"China curtails memorials during tomb-sweeping festival" by Anna Fifield and Lyric Li Washington Post, April 3, 2020
For at least two millennia, Chinese people have headed to their ancestors’ graves on the 15th day after the spring equinox to remove weeds and brush away dirt, to offer food and wine and paper money so Grandma and Grandpa can enjoy the afterlife.
Saturday is Tomb-Sweeping Day, but few will be tending to graves this year, despite many recent coronavirus fatalities. Thousands of families, especially those in the outbreak’s epicenter of Wuhan, have been unable to bury their dead.
‘‘No one in the family got to say goodbye to Grandpa or see his face one last time,’’ said Gao Yingwei, an IT worker in Wuhan whose grandfather, Gao Shixu, succumbed to the novel coronavirus on Feb. 7. The 76-year-old died at home; funeral-home staff in hazmat suits came to collect his body, telling the family it would be cremated immediately.
‘‘To this day, we have no idea how his body was handled, where his ashes are, or when we will be able to pick them up,’’ Gao said. ‘‘I don’t even know which funeral parlor those guys were from.’’
Adding to the angst, tomb-sweeping rituals — when huge crowds flock to cemeteries — have been either banned or severely curtailed by authorities nationwide. While a limited number of mourners with reservations will be allowed into graveyards in Beijing and Shanghai, there will be no such gatherings in Wuhan, where the municipal government has banned funeral ceremonies and tomb-sweeping until at least May.
This is ostensibly because of health issues but also reflects Beijing’s political desire, experts say, to deny emotional families the chance to get together and complain about the government’s handling of the outbreak, a matter of acute sensitivity for the ruling Communist Party.
If you substitute Washington, D.C., for Beijing it reads right.
The coronavirus pandemic ravaging the globe officially claimed 2,563 lives in Wuhan, where it began in a market that sold exotic animals for consumption, but evidence emerging from the city as it stirs from its two-month hibernation suggests the real death toll is much higher.
The exotic animal thing looks to be cover for the US bioweapon, if that is not a limited hangout, and the evidence here is that the numbers are being goosed by deaths from other causes, even natural ones. You die now, authority counts it as COVID-related.
Long lines have been forming at funeral homes in Wuhan over the past two weeks, as family members have been informed they may collect their loved ones’ remains ahead of Tomb-Sweeping Day. Some waited six hours to collect an urn, then the ashes.
The Hankou Funeral Parlor’s crematorium was operating 19 hours a day, with male staff enlisted to help carry bodies. In just two days, the home received 5,000 urns, the magazine Caixin reported.
Using photos posted online, social media sleuths have estimated that Wuhan funeral homes had returned 3,500 urns a day since March 23. That would imply a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number. Another widely shared calculation, based on Wuhan’s 84 furnaces running nonstop and each cremation taking an hour, put the death toll at 46,800.
They have been caught using photos from past outbreaks and presenting them as real now, so that doesn't wash. What we are reading, once again, is pure propaganda from the Washington ComPost.
Wuhan residents say the activities belie the official statistics. ‘‘It can’t be right . . . because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?’’ a man, identified only by his surname of Zhang, told Radio Free Asia.
What imagery does that bring to mind, 'eh, and that, too, was a case of wildly inflated deaths that were physical impossible if the official story is to be believed.
US intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded that China’s numbers are much lower than they are in reality.
They also said there were WMDs in Iraq so....
That is where the print copy ended the funeral services.
The web version resurrected this:
China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Thursday that China has been open and transparent about the coronavirus outbreak, and accused US officials of making ‘‘shameless’’ comments casting doubt on Beijing’s accounting of the toll.
Public cemeteries in Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province have said their staff will sweep tombs during the memorial period, and some private funeral companies are offering to tend to graves for paying customers, who can watch it live-streamed, but this robs Chinese families not only of the chance to honor their deceased, but also a rare opportunity to get together for an outing, eating and talking and traveling side by side.
That is what our governments are trying to do to us.
As China has developed, metropolises have built cemeteries on their outskirts to preserve urban land. That means tomb-sweeping is a major undertaking for many that involves traveling a long distance, usually bumper-to-bumper, so families make a day of it. Chinese authorities want none of that this year.
