NAC's New Albany "Persons of the Year" for 2020 should be obvious.

One cannot come back without first going away, and consequently NA Confidential is winding down after 16 years, but let's not neglect the selection of  New Albany’s "Person of the Year" for 2020.

As in 2019, there'll be no run-ups and time-wasting teasers, although our basic definition remains intact, as gleaned so very long ago from the pages of Time magazine.

Person of the Year (formerly Man of the Year) is an annual issue of the United States news magazine Time that features and profiles a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that "for better or for worse...has done the most to influence the events of the year."

Obviously the biggest story of 2020 was the COVID-19 pandemic, as yet ongoing in spite of the bleating and jabbering of my fellow aging white men. 

Mercifully the pandemic has kept Mayor Jeff "Dear Leader" Gahan stranded in his Down Low Bunker to an even greater daily extent than in previous years, thus sparing us from the worst excesses of his forever fawning ProMedia propaganda machine. 

And so, with sincere gratitude, we thank Jeeebus for small favors like this temporary shrinking of the mayoral personality cult. 

Meanwhile, we survey the field in search of the next biggest story behind only the coronavirus itself, and ironically, find the answer in the pages of Time magazine.

New Albany's co-persons of the year for 2020 are the city's frontline health care workers and those comprehending the year's movement for racial justice, or precisely the same ones who SHOULD have topped Time's list this year, both of them applicable locally, and both of them with far more relevance to humanity's shared contemporary experience than Mayor Nabob or Councilman Nobody might ever expect to be. 

Following are Time's own definitions, which were rejected, and let us note the ridiculousness of the magazine selecting Joe Biden, although doing so probably delighted His Deafness, Squire Adam, a handful of elderly DemoDisneyDixiecratic grandees and (sadly) a few politically impotent but materially comfy local progressives. I retain hope that the latter will eventually realize they must do, and not merely say. 

Frontline Health Care Workers

"The COVID-19 pandemic has put the world on hold. However, anyone deemed essential—like health care workers, postal workers, sanitation workers, transportation workers and many others—had to keep going. They risked their lives and in doing so, saved countless other lives."

Movement for Racial Justice

"The tragic killing of George Floyd started a movement, not just in America but across the globe. In the midst of a worldwide pandemic, protesters took to the streets, demanding action to fight racial injustice at the hands of police and any entity that embodies systemic discrimination. There have been some positive outcomes since the movement started but it’s far from over." 

---

A decade, including these previous winners:

• 2019 ... Automobile Supremacy in Nawbany
• 2018 ... Jeff Gahan's Money Machine
• 2017 ... #MeToo -- the NA silence breakers
• 2016 ... Chloe Allen
• 2015 ... New Albany property tax payers
• 2014 ... Heroic Non-Incentivized Downtown Developers
• 2013 ... (tie) Houndmouth and "Quality of Life"
• 2012 ... Bill "Slumlord" Allen
• 2011 ... The Sherman Minton Bridge

ON THE AVENUES: Doc Harris and the Commissioners at the No Clue Corral.

Ah, the foolish delusions of youth.

Displaying the guileless eagerness of a fresh military recruit going into battle for the very first time, I began attending New Albany city council meetings in 2005, concurrently submitting to engagement in all sorts of grassroots public meetings.

After a few months thrashing through this stinking, fetid swamp, my only goal in life became finding a nice, dry branch to hang on to.

My persistence in indulging this gavel-pounding, head-throbbing, BDSM-like fetish for social dysfunction subsequently extended far past the point when most normal people would have been forcibly loaded onto the padded taxi for a no-expenses-paid visit to Fantasy Island.

It’s a testament to my sheer, stubborn cantankerousness that I never became one of the zombie drones, although not unlike formaldehyde, copious quantities of beverage alcohol certainly helped preserve my sanity.

Then in 2019, lest the gateway martinis lead me down a path to heroin, I withdrew from the fray. After 15 years, I finally reached a sensible conclusion that as long as undemocratic Democrats ruled the municipal roost, there’d never be improvement. Rehabilitation proceeds apace. 

But those outlandish nightmares of King Larry Kochert ogling my leotards?

They’ll last forever.

One lesson from this era of trauma and self-harm also stays with me, because whenever Floyd County politicians belonging to either major political party suddenly cite an alarming lack of information as a reason to delay acting, even when the vital information deemed essential has reposed for weeks and maybe months atop a case of Bud Light Kumquat-A-Rita in their dens—in Bob Caesar’s case, immediately adjacent to the “missing” crate containing his Bicentennial Commission financial records—it invariably leads to two closely related outcomes.

Their sleeves are being tugged by self-appointed pillars (read: fixers) of the community … and as a result, an embarrassing retrograde maneuver is in the offing.

