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littlemissmartypants

littlemissmartypants's Journal
littlemissmartypants's Journal
July 1, 2021

Covid transmission 'common' in pet cats and dogs

Covid transmission 'common' in pet cats and dogs
By Jim Reed
Health reporter
4 hours ago

Covid is common in pet cats and dogs whose owners have the disease, research suggests. Swabs were taken from 310 pets in 196 households where a human infection had been detected. Six cats and seven dogs returned a positive PCR result, while 54 animals tested positive for virus antibodies.

"If you have Covid, you should avoid contact with your cat or dog, just as you would do with other people," Dr Els Broens, from Utrecht University, said. "The main concern is not the animals' health but the potential risk that pets could act as a reservoir of the virus and reintroduce it into the human population."

The authors of the study said no evidence of pet-to-owner transmission had been recorded to date but it would be difficult to detect while the virus was still spreading easily between humans.

Most infected pets tend to be asymptomatic or display mild Covid symptoms.

Much more at the link:

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57666245.amp

June 22, 2021

Thanks for sharing this, appalachiablue.

Maybe if enough of us post about it folks will heed the warning. I posted about it earlier today and the post continues to get the most disappointing replies. The other thing is that how many are of the "kill the messenger" variety. I thought DU was better than that. I guess denial is a river many more swim in than we realize.

What really bothers me is that if we don't take this variant seriously, we'll be postponing our freedom from this scourge by sloppy prevention and nonchalance.

Not getting both vaccines and continuing to wear masks seem like small prices to pay for actually and truly protecting our loved ones, neighbors and ourselves from the horrible effects of this terrible illness.

I'm going to bookmark both of our posts so six or three or two months from now, I can survey the damage, because there will be damage. I have little doubt.

❤ pants

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215547442



June 20, 2021

That 'well-regulated militia?' ...was originally created to quell rebellions of the enslaved, prof

That ‘well-regulated militia?’ It was originally created to quell rebellions of the enslaved, prof says | Opinion
BY LEONARD PITTS JR. JUNE 18, 2021 11:15 AM


Conservatives have a special purgatory for uppity black women who dare question America’s founding myths.

New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones — her Pulitzer Prize-winning “1619 Project” centralized slavery in America’s origin story, a heresy that inspired laws banning her work from classrooms — now lives there. And she’s about to have company.

In her new book, “The Second,” Emory University history professor Carol Anderson takes on an even more sacred cow: guns. She argues that the Second Amendment — which supposedly came about solely as a hedge against tyranny — had at its heart a much less noble concern: Southern states demanded the right to bear arms because they feared rebellions by enslaved Africans.

So the South held America hostage. It refused to join the new nation unless it was guaranteed the right to keep its guns. Not that this was the region’s only demand. Ultimately, the Constitution contained several clauses protecting slavery and slave owners.

Snip...

More at the link.

https://amp.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article252203768.html?__twitter_impression=true

May 19, 2021

The Healthcare Divide, Frontline, PBS

The Healthcare Divide, Frontline, PBS
Full Episode:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/the-healthcare-divide/

May 18, 2021 / 54m
Season 2021: Episode 15
FRONTLINE and NPR investigate the growing inequities in American healthcare exposed by COVID-19. The Healthcare Divide examines how pressure to increase profits and uneven government support are widening the divide between rich and poor hospitals, endangering care for low-income populations.

Extras:
Hospitals Serving The Poor Struggled During COVID. Wealthy Hospitals Made Millions.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/safety-net-hospitals-struggled-covid-wealthy-hospitals-millions-profits/


Why Safety-Net Hospitals Serving Low-Income People May Be “On the Brink of a Precipice”
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/what-is-a-safety-net-hospital-covid-19/

What Is a Safety-Net Hospital and Why Is It So Hard to Define?
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/safety-net-hospitals-struggle-endangers-care-for-low-income-patients/

###

❤ pants

May 14, 2021

Wow! So glad you survived!!!

I came home one day, to "danger" tape on the doors. I had petroleum poisoning though and my story telling in no way is as good as yours.

I too, almost 'bought the farm' as the saying goes. My dog, the late, great Napoleon, saved me. May he rest in peace.

I had the faulty stove and the gas heater removed two days later. I miss the heat that thing could churn out but I was too afraid of gas anything in the house after that experience. It turns out that the gas provider sold me a stove that had been recalled for faulty valves and I was slowly being poisoned.

