's at this point our, our collective understanding of it brings it down to I won or lost the genetic lottery when I got Covid. We're not even sure exactly what bevy of symptoms you'll have visited.
A point. Exactly. So one thing is that, you know, in the article I really talk about a new virus, right? It's a novel coronavirus, meaning so many, you know, hasn't faced this and this type of thing in a long time. It's a whole basic existing antibodies, as you said, there are existing tools. Correct. So that's that's one feature that's makes it difficult.
Right. We don't have in American history. You have to go back to like 1918 H1n1 and there is no we're alive here. Your point just to communicate their wisdom as you would it. Right, right. And also a lot of people want to take it seriously. Trump just a lot of people don't take it too seriously because they don't have a, reference point, if you will.
Right. Well, I you know, we've also been, to everyone's credit. We have been, isolated. We've been, you know, taken care of. We feel like we are removed from the vagaries of nature. We are not we're not on the planes anymore. We're sitting in our homes, you know, quarantining rich people involved, trying into $2,000 caviar in a in an expansive home while they were on social media.
You know, we we're so disconnected from what it means to be out here. That's that's a great point. I did at that point. But you I appreciate it. The, also a big factor is that, you know, I have obesity as a huge co, complication with the coronavirus as well known early on. It was the data came out pretty early on coronavirus that, you know, obesity was a very large contributing factor to major.
So too bad and such in the US. The US is like leading the way. Right. So so that's just another, kind of on the balance beam of a nation's ability to cope with, you know, from a virus that's on ours. That's way in the negative column, right? Yes. So if you do that, if just keep that in marble either side of the balance beam.
Right. And and you do that for each country's, you know, ability to cope with coronavirus United States, you just keep piling up the negatives. All right. On top. Another negative is that our system politicized it. We you know, our president at the time Trump tried to politicize coronavirus. Like, you know, it's oh, it's the blue states. You know, the blue states are fucked up.
You know, you know, type idea. And they're telling me to apologize because of the way that his administration operated was blame. Blame. And, you know, just trying to take advantage of everything. If there's a there's a pandemic that hit us. Well, you know, it must be the Democrats somehow did it. You know, the Democrats traded it, created this.
They I saw what some people were calling the Democrat flu during. Oh. Which I mean, you know, hey. And, China. Yeah. China virus. So rather than delve into the stupidity that is politicizing it and saying that a virus somehow has political lines or leanings, right? You know, so the politicized the political politicization, however you say that work is, you know, another negative for us.
It's what I'm saying that goes in the negative column as far as our country's ability to cope, because you start thinking about attitudes towards how to deal with the virus in terms of party mind. I mean, it's ridiculous, right? Gee, it should be governed by science, obviously, and technology and what the latest information is not by. Yeah. What what political party.
You know, due to it being novel, there might be a dearth of common sense surrounding it, you know, and, you know, also, there is a certain stigma around mask wearing originally because the only place we had really seen it were Asian and Asian areas that had been victims of a coronavirus or had been victims of a flu. Right.
And so the China's rate of morbidity, based on the best data you can find online, is not even a fraction of the morbidity because they understood wearing masks, they had done it before taking it on as a society, as a risk mitigation. And they had seen that it worked. We had yet to prove it out and we thought, well, this is something Chinese, the Asians, Chinese or you show other people, the other do also a society that's more attenuated to falling the rules like, you know, this is communism.
You do what you're told, then gets into another one of your points as to the method of governance we have. Right. So that's another drop that again in the negative column. So like the kind of picture that I'd like to see painted here, this is the United States. This has all these factors. It's no they're deep and profound.
All these factors in dealing with a pandemic like coronavirus. Yes. Raised their return to the bone terribly insecure. So again you can take these collection. So like if we were sitting down in the same tank as this stuff started happening and we were like, kind of in a smoky back room type idea, near you and I were a part of this think tank, and instead of us being the want to be benevolent, moral people, we are.
We're just like, how can we take maximum advantage of this? I think what we would do is, is come up with some plan similar to the way that this is rolled out. Right? Well, I would if if we were like, you know, board members or some, some kind of higher echelon consulting advisors for Pfizer or Moderna or whatever, we would say, oh, let's put extreme pressure on the government for vaccine.
We'll rush it through, blah, blah, blah, right, right. And all of a sudden, at the end of the day, capitalize on this, an unprecedented scale, just like what happened during the housing crisis, during the whole Tarp and all that nonsense, the banks just collectively ravaged the government and stole from the Treasury on really the unprecedented right, you know, and you've got small incidents like what AIG did for bonuses, sending people on executive junkets.
Right, right, right. You've got big things where, you know, a domestic auto company is about to go under. It takes the money but doesn't use it for what you would think they would. Right. And so this is what really predictable. And Carolyn, ultimately this domestic auto company gets bought out by a foreign entity. Right. And no longer is domestic.
