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.

A Halloween Carol Workshop

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I was honored to sketch at the world premiere of A Halloween Carol musical written and composed by local playwright Tracey Jane. I had sketched at a prior rehearsal so I knew several songs from this unique spooky musical but this would be the first time I could experience the whole tale. I arrive at the artist’s call time at the stage door. I helped the musical director (Billy Williams)  move a few folding chairs into the theater and then considered what my best angle might be to sketch the circular stage.

Tracey suggested I sketch from a wooden balcony that had been set up and that was indeed the best vantage point. At first all the actors sat on the circular stage but then the musical director asked for all the actors who were not wearing a mic to stand in front of the stage. This was how they rehearsed until the house opened. However for the final performance they all returned to the stage. This made for a challenging sketch opportunity.

The show as a delightful retelling of Charles Dickens Christmas Story. This story however took place in the present in a high school. Carol Cratchit (Alessia Preda) was visited by her BFF Marley Jacobs who had left for Idaho. As a song put it, she didn’t die, you know; she moved to I-DA-HO!” The show is about facing ones fears and indeed Carol is visited by 3 ghosts, the Ghost of Halloween Past, The Ghost of Halloween Present, and in a tense verb twist, The Ghost of Halloween Past Perfect.

Past Perfect (Carson Holly) gave a particularly memorable performance that left the audience stunned for a moment. Another amazing performance was by Alessia Preda as she sang “Electricity” about her crush Evan Neezer (Jacob Steele). Barnaby (Stephen Lewis) had everyone including Alessia in stitches as he performed as a happy hamster who loved life but unexpectedly passed away. In the talk back after the show, Tracey explained that her family got a hamster during the pandemic but hamsters only live 2 years, so he did not live to see the possible end of the pandemic. He lay on his back with his feet in the air and the cast sang “Barnaby’s Eulogy”. His foot twitched ever so slightly from the effort. Tracy gave him wings and a halo and he hilariously walked his way up the blood soaked staircase, disappearing into the greenroom.

I don’t think I will unveil the ghoulish plot twist that is at the core of this macabre tale. This workshop which showcased the 26 or so songs, is just the beginning of this show’s evolution. The rich orchestrations by Christopher Robinason were pared down for this workshop to just piano and percussion. The music will truly shine when performed by a full orchestra. The soundtrack will be available for sale and the hope is to raise enough through patrons and sales to fully stage the production in 2023.

 

Pulse Victims Services: Christine Mouton

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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.

Christine Mouton is the director of UCF Victims Services and the regional coordinator of the Florida Crisis Response Team for the 9th and 10th Circuit. After the Pulse tragedy UCF Victims Services and Florida Crisis Response Team provided aid to victim’s families and survivors.

Christine got a phone call about a shooting at Pulse.  She immediately called her on call advocate, and she directed her to go to the Orlando Regional Medical Center (ORMC). The advocate actually lives close to the medical center. She then proceeded to call her other staff. She managed to get three advocates down there. Then she called her community partners. She called an advocate from the sheriff’s office, she got contact information for the Victim’s Service Center which is a non-profit. They were able to provide some extra support.

An advocate helped identify the nine families who were destined to get the initial death notifications at ORMC. The doctor had to provide the death notification since he had witnessed the death, so a room was set up. Once families went in the room and came out traumatized it became very clear you did not want to go into that room. The advocate was put in charge of convincing families to go into the room. In those kind of moments people respond in terribly different ways. You can not predict how someone is going to respond. Some people just shut down, some are angry and aggressive, and you have to accept that. They have to come to accept the thing they never wanted to hear. Once the family heard the news, the advocates job then, is to provide families with the right options to empower them to make the best choices moving forward.

iVirus

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CNN reported that workers at an Apple iPhone manufacturing plant in Zhengzhou, China fled after the facility was locked down due to a COVID-19 outbreak. On October 2, 2022, authorities imposed a seven-day lockdown of the area that houses the Foxconn plant, an order that could hit the iPhone assembler’s production and shipments. 350,000 people work at the plant that some call iPhone City.

Analysts said the chaos at Zhengzhou could jeopardize Apple and Foxconn’s output in the coming weeks. Ivan Lam, senior research analyst at Counterpoint, estimated that between 10% and 30% of iPhone 14 production could be affected in the near term if the situation did not stabilize. The Zhengzhou campus is the world’s biggest iPhone factory and typically accounts for as much as 85% of iPhone assembly capacity, according to Lam’s estimates.

