My Coronavirus Diary Part 64

On Wednesday, we officially passed the 100,000 dead mark. We are currently at 101,617 dead. The president, following one of his not-uncommon tweet storms, tweeted his condolences.

Although things are opening up, a second peak could (and probably will) happen. In fact, some experts are warning that we are reopening much too quickly.

My friend Art in Massachusetts sent me a news link showing another model predicting a death toll of  131,967 deaths by August 1st instead of the 143,357 predicted less than two weeks ago. We will see...

In Pennsylvania, a democrat from the state's house of representatives, slammed his republican colleagues in a video rant, for pushing to reopen the state and chastised profusely at least one republican colleague who was positive for the virus but continued to work (without telling anyone) for at least a week.  Although profanity laced, the video is shocking. How could they do that?

In Maine, several health officials and emergency workers have developed COVID 19 symptoms.

In Massachusetts, a 103-year-old woman beat COVID 19...and celebrated with a Bud Lite. However, the Boston Marathon has been canceled.

New York has ordered that stores may deny entrance to people not wearing masks.

North Carolina has started using drones to help in the COVID 19 situation.

Montgomery County in Maryland has 50% of the COVID cases. As a county executive announces the first stages of reopening, Trump supporters heckled and berated him, calling him fascist, Nazi, and other things.

Minnesota is closing in on 1,000 deaths. A study by the University of Minnesota found that the stay at home orders helped keep hospitalizations down.

Wisconsin's Supreme Court struck down the stay-at-home orders the governor had put in place two weeks ago. Now the state is seeing record numbers of cases and deaths. There were seven cases in Kenosha alone from food and beverage workers.

Nebraska has been adding more cases of and deaths from the virus.

The Texas Supreme Court blocked a plan to offer mail in ballots to citizens in the November election, stating that "lack of immunity" to the virus was no grounds for doing so.

Half of the newly diagnosed cases of coronavirus in Washington state are people under 40. A fourth child there with the virus has developed that new inflammatory response that is similar to Kawasaki's Disease. A 21-year-old man who tested positive in Spokane, refused to self-isolate, was arrested twice causing 6 officers to have to quarantine for possible contamination.

In Nevada, the Las Vegas strip is reopening next week.

According to an article on Vox, only three states (Alaska, Kentucky, and New York) truly meet the criteria for reopening. However, the southeast, which has been reopened, is seeing their numbers go up.

The virus has killed 300 nurses in this country.

More than 41 million people in this country have lost their jobs since the pandemic started. There is fear that a new wave of layoffs will come as the economy struggles to get back to "normal".

According to Fox News, republicans are suing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi over proxy voting. The House voted that, as a safety measure, they would vote remotely. Republicans are suing, saying the Constitution requires them to be in the House for all votes.

Twitter added fact checking warnings to some of the president's tweets. This infuriated Trump. Now the president is saying that Twitter is interfering in the upcoming election.

Trump has since signed an executive order against social media platforms. While none of his tweets about the virus have been affected (yet), he has been known to spread a lot of misinformation about it. Twitter should just ban his account. That would really tick him off.

A new report suggests that the virus did not originate at the "wet market" in Wuhan, China. However, the market is suspected of being the location of an early "superspreader" event where an infected person spread it to several others.

Some researchers suggest that the virus is mostly an airborne transmission.

A report shows that blood clots tend to clog the lungs of African American patients with COVID 19.

Antibody testing is pointing to a lower mortality rate for the virus than originally thought...but also that it has been much more widespread than thought, too.

A poker player won a grim $10,000 bet that the death toll would reach 100,000 before August.


GLOBAL:

There are 5.8 million cases globally and more than 360,000 dead.

France has banned the use of hydroxychloroquin for use with COVID 19 patients, the anti-malerial drug that the president was touting as a cure-all for the virus (and said he took it himself prophylactically). The country is also set to reopen cafes, bars, and restaurants.

The resort town of Acapulco, Mexico's hospitals are jam-packed with COVID 19 patients.

Brazil is just being slammed. The country has started having double the amount of deaths on a daily bases that we've been having.

A 111-year-old woman in Chile survived the coronavirus.

According to Fox News, South Korea reinstated lockdown measures as the country had it's biggest spike in cases in nearly 2 months.

A 30-year-old Australian man became that country's youngest virus fatality. He threw a party just days before he died.

As the virus continues to ravage the world, some countries have been able to bring their rate of infection down to zero...or close to it.



CALIFORNIA:

California had a one day record of 2,565 new cases of the virus being confirmed. The state is nearing 4,000 deaths.

A study done in San Francisco has found that the virus has hit mostly lower wage workers.

Alameda County has become a hot spot for the virus. Among the new cases are 12 workers from a market in Oakland.

LegoLand in San Diego is looking to reopen July 1st.



LOCAL:

A nurse at the Kaiser hospital here in town has succumbed to COVID 19 that she contracted from a patient that wasn't even suspected for having the virus in March.

An inmate in Fresno County Jail has tested positive for the virus.

The city of Sanger is now requiring all residents to wear a face mask in public. (I wish they were required here.)

Barber shops and hair salons have reopened in Fresno and Clovis.

Several CVS stores in the Valley are now offering drive thru coronavirus tests.

Have a fair food craving? This weekend, you can get your fix on with the last (for May or for the summer?) offering of fair food favorites:

CREATIVITY:

Slim pickings this time...

The guy who did the Quarantine Kitchen bits is back with a make-shift graduation commencement speech -- Wisconsin-style.

