News roundup for Fri, Jun 18, 2021

4 Comments on News roundup for Fri, Jun 18, 2021

Power grids in Texas and California are once again struggling under intense heat and high use pressure. You’d think both states would anticipate each summer being hotter than the last…

The US heat wave is MASSIVE:

Starlink dishes are going into thermal shutdown in the heat.

Rainwater in the Great Lakes region contains high levels of “forever chemicals” called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The levels found in the samples range from 100-400 parts per trillion, which is many times higher than the level deemed safe for drinking water. These chemicals can do metabolic and reproductive harm to people.

Lumber prices have fallen 40% or more from the recent peak as people refuse to buy it at exorbitantly high prices:

In a similar vein, retail and wholesale prices are up, but sales are down:

A major Chinese shipping region is busy fighting off the Delta variant—this could spell more trouble for the already beleaguered logistics sector. The moral of the story is: buy what you need now, there’s more disruption and elevated pricing coming.

Southwest had to ground its fleet temporarily this week as a “glitch” impacted its weather detection system:

An Illinois chemical plant that produces axle and lithium grease caught fire. The employees are said to be safe, but mechanics and farmers who use these products could be left hanging as the plant was completely destroyed.

Bike shops can’t get bike parts:

Millions of rounds of .22 ammunition en route to the US have been stolen in Mexico.

There’s a blood shortage. If you’re the donating type, now’s the time:

The world has nearly 178.2 million COVID cases.  The world has gained 2.6 million cases in a week. There have been nearly 3.9 million deaths in total. The US has had nearly 34.4 million cases. Over 616,000 Americans have died. There have been 276 deaths in the last 24 hours in the US. The US gained over 9,600 new cases in the last day. India still leads the globe in daily deaths, with over 3,400 in the last day. Brazil is leading the globe with new daily cases and daily deaths—they have had over 2,100 deaths since yesterday. India follows in second.

In happy news, a study from Nature expounds on the probability that immunity to COVID may be long-lasting. This was the case with SARS, though it is not the case with all coronaviruses.

In the event that boosters are needed (for new variants, for example), the Administration is preparing:

A pre-print (not yet peer-reviewed) discusses the mild seasonality we see with the pandemic virus—it looks like R drops by about 0.4 in the summer. This means that concerns about rebound in the fall and winter are real concerns.

People who swear up and down that they had to have had COVID in December of 2019… well, they might be right.

Cases are rising fast in South Africa, and there’s concerning rise in all of Africa:

Sinovac is so poorly performing that health care workers are getting hospitalized with COVID in large numbers in countries that relied on that vaccine.

 

Stephanie Arnold | cosmicpixle

Stephanie Arnold is an advanced practice psychiatric nurse and a doctoral candidate in UA Tuscaloosa’s DNP program. Stephanie moonlights from time to time at UCLA teaching mental health nursing. She also likes making cold-process soap.

  • 4 Comments
    • Hardened June 18, 2021

      I wonder how well the gravity water filters we use perform against PFAS.

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      • Roland Hardened June 18, 2021

        I have a Berkey and checked with what they filter and didn’t see it on that list. https://www.berkeyfilters.com/pages/filtration-specifications

        Distillation might be the best treatment method. The article says how rain collects these forever chemicals when it is rainin from air particles. So good to know it isn’t being evaporated up in the water droplets but rather is collected while comin down to the earth again. A distiller should be able to produce clean PFAS free water.

        Good news roundup by the way Stephanie. Always enjoy the weekly survival news

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    • Sbesch June 18, 2021

      Hi Stephanie,

      Another informative update, as usual – thank you.  But I happened to notice you listed the concentrations of PFAS as “100-400 parts per million” (PPM), while the linked article listed them as “100-400 parts per trillion” (PPT).  Not that any amount of that junk is good to see in the environment, but at least we’re not that bad off (yet). 😉

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