Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Camel's Hump


56 comments:

  1. Bernie Sanders Reached Out to Black Voters. Why Didn’t It Work? [Click] “Sanders' movement will outlast him. And its next leaders are unlikely to be elderly white men from Vermont. Lumumba is 36, old enough to run for president. And Sanders' most important and effective surrogate, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will turn 35 in 2024.”

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  2. Sexism Probably Wasn’t What Doomed Warren’s Campaign [Click] “The belief that female candidates for president face impenetrable barriers does more to perpetuate sexism than dismantle it.”

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  3. Incompetence Exacerbated by Malevolence [Click] The coronavirus has dangerously inverted a long-standing Trump White House theme.

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  4. BTW, in the lead photo, the Camel's Hump appears to be of the bactrian sort, rather than dromedary.

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  5. Closed borders and ‘black weddings’: what the 1918 flu teaches us about coronavirus [Click] Some things remain the same, and others have changed; there is local variation.

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  6. Popping by just to update that Youngest is feeling much better today. Seems he (and his youngest, age 19 months) had a 48-72 hr bug that features dry cough and fever. Heh.

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    1. Me too. I gather that the coronavirus symptoms (at least in significant cases) are fever, productive cough, and shortness of breath. I had pneumonia twice when I was in my early teens, and that deep, racking cough is unforgettable.

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    2. I had heard dry cough.

      Is it productive cough instead? Argh!

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    3. I’m hearing that peeps who get COVID-19 have to self-quarantine until their cough goes away. That could take 5-6 weeks! Maybe I need to gather more supplies?

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    4. Perhaps I misunderstood the description of the cough, listener. Don't lay in more supplies.

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    5. Looks like both dry and productive. Here's a page from Web MD. Check it out.

      Know the Symptoms of COVID-19 - Click

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    6. Thanks, Cat; I was purposely looking for signs of severe infection, progressing to (or already progressed to) pneumonia.

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  7. The GUARDIAN:

    Mike Pence’s meeting with hospital executives was unexpectedly closed to the press, amid concerns about how the administration is making information on coronavirus publicly available.

    A press pool was orginally supposed to go in to the vice president’s meeting with the executives, but that was abruptly canceled without explanation.

    Reuters reported earlier today that the White House has ordered officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, raising concerns of the administration trying to restrict access to information about the pandemic.

    However, the office of the vice president, who leads the coronavirus task force, said he was holding meetings in the Situation Room at the unclassified level.

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    1. Nothing like a bit of chaos at the upper level of the government. Isn't it amazing the lengths those Democrats will go to?

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    2. "The White House press pool has just been called in to Trump’s meeting with business leaders, which was previously listed as closed to the press."

      Weird.

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    3. 1) Chaos is as chaos does.
      2) Where there are flames there's fire.

      IMO

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    4. Oh, yes. It is ever so much more important for the press to cover the president's meeting with business leaders than the vice president's meeting on a global epidemic with extensive economic as well as human costs. Definitely. :P

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  8. Bernie’s speech at 1:00pm ET today, at HQ in Burlington, Vermont.
    https://youtu.be/hgz3sblaJX8

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    1. ^ Bernie's opening words...

      He opened by denouncing Trump and emphasizing the need to defeat him in November.

      Sanders called the president a “pathological liar” who is running a “corrupt administration.”

      "In my view, he is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, and religious bigot, and he must be defeated, and I will do everything in my power to make that happen,” Sanders said.

      (That's where the video above picks up.)

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    2. From politicalwire.com:

      Sen. Bernie Sanders told reporters that he will not drop out of the presidential race, despite his poor showing in yesterday’s primaries.

      Sanders also said that he looks forward to debating Joe Biden in Arizona on Sunday night.

      YAY! Someone [named Bernie] needs to keep pressing Biden to take necessary remedial actions.

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  9. Those suggestions are also meant to serve for when the Cascadia Fault or Mt. Ranier busts loose. Interestingly, I don't see any recommendation for solar or crank-powered lights or radio. Also no provision for cooking one's food [e.g. barbecue and charcoal, hatchet], no flour, beans, oats, powdered milk, etc. No hunting or fishing equipment, either. But I am classically inclined.

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    1. Thanks for the suggestions.

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    2. Here's a flashlight that can be recharged by solar power or through a USB cable.

      L.L.Bean-HybridLight Solar Rechargeable Flashlight - Click

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  10. I took our car to the shop this morning for routine maintenance. On the way back it occurred to me that it would be interesting to question Biden closely about his position on the Espionage Act of 1917, and the 1950 declaration of emergency that makes it technically legal to use during peacetime. Persecutions under the Act were a notable feature of the Obama administration, just as were deportations.

