After 38 years, Chuck Feeney’s philanthropic foundation has run out of the $8 billion fortune he started it on, and he was still alive to see the impact that money has made.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Outbreaks of illness attributed to the coronavirus weren’t widely documented until the spring, however, new reports suggest that the virus could have been in the United States as early as December. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention previously reported that the virus first hit the country in late January, but researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, believe otherwise.
The study was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, and found that there was a significant increase in clinic and hospital visits by patients who reported respiratory illnesses the week of December 22nd, 2019. These patients all went to the ER with respiratory complaints, and many others were hospitalized with acute respiratory failure between December 2019 and February 2020. It’s important to note that these hospitalizations could have all been flu related as well, however, the spike in visits is substantial when compared to previous years, so it’s not to be taken lightly.
Currently, universities and schools across the country are coping with the inevitable spikes in outbreaks that have already been occuring. So far 50,000 coronavirus cases have been reported at various colleges and universities in all 50 states. Many universities are opting for required 14-day quarantine periods for all infected students.
The University of Arizona and the Colorado University of Boulder have both implemented these quarantine measures. Arizona specifically is urging all of its students to remain indoors and isolated until the end of the month based on how many new cases they’re seeing. They saw 261 new cases appear on campus this year alone.
Many have also heard about the wedding in Maine that has now led to 176 new Covid-19 cases and seven deaths. The seven people who died weren’t even at the wedding itself, but contracted it through individuals who were in attendance. The story is now being widely used as an example of just how badly this virus can impact individuals who were doing everything right in their lockdown procedures, but it still wasn’t enough due to others irresponsibility.
While authorities and government officials have “strongly encouraged” the health and safety measures created to prevent situations like the Maine wedding from occurring, the fact is these measures are rarely enforced. This is why America has one of the highest infection/death rates in the world. CDC director Dr. Nirav Shah recently spoke with the media about this wedding and gatherings in general in the US.
“The virus favors gatherings, it does not distinguish between happy events like a wedding celebration. That event is now linked to outbreaks more than 100 miles away from the venue, and among people who had only secondary or tertiary contact with an attendee.”
Some officials and industries have been adjusting and preparing for a coronavirus-altered way of life to return to some semblance of normalcy, while others are preparing for the worst; a second wave.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have been ongoing for several months now and show no signs of slowing anytime soon, and are in fact escalating in intensity as a Hong Kong university was transformed into a battlefield between police and demonstrators, which ended with hundreds of young people jailed. Roughly a dozen protestors remain inside the school after heavily armed police officers surrounded the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, arresting many protestors who eventually surrendered to the authorities. Some students were able to escape without being captured by police by rappelling from a bridge to be rescued by motorbike drivers, while others unsuccessfully attempted to use a sewage pipe to escape.
The protests began as a response to proposed legislation to make it easier to extradite Hong Kong residents to China which was feared to impact Hong Kong’s independence and political freedoms. While the legislation in question has since been withdrawn, the aim of the protests has expanded to demand a stronger democracy in Hong Kong, further independence from China, and greater police accountability. The police have escalated their attempts to quell the protestors, using live ammunition on multiple occasions. These actions have only emboldened protesters, who have used bows and arrows and homemade weapons such as molotov cocktails in their ongoing battles with the police. At PolyU, police used tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets against protestors, who retaliated with violence. As the battle at the university concluded, protestors were searched by police and those who were older than 18 were arrested. According to Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive, around 200 of the protestors were minors.
The recent events at PolyU resulted in the greatest number of arrests in a single day since the protests began several months ago, and many protesters received serious charges such as rioting and possession of offensive weapons
The dozen protestors who remain, many of whom are high school and university students, have said that they will neither leave the university nor surrender to police, in essence waiting for officers to enter the university and arrest them. Except for the few remaining protesters, the campus has been totally deserted, with debris littered throughout, and unused petrol bombs and pro-democracy grafitti were found on the campus. Roughly 80 people were treated for injuries at the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, and around 200 people were sent to other hospitals. Protesters have set fire to bridges connecting the university to a nearby train station and have destroyed other property as well. The recent events at PolyU resulted in the greatest number of arrests in a single day since the protests began several months ago, and many protesters received serious charges such as rioting and possession of offensive weapons, which carries the threat of serious prison time, leading to reluctance on the part of protesters to surrender to police.
Last week, protestors clashed with the police at another university, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Over 3,900 Molotov Cocktails were seized at this university, and Kwok Ka-chuen, a spokesman for the police, described the university as a “manufacturing base” for these weapons. At the same time as this drama unfolded at these Hong Kong universities, a Hong Kong court overturned a ban on face masks instituted by Beijing in an attempt to curb the tremendously disruptive protests. The Hong Kong High Court found that this ban violated the constitution of the Hong Kong territory, which is called the Basic Law. The Congress has taken the unusual step of criticizing the court’s decision, saying that the finding “seriously weakened the lawful governing power” of Hong Kong’s government. While this would be an extreme step, the National People’s Congress has the authority to change the Basic Law, meaning they could institute changes that would make the face mask ban legal, potentially having broader implications for civil liberties in the territory generally.
Tyler Olhorst is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. You can reach him at inquiries@thenationaldigest.com.