Jan 29 2025 - Lunar New Year

 

Do you remember that Lunar New Year festivities were cancelled five years ago?  I realized at the time that this was a major event. As the days went by, more Chinese cities shut down and New Year events were cancelled.  That hit the international news on January 23rd or so and continued. In the same article it said there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside of China, it eported there were cases being reported in the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Thailand.  And then the article  opinionated about the closures that "such sweeping measures are typical of China's authoritarian communist government, although their effectiveness in containing the outbreak remains uncertain"   - that article is HERE.  It comes from FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP, and REUTERS. COVID's anniversary is not likely to be a celebration, but a memorial in the future.  The CIA report from 2024 saying it most likely originated from a lab leak, though it then claimed low confidence in this. No surprise that the Trump administration declassified it this week for the anniversary.  The lab leak theory remains in play from various the epidemiology experts, and it will be time before all the evidence and facts come out. So here we are at Lunar New Year 2025.  I had wondered if the celebration has become tainted by Covid memories.  The Canadian Press article says the answer is yes -   in places like Vancouver where Chinese Canadians experienced racism during Covid.  Another article talks about the 76-day lockdown in Wuhan, but indicates that there is a cultural policy in China to erase the event, so there are no reports on the five-year anniversary that will come out of China. Worldcrunch has an article on all the changes in the city in response to the outbreak.  It is HERE and is very revealing about how impactful the virus was in Wuhan as a city and how it has made a "rebirth." And travelling to China for the celebration, there's lots of advice from travel.gc.canada.  Things lik:e risk of accidental injuries is higher in large crowds, stays away from very crowded areas, know where to find medical care, and practise safe food and water precautions, insect bit protection, and so on.   This is the Frank Gehry Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles - what a mysterious building it is.

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Nov 4 2023 - COVID Update

 

I got my COVID and Flu shots yesterday.  Today my arms feel twice as long and twice as sore, and my sinuses are clogged.  Which do you think I should attribute this to - Is it the COVID shot or the Flu shot? And where are we on COVID trends?  There are COVID deaths and hospitalizations throughout Ontario - but the concern is low given the low numbers.   And what tests are we to use now with the evolved virus? Is it known as EG.5 Eris? that's what Yale Medicine says.  A WHO table shows Omicron has mutated to BA.2.75 and two versions of XBB.1.5, and the article says there is a larger list of mutations and lineages available.  The outbreaks in our area are in the hospital, retirement homes and long-term care homes.  These places have all changed:  what a difference from before COVID where there was a sign to voluntarily wash one's hands and voluntarily put on a mask.   For the rest of us, where are the outbreaks?  Anecdotally, people say that taking a trip results in COVID.  Either spread on planes and big events.   The recent headline on the topic is from Fortune and it says half of Americans will fly between Thanksgiving and mid-January.  Now that will cause an uptick.   The jokes on COVID aren't funny.  But here's one that is a delight:  We don't see discarded masks all over the place anymore.  What will the rats do?

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Jan 17 2023 - No Covid Pardons

Quite a few Canadian newspapers such as The Globe and Mail and the National Post helped me understand the question: What is a Covid pardon?  It made the headlines yesterday with Alberta's Premier Danielle Smith saying she is no longer pursuing amnesty for COVID-19 health-rule violators because Canada doesn’t work that way. And that she hadn't contacted prosecutors. After being sworn into office she said non-vaccinated people were the most discriminated-against group she's ever seen in her lifetime.  She had to walk that one back - she later said she was misconstrued after receiving much backlash.   For the pardons, she said "my language may have been imprecise."  And then she explained how she didn't call a Crown prosector because she knows she isn't allowed to do that and then corrected it with contacting the attorney general and deputy attorney general. Canadian News media  have given her the process to follow:  If she wants to cancel fines, she would pass legislation, that in a province, the premier doesn't have the power to provide pardons.  It seems strange that the news media is now instructing the provincial premiers on how they get things done.  At the other end of the spectrum, the Toronto Sun had an article about a Kentucky woman who won the lottery after the chose a lottery ticket in a gift swap at her work holiday party.  Her winnings?  $175,000.  The look on her colleagues' faces who didn't choose the ticket?

