December 7, 2020

A visit to the bank – The upcoming certification deadline – A n innovative electoral principle – Unknown disease in India – Evening statistics

Banks have re-opened – at any rate, my local one has.  I found this out when I tried using the ATM and it could not read a check properly when I tried to deposit it.  To my surprise the door to the bank lobby was unlocked and cashiers were at their counters, so I was able to deposit the check without difficulty.  But it is a bit puzzling.  Matters are certainly not safer now than they were a few months ago.  In fact, infections have been increasing at the rate of close to 200,000 a day nationally for some time and not a day has passed these past two weeks without at least 1,000 deaths.  I kept my visit there to a bare minimum, getting out as quickly as I could and doing all other transactions at the ATM.  Not many customers were present, even though it was a Monday, so I suppose that others have similar concerns.

New Jersey has certified its voter count today – not that there was any doubt about the outcome – and at this point Hawaii and Missouri are the only states yet to certify.  Biden now officially has 288 electoral college votes, 18 more than required to secure his office.  There is one last-gasp hope for the Trump contingent.  Congressman Mike Kelly has filed a petition to the U. S. Supreme Court to cancel Pennsylvania’s certification of a Biden win on the grounds that the state law setting up this year’s election rules violated the U.S. Constitution by restricting state legislative control of the process.  The hearing date is set for tomorrow, but it seems unlikely that anything will come of it.  Most legal experts regard such a claim as fairly clumsy. Tomorrow, the 8^th, is the deadline for a final certification of all states.  It’s still a week before the official casting of Electoral College ballots, but tomorrow will at any rate signify the end of a significant hurdle.

The Trump groupies are clearly starting to get desperate.  They are now contending that the election is suspect because Biden won little over 16% of the counties in the U. S.  Of course, that claim omits a factor – ignored by people quoting this statistic – known as “population density.”  For instance, the county in which I live has more residents than the entire state of Wyoming (or, for that matter, several other states such as Vermont and Montana), by several hundred thousand; and it is far from being the most populous county in the nation.  I realize that the Electoral College has been established to ensure that the states with the greatest concentrations of residents don’t run roughshod over those with less, but this is the first time I’ve anyone argue that we apply this principle on a county-by-county basis.

There is a new disease that has come to the surface in India.  Its symptoms have more in common with epilepsy than the flu:  seizures, headaches, and vomiting.  The persons affected with it have tested negative for the COVID virus.  More than 400 people have been hospitalized by this as yet unidentified illness, and it is increasing just at the rate as the COVID virus was during its early stages.  It is fairly localized at the moment and there are no reported cases outside of India, but it needs to be monitored.  The last thing we need at this point is another pandemic.

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 67,921,471; # of deaths worldwide: 1,549,733; # of cases U.S.: 15,365,416;  # of deaths; U.S.: 290,438.  At this rate we will reach a total of well over 300,000 deaths by the end of the month.