Welcome Back

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Florida Governor Ron DeathSantis has vowed that schools will remain open through the Omicron blizzard. Mask mandates for students are a thing of the past since DeathSantis created a law making mask mandates illegal to protect students.

The Governor has been at war with local school districts that wanted to mask mandates to protect students during surges of COVID. The  administration’s policy was to deny school boards, the right to choose whether their children attend school masked or unmasked.

The State Board of Education docked pay from school boards that issued mask mandates in defiance of the governor’s policy. The Federal Government stepped in to cover School Board salaries. However, it is now illegal to protect the lives of students. The Governor wants students to get infected in the  hope that it will foster herd immunity with what he considers an acceptable amount of death. COVID is not benign in in kids and it is not inconsequential.

So students are returning to classrooms mask free if they like, to spread this highly transmissible virus at will. Governor DeathSantis said, while speaking in Fort Lauderdale, children “do not need to be doing any crazy mitigation” such as testing or wearing masks, unless their parents want them to. He is also making moved to cut back testing just as the demand for more testing has grown in this wave of the pandemic. Tests  will only be for “High Value” individuals, whatever that means. An example given was of an elderly grandmother given more testing consideration over an 8-year-old third grader. Clearly he feels that allowing children to get sick will held his re-election plans

According to The New York Times, “Large city school systems in Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee and Newark have joined a growing list of public schools across the country that have postponed reopening after the holiday break, switched to remote instruction, or have taken both steps because of COVID-19 outbreaks and staffing shortages.”

Florida reported 85,000 new COVID-19 cases on January 4th 2022. 61 people died that same day. Hospitalizations have spiked suddenly high above the peak of the Delta wave. It will get worse before it gets better. As of 6Pm on January 3, 2022 over 3,000 schools nationwide had closed for the week, according to Burbio, which tracks school calendars. Many schools are pivoting to virtual learning.  School districts in and around  Detroit, Atlanta, Newark, New Jersey, and Milwaukee, as well as individual schools elsewhere, have reverted to virtual learning for days or weeks, mostly because of staff shortages resulting from illness or quarantine.

Omicron Tsunami

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The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on December 29, 2021 that a “Tsunami” of Omicron cases are coming. This deluge of cases should stretch throughout the winter.

The Financial Times reported that Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director-general, said the highly transmissible omicron variant and the fast-spreading delta variant will lead to the surge of cases. “This will continue to put immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems on the brink of collapse and again disrupting lives and livelihoods,” Tedros said.

“There is this narrative going on which is ‘it’s milder or less severe,’” Tedros said. “But we’re undermining the other side, at the same time it could be dangerous, because the high transmissibility could increase hospitalizations and deaths.” “Previous strains could often be treated with drugs called monoclonal antibodies. Omicron seems oblivious to most of these, and supplies of those that do affect it, newly developed versions … are limited. This is and will continue to put immense pressure on exhausted health workers and health systems on the brink of collapse and again disrupting lives and livelihoods,” Tedros told reporters as the health body marked the two-year anniversary of the emergence of the pandemic.

We can expect to see major disruptions in the work force as more people become infected. The CDC reduced the isolation time for people who have a close contact but are asymptomatic. from ten days of isolation to five. After 5 days of isolation a person is still 35% infections, so it makes no sense that a negative test is not required before a person can return safely to work. If you are unvaccinated the virus will find you. It is so transmissible that it will be impossible to avoid. The hope is that it will boost the immunity for those who are fully vaccinated and boosted. This could be the beginning of the end of the pandemic or it could be just another enormous wave.

The nation broke records at least four times this week for its seven-day average of new daily Covid-19 cases, reporting an all-time high of more than 386,000 new daily infections December 31, 2021, according to the latest data from Johns Hopkins University. The high case count is already causing disruptions in the country. In New York City, which just hosted a Times Square superspreader event on New Years Eve, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is plagued with staffing issues and announced three subway lines — the B, Z and W — which service various parts of the boroughs, have been suspended.

The virus is now “extraordinarily contagious” and previous mitigation measures that used to help now may not be as helpful, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told CNN on December 31, 2021. “At the beginning of this pandemic… we all were taught, you have a significant exposure if you’re within six feet of somebody and you’re in contact with them for more than 15 minutes. All these rules are out the window,” Reiner said. “This is a hyper-contagious virus.”

Now, even a quick, transient encounter can lead to an infection, Reiner added, including if someone’s mask is loose, or a person quickly pulls their mask down, or an individual enters an elevator in which someone else has just coughed.

Crealde

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Teaching Urban Sketching at Crealde School of Art has caused me t speed up my sketching process. I am learning how to focus only on the important details and then let everything else go since I drill this idea into my students each Sunday. Actually verbalizing and then demonstrating these ideas has caused me to get better at my own daily sketching.

