Self-grooming has become an unavoidable necessity for millions of Americans across several states as governors and mayors shut down barbershops and salons in an effort to enforce social distancing mandates aimed at limiting the spread of the deadly and highly contagious COVID-19 virus. As a result, self-grooming products for those forced to take a DIY approach to haircare, mani/pedis, and other personal care needs are among the areas of entrepreneurial opportunity emerging from the coronavirus crisis.
St. Lucian immigrant and Shark Tank winner Joshua Esnard is one of those with a self-grooming product to meet a key demand in the current environment. His invention, The Cut Buddy, is a DIY-barbering tool created to help people do their own haircuts and beard trimming.
“I created this when I was a kid,” says Esnard, who was recognized as a 2018 BE Modern Man of Distinction. “I couldn’t go to the barber. Either it was too far away, or I couldn’t afford to. Now, with this pandemic, hopefully, my invention can help people feel a little bit better about their haircuts and themselves every day.”
The Cut Buddy is a stencil that, when held against one’s head, allows anyone to give themselves (or someone else) a barber-quality line-up, edge-up, or shape-up to their haircut or beard. Esnard was just 13-years-old when he created the self-grooming product as a solution to the same struggle many people are now challenged with during the current pandemic: “How can I cut my own hair?” After numerous failed attempts and mangled hairlines, Esnard traced out a stencil that would prevent him from making errors and give him crisp, barber-quality results.
Patented in 2015 and released in 2016, a YouTube influencer campaign helped The Cut Buddy go viral, with 4,000 units sold in just one hour. Esnard says that PayPal’s fraud system automatically froze his account because the large and sudden increase in cash flow triggered a shut-down designed to prevent suspected money laundering.
Since its viral release, The Cut Buddy self-grooming tool has been featured in GQ, Forbes, NBC’s The Today Show, NPR, and Black Enterprise. Esnard went on the ABC hit television show Shark Tank and struck a deal with Daymond John, giving up 20% of the company for $300,000. The Cut Buddy has since partnered with Andis Co. Inc., a leading designer and manufacturer of electric clippers and other tools for professional barbers and hairstylists. Esnard says that as of the end of 2019, over 500,000 Cut Buddy haircut stencils have been sold worldwide.
In response to the current crisis, The Cut Buddy and The Cut Buddy PLUS are available at a 15% discount at checkout at TheCutBuddy.com with the promo code: DIY2020. The self-grooming products are also sold on Amazon. Esnard, now 33, looks back on his self-grooming invention of two decades ago and how it might be more helpful now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, than ever before. “It’s only a haircut tool, but I’ve seen how much it means to people to feel good about how they look every day,” he asserts. “I hope this can help people’s lives feel a bit more normal.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden added Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s name to the list of women he is eyeing for his running mate.
Biden, who said previously he would choose a female vice president, told MSNBC’sBrian Williams that he has been weighing Whitmer, along with a handful of other female vice-presidential possibilities, for several months but would ultimately narrow it down and pick a candidate this month.
Michigan Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
Biden is also considering Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) and Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia state House, among others.
“She made the list in my mind two months ago,” Biden told Williams about Whitmer. “There’s probably going to be a list, I’m in the process of — Brian, we’ll have it by mid-April, putting together an organization that will run the background checks … by the second or third week in April.”
“I’ve thought about some of the women who I believe are ready to be president and I think I can work with and would be willing to work with me. It’s going to be somewhere between six and 10 of them,” Biden added.
Former Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams and former Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris. (Photo: Getty Images)
As Michigan governor, Whitmer may be particularly appealing as she is a well-liked governor who heads up a must-win swing state for Democrats come November. Whitmer endorsed Biden ahead of her state’s Democratic primary and helped him score a victory over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
Whitmer has also proven that she is tough and unafraid to take it to President Donald Trump, who she has publicly criticized for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Facing a dangerous abdication of leadership from Donald Trump during this pandemic, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has been a tenacious fighter for Michigan families,” Biden released in a statement.
“Donald Trump could learn a thing or two from Governor Whitmer — speed matters, details matter, and people matter.”
Amid the coronavirus, outbreak, also known as COVID-19, there has been a huge call for donations of medical supplies for healthcare professionals working on the front lines of the crisis. Due to the shortage in necessary materials such as N95 masks and gloves, many doctors, nurses, and other essential workers have been left vulnerable to contracting the virus themselves as they treat patients.
Mississippi-based entrepreneur Alexis Williams is the founder of a local African and Hawaiian inspired clothing boutique called Aloha Glamour. In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Williams started selling reusable face masks with Ankara prints for use as protective measures against the spread of COVID-19.
