New York is the New Wuhan

Is it time to stop talking about coronavirus numbers? The new infection rate is still dropping, and it’s not going to stop. Repeating this every day doesn’t make it interesting or illuminating.

I guess I can report something of special relevance to me. The known-case number in my county seems to be frozen. It barely moves. We’re still stuck under 130 cases. Days ago, we were at 121.

But that doesn’t mean I’m safe at the grocery, because of all the unreported cases, right?

I don’t think it works that way here. If we had a lot of unreported cases, we might still have a low number of reported cases, but we would have a high transmission rate. People who didn’t know they were sick would be infecting others. A low transmission rate, when coupled with a low known-case number, seems to indicate a low actual-infection number.

I think we simply don’t have many sick people here. Don’t ask me why. I don’t think the sparse population is the entire answer. Maybe it is, but there are rural counties that have done worse.

It’s funny how the disease is distributing itself. It’s really not a big deal in most places. If you remove New York State from the USA total, the numbers drop by about a third, and New York isn’t as populous as you think. COVID-19 is much more common there than in most places, and it’s also more common in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, and New Orleans. Other places that may make the list: Cleveland, St. Louis, DC, Baltimore, and Kansas City.

Should we call it the Chinese virus or just the Democrat virus? Very strange.

L.A. isn’t too bad, though, and San Francisco is doing well.

It’s important to note that COVID-19 isn’t “common” anywhere. It’s not like the flu. It’s “more common” in some areas, but it’s not common by cold and flu standards. When New York City (not State) has well over a million cases, you can say it’s more common than the flu in that location. At least 10% of Americans get the flu every year, so you would expect nearly a million obvious cases in New York City. The lab-confirmed rate is much lower than 10%, but the CDC doesn’t limit itself to tested patients when compiling flu statistics.

I wonder how COVID-19 will affect rural home prices. I hope they go sky-high so I can make a profit when I sell this place, but I hope they stay really low so I can get a great deal when I buy another one.

I’ll bet it won’t help property values in New York City. If people leave, I hope they go to California, which is already destroyed. Please, God, keep them out of the South. If they ruin the South, there is no place left to go.

The bias of the press is still astounding. I saw an article saying what you buy these days depends on how you vote. It said Republicans were more likely to buy guns while Democrats were more likely to buy toilet paper. It said Democrats were rationally preparing for lockdowns and time at home.

That’s so idiotic, it hurts to think about it. How can anyone try to rationalize selfish, senseless, destructive hoarding of a product that is in no way related to the disease? How does “time at home” relate to a need for 300 rolls of toilet paper? There was never any danger, real or perceived, that we would not be allowed to buy toilet paper. It was an absurd Satanic mass delusion.

If they were worried about being stuck at home, they would have hoarded canned goods, but they have gone much easier on canned goods than toilet paper. If they were worried about being stuck at home, they wouldn’t have hoarded bottled water in the beginning, but they did. The water supply, which doesn’t depend on bottles, was never in doubt.

Hoarders can’t be excused. What they did is utterly nonsensical. The person who wrote the article was just trying to make leftists look better.

As for guns, a whole lot of non-conservatives have been trying their best to get them. It’s not just right-wingers. Coronavirus converted a lot of gun-haters. I still don’t understand why a Democrat or anyone else would think an epidemic would make a gun more useful. I suppose a gun may help you if you live in an area where they’re releasing criminals and refusing to send cops to crime scenes.

There have always been big buyers on the right. Some are profiteers. Some are irrational hoarders. Some are preppers. Some are just getting ready for the banning of lead and our leftist future without easy access to guns. Then there are people like me who like to buy ammunition in bulk to save money.

Things continue to go well here. Life is easy. I’ve made lots of ammunition. I must sound like a scared pandemic prepper, but I was already at work before the hysteria started. I think my Hornady Lock-n-Load AP press is finally working correctly.

This press is like a Chinese lathe. Basically, there is nothing wrong with it, but the factory didn’t finish manufacturing it. It came with a lot of rough edges. They say a Chinese machine tool is really a kit. When it arrives, it may be unusable, but after considerable work and study, it will do just fine. Same thing with the Hornady press.

Here’s something that plagued me. The press refused to prime brass. Every so often, a shell would go through with no primer. This allowed powder to leak out onto the press. As a result, the press’s column was generally coated with grey residue, and I had problems with gummy crushed powder clogging things up.

It turned out the base plate the shell plate sits on was too thin. I’m only writing about this in case some Googler has the same problem. The spring-loaded punch that seats primers screws into the base plate. The top of the punch should be level with the top of the plate or slightly lower. My punch protruded through the plate. The primers are loaded by a slide that moves back and forth over the punch, so because the punch protruded, it caught the slide and prevented primers from loading.

The simple answer was to Dremel material off the bottom of the slide so it could pass over the punch.

It was annoying to find that this problem existed, because manufacturing a flat piece of steel to a desired thickness is a very easy task for a machinist. There is no excuse for getting it wrong and then passing the product on to a consumer. If the base plate were 20 thousandths thicker, the primers would always have loaded correctly.

I know that was boring, but someone on the Internet will eventually need the information.

I’m expecting 3,000 more rounds of .22 LR to arrive today. This will bring me up to over 9,000 Mini-mags. It’s not enough for a lifetime, but it’s enough to sit back on while I wait for prices to drop so I can accumulate a final stockpile at relatively low prices. As I’ve said earlier, I would have left it for other people to buy, but they were ignoring it, so too bad.

I have to make defensive ammo for the 10mm pistols. I’m not really that interested in self-defense these days, but I am interested in tools, guns, reloading, and shooting, so I want to do things right. I’m planning to load 180-grain Hornady Gold Dots to about 1200-1250 fps. That ought to be fine.

I don’t want to kill you, but I do want to be able to kill you. Not because I like killing people, but because I don’t like getting involved with firearms and then making bad ammunition choices. I guess I’m like an old lady who puts plastic covers on furniture she never lets anyone sit on. Shooting people isn’t the point. I just enjoy learning about guns and ammo and trying to do things well. The fact that I don’t want to use my carry gun doesn’t mean I don’t want it to work correctly.

Ammunition technology keeps improving. The .40 S&W has started to look a lot better. You can get very good performance with the same Gold Dots, with a little less recoil and weight. Makes me wonder if buying another 10mm was the right idea, but I know it will work. I can get 1200 fps from the 10mm, compared to maybe 1100 from the .40, without over-driving the 10mm. That can’t be a bad thing. I still think .45 ACP is a great option.

If I didn’t make my own ammunition, I wouldn’t go near the 10mm. Hot factory ammo is just too overpriced.

I’m enjoying life and continuing to improve. I don’t know God’s plans for me, but I am content to putter around and have fun until I find out.