COVID Disenbarks

Posted on by Thor

A cruise ship with 800 COVID-19 infected passengers docked in Sydney, Australia. The Majestic Princess cruise ship was about half way through the scheduled cruise when the infection spread among the passengers and crew like a wildfire. There were 4,600 passengers and crew passengers and crew on board. Infected guests were isolated in their staterooms being separated from non-infected guests.

The infected passengers were escorted off the ship and “advised” to isolate for five days. What passenger will self isolate when they are on vacation? You can bet the infected are rushing out to every restaurant and crowded venue in Sydney. They will justify their mindless and violent, act saying they are only mildly infectious.

This seems to be the new normal, knowing that you will likely be infected when you book your dream horror cruise. The New South Wales Ministry of Health has recorded 19,800 new cases of Covid-19 and 22 deaths in the past week. In America, the new normal is over 300 deaths due to COVID every day.

At least three other ships within the company’s Princess fleet, the Ruby Princess, Diamond Princess, and Grand Princess – experienced outbreaks earlier in the pandemic. A spokesman for Carnival Cruises said, Fuck the health of the passengers, they are mindless brain eating zombies, give us your god damn money.

After Pulse: Angie Gallo

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Angie Gallo as two children and is the legislative chair for the Florida PTA. After The Pulse Nightclub shooting advocacy and legislative groups banded together to build a legislative coalition for gun safely regulations.

On June 11, 2016, Angie and her family were traveling to Destin. She first hear about the Pulse Nightclub shooting on Twitter. Scrolling, she found out that the shooting was in Orlando, her backyard. Her phone started ringing and she called people. It was just awful.

While in Destin she got a phone call within days from Patty Bringham with the League of Woman Voters, who is the gun safety chair of the state. She said, we have to do something, we have to form a coalition. She asked if the Florida PTA would be on the coalition. That wasn’t Angies call, she spoke to the president who was absolutely on board.

Conference calls followed where they defined their mission and goals. They agreed that background checks should be expanded, and assault weapons should be banned.

The coalition kept growing. Angie was asked to be on the steering committee on behalf of the PTA. She attended a big press conference for the release of the assault weapon ban bill on the steps of the courthouse. There were some survivors from Pulse who spoke.

She feels that people in Orlando have become a little bit kinder, a little bit more aware of different view points and different people. A dialogue was started that should have been started a long time ago with gun safety and mental health.

After Pulse: Anthony Mauss

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Tony Mauss, was the husband of the writer, activist, and incredible columnist Billy Maines, who passed away on July 21, 2017 at the age of 45. It was always an event to be with Billy. When Billy moved from his job at the Orlando Weekly to Watermark, life got busy. Everyone wanted to speak to him. He knew the issues inside and out. He always had fun at the forefront but was happy to discuss any issue. He could make a point the way an Olympic gymnast could land a perfect floor routine.

When Pulse happened, things changed. Tony was up at 1AM on June 12, 2016. He saw what was happening on Facebook. He was getting texts as it was happening. Their home is just two or three blocks from Pulse so the sirens could be heard. He made the conscious decision to not wake Billy up. He knew As Billy woke up, Tony asked him not to look at his phone. OF course Billy had to look at his phone.

Pulse changed Billy. It pulled him in. Things got very serious. The second he woke up he went to the scene of the shooting. Billy’s writing went on to become the vulnerable face of Pulse. He wrote that the shooting was a hate crime and that he was frightened and that he could not believe it happened here in Orlando. He was honest and sincere in facing the tragedy. He gave everything.

After Pulse: Dr. Tracy Wharton

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Dr. Tracy Wharton is a social work faculty member at the University of Central Florida and a licensed clinical social worker in the state of Florida and Alabama. After the Pulse shooting Dr. Wharton was involved in organizing and providing volunteer counseling for survivors and victims families.

Tracy’s phone started pinging early, before the sun came up, the night of the shooting. The third time it pinged, she had to pick it up. Facebook had pinged with the mark yourself safe feature. Her sister left a message making sure she was OK. Other friends started to text. Her sister texted “Get up and turn on the TV.”

The Knights Clinic is literally around the corner from the club so she was familiar with Pulse. She had driven by it 100 times. All the residents at the hospital immediately went back to help. Faculty started texting one another.

By early morning she was in contact with social worker colleagues. They started to figure out how to plug in and organize to help. She knew families would be showing up. There would be people at the barricades. She went to the memorial that afternoon.

The next day she began work and it didn’t stop for weeks. There was a Google Doc spreadsheet that pointed out different places needing support. There were a few dozen names to start, 48 hours later there were 300 or so people, a week out there were 600 people on the sheet who wanted to volunteer time. There were about 13 different locations where social workers were needed and people would sign up for time slots.

A lot of people went to clubs to support patrons. Club owners wanted social workers there. Bartenders were feeling stressed out. She was called on to go to Southern Nights. There was a flamboyant sparkling fundraiser going on at the club. She let the bartender know she would be outside should anyone want to talk. It was too loud to talk inside.

