Virtual Ball Drop

Posted on by Thor

Times Square is empty on New Years Eve. As the number of coronavirus cases continues to climb across the country, event organizers will host a virtual ball-dropping celebration.

Police   have set up a perimeter around Times Square to keep spectators out. Garbage trucks and buses are parked at intersections to keep vehicular traffic out. There will be no public spectator viewing areas. Even people in local hotels are being told to stay inside.

The event will be broadcast online. The ball will be raised at approximately 6 p.m. to the top of One Times Square. There will be musical performances by Andra Day, Gloria Gaynor, Jimmie Allen, Machine Gun Kelly, the USO Show Troupe and more. Additionally, first responders, front-line and essential workers will be celebrated as special guests and heroes of 2020. They will be some of the privileged few to celebrate the new year from Times Square.

Mayor Bill de Blasio will press the button to send the Waterford Crystal ball on its one minute descent and finally the horror of 2020 will come to an end. Last year when the ball dropped, the first case of COVID-19 were just being reported.

The New Year’s Eve ball has dropped every year since 1907, except in 1942 and 1943, when the dropping was suspended because of the city black-out during World War II.Even then people gathered in the dark to celebrate. COVID-19 has created a much greater black out on social gatherings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging people to stay home and celebrate virtually with friends and family. The COVID-19 death toll is projected to be as high as 419,000 by mid-January.

Cold Storage

Posted on by Thor

650 bodies remain in a disaster morgue in refrigerated trailers on the Brooklyn waterfront. In April 800 people were dying a day in NYC from COVID-19. Many of these bodies have been in cold storage since that time. This disaster morgue was set up for people whose families can’t be located or can’t afford a proper burial, officials said. Some of those families can’t be located because they died form COVID-19 as well.

At first mass burials were held at Hart Island for those who were not claimed by family. However Manhattan Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged that mass burials in temporary graves wouldn’t take place after footage of the mass burials taken by a drone were shown on social media.

NYC is slowly reducing the number of bodies in storage, with the number declining from 698 to 650 since mid-September, according to Dina Maniotis, the chief medical examiner’s office’s executive deputy commissioner.

In Texas, inmates are paid $2 an hour to move bodies to mobile morgues in freezer trucks. The sheriff’s office said the use of the inmates began on November 9 , 2020 on a volunteer basis. While prison labor is a common practice across the U.S., the reliance on inmates to handle the task of moving the corpses of COVID-19 victims is raising questions about the ethics of such work. El Paso County in Texas has about 34,000 active COVID-19 cases, with more than 1,100 people in hospitals, according to local health data. Since the pandemic began spreading widely in March, the county has recorded 769 deaths due to COVID-19. El Paso now has 10 mobile morgues. The National Guard was was then called in to to help move bodies.

With the present surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitals in the Midwest are reaching capacity and they are short on staff. More than 68,500 are hospitalized with Covid-19 across the country, more than at any other point during the pandemic, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project, which is run by journalists at The Atlantic. 19 percent of American hospitals are faced a staffing shortage. We should expect many more hospitalizations, and even worse staffing shortages, to come as the virus burns across the country largely unchecked.

Experts are advising people to stay at home for the Thanksgiving holiday to help slow the spread, but millions of Americans are ignoring the advice of public health experts and traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday. More than 1.04 million people went through airport security checkpoints Sunday November 22, 2020, the most since mid-March.

Democratic Debate Round 1

Posted on by Thor

Since Pam and I don’t have a TV, we decided to go out to a Democratic Debate Watch Party. I found one at the Barley and Vine but when we drove by, we found the place deserted. Instead we drove over to Thornton Park to watch at the Falcon Bar and Gallery (819 E Washington St, Orlando, FL 32801). Planned Parenthood was hosting the watch party which meant a slice of free pizza if we surrendered all our personal information. Heck, I have given away more than that for a slice of pizza.

A small baby Trump balloon was floating above the bar so I immediately started sketching. We had a solid 45 minutes to kill before the debate really got under way. A friendly wide eyed pug kept sniffing around and standing on his hind legs hoping to get some of our pizza. Once the debate started the place got really packed.

Half of the Democratic party contenders would face off during the debate. With 10 candidates behind the podiums I honestly only recognized Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar. Amy had worked the news stations as the Warren report went public and I respected her views. In the bar there was one guy that clapped for every candidate and their opinions. Beto O’Rourke responded to one of the initial questions in Spanish and the bar loved that the captions paused since there was no interpreter.

When candidates were asked, “What is the greatest threat to American security?”  The loud clapper in the bar shouted out, “Donald Trump!” Folks laughed and then moments later a candidate gave the same response. It was exciting to watch the debate with a crowd. The enthusiastic hope that something new might follow the controversies and wasted energy of politics these past two years was contagious. Beto O’Rourke said Congress should immediately begin impeachment
proceedings against President Donald Trump in response to special
counsel Robert Mueller’s findings. If congress doesn’t impeach then he would press charges after Trump leaves office. Bill De Blasio said that Russia is the biggest threat to America “because they are trying to undermine our Democracy and they have been doing a pretty damn good job.”

Amy Klobuchar took a strong stance against Trump saying, “This president is literally every single day 10 minutes away from going to war, one tweet away from going to war. I don’t think we should conduct foreign policy in our bathrobes at 5 in the morning.” The two baby Trump balloons floated face up to the bar ceiling looking very much like the drowned father and daughter photo that has been all over the news.