Sunday, May 31, 2020

Strife

Denver put a curfew in place and the Colorado National Guard has been called out to address riots in the Centennial State's capitol city.

National Guardsmen of the 40th Armored Division, California National Guard, August, 1965.

The riots stem from several recent incidents of violent deaths of African Americans, the most recent at the hands of a policeman in Minneapolis Minnesota.

Those riots have spread all across the urban United States.  It's hard, from a distance, to grasp why hundreds of miles away from the scene of the offense riots take place against a community that didn't participate in the offense.  It points to something underlying, and the pundits will be full of analysis over it over the next several weeks.

But on the topic in general, distant riots aren't calculated to achieve anything and end up punishing the communities that were affiliated by them.  Businesses move, employment drops, and those who were deprived to start with are more deprived.  It's a compounding tragedy.

And its one that, in this context, we should be well past.  And yet we're not.

May 31, 1920. Memorial Day for 1920

Sunday Morning Scene (A repeat): Churches of the West: Stop! Don't change that Church!

Churches of the West: Stop! Don't change that Church!:

Stop! Don't change that Church!

A theme, if not always an obvious one, of this blog is architecture.

And  nothing does more violence to traditional, serviceable, and beautiful architecture, than "updating" it for any reason.

Just don't.

A case in point.


The photograph above, unfortunately not entirely in focus and in black and white, dates from November 1958.  It depicts St. Anthony's of Padua Church in Casper Wyoming on the occasion of my parents wedding.

Now, St. Anthony's remains a beautiful church today, but if we had a picture of the interior (which I don't from this angle) and if we had this picture in sharper focus (which it isn't) and in color (which it is not), we'd notice some changes right away.

And they aren't good ones.

The altarpiece and the altar are all still there.  The cross painted on the wall behind the altarpiece is also still there.  But many other things have changed.

Most obvious, the beautiful marble altar rail in this photograph, a gift of the Schulte family when the church was built, is gone.  I was told that a part of it can be found now in a local restaurant, which I hope is not true.  If it is true, I've never seen it, so it must be some place I don't go to.  It's not clear here, but the gate for the altar rail was marble with heavy brass hinges.  A true work of art in every sense.

The heavy brass lanterns hanging from the ceiling are also gone.

What appears to be a marble ambo is gone as well, replaced by a very nice wooden (walnut?) one.

The statute of St. Patrick moved across town to St. Patrick's, which sort of makes sense. The funds to build St. Patrick's came from St. Anthony's donors, many of whom were Irish, to that we'd ultimately send the statute of the Patron Saint of Ireland over there, which we did only fairly recently, does square with the general them there.. The statute of St. Anthony has been moved to a different spot, but it looks good where it is.

I'm not certain what sort of floor covering we're looking at here, probably carpet, and of course we have new carpet.  But what would strike anyone looking at this photo about what is next to the carpet, the pews, is that the pews are now cantered to face towards the center of the alter.

Okay, what's up with all of that, and was it an improvement?

Well, I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder, as all such things are, but in my view, the answer is a very distinct "no".

It's funny how these things work.  I can remember all of the features depicted here, including the altar rail, even though I was very young when at least that feature came out.  But, at the time, I don't think I thought much about it, if I thought about it all.  I don't remember the Mass being in Latin at all, although when I was very, very young, it must have been.  Anyhow, while these things didn't bother me at the time, or the one change that I recall from when I was a bit older, the cantering of the pews, didn't bother me much, now they do.

That may be because I now have a greater appreciation for history and tradition than I did when I was just a boy, although I had a sense of that at the time.

The cocked angle of the pews, remnants of a decision made by a Priest in the 1970s or perhaps early 80s,  has been something I've never liked, even if I understand the intent behind it.  Not visible in this photograph, a row of pews that were in the middle of the church were taken out to facilitate twice as many Communion servers.  It's awkward and always has been and should not have been done.  Indeed, as this was the only Catholic Church in town with it was built, it was probably jam packed nearly every Mass and they seemed to manage to get by just fine. For that matter, I've been in plenty of packed Catholic churches where everyone came up to the front of the church and it always worked just fine as well.  Having said that, changing the angle of the pews didn't do a great disservice to the church even if it didn't really help it any.

Another matter, however, is the altar rail.

Now altar rails turn out to be a surprisingly hot button item to people not familiar with them.

All Latin Rite Catholic Churches and Anglican Churches had altar rails. Chances are very high that other churches close in form to the Catholic Church also had them, I just don't know. Their purposes was to provide a place for communicants to kneel when receiving communion.  Prior to Vatican II (1962 to 1965) all Latin Catholic in modern times received communion on the tongue.  Communicants would kneel at the altar rail and receive communion.

You'd think that finding a public domain photograph of communicants receiving communion at an altar rail would b easy, but it isn't.  This almost illustrates it in a better fashion, however.  British solders lined up, as if there is an altar rail, and receiving communion in teh field in North Africa.  Off hand, I suspect that this is an Anglican service.

Now, before we get too far down this road it should be noted that people can get really up in arms about this in all sorts of ways and some traditionalist will insist that communion can only properly be received kneeling and on the tongue.  This doesn't seem to be true and certainly wasn't universally the case.  Indeed, originally, the very first Christians, received communion in the hand and you can find very early writings that effect.  However, traditionalist will hotly dispute what those writings and the other evidence actually means. Given as I'm not getting into that debate, I'm not going there and that isn't the point of this entry.

What is the point is that altar rails were an integral part of the design of churches for an extremely long time. Take anything out of a well designed building and you risk subtracting from its design. That's exactly what I think occurred here.

Which isn't to say that I feel that St. Anthony's is a bad looking Church now, far from it. It's still a beautiful church. But it was more beautiful before the marble altar rail was taken out.

Indeed, the problem with making alterations to these well designed structures is that any time that this is done it risks giving into a temporary view in favor of a more traditional element that was integral in the design of the structure while doing damage to its appearance.  All Catholic churches up until the id 1960s were designed to have altar rails.  Taking them out may have served what was, and perhaps is, the view of the day in regards to worship, but it also means that a major feature of the interior of the building, to which careful consideration had been given, was now missing.

And it turns out that, contrary to widely held belief, they did not have to be removed.

Most people believe that the altar rails were taken out as it was somehow required post Vatican II.  It wasn't.  Rather, for whatever reason changes in the Mass now allowed them to be.  They didn't have to be.  Theoretically it was apparently up to individual Pastors on whether they thought an altar rail should be removed, but given as in Wyoming they are nearly all missing, it might have been the case that the decision to remove them was made at the Diocesan level.  The motivating thought here was that the altar rail served to act as a sort of barrier to connection between the people and the Offering of the Mass, and those who supported altar rail removal often felt fairly strongly about that (as we'll see below).  This was, I think, part of an overall change in the Mass at that time, when it went from Latin to the local vernacular, as the Celebrant had faced Ad Oreintum while offering the Mass.  That is, the Priest faced his altar, as a rule, with his back to the Congregation.  

Now all of this gets into some fairly complicated symbolic matters.  There's some truth to the view held by those who argued for the new position and removing the altar rails, in at he "we're all one together sense". There a counter point, however, that maybe the Ad Oreintum orientation actually served that better, as the Priest was facing the same direction for significant portions of the Mass that the parishioners were.   That is, by way of a poor example, if somebody faced you in a large group they're more likely to have some elevated authority over you than if somebody has their back to you, in which case they can be argued to be working with you.  Interestingly in recent years there's been a slow return in some areas to the Ad Oreintum orientation, particularly following Cardinal Sarah's suggestion that this was a better form. The Cardinal occupies a high position at the Vatican and therefore his views cannot be easily discounted.  As has been noted in regards to this there's actually never been an official position on which orientation is better, and in some ancient and modern churches the Ad Orientum position is actually impossible.

In any event, what that did was in part to remove an item that was closely connected to the church and hence the parish and the parishioners.  In this case, the altar rail itself had been a gift from a family early in the parish's history.  In Catholic parishes the pastor is usually there for about seven years and bishops can be in office for long or short periods. However, as the parishioners are often there for decades, that means the traditional in which they participated was removed by individuals who were there on a more temporary basis.  It was certainly "legal", if you will, but it might not have been well advised.

The same is true of most, but not all, of the interior changes to the church. A person can debate the aesthetics of the heavy brass lighting, but the church was built with it in mind and the features that once decorated where it attached to the building remain there to this day.  The removal of one confessional, the relocation, in an awkward fashion, of a place for "music ministers" to stand that resulted, and all of that, were done in a heartfelt fashion, but often to the ascetic detriment of the church which was not built with remodels in mind.

This touches, moreover, on the larger topic of church architecture itself, which as been addressed in another one of our rare commentary threads here.  These older churches are better looking as the architecture and design that came in during the 1970s was not as good as earlier architecture, and according to some focused more on the congregation than on the Divine.  This blog was at one time going to avoid all such churches in general, but as time has gone on its put up posts of quite a few.  Many of these churches are just not good looking. By the same token, many alterations to older churches are not good looking either.

As I noted when I started off, a lot of this stuff did not bother me when I was a child and experiencing it, but it does now.  Indeed, the removal of the altar rail in this church frankly makes me mad when I think of it.  I wish it could go back in.  It won't, of course, but the whole thing upsets me.  I'm not alone, I think, on this sort of thinking and I think it reflects a generational befuddlement with the generations immediately preceding us which seems to have had, in many instances, low respect for tradition in general.  In civil society, in terms of structures, this is probably why we now see all sorts of effort to restore the appearance of old buildings whose owners in the 50s, 60s, and 70s didn't give a second thought about making them ugly through renovation. A prime example of that is the Wyoming National Bank building in Casper Wyoming which was made to look hideous by the additional of a weird steel grating in the 1950s to its exterior which was supposed to make it look modern.  It mostly served to house pigeons and was removed in the 2000s when the building was redone and converted to apartments.

Now, not every one feels this way, I should note.  Particularly in regards to churches.  When I posted this same photograph on Facebook, a friend of mine with a few years on me posted this reply (I hadn't commented on the altar rails in my original post):
So happy that the railings have come down and the hats came off! The church is still so beautiful.
I agree that the church remains beautiful, and I agree that the women wearing head coverings is a tradition that I don't miss, but I don't feel that way about the altar rail at all.

I suspect my friends comment goes to a "spirit of Vatican II" feeling that she's old enough to have experienced and which I not only am not, but which I don't really share enthusiasm for.  It's important to note that Vatican II and "the spirit of Vatican II" are not the same thing.  "The spirit" thing was a zeitgeist of the times which took a decidedly more liberal and less traditional view of things, no doubt an "open the windows and doors and let some fresh air in". Some of that was likely needed but as is often the case with people who are in a "let in the fresh air" movement the realization that cold winds high winds can come in through the same windows and doors and do damage is rarely appreciated. 

