Y'know What I Miss?

     I miss salad bars.  They'd already gotten pretty scarce before this pandemic and they're not going to come back any time soon.

     There's a lunch place across from where I work that's got one, but my lunch break is late, they are understaffed and by the time I get there, it's more science experiment than temptation.

     It used to be that no small-town steak joint worthy of the name lacked a salad bar.  It was a necessary component.  They seemed to fade away with the first round of chain-restaurant steak places (Bonanza, Ponderosa, Mr. Steak) and their standalone competitors.  The next bunch (Outback, Texas Roadhouse, etc.) don't seem to have them -- and for my money, the steaks aren't the same, either.

     Some fine, far-off day there will be sit-down chow joints and salad bars again.  Some day.

Oh, For Pity's Sake...

     The "It's no worse then the flu"/"They're cooking the books on the death count" crowd has just about convinced me to leave F*cebook for good.

     Cause of death is a complex thing and like Achilles and the Tortoise, every time you think you've caught up with it, it has moved a little bit ahead: if you've got an pre-existing condition, say COPD, heart disease or extreme old age, and you come down with COVID-19 and develop a severe case, your pre-existing condition is likely to be the thing that directly kills you, months or years earlier than it would have if you didn't have COVID-19.  It's probably going to get recorded as a coronavirus death.

       You can pick nits over defining those stats all day long (and still miss the person dying of a quiet stroke in the ER waiting room, overlooked because the hospital is too overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients), but that's not a useful analysis; the real measure is the raw death rate in an area with a coronavirus outbreak.  All deaths, by any cause; add 'em up and compare to the same period in previous years.  If it's higher, you've got a problem.  We won't have even those numbers for awhile, but we have a proxy: how full are the morgues?  How busy are the funeral homes?  And the answer is, in the hard-hit areas, they're swamped.  That's not something that can be faked, not in a city crawling with newspaper, radio and TV reporters with too much free time and a lot of competitive pressure.

     SARS-CoV-2 is worse than the flu.  A lot worse -- and likely far more communicable.

     Which leads to the other line of addled thinking; I keep seeing, "They say we're all going to get it, so why not open everything back up, catch it and get it done already?

     The problem with that approach is, if we all get it at once in some city or region, you get a replay of New York City or Northern Italy.  Those places don't have an unusually low number of hospital beds per capita; they're about average or even a little better.  Yes, where you live isn't as densely populated as NYC, but on a per-person basis, it's got the same number of or fewer doctors and hospital rooms; on a per-capita basis, it's got the same square footage of grocery stores and big-box stores and other places where you can get right up close and personal with your neighbors -- and whatever viruses they've got.  One percent of Manhattan's population, in one percent of the space, with one percent of the doctors, hospitals and common spaces is not one percent of the problem.  It's the same problem, overworked medical personnel, high death rate and all.

     If you're in a rural area, you do get a break: the spread will be slower.  If you and your closest neighbors (dozens of miles away) are only in town once every two weeks, the virus won't spread as quickly in an outbreak; but given that some infected people are spreading the virus for two weeks before they show symptoms, it will still spread -- and medical services tend to be few and far between in such areas. You'll all end up in the same dinky county hospital and it will be just as busy as Big City General would be, despite the smaller scale.

     That gets us to another problem, one that haunts medical facilities, especially overworked ones.  It's a version of The Sniper Problem: there you are, in an area with only fair cover and concealment, and there's a sniper hidden some distance away.  You have to stay out of sight of the sniper all of the time but the sniper only has to get a clear shot at you once.  It's an unfair contest -- and it is exactly the fight between healthcare workers and a highly infections illness: they have to get PPE exactly right every time, but the virus only has to get through one time.  And it's not just patient-to-provider transmission, but patient-to-patient via provider: hospitals (and other patient-care facilities) can easily become centers of infection.

     So there are good reasons to remain isolated, to restart non-essential commerce slowly and cautiously, and to remain ready to pull back when and where there are outbreaks.

     Many people are saying the risk doesn't matter, that we have to restart the economy to prevent a recession or worse.  Too late.  We're going to have a recession and maybe a depression.  It can't be avoided.  There are going to be economic readjustments and they're going to hurt.  Just getting supply chains untangled from Red China is going to be disruptive, and that may be the smallest effect.

     Our choice is to have a bad economic slump and huge numbers of overloaded hospitals (with all that entails), or to just have a bad economic slump.

     Better buckle up.  It's going to be a bumpy ride -- and lying to yourself about it won't help a bit, no matter how loud you are.

"...Think They're Better'n Me...."