“My masks are 100% cotton, reversible, reusable and machine washable,” says Williams in a statement “My masks are not meant to replace surgical masks, but it is a contingency plan for those who don’t have the ability to get surgical masks because of the shortage. It is not medical-rated, but it is good enough to filter other hazardous particles and bad smells. The response to it has been overwhelming and we want to do anything we can to help out.”
While the masks are not N95 certified, they are big enough to wear on top of the mask, which helps with keeping your hands off your face. For every face mask sold, Williams will be donating a free one to local healthcare workers.
“I decided to encourage my other customers to help provide masks for those on the front line in this pandemic battle,” Williams said. “I asked them to make contributions so my business could provide face masks for someone in public service for free. Several of my customers have responded by donating to help in this important effort.”
The IRS is requiring retired seniors, people drawing disability and other groups to file a “simple” tax return in order to receive their one-time payments from the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus plan.
On IRS.gov, the agency said distribution of the economic impact payments will start in the next three weeks, but cautioned that “some people who typically do not file returns will need to submit a simple tax return to receive the stimulus payment.”
The stimulus package provides one-time payments of up to $1,200 to some adults and $500 per child.
This news didn’t go over too well for roughly 40 Democrat and Republican congressional leaders who joined forces in asking the Trump administration to eliminate this requirement.
“This filing requirement would place a significant burden on retired seniors and individuals who experience disabilities,” Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Social Security Commissioner Andrew Saul.
“Crucial filing resources, like Volunteer Income Tax Assistance and Tax Counseling for the Elderly, are not available to provide assistance due to the COVID-19 crisis,” Neal said in the letter.
Neal also sent off a letter to the Free File Alliance asking the group of tax preparers to work with the IRS to provide free assistance to these impacted groups, according to Fox News.
“I believe that free tax preparation assistance can go a long way in easing the burden on non-filers who may need to file a return and helping our country during this pandemic,” Neal wrote.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), agreed with Neal and is asking the IRS to clarify its stance.
“During this unprecedented time of need, requiring seniors to go through the confusing and laborious tax return filing process before receiving desperately-needed stimulus checks is unacceptable,” she wrote in a news release.
Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, questions witnesses during a House Intelligence Committee impeachment inquiry hearing on Capitol Hill November 21, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)
“Thousands of seniors across my district do not file tax returns because their main source of income is Social Security. North Country seniors should not have the added burden and stress of figuring out how to file tax returns before receiving the checks that Congress allocated for them. I represent one of the largest constituencies of seniors in the country, and I will continue to be their advocate. This policy must be clarified immediately.”
IRS.gov appears to have been updated to explain that “Social Security beneficiaries who are not typically required to file tax returns will not need to file to receive a payment,” however no updates have been made thus far on other groups expected to file the simple tax form.
The IRS said it will continue to update its site as more information becomes available.
As millions of Americans lose their jobs and go without healthcare, President Donald Trump has decided not to reopen Healthcare.gov marketplaces to new customers.
Trump opted not to allow a special enrollment period, which would have reopened the Affordable Care Act’s Healthcare.gov marketplaces for a set time period for the uninsured or those soon to be, as the country grapples with unprecedented calamity in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump had been mulling the idea for about a month, but decided to explore other options outside of Obamacare, a White House official told Politico.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media during a Cabinet meeting at the White House December 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images)
People who recently lost their jobs still qualify to find a health insurance plan on the marketplaces, however, they must show proof that they lost their insurance coverage. If Trump would have allowed a special enrollment period, it would have made the process less cumbersome for people to enroll, as it would not have required that paperwork.
Further, it would have given additional people, who previously opted not to buy health insurance this year, another avenue to do so, according to The New York Times.
Trump’s decision isn’t shocking for people who have followed his stance on Obamacare. He is still calling for the law to be overturned and replaced, and has even joined a lawsuit with other Republican-leaning states hoping the Supreme Court will rule to cancel the law in its next term.
People celebrate in front of the US Supreme Court after ruling was announced on the Affordable Care Act. June 25, 2015 in Washington, DC. The high court ruled that the Affordable Care Act may provide nationwide tax subsidies to help poor and middle-class people buy health insurance. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Recently, Trump told reporters: “What we want to do is get rid of the bad health care and put in a great health care.”
Some politicians have criticized Trump’s decision, including former Vice President Joe Biden, who is challenging Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Also, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee issued a statement, slamming “Washington Republicans” for taking part in a “crusade against the health and safety of the American public.”
“By blocking uninsured Covid-19 patients from getting health care, Trump and his allies have decided to bankrupt American families,” Fabiola Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the group, said in the statement, according to the Times.
“The American people deserve to know if House Republicans will stand up for the millions of Americans who face the challenge of being jobless and uninsured during the Covid-19 pandemic.”
It remains unclear what other options the Trump administration will make available for Americans who have lost their jobs and healthcare benefits.
