Trump declares, via Tweet, that all immigration is halted. No one in the administration knows what he's talking about. Which is to say, business as usual.
Attorney General Barr threatens states with legal action for continuing suppression measures. This despite Trump having told governors that they're on their own to figure everything out.
The National Institutes of Health recommend against using the drug that Trump has been touting as a miracle cure.
The National Security Advisor is now pushing the completely unsupported claims that the WHO is a Chinese propaganda puppet. Trump paid no attention when the WHO warned us in January, so his failure to act must be their fault.
Livermore cases: 33
Alameda County cases: 1,235; deaths: 44
U.S. Cases: 802,000+; deaths: 44,500+
I mentioned in previous posts about the protests against the shelter-at-home orders. One might think that these protestors are upset because of things like, "I need to work to put food on the table." I'd be entirely sympathetic to people who are trying to make it known that their families are starving and that they need help.
That's not who's protesting.
These are people protesting because they can't go play golf or get a haircut or a massage--insisting that temporary inconvenience is oppression. They're selfish, self centered, and willfully ignorant. And the messaging is all being pushed through intentional disinformation/astroturfing campaigns and encouraged by Trump. It disgusts me.
Yesterday I came across this concerning article from last week: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2010025 (Title: In Pursuit of PPE, Date: April 17, 2020, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2010025). It describes the extreme lengths some hospitals are resorting to in order to obtain PPE. In this case moving equipment in trucks labeled as food supplies and then needing Congressional involvement to stop the FBI from seizing the shipment and giving it to DHS.
Normally I wouldn't put much stock in an internet anecdote like this, but it's through the New England Journal of Medicine so it gets a huge credibility boost. Presumably they have some vetting on at least the authors if not the information they're providing. And that makes it quite concerning. If the federal government has been actively hijacking equipment purchased by hospitals there are serious problems afoot.
Crude Oil WTI futures are trading around $-25 today ($-37 when the market closed). NEGATIVE! That's insane. It was ~$60 in January. The entire oil market has just completely imploded.
More protests around the country by people demanding that shelter-at-home orders be lifted.
Late last week several S.F. Bay Area counties announced mandatory mask-wearing protocols when out in public, starting Wednesday.
Livermore cases: 30
Alameda County cases: 1,149; deaths: 41
U.S. cases: 746,000+; deaths: 39,000+
Oil futures have never gone negative before. There is apparently so much oil sitting around that no one has anywhere to put it, so now they'll pay someone to take it off their hands. I fully expect this will completely destroy the U.S. shale-oil industry which is relatively expensive process compared to other methods of oil production (obviously, no one can make money at negative pricing regardless of production costs, but it hurts even more when your costs are higher).
The rhetoric around the anti-shelter-at-home protests also appears to likely be a coordinated disinformation campaign or, at best, a thorough astroturfing job by some entity. Groups in several states all had websites up within hours of each other spouting the same narrative about "the cure is worse than disease" and urging people to go out and protest by blocking roads around hospitals and waving guns around. No legitimate sourcing is provided to support their claims, just opinions by random self-proclaimed experts. No disclosures are made about where the funding to create and run the websites are coming from. And hundreds of people are falling for it. It drives me crazy. Oh and with such insane signs as "social distancing = communism." I won't even begin to dissect that level of fear and ignorance.
I went digging around in the garage on Friday to excavate old games and toys from my childhood.
Limber Louie is still alive and kicking!
I also thought, and thought right, that an old board game "Dragon Strike" was out there. It's an adventure game, a simplified form of Dungeons and Dragons. I thought Heather might enjoy going on an fantasy adventure.
It's missing a few figurines, the dice, and the instruction manual (but had the adventures guide and maps). I found a scan of the instruction manual online, and it's easy to work around missing dice and figurines. However with a little poking around online I found someone selling the original figurines and instruction manual for reasonable prices. So I ordered replacements. And I ordered a set of dice from a dice company.
For the weekend we made do without the replacement parts though and on Saturday we all went on an adventure to slay the evil giant (well, Jess, Heather, and Corinne did, I was playing the Dungeon Master). And on Sunday we escorted the king through the valley, protecting him from an ambush. Heather is really enjoying it. Corinne is less able to maintain interest through the length of a game. And I'm finding it to be a fair bit of work to run the game, keep it balanced, have fun with the characters, and make up narratives to go along with things.
The Warrior and Wizard enter the cavern and are attacked by a pair of orcs, Dingle and Dongle.
I went to Safeway again tonight. The fridge is becoming noticeably bare and we needed a restock beyond what Contreras Market has to offer.
I wore one of the masks Mom sent. I augmented it with a strip of aluminum to form it around my nose and try to keep it from completely fogging up my glasses with every breath. It actually worked pretty well. (I used a needle and thread to wrap the aluminum against the fabric.)
