New Year 2023

Posted on by Thor

Complacency settled in by the end of 2022 as people yearned for some semblance of pre pandemic normalcy. The Unites States dropped all forms of control measures. Masks were stripped off and people gathered in large groups once more. The virus is now free to board any plane and spread around the world.

The virus began in China and now it is ripping though that country once again. Research models are predicting on million deaths in China over the course of the new year. China is not a highly vaccinated country, so the population has no immunity to fight infection.

Like the waves crashing against the shore the COVID waves have continued ceaselessly over the past three years. Rather than diminishing in side they remain large and overwhelming to the world population. Over 400 people continue to die every day in America from COVID with the average rising %15 from last week. That is like 4 plane crashes every day will everyone on board dying.

In 2023 new variants of the virus will continue to emerge. Many countries around the worlds only have 25% of their population vaccinated. That is not enough to stop the continued spread. What happens in China will happen another nations in the following weeks.

Just as most of the population have surrendered to the virus and are ignorantly wishing it away. The health care professionals are abandoning hope and getting out of the profession. So what lies ahead in 2023? More of the same I am afraid, until people and governments get their heads out of the sand and promote simple health guidelines. Improve indoor air filtration, mask indoors, social distance and wash hands. It is all so simple yet politics got in the way of people caring about one another.

Hazmat Santa

Posted on by Thor

Try and spread holiday cheer and not COVID this season. Santa is an elder and thus more susceptible to severe complications from an infection. Don’t sent Santa to the ICU. Wash your hands, social distance, and wear a quality n95 mask when indoors. Consider thinking about someone other than yourself this holiday season. By protecting other you are protecting holiday traditions.

The media has been talking of the tripledemic hitting this winter. Flu hit earlier than usual this holiday season and RSV has been sending plenty of children to hospitals instead of Santa’s lap. Then on top of it all the COVID pandemic is not over. I know many people have chosen to ignore the fact that over 400 people are still dying every day so that they can back to “life as normal.” Pandemic fatigue is real. Many cope by burying their heads in the sand or snow.

People are getting infected multiple times and the misguided hope was that they would build immunity. However each new infection gets worse. It turns out COVID destroys T Cells needed for immunity. People are suddenly more susceptible to flu and RSV infections that put them in the hospital. COVID is more like aids than a common cold. Convincing people that getting infected is the best way to battle the virus was stupid and criminal.

If you caught the  original strain of COVID you might infect 2 other people. With Alpha you might infect 3 other people. With Delta you might infect 5 other people. With Omicron you might infect 9 other people. Some claim that with BA.5, the variant circulating right now, you could infect 18 other people. That would make COVID more contagious than the measles. Rather than settling into a predictable endemic pattern, the virus is becoming insanely more infectious. 601 Americans died of COVID on December 22, 2022. 2,852 Americans died from COVID in the past 7 days.

The steps to protect yourself and your family are simple, wash hands, get vaccinated, wear a mask and be thinking about ventilation. Have everyone in your  family test for COVID if you plan to get together. Think for yourself and avoid infecting others.

Crealde Classroom Pandemic Sketch

Posted on by Thor

In my Crealde Urban Sketching course we tend to take one class to sketch fellow students as they work. I do quick 5 minute sketches to demonstrate how to position a figure on the page.  This particular sketch seems to be a sketch on top pf a sketch. I forget what I was demonstrating with the rough grid pattern. I was probably stressing how to avoid lining everything up on a grid and avoid horizontal and vertical lines.

Most classes are outside exploring the campus with our sketchbooks. I do this because it keeps my students safer during the pandemic. I was advised to offer an advanced urban sketching course but not enough students signed up so it was scrapped. No artist thinks of themselves as intermediate or advanced. Heck every one on my sketches is a series of mistakes.

The next series of Crealde Urban Sketching classes is starting up January 20, 2022. We meet on Sundays from 9:30am to 12:30pm.

Animal Reservoirs

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Some have theorized that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was circulating widely in populations of mice before it found its way back into human hosts. That would explain why the variant was so completely different that the previous variants of COVID. It came out of left field, unrelated to strains of the virus that had been mutating in the human population.

Humans as a rule tend to think of themselves as the center of the universe. They are however only a fraction of the life on the planet. Scientists have known for a long time that animals can catch COVID-19. However research has been scant as to exactly which animals have contracted the virus and more importantly how often animals have passed the virus back to humans.

Undoubtedly people have passed the virus to their pets as they become infected multiple times. COVID may have infected over 500 other mammal species. Humans have become complacent about the virus spreading from human to human so of course there is little concern about the virus spreading among animals. The only problem is that the virus tends to mutate differently in other mammals. COVID is not a human virus it is a virus that attacks many species. Mutants of the virus could become more transmissible but no one knows it that has happened.

