Some Nominees for This Year's Darwin Awards

[silverscreenselect]

I know that in my neck of the woods, the businesses that have been able to remain open have been quite good about enforcing social distancing. --Bob

Again, you are fortunate enough to live in a state where most people take public health seriously. In Georgia and South Carolina, a lot of them don't.

Also, there's a report out that links seven cases in Milwaukee to people who participated in the primary on April 7 (six voters and one poll worker). As you'll recall, the state Supreme Court and US Supreme Court overrode the governor's order to postpone the election to allow more absentee voting.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/loc ... 168669002/

[Bob Juch]

This seems like a reasonably sensible approach. None of the business types he's listed require large crowds within the stores or an unacceptable level of person-to-person contact.

While the South Carolina order isn't anywhere near as bad as the Georgia order, we still haven't seen in any state the minimum standards that the Feds set for relaxing the stay-at-home orders. As a practical matter, I think that (1) stores that have been bringing in zero revenue for a month won't be too picky about enforcing the total number of people allowed in at any time, (2) Southern state governments won't be too picky about enforcing those regulations either, but (3) many customers will be unlikely to go shopping, especially for non-necessities for quite a while still, but those that do will be more likely to be those same yahoos who are griping about their freedoms being taken away.

Also, there is a good bit of close interaction in places like shoe, clothing, and jewelry stores.

I would feel better if any reliable medical or scientific experts came out in support of any of these measures. But, while the governors cite the "public health" experts they've consulted, nobody ever goes on record as supporting these governors' actions.

Would you want to try on clothing that someone who's infected might have tried on?

[silverscreenselect]

Here's some of the mindset that has declared the coronavirus numbers faked. Bill Mitchell hosts a far-right-wing internet talk show:

Interesting that ActBlue raised an average donation of $30.38. This would imply people are donating in uneven numbers, including pennies, which would be odd. OR it would indicate untraceable foreign donations and an exchange rate translation, which would be illegal.

When various people tried to point out what the word "average" means in a mathematical context, Mitchell just doubled down:

Lol, Liberals are saying I only trended #1 because "I can't do math." Ok, here's my challenge.

Tweet 2 + 2 = 5 and see if you trend #1.

I trended #1 because I called out #ActBlue as a Soros money-laundering front.

This is the mentality that's driving the reopening of businesses despite the vast majority of scientific wisdom to the contrary.

[Bob Juch]

[silverscreenselect]

Newest insult from one right-winger to another: "You couldn't hit a coronavirus with an AK-47."

[Vandal]

From Twitter:

State of Georgia announces it is re-opening while they have 28-3 lead on COVID-19.

[silverscreenselect]

[jaybee]

The big part that concerns me (aside from the attitude displayed in the photo above) is that the numbers are against us. Numbers don't lie. Six weeks ago in the US we had a dozen or so known cases and an unknown number of undetected ones - that lead to the 40,000+ dead and the hundreds of thousands sick that we have now. The only thing that has kept those numbers in check at all is the shutdown process.

If we open things up in the next week or so, we are still going to have hundreds of thousands of infected people out there. On the plus side, many are going to continue to practice some form of social distancing, and that will help. But with that many people still contagious there is no way that we will have less transmission of Covid than we had in early March. People may want to be careful but they are going to screw up. I really want to be wrong here but as soon as we back off then we are going to see a second increase in Covid in mid to late May. That means that all the shit we've gone through in the last month and a half has been for nothing. If there is a second wave of Covid then businesses will only be open for a few weeks and then will have to shut down again. The clock will reset. June 1st will become the new March 1st and the whole country will be out until September. Definitely a worst case than what we are going through now. Definitely bad for business.

It's a damn virus. Doesn't give a crap about popular opinion. Doesn't care if you are are liberal or conservative. We know how to defeat it - we just don't have the tools yet.

Our options:

1. Develop a vaccine. This is going to happen but even the most optimistic estimates put it at over year out. Not going to help for now.
2. Test everyone and isolate those who are positive. This has some hope but we are way, way far away from making it happen. My state of Tennessee announced yesterday that free testing for everyone would start yesterday (Monday). Testing was shut down today after being overwhelmed with people and running out of supplies. To date in our county, we have tested 0.08% of our population. Even if we get the test kits and really ramp up our testing process, the best case scenario will take weeks or months to get everyone tested.
3. Keep isolating everyone for the few weeks more that it will (hopefully) take to break the lifeline of Covid. Sure, it's tough on all of us but we've got the past month invested already. The numbers are just starting to flatten out. Now is not the time to back off. If we do there is no way that Covid will not just bitch-slap us again.
4. Open everything back up, let the numbers go up, let many die and the rest recover. Hopefully those who live will also have an immunity. But if we choose this path, we are going to see those numbers that were forecasted to happen in early March become real after all.

We still have many countries who are 2 to 4 weeks ahead of us in virus infection and results. While we can't trust all of their numbers, there are enough countries out there that will demonstrate either success or failure in the coming weeks that will show us what can or cannot work. Hopefully we will be smart enough to learn from them and do something about it.