Yesterday I learned of the death, this week, of a certain local woman. I didn’t know her, but knew of her. Whenever I had reason to watch the local school-board meetings on livestream, she was often among the public-comment speakers. She always prefaced her remarks with a long Bible verse, and often warned members of who they’d have to answer to if they continued on the road to perdition, which they always were.
She spoke for God, in other words, and she had the usual right-wing positions. Her latest issue was masking in schools (she was opposed), and on her website, there’s a hodgepodge of paranoia over vaccines and why the God-approved treatments of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, Vitamin D, etc. are being kept from The People.
You’ll never guess what killed her.
Which would be merely a tragedy to her family and friends, except for this, a note left by her sister on the dead woman’s Facebook page. The sister appears to still have a rational brain:
Seven weeks. SEVEN WEEKS, much of that in intensive care. Seven goddamn weeks, refusing treatment. If anyone wonders why doctors and nurses are shattering like dropped china, here’s one big clue, this woman who refused to save herself, taking up the most expensive real estate in an American hospital for nearly two months.
Hate to be a bummer, but maybe the bright side is this: I’m still capable of being astounded by this stuff. Yay me.
And thanks to the Supreme Court, there will be more Alisons in more hospitals, because Freedom. God bless America.
I want to leave you on a cheerier note, so here’s this: Treble-vaccinated, I am taking care of myself. No symptoms yet from our heedless safari for hummus last week, so feeling I escaped that one. Meanwhile, you do the same. And have a great weekend.
Dave said on January 14, 2022 at 8:51 am
Completely unrelated but glancing back through NNC history, I see your on-line musings have come of age now. 21, is that really right? That’s a lot of dedicated time and a lot of words. Thank you.
Meanwhile, I see an unvaccinated Glen Beck has Covid for the second time.
276 chars
Mark P said on January 14, 2022 at 8:52 am
Do you see that big pile of smoking rubble with all the crazy people running around tearing their hair and thumping their bibles, down at the bottom of that long, bumpy road? That’s where we’re headed. Once we’re all insane, that’s where we’re heading.
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe not. But probably so.
312 chars
David C said on January 14, 2022 at 9:31 am
My sister told me last night that our brother has Covid again. Not vaxxed, Fox news and wingnut radio nut, of course. He was at the hospital when my dad was in for heart procedures and the goddamned hospital let him. We’re never getting out of this.
249 chars
LAMary said on January 14, 2022 at 9:56 am
The roadie son who caught covid is testing negative now and he got boosted last night. I felt like shit yesterday but no fever, just tired and produced prodigious quantities of snot. I used two boxes of tissues in one day. I still hire nurses for a living but now it’s for jobs that are not in hospitals It’s telecommuting RNs who follow up with people on medicaid or medicare who were just discharged from hospitals. The RNs job is to keep them from going back in by making sure they go to the doctor appointments, take their meds, have regular meals and that their families support the care plan they have. There’s a very large sign on bonus for nurses who take these jobs. I’m stealing hospital nurses and it’s not hard to do these days.
741 chars
Jeff Borden said on January 14, 2022 at 10:10 am
A researcher in Europe stated recently the coronavirus will go from pandemic to endemic because so many people remain unvaccinated. A covid shot will now join the flu shot as an annual experience. Yippee. All the anti-vaxxers sure have owned the libs. . .at least until they croaked.
If Cassandra were still around, she’d be frantic.
SCOTUS, of course, crushed Biden’s mandate efforts, though I’m mildly surprised they did allow that health care workers must follow the mandate. Next up? Roe. And then, Griswold.
The Republican National Committee is threatening a boycott of the presidential debates in 2024 because they have been deemed “unfair” to a party that will nominate a brain-addled racist as its standard bearer.
Two “Democrats” with a warped sense of tradition are ensuring the QOP will tilt the playing field to its advantage by refusing to budge on a carve out for voting rights. If you want to develop a nice, pulsating ulcer, I urge you to watch Sinema’s speech from yesterday, which might’ve been appropriate 50 years ago, when the QOP was still a functioning political party.
After the QOP takes power in the midterms, the House already is promising a series of investigations into Biden, Pelosi, etc., while it will ignore the traitorous members of its own party.
All in all, I’d say we as a nation are fucked. The delicate machinery of governing created in the late 18th century has proven no match for a depraved political movement funded by wealthy misanthropes and driven by the most dishonest media this side Tass.