The large mass of palm fronds simply became a pointed blob and I never focused on individual leaves, instead focusing on the impression of what it felt like. Sky just became a small splash of blue. Clouds are left vacant and hopefully the viewer fills in the details.

This sketch was also done on ancient tissue thin paper, so I didn’t take it as seriously and I am realizing that this attitude of not giving a damn is very helpful to the act of just throwing an idea down on the page.

The Winter sessions begins January 30, 2021  until March 20, 2021. We work outside and take every possible COVID safety protocol. I am masked at all times until this pandemic is over.

Swift Superspreader

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A Taylor Swift album party became a superspreader event with over 100 attendees testing positive for COVID-19. The event was held December 10, 2021 in Sydney Australia. Sydney is on the epicenter of the largest outbreak of COVID-19 in the country since the start of the pandemic. December 31, 2021 the country saw over 21,000 new cases in a country which had previously done an amazing job of controlling the outbreak.

In a public health alert issued on December 16, 2021, the New South Wales (NSW) Ministry of Health said it had been notified of a “venue of concern” in Sydney connected to at least 97 confirmed cases of Covid-19.

The health ministry said that anyone who attended the “On Repeat: Taylor Swift Red Party” at the Metro Theatre from 9 p.m. local time on Friday Dec. 10 is considered a “close contact” of a positive Covid case and “must immediately get tested and isolate for 7 days.The event had more than 600 guests, according to the New South Wales Ministry of Health, but officials have only been able to contact those who checked in on-site using a QR code. The health ministry said it was likely that at least some of the cases identified were the omicron variant. NSW Health said it was also asking all household contacts of those at the event to get tested and self-isolate until a negative result is received by everyone in the household.

NSW Health reminded everyone of the importance of maintaining COVID-safe practices as transmission is occurring at social events during the festive period. “Everyone should remain vigilant when celebrating with family, friends and colleagues and should not attend any social functions if they have any symptoms.”  NSW Health said penalties for non-compliance with isolation, testing and quarantine rules have been increased from $1,000 for individuals to $5,000, with penalties for corporations rising from $5,000 to $10,000.

 

No Popcorn for You!

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France is experiencing a huge wave of Omicron infections. To combat the spread of the disease,    the country is going to prohibit Popcorn, candy and soda sales in movie theaters.

These restrictions will go into effect January 3, 2022. The ban of at least three weeks on eating and drinking also applies to theaters, sports venues and public transport. France’s cinemas are expecting a deluge of sales in the final days before the ban takes effect.

French President Emmanuel Macron, is facing reelection in April 2022 so he is hoping these types of restrictions will keep venues open while curbing the spread of the virus. There will also be limits on crowd numbers at public venues, with no more than 2,000 allowed indoors and 5,000 outdoors. The limits don’t apply to election campaign rallies which are always perfect superspreader events.

New infections are higher than they have ever been and hospitals are again overburdened with the sick. Some Cinema goers struggled to see any logic in not being able to indulge their sweet cravings in cinemas or theaters when restaurants are still allowed to serve food and drinks.

In America, a December 20, 2021 YouGov poll of 1,000 Americans found that 39 percent of respondents age 45 to 64 were less likely to attend theaters during the variant surge. 53 percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 were not more or less likely to visit.  The major studios have seen resurgent box office for blockbusters like No Time to Die, Dune and especially Sony’s  Spider-Man: No Way Home, which reached theaters in mid-December 2021. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” could become the first and only film released in 2021 to surpass $1 billion at the global box office. Cha-ching!

 

 

Omicron New Year

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On a December 30, 2021 morning TV interview New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the ball drop in Times Square  will go on as planned. City Councilman Mark Levine, who chairs the health committee, to cancel it as other cities like Rome, Paris, and Tokyo have done. Levine and others fear that it could become a superspreader event.

December 31, 2021 is the mayor’s last day in office. So this superspreading event will be his swan song. Shortly after the ball drops, Eric Adams will be sworn in as the city’s 110th mayor in Times Square. It will be his job to clean up the aftermath. Adams had planned to have an inauguration ceremony at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn Saturday night but canceled it because of rising COVID cases.

The celebration in Times Square typically holds around 58,000 people in viewing areas, but this year it will be limited to 15,000 people. Everyone will be required to wear a mask and show photo identification. All visitors to the Times Square celebration are required to show proof of vaccination if they are older than 5. Any unvaccinated children younger than 5 must be accompanied by a vaccinated adult to attend.

In November 2021, de Blasio had announced the return of a “big, strong, full strength” in-person New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square this year following its Wack Waving virtual event last year due to pandemic concerns. So are the safety precautions enough to keep New Yorkers and visitors safe? Of course not.

Pediatric Cases Double

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Pediatric cases due to Omicron are on the rise. CNN reported that there has been a five-fold increase in pediatric admissions in New York City this month. Nationwide, on average, pediatric hospitalizations are up 48% in just the past week.

