# Orlando Morons

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City officials seemed to think that promoting a huge Halloween gathering in downtown Orlando would be a good idea. The idea was to cordon off downtown streets and to promote open carry of drinks so that people did not gather inside crowded bars. It would be best to get drunk in the gutter. The area was bound by Garland Avenue on the west side, Church Street on the south, Magnolia Avenue on the east and Washington Street to the north. Orange Avenue became a congested and shoulder to shoulder mass of people, many whom did not wear masks.

An outdoor stage was even set up in a parking lot by a promoter called Vanguard and they seemed to think they could could hold this concert safely. Each ticket holder was given a mask and face-shield for the price of the ticket. The crowd waiting to enter the The Boo! Orlando 2020 stage could be at the epicenter of this super spreader event. Also, what zombies gathered at the edge of the fenced off parking lot, crowding close to listen? Boo indeed.

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings sent out compliance teams to the bars downtown hoping to promote social distancing and safety. Free PPE was handed out to bar owners before the festivities but it was a drop in the bucket when thousands showed up with no masks that night.

Mayor Buddy Dyer said, “The pilot program to help alleviate the expected big crowds in downtown Orlando on Halloween night didn’t work. Instead, thousands of costumed crowds packed the downtown area in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. A lot of people were out there without masks, without social distancing so I am concerned whether there was some spread of COVID-19 Saturday night downtown.”

The CDC advised against drinking alcohol or taking drugs Halloween night since they can cloud judgement and increase risky behaviors. They also advised against attending crowded costume parties. Bar owners and promoters must have done very well Halloween night, but they have blood on their hands as do any city officials who thought this was a good idea.

The downtown Halloween event was an undeniable disaster and most certainly was a super spreader event. Thousands of plastic cups littered the streets the day after and the puke had to be sprayed off the pavement. Downtown was a dump, and now the virus can spread throughout the community. Orange County reported 4,651 new cases of COVID-19 on November 2, 2020 for a total of 46,985 cases and 560 deaths. Expect those numbers to spike in the next 14 days. The horror… the horror.

VOTE

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VOTE.

Dr. Michael Osterholm said on “Meet the Press,  COVID-19 will rage “like a forest fire” in the U.S. Trump has no clear plan to deal with it, and has regressed to a dismissive, “pre-pandemic” attitude. “I don’t think that this is going to slow down. Wherever there is wood to burn, this fire is going to burn.  I think we’re going to just see one very, very difficult forest fire of cases.”

Trump has surrendered to COVID-19 with no sane plan.

The Biden Harris ticket have a seven point plan,

  • Testing as many people per day as are currently tested per week by doubling the number of testing sites in the U.S.; investing in rapid and at-home tests; creating a Pandemic Testing Board to oversee test production; and building out a 100,000-person national contact tracing workforce that would collaborate with community groups.
  • Ramping up production of personal protective equipment like masks and face shields.
  • Working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to produce clear guidance for businesses, schools and other facilities trying to reopen, accompanied by government funding for businesses, schools and state and local governments.
  • Creating (and investing $25 billion in) a vaccine production-and-distribution plan that ensures free and equitable access, while allowing scientists to clearly communicate progress with the public.
  • Protecting vulnerable populations like the elderly and people of color, including through a COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force, and publishing a real-time data dashboard that provides local information about the outbreak.
  • Restoring the White House office responsible for monitoring global health risks, which Trump disbanded in its original form in 2018, and rejoining the World Health Organization, among other efforts to strengthen the U.S.’ global health response.
  • Encouraging universal masking by urging governors and local lawmakers to enforce mandates.

VOTE.

Stranded

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Hundreds of Trump supporters were left stranded in the cold after a Trump rally at Eppley Airfield in Omaha Nebraska. After Air Force One took off, the nightmare had just begun for many. Parking for the rally was four miles away and people had to wait for hours hoping buses would get them back to the lots. Many started walking to their cars further clogging the roads. The Trump campaign said “local road closures and resulting congestion caused delays.” No campaign staff were on site to help with the chaotic scene that unfolded.

An Omaha police officer shook his head and said, “We need at least 30 more buses.” Police assisted in giving the elderly and infirm rides to their cars. According to preliminary reports from that night, 30 people were contacted by emergency personnel for medical reasons and seven were transported to hospitals “with a variety of medical conditions.” News reports indicated that temperature, with wind chill, dropped into the 20s. Seven people were hospitalized for hypothermia.

