Covid-19 lockdown check-in

[Valmy]

Had my first lunch out in months. Paella and sangría under the sun. Cliché, but awesome.

[Sheilbh]

So I went to the pub with a friend. The pub basically serves one litre plastic bottles (old milk bottles) of IPA, lager, cider or a bottle of wine, plus plastic cups. It looks onto a typical London square so you then go and sit on the benches or the floor with your drinks. They also rent out petanque sets if you want to play that. It was a delight. Sat in a early summer London (and I've always thought London improves with the sun more than any city I know) square, light dappling through the leaves with a pint

It was a very young crowd - everyone in their 20s/30s so no-one who looked particularly high risk. I don't think I saw any groups over 6 but I think it's fair to say 2m has gone out the window, but people generally seemed to stay about 1m (maybe little bit more) away except for the obvious couples. People arriving on bikes and doing little laps round the square - just everyone very happy to be in human company.

I think this will be what happens as we move into different stages of lockdown. As the government has lost authority in this area, I think people will make a judgement and follow the rules they feel make sense rather than strictly follow all rules.

Also used buses for the first time and it is extraordinary the changes as double-deckers (which at maximum capacity have about 130 people on them) are down to 20 maximum capacity. It's very weird. Most people are wearing masks and trying to leave 2m away from each other on the seats. Again, this seems like people deciding to follow the rules that they think are sensible.

[Duque de Bragança]

I took the RER (S-Bahn for the Teutons) for the first time in 2-3 months for a picnic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Réseau_Express_Régional

I took the metro for the first time in two months a couple of weeks ago.

Thankfully, not at peak hours in both occasions.

[garbon]

I went out yesterday morning for the first time in 10 weeks. Had a pleasant stroll through the cemetery, though on the way home had to share the sidewalk with more runners than I would have liked. Saw a lack of social distancing among a couple different exercise groups.

[The Larch]

Brazil stops releasing Covid-19 death toll and wipes data from official site
Government accused of totalitarianism and censorship after Bolsonaro orders end to publication of numbers

The Brazilian government has been accused of totalitarianism and censorship after it stopped releasing its total numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths and wiped an official site clean of swaths of data.

Health ministry insiders told local media the move was ordered by far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, himself – and was met with widespread outrage in Brazil, one of the world's worst-hit Covid-19 hotspots, with more deaths than Italy and more cases than Russia and the UK.

"The authoritarian, insensitive, inhuman and unethical attempt to make those killed by Covid-19 invisible will not succeed. We and Brazilian society will not forget them, nor the tragedy that befalls the nation," said Alberto Beltrame, president of Brazil's national council of state health secretaries, in a statement.

Brazil currently has the world's second-highest number of cases, at 672,846, according to the John Hopkins university site, and has overtaken Italy, with 35,930 deaths. John Hopkins removed Brazil from its global count on Saturday but later reinstated it.

On Friday night, Brazil's government stopped releasing the cumulative numbers of confirmed Covid-19 cases and obits in its daily bulletin and only supplied daily numbers. A health ministry site was taken offline and returned on Saturday without the total number of deaths and confirmed cases, as well as numbers of cases under investigation and those that recovered. The death counts were reported as 904 on Saturday, 1,005 on Friday and 1,473 on Thursday.

The move was widely criticised across Brazilian society, with doctors, medical associations and state governors attacking what they called an attempt to control information. Federal prosecutors announced an investigation on Saturday and gave the interim health minister 72 hours to explain the move, using the Brazilian constitution and freedom of information law as justification.

"The manipulation of statistics is a manoeuvre of totalitarian regimes," tweeted Gilmar Mendes, a supreme court judge. "The trick will not exempt responsibility for the eventual genocide." Rodrigo Maia, speaker of the lower house of Congress, called for the data to be replaced for "transparency".

"You can't face a pandemic without science, transparency and action," Paulo Câmara, governor of the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, posted on Instagram. "Manipulation, omission and disrespect are the striking marks of authoritarian administrations. But this won't destroy the effort of the whole nation. We will continue producing, systematising and releasing the data."

Moves to control Covid-19 numbers began earlier in the week. On Wednesday, the ministry pushed back the release of its daily bulletin from 7pm to 10pm, after the nightly television news. "That's the end of Jornal Nacional reports," Bolsonaro said on Friday, referring to Brazil's biggest TV news programme.

The data was "adapted" because it did not "portray the moment the country is in", tweeted the president, who has flaunted isolation measures, dismissed the disease as a "little flu" and shrugged off Brazil's rising death toll because, he said, death was "everybody's destiny".

