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This is Not the Flu, Goddammit!

Written by a nurse who works with ventilators:

For people who don’t understand what it means to be on a ventilator but want to take the chance of going back to work….

For starters, it’s NOT an oxygen mask put over the mouth while the patient is comfortably lying down and reading magazines.

Ventilation for Covid-19 is a painful intubation that goes down your throat and stays there until you live or you die. It is done under anesthesia for 2 to 3 weeks without moving, often upside down, with a tube inserted from the mouth up to the trachea and allows you to breathe to the rhythm of the lung machine.

The patient can’t talk or eat, or do anything naturally – the machine keeps you alive. The discomfort and pain they feel from this means medical experts have to administer sedatives and painkillers to ensure tube tolerance for as long as the machine is needed. It’s like being in an artificial coma.

After 20 days from this treatment, a young patient loses 40% muscle mass, and gets mouth or vocal cords trauma, as well as possible pulmonary or heart complications.

It is for this reason that old or already weak people can’t withstand the treatment and die. Many of us are in this boat … so stay safe unless you want to take the chance of ending up here. This is NOT the flu.

Add a tube into your stomach, either through your nose or skin for liquid food, a sticky bag around your butt to collect the diarrhea, a foley to collect urine, an IV for fluids and meds, an A-line f to monitor your BP that is completely dependent upon finely calculated med doses, teams of nurses, CRNA’s and MA’s to reposition your limbs every two hours and lying on a mat that circulates ice cold fluid to help bring down your 104 degree temp.

Anyone want to try all that out? Stay home. Stay safe and well!

Source.

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The Madness of King Trump

He really is batshit…


If the “radical left” was “in charge” of social media then you wouldn’t be able to post all your bullshit conspiracy theories all day long, your fucking twitter account would’ve been shut down years ago, and you might actually be forced to do your damn job you lazy, ignorant cunt!

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Triggered

I stumbled across this photo online yesterday and it brought up a lot of very traumatic memories.

But before I get into that, some backstory:

No matter how many times I’ve gotten burned over the years by my penchant for always wanting the latest tech, I’ve remained—in our current vocabulary—an early adopter. For as long as I can remember I’ve always been fascinated and have wanted to own the latest bit of technological whatever.

This wasn’t something that just popped up with the arrival of personal computing; it seems to have been wired into my psyche’s DNA and has applied to pretty much anything my interest is focused on at any given time.

Before computers became my obsession, there was hi-fi audio gear to fire my imagination and drain my wallet.

Among my early-adopter purchases that was not an immediate abject failure was a Technics SL-1300Mk2 fully automatic turntable. I’ve been trying to piece together the exact timeline and sequence of events that initially brought one in my possession, but my memories are cloudy and when I thought things happened are making no sense in the timeline. So let’s just cut to the chase and say sometime around the end of 1978, with some financial assistance from my parents—who were incredulous that I wanted to spend $500 (approximately $1900 in today’s dollars) on a turntable—I became a proud owner of what I—despite knowing what I know now—still consider the epitome of Technics turnable design.

The honeymoon lasted about nine months. One night something went south and the platter started spinning out of control. After taking it to a local shop and being told for the better part of two months the required part (one of the fabulous new IC chips in the deck) was on backorder from Japan “indefinitely,” I retrieved the table and contacted Panasonic directly to arrange for repairs. It was something I should’ve done from the start, because less than a week after receiving it, the table was repaired and was shipped back.

And that’s where the picture above comes into play.

My family never got along with the neighbors to our east, an animosity that stemmed from years of our families butting heads over anything street related (think of that one house in the neighborhood—and everyone has one—with perpetually waist-high weeds and rusting cars in the front yard). Their twin sons (about ten years younger than me, as I recall) had a reputation for being the kind of kids you wouldn’t want your kids hanging out with, and I think that paints a good enough picture of the dynamic going on here.

Anyhow, when the turntable was shipped back, instead of UPS finding no one home at our place and leaving a tag notifying us that we’d have to schedule a new pickup as was the custom even back then, the driver left it next door with those neighbors.

When my mom arrived home that afternoon, she called me at work. “I think your turntable was damaged in shipment. The box is pretty beat up.”

I tried to tell myself that these things were packed like tanks and designed to survive the mishandling of any carrier, but once I got home and saw the condition of the box—before even opening it—I knew The Precious had been destroyed. And while it was never proven otherwise, UPS swore it was delivered in perfect condition, leaving only one—or should I say two—culprits; the unsupervised pre-teen hellions next door. This was not shipping damage. The box had been stomped on and thrown across the room.

Its condition wasn’t quite as bad as the photo above, but it was close. And it was bad enough that my heart sank when I saw the extent of the damage. While the top deck and platter weren’t shattered, the tonearm looked pretty much like the picture and  very little else was still in one piece. The dust cover was destroyed. The bottom cover was split in multiple pieces to such an extent that it stripped components from the internal circuit boards.

We documented everything with photos and filed a claim with UPS, while simultaneously contacting Panasonic. As I recall, UPS denied the claim, but Panasonic asked that the unit be returned to them and they graciously either performed major surgery on what could be salvaged, or more likely simply replaced it with a refurbished unit from stock.

It was nice to have the turntable back (this time we had it delivered to my mom’s place of business), but it just wasn’t the same. It just felt off. I eventually sold it at a loss and replaced it with a 1700Mk2, semi-automatic table from the next generation (because, of course, the 1300Mk2s were no longer being sold). The 1700Mk2—a very nice table in and of itself—lacked the digital readout and the precision pitch adjustment of its predecessors so it never fired my imagination the way the 1300 did. On the plus side, I had no issues with it whatsoever for the eight years I owned it. For the uninitiated, the 1700Mk2 is basically a home version of the long revered 1200Mk2 (the model in the picture above) that had yet to gain the recognition it rightfully earned among DJs in subsequent years as “the wheel of steel.”