That feeling of foggy incapacitation and the inability to walk barely registered. I was dragging myself from the door jam in the bedroom to the phone in the kitchen to call my boss. I was calling in late but everything was difficult and confusing. My boss told me later that she was pissed because I sounded drunk.

I was able to get a shower and get my scrubs on, just barely. I got Napoleon and dropped him off at a friend's house and took off for work, still confused about what was happening.

On the way to work I called my boss again and after a brief conversation with her it was clear my next call needed to be to the Poison Control Center and then the gas company who called the fire department.

When I called poison control I asked the nurse on the phone what the symptoms of being gassed were. She said, "It doesn't work that way. You tell me your symptoms."

I explained that I had an incredibly painful headache. I was having trouble walking and holding things, with a feeling like my limbs were turning to mush. She asked about my pets and that's when it hit me.

Napoleon had been sleeping in the living room under the four front facing windows near the fireplace, something he had never done, that I remembered. He almost always, slept on the other pillow in my double bed, usually with his butt in my face.

That morning, I had to call for him and he was really slow in responding. He kept barking but refused to come to me. Only after I spoke with the poison control nurse, did it dawn on me that was a warning sign. He was going to a place where the air flow was better and he wanted me to come along.

The nurse told me to immediately call the qas company. The rest is history.

Napoleon lived to be fifteen years old which is the upper level of expected lifespan for a Pomeranian. I am thankful for every moment we had together and I miss him to this day. We really don't deserve them.

Thanks for telling your story. There's no telling how many people you helped by sharing it.

❤ pants

May 13, 2021

Amanpour & Co., DOOM by Naill Ferguson, The Politics of Catastrophe



Niall Ferguson's New Book Explores The Politics Of Catastrophe

The Roundtable
Link: https://www.wamc.org/programs/roundtable

By Joe Donahue • 10 Hours Ago


Audio here:

https://cpa.ds.npr.org/wamc/audio/2021/05/niallferguson-doom.mp3

Disasters are by their very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises, and wars are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate the next catastrophe. But when disaster strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted, or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all.

Yet in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the responses of a number of developed countries, including the United States, were badly bungled. Why? In "Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe," New York Times best-selling author Niall Ferguson sets the great crises of 2020 in broad historical perspective and explores why, in the face of a catastrophe, some societies fall apart and others hold together, while a few emerge stronger.

Short article. No more at the link.

https://www.wamc.org/post/niall-fergusons-new-book-explores-politics-catastrophe

#####

Book Cover:


May 11, 2021

Parental Advisory, Frank Zappa, Dinah-Moe Humm







Kicked and Recommended.
May 11, 2021

Gas lines in Eastern NC.

I just got a frantic text from my sister. She's trying to find gas. We're in coastal NC and things aren't looking good.

Is there or isn't there a gas shortage?

Is this just an opportunity for the big energy companies to "teach us a lesson" like you're going to miss me when you're moving to renewable energy and can't find a gallon of gas?

Or is it an opportunity for them to price gouge?

Or are people panic buying?

I'm so frustrated and now worried. I haven't been anywhere significant for over a year. I've literally kept one tank since then, which is now halfway gone. Of course, now that I have to go somewhere, I don't have enough gas to get me there.

Does anyone have any information that can be shared about this? Thanks in advance.

May 3, 2021

The crux of it...

if an infected person walks into a classroom hosting 25 people, none wearing masks and all speaking, everyone would be at risk from the coronavirus within 36 minutes, the website says. It doesn't matter if they follow the 6-foot rule.

By contrast, if all 25 people in that room were wearing a mask, the air would be safe to breathe for 20 hours, it said.

If they were all singing without a mask, they be at risk from the virus within three minutes...


Thanks for sharing this, appalachiablue.

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Member since: Tue Aug 28, 2012, 07:58 PM
Number of posts: 22,850

About littlemissmartypants

I read voraciously and fast with high comprehension. I love to learn and share. But I will never, ever post anything in LBN again because someone always seems to find fault with my posts. I've had too many locked for stupid reasons to ever take LBN seriously ever again. I now just trash it. Which is a shame since there are individuals who are regular posters there that I love. I just send all not truly LBN and LBN dupes to the Trash from now on. No need to even bother any hosts with those anymore. Using Ignore and Trash are proving to be much easier and better options for me than trying to engage and attempt to make LBN a better place. I'm also getting tired of this place looking like the Trump Underground. Trashing every iteration of the surname and all of the clever nicknames people have created make it virtually impossible not to see posts about the psychopath that is the Republican party's preferred presidential candidate. Oh, well. GOTV!
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