Allen Bellman Dies: ‘Captain America’ Artist In Comics’ Golden Age Was 95


Bruce Haring 13/3/2020

© AP Images

Allen Bellman, one of the last links to the early days of Captain America in comic books, died March 9 after a short illness. He was 95 and lived in Florida, according to an announcement posted to Facebook by San Diego Comic Fest.

“Last year we hosted Allen as our Golden Age Guest of Honor. He was a kind man and forthcoming to all of the fans who came by his table. He told stories of his days at Timely Comics in the 1940s, working on Captain America, Young Allies, Human Torch and The Destroyer. He left his mark on the world of comics and he will be missed. He was a brilliant creator and a good friend. Rest in Peace, Allen Bellman.”

Bellman was born in New York City in June 1924, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants who fled that country’s pogroms. He became intrigued by comics when he saw an issue of Action Comics #`1, which he purchased. He began drawing on his own and did one panel cartoons for several New York newspapers, including the Brooklyn Eagle and New York Daily Mirror.

He answered a newspaper ad for an artist in 1942 and began work for Timely Comics/Atlas Comics, which became Marvel Comics in the early 1960s.

One of his first assignments was Captain America. He soon graduated to other titles, and in the pre-Comics Code Authority days, worked on horror, crime and western titles in what’s now called the Golden Age of Comics. When Timely closed, he became a freelancer and retired from the comic book industry in the 1960s.

He later self-published a book on his career called Timely Confidential: When the Golden Age of Comic Books Was Young, released in 2017 with editors Michael J. Vassallo and Audrey Parente. He continued to attend comic book conventions into his 90s, regaling fans with tales of the early years.

No information was immediately available on survivors or memorial plans.

POSTMORTEM

We should have seen the challenges of Elizabeth Warren's campaign

Jessica Tarlov, opinion contributor 3/9/2020

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.

© Greg Nash We should have seen the challenges of Elizabeth Warren's campaign

In the sea of post-mortems on Elizabeth Warren's campaign, I have yet to see the central truth of her candidacy mentioned: the media loved her more than Democrats did.

In the midst of Warren's surge to the top tier of the Democratic field nationally, becoming the leader in Iowa last summer, I wrote about the implicit racism of the primary system that favors white, liberal constituencies over minorities. We hear what a few hundred thousand progressives think in Iowa and New Hampshire before we scrape the surface of what Latino and black Democrats have to say.

After the Iowa app debacle and the fact that Iowa's winner, Pete Buttigieg, was out of the race within weeks, I am confident a real evaluation of the primary and caucus system will be undertaken.

That, however, doesn't change the fact that the mainstream media never liked Joe Biden's candidacy and was always enamored with Warren. With her dismal performance on Super Tuesday, unable to even come in second in her home state, the pundit class has the proverbial egg all over their faces.

Indeed, it comes as no surprise that jaws were left agape when the most reliable voting bloc in Democratic politics - African Americans - turned out in droves for Biden in South Carolina. While black voters have been consistent in their support for the former vice president, the refusal to acknowledge the depth and breadth of his support in those communities of color has been glaring. African Americans have been screaming "Biden" from the rooftops and only a few reporters and commentators have heard their shouts.

I personally liked Warren's campaign. It was, admittedly, tailor made for someone like me and I fit squarely in her white, college-educated, female base. I loved that she had a plan for everything, though her health care plan shouldn't have abolished private insurance. I bought into her "I'm a fighter" rhetoric and I deeply admired her energy and enthusiasm.

I turn 36 today and couldn't make it through one day as Elizabeth Warren on the campaign trail.

But while all those things are true, they should not have been the dominant storyline surrounding Warren's candidacy. Her story - similarly to Buttigieg's and Amy Klobuchar's - should've been dominated by their lack of minority support. Not for reasons of neglect or lack of effort. Warren showed up in all the right places and had plans to address racial inequities that were widely praised.

But she never connected with black voters themselves. In turn, media representation of her campaign was all too often colored by the preferences of the commentator class, not Democratic voters. If coverage were to get negative, it was more often than not shock about why she wasn't resonating, especially with all her plans and campaign infrastructure.

A big part of the problem is that the media needs to better mirror the population. Representation matters in all arenas from politics to media to business and beyond.

This is not to diminish the very real challenges that affected the trajectory of Warren's campaign. I have been ringing the alarm consistently over the impact of sexism and misogyny on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and it was undoubtedly a problem for Warren as well. Questions of "likability" and "electability" had very different impacts on female candidates than male ones. Look no further than the fact that it is seen as a positive for Bernie Sanders that he is irascible and unlikable.

It was, too, an issue that affected Kamala Harris and I do think it relevant that there has been far less ink spilled on analyzing the impact on her campaign as a woman of color running for the presidency.

Women are held to a different standard than men. That is indisputable. Two-thirds of Democratic voters believe a man has the best chance at beating Donald Trump in November.

There are also explanations of Warren's fall from top. Analysts centered on her "riskiness" as a candidate, the "curse of the frontrunner," her inability to "pick a lane" and how "'Medicare for all' wrecked" her campaign, but not Sanders's.

All these things can be true, and I happen to think they are. But nowhere in those analyses do you see anyone saying, "My bad, we got it wrong." And by wrong I don't mean predicting a Warren win but, rather, the breathless fawning over a candidacy that never had the core components to go all the way even when she was on top in Iowa.

As a member of the media, I've certainly thought a lot about how 2016 was covered and how we can learn from our mistakes. I can't handle another 2016-like shock and, to avoid it, the media and voters have got to get on the same page.

Just like we, by and large, couldn't see the possibility of a Trump win in 2016, the coverage has relentlessly diminished Biden's candidacy when all the trappings of a successful run have been in plain view.

