Monthly Archives: June 2020

On June 22, 2020 Total Americans:

Recovered/Recovering:2,155,722

Cases: 2,275,645

Fatalities: 119,923

Washington State:

28,680 cases, 1,270 fatalities

Lewis County.:

49 cases, 3 fatalities

Yakima County:

6,283 cases, 138 fatalities

Yakima County’s daily new infections numbers continue to be higher than the entire rest of Washington State combined. The governor has now required masks in public and prohibited businesses from serving unmasked customers.

Our vulnerable people must continue to Stay at Home!

Our frontline workers and nursing home workers and patients must be perfectly protected!

We all must continue masks, separation, sanitation and slowing its spread so that we keep the hospitalizations curve flattened and protect our most vulnerable!

The rest of us must get back to work! We’re not dummies; we will protect ourselves by masks, separation and sanitation, thereby preventing any large increase in hospitalizations.

Total American household expenditures, the foundation of our nation, are $30 trillion. We pay these dollars for goods and services made by other workers who then spend their paychecks, another $30 trillion, paying them to others for products and services, and so on up through the nation.

Taxes along the way pay for our health care, education, peace, security and everything.

The once or twice paltry $3 trillion borrowed government stimulus is miniscule compared to this power of we consumers spending our paychecks up through our nation.

Dave Bunting

Red sky at night; sailor delight! Red sky at morning; sailor no warning?
A huge dust cloud from the Sahara is coming across the Atlantic and will arrive on southern US coast through the next week.
Forecasters say the dust cloud will make extra bright both sunrises and sunsets, and that it will reduce atmospheric instability and thus storms and hurricanes as well.
Info: shpr.fyi/dustcloud
Loss of sense of 
smell often precedes COVID symptoms
Anosmia, also known as smell blindness, is the loss of the ability to detect one or more smells. Anosmia may be temporary or permanent.
A study of over 3,000 hospital staff who tested positive for COVID antibodies found 95% of them lost their sense of smell prior to any other symptoms.

Info: shpr.fyi/anosmia

Black Hornet 1 oz. palm-size surveillance drone for combat troops
  In August, US Army troops in Afghanistan deployed a new reconnaissance tool: palm-size drones that weigh just over an ounce. The Black Hornet remote-control micro-copters stream hi-def video and photos, and their diminutive dimensions—and ability to fly without a GPS signal—make them especially adept at ducking into buildings, bunkers, and caves. FLIR developed a proprietary composite to minimize weight without sacrificing durability, so the wee spies can fly in 15-knot wind, remain airborne 25 minutes, and venture as far as 1.5 miles on a charge. Thanks to a revamped rotor design and flight control software that works much like an autopilot, the Black Hornet is unusually easy to fly using a tablet and a pistol-grip-style controller. Soldiers carry one version for daytime use and another equipped with a thermal camera for low-light conditions. Learning to maneuver them takes just minutes, quickly (and dramatically) increasing a squad’s situational awareness.
Info: shpr.fyi/palmdrone
Low-cost steroid 
cuts COVID deaths
 by one-third
Clinical trial of dexamethasone, a low-cost steroid treatment, cut the risk of death by one-third for coronavirus patients on ventilators and one-fifth for those on oxygen.
Info: shpr.fyi/steroid
Ultraviolet light 
an alternative 
for disinfection
One potential chemical alternative is ultraviolet light. Breckenridge Grand Vacations, which owns 800 rooms across five resorts in the ski town of Breckenridge, Colorado, scooped up 50 Puro UV disinfection lights, which kill pathogens illuminated for 15-30 minutes. The lights are deployed when humans aren’t present, and up to now have been used primarily in hospitals.
Info: shpr.fyi/ultraviolet
Sunlight Disinfects
Sunlight contains three types of ultraviolet light — UVA, which tans your skin (and ages it) and can cause eye damage; UVB, which burns and also ages skin; and UVC, which is “the most harmful one” because it’s quite good at destroying genetic material, explains Juan Leon, a virologist who focuses on environmental health at Emory University. Luckily, he notes, the sun’s UVC rays don’t reach us because they are filtered out by Earth’s atmosphere.
Sunlight can be a good disinfectant with other pathogens. Leon notes that’s why in the developing world, the World Health Organization recommends sterilizing water by putting it in plastic containers and leaving it outside in the sun for about five hours.
The researchers noted that simulated sunlight was capable of rapidly inactivating the SARS CoV-2 on the stainless steel coupons. Results showed that 90 percent of the infectious virus was inactivated in just 6.8 minutes in saliva solution and in 14.3 minutes in a culture media. The sunlight required for this is similar to the summer solstice seen at 40oN latitude at sea level on a clear day, wrote the researchers. They added that similar inactivation was seen at a slower rate when levels of sunlight were lower.
This study is the first to show that UVB levels found in natural sunlight can actually inactivate SARS CoV-2 on surfaces.
Carrying our masks on our dash in sunlight disinfects them.
Info: shpr.fyi/sunlight

On June 15, 2020 Total Americans:

Recovered/Recovering:1,970,125

Cases: 2,085,769

Fatalities: 115,644

Washington State:

25,834 cases, 1,217 fatalities

Lewis County.:

38 cases, 3 fatalities

Yakima County:

5,384 cases, 120 fatalities

Yakima County’s daily new infections numbers continue to be higher than the entire rest of Washington State combined. Last Sunday had 107 new infections and five new hospitalizations, about a third of daily hospitalizations statewide.

