Unlocking

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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Olly Olly, Oxen Free. It’s time to get back to life.

Yesterday I came across a stupid — well, it is — post about how the economy unlocked, but people still aren’t going out.

I also keep seeing how Colorado is just like Georgia, so why aren’t democrats mad at Colorado’s Polis for unlocking?

Well, mostly because he hasn’t.  The big difference here, apparently, is that some “non essential” businesses are now open for pick up. There are some that aren’t opening at all, because what is the point? Take clothing, for instance. Sure. I can shop for pick up. If I’m buying t-shirts or jeans. I know the brands that fit me, and the size.  BUT that’s about it. And I’m not in need of jeans right now.

The museums and zoo and botanic gardens remain closed, as do — officially — parks. This even though NOT ONLY can’t you really catch a virus (well, you can, freaky stuff happens all the time) outside in moving air, but UV seems to kill it. But hey, our governor, who has the scientific education of a slug thinks that you’re safer at home. Which in turn means he’s doing everything possible to disincentivize your going out. He’s already said, for instance, that he’ll only consider the next phase of unlocking if everyone wears a mask all the time: so for the first time in this insanity, I’m seeing people jogging or walking in splendid isolation, wearing masks.

And because I find that submission vile and despicable — because there’s no sane reason to wear a mask while alone, and the cloth masks are only useful to prevent YOU sneezing on people. Since I’m not sneezing — my allergies always manifest more in a tight chest and stuffy nose — I’m perfectly safe around others.

But I’ve been staying in more. I don’t want to deal with Karens screaming about masks, and I am afraid of getting to the grocery store and being told I can’t go in without a mask. So I stay put.

The point is: THIS ISN’T UNLOCKING.

Unlocking and getting back to life is just that.  And I’d respect the hell out of a politician who had the nerve to do it. He doesn’t seem to exist. But just the nerve to say “You know, this was a massive over reaction, America. You’re not at any risk. Turn off CNN and get back to work.”

Because the idea that we need to open gradually is insane.  We’re well past flattening any potential curve. WHY are governors still deciding what opens and when?
Why are the elected jackasses, who have no clue what people do for a living, or where money comes from, telling us who gets to earn a living?

AND why are they trusting “experts” who haven’t worked a real job outside of politics in years?

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? And what right do they have to choose who gets to work and who gets to eat?

What part of the bill of rights is written in disappearing ink?  What part of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is written in Martian? WHAT are they failing to get?

It’s time to set yourselves free. Not one here, one there. Just…. set yourself free.
Demonstrations?  Sure. Wouldn’t hurt.
BUT it is important to go out and do things. Even if you’re not very sure what to do. Even if you don’t NEED to do something right away.  We don’t need to go out.

But I’m tired of the bait and switch. I’m tired of their pretending they opened up and it’s us who arent’ interested in being out.

Safer at home?  No, governor Polis. Either scientifically, mentally or politically, none of us safer at home.  Like the ridiculous saying on our highway signs “stay home. Save a life” it’s not just not true that we’re safer at home, it’s contrary to the truth.

The business of America is business.  The business of humanity if interaction.

Sure, we can hide under our beds till we die of starvation, and totally avoid Winnie the Flu. BUT then who will grow the food you eat?

From today on I’m going out every day, even if all I do is buy a pack of gum at the convenience store.

Because it’s time we got out of the house and went back to work and fun and normal. Not the new normal. JUST NORMAl.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

The end of the world has been grossly exaggerated. It looks uncommonly like the common cold. The experts were wrong again, and the authoritarians are seeking to take advantage again.

It’s time to ignore them and get back to life.

424 thoughts on “Unlocking”

  1. the pessimist in me says this really really for realz is not going to end well.
    enough so it is affecting me far too much and I am noticing it is affecting me.

      1. Work, today, decided maybe they should require masks in all work areas. (almost makes sense in the line areas, but it a whole different world there, and they still won’t do it in a way that would work.
        I have not gotten word officially, it was the material handler ranting about it with a sheet she didn’t let me look at very long.
        we’re in about 70,000 sq ft of warehouse with 10 people at most. If everyone stays the hell away from me, I don’t have to come within 12 feet of anyone, and that is at my desk in the office I have to share with her.
        “If you are in your office, alone, you do not have to wear it”
        fail
        If this comes up to be true, I am going to demand a mask an hour, none from China, and then stay out in my work area and refuse to let anyone near and not have to wear mine. Time to get as stupid as they are. I going to refuse to use a shared fork lift, and they best stay away from the pallet jacks I use for the duration as well.

        They need to test everyone that was sick across town in the two areas they almost had to shut down for all the people on leave (said line areas). This was back in the end January. I had to suffer a class with several of the people from there complaining and coughing. I’d not mind a test either. Starting to bet I have the antibodies from that. There was a feeling of something maybe starting but never came on, with zicam and whatnot partook for a weekend.

  2. I’ve been saying this for a while, Sarah. And trying to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Our church has held in-person services every Sunday, no exceptions. I mentioned this in a comment thread on PJMedia, and one of their rather loud-mouthed posters tried to excoriate me for not leading public demonstrations against the Tennessee lockdowns. I told him that we’re ignoring the lockdowns and encouraging everyone else to follow our example, but he wanted me to strut and crow about it, and then accused me of “preening” when I refused. Some folks on our side can be just as big jerks as those on the other side…

    1. I find it kind of helpful to remember that the other side has, as a major basic tactic, “go pretend to be on their side and be an abject idiot.”

      I’m aware that everybody derps sometimes, and being right on one thing doesn’t mean they’re right on all– but it helps my blood pressure. Lets me reframe things as a chance to show what exactly is wrong with their arguments, rather than the attempted attack that it often is. (The target responding to the attack is part of the tactic; so for once taking an excessively charitable route in assuming the obvious attack is just a mistake is a good tactic, even if you’re 90% sure that yeah, they meant to hit you.)

      1. Both sides given a partial truth, told who to hate. Weaker side gets the most press of its whackadoodle crew. Everyone recoils in horror and the Versailles crew sail on unmolested.

        Until the don’t.

      1. Agreed. My church closed before Her Sufficiency Kate Brown decreed it. This whole online service thing is for the birds. Worship needs to have other people – the whole “where two or three are gathered together” means that We are TOGETHER, not watching what is a glorified (heh) youtube video.

        1. If my place of worship opens anytime soon, it will be June 7, with all kinds of precautions and limiting the number of people who can attend and so on. I sense lawyers circling, for some reason.

  3. When you are swimming under water very soon you must come up for air. When your head is being held under water the air becomes imperative. Like most people i have a life that doesn’t include constant political activism (Pig Wrestling?) BUT, Protests while good and certainly legal are not going to cut it. Politicians and GovFlunkies need more heat. I can say for sure what form that would take, but to throw out a cliche, We need a Lawyer. Lots of them in fact. Power them with GoFundMe or whatever, DON’T set up a foundation or a nonprofit; That is fertile ground for leftists to plow because the worthless **** are always looking for gigs that are good pay for no work.
    Revoke sovereign immunity now.

    1. I wrote to the Governor of Texas today. I told him my husband says the only difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Republicans make loud ineffectual noises at the gross abuses of the powerful.

      Please prove him wrong.

      1. To bounce off of this – is there any particular medium that elected officials actually pay more attention to? Paper, electronic, etc? I figure the higher the level of gov, the more communication there is, but I’m curious if there is a way to cut through the noise ….

        2. Lead. Perhaps hemp.

          If you want their attention you pretty much need to send the message via television, radio or a really, really effective internet meme.

          I suppose, if you’ve got the body for it, dancing naked (in mask & gloves but little else) in front of the capital might get the officials’ attention.
          –

  4. I’m getting really tired of all the Karens (and Kyles) shouting about the need to wear a mask when out. With the size of the pores of the cloth masks (most of which people have huge gaps at the sides anyway) vs. the size of the virus itself, it’s like using mosquito netting to roof your house and expecting to not get wet in a thunderstorm. It’s theater. And a large portion of the country bought into it.

    1. When I was shopping yesterday, I decided I had mask fatigue and left the masks (one cloth+flannel, 1 surgical, 1 generic dust mask) in the bag in the car. The main thing I saw was more businesses with employees masked up. At least one was requiring their people to do so, but I also saw a bunch of nostrils.

      Last week and this week seemed to have the same level of masking by the public. As I recall, it was steadily rising through April. Might have a peak.

      $SPOUSE is going to make a couple of two-layer cloth masks for me for the occasions when I have to mask up. I see that the guidance for hair salons (when they might open, according to the Idiot-In-Charge Feelz) will require masks for cutter and cuttee. I think I’m going to have really short, self-cut hair this summer.

      1. I finally broke down and attacked my hair with the scissors yesterday morning. I cut the front so it was over my eyebrows again, and the big wads on the sides off until I could get my hearing aids in without fighting all the hair. I left the top and back alone. Despite having at-least-average coordination, my main worry about using scissors in a mirror is avoiding putting an eye out…

        The result was slightly asymmetrical, but… so *that* is how you get a “mullet.”

        1. My son hair is taking on the “Harry Potter” look.

          He’s been looking at clippers on Amazon. His hair, would be easy. Take him out back, put a towel around his shoulders. Put in the 1/2 inch attachment. Clip away. Use whatever it is called to clean up on neck & around ears. Those areas might not be quite straight. But as he has said, “He’d feel better. Right now it’s irritating.”

          Hubby has an attachment on his electric razor. It won’t do the 1/2″ cut, but it will trim around the edges. His neckline trim isn’t exactly straight … I tried …

          1. FWIW, Bi-Mart had a handful of Conair clippers in stock. (Might be the normal stocking level.)

          2. “His neckline trim isn’t exactly straight … I tried …”

            The important things to keep in mind are:

            a: you tried
            b: it will grow out
            c: you can try again, in a few days
            d: it will grow out
            e: you can try again, in a few days
            f: nobody will notice
            –

            1. LIfe lesson from being one of those once told loudly to stand on the painted footprints: The haircut is the least of the things. It grows out. Even the worst haircut grows out.

            2. Or use my philosophy, as a veteran of self-barbering::

              My hair is straight.
              My head is crooked.

        3. What I do is a ribbon. A length of ribbon, tied into a loop. Pull it down over the head, pull the hair out, push it back up to push back the hair.

          When I was younger, I did them in bright colors. Now I just do them in black and sometimes I pull them down and shake my head to demonstrate my Cousin Itt imitation.

      2. I keep threatening to make a read MAGA mask. If everyone wheres them this mask idiocy will end tomorrow.

        1. I’m considering tacking little gears and a chainmail dragon onto mine, wear it with a steampunk riding hat, and see what happens.

          1. I want a black mask with the Division logo (from the video game). Seems as if that would be appropriate! Sadly, it doesn’t appear that Ubisoft has made them available. I would imagine that it’s due to a combination of turnaround time to get them out, and a perceived bad taste issue.

          2. My mother is trying to work up a plague doctor mask for my sister. If she is successful maybe I’ll see if I can wear it without getting lightheaded and having irrational lizard brain start screaming that I’m being suffocated. Since it would not actually be touching my nose and mouth, it’s worth a try.

            And I’d love to see my allergist’s face if I showed up with one. They won’t let you inside the practice without a mask which is why I know that I still can’t wear the stupid things. Lizard brain went into full-on panic mode when the ER tried to put an oxygen mask on me, so I shouldn’t have been surprised at the reaction to a surgical mask.

            1. I had that problem when I was trying to adjust to the CPAP mask. The old-style ones sealed all the way around, so when you exhaled, you breathed some of your exhausted CO2 back in. Turns out I’m sensitive to that, and despite gales of high-pressure air, the lizard insisted it was smothering. Once I figured out what was going on, I drilled some holes in the mask to vent the CO2. Wound up drilling too many and closing the extras off with Scotch tape (on the inside) until I got just the right amount of leakage.

              The newer masks have holes in them already. Apparently it took them about a decade to figure it out…

              Sounds like you’re more sensitive than I am. Do you feel smothery if you pull the blanket up over your head? That’s a good sign of CO2 sensitivity. Not much you can do about ER, though.

              1. Oooh, that’s cool!

                I’ve always disliked breathing my air back in– only had a major problem once, but it was a doozie, apparently it’s enough to make the lizard do the nope octopus when I’m hit– but I didn’t know they’d figured out what CAUSES it.

                Would explain my dislike of crowded rooms, and maybe the family obsession with “getting the air to move” in most rooms.

                1. I bet it would also manifest as “claustrophobia” in some instances.

                  Knowing what causes it makes it a bit easier to handle when you’re awake, but it doesn’t help a bit once you go to sleep.

              2. “Apparently it took them about a decade to figure it out…”

                The medical profession in general is absolutely horrible at dealing with complaints from (so-to-say) lay people. There are honorable exceptions, and I have been blessed to be treated by a number of them, but the average doctor is far too ready to dismiss problems like “I feel like I’m suffocating with a mask on” with “there’s no reason for that.

                Who the F*ck CARES what the REASON is? A feeling exists. Feelings are real. They shouldn’t be trump, but they must be dealt with. They aren’t just going to go away.

          3. Locally a quick read of the “guidance” in the 聖塔克拉拉縣衛生局長家避疫命令 and the various subsidiary orders and information pages indicates a chainmail mask might suffice if there’s a “cloth, fabric, or other soft or permeable material” layer backing up the mail.

            1. There are tons of “meme” pictures out there of masks made from repurposed plastic bottles, feminine undergaments, and other items…

              1. A friend of perverse temperament is using a mask that looks like it wanted to be Greedo, but could only afford black plastic. He reports having lately seen someone in a full Darth Vader getup.

                See? there’s the problem; we’re being insufficiently creative.

                1. We’re being insufficienciently creative

                  The fear husband has ordered balaclavas for us to keep in the car. If we get to a “masks only place” we’re to put them on.

                  Be careful what you wish for.

                2. [tch, hiss] “I find your lack of masking” [tch,hiss] “disturbing…”

                  I still find it hilarious that the State wants me to conceal my face while I’m open carrying a gun. Which is the exact opposite of what they wanted a few years ago…

                  1. Seen on the internet:

                    * “Who knew I’d walk up to a bank teller masked and hand a note demanding money!”
                    * “Never guess I’d be putting on a mask to go into the liquor store!”

                    Second one I think I saw in comments for one of Sarah’s blogs …

              2. I have a couple of those. We call them tubies. Great for yard work (much better to get it snagged by the Murder Rose than one’s hair) and sledding.

        3. I’ve been thinking of a Guy Fawkes mask. But hmmm… maybe your idea is better.

    2. It’s an attempt to establish a foot-hold for you to pay for a (theoretical) third party’s benefit.

      When there are available, more effective means for those who would be getting a benefit to be protected. Yeah, my husband’s N95 mask is uncomfortable–though not so bad as a dust mask– but it is also going to protect him from anything short of somebody spitting in his eyes.

    3. My husband got Karened at the same grocery store, and I did not this past Sunday afternoon, though we both went sans mask, and I went the wrong way down a one-way aisle twice (that part wasn’t on purpose)

      I went out with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. I was so tickled to be out and about again. I was greeting people, and smiling at them.

      Sunshine really is a useful disinfectant.

      1. There are two grocery’s here that have set up a dedicated entrance and exit, and also one way aisles. I’m not patronizing them until they stop that stupidity.

        1. Home Desperate now has a dedicated “in” door. I had been using it for a while but didn’t notice until I tried to go into the contractor’s exit. OTOH, only three people were wearing masks in there on Tuesday. (And no, I wasn’t one of them.) And yes, they have a Gazinta and a Gozouta person at the relevant doors. Sigh.

          So far, shopping in Klamath Falls has been a remarkably Karen-free experience. I do need to drop the vote-fraud-by-mail ballots at the country clerk’s office next week, so if there’s going to be a Karen, she’ll be there.

    4. Someone I know was freaking out about the claustrophobia caused by the mask. The Karen’s praised for taking one for the team. The stupid Karen’s told him to wear it under his nose or keep it loose about his face, with no seal. ::headdesk:: the one person who told him it was just feel guilty of theatre got dog piled by the scared Karen’s.

  5. I saw a brief vid-clip yesterday of brave officers marching forward in formation, guns drawn toward a group of outlaw hair stylists who stood manos-arriba in a trailer park. The cops were backed up by a Bearcat- an armored car with a machine gun turret on top. Really? I mean, REALLY??? For some reason this conjured up the disturbing image of Officers mounted on horseback, galloping after bunnies with polo mallets.
    In this rural area i inhabit I bother no one, and no one bothers me. I drive into Tennessee to shop, and other than bizarre shortages of some grocery items, I ignore the orders and they ignore me. BUT! I needed a haircut on March 15, didn’t get around to it. My hair hasn’t been this long since 1976.

  6. I don’t have a job to go to… but I can darn well take the kids out to a playground. Gonna see about inviting a (lonely) friend who doesn’t live in my household, too.

    (On the bright side, I have noticed fewer infantilizing memes? In… favor of the outright demonizing ones, mind you, but I still can’t help but see the movement as a positive, from disobedient children who need to be controlled for their own good Because They Don’t Know Better to Greedy Exploitative Bastards Who Need To Be Crushed for the Good of Others. I mean, we’re at least adults that way.)

    1. I can darn well take the kids out to a playground.

      You can? I envy you. Around here, all the playgrounds have been covered in yellow caution tape. Because if you let the kids play on the playground, they might be happy, and if the kids were happy, the parents might be a little less miserable, and who knows where that might end?

      I’m keeping a list of the playgrounds where we’re going if this ends before my toddler reaches her teenage years. It won’t be over until that tape comes down.

      1. Well, depending on where you live and how power-trippy the local authorities are, those yellow tapes come down awfully easily…just sayin’…

          1. I was at a wilderness reserve yesterday, probably 15 people there over about 500 acres. They had the picnic tables taped off. If it weren’t for the deputy taking his lunch in the parking lot, I would have been sore tempted to break out the Guy Fawkes mask.

            1. My girlfriend and I starting bringing folding chairs and setting them up beside the taped-off picnic tables, or on the pad where the picnic table was before they hauled it off, or setting the little table up in front of the park benches they left behind.

        2. I wonder what legal authority those yellow tapes represent. Crossing them at a crime scene probably falls under “tampering with evidence” proscriptions, but around a park or picnic table? I’m not sure how the legal code could interpret those as anything more than warnings, lacking authority.

          Sure, they can harass you (they can do that anyway) but I suspect making any prosecution stand would require compliant judiciary.

          It would cost you time and money and might not be worth the hassle … I confess the lock-down has had little noticeable effect on me, being retired, an introvert, and as prone to engage in interaction with others as your typical cat.
          –

          1. It would cost you time and money and might not be worth the hassle … I confess the lock-down has had little noticeable effect on me, being retired, an introvert, and as prone to engage in interaction with others as your typical cat.

            –
            Us too. Where to draw a line?

            There is no yellow tape at the grade school across the street. I don’t have to go over any fence. I just don’t have to “see” the extra small paper on either side of the school (legit), when I walk next to the fence on the far north side through that common path entrance. Still haven’t checked the small neighborhood parks. Park equipment has had the yellow caution tape. But the parks are going to be difficult to block … no fences.

            Also. We still haven’t received our $1200 each “free” check. Neither has mom. Kid has his $1200. Nieces have theirs. We all three, who haven’t gotten ours, fall under SS auto deposit. Hubby & I are, eh?, whatever. But it really will help mom, even with spending (currently) way down.

            I don’t expect spending to stay down. Grocery costs are already creeping up. I can’t point to one specific item as “proof”. I can’t use Costco past VS present because mom’s costs are folded in (I can’t just take and use her Costco CC to pay for her items, they frown on using cards without your face on them). But Fred Meyer portion is way up (I do use her card to buy her groceries), by at least 15 to 20%. Right now that is balanced by the decrease in fuel costs (both usage and per gallon) but I don’t expect that to last. I lived through the last quick inflation rise, I know better. I was of one of the classifications that it hurt the most … a working college student.
            –

      2. house a few doors down has a very large yard, and **gasp*** lets the older two cross the street and play in the lot and woods along the river.

      3. The fenced one “in town” has been chained shut, but the open-air one in the nature trail is untouched (a long with picnic tables and grill), and when I went to the park in the next town there was… like, a single yard of orange plastic fencing at the “gate” (which is not particularly noteworthy when there’s no fence otherwise), and no one bugging the gentlemen playing basketball.

        Now, failing that, my children (one and four) are driving me to wit’s end enough I’m not sure I’d have abided tape. But it’s nice that I didn’t have to. (I suspect my county has a high base resentment of NYC mandates to begin with, which helps.)

      4. Update on the local playground situation: I decided my daughter was going to get to play today. We drove to three different playgrounds; first two were taped off, but the third was clear. I don’t know if it was actually open or if a previous group of parents had just decided that they’d had enough and implemented drloss’s solution, but either way, we spent about an hour there climbing, going down slides, jumping on rocks, and even (gasps of horror) playing with other kids.

        As we were driving away, I saw a little girl slightly older than mine. Her eyes lit up as she noticed the playground, and she started running towards it like a desert traveller towards an oasis. We were gone before I saw if she got to play, but I hope so. My lord, what have we done to our children? This is bordering on abuse.

        1. What they’re doing to the ADULTS is well beyond ‘bordering’ on abuse.

        2. Yes!! That’s awesome. ^.^ I wish there had been someone to play at ours, but I’ll say that the kids I had after a few hours of playing on the equipment were *much* different than the ones before, even though I have a backyard. 😀

          (Charlotte’s terribly lonely still, I need to figure out the underground hotspots where the other toddlers play…)

    2. I keep missing it on TV (don’t watch much to begin with), but Oregon has one spot that goes “If you go out, you’re committing murder.” Doesn’t sound like it’s going over very well.

      1. /sarc Because your germ is going to hunt around until it fins that individual who is in the super-duper high risk category of being the 1-2% mortality pool if they catch the bug?
        /sarc off

        1. I was hoping more if it’s murder it would hunt down people who really annoy me; starting with the creator of that ad.

        2. *laughs*

          I am so glad you wrote that.

          I just got done responding to a call for superficial solidarity, do your part, etc, on Sarah’s insty post about masks.

          As always, part of my responding is to ask “am I wrong?”

          I’d gotten so busy thinking that I totally spaced the sense of proportion for how small the group that might be at risk is, and how much more effective it is to protect those in danger, rather than attack the huge number who might possibly maybe be a source of risk.

      2. They should want to be really careful with that train of thought. After the first felony the rest are free. But I doubt their situational awareness is that developed.

      3. There’s a Twiiter storm now because the blue checks are calling a woman who noted the nursing home outbreaks, “Grandma killer.” They’re really getting (more) irrational.

      5. If that’s the case then we have all killed someone. I guarantee that we have all passed on a flu, which is at least approximately as lethal as this.

        1. Heh. I’ve been making offerings to gather (Real quarantine safety! Guaranteed! Plus xhrese, wine, and a bonfire!) for the past 6 weeks out of a sense of duty.

          I’m actually guiltily pleased that I haven’t had to follow through.

      6. Thank God I haven’t been watching TV. That is emotional abuse. Also, they can go to Hel.

  7. From today on I’m going out every day, even if all I do is buy a pack of gum at the convenience store.

    You haven’t been?

    The near daily QT run fora the huge iced tea or diet soda, maybe with roller grill food or a flatbread sandwich, has been key to me not being homicidal.

    I’m going nuts with no one willing to gather though.

    1. The fountain drinks and roller foods are all closed here. I’ve been going to McD’s a lot just to get a fountain drink, and food to eat in the parking lot. Just to get out of the horse and away from the family.

      I miss being able to just sit at McD’s and write. Also miss free refills.

      1. When we reopen (hah! It’s Oregon, Jake), at least for Stage 1, no self-serve fountain, no self-serve cooler. Pretty much the same as now, except that tables can be set, but 6′ apart. Which will suck for small places. The target is about 50% of the previous capacity. Better than with takeout, but it is still bad.

