#just got an email from my former university about equipment return

[sleepycrowhours]

Mood of the day: stressed out zim on a index card

[ourimpavidheroine]

Okay, @peoniequeen, here are your stories.

How many people do you know moved across the world for love? 

Well, you all know about this one. I met my late wife online in late 1998 on an X-Files message board, we emailed and then called, etc. until she came to the U.S. from Finland in September of 1999 to live with me for a year. After the year was up we relocated to Finland, in part because she could not legally immigrate to the U.S. during that time as a same-sex partner (Finland was a huge fucking pain in the ass about it but eventually they let me immigrate there based on our relationship status) and in part because we thought Finland would be a better place to raise kids due to healthcare, schools, etc. When I arrived in Finland it was the first time I had even been to Europe, never mind the country I was going to live in and the airline accidently left my two dogs in Amsterdam instead of putting them on the plane to Helsinki and I spent my first moments in my new home sobbing about my dogs until the very nice airline lady called for my late wife over the loudspeaker and let her come back and take me in hand (much the way Mako takes Wu in hand, if you must know). (Don’t worry, the airline put us up in a hotel next to the airport and the dogs came on the next flight and came to us there in a taxi the airline made arrangements for. They were completely fine and in fact weren’t sure what the fuss was about.) It was kind of a big culture shock. The end.

Or worked as a college radio DJ? 

I did! I had a show on Tuesday mornings from 4-6 am that nobody listened to but about 10 loyal people. (Kind of like my blog here, come to think about it.) I played a lot of old blues and jazz stuff that I’d grown up listening to. My Dad worked part time as a DJ at a local radio station so I knew how to work all the equipment and such thanks to him. (I also had a two hour slot on Wednesday nights there in high school where I played stuff teenagers wanted to listen to and not the never ending country western that the station owner and manager wanted played 24x7.) Yes, this was in the late 80′s-early 90′s when I was at university so it was all vinyl. I still have a collection of albums that have the gold stamp on them saying they are not for sale, that they are for radio station play only! (Some of them the aforementioned station manager gave me since they were not country and he was basically going to toss them into the trash and some of them were albums that I might have gotten through less altruistic means.)

Or was a makeup assistant to Drag Queens? 

I took a stage makeup course while I was majoring in theater at University and did so well with it that the guy who gave the class asked me to come and assist him at the San Francisco opera while they were essentially painting all of the singers brown in a classic racist move that was pretty well accepted in the 90′s but, thankfully, would be extremely frowned upon now. As I was doing it I struck up a friendship with one of the chorus tenors; it turned out he was a drag queen who sometimes did performances when he wasn’t doing opera. He was a Madonna impersonator (not a very good one, sorry to say) and he wanted me to help him design his makeup for it. So I went to the club he performed at a few times to get a better feel for how drag queens worked and then hung around backstage and ended up doing some designs for some of the other queens. The pay was basically me getting to see their performances for free and getting fed afterwards at whatever was open at 4 am but God it was fun. Also, now I am the most Judgy McJudgerson of ever when it comes to drag makeup on RuPaul’s Drag Race. The end.

Or wrote a letter to their Archbishop when they were twelve and got a personal answer in return? 

I was very put out by the fact that boys could be altar boys but girls got shit (I was Catholic, in case you haven’t guessed) and I was talking about it to my Grandma one time and she told me I should write a letter to the Archbishop and ask him why. Now see, my maternal Grandmother was married to a labor union president (my grandfather was still the president when he died of a heart attack when I was 8) and she was a good old fashioned liberal rabble rouser. Like, she got arrested with nuns protesting nuclear power plants in her muumuus and Birkenstocks, okay? She wrote letters to EVERYONE. So I sat down and very carefully wrote the letter and my Grandma made a few calls and got me the address and we sent the letter. I don’t think my Grandma actually thought I’d get a letter back (it was more of a teaching moment, if that makes sense) but he did send me a letter back! He was very kind, although his answer was the usual Catholic BS. I still have the letter but it is packed away in storage so I very sadly will not be producing it at this juncture in time.

Or drove from Los Angeles to Philadelphia in a 20 year old Volvo? 

My friend from university was going to Grad School at Temple University and her parents didn’t want her to drive the entire way by herself. So I drove with her in an orange 1971 Volvo sedan. (In fact, I drove about 90% of the trip because she didn’t like driving.) The air conditioning fan died as we were driving through the Mojave Desert on the way to Vegas and I realized that if I floored it the cool air would actually move itself and so I floored it all the way through the desert and we are lucky that fucking ancient hulk of Swedish steel did not die and leave us stranded to be baked to death. We stopped in Vegas (which was not as impressive in 1992 as it is today, trust me) and found a guy who could actually fix the fan and spent the night in one of the casino hotels before continuing on. We did stop in Chicago to stay with her grandparents for two weeks (where so many elderly Jews kept responding to my last name with confusion as they assumed I was Jewish that I eventually started to do genealogy and found out that I am, indeed, Jewish on my father’s side) and also we saw the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer film in Des Moines and went to a cowboy bar in Cheyenne (I learned how to line dance and my friend got completely trashed and I had to practically carry her back to the hotel) and many other adventures until we finally arrived in Philly and her parents flew me back to California. It was a great road trip and short of the reeeaaaally sketchy and filthy motel room in Salt Lake City that had both a half-empty Chinese takeout box and a soiled condom under the bed we had a grand time.

Or was part of a thruple? 

I have been part of two thruples. Well. Sort of. One thruple and one wanna be thruple. The first one, with my first husband and my girlfriend was a huge mistake from the get-go. (Oh god, she was so hot and the sex was so fucking good but she was really an awful person and my ex kept trying to control the entire thing and basically forced her into living with us instead of being just my girlfriend with benefits and the entire thing blew up and while it wasn’t the reason why I divorced him it didn’t help either.) The second one was with my late wife and our mutual boyfriend and it worked very well but he had a little boy from a former relationship and his son got very ill and died and he didn’t handle it at all and he disappeared out of our lives. It’s been 20 years, give or take, since I’ve talked to him. He asked us to no longer contact him and I’ve always respected that. And before you ask, he knows where I live and my email address is the same as it was all those years ago. If he wanted to find me it would be very easy for him to do so. He clearly doesn’t and I respect that. I wish him love and peace, wherever he is. I miss him still.

Or beat up the drunk lady in the hallway to get back a little girl’s keys?

Ah, I’ll tell this one tomorrow.

[adriannaelle]

Treehouse and Chill

The Simpsons reached another milestone this year with the recent airing of its thirtieth “Treehouse of Horror” special which, coincidentally, is the show’s 666th episode. While certainly not the best installment of this annual series, “Treehouse of Horror XXX” was pretty funny. Still, even the funniest jokes in this episode pale in comparison to some of the classic “Treehouse of Horror” specials. To this day, iconic segments such as “The Shinning”, “The Devil and Homer Simpson”, “Nightmare Cafeteria”, and “Citizen Kang” are still hard to top.

So, in honor of Halloween, thirty years of scary tales, and 90’s nostalgia, I want to briefly discuss my favorite five episodes of the Treehouse of Horror series. As always, ranking articles like these are subjective and are based on personal taste. Therefore, I don’t care if you nor yo’ mama thinks “Treehouse of Horror III” was trash. It’s still going on this list!

Alright, let us continue.

Honorable Mentions: “Treehouse of Horror II”, “Treehouse of Horror VIII”, and “Treehouse of Horror X”

Number Five: “Treehouse of Horror VII” (Season 8, Episode 1; 1996)

Although “The Thing and I” was a strong first segment, I enjoyed it least in “Treehouse of Horror VII”. Don’t get me wrong, I thought the story was pretty funny, I just like the second and third stories better. However, I do have a bone to pick with the ending of “The Thing and I”. Instead of confining Bart to the attic, why not keep both Hugo and Bart around after they discovered Bart was the evil twin? I mean, the family already lived with Bart for 10 years. They might as well kept the mistake going.

“The Genesis Tub” was amusing.  It may be the creative in me, but I really enjoy the concept of creating your own world and overseeing it.  Still, I felt the ending of “The Genesis Tub” was a bit abrupt.  I feel like the writers could have done so much more with the concept of Lisa creating and ruling her own Universe. Maybe she could have assaulted Bart with more fighter pilots. Maybe she could have built a massive ray gun a la the ray gun seen in “Citizen Kang”.  The ideas are limitless.

Speaking of “Citizen Kang”, this story is one of my favorites in the entire Treehouse of Horror series.  It's a brilliant satirical take on elections in the United States and the country’s politicians.  I especially like how the writers make fun of our ridiculous two-party system.  Like really, are our only choices between a drooling, Gangreen Gang, cyclops squid, and his twin sister?  Ross Perot should have brought up Kang’s and Kodos’ emails.  That always works.

Number Four: “Treehouse of Horror III” (Season 4, Episode 5; 1992)

Akin to my feelings about “Treehouse of Horror VII”, I’m only a big fan of two of the three segments in “Treehouse of Horror III”.  “King Homer” was just a’ight to me. Granted, the segment did have a great exchange between Mr. Smithers and Mr. Burns about the former’s distaste of seamen and women mixing.  Yet overall, I didn’t get a kick out of this story as much as I did the other two.

“Clown Without Pity” is a parody of the lauded Twilight Zone episode “Living Doll”.  This segment had its share of funny jokes, particularly the line from Patty about losing the remaining thread of her heterosexuality after seeing Homer horrifically run through the house butt naked.  I also like how the key to turning off the Krusty doll’s murderous rage, is switching the lever from “evil” to “good”.  Like, what happens if the lever accidentally switches back?  What if it breaks and he gets stuck on “evil”?  Take the doll back and get a refund!  Like, what are y’all doing?!

Finally, there is “Dial ‘Z’ for Zombie”.  No matter how self-aware I am about the absurdity of my kinemortophobia (fear of zombies), I still have it.  That is why I hated this segment as a child.  But as a grown woman, I find this story very funny.  It’s a pretty simple zombie story, but the jokes strewn throughout are what make it a highlight of the series.  The joke about Homer being immune to the zombies because he lacks brains is one that stands out in particular.  Also, what are George Washington, Albert Einstein, and William Shakespeare even doing in Springfield?

Number Three: “Treehouse of Horror IV” (Season 5, Episode 5; 1993)

Choosing between “Treehouse of Horror IV” and “Treehouse of Horror V” as my second favorite episode of the series was the hardest.  Ultimately, I prefer V ever so slightly over IV, but IV is a heavyweight in its own right.  “The Devil and Homer Simpson” shows just how far our dimwitted protagonist is willing to go to get his favorite, sugary snack.  You got to be desperate as all hell to sell your soul for a donut!  Other than Homer’s enjoyment of his ironic punishment, the best part of the segment is the trial itself.  The Devil’s voir dire game is trash.  How do you select the jury and still lose the case?  Never hire this man for anything.

“Terror at 5 ½ Feet” is yet another hilarious spin on an old Twilight Zone classic. This parody of “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” stays true to the basic horror elements and story structure as the original tale, but, of course, adds its own Simpsons brand of humor to it. However, unlike the original, Bart is still tormented by the gremlin after he’s hauled off to the psych ward.  Side note, Ned Flanders really took a lot of L’s in this episode.

