The Daily Parker

The city has started adding traffic controls to side streets in an effort to encourage outdoor recreation and social distancing:

Earlier this week, officials said at least six streets are expected to be closed to through traffic and opened to the public. The move comes after weeks of transportation advocates asking the city to open up streets to pedestrians, giving them more room to walk, jog and ride bikes so they can safely social distance while outside during the pandemic.

Advocates have long called for streets to be opened to pedestrians during the pandemic. With the lakefront and popular trails like The 606 closed to prevent overcrowding, people have said they need more room to get outside without having to worry about crowds or packed sidewalks.

Other major cities, including New York and Los Angeles, created open streets weeks ago.

One of the streets announced as the first to switch runs right past my block. Unfortunately for my side of the neighborhood, our alderman threw cold water on the city's announcement in an email to constituents he sent last night:

Unfortunately, a web blog errantly [sic] and preemptively posted this information before the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) had finalized their plans.  The portion of Leland in the 46th Ward, from Clark to Sheridan, was never going to be a part of this plan because Leland already has, or will have, significant construction taking place this summer. So, according to CDOT, this portion of Leland is unsafe for promoting a shared streets concept.

For reference, these projects include: MCI utility installation, resurfacing of the 1200 block of Leland and the 4700 block of Malden, water main installation on Racine that will cross Leland, and the ongoing building construction at Sheridan and Leland for the new Sarah's Circle facility. It is because of all of these conflicts that CDOT is not supporting Leland as a shared street at this time.

Safe open space is critically important for everybody's mental and physical health during these Stay at Home orders, and that is why we continue to advocate for the Lakefront trails to reopen. This is a plea my office hears daily from residents, and I agree that the trails should open in a phased and planned way to provide safe, and equitable social distancing for recreation and transportation throughout the city.

In other words, yes, Leland will become a shared street—right up to the border of my ward and not actually in my ward. Nice to hear he's lobbying the mayor to reopen the lakefront, though Monty and Rose might want to keep it closed.

Also yesterday, the mayor announced that the city will close a few streets to traffic to encourage restaurants to expand outdoor dining. The Tribune said, however, "it was unclear when the program would start."

The bascule bridge over the Chicago River at Michigan Avenue turned 100 today. The Chicago Tribune has photos.

Also:

• The Tribune explains how the various Covid-19 tests work, and where Illinois is in getting them to people.
• Seems I'm not the only one who thought a combination between GrubHub and Uber might not fit in with US antitrust laws.
• A new book says the US would lose a direct military confrontation with China, because they're set up to fight a different war than we are.
• Turns out, the 4-3 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision yesterday that sent the state's Covid-19 response into chaos may not have been the Republican Party's best move.
• The FBI has seized US Senator Richard Burr's (R-NC) mobile phone as part of an investigation into his alleged securities trading on the nonpublic information he received about Covid-19 in an intelligence briefing in January.
• The full 4th Circuit US Court of Appeals overturned a 3-judge panel from the same court, holding that the president's businesses cannot derive income from foreign governments under the constitution's emoluments clause.

And the New York Times interviewed science-fiction author John Scalzi, whose The Last Emperox came out two weeks ago.

As Illinois hits 2,662 Covid-19 deaths and the CDC says the country will hit about that number every day by month's end, May the 4th be with us:

• Newly-disgorged White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany began her very first press briefing by saying "I will never lie to you." You'll never guess what she did next.
• James Fallows draws a comparison between former President George W Bush's video message to the country last week and the current president's behavior.
• New Republic's Libby Watson says, "For the president, the question isn't how many people die from the coronavirus pandemic, but who."
• Illinois had it's 27th coldest and 43rd wettest April in the 148 years we've kept records. (It was also the longest April in history, clocking in at around 300 days. But that could just be my perception.)
• Former US Attorney Preet Bharara is pissed off at Mitch McConnell.
• Data from the Chicago Transit Authority shows where in the city people are working from home.
• Anhauser Busch-InBev won its appeal against Molson Coors in the "corn syrup" flap from last year. The appellate court ruled that AB's claims that Coors uses corn syrup are backed up by the ingredients listed on every Coors beer can.
• Chicago only has two James Beard finalists this year. Pity.
• But Chicago also has two endangered plovers, Monty and Rose, who returned to Montrose Beach this week.

