Nothing says “we don’t care much about the health of our county residents” better than this COVID-19 “dashboard” from Collin County, TX: No case counts. No testing information. No death counts. No sense of the past, or trends. Collin County has yet again abandoned its residents to the coronavirus. Data […]
In my thoughts on the close of the experiment with American Fascism, I worried at the end about the damage that would be wrought in the months before Trump is constitutionally required to leave office. Here is a good example on the scientific side of things: www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/11/09/trump-removes-climate-program-director/ UPDATE: 10:46am This […]
One of the great victims of the four-year experiment of American Fascism has been science, along with scientific thinking. Readers of my past essays in this blog are well aware that, already in the past, this nation had a real struggle with critical thinking. I’ve worried in the past about […]
UPDATES: Last week, I started seeing the emails from my server: the disk hardware early failure detection system, known as SMART, was beginning to spot errors on a disk in the server that powers this domain (and a few others). I sort of plan for disk failures, but I hate […]
We crossed a horrific milestone this weekend: at least 200,000 Americans are now dead due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We crossed the 100,000 mark around May 27, approximately 4-5 months after the virus first landed on U.S. soil. [1] Now, 4 months after that grim […]
One of the things that often gets mentioned by coronavirus public information projects [1][2] is that certain days of the week are “under-reporting” days. Weekends tend to take the crown in this – public health reporting systems lag on weekends. I can see this in the data from our county, […]
When I step outside, it’s 81F and humid. 10am on a Sunday morning in July in Texas is brutal. It doesn’t matter to me. I need some variety in my workout routine, and I need to go outside and run. I set out west. I avoid people on the narrow […]
Redfield was then asked for a definition of “hot spots.” He said it would include places where more than 5 percent of coronavirus tests come back positive. Looking county by county, he said “the majority of the nation” is not a hot spot. “CDC director concedes schools in ‘hot spots’ […]
On Saturday, we took a break from the pandemic to go outside and look for a comet. We live in a Dallas suburb, but one which has grown a lot in 10 years. The skies are not quite as dark as they used to be, but we thought it might […]
Colleges and universities across the United States are planning to re-open in the fall with large numbers of students on-campus. Some places have done this sensibly, by limiting that number to just first-year students, or just seniors, and only for one term or another. Others have proceeded with full populations […]
It has been 73 days since Texas, racing to reopen without first putting in place large-scale testing and tracing infrastructure, ceded the population of the state to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. That was COVID Day, or C-Day: May 1, 2020. On C-Day, Texas announced that businesses could re-open at 25% capacity; […]
“Don’t forget your mask.” I haven’t been in a place where people are actually expected to gather since March 6. I have so much to remember as I re-enter the world. I have to remember to get all my keys. Where are all my keys? My car keys are on […]