Today I found another discrepancy between the way we want to see the world, and the way it is.
I have breathing problems I believe were caused by exposure to my parents’ cigarette smoke when I was young. When I talked to a doctor in Ann Arbor, Michigan, around 1980 he told me I didn’t have asthma, but asthma-like symptoms and gave me a booklet to read. It said asthma was a condition of the lungs that only could be identified with an autopsy.
The Ann Arbor doctor told me my condition would be exacerbated by exercise, cold temperatures, and exposure to water. That was certainly proved true when I moved to Chicago and had to walk by the lake to get to the commuter train station in winter.
Fast forward to today. Our concept of asthma has changed, partly because there are fewer doctors per patient, partly because of the discipline imposed by malpractice insurance, and partly by pharmaceutical companies offerings medicines based on symptoms, not diagnosis.
A while back I asked someone in my doctor’s office about that definition of asthma. Oh no, I was told, you have asthma is you have trouble breathing.
My most recent doctor was appalled I was using albuterol sulfate, because it was not a control medication, but an emergency treatment. He cut back my prescription and told me to take one of the inhaled steroids.
I wasn’t convinced, because when I had tried one years before it seemed to have no affect. But with the one medication cut back I had no choice. Within six months I was in his office with uncontrollable coughing, my first serious asthma attack in years.
I went back to using the albuterol but continued the steroid, until last winter when I saw an article that said the steroid ws only effective in about 50% of the cases. The reason: there are different kinds of asthma, and the steroid treats only one type. Albuterol is what works in the other cases. [1]
It noted that no one did the diagnosis required to determine the type of asthma. There lies the gap between medical research, with its sophisticated laboratory tools, and what’s available from commercial companies and covered by medical insurance.
When coronavirus hit and Trump started making noises about cutting off our trade with China, I tried to get all my prescriptions renewed one last time. I was sure one had Chinese ingredients. I wasn’t sure about the others.
I wasn’t the only one. Apparently many people started stock piling their medications at the time albuterol inhalers were being used to treat respiratory problems of people with COVID-19. A scarcity developed, although one publication glibly said it wasn’t a supply problem, just an increase in demand. [2] Try that answer on an economics exam.
This is where the reality based on television takes over. In the typical medical drama like Marcus Welby or Doctor Kildare, a problem is identified before the first commercial, a desperate search is made, and, just before the final advertisement, a solution is found.
The one I remember most clearly was a M.A.S.H episode that was rerun about the time hantavirus was infecting Native American athletes. In the beginning, the medics are treating some patients with hantavirus and Klinger says he has the same symptoms. The medics assume he is playing another role to be dismissed from the army, and ignore him. Then when he gets really sick, they discover it also can affect Lebanese like him. They gave him the necessary treatment, and he was back in full drag in the next episode.
In the case of albuterol, the Federal Drug Adminstration reported the shortage, probably in April. [3] Medical websites warned people with asthma to use their steroids and other maintenance drugs, and not rely on albuterol. One even said a canister should last several months. [4] The medical research reported in December had not percolated through the establishment.
Then, the government took action. The FDA approved "the first generic version of an albuterol sulfate inhaler" to increase supply. [5] After that appeared, the stories of shortages disappeared.
I couldn’t get my refill in April because the prescription had expired, and I had postponed by annual physical until New Mexico began to allow some offices to reopen. Then, I got the one with Chinese ingredients first.
Next, and now it was August, I needed to refill something that was running out. This was when it was becoming obvious the Post Master was slowing down the mail. It took three weeks, instead of two to get the refill. I ended up taking the medicine every third day, instead of daily, to get by.
Now it was time to reorder the albuterol. I thought I was safe, but then my next to the last canister failed. This happens every couple years, and now I was down to one that was half gone, if I trusted the meter on it.
The post office has improved since its actions were publicized. I mailed the prescription on Monday, and on Thursday got an acknowledgment that it had been received. Then Saturday, I received an "urgent" message to call them.
Saturday was the first day of a three-day holiday. I called and was told my prescribed version of albuterol was out-of-stock, and to call back Monday. It was after that that I went on-line and searched for keywords "albuterol" and "shortages."
