I keep reading that the US has 3 times more vaccine than it needs and that
it is unethical for this extra vaccine not to be shared with other
countries. Yes, it is absolutely unethical to hoard the vaccine and to allow
these companies' patent protection when we know that the government was
involved with so much of the research that helped develop the vaccines. But
there's also another problem, at least here in New York State. Vaccinations
are not easily available to people who want them. Last week, I had my first
shot at a local pharmacy. But that happened only because Debbie was looking
online every day and saw an announcement on Monday evening that vaccinations
would be available to elderly people, (I don't know the age cutoff), on
Tuesday by appointment. Now, for a normal old person, this would have been
great. For me, getting there wasreally hard. My physical condition is such
that I'm basically homebound. But there are no arrangements to vaccinate
homebound people. Now theoretically, there's enough vaccine in this country
to vaccinate everyone, no matter how old they are. But there are hardly any
distribution points in our area. The ones that exist, seem to involve
waiting for hours. Melanie and Debbie belong to the same medical group.
Melanie received a notification on her phone that she can get a vaccination.
She's 49 years old. When she looked online, most of the distribution points
were in the city, 50 miles away. One is in Nassau County, about a 35 minute
drive from here and she was able to get an appointment for today which she
has off from work. Debbie is 56 years old and hasn't received any
notification on her phone, from the same medical group, about vaccinations
being available. So my family offers a tiny picture into the chaos involved
in the distribution of these vaccinations. You're not hearing anything about
this on the news.
About the murder of the Asian women: There seem to be two theories as to the
cause of the outbreak of overt anti Asian prejudice. Democratic loyalists
blame all of this on Trump and his targeting China as the cause of Covid.
People on the left who are not party loyalists, blame it on the pivot to
China, begun by Obama and now being turned into a prelude to war by the
Biden administration.
Because I know from long bitter experience, that our government lies to us,
with the help of the media, in order to secure our support for its foreign
policy, I am having a lot of difficulty believing what I'm hearing and
reading about Burma. That lovely lady on Democracy Now was talking about how
China is supporting the Burmese military. It may very well be true. What she
said, sounded reasonable. But I've discovered from a lot of reading and
listening, that what they're saying about the Chinese genocide of Muslims in
that province is an out and out lie and that the person whom all the news
outlets, including democracy Now interviewed, is a far right Christian
Evangelical who was not a witness to any of what he described.
Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper moved their podcast, Useful Idiots, from
Rolling Stone to Substack.com and I spent a good part of Tuesday having Bill
White helping me capture the private feed for my stream. Their first
interview in their new location, is with Daniel Ellsberg, and the second
half of that first interview was in a video which I probably can't forward
because I don't know if people who didn't pay for it can access it. That's a
shame, because it is a fascinating part of the interview. One of the things
that he says, which is particularly meaningful for some of us, is that
people on the left who want to support a third party, are being as
delusional as the people who support Q Anon because our system is a 2 party
system which is unbreakable. We may not like the reality, but that's how it
is and we have to find ways to make change within this system that we hate.
Miriam