Wednesday, September 9, 2020

 

Last night I went to bed at 10:30, got up once during the night, again at 5:30, finally fell back asleep, waking/getting up just before 8am.

Last night I played 4 games on Chess.com winning 2 and losing 2. In the first game my opponent ignored the threat I had against his king until he resigned on the 16^th move. In the 2^nd game I was ahead but this time I was the one who missed a threat and he checkmated me. In the 3^rd game I was clearly ahead when my opponent resigned on the 20^th move. In the 4^th game I was up 3 points (Chessbase analysis) when I blundered my queen. Sigh!

I watched the first 20 minutes of the Today show then left for my walk. I started my usual route but skipped the 2^nd mini hill and walked out the back way by Colegio Teresiana to Avenid Poblado. I headed south then cut through the main streets of La Buena Mesa. I stopped briefly at Parva and was told they would be open inside starting tomorrow.

 

If I understood the afternoon news, police in Bogota killed a man in a physical street arrest.

I beat Teresa in parcheesi today 5 games to 2.

On the evening news we learned the man who the police killed was a lawyer.

 

U.S. Senate leaders on Wednesday held onto their radically different positions on what is needed to address the continuing fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, one day before a vote on a modest Republican bill that appeared destined for defeat.

The Republican bill, unveiled on Tuesday, would provide around $300 billion in new aid for schools, businesses, medical supplies and other coronavirus-related costs. It was drastically scaled down from a $1 trillion plan Republicans offered in July and far from the more than $3 trillion Democrats have been pushing.

Democrats are expected to block the Republican bill from advancing, arguing that there is nothing bipartisan about it and that it falls far short of the nation’s needs during a pandemic that has killed nearly 190,000 people in the United States and brought massive job losses.

 

In 2016, Donald Trump’s campaign ran on a shoestring, and won. He planned a different 2020: It would be the biggest, richest, most expensive presidential campaign ever. But with just two months to go before the election, the president has burned through massive amounts of money, and now his campaign is at a cash disadvantage to the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden.

 

At a campaign event in Pennsylvania last week, Donald Trump told his followers, "Mexico will be paying for the wall, and I say it respectfully to Mexico, but they will be paying for the wall."

Last night in North Carolina, the president changed the tense: the Republican doesn't just believe Mexico "will be paying" for a giant border barrier; Trump suggested our neighboring country is already paying for it.

"And you know, Mexico is paying for the wall, just so you understand. [Journalists] don't say that. They never say it. But we're gonna charge a small fee at the border. You know, the toll booths."

 

As revelations of President Donald Trump’s early understanding of the coronavirus threat rocked Washington, the White House and its surrogates were focusing on the Nobel Peace Prize.

On Wednesday, Trump vigorously promoted the news that he had been nominated for the prize, tweeting at least 17 times in less than a half-hour about his candidacy for the prestigious commendation.

This makes sense to me if you understand that previous nominations include Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini.

 

A health official hired by a Donald Trump appointee has been working to prevent Dr Anthony Fauci from talking about dangers that Covid-19 poses to children, Politico reported on Wednesday.

The attempts by Dr Paul Alexander – who serves as a senior adviser to Michael Caputo, the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) assistant public affairs secretary – were described in emails obtained by Politico.

Alexander reportedly told media liaisons at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about what Fauci should discuss during interviews. Alexander opined on Fauci’s possible responses to inquiries from publications such as Bloomberg News, HuffPost and BuzzFeed.

“I continue to have an issue with kids getting tested and repeatedly and even university students in a widespread manner … and I disagree with Dr Fauci on this. Vehemently,” Alexander wrote in a 27 August email, in response to a press office rundown of Fauci’s planned remarks to Bloomberg.

In an email Tuesday, Alexander also told Fauci’s spokesperson that he should not advocate mask-wearing by children in a planned MSNBC sit-down.

“Can you ensure Dr Fauci indicates masks are for the teachers in schools. Not for children,” Alexander reportedly said in this email. “There is no data, none, zero, across the entire world, that shows children, especially young children, spread this virus to other children, or to adults or to their teachers. None. And if it did occur, the risk is essentially zero.”

