SAN ANTONIO – San Antonio CPS Energy customers say they’re worried about the elderly and sick neighbors who are without power during the ongoing rotating outages happening across the state.
Carlos Correa has been routinely checking in on his 90-year-old neighbors since they have been without power since 2 a.m. Monday morning due to ongoing rotating outages. He says his calls to CPS Energy for answers about when the power would be restored have gone unanswered.
“We’ve called everybody. CPS Energy has no one to speak to, no one to give us any type of information as to even when our electricity is going to come back on,” Correa told KSAT on Monday evening. “As much as we pay into our electric usage every single month, (they’re) just so unprepared with anybody, with any type of customer service or any type of emergency command center to give us some sort of answer as to when we’re going to be getting some sort of electricity back.”
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CPS Energy: Most customers subject to rotating outages as winter weather continues
CPS Energy says the energy demand has been up to four times higher than expected. Some systems have been impacted by the high demand and others by equipment failure due to the cold temperatures.
CPS Energy CEO Paula Gold-Williams said every energy system is stressed across the state.
“We are absolutely sorry that this is occurring. It is an unprecedented weather event that we actually had thought that the cold weather was behind us,” Gold-Williams said.
Rudy Garza, with CPS Energy, says CPS Energy is reaching out to its customers via all social media platforms, calls, and emails. The utility company says it is also contacting the elderly and sick who are on their list.
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“In some cases, we have done automated calls to customers in this group, letting them know that if they find themselves in a medical emergency where they are, maybe their home gets too cold or their oxygen tank runs out or something happens, dial 911 and seek medical attention,” Garza said.
While temperatures will continue to affect the energy consumption, CPS Energy expects the outages to continue, so the company urges customers to make plans.
Correa urges others to check in on their neighbors as well.
Late Monday night, Gold-Williams issued the following statement:
“We hope to see improvements overnight, but we are facing unprecedented challenges. Our focus tonight is to restore the consistency of the grid. Conservation is important, and we ask our community to continue to do all they can to limit electric and natural gas energy use. We understand that this is a big ask of our customers and sincerely apologize for the problems that this is causing them. Our customers are our neighbors, families and friends, and we are doing everything we can to make sure we work to make things better for everyone.”
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“Rotating outages began across the state around 1:30 a.m. on Monday morning. Utility system operators are making real-time decisions with real-time information coming from ERCOT, and these decisions are made in a nondiscriminatory manner. While increasingly difficult to accommodate, utilities work to preserve power for critical functions (i.e., hospitals, governmental entities, etc.) to limit the impact on those facilities. It is through this outage management process, executed over the same timeframe in major cities across the state, that the grid can and must be re-stabilized.
“Please know that all participants in the ERCOT grid are taking the same measures. The extreme weather has driven record-breaking energy use across the state. With energy reductions driven by outage management, CPS Energy used more than 4,954 MW yesterday, which was a winter record. If the outages had not been proactively managed thus far, winter energy demand would have exceeded summer maximums for the first time in CPS Energy’s history.
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To assist with keeping residents off the road and safe, CPS Energy’s walk-in centers will be closed on Tuesday, February 16, 2021. Additionally, Braunig and Calaveras parks and lakes are closed until further notice.”
The utility company offered the following tips for customers to keep warm and conserve power:
Stay warm by dressing in layers of loose-fitting clothing instead of a single heavy layer.
Wear a hat, even indoors. Keeping your head warm helps keep your body warm.
Wear gloves or mittens to keep hands warm, and wear a scarf to keep your neck warm.
Use towels to block drafts around doors and windows.
Use extreme care when using gasoline-powered generators. Do not operate a generator inside your home or other inhabited building. Only operate generators outdoors, and be sure the exhaust is facing away from your home.
Do not use camping stoves or outdoor grills indoors, not even in your garage. These can cause carbon monoxide to build up in your home and can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning.
Conserve power on your mobile phone in case of emergency. Some battery-saving tips include:
Turn down the screen light
Turn off Bluetooth
Close all unused applications
If possible, use text to communicate instead of making a call
If you have multiple mobile phones in the household, keep one phone on for emergency updates and turn the others off to preserve battery life.
Unplug sensitive equipment during a power outage, including televisions, computers, and other electronics which helps protect against any voltage irregularities that may occur as power is restored.
If you have medication that requires refrigeration, please check with your pharmacist for instructions on storage during an extended power outage.
If you have a garage door opener, review the instructions for manually opening the garage door.
Be extra cautious when outdoors in snowy conditions. Downed power lines can be hidden by snow, trees, or other debris. Always assume a downed power line is live. If you see a downed power line, stay away and call us immediately at 210-353-4357 (HELP).
Stay Informed
As always, Your Weather Authority team will keep you updated. You can get the very latest forecast anytime by bookmarking our weather page and downloading the KSAT Weather Authority App – available for both Apple and Android devices.
When America’s amusement parks and baseball stadiums no longer must serve as COVID-19 mass vaccination sites, some investors believe that households pocketing pandemic financial aid from the government might start to splurge.
While a consumer splurge could initially boost the parts of the economy devastated by the pandemic, a bigger concern for investors is that a sustained spending spree also could cause prices for goods and services to rise dramatically, dent financial asset values, and ultimately raise the cost of living for everyone.
“I don’t think inflation is dead,” said Matt Stucky, equity portfolio manager at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company. “The desire by key policy makers is to have it, and it’s the strongest it’s ever been. You will see rising inflation.”
