Yes, the best response next time would be to shut down the CDC and FDA. Even Cuomo admitted that the regulations were slowing things down.
[Update a while later]
Stop panicking over bad data.
I won’t be surprised to find out when this is all over that the mortality rate was one in a thousand.
[Update a few minutes later]
Ford is making ventilators from seat fans.
#Murrica
[Update a while later]
Sorry, first link is fixed now.
Alex Azar describes the administration’s strategery.
How it is affecting the agency.
…has become a casualty of the virus (and perhaps overzealous government in Carson City).
Bigelow has had ups and downs for years, perhaps because of an incoherent business plan. He was expecting transportation to come along a lot sooner than it has, without doing anything to help it along other than promise demand.
Meanwhile, we’re back home. As noted, we did drive up to Cambria (with the cats, which was…interesting — it was their first road trip, and Ember cried most of the way). It was relaxing up there, but a little weird, with all the restaurants being closed except for delivery or carry out, and most of the motels empty (we had a vacation rental across the street from the beach). We drove up to Ragged Point on Saturday (which was also closed except for gas and the general store), but no further into Big Sur, then perused the elephant seals on the way back to town. Not that many on the beach; it was just past mating season. A few week ago the beach at Piedras Blancas would have been full of them, fighting and fu**ing (I could have just written “mating,” but I liked the alliteration), and the mothers and pups trying to avoid being crushed by the bulls.
Did a three-mile hike Sunday on the bluffs above the ocean, and shot lots of pictures of breaching and fluking gray whales and their spouts as they migrated north. Very weird being up there on a weekend with so little traffic. I may post some, after we look at them to see how they came out.
Got back to Redondo Beach yesterday (the lack of heavy traffic on the 405 through Sepulveda Pass and West LA on a Monday afternoon was a little eerie), and now get to put the house back together after fumigation. The cats (who cried all the way back) are looking around and at each other like they’re wondering “Was that all some sort of weird dream?” Not infected, as far as we know (seems unlikely, considering that we were already hermits before this all started; it’s an introvert’s paradise).
[Update mid-morning]
One thing we saw up there that we never see in LA: Stars. We were across the street from the beach, and it was quite a dark neighborhood. Orion was very obvious, and I could easily see the Pleides naked eye. Milky Way wasn’t obvious, though.
SLS will be further delayed by the virus.
But they’ll continue to be paid, so the overruns will just be higher.
[Late-afternoon update]
I wish that publications wouldn’t report this as a fact: “The Space Launch System is a powerful deep space rocket to transport astronauts to the Moon and beyond while Orion is the crew module.”
At least say that “NASA claims that…”
I don’t know how many are left, but we drove past one on Friday coming up to the central coast. They’re looking pretty good now for going out to the movies. Most modern audio systems in cars would be a huge improvement in home theater over that mono speaker that hung in the window.
Turning one ventilator into nine.
[Update a while later]
While my only risk, based on Italian data, seems to be hypertension (which I’ve had all my adult life), I do suffer from the disability and pre-existing condition of not being a woman.
Maybe, just to be safe, or at least reduce my risk, I should start identifying as one. I’m sure it will fool the virus.
Our reliance on it has destroyed our ability to manage risk.
Gee, someone should write a book about that. It applies to climate as well. And more related links.