Every Minute

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The U.S. Centers of Disease Control (CDC) reported that the United States is now averaging one COVID-19 related death every minute. The pandemic is increasing in severity as we head into the winter months.

The virus has causes 69,000 deaths in nursing homes as of November 15, 2020. The latest COVID-19 pandemic death toll for the U.S. stands at 267,302, with 1,251 new deaths being reported in the 24 hours leading up to Tuesday, December 1, 2020.

Hospitals in the Midwest are being overrun by  the increasing demand. COVID-19 hospitalizations are rising amid shortages of nurses and other health care workers, the situation in some places is becoming severe. If things don’t change, hospitals will have to ration care by turning patients away. COVID-19 deaths, have climbed more than 40% over the past two weeks and set records last week in places like Wisconsin. The Dakotas and Wyoming had the country’s highest infection rates last week, but Iowa and Wisconsin weren’t far behind, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

There is light at the end of the tunnel with vaccines becoming available. But the three of four month until those vaccines can be distributed to people, will be the darkest months of this pandemic. “We have not even come close to the peak and, as such, our hospitals are now being overrun,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm of Biden’s  coronavirus advisory board. The United States is headed for a COVID Hell.

Zombie Mink

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17 million mink were killed in Denmark in November after COVID-19 spread from mink farmers to the mink they were raising and then a mutated strain of the virus passed back to humans.

The Denmark Food and Agriculture Minister Morgens Jensen resigned when it was decided that the order to kill the animals was illegal. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen visited a mink farm after the mass killing.

Mass graves were dug at a military area in western Denmark for the 17 million mink and they were buried under six feet of dirt. Hundreds of bloated mink have started rising from the grave. It is believed that the CO2 gas used to kill the animals caused the decomposing bodies to rise to the surface. The local media has started referring to them as zombie mink.

Jensen’s replacement, Rasmus Prehn, said Friday November 28, 2020 that he supported the idea of digging up the animals and incinerating them. He said he had asked the environmental protection agency look into whether it could be done. Parliament was to be briefed on the issue on Monday November 30, 2020.

The American Mink Farming industry as been on high alert since the mass killings in Denmark. Thousands of mink have died at fur farms in Utah (8,000) and Wisconsin (2,000) after a series of COVID-19 outbreaks. In Oregon, least 10 minks and an undisclosed number of human farm workers tested positive for the COVID-19, the U.S. Agriculture Department confirmed Friday November 27, 2020. The infected animals were ordered isolated, so far sparing them from the grim fate of the Denmark mink. So far, no mutation has been detected in U.S. minks. The United States produces roughly 3 million mink pelts a year compared to Denmark’s 17 million. There are about 275 mink farms spread among 23 states; to date, 16 mink farms have had COVID-19 outbreaks in Utah, Wisconsin, Michigan and Oregon, according to figures provided to The Post by the USDA. The number of farm workers infected from the outbreaks is being withheld  by the Department of Agriculture, citing privacy concerns. Animal and environmental advocates, believe the privacy concerns are a smokescreen to protect thee American mink industry. The lack of transparency from the mink farming industry now poses a public health risk.

Holiday Travel

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Holiday travel this year is like holding a hot air balloon Festival during a tornado. This is 2020 so a firenado seemed more appropriate.

There are 37 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The constant refrain of holiday carols and commercialization leads to a desire for human companionship. Millions of Americans ignored warnings from health experts and decided to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday. The CDC has said that small home gatherings are the primary source of spread of the COVID-19 virus.in a recent study it was found that the virus was spread 65% of the time at small gatherings. The coming weeks will be difficult, especially since so many traveled over the holiday and held in-person dinners indoors.

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s foremost authority on infectious diseases, and Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned about the potential for a spike in infections stemming from holiday parties, even if they’re small and only among relatives.

