Pandemic: Testing, Beaches, Masks

Since this blog is an ongoing commentary on the times I live in...and since these times are currently dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic and our response to it...here's another article about the damnable pestilence...

--I'm hearing a lot in the news media about the need for lots and lots of testing for coronavirus in order to reopen the economy and get through different phases of the recovery, but with this I also hear much complaining about the lack of availability of these tests.  Contact tracing for those testing positive puts not only the one testing positive into quarantine but also those in their recent past with whom they had contact, as everyone else gradually reenters more "normal" social and economic activity.  Unfortunately, for this scenario to work it requires enough tests to blanket virtually the entire population...we're way over 300 million in the USA...while there is another kind of testing, with scientifically-designed, statistical random sampling.  New York's governor Andrew Cuomo the other day revealed the results in his state with 7,500 people randomly tested: the results revealed statewide an average infection rate among the general population of 14% (much higher than the tallied raw numbers), with the tests able to also reveal the places within New York state where the numbers were higher or lower.  The way I see it...and I say this admitting that I'm no epidemiologist...the sickness is already everywhere around us and the contact tracing strategy using massive amounts of testing (that will be unavailable for some time anyway) sounds like an exercise in futility.  But randomized testing using much smaller sample sizes than the general population is feasible and can serve to reveal resurges in the pandemic in different areas once the restrictions are lifted...

--One thing I'm seeing a lot on TV is how it looks as if nobody on the reopened beaches at various places in our country...especially in California and Florida...is following social distancing rules.  But although with some people this may be sadly true, I think that a lot of this perception is due to zoom shots that make beachgoers who are actually following the distancing guidelines seem to be a lot closer together.  Also, people tend to frequent beaches by taking with them their own households, members of which are not expected to be following social distancing with one another...so they're seen close together out in public and the media freaks out over it.   Hah...I'm writing this and CNN just did what I'm complaining about.  On St. Augustine Beach at least, they have a rule that if you're on the beach you need to be in motion, walking or swimming or running or surfing or cycling...not just sitting there on a blanket, and the hours are restricted to the morning time.  Other beaches seem to have different rules, though...

--Black men have been harassed for wearing masks in public...a physician in Miami wearing one was actually handcuffed by police in front of his home as he was loading his truck to help neighbors.  I just don't know what to say about this, here in time in the year 2020...shameful.  I have always despised wearing a mask, although the ones my wife made for me are excellent: but it is difficult enough to get yourself "used to" wearing one...especially around others...without having to deal with the bigoted presumptions of some of your fellow "human beings" as you try to survive this pandemic ordeal like everyone else.  Some say the pandemic is bringing us together...but in some ways it is bringing out our deep divisions...