COVID19: The Prisoner?

We've Nattered about crowded environments, transmission, seasonal flu numbers, mortality rates, imagined vs real, the backdraft of draconian measures, predicted "superspreader" events, pigs in a poke, monetary policy, preexisting conditions, a lack of global leadership, social habits, cultures, mutation, second hand stupidity, unknown known's, things that seemingly come out of the blue and a collective tabula rasa, all of which have "conspired" in many ways to allow a mischievous Jinn out of it's bottle. Unlike others, this was not to infer that COVID19 is much ado about nothing.  

I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own. I resign. - Number Six

Alex, I'll take Nemesis for $400. Trebek: On the British TV series "The Prisoner",  #6 worst enemy.

Tonight's trope and meme cloaked offering manifests a certain impatience in societies numerology, it's human ciphers, and all things Prisoner: of conditioning, trappings, dilemmas and the inevitable tragedies thereof. Please do enjoy and now picking up where Bat Shit Crazy? left off on 05/13...

In Spain's Sierra Nevada Mountains, researchers found billions of viruses and tens of millions of bacteria are being deposited per square metre per day.

As demonstrated 2.5K metre altitudes will suffice for long distance viral carry, and one does not need Chinese take out for things that are already well distributed. Unlike the distribution of necessities such as water, food, etc. with obstructing prisoners' dilemmas and tragedies of the commons outcomes, viral production capacity and distribution is amply available planet wide for your convenience and conspicuous consumption.

There are an estimated 10³¹ viruses on Earth... the vast majority of which remain unidentified and uncharacterized... around 40 trillion bacteria in the human body, mostly in the GI tract which with 100 trillion microbes (anything small) hosts twice the human bodies cell count... two thirds are individually distinct. In other words, your intestinal microbiota are an ID card, and you are what you consume. - Out Of The Blue?

Along those enteric lines, for those who missed last time out we were scuttling about while muttering in a Southie accent, all things "covid", have we "covid" all da bases?  What goes in comes out, influent "Darkside" surveillance  (major wastewater treatment plant) in urban Mass. suggests something long suspected.  Compared to the 446 reported cases in the area, the sewage samples revealed that even by conservative estimates, at least 2.3K and as many as 115K people could have actually been infected and shedding the virus during March 18-25. At the low end 6X greater infections than reported. Upshot? A two edged sword, good news first? Due to many factors tither estimates can vary widely. 10X is more probable, which decreases the mortality rate from 6% to 0.6%.  Bad news, still 6X deadlier than the flu. More problematic, increased infection rates multiply mutation and recombination potentials, which would complicate any recurrent emergence. Passing the sniff test...

There is no doubt COVID19 came from bats in the wild. Pre COVID19, bats already harbored CoVs with the ability to infect humans without adaptation.  Plenty of slow cooking time with endo and exogenous triggers along the way caused recombination of necessary and supplemental traits for receptor binding and proteolytic activation. One ingress is via ACE2 endothelial pathology, is this the only door in?  We think not, with COVID19's demonstrated  hematopoietic and enteric capabilities there are multiple combinations of receptor binding domain (RBD) and proteolytic activators, thus multiple doors. Looking ahead, any further recombination which the above poop snooping indicates, would be problematic in the extreme, the rest TBD.  For something that stinks, and now this...

Good news first? Wages are about to jump faster than ever in history, but for all the wrong reasons. Mass layoffs of the lower waged shrink the number of employed, leaving those with higher wages to boost the average wage.  Of course corporate management will take full credit and advantage of the suddenly "higher" wages. i.e. no actual raises, pay cuts, more layoffs to come, and fatter bonuses for those E-suite "nice" guys. And now this...

Another consequence of knee jerk, dim witted responses which affect the supply chain, effects farmers being forced to dump highly perishable foods, milk, cheese and butter in increasing amounts. - 04/06  I Dream Of Jeannie?

