"With the fall semester a big question mark, students are considering alternatives" by Deirdre Fernandes Globe Staff, April 18, 2020
Brooke Libby’s oldest daughter, a junior at the University of Chicago, has already declared that she will hold off registering for the fall semester if the only option is remote online classes. Her younger daughter, a freshman at Bowdoin College, is leaning that way too.
Libby, a director of college counseling at Gould Academy, a boarding school in Bethel, Maine, is having similar discussions with nervous high school seniors and their parents. Some are starting to research the admissions deferral process — which would allow them to start college later than planned — and others are having second thoughts about where to go to school due to the coronavirus pandemic, Libby said.
The fall semester poses a looming financial dilemma for colleges and students and their families. In the coming weeks high school seniors will have to commit to a college and undergraduates will have to register for classes. Meanwhile, institutions themselves must determine how they will reopen amid a pandemic and the financial toll of it.
Colleges and universities across the country are already preparing in case students cannot come to campus and learn, exploring scenarios such as continuing virtual classes, scrapping large lectures, and delaying the fall semester by a few weeks or even months.
How this will all shake out is entirely unclear. Questions remain about how many freshmen will enroll in college, whether they will actually show up in September, and how many returning students will register for classes, instead of opting for a leave of absence or dropping out.
Actually, it is quite clear to certain chosen people regrading where all this is going.
The financial risks for colleges could be severe. Many have already lost millions from refunding students room and board this semester and spending on additional technology to provide online instruction.
On Friday, the head of the Vermont State College system recommended closing three of its five residential campuses permanently due to stagnant enrollment and the financial cost of the pandemic.
There you go.
For many of us, there will be no future of higher education. The ladder is about to be pulled up, and colleges and university will only be for the elite ruling cla$$.
Many other colleges and universities across the country are also worried about how the coronavirus could reshape the higher education marketplace.
Yes, your education is now an indu$try!
That is why it is rotted. What they call education is nothing more than inculcation and indoctrination into approved state dogma, and it is about to get way worse! There will be no independent thought at all.
Early indications are that it is already starting to alter consumer behavior when it comes to higher education.
Libby said one Gould Academy senior from China was prepared to enroll in Boston University in the fall, but now his parents are pushing him to consider Penn State University. If travel restrictions are lifted, and if the student can come back to the US to study, his parents think he would be safer in rural Pennsylvania than in Boston, Libby said.
A survey in late March by Maguire Associates, a Concord-based higher education consulting firm, of prospective US students and their parents found that interest in enrolling in colleges near virus hot spots including Boston and New York dropped by more than 10 percent. Before the COVID-19 spread, 56 percent of students said they were likely to enroll in Boston-area colleges, but only 42 percent felt the same by the end of March, according to the survey.
HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
The unintended consequence of throwing in with the evil agenda!
Sorry, Bo$ton!
Then again, the Rockefeller plan said there would be no more need for entrepreneurship and innovation. It will the be government line, period, despite the reality.
It's Soviet Union stuff, folks.
The survey also found that parents are more likely to be considering alternative options closer to home, than their children. Lower- and middle-income families are also more apt to consider living at home due to the virus, suggesting that they may be feeling more of the financial pressures of the pandemic, said Kristin R. Tichenor, a special consultant with Maguire Associates and senior adviser to the president at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
“Colleges have to assume that enrolling populations will be smaller than what they were,” Tichenor said.
I was just going to say, who is really going to be able to afford to send their kids to college now, other than, you know?
In a normal year, high school seniors would be selecting and committing to a college now. Colleges usually require students to make a decision about enrolling by May 1 and require families to send in a deposit of several hundred dollars to hold the spot.
Why did Lori Loughlin just cross my mind?
This year, many institutions have moved that deadline to June 1 or later. After canceling big college tours for prospective students in April, many institutions also set up virtual visits with video walk-throughs of campuses.
They actually think such $h*t will sell!
Universities are also fielding requests from students whose parents have lost jobs and need more financial aid, meaning that families are taking longer to make decisions and adding to the uncertainty about which colleges families can afford.
Where the hell is that going to come from, the rapidly shrinking tax base?
Choosing a college has become harder than ever for students.....
Oh, 2/3 way through the article, they finally enter the discussion.
All supposed to be for them, but we know it is obviou$ly not.
Libby, the director of college counseling in Maine, said students and families have to ultimately decide what options are financially feasible and most safe for them. She is confident that colleges will improve their online instruction by the fall, but it still may not work for students who flounder in isolation and without the supports and face-to-face interactions with their peers and professors.
Students “need to really evaluate how well they’ll be able to thrive and not thrive in a remote learning environment,” Libby said. “They’ve got to look inward first."
She needs to look in the mirror herself.
--more--"
Yeah, they are evil, too.
Related:
"The $150 million set aside for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to distribute to cultural organizations across the entire country in the recent $2.4 trillion rescue package passed by Congress — laughably small, not even enough to keep tens of thousands of laid off workers in health care for a month — reflects the American government’s blind spot when it comes to culture. Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador for President Trump and now one of his chief surrogates, tweeted those numbers shortly after the bill was passed, outraged the numbers were, in fact, as large as they were. “How many more people could have been helped with this money?” she wrote, but Haley and those like her are asking the wrong question. Ask instead how much damage could be done by not throwing a rope to cultural institutions, but there can be little question that Greater Boston is the heart of the state’s cultural economy: according to a 2019 report from ArtsBoston, culture pumped $1.3 billion directly into the area’s economy. Spinoff spending — on hotels, food, drink, and parking (of course) — generated another $675 million....."
Unfortunately, our culture has degenerated to filth and perversion due to its inculcation of Zioni$t values, and as you can see, this whole proce$$ is $etting up a wonderful world for the elite ruling cla$$ after we have all been dispatched. They will have their e$$ential $lave class, and that will be that.
(flip to above fold)
"Quick recovery? Not likely in Massachusetts, as a coronavirus-induced recession stuns economy; Unlike previous recessions, the state’s leading industries are particularly affected by the pandemic shutdown" by Shirley Leung and Larry Edelman Globe Staff, April 18, 2020
I must start off with a confession, dear readers, for I only read last Wednesday that "in one of the few bits of good news legislators received, Dan White, the director of government consulting and fiscal policy research at Moody’s Analytics, said Massachusetts’ economy is probably in a better position than other states’ to weather the downturn, thanks to its reliance on durable sectors like health care and education."
Talk about mixed me$$ages!
I gue$$ he was off-$cript, and isn't Moody's one of the agencies that was paid by Wall Street to value the garbage MBS "$ecurities" as AAA investment back in 2007-08?
Yeah, we should listen to them so we can be exponentially fleeced this time.
When the financial crisis hit in 2008, the blow wasn’t quite as bad for Massachusetts as for other parts of the country thanks to its formidable mix of industries — from higher education to health care, from technology to life sciences.
This time will be different.
A month into what may prove to be the most devastating economic collapse since the 1930s, the region’s world-famous hospitals and universities find themselves too crippled by COVID-19 to provide a soft landing. White-collar professionals, another bulwark of the state economy, are also bracing for the worst. With Europe and China also in trouble, Massachusetts won’t be getting much of a lift from exports or international travelers.
The Great Recession, triggered by a mortgage meltdown and recklessness by banks and investment firms, required the government and Federal Reserve to put the financial system on life support. By contrast, the coronavirus pandemic in a matter of weeks has inflicted far more damage: an abrupt and intentional shutdown of a broad swath of the economy.
That is where the turn-in comes.
