Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Tuesday CoronaBuzz, December 1, 2020: 34 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Tuesday CoronaBuzz, December 1, 2020: 34 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz

Please wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay at home if you can. Please be careful. I love you.

NEW RESOURCES – EDUCATION/ENTERTAINMENT

Nursery World: Coronavirus: Sesame Street launches storylines to help parents through the pandemic . “The three organisations have come together to launch the Parenting Partnership, which will be rolled out to address the specific needs of parents and carers worldwide. The first phase of the partnership involves newly-created Sesame Street content, available in ten languages, which address common issues, such as adapting to spending more time in the home together, and not being able to socialise with friends.”

TwinCities Pioneer Press: Holiday Arts Guide: From Blenders to Brickman, music traditions continue online. “Nearly all of this year’s holiday concerts are virtual, but many familiar faces both local (the Blenders, Lorie Line, the SPCO) and national (Jim Brickman, Trans-Siberian Orchestra) have planned online events to keep holiday traditions going during the pandemic. Here’s a look at what’s on tap.” These events are a mix of free and not-free.

NEW RESOURCES – STATE-SPECIFIC

NYC Department of Education: Chancellor Carranza Launches Parent University, New Online Resource for Families. “Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza today launched Parent University, a new online platform that offers a centralized catalog of courses, live events, and activities to help connect with families and support students. The platforms offers all New York City parents and guardians access to live and on-demand courses and resources across multiple discipline areas and grade bands.”

UPDATES

WARNING: This is really gross. USA Today: Dead minks infected with a mutated form of COVID-19 rise from graves after mass culling. “Minks infected with a mutated strain of COVID-19 in Denmark appear to be rising from the dead, igniting a national frenzy and calls from local officials to cremate mink carcasses. While the sight itself is certainly terrifying for the residents of West Jutland, a region of the country grappling with confirmed COVID-19 cases connected to mink, there is likely a scientific explanation for the zombie-like reemergence from their graves.”

Los Angeles Times: New COVID-19 spike spreading beyond urban areas to all corners of California. “A Times data analysis found that most California counties are now suffering their worst coronavirus daily case rates of the entire COVID-19 pandemic, surpassing even the summer surge that had forced officials to roll back the state’s first reopening in the late spring.”

MISINFORMATION / FACT-CHECKING

BBC: Covid-19: What’s the harm of ‘funny’ anti-vaccine memes?. “Memes, often in the form of humorous images and videos, are a major part of how people communicate on the internet, but they can also be used to spread disinformation. We’ve been looking at how these memes can present false and misleading information about Covid-19 vaccines, feeding into concerns about their efficacy or safety.”

SOCIETAL IMPACT

Mashable: 11 ways to virtually visit Santa this holiday season. “While your kids aren’t able to sit on Santa’s lap in 2020, they can still interact with him through a screen. A bunch of helpful online services are offering virtual Santa visits in the form of pre-recorded video messages or live video calls. They vary in price depending on type and duration of experience, date booked, and personalization, so we thought it would be helpful to round up a few of the best options for you to browse.”

BBC: Cancelled prom pictures win £15,000 Taylor Wessing portrait prize. “A series of portraits of school leavers dressed for proms that never took place because of the coronavirus pandemic has won a £15,000 prize for photography. The judges of this year’s Taylor Wessing Prize felt Alys Tomlinson’s Lost Summer ‘spoke to the events of 2020… without being heavy handed.'”

San Jose State University: Research Shows Lockdowns Did Not Decrease Park Visits. “Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Ahoura Zandiatashbar scoured publicly available data and found that although we have limited our visits to stores, Americans are still visiting parks and beaches at near pre-pandemic rates. In the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, Zandiatashbar—a newly hired faculty member in SJSU’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the College of Social Sciences—published a study he co-authored with Shima Hamidi, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.”

Poynter: How big will the pandemic eviction wave be?. “One estimate based on census data says, ‘8.4 million renter households, which include 20.1 million individual renters, could experience an eviction filing’ one month from now. Get your head around that: 8 million households could face evictions in four weeks. To put it in perspective, about 2.5 million people were displaced in the Dust Bowl days. I am way more interested in this than in Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping statistics.”

HEALTH CARE / HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS

AZ Central: Yuma doctor says Arizona has shortage of ICU beds, staff as COVID-19 cases surge. “Dr. Cleavon Gilman was shocked when he came into work at Yuma Regional Medical Center this week and was told that although the hospital’s intensive care was full, patients in intensive care could not be transferred to other hospitals. ‘There was supposed to be 174 ICU beds in Arizona,’ Gilman said. ‘When I came on the shift there were none. And that’s unacceptable.'”

BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS

New York Times: ‘Bleak Friday’ for Stores as Pandemic Pushes Holiday Shopping Online. “Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimated that retailers’ overall Black Friday sales fell 20 percent from last year, based on early reports of drops in store foot traffic and increases in online sales. Consumers spent $9 billion online on Friday, a 21.6 increase from last year and the second-biggest figure for online retailers ever, according to Adobe Analytics, which scans 80 percent of online transactions across the top 100 U.S. web retailers. The firm said online sales rose to $23.5 billion in the four-day Thanksgiving-to-Sunday period, up 23 percent from last year.”

Daily Beast: Meat-Plant Workers Slam Rogue Colorado Officials Over Refusal to Enforce COVID Rules. “Meat-plant workers in Colorado condemned local leaders on Wednesday for refusing to enforce new state-directed COVID-19 safety restrictions, even after hitting a ‘level red’ designation over the region’s spiraling increase in coronavirus cases and dire hospital situation.”

NPR: New Mexico Distillery Owners Discuss Closing Their Business Because Of COVID-19. “Matt and Susan Simonds struggled to keep their Albuquerque distillery afloat over the summer during the pandemic. Now, they are among the tens of thousands of small businesses that have gone under.”

STATE / LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Anchorage Daily News: Governor’s outreach director urged people to go out and ‘party like it’s New Year’s Eve’ before Anchorage closed bars. “As the state of Alaska urges people to make sacrifices to slow the rapid spread of COVID-19, Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s director of communications and community outreach told friends and family to gather and party. ‘Monday night, go to your favorite bar and party like it’s New Year’s Eve,’ Dunleavy outreach director Dave Stieren wrote Thursday on his personal Facebook page. ‘Dress up. Uber. Whatever. Do it.'”

COUNTRY / FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

NPR: North Korea Executed Coronavirus Rule-Breaker, Says South Korean Intelligence. “North Korea is taking increasingly harsh measures to stop the coronavirus from entering the country, including executing an official in August who violated anti-virus rules, South Korean intelligence officials told lawmakers on Friday. In a closed-door briefing to a parliamentary intelligence committee on Friday, the officials told lawmakers that the executed North Korean had brought goods through customs in the city of Sinuiju on North Korea’s border with China, in violation of coronavirus-related quarantine measures.”

New York Times: Britain Set to Leap Ahead in Approving Vaccines. “Britain asked its drug regulator on Friday to consider AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine for emergency approval, forging ahead in the face of considerable uncertainty about the vaccine’s effectiveness as the government tries to corral a pandemic that has killed more than 66,000 people in the country.”

Washington Post: How a $17 billion bailout fund intended for Boeing ended up in very different hands. “The Trump administration has used a $17 billion loan fund meant for businesses critical to U.S. national security to help a hodgepodge of little-known companies with unclear importance to national defense, and the fund remains mostly unspent nearly eight months after Congress approved it as part of a $2 trillion stimulus bill.”

BBC: Coronavirus: Netherlands makes face masks mandatory indoors. “The Netherlands has made it compulsory to wear a face mask in indoor public spaces in an effort to contain the spread of coronavirus. The country is one of the last in Europe to introduce such a measure. The rule will apply to those over the age of 13 in public buildings such as shops, railway stations and hairdressers from Tuesday.”

Poynter: The CDC will meet this week to discuss who will be first to be vaccinated. “The meeting comes nine days before the CDC will consider Pfizer’s emergency application for the approval of its experimental vaccine, which it says is about 95% effective in preventing COVID-19. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Stephen M. Hahn would not say exactly how many days it might take for the government to act on Pfizer’s application.”

INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS

CNN: Sudan’s last democratically elected prime minister dies of Covid-19. “Sadiq al-Mahdi, Sudan’s last democratically elected prime minister, who was toppled in 1989 by former dictator Omar al-Bashir, died Thursday from coronavirus. Al-Mahdi, who was 84, died in the United Arab Emirates, where he had traveled for treatment after contracting the virus, his family said in a statement.”

