#I thought it might have something to do with Covid distancing restrictions but like they’re shooting everything else next to each other

[kirnet]

This is gonna be rambley but is it just me or are sw action scenes just laughably bad now? I haven’t seen the latest owk ep so I can’t comment but the chase scenes are just… meh. The fight with Vader… meh. The LEADUP to the Vader fight was fantastic and tense but the actual choreography was. Whack. (Which makes sense from obi wans pov he should be bad at it, but Vader should be chopping limbs off)

And it’s not just that but mando season 2 and bobf and the sequel trilogy. Like in my opinion the action scenes in the prequels were really good! Even the action scenes in the og trilogy, while obviously not as polished as what we can do now, hold a lot of emotional weight and entertainment value. But so much of the action in these new series that should be blowing us out of the water with the technology that they have is just. Meh.

[jazy3]

Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 17X1 & 17X2

MAJOR SPOILERS!!!

My mind is blown! I am shook! Never in a million years did I ever expect that we would see McDreamy again! Or that Meredith and Derek would be reunited like this. Oh my god. I literally can’t even. I think this might be the best season opener Grey’s Anatomy has ever done. Hands down. They came to play and they did not mess around. I thought something was off when they showed the opening sequence with Meredith on the beach because the pier walkway was way too long, but I never expected the surprise to be what it was.

The implication at the end of the episode is that Meredith has contracted COVID-19, is currently unresponsive, and will be battling this for the foreseeable future. I’m interested to see if that is in fact the case or if it’s something else. I did not believe that she was going to be the character that got it so I am super shocked and surprised. As some eagle eyed fans noticed over the summer the IMDB page for Grey’s Anatomy was updated recently with the appearance dates of many of the original cast members being updated to 2020.

I have to admit when I first saw that I didn’t think much of it because Season 16 overlapped between the years 2019 and 2020 and since they mentioned and used archival footage of past characters during seasons 15 and 16 my initial thought was that the actor’s profiles were updated to reflect this for contract reasons. But now that the McDreamy Derek Shephard himself has reappeared anything is possible my friends!

Literally anything and I am so glad. It looks like there are more dream sequences and possible afterlife sequences to come. My guess is that more of Meredith’s deceased loved ones will appear on that beach. I’d love to see George, Mark, Lexie, Ellis Grey, Doc the dog the list goes on. I’d also love to see Cristina, Alex, Izzie, Callie, Arizona, and April all make appearances either through dream sequences or over Zoom.

I’m also wondering if they’re going to have Meredith code and then do a reprise of the elevator hallway sequence where the elevator doors open and Meredith’s dead loved ones and important people in her life greet her and tell her it’s only temporary and she’ll back in the land of the living soon. Oh gosh. What if they have Ellis tell her she’s extraordinary?!?! Now I’m crying! She so deserves to hear that! Oh my gosh. The possibilities are endless.

The Station 19 episode wasn’t much of a cross over to be honest and I’m okay with that. My best friend and I watched it for context, but you could have totally gotten everything you needed to know just by watching Grey’s and those are the cross overs I prefer. In the Station 19 episode we got some additional Bailey and Ben content (always nice) and we learned how the kids who wound up with third degree burns became injured. That’s it really.

Richard had some snaps in this episode! He had all the best lines in my opinion! He was hilarious. His exchanges with Bailey and Catherine were hilarious. It’s great to see him back on his feet and throwing zingers. Bailey was a boss ass bitch in this episode. I loved it! She laid down the law and I thought they did a really good job of showing subtly how the COVID situation is impacting her because of her OCD. I really liked that they wrapped up DeLuca’s storyline because as long time readers will know I was not a fan of his mental health storyline and the last two seasons have really made me hate his character.

I thought they did a good job wrapping that up giving the confines of COVID, both real and fictional, and that we got closure there. At this point they’ve wrapped up his storyline to the point that DeLuca is back to being a side character and just another doctor who works in the hospital and for that I am glad. A fun little aside, when DeLuca asks Meredith if there is a specific patient she wants him to check on she tells him to check on the patient in room 1702 which is the episode number.

I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t get as many Meredith and Hayes scenes as I would have liked. Hayes wasn’t in the first half of the premiere at all and his scenes with Meredith in the second half were briefer than I would have liked. However, that might be because they weren’t able to film scenes with the actor before COVID shut everything down so I am hoping that we will see more scenes between him and Meredith, especially him at her bedside, going forward now that both actors are full time regular cast members.

I really loved the scenes that we did get. They felt authentic and natural. That natural comradery that the actors have was there in full force. We got to learn more about both characters quarantine situations with regards to their kids and we got to learn a bit more about Hayes’ past and their developing relationship which was nice. Also I really want to hear that story he alluded to about hoping an electric fence as a teenager to see his girlfriend. I loved the aside where Meredith commented that his mask was falling apart and he told her that he gave his new one to a nurse who needed it more than he did. He’s so caring and compassionate and kind I just want to reach through the screen and hug him.

Meredith deserves someone in her life who is kind like that and who thinks of others the way she does. Who puts the job and her patients and her kids first over everything else. Who gets it and thinks nothing of showing that kind of compassion. She’s never really been with anyone like that before. No one who was a doctor anyway. I also thought it was very significant that Hayes invited Meredith to have a drink with him in his office after work and then was the one that found her in the parking lot at the end of the episode.

This appears to be a call back to the fact that he asked her out for a drink at the end of last season and she accepted, but asked that they do a rain check because she was so exhausted and the fact that they are growing closer and he wanted to check in with her and see how she was doing. The fact that he was the one to discover her I think is also very significant because at the end there I felt liked he looked towards her car to see if she was there to talk to her or to see if she’d gone home and I love that he was looking out for her in that way.

Also, the fact that he was the one to find her and call for help and that led into a dream sequence where she was reunited with Derek the love of her life feels very significant. The fact that Hayes calls out to Meredith and tells her to stay with him, in the present and in the land of the living, and then that transitions into the dream sequence where Derek is calling out to her on the beach feels significant to me. 

My best friend that I watch with commented that she could see them doing a scene where Derek tells Meredith it’s okay to move on and fall in love again the way Abigail did with Cormac in the flashbacks we saw in the Conference episode last season. And that based on that Meredith makes the decision to formally move on and actively pursue something with Hayes now that she knows she has Derek’s blessing and that her ex DeLuca is doing okay and is back to work.

I think both of those things could free her to truly give Hayes a chance and build a life with him. He’s really the only post-Derek love interest for me who really checks all the boxes and who I could see her building a life with in a way that would respectfully honour what her and Derek had. It also just occurred to me that because they established that both Meredith and Hayes are quarantining at hotels because of their COVID work and are away from their kids there’s a potential storyline there in that once Meredith is better they could quarantine together and spend some sexy time alone without breaking any of the necessary restrictions. I’d love to see them quarantine together.

Something else that I realized after watching is that the episode establishes that Amelia and Link are quarantining at Meredith’s house with Scout, Zola, Bailey, and Ellis and that Maggie has been coming by to watch and visit with the kids from a safe distance while Meredith has been quarantining at a hotel because she’s working COVID command. The fact that they set this up early on in the episode becomes important later when you realize that something is wrong with Meredith and she’ll be hospitalized for a while and could die so it sets it up that her kids are okay because they’ve got Amelia, Link, and Maggie, people that Meredith trusts, looking after them.

Also we find out that Meredith’s house has a backyard for the first time! So that’s neat. Maggie and Winston are officially the cutest! I love them! I’m calling it now they’re endgame. They’re soulmates. I thought at first the long distance thing was going to be super boring and dull, but they found a way to make it really sexy and fun and I love that! We finally found out what Amelia and Link named their baby! As many had predicted they named the baby Scout! His full name is Scout Derek Shepherd Lincoln! My heart! Derek would be so so proud of Amelia. She’s come so far. I loved the scene with Meredith, Amelia, Link, and Scout. I really felt like that was missing from the Season 16 finale so I’m glad we got to see it in flashback.

About the only thing we didn’t get to see in this episode that I would have liked to have seen is a scene with Richard and Meredith catching up and either operating or treating a patient together. They haven’t had as much time together recently and I’ve missed that. Although considering that Meredith is about to hospitalized I’m guessing were about to see a whole lot of that. We did get to see Jackson spending lots of quality time with Richard and we got to see Maggie stand up for him with Catherine this episode so that was nice. This episode changed my mind about Catherine and Richard. 

At the end of last season I really wanted them to separate and go their separate ways because I felt like they were bringing out the worse in each other and that was the only way they could find peace. But this episode we saw Catherine apologize really apologize and she made Richard Chief of Chiefs to make up for what she did and I thought there reconciliation was really quite sweet. Teddy and Owen wowza. Teddy was god awful and a terrible human being this episode. I was completely on her side last season, but this episode changed that for me. I hate Owen as a character most of the time, but damn if this episode didn’t make me feel for him. Oh boy. Teddy lied straight to his face multiple times when given the opportunity to tell the truth.

I don’t think there’s any way that they can come back from that personally. Which is a shame because for the first time in the show’s run Owen is single and is not hung up on someone else. Cristina is in Switzerland living her best life. She’s happy. That’s long over. Amelia is with Link. They have a child together. Her and Owen are happily co-parenting Leo and there’s no way that Owen, horrible as he can be, would do anything at this point to split Amelia and Link up or come between them because that would mean separating Scout from his father and having lost his Dad at a young age Owen would never knowingly do that to someone else’s child. At least I don’t think he would.

Plus, he got what he wanted in that he did get to parent Betty and Leo with Amelia and they still share in the parenting of Leo. I also thought there was a good call back there to when Owen cheated on Cristina. I hated that plot, but it’s nice to see them acknowledge his relationship with Cristina because it was so instrumental to the show in those early seasons. I’m glad that we got a reference to Amelia and Owen co-parenting Leo because I feel like that’s been missing lately. I get that Teddy is scared of being happy, but the way she treated Owen was just horrible. She was so awful to him in this episode I actually felt sorry for the guy and that is truly a miraculous feat because I rarely do because of how horribly he treats all of the women in his life.

Side note: His line where he told his Mom to tell Leo that the broccoli and carrots needed to be reunited in his stomach was both hilarious and horrifying! I loved Owen’s lines and how he kind of played Teddy while giving her opportunities to tell him the truth. I thought that was hilarious in a funny not funny kind of way. I’m curious to see what Teddy, Owen, and Tom’s storylines will be going forward. We didn’t see a lot of Tom in this episode and at the end he was fired and demoted to being a Neurosurgeon. There’s no indication of him and Teddy getting back together so I’m curious to see what they do with him.

Owen seems 100% done with Teddy and her nonsense and at this point I can’t blame him. I would be too. I’m interested to see where this goes. Will Owen end up with someone else? Will he stay single and continue on as a single parent? What will happen to Teddy? I’m starting to really like Levi as a character I have to say. Nico not so much. He treats Levi horribly and the guy deserves so much better. I loved seeing the intern from Pac North who called Bailey an icon last season checking temperatures. Amazing.

Richard’s idea on how to sanitize the masks with the purple light was really cool. I loved the moments between him and Bailey. I get why she’s worried about him, but as Richard says Grey Sloan is his life. It’s his longest and most successful relationship and as he says he will find no peace without it. Bailey and Ben have my whole heart. They are so cute. They’re the best. I loved the small moment that they had at the beginning of the episode where Ben did the “going through the motions” count with her because he knows it helps her. It was also a great call back to Jo teaching that to Bailey after she got out of treatment.

Also oh my god Jo and Jackson! Wow! I have to say when I saw fans speculating about that online before the show came back I thought it was the dumbest idea ever. One, because those two characters rarely have scenes together and aren’t that close. And two, Jackson has Harriet and is a single parent. Jo has been decidedly luke warm on the idea of having kids. She only considered it because of her relationship with Alex. That being said, after this episode I could go for it. I liked the twist that she went to Jackson and asked him for a favour and they were going to hook up and have a one night stand and then Jo got drunk on the way over and wound up crying because she wasn’t ready.

I have a feeling that they’re going to have them go back to being friends for the time being and then pick that storyline up later when Jo’s had a chance to heal possibly in the second half of the season. I also like that they wrapped up the storyline between Jackson and Vic and that we got to see Harriet for the first time in forever! Yeah! Vic isn’t ready or wiling to be a step parent and I liked that they established that Jackson needs to be with someone long term that is. Jo isn’t at that stage yet, but at least she’s open to the idea and has been married and had a successful adult relationship with someone in the past. Jackson’s been married, divorced, lost a child, and is raising a child.

With time and proper communication I think they could actually be a great pairing. Never thought I’d say that. Not wanting to be a parent is part of what broke Jackson and Vic up in the first place. They never addressed the issue with Maggie, but in retrospect that was never going to work out because Maggie is so involved with Meredith’s kids. They’re her main focus kid wise. We should have known that they weren’t going to work out when they failed to address that.

With April what broke them up was her devote faith and his complete lack of belief coupled with the different ways they dealt with the death of Samuel. While I did like April and Jackson as a couple I was happy with April’s write off in the sense that she got to be with someone who shares her faith and dealt with the trauma of losing someone close to them in a similar way. Her and Jackson never had that. Jackson found God in the wake of almost losing April, but by that point it was too late.

The damage was down. There was nothing either of them could do to repair what had been broken. With Jo he has the opportunity to start anew and lay all of that out on the table and vice versa. Although I imagine that the conversation Meredith would have with Alex about that would be pretty weird. I thought they did a really good job of showing the realities of COVID in hospitals right now. What the disease does, how deadly it can be, and how hard it is on all the health care workers and first responders. 

I have family members and friends who work in health care and it’s a scary time. Levi’s comment that they had lost 100 people in one day and that he’d had to tell 100 people’s family members that their loved one had died was chilling. It’s also real. This is not something they are sensationalizing for the sake of television. This is really happening to real people everywhere and it is heartbreaking.

In this episode we saw Meredith have her first breakdown in quite some time. The last one I can remember was after Derek died and that was a while ago. She was upset that so many of her patients had died and I’m sure that reality is something that a lot of healthcare workers are going through right now. This episode felt raw in a lot of ways because of that and I’m glad that a show that has worked so hard to reflect the realities of our time is taking the time to honour and showcase that.

