It will be months before you can visit one of these places in California. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
The California governor has laid out some general plans on how the state eventually will be taken off lockdown. There are four overall phases stretched over the next year or more. Highlights include:
Curb side pickup from retail stores will be allowed perhaps in weeks.
In-person worship services and getting a haircut will be allowed months from now.
Stay-at-home orders will not be lifted for a year or more.
Schools may start early, perhaps even in July. That will be conditioned upon schools having the ability to maintain safe distances between students.
This discussion will be posted on several of my blogs.
The graphic provided by the state describes the four stages:
The Air Force Thunderbirds and the Navy Blue Angels flight demonstration teams are having a series of joint flyovers of multiple metropolitan areas as a tribute to all the health care providers and first responders.
Saw some video of the flights this morning. Even distant view on a TV screen and just straight line flying was impressive.
Off to the side there was a pursuit plane, obviously taking lots of pictures. When those appear on the USAFand Navywebsites, I’ll post some. In the meantime, here are a few pix of those astounding pilots, for your viewing pleasure.
The U.S Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron “Thunderbirds” fly over Las Vegas April 11, 2020, to show appreciation and support for the healthcare workers, first responders and other essential personnel who are working on the front lines to combat COVID-19. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Cory W. Bush)
Now for a breathtaking break from the negative news on the evaporating economy and fading freedoms. (Ugg. So sorry for the awful alliteration!)
Delightful photos of the B-17 Flying Fortress, workhorse of the U.S. during World War II. All photos courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.
Incredible view from the underside of a formation on its way to Germany:
OVER GERMANY — B-17 Flying Fortresses from the 398th Bombardment Group fly a bombing run to Neumunster, Germany, on April 8, 1945. On May 8, Germany surrendered, and Victory in Europe Day was declared. (Courtesy photo from U.S. Air Force)
The classic photo of B-17s with their escorts overhead.
B-17 -1940s — B-17 Flying Fortresses (Courtesy U.S. Air Force).
Time to use the other side of those signs. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
If the politicians don’t start relaxing the lockdown and letting people pay their rapidly accumulating bills, bunches of people are going to take the initiative and do so on their own.
I sense there is a limited time for those in power to start loosening the extreme restrictions or people are going to start ignoring parts of the rules.
At a deeper level, the concern I have is what’s referred to as the “social contract.” Government gets its authority from consent of the governed.
If a large number of people get to the point of concluding the rules in places like California and Virginia are unnecessarily severe and are causing more health, mental, social, and economic damage than they prevent, people will conclude our leaders have broken the contract.
If we get to that point, respect for law and respect for public officials will decline. That is not a good place to go.
Next two articles point out a small number of people who have already reached that conclusion:
Damage from the shutdown is getting more visible; it is growing, spreading every day.
Hospitals and surgeons have been devastated by stopping what is considered ‘non-essential’ care. Many hospitals may go under. Going under is what farmers are starting to do with their crops. After a panic like we are in, who has liability if anyone gets sick and thinks they caught the bug in a store, restaurant, or business?
With the ongoing shutdown we are getting way out there onto dangerously thin ice. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
We are past the point where the damage caused by the lockdown is greater than the damage caused by the coronavirus. The damage could start compounding. Here are just a few of the recent articles making this point:
4/22/20 – The Hill – The data is in – stop the panic and end the total isolation– A medical doctor says it is time for our leaders to examine the evidence instead of hypothetical guesses and then carefully let the country start operating again. He cites five factors ignored by people who want to keep the country in ongoing lockdown:
Fact 1: The overwhelming majority of people do not have any significant risk of dying from COVID-19.
Fact 2: Protecting older, at-risk people eliminates hospital overcrowding.
Fact 3: Vital population immunity is prevented by total isolation policies, prolonging the problem.
Fact 4: People are dying because other medical care is not getting done due to hypothetical projections.
Fact 5: We have a clearly defined population at risk who can be protected with targeted measures.
Keep in mind California will probably be on lockdown until August and Virginia may be locked down until a vaccine is in use.
Two severe medical problems are being caused by and will be prolonged by the severe lockdown.
A deep freezer, used for keeping large volumes of meat and vegetables frozen. That’s where the economies of California and Virginia are going to be stored for a long time. Image (but not commentary) courtesy of Adobe Stock
Virginia may be closed down tight for up to 24 more months.
California may not open up until August.
August.
There will be incalculable medical, emotional, and financial damage in California and Virginia from the lockdown. More on that momentarily.
This discussion will be posted on several of my blogs.
Good news
On the bright side, getting most attention for opening are:
Texas
Georgia
Other states are thawing because they also don’t want to bankrupt everyone, destroy all the hospitals, further tear down overall health levels, and permanently cripple their economy. List includes:
Will the Grim Reaper get more business from the coronavirus or the shutdown?
