COVID19 Update - Day 59

US Tests: 8,408,788
US Cases: 1,275,916
US Deaths: 71,762
Worldwide Cases: 3,938,080
Worldwide Deaths: 274,898

I want to focus on a very specific aspect of the pandemic tonight, and that concerns food insecurity.  In short, a lot of lower-income families simply don't have enough food.  And not surprisingly, that situation is more common among families with children:

By the end of April, more than one in five households in the United States, and two in five households with mothers with children 12 and under, were food insecure. In almost one in five households of mothers with children age 12 and under, the children were experiencing food insecurity.

We have seen extreme examples of this, like the line of thousands of cars waiting to get food from a food bank in San Antonio.  And we already know it's going to get worse, as the Corrupt Racist in Chief encourages states to reopen far too soon.

So I would like to use my tiny platform to encourage those who have the means to help out, ideally with a monetary donation.  Since food banks often have special agreements with grocery stores and the like, a monetary donation will usually do more good than using that same money to buy a bag of groceries to donate.

Ideally, you would donate to your local food shelf, but there are national organizations you can donate to as well.  There's Chefs for America, which purchases meals from restaurants and gives them to people in need, thus helping to keep the restaurants open and their workers employed during the pandemic.  And there's also Give Directly, which puts your donations in the hands of families who need food.

These and other charitable organizations are supported by While at Home, a site set up for the express purpose of helping to soften the economic blow of the virus.  Please help out however you can.

Besides that ask, I shall simply continue to scream into the void about how badly the Trump administration is mismanaging the response, and continue to gaze longingly at countries with competent leadership:

With the disease seemingly beaten back domestically, Hong Kong is now in a position to start switching emphasis to a strategy focused on border controls. With the pandemic still raging globally, the city can’t let its guard down entirely. And because Hong Kong is so small and dependent on international commerce, just opening up the domestic service economy can’t really save the city from serious economic problems.

But the city has a clearly articulated strategy that it calls “suppress and lift”: ease restrictions now when cases are at zero, but then clamp back down as necessary to push cases back down if they pop up.

Taiwan has also had no new cases for several days, and since April 6, all of Taiwan’s reported cases have stemmed from a single naval vessel’s goodwill mission to the island of Palau rather than community spread. New Zealand has not done quite this well, but the government believes it has successfully identified and isolated all of the country’s coronavirus cases and is lifting restrictions, on the claim that the virus has been “eliminated” in the country.

South Korea’s outbreak is now down to single-digit numbers of new cases per week, and a key test for the country is whether an anticipated surge of holiday travel this week to the island of Jeju (a major Korean tourist destination) will lead to a new wave, or if the peninsula can suppress spread of the disease. South Korean professional baseball also resumed this week, though without fans in the stands.

The U.S. could be doing better, but it would require: a) A president who is 'lava level mad' about the number of infections of deaths nationwide, not just about the fact that he personally has come into contact with infected people, and b) Citizens who are more concerned with the public health than they are with their desire to get their hair done, go to the tattoo parlor, or party with their friends.