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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[bambu.]

Also;

The name 'Wagga' is derived from the local Wiradjuri Aboriginal language on whose land the City of Wagga Wagga now grows. It is widely accepted that 'Wagga' means 'crow' and to create the plural, the Wiradjuri people repeat the word. Thus Wagga Wagga translates as 'the place of many crows'.

*****

http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/wagga-wagga-city-council-cuts-china-sister-city-ties-over-communism-coronavirus-concerns/ar-BB12DBqN?li=AAgfYrC&OCID=AVRES000

The largest inland city in NSW has voted to sever its China sister city relationship in a move slammed as "racist dog whistling" by a fellow politician.

Wagga Wagga City Council last night narrowly voted to cut ties with its sister city Kunming, a relationship which began in 1988.

The councillor behind the push, Paul Funnell, said the "Chinese Communist Government that delights in lies, subterfuge and coverups" has brought "death and destruction across the world with COVID-19".

[bodiddley]

From what I've read, the strain of virus that is prevalent in NYC and the East Coast of the US came from Europe, which makes sense given the geography and timing.

This was stoppable or at least containable in the US if proper measures were taken early.  The lack of a coordinated national response doomed many (and the economy).

Trump said, "the WHO has not addressed a single one of these concerns nor provided a serious explanation that acknowledges its own mistakes, of which there were many."

Trump criticizing the WHO for not admitting its missteps and mistakes. 
Rich.


Trump claims the virus could have been stopped early if the WHO acted tougher in China.  But how come the US couldn't stop/contain the virus when it had advance warning, two months to prepare, the viral genome in hand, a Covid test already available?
Something doesn't add up.

[bodiddley]

Krugman on Trumponomics:

Thus, the Trump administration has flatly ruled out any bailout for the U.S. Postal Service, which is in financial crisis. Aside from being an essential part of our nation’s life — even more than usual in these times, when mail deliveries have become an essential lifeline to families sheltering at home — the post office employs 600,000 workers. But apparently those workers don’t count.

Hospitals obviously play a vital role in dealing with the pandemic; but they also employ more than five million people — and they’re facing financial crisis thanks to the pandemic.

State and local governments, which in general are required to balance their budgets, have seen revenues plunge and expenses rise — and they employ almost 20 million people, a majority of them in education. But again, apparently those jobs don’t count.

U.S. oil and gas extraction employs only around 150,000 workers.
So what makes oil worthy of aid when hospitals aren’t?

One answer is that investors have sunk a lot of money into oil, even though few jobs were created. Net fixed assets in oil and gas extraction are around $1.8 trillion, almost twice the total for hospitals, despite far smaller employment. So maybe this isn’t about protecting jobs, it’s about protecting capital.

And this capital happens to be very G.O.P.-friendly: The oil and gas sector makes big political contributions, almost 90 percent of them to Republicans. This is, by the way, in strong contrast to education, which accounts for a majority of state and local government jobs and gives most of its contributions to Democrats.

[luee]

---'Crime against humanity': Trump condemned for WHO funding freeze
Timing of move during Covid-19 crisis is deplored by UN chief and experts who say it will cost lives---

[url][https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/politics/donald-trump-world-health-organization-funding-coronavirus/index.html/url]

[josh]

Good news.
Dogs are people.

More so than horses?

I don't see much difference between killing a dog to eat and killing a chicken or rabbit   or pig or deer.  Or between killing a wolf for its fur or killing a dog to eat.

It all should be stopped.

Fish? Squid? Ants? Bacteria? Corn? Where do you draw the line and why there?

[josh]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/health/coronavirus-antibody-tests-scientists/index.html

Bad news about antibody tests.

"We have made great progress with the antibody testing, fantastic progress," Trump said at a media briefing April 5.

Five days later (April 10th for the arithmetic challenged), Vice President Mike Pence said at a media briefing that "very soon we will have an antibody test that Americans will be able to take to determine whether they ever had the coronavirus."

That's great, right?!

Not so much. Trump might not have known better, but Mike Pence must have.

But on the April 6 phone call, members of the National Academy of Sciences' Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats told members of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy there are issues with the availability and reliability of the antibody tests in the United States right now.

"In three words: Work in progress," said Dr. David Relman, a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee who was on the call.

Second, there are good tests in the midst of the bad ones, but they're not yet widely and easily available throughout the country.

Third, it's not entirely clear that having antibodies to Covid-19 means that you truly have immunity and won't get the disease again.

Why did Mike Pence say that? Because they wanted it to be true.

So...

First, the US Food and Drug Administration relaxed its rules, and now companies can sell antibody tests without submitting validation data that shows they actually work.

The American Public Health Lab Association says that has resulted in "crappy" tests flooding the market.

"It's like the wild, wild West out there -- or wild East," said association CEO Scott Becker, a reference to the fact that at least half the companies making these tests are in China.

