Those California Refugees Are Becoming a Problem

They are bringing their earthquakes with them!  The whole house shook, light fixtures wayed.  It was the strongest that I have felt since the Loma Prieta earthquake and the first I have experienced in Idaho.  And an aftershock a few minutes later.  Richter 6.5.

Arsenal of Democracy Part 2

3/30/20 GQ:

As health-care workers continue to face a dire shortage of personal protective equipment and fashion designers and manufacturers struggle to address the dearth, Brooks Brothers announced on Monday that it will begin producing medical-grade masks and gowns, converting its New York, North Carolina, and Massachusetts factories from manufacturing ties, shirts, and suits to producing masks and gowns for health-care workers and others fighting the spread of coronavirus. The company—which, at over 200 years old, is America’s oldest retailer—says it will be able to produce up to 150,000 masks per day.

Fox 32 Chicago:

The My Pillow company is refocusing 75-percent of its production to make face masks for health care workers. CEO Mike Lindell talks about his company's efforts to help battle the COVID-19 pandemic.

50,000 masks per week.

Fox News:

Several members of the media were quick to dismiss the presence of "My Pillow" founder Mike Lindell at the White House coronavirus press briefing despite his company's ongoing contribution to combating the outbreak.

Lindell, who was among several business leaders who spoke at Monday's presser, announced that his company is aiming to increase its production of cotton face masks from 10,000 to 50,000 per day.

He also said a prayer and encouraged the country to dedicate time to their families and religion.

"God gave us grace on November 8, 2016, to change the course we were on," the pro-Trump businessman said. "God had been taken out of our schools and lives, a nation had turned its back on God. I encourage you to use this time at home to get back in the word. Read our Bible and spend time with our families."

However, critics from various news outlets mocked Lindell's appearance at the Rose Garden.

And what the SJWs and lamestream media contributing?  Tears for saline?

4/1/20 Israel National News:

 Medtronic, the world’s largest manufacturer of medical equipment, is currently receiving large amounts of attention for its ventilator. This week, the CEO of the company's Israel division, Yaron Yitzhari, made the decision to release all of Medtronic’s patents for the production of ventilators, in order to enable any company wishing to manufacture them to use Medtronic’s blueprints, for free.

Arutz Sheva spoke with CEO Yitzhari, asking him about his decision and the possible repercussions for the company.

“We didn’t just release the patents,” he clarifies. “We’ve made available all the details of the manufacturing process, for anyone who’s interested in manufacturing ventilators himself.”

It Doesn't Take Much to Bring Out the Totalitarian

Mayor de Blasio threatens to permanently close houses of worship if they do not obey his quarantine rules.



Yet the subways are still open.  3/24/20 New York Times:

As the coronavirus engulfs New York, the city’s public transportation network is slashing service at least 25 percent as ridership plummets and an increasing number of sick workers hobbles the ability to run the system normally.

The decision on Tuesday to cut service on the nation’s largest transportation network came after subway ridership plunged a staggering 87 percent, or nearly 4.8 million riders, compared with the same day last year. Personnel shortages forced the the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees subway, buses and two commuter rails, to temporarily eliminate service on three subway lines: the B, W and Z.

Of course, everyone is staying six feet apart on the subways.

Imagine if President Clinton were in charge.

Today's SQL Question

You have multiple columns.  You want to sum those columns, into sums for each column.  Many of the columns are empty, so I know that I need NVL.  All the examples that I can find involve summming all the columns.

Something like
SELECT DISTINCTROW Sum([incidents].[UNKNOWN]) AS [Sum Of UNKNOWN], Sum([incidents].[AX]) AS [Sum Of AX], Sum([incidents].[HATCHET]) AS [Sum Of HATCHET], Sum([incidents].[KNIFE]) AS [Sum Of KNIFE], Sum([incidents].[OTHERSHARP]) AS [Sum Of OTHERSHARP], Sum([incidents].[BLUNT]) AS [Sum Of BLUNT], Sum([incidents].[EXPLOSIVE]) AS [Sum Of EXPLOSIVE], Sum([incidents].[POISON]) AS [Sum Of POISON], Sum([incidents].[STRANGLE]) AS [Sum Of STRANGLE], Sum([incidents].[DROWN]) AS [Sum Of DROWN], Sum([incidents].[ARSON]) AS [Sum Of ARSON], Sum([incidents].[HANG]) AS [Sum Of HANG], Sum([incidents].[OTHER]) AS [Sum Of OTHER], Sum([incidents].[personal]) AS [Sum Of personal], Sum([incidents].[FIREARM_UNKNOWN]) AS [Sum Of FIREARM_UNKNOWN], Sum([incidents].[SHOTGUN]) AS [Sum Of SHOTGUN], Sum([incidents].[RIFLE]) AS [Sum Of RIFLE], Sum([incidents].[PISTOL]) AS [Sum Of PISTOL], Sum([incidents].[MACHINE_GUN]) AS [Sum Of MACHINE_GUN], Sum([incidents].[AIRCRAFT]) AS [Sum Of AIRCRAFT]
FROM incidents;

but sum(dead) WHERE hatchet=1 and so on for all the weapons.

