Moon of Alabama Teams Up With Rachel Maddow to Promote Covid Detention Camps
16.8 New Unemployment Claims in 3 Weeks: Greater Depression Approaches
What I would further like to point out is the videographer is someone who has always presented himself as measured and calm. He investigates official sources and gleans his comments from things that are not from "conspiracy theorists." He is far from alarmist, and yet he is nearly apoplectic about where this is going, and he is right. Nor do I see anyone stopping it, although cracks have emerged and hopefully the lid can be blown off.
The MoA is interesting because you really have to go North to find any semblance of true investigative reporting. It's not really that Farr at all and won't cost you a thing.
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that it would begin using antibody tests to see what proportion of the population has already been infected. “Within a period of a week or so, we are going to have a relatively large number of tests available,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the United States, said Friday morning on CNN. He said the White House coronavirus task force was discussing the idea of “certificates of immunity,” which could be issued to people who had previously been infected. “As we get to the point of considering opening the country,” Fauci said, “it is very important to understand how much that virus has penetrated society.” Immunity certificates, he said, had “some merit under certain circumstances.” The idea of providing proof of immunity to allow workers to return to their jobs is being considered in many countries, including Britain and Italy, but as with any test, they are not perfect, and there have been problems with their accuracy (NEW YORK TIMES)."
Since when have their been problems with the tests, because that is not coming across in the reporting!
In any event, Bill Gates just had an orgasm with all of it being measured by models that are wildly inconsistent, but....
"US projects summer spike in infections if stay-at-home orders are lifted" New York Times April 10, 2020
Stay-at-home orders, school closures, and social distancing greatly reduce infections of the coronavirus, but lifting those restrictions after just 30 days will lead to a dramatic infection spike this summer and death tolls that would rival doing nothing, government projections indicate.
This is the same government that projected 2.2 MILLION DEATHS before dropping it down to 60,000 in their most recent projection (liberally sprinkled with deaths from preexisting health conditions and those by other means, as Birx admitted).
Now the New York Times comes along with this report that doesn't even mention the faulty models. It just accepts and stenographs what comes from the lying government.
The projections obtained by The New York Times come from the departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. The models use three scenarios. The first has policymakers doing nothing to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. The second, labeled “steady state,” assumes schools remain closed until summer, 25 percent of Americans telework from home, and some social distancing continues. The third scenario includes a 30-day shelter in place on top of those “steady state” restrictions.
That is where we are headed, that third scenario!
This is evil, folks, and the New York Times is the main mouthpiece.
The documents, dated April 9, contain no dates for when shelter-in-place orders were delivered nor do they contain specific dates for when spikes would hit. The risk they show of easing shelter-in-place orders currently in effect in most of the country undercut recent statements by President Trump that the United States could be ready to reopen “very, very soon.”
He is done anyway, and who really cares at this point? He's part of it now, and failed to stop it. His legacy will be the Grand Depression, worse than Hoover! We will have Trumpvilles! That is assuming we are not all exterminated in the COVID concentration camps.
The model foresees a bump in the demand for ventilators — considered a stand-in for serious COVID-19 infection rates — 30 days after stay-at-home orders are issued, a major spike in infections about 100 days after, and peaking 150 days after the initial order (assuming further shelter-in-place policies are not implemented to reduce future peaks).
For most regions that implemented stay-at-home orders in late March, including New York City, Massachusetts, and Illinois, that spike would come in mid to late summer.
Even though they have no dates, blah, blah, blah, this is just a way to keep COVID rolling and rolling and rolling. Rolling lockdowns, let you out, LOCKDOWN! A PRISON PLANET, if you will!
The government’s conclusions are sobering. Without any mitigation, such as school closings, shelter-in-place orders, telework, and socially distancing, the death toll from coronavirus could have reached 300,000, but if the administration lifts the 30-day stay-at-home orders, the death total is estimated to reach 200,000, even if schools remain closed until summer, 25 percent of the country continues to work from home, and some social distancing continues.
If nothing was done, infection rates would top out at 195 million Americans, and 965,000 people would require hospitalization in an intensive care unit, according to the projections’ “best guess,” but with a 30-day shelter in place and other measures, infections would still reach 160 million and 740,000 would need intensive care.
This is absolutely disgusting propaganda spewing from the New York Times.
The models show a higher demand for ventilators in the short term if states had never issued the stay-at-home orders, but the spike in demand 150 days after lifting such an order is expected to be more severe than if the United States had never issued such orders and instead relied on school closures, sending people home to telework, and directing the public to socially distance.
The federal agencies advised in the model that the projected demand for ventilators are “a worst-case scenario” and did not factor in states sharing the lifesaving devices across state lines.
Trump has floated the idea of reopening the United States to boost the economy, even as state governors, hospitals around the country, and the federal government’s inspector general for Health and Human Services have warned of widespread shortages of test kits, protective gear, and medical equipment.
“You see what’s happening and where we are and where we stand,” Trump said. “And hopefully we’re going to be opening up — you can call it ‘opening’ very, very — very, very soon, I hope.”
Forget it, and who cares? He is obviously impotent, a figurehead and carnival barker who has betrayed the American people.
Economists say that lifting restrictions — particularly on nonessential businesses — will restore some activity to an economy that is currently in free fall, shedding jobs, and contracting rapidly.
Many experts caution that growth will be slow when it returns because people will be wary of resuming normal activities before the country has far more extensive testing for the virus to help people assess the risk of contracting it if they leave their homes. Such a system appears nowhere close to deployment.
If you decide not to leave they will come and get you. Kick the door down if they have, too.
At a news briefing at the White House on Friday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that although he had not seen those projections, he assumed that whenever the restrictions are lifted, there would be an increase in cases, which would heighten the need to be able to identity them, isolate them, and trace them.
Then they will give you your "certificate of immunity" so you can do e$$ential work!
“When we decide at a proper time when we’re going to be relaxing some of the restrictions, there’s no doubt that you’re going to see cases,” he said. “I would be so surprised if we did not see cases. The question is how you respond to them.”
These f***ers are goddamn evil.
Asked if he thought that Americans would have to choose between going back to work and staying healthy, Trump said that he thought they could do both. “We’re looking at a date,” he said. “We hope we’re going to be able to fulfill a certain date, but we’re not doing anything until we know that this country is going to be healthy. We don’t want to go back and start doing it over again.”
Is that when the drill will be standing down?
When Trump was later asked if he wanted to ease the social distancing guidelines as soon as May 1, as some have reported, Trump said that he wanted to reopen the country as soon as possible but that “the facts are going to determine what we do.” He said that he would listen to his health experts if they warn him that that would be too soon. “I listen to them about everything,” he said. “I think they are actually surprised.”