Also I think having Meredith Grey the show’s titular character and star for over 16 seasons potentially contract COVID and collapse from working too hard and not taking her own advice is the ultimate example of it can happen to anyone and anyone can get it. The show did not have to go as hard as it did, but they did and they delivered and I respect the hell out of that. The tagline for this season is “Sometimes we all need saving.” Apparently they were being literal about that as that includes Meredith freaking Grey. What a twist!

I honestly believe that this will be the show’s last season. Because when I look at the storylines and the ways in which they’ve set up the characters starting with last season I can see where they could go with it and how they would wrap everyone’s storylines up in a satisfactory way. Plus I don’t think they’ll ever be able to top this season and it’s opener. Also we’ve got main cast members coming back because those actors are normally so busy they’ll probably never get another opportunity like this to bring them back and they’d be foolish not to take it.

The promo for next week teases more scenes with McDreamy (!!!), Meredith battling COVID literally, and Hayes visiting her in her hospital room. I’m excited!

Until next time!

[argumentl]

The Freedom of Expression Ep 28 - Risk assessment of restarting events, German experiment.

K: Hi, Lets start this week's episode of The Freedom of Expression. Joe san, Tasai san, welcome....Oh, I forgot to say 'This is Dir en grey's Kaoru'.

J, T: Hahaha.

J: Well, say it now, haha.

K: No, well, Im always saying this, but the preparations to get this show started each time are so slow!

J, T: Hahaha.

K: I got here about 90mins ago!

J: Yeh, honestly for me, sorry about this, but I mistook the time and the day, I only noticed when I saw Tasai's LINE message.

T: I was thinking, 'this is not good'.

J: 'Joe san! We're all already here!' And I thought, 'Eh!?', and I rushed here in a panic. But  they still weren't ready to start recording.

K: Seriously, they havn't ever got it all set up quickly and smoothly.

T: Thats right.

K: We're waiting for so long.

J: Yep, there's been a lot of waiting to get to this point. But we do have time to have a meeting about the theme.

K: Yeh, we do that. But why does it never work out properly? They only have to do the same thing every time. We're talking about this every third episode.

J: Yeh, and we record three at once, so its like every time, haha.

K: Hahaha

J: Yep, we start each recording session with this conversation every time. Its become famous already.

K: We are kinda grumbling a bit.

J: The viewers have no connection to this.

K: Well, anyway, for today...Joe san, could you please?

J: Yes, 1500 at a concert - risk assessment of event restarts in German experiment. With the reopening of music and sports events in mind, which have faced huge restrictions amidsts the spreading of Covid-19, German researchers conducted an experiment on the 22nd, analyzing the risk of infection at a real live concert. On this day, a team of researchers from Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany put on a concert by the singer Tim Bendzko in an indoor venue in Leipzig. 1500 people took part in the experiment. Masks and small size tracking devices were distributed to the audience, and their hands were applied with fluorescent gel before entering. This was to record areas of high contact within the venue, and identify where people are touching the most. Professor Gekle from the same university's medical department said, 'I want to be able to offer some means of making a reasonable decision as the whether or not events can be permitted. We need the means to predict how many people will be infected after events are reopened.' Three scenarios were tested: a pre-pandemic environment, a mid-pandemic/strengthened infection prevention environment, and a limited audience environment. The team will analyze the gathered data, and evaluate the success of  the prevention methods using a mathematical model. They will announce their results within this year. Soo, this has finally gotten started.

T: It was picked up on a 26" Sharp *1

J: Yes, in the end 1500 people took part in the experiment.

K: Didn't they say they wanted 4000 people?

J: Yeh, maybe they couldn't gather that many.

K: Yeh

J: Sounds like it.

T: I think so. It looks like the data is split into three parts. The first group is like at the start of the pandemic with everyone...

J: Everyone crammed in. Doing a live show in a packed space.

T: Yeh. The second group was testing the prevention measures, like using alcohol, with a certain amount of social distancing. And the third group was keeping a strict distance of 1.5 meters between each person, and making it perfectly spaced out. Then they could gather these three sets of data.

J: Yeh, I see. It looks like we could get some good guidelines out of this.

K: But if they say the results will be out within the year, thats still quite a way off, isnt' it?

J: Yeh, we may have to wait a bit, but as for big events in Japan, the government made an announcement on the 21st of this month (*Sep or Oct 2020*). They will continue with their 5000 upper limit of people allowed in indoor or outdoor facilities. As to why they will continue this, a govt. person had this to say in an article for Mainichi Shinbun. 'Experts are saying we have already passed the peak, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't extend the limit on spectator numbers. The rest of the world would never forgive us'. Germany is using this kind of scientific logic, but Japan is saying 'we won't change the 5000 people limit, because the world wouldn't forgive us'!

T: Yeh..

Kami: Can I say something? ..Um, I listened to the report, and I got distracted by the names of that singer and that professor, Tim Bendzko and Professor Gekle, so I didn't really listen to the rest.

T: Well, yeh, those names are pretty interesting  to Japanese people.

Kami: So I wasn't listening much...but you said, 'The rest of the world wouldn't forgive us'..if they were to lift the limit on 5000 people?

J: Yes, yes. Not me, someone connected with the government said that.

Kami: Thats pretty amazing, isn't it? They won't lift the limit because the world would never forgive them?

J: Well, experts are saying we are past the peak, so..ordinarily, this would be a good time to lift the limit.

Kami: Even though experts say we are past the peak, the world would never forgive us, so we won't lift the limit...Japan is really keeping up with the trends, isn't it?

K: Its cute, right?

J: Yeah

Kami: Its great, isn't it?

J: Its like, we know the science, but we don't wanna get bullied!

Kami: Even I didn't think of this. Thank you very much for this.

J: Well, its a new discovery...

Kami: Yes, I started to really love Japan.

T: Its a politician's job to explain this type of thing properly tho.

Kami: I really love Japan now.

J: But this really isn't any kind of scientific logic.

K: But the rest of the world aren't doing live shows as much as Japan is...they can't can they?

J: Ahhh....yeah.

K: In that sense ???*2

J: Japan is always in this kinda grey zone. There's a lot of talk about this request for self-restraint, like what does it mean? Like, Can I? Can't I?

K: Nothing has been forbidden though, has it?

J: Yeh

K: Also, what was it? A kind of bike event that took place in North Carolina..

J: Yes, thousands of people attended. Events like that are happening in America. At the moment, there are no penalties for doing anything.

K: People are just not doing stuff by exercising self-restraint

J: Thats it.

K: So that means Japan hasn't even ???*3

J: Yeah.

K: No, well it depends how you say it! Didn't they have anything clearer to say?

J: It wasn't very scientific.

K: We've only spoken about Japan, but in Taiwan they are holding concerts with over 10, 000 people.

T: Thats amazing, isn't it?

K: Because they have a really low rate of infection right?

J: Yeah, they do.

T: This was on August 8th, right?

Kami: The world has forgiven them right?

J: Well, yeah.

T: Doesn't this photo have quite an impact?

K: Its great, isn't it? Its a packed live show.

J: It is. They are wearing masks, but there is no distance between them.

T: Its just like normal.

K: That means they've returned to daily life then? In Taiwan?

J: Well, I guess so.

K: I spoke about this before, but I wonder if they will do experiments on other areas of life, not just live shows. This German study is only looking at live shows, right? Other things...

T: For example, public transport?

K: Mmm

T: Public spaces, they could do the experiment with public transport and stuff.

Kami: If Japan conducted this kind of experiment, the world wouldn't forgive us, right?

J: Well, you might not even be able to gather participants.

K: Well, conversely it would be seen as raising the infection risk, if Japan did it.

T: Are you slightly envious when you look at this, Kaoru? The Taiwan live show? 10,000 people gathering like this..

K: Well, i mean, at our lives people aren't all sat down like this, so I'm not sure. It doesn't feel like authentically back to normal. Its great that so many people can be allowed in there though.

Kami: Haven't Dir en grey ever played in Taiwan?

K: We have. It was good. How many times did we go? Twice?

Kami: Was the food nice?

K: Emm, yeh, haha.

J: Hahaha. The topic has turned more relaxing towards the end, haha.

T: Kami sometimes says cute stuff.

J: Yeah.

Kami: What did you eat?

K: What did I eat? Hmm

J: He's quite interested in this, isn't he?

K: I don't really remember.

Kami: Did you go out during the night?

K: Eh? Err, I think I did, yeh.

Kami: Did it taste nice?

K: Did it taste nice?? Well, I don't think I ate at night.

T: Did you try that Stinky Tofu?

K: I have never tried it!

J: Ahh, it really stinks doesn't it? That..

K: The smell is too offputting.

J: That knocked me flat...But you could do live shows if you went to Taiwan though?

K: They wouldn't let us in.

J: Ahhh, right. At the moment..

K: Yeh, we wouldn't be allowed in.

J: Now we have this problem.

K: They're not allowing people in, so...huh? *a music box sounding tune starts playing*  Whats that?

J: Is someone's phone ringing? Haha, is this revenge from Kami? Are we ok?

Kami: You're ok.

K: They're not allowing people in, thats why they can do big shows. Probably.

J: Yeh

K: Well, who knows when Japan, or even the rest of the world will be able to do live shows like this, but im interested to see what kind of results this experiment will produce.

T: We can do an episode about it.

K: Yep. Well, the conversation was a bit all over the place today...

J,T: Hahaha

K: But please tune in again next time. Please subscribe.

*1 I don't know what he means by this.

*2, 3 Couldn't catch

[jbk405]

Oh did today become A Day and I am seething.

My mother invited me to have dinner at my grandmother’s home today, specifically noted as a ‘lite supper’.  Since I see my grandmother weekly for assorted chores or dinner, and both of them are fully vaccinated, I had no problem with this concept and no concern about COVID exposure or spread.  Three people total isn’t a problem, and if my father showed up to ‘surprise’ me (He slipped up and mentioned the dinner on Friday) it wouldn’t be an issue since he is also vaccinated and I see him almost every day and we’re still only at four people total.  Dinner with my parents and my grandmother even sounds nice, and it hasn’t happened in a long time.

Except I arrive and I see ten places set.

“It’s just family” my mother says, as if family members can’t be carriers (Do you want to guess how I was exposed and forced to quarantine back in November?  Do you want to guess who?).  “They’re all vaccinated” my mother says, but I’m not, and I’m honestly not convinced that all of them are (Most, sure, but even if they’ve started the process it can take almost two months to complete depending on the vaccine version).  “I wanted it to be a surprise” my mother says, as if that isn’t the very problem.

My family has never thrown a surprise party before, why the fuck are they starting now?  I’ve got no good move here, and  I resent the position I have been forced into.

If I stay I will be uncomfortable the entire time, and will be stressed for the next two weeks as I ascribe any and all aches and pains to “Is this COVID?”  If I don’t get enough sleep one night and am groggy the next day, I’ll think it’s COVID.  If I don’t drink enough water and get a headache, I’ll think it’s COVID.  Because though unlikely, it’s possible for vaccinated people to be asymptomatic carriers.  Because I am aware that COVID cases are actually surging right now because people are acting like everything is over, and I consider it a moral duty to continue abiding by restrictions “just in case”.   That’s why I have continued to avoid group get-togethers even with my friends who are vaccinated.

If I leave I become the guy who ruined his own birthday party that some family drove hours to get to.  Oh, I didn’t mention this was supposed to be my birthday party?  Yes, it was supposed to show their appreciation for all I do (Including the aforementioned weekly visits with my grandmother). Gee, it sure would have been nice to know that beforehand so I could have said if I was okay with a party or not.

I could insist everybody keep their masks on for the entire time, except the food is already set out and they guests will be hungry and they didn’t know I wasn’t consulted so it would be incredibly rude to ask them to suddenly start fasting apropos of nothing.  Especially since most of them are older and it could be dangerous to not eat if they perhaps didn’t eat lunch.  We can’t eat outside since it’s a cold, rainy day.

I split the difference and spent my ‘birthday party’ standing in the open garage, unwilling to go inside, unable to go home, as my grandmother keeps calling through the door for me to come inside and get something to eat and my mother tearfully tries to explain herself.  I ate no food, hugged nobody, and generally acted like an asshole because when I did come inside at the end at my grandmother’s pleading I literally pressed myself against the door to keep the greatest possible distance.

Maybe I would have been okay with it if I had known in advance.  If a week ago my mother said “Hey, would you be okay with these family members coming over next week for dinner?” I might have been feeling adventurous and decided to risk it.  I’ve done risky things in life before, even downright dangerous things for fun or excitement, but they were my choice.  Or maybe not, maybe I still would have decided not to go, but I could have told her that in advance so she could still have had a gathering of family who wanted to go and maybe I could have joined via Zoom or somesuch without the awkwardness or putting me in this position.

This also wasn’t something that snowballed unintentionally as if my mother had mentioned dinner to some family and they misunderstood and thought they were invited and she didn’t want it to be awkward by uninviting them, she hired a Broadway singer!  Yes, a live singer to perform a show for us.  That doesn’t happen spur-of-the-moment or because things spun out of control.  This was a party.

And, by the way, I don’t fucking like parties anyway.

What.  The.  Hell.

[firelord-frowny]

Anyway, today was scary as shit. :(

Y’all know I fucking hate my grandma lmao she has been a monstrous person for her literal entire life and was a NIGHTMARE to my mom, who still managed to grow up into a very sweet lady in spite of her. 

But like damn, I don’t want her to die! I want her to live as long as possible bc she’s my mom’s mom and my mom would like her to keep living.

And it was just so awful to have to watch my mom frantically trying to hold her mom up after she went limp and started falling out of her chair. She told me to go and get my dad, and so I did, and when my dad and I came back in, she told us to call 911 and so he did, and like 

I really 100% thought that I was about to watch my grandma just die in my mom’s arms. 

I’ve never been in any situation in which 911 needed to be called. All the time, when I’m out and about and pass by some kind of emergency scene where there’s ambulances and flashing lights, I always think about how scared everyone in that house/location/whatever probably is, and how they’re probably petrified and fearing the worst, and their whole body is saturated with pure dread. 

And like. Damn. That was my house today. My house was the house where people gasp a little gasp and go, “Oh, no. I hope everyone there is gonna be okay.” 