It’s been a difficult summer when smoke almost constant from fires in Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, California, and local ones like Rio Medio. Saturday the California and Medio fires were sending smoke that accumulated in front of the Jémez and even began to obsure the badlands.
I started worrying because I didn’t know the nature of the shortage. I didn’t dare take the remaining medicine, lest the canister fail. I put on my cotton beard mask in the house. I tried inhaling oxygen from an oxygen bar, a device used by gym rats to give themselves an edge. It only helped a little. I used a little of my precious cough medicine to treat the nasal drainage caused by the smoke. (Precious because it also became unavailable for reorder in April).
Instead of taking medicine in the middle of the night, I got up and spent half an hour on the oxygen bar. Then, and only then, did I take a puff of albuterol. Note, I said a puff. The prescribed amount is two.
I called Monday, but of course only the answer line people were working. I did ask when the other people would be available Tuesday, and was told 5 am. I asked the man his time zone, and calculated someone would be available at 6 am.
The smoke was worse yesterday, and I was still just as cautious.
Today, I was told the generic form I used was out of stock, [6] but that the name brand was available. The difference would be $100 co-pay instead of zero.
This is where having some savings or other financial resources matter, and why the poor suffer most in pandemics. I authorized the increased payment, and asked when I should have it. He was a bit hesitant, because so much depended on the post office, but he hazarded by the end of the week.
I got off the phone, and took some medicine.
When I get the prescription package I’ll discover the real cost. When I last had the medicine refilled it cost $105 for three months, and that was six canisters. It’s never been zero.
Over the weekend I was considering asking my doctor’s office for another copy of the prescription to take to a local drug store to see if they had it. That chain would be experiencing similar problems, but there was a chance the New Mexico warehouse might have more than the national one preferred by my Medicare Part D insurer.
The daily reports on Wikipedia, which have been less regular, indicates the number of new cases of Coronavirus since September 1 has come down from 31 to 22. The number of deaths in two weeks remains at three. [7]
Another holiday may change all that, and new storms can ignite new fires.
Sources:
1. "Inhaled steroids may not work for half of asthma patients." PulmCCM website. 12 December 2019. Its source was the New England Journal of Medicine.
Suzanne Leigh. "Gold Standard Asthma Treatment May Not Be Effective for Most Patients with Mild Asthma." University of California San Francisco website. 19 May 2019. Its source was the New England Journal of Medicine.
2. American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. "A message to asthma sufferers about a shortage of albuterol metered dose inhalers." 9 April 2020. It had the sentences: "it is not a production problem. The shortage is occurring because of the increased use of albuterol inhalers in hospitals."
3. United States Federal Drug Administration. "Drug Shortages" website. It still had the announcement of the albuterol shortage when I looked yesterday, 7 September 2020.
4. American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. "It is important that you not overuse your albuterol inhaler, as one canister should last for months."
5. Kristin J. Kelley. "FDA Approves Generic Asthma Inhaler, Acknowledges Shortage Due to COVID-19." Jwatch website. 9 April 2020. Its source was the New England Journal of Medicine.
6. I had thought when my doctor (another one from the ones so far mentioned) changed my prescription, it was to a generic, but perhaps it was just to a cheaper alternative that insurance companies would accept.
7. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.
Tuesday, September 08, 2020
Monday, August 24, 2020
Journal of a Plague Year, Sunday, August 23
Another month when I don’t have all the bills I need to pay. I mail bills on or before the 25th if they are due on the 1st. When I was in the post office on Monday, one medical insurance bill hadn’t arrived 13 days before it’s due date.
I have two choices. Drive into the post office every day to see if it’s arrived, or take my checkbook with me and write a check in the car tomorrow. With the pandemic, I’ve cut my trips to the post office to one a week to minimize risks, so it’ll be in the car tomorrow.
In case the bill isn’t there, I’ll take an envelope and stamp with a copy of a previous bill to mail.
The pandemic and changes in the management of the Post Office may be making it difficult to pay in a timely fashion, but the insurance company’s computer systems haven’t been reprogrammed. Paying late, especially if I have develop a record of paying late, means I risk having my insurance cancelled.
I discovered a similar scheme earlier this week with my bank. It was sold to an out-of-state company last year, and things have been getting worse. My last savings account statement showed it was now paying the same token interest it was paying on the checking account.
