Ministers and priests are suddenly streaming Passover and Holy Week services live in their living rooms or church altars around Pennsylvania.. the United States.. and the world.
2020 has been a series of strange and unfortunate events.. the culmination *we hope* is this hard week in the United States when health official tell us all hell itself is breaking loose due to COVID-19..
I type we hope only because it’s all based on models.
Projections.
Suddenly health officials turned into weather forecasters, with competing models of potential death counts being tossed around like a forecaster prognosticating how many inches of snow will fall from a winter storm.
In this odd and bizarre moment in time we can’t escape from, Holy Week has turned into living hell for believers and faithful..
While numbers of expected deaths took a major down swing from the 300,000 projected by the Trump Administration a few days ago, the numbers still range in the tens of thousands…
A University of Washington model often cited by U.S. and state officials projects that COVID-19, the respiratory ailment caused by coronavirus, will claim 60,415 American lives by Aug. 4, with the peak coming on Easter Sunday this weekend, when it projects that 2,212 will die.
Easter Sunday…a strange time for a catastrophic peak of heartache..
It all seems weirder when juxtaposed to a Pope slapping a woman of Asian descent as the year began in an event that seems to be multiverses ago:
After the incident, the Vatican was forced to apologize.. the Holy Sea said that Pope Francis did it out of concern for ‘hygiene,’ with the New York TIMES reporting this as the year began:
The Vatican said at the time that the pope’s motivation for yanking his hand back was itself viral. “It was a simple question of hygiene,” said Alessandro Gisotti, who was then the Vatican’s chief spokesman.
A few weeks later, Pope Francis was dealing with an Ash Wednesday ‘cold’ …
This week began with worry.. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson once proclaimed he would continue shaking hands in his nonplus attitude about the coronavirus..
Hours after the Queen did a very rare address to the British people, Johnson ended up in intensive care .. he remains hospitalized as this post is written, but reports indicate his dire situation has lessened into a normal stay for the world leader.
In a later AP news alert today, this report:
A staggering 16.8 million Americans lost their jobs in just three weeks, a measure of how fast the coronavirus has brought world economies to their knees. Meanwhile, religious leaders worldwide Thursday urged people to celebrate Good Friday and Easter from the safety of their homes.
As the ‘pink moon’ rose over America, hot spots began to emerge across the nation.
New York City. Baltimore.. Detroit.. Philadelphia.. HAZLETON!?
MEAT SWEATS
Luzerne county cases skyrocketed.. This report was filed by the Philadelphia INQUIRER late April 9:
Cargill Meat Solutions, a 900-worker plant in Hazleton, Pa., that packages meat in plastic for supermarket shelves in Pennsylvania and surrounding states, shut down temporarily on Tuesday as 130 hourly workers have tested positive for COVID-19 and a rash of employees called out sick, a union leader said.
And on Wednesday, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed to the family of a 70-year-old union steward at the JBS Beef slaughterhouse in Souderton, now shut down for a second week for sanitizing, that he died on April 3 from respiratory failure brought on by the pandemic virus.
There has been little of anything ‘normal’ about any of this. And there never was..
A few other news bits about COVID-19 worth reading and contemplating more..
“There’s been a very small number of breakouts on the Nimitz, and we’re watching that very closely,” Air Force Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday about the 5,000-member crews. He said that those sailors have “been isolated on the ship.” Hyten pointed to the inherent problem of containing the spread of the virus, which causes a disease known as COVID-19, aboard a ship in which many crewmembers share quarters, sometimes with as many as two dozen sleeping in bunks in one room. Not enough local hotel space exists in Bremerton, Washington, where the ship is based, for its commanders to quarantine crew members, so they’re attempting to isolate them on board, the general said.
NEWS WRAP JUST THE FACTS
Analysis: Trump’s secret theory about Barack Obama’s endorsement
Major Meat Processors Shutting Down Plants Nationwide As Employees Get Sick...
After Violent Night, Chicago Mayor Puts Curfew On Liquor Sales...
Prison riot in Washington state...
UK lockdown indefinitely...
Trump Rips WALL STREET JOURNAL as 'Fake News' For Criticizing Press Briefings...
White House to require coronavirus tests for journalists...
How single cough spreads across supermarket...
Video shows particles from runners can infect you...
Immune system gone haywire doing more damage than covid itself?
More and more testing positive AGAIN...
Most New York Cases Came From Europe, Genomes Show...
Scientific journal apologizes for linking Covid-19 with China...
Federal stocks of protective equipment nearly depleted...
Mnuchin says could be 'open for business' in May...
16.8 million Americans thrown out of work as toll rises...
Fed Chair Powell says U.S. economy deteriorating with alarming speed...
Pumps Another $2.3 Trillion...Why relief to small businesses has lagged...
Crisis Legacy: Mountains of Debt...
Fake news from China on who started the virus..
The initial origin story seems shaky..
Is it all in the poop!?
As the US struggles to figure out just how many people beyond the tested have the coronavirus, researchers are looking into excrement to get answers!
Coronavirus was detected in Massachusetts sewage at higher levels than expected, suggesting there are many more undiagnosed patients than previously known, according to a new study.
Researchers from biotech startup Biobot Analytics collected samples from a wastewater facility for an unnamed metropolitan area in late March, according to a report Tuesday on medRxiv.
The BOSTON GLOBE reports this,
Just one section of Massachusetts could have more than 100,000 coronavirus cases — many times more than the entire state has identified at this point, according to an MIT-associated study of local sewage.
Biobot Analytics, which is a lab associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published research this week that an analysis of sewage from a treatment facility in “a large metropolitan area in the state of Massachusetts” suggested that many more people potentially have the highly contagious disease than tests have confirmed.
“On March 25, the area represented by the sample had approximately 446 confirmed cases of Covid-19,” Biobot researchers wrote Wednesday in a post about their research. “Based on our sewage analysis, we estimate that up to 115,000 people are infected and shedding the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”
Biobot, which didn’t respond to requests for comment, didn’t specify where in the state the samples came from.
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THE LOST GENERATION
High school seniors in Pennsylvania, and across America, are set to miss traditions.. proms.. graduations.. parties.. and goodbyes, all robbed by COVID-19. School years are being canceled and students are being told to learn from home. Schools are struggling to quickly find out what that means and how to do it..
We are all struggling to figure out what this means.. how we get out of it.. And what the post-pandemic adjustment looks like.
No more handshakes as Dr. Fauci says?
Is the love dead?
Or .. is a new age about to be born.. live streamed… and phoned in on ZOOM for the virtual world to see?