        1. When we reopen (hah! It’s Oregon, Jake)

          Which is now July 6th …

          OTOH Hubby is still golfing. They still can’t gather at the unofficial club house 19th hole (bar) after playing 9 or 18 … guess that is what the 20th hole (maintenance shed) is for … and they have to bring their own beer now.

          1. Good for Hubby. 🙂

            Clever how Despicable Kate Brown waited until *after* her Friday Afternoon news conference to drop that little stinkbomb. I suspect even the LSM news organizations might have asked some pointed questions.

            I see the rural county Free-At-Last criteria has 5 *cases* as the threshold. We’ve had 39, with 8 active, and nobody got killed. (Several of those cases are from somebody flying between Kung-Flu hotspots on a plane that ended up in Medford, infecting Klamath residents. FWIW, no airline traffic from Klamath County since the last provider went toes up.)

            1. Did you notice that Her Despicableness gave herself more power longer after the protest in Salem on Saturday?

              Also, I have heard, but not yet verified with my own eyes, that the OR Constitution limits States of Emergency to 30 Days unless extended by the legislature. Having heard NOTHING recently about the legislature doing anything, including breathing, makes me wonder…

        2. Nope, your governor signed the mutual cross border fraternal socialist solidarity pact with Gavin the Magnificent (Hair) and thus your entire state is now hostage to Los Angeles like the rest of California.

        1. I need to hit the archive and get back into the [redacted] papers and see if I can track down some references to [redacted], plus finally get a copy of the Great [noun] Controversy out of the city records. I keep saying I’m going to write an article on that, and I keep putting off the research.

    2. Not going to say what state I’m in, but few masks seen, and some of the stores are open in defiance of political edicts. I went and bought some tshirts I really didn’t need at one yesterday, in support. I vote with myMastercard!

  8. I live in Florida. I think my state Governor isn’t doing to bad. Sure, opening could–and in my opinion probably should–go faster, but I watched the Governor explain what he was doing and why he decided the way he did. It showed he’s looking at the statistics and evidence he has available to him, understands what he is looking at, and is thinking rather than reacting.

    Some of my friends won’t listen to him because he made–in their estimation–the unforgivable mistake of not closing down spring break. Believe it or not, one of them actually believes that because of it, he’s responsible for ALL of New York’s Corona problems. Sigh…. Leaving the subway open? Where people are packed in like sardines with NO sanitation? Perfectly fine. Letting predominantly young healthy people go to the beach where they are outside in the sun and the UV radiation further reduces chances of transmission? OH NOES!!! That’s EEEEEvil. (sometimes I think I need smarter friends)

    Note: Same friends are blabbing that Trump should have acted sooner like ??? would have. ??? What fscking Democrat DIDN’T give Trump crap for being a racist and/or jumping too soon when he closed down travel? And they think ??? would have done better? (sorry, had a call last night with one of my friends from the North East that I hadn’t heard from for months. I’m glad she’s doing ok, but my brain is still recovering from the broken reality seeping through the phone.)

    1. Leaving the subway open? Where people are packed in like sardines with NO sanitation?

      Even better, as ridership decreased NYC cut train sizes so despite fewer riders the crowding remained the same.

          1. I am so tired of that misstatement. If they’re not human, eating humans does not make them cannibals.

            It’s another piece of Hollywood Stupid.

            1. Yeah, but then they’re just H.U.D, which doesn’t sound as cool.

              2. HUD is REALLY terrifying. Think of all those old housing projects…

            2. “Cannibal” has multiple definitions; a person that eats another person (note: person is not, and never has been, identical to “human;”) is one of them, in addition to eating the flesh of mutually inter-fertile groups. Depends on the shade of meaning in “own kind.”

              I can easily see a dark storyline for X-Men having Brotherhood members that are OK with eating non-active-X-gene humans, as not their “kind;” at the same time, I can see someone playing with cannibal vs non-cannibal dragons, where the question is eating sentient beings, not other dragons.

              1. You could also suppose a population that eats humans for daily living, and their own much more rarely.

                Long term, purely internal all cannibalism diet doesn’t make thermodynamic sense.

                Of course, a diet of intelligent prey seems pretty hard to survive off of, once you pay serious attention to metabolism, spoilage, and caloric intake.

                1. Especially if that intelligent prey is human.

                  There’s not a long history of success for species that routinely hunt humans.

                  1. And this is why I really can’t get behind all the shrieks about “we must stop global warming for the polar bears!”

                    Polar bears are one of the few species that eats people because. Tigers, lions – the other big cats usually have to be badly injured or taught as cubs before they start stalking humans. Polar bears see us as “edible”.

                    1. Polar bears see *everything* as edible. They’re not exactly living in a high-calorie environment…

            3. While I will not argue it’s not stupid, and a very Hollywood stupid, the CHUDs were supposedly mutated (in the meaning of maimed/damaged/mutilated, rather than “genetically changed”) humans, too– so that would be cannibalism in even the strictest sense. If they could pass on the change, then arguably those offspring wouldn’t be committing cannibalism.

              The summary form Wikipedia reminds me of the old Scottish legend/history/yes of the cannibal robber family, but with generic mutation causing chemicals instead of a crazy evil Greek mythology style father and his inbred horde.

      3. If the New York leadership had been trying to get as many people killed as possible while at the same time maximizing economic damage, I don’t know what they could have done differently. And yet for some reason, Cuomo is being held up as the model of leadership.

        1. I am informed that De Blasio made him look like a comparative genius by being too controlling to let people make decisions without him and too indecisive to make them himself. Add media bias and stir.

          If he replaces Biden as the nominee, as some rumors suggest, I hope he finds out his nursing home policies managed to tick off enough people in NYC and particularly some of the ones who would normally help with the cheating, about the time New York counts up for Trump on November 3.

          Yeah, yeah, it’s a pipe dream.

          1. The Republican Party’s incompetence at running their candidates is legendary, but even the Libertarians could make a go of “killing old people in nursing homes”, complete with tearful interviews of surviving family intercut with angry silence or keyword gibber from those responsible.

            Anyone with even a minimal budget could ride that horse into office.

            Flip side, NYC has been a closed political machine for over a century. If you thought the Deep State and the NeverTrumper federal employees were bad, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

          1. Milton Friedman didn’t call them Satanists… not that I can recall anyway, but he *was* quite good at pointing out their stupidities. There are fewer modern leftists than it ever seems, but an awful lot of fellow travellers (aka “useful idiots”) and a few terrified souls that *know* but are frightened for their jobs, their families, and thier very lives as well.

      4. New York *can’t* close the subways entirely. Too much of the infrastructure – the low level bureaucrats, the police, the firemen, doctors, nurses, EMTs, snowplow operators, boiler operators, and others – have no other practical way to get to work.

        They could have tried to set up some kind of two or three level pass system, put Transit Authority guards at every turnstile to allow only people with the right cards on the train… if they’d got right on that back in January. they might be able to implement it by 2024 or so. They’re not exactly the most efficient organization in the world.

        What the average New Yorker would have thought about their newly-declared “betters” being able to use the subways while they were turned back, after paying through the nose for their pass cards or tokens, is left as an exercise for the reader.

          1. Or add cars and physically mark and block spaces. And program limits into the turnstiles.

            And hiring laid-off workers at union wages to man all the turnstile spots and call in jumpers to the cops.

            Ditto hiring cleaning crews to dusinfect…

            Kabuki Quarantine.

        2. They could have at least not decreased train size with decreased ridership, thus letting people spread out. I know how close rush hour is on MARTA. I can only imagein NYC subways.

          1. The same brain wave overcame the MBTA hear in the Boston area. Subways weren’t bad (mid march I was seeing like 8 people in a car in the morning on the Orange Line so 6′ distance was easy. My usual Lowell Line Commuter rail was a different issue. They massively reduced the trains to a schedule that meant that ONLY one train was suitable if you wanted to go in in the morning, and only 1 leaving Boston was late enough to have you had worked an 8 hour day. I saw that change and said NOPE and shifted to the orange line for the remaining week of work.
            I never checked but my bet is those Lowell Line trains were cheek by jowl in and out.

        3. They may not, ere long, have subways to close – and then they’ll not have New York because without subways it cannot function:

          Closing NYC subways at night is ominous step toward giving up on them
          … The MTA doesn’t need to shutter its 472-stop system for four hours — inconveniencing 11,000 critical private-economy workers — to aid homeless people or deep-clean trains. It has rules against sleeping on trains, and the NYPD can better enforce them than it can secure 472 empty stations from potential terror. As for cleaning: Most trains are out of service at night. The MTA could set an hourly schedule for that.

          The ominous truth was buried in the MTA’s statement: It will bring back 24/7 service “when customer demand” returns.

          This is backward. Ridership is low now — a quarter of the 41,312 people who generally use transit during these hours. ­(Although the fact that 11,000 still need this transit shows ­remarkable resilience, which we should be building, not cutting off.)

          But riders won’t come back unless they know there’s a train.

          Consider the signal the state and city are sending to New York’s theater, nightlife and restaurant industry with this move. If you try to open up soon, your workers and customers will have no cheap, safe way to get home.

          [SNIP]

          If ridership is at 50 percent by fall — an optimistic projection — the MTA will find itself more abandoned by the political class.

          The state and city are already washing their hands of transit. The Legislature wants the MTA to borrow $10 billion for operating expenses: more than half of any one year’s $17 billion budget; de Blasio has never cared about subways.

          [SNIP]

          Failing spells the end of Manhattan and the core of a three-state economy. There is no other way to move 2.2 million people onto the dense island each day.

          [END EXCERPT]

          1. Interesting phenomenon isn’t it RES?

            They always sell us whatever Big Gummint scheme in something that you really do need a collective to do: Like the Metro or the subwa y.

            Five minutes later every nickel and effort is spent on anything else.

            It’s diabolical.

      5. And even worse, New York ordered nursing homes to readmit elderly residents once they had been released from hospitals thus guaranteeing the spread of the disease to their fellow elders. Last number I saw had the body count for just nursing home and elder care facility resident deaths at nearly 5,000. Supposedly this was done in fear that hospitals would run out of beds, which surprise, New York never even came close to. In fact neither the emergency hospital built in record time nor the Navy medical ship ever reached even ten percent of their capacity.
        Anyone needs to be blamed for making stupid decisions that caused unnecessary deaths it would be Governor Cuomo.

        1. Given how some progressives view the aged, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that infecting nursing homes was viewed as a feature. Especially if they thought they could spin it as “not my fault”.

        2. Hey, Medicare is a huge health care cost center that isn’t going to fix itself. Plus, most elderly watch Fox News and are thus delplorables.

        3. They are still requiring nursing homes to take WuFlu patients. Cuomo say that they aren’t, but that would be a, how do you call it, lie Shocking, I know. I suspect that the pantomime we’re going through now is as much about throwing up smoke to hide the liability as it is about squalid power hungry little sh-ts getting their jollies in controlling people.

          They have so much to hide and distracting people is a great way to hide it. They’re saying we’re all going to die to hide the fact that we’re not but they killed a lot of the people who did.

          I hate these people.

          2. Consider the things that only now we are learning that they did years ago. Despicable things. Vile things. Ghastly.

            Consider that we don’t now know the things that they’ve been doing recently.

            That, at least, I believe is how things are going to get worse.

            The virus? Not so much. The data we have is inconclusive, incomplete, and outright lies (*cough* CHINA *cough cough*). Only with accurate data will we see what’s actually going on here. Although I think most of us who are paying attention likely have a pretty good idea based on the few things we *know* are true so far.

          3. Nobody is ever going to admit to being the one who forced nursing homes to readmit COVID-19 patients discharged by Hospitals. Medicaid rules don’t allow nursing homes to evict Medicaid patients that still need the nursing home care, and that apples to readmitting those that have been in the Hospital.
            There is an exception for patients who endanger the health & safety of other residents which should have covered this, but if you’ve ever dealt with Medicaid you’ll realize some disinterested bureaucratic bean counter is very likely the one who told the nursing homes that the exception didn’t apply if the hospital thought they were well enough to discharge.

            Stupid, but likely unintentional. People with little imagination and not enough knowledge to make informed decisions just going by the book.
            Now those in the State government who were in a position to overrule the bean counter and were contacted by the nursing homes but decided not to step in were criminally negligent and/or evil.

