Tag Archives: pandemic

national news

Yeah, good riddance … 2020!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I cannot take credit for thinking this up, but it cracks me up so much I want to share it here.

A Facebook meme showed up that reminded us that when the new year commences in a few days, that “no one is going to write the wrong year on our checks, I can effing guarantee that.”

Yep, no doubt we are going to say so long, farewell, sayonara, good riddance to 2020. I will gladly and without a single solitary moment of hesitation write the new year on any document that requires it.

Bring it on, 2021!

medical news, national news

Merry COVID Christmas, America

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

This will be a Christmas for the ages.

Not necessarily because Santa Claus was especially generous or because we all are filled with holiday joy and gratitude … although many of us will express our thanks and will honor the religious significance of this time of year.

Oh, no. This will be a Christmas we’ll remember because of a disease that keeps lashing out at Americans.

It has felled neighbors of ours here in Collin County, Texas. Friends of ours all across the nation have taken ill. Then came the chilling news that members of our family have been stricken with the infection. They aren’t hospitalized but their Christmas cheer has been dampened by the fear that comes with knowing they are infected with a virus that has taken far too many lives and sickened far too many others.

I have reported to you already that we in the clear in our house. That doesn’t give us license to, um, party like there’s no tomorrow. My wife and I intend to see many tomorrows as we continue our journey together. To ensure that future we intend to play by the rules set for by the infectious disease gurus who tell us constantly what we need to to do to stay safe and healthy.

We are resigned to the notion that our beloved nation is in the throes of a pandemic that has changed millions of lives — and not for the better.

It’s a bit of a chore today to wish everyone a joyful and Merry Christmas. I’ll add the word “COVID” in front of Christmas with the hope that next year at this time we can cheer the fact that we are celebrating a COVID-free holiday.

national news

Hey, Mr. POTUS … just stay in Florida

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Mr. President, this is likely the final blog entry I will direct to you, but I have something I want to get off my chest.

I get that you and the first lady are in Florida enjoying the Christmas season. Good deal, but here is what I want to ask you: Why don’t you just stay there and not bother returning to the White House? 

You have left a mess in Washington. The COVID relief bill contains some help for Americans who need it; it also funds the military; it also keeps the government running. Yet you say you won’t sign it. You screwed this up royally with your surprise reversal after your team negotiated the deal that ended up on your desk.

The chaos we all predicted would be the lowlight of your tenure as president is coming home to roost. Thanks to you!

So, just stay away from Washington. You don’t do any work there anyway, other than concoct traitorous methods to overturn an election that you lost handily. Just don’t bother darkening the door of our house, OK?

Hey, just stay near a phone. Someone can call you in case an emergency arises. You’re still the president until Jan. 20. Just remain available to make a decision that only you can make. Movers can pack up your stuff and send it to you and the first lady. They’ll know where to find you.

Beyond that, we don’t need you any longer. President Biden will be ready to step in when he takes his oath of office. What’s more, he is certain to honor the oath, which you have failed miserably to do.

I’ve had enough of you in my house. Stay away.

Merry Christmas … numbskull.

local news, medical news

Update on COVID test

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

I took the liberty the other day of announcing to the planet that my wife and I had taken a test to see if we had become infected with the COVID-19 virus.

We learned this morning we both tested negative. The young woman who called with the results was practically giddy when she gave us the news. I don’t know if she feared for us or whether she had grown weary of delivering bad news to patients who came to the McKinney clinic for coronavirus testing.

Whatever. We ain’t infected. We certainly ain’t sick.

We also are not out of the proverbial woods, even with the vaccine that is being injected into the arms of thousands of Americans each day.

Mask up, keep your distance, wash your hands … and keep your voice down, America.

national news

Trump does what? Threatens COVID relief package?

7 Comments

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Donald J. Trump’s threat to derail a long-awaited, long-debated COVID-19 relief package might be worthy of praise … except for this little factoid.

Trump took no part, none at all, he was AWOL during Congress’s agonizing debate over how to help Americans affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Now he has a bill on his desk. It was approved by rousing bipartisan majorities in both congressional chambers. Trump’s reaction has been to withhold his signature from a $1.4 trillion spending package that offers $900 billion in COVID relief; the bill includes $600 stimulus checks to be sent to Americans who qualify.

Trump wants more money sent to Americans. He calls the package a “disgrace.”