Instead, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has told local authorities to ‘‘make full use’’ of online funeral ceremonies and online tomb-sweeping, where people can perform electronic bows and make digital offerings. On the Heavenly Cemetery website, for example, customers can upload photos and videos of their deceased relatives and offer them a virtual glass of baijiu liquor, or light a virtual cigar with a virtual lighter for a few cents.
That way they can zoom in on you.
Fu Shou Yuan, one of China’s largest funeral providers, launched an online tomb-sweeping service a few years ago but it wasn’t particularly popular. ‘‘The epidemic is encouraging more people to have a try,’’ said Zhou Chen, the company’s assistant general manager.
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Related (my emphasis): "You may be interested to know that here in China it's all over. Shops are all open, the streets are full, and restaurants are again hosting big noisy parties. I've already been to several. Schools open on a staggered basis next week - unis first, then high schools, then primary. Yours truly back to work. Interestingly, my old swine flu question, 'Do you know anyone who has the lurgy?' followed by, 'Do you know anyone who knows anyone who has the lurgy?' still holds water. Everyone I ask it of ends up scratching their head, somewhat uncomfortably I might add given that people here (minor criticisms aside) broadly support their leaders. I am in the second biggest city in the province next to Hubei and in spite of a spectacularly efficient transport system (just like the shinkansen only noisier with trains running like clockwork every ten minutes) delivering thousands of people from Wuhan hither and yon prior to the shutdown, according my journo cousin here we only had a hundred or so people fall ill and that resulting in a single fatality. He didn't reply when I said that that sounds like regular flu. Go figure the logic of thousands of people from Wuhan travelling within China during the given pre-shutdown window resulting in not particularly high figures compared to the tiny numbers of the aforementioned travelling overseas with everyone in those countries going down like ninepins. Like that makes sense? Let the record reflect that the witness is shaking his head in disbelief. Anonymous 30 March 2020 at 20:11"
Also see: Return to Sender
The pre$$ seems to lose such things very quickly.
"Prince Charles remotely opened a vast temporary hospital for COVID-19 patients at London’s main exhibition center Friday, as the number of coronavirus-related deaths reported in the UK surpassed China’s official total. While confirmed virus cases and deaths continued to rise steeply, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he remained in isolation with a fever eight days after testing positive for the new virus. Charles, who on Monday completed a week of self-isolating as he recovered from COVID-19, said via video link that he was “enormously touched” to be asked to open the new Nightingale Hospital, which was built in just nine days at the vast ExCel conference center in east London, with corridors stretching over half a mile. Charles described himself as one of “the lucky ones” with only mild symptoms but noted “for some it will be a much harder journey.” The number of virus-related deaths in Britain has sharply increased in the past two weeks. Government figures provided Friday showed that a total of 3,605 people who tested positive have died in British hospitals, an increase of 684 from a day earlier. The government’s updated count would make the UK the latest country with a higher death toll from the worldwide pandemic than China, which according to a Johns Hopkins University tally officially reported 3,326 deaths from the outbreak that emerged there in December....."
I don't believe BoJo, and they have suppressed the adjusted figures and his own NHS report on infectious diseases. The death numbers aren't any higher than average, adding to the sense that it's another drill and part of the simulation.
"French health officials on Friday reported 588 new deaths in hospitals linked to the country’s coronavirus outbreak, marking the largest daily rise in French hospital deaths since the outbreak began. The country’s total number of confirmed deaths now stands at 6,507. That toll includes deaths recorded in nursing and retirement homes, which until Thursday were not included in the country’s total death count. Nursing home deaths now amount to more than 20 percent of all coronavirus-linked deaths confirmed in France. Jérôme Salomon, French director-general of health, announced Friday that “there have never been so many critically ill people in France at the same time for one illness.” France has imposed a lockdown to try to slow the spread and officials implemented new checkpoints ahead of school holidays, Reuters reported, amid concerns people would try to skirt the restrictions (Washington Post)."