          4. Because Stigma. We cannot have Stigma against Persons Experiencing Wuhan Gurgling Death because that is… Racist? Definitely Hate.

            Their god is a jealous god and demands obeisance. I think it’s Catbert.

      1. Indiana is responsible for Chicago in the Left’s eyes. FL to NY is a few more miles, but otherwise of the same cloth.

      2. well, it certainly isn’t because those from NYC, where WuFlu was possibly first in the US, brought it to Florida, which didn’t have cases until after NYC did, now is it?

                1. Uh… Because either I or WP stink -?
                  I
                  I was really enjoying Bing Cosby and the Andrews sisters as they dissed Texas, the Southwest and the South East Coast (Though NC blue crab and key lime pie are nommy!) until they got to the PNW.

                  So I clicked the reply thingy under your Tubes of You-ness…

                  Moscow Rules #9-?

                  1. Ah yes. Then, it was the 1940’s, and the song was made for comedic purpose so there is a certain departure from reality as we know it. I am perhaps most amused by the likely accurate description of the town (but not the body of water) of Devil’s Lake, ND and the bit about Penobscot Bay and the Androscoggin River.

      3. Florida is in the Deplorable Zone between NY, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The light of Social Justice is weak in Miami, and gleams but dimly in Tallahassee and Tampa.

      4. You know, Spring Break not being shut down, and all that.

        Of course the fact that numerous small towns across the country – the ones that largely exist to serve as a support system for the nearby university – are largely unaffected is quietly ignored.

    3. But it’s okay, because they’re finally sanitizing the subway a month after the lockdown started . . .

        1. Hey man, you peons should be grateful they do it once a century.

          1. What, is that like immunizations for the germs? We get shots to keep us from getting sick, the subway gets “cleaned” to give the germs increased resistance?

        2. The way I look at it, he could still claim the rest of his second term.

          Just because he’s dead is no reason to discriminate against the differently-abled. Besides, being dead is a positive advantage for politicans.

    4. > need smarter friends

      Among the people I know, “must obey and wear mask” and “we’re all going to die!” and “it’s all Trump’s fault!” seem to correlate strongly with Facebook and Twitter use.

      The disconnect from reality can be pretty stout. One was damning people for not wearing masks and maintaining “social distancing.”

      “I notice you’re sitting less than six feet away.”

      “Well, that’s different.”

      “And you’re not wearing a mask.”

      “That’s different!”

      “How?”

      [glare]

      1. Of course they strongly correlate with Twitter and Facebook usage. I suspect they correlate with MSM viewing, as well. Because all calming/contrary information is censored as disinformation on Twitter and Facebook, and ignored by the MSM. They’re taking down videos of doctors discussing positive results from hydroxychloroquine treatment, statements of politicians questioning the need for lockdown, etc.

      2. Friends of mine are having their FB posts censored just for saying “We need to open up, with precautions”. It’s “against community standards”, apparently.

        1. Someone HAS to be “denouncing” them, because I say that several times a day (and screw the ‘precautions’ and NO ONE takes them down.

    5. And most of Florida was never locked down as tight as Colorado was.
      My county parks never closed, which is nice because my regular exercise is 18 holes of disc golf, and there are 4 courses within a 20 minute drive of home. Apart from an all-day rain on April 30 I’ve been out every day during the “lockdown”, either at the park, the grocery store, Lowes for repair parts, or (a couple times) food takeout.
      I feel for those not working – we retirees aren’t nearly as affected as those in the workforce.
      I’m not sure why folks on Social Security got the full $1200/person stimulus. Our income wasn’t affected by the lockdowns. Seems ill thought out. Of course at election time politicians love to take credit for stuff they’ve given the voters, and retirees vote. Once it was suggested it was politically hard to not do it.

      1. Our parks in San Antonio didn’t close, although our dip-sh*t of a mayor had a major cow upon observing people out in them without *observing social distancing! ELEVENTY! They are still open, and thank the Deity. My daughter and her dates are reduced to either going for long hikes along the Salado Creek paths … or cooking a supper at home and watching a movie on Date’s TV.
        She had a nice evening with friends in New Braunfels last weekend; the friends who usually go out to the Icehouse in Cibolo to listen to the live bands. They got takeout from the HEB and worked a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. All rather sweet and very early 20th century.

      2. What’s this “got” $1200 stimulus? Haven’t seen ours yet. Neither has my mom. (All three of us are under the limits.)

        1. Nada here as well. Not heard of anyone who has seen theirs.

          Are they supposed to be actual hardcopy checks or direct deposited?

          1. However you got your tax refund, if you got one.

            Ours made it here weeks ago, but we do have six kids, that might’ve been part of it.

            2. I don’t get tax refunds. A tax ‘refund’ means they took too much money all year, and now you’re begging them to give it back. I saw somewhere that the average tax ‘refund’ is $3,000. Wake up, you idiots! Fix that W-4 form and give yourself an instant $60-a-week raise!

              My neighbor (school teacher) got a notice that they would be sending her a ‘stimulus’ check.

              WTF, O?

              Why did they waste money and paper sending a NOTICE instead of just sending her the damn check? Typical Government Stupid.

              1. There’s no need for scare quotes around the word refund. It’s a refund. A return of my money. Scare quotes are suitable for suggestions that it’s free money, and/or rightfully theirs.

                Yes, they over charged us; believe it or not, mature adults can decide that giving the government a fairly small, interest free loan is worth it to avoid the annoyance, ill will, and possible risk of having to pay at the end of the year (which you will have to do, even if the charge is incorrect) that is involved with getting exactly the correct deduction, especially when the taxes weren’t even set until the end of the year.

                Why did they waste money and paper sending a NOTICE instead of just sending her the damn check? Typical Government Stupid

                Fraud.

                A lot of people don’t like having a check show up in their mailbox, assuming that it’s actually their mail box and they’re the one that checks it. Direct deposit is safer and less fraud prone, because of the tracking ability on a banking account.

            1. Oh my gosh– did you hear about that thing where a guy was suing his land lord because the landlord asked if he intended to pay part of his rent, because he knew the guy had gotten his check?

              Well, got more information….

              The guy who is suing is an AntiFa activist.

              And his landlord isn’t male, she’s female.

              And also the activist’s grandmother.

              In whose basement he resides.

              She pays for his phone and utilities, he pays rent, but was letting him wait until money came in…..

          3. Son got his already. He has gotten a refund from Federal. Short of putting down 0 deductions, he gets a refund.

            We pay each year. Have them take it out of our account at the appropriate time, so they have our account number. We file early, because we get a huge State refund. Not that we’ve seen that either. While we electronically file Federal, we paper file State. I’m not paying to do their job.

            We also have SS auto deposited.

            Per “where is my stimulus” link, someone already provided, SS and VA benefit receivers will get theirs sometime. RES is the only SS recipient I know of that have gotten theirs. Note, not that I’ve asked anyone. Only really tracking for mine, hubby’s, & mom is tracking hers.

    6. I am certain that DJT issuing a national no fly order and somehow under some obscure authority imperial-edicting shutting down NYC subways, closing all college campuses and cancelling all spring breaks everywhere back on the first day of the Senate impeachment trial would have been hailed universally as sound and just policy by all right thinking Democrats.

      Hah! I Kid!!

  9. Dr. Faucci is the last person I’d want running this clown show. I was brefly a public health bacteriologist in 1965 and the CDC was a outstanding agency. In the 30+ yrs. he has led it, it has been mission creeeped into a cess pool of PC nonsense. Worse their reported flubs with bugs like anthrax are bad enough but stagger the mind to consider what hasn’t been reported. In short they have more mishaps than the FBI and with a higher body count. Dr. Faucci epitomizes the Deep State.

  10. Sorry. My bad. He isnt CDC but comments about it stand. And his tenure for tht many years do argue Deep State to anyone familiar with biomedical politics in DC can arrest

    1. Don’t worry they all covered themselves in more glory than a kid in a septic tank.

      Honestly think it’s part of why everything so hyped. Had cdc, fda, nih, etc done their job right and treated everything like the emergency they are preaching (pull in privates for testing, start trials of meds immediately without being paid by drug co, etc.) Might have been much less fearmongering possible

    2. No worries. Mr. Faucci was garbage in the late ’80s (AIDS) when I was too green to figure his khreptastic-try. He”s screwed the pool for other pandemics since.

      But here’s the point to consider: How is it that neither Left nor Right held him accountable?

      2. Maybe we should ask him about the AIDS vaccine before we accept anything he has to say about a CCP vaccine?

  11. I learned on Twitter the other day that our Moral and Intellectual Superiors have declared that the movement to end the lockdown is fascist. No, really. Stop laughing.

    But having police patrolling beaches, drones watching overhead and fines for not wearing the masks we supposedly didn’t need a month ago somehow isn’t.

    1. Well, of course. Our Moral and Intellectual Superiors want the lockdowns to continue until morale improves, and they’re not fascists. It’s the people who disagree with them who are the fascists. Just ask them, they’ll tell you so, and prove it with geometric logic. And if you don’t understand the proof, why that just shows they’re your Moral and Intellectual Superiors – after all, they understand it!

      2. I’m fascinated by the belief that freedom and individuality are “fascist”. It makes absolutely no sense if you examine it for, say, a nanosecond, yet the Left has conned a remarkable number of people into believing this. It blows my mind.

          1. Arguably, fascism never did have much of a substantive meaning, or at least didn’t for no more than about a nanosecond after Mussolini founded his movement. It was back in 1946 that Orwell wrote “The word fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.'”

            1. Fascist is the word you call someone when you WANT to call them a Nazi, but you don’t want to be made fun of for being “that guy” that calls people Nazis without really understanding what that means.

            2. In all fairness, I think Paxton gave a good working definition, which excludes a lot of goverments called fascists, but oddly fits the PRC.

              Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

              1. Obsession with the humiliation of China by the West and Japan? Check
              2. Cuts of unitty? Check
              3. Mass based party of committed nationalist militants? That describes the PRC better than Marxist does
              4. Working in collaboration with traditional elites? Well, at this point the PRC are the traditional elites.
              5. Abandons democratic liberties? Never had them

              So, PRC meets 3 of 5.

              What is really interesting is the modern western left.

              1. The obsession with victimhood is defining.
              2. The cult of Woke fits.
              3. They are internationalists, however.
              4. The relationship of woke and the DNC
              5. Full spectrum from The Popular Vote Compact to the impeachment to Anti-fa fills this entire spectrum

              The only non-fascist characteristic of the modern American left is it is anti-nationalist.

                1. Yeah, while the CPC wants to pretend the Nationalists that fled to Taiwan were the old imperialist elites, that crew was who Chiang Kai-sheck defeated – The commies and the KMT were originally cooperating and eventually competing revolutionary movements in the several waves of chaos after the fall of the Qing dynasty.

                  Not sure there were really any elites left in China after the warlord era for the CPC to potentially cooperate with.

                  1. My reading of Chung and Halliday is that the Commies were basically rear area security for the IJA.

              1. Eh. Orwell fought the elites of his time. We are none of us George Orwell. We must instead become the footsoldiers of our time. Liberty and Freedom are hard things to hold. But for all their harships, for all the responsibility one must bear on their shoulders as a free man, the rewards are worth it. The dignity of soul one has when accepting that burden is unequal to any other thing in this life I’ve found.

      3. Okay, I actually did laugh out loud at “prove it with geometric logic”.

        Now I want strawberries.

        1. You can’t have them the mess boys ate them. Now put away the ball bearings :-).

        2. Whatever you do, don’t check out the strawberries behind the third door on the fourth floor.

          The way they are neon blue and glowing ought to be sufficient warning, but the aardvark had unfond memories of the time someone didn’t think.

        2. Potato gun.

          Or any similar compressed-air shooter. Shoot ’em down with tennis balls!

          Maybe a paintball gun.

    3. Yea.. they showed their hand with the no mask, mask nonsense. When we should have been wearing masks they said no. Now that the sun is out… most people shouldn’t have to wear masks.

    4. Drones patrolling…. but masks allowedencouraged.. Hrmm laser pointers are cheap. (I shouldn’t have so this, but: DO NOT DO THIS TO NON-DRONE AIRCRAFT!)

