All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

COVID-19 rages in county that dismissed farmworker risk – Los Angeles Times

As coronavirus cases began to grow in San Joaquin County in June, Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs proposed requiring citizens to wear a mask in his city in the center of the fertile valley, where agriculture is king and poverty pervasive.

The response he received from the county emergency services director, a key figure in coordinating the pandemic response, was disquieting, he said.

“Stay in your lane,” wrote Shellie Lima in a June 9 email to Tubbs obtained by The Times, days before the county allowed card rooms, hotels and day camps to open. “I am against the proposed mask ordinance for Stockton … Why would our elected officials feel that they have the medical understanding to do so?”

 

Source: COVID-19 rages in county that dismissed farmworker risk – Los Angeles Times

New ventilator ‘very simple and cheap to make’ – NZ-born designer Jason Bates | RNZ – Covid-19 related

As the coronavirus has spread through the world, stressed hospitals have struggled to cope with patients with serious lung impairment, who need ventilators to keep them breathing well. But ventilators are expensive, and there’s only so many to go around.

Professor Jason Bates grew up in New Zealand, and now works at the University of Vermont. He’s an expert in a problem that can easily occur when ventilators are used, and is working on a design for a new ventilator specifically made to avoid that problem, which would be cheap to mass produce quickly.

He told Saturday Morning’s Kim Hill his team are in the second round of negotiations to get emergency-use approval for their ventilator from the USFDA, and he hopes to learn the outcome of that any day.

 

Source: New ventilator ‘very simple and cheap to make’ – NZ-born designer Jason Bates | RNZ

As Japan Nears 1,000 Daily Coronavirus Infections, It Shies From Restrictions – The New York Times

The number of serious cases — patients requiring ventilators — has doubled in less than a week in Tokyo. And experts say that the young may eventually spread the virus to older people and others at risk of getting seriously ill.

Now, the virus “is mainly among young populations, but it will shift toward people in their 40s and 50s, and may even end up in the more vulnerable populations such as those in their 70s and 80s,” said Kentaro Iwata, an infectious disease specialist at Kobe University Hospital.

‘Mugged by Reality,’ Trump Finds Denial Won’t Stop the Pandemic – The New York Times

“He needed to be the pandemic president. Instead he became a pandemic denier,” said Dr. Jonathan S. Reiner, a prominent cardiologist who treated former Vice President Dick Cheney. “Unfortunately, when a president refuses to accept scientific reality,” Dr. Reiner added, “his words and actions are emulated by large numbers of Americans who then dismiss the seriousness of the pandemic with predictable disastrous consequences.”

in much of the country, school leaders, like many governors and mayors, are paying less attention now to a president whose predictions have fallen flat and are paying more attention to the numbers on the charts. If a political convention in Jacksonville is not safe in the coronavirus age, many schools are coming to the conclusion that it may not be safe for them either, at least not on a full-scale basis.“

The virus and science, not politics, will determine spread of the virus and whether and when schools and our economy can reopen without having to slam shut again,” Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Friday. “Facts matter. Science matters. Supporting and being guided by public health matters.”

LeBron James group to donate $100,000 toward paying Florida ex-felons’ fines so they can vote

More Than A Vote, the group that James helped establish this year, on Friday announced it would donate $100,000 toward paying fees and fines of people in Florida with past felony convictions so they can register to vote, Politico reports. The group is raising the money to be donated to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition fines and fees fund. Additionally, the group will host an online screening of a documentary about the late Rep. John Lewis, and proceeds will go to the fund.

“Your right to vote shouldn’t depend upon whether or not you can pay to exercise it,” Miami Heat player Udonis Haslem, who is also a member of More Than A Vote, said.

 

Source: LeBron James group to donate $100,000 toward paying Florida ex-felons’ fines so they can vote