I've given up on him.
“There are two sides,” added Trump, who at one point had wanted to reopen the country by Easter. “I understand the other side of the argument very well. Because I look at both sides of an argument. I’m listening to them carefully, though,” but he also said that he would be convening another task force, including business leaders and doctors, to consider the question of when to reopen the country.
Yeah, he sees both sides of the issue -- like a Sith.
What if there are more than two sides?
Then his thinking is quite narrow and limited, isn't it?
--more--"
I will be getting back too the economy below, but first:
"As the worldwide death toll from the coronavirus surged past 100,000 Friday, the epidemic in the United States is cutting cut a widening swath through not just New York City but the entire three-state metropolitan area of 20 million people connected by a tangle of subways, trains, and buses. In the bedroom communities across the Hudson River in New Jersey, to the east on Long Island, and north to Connecticut, officials were recording some of the worst outbreaks in the country, even as public health authorities expressed optimism that the pace of infections appeared to be slowing. Even so, New York officials said the number of people in intensive care dropped for the first time since mid-March and hospitalizations were slowing: 290 new patients in a single day, compared with daily increases of more than 1,000 last week. Governor Andrew Cuomo said that if the trend holds, New York might not need the overflow field hospitals that officials have been scrambling to build....."
Oh, yeah?
No mass graves or anything?
Looks like the drill is coming to an end, or this phase of it anyway.
So how can the subways, trains, and buses be causing continuing contagion when no one riding them?
"Plans to turn the Cathedral of St. John the Divine into a vast coronavirus field hospital were abruptly shelved Thursday, with public health officials saying that a leveling off in virus-related hospitalizations in New York City had made them reassess the need for the project, but behind the scenes, Episcopal leaders said they were upset by the role played in the project by Samaritan’s Purse, an evangelical humanitarian organization whose approach to LGBT issues runs counter to that of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, which is based out of the cathedral. Samaritan’s Purse is led by the Rev. Franklin Graham, who has been criticized for anti-Muslim and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and whose organization is based on a statement of faith that includes a belief that “marriage is exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female.” The Episcopal Church did not realize that Samaritan’s Purse would be involved in the project when it offered the use of the cathedral to Mount Sinai Health System last month, and the slowing rate of hospitalizations might have created an opportunity for all parties to step back from a fraught situation, officials said. The project was intended to turn the church, which describes itself as the largest cathedral in the world, into a 200-bed medical facility. If the need for hospital space increases, those plans may be reactivated, but Dean Clifton Daniel III, the cathedral’s leader, said he thought Samaritan’s Purse would not be back (NEW YORK TIMES)."
God be praised!
"Kansas’ governor, Laura Kelly, a Democrat, sued a Republican-controlled legislative council on Thursday after it revoked her executive order that limited church gatherings, marking the latest chapter in an escalating conflict between public health and religion during one of the holiest times of the year. In an interview Thursday, Kelly called the vote ‘‘mind-blowing.’’ ‘‘This is a purely political move, one that I find incredibly unfortunate,’’ she said. Although the Legislature as a whole has the authority to check her emergency powers, she argued, the seven-person council does not. The rift between the governor and GOP legislative leaders caused mixed messages and confusion across the state this week, as thousands prepare to celebrate Easter while sticking to social distancing guidelines....."
Related:
As Christians celebrate Easter, faithful find new connections while virus separates them from church
Virtual services animate the flock and even draw a larger audience
Like sheeple being led to slaughter through a drive-through confessional.
Christians observe good Friday in isolation
It's a personal connection to God anyway.
You know, with no mass gatherings allowed religion will fall by the wayside, to be replaced by the God of the State (and Bill Gates with his Mark of the Beast. That's the rapture you are going to see. Not people disappearing and going to heaven; they are going to disappear in COVID concentration camps never to be seen again).
Clergy celebrate Good Friday in damaged Notre Dame
Here is your chocolate rabbit.
British prime minister needs time to ‘rest up,’ father says
He won't be going to the French Riviera:
French send jet-setters back to United Kingdom
Maybe they could fly(?) to Moscow:
Moscow officials say virus has pushed city to its limit
Me, too.
Kenyans injured in stampede over food aid in capital slum
Coming to America sooner than you think, a lot sooner.
The Globe fortunately puts me at ease regarding all the fear and panic they have driven:
Staff members chose flowers outside Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston on Friday. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff)
Hmmm. Beds are allegedly filling up with a deadly and very contagious virus and they are busy with that?
Did you notice the people in the background practicing social distancing -- NOT!
Related:
"Hydrangeas, tulips, pansies, and daffodils were used to create the heart outside Beth Israel by workers from Cityscapes, the Boston-based floral company behind the gesture. Cityscapes owner Jan Goodman came up with the idea to support health care workers in the way she knows best — with flowers....."
The trouble with calling them health care ‘heroes’ is we’re failing to acknowledge they’re also human.
"Boston’s major hospitals so far staying ahead of high demand for ICU beds; Hospital officials say rising infection rates still require vigilance against overcapacity in intensive care units" by Liz Kowalczyk Globe Staff, April 10, 2020
Boston’s major hospitals are largely staying ahead of the surging demand for intensive care beds in the coronavirus pandemic and, so far, leaders are cautiously optimistic they will avoid the overwhelming crush of patients that has hit other cities.
This is stinking more of a damn drill every day!
Though some doctors predict infections and deaths will continue to climb for about two weeks, two hospital leaders said they believe advanced planning and social distancing efforts are paying off, potentially allowing the health care system to sidestep worst-case projections.
Can you sigh in anger?
Oh, wait, there is a “glimmer of hope.''
--more--"
Look who is coming to the rescue with the PPE:
"In January, as the novel coronavirus emerged in China, Chinese-Americans Robert Lu and Qiuyang Zhang could see from afar how ill-equipped the hospitals were. They realized immediately that first responders, here and in China, would need huge quantities of equipment to protect them from infection. In just weeks, Lu and Zhang raised more than $300,000 to ship 440,000 pieces of equipment, including gloves, masks, goggles, and protective gowns, to China, and have since launched a similar campaign in the United States....."
My cross to bear is my addiction to the Globe, but now that the sale of coffee has been banned I doubt I will be frequenting the newsstand ever again. That's probably what they want.
"Treating addiction on the streets of Boston over the phone; The coronavirus has sparked innovations in care that many hope will outlast the pandemic" by Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff, April 3, 2020
Recently Dr. Jessica Taylor wrote a prescription for a patient she had never met, an act that would have been illegal a few days earlier.