My grandma is still at the hospital now, and my mom is back home since they wouldn’t let her stay on account of covid social distancing restrictions. According to the docs, the testing that they’ve done so far doesn’t point to any life-threatening illnesses or injuries, and her covid test was negative (they didn’t actually think she might have covid, but since they’re required to test anyone who has covid symptoms, and covid symptoms run the fucking gammut between Completely Asymptomatic and Drowning To Death In Your Own Lungs, they usually wind up testing everyone. 

So far the docs think that she may have just been dangerously dehydrated, which I guess makes sense bc she used to drink SO MUCH WATER all day every day, but since her dementia has gotten worse, I guess she’s just been forgetting how to recognize that she’s thirsty. And no one in the household had really noticed that she wasn’t hydrating as much as usual, and so no one thought to make sure she drinks something every day. 

Soooo hopefully they’ll be able to release her tomorrow after they give her fluids and whatnot.

Sigh! 

Today was stressful as shit. A hoard of emt’s marching into my house like they’re soldiers about to carry out a tactical mission, so urgent, so well-practiced, everyone doing what they need to do like clockwork because time is of the essence. 

I hated it and I hope to go a looooong ass time before i ever have to see something like that again.

[nellie-elizabeth]

The Walking Dead: Diverged (10x21)

I don't really know about this one. I liked it, but I found myself frustrated by it as well.

Cons:

For one thing, on a big-picture scale, what the heck is this season building to? Nothing, I guess. Everything's disjointed. Next week is the finale, and it's a Negan-centric episode. We've barely checked in with Negan for weeks. Which means, unless they pull something miraculous off in the one hour they have remaining, that we're going to be going into the hiatus before the final season with all of these threads still dangling. Maggie and the new characters she brought with her? We barely know them. Princess, Ezekiel, Eugene, and Yumiko? Who knows where they're at. Carol and Daryl's growing distance? Impossible to say. There is just so much material here, and none of it is building to anything at all.

And then to narrow in on this episode specifically, I want to praise a lot about it, but I will admit that The Walking Dead has a subtlety issue, in that it's... not subtle. I think some of the moments here could have spoken for themselves, rather than having everything spelled out for us. Most specifically with Carol and Jerry's conversation at the end. 'Twas just a bit too on the nose.

Also on a small note, it was weird to me that Carol was supposed to feel like she was in the way and not useful in Alexandria as everyone else gets to work and makes things happen, but then there were basically no glimpses of the community or any of the people in it. Where were they all? Was this a COVID restriction thing, about the numbers of people who can be on set at one time? Alexandria looked like a ghost town. I thought it was supposed to be bursting at the seams with refugees from Hilltop and from Maggie's community.

Finally, and this goes back to some bigger picture concerns, I don't like how much this felt like a setup for the Carol and Daryl spinoff, instead of an integral part of the show itself. It all goes back to how much it doesn't feel like they have a bigger plan. It's bumming me out.

Pros:

If only this were in the middle of the season, and not the penultimate episode. If only this were a break from the chaos, a quieter, more character-focused pause in the middle of mounting tension. If only, if only.

When I look at it in isolation, there's a lot I like about this installment, just on its own merits. The performances are strong, and I think this show has a weakness in its dialogue, so a long quiet episode without many words is actually a great strength in this case. Carol and Dog teaming up to take on a rat, Carol's determination to make soup, and all the ways in which she kept failing to accomplish that, all took on a real mixture of gravity and comedy. We're watching someone in the middle of a really shitty, emotional day. It's kind of a spiral, but it's also not a situation where we're worried Carol is going to do something she can't take back. Dog anchors her. She's looking after him for Daryl.

And speaking of Daryl, he spends the episode alone, which is how he often likes to be, searching for a way to repair his bike. Not much happens, other than a few close calls with Walkers, which highlights the dangers of solitude in this world. But also... Daryl needed that time away from Carol. Away from everyone.

Their relationship fascinates me. I wasn't thrilled with some of the developments in the last installment. I definitely feel the drag of repetition with this show, as I often discuss. But that weird sort of place where you've just said some really harsh words to someone you love very much? That precipice, where you know things might never be the same, but hey, you're still going to watch their dog for them when they're gone? That's so real. I love how the two of them operate. There is nothing that could permanently destroy their relationship. They've been through too much. But that doesn't make it any less painful to go through this strained time.

This is a short review, but there simply wasn't all that much going on in terms of plot to discuss, so I think I'll stop there. This was good in isolation, although not astonishingly good. I'm side-eyeing next week's finale pretty hard... how are they going to pull this off?

8/10

[bitterxweetencounters]

The saga continues..

Navigating through life as a single 25 y/o has been..interesting. Although my love life remains non-existent, I will say I’ve had a few encounters in the past month or so which may be worth revisiting.

So two different guys messaged me over Facebook messenger. One was saying hi, and asked from which local I’m from, saying he saw me in a YouTube video (I think it was the CFO News one) where I was featured in, and then proceeded to send me a screenshot of me talking. I clicked on his profile and the guy looked like he was 14 - or 15 years old at most. He was inc alright, but too young for me. And also seemed too filo. Lol. We weren’t Facebook friends so I just left his message “unseen”.

The second guy messaged me after seeing me at our last online Meet & Greet, around a week after he added me as a friend on Facebook. He proceeds to start a conversation with me by asking me how my sister’s food truck business was going. Which I honestly thought was weird at first, but after talking to some people about it I guess it kind of makes sense since that’s all I post about on my feed. Lmao. I didn’t recognise the guy so I thought he was just some random inc person. He also looks kind of old and already married. He gave off major Dad vibes so I kept saying “po” to him. Loooool. Long story short, he tried to keep the conversation going and quite blatantly hinted that he was interested in me. But the feeling wasn’t mutual. I didn’t know the guy enough, and I didn't feel any attraction towards him from what I could see on his Facebook profile. I know its pretty superficial but you know how you just get a vibe from someone’s social media profile of the kind of person they are? Yeahhh, I really wasn’t feeling it with this guy. I showed his profile to one of my girl friends and they agreed we wouldn’t look good together. She said he’d look like my dad if I stood next to him. Which I found hilariously true.

With lockdown ending and covid restrictions easing, I’d been able to go out and catch up with friends. One of them was a guy friend from high school. Now before I go on about the catch up I should explain how we ended up catching up in the first place. I hadn’t spoken to this guy in years ‘cause we sort of drifted due to differences in lifestyle and new friend groups. Just the normal kind of drifting typical after high school. So anyway sometime last November (if I remember correctly) I was at Glen with a group of friends after we finished donating blood earlier in the day. We were standing outside a boba shop after buying some, when I felt someone staring at me from the distance. I look - and its my guy friend sitting down at a table with his friends outside the restaurant adjacent to us. Just as I caught his gaze, he looks away. Now before I go on even more, I should also mention that me and this guy sort of had a thing in high school..? He may have asked me to be his girlfriend but I may have rejected him saying that I wasn’t ready for a relationship ‘cause “I didn’t feel like I was ready” but that I thought he was a cool guy and all etc. I never told him (or even any of my friends) how I really felt about him, but I actually really liked him too at the time. Buuuuut, I knew we wouldn’t work out for a number of reasons. Which is the real reason why I rejected him. I wanted to save both of us the heartache to be completely honest. So back to the accidental encounter at Glen. I was actually so happy to see him. I walked over to him and his group of friends and said hi to him/them. He stood up, gave me a kiss on the cheek and we hugged. He asked me what I was doing there and I told him it was nice seeing him and went back to my group of friends. Later on that night I messaged him saying it was nice seeing him again and that I hoped all was well. We ended up talking for quite a bit over Facebook messenger after that and before you know it, we had a catch-up planned. So we decided that we would chill in the city for our catch up. My friend insisted that we drive to city, and that he was going to pick me up (mind you I am hella out of his way, on the way to the city). It was a heat wave of a day so I may have worn something backless, but nothing too crazy - a little out of my comfort zone, but very fitting for a Friday night at the city. My hair was curled. He called me saying he’s close by and arrives at my place quite on-time (but at the next door neighbours’ house actually lol so he had to reverse to get to me). I got in his car and we talked the whole time till we got to the city. Just caught up on things that have happened since we last caught up, who from high school we still hang with etc. One thing I did notice about him though, different to how he was from high school, was that this time around he seemed hella cynical/negative about people. Definitely filled with more pride, a little more aggressive than I remembered him to be. We had dinner at Shujinko, which is a popular ramen place in the city. He kept offering to carry my stuff for me, like my bag, my bottle of water. We walked around the city streets just talking about life, our past relationships, our heartbreaks. He told me he hadn’t been that open with anyone in a long time and a lot of the things he was telling me he hadn’t told anyone else. He was quite touchy - playfully squeezing my shoulders here and there. Playfully squeezing the back of my neck and playfully had his arm around my neck (both were a bit concerning ‘cause they weren’t as gentle as I would’ve hoped but I tried to brush it off). We got crepes for dessert which we had while sitting down at one of the benches in front of the State Library. The bench was empty but he was sitting so close to me like there was limited space available. Lmao. We sat there talking more about our past experiences with love. It all felt quite romantic. The way we were sitting so close, the gentle summer night air, the buzz of trams passing by, the quiet murmur of laughter and conversation of the people laying on the grass around us. If you didn't know any better, you’d think we were a couple on a date. We joked about possibly bumping into my ex in the city and how we would react if it happened. We sat on the grass (he laid ‘cause his pants were too tight lmao) in the middle of Federation square, and even walked along the Yarra River. As we were going up the stairs to go back to the main street there were some dodgy looking guys that I felt were sort of creeping up behind me so I walked up really fast. He noticed this and told me to relax and not worry ‘cause he was there. This one really got to me and it felt really nice feeling like I was safe and protected. He paid for all the things we ate and stopped me from paying for anything if I ever tried to pull out my card. He let me pay for the parking though and told me I was lucky he couldn’t be bothered getting out of the car. It was funny ‘cause we were worried the parking place might have closed ‘cause we were in the city that late. But luckily it wasn’t. He also kept telling me he didn’t want me getting in trouble with my parents if it was too late in the night already. I kept insisting it was okay. On the drive home we talked some more and he asked me what I’ve learnt I now want in a guy or my ideal guy now. I joked to him that my parents might still be awake by the time I get home, and he asked me if I wanted to just cruise and drive around for a while. I said no but I appreciated it. When we finally got to my house, I remember feeling a little nervous ‘cause I didn’t know what to expect. He asked me if I had fun/a good night and I said yes. “See you in another 5 years?” We laughed. I was low-key hoping he’d say he would be down to see me again soon, but I knew better not to expect or suggest that. As I look down at my bag looking for my house keys, he comments on my hair and asks if they’re extensions. I told him they were real and let him feel it for himself. Yo when I say there was tension-. I kept my gaze down of course ‘cause I didn’t want to deal with having awkward eye contact with him or anything. I found my keys, said my goodbyes and sent him off home. After that, no goodnight message and the day after, no message again. But two days later, he messaged me again complaining that the bluetooth in his car won’t connect to his phone anymore ever since I used it. Our messaging continued again for a week or so, but then abruptly came to an end after an awkward trash talking sesh (don’t even ask).

Okay so maybe I had unresolved feelings for the guy. And yes that may have unintentionally been a date. It reminded me of all the reasons why I liked him in the first place. The chemistry was still there after all these years. Hell did we have chemistry. We got along seamlessly, always playfully making fun of each other, which was a lot of fun. He was so much of what I was looking for in a guy. I knew he was a good person at heart, had values, principles, quite a gentleman/chivalrous, not a player or f-boy (lol), seemed to be an honest person, could support himself financially, had the same sense of humour, hardworking - not to mention tall and had a bigger build than me (I hate feeling like I’m the more masculine looking one in a relationship to be honest). But for reasons, I knew there couldn’t ever be an “us”. Which sucks. It was a nice few weeks though of feeling like I was in love. It always is, till reality kicks in.

[shirlleycoyle]

If Swine Flu Happens During COVID-19, Are We Screwed?

It feels like 2020 can't get any worse, but it always does. Genetic testing of pigs in China from 2011 to 2018 leads us to consider a truly dire possibility: What if we weren't just dealing with one historic and deadly pandemic, but two? Could it even happen?

There’s an outbreak of H1N1, or the “swine flu", running through China’s pig farms right now. According to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, recent genetic testing of pigs in Chinese farms show genes “similar to [swine flu ‘09] virus,” and has “all the essential hallmarks of a candidate pandemic virus.”

So, how worried should one be about a second pandemic-within-a-pandemic?

As it so happens, the flu is more infectious than even COVID-19, but the world is also better prepared to battle it. It’s been doing so for more than 100 years, after the 1918 pandemic ravaged a world that hadn't yet discovered flu viruses. And the world, if not the U.S., is already at heightened alert for infectious disease. It’d be hard, but not impossible, for two pandemics to run through the world’s population at the same time.

Early warning signals are working

Despite what you may have heard, COVID-19 is not the flu. And the fact that we even know about the possibility of a swine flu outbreak is because experts know all about influenza and take it incredibly seriously. That we are discussing a possible pathogen as it is being reported in academic journals is a good sign. In many ways, health experts are playing catch-up when it comes to Covid-19.

“So what we're seeing a little bit is what public health is constantly doing,” Theresa MacPhail,a medical anthropologist andAssistant Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, told Motherboard over the phone. MacPhail was in Hong Kong in 2009 during a previous outbreak of H1N1 and worked with the CDC to contain it.

The World Health Organization runs the Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System. (GISRS) Established in 1952, GISRS constantly monitors influenza hotspots and coordinates with healthcare providers and world governments to keep things in check.

“In China, [government officials] regularly sample birds on duck and chicken farms and pigs on pig farms and all the workers who work there for this reason: to see what strains are in circulation to see if there are any potential problems," MacPhail said. "So that's what you're seeing is this particular strain has been in circulation for a while.”

According to MacPhail, there’s good cause to worry, but not to panic, yet. China’s experts sounding the alarm this early is a sign that the system is working as intended. She also said these kinds of alerts and alarms happen all the time. “Most of the time that stuff is ignored by the public,” she said. “You don't know that this is normal.”

