The Games Begin

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Over 500 people protested outside the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Tokyo. They beat drums and shouted which could be heard inside the stadium. Less than 1000 people were in the stands hear the hatred outside.

Tokyo recently recorded a six-month high in new COVID-19 cases and the city is in a state of emergency because of the virus. Shortly after the ceremony the number of people infected at the Olympics rose to 127.

Over 100 American athletes have not been vaccinated. I can’t imagine why Japan allowed so many athletes into the country who are not vaccinated. The Government of Japan continues to enforce strict travel regulations that bar most foreigners from entering the country. America has had vaccines available for months so there is no excuse for athletes to not be vaccinated. Around the world other countries are struggling to get enough vaccines and the supply is scant. The U.S. athlete vaccination rate is likely higher than that of most countries. That means that as athletes get infected the virus has plenty of fuel to spread.

The energy of the ceremonies was muted at best. Athletes were checking their phones and one decided to lay down since he was so bored and tired. There was more energy outside the stadium in the angry crown than inside. Polls show that right now, most Japanese people don’t want this event. There was a moment of silence for those who have died of COVID-19. Hey Millions were invested in these games, so they will go on even if they bring death. Like the emperor, the Olympics have no clothes during this pandemic.

Choose

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“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky said at a Covid-19 briefing July 16, 2021. More than 97% of people getting hospitalized with Covid-19 now are unvaccinated, Walensky said.

And 99.5% of deaths are among the unvaccinated, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said July 18, 2021. The U.S. is now averaging about 26,000 new cases per day — up 70% from the previous week, Walensky said. Hospitalizations are up 36%, and deaths are up 26%, to an average of 211 per day.
Vaccinations have virtually stalled in the United States. Thought there is plenty of vaccines available, medical misinformation has convinced about half the country to avoid the jabs.  “We’re not just battling the virus,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We’re also battling the trolls and conspiracy theorists that push misinformation and undermine the outbreak response.” Misinformation is the pandemic within the pandemic that is convincing people that death is preferable to trusting science.
This is, what experts anticipated in low-vaccination parts of the world. In the U.S, however, unlike much of the rest of the world, vaccines are free and readily available. All of these cases and deaths are preventable.

Olympic Winner: COVID-19

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A flight of the Czech Olympic team is being investigated as a possible cause of a COVID-19 cluster leading up to the Olympics. Two of the Czech athletes had to withdraw from the games. An unvaccinated doctor might have contributed to the spread. The “doctor” claiming that gargling mouthwash can prevent the spread of COVID-19. He is misinformed. Five members of the Czeck delegation were infected and 42 people were on the flight.

Cities typically spend $50 million to $100 million in fees for consultants, event organizers, and travel related to hosting duties. Tax payers of course foot some of the bill. With that much money invested how could Tokyo not hold the games? The investment is more important that public safety.

People in Japan are increasingly mad at their government for the decision to go ahead with the games. 87% of Japanese who were polled are worried that the Games are going to proceed. Only 20% of the population has been vaccinated. Cases are rising in Tokyo. The country has been closed to overseas travels for over a year.

In an attempt to keep the games safe, athletes are being tested every day. There will be no crowds and no parties. The opening ceremonies will have 950 people including dignitaries and VIPs in a 68,000-seat stadium. Tokyo COVID cases are rising to over 2000 cases a day fast approaching the levels seen in January of 2021. Tokyo is reporting new COVID-19 cases at levels not seen since January, when Japan was enduring a record spike in coronavirus infections. In less than two weeks, Tokyo will face a critical situation with the number of infections far exceeding that of the third wave.

The first U.S. athlete expected to compete in the Tokyo Summer Olympics, beach volleyball player Taylor Crabb, has tested positive for COVID-19 while in Japan. Let the games begin. The only winner will be COVID-19.

Democrat Tourist Superspreaders

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Fifty Texas state representatives abandoned the state to avoid voting on a piece of legislation that would restrict voting rights. Photos appeared online of the democrats in a bus and airplane with no masks or social distancing, despite the spread of the highly infections Delta variant.

This became a super spreader event after six of these fully vaccinated Democrats tested positive for COVID-19 once they arrived in Washington DC. Two Washington staffers associated with the group also tested positive for COVID-19. Texas Governor Abbott said he will arrest these representatives once they get back into the state.