And its all too easy when traditions which are simply traditions are tossed to begin to toss out with them things that are more than tradition.  I'm not saying that occurred here with altar rails but I will be frankly that the 1970s saw a lot of innovations, some of them very local poorly thought out that were, in some cases, quite problematic. The generation that thought removing the altar rails was a good idea proved willing to entertain a lot of things in this area that turned out to be big problems for everyone else.

Part of that is because traditions are anchors in a way; moorings to the the past.  People of a "fresh air" bent will claim that a person shouldn't be bound by the past. That's true, but tradition is also in some cases the vote, or the expression of experience, of the dead and should not be lightly discounted.  Not only does casting out traditions tend to sever anchors, but all too often the severing simply puts people adrift in seas that they're not well prepared to handle. At its worst, the severing of traditions is a rejection of the long and carefully thought out in favor of the temporarily current and the poorly thought out.

Which is why, for many people of the post Vatican II generation the "Spirit of Vatican II" generation, when moored in their own changes, can seem now old fashioned.  Ironically younger generations have been busy for some time "reforming the reform", which means in the mainstream keeping the reforms that proved worthwhile and reversing those that did not.  Tradition has, in some instances, come back in the opened door after having been swept out it, but with a younger generation.

All of which is well off point on what this thread started out being about.  And I'm not going to start a "restore the altar rail" movement, locally or on the internet.  But I feel it was a shame that it was taken out, and to the extent that alterations that should not have taken place for ascetic reasons in regards to older structures can be repaired, they ought to be.

Best Posts of the Week of May 24, 2020

The best posts of the week of Saturday, May 24, 2020

The Rock in the Glen, Glenrock, Wyoming.


A Memorial Day Reflection on the Second World War. Changes: The impact of World War Two.


A Twitter Tour through the Superficial Zeitgeist


Pandemic, Part Two

Friday, May 29, 2020

May 29, 1920. Good Roads Week.

First East Bay Ship by Truck Tour, May 17-22, 1920, Robert W. Martland, Train Commander.  Copyright deposit, May 29, 1920.  Not juxtaposition next to railroad. . . a sign of things to come.  The five day tour, which included military and civilian trucks, was part of Good Roads Week.


Blog Mirror: The Prairie Homestead; How to Start Buying Local Food.

How to Start Buying Local Food

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Harbinger?

Prices at the pump went up .30 overnight, but West Texas is still only at $32/bbl.

Something must be going on.

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

A Twitter Tour through the Superficial Zeitgeist

I have a Twitter account that really just serves as an advertisement for this site.

I don't know that a person should feel proud of that. Twitter is really stupid.  And one thing that having a Twitter account does is expose you to the really superficial Zeitgeist of the moment. . . every day.

When I checked in this morning a big Twitter story is that Jimmy Fallon was apologizing for a Saturday Night Live appearance he did in black face a decade or so ago.  I'm not going to look that up, but Fallon is an entertainer and Saturday Night Live has been bad for decades.  Black face should have gone out before it came in, but as this apparently has been around for a really long time, blowing up about it now seems a bit late.  Perhaps it might just be better to note that Saturday Night Live should be Exhibit A in the trial of the People v. Harvard Lampoon Not Being Funny.

Indeed, if that trial were to occur, one of the primary expert witnesses would have to be a sociologist on the topic of how, at any one time, alleged comedic geniuses are such only by societal acknowledgement, as many of them are truly never funny.  Charlie Chaplin is a good example.  Not funny.  Not even once.

Chaplin.  Not funny.

In the category of funny is Kathy Griffin, who is also blowing up Twitter today for a comment she said about injecting President Trump with air.

Griffin is occasionally funny.  I didn't hear the comment but it doesn't strike me as funny.  It also doesn't strike me as something that serious people need to waste much air time on.

President Trump for his part ought to stay off of Twitter, but was on complaining that Michelle Obama had gone golfing at the same time that he, Trump, is taking flak for golfing.

I don't golf and it strikes me as boring.  I realize that not everyone feels that way.  My mother was a superb golfer when young and taught me how to golf as a child.  It didn't take.


Rants about golfing, by whomever is making them, are really about something else.  Americans of both parties like to complain that the President is insensitive and lazy whenever he's seen not doing something that seems to be work. Democrats are complaining about Trump golfing as its an opportunity to complain about Trump.  Republicans complained about Obama golfing while he was President for the same reason.  

Driving by the golf course every morning I always look out upon it, but not because I like golf, but because I'm hoping the foxes will be back.


This year, it seems, Mr. and Mrs. Fox have chosen to have their brood elsewhere.  So, instead, I see that Americans are out golfing.

Well, at least that's being out, which seems to me to be okay.  The argument that we should shelter in our basements for the rest of eternity doesn't seem to me to be a sound one.  I get it, if you are in the former cow pasture that New Yorkers now call Central Park there's going to be a lot of people, as New York is crowded, and you ought to be careful and wear a mask. And that advice goes for other places as well, and I'm not saying otherwise.  

I'm just not too worked up about the golfing.

Or Griffin.

Billie Eilish is apparently worked up about body shaming which caused a lot of people to engage in virtue signaling by supporting her for being against body shaming.  

This is in some ways associated, I think, with a song (I think) in which the words "not my fault" appear" somewhere where she decries people who have judged her based on her clothing or appearance.  I'm not in that category as, perhaps to my discredit, I don't really care about Eilish at all, other than she's pretty clearly an object of fascination for being a certain sort of teenage/twentysomething idol in the same way that James Dean was, whom I also am pretty disinterested in.
What are you rebelling against? 
What have you got?
M'eh.

Eilish has been the subject of a lot of fascination because she wears bulky clothes.  In the video for her comments, song or whatever it is, she apparently strips down to a tank top in reaction to being the subject of a lot of fascination about what her wearing bulky clothing may mean.

The problem with that is that its almost guaranteed that a lot of her juvenile, and probably not so juvenile, fans will stop in to see the video not to bond with her statement, but because now they get to find out what she looks like under those threads.  It's sort of like protests here and there in which women go topless, but not nearly as extreme.  The message gets mixed.

That gets into the topic of decent clothing, of which there's an entire cul de sac on the web where people rage on that topic, some with really extreme views.  It's a tough topic to engage in, in regard to women, as standards applying to female dress change every few seconds, or so it seems.  Having said that, if you dress really oddly it tends to be the case that, no matter what you're saying, you're doing it to draw attention, in which case some of the attention will be unwelcome.  Eilish may deserve credit for slamming body shaming, but simply dressing in a less "look at how oddly I'm dressed" fashion right from the onset would probably have accomplished that more effectively.  Well, her video probably doesn't hurt. . . except to the extent juvenile males are checking into it the same way that they check into Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions.

All of which brings us back to this.  In this era of COVID 19 introspection, American culture, as reflected on Twitter, isn't looking too great.

May 27, 1920

"Scene at the garden fete for the benefit of the Near East Relief at the Residence of Mrs. Chas. J. Bell, Twin Oaks. Wash. D.C."


Tuesday, May 26, 2020

May 26, 1920. Canning Clubs and hand rolled cigars.

A Canning Club Girl, May 26, 1920.

Girls Canning Clubs were a movement in the early 20th Century that was a reaction to a similar corn growing club for boys much in the same way that the Girl Scouts were a reaction to the Boy Scouts.  They started off as Tomato Clubs and evolved into general Canning Clubs, sometimes finding an expression in 4H.

I'm sure that canning is still done in 4H today and in recent years it seems to have undergone a bit of a revival.  My suspicion is that our current times will increase that trend.

Lee Ying, Washington D. C. Cigar maker.  May 26, 1920.

Lee Ying apparently operated his own shop and he didn't appear to be particularly pleased to be the subject of a newspaper photograph on May 26, 1920.  This probably was just another day at work for him.

Cigars, like canning, have enjoyed a bit of a revival recently.  Indeed, the things they're associated with have as well, two being whiskey and the concept, if not the actual practice, of leisure.

Lex Anteinternet: Heavier Rain

Lex Anteinternet: Heavier Rain: After just posting this, this morning: Lex Anteinternet: Rain : Pennys started out as Gold Rule.  This is the first one back in the day, i...
And last week the car rental giant, Hertz.

This week, Latam, Latin America's largest airline.

No travel, no income.

Monday, May 25, 2020

A Memorial Day Reflection on the Second World War. Changes: The impact of World War Two.

Rifleman in training, April 1942.

I'm a member of an email list serve that discusses the Second World War.  It's  populated by academics and writers.  Often the threads are pretty active around this time of year because of the holiday that, this year, falls on this date.

Normally I won't quote from there here, and I'm not going to do so directly now, as its a private list. But a member just posted the news that the new Tom Hanks movie Greyhound is going to be released on Apple TV, which I lack.

I was really looking forward to the film. 

Anyhow, that lead to a thread discussing things that are changing due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, and then I posted an item, after I commented on that, noting I should link it back to World War Two, as I was off topic.

An interesting thread developed, which I posing on here, editing some of it so as to keep folks anonymous.


Cornell freshmen, 1919.

It started with one noting the demise of the college beanie, attributing that to returning servicemen being older and not wanting to put up with that sort of foolishness.

I replied to that noting:

Indeed, I've looked through old university newspapers and the beanies were a big deal.  I've wondered what killed them off.

On university, I've heard it claimed and I think it correct that not only did the GI bill bring a lot of people into universities after the war that never would have gone to university otherwise, that had a major impact on the demographics of student bodies.  Demographics that were poorly represented in universities started to be fairly well represented in them for the first time.  For example, the number of Catholics attending university jumped quite a bit.

As that happened the diversity of student bodies in universities of all types increased and that changed their nature.  Some Ivy League universities, for example, still had chapel requirements as late as the 1960s, reflecting a fairly uniform Protestant student body. That started to go away by that time as a result of the change in the student makeup following WWII.

I have in fact posted on this odd, old, now gone custom a couple of times here.  Here's the threads for that:

Freshman Caps? The Wyoming Student, November 2, 1917.


Blog Mirror: Beanies, Brooms and Bother: UW Freshmen Get the Initiation Treatment (and Lex Anteinternet: Freshman Caps? The Wyoming Student, November 2, 1917.)


I'd forgotten that this odd custom lasted this long, and another participant noted that his university was still wearing them as late as 1970.  

Apparently beanies are still a thing at the South Dakota School of Mines, but they're optional.

This would suggest that this is another one of those odd things that we tend to associate with World War Two that isn't, although there are more significant ones to come. 

Soldier reading A Tree Grows In Brooklyn of the Armed Services Edition.

One that I only recently learned of, from one of my children, is the spread of the popularity of paperback books due to the war, which was brought up by one of the replies which noted the Armed Forces Expeditions of various novels.  Another participant expanded on that and noted a scene of a soldier reading just such a book is included in Sam Fuller's movie, The Big Red One, with the thinly disguised Fuller character commenting on a new recruit reading his book.  Fuller actually had written some novels prior to the war.