The mayor of Los Angeles on Wednesday told everyone in the nation’s second-largest city to start wearing masks to combat the coronavirus, but California’s governor isn’t ready to take that idea statewide.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday he’s focused instead on keeping people inside. He also announced the state may need 66,000 additional hospital beds, 16,000 more than previously forecast, to handle the crush of illnesses expected during the second part of May.
At an afternoon news conference, Mayor Eric Garcetti said he had been awaiting advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on mask-wearing but with the COVID-19 rate surging had decided to wait no longer.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti listens as California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks in front of the hospital ship USNS Mercy that arrived into the Port of Los Angeles on Friday, March 27, 2020, to provide relief for Southland hospitals overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic. Admiral John Gumbleton, United States Navy stands behind Mayor Garcetti. (Photo by Carolyn Cole-Pool/Getty Images)
The mayor said all 4 million residents who are performing essential tasks such as food shopping should wear homemade, non-medical face coverings, or even bandannas, as people in other COVID-19-struck countries have done.
“To be clear, you should still stay at home. This isn’t an excuse to suddenly all go out,” Garcetti said.
He also said people shouldn’t use medical-grade masks, which are in short supply and are needed by health care workers and first responders.
The mayor said even a “tucked-in bandanna” could slow the spread of the virus and the masks also are good for reminding people to keep their distance.
“I know it will look surreal,” he said, donning a mask. “We’re going to have to get used to seeing each other like this … This will be the look.”
Los Angeles County reported more than 500 new cases on Wednesday, a 17% hike over the previous day.
Garcetti’s announcement came after Riverside County public health officer Dr. Cameron Kaiser urged that people who need to go out in public should use something — even bandanas or neck warmers — to cover their mouths and noses to protect others and themselves.
The governor had been expected to release guidelines for masks, but at his own news conference Newsom said he did not think they should be a substitute for keeping a safe distance from other people and taking additional measures to prevent the spread of the virus.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a news conference at the California justice department on September 18, 2019 in Sacramento, California. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, California attorney general Xavier Becerra and California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols held a news conference in response to the Trump Administration’s plan to revoke California’s waiver to establish vehicle emissions standards for greenhouse gas emissions and standards to require manufacturers to sell zero emissions vehicles. Under the federal Clean Air Act, California is allowed to set its own vehicle emissions standards that are at least as protective as the federal government’s standards. The state has received 100 waivers from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for higher standards than federally mandated over the past 50 years. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“They are not a substitute for a stay-at-home order. They are not a call to get folks to find N95 masks or surgical masks and pull them away or compete against our first responders,” Newsom said.
Newsom focused instead on adding thousands more hospital beds than previously stated. He now projects needing 66,000 more hospital beds for the anticipated peak of cases in late May — 16,000 more than his prior projections.
In Riverside County, Kaiser said the virus is transmitted in droplets that can be spread through coughs or sneezes, so some type of covering could help even if it’s not a hospital-grade mask.
Kaiser issued the recommendation because the state’s fourth-largest county was seeing infections rise faster than predicted. At the current rate, he said Wednesday that it would run out of hospital beds April 12 and ventilators by April 26.
“When the situation changes, the rule book changes,” Kaiser said in a news release. “We’re seeing our numbers increasing even sooner than we predicted, and that means our strategy must change too.”
U.S. and global health authorities have said people who are not health care workers shouldn’t wear a mask unless they’re sick — to prevent infecting others.
The World Health Organization recommended people caring for a sick relative wear a mask. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed — as long as the person who was ill was not able to wear a mask.
But there has been some conflicting direction. Austria said this week it would require masks for grocery shoppers. President Donald Trump suggested people who are worried should wear a scarf.
California’s public health officer, Dr. Sonia Angell, said face coverings could prevent the spread of the virus, but if worn incorrectly or handled improperly could lead to infection. They could also lead people to let down their guard and not stay the recommended distance of 6 feet (1.8 meters) away from others.
Palm trees stand behind a street art piece by artist Pony Wave depicting two people kissing while wearing face masks on Venice Beach on March 21, 2020 in Venice, California. California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a ‘stay at home’ order for California’s 40 million residents in order to slow the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). Californians may still go to the beach without violating Newsom’s order as long as they maintain social distancing and adhere to other public health measures related to the coronavirus. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“When we speak about the potential downfalls, which we also must acknowledge, they can be that if people have these masks on, they feel somewhat immune, they feel like they can get closer to other people,” Angell said.
The spread of the virus statewide has, so far, been slow enough to give the state time to prepare for an expected spike in cases that could overwhelm hospitals if extreme measures aren’t taken to keep most people home and away from others.
The state had nearly 10,000 virus cases and 215 deaths reported Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is keeping a global tally.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.