The country is in uncharted waters, but this much is clear: In Massachusetts, this downturn will be particularly painful and the recovery slower than usual, according to business leaders and economists.
Consider how the virus is upending the higher-education sector, where employment barely budged during the financial crisis a decade ago. Hundreds of thousands of students were sent home in March, and some universities are planning for the possibility they won’t return to Boston in the fall if the virus has not been contained or a vaccine found.
Even Harvard, the world’s richest school, is freezing salaries, forgoing new hires, and may delay some capital projects.
“There is no doubt that pre-vaccine we’re all going to suffer together. That was not true in 2008 to 2010,” said Boston University president Robert A. Brown.
See how the Globe is focused on finding a magic bullet, 'er, vaccine and pushing that agenda while promoting the fallacy that we are all going to $uffer together?
$ome will be $uffering le$$ than others, and is even benefitting!
If students don’t come back until next spring, the economic fallout would be enormous, not only from another wave of layoffs on campuses, but also from a depressed rental housing market and lost spending from students and parents who no longer will be eating in restaurants, shopping in stores, or staying in hotels.
That is not what they were saying on Wednesday, and now they are stuck in limbo between that and the magazine.
Furloughs and pay cuts are also hitting another mainstay of the Massachusetts economy and its biggest employer with about 650,000 workers: health care.
So that Moody's guy was just talkin' $hit, as we used to say?
COVID-19 has eviscerated hospital revenue by forcing the postponement of routine care and elective surgeries, which is how hospitals and doctors make most of their money. The health care system instead is flooded with coronavirus patients, who tend to be poor or old, and on Medicaid or Medicare, which pay at a lower rate than private insurers. As unemployment skyrockets during the pandemic, hospitals will also have to contend with more people switching to government-sponsored insurance, which will lower provider payments.
So they say, and yet many are empty all across the land, and how many people will develop complications and die from the lack of routine care and "elective" surgeries?
“Historically, recessions have been good for medicine overall,” said Dr. Eric Dickson, chief executive of UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester. “That’s just not the case with this one.”
Dickson said revenue at his hospital is off 35 percent in April. So far he has resisted furloughs, hoping there will be a pent-up demand for services in the second half of the year. “It is a little bit of a gamble on our part,” acknowledged Dickson, but “people are working really hard.”
Dr. Steven Strongwater, CEO of Atrius Health, instituted temporary salary cuts and furloughs across its network of more than 1,100 physicians, nurses, and other clinicians that includes Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates.
While Strongwater intends to restore pay at a later date, he thinks it will take some time for business to return to the levels prior to COVID-19. He also anticipates the shutdown could lead to a wave of closures and bankruptcies of community hospitals, nursing homes, and doctor practices.
“We probably won’t see a settling out until 2021 at the earliest,” he said.
So 2020 is a fucking write-off, huh?
Healthy hospitals and universities, along with the other major institutions of Boston’s landscape, from museums to tourist hot spots to sporting events, create a spillover effect that helps sustain many businesses in the area.
You mean $tuff trickles down?
Garrett Harker’s restaurants benefit from their proximity to Boston’s colleges and health care institutions, as well as another major economic driver that isn’t reopening soon: Fenway Park.
“Those three things are gone. I have nothing right now in terms of micro drivers of the neighborhood,” said Harker, a partner in seven restaurants, including Eastern Standard and Island Creek Oyster Bar in Kenmore Square, and Row 34 in the Seaport. “When I look back at 2008 ... we were definitely insulated.”
You will soon be again, by having too close.
Restaurants are never coming back if California is any indication.
During the last recession, from December 2007 through June 2009, the state’s mix of knowledge-based jobs helped moderate the pain of steep layoffs in construction, manufacturing, and retail. The health care industry actually added 22,300 jobs, an increase of 4.6 percent, while the education sector held steady. Losses among business and scientific professionals were proportionally smaller than the state’s average. Unemployment peaked at 8.8 percent at the end of 2009, compared with 10 percent nationally.
This time around, the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation forecasts unemployment approaching 18 percent by the end of June, with 570,000 jobs disappearing in recent weeks. Many of those jobs will be recovered by next spring, but total employment won’t return to pre-crisis levels until 2022, the foundation predicts.
Moody’s, the Wall Street rating agency, ranked Boston seventh among major metro areas in terms of exposure to the virus’s economic impact, based on the high number of COVID-19 cases here, an aging population, urban density, and its international travel and financial services sectors.
Why should anyone believe anything they have to say, especially after the entire article is based on refuting what they said?
“Boston typically does weather recessions better than the rest of the country because it has industries that are less cyclical,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “In this particular case, probably not. … It’s going to be a slog.”
Oh, I $ee. Different analyst and probably his bo$$.
The life sciences industry is another stalwart of the Massachusetts economy that is bracing for short-term pain. The giant medical device maker Boston Scientific cut wages this month for many of its 36,000 employees, while a number of biotechs have postponed or halted costly clinical trials for experimental medicines.
Hospitals, where drug trials typically take place, are overwhelmed treating coronavirus patients, and drug firms are loath to run trials where participants could be exposed to the contagious disease. When trials are interrupted or postponed, it can delay applications for drug approvals and the ability to market the sliver of medicines that win approval.
Boston is also a financial services hub, and bear markets are never good for the industry. The city is one of the top three metro areas most dependent on Wall Street, according to Moody’s. The others are New York City and the Bridgeport, Conn., metro area. When financial markets decline, so does the revenue from managing clients’ money at major employers such as Fidelity Investments and Putnam Investments. That can translate into lower bonuses and potential layoffs, which threaten consumer spending and state tax collections.
$tate $treet doe$n't $eem to be worried, and they are e$$ential (for now)!
To be sure, volatile markets can be a plus for fund managers as their clients turn to them for advice. Fidelity said recently it would accelerate plans to hire thousands of advisers and other workers to meet increased demand.
Ah, "to be sure," yes!
That is used to concede the truth of something that conflicts with another point that one wishes to make, and it seems to be a popular phrase these days (in other words, forget facts and truth, there is a larger agenda to be pushed).
Massachusetts has the highest per-capita income among states, fueled in part by stock-based compensation among the professional class and income from investment portfolios. When the markets are down, so too is that money, and all the spending power it delivers to the local economy, from eating out, to furniture shopping, to taking in a show.
That means the income inequality is just going to get wor$e here in Ma$$achu$etts, where income inequality is among the worst in the country.
All of a $udden, things $tart to make a lot of $en$e in my press$!
Ordinarily, the technology sector should ride out a recession better than most, but in this downturn, “there is not an industry that tech doesn’t sell into,” said Maia Heymann, cofounder of the Cambridge venture capital firm Converge. With nearly every industry hit by the slowdown, she said, “that uncertainty is pausing purchasing.”
Heymann said investors and their companies must reset financial goals because the pandemic has upended business plans. “Your muscle memory is growth,” she said. “We have to train a new set of muscles, which is sustained survivability.”
That may translate into less money invested in early-stage startups, a contributor to job growth in the local tech sector.
“Right now we don’t think we’re going to have the capital to be able to grow efficiently,” said Brittany Greenfield, CEO of Boston startup Wabbi, which makes security tools for software developers.
As for all those cranes in the sky that came to symbolize Boston’s gilded age, the long-running building boom will probably take a pause, experts say.
The billions of dollars of projects that are under construction will probably be completed, but new buildings that haven’t broken ground yet could find it difficult to get financed, meaning the next boom could take longer to launch.
Most analysts agree this recession will be the worst since the Great Depression, yet forecasting the length and depth of the decline, and the contours of any recovery, is far more complicated given the unprecedented nature and velocity of the pandemic-propelled meltdown. Social distancing measures have forced the economy into hibernation, and some restrictions are expected to continue even after nonessential businesses reopen, yet amid the dismal forecasts, stock prices have recently rallied in response to massive Federal Reserve rescue lending and hopes that the economy will begin to reopen soon. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index has gained 28 percent since bottoming out March 23.The benchmark remains down 15 percent from its Feb. 19 peak.
Who ordered the social distancing that forced the economy into hibernation?
Any rebound will differ sector by sector. If hospitals and doctors can reschedule elective procedures to later in the year, the losses won’t be as brutal, but for the Boston hospitality industry — which has been among the hardest hit, along with restaurants and retail — the road back could take two years, said Rachel Roginsky, owner of Pinnacle Advisory Group, a Boston hotel consulting firm.
That’s longer than it took to recover from the Great Recession or the 2001 terrorist attacks.
International visitors won’t be returning for some time. Ditto conventions and corporate travelers. With less demand, Roginsky expects Boston hotels won’t command the same prices when they reopen and will experience an “interim normal” of reduced business until people feel comfortable enough to socialize and travel again.
The Massachusetts economy will come back, and its post-pandemic future could be as solid as ever. Innovations abound, whether it’s life science companies looking for a COVID-19 cure or health care finally embracing telemedicine and universities perfecting online education.
F*** off!
Boston, observes Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun, is well positioned to thrive in a world in which protecting public health will be paramount. That plays well to the region’s strength as a medical-industrial powerhouse anchored by academic research hospitals and biotechnology firms.
He has been thriving all along.
I wonder how much he is getting paid now.
The health crisis is also likely to remake the global supply chain, bringing more factory jobs back to the United States. Aoun said Massachusetts, which is known as a leader in advanced manufacturing, stands to benefit.
This is not the way I wanted that to happen!
“This community faces challenges, and this community provides solutions to those challenges,” said Aoun. “Boston is resilient.”
It's the city of the future.
--more--"
Now the New York Times takes a peek ahead:
"The coronavirus in America: The year ahead" by Donald G. McNeil Jr. New York Times, April 18, 2020
The coronavirus is spreading from America’s biggest cities to its suburbs, and has begun encroaching on the nation’s rural regions. The virus is believed to have infected millions of citizens and has killed more than 34,000, yet President Trump this past week proposed guidelines for reopening the economy and suggested that a swath of the United States would soon resume something resembling normalcy. For weeks now, the administration’s view of the crisis and our future has been rosier than that of its own medical advisers, and of scientists generally.
In truth, it is not clear to anyone where this crisis is leading us. More than 20 experts in public health, medicine, epidemiology, and history shared their thoughts on the future during in-depth interviews.
Some know where it is leading. They drew up the plans ten years ago, and everything is going according to plan.
“We face a doleful future,” said Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, a former president of the National Academy of Medicine.
He and others foresaw an unhappy population trapped indoors for months, with the most vulnerable possibly quarantined for far longer. They worried that a vaccine would initially elude scientists, that weary citizens would abandon restrictions despite the risks, that the virus would be with us from now on.
I don't think so.
If this past weekend is any indication, it won't take long until we are all out in the streets.
“My optimistic side says the virus will ease off in the summer and a vaccine will arrive like the cavalry,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a preventive medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University medical school, “but I’m learning to guard against my essentially optimistic nature.”
Sick f***, and there the Globe goes again, pushing the vaccine!
Most experts believed that once the crisis was over, the nation and its economy would revive quickly, but there would be no escaping a period of intense pain.
They are either $ick in the head or fanta$tic liars, or both!
Exactly how the pandemic will end depends in part on medical advances still to come. It will also depend on how individual Americans behave in the interim.
More Americans may die than the White House admits
COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, is arguably the leading cause of death in the United States right now. The virus has killed more than 1,800 Americans almost every day since April 7, and the official toll may be an undercount.
By comparison, heart disease typically kills 1,774 Americans a day, and cancer kills 1,641.
Those have been around a lot longer and we were never locked down over it!
Something else is going on!
Yes, the coronavirus curves are plateauing. There are fewer hospital admissions in New York, the center of the epidemic, and fewer COVID-19 patients in intensive care units. The daily death toll is still grim, but no longer rising.
The gains to date were achieved only by shutting down the country, a situation that cannot continue indefinitely. The White House’s “phased” plan for reopening will surely raise the death toll no matter how carefully it is executed. The best hope is that fatalities can be held to a minimum.
Why not?
“All models are just models,” Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, science adviser to the White House coronavirus task force, has said. “When you get new data, you change them.”
Yeah, all this was based on faulty and ever-changing models, not facts!
They DESTROYED YOUR LIFE based on PREDICTIONS and MODELS!
We should eat these guys alive, and maybe we will someday.
The lockdowns will end, but haltingly
No one knows exactly what percentage of Americans have been infected so far — estimates have ranged from 3 percent to 10 percent — but it is likely a safe bet that at least 300 million of us are still vulnerable. Until a vaccine or another protective measure emerges, there is no scenario, epidemiologists agreed, in which it is safe for that many people to suddenly come out of hiding.
(Blog editor responds)
“There’s this magical thinking saying, ‘We’re all going to hunker down for a while and then the vaccine we need will be available,’” said Dr. Peter J. Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.
I'm sick of them constantly jabbing at us with the agenda!
In his wildly popular March 19 article in Medium, “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance,” Tomas Pueyo correctly predicted the national lockdown, which he called the hammer, and said it would lead to a new phase, which he called the dance, in which essential parts of the economy could reopen.
They are really big on phases, huh?
Every epidemiological model envisions something like the dance. Each assumes the virus will blossom every time too many hosts emerge and force another lockdown. Then the cycle repeats. On the models, the curves of rising and falling deaths resemble a row of shark teeth.
It's a mind-jerk to protect certain people.
Surges are inevitable, the models predict, even when stadiums, churches, theaters, bars, and restaurants remain closed, all travelers from abroad are quarantined for 14 days, and domestic travel is tightly restricted.
Immunity will become a societal advantage
Imagine an America divided into two classes: Those who have recovered from infection with the coronavirus and presumably have some immunity to it; and those who are still vulnerable.
We already were, and now it is even worse.
You are either "e$$ential" or you are not.
“It will be a frightening schism,” Dr. David Nabarro, a World Health Organization special envoy on COVID-19, predicted. “Those with antibodies will be able to travel and work, and the rest will be discriminated against.”
A f***ing WHO sickie!
Already, people with presumed immunity are very much in demand, asked to donate their blood for antibodies and doing risky medical jobs fearlessly.
Soon the government will have to invent a way to certify who is truly immune. A test for IgG antibodies, which are produced once immunity is established, would make sense, said Dr. Daniel R. Lucey, an expert on pandemics at Georgetown Law School. Many companies are working on them.
One has already been invented, or is being worked on as I type.
The virus can be kept in check, but only with expanded resources
The next two years will proceed in fits and starts, experts said. As more immune people get back to work, more of the economy will recover, but if too many people get infected at once, new lockdowns will become inevitable. To avoid that, widespread testing will be imperative.
This is f***ing EVIL!!
Fauci has said “the virus will tell us” when it’s safe. He means that once a national baseline of hundreds of thousands of daily tests is established across the nation, any viral spread can be spotted when the percentage of positive results rises, but diagnostic testing has been troubled from the beginning. Despite assurances from the White House, doctors and patients continue to complain of delays and shortages.
