Duluth News-Tribune: ‘Armed citizens’ confront Minnesota health workers during COVID-19 testing. “A team of state and federal health workers was recently confronted by armed residents while conducting random coronavirus testing in communities across Minnesota. ‘The incident was unfortunate,’ said Julie Bartkey, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Health. ‘The team did the right thing by leaving and notifying their study site coordinator of the situation.'”
COVID-19
Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation: IPLC Launches the Collective Architecture and Design Response to Covid-19 Web Archive
Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation: IPLC Launches the Collective Architecture and Design Response to Covid-19 Web Archive. “… the Archive documents how the architecture and design communities have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. For the purposes of the Archive, the design and architecture communities are defined as practitioners and organizations who play a role in shaping public space and the built environment, including: architects, landscape architects, urban planners, and artists. Materials included come from a wide variety of sites, such as national organizations, professional and personal blogs, interviews, design firms, and cultural heritage institutions.”
Washington Post: Marylanders are still calling about stalled unemployment benefits. And no one is answering the phone.
Washington Post: Marylanders are still calling about stalled unemployment benefits. And no one is answering the phone.. “More than six months after the coronavirus pandemic triggered a deluge of unemployment claims in the Washington region, some jobless Marylanders are still experiencing major problems getting benefits and have endured weeks — or months — without the payments they are supposed to receive. The main frustration, they say, is they cannot get anyone to answer their calls.”
NBC News: Federal firefighter units juggle COVID-19 infection on fire lines
NBC News: Federal firefighter units juggle COVID-19 infection on fire lines. “Wildland firefighters are sometimes considered the last defense, called in after local resources are stretched thin. Federal crews spend the fire season crisscrossing state borders as they are sent to fight the latest burning blaze. And that constant traveling, as well as the close working proximity, have offered a challenge to COVID-19 mitigation, especially as firefighting methods like holding the line can require elbow-to-elbow teamwork.”
Crossing guards get new tool to guide kids during coronavirus: Handheld sirens (Tampa Bay Times)
Tampa Bay Times: Crossing guards get new tool to guide kids during coronavirus: Handheld sirens. “This school year, though, [school crossing guard Ellen] Cipriani can’t identify students’ faces when they’re hidden behind the masks that Cipriani and the students are required to wear to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Nor can she blow the silver whistle she has used since she first trained as a crossing guard with the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in September 2011. So the Sheriff’s Office has handed Cipriani and the county’s 369 crossing guards a new tool to help keep kids safe heading to and from school — electronic, handheld sirens.”
KSL TV: Interactive Map Shows SARS-CoV-2 Levels In Utah Wastewater Treatment Facilities
KSL TV: Interactive Map Shows SARS-CoV-2 Levels In Utah Wastewater Treatment Facilities. “The Utah Department of Environmental Quality is offering a new tool to help track the coronavirus in the state. The DEQ’s interactive map shows the areas where SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in Utah’s wastewater. It allows users to see the recent trends on a scale ranging from ‘not detected’ to ‘present, no trend,’ to ‘decreasing’ to ‘increasing.'”
MedicalXpress: Study links rising stress, depression in US to pandemic-related losses, media consumption
MedicalXpress: Study links rising stress, depression in US to pandemic-related losses, media consumption. “Experiencing multiple stressors triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic—such as unemployment—and COVID-19-related media consumption are directly linked to rising acute stress and depressive symptoms across the U.S., according to a groundbreaking University of California, Irvine study. The report appears in Science Advances.”
Harvard Medical School: Outbreak Detection
Harvard Medical School: Outbreak Detection. “The COVID-19 Outbreak Detection Tool, updated two to three times per week, predicts how fast an outbreak is spreading within a given county by estimating the doubling time of COVID-19 cases. To make these predictions, the tool accounts for reported COVID-19 cases and deaths, face mask mandates, social distancing policies, changes in tests performed, rates of positive tests and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index, which assesses the health-related resilience of individual communities when confronted with external stresses, such as natural or human-caused disasters or disease outbreaks.”
Bloomberg: India’s Hindu Temples Use ‘God’s Gold’ to Pay Pandemic Bills
Bloomberg: India’s Hindu Temples Use ‘God’s Gold’ to Pay Pandemic Bills. “Hindu temples hold as much as 4,000 tons of the precious metal, according to the World Gold Council, a stockpile as big as Fort Knox’s and administered by trusts empowered by Indian law to act on behalf of the deity. The Travancore Devaswom Board, a prominent temple association in the southern state of Kerala, has for the first time decided to deposit some of its treasures with banks—which pay interest on gold deposits of varying terms—to raise funds and pay salaries, according to the board’s president, N. Vasu.”
ABC News (Australia): No fever? You could still have COVID-19, with most new coronavirus cases not showing this symptom
ABC News (Australia): No fever? You could still have COVID-19, with most new coronavirus cases not showing this symptom. “Only about 20 per cent of new Australian coronavirus cases are presenting with signs of fever. That’s according to the latest epidemiological data from the COVID-19 National Incident Room Surveillance Team, looking at cases up until August 30.”
ABC News: 11 state treasurers call on Gilead to reduce remdesivir pricing
ABC News: 11 state treasurers call on Gilead to reduce remdesivir pricing. “As the U.S. approaches 200,000 coronavirus deaths, a coalition of 11 state treasurers is calling on drugmaker Gilead Sciences to reduce the price of remdesivir, its promising treatment for some patients of COVID-19.”
Channel 4: Care home provider under ‘pressure’ to accept hospital patients with Covid
Channel 4: Care home provider under ‘pressure’ to accept hospital patients with Covid. “When the full extent of deaths from coronavirus in care homes was revealed at the height of the pandemic, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock claimed there had been a ‘protective ring’ placed around them. Tonight, amid worrying signs that coronavirus cases are spreading to care homes, this programme can reveal that hospitals are again getting ready to rapidly discharge people with the virus into them.”
CBS News: WHO warns of “alarming” virus spread in Europe after 54,000 cases recorded in 24 hours
CBS News: WHO warns of “alarming” virus spread in Europe after 54,000 cases recorded in 24 hours. “The World Health Organization on Thursday warned of ‘alarming rates of transmission’ of COVID-19 across Europe and cautioned against shortening quarantine periods as countries in the region scrambled to find ways to reduce infections without resorting to new lockdowns. The WHO’s regional director for Europe Hans Kluge said a September surge — Europe set a new record last week, with some 54,000 cases recorded in 24 hours — ‘should serve as a wake-up call for all of us.'”
Boston Globe: Will we ever wear real clothes again?
Boston Globe: Will we ever wear real clothes again?. “Obsessing over pandemic fashion is a luxury some don’t have. Many workers have been forced to show up at their jobs since COVID-19 hit even when it didn’t feel safe. Others have lost their jobs. But with major Boston-area employers extending work-from-home policies until 2021 or beyond, and events and concerts and eating inside at restaurants and other fun activities either canceled, postponed, or greatly scaled back, the question has to be asked: Will we ever wear real clothes again?”
New York Times: Housekeepers Face a Disaster Generations in the Making
New York Times: Housekeepers Face a Disaster Generations in the Making. “The pandemic has had devastating consequences for a wide variety of occupations, but housekeepers have been among the hardest hit. Seventy-two percent of them reported that they had lost all of their clients by the first week of April, according to a survey by the National Domestic Workers Alliance. The fortunate had employers who continued to pay them. The unlucky called or texted their employers and heard nothing back. They weren’t laid off so much as ghosted, en masse.”
