Coronavirus

[Duke Bushido]

Job One (the good job) has been rotating employees in and out for regular testing since the state *ahem*. "reopened.". I don't understand the "re" as it is used here, since it implies that at some point the state was closed. 

 

If you declare that only "essential people" should venture out of their homes, and then declare that every man, woman, and muskrat in the state is, in fact, essential....  What have you actually closed? 

 

Anyway, the company is doing all this on their dime, no questions, no complaints, with the only "catch" being if you my turn up positive, tell them so they can schedule you out (they have pre-filled all the unemployment stuff on everyone, so anyone coming up positive will have a rather easy time of the transition).

 

My turn came up again today.  The test seems to have changed a bit since my first one six weeks ago.  They have switched to a _slightly_ smaller prove / specimen collector, and you only have to jab it in far enough to lose _one_ memory per nostril, which is a huge improvement!

 

On the negative, I have lost my wife's maiden name and algebra.  😕

 

Job Two (the job I left to take Job One, but still help out a few hours a week out of genuine appreciation for the team environment my coworkers and I had), on the other hand, has stopped us from denying entry to people without masks and dropping hints that some of the clients are upset in this way or that way that we are talking to them through masks...... 

 

See the problem? 

 

People are getting sick because making money off of self-centered solipsistic morons is more important than a few thousand human lives. 

 

The differences between the two jobs in terms of concern for the employees just boggles the mind. 

 

You know the wierd part?  Job 2 requires knowledgeable, experienced people--people experienced in a very wide variety of fields, but not actually working in those fields.   You know: the kind of people that are extremely hard to find. 

 

Job One is unskilled labor (for most of the plant, anyway).  You could very realistically train a monkey to do what most of those guys do..... 

 

 

[Cancer]

2 hours ago, Old Man said:

Appearances are more important than lives.  That's what.

 

China.  Again.

[Old Man]

Looking at new case rates again, things have clearly gone exponential in Oregon, California, Texas, Utah, Arkansas, and Florida.  Texas has set record new case/day counts five of the last seven days.  Florida's new case counts are triple what they were when lockdown was initiated 90 days ago.

 

But Arizona is leaving them all far behind on a per-capita basis. 

 

It's been about ten days since the case rates started their upswing so we can expect the death toll to start ramping up this week.

[Michael Hopcroft]

The European Union is pondering a recommendation that its member countries deny access to Americans due to the spread of the virus in this country.

 

The resolution, if passed, will still let each individual member nation make the decision. But it does drive home how we look to other countries -- our leadership on COVID-19 can be unfavorably compared to that the Three Stooges would have provided.

[Lord Liaden]

Your northern neighbor is watching you situation very nervously as well.

[Ternaugh]

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

The European Union is pondering a recommendation that its member countries deny access to Americans due to the spread of the virus in this country.

 

The resolution, if passed, will still let each individual member nation make the decision. But it does drive home how we look to other countries -- our leadership on COVID-19 can be unfavorably compared to that the Three Stooges would have provided.

 

I believe that our foreign policy unfortunately has been cribbed from The Marx Brothers' Duck Soup.

[Lord Liaden]

6 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

 

I believe that our foreign policy unfortunately has been cribbed from The Marx Brothers' Duck Soup.

 

I can't deny that in comparison, Freedonia isn't looking so bad these days.

[Michael Hopcroft]

18 minutes ago, Ternaugh said:

 

I believe that our foreign policy unfortunately has been cribbed from The Marx Brothers' Duck Soup.

Duck Soup: The story of a pseudo-fascist co9n man who swindles his way to poqwer, only to find himself way over his head and to lead  his nation into pointless wars in which he fires on his own men.

 

The only difference between the Donald and Rufus T. Firefly is that Firefly was actually smart (unqualified for public office of any capacity, and possible guilty of multiple felony frauds, but smart).

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

The European Union is pondering a recommendation that its member countries deny access to Americans due to the spread of the virus in this country.

 

The resolution, if passed, will still let each individual member nation make the decision. But it does drive home how we look to other countries -- our leadership on COVID-19 can be unfavorably compared to that the Three Stooges would have provided.