Vice President Kamala Harris met with members of the delegation a few days before the positive cases were announced, but her office said that she is fully vaccinated and didn’t have close enough contact with the legislators to require going into isolation. It is unlikely that the legislators will be permitted to meet with President Joe Biden. A fully vaccinated senior spokesperson in the Speaker’s Press Office tested positive for COVID after contact with members of the Texas state legislature last week. The press secretary had no contact with Pelosi since much of her staff was working remotely the day the Texas Democrats visited.  A vaccinated White House staffer tested positive for the virus after interacting with the Pelosi aide, according to a White House official. The infected person has not been in close contact with Biden.

Breakthrough cases like these are usually mild and can show no symptoms. State Representative Donna Howard confirmed Tuesday that she tested positive for COVID-19. She said in a statement that she is fully vaccinated and “basically asymptomatic,” but that she is isolating to limit the spread of the virus. Unvaccinated individuals however can face hospitalization and death.

Kobe in a Pandemic

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Pam wanted to treat her niece to a trip to Kobe Restaurant. Her niece had never had Hibachi.We had a reservation for 8PM and arrived a few minutes late. The inner layer to my 3 layer mask had disappeared and we had to rig up one of those blue hospital masks as the inner layer that I would use.

When we arrived that place was packed to capacity. We all had our masks on s we walked through the restaurant following another family of four. Only the dad wore a mask in that family. Very few people wore masks although the entire restaurant staff wore masks. Plexiglass dividers were set up between families. Of course an airborne virus can make its way around plexiglass, but at least there was 6 feet of distance between families.

I scanned the crowded room looking for anyone coughing or sneezing. Air would be sucked up into an overhead vent above each table so perhaps we were not swapping air with others. I had to wonder what happened to the air once it was sucked up and what air was them pumped back into the space. Suddenly I am always thinking like a ventilation engineer. This was my first time experiencing hibachi. Any time I stopped eating my mask went back up. I actually found myself trying to breath  very shallow as well.

The chef cooks the food at a large grill in the center of the table. He juggled some eggs with his spatulas and quickly made some fried rice and noodles. I had ordered some shrimp and scallops and those were the last things cooked since they are quickly flash cooked in a huge plume of fire. I used the time he cooked to try and sketch as quickly as he prepared the food. The mountain of food on the plate was more than any human could consume in one sitting. I ate the seafood and barely touched the rice and noodles. The left overs should last for several more days. The food was delicious but it was exhausting being on high alert the entire time we were there.

The Delta variant accounts for over 60% of the COVID-19 cases in the country and in Florida, the Delta variant accounts for 13.4 percent of new COVID cases, according to the CDC. Less than half of Florida residents have been fully vaccinated, so I have to wonder how many of the people pressed into that restaurant had gotten the jab. Medical expert are warning about how the Delta  variant is now infecting the young. Children below age 12, are not yet eligible for vaccination in the united States making them vulnerable to infection. At least 335 children, ages 17 and younger, have died from Covid-19, according to the latest data from the CDC. Increasing cases among children, including severe ones, are expected as the Delta variant spreads.

Florida’s numbers doubled since July 10, 2021. Florida’s numbers are also twice the case numbers of California an Texas which have higher populations. Central Florida also saw a dramatic increase in cases over the last week. The numbers are triple what was reported three weeks ago. Delta is far more transmissible that previous variants of COVID-19 allowing it to infect crowds quickly.

Over 60 Infected at the Olympics So Far

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Over 60 people working at the Olympics in Japan have tested positive for COVID Since July 1, 2021. Athletes or others who may have arrived early for training camp but are not yet under the “jurisdiction” of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) are not included in the count, an official told the Associated Press.

Table Tennis player Ryu Seung-min of South Korea was the first IOC member to test positive. Two South African soccer players who were the first athletes inside the Olympic Village also tested positive.

Team South Africa confirmed the coach of its rugby sevens team also tested positive at a pre-Olympics training camp in the southern Japanese city of Kagoshima. He is in isolation there and will miss the entire rugby competition, the team said. The British Olympic Association said six athletes and two staff in the track and field squad are isolating at the team’s pre-Olympic base in Yokohama after being deemed close contacts of a person who tested positive following their flight to Japan. U.S. tennis player Coco Gauff didn’t travel to Japan after testing positive for the coronavirus.

