Swans At Taku Lake on Sunny Grey Day

You can listen to this song as you read.  It should make sense by the end.  

The sun kept a steady beam shining through the clouds as I biked over to Taku Lake today.  I reached my 745 km goal (a vicarious bike ride from Chiangmai to Bangkok) on September 13.  There's a tension between the benefits of riding the bike outdoors regularly and how my knees feel.  It's obvious that three or four days without being on a bike makes my knees feel much better.  I can live with a little pain if I know that the damage done is temporary.  (It doesn't hurt while I ride, just later on.)  

But there was still good biking weather and so I made a new goal.  800 kilometers.  I reached that goal October 4.  So what next?  A quick and dirty calculation of .6 * 800km got me to 480 miles, so I needed 20 more miles to get to 500 miles.  That would be about 32 more kilometers.  It's not all that important and I didn't set out to go that far today.  But the weather was good, everything was beautiful and a changing seasons way, and I got to Taku Lake feeling good.  

At the south end of the lake were four swans (and a number of smaller and darker water birds) taking a rest on their way south.  

Then back home with a stop on one of the many bridges that cross over the meandering creek to  get a picture of the sun's reflection (maybe glare is a more apt term) on the creek.  Although the sky was mostly grey, the sun made its presence known most of the way.  

It ended up being 13+ kms.  All but about three kilometers were on dedicated bike trail in the greenbelt that buffers the creek from residential and commercial streets.  There's only one non-residential street that I have to cross.  So I now had 816.5 kms for the summer.  Time to check precisely how much more before I hit 500.  So I googled 500 miles = x kms.  Turns out the simple .6 rounds off more than I thought.  804km = 500 miles. 

 I was already there when I started.  So know I'll just ride until it's icy on the trails.  Winter biking, will be on the bike with studded tires and only for short distances if there's what used to be a normal snow covering - without ice.  

Meanwhile, I'm working on a post on how the different redistricting plans move me from one district to another.  Enjoy your Sunday.  Find something wonderful - whether it's the bark on a tree or an old picture of people you love.  

Links Of Interest: Hide Your House, Russian Mercenaries, Doctors Without Borders

Some things I've run into recently that may be of interest.  

1.  How To Hide Your House On Google (and other online) maps - street view.

"With the rise of increasingly convenient features such as street-level 360º photos available on Google Maps and other competing mapping services, there’s always a risk your personal data will be captured in a publicly available photo in a way you’d rather avoid—whether than means the outside of your house or the location where you park your car.

If you face this kind of a problem, there’s a simple solution available in many cases—you can ask the mapping service to blur or remove the picture. We’ll going to show you how to do that on the most popular mapping services."

Then it gives you step-by-step instructions.  Doesn't look hard 

2.  Another story I found fascinating - from NewslinesMag. A British reporter, a fluent Russian speaker apparently, pokes around the remains of what had been a Russian mercenary post outside of Tripoli. A story about the Wagner Group.  A couple of excerpts:

"From September 2019, photographs and reports had begun to emerge of Russian mercenaries in Tripoli. They were identified as units from the so-called Wagner Group, a secretive and highly controversial organization of mercenaries that fought first in Ukraine, then in Syria, and later in Sudan, Mozambique, the Central African Republic and Libya.

"Reportedly financed by the Russian catering magnate Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been sanctioned and indicted by the United States for his election interference efforts, the Wagner Group has been accused of acting as President Vladimir Putin’s shadowy expeditionary force, even though mercenaries are technically illegal in Russia. The group has also been linked to the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, from whose ranks its ostensible head, Dmitry Utkin, and other rank-and-file members hail. And yet, as has often been the case with Wagner, beyond such reports and speculation over Wagner personnel’s involvement in the fighting, little detailed evidence had emerged.

"But this spring we obtained a small white Samsung tablet with a cracked screen, protected by a battered brown leather case. GNA fighters said they had recovered it from positions held by Russian fighters in Ain Zara, the area where Haitham had fought. We put it through extensive tests to ensure it didn’t contain some kind of tracking device or malware; we examined it minutely, searching for clues to its users and making sure it was the genuine article. It was."

3.  For a different view of foreigners working in poor countries, we have the group Doctors Without Borders  (MSF French acronym) which saves lives but its local staff says it also  perpetuates colonialism and racism.  I heard this riveting radio show on Reveal the other day.  Decolonize MSF is an organization trying to change how things are done.  It's troublesome.  The organization does a lot of great work around the world, providing life saving care who otherwise might die.  Yet, this radio report is really well done.  It maps out, through interviews, what structural racism and colonialism looks like.  Do go to the website with the audio.  Below is some description from that page.

"The organization, also known by its French acronym MSF, has about 63,000 people working in 88 countries. While foreign doctors parachuting into crisis zones get most of the attention, 90% of the work is done by local health workers. 

In the summer of 2020, more than 1,000 current and former staffers wrote a letter calling out institutional racism at MSF. They say MSF operates a two-tiered system that favors  foreign doctors, or expat doctors, over local health workers. 

On the eve of MSF’s 50th anniversary, reporters Mara Kardas-Nelson, Ngozi Cole and Sean Campbell talked to about 100 current and former MSF workers to investigate how deep these issues run. We meet Dr. Indira Govender, a South African doctor who in 2011 accepted what she thought was her dream job with MSF in South Africa, only to get a front-row seat to the organization’s institutional racism. Even though she’s officially the second-in-command of her project, she says it feels like a select group of European expats and White South Africans are running the show."  

We think of the doctors going from Western countries to help out in poor countries as being better than this and I'm sure many, if not most, are.  But this shows us how blatantly racist some are but also how the separate treatment of foreign doctors and native medical staff institutionalizes the separation between local staff (about 90% of the staff) from those who come to help from overseas.  

Maybe I can believe this troubling story because I've run into this sort of thing.  When I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand I got pressed into helping a Thai dentist negotiate with the Israeli construction company paving the highway near the town I was teaching in.  She needed a translator and so I went along.  After it was over the Israeli negotiator offered me a job because he couldn't trust any of the Thais and was surprised that I could live alone with them.  I was shocked by his view of Thais.

