Why Are We Stopping The World Because Of Covid-19?

I have received five emails in the last month asking if I want my son to go back to school or do online classes.

It’s like the school system wants parents to demand the schools stay closed. They want everyone cowering in their homes.  Everybody should stay inside sanitizing doorknobs and wearing masks and gloves to go to the mailbox or even open the door.  They are somehow convinced the virus is going to come down the chimney or through the vents and cause instant, sudden death.

They can keep sending forms, it won’t change my mind. Each and every time they have sent out the survey, I’ve voted to have my child go back to real school. It’s really hurting him to be home. He’s bored, can’t see anybody his own age, and is watching 8 hours of TV a day because his Dad and I are busy working. What about him slipping into depression and video game addiction? Isn’t that a problem just as serious if not more so than a virus that only kills about .03 percent of those who get it?

Fortunately, tomorrow is the last day the survey can be completed, and Thursday it will be decided once and for all if it’s “safe” enough for kids to go back to school.

People act as if there were bodies lining the streets. I’ve seen so many articles likening this virus to the medieval black plague. As if people are falling victim to this illness as quickly as though they had been shot. Here one minute, gone the next.

It’s not true.

Yes, it’s horrible a few people experience a bad outcome, but look at how it affects those who can’t social distance or use hand sanitizer.

I have a friend in prison right now who is a Pathologist (or was), so I have first hand information about what’s going on from his perspective. Basically, everyone has it. Oh they take temperatures and only test those who have a fever above 99, but the entire compound has symptoms. Strange headache, aches, cold like symptoms. They all have Covid-19, it’s just that most either have mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.

A good indicator the virus in rampant and not really that deadly is that most of the tests done on the compound have come back positive. At this point they have tested around 200 people at his facility and more than 3/4ths of the tests come back positive for Covid-19. Funny enough, they’ve had zero Covid-19 related deaths at the particular facility where my friend is, and there has only been one death in the entire compound over the last five months. If this was a horrific killer, more people would have died. First responders and attending physicians would be six feet under. Criminals would be roaming free as nobody would come in to work in order to avoid certain death.

I will say, I do know one lady who does have Covid-19 and is currently in the hospital on a ventilator. It is awful, but she is around 60. She’s overweight and has some underlying conditions so she was never the picture of health to begin with. I do feel horrible for this woman. It would be awful to have to go on a ventilator and be drugged up with Fentanyl just to be able to breathe, but this happens in a minority of cases. 99.7 percent of people survive the virus, and the vast majority experience only mild symptoms.

The world has gone crazy though. When I log on to my piano teacher group, you would think the virus was certain death. People are putting up plexiglass walls. They are quarantining their mail, adding outdoor hand washing stations, and sanitizing the life out of their studios, that is if they dare to teach in person at all. It is absolutely ridiculous if you ask me. In reality, there is little you can do to keep a virus at bay. It’s a virus!

So what is the bigger picture? Is it the election? Is this really just to keep Donald Trump from winning? If so, it’s a horrible prank thing to pull on the American people. We’re sacrificing our well being, our jobs, our livelihoods and everything else over a few people who might get the virus and have a bad reaction?

I don’t understand why we don’t aggressively quarantine those with health issues and underlying conditions and let those of us who are healthy get back to work and school. Yes, a few people are going to die of Covid-19. People are also dying in car accidents. Do we ban cars? People have been struck by lighting as well. Do we ban weather? I simply don’t understand. It’s like mass hysteria has gripped the nation.

Finally, I saw a “please pray for my friend with Covid-19” post.

The full caption says “Please pray for my friend with Covid-19. She is on a ventilator and in bad shape.” The picture below shows a woman relaxing on her couch. She is wearing a sweatshirt and looks to be around 40 years old with a short, salt and pepper haircut. I would guess she majored in music and now works for the symphony. Probably a single lesbian with 5 cats who enjoys watching Netflix and downing a half pint of Ben and Jerry’s after work.

Don’t get me wrong, I am sorry this lady has the virus, but the words are confirmation this thing is out there. Before now, I was skeptical anyone had it at all. Everything on my Facebook news feed was about wearing masks and “flattening the curve,” but absolutely nobody I knew had it. Up until now, it was simply out there in the ether, despite the fact that I have over 500 “friends” all over the world.

