Another Dead Drummer

Ever since the virus panic turned into a vaccination gold rush a couple of years ago, I've noticed that a lot of musicians, especially drummers for some reason, have been dropping dead suddenly.  Given that the mRNA vaccinations have cardiac and immune system disorder side-effects (in addition to not working very well for their stated goal), when I hear of a musician's sudden and untimely death lately, I wonder if he or she got vaccinated against Covid-19, and what role that flawed product might have played in the passing.  Usually, I'd suspect a drug overdose or suicide when I hear of a musician dying young (or younger for the middle-aged ones), but when I hear that someone like Rick Froberg has died of "natural causes" at age 55, I wonder what role the vax might have played.  I've thought the same of the following musicians:

Rachel Nagy - The singer of The Detroit Cobras died at 48, and I've never seen the cause of death revealed.  I do note that she was supposed to play in Cleveland right before she died, and the venues here, like most places, were run by crazed vax zealots.  If the vax did play a role in her death, it's ironic that her band is playing a tribute at the same venue that might have contributed to her death with their vaccine bigotry and hysteria.

Blackie Onassis - I would have suspected the former Urge Overkill drummer to have died from drugs, but no cause of death is listed, and he was only 57, so I wonder about him.

Andy Rourke - The bass player of The Smiths died at age 59 from pancreatic cancer.

Pat Fish - The Jazz Butcher died unexpectedly.  He was 64.

Jeremiah Green - drummer for Modest Mouse, aged 45, died quickly of cancer.

Nanci Griffith - At least she made it to 68, ahead of the other ones on the list.

Taylor Hawkins - Suggestions that the vax played a role in the death of the 50-year-old drummer of The Foo Fighters were quickly met with outrage.  If only the outrage had been there when people were pressuring these musicians to take a flawed Big Pharma product due to the virus panic . . .

In any case, the list goes on.  Not all deaths of musicians in the past couple of years make me think the vax played a role.  Tony Bennett was old.  He wasn't going to live forever.  D. H. Peligro, another dead drummer, of The Dead Kennedys went due to the sadly all too traditional drug overdoes route.  But, if the vax did play a role in some of these other deaths, then the loss of the great music they might have made is yet another casualty of the virus panic.  If the hysteria hadn't been there, then it's likely these flawed products would not have been approved, given even the Big Pharma friendly nature of government regulators, but maybe that's even too much faith in the government.  In any case, best to think for oneself.  And, if you did get the jab and you're feeling fine, count yourself lucky.

I wouldn't recommend taking up the drums then though.

For happier times with music, listen to the Yeast? 7"!   

Tales From The Virus Panic #5: "Hollywood Celebrities United For Big Pharma"

A minor Hollywood celebrity testified to Congress via Zoom.  The Congressional Representative wet her panties with glee as she introduced him over her brush, albeit over the Internet, with fame.  He implored everyone to get vaccinated against the virus.  Months later after the vaccines he promoted were widely revealed to be neither "safe" nor "effective", as they failed to prevent the Omicron variant from spreading and racked up more reports on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System than any other vaccines in the system's decades' long history, he still, before hosting another awards show where Hollywood pats itself on the back, called the unvaccinated, "dipshits".

Meanwhile, the highest daily case rate of the virus panic was on a day over a year after the vaccines had been introduced, with the graph shooting straight vertical and looking like a rocket taking off, almost quadrupling any previous high.

A Hollywood talk show host suggested that anyone who didn't get vaccinated shouldn't be treated in a hospital.

Meanwhile, more people died from the virus in the year after the vaccines were used than in the year before they were used.

A popular disc jockey hoped the unvaccinated would die so they wouldn't infect him with the virus.

Meanwhile, the vaccinated died (typically, "mysteriously", "suddenly", or "unexpectedly") and were injured from side-effects brought on by the vaccine, but that coverage was left far from the glossy pages of mainstream magazines and fancy big tech websites, with only the conspiracy theorists on the edges of the Internet and family and friends of the fallen connecting the dots.