Katherine Mason, a medical anthropologist and an assistant professor at Brown University, said that the world is prepared for the flu in a way it wasn’t for the coronavirus. “Everyone always thought the next pandemic was going to be an influenza pandemic,” she told VICE on the phone. “Every year you get news of some new strain of flu … [scientists] have spent a lot of time and resources trying to be able to anticipate the flu, which is partly why Covid-19 caught people off guard.”

Nidia Trovao, a virologist at the National Institute of Health, said she’s watching the new H1N1 strain but isn’t particularly worried about it. “I think the probability of having two pandemics simultaneously is really really low,” she told VICE over the phone. She said that the virus has made the jump from human to pig, but only in the workers in close proximity to the swine. It has yet to move from human to human. “The big evolutionary hurdle is for the virus to gain the capacity for human to human transmission.”

Flu is watched so closely because, in the past, it’s been devastating. The 1918 flu pandemic was a predecessor of H1N1. While it’s often called “the Spanish Flu,” epidemiologists traced its origins to pig farms in Kansas, where it spread through U.S. Army bases and into the wider world. Epidemiologist and historians estimate that the flu killed more than 50 million people worldwide. It was devastating, but scientists learned a lot about how to fight a global influenza pandemic.

The concept of social distancing and wearing masks to prevent the spread of infection were lessons learned during the 1918 pandemic. One of the reasons that the flu spread so fast was because of the close quarters assigned to troops in the U.S. military. Much of the world’s modern health system and America’s modern mliitary’s sanitation practices are direct results of what we learned during the 1918 pandemic.

“This is actually a system that's working that's been in place for a long time,” MacPhail said. “And scientists are relatively on top of it.”

Health measures are already in place

According to MacPhail, the world is better positioned to deal with a flu outbreak than any other infectious disease, even Covid-19. “In some ways, this is the best possible time that's ever been for a new dangerous flu, and this one isn't even that dangerous. It looks like the cases in people are pretty mild,” she said.

She acknowledged that the flu mutates all the time. What seems mild one day may yet turn deadly. But the world is already at least familiar with the measures it needs to take to avoid mass infection. They look a lot like what the world (except much of America) is already doing: masks, shutdowns, social distancing.

“But, say we do have something terrible,” MacPhail said. “We’re already wearing masks…we’re more prepared than we’ve ever been for something like this.”

The GISRS meets twice a year in Geneva to create the seasonal flu vaccines. “This works by having more than 100 laboratires around the world that get samples from these patients with influenza-like illness, then they test for flu using different methods,” Trovao said. “The good thing here is that countries in the Southern hemisphere are currently facing their flu season so we can learn a lot from their experience. We’re seeing lower levels than we usually observe this time of the year. Of more than 2,000 sample tests, only 37 were positive for flu. Those are good results.”

But Trovao those good results should be interpreted with caution. “The pandemic crisis forced us into isolation which will naturally curb transmission,” she said. She also noted that there have been some reports of people getting both the flu and Covid-19 at the same time. “Clinicians should be alert that the positive test for either virus does not rule out the possibility for the other.”

Flu is more transmissible and it evolves more quickly, but the period between contracting the virus and showing symptoms is much lower than Covid-19. We also have vaccines for the flu and systems in place to develop new ones quickly when a new strain appears. According to MacPhail, a new flu vaccine takes roughly 9 months after experts identify a strain. More than 130 separate Covid-19 vaccines are in development currently. The world is spending billions to rush one to market and best estimates say it won’t be available until early next year.

“We were not prepared for Coronavirus in the same way,” MacPhail said. “We weren't really surveying Coronavirus the way that we do flu and we don't have the vaccine technology in place already for something like Coronavirus. So that's what we're seeing right now and why this is so bad.”

H1N1 isn’t the only influenza strain on the watchlist. Experts are constantly tracking outbreaks across the globe. “Every day there’s something,” MacPhail said. “Normal people don’t know that there’s a botulism outbreak in cheese in Ireland right now.”

There’s also an ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, cases of bubonic plague in Mongolia, and yellow fever in Ethiopia.

The point is: the world is filled with disease. A new one popping up isn't cause for panic, especially when it's being so closely watched, but it is an opportunity to be vigilant.

But what if it's bad?

These assurances are good reminders of the world’s robust public health system, but they’re cold comfort in the U.S. where COVID-19 infections and deaths rise daily.

In America, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, COVID-19 isn’t just a public health issue, it’s a fiercely political one. State and local officials push back against CDC recommendations, citing economic concerns. Anti-maskers make public scenes that are quickly posted online and go viral. In my own neighborhood message board here in South Carolina, anti-maskers are boasting that they won’t wear a mask under any circumstances. A U.S. passport, once the key to unlocking a world of travel, is now a scarlet letter. So many countries are turning Americans away that it’s easier to list the countries Americans can still travel to than those that block them.

MacPhail initially didn’t think COVID-19 would be that bad, but told VICE after it became a pandemic that she’d been wrong. According to MacPhail, she failed to predict that the U.S. Government would do such a horrible job containing it.

It’s possible, and even likely, that a new round of restrictions based on a new outbreak wouldn’t be enough to convince people to change their opinions on masks and social distancing. They might even double down, at least at first.

Mason said she worries that fighting a second pandemic would be hard, in part, because the flu and COVID-19 have such similar symptoms. “If Covid continues to rage the way it has been here in the states, it’s gonna be very difficult to separate out the appearance of a new flu strain. That’s what I’m worried about.”

Winter is coming, and winter always brings the flu and other respiratory diseases. “I have two kids,” Mason said. “My kids, in the winter, pretty much always have a virus for like four or five months. So it’s going to be hard to differentiate a new one from the one we already have. That’s number one. Number two is the capacity to deal with it which is non existent in the United States at the moment. If the flu started going around, I would be surprised if it made things better rather than worse.”

According to Trovao, the scientific community is already worrying about the flu season. “By itself it already causes high morbidity and mortality,” she said. “I think this is the year where we encourage people even more strongly to get the flu shot, because it lessens the burden on the healthcare system so those beds and capabilities can be directed towards the pandemic.”

“What we are doing to curtail Covid-19, might also curtail the spread of other viruses and reduce transmission of both viruses,” Trovao said. “That’s where we need to focus—keeping people wearing masks and continuing to physically distance and getting the vaccine that we produce every year.”

Anyone can catch COVID-19, but the rates of infection and death are highest among the people at the margins of American society—the elderly and members of racial and ethnic minority groups in particular. This may make it easy for the powerful and privileged to ignore it, and even demand that others risk their lives to provide them with goods and services. A flu with a higher death rate than even Covid-19 (which doctors now believe may cause extensive and life-altering complications even after recovery) would not be so easily mentally sidelined even with the buffers of wealth, power, and even youth.

"I just keep thinking, ‘Thank god [the death rate is] only between one and two percent,’” McPhail said. “But that’s shitty, because that allows us to ignore it for longer. I guarantee you, if a bunch of 20 and 30 year olds were dying right now we would be taking this much more seriously. And if it was killing kids, we’d be on top of this.” (Younger people and children do catch Covid-19 and die, but at rates much lower than older people with underlying conditions.)

“The flu strikes children pretty hard usually,” Mason said. She stressed that every flu strain is different, and affects different groups in different ways. “But if it follows the same pattern as most flu outbreaks, we would be seeing a lot more children dying.”

In particular, Mason pointed to people's reluctance to get flu shots as a reason for its annual death toll. Concerningly, anti-vaccine conspiracies have already begun to circulate regarding a possible Covid-19 vaccine.

“Covid is worse, don’t get me wrong, but the flu is still a big killer every year,” she said. “Part of the reason is people don’t get flu shots even though we have them because they don’t take the flu seriously enough. The flu just spreads like wildfire. If we think Covid spreads easily, if we’re hit with a really serious and deadly flu pandemic it’s going to be even worse.”

According to McPhail, a deadly flu pandemic on top of COVID-19 would be nothing short of a national "reckoning."

“Coronavirus is playing into our worse national traits whereas flu would make us have a reckoning,” MacPhail said. “This is why, traditionally, we’ve been more afraid of the flu. Because it kills indiscriminately across age groups.”

Mason pointed out that even if there’s not a strain of H1N1, seasonal flu on top of the Covid-19 pandemic in the winter, when people get more respiratory diseases, is still concerning.. “[Winter] is going to be really bad. I’m very very concerned about it. If we throw the flu on top of it, even just seasonal flu… nature doesn’t care whether you’ve had enough. It’s gonna do what it’s gonna do. It can get a lot worse.”

Which is why, thankfully, the world's health experts and governments do all they can to contain swine flu. The 2009 H1N1 epidemic began in Central Mexico and spread out of control before global health measures, including a vaccine, brought it under control. The newest outbreak is in China, a country taking active measures to contain and control the virus’s spread.

The pandemics of 1918 and 2020 have taught us a valuable lesson, though: the world's virus response is only as strong as its weakest link, and now as in the past, that weak link is the U.S.

If Swine Flu Happens During COVID-19, Are We Screwed? syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[kyndaris]

Banana Life

Growing up as a Chinese-Australian has had its ups and downs over the years. There has always been a bit of a cultural divide with how my parents have viewed things and how I’ve perceived such matters. In fact, I remember many a fight when I was younger and hated the thought of going to Chinese School every Saturday. Now that I’m older, though, I appreciate the fact that I’m bilingual (I still can’t read Chinese as well as my mother would have hoped, but at least I can tell where the train station is). 

But I often count myself among the more fortunate ones when it comes to being the target of racist attacks. There has never been one singular event when someone has told me to ‘go back to where I came from.’ Nor has anyone physically assaulted me based on my appearance.

In saying that, I have often bristled when people ask me again where I’m from. As if my answer: Australia is not enough. If you wish to know my ethnicity, then be more direct. Unless, of course, you wish to see my birth certificate? I know that some people are curious and want to find a way to bond about their experience in an Asian country, but there are better ways to phrase a question rather than going with a blunt: so, where are you from?

I’ve also never liked when people come up to me and say ‘Ni Hao.’ Yes, I know I’m Chinese-Australian and understand the words, but for all you (a relative stranger) know, I might not know a lick of Chinese at all. What if I was sixth generation and never grew up learning the language? What if I was actually Vietnamese, Japanese or Korean? Malaysian or Singaporean? How about Thai, Indonesian or Filipino? 

Actually, when I was in the small country town of Leeton, I did have a gaggle of girls approach me and say ‘Konnichiwa.’ Perhaps they saw a great number of tourists in that area and assumed I was one of them. I never actually got to the bottom of why they addressed me in Japanese, but I was greatly puzzled. A simple ‘G’day’ would have sufficed. It isn’t as if I approach all Caucasians and start going ‘buongiorno’ or ‘top of the morning.’

Then there have been the subtle times when I was at university and handed Free English lessons pamphlets. Why me? There were plenty of international students from Europe that might have been struggling with English. But because I looked different, many people assumed that I was an international student. One time, I asked one of these good Samaritans if it sounded like I needed Free English lessons. And do I speaker da good English. They quickly learned their error. Although, they then followed me up half the street trying to convert me to Christianity.

Over the years, though, and in more recent months, I’ve read plenty of articles and stories where people have discriminated against people that look like me. People, who, like me, have grown up in the West and often struggle with belonging as we straddle two worlds. Our values are not the same as our parents and yet, we don’t look white enough to be considered ‘true blue Aussies.’ As my mother loved to say - and which was repeated in Crazy Rich Asians - we’re bananas. 

One of my friends said that in the UK, East Asians are one of the smallest minorities there. Here in Australia, we’re one of the largest. Just like in the United States of America, we’re a model for all other ethnic minorities. Most of us studied hard in school, to the detriment of our mental health. We’re good at mathematics. We’ve also prove to be invaluable employees in the work place. And our parents have often hoped that we land an excellent job that pays well: accountant, lawyer, doctor or engineer. 

Most of us have also learned to play a music instrument. Some of us love anime with a passion. Others have dived down deep into the world of Korean Dramas. And a lot fell in love with a film that finally put us on the big Hollywood screen. Representation matters. Even as we’ve remained mostly silent in our achievements after decades of being regarded as the ‘yellow peril’ or ‘Asian invasion.’

COVID-19 has proved thoroughly that despite the great strides Western society has made in being more inclusive, many people are still mired by their prejudice. People have graffiti-ed and vandalised houses in the suburbs of Melbourne. They’ve made disparaging comments under their breath whilst in earshot of Asian Australian in shopping markets. Elsewhere, we have been attacked and told that we’re a disease.

Now, let me be clear. None of this has happened to me personally. And yet, reading these stories, I often fear what might happen should I ever find myself in such a situation. When I was younger, I often thought I’d retort with the fact that if they told me to ‘go back to where I came from,’ I’d simply do the same. Australia has always been a migrant country. All of us came via boat or plane if they’ve traced their ancestry as far as it can go. Maybe that was the First Fleet or as convicts. But just because you’ve settled and claimed the land that we’re on for longer than me and my family, that doesn’t give you the right to say that I’m not who I say I am: an Australian.

As I’ve grown older, though, I’ve realised that trying to reason with these people doesn’t always work. And trying too hard might mean risking getting burnt. In Life is Strange 2, trying to stick to my values only had Sean Diaz bullied into finally singing a song in Spanish for fear that he would be assaulted.

Even little comments can hurt, even when they’re said in jest.

I remember at around the start of the current COVID-19 crisis, a colleague once asked me if I ate bats. At the time, it was believed that the virus had been transmitted in a wet market in Wuhan by eating bats. I said ‘no.’ And then proceeded to list a number of things I have never eaten: snakes, shark fin, dog...the list went on. Of course, I knew it was all in good fun and teased her back by asking if she ate frog legs or escargot. It gradually evolved into a conversation about the different types of food that was enjoyed around the world. But that first assumption also stung and made me question how the people around me viewed this little Chinese-Australian trying to make her way in the world. 

Yet even when it’s not others trying to put us down, some of our fellows are coming up with conspiracy theories. In my badminton group, one of the players said that COVID-19 stood for something more sinister than just corona virus disease. They said that it was an acronym which stood for China Output Virus in December 2019.

