SARS-Cov-2 - the dreaded Corona Virus

Originally published on Steempeak
https://steempeak.com/hive-158694/@thermoplastic/sars-cov-2-the-dreaded-corona-virus

I have posted about the Corona Virus several times - you will find links to my previous posts further down. I have been in Self-Quarantine since last Tuesday, leaving my apartment only a few times for grocery shopping (just across the street from my place). The last time I was further away was at my studio across town on Monday, March 9th. Everything seemed still normal at that time. But since then measures had been introduced that severely restricted peoples movements. Watching the news mainly on my laptop, I seen reports with photos and videos of near empty streets downtown Vienna, where normally large crowds (mostly tourists) are mingling, sidewalk cafes and restaurants filled with people. But now, everything is closed except essentials: grocery stores, pharmacies and "Trafik" (tobacco shops) - right, smoking seems to be essential; and booze you can get at the grocery store. So we are all set, yahoo!
But the images and videos of near empty streets and plazas reminded me of surrealist views, such as Giorgio de Chirico, or the artist that had a great influence on me, Max Ernst.
This sort of depressing, near deserted scenery I painted on many occasions, ruins of civilizations, a unreal nightmare of a dystopian future. It was to be a excursion into my inner universe, a sort of catharsis to paint my deep-seated fears away. In those days when these works were created, I did not imagine that I would actually ever live in such a reality. Nobody I know and had talked to in these past days and weeks has ever experienced anything like that. I grew up in the post-WWII streets of Vienna among ruins, and I was in Canada when SARS broke out 2002-2003, but I cannot remember anything like what we experience now.

Here are two of such paintings from the depths of my imagination

BOGOMIL'S TEMPLE - no date (around 2000) - acrylic on paper

BOGOMIL'S TEMPLE (detail)

BOGOMIL'S LOST CITY

acrylic on canvas . 51cm x 76cm - 1976

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Before I go any further, here are links to previous blogs about the subject of SARS-Cov-2 - called Coronavirus. The first one began as a spoof when I found some silly postings concerning the Mexican Corona Beer, but while writing (and updating) it, I became more serious and included a lot of useful information.

Drinkers are confusing Corona Beer with the Corona Virus
on this post, I included a link to my Blogger which initially just mirrored the Steemit post, but later on,
I kept updating the blogger with additional information.

18 days ago, I posted a update (using a Bosch painting as the lead image):

CORONA VIRUS - UPDATES
I refrained in that one to joke about it, I was all serious for a change

A week or so ago, I posted this in the Austrian Community - it is in German only, so you might want to use Google Translate:

Angst und Schrecken - das Coronavirus geht um - und somit auch die Volksverdummung

Finally, again in the Austrian Community I could not help myself and put up a spoofy post in reaction to the announcement of our Government that put in severe restrictions:

WARNUNG - SARS-Cov-2 - CORONAVIRUS
in German again, but on this one I included a English translation on the bottom.

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Before I get to the vital information, I want you to be aware that there is a lot of misinformation going on - up to the point of total stupidity and even frightening radical theories so far removed from sanity and reality you'd wonder who could believe this - but from the messages I receive, and postings I see on social media, I am beginning to question the sanity of some (or even a large number of) people. Even some people I know and never before suspected that they might be mental!

Hysteria, Conspiracy Theories and Fake News

First of, the nastiest and scariest one:

Far-right QAnon nutcases see Tom Hanks' coronavirus diagnosis
as sure sign of looming mass arrests

Getty images via Daily Kos

There are many more, but let it be at that. There are quacks around, and they are well known to most but there are also a lot of people that eat out of their hands and believe anything they say (or peddle):

NY Attorney General Orders Alex Jones To Stop Peddling Fake Coronavirus Treatments

Getty Images via Forbes

A Televangelist Peddling Silver As A Fake Cure For Coronavirus
Has Been Warned By Officials To Stop

Facebook / Vital Silver Wellness via Buzzfeed News

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This was just a small sampling of what crazy shit is out there. Now lets get to the serious stuff that is of interest.

For those of you who want PROPER Information - but it may be a bit hard to follow, since it is geared toward medical professionals and medicine students.

Roger Seheult, MD
here is his YouTube channel MedCram - Medical Lectures Explained CLEARLY
particularly one video I found very interesting (not the latest one):

Coronavirus Pandemic Update 37: The ACE-2 Receptor
The Doorway to COVID-19 (ACE Inhibitors & ARBs)

there is a whole series on the Coronavirus Pandemic, so check the Playlist
by the time you did, you would be ready to write your medical exam!

You could also compare what is in this video about ACE Receptors to this information from Belgum (in German) about research into Antibodies against Covid 19:

Gute Nachricht: Belgische Forscher finden Antikörper gegen Covid-19

Image: Das VIB-Gent hat einen Erfolg im Kampf gegen das neuartige Coronavirus verbucht. | Foto: belga

Coronavirus myths and misinformation, debunked

(CNN) As the novel coronavirus -- and panic about the coronavirus -- continues to spread around the world, so too are bogus claims, conspiracy theories and misinformation about the disease.

