In comments to NDD’s post, Terry says:

Wisconsin—except for Milwaukee and Madison —basically opened up with no restrictions as a result of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling 4 weeks ago and much to the delight of the late night comics people flocked to taverns without regard of masks or social distancing. I certainly expected to see numbers bump up by now but in fact they have fallen steadily

Cool if true, but, as Warner Wolf said, let’s go to the video tape data:

author calculations from NYT County-level data

I’m seeing a pop in cases about two to three weeks after the ruling, which rather matches Terry’s (and the world’s) initial expectations.

If you look at the time after those two well-predicted spikes, they look as if they might—best case—return to the mid-May, still pre-“reopening” levels. This is most likely because large firms and stores and most non-alcoholics (unlike the gerrymandered abomination that is the lame-duck Wisconsin Supreme Court) are taking a cautious approach to returning people to work and restaurants and shops to full capacity (assuming they still have disposable income).

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Chattahoochee County, Georgia, had a significant increase in cases from a relatively high (ca. 50) base. Fort Benning’s new cases appear to be the source, even as those are not fully reported in the NYT data yet.

Scurry County, Texas, is more typical; a 1200% (not a typo) increase—but from a base of two (2). Curiously, the Snyder, TX, website still lists 33 cases in the county, while the NYT data indicates about seven of those have been removed.

This is independent of the Huntsville, Texas, prison facility with significant issues, which is in Walker County. There have been more than 900 new cases there in the past eight days.

Arkansas has been a microcosm of what not to do, so it’s no surprise that both Jackson and Nevada Counties there are showing huge increases, though from relatively small bases. I can find no online explanation for the growth in either location.

Cache County, Utah, is home to Logan, now showing one of the fastest growth rates in cases—including nearly a ten-fold increase since Memorial Day: “The growth in northern Utah is driven by the increase of cases at the JBS meat packing plant in Hyrum.” I’m going to tell my students next semester that being an omnivorous human, in addition to decreasing your lifespan, creates negative externalities.

The State of Virginia may well be trending in a positive direction, but Greensville County is an exception, with a four-day increase of just under 70%, and more than a 400% increase since Memorial Day. There is a prison facility there, but local authorities say that isn’t the reason for the increase.

As a final note for today, Otero County in New Mexico, is the home of an “immigration detention facility.” Those cases were previously allocated to Otero and Doña Ana counties, have been treated as State only for the past month, but another prison (one authorities admit is one) is still counted as being in the county. Given the data, it seems likely that the NYT source is still counting the ICE black ops site as part of Otero county.

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Shot:

Protecting Your Business From Legal Liability During Reopening
May 15 @ 11:00 am – 12:00 pm

In this brief 30-minute webinar, we will step business owners through the liability concerns when reopening following the COVID-19 shutdown. Bobbi Berkhof will inform entrepreneurs why following local, state, and federal recommendations may help protect the business from lawsuits, potentially stemming from employees and customers.

Chaser:

Or, in table form:

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This is an interesting study.  This link is to the summary.   There is a link there to the full study.   600 people with active disease of over 2 weeks completed a survey to find out just what people are experiencing with the illness.  I find the following most interesting:

● Early testing is crucial, and questions remain around test accuracy: Despite all respondents showing COVID-19 symptoms, 47.8% were either denied testing or not tested for another reason. The main difference between respondents who tested positive and those who tested negative was how early in their illness they were tested (on average day 10 for those testing positive, and day 16 for those testing negative).

Furthermore, the only difference in symptoms between these groups is that those who tested positive reported loss of smell and loss of taste more often, even when controlling for testing time.

It suggests that the test being used is testing for what ever caused the loss of smell/taste. But, if that is not you, you test negative.  It also appears that the longer you are into the disease, the less likely you will test positive.

Both of those combined suggest the need to test for a different marker of the virus as what is being tested for does not react the same in too many cases and may even pass away thus no longer being present.

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I have had this re-posted today because I believe it is as relevant today as when I wrote it in May, 2009.  My hope is that this event we are living moves enough new people to realize the society we built is not sustainable.  My hope is that one of the basic questions I was trying to answer in a more completely when I started blogging at AB is answered in a manner such that the nation and ultimately humanity becomes more inclusive: Why do we have an economy?  I will not accept the answer: To make money.

I believe today, people are discovering the rat race they have voted themselves into. I hope enough people will come to understand that just making money is not life sustaining.

My concern is that the use of the “war” analogy will lead us to policy which implies an end point…a win.  We are not at war.  You can not have a war with nature.  Nature has no ideology to fight against.  Nature just is.  It’s just doing.  It has no persona.  It has no intent.  It just reacts based on what has come in the past.  It’s not logical, it’s not irrational.  There is no end.  There is no win.  There will be another virus.  If we are lucky, only 1 virus at a time.  Yes, as we saw the past 2 days, weather events still exist.  Nature can do more than one thing at a time.

We are in the first nationwide crisis since the Depression.  WW2 was not a crisis in this nation.  The biggest difference between the Depression and now is that man created the Depression which had a natural event imposed on top of it (the Dust Bowl).   That natural event only effected a part of the nation.  Today we have a depression being imposed on us by nature.  The entire nation.  The Depression could and was undone by its creator.  This current developing one can not be undone by the creator: nature.  It can be argued that our policies pushed nature (pollution, climate change) and thus we created the disaster leading one to believe we can undo it.  Not really.  Not in the sense of simply undoing the policies that set up the environment such that nature has brought us to this point.  Nature only reacts.  It just does.  There is no simple solution as with the Depression.  It only required some policy changes addressing only the economy.

We can’t win.  We can only live.   Hopefully with a more inclusive thought process and thus society.

***************************************************************************************************************************************

Rat Race and the American Dream

There were some good responses to the first posting that I agreed with. They were, could we say, jumping the gun as to how I want to proceed, however. So, with this post I want to continue with looking at phrases/concepts/thoughts that are a part of, or were a part of any discussion regarding “rich”.

Have you missed the phrase: Rat Race?
Wonder why we ask: Is the American Dream dead?
Could it be that in an economy where “rich” is not or will not be defined, the race is won and the dream obtained? After all, we’re all rich now! Sodahead specifically asked the question.

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This is the complete letter Trump sent to Senator Schumer on April 2nd.   It is beyond embarrassing.

Senator Charles E. Schumer
United States Senator
Washington, D.C.  20515

Dear Senator Schumer:

Thank you for your Democrat public relations letter and incorrect sound bites, which are wrong in every way.

1. As you are aware, Vice President Pence is in charge of the Task Force. By almost all accounts, he has done a spectacular job.
2. The Defense Production Act (DPA) has been consistently used by my team and me for the purchase of billions of dollars’ worth of equipment, medical supplies, ventilators, and other related items. It has been powerful leverage, so powerful that companies generally do whatever we are asking, without even a formal notice.  They know something is coming, and that’s all they need to know.
3. A “senior military officer” is in charge of purchasing, distributing, etc. His name is Rear Admiral John Polowczyk.  He is working 24 hours a day, and is highly respected by everyone.  If you remember, my team gave you this information, but for public relations purposes, you choose to ignore it.
4. We have given New York many things, including hospitals, medical centers, medical supplies, record numbers of ventilators, and more. You should have had New York much better prepared than you did, and as Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx said yesterday, New York was very late in its fight against the virus.  As you are aware, the Federal Government is merely a back-up for state governments.  Unfortunately, your state needed far more of a back-up than most others.

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I have been wondering for a while, when would the media start pointing out that it’s no longer Trump. It is the Republican party. Well, finally.

She asked THE question that needed to be asked: How Long are we going to let him go?  Not that his party would hear her.  Even Joe is cringing at hearing it.  Too Bad Joe!

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