        1. Sling shots, maybe?

          Have son & husband do baseball practice in the backyard … oops missed throw. Now that I could get away with. Balls don’t go where I intended. OTOH that means it would be accidental if I hit a drone, because sure won’t accidentally on purpose by aiming…

            1. There is truth to the statement about solving problems through the suitable application of explosives.

    5. The Left, having nothing remotely resembling a conscience, has been using the word ‘fascist’ to mean ‘anything with which we disagree, for any reason’ for roughly half a century. For one thing, it distracts from the bald fact that THEY are the fascists…and always have been.

      1. Not so. the conscience of the left has been taken over by a virus called Socialism which causes it to stop producing arguments against self gratification and instead creates vacuous statements of faux virtue. It then follows, hive-like, the higher order infected. Viz. modern feminism, racism, and so on. Situational ethics (moral relativism) on display in the Reade accusation vs the Ford accusation. And so on.

      1. That…individual is aware of what the normal daily death rate is, right? Of course he’s not. Things don’t happen until or unless we are aware of them. Everything is just a potentiality until the Woke and Knowledgeable acknowledge things.

        2. I just love the recent headlines: “Deaths will double by June!!!”

          Well, that’s a whole lot better than “deaths will double by the day after tomorrow” which is how we started this thing. Gotta keep up the skeer, I guess. Can’t let the proles think things are improving.

          1. They’ve been saying “deaths will double in x” and they obligingly do. Mosltly because everyone who dies dies of “coronavirus” no matter what actually killed them.

      2. In case it gets deleted– as I actually hope it does, since that would indicate some kind of self-awareness–
        Starting to feel really weird that we made such a big deal about 9/11. At this point we have a 9/11 every two days and have decided that’s not a bad enough thing to stop people from getting haircuts.

        Probably just advanced virtue signaling, but it’s possible that the MSM hasn’t been mentioning the overwhelming demographics involved, here, and he really does think this is Spanish Flu 2020.

  12. From an article about some smaller businesses re-opening despite the Walz-ian edicts…

    “in southwestern Minnesota the Lakefield City Council voted 3-2 on Monday to take a stand against the governor’s orders by declining to devote any city resources to enforce them, according to the Lakefield Standard.”

    1. A number of rural counties have done this. I *think* this is what Orange County in California has done, and why Gov. Newsome is so pissed off at the county (to the extent that he closed all of the beaches in Orange County, and only Orange County).

      1. It looks like OC vs Noisome is turning into a court battle, and Gavin is backtracking. I think it’s Newport that is willing to keep going after the governor and his unconstitutional edicts.

        1. Partway – Gavin the Great issued a celebratory press release thanking OC for their enthusiastic cooperation in negotiating compliance with his enlightened policies, so now the beaches are reopened! … except as noted OC never applied any resources to enforce closing them, and they are saying they never talked to the governors office at all.

          1. That’s encouraging, actually. If Newsome backed down that quickly, it suggests he’s growing wise to the fact that he’s not going to be able to enforce the shutdown for much longer.

            The face-saving untruths can remain, for all I care.

      2. Yuba County posted re-opening plans that used the phrase “false essential vs. non-essential dichotomy.” Nice little backhand to the state government plans. Their re-opening timeline is based on the John Hopkins Center guidelines for safety, and has schools in the last group, rather than one of the early ones, because large groups of people in close contact indoors for long periods of time is more likely to spread things than, say, an interaction in a salon.

  13. It bothers me a lot that the parks are closed That is so counter-intuitive of dealing with a virus. Get some son and fresh air. Walk.Enjoy the flowers. Everyone would feel better. Even worse people are being told to stay in their houses. I’m noticing that most people here in NV are starting to go out and move around. Most people won’t stand for another three months under lock and key. I think its time to open.

    2. UV light destroys viruses. Ultraviolet is a component of sunlight. Which is why you should go outside and let it disinfect you.

      1. Yet the gov. of Texas opened the parks to only folks wearing masks. This ain’t Texas anymore

          1. I want a (set of) mask(s) with text, “This mask is only theater” or suchlike.
            $WORKPLACE now (after all those weeks sans masks…) requires such.
            Then it was just last week they finally installed an on-demand water heater setup so that the ‘wash with hot water’ could be done – before if you wanted hot water, you had to re-trigger the damned faucetbots enough to get all the cold water through the pipes across the building. By that time, something might be close to frozen or at least feel like it. And the the damned faucetbots are simpleminded (NONminded) IR sensing things… they stop triggering easily as it goes on. Thus, nobody bothered.

            3. The Comic and Tragic masks.

              And a Luchadore never removes his mask.

              All of these can be considered theatrical masks, of the sort that might be appropriate for a theater.

              1. As the Japanese have a long history with Chinese invaders, perhaps something of this sort would be apropos:

                Put a fabric liner on the inside of the mouth, clear plastic disks inside the eyes, and you’re probably good to go.

                If red clashes with your wardrobe try searching on”Japanese demon mask images”
                –

        2. Not until you burn Austin to the ground and salt the ashes.

          Meanwhile, you might as well rename it “East Boston.”

          – TRX (no love for Austin)

      3. UV is also the reason I have to be indoors between sunrise and sunset. Of all the times to be a Person of Pallor!

              1. I like supplements, but some folks don’t– and this tool can help folks who are freaking out get decent information.

            3. I read recently that the body produces Vitamin D from the Sun’s conversion of cholesterol. If true (I’ve not taken opportunity to look it up) that would suggest that the primary contributory factor to high cholesterol is failure to get enough sunlight.

              It might also correlate with higher incidences of high cholesterol among people whose ancestors’ epidermis evolved to handle high quantities of Sol’s balming rays.
              –

              1. I’m dark olive. I have to take supplements. Only way to get enough sun for making D would be to be a barechested roofer in FL. And Dan says no.

                2. Hows your cholesterol?

                  Acknowledged, the human body is a strange and complex machine which we understand not oe fifth as well as we think we do.

                  I’m so old I remember when the appendix was vestigial and we imagined we were born with brains fully wired and losing sells as we went along.

                  Hubris may be the oldest human vice.
                  –

                    1. Supplements would seem likely to reduce your body’s sunlight-aided conversion of cholesterol to Vitamin D … so either the theory is invalid or there are other factors involved, such as consuming “good” fats like olive oil and butter.

                      Maybe your body chemistry is simply odd? It would hardly be the only thing about you that is.
                      –

                    2. Oh, yeah. Mostly I consume olive oil or butter.
                      Also, btw son says they taught him “When you hear hoofbeats, look for a horse, not a zebra.” “Only with you, mom, it’s ALWAYS zebras.”
                      I suppose it’s a good thing. I’ve outlived rational life expectancy by 57 years so far.

              3. The?

                Cholesterol is also converted to bile acids. If you eat a high fiber diet, the soluble fiber binds to the bile salts in the digestive track, and they get carried out of the body, so they don’t get recovered, and you have to make more.

                There’s no denying we eat a lower fiber diet than our ancestors.

  14. Every day of late that the weather hasn’t been rainy, I’ve gone for a walk. Sometimes to the corner convenience store a few blocks away, sometimes just a walk. No mask. And there are a few other walking or bicycling – none with masks. I see masks in stores. The better walks include someone with a friendly dog that gets a few pets.

    When things finally do get to normal (or a facsimile thereof), I intend to walk to a bar and order something just for novelty of having someone else prepare or at least pour it. And chances, by then, my comfortable walking range might allow that to be anywhere in town.

    Why, Cinco de Mayo I had to mix my own Margarita. Alright, that likely meant a higher quality, but it’s the principle of the thing!

    1. I’ve never liked being crowded, but it’s hard to avoid when out among the public. I’ve found that my optimum “comfort distance” seems to be about five feet. Six is fine, though.

      I’d be happy to see the “distancing” thing become the new norm, but I’m pretty sure people will be back to crowding and jostling soon enough…

  15. I am SO ready for this to be over. I’d love if some of the local businesses around here said “screw this, we’re open for business.” As it is, I’ve been going out on bike rides, no mask, and I’d say a large percentage of the folks out walking, biking, jogging, walking the dog, just sitting in the park have been maskless. I have yet to wear a mask when I’ve been out and about, although I’ve not been going to the store (the wife generally tackles the grocery shopping.)

    Frankly, a part of me wants to take the mask to the extreme, get my hands on an old surplus gas mask and wear that. Which, considering my employer is talking about a phased return to the office in a bit more than a week, would be interesting considering where I work. Pretty sure the guards at the entrance would be initially amused, then annoyed at my holding up the line to get it off…

    Might also cause a ruckus walking around the campus, too…

      2. I think we’ve turned the corner down here, and masks in public aren’t going to be mandatory, but if they did I had planned to get a plague doc. mask and wear it to show my disdain for the whole thing.

        1. The governor in CT decided they were mandatory last week. My husband and I went to the local Super Walmart and then BJ’s yesterday and neither of us wore one. We only saw one other person without one, but no one complained or even looked at us funny, unlike the b!tch at BJ’s two weeks ago.

          I did like the BJ’s sign which said that they were “recommending masks for those who could wear them”. Nothing about it being “The Law!” the way most stores were shrieking last week.

        2. OH MAN! I’ve been know to do some sewing, but I’m a rank amateur. I just WISH I was good enough to pull something like that off. Maybe send it to my oldest daughter. She’s awesome. Maybe she’d make it for me. (probably not she’s super busy, but one could hope)

          1. If Iowa was being stupid and requiring them, I’d be doing my best to sew one by hand.

            The comparison would honestly be insulting to plague doctors, but the pop culture understanding fits perfect.

          2. As a rank incompetent at sewing (it’s very much a manual skill, like stick welding) I’d cut out the pattern, assemble the basic shape with stitches about an inch apart, and then keep tacking it together until I could do something like a continuous stitch. I wouldn’t turn my nose up at glue, either. And I might carve some styrofoam to fold it over, inside-out, to make it easier to get to the working areas.

            From my POV, it doesn’t have to be strong or properly-sewn, it just has to not-fall-apart for a few weeks.

            1. Uhm… did WP eat the actual link?
              But I did copy the timestamp address to open in backup browser and found the problem: tumblr – which I do not let run javascript by default, so it toddler-tantrums up and refuses to show ANYTHING. I miss the days of competent web sites that would least have useful fallback.

        1. I saw those Plague Doctor Masks on Amazon.

          If I had extra money, I’d be tempted to purchase on and wear it around the apartment. 😈

    2. Dive mask, regulator mouthpiece, and scuba tanks…

      If you’re gonna, you might as well bring your own air supply instead of depending on filters, y’know?

      –snip–
      Baley said, “Molecules all over Solaria’s atmosphere have been in thousands of lungs. Jehoshaphat! They’ve been in the lungs of animals and the gills of fish.”

      “That is true,” said Quemot with a rueful rub of his cheek, “and I’d just as soon not think of that, either. However there was a sense of immediacy to the situation with yourself actually there and with both of us inhaling and exhaling. It’s amazing the relief I feel in viewing.”
      –/snip–
      – Isaac Asimov, “The Naked Sun”

    3. Dr. Who said it a decade ago …

      Although it might be fun for people to go full Darth Vader for masks.
      –

  16. Maybe, just maybe, we can get a Southern Maryland Secession movement going. Leave the clutches of the I-95 Axis of Stupid that misgoverns Maryland.

  17. Here is the crazy zone of California, even if the Idiot Gov lets up, our local county – unelected, AFAICT, health offical won’t loosen things. Because she doesn’t want to waste the sacrifices people have already made. really. Headdesk

    I’m trying to write articulate polite letters to the county officials who must be the ones listening to her suggesting strongly they stop, but so far it’s hard (the polite fact filled part as opposed to ranting).

    And MORE stores are now requiring masks from customers than before. WHY??? “CDC” recommendations say a couple. But it’s getting better! ETc. won’t shop there while the requirements are in place.