There's so much inaccurate information floating around out there that the World Health Organization is calling it an "infodemic." In perhaps the clearest sign of the times, WHO has joined TikTok to help set the record straight.

Links in this quote: coronavirus, continues to spread and infodemic - read the entire article and watch the CNN video HERE

In all this bleak scenario, there are some glimmers of hope:

Interview

Corona Is Slowing Down, Humanity Will Survive, Says Biophysicist Michael Levitt

Michael Levitt. Photo: Reuters

Coronavirus: Five Reasons for Optimism

A bus in Israel getting disinfected. Photo: Motti Kimchi

The Single Most Important Lesson From the 1918 Influenza

St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps workers and ambulances waiting to receive influenza patients in 1918.Credit...via Library of Congress, via Associated Press

Update - Important Link

COVID-19 CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

Updates to begin the New Year

That I have not posted for a while is not due to that there is nothing new, just the opposite - I was very busy and just did not get around to post updates.

◄ a gratuitous selfie from New Years Day - dressing up with a fez given to me by a friend that day. 

So here are some of the things I had been working on late 2017:

STEEMIT:

I joined this blockchain posting platform in late August and had been a steady contributor since (slowing down a little toward the end of the year, Christmas and New Years holydays). It is in my opinion a better way to socialize than other social platforms, in particular: where you get likes on Facebook that you cannot take to the bank, on Steemit you get upvotes that translate into earnings of Steem, a cryptocurrency.

Here is my page:

I find I had good results with my posts and am satisfied that this network, founded in 2016, will quickly develop into a major social network, with the added incentive of being able to earn money from your posts. Added bonus: no annoying ads cluttering your page, nor in the news feeds, like they do on Facebook. There are some bots that monitor content, but none of this bothersome censoring you would find on Facebook, where the nipple-police is out in full force! Here it is your option to mark your posts as NSFW. 

 

NING PLATFORM for the Private Visionary Art Network:

I used this platform already since 2009 to gather some of the best Artists of my genre. The private network is not accessible to the general public, but I used embed features to put slide shows from this platform on a public website, the VISIONARY ART GALLERY (VAG). 

Late in 2017, Ning eliminated Flash content, which resulted in all the embedded slide shows not functioning anymore. This in advance to the announcement that Adobe’s Flash Player will officially be put to rest in 2020. While it primarily affected the Visionary Art Gallery site, to some extend it also affected its spin-off VISIONARY ART EXHIBITION and VISIONARY ART HALL OF FAME, as well as other sites I control that also occasionally use the embed codes, including some posts on this blog. This also affects my own website, ART OF THE MYSTIC OTTO RAPP.

Subsequently, I posted a message on the VAG Homepage regarding this, with a link to a more detailed explanation: IMPORTANT NETWORK INFORMATION: SLIDE SHOW EMBEDDING DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE!

Because of this development, these Websites had become construction Zones!

There are over 500 artists on the VAG site, plus uncounted other pages and features. My own website and the VAG spin-off contain also many pages that need to be worked on. This is a project that will keep me busy for quite some time. Thus I decided to also at the same time switch the outdated templates of the VAG and my own website to a more modern look, which also requires additional work on each page to customize them (I strive to give each artist a distinct personal look). The Hall of Fame and VA Exhibition are on attractive templates already, so no need for changes to those sites, other than the changes necessary because of the problems with Flash. But there may be older blog content on my sites that might still contain outdated coding which is near impossible to fix unless I hunt down each blog entry for all the years the sites had been active.  

To all the artist members of the Visionary Art Network on Ning:

I am in the process of downloading your images from the network, and uploading it to your pages on the public VAG site, as galleries and HTML5 slide shows.

The network fees are paid up until Summer 2018. By this time, I expect to be finished with the task of updating the public VAG and its affiliated sites. Once the changes to the VAG are complete, I will delete the Ning Network, which is no longer serving its main purpose of feeding content to our public pages. This will save me a major drain on my personal finances, since the costs came out of my own pocket, only partially offset by donations. There are still costs involved maintaining the public sites on Weebly and paying for the domains of these sites, so your donations are still needed and welcome to help me keep these sites on line.

Additional Notes:

The websites powered by Weebly (on my account there) had just recently security certificates (SSL) added. While the URL's now show this (https://) there also appears a info icon on the address bar (it does so with Chrome) where it says that there are some security problems on the site - when you mouse over this icon, it leads to an information page on Google Chrome: Check if a site's connection is secure. This would be important on merchandising sites where you enter sensitive information such as credit card numbers etc. My sites are not Merchandising sites, though you will find links to secure sites where prints are sold, for example. There is nothing on my sites where you would enter any information, other than maybe the contact pages, but there you have the choice of directly contacting my email, instead of using the contact form. 

I checked on Padlock which items would trigger this warning and found that this had to do with share buttons and some advertising banners. So there is nothing much to worry about the content.

WISHING EVERYONE A HAPPY AND SAFE NEW YEAR!