With sports on hold and the 2020 Olympics postponed until next summer, how about the Quarantine Olympics? Here are two editions of the Quarantine Games featuring real Olympic athletes. This first event...the sock slide competition:

Next---the Egg Hurdle Challenge:

Here is a recent Jimmy Kimmel Live monologue in which the late night talk show host talks about Trump spending the weekend golfing while 100,000 Americans lay dead.

Here is a second Jimmy Kimmel monologue in which he discusses Trumps recent Twitter issues.

MAIL:

There's not much mail today. I think that the 'novelty ' of the virus has ended, for the most part...even though we are still in the midst of it and it will get worse before it gets better. My friends are not checking in with me and relating what is going on with them as often as they had been. That's okay. I get it.

I had a quick email from my mom on Wednesday. Her phone was still on the fritz, so email was her only option to reach me. (She has since gotten a new phone.) Mom lives on Whidbey Island in Washington. With the state reopening, she was shocked to see wall-to-wall people in town over Memorial Day weekend--most of them not wearing masks or social distancing. This was a follow up note about that.

"What’s scary to me is we had no positive cases for quite a while," she said. "We are one of the counties that was opened by governor. Now we have lots of tourists, possibly bringing the virus in to us with no masks. Thank you very much..."


My friend Jenny in Fresno, CA also sent a brief note expressing similar concerns.

"I feel more scared of going out now than before, because people aren't social distancing or wearing masks."


Andrei in Italy sent a brief note:

"Hey there," he said. "I'm good, just in a very bad moment with money. I don't know what to do. I start working, but two months I didn't work. Everything start at normal, but everyone use a mask. Here, in my area, are zero cases."


Angel in Colombia also dropped a super brief note. It left me with questions that hwe hasn't clarified yet.

"I've been fine," he said, "but under a lot of stress and fighting with my family. But in my own company, thank God I'm doing well.I'm sick from the weather."



SHIRLEY:

I don't know if it is the change of weather (from pleasant spring-like weather to the blazing, blast-furnace hell that is the Central Valley in the summer at more than 100 degrees), but Shirley has been feisty lately...or maybe she's just been grumpy. She had been pushing her house around the last several days. On Wednesday night she went in it (and slept there), but for the longest time she was banging around in there. I have no idea what she was doing. Here is a brief 9 second video. You can hear her restless self in the box.

Other than that, she's been enjoying herself outside---and not wanting to come in. (Perhaps she is acting up because she is mad at me for bringing her in?) Her majesty has been sleeping in, though. She didn't wake up and go out until nearly 10:45 or so yesterday. Usually when it is hot, she tries to come back in the house. She hasn't wanted to yet...but the summer has only just begun. It will get hotter here soon enough...

ME:

Last Friday and Saturday the city was repaving my street. Monday was a holiday and I'm not sure why they had off Tuesday (possibly because they worked Saturday?), but they repavers were b-a-c-k Wednesday and Thursday, getting the block behind me. UGH! It was loud and they arrived early...

On Wednesday, I had a doctor's appointment with my primary physician. When I arrived, I was pleased to see that everyone in the waiting room (except one woman) was wearing a mask. The office staff behind the front desk wasn't masked up though.

Jenny had sent me her note while I was there. I responded.

"Fox News is playing in the waiting room," I said, after telling her where I was. "That's the problem with living in Clovis...well, the Valley.... People here are Fox watchers and by and large republican/pro-Trump.

"Jeepers! I have a mask on...but I just coughed. It wasn't a big cough and it wasn't a sick cough...it was a clear my throat cough...but from the stares I'm getting, you'd think I pulled out a gun or something."

The doctor went over labs I had done earlier in the month. Everything was fine, for the most part. In regards to my referral to the Stanford Movement Disorders Clinic, he was surprised I had not gotten a call from them yet. He wanted me to call and check on it. I later did. They'd gotten the referral and had faxed my doctor back the next day asking them to fill out an intake form and to send my records. They never did. So, I called my doctor's office...they hadn't gotten anything. I think they must have had the wrong FAX number or something. I hope they get it straightened out. I'll call later today or next week and see. But--ARGH! How frustrating.

After my doctor visit, I had to go to the bank. They had it all virus protection ready. The main entrance was an exit only. You had to enter through the back door. A security guard was posted there making sure everyone who entered was masked up. There were spaces on the ground to stand on, six feet apart from the others in line. All of the tellers, of course, were masked.

From there, it was off to Costco. It was busy there. I have not yet used my new handicapped license plate. I considered it when I pulled up, but there were no spots open. Fortunately there was a prime spot one row up from the disabled parking stalls and I snagged it. 

Everyone was required to wear a mask inside, but I did see some people trying to be sneaky (taking it off until they encountered someone, leaving their nose exposed, or pushing it down below their mouths, etc.)  Geez. It is so rude of them. 

There appeared to be plenty of meat. Toilet paper, paper towels, water, and (oh my stars!) hand sanitizer were plentiful. That was a shocker. 

What surprised me most was that there were so many people out and about as if nothing were wrong or out of the ordinary. There were cars everywhere. Shopping centers were open. I saw several people not wearing masks. I just don't know what to think...

Beyond that, it's been quiet. Later today, I'll need to run errands. I'm trying to get my disability insurance people to take my claim. They need documentation that my medical leaves in the fall (for crazy high blood pressure issues) and earlier in the spring (a week off for an angiogram) were not related to what is going on now. I also have to get the name, address and phone number of every doctor who has seen me in the last year. Swell...

Sunday is a Zoom call with Ricki, Erich, Ashley and Sai, At least that is something to look forward to.


Stay SAFE, Stay Sheltered. Stay ALIVE.


CHEERS!



Continue to the next part HERE.