July 1, 2021. New York Times. Coronavirus stuff.

July 1, 2021

An informed guide to the pandemic, with the latest developments and expert advice about prevention and treatment.

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The New York Times

By Amelia Nierenberg and Jonathan Wolfe

The Delta variant is not driving a hospitalization surge in England, health data shows. Digital Covid certificates aimed at facilitating free movement in the E.U. came into force across the bloc. The Biden administration is expected to advance a law to protect patients from surprise medical bills. Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and a vaccine tracker.

The view from New Zealand

Countries across the Asia-Pacific region — including Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Bangladesh — are scrambling to slow the spread of the Delta variant. Many governments are reimposing restrictions. For societies that had just begun to reopen, it’s a jarring reminder that the pandemic is far from over.

For insight into the situation in Australia and New Zealand, we turned to Natasha Frost, who writes the Europe Edition of the Morning Briefing.

Natasha: When I returned from New York to my home country of New Zealand in October, it was like slipping through a portal into another world — one where people casually brushed past strangers while waiting in line, routinely went without a mask and even shared plates of fries.

A few months later, Auckland went into lockdown because of what would eventually total 15 Covid cases. In most of the world, so few cases would have been cause for celebration. In New Zealand, it was a sign that something had gone drastically wrong.

It’s a similar story in Australia, where a recent outbreak of over 200 cases has led to about half the country being placed under heavy restrictions. (In the U.S., new cases routinely exceed 10,000 a day.)

Having decided almost from the outset to pursue an elimination strategy, Australia and New Zealand have undergone a radically different experience of the pandemic from the rest of the world. As well as having shorter lockdowns and fewer restrictions, we’ve been insulated from much grief and suffering.

Still, it hasn’t always been easy. Closing borders has cut many people off from their families, decimated our tourist industries and prevented some citizens from returning home from overseas. But few would choose the alternative. Our total deaths from the coronavirus are in the dozens.

The latest chapter of the pandemic, where many people in European and North American countries are vaccinated and societies are steadily opening up, is different for us yet again. Our inoculation campaigns have been sluggish. Our borders remain firmly shut even to our citizens. And though we have far fewer cases than in most of the rest of the world, lockdowns remain an active tool.

Our approach post-pandemic is also likely to be different. Some countries like Singapore are already planning to handle Covid-19 as a new endemic disease, to be managed rather than eradicated. But having invested so much in a zero-Covid strategy, Australia and New Zealand seem likely to continue their hard line, even after most people have been vaccinated.

“Now that we have really effective vaccines and public health measures,” said Michael Baker, an epidemiologist at New Zealand’s University of Otago, “we will aim for no transmission in our community.”

Frontline workers speak out

Outside of hospitals, especially in places with high vaccine rates, people have started to change the way they talk about the pandemic.

“Once this is all over” has become “now that this is all over.” Friends talk about a “post-pandemic” world, exhaling in a shared agreement that “things are back to normal.”

But not frontline workers.

Doctors and nurses are reeling from rising Covid-19 cases in parts of the U.S. But even where cases are in sharp decline, they’re also coping with burnout and prolonged stress from a pandemic that, for them, seems never-ending.

It’s not just frustration, exhaustion or post-traumatic stress. The pandemic worsened chronic staffing shortages, as thousands left the field or died on the frontlines.

In the South and Mountain West, where the transmissible Delta variant is gaining traction among the unvaccinated, staff members share a familiar sense of dread and frustration. Last time, they watched their neighbors refuse to wear masks or socially distance. This time, people refuse to get vaccines.

“People think they are exercising their rights by refusing to get vaccinated, but in reality, they’re exposing themselves and others to risk,” said Dr. Clay Smith, an emergency room doctor who travels between two distant hospitals in South Dakota and Wyoming.

In Missouri, caseloads increased more than 40 percent from two weeks earlier. In Springfield, the CoxHealth Medical Center had to reopen the 80-bed Covid unit it had shuttered in May. There, the Delta variant comprised 93 percent of all cases last week, said Dr. Terrence Coulter, a critical care specialist.

“The country has started the end zone dance before we cross the goal line,” Dr. Coulter said. “The truth is we’re fumbling the ball before we even get there.”