I was hoping things would be looking a little better at Safeway, but overall they're about the same as my last trip. Some improvements though. There are no longer any limits on milk and bread, so I stocked up on both (we were pretty much empty on both). Eggs are in stock from a new supplier, but a little pricier and still limit 1 per transaction.
There was a very limited selection of pasta, but rice was in stock. Butter was in short supply, but there was cheese and yogurt.
They even had plenty of frozen hamburgers, which I wasn't expecting to find since the slaughterhouses are mostly shutdown.
The store aisles are now marked as one-way to help encourage social distancing.
More people were wearing masks now than last time, but not all. They'll be mandatory in Alameda County starting on Wednesday. Not everyone was paying attention to the one way signs, but most were.
I had a totally dystopian shopping experience walking down the baking goods aisle. I said to myself, "Oh, cocoa powder is in stock. Haven't seen that in a while, I better grab a carton, we're running low." Then I paused and thought, "Whoa, I totally just thought that."
Seeing the grocery store like that the first time was weird, but I think it feels much more disconcerting and weird now that it's been over a month and it's still like that. Your shopping list is more of a set of guidelines that you see how well you can meet. "Oh, still no brownie mix; maybe next month." So you regularly complete your shopping with a hodge podge of "well they didn't have X so I grabbed Y instead" and "I wasn't planning on getting Z, but they had a bunch of it in stock so I grabbed one."
Jess was kind of freaking out through the afternoon today. We're not running out of food by any means, but the fridge was looking pretty bare and we're making noticeable dents in our other supplies. The complete collapse of the oil market apparently piled on to that for no particular reason other than "what does it mean?!"
Then she spent some time reading a doctor's account of how some patients with COVID-19 experience silent hypoxemia. Which is basically when your blood-oxygen levels are low, but you don't even know it. Apparently some patients' lungs get compromised in such a way that they can still expel carbon dioxide, but aren't uptaking oxygen well enough. The sensation that we need to breath is due to CO2 build up rather than oxygen deprivation. So you don't feel out-of-breath, but you're actually in quite serious condition and deteriorating. By the time you end up in the hospital your body is basically shutting down due to oxygen deprivation. So, you know, more things to stress about!
I think she's doing better now that our supplies are restocked and she stopped reading about ways we might be dying without knowing.
Another 5.2 million first-time unemployment claims filed last week.
South Korea reports 163 patients who recovered and re-tested positive, including 61 becoming symptomatic.
China corrects some death statistics upward by 50%, raising further concern over the veracity of their data.
Brazil's president (who denies there's an issue) fires their health minister (who was trying to prevent catastrophe). So they're pretty well hosed.
Livermore cases: 30
Alameda County cases: 1,021; deaths: 39
U.S. cases: 661,000+; deaths: 33,000+
The information out of South Korea is probably the most alarming news recently. Research continues to determine what's really going on. It's possible they're false positives and it's possible the patients becoming symptomatic have something else causing the symptoms. Also, transmissibility hasn't been determined. If, however, it turns out that reinfection is possible and transmissible then the war we're in is going to get much longer and uglier. Right now the only real information is, "More information needed."
I jogged down to Contreras Market (the nearby Mexican shop) for more milk on Wednesday. Their shelves were looking pretty good. I was only grabbing milk, but on my way through the store I saw bags of beans and rice. The milk cooler was full and there weren't any obviously barren shelves.
I made oatmeal cookies last night and tonight will be cheese pizza and, if we're not all insane, s'mores at the backyard firepit. Ooh! Oatmeal-cookie s'mores!
We are starting to make a noticeable impact on our supplies. We're down to one loaf of bread, one bag of bagels, and one bag of tortillas. We ran out of corndogs and are low on chicken nuggets. I believe tonight's pizza will use the last of our mozzarella cheese. Our cereal stockpile is probably down by about half. But we have lots of pasta and rice (not from stockpiling, just usual supplies). I probably have about 25 lbs of bread flour and I opened my last (50-lb) bag of all-purpose flour to make the cookies. I'm also on my last jar of yeast. But, most importantly:
We've eaten only meals prepared at home for over a month now. We had Thai food on March 14. We don't eat out very often, but even so, that feels like really long time ago.
In addition to the north-east coalition and the Pacific coalition there is also a coalition of 7 states in the mid-west (IL, IN, KY, MI, MN, OH) that will coordinate relaxation of suppression measures.
Protestors in Michigan hold gatherings and block roads to protest shelter-at-home orders.
Trump continues to place ego above efficacy and requires relief checks be branded with his name (by some reports delaying them from being sent).
Retail spending in March dropped a record 8.7%. Clothing down over 50%, furniture down over 25%.
Texas considers implementing oil-production limits to prop up pricing.