What? Wait a minute! Where was Trump during the negotiations? He didn’t call legislative leaders. He didn’t pressure anyone to craft a bill to his liking. He was nowhere to be seen or heard — except when he was yammering about an election he lost!

Heads up, congressional Republicans: Aren’t you glad you stood with this clown, the guy who has just threatened to put your political future in dire jeopardy?

medical news, science news

And now … a good word about Operation Warp Speed

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Admittedly, this blog has spent a great deal of time, emotional energy and cyberspace over the past four years bashing, slashing and smashing at the Donald J. Trump administration.

Trump is about to exit the political stage in less than 30 days. I now want to say a good word about what — in a normal world — should stand as an enduring legacy to his term in office.

This isn’t a normal world. Operation Warp Speed is a creation of someone within the White House to define the mission of finding a vaccine for the coronavirus that has killed more than 300,000 Americans and nearly 2 million people around the world.

The COVID-19 virus arrived early this year. Trump dragged his feet in recognizing publicly the peril it posed. Then he owned up to its consequence. He also announced the strategy he said would expedite the research and development of a vaccine that could cure the world of the pandemic.

Trump predicted during his failed re-election campaign that we could have a vaccine by the end of the year. Skeptics scoffed. I don’t recall speaking directly to Trump’s boast, but it did ring a bit hollow. Others in the White House task force formed to come up with a response strategy said it would take longer.

Well, guess what. Donald Trump was right. Pfizer and Moderna have produced highly efficient vaccines that are now being administered around the world. A third pharmaceutical firm, AstraZeneca, is about to bring a vaccine on line.

There is plenty of debate about the impact that Operation Warp Speed had in delivering these vaccines. Some experts say the drug firms were well on the way to producing it already; others give Warp Speed a ton of credit for goosing the companies to delivering the goods in a timely fashion.

I am willing to dole out praise to Donald Trump for providing some of the impetus to get this vaccine developed and approved. But not all of it. Indeed, I am weary beyond belief of hearing Trump take undue credit for work that others did.

Drug company researchers and scientists worked their butts off to produce a vaccine with an efficacy level that experts have called “extraordinary.” Yet there was Trump the other day stepping into the limelight to say that no other politician in human history could have produced those kinds of results.

Mr. President, the program that came to be under your watch has done well. Accept the congratulations that belong mostly to the researchers … and then get the hell out of the way.

local news, medical news

COVID test didn’t hurt a bit

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

My name is John and I am a statistic.

So is my wife of more than 49 years. No, we’re not that statistic. We are now among the millions of Americans who have been tested for the coronavirus that is infecting millions of our countrymen and women and, tragically, killing far too many of them.

We ventured this morning to a clinic in nearby McKinney. We walked in without an appointment. We were advised it might take a while to see a medical pro. It turned out to be not quite as lengthy a wait as it could have been.

I need to stipulate that we’ll know the results of our tests in three days or so. The clinic staff will call us with the … news, which we both certainly hope is good news.

We decided to seek the test because we both have a case of the heebie-jeebies, given what we hear about the multitude of symptoms that others have experienced — before they tested positive for the virus.

Both of us have been mindful of the measures we need to take to stave off infection. We have practiced them carefully: masks, social distancing, hand-washing; you name it, we do it!

Next up for my bride and me? The vaccine, that’s what!

We hear that we well could be on the very next list of those who qualify for the COVID-19 vaccine. We’re both of age. We don’t suffer pre-existing conditions that would push us to the head of that line, but we do qualify simply because our dates of birth say we do; and we can prove we qualify on the basis of age.

I am heartened to see high-profile Americans — VP Mike Pence and Karen Pence, President-elect Biden and Jill Biden, VP-elect Harris and her husband Douglas Emhoff, Dr. Anthony Fauci to name just a few — make a show of getting inoculated against the virus. It’s not that I need their endorsement to obtain the vaccine. As soon as it’s available to us, we’re going to get the shot immediately if not sooner.

We’ve taken the next logical step, which is to get a test to see if our good behavior has paid dividends for us. I remain optimistic that neither of us will become that other statistic.

national news, national security

‘Under control,’ Mr. POTUS?

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By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Here is a word to the wise.

When you hear the words “We have it under control” come from Donald J. Trump, you should pull the blanket up tightly over your head and not move for as long as you can remain still.

Trump decided to utter that phrase when asked the other day about the Russian hacking of our security system, which intelligence officials have called the worst such incident in U.S. — if not world — history.

