I Get Another Week Off

Oregon's governor Kate Brown announced that ALL schools statewide will be closed starting this coming Monday, March 16, and they will not be open for students again until April 1, at least in my school district.

However, I am lucky I will be paid for next week, and we do not have to make the days up.  I am hoping my trip to the Redwoods is still on for the first full week of June.

Oregon now has 30 confirmed cases of the coronavirus.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said Friday the state doesn’t have the testing capacity or equipment it needs to fight the COVID-19 disease. And she was quick to blame the federal government for what she described as a slow response.

“We need more capacity,” Brown said, noting that there were five private labs the state has certified that are in the process of ordering materials.

Brown also criticized the current testing process as too intensive. She dismissed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a new, faster test from Roche.

“Honestly, it’s too little too late and it’s absolutely inadequate,” she said.

Time to Stock Up on the TP and Clorox

I just saw this on my Twitter feed:

BREAKING: Governor Brown has declared a State of Emergency for COVID-19 in Oregon. https://t.co/KX3iMto94D

— NewsWatch 12 (@KDRV) March 8, 2020

I still think this whole thing is overblown.


Details:

The State of Emergency will remain in effect for 60 days. "It can be extended until the public health threat of the virus is contained" Gov. Brown said.

Oregon Health Authority director Patrick Allen says at this time there are 14 positive test results for COVID-19 in the State of Oregon. That includes 7 new presumptive cases. Allen says those cases are in Douglas County, Marion County, and Washington County. Allen says these cases are all community spread, and spread due to contact with a previous case. None of the 7 new cases were spread due to travel.

Meanwhile, Italy has been hard hit.

The U.S. total is now over 500.

Daily Mail's current U.S. map:

A political virus decides to quarantine himself.

Yes, it is true Trump fired his pandemic team.

I Spoke Too Soon About Oregon

It looks like the first case of "presumptive coronavirus" has hit the Beaver State as well:

The person in Oregon diagnosed with a presumptive case of the novel coronavirus had no known travel exposure and is believed to have contracted the disease through the community, according to Oregon Health Authority Director Pat Allen https://t.co/0YJFDLTBLv

— CNN (@CNN) February 29, 2020

It is of "unknown origin."

Oh, shit.

A Lake Oswego elementary school has decided to close because one of its employees has the illness.

A Lake Oswego elementary school employee contracted Oregon’s first apparent case of coronavirus, causing the closure of the 430-student school as health officials try to figure out how many people may have been exposed.

The employee lives in Washington County and is isolated at Kaiser Permanente Westside Medical Center in Hillsboro in what state health officials described Friday as another case of an unexplained transmission of the disease.

The patient hadn’t been under monitoring for coronavirus symptoms and doesn’t appear to have traveled to any of the countries with outbreaks or have associated with anyone who did, Oregon Health Authority officials said.

You Bet It Is Embarrassing,

and you can about bet Congress won't do one damned thing to improve Social Security benefits for the most vulnerable.

Instead the assholes, taking their marching orders from their billionaire backers, are trying to find even MORE ways to screw the rest of us over.

For example, raising the retirement age so that even fewer of those on the bottom ever get it.

This is a national scandal:

Many researchers believe the gap in life spans from lower- to upper-income Americans started widening about 40 years ago, when income inequality began to grow. Earlier in the 20th century, trends in life spans were of declining disparities, some experts say, because improvements in public health, such as the invention of the polio vaccine and improved sanitation, benefited rich and poor alike. The broad adoption of medication for high blood pressure in the 1950s led to a major improvement for black men, erasing a big part of the gap with whites, said Dana P. Goldman, the director of the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California. But medical improvements can also drive disparity when they disproportionately benefit affluent Americans; for example, cutting-edge cancer treatments.

The experience of other countries suggests that disparities do not necessarily get worse in contemporary times. Consider Canada, where men in the poorest urban neighborhoods experienced the biggest declines in mortality from heart disease from 1971 to 1996, according to a 2002 study. Over all, the gap in life expectancy at birth between income groups declined in Canada during that period. And a study comparing cancer survival rates found that low-income residents of Toronto had greater survival rates than their counterparts in Detroit. There was no difference for middle- and high-income residents in the two cities.

