Cavemen Understanding of COVID-19

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Dr. Michael Osterholm commented on a Center of Disease Research and Policy (CDRAP) podcast, that since the start of the pandemic scientists have been chasing the virus rather that getting ahead of it. Scientists are course correcting and learning as they go. It is like we are in the cave ages of understanding this virus, completely unsure what curve ball the virus it will throw next.

Numbers are beginning to fall and that results in instant complacency in most people. Masks and social distancing are abandoned. For July 4, 2021 President Joe Biden declared independence from the virus. However the Delta variant had just started to burn through America.

This has happened multiple times during the course of the pandemic and each time this lax attitude results in another spike. It seems very few learn from past history.

The vaccination program in America has come to a virtual standstill mostly along partisan lines. If you are not vaccinated, you can’t run out the clock on this virus. It will find you and you will know a COVID-19-related outcome. That might be a mild case or it could be death. 65 million Americans who could be vaccinated right now are not. That is more than enough human wood for this coronavirus forest fire to burn. Right now Covid-19 continues to surge in in Alaska and the upper mid-west states like Montana. It spreads daily like a lava flow from county to county and state to state.

As can be noted with Colin Powell‘s breakthrough case and death we can see that the vaccine is not perfect. Boosters are certainly going to a part of our future. The fight against this virus is not over. Now is not the time for complacency. There is no second guessing where tit will go next. To date 731,265 Americans have died from COVID-19 and that number continues to climb.

Colin & COVID-19

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Colin Powell, the retired four-star general who became the country’s first black secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, died October 18, 2021 due to complications from Covid-19. Powell, 84, was fully vaccinated. He was treated at Walter Reed National Medical Center where he died.

Powell had multiple myeloma, a cancer of a type of white blood cell, which can harm the body’s immune system, surgery for prostate cancer when he was Secretary of State and, more recently, Parkinson’s disease.

Powell delivered a well-known speech to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 laying out the White House argument for invading Iraq and stating that there was intelligence that the country had weapons of mass destruction. These excuses for invading Iraq later were proven to be based on false intelligence. Powell later expressed regret over the remarks before the U.N.

The former 45th president derided the news media for treating the former secretary of state “so beautifully” after his death. “Hope that happens to me someday.” he said.

 

62% of Police Die from COVID-19

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The Hill reported that COVID-19 accounted for more than 66 percent of all law enforcement deaths in the line of duty in 2020 and 2021, according to newly compiled statistics. The report from the Officer Down Memorial Page found that more law enforcement officers died from COVID-19 than from every other cause combined since the pandemic began in early 2020.

In 2020, 245 officers died from COVID-19, more than from gunfire, automobile crashes and other illnesses. So far in 2021, 228 law enforcement deaths have been recorded as a result of COVID-19 related illness, out of 356 deaths total.

2020’s death toll was the highest in 50 years, adding that the “silent killer” of COVID-19 was still on the offensive. “It’s climbing at a time when it should be decreasing with the knowledge, the expertise, the amount of training and education,” said, Patrick Montuore, the executive director of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, according to Bay News 9.

124 officers died in Texas, 53 died in California and 44 died in New York. Over 500 officers died due to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. Despite these sobering numbers, The New York Times reported that police unions are fighting vaccine mandates. The head of Chicago’s police union, John Catanzarra, on October 12, 2021 encouraged officers to defy the city’s vaccine reporting mandate and risk being sent home.

 

Sweep

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The Tampa Bay Times reported that for 105 days in the worst of the pandemic, Florida’s COVID-19 death toll went missing. County death tolls were withheld from the public. Floridians had no idea how many of their neighbors were dying. This is part of Florida Governor Ron DeathSantis’ blue sky policy. If you hide the statistic from the public they can go about their lives in blissful ignorance.

The Florida Department of Health knows how many people are dying in each county, but stopped telling the public on June 4, 2021. That’s when state officials stopped releasing daily pandemic data, switched to weekly reports and started withholding data once available to the public.

The state directed the public to find that information via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But the CDC relied on Florida’s online portal of COVID data — which the state also took down in June 2021. The CDC’s tally of deaths for Florida went blank. The number of people dying in each Florida county went missing from June 4, 2021 through September 17, 2021. This episode that illustrates how governments continue to hinder the public’s understanding of the virus and its toll. What they don’t know can’t kill them, or can it?

The designer of the Florida COVID-19 dashboard, was fired when she refused to cushion the numbers. The dashboard was also scrapped just as the Delta variant began to kill Floridians in large numbers. Florida leaders spent years whittling down the Department of Health, leaving Florida with one of the lowest numbers of epidemiologists per residents in the country.

