OT: Coronavirus 2, the No Politics Version

[RangerJoe]

Calgary father fights $1,200 COVID ticket for children's soccer drills

A Calgary father says he was slapped with a huge ticket for violating COVID-19 physical-distancing requirements while his children and some friends brushed up on their soccer skills, despite going out of his way to comply with the provincial rules.

Cenek Patik says it started May 9 when he, four other parents and five children including one of his, were working on soccer skills development at the Deerfoot Athletic Park.

Patik was using a net to keep two players separated. The father of three also used traffic cones to mark boxes on the field, about 10 metres apart, for players to pass the ball back and forth.

He says at all times physical distancing was being carefully observed.

Leave the park or get a ticket

But not everyone agreed.

"The police officer shows up and says 'soccer is cancelled,' We were not allowed to be playing soccer and we need to leave the park," Patik told CBC News.

"We tried to talk to him. We said we were not playing soccer. We were social distancing. He said leave the park or get a ticket."

Patik said something didn't feel right about the interaction. He had followed the province's updates on what is acceptable and what is not.

So he filed an informal complaint with police and asked Alberta Health Services for an opinion.
.
.
.
"This is not prohibited providing there are not more than 15 of you, the equipment you are using belongs to you, and that people within your party are practising physical distancing.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/calgary-fathe ... 48523.html

He was the only one to get a ticket. [&:]

[Lowpe]

This article isn't for everyone, but it is interesting.

The 2006 Origins of the Lockdown Idea

https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-o ... down-idea/

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Calgary father fights $1,200 COVID ticket for children's soccer drills

A Calgary father says he was slapped with a huge ticket for violating COVID-19 physical-distancing requirements while his children and some friends brushed up on their soccer skills, despite going out of his way to comply with the provincial rules.

Cenek Patik says it started May 9 when he, four other parents and five children including one of his, were working on soccer skills development at the Deerfoot Athletic Park.

Patik was using a net to keep two players separated. The father of three also used traffic cones to mark boxes on the field, about 10 metres apart, for players to pass the ball back and forth.

He says at all times physical distancing was being carefully observed.

Leave the park or get a ticket

But not everyone agreed.

"The police officer shows up and says 'soccer is cancelled,' We were not allowed to be playing soccer and we need to leave the park," Patik told CBC News.

"We tried to talk to him. We said we were not playing soccer. We were social distancing. He said leave the park or get a ticket."

Patik said something didn't feel right about the interaction. He had followed the province's updates on what is acceptable and what is not.

So he filed an informal complaint with police and asked Alberta Health Services for an opinion.
.
.
.
"This is not prohibited providing there are not more than 15 of you, the equipment you are using belongs to you, and that people within your party are practising physical distancing.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/calgary-fathe ... 48523.html

He was the only one to get a ticket. [&:]

He can take his case up with a judge. He was being careful but I am not sure he can say the group "owned" the equipment since they were kicking the ball amongst several families - sharing it in essence. If each family had their own ball and didn't share, I would say they followed all the rules. Having said that, a judge will probably quash the ticket as being too severe given their efforts to distance themselves. I hope he took video of his setup for evidence.

[BBfanboy]

Here's a brilliant Russian solution to the problem of PPE making medical staff too hot!

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/co ... li=AAggFp4

The headline says swimsuit but the picture says underwear.

[Lowpe]

Will NYC become a ghost town? 80% of one landlord's retail tenants skipped April and May rent as companies 'take a field day' from office lease payments while weighing permanently working from home - triggering an 'alarming' drop in tax revenue

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... gs-on.html

[Canoerebel]

Yesterday, radio news said that the Mall of American had missed a mortgage payment or two. The loan is more than a billion dollars.

