COVID Quarantine Chronicles Day 25

Light at the end of the tunnel? If only Easter weren't looming.

President Business Deals rode to power in no small part due to all the business deals he made will bankrupting everything from casinos to airlines to vodka distributors.

It should be no surprise that his government is operating in the same erratic and inefficient manner:

Josh Marshall @joshtpm

Gov @GovPritzker confirms that the federal ‘Air Bridge’ flights from China, organized by the White House taskforce, are bringing PPE back from China which are then turned over to private companies. The states then have to bid against each other to purchase from those companies.

I’m sure there’s an ethical flowchart on which private companies get the gear to gauge state governments. New York is paying 15 times the market rate for personal protection equipment. While California is trying to establish a consortium of states to bid in bulk, which seems like a promising idea that could one day lead to the invention of a federal government that could theoretically do the same thing with a united 50 states. We could even call the country the United States since the name is right there and easy and we have more pressing matters on our hands right now.

President Deals has been pushing hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, as a potential cure. Doctors in Ohio prescribed it to so many friends and family that the Pharmacy Board stopped that practice after the first weekend. (Still waiting for somebody to be charged for that crime.)

Last night The New York Times reported Deals has “a small personal financial interest” in Sanofi, the French company that makes Plaquenil, the name-brand version of hydroxychloroquine.

I’m not sure how much a “small personal financial interest” is to a fake billionaire money launderer like Trump, but I assume it’s enough to make the average American’s eyes pop.

Deals has spent the last three weeks trying to gaslight America. He asks who could have possibly seen this coming? Like nobody reads international news.

Turns out Trump didn’t even have to read international news. He could have simply been interested enough to read his staff’s reports as far back as January:

Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈 @Amy_Siskind

A memo from Peter Navarro sent in January said failure to contain a coronavirus outbreak could lead to “hundreds of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses.” Trump did nothing for 2 more months. Tiny hands covered in blood.

nytimes.comTrade Adviser Warned White House in January of Risks of a PandemicA memo from Peter Navarro said failure to contain a coronavirus outbreak could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and trillions of dollars in economic losses. It is the most direct warning known to have circulated at a key moment among top administration officials.

We are truly on the dumbest timeline outside of everyone but perhaps Britain, whose COVID-afflicted prime minister was whisked into an ICU unit a mere three weeks after he boasted about shaking the hands of coronavirus victims while visiting the hospital. I won’t wish ill on the man whose life now depends on the National Health Service from which he made a career of denying adequate funding, but I will save my sympathy for the everyday British people that didn’t have access to some of the world’s smartest epidemiologists in the world.

A NEW MODEL SHOWS LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Coronavirus took over the world in a matter of months because we know next to nothing about it compared to other viruses that people much smarter than me have been studying for decades.

That makes scientific modeling tough, even before accounting in how measures like social distance make a difference.

Ohio has been practicing social distancing for four weeks, and there’s no doubt the Midwest looks to be leading the way:

Alex Sims @WLNSAlexSims

The New York Times used cell phone data to assess which area of the country stayed home last week. The Greater Lakes states crushed it! #FlattenTheCuve

This map isn’t perfect. For example, it lines up almost exactly with a map of food deserts:

I haven’t left Franklinton in almost a month, but my friends tell me downtown Columbus is as much as a ghost town at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday as it usually is anytime past 5 p.m. on a Friday, which is wild to contemplate.

There are reasons to be encouraged that the monotony of social distancing is letting us see light at the end of the tunnel.

From Tom Jackson of sanduskyregister.com:

SANDUSKY — A health institute in the state of Washington sharply revised its forecast for Ohio, predicting the COVID-19 outbreak will peak in its effect on hospitals in a couple of days and result in far fewer deaths than an earlier forecast.

The new forecast by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington says Ohio’s COVID-19 outbreak will peak in its effect on hospital resources on Wednesday, April 8, and will peak in daily deaths on April 12. It forecasts 544 coronavirus deaths by Aug. 4.

The new forecast suggests Gov. Mike DeWine’s tough measures to enforce social distancing are having an effect. The IHME forecast about a week ago predicted peak hospital use in Ohio on April 20, and forecast 1,672 deaths by Aug. 4.

I don’t want to get too excited. We’re not even halfway through April. And we still belong to the United States, which means we will have to suffer the consequences of states like Texas, Florida and Georgia refusing to act as swiftly as Mike DeWine did.

If we do get our lives back sometime before July 1, you can bet your ass every pseudo-intellectual grifter will crow about how they were right and coronavirus was no big deal despite the fact over 10,000 Americans have already lost their lives due to government malfeasance that could have prevented 90% of them.

