covid diary: day 69

"Behold my shimmery throat"

A lot of stuff is happening in a really rapid fashion, and it's awfully hard to keep up with it all. Here is just a partial list, in no particular order

1. The president says he's taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventive so he doesn't catch the coronavirus. This is completely and totally stupid and dangerous. Kids, don't take untested drugs, especially when they have side effects like heart attacks and hallucinations. Also, stop and think for a second about the leader of the whole damned country making decisions while hallucinating.

2. The national parks are starting to reopen, and the president is encouraging people to go visit them. Karen Pence, the vice president's wife, even went to ceremoniously reopen Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Yeah, you'll never guess what happened. People crowded into parks, didn't observe social distancing, and mostly didn't wear masks. The scenes from the webcams at Yellowstone are kind of unbelievable. Do these people have a death wish? Do they think the crisis is over? Or maybe they think it was all made up in the first place?

This was today, you guys!
Photo credit: Gabriela Campos/The Guardian

3. The president fired yet another inspector general and illegally locked him out of his workplace at the State Department. Key to this is that the president didn't even know the IG. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked the president to fire the IG. The president asked one question, and shockingly, it wasn't "Hey, Mike, why do you want to fire this guy? Is it because he's investigating your illegal use of federal funds to have formal parties that are essentially political events for your future campaigns? Or maybe it's because he's investigating your use of government workers to do menial tasks like walk your dog? Or maybe because you gave your wife an office at the State Department when that should never ever happen?" Nah. The president asked, "Who appointed the IG?" and when Pompeo told him Obama had appointed the IG, that was as good a reason as any, so the IG got fired. The corruption never ends.

4. The National Guard was deployed in March to aid in the pandemic response, and today news broke that the administration plans to recall all Guard members on June 24. This is significant because June 24 is 89 days of service for the first groups who were deployed, and at 90 days of active service, they qualify for the GI Bill and some retirement benefits. So these people who have been out there on the front lines building hospitals and conducting testing and even disinfecting nursing homes are going to get completely screwed over. It's deliberate, it's cruel, and it shows an absolute lack of respect for our armed forces. (As if we didn't know his lack of respect already.)

5. Trump is refusing to follow tradition by unveiling the official White House portrait of his predecessor. Why? Because he's a racist, cowardly baby who knows he isn't even a tenth of the decent human being and great leader Barack Obama is.

6. Speaking of Obama (I miss you, Barack and Michelle!), today the Trump administration released a "smoking gun" email written by then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice after a briefing with President Obama, FBI Director James Comey, and others. The subject of the briefing was that it was very concerning to Comey that incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (who, let's recall, pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI and was secretly working for the government of Turkey, among other dirty dealings, but now the Trump administration is trying to make the case that somehow Flynn was innocent and Obama was the real criminal good god is there no low point in this nightmare) was having a "concerning" number of phone calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. So guess what the scandal was. Go on, guess what HORRIBLE, TERRIBLE PLOT Obama hatched that day. You're going to be shocked. Obama told everyone in the room that the entire investigation needs to proceed strictly "by the book." He then further told Comey, with everyone listening, that he was not weighing in on any investigative decisions because, let's remember, the FBI is supposed to be able to operate independently of political pressure. He said Comey should simply let Obama know if the concern ever became enough to warrant limiting the information made available to Flynn through briefings. That's it. That's what happened. And somehow Trump wants us to believe that this is OBAMAGATE THE BIGGEST SCANDAL IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. Come ON.

7. Today was the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly, the generally assembly of the World Health Organization, and leaders from various countries (Xi of China, Merkel of Germany, Macron of France, others) spoke about how their countries will work together through the WHO to fight the pandemic. You know who doesn't want to be on the team? If you guessed USA USA USA, you're right! Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar gave a speech picking a fight with China instead of focusing on how we fix this mess, and Trump wrote a letter to the WHO spouting lots of lies and threatening to permanently revoke U.S. funding for WHO. Cool, so while everyone else is working together to responsibly and safely find a way for the world to get through this, U.S. leaders are over here throwing a temper tantrum and saying they're gonna take their ball and go home. Too bad home is filled with coronavirus, eh?

8. And all of this is just a distraction to pull attention away from the fact that more than 90,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since March, and every week, about 10,000 more die.

Meanwhile, at home, Max slept until 3:30 p.m., then came downstairs and told me he was still tired. I would worry that he has mono or something, except he doesn't have any other symptoms, and honestly, I could also happily sleep 20 hours a day until this shitshow is over and it's safe to go places again. Liam got up early (ha! it was 9:30) to do yet more homework all day, and Henry wore his crusader helmet all day while playing a medieval-themed video game. At work, Mike heard that he might not be laid off next week, then he heard that he would be laid off, then that he would not be, then that maybe he would. I guess it depends on if they get all their special products made this week or not. So ... maybe? All this uncertainty is definitely bringing down morale around here. It took like three hours for him to decompress enough to enjoy watching all the swallows (we have barn swallows AND tree swallows!) swooping all over the pasture. Are we reaching a breaking point? Probably not, because there's really no limit to how awful this can get. But it's really unpleasant nonetheless.

Nationwide cases: 1,528,661. Deaths: 91,938.