Nearly 3 million air travelers passed through security checkpoints on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday before Thanksgiving. Sunday was the single-busiest day at airport checkpoints since March. The Thanksgiving travel damage is done. It will take 7 to 10 days for people to discover if they have been infected. Dr. Anthony Fauci described what the United States will experience in the first weeks of December as “A surge upon a surge.”

Fauci said the arrival of vaccines offers a “light at the end of the tunnel.”However we all have to stay vigilant to help slow the spread of the virus until that vaccines can be distributed. Health care workers will likely be among the first to get the vaccine, with the first vaccinations happening before the end of December, followed by many more in January, February and March, he said.

In the mean time do not let your guard down leading up to Christmas. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said to think of COVID like the Grinch. If you practice social distancing, wear a mask in public and wash your hands often we can all celebrate the holidays safely. In many places, hospitals are being overwhelmed by rising case loads. More than 20 percent of U.S. hospitals expect critical staff shortages in the coming week, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Beds can be built but you still need enough doctors to handle the rise in cases. we are fast approaching 100,000 people who are hospitalized for COVID-19. Now the Midwest, Great Plains, and Mountain West are the new hot spots, but some former hot spots are warming back up as well, with cases and hospitalizations surging again. Florida which is third in terms of the number of deaths from COVID-19 is again becoming a hot spot. “Thanksgiving may be the beginning of a dark holiday season as the surge in coronavirus cases is likely to persist, or even get worse, through December, January and February.” said Dr. Fauci.

Kansas Surge

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A Kansas mask requirement went into effect July 3, 2020 as cases began rising across the Midwest. However 81 counties opted out of the mandate, as permitted by state law. The other 24 counties — which account for the majority of the state’s population — chose to require that masks be worn in public places.

The CDC and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment analyzed trends in county-level cases before the mandate went into effect and two months afterward. Though rates were considerably higher in the 24 counties that required masks, over the two-month study period they brought the growth of cases under control and even reduced them. The counties that didn’t require masks continued to see their cases increase.

On average, the counties that required masks saw a 6% reduction in cases (calculated as a seven-day rolling average of new daily cases per capita). In contrast, the counties that opted out saw a 100% increase.  Along with other mitigation strategies including physical distancing and hand washing, “the decrease in cases among mandated counties and the continued increase in cases in non mandated counties adds to the evidence supporting the importance of wearing masks,” the CDC says. The conclusion is simple. Wearing face masks in public spaces reduces the spread of COVID-19.

Kansas hospitals are seeking the help of nearby states to help handle the surge of patients being admitted to hospitals. However the entire Midwest is struggling under the immense surge in cases.

Dr. Birx said that Americans who gathered for Thanksgiving should assume they’re infected and get tested. People who traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday are likely to cause a spike in cases in the next two weeks. If you visited family outside your home, you should consider yourself as possibly infected and should get a COVID-19 test.

Massive Mask-less Wedding

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An ordinance in New York allows gatherings of up to 50 people. In defiance of that ordinance, thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews packed into Yetev Lev D’Satmar synagogue in Brooklyn for a secret wedding. The building has a maximum capacity of 7,000 people and this event was packed shouder to shoulder with standing room only in the aisles.

Authorities learned about the secret wedding over the weekend and fined its organizers $15,000. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo condemned the event on Sunday as a “blatant disregard of the law” and called it “disrespectful to the people of New York.” Officials have issued strict limits on public gatherings in New York City’s boroughs and across the rest of the state. However, large parties have been cropping up on a near-daily basis, according to the New York City Sheriff’s Office.

A much smaller wedding in Maine had 55 guests. Guests reportedly did not wear masks, nor observe physical distancing rules. That wedding resulted in half the guests contracting COVID-19 with that then spreading to 177 people and killing 7. One guest who became sick visited a parent who worked at a retirement home. That resulted in an outbreak of 38 cases among staff and residents at the long-term care facility, over 100 miles away from the wedding. Six residents died at that facility.

