I had this hot idea yesterday.

I would take out a clickbait ad, the kind that runs on all the sites in a block with “celebrity disasters” and whatnot.  The ad would say: “Click here for One Easy Trick to Stop the Coronavirus.”  When someone clicked on it, it would go to a single page site that would have WEAR YOUR GODDAMN MASK in giant 100-point comic sans font with blink tabs backed with blaring music from a mariachi band and screaming neon visuals and googly eyes and robot arms would reach out of the Internet itself and shove a mask into the person’s left ear.

That’s all I got.

The game seems to be now we’re going to discredit Dr. Fauci, doctors, and data itself to make people think that everything is ok and send kids back to school and people back to work to revive the economy to get Trump re-elected.  Thus the really bizarre ham-handed attempt to drop oppo on Dr. Fauci to all the “Fake News” outlets and, when no one bit, running a sad op-ed from Navarro, who of course knows everything about viruses – in USA Today.  (I am not going to dignify it with a link.  You can google it if you’re curious.)  Data will no longer be routed to the CDC but to some unknown government contractor in HHS.  Luckily, because everything has been so “make the states deal with it!” that all the reporting is based on state and not Federal numbers but it cuts the CDC out of the loop.

This is a crazy rube goldberg plan.   It makes no sense.  It drips of jealousy.  And it feels like the end of every Trump plan, ever.  Everything he’s ever touched went down in flames in a conflagration of bankruptcy and lawsuits and lies.  How would a pandemic murdering people turn out any different?

Oh, and meanwhile, they’re trying to kill the Post Office. Why?  Who knows. Because it employs brown people.  Because people use it.  Because it’s something the government does.  Because it’s how people vote absentee.  Or because they’re cruel people who like to break things.

The only thing that could possibly save Trump is some massive 3rd party challenge from Biden’s left that would pull away young people and minorities but even that not-so subtle plan failed.

Meanwhile, Florida leads the world in COVID-19 cases.  Every one of its cities ranks in the top-20 of worst infected sites in the world.  Here are the charts from Florida, which should absolutely terrify you.  Every other Western Country in the world has the virus under control now except us.  Every.  Single. One.  Full stop.

Jesus Christ.  In the absence of any leadership whatsoever, maybe the best thing we can do is run clickbait ads that tell people to put on their goddam masks.

I am so frustrated with this thing.  And this new “let’s discredit the doctors” thing is sticking in my craw something terrible.  I just can’t with it.  I just can’t.  It’s so stupid, I just can’t.

I’m soothing myself with some polls here and here.  I’d feel a little weird ranting but it seems like I have a solidly majority opinion.

I finished MurderBot last night and I need a new series to obsess over.  Help.

Stats:

  • 41,764,557 test results.  Now with 8-10 day turn arounds which make the tests functionally useless.
  • 3,411,321 positives in the US.
  • 138,106 dead from Covid-19.  Millions more scarred for life.
  • 74,124 cases in MD with  3,425 dead
  • 1 in 113 have it in Howard County (no change)

Maryland continues to hover in the “ok but can easily not be ok” range.  We’re going up very slowly.  Wear your mask, or I’m coming to your house and shoving one in your left ear.