That scene is one of the better ones from The Big Red One, in my opinion.  That movie turns out to be one of the several World War Two movies referenced here which I find that I haven't reviewed yet, and I need to.

One of the comments had to do with a variety of ways the US was in a different position coming out of the war compared to when it went in it, noting that we came out of the war having 16,000,000 veterans and a fairly unified, disciplined, society, which translated into their being able to go on to higher education and train for careers.  After thinking about this, I added:

Another thing that it seems to have done that's sort of related to this is that it relocated quite a few people permanently.

California seems to have received a big influx of workers due to the war and a lot of them stayed there after the war, as an example.  As another odd example, I've read that returning Navajo servicemen tended to return to communities near where they had entered the service, but off reservation rather than on, as the economic opportunities were better.

In local agriculture, a big change occurred in that the start of World War Two came in an era in which ranches here still employed a lot of cowboys with a lot of them being career, usually single, cowboys. They didn't return to those occupations after the war.  At the same time, the war normalized the production of the 4x4 truck and that meant that they weren't actually needed for a lot of the winter time jobs they'd formally been necessary for.

Like a lot of things here, I've touched on these topics before.  I think the comment about the 16,000,000 disciplined veterans, mostly men, going into civilian life is correct, but we shouldn't forget that some of those men had lives that were significantly negatively impacted by what they experienced.  People don't like to touch on it, but alcoholism was very common in the World War Two generation and at least part, but not all, of that was due to the war.

The impact of the 4x4 truck has been covered here before in this extensive thread, among others:

A Revolution In Rural Transportation


A somewhat related topic came up which addressed Residential Building Codes, something I'd frankly never thought of.  The commenter noted that the Farmers Home Administration's guides for housing contracts were issued as a result of the war in 1942.  I had no idea. They noted the guides are still with us.

Regarding this item, I noted:

Sort of along these lines, there was an expansion of employer provided employee benefits during World War Two in the U.S.

Wages were frozen at some point to keep labor shortages from spurring inflation, so companies took up competing with benefits, like health insurance.  It can be argued that the employer provided health insurance system in the US was a byproduct of World War Two.  I guess a person's view on that may depend on what they think of that system, but it did work for a fair amount of time following the war.

Other benefits along these lines, like retirement benefits, etc., also received a boost.

This doesn't mean that they didn't exist at all before the war, but they were greatly expanded during the war and became the norm for a long period of time, and are still with us in an evolved form today.  

Another was the expansion of the calculating machine, which no doubt did occur, but which is something I never would have thought of.  It's modern descendant, the electronic calculator, is everywhere. For that matter, the modern home computer in some ways is a descendant of the calculating machine.*

An addition to this from a university history resulted in this, regarding changes in higher education, which were massive.  I've noted some of those here before, particularly the expansion of the student body to include demographics, such as Catholics, which previously rarely went to university.  As noted here earlier, Catholic students were basically barred from Ivy League universities as they had protestant chapel requirements.  Indeed, that didn't change until the 1960s for some.

He also noted the inclusion of refugee academics, which is something that would not have occured to me.

The massive expansion of education due to the GI Bill was a huge economic boon to the US in the late 40s, 50s, and the 60s, but like many things, there's a downside to it.  Breaking the doors to university wide open helped the first two or three generations of new university students, but they were also stepping into a university system that well predated World War Two in its focus.  As student bodies swelled, standards started to lower, something that was already notable by the 1970s  As that occured simply having an degree went from an advantage to a necessity for many occupations, reaching the nature of an absolute for some.  Entire occupations that never required a degree of any kind ultimately required a college degree and, quite frankly, for no real reason.  Universities themselves became addicted to public funding, something that they first started to really receive during World War Two, and it oddly has operated in recent years to drive up the cost of education.  And as universities offered more and more degree programs that conveyed upon their recipients no real advantage, a sort of radicalization of some elements of university faculty, which was something that had already started as far back as the 1920s, accelerated and became institutionalized.

One poster noted that much expanded airline travel resulted from the war, and that certainly is the case.

Just prior to the war airliners were beginning to take on a recognizable form, with the DC-3 being a recognizable commercial aircraft that went on to do yeoman's service during the war as the C-47.


After the war, however, things really changed. Four engined wartime aircraft made four engined commercial aircraft inevitable.  By the 60s they were yielding to jets and modern air travel was around the corner.  It really took airline deregulation, however, which came in during the 1980s, to make air travel cheap.

A  need for an Interstate Highway System, by which is meant a good one, was also noted.

This is one of those things where I'd disagree.  It's often stated that Eisenhower was really impressed with the German Autobahn, which was really a massive German public works project during the pre war Nazi years there, and he may have really been. But I think it was the ongoing evolution of the automobile that made the Interstate Highway System come in.  It was billed a defense program but that was, quite frankly, a funding charade.

What that does bring up, however, is the massive expansion of government that started with the Great Depression and which kept on keeping on during World War Two and which never went away thereafter.  It wasn't until the Reagan administration of the 1980s that contraction of any kind started, and its never contracted to its pre 1932 level.  Prior to the Great Depression the nation would never have undertaken a highway construction project on a national level, and not until World War Two would the country thought of trying to pass it off as a defense measure.

That act, of course, lead to the demise of passenger rail in US, so its another thing that had a mixed result.

Women in industry came up, as it usually does.


I've become pretty convinced that the women in the workplace story is, frankly, heavily mythologized.  I've written on that here before in this thread:

Women in the Workplace: It was Maytag that took Rosie the Riveter out of the domestic arena, not World War Two


I replied here, with the following:

Women in the workplace is a really complicated and I think poorly understood topic however.

I've looked at it before for other reasons over the course of the 20th Century and the increase in women working overall as a rising percentage is almost imperceptible in terms of its post WWII make up. Rather, women in the workforce started to climb starting around 1900 and continually climbed almost year by year up into some point in, I think the 1980s or 1990s, when it actually slightly declined.   There were big jumps during World War One and World War Two, with the jump in WWI rivaling WWII, and then after both wars the wartime jump declined and the rise went back to the prewar curve.

Having said that, following World War Two the type of work women were doing changed a lot, but that's also true following World War One.  Prior to World War One a massive number of working women were employed as domestic servants. That was still true all the way through the mid-50s, but women started to enter offices prior to WWI and then they did in large numbers during WWII.  So the type, and pay, of women working really changed and part of that was due to WWII.  Women in middle class occupations were greatly impacted by that.

The other big change, and I'd argue it was more significant than the impact of either war, however, was the introduction of domestic machinery, and that correlates really well with the rise in employed women.  Domestic machinery, such as washing machines, vacuums, modern stoves, etc., are a 20th Century deal and they really started to start reaching their modern form in the 1920s.  Prior to that domestic labor was so overwhelming that people basically couldn't "live on their own".  How many of us, for example, have lived in a boarding house, like so many men did prior to World War Two?  Men had to do that as there was no instant anything, and they simply couldn't live on their own, work and still wash their clothes and cook their meals routinely.  A lot of men never left home until they married.

Indeed, that  explains why a common aspiration for women was to marry and have their own homes.  They were already engaged in heavy domestic labor as it was for the families they grew up in.  Daily shopping, long slow cooking, washing clothes more primitively, etc., etc., was a huge chore that a lot of them looked up as something they'd rather do for households of their own as opposed to their parents.

Anyhow, once good domestic machinery came in the hours and hours of work that women had to do at home greatly declined and their labor became surplus to the household.  A lot of that would have occurred in the 1930s as domestic machinery continued to develop in that period, but the Great Depression kept it from being spread more widely, much like a lot of farms kept using horse implements in the same period.  After the war, however, ramped up domestic production rapidly changed that.  You can see that in late WWII advertisements in which all sorts of companies engaged in war production are promising to make washing machines, stoves, etc.

All of this is stuff we don't think of much on Memorial Day, nor perhaps should we that much.  Memorial Day is a day to remember war dead.  But sometimes we should remember the lives of the living as well, and, in terms of demise, the demise of things, practices and norms that came before a war.

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*May 25, 1970, mark the first orders, fwiw, of the stand alone desk top computer.  Primitive by today's standards, as anemic, they were also extremely expensive.

Today In Wyoming's History: The Rock in the Glen, Glenrock, Wyoming.

Today In Wyoming's History: The Rock in the Glen, Glenrock, Wyoming.:

The Rock in the Glen, Glenrock, Wyoming.


The Rock in the Glen, in Converse County, Wyoming is one of the numerous places along the Oregon Trail that served as a register and a marker for those traveling on the Oregon Trail.  It shows up in the earliest guide books for the trail and like other sites in Wyoming, those who camped here often carved their names into the rock.



The location is near the North Platte River, as the trail itself is in this portion of Wyoming, and ultimately the areas features lead to the foundation of the town in the late 19th Century.  Upon formation, the town was named for the rock.





The actual location of the rock belonged to the Continental Pipeline Company up until 1982, when it donated the land to the Town of Glenrock.





The location today is a town park which is currently undergoing improvements.






Sunday, May 24, 2020

May 24, 1920. Gatherings.

On this day in 1920 the Mexican Congress was ordered to assemble on the question of who would be the country's provisional president.  After three rounds of voting, Aldolfo de la Huerta was chosen for the role.

De la Huerta

On the same day the body of the assassinated Carranza was taken to Mexico City. When his train arrived there fourteen aids of his who accompanied the body were arrested and put in a military prison for holding.

As the contest in Mexico concluded one round, a law was signed in New York that brought about a limit to the number of rounds in prize fighting and which further established weight classifications.  Named after its sponsor, the Walker Law is regarded as having revolutionized boxing.

Jimmy Walker, then a New York state senator.  He'd later be Governor of New York from 1926 to 1932, before resigning in a patronage scandal.

And in Brightwood Maine, an Old Maids Club met at a church.


What exactly such a gathering met in this context isn't clear.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: First Baptist Church, Big Piney Wyoming

Churches of the West: First Baptist Church, Big Piney Wyoming:

First Baptist Church, Big Piney Wyoming


This is the First Baptist Church in Big Piney, Wyoming.  Other than its identify, I don't know anything about it.


Best Posts of the Week of May Sunday, May 17, 2020.

The best posts of the week of Sunday, May 17, 2020.

Communion and the State. Wyoming dictates how the faithful will receive and what that reveals about what people understand and don't understand.


The 2020 Special Legislative Session


May 18, 1920. Future Popes, Equine Events, and Middle Eastern Wars.


Venustiano Carranza assassinated . . .


The Mexican Revolution. . . where we're at in terms of century delayed time.


The 2020 Election, Part 7


Pandemic




Saturday, May 23, 2020

Pandemic

Seattle Washington during the 1918/19 Spanish Flu Pandemic.

Well, guess we might as well start a running thread on this.  This now dominates the news, it's a major event in the history of the world, and there's something every day.

Not that we will be reporting on it every day.