NPR: With Less Money In Its Red Kettles, The Salvation Army Rallies To Save The Holidays. “The charitable organization relies on its red-kettle campaign’s donations to raise enough money to help millions of Americans around the holidays. That’s especially true this year, with so many people out of work and suffering financially. So with store traffic — and red-kettle donations — down, the charity is turning to technology and its enthusiastic volunteers to keep the tradition going. The familiar red-kettle campaign’s roots go back more than a century.”

New York Times: Dr. Mary Fowkes, 66, Dies; Helped Science Understand the Pandemic. “Dr. Mary Fowkes, a neuropathologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan whose autopsies of Covid-19 victims early in the pandemic discovered serious damage in multiple organs — a finding that led to the successful use of higher doses of blood thinners to treat patients — died on Nov. 15 at her home in Katonah, N.Y., in Westchester County. She was 66. Her daughter, Jackie Treatman, said the cause was a heart attack.”

Merco Press: Bolsonaro said he will refuse vaccination against Covid-19: “it’s my right”. “Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday he would refuse a coronavirus vaccine, the most recent of his vaccine-skeptic statements. ‘I’m telling you, I’m not going to take it. It’s my right,’ he said in remarks aired over several social media platforms.”

SPORTS

Washington Post: As thousands of athletes get coronavirus tests, nurses wonder: What about us?. “As sports lurched back to life over the summer, health experts debated the ethics of entire leagues jumping to the front of the testing line. But ultimately the leagues, with billions of revenue dollars at stake, contracted with private labs to pay for the best and fastest tests available — a luxury many hospitals and other healthcare providers, reeling from the pandemic, can’t afford.”

K-12 EDUCATION

Bloomberg: Math Knowledge Is Another Casualty of the Pandemic. “Shalinee Sharma can track the impact of Covid-19 on students’ math achievement on a daily basis by checking Zearn, the nonprofit company of which she is chief executive and co-founder. Students go to Zearn to take math lessons and to earn badges, which they get for a perfect score on a quiz. Early in the pandemic she and her staff noticed that high-income students were using Zearn more than ever, but the low-income students that Zearn is most concerned about were dropping off. The gap seemed to narrow at the start of this school year, but lately it has widened again.”

New York Times: Teaching in the Pandemic: ‘This Is Not Sustainable’. “All this fall, as vehement debates have raged over whether to reopen schools for in-person instruction, teachers have been at the center — often vilified for challenging it, sometimes warmly praised for trying to make it work. But the debate has often missed just how thoroughly the coronavirus has upended learning in the country’s 130,000 schools, and glossed over how emotionally and physically draining pandemic teaching has become for the educators themselves.”

HIGHER EDUCATION

CNN: One college student shares why he trekked home for Thanksgiving, and what he’s doing to stay safe. “The choice to return home as cases continue to surge nationwide has not been an easy one for college students to make — and some health experts are concerned that colleges didn’t help enough to ensure safe departures for all students.”

HEALTH

Caroll Times Herald: A spreading sickness, part I. “… when you’re retired and have halted your lives for months, the allure of normalcy is tempting. There was a bottle of hand sanitizer ready at the front door, and the ladies wore masks when they weren’t eating pie. They tried to keep a safe distance, but Joan’s hands were arthritic and Nina had to help her with the cards. It’s hard to remember who won the $1 pot that day, because so much has happened since. So much is gone. The next day, Nina’s husband collapsed.”

TECHNOLOGY

MIT Technology Review: While mainland America struggles with covid apps, tiny Guam has made them work. “With no budget, and relying almost entirely on a grassroots volunteer effort, Guam has gotten 29% of the island’s adult residents to download its exposure notification app, a rate of adoption that outstrips states with far more resources.”

CRIME / SECURITY / LEGAL

ABC News: How to watch out for scams as a coronavirus vaccine nears. “Homeland Security Investigations officials are preparing for a crush of new scams when the coronavirus vaccine is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which could come in a few weeks.”

ZDNet: Personal data of 16 million Brazilian COVID-19 patients exposed online. “The personal and health information of more than 16 million Brazilian COVID-19 patients has been leaked online after a hospital employee uploaded a spreadsheet with usernames, passwords, and access keys to sensitive government systems on GitHub this month.”

OH THAT’S SO NICE

New York Daily News: EXCLUSIVE: COVID survivor thanks all 116 members of Manhattan hospital team that saved his life. “When the 44-year-old patient returned home May 2, he felt a gnawing need to thank them all – a total of 116 doctors, nurses, therapists and other anonymous medical heroes of the pandemic. The finance professional turned into an online detective, using a hospital app and his own insurance records to track down dozens of his benefactors across the next five months. And then, as Thanksgiving neared, he sent them all a note of deep appreciation.”

POLITICS

Yahoo News: New Hampshire Republicans want to impeach the state’s GOP governor for requiring people to wear a mask in public places. “Seven conservative lawmakers in New Hampshire have called for an investigation into whether the state’s GOP governor Chris Sununu can be impeached for ruling by executive order during the pandemic. This news comes just days after the governor implemented a mask mandate requiring people to wear a face covering in public places, which led to an anti-mask demonstration outside his home in Newfields on Sunday.”

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December 1, 2020 at 08:44PM
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Sustainable Packaging Design, University of Alberta Museums, Google Docs, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, December 1, 2020

Sustainable Packaging Design, University of Alberta Museums, Google Docs, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, December 1, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Packaging Today: BPF Launches Online Database of Sustainable Design Guides and Tools . The BPF is the British Plastics Federation. “The new online resource includes numerous design guides for making plastic packaging more recyclable, guides for incorporating recycled content in products, general guides about sustainability, as well as interactive tools such as carbon calculators. The searchable database presents a wealth of insight into plastic packaging design at a variety of technical levels, which can ultimately help to reduce the overall environmental impact of products.”

The Gateway: U of A museum collections launches new integrated search site. “The University of Alberta Museums’ online collections officially launched on October 1. The launch marks the first time all available collections will be accessible from a single, integrated site. While all collections are now accessible online, the museum’s collection has had some online capacity for almost two decades. Previously only nine were available online. Now 16 of the 29 collections held by the U of A have now made their way online.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Android Police: PDFs imported to Google Docs will soon look better than ever. “Google Docs might be the collaboration tool of choice these days, but PDF is still a wildly popular format for sharing documents. Now Google is making the conversion process between PDF and DOC better than ever thanks to a slew of new improvements, including better formatting and image importing.”

TechCrunch: Twitter’s Audio Spaces test includes transcriptions, speaker controls and reporting features. “Earlier this month, Twitter announced it would soon begin testing its own Clubhouse rival, called Audio Spaces. The new product will allow Twitter users to gather in dedicated spaces for live conversations with another person or with groups of people. While the company showed off a handful of screenshots of the product at the time of the announcement, there were few specifics about how Audio Spaces would work. Now, we know a bit more about Audio Spaces’ feature set, thanks to some digging by reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong.”

ZDNet: Linux Mint introduces its own take on the Chromium web browser. “Linux Mint is a very popular Linux desktop distribution. I use the latest version, Mint 20, on my production desktops. That’s partly because, while it’s based on Debian Linux and Ubuntu, it takes its own path. The best example of that is Mint’s excellent homebrew desktop interface, Cinnamon. Now, Mint’s programmers, led by lead developer, Clement ‘Clem’ Lefebvre, have built their own take on Google’s open-source Chromium web browser.”

USEFUL STUFF

New York Times: It’s Time for a Digital Detox. (You Know You Need It.). “With the holiday season upon us, now is a good time to take a breather and consider a digital detox. No, that doesn’t mean quitting the internet cold turkey. No one would expect that from us right now. Think of it as going on a diet and replacing bad habits with healthier ones to give our weary eyes some much needed downtime from tech.”

Make Tech Easier: Chrome Music Lab: An Introduction to the Easiest Music Maker Around . “You don’t need anything other than a mobile device or a computer to make your own music using the Chrome Music Lab. It’s the easiest music maker around and is completely free. You don’t even have to create an account to get started. It’s a fun music education tool and maker for people of all ages, from kids to seniors and everyone in between.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Search Engine Land: How DuckDuckGo (and Microsoft) benefit from Google’s sprawling advertising business. “DuckDuckGo is a search engine that was founded in 2008 with a focus on protecting searchers’ privacy, notably showing all searchers the same search results and refraining from building profiles of its users. Its search volume has risen steadily over the years, and in October 2020 was up to nearly 60 million queries daily.”

BBC: Spotify reveals 2020’s most-streamed songs. “Drake, Bad Bunny, Dua Lipa and The Weeknd are among the most-streamed artists of 2020, according to figures from Spotify. Drake was the most popular artist in the UK, reclaiming the number one position from Ed Sheeran. The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights was the most-played song in the UK, while Lewis Capaldi’s Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent was the top album.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Hill: Google ordered to disclose emails in Russia oligarch’s divorce. “A federal judge in San Jose, Calif., has ordered Google to hand over emails from the son of Russian oligarch Farkhad Akhmedov, a billionaire who has been embroiled in a four-year, $600 million divorce battle with his ex-wife.”

Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project: Organized Crime Has a New Tool in Its Belts – Artificial Intelligence. “As new technologies offer a world of opportunities and benefits in many sectors, so too do they offer new avenues and for organized crime. It was true at the advent of the internet, and it’s true for the growing field of artificial intelligence and machine learning, according to a new joint report by Europol and the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Center.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

EurekAlert: Why spending a long time on your phone isn’t bad for mental health. “General smartphone usage is a poor predictor of anxiety, depression or stress say researchers, who advise caution when it comes to digital detoxes. The study published in Technology, Mind, and Behavior was led by Heather Shaw and Kristoffer Geyer from Lancaster University with Dr David Ellis and Dr Brittany Davidson from the University of Bath and Dr Fenja Ziegler and Alice Smith from the University of Lincoln.” Good morning, Internet…

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December 1, 2020 at 08:16PM
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Monday, November 30, 2020

Monday CoronaBuzz, November 30, 2020: 27 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Monday CoronaBuzz, November 30, 2020: 27 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz

Please wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay at home if you can. Please be careful. I love you.

NEW RESOURCES – OTHER

New York Times: Smithsonian Archives of American Art Gathers an Oral History of 2020. “As the pandemic set in this spring, the historians and curators at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art began doing what they do best: looking through relics of history. They found little information related to the 1918 flu pandemic in their archives, and decided to make sure that future historians would have a lot more material about this time of the coronavirus. So a team at the Archives of American Art, led by Liza Kirwin, its interim director, set out to create a thorough record for posterity.”

MISINFORMATION / FACT-CHECKING

The Cut: Their Patients Have COVID-19 and Still Think It’s a Hoax. “On November 14, a South Dakota nurse named Jodi Doering wrote a viral Twitter thread about her experience treating COVID patients in intensive care units who called the virus a hoax (‘Their last dying words are, “This can’t be happening. It’s not real,”‘ she told CNN.) And while her story was criticized for being extreme (and possibly misrepresentative), she highlighted a real crisis in hospitals around the country, especially in red states where governors have refused mask mandates and the president’s false claims about the virus are taken as gospel. In interviews with the Cut, 12 nurses described dealing with COVID-denying patients, from ones who simply refused treatment to those who spit or coughed on them and recited conspiracy theories about the virus.”

BBC: Masked comic superheroes fight Covid disinformation. “In Priya’s Mask, due to be launched on 2 December, the comic crusader joins hands with Jiya, the ‘Burka Avenger’, a popular character from a Pakistani cartoon show, as the two go about trying to tackle the pandemic – and also the ‘infodemic’, a major proliferation in fake news surrounding the coronavirus.”

Mashable: Facebook comments on Fauci and Zuckerberg’s vaccine talk suggest we’re totally screwed. “Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Anthony Fauci talked all things coronavirus Monday afternoon, but if you tuned in to the Facebook livestream you’d be forgiven for missing the finer points of the discussion. That’s because the often deranged user comments, running alongside the conversation and overflowing with COVID-19 misinformation, had a tendency to distract.”

SOCIETAL IMPACT

Washington Post: A growing number of Americans are going hungry. “One in 8 Americans reported they sometimes or often didn’t have enough food to eat in the past week, hitting nearly 26 million American adults, an increase several times greater than the most comparable pre-pandemic figure, according to Census Bureau survey data collected in late October and early November. That number climbed to more than 1 in 6 adults in households with children.”

Gothamist: On The Plus Side, SantaCon’s Canceled?. “From the Silver Lining file, here’s something else to be thankful for today: SantaCon, the annual debauched meathead magnet bar crawl that floods certain unfortunate neighborhoods with blathering bro-chads in Santa costumes every December, has been officially canceled this year. SantaCon’s organizers said the pandemic was to blame.”

AP: Empty seats, delivered feasts as virus changes Thanksgiving. “Turkey and pies will still come out of ovens, football will still be on TV, families will still give thanks and have lively conversations about politics. But this holiday has been utterly altered after months filled with sorrows and hardships: Many feasts are weighed down by the loss of loved ones; others have been canceled or scaled back with the virus surging.”

Washington Post: A comfy chair, a locked door, an old record. Covid Thanksgiving inspires new reasons for gratitude.. “In any given year, Stephanie Coleman can recite reasons she is thankful on Thanksgiving, a list that includes her three children, her husband, friends, extended family and the six chickens in her backyard. This year? She is grateful for the lock on the door to her attic, where she flees to escape her family. She is grateful for the lock on her bathroom door, which prevents her kids from barging in at any moment to tattle on one another or whine for more screen time.”

HEALTH CARE / HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS

STAT: Data show hospitalized Covid-19 patients are surviving at higher rates, but surge in cases could roll back gains. “Other factors have contributed to the improved outcomes: Steroids that help save some lives are being used more widely, and people infected after the initial surge were, as a whole, younger and arrived at the hospital earlier in the course of the disease. But clinicians warn that this progress won’t withstand what happens when crushes of patients again overwhelm hospitals, as is now occurring in dozens of U.S. states. With the country setting new records of hospitalizations daily, care is getting threatened, and death rates — not just deaths — could increase.”

INSTITUTIONS

WRAL: Carolina Theatre of Durham temporarily closing. “The Carolina Theatre of Durham announced on Wednesday it will be temporarily closing for six months. The performing arts center will be closed from Jan. 1 through June 30.”

BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS

Washington Post: A Trump donor’s company got a 3 percent federal pandemic loan. It sells title loans at a 350 percent annual rate.. “A company owned by a major donor to President Trump that operates auto-title loan stores with names such as LoanStar and Moneymax secured a $25 million low-interest loan from a government pandemic aid program, using what consumer advocates describe as a loophole to a rule designed to prevent most lenders from getting this federal help.”

STATE / LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The Atlantic: The Logic of Pandemic Restrictions Is Falling Apart. “Two weeks ago, I staged a reluctant intervention via Instagram direct message. The subject was a longtime friend, Josh, who had been sharing photos of himself and his fiancé occasionally dining indoors at restaurants since New York City, where we both live, had reopened them in late September. At first, I hadn’t said anything. Preliminary research suggests that when people congregate indoors, an infected person is almost 20 times more likely to transmit the virus than if they were outside. But restaurants are open legally in New York, and I am not the COVID police. Josh and I had chatted several times in the early months of the pandemic about safety, and I felt sure that he was making an informed decision, even if it wasn’t the one I’d make. As weeks passed, my confidence began to slip.”

Gothamist: Maskless Indoor Religious Gathering With Hundreds Of Attendees Not Illegal, De Blasio Says. “Hundreds of maskless men gathered inside a Bed-Stuy synagogue on Tuesday night for yet another celebration honoring the marriage of two prominent ultra-Orthodox families. But according to NYC sheriffs at the scene, the indoor festivities violated neither city nor state COVID restrictions.”

Orlando Weekly: Florida Gov. DeSantis extends order banning local COVID-related shutdowns, restrictions and mask mandates. “The two-page extension, issued before the Thanksgiving holiday, said the state ‘continues to suffer economic harm as a result of COVID-19 related closures, exacerbating the impacts of the State of Emergency, and Floridians should not be prohibited by local governments from working or operating a business.’ The extension is slated to last as long as Florida remains under a state of emergency during the pandemic.”

Daily Herald: Algonquin’s virtual inspection program catching on. “Brian Martin spent his week inspecting house wrapping, windows and solar panels for the Village of Algonquin, all while sitting comfortably in his chair watching a computer monitor at the municipal center. In the new world created by the COVID-19 pandemic, Algonquin officials have taken the opportunity to start a program that not only keeps residents and staff members safe from contracting the virus but also serves the community more efficiently.”

COUNTRY / FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

BBC: Canada unveils largest economic relief package since WW2. “Canada’s federal government will spend C$100bn ($77bn, £58bn) to kick start the country’s post-pandemic economy. It is ‘the largest economic relief package for our country since the Second World War’, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Monday.”

AP: Germany extends partial shutdown to curb virus spread. “German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the country’s 16 state governors on Wednesday agreed to extend a partial shutdown well into December in an effort to further reduce the rate of COVID-19 infections ahead of the Christmas period.”

INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS

Washington Post: Driven by the coronavirus, Gov. Hogan succeeds in an old fight: Losing weight. “Hogan said his decision to lose weight was prompted in part by the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than a quarter of a million people in the United States and poses a greater risk to those who are obese or have other preexisting conditions. He had gone to the doctor for his routine physical this summer. After his bloodwork and other tests, he decided it was time for a change.”

