SPRING FORWARD 2ND WEEK: Here are the second week's pictures. The starting point, as usual, is the view from the deck. No change from last week, except it was cloudy when I took the picture this week. The scrub brush, which I am assidously attacking with the brush cutter, is beginning to poke through the leaves, but the trees have yet to show signs of budding out.

This is the Road from Nowhere (our house) with the driveway bottom right. During the summer it's typically a tunnel. Right now it looks like a freeway.

The third picture is the house taken from out beyond the fire pit. Our 'yard', in which I've assiduously attacked with the brush cutter, is clear for now. Hopefully it'll remain clear as summer returns, but I have my doubts.

And the final picture is the pond again, showing the walking path that goes around the perimeter. I've avoided cutting the brush along the pond side in past years, but this year I think I'll get the heavy boots, a safety rope, and attack it. It's a good 3-4 feet to the water, and very steep, but needs a good cleaning.

Till next week, then. Last week's pictures are here.

WUHAN FLU [CORONAVIRUS] UPDATE: Here's today's data, updated around 6 pm.

Note I've changed the scale again on the Cases Reported graph. Reported cases are still growing, a little more steeply for U.S. cases. I was probably a little overoptimistic yesterday is describing the data plotted on a log scale. Globally, the cases are still growing exponentially, though the rate does appear to be slowing over the past three days or so. For the U.S. data, cases are still growing marginally exponentially, though the rate has been slowing consistently faster than the global data and for a longer period of time.

Death rates are still trending higher, more so in the U.S. Still, both are below (far below for the U.S.) the 1% rate of a normal annual flu season. The apparent increase in death rate for the U.S. is a bit puzzling, in that I would expect increased testing would find a larger percentage of people who are ill, but not in serious danger of death. Unless all -- or the majority of -- the testing is performed on people who have been or are going to be hospitalized. This one is worth watching....

Reminder: today 99.79% of the U.S. population are (still) virus-free. That number has been dropping slightly for over a week now, which suggests that the increased testing is having the effect of generating real, useful data.

I FUCKED UP. So I'm going to sue you for responding to my fuckup. NY Gov. Cuomo threatens to sue Rhode Island for crackdown on New York visitors.

IF ONLY IT WEREN'T ACCIDENTAL: Government accidentally shuts itself down with ban on non-essential businesses.

Yes, it's the Babylon Bee. I wish it weren't.

THIS IS WHAT WE GOT for $2.2T (that's trillion dollars, folks) worth of coronavirus 'rescue'.

Make-work for bureaucratic wannabes.

POWERLINE'S Week in Pictures has two favorites this week. Here's the first:

And I was always of the opinion that duct tape was the solution to every problem. I was wrong.

Now go see the rest. They're worth the trip.

WUHAN FLU [CORONAVIRUS] UPDATE: There was no update yesterday; believe it or not, in rural Georgia, we're still allowed to travel to visit friends and family (and bring toilet paper).

Here's today's data, updated around 6 pm.

Note I've changed the scale again on the Cases Reported graph and I'll probably have to do it again on Monday or so. Reported cases are still growing, a little more steeply for U.S. cases. Given the increased testing, I'm somewhat surprised they're not growing more rapidly. The good news, though, is that if the vertical scale were logarithmic you could see that the (feared) exponential growth has almost stopped. Plot the data logarithmically and the curves are flat, beginning to bend downward, which means that the growth rate is linear, not exponential.

Death rates are still trending higher, more so in the U.S. Still, both are below (far below for the U.S.) the 1% rate of a normal annual flu season.

Reminder: today 99.82% of the U.S. population are (still) virus-free.

DEFINITION OF EXPERT: from the root words 'ex', meaning has-been, and 'spurt', a drip under pressure.

Applies most frequently to government (and media) experts....

CORRECT: "One of the problems with our ruling class is that it’s not just frequently wrong, it’s that it’s always self-assuredly arrogant in its wrongness."

WUHAN FLU [CORONAVIRUS] UPDATE:

Here's today's update. I'm so PO's at our government mandarins that I'm nearly incoherent with rage, so no 'analysis' tonight.

Reminder: 99.876% of America is coronavirus free. It's 2x4 time. Upside the head. Harshly.

THE GARBAGE LEFT tries to rewrite history:

So the media and the resistance were occupied with impeaching the president when the CHINA VIRUS was killing people in China. When Trump shut down travel into the U.S. from China, they attacked him as racist and said it would not help the effort to curtail the disease spread. Psuedo-credentialed entities like the World Health Organization were lying/telling the world the CHINA VIRUS could not be transmitted human-to-human in mid-January. So how to nail Trump on this despite the fact that Trump shut down the travel and got a team together early on while they dropped the ball? Re-write history!

On Friday, the WaPo and its anonymous sources wrote, “U.S. intelligence agencies were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen, according to U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.” SPY AGENCY. That’s all you need to know.

The WaPo continues, “But despite that constant flow of reporting, Trump continued publicly and privately to play down the threat the virus posed to Americans.” Right. They wanted Trump to start a massive panic in the middle of his impeachment trial so they could say he was overblowing the threat to distract. Also remember, the House Democrats knew Trump would never get convicted in the Senate and yet they pursued it as this “threat” ravaged China.

There will be plenty more of re-historying. And it will fail.

I'M SURE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IN NANCY PELOSI'S STIMULUS BILL IF SHE HAD THOUGHT OF IT: Democrats demand stimulus bill include reparations for transgender Native Americans affected by climate change.

Yes, it's America's News of Record.

AND NOW WE KNOW IT WAS CHINA: President Xi forgets to remove 'Made In China' tags from coronavirus.

GOOD MORNING: 99.895% of Americans are still coronavirus free.

IF ONLY: Nation to use coronavirus as convenient excuse to quarantine California.

Build that wall!

WUHAN FLU [CORONAVIRUS] UPDATE:

Still pretty much same old, same old. Confirmed cases are still increasing along the trend lines, both globally and within the U.S. The same is true with death rate globally, and the U.S. rate has increased since yesterday. New York cases showing up due to increased testing?

Reminder: 99.91% of the U.S. population is still unaffected by the coronavirus. Remind your local, city, county, state, and federal government critters -- with a 2x4 as needed.

UPDATE: PowerLine has more.

RANDOM THOUGHT: Watching television (which is becoming rarer and rarer as the days pass) I notice that the 'cover your ass' pandemic is spreading rapidly among the talking heads.

RANDOM THOUGHT: I'd love to practice social distancing, but there are so many idiots....

GOOD MORNING: 99.917% of Americans have not yet been infected by the Wuhan flu.

UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH begins burning bigoted biology textbooks.

Yes, it's the Babylon Bee, but every satirical post is hitting closer and closer to reality.

Here's another from our news of record:

TRUMP: I ... want ... Americans ... to die.

We know this one to be satire because it claims the NYT apologized.

SEN. TOM COTTON [R-AR] excoriates Nancy Pelosi's coronavirus 'economic stimulus' package. Watch:



Linked from PowerLine, who has not been kind. Thankfully, President Trump hasn't either.