Not, In Itself, Worth Waiting For. But With the Promise of Better Things to Come.

Well, it happened!  The BP Commission...met!  On Tuesday, there was a notice of an "emergency" meeting which was to occur on Wednesday, and the mechanism would be ZOOM.  All five Commissioners, and the acting manager, and the Village attorney, and the Village clerk, would be "present," presumably from different places, and the public could tune in.  There would even be public comment.

Ginny O'Halpin's stingy offering was that she would only agree to allow the Commission to meet, emergently or otherwise, on condition that nothing except the coronavirus was discussed, and that's all that was on the agenda.  In fact, the only two things on the agenda were resolutions that accepted state of Florida conditions, and the readings and acceptances of these two resolutions did not need to take more than about 10 minutes.  If you want to know where the other 110 minutes went, it's all a blur, and I'm still not sure.  The Village attorney likes being on the clock, and too many other people like to hear themselves talk.  Although one great outcome, which was well worth time spent, was the agreement to meet again, soon and often, and to have an actual, meaningful, and goal-oriented agenda.  Since one of the resolutions passed last night was acceptance of Ron De Santis' edict that municipal meetings can occur without a quorum of participants in the same place, then regular meetings are now permitted, and Ginny can't block them any more.  (It was never made clear, and it's still not clear, why she ever wanted to block them.)  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The meeting started with a collection of technical problems.  First of all, it wasn't true that the eight principals were all in different places, like in their own homes.  Some were, but some were in the administration building, and Dan Samaria was in the log cabin.  Each person used a laptop computer or a smart phone.  As we learned, when devices like these are sufficiently close to each other, they create feedback, which made parts of the beginning of the meeting impossible to hear.  But someone figured this out quickly enough, participants separated more definitively, and we proceeded.

We had our two quick acceptances, there was some meaningless blah, blah, blah, and we eventually found our way to what turned out to be the important part of the meeting: an agreement to meet again, the choice of a date for a subsequent meeting, and acceptance of upcoming agenda items.  It was Roxy Ross -- isn't it always Roxy Ross? -- who suggested that we have a good deal of important work to do, and we should probably plan to meet every two weeks, instead of monthly, at least for a while.  This got agreement from everyone, and Will Tudor, who imposingly and painfully couldn't care less, provided no more than slight resistance.  The chosen date for the next meeting is May 5, and Roxy suggested 6:00, instead of 7:00.  Hey, we're all just sitting around at home anyway, so we might as well start, and end, earlier.  Apparently, Will's not just sitting around at home.  He's doing his day job, whatever that is, and he doesn't get off work until 6:30.  But he agreed to a 6:30 start, which doesn't make any sense, unless he now does his day job from home, in which case, can't he stop at 6:00?  Ah, Will.  So, we're starting at 6:30 on May 5.  And we're meeting again on May 19.

And we're going to talk about actual things.  We have a sanitation contract that's expiring, a hurricane clean-up monitor to secure, a new manager to try to find, a CITT mess to try to worm our way out of (we really can't thank you enough, immediate past Commission), and other real matters.

Apart from the fact that Ginny O'Halpin made the mistake of allowing a setting in which progress could be made despite her, the only other mildly (or maybe more than mildly) interesting thing that happened last night was some inane resistance provided by Will Tudor.  Mac Kennedy, who is apparently mad as hell, and isn't going to take it any more, made a crack that Will is always reliable to say no to anything, which is largely true, and Will tried to make a retort.  But Ginny shut down this little spat, which was too bad, because it would have been fun to watch.  It would have been a lot more fun than anything else that happened last night.  But most importantly, we're alive again, having loosed ourselves from the grip Ginny had around our throats, and we can function now.

This Is Not the Time To Flinch.

You have cabin fever, and you can't stand it any more?  Me, too.  You can't work, or not like before, and your income is way down?  Same here.