CNN: Alabama’s Nick Saban tests positive for Covid-19 and is displaying symptoms. “For the second time, Alabama Crimson Tide head football coach Nick Saban, 68, has tested positive for Covid-19, the University of Alabama said in a statement on Wednesday.” The earlier test was a false positive.

BBC: Rita Ora ‘sorry’ for breaking lockdown rules to attend birthday party. “Rita Ora says she’s ‘deeply sorry’ for breaking English lockdown rules to celebrate her 30th birthday. The singer says she attended a party at a restaurant in west London on Saturday.”

Backstage: How Sarah Cooper Took Over TikTok (+ Took Down Trump Along the Way). “If you’ve spent any time online during these difficult eight months, you’re likely familiar with the writer-performer’s lip-syncs of President Donald Trump. They’re impressions with just a touch of pantomime, though she does not put on a wig or costume. Instead, she matches his intonation and pronunciation from real interviews and speeches, and lets his words, at last, speak for themselves.”

Route Fifty: Firefighters Push for Inclusion in First Phase of Covid-19 Vaccines. “The majority of calls that firefighters and EMTs respond to are medical in nature, and many have been exposed to Covid while on duty, according to the International Association of Fire Fighters. The potential for firefighters’ exposure, coupled with the role that fire departments could play in the administration of a vaccine, the IAFF is asking state governors to include firefighters in the same vaccine distribution tier as high-risk health care workers.”

TECHNOLOGY

CNET: COVID-19 creates new barriers to getting girls into tech. “As students continue remote learning, a lack of resources at home can make it nearly impossible to study properly and connect with teachers. And when women do enter the workforce, it will be harder to find female mentors as we emerge from the COVID-19 era. Multiple family demands in the pandemic are causing women to abandon the workforce four times the rate of men.”

RESEARCH

Wired: The AstraZeneca Covid Vaccine Data Isn’t Up to Snuff. “The problems start with the fact that Monday’s announcement did not present results from a single, large-scale, Phase 3 clinical trial, as was the case for earlier bulletins about the BNT-Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Instead, Oxford-AstraZeneca’s data came out of two separate studies: one in the UK that began in May, and another in Brazil, which got started at the end of June.”

Mother Jones: These Researchers Have Developed an Inexpensive, Low-Tech COVID Vaccine. “In reality, a large combination of effective, inexpensive vaccines will be necessary to cover the nearly eight billion people on the planet. This is where the Baylor College vaccine is different from the others. It utilizes recombinant protein technology, which is typical in vaccine development but uncommon among the leading COVID-19 candidates.”

OPINION

New York Times: Pope Francis: A Crisis Reveals What Is in Our Hearts. “Sometimes, when you think globally, you can be paralyzed: There are so many places of apparently ceaseless conflict; there’s so much suffering and need. I find it helps to focus on concrete situations: You see faces looking for life and love in the reality of each person, of each people. You see hope written in the story of every nation, glorious because it’s a story of daily struggle, of lives broken in self-sacrifice. So rather than overwhelm you, it invites you to ponder and to respond with hope.”

POLITICS

Politico: Trump officials hold first ‘Operation Warp Speed’ briefing for Biden. “Trump administration health officials on Wednesday kicked off a series of planned meetings with the Biden transition team on ‘Operation Warp Speed,’ the administration’s effort to rush Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, according to two people familiar with the hastily scheduled session.”

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December 1, 2020 at 08:20AM
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Scotland History, Indiana Rock History, Casetext, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, November 30, 2020

Scotland History, Indiana Rock History, Casetext, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, November 30, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

BBC: Historic Kinora ‘flipbook footage’ of Wick saved for the future. “The National Library of Scotland spent years digitising the footage, which shows the hustle and bustle of the fishing industry in the Highland coastal town of Wick. The reels, some of which are up to 120 years old, were originally played on a device called a Kinora viewer. A reel of images printed on card was revolved in the viewer, creating an illusion similar to a flip-book animation.” The video is freely available to view online.

New-to-me, from IndyStar: ‘I was there’: Promoter shares details of past concerts at Indiana Rock History database. “[Steve] Sybesma played a large role in thousands of shows that happened in Indiana, thanks to his time as co-owner of concert company Sunshine Promotions from 1974 to 2000. As the ultimate live music insider, Sybesma is sharing event details that can’t be found anywhere else. Beyond the basics of a concert’s date, headlining performer and supporting acts, the Indiana Rock History project frequently discloses attendance figures, what artists were paid and how much money was collected in ticket sales.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

SCOTUSblog: Legal research no longer limited to keywords. “Longtime readers of SCOTUSblog are by now familiar with Casetext’s legal search tool. It solves an ever-present need for our team: finding opinions from all levels of the court system for our articles and case pages. Practitioners who read this blog, on the other hand, face a different need in their day-to-day work with the law. Rather than searching cases by name, attorneys need a way to search case law to find support for specific propositions. This task is challenging not just because the common law is vast, but because judges will use different articulations for the same proposition or principle. Casetext addresses this formidable challenge head on with their new tool: Parallel Search.”

NiemanLab: Who shares the news that people see on Facebook — friends or publishers?. “The majority of people in our survey (54%) saw no news within the first 10 posts in their feeds at all. The most common type of news in the sample was hard news from mainstream publishers. I got a good question from Nieman Lab reader and contributor Dan Kennedy: ‘Were you looking only at stories from news organizations popping up in someone’s news feed? Or were you also counting friends who share news stories?'”

USEFUL STUFF

Business Insider: How to archive a Google Classroom on a computer or mobile device when you no longer actively need it. “As the end of your term or semester rolls around, consider archiving your Google Classroom. A feature available only to teachers, archiving is a way to keep you organized and preserve materials as you move on to a new section or other courses. Archiving is a way to file a class and its materials away without permanently deleting it.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Facebook Struggles to Balance Civility and Growth. “In the past several months, as Facebook has come under more scrutiny for its role in amplifying false and divisive information, its employees have clashed over the company’s future. On one side are idealists, including many rank-and-file workers and some executives, who want to do more to limit misinformation and polarizing content. On the other side are pragmatists who fear those measures could hurt Facebook’s growth, or provoke a political backlash that leads to painful regulation.”

Reddit: Italian newspaper’s online archive is going to get lost because Flash won’t be supported anymore. “Italian newspaper’s online archive is going to get lost because Flash won’t be supported anymore – edit: might get lost, they are actually working on it but my hopes aren’t too high.” I am linking to Reddit instead of the original article because a) the original is in Italian; b) I liked the Reddit discussion.

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Supreme Court hears case on hacking law and its limits. “For the first time, the US Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments surrounding a 34-year-old law on computer hacking — examining how the terms of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act mean everyday activities like browsing Instagram on a work computer could be interpreted as a federal crime.”

Ars Technica: Cases against Facebook are reportedly coming… when FTC decides how. “After well over a year spent investigating Facebook, state and federal regulators are more than ready to start launching a slate of cases against Facebook, new reports say—that is, as soon as the agencies can agree on how they actually want to do it. New suits against Facebook should come before the end of January, The Wall Street Journal writes. Both the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of attorneys general for 47 states and territories are expected to take some kind of action.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

BBC: One of biology’s biggest mysteries ‘largely solved’ by AI. “One of biology’s biggest mysteries has been solved using artificial intelligence, experts have announced. Predicting how a protein folds into a unique three-dimensional shape has puzzled scientists for half a century. London-based AI lab, DeepMind, has largely cracked the problem, say the organisers of a scientific challenge.”

Online Journalism Blog: “There are still many questions that are not answered” – Nicolas Kayser-Bril on investigating algorithmic discrimination on Facebook. “In a special guest post for OJB, Vanessa Fillis speaks to AlgorithmWatch’s Nicolas Kayser-Bril about his work on how online platforms optimise ad delivery, including his recent story on how Facebook draws on gender stereotypes.”

Chemistry World: Nature journals set to offer all authors open access route in 2021 – for a price. “In a significant policy shift, Nature and its 32 sister journals will give authors the chance to make their work free to read immediately after publication from January 2021. The move was announced by Springer Nature, the world’s second biggest scholarly publisher, which runs the Nature-branded journals, earlier this week. The publisher plans a hefty article processing charge (APC) of €9500 (£8460) per article. Springer Nature says it’s not waiving the APC for researchers based in developing nations, which many open access journals and publishers already do.” Good evening, Internet…

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December 1, 2020 at 06:54AM
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Sunday, November 29, 2020

Sunday CoronaBuzz, November 29, 2020: 31 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Sunday CoronaBuzz, November 29, 2020: 31 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz

Please wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay at home if you can. Please be careful. I love you.