Newsom has been talking in the past week about increasing hospital beds in the state by two-thirds to add 50,000 new beds at locations that could include convention centers and arenas to cope with peak demand next month. On Wednesday, he increased that number.
“Modeling shows we’ll need roughly 66,000 beds towards the end of May,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, said at a news conference with the governor.
Newsom had bad news for parents Wednesday when he said schools should plan to teach from afar for the rest of the academic year.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond provided similar guidance to districts Tuesday evening. The decision on whether students will return to the classroom will ultimately be up to school districts.
Ellis Marsalis Jr., jazz pianist, teacher and patriarch of a New Orleans musical clan that includes famed performer sons Wynton and Branford, has died after battling pneumonia brought by the new coronavirus, one of his sons said late Wednesday.
He was 85.
Ellis Marsalis III confirmed in a phone interview with The Associated Press that his father’s death was brought about by the virus that is causing the global pandemic.
“Pneumonia was the actual thing that caused his demise. But it was pneumonia brought on by COVID-19,” said the younger Marsalis, speaking of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Harry Connick Jr. and Ellis Marsalis perform at the 57th NBA All-Star Game, part of 2008 NBA All-Star Weekend at the New Orleans Arena on February 17, 2008 in New Orleans, Louisiana. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
He said he drove from Baltimore on Sunday to be with his father as he was hospitalized. He said others in the family also were able to spend time with their father.
Four of the jazz patriarch’s six sons are musicians: Wynton, the trumpeter, is America’s most prominent jazz spokesman as artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. Branford, the saxophonist, led The Tonight Show band and toured with Sting. Delfeayo, trombonist, is a prominent recording producer and performer. And Jason, the drummer, has made a name for himself with his own band and as an accompanist. Ellis III, who decided music was not his gig, is a photographer-poet in Baltimore.
Said Ellis III: “I was with him in the hospital for six or seven hours yesterday. Branford was with him Monday, I was with him yesterday and Jason was with him today. He passed right after Jason departed.”
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced the musician’s death in a somber news release Wednesday night. The elder Marsalis had continued to perform regularly in New Orleans until December.
“Ellis Marsalis was a legend. He was the prototype of what we mean when we talk about New Orleans jazz,” Cantrell said in her statement. “He was a teacher, a father, and an icon — and words aren’t sufficient to describe the art, the joy and the wonder he showed the world.”
Because Marsalis opted to stay in New Orleans for most of his career, his reputation was limited until his sons became famous and brought him the spotlight, along with new recording contracts and headliner performances on television and on tour.
“He was like the coach of jazz. He put on the sweatshirt, blew the whistle and made these guys work,” said Nick Spitzer, host of public radio’s American Routes and an anthropology professor at Tulane University.
The Marsalis “family band” seldom played together when the boys were younger, but in 2003 toured up East in a spinoff of a family celebration that became a PBS special when the elder Marsalis retired from teaching at the University of New Orleans.
Harry Connick Jr., one of Marsalis’ students at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, was a guest. He is just one of the many now-famous jazz musicians who passed through the Marsalis classrooms; others include trumpeters Nicholas Payton and Terence Blanchard, saxophonists Donald Harrison and Victor Goines, and bassist Reginald Veal.
Pianist Ellis Marsalis (L) and host Harry Connick Jr. attend the Jazz at Lincoln Center 2017 Gala “Ella at 100: Forever the First Lady of Song” on April 26, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Jazz At Lincoln Center)
Marsalis was born in New Orleans, son of the operator of a hotel where Marsalis met touring black musicians who could not stay at the segregated downtown hotels where they performed. He played saxophone in high school but was also playing piano by the time he went to Dillard University.
Although New Orleans was steeped in traditional jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll was the new sound in the city’s studios in the 1950s, Marsalis preferred bebop and modern jazz.
Spitzer described Marsalis as a “modernist in a town of traditionalists.”
“His great love was jazz a la bebop — he was a lover of Thelonious Monk and the idea that bebop was a music of freedom. But when he had to feed his family he played R ‘n’ B and soul and rock and roll on Bourbon Street,” said Spitzer.
The musician’s college quartet included drummer Ed Blackwell, clarinetist Alvin Batiste and saxophonist Harold Battiste playing modern.
Ornette Coleman was in town at the time, and in 1956 when Coleman headed to California, Marsalis and the others went with him, but after a few months Marsalis came back home. He told the New Orleans Times-Picayune years later, when he and Coleman were old men, that he never did figure out what a pianist could do behind the free form of Coleman’s jazz.
Back in New Orleans, Marsalis joined the Marine Corps and was assigned to accompany soloists on the service’s weekly TV programs on CBS in New York. It was there, he said, that he learned to handle all kinds of different music styles.
On returning home, he worked at the Playboy Club and ventured into running his own club, which quickly went bust. In 1967 trumpeter Al Hirt hired him. When not on Bourbon Street, Hirt’s band was appearing on national TV — doing headline shows on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show, among others.
Marsalis got into education about the same time, teaching improvisation at Xavier University in New Orleans, and in the mid-1970s joined the faculty at the New Orleans magnet high school where he influenced a new generation of young jazz musicians.
When asked how he could teach something as free-wheeling as jazz improvisation, Marsalis once said, “We don’t teach jazz, we teach students.”
In 1986 he moved to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond as coordinator of Jazz Studies, a post he kept until 1989 when the University of New Orleans lured him back to set up a program of jazz studies at home.
Marsalis retired from UNO in 2001, but continued to perform, particularly at Snug Harbor in New Orleans, a small jazz club that anchored the city’s contemporary jazz scene — frequently backing young musicians who had promise.
His melodic style, with running improvisations in the right hand, has been described variously as romantic, contemporary, or simply “Louisiana jazz.” He is always on acoustic piano, never electric, and even in interpreting the old standards there’s a clear link to the driving bebop chords and rhythms of his early years.
He founded his own record company, ELM (taken from his initials), but his recording was limited until his sons became famous. After that he joined them and other musicians on mainstream labels and headlined his own releases, many full of his own compositions.
He often played at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. For more than three decades he played two 75-minute sets every Friday night at Snug Harbor until he decided it had become too exhausting. But even then he still performed there on occasion as a special guest.
Marsalis’ wife, Dolores, died in 2017. He is survived by his sons Branford, Wynton, Ellis III, Delfeayo, Mboya and Jason.
The coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has caused economic devastation across the country. Small business owners have been some of the hardest hit by the fallout after many cities issued mandatory stay-at-home orders, closing down all non-essential businesses to contain the virus. The health crisis has created a looming threat specifically for black business owners who make up 4.3% of business owners in the U.S and who are at a disproportionate disadvantage when it comes to securing small business loans.
“There’s this old saying, ‘When America catches a cold, black America catches pneumonia,’” Ron Busby, president and CEO of the U.S. Black Chambers Inc. told HuffPost.
Many businesses have had to halt their operations completely while others are taking advantage of other streams of revenue through digital content. The need to adapt to the changing landscape has pushed many entrepreneurs to go into crunch mode if they expect to keep afloat during a difficult time. Social media has also provided a way for independent businesses to stay connected to their customers with the use of Instagram Live streams.
“I’m hearing from people that are already feeling the crunch and are even going to feel it more in the next couple of weeks,” Busby said. “But I’m excited that our firms that are prepared, are taking this time to be locked away in their own homes, are really trying to think about their businesses and how they’re going to come out of this.”
Other businesses are seeing an increase in business as a result of the virus outbreak. OneUnited, the largest black-owned bank in the country, has seen a huge increase in its virtual banking since the start of the pandemic.
“To some degree, we’ve seen a positive impact, and I say this cautiously, because it’s still early, but we think that people are becoming much more comfortable with doing business online,” said President and CEO Teri Williams. “We’re seeing an increase in customers. Also, people are trying not to go into branches. Our online business is actually growing, but it’s early in this whole experience.”
The bad news: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spiral throughout the globe, the only thing you can control these days is, maybe, your thoughts. The good news: Doing that alone can improve everything: your mood, your blood pressure, your productivity, interactions with others, and your long-term outlook, not to mention your actual ability to fend off (or endure) the new coronavirus.
Here are 10 affirmations to help you ease anxiety during this time.
1. Arthur Ashe
Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.
2. Ava Duvernay
What if we believed that everything happens for us, not to us?
3. William Edward DuBois
There is in this world no such force as the force of a man determined to rise.
4. Hallmark card
Sometimes you’ve got to let go of the handlebars and reach up to the sky.
5. Martin Luther King Jr.
We must use time creatively…and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do great things.
6. Anna Deveare Smith
Be more than ready…Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.
7. Nelson Mandela
I don’t ever lose. I either win, or I learn.
8. Tyler Perry
The trials we go through and the blessings we receive are the same thing.
9. Muhammad Ali
Don’t count the days. Make the days count.
10. Misty Copeland
I will forever fight, performing like it’s my last show. And I will love every minute of it.
Anticipating a surge in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations, officials in seven San Francisco Bay area jurisdictions have extended shelter-in-place orders from April 7 to May 1.
“I am sad to have to say the worst is yet to come,” Dr. Grant Colfax, San Francisco’s public health director, said in a press conference last week. “Every community where the virus has taken hold has seen a surge in coronavirus patients who need to be hospitalized. We expect that to happen in San Francisco in a week or two or perhaps less.”