 

Can't blame them.  Our daily new case numbers have been flat for 5 weeks...and didn't drop down *that* much from the early-April peak 4 weeks before that.  And it is abundantly clear, at this point, that we won't get our act together.  Depressing as that is to say.  Too many of the Powers That Be have decided their course, and the consequences are clearly deemed "acceptable losses."  AND too many pathetic, selfish pinheads can't abide by even minimal infringements on their rights to be pinheads, which undercuts efforts in those places *trying* to keep a lid on things.

This tells you a lot.  The US is now 11th among all statistical areas in terms of per capita case rates.  However, 5 of those with higher per capita numbers have less than 300,000 population;  3 others have 1.7, 2.8, and 4.3 million, so still fairly small.  One cluster can inflate the numbers.  The other 2 are Chile and Peru...and South America is getting blasted right now harder than western Europe did in March, I think.  

[ScottishFox]

On 6/22/2020 at 10:17 AM, Michael Hopcroft said:

if the Flash got it but had no symptoms, he could infect an entire city by himself and not even know it.

 

It's also possible given his metabolism that he'd go from exposed to infected to recovered in like 2.5 minutes.

[assault]

Panic buying is back in Victoria, Australia.

[ScottishFox]

15 hours ago, Old Man said:

Looking at new case rates again, things have clearly gone exponential in Oregon, California, Texas, Utah, Arkansas, and Florida.  Texas has set record new case/day counts five of the last seven days.  Florida's new case counts are triple what they were when lockdown was initiated 90 days ago.

 

On the plus side theater ticket sales are up and work hours have doubled. 😶

 

New Cases are soaring - just like you said:

 

Still under 4 deaths per 100,000 where I'm at.  The fatality rate continues to drop which tells me the expanded testing is catching more and more people who are not critically ill.  So far it's 1/2 of what it used to be (about 1.5% now compared to 3+ percent previously).  The local CVS has a testing line that is so long that my wife won't go inside the store anymore.

 

Mask discipline from what I see when I'm out and about is incredibly bad.  People leaving their nose out or wearing them on their chin after dealing with the slow suffocation for a few hours.

It's not looking great.

 

Our Rt is now clocking in at: 1.18.  Which is bad, though not as bad as Hawaii which is now up to 1.57 (yikes!).

[ScottishFox]

It's like we're intentionally trying to fail to contain this thing.

 

https://nypost.com/2020/06/23/oregon-county-issues-face-mask-order-exempting-non-white-people/

[Pariah]

We've been doing almost all of our shopping via curbside pickup. We picked up an order yesterday at Target, and maybe a third of the people leaving the store had masks.

[unclevlad]

2 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

It's like we're intentionally trying to fail to contain this thing.

 

https://nypost.com/2020/06/23/oregon-county-issues-face-mask-order-exempting-non-white-people/

 

This one is more complicated, tho.  The issue is racial profiling.  See a white guy in a mask, oh, that's a good thing.  See a black man in a mask, and.....???
 

Some other down notes...

Probably some time this weekend, we'll pass 2 milestones....10M cases and 500,000 deaths.

Yesterday, the US new cases rate spiked badly...about 1 person in 9200 yesterday alone.  7th worst rate in the world...3rd worst if we limit to countries with 10M+ populations.  Chile and Brazil would be the larger countries;  Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Kuwait would be the others.  Worse...in western Europe, the worst rate is in the UK.  It's 1/8 of ours.  Yesterday basically tied for the 2nd highest number of new cases--a touch over 39,000 on 4/24,;36,090 on 5/1; 36,015 yesterday.  4th worst is 34,600 and change.

 

Yes, we have failed miserably.  No pun intended.

 

[Starlord]

21 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

 

This one is more complicated, tho.  The issue is racial profiling.  See a white guy in a mask, oh, that's a good thing.  See a black man in a mask, and.....???
 

 

...and this hurts people of color more since you tend to hang out with your own ethnicity.  Not to mention that african-americans seem to be more susceptible to the virus as well.

[BoloOfEarth]

20 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Job One is unskilled labor (for most of the plant, anyway).  You could very realistically train a monkey to do what most of those guys do..... 

 

I didn't know you were in Congress... 

