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shadowkatWent back to the office today - and spent most of it revising various contractual documents.
Then came home, and spent time revising my novel.
Sigh.
Last night started Station Eleven on HBO Max. I'd been avoiding it because it dealt with a pandemic. (The set-up is basically a post apocalyptic world devastated by a flu pandemic.) But, I discovered something while watching it - the author apparently got her knowledge of viruses and pandemics from Stephen King. So, I needn't have worried. (Yes, I've seen and read The Stand.) And having now lived through a pandemic or rather still living through one (it's on-going), and having some knowledge of history (or rather more than most fictional novelists), they get it entirely wrong.
In Station Eleven - the first episode is the pandemic, and it lasts 80 days. LOL! I laugh because that's not possible. It's a virus. A virus needs enough time to infect other people. If it killed folks as quickly as it does in King's The Stand and Station Eleven - approximately .0000000001% of the population or 50,000 would be dead. That was the Ebola virus - and why it was never that big a threat. It tore through people too quickly.
It needs time to get around. If it kills folks within two hours or even a week, that's not enough of an incubation period to infect folks. I've read a lot of non-fiction virus accounts in my life time, and know something about the science. To infect someone - you have to get close to them, and you need to not be deathly ill - or they won't get close to you.
Since it takes time - the government would figure out there's a virus and shut everything down quickly (see COVID). Also, people in the government would still be alive, along with the scientists.
Anyhow, so far Station Eleven is reminding me a great deal of The Stand and other post-apocalyptic stories involving pandemics, it makes the same assumptions. There's the insanely violent people, the ones who just want to help others and form a loving commune, the religious fanatics, and everyone is kind of living in a back to nature manner.
That said - it's compelling. The characters are somewhat interesting and it employs the currently popular narrative gimmick of non-linear storytelling. Things are told out of order, with jumps back and forth in time. Kind of similar to This is Us, and a few other series. Mackenzie Davies (Halt Catch Fire fame) plays the central character - Kirsten, who we follow from childhood to adulthood. She's quite good at looking grief-stricken and duly horrified.
And in a way uplifting in that the central characters seek ways to heal others and connect with each other through theater and art. The first two episodes were interesting.
In the first episode "Wheel of Fire or Time" can't remember which it was, Steeven goes to a performance of King Lear with his girlfriend, Laura. They have a disagreement of sorts. In the middle of the performance as Lear is doing his final speech, the famous actor playing the role collapses. Steeven goes on stage to attempt to help him. But can't because he's not a doctor, and only has a rudimentary knowledge of CPR. (Begging the question why he went to the trouble to go up there to begin with. It also brought back a memory of going to a play in London, put on by the Royal Shakespeare Academy, that was four hours long - only to have it interrupted by someone having heart attack and collapsing at my feet. I was seeing it with fellow classmates (we were all in London studying theater together). They had to stop the performance to get the poor man help. He was yelling help me. So the actors on stage, paused, turned and pointed at the man's location. One spoke to the audience and requested help. It stayed in my memory. As a result of that experience - I found myself nit-picked at this one.)
Anyhow, they finally take the poor actor (who has died at this point, because everyone is clueless on how to help him) off in an ambulance, and Steevan becomes distracted by a little girl standing in the wings. For some reason he decides to help her find her handler, and when the handler becomes distracted and disappears offers to walk her home via the El. I found this kind of random and unbelievable. Why the little girl would go with him, or he would randomly approach her seemed odd. The woman he came with leaves - which makes sense, I'd have left too. He's kind of meandering about.
And things proceed from there. It's kind of The Stand meets one of those literary novels you study in school where people do odd things. I'm sticking with it, but I'm not sure what to make of it at the moment.
***
Mother: While talking to your father today, he mentioned keeping chickens. With your brother. And your brother said he wasn't going to be plucking chickens.
Me: Uhm, what?
Mother: apparently the CEO they were working with (mother is laughing hard during all of this, making it difficult to figure out what she is saying), wanted them to get rid of his chickens.
ME: Okay..what CEO, and what chickens?
Mother : The CEO had a warehouse filled with chickens and your father was being hired to get rid of them.
Me: Uhm..
Mother: And your brother had to help him.
Me: You realize this makes no sense, right?
Mother: well of course not. Weirdly your father went back to normal after that and we had a very lucid conversation about our past travels, and our finances. He also wants to plan on what we're going to do next.