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Jan 2 2023 - Covid Surge

 

Covid Surge in 2023? The U.S. experts think there is a level of immunity in the population this winter, along with more tools.   The prediction is that the current surge is not going to be as big as last winter's.  Georges Benjamin of the American Public Health Association says: "But I think there’s one really big outlier out there, China. If China gets hit with a big spike, then it is quite possible that it will bleed into the U.S... That's my one caveat, a nd I'm worried to death about that." Not very scientific writing to me.  I rather prefer what I found from Sylvia Browne, the psychic.  She died in 2013, and this is her prophecy on Covid.  “In around 2020 a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments. Almost more baffling than the illness itself will be the fact that it will suddenly vanish as quickly as it arrived, attack again 10 years later, and then disappear completely,” the book reads.   Looking back, there is some humour on the subject of Covid Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the chicken behind it didn’t know how to socially distance properly. My husband purchased a world map and then gave me a dart and said, “Throw this and wherever it lands—that’s where I’m taking you when this pandemic ends.” Turns out, we’re spending two weeks behind the fridge. The World Health Organization announced that dogs cannot contract COVID-19. Dogs previously held in quarantine can now be released. To be clear, WHO let the dogs out. Quarantine has really put a damper on comedy. For months nobody has walked into a bar. Our pictures are of Meconopsis Poppies - the Himalayan Poppy, in that beautiful Cerulean Blue that is so beloved.  It seems a perfect way to welcome the New Year.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Apr 12 2022 - Seven WAVES

 

If we get to seven waves of COVID, will we have some special luck by that point?  Will COVID come to an end, sort of, maybe?  Or go on to endemic status, which the experts assure us does not mean it will be harmless.  It will be predictable. I found an analogy to describe epidemic vs endemic.  "If you think of a disease as a regular-size KitKat bar, Baker says, and you open the package one day and there are six pieces instead of four, that candy bar is acting more like an epidemic (that is, a sudden spike of a disease that could lead to a pandemic if it spreads globally)." ""An epidemic means more cases than we expect," she explains. And if you unwrapped a KitKat bar to reveal six pieces, you'd know something was wrong — "it throws you off, you know something's happening," she says, just as you know that you can't count on things staying the same when there's an epidemic." An endemic means that it has reached a steady state where it doesn't cause large outbreaks.  So aren't we behaving like it is in an endemic stage?  Thinking we can take off masks in indoor spaces as OMICRON isn't very severe? There's more in the article HERE. How many waves did I expect?  My guess was three or four.  It was based on the 1918-20 pandemic - it had two (or three) phases with the later ones more severe.   There have been 10 outbreaks since 1889-92.  The article and chart are HERE.  And that article summarized how many waves were in each. The last five outbreaks, since 1957-58, occurred in the space of two years; Five outbreaks are described as having a second phase  The article says that "the theory of pandemics is murky" - and whether COVID would recur in phases or sporadic outbreaks, or even disappear altogether.   This is my personal idea of "waves"-  daffodils.  Like William Wordsworth: I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

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Jan 19 2022 - Status Quo or Quo Vadis

 

Would you ever have associated status quo with COVID-19?  How strange to consider this might continue to be the "current state of things".  Typically there are those who want to disrupt the status quo and those who want to maintain the status quo because it benefits them.   Will we or can we "exit the pandemic"? As though we can turn right or take an off-ramp and leave it behind on the highway? The experts are ahead of us and are weighing in on what's to come.  One of them is Seema Yasmin,  a journalist and doctor interviewed HERE on what needs to change. Her first item was supporting the mental health of health care workers.  The second is the need to improve scientific literacy among the public. "Something we’ve had to do is get people up to speed on the evolving — rapidly evolving — science as we are learning it,” Yasmin said. “We’re building bridges and we cross it. And we’re sharing that information with the public, realizing it’s not hitting home. We’re not communicating it well.   And that shows how difficult it is in a crisis to get the public up to speed when you haven’t had investment in education,” she added. “I think so many of these things are not quick fixes that we want to hear about, but they are paradigm shifts and they are generational issues that will take time to fix.” America's  "dreaded mask issue" was on the table:  On Monday, American immunologist Anthony S Fauci said while it was difficult to predict as yet what could be the new normal, he does not think that people will roam around with their masks on forever.  I wonder if that is a quote or the journalist used the verb "roam". The Endemic transition is being debated. Six medical experts close to the White House published three op-eds in the Journal of the American Medical Association, arguing that the time had come for a new approach to the pandemic—one that sets aside the campaign for eradication in favor of living with the disease.  Covid-19, one op-ed argued, should no longer even be tracked on its own but monitored together with other respiratory viruses, such as the flu. Something that we've lived in is the State of Emergency,  Here's the latest on this: “A ‘new normal with COVID’ in January 2022 is not living without COVID-19,” Ezekiel Emanuel, of the University of Pennsylvania, Celine Gounder, of N.Y.U., and Michael Osterholm, of the University of Minnesota, wrote. But they believed that the long era of emergency—the one defined by a wartime feeling and frequent briefings from Anthony Fauci—should draw to a close.   Just last week, a cat was returned home after nearly 12 years of going missing. Vaughan Animal Services picked her up and scanned the microchip to find the owner who now lives in Kitchener.   This cat very much owned the street in Niagara-on-the-Lake a few years ago during a garden tour.

