Apologies. Took some days off: grading and gardening time.
Doctors in France believe 2 patients admitted to hospitals in Paris in December were positives. One alleged his daughter got ill before he did. If confirmed, this would completely blow the lid off the whole wet market in Wuhan story.
King Un is alive and well. Or is he? Internet sleuths are claiming the videos released the other day show a body double. Un is known to have more than one.
Hospitals in Wuhan are still not turning their central air-conditioning on. Temperatures have been as high as 91° (not sure if that is an outside or inside temperature, probably the latter). This is due to recent research believed to show transmission through a/c.
Chinese internet sleuths have identified a lab worker from that Wuhan virus lab who has disappeared. Rumor is that she was patient zero. Here's the thing: like most internet rumors this can be easily shown to be absolute and complete nonsense if she'd just make a public appearance. Unless ... she can't.
Lots of states are "re-opening": 27 at last count. While the guidelines for this are rough at best, only 9 of those 27 actually pass on all counts.
Here's the bad news. People have convinced themselves we are doing a good job. Except that 1) we're doing about as well as predicted by the CDC:
and 2) the CDC forecasts things to get worse. Ummm ... hey folks out there ... the CDC isn't making mistakes on this, you are. Also, the Washington Post obtained internal documents from the White House forecasting 3K deaths/day by the end of the month. Try clicking through this link to see the chart that I'm talking about.There's a lot to say about newly released projections for #COVID19 in the USA. I'll be talking about it on @NewsHour tonight. But let's take a look at some of the stark, terrible new data and forecasts.— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) May 4, 2020
First, new infection rates will soar in May/June, hitting 3K/day.
MORE pic.twitter.com/ztkEbJAJEW
This is probably a good time to remind you that I posted about this exact sort of behavior about 2 months ago when we were still meeting classes face-to-face.
It is also worth remembering that the initial approach of the UK was very much like that of Sweden. In both cases, the countries made an assessment that the public would fatigue of social distancing before the virus stopped doing its thing. They didn't think social distancing was ineffective; they thought we were all morons (but were too polite to blurt that out).
Of course, you already knew this:
But I like the new visualization. Except they won't let me repost the visualization any more, so you have to click here.April 2020, United States— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) May 3, 2020
and likely will be #1 for months to come
by @PostGraphics pic.twitter.com/QXGKcJClIq
The Prime Minister of Russia tested positive the other day. That's not Putin, but a figurehead just underneath him.
Have you looked at case counts in San Juan county lately (that's Moab, Monticello, Blanding, Bluff, Mexican Hat, and part of the Navajo reservation)? It's rate is now # 3 in the state, ahead of both Salt Lake and Utah counties.
Oh ... and Gallup (on the other side of that reservation) was quarantined by the Governor of New Mexico. It's rate of 4,500 positives per 100K people is twice what it is in most of New York City.
What is it with repressive place releasing prisoners? Now Cuba has done it too.
What European Union? President Macron of France believes that borders will not re-open in the Shengen area until September.
I'll end with some trivia. Saks department store is close to bankruptcy. Hold that thought. When teaching principles of micro, students often ask what the oldest corporation in the world is. It's a little bit surprising: it's a department store in Canada. If you've ever been there, most malls have a store called The Bay. What most people don't know is that reaching way back into your American history classes, there were trappers in the western U.S. who came down from Canada and worked for the Hudson Bay Company. That Hudson Bay Company, founded in 1670, runs through one unbroken corporate line down to The Bay of 2020. And The Bay also borrowed a lot of money to buy Saks few years ago. The structure of the original deal is not quite clear, and renegotiations are in progress, but there have been rumors going around for a couple of weeks that bankruptcy of the Saks subsidiary may take the parent company down with it, after a 350 year run.
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