Wall Street investors and analysts have become fixated in recent weeks on the potential for the Biden Administration’s planned $1.9 trillion fiscal stimulus package that targets relief to hard-hit households to cause inflation to spiral out of control.
Economists at Oxford Economics said on Friday they expect to see the “longest inflation stretch above 2% since before the financial crisis, but it’s unlikely to sustainably breach 3%.”
Severe inflation can hurt businesses by ratcheting up costs, pinching profits and causing stock prices to fall. The value of savings and bonds also can be chipped away by high inflation over time.
Another worry among investors is that runaway inflation, which took hold in the late 1970s and pushed 30-year mortgage rates to near 18%, could force the Federal Reserve to taper its $120 billion per month bond purchase program or to raise its benchmark interest rate above the current 0% to 0.25% target sooner than expected and spook markets.
At the same time, it’s not far-fetched to argue that some financial assets already have been inflated by the Fed’s pedal-to-the-metal policy of low rates and an easy flow of credit, and might be due for some cooling off.
U.S. stocks, including the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.09%,
S&P 500 index
SPX,
+0.47%
and Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
+0.50%
closed on Friday at all-time highs, while debt-laden companies can now borrow in the corporate “junk” bond, or speculative-grade, market at record low rates of about 4%.
Read: Stock market stoked by stimulus hopes — what investors are counting on
In addition to rallying stocks and bonds, home prices in the U.S. also have gone through the roof during the pandemic, despite the U.S. still needing to recoup almost as many jobs from the COVID-19 crisis as during the worst of the global financial crisis in 2008.
This chart shows that jobs lost to the pandemic remain near to levels seen in the aftermath of that last crisis.
Job losses need to be tamed
LPL Research, Bureau of Labor Statistics
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday that he doesn’t expect a “large or sustained” outbreak of inflation, while also stressing that the central bank remains focused on recouping lost jobs during the pandemic, as the U.S. looks to makes serious headway in its vaccination program by late July.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday reiterated a call on Friday that the time for more, big fiscal stimulus is now.
“Broadly, the guide is, does it cost me more to live a year from now than a year prior,” Jeff Klingelhofer, co-head of investments at Thornburg Investment Management, said about inflation in an interview with MarketWatch.
“I think what we need to watch is wage inflation,” he said, adding that higher wages for upper income earners were mostly flat for much of the past decade. Also, many lower-wage households hardest hit by the pandemic have been left out of the past decade’s climb in financial asset prices and home values, he said.
“For the folks who haven’t taken that ride, it feels like a perpetuation of inequality that’s played out for some time,” he said, adding that the “only way to get broad inflation is with a broad overheating of the economy. We have the exact opposite. The bottom third are no where near overheating.”
Klingelhofer said it’s probably also a mistake to watch benchmark 10-year Treasury yields for signs that the economy is overheating and for inflation since, “it’s not a proxy for inflation. It’s just a proxy for how the Fed might react,” he said.
The 10-year Treasury yield
TMUBMUSD10Y,
1.209%
has climbed 28.6 basis points in the year to date to 1.199% as of Friday.
But with last year’s sharp price increases, is the U.S. housing market at least at risk of overheating?
“Not at current interest rates,” said John Beacham, the founder and CEO at Toorak Capital, which finances apartment buildings and single family rental properties, including those going through rehabilitation and construction projects.
“Over the course of the year, more people will go back to work,” Beacham said, but he added that it’s important for policy makers in Washington to provide a bridge for households through the pandemic, until spending on socializing, sporting events, concerts and more can again resemble a time before the pandemic.
“Clearly, there likely will be short-term consumption increase,” he said. “But after that it normalizes.”
The U.S. stock and bond markets will be mostly closed on Monday for the Presidents Day holiday.
On Tuesday, the only tidbit of economic data comes from the New York Federal Reserve’s Empire State manufacturing index, followed Wednesday by a slew of updates on U.S. retail sales, industrial production, home builders data and minutes from the Fed’s most recent policy meeting. Thursday and Friday bring more jobs, housing and business activity data, including existing home sales for January.
