Random Access Memories

So, for decades now i’ve almost no real-life friends. I just don’t fit the expectations of what people want me to be socially. This has had a massive impact on my mental and emotional health.

The response from people? “It’s your problem.”, “You have to love yourself before anyone can care about you.”, “Pay a therapist.”, “Take antidepressants”, “Hire a prostitute.”, Etc.

In other words, “I don’t care. It’s not my problem.”

And so it has been for decades. America is a wasteland as far as mental or emotional healthcare goes. I’ve had to deal with my own issues in a vacuum where pretty much nobody else gave a shit.

It doesn’t help that i’m a single white male, so there isn’t any “group” for me except the racists. I mean, there really is no other cohesive group for white males.

Then comes the pandemic and people are saying “Socially distance and wear masks. We all have to care about the group!” Wait, what? Hang on a second, why should *I* care about the group that has not cared about me and still doesn’t?

Even now during the pandemic we hear almost nothing about the mental and emotional toll of all this distancing. All we hear about is the physical consequences of the virus. Don’t get me wrong, those are bad, but don’t expect people to change their tune overnight when society has turned them into selfish curmudgeons.

So forgive me if my response now is, “I don’t care. It’s not my problem.”

Okay, I’m a socialist liberal but there are a few things i’m not happy about with this statewide mask mandate.

1. Fact: Baby boomers have been telling people “individual rights are absolute” for decades, and now suddenly people want to flip the dialogue and say “wear a mask for the good of others”. Regardless of why it’s simply not going to instantly happen. – https://www.businessinsider.com/how-baby-boomers-became-the-most-selfish-generation-2016-11
2. Fact: Testing is returning a VERY high number of false positives, but people are ignoring this. We hear about “asymptomatic carriers” and “Majority of new cases are coming at home” yet the most logical explaination for these two strange facts are that in both situations they are false positives. – https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/15/871186164/what-zebra-mussels-can-tell-us-about-errors-in-coronavirus-tests
3. Fact: In SPokane County we have had 1,144 “confirmed” cases, 37 deaths, and 120 cumulative hospitalizations. Most of these were all during Phase 1. Currently we only have 22 C-19 hospitalizations in a county of half a million people. – https://srhd.org/covid19cases
4. Fact: With so few cases we have over 600 open hospital beds in Spokane County – https://www.ahd.com/states/hospital_WA.html
5. Fact: People have been going downtown in Spokane to protest every weekend. Yet we have seen no masssive spike in C-19 cases – https://www.krem.com/article/news/local/hundreds-show-up-for-the-third-week-of-spokane-protests/293-16d71999-8035-4756-a64a-e23a8da281a6
6. Fact: Cases are on the rise in Yakima county, but not statewide. (Yakima has 7,000 cases for 250,000 residents. and 53 hospitalizations. I urge you to view “hospitalization numbers” as the true spread of the virus to avoid false positives in the numbers.) – https://kimatv.com/news/local/yakima-countys-total-covid-19-cases-surpass-7000-2-new-virus-deaths

Be safe, but don’t ignore the facts due to anxiety or fear.

People forget to check facts. Here are some facts regarding COVID-19 in SPokane.

Fact: People are going to pass around COVID-19 even with distancing and masks. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/ny-gov-cuomo-says-its-shocking-most-new-coronavirus-hospitalizations-are-people-staying-home.html

Fact: Spokane County only has 877 confirmed cases, 37 deaths, and 12 hospitalizations of COVID-19 out of a county of half a million people. 350 of those cases and 27 of those deaths occured before Phase 2. https://srhd.org/covid19cases

Fact: The “surge” that people were worried about, and still are worried about, is a spike in hospitalizations, not infections. (Note nobody is talking anymore about a lack of ventilators) The city of Spokane alone has almost 600 staffed hospital beds. https://www.ahd.com/states/hospital_WA.html (Tho this article mentions Sacred Heart saying they have 600 beds themselves https://www.kxly.com/providence-health-not-seeing-surge-in-patients-hospitals-prepared-to-handle-worst-case-scenario/ )

Fact: Hundreds of people have been showing up downtown to protest over the last three weekends. With a majority not wearing masks or social distancing. And we have not seen a massive spike in cases, hospitalizations, or deaths. https://www.krem.com/article/news/local/hundreds-show-up-for-the-third-week-of-spokane-protests/293-16d71999-8035-4756-a64a-e23a8da281a6

Fact: PCR-based testing (Which is what the majority of tests are using) false positives are likely the cause of the people who have tested positive and yet show no symptoms. https://www.npr.org/2020/06/14/876714225/what-mussels-can-teach-us-about-false-positive-covid-19-tests

Look at the numbers and decide for yourself. Are we being reasonable, or are we panicked?

Well, that’s off my plate now.

I’ve been selling off things looking towards the sailboat and I ran into a little issue. I only bank online, so it’s kind of hard to deposit cash.

One new local bank account and a huge cash deposit later and I can breathe a little easier. 😀

I’m going to have to research the best way to handle money when traveling globally.

So, i’ve decided to leave Spokane.

I really only came here because Seattle was too expensive. And because someone I loved lived here. However she is gone now, and the city is just feeling too conservative for me.

So where to? Well, i’m selling off everything, and the house, and buying a sailboat to live on.

Right now i’m waiting for my passport to come back. But I certainly plan to sail around the world.