"Cities in the age of coronavirus, and after" by Tim Logan Globe Staff, April 11, 2020
Cities thrive on human connections, on bustling sidewalks, on coming together for a concert or a baseball game, on the everyday interactions that can spark new relationships, or birth big ideas. They’re built on the premise that in many ways, we’re better off living in relatively close quarters, that we thrive in proximity, but so does a pandemic and that has a lot of people wondering what the coronavirus outbreak, whose deadly toll rises daily, could mean for the future of dense and vibrant cities such as Boston. Will it amount to a blip in the decades-long rebound of urban life, or mark the end of an era and the start of a gradual turn to social distancing as a way of life?
It’s a question with profound implications for the future of Boston. The packed stadiums, lively campuses, and vibrant neighborhoods that supply much of the compact city’s energy and charm depend on people being willing to gather. Our economy, too, is powered by proximity. Just ask the scores of companies from around the globe that have squeezed into a few square miles of downtown and Cambridge, betting the brainpower they can tap here is worth paying astronomical rents.
“That’s how you build a knowledge economy,” said Dan Dain, an attorney and restaurant owner who’s writing a book about the urban history of Boston. “Proximity, and serendipitous interaction, drive innovation."
Today, those features of urban life feel like a threat. Office towers are empty. Restaurants and stadiums sit dark. Our effervescent city has turned into a ghost town.
For now, that’s OK, said Sara Jensen Carr, a Northeastern University architecture professor who teaches about health and cities. When the coronavirus curve is flattened into submission, she believes, people will return. Far denser cities than Boston — Seoul and Singapore, for instance — have managed their outbreaks, and locked-down cities in China are slowly returning to normalcy, but even after the health crisis ends, and a vaccine is available to prevent its recurrence, the scars of this episode won’t soon fade.
There they go again, pushing the agenda that is pure evil.
“We all have short memories, but I think the severity of this is going to weigh heavily on people,” Carr said. “People are going to ask about density. People are going to reconsider what this means for housing, for architecture, for how we work,” and that could have big implications for the ways a city such as Boston might grow from here.
Yeah, this was a massive Trauma-based Mind Control Psychological Operation that makes 9/11, as horrible as that was, look like a campfire cookout. That was the appetizer, inconveniences only. This COVID-19 scam has taken away the freedom the government was allegedly trying to preserve fighting the terrorists who allegedly did that.
The headlong rush toward prosperity that has characterized Boston in recent years may be coming to a close, and maybe, he said, that won’t be so bad. That prosperity has priced so many people out of Boston, and squeezed the small businesses, corner bars, and arts venues that give a city its character.
Oh, for $ome this is going to work out wonderfully; for the vast majority, it's too late.
“In a more affordable city, there’s space for more of the things that make a city great,” said Max Grinnell, an urban studies professor at the Massachusetts College of Art. “Maybe this is an opportunity for that.”
Right, this will make everything more affordable even if you are out a job out a job, buddy. The college will not be reopening.
--more--"
So what is in Bo$ton's future?
The Globe sees little traffic with a section of sick immigrants, but not everything is awful. Sure, people are dying and the funerals aren't the same, but the Easter Bunny still comes to visit!
I never want to set foot in their stinking city ever again, but if we all pray, there will be a magical rebirth:
"Social distancing is working, but when will things return to normal, and what will that look like?" by David Abel and Naomi Martin Globe Staff, April 11, 2020
With daffodils and magnolia trees in full bloom, the rites of spring have been clouded by a hard truth: No one really knows when life might return to something close to normal, when it might be safe to go back to work or get a drink at a bar, but epidemiologists are drawing up plans for a glide path out of the purgatory, which they say could start as early as sometime in May.
Their vision of a reopening, however, is unlikely to include crowds at Fenway Park or Symphony Hall anytime soon. Even July 4 on the Esplanade remains in doubt, as do carefree weekends on crowded beaches.
That's because “if you watch the replays of the 2011 games on NESN, you notice and remember the atmosphere at TD Garden, and how much inadvertent expectoration there is, and how much saliva and beer there is everywhere, you realize how much of a bomb that could be. It’s going to be a long time before we can get people together like that again,” and you can forget access to the locker room.
It is, however, conceivable restaurants could seat diners again and stores welcome back customers, albeit with a range of new requirements before anyone enters.
The Globe gets to the bottom of the future in Bo$ton's re$taurants.
The key to returning to some semblance of normal, they say: testing. More and more testing.
