2-Includes photos on Flickr

New Style by ŢᖆĕŶōŁĨ ❤•.¸✿¸.•❤

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Phoenix hair- :::Phoenix::: Freya Hair Fatpack-Freya comes with styling options,

Highlight Enhancement System

Built in hair base

Optional glitter flakes with sparkle

www.flickr.com/photos/lillyherberg/52668878930/in/datepos...

Sabrina Reed- REED - LILLY FATPACK-Exclusive @Dollholic (Open February 18th)

www.flickr.com/photos/reedstoresl/52695320310/in/dateposted/

TentatioN- * TentatioN * Glasses #2-Includes :

- Glasses (Resize Menu)

- HUD 8 Lens Colors, 3 Leathers, 4 Metals Colors & Opacity

www.flickr.com/photos/145866717@N03/52670259536/in/datepo...

✿ X̷X̷I̷I̷T̷T̷A̷A̷ ✿ by ✿ ƝƛƝƖƖƬƛ ƘƛMƛƘƧӇƖ ✿

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Credits: bluemoodstyle.blogspot.com/2023/03/xxiittaa.html

෴✿෴ ෴✿෴෴✿෴

▶ ⲊⲢⲞⲚⲊⲞⲄ: .:(CW):. Angeles dress. Gold CELESTINAS WEDDINGS & SENSE EVENT //Sense Event starts 18/2 ends 28/2

INCLUDE HEELS & EARRINGS

✿✿EBODY REBORN // JUICY ✿✿KUPRA ORIGINAL ✿✿LEGACY CLASSIC

✿✿MAITREYA LARA

෴✿෴ ෴✿෴෴✿෴

✿ TOKIO Hair - BALLA

✿ LELUTKA HEAD

✿ EBODY REBORN

✿ KUNGLERS - Billie necklace

✿ 12. MVT - Mini leather handbag - Dusty

Himbos by Senpai Bunny - DEFILE

276 13

Just taking the toys home after a long days work, you know what it is.

.:Short Leash:. Playtime Bondage Toy Box & Toy Set #2 *includes both sets* (Left) Currently available at Kinky (Dec 28 - Jan 22): KINKY EVENT Then @ Mainstore

Gent's Essentials Tray (Right) @ Mainstore

ALIYA by Karin Genna

110 14

📍Outfit AMIAS for FaMESHed - Aliya Cardigan, Dress & Boots - Rigged for LaraX & PetiteX, Legacy & Perky, Reborn & Waifu bodies.

📍Bag MY BAGS - My Lotus - Each color sold separate, includes HUD Textures change (lower, strap, handle and handle 2) - Includes 3 bags: 2 with bento pose (Hand&Am), 1mores without pose , Fatpack 14 colors.

📍Skin & Shape MILA for DUBAI - Safiya Tone RoseKiss - Available in chosen VELOUR & BOATAOM tones - This pack includes: Face skin (with/without eyebrows), BOM eyebrow tinter for Brow versión, BOM lipstick tinter, BOM Teeth Add-On, Shine reducer for fase and Shape (LeLutka Briannon).

📍Lashes MILA - Supernova Sway Eyelashes set - Including 3 different set of lashes - Made for LeLutka EvoX heads.

📍Eyes MILA - Angelic Amber Pack - Compatible with Lelutka, Mesh and BOM - Fatpacks available with 8 eye colors.

📍More Info My Blog

The Center of the World by Karen Portin

33 4

One of the unique things we found in our travels through the southwest was the Center of the World in Felicity, California near the border of Arizona. The town, with a population of 2, includes the Church on the Hill constructed on a 35 foot manmade hill, a 21 foot glass and granite pyramid built over the bronze marker of the Center of the World and dozens of polished granite panels containing the history of humanity as written by the founder, Jacques-Andre Istel. Admission is $10.00. The hill is enclosed by a fence.

Happy Fence Friday!

[V.C.LAB] Free Somebody GACHA × EQUAL10 by V.C.Laboratory [V.C.LAB]

265 12

✜RARE 1✜

- Static pose

- include color HUD

✜RARE 2✜

- include color HUD

✜Common✜

- skirt - 8

- outfit - 10

- bag - 5

- necklace - 2

Maitreya / Legacy fit

Please try to use the demo💕

TACO TIME@SENSE EVENT STARTS APRIL 18 TO MAY 8, 2023 by gabby.jaws

56 5

gabbyjaws.blogspot.com/2023/04/taco-timesense-event-start...

FOXCITY. Photo Booth - Empty Lot #1 by Satomi | FOXCITY

348 3

Empty Lot 1 & 2 coming to Uber tomorrow, 25 March

Both 1 & 2 include clean and graffiti versions, sky surround and pre-set lighting. Plenty of unique angles for your photography or videography!

Enjoy ♥

XOXO

Paste this directly into your viewer's address bar for a quick taxi -->>

Uber/161/151/22

[V.C.LAB] Gals Rule GACHA × Ota.Con by V.C.Laboratory [V.C.LAB]

219 17

✜RARE 1✜

- include color HUD

✜RARE 2✜

- include color HUD

✜Common✜

- outfit 1-8

- cardigan 1-5

- shoes 1-4

- bag 1-5

- cell phone 1-3

Maitreya / Legacy fit

Please try to use the demo💕

Hello by Spilledguts

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"I sent a bird to heaven, wings whispering my love, just to say hello to the soul I miss above."

Sponsored By Kuni

Kuni- Anna Hairstyle

2 Head Sizes

4 Breast Sizes

Accessory Included

Style Hud Sold Separately

Kuni Mainstore: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Shinigami/189/225/1502

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not Sponsored

Pure Poison- Maira Nails and Rings

Picasso Babe- Halloween- Curvy Muse- Pink Fairy

Octubre- Cosmic Muse

Lelutka Avalon

Ebody- Reborn

Arkona- Royal Fairy Wings

Amitie- Greek Summer Pose Set

PS- FlowerMist Gown

My Blog: spilledgutsblogs.blogspot.com/2025/08/leila_19.html

Bradford, West Yorkshire by Glass Angel

6

Prudential Insurance, 6 Tyrrel Street, Bradford

Grade II Listed

List Entry Number: 1133642

Details

1. 5111 TYRELL STREET BD1

No 6 (Prudential Assurance) SE 1633 SW 36/142

II

2. Includes No 13 Ivygate and Nos 8 and 10 Sunbridge Road. 1895. A Waterhouse design for the Prudential. Red brick, terracotta and grey granite. Free interpretation of early French Renaissance. Three-storeys with dormers and gables. Three elevations with splayed corners to Sunbridge Road and Ivygate. Round arched doorways and windows on ground floor deeply moulded reveals, stepped sills. Mullioned windows above with weathered strings and panelled aprons. Shallow rectangular oriels at corners with 2 bay arcaded loggias with balconies to third floor. Arcades link gabled dormers, above parapet.

Listing NGR: SE1631133066

historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1133642

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prudential Assurance Buildings, 6 Tyrrel Street, Bradford, 1895.

By Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905).

Grade ll listed.

The only major building in Bradford to be built of red brick and terracotta. The style and materials were those chosen by the company for all its new buildings in order to promote its national image.

@Anthem by Enfer Sombre

50

Viviette Bento pose set 2

Includes mirror version

Anthem / Enfer Sombre

Follow us on PrimFeed

look2 by Cholo Ayuyao

17 1

Look 2 Includes:

Studded Corset

Pants with frayed hem

Cape with shoulder deatils

Train

Metal Finish Neckpiece

Ethnic Print Body Suit

Pair of Shoes

Wig/Headpiece

Fits: Sybarite Newgen Body and similar sized dolls

170208-A-IO170-045 by U.S. Department of Defense Current Photos

12

U.S. Army and Ghanaian medical professionals perform a radical prostatectomy during Medical Readiness Training Exercise 17-2 at the 37th Military Hospital in Accra, Ghana, Feb. 8, 2017. MEDRETE 17-2 includes participants from the Ghanaian government, U.S. Army Africa, Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, and the North Dakota National Guard. It is the second in a series of medical readiness training exercises that USARAF is scheduled to facilitate in various countries in Africa. The mutually beneficial exercise offers opportunities for the partnered militaries to cooperate on medical specific tasks, share best practices and improve medical treatment processes. (U.S. Army Africa photo by Staff Sgt. Shejal Pulivarti)

www.dvidhub.net

look2 by Cholo Ayuyao

15

Look 2 Includes:

Studded Corset

Pants with frayed hem

Cape with shoulder deatils

Train

Metal Finish Neckpiece

Ethnic Print Body Suit

Pair of Shoes

Wig/Headpiece

Fits: Sybarite Newgen Body and similar sized dolls

2014 Disney Parks Princess Mini Doll Set #2 (Modern Princesses) - Disneyland Purchase - First Look - Front Cover Removed - Merida - Full Front View by drj1828

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Merida of Set #2, with the front plastic cover removed, so the dolls are in clear view.

The 2014 Disney Parks Princess Mini Doll Set #2 (Modern Princesses). Set #2 includes the 'Modern' Princesses Rapunzel, Ariel, Jasmine and Merida. Rapunzel is almost identical to the 2011 Parks mini doll, but Ariel is now wearing the aqua green Parks Face Character dress, Jasmine's outfit is simpler and has long peplums (similar to the latest full sized Parks doll), and finally Merida is a brand new addition to the lineup. She differs from the Disney Store mini Merida doll in that she doesn't have a cape, but has a gold Celtic pattern on her adventure dress.