I got a call from someone this week because the bank hasn’t been able to send me my next order of blank checks. While we were talking, I discovered the bank had changed the rules on activity. It used to be one had to make one transaction a year to avoid an account going dormant. This was apparently some government rule instituted after 9/11. If it was dormant, you had to file paperwork to get access.
This time she said accounts go inactive in six months and dormant in a year. The reactivation paperwork is required for inactive accounts. It now charges fees on dormant accounts.
In the past I did my yearly transaction at the time when I did the government required annual withdrawal from my IRA. Well, the lobby is still closed, and that transaction is too complicated to do in the drive through.
So, the bank is closed for activity, but if I don’t act I get penalized by both it and the federal government. And, the bank makes additional money off me.
Fortunately, the woman I talked to sent me an email address, and told me to send her requests for these transactions. That’s more than another bank I used to use offered when it changed hands.
I don’t need news stories to tell me the post office service has gotten worse. I track the books I order which come through media mail. That used to take two weeks. Now it averages three.
The last time I checked the tracking, the truck with the package arrived in Española from Albuquerque around 11:30 am. The truck used to arrive before the post office opened. That adds a day’s delay.
At the beginning of the year I noticed that packages that arrived in Denver were being sent to Las Vegas instead of Albuquerque. Las Vegas, of course, has had some of the most serious problems with the Coronavirus. That rerouting adds at least two days, plus an extra set of handling.
Delays are being added everywhere, even though we’ve had six months to adjust to doing things remotely.
About two weeks ago, Wikipedia stopped updated the Coronavirus page for New Mexico by 7:30 pm. Now, I find the update the next day. When that is added to the days when the totals are the same or go down, one loses all confidence in the timeliness of the information.
In the past two weeks we’ve had 26 active cases, down from the highs in late July. However, the number of deaths increased to 10, although only three occurred in the past two weeks.
The local website on wildfires maintained by the Forest Service was really useful when some employee got the idea of using blogging software to keep people informed. That was years ago. Management became involved. Updates became official releases. And now, they come out a day late.
I don’t have to tell anyone we’re having serious problems with smoke right now from a fire near Nambé, plus a huge fire near Grand Junction, Colorado, and all those fires in California. The weather bureau Air Quality forecast is still making predictions that let me know in advance I should wear a mask.
The Forest Service updates are a day late and only confirm what I suspect. Confirmation is necessary. One can’t just go on assumptions about conditions based on problems with breathing. That creates the possibility that I might dismiss something important.
Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.
I have two choices. Drive into the post office every day to see if it’s arrived, or take my checkbook with me and write a check in the car tomorrow. With the pandemic, I’ve cut my trips to the post office to one a week to minimize risks, so it’ll be in the car tomorrow.
In case the bill isn’t there, I’ll take an envelope and stamp with a copy of a previous bill to mail.
The pandemic and changes in the management of the Post Office may be making it difficult to pay in a timely fashion, but the insurance company’s computer systems haven’t been reprogrammed. Paying late, especially if I have develop a record of paying late, means I risk having my insurance cancelled.
I discovered a similar scheme earlier this week with my bank. It was sold to an out-of-state company last year, and things have been getting worse. My last savings account statement showed it was now paying the same token interest it was paying on the checking account.
I got a call from someone this week because the bank hasn’t been able to send me my next order of blank checks. While we were talking, I discovered the bank had changed the rules on activity. It used to be one had to make one transaction a year to avoid an account going dormant. This was apparently some government rule instituted after 9/11. If it was dormant, you had to file paperwork to get access.
This time she said accounts go inactive in six months and dormant in a year. The reactivation paperwork is required for inactive accounts. It now charges fees on dormant accounts.
In the past I did my yearly transaction at the time when I did the government required annual withdrawal from my IRA. Well, the lobby is still closed, and that transaction is too complicated to do in the drive through.
So, the bank is closed for activity, but if I don’t act I get penalized by both it and the federal government. And, the bank makes additional money off me.
Fortunately, the woman I talked to sent me an email address, and told me to send her requests for these transactions. That’s more than another bank I used to use offered when it changed hands.
I don’t need news stories to tell me the post office service has gotten worse. I track the books I order which come through media mail. That used to take two weeks. Now it averages three.
