136 follow the bouncing ball

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the President of the United States of America. Bringing us all together at this moment of great pain.

Yesterday, I made the mistake of ordering the bullshit salad.

Japan, yes.

940 new cases yesterday, in a country 1/3 the size of the US. That's up from their previous high of just under 800 cases a day, back at the beginning of April. On the chart, it looks resurgence-y.

Germany, a bit smaller with a population about twice the size of California, or a quarter of the US, had 902 cases yesterday, down from a high of 6000+ in March. Can't exactly call that a resurgence.

Meanwhile, in the US, with about three times Japan's population, we had 68,543 new cases yesterday. That's 600 times more new cases than Japan, or 200 times more per capita. In other words, Japan isn't having a resurgence, they've never even had an outbreak.

So, these are two charts of a functional public health response, and one broken one. 

That would be?

Started going down that road, then made a U-turn at executive responsibility.

With this I agree.

Now he gets back into throwing old people under the bus, an odd POV for a senior citizen. (For the record, I disagree. The health of a society is measured by the health of the weakest citizens.)

He knows what Rt is! 

FYI45, both of the people I know who have been hospitalized for Covid have received plasma already.

Sounds nice, but there's a three week lag between becoming a case statistic and becoming a death statistic. Treatment has advanced, but good luck getting it in Texas, where they've been sending people home to die.

Now he gets into the economy and GDP, here claiming that the Chinese GDP was going to pass the US last year, but because of his awesome tariffs, it took until... This year?

(PPP means purchasing power, AKA, what you can actually get with your hypothetical money.

Guess we might as well throw this chart in here right now. It says our GDP took a nine percent dip over the past three months. That seems low to me.

I guess it seemed low to this reporter, as well.

I'm not sure why most reports were saying 9.5% and this one said 33%? I'm guessing they weren't eating the rays of sunshine being put out by our blindly optimistic commander in chief.

This also seems low. But let's work with that number anyway.

Who could have stopped it?

Yes, the Democrats objected. They want you to have more money.

Huh? Yes, that's right, up is down. Your landlord doesn't want you evicted, the cops won't serve the notice, it's Democrats! 

Damn Democrats at it again. How about the economic relief bill the (Democrat controlled) house passed two months ago that the (Republican controlled) Senate refuses to look at?

And now we start to dismantle the public school system. But making sure your kids are as dumb as his isn't even the goal of that one. His real objective is to weaken teacher's unions, who typically vote Democrat. 

In other words, he's attacking intellectuals. This is classic dictator 101.

Simply substitute "Republicans" and we're getting closer to the truth.

Who's taxes? His taxes.

Only one result of the voting can possibly be correct.

And of course, "you are not as trustworthy as I am."

Herman Cain trusted him that it was safe to go to the superspeader event in Tulsa. 

R.I.P.

This headline didn't last long.

So where are we on this thing, anyway? This top chart represents what would happen if we take the virus as seriously as we did in May, and kept Rt to .75.

This bottom chart represents what will happen if we stay on our present course, with an Rt just over 1.

That's 4000 deaths a day come December, about twice what we were having when they were digging mass graves in NYC.

And so on, and so on.

At this point, we need some serious talk of adapting. An online jobs program. A huge expansion of outdoor business. Mask fashion shows. A healthcare jobs program. A post-oil infrastructure building program. A housing conversion program. A suburban infill program. A national gardening scheme. A national clean up your street program. 

Guys, switching to electric cars sounds like a great idea, but it's also not sustainable. Electric bikes, maybe, but just in general, the Earth doesn't have room or resources for us all to haul a few thousand pounds of metal around with us everywhere we go.

And if you think you're saving the world with your electric vehicle, welcome to Bolivia, where you're actually funding a coup.

This was a hopeful headline yesterday.

The governor of Oregon says the goonsquads of the Republican Administration are leaving.

Unfortunately, they beg to differ. Following up this morning, I see federal troops have left Seattle, but are still in Portland.

You know what's scary? If you told me back at the start of this, by this summer, we'll have martial law, massive unemployment, street protests, and the world's highest infection and death rate, I would have thought we were about two months ahead of schedule.

But look at this amazing view of Saturn! 

And the first image of a star with two planets!