Hope everybody had a merry Christmas. This is likely the last blog of the year unless something drastic happens. There are three things that surprised me this year which in retrospect I should not be surprised about. These three things also caused me distress over the future of the country.
Obviously, COVID-19 is the biggest news of the year. I am surprised by the number of people who claim that restrictions as a result of the virus are infringements on their freedom. Decades from now I think people will look back and wonder how badly we responded to the pandemic. They will wonder that a country that will certainly lose more than half a million people before the vaccine will save it, could have been so selfish to not lose a small amount of freedom to save lives. This is the same country that was willing to give up a lot more freedom in the Patriot Act after losing 3,000 lives in 9/11.
I should not be surprised that people use the second amendment rights to walk into the capitol of Michigan to protest against restrictions with automatic weapons in hand. I should also not be surprised that people can walk the streets of Kenosha with automatic weapons and not be stopped by the police except to offer them drinks. To me, this is not about freedom but about lawlessness and different treatment of races by the police. While the mainstream media did cover these events, I have not heard many mainstream commentators who expressed shock at these event. What would happen if a large group of Black men enter a government building to protest police brutality while holding automatic weapons? I want to see what Fox News would say about that. Don't worry, no Black group will do such a thing. They know what the outcome would be.
We may be rejoicing that Trump lost by a landslide of over 7 million popular votes. But if we take away the margin Biden won by in California (5 million) and in New York (2 million), we can see that in the other 48 states, it was a draw. Given how poorly Trump has handled everything from the pandemic, to the economy, to foreign policies, not to mention his lack of morality, it distress me that outside the two most populous liberal states, he was able to win 50% of the vote. This shows how divided we are. So it is unlikely that Biden or anyone else can get things done in the future.
I think I am done ranting for the last time this year. Thank goodness this crazy year is ending. Hopefully 2021 will be much better. Happy new year, everybody.
Interesting year for sure, though it seems like people think things will change as soon as we hit midnight on 1/1/21. I do hope that things get better and they should, right?
ReplyDeleteTrump will be out of office, the pandemic will slow down due to the vaccine and the economy will bounce back more because of the previously mentioned.
Now, if the vaccine doesn't work or another strain of Covid hits that can't be stopped, who knows what will happen.
I was a little discouraged that Biden only won by 7 million. It seems like the race was not as close as it seemed, despite the "landslide" electoral college numbers. Plus, how did Trump get most admired man with Michele Obama as most admired female? I don't think I would want to be Trump. Maybe before 2016 when he was just a reality TV guy but now?
Did you hear about the sentencing of the Hong Kong Pro-Democracy activists? I was a little surprised they got these lengthy sentences. I thought they'd be sent back to HK and tried there. I'm also surprised there hasn't been more backlash for how the Chinese government has handled it. Here's an article from NPR:
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/30/951397947/chinese-court-sentences-10-hong-kong-democracy-activists-to-prison-terms
I also read recently that the Covid numbers from Wuhan in the spring were fudged to show less infections. We kind of figured they would try to do that...similar to what Trump wanted with less testing so that the numbers would look better. I'm interested to see if Wuhan is totally Covid-free. I've seen reports from there and it "looks" normal and the people they interview say everything is back to normal.
One last thing about Covid. I didn't realize that we hadn't closed travel from Great Britain. It was my understanding that no one could travel there from the U.S. but why would we want travel from Europe since there has been a surge in cases there and they're having a hard time containing it?
-LBOAYM
If we give out 1 million shots a day as Biden said we need to, we can only vaccinate 180 million a year because everyone needs two shots. We need 70% vaccinated to achieve herd immunity and that means about 230 million. So we need to do better than a million a day or we can't be free even at the end of next year!
ReplyDeleteBarrack Obama had been most admired for several years in a row. Trump won this year because he has many die hard fans, even though his haters are a lot more. Biden, as the president elect, probably took a lot of votes from Obama.
Those ten people sentenced by China for illegal entering their water space were being charged with very serious crimes under the new national security law in Hong Kong. If convicted in Hong Kong, they could get life sentences. So that is why they tried to escape. But I don't think China want them to be tried under this law. I think they are trying to let the Hong Kong government off the hook without looking weak. After their two or three years sentences are up, they may or may not send them back to HK for the original accusations. Basically they are kicking the can down the road.
I think HK is trying not to use the security law, if possible. They don't want to be China and China doesn't want HK to look like China in international arena. The three biggest activists, Joshua Wong (13 months), Agnes Chow (7 months) and Ivan Lam (5 months) got off relatively easy recently. So there is not too much blowback right now. Although if Pompeo and Biden both called Xi a thug and that didn't cause China to backdown, I don't know what kind of backlash the U.S. or any other country can do.
There is a video from South China Morning Post of a few of the protesters awaiting trial trying to get refugee status from the U.S. consulate in HK. After telling them to come to the consulate and interviewing them for hours, they told them that they can only apply for refugee status if they make it to the U.S. Why couldn't they have told them this over the phone? By going to the consulate and leaving there, they were in danger of being caught. I also have not heard any of the activists, other than some famous ones, having been accepted to the UK despite promises from the UK that they will be helped. So I think all the waving of British and American flags are useless for these people.
I have read that Wuhan may have 100 times more people infected than they realized. But even if that is true for the whole country, which I think it is doubtful since Wuhan is the epic center, the number of cases in China is still only 8 million. That is still way less than the U.S. which has one quarter of the population of China. I am sure that the counts of every country, including the U.S., is lower than the real number.
I think Wuhan and the rest of China are back to almost normal. Didn't you see the video of the huge concert a few months ago in Wuhan with thousands of people jammed together without masks? There was not surge of cases after that. The mask wearing in China is back to where it was before the pandemic. China is the only nation to have positive growth for the year. So it is back to pretty much normal. They took their bitter medicine in the beginning and now they are healthy. Western countries took less medicine on and off and are going to suffer more and for longer. The NBA put themselves in a bubble and had no cases after restarting their previous season. So strict isolations do work. China was in a giant bubble and it worked.
There are policies that been put in that don't make any sense. I don't see why we allow travel from countries with big surge in either. Maybe if they have 14 day quarantines after entering the country, it would be ok. But there probably be no enforcement so it would be worthless.
Well, hope they resolve the vaccine distribution mess and we can get more than a million shots a day in 2021.