     Who knows, it may even be true: on the conclusion of the final draft of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was supposedly asked by a woman in the crowd what the new government would be.  He replied, "A Republic, madam -- if you can keep it."

     The story does not record her scowling reaction at the great man, saying, "Whut?" and then later denouncing the Constitution to her friends and neighbors as a plot by the intellectual elite against the common man, but the older I get and the more I see of The People, the more likely it seems.

     We are terribly social creatures, gossipy and quarrelsome; we want our lives to be as richly complex as the plot line of a soap opera, filled with secret plans, behind-the-scenes machinations and all manner of larger-than-life heroes and villains.  We want it so badly that when we don't get it, we make it up.

     What stories are you and your friends telling yourselves and one another -- and have you checked them carefully against reality?

     Maybe we'd all better.  Too many people are dying of "It can't happen to me" already.

Burned Out

     I'm burned out on idiots and fools.  From politicians publicly spitballing notions that should only have been shared behind closed doors (if then) to "gotcha!" media that waves shrieking fresh-ink headlines for every gaffe to the contrarian (or possibly just that stupid) half-wits who apparently assume that if the New York Times and CNN say not to drink bleach or disinfectant* (because the President mused on the topic), then clearly the thing to do is to drink bleach or disinfectant.†

     I'm sick and tired being run ragged by a damn virus, and even more so by arguments over the effects of a damn virus.  I don't know how big a pile of corpses or how many unplanned-for filled hospital beds it takes to convince some people, but apparently more dead Americans than died in twenty years of fighting in Vietnam isn't enough.


     I'm tired of quack medicine and bullshit pseudoscience.  No, 5G didn't cause COVID-19, and while Bill Gates and I would probably never vote for the same people, he's not a shadowy mastermind plotting to Beast-mark your kids, he's a zillionaire who started to feel guilty about eating imported French PB&J sandwiches off solid-gold tennis shoes in the back of his platinum-plated Bentley submarine, and decided that funding medical initiatives that were likely to result in fewer dead children would make him feel better and reduce his tax payments.  Look askance at his politics all you like; being aghast at the politicians and causes our fellow citizens support is a national pastime older than baseball. Sneer at him all you like -- then tell me how many poor kids your disposable income saved last week.

     I'm annoyed and angry at how few people pay attention to the real stuff the real enemies of this country get up to.  No, China didn't tinker up SARS-CoV-2 and they almost certainly didn't let it slip out of a lab -- but they lied about its communicability, they lied about its impact on their country, and I still have doubts that we're getting reliable numbers.  In their haste to make the West look inept, China has sold (and sometimes given away) dodgy coronavirus test kits and defective medical supplies; they've held up shipments of personal protective gear bound to the U.S.  Russia is even worse; their long-term, invidious effort to undermine public trust in American political institutions has been reaping great benefits from this crisis.  Russia is on no one's side but their own and they are happy to encourage internal divisions in the United States.  They have long seen our political system of opposing parties and factions as a great weakness and they continue to try to use it against us -- every link you post to Russia Today (not free media; it is controlled by the Russian government) or Zero Hedge (very probably an FSB black- or gray-propaganda operation) helps them.  Don't be a stooge!

     Last, I am irked by people who won't do their homework, and just lazily post links that confirm what they already wanted to believe.  My favorite was the headline claiming there are 3.5 million more registered voters than adults in the U. S. -- shocking stuff!  Except, whoops, a little fiddling with search engines turns up 153 million registered voters in the U. S., out of just over 253 million citizens over the age of 18.  The headline is off by over a hundred and three million!  Digging deeper finds the 2017 National Review article that the headlined piece was based on, in which Deroy Murdock found a few hundred dead people had voted and turned up a lot of registered voters on the rolls who were no longer at the address on their registrations -- moved away, abducted by aliens or dead, but also most of them no longer voting.  It's not great, but it's not millions of fraudulent votes either. On a national scale, it's pretty far down in the noise.  Look that stuff up!  You have at your fingertips the greatest engine for finding out that has ever existed, and you won't use it.  I am mystified by the appeal of shiny candy-coated humbug over unvarnished fact.
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* Seriously, listen to me.  Their politics are often biased and like any journalists, on any complex or specialized topic they are often working on a deadline from fresh notes about a subject they had only general knowledge about a day earlier, if they even knew that much.  But a large subset of journalists have previously consumed or will drink now anything even remotely potable, especially if it might be intoxicating.  When they tell you what isn't safe to drink, they're right 99.9999999999999% of the time.

 † To be perfectly fair, at least some of the reported and tragically-foolish ingestion of cleaners occurred before the President's remarks and ensuing press furor, presumably as the result of quack medicine and/or unusual religious practices.  Look, I'm not going to tell you how to practice your religion, but as a general rule there's no good outcome to drinking such substances.

