I'm a grocery store worker. I bag your groceries, do carry-outs, collect carts from the parking lot, clean the windows and the ledges and the door handles, sweep the store, clean your shit off the bathroom floor (women's and men's), take the trash to receiving to be dumped, take the bags in the "recycling" bin back to receiving to be trashed too (store policy!), clean up spills, put away items that customers abandon, help people find their way around the store, have our affluent customers who make at least triple my income get upset with me because they didn't read their coupons, do other people's jobs for them because they were too lazy and selfish to bother, get talked down to by a new guy from Boratistan who blew in recently and seems to think he owns the place, and other fun stuff like that. This has been my job since...way too many years ago now.

Anyway, they decided to give me a $2 an hour pay raise, along with all the store employees, back in late March for working a public-facing job during a pandemic. They called it "thank you pay". Now they're taking that pay raise away starting this week because apparently the pandemic is over now...even though coronavirus cases here in the U.S. state of Texas are still on the rise? Also, I still have to wear a mask all day at the store, get a daily temperature check before starting, follow the little arrows down each aisle, stand on the little social distancing stickers when picking up a drink for my lunch break, and fill in for the cart sanitizing people when they go on their lunch breaks, so apparently the execs don't think the pandemic is over enough to eliminate any of that stuff, just over enough to cut my pay back to $9.39 an hour. Is this fair?

Our main problem is that people are not taking it seriously enough

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-city-considered-covid-19-hot-spot-warns-reckless-backyard-parties-need-to-stop-1.4967607

The mayor of Brampton, Ont. is urging residents to stop the "reckless" behaviour after more than a dozen charges were laid in relation to "backyard parties" over the past week. "Please understand this is not the time for social gatherings," he said during his weekly news conference on Wednesday. "We must listen to the advice of public health." Brampton, which has been identified as one of the province’s COVID-19 hot spots, "continues to be challenged" by the disease, Brown said.

The region's medical officer of health noted Wednesday that Peel Region is still seeing about 50 new cases each day. "I continue to be alarmed that when you look at the positive cases we have, a high number of young people between the ages of 20 and 29 are testing positive," Brown said. "You may not appreciate the severity of this virus but you are spreading it. You are putting loved ones, parents and grandparents, at risk. And this reckless behaviour must stop."

Quebec got the message and is finally on a steady decline, Ontario continues to hover around 400 cases a day. We've also had different messaging about face masks. Sure they are not that effective to stop getting infected, but it will help prevent you from infecting others when you're a (asymptomatic) carrier.

Brown also announced Wednesday that Brampton will follow other municipalities in the province by requiring passengers on public transit to wear masks. The directive, Brown said, will come in effect on July 2 and passengers will be permitted to wear any type of face covering, including scarves.

So now the advice is to wear one when you can't maintain at least 2 meters distance from other people. The thing that surprises me more is that stores haven't jumped on the opportunity to put advertising on disposable face masks handed out at the door! But I guess that involves a touch less dispenser to make it safe. Perhaps in a few months that will crop up everywhere for the second wave. Crap I should patent that now :)



I was wondering why Alberta was among the hot zones in Canada, got my answer today
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/new-report-details-spread-of-covid-19-through-global-mining-industry-1.4966770

A new report detailing COVID-19 outbreaks in mining facilities is accusing dozens of mining companies of prioritizing profit at the expense of the health of workers and local communities by continuing to operate during the pandemic.

The report released Tuesday aggregates data from more than 18 countries. Kirsten Francescone, MiningWatch Canada's Latin America program co-ordinator, told CTVNews.ca that it suggests that many mining companies are also using the pandemic as a chance to push deregulation of environmental checks and balances, and avoid community oversight, all while endangering their own workers and those living nearby. 

Within Canada, many provinces listed mining operations as “essential” in March when shutting down workplaces and businesses in order to cut down on large gatherings in accordance with COVID-19 health precautions. Since the pandemic began, Francescone said, mining operations across the world have become “hotspots for transmission of the virus.”

According to MiningWatch Canada, almost 4,000 positive cases of COVID-19 were identified within the 61 mines and one mining convention covered in the report, and 247 additional cases of COVID-19 could be attributed to community spread from workers in the mines.




Different strategies graph

Brazil is back on top after its weekend dip with near record cases and record deaths.
Japan and South Korea are on the verge of getting into another wave.