The patient, homeless and addicted to opioids, had been approached by an outreach worker with a cellphone, and standing on a street somewhere in Boston, the patient used FaceTime to talk with Taylor about wanting to get back on the anti-addiction drug buprenorphine.
Yeah, the pharmaceuticals who are furiously working on a vaccine to save us all (pffft) are the ones who foisted the over-prescription of opioids on people to create a revenue stream!
Such encounters, now permitted under regulations newly loosened for the coronavirus crisis, have become routine for Taylor, as the pandemic transforms addiction care in ways never seen before.
In a matter of days — in some cases literally overnight — services for people with addiction in Massachusetts have morphed from office visits to phone calls, from meeting rooms to laptops, from drop-in centers to street outreach.
Let's hope they don't become addicted to the Internet!
The coronavirus pandemic is potentially a disaster for people with addiction, whether in recovery or still actively using, because limitations on face-to-face interactions can sever them from essential services and social support, and the crisis exploded amid an already troubling situation — the unremitting high rate of overdose deaths throughout the state and an ongoing outbreak of HIV among drug users in Boston, but the need to respond to the peril, along with the temporary easing of federal and state regulations, has led to innovations that make addiction care more accessible.
I wonder if the drug-addled can see the inherent illogic in s**t spew.
You are now restricted and alone, but somehow care and support are more widely available via the 5G computer network, right?
For Taylor, the medical director of Boston Medical Center’s Faster Paths to Treatment program, collaborating with outreach workers (employed by the hospital and the city) has connected her with patients who would be reluctant to visit a clinic or hospital. “It’s been a very exciting change for us,” Taylor said.
This is giving me the DTs.
With restrictions on telehealth lifted, outpatient treatment programs throughout the state have switched to phone calls or videoconferencing for many, if not most, patient encounters.
If that is going to be the future of medical diagnostic care by your primary care physician, who needs 'em?
“I don’t think anyone’s ever dealt with anything like this before. We’re all a little overwhelmed, but we just kind of kicked it into high gear really fast," said Colleen LaBelle, director of Boston Medical Center’s Office-Based Addiction Treatment program, which serves some 800 patients.
For LaBelle’s program, that meant rapidly transitioning some 90 percent of its patients from office visits to phone calls and texts, buying cheap phones for those who didn’t have them, but even amid such efforts, many may be slipping away.
Oh, only may be slipping away, doesn't mean they are, and who cares?
With the success of the new recovery paradigm being promoted by the Globe, why let a few deaths of worthless addicts ruin it?
Patrick Doyle, a self-described “family addiction coach” who helps people navigate addiction care and recovery, says families he’s worked with for years are no longer returning his calls, and when he offered on Twitter to provide his services for free during the crisis, he got few takers.
Maybe COVID claimed their lives.
Maybe he should follow up on it more than a phone call!
“They’re struggling on a good day,” Doyle said of people coping with addiction. “All of a sudden, the stress on them is intensifying. They don’t have the tools yet to cope with increased stress.”
At least the outreach workers with a cellphone will help -- if you are homeless anyway!
With so many aspects of society closed down, some routes into treatment are blocked.
So what?
These innovations should outlast all that; let's hope the addict can.
The Gavin Foundation, a Boston addiction treatment provider, often gets referrals from the courts for people picked up for trouble-making related to addiction, but with the courts shut down, and people staying home, many may be foundering on their own, said John McGahan, the foundation’s president and chief executive. “The number of interventions we do through the courts is dramatically dropped,” he said.
At least they can run out to the liquor store for a belt!
Similarly, High Point Treatment Center, whose services include programs for people ordered into treatment by the courts, has seen only a trickle of these so-called Section 35 patients since the virus hit. Overall, High Point is operating at 70 percent capacity, down from its usual 90 percent. Payments for services, most from the state’s Medicaid program, have dropped by 20 to 25 percent, said chief executive Daniel Mumbauer.
Meanwhile, both the Gavin Foundation and High Point are finding that patients aren’t leaving residential programs because they feel safe there and lack prospects for a job or apartment in a crashing economy.
What is going to happen when their funding fries up, or is the funding based on rich philanthropists and is therefore protected?
The sudden disappearance of job opportunities has stymied people seeking independence while living in sober homes — private residences for people newly in recovery. Christine Driscoll O’Neill, executive director of One Life at a Time, a Weymouth job-training program for people with addiction, was in tears on a recent phone call. People can’t pay the rent to the sober homes where they live and often can’t even afford food, she said.
That is what the engineered destruction of the economy is meant to do. People will never be able to be independent or or object to government again.
One Life has been delivering food to sober homes, and O’Neill said she paid a client’s rent with her own money. “These people are still suffering, and no one is there for them right now,” she said.
No one is more worried about losing track of people in need than those who serve the most vulnerable of all — those who are still using drugs, many without stable homes.
That’s why every morning Rachel Bolton fills her backpack with clean syringes, alcohol wipes, antibiotic ointments, and other supplies that can prevent infections when people inject drugs, along with the overdose-reversing drug Narcan. Then the 25-year-old hops on her bicycle to search the streets of Cambridge for people who need her goods.
Keeping the mandatory physical distance, sometimes Bolton tosses a bag of supplies to a client or places it on the ground and backs away. Sometimes she even makes home deliveries ordered by text, dropping her parcel on a doorstep.
Thanks for enabling addicts.
Bolton is an outreach worker for Access: Drug User Health Program, and those items used to be available at its drop-in center in Central Square, where people could also have a warm, safe place to socialize and have a hot drink. Such gatherings can’t happen during the pandemic, and the drop-in center closed down.
They will not be reopening.
Instead, the program went totally mobile, searching out clients on foot, by van, and on bicycle — and also distributing flyers with employees’ cellphone numbers.
“We’re able to reach a lot of people," Bolton said. "We’re getting supplies out in the world.”
Maybe they could do a census while they are out there.
Still, a number of regular drop-in clients are nowhere to be found, possibly having migrated to Boston or elsewhere in search of food and shelter.
Possibly migrated?
How?
Where?
What is with this garbage journali$m that never questions anything and is simply pushing the s***t narrative?
Why doesn't the Globe throw a SPOTLIGHT on it?
Tapestry Health, a similar harm reduction program in Western Massachusetts, has also expanded its mobile services. “They’re reaching a lot more people than when they were just inside,” said director Liz Whynott, but even with the success of mobile outreach, Sarah Mackin, director of harm reduction services with the Boston Public Health Commission, whose needle exchange program is now outdoors under a tent, says there are “some things you can’t replace.”