At this point, I've had one blood relative and his wife, and his brother and sister in law come down with the disease in my hometown.  So it's hit home.  My daughter, wife and myself have all been sick with something, but we're quite certain its not that.  Still, this is a weird time to get sick with anything.

We'll update as we go along, but we've already reported on this story a lot.  As of this moment, there are twenty seven threads here that mention the pandemic, although not all of them are dedicated threads.   The more ore less dedicated ones are below.

We'll be the first to note, as well we should, that some of our earlier threads were flat out wrong.  Things have gone from scary to bad to worse.  

This week, promises to be the worst in the country so far.  Over the weekend, the Administration braced the public for it to be "the worse", but I doubt it will be. There will be worse weeks yet to come.

So we'll start collecting some threads here in a general running fashion.  We'll otherwise keep running individual entries as we see fit. After all, this isn't a major well read website, so we can do as we please.

But be careful out there.

April 6, 2020

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Here's an extremely interesting scientific analysis of peaks and deaths projected for the US, assuming that the current social distancing keeps on keeping:

COVID-19 projections assuming full social distancing through May 2020


A person wouldn't want to run around claiming to be optimistic from this data, but it is more optimistic than other recent projections.  If this is correct, the peak should come on April 15.

That's the peak. That doesn't mean things are over.

It also shows the pandemic basically being over in the United States by some  point in early June.  And it 81,766 deaths through August. That's a large death toll, but it is much less than the 675,000 who died in the 1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic.

That's right, 675,000.

It's more Americans who lost their lives in Vietnam or Korea, but actually not a lot more than died due to the flu last year, which was estimated at 61,000 people.  Last year was a really bad flu year.  The estimates are that this year 34,000 Americans will die from the flu.

These are projections, of course, and they assume the social distancing, etc., keeps on keeping on, which it looks like it will.

April 6, 2020, part two.

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Here's a headline that I didn't expect to see:

Fremont County greenhouse, garden experts promote growing world war-era 'victory gardens'


The article goes on to note that Fremont County organizers have started a Victory Garden 2020 campaign and base part of their argument on food security, which the maintain is a demonstrated need due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.

April 7, 2020

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Legendary singer-songwriter John Prine, who pioneered the 1970s genre of "New Grass" folk music, died of the Coronavirus.  He had recently been reported to be recovering.

Prine was a favorite of mine.  Several people with celebrity status have died to date in the pandemic, but most of them were in the fringe area of fame and I didn't know who they were, which doesn't mean anything one way or another  I did know who Prine was.

Prine was in the category of individuals with imperiled health.  He'd twice battled cancer, the second time lung cancer in 2013.

Amazon announced that it was suspending a delivery service that competed with other carriers, including UPS, FedEx and the United States Post Office, effective in June.  The huge company has been struggling with delivery issues as the nation went into lock down and it will instead be focusing on straightening out its backlog.  The news should help the USPS which is nearly out of money at the present time and which has been struggling with lost revenue due to competition for years.

April 8, 2020

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Not really meant to be amusing here, one thing that has happened in the past few days is that Wyoming has revived the old rallying cry of "Greenie Go Home", this time due to the pandemic.  Or, more accurately, Greenie Stay Home.

Long residents, and certainly natives, of this state have long had sort of a love hate relationship with Colorado, with us hating more of what is and has become Colorado than loving it, and with Coloradans feeling free to over love and take the best of what is Wyoming.  The exchange is tolerated as we have to, of course, and because of Greenie Bucks.  And the tension has become much reduced over the years.  I no longer see, for example, "Live in Colorado, Fish in Colorado" bumper stickers anymore (I also don't see "Colorado Native" ones anymore either).

The virus, however, has brought back the old tensions, as stressful times will do.  It showed up on Facebook first with those with a presence in Laramie County noting all the road traffic going up into Wyoming.  In fairness, some of that traffic is likely from Wyoming state government employees who are deemed necessary to their jobs who are reporting to work in Wyoming but who live in Colorado. But others are people who figure that if they aren't working, and they need to isolate, why not isolate in Wyoming and go fishing?

Well, because right now we're nervous about having you here is the answer and Governor Gordon reminded such folks that they've been ordered to quarantine for fourteen days upon arrival.  I suspect that isn't a difficult requirement for people who are pulling into fishing spots as they'll regarded themselves as isolated in that fashion.

Wyoming has fully joined the "Howl for . . . " movement, in which at 8 p.m. people go out and howl in celebration, somehow, of health care workers.  Apparently 8:00 marks their shift change.

In the UK people go out and clap, which makes more sense to me.  Of course, it'd be hard to hear in Wyoming given the distance, but the howling is being done in other locations as well, such as Colorado.  It's nice that people are acknowledging health care workers, but the howling motif is a bit confusing in this regard.

In news from other areas, the contra voice heard somewhat here of "get back to normal" is getting a test. . . in Sweden.

There have been some contrary voices here in the U.S.  One, for example, was in an op ed in the New York Times.  But by and large the US, lead by the states, has gone into shelter in place quarantines.  Only nine states, the last time I looked, were outside of them, and at least one of them, Wyoming, had a set or county restrictions and statewide restrictions that meant, in practical terms, it had ordered a shelter in place that was tailored for its locality (although that received some criticism from a former Wyoming Gubernatorial candidate who argued that at least as of the expiration of the current restrictions, things need to ease up.

Danse Macabre, 1493.

Sweden didn't lighten up, at least not much, and hasn't banned gatherings and the like. Apparently, to the extent that people are engaging in "social distancing", they're just doing it on their own.  The government argued that quarantines would prove counter productive, as sooner or later people would ignore them.

Well, that doesn't seem to actually be the case so far.  In the US people are largely observing them even though the US is the last society on earth that I thought would.  And Sweden's death rate due to COVID 19 is, so far, higher than the United States on a per capita basis.

So that experiment appears to be happening.

April 9, 2020
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Governor Gordon requested a Federal disaster declaration for Wyoming. The Governor’s press release on the request stated.
Gov. Gordon requests federal disaster declaration for Wyoming  

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Mark Gordon has submitted a request to President Trump asking for a major disaster declaration for Wyoming. The declaration would allow all 23 of Wyoming’s counties and the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes to access funding and services for crucial assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic.  
“Though Wyoming has not reached the dire situations of some states, this declaration will help us to prepare and mobilize resources when we need them,” Governor Gordon said. “I look forward to a swift response to our request from the federal government.” 
The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act allows states to request a Public Assistance and Individual Assistance Disaster Declaration to respond to incidents that exceed capabilities of a state to respond effectively.  
The declaration provides Wyoming the opportunity to access assistance from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for construction of temporary medical facilities, if needed. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reviewing sites in Wyoming to identify extra space for overflow patients and healthcare workers should it be needed.  
“This requested declaration will help ensure Wyoming gains access to critical assistance as we continue our mission to respond to this pandemic,” Wyoming Office of Homeland Security Director Lynn Budd said. “Providing individual assistance programs will be vital to help our residents recover from this crisis.” 
The declaration also allows the state to receive additional federal resources and services for Wyoming residents, including crisis counseling, disaster unemployment assistance, legal services, disaster case management and Small Business Administration disaster assistance.  
As of April 9, Wyoming has 230 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in 18 counties.
On the same day, he proclaimed Good Friday, April 10, a Day of Prayer.

Governor Gordon proclaims April 10 Day of Prayer  
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Mark Gordon will sign a proclamation tomorrow declaring Friday, April 10, 2020 a Day of Prayer in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The day of prayer is cross-denominational with the intent to unify people of many faiths during the crisis. 
“Across all faiths and beliefs, we can all come together at this time of year to find a sense of peace and purpose,” Governor Gordon said. “I invite our leaders and citizens to pray that the present pandemic may be controlled, caregivers protected, our soldiers and their families watched over, the economy strengthened and life normalized.” 
April 10 is Good Friday and is observed by many denominations as a day of prayer and fasting. Joining the Governor in this effort is the National Association of Evangelicals and the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. People of all faiths are welcome to participate. 
In Casper, on the same day, a small group of libertarian protesters gathered in Pioneer Park to protest the Governor’s emergency orders and seeking to have them lifted as being harmful to business.  The National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander also announced layoffs given the COVID 19 Pandemic and its impact on their school.

April 10, 2020

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Meanwhile, in Teton County, 2000 people signed a petition asking Governor Gordon to make the present order regarding activities and the like stricter.

April 10, 2020, part two.
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The Tribune reports that Wyoming Governor Gordon received a comment of some sort for Rachel Maddow and indeed a comment from Maddow, simply noting that Governor Gordon hasn't ordered a shelter in place in Wyoming, is on her Twitter feed.

Probably hardly worth noting, but we will nonetheless, Governor can't issue any quarantine orders in Wyoming at all.  Under Wyoming's law, the senior health officer for the state, not the Governor, as that sole and exclusive authority.

Be that as it may, and much more worth noting, the Tribune has an article in today featuring a chart in which they look at the restrictions of all the neighboring states.  It's really a revelation.  Wyoming's existing orders are stricter in some instances than those of the neighboring states with "shelter in place" orders.  Indeed, no two states are the same and some of the things allowed in shelter in place states aren't allowed here under the existing order.

Utah apparently has no order at all and everything is open save for things that shut down voluntarily.  That's interesting in that at least the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake halted Public Mass and Confession prior to Wyoming's Diocese of Cheyenne.  I knew that, but I assumed that was because of a state order.  It wasn't.

Which brings about the point that the Governor has, which is that Wyoming's order may not be a shelter in place order, but it's so extensive that there's really not much else Wyoming could do.  A lot of Wyoming's major industries are in the critical category and those that aren't are already under some sort of order.  An order could go a little further, but how much further we can really go, from now until the end of the month, is pretty debatable.

On other matters, for the first time in U.S. history every state has been declared to be a disaster area.

In Europe, the Netherlands have noticed a spike in reported deaths.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons, one being that it seems to suggest that a lot of cases just aren't being reported  It isn't that they've had a spike in Coronavirus related deaths, just deaths.  As that is odd, the suggestion is that they have a fair number of unreported cases.



Also interesting is that the Netherlands took an approach much like that urged by Dr. Katz in his New York Times op ed.  I.e., protect the vulnerable and go for herd immunity for everyone else.  They had to change their approach due to Dutch civil disobedience as the Dutch listened instead to the recommendations of European doctors and imposed self isolation on themselves, after which the Dutch government followed the views of their citizens.  The spike death level might seem to suggest that the people got it right.

This is of note here as, in spite of what some feel that the Governor should do, Wyomingites basically have followed the national advice to a large degree.  Employers have closed businesses that weren't ordered to be closed.  People are staying home.  While I've heard people say things like "it looks like people are still out", many more are shocked by how few people actually are out and how many things have closed.

April 12, 2020

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China disclosed 97 new Coronavirus cases on Sunday, over half of which were Chinese nationals who arrived on Russian flight to Shanghai on April 10.

