140,000 Orphans

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Over 140,000 children in the U.S. have lost a parent or caregiver due to COVID-19.

A peer-reviewed study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, described this as  “a hidden and ongoing secondary tragedy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.” The study found that roughly 1 out of 500 children in the United States “has experienced COVID-19-associated orphan hood.”

The study defines orphan hood as the death of one or both parents. The study also tracked the loss of care giving grandparents. Researchers found racial and ethnic disparities in the deaths of caregivers from COVID-19. The study broke down the disparities of those orphaned as follows, 1 of every 168 American Indian/Alaska Native children, 1 of every 310 Black children, 1 of every 412 Hispanic children, 1 of every 612 Asian children, and 1 of every 753 White children experienced orphan hood or death of a parent or caregiver.

California, Texas, and New York — states with large populations — had the highest number of children being orphaned by COVID-19.

A similar study published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in July 2021 found that more than 1.5 million children worldwide lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19 during the first 14 months of the pandemic.

Losing a parent or caregiver in childhood is a significant trauma. The study notes that this type of adverse childhood experience “may result in profound long-term impact on health and well-being for children.”

“The numbers don’t tell the full stories,” he says. “The full story is really in the lives and the affected future of these children and adolescents and their families.”

Phantasmagoria

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This was to be Phantasmagoria‘s first live performance in about 2 years. John DiDonna the company’s founder took every imaginable precaution to keep his cast safe during rehearsals. A custom build HEPA filter with a large fan recirculated air in the rehearsal space and all the cast was vaccinated.

Performances were scheduled on a train and they were told that everyone would be masked on board. When the cast arrived they found that few were masked among the train crew and audience, so the performers had to walk.

John let me know that the theater they were performing at in Orlando required vaccination cards and photo IDs. Therefor I felt relatively safe to venture out and experience live theater again.

I knew the Shakespeare Theater required vaccination cards since I had just sketched Every Brilliant Thing. For some reason I figured Phantasmagoria was at the Shakes. When I got there the folks in the ticket booth were confused. Phantasmagoria was not at the Shakes, it was downtown at the Dr Phillips Performing Arts Center. We still had about half an hour before curtain time so Pam drove like a New York taxi driver to try and get us there on time. Downtown traffic near the Arts Center slowed to a crawl. Pam realized that it was Pride weekend and some event must be slowing things down. A car broke down in front of us and I decided to hop out into traffic and run to the theater to pick up the tickets. She managed to valet park and we met in the lobby.

I have had my vaccination card in my wallet for the past 6 months assuming someone would ask for it eventually. I gave it and my drivers license to the security in the lobby. The government in their wisdom used cheap disappearing ink on the vaccination card. It was more that a challenge to read the faint ghostly lettering. My intrepid guards checked it under a flash light and managed to pick out my name and some dates. One joked that she got to put o her Nancy Drew hat. Panting, we got to the theater entrance with moments to spare.

An usher pointed out our seats which were in the center of a row with everyone pressed shoulder to shoulder. A guy had his mask off in his lap and when asked by the usher to put it on he pointed at his drink. I suddenly realized that I wasn’t comfortable shoving my way into those seats, even if these folks were vaccinated. We stood in the aisle and debated. There was an empty row behind the one the usher wanted us to press into, so we decided to wait until the lights went down and then we sat behind the masses. We were still only a few feet from the couples in front of us but at least we were breathing down their necks rather than the other way around. Behind us was an open row. We caught our breaths behind our KN95 masks. The house was dark, so I could not see the marks I put on the page.

The performance was awesome. I was impressed by the projections that played with each macabre story. The idea behind Phantasmagoria is simple. They are a troupe of Victorian storytellers whose stories become all too real, and once a story is begun, it must be finished, regardless of the consequences. I think my favorite story was Edgar Allen Poe‘s the Fall of the House of Usher. Between stories there was dance and fire choreography. John performed as a fabulous demon barber with his outlandish outbursts of laughter. Puppetry played a part as the cast battled a huge 10 foot high Golem.

It was inspiring to see live theater again. It was so nice to get lost in the Victorian horrors to forget for a moment the everyday horrors of this pandemic.

Every Brilliant Thing

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Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan MacMillan with Jonny Donahoe runs at the Orlando Shakes (812 E Rollins St, Orlando, FL 32803) runs through October 16, 2021. Suzanne O’Donnell did a magnificent job ass the narrator in this one person play.

The Shakes is coming back with full safety precautions in mind. All cast and crew at the Shakes are fully vaccinated. The theater also insists that the audience bring a vaccination card and photo ID to the performance.

I have had my vaccination card in my wallet for the last six months and this is the first time anyone has asked to see it. I was excited and proud to finally show my vaccination status. Those vaccine cards however are printed with cheap diapering inks. The police officer outside the theater had a hard time making out the faint marks that remained on the card. Ultimately I was waived in and I got to see my theater posters full size for the first time.