Not only that, they are unreliable!
There will not be a vaccine soon
Even though limited human trials of three candidates — two here and one in China — have already begun, Fauci has repeatedly said that any effort to make a vaccine will take at least a year to 18 months.
All the experts familiar with vaccine production agreed that even that timeline was optimistic. Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccinologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, noted that the record is four years, for the mumps vaccine.
Didn't the mumps vaccine give kids all sorts of problems?
Researchers differed sharply over what should be done to speed the process. Modern biotechnology techniques using RNA or DNA platforms make it possible to develop candidate vaccines faster than ever before, but clinical trials take time, in part because there is no way to rush the production of antibodies in the human body.
You need to refuse that shot!
Also, for unclear reasons, some previous vaccine candidates against coronaviruses like SARS have triggered “antibody-dependent enhancement,” which makes recipients more susceptible to infection, rather than less.
Treatments are likely to arrive first
In the short term, experts were more optimistic about treatments than vaccines. Several felt that convalescent serum could work.
They can make loads of money off that then before they squeeze again.
The basic technique has been used for over a century: Blood is drawn from people who have recovered from a disease, then filtered to remove everything but the antibodies. The antibody-rich immunoglobulin is injected into patients.
Isn't that how HIV was spread?
The obstacle is that there are now relatively few survivors to harvest blood from.
WTF are they talking about?
The death rate is at worst around 3%, and likely lower!
Having a daily preventive pill would be an even better solution, because pills can be synthesized in factories far faster than vaccines or antibodies can be grown and purified, but even if one were invented, production would have to ramp up until it was as ubiquitous as aspirin, so 300 million Americans could take it daily.
Either way, some are going to get awful rich.
--more--"
"Florida, Texas begin to lift some restrictions" by Paul Weber and Frank Jordans Associated Press, April 18, 2020
Delcia Dias, left, and Monica Dias celebrated at Florida’s Jacksonville Beach, one of a limited number of beaches that reopened in the state Friday. (Will Dickey/The Florida Times-Union via AP/The Florida Times-Union via AP).
AUSTIN, Texas — Governors eager to rescue their economies and feeling heat from President Trump are moving to ease restrictions meant to control the spread of the coronavirus, even as new hot spots emerge and experts warn that moving too fast could prove disastrous.
Adding to the pressure are protests against stay-at-home orders organized by small-government groups and Trump supporters. They staged demonstrations Saturday in several cities after the president urged them to “liberate” three states led by Democratic governors.
I see that as a good thing, but it will quickly be turned on them!
Protests happened in Republican-led states, too, including at the Texas Capitol and in front of the Indiana governor’s home. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott already said that restrictions will begin easing next week. Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb — who signed an agreement with six other Midwestern states to coordinate reopening — said he would extend his stay-at-home order until May 1.
For the first time in weeks, people were able to visit some Florida beaches, but they were still subject to restrictions on hours and activities. Beaches in big cities stayed closed.
Meanwhile, infections kept surging in the Northeast.
Rhode Island, between the hot spots of Massachusetts and New York, has seen a steady daily increase in infections and deaths, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project.
As opposed to those the U.S. has maimed or murdered in the wars based on lies. No one counts those.
At his Saturday briefing with reporters, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo cited more progress. The daily increase in deaths in New York state fell below 550 for the first time in more than two weeks as hospitalizations continued to decline, but the crisis is far from over: Hospitals are still reporting nearly 2,000 new COVID-19 patients per day, and nursing homes remain a “feeding frenzy for this virus,” he said.
That's why I am nursing this blog home.
Several hundred people rallied in Texas’ capital, chanting “Let us work!” Many clamored for an immediate lifting of restrictions in a state where more than 1 million have filed for unemployment since the crisis began. The rally was organized by a host of Infowars, owned by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who joined protesters on the Capitol steps. Jones is being sued in Austin over using his show to promote falsehoods that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax.
While not dismissing all of their work, they have been outed as controlled opposition.
In Indianapolis, more than 200 people stood close together outside the governor’s mansion. Public health officials said the ability to test enough people and trace contacts of those who are infected is crucial before easing restrictions, and that infections could surge anew unless people continue to take precautions.
Yeah, you don't even know you have it!
In Asia, some nations that until recently appeared to have the outbreak under control reported a fresh increase in cases Saturday.
Better lock down even tighter so we can avoid heard immunity.
Japan’s total case number rose above 10,000. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said he’s concerned that people are not observing social distancing and announced a 100,000-yen ($930) cash handout to each resident as an incentive to stay home.
Singapore reported a sharp one-day spike of 942 infections, the highest in Southeast Asia, mostly among foreign workers staying in crowded dormitories. That brought the total to almost 6,000 in the tiny city-state of 6 million.
What is 6,000 divided by 6 million?
The rate of infection -- not death -- in Singapore is only 1/1000th of 1 percent?
There have been tentative signs that measures to curb the outbreak are working, with the rate of new infections slowing across Europe.
France and Spain started dismantling some field hospitals, while the number of active cases in Germany has slowly declined over the past week as people recover.
France’s national health agency said Saturday that the country has seen almost 20,000 virus deaths. The agency urged the French public to stick to the country’s strict confinement measures, which have been extended until at least May 11: “Together, we will vanquish the pandemic. Don’t relax our efforts at the moment when confinement is bearing fruit.”
No more Yellow Vests on the streets.
In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the government will seek to extend the state of emergency to May 9 but begin easing the total confinement of children beginning April 27.
Children are thought to be a major source of transmission even if they rarely fall ill from the virus, but they’ve been confined to their homes for five weeks, prompting parents to ask that they be allowed to at least take a daily walk.
WHAT?
Sánchez announced in a televised news conference late Saturday that the government would allow children “to get out of their houses for a period on a daily basis,” but the specifics needed to be ironed out with experts.
It's the sick "experts" who are in charge of everything.
The national lockdown would be rolled back only when the country’s embattled health system is ready for a possible rebound of infections, he said.
The virus is believed to have infected more than 2.3 million people worldwide.
Believed?
All the tyranny is based on a "belief?"
While most recover, the outbreak has killed at least 159,000 people worldwide, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally based on figures supplied by government health authorities around the globe."
So says their simulation.
The numbers almost certainly underestimates the actual toll. Nearly everywhere, thousands have died of COVID-19 symptoms -- many in nursing homes -- without being tested for the virus, and thus have gone uncounted.
What unreal liars!
The OPPOSITE is the CASE!
They are lumping ALL DEATHS together and calling them all COVID-19!
Vice President Mike Pence delivered a commencement address at the Air Force Academy in Colorado, a trip aimed at showing the country is on course to gradually reopen.
Yeah, somehow the virus doesn't kill the wars or the advertising for troops!
Major cities in Brazil also saw protests Saturday by hundreds of people denouncing pandemic lockdown measures also opposed by President Jair Bolsonaro, a fierce critic of stay-at-home measures imposed by state governments.....
--more--"
Too bad you can't go to the beaches, Massachusetts resident:
"Amid flurry of national coronavirus data, Massachusetts remains a hot spot of infection" by Andrew Ryan, Kay Lazar and Mark Arsenault Globe Staff, April 18, 2020
Massachusetts has emerged as a national hot spot. There have been more than twice as many deaths here, and our infection rate is now triple that of Washington, which has a similar size population and has been nearly as aggressive in testing for the new coronavirus.