Every additional day of the shutdown is causing horrible damage. Not only is the economy suffering with record high unemployment, soon-to-be record high bankruptcies and shuttered businesses, but also there is now and will continue to be a decline in overall health. We will see increased mortality from other causes because of the shutdown. The damage to our freedoms is widespread and immeasurable.
Point made by the author of the column linked below puts it this way:
This is not a trade-off between lives and the economy. It’s a trade-off between lives and lives.
In a series of articles over the last week I attempted, in my own feeble way, to describe the wide ranging damage we are watching grow every day.
The question our governors and mayors urgently need to consider is whether we have already passed the point at which there will be more damage (including deaths) from the shutdown than from the coronavirus.
This post will be published on several of my blogs.
He draws the analogy to a hurricane expected to make landfall at category 5 but deteriorated to a bad thunderstorm the morning it landed. In that analogy the cat 5 which was expected to land on the entire country only hit New York, New Orleans, and Detroit.
The news feels like we are moving ever deeper into an over-the-top dystopian novel. Unfortunately this isn’t fiction.
Another 4 million unemployment claims last week and ongoing attacks on the First Amendment.
About the only job specialty in the country today with bright growth prospects in the near term is trial attorney.
(This post will cross-published on several of my blogs.)
New unemployment claims
4/23/20 – Department of Labor – Unemployment insurance weekly claims – an additional 4,427,000 people filed their initial claim for unemployment in the week ending April 18. Here is another article in case link is dynamic.
This is on top of the four previous weeks of horrible levels of new claims.
Here is a summary of the unreal news. Recap shows number of new claims for unemployment for the last five weeks with a subtotal. The number of people who were unemployed in March is then listed with my estimate of the total unemployment now.
Missed the live broadcast so watched the archived copy. SpaceX put another 60 Starlink sats into their constellation which will provide worldwide internet access. Link to video of the launch is at the end of this post.
Previous missions lifted 362 satellites, so adding these 60 makes 422 by my count.
This is the fourth flight for the booster and the second flight for one of the fairings.
Hat tip to Behind the Black for the legwork identifying additional sectors of the economy that are collapsing. Large segments of the economy I haven’t mentioned before:
Home sales
Housing construction
Apartment rentals
Clothing production
Flower trade
Damage to these sectors won’t immediately heal the moment state governors decide they will allow the economy to come back to life out of its induced coma.
Imagine all that frantic hustle and bustle of Denver airport back in 2018 dropping by 95%. Photo by James Ulvog.
I can barely type fast enough to keep up with the adverse impact on the economy or freedom. Can barely keep up with the news about entire sectors of the economy collapsing. Most recent sectors I’ve learned about: airlines and the entire health care system. Since drafting this post last evening, learned about the destruction in the clean energy industry and saw some stats on the devastation in the restaurant sector.
This post will be printed on several of my blogs.
Airlines
4/20/20 – NewsMax –Big 3 US Airlines May Cut More Than 100,000 Jobs by Fall– At the moment passenger loads are frightening – article says domestic flights are averaging 10 passengers and international flights are averaging 24 people plus crew.
We can now see an extensive effort to re-write the story of the shutdown of the economy. Before that is accomplished it is necessary to put a number of factors on the table so they don’t disappear down George Orwell’s 1984 memory hole.
4/13/20 – American Institute for Economic Research – Liberation From Lockdown Now – Article discusses recent explanations and how we got to this point.
We need to remember this uncomfortable information before it is removed from the discussion.
I shall quote one paragraph from the article to keep the information alive before it is erased from the record. The early advice from the experts was:
“For a family sitting around the dinner table tonight,” said Dr. Nancy Messionnier, a spokesperson for the CDC on January 17; “this is not something that they generally need to worry about.”
Here are a few articles in the last few days describing the economic catastrophe that is expanding daily as we watch. Estimate is out that one out of four employees in Los Angeles are out of work. Higher education as an industry is in danger.
4/14/20 – American Enterprise Institute – The International Monetary Fund’s coronavirus reality check – The IMF expects a worse downturn than the ‘08/’09 Great Recession. Global output is expected to have a US$9 trillion loss in output from what would have been expected.
For the US and Europe the loss will be equal to two years worth of economic growth.
4/17/20 – LAist – LA’s Latest Unemployment Numbers Are Staggering. An Estimated 1.3M Jobs Have Already Been Lost – Percent of LA county residents who are employed is estimated at 45%. That is down from 61% in March. The difference is 16%. Divide that by the 61% employed prior month indicates 26% of the people working a month ago are now unemployed. Data is from researchers at USC.