It started with the embrace of our political beliefs of the ruinous neoliberalism of Milton Friedman, and it has gone downhill ever since.

Another Quack Idea Bites the Dust

Years ago, probably 30 or 35 years ago, Consumer Reports had a long piece about the flaws in the cholesterol theory. Their biggest criticism, as I remember, had to do with making links between diet and disease when in fact it is difficult to isolate diet since it varies constantly from day to day. Even before that article I had been suspect of any of the nutrition gurus because they always seemed to be peddling quackery in order to promote a food faddism agenda.

Facts really aren't important to them, whether it is fat shaming people because they don't conform to a certain body size, whether it's peddling vegetarianism or veganism, or whether it's to peddle hysteria over cholesterol.


The federal government has decided to ditch the cholesterol nonsense once and for all.

Anytime somebody promotes a diet that supposedly combats disease or prolongs life, proceed with caution. It's a good indication somebody is a food faddist with an agenda.

What's Her Excuse

for being such a narcissistic, judgmental person? Most of the comments following the article miss the point.

I've got news for her: She may look "good" now, but in twenty years, when menopause starts taking hold, she won't be able to sustain her regimen and look that "good" without a ton of cosmetic surgery. She could wind up with thyroid problems and have problems keeping the hated "weight" off, no matter how often she works out or even if she gets medication for it.

Her problem isn't with how she looks, but how she perceives others for what she considers are their shortcomings. The statement "what's your excuse" is what is offensive, not the picture itself.

Women especially don't need this "fat-shaming" shit.

Not Buying This Study

Rock music is a relatively young form of entertainment. Give it another 50 years and that average lifespan will increase a great deal.

While many entertainers of the fifties have passed on, most today would be in their late seventies or into their eighties, which is average life expectancy. Many if not most rock entertainers of the sixties are still alive, and they would be approaching their seventies now.

And yes, many entertainers do die of natural causes, and I don't believe it's because of bad lifestyles alone or even at all. People do get cancer and heart disease in the general population, and many get them at an early age, unfortunately. I think of people I have gone to high school with. More of them are now dying of natural causes.

True, some pressures force some entertainers into substance abuse, but plane crashes, car accidents, and the like will increase in any occupation where substantial travel is required.

Shortsighted and Greedy

That describes how the eyeglass industry is a ripoff if you go through traditional doctors or even through chains like Lenscrafters for them:




However, one can go online and get perfectly good eyeglasses for a fraction of what doctors charge.

The problem here is there is a monopoly.

News, Comments, Etc.

With the S&P lowering the U.S.'s credit rating (I suspect it is trying to blackmail Congress into more "austerity" measures to bail out the parasites responsible for the economic meltdown), capitalism itself is under a severe crisis of which there may be no return.

I would say that in this country the blame rests squarely on Washington for creating this mess.
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Believe it or not, Rupert Murdoch doesn't actually call the shots at Fox "News"; instead it is Roger Ailes, who Murdoch is actually scared to death of:

Many within Murdoch's family have come to viscerally hate Ailes. Murdoch's third wife, Wendi, has worked to soften her husband's politics, and his son James has persuaded him to embrace the reality of global warming – even as Ailes has led the drumbeat of climate deniers at Fox News. PR man Matthew Freud, Murdoch's son-in-law, recently told reporters: "I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes's horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to."

"Rupert is surrounded by people who regularly, if not moment to moment, tell him how horrifying and dastardly Roger is," says Wolff, Murdoch's biographer. "Wendi cannot stand Roger. Rupert's children cannot stand Roger. So around Murdoch, Roger has no supporters, except for Roger himself."

The family could pull out the money financing the operation or sell the damned thing if it bothers them so much.

The original piece is here.
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In more and more cities, it is a crime to be poor:

In Los Angeles, housing expert Peter Dreier says that "people who've lost their jobs, or at least their second jobs, cope by doubling or tripling up in overcrowded apartments, or by paying 50 or 60 or even 70 percent of their incomes in rent." According to a community organizer in Alexandria, Virginia, the standard apartment in a complex occupied largely by day laborers has two bedrooms, each containing an entire family of up to five people, plus an additional person laying claim to the couch.

