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In these trying times, with a pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people around the world and medical institutions preparing to be pushed to their limits, it truly is best to listen to medical professionals and heed warnings about social distancing while taking protective measures to stay inside and help flatten the curve.

With piecemeal restrictions in place in various municipalities and states, however, it’s unclear how much those efforts have helped, how long life will be interrupted and just how bad things get as science grapples with the virus, treating it and hopefully finding a cure. One thing we do know already, however, is that those that initially downplayed the virus and its impact for political reasons have done real harm to society and threatened the lives of millions of people.

There’s so much to be done and no going back on what’s been said, but The Daily Show collected some of that bad advice in a segment it called Heroes Of The Pandumbic, which largely focused on the misinformation and doubt cast by many on Fox News in the weeks before COVID-19 was detected in all 50 states and killing hundreds of people each day. Highlighting misinformation and skepticism shared by conservative voices like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others, it’s a direct criticism of comments from just days and weeks ago that seems downright irresponsible in current conditions, especially while cities like New York deal with a crisis they haven’t seen in more than a century.

Lou Dobbs, for example, blamed the “national left-wing media” for playing up fears of the virus to hurt Donald Trump. If you haven’t been paying much attention to conservative media, it’s a great refresher of just what’s been said in the early days of the pandemic’s rise. Tomi Lahren, for example, says she’s more concerned about stepping on a heroin needle than getting coronavirus. And on and on.

The video highlights comments from the Trump administration, including Trump himself. It also shows Hannity tracking the deaths from the virus, which he basically stopped doing when the number was at zero. As of this writing, nearly 3,000 people have died in New York alone.

We’re a few years removed now from the Lob City era in Los Angeles, and before the coronavirus pandemic put the season on indefinite hiatus, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, and company had quickly transformed the revamped Clippers into one of the top contenders in the West.

The central figures of that era have since moved on to new situations around the league, to varying degrees of success. Blake Griffin has spent the last couple of seasons in Detroit while battling various injuries, while DeAndre Jordan has found his way to Brooklyn after brief stints in Dallas and New York.

Chris Paul had a couple of near-misses with title contention alongside James Harden in Houston, but has since gone on to what was a delightful surprise of a season with the Oklahoma City Thunder, who were the No. 5 seed in the West before the shutdown. Still, for Paul, it’s hard not to get nostalgic for those Lob City days.

On a recent appearance on the “All the Smoke” podcast, he remembered his team with the team fondly, particularly his pairing with Griffin.

“It’s seriously one of those things you don’t realize what you have until it’s gone,” Paul said.

“I think about it at times. And me and Blake Griffin absolutely had our issues here and there, but I actually appreciated Blake probably a lot more after I left.”

Paul went on to discuss the NBA’s unprecedented situation with the social-distancing protocols that have put the season in jeopardy, praising commissioner Adam Silver for his communication with players around the league even amid the uncertainty of how things will play out. As president of the players’ union, Paul will likely be at the center of many of the discussions on how to move forward whenever the league is able to resume play.

One of the actors who played Barry Allen on the CW version of The Flash is dead at 16. The Hollywood Reporter shared the news on Friday that Logan Williams, who played a young version of the title character’s superhero alter ego Barry Allen, had died.

Williams played ‘Young Barry’ in nine episodes from 2014-16, was the younger version of Allen, who as an adult was played by Grant Gustin.

Logan Williams, who played a young Barry Allen on the CW’s The Flash, died Thursday according to multiple reports. He was 16.

A rep for Williams could not immediately be reached for more information, but according to Canada’s Tri-City News, his mother, Marlyse Williams, said Friday she is “absolutely devastated” over his death. No cause of death was revealed.

The story included a post from a The Flash co-star Grant Gust mourning the loss on Instagram.

“Just hearing the devastating news that Logan Williams has passed away suddenly,” Gust wrote. “I was so impressed by not only Logan’s talent but his professionalism on set. My thoughts and prayers will be with him and his family during what is I’m sure an unimaginably difficult time for them.”

A number of other actors and organizations reacted to the news as well, including the SAG-AFTRA Foundation on Twitter.

It’s initially unclear what happened to Williams, but it’s yet another tragic story in a news cycle that never seems to stop producing them these days.

[via THR]

The coronavirus pandemic is now affecting 181 nations—that’s practically every country in the world. While some countries are farther along in the fight and others are just getting going, some of us have been on this journey for the exact same amount of time.

For example, the U.S. and South Korea had our first confirmed coronavirus cases on the same day, January 19. We’re like pandemic twinsies.

Except our different handling of the virus makes us more akin to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito in the movie Twins. Our strategies—and outcomes so far—could not be more different.

For one, South Korea started testing immediately on a widespread scale as soon as the virus arrived there. When they had just four confirmed cases, the government gathered together the country’s top infectious disease experts and twenty companies to start developing an effective test, promising quick regulatory approval. As a result, by the end of February, South Korea had drive-thru testing centers and the ability to test thousands of people per day.

The U.S. testing issues range from bureaucratic snafus to development mistakes to production problems, but suffice it to say our process was not efficient and our testing lagged woefully behind where it should have been.

