Pandemic Film: Depth Map

Posted on by Thor

I have made 3D images before that can be posted on Facebook. The process is pretty simple. You simply paint light grey over areas that are in the foreground and work your way back to progressively darker greys in the background. Since the sheep in my Procreate painting were already on separate layers, I just had to duplicate each layer and alpha lock them. I them painted each a different shade of grey. I names this file that exact same name as the color jpg of the same scene and added _Depth to the end of the file name.

In Facebook I loaded both images at the same time and then a cube appeared over the render area with 3D in the middle of it. Maybe a minute later the image appeared in my thread and when the phone of tablet is moved the sheep seem to be in deep space due to parallax. On my laptop, a mouse had to be positioned over the image to get the 3d effect.

This effect is perfect but the camera is stuck in place. I don’t think there is a comparable solution in Premiere Pro for achieving this 3d effect with a simple depth map. I am still researching to try and find the perfect solution. I suspect that I might need another program called After Effects to achieve a full 3D parallax look as I composite my many painted layers.

Pandemic Film: Day 1

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Politicgirl shared a Tik Tok film on Twitter created by @digitalresonator that set me off an a new film production adventure. The film used AI generated imagery cut together to the Billy Joel song, We didn’t Start the Fire. My plan is to create a similar music video style film using the amazing music of local musician Andy Matchett. He was responsible for an astonishingly prescient show titled The Key of E which was about an apocalypse. Listing to the song, Just Can’t Wait for the Game to End, I realized that is was very much a song about the pandemic.

I decided to start with a scene which zooms in on a flock of sheep. The title of that painting is What the Flock are They Doing? I want the opening shots to be a series of slow zoom ins. The challenge is to add parallax so that sheep closer to the camera move faster that sheep further from the camera. Whit this particular painting I knew that I had already separate foreground sheep from mid ground sheep and the sheep furthest away were also on a separate layer so that I could blur them.

I found out that Photoshop files can be imported into Adobe Premiere Pro, the video editing software as a series of individual layers. I stacked those layers i the timeline and animated each at a different rate for scale and position. Getting this shot to work was critical to figuring out the workflow for the rest of the 3 minute and 44 second film. After a solid day of work I managed to get a decent 1.5D effect and it worked perfectly with the soundtrack.

COVID Organ Damage

Posted on by Thor

Is there any organ in the body that COVID-19 does not harm? Many people are more sick now than they ever used to be. And it’s due to COVID. In June 2022 the CDC estimated about 7% of adult Americans had long COVID. Governments are ignoring the virus, hoping it will miraculously go away.

Stanford medical school researchers recently said COVID is “akin to HIV” and has not magically transformed into the common cold. What is repeated exposure to COVID  going to do to the kids? No one knows. The flu has a short limited season each year, but COVID is the virus that keeps on giving. Spikes happen all year round summer, winter, fall and spring.

The John Snow Project reported that, “current evidence suggests infected adults and children are at greater risk of new onset diabetes, adults are at increased risk of cardiac problems, and the long-term impact on children’s cardio-vascular health is uncertain. In addition, people can experience kidney injury, liver damage, erectile dysfunction, hearing loss, immune dysfunction, brain and memory dysfunction, ocular damage and dermatological complications. In fact there are few organs that COVID can’t harm, largely because COVID-19 is a vascular disease with immune-mediated severity impacting multiple organs. 

COVID Sweeps Through Jury

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Sudbury.com reported that the second-degree murder trial of Robert Steven Wright was delayed again after several jurors tested positive for COVID-19. The court is discussing the possibility of having ill jurors to continue by participating virtually. However, one juror is “not feeling well enough to participate virtually.

The first infected juror tested positive on March 16, 2023. The virus then swept through the jurors who had been in close quarters throughout the trial. They were told to self-isolate through the weekend. The exact number of positive jurors was discussed during voir dire and can’t be reported. Nationally in America the exact number of people infected by COVID is also kept under wraps.  Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is also in the best interest of any politician letting the virus rip.

Wright is on trial for the second-degree murder of 23-year-old Laurentian University student Renée Sweeney, who was stabbed 27 times while working at a video store on Paris Street on Jan. 27, 1998. At the time, Wright was an 18-year-old student at Lockerby Composite School, which was within walking distance of the store where Sweeney worked.

Partygate

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Partygate is a political scandal in the United Kingdom that lead to the downfall of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. While United Kingdom lock downs were in place, multiple gatherings took place at 10 Downing Street, its garden, and other government buildings. The police issued 126 fixed penalty notices (FPNs) to 83 individuals whom the police found had committed offenses under COVID-19 regulations, including one each to Johnson, and his wife. All apologized and paid the penalties.