>> WE ARE HERE IN STANISLAUS COUNTY AT THE MODESTO MISSION CLINIC. WE ARE GOING TO WALK THROUGH THE CLINIC AS IF YOU ARE THE PATIENT. >> THIS IS A LOOK AT HOW MONOCLONAL THERAPY WORKS IT IS A PROMISING PREVENTATIVE MEASURE THAT COULD REDUCE SERIOUS, LOCATIONS DUE TO THE VIRUS. >> IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. WE WOULD LIKE TO MAKE OUR COMMUNITY A HEALTHIER COMMUNITY. >> GOLDEN VALLEY HEALTH CENTERS IS THE ONLY OUTPATIENT CLINIC THAT OFFERS THIS TREATMENT. >> UNDERUTILIZED MEDICATION. >> WE HAVE A LIST OF — >> THREE WHERE THE LAST TO RECEIVE THE INFUSION. >> HE SAID HE CAN BREATHE BETTER. HE WANTED TO GO OUT. >> SHE SAYS THERE ARE SOME REQUIREMENTS FOR THEIR CLINIC. PATIENTS MUST BE 18 AND OLDER, MUST WEIGH AT LEAST 88 POUNDS. IT MUST OCCUR WITHIN 10POSSIBLE MUST UNDERLYING CONDITION. >> IF YOU HAVE CANCER. THOSE ARE EXAMPLES. >> WHAT ARE SOME OF THE SIDE EFFECTS INVOLVED WITH THIS TYPE OF TREATMENT? >> FEVER. BIT OF CHILLS. NAUSEA. >> THEIR PATIENTS HAVE NOT HAD ANY ADVERSE REACTIONS. SHE SAYS THE IMPACT OF THIS TREATMENT IS MULTIFACETED. >> THIS WILL DEFINITELY ALLEVIATE THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM. IT WILL INCLUDING FAMILIES EMOTIONALLY AFFECTED BY COVID 19 DEATHS. >> KAY RECEDE. >> THE TREATMENT IS OFFERED FOR FREE FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND SENT DIRECTLY TO GOLDEN VALLEY. DOCTOR SORIANO SAYS ANYONE NEWLY DIAGNOSED WITH COVID-19 WHO FITS THE CRITERIA CAN CONTACT THE CL
Monoclonal antibody therapy shows promise among Modesto community clinic COVID-19 patients
Updated: 4:46 PM PST Feb 11, 2021
A new treatment among COVID-19 positive patients at a Modesto area community health care clinic has shown promising results.The FDA approved monoclonal antibody therapy for emergency use in November. Golden Valley Health Centers began using the therapy the first week of February.Dr. Elaine Soriano said the treatment is a promising preventative measure that may reduce serious complications due to the virus.”(This is a) wonderful medication that is available to everyone, and we are happy at Golden Valley Health Centers to offer this medication for you if you have COVID and considered high risk,” Dr. Soriano told KCRA 3.Dr. Soriano added that GVHC is the only outpatient clinic in Modesto that currently offers the treatment used in this way.”Honestly, this is an underutilized medication that people may not know that it’s out there,” she said.She said, so far, patients have reacted well to the treatment, “and one of the patients that I talked to, he actually said could breathe better, his chest opened, up and he wanted to go out.”Dr. Soriano said there are some requirements.To receive treatment at GVHC, patients must be 18 or older, must weigh at least 88 pounds, the treatment must be used within the first 10 days of possible exposure, symptoms must be mild to moderate, and patients must have an underlying health condition, and if someone has an “immuno-compromised condition such as, you’re in chemotherapy, you have cancer, you have rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, those are just examples.”Dr. Soriano said in a clinical trial, side effects were similar to other infusion treatments, and occurred in less than 1% of users, “Low-grade fever, a little bit of chills, sometimes itchiness, nausea,” but she explained that none of their patients, so far, have had any adverse reactions. She also said, the potential impact of the treatment is multi-faceted.”This will definitely alleviate our healthcare system, this will definitely help everybody, including the families who are emotionally affected by the COVID-19 due to deaths of their families,” she said.The treatment is offered for free from the federal government and sent directly to Golden Valley Health Centers. Dr. Soriano encourages anyone who may have the criteria, to contact their health clinics.
MODESTO, Calif. —
A new treatment among COVID-19 positive patients at a Modesto area community health care clinic has shown promising results.
The FDA approved monoclonal antibody therapy for emergency use in November. Golden Valley Health Centers began using the therapy the first week of February.
Dr. Elaine Soriano said the treatment is a promising preventative measure that may reduce serious complications due to the virus.
“(This is a) wonderful medication that is available to everyone, and we are happy at Golden Valley Health Centers to offer this medication for you if you have COVID and considered high risk,” Dr. Soriano told KCRA 3.
Dr. Soriano added that GVHC is the only outpatient clinic in Modesto that currently offers the treatment used in this way.
“Honestly, this is an underutilized medication that people may not know that it’s out there,” she said.
She said, so far, patients have reacted well to the treatment, “and one of the patients that I talked to, he actually said could breathe better, his chest opened, up and he wanted to go out.”
Dr. Soriano said there are some requirements.
To receive treatment at GVHC, patients must be 18 or older, must weigh at least 88 pounds, the treatment must be used within the first 10 days of possible exposure, symptoms must be mild to moderate, and patients must have an underlying health condition, and if someone has an “immuno-compromised condition such as, you’re in chemotherapy, you have cancer, you have rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, those are just examples.”
Dr. Soriano said in a clinical trial, side effects were similar to other infusion treatments, and occurred in less than 1% of users, “Low-grade fever, a little bit of chills, sometimes itchiness, nausea,” but she explained that none of their patients, so far, have had any adverse reactions.
She also said, the potential impact of the treatment is multi-faceted.
“This will definitely alleviate our healthcare system, this will definitely help everybody, including the families who are emotionally affected by the COVID-19 due to deaths of their families,” she said.
The treatment is offered for free from the federal government and sent directly to Golden Valley Health Centers.
Dr. Soriano encourages anyone who may have the criteria, to contact their health clinics.
Kanto Celebration Event takes place from February 21 – 27 2021, as a follow-up celebration to the Pokémon GO Tour: Kanto Event. During the event, Trainers will be able to raid Kanto region legendary Pokémon and obtain Gen 1 Pokémon that know exclusive attacks from previous Community Day events.
You will be able to collect different Kanto region Pokémon from wild encounters, Incense and Eggs. Do note that shiny forms of all Kanto Pokémon will become available once Kanto Tour begins on the same day – February 21st.
