Thursday, July 30, 2020

Quarantine Day 135.

Last night I played 4 games on Chess.com, winning 1 and losing 3. The only excuse I can think of is that I had the black pieces for 3 of the games. My new rating is 1239. The first game was even when I lost on time.

Last night I went to bed at 10:30pm, got up twice during the night, finally waking/getting up at 7am.

I left the apt at 8:15 and by 8:30 I was in a taxi bound for El Tesoro. I arrived at Dr. Rendon’s office by 8:45. He took me closer to 9:30 than my 9am appointment.

We talked a bit about the virus and a point he made – while we can stock up our refrigerators for a month, most Colombians work today to feed themselves tomorrow. Neither of us have any idea when this could end.

He took about an hour to replace my new crown. By then my back was feeling stiff again for lying on my back for an hour. Afterward, I walked around both levels of the mall to get a little exercise and to loosen my back.

Just for the record, it was the upper molar, left side in the back. It cost 1,400,000 pesos and I hope it lasts at least 5 years.

Before I left I bought 2 slices of carrot cake from Starbucks.

I was back at the apt by 11:45.

While posting yesterday’s blog entry I noticed that no one had read my post for last Sunday. Then I saw it was listed as a “draft”. I published it but unfortunately now its out of order. Sigh! Maybe someday I’ll learn how to reorder the days.

 

As coronavirus cases in Florida surge, 51 hospitals in Florida have run out of beds in their intensive care units (ICUs), the wards where patients with the most severe COVID-19 symptoms are treated.

 

President Donald Trump has, for the first time, publicly suggested delaying November’s presidential election—an unprecedented measure which is beyond the powers of the president.

In his latest tweet pushing his entirely unproven pet theory that mail-in ballots somehow make elections more susceptible to voter fraud, Trump wrote that holding the election during the raging pandemic would be dangerous and mulled whether it would be best to “Delay the Election until people can vote properly, securely and safely.”

Despite his posturing, Trump has absolutely no legal power to follow through on the proposal to delay the vote. His incendiary tweet came minutes after the Commerce Department announced the U.S. economy had just suffered its worst quarter on record.

 

Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested that people wear goggles or face shields as an added measure of protection against contracting the coronavirus, according to a report.

“If you have goggles or an eye shield, you should use it,” Fauci, 79, the top US infectious disease expert, told ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton on Wednesday.

When asked if eye protection will become a formal recommendation at some point, he said, “It might, if you really want perfect protection of the mucosal surfaces.”

 

The U.S. economy suffered its worst period ever in the second quarter, with GDP falling a historic 32.9%.

Economists surveyed by Dow Jones were looking for a decline of 34.7%.

Neither the Great Depression nor the Great Recession nor any other slump over the past two centuries have ever caused such a sharp drain on the economy.

 

Coronavirus cases in Texas have risen to more than 418,00, putting the state at a higher case count than New York.

Once the US epicenter of the pandemic, New York now ranks fourth in total case count behind California, Florida and Texas, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Medical teams on the frontlines in Texas said that spikes in the state have taken a toll.

"It's very hard. We're seeing entire families in our communities ravaged by the virus," said Dr. Martin Schwartz, who treats patients in intensive care units. "A lot of deaths inside one single family. It's terrible."

The main hotspot in the state has been the Rio Grande Valley, where hospitals began reaching capacity earlier this month.

 

Donald Trump’s bungling of the coronavirus crisis has led to the “most severe” economic downturn in modern history, according to his hand-picked Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

“The current economic downturn is the most severe in our lifetimes,” Powell said on Wednesday, according to Barron’s. “It will take continued support from both monetary and fiscal policy” to recover.

Despite Trump essentially washing his hands of the virus, Powell said that the economic carnage will not go away until the government adequately deals with the health crisis – something this administration has still failed to do after more than six months.

 

Republicans and allies of President Donald Trump have made the coronavirus pandemic deadlier than it had to be — for example, Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, who tested positive for COVID-19 this week and, according to Politico’s Jake Sherman, repeatedly “berated” staffers for trying to protect themselves by wearing a mask.

 

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” namesake Joe Scarborough implied Thursday that President Trump is somehow profiting off hydroxychloroquine, which the president has hailed as a possible treatment for COVID-19.

“You have the president running around doing fundraisers without a mask in a crowd of people. You have him retweeting woman talking about demons and other bizarre things, mocking masks, talking about hydroxychloroquine which [former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner] Scott Gottlieb and just about every other medical professional says, ‘It does not work on this disease,’” Scarborough said.

