MADISON (WKOW) — Residents and workers at Wisconsin long-term care facilities are expected to start getting coronavirus vaccines on Monday.
CVS Health started giving out the vaccine at facilities in 12 states last week and will expand in 36 more states, including Wisconsin.
Walgreens is also using some of Wisconsin’s allotment as part of the program to vaccinate people at skilled nursing and assisted living facilities.
“It is our hope, indeed our expectation, that everyone who is offered the vaccine will take the vaccine,” Rick Abrams said on the UPFRONT program on WKOW this Sunday.
Abrams, who is president of the Wisconsin Health Care Association and the Wisconsin Center for Assisted Living, said he expects COVID-19 vaccinations in those facilities would be finished by March.
One of the most painful parts of this whole thing has been the detrimental impact on our elderly and their families. They are living and dying alone. It’s tragic. The faster we can reopen those facilities for families to visit, the better.
For many people, the year 2020 has been a year of discovery, rediscovery, and reprioritization. The world shuddered and shook loose some of the scales that obscured the truth. As the year comes to an end and Christians gather to celebrate the birth of our savior, we are again reminded of what is really important.
Driven by our innate human enthusiasm for celebrations, Christmas has been ornamented with traditions and tinsel that sometimes obscure the meaning behind the day. All of the presents, cookies, trees, and gatherings are to honor an extraordinary event: the birth of Jesus Christ.
Christmas is a time of joy, but shaded with guilt, for from the manger, we can see the cross. Jesus came into our ghastly world for the singular purpose of being brutally killed to atone for the sins of humankind — including my sins. It is sometimes difficult to take joy in the beginning of a story when you know how devastating the end is.
But that isn’t the end of the story. Jesus rose in glory from the dead and waits in splendor to welcome us into our eternity. Because he rose, so shall we. From that, Christians take joy and meaning for our lives. This mortal life we lead is a transient prelude to a story whose end is not ours to write.
As we celebrate Christmas by giving gifts to each other, it is really a celebration of the gift that Jesus gave to us. Without the baby, we would not have the man. Without the man, we would not have our salvation. For that, Christians are forever thankful.
It is with this knowledge of our salvation that Christians walk through this mortal life with earnestness, confidence, joy, and love. Earnestness to do the most good with the gifts God gave us in the short time we have. Confidence in our destination. Joy in our purpose. Love for our fellow humans. It is with this in our hearts that I hope we will approach the issues that we will face together in 2021 and the years left to each of us.
Earnestness to work hard to leave the world a better place than we found it. While it might be easier to leave the hard things to those who will follow, that would be to shirk our duty and waste the time and gifts granted to us. Let us move forward with the drive of a people who know that our duty cannot be delegated.
Confidence to act without fear because our salvation and our eternity have already been won. Because of this, we need not fear condemnation, retribution, ridicule, or the tools of malice wielded by dark hearts in this world, because those implements are blunted by the weight of the eons to come. We can act with the confidence that doing what is right is an act of gratitude for a reward that has already been given.
Joy is the sinew that binds the muscle of action to the solid bones of faith. Action without faith is aimless. Faith without action withers into dust. But connected by joy, the body comes alive. Joy makes everything possible.
Love is the birthright of humankind. It is our “why” and our “why not?” We do not love one another because we necessarily like one another. We love one another because Christ loves us even when we don’t love him … or ourselves. When we love one another despite our natural inclinations otherwise, it is like the pale moon reflecting the brilliant sun of God’s love for us. The moon will not bring you warmth, but it will move the oceans.
As Christians around the world celebrate the birth of the Christ child, let us carry his love for us in our hearts that day and every day after.
In true pop-up art fashion, the 7-foot-tall monolith made of tasty and aromatic gingerbread mysteriously appeared in San Francisco and then – perhaps unsurprisingly – collapsed the next day.
The tower, held together by icing and decorated with a few gumdrops, delighted the city on Friday when word spread about its existence.
The gingerbread monolith appeared on Christmas day, but had collapsed by Saturday morning. Photograph: Karl Mondon/AP
People trekked to Corona Heights park throughout the day, even as light rain fell on the ephemeral, edible art object. In one video posted online, someone took a bite of the gingerbread.