We're all human and bound to have personal preferences. The key is to make sure that we can still see what's really going on, despite those preferences, and honestly reflect upon our biases when the outcome isn't what "makes sense" to us.

Jessica Tarlov is head of research at Bustle Digital Group and a Fox News contributor. She earned her Ph.D. at the London School of Economics in political science. Follow her on Twitter @JessicaTarlov.

In Mexico, here’s what a day without women looks like
WOMEN STRIKE AGAINST FEMICIDE FOR IWD

Kevin Sieff, Gabriela Martínez 3/10/2020






a group of people riding bikes on a city street: A man sits alone on a bench in Mexico City during the Day Without Women protest.

6 SLIDES © Jane Hahn/for The Washington Post

A man sits alone on a bench in Mexico City during the Day Without Women protest.

MEXICO CITY —What does a country look like without women?


On Monday, in one of the world’s largest, busiest cities, it was a thought experiment that came to life, as women removed themselves from public view.

They didn’t go to offices, or restaurants or government buildings. They didn’t go to school. They didn’t ride in cars or buses or subways. For a day, they were gone.

Mexico has been shaken by an increase in femicides — women and girls killed for their gender — several of them particularly gruesome. In February, the body of 25-year-old Ingrid Escamilla was found skinned and disfigured. Then the body of 7-year-old Fátima Cecilia Aldrighett Antón, abducted outside her elementary school, was found naked in a plastic bag.

Those deaths invigorated this country’s long-standing women’s movement, which has clashed with successive governments that they say have done little to protect women. In recent weeks, protesters have marched outside the national palace; they scrawled the words “Femicide State” on its ornate doors. On Sunday, International Women’s Day, authorities estimate that at least 80,000 people marched through the center of the city.

But on Monday morning, after weeks of planning, women across Mexico protested by attempting to disappear completely. “On the 9th, No Woman Moves,” was one protest mantra. Organizers called it “A Day Without Us.”

Offices in both foreign and Mexican-owned businesses were half-empty. Many, in cities across Mexico, declined to open. Large employers such as Walmart and the baked goods giant Bimbo gave female employees the day off. Women at Google, WeWork and Hooters stayed home.

The Mexico City branch of Coparmex, an influential employers’ association, said the economic losses in the capital alone could hit $300 million.

The movement grew so big that even the government — a target of the protest — agreed to participate. Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo said female employees who stayed away would not be penalized. Women at the Foreign Ministry left pieces of paper with statements on their empty seats.

“By the end of the day, ten women will have been murdered. Stop killing us,” read one.

Public school teachers left signs in their classrooms explaining their absence.

“I didn’t come because I don’t want my female students or my daughter to be abused, humiliated or beaten,” a sign at a Mexico City school read.

At Bosque de Niebla, a small cafe in the Coyoacan neighborhood of the capital, Cecilia Lynn Sueños told her all-female staff days in advance that the shop would shut down Monday.

“The protest is an attempt to make visible the work of women and to unite behind the feminist demands of today,” Sueños said. She said it was partly aimed at the government — “because they should be the ones to ensure that laws really do protect the human rights of women.”

She and her employees would devote the day to reading about and discussing feminism, she said. She would pay them for a normal day of work.

Other women said they supported the protest, but couldn’t participate themselves — they weren’t offered the option of staying home with pay.

“I work because I need to pay rent,” said Nadia Iglesias, who plays a barrel organ near the city center. “I need to pay for my kids’ school.”

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday that he supported the protest. But he also suggested that the women’s movement harbored elements hostile to his presidency.

“This movement has various aspects,” he said during his morning news conference. “It’s a movement of women who legitimately fight for their rights and against violence, against femicides. But there is another part that is against us, and what they want is for the government to fail.”

He has said rising gender-based violence does not reflect the failings of his government, but rather a deepening “social decomposition” produced by previous Mexican leaders. He has blamed femicides on neoliberal values, and has expressed fatigue at addressing the issue publicly.

On Monday, he called some of the women “conservatives disguised as feminists,” and said they were hijacking the issue to destroy his government.

That response has left many women in Mexico unsatisfied. Some have been outspoken in their anger toward López Obrador.

“The president has been provoking us with his indifference, with his comments,” said Guadalupe Loaeza, a well-known Mexican writer and journalist. “He does not grasp that this is about feminism.” He misrepresents it, distorts it by saying that it is conservatism.”

Loaeza, too, stayed home.

“My husband already made me breakfast,” she said. “I am not going out. He already went out to buy food. He is going to take care of everything today.”

How long do viruses live on surfaces: Plastic, stainless steel, fabric, and more

© Shutterstock/Paraksa

The SARS-CoV-2 virus - responsible for the current coronavirus pandemic - can live on stainless steel surfaces for up to 72 hours, cardboard for up to 24 hours, and on copper for 4 hours and still be contagious.

Other coronaviruses can live on metal, plastic, and glass surfaces for four to five days, and could persist for up to nine days depending on temperature and humidity.

It's unclear how long viruses can live on fabric, but one study found that natural fabrics like wool and cotton are more likely to contain larger amounts of bacteria and fungi compared to silk and synthetic fabrics.

To properly disinfect surfaces make sure you're using alcohol-based cleaners that are at least 70% alcohol for hard surfaces and washing fabrics in water that's at least 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

This article was medically reviewed by Andres Romero, MD, infection disease specialist at Providence Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, CA.
Chances are, you're feeling more cognizant of viruses lately. To avoid them, you might cover you hand with your sleeve to hold onto a subway pole. To not spread them, you may cough into your elbow instead of your hand.

But what happens to the viruses that make their way onto subway poles, your clothes, and doorknobs? Here's what you should know about how long viruses can live on various surfaces.Lifespan depends on the virus and the surface

In light of the novel coronavirus, researchers are looking at how SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses behave on surfaces.