And when I traveled home from Thailand I took the long route so I could visit D who was teaching in Uganda.  I'd met him while I was a student in Germany and we'd hit it off and we traveled together a bit in England where he was from.  There, he came from a modest background, didn't drive, and had dropped out of college without completing his degree to start teaching.  In Uganda he lived in this giant compound surrounded by a ten foot wall.  Inside was like a giant golf course - green grass, trees, and cute little cottages scattered all around.  D lived in one and his car sat outside it.  There was dining hall with white table cloths and napkins and there four or five course dinners served by African waiters.  D's main interactions with Africans was with his students at the elite school he taught at, maybe some African teachers (I don't remember meeting any of them), the waiters and other help in the compound where he lived.  Again I was shocked.  But as we talked it was clear that D was socialized to live separate like this.  That's how all the Brit ex-pats, or at least the ones he knew, lived.  He didn't learn any of the local languages because "everyone speaks English" in this recently independent country.  When I'd talk with Africans in the market or anywhere, they would be very reticent, and after a few minutes they'd say something like, "You aren't a resident are you?"   Coming from Thailand where we'd had to learn Thai before even getting to Thailand and living and working completely with Thais, D's situation was hard for me to believe.  This was not the kind of life he' d had back in England.  We had long talks while I was there and that continued for years via letters.  And eventually he visited Alaska and I later visited him in England.  He had some harrowing experiences there and one African he did get to meet was Idi Amin.  But that's another story - his to tell.  

But those experiences were 50 years ago!  I would have thought things had changed since then.  I'm sure they have, but not as much as one might expect.  

As someone who has contributed to Doctors Without Borders I'm forced to think about how to support the good things they do and push for change.  The program talks about a protest group within MSF - Decolonize MSF.  Maybe contributing to them would be the way to go.  

COVID Crisis In Anchorage Hospitals

 As some of you know, in addition to my regular posting here, I also do daily updates of Alaska COVID stats in a tab above which also has a chart of those number going back to March 15, 2020.  Those reports were filling up this regular blog post space, so I pushed them into the tab.  But every now and then I spill over from just reviewing the new numbers to adding additional context.  That happened today as we hit a new pandemic  high for new resident cases and for Test Positivity. And the number of COVID patients in our hospitals is only slightly below Monday's all time high.  So I'm copying today's Alaska COVID update here.

Wednesday, September 15, 2021 - We need a new way of classifying insane.  Doctors from Providence Medical Center testified at the Assembly that we are in a health crisis and that 30% of their patients are COVID positive and require much more intensive care, and people jeered them and Assembly Member Allard questioning the veracity of their testimony.

From Hrrrl Scouts Twitter coverage of Assembly

They Mayor of Anchorage is quoted in the Anchorage Daily News today as having said last week that "hospital capacity issues weren't caused byCOVID-19 patients but nurses leaving their jobs over vaccination requirements."  I'm going to believe the doctor's knowledge about the hospital crisis over the Mayor's undocumented claims.

Meanwhile we have two more deaths reported today (nine reported in the last three days.)  18 more hospitalizations.  201(34) COVID patients in the hospital- one less overall from yesterday, but one more on vents.  Is it an improvement when we gain a hospital bed because two people died?  

1064/1068 new resident cases.  That's another  2021 record.  It's a pandemic record period for one day.  (If you scroll through the chart above you'll see some higher numbers in that column - but those are for more than one day (usually Mondays when three days are reported.)  27 new non-resident cases. 

Over 11,700 tests, a fairly high one day number, yet the Test Positivity went up from 9.1 to 9.62.  A couple of notes here.  1)  Test Positivity is on a rolling seven day average.  So, even though yesterday it reported 9.1, today it reports (for 9/13/21) 9.57. Adding today's high number and dropping off the number eight days ago, raises all the numbers.  and 2) Test Positivity is the percent of people tested who test positive.  So if the Test Positivity is high, it means you should test more.  I said 'yet' above because 11,000 tests is higher then normal for one day, but the number still went up.  We should be testing more.  But the staffing to do all the contact tracing is probably not available for this level of infection.  

I'm not including the chart.  You can see that at the Alaska Daily COVID-19 Count 3 - May 2021 - ???  above.  

Made It To Kamphaengphet Saturday In My Summer Anchorage Biking Trek

Back in May I described my itinerary - Chiangmai to Bangkok - 745 kilometers.  I'm doing this on the bike trails of Anchorage.  The original post gives a bit of background to this  way of giving me a reason  - beyond the sheer joy of being on a bike whizzing through the woods - for this technique.  Knowing how many kilometers I have to cover gets me out on days my body would rather not.  But once my feet are pushing pedals, I'm glad I'm out riding.  There's also a map showing the distances between key points.  

Kamphaengphet is kilometer 445, so I'm over half way.  That's good, because biking season  is also half over.   ( I have an old bike with studded tires for winter, but I don't do long bike rides when there is snow and ice)

This stop is particularly special because I spent two years in Kamphaengphet teaching English as a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s.  Below are some pictures from that time - a world much more closely connected to the past than it's connected to the present.  

These are from an album I put together while I was there.  Black and white photos I could get developed at the local photographer shop. The place where people could get portraits done.  But Kodak and Fuji slides had to be sent to Hong Kong or Australia to be developed.  That was minimally a two week process.  I think of my grandkids who probably don't even know about film and are used to seeing the picture the instant it's taken.  (I checked with my oldest and she did not know.)

This picture seems appropriate - me on a bike on the road in front of the school with the temple ruins and the water buffaloes in the background.  My house was on the school grounds, up on stilts, with two other 'apartments'  for teachers in the same building. The soccer field was between my house and this road.  So I had a view of the old temple chedis.  Here's a great link that explains the names of the different parts of Thai temples. My bike was my main form of transportation, though my colleagues had motorcycles too.  Peace Corps didn't let us have motorcycles but at that time the current ban on even riding on the back of a cycle didn't exist.  Peace Corps says the ban came after they figured out that most Peace Corps deaths came from motorcycle accidents.  My experience would have been significantly different had I not been able to ride on the back of motorcycles.  (Sorry for the blur, I didn't take this picture.)

This was one of my students.  Soccer was a big part of school life and since the best soccer field was directly in front of my house, a big part of my life.  It was out on this field that I set up the portable record player/radio that I'd bought when we stopped in Hong Kong on the way and played records in the moonlight when my trunk finally arrived.  I also played soccer there and started my love of jogging running around the field.  And the chedi was always there in the background.  At that time you could walk over and climb up on it and sit and contemplate the world.  Now it's part of a National Historic Park and has a fence and admission fee.

A short distance from the school in the forest were several more impressive temples.  I used to walk or bike over to be alone with these ancient structures - about 600 or 700 years old.  The Buddha on the left was part of a temple called The Temple of the Four Positions.  This was the sitting position.  There was a standing Buddha, a reclining Buddha, and a less common walking Buddha.