17 million mink were murdered in Finland in an effort to stop the spread of the virus. China began killing pet store hamsters in another effort stop the spread. It is fascinating how murder is often considered the best solution to a public health issue. Animals who get the virus are often asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. That is another reason people seem blissfully ignorant of this issue.

White tailed deer in America have been rather susceptible to the scourge of the virus. Since hunters wander the woods to kill the deer they might be the ones spreading the disease to the deer population. Researchers test some of the deer killed and an amazing number are infected. Of 481 deer tested, 30% were infected. Another surprise is the the variants found are different that those circulating among humans. One bit of advice to hunters is that they should not eat the brains of their kill.

Sars Ani-Vis has built a site that shows the animal species that are becoming infected and where they are found. The deer population in America has the largest number of documented cases followed by dogs and cats. The numbers however are very small compared to the millions of humans that have died from COVID-19. Not many researchers are following this lead. There is probably not much money in knowing animals are getting infected.

COVID Bauble

Posted on by Thor

A bauble is a small, showy trinket or decoration. COVID is so tiny it can not be seen and therefor it is easy to ignore until someone in your family dies. China which had a zero COVID policy has decided to follow the lead of the United States and ignore that the virus ever existed. The reason the China zero COVID policy could not work was because countries like the United States let the virus rip through the country with little to no mitigation. America has had over 1.1 million deaths from COVID. Omicron was supposed to be milder, but with so many more people infected, more people died during the Omicron surge than any other surge.

Now China is facing the possibility of millions of deaths. The government did a complete 180. A week ago they spoke of the virus an an enemy that had to be defeated at any cost. Now they are encouraging citizens to go to work even if they are infected. The official death count from the Chinese government was 5 on Tuesday December 20, 2022. China now only counts those who die from respiratory illnesses, such as pneumonia as an official COVID death. The actual count is of course much higher.

Crematoriums in cities across China are straining to deal with an influx of bodies amid a widening COVID-19 outbreak, as authorities scramble to install hospital beds and build fever-screening clinics.

In the capital, Beijing, security guards were seen patrolling the entrance of a designated COVID-19 crematorium, where more than a dozen vehicles were waiting to enter.

Crealde Pandemic Study

Posted on by Thor

With my Crealde Urban sketching class, we focus in one class on sketching fellow students. I only give 5 minutes for these studies.Much of the class is on getting something on the page other than just the figure. I used the classroom tables as a way to frame the composition. I always stress to use foreground elements to point into the picture.

Monkey Business

Posted on by admin

The race to develop new COVID vaccines has enriched monkey poachers. Orient Biomedical Center and it’s competitors are being accused by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of an international monkey smuggling ring which is trapping endangered primates and shipping them to United States bio medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies.

Last month the Justice Department charged eight people, including two Cambodian wildlife officials  who conspired to poach monkeys from the wild and supply them to researchers in the United States with false papers saying they had been bread in captivity.

There is a massive demand for monkeys at research facilities in America so this poaching has been going on for years. The recent cases are just the tip of the iceberg. The race for a COVID vaccine exponentially accelerated the demand much like a COVID wave. The U.S. leads the world in its demand for endangered Macaque monkeys for research.

China was the lead supplier of monkeys before the start of the pandemic but they banned the export of monkeys after the spread of the deadly virus. Because of the pandemic demand, a single long tailed monkey could fetch up to $40,000 whereas it cost $3,000 just a couple of years earlier.

Conservationists bcgan to notice an increase in reports of monkeys being pulled of of the wild in Cambodia and South East Asia. In 2019 Cambodia supplied 8,571 monkeys and by 2021 that number had more than doubled to 18,870 monkeys.

In July 2022 the population of Macaque monkeys went from being vulnerable to endangered, because they are being hunted to extinction of the sake of research. Most monkeys die in research facilities. There is money in monkeys, so the dark trade will continue.

COVID Dummies

Posted on by Thor

A new study in  The American Journal of Medicine has shown that people who have not gotten the latest COVID vaccine are assholes on the roadways. People who have skipped getting a COVID vaccine are more likely to get into a car crash according to the study.

During the summer of 2021, Canadian researchers examined the encrypted government-held records of more than 11 million adults, 16% of whom hadn’t received the COVID vaccine. They found that the unvaccinated people were 72% more likely to be involved in a severe traffic crash—in which at least one person was transported to the hospital—than those who were vaccinated.