So it wasn't all horrible news today.

I have gone to North Center Ribfest since moving back to the city in 2008. Until 2018 I even brought Parker most years, when he could walk 60 blocks as easily as I can. (Now he has trouble walking four.) I also attended the smaller, less-well-run Windy City Ribfest a couple of times. The Chamber for Uptown just cancelled this year's Windy City Ribfest, and the North Center Chamber of Commerce cancelled their Ribfest two weeks ago.

In honor of both events, I will have full slabs on both weekends (June 12th and July 3rd).

So far, Naperville's Ribfest (actually held in Romeoville) still plans to go forward on July 2nd. Maybe there will be rib samplers this year after all?

Either I spent all day coding and therefore didn't have time to read these things, or I just didn't want to read these things. Let's start with the big questions:

• Should you use an electric or manual toothbrush?
• Should you make a proper French omelette instead of the sloppy American kind?
• Should you trip runners who zip past you on narrow sidewalks during social distancing? (I find an antique dog at the end of a two-meter leather leash works well as a warning that this could happen.)
• Should you stop patronizing multi-billion-dollar businesses who have sued the state of Illinois over a requirement they pay workers compensation to some of their sick employees?
• Should you watch Anderson Cooper interview the loony mayor of Las Vegas as she volunteers her city to be the "control group" to see how many people opening up the economy prematurely will kill?
• Should you vote against the Republicans who have blocked Federal aid to states and cities, which may lead to entire states going bankrupt?
• Should you support Democrats like Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer who are trying to keep their citizens alive despite the unconscionable behavior of the Trump Administration?

You should have the same answer to all these questions ("yes"), though you might want to extend your answer to the first one after reading the article. (I vote "electric.")

The number of new Covid-19 cases per day may have peaked in Illinois, but that still means we have new cases every day. We have over 10,000 infected in the state, with the doubling period now at 12 days (from 2 days back mid-March). This coincides with unpleasant news from around the world:

• Covid-19 has become the second-leading cause of death in the United States, accounting for 12,400 deaths per week, just behind heart disease which kills about 12,600.
• More than 5 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total unemployed to 22 million, the highest percentage of Americans out of work since 1933. April unemployment figures come out May 8th, when we will likely have confirmation of a 13-15% unemployment rate. Note that the unemployment rate was the lowest in history just two months ago.
• Consumer spending on nearly everything except groceries has fallen, in some places catastrophically. Chicago's heavy-rail authority, Metra, has seen ridership fall 97% system-wide and predicts a $500 million budget deficit this year. (For my own part, since my March 31st post on the subject, my spending on dining out, lunch, and groceries combined has fallen 70% month-over-month.)
• UK Foreign Secretary (and acting Prime Minister) Dominic Raab announced today that lockdown measures would continue in the UK "for at least the next three weeks," reasoning that premature relaxation would lead to a resurgence of the virus as seen worldwide in 1918.
• FiveThirtyEight explains why Covid-19 has caused so much more disruption than Ebola, SARS-1, and swine flu.
• Talking Points Memo takes a deeper look at the hidden mortality of Covid-19.
• Brian Dennehy has died at 81.
• Chicago could get 75 mm of snow tonight. In April. The middle of Spring. FFS.

But we also got some neutral-to-good news today:

• George Conway and the rest of the Lincoln Project, a group of Republicans dedicated to the country rather than to the president, have endorsed Joe Biden.
• Author José R. Ralat has named Chicago the Taco Capital of America.
• Willis Sears Tower may get a new name in the next few weeks, with AON and United top of the betting charts on winning the contract.
• Sweet Farm Animal Sanctuary in Half Moon Bay, Calif., will set up a Goat-2-Meeting for your corporate online event for a $100 donation. Yes, for $100, they will put a live goat on your Zoom meeting for 20 minutes.

I pitched the Goat-2-Meeting to my chorus board for our next meeting, and unfortunately got told we don't donate to other NPCs. I guess we're not a bleating-heart organization.