Obviously, there's a host of conclusions that can be drawn from that.

April 13, 2020

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Wyoming had its first death due to the Coronavirus yesterday.  The victim of the disease is reported as an elderly Johnson County man who had imperilled health.

On the same day the news featured reports of Dr. Fauci praising Governor Gordon's approach to the virus, which has been nearly as strict as the quarantine approach taken by most other states.

President Trump declared yesterday that he has the authority to override those state orders, which he absolutely does not.  Indeed, one thing the COVID 19 pandemic has made clear is the amount of authority individual states retain in the face of a disaster, and it's very large.  Quarantine efforts have been completely lead by the states and imposed by them.  The Oval Office can do nothing about that.

One state that didn't go into quarantine with a stay at home order has been South Dakota which now has a hot spot of the disease in Rapid City.  300 cases are tied to a Smithfield pork processing plant.  This puts a new wrinkle in Wyoming's approach as Rapid City borders Wyoming and we now have two states, Colorado and South Dakota, with large scale outbreaks.

Also yesterday, a sailor from the USS Roosevelt died of the disease. The Roosevelt has been tied up in a drama surrounding its now relieved captain that will be the topic of a thread here, if I get around to it.

Finally, and related to the item immediately above, North Korea fired anti shipping missiles into the sea yesterday.  The entire pandemic has to be aggravating to Kim Jong Un, the Stalinist leader of the country, who is getting very little media attention now days.

April 14, 2020

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President Trump indicated that the United States was going to defund the World Health Organization in retaliation for the WHO covering up, in his view, the emerging epidemic, when it was just that, in China.  17% of the organization's budget is provided by the US.


This brought a storm of protests but also some surprisingly sympathetic treatment from commentators on NPR.  The organization, which uses the correct snake on a stick symbol for medicine as opposed to the inaccurate one used in the U.S., is a branch of the United Nations and therefore has always been subject to some dislike in conservative circles in the U.S.  That notwithstanding, the move has been largely condemned and in particular condemned for coming at the time at which it is.

Perhaps ironically, the standard for some medical things is set by the WHO and incorporated by reference by branches of the U.S. government.  That's unrelated to this, of course, but it is a bit ironic.

My suspicion is that this won't actually be carried out.

Closer to home, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department announced it was halting the sale of short term out of state fishing licenses.  It's announcement stated:
CHEYENNE - The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is suspending the sale of nonresident daily and five-day fishing licenses, effective immediately. This suspension is due to the need to ensure individuals coming into Wyoming for a non-work related purpose comply with Governor Gordon’s April 3, 2020 Directive requiring a fourteen day quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals are responsible for complying with all state and local orders.
While Coloradans aren't mentioned by name in the announcement, they've been getting mentioned by name in complaints from Laramie County residents and even the Governor.  Wyoming gets a lot of Colorado fisherman up on weekends and even on weekdays as it is, often filling up the good camping spots at popular trophy fishing locations.  Some seem to have decided to spend their state's "shelter in place" requirements up in Wyoming at those locations, for which they really can't be blamed, but which is impacting Wyoming in regard to the virus.  COVID 19 in Laramie County has been specifically tied to Coloradans.

April 16, 2020
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The President announced his three part program for opening up the economy again.  The entire plan may be read here:

Opening Up America Again

Based upon what's being heard in the news, while President Trump conceded that its really state governors that call the shots on reopening, it is going to start around May 1 for much of the country.

It has started in Europe.  Spain, which was hard hit, has begun to ease back on its restrictions.  France, however, has taken the opposite approach and just extended the length of theirs.

Wyoming is working on a plan for its transition back to open, but the Governor's office isn't indicating when that plan will go into effect, and instead is emphasizing that it will be data driven.

In signs that the public may be doing what we wondered if it might, beginning to take science seriously again, people are going after Oprah Winfrey for comments made by "Dr. Phil" and "Dr. Oz".

I know very little about Dr. Phil and I don't care to know much.  I personally can't stand Dr. Oz and can't grasp why people listen to him other than that they also listen to Oprah Winfrey, who kept promising to retire and never did.

Winfrey is the very emblem of the American secular religion of all values are equal and all nice information that you want to believe is good for you.  She's one of the things that's wrong with American society today and if she's getting heat for boosting bull crap that's circulating in the media, well good.  It's very long overdue.

Anyhow, I don't actually know what either figure stated, but whatever it was, and it may not have been on her show (which weirdly never went away), but some have really come after her.  Jonah Goldberg, a Conservative columnist, wrote regarding her on Twitter:
It's almost like Oprah's major contributions to medical discourse are a total disaster.
Much of the commentary is in the nature of a Twitter storm, which therefore means that it doesn't mean much.  But this is an interesting development.

April 18, 2020

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April 24, 2020

Yesterday, Wyoming's Governor Gordon announced that next week the state was going to modify its current restrictions on businesses operating as part of the stepped process to reopen the economy.  What these steps will be is not entirely clear, but it appears that gyms, barber shops and beauty salons will be allowed to reopen, but no doubt with certain restrictions.  The modified orders will be issued next week.

As Wyoming is stepping towards reopening some other states are as well, with some taking much larger steps.  Georgia in particular seems to be, which is meeting with a lot of protests one way or another.  In contrast, Illinois has extended its shelter in place order to May 30.

The progress of the disease continues to vary in different localities.  California sustained its largest death toll yesterday.  Other states seem to have plateaued.

Regarding California, one of the states to be impacted very early on, it's now known that it had deaths in early February.  Because of the newness of the disease at the time, it wasn't then detected but subsequent autopsies have shown Coronavirus to be the cause.  That suggests that the virus was in the US earlier than previously supposed.

For that matter, the Chinese are now reporting that they can track SARS-CoV-2, the actual name of the disease back now to a November 17, 2019 infection of a 55 year old resident of Hubei province, the same province that Wuhan is located in. The man was not, however, a resident of Wuhan although it appears that he may have traveled there.

The Chinese haven't confirmed this and right now they aren't claiming that he's "patient zero". Earlier an elderly man from Wuhan was so identified but this news pushes the date back by two weeks and causes real uncertainty in the story of when the virus first showed up.

A person could reasonably state, "so what", but it does actually make a difference in what the world is now experiencing. There's a vast amount that we don't know about the virus and one of those uncertainties is the overall infection rate combined with the asymptomatic infection rate.  Testing in New York, which may or may not be accurate, has suggested that about 14% of New Yorkers have had the virus, many of whom have shown no symptoms.  Some seemed to think that infection rate surprisingly low but it strikes me as the opposite.

One of the reasons that matters is that at some point humans will reach the herd immunity rate with the disease, but we don't know when that is.  For some diseases that rate is as low as 40%, but for most its 80% or more.  We're nowhere near either of those rates, but if it's 80% we're not only a long ways away, but we're going to have to hope for a successful vaccine to be developed in order to achieve it, as the only other way we'll achieve it, and we will, will be after that number of people have had the disease.

Anyhow, the fact that it now appears that the disease appeared weeks earlier than we thought cast a lot of doubt on when the infection first showed up in other places and how long it operated in the population before people were aware of what it was.  It's almost certain that in some places people simply thought they had the flu or a severe cold and had SARS-CoV-2. But if that's the case, then then question is why it didn't result in an outbreak of sudden severity as it did in Wuhan, and for that matter, how was it that there was at a least a lingering bit of time in China before that occured?

On herd immunity and the progress of the disease, one of the things we're now seeing is the sort of odd reveling in grim predictions, which is sort of a counter reaction to the "it's all a fake" sort of reaction that some people had earlier.

One of the positives, if you can call it that, of the pandemic is that suddenly, as earlier noted, science is really back in.  Lots of early claims that the disease wasn't real have evaporated but we now see some who are taking unscientific positions in the name of science.

Once claim is that the virus "reappears".  There's no evidence for that whatsoever.  To the extent that tests might support that suggestion, what that means is that the infection lingers longer than the symptoms do.  That's hardly novel.

Another big one we're seeing a lot of now is that "it'll be back in the Fall".  It might, but that has to do with herd immunity again. The dire suggestions that it'll return year after year as a massive killer are just wrong.

That doesn't mean it won't return in the Fall.  It very well might and, ironically, because of the "flattening the curve" approach that's been adopted.  Proponents of doing little noted that right from the onset and took the position that there was no point in flattening the curve and we'd be better off just rocketing towards herd immunity.  Critics of that approach justifiably noted that this threatened to overwhelm the medical infrastructure but the truth is that we have not come so far to that occurring.  Now at least part of the reason that we haven't had that occur is because we flattened the curve.  And that may indeed have been the absolutely correct thing to do.  Irrespective of that, the return of SARS-CoV-2, if it occurs, will be because of that, we knew that all along, and it won't happen year after year.  We have every reason to believe that by 2021 we'll have a vaccine.

Truth be known, we'll know a lot more about vaccines, and we already know a lot, by that time.  There's already been some curious lines drawn between old vaccines and the current disease which may be real dead ends.  Note that these are vaccines, not treatment for vaccines.  One old TB vaccine, for example, was being looked at as it was thought that it might offer come assistance with this disease.

While I've noted it before, on vaccines, one of the other real positives of the pandemic, if it can be called that, is that its shut up the entire anti vaxer movement, hopefully forever.  Hopefully this will spread to the other baloney anti scientific stuff that Americans have been buying up from purveyors of bogosity in increasing amounts in recent years.  Americans have always been prey to the purchase of snake oil, but in recent years it's become really over the top. The pandemic seems to have brought a screeching halt to that.

Indeed, at least in my case, it's brought an end to the spam emails of that type.  For a long time a business email of my mine has been constantly hit with the most absurd emails purveying all sorts of snake oil bogosity.  It's not just me a sit seems that everyone where I work gets the same set of bogus emails every day.  We've noted it from time to time and compared notes, and they're uniform.  One set of them is a collection that promises you can eat this and that and grow thin.  One in particular is some sort of ice cream you can buy from the hawker and you'll grown thin, it claims.

Bulls***

Anyhow, there's that set, and one set that claims ancient secret lost remedies, one set that claims shocking prophecies always involving Donald Trump and the Pope, and another that offers mail order brides from Russia or Asia.  Now all of those are gone, and I'm glad to see them gone.  I hope they never return.

In their place are constant ones for thermometers.

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April 27, 2020

Meet the Press had a genuinely scary interview with a Dr. Michael Osterholm over the weekend.