As a result, South Korea, with a population of 51 million people, had tested nearly 300,000 people as of two weeks ago. The U.S., with a population of 327 million people, had only tested 60,000. The U.S. has since ramped up our testing capacity, but as of yesterday, we had still tested just 1 out of every 273 people compared to South Korea’s 1 out of 119.

Why does early testing matter? Because it makes it possible to locate and isolate cases early on to keep the spread under control. Early testing, contact tracing, and isolating positive cases and their contacts has clearly helped South Korea keep its outbreak better under control. As of the writing of this article, South Korea has just over 10,000 cases and 174 deaths. The U.S. has 274,000 cases and over 7,000 deaths.

South Korea flattened the curve early. We’re still on a steep upward climb with our peak still a ways away.

A doctor recently made headlines for pointing out this discrepancy in our country’s responses and how it hurt the U.S. on Fox News, clearly stunning the host (or the producers in her ear) into ending the segment abruptly. His head shake says it all.

Other aspects of South Korea’s response have also showed an impressive level of innovation and far-sightedness. For example, a doctor at a public health center in Busan created a testing booth that allows health workers to swab patients with minimal use of PPE.

Busan Nam-gu Health Center

“Health care providers require no personal protective equipment as they stand inside the booth and take samples from patients using the gloves protruding outwards,” Dr. Ahn Yeo-hyun, who works at the clinic, told The Korea Herald.

“Having the full layers of the suit on can get stifling after a while, especially with the weather getting warmer,” she said. “The booth is positively pressured to protect the person inside by blocking out air from circulating in.” She also said that disinfecting these booths takes far less time than the ones where patients went inside. “Now, it takes only about five minutes to disinfect the gloves and outer surfaces before the booth is available again for the next patient.”

Since shortages of personal protective equipment has become a universal problem, such testing facilities that don’t require as much PPE could solve at least some of the problems we’re all facing.

And then, of course, there are the small, thoughtful touches that can happen when you succeed at keep an infectious outbreak largely under control. Someone on reddit shared a photo of a care package they’d gotten from the local government in South Korea after being tested.

“Currently in Korea and had some limited contact with a confirmed case. Was immediately notified by my local govt office and tested the next day. Thank God it came back negative, but they still advised that I self quarantine for 14 days.

Got a call from a dedicated case officer today that will check in on me twice a day every day during my quarantine. Mentioned they would drop off some supplies later that day which I thought would be some hand sanitizer and a box of tissues. Boy was I wrong! There was also a lot of included literature about best practices and emergency government income for those that can’t work and aren’t getting paid. It scaled up to about 1500USD for a family of five which as a supplement is pretty helpful.

Honestly the way this whole situation was handled was so efficient, professional and actually a bit calming. Gives me hope that Korea can somewhat cope with this virus (as well as one can hope) with their aggressive testing compared to most other countries.”

That post was shared a month ago. And yeah, no one can argue that South Korea hasn’t coped well with the virus compared to most other countries.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that there are demographic and governmental differences between the U.S. and South Korea that make an apples to apples comparison tricky. But there’s no question that their early and efficient efforts to test for and tackle the virus as soon as it became known made a huge difference in their outcome compared to ours. They did exactly what infectious disease experts recommend and they did it quickly.

Perhaps our leadership could set down the “America has done more than any other country” rhetoric for a sec and learn from the successes of our neighbors across the Pacific. They clearly have a better handle on what to do and how to do it than we do. It may be too late for us to take the measures we should have taken to begin with, but we can at least try to glean whatever wisdom we can from this point on.

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Read this instead of flipping through infomercials.

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Don’t mind me, I’m just gonna bury my head in this pillow.

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Spread the word.

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Much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is on pause, along with the rest of the world, as reality deals with COVID-19 and the struggles of a global pandemic. That means many big movies are delaying release dates later into the calendar, but that doesn’t mean planning for the next phase of the MCU is officially on hold.

The Hollywood Reporter, for example, shared on Friday that Ant Man 3 has found its next writer, and it’s from the Adult Swim universe. According to the report, Rick And Morty writer Jeff Loveness will write the script.

MCU head Kevin Fiege had hinted a third Ant Man movie was in the works, but now we have some idea of who will be at the helm of the film series that will almost certainly see Paul Rudd reprise his role as Scott Lang. According to the report, the deal happened before everything essentially shut down, which means Loveness is already working on things, hopefully from the comfort of his home while socially distancing.

The deal was wrapped up in the early days of Hollywood’s shutdown, according to sources, and Loveness has already commenced writing.

Marvel has yet to publicly announce the project and seeing as writing is just getting underway, it is unclear when the third Ant-Man outing would shoot. Sequels Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder were slated to shoot this year but the coronavirus pandemic has thrown all of Hollywood’s production schedule upside down. On Friday, Disney reshuffled the release dates of its movie slate, pushing back the series of Marvel films known as Phase 4.

THR reported that Peyton Reed is back to direct the film, so fans of the film series will have a lot going for the third act. Whenever it all actually gets filmed and hits the silver screen, that is.

[via THR]