A closer look at the big ones

Iran is currently growing the fastest week over, close to 150%.
Brazil in second closely followed by India, while the USA is growing again as well.
Canada is finally on a good downward trend thanks to Quebec.

Other countries to look out for are Chile, Pakistan, Peru and Mexico, all in the 4K new cases per day range.
Over all the world sticks to 117.5% week over week growth, doubling time of 30 days.
Now adding over 116K cases a day and 4,264 deaths a day. (avg of last 7 days)

Just out of curiosity:

Why do you use such a weird y-scale no scientist would ever consider using?

It's a simple logarithmic scale, used mostly to display total cases on graphs. I find it useful for daily cases as well to be able to better judge the changes, the slope of the plotted lines. A 20% increase is the same anywhere on the graph, while on a linear scale any increase/decrease in Japan and South Korea would be invisible when putting them together with USA and Brazil. The steady (exponential) increase in Brazil and India would be hard to compare.

Linear scale does look more dramatic for the big hitters and true, this scale distorts the proportions between countries. Canada is less than 4% of USA while it looks closer to 60% on that scale. Yet on a linear scale any movement in Canada's numbers wouldn't be visible. I'm interested in the growth rates, increase / decline, rate of change. The 'hard' numbers aren't that reliable anyway and off by a factor 5 to 30 depending on the country. Rate of change is more reliable as long as countries don't change methods around too much.

Here in Chile things went out of control mainly in the capital, after we had it-kinda- controlled at first. Daily deaths have gone up and they had to change the criteria since PCR test can't be ready in time to confirm 100% cause of death (that means total death toll will have to be adjusted later but it still shows how stressed are labs even if we are leading in tests made in the region)

I don't know about other places but people here find ways to cheat their way out of quarentine, my mom works in a clinic and people ask for hours so they can get the 12 hour permit, then they don't go to the clinic and use the permit for whatever reason.

Not isn't. It has equidistant horizontal lines between orders of magnitudes and the numbers don't fit. That is not logarithmic.

The y-scale of that graph starts at 10 -> 1.0.
Canada sits at 2.85 on the Y-axis. 10^2.85 = 708
The actual value was 713, log(713) = 2.853

I can change the background to make it more clear. I find the 'squeezing lines together' graphs harder to read so I just put 2 and 5 (at .3 and .7) to illustrate the plot is log ( y ) and have an easier way to estimate the actual value using 10^y.

Anyway @SpokenTruth has the numbers covered. I'm trying to compare countries by growth rates and stability of reporting while putting less focus on actual numbers. There are advantages and disadvantages to any graph. Week over week comparison varies wildly at low reported cases and any outliers will distort the graph twice. 7-day running average is more stable than the 3-day average I use, yet is also more unresponsive to see growth trends and 7-day averages are messed up for a week with outliers.

And then you have countries like France where it becomes more of an artistic impression to figure out trends lol.

I guess covid-19 is gone for those people and the media.

We have had the same in denmark too (we had like 2000+ gather yesterday I think).
I think its stupid... I  support BLM, and I have sympathy with all the crazy shit going on in america.
However in the middle of pandemic, I dont think we should mass gather in sympathy protests due to it increaseing spread of the virus.

Does america really benefit any by seeing pictures of us in europe, gathering as well? change and protests will have to be in the US for any effect of change to hit america. America wont change its ways because of people gathering in europe.  It basically serves no purpose (here) and increases spread and deaths of covid19.

Lets get this virus irradicated in europe before we start things like this.

I think america realises that its protesting, will increase spread and kill many of their own people too.
However they consider it a worthwhile sacrifice. Its honestly needed imo too.... black people shouldnt live in fear of the police there, killing them for no reason.

Europe update. now with proper logarithmic scale :)

What is going on in Sweden? Unusually large spike, high two days in a row. Different counting?
Norway came back up a bit, most is still declining.


Pretty much the usual mid week outlook. Decline on average except Russia.

Closer look week over week

France is going through lots of adjustments, result heading upwards.
Russia is back on the path to growth, just over 100% week over week.
The UK is also losing steam in their downward push, stagnating, creeping back to even.
And Sweden jumped up the last 2 days. Spike of 2214 yesterday, yet another high of 1080 today.
On the Swedish site most of the cases from the spike are moved backwards yet there is still a big increase left
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa