Lena Sun's report for the Washington Post over the weekend backs up fears that many have that Trump is trying to get control over coronavirus stats so that he can manipulate them for his campaign.
Europe seems to have gotten through the first phase of the pandemic relatively well-- at least compared to Trumpland. The virus burned through their population pretty early and pretty fast and then mostly died down as people followed social distancing and mask rules to an extent unheard of in most of the U.S.
The Second Spike by Nancy OhanianThe Wall Street Journal managed to do a whole piece on How the Covid-19 surge shifted to the South and West without once mentioning Trump or any of his stupid Republican enablers.
Next month is my friend's birthday. His wife called me today to ask me to come over for a little birthday party. "How little," I asked. She named about a dozen people. "This year?" I asked to confirm my suspicion. I told hold all my plans are being made by the pandemic, not by arbitrary dates and wishes. She did not want to hear that.
America 2020 by Nancy OhanianYesterday, as states and cities rush to re-open, some carefully, others not, the Washington Post ran a piece by Joel Achenbach, Shutdowns prevented 60 million coronavirus infections in the U.S., study finds.
We've been eating well during the pandemic, actually better than we have for the preceding couple of decades. That's because we ate out a lot and even the very best restaurant food is never as healthy as home-cooking. Also because I was a chef for almost 4 years-- and in a vegan/health food restaurant-- when I lived in Amsterdam.
I don't understand exactly why, but there was a time when I was looking at the daily COVID statistics and watching Califiornia with so much lower numbers than New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and other early states, and I felt some kind of primitive, tribal pride in my state (although I was born and raised in New York and lived for a time in New Jersey and in Massachusetts). Anyway, that's been over for a while.
Give Him A Break by Chip ProserIf you've been visiting this blog with any regularity since the beginning of 2020, you probably know that we started covering the coronavirus intensely by early February. And we were quick to point out that China was feeding international organizations fake COVID-statistics pretty early on-- as they have continued to do right up until this day. Yesterday, for example, they reported just 2 new cases and no new deaths.
Wave II of this pandemic is probably going to be centered more in rural areas than Wave I was. And it's started already. Friday morning, Axios ran a series of graphs showing how the Wave I states are showing significant decreases in serious cases in the last 2 weeks. Massachusetts is down 22.5%. New Jersey is down 19.4%. Connecticut is down 16.0%. New York is down 13.0%. Those were the hardest hit states.