1555 chars
Icarus said on January 14, 2022 at 10:14 am
@LAMary @4: got any open positions. My wife is looking for telecommuting. She’s an NP but started as a nurse.
111 chars
nancy said on January 14, 2022 at 10:24 am
I might be crazy, but I think Griswold is safe. This court is highly political, and isn’t going to do anything that will get people to turn against the GOP, and making birth control a campaign issue would be a bridge too far. The number of people who really want that level of government involvement in private lives is vanishingly small, although very loud. Roe is toast, but not Griswold.
390 chars
nancy said on January 14, 2022 at 10:27 am
Oh, and thanks to Dave for noticing: Today is this blog’s 21st birthday, which boggles my mind. It’s old enough to drink!
Just yesterday, a fellow traveler suggested moving to Substack, so you all can shower me with money. Eh, I dunno. I’ve gone for 21 years, and who knows if Substack will even be there in a few more?
Too bad it’s Dry January, or I’d open a bottle of something fizzy. That’ll have to wait until February, maybe.
438 chars
LAMary said on January 14, 2022 at 10:36 am
Icarus, yes. I do and the company I work for is huge so I know there are many more open positions all over the country. Maybe we can connect through our hostess here? I’m not entirely comfortable giving the name of my employer. It’s not the Nazi party or anything but well, you know.The hostess has my email address.
316 chars
Alan Stamm said on January 14, 2022 at 10:38 am
Alison’s irresponsibility extended to her family. She was a divorced mom with three kids, including a “son living with her” says a GoFundMe drive started Jan. 4 on behalf of daughter Alana.
“Her children have shared the expense and upkeep of Alison’s personal bills and home. … Just as Alison has been a voice for the unborn, we have an opportunity to let her voice be heard through our love and financial support!”
Fifty-seven people have given $4,995 toward the $20,000 goal, as of Friday morning.
507 chars
Julie Robinson said on January 14, 2022 at 11:27 am
Wonder if Alison had life insurance? Or is that not trusting God? When the kids were little we carried a large amount, so as not to make ourselves a burden on others should one of us die.
Alison reminds me of the old joke about a man drowning from the top of his house; then asking God where he was. Says God, I sent you a boat.
Of those I know who died from Covid, one was pre-vaccine, one had many health issues, and one was unvaxxed and unmasked. He also spent close to two months in the hospital and the family had to turn off the machines. Many of us here have probably been through that and know firsthand how traumatic it is. Even when you know there’s no point and your loved one is already gone, it’s horrible.
Happy Birthday nnc!
749 chars
jcburns said on January 14, 2022 at 11:29 am
Very glad you’re not moving your blog to Substack. For all kindsa reasons.
74 chars
Jeff Borden said on January 14, 2022 at 12:32 pm
Christian nationalists want lots more WHITE babies so I still think Griswold is in danger. This SCOTUS is as drunk on power as Brett Kavanaugh at a kegger. Nothing it does is unimaginable.
188 chars
Heather said on January 14, 2022 at 12:34 pm
Before Christmas I had a Zoom meeting with a client. He had Covid and mentioned he wasn’t vaccinated, as it was “a choice I made.” I didn’t say anything but thought, “Jeez, you could be dead next week.” Found out he’s been in the hospital since not long after then. They can’t get his oxygen levels to stay up. Do I feel bad for him? Sure. But not as bad as I feel for healthcare workers and the rest of us who have been responsible about getting vaccinated.
There’s a big story here in Chicago about one of those pop-up testing sites being a scam and giving everyone negative results, not sending PCR results, etc. I can’t tell if it’s the same one that runs the one I was using, but I never got my PCR test from the last one more than a week ago (rapid was negative). Plus they have my insurance card and driver’s license info. Meanwhile apparently one of the owners was crowing about buying luxury cars with “Covid money.” Sigh. Why do too many people have to be so awful? Is it really so hard to be a decent person?
1022 chars
Julie Robinson said on January 14, 2022 at 1:09 pm
Exactly, Heather. The health care workers are bearing the brunt for all the anti-vaxxers, and that’s the true tragedy.
In DeKalb, just outside Chicago, there have been reports of a place where people get negative test results emailed to them before they’ve even left the facility. Wonder if that’s being run by the same joint.