“It doesn’t work. I don’t know who’s making money, right, but follow the money,” Scarborough said as his wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski added, “You have to ask that question.”

 

CNBC’s Jim Cramer said President Donald Trump’s Thursday morning tweet that referenced delaying the November election is causing problems for the stock market because it “sows chaos and chaos is bad for the stock market.”

 

A woman in Arizona who posted a video of herself destroying a face-mask display at a Target on social media earlier this month said that her husband had filed for divorce and that she had lost all her clients at her public-relations firm.

 

When it comes to the coronavirus and children, looks may be deceiving.

In a study of children under five who show mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19, those kids were found to contain higher concentrations of the virus compared to older children, teens and adults, according to researchers at a Chicago pediatric hospital and Northwestern University.

 

In the spring, New York City was the coronavirus epicenter of the United States, but now, Sun Belt states are the ones being hit especially hard by the pandemic — including Florida. And the South Florida Sun Sentinel, in an editorial published on July 29, pleads with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to do more to combat the health emergency Floridians are facing.

“With each passing day, COVID-19 continues to careen out of control in Florida,” the Sun Sentinel’s editorial board warns. “A record 216 deaths were reported Wednesday (July 29). That broke the previous record of 191 deaths, reported just Tuesday.”

DeSantis, a far-right ally of President Donald Trump, has drawn widespread criticism for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic — from being much too fast to reopen non-essential businesses in his state to not doing more to encourage Floridians to wear protective face masks. In its editorial, the Sun Sentinel tells DeSantis, “Help us all out. Far better that you require people to wear masks in public than to continue fostering conditions that will force another shutdown. Your refusal to impose a mask order — a requirement now in effect in 32 other states — is out-of-touch with the mainstream. A new Quinnipiac poll found 79% of Floridians support a mask requirement, including 60% of Republicans. If that’s not a mandate, what is?”

 

On Tuesday, July 28, Charlie Kirk — co-founder of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA and a supporter of President Donald Trump — announced on Twitter that the organization’s other co-founder, 80-year-old Republican activist Bill Montgomery, had died of complications from COVID-19. Earlier that day, TPUSA had posted a tweet mocking “leftists” for wearing face masks — and that tweet, according to Business Insider’s Tom Porter, was deleted following Montgomery’s death.

 

White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci sees hopeful signs that the number of coronavirus cases in particularly hard-hit states is finally starting to improve.

The states in question include coronavirus hotspots like California, Florida, Texas, and Arizona.

Fauci warns that these states, however, are not out of the woods yet.

 

Teresa beat me in parcheesi 8 games to 5.

 

The US has 4,356,266 ð 4,435,387 ð 4,499,833 coronavirus cases with 149,500+ ð 151,100+ ð 152,300+ deaths.

Per Medellin Guru, as of this afternoon Colombia has a total of 267,385 ð 276,055 ð 286,020 cases with 9,810 deaths.  Medellin has 14,753 ð 15,417 ð 16,360 17,205 cases, an increase of 845 from July 29^th to 30^th. Envigado has a total of 954 cases, an increase of 72 from July 29^th to 30^th.

 

Joke of the day

An arrogant professor boards a plane and gets a seat beside an old man.

Mid-flight, the professor decides to play a game with the old man and prove he’s intellectually superior, so he turns to him and says: “Hey, do you want to play a little game with me?” The old man looks at him and says: “Depends. What type of game?”

The professor goes on to explain the game: “Taking turns, we’ll ask each other one question at a time. If the other knows the answer, the asker gives him one dollar, and if he doesn’t, he gives one dollar to the asker. Want to play?” The professor grins, knowing his general knowledge is vastly superior.

To his dismay, the old man refuses! Determined to make him agree, the professor raises the stakes for him.

“If I lose, I ‘ll give you two dollars instead of one!”

“No.”

“Five dollars!”

“No.”

“Ten dollars!”

“I told you, no.”

Desperate, the professor makes one final offer: “If I lose, I’ll give you a hundred dollars, and if you lose you’ll only give me one!” The professor pleads. The old man ponders this, then sighs. “Only if I get to start”, and the professor immediately agrees. “Ask away”, the professor says, confident he’ll never lose.

The old man asks: “What has five heads, forty feet, and lives inside of a bucket?”

The professor turns the riddle over in his head, trying to find anything that fits the description. After an hour of intense concentration, the professor gives up. Grumbling, he pulls out his wallet and gives the old man $100. He wastes no time and asks him: “So what has five heads, forty feet, and lives inside of a bucket?”

The old man smiles, shrugs and says: “I’ve got no idea. Here’s your dollar."