Date and Time
Starts on Sunday, February 21, 2021, at 10:00 a.m. local time
Ends on Saturday, February 27, 2021, at 8:00 p.m. local time
Wild spawns
The following Pokémon will be appearing more frequently in the wild during the Kanto Celebration event:
Incense encounters
The following Pokémon will be attracted to Incense during the event:
Eggs
The following Pokémon will be hatching from 5 km Eggs:
Field Research
Event-exclusive Field Research features tasks that reward Stardust and lead to encounters with Pokémon such as:
Raids
The following Pokémon will be appearing in raids:
Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, Pikachu, Magikarp, and Dratini will be appearing in one-star raids.
Scyther, Pinsir, Machoke, Kadabra, Haunter, Graveler, and Lapras will be appearing in three-star raids.
Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, and Mewtwo will be appearing in five-star raids.
Exclusive moves
Get Pokémon that know exclusive attacks from previous Community Day events! If you evolve the following Pokémon during the event, their Evolution will know an exclusive attack.
Evolve Ivysaur (the evolved form of Bulbasaur) to get a Venusaur that knows Frenzy Plant.
Evolve Charmeleon (the evolved form of Charmander) to get a Charizard that knows Blast Burn.
Evolve Wartortle (the evolved form of Squirtle) to get a Blastoise that knows Hydro Cannon.
Evolve Pichu to get a Pikachu that knows Surf.
Evolve Eevee into any of its Evolutions to get an evolved form that knows Last Resort.
Evolve Dragonair (the evolved form of Dratini) to get a Dragonite that knows Draco Meteor.
Collection challenges
Some of the Collection Challenges from Pokémon GO Tour: Kanto will continue throughout the Kanto Celebration event. Head on over to the Today View to track your progress.
JERUSALEM — When the pandemic swept through Israel, it upended Racheli Ohayon’s life in unexpected ways.
The 21-year-old phone center worker had questioned her ultra-Orthodox Jewish upbringing before but always stifled such thoughts by drowning them in even stricter religious observance.
Suddenly she was off work and under lockdown, her routines disrupted, holed up at home with seven younger siblings and plenty of time on her hands.
“When I had a lot of time to think, the questions flooded up again,” she said. “Suddenly, the rabbis didn’t know what to do. They aren’t doctors.”
She came to a decision that ranks among the most egregious offenses in the ultra-Orthodox world: She quit the community and took up a secular lifestyle.
As the virus has rampaged through Israel in recent months, it has shaken the assumptions of some in the insular ultra-Orthodox world, swelling the numbers of those who decide they want out.
Organizations that help ultra-Orthodox who have left the fold navigate their transition from the highly structured, rules-based lifestyle into modern Israeli society have noted a rise in demand for their services.
Experts attribute the departures to a breakdown of supervision and routine, a rise in internet use during the pandemic and generally more time for questioning and self-discovery.
“If they are not in their usual educational frameworks and are on the internet, meeting friends and going to the beach, that leads to a lot of exposure,” said Gilad Malach, who directs the ultra-Orthodox program at the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent think tank in Jerusalem. “They think of options they don’t think of when they are in yeshiva, and one of the options is to leave.”
For many, breaking away means being cut off by their families and leaving a tight-knit support system for an unfamiliar culture. In extreme cases, parents of offspring who leave sit shiva, observing the traditional mourning rituals as if they were dead.
While there is no comprehensive data on the scale of defections, Naftali Yawitz, who runs the division of the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry that helps fund those organizations, said there had been a “very significant wave” in recent months of both new leavers and more veteran ones seeking help.
One of those organizations, Hillel, which operates an emergency shelter with the ministry as well as rent-free, halfway apartments for leavers, has a waiting list for the shelter in Jerusalem, the first stop for many with nowhere to go. It has also noted a 50 percent increase in former ultra-Orthodox seeking help over the last year.
Out for Change, the other main organization, offered leavers the option of registering with the group for the first time last year, in part to help formalize their status in dealings with the authorities. Even though many are traumatized and conflicted by the break and reluctant to identify themselves, more than 1,300 signed up.
This was just what the ultra-Orthodox rabbis had feared and why some were so insistent on keeping their religious education institutions open in violation of lockdown regulations. In a letter calling for girls’ schools to reopen, Leah Kolodetzki, the daughter of one leading rabbi, said that in her father’s opinion “boredom leads to sin” and puts girls in “severe spiritual danger.”
Israel Cohen, a prominent ultra-Orthodox political commentator, played down concerns about the increasing flight from the ultra-Orthodox, known as Haredi in Hebrew, accusing Hillel, for one, of exploiting the health crisis to recruit more leavers with a publicity campaign. But he acknowledged that the Haredi leadership was afraid of losing control.
“There was a sense that the coronavirus caused not only physical harm, in terms of sickness and death, but also spiritual harm,” he said.
The pandemic has only accelerated a growing trend.
Even before the coronavirus crisis, the number of young adults leaving ultra-Orthodox communities had reached about 3,000 a year, according to a study by the Israel Democracy Institute, based on data up to 2018.
The desertions do not threaten the Haredi demographic clout. The more than one million Haredim account for over 12 percent of the population, and their high birthrate more than makes up for the numbers who are leaving.
Studies show that many leavers do not abandon Judaism altogether but are seeking more individualism and the ability to make their own choices about their lives.
But the deserters often find themselves in a netherworld, estranged from their families, community and the only way of life they knew and, lacking a secular education, ill-equipped to deal with the outside world.
