In The News (17)

U.S. Passes 12 Million Confirmed Coronavirus Cases Cases of COVID-19 are rising at an alarming rate in nearly every state as the nation approaches Thanksgiving. The cumulative case count passed 12 million on Saturday, six days after the previous million mark was crossed, which was six days after the previous million........ To avoid an even starker increase in the spread of the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging people to not travel for Thanksgiving at all. The CDC says Thanksgiving should be spent only with people actively living in your own household for at least 14 days before the holiday, advice many medical professionals are echoing.   

G-20 Summit Opens With Calls For United Response To Pandemic

सावधान ! मधुमेहका रोगीलाई कोरोनाले छिटो संक्रमण गर्न सक्छ ! महामारीमा मधुमेह रोगीको स्वास्थ्य अवस्था झन जटिल बन्दै : वीर अस्पतालका मधुमेह रोग विशेषज्ञ डाक्टर दीपक मल्ल

धुलोमा भेटिएको कोहिनुर अर्थात् डाक्टर विष्णुमाया परियार

Elon Musk: First Mars City Will Start With Glass Domes "At least a future spacefaring civilization — discovering our ruins — will be impressed humans got that far." 

100 Notable Books of 2020 The year’s notable fiction, poetry and nonfiction, selected by the editors of The New York Times Book Review

Trump Using Last Days to Lock In Policies and Make Biden’s Task More Difficult At a wide range of departments and agencies, Mr. Trump’s political appointees are going to extraordinary lengths to try to prevent Mr. Biden from rolling back the president’s legacy.

US coronavirus cases top 12 million. An expert says spread is now 'faster' and 'broader' than ever November already accounts for almost a quarter of all Covid-19 cases ......... the real case count is likely to be "multitudes" higher than the 12 million reported because not enough people are getting tested. ......... more than 50% of Covid-19 infections are spread by people who exhibit no symptoms. .......... a negative test result will not guarantee a person isn't carrying the virus to a Thanksgiving gathering, because a test won't necessarily pick up on fresh infections .............. in the 24 counties that required people to wear masks in public, there was a net decrease of 6% in cases. Meanwhile, in counties without the mandate, the disease continued to surge, with a net increase in cases of about 100%. 

बालुवाटार भेटको तरंग : ओलीले देउवालाई प्रधानमन्त्री ‘अफर’ गरेकै हुन् ?

प्रस्ताव फिर्ता नलिने प्रचण्डको अडानबीच ओलीको देउवा कार्ड कता जाला नेकपा विवाद ?

राजनीति मूल्य, मान्यतामा आधारित हुनुपर्छ : अध्यक्ष  यादव

Bill Gates on his WFH schedule during the pandemic, including what he likes about it  he hasn’t been to a physical office since March. .......... Now, “it’s a simpler schedule.” .......... traveling can also disrupt “being thoughtful,” as well as his reading time and even his sleep quality ............. These days, Gates said, he has mostly been reading about the pandemic ........... Gen-Z adults, those ages 18 to 23, reported the highest levels of stress during the pandemic compared to other generations.  

Here’s what President-elect Joe Biden wants to include in a coronavirus stimulus bill It is possible that Democrats could take control of the Senate when Georgia hosts a runoff election for two seats in January, potentially making it easier to pass a bill. ......... millions of people could lose unemployment benefits altogether by December 31, 2020 and housing advocates warn about an impending eviction crisis if more relief isn’t made available. ........ he will work with Congress to extend the extra $600 per week in federal unemployment benefits that expired at the end of July for “however long this crisis lasts.” ......... Biden has advocated making all testing and treatment for Covid-19 free for everyone, including any possible vaccines. 

Biden calls for Congress to pass another coronavirus relief package. But there’s no sign of a stimulus deal as holidays approach  Biden said he supports a stimulus package like the HEROES Act, the $3 trillion relief package passed by House Democrats in May, that included provisions for enhanced unemployment benefits, a second stimulus check, aid for state and local governments and housing relief. He also noted that sick leave and more money for child care are economic imperatives 

What's next for the Trump show? "They don't want the ride to end," when Trump leaves office. .........  focusing instead on his TV star bona fides and his packed rallies. "He is," declared Ruddy, "a very great TV personality." ........... Trump has been building his persona since his early days in New York City, when, before completing a single building project, he sold himself as a rich, sexy and much sought-after young man. "He looks ever so much like Robert Redford," a New York Times reporter gushed in 1976. Over time, celebrity became Trump's main product. As Donald Trump played Donald Trump on TV and at public events, he netted hundreds of millions of dollars more in some years than he earned in his real estate business ............. Trump's true money-making talent lies in media and not real estate .......... Trump ran for President in 2016 not to gain office but to increase his visibility ......... The campaign was a "political infomercial" ...... $2 billion worth of free publicity as the press became transfixed by his tirades and insults ............ allowed Trump to expand his fan base to include 70 million voters and 90 million followers on Twitter. ............ From the Trump family's perspective, January 20, 2021 need not mark not an end, but a beginning. To quote Kimberly Guilfoyle, "The best is yet to come!"

When the World Seems Like One Big Conspiracy Understanding the structure of global cabal theories can shed light on their allure — and their inherent falsehood........ at its heart, Nazism was a global cabal theory based on this anti-Semitic lie: “A cabal of Jewish financiers secretly dominates the world and are plotting to destroy the Aryan race. They engineered the Bolshevik Revolution, run Western democracies, and control the media and the banks. Only Hitler has managed to see through all their nefarious tricks — and only he can stop them and save humanity.” ...........  Global cabal theories argue that underneath the myriad events we see on the surface of the world lurks a single sinister group. .............. Global cabal theories are able to attract large followings in part because they offer a single, straightforward explanation to countless complicated processes. Our lives are repeatedly rocked by wars, revolutions, crises and pandemics. But if I believe some kind of global cabal theory, I enjoy the comforting feeling that I do understand everything. ............ The skeleton key of global cabal theory unlocks all the world’s mysteries and offers me entree into an exclusive circle — the group of people who understand. It makes me smarter and wiser than the average person and even elevates me above the intellectual elite and the ruling class .............. The key premise of global cabal theories is that it is relatively easy to manipulate the world. .............. Particularly remarkable is this group’s ability to see 10 moves ahead on the global board game. .............. it is incredibly difficult to predict and control human affairs. ......... Lenin, for example, would never have won power in Russia by avoiding the public gaze. And Stalin at first was much fonder of scheming behind closed doors, but by the time he monopolized power in the Soviet Union, his portrait was hanging in every office, school and home from the Baltic to the Pacific.  

देउवालाई आठ मन्त्रालयसहित सहकार्यको प्रस्ताव राखे ओलीले 

In The News (16)

Detailed Turnout Data Shows How Georgia Turned Blue By Nate Cohn, Matthew Conlen and Charlie SmartNov. 17, 2020 Democrats have long dreamed of turning Georgia blue, with young voters and nonwhite voters leading a progressive charge. Now, a blue Georgia is a reality, but with a winning coalition that might have stunned the party not that long ago. ......... Republican candidates won more votes than Democrats in the state’s two Senate contests, even as President Trump was defeated at the top of the ticket. ............ the relatively low Black share of the electorate could mean that Democrats have the potential for a better showing, perhaps even in the two Senate runoffs in January. ............. Over all, Mr. Biden ran well ahead of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 showing in well-educated, wealthy and increasingly diverse precincts around Atlanta, while making relatively few gains elsewhere in the state.  

Groupthink Has Left the Left Blind A constricted view of the world leaves progressives surprised by the world as it is.   ....... Trump once again stunned much of the liberal establishment by dramatically beating polling expectations to come within about 80,000 votes of another Electoral College victory. .......... The old liberal left paid attention to complexity, ambiguity, the gray areas. A sense of complexity induced a measure of doubt, including self-doubt. The new left typically seeks to reduce things to elements such as race, class and gender, in ways that erase ambiguity and doubt. The new left is a factory of certitudes. ......... Trump won a majority of the vote of white women against both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. ......... He also improved his vote share over 2016 with both Latino and Black voters, while losing most of the advantage he previously had with college-educated white males — precisely the demographic his policies had supposedly done most to favor. ............. “Trump did a much better job at understanding Hispanics. Sometimes, Democrats see Hispanics as monolithic.” Latino voters in his South Texas district were particularly turned off by progressive rhetoric about defunding the police, opposition to fossil fuels and decriminalizing border crossings. .......... People are rarely reducible to a single animating political consideration. Nor should they be subject to a simple moral judgment. Motives are complicated ..................  the unemployment rate reached record lows before the pandemic hit   

American health care workers issue a call to arms for wearing masks as the coronavirus pandemic rages across the United States, breaking records nearly every day for deaths — and cases — in state after state. ........... the frustration felt by some of the nation’s health care workers over the refusal of so many Americans to wear masks ..........  It’s a call to arms. “We put our lives on the line daily to keep you safe. So, do something for us. Wear. A. Mask,” the caption reads.  

