Doug's Darkworld

My friend’s daughter lost her sense of smell from Covid-19 too. A very bad sign, means it’s doing things in her brain. Let’s just hope she’s not going to have heart damage either, looking like a lot of people who otherwise got over Covid-19 with few symptoms have damaged hearts: Covid-19 infections leave an impact on the heart, raising concerns about lasting damage. Thank you Mr Trump and Mr Limbaugh and all the other people who downplayed the severity of this crisis and left America virtually defenseless. Or worse: Coronavirus Doctors Battle Another Scourge: Misinformation.

And Trump (and his followers) still haven’t grasped that magical thinking isn’t going to make Covid-19 go away. Now Trump’s touting a quack cure made from Oleander leaves: On coronavirus, Trump reportedly has a new ‘cure’ in mind. No Mr Trump, as Rachel says, this is the cure: “Trump needed to implement a national, coordinated response, built around stay-at-home orders, an aggressive testing regime, an ambitious contact-tracing system, and related mitigation efforts.” Still waiting. The real death toll is likely over 200,000 now: Up to 204,691 extra deaths in the US so far in this pandemic year. We’re hosed.

So, yes, the post title. No doubt about it, like heights, I am afraid of catching Covid-19. It’s basically like being forced to play Russian roulette without even knowing how many bullets are in the gun. Typically one out of six. With Covid-19, we don’t know! I already know people who survived, but are still messed up. It’s still stunning to me that so many people simply can’t grasp that Covid-19 is utterly new and unknown. It really is an alien invasion, but people are so wedded to their complacent world view, they can’t see that.

I guess it makes sense. A colony of animals first and foremost must get along in a reasonably productive and safe manner in a mutually agreed upon reality. Things like Covid-19 are extreme outliers, it simply doesn’t fit into our world view. Covid-19 is superficially like a cold or flu, so that’s how our brains categorise it. Sadly though the rest of the human race appears to  at least on some levels understand their leaders need to be able to deal with novel threats. We are living on the surface of a planet, a chaotic dangerous environment if there ever was one.

Oh well. I’ll survive. Or I won’t. Was gonna make a science post, but the pandemic intruded. Still, here’s one sciency thing: Political forecast models aren’t necessarily more accurate than polls – or the weather. Polls are the astrology or divination of our times. Here’s a secret  this old fellow has learned through decades of studying reality: The future can’t be predicted, because it hasn’t happened yet! Codicil: Yes of course some things like eclipses can be predicted with great accuracy, but even then not 100% accuracy. Things can change. Elections though, way too many variables. Especially in contemporary America, where things are kinda messed up right now.

So lastly, the image. A Tully monster. Only known from fossils in Illinois. It lived in shallow seas about 300 million years ago. Grew up to about a foot long. A frog, a fish, a worm? No one knows, best guess it was a vertebrate of some sort. It was apparently an evolutionary dead end, it’s not believed any modern life descended from it. Let’s hope homo sapiens doesn’t suffer the same fate. Right now I am not reassured.

It’s a Monday in 2020. Blerg. Stay safe everyone. #StaytheFhome #wearaDamnMask

Copyright © 2020 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Image. A Tully Monster. Credit: Nobu Tamura email:nobu.tamura@yahoo.com http://spinops.blogspot.com/  Reproduced here under a creative commons licence.)