eVille Times

Jun 8, 2020

Overheard

Q:
You're willing to turn your back on friends because of their politics?

A:
I'm willing to turn my back on them because of the morality of their politics - huge difference.

We can disagree on lots of issues and still be friends - racism isn't one of them.

- abuse of power isn't one of them.

- corruption isn't one of them.

Now, maybe this is one of those times when the obvious isn't what's really happening, but c'mon - the disproportionality is there, and it's been there for decades.

But expand it out and look at the bigger picture - the scope of the problem gets pretty fucking alarming.

And for the moment, let's leave aside the usual complaint that "Oh, I see - now it's a real problem cuz white people are starting to notice how they're being fucked over too."

WaPo:

Despite the unpredictable events that lead to fatal shootings, police nationwide have shot and killed almost the same number of people annually — nearly 1,000 — since The Post began its project. Probability theory may offer an explanation. It holds that the quantity of rare events in huge populations tends to remain stable absent major societal changes, such as a fundamental shift in police culture or extreme restrictions on gun ownership.

Let's keep in mind that All Lives Can't Matter 'Til Black Lives Matter Too, and concentrate on what we can do to make it better overall.

COVID-19 Update

And we've arrived at the magic number on one important metric. Growth Rate for deaths in the US is down to 1.00.

"Only" about 300 new deaths were reported yesterday.

WaPo:

Shutdown orders prevented about 60 million novel coronavirus infections in the United States and 285 million in China, according to a research study published Monday that examined how stay-at-home orders and other restrictions limited the spread of the contagion.

A separate study from epidemiologists at Imperial College London estimated the shutdowns saved about 3.1 million lives in 11 European countries, including 500,000 in the United Kingdom, and dropped infection rates by an average of 82 percent, sufficient to drive the contagion well below epidemic levels.

The two reports, published Monday in the journal Nature, provide fresh evidence that aggressive and unprecedented shutdowns, which caused massive economic disruptions and job losses, were necessary to halt the exponential spread of the novel coronavirus.

There's still a shitload of woods to get through. We can hope that we're seeing the big drop off - the signal that says we can easy up and start to get back to something like "normal".

Of course, we're likely to rush it and put ourselves right back in the soup. And the rush back to normal should be resisted anyway. Let's try to remember that "normal" was kind of a shitty state of affairs to begin with.

If I believed in such things, I'd have to say god is sending us some pretty strong indicators that we need to make some changes.