Most Haredi boys’ schools teach little or no secular subject matter like math, English or science. Girls tend to study more math and English at school and go on to seminaries where they can learn certain professions like accounting.
After years of campaigning by activists, the Israeli government and the military recently introduced new policies recognizing former Haredim as a distinct social group, entitling them to special grants and courses to help them go to college, as well as funding for job training programs.
“These are strong people who left their comfort zone, where they had few choices to make and everything was clear-cut,” said Nadav Rozenblat, the chief executive of Out for Change. “If you chose to leave, it shows that you have motivation and backbone. It’s like being a new immigrant in Israel.”
The pandemic has also pried open the fault line between the Israeli mainstream and the ultra-Orthodox, who have been hit hard by the coronavirus and have been assailed by critics for their resistance to antivirus measures.
The battle over health and safety only compounded existing resentments. For years, officials and experts have sounded alarms that the rapid growth of the ultra-Orthodox population threatens the economy. About half of all Haredi men study Torah full time and subsist on government welfare. Most Haredi women work in low-grade jobs to support their families while also being primarily responsible for raising the children. Under a decades-old arrangement, most Haredi men avoid military service.
Those concerns have persuaded the government to offer financial incentives to young Haredi adults to forgo full-time study in religious seminaries, enlist for military service (an obligation for most other Israeli 18-year-olds), take academic or training courses to make up for the gaps in their education and to join the work force.
Under the new policies, those who left Haredi communities will be eligible for the same benefits, including educational and vocational programs offered to Haredi soldiers serving in special Haredi military units.
Similarly, the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry recently began defining ex-Haredim as a special category eligible to receive vouchers for vocational training courses, the same as those granted to Haredim.
The ministry is also planning to open a preparatory course for those hoping to pursue higher education.
“It’s not just about learning the ABC in English, but the social ABC,” said Mr. Yawitz, of the ministry. “It’s about how to speak to people. To learn from zero what is normal and what is not.”
Mr. Yawitz left the ultra-Orthodox world himself as a young teenager. Cut off by his family, he lived on the streets and was arrested at 17 for drug dealing before he was pardoned and rehabilitated. His personal struggle became the subject of documentary film.
Increasingly, though, the definition of ultra-Orthodox has become more flexible as the community frays at the edges. Some Haredim who have joined modern life have found options in some of the less rigid sects, allowing them to remain on the margins of the community rather than leave it altogether. Others live a double life, outwardly maintaining a strictly Orthodox lifestyle but secretly breaking the rules.
Dedi Rotenberg and his wife, Divan, discovered they were both closet doubters only months after they had been married in a match, the traditional method of arranged marriage in Haredi communities. About 15 months ago they finally moved out of Bnei Brak, the ultra-Orthodox city near Tel Aviv where they had both grown up, for a secular life in the south.
“There are a lot of things I still have to get used to,” Mr. Rotenberg said. “Slang, movies. At least once a week I hear my friends talking and I have no idea what they are saying.”
Ms. Ohayon had attended an ultra-Orthodox girls’ school where the only history taught was Jewish history. The school had computers, she said, but they were not connected to the internet. She had never been to see a movie, never worn a pair of jeans.
When she had to stop work because of the pandemic, she began testing the boundaries. She bought a smartphone and discovered new worlds of information and music through Google and YouTube. She joined her local library in Petah Tikva and started reading secular literature that had previously been off-limits.
One novel in particular, “The Sweetness of Forgetting” by Kristin Harmel, jolted her out of her cloistered world. The novel follows a Cape Cod woman’s discovery of her secret family history, which spans the Holocaust and three different religious traditions.
The exposure to new cultures, people and ideas had a profound effect.
“I grew up with a sense of the Haredim being special and different,” she said. “I discovered I’m not so special or different, that there are millions like me. That’s what suddenly made me say ‘That’s it, I’m leaving.’”
It’s that time of the month again. Tomorrow is Community Day in Pokémon GO, and Roselia is the featured Pokémon. Let’s dive into the details.
Roselia Community Day graphic in Pokémon GO. Credit: Niantic
Here are the full details of Roselia Community Day in Pokémon GO along with our tips:
Sunday, February 7, 2021, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. local time. Roselia will be appearing more frequently in the wild. If you’re lucky, you may encounter a Shiny one!
Last month, Machop Community Day saw Niantic utterly nerf every non-Machop spawn in the game. In my raid group, we saw approximately two spawns other than Machop the entire day. Niantic has never commented on this change, but this hyper, hyper increased Community Day may make this quite the chance to earn Candy XL.
Evolve Roselia during the event or up to two hours afterward to get a Roserade that knows both the Charged Attack Weather Ball (Fire-type ) and the Fast Attack Bullet Seed.
This is interesting in that we’re getting a Community Day that offers two moves for the first-ever time, but this one seems like it has niche usage. It’s essentially going to make Roselia good against other Grass-types rather than giving it coverage against a Pokémon that could actually hurt it.
Budew will be hatching from 2 km Eggs. 1/4 Hatch Distance when Eggs are placed into an Incubator during the event period.
Take advantage of this while you can, even if this Community Day isn’t your style. 1/4 Hatch Distance is a terrific feature and will go into effect an hour after the Team GO Rocket event ends, so stock up on those KM Strange Eggs while you can.
For US$1 (or the equivalent pricing tier in your local currency), you’ll be able to access the Roselia Community Day–exclusive Special Research story, Stop and Smell the Roselia. Remember, Trainers—if you purchase a ticket for the Pokémon GO Tour: Kanto event by Wednesday, February 3, 2021, at 11:59 p.m. PST (GMT −8), you’ll get this Special Research story for free!
