So he is about where he was a month ago (within margin of error anyway) despite the pre$$ telling me he has been dropping after a rally-round-the-president bump, and the PEOPLE of AMERICA must be DELUDED!
Either that, or it is a total piece of $hit poll (more likely) with made up numbers to accentuated the po$itive and promote acceptance of police state tyranny. The giveaway is the promotion of the stimulant package amidst its failures. Only the rich were $aved, and Americans know it.
With each day that passes, I think the AmeriKan pre$$ can not sink any lower, and yet they, without fail, top themselves each and every day.
"Even as the confirmed US death toll from coronavirus rose past 50,000, salons, spas, and barbershops reopened Friday in Georgia and Oklahoma with a green light from their Republican governors, who eased lockdown orders despite health experts’ warnings. Though limited in scope, and subject to social-distancing restrictions, the reopening marked a symbolic milestone in the debate raging in the United States — and the world — as to how quickly political leaders should lift economically damaging lockdown orders. Similar scenarios have been playing worldwide and will soon proliferate in the United States as other governors wrestle with conflicting priorities. Their economies have been battered by weeks of quarantine-fueled job losses and soaring unemployment claims, yet health officials warn that lifting stay-at-home orders now could spark a resurgence of COVID-19. The coronavirus has killed more than 190,000 people worldwide, including — as of Friday — more than 50,000 in the United States, according to a tally compiled by John Hopkins University from government figures. The actual death toll is believed to be far higher. With deaths and infections still rising in Georgia, many business owners planned to stay closed despite Governor Brian Kemp’s assurance that hospital visits and new cases have leveled off. Kemp’s timeline to restart the economy proved too ambitious even for President Trump, who said he disagrees with the fellow Republican’s plan. On Friday, Trump signed a $484 billion bill to aid employers and hospitals under stress from the pandemic — the latest federal effort to help keep afloat businesses that have had to close or scale down. Over the past five weeks, roughly 26 million people have filed for jobless aid, or about 1 in 6 US workers. The gradual reopenings come as coronavirus testing continues to lag across the United States. To date, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project, just under 4.7 million people have been tested in the country of 330 million people. New York reported its lowest number of daily COVID-19 deaths in weeks on Friday. The state recorded 422 deaths as of the day before — the fewest since March 31, when it recorded 391 deaths. More than 16,000 people have died in the state from the outbreak....."
At a nail salon in Savannah, a lady was overdue for a visit to her hair stylist, but she’s “simultaneously exhausted and so angry she can barely see straight,” she said in a phone interview.
Trump is worried about a relapse, and he approved of plan before bashing it (flip-flop Kerry).
As for the death rates and totals, the Globe has gone over the top on the alleged undercounts while downplaying the dropping death rates.
Sorry to blin$ide you:
"Governors blindside front-line staff with abrupt reopening plans" by Isaac Stanley-Becker and Rachel Weiner Washington Post, April 24, 2020
Governors preparing to roll back restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus are in some cases acting without the input and against the wishes of their own medical and emergency management staff.
Who elected the medical staff God?
In these states, among those moving fastest to jump-start idle economies, plans are proceeding without the full approval of medical professionals and emergency response officials closest to the ground-level unfolding of the outbreak, which has claimed nearly 50,000 lives in the United States. The quest by certain governors to reopen by May 1 — the date favored by President Trump — has blindsided some of the officials advising them.
They are the ones who killed your livelihood, readers!
Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, for example, did not seek consensus among the doctors on his task force before proceeding with his reopening plan, according to one of its members, Andrew Reisman, who is president of the Medical Association of Georgia. Kemp and other governors pursuing aggressive reopening plans say they are following data-driven strategies in line with White House guidelines that make a downward trajectory of new cases in a 14-day period a condition of a phased reopening.
The jobs will not be retuning that way, Amurkn!
The apparent rush in Georgia and other states has alarmed some local leaders, who fear political considerations are overriding detailed assessments of the data.
What data?
The wildly over-predictive models they used to kill the economy over something that looks like it doesn't even exist save for the spooky COVID-19 moniker!?
‘‘I have great concerns about federal and some state pressure to reopen the economy without the guidance of the public-health data,’’ said Erin Mendenhall, the Democratic mayor of Salt Lake City. ‘‘No one doubts the gravity of this economic crisis, but the cost of human life is also grave. I think politics permeates crisis, and this crisis we are in is not exempt from that.’’
I'm sure Georgia will soon become a "hot spot," even if it isn't true. This whole thing has been a colossal fraud perpetrated on the American people by a criminal corporate cla$$ and their pre$$.
Reisman said Kemp’s physician task force had grown less active following an initial burst of activity about two weeks ago. Its chairman, Republican state Senator Ben Watson, a physician, emphasized that the state’s stay-at-home order continues through the end of the month and until May 13 for vulnerable populations.
Epidemiologists said the Trump administration’s guidelines are so vague as to sanction potentially any strategy, no matter how hasty.
In Tennessee, Republican Governor Bill Lee this week hailed a ‘‘steady decline in the growth rate’’ of new cases, explaining why he would begin a phased reopening May 1, but arriving at the state’s growth rate by dividing new cases by total cases is off the mark, said Joshua Epstein, an epidemiologist at New York University, and the calculation has also raised eyebrows internally, according to an official familiar with the state’s planning. Along with metrics such as hospitalizations, states should simply be tracking new cases per day, Epstein said, and looking to see whether they are rising or falling.
Why is it Jews at the bottom of everything in the Globe?
Some local orders will also still stand in Colorado, where Governor Jared Polis is among the Democrats moving fastest to end statewide orders, saying he would count on ‘‘personal responsibility’’ when businesses gain permission to reopen at limited capacity Monday.
Polis also refuted his own COVID-19 incident commander, Scott Bookman, who just days earlier had told reporters the state would not reopen ‘‘until we have the capacity to make everyone safe.’’ By that metric, Polis said, ‘‘we would have to be closed forever.’’
He is not only Jewish but gay.
Asked for input on the governor’s plan last week, Colorado’s association of local public health agencies drafted guidance that the reopening should not start until all symptomatic people can be tested and all cases monitored. Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, a Democrat, said restrictions in his city could last longer, warning, ‘‘This will be a different summer for those of us here in Denver.’’
In Georgia and South Carolina, by contrast, statewide directives lifting restrictions on businesses preempt local orders, incensing mayors of some hard-hit cities. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat who has decried the governor’s decision, on Wednesday posted a tweet of a text message she received referring to her by a racist epithet and telling her to ‘‘just shut up and reopen Atlanta!’’
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Good night, nurse:
"This nurse’s friends were skeptical about coronavirus. Then she drove north to work at MGH; Traveling nurse’s eyes are opened by work in Mass. hospital ICU" by Hanna Krueger Globe Staff, April 24, 2020
For reasons she can’t explain, Liz Adams has always been a Red Sox fan, but up until two weeks ago, she’d never been to Boston, or farther north than West Virginia for that matter. Born in Louisiana and raised in Huntsville, Ala., she didn’t know much about Massachusetts, and the coronavirus felt like a distant fear.
Then she took a job as a traveling nurse at Mass. General Hospital. On her first day in a converted intensive care unit in early April, Adams glanced at intubated patients and asked with doe-eyed innocence if any of them had COVID. They all did.
“You have to understand, I’m from Alabama, where many people are still deciding if this thing is real or fake, so it was a very chilling moment,” she said.
They aren't the only ones who think this is a ginned-up agenda of fear for nefarious reasons. Unless your head is up your ass in fear, you know. Hospitals are quiet, and newspaper narratives are lies.
The 35-year-old is one of more than a thousand traveling nurses who saw the contagion take aim at Massachusetts and decided to head into the storm to help in the state’s overburdened COVID units.
Why am I getting the feeling they are simulators?
Travel nurses are accustomed to being thrown into unfamiliar and unsteady situations. In normal times, the profession entails a string of three-month assignments at the hospitals experiencing surges or staffing shortages. Ski towns, for example, take on surplus emergency department nurses in the winter to help with broken bones and dislocations, while metropolitan hospitals may hire a travel nurse to temporarily fill the spot of a staffer on medical leave.
The rotating assignments afford travel nurses career flexibility, since they choose which jobs to take, as well as the chance to explore new places and hospitals. Operating room nurses are usually in the highest demand because of their niche skill set, but job openings in that specialty have plummeted in recent weeks with the cancellation of elective surgeries, according to several nursing agencies, including Aya and LRC.
Meanwhile, the demand for COVID-qualified health care workers has soared in hot spots. On NurseFly, an online marketplace in the health care staffing industry, opportunities for Massachusetts travel ICU nurses and respiratory therapists increased by 705 percent and 821 percent, respectively, from February to March. Seventy-five percent of those applying to these jobs are female, echoing a report from The New York Times that found that women make up the majority of the labor force on the front lines of the pandemic.
Mostly in nursing homes.
With nearly a decade of experience as a nurse in intensive care and step-down units, Adams was a prime candidate for a COVID position. She had just finished a year-and-half tour as a travel nurse in West Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama when the pandemic began to take off in the Northeast. She hoped to return home to spend time with her recently widowed mom, who also was recovering from a liver transplant.
Many in her county of Madison, which Donald Trump won by 17 points in the 2016 presidential election, were downplaying the severity of the virus and labeling national media reports about its spread as fake news, but Adams paid close attention to the grim dispatches from Italy and realized how dire the situation could soon become in the United States.
They are smarter than they are given credit.
“My dad passed away suddenly last year. I watched the amazing care he got, and I’ve felt so empty since. I saw what was happening, and I realized I could be the person to treat a patient like they treated my father, especially because family cannot be with patients right now,” she said.
Less than 24 hours after submitting her application in mid-March, she had an interview. Two weeks later, she and her Honda CRV embarked on a 1,200-mile journey through nine states via empty roads reminiscent of “The Walking Dead.” She crawled into Boston at last light on April 5.
Adams began work in a fledging COVID unit — one of many regular floors converted in preparation for a surge in cases — four days after her cross-country road trip. The transition hasn’t been without its hiccups. Her staffing agency originally placed her at a hotel in Braintree, but she struggled with the commute.
“I tried driving. Oh my gosh. I don’t understand ya’ll’s roads. I mean those circles, they don’t make any sense,” she said, referencing a rotary. “By the time I got to work, my heart was going 120 beats per minute and I was sweating. So long story short, they moved me.”
That is when I decided to make the long story short!
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Who let them out in Wisconsin?
"Several hundred protest stay-at-home order at Wisconsin state Capitol" by Reid J. Epsteinand Kay Nolan New York Times, April 24, 2020
WASHINGTON — A crowd of several hundred gathered at Wisconsin’s state Capitol on Friday, the latest demonstration by conservative activists against stay-at-home orders meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The crowd, bearing Trump campaign attire, Tea Party regalia, and American flags, condemned Governor Tony Evers and his extension of “Safer at Home,” a statewide declaration requiring Wisconsinites to practice social distancing through May 26.
“You’re being told to sit down and shut up because your opinion does not matter and you have to listen to professionals,” Madison Elmer, one of the event’s organizers, told the crowd at the beginning of the event. “You know what, you shouldn’t ever stop questioning the professionals.”
Or government. Or media.
Three separate conservative groups called for people who were opposed to Evers’s extension of the stay-at-home mandate to convene at the Capitol on Friday. In addition to a Wisconsin group that had thousands of RSVPs to its Facebook event, a caravan of business owners from the Milwaukee suburbs and a third group organized by a Minnesota gun-rights enthusiast said they would clog the streets of downtown Madison with their vehicles.
Like last week in Michigan.
By the time the event began, several hundred protesters gathered in front of the Capitol. Few wore the protective face coverings public health officials have advised people to use outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier, at least 20 vehicles had gathered in the parking lot in Delafield, about an hour outside of Madison. Drivers mounted American flags, yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flags, which are a Tea Party emblem, and signs protesting the stay-at-home order.
“We want Governor Evers to open up all businesses in the state immediately before everybody goes out of business,” said Bob Tarantino, a real estate agent who helped organized the caravan. “The curve, in the first 30 days, has gone as flat as it can possibly be — I don’t know how much flatter it can get.”
In Madison, demonstrators who arrived early carried Trump campaign signs. One brought an AR-15 — defying advice the treasurer of the Republican Party of Wisconsin gave to attendees earlier in the week.
At least someone is standing up for Freedom out there.
The protests come nearly three weeks after Wisconsin held the nation’s first in-person election as the country was wracked with the coronavirus pandemic. Since the April 7 contest, at least 19 people who voted in person or served as poll workers have tested positive for the virus.
They had to stick to the script.
Wisconsin’s leading legislative Republicans, including Robin Vos, the Assembly speaker, have sued Evers to try to overturn the extension of the state stay-at-home order. Vos encouraged people to gather in Madison on Friday but declined to say if he would attend or if he believed it was safe to do so. President Trump has encouraged uprisings against stay-at-home orders issued by Democratic governors in several states, though he has not spoken out against the Wisconsin order.
Vos has been marked like in Pennsylvania.
“Trump, Robin Vos, and Wisconsin Republicans bear personal responsibility for the protests taking place today and the infections that will spread because of them,” Ben Wikler, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said Friday. “They believe they can benefit politically,” he said if they try to ignore “the dangerous science of coronavirus and its spread.”
Then the pre$$ is responsible for burying and ignoring the science that contradicts their narrative of lies.
Both the protesters and Evers said the event would go on anyway. The governor Thursday said he did not plan to enforce social distancing mandates on the protesters. “I don’t think you’ll see the Capitol Police out there or other law officers out there with a yard stick to see if people are too close or too far away,” Evers said during a video news conference.
One hopes not, but it is happening elsewhere.
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{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Mass. reports 196 new coronavirus deaths, while case tally surpasses 50,000; Baker says state won’t reopen until numbers improve" by Travis Andersen and Martin Finucane Globe Staff, April 24, 2020
Governor Charlie Baker said Friday that it was too soon to say whether he will extend the restrictions he imposed to combat the coronavirus pandemic that are set to expire on May 4, telling reporters that he’s continuing to monitor data on infection and hospitalization rates.
“We’re going to continue to follow the data, and we’ll have more to say about it when we get a little closer,” he said. "I get the fact that people would like an answer, but any answer I give you today wouldn’t be worth very much. Because it’s going to be driven by what happens over the course of the next two weeks. ... I don’t have a crystal ball, I can’t predict.”
What does the simulation and drill call for, Chuck?
The state on Friday evening reported 196 new coronavirus deaths, bringing the total of pandemic deaths to 2,556. The state reported 2,877 new cases, and at the same time added an additional 2,096 cases to earlier days’ tallies due to a reporting error by Quest Diagnostics. In all, the state’s total confirmed cases jumped by nearly 5,000, surpassing 50,000.
Baker has ordered all non-essential businesses to close and issued a stay-at-home advisory to all residents, in a massive disruption of daily life intended to slow the spread of the virus, which has sown death and brought sorrow in communities across the state.
Baker said he was looking for a “significant number of days” of reductions in key indicators such as coronavirus infections or hospitalizations, before he will lift restrictions.
“Our view going forward here is going to be that until we start to see some of that kind of information — the peaking of the surge and the move in the other direction for some sustained period of time — we’re not going to be interested in reopening anything,” he said.
For the first time Friday, the state’s daily coronavirus update included a list of assisted living sites with two or more cases. The list, like the one it provides for nursing homes, gave only a range of cases for each facility, not a specific number of cases, and it didn’t include the number of deaths.
Those are the expendables in the coronavirus pandemic, the elderly and those with disabilities that, despite the patina of affection, the pandemic has revealed how we inherently devalue them using special protective booths to test them for coronavirus. A woman died in Belmont Friday morning, and 10 days after mourning loss of Boston police officer to coronavirus, the department celebrated the recovery of another even as the coronavirus pandemic could shrink some biotech startup valuations.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh predicted that Baker’s emergency measures would be extended.
