☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Monday, October 4, 2021 ☙ Cruise to Nowhere 🦠

In today’s roundup: news from our complaint department; the 5DAY restart; Fauci says some more dumb stuff, and somehow STILL has a job; New York’s first cruise delivers a unique adventure ...

It’s Monday! Let’s get this week started off right. In today’s roundup: news from our complaint department; the 5DAY restart; Fauci says some more dumb stuff, and somehow STILL has a job; New York’s first cruise delivers a unique adventure for its fully-injected passengers; society makes demands; northern states begin to see their winter wave kicking in despite high injection rates; Covid is coming across the border in record numbers; experts give us a new, bizarre Zoom-related mental disorder; pot smokers face bad news from a new UK study suggesting their pandemic fears might be enhanced by the habit; global transportation takes a beating from pandemic restrictions; and President Trump sues Twitter under the State Action Doctrine.

🗞 *THE C&C ARMY POST* 🗞

🔥 My firm’s voice mail received two messages after midnight Saturday from a gentleman who apparently, wanted to file something with the complaint department. Only the first call, at 12:04am, was comprehensible. The second message, at 12:16am, was just him breathing heavily into the voice mail for about ninety seconds. I am trying super hard to NOT imagine what he was doing.

Anyway, since we don’t have a complaint department, but I wanted to help as best I can, here’s his complaint, with light editing around the adult language:

“Childers, you’re a loser. I’ll send you some flowers when your lawsuit is tossed out of court. Why don’t you read that story about that ten-year-old girl that died after having Covid for a few days. That’s what you want, huh? See little kids dying, dropping dead. Well, at least you republicans are killing off all your own kind. That’s really good. I love it. Piece of s—.”

Listen for yourself! https://tinyurl.com/3cf7mf6f. The caller-id registered from Orlando: (407) 801-1872.

Since he didn’t leave formal contact information, regrettably, we are unable to process his complaint at this time.

☎️ 5DAY Calling Army! Time to shift back into gear. After working on our new strategy, we are going to split calls between two groups. First, just two state offices: the Governor and the new Speaker of the House. The second group will be our private employers. We’ll begin with Ascension Health, a hospital network that is founded on Christian principles but has denied every single religious exemption to its odious “vaccinate or terminate” policy. So, there will be two scripts: one for the Governor and Speaker, and a different one for the hospital.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🪳 During a virtual lecture at a Canadian university titled “Covid-19: Lessons Learned and Remaining Challenges,” the diminutive Dr. Fauci, posing with one hand slipped inside his jacket, delivered a message to Canadians who oppose injection mandates. He said, “you are a member of society and … you have a responsibility to society, and … in the context of a pandemic … there comes a time when you do have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decisions.”

Oh. Okay. So, according to Fauci, individual rights are things you CONSIDER that you have. Haha, they aren’t bestowed by your Creator or anything. They’re just weird, funny ideas that all you little people have dreamed up. The conflict with your responsibilities to “society.” I wonder who exactly Fauci thinks you’re giving up your right to make your own decisions TO? Who’s this society person? Just precisely who’s going to tell us all what “society” thinks we should be doing? Him?

Is it just me, or should a statement like this immediately disqualify someone from any position of authority in any government agency in the United States of America?

Just to tickle you a little, this is the same Fauci who, on February 5, 2020, wrote in an email to Sylvia Burwell that most masks can’t filter coronavirus:

> “Masks are really for infected people … the typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out [sic] gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you.”

Well, I guess society overruled him. You’ve got to watch out for that society. You never know what it’s going to come up with next.

And, people who live up north. Pay attention. You have a Covid wave coming. If you don’t resist now and draw a line when they try to shove down the early mitigations, you know what they’re going to do. Think about it for ten seconds.

🪳 On Sunday, following his annual “dark winter” warning party, Fauci told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “it is just too soon to tell” if Christmas gatherings will be advised in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Who knows? Christmas might be cancelled again. Society said so. Society seems to be a lot like Simon Says.

Anyway, tossing her journalistic standards under the nearest Greyhound Express, CBS anchor Margaret Brennan asked Fauci this hard-hitting question: “Do people need to start looking around and say it is too risky to gather with family members if there are unvaccinated children?”

Well, Maggie, I guess we know how YOU feel about tiny humans, huh?

There WAS one small glimmer of hope. I’m probably making too much of it. But, you know. I’m a relentless optimist. Fauci — maybe for the very first time ever — mentioned INDOOR AIR QUALITY. He said, in his trademark rambling, repetitive, disjointed, over-syllabalized fashion, “I believe the way the CDC has recommended is when you’re in a situation where you have a dynamics of virus in the community, where there is clearly a lot of spread, even if you are vaccinated, and you are in an indoor setting, a congregate setting, it makes sense to wear a mask and to avoid high-risk settings. We should be looking at ventilation in indoor places. It is clearly spread by aerosol, so you want more ventilation, which is the reason why outdoors is always much safer than indoors. If you are indoors, ventilation will be key. That’s the reason we should be paying attention to that.”

Yes, VENTILATION. Finally. It only took two years.

🔥 The AP ran a story yesterday headlined, “Virus surge hits New England despite high vaccination rates.” Oh, dear. That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? According to the AP, “Hospitals across the region are seeing full intensive care units and staff shortages are starting to affect care. Public officials are pleading with the unvaccinated to get the shots. Health care workers are coping with pent-up demand for other kinds of care that had been delayed by the pandemic.”

Why, it’s almost like the injections don’t work very well. Of course, that’s a silly idea. Silly and dangerous. They’re safe and effective, we all know that. Safe and effective.

So let’s jab more! The AP reports that a Rhode Island official said he didn’t think the 70% vaccination goal, once the gold-standard level that would help end the pandemic, is going to be enough. “What we’ve learned with delta and looking beyond delta, is because that’s where our focus is as well, to really reach those levels of vaccination, to give you that true population level protection, you need to be in excess of 90%,” said Tom McCarthy, the executive director of the Rhode Island Department of Health COVID Response Unit.

Uh huh.

Vermont’s Republican governor Phil Scott is drawing criticism from media for saying that “we can’t be in a perpetual state of emergency.” What a dumb idea, right? Of COURSE you can have a permanent emergency, if Society says so. Anyway, so far, Governor Scott has resisted re-instituting mitigation measures that were in place during the state of emergency. Which makes a lot of media personalities and Covid experts super cranky.

Northerners, remember what I said about what’s coming. You have a Covid wave to deal with. Get ahead of it now.

🛳️ Last week, the very first cruise to leave New York City since the lockdowns departed for Bermuda with great fanfare. The fully injected passengers were SO happy to be cruising again. They took those shots so they could get back on board. So what do you supposed happened right after the big departure concert and hors doevres? That’s right! You got it! Five fully injected passengers tested positive anyway. So then, ALL the passengers were quarantined and subjected to repeated testing while on board.

Sounds like a fun time, doesn’t it? It’s just like being locked down at home except you get to pay a few thousand dollars and have to stay in an 400-square-foot apartment for a week. I hear those tiny houses are super popular these days. Maybe it’s like that. And, I’m guessing that the food service delivered to everybody’s room might be a little, well, sub-par, and not super prompt. Just speculating.

Sounds more like an expensive floating prison ship to me, but hey, I’m not a cruise fanatic. I say, knock yourselves out.

🔥 According to NBC news, the Biden Administration is quietly getting ready for the largest influx of illegal migrants EVER — up to 400,000 of them. That is double the previous record, set in July, when 210,000 folks illegally walked across the country’s southern border. So far this year, over 1.2 million people have entered the country.

Covid’s coming too. Secretary Mayorkas said that he was “surprised” at the “tragic rise” of the Delta variant on the border. He has no idea how it’s happening, really. Totally baffled.

Meanwhile, White House spokeslady Jen Psaki defended the administration’s decision NOT to test incoming migrants for Covid. During a presser a couple weeks ago, a reporter asked why there are so many steps that citizens have to undergo for Covid-19 when they into the country, such as providing vaccination proof or a negative COVID-19 test, but seemingly none for non—citizens who stroll across the border. Psaki explained the difference is that the administration thinks the migrants are “not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time.” Plus, Society thinks so too.

Psaki also confirmed that the migrants were NOT required to get Covid injections, unlike Biden’s entire federal workforce. Psaki “did not elaborate” on the reasons for the differential treatment between illegal migrants and federal workers.

So.

🔥 Add a new anxiety disorder to the list of manufactured mental problems the experts have gifted to us all. According a recent article in Yahoo News, it’s Zoom Body Dismorphia. Apparently some people are freaking out about how they look on Zoom calls — their only social interaction. So they are getting nose jobs, lip plumping procedures, wrinkle fillers, or pretending their zoom cameras don’t work and stuff.

Dimplez Ijeoma, an 30’s something LA-based social strategist — whatever that is — didn’t used to spend much time in front of the mirror pre-pandemic. But once she was forced to stare at herself in work-related Zoom calls up to 40 hours every week, she started worrying about her skin texture. She tried Zoom filters to blur her appearance, but that just made her self-image even worse in real life. “When you look in a mirror after eight hours of a beauty filter on Zoom, it’s like, ‘Oh snap, I have pores,’” she says.