I’ve never seen nor read the original Dracula, so I do not know how faithful “Bart Simpson’s Dracula” is to the original story.  Well, I guess that doesn’t really matter here because this story is so funny and scary that it holds your attention from beginning to end.  From the super happy fun slide that leads to the vampires in the basement to Homer staking Mr. Burns (Burnscula?) in the crotch, this story provides many laughs that make this story a classic.  Also, the plot twist that Marge (Margecula?) is really the head vampire is funny as hell.  Sorry if that was a spoiler but in fairness, this episode is 26 years old now.

Number Two: “Treehouse of Horror V” (Season 6, Episode 6; 1994)

“Treehouse of Horror V” is solid from beginning to end.  “The Shinning” is firmly in my top five list of favorite Treehouse of Horror segments.  This segment has several hilarious moments, from Homer taking three days to make the voyage to the cabin due to his forgetfulness to the blood not getting off at the right floor, to that scene where the complete lack of television and beer made Homer go . . . something . . . hmm.  Well, anyway, I can definitely say that every time I watch “The Shinning”, I’m feelin’ fine.

“The Shinning” is not the only highlight of this episode.  Homer’s time-traveling escapade in “Time and Punishment” introduced us to numerous interesting alternative timelines that ultimately drove Homer to a pure state of “IDGAF” at the end.  Still sucks that he missed out on that donut rain.  That timeline would have smacked!  

This episode’s final segment, “Nightmare Cafeteria”, truly is the stuff of nightmares. I mean, it’s super funny now that I’m grown, but this segment used to legitimately scare me as a child.  It also didn’t help that I was a fat kid.  Like, imagine living your best life and then the next moment, you’re Ms. Wilson’s Fried Adri.  Woo, chile.

Number One: “Treehouse of Horror” (Season 2, Episode 3; 1990)

It’s often said that nothing beats the original, and in the case of Treehouse of Horror episodes, this sentiment rings true.  The very first Treehouse of Horror is the greatest episode of the series.  One of the highlights of this episode is the dulcet baritone of James Earl Jones as the mover, Serak the Preparer, and the narrator of “The Raven”.

The first segment “Bad Dream House” is a comedic spin on the classic haunted house movie trope.  The quintessential 80s style horror music that accompanies the story throughout greatly adds to the mood of the piece without overdoing it.  The conclusion of “Bad Dream House” is what makes this story so funny.  The house destroys itself rather than live with the Simpsons. I don’t know what it feels like to be curved by a house, but it must make you feel all kinds of insecure.  

“Hungry Are the Damned” is our first introduction to Treehouse staples Kang and Kodos.  It is also our introduction to the sorely missed Serak the Preparer, who definitely needs to return at least once in this series.  This segment parodies the classic Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man” and gives us a humorous plot twist at the end.  I suppose this episode also serves as a sort of origin story of Kang’s and Kodos’ beef with mankind because this is the only episode where they are genuinely nice.  Dang, all Lisa had to do was sit down and eat her food. Literally.

Finally, there is “The Raven”, which is absolutely my favorite segment in any Treehouse of Horror Episode.  What I like most about “The Raven” is how the crew manages to add comedy to the piece without losing any of the mystique of Edgar Allen Poe’s riveting poetry.  It also made this poem a bit easier to understand, which I greatly appreciate.  It’s a refined piece of television without the pompousness of the bourgeois.  In short, I like it. 

Honestly, no matter which of the thirty Treehouse of Horror episodes you like best, all are great for watching on Halloween for squeamish, easy-to-scare people like me.  So for those of us who aren’t bravely equipped to watch the more realistic, gory, and scary productions, I highly recommend binge-watching these episodes for some softer scary vibes and lots of laughs.

[wealthwithin]

Retire Comfortably: Stock Markets for Beginners

This post originally appeared on Wealth Within.

By Dale Gillham | Published 09 January 2020

It’s never too early to start preparing for retirement, but as the time gets closer, it’s important that you know what savings you need to continue to live a good quality of life. According to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia’s Retirement Standard, a single Australian requires $43,787 per year to retire comfortably.

As a white collar worker, would your current superannuation fund support a comfortable retirement? In many cases, Australians have to opt for a modest lifestyle once they retire, because that’s all they can afford.

But there are other options. More and more people are choosing to learn how to trade in shares in order to provide an additional income stream and peace-of-mind for themselves and their families, to support them once they retire.

In this article from Wealth Within, we’ll be looking at how you can learn to invest confidently and competently, even if you’re a complete beginner.

Could you achieve a healthier, happier retirement?

As you get older, your job can feel more demanding and straining. Whether you sit behind a desk or you’re dealing with the public, both physical and mental impacts are placed upon you which worsen as you age.

Common health complaints amongst white collar workers include work-related stress, neck and back pain, sleep problems, eyesight issues, depression and more. In an era where the Pension Age in Australia is 65½ (and expected to keep rising), health issues are a growing concern for older workers.

Additionally, ageing employees may naturally become less capable of carrying out their role to the same standard as before. Reaction times and memory can slow down, so that although white collar workers tend to retire later than blue collar workers, the strain on their mental state may still be great.

That’s why more people are putting their health first and finding alternatives to extending the length of their career. By learning how to invest in shares, you could retire earlier and still be financially comfortable - not to mention lessen the stress on your mind and body. Being able to profitably trade in the stock market means that families across Australia can still enjoy the things they like (such as holidays, cars, boats, etc.) and have the funds to provide a high quality of education for their kids.

The benefits of learning to trade

Even if you’ve never previously worked in finance, business or accounting, you could still learn to trade as long as you have the right resources. Wealth Within provides Australia’s highest standard of education in share trading, taking the guesswork out of investments for people like you.

Here are just some reasons to properly educate yourself in the stock market, even if you’re a complete beginner:

You can watch all the YouTube videos and tutorial videos you like, but they often provide conflicting advice that doesn’t account for market predictions and human psychology. Learning with Wealth Within provides the knowledge and practical skills you need for success

While the average return of the stock market fluctuates, we see overall increases per annum over any ten year period. A long-term investment could see attractive returns

Profitable shares can contribute nicely to your retirement nest egg, often being more lucrative than other assets

Backing yourself with the proper knowledge lowers the risk of investment and is recommended over blindly entering the market

Start on the right foot with How to Beat the Managed Funds by 20%. This bestselling book by Dale Gillham provides simple DIY market share strategies with an easy, practical way to approach the share market so you can reduce your risk and increase your chances of making a profit.

How to make extra money when you retire

The share market isn’t black-and-white, as so many online “experts” would seem to suggest. There are also no quick wins and tips that work for every market. To become a profitable trader, you must first develop the mindset of a trader, educate yourself and stay focused on your investment goals.

In such a volatile and risky landscape, it pays to invest in your own knowledge - failing to do so can lead to financial losses.

Professionals across Australia are seeing the benefits of learning to trade the stock market with Wealth Within. Equipped with advice from industry experts, as well as the tools for success and a mentor to keep you on track, our students learn techniques to analyse the market with more certainty than over 95% of other traders.

We offer Australia’s only government accredited and internationally recognised share trading course, designed for both complete beginners and those who have already entered the market but would like some extra support. We recommend starting with a Diploma of Share Trading and Investment or the Trading Mentor Course. You’re able to work through the courses online at your own convenience.

What others are saying about the Wealth Within courses

Learning how to trade has helped many others in the same position as you, strengthening their financial position and improving their lifestyle. Here are just some testimonials we’ve received from former and current students.

“I just wanted to say thank you in regards to the trading mentor course. I've just completed it and even though I have been trading for a few years it’s amazing how I was doing so going into trades so blind and uneducated or relying on various broker newsletters. The course has really opened my eyes with the view that I am now armed with the necessary start tools and rules to successfully trade and I can always review the course when I need to or send through an email and know i get help from professionals without any BS ;-)” - Anthony Thompson

“So far the Wealth Within Diploma experience has been fantastic. The material content and high level of support from the team is awesome. This is especially appreciated for someone like myself who is studying in their 50’s for the first time since leaving university in my early 20’s, and working full time.” - Ian S

“Trading the Share Market used to be a bit of a mystery to me, I likened it to gambling. While completing the Diploma of Share Trading with Wealth Within, I was taken on a trading journey, whereby, I had at my disposal crucial information (in a format to rival any university) and more importantly, a support team who are extremely knowledgeable and patient. Wealth Within have given me the tools to trade confidently and successfully.” - Tanya Kramer

Invest in yourself

Begin the journey towards financial freedom with Wealth Within. Equip yourself with the tools you need to confidently trade in stocks; we’ve got the books and trading courses to advance your knowledge and place you in an advantageous position. To speak to a member of our team, call 1300 858 272 or Email and they will provide you with any further information you need.

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Bringing ‘Poogie’ Home: Hospice In The Time Of COVID-19

After she landed in the hospital with a broken hip, Parkinson’s disease and the coronavirus, 84-year-old Dorothy “Poogie” Wyatt Shields made a request of her children: “Bring me home.”

Her request came as hospital patients around the world were dying alone, separated from their loved ones whether or not they had COVID-19, because of visitation restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

Bringing home a terminally ill patient with COVID-19 bears extra challenges: In addition to the already daunting responsibility of managing their loved one’s care, families must take painstaking precautions to keep themselves safe.

Julia Shields, 53, one of Poogie Shields’ four children, said she had reservations about the risk of infection and how it might affect her family’s health and ability to care for her mother. “I didn’t want to bring my mom here, and have it where we’re all of a sudden collapsed in bed ourselves and can’t give her pain medicine and can’t take care of her,” she said.

But she and her siblings were determined to honor their mother’s wishes. So they stocked up on personal protective gear and converted the mudroom of Julia’s Greenwood, Virginia, home west of Charlottesville into a solarium where her mother could be closer to family.

Julia said she wasn’t sure how long her mother would survive; it could have been a few days or even a few months at her home. “She’s such a fighter,” she said.

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Poogie Shields, a former guidance and addiction counselor, had an appetite for adventure, be it camping on the Appalachian Trail or moving her family to Paris for a year while writing a master’s thesis. After raising her children in Virginia, she set off to do volunteer work, helping homeless teenagers in Florida and pregnant women facing addiction in Washington, D.C.

But over the past 20 years, Parkinson’s disease gradually limited what she could do, and three years ago she moved into an assisted living community in Crozet, Virginia, about 5 miles from Julia’s home. At first, she walked all over the campus, taking yoga classes and playing trivia with friends. But in recent years, she could manage only short distances with a walker, and Parkinson’s, a progressive nervous system disorder, was affecting her voice, according to her daughter.

“She was the person who had the most interesting thing to say in the room,” Julia said. “It was sad. You just couldn’t hear what she had to say.”

In mid-March, as the pandemic spread, Shields spiked a fever and got tested for the coronavirus. On March 22, while self-isolating and awaiting her test results, she broke her hip and was taken to the UVA Health System University Hospital.

In the hospital, a rapid-results test came back positive for COVID-19.

The coronavirus wasn’t killing her: Her symptoms had largely subsided, and she wasn’t in respiratory distress, said Dr. Lily Hargrove, a private practice physician who had treated Shields for 15 years and advised her family.

The biggest problem was her hip. Surgery was an option, but Shields had already endured “an excruciating loss of independence” over the past two years, Hargrove said. Recovery from surgery — two to three months in a rehab center with no visitors because of efforts to slow the virus in most facilities — “would have been a nightmare,” Hargrove said, and would not have returned her to normal functioning. She said she and Shields had reached an understanding during the past year that her disease had progressed so far that “we were beyond the point of fixing things.”

