Hope you all had a good Veterans' Day

Sunny but cold today. It may get warm enough for me to go out and clean up some more leaves. Trees that still had their fall foliage a week ago are now winter bare. We had several days with high winds and a few with rain. That pretty well stripped the trees. The temperatures for the next week are more typically November--chilly.

I wasn't going to link to this. The COVID situation is as depressing as our political situation and there is nothing I can do about either other than limit my excursions out of the house while wearing a mask and voting. And I do both. I have heard the notion of a "lockdown" bandied about both at local levels and at the Federal level. One major point to start with--the Italian government can do (and did) impose a lockdown in the spring. The U.S. Federal government can suggest a lockdown but can't impose one. Major difference. But it is debatable how effective the lockdowns in Europe were. Sweden did not lockdown but their cases are surging now, they have the highest mortality rate in Europe and the economy has taken a serious hit just like the rest of Europe. Here in the U.S. cases are exploding with more than 120K per day for the last week. I think we set three records in three days with the worst yesterday at almost 149K. Hospitals are overwhelmed and N. Dakota's governor is relaxing rules to allow asymptomatic but positive personnel to work because they simply don't have more trained medical workers. Arguments over what policy to follow have usually been couched in terms of people's lives vs the economy. Unfortunately, I think we are at the point of losing both. But the author of the post I linked to draws attention to a problem we have over here but we have been able to whitewash it almost to oblivion: those hurt by what ever we do are at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale and have the fewest resources to sustain them through it. They are also the so-called "essential workers" who seem to be all too disposable.

November 13

Well, another record for COVID cases--159K. And another 1000+ death toll for the day. Chicago's mayor is issuing a stay-at-home advisory. She decided against a new stay-at-home order because too many people either won't or can't follow such an order. Those who are able are working from home and most everyone else has to go out to work. Indiana and Illinois have both been setting new records for hospitalizations and for deaths.

November 14

We have had frosts for the last three mornings including this morning and it was fairly heavy. Temperature on the patio was 30*F. Right now the sky is cloudy. 

So Jerome Powell (Federal Reserve Chairman) is saying out loud what I said back in late April: whatever economy we have on the other side of this pandemic will not be the economy we had. That might not be a bad thing because it didn't work well for a much too large a proportion of the population. It is nice he acknowledges the lower paid workers who will need support but given the current climate in Washington I am not holding my breath.We had a consumer economy but large numbers of consumers can't consume much beyond basics--if they can afford that.