I do not expect folks to like all I like. I do expect to challeng folks to open their acceptability window a bit wider.
I love this old black woman I do not know. Why? Because she genuinely and openly asks me “kiss me, kiss me a lot”…
Curiously appropriate:
The Worldometer says California is now over 3K cases. This heat map looks to be lagging them a bit as scanning the hot spot counties gives closer to 2K total. So I uplift Santa Clara County by a fudge factor. Presently showing 459. Call it a thousand today or tomorrow.
Then figure with non-symptomatic spreaders, not testing folks with low symptoms, early stage disease being unsymptomatic: Figure about 10 times that number are actually in the population. So 10,000 likely cases of potential exposure.
Santa Clara County has about a 1.8 million population (per wiki 2010 census – though likely closer to 2M now).
Do the division: 1,800,000/10,000 = 180 (to 200 top end).
So, as of now, any venue with over 200 folks in the day has near certainty of a spreader there or passing through.
That is every grocery store, most bank ATMs, and certainly big box hardware stores. All places currently OK to go and approved without masks or gloves. This guarantees continued spreading of WuFlu / Covid-19.
So, OK, as of now, going there is off limits for me. In an emergency, with my own mask, gloves, alcohol wash, maybe.
The Political Class continues to approach this incrementally, “data driven”, and reactively.
That is guaranteed to fail.
There is a 1 to 2 week lag time between reality of cases and hospital check in / data. If you wait for the data, you will always be too little too late. “A day late and a dollar short” on steroids. You MUST look ahead. Notice that my risk estimate did a “look ahead” to probable spreaders 10 times known symptomatic patients.
Look at Italy. That is where you WILL GO deciding incrementally. We know R0 is incredibly high. So you can easily know you must do everything possible to get that down. It is horribly irresponsible to tell folks not to wear masks. Masks stop the asymptomatic spreaders and newly infected from spreading it around as much.
The responsible thing would be to encourge folks to make masks and wear them. Fold an old T Shirt in half along a line top to bottom, you have 4 layers of cotton cloth. Sew the outline of several masks on it, cut them out, and apply strings, shoelaces, or folded and sewn cloth straps. Tell America to do that, our people will get it done. R0 plummets in a few days. Universal mask wearing is part of how China and S.Korea and others have beat this.
Decide what to do based on the nature of the virus and what if WILL DO, not what it has done. Go to the necessary end state, not incremental ineffective steps for 3 weeks, infect 10x more, and then be screwed.
Enforce the physical distancing and isolation. Saying “We can’t do that here” is defeatist and wrong. We CAN DO what it takes. This also drops R0 a bunch. The longer you do a half assed job of isolation, the longer, exponentially, you will have to keep doing a half assed job of it.
Saying there’s only 4 cases somewhere so you can ignore it and only react to the big problem spots is reactive and stupid. This all started with ONE CASE. Every case is critical. One guy in nowhere West Texas is going to infect the whole county if you ignore it. Instead, build out from zero cases zones and very aggressively eliminate cases in low case areas. That one case? Test everyone in town (as Nowhere Towns are small) and find the 5 asymptomatic folks he’s already infected. Now the town is no longer a spreading zone. Add it to the zero case map and move over to the next spot with few cases. Keep doing this until you only have a few crisis spots to deal with.
Telling us we are stupid so ought to do something stupider, is incredibly stupid. Stop it! Sure, one in 20 will use their mask wrong. Telling the other 19 to not wear a mask and keep spreading is incredibly stupid. Instead, put out a “how to wear, handle, and wash your mask” PSA. The 19 will “get it” and the one can get help from the local social pressure. Trust your citizens.
Similarly, exhorting folks to only buy a little food and every week go back to the Grocery Germ Exchange Store, unprotected by gloves & mask, guarantees spread. Instead, put an enforcer at each store. Limit folks inside. Clean the touch pads and carts after each person. Require a mask to enter (otherwise some of them are breathing virus onto the produce). Deliver a monthly sized food box to anyone in a high risk category, assembled and delivered by staff who are tested every day. That isn’t hoarding, it is limiting exposure to once per month. They still only eat one month of food per month.
TEST EVERYONE! Until you do, the asymptomatic cases are exponentially spreading and you can never beat the exponential. Yes, I know there are not enough test kits right now. But there will be. Stop lying to folks by saying not to test everyone. Be honest and say “We can only test the most necessary now, but eventually we must test everyone.” We’re able to handle that.
