Ivanka sweaters: Letters to the editor, May 27, 2020

Profit motive and Ivanka sweaters

First, which is it, illegal Chinese or illegal Mexicans? How about quite legal NBA players, who were in China and undoubtedly among the very first to bring COVID-19 back with them? How many of Ivanka’s Chinese sweatshop sweaters are infected? How many $40 MAGA hats? How about we should have banned all air travel? You know, like on 9/11/2001? No flights, no shipping would’ve cut the problem about in half. but we can’t have that, because if people don’t keep propping up the capitalist system beyond their means, then COVID-19 wins!

As for points two and three, what right-wing “preppers”? The political right has, if anything, always been against preparation and reserves because this represents resources tied up for something that probably won’t happen, and could make money otherwise! #famouslastwords. As for impeachment? Not one bit of that intersects with reality, certainly as it concerns the response to a public health emergency! Capitalism equals death for the species! How hard is that to figure out? Trumpalumpas, very sad indeed.

Trump backers will be ones to blame

It is with a bit of sadness that I am witnessing the end results of the internet and the Trump era in the dumbing of the American public. Wrong is right and right is wrong. It just goes to show that if you get enough talk show pundits in conjunction with internet pundits, you can sell anything to the average American.

I believe most people just go with the flow and really do not do any fact checking of the source of the material they are listening to or that they read. It appears that the Trump supporters are very much in a hurry to discount the wisdom of wearing a mask or sheltering in place and take no blame if they infect someone else. The protests that are taking place against safeguards in our governmental system are in effect merely kick starting the spread of the virus to other points within their own cities and neighborhoods.

I only wonder if they will take any part of the blame if they bring it back to their own parents or grandparents.

Here’s a way to get more doctors

Assemblyman (Adam) Gray appropriately quantitated the medical manpower difference between San Francisco (SF) and the Great Central Valley as “157 doctors per 100,000 residents” in the Valley versus “411 per 100,000” in SF. He neglected to point out that the dollar amount of insurance coverage per person in SF is also about 4x that of the Valley.

The MD competition in SF for the well-insured patient is Darwinian. There are too many MDs there. Instead of funding two new schools in the Valley, one for DO’s and one for MD’s, it would be cheaper for the CA taxpayer to (1) vastly increase the payout from MediCal and (2) increase the coverage to 100% for the illegals, the under-insured, and the uninsured. But, limit this increase in the medical payout to specific areas in the Valley. That would cause torrents of overeducated, underemployed, cash-starved MDs from SF to flow to their satellite offices in the Valley.

This story was originally published May 27, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Ivanka sweaters: Letters to the editor, May 27, 2020."