The city, of more than 12 million, imposed sweeping lockdown measures earlier last month after identifying dozens of Covid-19 cases. Workers are panicking over the spread of the virus at the factory and lack of access to official information. Workers are packed side by side much like meat packing workers. It is not clear how many cases of Covid have been identified at the factory. Many scaled fences to escape the iPhone facility by foot.

Apple has started to boost production in other countries, including India, to reduce its dependence on China.

Shanghai Disneyland COVID Lockdown

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On October 31, 2022 all guests at Shanghai Disneyland were locked down due to a single case of COVID-19. Reuters quoted city authorities as saying the resort shut its gates after authorities became aware of a 31-year-old woman who had visited the park in recent days testing positive for the coronavirus. Some rides kept running as guests were trapped in the happiest place on earth. No one could leave until they showed a negative COVID test. The city health bureau announced that all guests in the park tested negative and all guests could leave by 8:30pm.

There were 10 reported cases in Shanghai on October 29, 2022.  Shanghai then decided they must screen 400,000 people. President Xi Jinping‘s government has remained committed to a “Zero COVID” policy while the rest of the world had dropped most COVID safety precautions.

The city government appealed to anyone who had visited the Shanghai Disney Resort since October 27, 2022 to undergo three days of nucleic acid testing and avoid gathering in groups.

The snap closure of Shanghai Disney came just two days after the park began operating at a reduced capacity to comply with Covid measures.

 

Pandora’s Box

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How did the novel coronavirus first made the leap to humans? A senate report hints that the Wuhan lab may have been having trouble in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of COVID-19. Vanity Fair, in partnership with ProPublica, spent five months investigating underlying evidence. Communist official documents have been hiding in plain sight indicating that something might be amiss at the lab. U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP), concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.”

Dispatches archived on the website of the Wuhan Institute of Virology offer some hints about what may have happened. On November 12, 2019, a dispatch by party branch members at the BSL-4 laboratory appeared to reference a biosecurity breach.

“once you have opened the stored test tubes, it is just as if having opened Pandora’s Box. These viruses come without a shadow and leave without a trace. Although [we have] various preventive and protective measures, it is nevertheless necessary for lab personnel to operate very cautiously to avoid operational errors that give rise to dangers. Every time this has happened, the members of the Zhengdian Lab [BSL4] Party Branch have always run to the front line, and they have taken real action to mobilize and motivate other research personnel.”

One of the Wuhan research labs is just 8 miles from the wet market where the virus gained the attention of the world. The Wuhan labs became operational in 2018. Scientists had to report to the Communist party to demonstrate their loyalty and extol the idea that their research is forwarding the goals of the Communist party. The lab had three ongoing problems, no equipment and technology standards, no design and construction teams, and no experience operating or maintaining such an advanced lab.”

The Senate report does not conclude that they know for sure the source of the pandemic outbreak. Lack of transparency from China makes that impossible. In the weeks following the outbreak China did everything in it’s power to deny the virus was circulating and obfuscate the fact that it was airborne and could travel from person to person. The COVID virus may have been circulating as early as November 17, 2019.

On January 1, 2020, Wuhan officials closed the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market and carted away all the animals that were for sale. Stalls were sanitized and an epidemiology team spent days collecting environmental samples. So where was the possible animal host? On February 25, 2022, a team of researchers from China’s CDC published a preprint revealing that of the 457 swabs taken from 18 species of animals in the market, none contained any evidence of the virus. Rather, the virus was found in 73 swabs taken from around the market’s environment, all linked to human infections. Since there is no animal host “smoking gun” human to human transmission is more likely. The case for the lab leak theory remains circumstantial. I remain hopeful that with all the information in this digital age that someday, the truth will come out.

COVID Cuts Brain Synapses

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The Hindu reported that lost connections between nerve cells in the brain may help explain symptoms of long COVID. For some who are infected by COVID-19 symptoms can persist for months and even years after the initial infection. Even people with mild symptoms during the initial infection can get long COVID symptoms.

Some experience “Brain Fog” which affects memory, concentration, sleep and speech. There is also concern that those infected can develop brain disorders, such as dementia years after getting infected.

Stem cell research is helping researchers discover how long COVID may be developing. By infecting these cells called organoids, researchers found that an excessive number of synapses (the connections between brain cells) were eliminated – more than you would expect to see in a normal brain. Synapses are important because they allow neurons to communicate with each other. The elimination of these connections could explain why some experience  cognitive symptoms as part of long COVID.

