Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• The Board:

  

  New yesterday: +24,713

  
  

  

  Total deaths: 69,921

• Texas (we continue to head the wrong way):
  
• Tarrant (red - down) / Dallas (blue - up) /Denton (purple -down). Dallas County had a record day of 237 new cases:
  
• Wise County: 27 total. 5 active. You know, the total number of cases has been sneakily on the uptick lately. 
• Here's an interesting twist: What are the national numbers if you back out New York state which is now seeing a reduction in new cases? Here ya go: 
  
• The big news yesterday was the revised projections for total deaths. For a while, the projections were at 100,000 deaths and then they were revised downward in April to 60,000. That changed dramatically yesterday. That same model, which Trump had trumpeted before, "nearly doubled its prediction Monday for how many people will die from the virus in the U.S. by August – primarily because states are reopening too soon. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine is now projecting 134,000 coronavirus-related fatalities . . . ."  Oh, my.
  
• There are good bits, and there are bad bits. 
  
• We had new guidelines issued by the state of Texas yesterday for any in-person court proceedings in June and beyond. Presiding judges must submit a plan for approval before anything can happen. And that plan must include how the following will be handled:
  
• Have you ever been in the Wise County Courthouse? The elevator is smaller than a hotel closet, the stairwell is narrow, and "common areas" are few and therefore packed during any dockets. I don't know how you pull this off because "social distancing" isn't physically possible. Not that I'm for it or against it, but the county might have to rent the big conference room of the Decatur Convention Center. 
• Wait, there's more. How do you pull the following off? Seriously, say you've got a misdemeanor case pending and have a court date. Is court security going to ask if you have a headache, and if you answer "yes" you will not be allowed to enter? And someone is going to be taking peoples' temperatures? The submitted plan must explain: 
  
• The mayor and mayor pro tem in the city of New Fairview (Wise County's version) were yelling at each other last night.  Expect more of that in the future. 
• I championed this photo by Tom Fox of the Dallas Morning News from last year from the moment I saw it, and now it is a finalist for a Pulitzer.  (Side note: There are a million stories on the home page of the News this morning, and this is not one of them.)
  
• A couple of faithful readers pointed out the Texas sales tax numbers I posted yesterday were for March and not April. The big dip will be April.  
• They are fighting in Hood County. Apparently, the County Attorney announced he would not prosecute those which violated coronavirus orders and allegedly went to work out in a gym that should have been closed. This made the county judge mad. (h/t Bud Kennedy.)
  
• The Thirsty Armadillo in the Stockyards and the Katy Trail Ice House in Dallas received citations after opening up. 
• My very unofficial observation of the restaurants on the courthouse square around 6:00 p.m. yesterday: Not that busy at all. 
• There are absolutely no details about this other than the arrest was at 2:15 a.m. But the "while on duty" got my attention. 
  
• I didn't expect Jason Witten, the hero of the common man, to have a 8,841 square foot house in Westlake that he is selling for $4.6 million.  And why sell it? He'll play one or two years in Las Vegas at the most. 
  
• I'm predicting something crazy out of Trump today -- a fairly easy prediction on any given day. But he'll be on Air Force 1 for a long time to get back and forth to Phoenix just to tour a mask production line.  Once there, he'll get to free style in front of the cameras.