“I want to hug them, hold their hands,” Mackin said. "The inability to do that is so heartbreaking.”
What is heartbreaking are all the qualifiers served up by Globe propagandists!
Even amid such struggles, many addiction treatment providers are heartened by the fast pace of innovation — and its implications for the future of addiction care.
Emergency regulations have enabled many methadone patients to take doses home instead of visiting a clinic daily. People can now start on buprenorphine, another medication to treat opioid addiction, without an in-person doctor visit, and many places are forgoing the traditional urine tests to detect which drugs a patient has taken, a process some providers consider degrading and unnecessary.
Yeah, who cares if the addicts are using?
Empty out the jails while you are at it, right?
Many see a silver lining in the pandemic: Suspending regulations, they say, provides an opportunity to show that the old rules may have served little purpose.
“It’s going to help normalize addiction care,” said LaBelle, of Boston Medical Center. “We’re treating people with respect, like [with] other diseases.”
That mindset right there, a silver lining in all this, shows you what kind of monsters we are up against. I find nothing good or wonderful about any of this.
Besides that, the BMC medical center scum says addicts will now be treated with respect -- and thus, by implication, were not being treated that way before!
--more--"
Addiction is an indu$try as well, and I think it is time for a divorce:
"For divorced couples with children, coronavirus creates added challenges" by Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff, April 10, 2020
Amy was already anxious. Despite a statewide stay-at-home advisory and a terrifyingly contagious virus, her ex-wife — who has their 6-year-old several days a week — was not staying home, but continuing to go to work. Amy offered to take their daughter on those days, but her ex resisted.
Then she learned that her daughter had spent one day in the care of a friend who has teenagers in the house. Who knew how seriously young adults were taking social distancing precautions?
“It really wasn’t a fun conversation,” said Amy, a South Shore mother who asked that her last name not be used. “I’ve got a zero-tolerance policy for risk, given that there’s a global pandemic going on.”
As families are urged to stay at home or shelter in place, many divorced parents are being forced to reconsider: Which home? Which place? Carefully crafted visitation agreements are being reconsidered or rewritten on the fly. Precautions that seem like no-brainers to one parent are being blithely ignored by the other. Old grievances are being unearthed at a time when many are already emotionally raw.
“Nobody is their best self right now,” Amy said.
Coronavirus concerns are causing a surge in calls about parenting arrangements, said Jason V. Owens, a Hingham attorney who has been helping sort through the confusion on his blog. Some parents are finding it excruciating to hand over their children at a time of such uncertainty, especially if their former partner doesn’t take the threat as seriously.
Yeah, the lockdown is also destroying families, but our leaders don't care.
“How do you figure out what your quarantine looks like versus my quarantine?" said Maritza Karmely, a Suffolk University Law School professor who directs the Family Advocacy Clinic, where students represent clients, typically domestic violence survivors. "You can imagine how many disputes are coming up in divorcing couples, separating parents, who have different beliefs about how to keep their children safe.”
Still, parenting orders remain in effect, the chief justice of the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court said in an open letter to parents in late March.....
I wonder how many parents will end up killing their kids rather than handing them over.
--more--"
Somehow “generalized fear is not enough” to warrant a change in a parenting agreement, but it does warrant a lockdown and suspension of constitutional rights and the destruction of an economy!
Related: State Police to offer virtual workouts with troopers for kids
Yeah, the corruption and taxpayer looting OT scandal over there has vanished as they propagandize the kids to love authority!
Look who is piling on the soldiers in Holyoke:
"Justice Department opens civil rights investigation into coronavirus deaths at Holyoke Soldiers’ Home" by John R. Ellement Globe Staff, April 10, 2020
The Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice and Massachusetts US Attorney Andrew Lelling said Friday they have opened a civil rights investigation into the operations of the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke where 35 veterans have died since March 24, with 30 of them testing positive for COVID-19.
The entry by the federal law enforcement agencies is the third separate investigation into the state-run facility that the Globe reported was chronically short of staffing and supplies, both prior to the coronavirus pandemic and in the weeks since the virus has ravaged the ranks of retired servicemen there.
Attorney General Maura Healey has said she has launched her own inquiry, “to find out what went wrong and determine if legal action is warranted,” while Governor Charlie Baker has tapped Mark Pearlstein, a lawyer and former federal prosecutor, to oversee the administration’s inquiry.
The purpose of these investigation is so they can control the message and information coming from the place while shutting up other people. Pure evil, folks.
At a news conference Friday afternoon, Baker said the state welcomes Lelling’s participation, noting that the federal Department of Veterans Affairs also has a role to play at the home.
“I certainly believe that he’s got a position there where a review would be appropriate, if he deemed it as such,” Baker said.....
The more the merrier, huh?
Just keep your goddamn social distance, right?
--more--"
Btw, the Globe has previously called on Lelling to resign after he target Lori Loughlin and public corruption. That was after they praised him as the new sheriff in town who was filling his office with meaning.
Of course, he will no longer have to look into the marijauana licenses.
Maybe he can also investigate the nursing homes:
"More than 41 percent of state coronavirus deaths come from long-term care facilities; New data from the state show just how many residents of nursing homes and other facilities have died" by Laura Crimaldi and Laura Krantz Globe Staff, April 10, 2020
Members of the Massachusetts National Guard remove their hazmat suits after leaving Alliance Health at Marina Bay. The National Guard was deployed to Quincy to assist nursing homes with COVID-19 testing. (Stan Grossfeld/ Globe Staff)
The new coronavirus has caused the deaths of at least 247 residents of Massachusetts long-term care facilities, a grim toll that accounted for more than 41 percent of all deaths in the state linked to the disease, according to new data released Friday.
Releasing data all of a sudden?
The disclosure was made amid a series of dire warnings Friday from Governor Charlie Baker, who said officials expect that a new surge in COVID-19 cases could sicken 2,500 residents each day for the next 10 days, and possibly beyond.
Like a Friday-night news dump for the ages, right?
“Our health care system will be stretched like never before,” Baker said at a news conference.
That's odd because today's A1 lead story seemed to say the opposite.
Nursing homes across the state had been reporting for weeks increases in infections and deaths, but the state Department of Public Health had not released detailed data showing the full toll in long-term care facilities, which serve some of the frailest patients, including those who need assistance eating, dressing, and washing.
Yeah, all of this has been based on a liar's say so!
