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✭ ✭ ✭ Evansville Unfiltered ✭ ✭ ✭

Couple walking through American Flags

✭ ✭ ✭ Evansville Unfiltered ✭ ✭ ✭

by Mike Webster

Health

U.S. Number 28 in Quality of Life, and Dropping like a Rock

September 13, 2020

Some facts about our quality of life compared to the rest of the world from Nicholas Kristof’s column in the NYT…

“…out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than America’s.” Note those are the three countries ruled by the most ridiculous right wing buffoons.

“The United States, despite its immense wealth, military power and cultural influence, ranks 28th — having slipped from 19th in 2011. The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece.”

“The United States ranks No. 1 in the world in quality of universities, but No. 91 in access to quality basic education. The U.S. leads the world in medical technology, yet we are No. 97 in access to quality health care.”

“The Social Progress Index finds that Americans have health statistics similar to those of people in Chile, Jordan and Albania, while kids in the United States get an education roughly on par with what children get in Uzbekistan and Mongolia. A majority of countries have lower homicide rates, and most other advanced countries have lower traffic fatality rates and better sanitation and internet access.”

And so on. 

And all the lies and rah-rah bullshit in the world isn’t going to change the trajectory. Facing the truth is the only place to start. 

 

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Covid Update Aug. 17 – Indiana vs. Germany – Vanderburgh Co. vs. China

August 19, 2020

On August 17, Germany (population 80 million) had 2900 new cases and 11 new deaths. Meanwhile, Indiana (population less than 7 million) had 840 new positive results and 16 new deaths. Hmmm, something about those statistics suggests there might be a bit more testing going on in Germany than here in Indiana. 

For a more local perspective, Vanderburgh County (pop. 181,000) had 22 cases and 1 death while China (pop 1.6 billion) had 54 new cases and 2 new deaths.

 

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A peek into the wider world

August 17, 2020

Click to read a fascinating (and long) article from the New Yorker that details an American writing teacher’s experiences during the pandemic in China. I’m not putting it out there as any kind of “we should be doing this or that” recommendation, but it’s very interesting to see how different their approaches are to ours.

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An International Perspective

August 16, 2020

Via the Guardian: “The Italian government (Italy: population 60 million )has decided to close all discos in the country and to make mandatory wearing masks in outdoor public spaces where it is not possible to practice social distancing…  The fear of a new lockdown has begun to spread among Italians, as the country registered 479 new cases and 4 deaths on Sunday.”

Meanwhile, here in Indiana (population 6.5 million) on Friday we had 1085 new cases and 5 deaths and we are re-opening schools and looking forward to fall football.

When this is all over, it will be interesting to see which people’s are most devastated by the Covid epidemic: Those who listened to the science and got it under control, or those like the U.S. that failed miserably and let it run rampant.

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Don’t care about killing loved ones or strangers? Masks protect sociopaths, too

July 15, 2020

It seemed to me odd that masks reportedly do so well protecting others, but not the person wearing the mask. Turns out in this case, common sense is actually true. Wearing a mask does help prevent you from getting Covid-19. Or if it doesn’t prevent it, it may well result in a much less severe infection.

So don’t be like the Republicans trying to sicken and kill as many as possible. Make the minimal effort and wear a mask to save yourself, your loved ones, people you come in contact with, the economy, and maybe your soul. What have you got to lose, except perhaps your mindless loyalty to the sub-human shitstain in charge.

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7/10/20 – Vanderburgh County has more new Covid-19 cases than China

July 12, 2020

On July 10, Vanderburgh County (pop. 180,000) had more new Coronavirus cases (47) than China (pop. 1,439,323,776), which had 46 new cases.

Indiana (pop. 6,800,00), had 793 new cases, which is more than Italy, Spain, Denmark, Norway and Finland, with their combined populations of well over 100 million.

The United States had more new cases than the European Union and China combined, and you can throw in a host of other countries as well.

This is failure. Abject failure. Miserable failure. Historic Failure. And Catastrophic failure, both for millions of Americans and the economy.

And these failures are almost entirely the fault of Republicans. First they claimed it was a hoax, then they claimed it was no worse than the flu, then they claimed it was over. Well, now we know for sure that it was not a hoax, is much worse than the flu, and is far, far, far from being over.

Never, at least in the post-civil war history of the United States, has an American political party failed so catastrophically.

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U.S. surrenders to inevitable suffering and economic hardship*

July 4, 2020

* suffering and economic hardship demonstrably not inevitable.

