SchaumburgStormer

Some big bangers this morning. Nice to get woken up by thunder.

I have ran the furnace, AC, and had the windows open all during the last week. Now back to furnace. This is dumb.

Can really tell that restriction fatigue is building around me. People are basically going about their daily lives, and even the court system which had all but stopped to prevent the spread, is working on opening the doors again.

I think if there is any light in the darkness that is this dark cavern of our economy, it’s that this crisis will show average Americans that small business is important and vital to our way of life. Problem being, many many many small businesses won’t survive to see the other side.

Luckily for me, construction was allowed to continue at my new house. I was in an interesting position when my current dwelling was under contract to sell (April 24 close), but my new home was no where near ready to be inhabited. Had all construction work been prohibited, I would have been in the interesting position of deciding to violate the stay at home order, violate the construction prohibition, or whatever legal consequence may occur from failing to sell my home as contractually agreed. Due to this, I have had to make a couple trips to my local hardware store to grab some life/safety stuff for my new home. Handrails, electrical boxes, etc. It is insane how many people are there buying things which would be tough to consider essential, like flowers, mulch, etc. It seems that people are slowly getting back to normal. I even heard one person mention “cases are slowing down in Illinois so I decided to venture out”. This is the equivalent of stopping your antibiotic course halfway through because you feel better. I firmly believe, and you can here Lightfoot and Pritzker laying the groundwork, that this stay at home order will be extended again into mid-late May. While some of these orders may be confusing or dubious in execution (looking at you Michigan), I don’t think that this is the “beginning of the totalitarian state” as some of my friends Facebook posts would lead you to believe. I am frustrated like everyone, and I have a hard time justifying the fact that I cannot walk 18 holes by myself, but can contact 15 people in a liquor store. But I get it. I can walk 18 holes by myself and be confident I will be responsible. However the general public as a whole is stupid, and if you give them an inch, they will take a mile.

+sn under these squalls. Near white our due to big flake size. May be the best rates of the year, for five minutes or so...

My younger brother got the call for a liver/kidney transplant tonight. This will be his second transplant, had his first set of organs for 5 years before they started rejecting. When you hear about being the epitome of “high risk” when it comes to Covid, he is it. I found a bunch of old N95 masks in my toolbox and made sure they found their way to him. Since he has been on the list, he has already had 1 set of potential organs rejected by the surgeon due to potential COVID infection in the donor. It is very morbid, but the surgeon was saying that organs are actually harder to come by right now than normal, as a large majority of people are staying home. As such, people are not getting into the fatal auto accidents, homicides, etc at rates which would be considered “normal”. Thus the individuals who are passing are the COVID patients or those who have a strong likelihood of the infection even though they have not been lab confirmed. The transplant doctors are not treating these people as suitable organs donors. So hopefully these test clean in the morning, and we can get my bro back on the path to recovery. But this is just another ripple effect of the virus that the general population would never consider. Although I don’t know you as anything other than screen names; you are my weather family. If you find yourself with a spare moment, I would appreciate if you could toss one up to whatever higher power you subscribe to. Additionally, please sign up to be an organ donor. #****COVID

With trump pushing the social distancing guidelines out to the end of April, it is my assumption that pritzker keeps the state on lockdown for at least 2 additional weeks into mid-late April. Will be interesting to see if that huge jump of 1,100 cases is an aberration or another datapoint on an exponential infection rate. If we are 1,500+ tomorrow, it wouldn’t surprise me to see additional shutdowns or restrictions of businesses that were previously allowed to open.

18 additional deaths. Plus Joe Diffie died, reportedly from COVID 19 as well. Not a huge celebrity, but big in late 90’s country music for sure

465 new cases, 13 more deaths. 3491/47 totals now.

Work, aka the circuit court system out here, has indicated that we should at least be prepared for the possibility of another 4 to 6 weeks of remote work. It’s absolutely unprecedented to have the entire court system essentially frozen for any time period, much less 2+ months. IL will be nowhere near peaking by April 7th based on the current trajectory. I assume the stay at home order would get extended at least 7 additional days.

