Showing posts with label Kerala coronavirus response. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kerala coronavirus response. Show all posts

Saturday, April 11, 2020

Week 3 - Day 16, Saturday April 11

Easter notice outside a church: Jesus rode an ass into Jerusalem. You keep yours at home …

Why stay home? This morning’s numbers from Johns Hopkins might convince:*
Worldwide: 1,698,416 confirmed cases; 102,764 deaths
US has the highest number of infections: 501,419; 18,586 deaths
SA: 2,003 confirmed cases; 24 deaths
(*Compare this afternoon's numbers, below.)

History and the lesson of the 1918 influenza pandemic:
Tell the damn truth: “The government lied. They lied about everything”: A historian on what went wrong in 1918.
The US president is incapable of telling the truth. He’s failing, and Americans are paying.

What’s going on out there?

The good news
The not good news…

Let’s hear it for women

Meanwhile back at the ranch…

Shocking observation from a reluctant mower of lawns: grass keeps growing!
I push through the fourth or fifth segment of this garden’s fast-growing, thick, Kikuyu lawn and realize the first segment is still growing… In other words, there’s no end to this!

President Ramaphosa’s lockdown extension, now thorough the end of April, means I must redouble my efforts to maintain sanity.
Carrying an old-style camera around the garden helps. And patience. After waiting for what felt like an hour for this crab to perform for a video clip, I gave up and shot stills.
Note to wildlife photographers: I salute your patience and dedication.


Research shows this damselfly is Africallagma sapphirinum, the sapphire bluet, a species in the family Coenagrionidae. Endemic to South Africa, its natural habitat is ponds and lakes with floating aquatic plants. Guess where I saw it? Yes, posed on a floating aquatic plant.

click to enlarge.
I'm impatient for the day this garden reveals some long-mourned endangered species. So far, while extraordinary anyway, most of the critters I've stumbled upon have been of the "Common" variety.

(Visit Photo Album for more photos ...)
***
Six hours after I presented the numbers above, they have increased:
Worldwide: 1,701,718 confirmed cases; 102,867 deaths
US has the highest number of infections: 501,615
SA: 2,003 confirmed cases; 24 deaths (i.e., no updates)


Read Pandemic Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3