Social distancing restrictions are now easing around the world. I know many are looking forward to going out and meeting up with friends without having the fear of disease and death hovering over their shoulder. There is always the concern that lifting quarantine will lead to more outbreaks. But, what I’m scared of most of all, is when someone sees me and decides that it’s my fault COVID-19 was brought in Australia, though it’s been years since I’ve been to China. And then begins to attack me: either verbally or physically just because of what I look like.

[abujenna]

discerning the body and reopening churches

Last week several of our local jurisdictions--particularly the one where I live and the one where I attend church--partially lifted their bans on public religious assemblies. For the past few months of response to COVID-19, we have been limited to watching services online, with no more than ten allowed on-site. Now we can meet within certain constraints--chiefly, at 50% capacity or less, with appropriate social distancing, while wearing masks. My mind has been on the manner of our coming back together, and I have some serious concerns.

Some churches are taking a conservative approach. There are those that reacted to last week's announcements more patiently and have continued so far to offer streaming services only, while they work out more detailed plans. Some--I'm thinking here particularly of the Catholic Archdiocese--had already put together comprehensive guidelines and were ready to start up with careful measures: limited attendance, no singing, marked locations to ensure distance, mandatory wearing of masks, health monitoring, protective measures in the distribution of communion, etc. Some even started with outdoor services, though by this point they were not required to do so.

Others, like my own Orthodox parish, seem more reactive. They have been chafing under the tighter restrictions, and the main objective at this point seems to be a rapid return to normal operations with as few limits as they can manage: congregational singing despite strong advice against it, masks only over the state-mandated minimum age of 10 yrs, and leaving it up to each family to carve out their own space for social distancing. (This is in a very small venue, with a few chairs around the edges and normally standing-room only.) They have not communicated a clear rationale for any of these details, but based on the frequent messages we've been hearing over the past months, my best guess is that they're focused on the importance of bringing the church together in person, receiving the sacraments, and generally prioritizing the timeless things of God over our current circumstances.

I understand the motives, and I sympathize to some degree. But it has felt to me throughout this crisis like something important was missing from our discussions. I'm beginning to find ways of articulating this concern, though I'm honestly a bit scared to ride the train of thought to its end.

One image I have is of return from exile. We have been prevented from assembling for a few months now, and understandably, we are longing for “home.” Now it appears we can go back, and we are anxious to do so. Maybe the forces that drove us away are still active, but it is worth the risk. But if we think of ourselves as a people in exile, what is the manner of our return? Will we take an individualistic approach, where each packs up his things and heads out at the quickest pace he can manage? Is it a race to prove our zeal by who gets there first? Will we team up with those who seem most useful to our cause, banding together in case we meet some resistance on the way home? Or will we remember that we are a people who have all suffered together, and that all must return? That the "home" to which we are returning is not a building but a gathering of the faithful? Will we stop to carry the burdens of those who cannot? Will we move slowly enough so the old and weak can keep up? It did not take ten plagues for Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave--it took ten plagues for him to let them all go home. What if Moses had given up earlier and called it good enough?

The other image comes from 1 Corinthians 11. Here, St. Paul chastises the people for the manner of their communion. In the early church, the Eucharist was somehow accompanied by a shared meal. But something wasn't right in the Corinthian church, "for in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken." By their actions, they were despising the church and shaming the have-nots. Apparently there was some double standard by which the wealthier members were taking exclusive rights and poorer members were left out. Maybe it was an overt claim of status; maybe it was just that the ordinary laborers and slaves couldn't get enough time off work to participate.

But here's the point: We all know that St. Paul says to examine ourselves, and that the consequences of unworthily eating and drinking are judgment, chastening, condemnation, sickness, and death. But in this context, the thing that has him most worked up--the thing that seems to be the direct cause of these dire consequences because they're not examining and seeing what's wrong--is how some of the Christians are excluding others.

What then should we say about our present situation, where some are rushing to assemble at the chalice without attending to the needs of their weaker brothers--those who most need protection against the transmission of the virus? These latter could be:

those with less access to health care because of poverty;

the elderly, those with physical limitations or weaknesses that make them more susceptible, and their caregivers;

the essential workers who can't avoid putting themselves daily at risk of infection and don't want to spread it to others at church.

These "have-nots" of our current circumstances might look at bare-minimum protective measures and decide, however painfully, that they must sit outside and strain to hear through a window, or continue to seclude themselves at home and watch online. Meanwhile, the healthy, the courageous, the unencumbered, and those with access to adequate health care will gather inside without them. Perhaps some more restricted services will be arranged so they can show up occasionally, but then the church will be segregated into factions that already view things very differently and will now even worship in separate services.

We like to say that the Eucharist cannot be a disease vector, that it is the medicine of immortality. Personally, I'm not convinced that the two are mutually exclusive. But St. Paul clearly allows that by our failure to love others we could drink damnation, illness, and death to ourselves. I hate to consider whether we are risking such consequences by our current actions, but I wonder what he would say to us. And I wonder what the Corinthians might have said back then about how prioritizing the the things of God was their act of love for weaker brothers. After all, if we don't care about the body of Christ, what does it even mean that we are Christians?

[aion-rsa]

MST3K: Joel Hodgson Reveals the Secrets of the Gizmoplex, Teases “the Next Manos”

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

A few years ago, Mystery Science Theater 3000 made its grand return. Through an incredibly successful Kickstarter, they raised enough money and showed proof of enough fan interest to get the show back with a new season. Netflix acted as the home to the eleventh season with fourteen episodes and much fun was had by all. The Return also led to a series of live tours that kept going until COVID kicked in and they also did a Dark Horse comic spinoff.

Unfortunately, Netflix wasn’t so enthusiastic in the aftermath. The twelfth season only contained six episodes, emphasizing the challenge of binge-watching them. Then Netflix unceremoniously dumped the show. Well, at least we have the fourth season of GLOW to look forward to.

…oh, you bastards.

But now the MST3K team have a brand-new Kickstarter project, “Let’s Make More MST3K & and Build the Gizmoplex!” Yes, Joel Hodgson and friends are going the Bender route (minus the blackjack and hookers) of making their own streaming service of sorts specifically for MST3K viewing and checking out the brand-new episodes. The good news is that the initial goals were met, but the true, final goal is still a ways to go. They have until Friday night, May 7 to hit $5.5 million. If they meet that, there will be twelve episodes instead of the definite six.

Also cool is that while previous incarnations of MST3K have been based on mad scientists torturing one group of subjects at a time, the upcoming thirteenth season will feature two separate groups! Jonah will return with Baron Vaughn as Tom Servo and Hampton Yount as Crow for some episodes, but other episodes will feature the the cast from MST3K Live with Emily Marsh as Emily Crenshaw along with Conor McGiffen as Tom Servo and Nate Begle as Crow.

And if they reach the final stretch goal, Joel Robinson will come back into the theater for another round or two! Neat!

Speaking of Joel, I had the pleasure of speaking with series creator Joel Hodgson about the Kickstarter and the new episodes. Here’s what he had to say.

Den of Geek: So to start with, we have a new Kickstarter out there, “Make More MST3K.” This time, rather than shopping it around, the funding is based around building Gizmoplex, a streaming service. Can you give us a basic idea of what the Gizmoplex is all about?

Joel: Well, the idea of the Gizmoplex is a premiere theater. The Mads have built a Cineplex on the moon, and they’re prepping the make it a tourist attraction and screening movies there. And on the practical level, the way you access it is you can watch it on a lot of your different devices and on smart TVs and stuff like that. And there’s also a few features, like you can watch it with friends and chat. If you happen to buy episodes or bought episodes through the last Kickstarter, you can watch those there, too, kind of like your own locker or library with your shows in it.

Very nice. So since you’d be calling the shots this time, would you still restrict the episode length, or would you keep it uniform?

I think most the time we found that the sweet spot is the whole show should be about 90 minutes. We tend to cut the movies so they fit that. We don’t show them in their entirety, because sometimes these movies are poorly made.

Ha! I’ve caught on to that, yes.

Yeah. Right?

So last season you guys did “Ah-tor”/”A-tor”…I don’t know how to pronounce it, Ator the Fighting Eagle.

A-tor, yeah. Everybody says it different. I say “A-tor,” but a lot of people say “Ah-tor.”

Which was a huge deal, because it’s the prequel to what I consider to be the first true classic episode of MST3K, Cave Dwellers. Are there any other series you’d like to revisit? Any chance we might finally get some more Master Ninja out there?

We’re always looking for that. The tough thing with me with Master Ninja is that it’s made for TV. And so, the aspect ratio is… It doesn’t really give you that immersive academy aperture vibe. So I tend to want to do movies that are more wide screen. 4:3 to me is just so tough because everybody has these nice big TVs now and phones, so it doesn’t quite look right there. But we are experimenting and looking into trying something where we might be able to use a 4:3 in and change the aspect ratio, so it looks right.

Yeah, because one of my favorite sub-genres of Mystery Science Theater movies, I’m just fascinated by it, is just, whenever just two episodes of a TV show or a pilot or something are stitched together and they try and say it’s a movie. I always think those are just the weirdest experiments.

It’s true. And they are really interesting, and they are really super disjointed. I agree. They do have a unique profile, I think.

We have a movie we just screened that we’re trying to get, that I have to say is… We watched it, Matt and Cheryl and I, the other day, and it left us all really, really depressed. And we had ended the day, saying that’s a no-go on that movie. And then I thought about it, and I realized that we should probably do it. It might have components of that same kind of – oh man, what would you call it? It’s not like despair. It’s kind of like…a malaise, kind of the same way that a Manos: The Hands of Fate has this kind of malaise feeling to it. It was really weird, but I do think in some ways it could out-Manos, Manos.

I think Manos works because you get this really weird feeling as you watch it. You can’t tell if the filmmaker is really talented and is giving you this feeling of…almost like the air has gotten sucked out of the movie, and you wonder if they know what they’re doing or if it’s just a happy accident, that the movie gives you this really weird kind of feeling…

Yeah. Just kind of like a dread that goes through it. There’s just a dread feeling as you’re watching it mixed with wanting to take a shower.

Yeah, yeah. It’s really funny. You can’t tell if the filmmaker did that deliberately, or if it’s an accident, because there were things that work with that movie, where it was like they shot it with a specific type of camera that only could shoot 35 seconds of film at a time and then they did all the sound later. And by the time we got it, the print was really bad.

This new movie has those same kind of feelings that you can’t put your finger on, but it’s amazing in its own right. I had never seen this movie before. I never even heard of it before. But when we first watched it, we just said, “we can’t do this movie.” Then I realized that it would be really great if we could do it.

I’m very much looking forward to that one. So are we ever going to see any of the live touring shows in any form? I know it defeats the point and the purpose, but with 2020 and the whole pandemic screwing everything up, maybe we could get a little taste?

We’re looking into it on a couple of different levels, and we would really like do that. It’s really different, and it’s very ambitious to shoot a live show. We’re up for it, and we’d like to try it.

So to answer your question, I believe we’re planning on…I think the touring cast is going out once COVID is wrapped. We’re already planning another tour. We’re interested in recording those new ones, if possible.

With the comeback, the villain henchmen, the Boneheads, are based on the bad guys from Infra-Man. Has there been any plans or interest in covering that movie for the show at all?

I do love that movie. It’s actually a really good point. I’m going to look into that. I do love Infra-Man, and it would be really fun to do that. I mean, it kind of changed my life, man. I saw Infra-Man when I was… It was probably in the early ’80s at an art house cinema, and it was pretty amazing. I thought it was pretty great. And the idea of an ironic viewing and all that, that was when it dawned on me.

In fact, I’ll tell you something. When I was working on the idea of Kinga, the way I did it was I took the Dragon Queen from Infra-Man and I put Lucille Ball’s head on her in Photoshop. So that’s kind of was the beginning of Kinga. And then I thought that Felicia Day was probably the closest thing we have to Lucille Ball right now.

No disagreement here. One thing I’ve noticed with the MST3K resurgence over the past few years is that it seems like when you left the show, you decided to, I guess, distance yourself from it for a time, which is understandable. Since you’ve come back home, you’re now seeing all these Mike era episodes that you’ve never seen before. I know the other night you saw Hobgoblins for the first time, which was a treat to watch. What’s the experience been like? And are there any moments or movies that really stand out to you?

It’s really fun. I mean, I think that obviously it’s really fun to see one that I haven’t seen, and there are style things that are really different that they did after I left, that kind of in my mind, feels really foreign to me. So it always takes a little getting used to.

I’ll give you an example. The set is very disorienting to me, the way they lit it, because I think they actually lit the back of the set brighter than the characters. My thinking was always the set is the background plate and you want to light the characters. So that’s always really disorienting to me. It’s kind of shadowy, and the idea was… It’s just a style difference. Right? Nobody seems to notice, but that’s always a little disorienting for me is the way it’s lit, the whole segment.

Were there any movies that if you really wanted to do, but weren’t available for whatever reason, especially for the Netflix seasons?

It doesn’t work like that. We always start with lists of movies that are clearable. We don’t window shop and then tell the lawyers to go talk to other lawyers about clearing a movie, because that never works. So we just start with movies that are available and use that to create the aggregate of what we can go for.

The thankless job of the show is that you have to watch these movies over and over and over and over again. Are there any movies that just didn’t get old for you?

You’re kind of like an animator when you go through it, so it’s manageable. This one movie that I’m kind of billboard-ing as the next Manos, I’m not even sure I want one writing team to manage it, because I think it would bring a lot of despair. So I’m going to break it up between two or three writing groups. They’ll each manage a third of it, and they don’t have to watch the whole thing and be responsible for riffing on the whole thing. That one I’m really concerned about, and I’m going to make it as a challenge, and I’m going to bring it in when everybody’s got their chops. I mean, it’ll probably be the last movie we write for this series just because I want everybody to feel really comfortable and confident that they can get through it.

I was a big fan of the Dark Horse comic series you guys were involved in. Are there any other special projects cooking or that you’re interested in trying down the line?

Joel: The Gizmoplex is fascinating because it is really limitless, the kind of content we can make for it. And the nice thing is we can do events around specific movies. It’s really wide open, and I’m looking forward to that. It could be a vehicle for a lot of our ideas and a lot of the things we want to do.

