20200530 - Corona Virus Part 11

Welcome to another installment from our tin can by the sea. Wendy and I are doing well amid the self-isolation that is COVID-19. We are still healthy, though the aches and pains seem to be a bit more chronic now that we're not getting around as much. Most of our meals are Wendy specials or redo's of something we got as take-out from a local restaurant. One of our favorites so far is from Einstein Bagels: the egg-white, avocado, tomato, and bacon on an onion bagel breakfast. It has been a staple for us so far. We have also switched coffees - well, decaf coffee, at least - to Chock Full of Nuts Midtown Decaf. It is a great tasting coffee - Wendy prefers it to Eight O'clock decafe, which was our "go-to". Florida is opening up a bit more, with hair salons and the like opening up. The picture to the left is from UnaCast's site, where they graded the states (and counties) on social distancing. The basis for their measurement is the GPS reporting from cell phones. Well, our state is failing, which is why we are staying at home even though the governments wish for us to assume life as usual and spend, spend, spend - so they can tax, tax, tax. I do wish that I could resume normal life, since my daughter and her son are over on the space coast about to watch the SpaceX launch this afternoon. I would love to be able to give them a hug. Then the "buts" - in my sixties, heart disease, COPD, MS, etc., and I realize that I need to be very careful. I could easily become a quotable statistic on some guy's blog.

Cases

Deaths

On to the numbers, then - Worldwide: 6,086,344 cases (+13.8%) with 368,462 deaths (+8.1%); USA: 1,802,180 cases (+9.3%) with 104,786 deaths (+7.2%); Florida: 55,424 cases (+10.6%) with 2,447 deaths (+11.7%); Pinellas county: 1,238 cases (+10.9%) with 82 deaths (+12.3%). The percentages in parentheses are the increases since last week's report. In the US, the number of daily cases and the number of daily deaths are decreasing.  I'll break out a bit of process control geek-speak, it is a dampened response with a critically dampened harmonic. The cycle of the critically dampened harmonic is weekly with the peak occurring on Fridays for the daily number of cases and Tuesdays for the daily number of deaths. I'm not sure why those days, but I'm interested in the overall dampened response. Using the US numbers, both of these charts appear to be asymptotic - they are going to level off. It's hard to determine if the inflection point - where the overall curve begins leveling - has occurred yet or not. I may deconstruct and reconstitute this data, removing the weekly variation. It'll be a project for next week. 

Dr. Mike Ryan of the World Health Organization, put forward this past week that there is the possibility that even with a vaccine, the Sars-CoV-2 virus may never go away. It may become endemic - like the common cold viruses, measles, HIV, and the flu. This floored me. Big Pharma wins. Treatments rather than cures. That would mean that I would need encounter clothing anytime I came in contact with people. That would nix dinners and get togethers. I had a dream back in February, when the isolation began, about me dying in an isolation room in a hospital. There was a window that I could see people - colored images of them - peering through the glass. I had a a ventilator on and I so much wanted to touch my wife and say goodbye. And then I woke with a start! This world that Dr. Ryan is eluding to would be worse than that! I could be with people, but at a distance. For.ever. While paying Big Pharma a fee so I don't die. 

On to the economy - gas is holding at $1.85/gal at the local 7/11. The DJIA was flat, starting Monday morning at 25324 and ending Friday afternoon at 25366. Some of the headlines from the past week involve ventilators that were obtained from a sanctioned company in Russia that don't work and China is ceasing the experiment with Hong Kong. An additional two million Americans filed for unemployment, bringing the total to about 40 million unemployed since the beginning of March. 

The President was the unhappy recipient of this piece of twitter decoration. Posts that he made were deemed false and misleading regarding mail-in ballots, so the folks at twitter put this on his posts. If you click on it on the actual post, it takes you to a website with facts regarding mail-in ballots. This sent him into a tirade to have congress remove section 230 of the FCC Communication Decency Act. As a follow up, after the riots and mayhem that were caused because of the death of George Floyd, our President posted a tweet that was removed, and then it reappeared with one of these.

What happened to George Floyd was murder, in my opinion. Derek Chauvin killed him. The other three officers are also guilty of murder. They did not help, and let him die. There will be a courtroom trial at some point, but it will not eradicate this. This problem is pervasive - is is bigotry and racism at every level. It is a court system that exonerates minority lives lost at the hands of the state. The principal characters are the District Attorneys. They may be elected or appointed. Even if elected, the campaign is largely a beauty contest with most voters not even looking behind the names or pictures on the ballot. That's where I take ownership. I have only begun voting recently, and I look into the character of the people I'm electing. Granted, I use the media, but I do use several sources. For the hundreds of others like George Floyd, I have let them down. Should I join the rioting anarchists that have been bused in by special interest to leave a mark on the city of Minneapolis? No. What then Officer Chauvin did was wrong and what these mercenary rioters are doing is just as wrong. A man dies, so that gives you the right to commit arson and grand theft? On people that weren't involved? And to top it off, the residents of the neighborhood came out the next morning with brooms, dustpans, and bags, and cleaned up the filth left from the paid thugs. I don't understand the whys, but I will not forgive the hows. By ignoring these atrocities, we are condoning them.

Now have you ever seen the white teeth gleam

While you lie on a cold damp ground

You're taking in the face of a rifle butt

While the wardens hold you down

And you've never seen a friend in years

Oh, it turns your heart to stone

You jump the walls and the dogs run free

And the grave's gonna be your home

- Elton John, Have mercy on the criminal, Don't Shoot me, I'm only the Piano Player, 1973

Exodus 20:13