This excessive pruning process is similar to other neurodevelopmental disorders such as schizophrenia, as well as neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. One limitation of the study is that the cells tested are more similar to a fetal brain rather than an adult brain. It can not be postulated therefor that these effects are the same in an adult brain.

COVID is an RNA virus.  Similar lost connections  have been seen in mice infected with other RNA viruses that can also cause residual cognitive symptoms, such as the West Nile virus.

Research needs to be done to see if any drugs can inhibit the changes caused in the brain after infection with COVID-19.

Halloween Mask

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COVID is airborne and you can be much further than 6 feet from an infected person to get infected yourself. Despite this, children are sent to poorly ventilated schools to spread the virus and bring it home to parents and grand parents. The idea that children can not be infected was a lie perpetuated to keep the economy rolling. If children are not in school, parents can not be as active in the workplace. Kids get sick, Kids spread the virus.  Kids have lasting side effects.

Halloween lines up with the rise of a tripledemic of Flu, COVID and RSV. Pediatric wards are filling up. Nearly half of a Virginia High school is out due to a “Mystery” flu like illness. Now these germ factories and their unvaccinated parents will be walking door to door to spread disease.  These new variants are spreading at outdoor events like Octoberfest.

Kids will wear costumes as they go door to door, but how many will have qua#analogartistdigitalworld #covid_19 #illustrator #illustrativejournalist #sketch_daily #sketchbook #illustration #art #orlando #florida #centralflorida #floridaart #forsale #StayHome #StopTheSpread #SaveLiveslity KN-95 masks? How many parents will wear masks?  Halloween is the second most expensive holiday in America after Christmas, and the cost of candy has risen by 30% this year, so everyone wants the resulting sales and profits. Profit over public health is the American way.

While the risk of transmission during trick-or-treating is greatly diminished because it is an outdoor activity, it is still possible to get sick if you are not careful. Here are some ways you could contract COVID-19 while trick-or-treating:

  • Not wearing a mask.
  • Traveling with a large group of trick-or-treaters who are not vaccinated.
  • Going indoors to receive candy.
  • Accepting candy from an individual who is contagious.
  • Reaching into a community candy dish to collect your candy.
  • Eating candy without washing your hands or using hand sanitizer.
  • Rubbing your eyes while trick-or-treating.
  • Touching your mouth or nose before washing your hands.
  • Attending an indoor Halloween event.

Trick

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Scary new variants, or scariants abound as we approach the Halloween season. As the weather cools, we are entering another pandemic winter. BA.5 is beginning to be overtaken my a wide variety of new variants. BA.4.6, makes up about 12 percent of COVID cases in the U.S, and BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, make up more than 11 percent of cases, as of October 2022, according to the CDC’s variant tracker. And those are steadily taking over. in Singapore, a sub-variant called XBB has been driving a surge in cases, and may be the most immune-evasive variant yet

Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, called this rising wave of variants “troublesome.” monoclonal antibody treatments are becoming ineffective against the new variants. Dr. Jha the White House’s Covid response coordinator, is advising people to get their omicron-specific Covid booster by Halloween, He said, ‘You don’t want to be that person who gives it to your grandma’. “Why Halloween? Because three weeks after Halloween is Thanksgiving, and there’s a lot of travel, and you’re seeing family, and you’re seeing friends — and a few weeks later, it’s the holidays,” said Jha.

Over the past two-plus years, we’ve learned new ways to enjoy pandemic holidays, and “outside is always safer” has been the mantra for these holiday gatherings. Luckily, that’s easy to do on Halloween, because trick-or-treating generally involves plenty of outdoor time.

CDC advice includes the following:

  • Stay home if you’re sick. Skip the Halloween party if you aren’t feeling well.
  • Get tested if you have COVID-19 symptoms.
  • Take precautions in crowded or indoor events as informed by your county’s COVID-19 Community Level, like wearing a high-quality mask (and Halloween masks don’t count). Consider making the mask part of the costume—like a doctor, nurse, ninja, or cowboy.
  • If you’re hosting celebrations, review options for improving ventilation in your home. This can help you reduce virus particles in your home and keep COVID-19 from spreading.
  • Keep your hands clean. If you’re out trick-or-treating, bring hand sanitizer. If you’re giving out candy, wash your hands frequently.