Roy Exum
Back on those rare afternoons when a Bear Bryant-coached Alabama football team was trailing, this usually early in the game, there would come an electrifying play where Alabama would score and regain the lead. That’s when Coach Bryant would bellow, “Now we got a game! Let’s go … we’re back in it … Now we got a game!” On the Alabama sidelines that battle cry was more famous than “Remember the Alamo” and the players would somehow turn it up a notch. When I got up on Saturday, I read where the heavily-quarantined nation has found a way to still show the country’s spunk and mettle; people are coming out on their balconies and loudly singing together! Now we got a game!
Is that great or what on this, the Ides of March! Today in Italy the citizens are not allowed to visit one another, confined to just their own condominiums and their apartments unless there is the need for absolute necessities.
An update yesterday reported Italy has 3,497 new cases of coronavirus and 175 new deaths, raising the total to 21,157 cases and 1,441 dead, so while those in the country cannot gather or even touch one another, they can dadgum well sing with each other and what a lift to the spirits it has become, to unite in song. Want to know what is even better - Every Saturday at noon, be it in Rome, Naples, Palermo or up north in Milan, everyone in the nation goes out on their balconies to applaud, salute and praise the doctors and nurses who are on the front lines.
Not since World War II have the Italians sung their national anthem, their patriotic songs and church hymns from the balconies overlooking the streets and beautiful squares, but it is already being said the songs have helped the nation with “domestic tranquility,” so to speak. You don’t think that is important in Italy? In these United States? In Soddy-Daisy? Please!
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RITA WILSON CREATES ‘QUARANTUNES’ WITH TOM HANKS IN AUSTRALIA
The great actor Tom Hanks and his wonderful wife Rita Wilson, you may have heard, are taking their medically-supervised isolation in Australia “one day a time” and both are grateful that it is assured neither will spread the coronavirus to anyone else. But Rita has launched a project which I hope will spread around the world – she has released her "Quarantunes," music playlist. It is a hoot!
She went to her friends on Twitter and asked for songs she could collect for a Spotify playlist. "Something that might relate to isolation, perhaps?" she continued. "This is what one does in quarantine. Uthink of stuff like this."
Rita’s playlist, which you can hear on Spotify, includes songs like Eric Carmen's "All by Myself," Queen's "I Want to Break Free" and Billy Idol's "Dancing with Myself." Also on the “theme” based list are “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones, “Survivor” by Destiny’s Child, “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” by Kelly Clarkson and “U Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer.
Incidentally, when Hanks sends out his updates on the couple’s welfare, he signs off with the line, “Remember … there is no crying in baseball.”
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THE PRESCRIPTION MEDICINE IN YOUR BATHROOM
We have seen how the coronavirus has suddenly affected everything in the United States and Spain, just yesterday afternoon, ordered a lockdown of the country. You also know that the Wuhan Corona virus originated in China. But I’m willing to bet you are unaware that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates that at least 80 percent of the active ingredients found in all of America's medicines come from abroad – primarily China, a country our Department of Defense considers as an “adversary.”
I’m strong in the belief that 80 percent of the medicines you have in your bathroom – pain meds, antibiotics, even aspirin – contain ingredients that originated in China.
"Imagine if China turned off that spigot," said Rosemary Gibson, author of "China RX: The Risks of America's Dependence on China for Medicine." "China's aim is to become the global pharmacy to the world - it says that. It wants to disrupt, to dominate, and displace American and other Western companies."
In 2015, China unveiled "Made in China 2025," a national plan to make it the world's leader in 10 high-tech manufacturing sectors, including bio-medicine, by 2025.
"China dumped its steel in the United States at below-market price and it drove out so many factories and jobs and communities were devastated. We have the same story with a lot of our medicines and that happened with penicillin," Gibson said.
The last U.S. plant manufacturing the penicillin antibiotic closed in 2004.
"I have no doubt that they would consider weaponizing their dominance of the pharmaceuticals market if they felt that that would give them an advantage over us strategically," retired Brig. Gen. John Adams told Fox News. Adams is also president of Guardian Six, a defense research consulting firm.
Fox also reported last year that experts have warned, “In a worst-case scenario, China could withhold supplies of medicines like important antibiotics, or degrade the quality of our medicines - even put lethal contaminants in them. Even when it comes to treating anthrax, China is the largest exporter of the building block to make ciprofloxacin, an anthrax antidote.