Our vulnerable people must continue to Stay at Home!

Our frontline workers and nursing home workers and patients must be perfectly protected!

We all must continue masks, separation, sanitation and slowing its spread so that we keep the hospitalizations curve flattened and protect our most vulnerable!

The rest of us must get back to work! We’re not dummies; we will protect ourselves by masks, separation and sanitation, thereby preventing any large increase in hospitalizations.

Total American household expenditures, the foundation of our nation, are $30 trillion. We pay these dollars for goods and services made by other workers who then spend their paychecks, another $30 trillion, paying them to others for products and services, and so on up through the nation.

Taxes along the way pay for our health care, education, peace, security and everything.

The once or twice paltry $3 trillion borrowed government stimulus is miniscule compared to this power of we consumers spending our paychecks up through our nation.

Dave Bunting

Anti-virus Masks
The purpose of all masks is to prevent transmission of the virus from others to the wearer and reduce the transmission of respiratory droplets from the wearer to others and to the environment.
Three types of masks:
1. Respirators available at different performance levels such as N95: these high quality masks are specifically designed to prevent inhalation of droplets by healthcare workers who provide care to COVID-19 patients in settings and areas where aerosol generating procedures are undertaken. These masks also protect the patient and the patient’s environment from droplets exhaled by the wearer. 
 As with any mask, the mask must be donned correctly to prevent air leaks around the edges when the wearer inhales.
 The general public is discouraged from buying and using the N95 masks because they have been in short supply for the healthcare workers.
2. Medical masks (also known as surgical masks): these are made from a minimum of three layers of synthetic nonwoven materials. Many are configured to have a replaceable high-filtration layer sandwiched between the outer waterproof and inside comfortable layers. These masks are available in different thicknesses, have various levels of fluid-resistance and two levels of filtration.
3. Non-medical masks (also known as fabric masks, home-made masks, DIY masks) can act as a barrier to prevent the spread of the virus from the wearer to others. Though of the least effective materials, even these masks pretty much prevent the spreading of droplets by the wearer and the wearer’s inhalation of droplets in the environment. Better designs have several layers of cloth, especially non-woven cloth.
How do masks 
protect us?
Masks protect us because transmission via touching surfaces is much less likely than other forms of contact, the primary mode being breathing in tiny droplets from an infected person, person-to-person contact in an enclosed space for a long period of time.
How long does the virus live on surfaces?
Coronavirus can survive on glass for up to 96 hours, according to a study by the Journal of Hospital Infection published in January.
Coronavirus can last on plastic and stainless steel for 72 hours or three days, on cardboard for one day and on copper surfaces for 4 hours.
But how about virus
on our masks?
A recent study found that a detectable level of infectious virus could still be present on the outer layer of a surgical mask on day seven. However the virus remains detectable long after it loses its ability to infect.
If you just store your mask in a dry place for a week, it will be free of virus. During that week run it through the laundry with your clothes to both kill any virus and keep it smelling fresh. Replace its middle layer filter it it has one.
Info: shpr.fyi/masks
COVID-19 Treatment could be available 
by September
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc, of New York on Thursday said it has begun human testing of its experimental antibody cocktail as a treatment for COVID-19,
The dual antibody, called REGN-COV2, is being compared with a placebo treatment in hospitalized COVID-19 patients, and in COVID-19 patients who have symptoms but are not sick enough to be hospitalized.
“If it goes perfectly well, within a week or two we will move to the second phase. Within a month or so of that we will have clear data that this is or isn’t working. By the end of summer, we could have sufficient data for broad utilization.”
Remember this is a treatment to help us recover from a COVID infection, and not a vaccine. Vaccines prevent us from becoming infected and usually have no value after we are infected.
Vaccines are being developed but probably can’t be available until next year.
Info: shpr.fyi/regncov2
Second Wave?
As states have reopened, “Second Wave” increases in infections mainly result from increased testing.
As we reopen, additional infections are inevitable reflecting the fact that COVID-19 is a permanent change to the lives of humans and probably will be with us causing infections forever, as influenza does. We must learn to live with it as we live with influenza.
Hospitalizations have generally not increased much but remain relatively flat during reopening.
If hospitalizations should increase alarmingly, we’ll have to make some incremental increases in our separation and mask use.
Info: shpr.fyi/secondwave

On June 8, 2020 Total Americans:

Recovered/Recovering: 1,828,448

Cases:…………………. 1,938,823

Fatalities:……………….. 110,375

Washington State:

23,729 cases, 1,159 fatalities

Lewis County:

37 cases, 3 fatalities

Yakima County:

4,509 cases, 100 fatalities

Yakima County’s daily new infections numbers continue to be higher than the entire rest of Washington State combined. Last Sunday had a record 175 new infections, nearly triple the total number elsewhere in the entire state.