    1. Well in the People’s Republic of New Jersey, Chairman Murphy extended his health emergency decrees yet another thirty days,proclaimed that the goal is to “save lives” (so much for this is just to flatten the curve) and that he is going to keep his draconian restrictions in place “whether people like it or not”, in other words, he is telling the voters he could care less than what they think and that he expects to stay locked indoors and shut up. Sadly, there is no mechanism for voters to seek his early removal and he is not up for election again until 2021, giving him plenty of time to completely destroy every person’s livelihood in New Jersey and to put the entire state on the public dole, which I suspect is the actual goal.

      1. Everyone has a plan until someone punches them in the mouth. Murphy’s plan will last until it stops being obeyed. That’s already started in other places and will start here. If Cali is revolting against Newspme then NJ will revolt against Murphy. he’s just a big girls blouse agpfter all. I’m so tired of his teenage girl meltdowns.

        In other news, and things I never thought it was possible for me to think never mind say out loud, Huzzah for Texas. Governor and Attorney General at least. The only thing I wish was that Luther , what a wonderful name for a protest against corrupt authority, should have asked the judge if she would have been expected to respect the segregation laws since she was expected to respect all elected authority. Judge was a Harvard type of course. her go fund me is over $300k

        1. Speaking of Go Fund Mes, someone started one to buy a treadmill for the SWAT team that made the arrest. Pictures have revealed that the team members are a bit on the heavy side…

        2. The $300k question is whether gfm will actually let it be paid out. Since was found guilty of disobeying ruling class

    2. Well, I decided if I was going to be uncomfortable at Walmart (couple of things only available there) I was going to make them uncomfortable. So I wore a hijab. 😀 Oh, the looks.
      OTOH confirmed for self that I can’t wear face coverings. It started an asthma attack even though I haven’t had one since Jan.
      So at next store (which weirdly wasn’t requiring masks, just strongly suggesting) took inhaler from my pocket and waved it at employee at the entrance. He waved me through.
      In our state, they’re requiring masks because governor says he won’t open further unless there’s widespread mask usage. Poor fools think he won’t come up with some other shit to require.

      1. Of course he will. Going to ride that power high until someone boots him right out.

        I sincerely hope folks get a clue from all this. This is America dipping her toes into the raw seage that is Socialism. Do. Not. Want!

    3. I speak Race and Intersectional Gender theory for work. I’d be happy to help you craft letters that do not offend her g ods. Contact me at my username @ the mail of p roton.com. I’ll check it daily for the next week.

  18. Everywhere I’ve been for the last week has been packed. Keeping “nonessentials” closed has shoved everyone into tight quarters in the permissible stores. Open back up, let people spread out!

    All the BLM lands are crowded too, 3-5 times as many people as we’re used to seeing out there on quads and in jeeps. I joke when we see CA plates that we need to call their parole officers and report them for breaking covid quarantine, but that’s just because they’re Californians over here messing up my playgrounds.

  19. And because I find that submission vile and despicable — because there’s no sane reason to wear a mask while alone, and the cloth masks are only useful to prevent YOU sneezing on people.

    And there are masks that will protect the person wearing them.

    Better than the sneeze-guard.

    That folks are insisting on a genuflection instead of actually protecting the vulnerable— just like with the lockdown while they shove infected into the nursing homes– makes it clear that they. Are. Not. Protecting. People.

    2. The most charitable answer is that they are protecting themselves. The more accurate one should be sic semper tyrannis. But itll be more like baaaaaa

      1. Well, they *think* they are. Those masks are to keep nurses who are working close to vulnerable folks from infecting them– heck, when the Contessa was in the baby ICU, they didn’t have us wearing masks.

        Would be better than nothing if you’ve got folks coughing in your face or something, too.

        Gowns, scrubbing, hand sanitizer, nobody feeling bad, etc, but no masks.

        Pretty much all the babies are vulnerable in the lungs, too. Vulnerable enough to need masks when you weren’t actively operating was rare enough that those kids were in the enclosed pods.

        1. I mean the politicos are protecting themselves by looking like they are doing something.

          Surgical masks and such do help although no panacea. For cancer or other immunodeficiency patients I try to hew to mask for me, mask for you just to minimize risk. But it’s no guarantee and if you’ve got meningitis, well that’s the absolute minimum. But you know what else I did? Turn on exhaust fan, open vents and windows and so on. Viral load is the killer, and solution to that is diluting it. Like, I dunno, the outsidecair

          1. Oh.

            Yeah, and/or keeping the hysterical from clawing eyes out, yeah, is probable charitable interpretation.

            My aunt the nurse is so livid she’s actually supporting Trump; like you say, the mask is a minimum with someone who’s in serious trouble, so she’s watching folks treating them like trinkets and STILL DOING HORRIBLE DUMB STUPID BASIC STUFF and it drives her nuts.

          2. And protecting themselves by doing whatever looks most likely to prevent them from being blamed for anything bad.

  20. Gotta love this quote out of Illinios:
    “I know that we all have a passionate desire to return to the sense of normalcy that we felt before the world knew of COVID-19. Here’s the truth. And I don’t like it any more than you do,” Pritzker said at his daily briefing. “Until we have a vaccine, or an effective treatment, or enough widespread immunity that new cases fail to materialize, the option of returning to normalcy doesn’t exist.”

    Kind of hard to get any sort of “widespread immunity that new cases fail to materialize” when you’re ALSO telling people to stay home and don’t leave your own yard for anything except necessities…

    1. WuFlu only spreads in non-essential places. 😜It’s all just magic to them.

        2. FWIW, tbwsnbn has the definition of scientody that actually covers most of it. Basically its religion in lab coats with a sprinkling of corruption

        3. Anthropogenic Global Warming, mostly. And environmentalism, and lots of LGBTP propaganda as “health.” And everyone’s opinion has equal weight, so if enough of us *believe* that bridge won’t fall down…

          There’s worse than Zinn in the sciences.

    4. That fat fuck is enjoying every second of this. I don’t think he’ll ever let up until he hears guillotine blades being sharpened in his front yard.

  21. Whenever Democrats talk about implementing “their vision” or the “fundamental transformation of America”, this is what they mean:

    https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/05/05/harvard-law-prof-coronavirus-is-an-excuse-to-dump-free-speech-property-rights-from-constitution/

    They want to strip people of the right to free speech and the right to own private property, i.e.. they want to go full communist: Note that they push this by “reinterpreting the Constitution” since they know there is no way they could get the Constitution amended to meet their desire. If the Democrats win and pack the court with leftists, such a destruction of individual rights will be the result.

    Mind you this is being pushed by a constitutional law professor who teaches indoctrinates students in law school:

    1. > harvard-law-prof-coronavirus-is-an-excuse-to-dump-free-speech-property-rights-from-constitution/

      Not *my* Constitution, they won’t.

      Their names, faces, and home addresses are a few clicks away. Which reminds me, it wouldn’t hurt to make a list and keep it updated, since their servant The Goog and its competitors would almost certainly shield them from view if asked…

    2. Oh, that guy.

      He’s a nominal conservative who wants the social cons to adopt the same strategy as the libs and ditch the whole idea of “freedom” in the name of reordering things for the common good–as defined by him, of course.

      To modify Patrick Henry, I regret that I have but two middle fingers to give that kind of BS.

      1. I have friends. I can get more. AoS morons, Huns, freedom lovers and folks who’re sick and tired of this sh*t- salute!

      3. It’s a wonder any law firm hires any Harvard Law graduates.

        Of course, the profs at the other Ivy Law schools are just as asinine … so the real question is why any pf them get hired.
        –

    3. He’s a Constitutional Law scholar the same way I was Soviet Air Defense scholar.

  22. A lot of little places have quietly opened this week. Supposedly, the mop-chop-shops and nail salons can open on Friday, if they follow some precautions, and in two weeks the gyms might open (although the requirements proposed yesterday might make weight-lifting . . . a challenge.) The parks opened last week. People are not racing out and about, but that might have to do with our local outbreak (the state and feds are now in. [Lord save us all]).

  23. The museums and zoo and botanic gardens remain closed, as do — officially — parks. This even though NOT ONLY can’t you really catch a virus (well, you can, freaky stuff happens all the time) outside in moving air, but UV seems to kill it.

    –
    Took the dog a different direction for her walk last evening. You see if I walk the perimeter of the school grounds, it is over a mile, while being within eye sight of the house (more or less). It is a good way to start/end, either or both, a walk. Especially since, for me it involves uneven ground, flat, but uneven. The playground equipment has been shutdown for weeks. This time however, there are now two new notices (that I did not bother to walk over and read and if anyone says otherwise, I will deny it) stating the campus is closed, by executive order of the governor of Oregon Kate Brown. Just on either side next to the “normal accesses”. No posting on the pathway used by most to shortcut through neighborhoods, or on any of the various gates from backyards. We have two schools within walking distance, in two different districts. The other school has similar posting but states explicitly that the playground equipment and the sport fields are closed (or no bringing your kid to play catch, you peon). Technically all the green areas are “sports fields”, not just the baseball diamonds, basketball hoops, track, etc., because the open areas are soccer/flag-football fields, even tho they were never marked this year and no permanent goal posts. I need to double check the postings (that I DID NOT read) for the district school closest to see if it was worded the same or if they just state “Campus Closed”. Note, neither campus is chained off, although the other one is closer to being chained off. Short of papering the campus perimeter access points, there is plausible deniability, at least for awhile. Also close enough to farm. I might request walking it’s perimeter.
    –

    2. Took a lot of reading to find out there “was no reading”. 😉

  24. I’m finally reading the blog from inside my local Buffalo Wild Wings in SD.

    It’s about time. My wife came down with a nasty respiratory flu back in January that messed her up enough for three weeks that she had a test done. It wasn’t influenza A or B.

    It would be valuable if we learned some better procedures like Taiwan has. So far it seems like our politicians learned to overreach…

  25. The problem is that the Progressives (and many who claim the label of Conservative) have almost completely un-Locke-ed the country, and until we Locke up we will never again know Liberty.
    –

  26. I never masked. And I won’t.
    Like many others, the wife and I (and the kids) had a mystery respiratory bug back in late December / early January. Not the flu. Not a cold. This hung on.
    As far as I know, none of us got a fever, although I did have one day I called in to work due to extreme dizziness -very- similar to the symptoms of hypoxia. Yet I was able to breathe freely despite the sinus issues.
    I read with interest a month ago that the virus can sometimes interfere with oxygen perfusion in the blood by blocking the hemoglobin from picking it up in the lungs, effectively suffocating a person without actually obstructing the airway.
    I had -one- day of dizziness. One day of hypoxia symptoms, and I slept it off. One day of not going to work. I was still miserable from the sinus symptoms, but that’s normal for me every time I catch a cold.
    I won’t wear a mask.

    1. Honestly, if I’m sneezing or coughing or such like that, I am more than willing. But there is a difference between preventing sneezes and such and just breathing. This stupidity is for the latter. And no, I do not plan on getting into scba to go get a beer

  28. In the “fingers crossed” moment, work is talking about reopening at the end of the month. Which means that if I am very lucky, I will still have about a day and a half’s worth of PTO and one free holiday on my books before I have to start paying for my own health care. And, that means once again I’m back at waking up at 4 AM for the SF commute.

    On the other fronts…yay, we’re reopening!

    So what?

    Bookstores are closed, so I can’t go in and browse. Comic book stores are closed, so I can’t properly despise Marvel and DC for publishing absolute crap. I can’t sit down at a restaurant or other place to eat. I can’t go get a hair cut, I still have to wear a mask anywhere to shop at what is open, and if I sneeze people look at me like I’m about to have an alien monster burst out of my chest.

    This is pure Kabuki theater, no questions about it. Our local statists are going to be statists and I really want them to all go be statists somewhere else. Dark side of the moon, perhaps?

  29. If you not in the at risk groups and you are mad at your Governor for unlocking

    1) you didn’t lose your job and are happy to work from home
    2) you are an irrational idiot … covid19 was never a risk to you
    3) you are a political partisan hoping it helps Dems in Nov
    4) I can’t stress this enough … you are an irrational idiot …

    1. Er…. you do realize I’m NOT mad at my governor for UNLOCKING right? I’m mad at him for doing kabuki unlocking and requiring face masks.
      I want them ALL to say “Oops, we fucked up. Go back to life.”

