People should die

I will start with a bit of thanks. I’m alive. I’m not sick. I’m retired so I don’t have a job to lose. I am able to stay home. Compared to what others are going through boring is good.



Mark Sumner of Daily Kos looks at the numbers of coronavirus cases in the US and around the world. The US moved past 100,000 cases today. That’s more cases than any other country.

China went from 24K cases to 44K in seven days. Italy went from 21K to 53K in seven days. The US went from 19K to 100K in seven days. But we have much more than 100K cases. Because of the lack of testing we don’t know for sure.

A chart of these changes shows the US as an outlier with our rate rising much more steeply. What’s really going on is our curve likely much the same, but the numbers have been off all along. They’re not too far off. There certainly weren’t “just 15 cases” when the nasty guy asserted that weeks ago. But we also don’t yet have mass graves. Sumner wrote …

the numbers that we’re getting show that the situation is bad, but they can’t show how bad, or where we’re going, or how we find our way out.

Two months in, the one thing we’re still screwing up is the first and most important thing: testing.

Jen Hayden of Kos looked at a video put out by Tectonix. The company looked at cell phone location data for a particular beach in Fort Lauderdale during spring break, the first 2 weeks of March. This was a time when public places were starting to close, yet youth were defiant in their partying. Then Tectonix watched the location data as the youth went home. Two things about this. First: Seeing the way these people spread across the country, knowing some of them were infected, even if they had no symptoms, is scary to see. Second: It is also scary that Tectonix had access to this data.



Jim Swift of The Bulwark noted that frequently Democrats criticize GOP policy proposals saying people will die. The GOP responds that doesn’t mean the government should save them. But in this time the GOP variation of the phrase has become: People should die.



Mario King, Mayor of Moss Point, Mississippi, had closed restaurants except for takeout, barbershops and such, and churches. But Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves issued an order overruling mayors and reopening such businesses. King describes the order as “complete foolishness and foolery.” This is going to spike the number of cases in the state.



Laura Clawson of Kos wrote that entire states may have trouble getting equipment to combat the virus.

That’s because the personal grievances Trump seems most focused on right now are with governors—he’s literally threatening resources for entire states if he doesn’t think their governors have sucked up to him enough.
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As if the health of entire states should boil down to personal relationships between governors and presidents, because apparently millions of Americans don’t matter.

Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is one of those who has been critical of the nasty guy.



Ryan Struyk of CNN tweeted a quote from Joe Biden:

The harsh reality is that at least 3 million people now don’t have jobs because our president didn’t do his job when it mattered.

Bloomberg business news tweeted:

The Trump campaign told TV stations they could lose their licenses for airing an ad criticizing the president’s actions in the coronavirus crisis.

Olga Lautman, who researches Russia, responded:

Exactly how Putin handles things. The criminal authoritarian now using a crisis to attempt to silence free press. Media should not allow these bullying tactics and continue reporting facts that Trump intentionally failing to respond and suppress cases will lead to mass deaths.

I’ve written about and quoted Sarah Kendzior, who studies authoritarian regimes. I see Urban Dictionary has an entry for the Kendzior Rule. It’s defined this way:

When you let powerful people commit crimes, they will resurface later and commit more crimes. This will come as a total surprise to everyone who still believes shame is a deterrent to the powerful and corrupt.

After reading that the nasty guy was skeptical of the number of ventilators hospitals say they need, Leah McElrath tweeted:

Trump advised one of his friends and donors to flee NYC and go to a beach town because it would be “safer.”

We have to start acknowledging that Trump KNOWS people will die and WANTS them to die.

Trump WANTS chaos because he can (and already is) use the fog to consolidate power.

Today’s opera is Götterdämmerung, the fourth and final chapter in Wagner, *Ring* cycle. It is the longest, well over 4 hours. So to avoid staying up well past midnight I’m occasionally jumping over the boring parts to get to the Big Finish and its glorious music before I fall asleep. The title commonly translates to “Twilight of the Gods.” This particular race of gods have been scheming and screwing things up for three operas, and it all ends in tonight’s story.

A major character in operas 2, 3, and 4 is Brünnhilde. Whenever you see a cartoon (or anything really) of a moment in opera showing a woman with blond hair, maybe in braids, under a helmet with horns and holding a spear or shield, that’s Brünnhilde. She’s become quite the stereotype of opera. I used such a cartoon when I talked about the Ring when I taught music theory. However, in these Metropolitan Opera productions she doesn’t have the blond hair (it’s red) nor the braids. She doesn’t have a helmet with horns, though does at times have the spear and shield.

The ending: Siegfried (the hero in the previous opera) has been betrayed. Under the influence of a forgetting potion, he betrayed his bride Brünnhilde – lots of dramatic singing. He is killed, stabbed in the back. His body is taken back to Brünnhilde. And the Big Finish: She creates a funeral pyre and lights it. Then she mounts her trusty horse and with it leaps onto the pyre. That action burns down Valhalla, the home of the gods, which allows the Rheinmaidens reclaim the powerful yet cursed ring that was stolen from them in the first opera.