The number of long-term care patients and staffers infected with COVID-19 jumped by 491 cases on Friday to 2,124, the largest one-day increase in new infections to date, according to state figures, and there is at least one COVID-19 case at 176 long-term care facilities statewide. Baker said there are about 1,000 such facilities across the state.
As the outbreak spreads, long-term care facilities have struggled to provide their staff with personal protective gear, while workers fall ill at a quickening pace. Meanwhile, access to testing remains a challenge at many facilities.
“The continuing rise in the number of fatal cases among the 38,000 frail elderly and disabled residents under our care is devastating to our residents, families, and staff who are courageously battling the most horrific pandemic in our lifetimes,” said Tara Gregorio, president of the Massachusetts Senior Care Association.
Then why are families being denied visits?
The organization called on the state, hospitals, and others to expand COVID-19 testing to include symptomatic and asymptomatic residents and staff, to equip workers with personal protective equipment, and to boost their wages.
They want to test us all so they can tell us we all need a vaccine!
At Life Care Center of Nashoba Valley in Littleton, where 10 residents with the virus have died, its parent company said Friday that 75 of its 204 employees were out sick and that 14 have been infected with COVID-19. Town officials have accused the facility of not being transparent about the outbreak there, a claim the facility’s parent company denies.
Last week, all patients there were tested for the virus through a mobile testing program offered by the state, but employees were asked to seek out a doctor for testing.
“Due to ongoing limitations in availability of testing, we do not have a mechanism to request that all staff be tested,” Life Care Center of Nashoba Valley said in a statement. “While we have been able to bring additional staff from other facilities, this drop in the level of staffing adds increased pressure on the facility.”
In the past two weeks, the confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Massachusetts have been concentrated increasingly in people aged 60 or older, according to a Globe analysis of demographic data released by the state. As of Thursday, the overwhelming majority of the coronavirus-related deaths have been of people aged 70 or older, many with underlying health conditions. Only 1 percent of fatalities in Massachusetts have been residents under age 50.
Nevertheless, that 1% takes top billing in the Globe.
Related:
"The Salem Board of Health will require cloth face coverings for all shoppers and employees at supermarkets, drugstores, and other businesses operating during the coronavirus emergency, according to an emergency order issued Thursday. Beginning Sunday, anyone entering a grocery store, hardware store, pharmacy, restaurant serving take-out, or other business deemed essential by the state must wear a mask, bandana, scarf, or other fabric covering over their nose and mouth, the order says. It instructs shoppers not to wear a surgical mask or respirator, because such personal protective equipment is badly needed by health care providers and emergency responders. Salem’s health agent, David Greenbaum, could not be reached for comment on the emergency order Thursday evening. The city’s first known death from the coronavirus was a part-time cashier at the Market Basket in Salem, 59-year-old Vitalina Williams, who also worked in store security at the Walmart in Lynn. Masks also are required for store employees who interact with the public or work within 6 feet of a coworker. The emergency order instructs employees to follow the city’s previously issued guidance on wearing rubber gloves while working, washing hands frequently, and sanitizing work areas routinely. Cloth face coverings and social distancing measures are required for anyone entering a communal area of a residential or commercial building that contains more than one unit. The order also outlaws ice cream trucks. It will take effect at 12:01 a.m. Sunday and “remain in effect until notice is given, pursuant to the Board of Health’s judgement, that the Public Health Emergency no longer exists,” the document says."
It may never be lifted!
On March 31, the state launched a COVID-19 mobile testing program at long-term care facilities with the Massachusetts National Guard. So far, the program has collected samples at about 150 sites and expanded its reach to assisted-living facilities and group homes, according to Marylou Sudders, the secretary of health and human services.
The extent of the crisis in nursing homes, rest homes, and skilled nursing facilities remains difficult to measure because of spotty reporting on outbreaks and testing limits. The state has yet to reveal the names of the facilities with outbreaks, and some relatives of patients have complained that they can’t get information about whether loved ones have been exposed to the virus.
That's not the impression one gets when reading page after page of agenda-pushing propaganda.
The struggle some families have experienced getting information has been compounded by visitor restrictions placed on long-term care facilities during the second week of March, meaning families have gone weeks without seeing loved ones.
On Tuesday, state Representative Ruth Balser filed a bill that would require the state to report the weekly toll of COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facilities. The legislation immediately secured the backing of House Speaker Robert DeLeo.
Balser on Friday applauded the move to reveal how many patients in long-term care facilities have died, but pushed the state to release more detailed data.
“The importance of the transparency is to lead us to problem solve, because it is pretty startling to see the number of deaths among older adults in these facilities,” she said.
Elizabeth Dugan, a gerontology professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston who studies nursing homes, said the new data will be helpful for studying the outbreak and working to curb it. Though more information, Dugan said, is necessary.
“Anything where people are packed in densely together, if they’re older the risk is so much higher because it’s so transmissible,” she said.
So we are being told by these creeps.
On Friday, the city of Cambridge announced it was directing all nursing homes to collect samples from all staff and patients to be tested by the Broad Institute, a step that goes beyond the voluntary state testing program.
City leaders issued the directive to ensure all seven nursing homes in the city participated, the Cambridge Public Health Department said. As of Thursday, there were 24 COVID-19 cases in those facilities, but no deaths, the department said.
What a shame it is to see LIBERALS leading the charge into TYRANNY!
--more--"
After they see your "Certificate of Immunity" they will ask for license and registration:
"RMV workers union calls for agency to shutter all branches" by Adam Vaccaro Globe Staff,Updated April 10, 2020
The union representing hundreds of Registry of Motor Vehicles employees is urging state officials to close the agency’s branches, the latest flashpoint in the debate over what work should be considered essential during a global pandemic.
Oh, non-essential for sure!
The RMV has already closed all but eight of its 30 branch offices, though two others are open for just commercial licensing transactions. It has also moved to an appointment-only system for these in-person transactions, while shifting most other business online. These moves came after concerning lines formed outside RMV branches in the earlier days of the crisis.
As the tyranny descends upon us, the government will be even more distant and out-of-touch!
The Registry has also extended renewal dates for most expired and expiring licenses and registrations by 60 days, but the National Association of Government Employees, which represents the agency’s customer service representatives, said that still leaves workers dangerously exposed to the coronavirus, and urged Governor Charlie Baker to close all branches to the public.
“As the crisis escalates, the matter of closing down branches has reached life or death,” union president David Holway wrote in a letter to Baker this week. “Our members are being forced to deal directly with the public without protections in place to guard their health or safety.”
Yeah, that icky public you allegedly serve!
Btw, the hate goes both ways!