The Bay Area, which consists of Alameda, Berkeley, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, also falls under a statewide stay-at-home order issued by California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The governor issued the order on March 20 and said it could last until June.
According to Yahoo News, city officials originally announced a three-week shelter-in-place order would go into effect on March 17 and would end on April 7. The order directed residents to stay home as much as possible and to only leave for essential needs, such as to go grocery shopping or to buy medicine.
The new guidelines include the closures of recreational areas, including all public dog parks, playgrounds, picnic areas, golf courses, and tennis and basketball courts. Additionally, shared spaces like pools or rock walls, are also barred, and all funerals must be limited to 10 people only.
Construction has also been suspended during the coronavirus outbreak except for projects deemed necessary for essential infrastructure. Airports, utilities, and public transit can remain operative under these guidelines. Notaries, real estate agencies, and title companies are also allowed to stay open.
Florida and Pennsylvania have also increased their quarantine restrictions in recent days. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases predicted more than 200,000 deaths could happen due to the coronavirus.
The process of crystallization, in which atoms or molecules line up in orderly arrays like soldiers in formation, is the basis for many of the materials that define modern life, including the silicon in microchips and solar cells. But while many useful applications for crystals involve their growth on solid surfaces (rather than in solution), there has been a dearth of good tools for studying this type of growth.
Now, a team of researchers at MIT and Draper has found a way to reproduce the growth of crystals on surfaces, but at a larger scale that makes the process much easier to study and analyze. The new approach is described in a paper in the journal Nature Materials, by Robert Macfarlane and Leonardo Zomberg at MIT, and Diana Lewis PhD ’19 and David Carter at Draper.
Rather than assembling these crystals from actual atoms, the key to making the process easy to observe and quantify was the use of “programmable atom equivalents,” or PAEs, Macfarlane explains. This works because the ways atoms line up into crystal lattices is entirely a matter of geometry and doesn’t rely on the specific chemical or electronic properties of its constituents.
The team used spherical nanoparticles of gold, coated with specially selected single strands of genetically engineered DNA, giving the particles roughly the appearance of Koosh balls. Single DNA strands have the inherent property of attaching themselves tightly to the corresponding reciprocal strands, to form the classic double helix, so this configuration provides a surefire way of getting the particles to align themselves in precisely the desired way.
“If I put a very dense brush of DNA on the particle, it’s going to make as many bonds with as many nearest neighbors as it can,” Macfarlane says. “And if you design everything appropriately and process it correctly, they will form ordered crystal structures.” While that process has been known for some years, this work is the first to apply that principle to study the growth of crystals on surfaces.
“Understanding how crystals grow upward from a surface is incredibly important for a lot of different fields,” he says. The semiconductor industry, for example, is based on the growth of large single-crystal or multi-crystalline materials that must be controlled with great precision, yet the details of the process are difficult to study. That’s why the use of oversized analogs such as the PAEs can be of such benefit.
The PAEs, he says, “crystallize in exactly the same pathways that molecules and atoms do. And so they are a very nice proxy system for understanding how crystallization occurs.” With this system, the properties of the DNA dictate how the particles assemble and the 3D configuration they end up in.
They designed the system such that the crystals nucleate and grow starting from a surface and “by tailoring the interactions both between particles, and between the particles and the DNA-coated surface, we can dictate the size, the shape, the orientation and the degree of anisotropy (directionality) in the crystal,” Macfarlane says.
“By understanding the process this is going through to actually form these crystals, we can potentially use that to understand crystallization processes in general,” he adds.
He explains that not only are the resulting crystal structures about 100 times larger than the actual atomic ones, but their formation processes are also much slower. The combination makes the process much easier to analyze in detail. Earlier methods of characterizing such crystalline structures only showed their final states, thus missing complexities in the formation process.
“I could change the DNA sequence. I can change the number of DNA strands in the particle. I can change the size of the particle and I can tweak each of these individual handles independently,” Macfarlane says. “So if I wanted to be able to say, OK, I hypothesize that this particular structure might be favored under these conditions if I tuned the energetics in such a way, that’s a much easier system to study with the PAEs than it would be with atoms themselves.”
The system is very effective, he says, but DNA strands modified in a manner that allows for attachment to nanoparticles can be quite expensive. As a next step, the Macfarlane lab has also developed polymer-based building blocks that show promise in replicating these same crystallization processes and materials, but can be made inexpensively at a multigram scale.
The work was partly supported by a Draper fellowship and the National Science Foundation and used facilities of the Materials Technology Laboratory at MIT.
An Amazon worker has gone viral for speaking out against the e-commerce giant in a press conference after employees across the country walked out on the job in protest of work conditions amid the COVID-19 crisis.