I mean, one of the things I’d like to do… We experimented a little bit. We did this with the men and women from Critical Role. We did a night where we read the comic book and it was projected on a big screen in a club. We did it at a comedy club in LA, and it worked really great. So I think it’s very likely for us to do more things like that. If we wanted to, we could do the whole comic book series, and break it up, so it’s 20-minute installments that happen before a feature, or a classic episode, et cetera.

***********

In the meantime, as we get closer to the Kickstarter deadline, the MST3K crew are hosting a series of live events online. Most of them are commentary while they watch classic episodes. Here’s what’s going on, leading to the big finale.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post MST3K: Joel Hodgson Reveals the Secrets of the Gizmoplex, Teases “the Next Manos” appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ucxwpD

[wineanddinosaur]

How NYC Bartenders Are Building Pandemic-Proof Businesses

The days of sidling up to a bar in New York may feel like distant memories. But bartenders and business owners are fighting to bring them back by building imaginative solutions for the beverages, and the hospitality, that have been in such deficit over the past 11 months.

Some of these intrepid ideas involve new ventures and virtual bar experiences, while others pivot from traditional bar service entirely. One upstart is resurrecting an ancient technique to sell shelf-stable libations to-go. Another sees safety — in the form of rapid tests for Covid-19 at the venue entrance — as the new luxury.

In every story told here, there is resilience and a reimagined future. Here’s how a handful of NYC’s bar owners, workers, and newly minted entrepreneurs are attempting to survive and succeed in this pandemic.

Speakeasies Out on the Street

When Raines Law Room opened in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, it was the perfect example of the speakeasy style that many cocktail bars were emulating in 2009 — unmarked, hard-to-find door, tin ceiling, the works. With no standing room allowed, it was not easy to get in, which was the icing on the exclusive, hidden bar cake. These are not the sorts of places that thrive with indoor seating restrictions.

“Something that’s unique to all these frontline industries — and I hate to put us in the same category as health care, but we’re also some of the most affected — it’s like, ‘Come up with genius ideas while you’re kind of broke and uninsured!’” Meaghan Dorman, bar director of both Raines Law Room and Dear Irving, says. But bar people are immensely resilient, so Dorman opened up the bar’s intimate backyard and worked to obtain a bike lane permit in order to seat even more guests out front, in plain sight.

Though Dorman never thought she’d see a concept like Raines Law Room with a patio, it’s an increasingly common phenomenon in the streets of NYC. Even Attaboy, another infamous and elusive bar of New York, is now serving cocktails right out in the open on Eldridge Street.

“We’ve just really had to rethink how we can translate our philosophy into the only business we’re allowed to do right now,” Dorman says. For all of her bars, this entails not only in-person service, but a focus on to-go cocktails and virtual class offerings as well.

Paying for Safety is the New Luxury

In order to enter City Winery’s flagship location at Pier 57 in Hudson River Park on the West Side of Manhattan, both guests and employees alike are required to take a rapid Covid-19 test.* On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, patrons are responsible for the cost of a $50 test — a fee whose full amount goes directly to the testing company — and can spend their 15-minute wait for the results sipping on complimentary bubbles. Those who test positive for Covid-19 are sent home after being offered a follow-up PCR test with 24-hour turnaround, but they are not permitted inside. A negative result is rewarded with entrance to the restaurant, where all other safety protocols, such as social distancing and mask-wearing, are still enforced.

Michael Dorf, founder and CEO of City Winery, believes that offering tests at the door is “not just a scientific and social responsibility to keep people safe,” but an example of an expanding definition of hospitality. By ensuring that everybody inside what he refers to as “the bubble” has acquired a negative test result, City Winery is able to add another layer of comfort to the hospitality his restaurant venue provides. “And at some point in the not-too-distant future, we’re going to start to see [the need] to check people’s certificate of vaccination,” he says imaginatively.

Dorf believes there are “a lot of psychological considerations” to take into account to make guests feel as safe as possible, “and that’s our job,” he says. “Just like providing good bathrooms, we need to provide a good, comfortable situation for consumption. If people don’t feel safe, then they’re not going to come.”

Since City Winery is usually also a live-music venue, Dorf foresees thorough safety measures carried over for concerts when gathering restrictions are lessened. Until City Winery can host shows with an all-inclusive, test-and-ticket price for revelers, it is offering virtual concerts through its CWTV exclusive streaming series. Dorf says he is open to using it as an incremental offering for audiences who are unable to attend live because of logistics, “but we don’t see that at all in any way as a substitute.” As with its virtual wine tastings, he sees this more as a temporary bridge to connect people in a very solitary time, but also feels pushback on virtual gathering “because there’s so much of it,” he says. “And what we do really well, which doesn’t work in a Covid world … is bring people together.”

The Rise of the Salon

“My apartment, a brownstone with a large parlor, fireplace, and view of the Chrysler Building was my metropolitan dream. I was gutted at the thought of having to leave it,” recalls Georgette Moger-Petraske, a freelance food and drinks travel writer who lost her work last March. When her roommate moved out around the same time, keeping the apartment didn’t seem likely. Then she stumbled upon an 1860s perfume counter from Louisiana in an antique store during a day trip upstate. “I fell hard at first sight,” Moger-Petraske says of the beautiful bar-like structure. “Taking into consideration how much everyone was really missing bars and restaurants and attempting being home bartenders, I hatched a plan.”

The plan was to teach the fundamentals of classic cocktails like the simple yet elegant ones served at the storied speakeasy Milk & Honey, which was arguably the first of its kind in New York City to gain rabid popularity in the early aughts. Late owner Sasha Petraske and Moger-Petraske’s book, “Regarding Cocktails,” is filled with recipes for the at-home bartender and a fitting touchstone for any class. And so, with a little help from a PPP loan and a friend on the North Fork of Long Island with the Yennecott oyster farm, “Regarding Oysters” was born.

Moger-Petraske’s unique salon brings small groups into a Covid-safe learning space. During a two-hour session, guests are welcomed into her Murray Hill apartment with hand sanitizer and temperature checks before being treated to a class in cocktail-making and oyster-shucking at the little antique bar that had caught her eye so many months ago. “The salons are very intimate and there’s always a celebratory feeling in the air,” Moger-Petraske says of her small, reservations-only classes that will gather in honor of birthdays, engagements, and date nights.

Between the roaring fire, crystal clear Hundredweight ice cubes, and vintage barware that she has collected over the years, Moger-Petraske is able to present the feel of a curated bar to her students. The essence of hospitality is palpable. “Our favorite NYC dining rooms and bars put just as much consideration and passion into their establishments,” she says. “From the fold of a napkin to the charm of a miniature salt boat, the clarity of the cube chilling your Penicillin, to the delicate Depression-era coupe your Water Lily is served in. It’s my hope that in the absence of our beloved bars that my guests feel inspired to create some of this magic in their own homes.”

Your Friendly Neighborhood Grocer

St. John Frizell, owner of Fort Defiance in Red Hook, Brooklyn, tried to make his restaurant function as a delivery and takeout business for a short while back when nobody knew how long the shutdowns would last. Since sending out quality meals in to-go boxes is no simple feat and can require menu changes and more, “it was a question of how much investment,” says Frizell.

“Is this the best way to invest the money that I have left? And I decided it was not, so we closed the restaurant in late March,” Frizell explains. Not long after, he reached out to family-owned organic farm co-op Lancaster Farm Fresh to see about obtaining some of its CSA boxes. He found that enough people in town were interested in claiming one of their own to set up an online store on Fort Defiance’s website. Getting a box of beautiful vegetables through contactless pickup outside the closed restaurant was a popular notion in a time when nobody knew how Covid was transmitted and the supermarket was to be avoided. Business grew and soon people began asking for other items. “And I wanted other things too, like, cheese and milk, and eggs, and bread, and just started to build from there,” Frizell says.

It was decided then that the change for Fort Defiance was going to have to be permanent, not just a temporary closure until things got back to normal for restaurants. “That was an important decision because you can’t really ride two horses at the same time,” says Frizell. “You have to make a decision and just go for it with your whole heart.” The new iteration of Fort Defiance as a general store has since gotten into the mail-order and holiday catering business as he and his steadfast team roll with the punches of what their neighbors in Red Hook might need.

“I don’t want this to come off as corny, but [what] we went through, you have to ask, ‘How can I help?’ Like, ‘How can I be of service here?’” Much like when Hurricane Sandy flooded Fort Defiance and most of the neighborhood in 2012, “we were all kind of in the same boat as we are now. We all had problems, but we were all very ready to help each other at the same time,” Frizell recalls of his community.

As another way to reach out, he started a newsletter called The Fort Defiance Gazette with announcements of new items in the store, promotions, and more. “It’s also filled with the same kind of bullshit I would talk to people about across the bar. They’re still getting the content from me, whether they like it or not,” Frizell laughs. “But it’s another way to connect, and then people email me back all the time. So there’s this dialogue happening, it’s just happening in a different space.”

Room-Temp and Ready To-Go

“Our business really came about as we were watching our industry fall apart around us and feeling really sad and helpless about that,” says Blake Walker, co-founder of drinks delivery service Day and Night Cocktails. He and fellow Amor y Amargo alum Sean Johnson mitigated grief with conversations about possibilities for projects, contemplating styles of cocktail to best suit a pandemic hellscape. They settled on the “Scaffa” — a room-temperature and undiluted mixture of spirits found in Jerry Thomas’s 1860s “The Bartender’s Guide.” Recently appearing on menus at bars like Amor y Amargo and the late Pegu Club, the Scaffa also boasts the at-home allure of being shelf-stable, so it won’t take up space in the refrigerator.

Unlike many to-go models that can arrive alongside complicated instructions, Day and Night’s drinks are poured from their bottles without fuss. “What you get is exactly the way we would serve it to you if you were sitting across the bar from us,” Walker explains. Each menu features a fresh, bright “Day” cocktail alongside a deeper, richer “Night” mixture. For those not sold on the warm drink concept, think of cold as a flavor inhibitor and know that the professionals have layered some very indulgent ones in there.

Refreshingly, Day and Night isn’t only about the drinks — like bartending, it’s about taking care of people. “We decided right off the bat that we’d do a donation for each sale to an organization called Bushwick Ayuda Mutua, which is a mutual aid organization in Bushwick that I was volunteering for,” says Walker. After the murder of George Floyd, all profits for the month of June went to the Movement for Black Lives. Because of the smaller scale of the venture, Walker is also able to have an encounter with every customer. “I don’t take that for granted at all,” he says. “Having that personal interaction [is] the closest that I can get to the across-the-bar experience that I’ve missed so much about my job as it was a year ago.”

By the time Walker and Johnson’s workplace reopened to tackle outdoor dining, they already had their own regulars at what was becoming more than just a side hustle. “It made us turn towards Day and Night as a potential alternative because, at least for us, the experience of going back to work was not pleasant.” Less money for more effort with the added bonus risk of catching a deadly virus is a hard sell.

Instead, Walker started working full time on Day and Night Cocktails in December, quickly finding a way to make it a fully legal enterprise. He can now pursue an LLC and, with that, the potential of permanence. “We also are open to the possibility that this is meant to be a to-go concept,” Walker says. “It’s impossible to know exactly what drinking culture is going to look like on the other end of this, and I think that there may be some kind of a liminal time where both the to-go and physical bar spaces coexist.”

The Future

Are all of these innovations and modifications to the classic bar experience worth it if they don’t somehow improve the way hospitality workers are treated or protected?

For Day and Night Cocktails, the commitment to supporting good causes extends to its own hurting community. “Something that remains incredibly important to us is that whatever our participation is with this industry, on the other side of Covid, we just want to make sure that we’re working towards an industry that takes care of its own better,” Walker says. “We want to be a part of that rebuilding process.”

The real pain of newly vacant real estate where beloved bars once were is hard to ignore and important to acknowledge. There will be more empty storefronts as time trundles on, with plenty of talent waiting in the wings to fill them with new concepts. “It’s going to be a really opportunistic time,” Walker observes. Hopefully, the entrepreneurs jumping at these opportunities will have more than just profit in mind.

“Our guests need to understand that we’re not expendable and disposable, and our government needs to know that, too,” says Walker. “We need to remind each other all the time that our work is important and valuable and we shouldn’t be [a] disposable commodity that’s part of this gajillion-dollar industry. We have to do a little bit better [of a] job taking care of each other.”

As creative as bartenders are getting with side gigs and business-wide pivots, many want to get back to the bar as much as patrons do. “It’s all just so antithetical to what we love to do that I just can’t wait to serve someone at the bar again,” Dorman says longingly.

Despite everything, I do detect enthusiasm when speaking with these hospitality professionals about what the future holds for bars. I want to believe that fantastic transformations lie ahead, because perhaps it’s not a return to “normal” that we should crave, but a hope for an evolution. Dorman gets it right when she says, “It feels like the music has definitely changed at our party or something.” Here’s hoping for a better playlist on the horizon.

*At the time of publishing, City Winery is temporarily closed.

The article How NYC Bartenders Are Building Pandemic-Proof Businesses appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/post-covid-bars-nyc/

[multipleservicelisting]

The tourists who believe travel restrictions don’t apply to them

(CNN) — As pandemic quarantines go, this might be the best: sprawling on a hotel balcony overlooking azure Caribbean waters as you bake gently in the sun.

But it isn’t enough for some.

The past month has seen a slew of high-profile cases of tourists getting in trouble for breaking the rules while on a sun-and-sand vacation.

In December, Skylar Mack, an American student, was jailed for two months when she flew to the Cayman Islands and, instead of quarantining for two weeks at her hotel as the law obliged her to do, popped out two days later to attend a jet ski competition in which her boyfriend was competing.

In January, former British beauty queen and model Zara Holland and her boyfriend Elliott Love quarantined at her four-star hotel in Barbados for the required five days, before taking a second PCR test, as is required for travelers from high risk countries. So far, so good — except that when Love’s second test came back positive, rather than face further quarantine, the couple made a dash to the airport to try and catch a flight home.

Then there was the British couple, again in Barbados, who tried to spice up self-isolation by inviting a local resident over for sex (she was caught climbing over the hotel fence), and the Jamaican tourist who popped out of his hotel quarantine for a soft drink — and has ended up doing jail time.

