Texas Jeff

This is probably obvious. When reopening you either get to choose a date-driven policy or a data-driven policy. You don't get to choose both when relaxing restrictions. We picked the date-driven policy because people were evidently sick of staying at home and there was a lot of economic pressure to turn on the machines again. And so here we are... Unfortunately, the latency from super spreader event to folks crashing in hospitals is really long, so data based policy is tough. Getting the test sucks and it takes too long to get a result, aggravating the data problem. We could choose a data based policy based on some leading indicator. Consider if we could randomly deploy thermometers to the public and require everyone to just take your temperature once a day, with an automatic anonymous data report to the cloud. Aggregate the data and decide what to do in real time based on the data coming in. Shut down if it gets hot and relax if it cools off. Or, send some people out to count mask wearing at some sample businesses. If you see mask wearing at 20%, slow down. If you count 90%, maybe open up a bit. Nothing needs to be invented here and there is no magic, just metrics. You could supplement that with a date based policy to further limit the spread. What if we agreed to put in two week "firewalls" every three months where we really tried hard to lockdown, then relaxed more during the other times. This would allow people to plan ahead for a two week break from in-person work and be less disruptive. We could even plan to provide paychecks to people for those two weeks so that they can eat, pay rent, keep going with their lives. You can combine date and data driven policies together to add to the solution, but when you just pick a date-driven policy and ignore the data, you should expect what we have now. It should not be a surprise.

BTW, I screwed that one up ... Paul wrote Hey Jude but John's still pissed that it's playing at a Trump rally. The song after that was "We are the Champions" so add Freddie to the pissed off list...

C-SPAN has a feed from inside the rally. It is currently showing the My Pillow guy taking selfies with guests on the floor while "Hey Jude" plays, everyone sways and John Lennon rolls over in his grave...

Ranch starter pack: 1. Buffalo (the roaming kind) 2. Deer and antelope (capable of playing) 3. Lack of discouraging words 4. Clear skies If located in Texas, you should also add: 1. Stars at night (should be big and bright) 2. Prairie sky (wide and high, but this may be covered by #4 above) 3. Sage (should be in bloom and have a pleasant odor, like perfume -- should remind you of someone you love) 4. Wailing coyotes, rushing rabbits, singing cowboys and bawling dogies, in various quantities I think if you've got all of that you can call it a ranch.

I have been looking at other areas that had protests to see if they are seeing a spike in cases like we are in Texas. So far, it looks like some are and some are not. Texas, going up. DC, going down. Minnesota down. New York down, kinda stable. It's difficult, IMHO, to attribute a rise to the protests right now, unless Texas protesters were just less cautious than other states. Maybe the protest spike isn't yet reflected in the data.

I bought masks from two online locations: https://rendallco.com https://us.takecaresupply.com Both were too big for my kids but fit me great. Lead time was long, like 3-4 weeks between order and arrival. In Austin, I know Mozarts Coffee Roasters and Sue Patrick are selling them online. We bought some at the physical Mozarts location today that fit my kids better, but did not have a pouch for a filter. I bought some filter material from https://filti.com and am cutting pieces of material to stick in the pouch.

One caveat, I think they are using math to estimate recovered cases, rather than actually determining how many have recovered. Something to keep in mind when you look at the state numbers... The math is something like: Take total cases and subtract out the dead. Because they aren't recovered, they are dead. From the remainder, guess than 20% or so probably went to the hospital. Guess than 80% did not. For the 20%, count them as recovered if their case is more than 28 days old. For the 80%, count them as recovered if their cases is more than 14 days old. The recovery estimate is always going to be a function of the total case numbers minus deaths, with some time delay.

Fair enough, but that's a bold strategy .... don't count them when they occur so your numbers are lower then and then dump the data later but say it doesn't count because they should have been counted earlier but were not. Even removing the prisoner cases, 2,622 cases is a single day record for Texas. Hospitalizations statewide also hit a new record and went above 2,500 for the first time.

4098 new cases in Texas today! Finally made it to the top of the list of states for cases per day. Texas is COVID country....

