@Lookout
I am still unclear about the pre-symptomatic cases. They test for temperatures but people do not have a temp for some four or so days before they show symptoms. But I believe they are able to expose others. Same for asymptomatic people.

There is still a lot we do not know. China is now implementing many precautionary measures for people who work and shop and eat out.

Thanks for all you do. Take good care and have a good one. Hope your garden is burgeoning.

Why hasn't Vitamin D been pushed? Why aren't masks required in public buildings and transportation? Why aren't there activity distinctions made between young and older folks?

A friend was complaining about young people gathering with no masks, and I asked wouldn't you if you were young and unlikely to exhibit any symptoms even if you have it. As long as they don't visit their grandparents, I don't see a problem.

I go back and forth between the notion we're over reacting to we need to do more. I'm sure we need to better educate people about COVID-19 Starting with simple things like those above.

The virus is still rare here in the rural backwaters.

@Cassiodorus
this!

the combined strength of Democratic and Republican policy is to create a coronavirus response which preserves "market society" regardless of the cost in human lives.

Thanks for another reading assignment. Sigh. I need more time.

Take good care and have a good one.

Trump wants to massage the test numbers, but what's going to burn him are the death and the poverty numbers. I keep recommending Philip Mirowski's "Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste":

https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=F74EBFD5AAA65A8ADD74A3AA8A56EEA0

What we have with neoliberal governance is infinite power combined with infinite heedlessness. The fundamental theory of neoliberal governance, when you distill the overlap between all of the various schools of what Mirowski calls the "Neoliberal Thought Collective," is that "market society" is the high point of human civilization and that strenuous government power needs to be deployed to insure that everyone conforms to "market society" regardless of the consequences.

Now, the neoliberals can say what they want -- they can say what Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell says, they can say what Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer or Andrew Cuomo or Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama says, and it really doesn't affect their status as neoliberals. They can, in short, lie as they please, depending upon the demographic makeup of the audience that needs to hear said pack of lies. Neoliberals can even be in well-advertised conflicts with other neoliberals. What matters is what they do, and so in this regard the combined strength of Democratic and Republican policy is to create a coronavirus response which preserves "market society" regardless of the cost in human lives. And that's what we'll be seeing in the coming months. The disgust with Trump is a reflection of how blunt and open Trump is about shared values, not about the values themselves. For maximum effectiveness neoliberalism should be partially hidden, to keep the public confused.

@randtntx
Yes, I agree, it is intentional. And then there is the climate crisis on top of this and no one is even paying attention really. So many things falling through the cracks. It does not bode well.

Maybe Guy McPherson is right. Hope not.

In the most extreme scenarios (with rapid increases in air quality) their results suggest the hottest day of the year may be up to 4C hotter by 2050, with around one third of that increase due to cleaner skies.

Wilcox’s latest research also predicts that reductions in Asian air pollution will also result in more intense tropical monsoon rains, driven by a greater contrast in temperature between oceans and land.

If the drop in air pollution is sustained for long enough then it might be possible to see its impact on climate.

Thanks for all your thoughts. Take good care and have a good one.

Congress repeatedly not help the american people, I can only conclude that this response to a crisis is intentional. We now have Medicine Sans Frontiers come to help the Navajo Nation. We won't do it ourselves. An Associated Press story reports:

The Navajo Nation apparently is being hit very hard.

If the Navajo Nation were its own state, it would have the highest per capita rate of confirmed positive coronavirus cases in the country, behind only New York. In the states it spans, the number of cases and deaths among people who are Native American, on and off the reservations, is disproportionately high.

h/t JS

Who else is being hit hard and why can't we at least attempt to help stop the spread. Things like upgrading infrastructure with basic running water systems would go a long way towards helping. How can you stay infection-free without access to a working plumbing system?

Someone here recently wrote that we have ceded our power to govern ourselves to others. Except we gave that power to people who have no interest in governing for the benefit of the people. Thats my two cents.