In NYC the club scene went underground after the start of the pandemic. Those in the know can find crowded gatherings at warehouses, lofts, basements, boats, parks and rooftops. It is like the return of the prohibition ere only today people want to get drunk and deathly sick. Over Halloween weekend two parties were shit down by police, one with 400 people in Brooklyn and the other with 550 in the Bronx. Event organizers fail to understand or simply ignore the dangers of large indoor gatherings. Two bit event organizers see this as an opportunity to profit off the pandemic.

Beach Day

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The day before Thanksgiving, Pam and I decided we wanted to get away for a beach day with the dogs. Pam researched and found  a beach near Melbourne that allows dogs. The drive to the beach as fairly uneventful though Donkey kept blocking my view out the back window.

The beach had its own parking lot long with a bathroom and the lot was almost full with just a few parking spots left. Rather than carry the umbrella and towels out we decided to walk out to the beach with the dogs thinking we might have to turn around if it was too crowded.

We both wore masks the entire time and discovered that no one else on the beach wore masks. The beach was crowded but we decided to try and find an isolated spot. My comfort level included at least 30 feet of space or 5 times my height removed from others. That amount of space was hard to find. A sign staked out the limits for the dog beach and all said, maybe 100 yards were allowed for dogs. It was also high tide which meant people and dogs were crushed together. More than half the people on the beach also didn’t have dogs which was frustrating because they could spread out to the vast stretched of beach that were deserted on either side of this crowded mess.

The breeze was coming off the ocean so my other thought is that we should find a spot with no one camped out directly in front of us. We found one spot back by the dunes that was properly isolated. As I held the dogs, Pam started setting up the umbrella. As she was doing that a woman with her dog plopped down a few feet directly in front of us. Pam picked up stakes and we moved about 30 feet south to another spot.

We relaxed for a bit and then took the dogs out to the surf on their leashes. Our masks stayed on, we were no going to swim ourselves, we just let the dogs pay in the surf. Sprout was caught off guard by one wave, but swam back to shore like a pro. Donkey, a puppy, had never been to the beach and she had a blast. We played out in the surf twice. One lady lost her flip flop in the surf and we recovered it for her. On the way back to our umbrella that same lady lost her French Bull Dog and we had to catch it. All three dogs on leashed got tangled up. It would have been funny otherwise, but this lady was not wearing her mask. I worked hard to pull back from the chaos as dogs barked and tugged in all directions. When we got back to the umbrella two college girls had plopped down a few feet from us. We decided to call it a day rather than constantly having to pick up and move. The congested strip of beach kept getting more crowded.

We actually did spot one other responsible dog owner who wore a mask as she walked her pup. Several mask less children flew kites.

Financial Advisor

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I went to a presentation by  a Raymond James financial advisor at a local library in the four years between my separation and finally getting a divorce. His presentation was about gaining control of finances during the divorce.

I asked him to sit in on the final mediation since my lawyer was not offering much advice. In that mediation he cut through the numbers and boiled it down to simple straight forward facts.

After all was said and done, he now helps me in keeping track of those finances through these rough times.

Since the divorce work, keeps coming into my studio despite the pandemic. In the four years of waiting for the divorce to finalize, I learned how to hunker down to keep expenses low. Now that the pandemic has kicked in that war mentality of hunkering down continues.

Rockefeller

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Every year a large Christmas tree is cut down in Upstate New York and trucked down to Rockefeller Center to be installed behind the ice rink. This year, a 75-foot Norway spruce from was felled in Oneonta, in upstate New York and it made the 170 mile trip down to NYC.

A tiny owl was rescued from the branches of the tree in NYC, by a worker who helped transport and secure the tree and his wife called the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center.

At the Center the tiny adult Saw-whet owl owl  was  swaddled in a wool blanket and named Rockefeller or Rocky for short.

When the owl was found, she hadn’t eaten or drunk in three days, but began to recover after getting fluids and food.

The center said a return trip to Oneonta would likely be too traumatic to the bird, so it planned to release it on facility grounds in the upstate town of Saugerties.