“Right now, our stay-at-home order is until May 4. I’ve been talking to the governor about extending that. There’s been no decision on that, but I’m expecting that will probably happen," Walsh said during an appearance on Rev. Bruce Wall’s Boston Praise Radio program.
You don't have to be a prophet to see that.
During a later appearance on WGBH-FM radio, Walsh said “we certainly won’t be where we were” Feb. 1, when people were working and life was relatively normal, at any point in the near future. “We’re not going back to that moment in time for quite some time,” he said on the program Boston Public Radio.
But the American people are bulli$h on returning to work!
Pressed on a possible return to normalcy, Walsh said he believes “the transition starts probably early summer,” and that “it’s a slow, steady” process that may play out over the summer and into the fall. “The data that we have is incomplete,” Walsh said. “Clearly, we do not have enough tests.” He added that “we have to make sure that people are going to be safe” when the economy reopens.
He is completely ignoring the information, and he shut down Bo$ton based on no data except predictive models.
A$$HOLE!
Walsh said the city currently has 15 COVID-19 test sites operating and officials are working to increase access to testing. He said cities and states are bearing the brunt of the responsibility for obtaining tests. “We’re on our own, to some degree, in purchasing these tests,” Walsh said.
Did he see what happen to the guy from Baystate?
He said public health officials have indicated Boston needs to test a quarter of the population to get an accurate reading on COVID-19 in the city. Currently, Walsh said, the city has tested about 19,000 of the city’s roughly 700,000 residents.
Walsh said the city was making major progress in testing one of its most at-risk groups. He announced that all homeless people in Boston would be tested, thanks to a large donation of tests from a Boston company.
Another captive and helpless population!
Walsh was also asked about the status of the annual July 4 celebration on the Esplanade. He said no decision has been made yet, but he’s not optimistic that “large gatherings” will be possible by July or August. “I just don’t think we’ll be at that place yet by the summer,” he said.
Then NO SPORTS for the rest of the year and beyond -- despite all the draft talk!
That stuff is there as a major distraction that serves to give the feel of normalcy as you are imprisoned inside your home.
Speaking during a later briefing outside City Hall, Walsh also touted a new initiative to allow restaurants to sell groceries and paper products out of their establishments. Walsh said the move should “cut down on essential trips outside the home as well.”
Related: Mayor Walsh lays out guidelines for restaurants to sell groceries
It’s another lifeline for struggling eateries in Boston.
Meanwhile, the 10-year-old hit by stray bullet in Roxbury has been upgraded to good condition and John “Jack” Dempsey was named the new fire commissioner.
Asked about US Senator Mitch McConnell’s recent comments regarding the possibility of some states filing for bankruptcy, Walsh said such a move would be a “last resort” for cities and states, adding that it’s the job of Congress to help states recover from the pandemic. “The city of Boston is not going to file for bankruptcy,” he said.
Come hell or high water.
The mayor also took a question about the reopening of some businesses in Georgia Friday. Walsh said he’s hearing from the mayors of Atlanta and Augusta that city officials in those communities still have “real concerns about people losing their [lives]” and that if he were reopening a state, he would not have selected the industries chosen by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. He said that while he hopes Kemp doesn’t regret the decision, “I’m expecting at some point in the next week or so, they’ll be shutting them all down again.”
This taste of absolute power has turned him into a REAL A$$HOLE!
Dr. Monica Bharel, the state’s public health commissioner, also briefed reporters and said she had recovered from the COVID-19 diagnosis she received about a month ago. She urged residents to get their information about the virus from trusted sources. “We may be hearing about all kinds of treatments that are unproven and some might be dangerous,” she said. In addition, Bharel said her experience underscores how “all of us are vulnerable to potentially get this infection. ... That’s why this is such a community effort” to stop the spread.
I don't believe her.
The virus has caused a global pandemic that has sickened more than 2.7 million people and killed more than 192,000. In the United States, more than 870,000 people have been sickened and more than 50,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Daily life around the world has been disrupted and economies have ground to a halt as governments have closed businesses and asked people to stay at home to thwart the spread of the virus.
Experts say the state’s official death tally may be on the low side because of deaths that happened before officials were aware of the outbreak. Nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have been hit especially hard, accounting for 56 percent of the deaths. The state also reported Friday that 3,851 people were in hospitals statewide with coronavirus.
Yeah, keep padding the f***ing death totals.
It’s unclear what the ultimate death toll in the state will be. One highly cited model by the University of Washington predicts around 4,200 deaths by early August, but various models differ and experts are also warning that the outbreak could make a comeback in the summer or fall.
I would count on a comeback, and that model was the subject of much longer-pointing so take it with a grain of salt.
The virus can cause mild to severe illness. Older adults and people with serious underlying conditions are most at risk for severe illness and death, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.....
Yeah, play down the lack of lethality.
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Related:
Advocates press state leaders for small-business assistance
Job Number One at the State House is public health right now, particularly with COVID-19 in a full surge here, and Joe Kriesberg, who leads the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, said his coalition doesn’t want to reopen the economy just yet.
CEOs prepare for long transition back to their offices
Until then they will be $tuck at home:
"Greater Boston’s housing market held steady last month. April is going to look a lot different; The median single-family home price rose 6.8 percent, but there were signs of a coronavirus slowdown" by Tim Logan Globe Staff, April 22, 2020
Even with Greater Boston’s economy shutting down in March as the coronavirus crisis grew, the region’s housing market kept chugging along. For the time being, anyway.