F**K OFF!
“The more we know about the prevalence of the virus, the closer we’ll get to being able to reopen,” said Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who serves on a state task force dealing with the coronavirus.
In the coming days, Massachusetts and several other states will begin drawing blood from hundreds of residents around the state to get a clearer understanding of how many have already been infected and now carry antibodies to the virus. That testing — combined with a broader federal effort — should start producing results by the end of April or early May.
Related: "The National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project is a related effort that began several weeks ago as a clearinghouse for information and a way to match willing plasma donors with hospitals and doctors authorized to perform infusions....."
Patient Zero in New Jersey?
Now the sick evil f**ks literally want blood when Vitamin C and whole bunch of other things will help cure you.
Meanwhile beneath the blood was an ad for the Overlook Retirement Home with the catch phrase "social distancing at its best," and I kid you not, but the second half of the A section was all obituaries, something I said they would be doing a month ago.
If the virus has infected far more people than the 525,000 Americans who have already tested positive, as Mina and others suspect, that would suggest far more people have immunity to the disease, and that it sickens and kills fewer people than feared.
You damn bastards and your damn models!
If that proves true, and rigorous social distancing continues, Massachusetts could begin to see the number of newly reported cases dwindle from around 2,000 a day now to about a dozen or fewer a day by the latter half of May, Mina said. “Once we get it under control, we can start reopening in a safe way,” he said.
It will be too late for so many. Livelihoods have been destroyed, but that's okay. $ome are looking forward to greater market share and profits!
Scientists say the pandemic will persist until the virus’s spread is hobbled by “herd immunity,” estimated to occur when at least 80 percent of people are immune, either through a vaccine or infection. It’s unclear how long post-infection immunity lasts.
That's the only way this ends, which is why the "experts" are demanding these totalitarian measures! They want to keep this thing alive perpetually, to test, and test, and test, until the entire world is vaccinated and tracked. They are psychopathic control freaks the likes of which the world has never seen. EVIL!
When asked this week when the state might begin easing the shutdown, Governor Charlie Baker said he would rely on public health officials to make such decisions.
We are sunk then. Those sick bastards finally have power.
In an interview, Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston cautioned residents not to become focused on an early end to social distancing. “When’s it going to end, none of us know,” he said, “and what it’s going to be like when it ends, no one knows.”
Dr. Larry Madoff, a senior infectious disease director at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said state officials are still considering options, which will include a community surveillance program to help identify and quarantine anyone who has been exposed to someone infected.
Based on bogus tests that don't identify for COVID and which are used to check everyone off as positive, and what is Madoff (remember that name?) really saying? What was suggested on Tucker and Rachel Maddow? Kicking the door in and taking you away to a COVID concentration camp, never to be seen again?
Related: Meet The Companies Poised To Build The Kushner-Backed “Coronavirus Surveillance System”
Oh, that explains the actions of the president. He is simply taking orders from the master race, and this whole thing is starting to reek of the Soviet Union and the Bolsheviks, folks.
But it couldn't happen here, right?
In Washington, the Trump administration is also considering its options.
While public health experts have advised President Trump to allow social distancing measures to continue, he said he would make a decision soon about whether to press for more states to restart their economies.
“I’m going to have to make a decision, and I only hope to God that it’s the right decision,” Trump said on Friday during his daily news briefing.
Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor of health policy at the Harvard Global Health Institute, said his best estimate for when businesses might start reopening would be early summer.
That would be after June 21st then.
Larger gatherings — such as fans going to Fenway Park or moviegoers taking in a feature at the Coolidge Corner Theater — should take place only if a thorough testing and quarantine regime were in place and effective, he said.
“We know there’s a high chance that there could be another recurrence,” he said. “We need to be very careful about how we proceed, and dial up our responses as they’re needed.”
Restaurants, bars, movie theaters, and concert halls will likely need to reduce their capacities to keep people spaced at least 6 feet apart, said Helen Jenkins, a Boston University biostatistics professor, but events with large crowds, from music festivals to busy beaches, would likely be unsafe, she said. “The problem with large gatherings is that they can be super-spreading events where large numbers of people can get infected quite quickly,” Jenkins said.
That would help with the only way to end this, the herd immunity thing, right?
That means the social-distancing measures these sick experts are pushing are keeping the virus alive!