The region, and the country, and the world, have come to a standstill.  (Except for lawyers and palmetto bugs.)  No one can, or is willing to, function, because no one wants to get infected with the coronavirus.  And getting infected means getting close to someone else who is infected, and no one knows who that is.  I'm reminded, by the way, of a survey someone did 30 or so years ago in which college students were asked anonymously if they would tell a sexual partner they were HIV+, if they knew they were.  A shocking proportion-- it seems to me it was 25% or more-- said they wouldn't.  So you can't rely on the decency and fellow feeling of other people.

If you don't want to get sick, and take the risk of getting other people sick, and maybe dying, you have to keep to yourself.  You have to stay home.  (Again, this does not apply to lawyers or palmetto bugs.  Palmetto bugs don't get coronavirus disease, and lawyers have more pressing agendas than staying well.)

This presents huge problems.  It's not easy to keep yourself afloat.  If you don't have savings, and you can't earn money, and whoever sends you bills only wants you to pay them, then you're potentially in big trouble.  One of your big creditors, the IRS, has changed the due date for your first 2020 tax payment from April to July.  So if you pay quarterly, then you have a reprieve.  Will they really want your first 2020 payment in July?  It remains to be seen.  No one can predict anything about this coronavirus.  Don't forget that.  NO ONE CAN PREDICT ANYTHING ABOUT THIS CORONAVIRUS!

Also, most of the elements of your social networking have collapsed, at least if you're doing what you should be doing.  You still have the telephone, and you still have FaceTime (or equivalent), and you still have e-mail.  But you can't physically meet up with your friends and relatives, and you can't touch anyone.  This hurts.  My daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren moved two days ago.  My daughter wanted me to come up in March, to help pack, to help out, and to see them.  Flights were $18 each way between here and Boston.  In other words, the trip was free.  Nope, I couldn't do it.

Everyone is so tired of this.  Well, not the lawyers or the palmetto bugs, none of which have noticed.  Everyone wants this to be over already.  The earliest stupid talk was of allowing, or even encouraging, people to be active, and keep functioning, and spend money.  Those were the people whose understanding of the definition of a problem was that it was something that had adverse implications for the economy.  The slightly later stupid talk was choosing a target date when the country would "re-open," and they arbitrarily, but sentimentally, chose "Easter."  That was yesterday.  And there were some morons who said not only that this was still a good plan, but some of them were preachers who requested a church full of parishioners, and proposed that "god" would protect believers from the coronavirus.

Even one of the heroes of the coronavirus crisis, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of NY, is now starting to talk about "maybe May 1."  That's May 1, as in 2 1/2 weeks from now.

There are two "supporting" theories for talk like this.  One is that no one, except the lawyers and the palmetto bugs, can stand it any more, and everyone wants their lives back.  In that sense, anyone could pick any soon-approaching date, and people would be relieved and happy.  This is clearly childlike, but it's also common.  The second theory, which sounds as if it was rational and possibly even intelligent, is that as reported new cases increase at a slower rate, which is what people call the "flattening of the curve" (the known and reported new case rate is still increasing, it's just doing it at a less accelerated rate), then, the theory goes, the whole pandemic can be considered to be slowing, and this is taken as an indicator that it's under something someone would like to propose is "control," and we can normalize our lives and functioning.