Housework Day

     Laundry, kitchen cleaning, a little bit of electronics (because the washer needs to be watched on the spin cycle and my workshop is just a few steps away).

     The afternoon was sunny and warm -- well, warmish, at least -- once the rain was over and I spent some time outside -- not as much as I would like, but there was much to be done.  The air was wonderful!

     After reseasoning my cast-iron steak-grilling pan (darned thing had gotten ugly since last time) and a bacon press that's been in the way for awhile,  I got out the bread machine and looked it over; actually trying it is a project for another day but hopes are high.

     A grocery delivery arrived late in the afternoon  After getting it put away, I heated up some nice ham and bean soup from two days ago, with added fresh vegetables and some mushrooms. Over dinner, Tam and I watched an episode of our current series, Breaking Bad, which neither of us had seen.  We're well into Season Two.

     We had some nice multigrain bread with the soup.  I had picked it up from the grocer's store-baked breads on the sole basis of the crust looking good.  It's pretty dense, but flavorful and with enough texture to be buttered.  It went well with the soup.

     Another pandemic weekend.

Antenna, Repaired

     Earlier in the week, I noticed my ham radio antenna was broken.  It's a G5RV, a kind of "doublet," a long pence of wire, split at the center and with RF fed into it at that point.

     On one side, the wire of mine runs over to a tree and takes a turn (about fifteen feet above ground), supported by running it through a hole in an insulator.  There had been enough motion that the wire wore through!

     Today, I spliced it, with a pulley at the turn, and rearranged things so that it doesn't turn at the splice.

     I'm hoping it will hold up.

     Wrestling the ladder around to the roof and then to the tree was a lot of work and between that and digging up dandelions, I'm worn out.  Made chili for an early dinner and have mostly sat around ever since.

Friday

     It's "Don't Take Medical Advice From Politicians" Friday!

     Seriously, don't.  Guam tips over every time you treat an elected official as if he or she knows anything except politics.  Remember, our Federal system was devised so it would survive the kinds of people who get elected, not to exalt them.

Quarantine Food: What Am I Eating?

     This morning, the answer is easy: roast beef hash with a cornmeal crust and an egg baked on top of it.  It's my answer to the increased amount of water and fat in canned hash and it works pretty well.  It's an inexact art: you mix up some cornmeal and flour, possibly with a little seasoning, and sprinkle a layer into the pan before adding the hash. Fifteen or twenty minutes later (most of it covered), you should have well-cooked hash on a nice, crunchy crust and if you had broken an egg on top, it'll be baked all the way through.  Getting the exact perfect, golden-brown crust is a bit chancy and I'm still working on the proportion of flour to cornmeal.

     Last night was a simple dinner: some fancy bone-broth tomato soup with grilled-cheese sandwiches.  Yes, tomatoes don't have bones, but chickens do and the stuff was made with chicken-bone stock.  Very tasty, too.  The sandwiches were grilled Swiss on rye, which I think is the ideal combination.

     Night before last, pasta!  Rotini and some of Sunday's sauce, "stretched."   I sauteed celery, white carrots and half an onion in a little butter with a dash of garlic power, then pushed it to the sides of the pan and added a can of diced tomatoes and some spices..  Diced was all I had -- but I also have a potato masher* and it turned them into crushed tomatoes in short order!  Then I added the leftover sauce, which had plenty of meat, and simmered the whole thing together.  Time spent in the freezer had only improved the previous marinara sauce -- the finished dish was even better than Sunday.  Despite having made a big pot of pasta, we each ended up about two or three giant rotini short, to which Tam remarked that she did not remember ever having regretted a lack of noodles before.  The sauce was fine by itself, but adding the texture of al dente pasta made it even better.

     Monday was beef stew: really nice stew beef Tam saw at the neighborhood grocery, seasoned and browned.  Once it was well underway, I sauteed carrots, celery, leeks and an onion with it and then simmered everything in beef bone broth.   It was wonderful and warm -- and even better for lunch the next day.  You can go from raw materials to finished stew in about a half-hour but it's better to cook it low and slow or let it rest after the quicker cooking; give it a couple of hours over low heat on the stove or a night in the fridge and you've really got a treat.

     We're eating well.  Nothing fancy, and all based on a pretty simple list of ingredients, but it's good stuff.

Okay, Today I Have Nothing

     Or not much.  Be good to one another, even when you disagree.  There's a lot to disagree about right now and many of us have plenty of free time to spend disagreeing.