New figures out Wednesday from state and local real estate groups showed a market in which home prices rose — as they have for years now — even as buying a house became a logistical challenge and job losses mounted as the month progressed, but they may not last much longer, as even Boston’s long-healthy housing market is showing strain from the cratering economy.
Many of the gears of the home-buying process, from open houses to inspections to closings, have been slowed, if not stopped, by stay-at-home advisories, even as real estate agents and others in the industry have scrambled to devise workarounds like virtual showings and video-chat closings.
Then there’s the reality that hundreds of thousands of people in Massachusetts have lost their jobs in the last month, while many more face an economic future that feels far more precarious than it did just a few weeks ago. All that, real estate experts say, is likely to take a toll on housing as spring goes on.
“The real estate market is definitely going down,” said Tim Warren, CEO of the Warren Group, a housing data firm. “How far, and for how long, we just don’t know yet,” and with the strong March numbers, there were signs a slowdown is coming.
You would never know that from reading the Sunday Magazine.
“It really depends on the depth of the recession," Warren said. “If this snowballs, if 20 percent of the lawyers in Boston lose their jobs, it could be a long time."
As long as the lawyers have a home we $hould be fine!
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Looks like this guy will need one:
"Police in one Massachusetts town are on the hunt for Bigfoot. A statue of the legendary ape creature was stolen Wednesday night from outside a home in the town of Brimfield, a small town 20 miles east of Springfield. The Worcester Telegram reports the roadside, Bigfoot-sized statue has lately been outfitted with signs reminding people to observe social distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus outbreak. It’s even sported a face covering. Police Chief Charles Kuss says investigators are on the case and have already received some tips. Bigfoot’s owner has offered a $200 reward for the statue, which he says has a value of $2,400. Video footage of the theft shows hooded figures unchaining the statuee before making off with it."
Maybe they can zoom in on them:
"Facebook launches Zoom competitor, with built-in special effects" by Rachel Lerman Washington Post, April 24, 2020
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook announced Friday it’s making a big push into live video conferencing, capitalizing on millions of people being stuck at home globally amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The new service, called Messenger Rooms, allows users to conference with up to 50 people at a time — similar to Zoom, Houseparty, and other video conference services that have seen their businesses boom over the past few weeks.
Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg billed it as another way Facebook can keep people connected in a live-streamed announcement.
Video conferencing has become a necessity during the pandemic, as workers telecommute and families use video to stay in touch. It’s even become a destination for happy hours and dance parties.
Zoom, in particular, has benefited. The video conferencing company recently said the number of people participating in Zoom calls on a single day grew from 10 million at the end of December to more than 200 million people now. The free version of Zoom limits calls to 40 minutes until you sign up for a paid subscription, but can accommodate 1,000 people.
Related:
"Some of the world’s largest companies have advised against the use of the Zoom conferencing app, fueling a growing backlash against a service that shot to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Daimler, Ericsson, NXP Semiconductors, and Bank of America are among a wave of companies forbidding or warning employees against using Zoom because of concerns about its security, according to people familiar with their operations. They join corporations like Tesla and government agencies from Taiwan to India, which has initiated a public contest to develop a secure homegrown video-chat alternative."
Don't worry about the hacking.
Facebook’s Messenger Rooms is in some ways more limited: It must be started from Facebook or Messenger, though others who join don’t need to have a Facebook account, and it’s limited to a total of 50 people, but Facebook said Messenger Rooms will be free and won’t have a time limit. The new Facebook feature also allows people to drop in and join other rooms, or come and go as they please (though you can restrict who has access to your rooms), much like the newly popular Houseparty app.
Facebook has a head start in the video streaming game with its built-in following of more than 2 billion users, but it has also been plagued by misinformation and privacy controversies, eroding people’s trust in the service.
Facebook says it will not ‘‘view or listen’’ to video calls.
WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook, will expand to allow eight people on each call, up from four now. Facebook said 700 million people are chatting on daily video calls on Messenger and WhatsApp combined.
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Related:
Facebook invests billions in Indian telecom company
"India said Wednesday that it plans to manufacture thousands of wristbands that will monitor the locations and temperatures of coronavirus patients and help perform contact tracing. The wristband project aims to track quarantined patients and aid health workers and those delivering essential services. India is ramping up surveillance as it begins to ease one of the world’s strictest virus lockdowns. It has 19,984 confirmed cases of coronavirus, including 640 deaths, and experts fear the epidemic’s peak could still be weeks away. Thousands of wristbands are expected to be deployed, but an exact figure has not been released. The wristbands mirror a similar program in Hong Kong, where authorities used bands to monitor overseas travelers ordered to self-isolate."
"The white, long-sleeve T-shirt was retailing for $60. The title: “Bat Fried Rice.” It featured a small red image of chopsticks with bat wings on the front, and a larger design of a Chinese rice box with bat wings and the words “No Thank You” written on it. “No Thank You” also appeared on the right sleeve. Soon after Trevor Fleming, an art director for Lululemon Athletica, posted a link to the T-shirt in the bio section of his personal Instagram account, waves of online condemnation followed, and he was fired by the Canadian athletic apparel company. In replies to the comments, the company was quick to say the T-shirt was not one of its products. “We apologize that an employee was affiliated with promoting an offensive T-shirt, and we take this very seriously,” it said. “The image and the post were inappropriate and inexcusable. We acted immediately, and the person involved is no longer an employee of Lululemon.” The World Health Organization has said that the evidence shows the coronavirus may have originated in bats. Scientists believe it may have jumped from bats to another animal in a wet market in Wuhan and then infected humans."