The U.S., we are told, is helpless against the powerful inevitabilities that come with the Coronavirus. Its spread cannot be halted, at least not without destroying the economy and turning America into one big communist gulag. For those who need treatment, particularly hospitalization, the costs will be staggering. Typical insurance won’t cover much of it. Those without job-provided insurance are really on the button. Mass unemployment and economic hardship are inevitable for many who don’t get sick as well. Both public and personal safety inevitably cause severe economic slowdown, resulting in record high unemployment, inevitably followed by bankruptcy, evictions, and widespread personal suffering.

It’s all so inevitable, except it isn’t. In fact, these calamitous outcomes are easily avoidable. And it’s not some great mystery how to avoid them. Much of the world is avoiding them quite well.

This article in the New York Times give a good overview of just how inevitable mass suffering is not.

Some key takeaways:

The pandemic has ravaged Europeans and Americans alike, but the economic pain has played out in starkly different fashion. The United States has relied on a significant expansion of unemployment insurance, cushioning the blow for tens of millions of people who have lost their jobs, with the assumption that they will be swiftly rehired once normality returns. European countries — among them Denmark, Ireland, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Austria — have prevented joblessness by effectively nationalizing payrolls, heavily subsidizing wages and enabling paychecks to continue uninterrupted.

NYT

Of course that first sentence isn’t true. The pandemic has not ravaged Europeans and Americans alike. The European Union, with almost 200 million more people, has fewer and fewer new cases every day while the U.S. is spinning rapidly out of control.

In fact, the state of Florida alone, with a population of 21 million, had more new Covid-19 cases last week than the populations of the EU, China, Australia, and Korea combined. That’s like a billion and a half people – doing significantly better than a failed state of 21 million.

So clearly, it doesn’t have to be this way. Most of the population getting Covid-19 is not inevitable. The U.S. is failing. Failing miserably.

But what about economically? The EU had a much stricter lockdown than the U.S. Won’t are economy be in much better shape? Is that what we are buying, according to the Republicans, with all of those otherwise needless deaths and economic ruin for millions?

Sadly, no. The EU covered people’s paychecks during the crisis, and top quality healthcare was already available to all, paid for through taxes rather than by employers.

As cases increase at an alarming rate in much of the United States, the reliance on an overwhelmed unemployment system — the next infusion of money perpetually subject to the whims of Washington— leaves Americans uniquely exposed to a deepening crisis of joblessness. Europe appears poised to spring back from the catastrophe faster, whenever commerce resumes, because its companies need not rehire workers.

As cases increase at an alarming rate in much of the United States, the reliance on an overwhelmed unemployment system — the next infusion of money perpetually subject to the whims of Washington— leaves Americans uniquely exposed to a deepening crisis of joblessness. Europe appears poised to spring back from the catastrophe faster, whenever commerce resumes, because its companies need not rehire workers.

As cases increase at an alarming rate in much of the United States, the reliance on an overwhelmed unemployment system — the next infusion of money perpetually subject to the whims of Washington— leaves Americans uniquely exposed to a deepening crisis of joblessness. Europe appears poised to spring back from the catastrophe faster, whenever commerce resumes, because its companies need not rehire workers.

“You just send an email, and that’s it — you’re ready to go,” said Jonathan Rothwell, principal economist at Gallup, the American polling firm, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “There’s no recruitment or negotiation…

” In many European countries, wage subsidies have enabled paychecks to continue without a hitch, sparing people the anxiety of managing bills while awaiting relief. For Americans, hellish tangles with bureaucracy have become legion as tens of millions of people have deluged the unemployment system, crashing websites, tying up phone systems and standing in parking lots for hours outside benefits offices.”

The unemployment rate in the United States has soared nearly eight percentage points since February — it registered 11.1 percent in June — while France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands have all limited increases in the jobless rate to less than one percentage point.

“By and large, the European social model has proved quite adept and robust for this kind of crisis,” said Jacob F. Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

The American approach, by contrast, has barraged the unemployment system with people in dire straits, exceeding its capacity to deliver.

NYT

So you see, these calamities are not inevitable. Oh sure, the anti-American propagandists will tell you we can’t have healthcare and economic security because “Socialism,” but the fact is, what the far right propagandists call socialism is what normal, decent people refer to as “Democracy.’

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Failing state of America

June 20, 2020

The chart below shows the difference between the European Union and the United States in their effective handling of Covid-19 to date. You can see that Europe got hit hard first and then quickly started bringing down their number of new infections. The US, even with additional time to act, did worse in limiting the initial onslaught, and then totally failed to bring the numbers down significantly. And this is not per-capita, the EU has a much larger population so the real comparison is even more devastating for the US. And with nearly all of the Republicans and a lot of regular Americans ignoring expert advice, expect the red line on the graph to go off the chart in the coming months.

Why do we put up with such deadly, economy destroying incompetence from the Republicans? Why do we put up with weak national Democrats who measly roll over while all this is happening, doing little more than getting off a few good quips?

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© 2021 · Michael Webster