Stay tuned for our Is It Worth It breakdown on this ticket, as we assess the direction these ticketed Special Research questlines have taken lately.
Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets has grown significantly due to the community’s role in driving up the stock prices of companies like GameStop, AMC, and Nokia, and the whole saga has garnered so much attention that there are currently many movies and a TV show in the works. But that increased attention has also put strain on the r/WallStreetBets community itself, forcing Reddit to step in to help sort things out.
The trouble started Wednesday night, according to The New York Times, as some r/WallStreetBets moderators talked with each other about trying to get a movie deal. On Thursday morning, “the WallStreetBets moderators who were considering the film deal began booting out other moderators who had questioned them for secretly trying to profit from the forum’s success,” reports The New York Times. A highly upvoted r/WallStreetBets post called the situation “a coup,” saying the moderators the community “know and love” were being tossed out.
At some point, Reddit stepped in to stop the takeover, and the company confirmed to The Verge that it had removed some r/WallStreetBets mods. The company says they violated rule five of its moderator guidelines, which reads:
Stable and Active Teams of Moderators:
Healthy communities have moderators who are around to answer questions of their community and engage with the admins.
The company wouldn’t share how many mods were removed. As of this writing, there are 28 mods listed on the r/WallStreetBets mods page, and “in recent weeks there have been a few dozen,” according to The New York Times.
Reddit said it had to take action due to the instability the situation created for the community, according to a message sent to the r/WallStreetBets mods by Reddit that was obtained by Mashable. “We understand many will be upset with our decisions today, however it was clear to us an intervention was necessary for the continued health of the r/wallstreetbets community,” part of the message read.
The mods removed by Reddit can’t be immediately reinstated as moderators of r/WallStreetBets, the company tells The Verge. The mods removed by the bad actors can be reinstated as mods on r/WallStreetBets, but at the discretion of the current mod team. It’s unclear which of the removed mods may return, or which have been invited to do so.
Last week, Discord also had to step in to help moderate a WallStreetBets community. The company banned the original r/WallStreetBets server due to “hateful and discriminatory content” and has been helping the mods of the new one with moderation.
Scientists are settling on a road map that can help critical sectors of the economy safely conduct business, from meatpacking plants to financial services, despite the pandemic’s continued spread.
After nearly a year of study, the lessons include: Mask-wearing, worker pods and good air flow are much more important than surface cleaning, temperature checks and plexiglass barriers in places like offices and restaurants. And more public-health experts now advocate wide use of cheap, rapid tests to detect cases quickly, in part because many scientists now think more than 50% of infections are transmitted by people without symptoms.
The playbook comes after months of investigations on how the coronavirus spreads and affects the body. Scientists combined that with knowledge gained from years of experience managing occupational-health hazards in high-risk workplaces, such as factories and chemical plants, where tiny airborne pollutants can build up and cause harm. They say different types of workplaces—taking into account the types of interactions workers have—need slightly different protocols.
The safety measures have taken on new urgency in recent weeks as new infections, hospitalizations and deaths rise across the U.S. and Europe, and potentially more-transmissible variants of the virus spread around the globe. This phase of the pandemic is prompting a new wave of stay-at-home orders, closures and travel restrictions, important first steps to curbing contagion. Infection-prevention specialists say known strategies for stemming spread should continue to work against the new variants, but that increased adherence is even more important.
Vaccines are rolling out, but slowly, and access will be limited mostly to high-priority groups for some time.
“We have to still deal with ‘the right now.’ We’ve zeroed in on this set of controls that we know work,” said
Joseph Allen,
director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Over the past year, the lack of consistent and cohesive messaging among scientists and lawmakers has seeded confusion over what makes up risky behavior, what activities should be avoided and why. That is beginning to change as consensus builds and scientists better understand the virus.
In the U.S., scientists at first advised people against wearing masks, in part because of shortages, while the idea of stay-at-home orders received severe pushback from some lawmakers. Early in the pandemic, testing was limited to people with symptoms, also partly due to shortages. That advice has shifted, but a year later, sufficient testing remains a critical issue.
London’s Regent Street was nearly empty last week.
Photo:
May James/SOPA Images /Zuma Press
Countries such as New Zealand and others in Asia adhered to a combination of basic mitigation strategies from the start—particularly masking, large-scale testing and lockdowns that broke transmission chains. They have tended to fare better than those that didn’t.
In one of his first moves, President
Biden
signed executive orders to require masks be worn on federal property and at airports and other transportation hubs. The administration said it is focusing on increasing the availability of vaccines, and also stressed the importance of widely available testing, which still lags in low-income and minority communities.
The current scientific playbook follows from two of the biggest research insights since the start of the pandemic. First, individuals who aren’t showing symptoms can transmit the virus. Infectious-disease experts worry most about this silent spread and say it is the reason the pandemic has been so hard to contain. While visibly sick people can pass on the virus, data cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 40% to 45% of those infected never develop symptoms at all. With the new viral variants that can transmit more readily, the potential for silent spread is even higher, infectious-disease experts said.
Secondly, researchers now know that tiny airborne particles known as aerosols play a role in the spread of Covid-19. These can linger in the air and travel beyond 6 feet.