I still haven’t changed my mind about the mask though. The mask is nothing but a virtue signal and could quite possibly cause bacterial lung infections from wearing it. I’m also not convinced in the slightest the mask works because in the beginning, the CDC recommended NOT wearing a mask. It seems very suspect to me that all of a sudden, this organization changed it mind.

I mean, wouldn’t extensive testing have been done on masks before the Covid pandemic?  You know,  for people who have to wear them around those who are really sick? Tests done for nurses and doctors exposed to horrific pathogens more deadly than Covid? I’m not buying it that we didn’t think the mask was effective then, but now it is. Not just surgical masks, but ANY facial covering.  Scarf,  paper towel…doesn’t matter.  It just has to be some type of covering to appease the mask vigilante.

Another thing I’ve noticed, is even when I’m at work, (I decided to wear one to teach in order to put my students at ease), I find myself touching the mask all the time. I constantly fidget with it. I’m pulling it up and down, and when I can get away with it, I pull it down from my nose so that I can actually breathe.

Funny enough, people seem more comfortable when I’m wearing the mask even though I’m quite sure I’m transmitting more germs than I would without it on in the first place.  I mean I’m constantly touching the grimy piece of material that I’m sure is teaming with all kinds of unclean filth.

To be honest, I still think the virus is mostly overblown. That the statistics have been manipulated, and that the vast majority of people don’t end up on a ventilator and have their lungs turned into Swiss cheese.

The fact that it’s taken 4 months for me to hear of anyone remotely in my circle of friends and family getting this thing is telling, and I can’t even say for sure this woman I’m hearing about is a true case. I believe the same thing I did before the panic. Don’t be stupid and wash your hands. Take reasonable precautions, but don’t alter your life to accommodate something that will likely not result in anything more than mild symptoms for the vast majority of people.

The Karen Thing Is Not Ok

I have seen so many articles and YouTube videos proclaiming the “Karen” phenomenon NOT hurtful. That it is in no way a racial slur. “Karen” is an attitude. She is the privileged white woman with the asymmetrical hair cut. The one wearing capri pants in Starbucks complaining to the manager. She calls the cops on black people for minding their business, and refuses to wear her mask at Costco. Most of all, she votes Trump so she’s fair game.

But what if we all agreed to call black women “LaKeisha’s”?

Not every black woman…just FAT black women over 40 years old. The loud ones that have blood red nails proclaiming “I don’t do dishes,” a three foot long weave, and a shirt cut in such a way to expose a faded boob tattoo that seemed like a great idea back in 98. She also complains to the manager, is always has to be right, hates Trump but isn’t registered to vote.

I would be fired from my job if I suggested such a thing.

Why, you ask? Because of white privileged. When you are born white, you get a card that has a million dollars on it and a country club membership, so you have no right to speak up about anything. The system is totally for you. It’s been rooting for you all your life. Therefore, you better sit down and shut up. If you don’t, you’re a “Karen.” If you are black, of course you can say whatever you want. The system is against you, so a black person’s feelings are more than justified in ANY situation. If black people are offended, it must be offensive. If white people are offended, they need to shut up or “take a joke.”

With this type of hypocritical thinking it makes me wonder if ever anybody has ever been to Kindergarten.

In the lowest grade levels, you would never allow name calling. Even if the name wasn’t meant to be offensive, you wouldn’t allow it because of hurt feelings. If little Billy is offended somebody called him a “firetruck” or the color “orange” and his feelings were hurt, you would tell his classmates to stop, no matter what color Billy happened to be. Nobody should be made to feel less than just because of how they look or what age they are. Hurtful language is hurtful. If people are offended, it makes it bad.

The fact that “Karen” is a real name to countless woman doesn’t make it any less horrible. It only brings hurt and shame to the people named Karen. I feel bad for these women. I also feel bad for the little girls who are named after their grandmother’s who have to bear the brunt of this. It’s not fair, and I don’t understand the hypocrisy of those who insist it is ok to call one ethnic group names, but not ok to do it to others. Maybe some people should go back to Kindergarten.