Livermore cases: 28 (yesterday was 29, maybe I misread or maybe it got corrected)
Alameda County cases: 924; deaths: 35
U.S. cases: 605,000+; deaths: 24,500+
We held two interviews for work yesterday via video conferencing. So that's becoming the new normal. The Lab is still scrambling to figure out how to run a Summer Student program remotely and whether they can waive the mandatory pre-employment drug screening since students won't be able to get one in most places.
The weather is nice now. Warming up to the mid-70's.
I spend most of my day in my closet working. I don't have a good awareness of what insanity is happening in the rest of the house. Occasionally, Corinne will wander in to my closet and ask if I can play.
Jess and I have been watching the TV comedy "Community" that aired from 2009-2015. It's on Netflix now. Trying to balance the new stresses of daily life with some laughs.
We're out of milk again. I walked down to the Mexican market over the weekend to buy more. But they only had two gallons, so I only bought one. I guess I'll have to head down to Safeway tonight to see what the shelves look like now.
On my walk today I saw an ice-cream truck driving around. It's probably not supposed to be doing that. Also, landscapers and house painters seem to have mostly declared themselves exempt from the shelter-at-home orders.
I see I forgot to post Jess' most recent cross-stitch project. Particularly appropriate now, but also a general life motto around here:
Models suggest--assuming suppression measures remain in place--that the U.S. overall has passed peak death rate. Individual states vary.
California modeled to reach peak this week.
A group of states in the northeast (CT, DE, MA, NJ, NY, PA, RI) has formed a coalition to coordinate long-term response and lifting of suppression measures.
A group of states in the west (CA, OR, WA) has formed a similar coalition.
Congress delays next session by 2 weeks.
The International Monetary Fund warns that we'll have the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Trump pulls funding for the World Health Organization.
Livermore cases: 29
Alameda County cases: 850; deaths: 22
U.S. cases: 579,000+; deaths: 22,200+
We've been getting headlines/blurbs from NPR pretty much constantly for the last couple of weeks which provide a statement from Trump juxtaposed with reality. I think today's is my favorite so far:
California documents the 6 key indicators they will use to guide relaxation/reinstatement of suppression measures:
Ability to perform testing and contact tracing
Ability to mitigate risk to high-risk groups
Capacity of healthcare system to handle caseloads
Ability to develop and supply therapeutics
Ability for schools and child-care centers to maintain social-distancing measures
Ability to effectively monitor spread in order to adjust measures as appropriate
Trump declared he will pull U.S. funding for the World Health Organization. Which seems like an incredibly immature thing to do. A responsible person might say something like, "We have serious concerns with the governance of the organization and we will demand action to improve how things are run, but right now we're in the middle of a catastrophic, global, medical emergency and is not the time to disrupt the main system for international collaboration." But no. Instead we get, "This can't be my fault, it must be their fault and to show I'm serious I'm going to take their money away."
Social media is being absolutely flooded with the narrative that the WHO is now just a puppet and propaganda tool for China. I may not know anything about WHO's operations and behavior and I'm sure it has faults, but when every social media outlet is simultaneously blasted with the exact same narrative, always presented without any evidence or sourcing it starts to look a lot to me like an intentional propaganda campaign. And, I would put money on it being one. Likely out of Russia which has both a continued interest in disrupting international institutions and collaborations and a known capability and willingness to engage in such campaigns.
We're also already seeing a, sadly predictable, narrative about how stupid it was/is to shut down so much of the economy and put in place suppression measures. "We were told there'd be a million deaths in the U.S. and look, now they're saying only like 100 thousand; so it was all just fear mongering by doctors, scientists, and politicians. Why'd we shut everything down for this?" Yes, this is what some people are saying. Apparently, completely oblivious that this was the exact hoped for outcome of shutting everything down. People are the worst.
We had a long weekend since Monday was a work holiday. The weather was finally nice on the weekend so I got a bunch of yard work done. Needed to spruce things up for the Easter Bunny. The yard looks pretty decent when it's cleaned up.
I baked rolls on Sunday for dinner. I was making a double batch when I realized I wasn't paying attention to the recipe and had added 50% too much flour, so I had to switch to an emergency triple batch to salvage my dough. My mixer isn't big enough for a triple batch and the flour was already mixed in (into a very dense mass). So I had to prepare the new liquids and then work them into the dough by hand on the counter top. I wasn't sure it was going to work, but the rolls seem to have come out alright.
Monday I was finally able to use the headlight cleaning kit I bought weeks ago, but it had always been raining on the weekends. It worked pretty well (you sand down the plastic lens, polish, and then apply a sealant). So that makes the headlights on my Civic look a lot less sad, and improve light output which is the safety reason for doing the work.
I'll have another post up with pictures of our Easter egg hunt later. But for now, the Peeps we found hanging out in the backyard. They're not following social-distancing guidelines, but at least they're wearing masks!