I wouldn't have believed this, until I saw it for myself. When I was down there visiting him - we were having a perfectly pleasant conversation, until my Dad decided to ask about the pyramids that were being built in the center of the courtyard. [There were none.]
***
COVID
From NY Times Evening Briefing:
In the past two days, a federal judge struck down a nationwide public transit mask mandate, Uber and Lyft ended mask requirements for riders and passengers, and the C.D.C. dropped every country from its Covid “do not travel” list.
Still, some cities, like New York, San Francisco and Chicago, said they’ll keep mask requirements in place for now. As the situation changes, here are some answers about masking and airplane travel.
New York City has been ignoring the Federal Government for the most part since this began.
Here's the justice's opinion for those who are interested.
The complaint was brought by two frequent travelers who selfishly brought the complaint via the Health Defense Fund, based on their anxiety in regards to wearing masks. Daza routinely travels by airplane, and has anxiety that is exacerbated from wearing a face mask. Pope flew prior to the pandemic, but has flown less since the CDC imposed the Mask Mandate as constricted breathing from wearing a face mask provokes or exacerbates her panic attacks. The Health Freedom Defense Fund is a non-profit organization that opposes laws and regulations that force individuals to submit to medical procedures, products, and devices against their will. The Judge dismisses the mandate based on how sanitation is defined by Funk & Wagnell's, the CDC's failure to provide clear guidance, the timing of the initial mask mandate, among other things. I got annoyed and stopped reading.
The ruling left it up to individual airlines and local transit agencies to decide what to do, and by late Monday, the nation’s largest airlines had dropped their mask requirements for domestic flights. The Amtrak rail system said passengers and employees would no longer need to wear masks.
In a 59-page decision, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, voided the mandate — which also applies to airports, train stations and other transportation hubs — nationwide on several grounds, including that the agency had exceeded its legal authority under the Public Health Services Act of 1944. Because of the ruling, the masking order was not in effect for the time being, and the Transportation Security Administration would not enforce it, a Biden administration official said on Monday evening.
The official said that the administration was still reviewing the decision and assessing whether to appeal it, and that the C.D.C. still recommended that people wear masks in enclosed public transportation settings.
It remained unclear to what extent local transportation agencies would seek to keep their mandates in place. Earlier in the day, before the administration official said the T.S.A. would not enforce the mandate, several state and local transit agencies across the country suggested they would keep their mask requirements for now.
Still, governments and businesses across the nation have largely loosened precautions, and now new known coronavirus cases are sharply rising again. When the C.D.C. extended its mask rule last week, it cited a desire to assess the potential severity of the Omicron subvariant known as BA.2, which recently became the dominant version among new U.S. cases. (On Monday, the city of Philadelphia reinstated a mask mandate in response, becoming the first major city to do so.)
President Biden had called on the C.D.C. to impose a mask mandate for travelers shortly after his inauguration, and the agency did so starting on Feb. 2, 2021. It extended that mandate several times. In July 2021, the Health Freedom Defense Fund, a Wyoming-based advocacy group, filed a lawsuit challenging its legality.
In a statement, the group called the ruling a “victory for basic American liberty and the rule of law,” and quoted its president, Leslie Manookian, as adding: “Unelected officials cannot do whatever they like to our personal freedoms just because they claim good motives and a desirable goal.”
In her ruling, Judge Mizelle adopted a narrow interpretation of the authority Congress granted to the C.D.C. to issue rules aimed at preventing the interstate spread of communicable diseases.
The law says the agency may take such measures as it deems “necessary,” and provides a list of examples, like “sanitation.” The judge wrote that this power was limited to things like cleaning property — not requiring people to take hygienic steps.
“If Congress intended this definition, the power bestowed on the C.D.C. would be breathtaking,” she wrote. “And it certainly would not be limited to modest measures of ‘sanitation’ like masks.”
If the government’s broader interpretation of the agency’s powers were accurate, she added, the C.D.C. could require businesses to install air filtration systems, mandate that people take vaccines, or even require “coughing into elbows and daily multivitamins.”
The ruling joins a tangle of litigation over various mandates attempting to curb the pandemic, most of which have centered on requirements, issued under various legal authorities, that different categories of people get vaccinated.
The outcomes of legal challenges to those mandates have varied. For example, a Federal District Court judge in Texas blocked an administration requirement that federal workers be vaccinated, but this month, an appeals court reversed that ruling.
