week 15

Another dedicated post.

Our idiot Trump butt kisser governor has finally responded to the surging covid-19 cases here in Texas, surging because he did not follow even Trump's administration's guidelines of two weeks of decreasing cases before opening back up and started opening the economy when case numbers were still rising and now Texas is one of several hot spots (every day breaking the record of the day before) along with Florida (almost 9,000 new cases on Friday) and Arizona, and the ICUs in Houston are nearing capacity (and I believe I heard on the radio Friday that they had reached capacity) and Texas Children's Hospital is now accepting adults to free up bed space at the other hospitals. Abbott's response? Order mandatory mask wearing or reintroducing the stay at home orders or pulling back on capacity allowed at the businesses already open? No, in fact he issued an order preventing individual mayors from issuing mandatory mask orders for their cities, though certain county judges are issuing the restriction anyway but they are putting the burden on businesses to enforce it in their establishments; he has not reissued the stay at home mandate or cut back on capacity allowance which I think is at 75% now; and his only concession to daily increases in reported cases is to hold off on the continuation of the opening of businesses. Thanks gov, you toadie.

Edit: apparently the governor has bowed to saner minds and has taken a step backwards. All bars are ordered to close at noon on Friday, restaurants reduced to 50% capacity, and large gatherings (100 or more) must be approved by local governments with certain exceptions (probably churches).

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New research indicates that in some patients, covid-19 causes diabetes 1 as lab studies have shown that the virus attacks the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin and the onset may not occur until months after recovery.

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Dr. Fauci revealed Tuesday at the congressional hearing on the administration's response to the pandemic that the NIH canceled funding in the middle of the pandemic for research which specifically worked to understand the risk of bat coronaviruses jumping to humans and causing devastating disease and that the order came directly from the White House in response to a conspiracy theory, research that was renewed for another five years in 2019 after receiving an outstanding peer-review score. The deputy director of the NIH wrote “There are now allegations that the current crisis was precipitated by the release from Wuhan Institute of Virology of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. Given these concerns, we are pursuing suspension of Wuhan Institute of Virology from participation in federal programs” (note he said 'allegations' not proof or evidence, just allegation or in other words an accusation without proof which apparently is all Trump needs) blocking the only US research group still working in China to analyze COVID origins.

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The DOJ, Thursday night just before midnight, filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of the lawsuit brought by Republican dominated states asking the Supreme Court to invalidate the ACA. In the middle of a pandemic. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the lawsuit, 28 million Americans will lose their health insurance.

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The US is setting new records every day for new covid-19 cases in one day. Thanks to the lack of response from Trump and his administration and those Republican governors hamstringing their own mayors trying to respond in their cities, the US, which has 4% of the world's population, has 24% of the world's deaths from the virus. Trump and Republicans are unfazed by this.

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At his rally in Tulsa last week Trump once again claimed that the only reason we keep having new cases is because of testing and said that he told his team to slow down the testing, as if the test gave people the virus instead of identifying it. The White House responded by saying Trump was kidding. When asked by a reporter if he was kidding, Trump said “I never kid”. And in fact he is stopping federal funding for testing in some states (though I think I read yesterday that he has backtracked on that after the public uproar).

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While blacks have been hit hard by covid-19 mainly due to poverty, latinos are being hard hit as well as they make up the bulk of the 'essential' workforce, and now the virus is hitting the 20 – 40 age group. Young people are accounting for half, and in some places more than half, of all new cases.

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Heard on NPR Friday while in the car that while infections are increasing in the US, the death rate is decreasing since now doctors have a little more understanding of the virus and how it attacks our bodies and they are developing treatments. That's the good news. The bad news is they are also learning that people who needed to be hospitalized are likely to have continuing health problems from the attack of the virus on their lungs and other organs. Those with mild enough symptoms that they were never hospitalized and who test negative are still suffering from shortness of breath and fatigue and they may never recover fully.

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Interestingly enough, research indicates that the large protests did not cause a surge in infections. Being outdoors and wearing masks seems to have had an effect.

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My county has jumped up to 181 cases. Last week we were at 115.

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Canada and Mexico are keeping their borders with the US closed and it's looking likely that the European Union will keep their borders closed to Americans as well when the individual countries start opening their borders to other Europeans.

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Current US statistics as of today 6/28/20, 15:25 GMT (last fourteen weeks' totals in parenthesis): cases – 2,610,399 (2,332,056, 2,143,646, 1,992,453, 1,837,525, 1,685,367, 1,512,267, 1,384,681, 1,168985, 976,403, 741,230, 534,494, 312,223, 123,958, 38,757); deaths – 128,211 (122,020, 117,542, 112,141, 106,190, 99,286, 90,206, 81,724, 67,954, 54,965, 39,103, 20,637, 8,483, 2,231, 400); (no longer care about recoveries).