Lookm you need not have worried about me. I've gone to my last ball game and seen my last movie some time ago. I'm simply no longer interested in that $hit and filth (yeah, Hollywood love scenes are no more. Must be why Thrones wrapped up early and who is going to want to watch unrealistic reruns the rest of their lives?).
Under the right conditions — with new infections near zero and testing widespread — restaurants could conceivably reopen, but patrons would likely be required to wash their hands before entering, said David Hamer, an infectious disease specialist at Boston Medical Center.
Who wants a meal cooked for them where you can't see what the cook is doing, and what is this going to do vis-a-vis the shortage of good water?
I mean, if one looks at it from the situation of a drastically reduced population, it's all good, right?
You know, the kind of people for whom the Globe is written of and for by those who wannabe.
The state could also begin encouraging more people to use public transportation, if everyone wears masks and surfaces are cleaned frequently, he said.
No.
For Mina, the hope is that the virus has already infected tens of millions of Americans, without most of them knowing it.
He hopes that, huh?
“If that’s the case, the risks of becoming ill are very low,” he said. “That would mean I would feel a lot more comfortable taking my family to a restaurant.”
I will never eat at a restaurant again. and maybe somebody could spit in his meal!
--more--"
The risk is that we emerge from today’s pandemic without enacting substantive change in basic services that have been underinvested in for decades.
If I can't eat out:
A shopper had his temperature scanned as he waited to enter a supermarket in Milan, Italy, on Saturday. (audio Furlan/LaPresse via AP/LaPresse via AP).
I'm going to starve.
"After coronavirus, survivors’ symptoms include relief — and guilt" by Amy Harmon New York Times, April 11, 2020
It had been a week and a half since any of them had experienced symptoms, past the point when COVID-19 patients are thought to be contagious, and, assuming conventional virology wisdom applies, they were not at risk of immediate re-infection. Christy Karras had been told she was probably “one of the safest people in the country” by a researcher she asked. She and her husband, Bill Harper, who had each endured a weeklong headache as well as the disease’s hallmark fever and dry cough, longed for social interaction.
So it was that the two Seattle couples entered a phase of pandemic life that most of America can still only dream of. As recently as mid-March, fewer than 5,000 people in the United States had tested positive for the new coronavirus. Some are still coughing or tethered to oxygen tanks. Many have died, but the first large wave of COVID-19 survivors, likely to be endowed with a power known to infectious disease specialists as adaptive immunity, is emerging. They linger in grocery store aisles and touch doorknobs without flinching. They undertake not entirely essential travel. They have friends over. They hug.
With most Americans still desperate to avoid contracting the virus, and the number of known cases nearing half a million, several dozen spoke to The New York Times about what it was like to recover.
They are giddy; they are grateful. They are sometimes guilt-ridden, about possibly having spread the disease before its existence was widely known, and about recovering when others did not.....
Or that they are playing this role in the drill, and don't worry; the lower half of the page was an advertisement for Wild Arbor Liqueur where they tell you to "indulge with a clear conscience."
--more--"
Now for the rest of the country and the world:
"20,000: US death toll overtakes Italy’s as Midwest braces" by Kathleen Foody, Amy Forliti and Geir Moulson Associated Press, April 11, 2020
CHICAGO — The US death toll from the coronavirus eclipsed Italy’s for the highest in the world Saturday, surpassing 20,000, as Chicago and other cities across the Midwest braced for a potential surge in victims and moved to snuff out smoldering hot spots of contagion before they erupt.
With the New York area still deep in crisis, fear mounted over the spread of the scourge into the nation’s heartland.
Trump won't be pressuring anybody to open $hit; in fact, more states will be locking it down so he might as well declare a national quarantine, right?
Twenty-four residents of an Indiana nursing home hit by COVID-19 have died, while a nursing home in Iowa saw 14 deaths. Chicago’s Cook County has set up a temporary morgue that can take more than 2,000 bodies, and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has been going around telling groups of people to “break it up.”
I'm surprised she didn't receive gunfire in return, and don't you get sick of these on-their-high-horse hypocrites moralizing and lecturing to you?
In Europe, countries used roadblocks, drones, helicopters, mounted patrols, and the threat of fines to keep people from traveling over Easter weekend, and with infections and deaths slowing in Italy, Spain, and other places on the continent, governments took tentative steps toward loosening the weeks-long shutdowns.
That's free Europe, and Italy and Spain will pay dearly! Unless the drill is almost over.
Glorious weather across Europe posed an extra test of people’s discipline.