Moms were waiting outside as well, sitting on the curb all night. There is something terrifying about the mindset at the time that moms felt the need to wait outside to make sure their kids came out alive. Police were on hand with wand metal detectors and they were great. But the moms felt the strong need to protect their children.

She realized that social workers would need some way to be identified. An artist donated the rainbow graphic and a local business donated pins. About 80 were created. She wanted to give pins to Spanish social workers who were working with victim’s families directly. When she showed the pins she was asked, “Do you have any in Spanish?” She hadn’t thought of it, so she decided to pay for another print run out of her own pocked to make it right.

 

Immunity Down

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Andrew Nikiforuk at The Tyee wrote an amazing article about U.S. immunologist Anthony Leonardi who has been arguing since early in the COVID-19 pandemic that T cells are becoming hyperactivated by SARS-CoV-2 and are prematurely aging, harming organs, and becoming exhausted trying to rid the body of an immune-evasive virus. I highly advise going to read the whole article.

“Leonardi warned that the virus undermined and aged the immune system by hyperactivating and exhausting T cells. This over stimulation could in turn damage organs including the heart, brain and kidneys.

He predicted that the pandemic would reduce life expectancy around the world, most harming people aged 50 and over.

He hypothesized that the virus, by harming the immune system, could make people more vulnerable to other infections and cancers.

He speculated that COVID reinfections could be big trouble and should be avoided.

Given the virus’s ability to undermine and age the immune system, he argued that exposing children repeatedly to a virus that impairs the immune system and causes vascular disease and brain shrinkage was bad policy.

And, very early in the pandemic, he argued that herd immunity was wishful thinking and could not be achieved.” reported The Tyree.

What we are left with is a forever pandemic because many scientists and policy makers though it wise to just the the virus rip though society unchecked.

After Pulse: Coretta Cotton

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Coretta Cotton is the assistant director at UCF Victim’s Services. After the Pulse nightclub shooting, UCF Victim’s Services provided advocacy to victim’s families and survivors as well as relief efforts to the UCF community as well.

Advocates are on call for a week at a time. She happened to be on call on the day of the shooting. The director called her around 6AM. Coratta was going to church but the director asked her to be aware that there had been a shooting in Orlando. At that time the number of dead was reported to be eight.

Coretta was asked to report to Orlando Regional Medical Center (ORMC). When she got to ORMC, the hospital was in lock down. There was no one in the bays. Initially ORMC didn’t know what to do with her. She was asked to go to a big room where they were holding the families and survivors who were waiting to hear something. Everyone was being checked in.

People who were injured but well enough to text loved ones were being re-united with their families upstairs. At some point, Coretta began to work with an agent from the FBI to do death notifications. There were nine notifications that had to be done. These nine were at the hospital, while most of the others were still at Pulse.

So Coretta along with some advocates from the Orange County Sheriffs office, worked with the FBI to do death notifications. Even then the number kept rising. It was 8 then it was 20 something and then it finally reached 49. Everyone was frantic to learn what was going on with their loved one.

A separate area was set aside to meet with the families. The officer from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) actually delivered the news. Advocates were on hand mostly for support. After the first or second family got the news people realized it would not be good to go to this meeting. There were a couple of families that only spoke Spanish but the Sheriff’s advocate could speak Spanish.

She was probably at ORMC from 7am to about 3:30pm. There was no break. The gravity of the day didn’t hit until she drove home. That level of grief is something she hopes she never has to face again on that scale.

Citizen COVID

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The undisputed winner of the mid term election is COVID-19. COVID won the race in an undisputed red wave. Regardless of which party dominates Congress and the Senate, they are both down playing the ongoing pandemic. The cost of vaccines will no longer be covered by the government but will cost about $130 per jab.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned of a shortage occurring for COVID-19 rapid tests. In this advisory, the CDC advised diagnostic service providers to expect an increase in the demand for laboratory-based COVID-19 testing due to a shortage in supply for both point-of-care testing and rapid testing for COVID-19.

There is currently a temporary shortage in point-of-care and over-the-counter test supplies. To help preserve rapid test kits and supplies and meet the current test demand, CDC recommends the use of laboratory-based testing whenever possible.

As the election approached every candidate held packed election rallies which of course are fabulous venues to spread the virus since no one masks anymore. Passive conventionalists pretends the pandemic is over but it is not. The herds press together but there is no herd immunity.

President Joe Biden seems to think that Americans care about only one thing, and that is the price of gas. He may be right. He went on to announce that he felt the pandemic was over. All United States government efforts to curtail the coronavirus have disappeared. Mask mandates have been lifted on public transit. Public health agencies are being crippled by conservative law makers.

The White House and the CDC have framed COVID as a problem for individuals, but informed action is hard when cases and hospitalizations are underestimated, most testing sites have closed, and the over optimistic CDC guidelines downplay the coronavirus’s unchecked spread. COVID has won.

