Covid19 post for LQ members.

An update from Tucson, AZ.

Today at 5pm they are starting an essential travel only order. Not entirely enforced but I have no doubt they may begin to enforce with fines at some point. Store shelves have lots of empty spaces. Paper goods are long gone. The Dollar General up the road from my house I've gone to for years. They have been helping some of the locals in the area when they get paper towels, bleach, and tp by letting us know when the truck shows up.

My wife works in the Tucson Medical Center hospital in admitting / registration. She has been exposed plenty of times, still not sick yet. She figures it's only a matter of when, not if. I worry about her health because she is high risk being overweight and having pre-diabetes (doctors words, not mine). She is a hero imo like the doctors and nurses. She is front line and gets just as much exposure. If she goes down, she goes down a hero to me. My father is a cancer patient. We all live on a 2.3 acre piece of land with my grandparents. We all have separate homes out here. Mom is sick at the moment, unsure of why. I'm fairly certain I'm immune at best, or highly resistant at worst. Historically my immune system is damn near a brick wall. Stuff rarely hits me, and when it does get through it lasts for a few hours at best. Grandparents are ok, for the time being.

It's strange not being able to go out, restaurants and stuff. That was our thing, going out to eat. Now, takeout or bust. We've been eating quite a bit of pizza recently with store shelves the way they are. If Covid doesn't kill us the pizza will lol.

For those that think only elderly people are at risk:
- in Illinois a 7 month old infant who tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has died, the state’s governor said in a press conference on Saturday.
- A 12-year-old girl has died in Belgium after testing positive for COVID-19 — making her Europe’s youngest known victim, officials announced Tuesday.

There was already a case of a 16-year old, but these are still younger.

There's almost no illness that doesn't from time to time kill a child. Yes, children have been severely ill with covid-19 and some have died, which is a very good reason for keeping your child from mixing with others right now. But the overwhelming majority of children get it so mildly that they don't even show any symptoms. Ironically, that's why the disease spreads so fast.

On the news earlier today, it was reported that a teenager has died from it too.

Unfortunately, deaths seem to be rising over here in the UK - stay safe & abide by the rules people.

I'm worried about Cousin Lucky. Remember him?

Used to be close < exchange mail, personal trouble shooter > . But like oil and water . Texan & New Yorker. We grew apart.
I hope he is doing well also.

Nothing new to report out here.

I've been keeping up with progress by seeking maps displaying statistics on a daily basis. One very informative one for me living in Virginia is this one ----

http://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/

I imagine each state has a similar site and something like it must exist pretty much everywhere. The advantage of such in depth statistics is fairly wide. For example, if you check out the above state of Virginia, you can see how many have been tested as well as how many hospitalized and of course the number who have died. It also displays breakdowns by age, gender, race and location. One of the best graphs I think is the one that shows number of new cases by date. It can be seen that distancing is working but leveling the curve is not a smooth line. This can be due to increases in testing, more people taking the threat seriously, or people becoming lax too soon.

In my county there have been zero cases reported so far but there are checkpoints to larger towns that only allow passage to those with special work release forms. I think this is not over-reacting. I think it is partly why this county has zero cases.

Isn't it rather odd and also completely wonderful that we seem to have something of a virtual family here at LQN? My best wishes for good fortune, health and happiness go out to everyone here without exception, even the 3 people I have on "Ignore". I don't want to see anyone here go missing even for just a hospital stay so stay safe and healthy and keep letting us know you're still fighting the good fight. My departed Father, who endured the Battle of the Bulge in winter without an overcoat, once wisely noted that "No matter how bad it gets, Life is sweet!" Salut!

Children still missing.

The overall statistics have left those under the age of 20 missing from the charts in "statistical terms." Look at the world wide charts. Any other infection tends to target the young and old.

The idea that their lungs are better is not valid. They simply are not showing symptoms of even the early stages of this.

Another reason could be childhood vaccine but do all countries do that? I think that argument fails.

I'd wonder why no news has suggested that this may be worth a look at for defense of the rest of the population.

A bit of daily life in these viral times:

I had to swap my cable box today because it refused to record programs and we need our chewing gum for the mind in these viral times.

When I called support (my cable provider has an outstanding customer support and service staff--I know that's unusual, but it's true) I was informed that technicians are allowed to work on stuff outside, but not to enter customers' homes right now, something that's new this week, so I had to take the box to the local [cable provider] store to swap it out. At the store, blue tape had been placed around the various counters to help customers maintain a proper "social distance" from the staff.

I swung by the liquor store on the way out of the shopping center (in Virginia, USA, the liquor stores are run by the state ABC--Alcoholic Beverage Control--Board, though beer and wine can be purchased anywhere--and, no, it doesn't make sense, but this is America). The stacks were roped off and spots were marked where waiting customers were supposed to stand at a "social distance" while the staff fetched product from the shelves.

(I remarked, "It's like the old days when I was a kid and the staff stood behind a counter and wore uniforms." One of the woman clerks said, "And they were all men, weren't they?" Which they were. I didn't go into ABC stores when I was a kid, but there was one next door to the barber shop my father took me to.)

In southern Italy now, the enemy is not covid-19 but destitution and social unrest. The government hasn't provided guaranteed incomes like the UK government has, so a lot of people are starving and are beginning to threaten shopkeepers. Apparently there was an enormous black market in labour and these people are not getting anything now.

A lot of these people may end up working for the mafia because there is no one else to employ them.

Mean while. Gov shut down Texas till April 30.

No pedicures.
No haircuts.

Small shops like those will probably go under. West Texas Food Bank is now running low on stuff also.
We don't rely on Fed or State govt. so much out here to help us out.

We use the neighbourly support system out here. Now. Social distancing I guess is hurting that.

In the news

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/...h-15167883.php
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/31/...s-mass-graves/
https://news.trust.org/item/20200401004741-7rc0u
https://news.trust.org/item/20200331222223-j5t3m
https://news.trust.org/item/20200331211446-a3slf
https://nypost.com/2020/03/31/corona...it-researcher/
https://www.fox5ny.com/news/3-munici...uing-summonses
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j...over-to-police
https://apnews.com/6ed70e9db88b80439a087fdad8238009

I don't often suggest people to listen to Bill Gates.
But this time I do.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...63d_story.html
https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates...ready#t-500745
https://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates...ndemic#t-87874

Covidiots

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/lat...fools-21781346
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/larry...b6871702a6aeab
https://www.foxnews.com/us/coronavir...lers-imposters

In America, many of the health workers who are risking their lives treating covid-19 victims are suffering pay cuts because the health management organisations that employ them are making less money from elective treatments.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/hospital-...y-benefits-cut

That's capitalism for you! Thank God for the NHS!

The highest per capita infection rates in descending order right now, as cases per 1 million population, are:

Vatican City    7491
San Marino      6955
Andorra         5048
Iceland         3575
Faeroe Islands  3541
Luxembourg      3479
Gibraltar       2048
Spain           2185
Switzerland     1980
Liechtenstein   1783
Italy           1750
Monoco          1325
Belgium         1205
Austria         1172
Montserrat      1002
Channel Islands 989
Norway          891
Germany         889
Portugal        809
France          799
Netherlands     795
Isle of Man     764
Ireland         655
Israel          646
St. Barth       607
Estonia         587
USA             574
Iran            567
Denmark         534
Aruba           515
Bermuda         514
Malta           426

That will change of course before the day it out, but it shows:

Where it is spreading the most through populations.

Possibly who is doing the best job at containing it, jumped on it earlier.

Or who is a later arrival to the party and are in earlier stages of detection.