[JohnDillworth]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Will NYC become a ghost town? 80% of one landlord's retail tenants skipped April and May rent as companies 'take a field day' from office lease payments while weighing permanently working from home - triggering an 'alarming' drop in tax revenue

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... gs-on.html

The headline is a bit loaded. I'm sure one landlord has 80% of his retail tenants skipping payments. That does not mean that 80% of all retail tenants are skipping payments. One of my complaints about NYC is that in he last 10 years gentrification has eliminated so many mom and pop stores and along with that much of the street level charm of the city. So many small shops with charterer have been replaced by blocks of generic chain stores. I'd say that 60% of NYC's store front retail consists of chain stores. A typical block will have a Chase Bank, a CVS store, 2 or 3 chain fast food store (some are high end fast food but chains nonetheless), a TD Bank, A Duane Reade a Gap, a Sephora ect, ect,ect. The point is these are corporate entities and they are paying rent. So when this is all said and done there will be more chain stores and even less mom and pop stores. Add in restaurants and bars that will not make it through and you get more gentrification and homogenization. Manhattan and half of Brooklyn was already a lost cause before this started. Now commercial real estate is another thing entirely. In the short run things won't change much financially because big tenants are locked into long term leases (10 years is not unusual). Once those leases are however, who knows? The world will not be the same. The world of millions of people getting on trains and commuting into the city to sit at millions of cubes and then go out to restaurants and bars after work died in early 2020 and is never coming back. Another thing that will die is high rise condominiums full of tiny apartments that cost a fortune but you get to live in the city. Nobody wants those anymore. Commuter suburbs will be the big winner. After being locked in their tiny spaces for a few months the prospect of a house and yard is suddenly appealing. In this shattered economy house prices in the nicer suburbs have gone up instantly and some never even hang a shingle out saying for sale. It goes on the market and sells well above the asking price. Problem is those suburbs are well served by trains but people are not going to be comfortable getting on trains to commute but driving was impossible before so that is not really an option. They need to restore confidence in mass transit. NYC and the suburbs are coming back to life. The virus is on the run, hot spots get knocked down quickly, folks are good wearing masks and we have solid testing and contract tracing programs in place. Not quite there yet and we have to figure out how to reopen lots of stuff but the aggressive steps taken are staring to pay off in a big way. I'm looking forward to a few months of enjoying some of the museums and such before the tourists come back and clog everything up again. Tourism is one of he big industries here and it will be back all too soon. A necessary evil

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

This article isn't for everyone, but it is interesting.

The 2006 Origins of the Lockdown Idea

https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-o ... down-idea/

A very nice article. Thank you.

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Here's a brilliant Russian solution to the problem of PPE making medical staff too hot!

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/co ... li=AAggFp4

The headline says swimsuit but the picture says underwear.

Well, the old man in the picture definitely had his attention on the nurse . . . [:D]

[RangerJoe]

No Lockdowns: The Terrifying Polio Pandemic of 1949-52

The current pandemic is different because, instead of targeting the vulnerable populations, we’ve gone for society-wide one size fits all at nearly the national and global level, and certainly the state level. That’s never happened – not with polio, not with the Spanish flu, the 1957 flu, the 1968 flu, or anything else.

As the health official quote above said of the polio epidemic: “Nobody can shut down intercourse of people in communities.” Our rights survived. So did human liberty, free enterprise, the Bill of Rights, jobs, and the American way of life. And then polio was eventually eradicated.

The slogan for polio eradication – “Do everything you can within reason” – seems like a good rule of thumb for the management of future pandemics.

https://www.aier.org/article/no-lockdow ... f-1949-52/

[Canoerebel]

The nurse works at a Tula medical center.

In the mini-series about Chernobyl, the rough-and-ready miners are from Tula - the ones who end up working in the nude. It must be a regional "dialect."

[Jorge_Stanbury]

Virus ‘does not spread easily’ from contaminated surfaces or animals, revised CDC website states

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... e_-9i6fZ5c

[sPzAbt653]

China’s New Outbreak Shows Signs the Virus Could Be Changing

May 20, 2020, 5:00 AM EDT
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... n-in-wuhan

Second Waves That Are Hard to Trace Plague Asia’s Virus Recovery. 46 cases have been reported over the past two weeks spread across three cities, a resurgence of infection that sparked renewed lockdown measures over a region of 100 million people.

[sPzAbt653]

All Chinese Regions Now Downgraded to 'Low' Risk Level

May 7, 2020

Starting Thursday, all regions across China are now at a ‘low’ risk level.