Nationally, day after day, Massachusetts has persistently stood out by several alarming metrics, often ranking near or in the top five among states for deaths, per capita infections, and the rate of those who have tested positive for the virus.
Public health experts warn that state-by-state comparisons can be misleading. Testing has been uneven, illness and fatalities are tallied differently in different locales, and public health experts say it is likely there is a significant undercount of infections and deaths everywhere, but we gauge progress, or the lack of it, by the numbers in this pandemic, as each state pumps out new daily figures on hospital surges, fresh outbreaks, and the multiplying sickness. The data has become a grim box score that people trapped at home study for glimmers of hope, and, of late, the Massachusetts numbers have offered precious few reasons for hope.
The scoreboard has replaced $ports.
Related:
"Five weeks ago, sports without fans seemed unfathomable. Now, amid the global coronavirus pandemic in which mass gatherings represent enormous public health risks, the idea of thousands of people crammed into a stadium or arena feels insane. The reopening of such spaces to fans remains hard to fathom, and no one knows when or how leagues will recommence, or whether there will be any spectator sports this summer or at all in 2020. Spectator sports inevitably will return, but the world in which they do so will be changed — and with it, the fan experience will be altered, likely dramatically, for months or perhaps even years to come, in ways that are difficult to foresee....."
Some have foreseen a way to play ball; however, it will no longer be a ca$h cow.
State officials Friday reported 159 new deaths, the largest single-day increase of the pandemic. Massachusetts has suffered the sixth highest death rate per capita in the country, according to a analysis of data collected by The COVID Tracking Project.
The state has significantly ramped up the number of people tested, and as of Saturday morning ranked fourth per capita in the nation, trailing only New York, Rhode Island, and Louisiana. Increased testing, however, means more confirmed cases, with Massachusetts now having the third highest number of known infections per capita in the nation.
We will be the guinea pigs.
The Globe analyzed data tracking coronavirus tests, infections, and deaths from all 50 states, calculating per capita rates and taking into account each state’s population density, racial and ethnic makeup, wealth, age, and the timing of public health directives designed to slow the outbreak. Interviews with a dozen epidemiologists and other public health experts from across the country made clear that despite caveats, there are lessons in these statistics and the shared experiences of other states.
The early evidence suggests that social distancing can help slow the spread and is especially vital in densely packed cities such as those in the Northeast where the virus has thrived, and one phenomenon seems to hold true from coast to coast: Emergency orders and shutdowns, if enacted early enough, are key.
“There’s no doubt that stay-at-home orders play a role," said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "The places that have done it earlier have slowed the spread.
In Washington state, this new coronavirus struck with such initial ferocity that it compelled urgent action. Governor Jay Inslee declared a state of emergency on Feb. 29, the day the state announced the nation’s first death of a confirmed COVID-19 patient. It would be another 10 days before Massachusetts took the same step, after Governor Charlie Baker cut short a family ski trip to Utah and flew home.
Globe ripped him for it.
In that first week of March in Washington, large tech companies such as Microsoft and Amazon, were telling their employees in that state to work from home. The University of Washington on March 6 became the first major US college to cancel in-person classes.
Schools closed. Shoppers flooded local Costcos to stock up on toilet paper and other essentials. Even so, the death toll in Washington initially climbed at a terrifying rate to more than a hundred in a few weeks, with cases radiating from that one nursing home outside Seattle.
The high-profile ravaging of the Life Care Center in suburban Kirkland drove the state’s urgent response, said Ali H. Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
“People here realized that it was spreading faster than expected in our own backyard, and they paid attention,” Mokdad said. “We knew this was serious, and then when the mortality happened at the nursing home, everybody in Washington started staying at home, even before the government issued its orders.”
He is the guy who created quite a ruckus around here.
Washington’s governor initially begged residents to stay home, telling them March 20 he was “pleading with” them. Inslee followed three days later with a formal order that closed nonessential business and banned all gatherings.
In Massachusetts the next day, Baker issued a similar edict, but it was a stay-at-home advisory, not an order. While Baker urged people to limit their interactions, he also said, “I do not believe I can or should order US citizens to keep confined to their homes for days on end."
The Baker administration has said its policy has been extremely effective and that “all available data show Massachusetts residents are staying home.”
I would like to take a minute to at least thank him for that. He could have ordered it and didn't. He may still, and I don't like where going, but he at least deserves some credit for not completely caving.
While missteps by the federal government hindered testing across the country, Washington state ramped up its efforts faster than Massachusetts and other states. In recent weeks, new infections and hospitalizations with COVID-19-like illness there have dropped. The trajectory is clear in the epidemiologic curve on Washington state’s website: Confirmed cases and deaths are trending lower like steps on the downslope of a mountain.
“They started social distancing earlier,” said epidemiologist Nadia N. Abuelezam, a professor at the Connell School of Nursing at Boston College. “They got ahead of it. They were swifter.”
The Baker administration noted Friday that Massachusetts has now tested more people per capita than Washington.
The administration also said Massachusetts appears to have more COVID-19 cases because the Commonwealth is more aggressively testing in “affected” nursing homes and Washington was focused only on testing nursing homes in the county where the outbreak began.
Washington state health officials disagree.....
Thus begins the griping and the blame game, and why not just shut the f*** up, all of you?!!
--more--"
The obituaries covered pages A13-A28, encompassing the entire second half of the A-section and two pages of the first section, and brings me to the first page of the B-section:
"Mass. reports 156 new coronavirus deaths, nearly 2,000 new cases" by Tim Logan and Laura Crimaldi Globe Staff, April 18, 2020
The death toll from Massachusetts’ coronavirus outbreak continued to mount Saturday, even as some projections now suggest the peak may be near.
State health officials reported 156 new deaths from COVID-19, bringing the total deaths attributed to the disease to 1,560, and confirmed nearly 2,000 new cases, increasing that count to more than 36,000 in Massachusetts alone.
They said 159 above!
The increases were near, but slightly below, numbers seen in recent days, and they come as researchers running a widely cited coronavirus model at the University of Washington said the caseloads here may be peaking, and sharply lowered their estimates for deaths in Massachusetts.
After arguing over it, Mokdad backed down and another death toll is revised downward yet again!
The newest numbers from the state are the latest sign that the long-anticipated “surge” in coronavirus cases has arrived. So far, Governor Charlie Baker said Saturday, the state’s hospitals appear to be holding up.
“Generally speaking,” Baker said, “People feel pretty good about where we are with respect to [hospital capacity]. That’s been an important part of how we manage our way through this.”
There’s still a lot to manage through. Massachusetts has reported more confirmed cases than much larger states such as Texas and California, according to the COVID Tracking Project. Businesses and schools across the state remain shut down and stay-at-home advisories have turned neighborhoods eerily quiet. White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx on Saturday mentioned Boston as one of a handful of hot spots her office is watching closely, but there are some signs that all that social distancing is slowing the spread of the highly contagious disease.
After adding in data that tracks people’s movement around cities, models run by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation now predict both deaths and impact on hospitals in Massachusetts will peak by Monday, instead of the end of this month. Their total projection for deaths here are now just over 3,200.
You have been HAD, America!
Those models, which have emerged as a popular measuring stick for when life may return to normal, have themselves become controversial, swinging dramatically as researchers have incorporated new data. Earlier this week, when they projected some 8,000 deaths in Massachusetts, officials here pushed back, saying the model’s assumptions don’t match the reality of life on the ground here. Some epidemiologists have faulted them on scientific grounds, saying their methodology is far too back-of-the-envelope to guide weighty decisions about when to “re-open” the economy.