Given my pre-retirement history of gleefully exposing the dismal antics of New Albany's DemoDisneyDixiecrats, currently extinct beyond city limits, many heads will be nodding in anticipation of the usual verbiage directed against Adam’s Ants. 

Not this time. 

Instead, let’s take a journey to the other side of the aisle, and consider our information-deprived county commissioners, Republicans all: Shawn Carruthers, John Schellenberger and Tim Kamer. 

---

Dear reader, unless you’re a complete imbecile, you've grasped with clarity and certainty that the COVID-19 pandemic has entered a particularly gruesome stage as the holiday season approaches.

Consider the self-inflicted wounds of Indiana’s governor, Eric Holcomb. After more than seven months of futility spent trying to thread the GOP’s culture-wide needle of pandemic denial, even as his predecessor Mike Pence stood off to the side, maskless, breathing vapid scripture into his eyeglasses, Holcomb opened, then partially closed, and finally conceded his own impotence in declaring a new color-coded system to put COVID mitigation measures into the hands of local county officials.

Just think how much Holcomb’s late autumn devolution might have helped had it been implemented in April. Perhaps he was frightened by the Libertarian insurgency in the gubernatorial race. Pence might have been distracted by the need to find a new job. None of it would matter if not for the potential for a worse pandemic than we already experienced, and presently are witnessing.  

Now, in November, for all intents and purposes, COVID-era devolution means that local unelected county officials are being charged with formulating and enforcing policies pertaining to the pandemic.

There’s the rub.

With the vast majority of Indiana’s elected Republicans, as well as a far larger percentage of minority Democrats than you might imagine, all unwilling to risk leadership during an election-year public health crisis, but yearning to preserve their electoral viability for future pandering, the magical solution is to put unpopular decisions in the hands of folks like Dr. Thomas Harris, chief of the Floyd County Health Department.

Frequent readers will recall the infamous "Pour Gate" scandal in 2013 (see here for a full account), when Dr. Harris sought to exceed his agency’s statutory limitations and was wrestled to the ground and repelled by a holy coalition of Hoosiers. Obviously, Dr. Harris and I are not bosom buddies, and quite likely won’t ever be.

However, 2013 and 2020 are one hundred and seven years apart.

It was reported last week that Dr. Harris has been approved to serve another term by the health department board, a decision customarily "certified" by the three Floyd County Commissioners (as noted, all are Republican).

However, the certification was tabled, with Kamer, the least experienced commissioner, stepping forward as de facto spokesman to cite the telltale absence of critical information. Carruthers and Schellenberger merely confined themselves to disinterested nods, and transparency crawled off to die.

The optics of the unanticipated delay couldn’t be much worse for the commissioners, given that earlier in the week Dr. Harris has announced tighter pandemic restrictions on restaurants and bars, still more timid than those taken in surrounding states, and yet a step in the right direction.

Unless, of course, you’re among the whack-jobs who still deny the efficacy of any pandemic restrictions, or the existence of COVID itself. Whether the three commissioners do or don’t embrace science is a question we can’t answer, although their haste in stalling Dr. Harris’s reappointment seems to me an irrefutable clue. After all, one of them is the Republican Party’s county chairman.

Scuttlebutt meanwhile suggests their arms are being twisted by Republican grandees besotted with lunatic fringe Kool-Aid and evangelical Christianity; perhaps Dr. Harris failed to properly fill out the Right to Life questionnaire, or forgot to put a MAGA sign in his yard.

Or, as my friend Occam suggests, it’s exactly as it seems, and local Republicans are terrified lest they be viewed as surrendering to nasty masked liberals who worship George Soros. 

Freedom! Liberty! Mass infections and an early death to grandma! 

Well, you know, the stock market rules.

---

As many of you are aware, I’m employed part-time by a restaurant, and have another part-time job writing about restaurants. When Dr. Harris usurped his department's power in 2013, I spent two years fighting against him, and winning, because he was wrong—and quite a few Republicans agreed, and did the heavy lifting required.

However, I fully support the measures announced last week by Dr. Harris to address the pandemic’s spread. They’re something, as opposed to nothing, and also necessary, as opposed to Disney World.

In point of fact, Harris’s actions during a single day last week shot this unelected official straight to the top of the local leadership board, seeing as leadership from elected officeholders has been even more AWOL than usual since March.

Yes, city council passed a toothless resolution, and two weeks ago, the mayor attached his name to a ludicrously belated social media pronouncement divulging his lightbulb-above-noggin recognition of the pandemic, and urging citizens to mask up and distance themselves. News travels slowly into the shadowy bowels of the bunker, and it only took hundreds of days, but better late than never.

We needn't elaborate as to what local elected Republicans have done concerning COVID, since as Billy Preston once reminded us, nothing from nothing leaves … nothing.