UPDATES

Washington Post: California seemingly corralled the coronavirus. Now, cases are surging, hospitals are full and shutdowns are back.. “The fenced-in area outside The Dailey Method was filled with exercise bikes where, just hours earlier, it had served as outdoor seating for patrons of Miminashi. The restaurant had been near closing late last month when health restrictions were lifted and its inside tables filled again. In just two weeks, all that has changed here in the golden heart of California wine country and across the West, again overwhelmed by a swelling pandemic. This surge, though, has been like no other in how quickly the number of cases has climbed, hospitals have filled, and the improvised relationships that have kept businesses afloat have been re-created in crisis.”

ABC7: Nevada seeing COVID-19 cases of one 1 per minute, 1 death per 2 hours. “The coronavirus is spreading so fast in Nevada that one person is diagnosed with it every minute and someone is dying from it every two hours, state health officials said Wednesday. Nearly half of the state’s 142,239 total cases since the start of the pandemic in March have occurred since September – fully one-fourth of those in the month of November and 10% in just the last seven days, according to the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services.”

SOCIETAL IMPACT

WTOP: COVID-19 is increasing demands on nonprofits: How to help on #GivingTuesday. “December 1 is Giving Tuesday (#GivingTuesday) — a day dedicated to simply encouraging people to do good around the world by giving their time, talents and treasure. But that might be a bigger challenge this year as millions deal with the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.”

CNN: Another 778,000 Americans filed first-time unemployment claims last week. “The recovery in the American job market is still painfully slow. Another 778,000 people filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week on a seasonally adjusted basis. That was more than the 735,000 initial jobless claims that economists were expecting, and it’s also higher than last week’s revised number of 748,000. It’s the second straight week that first-time claims rose.”

HEALTH CARE / HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS

KSDK: ‘We are capacity now’: Task force says St. Louis hospitals will start sending patients to out-of-area facilities. “St. Louis Metropolitan Task Force head Dr. Alex Garza had a grim message after touring area hospitals on the busiest travel day of 2020 so far: ‘We are at capacity now.’ Garza said that in one hospital, there was one bed for three waiting patients. He expects the Thanksgiving holiday — which traditionally comes with extended-family gatherings, travel, and shopping sprees — will increase local coronavirus cases.”

Reuters: ‘We’re drowning’: COVID cases flood hospitals in America’s heartland. “The vital signs of the 30-year-old COVID-19 victim were crashing, and Kearny County Hospital in rural Lakin, Kansas, just wasn’t equipped to handle the case. Miller, Kearny’s chief medical officer – who doubles as the county health officer – called around to larger hospitals in search of an ICU bed. With coronavirus cases soaring throughout Kansas, he said, he couldn’t find a single one.”

Washington Post: Trump, Carson tout covid-19 treatments as lifesavers. But regular people find them harder to get.. “Frustrated doctors say they have had to ration the Regeneron medication given to Trump, and a similar one by Eli Lilly — if they can get them at all — because of extremely short supply. The government has distributed just 205,000 doses of the drugs so far, at a time when around 170,000 people are being infected by the coronavirus every day. Nonetheless, patients are clamoring for the medications, in part because of Trump’s comments, as well as testimonials from Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who also got the drugs before they were approved.”

New York Times: Covid Combat Fatigue: ‘I Would Come Home With Tears in My Eyes’. “About 2 a.m. on a sweltering summer night, Dr. Orlando Garner awoke to the sound of a thud next to his baby daughter’s crib. He leapt out of bed to find his wife, Gabriela, passed out, her forehead hot with the same fever that had stricken him and his son, Orlando Jr., then 3, just hours before. Two days later, it would hit their infant daughter, Veronica. Nearly five months later, Dr. Garner, a critical care physician at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, is haunted by what befell his family last summer: He had inadvertently shuttled the coronavirus home, and sickened them all.”

KSDK: Exclusive: Inside Mercy Hospital’s COVID-19 ICU. “It’s a once-in-a-century fight to save lives that, until now, most have never seen. For eight months health care workers have waged war against COVID-19 mostly behind closed hospital doors – until now. Monday, Mercy Hospital St. Louis granted 5 On Your Side access to its COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at a time when the region’s pandemic task force reports St. Louis area hospitals are in danger of running out of room for the most critical coronavirus patients.”

BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS

Los Angeles Times: Will California’s small businesses survive another COVID-19 surge without more help?. “After months of partisan wrangling and the presidential election of Joe Biden, Congress remains in a stalemate over new stimulus funding for struggling entrepreneurs, unemployed workers and strapped state and local governments. Without an influx of new federal aid, tens of thousands of California’s 5 million small enterprises face a bleak winter of government restrictions, dwindling customers and closures amid a slowing economic recovery. Many may not survive.”

Washington Post: Workers call on Walmart, Amazon and other retailers to bring back hazard pay ahead of holiday rush. “Workers at Walmart, Amazon, Kroger and other major retailers are calling on their employers to reinstate hazard pay and strengthen safety protocols ahead of the busy holiday shopping season as coronavirus infection rates skyrocket.”

New York Times: After Admitting Mistake, AstraZeneca Faces Difficult Questions About Its Vaccine. “The announcement this week that a cheap, easy-to-make coronavirus vaccine appeared to be up to 90 percent effective was greeted with jubilation. ‘Get yourself a vaccaccino,’ a British tabloid celebrated, noting that the vaccine, developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford, costs less than a cup of coffee. But since unveiling the preliminary results, AstraZeneca has acknowledged a key mistake in the vaccine dosage received by some study participants, adding to questions about whether the vaccine’s apparently spectacular efficacy will hold up under additional testing.”

CNN: Disney increases number of planned layoffs to 32,000 employees. “Walt Disney Co. is planning to shed 32,000 employees by the end of March — 4,000 more than previously announced — as the coronavirus pandemic continues to hammer its parks and resorts business.”

BuzzFeed News: After Two COVID-19 Shutdowns At The “Tamron Hall” Show, Crew Members Say The Show Is “Seriously Putting Lives In Danger”. “As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise across the US, crew members at Tamron Hall in New York City say they’ve repeatedly been exposed to the virus after two production shutdowns and that safety measures are inadequate. ‘They’re seriously putting lives in danger,’ one crew member told BuzzFeed News. ‘They do segments on COVID and how people lost loved ones and family members, but they’re not practicing what they’re preaching.'”

STATE / LOCAL GOVERNMENT

WBTV: N.C. closes prisons, moves inmates as COVID cases spike. “Three state prisons have been closed, with hundreds of inmates being transferred to other facilities across the state, as COVID-19 continues to spike within the prison system. Inmates at Randolph Correctional Center in Randolph County, the minimum custody unit at Southern Correctional Institution in Montgomery County and the minimum custody unit at Piedmont Correctional Institution in Rowan County have been moved.”

COUNTRY / FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Washington Post: Trump officials gave a finance firm $16.3 million to supply food boxes to the poor. House Democrats are raising questions about how those funds were handled.. “One of the largest awardees in a key Trump pandemic relief operation redirected $3 million to its own nonprofit organization despite its lack of track record or capacity in delivering food to people in need, House Democrats have alleged. Yegg Inc., a California firm that offers business finance solutions, was awarded $16.6 million to supply milk and dairy boxes for the Farmers to Families Food Box program May 8.”

Yahoo News: Intelligence employees vent frustrations over being forced to return to the office. ” Employees at one of the most secretive parts of government have been forced to return to their offices, leading to widespread concerns about their exposure to COVID-19. Tensions inside the National Security Agency — which is responsible for eavesdropping and digital espionage — bubbled over last week, leading to an all-hands meeting at the agency on Wednesday to address complaints, according to four sources familiar with the matter.”

CNN: White House coronavirus task force calls for ‘significant behavior change of all Americans’. “The White House coronavirus task force continues to sound the alarm on the spread of the pandemic across the country in weekly reports to states, focusing this week on mitigation efforts and calling for ‘significant behavior change of all Americans.'”

Reuters: Exclusive: White House considers lifting European travel restrictions – sources. “The White House is considering rescinding entry bans for most non-U.S. citizens who recently were in Brazil, Britain, Ireland and 26 other European countries, five U.S. and airline officials told Reuters.”

INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS

Washington Post: Which Trump official has coronavirus now? This reporter always seems to know first.. “If you want to find out who in the Trump administration has tested positive for the coronavirus, you should probably just set an alert for Jennifer Jacobs’s tweets. The Bloomberg News reporter has emerged as the preeminent source for intel on covid-19 cases in and around the White House. Before she helped break the story on Friday that Donald Trump Jr. tested positive, she was the one who first told the world — and many in the White House — about the positive diagnosis of Trump’s close aide Hope Hicks in early October, a watershed revelation followed hours later by President Trump disclosing his own positive test result.”

