Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Self-isolation Day 71.


Last night I was so tired I barely made it to 10pm before going to bed. Being 1 sleeping pill short of my next refill, I skipped taking one last night. I fell asleep quickly, got up once during the night woke up at 4:30 (6 ½ hours sleep in case you need help with the math, lol), and got up at 5am.



At 7:30 I went back to bed and slept until 9am. Now I feel rested enough to make it through the day.

Twitter added a disclaimer to a Trump rant claiming that mail-in voting would be “substantially fraudulent.” Users who click the disclaimer are sent to a page fact-checking Trump’s claim.

On Tuesday night, Trump responded by charging, on Twitter, that Twitter was intervening in the presidential election by not allowing him to lie. “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!” Trump wrote. On Wednesday morning, he went a step further, threatening to shut down social media companies that “totally silence conservative voices.” “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen,” Trump wrote.

Where are the First Amendment Rights supporters when you need them?



The feds announced Tuesday that they’d arrested two men for running separate schemes in which they attempted to sell personal protective gear that typically cost $1.27 a pop for as much as $25 a mask.

President Donald Trump was slammed by the editorial board of the conservative Wall Street Journal on Tuesday evening.

“Donald Trump sometimes traffics in conspiracy theories - recall his innuendo in 2016 about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination - but his latest accusation against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is ugly even for him,” the newspaper noted. “Mr. Trump has been tweeting the suggestion that Mr. Scarborough might have had something to do with the death in 2001 of a young woman who worked in his Florida office when Mr. Scarborough was a GOP Congressman.”

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley: Trump has failed to justify the ouster of watchdogs and suggested the vague rationale would fuel speculation that "political" motivations are at play. 

A growing chorus of Republicans are pushing back against President Trump’s suggestion that wearing cloth masks to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus is a sign of personal weakness or political correctness.

They include governors seeking to prevent a rebound in coronavirus cases and federal lawmakers who face tough reelection fights this fall, as national polling shows lopsided support for wearing masks in public.

“Wearing a face covering is not about politics — it’s about helping other people,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said Tuesday in a plea over Twitter, echoing comments by North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R) last week. “This is one time when we truly are all in this together.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) posted a photograph on Instagram of himself in a mask Tuesday night. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who faces a tough reelection fight, has added “#wearyourmask” to his Twitter handle, after photographing himself earlier the month wearing a mask in an airport as part of an appeal for the public to “remain vigilant.” Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), a member of the Republican leadership who is running for reelection this year, shared a photo of himself in a mask Monday, asking others to adopt the practice.



Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) declared that “a significant cause of the shortages was China’s efforts to cause our PPE shortage.” He asked about allegations “that the Chinese government hid the severity of the pandemic,” and thereby caused “a delay in the administration’s ability to respond.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) replied that the China pivot “is fascinating to me because I count at least 37 different statements by President Trump in January, February, March and April praising the Chinese government and defending the performance of General Xi.”



It’s been 3 weeks since my last haircut so I gave myself another little haircut and beard trim. Using #3 on my mustache and beard, #4 in back, #6 on the short side, and #8 on the long side.



We had a little rain in the late afternoon but it didn’t last long.

Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano on Wednesday shot down President Donald Trump’s threat to regulate Twitter after the company fact checked one of his tweets.

Twitter’s tagging of President Donald Trump’s claims about write-in voting are ‘absolutely protected’ under the First Amendment, says Harvard constitutional-law expert Laurence Tribe. It's ‘totally absurd and legally illiterate’.

Shortly after Trump claimed on Twitter he would "strongly regulate" or "close down" social media platforms that are allegedly silencing "conservative voices," Pompeo sent out a tweet saying the U.S. "will not tolerate" government-imposed censorship or shutdowns.



The first confirmed coronavirus infections in Europe and the United States, discovered in January, did not ignite the epidemics that followed, according to a close analysis of hundreds of viral genomes. Instead, the outbreaks plaguing much of the West began weeks later.


A second wave of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States "could happen" but is "not inevitable," White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci.




Per the Colombian evening news, adults over 70 years of age are now isolated until August 31^st. We are allowed to go out for 30 minutes, 3 times a week. I’m going to start walking.



I beat Teresa in parcheesi again today 6-0.


Scientists have found evidence that the coronavirus is less deadly than it first appeared — for Americans infected with the coronavirus, the chance of dying appears to be less than 1 in 100.


Moderna (MRNA) prodded a biotech sell-off Wednesday as investors digested a report regarding side effects tied to the company's experimental coronavirus vaccine.

There’s a good chance the coronavirus will never go away. Even after a vaccine is discovered and deployed, the coronavirus will likely remain for decades to come, circulating among the world’s population. Experts call such diseases endemic — stubbornly resisting efforts to stamp them out. Think measles, HIV, chickenpox.

And a Trump replay from February 26^th: Congress, recognizing the coming threat, offered to give the administration $6 billion more than Trump asked for in order to prepare for the virus. Trump mocked Congress in a White House briefing, saying “If Congress wants to give us the money so easy - it wasn’t very easy for the wall, but we got that one done. If they want to give us the money, we’ll take the money.”

The US has 1,669,745 ð 1,685,821 ð 1,707,329 coronavirus cases with 98,184 ð 98,826  ð 100,418 deaths.


Per Medellin Guru, as of this afternoon Colombia has a total of 21,981 ð 23,003 ð 24,104 cases with 803 deaths.  Medellin has 429 ð 447  ð  487 cases, an increase of 40 from May 25^th to 27^th. Looking at the 6-day averages, Colombia’s curve is now accelerating.



Joke of the day

This ‘spring forward’ thing would be a lot more popular if we moved the clocks ahead at 2pm on a Monday.