Hospitals Know What’s Coming “We are on an absolutely catastrophic path,” said a COVID-19 doctor at America’s best-prepared hospital. ........... One unit solely provides “comfort care” to COVID-19 patients who are certain to die. “We’ve never had to do anything like this,” Angela Hewlett, the infectious-disease specialist who directs the hospital’s COVID-19 team, told me. “We are on an absolutely catastrophic path.” ..............  “We’re watching a system breaking in front of us and we’re helpless to stop it,” says Kelly Cawcutt, an infectious-disease and critical-care physician. ............ “I don’t see how we avoid becoming overwhelmed,” says Dan Johnson, a critical-care doctor. People need to know that “the assumption we will always have a hospital bed for them is a false one.” ............. What makes this “nightmare” worse, he adds, “is that it was preventable.” The coronavirus is not unstoppable, as some have suggested and as New Zealand, Iceland, Australia, and Hong Kong have resoundingly disproved—twice. Instead, the Trump administration never mounted a serious effort to stop it. Whether through gross incompetence or deliberate strategy, the president and his advisers left the virus to run amok, allowed Americans to get sick, and punted the consequences to the health-care system. And they did so repeatedly, even after the ordeal of the spring, after the playbook for controlling the virus became clear, and despite months of warnings about a fall surge. .............   UNMC’s preparations didn’t fail so much as the U.S. created a situation in which hospitals could not possibly succeed. “We can prepare over and over for a wave of patients,” says Cawcutt, “but we can’t prepare for a tsunami.” ...........  with the third national surge, “all the trends have gone out the window,” Sarah Swistak, a staff nurse, told me. “From the 90-year-old with every comorbidity listed to the 30-year-old who is the picture of perfect health, they’re all requiring oxygen because they’re so short of breath.” ................  UNMC is struggling not because of any one super-spreading event, but because of the cumulative toll of millions of bad decisions. ..........  When the hospital first faced the pandemic in the spring, “I was buoyed by the realization that everyone in America was doing their part to slow down the spread,”  Johnson says. “Now I know friends of mine are going about their normal lives, having parties and dinners, and playing sports indoors. It’s very difficult to do this work when we know so many people are not doing their part.” The drive home from the packed hospital takes him past rows of packed restaurants, sporting venues, and parking lots. ................ the Midwest has taken entirely the wrong lesson from the Northeast’s ordeal. Instead of learning that the pandemic is controllable, and that physical distancing works, people instead internalized “a mistaken belief that every curve that goes up must come down,” he said. “What they don’t realize is that if we don’t change anything about how we’re conducting ourselves, the curve can go up and up.” ............... some of the people who get infected over Thanksgiving will struggle to enter packed hospitals by the middle of December, and be in the ground by Christmas. .................  Patients with strokes and other urgent traumas aren’t getting the normal level of attention, because the pandemic is so all-consuming. ........... “many of us feel like we haven’t had a day off since this thing began” ........ people with COVID-19 are far sicker than the average patient. In an ICU, they need twice as much attention for three times the usual stay. To care for them, UNMC’s nurses and respiratory therapists are now doing mandatory overtime ............... “I used to be able to leave work at work, but with the pandemic, it follows me everywhere I go,” she said. “It’s all I see when I come home, when I look at my kids.” ............. Long and other nurses have told many families that they can’t see their dying loved ones, and then sat with those patients so they didn’t have to die alone. Lindsay Ivener, a staff nurse, told me that COVID-19 had recently killed an elderly woman whom she was caring for, the woman’s husband, and one of her grandchildren. A second grandchild had just been admitted to the hospital with COVID-19. “It just tore this whole family apart in a month,” Ivener said. “I couldn’t even cry. I didn’t have the energy.”