As of October 18, 2021, the Florida COVID-19 related deaths per 100,000 was 0.79 with an average of 170.3 Floridians dying every day from COVID-19. Only Texas has a higher death toll at an average of 197 people dying every day. Lets just sweep that under the rug.

Crealde’ Urban Sketching

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Each Sunday I teach an Urban Sketching class at Crealde’ School of Art . I continue to hold the classes outside especially sine the weather is getting so nice as it cools down. My next series of six classes starts October 24, 2021. The class starts at 9:30Am until 12:30PM. The Crealde’ campus is dotted with statues and curving paths making it a wonderful place to explore visually in a sketchbook.

In this class the students were tasked with the idea of sketching the tent to give the impression that they were inside of a room. They were taught the principles of one point perspective and then set out to capture the space using pencil, pen and watercolor. The goal is to produced finished looking sketches right from day 1. It is a delight so see students slow down and experience the zen of truly observing their surroundings. We live in a time of constant digital distractions and sketching with old school pencil and paper strips students away form that hive mindset for a moment. The hope is that some will become addicted to the act of creation every day.

I always do a sketch along with the students so they can see how I approach each sketch. I share the initial block in, the pen and ink stage and the watercolor while sharing compositional thumbnails that point out things they can consider in their own sketch.

I am proud that Crealde’ continues to keep students and staff masked and safe. I insist that my students must wear a mask any time they are withing 6 feet of one another. Personally I wear a KN95 mask at all times and many students follow my example. The hospitalization numbers continue to drop in the United States so I we continue to maintain precautions the numbers can continue to drop. This class each week is the one day I get out of the studio to feel the breeze on my face and get some sunshine. Sharing my love of sketching is helping keep me sane through this pandemic.

My Halloween Display Plans

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On a walk with the dogs, Pam asked me what I would like to do for Halloween. The idea popped into my head that it might be fun to create hundreds, or thousands or hundreds of thousands of virus sculptures about the size of pumpkins and lay them out on the lawn, each being lit by those old big bulb Christmas lights. Of course we would have some skeletons, zombies and tombstones.

My first thought was to make paper mache viruses but they might not hold up to the Florida rains. Maybe spike proteins could be poked into tennis balls or pumpkins. The thoughts were flowing. How many should we make?  If we made 700,000 of them then the pile would cover and envelop the entire house and probably the block or several blocks. The logistics might be  bit much.

Her response was a simple, “Um, NO.” Regardless I am left wanting to create the perfect pandemic display in my mind. Maybe she will change her mind when she sees the possibilities.

White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN October 10, 2021 that kids can “go out there and enjoy Halloween,” an approach he attributed to the fact that more and more people are now vaccinated against COVID-19 and that most Halloween activities, including trick-or-treating, are held outdoors.

“It’s a good time to reflect on why it’s important to get vaccinated,” he said, urging unvaccinated adults and teens to get shots before Halloween. “But go out there and enjoy Halloween.”

Crealde’ Demo

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At my Crealde Urban Sketching class, I noticed that my students who were working on thumbnail drawings were getting caught up in too much detail as they were sketching with lines. I was surprised at the amount of time they were taking for each thumbnail.

I decided that the best way to loosen them up was to do a quick demo. Rather then do a thumbnail, I decided to fill an entire page since they were watching from a six foot distance.

In this sketch I decided to focus on the foreground sculpture. I might usually try and make sure the base id fully visible but I decided to crop the base so the sculpture could be as large as possible.

Three totems were behind the sculpture I as sketching. Those totems were visually taller than the sculpture I was sketching, but I decided to make them smaller so the foreground sculpture was the largest thing in the sketch.

From where we were sketching the cube shaped cement bases were hidden by ferns. I explained that seeing those cubes was critical to seeing how the sculptures were grounded in the scene. The totems were also different sizes compared to one another but I grouped then as if they were all about the same size using one point perspective. The vanishing point as across the lake.

I lightly blocked in the basic shaped in pencil and then immoderately started blocking in large watercolor washed. The bridge was one big red wash the ferns in the foreground were bright yellow since they caught the sunlight and the rest was a messy wash of green and browns. The primary point o the lesson was that I never painted the sculptures until everything else was painted in around them. The sculpture are most visible because they are surrounded by darkness. The detailed line work in the totems was also added as a thought rather late in the process. For much of the time they were amorphous columns of white that I painted around. I enjoy the process most when I am playing with abstract patterns of light and dark puddles. Staying spontaneous and playful is the biggest challenge. If I feel the fun slippnig away, I close the sketchbook and walk away.