Baker’s transportation secretary, Stephanie Pollack, countered that some Registry business remains crucial in a pandemic, such as licensing commercial drivers who are hauling protective equipment and other crisis-response materials into the state and making deliveries to people stuck at home. It’s also important to help residents obtain licenses and identifications if they need to access unemployment or Medicaid as a result of the economic fallout of the pandemic, she wrote.
Oh, man!
More road blocks to your benefits while the banks got their last week!
“The work of the RMV helps keep supply chains, households, and the economy functional enough to support us through this crisis period and I’m proud of the way RMV employees have stepped up to fulfill this essential mission,” Pollack wrote in a response to Holway on Thursday.....
The $elf-$erving slop makes one vomit, and it won't keep that Volodymyr what's-his-name off the road but that wast last summer, pre-COVID!
--more--"
Concerning lines formed outside RMV locations in March. (Steven Senne/Associated Press)
I'm concerned about the LACK of SOCIAL DISTANCING!
I guess that makes me a racist, unless Massachusetts has become Louisiana.
Related:
Amid Boston’s construction suspension, city inspectors halt work at dozens of job sites
Also see:
"Massachusetts State Police, hospital workers, and other well-wishers on Friday sent a hero off to his hometown in Maine after he spent nearly seven months in Boston hospitals for the treatment of injuries he suffered in a devastating gas explosion. Larry Lord, who helped co-workers evacuate a commercial building in Farmington, Maine, before a propane tank exploded, was discharged from Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown. He was transferred to the facility in February after spending about five months at Massachusetts General Hospital. He was severely burned when the building that housed LEAP, an organization that helps people with developmental disabilities and Lord’s employer, exploded on Sept. 16, 2019. Lord helped nearly a dozen people get out of the building after he smelled propane gas....."
Finally, a safe harbor:
"For those at the Constitution Marina, life on a boat during pandemic strengthens community ties" by Matt Berg Globe Correspondent, April 8, 2020
Like most people across the country, Stephanie Muto is working from home, learning to share space with her boyfriend and cat, and coping with the pandemic as best as she can, but unlike most, she’s living on a sailboat.
Muto, 34, has resided in her sailboat at Constitution Marina in Charlestown for two years, along with about 180 neighbors. She compared the experience of isolating in her 35-foot vessel to that of taking an offshore passage, without the relaxing reprieve offered by the vast ocean.
“You’re just out there and there’s nowhere else to go, but you have a sense of calm and peacefulness out in the open water,” said Muto, a fiscal officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “but we don’t have that right now because we’re stuck on the boat and there’s no open ocean.”
Looks like a safe space (unless you are a Kennedy), and I wonder if she knows Lichfield.
As she would prepare for any long sailing trip. she has stored up lots of food and books to read during the quarantine, she said, but now there is also social distancing and reaching out to neighbors in the marina community.
“They all look out for each other,” said Peter Davidoff, 64, a co-owner of the marina.....
Not my tribe.
--more--"
I wonder if she has seen any whales out there.
Looks like the tide is ri$ing:
"Everything Is awful. So why is the stock market booming?" by Neil Irwin New York Times, April 10, 2020
What on earth is the stock market doing?
Death and despair are all around. The number of people filing for unemployment benefits each of the last two weeks was about 10 times the previous record, and is probably being artificially held back by overloaded government systems. Vast swaths of American business are shuttered indefinitely. The economic quarter now underway will probably feature Great Depression-caliber shrinkage in economic activity.
Yet at Thursday’s close, the S&P 500 was up 25 percent from its recent low March 23 — and is up from its levels of just 11 months ago. There are answers as to why, but that doesn’t take away the extremity of the juxtaposition between an economy in free fall and a stock market that is, in the scheme of things, doing just fine.
Two powerful forces are pushing in opposite directions. Commerce is being disrupted to a degree that seemed impossible just weeks ago, but simultaneously, stock investors are betting that powerful interventions out of Washington — including an additional $2.3 trillion in lending programs from the Federal Reserve announced Thursday — will be enough to enable major companies to emerge with little damage to their long-term profitability.
Major companies, huh?
F*** the rest us!
It is a battle between collapsing economic activity and, to use a silly meme from finance Twitter, the federal government’s money printer going “brrr.” In the stock market, at least, the revving of the money printer is winning.
Once again I am treated to another rot gut piece of s**t from the New York Times!
The market is going up because they are being lavished with trillions to but back their stock!
Paradoxically, said Gene Goldman, chief investment officer of Cetera Investment Management, the shockingly high numbers of jobless claims can even be viewed as helpful to the market, as they increase political pressure on Congress to scale up rescue measures beyond the $2 trillion legislation already enacted.
“Imagine you’re a Democrat or a Republican talking about 16 million people unemployed,” he said. “It really creates more bipartisan pressure to support the next stimulus package.”
I almost broke down in tears reading that.
The people who have been thrown out of work as part of this evil and devious plan, are now going to be used so that the thieving corporations and banks can get even more loot!
The large companies that make up major stock indexes tend to have reliable access to capital, particularly after the Fed’s latest actions to prop up corporate lending. They may be more likely than small, independent-owned businesses to weather the economic storm and come out on the other side with greater market share and profits.
REALLY?
That is what this whole planned destruction of the economy was about, huh? Greater market share and profitability for the large companies that skew the stock indexes, eh!
The analysts who project corporate earnings are, in the aggregate, forecasting a relatively mild hit.
Oh, what a relief!
Our livelihoods have been destroyed, but at least the large companies will only take a mild hit!
Then there are technical factors.
Some of the strongest performers in this market rally have been the companies most severely affected by the coronavirus crisis, like cruise lines, hotel chains, and airlines. That suggests “short squeeze” dynamics, in which a small upturn forced investors betting against those companies to close out their positions, turning the small rally into a large one, and Saudi Arabia and Russia apparently reached a truce to reduce oil output, causing a rally in oil prices, which is good news for oil companies that have been hammered by plunging prices of crude.
Umm, NO, they DID NOT:
"A global deal to cut oil production and save the market from a coronavirus-induced breakdown proved elusive on Friday as a diplomatic initiative led by Saudi Arabia suffered repeated setbacks. After two days of talks, it remained unclear whether the kingdom had resolved the differences with Mexico, and a meeting of energy ministers from the Group of 20 ended with a statement that supported measures to stabilize the market but didn’t commit to specific supply reductions, according to a draft of the communique. These diplomatic obstacles cast doubt on efforts to revive the market from a debilitating slump in prices to the lowest in almost two decades, which has exposed governments and companies around the world to severe financial pressure. It was now up to the Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, and President Trump — who instigated the deal — to salvage something. “We are trying to get Mexico, as the expression goes, over the barrel,” Trump said in a White House news conference Friday....."