The planned arrival of over 11,000 people is stoking fear that the Games will be a major superspreader event. Tokyo reported 1,008 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, the 29th straight day that cases were higher than seven days previously. It was also the fifth straight day with more than 1,000 cases. The Olympics will open under a state of emergency in Tokyo and three neighboring prefectures.

COVID K9

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Bristol County in Massachusetts is the first County in the United States to have COVID-19 sniffing K9 dogs. The dogs can sniff out the disease in a similar way the dogs detect drugs or weapons. The K9s began their new job starting July 15, 2021.

Bristol Count Sheriff  Thomas Hodgson said “Bristol County and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have come so far since the pandemic started last year,” Hodgson said. “Today, festivals are happening, restaurants are full and concert venues are packed. We’ve made so much progress, and our new COVID-19 detection program is one way the people of Bristol County can stay ahead of the curve.”

The detection program was developed by Florida International University’s (FIU) International Forensic Research Institute. “This is all science,” Bristol County Capt. Paul Douglas. “This program was developed by professors, doctors and scientists at FIU, and we couldn’t be more proud or excited to execute it here in Bristol County.”

Douglas is paired with Huntah, a 9-month-old female black lab, while Officer Theodore Santos will work with Duke, a 9-month-old male golden lab and retriever mix. The dogs were born two weeks apart with the same father and different mothers.

The dogs are available for use at schools, town buildings, non-profits, nursing homes, Councils on Aging, public safety facilities, and medical facilities in Bristol County. COVID detecting dogs were first employed at an airport in Helsinki, Finland. I am glad to see the United States starting to catch  up with Europe in employing dogs to sniff out the disease. At the University of Helsinki, researchers found that dogs can identify a Covid-19 case days before a person begins showing symptoms. They even believe dogs are more accurate that available COVID test kits, and the results are instant.

Delta Wave

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The Delta variant wave has begun in America. While many governors are opening their states fully, the Delta Variant is causing a rise in COVID-19 cases across the country.

President Joe Biden encouraged Americans to get out for the 4th of July as his vaccination plan to have 70% of Americans fully vaccinated fell short of his goal. The CDC shows that 48.2% of the American population is fully vaccinated. The vaccine initiative has ground to a halt as Americans cling to medical misinformation and partisan politics over their health needs.

July 4th weekend events were most certainly super spreader events. Cases usually rise two weeks after a super spreader and cases are on a steep incline doubling in the last two weeks. The unvaccinated account for 99% of fatalities.

“We’re losing time here. The delta variant is spreading, people are dying, we can’t actually just wait for things to get more rational,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health told CNN July 14, 2021.

Elsewhere, Indonesia set another daily case record of 54,517 and has overtaken India as the Asian epicenter of the pandemic, CNN reported. At least 991 fatalities were recorded in the nation of about 170 million people on July 14. 2021 to push the total to 69,210. In China, local governments are moving aggressively to push residents to get vaccinated and some are planning to bar them from accessing public venues if they refuse, The Wall Street Journal reported.

England is experiencing a huge spike in cases because so many people fled India where the Delta variant first ignited. England plans to fully open on July 19, 2021 while cases soar towards 100000 a day.The government in England seems to be pushing for a herd immunity strategy by just letting everyone get infected.

A cluster of COVID cases at a hotel hosting Olympic athletes is raising concerns coming just over a week before the opening ceremony, Reuters reported. Adding to the gloom, Tokyo has just recorded its highest number of new COVID cases in six months.

 

After Pulse: Jessica Brooks

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At the time Pulse happened, Jessica Brooks was an emergency communications specialist for the Orlando Police Department. On that evening she was a call taker.  A call taker answers the 911 calls as well as non emergency calls and they collect all the information and they put it in the computer. A dispatcher then get that information and gets it out to the officers who are responding.

On June 11, 2016 she was on the 3PM to 3AM shift taking calls. The entire week had been insane to the point where they wondered what was going on. They were busier than they have ever been. They thought that maybe the Christina Grimmie murder at the Plaza Live was the end of the insanity. Everyone was burnt out. There had been a car jacking that day as well.

