Slog PM: Parts of Europe enter another closure, COVID cases in King County, and Redmond will exchange gift cards for a hotel booking – Slog

Slog PM: Parts of Europe enter another closure, COVID cases in King County, and Redmond will exchange gift cards for a hotel booking – Slog

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Let's not get cranky, people!

Let’s not get cranky, people!

Germany to close again. Ditto France and Poland. An ‘exponential’ increase in COVID cases has led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to start limiting activities. A huge increase in cases among younger people and the spread of variants have conspired to create some rather challenging weeks ahead of us, ‘German Health Minister Jens Spahn told the BBC. Representatives of these European countries, which suspended the administration of the AstraZeneca vaccine this week over (ultimately unfounded) fears that it would increase blood clotting, also said they did not have enough vaccine to slow the spread.

After a plateau, King County has seen a 13% increase in the past two weeks: At his weekly press conference on Friday, dr. Jeff Duchin, head of public health in Seattle and head of King County, the vaccine-related optimism, but stressed that we can not let it “blind” to the reality that “the risk is not gone.”

Geborg

See Jacob Lawrence’s reunited Struggle series at SAM – the only exhibition on the West Coast.

The good news: The province has not seen any new outbreaks at long-term care facilities in the past two weeks (although the province has recently seen 17 outbreaks in total), and nearly 80% of the country’s 65+ population has been vaccinated, although there are still racial differences. The province finally also has enough eyeballs on the new variants – the CDC recommends that we check 5% of all positive cases for variants, and from this week we go to 6%.

The bad news: Now that the province is looking for more, they are finding more variants. King County now has 93 cases of the more virulent and deadly British variant, six cases of the South African variant and two cases of the Brazilian variant. Duchin said the UK variant is likely to become dominant this month. Although we will see fewer deaths if these variants take over, Duchin warned that COVID-19 ‘is not a benign disease for younger adults’. New research from the University of Washington shows that up to 1/3 of the people who catch the bug develop long-term symptoms. “Increasing activity with increasing variants is a dangerous combination,” Duchin added, pointing out that the case is growing and has expressed concern that people may be abandoning the necessary levels of precaution due to their optimism about the vaccine.

So everyone please: Keep wearing your mask, keep distance and limit travel. Again, just because business lobbyists have successfully put the government under pressure to relax restrictions does not mean we are not in a pandemic. In other words: just because you can do something does not mean you have to do something. We are close to a time when the risks will be much lower, so stick to it.

The CDC shrinks social distance standard in schools: Now teachers need to place those torturous little desks three feet apart rather than six feet apart, according to the Associated Press. The move could simplify the game of COVID Tetris school districts to get kids back to school safely – just in time for summer!

I want to capture this joke in nature:

The LA Times spoke to the families of the victims of the racist massacre in Atlanta: “Gutting” is right.

No scratchy joke? No good people on both sides? No, just a president and a vice president using their pulpit to condemn hatred and comfort a community mourning the dead. According to the New York Times, President Biden and VP Kamala Harris recognize and condemn racism, xenophobia and sexism in America. Praying offers comfort to the grieving families. “The day will come when their memory will bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye, as believable as it is now. It will take a while, but I promise you it will come. And if it does, it’s the day when you know you’re going to make it, ‘he said.

Although it’s nice that Biden speaks out against hatred, It will be extra nice if he implements his anti-xenophobic and anti-racist rhetoric towards all the children we bring in at the southern border. A media columnist at the Washington Post talked to a bunch of journalists about the recent increase in people migrating north to fall for natural disasters and COVID-19, and Biden seems to be worse than Trump over transparency. “The Biden government has accepted an unwritten set of restrictions on media access to information” on dealing with the crisis, and denies all requests from reporters to photograph or tour the overcrowded facilities, writes Erik Wemple. Hate to say it, but the fucking Sean Hannity is right about this one: ‘They now say to the border patrol agents, no ride-sharing opportunities, any media requests send it to Washington. It is not transparent. What capable government – what are they trying to hide? ”

China talks to US in Alaska: After Chinese and American diplomats exchanged a “theater” at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska, the two parties “did business” on serious international issues, Al Jazeera reported. The US wants China to release two Canadians from prison. China is accused of espionage after Canada abducted Huawei’s chief financial officer on our orders. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also intends to bring the whole thing to the forefront of forcing a million outcasts into the “labor” camp, as well as the country’s anti-democratic a heel on Hong Kong , plus ‘recent moves in Taiwan and burglary attempts.’

