Just spoke with clients from Dubai. He said he's had the vaccine. We're like, "Really?!?!?!!!" He said, "Oh. Everybody here already got it."

Also they all wore masks. All of them. The country is "good to go!"

Meanwhile here in Super Spreader Country . . .


We interact daily with clients around the world. They agree with the person who said that if the world were a classroom America would be "the kid in the corner eating glue."

I know this is off topic, but our problems are so much bigger than Russ Nelson and Company.

Anyone who won't wear a mask is dead to me.

Almost everybody wears masks in France, but the vaccine is a long time coming...

My daughter, who spent New Year's Eve with four or five friends has been wearing a mask at home to prevent any risk to us.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2021 12:21PM by Soft Machine.

Dubai, don't buy! Which is it going to be!!!

Dubai or not Dubai, that is the question...

Frank Sinatra: Dubai Dubai Doo ...

I admire how tall Dubai is.



don't worry, I have things I have to do later.

Don’t bogart that Dubai.

Cheap mortgage rates don't hurt, either.

A friend traveled to see her kids for Thanksgiving.

At this writing,

She + her husband
All of their adult childen + spouses
All of their adult grandchildren + spouses

Total: 32 people

Are Covid positive.
One in ICU.

Ouch.

What 'reality'?

There is no baseline 'reality' according to RfM posters here.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2353232,2353232#msg-2353232

If there is no baseline reality words have no real meaning here. Everything is nothing and nothing is everything.
Up is down. Down is up
Blacks is white. White is black.

"Reality" here, in this upside down world, is whatever YOU say it is!!!

Every day is opposite day at RfM!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2021 01:30PM by schrodingerscat.

Well Madame. In this case, there is evidence to support the reality that the countries who wore masks are now in great shape, some hardly any covid, and others all doing much much better than the U.S., particularly SoCal which is a scary disaster right now. These countries masked up and still have a hospital bed for you today if you have a heart attack or stroke or perhaps just want a facelift or help with a kidney stone. That is a reality--the kind of reality that is not "whatever you say it is." The beds really are there and there are no tents outside the hospitals.

Many confuse the words perception and reality. Perception is whatever you want it to be.

Reality is when the hallucinogen that you've taken encourages you to try to walk through a wall (there are cases on Erowid) or over a cliff (the son of the singer Nick Cave sadly comes to mind). Reality is there, whether you like it or not, although usually less drastic than that and often harder to establish or prove. Nevertheless, it's there, as the US seems to be discovering with COVID - although I noted very few masks in the mob at the Capitol.

The "hallucinogen" may be a chemical, but it can also be a person, an ideology or a belief...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2021 03:54PM by Soft Machine.

I. Love. Your last line. The rest too.

Ditto

There’s a reason they call it LDS.

Soft Machine Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...although I noted very few masks in the mob
> at the Capitol.

Yes, I noticed this too. Scary times ahead I greatly fear.


> The "hallucinogen" may be a chemical, but it can
> also be a person, an ideology or a belief...

Thought-provoking. Especially for a quiet grey Sunday in the middle of a pandemic when many are staying put. Fortunately, I have dozens of books sitting around waiting for me to transport myself elsewhere, if only in spirit.

Oh, to be in Paris on a sunny day in ?January!

After months of waiting, COVID19 has finally come to my house. Got the test to prove it. Everyone has handled it very well. A few days under the weather and they’re good. Grandma survived just fine. Thank God we knew what to do. I still have to wait the incubation time to see what happens with me, but I don’t have to guess. I won’t get sick. But if I did, it’s easy to beat.

It’s pretty surreal to see the world around me freaking out about masks and vaccines and shutdowns. They can do their thing and I’ll do mine. None of this had to happen, but maybe it did. Maybe this yuge predicament happened because it was the best thing that could have happened.

This year helped me realize that I’ve been blessed more than any man alive. That’s a lot of guys. Even the bazillionaires. So there’s nothing for me to worry about. Let kingdom come, because that’s what this is.

Easy to beat? Slap in the face to the exhausted medical care workers and the kids who don't have mothers and fathers now. Perhaps you could visit a nursing staff in L.A. County and straighten them out. They think the dying part is real.

Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Easy to beat? Slap in the face to the exhausted
> medical care workers and the kids who don't have
> mothers and fathers now. Perhaps you could visit
> a nursing staff in L.A. County and straighten them
> out. They think the dying part is real.

I love LA. My son lives there and we visit him yearly, or did up until now. If you have not been there you really don’t know how big the crisis was there before COVID. My son just had it and got over it in 2 weeks, but my BIL is a Dr there and keeps me updated on the situation. What is happening there is happening in every city on the West Coast and it is about to get a lot worse, due to mass evictions.
This is capitalism at its zenith.
The post apocalyptic hellscape LA has becoming is worse than a gypsy refugee camp in Barcelona I saw, which looked like a hellscape. It’s worse in LA but parts of SF are just as bad, Portland, Seattle, falling apart, while the richest men in the world make billions more.