No one could call suicide a "coping strategy," but it is one way some people have responded to job loss and debt. There are no national statistics linking suicide to economic hard times, but the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline reported more than a four-fold increase in call volume between 2007 and 2009, and regions with particularly high unemployment, like Elkhart, Indiana, have seen troubling spikes in their suicide rates. Foreclosure is often the trigger for suicide -- or, worse, murder-suicides that destroy entire families.

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Our society is so full of sexism and ageism, a few women who are old enough to know better are actually undergoing the knife despite possible health risks.

Don't hand me any crap it's about "feeling better." This is about attracting men, period. By the time you are in your late 70s, the men have pretty much died off or are in bad shape anyway.

Etc. and News

Obama, you are no FDR.
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Just because a woman has liposuction doesn't mean the fat never comes back.
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Surprise!!! Most teachers have to work second jobs, and I would suspect the majority of the rest have working spouses to cushion the blow the lousy teacher salaries provide.

And it's getting worse because politicians and school districts are finding ways to get rid of the more expensive and better teachers, leaving a revolving door workforce of twenty-something bimbos.
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My new dog, Duffy, is actually a casualty of the foreclosure crisis. This link is the article about the woman who surrendered the 43 dogs to animal control last August.

News, Obits, Etc.

With all of the confusion about whether HRT is good for menopausal women, not to mention whether a low-fat diet is beneficial or that vitamin D and calcium prevent osteoporosis, women might just as well call it a day and die.
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Director Sidney Lumet, known for his work on films like Twelve Angry Men, Network, and Dog Day Afternoon, has died from lymphoma. He was 86.

He avoided Hollywood like the plague, which is helpful for one's sanity.
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Former NY governor Mario Cuomo tries to keep the liberal faith while his son Andrew has turned out to be a neoliberal piece of shit:

Except that it has. In the years after Cuomo delivered that address, a restive middle class, beset by industrial collapse and the dissolution of whole communities that went with it, grew ever more skeptical of liberal government, with its focus on poor and minority communities. And so Bill Clinton’s innovation in the 1990s was, in effect, to invert Mario Cuomo’s formulation. Most Democrats giving that speech in the post-Clinton era, Obama included, would have said that the party’s main mission was to serve the middle class without crushing the poor, rather than the other way around. That was, perhaps, the defining difference between Cuomo’s liberal moment and this one, and when I argued this point to Cuomo, he allowed that it was true.

What Cuomo didn’t say is that this probably also explains the political dissonance between him and his son, who seems to identify with a generation of Democrats who care more about the prose of government — restoring the faith of a jaded middle class through metrics and efficiencies — than about the poetry of liberalism. Although he consults with his father privately and speaks warmly of him publicly, Andrew Cuomo doesn’t talk much about his immigrant heritage or his passion for public housing, or anything else that might seem to place him squarely in his father’s tradition. In the weeks after I visited Mario, I tried repeatedly to reach the current governor to talk about his father. He declined to return the call.

His son is a spoiled rotten, clueless sack of shit, just like Barack Obama. Neoliberalism is a political poison and needs to be eradicated before it completely destroys the country.
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No surprise as new NYC schools "chancellor" Dennis Walcott has absolutely no classroom teaching experience.

Health Issues

Yesterday, when I got up from the couch, I lost my balance and almost fell through the window at my brother's house. I started breaking out in a sweat and finding it almost impossible to regain my balance. I called 911 and was taken to Providence Hospital.

They ran a bunch of tests on me, and it appears I likely have an inner ear infection, which is creating this vertigo. I was given some medication for it, but I really have to take it easy the next few days.

This is very scary stuff, so I make sure I grab onto something anytime I get up and walk around.

News, Etc.

The federal government continues to play fast and loose with UI numbers by saying the rate is 9.0 percent while only 36,000 new jobs were created.