“Don’t do silly things,” said Domenico Arcuri, Italy’s special commissioner for the virus emergency. “Don’t go out, continue to behave responsibly as you have done until today, use your head and your sense of responsibility.”
Stay buried in your hole.
The outbreak’s center of gravity has long since shifted from China to Europe and the United States, which now has by far the largest number of confirmed cases — over a half-million — and a death toll higher than Italy’s count of nearly 19,500, according to the tally kept by Johns Hopkins University.
That's the same Johns Hopkins that was involved with the Event201 simulation and got $1.8 billion from Bloomberg.
The death rate — that is, the number of dead relative to the population — is still far higher in Italy than in United States, which has more than five times as many people, and worldwide, the true numbers of dead and infected are believed to be much higher because of testing shortages, different counting practices, and concealment by some governments.
Actually, they are much lower. Government fudging of the numbers is what is driving the tolls already reported. Every death is by COVID now.
About half the deaths in the United States are in the New York metropolitan area, where hospitalizations are nevertheless slowing and other indicators suggest lockdowns and social distancing are “flattening the curve” of infections and staving off the doomsday scenarios of just a week or two ago.
All those "scenarios" where based on garbage models that have since been overwhelmingly revised downward, and yet still this spew comes from the pre$$.
New York state on Saturday reported 783 more deaths, for a total over 8,600. Governor Andrew Cuomo said the daily number of deaths is stabilizing “but stabilizing at a horrific rate.”
“What do we do now? We stay the course,’’ said Cuomo, who like other leaders has warned that relaxing restrictions too soon could enable the virus to come back with a vengeance.
Could not.
With authorities warning that the crisis in New York is far from over, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city’s 1.1 million-student school system will remain closed for the rest of the academic year, but Cuomo said the decision is up to him, and no such determination has been made.
Yeah, it has to stretch into late June!
In the Midwest, pockets of contagion have alarmed state and city leaders and led to stricter enforcement.
Nearly 300 inmates at the Cook County Jail have tested positive for the virus, and two have died. In Wisconsin, health officials expect to see an increase in coronavirus cases after thousands of people went to the polls during Wisconsin’s presidential primary Tuesday.
OMFG!
The vote put them in peril!
Or is it simply a ruse to totally surrender the electoral process and let everybody vote by mail?
The machines are bad enough, but if that is the $olution then you might as well mail it in regarding this Republic that has stood for over 200 years.
Michigan’s governor extended her state’s stay-at-home order with new provisions: People with multiple homes may no longer travel between them, and in Kansas, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in a dispute Saturday between Democratic Governor Laura Kelly and Republican lawmakers who overturned her executive order banning religious services and funerals with more than 10 people.
So the Michigan governor (Democrat) just abrogated the Constitution for wealthy people by restricting freedom of movement, and what will that do to parental custody cases?
The Internal Revenue Service said the first economic support payments from a $2.2 trillion rescue package have been deposited in taxpayers’ bank accounts, but it didn’t say how many people received them or how much money has been disbursed so far.
That didn't make print, and reminds me that there was no discussion whatsoever in the Globe's pages today regarding the bailouts. It's all this kind of $uperficial and $hallow agenda-pu$hing $hit. No why would that be?
Elsewhere around the world, Italian authorities set up roadblocks around Milan to discourage people from going on Easter weekend trips. British police kept a close watch on gatherings in parks and at the seaside on one of the hottest days of the year, and France deployed some 160,000 police, including officers on horseback who patrolled beaches and parks.
With religious leaders around the globe urging people to observe Easter safely at home, the archbishop of Turin, Italy, allowed a video-streaming display of the Shroud of Turin, believed by the faithful to be the burial cloth of Jesus, so that they can pray in front of it during the epidemic.
Pope Francis celebrated an Easter vigil Mass in an empty St. Peter’s Basilica, where the footsteps of the pontiff and his small entourage on the marble floor could be heard clearly as they walked in slow procession toward the altar. Francis likened coronavirus fears to anxiety felt by Jesus’ followers after his crucifixion.
“For them, as for us, it was the darkest hour,’’ he said, encouraging people to “sow seeds of hope, with small gestures of care.”
He must be demented.
Meanwhile, Austria aims to reopen small shops on Tuesday. Spain, with more than 16,300 dead, plans to allow workers in some nonessential industries to return to factories and construction sites Monday. Spanish authorities said they will distribute 10 million face masks at major train and subway stations.
