Author: Brendan Barry

  • So Much To Do, So Little Help

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    Brendan Barry
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    This week I’m on deadline for the magazine I produce. Technically, the files go out Monday, but I spend Monday double/triple-checking things and assembling all the packages I need and so everything really needs to be done the day before, for this quarter, that’s today. Regardless, that means little sleep and craziness. Over at Indexed,…

  • Farewell, Cardboard Cutouts

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    Brendan Barry
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    In 2020, baseball did not permit fans to attend regular season matches. (They changed this for the playoffs.) Instead, many stadiums opted for cardboard cutouts: fans often paid a fee and submitted a picture that the team printed on cardboard cutouts. Like so many things we will say about 2020, it was surreal. But in…

  • Lead Pie

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    Brendan Barry
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    This past weekend, I read an article in Politico discussing parents’ outrage over levels of lead and other toxic metals in baby food. The story focuses on a Congressional report into the matter, but that ties back into an EPA study from 2017 that investigated lead contamination. Specifically the article’s author notes “a chart that…

  • Covid Update: 28 February

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week we saw some positive trends with respect to new Covid-19 cases in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois area. What did we see this week? Curiously, we saw stagnating figures and, in some instances, slight reversals. This stagnation can be seen by the small flattenings at the end of the lines…

  • No, Your Vaccine Is Now Fully Operational

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    Brendan Barry
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    Another week is over, and for the past few years I’ve often said we all made it to the end of the week. When in reality, for the last few months, thousands of people were not. We’ve started using Monday to sort of recap the state of the pandemic in a select region of the…

  • Another Look at 500,000

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    Brendan Barry
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    Yesterday we looked at how the New York Times covered the deaths of 500,000 Americans due to Covid-19. But I also read another article, this by the BBC, that attempted to capture the scale of the tragedy. Instead of looking at the deaths in a timeline, the BBC approached it from a cumulative impact, i.e.…

  • 500,000 Deaths

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    Brendan Barry
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    The United States surpassed 500,000 deaths from Covid-19. On Sunday, in advance of that sobering statistic, the New York Times published a front-page graphic that dominated the layout. Usually a front-page graphic will make use of the four-colour process and present richly coloured graphics. This, however, starkly lays out the timeline of deaths in the…

  • Covid Update: 20 February

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    Brendan Barry
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    Another week, another snowstorm in the Northeast. This winter has been far busier than last, when Philadelphia saw no snow. Unfortunately, whilst people like me enjoy seeing the snow, it’s hampering with testing and vaccination. Last week we saw some middling signs of improvement, but perhaps partially exaggerated by the closures caused by the storm.…

  • Texas-scale Cold

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    Brendan Barry
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    The middle third of the United States sits under some pretty cold Arctic air, helping to bring frozen precipitation, i.e. snow, to places unfamiliar with it, most notably Texas. I say unfamiliar, but Texas is also negligently unprepared. There are photos circulating the internet of Texarkana, a city straddling the Texas–Arkansas border, of the Arkansas…

  • Covid Update: 15 February

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last week we discussed the potential impact of a major nor’easter that struck the East Coast and interrupted testing and vaccination operations in the states we cover: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois (affected by the storm as one of the components moved east across the Midwest). The possibility of an exaggerated downward trajectory…