OT Coronavirus: America in chaos, News and Updates. One million Americans dead and counting

Big spike in infections in Alabama. Also outbreaks connected to religious services.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wa...0/05/26/coronavirus-update-us/?outputType=amp

Live updates: Meat shortages could worsen as coronavirus infections at packing plants multiply

 

https://www.kgw.com/mobile/article/...lant/283-b1a0471b-e110-4bcd-88a1-4cd25e807109

Over 40% of employees tested at Vancouver fruit plant have COVID-19

 

where Oregon stands at the end of this Holiday:



New cases 1-week average normalized by population:



New deaths, 1-week average (you have to squint at the bottom of the graph):




New hospitalizations/day (again you have to look at the bottom of the graph):



all in all, we are doing pretty in Oregon, but I think most would agree that while we might ease up on the brakes a little, it's no time to relax or believe it's all under control. We still need to ramp up the testing rate significantly here as we rank toward the bottom in tests/million (although I did read we had a high rate of the much more dependable molecular tests vs serological tests)

 

I hope they give us two weeks notice before the end of this so we can lose10 pounds, cut our hair and get used to not drinking at 9:00 a.m.

New monthly budget: Gas $0 Entertainment $0 Clothes $0 Groceries $2,799.

Breaking News: Wearing a mask inside your home is now highly recommended. Not so much to stop COVID-19, but to stop eating.

When this quarantine is over, let's not tell some people.

I stepped on my scale this morning. It said: "Please practice social distancing. Only one person at a time on scale."

Not to brag, but I haven't been late to anything in over 6 weeks.

It may take a village to raise a child but I swear its going to take a vineyard to home school one.

The spread of Covid-19 is based on two things:
1. How dense the population is.
2. How dense the population is.

Appropriate analogy: "The curve is flattening so we can start lifting restrictions now" = "The parachute has slowed our rate of descent, so we can take it off now".

Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go up to a bank teller wearing a mask and ask for money.

Home school Day 1: I'm trying to figure out how I can get this kid transferred out of my class.

Putting a drink in each room of my house today and calling it a pub crawl.

Okay, the schools are closed. So do we drop the kids off at the teacher's house or what?

The dumbest thing I've ever bought was a 2020 planner.

For the second part of this quarantine do we have to stay with the same family or will they relocate us? Asking for myself. . . .


...and finally;

Coronavirus has turned us all into dogs. We wander around the house looking for food. We get told "No" if we get too close to strangers and we get really excited about going for walks and car rides.

 

Who are the WHO? Only The Shadow knows.

 

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Youth soccer is returning. The National league my daughter is a part of just sent out guidelines minutes ago...

 

from the St. Louis Dispatch:

"Woe is Donald Trump. The long-suffering, misunderstood president just can’t make the world understand what a raw deal he got. The pandemic was China’s fault. Or was it the World Health Organization’s fault? One thing we know for sure, the lax U.S. response was President Barack Obama’s fault.
“We inherited a broken, terrible system …,” Trump told reporters on April 18. “Our cupboards were bare. We had very little in our stockpile.” That was Trump’s attempt, frequently repeated by the president and recycled in White House presentations, to lay responsibility for the inept pandemic response at Obama’s feet, as if three years in office were insufficient for Trump to repair all the supposed damage his predecessor wrought.

Except it’s a lie of colossal Trumpian proportions.....

Perhaps because of his experience with the 2015 Ebola outbreak, Obama sought to leave his successor fully prepared to confront future pandemics. He asked in his fiscal 2017 budget request to boost federal isolation and quarantine funding by $15 million, to $46.6 million. Congress approved $31.6 million. In Trump’s three years in office, he has not requested a dime more in funding.

Obama asked to nearly double his own $40 million outlay for epidemiology and laboratory capacity. Congress balked, but Obama left Trump with that $40 million as a starting point. What did Trump do? In his 2020 budget, he asked Congress to cut that number to: Zero. Zilch. Nothing.

Obama’s goal was $629.5 million in funding for pandemic preparedness, though Congress only gave him $612 million. If Trump was so worried about a bare cupboard, why did he ask Congress to cut the 2020 pandemic preparedness budget by $102.9 million? In the 2019 fiscal year budget, he sought a $595.5 million cut in the overall public health preparedness and response outlay.

The CDC budget in Obama’s final year mentions “epidemiology” or derivatives of the word 252 times. Under Trump, the word appears 129 times. The phrase “pandemic preparedness” appears exactly once in Trump’s 2020 budget.

Interestingly, Trump’s own 2020 budget contains a chart comparing the nation’s public health emergency preparedness before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and where it stood in 2016 (why it stops with Obama’s final year is unclear). Before 9/11, the nation had a 20% ability to mobilize in response to a health emergency, a 5% ability to establish an incident-command system, and 0% storage and distribution capacity for critical medicines and supplies. By Obama’s final year, the nation’s preparedness on all measurements was 98% to 100%. That’s by the Trump administration’s own assessment.

