Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

At a Children’s Hospital, a Wave of Young Patients Struggling to Breathe – The New York Times

Helpless to improve her infant son’s breathing as he was about to be intubated, Catherine Perrilloux did the only thing that came naturally to her in that moment, the worst of her life: She looked away and prayed. The boy, known as Junior, was two months old and gravely ill with Covid-19.

“I see a bunch of them crowding around the room with the ventilator machine, and then they pull out the tubing, and I’m just losing control,” Ms. Perrilloux, a dean at a nearby private school, recalled last week in her son’s room in the pediatric intensive care unit. “There’s nothing that you could say to make it better. You can’t do anything. It’s just paralyzing.”

At Children’s Hospital New Orleans, where the intensive care unit has been jammed with Covid-19 patients, scenes like this have played out unrelentingly over the past month. Nurses raced around monitoring one gut-wrenching case after another. One child was getting a complicated breathing treatment known as ECMO, a last resort after ventilators fail, which nurses said was almost unheard-of for pediatric cases. About a half-dozen others were in various stages of distress.

“We all thought, ‘Well, thankfully it’s not happening to the kids; none of us would be able to stomach that,’” said Mark Melancon, a longtime nurse at the hospital, recalling previous stages of the coronavirus pandemic. “Fast forward to now, and it’s happening with the kids.”

 

Some Hotels Are Mandating Vaccines. Will Others Follow? – The New York Times

Accommodations such as PUBLIC HotelEquinox Hotel and Wythe Hotel, all in New York City, Urban Cowboy Lodge in Big Indian, N.Y., a hamlet in the Catskill Mountains, and Pilgrim House in Provincetown, Mass., are among the first in the United States to announce that they will require evidence of vaccination, via a physical card or a digital verification, from their guests.

The precedent for hotels requiring vaccination is already being set beyond the contiguous United States. In August, Puerto Rico issued an island-wide vaccine mandate that requires guests and staff at all hotels, guesthouses and short-term rentals, including Airbnb, to provide proof of vaccination or a negative PCR or antigen test taken within 72 hours before their visit. If a person is staying longer than a week, they will need to present negative tests to hotel staff on a weekly basis.

Elite Island Resorts, a Florida-based company that runs a collection of all-inclusive Caribbean resorts stretching from Antigua to Panama, announced that all guests over the age of 12 would be required to show proof of Covid-19 vaccination upon arrival beginning on Sept. 1.

BioNTech mulls producing malaria jabs in Rwanda, Senegal | News | DW | 27.08.2021

BioNTech could start producing malaria and tuberculosis vaccines in Rwanda and Senegal, the company said after the presidents of the two African countries met with with EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin in Berlin on Thursday.

The German pharma giant is developing malaria and tuberculosis jabs based on the same mRNA technology used to make in-demand COVID-19 shots, BioNTech said.

At the Berlin meeting with Sahin and Ursula von der Leyen, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Senegal’s Macky Sall discussed setting up facilities to use this technology in Africa, which currently imports 99% of its vaccines and is limited to a yellow fever inoculation producer in Senegal.

New vaccines thanks to COVID-19 profits

BioNTech announced in July it would start developing malaria and tuberculosis vaccines with the first phase funded from profits gained by the global sale of its COVID-19 vaccine.

Source: BioNTech mulls producing malaria jabs in Rwanda, Senegal | News | DW | 27.08.2021

CDC: Unvaccinated teacher spread COVID-19 to 12 students – UPI.com

…the unvaccinated teacher “was reportedly unmasked on occasions when reading aloud in class,” the CDC reported. “This outbreak of COVID-19 that originated with an unvaccinated teacher highlights the importance of vaccinating school staff members who are in close indoor contact with children ineligible for vaccination as schools reopen,” the CDC researchers wrote. “The outbreak’s attack rate highlights the Delta variant’s increased transmissibility and potential for rapid spread, especially in unvaccinated populations such as schoolchildren too young for vaccination,” they said.