 

The chief of the National Institutes of Health confirmed Wednesday that a “spinal cord problem” caused the suspension of the phase three trial of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine.

NIH Director Francis Collins, testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, revealed that the problem that led to the pause in the trial is a rare affliction known as transverse myelitis, a neurological disorder that causes inflammation of the spinal cord. Collins said that all of the doses of the vaccine will be thrown away if it is confirmed that it is related to the adverse event.

“This ought to be reassuring to everybody listening," Collins said. "When we say we are going to focus first on safety and make no compromises, this is Exhibit A."

The phase three trial is aiming to enroll 50,000 participants in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The trial was halted in both countries on Tuesday.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said that the participant, a woman, was improving and would likely be discharged from the hospital on Wednesday. It is not yet clear that her condition is related to the vaccine.

Soriot also confirmed to STAT that the phase three trial was also briefly shut down in July when another participant developed neurological problems. However, that participant was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which was unrelated to the vaccine.

 

President Donald Trump, in an interview with journalist Bob Woodward, has admitted to deliberately minimizing the seriousness of the novel coronavirus to the public despite understanding its true danger, according to reports on Wednesday.

"I wanted to always play it down," Trump said on March 19, according to CNN, which obtained an audio recording of the interview, and The Washington Post. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."

Trump had acknowledged to Woodward over a month before that the recognized COVID-19 was "deadly stuff," according to CNN -- in contrast with the president's public assertions the virus would "work out fine" and was "very much under control."

His statements to Woodward, as reported by CNN and The Washington Post, reflect a greater recognition of the threat than he let on publicly.

 

On Wednesday, the Washington Post published excerpts of reporter Bob Woodward’s new book Rage. In one passage, backed up by audio recordings, President Donald Trump acknowledged the severity of the COVID-19 crisis months before he would ever admit its seriousness in public. Indeed, even as Trump was telling the public to treat the disease “like you treat the flu” and downplaying its deadliness in press conferences and interviews, he was telling Woodward he knew it was far more dangerous than the flu.

Woodward’s recording makes it clear that the president was not simply misinformed or being wishful about the virus, but deliberately lying about what he knew. As the country got off to a slow and ineffective response to the virus, Trump would say that the pandemic “came out of nowhere” and that the danger could not have been foreseen. In fact, he was specifically aware of the threat, and chose to misinform the public about it.

 

The US has 6,316,331 ð 6,344,725 ð 6,354,614 coronavirus cases with 189,000+ ð 189,500+ ð 189,900+ deaths.

Per Medellin Guru, as of this afternoon Colombia has a total of 671,848 ð 679,513 ð 686,856 cases with 22,053 deaths.  Medellin has 52,026 ð 52,430 ð 53,114 cases, an increase of 682 from September 8^th to 9^th. Envigado has a total of 2,813 cases, an increase of 39 from September 8^th to 9^th.

 

Joke of the day

An old man placed an order for one hamburger, French fries, and a drink.

He unwrapped the plain hamburger and carefully cut it in half, placing one half in front of his wife...

He then carefully counted out the French fries, dividing them into two piles and neatly placed one pile in front of his wife.

He took a sip of the drink, his wife took a sip and then set the cup down between them.

As he began to eat his few bites of hamburger, the people around them were looking over and whispering.

Obviously, they were thinking, "That poor old couple...all they can afford is one meal for the two of them."

As the man began to eat his fries, a young man came to the table and politely offered to buy another meal for the old couple.

The old man said they were just fine, they were used to sharing everything.

People closer to the table noticed the little old lady hadn't eaten a bite.

She sat there watching her husband eat and occasionally taking turns sipping the drink.

Again, the young man came over and begged them to let him buy another meal for them.

This time the old woman said, "No, thank you, we are used to sharing everything."

Finally, as the old man finished and was wiping his face neatly with the napkin, the young man again came over to the little old lady who had yet to eat a single bite of food and asked, "What is it you are waiting for?"

She answered, "THE TEETH!"