REMINDER: WE’RE HOLDING AN ELECTION ON APRIL 28TH AND IT’S GOING TO BE A DISASTER

Rebecca Maurer @maurerlawllc

Ohio's "request a request form to vote by mail" system is doing abysmally. In Cleveland, we cast less than 8% of our ballots before the cancelled primary. We need an additional 59,000 votes to match 2016 primary turnout. So far...2,296 ballots have been requested.

Mike DeWine saved lives when he knighted Dr. Amy Acton to close every polling place in the state on March 17th. The most admirable trait about Baby Boomers is you can’t stop them from voting. Hell or high water, their voice is getting heard. It also would have led to unfortunate sickness and death (with elderly poll workers especially at risk).

The other shoe dropped, however, by the Ohio General Assembly getting to set a new election date. Despite Secretary of State Frank LaRose seriously contesting Ohio couldn’t find a printer capable of printing enough absentee ballots, we will indeed hold an election on April 28th through the mail.

The entire thing is going to be a clusterfuck. It includes steps like contacting your local Board of Elections and requesting an absentee ballot request form (not a typo) that you send back to the Board in order to receive your ballot.

I early voted like the patriot I am, so you jackals are on your own with this:

Innovation Ohio @innovationohio

Ohio extended the chance to vote by mail in the primary until April 28. If you didn't vote yet, request your ballot now. Help us spread the word to make sure every eligible Ohioan has a chance to cast their vote. Ballots must be postmarked by 4/27. innovationohio.org/2020-election/…

Upsets happen with low turnout in the primaries. It’s true on the right and the left.

The biggest wildcard race will be Morgan Harper vs. Joyce Beatty for Columbus’ House of Representatives seat (OH-3). Beatty spent millions on ads in attempt to bury Harper on NAME-ID alone down the stretch. Those ads are effectively worthless now with over a month elapsing until the actual election date. This format might give Harper the best chance at sending shockwaves through Ohio’s electoral system, though that’s no sure thing with how older Democrats have clung to establishment politics this cycle.

COLUMBUS ENDANGERING BUS RIDERS

When I say COTA was waiving fares during the pandemic, I thought it was awesome and how it should always be. Unfortunately staying home isn’t a luxury marginalized people can afford, especially when you don’t have a home in which to stay.

Columbus also does the bare minimum to house and help the homeless, so the vulnerable turn to COTA, which has been abandoned by working people due to the dangers of tight, crowded spaces. Drivers are getting fed up. The above picture was taken by my friend who drives for COTA. None of this is in his job description.

From Mark Ferenchik of dispatch.com:

Drivers for the Central Ohio Transit Authority are concerned about riders, some of them homeless, who ride the bus without a destination in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak.

“We are basically just riding the homeless around,” driver Davon Washington said. “Now they fall asleep.”

And with no one paying fares now, there’s nothing to prevent people from just riding to ride, even though bus travel is supposed to be for essential use only, he said.

“How do we know who is supposed to be on and who’s not?” Washington said.

“We should not be the ones to make the decision. I don’t know what they can do to fix the problem.”

Columbus could adequately fund homeless prevention programs. That way the homeless would have somewhere safe to go instead of having to sleep on crowded buses.

Instead City Hall prefers to shunt that work to local charities. During the pandemic, California has moved homeless people into nearly vacant hotels.

Mayor Andy Ginther would never do that because he’d be forced to muscle a rich person for once in his life. He’d rather make a few bare-minimum strokes with space at shuttered recreation centers.

SUCK MY ASSHOLE, DAVE YOST

As I wrote yesterday, my friend died of an opiate overdose early Saturday morning. The Franklin County Coroner reported 12 overdose deaths in 48 hours that same weekend.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, a man who likes to boast about “delivering truckloads of justice” on Twitter when he’s pinching garden variety scam artists, decided the following Monday was a good time for Ohio’s top cop to post a Boomer meme about selling “pure, uncut” dime bags of toilet paper.

Keep in mind there are hundreds if not thousands of Ohioans rotting away in a COVID-infested jail right now for the high crime of selling dime bags to their friends to feed their addiction.

I’m glad I worked through my raw emotions with that bottle of Tito’s on Saturday afternoon. And I’m also glad I decided to continue my quest for pandemic sobriety the following Sunday. Because had I been drinking when I first saw Yost’s “humor,” it definitely would have gotten me a knock-and-talk at best and a warrant for my arrest at worst.

THOSE WMDs. Sen. David Perdue bought stock in a company that produces PPE the same day he received a classified coronavirus briefing… Cuban doctors fighting coronavirus around the world, defying the United States… The Supreme Court is not your friend… The Dr. Oz show is a scam… Autocrats’ dilemma: You can’t arrest a virus.