banker’s hours

Red alert, day 37. Lockdown, day 27. Suffolk has 600 (+55) confirmed cases in today’s figures, neighboring Essex has 1781 (+60, about 2X Suffolk population) cases and Tower Hamlets has 543 (+8, about 0.5X Suffolk population) confirmed cases as of this morning.

The UK has recorded 114,217 cases on 460,437 tests (+21, 389, some on the same people). A total of 15,464 deaths in hospital have been recorded. For the week ending April 3, deaths exceeded the five-year average by 6,042 (ONS release, and it is the nature of recent counts that further deaths may be retroactively recorded).

Deaths have included at least 62 healthcare providers (daily Twitter wall of names), including nurses Donald Suelto and Michael Allieu. The NHS has a lot of male nurses. Patients who have died include Matthew Seligman, the jogging bass player from Bowie’s Live Aid gig [1] and a collaborator of New Wave acts like Thomas Dolby (who organized a Zoom wake). In his offstage life, Seligman was a human rights solicitor and writing “an autobiographical science fiction novel.”

The Times has published an investigation of how the government bungled preparing for the virus, which is great, but doesn’t help with the current state of crisis. Owen Jones has tweeted the key points. The fact that is getting the most coverage overall is that Boris Johnson doesn’t do chairing meetings and won’t work weekends. A friend suggests that Theresa May would have been a better leader in a pandemic, and I don’t think that’s a controversial take.

More authorities worldwide are saying everyone should wear masks (Cuomo in New York is ordering it), but not as many are giving people ways to get them.

Twitter has an explanation for the US small business grants that seemed to be going mainly to large chain restaurants: it’s just more of the industrial-lobbying complex drive to squeeze out independents. Or at least that’s going to be the effect.

In silver lining news for NUMTOTs and other new urbanists, a UC Davis study finds California is saving $40 million per day from the lack of car crashes. This could have been better phrased in terms of the human cost – 6000 fewer injuries or fatal accidents per month.

Penguins are walking the streets of Cape Town.

Readercon (Boston area convention held in the same Quincy hotel every July) is cancelled. They are shifting all programme and membership to next year, as opposed to going virtual (WorldCon/CoNZealand, end of July, adult attending membership now NZ$300/£150; Wiscon, May Memorial Day weekend) or cancelling, refunding and starting over for next year (EasterCon/Concentric, April). San Diego Comicon (July), the world’s largest fan convention, is cancelled.

Burning Man was finally cancelled a week ago, and will take place in some virtual form. I have friends who are Burners and there for the giant art, but I still think of Burning Man as people with money playing at survivalism. The year Hurricane Katrina was taking place at the same time, the SUVs with bottled water and camping equipment still headed for the Playa and not for Louisiana. (This is not to let politicians off the hook for disaster management, just to hold Silicon Valley to its fine words on saving the world.) This year we are all doing survivalism.

Today’s Zooms: WiFi SciFi, an occasional mini-con run by Anne Corlett (YouTube recordings), and a vicar friend’s gathering that was run partly so that she could practice virtual congregation management.

[1] That link goes to one of the best live song films ever, with a pogoing guitarist, a swimming percussionist and backup singers, Claire Hirst on sax and Dolby on synth, and Bowie channeling David Byrne. Look out for where the cinematographer uses the sax to frame Bowie.


Posted on by Diana ben-Aaron
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