In the last day or so:
- Kansas closed schools for the rest of the academic year.
- California Governor says CA schools are likely to be closed until the Fall.
- U.S./Canada border is closed.
- European Union borders are closed.
- Federal Government now advising that this will likely last into the summer.
- The Navy is deploying their hospital ships to the east and west coasts.
- The military is preparing to deploy field hospitals and has released some emergency-stockpile medical supplies.
- At least 7 more CA counties (Yuba, Yolo, Napa, Solano, Sutter, Mendocino, & Santa Cruz) joined the shelter-at-home directive, I'm having a hard time tracking them all.
- The U.K. announced schools will be closing at the end of the week.
- Congress has passed its 2nd crisis-relief bill.
- Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act giving the federal government the authority to force companies to act as instructed to ensure the production of critical goods and services.
We picked up school packets for Heather to work on. They were arranged outside under the awning. Jess picked one up yesterday morning, in the afternoon a rare thunderstorm rolled through and dumped hail and rain. Presumably they got everything inside before that happened. (I took this picture today on my exercise walk.)
We'll need to start trying to create some kind of daily/weekly schedules for the girls so there's a modicum of structure and expectations. Having every day be a free for all is just too draining.
We celebrated Corinne's birthday yesterday (I'll put up a separate post with details). She isn't really aware of the gravity of the world's happenings, so she just had a great day. What could be better than opening presents after lunch and eating cake after dinner?
The stock market continues to free fall. Losing all gains since the end of 2016. There have now been 4 days within 2 weeks where the 7%-drop "circuit-breakers" kicked in to pause trading.
Alameda county is now reporting 31 confirmed cases. Which follows the curve of doubling every 2-2.5 days despite the isolation measures. Which is probably mostly due to finally testing people that have been infected for days already rather than a reflection of new cases.
The new national mantra is "flatten the curve." Which is describing the curve of the graph of infections vs time and the goal of preventing it from spiking (which would overwhelm medical infrastructure) and instead to keep the infection rate to a dull roar that can be managed effectively.
All of this and there are still people who think it's nothing and they shouldn't have to inconvenience themselves by staying home.