We've previously Nattered about consequences, supply chain disruption and food dumping... We feed America? While food bank demands are rising, pour more salt in the wound... Dairy Farmers of America, estimates that farmers are dumping as many as 3.7M gallons of milk each day; a single chicken processor is smashing 750K unhatched eggs every week; restaurant closures force an Idaho farmer has dug huge ditches to bury 1M pounds of onions; in South Florida, tractors are crisscrossing bean and cabbage fields, plowing perfectly ripe vegetables back into the soil; 50M pints of beer going to waste in closed UK pubs. and a large US pork producer shut down as 230 employees tested positive for COVID19. Due to rising employee infection (10K), 37% at one plant, and deaths (30), the largest pork, poultry and beef producers which are few in a vastly consolidated industry, have closed at least 30 plants in the last two months. Hold that in mind as we give you the bad news, which plumbs new depths of the darkside...

Food dumping is old news, of late restaurant and rendering plant closures have effected the supply chain, forcing US farmers to depopulate an estimated 2M hens and 800K hogs (per week) while aborting countless piglets. One knows there isn't much spare feed, pasture or room on the farm. So one can readily estimate the depopulation by the YOY decline in slaughter rates i.e. what didn't make the trip to market.  The May 1st cattle decline was 290K for the week, and we shall leave that where we found it. With the dump and cull, average retail price of eggs YOY +40%; fresh chicken +5.4%, beef +5.8% and pork +6.6%.  

Along the wasteful way to euthanasia... Those who don't know how farming works, should not blame the farmers.   Once again, this pandemic is NOT a black swan and the supply chain consequences were predictable and preventable. Now in more ways than one, we are culling the herd, and its not just animals that are being  depopulated in rural America. Blame greed in a supply chain where consolidation into a few large lobbying concerns, values corporate profits over people, land, and animals.  Alas...

It's a cult-ure, it's a mindset - Same Bat Channel?

Speaking of which... Where's The Beef? On 04/28, at the behest of a few large meat producers (because that's all that's left), the EO invoked the Defense Production Act by signing an EO "to keep meat and poultry processing facilities open during the COVID-19 national emergency."  Back to Southie, just one small problem der Normy, the EO does not have any authority to force workers into life threatening conditions, and anything to the contrary is pure self serving propaganda. In this case, the EO cannot keep a chicken in every pot, and can only attempt to compel owners to operate plants they had closed because of the pandemic.  Along those self serving lines...

EO administration and meat producers figure that products and profits produced by the reopenings will offset any potential increase in virus related deaths in surrounding communities. Back to Southie, matta a fact der Normy, due to increased testing in those areas, one of two things is occurring at those plants and communities where 14 plants have slowly reopened. Either the infection rate in the plants and surrounding areas, or worse yet those rural states has doubled. Both being counter to ending a pandemic, and the latter being worse case. If cases and death's remain clustered in those areas, its the plants, if not and the trend is statewide, well there's the beef.  Moving West...

While Covid infection and deaths continue to rise, face mask assaults are ramping up too. The senseless killing of a security guard at a Flint Dollar Store, spitting on employees and responding LEO, and a woman banned from shopping for refusing to wear a mask.  From Is It Safe? paraphrased re: the demonstrators, if they don't care, and don't think they can get it, they should not waste their time whining in public, but go directly to the front of the line and help. Not the checkout stand at Trader Joe's, but the frontline at the hospitals. If only our federal, state, county and city elected cocotte's were not a pack of eunuch's... 

Patrons who verbally threaten, bully or intimidate and refuse to cooperate or leave should be arrested and charged with public nuisance and 1st degree misdemeanor reckless endangerment.  Those spitting on, intentionally touching, utilizing force and/or brandishing a weapon should be arrested and charged as above, with the latter being a felony charge, in addition to assault and battery with a deadly weapon, not the gun. And now this "Point" from a "sheeple freedom fighter" who thinks she's "Taking Back America" one Trader Joe's at a time... 