The lousy weather back east is being blamed for the numbers.
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President Obama sheds crocodile tears over Egypt:

Obama’s prayer follows a series of White House and State Department statements “deploring” the violence in Egypt and expressing moral indignation over the attacks by the regime of President Hosni Mubarak on peaceful protesters and the media.

Who do they think they are kidding? For 30 years, US administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, including that of Obama, have backed Mubarak precisely because of his ability to impose policies supported by Washington against the overwhelming opposition of the Egyptian people. That this required systematic and relentless violence was well understood.

Meanwhile, the protests continue as the ruling elite fractures.
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Does anybody really care whether dirty old man Hugh Hefner has his "groove back" or not?

I read enough about the filth in his mansion and the filth in his mind not to give a crap about his business or sexual prowess.
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Speaking of disease, diseases once thought eradicated or rare in the United States are making a furious comeback. These diseases include measles, the mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), and TB. They are making a comeback thanks to deliberate neglect of our infrastructure and budget cutbacks:

From January 1 to December 31 in 2010, the CDC reported 8,383 confirmed cases of pertussis in California, which once enjoyed a living standard among the highest in the world. More than 1,100 adults and children have been diagnosed with the illness in San Diego County alone, and across the state at least 10 babies died. California has not suffered this great an outbreak since 1947.

Michigan, once home to a thriving auto industry, also suffered an increase in pertussis in the first half of 2008, continuing through 2010. There were 315 reported cases in 2008, with 902 cases in 2009 and 1,092 in 2010. Ohio recorded a level of infection not seen since 1985, with 966 reported cases.

The official figures do not include those who are unable to seek medical attention due to financial hardship. Given that the US is in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and tens of millions lack health insurance, the real numbers are certainly much higher.

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And what about the almost 5 million people who have dropped off UI and aren't counted in any statistic?

They can go hang as far as our elected officials care.
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John Luebbers has pleaded not guilty in the shooting of Placerville school principal Sam LaCara.

The Case for Purchasing an RV

or sleeping out of a tent grows stronger every day, especially if one lives or plans to travel back to the East:

Potter says that not only have bedbugs survived, they've thrived. In recent years, the tiny critters have moved beyond homes and hotels — affecting many different types of facilities, including college dormitories, homeless shelters, nursing homes, office buildings, hospitals, schools and day cares, movie theaters, modes of transportation, laundromats, retail stores, libraries and camps.

Though bedbugs are certainly appearing more frequently than they used to, Potter says it's important to have a healthy attitude about the infestation.

More on this subject from Potter can be found here.

News, Etc.

If the financial elite doesn't get you sooner or later, the bedbugs will.

It is a real crisis, and a sign of the times.

This is a handy site to find out where these critters from hell are staying.

News

Labor expert Rush Limbaugh, who makes tens of millions a year spewing nonsense, says auto workers should take a 50-percent cut in pay.

One has to realize, though, Limbaugh is a mouthpiece or a mouth of sorts for the elite, whose intentions are becoming more and more obvious by the day.

Auto workers at one plant have awful working conditions.
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Since the country is sliding into third world status as sure as shooting, the only things that will find the country hospitable are bedbugs.

Why the proliferation of bedbugs after they were almost completely eradicated in this country, at least in the urban areas?

...Bedbugs, once nearly eradicated, have spread across New York City, in part because of the decline in the use of DDT. According to the city’s Department of Housing and Preservation, the number of bedbug violations has gone up 67 percent in the last two years. In the most recent fiscal year, which ended on June 30, the city’s 311 help line recorded 12,768 bedbug complaints, 16 percent more than the previous year and 39 percent above the year before. A New York City community health survey showed that in 2009, 1 in 15 New Yorkers had bedbugs in their homes, a number that is probably higher now.

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Next stop, the Twilight Zone, as the dipshits at Washoe County School District try yet another "reorganization" scheme passing the trash around in order to "improve" student "performance," in this highly transient school district.
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While Lance Armstrong may have done a lot of good for cancer awareness and philanthropy, it is all about to go down the drain because of allegations of cheating through doping.

If he cheated, it's over, despite all of the ink spilled in this article about his cancer activism.
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News

If only people had the kind of loyalty and devotion dogs have:

A golden retriever named "Lady" was a good and loyal dog until the end.