Dr. Harris exercised a semblance of leadership, and his Republican handlers immediately hung him out to dry. It isn’t a coincidence. They inhabit a political belief system that would have exiled Dr. Anthony Fauci before Memorial Day if not checked. Many of them are entangled in religious superstition that would have been right at home in Spain during the Inquisition. We stream music via weird and mysterious invisible waves; they spin 78-rpm discs coated with shellac. 

Dear reader, if you espouse human reason, and respect the veracity of the scientific method, I suggest you query the commissioners as to what sort of petty game they're playing, and who is issuing their marching orders. Their phone numbers are here, although not their e-mail addresses.

Not surprising, is it?

---

November 15: ON THE AVENUES: Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon (The Big Bang Remix).

November 7: On (or off) the Avenues, there's got to be a morning after. 

October 8: ON THE AVENUES: I'm voting for Biden. Otherwise it's Trump's burgeoning fascist GOP death cult. 

October 1: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to the last will and testament of NA Confidential. 

The NAPD is right, because pandemic safety measures should come first.

 

I'll begin by saying that in my own personal opinion, pandemic safety far outweighs the understandable urge on the part of some to "recreate" a festival canceled owing to ... that's right, pandemic safety. 

Consequently, the letter from NAPD, while uncharacteristically firm, is entirely fitting. I agree with these sentiments completely. 

I'm confused by only one passage, and will hazard an interpretation: "Ensure no patron exits your business with alcoholic beverages."

I believe the chief means to say alcoholic beverages must not exit businesses in open, non-original containers, which is to say a cocktail or draft beer in a plastic cup, seeing as the governor's statewide emergency writ currently allows carry-outs even from those establishments lacking the proper permit to do so. The city doesn't have any restrictions against open containers out in the open, although of course the police might choose to interpret public intoxication broadly. The Alcohol & Tobacco Commission generally is the final authority on such matters.

To reiterate, I'm personally uninterested in the various crowd-gathering events being staged during the time when Harvest Homecoming normally would be in progress, and I support the city's vigilance. 

One question, though: If these crowd-gathering events are judged not to be in the interest of public health amid the pandemic, couldn't the city and/or health department have pro-actively nixed them? In particular, as with the ATC and beverage licenses, the health department can intervene in a situation involving public health any time it wishes to do so.

Just curious. 

The great 800-lb pumpkin is silent. The madness yields to peaceful serenity.

Our 2020 non-Harvest Homecoming is under way, and it's a peaceful, easy feeling compared with the usual frenetic amok time, albeit still a tad strange given that with weather like this, we'd be pinned to the tarmac.

Today has been so very normal -- although "normal" will always be a subjective concept in Nawbany, where "We're All Here Because We're Not All THERE."

As first recommended in 2019, here's a new, innovative way to kick off Harvest Homecoming, whether or not it actually takes place: Sardinian throat singing. 

Friday and Saturday should be interesting. Minus the vendors from elsewhere, with some local organizations setting up anyway, and a few businesses staging kinda-sorta HH events, you get an idea as to how a scaled-back festival molded to downtown's actual contours might look. Maybe a springtime bookend fest one of these years? 

However, this year's not-the-fest-as-usual has a new 800-lb gorilla. It's the fact of these little farm-near-me/">mini-celebrations -- how many unofficial beer walks ARE taking place tomorrow, anyway? -- occurring in a pandemic context. Yes, I understand that the governor gave the okay to congregate outdoors, albeit it only recently, but supposedly the mask "mandate" that never really was still applies.

From my vantage point, I've spent the past few months watching local VIPs from both political flush mobs violating the mask mandate frequently and with apparent impunity. It's no longer my self-assigned "job" to call them out, so I haven't. 

However, the unmistakable message I've gotten is that our local political duopoly hasn't been very interested from the outset in leading by example.   

Note that I'm taking great care to be bipartisan, that elusive quality of fairness we all insist should be more prevalent. Let me be clear about what I've witnessed. It's been a firmly bipartisan indifference to science. 

Does any of it matter? 

Beats me. It will always annoy me that from top to bottom in America, grassroots business persons have been expected to enforce "mandates" that neither political entity cares to oversee and be held responsible for implementing. 

In closing, a random HH link from 2018:

Try to imagine Harvest Homecoming if 95% of visitors DIDN'T drive to it -- or, "Why Public Transportation Works Better Outside the U.S."

Our 2020 non-Harvest Homecoming.

It even seems a bit strange to me. In spite of my decades-long indifference to Nawbany's peculiar institution of Harvest Homecoming, the absence of a parade yesterday, and the silence to come this week, combine to produce a sense of loss.

Well, not much, but still ... that's something, I guess.

ON THE AVENUES: There, there. People are dying, so you may have to wait until 2021 for your pork chop sandwich.

