Happy to help

And yeah, we're all dealing with the pandemic now.

I definitely have opinions on the rona, and they are not completely out of alignment with yours, but depending on how SD feels that could be considered political.   MHO:   rona is the talk of the town.  Let it be.   Might as well have it here, too, and draw visitors.

Here's what crap:   China and South Korea have already figured it out.  China bought that knowledge at a very high price.   Resultingly China has been able to largely contain the virus (and more specifically, the mortality rate) to just the Wuhan province.  Since then, China has been helping Italy (albeit Italy is still not doing too well).   South Korea has NOT instituted extreme quarantine measures.  In fact, they lifted them.  Their number of cases has gone up, but their mortality has gone down.  I'm sorry, but there's no "flooded health system" there.  They can test 10X the people the US has, yet they have a population 1/6th the size.  They identified at least two meds to administer (a derivative of quinine, and a derivative of an HIV drug), plus they have an oxygenation treatment which kills the virus in the body.   Italy has been able to CV test an ENTIRE COMMUNITY, multiple times.

Why can't the US abandon their "not invented here" mentality, and just follow their lead?  It's already tested, on live patients.  The efficacy is already proven--just not to the US government's satisfaction, with their selective vision.  They have this idea that "the US' standards are higher than in Asia, so they need to validate it more".   Baloney.  It is East Asia who has the higher standard, and people are living where people in the West are dying.  Reporters keep hammering Trump about it--in fact, they have hammered the point about specifically the HCQ medication--and all they get is chastised as "bad reporters".   And then people wonder why the media is so "biased"?

Meanwhile, the rest of us all have to lock down in fear, trash the economy, lay people off, and wait for the Fed and the government to "rescue" them, when treatment is sitting right there.  Is it 100% effective?   No.  But it brings down the mortality and seriousness levels closer to that of the flu, and we don't shut down people's lives over the flu.  Get the virus, get the treatment, and then you've got some level of immunity for some amount of time.

Where I tend to agree with conspiracy theories is in the withholding of this treatment and testing.  There's just no excuse for it.

What is "Current Events"?   A thread quarantine?   Current Events is a 404 link.

I just want some degree of communication to what's what.   If I click on "Current Events", I get a 404.

I checked my options for grocery deliveries yesterday.

They're pretty much non-existent now.

What could have caused this unprecedented Corona virus outbreak?

Lana Del Rey Reveals She Used Witchcraft Against Trump

Life and death during the Great Depression

Pennsylvania ‘Nonessential’ Worker Blasts Gov. Tom Wolf: ‘Why Don’t You Stop Getting Paid?’

Why American life went on as normal during the killer pandemic of 1969

"“I know, as Americans, it’s not something we’re used to. But it matters,”

Biden said of wearing a mask, noting he wears one “everywhere I go.”

The former vice president went further during an interview with KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh,

suggesting he would use executive action or other means to leverage federal power and

mandate wearing masks in public."

What will Biden do? Send the defunded police to force you to wear a mask?

In Arizona, there have been ~28,000 total deaths (all causes) in 2020 through the end of May, of which 918 (3.3%) were classified as due to COVID-19. Those 918 deaths occurred between March 15 and May 31. Just under another 900 deaths have been classified as due to COVID-19 in June but total death data for June has not yet been posted.

What I find interesting is that the total number of deaths was constant at ~5600 each month through the end of May. There has been no ‘excess death’ bump attributable to COVID-19 so far. We might see a small one in June’s data but that remains to be seen.

The number of deaths averaged 5,000 per month through all of 2019 so, so far, the number of deaths is up about 600 per month in 2020. However, that increase began in January and has held steady since. For the first 5 months of 2019, the total number of deaths was ~25,800. The higher numbers for the first 5 months of 2020 could be largely related to population growth, among other factors. It is certainly possible that some of the increase in total deaths starting in January is in fact attributable to unknown/unrecognized cases of COVID-19, but I wouldn’t expect those numbers to be substantial.

Thought a little perspective from a ‘COVID-19 Hotspot’ might be helpful.

Follow-up from the AZ DHS.

https://azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-control/infectious-disease-epidemiology/covid-19/dashboards/index.php

The link is to a dashboard documenting state stats - both cases & deaths are on a fairly significant downward trend over the past 2.5 weeks.

The curve having been initially flattened, 're-opening' was inevitably going to be accompanied by an increase in cases.  That was acknowledged before the initial lockdowns.  The data suggest the Memorial Day weekend & mass demonstrations were major factors in the 'unanticipated' ballooning of cases as the increases were relatively modest until mid-June.  If we lock down again, we will face the same dilemma with the next re-opening - we cannot prevent the virus spreading, we can only slow it down a bit again.  No treatment or vaccine will be available soon enough to allow us to weather another prolonged disruption of normal economic activity, unfortunately.