In January, the Supreme Court blocked a Biden administration edict that large employers require workers to get vaccinated or submit to regular testing. But the Supreme Court has permitted military officials to take vaccination status into account when deciding where service members should be assigned or deployed — and on Monday, it allowed the Pentagon to take disciplinary action against a reservist who refused to get vaccinated.
Part of me wishes Station Eleven and The Stand were correct, and this virus did manage to kill off 50% of the population. But with my luck, I'd be left with the 50% that I despise. So never mind.
Gad. People are selfish and stupid. If you have anxiety flying and masks make it worse? Do not fly - drive. They don't have to fly. No one is making these people fly. What about the people who are immune compromised and at risk for getting the virus? But no, their anxiety trumps folks who could get it from them and die.
Health Defense Fund gets coal in their stocking for Christmas. (Note to self - Do not ever donate money to the Health Defense Fund. That's bad karma.) Also stay out of Florida. I'm boycotting Florida. I don't like Florida, so it's not hard. The relatives in Florida can visit NY, if they want to see me.
Oh well, at least the MTA is still doing the Mask Mandate, but it will become increasingly hard to enforce. I have N95 masks that I may save for airlines. If someone gives me a hard time, I'll dump a bottle of water on their head or better yet down their crotch. Having a wet crotch on an airplane is not fun.
**
I need a palate cleanser...and am reminded of why I've been avoiding the news. "In other business news, Netflix reported that it lost 200,000 subscribers in quarterly results, sending the company’s stock down 20 percent."
President Biden restored key parts of a bedrock environmental law that was dismantled by the Trump administration.
This is just sad...The couple, GuiYing Ma and her husband, Zhanxin Gao, knew each other from childhood in Fushun, China. At 56 and speaking no English, they emigrated to New York to make money to send home to their grandchildren and to have an adventure together.
Gao found a job cleaning restaurant grease filters. Ma worked at home to support him. Late last fall, as she swept a sidewalk, a rock-wielding assailant struck her repeatedly in the head. She died three months later in the hospital, where Gao had visited constantly. Her attacker was arrested, and though hate crimes can be tough to prove, the Queens D.A. is reviewing the charges in the wake of her death."
The assailant should serve life in prison for murder in the first degree.
Moral? Don't move to NYC right now.
Electronic verbal autopsying is a labor-intensive effort that helps developing countries tally death tolls, often for the first time.
Times global health reporter Stephanie Nolen reported on Sierra Leone, where surveyors go door to door in villages, gathering details of how people died and their symptoms. The data goes to a head office at Njala University. A physician there reviews and classifies each death by cause.
Currently, just a quarter of Sierra Leone deaths are nationally registered, none with causes assigned, and the government bases its programs and health care budget on what are essentially best guesses. The method may help throughout the developing world; worldwide, nearly half of annual deaths aren’t recorded.
In other global health news, Myanmar is now one of the most dangerous places in the world to do medical work. At least 30 doctors have been killed there since the 2021 coup. [Okay that was hardly a palate cleanser, see this is why I've not been reading the Evening Briefings lately.]
Grey’s book, the forthcoming “Out of the Corner,” details her experiences growing up as Oscar-winner Joel Grey's daughter, before playing the role of “Baby” in “Dirty Dancing.” Grey became America’s sweetheart, and “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” became a Gen X rallying cry.
But there wasn’t a fairy-tale ending. Just before the movie launched, she and her boyfriend at the time, the actor Matthew Broderick, were in a car crash that left two people dead and made her the target of press mockery. Her injuries would eventually require spinal surgery. Then came “schnozzageddon.” She had taken her mother’s advice to get a nose job. Overnight, she lost her identity and her career.
Grey, 62, says she’s on the threshold of a new phase, and hopes her memoir will inspire others. “Like Flintstone vitamins,” she says. “It feels like candy but you’re getting something.”
I'm glad I'm not famous and my family isn't.
I give up, there isn't anything. Unless Cinderella and Mickey Mouse giving kids hugs at Disney Land and Times Square, counts? Personally, I don't think so.
Below is a photo of Fort Green, Brooklyn.
Then came home, and spent time revising my novel.
Sigh.
Last night started Station Eleven on HBO Max. I'd been avoiding it because it dealt with a pandemic. (The set-up is basically a post apocalyptic world devastated by a flu pandemic.) But, I discovered something while watching it - the author apparently got her knowledge of viruses and pandemics from Stephen King. So, I needn't have worried. (Yes, I've seen and read The Stand.) And having now lived through a pandemic or rather still living through one (it's on-going), and having some knowledge of history (or rather more than most fictional novelists), they get it entirely wrong.