"Mosques were allowed to remain open in Pakistan on Friday, when Muslims gather for weekly prayers, even as the coronavirus pandemic spread and much of the country had shut down. Prime Minister Imran Khan is relying on restricting the size of congregations attending mosques and advice to stay at home from religious groups like the country’s Islamic Ideology Council; however, some provinces have issued their own lockdown orders to prevent Muslims from gathering for Friday prayers. Still, mosques remain open in Pakistan, even as they have been shut down across much of the Middle East and elsewhere. The Middle East has confirmed over 85,000 cases of the virus and over 3,700 deaths, most of them in Iran. Pakistan, with 2,450 confirmed cases and 36 deaths, has been sharply criticized for moving too slow to curb large gatherings, including a gathering of tens of thousands of Muslims from several Islamic countries in March. The gathering of Tableeghi Jamaat missionaries is blamed for several outbreaks of the new virus elsewhere in the world. The first confirmed cases that emerged in Gaza were traced to the gathering....."
OMG!
They are blaming Pakistanis for the coronavirus in Gaza?!
How did they get through the Israeli blockade?
Related: Pakistan rearrests 4 men in Daniel Pearl case
That is after a court overturned their convictions just the day before, so one is left to wonder what pressure was brought to bear.
"Early this week, the streets of the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak were bustling with shoppers as ultra-Orthodox residents, obeying their religious leaders, ignored pleas to stay home in the face of the coronavirus threat. By Friday, Bnei Brak had become the country’s worst hot spot and now resembles a ghost town. The military will soon be sending in troops to assist local authorities. One expert estimated that nearly 40 percent of the city’s population might already have been infected. The city has become a lightning rod for anger and frustration by some secular Israelis who allege insular Haredi communities — with disproportionately high numbers of confirmed cases — are undermining national efforts to contain the virus. The pandemic has threatened to upend deep-seated customs in the religious world, including blind obedience to religious leaders and the belief that religious studies and traditions take precedence over the rules of a modern state. The crisis is rooted in a combination of factors. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox tend to live in poor, crowded neighborhoods where sickness can quickly spread. Synagogues, the centerpiece of social life, bring men together to pray and socialize in small spaces."
What are they saying, there are dirty Jews living in ghettos?
How could that be?
"Israel’s unprecedented political stalemate — in which no party has been able to construct a governing majority in the deeply divided country for more than a year — has persisted through three ugly national elections, relentless campaigning, and round-after-round of negotiations. Now, not even the surrender of one side has been enough to create a breakthrough. At least, not yet. The haggling has unfolded against the backdrop of a worsening COVID-19 outbreak, with the number of infections topping 7,000. Twice during negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself has had to go into isolation after being exposed to infected individuals including, most recently, his own minister of health. It was the pandemic that forced Benny Gantz, the former army chief of staff who spent the last 16 months trying to unseat Netanyahu, to finally give up his drive to end Netanyahu’s long tenure at the top of Israeli politics. ‘‘These are unusual times, and they call for unusual decisions. That’s why I intend to explore the formation of a national emergency government,’’ Gantz said in address to the Knesset after his election as speaker....."
Yeah, autocrats everywhere are coming together, and as I remarked earlier, how odd is it to find the Jewish religious extremists in the same life raft with the rest of us? Just keep it down, will ya'?
Also see: "Uncertainty deepened in Poland on Friday over how and when the country can move forward with a presidential election scheduled for May amid the coronavirus pandemic....."
What does a Pole see in the mirror (answer here)?
Hey, you gotta laugh at yourself sometime.
"A member of a popular folk music group that is banned in Turkey died on the 288th day of a hunger strike that she and a colleague started while imprisoned to protest the government’s treatment of their band, according to a post on the group’s Twitter account. Grup Yorum said singer Helin Bolek, 28, died Friday at a home in Istanbul where she had been staging the hunger strike in an attempt to pressure the government into reversing its position on the band and its members. Grup Yorum, known for its protest songs, is a folk collective with rotating band members. It has been prohibited from performing in Turkey since 2016, and authorities have jailed some of its members. The government accuses Grup Yorum of links to the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front."
The Turks left the carcasses to rot in the street:
"The body was wrapped in a plastic tarp, swollen, already attracting flies. He had been a neighbor, a man Rosangelys Valdiviezo passed while walking home from work, though they’d never exchanged words. Now he lay in front of his home, one of an untold number of bodies cast out in the streets of Guayaquil, Ecuador, a sweltering South American city being ravaged by the novel coronavirus. Valdiviezo, a 30-year-old seafood worker, said the body had lain out in the tropical heat for six days. ‘‘I am very afraid,’’ said Valdiviezo, a Venezuelan migrant who moved to Guayaquil, by telephone. ‘‘I’m terrified of dying so far from home.’’ Ecuador’s largest city, a commercial center of nearly 3 million, is emerging as the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak in Latin America. Conditions reported in local news accounts, social media, and telephone interviews document fly-covered bodies on sidewalks in the poverty-stricken metropolis and corpses left inside homes for days. Ecuador confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on Valentine’s Day: a 71-year-old Ecuadoran woman who arrived in Guayaquil after a visit to Spain. Since then, the crisis has ballooned, jumping to more than 2,200 cases, or roughly 70 percent of Ecuador’s total, far surpassing the numbers in Quito, the capital."
That is what New York City will soon look like:
"New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Friday he will order ventilators be redeployed to overwhelmed New York City area hospitals from other places amid alarming increases in COVID-19-related deaths and hospitalizations. New York state tallied its biggest daily jump yet in deaths — up 562 to 2,935. Almost 15,000 people were hospitalized. “You have more deaths, you have more people coming into hospitals than any other night,” a weary sounding Cuomo told a state Capitol news briefing. With city hospitals facing a shortage of critical breathing machines, Cuomo said he will sign an order allowing the state to take ventilators and protective equipment from institutions within the state to hospitals where they are needed. There are hospitals and other institutions that have ventilators and protective equipment they are not using now, he said. “I’m not going to be in a position where people are dying and we have several hundred ventilators in our own state somewhere else,” Cuomo said. National Guard members will pick up the ventilators for use downstate, he said."
Actually, the hospital board claimed they had plenty on hand, but anyway:
Years of understaffing, mismanagement set deadly stage for coronavirus outbreak at Holyoke Soldiers’ Home, employees say
The state of our veterans care system is a disgrace.
Employees threw away items from the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke where several people have died due to coronavirus. (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff)
Or you could say it is literally garbage, I guess.
Remember when they threw $17 billion at the VA during the Obummercare years scandal and then dropped the ball.
"Amid pandemic, state moving infected and non-infected alike from Chelsea Soldiers’ Home; Bedford VA Medical Center has accepted several veterans" by Matt Stout Globe Staff, April 3, 2020
Amid a deadly cluster of coronavirus cases, state officials have begun transferring veterans out the Chelsea Soldiers’ Home, including those who aren’t infected but are at high risk — a move that has all but emptied the facility of confirmed cases, officials said Friday.
The decision comes as officials are also grappling with another outbreak at the state Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, where they have launched an investigation into how several deaths went unreported for days and at least 15 veterans have died after contracting the virus. Officials there plan to move as many of 20 veterans who’ve tested negative to a local hospital.
Those moves will be presented to us as increasingly occupied hospital rooms and beds due to coronavirus, watch.
At least two veterans have died at the Chelsea home after contracting COVID-19, and state officials disclosed Friday that cases continued to escalate there, with 11 other residents and five staff members testing positive. Twelve other residents were still awaiting test results.
Brooke Karanovich, a spokeswoman for the state’s Office of Health and Human Services, declined to say how many veterans in total have moved from the Chelsea home, citing privacy concerns, but as of Friday afternoon, she said none of those who have tested positive remained in Chelsea.
The facility has also begun proactively transferring any veterans who are symptomatic or “who are at higher risk” of infection to other facilities within the Boston VA Health Care System to be monitored, state officials said, but the moves haven’t eased all concerns. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward J. Markey and Representatives Richard E. Neal and Ayanna Pressley wrote a letter to the director of the Veterans Affairs New England Healthcare System on Friday urging him to “obtain more resources” to bolster supplies and testing at not just VA facilities but the two soldiers’ homes they’re helping support.
“Given the high-risk resident populations at both facilities and the shortages of medical supplies across the Commonwealth, we are concerned that Chelsea Soldiers’ Home is on the path to a similar outbreak” as Holyoke, they wrote.
Before the letter was released, Governor Charlie Baker and his aides said Friday that officials at the Chelsea home had taken various steps those in Holyoke hadn’t.
“One of the biggest differences between Chelsea … and the Holyoke Soldiers’ home is, people were reporting,” Baker said of notifying state officials of new cases. “People were doing what they were supposed to do.”
Yeah, Holyoke and Springfield are being recalcitrant about turning over numbers.