I wrote the preceding in June, and rather than repeat myself, just click through and read if you care to. 

Several of the traditional festival vendors are setting up shop around town during the coming days, and The Earl is having its own parking lot party this weekend. Pints&union will be conducting business for the most part as usual, as we have no parking lot. 

If you indulge in any of these make-up events, allow me to encourage you to wear a face mask. Lots of people are getting sick, and many are dying, because too many other people are selfish narcissists. To some, they're assholes.

Ask Donald Trump.

They're why Harvest Homecoming was canceled in the first place. We can do better. If you're interested in getting through this, maybe it's time to try a bit harder. 

These post-COVID ideas for cities could be scaled down for Nawbany.

It's a British publication, and in some ways these ideas are scaled for cities much larger than Nawbany. 

At the same time, the guiding principles are intelligent and applicable, and could be scaled down to fit -- if we had anyone here in a position of authority who could read and assimilate information absent an expectation of cash-stuffed envelopes. 

Bike superhighways

Garden streets

A digitally enabled high street

Multipurpose neighborhoods

Unlikely in this god-awful stupid place, but a boy can dream pro bono.

From garden streets to bike highways: four ideas for post-Covid cities – visualised, by Chris Michael, Lydia McMullan and Frank Hulley-Jones (The Guardian) 

As the pandemic wreaks havoc on existing structures, we look at some visions for post-Covid cities – and how they hold up

There is a huge, looming, unanswerable question that overshadows our cities, like an elephant squatting in the central square. Will a Covid-19 vaccine or herd immunity return us to “normal”, or will we need to redesign our cities to accommodate a world in which close proximity to other people can kill you?

After an anxious summer in the northern hemisphere, during which those of us who were able to safely do so mimicked a kind of normality with limited socialising on patios and in gardens, winter is coming – and it will test the limits of our urban design. Regardless of whether we “solve” this latest coronavirus, humanity now knows how vulnerable we are to pandemics.

Can we mitigate the effects of the next great disease before it happens? And has the colossal disruption to the way we work and travel created a renewed impetus to organise cities in a more sustainable, more pleasant way?

We asked four architecture firms to share their visions of what cities should do, now, to better design everything from offices to streets to transport – and we have analysed each one – to help inoculate our cities against a disease that is proving so difficult to inoculate against in our bodies.

Friday, September 25 is the soft RE-opening for dining inside at NABC Pizzeria & Public House.

Trek to the Deck, 1999.

Think of it as a public service announcement. We did curbside at NABC on Saturday, and if I may say so myself, the Roundhouse was brilliant. Sunday was spent eating leftover pizza and bread sticks. I've emphasized one passage in bold.   

Facebook post 

Well, guess it’s that time of year again, ya know, the one where there was a pandemic & you haven’t had customers in your building for six months?!

Soft opening THIS Friday September 25th on the Pizzeria dining room side.

We will resume our regular carryout service as before meaning customers will call in an order, you’ll be quoted a pick up time only this time you’ll be required to wear a mask upon pick up.

We will continue to be a first come first serve operation with the exception of the “waiting room” being outside the building to encourage physical distancing.

DOORS OPEN at 11am THIS Friday September 25th 2020

PLEASE NOTE our hours of operation have changed for the time being:

Friday & Saturday LUNCH & dinner
11am - 9pm

Monday- Thursday dinner only
3pm - 9pm

Masks must be worn upon entry and only taken off while seated at your space please.

ALL employees will wear masks properly and continuously.

We will be very diligent about cleaning spaces especially after each use.

IF the allotted spaces fill to capacity we will get a cell phone number from you and ask that you wait outside the building.
We will call you as soon as a space is cleaned, sanitized and available!

Operating a restaurant during COVID-19 has been challenging to all of us. We are, thankfully, a popular independent, local, family owned & operated business. We all need each other to make this work.

Please be patient, kind, & respectful to one another. We are doing the best we can do under these circumstances.
Hand washing, mask wearing, & distancing is the key to all of our health.
Be safe & well during pandemic & cold&flu season

RECAP:
11-9 on the weekends Friday & Saturday

3-9 Monday-Thursday

Masks must be worn upon entry and only taken off while seated at your space please.

IF the allotted spaces fill to capacity we will get a cell phone number from you and ask that you wait outside the building.

Respect Yourself.

I'm just the beer guy, and so I can't speak for everyone at Pints&union, but it's a great feeling to know you're working for/with people who take public health seriously, who are NOT science doubters, and who are doing their very best to observe pandemic protocols, and to implement best practices for the benefit of customers and workers alike.

If a food service establishment's or bar's priorities are in the right place, it doesn't matter that these various governmental pandemic mandates lack the necessary enforcement mechanisms to dissuade miscreants from mayhem. You follow the mandates because it's the right thing to do in a public health emergency.