The story is idiotic, and remember when the pervert designers at Lululemon made the see-through yoga pants that you could get at Target?
Also see:
"Hackers gained access to iPhones through a sophisticated security flaw in Apple’s built-in e-mail app that Apple hasn’t yet fixed, according to new research by a cybersecurity firm. The cybersecurity firm, ZecOps, began conducting research after finding suspicious lines of code on iPhones belonging to a client. Customers of ZecOps, a two-year-old cybersecurity firm with offices in San Francisco, instruct their employees to connect their iPhones to a computer or kiosk that uploads data logs to a central server, where they are analyzed for suspicious activity. Apple spokesman Todd Wilder declined to comment."
At least Google requires all advertisers to prove who they are.
"AT&T loses $600m because of March Madness ads, but the US stay-at-home orders, which started in mid-March, did help improve some of AT&T’s slumping consumer businesses. Homebound customers craving videoconferencing and cellular connections helped boost broadband and wireless numbers. AT&T added a total of 27,000 wireless subscribers, exceeding analysts’ prediction for a loss of 132,000....."
Of course, the Netflix boom may not last once people can leave home (what if they never let us out or do an in and out mind-f**k jerk-job as planned?).
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Time to check $tocks:
"In a manic week full of previously unthinkable market moves, Wall Street ended Friday with one reminiscent of what things were like before the coronavirus outbreak upended everything. The S&P 500 glided to a gain of 1.4%, with Apple, Microsoft and other technology stocks leading the way, as they did so many times before economies shut down worldwide in hopes of slowing the spread of the outbreak. The bond market was quiet, while crude prices climbed again. The gains offered a soothing departure from what was a wild week, which began with Monday’s astonishing plummet for oil and carried through Thursday’s sudden disappearance of a morning stock rally, as markets pinballed from fear to hope and back again. “The market sort of feels like Dorothy coming to the crossroads and has yet to meet the scarecrow to tell her which way to go,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA. The S&P 500 still lost 1.3% for the week as worries about the economic damage dealt by the coronavirus outbreak outweighed hopes that businesses could soon reopen....."
Oh, if the market only had a brain it would follow the yellow brick road and be off to see the wizard!
"Stocks rose Wednesday and the S&P 500 recovered a chunk of this week’s sharp losses as a bit of oxygen pumped through markets around the world. Even oil gained ground, pulling further away from zero after earlier getting turned upside down amid a collapse in demand. Treasury yields also pushed higher in a sign there’s a bit less pessimism among investors. Investors are still bracing for a severe, painfully deep recession after businesses shut down worldwide in hopes of slowing the spread of the coronavirus. Even as depressing economic and health reports pile up, some investors are looking ahead to the prospect of parts of the economy reopening as infections level off in some areas. Energy stocks jumped to some of the market’s biggest gains, riding the ripple of strengthening oil prices. Halliburton, Apache, and Diamondback Energy all added at least 9 percent. All three, though, are still down more than 60 percent for the year so far. The price of a barrel of US oil to be delivered in June jumped 19 percent to settle at $13.78. It had zigzagged in the morning before turning higher after President Trump threatened the destruction of any Iranian gunboats that harass US Navy ships, raising the possibility of a disruption in oil supplies. Stocks of companies that have been winners in the new stuck-at-home economy, meanwhile, are also telling investors just how much they’ve been benefiting. Netflix has been a big winner as people look to fill their time, with shares recently hitting a record, but shares slipped 2.9 percent after its profits didn’t quite live up to Wall Street’s lofty expectations. Toilet paper maker Kimberly-Clark rose 2.4 percent....."
"An early rally on Wall Street suddenly vanished on Thursday, the latest example of how fragile the hopes underpinning the stock market’s monthlong recovery are. The S&P 500 initially shot higher in the morning, completely brushing aside another stunning report showing millions of workers are losing their jobs by the week. Investors were looking ahead, beyond the current economic misery, to the prospect of a reopening economy amid expectations that the coronavirus outbreak may be leveling off in areas around the world, but all of its gain, which topped out at 1.6 percent, vanished in a span of seconds following a discouraging report about a possible treatment for COVID-19. After that, the S&P 500 flipped between gains and losses through the afternoon and ended the day down 0.1 percent. A report from the Financial Times on Thursday afternoon said a potential antiviral drug for the virus flopped in a clinical trial, citing documents published accidentally by the World Health Organization. Shares of the company behind the drug, Gilead Sciences, flipped from a 3.3 percent gain to a 4.3 percent loss after the report. It also helped flip the market. Among the dastardly numbers arriving Thursday: Preliminary data on manufacturing and services activity in Europe and the United States came in even weaker than economists expected, as did a report on sales of new US homes. The headliner, though, was the report showing another 4.4 million US workers filed for unemployment benefits last week. That brought the total over the last five weeks to 26 million, or roughly one in six US workers. Las Vegas Sands jumped 12 percent for the largest gain in the S&P 500 after executives said travel restrictions in Macau, where the casino operator gets the bulk of its revenue, could begin to ease in May or June....."
Also see:
"Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir failed to speed the improvement of patients with COVID-19 or prevent them from dying, according to results from a long-awaited clinical trial conducted in China. Gilead, however, said the data suggest a “potential benefit.”