The last time I checked the tracking, the truck with the package arrived in Española from Albuquerque around 11:30 am. The truck used to arrive before the post office opened. That adds a day’s delay.
At the beginning of the year I noticed that packages that arrived in Denver were being sent to Las Vegas instead of Albuquerque. Las Vegas, of course, has had some of the most serious problems with the Coronavirus. That rerouting adds at least two days, plus an extra set of handling.
Delays are being added everywhere, even though we’ve had six months to adjust to doing things remotely.
About two weeks ago, Wikipedia stopped updated the Coronavirus page for New Mexico by 7:30 pm. Now, I find the update the next day. When that is added to the days when the totals are the same or go down, one loses all confidence in the timeliness of the information.
In the past two weeks we’ve had 26 active cases, down from the highs in late July. However, the number of deaths increased to 10, although only three occurred in the past two weeks.
The local website on wildfires maintained by the Forest Service was really useful when some employee got the idea of using blogging software to keep people informed. That was years ago. Management became involved. Updates became official releases. And now, they come out a day late.
I don’t have to tell anyone we’re having serious problems with smoke right now from a fire near Nambé, plus a huge fire near Grand Junction, Colorado, and all those fires in California. The weather bureau Air Quality forecast is still making predictions that let me know in advance I should wear a mask.
The Forest Service updates are a day late and only confirm what I suspect. Confirmation is necessary. One can’t just go on assumptions about conditions based on problems with breathing. That creates the possibility that I might dismiss something important.
Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.
Sunday, August 23, 2020
Journal of a Plague Year, Monday, August 17
I finally got a new pair of glasses. Instead, of the usual place, I went to one of the cheap chains in Santa Fé.
It served my purpose. I wanted something that required as little human contact as possible, and that meant no measurements and no fittings.
Instead of paying a couple hundred dollars and waiting a week, I got a pair the same day for $40. I could actually have gotten two pairs for that price, but I didn’t want to spend more time looking for a second frame.
I know I’m getting what I paid for. There’s probably a quarter of the amount of plastic in the frames than there are in the more expensive ones. That means one really can’t have the ear pieces bent to fit.
There’s no scratch protection or light reduction coating. Those are luxuries.
The plastic lenses may not even be absolutely correct. They have a stock of standard lenses, and take them out of inventory.
But, when you’ve needed something for nine months, close is an improvement on inadequate.
I noticed while I was there the usual pattern of following rules without understanding. I asked if the woman who let me in the door if she would be taking my temperature. No, that’s only done at the optometrist’s office next door. They erected a low barrier between the two sections to maintain the safety of the one area.
Other than the mask and limited number of people allowed inside at a time, no other precautions were being taken. The set up was the usual one, a desk about 18" wide and three feet long with the technician on one side at one end and the customer on the other side at the other end. Not six feet apart, and no plexiglass barrier.
I think our local places have done a better job of implementing safe procedures. About three weeks back, all the restaurants put out picnic tables and installed canopy tops to make it easier to serve people outside. One even built a fence around its perimeter to give customers’ some privacy.
I don’t know how well they enforce small groups and distancing. I suspect much depends on peer pressure.
That doesn’t exist in Santa Fé. A friend told me he had a customer who works in one of the better restaurants. It constantly get parties from Texas who refuse to wear masks or respect the rules. All the waiter can do is wear a mask and hope.
I can only hope that waiter didn’t buy a pair of glasses this morning.
It served my purpose. I wanted something that required as little human contact as possible, and that meant no measurements and no fittings.
Instead of paying a couple hundred dollars and waiting a week, I got a pair the same day for $40. I could actually have gotten two pairs for that price, but I didn’t want to spend more time looking for a second frame.
I know I’m getting what I paid for. There’s probably a quarter of the amount of plastic in the frames than there are in the more expensive ones. That means one really can’t have the ear pieces bent to fit.
There’s no scratch protection or light reduction coating. Those are luxuries.
The plastic lenses may not even be absolutely correct. They have a stock of standard lenses, and take them out of inventory.
But, when you’ve needed something for nine months, close is an improvement on inadequate.
I noticed while I was there the usual pattern of following rules without understanding. I asked if the woman who let me in the door if she would be taking my temperature. No, that’s only done at the optometrist’s office next door. They erected a low barrier between the two sections to maintain the safety of the one area.