We all know some establishments aren't, and to be perfectly frank, I struggle mightily with the "code of silence" as traditionally observed by the food and drink sector pertaining to withholding comment about what occurs elsewhere in the hospitality business.

I appreciate those of you who have sent me accounts, photos and videos of incredibly unhealthy scenes at local eateries and bars. I applaud your candor and grasp of the issues.

However, I won't lie to you; there's nothing I can do to help. You might try informing your elected and appointed local government officials, although in all honesty they'll probably do little apart from kicking the can a bit further down the road. Regrettable, but true.

I know that there are no sure things in life. Perfection isn't attainable, but the object is to bust your ass pursuing it, and this is what Pints&union is doing with respect to dining and drinking indoors during a pandemic. I can attest to it.

Those of you who have no intention of visiting a restaurant or bar any time soon, you have my complete support; my own household still is doing curbside carry-out (Dragon Kings Daughter and Legacy Pizza and Bakery most recently), and because I'm extremely grateful to Pints&union for allowing me to do my work in the morning, and remotely from home whenever possible, I will not be shaming anyone else for refraining from old haunts until the pandemic is under control.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a community-minded, responsible place to have a sandwich and a drink, and you have not given Pints&union a try, please do. We're doing everything in our power to make the experience safe and enjoyable. Give us feedback, and let us know what you think about your visit.

(I have no ownership stake in Pints&union. As noted, I'm just the beer guy, and I didn't tell anyone else I was planning on writing this. COVID is real, and it's going to be with us for a while. We should be taking the virus seriously; what's more, we should be positively recognizing the efforts being made by those who DO accept their responsibilities toward this end. Thank you for your support.)

In My Room.

According to the death cult curated by the Right, these people who insist on staying home are behaving unpatriotically.

They should have all gone to Sturgis to experience the world's toughest guys drinking the lightest beer available.

But maybe, just maybe, tending to one's health when he's skint, anyway, is another variation on the pursuit of happiness.

Because, as the philosopher reminds us, pleasure is the absence of pain.

Americans Stayed Inside Even as Cities and States Reopened, by Alexandre Tanzi and Olivia Rockeman (Bloomberg)

Well after U.S. economies began reopening this year, Americans continued to stay home.

By the latter half of August, 130 million Americans said they avoided eating at restaurants, a new U.S. Census Bureau survey analyzed by Bloomberg News shows. Only about 21 million of the nearly 250 million people had resumed dining out, according to the data gathered in collaboration with multiple federal agencies.

Asked if they were still making fewer trips to stores in late August than before the pandemic, 70% said “yes.” Even among the youngest adults aged 18 to 24, 68% said they were shopping less.

In some cases, the ability to stay home was tied to income. More than 70% of households earning more than $100,000 said they were able to substitute telecommuting for some in-person work. By comparison, only 27% of households with annual incomes under $75,000 said someone in their home was able to telecommute ...

I Got the News: Sorry, but Uncle Walt's not going to save you, either.

I'm shocked ... SHOCKED ... to learn that "Disney is not only underreporting its COVID cases but clearing COVID-positive employees to return to work."

Four sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast that Disney has kept the total number of positive cases at the district under wraps, alerting unions only to the positive test results of their members—often days after the fact, risking further exposure—and leaving workers to guess for themselves why colleagues disappeared for days at a time, or why 11 people from the 12-person Horticulture Irrigation team didn’t show up to work for a full week.

All sorts of folks in positions of authority here and throughout the country, most often Democrats locally but in truth it's a bi-partisan thing, absolutely worship Disney for keeping its streets clean.

Of course, they're forgetting that a Disney theme park is not the real world. That's an important consideration, isn't it?

In fact, I reiterate: Veneration of Walt Disney is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.

Grow up, folks.

Verily, I wasn't made for a world this stupid: "Visiting Disney World is the modern version of a medieval pilgrimage."

Like the time Disney's for-profit masterminds proposed a history theme park, including "a new vision of a Disneyland for slavery."

"The weirdness of historical Disneyfication" failed miserably, but it accurately presaged the Dickey Error.

As Charles "Strong Towns" Marohn noted in a 2018 article about crony capitalism, Disney's in it for the money just as much, if not more, than any other power-wielding multinational:

When a company like Walt Disney, which had $25 billion in gross profits last year, can demand—and receive—decades of tax amnesty from a city like Anaheim, a city with a $1.7 billion budget that is struggling to pay pensions, maintain streets and provide basic services, something is broken.

Perhaps it isn't possible to prove categorically that Walt Disney himself was "sexist, anti-Semitic and racist, aside from the backlash against the now-banned Song of the South."

