generalspeaking

Battling Double Scourges; COVID and Idiocy

"There is a light at the end of the tunnel if everyone does their part for the next 30 days."
"This is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans' lives, quite frankly. This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it's not going to be localized."
"It's going to be happening all over the country. And I want America to understand that."
U.S.Surgeon General Jerome Adams

"We're defying the rules because the commandment of God is to spread the Gospel", crowed Tomk Spell, pastor at the Life Tabernacle megachurch in a suburb of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This is a man who obviously believes in the Divine, and by extension, his very personal line to the heavens above, giving him first-hand confidence that god is prepared to intervene to save the faithful and strike down the unbelievers.

A view of the USNS Comfort at the Pier 90 on April 1, 2020 in New York City. The Comfort, a naval hospital ship, is equipped to take in patients within 24 hours but will not be treating patients with COVID-19. The ship’s 1,000 beds and 12 operation rooms will help ease the pressure on New York hospitals, many of which are now overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.   Nancy Rivera | Bauer-Griffin | Getty Images

That the State of Louisiana has become a virus hot spot appear completely irrelevant to this man of god despite a report of a leap in deaths to 409 among the more than 12,000 cases of COVID-19. Now, there will be more, many more. Little wonder that though Iceland did not really make an official declaration that all religions expose humankind's irrationality and manic dystopian behaviours, great celebration would ensue had it done any such thing, including its own Lutheran tradition.

Now, as the U.S. enters what is anticipated to be one of the most critical weeks in its crisis with the advent of the novel coronavirus stalking its population, felling the elderly and the health-impaired but also those of the medical profession, and people in the mid-years of their lives, the death toll continues to spiral upward in New York, Michigan and Louisiana. And though some governors call for a national stay-at-home order, their president, focused primarily on economic recovery, is adamant nothing of that order is required.

At a makeshift morgue located outside the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, photos in the possession of Reuters show victims' bodies stacked in bright orange body bags. This is a crisis of monumental proportions. One that has its counterparts in Spain and Italy and Ecuador, and threatens the United States as the current world epicentre, though other candidates will, without doubt, surface in Africa and India.

A police officer walks across an empty 7th Avenue in a sparsely populated Times Square due to Covid-19 concerns on Friday, March 20, 2020, in New York.

One bit of good news, announced by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo -- that hospitalizations had crested, new hospital entrants have fallen by 50 percent over the last 24 hours. New York State has seen over 122,000 cases of the novel coronavirus sweep through its cities, leaving a total of 4,159 corpses to be buried, where even the families of the dead may no longer traditionally mourn their losses for fear of a gathering becoming yet another growth factor in infection.

Residents of most states have been ordered to remain at home, other than for essential trips to acquire groceries, or prescription drugs. There are no medical appointments pending for anyone; doctors in private practise now consult by telephone. Over 327,000 people have tested positive and more than 9,300 Americans have perished from COVID. But that won't stop a few churches from holding large gatherings on Palm Sunday, to start Holy Week in Christian churches.

Should sweeping orders to remain at home and self-isolate, or practise 'social distancing' not be taken seriously by the American population to the extent required to 'flatten the curve' of the epidemic, medical experts advising the White House have forecasted 100,000 to 240,000 Americans are likely to lose their lives to the pandemic. "Very horrendous" days ahead, announced President Donald Trump.

Workers prepare dozens of extra medical beds as they are delivered to Mount Sinai Hospital amid the coronavirus pandemic on March 31, 2020 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images