Hot and More Cases in AZ

It's hot.  How hot is it?  Well, actually it's not currently 110 but it's still pretty warm.  So, I get drugs by mail.  Last week I got a shipment, when it was 110, and we were slow getting out to the mailbox to retrieve the package.  This picture is what my benzonatate (a cough suppressant) looked like.  We had to take tin snips to the pill bottle to get them out because they were one big blob from softening up and sticking together in the heat.  Prescription bottles are amazingly strong.  This is the last of the blob, it took awhile but they eventually separated.

Here is our local squirrel. He comes up on the patio almost everyday.  He's hot.  He's laying on the flagstone because it's cool, he's trying to dump body heat.  Harris ground squirrels do that, as well.  This was taken through a screen and a glass door, so as not to scare him off.

As everyone probably knows, AZ is a hot zone of the first water.  Florida is worse but we're bad enough.  Currently testing is showing 25% positives.  The testing that is available is just pathetic.  Lines stretch for hours, people who have been waiting for hours are frequently turned away because they've run out of tests.  The public health budgets are being cut during the pandemic - makes perfect sense to me.  Governor Ducey did close bars, gyms and movie theaters.  However, I think you can get your hair cut and go out to dinner.  Mask wearing has been made mandatory by several mayors, but not everyone is doing it.  This is a good map how how states are doing, it came from this article.

Every state is probably doing this as an exercise, but apparently AZ is doing it for real.  Beds are in short supply, and a triage protocol has been developed.  Patients are scored on life expectancy, underlying conditions and then decisions are made as to how to allocate scarce resources.  It's just creepy as hell to see it all printed out.  I can't tell if the hospitals have reached Crisis Level or not.  When they do, the scoring goes into effect.  It's unlikely that being elderly will be advantageous with the decisions that are being made.

I am so pissed off about this entire thing.  Things did not have to be this dire. Governor Ducey is saying that by and large Arizonans behaved well.  We've all seen pictures of night clubs and bars stuffed to the gills, with nary a mask in sight, and all of the pretty young things dancing and laughing.  They are literally spraying the room with Covid-19.  I don't see that as good behavior.  When the 20 somethings are interviewed they all think they're young and healthy and it won't kill them.  Well how about the fact that it will kill their grandparents and quite likely their parents.  The orange man's weltanschauung of me-me-me-me has truly trickled down to the population.  We still have sheriffs saying they will not enforce mask regulations.  Posses need to be appointed to go out and enforce the mandate.  We still have those in AZ.

We're pretty dang cranky here in Tucson.  This is going to go on forever because our government is so stupid.