Some places in the U.S. are in the process of opening back up and there's sort of a sense of "we're through the worst of this", which most of us hope and pray is true.  Dr. Osterholm's views, however, weren't at all comforting.  In his interview, he states:

Well, first of all, let's just take the numbers. At most, 5-15% of the United States has been infected to date. With all the experience we have had so far, this virus is going to keep transmitting. It's going to keep trying to find humans to do what it does until we get at least 60% or 70% of the people infected. That is what it will take to get herd immunity. You know, Chuck, we are in the very earliest days of this situation right now. You know, if I could just briefly say one story here. Right after 9/11, I spent a number of days up at your studios doing filing around the issue of what was happening. The predecessor here, the late Tim Russert, used to say to me all the time, "Hi, Doc. How're you doing? Is the big one here yet?" And I would always say, "No, Tim, it is not." If he asked me today, "Is the big one here? Is it coming?" I would say, "Tim, this is the big one." And it is going to be here for the next 16 to 18 months. And people do not get that yet. We are just on the very first stages. When I hear New York talking about the fact they are down the backside of the mountain, I know they have been through hell. And that is an important statement. But they have to understand that’s not the mountain. That is the foothills. They have mountains to go yet. We have a lot of people to get infected before this is over.
In other words, Dr. Osterholm's view is that this is going to be with us until we get herd immunity, one way or another.  Elaborating on how that will occur, he stated:
Well, herd immunity is clearly going to happen if we do not have a vaccine. I do think that we have a better chance of a vaccine than some. The statement that came out yesterday from the World Health Organization suggesting there may not be immunity was misinterpreted to mean that we do not have evidence today that you are protected from humans. But we have actually animal model data, monkeys that have been infected intentionally and then rechallenged, that were protected. We have a new study on Friday that said vaccine protected them. So I think we are going to have it. I just do not think it is going to be soon. And we are on virus time right now, not human time. And so what we can get done in the next 16 to 18 months, that is great. But if we do not, we will not have a vaccine in time to protect most of the people in the world.
Herd immunity sans vaccine took a long time with the 18/19 flu, as a recent item posted here provided evidence of.  That pandemic had two waves, something that's being noted a lot now days, and for the most part it ended in 1919 for reasons still not completely understood  Maybe we had achieved herd immunity, or maybe it had evolved into a less lethal strain, something common with flu strains.  Indeed, it's already been noted that SARS-CoV-2 had thirty strains and some of them are less severe than others, so perhaps it works the same way.  Let's hope so.  In terms of evolutionary biology, that actually is the best genetic strategy for it.

Anyhow, this seems to run counter to what various governmental bodies are expecting, so we'll see how that works.  New Zealand had declared that it's completely contained the disease and basically eliminated it Sweden, whose approach was much less restrictive than other countries, has been taking a lot of heat but now claims it was right in its approach.  We aren't hearing much from China, the point of origin, right now, so perhaps its severely restrictive approach worked.  Spain is opening back up.

Or, perhaps in a heavily globalized economy, it'll all get rolling again. The 1918/19 flu did in a much less globalized era.

Also on Meet The Press the viewers were presented with another of a cumulative set of increasing reasons why Chuck Todd ought to be sent back down to the minors, this time in regard to an interview of Dr. Deborah Birx.  Birx is the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and in that role she found herself in the uncomfortable role of having to address comments recently made by President Trump which have been baffling to say the least and which are noted below.  One of the things that she did, however, was to give a pretty good scientific explanation on the nature of testing for the virus, stating that mass testing would require a breakthrough in RNA type testing.  This is simply a scientific fact but it gave Todd what he thought was ammo of some sort leading a listener to the conclusion that Todd probably didn't really grasp what he was saying.  Birx's comment wasn't political in any fashion and it frankly runs counter to what the White House has been saying on testing, which may be why Todd tried to run with it a little later in the show.

That came up when he was discussing the situation with invited panelist Dr. Vin Gupta, who was very critical up to that point of the Trump Administration's medical approach.  Todd was questioning Dr. Gupta on whether, essentially, Dr. Birx was having to compromise herself in order to take the company line, more or less, in the Administration, and Dr. Gupta was critical of her more or less giving favorable treatment to a single study that suggested that sunlight may play a role in curing the disease.  Sensing his moment Todd then went on:
I want to stay with you here a second, Dr. Gupta, and ask you about the testing comments that she made. That really struck me as one of the headlines out of the interview, when she basically acknowledged-- "acknowledge" may be the wrong word because there may be disputes about this. But essentially saying, "We're not going to be able to ramp up testing under the current situation." Do you concur with her on that? Or do you think they're just trying to come up with an explanation to follow the policy the president wants?
Not too surprisingly, as he is a physician, Gupta went on to indicate his agreement with Birx on the testing:
I think she's right actually. We need outside-the-box thinking. And so she's spot on. Under the current situation, Dr. Osterholm beautifully laid it out. That right now, every new technology that the FDA's putting out there largely is constrained by the same supply chain bottleneck that, Chuck, you and I have talked endlessly about: swabs, reagents. He just said it. He just laid it out. That's why we need more of a focus on interesting, new, creative, outside-the-box thinking, innovations like the Rutgers scientists on saliva. By definition, circumnavigating these supply chain bottlenecks. You spit in a tube. Potentially you can mail it to a lab if you do it at home. That's not that far off. So right now under the way we're thinking about it, the inside-the-box, constrained thinking, yes, I think she's correct.
I didn't see the show, but listened to it, as always, but on audio at least there was a noticeable pause following Todd's statement, followed by Todd changing topics and panelist and moving on to the economy.

This past week Trump certainly left himself open to criticism with his off the cuff comments on the disease, and its not surprising at all that the news shows (and I haven't gotten to This Week yet) would have a lot to discuss and criticize in this area.  But Todd has really gone off the rails and isn't even ballpark close to objective anymore.  It's really time for him to go.

In other news, President Trump has reportedly cancelled his daily briefings on the disease.

The briefings were becoming fodder for criticism as he sometimes countered his own medical experts and then offered off the cuff comments on medical matters that were often extremely ill informed. This capped off with a comment that seems to have tried to hope for a "miracle cure" type solution but which made a terribly poor analogy to cleaners which, if taken literally, would have been lethal  I haven't listened to the transcript of those comments as I generally don't listen to day by day press briefings, so I only know a snippet of what was said, but it is this sort of thing which has lead Trump's advisor to try to reign him in forever, and given that there has been a recent death that seems to have been attributable to such an off the cuff remark his handlers apparently felt that enough was enough and have gotten through to him.  After that, his advisors seemed to have gotten his attention and he's reportedly decided to focus on the economy on his upcoming statements.
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April 28, 2020

A few states are now beginning to partially reopen, although a person needs to be careful about what assuming that means.  Indeed, it's interesting that Wyoming, which people have been criticized for being not closed, is listed as fully having restrictions in place by the New York Times.

States that are easing up on some restrictions, which actually doesn't mean lifting all restrictions, are, as of right now:

Alaska, which has had a shelter in place order since March 28.  It's partial reopening is subject to strict limitations.

Colorado, which had a stay at home order in place allowed it to expire of April 26 and has a lesser set of restrictions now in place.

Georgia, which will have its shelter in place order expire on April 30.  It's reopening has been controversial but is subject to restrictions.

Minnesota, which will have its shelter in place order expire on May 3 is allowing for a partial reopening of the economy.

Mississippi, which had its shelter in place order expire yesterday, will allow some businesses to reopen.

Montana, which had its shelter in place order expire on the 26th, allowed some businesses to reopen and allowed churches to reopen.  Bars and restaurants will reopen on May 4.

Oklahoma, which never had shelter in place but restrictions, lifted restrictions on some businesses on April 24 and about everything else appears to be reset to open, with restrictions, on May 1.


South Carolina, which had a shelter in place order in effect since April 7, reopened part of its economy with restrictions on April 20.

Tennessee, which has a shelter in place order expiring on April 30, allowed restaurants to reopen on April 27 and businesses with restrictions are to follow.

Texas, which has had a shelter in place order in effect is allowing for a partial reopening of its economy later this week.

Wyoming, which never had a shelter in place order in effect but a stout set of restrictions, is allowing some businesses that were closed to reopen with restrictions.

There's an element of controversy everywhere things are opening back up, but there's also been controversy in keeping things locked down.  It's widely acknowledged that the economy can't be closed forever and while those urging it closed for longer periods of time, where they are, definitely have a humanitarian concern, there's been no real answer on how long the economy can really be suspended.

On that, on Meet the Press, panelist openly debated putting the entire American working population on the government payroll temporarily, a truly stunning proposition that never would have been considered prior to this event.
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April 28, part two.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEApril 28, 2020CONTACT: Michael Pearlman, Communications Director Michael.Pearlman@wyo.gov

Governor Gordon authorizes re-opening of gyms, personal care servicesunder new public health orders
Child care providers may also re-open to children of non-essential personnel
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Mark Gordon has announced that new public health orders effective May 1 will allow gyms, barber shops, hair salons and other personal care services to reopen under specific operating conditions designed to minimize public health risk from COVID-19. Other parts of the phased approach involve easing restrictions on day cares and issuing guidance to hospitals allowing them to resume elective surgeries.

“These new orders start our process of getting this part of Wyoming’s economy up and running again,” Governor Gordon said. “We have asked Wyoming citizens to make sacrifices over the past five weeks and they have responded. I want to thank these businesses for playing such an important role in our initial battle with COVID-19. Easing the restrictions on these businesses at this time is prudent and gets us one step closer to a return to normal.”

Another part of this phase allows some additional localized approaches to further easing restrictions based on local expertise and health data.

“We all recognize that the virus has had severe impacts in some Wyoming communities, while other towns and counties have been spared,” Governor Gordon said. “This plan takes into account the continued safety of our citizens and establishes a process to consider some case-by-case exceptions to state health orders when appropriate. It is important that we do not surrender the ground we have taken and that we extend our gains against this virus.”

Under modified order Number 1, gyms will be permitted to open on May 1 by adhering to public health guidelines outlined in the new order. These include limits on the number of patrons in the facility, a requirement that staff wear face coverings, and the closure of locker rooms. Gyms are also prohibited from offering one-on-one personal training and group classes. This order is also modified to allow child care centers and home day cares to reopen or continue to operate under specific conditions and precautions. These include limiting groups of people to fewer than 10 per room and implementing screening and cleaning protocols.

Under modified order Number 3, nail and hair salons, barber shops; cosmetology, electrology, and esthetic services; massage therapy services; and tattoo, body art and piercing shops may also open in a limited capacity on May 1 under certain conditions. These include operational requirements limiting the number of patrons, screening of patrons and staff for symptoms of illness or exposure to a person with COVID-19, requiring patrons and staff to wear face coverings and eliminating waiting areas.

No business closed through the public health orders is required to open on May 1. Businesses that choose to stay closed are still eligible for assistance from Small Business Administration (SBA) programs.The Department of Health has also issued updated guidance to hospitals and health care providers outlining how they can resume elective surgeries. That is effective immediately. Public health order Number 2 limiting public gatherings to 10 persons or fewer has been extended through May 15. The Governor’s directive requiring any individual coming to Wyoming to self-quarantine for 14 days remains in place through April 30. An extension to the directive is currently under review, with a decision expected tomorrow.
All three statewide orders have a provision allowing county health officers to submit requests for countywide variances from those orders if the public health conditions in the county warrant the change. The goal is to provide a measure of flexibility in recognition of the fact that public health conditions can vary greatly from county to county in Wyoming.