Police and an investigator with the Stark County Coroner's Office believe that Lady stayed by her owner's side in a field just outside of Hartville for almost a week.

Parley Nichols, 81, was found dead there Wednesday night, about a mile from his home.

Nichols had dementia and was reported missing on April 8.

Dogs love you so much, they will be devoted to you even after you die, such as the legendary Greyfriars Bobby:

In 1858, a man named John Gray was buried in old Greyfriars Churchyard. His grave levelled by the hand of time, and unmarked by any stone, became scarcely discernible; but, although no human interest seemed to attach to it.

The sacred spot was not wholly disregarded or forgotten. For fourteen years the dead man's faithful dog kept constant watch and guard over the grave until his own death in 1872.

The famous Skye Terrier, Greyfriars Bobby was so devoted to his master John Gray, even in death, for fourteen years Bobby lay on the grave only leaving for food.

It is reported that a daily occurance of people from all walks of life would stand at the entrance of the Kirkyard waiting for the one o'clock gun and the appearance of Bobby leaving the grave for his midday meal.

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So is taking estrogen at perimenopause actually beneficial to women in the long run, especially when it comes to heart disease and Alzheimer's? This writer seems to think so.
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Not that it wasn't obvious all the time which side the GOP is on when it comes to any kind of business regulations.

They are pandering to their base, which isn't really the Tea Party types, but instead they are pandering to their donors.
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Although the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Panel Recommended

regular mammograms at age 50 and every two years after that and said there was overscreening of breast cancer, the panel didn't quite foresee the storm of reaction against their recommendations, especially by women who had believed for years that early detection equals a cure or prevention.

There was something charming about the innocence of the independent task force. Did the scientists assume the public would just accept the information as given? Or, should I say, as revised? Anyone who has spent time in a waiting room with women taught to equate early detection with prevention could have warned them.

Within hours, stories poured in from women who deeply believe “my life was saved” by an early mammogram. Then came suspicions about what new guidelines would mean to their insurance providers. Women recoiled as well from an analysis that listed “anxiety” as a risk component of early mammograms—as if they couldn’t handle a little A in preference to a big C.

If the experts didn’t realize how women would react, they were truly disconnected from the poisonous political atmosphere around health care reform. Quickly and deliberately, politicians turned “recommendations” into “rationing.” As Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., darkly warned, “This is how rationing begins. This is when you start getting a bureaucrat between you and your physician.”

With younger women with breast cancer, survival depends on how aggressive the tumor is, now how big it is, and unfortunately, survival rates have hardly budged:

It’s important because—and I say this as someone whose mother, aunt and sister have all had breast cancer—the task force had a strong story to tell. The benefits of mammography for younger women have been oversold. As Laura Nikolaides of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, and a cancer survivor, says, “People have been doing mammography as a security blanket: If you have a mammogram, you won’t die of breast cancer. We wish that were true.” The biology of the tumor—how aggressively it grows—is now judged more important than the size at which it was discovered. And the terrible reality is that we haven’t done much to change the survival rate of younger women who get this disease.

More About Mammograms

Gina Kolata of the New York Times provides us a timeline of the mammogram controversy, which has continued for DECADES.

It's helpful.

This Writer Traces the Push Towards Having

mammograms at earlier ages, even though there are many, many false positives with younger women and the fact deaths from breast cancer have hardly budged:

Critics of this week’s recommendations have poked holes in the Preventive Services Task Force’s data analysis, have warned against basing present practice guidelines on the older imaging technology used in the studies, and have called for still more studies to be done. They generally sidestep the question of whether the very small numbers of lives potentially saved by screening younger women outweigh the health, psychological and financial costs of overdiagnosis.

You need to screen 1,900 women in their 40s for 10 years in order to prevent one death from breast cancer, and in the process you will have generated more than 1,000 false-positive screens and all the overtreatment they entail. This doesn’t make sense. We could do more research and hold more consensus conferences. I suspect it would confirm the data we already have. But history suggests it would never be enough to convince many people that we are screening too much.