Julia and her siblings consulted a palliative care specialist and decided to pursue hospice. The hospital and hospice staffs told the family “this was not to be taken lightly — not only her dying, her potential pain, and also us getting sick,” Julia said.

The family signed up with Hospice of the Piedmont, which is one of about 75 community-based, not-for-profit hospices in the National Partnership for Hospice Innovation (NPHI). Dr. Cameron Muir, NPHI’s chief innovation officer, said most hospices in the group have treated or prepared to treat COVID patients, despite the added risks for workers.

Many hospices are facing shortages in staffing and protective equipment due to the pandemic, prompting concern from some advocates that patients won’t get the care they need. Muir said hospices in his group have bulk-ordered protective equipment together.

With the pandemic, most NPHI hospices are seeing an increase in the number of people they’re caring for at home, Muir said, because hospitals are “eager to get people with advanced illness home if possible” to make room for COVID patients.

“Absolutely the safest place for frail elderly without COVID is in the home,” said Muir, who is also chief medical officer of Hospice of the Piedmont, and “if you’re COVID-positive, the best place to be quarantined is at home.”

Hospice of the Piedmont has shifted to telehealth when possible and has stocked up on protective gear so that staff and families can safely treat COVID patients, said CEO Ron Cottrell.

While the hospice gathered equipment, Julia and her family set to work creating a sterile-yet-welcoming solarium in her home. They cleared out the raincoats and lacrosse sticks from Julia’s mudroom. They rolled in a hospital bed next to a window overlooking the deck and hung a picture Julia’s daughter had painted.

They filled the windowsill with fresh daffodils. Julia’s husband and two children, 18 and 20, went to stay at a friend’s empty house, while one of her sisters moved in to help her care for their mother.

On March 25, Poogie Shields came home, sedated with pain medication. Out the window, she could see a redbud tree in bloom and, soon, the faces of her visiting grandchildren and other relatives.

Julia, a tax preparer, and her sister, an archaeologist, got into a rhythm of suiting up like hospital employees — in scrubs, gloves, shoe covers, masks and eye protection — every time they entered the room.

Their time together was peaceful, Julia said. Other family members hung out on the deck, 6 feet apart, just outside the window. Her sister brought an iPad to coordinate video calls and read aloud dozens of emails and cards.

“There was a fairly reasonable feeling of normalcy,” Julia said.

Over the course of several days, Poogie Shields became unable to eat, drink or swallow medication. With Hargrove’s advice, Julia and her sister managed her fentanyl patches and slipped morphine under her tongue.

As her mother began to lose awareness, Julia softly sang Episcopal hymns — “Abide With Me,” “Breathe on Me, Breath of God” — to comfort herself and her mother, just in case she could hear.

Poogie Shields’ last day “was very peaceful,” Julia said. “It was such a beautiful day.” Relatives had all come by to see her. There was “no anxiety about anything that we needed to figure out,” no last unburdening of unresolved feelings.

Julia said she and her sister were with their mother as she took her last breath at 8:30 p.m. on March 28. Hospice staff came to the house about three hours later. In the meantime, Julia said, “nothing needed to be done. It was just very calm.”

Hargrove said that in her 20 years of practice, “I’ve never had a patient die with such reported ease and grace.”

“The two daughters were extraordinarily brave,” she said. “They were committed to honoring their mom’s wishes.”

After their mother’s death, Julia and her sister disinfected the house before Julia’s family moved back in. No one in the family has become sick with COVID-19.

For other families, bringing COVID patients home might not be possible, especially if someone in the house is at a higher risk of serious complications from the virus, Hargrove noted.

“I would hate to have someone who was unable to bring someone home, who was dying of COVID-19, to think that they had somehow failed that person,” Hargrove said. “I would ask that people find grace and compassion for themselves if this is not available for them.”

Bringing ‘Poogie’ Home: Hospice In The Time Of COVID-19 published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[stephenmccull]

Bringing ‘Poogie’ Home: Hospice In The Time Of COVID-19

After she landed in the hospital with a broken hip, Parkinson’s disease and the coronavirus, 84-year-old Dorothy “Poogie” Wyatt Shields made a request of her children: “Bring me home.”

Her request came as hospital patients around the world were dying alone, separated from their loved ones whether or not they had COVID-19, because of visitation restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

Bringing home a terminally ill patient with COVID-19 bears extra challenges: In addition to the already daunting responsibility of managing their loved one’s care, families must take painstaking precautions to keep themselves safe.

Julia Shields, 53, one of Poogie Shields’ four children, said she had reservations about the risk of infection and how it might affect her family’s health and ability to care for her mother. “I didn’t want to bring my mom here, and have it where we’re all of a sudden collapsed in bed ourselves and can’t give her pain medicine and can’t take care of her,” she said.

But she and her siblings were determined to honor their mother’s wishes. So they stocked up on personal protective gear and converted the mudroom of Julia’s Greenwood, Virginia, home west of Charlottesville into a solarium where her mother could be closer to family.

Julia said she wasn’t sure how long her mother would survive; it could have been a few days or even a few months at her home. “She’s such a fighter,” she said.

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Poogie Shields, a former guidance and addiction counselor, had an appetite for adventure, be it camping on the Appalachian Trail or moving her family to Paris for a year while writing a master’s thesis. After raising her children in Virginia, she set off to do volunteer work, helping homeless teenagers in Florida and pregnant women facing addiction in Washington, D.C.

But over the past 20 years, Parkinson’s disease gradually limited what she could do, and three years ago she moved into an assisted living community in Crozet, Virginia, about 5 miles from Julia’s home. At first, she walked all over the campus, taking yoga classes and playing trivia with friends. But in recent years, she could manage only short distances with a walker, and Parkinson’s, a progressive nervous system disorder, was affecting her voice, according to her daughter.

“She was the person who had the most interesting thing to say in the room,” Julia said. “It was sad. You just couldn’t hear what she had to say.”

In mid-March, as the pandemic spread, Shields spiked a fever and got tested for the coronavirus. On March 22, while self-isolating and awaiting her test results, she broke her hip and was taken to the UVA Health System University Hospital.

In the hospital, a rapid-results test came back positive for COVID-19.

The coronavirus wasn’t killing her: Her symptoms had largely subsided, and she wasn’t in respiratory distress, said Dr. Lily Hargrove, a private practice physician who had treated Shields for 15 years and advised her family.

The biggest problem was her hip. Surgery was an option, but Shields had already endured “an excruciating loss of independence” over the past two years, Hargrove said. Recovery from surgery — two to three months in a rehab center with no visitors because of efforts to slow the virus in most facilities — “would have been a nightmare,” Hargrove said, and would not have returned her to normal functioning. She said she and Shields had reached an understanding during the past year that her disease had progressed so far that “we were beyond the point of fixing things.”

Julia and her siblings consulted a palliative care specialist and decided to pursue hospice. The hospital and hospice staffs told the family “this was not to be taken lightly — not only her dying, her potential pain, and also us getting sick,” Julia said.

The family signed up with Hospice of the Piedmont, which is one of about 75 community-based, not-for-profit hospices in the National Partnership for Hospice Innovation (NPHI). Dr. Cameron Muir, NPHI’s chief innovation officer, said most hospices in the group have treated or prepared to treat COVID patients, despite the added risks for workers.

Many hospices are facing shortages in staffing and protective equipment due to the pandemic, prompting concern from some advocates that patients won’t get the care they need. Muir said hospices in his group have bulk-ordered protective equipment together.

With the pandemic, most NPHI hospices are seeing an increase in the number of people they’re caring for at home, Muir said, because hospitals are “eager to get people with advanced illness home if possible” to make room for COVID patients.

“Absolutely the safest place for frail elderly without COVID is in the home,” said Muir, who is also chief medical officer of Hospice of the Piedmont, and “if you’re COVID-positive, the best place to be quarantined is at home.”

Hospice of the Piedmont has shifted to telehealth when possible and has stocked up on protective gear so that staff and families can safely treat COVID patients, said CEO Ron Cottrell.

While the hospice gathered equipment, Julia and her family set to work creating a sterile-yet-welcoming solarium in her home. They cleared out the raincoats and lacrosse sticks from Julia’s mudroom. They rolled in a hospital bed next to a window overlooking the deck and hung a picture Julia’s daughter had painted.

They filled the windowsill with fresh daffodils. Julia’s husband and two children, 18 and 20, went to stay at a friend’s empty house, while one of her sisters moved in to help her care for their mother.

On March 25, Poogie Shields came home, sedated with pain medication. Out the window, she could see a redbud tree in bloom and, soon, the faces of her visiting grandchildren and other relatives.

Julia, a tax preparer, and her sister, an archaeologist, got into a rhythm of suiting up like hospital employees — in scrubs, gloves, shoe covers, masks and eye protection — every time they entered the room.

Their time together was peaceful, Julia said. Other family members hung out on the deck, 6 feet apart, just outside the window. Her sister brought an iPad to coordinate video calls and read aloud dozens of emails and cards.

“There was a fairly reasonable feeling of normalcy,” Julia said.

Over the course of several days, Poogie Shields became unable to eat, drink or swallow medication. With Hargrove’s advice, Julia and her sister managed her fentanyl patches and slipped morphine under her tongue.

As her mother began to lose awareness, Julia softly sang Episcopal hymns — “Abide With Me,” “Breathe on Me, Breath of God” — to comfort herself and her mother, just in case she could hear.

Poogie Shields’ last day “was very peaceful,” Julia said. “It was such a beautiful day.” Relatives had all come by to see her. There was “no anxiety about anything that we needed to figure out,” no last unburdening of unresolved feelings.

Julia said she and her sister were with their mother as she took her last breath at 8:30 p.m. on March 28. Hospice staff came to the house about three hours later. In the meantime, Julia said, “nothing needed to be done. It was just very calm.”

Hargrove said that in her 20 years of practice, “I’ve never had a patient die with such reported ease and grace.”

“The two daughters were extraordinarily brave,” she said. “They were committed to honoring their mom’s wishes.”

After their mother’s death, Julia and her sister disinfected the house before Julia’s family moved back in. No one in the family has become sick with COVID-19.

For other families, bringing COVID patients home might not be possible, especially if someone in the house is at a higher risk of serious complications from the virus, Hargrove noted.

“I would hate to have someone who was unable to bring someone home, who was dying of COVID-19, to think that they had somehow failed that person,” Hargrove said. “I would ask that people find grace and compassion for themselves if this is not available for them.”

Bringing ‘Poogie’ Home: Hospice In The Time Of COVID-19 published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[dinafbrownil]

Bringing ‘Poogie’ Home: Hospice In The Time Of COVID-19

After she landed in the hospital with a broken hip, Parkinson’s disease and the coronavirus, 84-year-old Dorothy “Poogie” Wyatt Shields made a request of her children: “Bring me home.”

Her request came as hospital patients around the world were dying alone, separated from their loved ones whether or not they had COVID-19, because of visitation restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

Bringing home a terminally ill patient with COVID-19 bears extra challenges: In addition to the already daunting responsibility of managing their loved one’s care, families must take painstaking precautions to keep themselves safe.

Julia Shields, 53, one of Poogie Shields’ four children, said she had reservations about the risk of infection and how it might affect her family’s health and ability to care for her mother. “I didn’t want to bring my mom here, and have it where we’re all of a sudden collapsed in bed ourselves and can’t give her pain medicine and can’t take care of her,” she said.