Public unrest over the events led to a decline in public support for Johnson, the government and the Conservatives, and contributed to the party’s loss of the 2021 North Shropshire by-election and poor performance in the 2022 local elections.

Fighting for his political future, Johnson strongly denied misleading parliament in a marathon session in front of the Commons Privileges Committee on March 22, 2023. His excused were feeble and misleading at best. He claimed that the COVID guidance allowed for exceptions for him and his staff. The policies however did not allow exceptions for the public who were unable to visit loved ones or attend funerals for those who died. Measures in the guidance were “usually” expected to be complied with, just not in his case at 10 Downing Street.

Johnson did mislead parliament about parties held at Downing Street but his defense is that he wasn’t intelligent enough to recognize the lies.  Johnson said it was not realistic to operate in Downing Street in a socially distanced way as if there had “an electrical force field.” Social distancing is not rocket science. Getting 20 or so staff drunk in a small room is just plain stupid. Stupid is as stupid does.

If the Privileges Committee concludes that the former prime minister misled Parliament, and that this constituted a contempt, there are a range of possible sanctions that it could recommend. Possible sanctions could include suspension from the Commons for a number of days. Any sanctions recommended by the committee would have to be approved by a vote of the whole Commons. As Boris Johnson no longer holds ministerial office, the only sanctions that the committee could recommend relate to his status as a member of Parliament.

Lion Infects Handlers with COVID

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The New Scientist reported that, A lion at Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend, Indiana, tested positive for COVID after it started coughing and became breathless. Zoo workers who had cared for the lion later caught the infection. The lion that was infected with the coronavirus probably passed it on to two zoo employees, researchers have said in a new paper. Viral samples collected from the animal and the two workers were identical, with contact tracing suggesting the employees didn’t catch the infection in any other way.

After the lion tested positive, keepers wore respirators when interacting with the lion and all other animals at the zoo. The lion was old and needed to be hand fed by the keepers. The lion was likely first infected by an asymptomatic zoo keeper. The lion had two vaccinations for COVID in September and October 2021. By the time the animal was infected the immunity from the vaccinations had worn off.

COVID-19, can infect many species, and it can pass between humans and animals. The virus likely jumped from an animal to a human in the first place, and past studies have suggested that pet cats and dogs catch COVID from their owners at extremely high rates. Other studies have shown that deer have transmitted the virus to humans. Infected hamsters in a Hong Kong pet shop sparked a human outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID.

A wide variety of zoo animals have been infected by SARS-CoV-2 including gorillas, snow leopards, hippos, hyenas and giraffes. The first zoo animal in the U.S. known to be infected with COVID-19 was a tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York City back in April 2021. However, animal to human transmission of COVID has not previously been reported in a zoo setting.

Breath is the New Body Fluid

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COVID-19 is airborne. Airborne is when a droplet containing a virus is small enough to float in the air. This simple fact was not fully acknowledged by scientists until recently. It took the World Health Organization (WHO) to admit this truth, yet even now the WHO website claims that COVID is spread through close contact which is where the six foot short range distance myth was generated.

COVID can spread much further than six feet. It wafts through the air like cigarette smoke. If you were to enter a room where someone was smoking you would immediately smell the smoke even if the person were across the room. I personally have ascribed to a 22 foot social distancing rule. In public, no one will see me unmasked for the foreseeable future. To date I have never tested positive for COVID.

Early in the pandemic the false narrative lead to control measures that involved  reducing direct contact, cleaning surfaces, putting up plexiglass barriers, 6 foot physical distancing, use of masks within droplet distance, and wearing high-grade mask protection only for so-called aerosol-generating health-care procedures. Millions were infected while they whipped down surfaces and breathed infected air.

Reducing airborne transmission of the virus requires measures to avoid inhalation of infectious aerosols, including good ventilation, HEPA air filtration, reducing crowding and time spent indoors, use of masks whenever indoors, and attention to mask quality and fit. Masks worn as chin straps or loose fitting cloth and blue surgical masks don’t stop an airborne virus. Quality well fitted N-95 masks are needed.

As the pandemic continues we are growing numb to the mass death, hysteria, and fear. People have come to accept mass infection and disease. COVID breaks down the immune system in much the same way that AIDS breaks down the immune system. The virus damages CD8 and T cell response in much the same way as hepC or HIV. There is now a sharp increase in hepatitis, rsv, flu, norovirus, UTIs, staph and fungal infections.