In Station Eleven - the first episode is the pandemic, and it lasts 80 days. LOL! I laugh because that's not possible. It's a virus. A virus needs enough time to infect other people. If it killed folks as quickly as it does in King's The Stand and Station Eleven - approximately .0000000001% of the population or 50,000 would be dead. That was the Ebola virus - and why it was never that big a threat. It tore through people too quickly.
It needs time to get around. If it kills folks within two hours or even a week, that's not enough of an incubation period to infect folks. I've read a lot of non-fiction virus accounts in my life time, and know something about the science. To infect someone - you have to get close to them, and you need to not be deathly ill - or they won't get close to you.
Since it takes time - the government would figure out there's a virus and shut everything down quickly (see COVID). Also, people in the government would still be alive, along with the scientists.
Anyhow, so far Station Eleven is reminding me a great deal of The Stand and other post-apocalyptic stories involving pandemics, it makes the same assumptions. There's the insanely violent people, the ones who just want to help others and form a loving commune, the religious fanatics, and everyone is kind of living in a back to nature manner.
That said - it's compelling. The characters are somewhat interesting and it employs the currently popular narrative gimmick of non-linear storytelling. Things are told out of order, with jumps back and forth in time. Kind of similar to This is Us, and a few other series. Mackenzie Davies (Halt Catch Fire fame) plays the central character - Kirsten, who we follow from childhood to adulthood. She's quite good at looking grief-stricken and duly horrified.
And in a way uplifting in that the central characters seek ways to heal others and connect with each other through theater and art. The first two episodes were interesting.
In the first episode "Wheel of Fire or Time" can't remember which it was, Steeven goes to a performance of King Lear with his girlfriend, Laura. They have a disagreement of sorts. In the middle of the performance as Lear is doing his final speech, the famous actor playing the role collapses. Steeven goes on stage to attempt to help him. But can't because he's not a doctor, and only has a rudimentary knowledge of CPR. (Begging the question why he went to the trouble to go up there to begin with. It also brought back a memory of going to a play in London, put on by the Royal Shakespeare Academy, that was four hours long - only to have it interrupted by someone having heart attack and collapsing at my feet. I was seeing it with fellow classmates (we were all in London studying theater together). They had to stop the performance to get the poor man help. He was yelling help me. So the actors on stage, paused, turned and pointed at the man's location. One spoke to the audience and requested help. It stayed in my memory. As a result of that experience - I found myself nit-picked at this one.)
Anyhow, they finally take the poor actor (who has died at this point, because everyone is clueless on how to help him) off in an ambulance, and Steevan becomes distracted by a little girl standing in the wings. For some reason he decides to help her find her handler, and when the handler becomes distracted and disappears offers to walk her home via the El. I found this kind of random and unbelievable. Why the little girl would go with him, or he would randomly approach her seemed odd. The woman he came with leaves - which makes sense, I'd have left too. He's kind of meandering about.
And things proceed from there. It's kind of The Stand meets one of those literary novels you study in school where people do odd things. I'm sticking with it, but I'm not sure what to make of it at the moment.
***
Mother: While talking to your father today, he mentioned keeping chickens. With your brother. And your brother said he wasn't going to be plucking chickens.
Me: Uhm, what?
Mother: apparently the CEO they were working with (mother is laughing hard during all of this, making it difficult to figure out what she is saying), wanted them to get rid of his chickens.
ME: Okay..what CEO, and what chickens?
Mother : The CEO had a warehouse filled with chickens and your father was being hired to get rid of them.
Me: Uhm..
Mother: And your brother had to help him.
Me: You realize this makes no sense, right?
Mother: well of course not. Weirdly your father went back to normal after that and we had a very lucid conversation about our past travels, and our finances. He also wants to plan on what we're going to do next.
I wouldn't have believed this, until I saw it for myself. When I was down there visiting him - we were having a perfectly pleasant conversation, until my Dad decided to ask about the pyramids that were being built in the center of the courtyard. [There were none.]
***
COVID
From NY Times Evening Briefing:
In the past two days, a federal judge struck down a nationwide public transit mask mandate, Uber and Lyft ended mask requirements for riders and passengers, and the C.D.C. dropped every country from its Covid “do not travel” list.
Still, some cities, like New York, San Francisco and Chicago, said they’ll keep mask requirements in place for now. As the situation changes, here are some answers about masking and airplane travel.
