Ambergris

I was cleaning out a cupboard at work and found a small stash of junk silver--most of a roll of Mercury dimes. I guess I shouldn't say that in an open forum, but bear in mind it's no longer there. Remember Mercury dimes? Back when coins had personality?

Dr Malone saying I shouldn't be worried about monkeypox makes me several times more worried about it than I was before. That guy knows how to blow a horn. The current outbreak of monkey pox in Africa has been going on since 2017. It travels around in Nigeria, Congo, and countries neighboring the Congo. As previously mentioned, the version in the Congo is about ten times more likely to be fatal if untreated. The first imported human case in a traveler from Nigeria to the US was reported on 15 July 2021. The second time that an imported human monkeypox case was detected in a traveler to the US was in November 2021; that was in a traveler who developed a rash in Lagos, Nigeria, then traveled to Istanbul, Turkey and then traveled on to Washington DC before getting diagnosed and isolated. In addition to these two cases, between 2018 and December 2021, six importations of human cases of monkeypox were reported in non-endemic countries in travelers from Nigeria to Israel (one case), Singapore (one case) and the United Kingdom (four cases). Before it was considered a sexually transmitted disease, the longest documented chain of transmission was 6 generations, meaning that the last person to be infected in the chain was 6 links away from Patient Zero. This included someone getting infected from doing the laundry of an infected person. Cases of monkeypox in endemic countries between 15 December 2021 to 1 May 2022

We didn't bring any of my floppies when we moved, and brought almost no CDs or DVDs except some few movies. I thought we had boxes of software packed, but they sure didn't get unpacked. Talk about small fortunes spent and unaccounted for -- not to mention all that personally identifiable information on them. That's what really curls my hair. We had one of the non-floppy floppy disks with a game called Millennium, which taught my boys the names of Jupiter's 16 major moons, Saturn's 12 biggest moons, etc. The generator always blew up at the exact same point, Mars always declared war at the exact same point, and I just miss it. I can't find a replacement anywhere.

I really like the deck and planters! Roomy and HIGH.

Look at a recipe you need to make often. Something you can do with what's in the yard and cupboard. Get more of that. Do you have at least a pound of salt to cook and scrub with? Good, so next, if you want to preserve with salt, how much would you need for the first recipe in your book? How about vinegar? And so on.

Monkeypox is considerably worse than chickenpox. Untreated, one percent of the people who get the light monkeypox die, and ten percent of the people who get the worse monkeypox die. (The light one is the one that is spreading oddly.) Before there was a chicken pox vaccine, there were about 100 deaths per four million cases. One person in New York City, and probably one person in Broward County, Florida (a traveler).

VLA15 is on fast-track, at least. I was really downcast when they discontinued the old Lyme vaccine, but it didn't last but ten years or so and had other problems, so I never got it. I'm watching the development of this new one as closely as I can. When I remember the project exists, that is.

I have dying seedlings, still... what is wrong with me?

The problem is that this is the two-week spread of a disease that is not supposed to easily spread from human to human. Any time a disease changes the way it travels, the science community sits up and takes notice. They wonder what else about it is changing. WHO chart from https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2022-DON385 1-5 is a category, as are 6-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, etc.

11 is okay. 10 was okay, but I would be happy with permanent XP. I really liked that one. I really wish they would stop changing my hotmail around. Every time I figure out how to use it, it changes. Now they want you to rent Office by the year. But you can buy Office for cheap if you get last year's. https://shop.popsci.com/sales/microsoft-office-professional-plus-2021-for-windows (There are smaller packages.)

In my old house, I kept as many lemon balm plants going as I possibly could, to make teas to wash cold sores and poultices for them. I wonder if this would be effective for shingles? My chicken pox was bad enough to leave scars on my wrists and so on that persisted well into adulthood, but I haven't had the glory of shingles yet.

