A widely circulating Google document claiming to have identified a potential treatment for COVID-19 in consultation with Stanford’s School of Medicine is not legitimate. Stanford Medicine was not involved in the creation of this document, nor have we published a study showing the effectiveness of this drug. Please click here for accurate information about COVID-19, and please consult a physician before taking any sort of prescription medication.
No surprise that Taiwan mounted one of the most successful efforts to contain COVID to date. Transparent, vibrant, and innovative democracies like Taiwan always respond faster and more effectively to pandemics than authoritarian regimes. Secretary Pompeo@SecPompeo Tweets with no apparent irony on the day US cases go over 1.5 million with over 90,000 deaths compared to Taiwan’s 440 cases and 7 deaths.
Sunday, we lived high from the supply chain breakdown.
For lunch, we had takeout Dim Sum from H. L. Peninsula Restaurant in South San Francisco. H. L. Peninsula is a large Dim Sum and banquet restaurant based in China and we ordered the Stir-fried Lobster Noodles on special for $14.99 and it included a full lobster. Our first reaction upon opening the box was shock but then it occurred to us that, in another time, they did a lot of banquet business and lobster dishes were great for celebrating. Now, with zero banquets, they have too many lobsters.
For dinner, we had duck breast curry. A neighbor had posted on a local bulletin board that they had a friend in Sonoma who owned a duck farm that supplied ducks to restaurants and that business had dried up leaving them with a passel of dead ducks they had to get rid of. Michele got two huge duck breasts for six bucks a pound and six legs – and thighs – for about seven bucks a pound.
Our orchids, which spend most of the year outside, have no idea that the world has changed this spring.
Nor does our Aloe Plicatilis which we bought from Grigsby’s Cactus Gardens probably fifteen years ago.
We want our politicians transparent, yet we want them powerful as well, and power, even in the best of circumstances, means the management of information and telling the truth is not managing the information. Nathan Heller writing in The New Yorker about Jimmy Carter.
In a way, by doing all this testing, we make ourselves look bad, President Trump said last Thursday, May 7th.
Katie, she tested very good for a long period of time, and then all of the sudden she tested positive … this is why the whole concept of tests aren’t necessarily great … today, I guess, for some reason, she tested positive. President Trump in a speech on May 8th.
Today, San Mateo County announced that even as the state eases up it will continue the quarantine and start testing about fifteen hundred people a day with the goal of testing everybody in the county. At that rate, it will take more than a year, but it is a start, at least. In the meanwhile, cases of COVID-19 continue to rise at a rate that will double the current number of 1425 in 32.9 days (neighboring Santa Clara County – the heart of Silicon Valley – has 2307 cases but the growth rate has been cut back to doubling every 127 days). In other words, it is still getting worse. We are constantly told that the only way we are going to cut the infection rate is to test – to find out who is infected so they can be isolated – and it makes sense to me. Trying to irradicate the coronavirus without testing is like trying to fight a war without reconnaissance.
Reading the order? directive? – whatever it is, it is more than a suggestion – in both emails and texts from the County and the Mayor of our little burg gets me thinking about why Donald Trump is so resistant to testing. All politicians want to control the narrative and President Trump more than most, it is what his background as a Developer has taught him. But testing is its own narrative and that is a narrative that is not controllable unless we don’t have testing.
Reported US coronavirus deaths: Mar. 3: 9 deaths Apr. 3: 7,152 deaths May 3: 67,682 deaths from a Tweet by Ryan Struyk@ryanstruyk
I just found out that the two most powerful people in the country do not drink alcohol.
Today, I received an email with a question on President Trump’s performance, it was multiple choice; great, good, okay. That doesn’t seem to be completely impartial.
