Karol G Recovering From ‘Difficult, Painful’ Battle With Coronavirus

Karol G has confirmed she tested positive for the coronavirus. The 29-year-old star shared the diagnosis during an Instagram Live on Monday.

The Colombian songstress revealed that she found out several weeks ago but didn’t want to worry her parents -- one of the reasons she kept it a secret.

"I didn't want to make it public for various reasons,” she said, addressing fans in Spanish. “I didn't want to make it public because my parents are far away. I didn't want to worry anyone. My family and I are very close and do a lot of things together, and under different circumstances, they would most likely be here with me."

"My single ["Ay DiOs Mío"] was also set to come out, and I didn't want any of the headlines to be about me having the virus,” she added.

The "X" singer said that after testing positive for the virus, she immediately decided to self-isolate from her fiancé, Anuel AA, who does not have the illness. Prior to the news, the couple filmed a video for their song, "Follow," in quarantine.

She added that she is now feeling well and is hopeful that her latest test, taken Monday, comes back negative.

“Thank you to everyone who has reached out,” she said. “I did have COVID-19 and it was very difficult, [and] painful, but I'm recuperating.”

"Thank you for the sweet messages and for everyone that has worried about me,” she continued. “All I can [say] is, please take care of yourself. COVID-19 is real. I didn't want to make this news public ... but I'm doing well."

While isolating from Anuel AA will no doubt be difficult, the singer opened up to ET in August last year about the positive aspects of time apart.

"I feel like being apart from each other also helps our relationship and breaks the monotony of things," she said. "Every time we see each other it's like a surprise and I get really excited. So we don't have a [wedding] date right now, but I'm acting as if we're already married."

The couple's wedding was reportedly postponed due to the pandemic.

Karol G is one of several Latin musicians who have tested positive for the virus, including Prince Royce and members of Morat.

Others in the music industry who have contracted the illness include Pink and Babyface.

COVID-19 Is Surging. Donald Trump’s Response Is Shrinking

Dr. Peter Hotez tuned into last Friday’s White House Coronavirus Briefing hoping he might learn something new. Hotez is the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor’s College of Medicine and one of the leading vaccine researchers in the world. He and a team of scientists are currently working to develop a coronavirus vaccine candidate, but that breakthrough could be months or years away. For now, Hotez wanted to know what federal leaders had planned to deal with the new spike in COVID-19 infections.

Sixty days had gone by since the American public had last heard from the White House Coronavirus Task Force. During that two-month lacuna, almost 70,000 of us died from COVID-19 and more than 1.5 million of us tested positive for the virus. Now, while the countries that were first hit by the virus — China, Italy, Spain — began to reopen their economies and send children back to school, the U.S. plateaued and then entered what appears to be a deadly new phase of the worst pandemic in a century.

But as Hotez listened to the briefing’s rotating cast of administration officials last Friday, he struggled to discern any cogent, consistent message about fighting the virus. What he heard instead, he says, was a mix of self-congratulation, stale science, and spin.

Dr. Peter Hotez tuned into last Friday’s White House Coronavirus Briefing hoping he might learn something new. Hotez is the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor’s College of Medicine and one of the leading vaccine researchers in the world. He and a team of scientists are currently working to develop a coronavirus vaccine candidate, but that breakthrough could be months or years away. For now, Hotez wanted to know what federal leaders had planned to deal with the new spike in COVID-19 infections.

Sixty days had gone by since the American public had last heard from the White House Coronavirus Task Force. During that two-month lacuna, almost 70,000 of us died from COVID-19 and more than 1.5 million of us tested positive for the virus. Now, while the countries that were first hit by the virus — China, Italy, Spain — began to reopen their economies and send children back to school, the U.S. plateaued and then entered what appears to be a deadly new phase of the worst pandemic in a century.

But as Hotez listened to the briefing’s rotating cast of administration officials last Friday, he struggled to discern any cogent, consistent message about fighting the virus. What he heard instead, he says, was a mix of self-congratulation, stale science, and spin.

Vice President Mike Pence said the country had “flattened the curve,” even though the trend line of new cases was aimed unmistakably upward. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar described the recent surge in cases as localized “hotspots,” even though the places experiencing the largest new outbreaks — Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, Phoenix — ranked among the top-ten largest metropolitan areas in the country. Pence cited the declining fatality rate as evidence of progress, even though the data is unequivocal that virus-related deaths can lag behind infections by several weeks.

What Hotez didn’t hear, he told me, was anything like a coherent national strategy for fighting COVID-19. There were ongoing efforts by FEMA and other federal agencies focused on procuring critical medical supplies and expanding testing capacity, as well as the administration’s breakneck push to develop a coronavirus vaccine. But top administration officials offered no discussion of which response measures might make the most impact and should therefore be prioritized, leaving Hotez with the impression that they were chipping around at the edges of the problem. “This is not easy for me to criticize them,” he says of senior officials in the administration. “But even after almost six months, they cannot articulate a cogent plan. I have never gotten a sense of what their plan is.”

Last week’s Task Force briefing was emblematic of a larger problem with the administration’s response to the pandemic. At a time when national leadership, consistent communication, and a well-defined strategy are needed more than ever, doctors, scientists, and public-health experts say the Trump administration is missing in action, content to play a supporting role and to let states and cities take the lead. All the while, President Trump spreads misinformation about testing (“If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases”) and insists the pandemic will just “fade away.”

While it’s impossible from the outside to see everything underway inside the federal government, there are clear indications that the administration has scaled back its response even as the COVID-19 crisis worsens. After meeting daily for much of March and April, the Coronavirus Task Force now meets one to three times a week, according to a Task Force official. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top scientist on the Task Force, has seen his access to the president shrink. And a spokeswoman for FEMA tells Rolling Stone that there are 1,000 fewer employees currently assigned to support COVID-19 work than there were at the peak of the agency’s response.