A comedian canceled shows where the venues would not demand proof of vaccination to attend because he wanted to protect the public from the virus, drawing from the erroneous belief that only the unvaccinated could spread it.  Maybe he only wanted to protect himself from an unvaccinated heckler's thrown beer bottle since the unvaccinated are the only demographic in America that comedians feel comfortable making fun of anymore.

Meanwhile, a comedian bragging about being vaccinated collapsed on stage and fractured her skull.  Let's have a big hand for the vaccine injured, folks!

A popular action movie star said his fear of death was more important than the freedom of others to live their lives without being injected with an experimental drug whose long-term effects were unknown and told them to "screw your freedom".

Meanwhile, Wall Street began to rapidly sell off the stock of the vaccine companies.  One company's stock price dropped from its high months earlier of $484 to $130, as investors feared that even the liability protections the company had wrestled from lawmakers wouldn't be enough to shield it from future injury and wrongful death lawsuits.

An actress dropped all her unvaccinated friends and bragged about it to a gossip magazine.

Meanwhile, a soccer team started discriminating against its vaccinated players because of what its owner claimed were their weakened performances.

A talk show host said that people should be forced by the government to get the vaccinations.

Meanwhile, a few weeks later, she got her booster shot, didn't feel well (though it was claimed she was just using "an abundance of caution" after being exposed to someone with the virus), and took some time off from the show.  Before she could return, she caught the virus and had to miss the show some more.  Yet she insisted that people should get vaccinated, perhaps feverish enough from the virus that she was unable to think logically, though that same illogic seems to be a character trait of her overall.

A burned out hippie musician demanded that a music service either remove his music or remove a podcaster who had guests that dissented from the corporate, governmentally-sanctioned, mainstream view of the virus panic (what the musician labeled "misinformation").

Meanwhile, the gigantic equity group that invested in the company that owned some of the rights to the musician's music (he had sold out, man, long ago; "This (Promissory) Note's For You", dude!) owned an even larger stake in pharmaceutical companies that benefited from the vaccines since they also developed RNA-based medications, though when critics blew back charges of hypocrisy at the musician, he insisted that it was fine since the equity group technically had their investment in a different fund of the music company, though he oddly conceded that the optics looked bad with a former C.E.O. of one of the pharmaceutical companies that made the vaccine now leading the advisory board of the equity group, then he suggested we buy his new album on vinyl because it sounds better that way.  

A casting director skips casting an actress because she heard that the actress is anti-vax, and she doesn't want to work with people like that.

Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of money advertising in the media.

A major Hollywood star said unvaccinated people were selfish and cowardly, afraid of getting a shot in the arm.  Then, he got another Botox injection, explaining why he was comfortable with people injecting toxins into their bodies.

Meanwhile, the internal Democratic polling showed that unless they lifted virus panic restrictions they would be out of power (probably for a generation if they can't make everyone forget Joe Biden), so they started rapidly lifting restrictions claiming, "the science had changed".

Few Hollywood celebrities apparently bother to critically think and examine data, choosing to side with the rich and powerful interests who pay their salaries and fund their luxurious lifestyles.  The sick and dying, injured by the celebrities' pompous pronouncements about things they know little about, just aren't very photogenic, alas.  As Upton Sinclair once noted, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Meanwhile, the rest of us should stop watching and listening to these selfish, foolish people who don't seem to know anything other than knowing how to read lines from teleprompters from scripts written by paranoid public health officials and greedy pharmaceutical executives.

This is a work of fiction, but it's based on real incidents.  Here are some links to source material:

https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/files/documents/Written%20Testimony_Offerman_OI_2021.05.26.pdf

https://uproxx.com/tv/nick-offerman-anti-vaxxers-putin-genius/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

https://www.mic.com/p/anti-vaxxers-have-finally-incurred-the-wrath-of-the-celebs-84300606

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-has-already-seen-more-covid-deaths-in-2021-than-2020-before-vaccines-were-available-as-experts-again-warn-pandemic-is-not-over-11637769586

https://thecovidblog.com/2022/02/28/jesse-gerhard-33-year-old-new-york-firefighter-suffers-sudden-medical-episode-at-firehouse-dead-hours-later/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-risk-of-vaccinated-covid-transmission-is-not-low/

https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/people/2022/02/09/why-heather-mcdonald-fainted-onstage/6711458001/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2022/02/14/moderna-stock-crash-losses-top-140-billion-as-insiders-sell-millions-of-dollars-in-shares/?sh=17708e1d106b

