At least here in CA the General Public is taking this seriously. Mostly.
From a rather limited sample of my Facebook groups(not friends, GROUPS), it is along strict party lines.
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My coworkers are hard-core right wing. It’s all overblown, anyone who has the virus and dies is labeled as a fatality, even if they died in a car crash, social distancing and the lockdown is a joke, etc. What’s contributing to it is one of them has a wife in health care, and they’re not seeing the patient loads. In fact, they’re seeing nurses sent home as there’s no work. They are very much in the “let everyone do what they want, and let the virus run its course” mentality.
Yes, well the hospitals arent getting all their usual non urgent stuff, and the lockdown is working so the hospitals arent full of covid patients. So it is doing what it is supposed to, working.
We must be careful about anything political here, however.
Today:
4,256,024 total cases
287,332 dead
1,527,519 recovered
In the US:
1,385,834 total cases
81,795 dead
262,225 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:
I have Worldometer on a tab that I refresh various times of the day along with some others. My pessimistic side tells me with fewer death and case numbers in the last few days, we’re just low on medical examiners. My optimistic side tells me, holy shit, are we actually getting fewer deaths? I know it’s only two or three days that it’s been lower than average, but come on, nature! Let this one go, already!
Some of that is probably a tapering off of deaths, but some is a weekend effect. Go to the USA page at Worldometers and scroll down below the table of states. There’s several bar charts, one of which is for daily deaths. Note that for the past month, on two days out of every seven, the numbers are lower than the ones on either side. Those are weekend reports, but that has more to do with the days various people work, rather than an actual reduction in deaths on Saturday and Sunday.
Here’s the Financial Times’ graph of the U.S.’ and other countries’ deaths on a 7-day rolling average. It’s on a log scale, so both the increases and decreases aren’t as vertical as they’d be on a normal scale.
What it shows is that the U.S. coronavirus death rate has been decreasing for a few weeks now, but most of that was in the first week’s drop-off from the peak; the rate of decrease has tapered off since.
Broadway theaters closed until at least labor day
The infection rates in the early hot spots seem to be declining; they’re going up elsewhere.
Right, NY being so out of control has masked what’s happening in several other states. If the rate in NY drops 25% but climbs by 50% in a dozen other states, the overall trend will appear to be down. It might be several weeks before overall numbers go up, but things will be getting worse, not better, the entire time.
The restaurant chain Steak and Shake is closing several restaurants due to the virus.
Cal State all campuses will be online only this fall with a few exceptions. That includes San Diego St, Fresno St. and San Jose St. UCLA and Cal-Berkeley are part of UCal system and are not included in this shutdown but they might be later.
Today in Austria:
[ul]
[li] Unemployment figures seem to be very slowly improving. As of yesterday, about 549,000 people were registered as unemployed, down from 588,205 in the middle of April. The number of new applications by businesses to furlough their employees has also gone down (though a staggering 1.3 million workers are currently furloughed).[/li][li] The Austrian Retail Association is calling on the government to issue helicopter money in the amount of €500 for every adult and child residing in Austria. (And if they really do mean just having the central bank print off a bunch of new bills, then this is a ridiculous plan that will do nothing but inflate the currency.)[/li][li] Austria and Germany have agreed on a complete reopening of the Austria–Germany border by 15 June. There are plans to gradually ease the border controls until then.[/li][li] Current statistics: 15,894 confirmed infections, 623 deaths, 14,148 recovered. The vast majority of Austria’s 94 districts (the second-level political divisions, under federal states) have reported no new infections for two weeks.[/li][/ul]
What is Austria doing right?
This is why I don’t think we’ve seen the last of COVID, and it’s very possible that the next wave might actually be worse – possibly much worse – than this one.
I get the “The lock-down is killing us - we want to reopen” – believe me, I get it. My current job assignment expires in 2 weeks and I’m not completely sure I’ll get a new assignment for the summer. And I know once I’m out of work, it’ll be hustle time for God only knows how long. So even though between my wife and I, we’re okay, I get it. I also really feel for the restaurant workers, the bartenders, the retail employees. I’m basically a blue collar guy myself. I get that people are getting financially crushed by this.
But the thing is, it doesn’t have to be a dichotomy. There are probably ways we can reopen. But we have to have discipline and we have to show some commitment to the cause. These morons who freaking flip out over not getting their ice cream for example :smack:
Idiots are going to make the rest of us suffer. And they’re just going to delay our ability to reopen.
Panama’s president announced yesterday that tomorrow sectors of the economy will begin opening up in phased stages.
Right now it’s just grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, gas stations, hardware stores, and restaurant takeout/delivery.
There are six “blocks” of categories of businesses. Included in the group permitted tomorrow are electronics shops, car mechanics, plumbers, electricians, other maintenance activities, and fishing and aquaculture.
There are no set dates for opening other sectors. In the next block are public works construction, non-metallic mining, places of worship, recreation and sporting areas, and industry.
However, they are apparently still maintaining general quarantine, which means people can leave the house only two hours a day every other day. So I don’t know how you are supposed to visit those other places if you need to buy groceries regularly.
All stimulous payments are inherently inflationary. The US Congress has already voted over $3 Trillion[li] in various stimulous payments and no one’s going to pretend that that’s not inflationary. But the thing is, it’s the kind of thing you need to keep the economy from going into a Depression.[/li]
[*] and some congressperson want to vote a couple trillion more.
4,342,355 total cases
292,893 dead
1,602,443 recovered
In the US:
1,408,636 total cases
83,425 dead
296,746 recovered
Yesterday’s numbers for comparison: