
Texas Jeff
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Everything posted by Texas Jeff
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Crazy idea ... maybe there is a reasonably moderate path to walk so long as cases start to drop and keep dropping. Somewhere between mask-free rave mode and staying in your bathroom covered in hand sanitizer. Right now, cases in Texas are not dropping (which is bad) but the number of positive test results is low (around 5%, which is good). rt.live has our R number at 0.84 (good, less than 1, a path to no disease) but epiforcasts.io has it at 1.2 (moderately bad, a path to a big problem). The truth is probably in the middle somewhere. We have a problem and it it is likely slowly growing. Some projections show it slowing down in the future but right now the numbers are still going in the wrong direction. We are on a slowly rising plateau looking at two futures, one where cases slowly drop and one where they rise until they are out of control. You, my fellow Texan, can help make the problem go away. Spread out, wear a mask when appropriate, and wash your hands. You don't have to, but if you do it will help. Stay home if you feel sick and especially if you know you have come in contact with someone who has it. Not forever, but for a little while. Ask your neighbor how they are doing. They might be sad, lonely or just need someone to run to the store. A five minute chat across a front yard might cheer them up. Every little thing you do reduces the chance that one person will infect another person, which reduces the size of the problem. It keeps that R number just a little bit lower which makes the problem go away faster. Doctors and nurses have less emergency work to do in a less risky environment and can work more on the other problems we have. You'll never know if you saved the life of a kid or a grandma, but maybe you did. I see a risk in our polarized society that we will start choosing extreme paths on one side or the other, regardless of the data, based on which leaders we like. And that we will be too critical of each other for being on the other side. I would instead ask you to do what you are willing to do and watch those case numbers. If they are not dropping, consider doing more until they are.
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I'm more interested in the logistics of the process than the political side, although you probably can't keep politics out of this for long. Sorry if it goes CR but that was not my intent. We have a run-off election coming up that will be lightly attended. It's a chance to try to adapt to current conditions without large voting numbers. Hopefully our election officials will learn from the experience.
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What the heck will voting look like in November? I hope we all agree that everyone eligible to vote should have a chance to vote safely, even if we disagree with their vote. How do we make that happen? I see lots of people in line during presidential elections who appear to not have voted since the last presidential election. They frequently appear to have forgotten what to do. This is going to be tough this time in Travis County because the equipment is different, and tough for Texas in general because straight ticket voting is no longer an option. Everyone is going to have to learn to use the new stuff and everyone is going to have to figure out that they can't just vote R or D, they have to vote for each office. Should we have polling places at open air arenas rather than libraries? Maybe DKR becomes a super site for voting, or the convention center, or the concourse at the Palmer Events Center. Maybe school gyms or parking garages might be good locations? The back room at the local library with a mile long line spilling out the front seems ill-advised. Who is going to work at these polling places? The normal 80 year old women who love to do this stuff will be in a bunker, so we are going to have to find younger folks to do the job. Travis County has moved to a paper ballot system. They give you a blank paper ballot and you put it in a machine and vote, then you turn in your paper ballot to register your vote. It would be great if there was some way to generate the piece of paper before the election. If we could do that, then they could check your ID at the polls and let you turn in your piece of paper, which would speed up the lines. How hard would it be to double the early voting period? After the runoffs, I'll be ready to vote. Why can't I turn in my work early to spread out voting over more time? I hope our local election officials are thinking about this but I welcome your thoughts...
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Not if it's Crossfit. Ted is not down for Crossfit.
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I've avoided the delivery services because I think there are other people who need delivery more than me right now and it looks like there are not enough slots to go around. I can go during non-peak times, I have an exact list of what to buy and I know my stores pretty well, so I can get in and out fast with minimal interaction. I've seen many pro shoppers in the store trying to go get someone else's list and they are all over the store looking for items. I'm not complaining about that, but I know that I can do a faster job than a pro could for my list and so the overall burden to the system is less if I do it myself.
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IHME just updated their model and added a few new features: All of US: https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america Just Texas: https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/texas They are now estimating total infections vs reported infections and also showing social distancing and testing numbers.
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Man that second shot is totally the Millennium Falcon ... headed for Earth a long time ago from a galaxy far far away
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Dude's complain-tweeting about reporters receiving "Noble prizes" when I think he means "Nobel prizes" and I think he also means "Pulitzer prizes"
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"The Death of Stalin" is now on Netflix, if you missed it. It's a dark comedy about ... the death of Stalin.
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The Entitlement Thread -- Young Adults Being Stupid
Texas Jeff replied to Patrick Bateman's topic in Daily Texan
Carrollton/Farmers Branch ISD names most of their schools after obscure former administrators so that when you tell people what high school you went to, no one has ever heard of your school. Almost everyone I know who stayed around Carrollton moved to Frisco, home of about forty 5A schools. -
It goes. Sometimes it doesn't go...