Health ministry technicians told Brasília's Correio Braziliense that "Bolsonaro freaked out" and blamed the president for the decision to "misrepresent" the numbers.

The country currently has no health minister, having lost two since the pandemic began. The acting health minister, Eduardo Pazuello, is an army general with no health experience who has stuffed the ministry with military officers.

On Friday, Carlos Wizard, a billionaire Mormon businessman with no health experience who is taking over as secretary of science, technology and strategic supplies at the health ministry, called the current data "fanciful or manipulated".

"There are many people dying for other causes and public managers, purely interested in having bigger budgets for their towns, their states, were putting everybody as Covid. We are revising these obits," he told the O Globo newspaper. In fact, health specialists have argued that there is widespread under-reporting of cases and deaths in Brazil, in part due to a lack of testing.

"Only someone who does not know the public health system could make this statement," André Longo, health secretary of Pernambuco state, told the Guardian. "It stains the history of Brazilian public health."

Doctors across Brazil said the lack of information would hinder management of the pandemic as cases moved from big cities into its vast interior. "How is a manager going to reallocate resources and organise vacancies and transporting the sick if they don't have data?" said Guilherme Pivoto, an infectious diseases specialist in Manaus, one of Brazil's worst-hit cities.

Pressure on hospitals in big cities like Manaus, Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro has eased and states like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have begun slowly allowing shops and businesses to reopen.

But managing that transition requires accurate and clear information, said Alberto Chebabo, an infectious diseases specialist at Rio de Janeiro's Federal University hospital and vice-president of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases.

"We have room in intensive care ... but the hospital still has many patients," he said. "Many decisions are taken on basis of these numbers not just in Brazil, but in whole world ... It is an inadmissible lack of transparency."

[mongers]

I went out yesterday morning for the first time in 10 weeks. Had a pleasant stroll through the cemetery, though on the way home had to share the sidewalk with more runners than I would have liked. Saw a lack of social distancing among a couple different exercise groups.

Garbon you've shown commendable restraint, I couldn't have done that.

[derspiess]

We had great weather here this past weekend.  Got to see my son play 3 baseball games and my nephew in one as well.  I'm sunburnt but I'll take it

[Eddie Teach]

How did they do?

[DGuller]

The weather now is so nice, so I took a couple of long walks outside.  Jersey City is quickly becoming a very green city.  Thanks for the geese, Canadians, much appreciated.

[Valmy]

It is brutally hot right now. It may be June but summer is already in midseason form.

[KRonn]

Traffic has picked up a bit around town, still not real heavy. I got a haircut first time in about 3 months. Paid the barber double to help make up some of their losses. I've known both these guys for a long time, was in boy scouts with one and the father of the other barber was a friend of or knew my father. Both veterans of WW2. They told me that in the two weeks since opening that they had 400 customers! Way over the usual number. They do appointments but when I got there there were no customers, first time the place was empty in two weeks, so it was no problem getting me in.

There's more activity around town but still a lot more quiet than usual of course. I still see a lot of walkers all around, up town, in my neighborhood, etc. For one of my neighbor's kids across the street there was a birthday parade of cars and police cars, honking horns and sirens. That's become normal for birthdays and is kind of cool for the kiddies.

I've noticed also that the number of spam phone calls is picking up again.  That had been real quiet.

My work has picked up a bit this week. I think the hospitals are getting ready to start up more procedures and services that were on hold during covid. Also, we're getting going again on bringing about eighteen more hospitals onto our main medical system. Looks like through late summer into autumn that will be going on if the schedule keeps up. I'm still working from home and it looks like that'll be the norm for a good while as they figure out  how to get us back into the office. I don't think the company has a good idea how to proceed on that, and seem not too concerned with people continuing to work from home. As it was many people could already work from home one or two days a week.

[derspiess]

How did they do?

Son's teams lost all 3 games (I have him on 2 teams to make up for a shorter season) and nephew's team won.  Both boys played well. Son's team won tonight.

Basically between practices and games we are set to have baseball every day of the week but Friday the next 4 weeks, weather permitting.

[Valmy]

I am looking forward to MLB starting up again in July...presuming that is still happening.

It is kind of sad not being able to watch the Orioles be terrible all this time.

[Grey Fox]

I miss sports, all of them. So much actually, that I have watched Nascar.

[derspiess]

Can't bring myself to watch Nascar.  Watched some Korean baseball.  And the brewery nearby usually has some ESPN-8 "The Ocho"-type sport on so I'll watch crap like marble racing, cornhole, etc.