You Will Never Listen to Either Glen Campbell or Wiliam Tell the Same Way Again

Cool: Access, Excel. Word All Cooperating

Excel updates the queries in Access when you open the worksheet.  Word updates its linked fields from Excel when you open it.

Bringing Back the Bamboo Curtain

When I was young, Red China was said to be behind the Bamboo Curtain by analogy to the Iron Curtain.  It is beginning to look like the decision to open up to China was a mistake.  The hope was that free trade and capitalism would break down the totalitarian government.  It did not; it crated a fascist society; a mix of capitalism and authoritarianism.  It is time to end Most Favored Nation status for China.  I feel for the many Chinese capitalists and entrepreneurs who have done their best to make something of an opportunity for themselves, but the costs are too high.  A society that hides a major health problem too long is too dangerous to trade with.

Ventilators Insufficient Even Before COVID-19?

9/23/09 ProPublica:

With scant public input, state and federal officials are pushing ahead with plans that -- during a severe flu outbreak -- would deny use of scarce ventilators by some patients to assure they would be available for patients judged to benefit the most from them.
The plans have been drawn up to give doctors specific guidelines for extreme circumstances, and they include procedures under which patients who weren’t improving would be removed from life support with or without permission of their families.
The plans are designed to go into effect if the U.S. were struck by a severe flu pandemic comparable to the 1918 outbreak that killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. State and federal health officials have concluded that such a pandemic would sicken far more people needing ventilators than could be treated by the available supplies.

3/12/06 New York Times:

Right now, there are 105,000 ventilators, and even during a regular flu season, about 100,000 are in use. In a worst-case human pandemic, according to the national preparedness plan issued by President Bush in November, the country would need as many as 742,500.

To some experts, the ventilator shortage is the most glaring example of the country's lack of readiness for a pandemic.

"This is a life-or-death issue, and it reflects everything else that's wrong about our pandemic planning," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. "The government puts out a 400-page plan, but we don't have any ventilators and there isn't much chance we're going to get them."

Coyotes in San Francisco

3/27/20 SFGate:

While families' cats and dogs are enjoying the upside of spending days with their owners working from home during the coronavirus shutdown, wild coyotes in San Francisco are reportedly also taking advantage of the benefits of a suddenly empty city.

Any of you remember a series Life After People?

Projections for Deaths

Forecasting COVID-19 impact on hospital bed-days, ICU-days, ventilator days and deaths by US state in the next 4 months

Compared to licensed capacity and average annual occupancy rates, excess demand from COVID-19 at the peak of the pandemic in the second week of April is predicted to be 64,175 (95% UI 7,977 to 251,059) total beds and 17,309 (95% UI 2,432 to 57,584) ICU beds. At the peak of the pandemic, ventilator use is predicted to be 19,481 (95% UI 9,767 to 39,674). The date of peak excess demand by state varies from the second week of April through May. We estimate that there will be a total of 81,114 deaths (95% UI 38,242 to 162,106) from COVID-19 over the next 4 months in the US. Deaths from COVID-19 are estimated to drop below 10 deaths per day between May 31 and June 6. 

I see from CDC that there were 400K-730K flu hospitalizations during our current flu season.  That was spread over a much longer period of time, but it suggests that our system needs more capacity.

One of my online students joined the pandemic with his family.  They are recovering.

Switching to Access Probably a Bad Idea

Word cannot link to Access like it does to Excel.  Excel can get data from Access, but in a not very useful way.  My thought was to import into Excel, and link to Word.

The Access query produces:

category dead

'dead'	'Category'
671	FAM
357	FAMNONRES
15	PRIV
5970	PUB
169	RES
124	SCHOOL
18	UNKNOWN
165	WORK
12	WORSHIP

but imported into Excel all the Category names turn into numbers:

SumOfdead	cause
6	4
3	5
2	8
3	10
11	18
3	20
3	24

even though I imported them as text.  I think Access normalized all the category names.  It is almost like Access, Word, and Excel were written by separate corporations.

And no, I cannot write a book in SQL queries.

Figured it out.  I imported from the old database, not the new one.