Sam, a 28-year-old data analyst, said he tried therapy for his Zoom body dysmorphia, but ultimately decided on a nose job instead. “I was pleased with the results for a few months, but later, the dysmorphia re-emerged, and I found a new flaw in the same facial feature,” he says. “I’m now on the waitlist for a therapist with body dysmorphic disorder expertise.”

27-year-old operations manager Becky Schwarz opts out of virtual social gatherings now. “Zoom has made me want to be invisible, but that is incredibly lonely,” Schwarz says. “I’m really not sure how to come out the other side of this.” Now, after looking at herself in the Zoom window for so long, she doesn’t even want to go to IN-PERSON events. Becky says her social anxiety and body dysmorphia are peaking: “I hate so much the idea of going out places and having people see more than I have learned to control.”

Things are just going great, aren’t they? Thanks experts!

🔥 An op-ed in the AZ Central is headlined, “Biden’s approval rating might be higher if he stopped shooting himself in the foot.” It notes that “Most chief executives offer a mix of good and bad … but … it’s hard to think of a single area in which Biden is succeeding.”

I agree with that, so long as what they mean by “hard” is “impossible.”

🔥 The UK Daily Mail reported this morning that “Cargo ships anchored off N.Y. and L.A. are facing a 4-week wait to unload, and trains in Chicago are backed up 25 miles, with the global supply chain on the brink of collapse: Americans face shortages of cars, shoes and exercise gear as holiday season looms.”

The article explains in a sub-head that “supply chains have lagged far behind consumer demand due to a lack of manpower at US ports and restrictions that came with the Covid-19 outbreak.” It explains that protocols like social distancing and mandatory quarantines have put severe limits on the numbers of dockworkers who can work at one time. The traffic-jams at ports on the California and Atlantic coasts have reached crisis levels over the last 18 months, and are rapidly going downhill since July.

Now add injection mandates.

Pre-Covid, the cost of shipping a container from China to the US’s West Coast was about $1,300. Today the cost of transporting one container is about $35,000 — thirty times more. Some retailers who can’t buy ANY container to timely deliver their goods are turning to private air charters. The cost of chartering an aircraft from Asia to the US is about $2.5 million. So.

An open letter was published last Wednesday by union bosses of IRU, the world road transport organization; the IATA (the International Air Transport Association); the ICS (the International Chamber of Shipping); and the ITF (the International Transport Workers’ Federation). The letter warns that fragmented and inconsistent pandemic restrictions around the world have thrown global shipping into chaos. “ We are witnessing unprecedented disruptions and global delays and shortages on essential goods including electronics, food, fuel and medical supplies,” the shippers warned.

“Global infrastructure was not designed to handle goods at such a rate,” a logistics expert, who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation, told the UK paper. “Supply chains are the artery that feeds our entire ecosystem. The government needs to intervene to stop this crisis immediately, or face increased inflation and unemployment, and economic breakdown - or face an end to global trade.”

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a president who knew something about business a logistics? I bet a president like that could get things sorted out.

🔬 A cautionary study for marijuana users published last week in the journal “Psychological Medicine.” It claims to be the one of the largest cohorts of marijuana use ever explored. Using primary care data drawn from the UK’s public health database, the researchers found that, following the first recorded use of cannabis, patients were three times more likely to develop common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety and almost seven times more likely to develop severe mental illnesses like psychosis or schizophrenia. They were careful to note that the correlation between cannabis use and mental illness does not establish a causal relationship. But it’s something to think about while in the midst of a pandemic of fear.

🤜 President Trump, with some other “banned” Twitter users, has filed suit in the Southern District of Florida asking the Court to order Twitter to restore their accounts. It’s actually not a bad case. The suit alleges that the federal government in one way or another pressured Twitter to ban the president. That doesn’t seem farfetched. If it did, that would be government action, and unconstitutional, even though Twitter itself is only a private actor.

The motion states that “coercive and threatening statements made by Congressional and Executive Branch members…applying pressure on and threatening consequences against [Twitter] if it failed to censor [President Trump], amounted at a minimum to significant encouragement,”

The law is clearly settled: the government can’t get a private actor to do unconstitutional stuff that the government isn’t allowed to do. Called “state action doctrine,” it allows constitutional restrictions to be applied to private actors. The doctrine has been around for a while; it’s not like it’s the first time that politicians have tried something like this. Unfortunately it takes time to work through the courts.

One of the best things about Trump’s suit is that it could provide a LOT of opportunity for some very interesting discovery about all the communications the Biden people had with Twitter since before the election. It’s taken the President a long time to get this filed, but considering that it is evident they’ve thought it through, it will probably have been worth the wait.

Have a magnificent Monday. I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning, for more.

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