HIking and Covid-19

Greetings!  Long time, no write.  The news is just sucking the marrow out of my bones.  There has been hiking.  Hiking is good, there have been no fellow humans in sight.  It's kind of weird, we're wondering where they all are.  I finally figured out how to use the panorama setting on Jim's phone.  This time I did not cut the tops off of the mountains.  It's sort of a distorted image, not sure I'm a fan of the format.

Yesterday we hiked late, we spent a fair amount of time on the phone with Charles Schwab trying to determine why they had locked our account due to not being able to identify me.  They actually could not pin point the problem and after asking me the four questions they can pull from public records they restored us to full access.  The investment guy keeps telling us to stay the course, and we keep wondering just how bad things are going to get.

This was today, it was just a gorgeous day.  White puffy clouds and warm temperatures.  Monday it's going to rain.

See the bites taken out of the prickly pear?  Javelinas did that.  It's hard to believe they can munch on the spines.

There was a sunset, as well.

At the 2/28 rally in South Carolina, the president went on record as saying Covid-19 is a hoax perpetrated by the Democrat (sic) party.  He  followed up with the equally baseless statement that the stock market was tanking because the markets didn't like any of the candidates in the Democrat (sic) party. I can't stand it.  Today, he announced the first US death due to Covid-19.  He then followed up with the statement that most people will survive, they'll just have to go through some stuff.  I still can't stand it.  Dr. Fauci (head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) was on stage with him, why wasn't he speaking?

The first US death came today in Washington state.  He was a 50ish man, with underlying health issues.  That was bad enough, worse is that several patients at a long term health care facility have tested positive, as have some people who work there.  Now what?  One hundred fourteen nurses at another hospital (different state) are now quarantined because they cared for a sick person that turned out to be positive for the virus.  Things are not starting off well.  The Seattle area Costco stores are running out of everything, people are buying everything there is to buy.
 
It is unfortunate that the team put together to confront the Ebola virus by Obama was disbanded by John Bolton in May 2018. Fifteen years of putting processes and procedures to efficiently run a pandemic response were flushed because it was an Obama sponsored project. Now, the wheel is having to be reinvented, and yes I do blame the president for this. That action was stupid. His personnel decisions have been based on who is loyal to him, and not on expertise. The head of HHS, was president of Lily, a major pharmaceutical company. The head of CDC has long ties to groups who believe AIDS was "God's judgment" against homosexuals, spread in an America weakened by single-parent households and loss of family values.  Having Mike Pence, science denier, who famously declared that smoking did not cause cancer because not everybody who smoked got cancer as the Covid-19 team leader makes little to no sense to me.   I could go on, but I'll stop there. The thus poor response to Covid-19 can be traced to not having qualified, experienced people in place and that problem starts at the top.

Yesterday, we tried to buy hand sanitizer at Target.  That was futile.  The hoarding has already begun.  I keep thinking we should stock up, but can't really figure out what I should be buying.  Pasta maybe?

This is the view from a Seattle area Costco.

So remember, wash your hands frequently and quit touching your face!