Here are the problems.  First, if the new case rate is increasing, then nothing is under control.  Going out in that is grossly foolish.  What we need really is no new cases.  Not a slower acceleration of new cases.  Not the same number of new cases from one day to the next.  And not even fewer new cases one day than there were the day before.  NO new cases.  And we need that for at least a few days in a row.  That's not to say we need no new hospitalizations, or no new deaths.  Those were people who already got infected, maybe weeks ago.  We just need nobody getting newly infected any more.  Which leads to problem #2.  How would we know if no one was newly infected?  We don't test everyone.  We test very few people.  Our government, and private industry, have failed us, and they have not developed and made widely available tests for the coronavirus.  So it's a little tricky to address problem #1 because of problem #2.  We test many of the people who get sick, if they come to medical attention, but that's not nearly enough of a sample.  And it's too limited and too late.  Problem #3 is complicated, because of the unpredictability of "immunity."  There are many patterns of immunity, and they're not the same as each other.  Superficially, immunity means that if someone has been exposed to something, then his system has a mechanism to recognize and remember it, and his system will repel that thing next time it comes around.  For something like a virus, that means either that the person has had the infection, and his system will now recognize and remember it, and he won't get it again, or he's been deliberately and artificially exposed (by vaccination) to something extremely closely related to this virus, or part of it, so his system will repel the actual virus, if it comes around.  But no one knows what immunity to the coronavirus is like.  No one knows for sure if there is real immunity, or if or how long immunity will last.  And we can't even begin the inquiry, because of problem #2.  And problem #4 is that no one knows if, how, and when this coronavirus will recede and recur.  Is it like, let's say, the flu viruses, and it will calm down in the summer, then regroup and mutate itself, and come roaring back in the fall?  Will it never relent, and just keep on wreaking destruction?  Will it not mutate, and we'll develop an effective vaccine, which will work long term, and no one who survives the coronavirus will ever get it again?  No...one...knows.

NO ONE CAN PREDICT ANYTHING ABOUT THIS CORONAVIRUS!  We cannot make assumptions.  We cannot plan for anything.  Easter?  May 1?  The summer?  In time for the school year, or the NFL season?  Nonsense.  It's a very dumb guessing game, and there's no point in engaging in it.  As stupid as is the appearance of the people who carried signs stating the date of the end of the world, the next day after the world didn't end, that's how stupid appear the people who said this would be over by Easter (yesterday), or who encouraged believers to revel in the protection of churches.

Hunker down.  Reach out to the people you know.  Find ways to connect with people you didn't know.  Ask for help.  Last night, I got a call from a guy I know, and I know him because I met him at an art talk at MOCA, and I later bought some pieces of his art.  He and his wife make contact with me from time to time, really about nothing.  "Just thinking of you" kind of thing.  Last night, he wanted to make sure I was OK, and to let me know about programs and provisions for "seniors."  It's that obvious?  Oh, well.  But it was nice to hear from him.

Don't assume anything.  And if you can't help it, and you feel compelled to form assumptions, assume this will last at least for the balance of 2020.  Be pleasantly surprised, if it doesn't.  But it might.  Do you know when Ebola and HIV finally went away?  They never did.  Polio did, except for the morons who are antivaxxers.

Don't flinch.  This country-- the good old US of A-- is not the most populous country on earth.  But it has more coronavirus deaths than any other country, even the most populous country, which happens to be the country in which the coronavirus started.  We just haven't been careful enough.  To our credit, we as citizens have been more careful than our so-called "leaders" have advised us to be.  It could have been worse.  But we have to stay strong.  And tight.  We have to wait.  Stay at home.  If you go out, wear a mask.  Use Instacart.  Do without.  Whatever you can do.  But don't get cocky, and don't misinterpret comparatively slightly less than totally pessimistic news.

It's possible things will change permanently here, and in this country, and in the world.  That may happen.  Some people-- some very much in the know-- are already even wondering if it's an unnecessary, and maybe even dangerous, gesture for people to shake hands with each other, ever again. Sounds crazy, right?  It's a new world, and we can't know.  We certainly can't guess.  And we don't have to.

If you need help, gulp hard, and tell someone.

But...

I just saw a youtube clip of our current mayor, Ginny O'Halpin.  Someone-- not Ginny, and not the Village-- sent the link to me.  I'm apparently one of a group of people who are on the Village e-blast circulation, but who don't get Village e-mails, or at least not all of them.  This has never been explained.

Ginny soon enough reassures that she, the acting manager, and the police chief are all "trained in emergency management procedures."  She does not say what this training is, or for what kinds of emergencies these three people have been trained, or how this reported fact is supposed to help Village residents.  The one specific intervention Ginny says she imposed is that "all public gatherings were canceled."