The elephants surrounded to top of another temple more in the hidden in the woods, up on a bluff overlooking the River Bing. [Mae Nam literally means mother water, or river and usually proceeds the name of the river.  So sometimes you see names like Mae Nam Bing River.  Which is sort of redundant.]  I'm not sure how many elephants there were all around the temple (It was called something like Temple With Elephant Around it) but there were a lot.  The English book we used had stories in every lesson - stories from British history, US history, and Thai history, so I learned about Thai heroes of various wars against Burma, Laos, and Cambodia.  This temple looked out toward the mountains over which the Burmese army would have had to come.  

There was no television reception in my town.  So 'commercials' were live.  Here's the medicine salesman gathering a crowd with his microphone and cobra.  When enough people showed up, he'd get the mongoose out of the box and have a battle between the leashed mongoose and the well drugged cobra. And then he'd sell all sorts of medicine.  

And this is why I was here.  To teach English to MS 3 students at the boys' school.  MS 3 translates to about 8th grade.  They were fantastic students and we generally had a great time.  Our teacher training back in DeKalb, Illinois had been excellent.  We had 50 minute lessons for each chapter.  Each class would start with about five minutes of pronunciation drills.  There are lots of sounds in English that don't exist in Thai.  There are only about nine final consonant sounds in Thai.  Most English consonant clusters are real challenges for Thais because they don't exist in Thai.   Steve became Sateeb. (There's no v sound in Thai, let alone a final v.  The closest Thai has is a final b.  Other v's become w.)  Then ten minutes of vocabulary - lots of creative activities to get across the meanings without using Thai.  Then we had grammar drills, ideally using the sounds from the pronunciation drills and the vocabulary from that drill.  Then we'd read from the story and ask questions about the story.  Everything in English.  Thai not allowed.  Some of the things they learned best were classroom instructions that got used every day.  Stand up.  Sit down.  Louder please.  Stop talking.  Who wants to read first?   Open your books.  Repeat after me. 

About the kid with the bare feet.  No, it wasn't that he didn't have shoes.  Thais just take their shoes off before they go inside.  So outside the classroom would be lots of shoes.  

This is the old Burmese stupa and temple across the river.  On Buddha's birthday everyone went there and in the full moon, carried candles around the stupa.  It was a connection they had to their ancestors who had done the same thing for hundreds of years.  

So it was exciting Saturday knowing that I'd made it to Kamphaengphet on my summer biking adventure.  While I rode through cool birch and spruce forests in Anchorage, I was imagining the dusty roads, the wonderful people and their smiles, the delicious food, and the temples as they were back in 1967-69.  

This is just the tiniest peeks at my three years living with Thais.  Three years that dramatically rewired my brain.  The temple pictures are here because Buddhism wasn't really a religion, it was a way of life and permeated everything.  A good Buddhist doesn't even kill a mosquito.  And there was a tolerance for everyone.  There were, of course, economic differences among people, but even the king prostrated himself before the great Buddha statues.  I'm using the past tense here because I'm writing about that Thailand back then.  I've been able to spend time in Thailand since then and while the basics are still the same, the gap between the US and Thailand technologically has gotten very small.  Back in the 60s, Thailand was a different world, a different time, from the US.  No longer.  

Today I did another 16.5 km so I'm on my way to Nakorn Sawan.  This is the longer between stops and I remember the dusty red dirt road in the last three hours of my trips back from Bangkok.  Lots of rice and mountains that looked like growths on the mostly flat landscape.  I'd note that all these roads have long since been paved.  

Alaska's COVID Numbers Are Going Back Up

In the Alaska Daily COVID-19 Count 3 tab below the banner up top, I've got a spreadsheet with Alaska COVID stats since March 15, 2020. It's 3 because numbers 1 and 2 got so long and bulky, I needed a new one.  I started it because the state just kept replacing yesterday's numbers with today's and it was hard to know if things were getting better or worse.  They've got fancy dashboards now with graphs, but they are only posted three times a week now.  This week only twice because there was a holiday Monday.  Along with updated numbers on the chart.  I post some comments to give the numbers a little more meaning.  

In the last few weeks, the numbers have changed.  They were going down.  Then they seemed to level off.  And now they are going back up.  This isn't over yet.  I've kept my COVID posts mainly in the COVID tab, but given that we are moving up again, it seemed useful to repeat yesterday's (Friday) comments here in the main section of the blog.  You have to go to the tab to see the chart.

Friday, July 9, 2021 - Our direction has definitely changed.  We're going back up.

Two new deaths reported today for a total of 370 Alaskans. Note, reported doesn't tell us when they happened.  We don't know if it was in the last two days or ta while ago and that stats are just catching up.

There were 14 new hospitalizations.  27 COVID patients are hospitalized in Alaska.  There are 48 ICU beds available in Alaska.  That's a reasonably high number for the time I've been following it.  But it could drop if hospitalizations spike. That number is also affected by non-COVID patients.

You know that most of the hospitalizations lately are of unvaccinated people.  Not only are these people risking themselves, they're giving the virus time to mutate into ever more contagious and severe versions.  AND they are endangering all those under 12 who haven't been approved yet for vaccination. And they're using up medical facilities and the patience and time or health care workers unnecessarily. Most of the kids will probably have slight or no symptoms, but a number of them will get sick enough to be hospitalized.  But the anti-vaxers really don't seem to care about anyone but themselves.  It's like a bunch of are in a big rowboat trying to get to shore, but part of the group insists on jumping up and down and rocking the boat.  

117 more people tested positive in the last two days.  Nearly 60 a day.  

But what concerns me most is that Test Positivity was reported at 2.43.  That's the highest number I have (there were days when the numbers weren't available) since April 30, 2021.  There were about   6600 tests since Wednesday.  

Getting Vaccinated

This is an account of getting vaccinated Monday January 11, 2021.

In the Bingo like hit and miss of online appointments, I'd first gotten my wife on a waiting list at one clinic.  I got on as well, but she got a confirmation email and I didn't.  Most locations that showed up online had no available appointments. 

I started just rebooting the page several times a day, figuring that maybe if I get on just when someone puts up their announcement I can get an appointment before the run out.  About 6:15pm, I think on Friday, the Anchorage School District (ASD) had 259 appointments available Tuesday, January 12.  I snagged one for 3:30pm.  Then I started again, immediately, for my wife, but there was nothing left.

The next morning I suggested my wife check again - it was 7:15am.  The ASD had a lot again.  She tried to register, but it wouldn't allow her email. She was on an iPad, so I tried on my laptop.  There were still appointments and I was able to get her one at 1:45pm Monday January 11.  