Other than the mask and limited number of people allowed inside at a time, no other precautions were being taken. The set up was the usual one, a desk about 18" wide and three feet long with the technician on one side at one end and the customer on the other side at the other end. Not six feet apart, and no plexiglass barrier.
I think our local places have done a better job of implementing safe procedures. About three weeks back, all the restaurants put out picnic tables and installed canopy tops to make it easier to serve people outside. One even built a fence around its perimeter to give customers’ some privacy.
I don’t know how well they enforce small groups and distancing. I suspect much depends on peer pressure.
That doesn’t exist in Santa Fé. A friend told me he had a customer who works in one of the better restaurants. It constantly get parties from Texas who refuse to wear masks or respect the rules. All the waiter can do is wear a mask and hope.
I can only hope that waiter didn’t buy a pair of glasses this morning.
Sunday, August 09, 2020
Journal of a Plague Year, Saturday, August 8
I came across a pamphlet from Alpena, Michigan, that said more than 1,000 cases of small pox had been reported in an 1873 epidemic. The census for 1880, showed 6,153 lived in the city and 8,789 in the county.
Alpena then was a new logging town on the eastern side of Michigan’s lower peninsula. The 52 who died represented .8% of the 1880 population. The totals for the county may have been higher, simply because people were isolated, much like they are in Rio Arriba county.
Small pox differs from our current Coronavirus pandemic because it is highly visible. No one needed a special test to know they were among the 16% who had been infected.
Unfortunately, we have made our problem less visible. Because of the national increase in cases, the commercial testing systems have broken down. On July 26, our governor decreed only those with obvious symptoms could be tested.
Almost immediately, the number of reported cases dropped, but a grimmer manifestation appeared that could not be denied. The number who died started increasing. The total deaths in Rio Arriba County on July 27 was 3; now it’s 7. Thus, while the number of known active cases in the county has dropped by 70%, the number who died has more than doubled.
When I was in town Friday, I saw a headline that said the governor was thinking about letting more businesses open because the number of reported cases had dropped.
Anyone who’s been around LANL, or any other institution that has implemented metrics as an impersonal way to evaluate projects and individuals, knows managers try to game the metrics rather than solve their problems.
Without anyone taking a deliberate action, that’s what’s happened here. Something failed, and the metrics showed progress. That illusionary progress now is being used to justify advancing to the next stage.
Alpena knew when it’s epidemic had passed. We are in the dark.
Sources:
Alpena Dates of Events 1862–1902. Alpena, Michigan: Argus, 1915.
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.
Alpena then was a new logging town on the eastern side of Michigan’s lower peninsula. The 52 who died represented .8% of the 1880 population. The totals for the county may have been higher, simply because people were isolated, much like they are in Rio Arriba county.
Small pox differs from our current Coronavirus pandemic because it is highly visible. No one needed a special test to know they were among the 16% who had been infected.
Unfortunately, we have made our problem less visible. Because of the national increase in cases, the commercial testing systems have broken down. On July 26, our governor decreed only those with obvious symptoms could be tested.
Almost immediately, the number of reported cases dropped, but a grimmer manifestation appeared that could not be denied. The number who died started increasing. The total deaths in Rio Arriba County on July 27 was 3; now it’s 7. Thus, while the number of known active cases in the county has dropped by 70%, the number who died has more than doubled.
When I was in town Friday, I saw a headline that said the governor was thinking about letting more businesses open because the number of reported cases had dropped.
Anyone who’s been around LANL, or any other institution that has implemented metrics as an impersonal way to evaluate projects and individuals, knows managers try to game the metrics rather than solve their problems.
Without anyone taking a deliberate action, that’s what’s happened here. Something failed, and the metrics showed progress. That illusionary progress now is being used to justify advancing to the next stage.
Alpena knew when it’s epidemic had passed. We are in the dark.
Sources:
Alpena Dates of Events 1862–1902. Alpena, Michigan: Argus, 1915.
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.
Monday, July 27, 2020
Journal of a Plague Year, Sunday, July 26
Two more deaths reported, one yesterday, one today. Our total is now three.
We have the highest level yet of known cases: 134 in the past 14 days.