Ginny also points out that there are currently two Village police officers and two Village residents who have tested positive for the coronavirus.  Ginny does not explain why these four people were tested, or how many other Village residents were tested.  And how many were not tested.  So we don't know whether four people who are active in the Village are positive for this virus, or if everyone in the Village is positive.

Ginny then goes on to say that one Village employee has been provided personal protective equipment (PPE), and that that one Village employee is a "certified code inspector."  In that Ginny had already announced that all non-essential Village employees have been asked not to come to work, it is hard to imagine that the one essential Village employee is someone whose essential capacity is that he is a certified code inspector, but he is not our code officer.  There may be many reasons this one Village employee is of special value to be present in the Village, but his code certification doesn't really appear to be a likely one of them.

But most of what Ginny wanted to address is the unsettled matter of a "virtual" meeting of the Commission.  It was important to listen carefully, and to read slightly between lines, but it appears that the main reason our Commission has not met "virtually" is that Ginny has blocked a meeting, and her apparent reason is that she will not agree to a Commission meeting without a guarantee that nothing except the coronavirus will be discussed.  Ginny does not specify what other possible topics anyone has said they might want to discuss, or why Ginny is so avoidant about them.  But her answer is no.  There is one other method by which a Commission meeting can be forced on Ginny, but it requires the agreement of all four of the other Commissioners.  In that Will Tudor doesn't seem to care about anything to do with the Village, it is most unlikely he would care about a Commission meeting, either (despite what Ginny initially described as requests from several Village residents), so there is not the requisite supermajority.  This means the decision is Ginny's, and she has decided that no Commissioners and no Village residents who are not Commissioners are going to get their wish.

Ginny did add that there are now statewide accepted procedures for virtual meetings, and she even said she had conferred by telephone with other mayors.  So there's plenty of communication going on, and there's even a clear and readily available mechanism to have a meeting.  But still, Ginny won't permit one.

Ginny then explains that virtual (Zoom) meetings may not provide the same level of audience participation as do in-person meetings.  But if they provide any at all, or even if all that happens is that the Village gets to hear from all of their Commissioners, it's far better than...nothing.  (And since Ginny is a stickler for the three-minute limit on public comment, she doesn't really allow that much public participation anyway.)  Ginny further explains that someone has decreed that virtual meetings must allow for "a meaningful opportunity" for public participation, and "virtual meetings may not meet those criteria."  So Ginny has formed her own conclusions as to what would be "meaningful" to her constituents, and if there is any chance that the standard "may" not be fully met, she is prepared to deprive her constituents of whatever it is they might want.

Curiously, Ginny says "this is the time for unity; not division." And she rejects the one unifying mechanism at her disposal.

Elected officials do a number of things.  Under usual conditions, they act on a variety of issues.  They make decisions.  But under all conditions, they are the visible representatives of their constituents.  They are present.  They communicate.  They answer questions.  They reassure, if they can, and commiserate, if they must.  But elected officials who hide from their constituents, especially at times of emergency, or of heightened anxiety, are of limited or no use to their constituents.  "Trust me, and mind your own business" is not what constituents need.  It's not what they deserve.  Frankly, it's not what they pay for.

Tracy of the Parc.

Yes, of course I know how to spell Park.  I'm trying to make a point here.  I'm setting this up so you'll think of Jeanne D'Arc, or Joan of Arc.

Erik Bojnansky wrote an article about little old us, and it's in the current (April, 2020) number of the Biscayne Times.  We don't seem to make it into the BT unless it's to get roughed up about something, and this article is not much of an exception.  I'll say this, though: Bojnansky is a very good writer (but then, so was Gaspar Gonzalez, so maybe that doesn't do us any good), and apart from a few factual errors, at least he told the important parts of the story well.

Of course the whole police/Ray Atesiano thing has to get dredged up.  What's a BP story about anything without a rehash of that?  But then, Bojnansky gets into his real material: the Commission.  He, or the BT's publisher, entitled this tale "Punch, Counterpunch: Tiny Biscayne Park's Brawl May Be Over, But Now Comes the Bill."  And most of this write-up was about that.  You know, Tracy, the bobbleheads, Krishan, Rebecca Rodriguez, improperly canceled meetings, Dan Samaria, that material.