The Wyoming Business Council will host a series of webinars beginning tomorrow, April 29, to provide information and guidance for businesses eligible for reopening under the new orders. To register, visit https://wyomingbusiness.org/transition.

Copies of all three orders are attached to this release and are linked above.

--END--· ThirdContinuation_Order3.pdf· Dashboard_04282020 (1).pdf· Third Continuation_Order1.pdf· Third Continuation_Order2.pdf









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April 30, 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEApril 29, 2020CONTACT: Michael Pearlman, Communications Director Michael.Pearlman@wyo.gov 
Governor Gordon extends 14-day quarantine directive until May 8, announces campground openings 
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Mark Gordon has extended through May 8 his directive requiring any individual coming to Wyoming from another state or country for a non-work-related purpose to immediately self-quarantine for 14 days. The Governor anticipates allowing the directive to expire at that time, public health conditions permitting. 
Governor Gordon’s decision to let the directive expire May 8 was done after speaking with county commissioners throughout the state and in recognition of existing guidance in place in neighboring states. He noted that Colorado continues to discourage non-essential travel and Montana’s 14-day self-quarantine directive remains in place. 
Governor Gordon has also announced that camping at Wyoming State Parks will begin to open on May 15 for Wyoming residents. Camping will be by reservation only. Additional details on modified operations at Wyoming State Parks will be announced tomorrow.The new directive is attached and can be found here.Continuation of Self-Quarantine Directive.pdf
In other news, California closed its beaches.
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May 2, 2020

Movie art director Matteo De Cosmo died at age 52 of the virus.

Celebrity celebrity, Madonna reported that she had tested positive for having had, and then recovered from, the virus.

California's Madoc County defied the orders of the State of California and ceased enforcing the State's quarantine orders and "reopened" on May 1. The county of 5,000 residents has had no reported Coronavirus incidents.

New Mexico extended its stay at home order and ordered roads into hard hit Gallup closed.

The White House prohibited Dr. Fauci from testifying in front of the House of Representatives on May 6 but announced it was allowing him to testify in front of the Senate on May 12.

The Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne announced its closure of Public Masses would continue through May 15 after which the churches would start to reopen for Mass on a modified basis.

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May 5, 2020

Lots of states are beginning to "open up" with a lot of that opening up being fairly controversial as well.  Locally, the state had eased up on some restrictions starting this week.

I noted the item from the Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne above, here's its actual letter:
Statement from Bishop Steven Biegler, Roman Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne 
These past weeks since COVID-19 descended upon us have been difficult, and the suspension of public Masses has been deeply painful. As Governor Gordon lifts restrictions on some businesses, it is natural for Catholics to have a sense of hope that we can return to a somewhat normal parish life. Nonetheless, the need to protect the elderly and those with underlying conditions continues to be a high priority. Keeping in mind that numerous parishioners, as well as many priests, are at-risk for serious health complications if they contracted COVID-19, the Diocese of Cheyenne will continue to suspend public Masses.  
Beginning May 1, the Sacrament of Reconciliation will be celebrated by appointment using six feet of distance and masks, and the Anointing of the Sick will be celebrated for serious illness or pending surgery.  
The Diocese of Cheyenne is making tentative plans to resume public Masses, Baptisms, Matrimony and funerals for a maximum of ten (10) people on May 15, then on June 1 to expand participation based on the size of the church, while observing six feet of distance between individuals or households. These plans are subject to change.  
Re-opening the churches for public Masses will happen in phases, with health guidelines to follow for the protection of the common good and to minimize the continued spread of COVID-19. The obligatory guidelines include limited attendance, physical distancing and wearing masks. Because there still is a health risk for those who attend any public gathering, the general dispensation from the Sunday obligation will remain in effect.  
As we move forward, we will continue to follow state guidelines and adjust as needed. While we move through incremental steps through the three phases of reopening, I ask for your patience and prayers. Peace in Christ,
On other topics, quite a few counties in Wyoming have sought exemptions from some restrictions and are receiving them.  Teton County imposed tighter restrictions than the state had imposed and the state approved that.

Nationally, the Administration is asserting that the Chinese bear fault for the Pandemic.  Secretary Pompeo stated on This Week that the virus is natural, i.e., not man made, which reflects the scientific consensus but he also claimed that it had escaped a Chinese lab.  The Administration is also asserting that the Chinese acted to cover up the developing epidemic in their country so that they could hoard supplies for their own people.

I'm skeptical of the Chinese lab escape thesis, which seems unlikely to me.  I don't doubt that the Chinese government kept the outbreak secret, however, as that's what governments like that do about everything.

Meanwhile there's been some progress on anti virals to address SARS-CoV-2 as well as some progress towards a vaccine.  My suspicion is that this will develop much more quickly than we suppose.  Likewise, the claims of massive deaths breaking out in June due to reopenings strike me as likely overblown.

On COVID related economic news, Forbes is reporting that we're now at the point where some workers who are on the lower end of the economic scale, depending upon where they live, are making more money not working than they did working.  Nobody is to blame for this but this was nearly inevitable and with the country stretching into the third month of closures of various types, the next inevitable is happening.  Some of those workers are making the logical economic decision of choosing to stay home.

Indeed, why wouldn't you?  It's clearly lower risk and, for them, more financially prudent.

This creates an odd economic effect, however, in that if those workers choose not to come back to work, their employers stand a good chance of failing.  A lot of employees in that category have low employer loyalty for obvious reasons and will soon choose simply to never come back to their former employer, but many of those employers may soon be gone.

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May 8, 2020

The Army had announced that having had SARS-CoV-2, i.e., COVID-19, bars enlistment into the U.S. Army.

This is unlikely to be a long term thing, but is based on the lasting effect of the disease being presently unknown. Once they are, the Army will reassess.

Locally, so many things are now opening back up its impossible to keep track of it. A series of evolving orders is bringing closures of various types to an end, but with restrictions.  Restaurants in Natrona County may now reopen indoors, but churches interestingly remain subject to the public gathering limit, the state being unwilling to reconsider that for the county.

Statewide, a group of legislators have sent the Governor a letter complaining about his closure orders, even though the state never shut down completely and many of the closures were voluntary.

Those legislators will be back in session in Cheyenne on May 15 for a two day special legislative session concerning spending the money sent to Wyoming by the Federal government.
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May 9, 2020

Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris, former Democratic candidates and sitting U.S. Senators, have proposed a bill to pay Americans $2,000/month until the current crisis ends.  Such a move would really be a leap into uncharted waters and very well could have the practical impact of destroying the economy with some permanence.  The move pushes the credibility gap on the American monetary system dangerously close the monopoly money level, something that at least Sanders, who never had a firm grasp of where money comes from, has always been comfortable with.

The bill is unlikely to pass but it does serve to illustrate something that's already been noted in the economic press.  Some lower wage earners are actually better off not returning to work as long as crisis related assistance continues to pay off. For those individuals, a certain percentage of them are making rational choices in electing not to return to work. At the $2,000/month level many more would, making the failure of small businesses that depend on the same workers all the more problematic.

This is occurring just as a lot of the states are starting to open back up, including Wyoming which is undergoing a dual economic crisis, only one of which is COVID 19 related.  Restaurants opened in Natrona County yesterday.  The question is if Americans will fully return to their prior dining out customs at the same level they formerly had, something we explored in an entry from yesterday that became one of the most popular threads of this past week in a single day.  It appears likely that churches may open state wide next week.  It'll be interesting to see how churches respond to that when it occurs. Some, maybe most, will no doubt fully reopen and charge ahead.  Others, with large statewide structures and large congregations may react more slowly and keep some restrictions and existing closures in place.

Setting up a contest between sovereigns, South Dakota has ordered Sioux tribes to take down checkpoints in South Dakota within 48 hours.

This is a legally questionable move.  Indian Tribes are sovereigns within their territory and two of the Sioux tribes with lands in South Dakota have issued shelter in place orders, just as the tribes have on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation.  South Dakota never issued such an order and was among the states with the least restrictive provisions.

Wyoming has not interfered with the Wind River Reservation's provisions in any fashion, although Wind River hasn't gone as far as the Sioux in South Dakota apparently have.  At any rate, the legal ability of the state to order the tribe to do something of this type is really questionable and ill advised.

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May 10, 2020

South Korea is has closed bars and clubs in Seoul after infections of the virus rose.

South Korea's actions in containing the virus have been largely successful, but 50 new infections spiked after a 29 year old man infected with the virus went clubbing.

China is experiencing a spike in Shulan City in north eastern China. the city, located directly north of North Korea, has been closed by the Chinese.  The Chinese have also offered to help fight the infection in North Korea, about which the rest of the world doesn't know much.

None of this, of course, is really good news.

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May 13, 2020

In the category of not really good news, Meet The Press had its expert physician, Dr. Michael Osterholm, back on last Sunday who once again declared that it was inevitable that the Coronavirus would infect 70% of the human population, a grim assessment.  He basically holds out no hope for a vaccine being developed in sufficient time to prevent that from occurring.

The other guests, including one working on a vaccine and one working on a medication that has, in part, the effect of a vaccine on a temporary basis where more optimistic.  The latter hoped to have the medication fielded by next Fall. The doctor who was working on a vaccine suggested that next Fall might be possible but reserved declaring that, if all goes well, it would be widely available by that time.

Everyone seemed to think a resurgence of the disease, such as was the case with the 1918 Influenza pandemic, is inevitable.  Those working on medications and vaccines hope to have that ready in sufficient time so as to be able to prevent that from occurring.

In Fremont County the County Attorney has declared in a statement that his office will not enforce parts of the state's orders regarding the virus citing the Constitution as the basis for his actions.

Fremont County is one of the hardest hit counties in Wyoming by appearances, but a local official there has declared that this is a statistical appearance as the county has been tested more than others. That claim aside, the county clearly had some notable early fatalities.  Given that, the two statements are interesting as it appears that Fremont County is set to open matters up one way or another, the status of the state orders notwithstanding.

The County, of course, shares a large portion of its territory with the Wind River Indian Reservation, which is a separate sovereign that has its own more restrictive provisions.  The County cannot impact decisions made by the reservation.

All of this does point out a weakness in the state's system.  The state itself has very little in the way of authority to actually easily enforce its orders.  Wyoming lacks a statewide police force outside of the Highway Patrol, which itself is not suitable for any sort of statewide policing.  Really enforcing the state's orders, by the state, would require the state to divert the HP and might require some mobilizatin of the National Guard, neither of which is going to occur in this context.  If the county refuses to act the state's only recourse would be to the courts in an action directed at the county health officer, which is unlikely unless a things start going really badly in the county.