I was seeing stuff online that things were a little loosey goosey about walk ins.  So I went with J to the ASD.  There was a short line outside - maybe 6 people.  I went in with Joan.  They checked her driver's license and pointed her in one direction.  I explained that I came with her, but had an appointment for the next day, could I possibly get my shot then and not have to come back.  She took some information, gave me a sticky note, and pointed me to another line.  It curved around back to the sign in desks.  There were white markers on the floor showing where 6 feet apart was.  Everyone, of course, had on masks.  A few people had plastic shields as well.  

This picture shows the line just after the sign in.  You can see the white 6" markers.  And there were a lot of chairs around for people like the man in front of me who had a cane.  Up ahead are the banks of tables for people to register people.  

The people who had appointments had been sent to another line, directly to the nurses giving the shots.  It was to the left of that cone on the far left.  

You can see a man sitting down signing in.  On the other side was someone just filling in the info that we had to fill in on the computer.  But these guys had to power to give us appointments right then and there.

This is pretty much the same picture, EXCEPT the guy you see where the main had been sitting in the previous picture was sanitizing the chair and table.  As soon as the guy got up, he swooped in and sprayed.  The person in front of me was moving up to the next white dot.  

Way up ahead are all the people with the needles.  It looks far, but with everyone 6 feet apart, it didn't take long.  

This is the nurse who vaccinated me.  The story in the newspaper was that school nurses were being used for this.  I looked at all the vaccine she sucked out of vial into the syringe and I knew it was going to hurt.  

But I was wrong.  She was great.  I barely felt the needle go in and the vaccine going into my arm was not seriously painful at all.  A mild irritation.  

She then pointed me to the next stations and explained what would happen.  

J wasn't as happy about the nurse who vaccinated her.

Someone took me to a table with a laptop to make my appointment for me second vaccination February 5.  Again, it was like the form I had filled out online, except there was no guessing if there would be an appointment. And this time I had to check yes for have you been vaccinated for COVID and mark 2nd rather than 1st.   Though we've since learned that the original plan to reserve a second vaccine for people when they got their first one has been abandoned as they try to get as many people vaccinated as possible.  They did that on the belief that there was plenty of reserve vaccine nationally.  But that turns out not to be true.  So at this point we're going on faith that there will be a second dose of Moderna on February 5.  

J was finished but saw me and came over to help me get the next appointment.  

Everyone was polite and ready to help.  The six foot distancing was violated a lot - obviously when I got the shot - but also by patients trying to figure out where to go.  

Somewhere along the line we got vaccination cards with the date and Moderna marked.  Someone suggested I take a picture of it, which I did.  That was a good idea since I already don't know where my card is.

The next station we signed out.  He checked that it was 15 minutes since we'd gotten the injections.  And off we went.  

Neither of us had any side effects but a sore arm, mine was barely noticeable.  The next day all my usual aches and pains were absent.  That only lasted a day.  

And I have to say I felt significantly lighter.  While I think I'm doing pretty well in isolation - certainly not bored - the idea that by mid-February I'm going to be significantly less likely to contract COVID, and if I do it should have much less severe effects on me, was liberating.  

So now I have five weeks to clean all the boxes that we have downstairs.  I can make a dental appointment while I still have teeth.  And I can get out and collect signatures for the Recall Dunleavy effort.  

Do I feel guilty that I got vaccinated while others have not?  I think guilty is a little strong.  I do think people who work in grocery stores and other essential jobs should be getting their shots now, but they are in this tier.  I'm also in this tier because I'm over 65.  But basically, I don't think that my waiting is going to make a difference.  (Yes, if all the healthy seniors waited a bit it might, but that isn't going to happen.)  And with the sizable number of people who are reluctant to get vaccinated - even health care workers - I think the push to just get vaccine into people's arms is the right approach.  We don't want any wasted doses because they were taken out of deep freeze but not enough people showed up in the next five days.  

Let's hope President Biden will be able to get the public administration of all this better organized and more efficient and effective and equitable.   We do know that the scientists and the president will be sending the same message out.  Let's hope that Trump's twitter ban means he won't be continuing to pollute the truth at nearly as high a level as he has been.  

Alaska Airlines' Virgin Influences Show Up In COVID Safety Dance Video

 Virgin Airlines was bought by Alaska Airlines.  Virgin had created a safety instruction video that played before all their flights with an elaborate routine of dancing flight attendants (see video at end of post).  And apparently there are vestiges of Virgin still left in the combined airlines. 

I still can wait to get on an airplane until after I've been vaccinated.  

For those who never had the chance to fly on Virgin, below is one of their safety videos.  Well worth watching to see how to take a boring routine and make it entertainment. 

Anchorage Is Close To A COVID-19 Cliff

I've been tryin to keep my COVID-19 posts in separate place from my normal blog posts.  But things are getting worse fast, so here's today's update.  We're about to go off into significantly faster spread.  We already have, but it could get even worse.  And hospital beds could get scarce, not only for COVID-19 patients, but for everyone else.  We need some serious isolation but it appears our governor is following Trump's lead.   The table with all the numbers are in the COVID-19 tab just below the orange blog header above.  Here's a direct link.

Thursday, October 29, 2020 - Sit down.  6 new deaths.  That matches the highest death count on Sept 25.  We've had nine deaths in the last three days.  There were 12 new hospitalizations.  With yesterday's 13, that's 25 in two days.  34 in the last three days.

There were 359/349* new resident cases and our current total cases is 14,456.  That total increased by 3600 cases since last Thursday!  It took us 5 months (March-August 8) to get our first 3600 total cases.

There are 7932** active resident cases now in Alaska. Plus 412 non-resident active cases.  

There were about 3700 new tests reported today and our Test Positivity jumped to 8.1.  (We skipped 7 altogether.)   

There are 67 COVID-19 patients in hospitals plus another 22 suspected COVID-19 patients in hospitals.  We're down to 27 available ICU beds.   This is not a good time to have any kind of emergency health problem requiring an ICU in Alaska.  At this rate we're a week or two away from no available ICU beds unless they can set up some new ones.  The overflow hospital set up at the Alaska Center early on is now closed, though I suspect it still could be reopened.  (I have a call into UAA Public Relations office and will update this if I get something more definite.)

The sun just came out.  Take solace in such simple pleasures.  

*I determine new cases by subtracting yesterday's total cases from today's.  The State's dashboard often has numbers that are slightly different because they are constantly updating and correcting (say, moving a report to a different day or from non-resident to resident, etc.).  So I report the daily new resident cases with two numbers:  mine/State's.  

**I should emphasize that these are 'reported' cases.  Active case totals are a bit sketchy because they have to subtract recovered cases and those reports seem to be a lower priority.  If people don't self report the State has to track them down.  So take this number with a grain of salt.  It's a ballpark figure  

I Found Trump's Health Care Plan - It's Called "Go Fund Me"

Trump campaigned in 2016 saying he would get rid of Obama Care and replace it with something much, much better.  So far the closest we've gotten is the regular teaser, "A few more weeks and we'll have it."  Biden challenged Trump on his missing health care plan again at Thursday night's debate and Trump claimed to have a great health care plan coming up.  

Well, I think I've found his plan.  It's called Go Fund Me.  

The Go Fund Me website has a whole category called "Health Insurance Fundraisers".  12 appeals show up, but at the bottom of the page you can ask for more and get 12 more, then 12 more.  I stopped at 36, but it kept going.  

This is the defacto Trump Health Care plan.  

And I'm pretty sure the main thing many conservatives, and certainly Trump, oppose about the ACA is that it was Obama's program.  It's Obama that they want to erase even more than "socialized" medicine.

I'm Not Really Being Lazy Just Because I Don't Have A New Post Everyday

 Because, actually, I do.  And sometimes two.  

Since I started tracking Alaska's COVID-19 cases, other posts aren't showing up so often.  I started just doing COVID-19 posts here, like this post.  But they were taking too much room and I was repeating the same charts over and over.  So I switched to a "Page" - a tab in Blogger jargon.  So now, unless you click on the tab above (just under the orange blog banner) it looks like I haven't done a new post.  

But in addition to updating the table with the day's new numbers, I do a brief summary as well.  Like this one from yesterday:

Monday, October 19, 2020 - Good signs, but not all good.  

Today was the second day in a row with no new deaths or new hospitalizations.  October 4 was the last time we had just one day with no deaths or hospitalizations.  We have to go back to September 14 and 15 for two days in a row like that.  And before that?  June 27-30 when there were four days with no deaths or hospitalizations.  This might just be a problem of not getting the hospitalization reports in over the weekend.  But it's a glimmer of hope.

There were 208/200 new resident cases.  It's four days in a row with 200 or more cases.  That has never happened before in Alaska.  Not so good.  The more cases, the more eventual hospitalizations and deaths to follow.

27 reported recoveries and 175 MORE active cases - for another all time high of 5235.

11,012 new tests, one of the highest totals. [10/20/20 -Had typo in chart yesterday.  Not sure how many new tests, yesterday.  The updated past numbers are totally different from what I documented daily.] We're at [5]33,723 tests total.  Our state population is about 730,000.  But this number is NOT how many Alaskans have been tested, but how many tests have been given.  Many essential workers get tested over and over again. 

The test positivity rate dropped slightly from 4.78 yesterday to 4.6 today.  Under 5.0 is good.  

The State keeps other numbers I don't keep track of on the chart above.  I've been reporting Reproductive Number in the daily reports lately.  Today down slightly to 1.07.  Under 1 is the goal.  We're close.

I haven't mentioned hospital capacity for a while, mainly because it hasn't been an issue.  But when I looked today, The hospitals are getting a little more crowded.

57% of adult beds are occupied.  There are 550 vacant.  That's for everything, not just COVID-19.

68% of adult ICU beds are occupied.  There are only 43 left.  Again, not just COVID-19 patients.

Ventilators aren't an issue at this point.  Only 9% being used with 324 left.  

There are 41 COVID-19 patients in hospital beds and 24 more suspected COVID-19 cases.  

What I'm learning is that the State's numbers are fluid.  That is they get adjusted as more info comes in - maybe some new cases turn out to be non-residents instead of residents, or a bunch of tests come in from several days ago.  I'm just doing each day's numbers and if anyone every wants to know how much the State's numbers have fluctuated, they can compare what the State has posted to what I have posted.  Though that won't show how often the State adjusted their numbers.  

We've been seeing about 200 new resident cases a day this last week or so and the number of active cases keeps going up because new cases outpace recovered cases.  Though recovered cases are one of the least up-to-date numbers they offer.  

On the positive side, our Test Positivity has only been over 5.0 a couple of times.  (5.0 is the target number set by the WHO.  And our Reproductive Number is only fractions above the target number to be below: 1.0.  

But with not much effort at all, the numbers could explode, and our hospitals could get overpacked.  

Anyway, just wanted to point out that this action is taking place a little hidden from sight in the tabs. There are two COVID tabs because the first one was getting really big.  It goes from June 1 to September 30. (Before that I was doing daily COVID-19  posts, which you can probably find most easily by looking at the Blog Archive (right had column) in March, April, and May.  The new tab started October 1.  

Stay well and if you must engage the anti-maskers do it gently and just listen, don't argue.  Ask questions if you have to say anything.  They have issues regarding power mostly, so telling them to do something pisses them off.  Like a rebelling teenager who will do the opposite of what you ask them to do.  These are chronological adults, but emotional teenagers.  (Yeah, that's a pretty broad generalization, but I suspect it's more accurate than not.)

LA Times Article Looks At Republican Candidates Reversing Their Anti-ACA Stances - Including Dan Sullivan

Alaskans have all recently watched as Senator Dan Sullivan was forced by a leaked video to take a strong Twitter stand against Pebble Mine.  In the video, Pebble executives say that Sullivan is in their corner, but keeping quiet before the election. 

An LA Times article today says Sullivan, along with other Republicans like Iowa's Joni Ernst, are backing off their earlier anti-ACA stands.  

"WASHINGTON — Contempt for the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — was so central to Sen. Joni Ernst’s 2014 election campaign that the Iowa Republican, in a TV ad promising she’d “unload” on the law, pulled out a handgun and fired repeatedly. “Give me a shot,” she asked voters.

Six years later, the first-term senator is battling for reelection, and she’s holstered her gun.

Ernst is not alone. Earlier this month, she joined fellow Republican Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — two other would-be assassins of the 10-year-old healthcare law who are now fighting for their political survival — in breaking with their party to support Obamacare on the Senate floor. They voted with Democrats on a measure opposing a Republican-backed case against the law that’s now before the Supreme Court.

As that vote showed, endangered Republicans are frantically trying to pivot away from the “repeal Obamacare” slogans that served them well for much of the last decade. Those are now a liability amid a jump in public support for the healthcare law.

Candidates also are playing down the long-standing legal challenge initiated by a coalition of Republican-led states that’s reached the Supreme Court. And from President Trump on down, they claim to be guardians of Obamacare’s most popular provision — a guarantee of insurance coverage for people with preexisting conditions — though that mandate would fall with the rest of the law if the court’s conservative majority sides with Republicans."