A lizard perched on the sculptures hand for the longest time and I sketched it into place. Most people don’t notice this little detail but for me it is everything. In general my sketch is a mess and that is what I encouraged my students to strive for. When one of my students complained about getting paint on her hands, I shouted out, “Yes! No you are cooking with grease!”

Flat Earth Mentality

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Flat Earthers, Anti-Makers, and Anti Vaxers have been around for centuries.

In past pandemics, as today, strong anti-science movements hindered public health and the waning of disease.

The New York Times pointed out that, as soon as Edward Jenner introduced the first smallpox vaccine in 1798, posters appeared in England showing humans who had been vaccinated “sprouting horns and hooves,” Dr. Snowden said.

“In 19th-century Britain, the largest single movement was the anti-vaccine movement,” he added. And with vaccine resisters holding out, diseases that should have been tamed persisted.

Today the science deniers have the platform of social media to spread misinformation far and wide. We are now experiencing a social media fueled pandemic.

In July 2021 Joe Biden declared that July 4th would be a celebration of freedom from the virus. However that weekend resulted in a cluster of breakthrough cases among fully vaccinated individuals who had let their guard down. This had been happening for the past 20 months or so. There is a huge spike in cases followed by a decline in cases. As the numbers decline everyone thinks the pandemic is over and they stop wearing masks and social distancing. Holidays hit and people gather despite any warnings and then there is once again another steep incline in cases.

October 2021  has resulted in a series of amazing scientific developments that could help curb the pandemic. Vaccines are being approved for children and a new anti viral pill may reduce hospitalizations for the vaccinated. The problem of course is that the unvaccinated will refuse any science that may save their life. They would rather sail their schooner off the edge of their flat earth in the name of their politics. Death is preferable to reason and has been through out human history.

Neuro-COVID

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Medical News Today reported that neuro-COVID a phenomenon  resulting from long COVID. The serious neurological and neuro-cognitive impairments, result in problems concentrating, keeping up with conversations, and multitasking. All of which can keep people from being able to return to work for many months.

About 1 in 3 people who tested positive for COVID-19 and who were usually not admitted to the hospital for treatment do not recover fully in 3 months.

An international study of people with long COVID documented 203 different symptoms across 10 body systems. More than 88% of the 3,762 people who completed the online survey reported memory problems and cognitive dysfunction, making these the “most persistent and pervasive symptoms in this cohort, equally common across all age groups.”

Two-thirds (65%) reported experiencing symptoms for 6 months. Cognitive dysfunction was one of the top three most debilitating symptoms, alongside fatigue and breathlessness. Brain fog is the most common symptom described by people with cognitive dysfunction following COVID-19 illness. Long COVID, consists of ongoing physical, cognitive, or both symptoms at least 6-12 weeks after having a positive test for COVID-19 or symptoms of acute COVID-19. It is associated with anxiety, as are many of the respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms of long COVID, such as breathlessness, palpitations, and dizziness.

Using fine-grain automated analysis of the brain scan images to pick up changes that would not be visible to the naked eye, the researchers found that compared to controls, participants who had COVID-19 showed:

  • a greater loss of grey matter in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex
  • an increase in signs of tissue damage in various regions in the brain, including in the brain’s smell center (the olfactory nucleus and tubercle)
  • more signs of generalized brain atrophy.

Individuals who had COVID-19 also showed a larger cognitive decline on several cognitive function tests. Since the unvaccinated are the ones getting infected and filling hospitals, it is clear they can not afford to loose any more grey matter since their brain functions are already stilted.

Cloud 9 COVID Breakthroughs

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A new study published in World Psychology from the National Institute on Drug Abuse has found that fully vaccinated patients with substance use disorders are more likely to get breakthrough infections from COVID-19. The study analyzed health records for more than 580,000 fully vaccinated people in the U.S.

The researchers found that underlying health conditions and socioeconomic factors of health, which are common among those with substance abuse disorders, were “largely responsible for the increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infections.”

People who had substance abuse disorders were also more likely to have a severe reaction to COVID-19, as well as hospitalization and death. Marijuana advocates said the study did not show that marijuana could be a cause in breakthrough cases, also noting that most marijuana users are not dependent on the drug.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the institute, said it’s important for people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. “First and foremost, vaccination is highly effective for people with substance use disorders, and the overall risk of COVID-19 among vaccinated people with substance use disorders is very low,” she said in a news release.