re-closing

  I live in a nice L.A. neighborhood and if I go out for a walk or to buy groceries I see zero people without masks. Zero. But I talk to friends in other states who tell me it's 50-50 where they live... fully half the people not wearing the masks that can help end the pandemic. They can't be arrested or shot like rabid dogs, even though they are preventing the rest of us from resuming our normal lives and killing hundreds of thousands of us. Worldwide, the pandemic continues raging-- over 35 million cases and over a million deaths.

On Thursday, Israel reported 4,429 new cases of COVID-19 in their Netanyahu Pandemic. On Friday it was another 3,038 cases and yesterday 3,961 more, bring the country's total to a horrifying 152,525. Why "horrifying?" Israel only has 9.2 million people. That number is very high for a small country and can be better understood when you compare Israel to five of the other countries that had handled the first wave relatively well by shutting down and then reopened:

"Die For Him Grandpa" by Nancy OhanianCalifornia is a COVID-mess, particularly the southern part of the state, where all the counties followed Gov. Gavin Newsom into a wait-and-see approach (while the Bay Area counties ignored Newsom's cowardice and shut down fast and managed to stave off the worst of the pandemic that is devastating southern California.

You probably saw that picture before; it's me, in early March when one of my neighbors, a SNL star thought I looked so funny that he had to photograph me. I started wearing that outfit in February to the GREAT discomfort of employees and fellow shoppers in the grocery stores where I was going to buy enough root vegetables, paper goods and dried fruits, legumes, nuts and grains to last until after a major holocaust.