Associated Press: Ga. Sen. Perdue boosts wealth with well-timed stock trades. “On Jan. 23, as word spread through Congress that the coronavirus posed a major economic and public health threat, Perdue sold off $1 million to $5 million in Cardlytics stock at $86 a share, according to congressional disclosures. Weeks later, in March, after the company’s stock plunged following an unexpected leadership shakeup and lower-than-forecast earnings, Perdue bought the stock back for $30 a share, investing between $200,000 and $500,000. Those shares have now quadrupled in value, closing at $121 a share on Tuesday.”

K-12 EDUCATION

Los Angeles Times: Kindergartners struggle to learn online. But this mother-daughter duo keeps them glued. “A year ago, mother and daughter taught in classrooms one room apart at Bushnell Way Elementary School in Highland Park — Mrs. Carter with 4-year-olds, Ms. Tai in a mixed group of children ages 4 and 5. Many of the felt puppets and linking cubes they shared there are the same ones Karen Carter used when her daughter was a student in her classroom. Out of respect for her mother’s long tenure, Tai Carter goes by Ms. Tai at school. Now, the pair teach their pint-size students from home, keeping L.A.’s youngest learners engaged online even as kindergarten enrollment has plummeted and online attendance has slumped.”

HEALTH

New York Times: A U.S. Record: Two Million New Virus Cases in Two Weeks. “Some epidemiologists project that the number of deaths in the coming weeks could exceed the spring peak, in spite of improved treatment. In the past week, the United States added an average of 173,000 new daily cases. If this growth pattern holds, the total number of cases reported for the full month of November is likely to hit 4.5 million. That would be more than double the number of any previous month.”

TECHNOLOGY

NBC News: YouTube suspends OANN for violating its Covid-19 policy. “YouTube suspended the right-leaning One America News Network for one week on Tuesday after it posted a video that contained coronavirus misinformation. YouTube removed the video for violating a policy prohibiting the posting of content that spreads coronavirus misinformation. The one that One America News Network, or OANN, posted contained claims of a guaranteed cure for the disease.”

RESEARCH

Opportunity Insight: The Economic Impacts of COVID-19: Evidence from a New Public Database Built Using Private Sector Data. “We build a publicly available database that tracks economic activity at a granular level in real time using anonymized data from private companies. We report daily statistics on consumer spending, business revenues, employment rates, and other key indicators disaggregated by ZIP code, industry, income group, and business size. Using these data, we study how COVID-19 affected the economy by analyzing heterogeneity in its impacts.”

New York Times: Evidence Builds That an Early Mutation Made the Pandemic Harder to Stop. “As the coronavirus swept across the world, it picked up random alterations to its genetic sequence. Like meaningless typos in a script, most of those mutations made no difference in how the virus behaved. But one mutation near the beginning of the pandemic did make a difference, multiple new findings suggest, helping the virus spread more easily from person to person and making the pandemic harder to stop.”

CRIME / SECURITY / LEGAL

Politico: Major shift at Supreme Court on Covid-19 orders. “The Supreme Court signaled a major shift in its approach to coronavirus-related restrictions late Wednesday, voting 5-4 to bar New York state from reimposing limits on religious gatherings. The emergency rulings, issued just before midnight, were the first significant indication of a rightward shift in the court since President Donald Trump’s newest appointee — Justice Amy Coney Barrett — last month filled the seat occupied by liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September.”

Los Angeles Times: California has sent COVID-19 jobless benefits to Scott Peterson, death row inmates. “San Quentin inmate Scott Peterson, convicted of killing his wife and unborn son, received California unemployment benefits in recent months, according to a group of state and federal prosecutors who have been investigating fraud in the pandemic relief system administered by the state Employment Development Department. So did convicted serial killer Cary Stayner, who murdered two women and two girls near Yosemite in 1999 and now is jailed, near Peterson, on death row.”

OPINION

Washington Post: Pay Americans to take a coronavirus vaccine. “The vaccines are likely to arrive at the same moment Washington is, belatedly, taking up much-needed stimulus legislation. The timing couldn’t be better: Money would go into Americans’ pockets just when the U.S. economy can begin fully reopening with a vaccinated population that can go about their daily lives without fear of catching the disease or infecting others.”

POLITICS

CNN: Pandemic inauguration could cut the choir, standing-room-only parties and maybe the historic lunch. “Construction of the parade platform for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration festivities is well underway. The viewing stand and bleachers are almost complete and each day they get closer to being done — all within Trump’s view — as it becomes clearer his days in the White House are coming to a close. Despite the uncertainty of the coronavirus and Trump’s waning attempts to overturn the election, the structure is a growing reminder of the transition now in motion. Whatever else must change to accommodate the pandemic, people are getting ready for Biden’s inauguration come January, which will likely reflect the President-elect’s cautious, science-driven approach to the pandemic.”

Washington Post: Joe Biden calls for shared sacrifice to fight the pandemic as Trump rails about baseless election accusations . “President-elect Joe Biden urged Americans on the eve of Thanksgiving to recommit to fighting the coronavirus, not one another — even as President Trump continued to ignore the pandemic while he spent another day venting over baseless claims of election fraud. Wednesday afternoon provided a stark look at two vastly different presidencies, one suffused with anger and recrimination in its final days and the other sober and deliberate as it prepares to start.”

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November 29, 2020 at 08:46PM
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FCC, YouTube, Google My Business, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, November 29, 2020

FCC, YouTube, Google My Business, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, November 29, 2020
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Techdirt: Ajit Pai’s FCC Does Something Good, Frees Wireless Spectrum The Auto Industry Had Done Little With. “Last week, the FCC quietly voted unanimously to add 45MHz of spectrum to Wi-Fi to public access, taking it away from an auto industry public safety initiative that failed to materialize over the last 20 years. Spectrum in the 5.850GHz to 5.925GHz range for several decades had been set aside for something called Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), a vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications system that was supposed to warn drivers of traffic dangers.”

Ubergizmo: YouTube Testing A Timestamp Button For Commenting. “While YouTube does allow users to leave comments that include the timestamp, sometimes you have to go hunting for it, and not all users bother either, but that could change in the future. It would seem that according to a YouTube support document, the company is now testing a timestamp button that allows users to leave comments at that particular point in the video.”

USEFUL STUFF

Search Engine Journal: How to Create Google My Business Posts That Get Results. “Having a Google My Business (GMB) profile is one of the best ways to get attention for your local business and boost your rankings. With so many features, working with GMB can get overwhelming. One feature worth using: Google My Business Posts.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

KWWL: Local nonprofit believes Facebook took down their page by mistake. “Just 4 days before Giving Tuesday, the largest day of giving worldwide, the nonprofit Table 2 Table Food Rescue sees an impact after Facebook unpublished their page.”

Neowin: UK government sets less ambitious gigabit broadband goal. “The UK’s Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has announced that the country’s original plan to bring gigabit broadband to every home in the country by 2025 has been scaled back so that the technology will be available in 85% of residences. While those in towns and cities around the country will likely be unaffected by the watering down of the plan, those out in more rural areas will be left with poorer internet connections.”

Tubefilter: This Streamer Took The Sims’ Lack Of Diversity Into Her Own Hands — And Then Became An Advisor To EA. “Amira Virgil was an avid streamer of The Sims — but she became frustrated when she couldn’t create characters that reflected her reality. And so Virgil, who goes by the online moniker XMiraMira, took matters into her own hands, creating a downloadable ‘Melanin Pack’ — enabling users to create characters with 18 different skin tones and makeup looks to suit a diverse array of character preferences. In the latest episode of Creator News, Virgil shares that her custom packs have been downloaded more than 1 million times to date, which led her to create other mod packs in realms like hair, clothing, and more.”

The Verge: The cockroach emoji proposal is a story about texting through the apocalypse. “A slate of new emoji was announced in January. Months later, they’ve finally trickled onto most people’s phones… but in one case, it’s really more of a skitter. I’m talking about the cockroach, arguably the most shudder-inducing emoji of 2020 — and the product of a great little short story about the looming end of the world.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Google’s antitrust battles: Here’s what you need to know. “Several areas of Google’s business are being scrutinized. Here’s what you need to know about the tech giant’s antitrust battles.”