The 2014 Disney Parks Princess Mini Doll Sets. Newly released sets of 5.5 inch mini dolls of eight of the Disney Princesses. They are $29.95 each. Purchased in Disneyland, on Sunday April 6, 2014.

The first set, named the ''Classic Princess Set'' has Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora and Belle. The second set, named the ''Modern Princess Set'' has Ariel, Jasmine, Rapunzel and Merida. Ariel is in her aqua green Parks dress, and Merida is in her dark teal Adventure dress. Missing from the sets are Pocahontas, Mulan and Tiana, who were included in the previous versions of the mini doll sets (first released in 2011). Disneyland was still selling the old set #1, which includes the same four princesses as the current #1 set, but also has Tiana.

2014 Disney Parks Princess Mini Doll Set #2 (Modern Princesses) - Disneyland Purchase - First Look - Front Cover Removed - Jasmine - Full Front View by drj1828

9

Jasmine of Set #2, with the front plastic cover removed, so the dolls are in clear view.

The 2014 Disney Parks Princess Mini Doll Set #2 (Modern Princesses). Set #2 includes the 'Modern' Princesses Rapunzel, Ariel, Jasmine and Merida. Rapunzel is almost identical to the 2011 Parks mini doll, but Ariel is now wearing the aqua green Parks Face Character dress, Jasmine's outfit is simpler and has long peplums (similar to the latest full sized Parks doll), and finally Merida is a brand new addition to the lineup. She differs from the Disney Store mini Merida doll in that she doesn't have a cape, but has a gold Celtic pattern on her adventure dress.

The 2014 Disney Parks Princess Mini Doll Sets. Newly released sets of 5.5 inch mini dolls of eight of the Disney Princesses. They are $29.95 each. Purchased in Disneyland, on Sunday April 6, 2014.

The first set, named the ''Classic Princess Set'' has Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora and Belle. The second set, named the ''Modern Princess Set'' has Ariel, Jasmine, Rapunzel and Merida. Ariel is in her aqua green Parks dress, and Merida is in her dark teal Adventure dress. Missing from the sets are Pocahontas, Mulan and Tiana, who were included in the previous versions of the mini doll sets (first released in 2011). Disneyland was still selling the old set #1, which includes the same four princesses as the current #1 set, but also has Tiana.

Squad 2: Driver's side by Castle Beach FD

7 2

Brand new Squad 2 is a 2014 Ford F-550 4x4 with a Darley 2000 gpm pump, 500 gal. water, 25 Class A foam, 25 gal. Class B foam, and 500 lb. Purple K foam. This little piece of apparatus can also pack quite a punch with a 1500 gpm. Akron Electric StreamMaster II which can be remote controlled.

This apparatus was not intended to replace the larger Engine 2, but rather, to supplement that station's capability. Located in Downtown Castle Beach where a high volume of vehicles present problems for apparatus placement at a scene, this truck was designed to be highly maneuverable. Furthermore, Squad 2 can easily deal with vehicle fires in parking structures where larger apparatus cannot go.

Some of the equipment carried by Squad 2 include the following: axe, New York pike pole, Hurst Combi tool, Halligan, crowbar, 16" PPV fan, a rotary saw, an on-board generator, and a 10,000 lb. winch. The hose complement of Squad 2 is as follows: 500' of 5" hose, 200' of 3" leader hose, 2 sections of 2.5" hose (100' each), 4 high-rise packs, and a 100' booster reel.

Staffed by 2

Firefighter (2x)

Credits:

Darlington PA Mini-pumper 42-3

James K. Ford F-550 cab

Christian C. Ford F-550 cab

Paulo R. Ford F-550 cab

Buddha Statue - 3d by Manfred Sommer

2 1

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease has since spread worldwide, leading to an ongoing pandemic.

Symptoms of COVID-19 are variable, but often include fever, cough, fatigue, breathing difficulties, and loss of smell and taste. Symptoms begin one to fourteen days after exposure to the virus. Of those people who develop noticeable symptoms, most (81%) develop mild to moderate symptoms (up to mild pneumonia), while 14% develop severe symptoms (dyspnea, hypoxia, or more than 50% lung involvement on imaging), and 5% suffer critical symptoms (respiratory failure, shock, or multiorgan dysfunction). Older people are more likely to have severe symptoms. At least a third of the people who are infected with the virus remain asymptomatic and do not develop noticeable symptoms at any point in time, but they still can spread the disease.[ Around 20% of those people will remain asymptomatic throughout infection, and the rest will develop symptoms later on, becoming pre-symptomatic rather than asymptomatic and therefore having a higher risk of transmitting the virus to others. Some people continue to experience a range of effects—known as long COVID—for months after recovery, and damage to organs has been observed. Multi-year studies are underway to further investigate the long-term effects of the disease.

The virus that causes COVID-19 spreads mainly when an infected person is in close contact[a] with another person. Small droplets and aerosols containing the virus can spread from an infected person's nose and mouth as they breathe, cough, sneeze, sing, or speak. Other people are infected if the virus gets into their mouth, nose or eyes. The virus may also spread via contaminated surfaces, although this is not thought to be the main route of transmission. The exact route of transmission is rarely proven conclusively, but infection mainly happens when people are near each other for long enough. People who are infected can transmit the virus to another person up to two days before they themselves show symptoms, as can people who do not experience symptoms. People remain infectious for up to ten days after the onset of symptoms in moderate cases and up to 20 days in severe cases. Several testing methods have been developed to diagnose the disease. The standard diagnostic method is by detection of the virus' nucleic acid by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR), transcription-mediated amplification (TMA), or by reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) from a nasopharyngeal swab.

Preventive measures include physical or social distancing, quarantining, ventilation of indoor spaces, covering coughs and sneezes, hand washing, and keeping unwashed hands away from the face. The use of face masks or coverings has been recommended in public settings to minimise the risk of transmissions. Several vaccines have been developed and several countries have initiated mass vaccination campaigns.

Although work is underway to develop drugs that inhibit the virus, the primary treatment is currently symptomatic. Management involves the treatment of symptoms, supportive care, isolation, and experimental measures.

SIGNS AND SYSTOMS

Symptoms of COVID-19 are variable, ranging from mild symptoms to severe illness. Common symptoms include headache, loss of smell and taste, nasal congestion and rhinorrhea, cough, muscle pain, sore throat, fever, diarrhea, and breathing difficulties. People with the same infection may have different symptoms, and their symptoms may change over time. Three common clusters of symptoms have been identified: one respiratory symptom cluster with cough, sputum, shortness of breath, and fever; a musculoskeletal symptom cluster with muscle and joint pain, headache, and fatigue; a cluster of digestive symptoms with abdominal pain, vomiting, and diarrhea. In people without prior ear, nose, and throat disorders, loss of taste combined with loss of smell is associated with COVID-19.

Most people (81%) develop mild to moderate symptoms (up to mild pneumonia), while 14% develop severe symptoms (dyspnea, hypoxia, or more than 50% lung involvement on imaging) and 5% of patients suffer critical symptoms (respiratory failure, shock, or multiorgan dysfunction). At least a third of the people who are infected with the virus do not develop noticeable symptoms at any point in time. These asymptomatic carriers tend not to get tested and can spread the disease. Other infected people will develop symptoms later, called "pre-symptomatic", or have very mild symptoms and can also spread the virus.

As is common with infections, there is a delay between the moment a person first becomes infected and the appearance of the first symptoms. The median delay for COVID-19 is four to five days. Most symptomatic people experience symptoms within two to seven days after exposure, and almost all will experience at least one symptom within 12 days.

Most people recover from the acute phase of the disease. However, some people continue to experience a range of effects for months after recovery—named long COVID—and damage to organs has been observed. Multi-year studies are underway to further investigate the long-term effects of the disease.

CAUSE

TRANSMISSION

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spreads from person to person mainly through the respiratory route after an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks or breathes. A new infection occurs when virus-containing particles exhaled by an infected person, either respiratory droplets or aerosols, get into the mouth, nose, or eyes of other people who are in close contact with the infected person. During human-to-human transmission, an average 1000 infectious SARS-CoV-2 virions are thought to initiate a new infection.

The closer people interact, and the longer they interact, the more likely they are to transmit COVID-19. Closer distances can involve larger droplets (which fall to the ground) and aerosols, whereas longer distances only involve aerosols. Larger droplets can also turn into aerosols (known as droplet nuclei) through evaporation. The relative importance of the larger droplets and the aerosols is not clear as of November 2020; however, the virus is not known to spread between rooms over long distances such as through air ducts. Airborne transmission is able to particularly occur indoors, in high risk locations such as restaurants, choirs, gyms, nightclubs, offices, and religious venues, often when they are crowded or less ventilated. It also occurs in healthcare settings, often when aerosol-generating medical procedures are performed on COVID-19 patients.

Although it is considered possible there is no direct evidence of the virus being transmitted by skin to skin contact. A person could get COVID-19 indirectly by touching a contaminated surface or object before touching their own mouth, nose, or eyes, though this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads. The virus is not known to spread through feces, urine, breast milk, food, wastewater, drinking water, or via animal disease vectors (although some animals can contract the virus from humans). It very rarely transmits from mother to baby during pregnancy.

Social distancing and the wearing of cloth face masks, surgical masks, respirators, or other face coverings are controls for droplet transmission. Transmission may be decreased indoors with well maintained heating and ventilation systems to maintain good air circulation and increase the use of outdoor air.

