We live near San Antonio, Texas. A few weeks ago, she started to feel nauseous and had a hardness in her upper abdomen. Symptoms got progressively worse until she could not hold down food and eventually even water made her vomit. I took her to the emergency room where she received intravenous fluids, had medicine prescribed and then was released. They put her on a liquid diet, which she tells me is a clear indication that she should have been admitted. Based on her history of being hospitalized, she has told me that they do not release you until you take in solid food and process it normally.

The medicine stabilized her condition for a time, but it did not improve. We have repeated the emergency room, IV, prescribe and release dance 3 times. The car ride there and back is intolerable for her, causing motion sickness. She does have Medicaid, but has to jump through hoops to get referrals for doctor's appointments. She finally has one tomorrow, but it is a video chat appointment. It's nice that the doctor has video chat capability at his end, but we only have internet through hot spots on our phones and no web cams. I have doubts about how that would work or if it will help at all.

All of this is happening in a state that rushed to reopen like Florida and had the state block local mask ordinances like Georgia. The general attitude was that the lockdown being over meant that the pandemic was over. When the surge became undeniable, the governor finally issued a state-wide mask mandate. He is catching hell from all sides, from people with common sense for doing it too late and from the idiots on the right, both in and out of government, for doing it at all. They still don't get it.

We are no longer arguing over competing theories like trade or tax policy. We have finally gone through all the bouts on the undercard, and are engaged in the championship fight: reality versus bullshit. Reality should be the favorite since objective proof exists. The only reason the fight continues is because reality fights fair and bullshit cheats. The right has a decades old infrastructure to discredit truth tellers, scientists, journalists and non-partisan career government officials, and were quick to whip it out for the corona virus.

The climate debate has shown us that the republicans would rather burn the whole world down before allowing the government to make it a little less profitable to do business. My wife can't get a hospital bed for non-covid health issue because the wealthy will fight tooth and nail to avoid being slightly less rich.