NextGov: House Bill Would Create NOAA-Led National Database to Help Coastal Communities Confront Rising Seas. “Legislation recently introduced in the House calls for the creation of a sea level-tracking database—deemed the National Coastal Data Information System—to inform people in frontline coastal communities how climate change is uniquely impacting their areas, and ultimately advance their preparedness for future natural disasters.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: What Facebook Fed the Baby Boomers. “After years of reading about the ways that Facebook is radicalizing and polarizing people I wanted to see it for myself — not in the aggregate, but up close and over time. What I observed is a platform that gathered our past and present friendships, colleagues, acquaintances and hobbies and slowly turned them into primary news sources. And made us miserable in the process.”

The Guardian: For the sake of democracy, social media giants must pay newspapers. “One of the lessons we have learned over a couple of centuries is that functioning societies need free media – free in the sense of liberty rather than free beer. I hold no brief for newspapers, per se, or for many conventional media organisations, but I think it’s unquestionable that the survival of liberal democracy requires a functioning public sphere in which information circulates freely and in which wrongdoing, corruption, incompetence and injustices can be investigated and brought to public attention.”

TechCrunch: What will tomorrow’s tech look like? Ask someone who can’t see. “When I was pronounced legally blind in 2009, I didn’t know one other person who called themselves blind – least of all ‘low vision’ or ‘visually impaired.’ Today, I manage the largest blindness community in the world, Be My Eyes, a support platform where more than 4 million people and companies use live video to support users in almost 200 languages. And though the growth of our collective community is a crucial step making our lives better, it’s just one piece of what makes today, as I’ve heard many others say, ‘a great time to be blind.'” Good morning, Internet…

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November 29, 2020 at 07:00PM
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Saturday, November 28, 2020

Saturday CoronaBuzz, November 28, 2020: 40 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.

Saturday CoronaBuzz, November 28, 2020: 40 pointers to updates, useful stuff, research news, and more.
By ResearchBuzz

Please wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay at home if you can. Please be careful. I love you.

UPDATES

Salt Lake Tribune: Utah hospitals have begun informal rationing of care, doctors say, as they cope with surge of COVID-19 patients. “With a combination of luck, new hires and creative reorganizing of staff and patients, Utah’s hospitals haven’t had to eject anyone from intensive care units due to the coronavirus. But several doctors say the solutions still amount to rationing, with the quality of care deteriorating as hospitals are stretched thinner and thinner.”

WBEZ: COVID-19 Deaths Are Rising In Chicago And Black Residents Remain The Most Likely To Die. “While they’re not close to the peak levels witnessed in April and May, COVID-19 deaths in Chicago are rising fast. Deaths in the city have increased two months in a row. And just halfway through November, Chicago had already surpassed its death count for all of October, according to a WBEZ analysis of death records from the Cook County medical examiner’s office and census data.”

CBS 4 News: Curfew coming for El Pasoans as 14 mobile morgues now needed for wave of deaths. “El Paso will be expanding its morgue capacity to 14 mobile morgues and a refrigerated warehouse as the county is now investigating the deaths of nearly 500 El Pasoans for COVID-19.”

Reuters: Singapore nearly virus free after local cases and clusters cease. “Having once had the highest COVID-19 rate in Southeast Asia, Singapore has all but eradicated the virus after reporting 14 days without any new local cases on Tuesday, and saying it had snuffed out the last cluster of infection at a worker dormitory.”

MISINFORMATION / FACT-CHECKING

ABC News Australia: You may have seen pictures of vaccine vials dated March 15 on social media. There’s a simple explanation. “Low case numbers, eased lockdowns and the fast-approaching new year have prompted Australians to turn their attention to the likelihood of a return to some sort of pre-COVID normal and to the vaccines that may help get us there. In this week’s newsletter, we debunk suggestions that the quick start on developing a vaccine meant the pandemic must have been ‘planned’, and look at claims around the efficacy rates of the various vaccine contenders.”

SOCIETAL IMPACT

BBC: Coronavirus lockdown sees share of women on India’s stock market rise. “Sakina Gandhi has found a new passion: stock market trading. The 31-year-old works in public relations and until this year had only invested in mutual funds, generally seen as a safer bet than directly trading in stocks. But when India went into a stringent lockdown in March to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Ms Gandhi found herself with a lot of time on her hands.”

Poynter: How local journalists are covering a Thanksgiving drastically impacted by COVID-19. “More than 1 million COVID-19 cases were reported in the United States last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And as cases continue to rise again in different parts of the country, the federal agency has discouraged Americans from having gatherings with family and friends who do not live with them. Many local journalists and editors are adjusting their coverage around a drastically different Thanksgiving this year.”

New York Times: A.A. to Zoom, Substance Abuse Treatment Goes Online. “It began as a stopgap way to get through the pandemic, but both participants and providers say virtual sessions have some clear advantages and will likely become a permanent part of recovery.”

Route Fifty: Here Comes the Covid-19 Baby Bust. “The resulting decline in births, whenever it kicks in, could be quite large. In June, the economists Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine projected that 300,000 to 500,000 fewer babies might be born in 2021 than there would have been otherwise. ‘We see no reason to think that our estimate was too large at this point,’ Kearney told me five months after the analysis was published. ‘In fact, given the ongoing stress for current parents associated with school closures, the effect might even be larger than what we predicted.'”

Wall Street Journal: A Homebound Nation Goes All Out With Lavish Christmas Decorations. “Fred Stewart was disappointed that he couldn’t throw a holiday party as usual this year, he decided to decorate his front yard in Rogersville, Mo., for the first time. He bought four 6-foot snowmen and an 8-foot Santa, and is adding his own tropical theme, including 20 pink flamingos in Santa caps plus a 4-foot-tall hippo wearing a pink tutu. ‘We were like, what else can we do?’ says the 48-year-old owner of a plumbing company.”

ACTIVISM / PROTESTS

Idaho Press: Group protests Boise coronavirus restrictions at Mayor McLean’s home. “Roughly 30 people, some bearing Tiki torches, protested outside Boise Mayor Lauren McLean’s home Monday night, upset about the city’s new health order issued last week in an effort to curb the coronavirus’s rampant spread. The protest was organized via text by the group People’s Rights, an organization formed this year by Ammon Bundy of Emmett.”

HEALTH CARE / HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS

VOA News: Seven Sudanese Doctors Die from COVID-19 in 10 Days. “Sudanese health authorities said Sunday that seven medical doctors died from COVID-19 in 10 days, a development that reflects Sudan’s sharp rise in cases in recent weeks. Nearly 100 deaths were recorded in the past month.”

INSTITUTIONS

Mashable: ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse’ is a bizarrely perfect pandemic binge. “I’ve heard a lot of metaphors about social distancing — that it’s like a long-distance relationship, a voyage at sea, a prison sentence, being on a spaceship. For me, 2020 has been somewhat like Pee-wee and his Playhouse: a bizarre exercise in rekindling my inner child and appreciating the power my imagination has over my circumstance.”

BUSINESS / CORPORATIONS

CBS News: Grocery store workers fear getting sick as coronavirus cases continue to climb. “At least 350 UFCW [United Food and Commercial Workers] members have died of COVID-19, including 109 grocery workers, according to the union, which represents 835,000 grocery store workers at major chains including Ahold Delhaize, Albertsons and Kroger. More than 17,400 grocery workers have been infected or exposed to the virus, the union added.”

Route Fifty: Why Employers Find It So Hard to Test for Covid. “The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance to employers to include Covid testing, and it advised that people working in close quarters be tested periodically. However, the federal government does not require employers to offer those tests. But the board overseeing the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, on Thursday approved emergency safety rules that are soon likely to require the state’s employers to provide Covid testing to all workers exposed to an outbreak on the job at no cost to the employees. Testing must be repeated a week later, followed by periodic testing.”

STATE / LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Dallas Morning News: Who’ll get Texas’ first COVID-19 shots? Hospital, nursing home, EMS, home health workers top the list. “Hospital staff members working directly with coronavirus patients and workers in long-term care institutions serving vulnerable populations should be the first state residents to receive vaccines for COVID-19, a Texas health department panel has recommended.”

Mississippi Free Press: Health Leaders Call for Statewide Mask Mandate, Say Gov. Reeves’ Plan ‘Not Working’. “In cases and hospitalizations, Mississippi is now back at summer levels just days before Thanksgiving, which could provide fertile soil for COVID-19 super-spreader events if families across the state gather in large numbers. Dr. LouAnn Woodward, the vice chancellor for health affairs and the dean for the UMMC school of medicine, told reporters today that she believes the governor’s current COVID-19 strategy is failing.”

AP: Los Angeles orders more restrictions as coronavirus surges. “Los Angeles County announced a new stay-home order Friday as coronavirus cases surged out of control in the nation’s most populous county, banning most gatherings but stopping short of a full shutdown on retail stores and other non-essential businesses.”