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccine-damage-caseworkers-a-growth/comments?s=r

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-10542765/Romanias-famous-football-team-Steaua-Bucharest-announce-ban-VACCINATED-players.html

https://shadowandact.com/the-view-hosts-sunny-hostin-and-whoopi-goldberg-debate-mia-love-in-vaccine-discussion-we-just-cant-wait

https://people.com/tv/whoopi-goldberg-absent-from-the-view-after-covid-19-exposure/

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/whoopi-goldberg-shares-covid-19-diagnosis-update-1235070594/

https://www.stereogum.com/2176278/neil-young-pfizer-music-publishing-conspiracy-theory/news/

https://www.barrons.com/articles/blackstone-has-quietly-invested-in-life-sciences-for-years-now-its-bet-could-pay-off-51613767877

https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/eli-lilly-starts-winning-streak-it-keeps-tv-ad-spend-throne-ahead-regenerons-dupixent

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/covid-vaccine-mandate-hollywood-1235026178/

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/democrats-pivot-masks-biden-pollster-203920612.html

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/

If you need some entertainment that doesn't reverse Walt Whitman and "horrify slaves and cheer up despots", then please read my latest novel, Fast Guy Slows Down.

Tales From The Virus Panic #4: "Correlation Does Not Imply Causation"

Jessica's husband was nagging her to get her virus booster shot.  He had gotten his yesterday.  He felt great he said.

A prominent local doctor had died suddenly after reportedly getting his booster.  When Jessica told her husband this, he said it was a coincidence and that correlation does not imply causation.

The local hospitals joined together ran a television commercial with the sound effect of a patient on a ventilator urging people to get vaccinated and boosted.  Jessica saw it several times while watching her favorite police show.

When the news came on after the cop show, the cheerful announcer announced that a famous comedian had died unexpectedly.  Jessica looked it up online and saw that the comedian had recently gotten his booster shot.  Jessica heard a voice in her head say, "Correlation does not imply causation."  

A famous politician tested positive for the virus despite being vaccinated and boosted.  Her spokesperson said the politician was thankful for the vaccine that was safe and effective and urged all Americans to get vaccinated and boosted.

On Facebook, a post from an antivax cousin noted that a 13-year-old boy had died from a heart attack after getting a booster shot.  Another cousin replied that "Correlation does not imply causation."

Jessica didn't feel so great after she had gotten her second shot.  She wasn't looking forward to getting another.  Plus it had seemed like she had just gotten it.  She didn't need a tetanus booster for a decade.  She wondered why she needed this booster so soon.

Her soccer-playing teenage son liked to watch British soccer.  During a game, one player collapsed and was taken from the field.  It turned out he had had a heart attack.  When Jessica asked if the soccer league required vaccinations, her son just mumbled, "I don't know, but even so correlation does not imply causation."

Jessica did some Googling and discovered that the mRNA vaccines were originally developed to treat cancer but repeated doses proved to be too toxic so they were redeveloped as vaccines because those only required one or two doses.  Now people were supposed to get boosted every 5 months.

Some researcher who helped to develop the mRNA technology said the vaccines weren't safe and got banned from Twitter.  Bluechecks said the stuff he was saying was full of logical fallacies of the post hoc nature.  They noted that "correlation does not imply causation."

Her teenage daughter liked to post on Reddit.  She sometimes showed Jessica what she was reading (but never what she was posting).  She laughed at some man who hadn't wanted to get the booster because he said the vaccine didn't work.  Then he had caught the virus, developed acute respiratory distress syndrome, and died.  He had earned a Herman Cain Award.  Jessica told her daughter that it wasn't nice to laugh at the misfortunes of others, and her daughter said she wasn't laughing at his misfortune.  Just his stupidity.