A post on Instagram summed up the situation neatly, “I see people wearing coats and hats. I did my own research and found out that only 1500 people die of hypothermia in the US each year. That’s only 0.0005% of the population. The rally goers fear something that 99.9995% of people won’t die from. Many who died from hypothermia were wearing coats and hats, and they still died! Coats don’t work.” It seems strange that so many at the Omaha Rally did not have masks to help keep their face warm.

In another extreme, a dozen people from a Trump Rally in Tampa Florida were taken to a hospital possibly due to heat exhaustion, On person fainted and another had a seizure. The other 10 who were taken to the hospital were listed as “sick” with no other details.

More important is the fact that Trump Rally’s leave infectious spikes in their wake. Donny is acting like Johnnie Appleseed spreading the virus all over the country. A CNN investigation found that 82% of Trump Rally sites had an increased rate of new Covid-19 cases one month after the rally. In 10 counties, the new rates of infection were growing faster than the overall rate for the state. After the September 18 Trump rally in Bemidji, Minnesota the infection rate jumped by more than 385%.

Over 91.000 new cases of COVID-19 were reported on Thursday October 29, 2020 which is the highest number of new cases in a single day since the pandemic began. To say Trump is acting irresponsibly is a massive understatement. New studies have found that if this pandemic remains unchecked then more than 400,000 could be dead by February 1, 2021. Unlike the two previous waves, the virus is now affecting every corner of the country.

A Stanford study has found that Trump rally’s have been linked to 30,000 cases and over 700 deaths. Trump has become very effective a killing off his base.

The Great Pumpkin

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Linus of Charles Schultz, Peanuts fame, described The Great Pumpkin is a supernatural figure who rises from the pumpkin patch on Halloween evening, and flies around bringing toys to sincere and believing children. In the age of the pandemic however the Great Pumpkin has become a menacing figure of chaos intent on world domination.

In India, one police officer found a creative way to get the message across. Rajesh Babu, a police officer in the southern city of Chennai, wears a specially constructed coronavirus helmet while stopping vehicles and pedestrians at checkpoints. He also created a shield and COVID mace making him look a bit like a medieval knight capable of vanquishing a dragon.

The CDC offered guidance on how to celebrate Halloween safely in  pandemic…

“Many traditional Halloween activities can be high-risk for spreading viruses. There are several safer, alternative ways to participate in Halloween. If you may have COVID-19 or you may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, you should not participate in in-person Halloween festivities and should not give out candy to trick-or-treaters.”

These LOW RISK ACTIVITIES can be safe alternatives:

  • Carving or decorating pumpkins with members of your household and displaying them
  • Carving or decorating pumpkins outside, at a safe distance, with neighbors or friends
  • Decorating your house, apartment, or living space
  • Doing a Halloween scavenger hunt where children are given lists of Halloween-themed things to look for while they walk outdoors from house to house admiring Halloween decorations at a distance
  • Having a virtual Halloween costume contest
  • Having a Halloween movie night with people you live with
  • Having a scavenger hunt-style trick-or-treat search with your household members in or around your home rather than going house to house

Avoid these HIGH RISK ACTIVITIES to help prevent the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19:

  • Participating in traditional trick-or-treating where treats are handed to children who go door to door
  • Having trunk-or-treat where treats are handed out from trunks of cars lined up in large parking lots
  • Attending crowded costume parties held indoors
  • Going to an indoor haunted house where people may be crowded together and screaming
  • Going on hayrides or tractor rides with people who are not in your household
  • Using alcohol or drugs, which can cloud judgement and increase risky behaviors
  • Traveling to a rural fall festival that is not in your community if you live in an area with community spread of COVID-19

 

Yodel

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In late September, 2020 a yodeling competition in the rural Schwyz Canton, Switzerland became a super spreader event. The 600 people in the audience were asked to maintain social distancing, but mask-wearing was not required. Nine days after the performances, it was discovered that several yodelers were infected.

The pandemic has now spread through the region. Before the Yodeling Competition there were  just 500 cases in mid-September. On October 23, 2020 there were 6634 cases in one day, which is a major spike for this small rural area.

The overloaded Cantonal hospital has asked people to begin wearing masks and avoiding gatherings. The explosion in the number of cases in Schwyz is one of the worst in all of Europe,” chief doctor Reto Nueesch posted online. Wearing a mask has become compulsory at all public and private events with more than 50 people and in situations where distancing can’t be maintained. It is still possible to go to any shops without wearing a mask.

Swiss President Simonetta Sommaruga said, “It is five minutes to midnight,” She urged everyone in the country to take precautions.