Phil Ginsburg, head of city’s Recreation and Parks Department, told KQED the site “looks like a great spot to get baked” and confirmed his staff will not remove the monument “until the cookie crumbles”.
They worry about the potential emergence of a mostly male and increasingly interracial working-class coalition for Republicans that will cut into the demographic advantages Democrats had long counted on. They speculate that the tremendous Democratic gains in the suburbs during the Trump years might fade when he leaves office. And they fret that their inability to make inroads in more rural areas could forestall anything but the most narrow Senate majority in the future.
“We just need to acknowledge that Trump’s poison was deeper in the bloodstream of the American electorate than we thought,” said Bradley Beychok, the president of American Bridge, which ran a $62 million ad campaign to hurt Trump among White working-class voters in three northern states that Biden won.
Upping the stakes further is the grim math of the midterm elections in 2022, when historical trends favor a Republican takeover of the House and continued Senate control, especially if they can hold the two Georgia seats in a runoff Jan. 5 that will again test the party’s reach among college-educated White and working-class Black voters.Democratic losses in the House combined with post-election retirements could reduce the party’s majority to a razor-thin seven-seat margin if the two outstanding contests are called for Republicans.
“We won back the House and the White House in the suburbs, but my sense is we are leasing that support — we don’t own it,” said Robby Mook, the manager of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign who led the House Majority PAC this cycle. “With Trump gone, that lease is up for renewal. If we don’t hold on to our gains in the suburbs or replace it by winning back working-class White voters, we will have a problem.”
by Owen | 1941, 26 Dec 2020 | The Blog | 6 Comments
Welcome back! As you may have noticed, Jed gave the ol’ girl a makeover. There are also some new features like a contact form, updated social media tabs, and a more consistent look and feel on mobile platforms. There are also some new backend features that will allow us to make posts with more features (once I figure out how to work it). The content will still be useless drivel, but at least it will look sharp!
by Owen | 0922, 25 Dec 2020 | The Blog | 3 Comments
We’re going to take the blog offline for a while to do some much-needed maintenance. It has been having trouble with mobile devices and a bit behind on updates. If things go well, it should take a few hours. If things don’t go well, we’ll see you in the new year. We will try to migrate all of the old posts and comments, but we’ll see.
Oh, SHUT. UP. We have heard these same “fears” from “experts” before every social event all year and they have proven to be wrong. Election… Independence Day… Memorial Day… Labor Day… Thanksgiving… and no spike after any of them. Meanwhile, states that are locked down the tightest (cough: California) are seeing massive spikes and states that are pretty much going about their business are doing fine (Florida). Locking down healthy people doesn’t stop anything.
I think it’s safe to say that the “experts” that the media keeps going to are not really experts at anything at all. Enjoy your Christmas, y’all, without guilt or shame.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hard-hit California eclipsed 2 million coronavirus cases on Christmas Eve as the U.S. headed into a holiday season of travel and family gatherings that threaten to fuel the deadly outbreak across the nation.
Despite warnings from public health experts to stay home, over 1.19 million travelers passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints Wednesday — down by about 40% from a year ago, but the highest one-day total since the crisis took hold in mid-March.
Airports also recorded around 1 million travelers on each of the five days between last Friday and Tuesday.
Figures show there were 126,300 fewer New York residents in July, compared to one year earlier, signifying a drop of nearly 0.65 percent. Illinois trailed New York with a 0.63 percent population decline and Hawaii and West Virginia followed with 0.61 percent and 0.58 percent drops, respectively.
The Census Bureau released its estimates based on 2010’s numbers — the numbers for 2020 will be released next year.
With the new numbers, New York could potentially lose one seat in the House of Representatives, dropping to 26, according to analysis conducted by The New York Times.
An alarming new red wave map shows that the vast majority of the United States is currently one huge COVID-19 hotspot – as the country recorded its second deadliest day of the COVID-19 pandemic with 3,400 deaths and President-elect Joe Biden warned the ‘darkest days’ are still ahead.
The map data, which is included in the latest community report from the White House COVID-19 Task Force, tracks areas of concern on a county level across the country based on recent cases and testing history.
It shows that every state currently has counties that fall into the ‘sustained hotspot’ category, which means the task force classifies them as communities that have a high number of cases and may be at an even higher risk of overwhelming their local hospitals.
