no hogs, dogs, or cats

"that no hogs, dogs, or cats, or tame pigeons, or ponies be suffered to be kept within any part of the city, or any swine to be or stray into the streets or lanes, but that such swine be impounded by the beadle or any other officer and the owner punished according to the act of common council, and that the dogs to be killed by the dog-killers appointed for that purpose." edict by lord mayor sir john lawrence 1665.

well intended i suppose...unpopular with some as well...

and that sort of bureaucratic thinking has not evaporated in three hundred and fifty five years...leave it to government institutions to exacerbate a crisis by fomenting another one...how many cat owners misread this and how many shelters are being overrun as i type? who knows...no cats or dogs here..there is a bird...are we going to be warned about avian influenza any time soon?

the number of new cases in the country has some variation from day to day...37346 wednesday...17318 yesterday...and 36586 today ...growing daily but with some variation...

there is no stability in the "recovered" reports either...2146 reported nationally wednesday...914 yesterday...4320 today...no one will argue with a recovery spike...some consistently growing numbers would be better...here in the state 641 new cases in the past day and 99 in the county and the death rate is holding steady as well...while 21% of those tested in the county are positive and 18% across the state...level it may be...diminishing it is not and the state is due to "re-open" actually on may second which seems imprudent to me but is probably what will happen...how quickly it happens and if anything resembling the old "normal" re4constructs itself is still an unknown...too many unknown variables and...

i personally still am astounded at the death rate in new york city...especially compared to los anglese which has a marginally greater population density...density seems to not be much of a factor...cook county in illinois has half ( or a bit less ) of the populaton density of the other two but still has more deaths than los angeles...i keep coming back to my correspondent's theory of no mass transit in l a...anyone with a better one? let me know...so? will there be a spike in new cases in may...will the virus die down in hot humid weather...will it turn up again in the autumn and will we all find ourselves at home again? thinking no one knows...i certainly do not...i have questions, not answers...and. being who i am, i doubt anyone else has the answers either...waiting for events to unfold..until then there will be no new cat or dog here...the bird stays...she is innocent.