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Jan 17 2022 - How High is the Ocean - How Deep is the Snow

 

Millie growled when she looked out at the back yard this morning.  She didn't like what she saw.  Really deep snow.  And it is getting deeper as we type. She had to go outside immediately when we got up and she isn't usually interested in going outside till after 8:00am or so.  She jumped down one stair - fine.  The second stair - OK. The third stair - Oh Oh. The fourth stair - just her head was above the snow line and that was too much.  She rushed back up the stairs and in the house, spreading snow bits everywhere.   This is the first big snow fall this year.  Last year she was smaller  and the big snow not so deep so she played happily in it. So we'll see this morning what she decides to do.   I was so intrigued with the tennis news this past week.  Novak Djokovic, the 34-year-old Serbian tennis champ currently ranked number one by the Association of Tennis Professionals by a substantial margin is unvaccinated for COVID-19. He was deported from Australia Sunday following a highly visible appeal.   He's done a lot of testing positive for COVID-19 supposedly within the last month. And he's been out in public a lot as well.  Flying here and there, etc.  That's a big contrast with the Olympics coming up.  The Beijing Olympics are already in the 'closed loop'.  It is sealed and guarded.  The loop, which began on Jan. 4 and will open fully by Jan. 23, according to state media, covers sealed-off sections of Olympic venues and designated accommodation, amounting to a series of bubbles.  Participants are required to move between them using designated transport. Everyone in the loop must have a daily PCR test administered by staff. In Tokyo, tests were largely self-administered. To leave their accommodation, participants must first scan their pass and wait for a green code to confirm they’ve had a negative test result within the last 24 hours. Comparing the situation of Australia and China, we are likely in for a lot of COVID news at the Olympics. It will make this Olympics the most exciting ever for reasons entirely other than sports.  Beijing's event is a large-scale experiment to be watched as much by scientists and politicians as by sports fans. Can there be a special COVID wave at the Olympics?   Isn't this such a great representation of the mysteries beyond.  We visited Brock University's new performing arts centre in 2017 and these were two of the images manipulated with Flaming Pear's India Ink plugin.

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Jan 8 2022 - Getting to Beijing in 2022

 

What is the status of sports in 2022?  The Olympics is slated to start Friday Feb 4 and finish on Sunday Feb 20th.   We'll all be at home again, but what will there be to watch? The big news this week was Tennis star Novak Djokovic. His lawyers filed court papers Saturday in his challenge against deportation from Australia.  They show the tennis star tested positive for COVID-19 last month and recovered, grounds he used in applying for a medical exemption to the country's strict vaccination rules. But it has since emerged that the Victoria state medical exemption, allowed for people who tested positive for the coronavirus within the last six months, was deemed invalid by the federal border authorities. And the Olympics? We've known for a short time that the NHL opted out of the 2022 Olympics. Various diplomats will not be there - while it was billed as a boycott, maybe that's now looking like self-preservation. And athletes are testing positive so won't be able to compete in their finals to get to the Olympics.  Such a strange turn of events, given there was so much hype that the athletes want their 'chance to compete'.   Here's what the Canadian Press said yesterday: "The Beijing Games open in exactly one month, but the competition has already started. The challenge: getting the country's top athletes to China without testing positive for COVID-19, an ominous and invisible threat that few could have seen coming just a few weeks ago. If an athlete tests positive for COVID-19 in the next month, they must provide three negative PCR tests and then submit that documentation to the Beijing Olympic committee (BOCOG). It's up to BOCOG to clear the athlete to travel to China. All participants are also required to provide two negative PCR tests before boarding their flight to Beijing, within 96 and 72 hours of travel." Various aspects are covered in the article HERE.  Not just athletes themselves, but the cancellation of qualifications is a problem.  And then one reads about teams in 'bubbles' to stay safer.  Staff for the event are scheduled to report to the Beijing bubble on Tuesday and then have no contact with the outside community.  It would seem that the Olympics Committee and China are determined to win against the Pandemic.  With or without athletes there for competition.   Here are some experiments with Filter Forge software - another distortion program.  The original is the first picture - in camera multi-exposure of our translucent plastic garbage can in the sun

