This week has been a rough one for me at work. I've been assigned some tasks that involve requirement gathering. It would be great if the folks that had the info were very forthcoming with it, but they aren't, so it's like pulling teeth. I am also realizing that PwC is nice, but it's not my dream. They have a breadth of products, covering a breadth of dependencies, with a breadth of tech debt. The best that I can do is to try and help when I can and to be an advocate for change. I have a meeting coming up with our CIO - it's a lunch, actually - maybe I can bring up some of this tech debt and see if it gains any traction with him.
Our state's "lockdown" continues. Today is day 83 since the first case of COVID-19 in Washington state on January 19, 2020. I wear a mask when I go out in public for any length of time, but it doesn't seem that most people do. I went to Publix the other day, and I think only a handful of the patrons had masks on. I do applaud the store management, because nearly every store employee was masked. It also seems that traffic is picking up a bit - I think the population is tired of being cooped up, so they are starting to circulate again. It's bad timing for that. Though the rate of change for COVID-19 cases and deaths is slowing, it is still positive, and it will become more positive if folks don't mind their Ps and Qs about social distancing. According to some calculations, today is the peak day for hospital needs and the death rate from COVID-19 here in the US. This is adding to the laissez-faire position being taken by many US residents. They think that it's over and we won, and they couldn't be more wrong. If the estimates by the statisticians are correct, we are in the middle of it. It will take over two months to get out of this - maybe by 4th of July. That's assuming that it doesn't rekindle.
And that brings me to the numbers. Worldwide: 1,710,135 cases with 103,506 deaths. US: 502,876 with 18,747 deaths. Florida: 17,968 cases with 419 deaths. The day-over-day percentage changes for the US has been shallowing - today's total number of cases is an increase of only 7% over yesterday, and the number of deaths has increased 12% over yesterday. The decade factor, the number of days for a factor of ten increase, is out to 18 days. Generally, these numbers are a very low percentage of the US population. In terms of the overall US population, the number of cases represents 0.15% of the population and the number of deaths represent 0.03% of the population. I think these low proportions are feeding the notion that "everything is fine." I've also realized that, in the US, we are grossly understating the number infected, since the only folks that are being tested are people that can be admitted into an ER. The same goes with the number of deaths - unless the individual was positively ID'ed with COVID-19 before death, then it doesn't even enter into the cause of death on the death certificate. In fact, the CDC guidance asks the coroners to weigh all of the past history before assigning a cause of death. I think this is a push to keep the published numbers low, as a political front in a presidential election year. That may be a conspiracy theory, but who knows?
In absolute values, the case count for the US, and likewise the death count, is huge, But as I tumble these statistics around, I'm much more aghast at the values from Europe. As a comparison, the percentage of the number of deaths to the number of cases for the US is 3.73%. In Italy, that same number is 12.77%. The UK is 12.31%; France - 10.57%; Spain 10.16%. In a word: wow.
Economically, our gas is selling for $1.73/gal and the DJIA increased over the week from 23690 to 23716. I would call that "steady", but a gain is a gain. Over 16 million have filed for unemployment since March 1st. Going to the grocery store was an eye opener - there was more selection in the dog food aisle than there was in the canned vegetable aisle. Wen wanted some onion bagels, but she had to settle for me bringing home two packages of plain bagels, because there were only a total of four packs of bagels on the shelf. Back when the toilet paper hoarding began, we were told that there is nothing wrong with the supply chain and that everything would still be stocked up. We're a month into this, and, frankly, I ain't seeing it.
No reason to get excitedWithout COVID-19, Wen and I would be finishing our packing right now. We were to take a cruise at noon today, but that was derailed and slated for another day. Even though it's no where near our anniversary, "Happy 20th Anniversary, cutie!"
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But, uh, but you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin' falsely now
The hour's getting late, hey...
- Bob Dylan, "All along the watchtower", John Wesley Harding, 1967
And so castles, made of sand,I have one more story about me in Publix. While I was there, masked with my home-made froggy mask, I saw a woman with a hijab - the face covering typically used by Muslim women. During the last 20 years, there has been considerable diatribe about women wearing a hijab. In a second, that entire argument became crystal clear to me. It was bigotry, plain and simple. This woman and I shared the same concept - a facemask - and hers was as functional as mine. The fact that the society in the US questioned the use of a hijab is bigotry, plain and simple.
Fall in the sea, eventually.
- Jimi Hendrix, "Castles made of sand", Axis: Bold as Love, 1967
