Goodbye

This program no longer works, so it is with great regret that I must close for the last time. Stay safe, everyone, and good luck. Thank you for following us. Sincerely, Shadow

Passage

 

Time can be a gentle thief; you barely feel his passage,

As he trails his finger across your cheek to write the story of your journey

And offer wisdom as his message.

No science can remove his stamp, nor can your travels be erased.

He marches forward with resolve and writes the truth upon your face

And steals away your youthful grace.

Don't leave your destiny to providence; take it firmly in your hands

And mould it with honour and strength, to brave the whims of fate,

And so the test of time withstands.

Fill your days with generosity, make your smile a gift

And time will be a steadfast friend and make your hours of sadness swift

And bring you peaceful resolution and in all ways will  uplift.

Live each experience with joy and passion; make every moment count.

Don't spend them on contrition or regret.

Remember, there is little that love cannot surmount

And though the universe is timeless and your place in it so small,

He does not forget you; he awaits us all

And steals away our days, quietly discreet

Then comes to write that final line upon the balance sheet.

Isolation Activities

 

12 days of Covid Christmas

Message from Australia

Written by Henry R. Greenfield Nov 1st

 Resident of Australia

Australia just recorded zero cases of CV19 again after a big spike last month in Melbourne? What can the US and the rest of the world learn from this? 

 What a shocker. 

•Masks work, contact tracing works, all residents doing the right thing works and then you don’t you     lose lives, jobs, the economy and you are less miserable. 

•Selective lockdowns work. 

•Closing borders work. By state and not just international. 

•Making all international flights that come in go into 14 day (no exception) hotel monitored quarantine, WORKS! 

After Covid disasters where some people decided they didn’t like quarantine, left isolation and became ‘superspreaders', killing a few hundred people and forcing a complete lockdown for the entire state of Victoria, Australia learned the hard way. If you are going to do something, be serious about it and do it right with no exceptions.

 Is all this difficult? Absolutely. Is it terribly inconvenient? Of course it is. But look at the results. It works, just as it did in Perth, where I live. We talked a good game but we didn’t stick with it and we lost big time so we had to double down and do it right.

 Let’s be clear. Many of us have gone through the quarantine, it is not fun. No one wants to be isolated where you cannot step outside the door of your hotel room for 14 days and you pay $3,000 for the privilege. But it saves lives, it works.

 LIFE IS NOW ALMOST NORMAL IN AUSTRALIA. We can go to church, we have, in most of the country, large gatherings, all the restaurants are open, we play sports and go Christmas shopping. We made our mistakes and we are opening up carefully and slowly. We still are wearing masks where necessary. We test test test and contact trace and wash our hands. 

 HERE IS THE LESSON FOR THE WORLD. It is not just small countries like New Zealand that can beat this virus. As I have written before, it is not a woman thing or a man thing or a young thing or an old thing, it is an everybody thing. If absolutely everyone adheres to the rules and the government takes the pandemic seriously, like I mean really seriously, then CV19 can be stopped in it's tracks.

 It has not been cured, just controlled. Travel is still virtually cut off from the rest of the world. You have to apply to get in and out of Australia. But we have our lives back, we are not dying in hundreds of thousands, 10s’ of thousands or hundreds not even 1 or 2. We are not dying anymore. 

 The answer to the Covid spread in the UK and Europe and other parts of the world, but especially the USA, is that your leadership is taking you down down down. You do not have to be China, you do not have to ‘give up your freedom’. You just have to pay attention and care about protecting others. You cannot play games with other people's lives or say it is over or you are rounding the curve when you have 100,000+ plus cases in one day like yesterday in the USA. You cannot go into denial and say, well they had other symptoms or the people who died were old, or the deaths were not reported fairly or it is all exaggerated. Really, come on! Open your eyes and ears. This is not some weird conspiracy.

 Dear USA and its citizens, the President of the USA could have stopped this. We did it in Australia so any country, of any size, can do it. He is lying to you. You are losing to China. We need you to wake up and get rid of that guy and rejoin the rest of the world. You matter, please understand that. Come on, you can do it. And tell all the ding dongs with the guns that seem to threaten anyone they don't like or anyone they don't understand, to cut it and go home and grow up. Your schtick is getting old, we don’t even laugh about it anymore. 

 Sincerely, The Rest of the World