Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Self-isolation Day 70.


Last night I went to bed at 10:30, fell asleep quickly, got up once at 4am, couldn’t get back to sleep, gave up and got up at 6am.

Today, the US is putting up a 'not welcome' sign for foreign travelers from Brazil. (You mean up until now we’ve been letting foreigners still enter the country? I hope they are at least quarantining on entering.)

In the US the death toll from the coronavirus is nearing 100,000. And all 50 states have started easing restrictions. Some have opened small businesses like hair salons and barbershops. And others are expected to do so this week. Florida, New Jersey, and California have re-opened their beaches. New York saw less than 100 deaths per day for the first time since March.



Yesterday, the World Health Organization warned that countries could see a spike in the number of COVID-19 infections if they ease restrictions too soon. Unlike a second wave that may take months to happen, the WHO said a second peak could be "immediate" in countries where cases are on the decline. And reminded the world that we're still in the middle of the first wave of the coronavirus outbreak.



Last week, Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee claimed that black voters who are torn between electing him and President Trump "ain't black" on a morning radio show. He apologized hours later, saying he shouldn't have been so "cavalier." Hmm, just wondering when was the last time Trump apologized for something. Like, never?



I finished season 2 of The 100.


Finally! Today I beat Teresa in parcheesi 6-0 but midway through my streak she announced she wanted to change the rules. Instead of having the option to capture your opponent’s piece and send it back to start, she wanted to make it mandatory. I told her we’ve already played 150 games and now she wants to change the rules? She informed me that that’s the way they play in Colombia. I told her not to worry because I won’t be playing parcheesi with anyone else so I refused the change.



Twenty U.S. states reported an increase in new cases of COVID-19 for the week ended May 24, up from 13 states in the prior week, as the death toll from the novel coronavirus approaches 100,000.

In his inaugural address Jan. 20, 2017, President Donald Trump painted an unrecognizably dark picture of our country culminating with the bizarre declaration, "This American carnage stops right here and stops right now."

Just over three years later, almost 100,000 people in the United States have died from the coronavirus outbreak and almost 39 million have had to file for unemployment, all on Trump's watch. Trump's incompetence and failure of leadership have ushered in an unprecedented public health crisis that continues to threaten the lives and livelihoods of countless Americans and has disproportionately impacted vulnerable communities.

On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump tweeted:

"There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!"

When President Trump took office in 2017, his team stopped work on new federal regulations that would have forced the health care industry to prepare for an airborne infectious disease pandemic such as COVID-19. That decision is documented in federal records reviewed by NPR. "If that rule had gone into effect, then every hospital, every nursing home would essentially have to have a plan where they made sure they had enough respirators and they were prepared for this sort of pandemic," said David Michaels, who was head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration until January 2017.

Trump has repeatedly blamed former President Barack Obama for his own administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. “The last administration left us nothing,” Trump said last month.

But the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found that Trump’s own budget documents show the opposite ― exposing what it called “a lie of colossal Trumpian proportions.”

The newspaper’s editorial board said the Trump administration told Congress that the Obama administration left it with everything needed for a pandemic ― and sought big budget cuts from the programs as a result.

Trump’s 2020 budget asked Congress to cut the pandemic preparedness budget by $102.9 million, part of $595.5 million in requested cuts to public health preparedness and response outlay.

“Obama left office with an unblemished record of building up the nation’s pandemic preparedness,” the newspaper said. “Trump systematically sought to dismantle it.” 

Trump claimed on Tuesday that he did a good job on the coronavirus with nearly 100,000 dead, almost 2 million sick, and the economy in tatters. “For all the political hacks out there, if I hadn’t done my job well & early, we would have lost 1 ½ to 2 Million people, as opposed to the 100,000 plus that looks like will be the number. That’s 15 to 20 times more than we will lost. I shut down entry from China very early!”

During an event announcing limits on Medicare copays for insulin, Donald Trump went off script and bizarrely wondered whether he should be taking insulin, presumably as a preventive measure to ward off diabetes. Of course, it doesn't actually work that way. "I don't use insulin," Trump said. "Should I be? Huh. I never thought about it."

Vice-president Mike Pense late April: "I truly do believe that if we all continue to do that kind of social distancing and other guidance broadly from federal and state officials, that we're going to put this coronavirus in the past," Pence said on Geraldo Rivera's radio show Friday. "I believe by early June we're going to see our nation largely past this epidemic.... I think honestly, if you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us," he added.



National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said the Trump administration was weighing offering a "back to work" cash bonus to encourage unemployed Americans to return to their old posts or seek out new ones.



And a Trump replay from February 25^th: “CDC and my administration are doing a GREAT job of handling coronavirus.”  “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.  They have studied it.  They know very much.  In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”

The US has 1,640,913 ð 1,669,745 ð 1,685,821 coronavirus cases with 97,417 ð 98,184 ð 98,826 deaths.


Per Medellin Guru, as of this afternoon Colombia has a total of 21,175 ð 21,981 ð 23,003 cases with 776 deaths.  Medellin has 385 ð 429 ð 447 cases, an increase of 18 from May 23^rd to 25^th. Looking at the 6-day averages Colombia’s curve is increasing, mainly in areas outside of the usual 7 trouble areas.


Joke of the day

They should announce a sequel to Groundhog Day and then just rerelease the original.