Of all the below confirmed cases, only the first UK case had been to an area in Africa where monkeypox is at home. The first case was discovered May 7. Spain now has 30 confirmed cases, many linked to a particular sauna in Madrid. "Sauna" in this case refers to a place in which men meet to have sex with men. One confirmed case in the Extremadura region is not being counted, for reasons I didn't get. Another 18 cases are being investigated: 15 in the Madrid region, two in the Canary Islands and one in Andalusia. In Italy, the first confirmed case is a young man who had recently returned from Spain’s Canary Islands. The two other Italian cases are considered related to him. Each detected case had come into contact with about 10 people, so screening would concern 30 contacts. Portugal has 23 confirmed cases, with nine new cases detected Friday. Israel has one case, a young man who just returned from a trip to Western Europe. The German case was registered in Bavaria on Thursday. In France, the single patient, a 29-year-old man in the Paris region, had no history of travel to a country where the virus is circulating. Sweden’s Ministry of Health confirmed on Thursday that a single case had been identified in Stockholm. In the UK, 20 confirmed cases, some of them with no contacts to any other case and no history of recent travel. Nearly all in London or the southeast of England. Belgium has two confirmed cases in the Flanders region. Australia’s first case fell ill after travelling to the UK. The US is monitoring six people who flew from Nigeria to the UK next to an infected person. Also, the US has one confirmed case who had traveled to Canada. Canada has five confirmed cases in Quebec and "a couple dozen" possible cases, mostly in Quebec and British Columbia. Andrew Preston, a professor of microbial pathogenicity at the University of Bath, is concerned that many of the identified cases had no links to one another. “That would suggest there are other contacts forming the connections between those cases,” he explained. “That’s the worrying thing: The epidemiology would suggest there are other unrecognized cases at the moment. There have to be other cases in the community.”

The first case in the United Kingdom was reported May 7, in someone with a travel history to Nigeria. Cases have been detected in the US, Canada, UK, France, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Germany and Australia. France, Belgium and Germany declared their first cases on Friday. There are now 20 confirmed cases in the UK, Health Secretary Sajid Javid said on Friday. In the US, one case has been confirmed but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is monitoring six people for possible infection after they sat next to an infected traveler who had symptoms while on a flight from Nigeria to the United Kingdom in early May. Separately, CDC officials are investigating the case of monkeypox confirmed in a man in Massachusetts who had recently travelled to Canada. And the New York City Health Department is investigating a possible infection in a patient currently at a hospital. In Canada, there are at least a dozen suspected monkeypox cases. Two of them were confirmed on May 19. Australia’s first case was detected in a man who fell ill after travelling to the UK. Countries outside Africa where confirmed: 7 33 confirmed cases 42 suspected cases

They are looking into why so many patients in this wave are young males who have had sex with other men. They note that breathing on each other is common among people who have sex, and also is a major way to catch monkey pox without having sex, but ... the locations of lesions is also changing. Enough said. Common household disinfectants can kill the monkeypox virus on surfaces, according to the CDC. A number of treatments for monkeypox exist, even if none are specific to the virus. Smallpox vaccine Jynneos is approved to treat monkeypox in adults because of evidence that animal-transmitted pox viruses like monkeypox and rabbitpox typically cross-react and provide protection against other pox viruses. Other smallpox vaccines were used to prevent monkeypox transmission in outbreaks before the development of Jynneos, though they weren't approved for such a purpose. Antivirals are available too, including tecovirimat, also known as TPOXX, an oral antiviral approved for smallpox in adults and children. In the European Union it's approved for the treatment of monkeypox and cowpox. There's also cidofovir, an antiviral used for other viruses, like adenovirus, with demonstrated success against monkeypox. Such vaccines and antivirals are included in the Strategic National Stockpile in the U.S.

Right

Per the CDC and WHO: More than 450 cases have been reported in Nigeria since 2017. Two major strains of the virus pose different risks. About 1 in 10 people who get the Congo Basin strain die, 1 in 100 die from the West African strain. That West African strain is infecting people in the United Kingdom. It is not clear what strain the Massachusetts patient has. In 2003, more than 70 cases of the West African strain showed up in the Midwest, mostly among people who had prairie dogs as pets. This was linked to rodents from Ghana. Bad news: Two new cases in Britain found Wednesday have no known link to the prior nine cases known in the UK, raising a possibility of community transmission.

1 confirmed in US 13 suspected in Canada 5 confirmed in Portugal more than 20 suspected 7 confirmed in Spain 22 others suspected 9 confirmed in UK

Reuters Portugal and Spain detect new cases of monkeypox infection Thu, May 19, 2022, 6:21 AM LISBON/MADRID (Reuters) - Health authorities in Portugal identified nine new cases of the monkeypox viral infection, taking the total to 14, while in Spain authorities on Thursday reported the first seven cases. Monkeypox is a rare viral infection similar to human smallpox, though milder. Symptoms include fever, headaches and skin rashes. The outbreaks in Britain, Portugal, Spain and the United States have raised alarm because the viral disease, which spreads through close contact and was first found in monkeys, mostly occurs in West and Central Africa, and only very occasionally elsewhere. The nine patients confirmed in Portugal are stable and being closely monitored, Portuguese health authority DGS said late on Wednesday, adding that experts were trying to "identify chains of transmission and potential new cases". Most cases in Portugal were reported in and around the capital Lisbon, DGS said. Spain reported its first seven confirmed cases and 22 possible cases, all in the central region of Madrid, local health authorities said. "It's possible we will have more cases in the coming days," Madrid regional public health chief, Antonio Zapatero, told Onda Cero radio station. The Portuguese health authority has asked those with "suspicious symptoms", such as skin rashes or ulcerated lesions, to refrain from direct physical contact with others. (Reporting by Christina Thykjaer in Madrid and Catarina Demony in Portugal, Editing by Emma Pinedo, Inti Landauro and Barbara Lewis)

