COVID-19 Diary | San Diego Ties Highest Weekly Community Outbreak Record | Old Dude Explores Pandemic Disneyworld | COVID Kills Cain | Sexist COVID-19 Data

One of the many amazing birds in the San Diego Zoo Africa Rocks Aviary (7.30.2020)

I woke up bright and shiny this morning, then I saw the voting tweet from the CoVIdiot-In-Chief and decided I would go right back to bed. It probably doesn't help that I'm currently reading a book about a high school athlete who gets hooked on opioids. It's a great book and I've been cycling through every novel by Mindy McGinnis, but Heroine is super intense. I'm gonna read till the end but am having a hard time getting through it. 

I spent the afternoon trying to get through email, but sometimes it's a long slog. I had a free online photography class, but it was by a Nikon rep and was way, way out of my skill level and out of my budget with respect to all the gear he was recommending for dream photos, so I quietly exited the WebX class and went to the San Diego Zoo. That mostly lifted my mood, though I'm gonna write to the powers-that-be that they should adopt that Disneyworld policy, that if you're eating and drinking, you must be stationary and maintaining social distance, because I'm getting a little sick of people coming up in my space with their masks off while shouting to their families while they have a beer in their hand and thinking it's totally okay. It's really one of the only places I've felt safe to go recreationally, so I'm not letting some a-holes ruin it for me without at least saying something. 

After that, we fed the pets and went to my mom's for my niece's 13th birthday. They just bought a really nice Adirondack-style patio set and put new slab in the backyard so I can say we were certainly distant with masks and separated even more when the masks came off for cake. I'm trying now to catch up with the rest of my things so we can hang in the speakeasy, so I'm gonna keep it short today. News and stuff after the jump.

  

• COVID-19 News
• When we see all these maskless a-holes on TV or social media declaring the pandemic a hoax, or defying health recommendations and orders, it's really easy to quietly cheer inside or declare 'karma' or have some little told-you-so or should've-listened-to-the-experts feeling when we hear they got infected (Don Jr.'s girlfriend, Louie Gohmert, Herman Cain.) But now that Herman Cain is dead, of all the a-holes, there are dozens of old white guys and it bums me out that as a person of color and a cancer survivor, his death will just be written off instead of an actual "pure" COVID-19 death as the right continue to spin things. And this also dismisses the thousands of people getting infected through no fault of their own; working in high-risk industries or places where reasonable guidelines were never required or enforced, or getting infected because of other people's negligence. So maybe I shouldn't even write these things "out loud" so to speak, but it was literally the first thing I thought this morning when I heard he was dead. 
• I'm posting this one because I keep thinking that if we were to tell all Californians (and Zonies, and anyone of the large influx of Disney tourists) that Disneyland California is literally NEVER reopening until this shit is under control, we might actually get the Orange County maskholes to get their shit together. But then I read this and it actually didn't sound so terrible. I find his writing kinda boring, elitist, and judgmental--and coming from judgmental me, that's saying something, I think, but it's still an interesting long read for when you have time.
  I Went to Disney World: As the coronavirus pandemic ravaged Florida, the Magic Kingdom welcomed back its most loyal subjects—and me. - The Atlantic (7.27.2020)
• Open schools are the exception, not the rule, around the world - Politico (7.29.2020)
  Countries with open schools tend to fall into two categories. Some took swift action against the pandemic in January to minimize disruption. Others were less proactive in the fight against Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, but they prioritized education in their recovery plan, coordinated by the top levels of government. The United States did neither.
• CALIFORNIA STATS:
• 116,374 tests reported yesterday
• 10,197 positive cases
• Positivity rate remains stable at 7.5%.
• 194 new deaths
• SAN DIEGO STATS:
• 381 positive cases/5% positivity rate/8,238 tests 
• 6 new deaths
• Case rate 134.4/100k of population
• 28 Community Outbreaks in last 7 days. 5 new since yesterday.
• Totals 28,668 cases/558 deaths. 
• Sexist and Incomplete Data Hold Back the World’s Covid-19 Response - STAT  News (7.30.2020) 
  When it comes to the pandemic and its effect on women, too often we just don’t have the numbers. Without a clear picture of the devastation, responses to Covid-19 risk leaving out millions of women and girls and slowing recovery. If governments, for instance, aren’t counting the number of women who’ve had to drop out of the workforce, they may overlook the urgent need for child care legislation. No business would make decisions based on information that excludes 50% of its customers; governments shouldn’t either. Here are four things all governments must do immediately.
• Protests: 
• Federal Loans Available to Help Small Businesses Affected by Civil Unrest - County News Center (7.30.2020)
• The Constitutional Case Against Trump’s Use of the Department of Homeland Security - New Yorker (7.30.2020)