"We know everyone is hunkering down and keeping cozy in their homes for the next few days. We wanted to share a few digital back issues to keep you all inspired and enchanted!" Faerie Magazine and Enchanted Living offering some of the back issues for free. "We also want to share our Mythic Coloring Book, which we printed in 2015 and which features the art of legendary artists Charles Vess and Michael Kaluta… (plus) Charles Vess’s WALKING THROUGH THE LANDSCAPE OF FAERIE, featuring Charles’s lush fantasy illustrations and writing, along with an introduction by Charles de Lint and additional poetry from Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Maguire, Alice Hoffman, Terri Windling, Jane Yolen, Delia Sherman, Theodora Goss, Ari Berk, John Matthews, and more! Please download and enjoy!" OMG! Makes grabby hands. Also, as a side note, I have cancelled most of my print magazine subscriptions (other than National Geographic). I may need to make another exception. (Grokked from Terri Windling)
"They are about the same size as a standard Easter egg, but are rather older – with some specimens dating back five millennia, to the early bronze age… A collection of decorated ostrich eggs belonging to the British Museum in London has been reexamined by experts in an effort to understand where they originated, and how their often elaborately painted or engraved designs were created." Just gonna say it, if ostrich eggs are the "standard" Easter egg size, just WTF kinda chickens do you have over there? Although, if they are, then this are "witches eggs" (which are the non-fertilized, no-yoke eggs, typically much smaller than normal) of the ostriches, which may be why they were so valued.
There's this joke about finding out how old someone/something is by cutting them in half and counting the rings. "Scientists have figured out how to calculate the age of whale sharks - Earth’s largest fish - with some guidance from the radioactive fallout spawned by Cold War-era atomic bomb testing." They cut the cartilage in half and counted the rings. It's just now we know that each ring does equal approximately a year.
"Two Russian cosmonauts, Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy launched to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Thursday morning at 4:05 a.m. ET." Astronauts already go through strict quarantine before launches.
"In his 1978 novel The Stand, author Stephen King wrote about a viral pandemic that decimated the world's population. And he gets it when fans say experiencing the COVID-19 outbreak feels like stepping into one of his horror stories… 'I keep having people say, "Gee, it's like we're living in a Stephen King story,"' he says. 'And my only response to that is, "I'm sorry."'"
"Some coronavirus testing sites around the U.S. plan to close as the federal government ends support for them on Friday… A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tells NPR, 'Many of the Community-Based Testing Sites (CBTS) are not closing, but rather transitioning to state-managed sites on or about April 10.'" I wonder if they actual told the states about this?
"Dozens of patients from a nursing home in Southern California were evacuated to other centers Wednesday after employees stopped showing up for work, officials say." Da fuq? I'm appreciative of just how little these people are paid, and that they feel in this crisis that they're not being protected (I feel ya, believe me how I feel ya), but that abandonment which is malpractice. I'll also note that there is (I'm sure) a huge backstory to this that isn't represented in the reporting and this has probably been building for weeks.
"The novel coronavirus has infected a crew member aboard the USNS Mercy, the hospital ship docked in Los Angeles to provide relief to local hospitals by treating non-COVID-19 patients… The infected medical treatment facility crew member has been isolated on the ship and will be transferred to a facility where they will self-monitor for severe symptoms, the U.S. Navy confirmed on Wednesday."
"The military-run hospitals at the Javits Center and onboard the USNS Comfort remain mostly empty — so far treating only 110 patients between them, Pentagon officials said Tuesday." Who has time (and staff) to transfer non-COVID-19 patients? Also, there hasn't been time for EMS and the general public to process that they should go to the "new hospitals." And many of the usual patient types admitted to hospitals are also likely COVID-19 positive.
"The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has given a boost to an unsettling idea: that the novel coronavirus can spread through the air—not just through the large droplets emitted in a cough or sneeze. Though current studies aren’t conclusive, 'the results of available studies are consistent with aerosolization of virus from normal breathing,' Harvey Fineberg, who heads a standing committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats, wrote in a 1 April letter…" Rhut rho. "Taken together, 'The presence of viral RNA in air droplets and aerosols indicates the possibility of viral transmissions via these routes,' the NAS panel concludes." Viral RNA is not the same as the virus (although a limited possibility of still be infectious).
"Auto giant General Motors will build 30,000 medical ventilators for the national stockpile, at a cost of $489.4 million, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday… The contract calls for more than 6,000 ventilators to be delivered by the end of May, with the remainder arriving by August. That's well after the projected peak of the pandemic, but ventilators arriving this summer could potentially fill the national stockpile to prevent future shortages." You know, unless this actually goes the way some scientists think and we're going to be in this lockdown until we have a vaccine (or enough of us survive infection). We'll have to see what happens in Wuhan (reminder, they were in lockdown for 3+ months, we've barely passed 1).
"Although President Trump has directed states and hospitals to secure what supplies they can, the federal government is quietly seizing orders, leaving medical providers across the country in the dark about where the material is going and how they can get what they need to deal with the coronavirus pandemic… Hospital and clinic officials in seven states described the seizures in interviews over the past week. (FEMA) is not publicly reporting the acquisitions, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, nor has the administration detailed how it decides which supplies to seize and where to reroute them." Just your federal government, acting without oversight, in an opaque manner, interfering with commerce without explaining why. (Grokked from Chuck Wendig)
"Millions of Americans didn't pay their rent last week, according to new statistics, and forecasts suggest that those shortfalls could deepen as the economy seizes up amid drastic countermeasures aimed at slowing the spread of the virus… Against that backdrop, President Trump and congressional Democrats are haggling over the size of the next bill designed to help Americans through the crisis while many of them cannot work." Structural changes. We need structural changes (to which the GOP will never agree).
