The Corona Virus April 12, 2020

There are currently 559,860 reported case in the US and 22,073 deaths.

New York has 189,033 cases and 9,385 deaths
New Jersey has  61,850 cases and 2,350 deaths
Massachusetts has 25,475 cases and 756 deaths
Michigan has 24,638 cases and 1,487 deaths
Pennsylvania has 22,938 and 557 deaths

Last week was a very bad week. From April 5 to April 11th there were 12,108 deaths compared to a total of 8,511 prior to that. This week isn't starting off well either with 1,454 deaths reported today so far.

I still don't see any indication that the virus is slowing down. It appears to have reached a plateau but my concern is that it's a false plateau enforced by limited testing.

This is Easter Sunday and a number of churches went ahead with traditional Easter services despite "stay at home" orders.

In Kansas the governor, a Democrat, issued an order prohibiting gatherings of 10 or more with no exceptions for church services. The GOP dominated legislature executive committee immediately overruled her in a 5-2 party line vote. She sued and the Kansas Supreme Court overruled the legislature executive committee. The argument being that the full legislature could overrule the governor but not the executive committee.

A church in Kentucky held services and some clown, apparently upset over the violation of social distancing orders, threw nails in the parking lot. Police put warnings on the cars, asked the owners to quarantine for 14 days  and took down the license plate numbers. I figure the odds of these people quarantining themselves are between slim and none.

In Louisiana a pastor expected 2,000 to gather for Easter service. I haven't seen anything about how many people actually showed up.

I suspect the ongoing collision of secular versus religious authority is going to have some far reaching implications. I'm just not sure what those implications are going to be.

Trump is again talking about reopening the economy and throwing around a May 1st date. It's not going to happen unless the numbers start to come down significantly and I don't see that happening anytime soon.