The COVAX Facility aims to pool resources of high-, medium-, and low-income countries to speed COVID-19 vaccine development, manufacturing, and distribution, working to ensure fair global access to safe and effective vaccines once a vaccine is licensed and approved. There are over 170 countries now in talks to be involved with the effort, which is supporting nine leading vaccine candidates. Some of the countries involved so far are the UK, Canada, Japan, the European Commission, New Zealand, and South Korea.
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Fair??? FAIR??? This is communism!
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Journal of the Corona Year
9/01
Every Friday evening since the start of the PAUSE order, the CEO of the company I work for has sent out an encouraging email. In each he sums-up the past week and offers a rosy forecast for the next. Mostly what he writes is directed to the people who work for commissions, and has no bearing on my job at all.
He sends these out after the office closes. Normally donât see them until Monday morning. Below is what greeted me this Monday morning. I removed the salutation and the closing. This is the bulk of what he wrote:
This week on the CNBC show Squawk Box, the legendary real estate investor Sam Zell was interviewed about what CEOâs can do help get the economy get back on track and said the following: âItâs going to require leadership. Itâs going to require leaders of all the companies to come back to their offices and lead the people and create the opportunity. Hiding out in the Hamptons or hiding out in Vermont or wherever doesnât make any sense and is counter-productive.â This resonated with me and I know it resonates with all of us.
While many people have been coming into the office daily already, we will be making a big push heading into September to safely return the vast majority of us to the office on a daily basis. More detail will come on this next week.
But for now, as we have the last week before Labor Day ahead of us, I hope that everyone has a chance to relax and recharge before what I know will be a very active September and few months to come.
So thatâs the problem with the US economy â too many people hiding in the Hamptons!
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Perhaps he was thinking of his multimillionaire CEO friends instead of the peasants, who I wouldnât be surprised are all hiding in the Hamptons.*
*spelled that Hamptoms at first, like symptoms, which isnât far from the truth.
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UmâŚno masks? They do appear to be standing far enough apart, though. But lovely to look at and read about, isnât it?
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no masks needed. The picture was taken way back in 2015.
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Oh my dearie-me, I keep forgetting to read those darn captions below the pics - thanks!
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Thatâs close but not where he lives and where his kids went to school. Iâm not a fan of the guy (long story) but that shows actual care for others who arenât fortunate enough to live where he does.
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Wow, that is so odd to readâŚfrom reading his âDiaries: 1969 - 1979â he comes off to me as a nice guy, confused by life at some points - especially in relation to his parents - but loving and supportive. I was really surprised when I found out about Terry Jones and his second wife.
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Iâve been on both (d. for eczema and h. for Crohnâs) and both make me severely depressed. But I suppose itâs better than the alternative.
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I really admire Stephnie Weir. I relate to her characters (especially Dot; I think I was a low-key version of her).
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PSU football doctor: 30-35 percent of COVID-19-positive Big Ten athletes had myocarditis
During a State College Area school board of directors meeting on Monday night, Wayne Sebastianelli â Penn Stateâs director of athletic medicine â made some alarming comments about the link between COVID-19 and myocarditis, particularly in Big Ten athletes. Sebastianelli said that cardiac MRI scans revealed that approximately a third of Big Ten athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 appeared to have myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can be fatal if left unchecked.
âYou could have a very high-level athlete whoâs got a very superior VO2 max and cardiac output who gets infected with COVID and can drop his or her VO2 max and cardiac output just by 10 percent, and that could make them go from elite status to average status,â Sebastianelli said. âWe donât know that. We donât know how long thatâs going to last. What we have seen when people have been studied with cardiac MRI scans â symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID infections â is a level of inflammation in cardiac muscle that just is alarming.â
[Edit:]
ESPN is saying those numbers were accidentally exaggerated, and that the comments werenât meant to directly refer to Penn State athletes being actively known to have cases of myocarditis.
Thereâs still some meat behind the story of a link between the diseases, though:
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Tests done.
Now we wait.
I was in my lab for an extended period with someone who then tested positive.
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yikes. best wishes!
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Iâm going to vent a little bit about this whole situation, because itâs stupid.
We brought students back for dorm, food, and parking income. That is it, that is all.
I donât want to lose my job. I donât want the ladies at Subway to lose their jobs. I donât want businesses in town who depend on foot traffic from students to shutter. We donât have a federal government that is acting reasonably to prevent these things. So the university felt that they needed to bring students back.
I disagree, but I get it. But why didnât we do anything to make this possible? My classes were packed to over capacity. That means students can only come to one face-to-face day in my class. They have to do the other online. Was it magical thinking? Why were departments not instructed to have one section online for popular classes? I could have taught my section of a core curricular class online. I could have had 50 students, and the other two faculty could have taught the in-person sections. It would have avoided the hell of this hyflex schedule. The larger university system in which I work cut the cost per credit for people returning to finish a degree. The governor established a special pot of money for teachers to refresh. Those are working adults - maybe theyâd like an online class? But no. All three of us are forced to teach hyflex. Literally everything about this is the worst possible way to make face-to-face happen. And every institution that tried for face-to-face is doing it. Why?
My students donât bring in dorm money. I have all upper-division and MS classes this semester. About 15% of students live on campus. If we would have had fresher and sophomore classes in-person, I think we could have made it the whole semester. All the rooms on campus would have been freed. Every class could be in the biggest possible room. And yet.
As a money-making scheme, what weâve done makes no sense. Iâm worried that when the outbreaks start in earnest (weâre going to begin tracking cases in two weeks - WHAT), parents will lose all trust. They wonât send their kids back. When this is under control, will the dorm model of making money collapse because of this utter clusterfuck? Are we just staving a collapse?
We could have really pioneered what a new world would look like. Instead we got whatever this is.
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In one of the harshest punishments imposed to date against students for violations of coronavirus safety protocols, Northeastern University dismissed 11 first-year students this week and declined to refund their $36,500 tuition after they were discovered crowded into a room at a Boston hotel serving as a temporary dormitory.
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