Casa Feliz

Posted on by Thor

I often venture off to sketch Casa Feliz with my Crealde Urban Sketching students. Since I have sketched the same structure many times, I get to play with how I treat the subject without much concern about the final result. I don’t focus explosively on the sketch but also circulate among the students to give them tips and show them my progress.

I think it is a good idea for students to see how much time I spend on each stage of the sketch process so they can make adjustments to their time management. Finishing a sketch in the course of two hours is a challenge if you are studying every detail. The key to this sketch is the blue door. Even outdoors, I remain masked when sketching on location.

Crealde Urban Sketching classes resume on Sunday January 27, 2023.

COVID: The Boomer Remover

Posted on by Thor

COVID-19 is known as the Boomer Remover and it is also setting its sights on Generation X. The median age that people are dying at has dropped by a decade, dropping from 78 in 2020 to 69 years in 2021 thanks to COVID.  Long COVID is now killing more people than COVID itself. Kraken is dominating in America right now with deaths increasing by 44%.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed long-standing system problems of US health care ranging from access barriers, excessive costs, inefficiency, unacceptable quality, widespread disparities and inequities, and marginalization of public health. The existing healthcare system has been ill equipped to respond effectively to the pandemic.

America has focused on magic bullet drug solutions promoted by highly profitable drug companies. COVID has found ways to dodge every one of the pharmaceutical magic bullets. Under paid and exhausted healthcare workers are abandoning their jobs because of the endless and needless COVID deaths.

In America and other countries like Sweden, officials intentionally promoted mass infection. At the end of December 2022, Sweden saw more deaths than at the height of the first Omicron wave. Japan is now seeing the highest number of deaths since the start of the pandemic. Some reports say 9000 people are dying every day in China.

As the virus spread unchecked,, immune systems are being harmed and the healthcare system seems to be under continual strain. For the mask less drones, let me simply state once again, the pandemic is not over. Braces in a toothless mouth will not change the course of the pandemic. Vaccines only offer marginal protection from infection. Despite this, denial is the American norm.

2022 Pandemic

Posted on by Thor

2022 was a crazy roller coaster ride. Nine tenths of the work I did since march 2020 has been pandemic related. The pandemic is not over but there seems to be a news black out related to the subject. Complacency, ignorance and pandemic fatigue has set in as everyone wants life to return to “normal”. People are gathering in tight groups without wearing masks to allow the virus to spread.

I am waiting to see what happens in China with a huge population that was largely protected from previous infection and has a very low vaccination rate. Of course news is not very reliable coming out of that Communist county. They have stopped daily reporting on the number of cases and they are no longer testing for new variants. Whatever happens in China will soon spread to the United States since this country had done the worst job at handling the health crisis. Over 1 million Americans have died from COVID since the start of the pandemic and about 2,500 people continue to die every week.

2023 looks like it might offer much of the same. Strap in because it looks like it will be another rough ride. Could the pandemic wind down in 2023? Perhaps, but no one really knows for sure. Those who claim they know what lies ahead are lying. Wishful thinking helps misinformation flourish.

Times Square Selfie

Posted on by Thor

Rain and the Kraken (XBB.1.5)  COVID variant did not stop thousands of people from gathering in Times Square for the New Year’s Eve ball drop. The city of New York does not have COVID requirements for outdoor events. There were no restrictions and no public health safety precautions taken.

People are wishing that the pandemic were over and a wishing wall was set up in Times Square. People could write their wish for the year on a post it note and stick it on the wall. About 80,000 notes were collected and those notes rained down on the crowd at midnight. One fellow wished his girlfriend might be healthy in the new year. She was battling COVID-19 and pneumonia. More than 1 ton of confetti is typically dropped in Times Square to bring in the new year.

Do superspreader events still exist? Yes they do. The United States defunded and scaled back its testing and contact tracing programs in early 2022, and in doing so, the public was encouraged to ignore just how widespread COVID is. The simple fact is, that the media no longer reports about superspreading events. After over a million deaths, Americans want to blissfully ignore the ongoing carnage of over 2000 deaths a week. Right now China may be experiencing over 9000 deaths a day, but the government needs to spin that in a positive light.

In a matter of a week, right before the New Year’s celebrations,  the XBB.1.5 variant has become the dominant variant in New York. It now accounts for over 50% of reported COVID cases. With at home testing there are many more unreported cases. The number of people hospitalized for COVID has risen to over 45,000 which is the highest it has been since February of 2022. The pandemic is NOT over.

