Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Self-isolation Day 126.

Last night I went to bed at 10:30, took a while to fall asleep, got up twice during the night, woke up at 6am and got up at 7am.

Last night I played 4 games on Chess.com, winning 1 and losing 3. My new rating is 1294.

Teresa called the doorman and she says we can go out for exercise today.

Teresa left for her walk about 9am and returned at 10.

I watched the first 45 minutes of the Today show then left for mine. My route is I walk across the street, turn right, then keep left until I return to the apt. I guesstimate it was about 50 minutes. They restriped the complex roadway and I see a lot of restriping being done on the side streets.

Today my cellphone seems to be back to normal. My best guess is Claro had some problem that kept sending notifications to my cellphone which taxed my operating system.

While Teresa was taking a nap I trimmed by beard, moustache and hair. She says it turned out pretty good although of course she wanted it shorter.

I beat Teresa in parcheesi today 5 games to 2.

At 10pm I heard some fireworks toward the south. Just as we were getting ready to bed I noticed it was raining.

 

President Donald Trump held his first press briefing focused on the coronavirus crisis in nearly three months on Tuesday -- by himself -- without any experts from the White House task force.

"Today, I want to provide an update on our response to the China virus, and what my administration is doing to get the outbreak in the Sunbelt under control. Seems largely in Sunbelt but could be spreading," Trump said to open the briefing amid polls showing Americans sharply disapproving of how he's handled the crisis.

Comparing the U.S. to the rest of the world, he downplayed the impact of the pandemic on Americans by emphasizing it's a global problem, but he also made a rare acknowledgment of bad news ahead.

"It will probably unfortunately get worse before it gets better. Something I don't like saying about things but that's the way it is. It's the way -- it's what we have. You look over the world. It's all over the world. And it tends to do that," he said.

(What planet has he been living on the past few months?)

 

The United States has ordered China to close its consulate general in Houston "in order to protect American intellectual property and American's private information," State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said Wednesday.

 

If people washed their hands regularly, wore masks, and kept their social distance from each other, these three simple behaviors could stop most all of the Covid-19 pandemic, even without a vaccine or additional treatments, according to a new study.

The study, published Tuesday in the journal PLoS Medicine, created a new model to look at the spread of the disease and prevention efforts that could help stop it.

 

Longtime conservative commentator George Will said Monday he’ll cast his vote for presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in order to help defeat President Donald Trump at the ballot box.

It will likely be the first time that he has ever voted for a Democrat, Will told USA Today’s Susan Page during a conversation for The Aspen Institute.

“I’m a big believer in parties, in party strength and party tickets. Not this year,” said Will, who quit the GOP in June 2016 in protest of Trump’s then-imminent nomination as the Republican presidential candidate.

 

The most revealing answer from Donald Trump’s Sunday interview with Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace came in response not to the toughest question posed by Wallace, but to the easiest.

At the conclusion of the interview, Wallace asked Trump how he will regard his years as president.

“I think I was very unfairly treated,” Trump responded. “From before I even won, I was under investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal investigation.”

 

After six months of complete disaster in the United States, President Donald Trump announced that he was finally beginning to develop a strategy.

“We are in the process of developing a strategy that’s going to be very, very powerful,” Trump announced at his first coronavirus task force briefing that didn’t have any members of the coronavirus task force in attendance.

This would be funny if it wasn’t so sad!

 

CNN opinion by S.E. Cupp: In presidential politics, it's hard to measure greatness. There is a general sense of the size of a president measured alongside his accomplishments and set in the context of his challenges. We have a general sense that Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were great, not only in temperament and tone but in rising to the considerable circumstances in which they governed.

It is much, much easier to measure weakness, smallness and failure. And in the case of President Donald Trump, we can tragically measure his failure in American lives lost during this pandemic. The cost of Trump's pathological insecurity, his overweening ego and his rank incompetence is a failure to provide the national leadership that could have prevented at least some of the roughly 140,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US.

That's because it took that many people — and months of talk — for the President to finally, publicly and unequivocally promote the lifesaving practice of wearing a mask in public places.

 

The US has 3,784,924 ð 3,841,982 ð 3,905,319 coronavirus cases with 140,300+ ð 140,800+  ð 141,800+ deaths.

Per Medellin Guru, as of this afternoon Colombia has a total of 197,278 ð 204,005 ð 211,038 cases with 7,166 deaths.  Medellin has 8,459 ð 9,169  ð 10,022 cases, an increase of 1,052 from July 20^th to July 21^st. Envigado has a total of 518 cases, an increase of 63 from July 20^th to July 21^st. Cases here are still increasing.

 

Joke of the day

While riding my Harley, I swerved to avoid hitting a deer, lost control and landed in a ditch, severely banging my head.  

Dazed and confused I crawled out of the ditch to the edge of the road when a shiny new convertible pulled up with a very beautiful woman who asked, "Are you okay?"  

As I looked up, I noticed she was wearing a low cut blouse with cleavage to die for...  

"I'm okay I think," I replied as I pulled myself up to the side of the car to get a closer look.  

She said, “Get in and I’ll take you home so I can clean and bandage that nasty scrape on your head.”  

"That's nice of you," I answered, "but I don't think my wife will like me doing that!"  

"Oh, come now, I’m a nurse," she insisted. "I need to see if you have any more scrapes and then treat them properly." 

Well, she was really pretty and very persuasive. Being sort of shaken and weak, I agreed, but repeated, "I'm sure my wife won't like this."  

We arrived at her place which was just few miles away and, after a couple of cold beers and the bandaging, I thanked her and said, "I feel a lot better but I know my wife is going to be really upset so I'd better go now."  

"Don't be silly!" she said with a smile. "Stay for a while. She won't know anything. By the way, where is she?"  

"Still in the ditch with the Harley, I guess."