You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die

I did watch all of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolda yesterday evening. It finished close to 11:30.

There are times during plays and operas when one can get annoyed with the length of a death scene. The character gets stabbed or shot and sings for an amazing long time before keeling over. Tristan took that to extremes – he got shot at the end of Act II and didn’t die until ¾ of the way through Act III! Wagner wrote his own text as well as the music. I think he could have used an editor to condense the story.

On to Das Rheingold for this evening. It’s not quite three hours in length. If you would like a good summary of the whole Ring cycle find Anna Russel. She can accurately and humorously tell the whole 15 hour story in 20 minutes.



Quote of the day:

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.
~~Franklin D. Roosevelt

A bit from today’s pandemic status report that Mark Sumner does for Daily Kos:

Thanks to despicably poor preparation, criminally slow testing, and an unwillingness to accept the steps taken elsewhere, the United States is well on its way to becoming not just the major global hotspot for COVID-19, but the major source of infection that threatens the rest of the planet.
...
As Reuters reports, the World Health Organization has singled out the United States as a unique threat. The U.S. has a very large outbreak, a series of very uneven regulations from state to state, and a White House that is expressing more concern over market falls than overcrowded hospitals. No other nation on the planet is adding cases like the United States.
...
China appears to be successful in fighting the infection there, while the United States seems utterly ineffectual in halting the lightening growth here. At this point, there’s no doubt about which nation is more dangerous to the rest of the world.

And what is happening in that ineffectual national government?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo gave a press conference today. I’ll take it in two parts. Cuomo said in a justified rant:

FEMA says we’re sending 400 ventilators. Really? What am I going to do with 400 ventilators when I need 30,000. You pick the 26,000 people who are going to die because you only sent 400 ventilators.

To which the nasty guy said:

It's a two way street. They have to treat us well too.
…
I hear there's a problem with ventilators. We sent them ventilators. They they could have had 15,000 or 16,000. All they had to do was order them two years ago. But they decided not to do it. They can't blame us for that.

lovewinsalways of the Kos community explains:

This is where Trump makes explicitly clear that he will happily let those stricken blue states burn in virus hell, unless they flatter him—by doing whatever he wants at the moment.

It is the most chilling moment of his already chilling presidency: if one looks at the bigger picture, I feel like it’s his personal declaration of civil war against half the country.

Neo Cortex tweeted:

He thinks governors need to curry favor with him in order to get what they need.

He thinks he's a damn king.

lovewinsalways replied:

As long as he can singlehandedly throttle the Fed’s action on coronavirus, he IS a king. The Repub Senate did this.

The other part of Cuomo’s press conference is in response to the GOP, so I’ll start with what they did.

I had mentioned that the nasty guy wants to “restart” the economy in spite of how that would cause a lot more exposure to the virus. Various GOP members are now saying stupid stuff to support that narrative. For example: Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick went on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News to say:

And you know Tucker, no one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, ‘Are you willing to take a chance on your survival, in exchange for keeping the America that all America [sic] loves, for your children and grandchildren?’ And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reminds us that it won’t be privileged Dan Patrick who has to make that sacrifice. Besides, while seniors are more likely to die, those who are not yet seniors also end up spending long periods in ICUs and also die.

Avoiding more damage to the economy is so important the GOP and the nasty guy are willing to put up with millions of deaths? Yeah, they are.

Laura Clawson of Kos reminds us that even if that was an acceptable trade-off (and it’s not), having millions of people get sick and a couple million die will have a profound effect on the economy, whether it’s restarted or not. All that disease means missing and lost workers, major medical debt, and possibly lost homes.

I’m sure that shuttered Trump properties has nothing to do with the nasty guy’s desire to restart the economy. Sheesh, only six of his top seven properties are shuttered. Together they produce $174 million a year. So what are a few million deaths when one is faced with the loss of a hundred million dollars?

Now, back to Cuomo and the second part of what said:

My mother is not expendable and your mother is not expendable and our brothers and sisters are not expendable and we're not going to accept a premise that human life is disposable.

Even before they try to reopen the economy the GOP and the nasty guy seem intent in killing of their base. Example 1: The nasty guy has been touting that chloroquine, a malaria drug, works against the coronavirus. It may. Or may not. Research whether it does and dosages for the safest outcome hasn’t been done yet. But that hasn’t stopped his desperate followers from trying it. And dying from it.

Example 2: They’re talking that restarting the economy means allowing perhaps millions of seniors die. But seniors voted for the nasty guy in pretty good percentages. They want to kill their voters.