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Place a frog in cold water that slowly heats to boiling and the frog, not registering the rise in temperature, will cook.
Moral of the story? Frogs do not react quickly to significant change.
Substitute frogs for humans and we have a metaphor for humans’ current reality.
American frog-humans
The United States has a frog in charge (no prince hidden under the froggy warts) and We, the People, don't notice the increasing temperature or how to leap out the water to save ourselves.
South African frog-humans
Telkom is South Africa’s SOE – State Owned Enterprise – for telephonic communication.
Think of Telkom as the slowly heating water and Telkom customers as frogs.
Two years ago, Telkom decided to transition all landline phones to wireless phones.
I received a breezy marketing but detail-free email from Telkom that the transition was underway.
I worried about the implications for aging customers such as mother. Tough to learn new technologies at 87-years-old, plus wireless reception in this rural neighborhood is unreliable.
I asked that Telkom email me whatever information it had about the proposed change so that I understood, 1) the overall plan, 2) the conditions of the proposed plan, 3)how it would affect my mother IF she choose to transition.
No email ever arrived.
Calls to Telkom were a nightmare of endless loops – “press x for x” – and, if I managed to talk to an actual person, I was told there were no conditions under which my mother could keep her landline.
Last January, I arrived in South Africa to find Telkom had forced my mother to transition and presented her with two D-Link wireless phones made in China. Only one of the two phones had a SIM card.
Before the start of lockdown, calls on the working phone intermittently failed and displayed, “No mobile network available.”
For the next eight weeks, my 87-year-old mother had no way to call a friend, a doctor, or an ambulance, police, or security firm if an emergency arose.
I called Telkom on my cell phone (waiting for a Telkom representative to answer is an expensive proposition in South Africa). I was told to drive to Telkom center in a large shopping mall in Pietermaritzburg. That is, drive twenty-five miles during lockdown with roadblocks and aggressive police and military patrols and wait for at least an hour in lines with little, if any, social distancing.
I complained to Telkom via email. No reply.
I wrote a Facebook complaint and got a response to “contact Telkom” but no contact info was provided.
Eventually, we traveled to Pietermaritzburg. Three times. Each time there was a small variation in why we couldn’t be helped: phone was broken, sorry, no replacement; ID info, phone number, or something else was incorrect, etc.
Finally, yesterday, Telkom presented a phone that appeared to work.
I tested it with a call from my cell phone. My mother answered! It worked!
She called the first friend on the list of friends she hoped to reach.
During that call, the phone failed.
Now, the phone displays no messages at all. The screen is black.
The frogs are cooked.
News blues…
The numbers continue to growWorldwide: 4,805,050 infections; 318,535 deaths
US: 1,508,600 infections; 90,360 deaths
Russia: 290,700 infections; 2,722 deaths
Brazil: 255,370 infections; 16,860 deaths
SA: 16,440 infections; 286 deaths
Map of infections per 100,000 by municipality in South Africa
***
"If it can take me down, it can take anybody down." (video clip, 7:44 mins).Infectious disease expert Dr. Joseph Fair speaks from his hospital bed after contracting Covid-19: He shares his battle with coronavirus and warns others to take the outbreak seriously.
***
Ready for a laugh? Sara Cooper:
Latest ad from The Lincoln Project
Whackjobbery*:
Just when one thinks Donald Trump can’t go any further in his brand of whackjobbery, he goes further!“Trump Says He Is Taking Drug That Is Deemed a Risk”
Hydroxychloroquine can cause arrhythmia, but the White House physician says the “potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks.” Stocks rose after positive vaccine news.Trump wants the public to believe he’s taking regular doses of Hydroxychloroquine?
This, from a man who is notoriously self-centered and germophobic?
I don’t believe him.
He is either lying …or he understands only people with a heart can suffer arrhythmia.
Remember the day Trump swore the crowd at his inauguration was the bigly-est ever in the history of inaugural crowds? Soon after, we learned “Trump inauguration crowd photos were edited after he intervened.”
His whoppers have only become whoppier.
Trump’s pal, Howard Stern, believes that Trump’s run for president was a Trump branding exercise, and that no one was more surprised at Trump’s win than Trump himself.
I concur with Stern. In the spirit of offering The Donald advice, I’ve urged Trump – telepathically – to feign a heart attack, to get out of the job of president, to retire to Mar a lago and write a whopper of a memoir.
Surely, somewhere in his “very, very large brain,” he knows he’s killing humans?
Feigning a heart attack would get him out of the White House and a job he doesn’t really want. Best of all, many Americans would consider him a hero, rather than a buffoon.
A heart attack would also prove he has a heart … and suggest he sacrificed himself out of overwhelming love of country and countrymen.
Feigning a Covid-19 infection would also get him out of the White House, but it’s not as romantic as a heart attack. It also risks mixed messaging.
He’d be a hero – to some - but an infection could raise uncomfortable questions:
- Should people wear masks after all?
- Should people stay home after all?
- Should states not open? Should workers, including meatpackers, refuse to go to work?
- Would the stock price of Hydroxychloroquine plunge instead of rise?
- Could Democrats, worse, socialists, be right about a more robust health insurance policy?
*Whackjob: term coined by Steve Schmidt of The Lincoln Project to denote virulent Trump supporters who’ve given up common sense in favor of Trumpism.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
Finding the right cell phone for my mother is top of today’s agenda.Continuing with building the pond weed path is next on the agenda.
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