The number of people generally infected by one infected person varies. Coronavirus disease 2019 is more infectious than influenza, but less so than measles. It often spreads in clusters, where infections can be traced back to an index case or geographical location. There is a major role of "super-spreading events", where many people are infected by one person.

A person who is infected can transmit the virus to others up to two days before they themselves show symptoms, and even if symptoms never appear. People remain infectious in moderate cases for 7–12 days, and up to two weeks in severe cases. In October 2020, medical scientists reported evidence of reinfection in one person.

VIROLOGY

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. It was first isolated from three people with pneumonia connected to the cluster of acute respiratory illness cases in Wuhan. All structural features of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus particle occur in related coronaviruses in nature.

Outside the human body, the virus is destroyed by household soap, which bursts its protective bubble.

SARS-CoV-2 is closely related to the original SARS-CoV. It is thought to have an animal (zoonotic) origin. Genetic analysis has revealed that the coronavirus genetically clusters with the genus Betacoronavirus, in subgenus Sarbecovirus (lineage B) together with two bat-derived strains. It is 96% identical at the whole genome level to other bat coronavirus samples (BatCov RaTG13). The structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2 include membrane glycoprotein (M), envelope protein (E), nucleocapsid protein (N), and the spike protein (S). The M protein of SARS-CoV-2 is about 98% similar to the M protein of bat SARS-CoV, maintains around 98% homology with pangolin SARS-CoV, and has 90% homology with the M protein of SARS-CoV; whereas, the similarity is only around 38% with the M protein of MERS-CoV. The structure of the M protein resembles the sugar transporter SemiSWEET.

The many thousands of SARS-CoV-2 variants are grouped into clades. Several different clade nomenclatures have been proposed. Nextstrain divides the variants into five clades (19A, 19B, 20A, 20B, and 20C), while GISAID divides them into seven (L, O, V, S, G, GH, and GR).

Several notable variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerged in late 2020. Cluster 5 emerged among minks and mink farmers in Denmark. After strict quarantines and a mink euthanasia campaign, it is believed to have been eradicated. The Variant of Concern 202012/01 (VOC 202012/01) is believed to have emerged in the United Kingdom in September. The 501Y.V2 Variant, which has the same N501Y mutation, arose independently in South Africa.

SARS-CoV-2 VARIANTS

Three known variants of SARS-CoV-2 are currently spreading among global populations as of January 2021 including the UK Variant (referred to as B.1.1.7) first found in London and Kent, a variant discovered in South Africa (referred to as 1.351), and a variant discovered in Brazil (referred to as P.1).

Using Whole Genome Sequencing, epidemiology and modelling suggest the new UK variant ‘VUI – 202012/01’ (the first Variant Under Investigation in December 2020) transmits more easily than other strains.

PATHOPHYSIOLOGY

COVID-19 can affect the upper respiratory tract (sinuses, nose, and throat) and the lower respiratory tract (windpipe and lungs). The lungs are the organs most affected by COVID-19 because the virus accesses host cells via the enzyme angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), which is most abundant in type II alveolar cells of the lungs. The virus uses a special surface glycoprotein called a "spike" (peplomer) to connect to ACE2 and enter the host cell. The density of ACE2 in each tissue correlates with the severity of the disease in that tissue and decreasing ACE2 activity might be protective, though another view is that increasing ACE2 using angiotensin II receptor blocker medications could be protective. As the alveolar disease progresses, respiratory failure might develop and death may follow.

Whether SARS-CoV-2 is able to invade the nervous system remains unknown. The virus is not detected in the CNS of the majority of COVID-19 people with neurological issues. However, SARS-CoV-2 has been detected at low levels in the brains of those who have died from COVID-19, but these results need to be confirmed. SARS-CoV-2 could cause respiratory failure through affecting the brain stem as other coronaviruses have been found to invade the CNS. While virus has been detected in cerebrospinal fluid of autopsies, the exact mechanism by which it invades the CNS remains unclear and may first involve invasion of peripheral nerves given the low levels of ACE2 in the brain. The virus may also enter the bloodstream from the lungs and cross the blood-brain barrier to gain access to the CNS, possibly within an infected white blood cell.

The virus also affects gastrointestinal organs as ACE2 is abundantly expressed in the glandular cells of gastric, duodenal and rectal epithelium as well as endothelial cells and enterocytes of the small intestine.

The virus can cause acute myocardial injury and chronic damage to the cardiovascular system. An acute cardiac injury was found in 12% of infected people admitted to the hospital in Wuhan, China, and is more frequent in severe disease. Rates of cardiovascular symptoms are high, owing to the systemic inflammatory response and immune system disorders during disease progression, but acute myocardial injuries may also be related to ACE2 receptors in the heart. ACE2 receptors are highly expressed in the heart and are involved in heart function. A high incidence of thrombosis and venous thromboembolism have been found people transferred to Intensive care unit (ICU) with COVID-19 infections, and may be related to poor prognosis. Blood vessel dysfunction and clot formation (as suggested by high D-dimer levels caused by blood clots) are thought to play a significant role in mortality, incidences of clots leading to pulmonary embolisms, and ischaemic events within the brain have been noted as complications leading to death in people infected with SARS-CoV-2. Infection appears to set off a chain of vasoconstrictive responses within the body, constriction of blood vessels within the pulmonary circulation has also been posited as a mechanism in which oxygenation decreases alongside the presentation of viral pneumonia. Furthermore, microvascular blood vessel damage has been reported in a small number of tissue samples of the brains – without detected SARS-CoV-2 – and the olfactory bulbs from those who have died from COVID-19.

Another common cause of death is complications related to the kidneys. Early reports show that up to 30% of hospitalized patients both in China and in New York have experienced some injury to their kidneys, including some persons with no previous kidney problems.

Autopsies of people who died of COVID-19 have found diffuse alveolar damage, and lymphocyte-containing inflammatory infiltrates within the lung.

IMMUNOPATHOLOGY

Although SARS-CoV-2 has a tropism for ACE2-expressing epithelial cells of the respiratory tract, people with severe COVID-19 have symptoms of systemic hyperinflammation. Clinical laboratory findings of elevated IL-2, IL-7, IL-6, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interferon-γ inducible protein 10 (IP-10), monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1), macrophage inflammatory protein 1-α (MIP-1α), and tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) indicative of cytokine release syndrome (CRS) suggest an underlying immunopathology.

Additionally, people with COVID-19 and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) have classical serum biomarkers of CRS, including elevated C-reactive protein (CRP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), D-dimer, and ferritin.

Systemic inflammation results in vasodilation, allowing inflammatory lymphocytic and monocytic infiltration of the lung and the heart. In particular, pathogenic GM-CSF-secreting T-cells were shown to correlate with the recruitment of inflammatory IL-6-secreting monocytes and severe lung pathology in people with COVID-19 . Lymphocytic infiltrates have also been reported at autopsy.

VIRAL AND HOST FACTORS

VIRUS PROTEINS

Multiple viral and host factors affect the pathogenesis of the virus. The S-protein, otherwise known as the spike protein, is the viral component that attaches to the host receptor via the ACE2 receptors. It includes two subunits: S1 and S2. S1 determines the virus host range and cellular tropism via the receptor binding domain. S2 mediates the membrane fusion of the virus to its potential cell host via the H1 and HR2, which are heptad repeat regions. Studies have shown that S1 domain induced IgG and IgA antibody levels at a much higher capacity. It is the focus spike proteins expression that are involved in many effective COVID-19 vaccines.

The M protein is the viral protein responsible for the transmembrane transport of nutrients. It is the cause of the bud release and the formation of the viral envelope. The N and E protein are accessory proteins that interfere with the host's immune response.

HOST FACTORS

Human angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) is the host factor that SARS-COV2 virus targets causing COVID-19. Theoretically the usage of angiotensin receptor blockers (ARB) and ACE inhibitors upregulating ACE2 expression might increase morbidity with COVID-19, though animal data suggest some potential protective effect of ARB. However no clinical studies have proven susceptibility or outcomes. Until further data is available, guidelines and recommendations for hypertensive patients remain.

The virus' effect on ACE2 cell surfaces leads to leukocytic infiltration, increased blood vessel permeability, alveolar wall permeability, as well as decreased secretion of lung surfactants. These effects cause the majority of the respiratory symptoms. However, the aggravation of local inflammation causes a cytokine storm eventually leading to a systemic inflammatory response syndrome.

HOST CYTOKINE RESPONSE

The severity of the inflammation can be attributed to the severity of what is known as the cytokine storm. Levels of interleukin 1B, interferon-gamma, interferon-inducible protein 10, and monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 were all associated with COVID-19 disease severity. Treatment has been proposed to combat the cytokine storm as it remains to be one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in COVID-19 disease.

A cytokine storm is due to an acute hyperinflammatory response that is responsible for clinical illness in an array of diseases but in COVID-19, it is related to worse prognosis and increased fatality. The storm causes the acute respiratory distress syndrome, blood clotting events such as strokes, myocardial infarction, encephalitis, acute kidney injury, and vasculitis. The production of IL-1, IL-2, IL-6, TNF-alpha, and interferon-gamma, all crucial components of normal immune responses, inadvertently become the causes of a cytokine storm. The cells of the central nervous system, the microglia, neurons, and astrocytes, are also be involved in the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines affecting the nervous system, and effects of cytokine storms toward the CNS are not uncommon.