Vaccine rollout

Amid lagging vaccination rates, Romania is looking to offload doses before they expire. Seven countries in the E.U. have approved India’s Covishield as an acceptable vaccine for travel, the BBC reports. In the U.S., the people you live with are likely to share your vaccination status.

See how the vaccine rollout is going in your county and state.

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What else we’re following

An outbreak is crashing over Myanmar and doctors are on strike to protest the junta, which has neglected the pandemic. Mexico’s death toll from Covid-19 could be 60 percent higher than official numbers, Reuters reports. Indonesia, which is especially hard-hit, announced restrictions for parts of Java and Bali islands in an effort to contain the Delta variant. Almost five out of every six virus cases went undetected in the first months of the pandemic, The Los Angeles Times reports. The W.H.O. said crowds for European Championship soccer games are driving infections in Europe. Queens, N.Y., was once the epicenter of the virus. Many neighborhoods, although alive with hustle, are struggling to rebound. As weddings restart, officiants add pandemic protections. Indoor smoking will return in to casinos in Atlantic City, N.J. on the Fourth of July. A new study suggests that pets often catch Covid-19 from their owners, the BBC reports. The Washington Post has advice for taking a pandemic-purchased pooch on its first road trip.

What you’re doing

In March 2020, we moved my 89-year-old mother from a senior residential community to our home. Our two grown sons also moved home, thinking our little farm was a safe place to ride out the pandemic. Then we all got Covid, brought home inadvertently by the N.Y.C. son. We got through it, but preparing meals for five people, while ill, was grueling. . The kitchen looked like a bomb went off for weeks. Fifteen months later, and I am tired of the trivial family disagreements and grown kids assuming they know more about everything — because their parents are now supposedly “over the hill”! I am also tired of my mother being sassy. I am dreaming of simple dinners for two with my husband, less toilet paper, loving our adult children from a distance, and a mother who is safe and cared for by someone else most of the time. I know I will miss this close family time someday, and I am extremely grateful to have become re-acquainted with my adult children, and that my mother was not locked up in an institution for a year. But right now I just want to get back to living a simple life. It is time. — A tired mother, wife and daughter, Bucks County, Pa.

1959

Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City sits on Missouri's western edge, straddling the border with Kansas.

Wikipedia - Kansas City

I'm adding this to my list of favorite chess quotes.

Jimmy

I play soccer, baseball, basketball, and chess

Missouri United States

https://lichess.org/@/ChickenDinner1

February 7, 2021 Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated Kansas City Chiefs 31–9

I used to eat pork steaks but these days I prefer chicken thighs. I never met a chicken thigh I didn't like.

Texas Pork Producers Association

History of Pork

The pig dates back 40 million years to fossils, which indicates that wild pig-like animals roamed forests and swamps in Europe and Asia. By 4900 B.C., pigs were domesticated in China, and by 1500 B.C., they were being raised in Europe.

On the insistence of Queen Isabella, Christopher Columbus took eight pigs on his voyage to Cuba in 1493. However, it is Hernando de Soto who could be dubbed “the father of the American pork industry.” The explorer landed with America’s first 13 pigs at Tampa Bay, Fla., in 1539.

Native Americans reportedly became very fond of the taste of pork, resulting in some of the worst attacks on the de Soto expedition. By the time of de Soto’s death three years later, his pig herd had grown to 700 head, not including the ones his troops had consumed, those that ran away and became wild pigs (the ancestors of today’s feral pigs or razorbacks) and those given to the Native Americans to help keep peace.

America’s Pork Industry Had Begun

Pig production spread throughout the new colonies. Hernando Cortez introduced hogs to New Mexico in 1600, and Sir Walter Raleigh brought sows to Jamestown Colony, now in Virginia, in 1607.

Semi-wild pigs conducted such rampages in the grain fields of New York that colonists who owned a pig 14 or more inches high had to put a ring in the pig’s nose. On Manhattan Island, a long solid wall was constructed on the northern edge of the colony to control roaming herds of pigs, as well as to protect the colonists from native Americans. This area is now known as Wall Street.

The pig population in the Pennsylvania colony num­bered in the thousands by 1660. As the 17th century closed, the typical farmer owned four or five pigs, supply­ing salt pork and bacon for his table, with surpluses sold as barreled pork. Following a practice that had become common in Pennsylvania, pigs were fed a diet of native American corn.

