May 4

David Kaiser has some interesting comments on how the corona virus spread. The data he examines (deaths per million population) appears to show that the virus has spread most widely in advanced countries and less in the "developing" countries. And in the U.S. the hardest and earliest hit areas are New York City and its surroundings and the West Coast. The least affected areas are the "fly-over" states. That tallies with something I noticed looking at some of the maps and checking with the various state maps. The virus spread most widely and earliest in cities especially those with colleges or universities while spreading last and most slowly in the rural areas. Kaiser suspects that the key to the spread is transportation. I think he might be right.

A friend posted on her Facebook page a picture of a protester at one of the rallies against the measures imposed to fight the virus (stay-at-home, business closures, masks, and social distancing) who held a sign reading "Albeit Mach Frei." My friend and I both took it as a sign of abysmal ignorance and another failing of our so-called education system. But someone else responded with a comment that, honestly is more frightening: what if the person knew exactly where the phrase came from and believed in the underlying ideology? That would mean that the Nazi ideology won WWII 75 years after Germany surrendered. I asked when I saw the picture whose work? and whose freedom?. Those who worked in the Nazi camps were certainly not free and many were worked to death before the allies liberated the camps. I remember a comment the governor of Illinois made when he got complaints from people whose livelihoods were threatened by the shut down: you have to have a life to have a livelihood. Twenty years ago (plus or minus) I thought too many people (myself included) were working themselves to death to make a living. Today, I think it is a major indictment of our "capitalist" system that people work themselves to death to not make a living.