'Now it starts again': new coronavirus outbreaks spark unease in China

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... e-in-china

A week after China designated all regions in the country as low or medium risk, Chinese authorities reclassified Shulan as high risk. In the city of Wuhan, where the virus originated at the end of last year, Chinese authorities also reported five new cases on Sunday.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

There is some margin for people to interpret data differently but probably not as much as feared. If an instruction were handed down by a governor or the head of a state health department to "cook the books" to paint a rosier picture, or a bleaker picture, there would be leaks, the press would get ahold of the story, and the instigator would be hounded or demolished. It's far more likely that variations in reporting/tabulating are good faith differences in how jurisdictions or entities or individuals do things. As we've noted before, there is merit in the statistics, especially as long as a given jurisdiction is consistent in reporting. Thus, if Belgium reports 200 deaths on April 15 and 25 today, it means something, even if Belgium counts differently than Denmark.

I'm not suggesting that anyone is purposely cooking books or anything like that. I'm just saying this is a group that loves numbers, and just cautioning you that the basis for the numbers being released is NOT consistent and this is known. If you understand that statement, then you understand why I am urging caution.

The data is being released because of the need to provide something to the public that they can understand. It isn't being done to intentionally mislead, its just that at this point even the Wharton graduates need another couple of months to get all the data onto a consistent basis, and then it will take another month to get the required 3-4 peer comparables to confirm. My guess on this is Aug, but it might slip another month or two.

Until then, we use other, more consistent data to infer what we need to know. You can't explain this to the masses, it isn't that it's rocket science, it actually is considerably more advanced mathematics than that. [;)]

[sPzAbt653]

Guys, it's beyond Flu Season so of course we will see 'numbers' lesson. Regardless the 'curve' or '% detected' or 'numbers of ICU beds', I still see 40-70 people dieing each day in my home state. That is one State in the USA. So I can't buy into the Positive Side and don't see how anyone else can. Aren't we in the 'Lull in the Action' that we are all used to seeing on the front lines? Shouldn't we be preparing to protect our selves and especially our HQ's [Parents and Elderly] for when the enemy launches a new offensive? Shouldn't we be stocking up on ammo and conserving the rations? Giving our few vests to the women, children and elderly? Why are restaurants closed while some go hungry and some of us are paid to stay at home? Why not pay the reataurants to stay open so that they can deliver food to the hungry?
I wish there was, but it seems there is no SuperMan®. Who else can we rely on ?

[JohnDillworth]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The nurse works at a Tula medical center.

In the mini-series about Chernobyl, the rough-and-ready miners are from Tula - the ones who end up working in the nude. It must be a regional "dialect."

A fine piece of TV. My favorite quote is at the end when they tell Legasov how this ends in the public eye.
"Why worry about something that isn't going to happen?" Oh, that's perfect. They should put that on our money.

[JohnDillworth]

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

Guys, it's beyond Flu Season so of course we will see 'numbers' lesson. Regardless the 'curve' or '% detected' or 'numbers of ICU beds', I still see 40-70 people dieing each day in my home state. That is one State in the USA. So I can't buy into the Positive Side and don't see how anyone else can. Aren't we in the 'Lull in the Action' that we are all used to seeing on the front lines? Shouldn't we be preparing to protect our selves and especially our HQ's [Parents and Elderly] for when the enemy launches a new offensive? Shouldn't we be stocking up on ammo and conserving the rations? Giving our few vests to the women, children and elderly? Why are restaurants closed while some go hungry and some of us are paid to stay at home? Why not pay the reataurants to stay open so that they can deliver food to the hungry?
I wish there was, but it seems there is no SuperMan®. Who else can we rely on ?

It's a mindless and unrelenting microbe. It doesn't care what our opinion of it is and what numbers we report, what we open or what we close. If it can find a new host, it will. It certainly isn't gone. It just isn't spreading out of control in so many places. That doesn't mean it is under control. If it finds an uninfected population in a high enough concentration it will rampage. No, there is no Superman, there is only us, and that will have to be enough. Perhaps we are getting a bit closer to figure out how it best transmits. Our understanding of that has changed, hopefully evolved, over the last few months. So maybe not surface transmission or aerial transmission but person to person transmission? I think that is the latest understanding. OK, not sure I'm ready to get on an elevator with other people just yet. Hopefully we will get a better understanding of this before schools open. That is going to be a challenge because if it starts spreading through schools, even if the students are mostly carriers, its is going to be an ugly fall.