We have tests, many made in China, that cannot tell antibodies from COVID-19 apart from antibodies from the Common Cold. Why? Because the Trump administration gave the okay on it so they could pretend we are readier to go back to work than we are.

But even the tests that work don't tell us what the administration has said that the tell us - we don't know if they are announcing immunity or not!

[josh]

People around the world might need to practice some level of social distancing intermittently through 2022 to stop Covid-19 from surging anew, a group of Harvard disease researchers said Tuesday.

~Boston Globe

[bodiddley]

Stop killing animals.
Pretty easy line drawing.

Or if that's too hard, first stop with land animals, then move on to sea animals.
(curious how humans tend to have little empathy for fish).

Could apply the tobacco blueprint and heavily tax meat (besides the killing, it uses up a lot of land and water resources and pollutes heavily with animal waste runoff, steroids, extra fertilizer to grow animal feed, etc).  Secondly, demonize meat by showing the animal suffering and negative health effects.  Could gradually work.

If that ever takes hold then can move on to your heartfelt concern for plant life ...

[bodiddley]

A Covid saliva test.
https://apnews.com/a420e1c4b93f9fd9a14561196c92e0a2
Hurrah for Rutgers.

[josh]

https://news.yahoo.com/putins-bleak-covid-19-admission-122708635.html

Putin: "We don't have much to brag about," as any glance at the numbers would tell anybody but Kid. Nor are they only place where the numbers are very much going in the wrong direction. In a week (more likely 5 days), two more countries will pass China in cases. Turkey is doing far better than Iran in deaths, but not total cases.

Canada's case load seems to be slowing down, but not their new deaths. And while Brazil is doing better than Russia in total cases, that's largely because they suck in testing - and their death rate is far worse. (By the way, I had not realized that Brazil has more people than Russia, now! Brazil is #6, Russia #9, and while the countries around Brazil (#7, #5) are growing faster, Russia is largely stagnant - growing at 4 hundreths of a percent (0.04% or 4 per 10,000 people) per year! Brazili's going at a bit over 0.7%.)

And the world is over 2 million known cases as of today (4/15). With a ton more unknown.

[josh]

How do I know a ton more have it than the official number?

This frightening story out of Boston:

A homeless shelter got testing for the roughly 400 folks staying there, after somebody noticed that a few of the city's positives had come from there.

Out of 397 people tested, 146 (36%) came up positive. But even more surprising, they weren't showing any signs of sickness.

[josh]

A Covid saliva test.
https://apnews.com/a420e1c4b93f9fd9a14561196c92e0a2
Hurrah for Rutgers.

Good news, though given the other information I sure am looking more skeptically at FDA approvals!

But the Rutgers study seems solid, even with the small number, especially with the backstop of a 2nd test for negatives. False positives represent less of a problem.

[bodiddley]

Hurrah for Nancy Pelosi:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a stark warning for Americans to “ignore the lies” and “insist on the truth” while the U.S. assesses next steps in the crisis.

She said the president ignored early warnings about the virus and took “insufficient” action that “caused unnecessary death and disaster.” Because of his “incompetent” reaction, she said, the economy is now a “disaster.”

“The truth is a weak person, a poor leader, takes no responsibility,” she wrote.

“The truth is, from this moment on, Americans must ignore lies and start to listen to scientists and other respected professionals in order to protect ourselves and our loved ones,” she wrote to colleagues.

“Our future will be healthy and prosperous if we no longer tolerate lies and deceit,” she wrote.

[josh]

80 pages of emails, trying to warn the Trump administration and the president himself about the crisis. Failing to budge the man who knows the most about everything always.

Courtesy Business Insider:

As the coronavirus outbreak worsened, several public-health experts both within and outside of the federal government sounded the alarm about the severity of the crisis.

Over the weekend, The New York Times published about 80 pages of emails showing how the nation's top experts were expressing serious concerns and frustrations about the government's lack of a clear, coordinated mitigation strategy as the outbreak unfolded.

"We are making every misstep leaders initially made in table-tops at the outset of pandemic planning in 2006," an infectious-diseases specialist wrote on March 12, adding, "We have thrown 15 years of institutional learning out the window."

[barton]

Good analysis by Krug Man.   It's always been about capital first,  people a distant second.

On ethics of vegetarians, I think most look at sentience.  And yes, many studies show we humans tend to confer more sentience on creatures that are closer to us in the phylogenetic tree.   I've met vegetarians who go by "don't eat anything with a nose. "  An Indian friend told me that some people there go by the criterion of having a central nervous system... scallops,  for example, are okay,  and often called "sea vegetables" and presumed not sentient.   

The WHO funds cutoff is Trump tossing more candy to his base.   Don't give money to foreigners!    A lot of his nervous system consists of knee jerks, rather than fully formed thoughts. 

All the other links I didn't comment on - informative stuff,  thank you.    (clutches head swollen with facts...)