That article was at top of same page, and all of a sudden Mexico throws a monkey wrench in the works!
As for Trump, he's evil, too. He is onboard with all this, and now wants to f*** Mexico.
Finally, the gush of money into safe investments, both from private savers and the Fed, is pushing down longer-term interest rates. That makes even weak or uncertain future earnings for shareholders more appealing than they would have been when interest rates were higher, but just because there are reasons for the stock market rally does not mean those reasons are good ones.
Stock prices are always based on what the world will look like in the future, not the present. In the global financial crisis, stock prices bottomed out in March 2009. The economy did not begin expanding again until July, and the unemployment rate would not peak until October, but current market pricing suggests that investors are counting on a speedy rebound.
For themselves, not for us. and they are bordering on the edge of delu$ion!
“If this doesn’t go on much longer than expected, if it really is a three- to six-month event from the time we turned the switch on the economy off to when we turn it on, then markets have already accounted for that and are looking ahead,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist for the Leuthold Group. “It could be that the virus stays hot, and this situation stays in place for three or four quarters, and we’re not priced for that.”
Yeah, they will just flip the switch and everything will go back to the way it was!
--more--"
Look who will be getting a loan:
Harvard University taps credit market for up to $1.1 billion" by Janet Lorin and Amanda Albright Bloomberg News, April 10, 2020
Harvard, the richest US university, is tapping the credit markets for as much as $1.1 billion at a time when it can secure lower funding costs after recent steep rate cuts made to address the coronavirus pandemic.
So all the big borrowers are going to benefit from the rate decreases in response to the panic.
As much as $573 million in revenue bonds will be sold through a state agency and the proceeds will be used to refinance outstanding debt, Moody’s Investors Service said this week in a report. The ratings company said Harvard will also sell $500 million in taxable bonds for “eligible corporate purposes.”
The active financial management is designed to lock in lower rates, said Jason Newton, a Harvard spokesman.
The pandemic is upending US higher education. Small colleges that are weak financially and dependent on tuition could be threatened with closing after campuses have been emptied of students with no firm return date. The wealthiest colleges may face endowment losses and expected declines in fund-raising.
Harvard, with a $40.9 billion endowment as of June 2019, last month forecast a decline in revenue and a slowdown in philanthropy due to the economic impact of the outbreak. It also said it would refund room and board for students ordered to leave campus and pay thousands of dining, custodial, and administrative workers through May 28.
“This is part of long-term planned debt activity,” Susan Shaffer, a vice president at Moody’s who specializes in higher education, said of Harvard’s bond sale. “Their liquidity is ample. They are very well managed and had already put into place, as most top-notch universities do, regular scenario analysis for potential recessionary conditions or other things that could cause operational stress. This could be smart timing because interest rates are low.”
Shaffer just admitted the program has nothing to do with the virus!
Harvard is prepared to withstand a recession and the interruption of its operations, Chief Financial Officer Thomas Hollister said on March 23.
The endowment lost 27 percent of its value in the last big downturn over a decade ago, forcing the university to borrow money to shore up its cash position.
--more--"
At least they forgave the loan.
Related:
Mass. cancels MCAS exams
Where were they going to go anyway?
As banks ramp up loans, many businesses still waiting for federal aid
It's been over a week now!!
Walsh, banks, agree to mortgage deferral plan for coronavirus crisis
The participants include Bank of America is the largest bank in the program; Boston Private; Cambridge Trust Company; Century Bank; Citizens Bank; City of Boston Credit Union; Dedham Savings Bank; Eastern Bank; Mortgage Network, Inc.; Prime Lending; Salem Five Bank; and Santander Bank, and “Boston Private is pleased to expand its partnership with Mayor Walsh and the Department of Neighborhood Development to help our home mortgage borrowers who have been dramatically affected by COVID-19.”
Worcester man arrested for allegedly robbing two banks within 1 hour
Expect a lot more of that as this thing $ours very quickly, and they caught him because he didn't have on his running shoes.
Treasury’s Mnuchin ‘properly’ followed guidance in refusing to give Trump’s tax returns to Congress, inspector general finds
Proving once and for all that Bill Barr is a fraud, and notice how Mnuchin is not tainted by any of the Trump administration shit? He's above it all, and that tells you something right there!
"Trust in Trump’s virus response is falling. What does it mean for November?" by Giovanni Russonello New York Times, April 10, 2020
Americans are rapidly losing faith in President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, according to national polls released over the past week.
PFFFT!
Consider the source!
What’s more, some of that drop-off is occurring among groups that Trump will need to retain as he looks ahead to a difficult reelection battle in the fall.
Who cares who is president anymore? They just follow orders. Trump has shown that they are irrelevant and impotent.
Older voters broke for Trump in 2016, and they are seen as crucial to a potential victory for him in November, but their approval of his job performance has been middling throughout his presidency — and with the oldest Americans now particularly endangered by the virus, they may be watching his response to the pandemic closely, and while it is typical for registered voters to skew slightly more conservative than the overall population, that trend disappears when it comes to views of the coronavirus response.
Registered voters were considerably more likely than nonvoters to give the federal government’s handling of the crisis a bad review, according to the CNN poll. Fifty-seven percent of voters rated it poor, while 39 percent gave it positive marks.
“I think what recent polling has suggested is that while he’s kept his base satisfied, he has turned off a lot of people, especially elderly voters, who are frankly a little bit scared by what they’re hearing at the podium every night,” Jim Manley, a veteran Democratic strategist, said, referring to the president’s daily news conferences.
Watching, are they?
See: "President Trump has always been a president of contradictions: a New York mogul fond of ostentatious shows of wealth who appeals to rural working-class voters. A populist whose main recreation is golfing at one of his exclusive clubs. A self-avowed deal-maker who ends up mired in gridlock. A publicity hound who cannot get enough of the news media even as he denounces it as the “enemy of the people.” The president’s words matter because, as he himself likes to note, the ratings for his briefings have been high, and for many Americans, they are the main source of their information about the pandemic......"
Wow, so much has changed in just three weeks!
In any election, different types of voters are likely to be swayed by different factors. Liberals, for instance, often express more concern about health care, whereas conservatives generally pay more attention to foreign affairs, but this year’s presidential race may be an anomaly. With the response to the pandemic taking center stage, issues like health care, the economy, and voting rights are likely to be viewed through the lens of the virus. So how the president handles the response — and how Joe Biden, the former vice president and Trump’s presumptive opponent, proposes to confront the outbreak — could become a kind of omni-issue.