After the Revolutionary War, pioneers began head­ing west, taking their indispensable pigs with them. A wooden crate filled with young pigs often was hung from the axles of prairie schooners.

As western herds grew, so did the need for pork pro­cessing facilities. Packing plants began to spring up in major cities. Pigs were first commercially harvested in Cincinnati, which became known as Porkopolis. More pork was packed there than any other place in the mid- 1800s.

“Drovers” Herd Pigs to Market

Moving pigs to market in the 1850s was no small undertaking. “Drovers” herded their pigs along trails, which later developed into railroad routes. Between 40,000 and 70,000 pigs were driven from Ohio to eastern markets in any one year. Drivers, the drovers’ hired hands, each managed up to 100 hogs, and the herds moved five to eight miles a day, covering distances up to 700 miles.

The refrigerated railroad car transformed the meat industry when it was introduced shortly after the Civil War. It enabled packing plants to be centralized near points of production instead of near points of con­sumption. Large “terminal markets” with railroad access developed in major cities, such as Chicago, Kansas City, St. Joseph, Mo.; and Sioux City, Iowa. Large packing plants were located adjacent to these stockyards. Live pigs were shipped via railroad to the markets, and pork was shipped, again mainly by rail, to consumers nationwide.

As a result of these transportation developments, the pork industry relocated to the upper Midwest, where ample amounts of feedgrains were produced, and the “Corn Belt” also became known as the “Hog Belt.” In fact, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, Indiana and Missouri held the top six spots in state rankings for pork production for many years. Iowa is still No. 1.

The 1980s and 1990s brought major technological developments in the pork industry, some of which allowed production to grow dramatically in states not known for pig production. The most notable growth occurred in North Carolina, which is now the second largest pork- producing state.

Despite inherently more expensive feed, North Carolina producers became cost competitive by using pigs with the genetic capability for higher reproductive efficiency and enhanced lean muscle growth, resulting in better feed efficiency. They also captured economies of size and developed pig-raising methods that controlled disease, and improved productive efficiency. Many producers in other areas have now adopted these same methods.

Today the United States is one of the world’s lead­ing pork-producing countries. Also, the U.S. became the largest pork exporter in 2005 and remains so today. U.S. production accounted for 10 percent of total world supply in 2012.

You can find more information about today’s U.S. pork industry at the Pork Checkoff’s Web site at pork.org.

Another Republican fucktard who didn't want to wear a mask has been infected with the coronavirus.

The Washington Post

Missouri Governor Mike Parson (Republican), who has repeatedly disdained covid-19 precautions and attended large events without a mask, tested positive for the virus on Wednesday.

Evolution makes Idiot America's Christian assholes cry.

I never met a Christian who wasn't a stupid fucking asshole. Christian scum and their never-ending war against science education. These stupid fucking assholes need to drop dead.

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The Atlantic

EDUCATION

The Evolution of Teaching Creationism in Public Schools

A new study shows that anti-evolution lessons have become more stealthily integrated into curricula.

ERIC JAFFE and CITYLAB

DECEMBER 20, 2015

Some 90 years out from the Scopes Monkey Trial, and a full decade after the legal defeat of “intelligent design” in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the fight to teach creationism alongside evolution in American public schools has yet to go extinct. On the contrary, a new analysis in the journal Science suggests that such efforts have themselves evolved over time—adapting into a complex form of “stealth creationism” that’s steadily tougher to detect.

Call it survival of the fittest policy.

“It is one thing to say that two bills have some resemblances, and another thing to say that bill X was copied from bill Y with greater than 90 percent probability,” Nick Matzke, a researcher at the Australian National University and author of the new paper, tells CityLab via email. “I do think this research strengthens the case that all of these bills are of a piece—they are all ‘stealth creationism,’ and they all have either clear fundamentalist motivations, or are close copies of bills with such motivations.”

Matzke performed a close textual analysis of 67 anti-evolution education bills proposed by local government since 2004. (Three U.S. states have signed them into law during this time: Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee.) The result was a phylogenic tree—in effect a developmental history—tracing these policies to two main legislative roots: so-called “academic freedom acts,” and “science education acts.”