New York City has been ignoring the Federal Government for the most part since this began.
Here's the justice's opinion for those who are interested.
The complaint was brought by two frequent travelers who selfishly brought the complaint via the Health Defense Fund, based on their anxiety in regards to wearing masks. Daza routinely travels by airplane, and has anxiety that is exacerbated from wearing a face mask. Pope flew prior to the pandemic, but has flown less since the CDC imposed the Mask Mandate as constricted breathing from wearing a face mask provokes or exacerbates her panic attacks. The Health Freedom Defense Fund is a non-profit organization that opposes laws and regulations that force individuals to submit to medical procedures, products, and devices against their will. The Judge dismisses the mandate based on how sanitation is defined by Funk & Wagnell's, the CDC's failure to provide clear guidance, the timing of the initial mask mandate, among other things. I got annoyed and stopped reading.
The ruling left it up to individual airlines and local transit agencies to decide what to do, and by late Monday, the nation’s largest airlines had dropped their mask requirements for domestic flights. The Amtrak rail system said passengers and employees would no longer need to wear masks.
In a 59-page decision, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, voided the mandate — which also applies to airports, train stations and other transportation hubs — nationwide on several grounds, including that the agency had exceeded its legal authority under the Public Health Services Act of 1944. Because of the ruling, the masking order was not in effect for the time being, and the Transportation Security Administration would not enforce it, a Biden administration official said on Monday evening.
The official said that the administration was still reviewing the decision and assessing whether to appeal it, and that the C.D.C. still recommended that people wear masks in enclosed public transportation settings.
It remained unclear to what extent local transportation agencies would seek to keep their mandates in place. Earlier in the day, before the administration official said the T.S.A. would not enforce the mandate, several state and local transit agencies across the country suggested they would keep their mask requirements for now.
Still, governments and businesses across the nation have largely loosened precautions, and now new known coronavirus cases are sharply rising again. When the C.D.C. extended its mask rule last week, it cited a desire to assess the potential severity of the Omicron subvariant known as BA.2, which recently became the dominant version among new U.S. cases. (On Monday, the city of Philadelphia reinstated a mask mandate in response, becoming the first major city to do so.)
President Biden had called on the C.D.C. to impose a mask mandate for travelers shortly after his inauguration, and the agency did so starting on Feb. 2, 2021. It extended that mandate several times. In July 2021, the Health Freedom Defense Fund, a Wyoming-based advocacy group, filed a lawsuit challenging its legality.
In a statement, the group called the ruling a “victory for basic American liberty and the rule of law,” and quoted its president, Leslie Manookian, as adding: “Unelected officials cannot do whatever they like to our personal freedoms just because they claim good motives and a desirable goal.”
In her ruling, Judge Mizelle adopted a narrow interpretation of the authority Congress granted to the C.D.C. to issue rules aimed at preventing the interstate spread of communicable diseases.
The law says the agency may take such measures as it deems “necessary,” and provides a list of examples, like “sanitation.” The judge wrote that this power was limited to things like cleaning property — not requiring people to take hygienic steps.
“If Congress intended this definition, the power bestowed on the C.D.C. would be breathtaking,” she wrote. “And it certainly would not be limited to modest measures of ‘sanitation’ like masks.”
If the government’s broader interpretation of the agency’s powers were accurate, she added, the C.D.C. could require businesses to install air filtration systems, mandate that people take vaccines, or even require “coughing into elbows and daily multivitamins.”
The ruling joins a tangle of litigation over various mandates attempting to curb the pandemic, most of which have centered on requirements, issued under various legal authorities, that different categories of people get vaccinated.
The outcomes of legal challenges to those mandates have varied. For example, a Federal District Court judge in Texas blocked an administration requirement that federal workers be vaccinated, but this month, an appeals court reversed that ruling.
In January, the Supreme Court blocked a Biden administration edict that large employers require workers to get vaccinated or submit to regular testing. But the Supreme Court has permitted military officials to take vaccination status into account when deciding where service members should be assigned or deployed — and on Monday, it allowed the Pentagon to take disciplinary action against a reservist who refused to get vaccinated.
Part of me wishes Station Eleven and The Stand were correct, and this virus did manage to kill off 50% of the population. But with my luck, I'd be left with the 50% that I despise. So never mind.