But his successors shouldn't be absolved from fleecing generations in pursuit of obscene profits. Shouldn't we be embracing history's verdicts, not fleeing headlong from them?

The Second Time Around.

When you elect grifters to manage a country, don't be surprised if they set the dumpster on fire and walk away with their pockets stuffed with cash.

The Emotionally Challenging Next Phase of the Pandemic, by Juliette Kayyem (The Atlantic)

The end of summer is a bitter reminder: America’s coronavirus ordeal won’t end when 2020 does.

 ... The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention got some Americans’ hopes up with its recent instruction that states should be ready to distribute a coronavirus vaccine in the next couple of months. President Donald Trump is desperate to convince the public that a vaccine to COVID-19 will arrive by a politically convenient deadline: “maybe even before November 1,” he said Friday, or “some time in the month of October.”

But Trump’s Operation Warp Speed is an election ploy, not a guarantee of scientific progress. Drug companies that are competing to develop vaccines are banding together to resist political pressure to take shortcuts in safety testing. On NPR Thursday, Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser to Operation Warp Speed, said that an effective vaccine by the end of next month is “extremely unlikely” and that population-wide distribution of a vaccine could take until the middle of next year.

In other words, the American coronavirus crisis will end—just not soon. “With a combination of public-health measures with a vaccine that’s reasonably good,” the infectious-diseases expert Anthony Fauci told me in a recent online interview, “by the time we get around through 2021, we can start having some form of normality. Maybe not exactly the way it was, but certainly different than what we’re doing right now.” Fauci’s prediction is based on the best-case scenario in which, “as we get into 2021, we should start seeing a substantial number of [vaccine] doses available.”

This timetable comes as difficult news. Summer is ending. Americans were told that this season, the season of outdoors and open windows, would create the best conditions to manage COVID-19 ...

Open Arms: Indiana enthusiastically welcomes COVID-cuted Kentucky diners, drinkers.

"Duh" just doesn't do it justice. Not only that, but every now and then, 125% is the new 75%.

Some Louisville bars report losing business as Indiana competitors face less stringent restrictions, by Sara Sidery (WDRB)

Some Louisville restaurants say they're losing business to competitors across the river, as Indiana has less stringent restrictions on patrons.

Indiana is keeping bars and restaurants at 75% capacity for another month, but Kentucky establishments are still stuck at 50% and likely will be for a while.

Face the Face.

There's a reason for #DontBeAMaskHole.

I've said all along, and will now repeat, that it's the ultimate in despicable governmental cowardice to "encourage" face masks, but to allow retail workers to do the dirty work of enforcement.

A restaurant subject to health department guidelines regarding hygienic standards, generally now including face masks, must obey (and most are aboard) or face sanctions. Meanwhile elected officials from BOTH major political parties see no issue with issuing unenforced mandates leading to ordinary workers being compelled to act as police on behalf of spineless politicians.

It's bullshit, and it needs to stop. I live in a place called New Albany, Indiana, and the unmitigated, calculating drivelers currently serving in elective office here can be the place where rationality begins.

Fed up with anti-maskers, mask advocates are demanding mandates, fines — and common courtesy, by Marc Fisher

 ... In a country stumbling to control a rampant and deadly virus, masks are effective and popular weapons. Three-quarters of Americans favor requiring people to wear face coverings in public to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, including 89 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of Republicans, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in July.

Now, with the nation reeling from more than 5 million infections and nearly 170,000 virus-related deaths, a rising sense of outrage is leading this silent majority to push back against the smaller but louder anti-mask contingent.

Instead of flashy protests and confrontations, however, mask supporters are expressing their exasperation in quieter ways, writing letters to local newspapers, posting on social media, patronizing businesses identified as mask-enforcers on dedicated Facebook groups and urging state and local officials to mandate mask-wearing in public.

So far, 34 states and the District have adopted mask requirements. Now, mask advocates want police to enforce those orders, a move some police chiefs have said they are reluctant to make. They are seeking legal protection for retail workers put in the awkward position of enforcing mask rules. And they are lobbying for a coordinated federal mask policy ...

Expectations.

If there remains anyone out there who insists COVID-19 is no worse than the common cold, refer them to this free read at The Economist.

Or read it to them. Maybe that's better.

Nicholas Christakis on fighting covid-19 by truly understanding the virus (The Economist)

The latest coronavirus is different from past ones, so requires a different response.

SEVEN VARIETIES of coronavirus infect humans: four give us the sniffles; one causes a deadly disease smouldering in the Middle East since 2012; and two erupted into full-on pandemics. The first caused SARS and it petered out quickly. The other causes covid-19 and it has hobbled the global economy. Why the difference?