Rocky was released Monday November 23, 2020 at dusk by avian veterinarians and owl experts. “Rocky’s release was a success!” the center said in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “She is a tough little bird and we’re happy to see her back in her natural habitat.”

 

Rudy’s Meltdown

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Rudy Giuliani held a press conference on Thursday November 18, 2020 in which he literally melted down. He was attempting to pith the conspiracy theory of wide spread voter fraud and in the process suffered a strange hair dye or mascara malfunction. As he spoke dye began running down his cheeks from his side burns as he sweated profusely. He blew his nose in a hanky from his breast pocket, folded it snot side out and began wiping his face.

He cited the 1980s movie My Cousin Vinny to reference the notion that pole inspectors were not close enough to see the votes being counted. He held up two fingers as the lawyer did in the movie when the witness with bad eyesight guessed wrong. All of the strange conspiracy theories aren’t with mentioning since they are not based in fact. Trump’s lawyers talk of “Fraud” outside the courtroom but inside the courtroom they stress that there is no fraud. Judges keep dismissing cases as baseless since no evidence is presented.

Even more outlandish than Rudy’s lies, Sidney Powell claimed that Georgia’s voting system software was part of a conspiracy involving former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez who died back in 2013. She vowed that her conspiracy theories would “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” lawsuit. This was even a step too far for Trump, his legal team, Giuliani and, Jenna Ellis  put out a statement Sunday November 22, 2020 that said, “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity.” Trump himself tweeted last week that Powell was part of a team of “wonderful lawyers and representatives” spearheaded by Giuliani. What a national embarrassment. President Donald Trump is worried his campaign’s legal team, led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is composed of “fools that are making him look bad,” NBC News reported. For once Trump is waking up to reality.

Trump has over 30 lawsuits on courts attempting to overthrow the election results. At least 25 have been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn. He won only two which allowed election inspectors to stand closer to the people counting votes. I would hate to be those counters having people breathing down your neck during a pandemic. No court has found even a single instance of fraud.

 

Cold Storage

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650 bodies remain in a disaster morgue in refrigerated trailers on the Brooklyn waterfront. In April 800 people were dying a day in NYC from COVID-19. Many of these bodies have been in cold storage since that time. This disaster morgue was set up for people whose families can’t be located or can’t afford a proper burial, officials said. Some of those families can’t be located because they died form COVID-19 as well.

At first mass burials were held at Hart Island for those who were not claimed by family. However Manhattan Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged that mass burials in temporary graves wouldn’t take place after footage of the mass burials taken by a drone were shown on social media.

NYC is slowly reducing the number of bodies in storage, with the number declining from 698 to 650 since mid-September, according to Dina Maniotis, the chief medical examiner’s office’s executive deputy commissioner.

In Texas, inmates are paid $2 an hour to move bodies to mobile morgues in freezer trucks. The sheriff’s office said the use of the inmates began on November 9 , 2020 on a volunteer basis. While prison labor is a common practice across the U.S., the reliance on inmates to handle the task of moving the corpses of COVID-19 victims is raising questions about the ethics of such work. El Paso County in Texas has about 34,000 active COVID-19 cases, with more than 1,100 people in hospitals, according to local health data. Since the pandemic began spreading widely in March, the county has recorded 769 deaths due to COVID-19. El Paso now has 10 mobile morgues. The National Guard was was then called in to to help move bodies.

With the present surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitals in the Midwest are reaching capacity and they are short on staff. More than 68,500 are hospitalized with Covid-19 across the country, more than at any other point during the pandemic, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project, which is run by journalists at The Atlantic. 19 percent of American hospitals are faced a staffing shortage. We should expect many more hospitalizations, and even worse staffing shortages, to come as the virus burns across the country largely unchecked.

Experts are advising people to stay at home for the Thanksgiving holiday to help slow the spread, but millions of Americans are ignoring the advice of public health experts and traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday. More than 1.04 million people went through airport security checkpoints Sunday November 22, 2020, the most since mid-March.