 

It Is What It Is

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Trump has not been to a Coronavirus Task Force meeting in months. Simply put he doesn’t give a damn how many people die. Scott Atlas, a radiologist with no experience with infectious diseases, has caught the presidents ear and he is a yes man, telling the president what he wants to hear.

Atlas, put out a Tweet that claimed that widespread use of face masks does not help slow the spread of COVID-19. Twitter had to remove the tweet for spreading false and misleading information. Atlas frequently clashes with other members of the White House Coronavirus task force. Last month, an NBC News reporter overheard CDC Director Robert Redfield saying on a phone call: “Everything he says is false.” US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC) recommends people wear masks in public settings and when around people who don’t live in their household, especially when other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.

Atlas has rejected the need for widespread community testing, arguing that the administration should focus almost exclusively on protecting and testing elderly populations while pushing for the rest of the economy to return to normal, this official said. “Everything he says and does points toward herd immunity,” a senior administration official said. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, have warned that the “herd immunity” approach is dangerous.

The My Pillow Guy caught the presidents ear and was promoting an unproven treatment for COVID-19. He proclaimed the President was “enthusiastic” about the unproven therapeutic. Many reports have focused on its considerable toxicity, which has led to accidental — and sometimes deliberate poisonings, including for suicide. It has also poisoned animals. The US Army Institute of Infectious Diseases conducted tests on the drug’s effect on Covid-19, which were halted due to “inconclusive” results.

The White House has been a hot spot for the virus having more cases than all of New York State. Trump who recovered from COVID-19 has not embraced simple safety measures instead he is holding super spreader rallies all across the country, effectively spreading the disease. Trump believes that if you put your head in the sand it will all go away. His incompetence continues to cause needless deaths, it is what it is.

In White House coronavirus task force reports obtained by CNN this week, officials say there are “early signs of deterioration in the Sun Belt and continued deterioration in the Midwest and across the Northern States.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis got this report just prior to Trump holding a super spreader rally in Sanford Florida but the governor tried to hide the report claim all is well. He also wants to stop sharing the daily numbers from testing just as the worst is about to begin.

The United States just reported its highest spike in new COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began with more than 83,000 new cases on Friday October 23, 2020.  Hospitalizations and daily death tolls are rising across the country, with experts warning that the worst is yet to come. In a few weeks, deaths will start to increase. It is a pattern that repeats itself with each new ave of the virus with no plan to stop the spread. 224,000 Americans have died so far from COVID-19.

20,000 Amazon Employees Infected

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Amazon said that more than 19,816 of its front line workers in the US have contracted Covid-19 since March 2020. This umber does not include all the front line drivers who might be infected. One 22 year old driver abandoned his truck full  of packages at a Detroit gas station and quit.

Amazon has kept its facilities open throughout the pandemic to meet a surge in demand from shoppers stuck at home. Amazon doubled its net profit year over year to $5.2 billion, compared to $2.6 billion at this time in 2019. The minimum wage at Amazon is $15 an hour but a newly formed Union is working to double that starting wage. Amazon had faced criticism from employees, unions and elected officials, who have accused the company of putting employees’ health at risk.

Staying open has proven very lucrative for the e-commerce firm, and has added tens of billions of to the wealth of founder Jeff Bezos, who is the world’s richest man. Starting in March, 2020 Amazon hired 100,000 new workers in a matter of weeks to meet surging demand from customers, and announced plans to hire another 75,000 in April, 2020. The company said that it  distributed more than 100 million face masks, and implemented temperature checks at its facilities around the world. Athena, a coalition that has opposed Amazon on a wide range of labor, planning and environmental issues, called on officials to investigate further. “Amazon allowed Covid-19 to spread like wildfire,” Athena’s director Dania Rajendra said in a statement. There have been at least 10 deaths among Amazon warehouse employees who tested positive for COVID-19.

 

Ice Contagion

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An amateur recreational ice hockey game  played at an indoor ice rink in the Tampa Bay, Florida became an example of a super spreader event for COVID-19. The teams each had 11 players between the ages of 15 to 53. 14 players of the 22 players and one rink staff member became infected.

Ice hockey involves vigorous physical exertion accompanied by deep, heavy respiration, and during the game, players frequently move from the ice surface to the bench while still breathing heavily. In this game, hockey-specific face protection varied and included metal cages or plastic half-shields (covering the eyes and the upper part of the nose); some players do not wear face protection. Cloth face masks for disease control were NOT used in the locker rooms or during the game.