If Sen. Mona Das’ Bill Karen / Ken passed sooner, then the newspaper businessman in Tacoma can have a decent case against the sheriff of Pierce County who used the power of his office to summon half of the country’s officials to protect him from a black, ‘homeless’,’ deceiver ‘, who’ threatened ‘to kill him. ‘All these descriptors, the Seattle Times tells us, were ultimately projections of his officer’s own thinking, and a good proof of the general attitude of law enforcers towards the homeless. (The officer said he did not know the newspaper bearer was black when he called the police.) In the sound of the call, the sheriff expresses a sense of victim and racist paranoia described by the son of the Tacoma policeman driving his cruiser. by a crowd of people during a drag race. Das’ bill was passed by the Senate and will be heard in the House on Tuesday.

Amazon settles wage theft for $ 8.2 million: Two executives said Amazon forced them to “work without lunch or breaks” when delivering packages to a company with which the trillion-dollar business contracts. Amazon has Seattle Times, who discussed the story, they do not tolerate labor violations. (They just fixed it, I think.) In any case, the drivers will get $ 5.5 million from the class action for the contractor.

A little news in this follow-up to the Blake decision in the Seattle Times: The Spokane County Prosecutor’s Office (SCPAO) has filed a motion with the Supreme Court to reconsider their decision to destroy the state’s drug law. In the motion, SCPAO Larry Haskell argued somewhat condescendingly that it was ‘unclear whether all the members of this court were considering the very different consequences’ of the decision because the court was not informed of the retroactive effect of the majority decision, as if the majority had did not know what they were doing when they dissolved the law that has been applying the criminal justice system in a racist way for decades. However, the Times King County County Prosecutor Dan Clark “acknowledged that such motions are regularly denied,” so the verdict is likely to still apply. But we will see!

Grocery industry claims dismissal of risk payment: These greedy little groceries have filed an appeal after a federal judge ruled yesterday that Seattle, according to KING 5, could in fact order massive grocery store chains to temporarily raise their frontline workers by $ 4 an hour.

Seattle City Council needs to be redesigned: And SCC Insight did math, determined which districts to grow or shrink, and proposed a new map. If the redistribution commission draws lines like his, after a very brief look at the results of 2019, and with not yet enough understanding of how the pandemic and protest have reformed the political tendencies of the current districts, I think political dynamics would remain more or less the same in districts, except that District 6 would become even more of a NIMBY stronghold. Not that you would ever need permission, but feel free to annoy me for this flight analysis in the comments.

Another manifestation of our necroeconomic model: The City of Redmond is charging tax money to fund $ 100 gift cards for people staying longer than two days in participating hotels in the city, reports KING 5. The gift cards work at restaurants, bakeries, fitness centers and other local attractions in the city. ‘ It’s hard to see this effort to promote tourism as anything other than advocating for higher business, but what are you going to do – pay people to stay home? Hah, what is it, New Zealand?

Speaking of gifts: This Sunday, Lady Jaye of West Seattle is giving away a 100 German ‘Street-Style’ Bratwursts to the first 100 people starting at 11 p.m. It’s basically going to be a Bratwurst in a split sandwich with mustard and curry ketchup, ‘according to the West Seattle Blog. It’s an early lunch, but who can say no to a hot brak? Sit down, vegetarians. I know you are is correct, but no ethical consumption under capitalism etc etc etc.

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