Prisoners are Not Good People

When I was in college, I met a guy. He was overweight and not very attractive, but (shallow as it might be), he was studying to become a doctor so I decided to go to dinner with him.

The dinner was ok. Sure he was smart, and could be funny, but there was an underlying creepiness that put me on edge. Even so, he was going to be a doctor, so I told myself I was being ridiculous. Maybe the creepy feeling had more to do with me than him, so I went out with him again to find out.

I deluded myself for maybe three more dinners and a walk in the park, but eventually I followed my gut. I knew if I waded into the waters much further with him, I would be signing up with a relationship with someone who wasn’t safe, so I decided to move on.

Well, I would have moved on except that this guy was in love with me. So, either out of pity or probably more because I liked the attention, I talked to him on the phone. I decided I could keep him as a friend. Friends are always good to have, and as long as he knew we were never going to be an item, it was ok. After all, he was smart, and had a very different viewpoint of the world than I did and gave a unique perspective on things.  I could have a friendship, couldn’t I?

We talked a lot on the phone from January to May; in fact the only thing that really got him to stop calling me was his going on to residency in another state. After that, I talked to him less and less, and eventually found a boyfriend that I genuinely did like and felt safe with.

I still heard from him though.  Over the next 20 years, he would contact me sporadically, and when he did he was mean. He would taunt me on social media, and say nasty things referencing my “twat” and “crotch fruit.”  In fact, it got so bad I blocked him from being able to see my posts.

Still, sometimes he could be nice.  He would call and tell me things like he still remembered my old phone number.  That the last 4 digits he routinely used for security pass codes.

Then one day last October, I found out he was in prison for possession of illegal pornography.

It wasn’t for one picture accidentally downloaded either. He had been accessing the stuff, full movies for five years; the entirety of time he had lived in New York state. He had likely been accessing this material for decades.

It took me awhile to digest the fact he had done this horrible act. In fact, at first I made excuses for him, but after coming to terms with it, the pieces fell together and I knew it was true:  He was a pedophile.

There had been little clues the whole time.  The way he had talked about porn as if I couldn’t quite understand (despite the fact that I certainly watch my share of X rated material) and the way he told me he had once been arrested, but wouldn’t say what for. Looking back, I always knew there was something he wasn’t telling me. Some kind of weird kink he had that was underground. Like a secret society I would never know about.

When I felt I could, I wrote him some letters. It took him awhile, but he finally responded.

For the most part, we picked up our relationship where we left off.  I never asked for any explanations, but he tried to tell me he was on drugs. That he had a stressful job, that people do horrible things when under stress.

I didn’t believe it, but I also didn’t judge.

Still, I wonder if he can help it.  If this is who he is, or if rejection by women or maybe by society in general pushed him into watching such distasteful sex acts.

What shocked me the most though is he’s mean sometimes and nice others just like he always was. He’s smart, sometimes funny…and I still feel that underlying evil is there just below the surface.

In some ways, my heart breaks for him. He has lived alone for 20 plus years. Reading between the lines any actual sex he had not watching pornography was with prostitutes or women who were just after his money.

What’s weirder is he claims to have a fiancee, but the details are strange, so I don’t know how much to believe. He claims she is hyper sexual, can’t get enough of him…but then has sexual relationships with women.  She’s also long distance, hasn’t visited him in prison yet, and is too busy to write or take his calls very often, and has gone MIA for six months at a time.

I’m really not sure of what to make of this relationship, but I feel in some ways it’s a cover.  He’s telling me he has someone so I won’t feel as though he wants a relationship, but she’s not close, so I’ll continue to contact him.  Then again, maybe what he tells me is true, and I’ll be attending his wedding when he gets out.  I don’t know.

In any event, I think I’m done with him now.

Now I’m at a place now where I dread checking the mail.   Truthfully I’m afraid he will have written. I don’t want to hear from him anymore. Maybe there is a good person in him somewhere, but the bad part has won out, at least for now. I do believe people deserve second chances, but he hurt children.  What’s worse is, because I can’t predict his reaction to anything I tell him, it directly hurts me as well.

I don’t think I’ll be writing to him anymore for the time being.

