Coronavirus Lockdown Journal: Day 32
50x undiagnosed, cabbage?!?, and high hopes
San Francisco, Friday, April 17, 2020
Videos where you expect a blustering trumpeter, but get a nuanced progressive view, can be disarming, reassuring, and funny.
"They don't get to determine when the economy reopens, you do."
"We bail you out, we get fucked."
(You might want to wear your face mask for this one.)
6:30am. Back in line at Safeway. If this wasn't so fucked up, it would be pretty funny. The line is long, but it follows a different path than last time. Is it different every day, depending on who shows up and where we stand?
Almost everyone, but not everyone, has a mask.
Oh god. Just had a little coughing attack, while wearing my mask, in line. The worst. Can't take my mask off, so my glasses get fogged up, can't cough more to get whatever it is loose, wind up laughing and coughing way more than anyone would like.
No, I don't think I have anything other than a dry throat and a mask over my breathing airway.
Nobody really talks in line. Maybe it's early, maybe we all have phones, maybe it's cooties.
6:54 second in line.
7:21 and I'm out. There were definitely some holes in their selection, including a couple surprising places. TP was gone, but they did have some precious little picnic packs of wipes. Soymilk, gone. Cheese, gone. Inexpensive meats, gone, except for very good deals on Easter hams. It looks like our dogs are getting a spiral cut this week. Surprisingly, there were holes in the produce department. Big ones. I wonder why? Yams? Cabbage? Lettuce?
At this point, I am grateful for the abundance of stuff they did have.
How are you holding up? Is the catchphrase of 2020.
36k deaths in the US so far, as of today, the most reported of any country. 2k per day right now, half in NY. Parts of the country are weeks from peaking. And this is with a lockdown in place in 45 states.
And yet, the propaganda machine has focused on "reopening." I guess they're selling hope. Why not focus on making some tests, and sending some checks?
Good news, free drive thru testing! For 200 people per day. With an appointment.
50x undiagnosed sounds crazy, right? No way it could be that high, right? And the machines aren’t in charge, either.
From their antibody testing of 3000 Bay Area residents, they found 1.5% had been infected already, and they speculate a death rate of .1-.2%. That's not much worse than the normal flu, but combine it with the fact that we have zero immunity and asymptomatic carriers, which basically means everyone who runs into the virus will catch it and likely spread it before they know, and suddenly you've got a pandemic.
This is, as they say, a "weak" virus, and apparently that's just the kind of thing that causes mayhem. Too strong, and it's easy to detect, and therefore doesn't move as quickly.
Danced to Mother by Idles, High Hopes by Panic! At the Disco, and Triumph by Wutang Clan.
Zoomed with friends in Australia last night, we’ll call them Mr. and Mrs. Styleo. It’s very interesting to hear firsthand stories from other places. Australia has something like 70 deaths, in a country of 25 million. (California, which is far from the hardest hit state in the US, has a thousand deaths for 40 million people, so something like 7x more.)
The lockdown in Australia mainly means people who can work from home, are, and all gatherings are banned. Many stores, malls, etc are still open, with social distancing efforts in place. Gardeners and builders and beauty salons are still working. You can golf, but only with one other person, at safe distance. Same with sailing, but the number allowed on a boat depends on its size. Apparently their testing situation is still sketchy, despite what Tom Hanks says.
They haven’t had much community spread, as far as they know, their cases have mostly arrived in the country from abroad, or can be traced directly to someone who did.
It’s summer there, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s a weather factor here. Nobody in the MSM I read is talking about that, I guess they don’t want to raise false hopes. I have seen some sorta “fingers crossed” references. But all my anecdotal antenna are saying, come October, this may be a big factor in our lives again.
According to official numbers, 38% of California applicants for “forgiveable” SBA payroll loans were approved. Which is hella low, because when we went to apply on the Monday after the Friday it was announced they were available, every bank we checked with said all their applications were taken.
Before Gavin Newsom, that white knight of liberal ideals, became mayor, San Francisco actually had a UBI, of $395 a month. He replaced it with a program called “Care not cash.” From a casual observer’s standpoint, that hasn’t done anything to get people off the street. But, I’m sure, the people holding the purse strings are getting a nice song and dance.
Click my profile picture below to read the whole series. The photo at the top was taken on our walk this morning.
And on the lighter side, here’s the leader of Japan, in a mask.
Danny Kennedy, known by some as Mark Twain, has been making some lovely music during the lockdown. Unfortunately, they’re not public.