It has nothing to do with capitalism. The COVID debacle is a result of dysfunctional political leadership, a problem that afflicts countries across the globe irrespective of economic system.

It's scary as hell here and it isn't about capitalism. It's about selfish asses who would rather go to a super spreader party than wear a mask. Who think it's "easy to beat."

The Drs. and nurses have little left to give. Announced that Ambulance drivers should not bring the really sick ones to the hospital cuz they aren't going to make it anyway and they want to save the beds for the ones who have a chance. They are running out of oxygen.

A few weeks ago while walking and running into a couple with no masks, we told them to put them on and their response was smug "Trump 2021".

I go to the grocery store and work. We require masks, distancing, and have put up plexiglas panels. The holiday surge is starting. Several people I know have had it. Some with no symptoms and some who thought they were going to die for a few days. Luckily they didn't.

“Easy to beat? Slap in the face to the exhausted medical care workers and the kids who don't have mothers and fathers now.”

Easy for me. It’s a huge education problem, getting the solution into the heads of a medical industry indoctrinated against it. That doesn’t happen overnight. But because of my experience with Mormonism, I don’t beat myself up about it. It’s kind of beside the point anyway. Wouldn’t waving away the pandemic be an even bigger geopolitical problem than the pandemic itself?

Yeah, it sucks to die for the sins of your society. Isn’t that whose sins we usually pay for?

I know three people who have died of it. I have dreams about one of them.

I'm glad that you and yours are safe.

bradley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Easy for me.

How so?

>It’s a huge education problem, getting the solution into the heads of a medical industry indoctrinated against it.

What is your solution that the medical community doesn't seem to know about?

exactly

bradley - why are you crowing? May you continue to remain unscathed.

It's the triumph of anecdote over data.

bradley is smarter than that. He shouldn't fall into the trap but sometimes he does.

Inequality
Waiting Game
Double Standards
Worry
Doubt
Confusion
Lies...

Politics

What's new?

As I've stated in previous posts, if anyone wants a dose of reality, talk to my daughter.

She described the horrors that the Covid patients went through in the ICU. Some of them had to have tubes the size of garden hoses coming through them so that their blood could be taken out, oxygenized, then returned back in their bodies. They were awake and conscious for it.

Or how about the time when all she could do was clean up a dying patient so that he could look as good as possible for his family as they said goodbye from the other side of the window?

She has so many stories and she got stressed out to the max because she would get off of a shift and when she would ask a co worker how so and so was doing, only to be told that they had died. Her hair has been falling out because of the mental stress.

Our next door neighbors all got infected with the Covid and they all breezed through it, and because they were lucky enough to do that, they laugh about it. They don't believe in wearing masks; only if they have to put on a show.

Other countries, like Dubai, are doing well because the people are smart and disciplined and took this seriously. But then, what can you expect from someone who said, don't worry aboutit; it's all going to go away.

Your daughter is a hero.

I'm not sure if I could have made it through when I worked as an RN. I'm terribly squeamish at the best of times and wasn't good with the normal tubes and dressings and blood and guts of it all pre-COVID. I marvel at the resilience and dedication of the medical teams through this most incredibly trying time.

I read yesterday of a Cdn MD, a beautiful young woman, who just committed suicide, presumably from the horrific ongoing everlasting stress of caring for CV patients. There is no down time for many drs and nurses and allied health care workers. It will inevitably lead to PTSD and other sequelae of this most demanding time.

Quebec has just imposed a curfew (8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.). Several other Cdn provinces are seeing surges, despite widespread measures being taken. Complaints abound about the slow rollout of the vaccination program. It's a learn-as-you-go situation, because it's so unprecedented, and inevitably, looking back, we will see errors and better ways to have done some things.

I saw a brief video of an ICU in the US where you could hear patients coughing weakly and struggling to catch their breath. That alone would try my personal resources, listening to that all day, and then having to ration O2. Shortages and rationing can try the resolve of medical staff as they see multiple deaths on every shift that in some cases they know could have been prevented. They're not automatons - they can get to feel close to people they are caring for. With all of the suffering, anguish, isolation and loss the medical teams see and feel, both from the patient's perspective and the family members who grieve the loss but also their immense tragedy of not getting to be with their loved one in their final hours, it is amazing and admirable that they keep on keeping on. Their strength, both physical and emotional, seems to know no bounds but I fear their reserves are running low.

I feel for their plight as well as that of the people they strive to care for to the best of human ability in an unprecedented (in our lifetime) challenge that must seem unending. It must be sheer hell.

Thank you, Lottie. Your very kind; I’ll let her know what you said.

I have a friend who is in healthcare, not front line but second line, and she tells me the stories both of the sick and of the caretakers. Your daughter has my deepest respect.

As do you.

I'll go so far as to admit that she is '...of a kind.'