A recent study from scientists at a federal laboratory reported that SARS-CoV-2- the virus causing the current coronavirus pandemic - can live on plastic and stainless steel surfaces for up to 72 hours, on cardboard for up to 24 hours, and on copper for 4 hours. This was how long the virus could survive in large enough amounts to be transmissible, according to the researchers.

Another 2020 study published in the Journal of Hospital Infection analyzed 22 studies on other SARS and MERS coronaviruses. Researchers found that, on average, the viruses persisted on metal, plastic, and glass surfaces at room temperature for four to five days, and could persist for up to nine days depending on temperature and humidity.

Therefore, how long harmful germs live on different surfaces is "very specific to the pathogen, environmental factors like humidity, and also what surface it's on," says Todd Nega, MD, an infectious disease specialist at NorthShore University HealthSystem.

With fabrics, it's unclear how long viruses can last. But generally, they tend to last for a shorter amount of time on fabric compared to hard surfaces like stainless steel, according to the Mayo Clinic. It may also depend on what material the fabric is made from.

For a 2015 study in the Polish journal Medycyna Pracy, researchers looked at fabrics in industrial facilities, stables, homes, and a zoo. They didn't study viruses but they did see a correlation between how much fungi and bacteria contaminated the fabric depending on its material. They reported that smoother fibers - synthetic, semi-synthetic, and silk fibers - showed less microbial contamination than natural fibers like wool, hemp, or cotton.

This matters because you come in contact with fabric throughout your day. There are the clothes you wear, the towel you dry off with after a shower, the sheets you sleep on. "This is why we're very careful with contact isolation in hospital," Nega says. "In healthcare, we look at not contaminating things versus decontaminating them."

As an extra precaution, some experts recommend changing into clean clothes when you get home if you've been in contact with large groups of people at work throughout the day.How to clean hard surfaces

For hard surfaces like tabletops, doorknobs, countertops, sinks, and glass, the CDC recommends using alcohol-based disinfecting wipes or solutions that are at least 70% alcohol, diluted bleach solutions, or other disinfecting products registered by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

First, make sure to protect your skin by wearing gloves. And then check that you're using enough of the cleaning solution to properly disinfect the surface.

For example, if you're using Chlorox Disinfecting Wipes, there should be enough solution on the wipe to leave the surface visibly wet for at least four minutes while air-drying. If it's not visibly wet for four minutes, it could mean you've been overly ambitious and cleaned too much surface area with the wipe already.

Here's a complete list of EPA-registered disinfectants and also a list of disinfectants the EPA specifically recommends for disinfecting surfaces against SARS-CoV-2.How to clean fabrics

One of the best things you can do to reduce your exposure to viruses, and other germs, is to wash your clothes and other fabrics regularly. Washing clothes in water of at least 86 degrees Fahrenheit "significantly decreases, but does not eliminate, the bacterial burden," according to a study published in 2020 in the Journal of Small Animal Practice that examined bacteria on clinicians' scrubs.

To further sanitize fabrics, add bleach or color-safe bleach diluted with water. But first check your fabric's care instructions to make sure you're using it correctly. Be careful not to over-fill the washing machine. This gives the clothes room to vigorously stir in the disinfecting, soapy water, according to the American Chemistry Council's Water Quality and Health Council.

Running clothes through a drying cycle is key to eliminating germs, too. The high-heat setting is most effective, but again - check the specific instructions on your fabric to avoid damaging the fabric. You can also hang clothes to dry outside in direct sunlight. According to one study, the sun's ultraviolet light has disinfecting properties that kills certain types of bacteria.

If someone in your home has been sick, make sure to sanitize your laundry basket or hamper, as well as the washing machine itself. Check your specific washer for instructions or a clean-out cycle. And after all that cleaning - don't forget to wash your own hands, too.

DO AS WE SAY NOT AS WE DO

CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE

 TELLS AMERICANS TO SOCIAL DISTANCE THEMSELVES

SOCIAL DISTANCING IS SIX FEET OF SEPARATION 

FROM THE NEAREST PERSON IN PUBLIC SETTING

Viral ‘match video’ shows how social distancing can save lives

A husband and wife artist team are illustrating how social distancing can halt the spread of COVID-19.

© Courtesy of Valentina Izaguirre and Juan Delcan

In the animated video, which has gone viral with more than three million views, a row of matches are shown catching on fire until one steps aside and stops the blaze in its tracks.

Do your part and stay home. It’s all we can do. pic.twitter.com/dLOkV3znNe— juan delcan (@juan_delcan) March 16, 2020

“Stay home. It’s all we can do,” Juan Delcan wrote on Twitter.

Delcan, 54, directed the 3D clip, while his partner, Valentina Izaguirre, designed and styled the set.
“We wanted to reach younger people who are not taking this seriously,” Izaguirre, 48, told TODAY. “One of the most touching messages we received, was from a kid who said our visual helped him to realize the severity of the situation.”

© Courtesy of Valentina Izaguirre and Juan Delcan Juan Delcan and Valentina Izaguirre are created an animated video with matches to illustrate how social distancing can stop the spread of Coronavirus. (Courtesy of Valentina Izaguirre and Juan Delcan)

The LA-based couple began working with matches about a year ago.

Up until yesterday, their Instagram account showed the wooden sticks engaged in a variety of silly activities such as skiing down a mountain of confectioners sugar and “burning calories” with cotton swab barbells.

“It was just supposed to be cute and fun," Izaguirre said. “Then when this whole thing happened with coronavirus, we understood the meaning of them and the real purpose of what they’re here to do. Our relatives are in Europe, which is the epicenter of the virus right now. We're very worried about the situation."

Delcan said he comes from a family of doctors and nurses.

“I can’t cure people, so this is my contribution,” he explained. “I’m very worried about what is going to happen. People are in denial.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Sunday that people throughout the U.S. should avoid events of 50 people or more for the next eight weeks to slow the spread of Coronavirus.

The virus, which is transmitted from person-to person, has reached every state except West Virginia.

Coronavirus Patient Speaks from Hospital Bed on Social Distancing: 'Stay Away from Other People

A hospitalized Ohio man recovering from coronavirus is warning others to take social distancing seriously as the virus continues to spread across the country.

Kevin Harris, 55, said he is “not out of the woods, but… better every day” as he continues treatment at Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital in Warren — but that wasn’t always the case.

Harris said in a Facebook Live video filmed Friday night that his symptoms began on March 2 with a small cough, which soon led to body aches and a fever. The father of four assumed it was the flu, as he did not have a sore throat or runny nose.

“I never had any signs until the night… I started coughing,” he said. “That was the first sign and it went downhill in 24 hours, like gangbusters. I woke up several times thinking I was gonna die.”
Harris said he was “one cough from going into cardiac arrest” when a friend came to take him to the hospital, where he was admitted on March 8, WJW reported. He tested positive for coronavirus on March 11, making him the fifth confirmed case in the state of Ohio, according to NBC affiliate WKYC.

Speaking from his hospital bed with an oxygen hose in his nose, he emphasized the importance of social distancing, or keeping significant distance from others so as to reduce the risk of breathing in droplets produced by the coughs and sneezes of infected people.

“Do not go in the crowds. Do not shake hands. Stop hugging each other,” he said. “Wash your hands continually. Do not kiss on your kids. There are thousands of people carrying this virus around. They may never get it.”

He doubled down on his plea in a Skype interview with WKYC, once again urging people to avoid others for the time being.

“People need to stay away from other people. They call it social distancing — I say just be anti-social. Just stay away from other people,” Harris said. “This thing is deathly dangerous. Treat everybody like it’s the zombie apocalypse. Don’t trust nothing anybody touches.”

In his Facebook video, Harris said he became ill despite not having gone many places for two weeks prior. He believes he contracted the virus while at a check-up at the Cleveland Clinic.

Since falling ill, which he likened to “drowning on dry land,” he says he’s certain he has not exposed anyone else to the virus, as he was holed up in his home for two weeks.

“I promised certain officials that I would tell people they can get through this,” he said. “Don’t be scared. You can live through this. But you’ve got to start taking care of yourself.”

Harris is one of 37 confirmed cases in Ohio, and one of at least 3,602 in the United States, according to The New York Times.

Social distancing has been embraced by cities and states across the country, many of which have closed bars, music venues and schools as a means of keeping people from gathering in large crowds.

For nurses, a bad situation has gotten worse

© Erin Clark/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Nurses detailed a lack of coordination between governments and hospitals over protocols that could help stem the outbreak, with mask shortages a notable example

Nurses were already working at full capacity before the outbreak, and many are facing a choice between paying their bills and calling in sick if they get exhausted or even catch the coronavirus.

In the case of a "domino effect" where nurses begin to get sick, one nurse warned, a nurse staffing crisis will only make the current health crisis worse.

Maeleigh Soper, a registered travel nurse in Seattle, has been rationing masks and hand sanitizers for the past week.

She said her hospital, which went through a month's worth of masks and hand sanitizers in three days, suspects that patients and families have been stealing medical supplies amid the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The novel coronavirus, which spread from China in late December, has since infected at least 169,000 people in every continent besides Antarctica.

US localities and businesses have taken steps to lessen the disease's spread, so that the health care system won't be overwhelmed by new patients. But Business Insider talked to nine nurses in hospitals nationwide, who said equipment shortages are putting their health and that of their patients at risk, as the novel coronavirus continues to spread.

Hospitals cannot limit the number of patients a nurse can legally care for at once in every state except for California, and nurses who care for more than six patients in a day get burned out and cannot provide adequate patient care, according to research from Linda Aikens. Nurses reported grappling with equipment shortages, understaffing, and a lack of coordination on protocols between health systems and the government.

"I think the real message we need to tell people is that this is the calm before the storm," Marcia Santini, a registered nurse at an emergency room in California, told Business Insider. "We need to keep our health care workers healthy, and if they get sick, that would collapse the health care system."Nurses are facing mask shortages - and they have called on the government and hospital systems for more resources

Santini said her hospital was crowded and nearly filled to occupancy - before the coronavirus outbreak.

Like Soper, Santini said her hospital has had a shortage of proper medical supplies like gowns and masks. On March 10, the National Nurses United union called on the White House and hospital systems to ensure that nurses have enough protective equipment. A union survey found only 30% of nurses report having enough equipment to deal with the virus outbreak.

Soper works in her hospital's oncology department, where patients receiving bone marrow transplants have severely comprised immune systems. Soper said her biggest fear is passing on the virus, potentially deadly to patients with comorbidities, to her patients.

"We need to be protected because once you start the domino effect," Santini said, referring to one health care worker getting sick and spreading the disease to other staffers, "then you're going to have a staffing crisis."

© AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

Nurses described feeling frustrated at the lack of coordination from hospitals and the government over proper protocol

Monica, a registered nurse who works in a rural hospital in Washington state, identified four patients last week who she thought should have been tested for COVID-19. (Business Insider confirmed Monica's identity before publishing this article).

But due to confusion from the state's Department of Health and hospital providers, none received a test.

The first man to die from coronavirus in the US lived in a long-term care facility in Washington state. Health care workers and other residents in the nursing home were also exposed to the virus.

Monica's hospital, which has already faced staffing shortages, asked her to work extra shifts on top of her six continuous night shifts. Coupled with a lack of proper protective gear, Monica told Business Insider she was frustrated by the lack of coordination between federal and state governments and hospital systems on figuring out coronavirus protocols.

Marie Spaner, a hospital nurse in the Los Angeles area, told Business Insider that she also felt frustrated at her hospital's lack of planning. Her hospital has not changed cleaning or sanitation protocols since the outbreak, nor has it limited visitors.