It is clumsy.  Link from Excel to Access query results.  Create graph from data in Excel.  Link from Word to Excel objects.

SQL GROUP BY field and SUM

I have a query that sums categories.  But I would like a sum of all those numbers as the last row.
SELECT sum(dead) AS ['dead'], incidents.category AS ['Category']
FROM incidents
GROUP BY incidents.category;
There has to be a way to get a total of all those sums that does not require a separate query.

SQL Question

SELECT count(*) as 'ax mass murders'
WHERE (incidents.ax=1);

Access rejects this as "The SELECT statement includes a reserved word or an argument name that is misspelled or missing, or the punctuation is incorrect."

Missing "FROM incidents"

The count seems too low.

Trying to sum dead by decade was hard but I solved it:

select int(year/10)*10, sum(incidents.dead) as dead from  incidents group by (int (year/10)*10);

How We Do Things in Idaho

Governor orders statewide shelter-in-place.  Gun stores are essential businesses not required to close.

Governor signs HO 516, allowing concealed carry by any U.S. citizen not otherwise prohibited from firearms possession.   Bill text.

How Lethal is This?

The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford has mortality data.Two nations have >10% mortality rates: Bangladesh (no surprise) and San Marino (completely surrounded by Italy). The USA is 1.43%.  That's still scary, but this is not Black Death 2.

Mortality rates by age also conform to existing data: less than 1% of those under 50.

I suspect shelter-in-place will turn out to be the most effective strategy.  During the Black Death, homes were quarantine, but this was often ignored as those not yet sick escaped, infecting others.  Of course the Black Death was very deadly, so escape from the house did little good.

Redirecting Stdout in Eclipse

There must be some way to redirect stdout from the console to a file in Eclipse.  No instructions that I can find look like Eclipse Oxygen.  I used to know how to execute java classes from the command line. (All my early Java programming was using a command shell, the javac compiler, and emacs.  I mentioned in a job interview once and the interviewer was clearly blown away.  IDEs are nice, but hardly necessary.) 

Not as elegant as redirecting stdout:

import java.io.FileOutputStream;

import java.io.PrintStream;

 

 

System.setOut(new PrintStream(new FileOutputStream("output.txt")));

System.out.println("This is test output");

Ada and Canyon Counties Are Now Shelter-in-Place

My old house is in Boise County.  Just relisted for $519,900.

Tragicomic Naval Warfare

Writing Java

Not much activity here because I have been writing a Java program to convert the spreadsheet of horror into SQL commands to create the needed database.  The program is done, but running it finds inconsistencies in my data: misspelling an abbreviation; inconsistent cause codes (ALTERCATION where my standard is QUAR for quarrel; swappin cause and category (LYNCH is a cause; always in the category public).  It is slow work.

Arsenal of Democracy Part 2

During World War II, American manufacturing might turned from consumer goods to weapons of war, making America the great "arsenal of democracy."  U.S. companies made Sherman tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them.  Winning wars is about logistics. 

It is happening again.  Along With Wal-Mart and Amazon stepping up to the plate to hire 200,000+ workers, 3/24/20 Car & Driver:

The General Motors plant in Kokomo, Indiana, is gearing up to begin producing badly needed ventilators for hospitals, in a joint project with medical equipment maker Ventec. The plant currently builds small electrical components for cars. The goal is to start producing the ventilators in early April. 

Reuters reports, citing an email by GM's vice president of global purchasing, that the automaker has already sourced 95 percent of the parts needed for production and is currently looking to secure sources for the last 37 components it's still missing.

Spokesperson Dan Flores said that with GM’s support Ventec is planning on "exponentially higher ventilator production as fast as possible.”

When I worked for GenRad in the early 1980s, our CEO described visiting the GM plant at Kokomo, and his surprise at watching ICs being transported by conveyor belts.  GM does nothing small. 

Los Angeles County Gun Store Closing Confusion

3/24/20 KMPH:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles County sheriff said Tuesday gun shops are not essential businesses and ordered deputies to make sure they were closed during the coronavirus crisis — a move that was contradicted hours later when the county's top lawyer said the shops could be open....

The stay-at-home order is not a license “for everyone to be panic gun-buying or rushing to stores, which is now what we're seeing," Villanueva said.

A few days ago, 3/16/20 Los Angeles captured the hypocrisy well:

All across Los Angeles, from Culver City to Burbank, gun sales are booming. Long before compulsory social distancing became a reality in California, gun stores were already selling out of ammo and staying open late to accommodate a panic-driven run on their wares. According to gun shop personnel, most of the rise in demand is being driven by first-time buyers, including many who have never fired a gun....

 As images of the crowd outside Martin B. Retting gun store in Culver City circulated on social media, motorists would slow to a drift on Magnolia Boulevard and gape at the bizarre scene outside Gun World in Burbank. Some took out cell phones and filmed in disbelief. One pedestrian edging through the crowded sidewalk called out, “It’s not the zombie apocalypse!”

The array of face masks in the crowd were not entirely to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Ranging from paper surgical masks to headgear reminiscent of Bane’s in The Dark Knight Rises, they were also useful to protect one’s identity. This is L.A., after all, and some people were rather sheepish about exercising their right to keep and bear arms....

“You’re not going to describe what I look like, are you?” asked a young screenwriter from Burbank who was wearing a corduroy cap and Warby Parker frames along with his N-95 respirator mask. “I told my wife not to even mention to my friends that I’m doing this.”

In the news vortex that has formed around the coronavirus, the longstanding social taboo against gun ownership in L.A. is losing ground to doomsday imaginings. The screenwriter was seated on a bench beside another “creative,” a music producer from Hollywood, who kept making references to the 1992 L.A. Riots and the AMC hit TV show The Walking Dead. The music producer declined to give his name and admitted the surgical mask was intended to conceal his identity. Owning a gun, he said, “is not really my brand.”...

The father, an Encino attorney in his 50s named Sal, described himself as a Joe Biden supporter and “gun-toting liberal.” He blamed President Trump for the anxiety on display at the store. “When Trump is on TV downplaying the virus, and the medical experts are shaking their heads and then correcting him later, that causes anxiety,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of people doing stupid things.”

Using Map in Java

I need to translate some strings (state abbreviations for example) into corresponding integers.  There is a way to use Map to simplify this, but the examples that I am fjnding are less than clear.  There are three different tables that I need to do lookups in, and each table is static.  I am guessing that the method is something like:

public class Lookup {
    public int LookupTable(HashMap(String, Integer) table, String toLookup)
        return (table.get(toLookup));
    }
}

But how do I statically define the HashMap that I will pass to this method?
This ought to do it, I think.

    Map states = new HashMap();
    states.put("AL", new Integer(1));

But I still get errors  about syntax error on the semicolon on the states.put line.  Every example that I can find looks like this:

    HashMap states = new HashMap();
    states.put(1, "AL");

So why does my put call fail syntactically?  Not in a method.

Writing Java Again

And finding the sort of puzzles that kept me gainfully employed for so many years. Trying to tokenize a TAB-delimited line exported from Excel, StringTokenize almost does what I want.  But empty cells produce two tabs in a row, and it seems StringTokenize ignores two tabs in a row, treating them as one tab.  Mysteries.

Definitely works in mysterious ways.  \
 
t\tThird\tFourth

keeps producing tokens with a single tab character out to infinity (or at least, index out of range).

Curious Email From CDC

Or is it?  The advice all seems reasonable including correct with one this surprising, but very reasonable claim:

Masks work. There is widespread evidence from the field of occupational health, the SARS epidemic, and other outbreaks that wearing masks protects us from germs and interrupts the transmission of disease from sick to healthy people.

 Masks are the best way to enforce the “do not touch your face” mantra we are hearing about for COVID-19. The coronavirus, like all respiratory viruses, needs to enter mucous membranes in the nose, throat, and eyes to cause infection. If you can successfully block access to these critical entry points, you will avoid infection by the coronavirus, flu, and any of several hundred other respiratory viruses. Unfortunately, we humans are relatively unique among mammals in that we continuously touch our eyes, noses, and mouths for seemingly no reason every 2.5 minutes. This behavior is hard-wired and starts in utero. Let’s get real — we’re not going to be able to instantly stop doing something we’ve been doing our whole lives.

And then a link to Amazon.  10 KN95 masks for less than $40.  This seems suspicious to me.  The price is very low and what is KN95?  Or is this a clever spam that puts money in someone's Amazon seller account by pretending to be from CDC?  As several have noticed, there are several indications this is not from CDC.

Can't Have Panic Buying of Guns

3/17/20 San Jose Mercury News:

SAN JOSE — As Bay Area business owners navigated the labyrinthine rules of the sweeping shelter-in-place order implemented Monday, many gun dealers across the region opted to stay open this week, amid a spike in sales apparently driven by fears over the coronavirus pandemic.
But after customers lined up around gun stores in several counties Tuesday — including outside the Bullseye Bishop in San Jose — San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo declared that “gun stores are non-essential.”
“We are having panic buying right now for food,” Liccardo said Wednesday. “The one thing we cannot have is panic buying of guns.”
Law enforcement officials confirmed Wednesday that they shut down the Bullseye Bishop with little fanfare, in one of the first enforcement actions taken in San Jose on the initial day of the shelter-in-place order.

