COVID Face Blindness

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Medical Press reported that COVID-19 can cause ‘face blindness‘ and navigational problems according to a new Dartmouth study in Cortex. The researchers worked with Annie, a 28-year-old customer service representative and part-time portrait artist, who was diagnosed with COVID-19 in March 2020 and suffered a symptom relapse two months later. Shortly after the relapse, Annie noticed difficulty with face recognition and navigation.

Annie began having trouble recognizing her family. When her father called out to her, she thought his voice was coming out of a stranger’s face. She now relies on voices to recognize friends and loved ones. She began having difficulty navigating the grocery story and could not find her parked car.

She was presented photos of 60 celebrities and could identify just 29% of them. Most people can identify 84% of the celebrity faces. Granted Tom Hanks could resemble Mr. Rogers or the serial rapist who lives down the street and who needs to be able to identify Tilde Swinton anyway? She isn’t actually a celebrity.

She was given the Cambridge Face Memory test in which she was shown photos of 6 men. She was then asked to discriminated between those men and photos of other strangers. Annie could identify the faces 56% of the time while most people get 80% correct.

Her test scores in face detection, face identity perception, and object recognition were normal, indicating respectively, that Annie’s problems with faces are due to face memory deficits and are not a more generalized impairment.

Annie had flawless test scores in scene processing. When she was shown a set of landscapes and was then shown them again with a new set, she made no errors in identifying the landscapes she had been previously shown.

Annie also did really well in voice recognition tests in comparison to the controls, so the researchers think that her problems with face processing are mostly likely due to a deficit within the visual system.

There may be a lot of other people who have quite severe and selective deficits following COVID. To test this theory researchers polled 54 individuals who had long COVID with symptoms for 12 weeks or more; and 32 persons who had reported that they had fully recovered from COVID-19. A broad majority of people in the long COVID group reported noticeable difficulties doing things that they were able to do before contracting COVID-19. One of the challenges that many respondents reported was a difficulty with visualizing family and friends.

Where’s the Bacon?

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Smithfield Foods the world’s largest pork production facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota is now the largest Covid-19 hot spot in the United States. Nine state governors have not issued stay at home orders, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. The governors, all
Republican, have often defended their actions out of a belief in smaller
government, despite many calls from within their own states to do so.  

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, for instance, told reporters
earlier this week that “the people themselves are primarily responsible
for their safety” and that state and national constitutions “prevent us
from taking draconian measures much like the Chinese government has
done.” She also added, “South Dakota is not New York City.”

Eighty of South Dakota’s 180 new COVID-19 cases are employees of the
Smithfield Foods meat-processing company, bringing the total to 600 Smithfield Foods
employees who have tested positive. There are also now 135 total cases
of non-employees that became infected when they came into contact with a
Smithfield employee, according to the South Dakota Department of
Health. 

Augustín Rodriguez, 64, showed up for every one of his
shifts at Smithfield Foods, where he worked for nearly two decades.
Augustín kept going to work even after he began experiencing COVID-19
symptoms like fever and cough because he needed to work. He kept working until a sharp pain in his side kept him from going to work. Three days later he was hospitalized and tested positive for Covid-19. He was placed on a ventilator and died two weeks later. His death is presumed to be the first connected to a COVID-19 outbreak at Smithfield Foods meatpacking plant in Sioux Falls. His wife, Angelita, believes he was worked to death.

Smithfield announced Sunday April 12, 2020 that it would be closing its Sioux Falls
plant indefinitely Wednesday. The plant has 3,700 employees.  The company is closing its meat processing plants in other states as well. The number of South Dakota residents who have tested positive for Covid-19 has surpassed 1,100, and more than half of those cases have
some connection to the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in Sioux Falls. 

Kristi Noem a staunch Trump supporter seems to think that her rural state is safe from the virus or she is choosing to ignore the reality. Despite the numbers, Noem said she would not issue a stay-at-home order
for Minnehaha and nearby Lincoln Counties, as Sioux Falls Mayor Paul
Ten Haken requested. Noem said a stay-at-home order wouldn’t have made a
difference in Sioux Falls because the plant would have remained open as
part of a critical infrastructure business.

Noem also said her state will begin trying Hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug pushed by President Donald Trump in treating COVID-19. On the same say she made that announcement scientists in Brazil said they stopped part of their study, after heart rhythm problems developed in one-quarter of people
who were given a higher dose of the drug. Tom Hanks wife, Rita Wilson, developed “Extreme side effects” when she was given the drug in Australia. Noem received 1.2 million doses of the drug from the Federal government. Her constituents will be the guinea pigs. Senator Elizabeth Warren, said: “The governor just lets this problem get bigger and bigger and bigger.”

The Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls used represents about 4% to 5% of
U.S. pork production, or about 18 million servings per day. The pork industry could see 5 billion dollars in losses due to the pandemic. Consumers are likely to be meat shortages due to the plant closings.

Apollo 13

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In June there was a free screening of Apollo 13 starring Tom Hanks at Winter Park‘s Central Park. I saw the film when it first came out in 1995 on the big screen. It was about the third attempt to land men on the moon. The one thing I remember form that showing was that I was seated in a front row of the theater and the film gave me a huge headache. At the time I was working at Disney Feature Animation and we had a box lunch session in which producers of the film showed us how it was made. The film was directed by Ron Howard of The Andy Griffith Show fame. Some scenes in the film featured astronauts in weightlessness. Back then there was no Digital Effects to recreate that effect so they actually got permission to build a set inside a plane known as the Vomit Comet or KC-135 airplane. It got that illustrious name because it would fly extremely high and then nose dive towards the earth creating a momentary weightlessness inside the fuselage. The remaining scenes in the capsule were usually close ups and to get the effect of weightlessness in those shots the actors would be on sea saws which would gently rock them up and down. Watching the film again I couldn’t help but wonder which scenes featured those rocking horses or sea saws.