"It's frustrating and frightening. If we can't have things implemented properly in the hospital then it's a danger for us [nurses] and to the patients," Spaner told Business Insider. "We're just grossly unprepared."  

 

© Reuters 

For nurses themselves, getting sick means losing pay

Many nurses told Business Insider that if they take time off work, they won't get paid.

Carmen Martinez, who works as a nurse in the registry department in a California hospital, said her hospital recently stopped screening patients with fevers below 104 - even if they present other coronavirus symptoms.

Without screening patients for coronavirus when their temperature is below 104 - coupled with the shortages of protective equipment - Martinez said she was worried most about getting sick and needing to take time off work. Two weeks without work means Martinez won't be able to pay her bills.

"I don't think America knows how much how much is at stake for us," Martinez told Business Insider. "We're putting our lives at risk right now. I think everybody needs to remember that we're in the front lines were at risk, but there has to be provision made for us."

WE ALL WONDERED
Why toilet paper has become the latest coronavirus panic buy

By Scottie Andrew, CNN 3/9/2020

Masks were the first to go. Then, hand sanitizers.© Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images Shelves are empty of toilet rolls in a supermarket in Sydney on March 4, 2020. - Australia's biggest supermarket announced a limit on hand sanitisers and toilet paper purchases after the global spread of coronavirus sparked a spate of panic buying Down Under.

Now, novel coronavirus panic buyers are snatching up ... toilet paper?

Retailers in the US and Canada have started limiting the number of toilet paper packs customers can buy in one trip. Some supermarkets in the UK are sold out. Grocery stores in Australia have hired security guards to patrol customers.

© WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images Supermarkets in Australia are largely selling out of toilet paper due to novel coronavirus fears. An Australian newspaper even printed out eight extra pages in a recent edition to serve as emergency toilet paper.

An Australian newspaper went so far as printing eight extra pages in a recent edition -- emergency toilet paper, the newspaper said, should Aussies run out.


Why? Toilet paper does not offer special protection against the virus. It's not considered a staple of impending emergencies, like milk and bread are.

So why are people buying up rolls more quickly than they can be restocked?


Reason 1



People resort to extremes when they hear conflicting messages

Steven Taylor is a clinical psychologist and author of "The Psychology of Pandemics," which takes a historic look at how people behave and respond to pandemics. And compared to past pandemics, the global response to the novel coronavirus has been one of widespread panic.

"On the one hand, [the response is] understandable, but on the other hand it's excessive," Taylor, a professor and clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia, told CNN. "We can prepare without panicking."

The novel coronavirus scares people because it's new, and there's a lot about it that's still unknown. When people hear conflicting messages about the risk it poses and how seriously they should prepare for it, they tend to resort to the extreme, Taylor said.

"When people are told something dangerous is coming, but all you need to do is wash your hands, the action doesn't seem proportionate to the threat," he said. "Special danger needs special precautions."


Reason 2



Some are reacting to the lack of a clear direction from officials

Several countries have already imposed mass quarantines. People buying up toilet paper and other household supplies may be preparing for the same thing in their city, said Baruch Fischhoff, a psychologist and professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy and the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University.

"Unless people have seen ... official promises that everyone will be taken care of, they are left to guess at the probability of needing the extra toilet paper, sooner rather than later," he told CNN. "The fact that there are no official promises might increase those probabilities."




Reason 3



Panic buying begets panic buying

Images of empty shelves and shopping carts piled high with supplies have inundated news reports and social feeds. People see images of panic buyers, assume there's a reason to panic and buy up supplies, too, Taylor said.

"People, being social creatures, we look to each other for cues for what is safe and what is dangerous," he said. "And when you see someone in the store, panic buying, that can cause a fear contagion effect."

All those photos of empty shelves may lead people to believe that they must rush out and grab toilet paper while they still can. And what started as perceived scarcity becomes actual scarcity, Taylor said.

Social media is a huge player in novel coronavirus fear-mongering, Taylor said. Misinformation spreads with ease, and open platforms amplify voices of panic.


Reason 4



It's natural to want to overprepare

There may be some practicality in stocking up, says Frank Farley, a professor at Temple University and former president of the American Psychological Association.

With the CDC and other international health agencies now advising that certain populations should stay home and avoid contact with other people or crowds, it's natural to want to prepare, he said.

"[The novel coronavirus] is engendering a sort of survivalist psychology, where we must live as much as possible at home and thus must 'stock up' on essentials, and that certainly includes toilet paper," he told CNN. "After all, if we run out of [toilet paper], what do we replace it with?"

You'll be spending money on toilet paper at one point or another -- the only extra costs are the hassle of doing it sooner rather than later, contending with long lines and having difficulty finding it, Fischhoff said.

Since they'll eventually use the toilet paper, the analysis is different than if they'd bought something they likely wouldn't use, like a perishable item, he said.

The US Department of Homeland Security advises Americans to keep at least two weeks' worth of food, toiletries and medical supplies on hand anyway, but Taylor said most people don't. So when health officials publicly advise to stock up, they may take it to the extreme.


Reason 5



It allows some to feel a sense of control

The people who are stocking up on supplies are thinking about themselves and their family and what they need to do to prepare, Taylor said -- not healthcare workers, sick people or even regular folks who might run out of toilet paper sometime soon.

"It's all due to this wave of anticipatory anxiety," Taylor said. "People become anxious ahead of the actual infection. They haven't thought about the bigger picture, like what are the consequences of stockpiling toilet paper."

But people only act that way out of fear. Fischhoff said that preparing, even by purchasing toilet paper, returns a sense of control to what seems like a helpless situation.

"Depending on how people estimate the chances of needing the toilet paper, the hassle might be worth it," he said. "If it gave them the feeling that they had done everything that they could, it might free them to think about other things than coronavirus."

Amazon launches business selling automated checkout to retailers

By Jeffrey Dastin
3/9/2020



Shopping carts are pictured during a tour of an Amazon checkout-free, large format grocery store in Seattle, Washington, U.S. February 21, 2020. Picture taken February 21, 2020. REUTERS/Jason Redmond

Shopping carts are pictured during a tour of an Amazon checkout-free, large format grocery store in Seattle, Washington, U.S. February 21, 2020. Picture taken February 21, 2020. REUTERS/Jason Redmond

March 9 (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc on Monday is set to announce a new business line selling the technology behind its cashier-less convenience stores to other retailers, the company told Reuters.

The world's biggest web retailer said it has "several" signed deals with customers it would not name. A new website Monday will invite others to inquire about the service, dubbed Just Walk Out technology by Amazon.

The highly anticipated business reflects Amazon's strategy of building out internal capabilities - such as warehouses to help with package delivery and cloud technology to support its website - and then turning those into lucrative services it offers others.

Its chain Amazon Go has brought shopping without checkout lines into the mainstream, and the market for retail without cashiers - one of the most common vocations in the United States - could grow to $50 billion, U.S. venture firm Loup Ventures has estimated.

Dilip Kumar, Amazon's vice president of physical retail and technology, had no market forecast to share but said shoppers' preferences will determine how big the business becomes.

"Do customers like standing in lines?" he asked. "This has pretty broad applicability across store sizes, across industries, because it fundamentally tackles a problem of how do you get convenience in physical locations, especially when people are hard-pressed for time."

Unlike Amazon Go stores, shoppers will insert a credit card into a gated turnstile to enter, rather than scan an app. The turnstiles will display the logo "Just Walk Out technology by Amazon," but all other branding and store aspects will be controlled by the retailer using the service.

Items picked up by a customer and any guests who enter with them will be added to the shopper's virtual cart. The store will then bill the credit card once the person or group leaves the store - no bar code scans or checkout lines necessary.

Kumar said Amazon will install the technology including ceiling cameras and shelf weight sensors at retailers' stores, whether they are new locations or retrofits, and it will have a 24-7 support line.

COURTING RIVALS?

A by-product of demand for the offering would be increased usage of Amazon Web Services, the company's cloud that underpins its checkout-free systems.

Still, high demand is by no means certain. Other vendors including Grabango and AiFi are offering automated checkout to retailers, which in the past have been loath to hand deals to their rival Amazon that has been the biggest disruptor of their brick-and-mortar businesses.

Media reports have said Amazon was in talks to bring its technology to airport stores, for instance, rather than to Walmart Inc or Target Corp. Kumar said Amazon "potentially" could sell the service to big box rivals but would not speculate.

He declined to comment on the service's business model or pricing, saying, "a lot of those are bespoke deals."

One issue that may arise is who owns the shopper data, something that businesses typically want in order to tailor marketing offers and build their customer base.

Shoppers who desire a receipt will be able to type their email into a kiosk at any store. Amazon will send receipts to that address each subsequent time the credit card is used at a Just Walk Out location, no matter the retailer. Kumar said Amazon saves the email address and ties that to the credit card information, solely for the purpose of charging the customer.

Kumar would not discuss whether or how Amazon would integrate this into retailers' loyalty programs but said, "These are the retailers' customers."

"We prohibit the use of Just Walk Out technology data for anything other than supporting Just Walk Out retailers," he said.

(Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

A new Dr. Seuss book will be published in September "Dr. Seuss's Horse Museum" by Dr. Seuss, illustrated by Andrew Joyner.

By Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times
3/9/2020

© Penguin/Tampa Bay Times/TNS

 "Dr. Seuss's Horse Museum" by Dr. Seuss, illustrated by Andrew Joyner.

You know Dr. Seuss books helped make your kids smart.

And now there's a new one that's all about art!

Wait, a new Dr. Seuss book? The beloved children's author and illustrator, whose real name was Theodor Geisel, died in 1991. But Random House Children's Books has announced that it will publish a new book by him on Sept. 3.

According to an email: "The original manuscript for 'Dr. Seuss's Horse Museum' was discovered in the late author's La Jolla, Calif., home 21 years after his death, alongside the manuscript for the 2015 No. 1 New York Times best-seller "What Pet Should I Get?"

Seuss left notes and sketches for "Horse Museum," but not a finished book. His publishers worked with Australian illustrator Andrew Joyner, whose books include The Hair Book and the Duck and Hippo series, to re-create Seuss' unique visual style.

"Dr. Seuss's Horse Museum" also reflects Seuss' intense interest in modern art, and the book will incorporate full-color images of horse-themed works by such artists as Pablo Picasso, Rosa Bonheur, Alexander Calder, Jacob Lawrence and Jackson Pollock.

Dr. Seuss has been the target of some recent criticism, with studies showing that some of the images of people of color in his books use racist stereotypes. In 2017, the National Education Association rebranded its 20-year-old literacy program Read Across America, centered on his books and his March 2 birthday, to de-emphasize his work.

But he remains a beloved author, and many communities and schools in Read Across America continue to include his books.

"Dr. Seuss's Horse Museum" will have a first printing of 250,000 copies

Coronavirus truthers prey on the anxiety of the moment

© Provided by Yahoo! News Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh File)© Yahoo News

As the global coronavirus outbreak continues to shutter businesses and schools across America and upend the stock market, a number of commentators on the right have been busily floating conspiracy theories about what’s behind the outbreak, or even how real it is.

“People should ask themselves whether this coronavirus ‘pandemic’ could be a big hoax, with the actual danger of the disease massively exaggerated by those who seek to profit — financially or politically — from the ensuing panic,” former Rep. Ron Paul wrote on his website Monday.

The former Republican presidential candidate, a physician and the father of Sen. Rand Paul, described Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading scientific voice on President Trump’s coronavirus task force, as one of many government “fearmongers” who were part of a plan to institute martial law and permanently strip Americans of their rights.

Comments like Paul’s have stoked internet rumors about what’s to come and led more mainstream politicians, like Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., to attempt to calm fears over the government’s response, albeit with spelling errors.

Please stop spreading stupid rumors about marshall (SIC) law.

COMPLETELY FALSE

We will continue to see closings & restrictions on hours of non-essential businesses in certain cities & states. But that is NOT marshall (SIC) law.
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 16, 2020

Paul is not the only coronavirus truther on the right. Former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, who was floated as a possible candidate for a Trump administration post at the Department of Homeland Security, sounded the alarm on Sunday about what he saw as “an exploitation of a crisis.”

GO INTO THE STREETS FOLKS. Visit bars, restaurants, shopping malls, CHURCHES and demand that your schools re-open. NOW!

If government doesn’t stop this foolishness...STAY IN THE STREETS.

END GOVERNEMNT CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES. IF NOT NOW, WHEN?
THIS IS AN EXPLOITATION OF A CRISIS.
— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) March 15, 2020

Clarke then raised the specter that the right’s favorite bogeyman, banker George Soros, might be behind the pandemic.

Not ONE media outlet has asked about George Soros’s involvement in this FLU panic. He is SOMEWHERE involved in this.

— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) March 15, 2020

Shortly thereafter, Clarke announced that he was “LEAVING TWITTER DUE TO THEIR CONSERVATIVE SPEECH CONTROL.”

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has described himself as a “corona truther” who sees COVID-19 as nothing worse than the flu.

“It’s like a common cold,” Portnoy, whose website depends on business-as-usual in the sports and entertainment world, said on Jan. 30.

On March 11, Gavin Heavin, the co-founder of the fitness company Curves International, appeared on fellow conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s program to promote a view heard on the fringes of the right-wing media: that coronavirus was engineered by enemies of the president to discredit him.

“We know that it’s a weaponized virus because we see the RNA strands that were put into this virus from HIV, from MERS and from the SARS virus. There’s no way this could have happened in nature.”

Coronavirus, according to Heavin, was produced by those “who want to destroy Trump’s presidency.” But Heavin, whose business will be hit hard as millions of Americans avoid exercising in gyms, went even further.

“I’m trying to get to Trump to make him aware that this is not a nonevent. This is a very nefarious act against him,” Heavin said, adding, “This virus was designed to kill primarily Asian people. Now the problem is it’s going to kill a lot of Europeans and non-Asian people because it’s still lethal. But that’s one more evidence that it was designed as a bioweapon to attack China.”

Taking a different, although equally conspiratorial, view of the matter, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., posited that the coronavirus originated at a secret Chinese biological lab near Wuhan, the city where it was first detected.

Tom Cotton reiterates his suggestion that the Coronavirus originated at a super-lab in Wuhan pic.twitter.com/i1cSNSqU0d

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) February 16, 2020

Zhao Lijian, deputy director of China’s foreign ministry of information, took to Twitter to promote the conspiracy theory that the virus originated in America and was first spread in his country by U.S. soldiers visiting Wuhan province.

Rubio, meanwhile, continued to try to steer the truthers’ focus back to the task at hand.

It won’t change anything but wanted to leave it for the record

Given what #COVID19 did to #China & now #Italy political potshots from all sides are really trivial

If we don’t change the trajectory of our current infection rate, in a few days no one will care about politics — Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) March 16, 2020

Trump finds his MAGA movement fracturing over coronavirus

By Tina Nguyen 

Just two weeks after President Donald Trump rallied conservatives to focus on the threat of socialism, his followers are splintering over the coronavirus pandemic.

© Brian Blanco/Getty Images President Donald Trump.

On one side are those like Bill Mitchell, who dismiss it as nothing worse than the flu, and the drive to eradicate it as “climate change 2.0” — as in, a media-lefty mass hysteria. On the other side are pro-Trump fixtures like Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller, who had been sounding the alarms on the coronavirus since January, and are calling for harsher lockdowns and urging social distancing.

While the MAGA movement is divided over how seriously to take the coronavirus threat or how to tackle it, the message among his supporters is increasingly unanimous: If Trump fails to control the virus, prevent its spread and prove his leadership, much less save the economy, he will lose the election and cripple his movement.

Trump’s supporters elected him because he was a “wartime leader” who could fight against the swamp and the elites, so they expect the same against a truly invisible threat, said War Room host and former Breitbart editor Raheem Kassam. “If, for a second, people think that he doesn't have that strength, or he doesn't have that fortitude, then it will become a problem,” he said.

The mounting health and economic risks from the coronavirus outbreak present a monumental political challenge for a group vowing to Make America Great Again. With just under eight months to go before a presidential election, Trump’s followers face the prospect that their core message — about deconstructing the “deep state” of government workers and transforming the nation’s power structure to serve everyday Americans — could collapse in a crisis environment.

“I would think that the very pro-Trump people maybe would like to downplay this, but actually, I don't even think that,” said Chris Buskirk, the editor-in-chief of the nationalist magazine American Greatness. “Because on this particular issue, the nationalist-MAGA crowd are all over the place. It’s totally individual.”

The divide was in stark contrast on Fox News last week, as the crisis snowballed into the public eye. One host, Tucker Carlson, delivered grave warnings about the coronavirus. He accused officials — who his conservative audience “probably voted for” — of minimizing “what is clearly a very serious problem.” Another host, Sean Hannity, called it “fear-mongering by the deep state.”

Across Trump world are other attempts to deflect blame — following an approach used by the president himself in recent weeks, as he attacked the Obama administration and others outside his administration for his team’s response.