But here's what I found interesting.  And I'm not going into Tracy's suggestion that she might sue the Village (although Bojnansky doesn't say for what, and Tracy refused to respond to his attempts at outreach), and Dan's current suit against the Village, which he somehow constructs as not really against "the Village."  One thing I found intriguing was a quote from Krishan, in which he declares that the new new Commission (the one that includes Mac Kennedy, Ginny O'Halpin, and Roxy Ross; you know, the Commission that fired him) are "abusing [their] power," and that their management of the Village, including firing him, is what Krishan called "a political coup."  He's talking about three duly elected Commissioners (plus Dan Samaria, which makes it four) making a decision that is theirs to make, and they're doing it openly, at a proper Commission meeting, with open discussion.  If Krishan thinks that was a coup, I wonder what he thinks of the completely private and off the record, unilateral (only one person) dismissal of Sharon Ragoonan, who is said to have resigned, but reported this only privately and only to Tracy.  Fun fact: the people who are listed in Bojnansky's column as Tracy's personal attorneys-- hmm, I wonder why she needs a staff of personal attorneys-- are Judith Gersten and her husband, Ray Irizarri.  Wait, Fred, do you mean Judith Gersten, as in the Judith Gersten Tracy placed on the Charter Review Committee to push through all her Charter fantasies?  That Judith Gersten?  Yes, that Judith Gersten.  If you don't like it, hold your nose.  And if you're worried about Tracy, and what all these lawyers are going to cost her, I have a funny feeling she's not going to get a bill from Gersten and Irizarri.  And she didn't pay Rebecca Rodriguez.  You/we did.)

It was a twisted joke that Will Tudor was quoted as having said he just objected to the unnecessary fighting between "two small groups of residents who don't like each other," and he advocated for "Commissioners who are completely independent...[and] willing to listen to both sides."  Starting when for you, Will?

It might be worth a passing mention, again, that Krishan said he instituted the action against Samaria "without the full permission of the Commission."  Yeah, that's certainly true.  It was at the direction of one Commissioner-- Tracy.  The unanswered question is why Tracy or Krishan, or Rebecca, initiated a court action against a Commissioner for not living in the Village, when he lived in the Village.  And I'm setting aside that it would not have disqualified Dan even if he hadn't at that moment lived here.  But he did.

There was also recapitulation of the alleged claim by Betsy Wise and Jenny Johnson-Sardella that they felt in some way threatened, when they told police that they didn't feel threatened, and never said they did.  Rebecca Rodriguez also said that Betsy and Jenny felt physically threatened, which either they forgot, or they refused to admit it, or it wasn't true, since they both denied it, and that both of them are "now selling their houses to move out of BP altogether."  This is an interesting "fact."  Assuming, of course...  In one way, I would say good, they did tremendous damage around here, by enabling Tracy, and we're all better off without them.  But in another way, I would say they don't have to leave.  Neither one of them had anything to do with BP before they decided they should be Commissioners, both of them kept to themselves and didn't bother anyone before, and they're welcome to stay, as long as they resume not bothering anyone.  So I'm not sure how I feel about this alleged development.

