Rob Rogers for November 25, 2020

The folks in the US have a bad record w/ pandemics. We’re very aware of the current one of course, and we can see the idjits acting out. Less personal are the reports from the “Spanish Flu” pandemic during WW I. Then too, alas, we behaved very stupidly.

I hope we make it through. And I wish that the ones who succumb to malignant dumbitude die easily.

The Pilgrims — a boatload of incompetent religious nerds aiming for the Virginia colony and ending up in Massachusetts — arrived in fall, utterly unprepared for the harsh New England winter and would have all died out had they not be aided by the Wampanoag indigenous people who helped the invasive illegal aliens survive.

The Wampanoag had just endured a horrible pandemic brought a few years earlier by English explorers that eradicated completely the Wampanoag village of Pawtuxet with no survivors. Wampanoag from nearby helped the Pilgrims utilize now-vacated structures and facilities and use food supplies to survive the winter.

The Pilgrims arrived in 1620 — exactly 400 years ago. A year later, 1621, they celebrated what would become the First Thanksgiving, thanks to food supplies the Wampanoag brought to supplant the meager harvest of the Pilgrims.

This 399th year after the First Thanksgiving, as the descendants of Europeans prepare to celebrate a recreation of that first feast in the midst of a pandemic, hoping that we will not eradicate ourselves before Christmas, is somehow a poignantly appropriate observation of the holiday.

Perhaps next year, on the quadricentennial, we will have more to celebrate.

Jon Stewart once said in jest, “I like to celebrate thanksgiving the old fashioned way. Cook up a huge feast, invite all my neighbors, kill them and steal their land!”

We do have a history of doing that. Measles did a real number with the South American civilizations, and colonists brought over syphilis.

And it wasn’t the first Thanksgiving, it was the second. The first happened at Berkeley Plantation in the Jamestown Colony, December 1619.

I see Trump is gonna pardon more than one turkey this year. He’s also pardoning Michael Flynn.

Already been done. Smallpox Blankets.

I don’t see any Mac&Cheese on the table.

The Puritans/Pilgrims did not celebrate Christmas, or any other holiday. But they were big on thanksgivings. And the winter of 1621 was just as bad.

“You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides. You will play golf and enjoy hot hors d’oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, ‘Do not trust the pilgrims’ . . . And for all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.” Wednesday Addams (Christina Ricci) in Addams Family Values; screenplay by Paul Rudnick based upon characters created by Charles Addams (1993).

The day should be called ThanksTAKING day…

Native Americans and Covid 19: 2.8x higher cases; 5.3x higher hospitalizations; 1.4x higher death rate compared to white, non Hispanic persons. (As of Aug 2020 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html)

In the past four weeks, the death rate among Indigenous people has accelerated the fastest Compared to Whites, the latest U.S. age-adjusted COVID-19 mortality rate for:Indigenous people is 3.2 times as highBlacks is 3.0 times as highLatinos is 3.0 times as highPacific Islanders is 2.3 times as high, and Asians is 1.1 times as high. (Oct of 2020 https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race)

Infecting families with covid has become a right wing obsession.

The Pilgrims did not celebrate Christmas, along with several other Protestant sects considered it a pagan holiday. In 1659 the Massachusetts Bay Colony even went so far as to outlaw celebrating it.

Which they did

Those healthy young people who believe that the Trump plague is no match for their immune system need to remember several things.

1. You are infecting people when you have no symptoms at all. This includes your family and people who actually matter to other people even if they don’t to you.

2. When you overestimate your immune system, or underestimate the plague, you wind up competing for a respirator and other materials needed by those who developed the disease because they were essential workers.

3. You are endangering the medical workers who have to care for you and the people that you infect. They are already risking their lives. What right have you to add to their jeopardy because you need a haircut?

4. Many viruses remain within the cells of your body. We don’t know that this is one of them, but it’s not unlikely. They wait there until your body’s immune system is no longer strong enough to keep them in check. That could happen when you are older, or in the car wreck you have next week. Then, with their new assistance, they come back in full force.

My son is an RN. He treats Trump plague patients, and has watched them suffer greatly, then often die. He has assured me that there is no possibility of taking this thing too seriously. If you think a mask is a problem, you are not thinking this thing through clearly.

Skipping big family get-togethers for ONE freakin’ year shouldn’t really be considered the end of the world, you know. (And people who don’t skip them will be part and parcel of ending the world for some of their friends and relatives—and themselves.)

With a whole bunch of your friends and family attending your super-spreader Thanksgiving, it’s a good opportunity to argue over inheritances and plan out the upcoming funerals…

 New World Record in Ball Dropping

2020-01-07 • Presidential Daily Brief: “Analysts concluded [coronavirus] could be a cataclysmic event.” • Trump did nothing.

2020-03-11 • WHO declared a global pandemic.

2020-04-15 • Trump suspended US funding of WHO.

2020-11-25 • US coronavirus deaths: 267,024 (45 weeks after PDB; 5934/week)

For comparison …

2001-09-11 • terrorist attacks: 2,977 (5 weeks after PDB warned Bush about it)

Korean War (33,686) + Vietnam War (58,220) + Afghan War (7,970): 99,876

WW1: 116,516 (83 weeks for US; 1403/week)

WW2: 418,500 (195 weeks for US; 2146/week)

Civil War: ~620,000 (213 weeks; 2911/week)

Spanish flu: ~675,000 (~117 weeks; 5769/week)

I want to wish all my Friends here at GoComics a Safe & Healthy Thanksgiving.

Very good history lesson. Thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving, and don’t forget the 3 W’s!

Wear a mask, Wash your hands, Watch your distance.

The way so many are throwing caution to the wind for some normalcy, I’m thinking the pre Christmas festivities this year will be wakes and funerals.

Let’s see how many families that gathered for Thanksgiving will also gather for Christmas or Hanukkah….