Jerry Falwell Jr. suggested that North Korea created the virus. A conference promising “supernatural protection from the CoronaVirus” [sic] through the “blood and power of Jesus” initially advertised that Trump’s White House faith adviser, Paula White, would speak. (White is not attending.) And the more grounded, less conspiratorial-minded in the Trump base still found ways to take aim at the Democrats and the media.

On Sunday night, as Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were debating the response to the virus, Breitbart’s snarky homepage headlines questioned whether the septuagenarians were up to the challenge, while Newsmax’s John Cardillo openly targeted conservatives who were “enabling” the “leftists salivating at the power grab COVID-19 presents.”

“80% of these cases are mild, meaning you get common cold, like people are recovering. I just don't see the need for all the panic,” said Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier, who praised the fact that Trump’s speech in the Rose Garden raised the Dow by nearly 2,000 points. (They were under pressure overnight.)

The other half of MAGAland is urging their peers to look at the bigger picture.

“If you take that perspective, that it’s just the flu and it’s roughly the same thing that other people are going to get, and it’s probably going to have the same outcome, why would you want to have two separate viruses like that circulating at the same time as you can on that assumption?” Buskirk countered separately, worried about the potential strain on hospitals. (Admittedly, he joked, he had also been preparing for catastrophic events since 9/11.)

Other prominent figures in the loose confederacy of pro-Trump media recognized the potential for trouble. “That would be a massive vulnerability … if he started downplaying the disease again, and it were to get worse,” agreed Will Chamberlain, a pro-Trump commentator and the editor-in-chief of Human Events.

“Every president has the sort of out-of-the blue instances that happen that you can’t really plan for and it tests your leadership ability. It tests everything,” conceded Fournier. “And I think it is a fair assessment to say that the president has to exert strength here.”

Seth Mandel, the editor-in-chief of the conservative Washington Examiner magazine, noted that the rapid flip on the right from triumphal unity to existential terror happened in less than two weeks.

“I think, for a while, there was some degree of harmony in the conservative press,” he observed, pointing to the potential of Bernie Sanders as the Democratic presidential nominee bringing consensus to the movement prior to Super Tuesday. “If you're debating policy, then it looks like everybody’s pretty much on the same page, because whatever people think of Trump, they also don’t like socialism to a great degree.”

But over the next two weeks, that future shattered with the one-two punch of Joe Biden trouncing every candidate during the next 22 primaries, placing Sanders’s campaign on death watch, and the sudden, complete shutdown of Italy over coronavirus fears, leading to Trump’s decision to shut down travel between much of Europe and the U.S. And now much of the nation is shutting down to save itself from the rapidly spreading outbreak.

While they applauded Trump’s earlier decision to ban travel from China, they still could not overlook the lack of testing and the CDC’s inability to mount a strong prevention campaign against the virus, and some criticized Trump’s initial messaging.

“Trump was comparing flu statistics to coronavirus statistics,” said Chamberlain. “Well, that’s the same mistake that people make when they say, ‘Why do you care more about terrorism? Terrorism kills so many fewer people in car accidents every year.’ The answer is, ‘Because if something goes really wrong in terrorism, they could do unbelievably dramatic damage.’ Same logic here.”

There was a consensus among Trump’s supporters that the crisis was precipitated by the two things that Trump had long railed against: open borders and the over-reliance on Chinese manufacturing. With the coronavirus, argued Chamberlain, Trump was proven right: Lax border security had allowed the virus to spread, and the shutdown of Chinese factories, particularly the ones that manufactured medical supplies and medicine, hobbled America’s ability to fight it.

“If Trump wants to pursue his normal, original nationalist agenda, there's nothing about the coronavirus crisis that would preclude him from doing so. If anything, it is evident that his agenda is the right one to pursue.”

While coronavirus presented a custom-built argument for economic nationalism, it was not the argument that Trump initially made — something that did not escape Mandel, who was flabbergasted that Trump did not spin himself as a “prophet” and instead tried to downplay it. “When the president had a crisis that hit that would have, theoretically, been designed perfectly for the nationalist argument, he didn't reach for it. So maybe he doesn't really believe it.”

Trump’s Friday afternoon speech in the Rose Garden, in which Trump announced a national emergency and displayed several private corporations to aid the CDC’s response, heartened his supporters, who applauded the fact that there was, at least, a conservative-friendly plan to combat the virus: a website for people seeking information about COVID-19, a public-private partnership with several corporations to fight the disease and, most importantly, the declaration of a national emergency, freeing up billions in federal funding. (The website, however, was not quite what Trump had initially sold: What was initially early discussions about a Bay Area pilot program for health care workers run by a Google-affiliated startup was inflated to a Google website with 1,700 employees that could help people self-screen for COVID-19 symptoms.)

To be sure, the health of the economy is indeed one factor in Trump’s re-election — a bar, Kassem pointed out, that the Trump campaign set for itself by touting the strength of the economy for the past three years as proof positive of his leadership. But most would forgive him if he didn’t restore the Dow to its recent soaring heights, as long as the markets were stable.

Fournier pointed to Trump’s post-address market rebound as proof that Trump was truly in control. “Today it’s a good day in America. Declaring a national emergency, releasing those funds, working with these other companies — this is the holistic solution,” he said.

Mandel doubted that Trump would lose the percentage of his base that would be with him no matter what during the coronavirus pandemic, but cautioned that Trump could not rely on press conferences and bolstering the economy forever.

“There’s the public health thing, and then there’s the economy part of it, and everybody should really be caring about the public health thing the most, but even he needs to presumably get some credit if the economy doesn’t tank,” he said. “And if it looks like he tried to save the economy at the expense of the public health aspect of it — if voters think that’s what he did, and also he failed at both — then yeah, you can imagine that it’s absolutely a real threat to his reelection. And again, he doesn't have Bernie to lean back on.”