Dying Indirectly

 OFFICIALLY, more than two  hundred and twenty thousand Americans have died from Covid 19, more than any other country in the world, largely because of failed leadership and the unwillingness of the American people to make the necessary sacrifices to stay healthy. The actual number is doubtless much higher, perhaps twice higher, according to scientific experts. Scientific experts are defined as people who know a great deal about a particular scientific area of knowledge by virtue of having spent a lifetime researching and studying the area, and are therefore automatically ridiculed, reviled, and ignored by American conservatives, who almost always disagree with experts, preferring to cling to their idiotic notions of reality in order to deceive and flatter themselves by believing that they are intelligent. It has now been determined that many Americans who have died during the pandemic whose cause of death was ostensibly and officially listed as having been caused by some other medical condition or pre existing condition would in fact not have died except for Covid 19. Examples of this are who suffered terminal cardio vascular episodes, or diabetic events, or cancerous deaths triggered by the virus, or people who, due to the pandemic, postponed or delayed treatment fof other health conditions. The exact total will never be known, but it is possible that by the end of twenty twenty, more than half a million people will have died, directly or indirectly, from Covid 19. At every turn, with every new discovery, it becomes evident that this virus is causing more harm, much more harm, than had previously been known. and yet there are those, most notably teh president of the United States, who, even after contracting the virus himself and in his words becoming very, very ill, refuse to acknowledge the actual severity of the situation. Just the other day Trump once again made light of the virus, telling his mislead followers that "we have turned the corner".Indeed we have, turned the corner, toward a winter of devastating disaster, as already the sick and death count have risen higher in October than at any time since August. One of my former friends is a sixty three year old woman with lupus, diabetes, and heart condition who refuses to wear a mask in public because,s he says, wearing a mask is harmful to your health, it to forces you to inhale your own carbon "monoxide" I'm afraid to be in the same room with a person like that, not only because of her ignorance of basic chemistry and of the fact that humans exhale carbon dioxide, but because being around her might very well kill me. Being around President Trump has sickened and killed no one knows how many people, and being around his benighted followers has sickened or killed who knows how many tens of thousands of innocent people. We should thank the dear lord that soon we may have to be around Trump and his followers no longer.