An early hallmark of the pandemic response focused on the risk of transmission through large respiratory droplets that typically travel a few feet and then fall to the ground. Businesses rushed to buy plexiglass barriers, creating shortages.
The barriers can be good at preventing larger virus-containing droplets from landing on and infecting healthy individuals. They may offer some protection in shielding workers who have brief face-to-face interactions with many people throughout the workday, such as cashiers and receptionists, some occupational-health experts said.
Yet in settings like offices, restaurants or gyms, the role of the barriers is murkier, because activities like talking loudly and breathing deeply create aerosols that can waft on air currents and get around shields.
A Los Angeles Apparel employee added plexiglass to sewing stations in July.
Photo:
Sarah Reingewirtz/Orange County Register/Zuma Press
Outdoor diners at Eat At Joe’s restaurant in Redondo Beach, Calif., in December.
Photo:
patrick t. fallon/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
A gym in Milan in October.
Photo:
DANIEL DAL ZENNARO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Also, installing such barriers could affect airflow throughout the space, environmental-health experts said. It is possible they could limit proper ventilation, making things worse, they said.
“There seems to be an assumption that particles are going to get stopped by the barriers, which is simply not true,” said
Lisa Brosseau,
an industrial hygienist and research consultant for the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. Airborne particles ferrying the virus “really distribute all over the place.”
The emphasis on intense surface cleaning has diminished as scientists have come to understand that indirect transmission through contaminated surfaces doesn’t play as critical a role in the spread of Covid-19 as they thought in the early days of the pandemic. In September, the CDC published sanitation guidelines for offices, workplaces, homes and schools that said that, for most surfaces, normal, routine cleaning should suffice, and that frequently touched objects, such as light switches and doorknobs, should be cleaned and disinfected.
“Sanitation is important in general always,” said
Deborah Roy,
president of the American Society of Safety Professionals. “The idea is we went overboard at the beginning because of the amount of unknowns. Now, we’re in a situation where we have more information.”
Temperature checks have become less popular among some employers because scientists now know that not all Covid-19 patients get fevers. One large study published online in November in the New England Journal of Medicine showed only 13% of Covid-19 patients reported a fever during the course of their illness.
Scientists now understand that brief encounters with an infected person can lead to spread, according to an October case study—an advance from earlier, when the rule of thumb was to avoid close contact for 15 consecutive minutes or longer. The report urged people to consider not just time and proximity in defining close contact with a Covid case, but also ventilation, crowding and a person’s likelihood of generating aerosols. Following the report, the CDC changed its definition of close contact to a total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period.
A flight attendant showed an air filter on LATAM airlines in Bogota in August.
Photo:
juan barreto/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Fresh air and effective filters indoors are important because they can remove virus particles before they have time to infect.
Masks offer a similar benefit, by lowering the amount of particles that infected individuals emit. Some scientists say there could be a benefit to doubling up on masks, as a second layer may improve both filtration and fit, so long as the masks are worn correctly.
A study published in October found that in countries where mask wearing was the norm or where governments put in place mask mandates, coronavirus mortality rates grew much more slowly than in countries without such measures. This fall, the CDC said that masks also offer some personal protection by reducing a wearer’s exposure to infected particles.
As the weather gets colder and people head indoors, the risk of catching Covid-19 is rising. WSJ explains why air ventilation and filtration are one of our biggest defenses against the coronavirus this winter. Illustration: Nick Collingwood/WSJ
The combination of airborne particles and personal interactions, even among people who don’t feel ill, can turn wedding receptions, plane rides and choir practices into superspreading, potentially deadly events.
“For Covid, those two factors—asymptomatic spread and aerosolization—is what made mask-wearing so essential,” said
Megan Ranney,
emergency physician and assistant dean at Brown University.
Lessons can be gleaned from an outbreak at a Canadian spin studio last fall. The operators of the SPINCO studio in Hamilton, Ontario, had many public-health measures in place, including limiting the number of bikes in each class and screening staff and attendees with a questionnaire about topics including symptoms and travel. Rooms were sanitized within 30 minutes of a completed class, and towels were laundered, according to a statement provided last fall by
Elizabeth Richardson,
medical officer of health for the city of Hamilton.
Masks were also required before and after workout classes, Dr. Richardson said.
In total, 54 people who attended workouts over a span of several classes became infected. Another 31 cases were tied to the outbreak after spin-class attendees who contracted the virus then passed it on. The spin studio temporarily shut down following the outbreak and later reopened. It is currently not offering classes due to local regulations that mandated the closure of all gyms and fitness centers amid rising Covid-19 cases in the area.
In a November statement following the outbreak,
Michelle August,
founder of SPINCO, said that the company has “always put safety first and [has] exceeded all recommended guidelines from public health throughout” the pandemic. She said SPINCO has also strengthened and heightened its Covid-19 mitigation measures. SPINCO’s website currently says face masks are mandated throughout workouts in the company’s Hamilton location.
It also says that SPINCO is installing air purifiers in all of its studios that filter air in the rooms every 17 to 21 minutes. Airborne transmission experts recommend that building managers pump in clean, fresh air between three to six times an hour and that they install filters that are proven to effectively trap and remove a substantial number of virus-carrying particles.
To film a stage play of “A Christmas Carol” in November, the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis upgraded its air filters and increased the rate at which the ventilation system pumps in outside air, said
Brooke Hajinian,
the Guthrie’s general manager. Management staggered arrival times, and a compliance officer made sure everyone socially distanced, wore their masks properly and washed their hands.