“We think that with these measures we will prevent a jump in infections,” Health Minister Salvador Illa said.
Italy continued to include all nonessential manufacturing in an extension of its national lockdown until May 3, but Premier Giuseppe Conte held out hope that some industry could reopen earlier if conditions permit.
Arcuri said that the exit from the lockdown will include increased virus testing, the deployment of a voluntary contact-tracing app, and mandatory blood tests as Italy seeks to set up a system of “immunity passports.”
Your NEW WORLD ORDER, brought to you by Bill Gates and the Pharmaceutical companies, and if you have no certificate of immunity?
India extended its lockdown of the nation of 1.3 billion people by two more weeks, but Iran, the site of the worst outbreak in the Middle East, reopened government offices and businesses outside Tehran.
In Indonesia, inmates set fire to a prison on Sulawesi island during a riot, apparently angry over restrictions imposed to contain the coronavirus. There were no reports of riot-related deaths.
They need to be let out like here.
Britain on Saturday reported 917 more deaths from the coronavirus, down from the peak of 980 recorded a day earlier. The country’s overall death toll neared 10,000. At the same time, data suggest that the number of hospital admissions in Britain is leveling off.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson continued to recover at a London hospital, his office said.
Worldwide, confirmed infections rose to about 1.8 million, with over 108,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins. More than 400,000 have recovered.
--more--"
At least Irish eyes are smilin':
"How a pandemic rescued the political image of Ireland’s leader" by Mark Landler New York Times, April 11, 2020
LONDON — Just two months ago, Ireland’s leader, Leo Varadkar, was a spent force in Irish politics: A trailblazing prime minister whose failure to solve Ireland’s housing crisis frustrated voters and whose aloof style left them cold. In a three-way Parliamentary race in February, his party finished last.
Last month, Varadkar, still in office as a caretaker, reactivated his registration as a medical doctor and said he would spend half a day each week fielding calls from people who believe they have contracted the coronavirus. What many Irish might have once dismissed as a shameless publicity stunt was instead greeted with broad support — a retired doctor doing his bit to help a great national effort.
To the list of politicians whose fortunes have been rescued by the pandemic, add Leo Varadkar’s name.
Hated leaders who are now beloved, wow.
Ireland has not escaped the scourge of the coronavirus, with 263 deaths, 6,574 confirmed cases, and the expectation is that both numbers will spike in the coming weeks. Its death rate is somewhat lower than Britain’s, while its rate of infection is slightly higher.
It's a scourge, it's a plague, according to the pre$$ -- the same as the ruling cla$$ they front for.
Yet Varadkar, 41, is winning praise for his energetic handling of the crisis. He canceled St. Patrick’s Day festivities, oversaw an aggressive early testing program, closed pubs and schools earlier than other European leaders, and has spoken to the public about the contagion in honest, humane terms — like the general practitioner he once was.
I no longer trust doctors. Mine or anyones.
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s advisers debated how aggressively to curb the spread of the virus, allowing testing to lag. He was reluctant to order pubs and cafes to close, and his relaxed approach to social distancing came back to haunt him when he contracted the virus himself, ending up in an intensive care unit.
Yeah, funny how people who resist or doubt the hoax crisis suddenly come down with it soon after.
Varadkar’s performance has not completely escaped criticism. Some people clucked over his decision to keep his annual St. Patrick’s Day date with President Trump in Washington during the early days of the outbreak. While there, he called a dramatic news conference at Blair House, opposite the White House, to announce he was closing Irish schools and banning large gatherings.
Later, the prime minister, or Taoiseach, as he is known in Ireland, was criticized for saying that people might prefer to lose their jobs because they would qualify for a weekly pandemic unemployment payment of 350 euros. That played into a familiar critique that Varadkar, the son of an Indian-born doctor and an Irish nurse, has little empathy for those in hardship, but he compensated for those stumbles with an address on St. Patrick’s Day that was viewed by commentators as one of the most memorable ever delivered by an Irish leader.
“We need to halt the spread of the virus, but we also need to halt the spread of fear,” Varadkar declared. “Fear is a virus in itself.”
OMG!
I better quite reading the Globe then!
As in Britain, there is now a long backlog of people waiting for tests. Still, Ireland has tested at more than double the rate of Britain.
Ireland also moved swiftly to impose social distancing, working off an influenza pandemic plan developed 13 years ago, said Dr. Samuel J. McConkey, an infectious disease specialist at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
This crap is just in your face!