As you can see from the chart below, Alaska is one of only four states not involved in the case, either for or against the ACA.  

The chart comes from a Kaiser Family Foundation webpage that explains the court case and who all is involved.  Click on the chart to enlarge and focus it.

But I'm more troubled by unflagging loyalty to Trump as one of the bots on the Republican side of the US Senate.  He acts like a kid who doesn't want the teacher to call on him.  Sort of like the Pebble guy who said he's trying to lie low until the election is over.  And while he said he didn't vote for Trump in 2016, he now says he will.  

One has to wonder who is holding all those Republican Senators in line and voting to confirm Amy Barrett's appointment to the Supreme Court.  Senator Whitehouse gave the most insightful presentation on that in the Hearings and I'm hoping to get up a post about that soon.  I'll link to it here when I do.  

[UPDATE October 17, 2020:  Here's another article from Salon:  Alaska GOP senator routinely voted for policies that benefited family's chemical company]

The Guitar Center And New Sagaya - Two Very Different COVID-19 Strategies

First, we've taken COVID seriously.  Shopping has only been by online ordering with home delivery or (mostly)  curbside pickup.  Until we went to Denali in early September and had to go into the campground store to pickup our reservation, I hadn't been inside anywhere except our house and car since March. 

The Guitar Center Gets An A

So it was with great reluctance that I agreed to go the Guitar Center to pick up an electronic keyboard for my wife for her birthday.  It's something she's wanted since watching our granddaughter learning piano and  learning a bit with her.  The Guitar Center said they only allow five customers in at a time, one per section of the shop.  Masks were required.  I had tried to order it online and get curbside pickup - but they charged about $70 for that.  They had what I wanted in stock and if I came in to pick it up there was no charge.  

Lots of friends have been shopping with masks and they haven't contracted the virus.  I've been reading that wearing masks greatly reduces the spread.  It sounded like the conditions were ideal.  I parked in the lot.  There's a sign outside where people are to line up.  (No one was in line.)  The door was locked.  Someone let me in.  They had my stuff at the counter.  I paid.  Someone carried the keyboard out to the car.  It's a large store with lots of room.  One other customer came while I was there.  They unlocked the door and let him in.  

New Sagaya Gets an D-

On my wife's actual birthday, I was getting curbside pickup at Carr's.  But I hadn't ordered any kind of birthday cake and they said they couldn't add to the order.  So, given my good experience at the Guitar Center, I decided to go to New Sagaya and pick up something tasty at the bakery.  You just walk in.  The bakery was ok, the employees were masked, and he put on gloves to get the pastries and put them in a box.  Since I was already in the store, I figured I could pick up a few things we haven't had for a long time - like sushi, and a veggie wrap.  There were a lot of people in the store.  You could not pass through and maintain any kind of distance.  I only saw one customer without a mask covering his face.  

But then I got to the checkout.  There are four, but only two on one end were open.  They're close together.  At best, in my row (not the one on the end) I would be back to back with the cashier in the end row probably less than two feet separation.  But there was a second employee standing next to that other cashier talking to my cashier (casually, not about business) with her mask below her chin.  

I was surprised.  I would have to be less than a foot from her if I passed through.  I was next in line, but about three feet back.  I asked her to put on her mask.  She turned and faced the other way.  I quickly got my stuff and left.  

I called the store and asked to speak to the manager.  I told him my tale.  He said he knew who I was talking about and would take care of it.  

But it's more than the one employee.  They have four registers.  Only two were being used.  They really should only use every other checkout line.  They shouldn't have so many people in the store that you have to pass within a foot or two of other customers.  They should monitor the doors and limit how many people are in the store.  

And an employee who is that close to customers without a mask should be fired.  Sorry.  They have less control of customers and masks, but for employees, this should be unacceptable behavior.  

We did enjoy the pastries, one with a candle in it.  I don't know what it's like inside other stores, but that was my experience.  And I only went in because it was my wife's birthday.  

We have to decide if we're going inside for flu shots.  We went to the Alaska Regional Hospital drive through flu shot event last week.  We called first to see if they had the stronger version for seniors.  The lady said they did.  She also said it was really crowded (at 6pm - they opened at 5:30) and we should come closer to 8 (when they close).  We got there at 7:10 and the line wasn't too bad.  There were actually several lines.  But they had run out of forms to fill out.  When we got to people holding needles, they gave us a form.  We said we wanted the stronger version.  They didn't have any left.  If we took this one could we get a stronger one later?  No, you shouldn't get the other one if you get this one.  So we left.  

We'll try again this evening.  We'll go earlier.  If it doesn't work, we'll probably go to Walgreen.  Not something I want to do.  [UPDATED October 6, 2020 10pm:  There was a very long line when the drive thru flu shots opened up at Regional, but they had five open lines and things went much faster than I expected:  maybe 40 minutes.  Arm's not too sore either.]

But I did hit 600 kilometers on my bike this week, and that's only from when I got the odometer working, early June I think.  

Hope you're all staying well.  We're being a little extreme, waiting as doctors and researchers learn more about the habits of this virus.  And there's no guarantee that it won't mutate and learn different behaviors.  

So, There's This Virus. It Needs A Human Host. If It Can't Find One It Dies.

There's been lots written about how the virus spreads.  And as I started writing this post, I googled questions to make sure I was right.  But I couldn't figure out the questions that would lead to the kind of answers I was looking for. (Not ones that supported my beliefs, but ones that factual detailed how the virus spreads.)  Most of the posts about how the virus spreads are dated March or April of this year.  Others have no date whatsoever.   This was the closest I could find and is dated September 18.  It's from the CDC:

"The virus that causes COVID-19 is thought to spread mainly from person to person, mainly through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or talks. These droplets can land in the mouths or noses of people who are nearby or possibly be inhaled into the lungs. Spread is more likely when people are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet)."

 

The point I'm trying to make is this:

• Humans are the host for the COVID-19 virus.
• If the virus can't get to another host (another human) from the original host, the virus can't spread.
• People (whether they know they host the virus or not) can prevent the virus from spreading to another human by:
• Staying home alone until the virus is out of their system (until they are better, basically)
• If they must have contact with other people:
• Not broadcasting droplets or aerosol sprays containing the virus (by breathing, talking, coughing, singing, etc.)  on or near other human beings 
• People around them wear protective gear - masks minimally, and for first responders, other appropriate protective gear.
• The infected person wears a mask

If the virus can't find a new host, it dies.  If all infected people prevent the virus from finding another host, the pandemic will end.  It's that easy.  It might take a month or two for most of the viruses to die because of lack of a new host.  