Pam and I elected to sit in the socially distanced section of the theater. In every row black lace marked several seats in alternating spots where people should not sit. This would allow for at least 4 feet of social distancing between groups. Everyone was wearing masks. I felt safe and secure to relax and enjoy the show as I sketched. Members of the audience were given numbered cards with list items on them. During he show Suzanne would shout out a number and an audience member would shout out what was written on their card. Pam pointed out that one guy kept removing his mask when he had to shout out his item, which kind of defeated the point of having a mask. One drawback is that the audience wasn’t always on top of their callback game but the actress handed these glitches with grace and humor.

Every brilliant thing has to do with a list the narrator began compiling as a child which was expanded later in life. She started the list because her mother was depressed and felt no desire to live. The list was for her mother to remind her of every brilliant thing that makes life worth living. Number 1 was of course ice cream. Later in life the items became more subtle like lending a book to a friend and actually having them read it. This was a perfect play for these pandemic times. We have all been isolated in some way and the joys in life must be found even through the isolation. Happiness was mixed with a pinch of sadness.

Suzanne exuded joy and passion for life, and in the end as she relaxed on her lounge listening to music I left feeling she would be fine, even though life is bitter sweet.

Three cheers to the Shakes for bringing back theater safely and responsibly. They are a bright light in these dark times.

 

Swiss Cheese

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At the start of the pandemic Americans got crafty at home and sewed cloth masks. People began sewing masks from old tee shirts. Pam researched the best mask designs and sewed several quality masks that had three layers including a pocked for surgical mask material as well.  I have been wearing the same cloth mask for the past 18 months. Originally these masks were intended as a stop gap until quality masks became available. In the early months America purchases huge shipments of surgical masks from China. Those masks however turned out to not be the quality masks that were promised. They were cheap knock offs which did not have the fine mesh needed to stop the viral particles from getting through. Cloth masks, although far better than going mask less, weren’t as protective as other types.

Epidemiologist Dr. Michael T. Osterholm compared cloth masks to wearing Swiss cheese. Of course viral particles will get though those large holes. However if several layers of fabric are worn in the same mask then there are fewer and much smaller holes. Even better is to wear a quality well fitted KN95 mask. Pam and I purchases a set of the KN95 masks but those bands that fit around the ears are incredibly tight, giving any wearer Dumbo ears that stick out and an ear ache from the elastic pressure. I stated to wear the KN95 held in place with the cloth mask. The cloth mask Pam designed has a cloth band that ties around the neck and also around the back of the skull. This makes the mask convenient to flip up or down as needed. When down it resembles an ascot.

A recent study in Bangladesh, which has yet to be peer-reviewed linked wearing surgical masks (those ubiquitous blue masks surgeons wear) with an 11.2 percent decrease in COVID-19 symptoms, while cloth masks were associated with only a 5 percent decrease. Many countries, including France, Austria, and Germany, shifted their mask guidance away from cloth masks toward those offering higher protection a long time ago.

Back in July 2021 Joe Biden declared that vaccinations would signal a freedom from masking. On July 4th weekend Pam, her niece and I went to Saint Augustine and we were stunned to see huge crowds pressed together on the main street and for the river front fireworks display. We masked up and were in a minority that weekend. At the time I only had the three layer cloth mask to navigate the crowds. At the time of July 4th the Delta variant was just beginning to gain momentum n America. We were lucky to dodge the bullet.

Mask wearing has become a political binary war zone. “People are just divided into either you’re masked or you’re not. And that would be like saying everything that has wheels”—including a tricycle and a jetliner—“is the same.” said Osterholm. Americans generally don’t pay enough attention to the quality of a mask and how it’s worn. I am always amazed at the number of chin straps I see or people who are unable to cover their nose as well as their mouth.

Harvard epidemiologist Bill Hanage wrote to an Atlantic reporter that, surgical masks are like to a sturdy, well-made umbrella and cloth masks are like the cheap kind that inverts. “Both are better than a plastic bag held over your head, which is itself better than nothing,” he said. “I can’t speak for the CDC,” Hanage said, “but I would hope that they would be able to convey the message that all masks are not alike, just like all umbrellas are not alike.”

At the start of the pandemic the US government had a plan to ship free masks to every American but that plan was scrapped by the former president. Had messaging been consistent masks would not have become a political football. Though the number of deaths are finally dropping, this pandemic is far from over. What happens any time the numbers drop from their astronomic highs is that people immediately abandon masks and distancing and then another surge is the result. Stay vigilant and wear a quality mask. Flash your wisdom by wearing a KN95 instead of a cheap cloth mask.