@MinuteMan
The states the have reopened are already experiencing at rise in cases. And it's only started and it's summer. As the professor in my link above says, "if you don't solve the biology, the economy won't recover."

I am not seeing a lot of infrastructure ramping up. Social distancing and sheltering in place are working in CA. The places here with the most cases are places where the migrant farm workers live. Què sorpresa.

Take good care and have a good one.

It seems to me that unless summer weather naturally dampens the virus spread for the season, the reopening is going to end badly. We've got a much larger reservoir of COVID19 infections than we did before the shutdowns started in mid March so if we return to social contact similar to that period the virus spread will be much larger. We haven't ramped up our infrastructure appreciably since mid-March so we'll quickly run into the same problems of shortages in medical supplies, facilities and personnel—and probably food, cleaning supplies and toilet paper!

Another possibility is that we'll practice just enough social distancing to not really let the virus die out and merely shift the natural selection in favor of a more infectious strain although it could also shift the selection to also favor of a strain that's less virulent, too—I guess we'll end up rolling the dice and hope it doesn't come up craps like it did in the fall of 1918.

@enhydra lutris
right you are. Take good care and have a good one

Of this strategic culling, how much is just for political gain and how much, if any, is, well just culling?

AND

At this point, so many things have gone awry it is hard to believe that it is only the result of simple disorganization, a lack of information.

OK, think of the stereotypical pack of hyenas; they band up and work together to a certain extent to achieve certain goals, but otherwise are in it for themselves. "Hey, we've got the kill, this is a chance to get in and get ours." In this case, they have some common goals and some disparate goals and they are far from strictly rational or logical. They are generally psychotic and sociopathic and unable to tell themselves the truth about many things. Thus, Trump's behavior is in many ways more likely to reduce his base and decrease his re-election chances unless he can pull off something of an economic mini-boom or something which can be effectively propagandized as such before the election rolls around. But he also has targets to punish, the nasty press, for example. He and his minions are operating out of drives for self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment while also trying to enhance and extend their ideological goals, but they have a flawed ideology and working towrd those targets undermines everything else they might think that they are trying to do.

I sort of have to rush this morning, but if they were to actually try to help the people they would certainly fuck it up royally because their thinking is based on whole great heaps of wrong premises and even if they applied sound logic to them the result would be chaotic. Beyond that, one primary false premise is that what will be best for the people is for them to continue in power and to promote their ideology and their ideologically driven goals.

be well and have a good one

@mhagle
Beautiful poem. Sweet.

Thanks for posting it. Take good care and have a good one.

I posted this poem at the end of Anja's OT on Tuesday evening, so I doubt many saw it. It has boosted my spirits considerably.

The Little Duck by Donald Babcock

Now we're ready to look at something pretty special.
It is a duck,
riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf.
No it isn't a gull.
A gull always has a raucous touch about her.
This is some sort of duck,
and she cuddles in the swells.

She isn't cold,
and she is thinking things over.
There is a big heaving in the Atlantic,
and she is a part of it.

She looks a bit like a mandarin,
or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.

But she has hardly enough above the eyes
to be a philosopher.
She has poise, however,
which is what philosophers must have.

She can rest while the Atlantic heaves,
because she rests in the Atlantic.

Probably she doesn't know how large the ocean is.
And neither do you.
But she realizes it.

And what does she do, I ask you?
She sits down in it!
She reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity
– which it is.
She has made herself a part of the boundless
by easing herself into just where it touches her.

I like the duck.
She doesn't know much,
but she's got religion.

@doh1304
All those things, but why do we have to return to consumerism. Oh, right, we need to support the ptb. Dayum.

Take good care and have a good one.

domestic violence is up, child abuse us up, alcohol (and therefore alcoholism) is up, tobacco use is up.
We were going to have to learn how to live without jobs, but not this way. This is making the transition worse. And allowing a "return to normalcy" instills a fear of the transition (the pain always comes first) teaching people to fear the end of wage slavery and wish the return of consumerism.