Worth Reading And Calming Down

Apparently taken down by Medium, now here.

Good News, Bad News

3/20/20 WJAR:

(WJAR) — Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo has signed an executive order that extends background checks for firearm purchases from seven days to 30.
The move was made because of a recent run on gun purchases that are overwhelming police forces....
According to a letter from the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs’ Association Sidney Wordell, the number of applications is having a strain on local police department as the backgrounds need to be made within the seven days or the purchaser would be able to get the weapon without a background check.
As an example, Wordell said Warwick PD got an average of 28 applications a day before the run, and now they got 404 in just three days.

As the number of gun owners increase, the political viability iof gun bans falls.

Eclipse for C

Unfortunately, the ddd debugger for Linux has stopped working, at least with new code that I compile.  No symbols.  And yes I am compiling with 0g flag.

So Eclipse for C for Windows 10.  Go simple, build the default hello.c.

Building file: ../src/hello.c
Invoking: Cross GCC Compiler
gccgcc -O0 -g3 -Wall -c -fmessage-length=0 -MMD -MP -MF"src/hello.d" -MT"src/hello.o" -o "src/hello.o" "../src/hello.c"
/bin/sh: gccgcc: command not found
make: *** [src/subdir.mk:20: src/hello.o] Error 127
"make all" terminated with exit code 2. Build might be incomplete.

19:27:22 Build Failed. 2 errors, 0 warnings. (took 2s.473ms)

Any suggestions? And it cannot resolve stdio.h either.


The core problem seems to be that gcc eun from the cygwin shell cannot resolve stdarg.h, nor does it seem to be under /usr/include.

I was hoping to do this project in C, but at least I can write and run Hello World in Java, so I guess  Java instead.Except that import.iava.io.* does not resolve File class.  Maybe I just need to stop trying to program.  Not sure why, but starting over fixed it.  Maybe import after the package statement.  It was six years and several billion brain cells ago.

Too Good to Not Share

Spain is on lockdown, so police arrest... T. rex.  Scroll down.

Black Lynch Mobs

Most people imagine a Southern lynch mob as whites lynching blacks.  (Extra points if you know about the mob that lynched a Jew for the National Pencil factory murder.)  In the West, whites lynching whites fits our prejudices.  But this surprised me:

Wickliffe, Ky. (1901)

9/11/1901: A black mob took three black men accused of murder from the jail and hung them.

Category: public

Suicide: no

Cause: lynch

Weapon: hung[1]

---

[1] “Sight is Grewsome [sic]," Ottumwa Semi-Weekly Courier, Sept. 12, 1901, 1.

Access Gurus

With the assistance of one of my very helpful readers, I am moving the spreadsheet of horror into Access.  (An RDBMS is really the right way to do this.)  There is an incident table with one row per mass murder.  It has an incident_source_id which points to an incident_source table containing source_id (key), article title, newspaper, date, and page number (as one long string) and a URL string.  There can be multiple sources per incident.  (I think I need to add more incident_source_id fields to incident table or multiple incident.id fields to incident_source.) 

Right now, I add an incident in a row until I reach source_id field, at which point I add an entry to the incident_source table, and put its id into the incident.source_id field.  It would be much simpler if I could click some button to switch to the incident_source table, enter that row, and then click another button to go back to incident.source_id with the new incident_source.id going in automatically.  Any ideas?

Nice Visual of Pandemic Sizes Through /history

Here.

FBI Background Check System Swamped

Washington Examiner reports 300% year-over-year increase in firearms background checks.   The January and February numbers are breathtaking: 2.8 million in February (about 1/3 are concealed carry license checks, so probably 2 million new guns sold).   The FBI has issued a warning that is being misreported as end of gun sales.  Where state governments perform the background check for the FBI:

Should a state choose to limit their days of operation or close state offices, this could potentially impact the Brady Transfer Date (BTD) by changing the time in which an FFL can legally transfer a firearm in a delayed status. The NICS Section urges FFLs to be cognizant of the impact this may have to your day-to-day operations, and also to stress the importance of adhering to the BTD that is provided to you at the time a transaction is put into a Delay status. The Brady Act does not federally prohibit an FFL from transferring a firearm after the third business day expires, even if the NICS Section has been unable to provide a proceed response, pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 922(t)(1).

Sales can proceed.  The electronic check is not impacted.  If your name is too similar to a prohibited person and a human has to unravel this, the wait could stretch out.