Baguio City artists join forces to make PPEs for garbage collectors

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a dismal effect on our economy. Lots of workers have been displaced as businesses have been put on hold. Among those badly hit is the art community. With lockdowns and quarantines in place, exhibits and cultural shows have been postponed, if not canceled. Artisan stores and shops have also been closed.

But in Baguio City, the country’s first ever Creative City as awarded by UNESCO, local artists are extending their hands to those most vulnerable. Although most of them are also struggling financially, these artists have been using their skills and talents, coming together to provide food assistance for medical frontliners and to create personal protective equipment (PPE) for the city’s garbage collectors.

This initiative is headed by sculptor and fashion designer Laydeh Alberto, working together with performance artist Francis Siapno a.k.a Miz Kiki Krunch. In a conversation with Manila Bulletin Lifestyle, these two creatives share how Baguio City’s local artists have come together to make this project possible and what inspires them to do it.

Delicious food, relief packs, and PPEs

Laydeh owns Café Cueva, a food store at Ili-Likha Artists Village. Under quarantine, the store has been closed, only available for online and take-out orders. With access to a kitchen that serves mouthwatering food, she decided to provide delicious meals to medical frontliners. While doing this, she thought of the garbage collectors tirelessly working around the city.

“Cafe Cueva has been feeding frontliners from the get-go,” she says. “But I wanted to do more. I can see that the focus is on helping medical workers but we somehow neglect the garbage collectors. They’ve been working continuously even in the ECQ, rain or shine. They work unprotected, to think that they are the ones handling hazardous wastes from hospitals.”

With a limited budget, she looked for ways she could turn her vision of helping these workers into reality. She came across Miz Kiki’s donation drive and that was how their collaboration began. “The café’s sale is down and as much as I wanted to help, I didn’t have the funding for it,” says Laydeh. “That’s when I saw Miz Kiki’s fundraising and I pitched to her my ideas.”

Unexpected collaboration

Kiki’s original plan was to hold a one-man drag queen show for the celebration of her 30th birthday this year. But thanks to Covid-19, this plan was canceled, so she found ways to divert this project into something more useful and helpful.

“I had initial sponsors for my supposed show. Then naisip ko na yung ibibigay sana nila na sponsorship for the show, i-laan ko muna dito sa donation drive since ito naman mas kailangan (I thought of using that sponsorship money to set up a donation drive since it was what was more urgently needed),” says the drag show performer. “We raised around P90,000. We used the initial P60,000 to provide relief packs for the jeepney drivers of Baguio and La Trinidad, Benguet. We also gave to utility workers of the city hall and University of the Philippines-Baguio. The remaining budget, that’s what we’ve been using to make PPEs for garbage collectors.”

According to Kiki, some artists, who didn’t have cash to donate, sent their crafts and products instead for her to sell. The money from the sale has gone to the donation drive. Meanwhile, some used their social media influence to inform people about the fundraising project.

With all these efforts combined, Laydeh has been able to start making PPEs for the garbage collectors. Due to limited access to materials, she used umbrella textile she bought from a local shop. Using an old sewing machine, the fashion designer has been tirelessly sewing these PPEs by herself. The empty Ili-Likha, owned by National Artist for Film Kidlat Tahimik, serves as her studio and production house.

“I’ve been doing it alone, from cutting to sewing,” she says. “We’re aiming to give PPEs to garbage collectors of five barangays. That is equal to 30 PPEs. My thought is, if we protect them, we protect ourselves. It really goes hand in hand.”

Kiki and Laydeh say they are doing all of these because they appreciate the efforts of garbage collectors to serve the community. “They are so brave,” Kiki says. “We’re truly grateful for their service. They are too passionate about their job and I hope they have the same passion when it comes to taking care of themselves. They are frontliners and we need them now more than ever.”

People Claim This Dean Koontz Novel Predicted the COVID-19 Outbreak as “Wuhan-400”

There are so many conspiracy theories about the 2019 novel coronavirus (now named as COVID-19) outbreak that it is hard to tell whether any of these is actually true at all. But there’s a recent impressive “prediction” that has gone viral because an old Dean Koontz novel appears to have predicted the COVID-19 outbreak with some accuracy! The virus involved in the novel is called “Wuhan-400”. And though the one in the movie had a faster incubation period and a 100% mortality rate, it supposedly happened in 2020 and that is the exact year we are in! The book, entitled “The Eyes of Darkness”, was published in 1981.

The bestselling suspense author Dean Koontz wrote the book that tells the story of a Chinese military lab that creates a virus as part of its biological weapons program. “They call the stuff ‘Wuhan-400’ because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside of the city of Wuhan, and it was the four hundredth viable strain of man-made micro-organisms created at that center,” explained Carl Dombey, one of the characters in the novel. The character went on to explain the scary characteristics of the Wuhan-400, saying that it can’t live without a human host of longer than a minute. “If I understand you, the Chinese could use Wuhan-400 to wipe out a city or country, and then there wouldn’t be any need for them to conduct a tricky and expensive decontamination before they moved in and took over the conquered territory,” another character, Elliot, said in reply. Did Dean Koontz Really Predict the Wuhan Outbreak? Eerily, there are many parts of the novel that appear to have really predicted the virus. There is a Wuhan Institute of Virology located just a few kilometers away from Wuhan City. Moreover, COVID-19 is believed to be unable to survive without a host after a few minutes; though it is believed to have come from animals before finding a human host. But according to Mashable, as impressive as the book might have been in “predicting” the Wuhan outbreak, the novel had a Russian biological weapon named “Gorki-400” when it was first published. It was only in later publications that the antagonists became Chinese, the locations moved the China, and the virus renamed to “Wuhan-400”.