You know? Fuck this entire line of thinking.

This "we" that we keep talking about only serves to share blame where it doesn't fucking belong. 'We' could solve COVID if only we clapped our hands and believed in fucking fairies. 'We' can do anything if only we put our fucking minds to it.

FUCKING LISTEN

Quest thinks a fucking COVID test should be $15k out-of-pocket. Atul Gawande thinks we need to do one of these per person per day, or maybe per week, who fucking knows. So between the company profiting off of tests and the people trying to fucking stay alive there's a gap of a brand new fucking Toyota Yaris, or maybe seven of 'em, doesn't fucking matter, Atul Gawande doesn't care.

So okay, maybe "the government" swoops in and says "we'll pay Qwest $1500 per test because yay socialism" except that's actually gouging because fuck you, the chemicals don't cost that much, the swab is a fucking swab and the time on the machines is nothing. But we're not going to do that because you see capitalism and while we have Medicare? Which pays for old people and only old people? Medicare is forbidden by law to negotiate prices so even if we said "medicare for all!" that just means all of a sudden we're paying Quest trillions per week.

And we? As a society? The "we" that keeps getting blamed for fucking COVID? Fucking half the country has wanted universal healthcare for fifteen fucking years. "we" know exactly what's fucking necessary to make this fly: a national health service. "We" also know that half the reason we have Chuds walking the streets is fucking Sarah Palin screaming about "death panels" and Rand Fucking Paul saying they're coming to take our fucking doctors away, as if you need a fucking doctor to get a disease screening, except now you do, because "we" all want to fucking die, according to Atul Fucking Gawande.

If our president had any fucking compassion or any fucking stones, he'd go "executive order, we're giving this whole thing to Medicare, we're negotiating prices or commandeering through the Defense Production Act, poof I'm nationalizing this shit because crisis" and then let people fucking fight about what happens once we're on the other side of it. It's the only fucking thing that would work. But it would have worked in February, and it's September, and instead he told us all to drink bleach.

So this "we" that keeps getting chewed out by chin-stroking thought leaders? Count me the fuck out. 'cuz I turned furnace filters into PPE because my local health system told me that emergencies might flow the wrong way depending on how dicey it gets and NONE OF THIS SHIT can be hung on me.