Six call takers worked the lines. She was handling six radio channels. She had worked as a dispatcher for eight hours and for her last four hours she became a call taker. Things usually slow down between midnight and two. At to AM it can pick up because that is when the clubs let out. She was on her last break and it was just before 2AM. She took a bathroom break and when she walked back in the room, the phones were ringing off the hook. Co-workers wee standing up. She heard there was an active shooter at Pulse nightclub. She wasn’t sure it was legit. She decided to plug back into her headset and take a few calls and she would take a break later.

She doesn’t remember many of the calls. The first call she does remember was the worst call she had ever taken. It was a female who was stuck in a bathroom. She was scared and begging for help. She encouraged her and let her know there was an officer on the scene. Then Jessica heard gun shots. They were not in the bathroom but they were close. Then they were in the bathroom. She heard screaming and horrible things. There was moaning for a while and then silence. She stayed on the line putting it on hold and handled other calls hoping she could go back to the line and get a response, but she didn’t.

The next call was a minor traffic accident with no injuries and she had to inform the driver that there were no officers available. Some of that evening is a blur. She took another call from someone what was trapped in an office at Pulse. She was on the phone with him for a while. There were ten others in the room. She got his basic information and kept him calm. Inside she was panicking because of hat had happened to her last caller. She didn’t want that to happen to him. Ultimately she got to hear who went in and pulled him get out. She could hear her co workers talking to people in bathrooms, and the same room as her survivor. She knew of parents who were texting their children who were trapped in the bathrooms.

It was a loud insane night. The final call she took that night was from the shooter. She couldn’t hear him because it was so loud in the room. He claimed his allegiance to an Islamic state. He said, “I am the Orlando shooter.” She muted her phone, and told her supervisor that she had the shooter o the phone. One of the lieutenants was there and he made his way to her so he could take over the call. She asked the shooter where he was, and he said he was at Pulse. Her computer screen showed a map, that map shows where the call is coming from. He was indeed right at Pulse. He spoke in another language at another point. Then he hung up on her. The lieutenant took her console and she was done for the night. She wanted to stay but they wouldn’t let her. Some people worked 16 hour shifts but they must have seen on her face that she had enough. The first call is what got to her the most. She could not sleep for 48 hours.

At home she did click on the news which announced that 20 had died. She felt sick and turned it off. She felt she would never be the same. A friend came over from work along with a pastor and she was surrounded by love. The next day she went to church in search of hope. She was off work for 4 days.

 

After Pulse: Deacon David Grey

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Deacon David Grey is from the Dioceses of Greater Orlando. Catholic Deacons, priests and the bishop provided pastoral care and leadership to the Hispanic community and the Orlando Community following the Pulse nightclub massacre.

On June 12, 2016 David as sitting at home on the front porch following a run. They found out what had happened. He connected with the chief operating officer at the Diocese. There tragedy was just down the street from the church. They needed to be involved in doing something. David needed to get dressed and get down there.

He ended up at the hotel which became the staging point. It was very chaotic since no one had experienced something of this magnitude before. Families clung to the hope that they would find out what happened to their loved one but those in charge needed to know who next of kin were. Finally at the end of the day news was not forthcoming for the families. It just wasn’t possible.

A Federal Response team was on route to Miami for a training exercise and they were diverted to Orlando. The Federal agents took control form city and county agencies. This threw off notifications. Some notifications were done. There was chaos and anger. One person walked around with a cell phone with a photo and he told people , “If this is your son, he is not coming home.” He was frustrated and angry. Pizzas came in that were ordered by people from California. People wanted to help in any way they could so there was food and water. Translators started manning tables and taking in supplies.

Word went out among the priests in the hospitals that there needed to be a response. Because of his position, as a deacon, David knows most of the priests. They needed to find priests who speak Spanish. He called Catholic Charities, to find people who were bi-lingual. He assembled a team who were bi-lingual and they immediately came down. This was on a Sunday when they had to juggle masses. The day was open and unstructured as they walked with families in their moment of uncertainty and need. The bishop had flown to California and when he landed he heard about the Pulse massacre and he got right back on a plane to Orlando.

Universal prayer services were planned soon afterward. A timetable structure had to be developed so that Spanish speaking priests could meet with families. Then came funeral arrangements. Family were coming in from other countries. In the midst of a challenge like this you have to have hope. That can be hard to come by. There were challenges in the family structures in the midst of the tragedy. Unity was the primary message moving forward in both the city response and the church response. We stand together, Orlando Strong.