Trump said it’s “under control” and said China might be the culprit … not those Russians.

Well, let’s harken back to a previous time the POTUS declared something to be “under control.” It was earlier this year. The COVID-19 coronavirus had just stormed ashore. We had a handful of cases. Trump said then it was “under control.”

Well … it wasn’t. It isn’t yet. It has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Help is on its way in the form of vaccines that have been developed and are being developed. However, Donald Trump’s so-called assurance that something is “under control” should be cause for serious alarm.

Therefore, I am terribly concerned about the latest Russian attack.

Uncategorized

Sanity rules in Senate District 30

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Texas Senate District 30 voters seem to have retained some sanity in what otherwise is a largely insane political climate.

They chose over the weekend to send someone to the Texas Senate with actual government experience rather than select a candidate who was running for office – and this is just my humble opinion – for the purpose of making a spectacle of herself.

The senator-elect is state Rep. Drew Springer, who will succeed U.S. Rep.-elect Pat Fallon. Indeed, it’s been a bit of a musical chairs game in these two Northeast Texas political jurisdictions. Fallon got elected to the Fourth Congressional District seat vacated by John Ratcliffe, who was appointed director of national intelligence by Donald J. Trump. Ratcliffe’s tenure as DNI, of course, is about to end the day that Trump leaves office on Jan. 20; Trump lost the election in November, but I guess you knew that already.

Fallon moves on to Washington, D.C., while Springer moves down the hall in the State Capitol into Fallon’s old seat in the Texas Senate.

Let me be abundantly clear: I am not terribly fond of Drew Springer’s politics. He tilts a bit too far to the right to suit my taste. However, he does bring some political experience and seasoning to his new legislative assignment, unlike the candidate he defeated in the runoff. That would be Dallas salon owner Shelly Luther, who this past summer decided to make a name for herself by defying an order by Gov. Greg Abbott to close her business in the wake of the COVID-19 virus that is still killing Texans at an alarming rate.

No can do, Luther said. She opened her business despite the order … and then got arrested and tossed into jail. Why? Well, because she broke the law, which I figure is enough of a reason to spend a little time in the slammer.

She got out of jail right away and then announced she would run for the Senate. Her platform? It was to send some sort of message that business owners such as herself wouldn’t be pushed around by “tyrants” who are elected to state office. She did concede to Springer but then vowed to keep fighting against that so-called tyrant Gov. Abbott, who to my way of reasoning is trying to save Texans’ lives.

There you have it.

Springer managed to defeat Luther fairly handily, although I hate to acknowledge that Collin County, where my wife and I live, cast most of its votes for Luther. As they might say … “no place is perfect.”

We surely do live in strange political times. I am heartened to see evidence of some semblance of sanity presenting itself in at least one Texas Senate district.

Note: This blog was published initially on KETR-FM radio’s website. 

national news

Deal arrives … finally!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Call me a cynic or just plain pi**ed off at Congress and most certainly at the current president of the United States.

If members of the House and Senate are expecting any back-slapping or high-fiving from me on the deal they have struck to provide pandemic relief while keeping the government operating, well … they won’t get it.

Congressional leaders have cobbled together a $900 billion pandemic relief package as part of a $1.4 trillion government funding bill that keeps the government running until October. Fine. Thanks, ladies and gentlemen.

I am still amazed, though, at the drama, the theatrics, the posturing and name-calling that preceded this deal. We had Republican senators blocking measures that would have provided $1,200 relief payments. Why block it? They were concerned — and this is really rich — the impact on the federal debt!

What a crock of horse dookey! Senators and House members, namely Republicans, didn’t give a crap about the debt when they enacted enormous tax cuts for rich folks. Now they have found deficit/debt religion? Give me a break!

What’s more, they have subjected many millions of Americans to unnecessary anxiety while they await some form of help from their government, the one populated by officials who take an oath to serve you and me.

I am glad they found a way to get ‘er done. I am not going to sing praises to the nimrods on Capitol Hill or the dips*** who lives — for the time being — in the White House.

This is no way to run a government.

I am going to make a request of the new guy who’s moving into the White House on Jan. 20.

Uh, President Biden? Please clunk some Democratic and Republican heads together when you get settled in and start searching for ways to provide long-term solutions to our on-going crisis in paying for our government.

I am sick and tired of wondering whether my government will remain open when our legislators and the president cannot arrive at a timely solution to crises.