“We’ve all rolled in behind these measures,” McConkey said. “Even though we’ve had a legacy of shooting at each other over decades, we’re actually quite a socially cohesive society.”
OMFG!
Yeah, we are all one now!
--more--"
"Murder rates were staggering. The virus has brought some quiet, for now" by Kirk Semple and Azam Ahmed New York Times, April 11, 2020
MEXICO CITY — In El Salvador, the number of murders plunged by nearly half between February and March. Neighboring Honduras has also seen a falloff in killings in recent weeks, as has Colombia.
As nations around the world contend with a growing number of fatalities caused by the coronavirus, some are simultaneously experiencing an unanticipated — and welcome — decline in a different form of death: murder.
Domestic violence calls are surging, but that doesn't merit the same focus.
Governments around the world have imposed travel restrictions, curfews, and quarantines to help control the spread of the virus, and by doing so they have inadvertently lowered criminality and violence — for the moment, at least.
Is it inadvertent?
The trend has been particularly notable in Latin America, the region with the highest homicide rates in the world outside of war.
“It’s taking people off the streets,” Alejandro Hope, a security analyst in Mexico City, said of the pandemic and governments’ efforts to combat it. “The rule of thumb is: The stricter the lockdown, the bigger the effect on crimes committed against strangers on the street.”
In addition, analysts say, not only have the lockdowns led to fewer opportunities for crime — like extortion, muggings, and even murder — but the virus has even taken some criminals out of action as they, too, hunker down in their homes, wary of infection. In several places, criminal gangs have even led efforts to impose curfews in neighborhoods and regions where they hold sway.
Look at that New York Times filth. The criminal gangs are now working for the largest organized crime outfit in existence, governments. Yup, the virus has taken the criminals out of action all right!
El Salvador began its coronavirus lockdown before almost any of its neighbors, closing its borders in mid-March, and shutting down schools and many businesses. On March 22, the government ordered all Salvadorans to remain quarantined in their homes; people caught in the street without the proper permissions were sent to quarantine centers.
The repression is worldwide.
The measures have helped lead to drops in homicides in recent weeks. There were 65 homicides in March, or an average of about two a day, down from 114, or nearly four a day, in February. On four days in March as well as on Monday, there were zero recorded murders.
“We are in a pandemic and our priority is to fight against it, but today many lives were saved,” the president, Nayib Bukele, said on Twitter, hailing the achievement.
Yeah, the loss of freedom is worth it.
The government has mostly attributed the recent decrease to its security strategies, which it started to implement in June when Bukele took office, but experts say the stringent measures intended to compel people to stay home to curb the outbreak has helped to push the numbers far lower.
If he implemented them in June when he came into office, he knew it was coming!
In Honduras, where the government has severely restricted movement and imposed a curfew, stores are now shuttered, streets are empty, and the police are arresting people caught driving or hanging around outside in violation of the lockdown. Between March 30 and April 3, more than 2,000 people were detained for violating government orders to remain inside, the police said.
Honduras is a US client state that underwent a regime change years ago. They chased a leftist populist out so he could be replaced by the traditional military dictatorship most Hondurans are used to. Even stole a vote to validate it.
Since mid-March, when Argentines were asked to stay at home, robberies have fallen by nearly 90 percent in the capital, dropping from an average of 225 per day to 30.
Renato Sérgio de Lima, the director of the Brazilian Forum of Public Security, an organization that studies public safety trends, said that muggings and other forms of routine crime have dropped in several states in the country.
In Colombia, reports of many types of crimes plummeted following the president’s decision to declare a nationwide quarantine beginning the week of March 20. The country had 91 reported homicides between March 20 and 25, compared with 206 during the same period the year before. Assaults fell to 283, from 2,046 the year before, and robberies dropped to 486, from 5,045.
The drugs are still flowing though.
The statistics, however, do not mean that violence in the country has ceased. In the countryside, war continues. Colombia is home to a swirl of armed groups, many of which are involved in drug production and trafficking. Some of them see the shuttering of businesses and borders as a threat to their revenue streams.
Local leaders who speak out against these armed groups have come under attack, and killings of social leaders have gone on even as the virus spreads and families struggle to deal with lost jobs and increasingly limited food supplies.
The United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, has called on armed groups to declare a cease-fire amid the health crisis, with limited success.
As long as they enforce the curfew, why bother them?
--more--"
Noticeably lacking in that article: Venezuela.