It is not only a matter of the public-health response or governmental incompetence (though that has certainly made things worse). It also has to do with the underlying epidemiology of the pathogen, which we are coming to appreciate, after little more than a half-year of experience. Viewing covid-19 through the lens of SARS can lead to flawed responses. Understanding how the novel coronavirus is different is essential for identifying how society can best confront it ...

... What do the differences between yesteryear’s SARS-CoV-1 and the current SARS-CoV-2 tell us about how to respond today? There are critical insights that must be heeded if countries are to protect their people and economies.

Cutting to the chase.

Since we cannot rely on symptoms to identify cases, testing needs to be widespread and the results returned rapidly if not immediately.

After all, a thin cotton swab shoved up your nostril beats a thick plastic tube jammed down your trachea. And though some people resist face masks, perhaps they will come to see that they’re better than closing the economy or counting body-bags. Given the epidemiology of the virus, the best response is to do what has been voiced by health officials but not always adhered to in our communities. Until an effective vaccine is developed and becomes widely available, farm-near-me/">minimise social interactions, keep our physical distance, implement widespread testing and yes, wear masks.

The distinctive characteristics of the virus behind covid-19 mean it will inexorably infect a large percentage of the world before the pandemic has run its course—an epidemiological parameter known as the “attack rate.” For SARS, the attack rate was infinitesimal: only 8,422 people out of a global population of 6.3bn in 2003, just 0.00013%. For covid-19, at least 40% of the world’s 7.6bn people will probably become infected, with millions of deaths. We have a long and sorrowful way to go. So we had better respond wisely.

Why Don't We Do It In The Road?

David Thrasher has been engaged by the city (UEA?) to restore the Coca-Cola "ghost sign" on the east-facing brick wall of the building currently occupied by The Root, above the roof line of Pints&union.

For the next two photos, one from New Albany and the second from Los Angeles, file under: symmetry.

Foreshadow much?

It's a tale of three parking spaces. If they can be used for one thing, then ... well, you know.

As for dining in the street (well, amid the disposable parking spaces) as a pandemic-evasion tactic?

It's happening throughout America and the remainder of the planet, and you can read more here.

The caption of the photo from the Los Angeles Times reads, "Brandon and Rose Astudillo of Glendale eat dinner at Baracoa Cuban Cafe in Atwater Village in a new outdoor seating area that occupies three parking spaces."

I can't make the subtle hint any broader, can I?

Previously:

Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love).

Eine kleine Nachtmusik.

It's complicated. If the solution is outdoors, there'll be understandable NIMBY in response, at least in some cases. As usual, Berlin is ahead of the pack; the author also looks at Paris, London and Madrid. Will we see the return of the speakeasy?

The Nightlife Rescue Plan That Could Save Your City’s Scene, by Feargus O'Sullivan (CityLab)

As bars, clubs and music venues emerge as high-risk sites for Covid-19 outbreaks, a team of experts has developed a playbook for nightlife survival.

In March, just days before the city locked down, three young people in Berlin began experiencing symptoms and tested positive for Covid-19. All three had been partying at the nightclub Kater Blau. Could they, doctors wondered, have infected other people during the same evening?

The answer was a resounding yes. One clubber, called Sina by the newspaper Welt Am Sonntag that investigated the outbreak, estimated that she had hugged and kissed at least 50 people during her visit to the club. She had talked very loudly, in very close quarters, to many others, trying to be heard over the booming sound system. Within just a few days, the three clubbers diagnosed with Covid-19 had been in close contact with over 1,000 people, likely making them unwitting super-spreaders. It’s unknown how many of those clubgoers ended up contracting the disease, but the potential toll is high indeed. A single person infected with coronavirus who visited Berlin’s Trompete nightclub earlier in March ended up infecting 17 others in a single evening.

Since then, it’s become clear that such outbreaks were no outliers. In Japanese karaoke haunts, Zurich nightclubs and Florida beach bars, the indoor places where people gather to drink, dance and listen to music have emerged as major super-spreader risks. South Korean public health officials traced more than 100 cases to a single infected Seoul pubcrawler who hit five nightspots over two days. In communities that appeared to be successfully controlling the spread of the virus, reopened nightspots appear to be fueling fresh outbreaks.

So should all bars and clubs simply close until we have a vaccine or cure? A blanket ban on all nightlife activities would be economically devastating, impossible to police and socially harmful, says a new report from the nightlife consultancy VibeLab. Co-created with an international panel of night mayors, academics and music promoters, the report recommends that urban nightlife must very carefully move outdoors, and lays out a set of principles for doing that. The advice reflects what’s been learned over a period in which food and drink service in cities around the globe has set up shop outside, often claiming street and sidewalk space from other uses — an ad-hoc solution that hasn’t always succeeded.