City Mouse

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The numbers of deaths from COVID-19 in 2021 has already surpassed the number of deaths in 2020. Urban Americas are dying half as often from COVID-19 infections compared to their  rural American counterparts.

Vaccinations are the most effective way to prevent Covid-19 infections from turning deadly. Roughly 41 percent of rural America was vaccinated as of September 23, 2021, compared with about 53 percent of urban America, according to an analysis by The Daily Yonder, a newsroom covering rural America. Limited supplies and low access made shots hard to get in the far-flung regions at first, but officials and academics now blame vaccine hesitancy, misinformation and politics for the low vaccination rates.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for some people who completed their two-dose series of the Pfizer vaccine at least six months ago. Getting fully vaccinated — including your boosters if you qualify — is the right thing to do because it protects others from getting COVID-19.

Boosters are suggested for:

  • People 65 or older
  • People who have a medical condition that puts them at high risk
  • People who work in a setting where they could be exposed to the virus like teachers and store clerks.

Only 57% of the Americans population has been fully vaccinated. Many elite city dwellers got their vaccine booster shots early by taking advantage of the nation’s vaccine surplus and loose tracking of those who have been fully vaccinated. As of August 11, 2021, 1.1 Million Americans had already gotten the booster shot. An NBC News analysis of CDC data shows that the number of people receiving booster shots is outpacing those getting their first or second doses of the initial vaccination.

On October 14, 2021 the FDA’s advisory committee will meet to discuss and potentially recommend approval of booster shots for people who received Moderna’s vaccine.

October 15, 2021  that committee will meet to potentially recommend approval of boosters for those who received Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Also, that day, the committee will discuss potentially mixing and matching vaccine boosters — that is, getting a booster that’s different from your original vaccine.

Then, about a week and a half later, on October 26, 2021 the FDA has scheduled a meeting to approve the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.

Country Mouse

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HuffPost reported that COVID-19 is killing rural Americans at twice the rate of urban residents.

The first surge of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 initially hit urban areas hardest, with high rates of infections and deaths, according to the study for the Rural Policy Research Center published in September 2021. At the time, many rural communities were largely untouched.

But subsequent waves of the pandemic tore through rural areas, where many people are older, in poorer health, unvaccinated. Rural rates of infections and deaths began pulling ahead of metropolitan areas at the beginning of summer 2020, the study noted.

Since the pandemic began, about 1 in 434 rural Americans have died from COVID-19, compared with roughly 1 in 513 urban Americans. But as of mid-September 2021, metropolitan areas were experiencing a seven-day average death rate of 0.41 per 100,000 people, while rural communities had an average death rate of 0.85.

Alan Morgan, head of the National Rural Health Association, told NBC News, “We’ve turned many rural communities into kill boxes,” he added. “And there’s no movement towards addressing what we’re seeing in many of these communities, either among the public, or among governing officials.”

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that COVID cases and deaths were notably higher in Republican states than in Democratic states.

Of the 23 states that had new per capita case totals higher than the U.S. average, 21 voted for the former president in November, the Post noted. Sixteen of them were among the 17 states with the lowest rates of vaccination.

The newspaper called it an “inescapable overlap of pandemic and politics” as Republicans battle against mask and vaccine mandates, essentially killing their constituents.

700,000 Pixels

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On the National Mall in Washington D.C. workers are placing small white flags for each life lost to COVID-19. As a country we have surpasses 700,000 deaths. No single image of the field of flags can convey the enormity of the loss.

I tried to figure out how to that large a number in a single image. I thought how many dots did Georges Pierre Seurat use to finish one of his large pointillist paintings like the La Grande Jatte? No one knows there are too many dots to count.

Then I wondered how many pixels are in one of my digital paintings? I realized I could create a canvas with just over 700,000 pixels and this image is the result.

What would 700,000 people look like lying head to toe and shoulder to shoulder? If each person was 6 feet tall then one side of the image would be 5,028 feet long, or almost 17 football fields.

If you look at just a small detail of the image you can see that each star consists of about 9 pixels and each square of the large pill is maybe 20 pixels wide.

The display of flags at the National Mall came to an end on October 4, 2021 after being in place for two weeks. Artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg created the installation. Some who visited the installation were able to write the name of their loved one on a flag.

Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics announced on October 1, 2021 early results that indicate their experimental oral antiviral drug molnupiravir might reduce the risk of death or hospitalization from Covid-19 by half. This could be a game changer to save lives but hey, we thought having free vaccines would be a game changer. In a news release, the company said 7.3% of 385 patients who received the antiviral were either hospitalized or died from Covid-19, compared with 14.1% of the 377 patients who received a placebo, which does nothing. In countries that are desperately waiting for vaccines this could save lives. The anti viral would not be a replacement for vaccines but another tool to help stop deadly outcomes.