Instead, fear about the economy caused many politicians to open places where spreading happens.  Many politicians refused to require masks. Or wear one themselves. The economy would take a hit if things were shut down for two months.  But then it could open.  Fear of the virus is keeping the economy down as much as, if not more, than government restrictions on businesses.

That doesn't mean, after we starve most of the viruses out there, everything will be perfect.  There will be people in whom the virus keeps thriving longer than normal.  There will be people traveling from other places carrying the virus.  But just wearing masks would radically slow down the spread of the virus.  

Instead the virus is finding millions of hosts.  Why?

• Lack of understanding these basics.
• Lack of concern for other people. ("I'm young, it won't hurt me if I get it.")
• Lack of self-discipline. (People who need to go to weddings or bars before this is over.)
• Underlying personal issues individual humans have that make them defy the obvious. ("Wearing a mask infringes on my freedom.")
• Mixed messages from science on one side and religious leaders and the Trump cult on the other side

That's all.  It's not that hard to understand.  

Random Thoughts On COVID-19 Impacts Now And Later

 Impact On Kids 

There's lots of talk about the debilitating impacts on the mental health and development of kids with schools out of session.  But I haven't seen anything (I did look, though not exhaustively) on all those kids for whom school is torture because they are shunned, picked on, bullied, beat up, or otherwise made to feel miserable at school.  For them, distance learning is probably an improvement.  

Medical Waste

I've been appalled for a long time about medical waste.  I think it started when I accompanied someone to the ER for a twisted ankle that was swelling.  It was winter here in Anchorage with lots of snow.  We got into the ER and they pulled out some sort of chemical ice pack, they twisted it and put it on her ankle.  I don't recall the price of the item - over $50 at least.  All the free snow and ice you could want, perfect for molding in a plastic bag on an ankle, was just outside the door.  

When you get a shot, the syringe and needle is tossed.  My mom was a lab technician and I remember the autoclave (there's a word that's been sitting idle in my brain for decades just waiting for this post, I even forgot it was there) where they sterilized the glass syringes and the needles.  Now things get tossed. 

When my mom caught MRSA in the hospital - new doctors kept coming in and each put on a whole set of protective clothing before entering.  (They all wanted to do new tests which required drawing more blood from my poor mom.)  They saw her for less than five minutes, then tossed all the protective gear when they left.  

While I don't know how much this kind of waste adds to the total medical costs, I do know it contributes to the landfill problems, including plastics and ocean plastic gyres.  

But when PPP were in short supply at the beginning of the pandemic, medical personnel began wearing masks all day instead of throwing them away after each patient.  Hospitals found ways to sterilize PPP. 

I hope there are people rethinking our throwaway hospital practices.  How can they reduce what they add to landfills, reduce the use of the raw materials, reduce costs?  All the medical supply companies will be fighting them all the way.  It would be interesting to see the role of medical supply company lobbyists play in the developing the rules hospitals must follow in these practices. 

Food

The whole way my household gets food has changed radically.  We use an app and then go pick it up 'curbside' in the parking lot.  (There really isn't a curb involved.)  I'm getting better finding what I'm looking for with the app.  I buy less spur of the moment things because I don't see them.  And I realize that we have at least one new staple in our fridge - cottage cheese.  It's an easy to 'prepare' snack that's probably healthier - and less expensive - than the Talenti gelatos in the freezer.  Also, without going out to eat, our food bill has gone way down.  

Will we go back to in-store grocery shopping when this is over?  I  suspect so, but I don't know, but when we're pressed for time I'm sure we'll use the apps.  And I know there will be a huge demand for restaurants.  And there will be plenty of people ready to open restaurants to meet that demand.  

Laws of Nature versus The Rules of Men*

The notion of social construction - things that are created by humans - is becoming clearer during the pandemic.  Often these are institutions that people just assume are 'natural', fixed, the way things are.  Like slavery once.  Like women not voting.  Like until death do us part heterosexual marriages.  (And the * in the heading is to emphasize that until very recently in the US, nearly all laws were made by men.) 

We're seeing now how the economy can collapse.  How school can be cancelled.  How our customary forms of greetings can be put aside.  How covered faces can be seen as the fashion of bandits, the assumed oppression of some Muslim women, to now a badge of political political persuasion or concern for health.  

But while we keep being enlightened about the 'made up' quality of the rules of people, the laws of nature keep steady - the sun comes up each morning, the weather does its thing, viruses do theirs.  

Science is the study of the laws of nature.  Science doesn't always correctly describe how nature works, but it's surely proving that science does a lot better than religion or politicians who want to ignore it for their own personal gain.  

I'm hoping that when this is over, a lot of the rules of men that oppress other people, that keep people poor, that destroy the natural world, that allocate wealth, will be seen as just made up rules that can be changed to create a more equitable and positive place for people to live.  

Video Conferencing

As I'm writing this post in Anchorage, I'm also on jitsi watching my grandkids in San Francisco playing with various Lego and other building materials.  We're just hanging out together doing our own things, but we can look and see each other as we do it.  It's VERY cool that we can be together like this.  I think back to my childhood when even a call to outside the local area in Los Angeles cost so many cents per minute, and international calls were dollars per minute.  This video conferencing is as amazing a change as anything I can think of.  (As I was proofing this my granddaughter pulled  apart her big brother's lego creation and he got so mad he hit her.  And she cried and told him to go away.  And now they've made up with the guidance of their dad.  

Everyone enjoy your weekend.  Time for me to get away from this screen.  

What We Didn't Learn In History About Plagues

Andrew Sullivan has an essay in New York Magazine: "A Plague Is an Apocalypse. But It Can Bring a New World. The meaning of this one is in our hands"  on the history of plagues, or maybe plagues in history, is a better way to phrase it.  As I think about my knowledge of such things, I was taught about the Black Death and as best as I can remember, the message was:  "You should be glad you live in a civilized society where this doesn't happen anymore."

And I probably learned that just after a vaccine for polio had been created.  I don't recall anyone connecting the scourge of polio with the Black Plague.

Sullivan starts with what he calls, perhaps the deadliest plague - when small pox came to the "New World" and killed of 90% of the indigenous people there.

Then he goes back to the Roman Empire.  Here's a description of one of many plagues.

