Only god knows it's Friday

Lockdown. Officially only the end of the second day, and already it's hard to know what day it is. In the confinements of ones home, the days all seem the same. I've lived it of course in self-isolation but this time is qualitatively different: when everyone is under lock down, everyone is in the same twilight life. The last two days have been the most frenetic work-from-home days ever. It was apparent during the self-isolation that I'm relentlessly more productive at home but also still wall-to-wall busy. There is a obstruction quotient that causes interactions to be slower; and a competing non-distraction quotient which causes all tasks to be done easily because JS or SS aren't at your door asking the same question they did yesterday.

Even though the days are merging into one, I've used Friday as a my measuring stick day to mark the progress of Covid-19, so just to shock you a bit:

• if New York State were a country, it would have the 6th most cases and the 8th most fatalities, despite being much smaller than almost all the states in the top, bar Switzerland.
• in 7 days, Italy's fatalities doubled from 3,405 (shockingly surpassing China) to 8,215, where China is no longer a relevant comparison.
• if Italy felt bad for doubling deaths in a week, Spain went from 831 to 4,365 to make it seem like it had been "flattening the curve"
• Diamond Princess fans were shocked when the model sample went from 8 fatalities to 10. The now ignominious sisters, Diamond, Grand and now Ruby, have a lot to answer for but Diamond has often been taken as a perfect sample to prove that Covid-19 isn't as fatal. There were 712 diagnosed cases and for a long time only 7 fatalities, which for a cohort of older people might appear decent. Except for the fact that they would be receiving the high quality unburdened care in Japan, and even with that they had a large number of still "Serious/Critical" cases (15 is the number quoted on worldometer.info). If that number of deaths continues to rise, some of the viruskeptics will have one less straw to pull. 
• Horrifically for our neighbour, Australia has gone from a mere 756 cases (and 7 deaths) to 3,166 cases and 13 deaths in a week. And still they don't think to pull the cord to stop the bus.

The inanity of the US/Australian cases for a mottled lockdown is that it even if it puts out the fire in parts it allows the cinders to burn and reignite. New York State might heroically lock down and smother out the virus locally but it will still be surrounded by dubious states with unknown degrees of contamination. Same for Australia who have the worst parts of a lock down without locking down and then still allow it to burn. Perhaps the Australian example is a Machiavellian plan to flatten the curve while still preserving economic life. Or perhaps it's just an ill thought through, inconsistent, incoherent plan. Next Friday we'll see where they are. 

I used to get my figures from Chinese sources when this virus only had a garnishing of non-Chinese cases, but now I use https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries as it's the quickest to update. It's crowd sourced so subject to change but it's still the best out there, and the best statistics. best of which is the logarithmic charts. (Nerdy, I know.) One of the side benefits of a pandemic and comprehensive tracking is the abundance of geographical locations that you feel you must know. So your task today is to state where the following places, with confirmed Covid cases, are:

• San Marino
• Aruba
• Andorra
• Guadeloupe
• Martinique
• Curacao
• Cabo Verde
• Eswatini
• Turks and Caicos Islands
• Sint Maarten

Anyway, none of these places are like Cocomo, where you're not gonna go.