    2. Number one is honestly I think a plurality. For now (we are laying off a tenth of our workforce and if my group is targeted I’m probably it since I started literally three days before shutdown) I still have work but know a huge number can’t get UE and even more lost hours, if we are all in it together, let’s do a 20% emergency tax solely for a fund to support small businesses, landlords and such. Unemployment got their bonus but these folks getting shafted. Plus it means that the folks who have seen no effect on their lives other than not going into office, or simpler commutes get to have skin in the game.

      And yes, I know that no tax goes away. But I’m getting to point that unless pain is shared neither will the lockdowns

  31. Most “analysis” code, which this is, should never be used more than once. I wrote a lot of it over the years. The programmers who had to implement our models used to despair.

    In Ferguson’s case, he spent the too much time with other men’s wives to worry about code or accuracy for that matter. He left Oxford because of it and now lost his QUANGO. I wish there was some prolonged way he could be made to compensate the rest of us for his peccadilloes, but alas!

  32. Preach it Sarah.
    Down in this corner of our lovely state we are a little insulated from the stupid emanating from the Governor’s high chair. One of our local stores has refused to require their employees to mask up, individual choice (funny, none of them chose to ware the darn things). The CEO of our local hospital stopped in two weekends ago and had a hissy fit that none of the employees were wearing mask. The owner took his complaint and told him to suck it. He threatened to shut them down (on what authority????). The little Stassi agent called the health department the following Monday. Health department came in, inspected and found them in violation of the Govenor’s Executive Order. The owner filed the citation appropriately and continued as per each individual’s choice. Health Department re-inspected on Wednesday and issued a cease and desist order. Store was closed all of five hours. County Commissioners got involved and read the hospital’s CEO the riot act, re-opened the business. There are some sane politicals left if you look hard enough.

    The company I work for is phasing people back in and has issued the corporate guidance on masks. If two or more employees are in the same room, regardless of size, they have to mask up. We’re an oil/gas company. Most of the guys at our location are scattered around the various production stations (think compressor rooms about the size of a college gymnasium). Masking up to be in the same room? No common sense.

    1. Foxwoods just sent us their initial plans for employee health and safety (if we ever actually get to reopen…) which include every employee wearing a mask for the entire time they are on the property.

      I’ve sent an email to our interim CEO asking what accommodations they will have for those who cant wear masks.

      It will be interesting to see what answer I get. Because, quite seriously, just the thought of having to wear one is starting a panic attack, never mind having to wear one to keep my job. The amount of attivan I’d have to ingest to get one on would leave me completely non-functional.

    1. A Chinese researcher. Shot by a Chinese man who committed suicide shortly after.

      You’d not provide it as a writing prompt to conspiracy theorists because it’s just too on the nose.

  34. Yahoo/News homepage big headline “New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday that a survey showed that a “shocking” two-thirds of patients recently hospitalized for coronavirus became infected despite largely staying at home.”

    Not that I expect that to convince our local tyrants to change their orders.

    2. It’s because of the word largely. Zomg they went out to get the mail and floating wolfpacks of virus attacked them.

      *do i have to add the tag?*

  35. I hit post too soon. Also meant to add, the blog https://spinstrangenesscharm.wordpress.com/

    Has some interesting stuff on the activity of this virus in the body with more detail than I’ve seen elsewhere. And crunches numbers “The rule of thumb is that 80-85% of symptomatic cases get the mild version that affects the upper respiratory tract but not the lower lungs. These patients, seemingly without exception, get better on their own — it’s the remaining 15-20% that get lower pneumonia who may be fighting for their lives against bad odds. The sooner such cases are recognized, the better to start administering oxygen and anticoagulants, and perhaps remdesivir if available.

    (2) But is this “80% rule” constant across all age brackets? A breakdown of case fatality rates by age cohort makes this seem quite implausible…”

  36. I’m a homebody when not at work. I could happily self quarantine for *years* with my only outlet being the occasional trip to resupply and my occasional nosing about on the internet.

    I’m getting out of the house one whole heck of a lot more these days.

    Going on walks. Talking to neighbors. The park. The store more than once a month. Visitng people. The park. The other park. Totally unmasked, gloved, or anything.

    Because the surest way to get my attention, to get me interested in something is to forbid it for no reason. Or for a stupid, insane, malevolent and vile reason. Effing lockdown theater. Seems to have brought the verminous stasi wannabes out from the shadows they’ve been hiding in. At least now we see them.

    1. Because the surest way to get my attention, to get me interested in something is to forbid it for no reason.

      When I was a kid, I always thought that was stupid.

      I mean, really, that just meant folks could manipulate you into doing things by saying “don’t do that.”

      Since I’m not a kid anymore, I’ve discovered the pissing-in-the-corners, re-arrange-the-desks, exercise-power-stupidly-to-show-you-have-it, there really isn’t a single word or good phrase that specifically describes it but most of us have seen it, behavior.

      It’s… well, I can’t quite describe it, but it feels wrong. There’s a fundamental lack of respect for the inherent dignity of others.

      1. It’s a sociopathic trait. They don’t see others as people like themselves, just pawns to push around.

    3. I could happily self quarantine for *years*

      Except for having to work from home, all of this stay-at-home nonsense is what I would normally be doing anyway.

      it is surprisingly frustrating that I can’t go out and rebel by “doing normal life stuff”, because all my “normal life stuff” is home-based and solitary..

  37. I just had a conversation with three friends/colleagues (we’re all faculty, so use that as your starting point). One was discussing the vitriol she’s seen on NextDoor (big surprise, that thing has always been infected with Karens and Kyles) and how another colleague had posted pics of a trip out to a state park about an hour away while also excoriating people in those pictures for not following the stay-at-home orders. I was all in favor of the trip to the park. But, my friend went on to say “How could she say that?? She was out in ____park! You’re not supposed to go out there! You’re only allowed to walk in your neighborhood and go to the grocery store!” The others were nodding in complete agreement. I just tried not to look too shocked or roll my eyes. I’m still in favor of the trip to the park…but I am totally not surprised by the one who posted pictures and ranted at the ones not wearing masks.

    Hubby and I don’t wear masks outside at all. We don’t wear them when we go to pick up food from our local eateries either. I take one with me in case I have to go inside and *they* want me to wear one. I’m not going to jeopardize their ability to stay open. I saw my neighbors in their car today, both wearing masks in the car. I just waved and then rolled my eyes when they weren’t looking.

    Taking selfies while outside wearing your mask is the new height of virtue-signalling. It’s disgusting.

    1. masks in the car is fricking insane. BUT jogging with masks? that’s next level and makes me want to beat the neighbor kid who does it.
      I swear one of these days I’m going to intercept him and ask him for fuck’s sake what he thinks he’s doing. He’s early twenties I think, and shouldn’t be THAT dumb.

      1. Maybe he’s working on his lung capacity – I mean, once you acclimate to Denver, forcing his exercise breathing through thicker and thicker fabric could seriously bulk up his diaphragm!

        1. sorry – pronoun flip flop – if only WP allowed post-hit-post editing…

        2. Denver is for wussies. Move up another thousand feet to Colorado Springs, or Falcon, or to Alma, which is more than a mile higher than the “Mile-High City.”

      2. A lot of folks are doing it because they promised family they would.

        Got in a conversation with a gal who was wearing her mask… under her chin.

        Hey, she didn’t promise she’d wear it CORRECTLY. Just that it would be on her face when she went to the grocery.

        1. The shipyard instruction says that I have to wear a mask over my mouth and nose. You’d think that a Captain in the United States Navy would be familiar with the word “overhead.”

      3. It’s also unhealthy and outright dangerous as it obstructs intake of air when one is exerting oneself physically.

        1. We’ve now had more people get sick from bacterial pneumonia from their masks than have picked up the Wu Flu at work.

      4. Totally agree on both counts. I see all kinds of people running with masks on. I just have to shake my head.

        A guy in NJ crashed his car after passing out while driving. He was wearing his mask in the car and gave himself hypoxia breathing in all his own CO2.

  38. Where I live most people pay little attention to all these BS rules. Only time you see a lot of mask wearers is at the grocery

  39. My wife and both DON’T wear masks despite Dictator Cuomo’s orders. Even it they did any good at all for everyone to wear one at the beginning, (it didn’t) at this stage of the game, it’s useless. Well, worse than useless- it takes money and effort and there’s no return on the money and effort, so it’s a net loss. The stores all have signs up saying masks are required per state order. None are enforcing it.

    Problem is- each day I go out, I see more people wearing them. Most continuing to wear them incorrectly, but more wearing them. Sheeple. I feel surrounded by sheeple at times.

    Only had one person confront me. Simply said I didn’t have one. I think next time I’ll say: “I’ve already had it. I’m fully recovered. I’m full of antibodies. Would you like me to breathe on you directly so you can get some from me?”

  41. My husband is retired military. We went down to the Arsenal today so he could get a haircut. They’re requiring face coverings – bandana, mask, just something. Friends from the Northeast sent us fabric masks so we used those.
    Took two hours for him to get his trim. Limited number of clients in at one time, then the mandatory break period for lunch, then the active guys showed up and took priority…
    What really got to me was the commissary. No TP, no paper towels. Worse, meats were rationed and some things were totally missing, like hamburger. Beans were rationed, too. It really got to me.

    1. I don’t think that they’re doing hair cuts at the Subase yet. The commissary demands masks so I haven’t been in weeks. Husband went today and says the meat section looked ok, but he didn’t look closely. We haven’t heard anything about rationing yet, but with the various bits of info about problems with the meat supply chain, I’m not surprised. It’s probably well past time to get a pellet gun and start learning to hunt squirrels. They’re tasty, and deserve to die for their insistence on playing with my roof shingles. My boss could probably give me his mother’s squirrel pot pie recipe which he raves about.

  43. To be honest, Deb and I may not have been CNN’s model citizens. We, or I, were out pretty much every single day, between victualling (although we were fair well stocked to begin with, feeding the colonies of stray cats we look after, and rotating between local eateries for takeout to keep some cash in their tills. Not that we were unique paragons; this is a smallish town after all, but we weren’t hiding in the basement and neither were our neighbors; there was work to do. Neither did I hear of too many officious pecksniffs harrassing the local farm and cattle supply businesses.

  44. You’re right about the parks, we should definitely be opening those, during the day, and with people staying 6 feet apart. That gives the UV in the sun time to deactivate the viruses before they hit others. People should be spending more time outside since that has helped with prior viruses including the Spanish Influenza.

    Also, they should allow any business to open as long as they come up with a plan for keeping the virus from spreading at their place of business. It makes no sense to close down storage locker companies and the like where there’s no human to human contact to do business, and I’m sure there’s plenty of other kinds of businesses that equally make little sense to keep closed.

    You’re a little bit off on masks. The droplets are also produced by speaking, breathing very hard (exercise) and coughing. Some of the biggest clusters were caused by people getting together and singing. So it’s not just sneezing that you have to worry about. Bill Whittle did a Coronasphere lounge talking about that a couple weeks ago.

    As for flattening the curve, we’ve done that through extreme lockdown, but if we completely stop all NPI’s then it’ll start going exponential again, starting from a slightly lower level than the peak. Wearing the masks, vulnerable people staying home, limiting the number of people indoors on the same air system, and staying apart when out in public or at work are lower impact NPIs than shutting businesses down entirely, if we can keep the spread rate at 1 additional infection per infected person, then we can stay at this flattened level indefinitely until the pharmaceuticals are ready, adjusting our interventions up or down based on if it starts growing out of control again, or if it continues dipping down.

    Looking at the 7 day average deaths for Colorado, we might already be opening up too quickly. Our curves are very slightly going up right now. We’ll have to see if that trend continues or if we flatten back out.

    1. Though, I just pulled in another dataset to my spreadsheet, and that one is showing a much more steady decline in the 7-day death rate average than my original data source. This one is state-specific while the other one is a nation-wide aggregator, so I’ll guess that this source might be more accurate. If so, then we’re probably good to continue letting our foot off the brakes a bit more, just have to keep monitoring it. (We’re down from about 9 per day 8 days ago, to about 6 per day 2 days ago.) In fact, this data set shows a steady decline since the 4/23, which was when a whole bunch of tests finally came in as the testing backlog started to clear up.