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Nov 28 2021 - Getting to Know You

 

There were no classes in Greek when I went to school - not during school hours.  There was a boy in high school who took Greek after class - I don't recall what kind of offering this was.  He was a mot intellectual type and very pleased with such a distinctive undertaking.  That's why we all got a jolt of Greek letter education this week to find out the Omicron is a Greek letter. It follow Nu and Xi.  Xi is the first name of the Chinese president, so this would be weird - retrieving COVID and the Chinese President on a Google search.  And why not "nu"? - it is too easily confounded with "new".  Can you imagine the automatic spellcheck fixing that all the time?   But WHO says it is because the agency's best practices for naming diseases suggest avoiding "causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups."   So I guess Delta airlines is not anything to worry about. We missed out on iota, as in not one iota - this expression comes from the Bible (Matthew 5:18): "For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished."   I see a this as a great Holiday gift and ornament on the tree this year - it could have circled variants "of concern".  It will be joined by the "Dog Pooping 2020" ornament made by a B.C. woman who can't keep up with demand.  I can't see putting that on the next tree anywhere near the cookies and cakes and donuts below.  This is one of the holiday trees in the Fantasy of Trees this year.

Oct 9 2021 - Singing like Sweet Adelines

 

Choirs are returning to practice.  There are special masks for singing. The website choralcanada.org has information on them.  There is a mask on the Broadway relief project website and it is available there.  The Singer’s Mask was developed by singers FOR singers by Broadway professionals to help contain droplets while allowing space around the mouth to sing comfortably. There's information on the mask HERE. You can buy music and masks from the same sites now - JWpepper.com has lots of masks.  There are also masks for various wind instrument players.   So this seems extremely encouraging - as though choir singing can begin again this Fall.  But that doesn't seem to be the case - there's a very cautious set of guidelines in Ontario. The Region of Halton published this update of Ontario COVID guidelines/requirements on September 17th: Adapt or suspend singing, choirs, and the playing of wind or brass instruments. Consider audio or video recordings instead of live singing or wind or brass instrumental music.  Group singing is strongly discouraged. The number of persons singing should be limited to the fewest possible. Anyone singing or playing wind or brass instruments should be separated from others by a barrier and should maintain two metres (six feet) distance from others. The conclusion seems to be that safe masks for singers will be for professionals, and us amateurs have a while to wait. The important key indicator of when singing would be safer is having fully vaccinated singers.  Canada has over 80% of the eligible population fully vaccinated, but that isn't the case in the US at all.  So websites that are dominantly US are negative on singing. Our image today is titled "Bubble Up".

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Dec 20 2020 - Christmas Covid Decorations

 

We've seen that COVID symbol for most of the year.   Here it its official illustration with key parts labelled. Who is the blue one? That's measles.  Very similar.

These were created by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to show structure. They reveal ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses.  "Note the spikes that adorn the outer surface of the virus, which impart the look of a corona surrounding the virion, when viewed electron microscopically. In this view, the protein particles E, S, and M, also located on the outer surface of the particle, have all been labeled as well. A novel coronavirus, named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was identified as the cause of an outbreak of respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China in 2019. The illness caused by this virus has been named coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)." The COVID picture showed up everywhere.  Being a pandemic, it needed to be identifiable right away.  I looked through the CDC site's inventory of images of diseases.  If you want to check them out, here's the LINK.  And here's the full resource library of various images HERE. Did you consider getting a decoration for your tree based on virus decorations?  There's everything -  virus, masked Santa, toilet paper, first responder, hand sanitizer, zoom meeting, lysol wipes, quarantine baking, puppy love...  The article/pictures are HERE.  I liked this one below with most of the elements in one decoration.  I predict we will be putting these on the tree in years to come - it will stand up to the pickle and the spider web as enduring Christmas mythology.   Here are Millie's Christmas pictures.  I didn't take these - they were done at the dog training school in Beamsville.    Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca