Badlands Journal
Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice
MERCED (BLJ) – The Merced County Public Health Department on September 4 reported 120 deaths from Covid and an 18.47% infection rate.
California reported 13,497 deaths (109 new).
The United States reported 190,635 deaths (1,363 new).
The global report was 871,205 deaths (3,986 new).
“The university used to be a ‘grazing land,,’ Chancellor Juan Muñoz said, and seeing the campus now “the word that comes to mind is ‘transformation.’
“You come up Lake (Road) or Bellevue (Road), and you see the campus. Everyone has the same reaction,” he told The Bee during a Zoom interview. “It’s sort of like coming out of the tunnel, and you see Yosemite for the first time. It emerges like the city out of a prairie.” -- Monica Velez, Merced Sun-Star, August 23, 2020
Four years to the day after Colin Kaepernick first sat out the National Anthem on the 49ers bench, the NBA began a series of playoff boycotts, which spread to other sports including for a day or two Major League Baseball and tennis star Naomi Osaka. Kaepernick and the other athletes, or Civil Rights workers 60 years ago, were all protesting the same issue, the oppression of African-Americans, which gone on in this country in one form or another since the beginning of slavery.
MERCED (BLJ) –On August 29, Merced County Public Health Department reported 115 deaths, no increase over the previous day, according to the departmental “statistical dashboard”) – so much quantitative sophistication, so little improvement in the quality of prevention or cure of the virus.
A Dull-Witted Boy story, for your entertainment only.
From the offices of the Badlands Journal editorial board.
On Basketball
It was Wednesday afternoon and four masked boys were playing basketball at the last public basketball court in town that didn’t have lids on the baskets. Somebody in Parks and Rec thought the whole idea of fitting lids on basketball hoops was baloney.
MERCED (BLJ) – One August 25, the Merced Public Health Department reported 106 total deaths, an increase of seven for the day. We aren’t sure of the numbers on the rest of the departmental “statistical dashboard.” We believe that the deaths have been recorded by more responsible agencies.
California reported 12,257 deaths, an increase of 123 for the day.
The United States reported 180,375 deaths, an increase of 640 for the day.
The global total deaths is 814,354, an increase of 1,332 for the day.
Bill McKibben’s masterful review of Mark Lynas’ Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency is a timely update on the state of the climate emergency. This is not exactly a strange subject to Californians at the moment, whose state is under an emergency order due to the dire effects of 12,000 lightning strikes last week. -- blj
8-20-20
New York Review of Books
130 Degrees
Bill McKibben
August 20, 2020 Issue
8-12-20
Washington Post
Quoting ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ judge strikes down Trump administration rollback of historic law protecting birds
‘It is not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a crime,’ Judge Valerie Caproni wrote in a forceful decision
By Darryl Fears
MERCED (BLJ) – On August 19, the Merced County Public Health department reported 97 people had died from Covid-19. Let those to blame rot in their own private hells. Let the rest of us continue to wear our masks, wash hands, observe social distance, be kind to doorkeepers who poke temperature-taking apparatuses in our faces, and find some way, regardless of how irritated we are, to take these precautions seriously.
You never know: the life you save may be your own.
MERCED (BLJ) – On August 17, Merced County Public Health Department reported 93 deaths (4 new). We think that hospitalization figures might also be reliable so we are now including: 454 even in the hospital, and 91 currently in the hospital.
California reported 11,242 deaths (18 new).
The United States reported 172,146 deaths (60 new).
The global report was 773,152 deaths.