Monday, June 1, 2020

Self-isolation Day 76.


Last night I went to bed at 10:30, fell asleep quickly, got up twice during the night, again at 6:20 but fell back asleep quickly finally waking/getting up at 8am.


The mayor of Medellin was on the morning news: “We are beginning to reopen the shopping centers. The use of a facemask is still mandatory. We are not going to overwhelm our health care workers but that requires the proper action of every citizen.”



In cities across America on Sunday, people awoke to see shattered glass, charred vehicles, bruised bodies and graffiti-tagged buildings. Demonstrators gathered again in peaceful daytime protest of racial injustice. By evening, thousands had converged again in front of the White House, where people had rioted and set fires the night before. President Trump stayed safely ensconced inside and had nothing to say, besides tweeting fuel on the fire.



It was a tense 6th night of protests with curfews in dozens of cities. After chastising everyone but himself, Trump then Fled to a Bunker as Protests Raged Outside White House. The White House turned off the external lights Sunday night as protests raged nearby “as if he ran out of Snickers on Halloween”.



Glenn corrected me on something. He pointed out that some of Envigado’s rules are different from Medellin’s. While my pico y cedula days for going to the bank, pharmacy or the doctor are Tu/Th/Sat, my days to exercise are M/W/F and only from 9am to 9:30.



Teresa and I tied today in parcheesi, 4-4.

Per Time: “In its latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers at the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) say that there were limited instances of COVID-19 in the U.S. during most of January, and that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease, didn’t start to spread widely until the end of the month and into February.

These findings suggest that an aggressive testing and detection program might have mitigated some of the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 and allowed public health officials to contain the infection more reliably. In a telebriefing with reporters, however, CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield said that the number of cases of COVID-19 until late January was so low, that finding them, even if testing had been more widespread, would be like “looking for a needle in a haystack.” Redfield says that existing systems for picking up respiratory diseases “really did have eyeballs on this outbreak.”

The U.S. government initially screened passengers arriving from infection hot spots in China in mid-January before stopping arrivals from the country altogether several weeks later. But COVID-19 tests developed by the CDC were also delayed because of early contamination issues, which meant that public health officials were behind in identifying those who were infected.”

President Donald Trump told governors and mayors on a conference call that they must begin arresting protesters and putting them in jail for 10 years to discourage protests. He blasted them as “weak” for refusing to do so already and not bringing in the national guard to quell protestors. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois Governor Pritzker immediately told Trump he is “extraordinarily concerned about the rhetoric that’s been used by him.

“It’s been inflammatory, and it’s not OK for that officer to choke George Floyd to death but we have to call for calm,” Pritzker told the president. “We have to have police reform called for. We’ve called out our National Guard and our State Police but the rhetoric that’s coming out of the White House is making it worse. And I need to say that people are feeling real pain out there. And we’ve got to have national leadership in calling for calm and making sure that we’re addressing the concerns of the legitimate peaceful protestors. That will help us to bring order.”

A new report from the well-respected medical journal The Lancet suggests that the coronavirus may be a blood vessel disease as well as a respiratory infection. 

The coronavirus pandemic’s pace is quickening worldwide, as the tally on some days reaches more than 100,000 new cases, after the pathogen found greater footholds in Latin America and the Gulf states.

Today we reached a high of 81-82 degrees with a little rain just before 6pm.

Per the evening news, 52 Medellin shopping centers are opening their doors.

In a dramatic escalation of a national crisis, National Guard troops were deployed near the White House Monday evening hours after President Donald Trump said he wanted a military show of force against violent protests gripping the country.

Shortly after, Trump came to the White House Rose Garden to call himself the "law and order" president, saying "domestic terrorism" was to blame for the unrest.

"As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement officers to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism, assaults, and the wanton destruction of property," he said. "We will end it now."

He called on governors to use their National Guard military police units to "dominate the streets" and said he would deploy the active duty military if governors failed to use the National Guard more forcefully.

He said he may invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act, which permits a president to deploy military inside the U.S. to deal with civil disorder.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner on Monday declared the death of George Floyd a homicide, saying he died of "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual restraint, and neck compression," according to a Minneapolis television station.

The updated report from the examiner states that Floyd died from a loss of blood flow due to compression on his neck while being restrained by Minneapolis police, local Fox television affiliate Fox 9 reported.

The coronavirus likely will sap about $7.9 trillion of economic activity over the next decade-plus, even with all of the rescue funding being poured in to offset the pandemic's impact, according to a government estimate Monday.

Through fiscal 2030, the virus will reduce real economic output — nominal GDP adjusted for inflation — by 3% from initial economic estimates in January before the pandemic hit, the Congressional Budget Office said.

Another Trump replay from March 2^nd: Trump attends a campaign rally in Charlotte, NC.  “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, on corona?”

The US has 1,777,633 ð 1,789,246 ð 1,817,454 coronavirus cases with 103,769 ð 104,105 ð 104,833 deaths.


Per Medellin Guru, as of this afternoon Colombia has a total of 28,236 ð 29,383  ð 30,493 cases with 969 deaths.  Medellin has 516 ð 533 ð 556 cases, an increase of 23 from May 31^st to June 1^st. Looking at the 6-day averages Colombia’s curve is now beginning to flatten. We'll see if that continues.



Joke of the day

As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were to break wind in the sound chamber, he would never hear the end of it.