BBC: Covid-19: Recent claims about cremations and vaccines fact-checked. “Throughout the pandemic, statistics have been used in misleading and false claims about the impact of Covid-19 and the use of vaccines. Here are four recent claims we’ve fact-checked.”
Texas Tribune: Texas has seen nearly 9,000 COVID-19 deaths since February. All but 43 were unvaccinated people.. “Of the 8,787 people who have died in Texas due to COVID-19 since early February, at least 43 were fully vaccinated, the Texas Department of State Health Services said. That means 99.5% of people who died due to COVID-19 in Texas from Feb. 8 to July 14 were unvaccinated, while 0.5% were the result of ‘breakthrough infections,’ which DSHS defines as people who contracted the virus two weeks after being fully vaccinated.”
WDSU: A nurse in Missouri says she’s seen more COVID-19 deaths in the last 2 weeks than the past 6 months. “Registered nurse Brittany Dillard has been working at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, since January. She told sister station 40/29 News that she’s seen more patients die in the last two weeks from COVID-19 than in the last 6 months.”
Global Times: Chinese netizens offer advice to Indians on how to prevent deadly selfie accidents. “Has taking selfies become a deadly extreme sport? The answer is yes. On Monday, the news that more people have died while taking selfies in India than any other place around the world shocked Chinese netizens, who took to social media to provide tips on how to safely take memorable photos without putting one’s life in danger.”
ABC News: Nearly 120,000 children in US have lost a primary caregiver to COVID-19: Internal CDC data. “An estimated 119,000 children across the country have lost a primary caregiver due to COVID-19 associated death, and more than 140,000 children experienced the death of a primary or secondary caregiver, defined as co-residing grandparents or kin, according to data in an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention document obtained exclusively by ABC News.”
Digital Library of Georgia: How I Built A Funeral Program Collection for African Americans in Atlanta. “What started as a friendly competitive thought has now become another resource for researchers as well as scholars (I am one of the latter) who are interested in the individuals and local communities represented in the individual documents. The Atlanta funeral programs collection could possibly provide the information needed by a family historian (like myself) working to piece together their family’s story. This collection will always mean a lot to me, not only because I helped to start it but also because members of my own family are featured in the collection.”
BBC: The relatives frozen in time on Google Street View. “Social-media users are sharing Google Street View images featuring friends and relatives who have since died. It was sparked by a post on the Twitter account Fesshole, which asks followers to submit anonymous confessions – many of which are explicit.”
Arizona State University: Practical tools from award-winning ASU program made accessible online to parents of bereaved children. “The practical tools that are now available on the new website promote four key aspects of bereaved parenting. The foundation is self-care: parents’ ability to be kind to themselves during this time when they are grieving. The second tool teaches simple activities parents can use to help build stronger bonds with their children. The third involves basic communication tools to help children open up and share more. And the fourth focuses on tools to help parents respond in a way that helps children feel understood.”
TorrentFreak: RIP: The Uncanny Business of Dead Celebrity Endorsements on Social Media. “The dead are more alive than ever. Thanks to social media and inherited ‘intellectual property rights,’ stars of the past enjoy digital immortality. Icons including Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and John Lennon remain active on blue-checkmarked social media accounts that are often controlled by for-profit corporations, which don’t require a family tie to the deceased.”
Mashable: 150,000 handpainted hearts on memorial wall represent each life lost to COVID in the UK. “150,000 hand-painted red and pink hearts line a wall beside the River Thames in London, with each heart representing a person lost to COVID-19 in the UK. The National COVID Memorial Wall sits on the embankment on the south side of the River Thames in London, stretching nearly 500 metres between Westminster and Lambeth bridges. The hearts have been handpainted by volunteers.”
The Hill: Reported daily COVID-19 deaths dropped to lowest point in year on Sunday. “The number of COVID-19 deaths per day reported in the U.S. dropped to its lowest point in more than a year on Sunday, with the country documenting 222 fatalities. The U.S. saw daily toll drop from 676 fatalities recorded on Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University statistics. The data show the number of daily deaths reached its lowest point since early in the pandemic on March 23, 2020, when 192 deaths were documented.”
Lapham’s Quarterly: Revisiting the Dead. “Earlier in the year, I heard a news report that mentioned there were few, if any, memorials to those who died in the influenza pandemic of 1918. It just wasn’t the sort of mass death that lent itself easily to memorialization. I wondered if or how we would memorialize our own pandemic. Soon thereafter, I stumbled across a blog post about the burial grounds—and memorials—dedicated to those who died in nineteenth-century pandemics on Staten Island. I wanted to go see all three sites—the one in St. George, one up the road from there, and one farther south along the coast called Seguine Point—thinking maybe I would glimpse into our future.”
WRAL: COVID-19 was third leading cause of death last year, CDC confirms in early data. “Covid-19 was the third leading cause of death in the United States last year, after heart disease and cancer, according to provisional data released on Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death rate from 2019 to 2020 increased by 15.9%, going up from 715.2 to 828.7 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the report.”
The City: One in 10 Local COVID Victims Destined for Hart Island, NYC’s Potter’s Field. “More people were buried on Hart Island in 2020 than any year during the AIDS epidemic — and the city is on pace to inter one in 10 of its COVID-19 victims in the potter’s field. An exclusive analysis of city data, public records and interviews with dozens of local officials indicates at least 2,334 adults were buried on Hart Island in 2020 — 2 ½ times the figure recorded in 2019 and about 1,000 more than in 1988, the peak year for AIDS burials.”