329 chars
Deborah said on January 14, 2022 at 8:00 pm
I’m distracting myself from LA traffic while my husband is driving us down to Anaheim where his granddaughter lives. I hate being on the freeways here. We dropped Jena off in Beverly Hills at a restaurant where her friend who works at Cedar Sinai is picking her up after work. So far the trip has been ok, except last night at the Hampton Inn in Flagstaff, AZ between midnight and 3am, there were loud angry people talking loudly outside, I couldn’t tell what they were saying but I could tell they were angry and it was creepy. Seems like everyone is mad as hell these days.
575 chars
Sherri said on January 14, 2022 at 8:23 pm
It will be interesting to see what happens with this: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/01/madison-cawthorn-insurrection-disqualify-reelection.html
155 chars
MarK P said on January 14, 2022 at 11:57 pm
I’m at the point where I think the left should join the right in destroying this government. It has only worked as well as it has because the norms were mostly respected. Now they aren’t. The majority on the SC consists of partisan hacks who make decisions not supported by law or logic. If I were president, I would call out the justices who voted to throw out the vaccination mandate, and then say that I respect the court’s decision, and am now declaring a national emergency, and will order all employers with more than 100 employees to mandate vaccination, no exceptions. Then I would tell the SC to go fuck itself.
620 chars
Dexter Friend said on January 15, 2022 at 1:35 am
My daughter flew back from Las Vegas after finishing her stint of like 10 days of long shifts in a hospital there. She’s going to do this long commute for a while until she finds a house somewhere in Ohio and lands a new job there and says goodbye to Las Vegas for good. She currently has an apartment in Grove City, Ohio. She texted me this evening saying she is coming for a visit this afternoon. Bad thing…she and her husband and half the people at the Christmas party I was at have tested positive, and I was exposed, but did not get sick. She is fresh out of a hospital working environment and is coming to see me. I’ll be wearing my N95 mask and will not be hugging her hello or goodbye. I don’t know…so many triple-vaxxed older people I know are getting very ill here, testing is nearly impossible here…I do not want to get this virus. I checked with a pharmacist I know and this area has not had a single case of Omicron yet. My daughter may be the one who introduces it to the area. She says my vax status will protect me. I do not believe it.
I had to go to Walmart. No cart. A giant retailer sells stuff a person needs a cart for gathering items.
Nobody around, I see the pharmacist I know. She says no, there are supposed to be carts , but there is no one to go get them in the parking lot. Can you imagine that? A Walmart, no available shopping carts. I grabbed two small items I needed and checked out. The groceries and stuff I needed were impossible to deal with. As I left the parking lot, I saw a person shoving a few carts back into the cart corral. Too late. It was just too weird.
1626 chars
David C said on January 15, 2022 at 6:09 am
We’re going to need something like that Mark. It’s probably too early right now but it’s a good time to start priming the pump. They were entirely too calm about the OSHA decision. Oh well, we’ll just work with the employers to do it voluntarily wasn’t a good reaction. Read the law and ask what part of protecting workers from disease the Supremes don’t understand. A little ridicule about Ivy Leaguers with such poor reading comprehension would be a nice touch.
463 chars
nancy said on January 15, 2022 at 6:49 am
Dexter, that pharmacist is full of shit. Besides, how would he know? He’s not doing gene sequencing in the back room at the drugstore. Omicron is everywhere now, it’s the “just a cold” variety that everyone is getting. Of course, “just a cold” for generally healthy, young, vaccinated people with no co-morbidities, and I sure as hell don’t want to get it, either. Delta is still here, of course, but omicron is No. 1 with a bullet. No way has it not penetrated NW Ohio.
470 chars
Jeff Gill said on January 15, 2022 at 8:20 am
Dexter, what Nancy said; the Ohio case counts and hospitalizations have peaked in the Cleveland area, are still climbing to a hoped for peak and decline around my Columbus neighborhood & up in your Toledo vicinity. Lots of useful info on the state site here, but bottom line is you are right, stay masked & be cautious, regrettably, because vax status will likely keep you from getting mortally ill, but NOT from getting it altogether:
https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/covid-19/dashboards/current-trends
Statewide, we were at 74% of all COVID cases testing as the Omicron variant, and that was days ago; again, nobody is showing a county by county tally, but the upshot is clear — since the first week of December, it’s gone from two cases to being in every one of our 88 counties:
https://fox8.com/news/omicron-in-ohio-where-we-stand-after-first-cases-were-detected-5-weeks-ago/
902 chars
LAMary said on January 15, 2022 at 10:45 am
My just a cold variety sucks but it just like a bad cold. So far. No fever, just lots of snot and a scratchy throat. The sons are better but they are young. I’m vaxxed and boosted so it is possible to catch it when you’re vaxxed and boosted. I’d say stock up on tissues, tylenol and lots of beverages. I’m chugging cranberry mango juice and herbal tea but that’s just my preference, not any sort of medicinal thing.
