Spooky

News blues…

In April 2020, two studies on Covid-19 came out identifying obesity as a significant risk factor for serious illness and death. Doctors were scrambling to understand why coronavirus gave some people mild symptoms and left others so sick they were gasping for air.

[Many countries are ramping up action] as officials begin to recognize diet-related diseases such as obesity, hypertension and diabetes have made their citizens much more vulnerable during the pandemic. Some states in Mexico recently went as far as banning junk food sales to children— on top of the country’s existing taxes on sugary drinks and fast food. Chile was already deep in its own crackdown on unhealthy products, having imposed the first mandatory, national warning labels for foods with high levels of salt, sugar and fat along with a ban on marketing such foods to kids.
[In the US] there has been no such wake-up call about the link between diet-related diseases and the pandemic. There is no national strategy. There is no systemswide approach, even as researchers increasingly recognize that obesity is a disease that is driven not by lack of willpower, but a modern society and food system that’s almost perfectly designed to encourage the overeating of empty calories, along with more stress, less sleep and less daily exercise, setting millions on a path to poor health outcomes that is extremely difficult to break from.
Read “Diet-related diseases pose a major risk for Covid-19. But the U.S. overlooks them” >> 

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COVID-19 still rages, but some US states reject federal funds to help. As the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic burns through the rural U.S. state of Idaho, health officials say they don't have enough tests to track the disease or sufficient medical workers to help the sick. 

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The Lincoln Project: Anti-American  (1:10 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Will COP cop to climate-related challenges? Or will it be just more blah, blah, blah?  …

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There Is No Reason To Trust Brazil’s Climate, Deforestation Pledges 

The U.S. has held on-again, off-again talks with [Brazil’s] Bolsonaro government over climate and deforestation since the beginning of the Biden administration, which sees its attempts to bring Brazil back to the table on environmental concerns as a centerpiece of its efforts to reestablish the United States’ own leadership role in global climate efforts.
But Brazil’s “new” pledges are far less ambitious than they seem at first glance, experts say.
The emissions goal is “just a correction” to a previous policy that far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s government outlined in December, said Marcio Astrini, the executive secretary of São Paulo-based Climate Observatory.
The 2020 target would’ve allowed Brazil to emit 400 million additional tons of carbon than it would have under pledges the country made in 2015. The new pledge merely puts Brazil back on the same path it had already plotted six years ago, when then-President Dilma Rousseff signed the country onto the Paris Climate agreement.
“They just aligned the numbers to have the same emissions pledges for 2030 that the country already had in 2015,” Astrini said. The Bolsonaro government, he added, is “running to the past while the world is no longer the same, the climate emergency has [worsened] and countries are being called to look to the future.”
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There is little, if any, reason to trust that the Bolsonaro administration is serious about curbing greenhouse gas emissions or stopping the razing of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. Much like former President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro has turned his nation into a global pariah on climate issues. He didn’t even show up for COP26 in Glasgow.
Read the article  >>

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

As mentioned in an earlier post - Alaska has high rates of vocal anti-vaxers… and high rates of Covid-19 infections - among the highest rates in the US.
A family member who lives in Anchorage – fully vaccinated with three doses and masked when in public – reports Sunday night’s neighborhood Halloween party was hosted by a man infected with Covid-19. He was inside the house while party goers cavorted outside… and the party was well attended.