The paragraph was meant to encourage further lockdowns, but it did the exact opposite!
The "models" are not matching "reality," and yet the pre$$ is reporting as if they did!
Regardless, Baker said Saturday, the state is doing everything it can to contain the virus, and manage it in the long months ahead until treatments and vaccines are developed.
Massachusetts has quickly ramped up testing, becoming a “top-five player in terms of testing per capita," he said. More than 8,000 people received coronavirus tests Saturday, according to the Department of Public Health, for a total of nearly 157,000 tests so far. The state has distributed about 4 million pieces of personal protective equipment to hospitals and other health care facilities since the outbreak began, Baker said, and it’s ramping up the nation’s most ambitious “contact tracing” program to find people who’ve come in contact with someone confirmed to have COVID-19 and prevent further spread.
Seems like I have already read much of this, and what a change from a state that wasn't realizing information just a short time ago, and can you really believe in their numbers?
“The most important thing we’re going to need to be able to do is identify people who’ve been infected, get in touch, and help them isolate,” he said. “That, from our point of view, is just a crucial element in our ability to provide people with confidence that we’re doing all we can.”
Still, the virus is taking an astounding toll, particularly in the state’s nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
Saturday’s figures showed, for the first time, that more than half of the people who’ve died from coronavirus in Massachusetts were residents of long-term care facilities, and 250 such facilities have confirmed cases. The hard-hit Holyoke Soldiers’ Home had another resident die Saturday, bringing the total confirmed deaths from COVID-19 there to 48. The Chelsea Soldiers’ Home also reported another resident coronavirus death Saturday.
The Massachusetts National Guard has been visiting nursing homes to test residents and staff, and Baker said state officials are trying to help these facilities rethink their operations to help reduce the spread of disease, no simple feat in places that are set up to encourage socialization and where staff often float from room to room.
“They are basically set up for people to engage with each other,” he said. “The whole point is not to isolate people.”
Then why are you scaring them?
In Brockton, Mayor Robert Sullivan said Saturday a significant portion of the city’s 48 COVID-19 deaths were patients at long-term care facilities.
“We know that the virus really attacks the seniors,” Sullivan said. “They’re the most vulnerable.”
They also are the ones with underlying health conditions, but it's all COVID-19!
Out on the streets of Boston, the focus remains containing the spread of the disease. The Walsh Administration on Sunday plans to send out sound trucks to hard-hit neighborhoods such as Mattapan, Dorchester, and East Boston, broadcasting messages in seven languages to stay home, and stay healthy.
“This weekend we are launching new tactics to get the message out in the places that we know are hardest hit,” said Mayor Martin J. Walsh. “We need everyone to know that we are in a public health emergency and we need everyone to do their part,” and they’re focused on managing treatment. Baker on Saturday visited the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, the vast Seaport convention hall which has been converted to a coronavirus field hospital. A week after it opened, about 150 of its 1,000 beds are in use, Baker said, housing homeless people with nowhere to shelter in place, and coronavirus patients who no longer need hospital-level care but who aren’t yet well enough to go home.
That’s preserving valuable acute-care beds at hospitals for patients who need them more, and enabling hospitals to continue to treat non-coronavirus patients as well.
“It’s working pretty much exactly as it was intended to work,” Baker said. “That’s a big, big relief as we move forward through the surge."
Would you like to see your "room?"
That surge is upon us, Baker said, and right now there’s no real way to know when it might be through. That’s one thing that makes this so different from previous emergencies the state has faced recently — be it the Boston Marathon bombing or the brutal winter of 2015. Those sort of episodes, he said, have a beginning and, usually, a clear end.
“One of the things about this,” Baker said. “Because of the unprecedented nature of it, we don’t really know exactly when it’s going to end.”
It never will, at least, not until Bill Gates has his poisonous potion ready for injection!
--more--"
Inside the concentration camp at the Convention and Exhibition Center:
"Patients start to fill field hospitals amid surge in coronavirus cases" by Priyanka Dayal McCluskey Globe Staff, April 18, 2020
Boston’s newest medical facility — a pop-up field hospital at the city’s cavernous convention center — has already treated more than 100 coronavirus patients in the past week and could reach capacity in the coming days as the state’s COVID-19 cases peak.
The already high demand for beds in the temporary facility known as Boston Hope is a sign of the magnitude of the pandemic, even as doctors and state officials say social distancing measures are helping to slow spread of the virus.
The site has 1,000 beds for patients with coronavirus, 500 for those who need medical care, and another 500 for individuals who are homeless and recovering from COVID-19.
“If the surge really happens, which it feels like it’s here and escalating, then in fact we will be filling all of our beds,” said Jeanette Ives Erickson of Partners HealthCare, co-director of the facility.
If the surge really happens?
Baker says we are in it now!
The temporary hospital at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center is the largest of five field hospitals planned for the state. A 216-bed site was the first to open, on April 9, at the DCU Center convention hall in Worcester.
Two additional field hospitals are slated to open Monday, at University of Massachusetts Lowell and at Joint Base Cape Cod. Each site will have about 90 beds. The following week, another site is scheduled to open at UMass Dartmouth.
The sites are designed to treat patients who don’t need intensive care but are not well enough to go home. Many of them, for example, need supplemental oxygen.
Why can't they isolate at home like richers?
They need oxygen, huh?
By moving patients who are less acutely ill to these field sites, hospitals can devote more space and resources to the sickest patients, including those who need ventilators and other intensive treatment.
More than 3,700 people across Massachusetts who have COVID-19, or are suspected to have it, already have been hospitalized. Massachusetts General Hospital has the most — more than 400 of these patients — but even small community hospitals each have dozens.
Ours has been quiet. I think I have heard one ambulance the last three weeks, and it was for a car accident.
“These field hospitals are crucial in reducing the strain on Massachusetts’s health care system and have helped us add a significant number of beds as we deal with the surge,” Governor Charlie Baker said Saturday at a press conference at the Boston convention center.
Field hospitals have been part of the strategy to respond to coronavirus in other areas, including New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo said 800 patients were sent to a temporary hospital at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan.
In Massachusetts, state officials, health care providers, and members of the military have worked to build each of these sites in just several days, transforming concrete floors and gymnasiums into MASH-style medical stations with cots serving as hospital beds, separated by curtains and screens instead of walls. The furnishings are spare, but patients have access to doctors, nurses, and medications.
Suicide is painless, it brings on many changes.....
“It’s working pretty much exactly the way it was intended to work,” Baker said of the Boston site. “That’s a big big relief as we move forward through the surge.”
The state’s hospitals still have the capacity to treat additional coronavirus patients — as well as those with other urgent medical issues, he added
Doctors and nurses at the Worcester site are trying to reduce the need for personal protective equipment, such as respirator masks, gowns, and gloves, by communicating with patients by phone when possible, instead of entering the patient’s room for each check-in.
Officials at Lowell General Hospital are watching the experience in Boston and Worcester as they prepare to open a hospital across three basketball courts in the UMass Lowell recreation center. They will be ready to open the first 14 beds on Monday but need to find more staff before they can open additional beds, said Amy Hoey, chief operating officer.....
A lot of people out of work, including hospital staff (why they want volunteers is beyond me), and this is smelling more and more like a drill!
--more--"
Related:
Health care workers can find mental health counseling for free
Through a new site run by this person:
Ariel Brown, a medical scientist in Boston, gathered a team of mental health workers for The Emotional PPE Project. (Ariel Brown)
Dear God!