The Christmas holidays have resulted in children being infected more then ever before. Across the country, pediatricians are bracing for a busy January.

Dr. Stanley Spinner told CNN, “They’re needing oxygen. They’re needing some other assistance. Even if they’re just really dehydrated, needing IV fluids, most of these kids that we’re admitting for COVID are kids that have respiratory issues — that they need oxygen and they need other support. So they’re going to be pretty sick. You know, you don’t see kids that are not very sick in the hospital.”

Children are an easy target for the virus, Dr. Juan Salazar, physician in chief at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford, told CNN.

The Miami Herald reported that, emerging evidence shows children are getting infected with the coronavirus and being hospitalized at alarming rates relative to pre-omicron days, particularly those who are unvaccinated. As a result, kids younger than 5 years old, who are not yet eligible for vaccination, are making up large portions of pediatric COVID-19 surges across the globe. Nationwide, more than 900 children with COVID-19 have been admitted to a hospital as of the week of Dec. 20, up from 800 the week prior, according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

 

 

The Gadget

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The “Gadget” was the plutonium device detonated at the Trinity Test site in July 1945. Manhattan Project scientists had to overcome difficult scientific and engineering challenges to design and build the Gadget. Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project.

The Gadget was much larger than the COVID-19 virus but its deadly impact has been very much the same. Over 5 million people have died fro COVID-19 world wide and America leads the world in the number of deaths with over 800,000.

Between Hiroshima and Nagasaki about 199,000 died. A 2016 study concluded that, in the United States’ nuclear weapons plants since 1945, some 107,394 American workers contracted cancer and other serious diseases, and 33,480 of these workers have died as a result. People continue to die from something that they can not see and therefor do not believe.

Omicron is spreading as fast as a nuclear explosion. Omicron variant multiplies about 70 times faster inside human respiratory tract tissue than the delta variant. This means the infected person can breath out the virus much easier than if it settled deep inn the lungs. That allows that person to infect many others while perhaps being asymptomatic. “Strikingly, Omicron was 4-fold more infectious than wild type [the original version of the virus] and 2-fold more infectious than Delta,” Garcia-Beltran and colleagues wrote in their study.

In one case two fully vaccinated people were isolating in a hotel across the hall from each other. Each tested negative prior to isolation. Neither person left their room and yet they both became infected with Omicron. It is believed that the brief moment hotel staff opened one door and then the other to deliver food was when the virus spread from one person to the other across the hall. It may take less of the airborne partials to start an infection. It is more important than ever to wear a well fit KN-95 mask and to stay further than six feet from others indoors and out. January will result in an amazing nuclear wave of infection.

Crealde Thumbnails

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These are examples of the quick little thumbnail notes I jot down for students taking my Crealde Urban Sketching class. We work outdoors documenting the Crealde Campus. The notes usually apply directly to the sketch that the student is working on and I offer a quick simplification of the process.

My next series of Urban Sketching classes start January 30, 2022. They are every Sunday from 9:30Am to 12;30PM.

Learn to sketch from subject to the environment. Classroom sessions will focus on sketching clothed models and progress towards sketching the model and classroom environment. Learn how to incorporate storytelling into your sketches in our location sessions. These trips to local venues will challenge you to use your sketchbook the way a photojournalist uses a camera. The six-week goal is to produce finished sketches using pencil, pen, and watercolor within two hours. Skill level: Intermediate

Required Supplies

#2 pencil with an eraser, 05 and 08 micron pens, Stillman and Birn 9 x 12 inch spiral bound sketchbook (Alpha or Epsion series), Travel sized watercolor pallet (mine is a Windsor Newton with 14 color pans), Pentel water brush (water goes in the handle), Black Prismacolor pencil, Compact artist stool

I am always pleased by the wide variety of artists who take the class. My goal isn’t to get each artist to draw exactly like me but to encourage them to express themselves in their own unique style. If Artists start carrying sketchbook where ever they go, the world will have so much more to see than iPhone photos.

Crealde Urban Sketch Class

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Each Sunday I teach an Urban Sketching class at Crealde School of Art. We sketch outdoors on the campus and lately the weather has been gorgeous. I appreciate the class because it gets me out of my socially isolated studio where I focus on the horrors of the pandemic every other day of the week.

This sketchbook is over 35 years old and  I am intent on filling it up. The pages are tissue thin so the pages curl up when I apply watercolor. Partly because I know this will look like a throw away sketch, I can be looser and more spontaneous. I also work faster so i can walk around and give notes to each student.

I always wear my mask, even outdoors while teaching since I never know when a student might approach with a question. One of my student is a serious about staying masked as I am, which I appreciate.

We just finished the series of classes and the next series will begin, January 30, 2022.