COVID is still a leading cause of death in the U.S., indicating that substantial transmission is still occurring. The simplest way to avoid infection is to avoid superspreader events.

 

 

 

China Wave

Posted on by Thor

China’s Zero COVID policy has crumbled after protests in the streets over what the American media called a draconian policy. The same people who considered the zero COVID policy as heavy handed are now gleefully pointing out that millions will become infected once that policy was reversed. China is going to far as to insist that people go to work even if they know they are infected.

I for one was happy to see China trying to do something about the pandemic. However Omicron is so infectious that a zero COVID policy was impossible to enforce. Up until the Zero COVID policy reversal, China saw few infections since the initial outbreak in Wuhan. The Chinese New Year was a massively effective way that the virus spread in the first weeks of the pandemic. Chinese workers would travel far to be with family for the new year celebrations.The same mass exodus is about to happen now that the virus is spreading rapidly in the vaccinated and population. The Chinese New Year celebrations are on January 22, 2022, it will be a super spreader event.

Spiraling infections in China have led to shortages of cold medicine, long lines at fever clinics, and at-capacity emergency rooms turning away patients. China has stopped genomic sequencing of the virus strains in the country.The danger is a new variant of the virus developing.

America has decided that it needs to insist that any person flying from China must test negative for COVID. Italy has also decided to test all passengers coming in from China. On a recent flight into Italy half of the passengers tested positive for COVID-19. The virus does not respect borders or walls. Had flight been stopped in the first week of the pandemic then the virus might have been contained, but that opportunity has long passed. Around 9,000 people in China are probably dying each day from COVID-19, UK-based health data firm Airfinity said on December 29, 2022.

If there is a new variant coming in from China it will have free reign to spread in America in a few weeks. No border wall will stop it.

Corpses Carry COVID

Posted on by Thor

Since the beginning of the pandemic, people have suspected that corpses carry COVID. Now there is a study that verifies this. A corps is infectious up to 17 days after death according to a study published in the International Journal of Legal Medicine. The study shows that a corpse can carry a significant amount of the virus. They found that dead hamsters can transmit the virus to cage mates.

Researchers found that six of the 11 corpses they tested had high amounts of virus in their noses and lungs after they died. Researchers found the most virus in the lungs, as opposed to the upper respiratory tract, and said gases that build up after death can be released through any orifice, including the mouth, and may carry disease.

Embalming can help prevent transmission, as will the Japanese practice of “angel care,” which is plugging the mouth, nose, ears, and anus with cotton pads.

Those who are most at risk are morticians and health care workers. If you are at a funeral, you should be cautious around your loved one’s remains. Of course you are much more likely to become infected from friends and relatives at a funeral rather than a corpse. You should take the usual precautions at a funeral, wear a quality and well fitted kn95 or n95 mask indoors. If there is poor ventilation indoors then step outside for air. Social distance, and wash your hands often.

New Year 2023

Posted on by Thor

Complacency settled in by the end of 2022 as people yearned for some semblance of pre pandemic normalcy. The Unites States dropped all forms of control measures. Masks were stripped off and people gathered in large groups once more. The virus is now free to board any plane and spread around the world.

The virus began in China and now it is ripping though that country once again. Research models are predicting on million deaths in China over the course of the new year. China is not a highly vaccinated country, so the population has no immunity to fight infection.

Like the waves crashing against the shore the COVID waves have continued ceaselessly over the past three years. Rather than diminishing in side they remain large and overwhelming to the world population. Over 400 people continue to die every day in America from COVID with the average rising %15 from last week. That is like 4 plane crashes every day will everyone on board dying.

In 2023 new variants of the virus will continue to emerge. Many countries around the worlds only have 25% of their population vaccinated. That is not enough to stop the continued spread. What happens in China will happen another nations in the following weeks.

Just as most of the population have surrendered to the virus and are ignorantly wishing it away. The health care professionals are abandoning hope and getting out of the profession. So what lies ahead in 2023? More of the same I am afraid, until people and governments get their heads out of the sand and promote simple health guidelines. Improve indoor air filtration, mask indoors, social distance and wash hands. It is all so simple yet politics got in the way of people caring about one another.