The theater divided staff into pods depending on how close they must get to the lone actor on stage, who portrayed Charles Dickens and didn’t wear a mask while performing, according to Ms. Hajinian. Those working nearest the stage underwent testing three times a week and wore N95 masks at all times, she said, while cleaning and security crews, who didn’t interact with the stage crews, wore cloth masks and didn’t undergo testing.
Actor Nathaniel Fuller performed in ‘A Christmas Carol’ at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
Photo:
Kaitlin Schlick
Ms. Hajinian said she monitored the staff’s testing results and symptoms. “Any symptom is not a failure of this plan,” she said. Catching a case “and isolating it—that’s what success looks like for us,” she said. There were no cases, she said.
Scientists say multilayered safety efforts are needed because no single prevention method is 100% effective.
One of the largest studies of asymptomatic transmission to date showed that frequent testing was essential in identifying infections among a group of nearly 2,000 Marine recruits required to socially distance and wear masks except while eating and sleeping.
The study looked at cases identified with lab-based tests that search out and amplify the genetic material of the virus, but those tests aren’t as easily scaled as so-called rapid antigen tests, which search for viral proteins.
Results from lab-based tests can sometimes take days, while results from rapid tests are usually available in less than an hour. As a result, some epidemiologists have been advocating for widespread use of antigen tests to prevent outbreaks, because they are cheaper and don’t require high-tech laboratory equipment to run, meaning they can be deployed in a broader range of settings.
The shift toward using frequent, inexpensive and rapid tests on the same people multiple times a week to screen entire populations—instead of one-time tests on individuals who have symptoms—will be important to efficiently break transmission chains, epidemiologists said.
“Unless we’re doing really broad, frequent screening of the people at large, we’re completely missing the vast majority” of infections, said
Michael Mina,
an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We have to change how we’re doing this.”
A Covid-19 testing site at the Alemany Farmers Market in San Francisco in November.
Photo:
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News
While rapid tests tend to be less sensitive than lab-based tests, Dr. Mina said the data suggest they have high sensitivity when people are most likely to be infectious.
Other infectious-disease experts have touted contact tracing to identify and bust clusters of infection. But they say the strategy works best when cases aren’t surging, as they are now. When transmission rates are too high, limiting gatherings, travel and crowding are more effective at denting spread, said
Abraar Karan,
a global-health physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
In places without big surges, a high-tech approach is becoming increasingly useful: genetic epidemiology, or tracking tiny changes in viral genomes to map out transmission chains. As the coronavirus replicates and moves from person to person, its genes change slightly. Sometimes, those tiny changes are unusual, and they can be particularly useful in mapping transmission events, according to
Justin O’Grady,
an infectious disease expert at the Quadram Institute in the U.K.
By sifting through the differences among more than 1,000 viral genomes, Dr. O’Grady and his collaborators found that a particular viral variant was moving through multiple nursing homes in the U.K., among patients and staff, but not among the wider community. The unpublished data suggested that transmission was facilitated by the movement of staff from one facility to another, Dr. O’Grady said. The team relayed the findings to government authorities and advised them to restrict staff moving among facilities during the pandemic.
“Sometimes genomic epidemiology is able to find hidden transmission links that traditional epidemiology would struggle to find,” Dr. O’Grady said. “We can’t stop transmission, but when we find a superspreader event…we can bring in the right prevention methods to stop it from spreading further.”
A London ad urged safety measures last week.
Photo:
Dinendra Haria/London News Pictures /Zuma Press
—Betsy McKay contributed to this article.
Write to Daniela Hernandez at daniela.hernandez@wsj.com, Sarah Toy at sarah.toy@wsj.com and Caitlin McCabe at caitlin.mccabe@wsj.com
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand has reported its first coronavirus case outside of a quarantine facility in more than two months, although there was no immediate evidence the virus was spreading in the community.
Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said Sunday the case was a 56-year-old woman who recently returned from Europe.
Like other returning travelers, she spent 14 days in quarantine and twice tested negative before being returning home on Jan. 13. She later developed symptoms and tested positive.
He said health officials will conduct genome testing but are working under the assumption that the case is a more transmissible variant of the virus.
He said they are investigating to see whether its possible she caught the disease from another returning traveler who was staying in the same quarantine facility.
New Zealand has eliminated community transmission of the virus, at least for now. Bloomfield said officials are ramping up contact tracing and testing efforts and hope to have more information about the case in the coming days.
Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region:
— A Chinese city has completed 2,600 temporary treatment rooms as the country’s north battles new clusters of the coronavirus. The single-occupancy rooms in the city of Nangong in Hebei province just outside Beijing are each equipped with their own heaters, toilets, showers and other amenities, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Special attention has been paid to Hebei because of its proximity to the capital and the province has locked down large areas to prevent further spread of the virus. The provincial capital Shijiazhung and the city of Xingtai, which encompasses Nangong, have been largely sealed off. Community isolation and large-scale testing have also been enforced. The National Health Commission on Sunday reported 19 additional cases in Hebei. The far northeastern province of Heilongjiang reported another 29 cases, linked partly to an outbreak at a meat processing plant. Beijing, where around 2 million residents have been ordered to undergo new testing, reported two new confirmed cases. China currently has 1,800 people being treated for COVID-19, 94 of them listed in serious condition, with another 1,017 being monitored in isolation for having tested positive for the virus without displaying symptoms.
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