If the cupboard was bare, it’s because Trump swept it clean."

https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/ed...cle_bd1bb8d6-7477-590d-af72-ae4e305de601.html

 

A cute coronavirus Green Day parody.

 

Before face masks, Americans went to war against seat belts

State and federal officials nationwide have ordered the use of protective face masks to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Many businesses have instituted similar policies to protect customers and staff.

It's a relatively straightforward precaution with proven public health benefits. Still, a small but vocal minority is resisting.

Some are fighting mask policies by invoking the Americans with Disabilities Act. Others are starting fistfights or even killing people.

Backlash against public health safeguards has plenty of precedents: When the influenza pandemic swept through San Francisco in 1919, hundreds of "mask slackers" disobeyed the law and were arrested.

Even the seat belt, one of the most ubiquitous safety devices in modern history, faced a contentious battle for acceptance.

The long road to seat-belt safety

As cars became increasingly popular through the 20th century, vehicular fatalities skyrocketed. Between 1920 and 1960, the rate of auto deaths doubled, from 11 people per 100,000 to 22 people.

Edward J. Claghorn first patented an automobile safety harness in 1885, mainly to help keep tourists from falling out of New York taxicabs. But it wasn't until the mid-1950s that many carmakers even offered seat belts as an option.

Most motorists declined: In 1956, only 2% of Ford buyers took the $27 seat belt option, and the death toll kept rising.

In 1959, American politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan described the situation as "the epidemic on the highways."

Then came Ralph Nader.

In 1965, Nader, 31, penned "Unsafe at Any Speed," a best-selling expose that claimed car manufacturers were sacrificing lives for style and profit.

Nader argued that Detroit willfully neglected advances in auto safety, like roll bars and seat belts, to keep costs down.

His investigation spurred Congress to create what eventually became the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which required all vehicles (except buses) to be fitted with seat belts in 1968.

But using them was strictly voluntary. And many Americans didn't want to.

As late as 1983, less than 15% of Americans said they used seat belts consistently.

New York became the first state to pass a mandatory seat-belt law, in 1984. Other states soon followed.

While there was already clear evidence seat belts saved lives, these measures faced stiff opposition. A Gallup poll from July 1984 showed that 65% of Americans opposed mandatory belt laws, according to the Los Angeles Times.

In a survey one year later, drivers said they thought the restraints were "ineffective, inconvenient, and uncomfortable."

Some argued — incorrectly — that it was safer to be thrown clear from a wreck than trapped inside one.

"In this country, saving freedom is more important than trying to regulate lives through legislation," wrote one staunch opponent in a 1987 Chicago Tribune editorial.

The auto industry actually supported seat-belt requirements, mainly to circumvent legislation that would have mandated airbags.

But the public bristled.

Some people cut the belts out of their cars. Others challenged seat-belt laws in court.

Massachusetts radio personality Jerry Williams transformed his talk-show into a crusade against seat belts, gathering 45,000 signatures in three months. He managed to get a referendum on the ballot to repeal the state's new belt law.

"We don't feel we should be forced to buckle up and have a police officer sent in by the state to make sure we're buckled up," Williams told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 1986.

"There was a libertarian streak among resistors," Nader told Business Insider. "They took the stance that 'you're not going to tie the American people up in seat belts.'"

'They're not community people'

A similar ideology seems to be fueling pushback against face-covering during the pandemic.

Republican governor Mike DeWine of Ohio was forced to rescind his face-mask order, he told ABC News, when he realized Ohioans "were not going to accept the government telling them what to do."

In California, an anti-lockdown protestor held a sign comparing wearing masks to slavery, Newsweek reported.

Nader says he believes most modern-day mask slackers are fueled by obstinance, not a political agenda.

"It's just an ornery personality trait by some people," he said. "They're not community people."

The former presidential candidate is quick to mention that few Americans oppose the current public health measures. A recent Washington Post poll found that fewer than 20% of Americans opposed wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.

"It's a tiny percent of the population — let's not exaggerate," Nader said.

Americans have grown comfortable with seat belts, too: More than 90% buckle up regularly. New Hampshire — whose license plates proclaim "Live free or die "— remains the only state without a mandatory seat belt law.

But that shift took time. It also took public service campaigns, legal enforcement, and even regular reminders from our cars themselves.

"We are a very hard society to change cognitively," Nader said, some 55 years after publishing "Unsafe at Any Speed."

He hopes holdouts against pandemic precautions come around more quickly.

"The same people who don't want to do social distancing and face masks get in their car and put their seat belt on," he said. "Nice irony, huh?"​

 

Who's on first!

 

^^^lol...that's about the size of it, it seems.