Early life lesson learned: don’t fall in love with things.

It wasn’t until the late 90s when I started rebuilding the vinyl collection that I had purged in the 80s that I discovered a 1300Mk2 could be had via the used equipment market, and the rest is history. Age had not been kind to the majority of the tables, as over the years they all succumbed to a design defect in the arm return mechanism that caused it to stop functioning unless extensive repairs were completed. (I don’t blame the Panasonic engineers; I’m sure none of them anticipated that their designs would still be in use 20-30 years after they initially came out.) Thankfully I had those repairs performed the 1300Mk2 I bought, and I fully expect it to outlive me at this point.

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Brutal—And Every Word of it the Truth

I’m glad this is finally being said. These words are not hyperbolic. If you do not believe this, I’m surprised you’re even reading my blog:

“A moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness—when you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile, an idiot. And I don’t use those words to name-call, I use them because they’re the precise words in the English language to describe his behavior, his comportment, his actions.” ~ Steve Schmidt, former GOP strategist

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This Photo Set My Blood Boiling

Large crowds at the bar last night in Columbus, Ohio. No one social distancing. Not a single mask in the crowd. In fact, the scene was so disturbing police received dozens of emergency calls with people frightened by what they were seeing. [Source]
I’m really starting to believe that what we’re going through is the Earth’s way of thinning the human herd, using the virus as a catalyst and leveraging our own hubris and stupidity to do the rest.

And I’m okay with that.

It was written a couple thousand years ago that “The meek shall inherit the earth.” If you think about it, who are the meek ones? The scientists, the “brainiacs” who sat quietly at the back of the class yet aced every test they were give. The smart ones; not the gun-toting, statehouse-storming Neanderthals wasting oxygen to throw their tantrums.

All the rest of us can do is try and protect ourselves as much as possible, continue to wear masks, practice social distancing and avoid the type of demonstrably selfish, stupid crowds of people like the photo above when we have to be outside of our homes.

Look, I want to sit in a Starbucks, actually eat in a restaurant, and visit with my friends in person. But I also want to see the Republican party utterly and completely destroyed and that orange shit stain on humanity dragged from the White House in January and thrown into prison or strung up, whichever comes first—not to mention see the beginning of the new world we will grow from the rubble left in his wake, and the only way that’s going to happen is if I stay safe.

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Released 33 Years Ago Today

“Dolly…Dolly…you’ve got a willie!”

My favorite film of all time, Personal Services (1987)

Trailer 1:

Trailer 2:

The Germans were obviously more liberal in what they showed in their trailers:

Some clips:

An interview with the filmmakers:

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Quote of the Day

The best thing any of us can do until we vote this imbecile out of office and into jail is stay safe. Wear you mask, practice social distancing, and decontaminate and we will outlive both these dinosaurs and the faltering economy.” ~ Dave at Riding On

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Some Thoughts on Getting Tested

Several people I know (including both coworkers and friends) have somehow managed to get tested for COVID-19. The tests have uniformly* come back negative for antibodies, indicting that they were all still quite susceptible to getting infected.

In the early days of the AIDS crisis, I lulled myself into a possibly false sense of security by telling myself the disease was so rare at the time that anyone who got sick in Arizona was going to have their name splashed all over the news…and I knew I’d never be that famous.

As the years passed with no cure in sight, and after seeing so many of my friends and lovers die—some quickly, some excruciatingly slowly—when testing for HIV started becoming readily available I made the conscious decision not to get tested. If I was going to be stricken with this horrific disease, I wanted to be diagnosed and be gone within a matter of days or weeks afterward.

I took some solace in knowing that my own sexual preferences in combination with adhering to safer sex recommendations when I strayed outside that comfort zone were probably keeping me safe, but let’s be honest here…there were occasional slip-ups along the way that introduced enough doubt in my mind that when therapies started becoming available and the SF AIDS Foundation finally came out in favor of testing everyone, I marched my ass down to the Health Center and had my blood drawn.

While I’m sure pure dumb luck played a factor in it as much anything else, it was only when my HIV test came back negative that I could finally breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that what I’d been doing (or rather not doing) all those years to protect myself had actually paid off.

Although direct comparisons can’t be drawn between AIDS and COVID-19, other than the US Government—under Republican leadership (surprise, surprise)—ignored the problem for far too long, there are similarities. I’m not rushing out to get tested because honestly, with no cure or vaccine available before the end of the year at the earliest, what difference will knowing actually make? Will it change my current behavior in any way? If I don’t have antibodies, I’m still susceptible. If I do, at some point I was exposed, asymptomatic, and got over it. Would that mean that I could go back to my normal existence? Oh hell no. Unlike what happens with most infections, no one can yet say with any certainty that if you have the antibodies to the Corona virus you’re immune to reinfection.

I mentioned all this to my colleagues yesterday during a discussion of how and when returning to work will be implemented, and added, “So if we’re forced to return to the office prematurely, y’all will have to forgive me because I’m going to continue to mask and glove up until there’s a tested vaccine fully in place.”

Not surprisingly, everyone was in agreement.

We get it. Why doesn’t the government?

*UPDATE 5/15: I learned today from one of my friends—who I just found out was very symptomatic last week—was tested this week and came back positive.

 

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