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CHINESE DOCTORS REPORT THEY HAVE SAVED 10,000 VIRUS VICTIMS
The number of coronavirus cases worldwide has surpassed 150,000. Of those, 5,774 have died, 73,962 have recovered, and 72,698 are still sick, according to a Saturday afternoon scoreboard. In China, there is a belief the virus may have peaked and doctors there are credited with saving more than 10,000 patients. For more on that, visit https://ncov.dxy.cn/ncovh5/view/pneumonia_peopleapp (I know its tough to read, but it’s all I’ve got.)
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TEANECK, NJ, MAYOR REQUESTS CITY TO QUARANTINE
Mohammed Hameeduddin, the mayor of Teaneck, New Jersey, has told ABC News that he is requesting all residents to self-quarantine and only to leave their homes for food and medicine. Hameeduddin said that his town is "ground zero" for the infections in the state. As of last night, New Jersey now has 19 new coronavirus cases. Total cases statewide, now at 69, include a second confirmed death in Jersey City. The Mayor said he has been told people who have tested positive have been walking around with it for the past four weeks.
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DO NOT FALL FOR “THE BLAME GAME”
As nauseating as it may well be and to absolutely no one’s gain, the American people should not point a finger at who they may suspect is at fault for the virus and the ensuing panic because it is wrong. How are you going to create a test, much less a vaccine, for a disease until you can identify it? To fault the government, our Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health, or any of our legendary watchdogs is patently absurd. Before January 21, 2020, no CDC lab had ever tested for coronavirus because we didn’t know what it was. Today – two months later – there are coronavirus-certified labs in all 50 states. Please recognize that is in the space of eight weeks.
The fools say we should have been ready. For what? You don’t have to be an Einstein to grasp the fact the first identifiable case of the coronavirus was reported by the CDC on January 21, 2020. Look at your calendar and if you cannot recognize our nation’s response in less than two months is anything less than extraordinary, it is safe to say you are a very desperate and most unfortunate Democrat and/or a righteous defender of chaos in The Legion of the Miserable. This isn’t political, nor should it be. President Donald Trump has done a masterful job with this totally unexpected tragedy and, when you say he has not, please check and validate your source. Then explain to me why is it the only whiners in our nation are the ones who once voted for Hillary Clinton? We have a crisis here and there is no need nor want for any Pelosi venom.
Argue loud and long about the Electoral College, ignore the maps that confirm her fan base did not represent the total of our country at all, and then imagine her being at the center of the coronavirus, may God in heaven be blessed for sparing us such a dismal doom. Instead, let’s support the heroes … America’s scientists and medical minds who – most assuredly – will get us through this mess. Now, combine our findings with Britain’s scientists, and the leading-edge Israeli labs, the Japanese, the Russians, the whoever … and we’ll one day rejoice over how many were saved versus the percentage that died.
Let’s be about winning, instead of acting like the losers whose lone intent, given their hatred of Trump, is to pull our nation down to their seedy level. Trust me, that ain’t gonna happen come November.
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WHY SHOULD WE ‘BEWARE THE ‘IDES OF MARCH?’
THIS FROM WIKIPEDIA: The Ides of March was a day in the Roman calendar that corresponds to the 15th of March. It was marked by several religious observances and was notable for the Romans as a deadline for settling debts. In 44 BC, it became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar which made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history.
The Romans did not number days of a month from the first to the last day. Instead, they counted back from three fixed points of the month: the Nones (the 5th or 7th, nine days inclusive before the Ides), the Ides (the 13th for most months, but the 15th in March, May, July, and October), and the Kalends (1st of the following month). Originally the Ides were supposed to be determined by the full moon, reflecting the lunar origin of the Roman calendar. In the earliest calendar, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the new year.[3]
MUCH BETTER: In modern times, the Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the Senate. As many as 60 conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were involved. According to Plutarch, a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar no later than the Ides of March. On his way to the Theatre of Pompey, where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, "The Ides of March are come", implying that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied "Aye, Caesar; but not gone." This meeting is famously dramatized in William Shakespeare's play “Julius Caesar,” when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March."
So there, now you know.
royexum@aol.com