04:37: "I should have the right to not wear a mask in America I have the right to not wear a mask in America because I'm an American citizen... 05:17: I have a right to my own opinion so I have a right to wear a mask or not... 07:53: they've taken all of our rights away... 07:57: there's absolutely no reason for us to wear masks none zip zero a 99% survival rate that's what coronavirus is... 17:58: this is what the Revolutionary War was about...  19:44 we the people have the voice this is our country...  pretty soon we're gonna be stepping on trains like in Germany.  20:24: the evidence is in...  its such a low % of people that have this, and its no bigger or badder than the flu... 20:42: stop following these senseless dangerous mandates that are not the law." 

Above, not to be confused with Number Six. And now this Nattering Counterpoint...  Jane, you ignorant slut. Bagged out, dried up slunk meat like you should know the rules. "We the people" forgot the "we reserve the right" to refuse sign posted on the wall?  Oh, but let's all shed a tear for poor little Jane and the Covidiots who don't care if they shed and spread like cheap whores with STD's at fleet week. Newsflash, establishments public and private can require and enforce the wearing of masks to protect their employees and other patrons.  Simply put, others should not have to pay a high price for your viral stupidity and strumpeting.  Even if one thinks they never had the virus, it IS their responsibility to abide and wear a mask. If you have the strip mall In-N-Out monkey style urge or parking lot hokey pokey hot to trots, just like a condom, no glove, no love, no mask, no entry, game over, right, got it, thanks.

And yes Jane, the evidence is in and at the low end COVID19 is 2-3X more virulent and 66X deadlier than the flu. Just the facts ma'am, but I suppose that sort of fashionable viral promiscuity and the attendant mortality risk mean nothing to someone like you Jane, who hops from store to store and pathogen to pathogen with the frequency of a cheap, HAM radio. But hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Jane and the Covidiots, like a pack of gun toting, screeching,  squealing, rapacious swamp sows, are ever keen to throw down like trollops for the next 1.5M infections and 100K deaths.  I guess what you are saying is that regardless of the cost, when you're out and about you might as well be on your back, and the meter is running.  Well Jane, please spare us your infectious harlotry as we know those pathogenic rates that have and will continue to cost us at the end of the day. Try it now your way, we can only lose, girl the death toll could get much higher, and if you step on any train it won't be alive, but only as funeral pyre. 

In closing Jane, please quit conflating whiny self entitlement and paranoid conspiracy theories with real civil rights, and a genuine concern for public health in a pandemic. Unlike your imagined rights, as long as the proprietor does not violate civil rights via age, gender, sexual persuasion, racial, ethnic or religious discrimination, they have the right to refuse admittance and service. This right applies especially to self centered adolescent like meretricious sows, who wish to wallow in a viral mire of self pity. Further, it is our right not to be forced to shack up with, and be exposed to a killer virus from pathological two bit tarts and bargain basement pandemic slatterns like you. - That's the news, good night and have a pleasant tomorrow. 

Coming full circle in our theme and apropos title, we think, where the rubber meets the road, the general workforce, farmers, meat supply chain workers and those who are conscientious adults, stuck between a rock and a hard place.  In no man's land between greed driven E-suites, food chain conglomerates and EEG flatline Covidiot's all screaming in conflated unison about being prisoners.  Where a lack of leadership whose strictly political motivations pander to a base mentality which is allowed to run wild and seemingly run the asylum, who are the real prisoner's?  A prisoners dilemma indeed, all the while forgetting ye shall reap as ye sow, and the outcome when the piper shows up for the post dance collection, can only be more tragedies of the commons.  Case in point, The Prisoner is about the brainwashed who believe they have freedom and agency, and are yet nothing more than self deluded prisoners of their own trappings. Answering Trebek's original query: What is himself?  Meanwhile, Covid19 can be heard whispering sweet nothings about infection and death rates softly into Jane and the Covidiot's ears...

You know that it would be untrue 
You know that I would be a liar 
If I was to say to you 
Girl, we couldn't get much higher
Come on baby, light my fire
Try to set the night on FIRE!!!!

Be well, more to come in COVID19: In Memoriam? Stay tuned, no flippin.

Recommended Reading:
COVID19: Corona Virus Series
March 1977 Patrick McGoohan Prisoner Interview with Warner Troyer
Tip o The Hat to Jane Curtain, Dan Aykroyd and SNL in the day.