     That's fine.  What's not fine is being a jerk about it.  Treat others as you would like to be treated -- and don't try to jailhouse-lawyer your way around the principle, either.

Opening Up? Closing Down?

     There aren't any easy answers.  A vocal minority is shouting in in the streets and on the Internet, wanting to lift restrictions on non-essential businesses.  Another vocal minority is staging walk-outs and editorializing online about workers at essential businesses being exposed to the novel* coronavirus.  A news company ran a nationwide poll, and nearly two-thirds of Americans are concerned restrictions in their state will be lifted too soon, hastening the spread of the virus; another third worry it might not be soon enough and small businesses will fail as a result.  There's hardly anyone on the fence, a fraction not much larger than the margin of error.

     None of them are wrong.  We're not getting out of this without pain and damage.  People are arguing over what's worse, and arguing with insufficient information.  But get this: there's no "make it didn't happen" option.  We're not going back to normal, not ever; people have died and the ice-cream shop on the corner may never return.

     Being the species we are, we'll find out what we to do the hard way.  Many people are already taking the restrictions and suggestions lightly.  I gassed up my car yesterday and while I'm careful to be gloved and masked, and to follow proper procedure in doffing, donning and disposing, the adjacent gas-pump island was in use by a young woman with green hair, wearing a T-shirt, jeans and sandals, bare-faced and gloveless.  When she was done, she hopped in her nice, recent-model Cadillac and drove off with nary a pause for hand sanitizer.  Which one of us is the outlier, locally?  Not her.

     We flattened the curve and now, cheerful primates that we are, many of us are now looking around, deciding it wasn't so bad after all, and throwing caution to the winds.  If we get a second spike in new infections, we'll know that wasn't such a great idea.

     It is not a matter of nature "learning us or killing us."  Nature teaches us by killing a some of us.  As a species, we learn when people die.  How did we figure out which mushrooms are safe to eat?  How did we learn how to make poke salad that didn't kill us, or prepare rhubarb for pie?  Pokeweed and rhubarb (leaves) are poisonous; you have to know which parts to eat and how to prepare them.  Historically, the only way to learn is by doing it wrong and suffering the consequences.

     "Doing it wrong and suffering the consequences" might as well be humanity's motto.  But we follow it a few at a time -- and the onlookers and survivors learn from the experience.

     We're learning now.  It sucks, doesn't it?
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* Novel?  There's a whole multi-book series in this thing.  It will be a long while before anyone wants to read it.

I Suppose....

     I suppose I should link to a collection of interesting articles about the pandemic, and make a pithy comment.

     I suppose I should talk about the irony of people out protesting -- locally and nationally -- most of them unmasked and much closer to one another than six feet apart.  Irony?  Well, they're protesting being forced to stay home, weak masks and maintain social distance, you see, and yet I have not been able to find even one report of protesters being issued so much as a ticket for breaking the rules.  Personally, I am quite comfortable with volunteers running an experiment in virus transmission; I just wonder how their elderly or otherwise vulnerable family members feel about being involuntary participants.  Doesn't that count as an initiation of force?

     I suppose I should do a lot of things.  I think I'll go have a bath instead.

Sunday, Pasta

     The pasta itself was rotini, those interesting spirals that we called "scroodles" when I was young.  The sauce, now--

     Start with sweet Italian sausage, say about a pound; toss a little Italian spices on it and and some fresh-ground pepper, get it mostly browned, drain most of the fat and moisture, then add a leek,* a white carrot and a few fresh mushrooms, sliced smallish.  Sauté that and then add whatever store-bought marinara you like and a small can of diced or crushed tomatoes if the meat/sauce ratio needs adjusted. (Ours did)  A couple of bay leaves, maybe some basil, parsley, rosemary and so on is good, too.  Stir, cover and let simmer.

     The pasta water should be good and boiling by now -- and you salted it well beforehand, right?  Add the pasta, which will take somewhere between seven and ten minutes to cook al dente.  Check the package -- big, thick pasta takes longer than small, fine stuff.

     You do not drain or rinse the pasta; just fish it out with a slotted spoon or pasta tongs, let the water run back into the pan, and plop it into the soup plate (those big, wide-brimmed bowls are ideal).  Ladle the sauce over it and there you go!

     It was delicious.  The rotini were good-sized, and held lots of sauce.

     All we had on the side was an olive assortment: a few Castlevetranos, Kalamatas and a caperberry.  That's all we needed.
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* Leeks are muddy things and a bit awkward to clean up.  I rinse them off as much as possible, chop off the root end as close as gets the fused-together part removed, then split them lengthwise and rise out each half.  That does the trick and you can chop them up small with ease.