415 chars
Deborah said on January 15, 2022 at 12:46 pm
So there is, or maybe was a tsunami warning for the US west coast this morning where we are right now. Not expecting inundation but could be strong currents. It’s raining now so we weren’t planning to go to the beach today anyway. Weird. There was a large volcanic explosion near Tonga in the Pacific causing some tsunami action all around the pacific. There are satellite videos of the explosion that are quite dramatic.
425 chars
Sherri said on January 15, 2022 at 1:11 pm
Dexter, your triple-vaxxed status won’t protect you from getting omicron, just make it less likely that you end up in the hospital or die. Depending on your comorbidities, it can still really suck. My triple-vaxxed friend in her 30s who has been through a couple of rounds of chemo just got it despite being really careful, and she ended up at the ER with difficulty breathing. She didn’t have to be admitted, fortunately, but it was a little scary. She’s better now.
473 chars
Brandon said on January 15, 2022 at 2:26 pm
“Texas scientists’ new Covid-19 vaccine is cheaper, easier to make and patent-free.”
“A new Covid-19 vaccine is being developed by Texas scientists using a decades-old conventional method that will make the production and distribution cheaper and more accessible for countries most affected by the pandemic and where new variants are likely to originate due to low inoculation rates.”
“The team, led by Drs Peter Hotez and Maria Bottazzi from the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine, has been developing vaccine prototypes for Sars and Mers since 2011, which they reconstructed to create the new Covid vaccine, dubbed Corbevax, or ‘the world’s Covid-19 vaccine’.
“Although more than 60 other vaccines are in development using the same technology, Bottazzi said their vaccine is unique because they do not intend to patent it, allowing anyone with the capacity to reproduce it.”
1064 chars
susan said on January 15, 2022 at 5:36 pm
Kyrdastan Cinema as porta potties.
126 chars
tajalli said on January 15, 2022 at 6:04 pm
Videos of the surges. Santa Cruz is south of San Francisco Bay. Richardson Bay is a bay on the north end of SF Bay proper and is a huge wildlife reserve.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tsunami-advisory-San-Francisco-Bay-Area-Tonga-16777945.php
258 chars
Julie Robinson said on January 15, 2022 at 11:53 pm
Word from Wane-TV is that former and disgraced Congressman Mark Souder has pancreatic cancer.
93 chars
Deborah said on January 16, 2022 at 12:47 am
Beaches are supposed to be open tomorrow morning in Orange County so we’re going to maybe Seal Beach or Huntington Beach tomorrow. They were worried about tsunami caused rogue waves but I don’t think there were any so far around there so they lifted the closures. Although it sounds like they had surges further north up the CA coast.
338 chars
Dexter Friend said on January 16, 2022 at 2:49 am
My daughter and her husband never showed up, deciding to visit her cousin just 8 miles away from me and not telling me. Finally she called me at midnight saying she wasn’t coming, oh well. She echoed what you folks wrote, Omicron certainly is here; the pharmacist was going by the local paper’s daily reports that there have been no documented Omicron cases yet. Lori is sure I had it since I was all around it on 12-25. And she and her husband bought a ranch house in Van Buren, Ohio, a place Dave and Jeff G may have heard of. I think I drove through there before Wayz when I was on a detour years ago.
I gotta stop bragging on how the Honda Odyssey is such a great vehicle. 7 months, just TPMS and heater problems, stuff I knew was wrong when I bought it o-so-cheaply. Now , a leak. *sigh*. Ever hear the John Prine classic, “When I Get To Heaven…” He sings he’s gonna get a cocktail, vodka and ginger ale, gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long…” Well, I’m gonna get a flying car that runs on air and never sees a mechanic’s wrench.
1061 chars
ROGirl said on January 16, 2022 at 7:36 am
Maybe you shouldn’t use your work email to send messages to someone you’re involved with who isn’t your wife.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2022/01/15/university-michigan-president-mark-schlissel-fired-board-investigation/9162810002/
249 chars
Suzanne said on January 16, 2022 at 8:25 am
Speaking of men brought down by [clears throat] inappropriate behavior, it seems former IN congressman Mark Souder has pancreatic cancer. I will never forget his response to being found in violation of his marital vows with the woman who had helped him make abstinence videos. He praised God because his unethical behavior led to more publicity about the videos so more people watched them than would have otherwise.
