I’m reading that Los Angeles County, which is adjacent to where I live (Orange County) is now requiring travelers to quarantine for 10 days. By comparison, I also just read that Sweden, which didn’t do lockdowns, continued to send kids to school, adults to work, didn’t close bars, restaurants, gyms, etc., will have about the same death rate in 2020 as they’ve had every year since 2010. One explanation would be that people tagged as COVID victims were on track to die within a year or so anyway. I looked at COVID death rates for California and found that residents age 80+ are 3% of cases but 43% of deaths. If we go down to age 65+, we see 11% of cases but 76% of deaths. In a large majority of cases, the decedents had one or more comorbidities. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Sweden
EppsNet Book Reviews: Faceless Killers
Faceless Killers is the first novel in the Kurt Wallander series by Henning Mankell, described as “Sweden’s greatest living crime writer” and “the dean of Scandianvian noir.” I love a good mystery novel — a good mystery novel — but most mystery novels are very bad. I can’t even finish them. Genre novels — mystery, fantasy, romance, sci-fi, etc. — have a built-in audience so the quality standard is well below the standard for a mainstream novel. I did finish Faceless Killers, so it’s better than most, but it’s still no more exciting than a Swedish meatball. If you’ve ever had an inkling to try writing a mystery novel, I encourage you to move forward with it. Your competition is mostly idiots. Rating: Read more →
EppsNet at the Movies: A Man Called Ove
EppsNet Movie Reviews: We Are the Best!
Contrary to the IMDB summary below, only two of the girls, Klara and Bobo, have no instruments (or talent). The third girl, Hedvig, is a painfully shy classical guitar-playing schoolmate recruited to teach them about music. This movie is a joy! I don’t know what else to say. See it. Rating: We Are the Best! Director: Cast: IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →