Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Late to the party, but I want to add my good wishes to the Corners, Neutral and Missus.

Everybody, if you can stay in, please do.

Last night a group of people from a playwright's incubation program I attended some time ago got together online and toasted the memory of Terence McNally. During that get-together, someone said something they shouldn't have said, that they wished it has been someone specific in McNally's place. I understand the anger, but no. Just no.

Years ago, Garrison Keillor did a monologue about how we were seeing the faces of monsters in our leadership. I think about that monologue and how it is a better fit now than it was for the Bush Administration. We don't have to become as monstrous as the people we see on the news, the people who are so willing to sacrifice lives for dollars. I am not going to wish anyone ill, but I have to wonder about someone who responds to a congressional measure to over a thousand deaths. What kind of person does that? Why would you willingly abdicate your humanity for money and power? Can you come back from that? Is there redemption and an awakening? I pray for it.

Getting back to the playwright's gathering, someone toasted McNally and all of us. Theatrical traditions can be dark. We still wish each other luck by telling people to break a leg before shows. Some people gleefully mention Macbeth to make everyone within hearing chant, "Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell."

Even for me, last night's toast was too dark.

"May you live to see the last living Trump perish."

Oh, shoot. No.

I'll offer my own toast: All of you magnificent bastards cough in the other direction. I'll see you in Vahalla.*

*Just not too soon. I'm in the middle of rewatching Black Books. Screw the flu. I want to see Bill Bailey flail round.

 

I am going by the Johns Hopkins tracker, since they do a pretty good breakdown of it all. That hasn't been plugged in there

 

well at least they understand it's not a priority. That feels like progress

 

Mutti, save us!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...HHN2QGdNjXcyr074g7vwazXXCU0VKp687tHOFZCfRBy9c

 

good read here about another outbreak some of us are old enough to remember


“Our Goal Should Be to Crush the Curve” — ProPublica

 

So ... blame soccer?

 

I've thought about this. In one of my first college PR classes, the professor said, "Statistics don't lie, statisticians do." That is a great truism. (Along with, "I don't care what you say about me, just spell my name right." That's why we have the president we have, that's why celebrities, or pseudo-celebrities win elections.)

Where are these statistics coming from? Are doctors stopping what they're doing to alert the statistician? "Hey, we lost another one. Put them on the tally sheet."

On Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, there is (or used to be) an anti-smoking billboard. The message was, this is the number of people who have died this year from smoking-related illnesses. And there was a counter, like the odometer in your car. I wondered who was monitoring that. Is there somebody sitting in an office, getting calls. "Oops, another smoker died. Adjust the totalizator."

 

The benefit is the same as a max unemployment insurance benefit. The difference is that the UI benefit is based on your income with the 2K/month being the max regardless of income.

This new benefit matches the max regardless of what your income is so there are people who will be doing better on the benefit than if they had been working.

 

The max EI benefit is 573 per week.

 

good for Dyson

UK orders 10,000 ventilators from Dyson for coronavirus patients

 

I'd bet Dyson makes good ventilators, too.