Thus we see that the GOP convoluted reasoning is nothing new.
I feel your pain, Dexter. We recently were given my in-laws’ Chevy Impala, 2009, free of charge and have already put close to $4000.00 into it. It is still cheaper than buying one off the lot, though, so there’s that.
705 chars
Jeff Gill said on January 16, 2022 at 9:02 am
Van Buren: near Fostoria? I think of it as an exit off I-75, that’s all I know.
We’ve opened our emergency warming shelter in this county for six nights total so far, with 15 degrees the threshold, each two nights at a time, but forecasts after the snow coming tonight show a potential five day stretch later in the week below our agreed on benchmark . . . and the city is making noises about shutting us down for code violations if we operate more than three nights in a row. We’ve moved up from thresholds of 0 at first, then 10 degrees, and wanted to try to offer it at 15. The goal is to provide a low barrier shelter for three months, but we have local leaders who are complaining that the services we and Salvation Army and the jail ministry are providing are “drawing in” homeless from adjoining counties. Which I can’t say is entirely untrue, but sweet baby Jesus, what an argument. So, if 4 of your 12 guests are not from around here originally, we should be shut down so they and the other eight can be found the next morning at the ER losing toes or frozen to the sidewalk?
1087 chars
David C said on January 16, 2022 at 9:59 am
We’re having a pissing contest here over the location of a homeless shelter. The current warming shelter has only fifteen beds. The rest are given sleeping bags and sent out. We’ve already had one man freeze to death and one who broke a street light, walked to the police department, and turned himself in so he could spend the night in jail instead of on the street. They want to build a larger shelter that has capacity to serve more and offer more services. There’s city owned land available but it’s next to the amphitheater and convention center, so the economic development people are Oh yes, we need a shelter… …somewhere else. They think the land is better suited for an entertainment complex whatever that means. It’s been vacant since we moved here fourteen years ago. It’s a pretty small downtown and there aren’t very many somewhere elses left and they never say where somewhere else might be. This economy creates the homeless and can’t think of any other solution than “Not here”.
999 chars
Jeff Borden said on January 16, 2022 at 11:43 am
Maybe I need to do what Dorothy did and simply stop using news media for a few weeks. My already dark mood after the narcissistic performance by Krysten Sinema killed the voting bill and the Supreme Court gutted Biden’s vaccine mandate for large companies, I endured a coupe of news programs this morning detailing just how fucked Joe Biden is after just one year in office while my NYT details how Sinema’s stunt has absolutely fucked over the party, which will be required to spend tens of millions of dollars in a likely vain attempt to juice Democratic turnout. Black and brown voters will be notably less excited for the. midterms since Biden was unable to deliver on voting reforms. All so one woman can preen about how she is the defender of tradition. George Wallace, Lester Maddox and Orval Faubus must be beaming down in the lower levels of hell.
Thus, two Democratic assholes –Sinema and Manchin– will help the QOP retake Congress. Six lifetime justices just gave the coronavirus free reign. Isn’t democracy wonderful?
1034 chars
Dave said on January 16, 2022 at 12:24 pm
Van Buren? Really, how on earth did they land in the tiny town of Van Buren, just a short piece up the Dixie Highway from Mortimer, a wide spot in the road with the railroad running east and west through it, one I made many trips on, also known on the railroad as North Findlay. Welcome to Hancock County.
Jeff Borden, I think about ignoring the news frequently these days but I’m afraid that if I do, when I give in and look at it at some future date, I’ll be even madder about what has happened while I made an effort to ignore it. We see that Dorothy still posts here occasionally when she said she would try to stay away for her own peace of mind, nothing against any of us.
I worked with a man who went to public school with Mark Souder and he always said he was a self-righteous sort even when they were kids. That is all.
841 chars
alex said on January 16, 2022 at 1:45 pm
We won’t have Mark Souder to kick around anymore, and in even better news (for Republicans anyway) Cathie Humbarger of Allen County Right to Life is stepping down from her role as Kingmaker of Republican Mayoral Primaries, thus giving the GOP a fighting chance of winning a general election for the first time in decades.
323 chars