"China delays mask and ventilator exports after quality complaints" by Keith Bradsher New York Times, April 11, 2020
BEIJING — Chinese officials have begun inspecting every shipment of N95 respirators, ventilators, and other medical supplies for quality issues before export, a policy likely to delay the arrival of critical gear at hospitals around the world that are struggling to cope with the coronavirus pandemic.
Damn Chinese!
It's a conspiracy to hurt America!
The policy, announced by the General Administration of Customs on Friday, produced immediate delays Saturday as manufacturers, freight agents, and traders tried to understand how to comply. Depending on the city, they said, the delays could range from a few hours to a few days or longer as government officials rush to comply.
That looks more like American red tape.
The new customs policy comes after a series of complaints from Europe that medical supplies from China had quality problems. Chinese officials have countered that many of these complaints involved industrial respirators that were purchased for medical use but were not designed to meet those standards.
It did say "Made in China," right?
So what did you expect?
The new delays come as countries have complained that a global free-for-all for personal protective equipment has left acute shortages for doctors and nurses. These countries include the United States, Spain, and most recently, Russia.
China is the world’s dominant producer of a wide range of medical supplies. Its manufacturing lead has widened in many sectors as it has engaged in a nationwide mobilization of medical supplies production since late January, when Beijing ordered a lockdown in the city of Wuhan to curb the rapid spread of the coronavirus there.
How did that happen?
The new rules cover China’s exports in 11 categories: medical respirators and surgical masks, medical protective clothing, infrared thermometers, ventilators, surgical caps, medical goggles, medical gloves, medical shoe covers, patient monitors, medical disinfection towels and medical disinfectants.
Wen Guicheng, vice general manager of the Hubei V-Medical Products Co., a manufacturer of caps, masks, and gloves based in the southwestern suburbs of Wuhan in central China, said that his company was trying to avoid delays by speaking with customs officials before exporting more goods.
Noah Blake, a respirator trader in Shanghai, said that one of his shipments had already been delayed by the new rule but added that the new regulation would help make sure that public health agencies and consumers could count on medical supplies imported from China.
This after the crisis there is over and we are two months into this one.
The new rules might also help some factories export what they make.
Beijing’s initial response two weeks ago to quality complaints was to require that factories producing medical supplies be certified by the government before they could export their goods. That policy caused export delays at many factories that previously manufactured everything from winches to cranes but suddenly switched to making medical equipment after the lockdown of Wuhan on Jan. 23.
Like what we do here regarding Iran and all the other countries we have under sanction.
Those factories typically do not have medical certification from Beijing, which can take months to obtain.
If these factories are now allowed to export medical supplies that pass quality inspections, then that could allow many more companies in China to export products needed to fight the pandemic.
As China appears to have brought the virus mostly under control within its borders, it has ramped up exports of safety gear for medical workers fighting the outbreak, and China has mounted a humanitarian aid blitz to allay international criticism that it was slow to alert the world to the dangers of the pandemic.
The New York Times couldn't resist the projection, 'eh?
In the United States, the debate over the quality of Chinese medical supplies has centered on respirators that are manufactured to meet China’s KN95 technical standard, which is slightly different from the N95 standard commonly used in North America. The Food and Drug Administration announced April 3 that it had approved the emergency use of KN95 respirators in medical settings in the United States.....
They were fine for Kushner.
--more--"
If you don't like theirs, you can get them from Indonesia or locally (if you can afford the rents).
The power is still out in Maine, not that you are missing anything. Gives you a chance to get outside and scout some turkeys. Can't shoot them, of course, but you can call them out into the open.
"A 15-year-old Springfield boy died in a single-vehicle crash Friday night in Northampton, according to State Police. At 10:36 p.m. troopers responded to reports of a crash on Route 91, where they found that a 2007 Toyota Camry had left the roadway, State Police said in a statement. The 15-year-old driver was pronounced dead at the scene, State Police spokesman Dave Procopio said in an e-mail. The teen was the only person in the vehicle, according to the statement. Preliminary investigation indicates that the Toyota was traveling south on Route 91 when the car left the road for reasons unknown, went through the guardrail and down an embankment, according to the statement. The crash remains under investigation."
He had the radio turned up too loud.
As for this day in history, it was the day that Boston feminists took over the Globe, the same way they did over five years ago when John Henry bought the the paper and put his wife in charge. They are now running the paper with mostly female reporters and screaming racism as often as possible!