One of her friends who had refused to get vaccinated emailed her an article about a life insurance company in Indiana noting that deaths had risen 40% among those aged 18-64 in the last year.  It wasn't entirely clear from the article what the cause was, but Jessica's friend said it was because of adverse reactions to the vaccine wherein the body started attacking itself.  But Jessica remembered her husband saying "correlation does not imply causation."

Jessica got an email that she had a new message in her medical chart from the hospital system.  When she logged in, she was annoyed that it was just a reminder to schedule her booster shot.

On Instagram, friends posted about getting their booster shots.  One of them never posted again.  At 46, he died of a heart attack.  Someone suggested the booster shot had something to do with it, and another wrote, "Bullshit!  Correlation does not imply causation!"

Jessica and her family were invited to her niece's wedding in the spring.  A small asterisk at the bottom of the invitation asked that no children younger than 5 be brought to the wedding and reception and that all guests be fully up to date on their virus vaccinations including the latest booster.

Her husband kept nagging her about getting her booster.  She wondered if she punched him in the face and broke his jaw, would he still say "correlation does not imply causation" when she denied that her punch had broken his jaw?

At work, the CEO sent over a memo stating that regardless or not of whether the federal government's vaccine mandate was swatted down by the Supreme Court, the company would require all employees to be boosted by the end of the month (the company had already previously demanded that all employees be vaccinated or face termination).  All employees not boosted would be terminated.  The company also sent along a form that employees were required to sign waiving the company of all responsibility for any adverse effects from the booster.

Two days later, her manager in a team meeting announced that one of the team had died unexpectedly.  When someone asked if she had gotten her booster before the sudden death, the manager said he couldn't share that information, but, in any case, "correlation does not imply causation."

Jessica's husband started sleeping in the guestroom because he had read a news article that unboosted Americans represented a threat to boosted Americans and the virus cases in their area was skyrocketing.  He asked Jessica to consider wearing a facemask in the house until she got boosted.  One morning, he wasn't up when she went to work.  When she came home, the guestroom door was still closed.  When she asked the kids if they had seen their father, they shrugged and went back to the video game they were playing.  Her husband was still in bed when Jessica went into the guestroom.  He had died suddenly and unexpectedly.

Jessica thought "Correlation does not imply causation," and then she thought, "I'm not getting fucking boosted."

This is a work of fiction, but it's based on real incidents.  "[D]ied suddenly", "died unexpectedly", "passed away suddenly", and so on have become regarded in some circles as code for dying from vaccine side-effects (though some will argue it also applies to deaths from overdoses and other causes).  Since most of the deaths ultimately involve some mention of a heart attack and myocarditis has been noted even by the CDC as a side-effect of the vaccine, it's not hard to posit a connection between vaccine and death, though mRNA vaccine proponents continue to insist even in the face of contradicting evidence that there is no such connection.  It took over five years of people dying from Vioxx for the FDA to pull it from the market, and this time a lot more people will have proverbial egg on their faces if these vaccines are indeed not safe, so the connection may never be admitted for the mRNA virus vaccines.  Here are some links for source material:

https://www.ohio.edu/news/2022/01/chsp-university-community-mourns-death-tommy-rees

https://abc6onyourside.com/news/local/jefferson-township-firefighter-tommy-rees-who-died-while-on-duty-laid-to-rest-1-5-2022

https://www.ohio.edu/coronavirus/vaccine/vaccine-requirement

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/myocarditis.html 

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16211947

https://thecovidblog.com/2022/01/09/bob-saget-long-time-standup-comic-and-television-actor-dead-weeks-after-receiving-booster-shot/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-covid-19-test-positive/

https://www.cleveland.com/coronavirus/2021/12/read-the-firsthand-experiences-of-breakthrough-covid-19-cases-from-your-northeast-ohio-neighbors.html

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-new-normal-13-year

https://www.espn.com/soccer/english-premier-league/story/4555832/as-covid-19-causes-premier-league-chaosfocus-turns-to-convincing-vaccine-hesitant-players

https://www.rt.com/sport/541515-football-players-collapsing-debate/

https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommendations/immuno.html

https://www.foxnews.com/media/dr-robert-malone-joe-rogan-covid-ingraham-twitter-ban-youtube-censorship

https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/

https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ 

https://www.thecentersquare.com/indiana/indiana-life-insurance-ceo-says-deaths-are-up-40-among-people-ages-18-64/article_71473b12-6b1e-11ec-8641-5b2c06725e2c.html

https://nypost.com/2022/01/07/supreme-courts-liberal-justices-slammed-over-vax-mandate-statements/

https://www.foxnews.com/media/the-atlantic-mocked-for-revising-headline-asking-if-its-safe-to-hang-out-with-the-unboosted

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/04/us-counts-over-1-million-new-daily-covid-cases-in-global-record-.html 

And if you still want to read anything else after you checked out those links, then read Edna's Employment Agency, where the idiots are fictional and amusing and not in charge of governments and corporations like in real life.

Tales From The Virus Panic #3: "The Photocopy Protein"

Dr. K was hogging the photocopier again.

Dr. W sighed and waited for his turn to copy an article out of a journal.

Again.

She told him it would just be a minute, and they started talking.  He asked what she was working on.  She asked what he was working on.  A partnership was born.  Together, they tried to get messenger RNA (mRNA) to get into the body and tell cells what proteins to make to help fight diseases without the body's immune system freaking out and swatting it down.

After a decade of work, they thought they cracked the problem.

Some others did too.

In 2008, a company was founded to utilize mRNA to fight cancer.  They wanted to help people.

And make money.

In 2008, a child was born in Ohio as well.

The company and child were on a collision course.

The mRNA treatments showed promise but also triggered autoimmune issues.  A body could only take so many treatments before it started destroying itself in an effort to destroy the artificial mRNA.

The company started to focus on treatments that only required one or two doses instead of repeated doses:  vaccines.

Meanwhile, the child in Ohio grew up.  She liked to dance.  She was a healthy and happy girl who loved to help others.

In 2020, politicians and public health officials were panicking about a new coronavirus.  They tried lockdowns.  They tried masks.  The virus still virused.  They still hoped for deliverance.  They asked for a vaccine.

The company was already on it.  The genetic sequence of the virus was posted by Chinese scientists, and the company used it to create a snippet to slip into cells.  The little photocopier inside a cell started cranking out copies of spike proteins.  The body recognized these as intruders and started cranking out photocopies of its own:  antibodies that would smash the spikes.  Then when the virus showed up with its spike proteins, the body would smash them and wouldn't get sick.

That was the plan anyway.

The government was in a rush.  They had made the virus a big deal so they could look like heroes, and now they couldn't stop it.

They weren't looking good.

The company and others working on similar vaccines said we could help but the government needed to shield them from lawsuits in case it didn't work as planned.

The government said sure and invoked the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, an earlier government giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry who gave money to the politicians who wrote the laws governing the pharmaceutical industry.

If you got injured from the vaccine, you couldn't sue the maker.  

If you got injured from the vaccine, you couldn't sue the government because of sovereign immunity.

America threw out the king in 1776, but they kept his sovereign immunity.

The government did kindly set up a fund for vaccine injuries though; so far, they've approved 5% of the claims that had successfully navigated the bureaucratic maze before they died.

The others were just shit out of luck.

After some hurried and dubious clinical trials (though the government and company would claim that "no corners were cut"), the government, of course, approved the vaccine by the company.  Then both government and company encouraged people to get it.

Since the virus mainly affected older people, the rush was on to protect them, so the vaccine was only approved for adults at first.

But the company wanted to help more people.

And make more money.

So they started the process to get the vaccine approved for children as well.

The child's father was a nurse.  The child's mother was an engineer.  They worked for big companies.  They believed in science.  They believed in vaccines.  They enrolled their children in the clinical trial at their local hospital.  The child was glad to help people.

They gave half the kids in the trial the vaccine.

For an illness almost no child is at serious risk from.

A photocopy of the rushed adult trial, the trial was declared a success, and the government approved the vaccine for children, starting first with adolescents.

The government photocopier copied out another approval.

