New confirmed COVID-19 hospital admissions reported in the United States, 26 October 2021 - 27 December 2021 and forecast to 28 January 2022. The number of new daily confirmed COVID-19 hospital admissions will likely increase, with 24,700 to 53,700 new confirmed COVID-19 hospital admissions likely reported on 28 January 2022. The forecast may not fully account for the emergence and rapid spread of the Omicron variant or changes in reporting during the holidays. Graphic: CDC

U.S. hospitals are in serious trouble – “Too many facilities are pulling from the same labor pool, and if that pool is sick, where are the reinforcements?”

By Ed Yong 7 January 2022 (The Atlantic) – When a health-care system crumbles, this is what it looks like. Much of what’s wrong happens invisibly. At first, there’s just a lot of waiting. Emergency rooms get so full that “you’ll wait hours and hours, and you may not be able to get surgery when […]

Homes are engulfed by flames as the Marshall Fire spreads through Superior, Colorado on 30 December 2021. Photo: Sean David Van De Riet / Reuters

More than 40 percent of Americans live in counties hit by climate disasters in 2021 – “More people are living in more flammable landscapes. More people are going to be interfacing with disaster.”

By Sarah Kaplan and Andrew Ba Tran 5 January 2022 (The Washington Post) – 2021 ended as it began: with disaster. Twelve months after an atmospheric river deluged California, triggering mudslides in burned landscapes and leaving a half-million people without power, a late-season wildfire destroyed hundreds of homes in the suburbs of Denver. In between, Americans suffered blistering heat […]

Global greenhouse gas emissions, 1990-2020. The reduction in emissions in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and global recession was 10 times greater than the impact on emissions from the 2008 global financial crisis. Graphic: Rhodium Group

Global greenhouse gas reduction in 2020 from pandemic and global recession “was 10 times greater than the impact on emissions from the 2008 global financial crisis”

By Alfredo Rivera, Shweta Movalia, Hannah Pitt, and Kate Larsen 23 December 2021 (Rhodium Group) – Understanding annual trends in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a critical input for decision-makers in their efforts to reach net-zero emissions, whether is at the national, state, city, or corporate levels. Tracking emissions of the 190+ Parties to the […]

Screenshot from a video of Qtuber Cirsten Tien Soong Weldon on 28 December 2021, before she succumbed to COVID-19. She is clearly ill and has a deep cough but still promotes anti-vaccine disinformation before discussing election conspiracy theories. At the end of the video, she mentions her “flu” and says she won’t be webcasting because she’s traveling. Video: Sorry Antivaxxer

QAnon star who called for Dr. Fauci “to be hung from a rope” and said only “idiots” get vaccinated dies of COVID

By Will Sommer 7 January 2022 (The Daily Beast) – A leading QAnon promoter who urged both her followers and strangers she passed on the street not to take the COVID vaccine died Thursday of the coronavirus, making her just the latest vaccine opponent killed by the disease. Cirsten Weldon had amassed tens of thousands […]

Surveillance video shows a suspect, Thomas Apollo, assaulting workers at a vaccine clinic in Tustin, California after he verbally attacked them and called staff “murderers” on 30 December 2021. Apollo was arrested on suspicion of battery and resisting arrest. Video: ABC7

Man attacks workers at Orange County COVID-19 vaccine clinic, calling them ‘murderers’ – “First, we’re heroes. And then somehow we’re not heroes anymore. Now we’re the enemies.”

By Lila Seidman 4 January 2022 (Los Angeles Times) – One of Parsia Jahanbani’s biggest fears was realized when a man calling healthcare workers “murderers” attacked him and other staff members outside a mobile vaccine clinic in Tustin last week, he said. [For context, see Desdemona’s post, Covid and the war on medical expertise. –Des] […]

A plaque depicts Donald Trump as a “Hero of the Freedomsurrection”, part of an art installation in New York City’s Flatiron Plaza on 6 January 2022. The plaques were created by Trevor Noah and “The Daily Show” to commemorate the first anniversary of Trump's coup attempt and his co-conspirators in the insurrection. Trump’s plaque reads, “No hero played a bigger part in the Freedomsurrection than President Trump himself. Though too humble to willingly release documents detailing the full scope of his efforts to stop the tyrannical will of the people, we do know he fought tirelessly to install turnover-friendly allies in the Justice Department and directed officials to ‘just say the election was corrupt’ and ‘leave the rest to me.’ While his efforts were not enough to keep him in the White House, his bravery on January 6 will never be forgotten, unless Republicans retake Congress and disband the committees investigating it.” Photo: The Daily Show

Trevor Noah trolls Trump and conservatives with Capitol insurrection monuments – “Heroes of the Freedomsurrection honors eight of the patriots who tried to overthrow their country on January 6, 2021 – and failed miserably”

By Christi Carrasstaff 6 January 2022 (Los Angeles Times) – Trevor Noah and The Daily Show are commemorating the Jan. 6 insurrection in their own special way. On Thursday, the hit Comedy Central program erected a series of “monuments” holding former President Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Fox News pundit Tucker […]

Daily COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in Indiana, 4 January 2022. Graphic: Covid Act Now

Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40 percent among people ages 18-64 – “A three-sigma or one-in-200-year catastrophe would be a 10 percent increase over pre-pandemic, so 40 percent is just unheard of”

By Margaret Menge 1 January 2022 (The Center Square) – The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people. “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” […]

Armed Trump coup supporters surround the home of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson on 5 December 2020, as part of an organized harassment and intimidation campaign planned by convicted felon Bernard Kerik and other Trump insurrectionists. Photo: Genevieve Peters / Facebook / CNN

Trump coup plan included harassment and intimidation campaign against election officials – “I’ll never forget the moment armed protestors gathered outside my home in the dark of night last December”

By Andrew Feinberg 4 January 2022 WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Independent) – Allies of former president Donald Trump planned a campaign of harassment and intimidation against election officials and “weak” Republicans that was to culminate in what would become the worst attack on the US Capitol since the Burning of Washington in 1814, according to new […]

Astronomers Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her PhD adviser, Dr Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), discover a “planet killer” comet that will impact the Earth in just over six months the Netflix film “Don’t Look Up”. Naturally, the scientists are ignored by politicians and the commercial mass media. Photo: Netflix

Climate scientists love “Don’t Look Up” – Satirical film “captures the madness I see every day”

By Eithne Dodd 1 January 2022 (Buzz) – The Netflix film Don’t Look Up has divided opinion between critics and audiences. One of the most popular pieces of content on Netflix’s platform since it debuted, Rotten Tomatoes, a site that gives a cumulative critical score show’s just a 55 per cent approval from critics. So while many […]

Three SARS-CoV-2 lineages identified in white-tailed deer. (A) The number of weekly COVID-19 cases in humans in Ohio is presented from October 2020 – September 2021, shaded by the proportion of viruses sequenced each week in Ohio that belong to one of five Pango lineages (or “Other”). (B) Summary of six human-to-deer transmission events observed in Ohio, with putative deer-to-deer transmission. Graphic: Hale, et al., 2021 / Nature

Covid is rampant among deer, research shows – “The sheer possibility that these things are happening and it’s unknown makes this very unsettling”

By Evan Bush 2 January 2022 (NBC News) – Humans have infected wild deer with Covid-19 in a handful of U.S. states and there’s evidence the virus has been spreading between deer, according to recent studies, which outline findings that could complicate the path out of the pandemic. Scientists swabbed the nostrils of white-tailed deer […]

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