"Social distancing and other mitigation efforts by the American people are working, raising hopes that the US can defy projected death tolls, the White House coronavirus task force said on Wednesday." On "undershooting" the mortality rates, that would be fantastic, but we still haven't peaked, yet. And there's this thing about counting chickens. Also note there is a secondary argument on whom to count here, such as if they're not tested before death (and we don't have enough tests to do them post-mortem), and if we should count those with pre-exiting conditions. The answer to both is yes we should count them all. But we won't. I'll also point out that just because the rate of increase is dropping, we are far from this being over. It just means that we might (emphasis on "might") bend the curve enough that we don't have excess deaths because we couldn't give everyone a ventilator or hospital bed who needs it.
"With health experts warning that warmer months won't bring an end to coronavirus, officials are developing a framework for what America's new normal could look like… President Trump has previously claimed that increased temperatures will bring an end to the virus. But members of a National Academy of Sciences committee said in a letter to the White House Tuesday that the data is mixed on if the virus spreads less easily in the heat, however that might not matter much given the lack of immunity." Yeah, warmer weather (actually it's having the sun at a higher angle which exposes this parti of the Earth to higher UV radiation and that people go outside more than have indoor activities) might help slow the spread, but it won't make it "magically go away."
"Dozens of inmates at the Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington state have staged a brief protest after several fellow prisoners tested positive for the novel coronavirus in recent days."
"U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson 'continues to improve,' his spokesman said Thursday, after spending a third night in intensive care with coronavirus." "Continues to improve"? He supposedly went in for routine testing, and was transferred to the ICU for an overabundance go concern. What's this "continues to improve but still in ICU" bullshit?
"Across the country, major meat processors are starting to shut down plants as employees are getting infected by coronavirus." Notes it's when the management gets sick that they close the plants. (Grokked from Xeni Jardin)
"The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits in the last three weeks has topped 15 million, as weekly new claims topped 6 million for the second straight time last week as tough measures to control the novel coronavirus outbreak abruptly ground the country to halt." Let's see, carry the 1…
"Shares of Walt Disney Co. surged 5.4% to pace all of the Dow Jones Industrial Average's premarket gainers Thursday, in the wake of the media and theme park operator's announcement that paid subscribers for its Disney+ streaming service surpassed 50 million." Woohoo! Some people are making money off this stay-at-home thing.
"Six in 10 Americans now say the economy is in poor shape, up 30 points since last month, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS… The shift is the steepest worsening of public perceptions of the economy in polling dating back to 1997."
"Hundreds of cooks and cashiers at 30 fast food restaurants across California plan to strike on Thursday—demanding that McDonald’s and other fast food chains provide masks, gloves, soap, $3-an-hour hazard pay, and two weeks of paid sick leave to workers exposed to COVID-19." (Grokked from Bo Bolander)
"Some of the world’s largest oil producers will hold an emergency meeting on Thursday to try to agree on historic output cuts, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to crush worldwide demand for crude." Call me if something actually changes.
"Using the COVID-19 pandemic to score political points is dangerous and will only cause more deaths, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Wednesday, after President Trump criticized the WHO and its relationship with China. Tedros also revealed that in recent months, other criticisms of him have included death threats." Oh, you thought Trump actually gives a damn about anyone else than himself? That's a silly mistake. He's just using you to lay the blame on anyone other than himself.
"The White House's Office of Management and Budget is working on a possible plan to cut U.S. aid to the World Health Organization, administration officials said Wednesday, as President Donald Trump tries to deflect blame for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic." Blame anybody but the Trump. This is a very dangerous move and would leave us totally unprepared for the next one. But just remember, the WHO was sounding the alarm when this president was still calling it a hoax.
"Despite this network and the efforts of thousands of scientists working to ward off dangerous new outbreaks, the coronavirus behind COVID-19 was unidentified when it launched into an unprepared world at the end of 2019. How did the virus slip by disease detectives looking for exactly this type of threat?… Experts say that like a fishing net with many holes, the surveillance network had numerous gaps, with too little money and manpower to be truly effective… An estimated 600,000 unknown viruses, possibly more, have the ability to jump from animals to people."
"'Seems like I should have been ARRESTED by now, eh?' (Austin "Baby-Q") Steinbart tweeted to one of his foes in late March, adding a sarcastic thinking-face emoji… A few days later, FBI agents arrested him." Just another diseased mind unleashed by the Trump presidency. (Grokked from Robert J Bennett)
"That's what made Wednesday night's briefing so noteworthy. By our preliminary count, Trump made just two false claims. This isn't to minimize those falsehoods. In fact both claims, pertaining to the President's false assertion that voter fraud is rampant in this country, are particularly dangerous, especially given the problems the coronavirus outbreak presents to voting." Wow, only 2. He should get a medal or something.
"Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said Wednesday he's assembled a bipartisan group of senators calling on President Donald Trump to provide a 'detailed written explanation' for the removal of the inspector general who flagged the Ukraine whistleblower complaint… Citing a loss of confidence, Trump told Congress on Friday that he was removing Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, who deemed the complaint an 'urgent concern' and was then required by law to provide it to the congressional intelligence committees." Detailed? Written? Explanation? From the president? That's hilarious.
"In other words, public views of Trump’s leadership in the coronavirus crisis are now breaking down along familiar lines of polarization: Americans view his performance during the pandemic about the same way they view his performance generally." So much for the rally-around-the-flag bump. But then Trump's made-for-TV pvolitical rally (the daily coronavirus briefings) weren't really meant to bring new support, but to keep hold of what he has.
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