Also, Anya is working on a plan to train the raccoons to defend our property.
The great toilet paper run of 2020 … may not be panicked hording the way it is portraits in the media. I work from home, but Anya is in school (well, was). And used the bathroom there a few times a week. Back when I worked from an office, I used that bathroom once or twice a day. That’s somewhere between a 30 and 50 percent increase in home bathroom usage. Per person, per weekday.
Food is apt to have a simialr shortfall – kids aren’t eating lunch at school, uni kids are staying home, office workers aren’t going out to lunch. Plus people at home have more time to make breakfast … So goodbye eggs at the grocery store.
Now, if I am right, that means there’s a surplus of the one-ply commercial stuff no one likes. There’s not a shortage – there’s a surplus in the commercial supply sector and a corresponding shortage in the retail one. Which is a lot easier to solve – check out Staples or online warehouses that specialize in office supplies. And restaurant supply centers may welcome smaller scale orders.
I see charts of the cumulative number of infections (‘the curve’) and the number of tests administered … but comparing the daily number of tests to the cumulative number of infections is not particularly meaningful beyond seeing that the increase in infections is still rather exponential.
A better visualization compares the cumulative tests to the cumulative infections (or, for less staggering numbers, the daily tests administered and the daily number of new infections identified). No, it doesn’t appear that ‘the curve’ is flattening. I’m curious to see, however, the impact of multiple states going into lock-down has in a week or two.
Looking at a number of infections, especially compared across the globe, provides a bit of a distorted view. Comparing countries by the percent of the population that’s been identified as infected instead of the raw number of identified infections avoids the appearance that small countries are less impacted (and that highly populated countries are disproportionately impacted).
I don’t get why we they’re talking about “bail outs” instead of making purchases that solving other problems. I was seeing news stories about people stuck abroad followed by news stories about airlines needing money because no one was flying — paying for flights to bring people back to the US seemed like an obvious win-win. Now there are restaurants going under & kids who are out of school not getting meals. Hotels with no customers and individuals without a safe home in which to shelter. Instead of floating loans or handing out money, *buy* services and fix two problems simultaneously.
In addition to a Science Experiments For Covid19 Break, lots of e-books from the local libraries, the free learn-at-home program from Scholastic, and a handful of new physical books, I’ve got four daily educational activities for Anya during this school not-a-break:
10:30 Cleveland Science Center Curiosity Corner Experiments https://www.youtube.com/user/GreatLakesScience
11:00 Cleveland Metroparks Zoo Animal info https://www.facebook.com/ClevelandMetroparksZoo
13:00 The Kennedy Center / Mo Willems Drawing https://www.youtube.com/user/TheKennedyCenter
15:00 Cleveland Metroparks Naturalist https://www.facebook.com/ClevelandMetroparks
There are two get-moving videos that we’ve checked out … but it’s maple sap season so most of our physical activity is “hike in the woods and collect sap” 🙂
Wednesday @ Noon, https://www.clevelandinnercityballet.org/ does a virtual ballet lesson
Daily, not live, https://www.facebook.com/DominiqueMoceanuGymnasticsCenter/ has mini-workouts
Visualization from Johns Hopkins Uni Center for Systems Science and Engineering: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Testing Stats: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing-in-us.html
Interesting combination of data — there have been 13,624 tests (although the data points for the past few days is currently incomplete) and 1,663 infections. That means like 87% of the people who have been tested weren’t infected. Which could be that they’ve been tested before they are infected enough, or it could be that there are a LOT of uninfected people getting tested. Since the actual number of tests is going to be higher, the percent actually infected is lower.
Governor DeWine announced today that school will be out starting Monday — I guess I understand the need for some logistical wrangling, but it seems a bit odd to say “there’s a public health emergency that requires us to close down all of the schools …. next week”. I wonder how many people will be absent for the rest of the week. It seems like — if there’s enough spread to require schools to be closed, we shouldn’t be going in tomorrow.
It bother anyone that the map on the CDC’s web site
Is missing a lot of data points that the map on NBC’s web site has?
We finally got around to calling Progressive about the difference in my quoted price v/s their renewal price … ugh! The first person we spoke to started out with ‘just cancel the old policy & open the new one’. Which, great — except it’s a pain. And we lose the ‘perks’ that come with being a long time customer. Including some 250$ off the deductible. Start a new policy, have the bad luck to get in an accident, and saving 150$ just cost me 250$. Not a great deal, that. Plus our home insurance is tied in with the car insurance. And the only reason I didn’t just buy insurance from GEICO (who had the lowest quoted price) is that I didn’t want to screw with the home insurance right now.
Luckily, she transferred us to an insurance agent for help. He checked and there was no way they could price the policy we had at the price quoted under my name. He was able to move the reduced deductible over to the new policy (although it’s still a pain that they have no provision for just swapping the names … and it’s even more of a pain that the person listed first makes such a difference in pricing!). Final price was 164$ for more coverage than the policy they wanted 321$ !?!?! Only took an hour and a half to get there! And I’ve got a really bad feeling the same thing can be done with the homeowners insurance. 🙁