[ScottishFox]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

This one is more complicated, tho.  The issue is racial profiling.  See a white guy in a mask, oh, that's a good thing.  See a black man in a mask, and.....???

 

I would hope the solution is less racial profiling and not telling people of color - who are dying at much higher rates - that they can skip the mask and spread the illness faster in their own communities.

 

This just seems like a terrible solution.

[Old Man]

In ten hours, people from Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Washington will be quarantined for 14 days if they travel to New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.

[Old Man]

Texas Medical Center in Houston projects it will run out of beds in 12 days.

 

 

 

 

Some Texas hospitals are preparing to build temporary tent facilities in their parking lots to handle the overflow.  (In Texas.  In July.)

[Cancer]

29 minutes ago, Old Man said:

In ten hours, people from Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Washington will be quarantined for 14 days if they travel to New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.

 

Interesting to include WA.  The surge in the state is undeniable, but it is almost exclusively in four agricultural counties, east of the Cascades: Yakima Co. is the worst; Benton and Franklin counties -- which include the Tri-Cities -- are also surging, and Grant county as well.  These are where migrant farm worker labor sees largest use.  The big urban counties (King, Snohomish, Pierce) west of the mountains seem stable at this point, though Spokane County (again, east) may be gaining incidence as well.

 

EDIT: data source: WA Dept of Health COVID Data Dashboard

 

I also note that the nationwide increase in cases is right on time for someone's prediction of a surge to occur two weeks after the large BLM demonstrations.  I admit I wussied out of participating in a BLM march here in Seattle  because of the virus (it would have been a six-mile walk in the rain for me).

[Pariah]

9 minutes ago, Cancer said:

I also note that the nationwide increase in cases is right on time for someone's prediction of a surge to occur two weeks after the large BLM demonstrations.  I admit I wussied out of participating in a BLM march here in Seattle  because of the virus (it would have been a six-mile walk in the rain for me).

 

 You can hardly be blamed for that. You do have to take care of your own health and safety, after all. It's like Count Rugen said:  If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything.

[Cancer]

43 minutes ago, Old Man said:

Some Texas hospitals are preparing to build temporary tent facilities in their parking lots to handle the overflow.  (In Texas.  In July.)

 

* Cancer pops up a tab and glances at the National Hurricane Center site *

[Old Man]

44 minutes ago, Cancer said:

 

Interesting to include WA.  The surge in the state is undeniable, but it is almost exclusively in four agricultural counties, east of the Cascades: Yakima Co. is the worst; Benton and Franklin counties -- which include the Tri-Cities -- are also surging, and Grant county as well.  These are where migrant farm worker labor sees largest use.  The big urban counties (King, Snohomish, Pierce) west of the mountains seem stable at this point, though Spokane County (again, east) may be gaining incidence as well.

 

It does seem odd, but I double checked and while Washington is only 10th in per-capita cases by 7-day moving average, that's still top 10.   At least it's trending in the right direction, unlike most of the other states in the list.

 

44 minutes ago, Cancer said:

 

EDIT: data source: WA Dept of Health COVID Data Dashboard

 

I also note that the nationwide increase in cases is right on time for someone's prediction of a surge to occur two weeks after the large BLM demonstrations.  I admit I wussied out of participating in a BLM march here in Seattle  because of the virus (it would have been a six-mile walk in the rain for me).

 

It's more complicated than that, of course.  The states that had the largest protests--Washington, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio--haven't seen any uptick (yet).  But it takes another week or so for any spread to gain enough momentum to show up in the data.   On the other hand there have been some preliminary studies suggesting that the protests actually suppressed virus spread by encouraging non-protestors to stay home.

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

In ten hours, people from Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Washington will be quarantined for 14 days if they travel to New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.

 

This will be going to court.  It may well be unconstitutional.

 

1 hour ago, ScottishFox said:

 

I would hope the solution is less racial profiling and not telling people of color - who are dying at much higher rates - that they can skip the mask and spread the illness faster in their own communities.

 

This just seems like a terrible solution.

 

No question.  But racial profiling is a serious concern as well.  Racial profiling *does* happen, and it's not something we can expect to remove any time soon.  We'll have the coronavirus problem resolved long before we have racial profiling resolved...and the fear of racial profiling will last even longer.