I love the New York Times stereotypes regarding the false dichotomy of conservative and liberal!
Of course, we all know liberals don't give a f*** about foreign affairs given their support of the wars and that's surely all that conservatives care about. No culture war or an attempt to save a nation here at home.
Now where does that leave PROGRESSIVES?
that's a whole wing of a party that is to be ignored and taken for granted, right?
Trump has sought to project authority as the nation weathers the storm, but he has hardly let up on his habit of lashing out at political opponents, and he has refused to take responsibility for things like shortages of test kits and medical supplies, which many governors say they need.
Why should he be solely responsible?
Where were the Deep $tate agencies and the governors all this time?
Cuomo chose a lottery over more ventilators!
Most Americans are not convinced of the president’s position. Roughly 7 in 10 said the federal government should be doing more to address shortages in personal protective equipment and medical devices, the CNN poll found, and by a 14-percentage-point margin, most respondents to that survey said the federal government had done a bad job of preventing the virus’s spread.
Hey, President Jared is doing all he can!
As the pandemic has worsened nationwide, Americans have expressed widespread approval of their own governors (72 percent, according to a Monmouth University poll released this week) and of federal health agencies (66 percent, per the Monmouth poll). This bucks the trend in recent years of waning faith in American institutions, but Trump has never shed his public persona as an anti-establishment firebrand. Throughout the crisis he has criticized everyone from nonpartisan inspectors general to popular state governors. So the president will need to contend with Americans’ belief in core institutions — which Biden has consistently echoed — alongside their wavering confidence in Trump himself.
This is reaching the point of farce as the NYT tries to tell us the planned-emic is responsible for a renewed belief in the lying, totally discredited governments!
About 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the three weeks since the CDC recommended avoiding public gatherings and states began ordering nonessential businesses to close. California alone has averaged more than 1 million jobless claims each week.
Never before have this many people sought unemployment benefits all at once, and in the history of modern polling, people’s views of the economy have never dropped so quickly. Last month the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index, a polling indicator of the national economic mood, experienced its biggest two-week drop on record. Then it outdid itself again, falling by roughly the same amount — this time in a single week.
In the CNN poll, the share of Americans saying the economy was in bad shape doubled since last month, to 60 percent from 30 percent. Roughly half of all respondents said the virus had caused them some financial hardship.
This robs Trump of what was supposed to be his greatest argument for reelection: the once-thriving economy, which had an enviable 3.5 percent unemployment rate before the pandemic. Just 48 percent of Americans said in the CNN survey that they approved of how the president was handling the economy. That tied his worst showing on this measure in more than two years.
What is interesting is the virus didn't raise its ugly head until after Trump had cleared impeachment and seemed to have clear sailing into November, and the fact that he is powerless to do anything about the live exercise destroying his legacy.
Still, it is impossible to know how things will play out between now and November, and Trump has plenty of time to earn the trust of persuadable voters. Besides, the Electoral College tends to favor Republican presidential candidates.
STILL!
The Monmouth poll released this week found Biden up on Trump by 4 points among registered voters — a far slimmer lead than Hillary Clinton held in comparable polls at this point in 2016, on her way to a general-election defeat.
--more--"
Related:
"A new attack ad by President Trump’s campaign that portrays former vice president Joe Biden as too cozy with China to confront the country over the coronavirus pandemic includes an image of Gary Locke, a former governor of Washington state, that appears to falsely suggest he is a Chinese official. Locke, who is Chinese-American and was serving as US ambassador to China at the time, is briefly depicted onstage at a 2013 event in Beijing with Biden. The clip is interspersed with others of Biden toasting the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, and criticizing Trump as xenophobic for imposing a travel ban on China....."
"As the number of coronavirus cases kept climbing worldwide Thursday, Barack Obama offered some simple advice for mayors and local leaders battling outbreaks in cities across the globe: “Speak the truth.” “The biggest mistake any [of] us can make in these situations is to misinform,” the former president said during a virtual meeting organized by Bloomberg Philanthropies. With many feeling fearful and anxious while misinformation about the coronavirus continues running rampant on social media, Obama emphasized the power of truth....."
As if he and his had any connection whatever to truth!
Also see:
South Korea Goes to the Polls, Coronavirus Pandemic or Not
Just like Wisconsin, who also did not abort the vote.
"Weeks before the coronavirus spread through much of the world, parts of Africa were already threatened by another kind of plague, the biggest locust outbreak some countries had seen in 70 years. Now the second wave of the voracious insects, some 20 times the size of the first, is arriving. Billions of the young desert locusts are winging in from breeding grounds in Somalia in search of fresh vegetation springing up with seasonal rains. Millions of already vulnerable people are at risk, and as they gather to try to combat the locusts, often in vain, they risk spreading the virus, a topic that comes a distant second for many in rural areas....."
Desert locusts swarmed over a tree in Kipsing, near Oldonyiro, in Isiolo county, Kenya, late last month. (Sven Torfin/FAO/Associated Press/FAO via AP)
Looks like lunch is ready.
Related:
"A supercomputer is boosting efforts in East Africa to control a locust outbreak that raises what the UN food agency calls ‘‘an unprecedented threat’’ to the region’s food security. The computer, a donation from Britain that is based in a regional climate center in Kenya, where the insects have been particularly destructive, uses satellite data to track locust swarms and predict their next destination. Quickly sharing the information of the locusts’ movements with regional authorities is key to controlling the outbreak, as even a small swarm of locusts in a single day can move nearly 100 miles and consume the amount of crops that would otherwise feed 35,000 people. Kenya, Somalia and Uganda have been battling the worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years. Swarms have also been sighted in Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Congo, and South Sudan, a country where roughly half the population already faces hunger after years of civil war. The threat from the locusts “remains extremely alarming’’ in the Horn of Africa, where “widespread breeding is in progress and new swarms are starting to form, representing an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods at the beginning of the upcoming cropping season,” according to a warning issued this month by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Locust swarms, sometimes as large as some cities, can destroy crops and devastate pasture for animals. Aerial spraying is generally considered the only effective control method. In Uganda, where the locust infestation has recently spread to more than 20 districts in the country’s north and northeast, soldiers have been battling swarms using hand-held spray pumps because of difficulties in getting aircraft as well as the recommended pesticide....."
They need $70 million to step up aerial pesticide spraying, the only effective way to combat them, the UN says, as swarms now plague Las Vegas and Yemen (who have been left for dead).
At least it is still a Good Life for $ome.