“This is the most impactful result that I remember seeing of an orally available drug in the treatment of a respiratory pathogen, perhaps ever,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday.

 

Brett Kavanaugh Tests Positive for COVID-19

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Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh tested positive for COVID-19 just days before the justices were set to return to the courtroom to begin a new term, the court announced October 1, 2021. This is a breakthrough case since all Supreme Court justices have been vaccinated since January 2021. He is not experiencing any symptoms.

He was informed on September 30, 2021 ahead of a ceremonial swearing-in for Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett set for on October 1, 2021. Court officials said Kavanaugh, 56, would not attend Barrett’s investiture ceremony. Kavanaugh will participate in next week’s oral arguments remotely from home.

The Supreme Court announced in September 2021 that it would conduct oral arguments in person starting October 4, 2021 after more than a year in which COVID-19 forced them to debate their docket virtually. The return to the courtroom will be limited to the justices, attorneys and journalists as the court’s building remains closed to the public.

Amy Coney Barrett tested positive for COVID-19 last year before she was confirmed, The Washington Post reported at the time.

Kavanaugh underwent a contentious confirmation process in which a a handful of women accused him of sexual misconduct despite his fervent denials. Comedian Steve Hofstetter apparently alluded to the Kavanaugh accusers, saying the justice “has no problem with something entering someone’s body without their permission.”

SAK in a Pandemic

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Pam’s niece was visiting from the mid-west in August and she wanted to treat her to an evening at SAK Comedy Lab.

SAK strongly encourages all non-vaccinated students to wear a face mask while in the class area.

An inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. COVID-19 is a contagious disease that can, in some instances, lead to severe illness and death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), senior citizens and people with underlying medical conditions are especially vulnerable.

Pam, her niece and I wore masks the entire time. Under this situation I wore a KN-95. I noticed that ushers also wore masks but as the audience filled in the seats there were no masks in sight. None. When the audience had filled in I turned around and saw that one lone woman also wore a mask.

The SAK seats up to 60% of their pre-covid maximum capacity. They provide one seat open between groups. That is a full two feet of social distancing. They advised online that, if you are uncomfortable being in a venue that feels somewhat dense with people, now might not be the best time to attend their shows. They politely request that all guests wear a mask in the venue regardless of vaccination status. It can be removed when you are seated with your food and drink. If wearing a mask while at a live venue isn’t your thing, they completely understand. I can vouch for the fact that veeeeery few took this advice seriously.

The performers are all vaccinated and are not masking while on stage. The performances consisted of some of the cast belting out some amazing show tunes. Chase Padget whose work I have admired from past Fringe shows was among the cast, and he did a stellar job. They all killed it. If you want to laugh yourself to death, this is the place to do it.

A few weeks after this performance, on August 20, 2021, a member of SAK’s Front of House staff reported a positive Covid-19 test. Because the staff work closely together, they decided to take their shows down for the weekend out of an abundance of caution. This was the first time since the pandemic began that they took a show down.

In August 2021 alone, more than 9,000 residents died in Florida from COVID-19, making it the most deadly month of the pandemic in the Sunshine State. Yet looking around this audience you would think that COVID was a thing of the past. Florida is way ahead of the nation’s other five largest states in a race no one wants to win. In the last six months, Florida has recorded nearly 90 deaths for every 100,000 residents, by far the highest among the six largest states. Florida’s death rate over that period is more than three times higher than in New York and more than five times higher than in California. In fact, only Texas has a rate that is at least half of Florida’s.

 

Pandemic Studio

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For the past 18 months I have been getting up each morning and immediately stepping over these storage crates to work in the studio. I start the morning by sharing the post of the day on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I then look up the daily hospital rates and United States risk assessment map which I put on the sidebar of the days article.

As I eat breakfast, I browse through he days news looking for the latest horror that needs to be illustrated. Some mornings I wake up with the idea fresh in my head. Some of the best and strangest ideas occur to me as I am trying to wake up.

With the idea in mind I start researching on Google images. This part of the process is quite fun as I get lost down various rabbit holes and the idea may morph as my research leads down strange tangents.

An older version of Photoshop is used to cobble together my ideas and then I e-mail that composite to myself  so I can use it as reference for the painting which is done in Procreate on an iPad. My goal is usually to get the drawing done by lunch and then have the painting done with enough time to write an article by midnight. Some days, like today,, I post work that is unrelated to the pandemic so I can have a few moments of peace were I am not analyzing the situation our country is still in. Social isolation for an artist isn’t that bad if the world is in a tail spin, and you feel the need to document every moment of the free fall. I am also thankful to be with a partner who has made the pandemic incredibly bearable. Laughter and time spent together in our bubble make the time fly by.

The pandemic is far from over, but moments of peace and quiet are as important as the endless insanity.