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other thoughts

When will it be normal

[Saturday: 6 miles; Monday: 3 miles]

I had blood donation last Thursday and my running efficiency has taken the usual hit. So I have ended up walking some of my last two runs. I hope that I bounce back soon.


Someone on Facebook asked when we would be back to normal. So I did a bit of google research and came up with the following:

Death by lightning strike always seems to be the standard in these situations. That number is somewhere around 40 per year. A higher touchstone is death by car wreck, roughly 1000 times higher than lightning. Most people take precautions for car wrecks, like wearing their seat belt. And we have as a society implemented expensive features on cars to limit fatalities.So if we get the COVID-19 rate below car wreck it is significant but manageable. And if we get it below hit by lightning you can pretty much ignore it.

Right now our national COVID-19 death rate is about 300 a day and the daily breakdown for car wrecks is closer to 100 a day. Hit-by-lightning (and killed) is .1 per day.


I had another Facebook friend go into a nicely formed speech about how we shouldn’t have school again until we can guarantee the safety of every child. IF ONE CHILD IS IN DANGER WE blah blah blah.

So here I am thinking where is this guy when the in-school shootings happen? (And of course he is hot on the Defund The Police movement which wants to remove police safety officers from schools.) Or what about the suicides and domestic violence resulting from people stuck together who are used to having a bit of space or a calmer place for some part of the day?

The whole IF ONLY WE SAVE ONE LIFE!! thing is a political slogan similar to A Chicken In Every Pot! The first guy who said that did it as a stunt and then enough people did it that it started to be a meme and now some people actually think it can substitute for a reasoned argument.


We’ve been watching a BBC show on Amazon Prime in the evenings called The Bench. It has been enjoyable. But there are about 20 shows spread over two seasons and whoever at Amazon loaded up the schedule did it from a DVD player set on Randomize: the episodes are all mixed up. It gives the show a certain flair of Surrealism. But my mind is having to work a bit too hard to remember if this episode Joe is on the Outs with Mary or if this was before the new guy became the top dog, etc.

In the Amazon customer reviews we found a “map” of the true order of the episodes. And I hope to eventually find out if the sleazy defense lawyer gets bushwhacked by the crooks he just got off the hook.


The Iowa State Fair is cancelled this year. State fair attendance is not a usual thing here in the northeast corner of the state. My boss grew up in this area and she’s never been there in her life. I was trying to tell her what it is like but not doing a very good job. I always enjoy going. I like to stand up on Grand avenue on the hill up from the Agriculture Building and look west over the crowd of thousands of people. And then in a few days the place is empty again.