Source: CDC: Unvaccinated teacher spread COVID-19 to 12 students – UPI.com

How Pollution Makes Covid Cases Worse – by Erin Brockovich and Suzanne Boothby – The Brockovich Report

In 2017, The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health found that pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and death in the world, responsible for an estimated 9 million premature deaths. Huge multinational companies and regulatory agencies have been missing the mark, making grievous mistakes, or in many cases intentionally polluting for their own profit. And, not surprisingly, it’s making millions of people sick. Almost every town hall meeting that I’ve attended turns into a meeting about the health crisis in a community, and that’s not okay. Many communities only find out about pollution in their area because huge clusters of people become sick. So it’s not surprising to me that 18 months into this global pandemic, we are seeing how polluted communities are also dealing with more severe cases of COVID-19. New research published on August 13 found strong evidence that wildfire smoke created more severe cases of COVID-19.

Source: How Pollution Makes Covid Cases Worse – by Erin Brockovich and Suzanne Boothby – The Brockovich Report

Africa’s COVID-19 trend stabilizes, vaccine push intensifies | CIDRAP

The pace of COVID-19 activity in Africa has stabilized, but at a very high level, amid fresh calls to coordinate global efforts to funnel more of the world’s vaccine supplies to African countries, which have among the world’s lowest immunization coverage.

Africa’s vaccine rollout gains steam

At a World Health Organization (WHO) African regional office briefing yesterday, Director Matshidiso Moeti, MBBS, said Africa’s third wave seems to be stabilizing, but cases are still high, with nearly 250,000 reported across the continent last week. The COVID-19 picture varies in different countries, with cases rising in 24 nations and deaths increasing in 8 locations.

Source: Africa’s COVID-19 trend stabilizes, vaccine push intensifies | CIDRAP

Insurrection Update #13

In Saner Thought

MY continuing series on tracking the idiots that participated in the rebellion of 06 January and those traitors that are lurking in the wings waiting for their next ‘big” chance….

Think about this before I get into the idiots that got caught from their part in 06 January…..

Less than a year after a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol, nearly half of Republican voters (47%) say that “a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands,” per a new nationwide survey by George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.

Only about 29% of Americans agreed with this statement on some level, the poll found, including just 9% of Democrats. And 49% said they disagree or strongly disagree.

The poll also found that a majority of Republicans (55%) say “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast we may…

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ISIS-K?

In Saner Thought

I see the Pentagon has given the media who in turn have given the American people a new term…a new enemy…..ISIS-K.

Has anyone explained this situation adequately?

So far all I have seen and heard is the use of the acronym….

I shall attempt to help my reader understand……

The ghastly bombings at Kabul airport Thursday resulting in the deaths of 12 U.S. Marines and as of this writing, 60 civilians, are the latest in a series of especially savage terrorist attacks reportedly by the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), the local affiliate of the Islamic State of the Middle East. The growth of ISKP faces the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan with both a threat and an opportunity.

The threat is that ISKP will attract enough Taliban defectors and foreign fighters to cause serious instability and ruin the hopes of pragmatic Taliban leaders for economic development. The opportunity lies…

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How Vivaldi’s productivity tools got Lars to switch from Chrome (Me: I am a happy Vivaldi user on a Mac for 4 years)

How does he describe his relationship with a browser? Well, he uses browsers a lot.

He started off with Internet Explorer back in the day, then moved on to Opera and Safari. In recent years, Chrome has been his primary browser.

What are his “musts” for any browser?

  • Easy to use ✅
  • Add-ons, so you can go beyond the regular. ✅

As the user, you can influence the ease of use in Vivaldi, by configuring it to your liking. As for add-ons, while it is true that you can use any Chrome extension in Vivaldi, you might not need any. Have a gander at the features built into the browser to get an idea of all the ways you can make Vivaldi your own.

At the time of filming, Lars had used Vivaldi for about a week, and was pleased with it so far. He wasn’t sure if he’d convert completely yet, but based on his experience he plans to set it as his default browser and give himself some more time to use it. It initially took him a while to set up, to configure the browser to his needs. But so far, he is really happy with the browser. 🙌

We realize that the sheer number of features Vivaldi offers may be overwhelming to new users. This is why we now offer the layout selector, to make it easier for newbies to get up and running in Vivaldi. Just select the EssentialsClassic, or Fully Loaded option and you will have the features you need to get on your way. Though, of course, since this is Vivaldi, those features will be ready and waiting for you in the background, awaiting your discovery.

We’re glad that Lars’s experience with Vivaldi was such a positive one. He is keen to explore and test out more of the features and customizability, and we think he will like what he finds.

Source: How Vivaldi’s productivity tools got Lars to switch from Chrome