Wednesday, October 21, 2020

13: First Snow on the Mountain




 

33 comments:

  1. VT: 1971 (+15) 😫
    58 deaths (84 days)
    215active cases
    Recovered 1708 (+7)
    In Hospital 1 (+1)
    Tests 180,694 (+991)

    We really need the daily numbers to drop.

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    1. _You_ need the daily numbers to drop? Illinois just reported 4,342 new cases today. Of course, that was based on more than 66,000 tests. But still. The positivity rate is above 5%.

      I got my teeth cleaned yesterday, based on an appointment I made two months ago. But I'm not sure I will be leaving the house until the numbers come down.

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    2. Risk is all relative to the population.

      Illinois has 12,670,000 people!

      Vermont has 623,989.

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    3. My concern is that because our county has a few more than we ought, we can't go visit family. We have reservations to visit family in Maine in early December, but it all depends on how their county and our county (and our travel route) are doing at that time.

      We had been seeing 0 to 3 or 4 case per day for a long time. Now it's 10-15, so that's a big jump for us. Our positivity rate was lowest in the country and it's still low, but not as low as it was. So we are starting to go back to getting in extra provisions so we can sequester as needed.

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    4. I can see your concern. But Illinois has 20 times the population and 30 times the number of cases. I would have been a lot more comfortable getting my teeth cleaned if we'd had 500-800 cases as we did in July or even ~1800 as we did a month ago.

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    5. Yeah, I hear you.

      My county posted "419 active cases" but they meant *per million*! =Whew!= That means it's actually more like 70 active cases. That's more comfortable. Of course, like you, in July our case load was FAR less...!!

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  2. OHIO: COVID cases, 188,005 and 5,149 deaths.

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  3. George Will: “As the Donald Trump parenthesis in the republic’s history closes, he is opening the sluices on his reservoir of invectives and self-pity. A practitioner of crybaby conservatism — no one, he thinks, has suffered so much since Job lost his camels and acquired boils — and ever a weakling, Trump will end his presidency as he began it: whining.”

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  4. Meadows’ FEC Filings Suggest [sic] Unlawful Spending [Click] Sounds like he’s a perfect fit for the Trump administration!

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  5. October 21, 2020 at 4:01 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard

    With 13 days to go, more than 40 million ballots have already been cast in the 2020 presidential election. That represents 30% of the total number of votes cast in the 2016 election.

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  6. Republican senator 'personally benefited from tax change he sought' [Click] “Ron Johnson, who has led attacks on Joe Biden’s son Hunter, began sale of company months after insisting on change of tax law.” I am shocked; shocked, I say!

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  7. Revenge of the Wine Moms [Click] “How anti-Trump women in America’s suburbs are ushering in a new era of political activism.” Interesting, but such things still seem altogether foreign to me. Maybe a good part of that is that in my experience women are far more likely than men to cultivate friendships outside the family.

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  8. Abour China: I just saw on Quartz that China has more (USD) billionaires than any other country. They know banking!

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  9. It strikes me that I haven't been seeing polling results for Indiana. I believe I've mentioned 2008 when Indiana, which natives thought couldn't possibly be in play, went for Obama.

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    1. Indiana polls here. [Click] Few, and they seem to show Trump ahead. I remain fascinated by Texas polls— they indicate Trump and Biden are neck and neck, and Texas has a huge trove of electoral votes. Georgia is also a big state that’s real close.

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    2. Thanks, Alan. That last suggests Indiana might possibly be in play.

      I agree about Texas.

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  10. “Senate Republicans reiterated on Wednesday their stiff opposition to the White House’s last-ditch effort to cut a major stimulus deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the latest indication that passing any new relief package almost certainly will have to wait until after Election Day,” CNN reports. Sounds like a political death wish to me.

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    1. I think the pint is that there is not enough time to both pass a relief bill and confirm Barrett. And McConnel thinks the Supreme Court is more important than the Senate.

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    2. I gather that it's not McConnel's doing--rather just a bunch of obstreperous Republicans.

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    3. McConnell thinks the Barrett confirmation is more important that the lives of people who need food and shelter.

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  11. https://twitter.com/anastasiakeeley/status/1318933175436009475

    McConnell's hands are entirely covered with bruises and bandaids. What kind of medical issue is he having? Covid? He also has bruising near his mouth.

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    1. He's an old White guy, so his hands might bruise very easily because of excessive sun exposure when he was young. That said, he might have had a special kind of conversation, with either members of his caucus or the President.

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    2. I just now looked at the photos; I've noticed the same thing before. Just old honkey hands.

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  12. Almost Everyone Plans To Vote a Straight Party Ticket
    October 21, 2020 By Taegan Goddard

    A new Pew Research poll finds just 4% of registered voters in states with a Senate contest say they will support Donald Trump or Joe Biden and a Senate candidate from the opposing party.

    Likewise, just 4% of registered voters say they plan to vote for Biden and the Republican candidate for House in their district or Trump and the Democratic House candidate.

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  13. The Atlantic: America Will Sacrifice Anything for the College Experience [Click] “The pandemic has revealed that higher education was never about education.” The author’s description of “The College Experience” does not at all resemble my thirteen years of college and university. I can recognize elements of it happening around me at the time, but that was for other people. But I can recognize that what he is describing may be what it is like for many people. As I understand, German universities, for one example, are strictly educational institutions, no social experiences intertwined.

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