Monday, April 06, 2020

PLAGUE REPORT FROM STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA

by Bob Walsh

Things may not be looking up, but they are not looking down. Some paper products are starting to work their way back into the stores, with a bit of luck cleaning products will follow. I could make a fortune right now with a case of Purell and a case of Lysol. Food is now in pretty good shape and gas is easily available and relatively cheap.

Most gun store are re-opened, though stock in many is very, very thin. In some not so. I have hit two of the three good size gun stores in town in the last couple of days. One looked like a plague of locust had gone thru. One was stocked well in firearms, but ammo was almost gone.

I can't get in to the Dr. to get my cortisone injection as they do not consider it urgent. I am therefore walking slowly, poorly and painfully. I am not sure I agree with their assessment, but there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. Also my dentist is closed down for the duration.

The powers that be are now recommending people wear a mask when they go out, just not a medical mask, which they want reserved for medical staff. They are saying that a home made mask works very well. I am unsure I believe "them." One of the things they are saying is that a mask made of two layers of thin cotton, like t-shirt material, with a pocket in the middle is very effective. You put one layer of paper towel in the pocket and change that at regular intervals. That actually makes a modest amount of sense to me. The glove situation is still very bad if you need a lot of gloves on a regular basis.

I saw on the news yesterday some moron sent a flock of Covid-19 patients to one of the hospital ships. They whole idea was they were suppose to NOT take Covid-19 patients. They are now working on a cure / fix for that.

Governor Cuomo is still acting like an asshole, accusing everybody else on the planet (mostly Donald Trump) of peeing in his corn flakes. In actuality he and his road dogs had their heads up their asses well into this thing. They were the ones calling Trump a racist for shutting down air traffic from China. Gavin Newsom is actually saying good things about Trump. Deservedly so.

Two days ago, after ensuring they had an infection-free staff, Northern Command buttoned up Cheyenne Mountain. That hasn't been done since 9-11. The military command staff want to ensure that they have at least ONE fully functional command center for the short and medium term for this situation. Smart move.

This bug is hitting First Responders hard.

CA has just decided to get with the program and get nursing students out of the classrooms and into the health care facilities early. It took them 3 1/2 weeks to make up their minds.

There were only two shooting in Stockton over Friday night into Saturday morning. One was a teenager out at 0230 on Saturday morning. Neither one is life-threatening.

It seems like the mitigation program is working, at least locally. The epidemiology people were speculating that it would hit San Joaquin County hardest at the end of April with over 750 cases. They are now speculating it will be the end of May with half that number hospitalized. (These are computerized projections and not necessarily real numbers.) As of yesterday there were 185 confirmed Covid-19 cases in the county with 11 deaths.

I have heard is speculated on the news that CA actually got hit much earlier but much lighter than New York, and that CA had time to build up some herd immunity to the bug. The person doing the talking however said up front that this was rank speculation and that there was no hard evidence to back it up.

Both the local jail system and the prison system are dumping out people who are short to the house, just to get them the hell out of the system. Short term that probably makes sense, but it still makes me uneasy.
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And most important of course, WELCOME BACK HOWIE. i had feared he had been kidnapped by the Haganah for letting his alumni association dues lapse, but it turns out it was merely computer problems. With the supply chain interruptions right now getting a new computer isn't nearly as fast or easy as it once was.

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