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"Mass. reports 38 more coronavirus-related deaths; number of confirmed cases rises to 10,402" by Travis Andersen, Martin Finucane and Laura Crimaldi Globe Staff, April 3, 2020
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Massachusetts surged past 10,000 on Friday, as the state reported its largest single-day tally of new cases — and deaths — since the outbreak began.
An additional 38 people, most in their 70s or older, died due to COVID-19, state data show, bringing the total to 192, and as clusters of cases at nursing homes continued to emerge around the state, the number of people living in long-term-care facilities who tested positive nearly doubled, growing from 197 to 382 — a rise that health officials attributed, in part, to reconfiguring which centers they consider as offering long-term care.
See? Died due to COVID-19, no autopsy.
At a news conference, Governor Charlie Baker detailed the state’s plan to trace the contacts of people who have tested positive, “an enormously powerful tool for public health officials to rely on in their battle” against the coronavirus pandemic, Baker said.
Plans call for the “community tracing” program to include a virtual call center that will consist of nearly 1,000 contact tracers.
The staff will contact people who test positive to make sure they’re healthy, but also get contact information from them, and then contact those people who may have been exposed so they can self-quarantine or get treatment.
They intrusion is all for your own protection.
“What we’re doing here today is the beginning of breaking of new ground in the fight against COVID-19,” Baker said, calling the program unique in the nation. "We need to get out ahead of this, and do everything we possibly can here in Massachusetts to deal with COVID-19 through and in the aftermath of the surge.”
Must have hit a gas pocket because this stinks.
Officials’ goal is to get the new initiative staffed and ready to go by the end of the month, but some public health specialists have been skeptical that ramped-up contact tracing would have much of an impact, with hundreds of new cases already being reported every day.
“Three weeks ago this would have been helpful,” Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, told the Globe a day before the program was announced.
It is a way to waste money, though.
The 1,436 new cases announced Friday brought the statewide total to 10,402 — a roughly 16 percent increase that emerged from a new daily high of 6,354 completed tests, and a daunting number for any tracing initiative.
Where you been? Who you been with?
“From where I sit, I view us as early in this game,” Baker said, noting that projections that he released Thursday put the possible total number of cases as high as 172,000.
Meanwhile, the state sought to contain deadly outbreaks at long-term-care facilities that house seniors.
At Williamstown Commons Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in the northwest corner of the state, two more residents have died from the virus, bringing the death toll to three, according to the facility’s parent company, Berkshire Healthcare.
The facility’s first fatality occurred last Saturday when an 86-year-old woman with the virus died.
So far 33 residents there have tested positive for COVID-19, and 10 more tests are pending, said Lisa Gaudet, spokeswoman for Berkshire Healthcare
The company also operates Hunt Nursing and Rehabilitation in Danvers, where one resident has died and 20 have tested positive for the virus. On Thursday, Gaudet said the Massachusetts National Guard tested the remaining 55 patients.
At Life Care Center of Nashoba Valley in Littleton, where at least 17 people have tested positive for COVID-19 and one has died, the National Guard on Friday tested the remaining patients, at least 80 people.
The state has not yet followed through on a pledge to release data about each nursing home or long-term-care facility outbreak, and some families say they’ve been left in the dark.
All I can say to that is EVIL!!
Among the families that struggled to get updates from Life Care Center of Nashoba Valley was the son of Hazel Plummer, who is 111 years old and the state’s oldest resident.
David Plummer said he wasn’t aware of the COVID-19 cases at the facility until his son in Chicago alerted him on Thursday. Plummer said he called the facility repeatedly and even drove to the nursing home on Friday, but was turned away at the door by National Guard members who have been deployed to help test patients for the virus.
Hmmmmmmmm!
Then Friday evening, Plummer, 83, got a call from a representative who told him his mother has no fever or congestion and was tested for COVID-19 by the National Guard. He said the testing results are expected next week.
She is vulnerable to the virus because of her age and history of upper respiratory infections, he said.
“Let’s face it. As old she is, someday she’s going to pass. It’s just a given, but I would prefer that obviously that she doesn’t get this virus if it’s at all possible,” Plummer said.
In December, the facility hosted a celebration for Hazel when she became the state’s oldest resident, according to the nursing home’s website. The party included a cake, trivia about 1908, the year she was born, and a videotaped message from Governor Charlie Baker.
The secret to a long life, she said at the gathering, is “eating ginger.”
