Abby,
It seems to me that historically, California has always had superior services
for disabled people. My cousin had a daughter who was born with a severe
disability. She was paralyzed from the neck down. She could move her hands and
wrists. They had to insert a rod in her back so that her back could be
straight. When it was time for college, she attended one of the branches of
your state university where she was supplied with all of the personal
assistance that she needed, including someone to turn her several times at
night. I don't know all of the details, but I do know that nothing comparable
was available here in New York. I suppose that even today, some of that
tradition lingers.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Abby Vincent
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2021 7:52 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: some of my other discontents
Miriam, in Los Angeles, you can use your AC paratransit the ADA para transit to
go to one vaccination site. Cesar Cesar using huge parking lot where the driver
will come and get you driving around the parking lot until you get your shot
then take you back over again. I know my home health provider doesn’t do the
vaccines because it’s hard to store them and distributing.
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 18, 2021, at 11:01 AM, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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