Black Lives Matter - Gunnison

I am extremely proud of the people who organized the demonstration in Gunnison in honor of George Floyd and the thousands of other black men and women who are unjustly killed by police in our country. I was overwhelmed by the show of solidarity, the energy, and the sheer number of people who came out. I have helped put on some demonstrations in Gunnison, I have attended many more, but this event was the most powerful and emotional thing I've ever witnessed in this town. I'm not ashamed to say I cried. Photographers for our newspapers cried. The organizers and speakers cried a little bit too. It was unspeakably moving. It affected me even more deeply than standing on stage with the diversity of supporters behind Joe Salazar's bid for Attorney General in 2018. I want to extend my thanks to our Gunnison police, who were, from what I could see, very respectful, did not interfere, and helped direct traffic for our safety when we were all standing in the middle on an intersection of two highways. So thank you.

The demonstration was a great success, and now we all need to harness that energy and use it. Become more engaged politically so we can make these changes our society so desperately needs. We elect representatives who are supposed to speak for us. That's hard when they do not reflect our diversity, or don't care about our issues. Become involved in the dominant parties at a small and local level and the primaries. Primaries are vital. For better or worse (mostly worse) these two parties are the ones who are going to field a candidate in a general election. If we don't speak up and demand that those candidates care about us, and if we aren't involved in choosing leaders of a diverse cast, we'll end up with more sociopathic narcissists like the Darth Drumpf and his horde of allies.

Keep the energy up!

In solidarity,

Edward

June 3 COVID data

The same day the US drops to 10th place in the great Race to the Bottom, Gunnison registered its first case of Coronavirus 9 days after Memorial day. Our last positive test was on the 24th. Now is the beginning of the time we will see a surge in cases, if we are to see one, from the Memorial Day revelries. I have been predicting we should see a surge. However, if we remain at 20,000 cases added per day, we will probably continue to remain stable. We wont get worse through the summer.... that would be my humble prediction.

Unlike other countries with resources that got hit hard early: they are dropping in cases per day.

And don't forget Andorra, they made the big move to the 1% club today.

June 2 COVID race

In 9 days, at our current rate of 20,000 cases a day, the US will be the first country in the world to 2 million cases. But we are losing the race to the bottom. Even Singapore pulls away from us a little, leaving us lonely in the 0.5% club. Kuwait, however, passes Singapore, pulling into 7th.

It shows you what elite company we are in when we add nearly the same number of cases as many cases as our competitors have in total. Carrying nearly 1/3 of all cases in the globe, we are still able to race for the most cases per person.

However, South America is closing many gaps, so it may be that tomorrow we drop out of the bottom 9, displaced by Chile and Peru. We still have 5-10 days to see how the USA rallies from Memorial Day revelries. Hopefully protesters of genocide and discrimination were careful enough we don't get a spike from that. We really don't need help hurting our marginalized communities in the US of A. 

Big Upset in the race to be the worst

Big upset today as Qatar finally passes San Marino to be the first country in the world to 2%! Despite having 2 orders of magnitude more people. That eclipses any individual state in the US.  Still, they have managed to keep their death rate down.

Kuwait has easily pulled away from the US from yesterday. With 3 orders of magnitude less people, it's easy for them to grow their numbers. We still have to wait to see the effect of the Memorial Day holiday on the US cases, but it'll almost certainly be too late for them to win the race to 0.6% or even 0.8%. Bahrain, Singapore, and Kuwait have a great potential to continue pulling away in the next few days.

Can the US even hold on to its 9th place spot for the next few days? Chili, Peru, and Belarus are all growing quickly, and are only at 0.4%

Time will only tell in this slow, morbid race to the bottom. It takes persistence in ignoring reality, and we all know how good the US is at this skill. They are certainly the country to beat.

COVID race May 29

A little cynicism about Corona virus. Since I live in the United States, the dying Imperial Empire of the world in the early 21st century.

Truly, the winners in the CoronaVirus outbreak is currently a dozen small countries and African nations, a few in Southeast Asia which reportedly have NO cases. NO deaths. They're doing fine.

But the "race" is between who is going to crack that 1% mark earliest. 

The small country of San Marino passed the line long ago, followed by Qatar. A few days ago, the USA was in 8th place in terms of cases per person, only to get passed by Kuwait. Whose small population means it's a lot easier for them to raise their rate. A few people get sick, and up it goes. Whereas the USA has to infect several thousand of its people to make a dent in the percentage.

But we've managed it. Trying desperately to be the worst affected nation to the disease, we slowed our recovery in Mid-May, engaged in several revelries during Memorial Day, which have yet to show up in our caseload (and wont for a week or two yet), we might be able to ramp up our toll and skate through 0.6% and 0.7%.

We're going to be hard pressed to pass all the countries that are ahead of us. For we have 3 Orders of Magnitude more cases for a lower percentage of people affected.

And yet, still, there are many who think The Don Drumpf is doing just fine.