Anchorage Daily News: Over 1,600 COVID-19 cases never made it into Alaska’s database after a lab failed to report results for weeks. “Hundreds of positive COVID-19 test results weren’t reported to Alaska’s health department in the past month, one of several indicators of a taxed data reporting system and a sign that climbing daily case tallies announced by the state reflect only a portion of recent cases.”

New York Times: Emergency Hospital Reopening on Staten Island to Handle 2nd Wave. “The announcement is another sign that New York City is in the grip of a second coronavirus wave that has already led to the closing of public schools, the reversal of some reopenings and warnings to families to scale back their Thanksgiving plans. It also raises the specter of a return to the pandemic’s darkest days in March and April.”

COUNTRY / FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

AP: Federal prisons to prioritize staff to receive virus vaccine. “The federal prison system will be among the first government agencies to receive the coronavirus vaccine, though initial allotments of the vaccine will be given to staff and not to inmates, even though sickened prisoners vastly outnumber sickened staff, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.”

NPR: CDC Likely To Recommend Shortening Coronavirus Quarantine Period. “The exact language of the new guidelines and when they might be announced remains unclear, but according to a federal official who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the issue, the recommended quarantine time is likely to be just seven to 10 days for people who then test negative for the virus.”

INDIVIDUALS / BANDS / GROUPS

New York Times: The Reigning Queen of Pandemic Yoga. “[Adriene Mishler] is an Adidas ambassador and runs an online shop where you can buy a T-shirt or a camping mug that says Find What Feels Good, which is her motto — as in: Don’t worry if you can’t nail the Split-Leg Handstand or Killer Praying Mantis; no one’s keeping score. Her top video has more than 30 million views. She’s the most popular instructor on YouTube, which means she’s probably the most popular instructor in America and arguably the most prominent yoga figure this country has seen since Ram Dass.”

NBC News: 70-year-old nurse who came out of retirement to teach dies of Covid-19. “Iris Meda retired in January excited to start her new life. After a 35-year-long-career as a devoted registered nurse, Iris had planned on spending more time with her grandkids, catching up with her siblings, and joining her local senior center. But soon after her retirement, the pandemic arrived and with it, a change of plans.”

The Guardian: Honestie Hodges, handcuffed in Michigan at 11, dies aged 14 of Covid. “Honestie Hodges, who was handcuffed outside her home in Michigan at age 11 in an incident that prompted national outrage, died on Sunday aged 14. Her grandmother, Alisa Niemeyer, said in posts online the 14-year-old died from Covid-19.”

ABC News: Sanford Health CEO steps down following reports he won’t wear a mask. “Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Sanford Health announced Tuesday it has parted ways with longtime CEO Kelby Krabbenhoft. The announcement comes after Krabbenhoft sent an email on Nov. 18 to health system employees, saying he won’t be wearing a mask at work because he recovered from COVID-19, according to the Associated Press.”

New York Times: Cuomo Invited His Mother for Thanksgiving. New Yorkers Noticed.. “For days, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has been preaching a message of sacrifice during the holidays, warning New Yorkers that Thanksgiving gatherings could be dangerous as virus cases spike across the nation, and beseeching them to reconsider their plans to help stem the rising tide. So it was surprising when Mr. Cuomo announced on Monday afternoon that he had invited his 89-year-old mother, Matilda, and two of his daughters to celebrate a very Cuomo Thanksgiving with him this week in Albany.”

K-12 EDUCATION

ProPublica: Two School Districts Had Different Mask Policies. Only One Had a Teacher on a Ventilator.. “No other precaution short of closing schools — a drastic measure that can set children back academically and developmentally, and deprive them of free meals and health care — is likely to be as effective as a mask mandate, experts say. Allowing staff and students to forgo them contradicts guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on reopenings.”

HEALTH

USA Today: New Zealand study details COVID-19 spread on long-haul flight despite tests. “The 12-page report…follows a cluster of coronavirus cases linked to one passenger traveling on an 18-hour flight from Dubai to New Zealand in September. Though the traveler tested negative with a PCR test before the flight, researchers concluded that ‘at least four in-flight transmission events of SARS-CoV-2 likely took place’ as the pre-symptomatic yet contagious person infected at least four others. SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes COVID-19.”

STAT News: ‘Essential workers’ likely to get earlier access to Covid-19 vaccine. “Essential workers are likely to move ahead of adults 65 and older and people with high-risk medical conditions when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signs off on Covid-19 vaccine priority lists, coming after health care workers and people living in long-term care facilities, a meeting of an expert advisory panel made clear Monday.”

Duluth News Tribune: Drug overdose deaths increase during pandemic, hit rural areas. “According to preliminary numbers in a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug-related deaths increased about 10% while the pandemic was first hitting the country. The biggest increase in fatal overdoses happened in rural South Dakota, where drug-related fatalities increased by nearly 50%.”

TECHNOLOGY

The Register: UK coronavirus tier postcode-searching tool yanked offline as desperate Britons hunt for latest lockdown details. “The gov.uk postcode-searching tool for Britons to find out what level of coronavirus lockdown they’ll be in until Christmas has crashed on launch and been withdrawn. Arriving [Thursday] morning as part of the government’s scheme to partially lift lockdown measures across England, the website almost immediately died and threw up a slew of different errors before red-faced Government Digital Service (GDS) bods pulled the plug.”

Caltech: Caltech’s AI-Driven COVID-19 Model Routinely Outperforms Competitors. “While existing models to predict the spread of a disease already exist, few, if any, incorporate AI, which allows a model to make predictions based on observations of what is actually happening—for example, increasing cases among specific populations—as opposed to what the model’s designers think will happen. With the use of AI, it is possible to discover patterns hidden in data that humans alone might not recognize.”

RESEARCH

ScienceBlog: Doctors Use Existing Treatment Earlier To Save The Lives Of Covid-19 Patients. “The lives of patients hospitalised with COVID-19 are being saved by doctors who are using an existing medical treatment at an earlier stage. Dr Luigi Sedda of Lancaster University analysed the results from the team at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (WWL). Their research has now been published in the prestigious medical journal BMJ Respiratory Open.”

CRIME / SECURITY / LEGAL

The Cut: New York nightlife never stopped. It just moved underground.. “The urge to party isn’t class-specific. For every good bottle of Champagne consumed on a Manhattan rooftop, there was a handle of Taaka vodka being passed around a circle somewhere. This illicit summer saw a Bushwick brownstone that threw enough parties to be declared the ‘Illmore,’ along with crowded outdoor park events that took place in the light of day. In their most flagrant pandemic-defying jubilance, party organizers have staged warehouse ragers, spreading the word via Instagram about indoor and outdoor all-night events with rotating DJs and unlicensed bars.”

Yahoo News: NYC sheriffs broke up a sex party with 80 people, a room full of mattresses, and boxes of condoms. “Officials walked into the venue to find a crowd of people at the event hosted by self-described swinger’s club Caligula New York. The New York City Sheriff’s Office told Insider that deeper in the party, officers found three couples having sex in a back room with multiple mattresses set up covering the floor, which was scattered with condoms.”

New York Times: $15,000 Fine After Secret Hasidic Wedding Draws Thousands of Guests. “Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered to celebrate a wedding inside a cavernous hall in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood earlier this month, dancing and singing with hardly a mask in sight. The wedding was meticulously planned, and so were efforts to conceal it from the authorities, who said that the organizers would be fined $15,000 for violating public health restrictions.”

CBC: Man arrested after assault of Walmart employee who asked him to wear face mask, B.C. RCMP say. “A 30-year-old man has been arrested for assault and mischief after allegedly assaulting an employee at a Walmart in Dawson Creek, B.C. RCMP were called to the store at around 8 p.m. PT Wednesday after reports of a customer assaulting an employee who asked him to wear a face mask — which is both store policy and a provincial health order.”

POLITICS

Politico: Biden to spotlight CDC officials shunned by Trump. “President-elect Joe Biden is putting scientists in charge and back on the stage to restore trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The plans include immediately reviving regular media briefings and giving a central role to long-sidelined career officials including Nancy Messonnier, the public health official who first warned of the ‘severe’ impact of the Covid-19 back in February.”

Washington Post: Nearly a sixth of the Senate Republican caucus has tested positive for coronavirus. “Since the novel coronavirus emerged in the United States, more than 12.5 million Americans have been confirmed to have been infected by it. The actual number is unquestionably far higher than that, given the slow rollout of effective testing for the virus. But even by itself, that number constitutes nearly 4 percent of the population. In the Senate, the rate of infections is even higher. As of writing, eight senators have tested positive for the virus, according to data compiled by GovTrack. That’s an 8 percent rate of positive tests, more than twice the national measure.”

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November 28, 2020 at 07:40PM
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