But the child didn't feel so well.  Almost immediately after her second dose, she complained of stomach pain.  

The company dutifully noted this in their report data:  child had tummyache.

Maybe it was something she ate.

The photocopier made copies of the report for the regulatory panel.

The company didn't note how the child later couldn't walk and needed a feeding tube to live.

All to prevent a disease she was at little risk from.

The company and government didn't want to hear from her, told her she was just hysterical and it was all in her head.

It certainly had nothing to do with the vaccine or the autoimmune problems that plagued the early development of mRNA treatments.

Anyway, they were too busy photocopying press releases touting the vaccine's success.

One senator did listen though.

He also was ignored, when he wasn't being called a crank.

Instead, the government sent the surgeon general on The View encouraging every parent to get children vaccinated.

Save the 5-year-olds!

The View didn't invite the girl onto the show.  After all, unlike the company, how many commercials would she buy?

The company's stock price was up again today.

Meanwhile, virus infections were up in countries with high vaccination rates and down in countries with low vaccination rates.

Probably just seasonal variations in the hemispheres, the company and government said.  They also said if you tested positive for the virus and got shot to death, you died of the virus, but if you got the vaccine and died the next day, the vaccine had nothing to do with it.

It didn't seem as if the company and government could add things up, at least when they didn't like the results.

The girl learned a valuable lesson though, should she survive her adolescence.

Don't copy adults.

They're mostly fools.

This is a work of fiction, but it's based on real incidents.  Here are some links to source material:

https://www.sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Letter-to-Federal-Health-Agencies-Regarding-Maddie-and-Clinical-Trials-for-Children.pdf

https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/2021/10/media-advisory-sen-johnson-holds-expert-panel-on-federal-vaccine-mandates-and-vaccine-injuries

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-compensation-lawsuit.html

https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/

https://www.pennmedicine.org/coronavirus/vaccine/qa-with-drew-weissman

And here's a commercial that was refused airplay:  

https://odysee.com/@VSRF:d/maddieaddenied:3

If you need some cheering up after this, then please read Edna's Employment Agency where the idiots are fictional and amusing and not in charge of governments and corporations like in real life.

Tales From The Virus Panic #2: "Democracy Inaction"

Suzy believed in democracy, but she didn't believe in getting up early in the morning, so it took some work for her friend Wilma to convince her to work the polls for the election.  Nevertheless, Suzy signed up and dutifully attended her training session at the local public library where she learned the rules of the election and how to operate the machinery by which the election was conducted.

The day before the election she got a phone call from the board of elections that the evening setup was canceled.  Instead, they would go in even earlier the next morning and set up then.

Suzy swore then to never let Wilma talk her into doing anything she didn't want to do again.  The nasty little cold virus going around that the news was always talking about had already made her regret signing up to work the polls.

Meanwhile, the president's public health official, feeling her power swell, had really laid on the fire and brimstone in her conference call with the latest group of state governors.  Feeling pleased with herself, she went home and masturbated.

The elderly governor of one Midwestern state, however, was scared silly.  He was terrified of dying, especially before he could achieve his dream of one day being president.  He knew time was running out as it was; he didn't need this nasty Chinese virus slaughtering him before he even got to declare his candidacy.  He decided on a second opinion and called his department of health head.

She said it was bad, real bad.  Some folks in England had plunked some data into a computer model and it said unless people stayed away from one another then they would all die.

The governor, a know-nothing who still thought there were weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq, knew little about health and even less about computers.  He didn't know that public health officials were almost to a man or woman or nonbinary gender identifying creature hypochondriacs who loved telling people what to do.  He also didn't know that if you fed garbage into a computer you got garbage out.  He did know that if he died or he let everyone in his state die, then he would never be president.

The governor called the secretary of state who was in charge of administering the election and told him to cancel it.  They could always hold the election a couple of weeks later when this virus had passed over them.

The governor thought of the virus like the angel of death in the Passover story of the Bible, which his mommy had read to him when he was a wee lad in short pants and which he still sort of kind of believed in.

That afternoon, they closed the bowling alleys first and canceled the election second.

They knew the priorities of the state's citizens.