Emergency Ordinances

A number of cities have passed emergency ordinances granting them power to ban sales of alcohol, firearms, and ammunition.  Some dishonest or sdloppy clickwhores have said that these cities have banned gun sales.  Fresno, for example.  The actual issued regulation says nothing of the sort.  These emergency powers ordinances are nearly identical and remind me strongly of 1960s race riot emergency ordinances.  Why read the boilerplate first?

Kudos to Amazon

Amazon responds to the crisis:

We are opening 100,000 new full and part-time positions across the U.S. in our fulfillment centers and delivery network to meet the surge in demand from people relying on Amazon’s service during this stressful time, particularly those most vulnerable to being out in public. We also know many people have been economically impacted as jobs in areas like hospitality, restaurants, and travel are lost or furloughed as part of this crisis. We want those people to know we welcome them on our teams until things return to normal and their past employer is able to bring them back. In addition to the 100,000 new roles we’re creating, we want to recognize our employees who are playing an essential role for people at a time when many of the services that might normally be there to support them are closed. In the U.S., we will be adding an additional $2 USD per hour worked through April from our current rate of $15/hour or more, depending on the region, C$2 in Canada, £2 per hour in the UK, and approximately €2 per hour in many EU countries. This commitment to increased pay through the end of April represents an investment of over $350 million in increased compensation for hourly employees across the U.S., Europe, and Canada. Read more. March 16, 2020.

Hiring.   Here.

Don't Panic

3/16/20 NPR reports 6353 cases, 108 dead.  That's a 1.7% mortality rate.  This is not the Black Death, nor is it even the Spanish flu.  From 3/16/20 StatNews discussing mortality data from China:

The chance of someone with symptomatic Covid-19 dying varied by age, confirming other studies. For those aged 15 to 44, the fatality rate was 0.5%, though it might have been as low as 0.1% or as high as 1.3%. For people 45 to 64, the fatality rate was also 0.5%, with a possible low of 0.2% and a possible high of 1.1%. For those over 64, it was 2.7%, with a low and high estimate of 1.5% and 4.7%.

The chance of serious illness from coronavirus infection in younger people was so low, the scientists estimate a fatality rate of zero.

3/13/20 The Lancet:

Italy has had 12 462 confirmed cases according to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità as of March 11, and 827 deaths. Only China has recorded more deaths due to this COVID-19 outbreak. The mean age of those who died in Italy was 81 years and more than two-thirds of these patients had diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, or cancer, or were former smokers.

ICU beds are critical.  And guess what backward, market-driven health system has the most ICU beds per capita?  The U.S.

Tsai's Kitchen, Middleton

Best Chinese food I have had in Idaho.  Tiny restaurant, still open reduced hours.  The big winner from this crisis is the shops making OPEN banners.

A Cure May Be Coming Soon

An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus (COVID-19)  And a widely available approved drug.

Approved by FDA. Treating this like an emergency.

3/19/20 New York Post:

Now, French physician-researchers have completed a largely successful clinical trial using the drug — approved for use in the US in 1955 — to treat confirmed COVID-19 patients, according to a study published Wednesday.
A total of 36 patients — including 20 treated individuals and 16 infected controls — were enrolled in the study, led by Didier Raoult, an infectious disease expert from l’Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire in Marseille.
The treated group was given 600 mg of Plaquenil each day.
The researchers found that 50 percent of the treated group turned from positive to negative for the virus by the third day — and by day six, that figure was up to 70 percent.
Of the 20 test patients, six who were treated with both Plaquenil and the antibiotic azithromycin showed impressive results — with five testing negative at day three. All six of them tested negative at day six.
“Despite its small sample size our survey shows that hydroxychloroquine treatment is significantly associated with viral load reduction/disappearance in COVID-19 patients and its effect is reinforced by azithromycin,” the study concluded.

Why Panic is Bad

People with mental health problems respond... poorly.  3/16/20 KTVB:

HORSESHOE BEND, IDAHO, Idaho — A man who shot and killed an 11-year-old boy in Horseshoe Bend Sunday night was yelling about the end of the world and before opening fire, witnesses say. 

The shooting happened at 10:25 p.m. in a mobile home park on Canyon Street.

The Boise County Sheriff's Office identified the shooting suspect as 44-year-old Benjamin Michael Poirier of Emmett. He has no known connection to the family that was targeted, according to officials. 

A Store With Food

Ridley's in Middleton had a no spaces left parking lot.  Bi-Mart in Star had lots of space and a variety of canned foods left.

