Category Archives: News to use

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

Infected Trump seen ‘gasping’ from White House balcony before photo op

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Trump appeared to gulp in several breaths before saluting from the White House balcony, in moments not depicted by his promotional videos.

Covid-19 prevention; Why some colleges win, and others lose – Vox (Failure to lead in many colleges is fueling ongoing community spread and ultimately – deaths)

Since the start of August, the University of South Carolina has reported more than 2,300 student Covid-19 cases. And it is not alone. There are more than 130,000 estimated coronavirus cases on more than 1,300 college campuses across the US, as of late September.

“Universities and colleges are not islands unto themselves, and they exist in their communities,” says Crystal Watson a public health risk expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. She says that infections among students are “essentially feeding cases in the community.” Indeed, many towns with the highest rates of Covid-19 as the fall semester got underway were those that house large universities.

The University of Illinois created an ambitious campus testing program, requiring every on-campus student to get tested at least twice a week with the school’s rapid saliva test. (The school has conducted more than 466,000 Covid-19 tests since early July.)

However, just several days into the semester, it detected 320 new cases in a single day, bringing its campus-wide test positivity to almost 3 percent (because of universal regular testing, this was close to the true campus infection level). The next week, administrators put the campus on lockdown for two weeks.

The lockdown drastically slowed case spread; the test positivity rate has stayed below 1 percent since early September (and is currently at approximately 0.2 percent). And the university continues to conduct more than 10,000 tests on a typical day to monitor for new outbreaks.

 

Source: Covid-19 prevention; Why some colleges win, and others lose – Vox

Kyrgyzstan’s prime minster steps down, is replaced by dissident freed from prison just hours earlier

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Kyrgyzstani Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov has resigned from office after just a few months on the job, amid protests and riots in Bishkek against election parliamentary election results. National lawmakers have already appointed his replacement: Sadyr Zhaparov, a former member of parliament who was freed from prison just hours earlier by demonstrators. A court previously sentenced Zhaparov to 10 years behind bars for allegedly organizing riots.

FDA says it’s sticking to vaccine guidelines blocked by White House

FDA has told coronavirus vaccine developers that it will hold them to strict standards for emergency authorization, even though the White House has so far blocked the formal release of the requirements. (Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla wants to be first, whether safe and effective – no effing way dude!)

Source: FDA says it’s sticking to vaccine guidelines blocked by White House

Representing Covid-19 Deaths, 20,000 Empty Chairs Face the White House

I’m going to point out once again that whenever you see a number in the media for Covid-19 deaths, that’s the official count. But if you look at the excess mortality in the United States during the period in question, the true death toll is significantly higher. “For example, the US suffered some 260,000 more deaths than the five-year average between 1 March and 16 August, compared to 169,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths during that period.

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An array of 20,000 chairs set up in front of the White House

On Sunday in Washington DC, a group called Covid Survivors for Change set up 20,000 chairs in front of the White House to represent the 210,000 people who have died from Covid-19 in the United States.1 Each chair represents about 10 people who have died and their collective emptiness represents both the loss felt by the families & loved ones of those who have died and the feckless, hollow response of the federal government to the suffering.

  1. I’m going to point out once again that whenever you see a number in the media for Covid-19 deaths, that’s the official count. But if you look at the excess mortality in the United States during the period in question, the true death toll is significantly higher. “For example, the US suffered some 260,000 more deaths than the five-year average between 1 March and 16 August, compared to 169,000 confirmed COVID-19 deaths during that period.”

Tags: COVID-19   photography

Nearly all marine life killed along the seabed of Kamchatka’s Avacha Bay, scientists report

Following the recent discovery of high pollution levels off the coast of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, scientists are reporting that nearly all of the marine life along the seabed (the benthos) of the Avacha Bay has been killed. This was reported to the regional authorities by specialists from the Kronotsky Nature Reserve, the Kamchatka Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (KamchatNIRO), and the Kamchatka branch of the Pacific Institute of Geography, who conducted survey dives in the area.