Not Vitamin C, which seems to help against coronaviruses.
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Also see: 24 more coronavirus-related deaths, more than 1,300 new confirmed cases in Mass.
Related:
"51 residents positive for coronavirus at Wilmington nursing home, despite having no symptoms" by Jeremy C. Fox Globe Correspondent, April 3, 2020
They test positive with no symptoms, huh?
Maybe they are not really sick.
A second nursing home in Massachusetts has delayed plans to be turned into a temporary recovery center for COVID-19 patients after a high number of its residents tested positive for the coronavirus.
AdviniaCare at Wilmington said 51 of 98 residents had tested positive for the respiratory illness, and that it would temporarily halt plans to relocate residents to other facilities, according to a statement Friday from its owner, Pointe Group Care LLC.
Thankfully, finally, people are fighting back.
The decision by the Norwood-based company came just three days after a Worcester nursing home said it would temporarily halt plans to be turned into a recovery center after one of its residents had become infected with the respiratory illness.
Residents at AdviniaCare who tested positive will be kept separate from those who tested negative, the company said, and will receive care from Partners HealthCare. Staff members at the 142-bed facility will also be tested, according to the statement.
“To say we are surprised by the findings would be an understatement,” Chris Hannon, chief operating officer at Pointe Group Care, said in the statement. “Considering how aggressive we have been, this points to how insidious this virus is; we are fighting an invisible enemy. We are ensuring that residents with the illness get the specialized care and support that they need.”
Dr. Chuck Tsun-Zhi Pu, Partners Healthcare’s medical director for population health, said the testing protocol had helped prevent further spread of the virus.
“It makes clear the challenging clinical circumstances that we are all operating under, and the important role that testing plays in battling this pandemic,” he said in the statement.
Except that they are Mickey Mouse test kits that detect false positives 75% of the time.
The company said it has followed all guidelines from the state Department of Public Health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since the pandemic’s onset. It has been working closely with the Massachusetts Covid-19 Response Command Center and Partners HealthCare to plan the transition, which state officials had requested, it said.
They follow the guidelines and yet it spreads like wildfire. WTF?
The loss of the first two sites planned as recovery centers came just days after Governor Charlie Baker unveiled an ambitious plan to find 1,000 nursing home beds across the state that can be used to treat recovering coronavirus patients.
Baker said at a news briefing Monday afternoon that the goal of the effort was to “ensure that we have the right kinds of beds in the right places to serve people once the surge arrives.”
That will be the next two weeks, per simulation.
AdviniaCare and Spaulding Hospital in Cambridge were the first locations identified as potential sites for Boston-area COVID-19 patients who are discharged from hospitals but may still be contagious and in need of oxygen, physical therapy, and other support.
Spokespeople for Baker and for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday night.
Separately on Friday, the Chestnut Park at Cleveland Circle assisted living facility said one resident and two staff members had tested positive for the virus.....
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More corpses for you:
Daughter, grandson of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend presumed dead after going missing in Chesapeake Bay
I'm told they "went missing in a canoe in Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, and the husband, David McKean, said in a statement posted to Facebook, that his wife and son had gone out in the canoe Thursday to retrieve a kickball that had gone into a “small, shallow cove” behind Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s home on the bay. The family was staying there, he said, while quarantining for the coronavirus pandemic and “hoping to give our kids more space than we have at home in DC to run around.” About a half-hour after getting into the canoe, he said, “they were spotted by an onlooker from land, who saw them far out from shore, and called the police. After that last sighting, they were not seen again. The Coast Guard recovered their canoe, which was capsized and miles away, at approximately 6:30 yesterday evening.”
Why the Globe decided to omit that waves were 2-3 feet and winds were gusting up to 30 mph is beyond me, and would it have been worth it to retrieve a kickball?
Cue the funereal music:
"In 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot and killed while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee; his slaying was followed by a wave of rioting (Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Chicago were among cities particularly hard hit.) Suspected gunman James Earl Ray later pleaded guilty to assassinating King, then spent the rest of his life claiming he’d been the victim of a setup."
They took his life, but not his pride.
A quarter million Americans could die from the coronavirus, maybe more
Scharfenberg says the United States is about to endure a collective trauma unlike anything in recent memory, and if you go outside you will smell it.
Of course, many scientists are already casting doubt on Planet Lockdown.