But none of that is what I mostly wanted to discuss.  I want to remember Tracy, whom we apparently might not yet be able to forget, if she's really suing us.  (How come she and Judith Gersten and Ray Irizarri don't themselves pull up stakes, and move to somewhere else?)  Bojnansky came up with some quotes from her, even though she refused to communicate with him, and it seems he got his material from what she was more willing to tell the county Ethics Commission.  Ste Tracy rode triumphantly and commandingly into office, according to her, to "'fix' a Village that had been mismanaged for years.  In response to complaints that she'd exceeded her authority under the Village Charter, she told investigators that a cabal of former elected officials and neighborhood malcontents tormented her, her allies, and Village staff at meetings and online."  (This, of course, is standard new dictator material.  I told Tracy, who demanded to be called Mayor Truppman, in public comment at a Commission meeting that the most efficient form of government is a dictatorship, but that's not what our Charter provides.  Either she disagreed with me, or that's why she wanted to change the Charter.)  She added to Ethics "Trust me when I tell you, six months from now, there will be nobody sitting on this Commission.  Because everybody has had enough, including the mayor."  She said that in October, 2019, so she was partially right.  Of course it wouldn't and couldn't be true that no one would be on the Commission, and even one of her stooges is still on the Commission, but it was true much sooner than six months that her two trustiest stooges, and she herself, were no longer on the Commission.

If you know or have read anything about Joan of Arc, you know that she was heroic.  And psychotic.  She was an effective, if unhinged, leader, until she was captured and burned at the stake.  She either took advantage of or whipped up great passion among her constituents.  And the beat goes on.

China and South Korea

Both countries were hard hit by the coronavirus.  It first appeared in China.  Both countries instituted firm lockdowns, much firmer than we've done here.  The "curves flattened" in both countries, and once that appeared to be happening, and fewer people per day were becoming positive, and getting sick, socializing of various kinds was opened up.  People could begin to gather again, and people in various walks of life began to return to business.  This even included some street vendors in the Wuhan district of China, where the pandemic appears to have begun.

Both countries more or less quickly saw new cases, and they saw the curves turn up again.  I have not seen anything about what they intend to do about that, but I'm assuming the answer is obvious: reinstitute lockdowns.

I don't know, and I don't think anyone knows, how long this will take, or what will have to be done to try to gain control of this pandemic.  The virus is powerful, and it propagates somewhat easily.  The only answer is isolation.  Ideally, in any area, everyone would get tested, and everyone who is positive would be isolated for the right period of time (seems to be anywhere from about one week to over a month, depending on the case; it is not predictable) until the virus has run its course in that person.  And that course might include deterioration to the point of need for hospitalization, or it might include death.  But once continued testing shows no further active live virus, then the carrier can be part of society again.  And that person will have immunity.  It is unclear how long the immunity will last, and it is impossible to know if the virus will mutate into a virus just different enough that immunity to the original virus will no longer be protective.

It's sort of like the flu vaccine.  The flu vaccine anyone can get before flu season any year is essentially last year's flu vaccine.  It protects against getting last year's flu.  It does not protect against getting some new and related flu virus which did not exist in exactly that form last year.  It's not like polio vaccine or measles or other well-established vaccines, where vaccination means the vaccinated person will never get the disease in question.  If everyone got the available flu vaccine every year, that in no way means no one will get the flu.  They just won't get last year's flu.

The governors of many states-- but not ours, except belatedly and not with full conviction-- have instituted lockdowns.  That is the only answer.  No one with symptoms should leave the house at all, and everyone without symptoms should almost never leave the house, and very carefully if necessary.  If you need something from the grocery store, make a list before you go, do the store very efficiently and quickly, and get home.  I myself haven't been to the store in a few weeks, but I have to go tomorrow.  I'm told that most or all grocery stores now allow only a limited number of shoppers at a time, with monitoring to be sure people are distant from each other, and shoppers commonly stand on line outside until they're allowed in.  Standing on line is a bit fraught, because you don't know anything about the other people on line.

Life is not normal.  It isn't going to be normal, probably for a good deal of time.  I'm guessing at least a few months, but it might be many months.  But the fact is no one knows.  Any activity of people outside their homes, and especially if they congregate in groups, keeps propagation going, and it makes the whole problem take longer.  It increases the chance for infection, and for illness, and for death.

No one likes this.  We're all suffering.  But the one and only thing any of us can really do to try to gain control of it is to stay at home.  So stay at home.