Fortune First monkeypox case in U.S. this year identified; 6 people in U.S. quarantined for potential exposure, CDC says Erin Prater Wed, May 18, 2022, 3:56 PM The first monkeypox case of the year has been identified in Massachusetts, state health officials said Wednesday—this as the CDC told Fortune that six people in the U.S. are being monitored for potential exposure to the smallpox-related virus typically endemic in Africa. The lone case was confirmed in an adult male who had recently traveled to Canada, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health said in a news release late Wednesday. The department is completing contact tracing and the man is hospitalized in good condition, the agency said. Also late Wednesday, the CDC informed Fortune that the United Kingdom had notified the U.S. of eight individuals who may have been seated near an infected U.K. traveler when they flew from Nigeria to London from May 3-4. Of the eight, one is no longer in the U.S. and another was not a contact, the health agency said. “The remaining six are being monitored by their respective state health departments,” the CDC said in a statement. “None of these six travel contacts have monkeypox symptoms, and their risk of infection is very low.”

First US monkeypox case identified hours after a CDC official expressed concern about unusual outbreak across Europe Andrea Michelson Wed, May 18, 2022, 3:52 PM CDC Tami Chappell/Reuters A case of monkeypox has been confirmed in a man in Massachusetts. The man is hospitalized and in good condition, and his case "poses no risk to the public," according to state officials. The case comes on the heels of reported monkeypox clusters in the UK, Portugal, and Spain. A single case of monkeypox has been confirmed in Massachusetts, days after new clusters were reported in the UK and Europe. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced that an adult male who recently traveled to Canada was tested for monkeypox virus late Tuesday. In a press release Wednesday, the agency said the case was confirmed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The individual is hospitalized and in good condition, according to MDPH. Local health authorities are working to identify any close contacts who may be infected, but the department said the case "poses no risk to the public." Human monkeypox infections are rare, as the virus does not spread easily between people. Transmission can occur via contact with bodily fluids, including respiratory droplets in situations with prolonged face time (i.e.: intimate contact). Most infections are mild and last two to four weeks, according to MDPH. The case in Massachusetts is the first monkeypox case to be identified in the US in 2022. Since early May, at least seven cases have been confirmed in the UK, and additional clusters were reported in Portugal and Spain this week. In 2021, Texas and Maryland each reported a case of monkeypox, both with connections to recent travel to Nigeria, where the virus is endemic. The latest cases have raised concern among public health officials because of the possibility of local transmission; half of the cases reported in the UK in May had not recently traveled outside of the country. "If there appears to be unknown chains of transmission, it just puts us on alert to be thinking: Could this be spreading outside the UK?" CDC official Jennifer McQuiston told STAT Tuesday, before cases were announced outside the UK. "We do have a level of concern that this is very different than what we typically think of from monkeypox," she said.