    2. . Some of the biggest clusters were caused by people getting together and singing.

      There’s only one that I’m aware of, in Washington– and given the area (some of my folks’ “cowboys”– rich hobby riders, but decent folks– are from tehre) and the extremely unusual infection rate, plus the massive amount of information that was chopped out even between simi-local reports and what hit the national media, there was something else going on.

      My guess would be either they use the same illegal housecleaner, or were eating snacks while they stood around after the socially distanced part of the singing, or something I haven’t even thought of yet that would cause them embarrassment; if it had happened in Lakeview, I’d know that an elderly member was obviously sick, made snacks and hugged everyone, and since died so they were protecting him/her, but that singing group doesn’t seem likely to be dynamics.

      The lack of investigation into the much more likely oral/fecal route, especially combined with Washington’s health department’s behavior of “smash it, now” on any kind of looking into how much before January it was in Washington, is suspicious.

      1. Fecal-oral or fecal-respiratory could be another path, and they think that some of the apartment building spread may have been due to this, because they often have poor and interconnected septic systems.

        The singing has more evidence than just washington though. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6914e1.htm Singapore contact tracing also showed spread through singing classes. Two separate singing classes had transmission. One of those went on to infect others at a church who were standing behind her, which would probably be indicative of transmission in a way other than sneezing directly ahead. All of these occurred per-symptomatic as well, so no sneezing.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jEPWq91QRk Here’s the Bill Whittle video where he shows the videos where they were using lasers to track respiratory droplets. In part of it, they had people just talking face to face and observed the droplets that were spilling out of their mouths.

        I know a lot of people discount any study out of China, but https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article this one indicates that the standard sized droplets can’t explain all of the transmission, and that small and light droplets somewhere in the spectrum between droplet and aerosol may be involved in some transmission, especially in poorly ventilated enclosed spaces.

        Colorado at least has moved towards the Swedish model, so we’ll probably be on the evidence-based slow opening here.

          1. The one that wasn’t approved by the Chinese gov’t specifically stated that they only checked folks who had been exposed to a known infected person– which means that they could’ve been in the middle of an entire outbreak, and they’d still only find those that had been exposed to a known case.

        2. Both of those CDC links assume that the infections which were discovered were caused by the known-infected person – which would only make sense if the virus hadn’t been in circulation for very long.

          We have objective *proof* that it was in France in mid-December, so that assumption is not supported.

          Thank you for having a source besides the ‘didn’t even bother to speak to the person involved’ study.

          1. I think Singapore had a better handle on it though, and they were basically able to track a far greater number of their infections back to a known person, unlike most other countries, so their data is probably somewhat more reliable as far as the tracing goes.

            As far as knowing the true scale of how many people are infected, the one country that has done large scale randomized testing is Iceland, and they’re still showing under a 1% infection rate in their country on those randomized tests. One randomized test done in a hotspot, New York, on mothers delivering babies, showed as high as a 16% infection rate. Vo, Italy did a whole population sample and come up with an infection rate of 3% in their town, which was in the Lombardy region of Italy. This is a much earlier datapoint than the other two, so they may have a bit higher rates now. Those are basically the 3 good datapoints we have as to how widespread the infection is, and they only give us a very limited picture.

            Everyone else is only testing people with known contacts or symptoms, or they’re doing testing on people who are in some ways a self-selecting sample, (People who answer facebook ads, people who are out shopping, etc) so the data is a lot less reliable.

            Antibody testing is still a bit of a mess, with a lot of counterfeit tests from China slipping into the supply stream, and a lot of tests with high false positive rates. Hopefully that gets sorted out soon and we can get a good picture of exactly how many people are or have been infected, with the knowledge that we need 80-85% infection rate before we have true herd immunity with something like this.

            The infection in France is interesting. One of the things that it implies is that one of the ways this may have spread was through the Military Games in Wuhan China in October, since worldwide spread that early would line up with people getting infected back then, which muddies the water even more as to the source of the virus. The CCP is trying to claim that either Italy, US, or Japan brought it to Wuhan during these games, rather than it coming from animals in their wet market or a leak in their labs. France had a particularly large contingent of athletes at the military games. The US only had a moderate sized group there and didn’t win many events. Of course, the US seems to only barely compete in these things usually, and rarely gets into the top 5 for medal winners.

            1. I think Singapore had a better handle on it though, and they were basically able to track a far greater number of their infections back to a known person, unlike most other countries, so their data is probably somewhat more reliable as far as the tracing goes.

              I must not be saying this right….

              I’ll try again:

              They were able to track to a known person because they assumed that if they were in the same room/area, then that is where the connection came from.

              Additionally, they didn’t test people for the disease unless they had been exposed to a known outbreak or had symptoms and known exposure to someone who was infected.

              Which boils the logic down to:
              Most car keys are found under street lights.
              We searched for car keys street lights, and that’s the where we found the keys.
              Thus, car keys are more likely to be dropped under street lights, due to the pattern of their discovery.

              1. “Lost my keys over there, but I’m searching here because the light is better.”

              3. You know, I tried. It really is frustrating though. Spending 2 months trying to convince the brick wall of a government of the logic chain, that A. Masks help infected people keep from spreading the virus, B. that there are pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic spreaders of the disease and thus C. those who think they’re healthy should also wear a mask, and if we do this we could reopen things and also greatly reduce the curve without interrupting normal life as much, only to have the people on your own side start attacking it, because they think that everyone’s already immune.

                We certainly don’t have enough evidence for the claim that everyone is already immune. The serological tests that have already been done are nowhere near herd immunity yet, most of them aren’t even outside of the error bars for 0 infections, and most of them have partially self-selected samples rather than random ones.

                Over the past week and a half, testing has dramatically increased, and rather than seeing a constant level of infection as more people get tested who wouldn’t have previously “been under the street light” we’re seeing the rates of positives decline. The combination of serological antibody tests mostly being under 5% outside of the New York metro area, even among people who are more likely to be carriers than the general population, and the declining rates of positives as testing expands to more people indicates to me that we’re way below 10% of people who have gotten it so far, so there’s plenty of room for it to get worse if we don’t at least try to limit the spread in some minimal way as we reopen.

                Masks seem to be the most effective intervention on a cost-benefit basis for keeping that spread lower.

                1. You know, I tried.

                  Here’s a radical idea, try paying attention to what people actually say.

                  It’s crazy, but it just might work.

                  As it is, you just managed to demonstrate that your idea of persuading people is to scream louder and argue against things they did not say, while COMPLETELY FAILING to explain why we should believe claims that you can’t be bothered to support.

                  1. Which part of what I said is disproven by that link? Honestly, this is the same data I’ve been sending to people to say that we don’t have 20+% of the population infected by the disease, because as testing is increasing, the positive rate of those tests is decreasing, which means we aren’t missing as many infected people as many people think we are. As they widen the streetlamp to people who wouldn’t previously be given tests, the people that the streetlights are now hitting are not infected. https://covid19.colorado.gov/data/case-data The last graph on this shows the testing backlog clearing out on the 23rd, then our testing stabilizing at more than double the rate we were at before, and at the same time dropping in positive rates from 25% down to just over 10%. It’s also the same data that I’ve been sending to those on the left to say that we can reopen, wear masks, and loosen up some of the more costly interventions and not overwhelm our hospitals with cases.

                    1. (Similarly depressing is how a decade ago, my family and I were all basically supportive of vaccines, but still largely believing that it should be the parents responsibility to decide, because only a handful of hippie dippie idiots from California actually believe the Antivax nonsense… and a decade later now they’ve shifted to full out antivax. Frustrating.)

                    2. I am. overall seriously supportive of vaccinations. When the Good Job went *poof* the FIRST thing I did was visit the Doc-In-A-Box and ask about what vaccines I Really Needed Right Now and got them. I have NO issue with the yearly (admittedly imperfect) influenza vaccines. But… I anm ready, Right Bloody Now to rename ANYTHING Bill “crashware” Gates promotes as ‘American Thalidomide’.

                    3. Healthy skepticism of Gates is always a good thing. I’m going to wait until their vaccines have undergone the full suite of high quality randomized trials before I take anything like that. I’m talking about my family suddenly being anti-polio anti-measles vaccine.

                    4. Now, I would very much like to be able to insist on, for example, a measles vaccine that was not made in fetal cell cultures, which as far as I have been able to learn is available in Japan but not the US, and after the quality control issues with other medical supplies I would like it not to have involved China. But I do want one.

                    6. I wouldn’t be so confident that smallpox has been eliminated. There may be no new ‘live’ cases, but I heard about some Canadian workers who caught smallpox by digging in an old graveyard, from corpses that had been buried for almost 200 years. I think it happened before smallpox vaccinations became pretty much universal. How long can the virus remain dormant? A looooong time, it would seem.

                    7. Oh, I fully expect someone to disturb something and come down with Nasty Mystery Disease which “resembles smallpox” at any time… and it will take a while to realize that ‘resembles’ should be ‘is’ — and that’s withOUT accounting for malicious intent. That, however, does mean that vaccines are ineffective.

                    10. Oh, no, it was never my intent to suggest that. I was commenting on the complacency of declaring smallpox to be eliminated so we don’t need to worry about it any more.

                      So, the idiots win, we stop vaccinating, and in twenty years somebody digs up something contaminated and we have ourselves a good old-fashioned smallpox epidemic.

                      And the leftists all hold their heads wailing ‘HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?’

                    11. Small pox vaccinations are actually one of the examples I go to for explaining to people that vaccination is not zero risk.

                      FFS, it’s painful that it has to be EXPLAINED that hacking your immune system has risks, much less having to do it often, but there you go. I freaking loath the magic wand view of medicine.

                      Folks aren’t blind to the way it’s likely that small pox will pop up again, innocent or no, and that’s why it’s only officially extinct in the wild. We’ve got samples, and we’ve even got vaccines, and before the big push to vaccinate the military and emergency responders there was still a bit going on all the time.

                      The obvious problem being that, to make the vaccine, we’re keeping the disease alive, and thus making it more likely that BadGuy will get it.

                3. Before being to quick to disparage polio vaccines be aware that disease is coming back over our southern border and if infected people hit populations of unvaccinated we could be living again with polio epidemics. Been there, done that and don’t want to again

              1. Yep. Whereas the 15%-ish in NYC maternity wards or whatever it was exactly was definitely antibodies.

                False positive rates are an issue. False negative rates of 30% or whatever we were dealing with, also a problem.

                …I sort of feel like “I might have been exposed and couldn’t get tested at the time” is a relatively limited source of bias, because at this point, who doesn’t wonder if they got exposed?

                1. I asked my doctor 2 days ago about antibody tests, and he has no idea when they’ll be available here. I don’t think I was exposed, but I did have those two rounds of really nasty colds that the kid brought back home this year. And both nasty in different ways. The Mid-December/Mid-January one made me exhausted and unable to stay up to my normal time, and a bit foggy. The Mid-February to late-March one made my lungs feel heavy and gave me a sinus infection. It’d be interesting to know if one of those was the disease, though I doubt it was. I’m pretty sure the PCR test would be negative either way at this point.

                2. Way back when I worked for USPS on part-time/temp basis they STARTED with (illegal) drug testing that asked what I had taken in the last month or so. The last time I was there the person collective the samples didn’t ask ANYTHING and simply claimed that they had ZERO false negatives. I carefully did not asked about the CERTAIN false positives that that statement SCREAMS to anyone with more than two active neurons.

                  Ox slow. But DAMN!

            3. One of the things that it implies is that one of the ways this may have spread was through the Military Games in Wuhan China in October, since worldwide spread that early would line up with people getting infected back then, which muddies the water even more as to the source of the virus. The CCP is trying to claim that either Italy, US, or Japan brought it to Wuhan during these games, rather than it coming from animals in their wet market or a leak in their labs.

              *snorts*

              Yeah, ‘cus it’s totally normal to slaughter people to cover up a bunch of nasty foreigners bringing in a disease, work like crazy to hide it for as long as possible, and lean on the WHO to cover up stuff that totally didn’t come from my nation’s cruddy bio-safety and inability to practice even basic lab procedures…..

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