I gue$$ it's all a gamble:
"DraftKings is set to become Boston’s newest publicly traded technology company, after completing a complex merger that will allow it to list its shares starting Friday. Now a major player in the promising field of sports gambling, the company is hoping to appeal to public market investors as a mobile-heavy digital competitor in an industry attracting competitors from the existing casino industry and beyond....."
Who is going to have money to bet on sports they can't go to in person?
Let's get into the meat of it:
"Tyson Foods Inc. is halting its largest pork plant, becoming the third major US facility to shut as the coronavirus sickens workers, exacerbates livestock gluts, and threatens supplies. The Waterloo facility in Iowa, which has been running at reduced levels due to worker absenteeism, will stop mid-week until further notice, Tyson said in a statement Wednesday. It’s the latest blow to the nation’s meatpacking industry that’s struggling to contain the disease among workers. JBS SA is shuttering its pork-processing facility in Minnesota, and Smithfield Foods Inc. closed a slaughter plant in South Dakota. Combined they make up about 15 percent of US capacity. The growing disruptions in slaughtering and processing are cascading through supply chains, affecting farmers, truckers, distributors and supermarkets. While there’s plenty of frozen inventory in the United States, wholesale pork prices have surged."
"Another huge meat plant has been closed indefinitely in the United States, with experts saying the country is just weeks away from shortages. Tyson Foods Inc. said Thursday it was shutting its beef facility in Pasco, Wash., while team members undergo testing for COVID-19. Tyson has also closed two of its key pork plants. In Canada, industry groups are saying they’ll probably hold back some of what’s usually exported to the United States. Meanwhile, the head of JBS SA, the world’s top meat producer, warned of shortfalls. At least eight major US meat facilities have seen halts in the space of a few weeks."
You will have to eat it raw then:
CEO of bankrupt California power company to leave
The thought of food shortages and blackouts makes one shiver.
"The shutdown of television and movie production in Los Angeles silenced more than 1,000 productions, and the city’s film office isn’t sure how the entertainment capital will recover from the impact. After Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued stay-at-home orders on March 20 because of the coronavirus outbreak, 644 projects across the city were shut down, according to a report by FilmLA. At that time, about half the 1,091 shows, commercials, and movies filming in Los Angeles in February had already halted or reduced staff because of the virus. The closing is crippling the Los Angeles economy, where about 1 in 5 jobs is tied to the entertainment business. It also will affect what’s available to audiences. More than 40 percnet of scripted television shows are shot in the city, and it’s still unclear when they’ll be able to resume production, leaving a gap in new content."
That's okay; I'm sure I will survive without the virus of Hollywood.
Union Pacific expects its shipping volume to fall by 25 percent
Then why are the trains around here running more than usual?
"Amtrak expecting $700 million in losses, ridership down 95 percent during coronavirus pandemic" by Matt Berg Globe Correspondent, April 24, 2020
Amtrak is expecting at least $700 million in losses with ridership dropping 95 percent across all routes as people abide by social distancing and stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic, according to company officials.
The transportation company was expecting to break even this year for the first time in its history, former CEO Richard Anderson said last year. Now, the outlook is grimmer.
Meanwhile, Amtrak mechanical and engineering workers are taking advantage of the lull in ridership to work on projects to improve the tracks, said Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn in a conference call with reporters Thursday. Major projects, such as the new Amtrak fleet, will also move forward.
“We continue to execute on our major projects, everything from Acela 21 through to Gateway,” he said.
Amtrak responded to the ridership decline by temporarily suspending several routes and modifying services on the majority of routes, said Anthony Coscia, chairman of the Audit and Finance Committee at Amtrak.
As emergency funding was doled out to companies providing essential services through the CARES Act, Amtrak received enough funds to avoid furloughs and layoffs along with major operational reductions, Coscia said.
Amtrak has implemented several initiatives to curb contact among passengers. Currently, no more than half of the capacity of a train is allowed to be filled to maintain a safe distance from other passengers. All employees are also required to wear masks and gloves on the trains.
To further ensure social distancing, the company will roll out touchless features at stations, such as alerting passengers about boarding information via text message, implementing new kiosks with advanced features, and allowing customers to pre-order food for pickup to avoid waiting in line.
As for how Amtrak will move forward with the “new normal” once the pandemic passes, officials couldn’t say for sure. “We’re conducting a fair amount of research to see what ramping up will look like," Flynn said.
Americans think the old normal is going to return!
The company is working with multiple states to gauge what post-pandemic ridership may look like.
Flynn stressed the importance of breaking even financially in the future, but couldn’t give a definitive timeline given the nature of the pandemic and uncertainty about when ridership numbers might rise again.
“At this point, we don’t have a firm date by which we think we will break even in part because we still don’t know what the level of ridership will be," Flynn said.....
They just want to break even?
--more--"
You would be better off driving:
Let's get into the meat of it:
"Tyson Foods Inc. is halting its largest pork plant, becoming the third major US facility to shut as the coronavirus sickens workers, exacerbates livestock gluts, and threatens supplies. The Waterloo facility in Iowa, which has been running at reduced levels due to worker absenteeism, will stop mid-week until further notice, Tyson said in a statement Wednesday. It’s the latest blow to the nation’s meatpacking industry that’s struggling to contain the disease among workers. JBS SA is shuttering its pork-processing facility in Minnesota, and Smithfield Foods Inc. closed a slaughter plant in South Dakota. Combined they make up about 15 percent of US capacity. The growing disruptions in slaughtering and processing are cascading through supply chains, affecting farmers, truckers, distributors and supermarkets. While there’s plenty of frozen inventory in the United States, wholesale pork prices have surged."