I'm Definitely Not a Fan of Boris Johnson. But...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/coronavirus/uks-johnson-is-still-sick-tells-others-to-stay-inside/vi-BB128KkE

If I were to politicize what's going on now, I would say that sane people all deliver the same message: STAY...AT...HOME.  But right wingers are much more concerned with the economy, and they are permissive, or frankly encouraging, of people getting out there to do some business.  Buy something.  Keep that money flowing.

A story today from the Washington Post (I know; it's a left wing rag; but they do tell the truth) said that what they called "moderate social distancing," which they defined as a seven-day isolation for anyone showing symptoms, a 14-day voluntary quarantine for their households, and "significantly" (whatever that means) reduced social contact for those 70 and older, would reduce the overall estimated mortality rate from coronavirus by 1.1M people.  The estimated mortality rate for unchecked behavior is 2.2M (which everything else I've seen suggests is probably a low estimate), and the estimated mortality rate with the Post's recommended "moderate social distancing" is 1.1M.  Those estimates, according to the Post, are for the US.  They are not worldwide estimates.  But the Post's happy conclusion was these 1.1M saved lives would eventually result in an economic increase of $8T.  OK, well I don't know if that's really true.  But they were trying to make a point.  Even people who are totally distracted by money should see the "value" in saving a lot of lives.

So I don't know what to tell ya.  It's a pain.  It's inconvenient.  It's not fun.  (Although someone already suggested there will be a marked baby boom nine months from now.)  It'll make you crazy.  It's massively boring.  And it's the only way to stay safe.  Let who gets it get it.  Let them have whatever experience with it they're going to have.  And wait for the numbers of new cases to drop.  It's a little hard to track that, because it depends on how many people can get tested.  (How do you know if you're a case, maybe an asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic one, if you can't get tested?)  What's easier to track is the numbers of people who get sick enough to get hospitalized, because they get tested there.  And the numbers of people who die.

Watch TV.  Listen to the radio.  Read articles on your homepage all day.  Figure out what's going on around you.  But stay inside.  Ask Boris Johnson.  Ask Chris Cuomo.  Ask Anthony Fauci.  Ask Deborah Birx.  Anyone with any brains, and maybe a certain kind of experience, will tell you the same thing.

If you want to have something loosely related to fun, you can go to youtube.  Search "Stayin' Inside."  You'll find that parody video, and you'll find links to some others on the same topic.  You get it, right?  "Stayin' Inside."  "Stayin' Alive."  BeeGees.  Saturday Night Fever.  Yeah, you get it.  See if you can find enough distraction to make you forget how miserable you are.  And if it makes you feel any better, so am I.  Last Sunday was the first Sunday in many years that I was in town, which I almost always am, and I did not go to my mother's house for breakfast.  She's 93, has had two strokes, is a complete invalid, and gets very little of anything.  These Sunday morning breakfasts, which include getting my daughter and son-in-law, and my two grandchildren (my mother's two great grandchildren) on FaceTime, are a rare happy experience for her.  But I can't take the risk of bringing her something other than my smiling face and her family on FaceTime.  So no meet-ups with my mother.  Not tomorrow, either.  Who knows when?  She'll die of something, and it will be sooner more than later.  But I don't want it be from coronavirus.  I bet you the Marsalis boys wish their father hadn't died of it.

"Our Survey Showed..."

I'm not on Nextdoor.  But I sometimes hear about posts and issues that are discussed there.  Reportedly, there are about 1200 VBP residents who are on Nextdoor.

I'm told that recently, there was some discussion as to whether or not VBP residents want the Commission to (find a way to) meet.  The calculation to date (April 2, 2020) is that 81% of respondents (49 respondents) want a Commission meeting.

As far as I have been able to follow, there has been no explanation from anyone on our Commission as to why there has not been a meeting, or why one has not been advertised as imminently planned.

As a frame of reference, a meeting can be called either by the mayor or by consensus of the four Commissioners who are not the mayor.  Apparently, the mayor does not want a meeting, and neither do all four of the other Commissioners.  Some of them might, but not all four of them do.

What we have going on here is everyone in the world's idea of an emergency.

That's all I got.