Fairy Doors

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Leu Gardens in Orlando Florida had twenty, one-of-a-kind, whimsical fairy doors scattered throughout the gardens. Orlando Urban Sketchers organized a group outing to sketch the doors. About 10 to 15 artists gathered in the garden’s guest house. I was surprised that I was the only artist wearing a mask. I invited several of my advanced Urban Sketching students to the event so they could see that there are other artists in Orlando who sketch on location.

We each got a map that showed where to find each Fairy Door. The first one we went to however was hidden up inside a trellis so it was rather hart to find and difficult to draw. We settled on this second fairy door which was in plain sight on a large live oak tree.

This was the Karasi Fairy Door which means life and wisdom. Karasi is a book fairy who loves to read every day. She shares her books and knowledge with all the fairies. She has teal eyes and plum-colored hair and wings. Her silver pixie dust is rare and can only be used if she sees another fairy in need. Basically this was a red book with several pages slipping out of it. My primary memory of sketching that day was the incessant humm of loud fairies buzzing in my ears. I would swat them away, but moments later they would buzz my ears once again. It had recently rained, and apparently fairies are very active after a rain storm.

Back at the Leu gardens guest house all the artists gathered and shared their work. It is always exciting to see all the different styles of work created.

After Pulse: Melanie Rollman

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Melanie Rollman is the founder of the Facebook group Conway Critters. She offered pet sitting and dog walking to survivors and victims pets in the aftermath of the Pulse massacre.

After the shooting Maleanie’s son started blowing up her phone about 2am with text messages. He works as an EMT clinical tech at ORMC in the emergency room for the overnight shift. The first text said simply: “24 dead.” Another said, “at Pulse there is a huge shooting.” At this point she could hear all the helicopters flying over her home. Then she turned on the TV to see what was happening.

She knew survivors would be taken care of, to the best of everyone’s ability. But then she thought, what about the people who died? They might have animals at home with no one to return home to take care of them. Some of these people might not have extended family. She decided she had to save the animals somehow.

The next afternoon, she put out on Conway Critters and her personal page, that she would need help to bring this about. She s tarted getting calls from everywhere, as far away as California, and Canada. Several others were doing the same thing. There were just 2 animals that no family members would take. Those 2 went with a 5013c rescue organization. The rest were taken in by family or friends.

She turned her attention instead to collecting and providing all the food and supplies that would be needed to take care of the animals. People who took in these animals might not have the supplies needed to take care of them. A friend who owns the Monograph merchant offered her store as a drop off point. Crates, bowls, collars, leashes, food, toys, treats were collected. A local radio station announced the drop off spot. It was incredible. By day of or three the store owner was calling saying trucks were needed.

It got too big. She couldn’t handle it all herself. She had to delegate responsibilities. Blue at the Venue stepped in and took all the supplies at her theater. The venue couldn’t handle all the incoming donations, so they had to obtain a storage space at the a Track Shack on Mills Avenue. Everything was moved from the Venue to the Track Shack space. The entire space was filled up. It was amazing.

The drive lasted about two months.

COVID Happily Ever After?

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The COVID-19 pandemic had played out like a fairy tale for most people. In the first act normal everyday life was interrupted by a dark and deadly mythical creature. In the second act heroic scientists helped the millions of people who were dying by creating an invincible vaccine. For many, once they took the vaccine, the story was over, they were vaxed and done and life returned to normal. Masks came off and everyone huddled together indoors to comfort one another, and spread the disease.

However the vaccines do not actually protect against infection, it protects against hospitalization and death. There is also another segment of the population who decided that vaccines were a hoax and they refuse to ever get vaccinated. There is plenty of human wood for the COVID forest fire to continue to burn through.

We are in a relative calm right now, but hospitalizations have begun to climb again due to immune evasive new variants. No one knows how high the next infection wave will rise this winter. Flu which has been on the sidelines because of social isolation and masking is now coming back with a renewed vengeance along with RSV. This winter promises a triple whammy of infections.

The other factor is that the immediate threat from a COVID infection is not always apparent at the first flush of infection. Cardio vascular disease, diabetes, blood clots, along with heart disease, and brain problems are being discovered months and even years after the initial infection.

So just how many people have died due to the pandemic so far? The pandemic directly or indirectly caused 14.9 million deaths in 2020 and 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on May 5, 2022, in its newest attempt to quantify the outbreak’s toll. That’s around 2.7 times more than the 5.42 million COVID-19 deaths the WHO says were previously reported through official channels in the same 2-year period. Over 2,000 Americans continue to die each week from COVID-19 and this seems to have become the accepted new normal.

On top of this, excess deaths are on the rise. Excess deaths are the number of deaths above what would be expected over a 5 year average. Excess deaths are happening in every age group.  The number of excess deaths today is higher that the number of deaths from COVID-19 at the start of the pandemic lockdown. For some reason no one is reporting about this rise in excess deaths. My concern is that these deaths could be the result of the after effects from COVID infections. There is likely collateral damage. I however an not a scientist, so don’t take my word on that point. It is just my suspicion. The long term effect of COVID infections are only now being discovered. And the media remains silent.