Increasingly, I don’t. With the clear lax behavior of people supposedly “in the know” and personal observation, I just don’t buy the hype. Then you get stories like this:
According to the video, Jensen and Franson looked at 2,800 “death certificate data points” and found that 800 of them did not have COVID-19 listed as the underlying cause of death, but were still counted as COVID-19 deaths. That means, Jensen said, that those 800 people may have died with COVID-19, but not of COVID-19.
“That would mean that we’ve had the number inflated by 40%,” said Jensen, who explained that the “key diagnosis on a death certificate is the UCOD,” which stands for underlying cause of death.
In one case, a person who was ejected from a vehicle and died was “counted as a COVID death” because the virus was in his system, Franson claimed.
“I have other examples where COVID isn’t the underlying cause of death. We have a fall. Another example we have a fresh water drowning. We have dementia. We have a stroke and multi-organ failure,” she said.
The two lawmakers concluded their video, which has been viewed more than 200,000 times on Facebook, by expressing support for an audit of the data.
We are in a pandemic of an aggressive virus, but the numbers being put out are massively misleading. We have also failed as a society to put those numbers into perspective. Everything in life is about weighing the consequences and making compromises. We have failed to do that with our response to COVID-19.
A top public health official on the White House coronavirus task force has said she will retire after it emerged she hosted a holiday gathering.
Dr Deborah Birx, who is 64, cited the criticism she had faced for a family get-together over Thanksgiving in Delaware in her decision to step aside.
“This experience has been a bit overwhelming,” she said. “It’s been very difficult on my family.”
[…]
She had urged Americans in the days before Thanksgiving to restrict gatherings to “your immediate household”.
But it emerged on Sunday she had travelled from Washington to one of her other properties, on Fenwick Island in Delaware, where she was joined by three generations of her family from two households.
While in Delaware, she did an interview with CBS in which she noted that some Americans had “made mistakes” over Thanksgiving by travelling and they “should assume they were infected”.
We have seen hypocrisy from our politicians and public health officials throughout this pandemic. Now, people can be hypocritical about all sorts of things. I am, at times. We are human and it is easier to say than to do. But the pervasiveness of it during this pandemic tells us something… what?
Are the politicians and public health officials just flawed humans who screwed up? When they get the call from their family inviting them over, they just succumb to the natural human desire to be together?
Do the politicians and public health officials think that they are truly better than the rest of us? They believe that we are in a serious pandemic, but they can write their own personal guidelines based on their judgement of the risk factors. The rest of us are too stupid to do so. After all, they are the smart ones, right?
Do the politicians and public health officials actually believe that the pandemic is serious? In their hearts, do they believe that the pandemic is a big nothing-burger and they are just feeding into the hysteria because it advances their personal power or ideological goals?
I suspect it is a mixture of the three potential possibilities with a heavy emphasis of the latter two.
“While I am glad a government shutdown was avoided and that financial relief will finally reach many who truly need it, the fact that this dysfunction has become routine is the reason we are currently $27.5 trillion in debt. This combined spending bill will drive our debt to over $29 trillion by the end of this fiscal year. I supported the CARES Act because we had to act quickly and massively to prevent an economic meltdown and to provide needed financial relief. I also helped craft and voted for a bill in September that would have provided more than $600 billion in targeted relief, but Democrats simply voted no.
“We do not have an unlimited checking account. We must spend federal dollars — money we are borrowing from future generations — more carefully and place limits on how much we are mortgaging our children’s future.”
As planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, some have been driven to explore desperate measures. One proposal put forward by the California-based non-profit Arctic Ice Project appears as daring as it is bizarre: to scatter a thin layer of reflective glass powder over parts of the Arctic, in an effort to protect it from the Sun’s rays and help ice grow back. “We’re trying to break [that] feedback loop and start rebuilding,” says engineer Leslie Field, an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University and chief technical officer of the organisation.
by Owen | 1945, 22 Dec 2020 | Politics | 5 Comments
Excellent. I’d rather they scrap the whole thing, but if there is going to be a relief bill, this would make it much better.
“I’m asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2000 or $4000 per couple,” Trump said in a video released on Twitter. “I’m also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items in this legislation or to send me a suitable bill.”
I do agree that the Republicans need to try to keep the doors open to compromise, but stop waiting for it. Pass your ideas and let Evers decide if he’s going to us his veto or not. But we’re waiting to see Republicans do more than talk.