Video from Abbott's presser today: https://www.c-span.org/video/?473118-1/texas-governor-abbott-coronavirus-news-conference He said we are having record cases but you have to look behind the numbers. Lots of prisoners have tested positive for COVID, some counties have made math errors, and lots of cases have come from retirement homes or other communal gathering areas. He was speaking words but it sounded like he was whistling past the graveyard. Hays County is going to put up a big number today, following a few days of zeros. He said people under thirty were not social distancing, thus contributing to the spread. He asked everyone to wash their hands, wear a mask, and keep at a distance from others. From the hospital numbers, it looked to me like the numbers can get maybe 4x worse before we start stacking sick people where they shouldn't be stacked. So the numbers can double, and then double again, and sometime around there we are full.

If you've updated your phone since around mid-May, you already have the technology in your pocket to do mostly automatic contact tracing. If we all turned it on and we had the correct app for the health authorities to use, contract tracing would be as simple as pushing a button on a phone of someone who tests positive and everyone who was near that person for too long would get a message saying that they might have been exposed. I am amazed that we are not pushing ahead with this as fast as possible. States are refusing to use this technology and instead going with manual contact tracing. Do you remember the names and phone numbers of everyone you stood near for too long at HEB a week ago? No? Maybe because you never met them? Your phone met their phone, or at least it could have. I understand there are privacy concerns (or maybe, Apple and Google's system provides too much privacy) but the numbers are rising and we have the technology on hand to make a dent, we just are choosing not to use it. We can't even opt in to voluntarily joining a national system, because the system today requires a public health authority to release an app to cover an area, and most states have decided not to do that.

The song was written by one guy at the prompting of another guy and sang by four members of the Glee Club, plus the guy who wrote it on banjo. The same guy who wrote the song also wrote a poem in March, two months before the show -- a precursor to what would be the song. It talks about the "myriad eyes of Texas" and ends by saying that Texans' eyes are "Vandyke brown, vermillion, Sepia, Prussian blue, Ivory black and crimson lac, And eyes of every hue." In the poem, he tried to cover everyone, even with a blanket line at the end in case he forgot someone's eye color. Isn't that what we are trying to do? Do we give Sinclair any points for putting diversity in his poem? So, let me tweak the song using words from the poem, but the same melody: The Eyes of Texas are upon you, All the livelong day. The eyes of Texas are upon you, They’re with you all the way. Sing me a song of Texas, And Texas’ myriad eyes Countless as the bright stars That fill the midnight skies. All of those words are from the original poem. The sentiment of the song changes, for me, to mean that Texans are watching you but they are behind you. If we need more tweaks to the wording let's talk about it, but you can build the lines above from the original poem. The poem existed in March, before the show, and has probably never been performed, in blackface or not. I can't change the fact that it comes from the source melody and probably neither could Sinclair, since he stole tunes for both of his song attempts. A&M stole "Goodbye my Coney Island Baby" for their song, so it happens. I also can't change the similarity to the Robert E Lee quote, but I can point out that Sinclair was making fun of the quote derived from the quote. Can we take what we have and work together to make it inclusive?

Not sure if it matters, but the Eyes debuted in 1903 and the Texas Cowboys apparently were founded in 1922. They didn't exist at the time of the show.

Stage 3: Gently suggest that Gov. Abbott help us. Stage 4: Gently suggest that Gov. Abbott help us, but with a bit more emphasis and a more urgent tone. Seriously, 20 admits (maybe per day?) over a rolling 7 day period was the trigger they were worried about last week that would eventually saturate our hospitals. At the time the number was 13.

Here's a picture from the Austin ISD police department of some of their vehicles, I always though this was a little excessive for a school police department:

