Which folks at the Centers for Disease Control are going to get fired for “incompetence” (if that is what it is)?

The original excuse for the drastic actions, the reasoning that led to the shutdown of our economy, was that 6.6 million people would be dead within 6 weeks if we did not.
Then revised to 3.4M,
then 2.1M,
then 1.2M,
then 600K,
then 200K. (I may have missed a reduction in the revisions somewhere).
The tens of thousands of hospital beds needed….were never needed. The ventilators…..not needed. The shortages of beds and ventilators never materialized…because we did not have even 1% of the cases that were originally forecast. The extra beds in the convention centers were never needed. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent setting up extra medical centers that remained idle.

Even worse than the cost of the unneeded preparations is the cost to our economy. I believe that the percentage of unemployed US citizens is nearly 30% of our workforce.

This wasn’t a slightly high guess of cases…..this wasn’t a minor overshoot….this was a very nearly 99% overestimate. Not high by 20% or even 50%…by 99%. Even New York, the poster child for failure of isolation and “Social Distancing” protocol….missed the mark by well over 98%.

So who in the CDC will be fired? These folks are supposed to be the “experts”. If this is the best they can do (and in a situation like this, it SHOULD be the best they can do), then we need to find some real experts….not the crop of failures we have.
If we really need the CDC as it currently exists.

It is not even worth discussing the layers of incompetence within the WHO here at this time.

Those damned greedy landlords.

There is  push in Chicago (and in many other cities, I am told) to “stop the rent”….Force the landlords to give their tenants a month or more of free rent.
(strangely, these folks sound just like the socialists that demand free heath care, free college, free medical care, free everything….)

These folks are demanding free rent…they claim they can’t pay it. They are getting, after less than 2 months off of work approximately 1.5 times the “normal” amount of unemployment pay, there are free food pantries all over the place. They had the gasoline for their vehicle to do the parade in protest…..And they had the electronics and data services to get them together to do the protest.

But they don’t have the money to pay their rent. Odd, that.

One wonders who is organizing this movement of the terribly poor and downtrodden folks

They also fail to realize that their landlord needs to pay his or her payment to their lender…or they simply don’t care.

These folks look like, and talk like, every other socialist….. “I deserve Free Shit” is the official cry of the “downtrodden”…

So bandanas on Amazon were $2.99-$3.49 2 weeks ago.

Today they are $7.99 each.

Yes, I understand, demand has gone up. Is this not still “Price Gouging” Pricing has doubled. Yet Amazon still allows them to be sold.

When it was Hand Sanitizer, and people were willing to pay even more for it, then it was “Price Gouging”.

Where, I ask you, is the point where marking up when demand increases vs price gouging when demand increases?.

ETA in response to comments:  I have 8 large bandannas already. But I thought I might get more. If you read me often, you will see posts in the recent past where I applauded those who chose to make a profit when they had supply and others a sudden demand….Those who are unprepared should pay for their failure in foresight. 
I agree that they (the vendors) can charge any price they want. But Amazon and other places pulled the Hand Sanitizer when it jumped in price for “Price Gouging”  when demand went up. I just fail to see the difference between that then and today with the bandannas. 


BTW, I ordered a 12 pack….


BTW, I don’t wear a mask, but I am finding places where it makes you stand out, so I thought I’d keep a bandanna in the pocket of each jacket and the car and the truck so I can blend in more, and have some so I can change them out and keep ’em clean. 

Everyone is getting in the game:
African Americans, of course

Black communities impacted disproportionately by Coronavirus.

Plus, of course, Latinos:

Latinos struggle during Coronavirus outbreak

And, of course, the LGBT community:

Gay bars struggle during coronavirus shutdown as LGBT people hve nowhere to socialize

Oddly, I could not find anything on Chinese people’s struggle, Indian people’s struggle, Native American’s nor white people as a whole.

But selected “Minorities” ….that’s different.

Everyone is struggling…some more than others. If you an undocumented worker, guess what? No unemployment. If you are overweight, diabetic or fail to distance yourself in you community then yeah, the virus is more likely to get ya.

I can’t really make a cogent comment on the poor gay folks who are now :socially isolated”…like straight whites and blacks and latinos as a group aren’t also having trouble meeting people now that the bars and churches and other social venues are shut down? WTF?

eh. Everyone is a victim….if they want to be. 

(Hint: I never was…the ship was sent as a political move to calm the terrified mayor who bought the lies of the doomsayers)

Seems that the Comfort is leaving New York, as it has not treated many people….like 180 in 3 weeks.