Did You Know Piano Method Books Are Now…RACIST?

The “woke” mob has come for piano teaching. Now the currently used method books are deemed racist. Some (but certainly not all) of the hurtful pieces are “Snake Charmer,” “Yankee Doodle,” “Indian Dance,” “Camptown Ladies,” a song called “Cops and Robbers” and a whole host of others. Nothing is safe. These songs according to some piano teachers are hurtful and should be stripped from the literature immediately.

I took issue with this, so I abided the current set of rules imposed by these morons and flexed my Native American Heritage. I don’t think it matters, but my great grandmother was a full blooded Cherokee Indian. The rules (I thought) were that you can’t have an opinion unless you have a certain bloodline, so I mentioned it to talk about my issues with “Indian Dance.”

As a piano teacher, I use the song “Indian Dance” (as well as some of the others) as a jumping off point to introduce kids to native American culture. The song itself is a gateway to learning more. When teaching the song, I can get out my drums and talk about rain dances and how the Native People believed music and dance could somehow control the weather. It’s a time for sharing information about how other people live and fosters understanding and love for other people.

I wasn’t alone.  Several other Native Americans with thicker ties to the culture than I have chimed in as well.  They stated their belief that the song was a great tool, not only for learning about the interval of a perfect 5th, but also for sharing something about history and culture.

I should have been able to predict it, but I was told that “Indian Dance” was adapted by white people, so it was no great loss to toss it out. We should get rid of it. It’s horrible, and if anybody wants to teach Native American Culture, they should seek out “real” Native American pieces that weren’t dumbed down adaptations for beginner piano students. I should probably just go ahead and find a full blooded Indian complete with headdress and spear to teach it as well.

I was incensed because here are people…a whole mob of them…without ANY Native American blood or culture in their family telling those who DO have a tie to the culture how to feel. As a person with Native blood running through my veins, I am telling them I think it’s fabulous whenever anyone wants to learn more about Native Americans, but they don’t hear it. They believe I can’t possibly speak for ALL native people, and these songs might offend someone, so what I have to say is garbage.

The thing is, you can choose to be offended by anything. “Old MacDonald” is ageist. “Mary Had A Little Lamb,” well, that lamb was white, so it’s racist. Taking out the “offensive” songs will only begat taking out more songs. This is going to have bad repercussions on children.

I think back to when I was a beginning piano student myself. I was fascinated when I first learned the piano piece “Snake Charmer” at about 8 years old. For whatever reason, that song captivated me. I wanted to know what sort of people could control snakes like that. Was it magic? Could I do it? Where was this place where these mysterious people lived?

Then I began to think, how would I feel if I was told I couldn’t learn more about snake charmers and Indian culture? That I was only allowed to be interested in things that I was tied to by blood. I think I would grow up hating all Indian people and whatever they stood for.

I suppose the end result will be eradicating all pictures and cultural references out of piano books entirely, which might even be worse than simply telling kids they can’t learn.  Not only will this will result in he most boring, themed music book possible, children won’t learn about other cultures at all.  It will become something they aren’t allowed to know about, so they’ll fear it.

The irony is, even if that boring book book devoid of all things cultural got published, the writers would likely be white, (as was the writer of the post suggesting we get rid of the offensive pieces) so the book would still somehow make it racist. Additionally, the exercises (songs are too risky) would be written in the western style of music, so therefore the whole thing would be “systematically” racist.

Where will it end? Likely in backlash. Children will once again be taught to hate others for their culture and color of their skin. To be told that the most important person about anyone is their skin color, and we’ll be headed back to a time where people wage war simply because of the way they look.

How Wearing A Mask Became A Political Symbol

In the beginning, the Coronavirus was scary.  Nobody knew anything about the sickness, and we were told it was lethal. There were reports that stated the virus was ten times more deadly than the flu. That hospitals were piling up with bodies and doctors were overwhelmed. Even the most level headed among us were terrified. People were instructed to wash their hands and stay home. School was cancelled, movie theaters and restaurants were a no go and items like cleaners and hand sanitizer flew off the shelves in a desperate hope those things would save us from certain death.