"Another huge meat plant has been closed indefinitely in the United States, with experts saying the country is just weeks away from shortages. Tyson Foods Inc. said Thursday it was shutting its beef facility in Pasco, Wash., while team members undergo testing for COVID-19. Tyson has also closed two of its key pork plants. In Canada, industry groups are saying they’ll probably hold back some of what’s usually exported to the United States. Meanwhile, the head of JBS SA, the world’s top meat producer, warned of shortfalls. At least eight major US meat facilities have seen halts in the space of a few weeks."
You will have to eat it raw then:
CEO of bankrupt California power company to leave
The thought of food shortages and blackouts makes one shiver.
"The shutdown of television and movie production in Los Angeles silenced more than 1,000 productions, and the city’s film office isn’t sure how the entertainment capital will recover from the impact. After Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti issued stay-at-home orders on March 20 because of the coronavirus outbreak, 644 projects across the city were shut down, according to a report by FilmLA. At that time, about half the 1,091 shows, commercials, and movies filming in Los Angeles in February had already halted or reduced staff because of the virus. The closing is crippling the Los Angeles economy, where about 1 in 5 jobs is tied to the entertainment business. It also will affect what’s available to audiences. More than 40 percnet of scripted television shows are shot in the city, and it’s still unclear when they’ll be able to resume production, leaving a gap in new content."
That's okay; I'm sure I will survive without the virus of Hollywood.
Union Pacific expects its shipping volume to fall by 25 percent
Then why are the trains around here running more than usual?
"Amtrak expecting $700 million in losses, ridership down 95 percent during coronavirus pandemic" by Matt Berg Globe Correspondent, April 24, 2020
Amtrak is expecting at least $700 million in losses with ridership dropping 95 percent across all routes as people abide by social distancing and stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic, according to company officials.
The transportation company was expecting to break even this year for the first time in its history, former CEO Richard Anderson said last year. Now, the outlook is grimmer.
Meanwhile, Amtrak mechanical and engineering workers are taking advantage of the lull in ridership to work on projects to improve the tracks, said Amtrak CEO Bill Flynn in a conference call with reporters Thursday. Major projects, such as the new Amtrak fleet, will also move forward.
“We continue to execute on our major projects, everything from Acela 21 through to Gateway,” he said.
Amtrak responded to the ridership decline by temporarily suspending several routes and modifying services on the majority of routes, said Anthony Coscia, chairman of the Audit and Finance Committee at Amtrak.
As emergency funding was doled out to companies providing essential services through the CARES Act, Amtrak received enough funds to avoid furloughs and layoffs along with major operational reductions, Coscia said.
Amtrak has implemented several initiatives to curb contact among passengers. Currently, no more than half of the capacity of a train is allowed to be filled to maintain a safe distance from other passengers. All employees are also required to wear masks and gloves on the trains.
To further ensure social distancing, the company will roll out touchless features at stations, such as alerting passengers about boarding information via text message, implementing new kiosks with advanced features, and allowing customers to pre-order food for pickup to avoid waiting in line.
As for how Amtrak will move forward with the “new normal” once the pandemic passes, officials couldn’t say for sure. “We’re conducting a fair amount of research to see what ramping up will look like," Flynn said.
Americans think the old normal is going to return!
The company is working with multiple states to gauge what post-pandemic ridership may look like.
Flynn stressed the importance of breaking even financially in the future, but couldn’t give a definitive timeline given the nature of the pandemic and uncertainty about when ridership numbers might rise again.
“At this point, we don’t have a firm date by which we think we will break even in part because we still don’t know what the level of ridership will be," Flynn said.....
They just want to break even?
--more--"
You would be better off driving:
"AutoNation, an auto retailer worth billions, received nearly $95 million in SBA funds" by Jonathan O’Connell The Washington Post, April 24, 2020
AutoNation, a Fortune 500 company that runs a network of auto sellers, received nearly $95 million in federal small business funds, according to internal company documents and two company employees.
Meanwhile, the repo men just came and took your car for lack of payment as you wait for that chump change government check.
The $95 million, spread across dozens of locations, is more than triple the amount any company is known to have received through the fund, called the Paycheck Protection Program. The $349 billion small business loan program ran out of money last week, leaving thousands of small businesses empty handed.
They took the loot and floored the gas pedal on the getaway car!
The Post reviewed documents detailing the AutoNation loans and interviewed two employees of the business, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized by the company to discuss the matter.
The $3 billion publicly held company has 26,000 employees in 18 states. AutoNation used separate tax identification numbers assigned to dozens of its more than 300 locations to apply for at least $266 million in funds for separate dealerships, including Jaguar and Land Rover of Bethesda, Porsche Orlando, and Lexus of Cerritos, outside Los Angeles, according to the documents.
‘‘The majority of our dealerships are able to apply for this,’’ said executive James J. Murphy on a call with employees last week, according to one of the employees on the call.
Executives compiled detailed spreadsheets of which dealerships had already applied, been approved and received the money. Last week executives internally reported having received $79 million for locations in its western division and $15 million for its eastern division.
More than 81 locations received loan money, according to the documents reviewed by The Post. That included $4.6 million for an Audi dealership in Bellevue, Wash., and $2.7 million for a Toyota Mall location in Georgia.....
--more--"
I'm sorry, readers, but I've run out of gas for today.
