Looking like maybe some rain this Friday evening here in California’s Central Valley, it’s warmed-up a bit and the air feels moist, but we’ll wait and see.

Meanwhile, life has become a lengthy disaster movie. Coronavirus is like a whatever-the-fuck that won’t go away. And when it does appear to be slowly, possibly, going away, it quickly comes back even worse, and even worse crazy-deadly — the whole country is experiencing maybe the ‘third wave‘ of COVID-19, although Dr. Anthony Fauci thinks it’s just one horrifying, weird-ass episodic deluge:

“When I hear people talk about second and third waves, it really is the original wave that just resurges up, comes down a little, and resurges up again,” Fauci explained.
“We never got out of the real wave. We kind of went up and down within a wave.”

Just yesterday, Fauci said the 1918 flu epidemic and the nowadays are similar: ‘“So history is kind of repeating itself 102 years later.”‘

(As an aside — via Wikipedia: ‘Lasting from February 1918 to April 1920, it infected 500 million people — about a third of the world’s population at the time — in four successive waves. The death toll is typically estimated to have been somewhere between 17 million and 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest pandemics in human history‘).

Whatever the actual terminology, or historical comparisons, we’re in someting so fucking dark I’d prefer to not even think about, especially as the data is way-ugly on a continuing upward spiral that’s hugely heartbreakig and abhorrent to the senses.
A needful look at the dreadful medical COVID situation via a piece at The Atlantic this morning, a tale of how our health-care workers are losing the fight to the massive onslaught.
Read the whole article, wothwhile though scary, but here’s some snips for the the feel (h/t Digby):

Hospitals have put their pandemic plans into action, adding more beds and creating makeshift COVID-19 wards.
But in the hardest-hit areas, there are simply not enough doctors, nurses, and other specialists to staff those beds.
Some health-care workers told me that COVID-19 patients are the sickest people they’ve ever cared for: They require twice as much attention as a typical intensive-care-unit patient, for three times the normal length of stay.
“It was doable over the summer, but now it’s just too much,” says Whitney Neville, a nurse based in Iowa.
“Last Monday we had 25 patients waiting in the emergency department. They had been admitted but there was no one to take care of them.”
I asked her how much slack the system has left.
“There is none,” she said.
…
In the imminent future, patients will start to die because there simply aren’t enough people to care for them.
Doctors and nurses will burn out.
The most precious resource the U.S. health-care system has in the struggle against COVID-19 isn’t some miracle drug.
It’s the expertise of its health-care workers — and they are exhausted.
…
For many health-care workers, the toll of the pandemic goes beyond physical exhaustion.
COVID-19 has eaten away at the emotional core of their work.
“To be a nurse, you really have to care about people,” Neville said. But when an ICU is packed with COVID-19 patients, most of whom are likely to die, “to protect yourself, you just shut down. You get to the point when you realize that you’ve become a machine. There’s only so many bags you can zip.”

And thus the sorrowful picture from the other side.
How about the guy that should be working his ass off to try and save as many people as possible in the most-best way possible. He’s whining like one bizarre-ass baby, all about himself.

1/4: We were asked what @realDonaldTrump is tweeting about, since his last verbal public statement was Nov. 5, 2020 @ 7:04 pm ET. The question was in the context of the resurgence of coronavirus cases. We looked. Between Nov. 5 @ 7:04 pm and noon Nov. 12… pic.twitter.com/KGI6WOSF3q

— Factba.se (@FactbaseFeed) November 12, 2020

Despite making zero effort, this afternoon in his first pubic comments in more than a week (pure verbal silence since Joe Biden was named president-elect), the T-Rump shit-faced himself at a coronavirus briefing by criticizing NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and not mentioning the virus surge at-fucking all (NBC News):

“As soon as April the vaccine will be available to the entire general population, with the exception of places like New York state, where for political reasons the governor decided to say — and I don’t think it’s good politically, I think it’s very bad from a health standpoint — but he wants to take his time on the vaccine,” Trump said.
…
“He doesn’t trust where the vaccines coming from,” Trump continued.
“So the governor, Gov. Cuomo will have to let us know when he’s ready for it, otherwise we, we can’t we can’t be delivering it to a state that won’t be giving it to its people, immediately. And I know many I know the people in New York very well I know they want it. So the governor will let us know when he’s ready,” he added.

“I hope he doesn’t handle this as badly as he’s handled the nursing homes. But we’re ready to provide it as soon as they let us know that they’ll actually use it,” Trump said.

Asshole: ‘Asked about Trump’s comments, Cuomo told MSNBC, “None of what he said is true.”‘
Of course.

T-Rump took no questions from reporters at the end of his bullshit, but he did let this slip about the future, that he’s a loser:

“This administration will not be going to a lockdown hopefully the, the, whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration will be, I guess time will tell, but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown,” Trump said.

The next 67 days can’t go fast enough…

(Illustration: Pablo Picasso’s ‘Seated Pierrot,’ found here).