And, we have no idea what’s really going on. Thursday, July 23, the governor had to limit tests to those with obvious symptoms, because of the delays in getting test supplies and results.
Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.
We have the highest level yet of known cases: 134 in the past 14 days.
And, we have no idea what’s really going on. Thursday, July 23, the governor had to limit tests to those with obvious symptoms, because of the delays in getting test supplies and results.
Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Journal of a Plague Year, Wednesday, July 22
It’s only going to get worse. Yesterday 46 new cases of Coronavirus were reported in Rio Arriba County; today it was 5. The total for the last 14 days is 132. That’s more than our accumulated total on July 9. [1]
Wikipedia has added demographic information for the state since I last scrolled to the bottom of its web page. It indicates the largest groups getting positive test results are in their 20s and 30s.
When I was out Monday, the consequences already were obvious. The governor had closed restaurants again on 13 July, and only the drive ins had cars in their lots.
If that’s not bad enough, the president has intervened in one of our political disputes [2] and has announced he’s sending federal troops to Albuquerque to restore order.
These aren’t just any police. They’re from immigration control. Probably most don’t understand the difference between someone whose family was here before the Mexican War and refugees from Central America. They all look alike and speak Spanish.
The first result will be a greater spread of the virus as people move about in Bernalillo County and those leery of the police move north. Wikipedia indicated problems in Bernalillo County are now as bad as in Rio Arriba on a per capital basis (the total number of cases divided by the population is greater than 500 per 100,000 people). We reached that status on July 19.
The secondary result may be fewer individuals from Albuquerque driving north to make deliveries to our stores. People who are sick can’t work.
A trivial consequence is my car has missed its annual service. I bought it in Albuquerque and generally take it in sometime in April. Since I’m driving less, things dependent on use aren’t aging. Still, I’d had been thinking about scheduling maintenance, but no more.
I’d rather live with faulty windshield wipers than Coronavirus.
Sources:
1. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated 22 July 2020.
2. I have no idea who Manny Gonzalez is, and zero knowledge about family feuds in Bernalillo County, but if they’re anything like the ones here they run deep and are hidden from public view
Wikipedia has added demographic information for the state since I last scrolled to the bottom of its web page. It indicates the largest groups getting positive test results are in their 20s and 30s.
When I was out Monday, the consequences already were obvious. The governor had closed restaurants again on 13 July, and only the drive ins had cars in their lots.
If that’s not bad enough, the president has intervened in one of our political disputes [2] and has announced he’s sending federal troops to Albuquerque to restore order.
These aren’t just any police. They’re from immigration control. Probably most don’t understand the difference between someone whose family was here before the Mexican War and refugees from Central America. They all look alike and speak Spanish.
The first result will be a greater spread of the virus as people move about in Bernalillo County and those leery of the police move north. Wikipedia indicated problems in Bernalillo County are now as bad as in Rio Arriba on a per capital basis (the total number of cases divided by the population is greater than 500 per 100,000 people). We reached that status on July 19.
The secondary result may be fewer individuals from Albuquerque driving north to make deliveries to our stores. People who are sick can’t work.
A trivial consequence is my car has missed its annual service. I bought it in Albuquerque and generally take it in sometime in April. Since I’m driving less, things dependent on use aren’t aging. Still, I’d had been thinking about scheduling maintenance, but no more.
I’d rather live with faulty windshield wipers than Coronavirus.
Sources:
1. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated 22 July 2020.
2. I have no idea who Manny Gonzalez is, and zero knowledge about family feuds in Bernalillo County, but if they’re anything like the ones here they run deep and are hidden from public view
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Journal of a Plague Year, Monday, July 20
We are now firmly in the second phase of the pandemic, the one people are calling "It Didn’t Have To Be This Way."
We have more people getting sick in Rio Arriba County, and know less about them than we did in March. We passed a milestone today when more than 200 cases were diagnosed since the Coronavirus first appeared in the county on March 25. [1]
Our numbers of cases reported within 14 days had been creeping up from 45 on July 10 to 51 on July 16. Then, exactly two weeks after the Fourth of July, 37 new cases were reported on July 17, making the two-week total 87. Today, it was 99.
It’s easy to say "Aha, the Fourth" but, until recently, the two-week period was the extreme end of the period when people became sick. Symptom usually appear after about four days.
