I need a break.

I think we all need a break.

There is chaos everywhere and the news just keeps piling up.

Riots.  Riots with good reason, and protests that should be shut down and protests that should not be.

Any peaceful protest should be able to be dealt with without violence.

Any armed protest should be met with an armed reply.

Covid and the responses.  I mean whining about wearing a mask?  Really?

China has deployed troops near Pakistan to ensure the security of infrastructure projects financed by them.  India reacts with alarm at a division of troops deployed some 60 miles from their border.

I do not know why the amount of corruption in politics is allowed to happen.  It is a stain that soils every country on Earth, and makes every person's life worse.  Yet we as a society can do very little to halt and expose and root it out.

Corporations are soulless entities, but need to be held accountable for their actions.  The people who control the poisoning of the environment should be forced to live in that poison they order to be created.

Everyone who works deserves a living wage.  A wage that is better than ekeing a scratch living.

While a few people have done something to lessen the amount of plastic in the ocean, there are a lot of people still making that horrible situation worse.

And the news keeps piling up.

The world seemed to be getting it's act together.

Human slavery is slowly ebbing into history, and spotlights shining on the places where it still happens and forcing it to whither and die is great.

The awareness that oil is killing our environment is finally making it to the front of our brains.

And the rich somehow manage to dodge more and more taxes.

And somehow they do not see the rest of us reaching for the re-set button.

I need a break.

Weird Times

One of the weird things about the whole COVID -19 thing is how conspiracies theories can build.

There is one going around about how the pandemic cannot be all that bad because the hospitals are half empty.

But.

The hospitals are half empty because anyone with a compromised immune system, is over weight, over 60, has asthma or diabetes are doing their best to avoid all hospitals and leaving or staying away, and putting off elective surgeries.

In Canada, this does not mean much because our health system is not profit driven.

In the USA, it means that the hospitals are not showing a profit, and indeed are operating at a loss because they need to fill the beds to make as much money as possible.  There are many places that will have to lay off doctors soon because they have no work for them.

It may seem strange, but it is a direct consequence of letting your health are be driven by profit.

And to the companies that have long demanded huge profits from health care, now that there is a shortage of patients and your profit has turned negative, too bad.  This is the system you asked for, you have to take the problems along with the benefits.