But she and her siblings were determined to honor their mother’s wishes. So they stocked up on personal protective gear and converted the mudroom of Julia’s Greenwood, Virginia, home west of Charlottesville into a solarium where her mother could be closer to family.

Julia said she wasn’t sure how long her mother would survive; it could have been a few days or even a few months at her home. “She’s such a fighter,” she said.

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Poogie Shields, a former guidance and addiction counselor, had an appetite for adventure, be it camping on the Appalachian Trail or moving her family to Paris for a year while writing a master’s thesis. After raising her children in Virginia, she set off to do volunteer work, helping homeless teenagers in Florida and pregnant women facing addiction in Washington, D.C.

But over the past 20 years, Parkinson’s disease gradually limited what she could do, and three years ago she moved into an assisted living community in Crozet, Virginia, about 5 miles from Julia’s home. At first, she walked all over the campus, taking yoga classes and playing trivia with friends. But in recent years, she could manage only short distances with a walker, and Parkinson’s, a progressive nervous system disorder, was affecting her voice, according to her daughter.

“She was the person who had the most interesting thing to say in the room,” Julia said. “It was sad. You just couldn’t hear what she had to say.”

In mid-March, as the pandemic spread, Shields spiked a fever and got tested for the coronavirus. On March 22, while self-isolating and awaiting her test results, she broke her hip and was taken to the UVA Health System University Hospital.

In the hospital, a rapid-results test came back positive for COVID-19.

The coronavirus wasn’t killing her: Her symptoms had largely subsided, and she wasn’t in respiratory distress, said Dr. Lily Hargrove, a private practice physician who had treated Shields for 15 years and advised her family.

The biggest problem was her hip. Surgery was an option, but Shields had already endured “an excruciating loss of independence” over the past two years, Hargrove said. Recovery from surgery — two to three months in a rehab center with no visitors because of efforts to slow the virus in most facilities — “would have been a nightmare,” Hargrove said, and would not have returned her to normal functioning. She said she and Shields had reached an understanding during the past year that her disease had progressed so far that “we were beyond the point of fixing things.”

Julia and her siblings consulted a palliative care specialist and decided to pursue hospice. The hospital and hospice staffs told the family “this was not to be taken lightly — not only her dying, her potential pain, and also us getting sick,” Julia said.

The family signed up with Hospice of the Piedmont, which is one of about 75 community-based, not-for-profit hospices in the National Partnership for Hospice Innovation (NPHI). Dr. Cameron Muir, NPHI’s chief innovation officer, said most hospices in the group have treated or prepared to treat COVID patients, despite the added risks for workers.

Many hospices are facing shortages in staffing and protective equipment due to the pandemic, prompting concern from some advocates that patients won’t get the care they need. Muir said hospices in his group have bulk-ordered protective equipment together.

With the pandemic, most NPHI hospices are seeing an increase in the number of people they’re caring for at home, Muir said, because hospitals are “eager to get people with advanced illness home if possible” to make room for COVID patients.

“Absolutely the safest place for frail elderly without COVID is in the home,” said Muir, who is also chief medical officer of Hospice of the Piedmont, and “if you’re COVID-positive, the best place to be quarantined is at home.”

Hospice of the Piedmont has shifted to telehealth when possible and has stocked up on protective gear so that staff and families can safely treat COVID patients, said CEO Ron Cottrell.

While the hospice gathered equipment, Julia and her family set to work creating a sterile-yet-welcoming solarium in her home. They cleared out the raincoats and lacrosse sticks from Julia’s mudroom. They rolled in a hospital bed next to a window overlooking the deck and hung a picture Julia’s daughter had painted.

They filled the windowsill with fresh daffodils. Julia’s husband and two children, 18 and 20, went to stay at a friend’s empty house, while one of her sisters moved in to help her care for their mother.

On March 25, Poogie Shields came home, sedated with pain medication. Out the window, she could see a redbud tree in bloom and, soon, the faces of her visiting grandchildren and other relatives.

Julia, a tax preparer, and her sister, an archaeologist, got into a rhythm of suiting up like hospital employees — in scrubs, gloves, shoe covers, masks and eye protection — every time they entered the room.

Their time together was peaceful, Julia said. Other family members hung out on the deck, 6 feet apart, just outside the window. Her sister brought an iPad to coordinate video calls and read aloud dozens of emails and cards.

“There was a fairly reasonable feeling of normalcy,” Julia said.

Over the course of several days, Poogie Shields became unable to eat, drink or swallow medication. With Hargrove’s advice, Julia and her sister managed her fentanyl patches and slipped morphine under her tongue.

As her mother began to lose awareness, Julia softly sang Episcopal hymns — “Abide With Me,” “Breathe on Me, Breath of God” — to comfort herself and her mother, just in case she could hear.

Poogie Shields’ last day “was very peaceful,” Julia said. “It was such a beautiful day.” Relatives had all come by to see her. There was “no anxiety about anything that we needed to figure out,” no last unburdening of unresolved feelings.

Julia said she and her sister were with their mother as she took her last breath at 8:30 p.m. on March 28. Hospice staff came to the house about three hours later. In the meantime, Julia said, “nothing needed to be done. It was just very calm.”

Hargrove said that in her 20 years of practice, “I’ve never had a patient die with such reported ease and grace.”

“The two daughters were extraordinarily brave,” she said. “They were committed to honoring their mom’s wishes.”

After their mother’s death, Julia and her sister disinfected the house before Julia’s family moved back in. No one in the family has become sick with COVID-19.

For other families, bringing COVID patients home might not be possible, especially if someone in the house is at a higher risk of serious complications from the virus, Hargrove noted.

“I would hate to have someone who was unable to bring someone home, who was dying of COVID-19, to think that they had somehow failed that person,” Hargrove said. “I would ask that people find grace and compassion for themselves if this is not available for them.”

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/bringing-poogie-home-hospice-in-the-time-of-covid-19/

[mastcomm]

After Culinary and Literary Acclaim, She’s Moving to the Woods

NAHMA TOWNSHIP, Mich. — It was only Saturday morning, and already the problems were piling up for Iliana Regan here in the rainy woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Ms. Regan is a 40-year-old chef from Indiana with a Michelin star who last summer published “Burn the Place,” perhaps the definitive Midwest drunken-lesbian food memoir. On its cover, the chef David Chang calls her one of the best chefs he has ever known.

Ms. Regan and her wife, Anna Hamlin, who is 10 years her junior, have staked their future on these woods, where sight unseen they bought a late-1990s, four-bedroom cabin with pine log walls on 150 acres at the edge of the Hiawatha National Forest. They fixed it up and named it the Milkweed Inn. Last summer, they hosted their first guests.

The dream is that every weekend from May to October, 10 people will each pay $750 to nearly $1,000 to relax in the woods and immerse themselves in what some chefs and writers have started calling “new gatherer” or “deep nature” cooking.

If the chef René Redzepi (also a Regan fan) is the Nordic godfather of a culinary movement that cultivates a deep connection to the surrounding landscape, Ms. Regan is its Greta Thunberg, steering her tiny boat steadily into uncharted waters and attempting a new definition of what it means to be an American chef.

“She’s an example of American pragmatism,” said Mr. Chang, who invited Ms. Regan to cook with him last year at an event in Austin, Texas, and later interviewed her on his podcast. “It’s almost a liberal-arts approach to how she cooks.”

Her plan is counterintuitive: Make the remote inn successful enough so she and Ms. Hamlin can jump off the fame Ferris wheel near its apex and close Elizabeth, the Chicago restaurant on which Ms. Regan built her name.

The restaurant has won a Michelin star six years in a row. Jeff Gordinier, the food and drinks editor for Esquire magazine and a former reporter for The New York Times, called it “a funky, foraged, magic-realist vision of the Midwest” when he included it on his recent list of the last decade’s 40 most important restaurants.

Closing it would be a relief, the women said. No more wondering if they can make payroll or whether the dishwasher will show. No more pressure to scale a concept or seduce an investor or battle the haters on social-media platforms like Yelp, which Ms. Regan described in her memoir as a 10-ton penis relentlessly “boinking you on the head.”

She just wants to write, raise a family and fill her pantry with the wonders of the woods.

“Cooking is something I want to be doing until the end of time,” she said. “But I definitely don’t want to be 55 years old and running Elizabeth.”

On this weekend, with winter bearing down and a compound to secure until the first guests would return in May, it was hard to see how that was going to work.

On Friday night, after the staff at Elizabeth had served the last fresh doughnut dusted with blueberry powder, which capped her 14-dish fall tasting menu, the couple wrangled their three dogs into an S.U.V. and drove six-and-a-half hours to get here.

Around 2 a.m., they got lost on the network of profoundly muddy, one-lane logging roads that lead to the cabin. The next morning, Ms. Regan had to drive back out 25 miles to pick up a reporter and photographer at a minimart near the edge of Lake Michigan because the rain hadn’t stopped and the roads were too rutted for a city car to navigate.

Ms. Regan doesn’t so much arrive as she just appears, quiet as a deer. She looks younger than she is, in round eyeglasses and a yellow Minnesota Vikings watch cap she bought not because she is a fan but because she liked the looks of the Viking.

It’s hard to square the woman who quietly suggests a fried chicken thigh from the gas station as a road snack with the person who, before she got sober 10 years ago, ran away from the police in handcuffs, had sex in bar bathrooms and used her car key to administer bumps of cocaine.

“Because Iliana speaks with this high, gentle, childlike voice, I think some people underestimate her,” Mr. Gordinier wrote in an email. “She’s not an innocent kid lost in the woods. She’s actually the wolf. She’s fierce and independent and hungry.”

After a quick stop to pick apples from what seemed like the only tree in the forest that still held any fruit, we made it to the cabin. Almost immediately and despite the clear warning they give every guest not to pet him, Bear, her beloved Shih Tzu, bit me hard enough on the finger to draw blood.

There were other, bigger problems. Mice had discovered a bag of marshmallows left over from a summer s’mores kit. An enterprising rodent had dragged one into the banneton basket Ms. Regan uses to proof her sourdough bread, and hosted a mouse party.

A Knack for Foraging

Bread plays an outsize role in her life. She makes it from a starter she has been tending like a pet for 15 years. It took her a year to learn how to turn wild yeast and winter wheat flour into a perfect loaf with a hard crust and a custardy heart. She serves it as a separate course at Elizabeth, alongside cultured butter that has been molded into the shape of an owl.

The bread also sustains guests throughout their weekends at the inn, which starts with pierogi and smoked lake trout on Friday and peaks on Saturday with a 15-course dinner that might include wild blueberries in juiced wood sorrel, young milkweed pods fried until the insides turn as silky as cheese, and moose tartare.

“Making a good loaf of bread can entirely change my mood,” she wrote in her memoir. Executed correctly, the day is good no matter what else happens. Screw it up, and she feels sad and worthless.

The mice had ruined the proofing basket, so she improvised with a colander and a dish towel. Temperature and timing were not on her side. When she baked her loaf outdoors in a cast-iron Dutch oven tucked inside a ceramic grill, it emerged misshapen with large holes.

Redemption came in a steamy cup of tea brewed from three kinds of mushrooms, including some black trumpets like the ones she hoped we might find down by the river once the rain stopped. She has been making the dark broth ever since she ran an underground restaurant out of her Chicago apartment a decade ago.

“It’s her ‘Free Bird,’” Ms. Hamlin said.

One sip, and you think maybe they can actually pull this off.