Of course, skipping a COVID vaccine does not mean that someone will get into a car crash. Instead, the authors theorize that people who resist public health recommendations might also “neglect basic road safety guidelines.” In other words they are assholes.

Why would they ignore the rules of the road? Distrust of the government, a belief in freedom, misconceptions of daily risks, “faith in natural protection,” “antipathy toward regulation,” poverty, misinformation, a lack of resources, and personal beliefs are potential reasons proposed by the authors.

The authors advise, that that primary care doctors should consider counseling unvaccinated patients on traffic safety—and insurance companies might base changes to insurance policies on vaccination data.

After Pulse: Bryan Batien

Posted on by Thor

Bryan Batien is a psychologist at the Orlando Veterans Administration Medical Center. After the Pulse nightclub massacre the Orlando VA offered significant volunteer counseling to members of the community, victims families and survivors.

The morning after the Pulse nightclub shooting Brian’s wife turned on the TV. News of the shooting was on all of the channels. They sat and watched all of the updates, feeling helpless. His wife is also a psychologist and they are used to working with trauma so they knew how devastating this would be for the community. They both wanted to help. They both work with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and realized this might trigger some of the vets they work with. They realized there might be a flood of people going to the Lake Nona clinic.

He texted his chief of psychology and said he could go into the VA if needed. Half an hour later he got a text back about the emergency response team. Bryan had been to the Institute of Disaster Mental Health so he and his wife had training in psychological first aid and responding to disasters and emergencies. The text response asked if he could get to the Hampton Inn in 45 minutes. This is where the families of victims and survivors were meeting. He had no idea what he would be doing at the location.

The Va sent several giant buses that can be used as portable offices and medical exam rooms. Families were there because they could not get a hold of their loved ones. Families were starting to collect there and waited, not knowing. A briefing was vague, they were asked to do what they can and answer questions. Give people water, guide them if they don’t know where to go. Just be there if people need to talk. As they identified the victims,  both in the hospital and deceased, they slowly figured out how to notify families. That went on throughout the night.

The second day they went to the Beardall Center and the process was much the same. They pulled in families one at a time, and the psychologists would be there with the family. Families saw other families come out of those rooms, so they suspected the outcome. But there is always the hope that their loved on was recovering in the hospital.

This was the first time he had to be involved in giving death notifications. The first time he entered one of the rooms with a family, he didn’t know what to expect. After being told, the family would be in the room for quite a while.  When hope was shattered there would be a floodgate of emotion, grief, sadness, loss, and pain. It took a long time to get to a place where they could leave. As a psychologist he is used to working towards a goal, but here, he could do nothing. The process became a blur.

 

 

After Pulse: Olga Molina

Posted on by Thor

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

Olga Molina is an associate professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Central Florida (UCF). On June 12, 2016 Olga was in her car and turned on a Spanish speaking radio station. She heard announcements that blood was needed and that people were lining up at blood banks. Something terrible must have happened. For the longest time they didn’t say what had happened. When she got back home, she turned on the TV and started seeing the images of people coming out of the nightclub. She didn’t know how many had been killed yet. The community came together very quickly, bringing water to those in line to give blood.

Several days later she went to a conference in New York City. There she met the executive director of Hispanic Family Counseling who said that they were short of bilingual social workers. They were being overwhelmed with the number of clients they were seeing. There are not enough bilingual social workers in Central Florida. Olga volunteered. They were doing a lot of home visits since people were so frightened that they didn’t want to leave their homes.

Olga began a Spanish speaking support group for survivors. These were people who were in the nightclub on the night of the attack. About 6 survivors came into the group. They met for about eight sessions. Then people were transferred to therapists. That happened between June and October of 2016. The meetings happened once a week for about two hours. The stories were horrific. Confidentiality and safety and trust were important. It was about mutual aid. They were the only ones who had gone through this experience and so they would best know how to help each other.

Some could not sleep at night. Many lost their jobs. Several became homeless because the FBI was asking questions and the landlords didn’t want problems. Anxiety was high. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder had to be overcome just to go to the meetings.

They exchanged phone numbers, and began contacted each other during the week. After the group meeting they would go across the street to the coffee shop and talk for several more hours. They became friends, some attended church together, Some took English classes together. It was empowering.

After the eight weeks they decided they wanted to keep meeting and so a new counselor was brought in to continue the sessions. They worked with the new counselor for several more months and then decided to end the group. Progress was made as they shared and made their way back to society. The eight weeks were not enough for any type of full recovery but everyone made their own progress. People are still hurting and there are long term consequences of the attack. Bridges still need to be built.