angry hornets. epidemic ethics

A masking sketch.

My experience at the landromat in Twisp, Wa on Thurday is very typical of what is going on. The business was at about 80% use, and has added brand new machines to help with the workload. 

When I tried to enter [wearing new surgical mask and face shield, i could see unmasked people milling by the front door. I went around to the back, and used a machine near the back door.  I noticed that the mask users were all sitting in their cars, with the engines running to provide heat. I stood outside while the washer was going, and went back in to use the dryer. The 2 non maskers got into a loud conversation while I got my stuff into a cart. I noticed that the conversation was about the uselessness of masking. I opened the back door, and opened 3 dryers for transfer. The landromat owner entered with no mask. He closed the back door, and closed the 3 dryers that i had opened. I explained that i had opened the door for my own safety. When asked about the lack of masks in the business, he stated that one only needed a mask when within 6 feet of another person. He was very polite, but 100% incorrect; Tragically incorrect. 

Covid 19 has mutated so that it is much more contagious. Folks who are going about their normal lives without a mask will be increasingly offering swarms of particles to the rooms that they spend time in. 

We are trying to affect the transmission rate of the virus statistically, so that each secret, [no symptoms] case of Covid causes less that one new case. Even without testing and tracing, this plan of distancing and masking and hand washing can eventually eliminate the infection from our community. We are looking forward to this, so that we can save the masks for big fires and the next epidemic. We want all the kids to go to school. We wish to pack into buildings and enjoy fun community events. 

So, is it OK to stay by the door in a busy and essential business like a landromat? Is it an expression of the personal freedom that we value so highly? Is it an excelent expression of free speach to converse loudly about the futility of masking and distancing?

I suggest that such behavior represents selfishness and bullying. One does not have freedom to hurt another person. This is not a hoax, with the smart people ignoring lockdowns, masks and health rules that they believe are of no use. The people who are breathing through a well fit mask in public spaces 100% of the time are not fools that have been brainwashed by a political movement. The folks who are staying home and skipping visits with their family are not cowards. They do not lack money or courage. Those folks who are distancing and masking and staying at home believe in SCIENCE.

Like it or not, SCIENCE is back in as the guiding principle of our society. It is difficult to believe in semi living particles that you can not see, but that can fool your very own body into rejecting your very own lungs. By rights, these particles should be the size of hornets, and they should make a loud sound. It would be easy to distance from a person whose nose and mouth issued streams of loud, angry hornets.

Since the particles are invisible and have no odor, it seems like an act of faith to believe in them. Further, it seems rediculous to some people to take an uncomfortable action that seems to impinge on their rights. It only seems rediculous because we have not had a health crisis of this magnitude in the US since 1919. And, in a century, your culture forgets it's fear of epidemic disease.

I am not suggesting a fear based response. People have an ample load of economic and behavioral health worries. I am suggesting a science based approach based on the advice of people like Anthony Fauci and Paul Edward Farmer. During our year of illness, These scientists have been apportioning scarse PPE, ballancing the benefits of lockdowns with suicides from cabin fever, and working out health mandates that slow the spread, but allow food to be grown and distributed.

I will post this on my blog under the title 'angry hornets', so when some critic of my inteligence has this thread taken down, you can still read my nonsence! Text or write to me for a link so that you may read as much nonsence as you wish.

Thanks for reading!

The start of things. Symetry and the big bang.

 The big bang, as I see it.

I used to be quite disturbed by the fact that the universe was expanding, and seemed to be doing so forever. That is not a cycle, and cycles are pretty standard in nature. Rarely does a natural thing happen once without repeating.

A lot of things seem to breath, or to do something cyclic to keep existing. In our case, breath in and breath out, eat and poop, etc. Even the Judeo-christian notion of heaven and hell does not work for me. It does not make sense that a soul comes from nowhere, lives a short time on this planet, and then is filed in one of 2 places for eternity. That is not a cycle, and it is not sustainable. It would not keep going.

Everything in nature is in equalibrium. Births and deaths eventually ballance. Matter and energy are recycled forever, with no new matter/energy created, and none lost. So, how can the universe explode one time from a single point, and grow forever? There is no symetry and no ballance to that. It is not beautiful, and it does not make sense.

I started to think a lot about the arrow of time. Processes in the particles realm have no preference about the direction of time. Every single process can happen in either direction. For instance, a particle of Matter and one of anti matter can collide and change into energy. When there is enough energy present in an area, some of it can turn into a particle of matter and a particle of anti matter. 

Bigger objects are collections of many particles. With macro objects, there is a direction of time. Eggs break but they never unbreak. The arrangement of the particles is really important for something like an egg. An unbroken egg is a very organized item, and a broken egg is much less organized. Organization follows a law, so that a given isolated system is always becoming less organized. If you are thinking of the creation of a child, that is far from a closed system. Creating a new human being causes the disorder in the universe to increase. Organization increases in the child, but a larger amount of disorder is created outside the child.

