"15 days to flatten the curve" they said, 243 days ago

 I saw it on a screenshot of a tweet but can't remember the source.  Seemed worth repeating.

So what's a progressive governor to do when the lockdown fails?  Double down. 

Inslee (D-Washington), Brown (D-Oregon), and Newsom (D-California) have all agreed to some coordinated course of action that involves locking us all down again.  Brown has already issued restrictions for Oregon and Inslee's are expected soon.  The high school where I teach has already sent out an email asking us to report whether we are planning on traveling out of state for Thanksgiving.  I responded in an appropriately snarky manner to wit:

Please explain what business it is of yours or the District's where we travel.

I don't know how well it will be received but it is my intent to travel where and when I please without informing the authorities or having my travel papers in order.

Meanwhile around the world:

    Sweden has fallen to 18th in the world in Coronavirus deaths per 100,000 population (I am assuming for the sake of argument that all statistics regarding cause of death are accurate other than those coming from Communist dictatorships) and they never had any lockdown of any sort.

    The United States has fallen to 14th in the world (down from 9)

    The World Health Organization had the following to say " The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”  

How much time do our state governments need?  They've had eight months to get ready while hospitals sat empty.  They've had eight months to honestly evaluate the claims of hydrocloroquine, Vitamin D, and Quercetin, as well as the various other medications that have been floated as having positive effects.  They've had eight months to analyze the deaths and to recognize that this virus targets a very specific portion of the populace and to adjust public health doctrine accordingly.  Apparently they have been so caught by surprise that their only available response is another lockdown.  Another opportunity to destroy people's lives.

And in a mildly political note, coincidence or good timing for Inslee that this announcement didn't come two weeks ago?  Of course with the universal mail-in balloting t hat we have in Washington I guess it would have to have been six weeks to make a difference in the election results.