Matzke's analysis shows that academic-freedom acts were popular in 2004 and 2005 but have since been “almost completely replaced” with science-education acts, which emerged as the strategy of choice after the adoption of a 2006 anti-evolution policy in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana. (That policy’s lingering impact on creationist teaching was thoroughly exposed by Zack Kopplin in Slate earlier this year.) These acts tend to call for “critical analysis” of scientific topics that are supposedly controversial among experts. They often lump evolution alongside research areas like climate change and human cloning—an effort, argues Matzke, to skirt legal precedents that connect policies solely targeting evolution with unconstitutional religious motivations.

“Kitzmiller was mostly about policies that specifically mention ‘intelligent design,’” says Matzke, who uncovered an explicit link between creationism and intelligent design during that case while working for the U.S.-based National Center for Science Education. “If a policy encourages evolution bashing, and has the same sorts of sponsors and fundamentalist motivations, but doesn't mention intelligent design or creationism, is it unconstitutional? If I were a judge, I would say ‘yes, obviously,’ but judges have all sorts of different philosophies and political biases.”

Another marker of science-education acts is that they typically go out of their way to note that only scientific information, not religious doctrine, is protected by the policy. That’s a revealingly insecure stipulation, given that U.S. public schools are secular arenas by default.

A review of six anti-evolution education bills proposed at the state level in 2015 shows many of these legislative tactics on display:

Missouri. This act looks for ways “to assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies”—with “biological evolution” among them.

Montana. This House bill pushes “critical thinking” in science class on the grounds that “truth in education about claims over scientific discoveries, including but not limited to biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, random mutation, natural selection, DNA, and fossil discoveries, can cause controversy.”

South Dakota. State S.B. 114 gives teachers full freedom to help students “understand, analyze, critique, or review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories,” with “biological evolution” mentioned as one such theory alongside global warming.

Oklahoma. This bill—creating a “Science Education Act”—urges teachers to help students develop “critical thinking skills” about unidentified “controversial issues” with the understanding that it “not be construed to promote any religious or non-religious doctrine.”

Alabama. Much in line with the aforementioned legislative efforts, the sponsor of this bill, Representative Mack Butler, betrayed its intentions when he noted on Facebook that its aim was to "encourage debate if a student has a problem learning he came from a monkey rather than an intelligent design!"

Indiana. S.B. 562 only mentions “human cloning” as a controversial scientific subject, but its mission to help students “understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing conclusions,” with its caveat about protecting “only the teaching of scientific information,” tags it firmly within the science education act lineage.

That none of these bills passed in 2015 isn’t the point, says Matzke. After all, several states have adopted such policies into law in recent years, placing millions of public-school children in the hands of educators who might promote creationist alternatives to evolution, either because they have religious motivations themselves or simply weak scientific backgrounds. That Matzke’s analysis links two such laws to science education act language—those in Louisiana and Tennessee—is evidence enough that anti-evolution policies can, indeed, adapt to new times.

“Successful policies have a tendency to spread,” he says. “Every year, some states propose these policies, and often they are only barely defeated. And obviously, sometimes they pass, so hopefully this article will help raise awareness of the dangers of the ongoing situation.”

Idiot America: In 2019 guns killed 39,429 people, including 209 children under 12 years old. There was more violence last night in Missouri.

GVA - Gun Violence Archive

GUN VIOLENCE ARCHIVE 2019

Evidence Based Research - since 2013PUBLISHED DATE: March 16, 2020

• Total Number of GV Deaths - ALL Causes4 
   39,429
• Homicide/Murder/Unintentional/DGU1 
   15,339
• Suicide3 
   24,090
• Total Number of Injuries1 
   29,652
• Mass Shootings2 
   418
• Mass Murders2 
   31
• Number of Children (age 0-11)1 
  Killed 209
•  
  Injured 487
• Number of Teens (age 12-17)1 
  Killed 776
•  
  Injured 2,302
• Officer Involved Incident1 
  Killed 71
• Officer Killed or Injured 
  Injured 302
• Officer Involved Incident1 
  Killed 1,284
• Subject-Suspect Killed or Injured 
  Injured 791
• Defensive Use2 
   1,577
• Unintentional Shooting2 
   1,875
• Murder/Suicides Incidents2 
   626

This happened last night in Missouri. 3 people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time were killed. Also, a young police officer was killed. And the lunatic was killed.

