Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Mask On!

The epidemiologists were right about Delta-Covid creating another pandemic wave. Incredibly, the Trumpy simpletons continue to insist they know more than communicable disease experts, and that masks are completely useless. Some masks are, sure, because they’re just a piece of cloth, or proper masks that have been overused. What’s really concerning for public health are the anti-maskers who are also anti-vaxx.

I like this clever faux Winsor McCay cartoon by Peter Kuper in The New Yorker, from early in the pandemic, April ’20.

Click to enlarge

I’m going to assume Kuper worked from an actual McCay cartoon. For reference here’s a Little Sammy Sneeze.

Here’s another McCay creation, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, featuring an early appearance of Gertie the Dinosaur. Gertie appeared the following year in an animated cartoon by the prolific McCay.

Testing… Testing… 1… 2… 2:20

Today after 2 PM ET is the time to not panic!

https://www.fema.gov/press-release/20210611/fema-and-fcc-plan-nationwide-emergency-alert-test-aug-11-test-messages-

WASHINGTON – FEMA, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission, will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) this summer.

The national test will consist of two portions, testing WEA and EAS capabilities. Both tests will begin at 2:20 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Aug. 11.

A Point Worth Repeating

This is a comment I made on Facebook:

It’s much easier to not infect someone else than it is to avoid being infected yourself. Preventing the spread can be done with the cheap, blue surgical masks. Protecting yourself requires a more expensive, and much less comfortable, N95 mask.

It’s now clear that someone who is fully vaccinated can infect others with Delta-Covid. So the obvious thing for everybody to do, including those of us who are vaccinated, is to return to wearing proper masks in public when indoors. The virus doesn’t know politics, it only knows biology, and yet many people insist on making this a political issue.

Deflating the Fed

The ultimate winners of the 2008 investment bank debacle were the investment banks. The Fed can’t give money to people directly, it can only give money to banks in the hope doing that will help people. The banks have instead, of course, been helping themselves.

Through the Treasury, Congress can give money to people directly, which it has been doing during the pandemic. This action has been a factor in triggering short-term inflation. It has apparently even helped some people delay returning to work.

I don’t see inflation becoming a chronic problem unless income inequality is addressed. Perhaps we’re getting a taste of that, with more people demanding a higher minimum wage. If the Fed decides it must raise interest rates Wall Street will freak out, but they have to know that their free lunch can’t last forever.

Here’s some more on this favorite topic.