Got a letter from the power company saying they plan to replace a utility pole this morning and thus will be rolling Amish for most of the morning.  They quoted three and a half hours but having done the job of replacing a pole with the power on I know it shouldn’t take this long…

Whatever, here are the links!

With Pfizer announcing exports of their vaccine, Mexico aims to chip the entire population by next year.  Lucky for them the City of Baltimore will help them out.

With papers, without papers, its not important.  All people who live in Balmer over 16 are eligible to receive the vaccine gratis.  Without exception.

Hot damn, they might actually pass us in spite of having 2/3 the population.  One thing to note about Brazil, is the number of hospital beds on paper is on par with most countries in Europe.  The issue is in distribution:

There are 25 ICU beds per 100,000 inhabitants ‏and 7.6 public ICU beds per 100,000 inhabitants, ‏rates that on average are close to most ‏European countries (Rhodes et al 2012; Instituto ‏Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística 2016). ‏However, distribution ranges from fewer than ‏3 beds per 100,000 inhabitants in some states ‏in the Northern region to more than 20 beds ‏per 100,000 inhabitants in the Southeast states ‏(Rhodes et al 2012, IBGE 2016).

How might this be relevant?  Correct me if I am wrong, but the northern part of Brazil is highly underdeveloped, and extremely poor.  Turns out, its really difficult to develop your economy when the entire world pisses and moans every time they try to utilize their natural resources like every other developed country on earth.  That might mean little things like building hospitals, or roads to transport medical equipment over a densely forested area the size of the western half of the United States a little more complicated.  I would be interested in seeing a distribution of deaths by state in Brazil when this is all over.  Note the senator engaging in political theater, discussed here is from Amazonas—located in the north so there may be something to my theory.

Taxation is theft regardless of the country.

 

Here’s a classic tune.