Suzy got another call from the board of elections telling her she didn't need to report to work the polls the next morning.  She was surprised but happy that she could now sleep in.

Then a candidate objected and filed a lawsuit, and the election was back on.

The board of elections called Suzy again and told her the election was back on and sorry for the misunderstanding and that the state was led by morons and all that, yadda yadda yadda.  Suzy went to bed right after the call since she had to get up in the middle of the night and she was already up much too late already because she didn't think she had to go to bed early based on the earlier call.

Meanwhile, the governor had his attorney general reading some dusty law books, and it looked like the state department of health could declare a health emergency and order the polling places closed.  What the heck the governor thought, even if it ended up being illegal it might do the job.  So he told the department of health director to do that, and she did just in time to make the 11 o'clock television news where the anchors chitchatted and read press releases from the government and large corporations between car commercials.

And the governor went to bed, where he waited until his wife was asleep and he masturbated to the power he had and also the head of the health department because she was kind of foxy.

Later, Suzy got up in the middle of the night, feeling groggy.  She turned on some electric lights and stumbled around getting washed and dressed.  She ate some breakfast hurriedly and made coffee for the short walk to the polling place.  It was drizzly, and as she walked under her umbrella, she startled a deer snoozing in a neighbor's yard.  Grumbling again that Wilma would never talk her into anything she wondered if she should have driven, but then she probably wouldn't have had the delight of the deer.  Still she hoped she wouldn't get raped or mugged walking in the dark all alone.  Of course, she lived in a very nice neighborhood which is why she chanced it in the first place.  She was mulling this all over when she arrived at her destination.  It was dark and no one was there.  She walked around the church to the door she was supposed to go to.  She knocked.  No one answered.  There was no sign on the door.  She wondered if she had gotten up too early.  She checked her phone.  No, she had the right time.  There was a voicemail there though that she hadn't noticed earlier in the rush to get to the polling place.  It was from the board of elections telling her the election was canceled.

On her walk home, the rain got heavier, the wind picked up, her umbrella blew away, and she got soaked.  When she got home, she finished her now cold coffee and masturbated to the image of smashing both Wilma's and the governor's heads in with a rock.

This is a work of fiction, but if you lived in Ohio in 2020, then you know it's based on a true incident. Our democracy is inviolate unless some rich folks panic about their health, then it's tossed away like a used tissue by all those who swore to defend the Constitution.   It could be worse though, we could live in Australia where the police will choke you "to protect your health" and bar you from the hospital and even the pub if you refuse to get vaccinated (meanwhile, their cases and deaths rise as they vaccinate more and more, hmm . . . something's not computing there, check out how the graphs for vaccinations, cases, and deaths follow basically the same rising curve from July to October--weird); my apologies, of course, if you do live in Oceania, I mean, Australia.  Maybe they can mask the kangaroos next because that would be about as effective as in not effective, not effective at all.  If you need some cheering up after this, then please read Edna's Employment Agency where the idiots are fictional and amusing and not in charge of governments and corporations like in real life.

Tales From The Virus Panic #1: "Sex, Vaccines, And Rock & Roll"

Someone was screaming at Frank on the telephone.  He was used to that at work, but this was home.  Finally, he recognized the voice.  It was his friend Alfred.

He hadn't seen Alfred in a couple of years, as middleage swept them both along into different orbits, but he remembered the raspy voice well and with affection.  Alfred and Frank had a college radio show together in the 1980s and shared enthusiasms for local bands, punk rock, and novelty songs.

"Dude, The Stainless Steel Toilet Flappers are touring!" Alfred yelled.

"What?  I thought they broke up years ago and said they would never play together again," Frank said, remembering how the band had gotten into a fistfight onstage at what proved to be their final show.

"I know, right?  Maybe they need the money or something.  I don't know.  Remember we said if them or The Smiths ever reform we were going to go no matter what?" Alfred said.

Frank didn't, but it sounded like something he would have agreed to when he was drunk in college.  "And they're playing at The Slop Shop, a little club right in town.  It's going to be great!" Alfred raved on.

