Day 180: The Six-Month Mark

First off, a public service announcement: tonight is the Jewish holiday of Tisha b'Av, commemorating the destruction of the two temples by peaceful protestors the Babylonians and Romans, respectively. Normally the "holiday" involves fasting for 25 hours, but the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel has decreed that the COVID-19 positive, anyone who is symptomatic, all recovering patients, and even recovered patients who still feel weak are forbidden from fasting. He also encouraged the use of hand sanitizer and washing, which would normally be highly restricted. (The Sephardic Chief Rabbi only exempts the symptomatic.)

Elsewhere on the Abrahamic religion front, the Hajj has begun. It's not much of a pilgrimage, since no international travel into Saudi Arabia was permitted for the Hajj.

On the HCQ front, India has donated seven tons of hydroxychloroquine to Nigeria to help them fight coronavirus. India itself still recommends HCQ for COVID-19 despite its controversial status in the West (not that we don't still have our share of HCQ proponents.)

Newcomers to PlagueBlog may be confused by our ongoing day count of the coronavirus pandemic. Our first COVID-19 case, a UMass Boston student, flew into Boston from Wuhan on January 28th. He wasn't instantly quarantined for his sniffles; instead he sought medical attention on his own. The news came out on February 1st (Day 1) that he had tested positive for coronavirus, though the CDC had actually reported the positive result to the state on January 31st. Back in the day, we didn't even have a COVID report; he appeared in the MDPH's weekly flu and pneumonia statistics for more than a month before enough positives had joined him to make a webpage out of it.

Since day 1, there has been plenty of coronavirus news to track, and more craziness that anyone ever predicted. From HCQ to 5G towers to mask nazis to starvation and suicide-inducing lockdowns, it's definitely become a situation where not just the cure but pretty much everything is worse than the disease.

The MDPH is celebrating Day 180 by being late with the numbers again, possibly because it's cities and towns day as well.

P.S. Massachusetts cases are up four ninths of a percentage point today, due to a "technical reporting error by a hospital group".