In the 1980s everyone became very aware of possible transmission via body fluids. Today the invisible wafting breath of people around you have become the body fluid to be most aware of. People do not believe in what can not be seen, so most are happy to live in a fantasy and go about life as if the virus were no in every breath they breath.

There are lots of other wildfires around you know!

Posted on by Thor

Connor Brown outlined the simple things you might consider at this stage as many are proclaiming the pandemic “over.”

1. There is no upper limit to the number of SARS-CoV-2 infections any individual can have.

2. Each infection increases an individual’s risk of a cardiovascular problem, and increases an individual’s risk of developing Long Covid.

3. Long Covid can disable people for weeks, months, or years.

4. Cardiovascular problems can disable people for weeks, months, or years.

5. On average, with no mitigations, it is likely that any given individual will get Covid-19 twice per year.

6. With each infection, the risk of cardiovascular problems and / or Long Covid is always present. 1 in 5 people develop long COVID. That is worst odds than roulette gun with one chamber loaded.

7. On a population level, this means that as time passes, more people will tend to become disabled from cardiovascular problems and Long Covid than those who have fully recovered.

8. Therefore, as time passes, the percentage of the population disabled by Covid will increase.

9. Since people who are disabled may be unable to work full-time, or unable to work at all, the available workforce will decrease.

10. A decreasing workforce pool will damage productivity.

11. In tandem, an increasingly disabled population will lead to an increased demand on healthcare services.

12. Governments will have fewer workers to tax, and will need to spend more on healthcare services.

13. As such, allowing SARS-CoV-2 to spread in an entirely uncontrolled manner is very, very bad for the economy.

Slowing the wildfire will just prolong the wildfire!

Posted on by Thor

The United States has embraced a COVID-19 policy of mass infection with the hope that the link has been broken between infection and mortality. This is an unfortunate and misguided notion.  The link between infection and death might have been weakened, but it has not been broken, and infection can still cause substantial morbidity in both acute and long-term illness.

Population wide immunity is impossible since the virus is mutating to often for scientists to keep up with the new variants. Breakthrough infections are common even among people who have had every available booster shot and those who have been infected and survived. Despite this Joe Biden has let it rip and wants to end the COVID state of emergency starting May 11, 2023.

The CDC quietly add is this to their website… ‘Emerging evidence suggests that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),the virus that causes COVID-19can have lasting effects on nearly every organ and organ system of the body weeks, months, and potentially years after infection. Documented serious post- COVID-19 conditions include cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological, renal, endocrine, hematological, and gastrointestinal complications, as well as death.’

COVID is not a cold, COVID is not the Flu. COVID is a life threatening pathogen that can kill you months after you “recover from an infection. It damages your heart, lungs, brain and nervous system. Long COVID which can occur in 1 in 5 cases can lead to a massive loss of quality of life.

COVID also damages the immune system,  aging of immune cells, cell death, risk for autoimmune disease, cancer, it causes susceptibility to secondary infections, co-infections, inflammation. Excess deaths have been on the rise since the pandemic began,  and this is likely because COVID has destroyed the immune systems of so many many people.

 

The Infected

Posted on by Thor

New York City rats carry COVID-19 and could be a risk to humans. A study published March 9, 2023 in the American Society for Microbiology “mBio,” determined that the rats could be infected with the Alpha, Delta and Omicron variants.

The rat samples were collected in the fall of 2021. The team set up two trappings near locations surrounding wastewater systems and captured 79 rats from three sites in and around city parks in Brooklyn in the fall of 2021, when Delta was dominant. 13 rats tested positive for the virus. The researchers also determined which specific variants could infected the vermin. the study “highlights the need for further monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 in rat populations to determine if the virus is circulating in the animals and evolving into new strains that could pose a risk to humans,” Dr. Henry Wan, the study’s principal investigator warned. “Overall, our work in this space shows that animals can play a role in pandemics that impact humans, and it’s important that we continue to increase our understanding so we can protect both human and animal health,” he said.

By giving wild rats samples of different variants through the nose, the researchers also found that Alpha, Delta, and Omicron were able to infect the rats.

The National Library of Medicine published an article that concluded that Omicron could have evolved in another mammalian host like mice or rats. Omicron contains a large number of mutations that are rare in other known human variants. Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences now report that they have found a pattern of mutations in Omicron that is typical of a virus that has infected mice. They believe SARS-CoV-2 jumped from a human to a mouse in mid-2020, then back into a human in late 2021.

Mayor Eric Adams declared a war on NYC rats as the vermin sightings soared into the thousands.