Covid-19 Notes -- Sunday, July 18, 2021

Huge reminder: the original aim of the lockdown was to flatten the curve, to keep the US health system from collapsing.

GS: variants won't derail economy. 

Bikes: Shimano is shattering profit projections.

Asthma: most fascinating. severe childhood asthma cases plummeted.

Fear-mongering: two pandemics in America. So what's new?

Louisiana: interesting "active case" chart. Fourth wave of active cases. 

Canada: overtakes the US with regard to Covid-19 vaccinations. May open borders to US. 

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Meanwhile, In Portland, OR

Covid-19 not even on the city's radar scope. 

For the most part, it's been a quiet weekend.

In one "event," seven people shot; one died.

In thirty-eight hours: eleven shooting "events." Thirteen people injured or killed. 

Covid-19-related deaths for the entire state of Oregon, July 16, 2021: seven.

Covid-19-related deaths for the entire state o Oregon, the month of July, 2021, so far: five per day, average.

It appears, Oregon doesn't have a Covid problem, it has a homicide problem. 

"They're" blaming guns but to the best of my knowledge, the guns are not firing themselves. The good news, the law enforcement agencies seemed not particularly concerned; the city leaders are certainly not concerned. The killing fields are pretty much limited to downtown between 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. on the weekends. Suburbs are fine.

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Proterra

The other day I mentioned Philadelphia's experience with EV buses.  

Someone must be reading the blog, providing more information:

Similar problems have been found in other cities that partnered with Proterra. Duluth, MN, which, like Philadelphia, waited three years for its Proterra buses to be delivered, ultimately pulled its seven buses from service “because their braking systems were struggling on Duluth’s hills, and a software problem was causing them to roll back when accelerating uphill from a standstill,” according to the Duluth Monitor.

Back to Philadelphia: I missed this at the time of the original post:

Battery capacity is a huge issue with electric vehicles:

Philadelphia placed the Proterra buses in areas where it thought they could succeed but quickly learned it was mistaken. Two pilot routes selected in South Philadelphia that were relatively short and flat compared with others in the city were too much for the electric buses.

“Even those routes needed buses to pull around 100 miles each day, while the Proterras were averaging just 30 to 50 miles per charge,” WHYY reporter Ryan Briggs wrote.

Thirty to fifty miles! Pathetic. 

If anyone has looked at a city bus, maximum volume for passengers; minimum volume for batteries. I can absolutely believe the 50-mile range. That's still five round trips for the average urban bus route.