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twenty-five things tagged “pandemic

When Does It End?

COVID Theater has become a sad thing to behold these days. Do we still wear masks? If transmission is mostly airborne, why do we get to take them off at restaurants to eat our food when droplets from a sneeze can travel in excess of 25 feet? What’s all this talk about a second booster? Is Omicron so…

Together by Luke Adam Hawker

Together (2021)

by Luke Adam Hawker

Rating: A

“Fear can be a funny thing; it doesn’t always shine a flattering light. It can make us forget that others are scared too.” The author tells a short and lovely story about the pandemic, isolation, hope, the value of community, nature, and so many other things for such a short book. It is told through…

AppleTalk

“For all that we’ve been able to achieve while many of us have been separated, the truth is that there has been something essential missing from this past year: each other,” [Tim Cook] said. “Video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us, to be sure, but there are things it simply…

The Joke

Trump has been saying the pandemic has been totally under control since January, and said it would just “go away” in February. He reiterated this in March as the virus surged, and insisted we had “perfect” tests that anyone could get after reports of faulty tests. He said he wanted pandemic-relate…

Idiots Out Walking Around - II

Informed Choice Iowa is a group that “unites Iowans seeking to preserve their medical freedoms.” They are “pro-science” folk that count “ex-vaxxers”, “selective vaxxers”, “non-vaxxers”, and “vaxxers” among their members. I’m guessing that this list doesn’t include a single practicing physician. And…

Idiots Out Walking Around

Reynolds said election victories for Republicans in the state this week show Iowans support her approach. “It was a validation of our balanced response to COVID-19, one that is mindful of both public health and economic health,” Reynolds said. Because political victories, not cases or deaths, shou…

Should I Be Worried

is a simple and aptly-named COVID tracker that uses data from Johns Hopkins. As of September 1st 2020, my state of Iowa is #1 (woohoo!) with a 7-day infection rate of 261/100,000 people (“there might be 2 to 6 times as many recent infections”) and an R0 rate of 1.7. “Over the past 30 days, 246 peopl…

COVID-19 Map

Found this map when Googling “coronavirus india”. Looks like it’s maintained by the WHO and is pretty up-to-date. They have a daily update page. At the time of this writing, there are 110,029 confirmed cases, with 3,817 deaths in 105 countries. China, South Korea, Iran, France, and Germany account f…