Apparently, the NYC hospitals never got the surge of people. (And, really, had the worst case predictions happened in NYC, the Comfort would not have been that much help.

How much Federal money does moving the Comfort cost? How much to keep it staffed rather than in a lesser readiness state?

The good news? I don’t have to try to get the  broken insert out of the inlet on the cylinder.

The bad news: I gotta cut off the elbow and replace it ’cause the it isn’t an insert. The whole shebang was one piece and it is done broke off. (Which explains why the easy-out didn’t work…)

The good news: I can get the part, cheap. Local too, or online for a few cents less and a 5 day wait.
The bad news:  I gotta cut the thing off the cylinder and grind the pocket, then weld it in place.

The bad news: the pivot bearing where the pin was broken is also cracked.
The good news, it too is relatively cheap, and it comes out with only a snap ring. Delivery is also easy, see above.

My local source of parts is, of course, the hydraulic shop. Parts are as cheap as online, probably better quality than online, and available now….

And he offered to fix the cylinder for parts cost and not much else and promised to give me a good deal and have it done in 3 or 4 days. And he will make a pin for cheap too. I can have the whole thing fixed for about 125% of my cost for parts….

Fuckit, Imma let him do it. I’m getting lazy.

If the Media wants to…you know, actually help people in this Coronavirus “crisis” (while they tell us how wonderful the hospital workers are, how bad this is for African Americans, how we should all stay home, how we are “all in this together”, while they misquote officials in manners that gin up fear and panic, while they warn us of food shortages while misquoting the industry experts, all the while chanting “orange man bad”…..)

They haven’t helped the country or its citizens one iota with all of this.

If they want to do something to help, they should push 2 things besides “Stay At Home”.

1. Wash Your Hands.

2. Wear the Mask Properly. Stop showing people (especially African Americans) wearing masks on their upper lip, not on or covering their nose. Wearing a mask improperly like that is as useless as a screen door on a submarine. I see lots of white folks and hispanics and asians wearing masks improperly….maybe 10% of the people I see. But African Americans almost exclusively wear their masks not covering their nose….And the media is trumpeting the fact that this disease is hitting them harder than the rest of us….But telling people to wear a mask properly (and showing them and explaining what “Properly” is) might go a long way towards actually helping…..
And showing people in their stories wearing masks incorrectly is certainly not helping.

If they’d push these teo things every program, every news broadcast, they’d certainly do something that the News Media has not done to date….help their viewers and actually make a difference. 

The bad news:

This winter, a tree fell on my backhoe. It’s not a high end backhoe, but a really cheap Chinese made 3 point backhoe I bought new for only 3000 dollars…but it digs well and does what I need it to. It was detached and sitting all alone at the edge of the woods, waiting for springtime jobs….not bothering anyone,just sitting there inoffensively when a half a tree fell on it. Not the largest half, which was good, but the half that fell was over a foot and a half in diameter and it smacked right down on the big hydraulic cylinder that is the dipper cylinder that bends the thing for digging.

When the errant tree fell, it smacked right on the end of the cylinder, then bounced and broke the hose off at the retract port.

The good news: it hit right on the mounting ears for the solid end of the cylinder and did not appear to have damaged the cylinder itself.

The bad news: It appears that the ears that mount the cylinder are bent and the pin itself is bent. The ears are made of 1/2 inch-ish steel and the pin is whatever the Chinese metric equivalent to an inch and a half diameter, more or less.

Not a big deal, I moved the tree with the loader bucket and I got my brother to come help…we put a sling under the knee and bent the arm so we could fish the hose out. The hose was actually easy to remove and the other end was easy to get to rather than buried in the rats nest of hoses where they connect onto the valve setup.

The good news: I took it to a hydraulics place and got a new end on the hose for a price of $8.77. Modern manufacturing is a wonderful thing….I can get a fairly precision part installed for dirt cheap.

The bad news: The fitting where the hose screws to the cylinder was also damaged and cracked and broke off while trying to fit the new hose end onto it. Shit.

The good news: I have an “Easy Out” that fits into the remains of the fitting.

The bad news: Not a chance in hell is that fitting gonna move without some love from the Blue Wrench. And probably two people…and a vise. Maybe some other shit….I dunno And for that to happen, the cylinder is gonna have to come off of the backhoe. The moving end is undamaged, that will be easy. the other end, the fixed end with the bent ears and the bent pin…not so easy.