Ms. Regan grew up with three older sisters on a 10-acre farm near Merrillville, Ind. Her bedroom had plywood floors, and the basement always flooded. The barn was crammed with used restaurant equipment, coffee cans filled with old parts and an abandoned light-blue Chevy, where she used to sit and fantasize she was on a date with a pretty girl. An outsider observing her young life, she wrote, might have bet she’d grow up to be an alcoholic transgender trucker carny.

Her mother liked to read Gourmet magazine and make her own pasta. Her father, a steelworker who never met a vegetable he didn’t want to grow, saw early on that she had a knack for finding the last ripe dewberry on a bush.

In an arresting passage in her book, she describes the day he taught her to hunt for chanterelles. She was about 5, and so focused on the task that she lost track of him. A drunk uncle who she recalls was always telling her what a pretty little girl she was, picked her up from behind and carried her into a dilapidated cabin. A family friend was inside, saving her, perhaps, from something terrible. He took her back to her father. As they headed to the car with their bags of mushrooms, a tornado spun through the sand and swept the family to the ground. When they finally made it home, her father placed her on a stool next to the stove and taught her how to carefully cook the chanterelles with red wine and butter.

“This was the day I slighted fate and became a chef,” she wrote.

By 15, she was already a hard worker, grinding it out in small-town restaurants. She was drinking, too. And chasing women. She tried studying chemistry at Indiana University Bloomington but realized she wanted to write, so she got a creative writing degree from Columbia College Chicago.

In between classes, she worked in restaurant kitchens, eventually landing a job waiting tables and expediting food at Trio, the restaurant the chef Grant Achatz ran before Alinea, where she also worked for him.

Despite the insight that comes with maturity and a decade of working the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, she can still obsess over criticism and the backbiting gossip endemic in professional kitchens. To wit, she had heard that Mr. Achatz didn’t think much of her.

Not so, he said in an interview. “There is a certain amount of honesty there that resonates,” he said. “She’s not playing the game.”

In 2008, Ms. Regan began selling food she made or grew at farmers’ markets, including warm pierogi she stuffed with beets and sautéed in butter. Chicago Magazine named them the best pierogi in the city. Two years later, she started a small underground restaurant with an elaborate menu in her apartment. Fans encouraged her to start a traditional restaurant and were willing to back her.

Ms. Regan opened Elizabeth in 2012, naming it after a beloved sister who was a drinker, too. She died, possibly from a stroke, during a night in jail that followed a fight with her husband.

Success, and Stranger Things

Elizabeth is a small restaurant tucked between a tire shop and a soccer supply store in a north-side Chicago neighborhood. The open kitchen in the back feels like something your well-off friends who like to cook might set up until their loft got remodeled. The décor is deeply personal, with thrift-store teacups and antlers and Funko figurines. In the bathroom, a collection of small logs leans against the toilet. A thoughtfully considered shelf holds bobby pins and a marble box of tampons.

It was here that Ms. Regan learned to weed out the arrogant young male chefs who challenged her authority and to temper her own tendencies to either withdraw or yell like a coyote and fire people if things weren’t done properly. She taught herself to become, in her words, a girl boss.

“I can’t really say I have gone to chef ladies for advice necessarily,” she said. Part of it is simple shyness, or maybe respect for their time. When she went to Sqirl in Los Angeles recently, she didn’t tell the chef, Jessica Koslow, that she was coming even though the two had cooked together before and had spent time together in Copenhagen at Mr. Redzepi’s MAD conference.

She just ate, and left a copy of her book. “I know how much pressure there is when another chef calls you up and says they’re coming in,” Ms. Regan said.

Ms. Koslow was disappointed but understood. “She’s just so cool by even doing that, for being someone who doesn’t need to be recognized,” she said. “She is just trying to be her, and that’s so refreshing.”

Doug Seibold, who runs Agate Publishing in Evanston, Ill., has an imprint dedicated to Midwestern literature. He had been following Ms. Regan’s career, and reached out five years ago, thinking she might want to do a cookbook. She didn’t, but she was interested in a memoir. It came out in July. By December, several publications had picked it as one of the year’s best.

“I think some people were unprepared for a Michelin-starred chef to be the daughter of a steelworker union rep who grew up with sisters who were drunk and fighting all the time,” Mr. Seibold said.

The memoir made the long list for the National Book Awards, the first time a food book landed there in nearly 40 years. The September morning the list was announced, she and Ms. Hamlin woke up to dozens of messages. They had no idea what had happened.

“I had to actually look up the National Book Award,” Ms. Regan said. “It was a huge shock.”

She is working on her second book. It’s about foraging, but also about inherited trauma and her family’s cooking lineage.

The book advances were small, and went right back into the restaurant. The couple relies mostly on income from cooking classes and Elizabeth’s popular theme menus, which can cost close to $600 for two with wine and can last three or four hours.

Ms. Regan created one inspired by the television show “Stranger Things,” and prepared her “Game of Thrones” menu by reading all five books and highlighting every food reference. During November, the theme was 1980s Nintendo. The menu featured dishes like a Super Mario mushroom built from a root-beer leaf with Meyer lemon and a slice of black truffle sandwiched between brick pastry.

“I basically gauge how far she is willing to go,” said Ms. Hamlin, who is as animated as her wife is introspective. She grew up in a Southern Indiana restaurant family, and fell for Ms. Regan when she was working for a wine distributor and landed the Elizabeth account. Now she is a full partner, running service, worrying about staff and matching beverages as eclectic as the food.

They also offer an elegant, seasonal tasting menu, which is so personal it can restore an eater’s faith in a format that has become cliché. Late last fall, she served a dense, rosy slice of duck that had been dry-aged for three weeks, with a sauce made from the apples and wild cranberries we had harvested together at Milkweed a month earlier.

Still, 2019 was a tough year, even though the book was a hit and they hosted their first guests at the inn. Ms. Regan had to close her two other Chicago businesses: Bunny, the Micro Bakery, which had been entangled with a difficult investor, and Kitsune, a 24-seat mash-up of Japan and the American Midwest that was a critical darling when it opened in 2017.

The closings were a blow to her ego, but she had to consolidate. It was the only way to save Elizabeth, expand the inn and create some semblance of a balanced family life.

“Everybody around me seemed to be, like: ‘Hashtag-cheflife, it’s all good,’ ” Ms. Regan told Mr. Chang on his podcast, “and I’m like, what are they talking about?”

She also had a miscarriage last year. Ms. Hamlin has medical challenges, so it’s up to Ms. Regan to carry their child. More attempts to get pregnant haven’t worked yet, but they’re trying.

On Their Own

The Milkweed Inn is all Pendleton blankets, deer taxidermy and wood smoke. The water pressure is great, and the basement is filled with new fishing gear and inflatable kayaks. A copy of the 2016 Best New Chefs edition of Food & Wine is in one bathroom. There Ms. Regan is on the cover, the only woman in a sea of 10 men.

You can rent one of three rooms inside the house, a platform tent or the tiny Airstream trailer the couple took around the country to cook pop-up dinners in 2018. It has a bumper sticker that reads “Ted Bundy was a Republican,” which is just one reason the handful of people who own hunting cabins nearby were initially suspicious of the two women.

After a walk to look for mushrooms, Ms. Hamlin removed the orange vests the dogs have to wear during hunting season. Ms. Regan was busy sweeping the new wood floor. She had two walleyes hanging by their lips over a fire outdoors, and a pile of chores to do before they left the next day.

Talk turned to what little progress has been made for women in the restaurant business and whether her book would become a movie and just what it means to homestead a new life here.

Ms. Hamlin is still adjusting.

“I know we’re safer here than when we’re in the city, but I am scared of bears and I’m scared of old white men sometimes,” she said. “This can be quite isolating.”

“That’s why I like it,” Ms. Regan said. She slipped on a jacket and headed outside to check on the fish.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/life-style/after-culinary-and-literary-acclaim-shes-moving-to-the-woods/

[amberdscott2]

Mobile Giants: Please Don’t Share the Where

Your mobile phone is giving away your approximate location all day long. This isn’t exactly a secret: It has to share this data with your mobile provider constantly to provide better call quality and to route any emergency 911 calls straight to your location. But now, the major mobile providers in the United States — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — are selling this location information to third party companies — in real time — without your consent or a court order, and with apparently zero accountability for how this data will be used, stored, shared or protected.

Think about what’s at stake in a world where anyone can track your location at any time and in real-time. Right now, to be free of constant tracking the only thing you can do is remove the SIM card from your mobile device never put it back in unless you want people to know where you are.

It may be tough to put a price on one’s location privacy, but here’s something of which you can be sure: The mobile carriers are selling data about where you are at any time, without your consent, to third-parties for probably far less than you might be willing to pay to secure it.

The problem is that as long as anyone but the phone companies and law enforcement agencies with a valid court order can access this data, it is always going to be at extremely high risk of being hacked, stolen and misused.

Consider just two recent examples. Earlier this month The New York Times reported that a little-known data broker named Securus was selling local police forces around the country the ability to look up the precise location of any cell phone across all of the major U.S. mobile networks. Then it emerged that Securus had been hacked, its database of hundreds of law enforcement officer usernames and passwords plundered. We also found out that Securus’ data was ultimately obtained from a California-based location tracking firm LocationSmart.

On May 17, KrebsOnSecurity broke the news of research by Carnegie Mellon University PhD student Robert Xiao, who discovered that a LocastionSmart try-before-you-buy opt-in demo of the company’s technology was wide open — allowing real-time lookups from anyone on anyone’s mobile device — without any sort of authentication, consent or authorization.

Xiao said it took him all of about 15 minutes to discover that LocationSmart’s lookup tool could be used to track the location of virtually any mobile phone user in the United States.

Securus seems equally clueless about protecting the priceless data to which it was entrusted by LocationSmart. Over the weekend KrebsOnSecurity discovered that someone — almost certainly a security professional employed by Securus — has been uploading dozens of emails, PDFs, password lists and other files to Virustotal.com — a service owned by Google that can be used to scan any submitted file against dozens of commercial antivirus tools.

Antivirus companies willingly participate in Virustotal because it gives them early access to new, potentially malicious files being spewed by cybercriminals online. Virustotal users can submit suspicious files of all kind; in return they’ll see whether any of the 60+ antivirus tools think the file is bad or benign.

One basic rule that all Virustotal users need to understand is that any file submitted to Virustotal is also available to customers who purchase access to the service’s file repository. Nevertheless, for the past two years someone at Securus has been submitting a great deal of information about the company’s operations to Virustotal, including copies of internal emails and PDFs about visitation policies at a number of local and state prisons and jails that made up much of Securus’ business.

Some of the many, many files uploaded to Virustotal.com over the years by someone at Securus Technologies.

One of the files, submitted on April 27, 2018, is titled “38k user pass microsemi.com – joomla_production.mic_users_blockedData.txt”.  This file includes the names and what appear to be hashed/scrambled passwords of some 38,000 accounts — supposedly taken from Microsemi, a company that’s been called the largest U.S. commercial supplier of military and aerospace semiconductor equipment.

Many of the usernames in that file do map back to names of current and former employees at Microsemi. KrebsOnSecurity shared a copy of the database with Microsemi, but has not yet received a reply. Securus also has not responded to requests for comment.

These files that someone at Securus apparently submitted regularly to Virustotal also provide something of an internal roadmap of Securus’ business dealings, revealing the names and login pages for several police departments and jails across the country, such as the Travis County Jail site’s Web page to access Securus’ data.