“I stand for everybody here beside me,” Mario Chippen said to reporters while wearing a mask outside the Romulus warehouse in Michigan. “I want DTW 1 to be shut down immediately for professional cleaning.”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MARCH 30: Amazon employees hold a protest and walkout over conditions at the company’s Staten Island distribution facility on March 30, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The warehouse where Chippen works at had recently received word that three of their co-workers are now homesick after testing positive for the novel coronavirus.
“They should not be selling non-essential items,” Chippen said. “If you go on the website, all the essential items are sold out.”
There was one item, however, that Chippen called out as an obvious non-essential item.
“Dildos are not essential items,” Chippen said. In fact, he added that every day he packages a massive amount of the sex toy item.
“Books? For kids, yes. But dildos? No!”
This @Amazon worker said he’d understand if they cut hours and stayed open selling essentials as they come in stock. But with all the non essential items they’re forced to work “shoulder to shoulder.” He says 3 co-workers are confirmed to have the virus. @JeffBezos comment? pic.twitter.com/H2Vb9sWacI
Maybe not surprisingly, Chippen’s dildo comment hit the Twitterverse and quickly garnered thousands of comments.
“I don’t mean to be juvenile but every time he says dildo’s I giggle,” tweeted @ShawnS987.
One person joked, “And who is HE to say they’re non-essential!”
“I think some women would argue in a self distancing era that dildos are essential for sanity. And if women can be calm the world is a better place. Essential,” tweeted @DewMeNoFavors.
The newest Amazon Robotics fulfillment center is seen during its first public tour on April 12, 2019 in the Lake Nona community of Orlando, Florida. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In all seriousness, though, Amazon has been under fire the past few days as workers in New York and Michigan decided that their health meant more to them than their paychecks.
The standoff has even led to New York Attorney General Letitia James threatening legal action against Amazon after the company fired a Staten Island warehouse employee who led a protest over accusations of the company failing to clean the workplace.
Chris Smalls, who organized the protest, along with other employees walked out of work on Monday and formed a picket line outside an Amazon facility.
Amazon says Smalls was fired because he didn’t practice social distancing guidelines and refused to self-isolate from his co-workers even though he was in contact with a worker who has the virus.
Attorney General James wasn’t buying it. She tweeted: “In the midst of a pandemic, Chris Smalls & his colleagues bravely protested the lack of precautions that @amazon employed to protect them from #COVID19. Then he was fired.”
“I’m considering all legal options & calling on the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) to investigate. Amazon, this is disgraceful,” she added.
Wayne Brady has found himself in a pretty unique living situation as he is sharing his quarantine time with his ex-wife and her boyfriend.
Living life under quarantine isn’t easy for anyone but some folks are struggling through it more than others. Married folks are likely bickering and single people may be stressed about being alone while much of the country is on lockdown, but this is quite the unique scenario for Brady.
The comedian caught up with Access Hollywood to discuss how he’s handling the coronavirus crisis. He touched on everything from how much toilet paper he has left to how he ended up under the same roof (kind of) as his ex-wife, Mandie Taketa, and her boyfriend Jason.
Wayne Brady, Mandie Taketa and their daughter Maile (Credit: Getty Images)
It turns out, Brady is putting his daughter Maile first amid the pandemic, choosing to share space with her while they self-isolate, even if it means he has to be the third wheel to his ex and her new boo.
“My ex-wife Mandie and I, we have a different and I think a very special relationship than a lot of people who co-parent…And our daughter is 17, so it’s very different than if she were 5,” he explained
“We’ve also lived like seven minutes away from each other at the most. Right now, we live literally next door to each other. So our quarantining is a little different. We quarantine between both of our homes and I’ve got a big backyard and lots of land so we both share this land and this space.”
The Masked Singer star also talked about his time on the crazy singing competition that forces celebs to perform in cumbersome costumes.
“The hardest part for me really was the physicality of it but I had a leg up on everybody because when I was a teenager I worked at Disneyworld as a character,” he said. “I was cool.”
Now, the funnyman is gearing up for the premiere of his new series WayneBrady‘s Comedy IQ, which premieres April 6th on BYUtv.
Winglets. Better engines. Lighter materials. The industry is trying everything it can. But the best fix for the planet would be for us to stop flying so much.
The Cowboy State should be a renewable energy juggernaut, but it's dominated by fossils fuels. Next step: Thinking of the future instead of digging up the past.
How Burkina Faso's Hugues Fabrice Zango - who was hoping to be his country's first Olympic medalist at Tokyo 2020 - is changing his mentality to cope with the coronoavirus lockdown.
The research described in this article has been published as a working paper but has not yet been peer-reviewed by experts in the field.
