Month: January 2022

Why Covid-19 Will Not Go Away

Everyone is tired of hearing about this, save the cable watchers, mouth breathers, fake Republicans, and the Democrat party.  Truth is we never should have had massive shutdowns, but fear took over.  Trump listened to Fauci, and fear has taken hold.  We will all die of Omicron, even though the experts claim you will have only mild symptoms.  We have been doing this for almost 2 years, and no end is in sight. I will lay out two examples of why this will not go away, neither are cable related.

Case #1 It’s the stupidity, stupid.

Case in point, my “fully vaccinated” colleague who came back from Dallas after a long weekend.  He didn’t feel well Monday, leading to a worse cough Tuesday, a massive fever Wednesday, and Thursday he was so sick he could barely stand.  Did he come to the office?  Yep.  Did he get tested?  Nope, not till Friday.  By Friday it was too late for me, I had been exposed for 50 hours of a work week.  Thankfully I found out he lived on the other side of the house from his wife, her health was more important than mine.  I was Covid positive and got very ill, lasting about 10 days, say what you want about my vaccine choice, I got through it.

Case #2 It’s the stupid behavior, stupid.

A friend of mine from college called me on Tuesday a week ago, she was coming home from a bar.  She called me again Wednesday, ditto on the bar thing.  She lives in Marin County and was fully vaxxed.  She went out again Friday and called me on her way home.  She said it had been a rough week (hangovers? but I wasn’t sure).  As the conversation went on, she said she was going to get tested Saturday. When I questioned why, she volunteered that she had a cough, fever, and fatigue all week.  But fortunately, she still went out!  Priorities.  Worse, yet, which brings me to my point, she tested positive earlier in the week, via a rapid test.  Yep, as in she had the ‘rona.  Did she quarantine?  Nope, that’s silly. It’s a big part of her life, going out that is.  She claimed it was a rapid test and they are not always accurate.  Sure, Trump colluded with Russia too, it’s what you feel, not facts.  Since getting a confirmed positive, she now is quarantining, mind you five of her friends have gotten sick, they got the ‘rona.  They all hung out all week.  She continues to go out to dinner, she wants to support local businesses, in person by the way.  She went for a long walk twice this week, mask less because why not.

Conclusion

The point of this blog is to illustrate that this virus will not go away, nor will the media or political types allow it to, due to people’s stupidity.  In the case of both these folks, if they stayed at home, by the way the laws are on your side, due to this pandemic.  But they chose not to put their lives on hold, they chose to bring other folks down with them.  This is stupidity.  Plain and simple.  How can one be so selfish?  After two positive tests you keep going out?  I’m sorry it sucks, but I did it, and so can you.  Following the rules, reduce your chances of getting/spreading it, but you cannot fix stupid, and as long as those folks are out and about, it won’t go away.

It’s stupid folks like these that empower our masters to demand that the sheep inject yet another semi-annual booster.

The Chief

Folsom Dam Releases Water: 90 Day Guy Panics

So, we have had a lot of rain and snowpack recently.  If you believe in global warming, you likely ignored all news media, since well, how can snow be happening if the planet is being cooked by emissions.  Ignoring all that, we had an appearance by 90-Day Guy at the office, and predictably he fired up the internet machine and got to reading headlines.  Not the article, just the headlines.

Tahoe record snow December 2021

He stumbled across an article stating Folsom dam was going to release water due to all the rain we had received lately. This set him into panic, because, well he lives in southern Sac County and his house will be for sure under water due to this emergency.  He made a few calls to check sandbag availability, I would be shocked, but he is just like this.  When the man on TV or an article on Yahoo! News pops up, he takes it as gospel, because…well why should you seek any other opinions or facts.  He is still scared of the “virus” and refuses to touch any door knob because…. the virus.

Folsom Lake 2021

Personally, his best position is cowering at home with a warm glass of milk, under the covers, watching the world burn through the lens of news anchors who are trying to drive ratings.  I typically rib him with comments like “Well, at least there are no mean tweets” or “Biden ended the virus 1/15.”  He blames this on his old age, but this is a trait I don’t see in many folks, only the ones who are fixated on the tube.  If it bleeds it leads, and sex sells.  His excuse is his wife watches it all day, he just happens to be in the room.  Similar to the “I’m sorry your honor but I didn’t rob the bank, and shoot the teller, I just drove the get away car.”  It’s pathetic and sad.

To put you all at ease, I will offer up this.  Folsom Dam is not a storage or flood control dam like Shasta or Oroville.  Folsom is designed to hold water for recreation and to supply water to local communities.  You don’t have to believe me.  Folsom is under contract by the Bureau of Reclamation and has to be tightly regulated as far as water levels go.  Again, don’t believe me, they came out and said they had to release a slight amount of water due to standards to allow for more inevitable run off when the microwave in the sky heats the planet and causes the snow to melt.  Follow the dam in the spring/summer months, typically what goes into Folsom Lake on the back end, is released from the dam’s spillways on the front end.

Folsom is not there for flood control, hence when the Oroville Dam failed, panic set out everywhere because Folsom cannot hold that volume of water, they are not allowed to.  Dams are actually one thing in this state where the government regulation is extremely tight, thanks to the Sierra Club and other environmental groups who want to see us demolishing them as opposed to building new ones.  You may remember back during the Oroville Dam pending failure, they evacuated the fish at the hatchery long before they told the people of imminent danger.  The government even went as far as saying the releases where miniscule and fishing would be completely unaffected. 

Que the Kermit the frog freak-out gif.  Head desk!

Folks I will conclude by saying this; stop reading the internet and watching the news on TV. It’s all depressing.  You would think we live in a slum, and the sun is killing the planet…. oh wait.  The bottom line is we can only control what we can control, some things are in God’s hands.  For those of you who are non-believers the world is a scary place, and you have no control over things it does.  Best bet is be prepared, and minimize your risk.  This means the inevitable freak out will not affect you.  I’m not worried about a few thousand cubic feet of water, with the amount of steady rain we received, it is no big deal.  The time to be worried is when we get a warm storm.  That will overwhelm the dams and we could see an issue, lucky for us in the valley we will have ample warning.

Back to your freak out folks.  I heard 5G is coming to a cell tower near you and will scramble your brain.  You have been warned!

The Chief

Editor’s Note: as on 12/30/21, we have had 14.42 inches of rain this season which is 242% of normal. Currently we have received 79% of our average annual rainfall of 18.14 inches.