However, testing is no longer a useful measure. Numbers of cases have been increasing in so many states, including neighboring Texas and Arizona, that commercial laboratories that process the swabs can’t keep up, and results are taking a week to produce.
Colorado’s governor said Sunday that "every test we send out to private lab partners nationally, Quest, Labcorp, seven days, eight days, nine days — maybe six days if we're lucky. Almost useless from an epidemiological or even diagnostic perspective." [2]
The problem was the expectation this particular virus would disappear like the seasonal flu, so corporations didn’t invest in increasing their capacity. It made no sense to build new facilities and train new people on a tight schedule, when everything would be redundant in a few months. They only would have acted if they had had some government guarantees for financing, or if they believed their competitors would also act so no one would be at a competitive disadvantage for investing capital funds.
The same problem is happening in other areas of manufacturing. When I went to the grocery today, I noticed more empty shelves, especially in canned soup, canned tomato sauces and salsas, and canned entrees like ravioli.
I no longer can get the type of pizza I’ve been eating. It, and every other type from the one company, has been gone for more than two weeks. The company has exhausted its inventory. Some of the last ones I bought had ice crystals or odd packages that indicated they were the last items in storage.
Pizza, and many of the other foods I mentioned, contain tomatoes. They may not be able to be produced until tomatoes grown in this country are available. Shipments of produce from other countries probably have decreased with various types of international quarantines, and our domestic output may not be able to compensate in quantity within one growing season.
Tomato products may be another casualty of the agricultural cycles that made brown rice scarce this spring.
However, not every type of soup uses tomatoes. Chicken soups have been randomly available since spring: gone, then back, and now gone again.
We know the problem here: chicken producers have had the same problems as meat producers. They didn’t take the Coronavirus serious, and didn’t rethink their manufacturing processes. They had to close down to sanitize their sites. I’m not sure how many actually spent money on safety measures like installing plexiglass shields between work stations.
Not all companies have been passively waiting for things to get better. Amazon’s head, Jeff Bezos, responded to overwhelming demand in the spring by spending money to increase capacity. He saw possibilities in a permanent increase in business as people who wouldn’t buy things online had to change, and once over their qualms would become permanent customers.
In his case, it was a combination of entrepreneurial vision and cash resources. Unlike many companies that have come under the control of hedge funds, debt didn’t prevent him from acting.
Another industry that seems to have risen to the occasion is plexiglass. Natalia Broda said, that in Michigan, companies have been working full-time since March to meet demands. In one small company, the heads of Service Glass Company met two weeks after everything shut down, because they saw the possibility they would be inundated with orders.
Plaskolite, who makes the resin that is processed into sheets, has been running at near full capacity at ten plants seven days a week. This is the kind of operation that is so automated, few people are needed on the plant floor. It could increase production with fewer worries about contagion than a poultry plant. Its only worry is maintenance to keep machinery running.
Apart from wistful thinking, the biggest problem with economists in Washington is they only understand the stock market, which is driven by those hedge funds. I don’t know anyone in this, or previous administrations, who actually understands how an assembly line works. That expertise has been driven overseas by companies outsourcing their manufacturing operations. It’s a more serious loss than the resulting extended supply chains.
People in Detroit in the 1970s began warning these kinds of problems would occur sooner or later. The crises in the food supply did not have to be.
Fortunately, the knowledge and managerial skills survive in some places, like Detroit, and in some industries. The article I mentioned on plexiglass was written for a suburban newspaper outside Detroit by a female reporter who’d been around long enough to know the questions to ask for readers who still understood manufacturing from the plant floor up.
Sources:
1. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.
2. Jared Polis. Meet the Press. 19 July 2020. Reported by David Cohen. "Colorado Governor: ‘National testing scene is a complete disgrace’." Politico website. 19 July 2020.
3. Natalie Broda. "Local Manufacturers Working 24/7 To Supply Plastic Protective Barriers." The Oakland [County, Michigan] Press website. 6 July 2020.
We have more people getting sick in Rio Arriba County, and know less about them than we did in March. We passed a milestone today when more than 200 cases were diagnosed since the Coronavirus first appeared in the county on March 25. [1]
Our numbers of cases reported within 14 days had been creeping up from 45 on July 10 to 51 on July 16. Then, exactly two weeks after the Fourth of July, 37 new cases were reported on July 17, making the two-week total 87. Today, it was 99.
