Covid 19-Operation Enduring Charlie Foxtrot
By Glen Lamont
Welcome to 2021! This is the year that will bring us out of the darkness and into the light. The year that will deliver us from isolation and Zoom meetings. The year that….hey who am I kidding? 2021 is probably going to look a lot like 2020 except for there won’t be a big steaming bowl of crazy in charge of the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. Oh yeah, and we have a vaccine, at least ways the wealthy nations have a vaccine. When I say we, I mean Canada, the US and the UK. Luckily Canada has a “me first…me first” policy when it comes to the vaccine. Canada bought a shit ton of Vaccine doses from Pfizer, Moderna, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, Glaxo-Smith-Kline and the Sinaloa Cartel ( I mean who knows delivery and distribution better than those guys?).
Many people I talk to seem to have a great deal of hope for the coming year now that a vaccine is here. The thing is, as I understand it, we need 70 percent of the population to be vaccinated in order to achieve herd immunity. With what I’ve witnessed over the past year, the odds of that happening are right up there with the Seattle Mariners winning the World Series (hey, they’re my team but let’s try and stay grounded here folks).
We learned a lot last year. We learned that when people are dying at alarming rates from an illness that nobody understood, we didn’t call celebrities, lawyers, hedge fund managers, professional athletes or Instagram influencers. We relied on Epidemiologists, Doctors, Nurses, Front Line healthcare workers, grocery store employees, delivery drivers and folks who work in food security. So thank god we learned something!! If not we might have had daily Covid 19 briefings from Kim Kardashian. If Trump had gotten reelected we probably would have.
Right now we’re hearing the term Covid Fatigue a lot. The term is being used to describe how fed up folks are with all the mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing and well basically….trying not to kill your neighbour with a deadly virus. I remember when Covid 19 first hit and they imposed a lockdown. In the building where I live there were bright and cheery little signs left in the lobby like “I have extra sourdough starter if anyone’s interested-#503”. Or, “If anyone needs to chat, I’m doing Zoom mental health check ins every day-#709”. About 3 months in, those cheery little notes looked like this; “Could whoever is practicing their shitty saxophone in #709, just fucking not…you suck!!-#503”. “Fuck off-#709”. So it didn’t take very long for our privileged little society to start losing their shit. It really hit home how entitled we are here in the so called civilized world. We are talking about people that actually take mental health days because their phone broke or their wi-fi is down. I think Covid 19 has changed many things for the better and others for the worse. Working from home is a thing now. Maybe we can start to get rid of our attachment to the 9–5 work day, chained to your desk. Mind you, a bunch of middle management positions are going to be made obsolete, which can only be a good thing. Online learning is another boon and so is phone and Zoom calls with your Doctor. Then there is the fact that advances in biotechnology have allowed us to have a vaccine faster than ever thought possible. People complained about how long the vaccine took but in reality this simply couldn’t have been done even 5 years ago.
In spite of all the resilience we have shown, the pandemic pay that countries like Canada have rolled out and the cooperation that has occurred between different nations and levels of government, we still couldn’t convince the lunatics. Anti-mask rallies, Q-Anon believers, white supremacists and the alt right in general, all of them were having a field day. On the up-side, Americans voted in record numbers, especially black voters, to get rid of the four year long reality television show that was the Trump administration but they couldn’t get rid of them all. Sidebar: How has Rudy Gulianni not been sectioned under the mental health act? Anybody? also, case in point; Marjorie Taylor Greene. She makes Ted Cruz look like a Rhodes scholar. I mean when Cruz thinks you might have a screw loose, it’s time to see someone.
Among Rep.-Greene’s beliefs; The Sandyhook School Shooting was a “false flag” event, 911 was a hoax, Bill and Hillary are “murder for hire” (if that was the case Trump would never have lived long enough to eat his first Big Mac in the White House) there is a Muslim takeover happening in Congress and my all time favourite…….the California wild fires were started by a “Jewish Space Laser”!! Anyhow, this wing nut is a duly elected serving member of Congress who also threatened Nancy Pelosi and others. A spokesperson for House Republican leader Kevin Mcarthy calls Greene’s comments “highly disturbing” and plans to have a conversation with her about it……because “all this publicity could very well scare away the Mother Ship when they come to rescue us”!
Then there’s the fact that hundreds of Trump supporters converged on the Capital to attend a Trump rally on the day that congress would be holding a joint session to formally count the Electoral College votes and declare Joe Biden the winner. Trump encouraged them all to march on the Capitol and disrupt the count. What transpired as described by Wikipedia was; “…. a riot and violent attack against the 117th United States Congress at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, that led to the evacuation and lockdown of the Capitol and five deaths. Part of wider protests, it was carried out by a mob of supporters of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, in a failed attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.”
I think we all know what happened. We know because the geniuses that were in the act of committing a felony Instagrammed, Snapchatted and Facebooked themselves right into jail. Of course the most famous of this troupe of inbred hillbillies was Q Shaman guy. The guy wearing the fur hat with horns and the stars and stripes face paint. Q anon shaman guy’s real name is Jake Angeli and he is a well known fixture at Qanon rallies in Phoenix and around Arizona. Needless to say he was one of the first one’s taken into custody. What amazes me is the sense of entitlement most of the rioters have, Jake included. He told his jailers that he can only eat organic food because it was the way of the Shaman. Here’s the thing though…..they actually complied and he now receives an all organic diet courtesy of you the taxpayer. WTF?!! Now having been in jail on one or two occasions myself, I learned very early on not to complain about anything. I once complained that my toilet was broken and the guard told me to shit my pants! But this guy breaks into the Capitol building armed with a 6 foot long spear and gets room service!
Also I heard that he’s thinking of counter suing the federal government alleging that he lost a lot of money going to the capitol on behalf of Obergruppenführer Trump as he has had to take extended leave from his regular job of pushing a shopping cart full of garbage down Main St., while randomly screaming obscenities at no one in particular. The point being is that the double standard is glaring. When BLM was peacefully protesting in DC they called in everyone but SpaceForce to deal with them, but these guys basically attempted an armed insurrection and all of a sudden everyone’s adhering to the Geneva Convention.
Still, at least the Trump family circus has left town and hopefully for good. Meanwhile in the very privileged city of Vancouver, where I live, people are turning their penthouse apartments into private nightclubs, entitled rich white people are flying to the Yukon to jump the que and get the Covid vaccine and Canadians in general just can’t stop vacationing. On top of that, Mr. Trudeau may have jumped the gun a little bit when he announced the vaccine rollout schedule. By my calculations we should be putting this whole Covid 19 thing to bed by about……..2025 or thereabouts. In the meantime stay home, stay safe and try not to kill your neighbour with a deadly virus that has no cure. Have a great 2021 everyone!