The VibeLab report is just the first installment of the group’s overarching Global Nighttime Recovery Plan, due in September. Future installments will focus on a host of pandemic-fueled problems, including finding financial supports for workers and owners of venues that can’t reopen and what the future of dance and live music clubs might look like. Its goal is not just to save a threatened part of cities’ cultural and economic life, but to make some longer-term improvements in relations between nightlife businesses and citizens, and how public spaces are managed and monitored. It would be wrong, the report suggests, to see the pandemic as a unique and unprecedented emergency: The night economy faced a grave threat even before the coronavirus arrived ...

Birds of Prey.

True; the whole class is losing recess because of the actions of a few. At the same time, local governments have refused to enforce their own laws (as Steve notes), and the responsible majority within the food and drink economic sector has looked the other way while the scofflaws deny science and shirk voluntary restrictions. 

Change has to come from both directions. This being America, it likely won't, with the pandemic lasting longer and causing more suffering than it should. 

Opinion: Closing, Opening Bars And Restaurants Hastens Their Avoidable Deaths, by Steve Coomes (The Whiskey Wash)

 ... In 2020, anyone with any sense knows that packing the house is reckless. Still, some insist on rolling the dice and betting their immune systems are superior to an invisible microorganism that’s killed more than 150,000 and infected more than 4 million people in the U.S. alone. Pour alcohol on such stupidity and the gambler just gets gutsier ...

Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love).

With formerly restrictive alcoholic beverage laws being relaxed, and from a recognition that outdoor living with social distancing is a way of coping with COVID, it would take almost nothing in terms of resources and expenditures for just about any city in America to enable experimentation like this.

Look at those parking spaces, finally used for a useful purpose. Local authorities need only establish broad boundaries and get out of the way, as state government already has done v.v. those alcohol floor plan laws.

The other day I was asked if I "hate" New Albany.

I answered no.

What I "hate" is that so many New Albanians can't so much as imagine things that occur in the outside world, like this. Quite literally what you see in the photo above is happening all across the country and the planet, thanks to the pandemic and the ability of city fathers to think on their feet.

Why not here in New Albany?

After all, Los Angeles is doing it.

L.A.-area parking spots have become dining areas during the pandemic. Will it last? by Laura J. Nelson (LA Times)

 ... The pandemic has forced cities and businesses to be more nimble and experimental, and allows them to think about the logistics and trade-offs in real time: "What’s going to bring us more customers? Is it that we have a place to sit outside, or that we have nearby parking?"

Jeffersonville's been doing it for quite a while, and now so is Louisville. Considering Louisville's mayor has been routinely wrong of late, here's one he can hit out of the damn park -- and does.

Louisville Metro says restaurants can expand to on-street dining to help survive pandemic, by Dahlia Ghabour (Courier Journal)

“As we envision a day beyond the pandemic, we want our eclectic Louisville eateries to be part of that future, which is why Louisville Metro has been seeking new ways to help them stay open throughout the restrictions,” Mayor Greg Fischer said in a news release. “The new on-street dining option will give restaurants the chance to serve more customers in a safe manner while complying with the state restrictions that are necessary to stem the spread of COVID-19.”

Why must easy things be so hard?

Out of Nowhere.

I had a pandemic-inspired old fart moment today.

The Monarch (wholesale beer distributorship) order arrived on schedule and the driver Ray phoned me according to our usual arrangement. My bike's back from the shop, so I rode it down to unlock Pints&union.

About halfway there I thought "crap, I forgot my mask." Ah, I further reasoned, we have some official Pints&union masks at work; no problem.

Ray was waiting by the back door. I rushed in and ran past all the masks stored by the taps, apologized to Ray because I'd forgotten my mask, said I'd keep my distance, and received the order.

Only then, with no one else around, did I think to grab a Pints face mask from the stack. I put away the beer and came home, sat down, and noticed my mask was right there, hanging from my neck the entire time.

Ray thinks I'm senile.

I'm wondering, too.

Happy 60 years + one day (to me).

A Monday Date.

It's been a tough week.

I've got blisters on my "unfollow" fingers; it was time to eliminate the social media "friends" who can't do any better than post one fabricated, lying, propaganda meme after another. This has included a few people for whom I feel genuine affection and consider to be friends in the real world, not the pretend on-line world. I understand that some of them are scared; others didn't have a strong grip when things were good. What's changed is my willingness to tolerate their blathering.

As K. stated so well, it's about my own sanity and survival. I usually could brush it off prior to COVID, but now these people no longer are just harmless loonies; they're advocating harm at every turn -- whether pandemic obliviousness, or white supremacy, or virulent superstition.

For all my reputation as an extremist, no one has persisted as long as I have in the effort to cling to a middle ground as it pertains to talking with people who hold differing beliefs. But they're becoming toxic zombies to me, and while I dislike having jettison dysfunctional ballast to protect myself, here we are.