It’s easy to say "Aha, the Fourth" but, until recently, the two-week period was the extreme end of the period when people became sick. Symptom usually appear after about four days.
However, testing is no longer a useful measure. Numbers of cases have been increasing in so many states, including neighboring Texas and Arizona, that commercial laboratories that process the swabs can’t keep up, and results are taking a week to produce.
Colorado’s governor said Sunday that "every test we send out to private lab partners nationally, Quest, Labcorp, seven days, eight days, nine days — maybe six days if we're lucky. Almost useless from an epidemiological or even diagnostic perspective." [2]
The problem was the expectation this particular virus would disappear like the seasonal flu, so corporations didn’t invest in increasing their capacity. It made no sense to build new facilities and train new people on a tight schedule, when everything would be redundant in a few months. They only would have acted if they had had some government guarantees for financing, or if they believed their competitors would also act so no one would be at a competitive disadvantage for investing capital funds.
The same problem is happening in other areas of manufacturing. When I went to the grocery today, I noticed more empty shelves, especially in canned soup, canned tomato sauces and salsas, and canned entrees like ravioli.
I no longer can get the type of pizza I’ve been eating. It, and every other type from the one company, has been gone for more than two weeks. The company has exhausted its inventory. Some of the last ones I bought had ice crystals or odd packages that indicated they were the last items in storage.
Pizza, and many of the other foods I mentioned, contain tomatoes. They may not be able to be produced until tomatoes grown in this country are available. Shipments of produce from other countries probably have decreased with various types of international quarantines, and our domestic output may not be able to compensate in quantity within one growing season.
Tomato products may be another casualty of the agricultural cycles that made brown rice scarce this spring.
However, not every type of soup uses tomatoes. Chicken soups have been randomly available since spring: gone, then back, and now gone again.
We know the problem here: chicken producers have had the same problems as meat producers. They didn’t take the Coronavirus serious, and didn’t rethink their manufacturing processes. They had to close down to sanitize their sites. I’m not sure how many actually spent money on safety measures like installing plexiglass shields between work stations.
Not all companies have been passively waiting for things to get better. Amazon’s head, Jeff Bezos, responded to overwhelming demand in the spring by spending money to increase capacity. He saw possibilities in a permanent increase in business as people who wouldn’t buy things online had to change, and once over their qualms would become permanent customers.
In his case, it was a combination of entrepreneurial vision and cash resources. Unlike many companies that have come under the control of hedge funds, debt didn’t prevent him from acting.
Another industry that seems to have risen to the occasion is plexiglass. Natalia Broda said, that in Michigan, companies have been working full-time since March to meet demands. In one small company, the heads of Service Glass Company met two weeks after everything shut down, because they saw the possibility they would be inundated with orders.
Plaskolite, who makes the resin that is processed into sheets, has been running at near full capacity at ten plants seven days a week. This is the kind of operation that is so automated, few people are needed on the plant floor. It could increase production with fewer worries about contagion than a poultry plant. Its only worry is maintenance to keep machinery running.
Apart from wistful thinking, the biggest problem with economists in Washington is they only understand the stock market, which is driven by those hedge funds. I don’t know anyone in this, or previous administrations, who actually understands how an assembly line works. That expertise has been driven overseas by companies outsourcing their manufacturing operations. It’s a more serious loss than the resulting extended supply chains.
People in Detroit in the 1970s began warning these kinds of problems would occur sooner or later. The crises in the food supply did not have to be.
Fortunately, the knowledge and managerial skills survive in some places, like Detroit, and in some industries. The article I mentioned on plexiglass was written for a suburban newspaper outside Detroit by a female reporter who’d been around long enough to know the questions to ask for readers who still understood manufacturing from the plant floor up.
Sources:
1. Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated daily.
2. Jared Polis. Meet the Press. 19 July 2020. Reported by David Cohen. "Colorado Governor: ‘National testing scene is a complete disgrace’." Politico website. 19 July 2020.
3. Natalie Broda. "Local Manufacturers Working 24/7 To Supply Plastic Protective Barriers." The Oakland [County, Michigan] Press website. 6 July 2020.
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