Yeah. So so it's very predictable. When you give money to capital, a capitalist institution, they're going to maximize that for their own capital gain. They're not going to they're not going to like. So if you give the banks a whole bunch of no strings attached money, it's not like they're going to start making, you know, risky loans to kind of, small businesses, with shaky business players trying to bolster the economy.
You know, they're going to take the money, invest in stock market. And that's exactly what they did. Right? Right. So another thing is that, yeah, I mean, you have to earmark the money. You have to it's just like with the loans we just had, you know, you have to put strings around it. You can't really you can't tell me that the administration that was handing out $800 billion thought the businesses were going to do the right thing.
Right? So you go back to the form of government saying, if you have a constitutional federal republic or representative republic, how do we really want to call it exactly? The United States? Obviously, that kind of that kind of tiered hierarchy of leadership isn't going to be as well, you know, able to cope with managing mandates of society. Then you would have like an, a collective, communist and socialist, you know, party.
But I just like because it's one size fits all in that situation. Yes. Like in the United States, it rules out it becomes a state thing. They defer to the state and they have like, you know, what is the problem, right. So form of government is a beast. Well, it's it didn't have to be as big of an Achilles heel as it was.
Right. It just turned into another major negative on that side, you know, really did because our method of governance can work. It ends up being a a quilt of, you know, moving in the same direction of everybody pulling in the same direction. But then whenever certain people see an opportunity to be divisive, to some may argue, further profit in game, then that's what happens.
And ultimately it was advantageous to divide rather than unite. Sure. And then you take this whole idea of culturally that we have here of individuals and as you well mentioned, you know, a few, like 50 minutes ago, you're talking about this like kind of brutal individualism, you know, it's like individual anti individualism taken to this extreme. There's another cultural Achilles heel that we have here.
Right. So like you know but again you tell me to wear a goddamn mask. You know it's like, you know, this defiant Yankee spirit that is kind of here and built in has some great features to it, no doubt. Right. Well, yeah, it leads to a lot of good things. But then in this case, it's just it's another unfortunate marble on the negative side of the scale.
So, a couple more, couple more items and then we'll wrap up. But, you know, I have lower scientific achievement, lower scientific and mathematical achievement, and also a pretty big gap in critical thinking skills through our education systems. Quite dismal. Right? So we're churning out a lot of great young, motivated consumers that are willing to work really hard for, you know, for some gadgets and for some, some objects for a fucking pocket full of fidget spinners.
Yeah. But, but but but we're not cranking out, you know, well-educated, critical thinking, high reasoning, you know, society. No, no, we're pretty, well, good little factory workers that will put all of their money back into the company store. So there's another kind of, you know, negative that we have as a society in just juxtaposition to other, you know, countries and cultures, is that this individualism combined with low mathematical and scientific achievement and logic and the thinking skills winds up with, you know, poor people, forward theories, misinformation online, you know, very easily making terrible decisions, denial, you know, so, you know, the the statistics are real.
You can just go, you know, Facebook, the largest source of news right now for our society, has been well documented as being riddled with misinformation. Lots of people get sucked into it. So that's another big negative for us, right? Our our cultural, aptitude in science and technology and critical thinking, because it would be a backstop against all of these things, all these, dismiss information.
People would have a better, well honed bullshit detector if they had the science and understanding of such to weed through. Because right now, you know, we're in a situation where we are awash in misinformation. And it's not just about this. It's about everything. I totally agree. Well, to to wrap up, there's too many things on this list to, like, really cover and have to have like a sit down episode just to, just to do, just to go through them and let's have one.
But I'll. Yeah, that'd be a good idea. But, for, for the sake of like, posting this, I'll actually link to this article. Do it because, you know, that was a, that was the foundation for our, conversation today. And, people might want to poke through it. Who knows? Anyway, cool. Oh, I have one last thing.
Yeah. Oh. My voice. I feel like whenever it comes, whether we're talking about mockery, whether we're talking about what? It's, politicization in in going against people for that, whatever pleas for civility here or fraud, their goal is to blunt and enfeeble criticism and they distract from truth. What we need is the we need the rawness, the openness, the, I and the only way I can think to get that is comedy.
The only way I can is so I or like this like no holds barred conversation. Yes. No holds barred conversation. We can't. But then what we need is we do it. I love the idea of tipping the hat to the absurd because, yeah, that's that's at the end of the day. That's what really you have to look at some of these things as there's just no all you have to do is tip, you have to the absurd because it is.
Yep. You know, it is. It's it's irrational. It's psychotic in many ways. You know, when you when you get down the rabbit hole and some of these and you analyze the actual, like, thought process of different people along the way, it's, it's it's scary. But instead of succumbing to that fear and just, you know, staining a house naked and afraid, right, right.
So they just laugh at it and and move on. Yeah. And in fact, this ability though, we need to weather criticism and we need to have a hard look at ourselves. Oh I know I like it. All right. That's a great final. No. So that's it makes it,