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Ha ha, but I'm not that Jeff. I might be able to kick a wind-aided extra point.
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Try subscribing to the podcast here: https://omny.fm/shows/the-jeff-ward-show
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The valuations only really determine how much tax you will pay relative to everyone else. Looks like this year is mostly frozen for residential. The real kicker will be when tax rates are set, which determines how much you'll pay. Will our city and county government have the courage to raise taxes as much as the legally can during a recession? I'm thinking yes... They will say if they don't raise it to the max they lose out on the ability to raise it even higher in later years.
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The survey results are here https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hgp-3ol9cEvQXjuoaRrMJf1rlJWJSZRO/view The question you are talking about was 19A. They polled 2,020 people, 694 identified as Democrats, 579 identified as independent, 517 identified as Republicans. I guess some people did not identify with any of those three categories, because those last three numbers do not add up to the total surveyed. About 413 R's said they trust Donald Trump for medical information about the outbreak (80% of 517) but only 747 people out of the total said they did (37% of 2020). So only 334 out of the 1503 non-Republicans in the survey said they trust Donald Trump for medical information (22%).
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Coronavirus--Activities for Children & Teens
Texas Jeff replied to Mrs Whiggins's topic in Daily Texan
If you're not a big runner but want exercise ... or if your favorite trail is now closed, you can build your own 5k using the gmaps pedometer: https://www.gmap-pedometer.com Start at your house and plot a route through your neighborhood that adds up to 5k, or however far you want to go. Then go walk or run it. You'll likely be separated from other folks since not everyone is on the same trail, and at the end you can say you did a 5k. You can preview the elevation change and make it hard or easy. My favorite route goes out away from my house a bit, then circles back and spends the last half mile going around streets near my house, if I decide to cut it short. -
The numbers look a lot better for Texas, we don't come close to running out of ICU beds or hospital beds in their new model. The old model had a ICU shortage for about two weeks in mid-April. The peak for Texas was pulled in from around May 5th to April 19th and the tail going into May is shorter. Great news!
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You can read the law here: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/6819239/FINAL-FINAL-CARES-ACT.pdf See Sec 2201 starting on page 144. The money is a tax credit for tax year 2020, but they are giving checks to taxpayers now. It looks to me like the $500 per kid is lumped in with the $1200 (or $2400 for married folks) to figure the amount of your credit. It starts to phase out at $75,000 AGI for an individual, $112,500 for a head of household, and $150,000 for a joint return. I think they are going to guess the amount of your credit due based on a previous year's tax return when they send you a check, but ultimately you will see some math on your 2020 taxes to figure out what the actual credit should have been.
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Their website models "normal" flu behavior, so it decreases over time during the spring. It declares an area abnormally high if the incidence of fever is higher than what would be expected at this time of year according to the model, and abnormally low if lower... It is showing that there was an abnormal spike higher than expected from the end of Feb until about eight days ago, then the trend reversed, and now it is lower than expected. COVID-19 may explain the higher spike. More distancing or simply more people taking their temperature may explain the lower spike. Maybe this is causing normal flu season to end a little early, or maybe COVID infections are dropping, or both. But the data went higher than the model and is now lower than the model, indicating that something may have happened to increase disease and we may be responding to stop it. It's pretty cool that we can measure it.
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Our social distancing and shutdown efforts may be having an effect, according to the "US health weather map" https://healthweather.us/ Kinsa makes wifi thermometers and uses the collected data to forecast hot spots of disease. They make a public national "weather map" showing trends and with the ability to drill down to any county. Around Feb 29th, the amount of people with a high fever started to increase and deviate from their expected seasonal model. The deviation kept getting worse until about Mar 19th. The trend then reversed sharply, fell through the expected range, and is now below the expected range for this time of year. If you drill down to counties, you can see this happening all over the country, but in different degrees. So, something is happening. Either normally healthy people are taking their temperature more than expected and the weather map does not account for that, or social distancing is working, or some other factor is at play.
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COVID 19 - Who's Stepping Up With $
Texas Jeff replied to Wally Pryor's topic in Business and Markets
Our social distancing and shutdown efforts may be having an effect, according to the "US health weather map" https://healthweather.us/ Kinsa makes wifi thermometers and uses the collected data to forecast hot spots of disease. They make a public national "weather map" showing trends and with the ability to drill down to any county. Around Feb 29th, the amount of people with a high fever started to increase and deviate from their expected seasonal model. The deviation kept getting worse until about Mar 19th. The trend then reversed sharply, fell through the expected range, and is now below the expected range for this time of year. If you drill down to counties, you can see this happening all over the country, but in different degrees. So, something is happening. Either normally healthy people are taking their temperature more than expected and the weather map does not account for that, or social distancing is working, or some other factor is at play. (sorry folks, I meant to post this in the main thread!)
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