Month: April 2020

The headline says it all. It’s Thursday, April 9 and your OB Rag has nothing to publish.

Our raft of writers and bloggers and photographers and poets are all at home trying to get through this crisis like the rest of us are. But they haven’t sent Editordude anything to post this day.

Yesterday, in contrast, we posted a number of stories and we had several thousand visitors. But not today.

So, we ask our readers: What’s new?

Do you have a story or photo or observation or poem about our new reality you’d like to share with the thousands of readers who come onto our website and facebook page every day?

By Kim Prather from her facebook:

Hope everyone is laying low and staying healthy. Warning: this is a long post that addresses many questions and conversations I have had over the past week on topics that are very important to many right now.

We are all experiencing and adapting to unprecedented times right now. My week was made even crazier by being re-taught the meaning of “out of context”. For those who read it, the LA Times article with subsequent twists made by additional media outlets was a major disappointment — and caused some people extra angst which is not needed right now.

For the record, the story was supposed to focus on the fact that aerosols can go further than 6 ft especially if you are on a crowded beach which was continuing to happen in our area. This realization of aerosol transport came out in several articles over a 2 day period (see bottom of post).

By Colleen O’Connor / Times of San Diego / April 8, 2020

The British went to bed proud on Sunday night. We Americans woke up sad, again, on Monday.

Why? Because of the stark, contrasting coronavirus appearances, over the weekend, by President Trump and Queen Elizabeth II. Trump in his repetitive daily briefing; Elizabeth in a rare public address.

One was full of blame, accusations, impatience, falsehoods and bravado. The other was full of gratitude, praise and encouragement.

The Queen’s address was broadcast just hours before Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized with COVID-19 and less than a week after her son, the Prince of Wales, finished quarantine following his own coronavirus diagnosis.

Another Ocean Beach set of apartments has been sold – this time it was 7 units for $2.8 million.

The cottage-style apartments – built between 1937 and 1947 – are located at 4934 to 4944 Coronado Avenue.

The units include six one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartments and one, one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with a den. The property includes 10,500 square feet of land, and includes four single-car garages and four surface off-street parking spaces.

By Sean Sullivan and Chelsea Janes / Washington Post / April 8, 2020 at 8:24 a.m. PDT

Sen. Bernie Sanders, the liberal insurgent who rose from relative obscurity to build a movement and become a two-time runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination, is ending his 2020 campaign, clearing the way for former vice president Joe Biden to be the party’s choice to take on President Trump in November.

Photographer Jim Grant has captured the stark new reality for Ocean Beach.

President Donald Trump has a “small financial interest” in the maker of an anti-malarial drug that he has been touting as a “game changer” in treating coronavirus, according to The New York Times.

Over the past two weeks, Trump and his Fox News allies have aggressively promoted hydroxychloroquine as a potential cure, despite top infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci and others urging caution and noting that there was not enough evidence of the drug’s efficacy.

The Times reports the president’s family trusts all have investments in a mutual fund whose largest holding is Sanofi, the manufacturer of Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine. Associates of the president, including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, have also run funds that hold investments in the pharmaceutical firm.

The OB Rag, with Kevin Hastings’ creations, was the only site running COVID-19 cases in San Diego by ZIP code for a couple of days. Then KPBS jumped in – thankfully somebody with more resources – and decided to post a more inter-active breakdown of coronavirus cases by neighborhood.

Here’s what KPBS reporter, Christopher Underwood, had to say yesterday, April 6:

San Diego County Health and Human Services recently began providing data breaking down confirmed COVID-19 cases by ZIP code.

KPBS has mapped out those cases across the county using their data, which gets updated daily.

The data represents the residence of the person who was infected, not the site of transmission. County health officials have frequently stressed that they don’t want the public to read too much into the data because the numbers only represent a portion of actual COVID-19 cases.

By Rosanna Xia / Los Angeles Times / April 2, 2020

Kim Prather, a leading atmospheric chemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wants to yell out her window at every surfer, runner, and biker she spots along the San Diego coast.

“I wouldn’t go in the water if you paid me $1 million right now,” she said. The beach, in her estimation, is one of the most dangerous places to be these days, as the novel coronavirus marches silently across California.

By Sheila Pell / San Diego Reader / April 7, 2020

In many places, temporary bans and restrictions are being placed on short-term rentals to help stop the spread of coronavirus. San Diego, reeling from the travel slowdown, hasn’t joined them.

On April 4, Newport Beach, a vacation hotspot, banned the units for as long as the local emergency is on. Palm Springs, Big Bear Lake, Placer, and Nevada counties have shut them down. Several states have suspended them. The only exceptions are for critical workers.

California’s stay-at-home order was issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom on March 19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends avoiding all nonessential travel, even trips across town.

By Lisa Halverstadt and Kayla Jimenez / Voice of San Diego / April 6, 2020

As the coronavirus pandemic rages through the region and most people stay home, homeless San Diegans are confronting a loss of food resources they have long relied on to survive.

Many meal operations – both organized and impromptu – have halted. Cafés and restaurants that once served as daytime refuges from the streets and in some cases, handed over free food, are no longer open.