Meanwhile, at the bottom of page A14:
"Mid-April snowfall blankets spring flowers" by Max Jungreis Globe Correspondent, April 18, 2020
Across Massachusetts residents woke up Saturday morning to see spring flowers blanketed in snow.
“Oh God,” Miss Worcester Diner owner and chef Kim Kniskern said she recalled thinking when she saw the snow, already dismayed at being allowed to only do takeout these days. "Now there’s snow on top of it?”
It was a drastic change from the springtime scenery of the day before.
“It was a little bit of a shock,” said Sarah Kyriazis, who manages online learning for the Worcester Public Schools district. “Because yesterday everything was so green and now everything’s all white.”
Snow started falling across the state Saturday night and turned into rain by afternoon, according to the National Weather Service, which said Dorchester got 2 inches of snow.
Communities in Worcester County had many of the highest recorded levels of snowfall, with the city of Worcester getting 4.1 inches, Sturbridge getting 4.5 inches, and Grafton getting 5.4 inches.
Clusters of people lost power in Worcester County as wet snow toppled trees that felled power lines, but for many in those areas who were not caught in the outage, the snow fell somewhere between delightful and strange.
“Just like a winter wonderland,” said Mike, a worker at Martin Tire and Auto Repair who declined to share his last name. “The snow was stuck to the trees. It was pretty cool driving into work.”
You don't have to have a college education to see how offensive this is!
When Vanessa Symonick of Auburn awoke Saturday morning, she briefly forgot she was sequestered at home and not living on her university’s campus.
“I go to school in northern Vermont, so this wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for me,” Symonick, 19, said. “But here, it is.”
Better check to see if the school hasn't been permanently closed!
Locals took to social media to share photos of snow-encrusted flowers and unseasonably wintry landscapes.
Despite winter’s last gasp, business went on as usual with few disruptions.
PFFFFFFFT!
OFFENSIVE!
“Not the way the phone’s been ringing since I got here,” Beth Brown, the eponymous owner of Beth’s Family Dining in Monson, said. “We’re hoping for a good day.”
People were relieved to find the snow melted as quickly as it had appeared.
“I live right outside Worcester and I thought it was going to be really bad,” Kniskern said. “As I got closer to the city, it was kind of more like slushy rain. It wasn’t that bad, honestly, but it is kind of crazy to snow like that this time of year.”
Couldn't go outside to shovel it anyway!
For some, the snow was just another strange twist in an already surreal spring spent mostly at home due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Oh, that finally comes in for a fleeting mention!
“It’s my Easter tomorrow, because we’re Greek Orthodox," Kyriazis said. "Thinking back to what we did last year — roasting the lamb, and we were outside, and the kids were doing the Easter egg hunt — it’s a totally different feeling this year. A little bit more somber.”
Forecasters said Saturday’s clouds and rain should clear up overnight, with a sunny Sunday ahead for the region, according to forecasters, with a high of 60 degrees. The rest of the week is expected to boast temperatures more typical of the season.
Some rain is expected to fall again Monday, but the sky will be partly sunny at times, forecasters said. Monday will have a high of 51 degrees before falling to 37 degrees that night.
That's all we will be allowed soon is small talk regarding the weather.
--more--"
Thus the question should be asked: in a shrinking world, what will we pass on to our children
The Globe is of the opinion that the coronavirus crisis provides a very green opportunity to rebuild society and the economy, because when it comes to battling climate change and sea rise you need to upend the political power of carbon polluters. They say it is time to free the animals from the farms and let them run free in the streets.
That is going to be hard to do when the US has abdicated its leadership role in protecting the environment and Trump appears increasingly irrelevant (who cares about Joe Biden's VP pick?) as the nation careens off track.
Related:
"Keolis, a French company, has had a mixed run in Greater Boston, where it won an eight-year deal worth more than $2.5 billion and took over service in 2014 — just in time for the massive snowfall that stymied service for several weeks the following winter. The Baker administration has occasionally criticized its performance in subsequent poor weather and noted uneven performance from line to line, but Keolis has improved service on some lines, most notably the popular Worcester line, and usually hits its targets for on-time performance. Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack, however, said the MBTA faced a big decision on a possible extension even "before there was a pandemic.”
That winter is all but forgotten now, and I wonder if the former Nazi rail line is in line for some of the $840 million in stimuloot.
"The Steamship Authority pleaded for state aid Friday, saying in a letter to the governor that it may be forced to cease ferry service to Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard without money to offset revenue lost because of the coronavirus pandemic. Ferries could stop running after the end of May if the authority doesn’t receive assistance, general manager Robert B. Davis, said in the letter to Governor Charlie Baker. “With the rapid onset of the COVID-19 virus, the current travel restrictions imposed by State directives, and the limited cash on-hand balances at its disposal, the Authority cannot wait until December 31, 2020 to present millions of dollars in shortfalls to the Commonwealth seeking its assistance,” Davis wrote. Jacquelyn Goddard, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, said in a statement Friday night that department officials had “been in communication with the Authority, and the administration is reviewing this request.” The Steamship Authority announced March 20 that it would reduce service to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket and delay the return of its seasonal high-speed ferry....."
OMG, the $hit service has been underfunded and now the richer's island ferry is going to get tax loot to stay solvent!
Also see:
Boston police officer who died of coronavirus buried Saturday
Baby born to Massachusetts state trooper and wife on N.H. roadside
What were they doing up there?
One killed, four injured in Springfield shooting
Springfield Police Commissioner Cheryl Clapprood (for The Boston Globe).
I guess the extra police didn't help, 'eh, Tommy?
10-year-old girl shot in Roxbury, critically injured
Gees, Abby Feldman has been a busy Globe correspondent.
Woman killed in late night house fire in Methuen
????
Time for me to put the fire out for today.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
NEXT DAY UPDATES:
Vermont delays vote on colleges’ fate
Pittsfield man dies, infant survives after car hits tree in Richmond
Two drivers killed in Westborough head-on crash involving wrong-way driver
After shootings of youth, city councilors develop violence prevention plans
Gal Tziperman Lotan of the Globe Staff says it has alarmed councilors, and I don't know why.
What did they expect with no school?
Surging forward for today's top story:
"Mass. a top concern for federal officials; Baker says state is in ‘middle of the surge’" by Andy Rosen Globe Staff, April 19, 2020
Massachusetts is becoming a top concern for federal officials responding to the COVID-19 outbreak as the pandemic’s course in the state enters what Governor Charlie Baker described on Sunday as “the middle of the surge.”
Baker spoke during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” just after White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said on the show that she was treating the pandemic as a “series of small epidemics across the United States.”
“We’re still very much focused on Boston and across Massachusetts, where the epidemics continue to spread,” said Birx, who also noted her concern about Chicago and other areas.
She is also focused on leading the attack on China while defending the evil and corrupt WHO.
The state Department of Public Health on Sunday reported 146 new deaths from COVID-19, bringing the total deaths attributed to the disease to 1,706, and Massachusetts confirmed 1,705 new cases, bringing the statewide total to 38,077.
The number of cases has been declining in recent days ― the count of new cases was 2,221 on Friday ― though state officials caution against reading too much into day-to-day trends, in part because of the variation in the number of tests reported by labs in the state.....
--more--"
Baker, speaking on the television program, said the state will benefit from the US government putting its “foot on the accelerator” when it comes to ramping up testing, while on CNN Sunday night, Walsh was “disappointed” with the sunny, 60-degree weather because “there were people out golfing, playing soccer, and gathering.”
What a party pooper he has turned out to be!