Check out the screen shot below. Notice that forgot password link there? Clicking that prompts the visitor to enter their username and to select a “security question” to answer. There are but three questions: “What is your pet’s name? What is your favorite color? And what town were you born in?” There don’t appear to be any limits on the number of times one can attempt to answer a secret question.

Choose wisely and you, too, could gain the ability to look up anyone’s precise mobile location.

Given such robust, state-of-the-art security, how long do you think it would take for someone to figure out how to reset the password for any authorized user at Securus’ Travis County Jail portal?

Yes, companies like Securus and Location Smart have been careless with securing our prized location data, but why should they care if their paying customers are happy and the real-time data feeds from the mobile industry keep flowing?

No, the real blame for this sorry state of affairs comes down to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. T-Mobile was the only one of the four major providers that admitted providing Securus and LocationSmart with the ability to perform real-time location lookups on their customers. The other three carriers declined to confirm or deny that they did business with either company.

As noted in my story last Thursday, LocationSmart included the logos of the four carriers on their home page — in addition to those of several other major firms (that information is no longer available on the company’s site, but it can still be viewed by visiting this historic record of it over at the Internet Archive).

Now, don’t think for a second that these two tiny companies are the only ones with permission from the mobile giants to look up such sensitive information on demand. At a minimum, each one of these companies can in theory resell (or leak) this information and access to others. On 15 May, ZDNet reported that Securus was getting its data from the carriers by going through an intermediary: 3Cinteractive, which was getting it from LocationSmart.

However, it is interesting that the first insight we got that the mobile firms were being so promiscuous with our private location data came in the Times story about law enforcement officials seeking the ability to access any mobile device’s location data in real time.

All technologies are double-edged swords, which means that each can be used both for good and malicious ends. As much as police officers may wish to avoid the hassle and time constraints of having to get a warrant to determine the precise location of anyone they please whenever they wish, those same law enforcement officers should remember that this technology works both ways: It also can just as easily be abused by criminals to track the real-time movements of police and their families, informants, jurors, witnesses and even judges.

Consider the damage that organized crime syndicates — human traffickers, drug smugglers and money launderers — could inflict armed with an app that displays the precise location of every uniformed officer from within 300 ft to across the country. All because they just happened to know the cell phone number tied to each law enforcement official.

Maybe you have children or grandchildren who — like many of their peers these days — carry a mobile device at all times for safety and for quick communication with parents or guardians. Now imagine that anyone in the world has the instant capability to track where your kid is at any time of day. All they’d need is your kid’s digits.

Maybe you’re the current or former target of a stalker, jilted ex-spouse, or vengeful co-worker. Perhaps you perform sensitive work for the government. All of the above-mentioned parties and many more are put at heightened personal risk by having their real-time location data exposed to commercial third parties.

Some people might never sell their location data for any price: I suspect most of us would like this information always to be private unless and until we change the defaults (either in a binary “on/off” way or app-specific). On the other end of the spectrum there are probably plenty of people who don’t care one way or another provided that sharing their location information brings them some real or perceived financial or commercial benefit.

The point is, for many of us location privacy is priceless because, without it, almost everything else we’re doing to safeguard our privacy goes out the window.

And this sad reality will persist until the mobile providers state unequivocally that they will no longer sell or share customer location data without having received and validated some kind of legal obligation — such as a court-ordered subpoena.

But even that won’t be enough, because companies can and do change their policies all the time without warning or recourse (witness the current reality). It won’t be enough until lawmakers in this Congress step up and do their jobs — to prevent the mobile providers from selling our last remaining bastion of privacy in the free world to third party companies who simply can’t or won’t keep it secure.

The next post in this series will examine how we got here, and what Congress and federal regulators have done and might do to rectify the situation.

from Amber Scott Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/mobile-giants-please-dont-share-the-where/

[wealthwithin]

Achieve Financial Freedom by Learning How to Trade Stocks

This post originally appeared on Wealth Within.

By Dale Gillham | Published 09 January 2020

It’s never too early to start preparing for retirement, but as the time gets closer, it’s important that you know what savings you need to continue to live a good quality of life. According to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia’s Retirement Standard, a single Australian requires $43,787 per year to retire comfortably.

As a white collar worker, would your current superannuation fund support a comfortable retirement? In many cases, Australians have to opt for a modest lifestyle once they retire, because that’s all they can afford.

But there are other options. More and more people are choosing to learn how to trade in shares in order to provide an additional income stream and peace-of-mind for themselves and their families, to support them once they retire.

In this article from Wealth Within, we’ll be looking at how you can learn to invest confidently and competently, even if you’re a complete beginner.

Could you achieve a healthier, happier retirement?

As you get older, your job can feel more demanding and straining. Whether you sit behind a desk or you’re dealing with the public, both physical and mental impacts are placed upon you which worsen as you age.

Common health complaints amongst white collar workers include work-related stress, neck and back pain, sleep problems, eyesight issues, depression and more. In an era where the Pension Age in Australia is 65½ (and expected to keep rising), health issues are a growing concern for older workers.

Additionally, ageing employees may naturally become less capable of carrying out their role to the same standard as before. Reaction times and memory can slow down, so that although white collar workers tend to retire later than blue collar workers, the strain on their mental state may still be great.

That’s why more people are putting their health first and finding alternatives to extending the length of their career. By learning how to invest in shares, you could retire earlier and still be financially comfortable - not to mention lessen the stress on your mind and body. Being able to profitably trade in the stock market means that families across Australia can still enjoy the things they like (such as holidays, cars, boats, etc.) and have the funds to provide a high quality of education for their kids.

The benefits of learning to trade

Even if you’ve never previously worked in finance, business or accounting, you could still learn to trade as long as you have the right resources. Wealth Within provides Australia’s highest standard of education in share trading, taking the guesswork out of investments for people like you.

Here are just some reasons to properly educate yourself in the stock market, even if you’re a complete beginner:

You can watch all the YouTube videos and tutorial videos you like, but they often provide conflicting advice that doesn’t account for market predictions and human psychology. Learning with Wealth Within provides the knowledge and practical skills you need for success

While the average return of the stock market fluctuates, we see overall increases per annum over any ten year period. A long-term investment could see attractive returns

Profitable shares can contribute nicely to your retirement nest egg, often being more lucrative than other assets

Backing yourself with the proper knowledge lowers the risk of investment and is recommended over blindly entering the market

Start on the right foot with How to Beat the Managed Funds by 20%. This bestselling book by Dale Gillham provides simple DIY market share strategies with an easy, practical way to approach the share market so you can reduce your risk and increase your chances of making a profit.

How to make extra money when you retire

The share market isn’t black-and-white, as so many online “experts” would seem to suggest. There are also no quick wins and tips that work for every market. To become a profitable trader, you must first develop the mindset of a trader, educate yourself and stay focused on your investment goals.

In such a volatile and risky landscape, it pays to invest in your own knowledge - failing to do so can lead to financial losses.

Professionals across Australia are seeing the benefits of learning to trade the stock market with Wealth Within. Equipped with advice from industry experts, as well as the tools for success and a mentor to keep you on track, our students learn techniques to analyse the market with more certainty than over 95% of other traders.

We offer Australia’s only government accredited and internationally recognised share trading course, designed for both complete beginners and those who have already entered the market but would like some extra support. We recommend starting with a Diploma of Share Trading and Investment or the Trading Mentor Course. You’re able to work through the courses online at your own convenience.

What others are saying about the Wealth Within courses

Learning how to trade has helped many others in the same position as you, strengthening their financial position and improving their lifestyle. Here are just some testimonials we’ve received from former and current students.

“I just wanted to say thank you in regards to the trading mentor course. I've just completed it and even though I have been trading for a few years it’s amazing how I was doing so going into trades so blind and uneducated or relying on various broker newsletters. The course has really opened my eyes with the view that I am now armed with the necessary start tools and rules to successfully trade and I can always review the course when I need to or send through an email and know i get help from professionals without any BS ;-)” - Anthony Thompson

“So far the Wealth Within Diploma experience has been fantastic. The material content and high level of support from the team is awesome. This is especially appreciated for someone like myself who is studying in their 50’s for the first time since leaving university in my early 20’s, and working full time.” - Ian S

“Trading the Share Market used to be a bit of a mystery to me, I likened it to gambling. While completing the Diploma of Share Trading with Wealth Within, I was taken on a trading journey, whereby, I had at my disposal crucial information (in a format to rival any university) and more importantly, a support team who are extremely knowledgeable and patient. Wealth Within have given me the tools to trade confidently and successfully.” - Tanya Kramer

Invest in yourself

Begin the journey towards financial freedom with Wealth Within. Equip yourself with the tools you need to confidently trade in stocks; we’ve got the books and trading courses to advance your knowledge and place you in an advantageous position. To speak to a member of our team, call 1300 858 272 or Email and they will provide you with any further information you need.

[stephenmccull]

Abbott’s Fast COVID Test Poses Safety Issues, Lab Workers Say

Lab personnel say worries are mounting over the safety of a rapid coronavirus test by Abbott Laboratories that President Donald Trump has repeatedly lauded ― particularly, the risk of infection to those handling it.

Trump and federal health officials have promoted the ease with which the Abbott test can be given to patients, whether at a drive-thru site or a doctor’s office. Another selling point: The test could “save personal protective equipment (PPE),” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Yet medical workers say that there’s a serious danger in the test’s design, one that would require much more protection — not less ― for those who administer it.

Running a test involves swabbing a potentially infected person’s nasal passage and swirling the specimen in an open container with liquid chemicals, raising the potential of releasing the highly contagious virus into the air.

When HHS announced it had bought tens of thousands of Abbott’s point-of-care tests for public labs and others across the country, it noted that “only gloves and a facemask are necessary” to administer it.

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The notion of donning less protection runs contrary to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and medical workers fear that they could be infected while testing others.

Abbott says the test can return a positive result in as little as five minutes. And its development was welcome news for governors and hospitals across the nation desperately searching for COVID tests for patients and scarce protective gear for medical workers.

“What makes this test so different is where it can be used: outside the four walls of a traditional hospital such as in the physicians’ office or urgent care clinics,” says Abbott Labs on its website. It has already been deployed in public health labs and several drive-thru sites, where people wait in parking lots normally occupied by casino- and cinema-goers.

We Want To Hear From You

Do you work on the front lines of COVID-19? As a medical specialist, health care manager, or public official or employee?

Tell us what you’re seeing, and help us report on important, untold stories. Contact us at covidtips@kff.org.

Send Us A Tip

But lab officials and medical diagnostic experts say running the Abbott machine — used for years to detect other pathogens, including the flu ― requires a technician to leave patient specimens out in the open. Gloves and a mask alone would not protect them.

Standard precautions for biosafety protection in labs include good hand hygiene and the use of lab coats or gowns, gloves and eye protection to protect medical workers when a specimen is being manipulated, according to the CDC. Health workers collecting specimens should wear an N95 mask and other PPE.

To run the Abbott test, medical workers or patients themselves swab an individual’s naval cavity to collect a specimen. Then, the swab is put back into its original wrapping, potentially exposing workers to contaminated materials when they handle it, according to Michael Pentella, the head of Iowa’s state public health lab who chairs the Association of Public Health Laboratories’ biosafety and biosecurity committee.

Abbott’s instructions direct workers to “vigorously mix” the swab with liquid in an open vessel in the machine for 10 seconds — a kind of open system that Pentella called “unusual.”

