COVID-19

Pave Paradise, Put up a Parking Lot

Vets are considered essential services, so the local animal clinic is practicing social distancing by seeing pets in the parking lot. You stay in the car with the animal and the vet comes out with a little doctors’ bag. Drive-ins, but for dogs.

Remember drive-ins? Drive-in theaters, drive-in diners. It was a civilized way to bring screaming children on a family outing. Back when the country was great, cars were the size of cruiseliners and the backseat was a fine place to take a date.

Then there was an oil embargo and gas guzzlers fell out of favor. No one wanted to be seen in public with their Ford Pinto or GM Vega, so restaurants created drive-throughs for patrons to discreetly grab their meals and go.

But oil is cheap again! It’s time to bring back ginormous Cadillacs and 20-acre parking lots. Hair salons, restaurants, doctors’ offices should all become drive-ins. No need to sanitize surfaces between customers, and hey, my car already comes with a reclining seat for the dentist.

Remember those electric hoverboards that were cool for about a month? No one born in this century knows how to rollerskate, so carhops can ride hoverboards instead.

Automakers are trying to get another bailout, but a more sustainable solution is to lobby the CDC to recommend vehicles for social distancing.

Racist Virus? (part 2)

This was supposed to be an appendix to the last post, but there were too many images.

Here’s a breakdown of NYC COVID-19 cases by zip code.

Census data here, but this map may be more informative (most commonly-spoken language after English and Spanish):

COVID-19 cases by zip code in Seattle:

Census map here.

Analysis left as an exercise for the reader.

(Census data may be more useful for showing population density than racial distribution)

Update: I’m a little hesitant to link to this, as it appears to be the sort of website one might get canceled for reading. The author is doing a COVID-19 analysis for Los Angeles by zip code. (02-Apr)