I sketched as people set up their blankets on the Central Park Lawn. As it grew darker I made my painting darker as well. Twice the film had to be stopped as an Amtrak Train roared by. I finished my sketch about half way through the film as Tom Hanks announced, “Houston we have a problem.” An on-board explosion deprives their spacecraft of most of its oxygen supply and electric power, forcing NASA’s flight controllers to abort the Moon landing, and turned the mission into a struggle to get the three men home safely.
What followed were very exciting solutions to very difficult problems. Oxygen was being vented into space, and the astronauts had to move into the lunar landing vessel which acted as their life raft. With CO2 levels rising they realized that the filter could not keep up with the CO2 they were exhaling. The filter form the capsule they abandoned could not be used because it was round rather than square. On the ground engineers were tasked with finding a way to use the wrong shaped filter. It involved ripping the cover off a manual, some tape and tubing. When reconstructed with step by step instructions the astronauts held their breath hoping the filter would work and it did.

When the aborted mission returned to earth, the astronauts had to go back inside the capsule and jettison their life raft into space. When re entering the earths atmosphere they had to hope that the heat shield on the bottom of the capsule had not been damaged in the explosion which had been caused when they stirred the oxygen tanks. As the capsule was engulfed in flames as it dropped towards the earth everyone in the audience saw a shooting star streak above the movie screen. Apollo 13 was an amazing film about perseverance hope and steely eyes determination in the face of seemingly insurmountable life and death decisions. It was a nail biting ride from launch to splashdown. And watching it under a shooting star shower was and ethereal experience.

Bridge of Spies hits theaters October 16th.

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I went to a free preview screening of Bridge of Spies starring Tom Hanks and directed by Stephen Spielberg on October 13th. I arrived several hours early an hours early and decided to sketch this larger than life chess set. A young couple set up the board and began to play. Across the street at the Regal Winter Park Cinemas, two large lines had already formed to get in the theater. I overheard that one was for Goosebumps the movie, and the of he was for Bridge of spies. As I was finishing my sketch, the spies line moved forward into the theater. There was more than an hour before the movie was to be screened, but I went inside to assess the situation.

Two co-workers from Elite Animation Academy were in the lobby. They were waiting for friends and family. Guards were collecting and bagging cell phones so the no one would record video of the movie prior to it’s release on October 16th. I waited with them since Terry planned to arrive minutes before the screening. All the heightened security seemed appropriate for a movie about Soviet and us relations as the  Berlin wall was raised. Everyone was patted down and scanned by y metal detector as we went through Check Point Charlie to go into the screening room. I had purchased a large popcorn and realized the had I hidden my phone in the popcorn I could have smuggled it into the theater.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union captures U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers after shooting down his U-2 spy plane. Sentenced to 10 years in prison, Powers’ only hope is New York lawyer James Donovan (Tom Hanks), recruited by a CIA operative to negotiate his release. Donovan boards a plane to Berlin, hoping to win the young man’s freedom through a prisoner exchange. If all goes well, the Russians would get Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), the convicted spy who Donovan defended in court. Although Rudolf was clearly a spy, I rather liked him since he was also a rather go representational artist. He seemed unfazed during the court hearing in which he was found guilty. His lawyer kept asking, “Aren’t You worried? to which Abel replied “Would it help if I were?  This became a running joke between them.

At times the film  reminded me of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in which Atticus Finch had to defend a black man in a racist Southern town. Like Donovan, he and his family were threatened for taking the case. Spielberg’s influence can be seen in the interrogation scenes in which the windows are brightly illumined behind the actors. Negotiations in Eastern Germany involved as much strategy as a game of chess. The film is smartly written and brilliantly directed.

Lets Make a Movie!

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I  stumbled across a meet up group online that was meeting at Perkins Restaurant and Bakery (6425 University Boulevard, Winter Park) . A guest speaker, Todd Thompson of Stars North Productions, a locally based independent film company, was lined up.  He outlined a long list of credentials. He made his first three movies by the age of 11 using his Grandfather’s Super 8 movie camera, using action figures and stop motion animation. He worked on the Tom Hanks mini series, From the Earth to the Moon in 1998. He worked on The Green Mile in 1999. He was told that producing independent shorts was the best way to break into the industry. So he did just that, and won awards along the way for films like Time & Again, and Once Not Far From Home. Chance meetings at film festivals lead to other contacts and productions. It seems film making is all about persistence, drive and chance encounters.

His current project, The Highwaymen, sounded like it could be a fantastic film. The film centers around a talented African American painter named Alfred Hair, who is unable to show his work in galleries because of his race. He meets a white landscape painter, A.E. Backus who taught him everything he knew about painting. He took this information and taught 26 other African American men how to paint. They produced over 100,000 paintings which they would sell on the road side for like $20 a painting. A.E. Backus would produce maybe one painting a month whereas these guys were producing at least a painting a day.  Some of the Highwaymen could produce up to 30 paintings a day, working in series. The paintings were quickly executed Florida landscapes. An art critic “discovered” the work and after he wrote an article, the price of the work skyrocketed. Highwaymen paintings are probably still scattered in peoples attics with the owners having no idea as to the value of the work. I love the premise of this film, the mentor ship, and overcoming the racial divide. The original artists have been interviewed and a huge wall was set up that follows their intertwined lives. I’d love to sketch and document the shooting and post production of this film.

People began introducing themselves and discussing their interest in film production. The introductions weren’t in any order and perhaps half way through, order broke down and lively discussions erupted. A short script for a SPCA public service announcement was on the table and I believe a number of people in the room were going to be involved in shooting the project in an animal shelter. When I realized I didn’t have to introduce myself, I slipped away.