Mitch's Blog

I went to the big Von’s on University Avenue to stock up today

I wore nitrile gloves, as I did the other time I went to the supermarket nine days ago. I also wore an N95 mask – my first time out in public wearing one.

I felt self-conscious about the mask, and over the past few days I was mentally rehearsing the conversation I might have with a hypothetical person who might confront me about using the mask when healthcare professionals are doing without. I imagined myself saying, “We bought the masks long before the pandemic; Julie uses them when she cleans the litterbox. We had the gloves too. We’re not hoarding; we have 10 masks and 100-200 pairs of gloves.

“We do not have a large extended family in the area,” I would have said, “so if one of us gets sick the other one takes care of them. If we both get sick, well, we’re screwed.

“By protecting ourselves, we avoid becoming additional burdens on the healthcare system,” I would have said.

“And also, you may be right,” I would have said to the hypothetical person.

Nobody non-hypothetical confronted me.

The supermarket crowd was light, but I would not have found it remarkably light on an ordinary day. Only three or four of us wore masks, and a few more wearing gloves. None of the supermarket staff seemed to be wearing masks, but the pharmacy staff did. The cashier, at least, was wearing gloves, of the type that food service workers usually wear.

One man brought his son, who looked to be about 4 years old. Seems like a bad idea. Maybe he had nobody to watch the kid?

The supermarket had most of the things I was looking for. Plenty of fresh produce, even fresh asparagus for a treat tonight. They did not have Julie’s favorite brand of salad dressing, but that might not have been virus-related as the shelves were full of salad dressing. Maybe they just didn’t carry it.

Also absent: Toilet paper and cleaning supplies. I keep hearing the supply chain is fine with those, and people are just hoarding. So when will that ol' supply chain kick in? Eventually people will run out of room in their houses for toilet paper.

I also was able to find two big bottles of my favorite hand soap, Dr. Bronner’s. That was a pleasant surprise.

5 reasons why people hate Apple

I just got an email this morning.

The email had no context. Just a short two sentences on why the sender hates Apple – he’s an Android user and was using Dark Sky until Apple bought it this week and shut off API access, including Android.

I replied by asking him why he was sending the email to me. But I was still waking up when I sent that reply, because truly I already knew. That article.

I just reread it. It’s a pretty good article. If I were writing it today, I’d spend time discussing Apple’s monopolistic practices. Or quasi-monopolistic – they don’t own the market, but they control a big chunk of it. It’s the same all over the economy; a few big companies control each industry. They compete against each other but mainly they’re concerned with stifling new competition.

I’m still nearly exclusively an Apple user but I have fewer illusions today. When you do business in the current economy, you compromise your principles. Like using Facebook, for example.

Skimmed and bookmarked for later reading.

Food supply worries farmers in US as coronavirus disrupts their work - CNN

The Effects of COVID-19 Will Ripple through Food Systems - Scientific American

Emmanual Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists at the University of California, Berkeley, writing at the New York Times: According to some projections, unemployment might rise to 30% in the second quarter of 2020 in the US, far beyond what other nations are seeing.

Elsewhere, “governments are protecting employment. Workers keep their jobs, even in industries that are shut down. The government covers most of their wage through direct payments to employers. Wages are, in effect, socialized for the duration of the crisis.”

Then, when the crisis ends, workers and businesses just pick up where they left off.

But in the US, we’re relying on improved unemployment benefits. You suffer the stress of losing your job, you have to apply for unemployment, which is burdensome and swamps the system.

Many Americans will find that when the crisis ends, their jobs are gone, with many of their former employers out of business.

That’ll slow down recovery, whereas in Europe, people will just get back to work.

And as they’re losing their jobs, Americans also lose health insurance.

There’s a saying that when the US goes to war, it mis-applies the lessons of the last war. That’s what’s going on here. Conservatives and progressives were both rightly appalled by the lesson of the 2008 bailout, when we propped up broken businesses and rewarded the thieving and incompetent investors and managers who crashed the economy, while abandoning middle class and poor victims to fend for themselves.

But the situation is different now. Yes, we still have an economy that rewards greed, stealing and incompetence, but coronavirus is slaughtering both good businesses and badly run businesses. Government’s goal should just be to press the pause button on the entire economy, then resume, and fix structural problems, when the crisis passes.

Via Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic.

Cory says: “The package also needs to create Covidcare For All, universal health coverage for the duration of the emergency (and beyond, ideally – once Americans get a taste for it).”

Yes, you read that right. The company, Alteon Health, slashed benefits to emergency room healthcare workers during the pandemic. These emergency room healthcare workers are literally the most important people in the world right now.

Isaac Arnsdorf at ProPublica:

Alteon Health, a staffing company backed by private-equity firm Frazier Healthcare Partners, will cut salaries, time off and retirement benefits for providers, citing lost revenue. Several hospital operators announced similar cuts.

Most emergency room providers in the US work for companies like Alteon – staffing companies with contracts with hospitals. Coronavirus is eating into those companies' profits.

Steve Holtzclaw, CEO of Alteon Health, delivered bad news to employees Monday: “Despite the risks our providers are facing, and the great work being done by our teams, the economic challenges brought forth by COVID-19 have not spared our industry.”

The memo announced that the company would be reducing hours for clinicians, cutting pay for administrative employees by 20%, and suspending 401(k) matches, bonuses and paid time off. Holtzclaw indicated that the measures were temporary but didn’t know how long they would last.

In other words: Thanks for risking your lives and families to save the rest of us. Now go fuck yourselves.

The cuts are coming at a time when these emergency room workers are accruing the cost of living apart from their families to avoid infecting loved ones.

One doctor said he’s getting a $20,000 annual pay cut.

He said, “This decision is being made not by physicians but by people who are not on the front lines, who do not have to worry about whether I’m infecting my family or myself. If a company cannot support physicians during the toughest times, to me there’s a significant question of integrity.”

That’s far more diplomatic than I would use.

Hospital operators, including Tenet Healthcare, Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Atrius Health, are also announcing cuts.

Another Alteon physician said he had been planning to ask for time off to go help out in New York, where the coronavirus outbreak is the worst in the nation. Now he has no paid time off, and he thinks his employer won’t support him if he gets sick. He said if his pay drops he’ll have to look for a new job.

“I have a huge loan payment. I have rent. I have groceries. I’m not going to sacrifice my life for when I get sick and they’re going to say, ‘You were replaceable,’” the physician said. “I cannot believe they did that to us."

Tell me again why it would be bad for the US to have Medicaire for all?

Via Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic

Until a few days ago, he and his seizure dog, Poppy, lived at Terminal 6, sleeping on the floor behind a pillar.

Stranded and homeless at LAX. Then coronavirus hit - Los Angeles Times

Devastating story, by Maria L. La Ganga with photographer Francine Orr:

Davis had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and epilepsy. He had been in foster care or adult protective services for most of his three decades. He survived on Social Security and food stamps. As Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day, his wallet was stolen. Then his identity was hijacked and his bank account plundered.

What was already a precarious life began to spin out of control.

Davis and Poppy were not sick, yet the coronavirus hit them hard. The agencies that could help them, he said, had been mostly overwhelmed or closed in recent weeks. On Tuesday evening he had $5 and change. Poppy was out of dog food.

They were homeless and alone.

You’ve maybe heard that about half of Americans are one paycheck away from disaster and ruin. Davis is one of those people. $350 made all the difference to him between a comfortable, albeit difficult, life, and homelessness.