The high proportion of infected players on the index patient’s team might have resulted from additional exposures to the index patient in the locker room and on the player bench, where players sit close to one another. Not all players from the game sought testing, and asymptomatic infections were possibly not identified. There was only one spectator to the game and that person showed no symptoms and went untested. It is unknown how many people the players then went on to infect.

A super spreader event is when one person infects more than 5 people. This is happening more often that you might think. The fact that the United States has been so lax on contact tracing, means these types of spreader events often go unchecked. You have to look for something to find it.

 

Third Wave

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The number of COVID-19 cases is surging across the country.The Midwest is being hit particularly hard, notably South Dakota which was the site of the Sturgis motorcycle rally which may have seeded outbreaks all across the Midwest. In South Dakota there is no mandatory mask mandate, governor Kristi Noem saying that people have the right to decide for themselves. One candidate for the North Dakota the house of representatives, David Andahl a “Trump Republican”, passed away from COVID-19 but is still on the ballot.

In all 45 states are seeing increases of cases of COVID-19. The U.S. has confirmed an average of 54,000 new cases per day, a 25 percent increase compared to two weeks ago. Florida is also seeing increases. Wisconsin is building a field hospital on the state park fairground.

The first surge hit New York and the northeast in the spring, and the second hit the south including Florida, over the summer, peaking at about 73,000 cases per day in July — the highest levels so far recorded in the pandemic in the U.S. Experts have warned for months of a surge in cases in the colder months that would likely rival the battering by COVID-19 the U.S. already endured.

Twenty-seven states, mostly in the South, Midwest and Mountain states, have “uncontrolled spread” of COVID-19, according to the COVID Exit Strategy, a nonprofit public health group that tracks metrics of the pandemic, including case numbers and test positivity rates. Another 18 states are “trending poorly,” including states on the East and West coasts, and Texas and Louisiana. Only two states — Maine and Vermont — are “trending better,” with declining cases and a smaller proportion of tests coming back positive.

The U.S. is nearing 8 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 220,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ensemble forecast projects an additional 9,000 to 20,000 deaths by Nov. 7, 2020. All the while Trump is downplaying the virus spreading lies and misinformation. Listen to experts not politicians, your life depends on it.

Commander in Sheep

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The Trump Campaign continues to hold super spreader rally’s across the country. This one was in North Carolina. Trump can not run on his record since there are 218.000 dead from a virus that the administration made no attempt to contain. Trump is pushing all around him to find an October surprise and yet they are going back to Hillary Clinton’s e-mails as if that should concern us all when he is threatening our lives with his every lie.

Regardless of weather he wins or looses, Trump is profiting from the campaign. He has moved  $2.3 million of contributions from other people into his private companies. Rudy Giuliani handed the New York Post a suspicious story about some abandoned laptop. The White House was warned that Giuliani was the target of a Russian intelligence misinformation campaign. The warnings were dismissed. The warnings were based on multiple sources, including intercepted communications, that showed Giuliani was interacting with people tied to Russian intelligence during a December 2019 trip to Ukraine. Of course Trump was impeached for his attempts to force Ukraine to come up with a fake investigation into is political rival in order to get military aid as they were being attacked by Russia.

He had hoped to rush through a virus before the election ignoring safeguards, he flipped flopped on a stimulus package and wanted to hand out money with his signature for votes but that was shot down by Moscow Mitch. The man is desperate to find old dirt and new and when he finds none he lies.

Despite this, people still show up to his super spreader events to catch a glimpse of the man. They are willing to risk getting the virus because their commander in sheep beat the virus. He got the best cocktail of experimental drugs but they are on their own with no vaccine and no access to the treatments he got at Walter Reed Hospital. Trump claims the virus is behind us but nationally we are seeing more that 50,000 new cases every day. More than 40 states are seeing daily increases in cases. College students returning to campuses have helped fuel the fire. People are not following simple CDC guidelines to help stop the spread, wear masks, wash hands often and avoid social distancing. These super spreader rallies are a sure sign that people are  ready to die. They are the red hatted sheep going to slaughter.

Trump is the weakest sheep. His only desire is attention and admiration. He continues to ignore, downplay or wish away COVID-19. If he has to leave office, he want to take his followers with him. These airport rallies remind me of Jonestown where everyone had to drink the Koolaid and die. He has pinned all his hopes on this hectic tour of super spreading events. He fails to remember that voters need to be alive to cast their vote.

“Beware of false profits who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” -Matthew 7-15