The national “yellow alert”, issued late on Thursday, comes after regions from Sichuan in the south-west to Shanghai in the Yangtze delta have experienced weeks of extreme heat, with government officials repeatedly citing global climate change as the cause.
The alert is two notches short of the most serious warning on Beijing’s scale.
In one of the Yangtze’s important flood basins in central China’s Jiangxi province, the Poyang Lake has now shrunk to a quarter of its normal size for this time of year, state news agency Xinhua said on Thursday.
As many as 66 rivers across 34 counties in the south-western region of Chongqing have dried up, state broadcaster CCTV said on Friday.
Rainfall in Chongqing this year is down 60 per cent compared to the seasonal norm, and the soil in several districts is severely short of moisture, CCTV said, citing local government data.
The district of Beibei, north of Chongqing’s urban centre, saw temperatures hit 45 degrees Celsius on Thursday, according to China’s weather bureau.
Chongqing accounted for six of the 10 hottest locations in the country on Friday morning, with temperatures in the district of Bishan already approaching 39 degrees Celsius.
Shanghai was already at 37C.
The Chongqing region’s infrastructure and emergency services have come under increasing strain, with firefighters on high alert as mountain and forest blazes erupted across the region.
State media also reported an increase in cases of heat stroke.
The gas utility in the district of Fuling also told customers on Friday that they would cut off supplies until further notice as they deal with “serious safety hazards”.
The Chongqing agricultural bureau has also set up expert teams to protect vulnerable crops and expand planting to compensate for losses ahead of the autumn harvest.
Rather than make the case for renewed Covid protections, the Biden administration has normalized illness, avoided telegraphing a sense of urgency to the public, and stayed mostly silent about long Covid and Covid mortality. Repeating the catchphrase “We have the tools”—yet not working to make sure everyone has those tools—public health leaders have been resting on unearned laurels. While the president was ill and convalescing—and modeling the staying-busy, back-to-work ethos that the administration is pushing to all Americans—Covid response coordinator Ashish Jha commented, “We are now at a point, I believe, where we can prevent nearly every Covid death in America.” That’s a bizarre claim on its face, given that 5,900 Covid deaths were recorded in the US that very week.
Over recent months, official efforts to steer messaging away from the pandemic and roll back Covid protections have been justified with claims that could seem like common sense: that the public is “tired” and “burned out” and experiencing “pandemic fatigue”; that we find Covid measures “burdensome.” Figures on both sides of the political spectrum have endorsed these assessments, including many Democratic leaders. Amid efforts to roll back pandemic protections, the Biden administration and its allies have leaned on the talking point that the public is “tired, worried, and frustrated”—in need of concessions, fewer rules, and being met “where they are.”
In a sense, this might seem convincing. After all, if politics is “the art of the possible,” isn’t public health the art of the possible too? If people are tired, shouldn’t they be allowed to have a rest? Yet the idea of Covid fatigue or burnout deserves a closer look—not least because it has been used to accomplish so much ideological heavy lifting.
[…]
A tired public is not an argument. In fact, pandemic fatigue is a reason to do more in public health policy—suppressing disease transmission as efficiently as possible to keep morale from fading. The tired-public hypothesis is also an excellent argument for implementing less-obtrusive interventions at the levels of policy and institutions, such as improving indoor ventilation and funding paid sick leave—yet somehow the administration and the CDC are reluctant to connect those dots.
Horror comics
source: SpookyStew 🎃 🍕 🦇 🌭 @elviraswig, pinterest
sorry if i am reblogging stuff that i already blogged recently but my memory is failing me
Periods of Ancient Japanese History
An image illustrating the progression of periods in ancient Japanese civilization from its pre-historic settling by paleolithic migrants from northeast Asia. Through profound domestic evolution and constant international exchange during the main eras of its colorful development (Jōmon, Yayoi, Kofun, Asuka, Nara, and Heian), Japan has seen the rise and fall of emperors, the bloom of the Shinto religion, and multiple interpretations of Buddhism, rule by samurai warriors, some of the oldest pottery vessels and the world’s first novel.
