Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

 


Quarantine Day 147.

Last night I went to bed at 10:45, got up twice during the night, finally waking/getting up at 7am.

Last night the doorman brought our utility bill to our apartment. Of course it seems to go up a bit every month.

Last night I played 4 games on Chess.com, losing all 4. Yikes! Very disappointing! My new rating is 1224. In the first game my opponent was ahead the whole game except at one point he hung a rook that I didn’t see and I soon lost. In the second game it was back and forth with both of us having winning possibilities

 

My friend Glenn just spent 5 nights in the hospital. He had 2 heart related procedures and with his insurance he only had to pay for some tests at a cost of 600,000 pesos (about $160).

Teresa left the apt at 9:15 go visit her mother and perhaps take her for a walk. She will call me later and we might be ordering out lunch today.

I watched the first 20 minutes of the Today show then left for my 50-minute walk. At the end I walked to the small market and bought 3 bags of milk. I returned to the apt at 10:30.

I cool down for an hour before taking a shower otherwise I will just be hot again after I come out.

I got my Chess.com puzzle rating up to 1801.

We hit 80 degrees about noon and then it clouded over and got noticeably cooler. Felt like it could rain.

Teresa beat me in parcheesi today 4 games to 3.

 

As the coronavirus outbreak continues to spread across the U.S., recent polls indicate dissatisfaction about the federal response to the pandemic: One Aug. 4 NPR/Ipsos poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe the U.S. pandemic response is worse than that of other countries.

Inherent in that response is what can often seem like a lack of coordination. In recent months, the White House has vacillated on mask-wearing, challenged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines on reopening schools, and ordered hospitals to send coronavirus data to the Department of Health and Human Services instead of the CDC. Then, on Saturday, amid stalled congressional talks, President Trump signed executive orders extending coronavirus relief even though the legality of such a move is in question.

But a look back at the influenza pandemic of 1918 reveals that a chaotic White House response to a public-health emergency is nothing new.

President Trump talks about the fight against COVID-19 as a war against an invisible enemy, but a little over 100 years ago, President Woodrow Wilson was fighting both kinds of war: the Great War in Europe was in its final stages as the flu pandemic swept the globe, including the United States. Wilson chose to focus on the battlefronts of Europe, virtually ignoring the disease that ravaged the home front and killed about 675,000 Americans. The 45th President has made inaccurate public statements about the coronavirus—last Wednesday, for example, Facebook removed a video in which President Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19—but, by comparison, the 28th president never uttered a single public statement about the 1918-1919 flu pandemic.

 

Even if the most optimistic projections hold true and a COVID-19 vaccine is cleared for U.S. use in November, the vast majority of Americans won’t be able to get the shots until spring or summer next year at the earliest.

That likely timeline, based on interviews and remarks from top specialists including Anthony Fauci of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, means businesses, schoolchildren and families will continue to wait.

In an interview, Fauci, who has also been involved with White House’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine program, said it may take until well into 2021 for vaccines to reach the much of the general public.

 

As the world passes a grim milestone of 20 million coronavirus cases, we look at how the pandemic humbled and humiliated the world’s most powerful country. Over a quarter of the confirmed infections and deaths have been in the United States, which has less than 5% of the world’s population. Ed Yong, a science writer at The Atlantic who has been covering the pandemic extensively since March, says existing gaps in the U.S. social safety net and the Trump administration’s “devastatingly inept response” made for a deadly combination.

 

Almost every night about 9:30 there is someone in the neighborhood cooking dinner. Teresa tells me that she always burns it; every night.

About 9:30 I heard thunder in the distance; about 10pm it started raining; about 10:30 it was a downpour. Great, that should make sleeping easier.

 

The US has 5,052,168 ð 5,083,857 ð 5,152,393 coronavirus cases with 162,400+ ð 162,800+ ð 164,400+ deaths.

Per Medellin Guru, as of this afternoon Colombia has a total of 87,481 ð 397,623 ð 410,453 cases with 13,475 deaths.  Medellin has 27,883 ð 29,568 ð 30,704 cases, an increase of 1,093 from August 10th to 11th. Envigado has a total of 1,695 cases, an increase of 37 from August 10th to 11th.

 

Joke of the day

There once was a man and a woman who had been married for more than 60 years. They talked about everything. They kept no secrets from each other... except that the old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about.

For all these years he had never thought about the box, but one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said she would never recover.

In trying to sort out their affairs the little old man took down the shoe box and took it to his wife's bedside. She agreed it was time that he should know what was in the box.

When he opened it he found 2 beautifully crocheted doilies and a stack of money totaling over $25,000. He asked her about the unusual contents.

"When we were married," she said, "my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you, I should just keep quiet and crochet a doily."

The little old man was so moved, he had to fight back tears. Only two precious doilies were in the box. She had only been angry with him two times in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with joy and happiness.

"Sweetheart," he said... "that explains the doilies, but what about all this money? Where did it all come from?"

“Oh," she said, "that's the money I made from selling the doilies."

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