Staying put in the sun seems like the easiest thing anyone’s been asked to do so far in the pandemic — so why are people breaking the rules?

‘Switching off’

Countries around the world have implemented travel restrictions. Shown here: a testing center in Rome.

Antonio Masiello/Getty Images Europe/Getty Images

“Whenever people are presented with an extremely frightening scenario, previous research has shown that they switch off,” says clinical psychologist Bhavna Jani-Negandhi, who believes that health warnings should be at an “optimal level for people to take notice.”

In the case of, say, the harmful effects of smoking, warnings can be tailored up or down, to increase the chance of people taking note. But with regulations that need to be kept at a certain level to protect the local population, it’s not possible to beat about the bush.

In the pandemic, says Jani-Negandhi, “facts cannot be tailored. It seems that some people are behaving in a manner that would suggest they are switching off to the facts — believing that it will not happen to them and that only the most vulnerable are at risk.”

What’s more, according to one travel industry expert, the lack of coherency on travel restrictions across the globe doesn’t help.

“There’s no consistency, and travelers are being badly misled by the fact that there are no global rules,” says Paul Charles, Virgin Atlantic’s former director of communications who now runs his own PR consultancy, The PC Agency, and has become something of a thorn in the UK government’s side over its regular flip-flopping of travel regulations.

Charles has a vested interest in getting the travel industry back up and running, of course; but he believes a global approach, led by the G20 countries, would be the ideal way forward.

He says that a “global consistent testing program, so that everybody could be tested on departure with high-quality results within 30 minutes” would transform the way we are currently traveling (or not).

However, in the meantime, he says, any restrictions have to be enforced for travelers to behave them.

“I think the rules have to be fully supported by law — in a pandemic, you have to have strict enforcement so you achieve the outcome of lower infection rates and lower deaths,” he says.

“That’s perhaps been one of the issues — governments haven’t backed up tougher rules with tougher enforcement. Economies around the world are being ruined because people are breaking the law, meaning tougher measures are being put in place for longer.”

‘It only takes one uncaring person’

Skylar Mack was jailed when she broke her 14-day quarantine, two days in

Courtesy Jeanne Mack

Strict enforcement is exactly what the Cayman Islands are going for. As far back as January 2020, “We began planning and preparing for what we expected to be the eventual arrival of the virus on our shores,” says Roy Tatum, Head of the Office of the Premier, Alden McLaughlin.

Early measures included bans on travel from affected countries, and additional screening of arrivals. But despite precautions, the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed in March. In response, the islands closed their borders and implemented a 14-day quarantine in government-controlled facilities for anyone entering the country, as well as implementing lockdowns and curfews, closing schools, and restricting access to care homes, hospitals, prisons and breaches.

The result? As of January 10, just 359 cases and two deaths during the entire pandemic.

“We have sacrificed much since the initial lockdown at the end of March, which has helped eliminate the virus within our local community,” says Tatum. “Today, people are able to live somewhat normal lives and many businesses have been able to open.

“The only way the virus is able to reinfect our community is if it arrives on our shores from the outside.”

But since “hundreds” of residents were prosecuted and fined for breaking the initial lockdown, there have been just seven potential quarantine breaches investigated, two of which have gone to court.

Skylar Mack was visiting her boyfriend, Vanjae Ramgeet, a Cayman Islands resident, when she fell foul of the law in November.

Allowed in as the partner of a resident, she should have quarantined for two weeks.

Instead, after just two days, she removed the tracking device that was making sure she stayed in one place, and joined her boyfriend at his jet ski event.

When police caught up with her, she was found to be not wearing a mask, and not social distancing.

Her initial sentence of four months in jail was halved on appeal in December. Ramgeet received an equal sentence.

But despite protestations from her family, who appealed to US President Donald Trump for help, and received a supportive tweet from his son, Eric, the authorities of the Cayman Islands — a self-governing British Overseas Territory — have not backed down.

“Should Covid-19 become widespread in our small community it would be potentially devastating,” says Tatum.

“We are talking about a disease that has the ability to kill people and destroy an economy. That the reason why anyone who deliberately flouts the important public health laws and regulations of our Islands that are in place to protect the wider population, should be subject to strict penalties.

“There also needs to be a deterrent to ensure people understand the seriousness of the virus and the importance of the public health law and regulations.

“It only takes one careless, uncaring person to move about our community to create serious health issues, including potential death by restarting community transmission.

“We have a small population and a close community that still treasures and respects our elders, who, as we all know, are very high risk.

“In addition, if the Cayman Islands had to go back into a lockdown situation, the effect on our local economy, and the impact on our children, elderly and indeed the broader population, would be considerable.”

‘You must be held accountable’

Barbados is allowing tourism, but travelers must quarantine on arrival.

Shutterstock

So far this year, it’s Barbados that has hit the headlines for tourists behaving badly, as they flock to the Caribbean. Many of thse traditional alternative winter sun destinations are out of bounds due to closed borders, which perhaps explains the slew of offenders descending on the region.

When Elliott Love, ensconced in the plush beachside Sugar Bay hotel, tested positive, he and girlfriend Zara Holland cut off their quarantine wristbands and checked out.

They caught a taxi to the airport and attempted to board a plane for the nine-hour flight back to the UK, knowing that the new UK variant is thought to be up to 70% more transmissible.

They were arrested as they went through security on December 29. Holland was given a $12,000 (US$5,900) fine, instead of a nine-month prison sentence, and was bailed for an undisclosed amount. Love — who was tried several days later, when he was no longer testing positive for the virus — was fined $8,000 ($4,000).

Neither Holland or the couple’s lawyer responded to a request for comment.

But they’re not the only tourists behaving badly in Barbados. On January 1, Swiss national Ismail Elbagli was fined $6,000 (US$3,000) when he left the hotel where he was quarantining, having tested positive.

Elbagli argued that his wife had received a call confirming a negative test that morning, and assumed it covered both of them. His fine was reduced from $8,000 in light of the circumstances.

In reaction to social media outcry that white tourists were being fined, while the only Black rule-breaker was jailed, Chief Magistrate Ian Weekes told the court that prison terms were a last resort, if paying a fine was not an option.

Neither the Barbados tourist board nor the government were available to comment on the restrictions.

However, Acting Chief Medical Officer Dr Kenneth George has laid the blame for the island’s increasing case numbers partially at the door of rule-breaking tourists.

And in a video posted to Facebook shortly before Holland’s trial, Prime Minister Mia Mottley said: “We are very clear that on those persons who are visiting us, and to the extent that anyone is breaching our protocols, the government of Barbados through the Covid Monitoring Unit will take the necessary action for any visitors.

“We believe that by far the majority of them are compliant, but the handful who have chosen to ignore our mores, ignore our customs, ignore our laws and guidelines… you must be held accountable.”

Why one traveler broke the rules

One traveler broke the UK lockdown to travel to Venice in June.

Andrea Pattaro/AFP/Getty Images

So what’s going on in the heads of people when they break the law when traveling?

For one rule-breaker, it was merely the idea of seeing how far they could go.

The UK resident, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of losing his job, told CNN he traveled from London to Venice for a vacation in June while the UK was still in lockdown and all but essential travel was banned.

“It was at the end, when lockdown was about to be lifted, and the news was saying how people are booking holidays and everything was getting booked up. I thought, I want to travel, but not with the crowds — when it’s still quiet,” he says.

“I’d seen images of famous landmarks being empty, so it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”

At the time, Italy was allowing travelers from the UK, so he was breaking no rules on arrival, even though he was on departure. “I didn’t see it as breaking the rules too much — I was thinking for myself, basically,” he says.

“Italy was more safe at that point than the UK, so by going, Italy was more at risk — but they were the ones with the open borders.”

He flew via Dublin, which was locked down at the time, but allowing transit passengers.

“But I had a couple of hours between flights and out of curiosity wanted to test what happened,” he says.

So instead of staying in the airport, as he was obliged to do, he went outside — and nobody stopped him.

“I was looking for a bus to the city center to see if there was time to get a Guinness. But there was no shuttle, and with nothing running I didn’t want to spend too much money on Ubers.”

The UK traveler doesn’t see his infractions in the same light as those travelers to the Caribbean who he calls “bad” and “irresponsible.”

But he says that one thing that made him feel comfortable with traveling when he shouldn’t, was seeing footage of travelers arriving in the UK at the start of lockdown. The UK never closed its borders (and has only recently stopped arrivals from countries exposed to the new South African variant); but when Passenger Locator Forms and then quarantine were introduced, travelers were filmed arriving, clearly unaware of the restrictions.

“That’s why I felt pretty safe [breaking the rules],” he says.

He also says that on return to the UK’s Stansted airport, he was not asked for his Passenger Locator Form, or told to quarantine for 14 days, as he was obliged to do at that point. He did do so, though says that a couple of days afterward, quarantine restrictions were lifted so he ventured out.

Psychologist Bhavna Jani-Negandhi says his behavior is understandable.

“When people see others break the rules, then they could wonder why different rules apply and they might try getting away with it,” she says.

But for some, arriving in countries where the travel restrictions are enforced by the law may come as a sharp surprise.

from Multiple Service Listing https://ift.tt/3nIuzJe

[lodelss]

Three Missouri Voters Explain Why Everyone Should be Able to Vote by Mail in 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way the world operates, but as the presidential election approaches, many states have failed to respond when it comes to voting. The safest way to vote during the pandemic is to vote by mail, but state restrictions block many voters from doing so. The ACLU has sued 10 states for restricting access, including Missouri, where the state legislature just voted to expand access in 2020. While the Missouri legislature win was a major step toward progress, the state is still restricting access by requiring most voters to notarize their mail-in ballots — which means they have to violate social distancing recommendations to vote by mail.  The ACLU is fighting the notarization requirement on behalf of voters like Cecil Wattree and Javier Del Villar — two Missourians who joined the original lawsuit because they wanted to exercise their right to vote by mail. Cecil, Javier, and fellow Missouri voter Kamisha Webb shared their stories with the ACLU to show why voting by mail should be accessible — and safe  — for all. 

Vote by mail to protect Kamisha

For Kansas City resident Kamisha Webb, going to the polls could put her life in jeopardy. Kamisha has asthma and a condition called hereditary angioedema, which requires her to use a nebulizer machine, various medications, and biweekly injections to manage her health. A cold or flu could land her in the ICU. Contracting COVID-19 could be fatal. Kamisha is doing everything she can to be safe. She stays at home on paid leave from her job because teleworking isn’t an option. She talks to her grandmother virtually, despite wanting to see her in person. But she’s worried she may not be able to take similar safety precautions when it comes to voting. 

“I feel like I have to choose whether to exercise my right to vote, or risk putting my life on the line,” she tells the ACLU. “And no one should have to mix the two, ever.”

Kamisha first learned about absentee voting when she overheard people signing up at a polling place during the 2018 midterm election. She learned that it was an option for people who are sick, for example, or have a disability that hinders their ability to vote in person. 

“I just thought, wow, that’s so cool to have a process in place for individuals to still vote if they’re not able to physically go to the polls,” Kamisha tells the ACLU. “It would be wonderful if we could take that same idea and make an exception due to COVID-19. Whether or not someone has a health condition, we have a deadly virus on the loose. We should all have the right to not only vote, but to be safe in doing that.”

People of color will likely be harmed most by restricting access to voting by mail. Voter suppression efforts already target people of color nationwide, and COVID-19 disproportionately affects people of color, particularly the Black community, to which Kamisha belongs. She attributes this to the prevalence of underlying health conditions, lack of access to health care and insurance, and discrimination in medical care. On the higher death rates in the Black community, Kamisha is “saddened, but not surprised.” Kamisha joined the Missouri lawsuit not only because she is at risk, but because she believes everybody should be able to vote by mail during the pandemic. If the court rules in her favor, she says she will be overcome with joy: “I’m kind of filled with emotion just thinking about it.”

Vote by mail to protect Cecil’s daughter

By the time she turned eight, Cecil Wattree’s daughter, Allyn, had gone through open heart surgery, multiple strokes, was placed on a ventilator, and was on a waiting list for a heart transplant — among other ailments and surgeries resulting from her being born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome.  “It’s a gift of God that she recovered to the point where she is able to function,” says Cecil. “But it still leaves her immunocompromised when it comes to her lungs and her heart.” That makes Allyn high risk to COVID-19. When the ACLU sued Missouri, he joined the lawsuit, explaining, “I’m in a unique position to be able to advocate for my daughter.” Cecil constantly worries about exposing his daughter to the virus, especially because he still has to go to work at a primary care clinic. The clinic has taken precautionary measures, and Cecil is being “super hyper vigilant” at home because of his daughter.  “When I come home, I have to pretty much take all my clothes off in the garage or the cellar and then run into the bathroom and take a shower before I even see Allyn,” says Cecil. “Even after that, it’s a struggle to be safe when you have a highly affectionate eight year old who wants to be in your arms. I always worry that I might have encountered the virus in some way.”

It doesn’t help that as a Black man, Cecil has to navigate a world where his race directly impacts his ability to stay safe. He thinks twice about visiting a store wearing a mask in a white neighborhood. And he’s seen discrimination in medical care firsthand with his own daughter: “When Allyn had a stroke, the doctors didn’t believe she had one, even though she showed symptoms. I had to advocate so hard just to get them to look at her and give her a CT scan.”  He worries about what this means when it comes to COVID-19, which has symptoms similar to the flu or cold: “How am I going to get them to take it seriously?”

Cecil wants to be as safe as possible and vote absentee in November — but having a vulnerable daughter, being Black, and being an essential worker doesn’t make you eligible in Missouri.  “A lot of people have fought and died for my ability to vote,” says Cecil on why voting is so important to him. “Being able to vote by mail would give me a sense of protection while also ensuring that I can exercise my right to have a say in the direction this country’s going.” No matter the outcome of the lawsuit, however, Cecil knows he’s privileged to have the option to vote in person when it comes down to the wire. “There are people who have no availability, no transportation, whose health is already compromised. To tell them to social distance while not allowing their voices to be heard is to take advantage of the current situation to suppress voters.”