Start 100% testing your very low population areas, building out your rural Green Zone. As more kits become available, climb up the population size areas. From the other side, test all hospital staff and cases presenting for treatment. As kits are available, expand out to family, friends, neighbors, regions. Telling folks with low symptoms not to get tested, just go home, is just guaranteeing they will infect bus riders, neighbors, family, kid’s friends as they get it, the grocer as they buy groceries on the way home…
Going for “herd immunity” by telling the “at risk” to hide while everyone else shares the bug is asking for disaster. With about 340 million population, if only 1% of them are surprise bad cases, an order of magnitude below experience, will be 3.4 million and that will break the medical system and be a disaster. Better to be hyper proactive than disastrously reactive.
Think like a farmer who must plan a season ahead, not like a boxer reacting to each new punch. You MUST identify all cases, even the asymptomatic spreaders, and pull them out of the herd into isolation. If boxing, know your opponent is doubling in strength every 3 to 6 days.. Eventually you, as boxer, must lose.
The Stupid, It Burns.
Kaiser Medical has threatened to fire nurses, treating Covid-19 patients, if they wear an N95 mask. Even their own.
In New York, prison guards are forbidden to wear an N95 mask.
While China, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong have all mandated masks for everyone AND have done much better than the west at controlling this thing, our Idiots In Charge can’t learn from others.
WE KNOW:
Covid-19 has some amount of aerosol spread. How much is in question, but not the existence.
Covid-19 spreads rapidly to medical staff with any reduction in PPE from bunny suits or N95 + face shield.
Covid-19 spreads rapidly in prisons.
Between 15% and 50% of those who are tested as infected are asymptomatic spreaders.
Countries using strict social distancing, quarantine, masks, and universal testing win.
Those with sloppy weak “shelter” requests, no masks, testing only the symptomatic: FAIL HARD.
It sure looks to me like the goal is to go ahead and infect everyone and just let the old and ill die. Europe and the USA will fail given our current practices.
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/24/kaiser-permanente-nurses-coronavirus/
KAISER PERMANENTE THREATENED TO FIRE NURSES TREATING COVID-19 PATIENTS FOR WEARING THEIR OWN MASKS, UNIONS SAY
Akela Lacy
March 24 2020, 12:05 p.m.NURSES AT KAISER Permanente hospitals and clinics in California could be fired immediately for wearing their own face masks, according to unions representing nurses at the facilities. The news comes after nurses were ordered to reuse disposable protective gear to save supplies in the face of shortages brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
The California Nurses Association and National Nurses United sent a flyer to members noting that Kaiser had threatened nurses with firing if they wear their own N95 masks, which offer a high level of protection from airborne contaminants, to work. “Kaiser has told nurses that if they’re seen wearing their personal N95 masks, they could be fired ‘on the spot’ for insubordination,” the flyer read. The unions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gee… heading into a massive nurse shortage, think a Kaiser nurse could get a job where the good PPE is provided?
This pretty much lays it out.
I modeled this on a fancier Irish Soda bread, made in much larger lots.
https://www.recipetineats.com/no-yeast-bread-irish-soda-bread/
This is a more plain bread, made a bit more roughly. Only flour, soured milk, oil and salt.
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup evaporated condensed milk, reconstituted to 1/2 cup
1 & 1/2 tsp vinegar
1/2 tsp. salt.
1/2 tsp baking soda
In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and soda.
In a measuring cup, reconstitute the milk to make 1/2 cup. Add the vinegar and stir.
Pour about 3 oz. of the liquid into the dry and mix with a spoon.
If you need more, add more liquid in small amounts until you have a loose dough.
Dust the counter or table top work surface with flour. Put the doughball on it, and knead it for just a few times. No more than ten. A too wet dough will pick up the flour it wants. When it is a nice texture, form a small round loaf, put it in an oiled cast iron skillet, cut a cross in the top, and place it in a 425 F oven for 20 minutes, then turn it down to 350 F for 10 minutes.
This makes a very neutral flavor (i.e. kind of bland). Fine as a bread with flavored beans. You can also add a tsp of sugar for a sweeter bread and even put some raisins or dried fruit in it. I like salt, so may try increasing salt by half.
It looked very nice, like it ought. But no photo… it didn’t survive the taste test ;-) Maybe tomorrow.
