Things don’t have to get really bad, for things to get really bad.
If you don’t want the shit scared out of you, stop reading.
There is one hospital in neighboring Carrollton, Georgia where I grew up. Sunday, the county board of health held an emergency meeting of county officials and hospital administrators.
They need to secure more ventilators for the coming avalanche of Covid-19 patients.
The hospital CEO remembered they had loaned some ventilators to the nursing school at the local university. Maybe someone at the state could help them get their ventilators back.
No.
The state has seized ownership of the ventilators.
Covid kills by suffocation. A patient not in extreme distress suddenly goes into full respiratory arrest. When that happens, only a ventilator can save your soul.
Italy has 3.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people.
Chop up a city into groups of 1,000.
There are only enough beds for 3 people from each group of 1,000 to be in the hospital at the same time.
If JUST ONE MORE person in that group of 1,000 gets sick and needs to be hospitalized, they’re fucked.
Things don’t have to get really bad, for things to get really bad.
But that’s Italy. Surely America is in better shape.
No.
We only have 2.8 beds for every 1,000 people.
Georgia has now reached the “point of no return” — the point at which demand on hospital services begins to exceed limited resources. Phoebe Putney hospital in Albany, Georgia reached maximum capacity yesterday — they are now begging other hospitals to take patients as they prematurely discharge some to make room for others.
Algorithms for allocation.
We are now developing algorithms for the “fair” and “ethical” allocation of limited life-saving resources.
Italy’s algorithm denies the life-saving ventilators to people over 60.
England has developed an algorithm; a flow chart to allocate finite resources to an infinite population in dire need.
The State of Georgia is quietly developing an algorithm for the allocation of resources too scarce to save everyone.
Every accredited hospital in America is required to have an algorithm. Preachers and politicians and pollsters and parents and physicians sit secluded in a room and discuss precious life with the same cold clinical compassion a grocer looks at the expiration date before tossing a can of beans into the trash.
Have you outlived your “social usefulness”?
Are you at an age where you probably only have a few more years to live anyway?
Do you have heart disease or are you a stroke or cancer survivor who might die within a few years anyway, after we wasted ventilator space on you today, that could have been better used on someone else?
An algorithm for allocation.
An algorithm to decide whose life is worth saving.
Your insurance won’t help you — it’s not about whether the procedure is covered.
It is about who is worth saving.
Your money won’t help you — it’s not about who can afford to pay.
It is about who is worth saving.
Your church won’t help you — it’s not about who can pray.
It is about who is worth saving.
It’s not “first come, first serve.”
It is who is worth saving.
It’s not who you know.
It is who is worth saving.
The algorithm’s power doesn’t end with the decision of who gets placed on a ventilator.
The algorithm also decides who STAYS on a ventilator.
“You’re not showing much improvement. It would be a shame to waste this on you if you’re not going to make it anyway. The patient down the hall has a better chance at survival; we’re unpluging you; I’m so sorry, ma’am. Good luck.”
“A young mother of two small children was just brought in gasping for air; we don’t want her kids to become a burden on the state; you don’t have young children; good luck, sir.”
We humans will now judge who among us is worth saving.
We humans will now decide who among us lives and who among us dies.
We humans will now create a God.
How did we get here?
On February 28, Trump stood before this great nation and said we had 15 cases; he assured us he had it all under control; he swore to us by God in Heaven that the number of cases would be “close to zero in a couple of days.”
On March 15, 15 days after we had only 15 cases, we had 1,000 cases.
Four days later we had 13,000 cases.
That was last Thursday; that was a week ago.
Today, we have 65,000 confirmed cases.
It took two weeks to get from 15 to the first 1,000. Only four more days to get to 13,000. Only a week more to get to 65,000.
Saturday it will be 130,000 — it’s doubling every three days.
We are not here because of a virus that jumped from a butchered bat in Wuhan to a human being.
We are not because China arrested the doctor who had the first 15 cases in the world isolated in his hospital in Wuhan.
We are not here because of the 35 year old man in Snohomish County who traveled here from Wuhan.
We are here because we twice elected a black president and racist white evangelicals were so pissed off about that, they foisted upon us the stupidest god-damn motherfucking piece-of-shit idiot to ever roam God’s green earth.
He KNEW about the ONE CASE in Snohomish when it was JUST ONE CASE; he KNEW the existential danger we faced when it was still just 15 cases; he KNEW it was going to be a pandemic before we knew, because he had been briefed by our intelligence community.
And that stupid god damn motherfucking idiotic piece of shit allowed the lethal virus to spread while he scoffed and mocked and jeered and lied and said it was all a hoax.
He has committed crimes against humanity.
Every drop of blood of those who suffocate to death is on his hands and on the hands of white evangelicals who put him in office and who continue supporting and defending him and scoffing and mocking and ignorantly saying it is all overblown.
But the rain falls upon the just and the unjust, alike.
And while they believe God will protect them, they have made a serious miscalculation.
God is dead.
Killed by the blasphemous son of perdition, using Easter as a milemarker and a waymaker to declare a miraculous end to the untold suffering he has caused; frivolously invoking the crucified Son of God to cover his abject ignorance and abhorrent deception and criminal neglect of humanity; sucking the canker of Hell up into his ass, belching out the stench of the lies of Satan and mockery of God.
God is dead.
We have created a new God.
An algorithm to reign over life.
An algorithm that sits upon the throne of glory; omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.
They shall now all stand before the judgment throne of the algorithm.
Their every knee shall bow before the algorithm.
Their every tongue shall beg mercy of the algorithm.
They shall cry out before the algorithm, but the algorithm will be deaf to their pleas.
They shall weep before the algorithm, but the algorithm will be blind to their tears.
And we shall all gather around the throne of the algorithm and stand in amazement, and wonder in awe, at the power of this God we have created.
May the algorithm have mercy on your soul.
While you were sleeping 