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
_________________________________________________________________________________
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
______________________________________________________________________________
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
________________________________________________________________________________
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.
________________________________________________________________________________
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
________________________________________________________________________________
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
________________________________________________________________________________
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
_______________________________________________________________________________
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:
April 16, 2020
________________________________________________________________________________
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:
April 18, 2020
________________________________________________________________________________
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.
________________________________________________________________________________
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:
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:
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.
________________________________________________________________________________
Related threads update for April 27, 2020
Related threads update for April 24, 2020
Related threads update for April 21, 2020
Related threads update for April 18, 2020
Related threads update for April 10, 2020
Related threads, update for April 7, 2020________________________________________________________________________________
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.
________________________________________________________________________________
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
________________________________________________________________________________
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
________________________________________________________________________________
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
_______________________________________________________________________________
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.
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.
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:
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:
The orders can be found here:
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:
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.
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Related threads update for May 21, 2020
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Related threads update for May 10, 2020
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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:
- FourthContinuationStatewideOrder1_Signed.pdf
- FourthContinuationStatewideOrder3_Signed.pdf
- FourthContinuationStatewideOrder2_Signed.pdf
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.
- Considerations in signing SEA1 and SEA2.pdf
- Line Item Veto HEA0001 HB1004 COVID-19 business relief
programs.pdf
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:
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
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
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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