“This is the only test I know of where you take the swab and you put it back in the paper wrapping,” said Pentella, who hasn’t used the Abbott rapid tests in his lab but has heard concerns about safety from colleagues. “It’s the contamination that could be associated with the wrapper that has some biosafety professionals concerned.”

The committee he chairs plans to issue safety recommendations for lab workers handling the product.

“It’s not like you shouldn’t use the instrument,” Pentella said. “You just have to use it safely.” While Abbott advises customers to use universal precautions for protecting health care workers, the extent to which that happens is up to each organization, Pentella said. “We don’t want to give this disease to anyone.”

Another longtime medical diagnostics expert expressed shock at the way the Abbott test is performed — that a swab gathered from a potentially infected patient must be openly mixed in liquid.

“The best point-of-care instrument is exactly like an automated pencil sharpener,” said the expert, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “You do nothing else.”

A spokesperson for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene similarly said officials were worried about biosafety and contamination because of how the test is performed, saying its open structure could contaminate the person performing the test as well as the area around the machine.

Trump has been a reliable pitchman for Abbott’s test, calling it a “whole new ballgame” as he showed off the machine in the Rose Garden. In public remarks from Feb. 29 to April 6 ― the day HHS announced it had purchased thousands of tests — Trump called out Abbott 14 times, according to a review of his remarks during daily White House briefings and related events.

“Now, a lot of people love the Abbott test. So do I. You know, the Abbott test is great because it’s, boom, it’s ― they touch, they put it in, and in five minutes you have [a result],” Trump said this week.

As one former HHS official put it: “He likes showy things that can look good.” A White House spokesperson declined to comment further on Trump’s praise of the company.

Certainly the initial HHS purchase of 30,000 Abbott tests to distribute across the country was supposed to do that. About 13,500 of them went to public health labs plus the CDC’s central lab in Atlanta, according to a department spokeswoman. The Indian Health Service received 10,000 tests, and roughly 5,000 were set aside for the CDC’s International Reagent Resource for states to replenish supplies.

Public health labs appeared to be in line for slightly more tests and devices than indicated in an earlier HHS document, obtained by Kaiser Health News, which showed state and local labs would receive a total 5,500 tests and the CDC lab would get 800.

On April 6, when HHS announced its order, millions of Americans were waiting on COVID tests. Multiple public health labs that received a batch from Abbott said they got 15 devices and supplies to conduct 120 tests. Even calibrating the machine would use up a portion of those — before labs could run patient samples. HHS also ordered 50 Abbott ID Now machines for Alaska because of its remote location, according to agency spokesperson Mia Heck.

When asked why HHS said only gloves and a face mask were necessary to administer the test, Heck said the department deferred to CDC guidelines.

Certain states have offered guidance to those handling patient specimens that is similar to the CDC’s. For example, the Washington state health department advised providers to use “appropriate personal protection” when collecting patient specimens ― at minimum, a gown, gloves, N95 respirator masks and goggles or a face shield, according to emails obtained through a public records request in King County, Washington.

Gary Procop, director of virology at the Cleveland Clinic, said he recommends that personnel either wear appropriate protective gear or use the test in a biological safety cabinet, which protects workers behind a glass shield. The large integrated health system is weighing whether to use the quick test in certain settings, including where there’s a low prevalence of disease, and had concerns about workers handling open swabs.

“What you really want to have is droplet precautions,” he said in an interview.

As safety concerns grow, some state officials are still complaining about a lack of supplies from Abbott — despite its statements that it would manufacture 50,000 tests per day.

“It’s incredibly frustrating because there was a lot of talk about this device, there was a lot of hype on it nationally, and that was wonderful,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, said at a news conference this month. “And then when they showed up, expectations were set really high as they should be. But to actually have 13 of these devices and have no way to use them, I’m banging my head against the wall.”

Abbott has won considerable publicity for the fast Abbott test since FDA granted emergency authorization on March 27. The company has partnered with CVS Health and Walgreens to set up drive-thru COVID testing sites in multiple states.

As of Monday, nine of 15 planned Walgreens sites in seven states are open with the Abbott tests. Walgreens pharmacists are tasked with overseeing patients and “PPE is used throughout the process,” a spokesperson said, without responding to questions about protocol for handling specimens and which specific items employees wear.

CVS Health is operating five drive-thru sites in five states, with each able to screen 750 to 1,000 people a day, spokesperson Christine Cramer said. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants handling specimens use gloves, gowns, N95 masks and eye shields or goggles.

“We won’t open a site until we are sure we have what we need,” she said.

In Washington, people expected to be in close contact with Trump ― including reporters covering his daily coronavirus briefings — have also been tested on Abbott machines.

Abbott spokesperson Darcy Ross said the company has shipped more than 850,000 rapid tests since April 1, although it’s unclear how many went to private-sector clients versus public health sites.

“We recommend our customers follow the CDC recommendations and guidelines for point-of-care sample handling and PPE. Our product information directly links to CDC guidelines,” she said.

The Abbott tests have had several other hiccups. For example, the Food and Drug Administration this month said Abbott would revise its instructions after one method for preserving specimens ― known as viral transport media — caused inaccurate results because patient samples were too diluted.

Pentella, the Iowa lab official, said, “People are shifting their concern from the viral transport media to, now you have a swab in a wrapper that’s potentially contaminated with nasal secretions from the patient.”

On an April 15 call held by FDA officials on the development and validation of COVID-19 tests, Timothy Stenzel, director of the agency’s Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health, was asked whether the agency has a process to remove authorizations already granted for tests found to be ineffective or dangerous, according to audio obtained by Kaiser Health News. The FDA has granted more than 40 emergency approvals for COVID-19 tests since Feb. 4.

He responded that the FDA’s “traditional way” is for the agency and developer to make decisions together on the best path forward.

“We always first want to engage the developer to understand what the performance issues might be,” he said, “to try to understand what the root cause is.”

“If there are indeed performance issues,” he said, “what is the best way to address that as quickly as possible?”

Abbott’s Fast COVID Test Poses Safety Issues, Lab Workers Say published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Abbott’s Fast COVID Test Poses Safety Issues, Lab Workers Say

Lab personnel say worries are mounting over the safety of a rapid coronavirus test by Abbott Laboratories that President Donald Trump has repeatedly lauded ― particularly, the risk of infection to those handling it.

Trump and federal health officials have promoted the ease with which the Abbott test can be given to patients, whether at a drive-thru site or a doctor’s office. Another selling point: The test could “save personal protective equipment (PPE),” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Yet medical workers say that there’s a serious danger in the test’s design, one that would require much more protection — not less ― for those who administer it.

Running a test involves swabbing a potentially infected person’s nasal passage and swirling the specimen in an open container with liquid chemicals, raising the potential of releasing the highly contagious virus into the air.

When HHS announced it had bought tens of thousands of Abbott’s point-of-care tests for public labs and others across the country, it noted that “only gloves and a facemask are necessary” to administer it.

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The notion of donning less protection runs contrary to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and medical workers fear that they could be infected while testing others.

Abbott says the test can return a positive result in as little as five minutes. And its development was welcome news for governors and hospitals across the nation desperately searching for COVID tests for patients and scarce protective gear for medical workers.

“What makes this test so different is where it can be used: outside the four walls of a traditional hospital such as in the physicians’ office or urgent care clinics,” says Abbott Labs on its website. It has already been deployed in public health labs and several drive-thru sites, where people wait in parking lots normally occupied by casino- and cinema-goers.

We Want To Hear From You

Do you work on the front lines of COVID-19? As a medical specialist, health care manager, or public official or employee?

Tell us what you’re seeing, and help us report on important, untold stories. Contact us at covidtips@kff.org.

Send Us A Tip

But lab officials and medical diagnostic experts say running the Abbott machine — used for years to detect other pathogens, including the flu ― requires a technician to leave patient specimens out in the open. Gloves and a mask alone would not protect them.

Standard precautions for biosafety protection in labs include good hand hygiene and the use of lab coats or gowns, gloves and eye protection to protect medical workers when a specimen is being manipulated, according to the CDC. Health workers collecting specimens should wear an N95 mask and other PPE.

To run the Abbott test, medical workers or patients themselves swab an individual’s naval cavity to collect a specimen. Then, the swab is put back into its original wrapping, potentially exposing workers to contaminated materials when they handle it, according to Michael Pentella, the head of Iowa’s state public health lab who chairs the Association of Public Health Laboratories’ biosafety and biosecurity committee.

Abbott’s instructions direct workers to “vigorously mix” the swab with liquid in an open vessel in the machine for 10 seconds — a kind of open system that Pentella called “unusual.”

“This is the only test I know of where you take the swab and you put it back in the paper wrapping,” said Pentella, who hasn’t used the Abbott rapid tests in his lab but has heard concerns about safety from colleagues. “It’s the contamination that could be associated with the wrapper that has some biosafety professionals concerned.”

The committee he chairs plans to issue safety recommendations for lab workers handling the product.

“It’s not like you shouldn’t use the instrument,” Pentella said. “You just have to use it safely.” While Abbott advises customers to use universal precautions for protecting health care workers, the extent to which that happens is up to each organization, Pentella said. “We don’t want to give this disease to anyone.”

Another longtime medical diagnostics expert expressed shock at the way the Abbott test is performed — that a swab gathered from a potentially infected patient must be openly mixed in liquid.

“The best point-of-care instrument is exactly like an automated pencil sharpener,” said the expert, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “You do nothing else.”

A spokesperson for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene similarly said officials were worried about biosafety and contamination because of how the test is performed, saying its open structure could contaminate the person performing the test as well as the area around the machine.

Trump has been a reliable pitchman for Abbott’s test, calling it a “whole new ballgame” as he showed off the machine in the Rose Garden. In public remarks from Feb. 29 to April 6 ― the day HHS announced it had purchased thousands of tests — Trump called out Abbott 14 times, according to a review of his remarks during daily White House briefings and related events.

“Now, a lot of people love the Abbott test. So do I. You know, the Abbott test is great because it’s, boom, it’s ― they touch, they put it in, and in five minutes you have [a result],” Trump said this week.

As one former HHS official put it: “He likes showy things that can look good.” A White House spokesperson declined to comment further on Trump’s praise of the company.

Certainly the initial HHS purchase of 30,000 Abbott tests to distribute across the country was supposed to do that. About 13,500 of them went to public health labs plus the CDC’s central lab in Atlanta, according to a department spokeswoman. The Indian Health Service received 10,000 tests, and roughly 5,000 were set aside for the CDC’s International Reagent Resource for states to replenish supplies.

Public health labs appeared to be in line for slightly more tests and devices than indicated in an earlier HHS document, obtained by Kaiser Health News, which showed state and local labs would receive a total 5,500 tests and the CDC lab would get 800.

On April 6, when HHS announced its order, millions of Americans were waiting on COVID tests. Multiple public health labs that received a batch from Abbott said they got 15 devices and supplies to conduct 120 tests. Even calibrating the machine would use up a portion of those — before labs could run patient samples. HHS also ordered 50 Abbott ID Now machines for Alaska because of its remote location, according to agency spokesperson Mia Heck.

When asked why HHS said only gloves and a face mask were necessary to administer the test, Heck said the department deferred to CDC guidelines.

Certain states have offered guidance to those handling patient specimens that is similar to the CDC’s. For example, the Washington state health department advised providers to use “appropriate personal protection” when collecting patient specimens ― at minimum, a gown, gloves, N95 respirator masks and goggles or a face shield, according to emails obtained through a public records request in King County, Washington.

