Covid-19: American Acceptionalism

The graph on the wall
tells the story of it all.
Picture it now,
see just how
the lies and deceit
gained a little more power...

(Bonus points for those catching the reference without Googling it).

 

Strangely enough Canada has ruined me for fish & chips. The fish & chips I've found in the US since then have been inferior and not worth the disappointment. I'm sure there are good fish & chips somewhere but I shouldn't have to do a hard search to get good ********ing fish & chips.

 

Last time I had good fish and chips: Newport, Rhode Island. At a ********ing IHOP! But the fish came off the boat that morning, which had to have helped.

 

You forgot the mashed peas.

 

The grabbing hands, grab all they can, all for themselves... after all

it's a competetive world.

 

Mushy peas, that’s something I can’t subscribe to.

I almost spelt peas, pees. Must be thinking of Trump.

 

Now I place the previous posts, I couldn't quite remember before.

 

Unlike @The Jitty Slitter and @MattR, you don't get the bonus points.

 

I'm not fond of mushy peas but I like split pea soup.

 

The funny thing is that I still have that album on vinyl but I still couldn't remember.

Old dudes. Is this how memory loss starts?

 

The best I remember was on a trip home when I took mum to Robin Hood Bay to show her where on the moors we used to parachute. Just a lovely piece of fresh North Sea cod and the best chips.

 

Which gets back to Song's original point: it shoudn't be that hard to manage a decent fish-and-chips. Though alas, I can't keep down food that is both breaded and deep fried, so I've had my last F&C, not to mention onion rings, crispy fried chicken, etc.

 

Coincidence, that’s another place I took mum to when she came over here. Anderson’s Split Pea Soup.

 

Shit! Oh sorry I got conned into a place that said fish and chip and they’d breaded it.

That poor fish died in vain.

 

Interesting article. It turns out one way that we are NOT exceptional in our response to the Covid-19 pandemic is in our treatment of the elderly:

https://unherd.com/2020/08/how-covid-exposed-the-worlds-lack-of-care/

The article opens with Sweden, whose initial approach is controversial, though it seems to be looking better now that the second wave seems to be, for now, at bay there. However...

. . . one aspect of their {Sweden's} approach is beyond debate: that a key reason for their high coronavirus death rates, among the worst in the world, was due to catastrophe in their care sector.

More than two-thirds of the 5,776 deaths in their population of ten million were older people in care settings, the majority in residential homes. There are grim stories of the elderly being given morphine and left to die rather than overload hospital wards, along with more familiar claims of failure to supply protective equipment and underpaid agency staff working across different locations. An official investigation found the deaths concentrated in 40 of Sweden’s 290 municipalities, with 91 homes needing further investigation. “We failed to protect our elderly,” admitted Lena Hallengren, minister for health and social affairs. “That’s really serious and a failure for society as a whole. We have to learn from this.”​

​

And in England, where many elderly people were chucked out of hospitals and into care homes without being tested, a similar story:

Official data revealed that almost 20,000 care home residents in Britain died with confirmed or suspected coronavirus during the peak 10 weeks of pandemic, although excess death figures suggests the real numbers may be even higher. ​

​

And that's not all:

Britain has the second highest number of deaths as a percentage of its nursing home population in Europe. (There are currently about 400,000 people living in 17,000 nursing and residential care homes across England). The worst was Spain, a country that likes to believe the family is at the heart of its society. Soldiers called in to help tackle the crisis found elderly people in care homes abandoned by staff, with corpses lying in beds; prosecutors are investigating whether to launch criminal cases. In Italy, another supposedly family-orientated nation, police launched probes into what were described as ‘massacres’ in huge care homes. Belgium has the world’s highest Covid-19 death rate, with two-thirds of fatalities occurring in nursing homes during its peak weeks of pandemic as the sector was overlooked in the rush to protect hospitals.​

​

And even Canada;

Canada reacted better, resulting in a relatively low per-capita death rate. Yet an official study found 81% of its fatalities were in care homes — the worst rate among 16 wealthy nations examined and twice the average level in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations. “This report confirms what we all suspected: Canada is not taking care of our seniors as it should be,” said prime minister Justin Trudeau.​

​

Being 59 years old, I hope 1) I live long enough for it to be an issue for me and 2) that as a society we get our shit together before it becomes an issue for me, if it does.

 

Before July 4 we had Zero! Covid cases in town and we were feeling pretty smug but careful. Soon after it grew to 18. Made us extra careful if we had to go into a store.

Today Friday local TV news spoke about the heat in the valley reaching Into the 100s then told everyone that it’ll only get to 80 on the coast here. They should get over early to get a parking place.

it’s going to be a fun weekend watching them strut along Bay Street, they don’t need masks it’s a weekend.

 

I'll rise the stake: I still have "Everything Counts" 12" Remix on colored vinyl!

But, yeah, it is indeed this how memory loss starts.

 

The neighborhood I grew up in was mostly Canadian French & Irish....so Catholic [meatless Friday]. The Irish must have purloined your recipe cuz that's how I remember that little shop that was only was open on Friday.

Ps...speaking of frog sauce have you tried your chips drenched in gravy with bits of cheese thingys?

 

what is?

 

I miss this also but I'm more understanding as to why I can't have any.

 

When you start forgetting the lyrics of the songs. Didn't happen to me for Depeche Mode, but it did happen indeed for other songs.

 

Nothing. People like side dishes next to the main covid dish.