Here in Idiot America, any violent asshole can have all the powerful weapons he wants.

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New York Times

Shooting at Missouri Gas Station Leaves 5 Dead, Including Police Officer and Attacker

The authorities said reports of several shootings preceded a fatal shooting at a gas station in Springfield, Mo., on Sunday night.

By Johnny Diaz

March 16, 2020

A shooting spree that spanned nearly five miles across a Missouri city ended with a car crash and a rampage at a gas station on Sunday night, leaving five people dead, including a police officer and the attacker, the authorities said.

The police in Springfield, Mo., said Monday that they first received a call about a shooting at 11:24 p.m. Sunday, in the southeast area of the city, about 220 miles southwest of St. Louis.

While officers were responding, more reports followed about shootings at other locations, and at about 11:43 p.m., a call came in about an incident at a Kum & Go gas station and convenience store on East Chestnut Expressway, near Highway 65.

“In essence, we had a roving active shooter moving from the South Side of the city up,” Chief Paul Williams of the Springfield Police Department said at a news conference on Monday. Chief Williams said later in an email that there was no discernible motive and that the investigation was ongoing.

Callers told the police that a car had crashed at the scene and that someone with a gun had entered the store and started shooting the people inside.

When the first two police officers arrived at the scene, they were immediately fired on from inside the store, the police said. Both officers, Christopher Walsh and Josiah Overton, were injured.

Other responding officers removed Officers Walsh and Overton from the scene, and when the police made their way into the store, they found the attacker dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Chief Williams said.

They also found three other people shot dead. The police identified them as Troy D. Rapp, 57, an employee of Kum & Go; Shannon R. Perkins, 46, an employee of the WCA Waste Corporation; and Matthew J. Hicks-Morris, 22, a customer. A fourth person was injured and in critical condition at Mercy Hospital on Monday afternoon, the police said in a statement.

Officer Walsh died at a hospital. Officer Overton was treated for an injury that was not life-threatening, and remained in the hospital on Monday afternoon, the police said.

The police identified the suspect as Joaquin Roman, 31. Jasmine Bailey, a spokeswoman for the Springfield Police Department, said that the police did not yet know what might have motivated the gunman, but that they believed the attacker was shooting at different locations while heading north toward the gas station.

“We are still actively investigating multiple crime scenes and dealing with grieving over the loss of one of our own,” Chief Williams said.

Mr. Roman pleaded guilty to three traffic violations in 2019 and was charged with a fourth traffic violation in February, according to court records.

A spokesman for Kum & Go confirmed that one of victims, Mr. Rapp, was an employee. “There are no words to express the shock and sorrow many of us are feeling,” the spokesman, Ariel Rubin, said on Monday. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, and their friends and families.”

Mr. Rapp’s daughter Bailey Rapp wrote in a post on Facebook on Monday that she was devastated. Mr. Rapp had been working at the Kum & Go for only about a month, she said. “I miss you more than words can explain,” she wrote.

Officer Overton, 25, has been with the Springfield Police Department for two years.

Officer Walsh, 32, had served with the department since 2016 and was assigned as a patrol officer. He was a Springfield native and an Army veteran, and had been active with the Army Reserves for 10 years, the department said.

“Chris died a hero, rushing in without regard to his own safety to protect members of his community,” Chief Williams said. “His courageous actions serve as an example to us all.”

The mayor of Springfield, Ken McClure, offered his “deepest sympathy to the families of Officer Chris Walsh and three citizens who lost their lives in the senseless shooting.”

He added: “We are indebted and very grateful for our officers who exhibit extreme bravery for our protection. Officer Walsh made the ultimate sacrifice.”

The shooting took place in a neighborhood with a mix of businesses, including a strip mall, a container store, fast-food restaurants and some residences to the south.

An employee at Hair Design, a shop near the scene of the shooting, said police were still outside the Kum & Go on Monday afternoon and that the area had been cordoned off. “I’ve never heard of anything like that before,” said the employee, who declined to give her name. She said she generally feels safe working in the area.

Springfield, a city of about 168,000 people in Greene County, was, like most of the country on Monday, bracing for the coronavirus outbreak. The county had three reported cases as of Monday, and city leaders held an emergency meeting around midday to discuss measures recommended by the Centers for the Disease Control and Prevention.

Jenny Gross contributed reporting.