Frank wasn't so sure, but he agreed to go anyway.  Recently divorced, he checked the date, saw he didn't have his son that week, and made arrangements with Alfred.

"Do you want me to get the tickets?" Frank asked.

"Already got them, dude!  You owe me $50." Alfred said.

Frank winced, as his budget was tight, but gritted his teeth and said, "Great!  Thanks!"

"The only weird thing is The Slop Shop said we have to show proof of vaccination to get in," Alfred said.

"Uh, I'm not vaccinated," Frank said.

"Neither am I, dude, but they said you could show a negative Covid test too," Alfred said.

Frank vaguely remembered that the last time he had been in Mart Mart they had been offering free Covid tests.  The concert kept sounding worse.  Frank really didn't want a Q-tip or whatever shoved up his nose, but it seemed too late to back out now.  It would be nice to see Alfred.  "I'll probably do that then," Frank said.

"I think I'm going to get vaccinated.  There's a few other shows I want to see coming up and it would be a drag to have to keep getting tested," Alfred said.

"That's kind of lame they're requiring that anyway.  Is that a law, or is that something the band's doing?" Frank said.

"I don't know, dude, whatever.  'I don't give a fuck about anything,'" Alfred sang, the chorus from one of their favorite songs by The Flappers, albeit one they couldn't play on their radio show.

They reminisced some more and made plans to meet up at Alfred's place since the club was on his side of town.

A week later, Frank got a text from Alfred that he had gotten his first dose of the Pfizer shot.  "Dude, it was easy.  I feel great!  Nurse had big tits too!" Alfred wrote.

Frank was suspicious of Big Pharma and the government, so he wasn't swayed.  He didn't even get the flu shot; he certainly wasn't getting this rushed thing.  He just texted back a thumbs up emoji.

A couple of weeks later, Frank got another text from Alfred:  "Fully vaxxed and ready to rock!  Let's goooooooooo!"

A couple of days before the concert, Alfred texted again, "Don't forget to get your test!"

Frank grunted and went online and scheduled a Mart Mart test.  At least it was free.  Well, probably the government was paying for it, but as long as Frank didn't pay for it he wasn't too upset.  The government wastes a lot of his tax money.  At least this boondoggle actually saved him some out of pocket money.

When Frank got his negative results back, he texted Alfred that he was cleared for takeoff.  Alfred didn't text back, but Frank figured that Alfred was just busy getting ready for the show.  After work, Frank went to the address Alfred had given him.  It was an apartment building that had seen better days and probably some better nights as well.  Alfred was in apartment C.  After blundering around a bit and walking down the stairs and then having to walk back up, Frank found it and knocked.

No one answered.

Frank looked at his phone.  There was no text from Alfred, and it looked like they were running late.  Frank looked around for a doorbell maybe he had missed the first time and, not finding one, pounded on the door louder.  He played the beat from "Open Your Legs And Not Your Mouth", one of the greatest hits of The Flappers on Alfred's door.

Alfred's door didn't open, but the one next door did, Apartment B.  An older woman in a purple housecoat looked out, "He ain't home.  I hope he's all right.  Aside from playing his rock music too loud, he was a nice neighbor.  I haven't seen him since the paramedics came last night.  They took him away."

Frank thanked her and went back to his car.  He called a few hospitals and waited on hold before eventually an operator connected him to the room Alfred was in.

A nurse answered, mumbled something about cardiac arrest and gave Frank her condolences, then quickly hung up.

Frank missed the reunion concert, but he missed his friend more.

This is a work of fiction, but I suspect it's happened more than once.  If you doubt me, just note how many "rebellious" rock and rollers and clubs want you to disclose your health history just to get in (surely a form of Stockholm Syndrome after the virus panic folks nearly destroyed their livelihoods last year) and then read some Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System entries for fun (my favorite tonight was "13 hours after the patient had had her 2nd covid-19 shot, she was found dead" but don't worry as the lab tech noted that the healthy 49-year-old's death was "likely a coincidence that she died only hours after her vaccination").  If you need some cheering up after this, then please read Edna's Employment Agency where the idiots are fictional and amusing and not in charge of governments and corporations like in real life.