Our vulnerable people must continue to Stay at Home!

Our frontline workers and nursing home workers and patients must be perfectly protected!

We all must continue masks, separation, sanitation and slowing its spread so that we keep the hospitalizations curve flattened and protect our most vulnerable!

The rest of us must get back to work! We’re not dummies; we will protect ourselves– by masks, separation and sanitation, thereby preventing any large increase in infections.

Total American household expenditures, the foundation of our nation, are $30 trillion. We pay these dollars for goods and services made by other workers who then spend their paychecks, another $30 trillion, paying them to others for products and services, and so on up through the nation.

Taxes along the way pay for our health care, education, peace, security and everything.

The once or twice paltry $3 trillion borrowed government stimulus is miniscule compared to this power of we consumers spending our paychecks up through our nation.

Dave Bunting

The Urgency and Challenge of Opening K-12 Schools in the Fall of 2020

The sudden closure of kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) schools nationwide this spring likely helped to avert a medical catastrophe from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This decisive step, however, is casting a long shadow.
More than 20 million children rely on school breakfast or lunch; surveys now indicate that 1 in 5 mothers with children younger than 12 years old report that their children are going hungry. Millions of children have lost access to health services through school-based health centers. There are major divides by race/ethnicity, geography, and economic class in access to home computers and high-speed internet.
When prolonged school closures are combined with summer break, some children may to fall behind normal academic growth by as much as a year.In addition, school officials typically make about 1 in 5 reports regarding child abuse and neglect without involvement of school-based counselors, these concerns may not be investigated.

Reopening schools this fall is an urgent priority.

To achieve this goal and reduce the chances that schools close again, school makers should plan carefully:
1. Prevent a new virus out-break. The best way to avoid a replay of the widespread closures is to control the pandemic before and then in school.
2. Create more space in the classroom, keeping groups of children together throughout the day to limit mixing, stag-gering drop-offs and pick-ups, change transportation such as on buses, and cancel-ing close-contact activities. Staff and older students should wear face coverings.
3. Make on-site education a high priority for youth who experience barriers to remote learning.
4. Screen children quickly on arrival, make hand washing and other supplies readily available, and adopt schedules for cleaning high-touch areas and disinfecting classrooms.
The COVID-19 pandemic is more than a short-term threat to the nation’s health. Through its effects on children, the legacy of COVID-19 will last for years.

Yakima County Health Urges Everyone to
Wear Masks
The daily rate of additional new COVID infections in Yakima County runs about 100, much higher than any other Washington State county, often higher than the daily number of new infections in the entire rest of Washington State combined.
The rate of hospitalizations and deaths reported per 100,000 population in Yakima County, though alarmingly high, are not as shockingly much higher than in other counties as is the infection rate. The infection rate may be somewhat artificially increased in comparison to other counties because Yakima County is doing more testing than some other counties.
Because of the high rate of new infections, Yakima County remains in Phase One of recovery, and, according to the Health Department, will remain in Phase One until the rate of infection is brought down to a very much lower number.
Over Memorial Day weekend, only 35% of Yakima residents were found to be wearing masks in public.
The Health Departments says 80% of citizens must wear masks when in public and close to others to reduce the high rate of infection in the county and thus enable the beginning of Phase Two.
The Health Department is distributing 330,000 masks.
Info: shpr.fyi/yakcovid
5G WiFi Continued
In the USA, Verizon is the only carrier to have deployed a significant millimeter-wave (5G FR2, various bands from 24GHz to 40GHz) network—and in fact, at the moment Verizon is only deploying 5G FR2, which is why its average 5G download speed bar leaps off the chart, at 506Mbps. 5G is a protocol, not a wavelength—and the extreme high speeds and low latencies carriers and OEM vendors promote so heavily come– not from the 5G protocol but from the wavelength– with the high-frequency, short-wavelength FR2 spectrum, not with the 5G protocol itself.
The other carriers are deploying 5G in the FR1 range—the same frequencies already in use for 2G, 3G, and 4G connections. FR1 spectrum runs between 600MHz and 4.7GHz and is further commonly split informally as “low band”—1GHz and less, with excellent range but poor throughput and latency—and “mid band,” from 1GHz to 6GHz, with improved throughput and latency but less range.
Those very high FR2 frequencies don’t penetrate walls.
Info: shpr.fyi/5gjune