How does this apply to the early universe? There is so much matter in the universe, and so many complicated structures. So the arrow of time is assured. The entire universe will become less and less organized as time proceeds. Matter is scattered farther and farther afield, and energy degrades to ever less condensed forms. 

So, if we follow the history of the universe backwards, we expect to see more and more organization, and more condensed energy. Times arrow remains locked in by this complexity and organization, until the entire universe is in one location. A single universe sized black hole would not give out any light. It could not rotate, because there is no other matter to rotate in reference to. It would be, in effect, a single particle without motion or temperature. There is only one way to arrange that matter, so the 2nd 'law' of thermodynamics no longer holds. Events can happen in either direction in time, exactly like they do in the particle realm. The big bang is free to occur in both directions of time.

If my notions of symetry are correct, there would be no difference in the 2 directions of time. There could be people and other highly organized arrangements of matter in both directions. I believe that people would experience the flow of time in a similar way in either direction. There is no forward and back in this scenario. No one is living 'backwards'. And both universes are free to expand forever, loosing organization. This symetry is enough to make me comfortable with the endless expansion and disorganization of our universe. There is no need for a god, or for any miracles. An endless explosion, taking place in both directions of time, is a ballanced and elegant system that i can hold on to. Otherwise, i need it to eventually condense and explode, again and again, in an endless cycle.  

A perfect political storm... the American flu!

The perfect political storm for the United States. This is the time of the Trump flu or the American flu.
We have the intersection of an attempted takeover of the US federal government, a virus outbreak, and World War that has possibly already begun.

How could I imply that there has been a successful coup in the good old US? I am using my own eyes. A superstitious and demented person has shut down the helpful parts of the federal government, and concentrated on 'making a killing'. The killing includes using the office of POTUS to sell snake oil drugs. It includes lying continuously to the US population. The killing features an early denial of the novel virus, followed by a weaponizing of the virus to get rid of concentrated minorities, close the borders permanently, and to prevent an election.

The timing could not have been worse. We have not seen a world war in 80 years, and we have not seen a killing pandemic in 100 years. That is how we have stumbled blindly into both catastrophes. The 1918 "Spanish" flu, and the start of hostilities for WW2 around 20 years later are both too far back in our cultural memory.

Because we no longer fear war enough, we have occupied at least 2 major countries in the world. This does not seem like a big deal to us. I can only imagine that the people of Germany felt a similar entitlement when they blitzcrieged across borders into Poland and the Chech republic. The world lets you grab 2 smaller properties, and clamps down when you take a larger country. This occured when Germany marched into France in 1940. They had been welcomed into Poland, and allowed into Chech. But, even though Hitler assured everyone that Germany simply needed coal, and did not mean to disturb the French people, war was declared.

Our current situation is eerily similar. We occupied 2 countries because we were too lazy or stupid to switch to better forms of propellant when the time came. REALLY! US corporations took over the government using fake emergencies and distinctily un-American new laws. Just like Hitler turned a fraction of the German population [the brownshirts] against the rest , we have Trump whipping himself up a private army of far right extremists, and a private news service that is more like a propaganda ministry.

Should we blame the epidemic on China, and try to fight them? That seems to be the strategy for the US war on Covid. We did not stock up on masks, we do not believe in testing for the cattle [oops; i mean citizens], and we have reopened while still the world hotspot for the epidemic. We are not the Covid leader by a tiny margin. No. We have more cases than the rest of the world combined. And, that is without counting! We are the worlds exporter of the virus, sending planeloads and shiploads of untested infected to other countries. We have refused to work with researchers around the world to learn about the virus, and we have only counted a fraction of our own cases and deaths.

The irony of trying to start a war with China is staggering. After a brief cover up [yes, they are a huge surveilance state], China open sourced their research, and controlled their own outbreak at state expense. They had 5000 deaths, and forcefully curbed the oubreak. They will be now be testing every citizen in Woohan to control a small number of new infections in the original hotspot. We opted to prolong the outbreak, and have settled on a policy of every state for itself as far as testing and contact tracing. This means that there is no strong attempt to end the lockdowns. The lockdowns are ending due to popular feelings, amid a steady increase in the infected rate. And, amazingly, we seak war with the only country on earth that can defeat us easily without any assistance.

We have an election coming at the perfect storm moment. The last election did not go so well, with obvious election meddling, voter suppression, etc. This one has almost no chance of proceeding well. Basically, we have a king that will not step down without a fight. A fat, superstitious and poorly educated king that likes to divide and harm. A king of con men, who made believe he was rich, and made believe that he was clever. Well, guess what? a brilliant person can fake being drunk or stupid. But, a stupid person can not fake being smart!

If you are reading this, mister President, Please understand that this is an attempt at comedy. Of course, I know in my heart that you are the most interesting US president in history. There will never be another like you! I hope that you don't mind if we just hold an election using the internet and the mail. The US will split up if you keep on doing what you are doing.