We hunkered down for two weeks to “flatten the curve.” This was to help hospitals deal with the overwhelming number of patients we were promised. We didn’t go out for any reason. Field hospitals were built in big cities to meet the demand, ventilators were mass produced, and we called all healthcare staff “front line” workers as though they were storming the beaches of Normandy.

Only, nothing really happened.

We were promised plague level death tolls. Bodies lining the streets. Exploding lungs and doctors abandoning their posts to cower at home. Anarchy, chaos, and hospitals overflowing with patients desperate to breath.

Of course a few people got the virus and died, but it was overwhelmingly older people in nursing homes. Those who met their demise generally had underlying conditions and were already at the end of their lives. Of course these deaths are tragic, but it’s not exactly unexpected when someone 90 years old with diabetes and heart failure dies when a virus or even a cold comes along.

For most people though, it never seemed like anybody really knew anyone who had contracted the virus. Even so, we were told there were sick people out there somewhere. They had to be. After two weeks staying inside, we decided it simply wasn’t enough. It was suspicious most hospitals seemed empty, but in the end we decided to keep cowering in our homes. The wave of death was cresting just ahead and we were sure to be swept under and taken by the magnitude of this deadly force. If you had to go out, you were instructed to wear a mask.

Of course people got bored and stir crazy. As a result, they started burning things and looting after an isolated incident of police brutality. The started screaming “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police.” They tore down statues of Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. They demanded our entire government structure be cut down and rebuilt.

White people were told they were racist for being white. If you didn’t agree you were racist, that made you more racist because you didn’t acknowledge your white privileged. More importantly, you could go out in huge mobs without wearing a mask because racial inequality was far more important than Covid-19.

Then, everything became about race. If you didn’t know anyone with Covid-19 you were racist, because everyone with the virus was black (though statistics don’t support it). The mob explained “front line” workers deal with the masses on a day to day basis. These people work cash registers or as servers and are black. White people sit in their palatial mansions making millions of dollars off of their white privileged, therefore minorities are getting the virus and dying at a much higher rate. That means it’s racist not to shut everything down, and racist not to wear a mask in order to protect black people.

Practically speaking, this virus seems to be much ado about nothing. We are finding out every day more and more people have or have had the virus than not, (black AND white) but interestingly enough, the death toll isn’t going up. If you’re over 70, the death rate increases somewhat, but the overall fatality rate is around 0.02 percent. In fact, it might not even be that high.

Mostly the inflation of cases is due to hospitals getting more money to report Covid cases. They are incentivized to do it, so it’s in their best interest to get the most cases they can. In today’s environment, if a person had the virus in April, recovered by May then got fatally shot in June, it would still be counted as a Covid death because they would test positive for antibodies.

With today’s current trends though, it’s considered racist to believe we should keep the economy going and not wear masks. We act as though all white people are sitting in ivory towers typing away in sterilized rooms making millions while black people work in unsanitary conditions at grunt jobs killing over. It’s simply not true, and the only people who believe this narrative are white people with good jobs that can be done from home.

Those white people who are servers and cashiers working with the public are pissed. It’s insulting to hear constantly how they’ve had it so much better than blacks when they clearly haven’t. If you have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth, it’s much easier to believe the narrative, but poor white people who have had it rough and grew up in a single mother household with ten siblings are angry.

This creates hate to the extent that white power is now a thing. I used to think the KKK was long gone. Something in the past, or at least something on the fringes the vast majority of people hated, but now under the current political environment, it’s alive and well. People who didn’t give a thought to a person’s race before are now taking notice and joining the clan. There are books out now, demonizing white people. White people who never said or did a racist thing in their lives, who were taught to love one another.

Now a days, white people can’t even defend themselves against angry mobs. Just a few days ago, a bunch of trespassing protesters invaded a gated community. The homeowners in this community were scared. The police weren’t going to come out and help them because of the whole “defund the police” narrative that’s going on across the country, so they came out of their house with guns. Yet somehow these people are racist? How is it racist to defend yourself against people attacking your home and your neighborhood?

I’ve personally had it, and refuse to wear the mask. The mask at this point is nothing but pandering to some dumb idea that black people are at a disadvantage. I believe in the United States, everyone has equal opportunity.