Gad. People are selfish and stupid. If you have anxiety flying and masks make it worse? Do not fly - drive. They don't have to fly. No one is making these people fly. What about the people who are immune compromised and at risk for getting the virus? But no, their anxiety trumps folks who could get it from them and die.
Health Defense Fund gets coal in their stocking for Christmas. (Note to self - Do not ever donate money to the Health Defense Fund. That's bad karma.) Also stay out of Florida. I'm boycotting Florida. I don't like Florida, so it's not hard. The relatives in Florida can visit NY, if they want to see me.
Oh well, at least the MTA is still doing the Mask Mandate, but it will become increasingly hard to enforce. I have N95 masks that I may save for airlines. If someone gives me a hard time, I'll dump a bottle of water on their head or better yet down their crotch. Having a wet crotch on an airplane is not fun.
**
I need a palate cleanser...and am reminded of why I've been avoiding the news. "In other business news, Netflix reported that it lost 200,000 subscribers in quarterly results, sending the company’s stock down 20 percent."
President Biden restored key parts of a bedrock environmental law that was dismantled by the Trump administration.
This is just sad...The couple, GuiYing Ma and her husband, Zhanxin Gao, knew each other from childhood in Fushun, China. At 56 and speaking no English, they emigrated to New York to make money to send home to their grandchildren and to have an adventure together.
Gao found a job cleaning restaurant grease filters. Ma worked at home to support him. Late last fall, as she swept a sidewalk, a rock-wielding assailant struck her repeatedly in the head. She died three months later in the hospital, where Gao had visited constantly. Her attacker was arrested, and though hate crimes can be tough to prove, the Queens D.A. is reviewing the charges in the wake of her death."
The assailant should serve life in prison for murder in the first degree.
Moral? Don't move to NYC right now.
Electronic verbal autopsying is a labor-intensive effort that helps developing countries tally death tolls, often for the first time.
Times global health reporter Stephanie Nolen reported on Sierra Leone, where surveyors go door to door in villages, gathering details of how people died and their symptoms. The data goes to a head office at Njala University. A physician there reviews and classifies each death by cause.
Currently, just a quarter of Sierra Leone deaths are nationally registered, none with causes assigned, and the government bases its programs and health care budget on what are essentially best guesses. The method may help throughout the developing world; worldwide, nearly half of annual deaths aren’t recorded.
In other global health news, Myanmar is now one of the most dangerous places in the world to do medical work. At least 30 doctors have been killed there since the 2021 coup. [Okay that was hardly a palate cleanser, see this is why I've not been reading the Evening Briefings lately.]
Grey’s book, the forthcoming “Out of the Corner,” details her experiences growing up as Oscar-winner Joel Grey's daughter, before playing the role of “Baby” in “Dirty Dancing.” Grey became America’s sweetheart, and “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” became a Gen X rallying cry.
But there wasn’t a fairy-tale ending. Just before the movie launched, she and her boyfriend at the time, the actor Matthew Broderick, were in a car crash that left two people dead and made her the target of press mockery. Her injuries would eventually require spinal surgery. Then came “schnozzageddon.” She had taken her mother’s advice to get a nose job. Overnight, she lost her identity and her career.
Grey, 62, says she’s on the threshold of a new phase, and hopes her memoir will inspire others. “Like Flintstone vitamins,” she says. “It feels like candy but you’re getting something.”
I'm glad I'm not famous and my family isn't.
I give up, there isn't anything. Unless Cinderella and Mickey Mouse giving kids hugs at Disney Land and Times Square, counts? Personally, I don't think so.
Below is a photo of Fort Green, Brooklyn.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-20 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-20 06:23 pm (UTC)"For Myanmar soldiers, who are notorious for stealing from citizens, going after doctors is also a convenient way to make money, since doctors are among the country’s wealthier people. During arrests, soldiers have seized cash, gold, jewelry and vehicles worth tens of thousands of dollars. In some cases, army officers have demanded as much as $5,000 not to shut down a private hospital, hospital officials said.
Since the coup on Feb. 1, 2021, soldiers and the police have arrested 140 doctors for participating in the nationwide protest movement, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which is monitoring arrests. Of these, 89 remain behind bars.
At least 30 doctors have been killed, according to the New York-based Physicians for Human Rights, which called Myanmar one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a health worker.
The harassment and arrest of doctors who oppose the regime comes as the country faces a continuing health emergency because of a severe shortage of doctors, a chronic lack of resources and the closing of many hospitals and clinics."
no subject
Date: 2022-04-20 06:29 pm (UTC)