20200829 - Corona Virus Part 24 - BLM Part 13

Howdy and greetings from our little tin can by the sea. Wendy and I have been doing well, and my big toe is healing nicely from my near fall last week. We will have a few doctor visits over the next couple of weeks. We put them off for a bit due to the surge in COVID-19 cases in our area. Not that things are that very much better right now, but we don't want to risk our health by missing the monitoring phase and the doc's input. Work isn't going so well for me. I'm not sure how I can fix it, but my co-workers have become rude. There's no asking - just telling. I think that I'll talk with HR and see if I can relocate within the business. I also had to drop Wendy from my medical insurance this past week, which has me on edge. The business put out a directive that if an employee or an employee's spouse had medicare part D, the prescription insurance, then they could not be enrolled in United Health Care coverage. Wen has a medicare advantage plan, and it does cover pharmacy, so she'll have to use that as primary come Tuesday. I think this is a cost saving step, but it makes me worry. 

In Japan, Shinzo Abe has resigned. He has been prime minister since 2012, a record stretch. I lived in Japan for three years, and I have witnessed retirements and resignations there. I'm sure that the country will celebrate his departure while welcoming a new prime minister. They have a way of doing this that softens the edges of the transition of power. Sorry, I digress - Shinzo Abe! Kompai! 🥂

The wildfires in California threatened the Lick Observatory, though fire crews held them from causing any harm. The northern California wildfires are rampant this year, which can be seen in the map to the left. The California fires have burned 1,660,332 acres so far this year, making this the second-worst wildfire season ever. During this past week, hurricanes Marco and Laura made landfall in Louisiana. Marco came in as a Category 1, and Laura trumped that as a Category 4. Only fourteen deaths have been attributed to Laura - any single loss of life is one too many, but this could have had hurricane Katrina numbers associated with it had the storm tracked a bit further east. Both Laura and Marco are the earliest 'L' and 'M' named storms on record for the Atlantic hurricane season. We haven't reached "peak" yet, which occurs on September 10th, marking the half-way point of the Atlantic hurricane season. This season may rival 2005, when there were 26 named storms.

Kenosha, Wisconsin. That's also a location from my past. I went to Electronics Technician 'A' school in Great Lakes, Illinois, which is just south of the Wisconsin border. We would make trips across the border to take the younger squids drinking - Wisconsin's legal age for alcohol was 18 at that time. There was a bar named "Rocket North" that we, and a lot of northern Illinois, frequented. 

This time, Kenosha's name is not being remembered - it is being drug through the mud due to two shootings. The first involved a policemen delivering seven rounds into a human being at point blank range while the victim's children watched from the back seat of the car. His name is Jacob Blake, and he has survived the ordeal, though he is paralyzed from the waist down. At the hospital, they had him hand-cuffed to the bed. This brought a week of protests to that city. During a protest on Tuesday night, an underage male shot three of the protesters with an AR-15. Two of his victims died. I can't stomach watching either of the videos so I can't offer an opinion on the incidents. I can offer an opinion that the have-gun-will-travel cavalier attitude in the northern mid-west needs to end. Both police and civilians are leading down the road of us against them, which will entail a lot of death - much of it collateral. There was also a gathering of protesters at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, commemorating Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech which was delivered on August 28, 1963. It happened to coincide with the Republican National Convention, and the president decided to accept his second term nomination at the white house - unethical and illegal. In his acceptance speech, he termed the protesters "thugs". 

Cases	Deaths	Tests

Scope	Cases	% Inc.	Deaths	% Inc.
Worldwide	24,942,210	7.7	842,008	4.8
United States	6,097,360	5.1	185,972	3.8
Florida	615,806	3.8	10,962	7.7
Pinellas County	19,740	2.6	645	9.1

I made an error in the numbers last week - I didn't update the number of deaths in Pinellas county. That has been corrected in last week's blog. This week, I'd like to talk about trust. This past week, I have lost my trust in two very necessary government institutions - the cdc and the fda. First, the cdc. I view their responsibility as being the "truth" in the center of the storm. Before you "quid est vertias" me, be cautious of your mindset. Quoting Pontius Pilot doesn't score well with me. Last Monday, the cdc changed their guidance concerning testing. Now, they say that you should only get tested if you are directed by medical personnel to receive a test. As the story begins to unfold, rumors have it that this came from the department of health and human services, which, being political in nature, could have received a prodding from the white house to reduce testing prior to the election. In addition, the us government has ordered almost all of the planned production of at-home test kits from Abbott Laboratories. Large companies do this in order to prevent a smaller company from hitting the market with a new technology. The net effect: the numbers will decline for political gain. Now, the fda, who gave emergency use authorization to COVID-19 blood plasma. The jury is out on this treatment - no one knows if it is useful at all - but the president gave comments terming a "deep state" of blocking corona virus vaccine and treatment tests shortly before the authorization was granted. Directly after the emergency authorization, the white house press secretary announced it as a "milestone achievement". I can tell theater when I see it, and this is the worst kind - people will die because of this. Unfortunately, the fda also delineates what suppliers of drugs are worthy to produce pharmaceuticals for our consumption. What else have they caved on? This doesn't support the notion that the vaccine tests are unbiased, either. I'm not enamored with any of hhs' agencies at this time. The corona virus cases, deaths, and testing numbers have slipped into Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

A gallon of gas is going for $1.95 at the local 7/11 Google tells me. The DJIA is up over the week, starting Monday morning at 28078 and closing on Friday afternoon at 28687. The DJIA and S&P are at or near their pre-COVID-19 levels. The banter in the economic news is wary - many believe that these values are propped from the initial $3 trillion corona virus relief package, and they are waiting for the other shoe to drop, since labor hasn't recovered and if that fails, it will lead to subsequent defaults and foreclosures. Unemployment claims exceeded one million people last week. The fed predicts a better than 25% annualized improvement in GDP for the third quarter. After a 30+ % drop in the second quarter, that still leaves the GDP down, with labor on a slow path to recovery.

In politics, excepting the president and his vice, it is illegal for any member of the executive branch to use their office to raise funds for a political party. This is called the Hatch Act (USC Title 5, Subchapter III).

Especially people who care about strangers

Who care about evil and social injustice

Do you only care about being proud

How about I need a friend, I need a friend

- Galt MacDermot, James Rado, and Gerome Ragni, Easy to be hard, Hair, 1969