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

Guys, it's beyond Flu Season so of course we will see 'numbers' lesson. Regardless the 'curve' or '% detected' or 'numbers of ICU beds', I still see 40-70 people dieing each day in my home state. That is one State in the USA. So I can't buy into the Positive Side and don't see how anyone else can. Aren't we in the 'Lull in the Action' that we are all used to seeing on the front lines? Shouldn't we be preparing to protect our selves and especially our HQ's [Parents and Elderly] for when the enemy launches a new offensive? Shouldn't we be stocking up on ammo and conserving the rations? Giving our few vests to the women, children and elderly? Why are restaurants closed while some go hungry and some of us are paid to stay at home? Why not pay the reataurants to stay open so that they can deliver food to the hungry?
I wish there was, but it seems there is no SuperMan®. Who else can we rely on ?

It's a mindless and unrelenting microbe. It doesn't care what our opinion of it is and what numbers we report, what we open or what we close. If it can find a new host, it will. It certainly isn't gone. It just isn't spreading out of control in so many places. That doesn't mean it is under control. If it finds an uninfected population in a high enough concentration it will rampage. No, there is no Superman, there is only us, and that will have to be enough. Perhaps we are getting a bit closer to figure out how it best transmits. Our understanding of that has changed, hopefully evolved, over the last few months. So maybe not surface transmission or aerial transmission but person to person transmission? I think that is the latest understanding. OK, not sure I'm ready to get on an elevator with other people just yet. Hopefully we will get a better understanding of this before schools open. That is going to be a challenge because if it starts spreading through schools, even if the students are mostly carriers, its is going to be an ugly fall.

New reports suggesting children are about half as likely to contract Coronavirus.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... oronavirus

[JohnDillworth]

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653

Guys, it's beyond Flu Season so of course we will see 'numbers' lesson. Regardless the 'curve' or '% detected' or 'numbers of ICU beds', I still see 40-70 people dieing each day in my home state. That is one State in the USA. So I can't buy into the Positive Side and don't see how anyone else can. Aren't we in the 'Lull in the Action' that we are all used to seeing on the front lines? Shouldn't we be preparing to protect our selves and especially our HQ's [Parents and Elderly] for when the enemy launches a new offensive? Shouldn't we be stocking up on ammo and conserving the rations? Giving our few vests to the women, children and elderly? Why are restaurants closed while some go hungry and some of us are paid to stay at home? Why not pay the reataurants to stay open so that they can deliver food to the hungry?
I wish there was, but it seems there is no SuperMan®. Who else can we rely on ?

It's a mindless and unrelenting microbe. It doesn't care what our opinion of it is and what numbers we report, what we open or what we close. If it can find a new host, it will. It certainly isn't gone. It just isn't spreading out of control in so many places. That doesn't mean it is under control. If it finds an uninfected population in a high enough concentration it will rampage. No, there is no Superman, there is only us, and that will have to be enough. Perhaps we are getting a bit closer to figure out how it best transmits. Our understanding of that has changed, hopefully evolved, over the last few months. So maybe not surface transmission or aerial transmission but person to person transmission? I think that is the latest understanding. OK, not sure I'm ready to get on an elevator with other people just yet. Hopefully we will get a better understanding of this before schools open. That is going to be a challenge because if it starts spreading through schools, even if the students are mostly carriers, its is going to be an ugly fall.

New reports suggesting children are about half as likely to contract Coronavirus.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/202 ... oronavirus

Perhaps their theory is correct. In practice, school employees that come in contact with school children die in large numbers. 65 in NYC including 28 teachers. They closed he schools fairly early but if you knowingly open them again and the virus is still around should we expect a different outcome? Can you test and protect 1 million students and teachers? Not perfectly. And when there seems to be some new pathology that effects children https://abc7ny.com/teacher-deaths-by-co ... c/6133083/