Animal Reservoirs

Posted on by admin

Some have theorized that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was circulating widely in populations of mice before it found its way back into human hosts. That would explain why the variant was so completely different that the previous variants of COVID. It came out of left field, unrelated to strains of the virus that had been mutating in the human population.

Humans as a rule tend to think of themselves as the center of the universe. They are however only a fraction of the life on the planet. Scientists have known for a long time that animals can catch COVID-19. However research has been scant as to exactly which animals have contracted the virus and more importantly how often animals have passed the virus back to humans.

Undoubtedly people have passed the virus to their pets as they become infected multiple times. COVID may have infected over 500 other mammal species. Humans have become complacent about the virus spreading from human to human so of course there is little concern about the virus spreading among animals. The only problem is that the virus tends to mutate differently in other mammals. COVID is not a human virus it is a virus that attacks many species. Mutants of the virus could become more transmissible but no one knows it that has happened.

17 million mink were murdered in Finland in an effort to stop the spread of the virus. China began killing pet store hamsters in another effort stop the spread. It is fascinating how murder is often considered the best solution to a public health issue. Animals who get the virus are often asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. That is another reason people seem blissfully ignorant of this issue.

White tailed deer in America have been rather susceptible to the scourge of the virus. Since hunters wander the woods to kill the deer they might be the ones spreading the disease to the deer population. Researchers test some of the deer killed and an amazing number are infected. Of 481 deer tested, 30% were infected. Another surprise is the the variants found are different that those circulating among humans. One bit of advice to hunters is that they should not eat the brains of their kill.

Sars Ani-Vis has built a site that shows the animal species that are becoming infected and where they are found. The deer population in America has the largest number of documented cases followed by dogs and cats. The numbers however are very small compared to the millions of humans that have died from COVID-19. Not many researchers are following this lead. There is probably not much money in knowing animals are getting infected.

Monkey Business

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The race to develop new COVID vaccines has enriched monkey poachers. Orient Biomedical Center and it’s competitors are being accused by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of an international monkey smuggling ring which is trapping endangered primates and shipping them to United States bio medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies.

Last month the Justice Department charged eight people, including two Cambodian wildlife officials  who conspired to poach monkeys from the wild and supply them to researchers in the United States with false papers saying they had been bread in captivity.

There is a massive demand for monkeys at research facilities in America so this poaching has been going on for years. The recent cases are just the tip of the iceberg. The race for a COVID vaccine exponentially accelerated the demand much like a COVID wave. The U.S. leads the world in its demand for endangered Macaque monkeys for research.

China was the lead supplier of monkeys before the start of the pandemic but they banned the export of monkeys after the spread of the deadly virus. Because of the pandemic demand, a single long tailed monkey could fetch up to $40,000 whereas it cost $3,000 just a couple of years earlier.

Conservationists bcgan to notice an increase in reports of monkeys being pulled of of the wild in Cambodia and South East Asia. In 2019 Cambodia supplied 8,571 monkeys and by 2021 that number had more than doubled to 18,870 monkeys.

In July 2022 the population of Macaque monkeys went from being vulnerable to endangered, because they are being hunted to extinction of the sake of research. Most monkeys die in research facilities. There is money in monkeys, so the dark trade will continue.

COVID Dummies

Posted on by Thor

A new study in  The American Journal of Medicine has shown that people who have not gotten the latest COVID vaccine are assholes on the roadways. People who have skipped getting a COVID vaccine are more likely to get into a car crash according to the study.

During the summer of 2021, Canadian researchers examined the encrypted government-held records of more than 11 million adults, 16% of whom hadn’t received the COVID vaccine. They found that the unvaccinated people were 72% more likely to be involved in a severe traffic crash—in which at least one person was transported to the hospital—than those who were vaccinated.

Of course, skipping a COVID vaccine does not mean that someone will get into a car crash. Instead, the authors theorize that people who resist public health recommendations might also “neglect basic road safety guidelines.” In other words they are assholes.

Why would they ignore the rules of the road? Distrust of the government, a belief in freedom, misconceptions of daily risks, “faith in natural protection,” “antipathy toward regulation,” poverty, misinformation, a lack of resources, and personal beliefs are potential reasons proposed by the authors.

The authors advise, that that primary care doctors should consider counseling unvaccinated patients on traffic safety—and insurance companies might base changes to insurance policies on vaccination data.