Vote by mail to protect Javier’s community

As a 29 year old without pre-existing medical conditions, Javier is not considered by the CDC to be high risk to COVID-19. But Javier works for the national delivery service, making him an essential worker who comes into contact with the whole community on a daily basis.  “In delivery, I feel like I’m helping people get what they need, because we do a lot of medical supply deliveries,” says Javier. “So it feels good. At the same time, it feels uncomfortable just knowing that the people receiving those deliveries are often out of work, while I am working.” While millions of people have lost their jobs in the past few months, Javier’s work has gotten even busier, with longer hours and more packages delivered each day. He calls it “Christmas volume.” Due to stay-at-home orders in the community, he’s also encountering more people when he delivers packages to their homes. Often, they want to come out and talk to him. “You really get the vibe that people just want to talk and see someone and interact,” he says.  He’s noticed a range in responses to COVID-19 safety measures in the people he encounters. “Some customers wave through their window and then will come out with a bleach bottle and spray down the package I just left at their door. Parents will yell at their kids to not touch the package if they come running out. And then there are some people who will just pick up the package and take it inside like it’s any other day. Everyone’s handling it differently.”

Javier can’t control what others do, but he takes his own precautions like wearing latex gloves while working, even though it’s not required by his job. When a customer wants to chat, he tries to keep his distance. If he comes down with symptoms similar to COVID-19, like he did in March, he stays home. Javier does what he can to stay safe in all areas of his life, so he wants to do the same when it’s time to vote in November. 

He knew voting by mail would be the safest way to vote during the pandemic, but he was surprised to find out how restrictive Missouri’s absentee voting criteria are. He says it’s a concern for the people he encounters on his delivery route, too.  “I’ve talked to a good amount of people about it within the last two weeks,” he explains. He thinks that people will be more likely to vote if they can do it from home with an absentee ballot — especially considering the pandemic.  “Voting is a basic, fundamental part of a democracy and it needs to be viewed more as a celebration and an essential part of every American’s duty if you will, to vote or not vote, but it still should be looked at as like a national holiday.”   “I picture Missouri at the forefront of changing ideology in the United States,” says Javier. “If we’re able to do something progressive in Missouri, I think the rest of the country would be able to see that as a positive thing.”

The stories of Kamisha, Cecil, and Javier show why voting by mail is a necessary option for everyone, regardless of their circumstances. There have been bipartisan efforts to expand access to vote by mail in states including Alabama, Indiana, New Hampshire, New York, and West Virginia. States should take additional measures, such as expanding early vote periods, preparing for a surge in absentee ballots, and doing away with unnecessary requirements like getting a witness signature or having to pay for postage. At the same time, states must ensure safety for those who choose to vote in person as well as poll workers. Nobody should have to risk their health to vote. 

For information on how to vote by mail, see the absentee voting guide. 

Published June 8, 2020 at 10:12PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/3f5BUi6

[essaycompetiton891]

buy college papers

About me

What Your Paper Should Look Like

What Your Paper Should Look Like Some legal students argue they permit universities to “decrease their obligation” to make sure a secure setting. College college students everywhere are being asked to shoulder a number of the accountability for stopping the spread of covid-19. Last however not least, do NOT forget to take breaks and maintain your sleeping schedule regular. Taking time to rest is extraordinarily necessary to school success. Modern services, seamless systems, and progressive labs and areas empower our college and college students to conduct chopping-edge research. Research tasks, designed and led by Khoury College’s world-class school, engage college students and different researchers in producing new information. Find quotes and analysis papers from consultants on sites similar to Google Scholar or Digital Dissertations. Weaving in bits of information and block quotes can bolster your argument and fill out your paper much more. But in the grand scheme of issues he doesn’t mind, and he wasn’t bothered by the acknowledgment or with the restrictions, or with Bonner’s warning to students. He stated it felt like a “privilege” to be on campus in any respect — he didn’t need it to be taken away. The strict guidelines aren't any shock to Casey Collins, 18, a finance scholar whose freshman 12 months is by no means like he would have imagined. Most of the stories about “covid issues,” Bonner stated, are coming from different students, members of the community or employees in residence halls. Search for longer synonyms for words and phrases that fluff out your paper much more. Once you have your base paper, use Internet sources to your profit. Make sure each paragraph has a topic sentence, supporting proof, and a concluding/transition sentence. Khoury College is proud of our collaborative, inclusive neighborhood. Every day we attempt to create programs that welcome diverse college students into CS. It helps your mind restore it’s pondering processes and talents, which leads to better productivity. All of the information talked about above are value attempting and definitely will assist, but none of them will work when you don’t give your brain a rest. Remove something that will trigger your thoughts to wander. Put away your electronic units and lists of issues to do. Sit away from your TV, telephone, or other issues you possibly can watch. If you might be using the Internet for research, place a block on social media websites for a particular time to stop the temptation of what your friends are doing. Clearing away potential distractions can ensure you stay targeted on getting your paper done. Make the thesaurus your finest friend while you write. While the acknowledgment is required to return to campus, Zwick stated college students are not waiving any of their rights. “I assume college students are caught unawares because they’re not used to pondering they need to discount over each entry to university infrastructure,” Feldman said. But in a college setting, the agreements could be off-placing to students. Many institutions have already cracked down on college students flouting social distance rules, attending parties or violating no-visitor insurance policies. And at Pitt and other universities, the burden began early with the “acknowledgement of danger” type. “We’ve been communicating our expectations all summer to students,” Pitt Dean Kenyon Bonner stated throughout a Monday news convention.

[aion-rsa]

The Challenges of Creating Power Rangers Dino Fury

https://ift.tt/3a3NwmS

The current season of Power Rangers isn’t done yet but fans are already looking to the future more so than usual. Why is that? It’s the 28th season of Power Rangers so it’s not an anniversary. The theme of the season is dinosaurs, which is a nice connection to the past, but not one that builds this much anticipation from hardcore fans.

The excitement actually comes from behind the scenes. Dino Fury has a new executive producer, Simon Bennett. Joining long time producer Chip Lynn, fans are eager to see what Bennett will bring to the table and how he may or may not change the formula of the long running franchise. Not only that but Bennett is shepherding the show as news of a new live-action movie, “non-kid” TV show, and animation are on the horizon. Will Dino Fury be a part of this new rebooted Power Rangers universe?

Bennett sat down with us over Zoom to discuss this, the unique casting process of the season amid COVID-19, gender flipping one of the Rangers from the Sentai, and much more!

DEN OF GEEK: You’ve been directing on the show for four years and now you’re an executive producer. How have you taken the lessons you learned as a director on the show and applied them to your new role as the executive producer?

SIMON BENNETT: I think having directed four seasons means that I understand how the jigsaw puzzle that is Power Rangers works. When I first came on board as a director, it was mindbogglingly difficult.

All the component pieces, how it all fits together, Japanese footage, second unit, main unit, stunts, action, who does what. Any one scene might be broken into three or four parts to different people who manage different aspects of their scene. Working out how they all fit together and communicating with all the various people who are responsible for all the various pieces, is a challenge as a director.

What I’m doing now as showrunner, it’s the same challenge, but writ large, because my purview also encompasses writing the stories, and at the other end of the shoot, post production, visual effects, music, all those elements. I’ve done this before on other shows and I really enjoy having that creative overview.

With Power Rangers, it is so complex and big, the machine, that it’s never dull. I’m constantly occupied from the moment I wake up, to the moment I go to sleep I’ve got questions coming at me about this bit of that episode, or that bit of this episode. I’m rushing into visual effects to approve a shot, or into writing to solve a question, or talking to the directors, or I’m on set helping out maybe with a performance scene that second unit find themselves directing.

So I’ve done a bit of directing on Dino Fury as well, which keeps my hand in. It’s incredibly busy and a lot of fun because at the heart of Power Rangers there’s a kind of joy, because the material is light, it’s silly, it’s fun, and it’s exciting. It brings out the inner kid in everyone working on it. Which is one of the things that makes it a pleasure to work on.

Are there any new focuses behind the scenes to keep all things consistent behind the scenes?

I can’t go into details, but I can say that a lot of thought has gone into the new season, and it is certainly a development that I think will excite and intrigue and hopefully delight the fans when they see it.

Many of the cast members of Dino Fury have significant social media followings. Was that intentional as part of the casting process or just a happy coincidence?

I think it’s a happy coincidence. We cast the people who have the skills necessary for the roles. We didn’t cast people because of their social media following. So I think that is a happy coincidence.

We’re well into the shoot now. We’re about to break for Christmas in a couple of weeks time. And I have seen, I think it’s safe to say, I have seen eight completed episodes, and I’m very, very excited with how it’s going. I think the cast is fantastic.

The decision was made to gender swap one of the Rangers from the Sentai, which hasn’t been done since the early 2000s. Were you a part of that decision or do you know why it happened finally?

I was part of that decision, and it was really about diversity. It was really about wanting the cast of the show to represent a little bit more of a balanced representation of people than Sentai delivered us. They had five men and one woman in Sentai, Ryusoulger, which we’ve adapted. We really wanted there to be at least one more female character. We’ve been very careful with all the guest characters as well, to ensure that there is a gender balance within the cast.

What was the casting process like amid all of the COVID restrictions? You were casting people over webcams and such. What were the challenges there?

It was tricky. It took longer than it would have taken normally. In an ideal world, I would have gone to the States for the final round of auditions. You start with maybe 4,000 people and then you narrow that down to maybe 30, and those final 30 we’ll get intensive auditions with the executive producers.

That would ideally be in person, but we couldn’t do it in person because of COVID. I know that Chip Lynn went back to the States, and he met at four-meter distance, in a tent, with open sides, in a park, the final candidates to have a meet and greet, and see what kind of people they were. But that wasn’t any type of audition because we actually weren’t able to do (traditional) auditions. The final auditions for the American cast were done by Zoom, basically.

They would play the scene, often they were at home, and often it was their mom or roommate who was reading the offlines. So the caliber of the audition was variable, trying to get them to set up their phone in a way that presented them in the most favorable light was a challenge.

And so they would play the scene and then I would give them some notes to see how flexible they were as actors. And they’d do it again. And we went through maybe three stages of this process with the final 30 odd actors. We would try them out on a new scene (as well.)

Finally, we narrowed it down to the people that we wanted. I was also running auditions in Australia and New Zealand. And Australia, because it looked in the early stages of COVID as if there was going to be some trans-Tasman bubble, so there would be free travel between Australia and New Zealand.

That turned out not to be the case, so we haven’t cast anyone in Australia. But we ran auditions in New Zealand, and because we’re very lucky here in that COVID is under control, basically our borders are closed. And the only cases that exist are people who are coming into the country, returning New Zealanders go in quarantine.

There’s no community transmission. So it’s strange, but we’re able to operate pretty much business as usual here. So I was able to do in-person auditions in New Zealand, which were very successful. We cast our secondary characters and our guest characters that way.

Hasbro CEO Brian Goldner stated in a recent interview that Jonathan Entwistle, who’s directing the new Power Rangers movie and overseeing the new shared universe, is handling “the kids-oriented TV show that’s in its 27th season.” Have you and Entwistle had any contact with each other?

No. I know as much as you do, because I read about it online as well. It’s completely news to me. I’ve had no contact with Mr. Entwistle.

Read more

TV

The Top 54 Power Rangers Episodes That Will Make You a Fan

By Shamus Kelley

TV

Power Rangers and How It Adapted From Super Sentai

By Shamus Kelley

So right now you’re just making your PR season, there’s no a “you’ve got to think about this movie. You’ve got to think about this animated show.” There’s none of that right now?

No, none of it. We’ve pretty much finished writing the entire season of Dino Fury, and we’re well underway with shooting, and we have interfaced with various executives within Hasbro and eOne and it’s going very smoothly. There’s been no external pressure on the show to make it something other than what it has always been going to be. If that makes sense. But things are going very smoothly.

What’s it like working with the cast? A lot of them have come from America, where we’ve very much had to be dealing with COVID. Now they’re able to live life normally in New Zealand.

Well, they don’t have a lot of time to live normally when they’re here, because they’re usually picked up at about five in the morning and driven to makeup, and on set. They have very long days because the actors playing the Power Rangers, when they’re not on main unit, they’re on second unit. So they will be working from 5:30 (in the morning) until 6:30 at night. Long days.

Then they’ve got to look at learning lines and material for the next day. And their weekends, I think they’re out and about exploring Auckland and enjoying the summer. I mean, what I would say about the cast is that they’ve got a huge amount of excitement, and enthusiasm to their work and maybe the anticipation in the States after they found they were cast and having to keep the secret. Then the two weeks quarantine that they had to go through when they arrived in New Zealand serves to heighten that anticipation, but they certainly haven’t lost the enthusiasm since they started shooting.

I’m aware that in previous seasons, the cast have been able to go home over the Christmas break and spend things like Christmas with their family. And we can’t do that because of COVID, and quarantine, and those kinds of issues.

So I think the cast during our Christmas hiatus, will be traveling around New Zealand and exploring the country and just enjoying the summer. We’re doing what we can to give them a Thanksgiving dinner, or a Christmas dinner, to give them a sense of family as much as we can. But they all get on very well with each other. I’ve heard no complaints, and they seem to be relishing being Power Rangers.

You had mentioned in our last interview that the start of production had to be delayed a little bit because of COVID. Has there been an attempt to catch up to where you would be, or is it just, “Okay, we’re just shooting it as we normally would.”?

Production can’t go any faster than it does because it is a fast show anyway, so that two months delay in starting shooting will have a ripple effect right through production. Post has been squeezed a little bit. We’re trying to actually complete the episodes a little earlier than we would if the two month delay had to trickle down through into the post production period. But beyond that, I can’t say much more because it’s commercially sensitive.

Can you comment on whether there’s going to be more than 20 or so episodes of Dino Fury?

No, I can’t. Because again, that hasn’t been announced, and it is commercially sensitive information.

Is there anything else you want to tell the Power Ranger fans that’ll be reading this?

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Expect lots of surprises with Dino Fury and keep the faith.

Power Rangers Dino Fury will debut next year and Power Rangers Beast Morphers will wrap up its final season this Saturday.

Stay tuned for the second part of this interview coming soon where Bennett discusses directing the final episodes of Beast Morphers, including all those returning elements from previous seasons!

The post The Challenges of Creating Power Rangers Dino Fury appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/39YDpj3