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So, when will the Health Dictators shut down the highways?
Here in Washington State, there are consultants for the State who keep track of highway traffic. They are careful to report traffic levels when the State Dictator forbids residents to travel to their relatives’ houses for Thanksgiving celebrations. To their horror, they reported that Mobility Levels in Washington State increase while COVID-19 cases reach record levels.
Now new data shows there was a travel spike the day before Thanksgiving.
According to a local transportation data tracking company it happened nationwide and here in our state.
No word if there’s a correlation between mobility and COVID-19 cases, but it’s clear, some people chose to ignore the governor’s travel advisory.
“I expected it to stay normal, I did not expect it — we saw that travel did increase nationwide on that day,” said Inrix’s Bob Pishue.
He’s a transportation analyst with Kirkland-based Inrix, that analyzes traffic data from vehicles and road sensors.
Pishue has been tracking mobility data in our state during the time of COVID.
He said at first, back in March traffic volumes plummeted statewide, but since April he’s tracked a steady increase.
“Public officials will definitely be looking at mobility data to see what’s working what isn’t and how to tweak it, their restrictions,” he said.
If the “guidelines” issued by the All-Powerful State did not get people to stay isolated in their homes for Thanksgiving, will they simply shut down the highways next and allow no travel at all? Christmas is coming, and the enhanced restrictions have been extended through January. I am hoping that my fellow Washingtonians will again ignore the restrictions and travel to Grandma’s house for Christmas. And I hope they get a chance to go to Church, too. I also hope that the Thanksgiving traffic increase means that more and more of us will no longer willingly obey these restrictions on our individual liberty.
Published in Culture
Not to worry. In time, The All-Powerful will release you after grabbing you, sticking a needle in your arm, handing you your new passport, and pronouncing you to be fit for civil society until the next mandate. Meanwhile you will find that you can get along without Christmas. It’s just a day.
If he really expected it to stay normal then he’s too stupid to be holding down a job. Or (probably) feeding himself…
It will end after Democrats take the white house, allowing a couple of months so they can claim that they solved the problem and about 45% of the country will believe them, the same folks who voted for them.
I saw something like this on the local news here in Raleigh when we were “locked down” in the spring. Haven’t seen anything since. I never put anything past any of our “betters”. Pooper Cooper just put out his new directive to stay home between 10pm and 5am because you know the virus isn’t active the other times of the day or something.
You know, that’s a scary thought.
And they will tout the effectiveness of the Biden vaccine as the reason . . .
I have a 4×4. I do not need no stinking roads.
The challenge is that it is hard to lie about the metrics. The powers that be can tell us that 1,000,000 people are going to die.
This is a screenshot from an Ivor Cummins video. The researcher plotted mobility data from Google phones in UK against reported cases. Notice the massive drop in mobility from the initial lockdowns, then a sustained gradual rise even though cases are dropping. Then as summer moves into fall and summertime mobility begins to decline, cases keep going up.
Below is the same data plotted logarithmically. Again, the eternal lesson is that COVID’s gonna COVID regardless of what we do. There is ZERO scientific evidence that restricting mobility will have any significant effect. (Unless of course we are all locked in our homes with no deliveries, no commerce. But then the street guards, secret police, and corpse removal teams will probably transmit it to one another so there will still be a reservoir to infect the survivors when and if they re-emerge.)
You know the scientific law about four-wheel drive: All four-wheel drive means is you get stuck in more inaccessible places . . .
True, but that is why I have a winch on the front of it.
Looking at the recent numbers of Covid-19 deaths and statements that icu’s are full or almost full I have questions for which I don’t see any information. Are those who are dying not getting into ICU’s or are those dying dying while in ICU’s? Some of the numbers are high so does that mean we are moving a lot of people through the ICU’s to the graveyard? The numbers are a puzzle to me.
Don’t forget who is dying: older people with comorbidities.
