In Norway the schedule for reopening is going to be removing limitations at two week intervals until we are back to normal on the 15th of June. Foreign travel excepted, and if the reproduction number spikes over one, we go back.
Still it is good to have normality in sight. Turns out social distancing and lockdown is like a diet, the more you cheat the longer it lasts.
How many Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul supporters will vanish from the voting rolls? Is that the court’s insidious, nefarious plan?
Today in Austria:
[ul]
[li] The number of new and existing infections continues to fall. The state of Tyrol, once the coronavirus hotspot of Austria, now has fewer than 100 active infections, and the state of Vorarlberg, for the second Saturday in a row, has reported no new infections at all.[/li][li] A new poll shows that 65% of Austrians are in favour of higher unemployment benefits during the coronavirus crisis. The country’s largest opposition party, the Social-Democratic Party, has asked the government to increase unemployment payments from 55% to 70% of the worker’s former net income.[/li][li] Current statistics: 15,756 confirmed infections, 615 deaths, 13,928 recovered.[/li][/ul]
Well, here in Panama I finally managed to get a six-pack of beer delivered today after they lifted the “dry law” yesterday after about six weeks prohibiting the sale of all alcohol. But yesterday only women were allowed to go shopping, so I couldn’t go, and today there was total quarantine, so nobody could go to the store. Fortunately the local supermarket was still doing deliveries.
Apparently the beer and liquor companies managed to get the law relaxed slightly, although you can’t buy more than one six-pack or one bottle of wine or liquor a day, and you have to consume it at home. But even so, some mayors are agitating to re-impose it. The concern is that if people have alcohol available, they’ll get together to party.
Build a little still? Applejack? Prison hooch?
So far I’m still good on hard liquor. It’s the beer I was missing. But I’ve been getting a lot more vitamin C from drinking more margaritas, caipirinhas, and rum sours. 
Three new cases reported in Hawaii today. A bit of a disappointment after yesterday’s zero cases, the first time that had happened in eight weeks. Total is 631 cases and 17 deaths.
The liquor stores haven’t closed down, just instituted social distancing, and seem to be doing well, any time I’ve been in them.
Three members of the US coronavirus task force, Doctor Fauci, Robert Redfield, and Stephen Hahn, are self quarantining after coming in contact with a person who has the virus.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Coronavirus-strikes-staffers-inside-the-White-15258425.
Oops. Political. Wrong forum.
4,101,772 total cases
280,443 dead
1,441,791 recovered
In the US:
1,347,309 total cases
80,037 dead
238,078 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
Oops. Dead link. (Story so hot they had to pull it already?)
Anyway, here’s the story at Rolling Stone:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, CDC Director and FDA Chief All in Self-Isolation, Peter Wade, Rolling Stone, May 9, 2020.
The AP has it as well: White House Virus Task Force members face quarantine.
Great. Aren’t those, like, the competent government people in this crisis…?
I will be SO mad if it turns out Trump is the asymptomatic carrier making everyone else sick…
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Today in Austria:
[ul]
[li] As of tomorrow prison visits will be once again permitted. The visiting areas have been equipped with plexiglass screens, and prisoners and visitors will be required to wear face coverings.[/li][li] Peter Kolba, an Austrian jurist, is preparing a class action suit over the government’s handling of the Ischgl incident, where thousands of holidaymakers from around the world were infected. So far 5384 people have registered with Kolba. A world map of Ischgl infections has been posted on Twitter.[/li][li] Current statistics: 15,786 confirmed infections, 618 deaths, 13,991 recovered. There are currently 1177 people with active confirmed infections, of which 291 are in hospital, and of those 72 are in intensive care. (A further 1035 intensive care beds remain available.) Several states are reporting no new infections today.[/li][/ul]
People with coronavirus are dying 10 years earlier than they would otherwise
Note: The headline says “naturally” instead of “otherwise”. I think the latter is more appropriate since the virus is 100% natural, as far as we know.
I think a lot of people have convinced themselves that only very frail elderly people are dying from this thing. But every day I hear about people who are in the prime of their life being taken out. Like this guy and this guy. They might not make up a huge proportion of COVID-19 deaths, but you gotta wonder what the death count of younguns is going to look like by the end of the year. As we lighten up the restrictions and try to go back to “normal”, I wonder how the average years of life lost due to COVID will change. Will it always be 10 years or could it expand as more and more people get sick?
OTOH one third of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths are nursing home related.
Putting more of our energy focused on doing a better job protecting them would have the biggest impact. Seeing people on the street walking around in N95s while this carnage is ongoing to no small measure because of staff and residents without adequate testing, without enough PPE and/or without adequate instruction and guidance on using it, is untenable. But that is what we currently have.
How to navigate through to protect as many of us all as we can as best we can over the long haul of both the disease and the impacts of both it and the responses to it, is a vital question, one that is trying to be answered with still insufficient information to really do more than guess.
The accuracy of this percentage is questionable. According to this article, only 9% of deaths in New Hampshire were in nursing homes. Local news puts the figure at 80%. Or, perhaps it’s just that the figures in the NY Times article are wildly out of date - they also say there have only been 12 deaths in New Hampshire: there have been 133.