Gary Procop, director of virology at the Cleveland Clinic, said he recommends that personnel either wear appropriate protective gear or use the test in a biological safety cabinet, which protects workers behind a glass shield. The large integrated health system is weighing whether to use the quick test in certain settings, including where there’s a low prevalence of disease, and had concerns about workers handling open swabs.

“What you really want to have is droplet precautions,” he said in an interview.

As safety concerns grow, some state officials are still complaining about a lack of supplies from Abbott — despite its statements that it would manufacture 50,000 tests per day.

“It’s incredibly frustrating because there was a lot of talk about this device, there was a lot of hype on it nationally, and that was wonderful,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, said at a news conference this month. “And then when they showed up, expectations were set really high as they should be. But to actually have 13 of these devices and have no way to use them, I’m banging my head against the wall.”

Abbott has won considerable publicity for the fast Abbott test since FDA granted emergency authorization on March 27. The company has partnered with CVS Health and Walgreens to set up drive-thru COVID testing sites in multiple states.

As of Monday, nine of 15 planned Walgreens sites in seven states are open with the Abbott tests. Walgreens pharmacists are tasked with overseeing patients and “PPE is used throughout the process,” a spokesperson said, without responding to questions about protocol for handling specimens and which specific items employees wear.

CVS Health is operating five drive-thru sites in five states, with each able to screen 750 to 1,000 people a day, spokesperson Christine Cramer said. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants handling specimens use gloves, gowns, N95 masks and eye shields or goggles.

“We won’t open a site until we are sure we have what we need,” she said.

In Washington, people expected to be in close contact with Trump ― including reporters covering his daily coronavirus briefings — have also been tested on Abbott machines.

Abbott spokesperson Darcy Ross said the company has shipped more than 850,000 rapid tests since April 1, although it’s unclear how many went to private-sector clients versus public health sites.

“We recommend our customers follow the CDC recommendations and guidelines for point-of-care sample handling and PPE. Our product information directly links to CDC guidelines,” she said.

The Abbott tests have had several other hiccups. For example, the Food and Drug Administration this month said Abbott would revise its instructions after one method for preserving specimens ― known as viral transport media — caused inaccurate results because patient samples were too diluted.

Pentella, the Iowa lab official, said, “People are shifting their concern from the viral transport media to, now you have a swab in a wrapper that’s potentially contaminated with nasal secretions from the patient.”

On an April 15 call held by FDA officials on the development and validation of COVID-19 tests, Timothy Stenzel, director of the agency’s Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health, was asked whether the agency has a process to remove authorizations already granted for tests found to be ineffective or dangerous, according to audio obtained by Kaiser Health News. The FDA has granted more than 40 emergency approvals for COVID-19 tests since Feb. 4.

He responded that the FDA’s “traditional way” is for the agency and developer to make decisions together on the best path forward.

“We always first want to engage the developer to understand what the performance issues might be,” he said, “to try to understand what the root cause is.”

“If there are indeed performance issues,” he said, “what is the best way to address that as quickly as possible?”

Abbott’s Fast COVID Test Poses Safety Issues, Lab Workers Say published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[dinafbrownil]

Abbott’s Fast COVID Test Poses Safety Issues, Lab Workers Say

Lab personnel say worries are mounting over the safety of a rapid coronavirus test by Abbott Laboratories that President Donald Trump has repeatedly lauded ― particularly, the risk of infection to those handling it.

Trump and federal health officials have promoted the ease with which the Abbott test can be given to patients, whether at a drive-thru site or a doctor’s office. Another selling point: The test could “save personal protective equipment (PPE),” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Yet medical workers say that there’s a serious danger in the test’s design, one that would require much more protection — not less ― for those who administer it.

Running a test involves swabbing a potentially infected person’s nasal passage and swirling the specimen in an open container with liquid chemicals, raising the potential of releasing the highly contagious virus into the air.

When HHS announced it had bought tens of thousands of Abbott’s point-of-care tests for public labs and others across the country, it noted that “only gloves and a facemask are necessary” to administer it.

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The notion of donning less protection runs contrary to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and medical workers fear that they could be infected while testing others.

Abbott says the test can return a positive result in as little as five minutes. And its development was welcome news for governors and hospitals across the nation desperately searching for COVID tests for patients and scarce protective gear for medical workers.

“What makes this test so different is where it can be used: outside the four walls of a traditional hospital such as in the physicians’ office or urgent care clinics,” says Abbott Labs on its website. It has already been deployed in public health labs and several drive-thru sites, where people wait in parking lots normally occupied by casino- and cinema-goers.

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But lab officials and medical diagnostic experts say running the Abbott machine — used for years to detect other pathogens, including the flu ― requires a technician to leave patient specimens out in the open. Gloves and a mask alone would not protect them.

Standard precautions for biosafety protection in labs include good hand hygiene and the use of lab coats or gowns, gloves and eye protection to protect medical workers when a specimen is being manipulated, according to the CDC. Health workers collecting specimens should wear an N95 mask and other PPE.

To run the Abbott test, medical workers or patients themselves swab an individual’s naval cavity to collect a specimen. Then, the swab is put back into its original wrapping, potentially exposing workers to contaminated materials when they handle it, according to Michael Pentella, the head of Iowa’s state public health lab who chairs the Association of Public Health Laboratories’ biosafety and biosecurity committee.

Abbott’s instructions direct workers to “vigorously mix” the swab with liquid in an open vessel in the machine for 10 seconds — a kind of open system that Pentella called “unusual.”

“This is the only test I know of where you take the swab and you put it back in the paper wrapping,” said Pentella, who hasn’t used the Abbott rapid tests in his lab but has heard concerns about safety from colleagues. “It’s the contamination that could be associated with the wrapper that has some biosafety professionals concerned.”

The committee he chairs plans to issue safety recommendations for lab workers handling the product.

“It’s not like you shouldn’t use the instrument,” Pentella said. “You just have to use it safely.” While Abbott advises customers to use universal precautions for protecting health care workers, the extent to which that happens is up to each organization, Pentella said. “We don’t want to give this disease to anyone.”

Another longtime medical diagnostics expert expressed shock at the way the Abbott test is performed — that a swab gathered from a potentially infected patient must be openly mixed in liquid.

“The best point-of-care instrument is exactly like an automated pencil sharpener,” said the expert, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “You do nothing else.”

A spokesperson for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene similarly said officials were worried about biosafety and contamination because of how the test is performed, saying its open structure could contaminate the person performing the test as well as the area around the machine.

Trump has been a reliable pitchman for Abbott’s test, calling it a “whole new ballgame” as he showed off the machine in the Rose Garden. In public remarks from Feb. 29 to April 6 ― the day HHS announced it had purchased thousands of tests — Trump called out Abbott 14 times, according to a review of his remarks during daily White House briefings and related events.

“Now, a lot of people love the Abbott test. So do I. You know, the Abbott test is great because it’s, boom, it’s ― they touch, they put it in, and in five minutes you have [a result],” Trump said this week.

As one former HHS official put it: “He likes showy things that can look good.” A White House spokesperson declined to comment further on Trump’s praise of the company.

Certainly the initial HHS purchase of 30,000 Abbott tests to distribute across the country was supposed to do that. About 13,500 of them went to public health labs plus the CDC’s central lab in Atlanta, according to a department spokeswoman. The Indian Health Service received 10,000 tests, and roughly 5,000 were set aside for the CDC’s International Reagent Resource for states to replenish supplies.

Public health labs appeared to be in line for slightly more tests and devices than indicated in an earlier HHS document, obtained by Kaiser Health News, which showed state and local labs would receive a total 5,500 tests and the CDC lab would get 800.

On April 6, when HHS announced its order, millions of Americans were waiting on COVID tests. Multiple public health labs that received a batch from Abbott said they got 15 devices and supplies to conduct 120 tests. Even calibrating the machine would use up a portion of those — before labs could run patient samples. HHS also ordered 50 Abbott ID Now machines for Alaska because of its remote location, according to agency spokesperson Mia Heck.

When asked why HHS said only gloves and a face mask were necessary to administer the test, Heck said the department deferred to CDC guidelines.

Certain states have offered guidance to those handling patient specimens that is similar to the CDC’s. For example, the Washington state health department advised providers to use “appropriate personal protection” when collecting patient specimens ― at minimum, a gown, gloves, N95 respirator masks and goggles or a face shield, according to emails obtained through a public records request in King County, Washington.

Gary Procop, director of virology at the Cleveland Clinic, said he recommends that personnel either wear appropriate protective gear or use the test in a biological safety cabinet, which protects workers behind a glass shield. The large integrated health system is weighing whether to use the quick test in certain settings, including where there’s a low prevalence of disease, and had concerns about workers handling open swabs.

“What you really want to have is droplet precautions,” he said in an interview.

As safety concerns grow, some state officials are still complaining about a lack of supplies from Abbott — despite its statements that it would manufacture 50,000 tests per day.

“It’s incredibly frustrating because there was a lot of talk about this device, there was a lot of hype on it nationally, and that was wonderful,” New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican, said at a news conference this month. “And then when they showed up, expectations were set really high as they should be. But to actually have 13 of these devices and have no way to use them, I’m banging my head against the wall.”

Abbott has won considerable publicity for the fast Abbott test since FDA granted emergency authorization on March 27. The company has partnered with CVS Health and Walgreens to set up drive-thru COVID testing sites in multiple states.

As of Monday, nine of 15 planned Walgreens sites in seven states are open with the Abbott tests. Walgreens pharmacists are tasked with overseeing patients and “PPE is used throughout the process,” a spokesperson said, without responding to questions about protocol for handling specimens and which specific items employees wear.

CVS Health is operating five drive-thru sites in five states, with each able to screen 750 to 1,000 people a day, spokesperson Christine Cramer said. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants handling specimens use gloves, gowns, N95 masks and eye shields or goggles.

“We won’t open a site until we are sure we have what we need,” she said.

In Washington, people expected to be in close contact with Trump ― including reporters covering his daily coronavirus briefings — have also been tested on Abbott machines.

Abbott spokesperson Darcy Ross said the company has shipped more than 850,000 rapid tests since April 1, although it’s unclear how many went to private-sector clients versus public health sites.

“We recommend our customers follow the CDC recommendations and guidelines for point-of-care sample handling and PPE. Our product information directly links to CDC guidelines,” she said.

The Abbott tests have had several other hiccups. For example, the Food and Drug Administration this month said Abbott would revise its instructions after one method for preserving specimens ― known as viral transport media — caused inaccurate results because patient samples were too diluted.

Pentella, the Iowa lab official, said, “People are shifting their concern from the viral transport media to, now you have a swab in a wrapper that’s potentially contaminated with nasal secretions from the patient.”

On an April 15 call held by FDA officials on the development and validation of COVID-19 tests, Timothy Stenzel, director of the agency’s Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health, was asked whether the agency has a process to remove authorizations already granted for tests found to be ineffective or dangerous, according to audio obtained by Kaiser Health News. The FDA has granted more than 40 emergency approvals for COVID-19 tests since Feb. 4.

He responded that the FDA’s “traditional way” is for the agency and developer to make decisions together on the best path forward.

“We always first want to engage the developer to understand what the performance issues might be,” he said, “to try to understand what the root cause is.”

“If there are indeed performance issues,” he said, “what is the best way to address that as quickly as possible?”

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/abbotts-fast-covid-test-poses-safety-issues-lab-workers-say/