Perspective: Don't Panic

Some historical perspective.  The 1918 influenza epidemic had a 2.5% mortality rate.  So far the U.S. coronavirus has a 2% mortality rate.  Gina Kolata’s Flu examines why it was so disruptive.  Unlike most strains, which primarily killed young and old, the 1918 strain killed young adults, causing great disruption to operation of the society.  Coronavirus is mostly killing elderly and other immune-compromised populations.   These are individual tragedies, but our society survives tens of thousands of flu deaths each year, mostly of older people.  Europe is hard hit because it has a much older population than the U.S.  

 Smoking is likely a contributor; China produces and consumes 30% of the world’s cigarettes.  This list of cigarettes consumed per year per person is dominated by European nations.

So Utterly Surprised

3/15/20 Los Angeles Times:

Gun sales are surging in many U.S. states, especially in those hit hardest by the coronavirus — California, New York and Washington. But there’s also been an uptick in less-affected areas, with some first-time gun buyers fearing an unraveling of the social order and some gun owners worried that the government might use its emergency powers to restrict gun purchases.

I am guessing many are Democrats who regarded gun ownership as an evil thing three months ago.  Will their enthusiasm for gun bans survive this?

Kavanaugh Not the Only Victim

3/13/20 DailyWire:

Two years ago, a woman named Halina Kuta told Las Vegas police that casino mogul Steve Wynn raped her in the early 1970s and that she was the real mother of Wynn’s daughter, whom she claimed to have birthed in a gas station restroom.
Despite the implausibility of Kuta’s allegations – she also claimed to have been a model for Pablo Picasso’s painting “Le Reve,” which was painted more than 10 years before Kuta was born – the media ran with the allegations against Wynn because of the #MeToo movement’s hysteria over powerful men getting accused of sexual misconduct. Wynn sued Kuta for defamation and has now won.
This week, however, The Associated Press reported that Clark County District Court Judge Ronald Israel awarded Wynn the $1 in damages that Wynn sought from Kuta, ruling that the woman did, in fact, defame the former casino mogul, who resigned in February 2018 as chairman and chief executive of Wynn Resorts.
“I find that Mr. Wynn’s testimony is credible and Ms. Kuta’s testimony lacks veracity in numerous areas,” Israel ruled, adding that Kuta “knowingly made a false report” to the Las Vegas police.
“This was intentional,” Israel added, “although this story seems to be totally fanciful.”

I hope Wynn gets his job back.

Behind the Food Shortages

In 1992, the Democrats used their media to provoke a recession to drive Bush from office; it worked.  A healthy economy was driven into recession.  These days there are alternative sources of news.  But social media now serves a lot of the Democratic agenda.  In this case, there is a real problem, and the media is doing its best to magnify this into an economic collapse to stop Trump.

A bit more positive spin on what we face from this interview with my niece:

And yes the interviewer reminds me of the host on Parks & Rec.

winco panic

Toilet paper, wheat,  and rice all gone.  Long lines, full parking lot, limits on high demand items.

Albertsons is out of rice, beans, and toilet paper.

House Listed

Here.  And apparently someone flying in from Washington this weekend.

There, I Fixed It Is Always Worth Visiting

This welder's spork, for example.

This is Tragic

The good part is that a new group now cares about gun rights.  The bad news is why.  3/10/20 CBS Los Angeles:

ARCADIA (CBSLA) – Gun sales are skyrocketing across the San Gabriel Valley as Asian Americans in the area fear they may be targeted because of their ethnicity amid rising fears about the spread of the coronavirus.

And the comments have idiots holding Chinese-Americans responsible for actions taken by Chinese in China.

52 Mbps

I bought this TP-LINK ac1200 USB device and without the repeater unit, I now get 52 Mbps download.  That's the full speed at the router.   Awesome.

For the Spreadsheet of Horror

I thought that I had figured this out before.

I need a count of rows where one and only one cell in each row contains a 1 in a particular column.  Example (b is a blank cell):
    A B C
1  1 b b b
2  b 1 1 b
3  1 b b b

I want to sum all of column A (then B and C) for each row where [column,row] is 1 but all other cells on that row are blank.  I know SUMIFS is the magic function, but the criteria have me a bit stumped.

=SUMIFS(A1A3,A:A,1,B:B," ","C:C," ")

Add a total column

   A B C D
1  1 b b 1
2  b 1 1 2
3  1 b b 1

=sumifs(A1:A4,D1:D4, 1)

Not quite.  I need another column for each of the columns to test: the total - the column I am trying to make unique.


