Humans. Gotta luv ‘em

News blues

Midnight Sunday, June 12, sees an end to the requirement for travelers to test negative for Covid-19 before entering the US. This, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention begins a "new phase" of the pandemic:

"Widespread uptake of highly effective Covid-19 vaccines, the availability of effective therapeutics, and the accrual of high rates of vaccine- and infection-induced immunity at the population level in the United States" have all helped lower the risk of severe disease and death, the CDC said.
… That means flights departing to the US from a foreign country at or after that time no longer have to present a negative test result or documentation of recovery in the past 90 days from Covid-19. … Foreign arrivals to the US will still need to be vaccinated. The vaccination requirement for foreign arrivals has not changed.
The CDC also continues to recommend wearing masks in indoor public transportation settings but masks are no longer required.
The rule change applies to air travel. Land border and ferry port arrivals are unaffected by the rule change...

Read more >> 

***

“An ongoing outbreak of monkeypox was confirmed in May 2022,
beginning with a cluster of cases found in the UK.
The first recognised case was confirmed on 6 May 2022 in an individual
with travel links to Nigeria, but it has been suggested that cases
were already spreading in Europe in the previous months.”

***

A pox on vile and greedy monkey business: 

US Attorney in New Jersey said Paul Andrecola, 63, of Maple Shade, New Jersey, pleaded guilty to one count of "knowingly distributing or selling an unregistered pesticide in violation of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), one count of wire fraud, and one count of presenting false claims to the United States."
… Buyers included a medical clinic in Georgia, a police department in Delaware, a Virginia fire department and "numerous" US government agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs….

Read more >> 

***

Monkeys vs hamsters? “Cocoa Krispies-loving hamsters could be key to cracking long COVID” >> 

***

The Lincoln Project:
Cheney to Republicans (0:30 mins)
Carnage and chaos  (0:45 mins)
And they came  (0:41 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Animals are vital to the functioning of the biosphere in innumerable ways. Their interactions with plants, fungi and microbes sustain the conditions on which we, along with all other life, depend. For example, the great whales that sit at the pinnacle of marine food webs are linked to some of the most fundamental processes that shape conditions in our world. They eat other marine creatures, including krill, and in the process take nutrients from deeper water to be released via their faeces into the ocean, where they fertilise blooms of planktonic algae.

Read “Our entire civilisation depends on animals. It’s time we recognised their true value” >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Tales from the bus. The bus ride to work in the early morning – few passengers - stands in sharp contrast to the bus ride home in the afternoon. 

The morning ride’s colorful character is an elderly masked lady who croons in Chinese. Before she offboards at 28th Street, she carefully uses slivers of newspaper to touch anything: the stop pullcord, the stop button, handrails…. While her crooning is disconcerting, I admire her vigilance against infection.
The afternoon ride home is a marvel of views into the diversity of human expression. 

Recent examples:
One elderly lady strenuously objected at any opportunity to the bus schedule. Fiercely, she’d pull her mask away from her face, scream that the bus was “40 minutes late”, then release her mask to pop back in place over her mouth and nose. So coordinated was this pulling and popping that it appeared a well-honed behavior.
Another elderly lady  boarded the bus shouting a variety of political slogans she’d updated for the current moment. My favorite? “No nukes! No fentanyl!”
Oh, we have grumpy bus drivers who say little that’s not, well, grumpy. We have determinedly happy bus drivers who yell out “have a good day” each time passengers disembark. 

We also have passengers who are kind to other passengers. One man hopped off the bus before it departed the stop to retrieve another elderly woman’s purse (why so many elderly ladies?). She’d forgotten it on the street in her haste to board the bus carrying a huge bag of groceries.

Riding the bus: a niche world expressing human peccadillos.
Gotta love it!