In other news, Dr. Fauci declared that the NFL playing its season in the fall was ill advised, but the NFL indicated it was going forward with plans anyhow.  This came at a time in which some individuals employed in roles close to the White House have come down with the disease.

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May 14, 2020

Wyoming is rapidly reopening.  Yesterday the Governor issued a new set of orders.  The announcement for them stated:
Restrictions ease under new orders, Governor allocates $17 million in CARES Act funding to expand COVID-19 testing and health response

CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Mark Gordon has announced that updated public health orders effective May 15 will ease restrictions on several business categories and permit restaurants to resume indoor table service statewide. The Governor has also allocated $17 million in federal funding to expand COVID-19 testing, improve contact tracing and add to the state’s supply of personal protective equipment (PPE). 

“We have been working diligently to modify our public health orders to continue a safe and sensible reawakening of Wyoming’s economy,” Governor Gordon said. “I am also pleased to be directing funds available through the CARES Act to improve our ability to identify cases of COVID-19 and limit public exposure to the virus.” 

The modified orders allow restaurants to offer indoor and outdoor dining service under specific conditions intended to limit the potential spread of COVID-19. These include adequate spacing of tables, a requirement that staff wear face coverings and be screened for symptoms of COVID-19, as well as the implementation of increased sanitation measures. The Wyoming Business Council will host a webinar on Thursday, May 14, to provide information and guidance for restaurant industry businesses eligible for expanding operations under the new orders. 

The further easing of orders expands the public gathering limit and permits larger gatherings for churches, religious organizations and funeral homes as long as they implement social distancing measures and specific sanitization procedures. 

Movie theaters and performance venues will also be allowed to reopen in a limited capacity and permit public gatherings of up to 25 persons. Gyms may now open locker rooms, offer personal training and provide group classes for up to 20 participants. Childcare centers will be permitted to have up to 25 persons total in a classroom.



“We must continue to be vigilant about social distancing,” Governor Gordon said. “I am confident that the public and business community will continue to recognize that their actions will allow us to continue a safe, steady path forward. It is important to remember that even as we ease restrictions, COVID-19 is still with us and will continue to be present in Wyoming for some time.” 

The $15 million Governor Gordon has allocated to the Wyoming Department of Health will help the agency increase its diagnostic testing and contact tracing capabilities. Funds will be used to bolster testing capacity at the Public Health Laboratory, obtain additional testing supplies and provide additional support to the team that does contact tracing, that includes people in communities across the state.



The Governor has also allocated $2 million to the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, who will be working with the Wyoming Business Council to purchase Personal Protective Equipment and distribute it to non-health care related entities to support public safety for businesses and other entities across the state under the new health orders. 


The orders can be found here:

The Wyoming Air National Guard will be doing a fly over of regional hospitals throughout the state on Friday to honor health care workers.  At the same time, some of the emergency centers set up for the Pandemic are standing down. They'll remain ready as a reserve, should the virus revive, but they are not going to be maintained on a standing basis.

France ended its lockdown on May 11.

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May 21, 2020

Governor Gordon signed three bills that came out of the recent special session, but used his line item veto as well.  His press announcement stated:

Governor Gordon signs 3 bills from Special Session
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Mark Gordon has signed three pieces of legislation passed by the Wyoming Legislature that provide a framework for spending $1.25 billion in federal funding awarded to the State through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

The bills were developed and passed during the Legislature’s special session held electronically on May 15-16.

Senate File 1001 gives the Governor further flexibility to spend the $1.25 billion in CARES Act funding through three allotments. It sets out $450 million immediately, an additional $400 million starting on July 15 and the remaining balance of $400 million beginning Sept. 15.

Senate File 1002 makes changes to the State’s unemployment insurance program and workers compensation program. It also creates an eviction prevention program that will be administered by the Wyoming Community Development Authority.
House Bill 1004 provides funding to establish three business-relief programs that will provide assistance to Wyoming companies impacted by COVID-19 and health orders. It allocates $50 million for the “Wyoming Business Interruption Stipend Program" to help businesses with 50 or fewer employees with grants of up to $50,000 dollars; $225 million for the “Coronavirus Business Relief Stipend Program” to assist businesses with up to 100 employees with stipends of up to $300,000; and $50 million for the “Coronavirus Mitigation Stipend Program” that will help Wyoming businesses of any size pay for COVID-19 related expenses up to $500,000.
The Governor exercised his line-item veto authority to address two elements of House Bill 1004. The first addresses the timing of the allocation of funds. Under the bill as written, the Legislature appropriated $325 million for these business relief programs, but required the entire appropriation be applied to the initial $450 million. This would limit the Governor’s flexibility to address other urgent needs prior to July 15.
The second line-item veto removes the $20,000 minimum amount that businesses would be eligible for under the Business Interruption Stipend Program. This better aligns the grant to the true need of the smallest businesses with minor losses.

The Governor’s veto letter and an additional letter addressing Senate Files 1001 and 1002 are attached. 
In other news, after having seemingly reached a plateau, Wyoming is now experiencing an increase in reported cases.  One in Natrona County is associated with a daycare and has lead to the quarantining of those who work there or attended there.  Additionally, the state has made four death announcements in five days.

This has resulted in the Governor cautioning residents of the state regarding letting recommended precautions lapse as if the virus no longer is a factor.  In Natrona County it lead to one of the county's health officer physicians expressing his overall disappointment on the same thing.

The state has additionally confirmed that six of the eleven deaths in the state are from the Wind River Indian Reservation, pointing to health conditions that are impacting the Reservation's residents at a higher rate than elsewhere.

In other news, not surprisingly, there's been a lot of countervailing news regarding the progress on a vaccine. There does appear to be real and genuine progress towards one being developed, and fairly rapidly.  In the meantime, however, one medical expert has expressed the opinion that SARS-CoV-2 will simply become endemic in the human population and the now living generation and generations to come will just have to live with it.

President Trump, it was announced, has been taking the anti malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.  It's not really known if this drug has an impact of preventing malaria or not.

There was debate this last week about the death toll so far, although that debate is a bit pointless in terms of its nature.  Reported deaths are over 80,000, meaning that no matter what a person's view is, its now killed more people than influenza this year in the U.S.  2020 has been a fairly bad flu year, but because the flu isn't tracked the same way that COVID 19 is, we don't really know how many people it has killed.  It's between 24,000 and 62,000, which means that this year infectious virus deaths are going to be extremely bad, rather obviously.

Interesting, a person has to wonder if the various shelter in place orders are also having a flattening impact on the flu.  It should be.

Be that as it may, the real death toll is almost certainly at least 100,000 and likely over that.

Oddly, as we approached that number comparisons to the Vietnam War, whose death toll was half that, have stopped.  They never made much sense anyhow, as wars aren't actually comparable to epidemics.

FWIW, about 40,000 Americans lost their lives in automobile accidents in 2019.  Because of the big decrease in driving right now, my guess is that for 2020 it will be lower.

In comparison to that, the number of murders in the U.S. in 2018, the last year I could find FBI data for, was 16,214 people, a figure that's likely to surprise people given that the press likes to give the impression that the US is awash in a sea of violence. That was down from the year prior, which has been a recent trend.  In spite of the common assumption of the opposite, it's likely that the murder rate will be lower again this year in my view.

This is also true, fwiw, of "gun deaths", a somewhat phone statistic.  The number of "gun deaths" of all types has declined every year since 1967 and in 2017 was 23,854 of which well over half were suicides.  I'm not saying that death by any means is somehow benign or to be ignored, but this figure, like others attributable to human causes, is going down, not up.

I'm also not saying that this means COVID 19 is not a big deal.  Indeed, these figures should show the opposite.  While we don't know how many people died of the flu this year, twice as many have died so far from COVID 19.

Brazil, we'd note, is now the pandemic hot spot.

This also, fwiw, plays a bit into misreporting.  The Press has done a very bad job regarding the spread of the disease and what it means in terms of statistics.  The suggestion has been, and the suggestion has been adopted here and elsewhere, that the United States is a disease mess and SARS-CoV-2 has been spreading through the country like wildfire at a far worst rate than anywhere else.  This has been based on the constant claim that the US has lead the world in infections.

Frankly, we don't know if that's true to start with as we really don't know the true infection rate in China, where the disease originated.  Additionally, the infection rate for a closed dictatorial country like China should be much lower than for an open society like the United States.

We unfortunately don't really even know the infection rate by percentage of the population for anywhere, due to the difficulty of detecting the disease in the overall population.  In sheer numbers the US leads with over 1.5M confirmed cases comparable to China's 84,000, but that's almost certainly misleading.  In confirmed cases, fwiw, Russia, which earlier claimed basically to have prevented it, comes in second at 317,000 cases.

But then by the same token Canada comes in just behind China with 81,000 cases. But if we accept China's total as real, that means the disease is much worse in Canada which has a much, much, smaller population.  Indeed, that would reflect a rampaging Canadian infection rate as compared to the China.

Anyhow, the disease is on the march in Brazil and we have to wonder how many other countries in the southern hemisphere as well as those in the less developed parts of the world have pretty high infection rates, and we just don't know it yet.

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May 23, 2020

This is Memorial Day weekend, generally an at least somewhat somber event, and this year particularly so.  We start with this news item from This Day In Wyoming's History, for yesterday, May 22, 2020.


2020  Governor Gordon orders flag's at half staff until Sunday, May 24, in honor of the victims of the Coronavirus.  The proclamation read:

Governor orders flags be flown at half staff statewide until May 24
in honor of the victims of the novel coronavirus pandemic
CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Governor Mark Gordon, pursuant to President Donald Trump's Proclamation, has ordered both the U.S. and State of Wyoming flags be flown at half-staff statewide until sunset on Sunday, May 24, 2020 in honor of the victims of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The Presidential Proclamation follows: 

Our Nation mourns for every life lost to the coronavirus pandemic, and we share in the suffering of all those who endured pain and illness from the outbreak. Through our grief, America stands steadfast and united against the invisible enemy. May God be with the victims of this pandemic and bring aid and comfort to their families and friends. As a mark of solemn respect for the victims of the coronavirus pandemic, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, May 24, 2020. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred forty-fourth.


DONALD J. TRUMP

On a related note, the Wyoming Oregon Trail Veterans Cemetery in Evansville, Wyoming, cancelled its traditional Memorial Day event due to the desire to avoid a large crowd and the impossibility of complying with current crowd restrictions.


In the typical American fashion, Memorial Day is also a three day weekend and the traditional beginning of summer for Americans.  It usually features picknics and gatherings.  This year, the public ones have been closed.

Also notable, of course, its nature means its associated with religious services of various kinds. At this point a lot of churches are opening up in disregard of the present orders, although others with large structures are not fully open yet. In any event, President Trump entered the fray on this yesterday and classified churches as "essential" entities and urged Governors to open them back up, threatening to open them by Presidential fiat if they fail, although its doubtful that he has that power.

________________________________________________________________________________
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