Astalavista .. till weekend!

I'm off Up North to my cabin for a few days. Catch me if you can Gov Whitmer! (She slightly eased some 'rules' today. It's okay to not social distance if you're setting fire to buildings, next week bars and restaurants can open at half capacity, but 77-year-old barbers still can't open their shop, so a mixed bag.)

Anyway, there's not a lot of connectivity in the woods, so you may not hear from me much for a few days.

Meanwhile, the Sunday-Monday is about like expected. The new cases are in the 23-24,000 range and new deaths are 6-700. I'm reasonably sure cases will continue to run above 20K/day, but after whatever 'correction' there is to the (probably) under-reported weekend data I expect to see the linear decline in deaths (and hospitalizations, ICU admits, and ventilator cases) continue. The virus is running out of connections between infected and not infected.

Today's data (for Sunday) shows NY with 70 new deaths, MA with almost 200, Ohio with 50, and no other state with 50. Most states, 32, with single digit deaths or less. 12 states had no new deaths on Sunday. Another 8 states had only 1 or 2.

Even IL saw a big drop in new deaths. NJ had 20, even CA had less than 50.

Michigan has really dropped in new cases and especially deaths, but I'm not sure the Governor has noticed yet.

The "peaceful protests" have pretty much pushed the virus off the news, and I doubt if you'll continue to see very much coverage after things quiet down. COVID-19 still leaves a lot to learn about it, but it can be handled at least for now as a kind of normal health problem. Even Dr Fauci is now saying there may not be a Second Wave. I believe there will be, but it will be much, much less than this wave. As data comes in it becomes more clear that the virus doesn't spread as quickly except in places where there is an infected person in close contact for a fairly lengthy period of time. That limits it in many ways to mass transit, nursing homes, parts of hospitals, and inter-generational family homes. All of those can be handled in the next wave by better testing.

Meanwhile, of course, both the CDC and Who are kinda, sorta admitting that regular face masks don't offer much protection and there is no hard science or even research that says social distancing of any number of feet makes a difference.

To date every country with good data (which leaves out China, Russia, and Iran for sure) shows the same pattern. From 'discovering' 100 or so case to peak number of infections takes about 6 weeks, with deaths peaking from 7-14 days later (probably related to ICU/ventilator capacity), then declining linearly until 6 weeks later the 'crisis' has passed. Also, very few people under age 20 die from it. The people under 50 who die almost uniformly have serious underlying comorbidities, and even the patients in the 70+ age who die typically have 2-5 serious comorbidities. Knowing that should mean we do better the next time.

So. I'm going to enjoy the woods and wildlife. I'll sit on the deck and drink coffee, beer, or scotch, depending on what time of day it is, and read a lot just for pleasure. My friend will be coming along and he'll probably read somewhat less for pure pleasure and drinks Irish whiskey instead of scotch. He's in charge of the grill and I'll make some stuff on the range. We'll undoubtedly build a fire or two. There may be some target practice. He's promised to quit breaking the safety reflectors.

We'll ride around the main trail and check on the recently planted trees. A lot of them seem to have gotten bent down over the past winter.

Enjoy your week. I'll keep up with the data but unless something unexpected (by me) happens I don't expect to write about it until next weekend.