What to know about monkeypox symptoms as more cases are reported in Europe Dr. Catherine Schuster-Bruce 4 hours ago A person with monkeypox holds out their hands, which are dotted with lesions. A person with monkeypox in the Democratic Republic of the Congo holds out their hands, which are covered in lesions. CDC/ Brian W.J. Mahy, BSc, MA, PhD, ScD, DSc Monkeypox has been detected in the UK, Portugal and Spain. The illness causes pus-filled boils and flu-like symptoms. The CDC has said there's some concern it will spread beyond Europe, STAT reported. By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Monkeypox cases have been reported in Spain, the UK, and Portugal, and disease experts are urgently investigating its unusual spread. The monkeypox virus can cause pus-filled boils and kills 1%-10% of those that catch it, according to the World Health Organization. It doesn't typically spread easily among humans, and as such officials are urgently investigating the current outbreaks. Seven monkeypox cases have been diagnosed in the UK since May 6, officials confirmed on Monday. Today, Portuguese authorities reported five local cases, and their Spanish counterparts reported eight suspected cases, according to Reuters. A US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official expressed concern on Tuesday that this version of monkeypox could be novel, and that the potentially deadly condition that could soon be detected beyond Europe. Speaking to STAT, Jennifer McQuiston, a senior official at the CDC, said: "We do have a level of concern that this is very different than what we typically think of from monkeypox. And I think we have some concern that there could be spread outside the UK associated with this." As officials study where and how the individuals across Europe became infected, they are sharing tell-tale signs of infection. Symptoms of monkeypox include fever, backache, and a rash Typically monkeypox causes a mild illness that lasts two to four weeks. It can take between five to 21 days to develop symptoms after catching the virus. Initial symptoms include fever, headache, muscle aches, backache, swollen lymph nodes, chills and exhaustion. A rash that starts on the face and spreads to the rest of the body can then occur within one to three days of a person developing a fever. The rash begins as flat, red bumps, that form into blisters that fill with pus. These boils crust over and fall off after several days. There is currently no proven treatment for monkeypox. Four of the cases self-identified as gay, bisexual, or men who have sex with men. While the UK Health Security Agency is still studying how likely sexual contact is as a route of transmission, they agency advised these groups to be vigilant for any unusual lesions, and to seek medical attention if they have concerns.

Yes, my son's car has a headlight bulb taped in place because the correct sized one wasn't in stock. Not a great solution, but what do you do?

Welcome back!

Quiet day. Back really bothering me, so I alternated between stretches and just resting it. My elder cat didn't mind. Housemate is getting ready to move out on her own. I had asked her to leave end of February / beginning of March and expected it to take until at least the end of March. She hasn't packed yet, but she's been talking to the VA and is on several waiting lists, has her updated food stamp card, has a state ID, has a Social Security card, and so on--none of which was true at the end of February. Repair person was supposed to come between three and five to fix the fridge. They routinely come an hour before or after the time, so we didn't give up until about eight p.m. Might come tomorrow. Might come after we file a complaint. Might be one of those things where we have to write complaints for six or eight weeks to get anyone to show up. Ugh.

Virus that’s killed birds turns up in first wild mammal in Minnesota Bob Timmons, Star Tribune Thu, May 12, 2022, 9:04 AM A fox kit from Anoka County has tested positive for a deadly, highly contagious bird flu that has killed countless wild birds this spring to the concern of wildlife specialists. The positive case is the first confirmed of highly pathogenic avian influenza, or HPAI, in a wild mammal in Minnesota, according to the Department of Natural Resources. It's not unprecedented — two red fox kits in Ontario tested positive last week for the flu strain, the DNR said in a news release Wednesday. They were the first reported cases in mammals in North America. DNR Wildlife Health Program Supervisor Michelle Carstensen said Thursday that fox kits already were on the agency's radar, knowing their diet and their biological vulnerability. The DNR was aware of ailing fox kits turning up at a wildlife rehabilitation center in Sherburne County. "This virus is hard on them," she said, adding it hasn't turned up in adults. The University of Minnesota Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory alerted the DNR to the kit's case from Anoka County. A family had found the sick fox and it died before the family got it to the lab. DNR wildlife health specialists will add bird flu to the routine screening when sick foxes are brought to the lab, the agency said. Some waterfowl like ducks and geese are considered hosts for bird viruses, which spread as they migrate. The current outbreak, which originated in Europe, has been more widespread and aggressive than the last outbreak in 2015, and it has dramatically affected the poultry industry, too. Waterfowl have been hit hard and, in turn, the raptors that have eaten their dead bodies. The DNR said testing so far in Minnesota has confirmed bird flu in about 200 wild birds, including 19 species. Carstensen said more cases of sick fox kits have been reported in Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan and other states, and its possible the virus turns up in other species, like skunks and rabbits. "[The virus] is confirmed in six counties in Minnesota, but I am going to guess it is everywhere in Minnesota," she said. Carstensen said she and her staff will continue to watch for new cases and testing species that appear "to be a good fit," knowing viruses change — much like what has happened with strains of the coronavirus. She said there is no evidence yet that domestic pets are at risk. But she sounded caution. "The million dollar question is predicting what it is going to do," she said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health officials have said the risk to the public remains low. "The best advice we have for Minnesotans is to avoid contact with wildlife that appear sick or injured and contact your health care provider if you are bitten or have other close contact with wildlife," said Dr. Joni Scheftel, Minnesota Department of Health public health veterinarian, in the DNR news release. People who see sick or dead birds are encouraged to call the DNR hotline at 888-646-6367.