With much of the U.S. in shutdown mode to limit the spread of the Covid-19 disease, a debate has sprung up about when the country might “reopen” commerce, to limit economic fallout from the pandemic. But as a new study co-authored by an MIT economist shows, taking care of public health first is precisely what generates a stronger economic rebound later.
The study, using data from the flu pandemic that swept the U.S. in 1918-1919, finds cities that acted more emphatically to limit social and civic interactions had more economic growth following the period of restrictions.
Indeed, cities that implemented social-distancing and other public health interventions just 10 days earlier than their counterparts saw a 5 percent relative increase in manufacturing employment after the pandemic ended, through 1923. Similarly, an extra 50 days of social distancing was worth a 6.5 percent increase in manufacturing employment, in a given city.
“We find no evidence that cities that acted more aggressively in public health terms performed worse in economic terms,” says Emil Verner, an assistant professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a new paper detailing the findings. “If anything, the cities that acted more aggressively performed better.”
With that in mind, he observes, the idea of a “trade-off” between public health and economic activity does not hold up to scrutiny; places that are harder hit by a pandemic are unlikely to rebuild their economic capacities as quickly, compared to areas that are more intact.
“It casts doubt on the idea there is a trade-off between addressing the impact of the virus, on the one hand, and economic activity, on the other hand, because the pandemic itself is so destructive for the economy,” Verner says.
The study, “Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not: Evidence from the 1918 Flu,” was posted to the Social Science Research Network as a working paper on March 26. In addition to Verner, the co-authors are Sergio Correia, an economist with the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Stephen Luck, an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Evaluating economic consequences
To conduct the research, the three scholars examined mortality statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), historical economic data from the U.S. Census Bureau, and banking statistics compiled by finance economist Mark D. Flood, using the “Annual Reports of the Comptroller of Currency,” a government publication.
As Verner notes, the researchers were motivated to investigate the 1918-1919 flu pandemic to see what lessons from it might be applicable to the current crisis.
“The genesis of the study is that we’re interested in what the expected economic impacts of today’s coronavirus are going to be, and what is the right way to think about the economic consequences of the public health and social distancing interventions we’re seeing all around the world,” Verner says.
Scholars have known that the varying use of “nonpharmaceutical interventions,” or social-distancing measures, correlated to varying health outcomes across cities in 1918 and 1919. When that pandemic hit, U.S. cities that shut down schools earlier, such as St. Louis, fared better against the flu than places implementing shutdowns later, such as Philadelphia. The current study extends that framework to economic activity.
Quite a bit like today, social distancing measures back then included school and theater closures, bans on public gatherings, and restricted business activity.
“The nonpharmaceutical interventions that were implemented in 1918 interestingly resemble many of the policies that are being used today to reduce the spread of Covid-19,” Verner says.
Overall, the study indicates, the economic impact of the pandemic was severe. Using state-level data, the researchers find an 18 percent drop in manufacturing output through 1923, well after the last wave of the flu hit in 1919.
Looking at the effect across 43 cities, however, the researchers found significantly different economic outcomes, linked to different social distancing policies. The best-performing cities included Oakland, California; Omaha, Nebraska; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, which all enforced over 120 days of social distancing in 1918. Cities that instituted fewer than 60 days of social distancing in 1918, and saw manufacturing struggle afterward, include Philadelphia; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Lowell, Massachusetts.
“What we find is that areas that were more severely affected in the 1918 flu pandemic see a sharp and persistent decline in a number of measures of economic activity, including manufacturing employment, manufacturing output, bank loans, and the stock of consumer durables,” Verner says.
Banking issues
As far as banking goes, the study included banking write-downs as an indicator of economic health, because “banks were recognizing losses from loans that households and businesses were defaulting on, due to the economic disruption caused by the pandemic,” Verner says.
The researchers found that in Albany, New York; Birmingham, Alabama; Boston; and Syracuse, New York — all of which also had fewer than 60 days of social distancing in 1918 — the banking sector struggled more than anywhere else in the country.
As the authors note in the paper, the economic struggles that followed the 1918-1919 flu pandemic reduced the ability of firms to manufacture goods — but the reduction in employment meant that people had less purchasing power as well.
“The evidence that we have in our paper … suggests that the pandemic creates both a supply-side problem and a demand-side problem,” Verner notes.
As Verner readily acknowledges, the composition of the U.S. economy has evolved since 1918-1919, with relatively less manufacturing today and relatively more activity in services. The 1918-1919 pandemic was also especially deadly for prime working-age adults, making its economic impact particularly severe. Still, the economists think the dynamics of the previous pandemic are readily applicable to our ongoing crisis.
“The structure of the economy is of course different,” Verner notes. However, he adds, “While one shouldn’t extrapolate too directly from history, we can learn some of the lessons that may be relevant to us today.” First among those lessons, he emphasizes: “Pandemic economics are different than normal economics.”