Our local fish wrap, the Oregonian, daily reports on COVID, using figures supplied by the state health department. The report includes a short paragraph on each decedent, including county, age, presence or absence of comorbidities, and place of death. I am struck by the number who are reported to have died at home. I conclude that these people were likely very sick and dying before being infected with COVID. They either died with rather than of COVID, or COVID hastened their end by a short time. Either they, or their health care representative, made the decision to not delay the inevitable.
A personal anecdote fits this analysis. My daughter’s best friend brought her father into her home because his poor health kept him from caring for himself. Not long after moving in, he caught COVID. He was hospitalized for one day, then sent back home. He wasn’t really affected by the COVID, but stopped eating and wouldn’t get out of bed. He confirmed to his daughter that he was “done” and died a day later. He will be counted as a COVID statistic, but really just lost the will to live.
No two states report identically on deaths, so the statistics cannot be reasonably believed. And I think we will never be able to gather accurate information on actual Covid deaths, which suits the Dictators just fine. They can exaggerate all they want, and no one will be able to refute them.
Deaths at home are also an indicator of deferred treatment and the stresses of the government response to COVID not COVID itself.
Seriously, why go to a hospital where you are sure to die of COVID when you can stay home and might die of COVID? The doctors have pretty much indicated they are helpless to help. So why go get poked and prodded on by educated idiots.
I want them to figure out how to use license plate readers for this.
Why shouldn’t they shut down the highways? They’re racist.
We have experience that when our GPS knows or discovers a portion of the highway is closed, it will automatically reroute you, but it could take you thirty miles or more out of your way, and it might be after dark. So remember to monitor your available fuel.
Hmm, I usually take the turnpike. With auto tolls.
I may have to resort to 2000 where I use back roads, and a good old fashioned. Map. Phone off.
Unless they put up barricades, I’m in a defiant mode.
Here is another numerical issue that has me puzzled.
The numbers of daily hospitalizations and daily deaths is reportedly increasing.
The highest percentage of deaths is among very elderly and those with co-morbidities. Is this still true in the latest cases? With the lockdowns, are not most of these people staying at home? If they are mostly at home and not part of lockdown violations, isn’t this a big indicator that the lockdowns completely fail?
I hope that my “governor” Timothy James Walz doesn’t see this post. If he does, we here in MN may see a whole new level of governmental control.
On newer phones, I think as long as your phone has life to it, like your bill is paid and what not, the authorities could still track you.
I mean, everything entails surveillance these days. A teen’s phone shows nopt only where they are at the moment, but their phone is probably tracking their friends. My husband has the ability through an email program to know where every person who is part of his family reunion email tree happens to be. As long as the email they offered up to the family matriarch 18 mos ago is still valid.
For a while in the spring the State of New Mexico literally blocked the highway exits near Gallup with concrete barriers to prevent travel into or out of the city because of a reportedly high number of Covid-19 cases in the nearby Navajo Nation. But, after several weeks they removed the barriers because people found other roads, too many for officials to completely block off, so blocking the major entry points was not accomplishing the control desired by the officials.
There were for a while (probably erroneous) rumors that New Mexico was thinking about erecting roadblocks at the state border on at least the major roads. There are relatively few major roads into the state so it’s conceivable. If nothing else, the truck traffic on Interstate 40 would make any actual roadblock a nightmare to try. States in the east would have a much harder time putting up entry roadblocks because there are so many roads. When we drove to New Mexico at Thanksgiving we heard reports of police pulling over and questioning cars with Texas license plates, but we saw no first-hand evidence of such activity, and our car with Texas license plates was not targeted.
During the early days of widespread lockdowns, I heard from two people (a truck driver and a news-radio host) whose employers provided them letters attesting to their “essential” work, in the expectation that the police would stop people on the road to verify that they were “allowed” to be out.
Enforcing a complete road ban is at least on the minds of some officials, but would be impossible to enforce.