Calling victory in the second quarter... We haven’t even had enough days of isolation to see if we have started to flatten the curve. This still has plenty of time to go full blown Italy, or New York for that matter. I get the sentiment. I have tenants who I am unsure I will get rent from. I have lost hundreds of thousands in the stock market. I am about to lose my shit working from home. But we need some more time and more data to ensure we are getting desired results. My assumption is that we end up under a no travel order for longer than April 7th. You must be absolutely certain the curve is flattened before resuming normal activity, as there is still plenty of time for this to go tits up. “We overreacted” or “this was all for nothing” or “I went about my normal life and nothing happened” MEANS IT ****ING WORKED. We, as a society, have done well thus far (mostly). Let’s not screw it up now.

That’s when some members of congress were briefed. But instead of sounding the alarm, they conveniently sold stocks in holdings which would be severely affected by widespread disease.

I think it’s fair to assume that if a county has a case severe enough to have been tested, it’s likely widespread with many not symptomatic enough to seek treatment. I am not certain that my recent short illness wasn’t the virus, as the symptoms matched but I was not ill enough to seek treatment other than isolation. If I did indeed have the virus, we will never know with certainty, which is the case for many infections nationwide

There will absolutely be rebound cases. The general hope is that we have “flattened the curve” enough for it to be manageable. I read a long article about the possibility of a seasonally related waning on the virus, which remains a distinct possibility but not one anyone should hang their hat on. This will be widespread. You will probably get it. You probably won’t need anything more than some cold medicine. But if a few weeks of social distancing keeps our healthcare system from buckling, I am all for it. This is tough as we won’t know if our efforts are working for several weeks.

I was at the store today (feeling better), and I coughed once. You would have thought I just walked into a preschool nude.

I’m guessing it’s a question of “when”, I assume no later than Thursday.

Yeah, with the incubation period being so long, everything is a week in arrears. Hopefully they peak soon.

It's not really the virus, or the restrictions that concerns me. It's people. People do really dumb, irrational things when they are scared. People are going to get a lot more scared when we go on a nationwide lock down, and thus people are going to do a lot more dumb, irrational things. The CDC is walking a brutally fine line. How do you convince the public of the danger of a virus which may only give them mild or moderate symptoms (but kill others, including at risk populations), but at the same time not cause panic?

I’m general, things are progressing exponentially worse, day to day. Reported cases & deaths are lining up shockingly close to Italy’s progression, with about a 10-14 day delay. It appears all but inevitable that the US will need to follow the same steps as Italy, France, and Spain and institute a full 14 day shutdown of non-essential services. I would prepare now. Today. There is no need to panic, but if you haven’t obtained a 2-3 week stockpile of your prescription drugs, groceries, baby formula, diapers, etc.; you need to do that now. People as a whole are stupid. We will continue to ignore the experts. People will continue to go to bars and gatherings even knowing the risks. The easy parallel is the GHD Blizzard. The public was told days in advance to not travel and be prepared for an epic blizzard, yet people were still on the roads and lake shore drive became a parking lot which put other citizens and first responders in danger. Eventually the government is going to have to step in and force us to protect ourselves from our own stupidity. I still hear people minimizing the severity. “I don’t know why we are doing this”, “this is bullshit”, “the flu kills far more people”. While it is correct that many of us will hardly notice we get the virus, we owe a duty to protect our friends and family who are at risk. If two weeks of inconvenience is all that takes, we should be jumping at that opportunity. Long story short, the curtain is dropping. You still have time to take some precautions and make preparations, but not much. We will get through this, but let’s be smart and prepared.

Came up with a cough, headache, and general feeling of malaise today (no fever). Under normal circumstances, I would pop some cough drops into my work bag and take some Tylenol on the way out the door. Now, I am skipping work and preparing to call the doctor if I spike a fever. scary times, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better

I’m sure we all saw the video of the brutal tactics China used to deal with individuals who refused to quarantine... The next couple weeks are going to be brutal.

As long as the supermarkets can stay open, utilities and mail can march on, we can have some semblance of normal life. If there is a supply line disruption, then things are going to get out of hand fast.