Well, dammit. I had hoped to not to have to take the cylinder off, as, while the pin was bent, the cylinder did move in the ears and there isn’t too much movement (like only a few degrees) at that end when the backhoe is operating….I was leery of pulling the pin because of the sprung ears that hold the pin and the cylinder….I might have issues getting them to line up again after being bent once I removed the pin to get the cylinder off…..Plus I wasn’t sure the bent pin would even come out of the bent ears.

The good news: Once I removed the retaining bolt, I was  able to get the pin out easily. It wasn’t even bent!

The bad news: The pin wasn’t bent, it was broken. I put a drift pin on the end and whacked it with a hammer and the other end of the pin came right out and fell into the mud. Huh…..Shit.
I’m not sure where I am gonna get a replacement pin for a one-off Chinese manufactured backhoe. I no longer have access to a larger metal lathe, so making a new pin is not really an option. Ain’t likely  I can get a pin from the Chinese factory that made it, either.

I do have the cylinder off now, so I SHOULD be able to get the remains of the broken fitting out and should be able to find another one to replace it with. I am looking for a pin to replace the broken pin with….And I have a plan to straighten out the ears so that I can get the pin back in when I put the cylinder back. Maybe. If all else fails a torch should soften the steel enough that I can bend the ears enough…maybe. Worst case, I take it to the hydraulic shop and have them put a new fitting in, but that gets somewhat pricey…they are a really good shop. but they aren’t cheap. But maybe they can source a pin for me….

We shall see. But hey, this activity is getting me out of the house and yet letting me stay away from everyone….so far, anyway.

See a parallel between the ads and the community sacrifice happening today and the same sort of ads (only print instead of video) and the community sacrifice that happened during World War 2?

I mean, the ads are now running showing people “donating PPE” to hospitals….Donating MONEY to hospitals….sacrificing for the good of the nation. (yes, I actually heard those words on CBS). All of this accompanied by video of people hugging folks donating such items.

The parallels are clear. Along with the oft repeated slogan “We are all in this together”.

While the Covid-19 virus IS a dangerous disease, causing a pandemic that rivals (or possibly slightly exceeds) the severity of any of our past flu outbreaks (except, perhaps, the “Spanish Flu”) there is a great deal of Social Engineering taking place here. People have been led into panic, have been conditioned from the beginning to accept barely Constitutional “Stay at home” orders, first told NOT to wear masks, then, when told TO wear masks, they jumped into that wholeheartedly…to the point that it is now a fashion.…..Now the “We are All In This TOGETHER” message…..Odd.

I’m not sure who is engineering the Social Message…but it isn’t random. Someone is managing this. Probably the same folks who ginned up the unreasonable fear from this disease in the first place.

I find it scary that whoever is engineering this message (and lets face it, LOTS of companies are putting their name on the message, and I find it odd that the message is the same, from many different companies….) is working so closely to the same propaganda map that was used for WWII….and that it is working so well. The enemy is, of course, not the Germans nor the Dirty Japs, but a disease…..But the parallels are, frankly, frightening when it comes to the Social Conditioning aspects. 

Look: I think that the CoronaPanic is somewhat overblown.

If you take New York (the Metro area, not the state…but including the edge of New Jersey where people commute from) out of the equation, then this isn’t much worse than a standard Flu season, although a bit more time compressed.

There is a HUGE push to “reopen” the economy, releasing folks to go back to normal, for whatever level of normal they can recover to.

I’m not so sure if that is a good idea….

I mean, we have done the Kinda-sorta mandated but without any force of law but still sorta semi enforced “lockdown” bit….and have damaged our economy to the point where the ripple effect of the damage will be felt for months, if not years

And yet, really, what will another two weeks hurt at this point? Schools are closed for the rest of the year, pretty much all large gatherings (ball games, races, concerts, etc) are cancelled until at least mid summer….
People are laid off but are now getting some unemployment, so another week or three won’t appreciably change their economic position…..Businesses are getting some relief, (some of them, anyway) and things have, for the most part, stabilized on the economic front.

I’d hate to see a minor downtrend change back to an upward tick in cases or even deaths in a week or so after the “reopening” of the country. Another two weeks will tell us for sure., at a small economic price. And another 21 days gives even more time for the curve to decay another two cycles…no matter what the curve actually looks like.

I’d hate for all the sacrifice and economic damage we’ve already done to be wasted. At this point, we might as well make sure. I would think another three weeks , say May 10th-ish would not be a bad idea.

We are fucked economically either way, so why not?