"John of Ephesus noted that as people “were looking at each other and talking, they began to totter and fell either in the streets or at home, in harbors, on ships, in churches, and everywhere.” As he traveled in what is now Turkey, he was surrounded by death: “Day by day, we too — like everybody — knocked at the gate to the tomb … We saw desolate and groaning villages and corpses spread out on the earth, with no one to take up [and bury] them.” The population of Constantinople was probably reduced by between 50 and 60 percent. The first onslaught happened so quickly the streets became blocked by corpses, the dead “trodden upon by feet and trampled like spoiled grapes … the corpse which was trampled, sank and was immersed in the pus of those below it,” as John put it."

Sullivan points out that it is, precisely, the move toward civilizations and living with domesticated animals that allowed for viruses to be transmitted from animals to humans.  And travel then carried these to others.

An interesting piece, worth reading.  A lot longer than a tweet, but a lot more comprehensive and worth reading.

Alaska COVID-19 Count Sunday May 31, 2020 - 27 NEW CASES - Most Ever

When the State is an hour past their "Updates will typically occur by 12:00 PM AKDT daily" promise (often their up before 11 am) I wonder if it's just because it's Sunday or whether they don't want to tell us the bad news.  The increased number of folks back out in the world, plus the demonstrations yesterday here (and other places) suggests a likely spike in a couple of weeks by the latest.

Meanwhile, while I'm waiting for the numbers, let me say once again, this is the last of these regular posts on the virus.  Instead, I'll update on a tab (what Blogger calls a Page) just below the header picture on top.


OK - the numbers were put up 15 minutes ago, now.  I guess it was the bad news that held things up.  27 NEW CASES.  That's the most we've ever had in one day.  The previous high was 22 on April 7.  This really shows the impact of hunkering down and then easing up the restrictions.  I'm hoping the governor and mayor get us back on hunkering down.  This isn't just a freak number.  This last week the numbers have been higher than the week before.

I'd note that yesterday's state chart (you can see the screenshot in yesterday's post) said there were 334 cases - so by my count that would mean we had 36 new cases to get us to 360.  But for various legitimate reasons the state adjusts numbers.  That's another reason why I'm tracking the original numbers and not adjusting daily.

CONFIRMED COVID-19 CASES ALASKA MARCH/APRIL/May 2020
Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
new/total	hos=hospital		12th  = 0/0	13th = 1/1	14th = 0/1	15th = 0/1
16th = 0/1	17th = 2/3	18th = 3/6	19th = 3/9	20th = 3/12	21st= 2/14	22nd= 8/22
23rd=14/36	24th =6/42 1 hos 1 dead	25th = 17/59 3 hos 1 dead	26th = 10/69 3 hos 1 dead	27th =16/89 5 hos 2 dead	28th = 13/102 6 hos 2 dead	29th= 12/114 7 hos  3 dead
30th=5/119 7 hos 3 dead	31st= 14/133 9 hos 3 dead
April 2020		1st=  10/143 9 hos 3 dead	2nd=8(6)/149 13 hos 3 dead	3rd=8(11)157 15 hos 3 dead	4th=15/171 16 hos 5 dead	5th= 14/185 20 hos 6 dead
6th=6/191 23 hosp 6 dead	7th= 22/213 23 hosp 6 Dead29 recovered	8th= 13/226 27 hosp 7 dead 32 recovered	9th= 9/235 27 hosp 7 dead 49 recovered	10th=11/246 28 hosp 7 dead 55 recovered	11th=11/257 31 hosp 8 dead 63 recovered	12th= 15/272 31 hosp 8 dead 66 recovered
13th= 5/277 32 Hosp 8 dead 85 Recovered	14th = 8/285 32 Hosp 9 dead 98 Recovered	15th= 8/293 34 Hosp 9 dead 106 Recovered	16th= 7/300 35 hosp 9 dead 110 recovered	17th=  9/309 36 hosp 9 dead 128 recovered	18th =  5/315 36 hos 9 dead 147 Recovered	19th= 4/319 36 hos 9 dead 153Recovered
20th 2/321 36 hos 9 dead 161 recovered	21st 8/329 36 hos 9 dead 168 recovered	22nd  6/335 36 hos  9 dead 196recovered	23nd  2/337 36 hos  9 dead 209recovered	24th  2/339 36 hos  9 dead 208recovered (-1 from 4/23)	25th  0/339 36 hos  9 dead 217recovered	26th  2/341 36 hos  9 dead 217recovered
27th  4/345 37 hos  9 dead 218recovered	28th  6/351 37 hos  9 dead 228 recovered	29th  4/355 36 hos  9 dead 240recovered	30th  0/355 36 hos  9 dead 252recovered
May 2020				1st  9/364 36 hos  9 dead 254recovered	2nd  1/365 36 hos  9 dead 261recovered	3rd  3/368 36 hos  9 dead 262recovered
4th  2/370 37 hos  9 dead 263recovered	5th  1/371 38 hos  9 dead 277 recovered	6th  1/372 38 hos 10 dead 284recovered	7th  2/374 38 hos 10 dead 291recovered	8th  3/377 38 hos 10 dead 305recovered	9th  1/378 38 hos 10 dead 318recovered	10th  1/379 38 hos 10 dead 324recovered
11th  1/381 38 hos 10 dead 328recovered	12th  2/383 38 hos 10 dead 334 recovered	13th  0/383 38 hos 10 dead 335recovered	14th  4/387 39 hos 10 dead 339recovered	15th  1/388 41 hos 10 dead 343recovered	16th  4/392 43 hos 10 dead 344recovered	17th  4/396 43 hos 10 dead 344recovered
18th  3/399 43 hos 10 dead 345recovered	19th  0/399 43 hos 10 dead 348 recovered	20th  3/402 44 hos 10 dead 352recovered	21st  0/402 44 hos 10 dead 356recovered	22st  2/404 44 hos 10 dead 356recovered	23rd4/408 45 hos 10 dead 358recovered	24th 0/408 45 hos 10 dead 358recovered
25th1/409 45 hos 10 dead 361recovered	26th 2/411 45 hos 10 dead 362 recovered	27th 2/411 46 hos 10 dead 362recovered	28th13/425 46 hos 10 dead 366recovered	29th5/430 47 hos 10 dead 367recovered	30th4/434 47 hos 10 dead 368recovered	31st 27/460 47 hos 10 dead 368recovered

State Charts

The screen shot above is high resolution so you can click on it to enlarge and focus. Click here if you want to use the chart interactively.


My Day-By-Day Chart

Alaska Covid-19 Data NewFor... by Steve on Scribd

It's going to get a lot bumpier from here on unless things get shut down again fast. This shows there have been a lot of untested folks out there and with the demonstrations in support of George Floyd yesterday, a lot more people were probably infected.