500K

In a week that saw Ted Cruz depart for Cancun, Rush Limbaugh depart to hell, and Perseverance land on Mars, the news was overlooked.  Or the official number trackers have yet to make it official.

No matter.  If we’re not already there, we will be (sadly) soon enough.

A half-million Americans have died from the coronavirus.

Five Hundred Thousand.

It’s one of the worst administrative disasters in our history, and because it’s dragged on for over a year, it barely makes a blip in the news cycle.

One reason might be the very fact that no one can say for certain just how many have died, exactly.

As of Sunday, WorldOMeters (pictured here – it’s the one I follow) had the count at 511,026.  The COVID Tracking Project says 489,060.  And the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University has 498,794.  Of course, the very fact we can’t get an exact count is also part of that administrative disaster.  The WorldOMeter count blew by 500K on Wednesday; the others will soon follow.

Yet I saw no stories or Op-Eds then about this disaster.  A few started to pop up on Friday, a couple on Saturday, and a few more today (Sunday).  Like this caught people by surprise?

But there’s something more disgusting than having 500,000 dead from COVID, even though that itself is disgusting enough.  No, what really grinds my gears is that a year later, even with 500,000 dead, we’re STILL having arguments about wearing masks.  We’re STILL arguing about keeping our “social distance.” We’re STILL not completely trusting the scientists to do what’s right and get our collective asses out of this fix.

Yes, the vaccines are coming.  They’re here.  They’re being distributed.  But each of the fifty states has their own methods, their own procedures, their own stockpiles.  I’ve said this before and I will say it again:  it’s damn hard to believe that everything not done about the virus and what was done (poorly) wasn’t done that way on purpose just to fuck everything and everybody.

It’s a fucking disaster.

The new administration has been at it for only a month and already things have improved, but there’s still a long way to go.  In the meantime, more will get sick, and more will die.

Yes, there were others who screwed up in dealing with the virus (looking at YOU, Cuomo), but there was one person above all who should shoulder much of the blame.  He KNEW what was happening, and failed miserably. Yes, the “former guy” whose name I shall no longer utter in this blog.

Imagine if he had come out and said, “Y’know, this is gonna be a tough one.  Stay safe, wear a mask, keep your distance, wash your hands.”  That’s it.  Nothing more than that.  Imagine the difference it might have meant.  Imagine if Rush Limbaugh, with his massive audience (OK, not as big as it used to be) said something similar.  Imagine if they didn’t fart around with pushing hydroxychloroquine as a remedy for COVID.  Imagine if they just shut the fuck up and didn’t push push push to “reopen the economy” prematurely.  Imagine if they took the resources that were squandered in the 2017 tax cuts and spread it out among first responders, the unemployed caused by the shutdown, and those in need.

Didn’t do any of that.  And now 500,000 are dead.

And that’s probably a massive undercount.  I’ve seen reports that it could be 600,000 or more.  It’s a staggering number, no matter what the official count is.

And it’s only going up from here.