One Hundred Thousand

Yesterday the protections for the tech media giants were removed by Executive Order. There is a class action suit being prepared, and the big G took about a 400 point dive on the news. (Will be watching the news to see what happens today. Really glad I’m not heavily into stocks right now.)

Tip of the spear. Changes coming from what I can see.

Ironically, by removing the protections for tech companies, the executive order only increases the pressure on social media platforms to label and/or remove misleading content, which seems to have been the original “problem” that triggered the order.

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Just keep an eye on what happens today. Holy crap. This is not going to end well.

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Before this discussion gets derailed into a space that I had not intended, I just want to present this other free laser design, which will fit onto the bed of your Glowforge.

I call it “One” and it is the only way our species will survive this challenge - together.

One

Thank you, and be well.

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I like it!

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Statistically though we’ll get pretty good numbers - CT’s deaths by month are double in April & May from what they were in the same months in 2019. Those are “excess deaths”. We’ll see national & global numbers of 2020 vs 2019 that will highlight the delta year to year. The cause of those excess deaths is pretty easily attributable to Covid.

Those won’t be exact because there are always natural deviations year to year but the statistical reliability should be pretty good.

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True, but not what happened even now. Florida in particular got a lot of raised eyebrows when several nursing homes had no reported illnesses because they are privately owned and deaths were bad news. Even now they report to the state but there is no transparency about any of those numbers.

Yeah we found that here too. It was only when the #s started stacking up that they got exposed. A nursing home with 20% of the residents dying over the course of a month got attention. And when it turned into 4 or 5 nursing homes the spotlight got turned on them.

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Locally here, we had a very small nursing home that had 17 deaths in less than 2 weeks. Only three of those were officially attributed to a COVID diagnosis, but eight other residents subsequently tested positive.

I think the thing to keep in mind is that we are still in the emergency response phase of this crisis. The system is too overloaded just trying to save lives to get sidetracked trying to do basic accounting of exact causes of death.

The fire marshall doesn’t worry about identifying the cause of a fire until after the flames have been extinguished. I hope we can all agree that it is still worthwhile to put out the fire, regardless.

There will be in-depth studies to sort it all out eventually.

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This is the ONE image that brings this home to me. Here day before yesterday, gone today.
She is (was) a friends child, 20 years old.

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That’s what the focus on the numbers and “acceptable casualties” miss - there’s a face attached to every number. And they’re not all “at risk” populations.

Sad for everyone.

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I am so sorry for your loss. I think we’ve all had that experience already, or soon will.

The worst part about the individual stories (and I hear this universally from everyone) is the fact that our loved ones suffer and die alone.

I was hoping that would be the underlying effect of seeing the number reduced to a field of anonymous squares. For me it is chilling to think about each of them as a life cut short, a shattered family, and a huge loss of human potential. I get a chill down my spine every time I scroll around that image, in a way that few news stories have managed to capture.

Imagine zooming all the way in and seeing a picture of a different person in every one of those squares. Then imagine the hundreds of surviving squares behind each of these, a bit emptier from the loss.

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This is what happens when people make overreaching decisions about things they 1) don’t understand, and 2) are too emotionally involved in.

Apparently we’ve just thrown out the checks and balances entirely.

And since I can’t think of anything else nice to say, I’ll end there.

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Oh my…this is SO heartbreaking. I’m so sorry. There are many young people in this country…and probably the world over…that need to see testimony like this.

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Oh I’m so sorry! I saw the news report on that… I didn’t realize anyone here actually knew her mom.

That was all over the news… my condolences to her family.

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This is a different girl Jules. Sadly young healthy people can be affected too. Deavon was just watching TV and suddenly couldn’t breathe. She died of a pulmonary embolism. Covid is not confirmed, but suspected. Who is the girl in your picture?

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Owens was the last name, but she was early in the outbreak (A suicide due to fear, not the actual virus. I think she was in the UK though.) They look awfully similar allowing for the inevitable Photoshop touch up work that happens…that’s why I thought it might be her.

Well, I’m sorry for your friend. Hope it doesn’t turn out to be COV-2 related, although I suppose that isn’t much comfort either.

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What I have yet to understand is NY(state) forcing nursing homes and assisted living to take back residents tested positive for Covid while also talking about how dangerous it was for old people. That lasted about two weeks before the governor’s order was rescinded. About the same time Michigan said hold my beer, and made nursing homes state sanctioned Covid quarantine locations. Anyone tested positive gets sent to one, and the order was just renewed a bit ago. :man_facepalming:
While Covid is killing these people…I’m not sure Covid is actually to blame when the victims were purposely put in danger.

And while some places have seen medical facilities stressed, many more are hurting and most have laid-off or otherwise reduced staffing because there weren’t enough patients in the hospitals. My work slashed 20% hours across the entire hospital, suspended already approved raises, froze hiring, suspended matching retirement contributions, halted any new education grants, and I’m sure a number of other things that we low level grunts weren’t told about.

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My wife was supposed to have her annual check-up next week but her doctor just rescheduled for December. We were surprised because we figured it’s not a high exposure kind of procedure, never more than a couple of other people in the waiting room and they ought to be able to use the income.

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When I was growing up, my hometown was roughly 100K people. I can’t even. :frowning:

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