Longhorn Band has a history of the Eyes of Texas posted here: https://longhornband.org/school-and-fight-songs/ The short version is that in 1902, Lewis Johnson, a UT tuba player, wanted to have an original song for the students of Texas. He asked John Lang Sinclair, another band member, to write a song just for Texas. Sinclair's first attempt was called “Jolly Students of the ‘Varsity'” and he ripped off music from "Jolly Students of America" for the song. Oh, the day was made for study, but the night for mirth and song; Let us all go down together, all you fellows come along. What’s the use to grind and cram for ev’ry little term exam? If the Prof intends to bust me, let him bust me as I am! For we are jolly students of the ‘Varsity, the ‘Varsity! We are a merry, merry crew. We’ll show the chief of all policemen who we are Rah! Rah! Rah! Down on the Avenue. And ev’ry day you find us in the classroom or the hall. You’ll find us on the campus and we’ll hear you when you call. We’ll hear you when you call, but when night begins to fall, You’ll seek in vain because we’re not anywhere at all! For we are jolly students of the ‘Varsity, the ‘Varsity! We are a merry, merry crew. And almost everyone who sees us says we are Rah! Rah! Rah! The best they ever knew. It premiered in May of 1902 and it probably sucked, because Johnson asked Sinclair to try again in March of 1903. And this time Sinclair wrote this poem: They watch above you all the day, The bright blue eyes of Texas. At midnight they’re with you all the way, The sleepless eyes of Texas.The Eyes of Texas are upon you, All the livelong day. The eyes of Texas are upon you, They’re with you all the way. They watch you through the peaceful night, They watch you in the early dawn, When from the eastern skies the high light Tells that the night is gone.Sing me a song of Texas, And Texas’ myriad eyes Countless as the bright stars That fill the midnight skies.Vandyke brown, vermillion, Sepia, Prussian blue, Ivory black and crimson lac, And eyes of every hue. This poem was then changed into the song we know as the Eyes of Texas and made into a joke about Prather's use of the phrase "The Eyes of Texas are upon you" when talking to the students. It debuted at the minstrel show in May with these lyrics: I once did know a President A way down South, in Texas. And, always, everywhere he went, He saw the Eyes of Texas. The Eyes of Texas are upon you, All the livelong day. The Eyes of Texas are upon you, You cannot get away. Do not think you can escape them At night or early in the morn – The Eyes of Texas are upon you Til Gabriel blows his horn.Sing me a song of Prexy, Of days long since gone by. Again I seek to greet him, And hear his kind reply. Smiles of gracious welcome Before my memory rise, Again I hear him say to me, “Remember Texas’ Eyes.” The article has a bit more history, but that's some additional background on the origin.

Ask the same folks if they are ok requiring pants to be worn in public. Lots of people just don't want to wear pants .... too much communist government control ... it's too hot for pants ... what if I have to go and I've got these darn pants in the way. Freedom man, feel the breeze.... I see my time has expired....

The left axis is logarithmic, which is making the top line look basically flat.

The Statesman is reporting that implementing Project Connect will require about a 25% rise in your City of Austin tax bill. So, take your property tax bill and add 25% to the City of Austin portion to determine what this might cost you annually in taxes.

I predict they will switch to something derived from their phone silicon, maybe an ARM CPU paired with a GPU. They will start with the lowest end MacBooks and work their way up from there. It makes it easier to develop MacOS and iOS and it will cut cost out of the Mac lineup. I think you'll see low end Windows laptops that are essentially the same thing. Essentially your laptop is becoming a big phone.

Texas's antibody tests so far have shown about 4% positive. That number has been flat over the past few weeks. Keep in mind that the population is somewhat self-selected. You have to have the desire and time to get a test, the knowledge of where to get it, and maybe the money to pay for the test. Or maybe you were having another medical procedure so you were tested. Only about 1 in 260 people in Texas have had an antibody test and maybe 2-3 thousand people per day are getting antibody tests in Texas. Also some are saying the test may not be accurate. So, the current answer is 4%. In my non-scientific opinion, there has not been enough random testing with a proven test in a large enough population to draw conclusions.

Travis County's website shows a breakdown by zip code and shows an ethnic breakdown of who is in the hospital. Since April, the percentage of hospitalized that are Hispanic has risen and the number of cases in poorer zip codes is larger than counts in wealthier areas. North Austin, south/southeast Austin, and Pflugerville have the largest counts. If that is true, then cases may be rising among folks that have to do physical labor to survive. They are also the least able to afford masks or have healthcare. A positive test means no work, which means no money. We aren't set up as a society to give this population paid time off to let the virus burn out, and they are choosing to work and take their chances with COVID. If we could magically change the world tomorrow so that a positive test resulted in an automatic two week paid vacation for anyone, I think we would see the spread slow below the 1.0 rate and cases start to drop to zero.

Trump finally got his wall, just not in the original intended location:

About 4% of the antibody tests done so far in Texas have come back positive. That does not mean 4% of Texans have been exposed, it just means that 4% of those with access and desire to get tested have had a positive result. That result is too low for us to be anywhere near herd immunity. It would be nice if our health care folks were randomly testing people for antibodies so that we can get some idea of how many people might have been exposed.

Ship floating in calm water -- feed good. Ship being blasted by space rocket falling from the sky -- feed bad. Ship no longer being blasted -- feed good. It is possible there is some correlation ... they need another camera some distance away.