I'm back on the west side of the Cascades now. Our flight (or maybe only my son's flight) back to Japan leaves from Seattle in a less than a week. We drove from the Bitterroot Valley, just west of the great continental divide, to Olympia, WA, on the southern end of Puget Sound, crossing over Snoqualmie Pass, at the great societal divide, splitting the red faction and the blue in Oregon and Washington. Or it used to be so. Back in the day one could count on a more conservative atmosphere traveling east from Portlandia and CHAZ (Seattle), but today Spokane and Bend, the biggest population centers east of the Cascades in WA and OR, are going blue, if they're not there already.
In addition to the traffic gridlock and road rage, another unpleasantness is the return to covid insanity, mostly in the form of mask wearing, but also the obliviousness. This is the land of people who are informed by the likes of NPR, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, NYT, WaPo and the local papers that all toe the line. Therefore people here are totally unfazed by the number of covid cases popping up among the fully jabbed. It makes no difference if you point out that yesterday they were saying that the jab would prevent covid, and today they've completely abandoned that stance. “We're lucky to be fully vaccinated. Yes, we got covid and it was nasty, but imagine how bad it could have been if we didn't get the shot!”
“But wait,” we respond, “Don't you realize that Fauci, Walenski, Biden, Gates and the rest told you that you wouldn't get covid if you got the jab?”
Behold the glazed expression.
In rural Montana one could convince oneself that this debacle is over, but the damage reports are coming in by the truckload, if your eyes are open. As if on cue, when we crossed the pass and descended into crazy world, my son announced the latest on my LINE feed from an anti-covidia group in Japan.
“A 13 yr. old boy died in the bathtub four hours after getting the shot. He had a heart attack and passed out and drowned.”
He was fit with no health problems. Played on the baseball team. I said to Andy, “That’s just what I was trying to prevent when I stood up in front of the staff and warned them! That’s what I wanted to prevent when I handed out the flyers to the students! How can people still be taking the jab now?!”
Andy just nodded.
“And he was on the baseball team. I’ll bet you two thirds or more of our baseball team got the damned shot. I even talked to our baseball coach. I said, ‘You know about Yusuke Kinoshita, right?’ and all he did was say, ‘Uh’ and so I reminded him that Kinoshita was on the Dragons and he died right after the shot and all the coach could say was, ‘Ahh. Yeah, I heard about that.’”
Restrictions have finally been partially relaxed at my dad's retirement home. Guests are now allowed into the giant Sunset Retirement Center, but not at anyone's residence, or in the dining room or game room or pool or exercise center or library or community room with the coffee maker. You can meet outdoors in small groups on the patio provided you wear your mask. Brief moments of masklessness are allowed to have a sip of tea or nibble of crumpet. Andy and I have been invited over, but I just can't stomach the idea of meeting my dad, for maybe the last time, with a mask on. Here is an excerpt of my recent email to him:
I know you think I'm nuts and I apologize for any inconvenience this causes but at your age there aren't many years left and who knows if I'll be able to see you another time, therefore I'd rather you not see me with that mask on and I don't want to put it on just to follow the rules to get to the patio where I can take it off to eat a hotdog. If Sunset Center is that strict about the mask, what do you say we meet at John's house again?
So hopefully we'll just meet at cousin John's again, where my dad and step mother will arrive masked, but will then take the diapers off for dinner, where we'll all be in close quarters for a couple hours. But why do I have to begin that explanation of my mask refusal with that meek apology, you ask?
I guess it's because my dad is 92 and if I go full anti-covidian with him I might lose him completely.
Down at my mom's old folks home in Olympia, this conversation took place as we walked into the main office building:
Mom- I have to go to a residents meeting at 3 o'clock. I'm on the committee.
Then mom gestured toward an office behind a big glass window, with a woman who looked in her mid 30s at her desk computer.
Mom-You see that woman? She's Jenny, the Residents' Activities Coordinator. She organizes everything around here and she's really good. She'll be running the meeting.
Then we turned the corner and my mom got close to me and whispered in my ear.
“Jenny lost her baby this year. She's just back from a long absence.”
“Oh, no! What happened?”
-Well, she was 6 or 7 months pregnant and the baby just died. It was devastating for her. She just couldn't return to work and just returned only a few days ago.
-Man, that's terrible.
-Oh, it was devasting.
-Did she get the covid shot?
-Well, all of the workers here have to be vaccinated in order to work here.
-So she got the shot...When did she lose the baby?
-In April.
-Of this year?
-Yes.
A death of a baby (or fetus if you don't think a baby is in there, [in the third trimester? FCOL!]) after six months is not called a miscarriage, or even late-term miscarriage. It's called a still birth.
A google search with late term miscarriage in the search bar gives you this for the first result:
A late miscarriage is one that happens after the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, but before 24 weeks. It is also sometimes called a second-trimester or mid-trimester loss. If a baby dies at or after 24 weeks of pregnancy, this is called a stillbirth. Late miscarriages are not very common and happen in 1-2% of pregnancies.
So if late miscarriages are only 1-2% of pregnancies, what about stillbirths?
Among the curious, informed and aware but not woke, we know this stuff is going on all over the place, in this post-jab, new normal world.
But here in Branch Covidia, it's just another astonishing tragedy without explanation.
Pfizer tested the jab on pregnant women before the rollout. 90% of them miscarried. Pfizer then requested that their internal documents, including that little tidbit, be sealed for 75 years. Request was denied, and now we know. And they knew, but they paid the fake news networks to say it was perfectly safe for pregnant women to get the jab. Many of them have given birth to babies with weak immune systems. Many people don't believe that it's possible for anybody to be this evil, but history is full of them.
My friends had a stillbirth child many years ago, just 1 week before the due date after a complication free pregnancy. This is the only time I have experienced this with anyone that I know in my close or wider circle. It was devastating for them (thankfully they now have two wonderful kids while not ever forgetting their first). I also know a fully jabbed couple who have recently had a healthy baby conceived after 2 shots and I know of another who is jabbed (I am assuming) and due in a month or so. I'm not really making a point. I guess im just saying that these current still birth stats are awful and must be causing so much pain in so many people who refuse to see the truth and that thankfully many children are still being born in spite of the shots. I think I heard that the still born rate in Scotland was something like 1 in every 5. This might be wrong but i'm sure someone could find the stats. Maybe i'll look later.
You have a wonderful way with words.