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    1. Sounds worthwhile and possibly highly instructive. Send the idear to Bernie's people. He's debating Biden on Sunday.

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  11. North Dakota primary results: Sanders wins

    It was a rough night for Bernie Sanders all around on Tuesday, but he did manage a victory in at least one place.

    With 72 percent of the vote in, according to NBC, Sanders was up more than 13 points on Biden — which translates to about 2,000 votes in the sparsely populated state.

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  12. BTW, a forensic pathology listserv of which I am a member has ongoing conversations about both security measures and postmortem findings related to the novel coronavirus.

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  13. Trump’s Company Paid Bribes to Reduce Property Taxes, Assessors Say [Click] I haven’t read it yet (gotta run) but I suppose the sources waited for expiration of the statute of limitations.

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  14. Did DT just call COVID-19
    a "foreign virus"? Really?

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    1. Yeah, ya gotta watch out fer them furrin viruses! Damned immigrants. What ever happened to our good old home-grown viruses?

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  15. This alert from the AMA:

    A malicious website pretending to be the live map for Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by Johns Hopkins University is circulating on the internet waiting for unwitting internet users to visit the website (corona-virus-map[dot]com). Visiting the website infects the user with the AZORult trojan, an information stealing program which can exfiltrate a variety of sensitive data. It is likely being spread via infected email attachments, malicious online advertisements, and social engineering. Furthermore, anyone searching the internet for a Coronavirus map could unwittingly navigate to this malicious website.

    Please make sure to exercise caution when opening emails from outside organizations even if those organizations may seem reputable.

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    1. I figured that sounded like a notably pernicious bit of malware.

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    2. Despicable!

      I posted the alert on my FB page as well as in the Engelbert fan group I run, prefacing it in the group with a note to the effect that, though off topic, it is extremely important and to please read it carefully. Doing that reminded me to post there as well, in the comments, the link for the Web MD page on recognizing symptoms. A bit belatedly, that; since I posted the link to my page at the same time as posting it here. I'm a lousy admin, no sense of responsibility. And, no, I'm not fishing but rather stating a discreditable fact.

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  16. From CNN: U.S. stock market futures fell more than 1,000 points in the hours after President Trump’s address to the nation on the global coronavirus pandemic.
    Way to go, Trumpy!

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  17. Jared Kushner is becoming more involved in the White House’s coronavirus response, as acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney heads for the exits, CNN reports.
    Said a source: “Jared is in total control.”
    -------------------------------
    Well, I suppose that having brought peace to Palestine he probably needed something to occupy his time.

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  18. “President Trump, in an explosive tirade Monday, urged Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to encourage Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to do more to stimulate the economy, revealing the president’s mounting fury as his administration struggles to corral economic fallout from the novel coronavirus,” the Washington Post reports.
    “During that tense Monday meeting in the Oval Office, Trump fumed that Powell never should have been appointed and is damaging the nation and his presidency.”

    Sure, let's lower the Treasury rate to -10%; that'll learn them viruses!

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    1. Them furrin viruses!

      Seriously, I was greatly surprised to discover that there actually is such a thing as negative interest rates. Seems a bit bass ackwards to my simple mind.

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  19. “President Trump announced he was taking ‘strong but necessary’ actions to keep new cases of the coronavirus from entering the United States by suspending all travel from Europe for 30 days, beginning on Friday. The restrictions did not apply to Britain,” the New York Times reports.
    >>>>>>>>>>So for 30 days people traveling from continental Europe to the US will have to change planes in the UK, eh?

    “Trump also said health insurance companies had agreed to waive all co-payments for coronavirus treatments and extend insurance coverage to cover coronavirus treatments.”
    >>>>I hope I may be pardoned some skepticism.

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    1. Hey, wasn't ol' Trumpoo himself exposed to the virus? So, what's he doing holding meetings and releasing statements and such like? How come he's not in lockdown, er, quarantine?

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    2. Actually, he was exposed to a few people who were exposed to it. That's not the same thing. You only have to self-quarantine if you had direct contact. And we know it's just a matter of time.

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  20. Currently rereading an old favorite, Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. Going to take it and possibly some Häagen-Dazs vanilla and retire to bed.

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  21. Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson have symptoms and have tested positive for COVID-19, in Australia
    https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/11/entertainment/tom-hanks-rita-wilson-coronavirus/index.html

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