"Education, Interrupted: For high school seniors with disabilities, school closures can feel like walking off a cliff; After 18 years in Boston schools, Willie Kincade may not get the farewell he deserves" by Sarah Carr Globe Staff, April 19, 2020
For high school seniors across the country, school closures have brought angst and logistical hurdles, including concerns about prom, graduation, college delays, and much more, but for graduates with disabilities, who often attend public schools into their 20s, the impending transition — which disability rights advocates have long described as the “cliff” — will be especially fraught.
Now the cliff could turn even more treacherous. Tens of thousands of special education students across the country are likely to miss the final, crucial months of preparation, from entering job-support programs to figuring out how to navigate the city bus system.....
--more--"
The story is the third in an ongoing series called Education, Interrupted that looks at how school closures during the coronavirus crisis are affecting individual students, and in spite of inequities and the coronavirus, many Boston Public School students are learning according to the president of the Boston Teachers Union, but there must be a societal shift that prioritizes the immediate and basic needs many families faced before the COVID-19 pandemic began as they adapt to distance learning and the new reality.
He can get on train if this doesn't freak him out:
Marcus Johnson waits for his train after finishing his shift as a custodian at Boston College (Barry Chin/Globe Staff/The Boston Globe).
Why does a college with no one at it need custodians?
"The last T riders: ’As soon as I get to the Green Line, my heart starts racing’; The eerie and unnerving experience of taking public transit during the pandemic" by Adam Vaccaro Globe Staff, April 19, 2020
It’s always been quiet at this hour, but never more so than now, as the global pandemic shutdown has left Marcus Johnson as one of the few people still venturing out on public transit to go to work. Before, the commute for Johnson and his fellow early-morning riders was a kind of unspoken and mundane collective misery; now, what’s left unsaid is the suspicion that the next rider over is a threat carrying an unseen adversary.
I refuse to fear my fellow human beings despite the Globe's encouragement.
The buses and trains may be near empty, but there are still thousands of workers who have little choice but to risk a T ride every day, nurses and janitors and food service workers whose jobs are as essential as ever, and desperate shoppers with no other way to get around. They’re the last commuters in a bestilled economy, voyaging each day into a scary unknown. It is the very promise of public transit — to move many people on one vehicle — that poses what may be their greatest threat.
The Globe stopped halfway through the paragraph for the turn-in.
Each weekday morning after she boards the 111 bus, Leslie Santiago observes a new ritual as it picks up more riders on its way through Chelsea and into Boston: a constant shifting of seats to maintain six feet of separation in a vehicle designed for confined quarters, and a studied effort to avoid grabbing poles and any other hard surface as the bus lurches into traffic, out of fear they could be teeming with the virus.
Look at the Globe push the fear!
“If I touch this, am I going to get it? Is that person in front of me going to get it?” said Santiago, a paralegal at a Boston law firm that specializes in immigration and still requires her to go to work.
How is that "e$$ential?"
Given the viral power of COVID-19, the eerie emptiness of a T vehicle is a reassurance, that most commuters have stayed home, and those still riding are following social distance guidelines. A month ago, the thought of masked riders boarding a bus would be fearsome; these days, it’s those without the mask who are scary.
“Under my breath, I’m saying ‘Well I’m protecting you from myself. Thanks for not doing the same for me,’ ” said Paul Burgart, a 68-year-old medical worker at Brigham & Women’s Hospital who rides the 39 bus from his home in Jamaica Plain.
Oh, look at the APPROVED SHAMING!
I must admit, I have been covering when I go out out of respect for my fellow citizen, but this bull$hit!
Related:
"The coronavirus death toll in New York dropped again, a sign that Governor Andrew Cuomo said Sunday means the state is “on the other side of the plateau’’ and that ongoing social distancing practices are working to stem the spread of the virus, but Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio maintained their warnings that people in New York City and the rest of the state need to stay vigilant to curb the spread of the virus. “We showed that we can control the beast and when you close down, you can actually slow that infection rate, but this is only halftime,” Cuomo said Sunday. Police and park officers will be out in force to break up outdoor gatherings that pose a risk, with violators facing potential fines of up to $1,000, the mayor said. Nearly 14,000 New Yorkers in all have died since the state’s first coronavirus case was reported March 1, according to state data....."
I'm glad they have nothing better to do in new York City.
No robberies, rapes, muggings, or murders to solve?
So when does Wal$h hop on board that train?
Also see:
“We’re in for a major reset,” said Professor Vince Gennaro of NYU’s Tisch Institute for Sports Management, Media, and Business. “It will take us years to get to the new normal. It could be the next three years until we feel like this has really played through our system, this particular pandemic, where we’ve got the combination of vaccines, antibody testing, and treatment for those who get it.'' It is possible that the demand for sports will be as high as ever while the desire to experience sports in person will be at an all-time low. Notably, those two opposing forces could take place against a backdrop where technology continues to advance in a way that makes the experience of sports from the comforts of a living room feel ever more genuine. “You couple the issues we’re talking about with the pandemic and the mood around it with increased technology — people are going to say, ‘Wait a minute. I can buy a VR headset, the top of the line for $350.’ That might come down like high-def TVs have. If that’s the case, in five years, I can get 75 percent of the experience with 10 percent of the risk or 5 percent of the risk or 2 percent of the risk,” said Gennaro. “There are all sorts of things happening that will put downward pressure on attendance that will be a double-whammy with the virus.” In short, there will be numerous forces that suggest dramatic changes in how sports are consumed....."
Looks like the Matrix, and I am no longer interested in $ports nor will I be going forward.
No more pick-up basketball, either.
Better get running or you will be late to work..
Johnson, the BC janitor, continues to report to a campus that has shifted to online learning but is still housing about 300 students, many of whom cannot return to their overseas homes because of travel restrictions.
Traveling outbound in early morning, Johnson always avoided the claustrophobic crowds of rush hour. Still, in normal times, there would usually be 25 or so riders on a car with him. These days, it’s just a handful.
“There were only two people on the train,” Johnson recalled of that first commute after the city essentially shut down. “They looked at me. I looked at them. We just kept staring at each other, wondering, ‘What are we doing here? Why are we on this train?’ ”
I'm wondering why it is running given the waste of resources and contribution to climate change.
The virus has upended Johnson’s life in several ways. There’s the stress of cleaning a campus mostly,— but not entirely — empty of students as an infectious disease continues to spread.
A Black man over 50 with a heart condition, Johnson said he is “a flying target for this disease.”
If he were a White man the Globe would not have capitalized it. That's Zioni$t $upremacism for you.
There’s also loneliness and sadness, as he is deprived of his Friday night tradition of taking his five grandchildren out for ice cream: “It’s my joy,” but the not-knowing has become so stressful that Johnson is planning to walk the five miles to work, even though it will add more than two hours to his round-trip commute each day.
“I’ll feel safer, I’ll feel better,” he said. “I don’t want to get sick.”
Am I supposed to feel sorry for him?
I mean, he is still working!
In some ways, the numbers alone indicate who is still riding the MBTA. These days, “rush hour” is a relative term; the busiest hours across the system have shifted earlier, roughly aligning with typical hospital shift times and indicating that medical workers still rely on public transit.
Another big shift is that MBTA buses now have twice as many riders as the subway; normally the subway is king.
“It tells you that there is a significant population who depend on the bus for transportation while most of society is staying at home,” said MBTA general manager Steve Poftak.....
That is where I had to get off.
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Help police and firefighters stricken by coronavirus
Healey sees coronavirus highlighting, and increasing, inequality