   A B C D E
1  1 b b 1 0
2  b 1 1 2 2
3  1 1 b 2 1

=SUMIFS(A1:A4,E1:E4,0)


Ifinished this and realized what I really needed was the sum of deaths for each cause of death where only one weapon was used.  So

   A  A B C D E
1  29 1 b b 1 0
2  5  b 1 1 2 2
3  10 1 b 2 1 0



This required adding columns for total columns with a weapon used, then a count of columns - each weapon category. Then for each category of weapon:

=SUMIFS(A2:A6,G2:G6,0)

where A2:A6 is the dead per incident and G2:G6 is the column of weapons total - the count of that particular weapon. 0 means no weapons other than the one for which I am totalling dead.

And yes, I am beating Escel into doing what a RDBMS does.

Enhanced CCW Class

If you need to carry on public colleges campuses (as either student or faculty) or you want to carry in most of the other U.S., you really want the Idaho enhanced carry permit.  A good friend is teaching the required course.



Saturday March 28th , NRA Personal Protection Handgun Course (Idaho Enhanced CCW class)


Idaho Enhanced Concealed Weapon License



Only 5 students allowed per class ONLY 3 SEATS AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME


If you would like to be in the class you need to register on the NRA website HERE:


https://www.nrainstructors.org/CourseDetails.aspx?Courseid=569237&seats=5&State=n&zip=83704&radius=25.1&id=14&bsa=&youth=&women=




After registering on the NRA website, I will be forwarding another email with all the pertinent information necessary for attending the class, address, directions etc.


Saturday March 28th, 2020





NRA Personal Protection Handgun Course
Idaho ENHANCED Concealed Weapon License
12 hour course 8am - 8pm
NRA Personal Protection in the Home Course exceeds Idaho 18-3302K ENHANCED Concealed Weapon License requirement, certificate recognized by all states as firearms training (Though NOT for certain states' CCW , see list below)

$150 Course Fee includes NRA handbook, fliers & NRA Course Completion & Idaho State Police Training Certificates. Classes are small (7 at most). PAID advance registration is required to reserve your seat. Class is open to Instructor-approved citizens who have no felonies or other legal gun-ownership disabilities. Liability Release form signature required.

Course consists of approximately 5 Hours Classroom, 2 Hours on the Shooting Range, 2+ Hours Legal Instruction, 2 hours written test and wrap-up. Includes Basic Handgun Safety, Familiarization, Hands-on Firearms Handling, Shooting Skills & Instruction. Personal security & avoiding violent confrontations will be covered in depth. Safety & Awareness are critical.
Several hours will be spent on the firing range bringing student skills up to standards. Idaho State Law and Federal Law regarding firearms, concealed weapons, self-defense and after-event issues will be taught by a licensed Idaho attorney (formerly served as a public defender, a prosecutor and as an Idaho State deputy attorney general, and often competes in IDPA and IPSC shooting events)
BRING: warm jacket & hat (it gets cold and windy at the desert shooting range) and a button up shirt or turtleneck so no hot brass goes down your shirt to ‘brand’ you and make the event unsafe, eye and ear protection and handgun & at least 2 boxes of 50 rounds of factory ammunition ( Idaho law requires 98 rounds ), lunch snacks drinks notepad highlighter pencil post-its (Don't have a handgun or eye/ear protection? let me know I have a few loaners & can help you select the right one)
T. ALLEN HOOVER
NRA Certified Instructor NRA Training Counselor
(208) 631 3003 PO Box 6232 Boise ID 83707
TALLENHOOVER@AOL.com www.TALLENHOOVER.com THE IDAHO ENHANCED CONCEALED WEAPONS LICENSE IS VALID IN: IDAHO ( & Idaho public colleges) ALASKA ARIZONA COLORADO DELAWARE NEVADA NEW MEXICO PENNSYLVANIA SOUTH CAROLINA VIRGINIA? LOUISIANA MINNESOTA WASHINGTON WISCONSIN as well as states that accept the Basic License: ALABAMA ARKANSAS FLORIDA GEORGIA INDIANA IOWA KANSAS KENTUCKY MAINE MICHIGAN MISSISSIPPI MISSOURI MONTANA NEBRASKA NEW HAMPSHIRE NORTH CAROLINA NORTH DAKOTA OHIO OKLAHOMA SOUTH DAKOTA TENNESSEE TEXAS UTAH WEST VIRGINIA WYOMING. VERMONT (no lisc reqd) Oregon non-reisdent licenses easy to obtain with Idaho ECCW. Total 41 states allow CCW w/ID ECCW. note: List per Idaho State Police 9/2018 - states laws change constantly, this list may not reflect current status. Yellowstone National Park accepts CCWs that are valid in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming (see website) Federal Park Service webpage indicates that which CCW holders may carry in Yellowstone park (but not into buildings of any kind) Shooting, even is self defense is prohibited, so don't unless you are being eaten, and then prepare for legal repercussions.