Today's Covid-19 news roundup highlights how no one in the White House should go anywhere near this crisis response effort:

• President Trump ordered a halt to payments to the World Health Organization as part of his effort to blame them for his botched response to the pandemic.
• He also delayed sending relief checks to tens of millions of people because he wants his name to appear on them.
• Kellyanne Conway, while criticizing the WHO for not knowing anything about Covid-19, demonstrates she doesn't know anything.
• New York City has updated their statistics to take into account an increase in deaths at home which are probably (but not certainly) from Covid-19.
• Illinois governor JB Pritzker has started chartering secret flights to bring in personal protective equipment (PPE); secret, because he doesn't want them stolen by the Trump Administration.
• Chicago's summer festival season might not happen, or might happen with serious reductions, which could cost tens of millions in revenue. (Already I'm bracing myself for the possibility that we won't have Ribfest this year.)

All of this, and we still have an hour to go before lunch.

There was one bit of good news, though. The National Transportation Safety Board released a report this week that said air-transport fatalities dropped by 75% between the 1983-2000 period and 2001-2017. One expects that Covid-19 will reduce those numbers even further.

Illinois' doubling time for Covid-19 cases has increased from 2.1 days to 7.9 days, as of yesterday.

In other news:

• The Times has a complete timeline of how the White House missed all the warnings about the disease until it became too big to lie about.
• George Conway places the blame for Wisconsin's voting fiasco last Tuesday on the state legislature, not on the courts.
• Thirsty? How about a Covid-19–themed drink?
• NPR interviews a psychiatrist about how single people are coping with quarantine.
• Food & Wine accuses GrubHub of gouging restaurants to take advantage of the pandemic.
• Science knows a lot more about what knocked Uranus on its side.

And finally, I'll leave you with this touching performance of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" by its composer, Curt Smith, and his daughter Diva:

...as I took the last squares of toilet paper from the roll this morning. I had to dig into the Strategic TP Reserve just to meet ends.

Before I round up the depression and sadness from around the world this morning, I would like to point out that yesterday's high temperature of 27°C at O'Hare was the warmest we've seen since the 30°C we had on October 1st, 189 days earlier. I opened all my windows, and Parker got his pace up just a little bit. Today's forecast calls for perfect spring warmth (21°C) and thunderstorms during what we used to call "rush hour." (I will probably have all my windows open when the rain starts and have to close them very quickly.)

So what else has the world thrown at us this morning? In addition to the usual drumbeat of deaths and Republican malfeasance, this:

• Just now, Bernie Sanders has ended his presidential campaign, leaving Joe Biden as the last remaining candidate. One hopes his supporters come back home before November 3rd.
• Comfort foods, aka that crap your parents didn't want you to eat when you were a kid, have made an amazing comeback as people shelter in place.
• Today is the 30th anniversary of Twin Peaks' debut.
• For the first time ever, people have adopted every single animal from Chicago Animal Care and Control. I really, really hope people keep them.
• The much-noted environmental benefits of shutting down a quarter of the world's economy seem great, but environmentalists have some pessimism about our return to full production when the emergency ends.
• Paul Krugman likens the government's crisis response to "learned helplessness."
• President Trump fired the inspector general just made responsible for overseeing the $2 trillion disaster-relief package, citing "bias." Of course Glenn Fine has a bias: he believes in evidence and government accountability. That makes him prima facie unacceptable to Trump. This comes days after he removed intelligence IG Michael Atkinson for similar reasons.

Well, now that I'm thoroughly pumped from reading the papers, I'm going to document an API while watching Schitt's Creek.

As we go into the fourth week of mandatory working from home, Chicago may have its warmest weather since October 1st, and I'm on course to finish a two-week sprint at work with a really boring deployment. So what's new and maddening in the world?

• The Trump Administration's chaotic response to the virus includes seizing states' protective equipment and giving it to private distributors, thus making states bid on stuff they've already obtained, sometimes for free.
• Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics communications director Jordan Libowitz holds up Jared Kushner as an example of literally everything that can go wrong with nepotism.
• Via Calculated Risk, Oregon Office of Economic Analysis economist Josh Lehner attempts to predict how the recovery will go.
• David Remnick describes what New York City is like without New Yorkers.
• Richard Florida examines the class divide in who's exposed to the virus.
• New Zealand didn't just "contain" Covid-19; they set out to eliminate it.
• Wildlife biologist Caroline Van Hemert thinks about what caribou have taught her about isolation.

And finally, two big gyros manufacturers, Kronos and Grecian Delight, are merging. Kind of like all the lamb and stuff that merges to form gyros.

Enjoy the weather, Chicago. The cold returns Thursday.