“Governor Evers has offered what he calls a compromise Covid-19 Recovery Bill. The only compromises in it would be on the part of Republicans giving up on everything we have asked be included. It contains none of the major proposals offered by Republicans to reopen public schools for in-person education, reopen state government facilities to state workers, or ending the abuses by public health bureaucrats in controlling every aspect of our daily lives.
It is time for Republicans to get off our knees and fight to advance the Covid-19 legislation our constituents are demanding of us. Governor Evers and his administration represent the interests of liberals in Dane County and the City of Milwaukee.
by Owen | 0908, 22 Dec 2020 | Culture | 2 Comments
My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. It is a departure from my usual fare. Here’s a part:
Christmas is a time of joy, but shaded with guilt, for from the manger, we can see the cross. Jesus came into our ghastly world for the singular purpose of being brutally killed to atone for the sins of humankind — including my sins. It is sometimes difficult to take joy in the beginning of a story when you know how devastating the end is. But that isn’t the end of the story. Jesus rose in glory from the dead and waits in splendor to welcome us into our eternity. Because he rose, so shall we. From that, Christians take joy and meaning for our lives. This mortal life we lead is a transient prelude to a story whose end is not ours to write.
As we celebrate Christmas by giving gifts to each other, it is really a celebration of the gift that Jesus gave to us. Without the baby, we would not have the man. Without the man, we would not have our salvation. For that, Christians are forever thankful.
It is with this knowledge of our salvation that Christians walk through this mortal life with earnestness, confidence, joy, and love. Earnestness to do the most good with the gifts God gave us in the short time we have. Confidence in our destination. Joy in our purpose. Love for our fellow humans. It is with this in our hearts that I hope we will approach the issues that we will face together in 2021 and the years left to each of us.
The suspected Lockerbie bombmaker is said to have told investigators how he avoided detection by airport scanners by positioning his explosive device near metal in a suitcase that was timed to go off 11 hours later.
Abu Agila Masud reportedly told Libyan law enforcement in 2012 how he was also given $500 by Libyan intelligence officials to fill the suitcase containing the explosive with clothes, which traveled on an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt before being transferred with luggage onto Pan Am Flight 103.
The United States on Monday unsealed criminal charges against Masud, the third alleged conspirator in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, mostly Americans.
Former Libyan intelligence officer Masud’s alleged confession was made after being taken into custody following the collapse of the regime of the country’s leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi. US officials received a copy of the interview in 2017.
by Owen | 2017, 21 Dec 2020 | Politics | 8 Comments
Again… follow the money. This bill isn’t about the $600 checks. That is just the fig leaf for an omnibus spending boondoggle to pay for a laundry list of pet projects for politicians.
A number of more obscure provisions have been tucked into the 5,000-plus page stimulus bill that Congress is expected to pass later Monday night.
The bill would green-light the creation of two new Smithsonians on the National Mall, could punish illegal streamers for up to 10 years and calls it a ‘clear abuse’ if China or any other country interferes with Tibet’s process for recognizing its next Dalai Lama.
The package also decriminalizes unauthorized uses of Smokey Bear, gives tax breaks to racehorse owners and bans the U.S. Postal Service from handling e-cigarettes.
And here I am agreeing with AOC.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive New York Democrat, came out against the provision in a strongly worded Monday evening tweet.
‘This is why Congress needs time to actually read this package before voting on it. Members of Congress have not read this bill. It’s over 5000 pages, arrived at 2pm today, and we are told to expect a vote on it in 2 hours,’ Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, sharing The Hollywood Reporter’s story about the bill including language that would make illegal streaming a felony.
This is coming. Eventually, it won’t just be about Coronavirus. Fight it now.
Work is being carried out to develop coronavirus freedom ‘passports’ that will allow those who have tested negative to enter pubs, schools and workplaces.
Two firms have been awarded Government contracts for exploratory work on a new app that would allow people to prove they do not have Covid.
The Department of Health said no decisions had been made on introducing the passport.
The contracts envisage a system under which people are assigned a QR code on their smartphones linking to a digital passport that includes a photo of them.
After a Covid test, this would be updated at the test centre and when people want to enter a venue they could present their QR code as proof of their negative status.