DIAGNOSIS

COVID-19 can provisionally be diagnosed on the basis of symptoms and confirmed using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) or other nucleic acid testing of infected secretions. Along with laboratory testing, chest CT scans may be helpful to diagnose COVID-19 in individuals with a high clinical suspicion of infection. Detection of a past infection is possible with serological tests, which detect antibodies produced by the body in response to the infection.

VIRAL TESTING

The standard methods of testing for presence of SARS-CoV-2 are nucleic acid tests, which detects the presence of viral RNA fragments. As these tests detect RNA but not infectious virus, its "ability to determine duration of infectivity of patients is limited." The test is typically done on respiratory samples obtained by a nasopharyngeal swab; however, a nasal swab or sputum sample may also be used. Results are generally available within hours. The WHO has published several testing protocols for the disease.

A number of laboratories and companies have developed serological tests, which detect antibodies produced by the body in response to infection. Several have been evaluated by Public Health England and approved for use in the UK.

The University of Oxford's CEBM has pointed to mounting evidence that "a good proportion of 'new' mild cases and people re-testing positives after quarantine or discharge from hospital are not infectious, but are simply clearing harmless virus particles which their immune system has efficiently dealt with" and have called for "an international effort to standardize and periodically calibrate testing" On 7 September, the UK government issued "guidance for procedures to be implemented in laboratories to provide assurance of positive SARS-CoV-2 RNA results during periods of low prevalence, when there is a reduction in the predictive value of positive test results."

IMAGING

Chest CT scans may be helpful to diagnose COVID-19 in individuals with a high clinical suspicion of infection but are not recommended for routine screening. Bilateral multilobar ground-glass opacities with a peripheral, asymmetric, and posterior distribution are common in early infection. Subpleural dominance, crazy paving (lobular septal thickening with variable alveolar filling), and consolidation may appear as the disease progresses. Characteristic imaging features on chest radiographs and computed tomography (CT) of people who are symptomatic include asymmetric peripheral ground-glass opacities without pleural effusions.

Many groups have created COVID-19 datasets that include imagery such as the Italian Radiological Society which has compiled an international online database of imaging findings for confirmed cases. Due to overlap with other infections such as adenovirus, imaging without confirmation by rRT-PCR is of limited specificity in identifying COVID-19. A large study in China compared chest CT results to PCR and demonstrated that though imaging is less specific for the infection, it is faster and more sensitive.

Coding

In late 2019, the WHO assigned emergency ICD-10 disease codes U07.1 for deaths from lab-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection and U07.2 for deaths from clinically or epidemiologically diagnosed COVID-19 without lab-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection.

PATHOLOGY

The main pathological findings at autopsy are:

Macroscopy: pericarditis, lung consolidation and pulmonary oedema

Lung findings:

minor serous exudation, minor fibrin exudation

pulmonary oedema, pneumocyte hyperplasia, large atypical pneumocytes, interstitial inflammation with lymphocytic infiltration and multinucleated giant cell formation

diffuse alveolar damage (DAD) with diffuse alveolar exudates. DAD is the cause of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and severe hypoxemia.

organisation of exudates in alveolar cavities and pulmonary interstitial fibrosis

plasmocytosis in BAL

Blood: disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC); leukoerythroblastic reaction

Liver: microvesicular steatosis

PREVENTION

Preventive measures to reduce the chances of infection include staying at home, wearing a mask in public, avoiding crowded places, keeping distance from others, ventilating indoor spaces, washing hands with soap and water often and for at least 20 seconds, practising good respiratory hygiene, and avoiding touching the eyes, nose, or mouth with unwashed hands.

Those diagnosed with COVID-19 or who believe they may be infected are advised by the CDC to stay home except to get medical care, call ahead before visiting a healthcare provider, wear a face mask before entering the healthcare provider's office and when in any room or vehicle with another person, cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue, regularly wash hands with soap and water and avoid sharing personal household items.

The first COVID-19 vaccine was granted regulatory approval on 2 December by the UK medicines regulator MHRA. It was evaluated for emergency use authorization (EUA) status by the US FDA, and in several other countries. Initially, the US National Institutes of Health guidelines do not recommend any medication for prevention of COVID-19, before or after exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, outside the setting of a clinical trial. Without a vaccine, other prophylactic measures, or effective treatments, a key part of managing COVID-19 is trying to decrease and delay the epidemic peak, known as "flattening the curve". This is done by slowing the infection rate to decrease the risk of health services being overwhelmed, allowing for better treatment of current cases, and delaying additional cases until effective treatments or a vaccine become available.

VACCINE

A COVID‑19 vaccine is a vaccine intended to provide acquired immunity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2), the virus causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‑19). Prior to the COVID‑19 pandemic, there was an established body of knowledge about the structure and function of coronaviruses causing diseases like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), which enabled accelerated development of various vaccine technologies during early 2020. On 10 January 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence data was shared through GISAID, and by 19 March, the global pharmaceutical industry announced a major commitment to address COVID-19.

In Phase III trials, several COVID‑19 vaccines have demonstrated efficacy as high as 95% in preventing symptomatic COVID‑19 infections. As of March 2021, 12 vaccines were authorized by at least one national regulatory authority for public use: two RNA vaccines (the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine), four conventional inactivated vaccines (BBIBP-CorV, CoronaVac, Covaxin, and CoviVac), four viral vector vaccines (Sputnik V, the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine, Convidicea, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine), and two protein subunit vaccines (EpiVacCorona and RBD-Dimer). In total, as of March 2021, 308 vaccine candidates were in various stages of development, with 73 in clinical research, including 24 in Phase I trials, 33 in Phase I–II trials, and 16 in Phase III development.

Many countries have implemented phased distribution plans that prioritize those at highest risk of complications, such as the elderly, and those at high risk of exposure and transmission, such as healthcare workers. As of 17 March 2021, 400.22 million doses of COVID‑19 vaccine have been administered worldwide based on official reports from national health agencies. AstraZeneca-Oxford anticipates producing 3 billion doses in 2021, Pfizer-BioNTech 1.3 billion doses, and Sputnik V, Sinopharm, Sinovac, and Johnson & Johnson 1 billion doses each. Moderna targets producing 600 million doses and Convidicea 500 million doses in 2021. By December 2020, more than 10 billion vaccine doses had been preordered by countries, with about half of the doses purchased by high-income countries comprising 14% of the world's population.

SOCIAL DISTANCING

Social distancing (also known as physical distancing) includes infection control actions intended to slow the spread of the disease by minimising close contact between individuals. Methods include quarantines; travel restrictions; and the closing of schools, workplaces, stadiums, theatres, or shopping centres. Individuals may apply social distancing methods by staying at home, limiting travel, avoiding crowded areas, using no-contact greetings, and physically distancing themselves from others. Many governments are now mandating or recommending social distancing in regions affected by the outbreak.

Outbreaks have occurred in prisons due to crowding and an inability to enforce adequate social distancing. In the United States, the prisoner population is aging and many of them are at high risk for poor outcomes from COVID-19 due to high rates of coexisting heart and lung disease, and poor access to high-quality healthcare.

SELF-ISOLATION

Self-isolation at home has been recommended for those diagnosed with COVID-19 and those who suspect they have been infected. Health agencies have issued detailed instructions for proper self-isolation. Many governments have mandated or recommended self-quarantine for entire populations. The strongest self-quarantine instructions have been issued to those in high-risk groups. Those who may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19 and those who have recently travelled to a country or region with the widespread transmission have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days from the time of last possible exposure.

Face masks and respiratory hygiene

The WHO and the US CDC recommend individuals wear non-medical face coverings in public settings where there is an increased risk of transmission and where social distancing measures are difficult to maintain. This recommendation is meant to reduce the spread of the disease by asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic individuals and is complementary to established preventive measures such as social distancing. Face coverings limit the volume and travel distance of expiratory droplets dispersed when talking, breathing, and coughing. A face covering without vents or holes will also filter out particles containing the virus from inhaled and exhaled air, reducing the chances of infection. But, if the mask include an exhalation valve, a wearer that is infected (maybe without having noticed that, and asymptomatic) would transmit the virus outwards through it, despite any certification they can have. So the masks with exhalation valve are not for the infected wearers, and are not reliable to stop the pandemic in a large scale. Many countries and local jurisdictions encourage or mandate the use of face masks or cloth face coverings by members of the public to limit the spread of the virus.

Masks are also strongly recommended for those who may have been infected and those taking care of someone who may have the disease. When not wearing a mask, the CDC recommends covering the mouth and nose with a tissue when coughing or sneezing and recommends using the inside of the elbow if no tissue is available. Proper hand hygiene after any cough or sneeze is encouraged. Healthcare professionals interacting directly with people who have COVID-19 are advised to use respirators at least as protective as NIOSH-certified N95 or equivalent, in addition to other personal protective equipment.

HAND-WASHING AND HYGIENE

Thorough hand hygiene after any cough or sneeze is required. The WHO also recommends that individuals wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the toilet or when hands are visibly dirty, before eating and after blowing one's nose. The CDC recommends using an alcohol-based hand sanitiser with at least 60% alcohol, but only when soap and water are not readily available. For areas where commercial hand sanitisers are not readily available, the WHO provides two formulations for local production. In these formulations, the antimicrobial activity arises from ethanol or isopropanol. Hydrogen peroxide is used to help eliminate bacterial spores in the alcohol; it is "not an active substance for hand antisepsis". Glycerol is added as a humectant.

SURFACE CLEANING

After being expelled from the body, coronaviruses can survive on surfaces for hours to days. If a person touches the dirty surface, they may deposit the virus at the eyes, nose, or mouth where it can enter the body cause infection. Current evidence indicates that contact with infected surfaces is not the main driver of Covid-19, leading to recommendations for optimised disinfection procedures to avoid issues such as the increase of antimicrobial resistance through the use of inappropriate cleaning products and processes. Deep cleaning and other surface sanitation has been criticized as hygiene theater, giving a false sense of security against something primarily spread through the air.

The amount of time that the virus can survive depends significantly on the type of surface, the temperature, and the humidity. Coronaviruses die very quickly when exposed to the UV light in sunlight. Like other enveloped viruses, SARS-CoV-2 survives longest when the temperature is at room temperature or lower, and when the relative humidity is low (<50%).

On many surfaces, including as glass, some types of plastic, stainless steel, and skin, the virus can remain infective for several days indoors at room temperature, or even about a week under ideal conditions. On some surfaces, including cotton fabric and copper, the virus usually dies after a few hours. As a general rule of thumb, the virus dies faster on porous surfaces than on non-porous surfaces.

However, this rule is not absolute, and of the many surfaces tested, two with the longest survival times are N95 respirator masks and surgical masks, both of which are considered porous surfaces.

Surfaces may be decontaminated with 62–71 percent ethanol, 50–100 percent isopropanol, 0.1 percent sodium hypochlorite, 0.5 percent hydrogen peroxide, and 0.2–7.5 percent povidone-iodine. Other solutions, such as benzalkonium chloride and chlorhexidine gluconate, are less effective. Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation may also be used. The CDC recommends that if a COVID-19 case is suspected or confirmed at a facility such as an office or day care, all areas such as offices, bathrooms, common areas, shared electronic equipment like tablets, touch screens, keyboards, remote controls, and ATM machines used by the ill persons should be disinfected. A datasheet comprising the authorised substances to disinfection in the food industry (including suspension or surface tested, kind of surface, use dilution, disinfectant and inocuylum volumes) can be seen in the supplementary material of.

VENTILATION AND AIR FILTRATION

The WHO recommends ventilation and air filtration in public spaces to help clear out infectious aerosols.

HEALTHY DIET AND LIFESTYLE

The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health recommends a healthy diet, being physically active, managing psychological stress, and getting enough sleep.

While there is no evidence that vitamin D is an effective treatment for COVID-19, there is limited evidence that vitamin D deficiency increases the risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms. This has led to recommendations for individuals with vitamin D deficiency to take vitamin D supplements as a way of mitigating the risk of COVID-19 and other health issues associated with a possible increase in deficiency due to social distancing.

TREATMENT

There is no specific, effective treatment or cure for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Thus, the cornerstone of management of COVID-19 is supportive care, which includes treatment to relieve symptoms, fluid therapy, oxygen support and prone positioning as needed, and medications or devices to support other affected vital organs.

Most cases of COVID-19 are mild. In these, supportive care includes medication such as paracetamol or NSAIDs to relieve symptoms (fever, body aches, cough), proper intake of fluids, rest, and nasal breathing. Good personal hygiene and a healthy diet are also recommended. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend that those who suspect they are carrying the virus isolate themselves at home and wear a face mask.

People with more severe cases may need treatment in hospital. In those with low oxygen levels, use of the glucocorticoid dexamethasone is strongly recommended, as it can reduce the risk of death. Noninvasive ventilation and, ultimately, admission to an intensive care unit for mechanical ventilation may be required to support breathing. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) has been used to address the issue of respiratory failure, but its benefits are still under consideration.

Several experimental treatments are being actively studied in clinical trials. Others were thought to be promising early in the pandemic, such as hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir, but later research found them to be ineffective or even harmful. Despite ongoing research, there is still not enough high-quality evidence to recommend so-called early treatment. Nevertheless, in the United States, two monoclonal antibody-based therapies are available for early use in cases thought to be at high risk of progression to severe disease. The antiviral remdesivir is available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and several other countries, with varying restrictions; however, it is not recommended for people needing mechanical ventilation, and is discouraged altogether by the World Health Organization (WHO), due to limited evidence of its efficacy.

PROGNOSIS

The severity of COVID-19 varies. The disease may take a mild course with few or no symptoms, resembling other common upper respiratory diseases such as the common cold. In 3–4% of cases (7.4% for those over age 65) symptoms are severe enough to cause hospitalization. Mild cases typically recover within two weeks, while those with severe or critical diseases may take three to six weeks to recover. Among those who have died, the time from symptom onset to death has ranged from two to eight weeks. The Italian Istituto Superiore di Sanità reported that the median time between the onset of symptoms and death was twelve days, with seven being hospitalised. However, people transferred to an ICU had a median time of ten days between hospitalisation and death. Prolonged prothrombin time and elevated C-reactive protein levels on admission to the hospital are associated with severe course of COVID-19 and with a transfer to ICU.

Some early studies suggest 10% to 20% of people with COVID-19 will experience symptoms lasting longer than a month.[191][192] A majority of those who were admitted to hospital with severe disease report long-term problems including fatigue and shortness of breath. On 30 October 2020 WHO chief Tedros Adhanom warned that "to a significant number of people, the COVID virus poses a range of serious long-term effects". He has described the vast spectrum of COVID-19 symptoms that fluctuate over time as "really concerning." They range from fatigue, a cough and shortness of breath, to inflammation and injury of major organs – including the lungs and heart, and also neurological and psychologic effects. Symptoms often overlap and can affect any system in the body. Infected people have reported cyclical bouts of fatigue, headaches, months of complete exhaustion, mood swings, and other symptoms. Tedros has concluded that therefore herd immunity is "morally unconscionable and unfeasible".

In terms of hospital readmissions about 9% of 106,000 individuals had to return for hospital treatment within 2 months of discharge. The average to readmit was 8 days since first hospital visit. There are several risk factors that have been identified as being a cause of multiple admissions to a hospital facility. Among these are advanced age (above 65 years of age) and presence of a chronic condition such as diabetes, COPD, heart failure or chronic kidney disease.

According to scientific reviews smokers are more likely to require intensive care or die compared to non-smokers, air pollution is similarly associated with risk factors, and pre-existing heart and lung diseases and also obesity contributes to an increased health risk of COVID-19.

It is also assumed that those that are immunocompromised are at higher risk of getting severely sick from SARS-CoV-2. One research that looked into the COVID-19 infections in hospitalized kidney transplant recipients found a mortality rate of 11%.

See also: Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children

Children make up a small proportion of reported cases, with about 1% of cases being under 10 years and 4% aged 10–19 years. They are likely to have milder symptoms and a lower chance of severe disease than adults. A European multinational study of hospitalized children published in The Lancet on 25 June 2020 found that about 8% of children admitted to a hospital needed intensive care. Four of those 582 children (0.7%) died, but the actual mortality rate could be "substantially lower" since milder cases that did not seek medical help were not included in the study.

Genetics also plays an important role in the ability to fight off the disease. For instance, those that do not produce detectable type I interferons or produce auto-antibodies against these may get much sicker from COVID-19. Genetic screening is able to detect interferon effector genes.

Pregnant women may be at higher risk of severe COVID-19 infection based on data from other similar viruses, like SARS and MERS, but data for COVID-19 is lacking.

COMPLICATIONS

Complications may include pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), multi-organ failure, septic shock, and death. Cardiovascular complications may include heart failure, arrhythmias, heart inflammation, and blood clots. Approximately 20–30% of people who present with COVID-19 have elevated liver enzymes, reflecting liver injury.

Neurologic manifestations include seizure, stroke, encephalitis, and Guillain–Barré syndrome (which includes loss of motor functions). Following the infection, children may develop paediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome, which has symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease, which can be fatal. In very rare cases, acute encephalopathy can occur, and it can be considered in those who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and have an altered mental status.

LONGER-TERM EFFECTS

Some early studies suggest that that 10 to 20% of people with COVID-19 will experience symptoms lasting longer than a month. A majority of those who were admitted to hospital with severe disease report long-term problems, including fatigue and shortness of breath. About 5-10% of patients admitted to hospital progress to severe or critical disease, including pneumonia and acute respiratory failure.

By a variety of mechanisms, the lungs are the organs most affected in COVID-19.[228] The majority of CT scans performed show lung abnormalities in people tested after 28 days of illness.

People with advanced age, severe disease, prolonged ICU stays, or who smoke are more likely to have long lasting effects, including pulmonary fibrosis. Overall, approximately one third of those investigated after 4 weeks will have findings of pulmonary fibrosis or reduced lung function as measured by DLCO, even in people who are asymptomatic, but with the suggestion of continuing improvement with the passing of more time.

IMMUNITY

The immune response by humans to CoV-2 virus occurs as a combination of the cell-mediated immunity and antibody production, just as with most other infections. Since SARS-CoV-2 has been in the human population only since December 2019, it remains unknown if the immunity is long-lasting in people who recover from the disease. The presence of neutralizing antibodies in blood strongly correlates with protection from infection, but the level of neutralizing antibody declines with time. Those with asymptomatic or mild disease had undetectable levels of neutralizing antibody two months after infection. In another study, the level of neutralizing antibody fell 4-fold 1 to 4 months after the onset of symptoms. However, the lack of antibody in the blood does not mean antibody will not be rapidly produced upon reexposure to SARS-CoV-2. Memory B cells specific for the spike and nucleocapsid proteins of SARS-CoV-2 last for at least 6 months after appearance of symptoms. Nevertheless, 15 cases of reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 have been reported using stringent CDC criteria requiring identification of a different variant from the second infection. There are likely to be many more people who have been reinfected with the virus. Herd immunity will not eliminate the virus if reinfection is common. Some other coronaviruses circulating in people are capable of reinfection after roughly a year. Nonetheless, on 3 March 2021, scientists reported that a much more contagious Covid-19 variant, Lineage P.1, first detected in Japan, and subsequently found in Brazil, as well as in several places in the United States, may be associated with Covid-19 disease reinfection after recovery from an earlier Covid-19 infection.

MORTALITY

Several measures are commonly used to quantify mortality. These numbers vary by region and over time and are influenced by the volume of testing, healthcare system quality, treatment options, time since the initial outbreak, and population characteristics such as age, sex, and overall health. The mortality rate reflects the number of deaths within a specific demographic group divided by the population of that demographic group. Consequently, the mortality rate reflects the prevalence as well as the severity of the disease within a given population. Mortality rates are highly correlated to age, with relatively low rates for young people and relatively high rates among the elderly.

The case fatality rate (CFR) reflects the number of deaths divided by the number of diagnosed cases within a given time interval. Based on Johns Hopkins University statistics, the global death-to-case ratio is 2.2% (2,685,770/121,585,388) as of 18 March 2021. The number varies by region. The CFR may not reflect the true severity of the disease, because some infected individuals remain asymptomatic or experience only mild symptoms, and hence such infections may not be included in official case reports. Moreover, the CFR may vary markedly over time and across locations due to the availability of live virus tests.

INFECTION FATALITY RATE

A key metric in gauging the severity of COVID-19 is the infection fatality rate (IFR), also referred to as the infection fatality ratio or infection fatality risk. This metric is calculated by dividing the total number of deaths from the disease by the total number of infected individuals; hence, in contrast to the CFR, the IFR incorporates asymptomatic and undiagnosed infections as well as reported cases.

CURRENT ESTIMATES

A December 2020 systematic review and meta-analysis estimated that population IFR during the first wave of the pandemic was about 0.5% to 1% in many locations (including France, Netherlands, New Zealand, and Portugal), 1% to 2% in other locations (Australia, England, Lithuania, and Spain), and exceeded 2% in Italy. That study also found that most of these differences in IFR reflected corresponding differences in the age composition of the population and age-specific infection rates; in particular, the metaregression estimate of IFR is very low for children and younger adults (e.g., 0.002% at age 10 and 0.01% at age 25) but increases progressively to 0.4% at age 55, 1.4% at age 65, 4.6% at age 75, and 15% at age 85. These results were also highlighted in a December 2020 report issued by the WHO.

EARLIER ESTIMATES OF IFR

At an early stage of the pandemic, the World Health Organization reported estimates of IFR between 0.3% and 1%.[ On 2 July, The WHO's chief scientist reported that the average IFR estimate presented at a two-day WHO expert forum was about 0.6%. In August, the WHO found that studies incorporating data from broad serology testing in Europe showed IFR estimates converging at approximately 0.5–1%. Firm lower limits of IFRs have been established in a number of locations such as New York City and Bergamo in Italy since the IFR cannot be less than the population fatality rate. As of 10 July, in New York City, with a population of 8.4 million, 23,377 individuals (18,758 confirmed and 4,619 probable) have died with COVID-19 (0.3% of the population).Antibody testing in New York City suggested an IFR of ~0.9%,[258] and ~1.4%. In Bergamo province, 0.6% of the population has died. In September 2020 the U.S. Center for Disease Control & Prevention reported preliminary estimates of age-specific IFRs for public health planning purposes.

SEX DIFFERENCES

Early reviews of epidemiologic data showed gendered impact of the pandemic and a higher mortality rate in men in China and Italy. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported the death rate was 2.8% for men and 1.7% for women. Later reviews in June 2020 indicated that there is no significant difference in susceptibility or in CFR between genders. One review acknowledges the different mortality rates in Chinese men, suggesting that it may be attributable to lifestyle choices such as smoking and drinking alcohol rather than genetic factors. Sex-based immunological differences, lesser prevalence of smoking in women and men developing co-morbid conditions such as hypertension at a younger age than women could have contributed to the higher mortality in men. In Europe, 57% of the infected people were men and 72% of those died with COVID-19 were men. As of April 2020, the US government is not tracking sex-related data of COVID-19 infections. Research has shown that viral illnesses like Ebola, HIV, influenza and SARS affect men and women differently.

ETHNIC DIFFERENCES

In the US, a greater proportion of deaths due to COVID-19 have occurred among African Americans and other minority groups. Structural factors that prevent them from practicing social distancing include their concentration in crowded substandard housing and in "essential" occupations such as retail grocery workers, public transit employees, health-care workers and custodial staff. Greater prevalence of lacking health insurance and care and of underlying conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease also increase their risk of death. Similar issues affect Native American and Latino communities. According to a US health policy non-profit, 34% of American Indian and Alaska Native People (AIAN) non-elderly adults are at risk of serious illness compared to 21% of white non-elderly adults. The source attributes it to disproportionately high rates of many health conditions that may put them at higher risk as well as living conditions like lack of access to clean water. Leaders have called for efforts to research and address the disparities. In the U.K., a greater proportion of deaths due to COVID-19 have occurred in those of a Black, Asian, and other ethnic minority background. More severe impacts upon victims including the relative incidence of the necessity of hospitalization requirements, and vulnerability to the disease has been associated via DNA analysis to be expressed in genetic variants at chromosomal region 3, features that are associated with European Neanderthal heritage. That structure imposes greater risks that those affected will develop a more severe form of the disease. The findings are from Professor Svante Pääbo and researchers he leads at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Karolinska Institutet. This admixture of modern human and Neanderthal genes is estimated to have occurred roughly between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago in Southern Europe.

COMORBIDITIES

Most of those who die of COVID-19 have pre-existing (underlying) conditions, including hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular disease. According to March data from the United States, 89% of those hospitalised had preexisting conditions. The Italian Istituto Superiore di Sanità reported that out of 8.8% of deaths where medical charts were available, 96.1% of people had at least one comorbidity with the average person having 3.4 diseases. According to this report the most common comorbidities are hypertension (66% of deaths), type 2 diabetes (29.8% of deaths), Ischemic Heart Disease (27.6% of deaths), atrial fibrillation (23.1% of deaths) and chronic renal failure (20.2% of deaths).

Most critical respiratory comorbidities according to the CDC, are: moderate or severe asthma, pre-existing COPD, pulmonary fibrosis, cystic fibrosis. Evidence stemming from meta-analysis of several smaller research papers also suggests that smoking can be associated with worse outcomes. When someone with existing respiratory problems is infected with COVID-19, they might be at greater risk for severe symptoms. COVID-19 also poses a greater risk to people who misuse opioids and methamphetamines, insofar as their drug use may have caused lung damage.

In August 2020 the CDC issued a caution that tuberculosis infections could increase the risk of severe illness or death. The WHO recommended that people with respiratory symptoms be screened for both diseases, as testing positive for COVID-19 couldn't rule out co-infections. Some projections have estimated that reduced TB detection due to the pandemic could result in 6.3 million additional TB cases and 1.4 million TB related deaths by 2025.

NAME

During the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, the virus and disease were commonly referred to as "coronavirus" and "Wuhan coronavirus", with the disease sometimes called "Wuhan pneumonia". In the past, many diseases have been named after geographical locations, such as the Spanish flu, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, and Zika virus. In January 2020, the WHO recommended 2019-nCov and 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease as interim names for the virus and disease per 2015 guidance and international guidelines against using geographical locations (e.g. Wuhan, China), animal species, or groups of people in disease and virus names in part to prevent social stigma. The official names COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 were issued by the WHO on 11 February 2020. Tedros Adhanom explained: CO for corona, VI for virus, D for disease and 19 for when the outbreak was first identified (31 December 2019). The WHO additionally uses "the COVID-19 virus" and "the virus responsible for COVID-19" in public communications.

HISTORY

The virus is thought to be natural and of an animal origin, through spillover infection. There are several theories about where the first case (the so-called patient zero) originated. Phylogenetics estimates that SARS-CoV-2 arose in October or November 2019. Evidence suggests that it descends from a coronavirus that infects wild bats, and spread to humans through an intermediary wildlife host.

The first known human infections were in Wuhan, Hubei, China. A study of the first 41 cases of confirmed COVID-19, published in January 2020 in The Lancet, reported the earliest date of onset of symptoms as 1 December 2019.Official publications from the WHO reported the earliest onset of symptoms as 8 December 2019. Human-to-human transmission was confirmed by the WHO and Chinese authorities by 20 January 2020. According to official Chinese sources, these were mostly linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which also sold live animals. In May 2020 George Gao, the director of the CDC, said animal samples collected from the seafood market had tested negative for the virus, indicating that the market was the site of an early superspreading event, but that it was not the site of the initial outbreak.[ Traces of the virus have been found in wastewater samples that were collected in Milan and Turin, Italy, on 18 December 2019.

By December 2019, the spread of infection was almost entirely driven by human-to-human transmission. The number of coronavirus cases in Hubei gradually increased, reaching 60 by 20 December, and at least 266 by 31 December. On 24 December, Wuhan Central Hospital sent a bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) sample from an unresolved clinical case to sequencing company Vision Medicals. On 27 and 28 December, Vision Medicals informed the Wuhan Central Hospital and the Chinese CDC of the results of the test, showing a new coronavirus. A pneumonia cluster of unknown cause was observed on 26 December and treated by the doctor Zhang Jixian in Hubei Provincial Hospital, who informed the Wuhan Jianghan CDC on 27 December. On 30 December, a test report addressed to Wuhan Central Hospital, from company CapitalBio Medlab, stated an erroneous positive result for SARS, causing a group of doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital to alert their colleagues and relevant hospital authorities of the result. The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a notice to various medical institutions on "the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause" that same evening. Eight of these doctors, including Li Wenliang (punished on 3 January), were later admonished by the police for spreading false rumours and another, Ai Fen, was reprimanded by her superiors for raising the alarm.

The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission made the first public announcement of a pneumonia outbreak of unknown cause on 31 December, confirming 27 cases—enough to trigger an investigation.

During the early stages of the outbreak, the number of cases doubled approximately every seven and a half days. In early and mid-January 2020, the virus spread to other Chinese provinces, helped by the Chinese New Year migration and Wuhan being a transport hub and major rail interchange. On 20 January, China reported nearly 140 new cases in one day, including two people in Beijing and one in Shenzhen. Later official data shows 6,174 people had already developed symptoms by then, and more may have been infected. A report in The Lancet on 24 January indicated human transmission, strongly recommended personal protective equipment for health workers, and said testing for the virus was essential due to its "pandemic potential". On 30 January, the WHO declared the coronavirus a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. By this time, the outbreak spread by a factor of 100 to 200 times.

Italy had its first confirmed cases on 31 January 2020, two tourists from China. As of 13 March 2020 the WHO considered Europe the active centre of the pandemic. Italy overtook China as the country with the most deaths on 19 March 2020. By 26 March the United States had overtaken China and Italy with the highest number of confirmed cases in the world. Research on coronavirus genomes indicates the majority of COVID-19 cases in New York came from European travellers, rather than directly from China or any other Asian country. Retesting of prior samples found a person in France who had the virus on 27 December 2019, and a person in the United States who died from the disease on 6 February 2020.

After 55 days without a locally transmitted case, Beijing reported a new COVID-19 case on 11 June 2020 which was followed by two more cases on 12 June. By 15 June there were 79 cases officially confirmed, most of them were people that went to Xinfadi Wholesale Market.

RT-PCR testing of untreated wastewater samples from Brazil and Italy have suggested detection of SARS-CoV-2 as early as November and December 2019, respectively, but the methods of such sewage studies have not been optimised, many have not been peer reviewed, details are often missing, and there is a risk of false positives due to contamination or if only one gene target is detected. A September 2020 review journal article said, "The possibility that the COVID-19 infection had already spread to Europe at the end of last year is now indicated by abundant, even if partially circumstantial, evidence", including pneumonia case numbers and radiology in France and Italy in November and December.

MISINFORMATION

After the initial outbreak of COVID-19, misinformation and disinformation regarding the origin, scale, prevention, treatment, and other aspects of the disease rapidly spread online.

In September 2020, the U.S. CDC published preliminary estimates of the risk of death by age groups in the United States, but those estimates were widely misreported and misunderstood.

OTHER ANIMALS

Humans appear to be capable of spreading the virus to some other animals, a type of disease transmission referred to as zooanthroponosis.

Some pets, especially cats and ferrets, can catch this virus from infected humans. Symptoms in cats include respiratory (such as a cough) and digestive symptoms. Cats can spread the virus to other cats, and may be able to spread the virus to humans, but cat-to-human transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has not been proven. Compared to cats, dogs are less susceptible to this infection. Behaviors which increase the risk of transmission include kissing, licking, and petting the animal.

The virus does not appear to be able to infect pigs, ducks, or chickens at all.[ Mice, rats, and rabbits, if they can be infected at all, are unlikely to be involved in spreading the virus.

Tigers and lions in zoos have become infected as a result of contact with infected humans. As expected, monkeys and great ape species such as orangutans can also be infected with the COVID-19 virus.

Minks, which are in the same family as ferrets, have been infected. Minks may be asymptomatic, and can also spread the virus to humans. Multiple countries have identified infected animals in mink farms. Denmark, a major producer of mink pelts, ordered the slaughter of all minks over fears of viral mutations. A vaccine for mink and other animals is being researched.

RESEARCH

International research on vaccines and medicines in COVID-19 is underway by government organisations, academic groups, and industry researchers. The CDC has classified it to require a BSL3 grade laboratory. There has been a great deal of COVID-19 research, involving accelerated research processes and publishing shortcuts to meet the global demand.

As of December 2020, hundreds of clinical trials have been undertaken, with research happening on every continent except Antarctica. As of November 2020, more than 200 possible treatments had been studied in humans so far.

Transmission and prevention research

Modelling research has been conducted with several objectives, including predictions of the dynamics of transmission, diagnosis and prognosis of infection, estimation of the impact of interventions, or allocation of resources. Modelling studies are mostly based on epidemiological models, estimating the number of infected people over time under given conditions. Several other types of models have been developed and used during the COVID-19 including computational fluid dynamics models to study the flow physics of COVID-19, retrofits of crowd movement models to study occupant exposure, mobility-data based models to investigate transmission, or the use of macroeconomic models to assess the economic impact of the pandemic. Further, conceptual frameworks from crisis management research have been applied to better understand the effects of COVID-19 on organizations worldwide.

TREATMENT-RELATED RESEARCH

Repurposed antiviral drugs make up most of the research into COVID-19 treatments. Other candidates in trials include vasodilators, corticosteroids, immune therapies, lipoic acid, bevacizumab, and recombinant angiotensin-converting enzyme 2.

In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) initiated the Solidarity trial to assess the treatment effects of some promising drugs: an experimental drug called remdesivir; anti-malarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine; two anti-HIV drugs, lopinavir/ritonavir; and interferon-beta. More than 300 active clinical trials were underway as of April 2020.

Research on the antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine showed that they were ineffective at best, and that they may reduce the antiviral activity of remdesivir. By May 2020, France, Italy, and Belgium had banned the use of hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment.

In June, initial results from the randomised RECOVERY Trial in the United Kingdom showed that dexamethasone reduced mortality by one third for people who are critically ill on ventilators and one fifth for those receiving supplemental oxygen. Because this is a well-tested and widely available treatment, it was welcomed by the WHO, which is in the process of updating treatment guidelines to include dexamethasone and other steroids. Based on those preliminary results, dexamethasone treatment has been recommended by the NIH for patients with COVID-19 who are mechanically ventilated or who require supplemental oxygen but not in patients with COVID-19 who do not require supplemental oxygen.

In September 2020, the WHO released updated guidance on using corticosteroids for COVID-19. The WHO recommends systemic corticosteroids rather than no systemic corticosteroids for the treatment of people with severe and critical COVID-19 (strong recommendation, based on moderate certainty evidence). The WHO suggests not to use corticosteroids in the treatment of people with non-severe COVID-19 (conditional recommendation, based on low certainty evidence). The updated guidance was based on a meta-analysis of clinical trials of critically ill COVID-19 patients.

WIKIPEDIA

look2 by Cholo Ayuyao

6

Look 2 Includes:

Studded Corset

Pants with frayed hem

Cape with shoulder deatils

Train

Metal Finish Neckpiece

Ethnic Print Body Suit

Pair of Shoes

Wig/Headpiece

Fits: Sybarite Newgen Body and similar sized dolls

1997 Toyota MR-2 Turbo Widebody by />ylan/>.

9

Entry part #2 from the current LUGNuts challenge.

Upgrades to the MR-2 include:

-19" Alloy Rims

-1.6" Suspension Lowering

-Rear Strut Bar

-Original Design Widebody Kit

-Fiberglass Bulge Hood

-Dual Cold Air Intake

-Painted Valve Cover

-Racing Turbo & Intercooler

-Yellow Fog Lights

-Smoked Lights & Front Signals

-Halo Projector HID Headlights

-Short-throw Shifter

-Rear Diffuser

-Vinyl Decor

Neato!

Squad 2: Equipment Cache by Castle Beach FD

4 2

Brand new Squad 2 is a 2014 Ford F-550 4x4 with a Darley 2000 gpm pump, 500 gal. water, 25 Class A foam, 25 gal. Class B foam, and 500 lb. Purple K foam. This little piece of apparatus can also pack quite a punch with a 1500 gpm. Akron Electric StreamMaster II which can be remote controlled.

This apparatus was not intended to replace the larger Engine 2, but rather, to supplement that station's capability. Located in Downtown Castle Beach where a high volume of vehicles present problems for apparatus placement at a scene, this truck was designed to be highly maneuverable. Furthermore, Squad 2 can easily deal with vehicle fires in parking structures where larger apparatus cannot go.

Some of the equipment carried by Squad 2 include the following: axe, New York pike pole, Hurst Combi tool, Halligan, crowbar, 16" PPV fan, a rotary saw, an on-board generator, and a 10,000 lb. winch. The hose complement of Squad 2 is as follows: 500' of 5" hose, 200' of 3" leader hose, 2 sections of 2.5" hose (100' each), 4 high-rise packs, and a 100' booster reel.

Staffed by 2

Firefighter (2x)

Credits:

Darlington PA Mini-pumper 42-3

James K. Ford F-550 cab

Christian C. Ford F-550 cab

Paulo R. Ford F-550 cab

Newton Chambers - New Street, Birmingham by Elliott Brown

4 1

New Street is more or less back to normal again now that the Birmingham FCM has gone. A little crowded with sales shopper but not as heaving as it was when the Christmas market was there.

The Newton Chambers building on New Street between Needless Alley and Cannon Street.

It is next to Caxton Gate and Tesco Metro.

Current let units include Charles Tyrwhitt at 41 New Street. Also MUJI at 40 - 42 New Street.

Grade II Listed Building

Newton Chambers

Listing Text

CANNON STREET

1.

5104

City Centre B2

No 43

(Newton Chambers)

and Nos 44 and 45

SP 0686 NE 33/11 21.1.70

II GV

2.

Includes Nos 41, 42, 42A New Street. Circa 1899 by Essex, Goodman and Nicol.

Pink terracotta; slate roof. Four storeys plus attic; 5 bays, the fifth

containing the entrance and wider than the others plus the corner with its

little cupola. Ground floor with modern shop fronts and the entrance with

fanlight with 4 glazed lights. First floor with 4 tripartite windows beneath

broad segmental arches. These and the arch over the entrance with pretty,

detached scrolly members and ball flower ornament and a decorated stringcourse

above. Second and third floors each with 4 tripartite windows with ause-de-panier

arches to the lights and pretty, detached scrolly members. They are linked

vertically by baluster-like shafts left and right. In the fifth bay second

and third floors each have a 4-light transomed window with ause-de-panier

arches to the lights. They are treated together as a very shallow bay window

surmounted by a round window. Moulded eaves cornice. Attic with 4 canted

bay windows, terracotta faced but timber sided. The long return to New Street

(where are the entrances to Nos 41, 42 and 42A New Street) treated similarly,

but the centre gabled and with the second and third floors with canted bay

windows and 2-light rather then tripartite windows. Once housed the Kardomah

Cafe, some of whose interior is said to remain behind the present fittings.

Listing NGR: SP0698086830

This text is from the original listing, and may not necessarily reflect the current setting of the building.

170208-A-IO170-006 by U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa

3 1

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Stewart Lee, an operating room specialist assigned to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, and his Ghanaian counterparts arrange the surgical instruments in preparation for a radical prostatectomy during Medical Readiness Training Exercise 17-2 at the 37th Military Hospital in Accra, Ghana, Feb. 8, 2017. MEDRETE 17-2 includes participants from the Ghanaian government, U.S. Army Africa, Brooke Army Medical Center and the North Dakota National Guard. It is the second in a series of medical readiness training exercises that USARAF is scheduled to facilitate in various countries in Africa. The mutually beneficial exercise offers opportunities for the partnered militaries to cooperate on medical specific tasks, share best practices and improve medical treatment processes. (U.S. Army Africa photo by Staff Sgt. Shejal Pulivarti)

U.S. Army Africa

www.usaraf.army.mil

U.S. Army Africa on Facebook

www.facebook.com/ArmyAfrica

U.S. Army Africa on Twitter

twitter.com/USArmyAfrica

RUBE GOLDBERG - ALEX RAYMOND - MILT CANIFF

ALEX RAYMOND

October 2, 1909 - September 6, 1956

Alex Raymond was one of the most influential American newspaper comic artists of all time. He is widely praised for his realism, beautiful and elegant depictions of women and clever use of black and white. With his space opera 'Flash Gordon' (1934) he redefined the science fiction genre, while his post-war detective strip 'Rip Kirby' (1946) stood out for its contemporary realism and cosmopolitan look and feel. Raymond's other (co-)creations 'Secret Agent X-9' (1934) and 'Jungle Jim' (1934) have also become classics. Despite his relatively short career - Raymond died in a car crash at age 45 - he has left a lasting mark on comic book realism, together with his contemporaries Hal Foster, Milton Caniff and Burne Hogarth.

Early life and career

Alexander Gillespie Raymond was born in 1909 in New Rochelle, New York, into a family of Irish-American descent. His father was an engineer who worked in the Woolworth Building, and strongly supported his son's artistic talents. Although Raymond showed an early interest in drawing, he held several jobs to support his family after his father passed away in 1922. He dropped out of high school in 1928 and became an order clerk with a brockerage firm in Wall Street. In the evenings, he took a course from the Grand Central School of Art. His career as a stockbroker was cut short when the economic crisis hit the USA in 1929. Raymond worked as a mortgage salesman for a while, but eventually chose to further pursue his artistic ambitions. By 1930 he started assisting his former neighbor Russ Westover, the cartoonist of 'Tilly the Toiler'. He initially served as an errand boy, but eventually got some small lettering and background art tasks. Westover introduced Raymond to King Features, the syndicate related to William Randolph Hearst's media empire. He was hired as an assistant artist in the King Features bullpen in 1931. In the evenings he helped Chic Young with his comic strip 'Blondie'.

He joined Young full-time in late 1931, and continued to work on 'Blondie' until early 1933, shortly after Blondie and Dagwood's wedding. Also in late 1931, he began assisting Chic Young's younger brother Lyman Young on 'Tim Tyler's Luck'. In 1932 and 1933, he ghosted both the daily and Sunday installments of 'Tim Tyler', after which his talent was truly recognized by King Features manager Joseph V. Connolly. Competing syndicates had launched several popular newspaper comics in the previous years, so Hearst's company had to strenghten their position in the market. This resulted in Raymond debuting no less than three major comic strips in January 1934. 'Flash Gordon' was Hearst's answer to the popular feature 'Buck Rogers in the 25th Century' (1929) by Dick Calkins and Phil Nowlan at the John F. Dille Company, 'Jungle Jim' had to compete with United Feature's 'Tarzan' by Rex Maxon and 'Secret Agent X-9' stepped in on the wave of popular crime features initiated by Chester Gould's 'Dick Tracy' (1931) at the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate.

Flash Gordon

Of all these creations, 'Flash Gordon' has become the most iconic. It made its debut as a Sunday page on 7 January 1934, and continued to run in newspapers until 2003. It has also inspired a great many movie adaptations, TV and radio serials, comic books and merchandising lines. Raymond's Jules Verne-type space opera headed for thrills right away. Already on the first panel, humanity is threatened by a strange new planet approaching planet Earth. A flaming meteor torn loose from the comet shoots down the transcontinental flight which boards "Yale graduate and world-renowned polo player" Flash Gordon and the beautiful Dale Arden. Gordon heroically parachutes himself and Dale to safety, but the two are quickly captured by Dr. Hans Zarkov. The desperate scientist takes the two coincidental bystanders with him on a suicide mission to crash his rocket into the approaching comet. And this is only the first Sunday page! Gordon overpowers the mad scientist, but can't prevent the rocket from crash-landing on the mysterious planet Mongo, which is ruled by Ming the Merciless (the name says it all). It is the beginning of a long saga filled with strange creatures, intriguing landscapes, futuristic cities and machinery and highly imaginative science fiction, accompanied of course by tireless heroics of the title hero.

Most of the early stories have Flash acting as a resistance leader against the ruthless leader Ming, while finding allies in Prince Barin from the forest kingdom of Arboria, Prince Thun of the Lion Men, Prince Vultan of the Hawkmen and other more noble leaders. Ming's daughter Princess Aura initially takes after her father, but is reformed by her love for Flash, and later for Prince Barin. Flash, Dale and Zarkov finally return to Earth in July 1941, after learning from an upcoming new world war, initiated by the fascistic Red Sword organization. While Raymond's timing for this storyline seems impeccable, our heroes have already overthrown the fascists and returned to Mongo by January 1942. This was only a month after the Pearl Harbor attack, which plunged the U.S. into World War II. Alex Raymond crafted his plots in a steady collaboration with pulp writer Don Moore, who served as a ghostwriter. They came up with the most extraordinary worlds and creatures, which Raymond brought to life with his skillful brushwork. Getting his visual inspiration from leading magazine illustrators like Matt Clark, Franklin Booth and John LaGatta, Raymond managed to bring character into his settings through his strong sense of realism and unique use of perspective. From the lush landscapes of Mongo to the egocentric splendor of Ming's environment - Raymond was one of the first artists who made science fiction "believable". With his masterful renderings of sensual women as more eye candy, 'Flash Gordon' quickly surpassed his predecessor in popularity. As Checker's Mark Thompson wrote in his foreword for the publisher's first 'Flash Gordon' collection (2005), Raymond "brought the worldwide public into the visual age of science fiction".

Jungle Jim

Raymond was assigned to fill a full page in the Sunday newspapers. To accompany 'Flash Gordon', he and Don Moore came up with the "topper" 'Jungle Jim'. Although it was meant as a competitor for the 'Tarzan' strip, this adventurous saga was set in South-East Asia instead of Africa and starred a big-game trapper instead of a jungle hero in loincloth. The hero was named after Raymond's cartoonist brother Jim Raymond, and can be considered a fictional rendition of real-life adventurer/writer Frank R. Buck, the author of 'Bring 'Em Back Alive' (1930). The initial stories dealt with regular genre villains like pirates and slave traders, but the feature took a war-themed direction at the beginning of World War II. 'Jungle Jim' is one of the few Sunday companion features to become a classic in its own right. During the 1940s it's popularity justified its transformation into an independent Sunday page, apart from 'Flash Gordon'. In the post-Raymond period, 'Jungle Jim' has also received comic book series with original stories published by Standard Comics, Dell Comics, Charlton Comics and Dynamite Entertainment.

Secret Agent X-9

'Secret Agent X-9', Alex Raymond's third comic strip, made its debut a few weeks after 'Flash Gordon' and 'Jungle Jim', on 22 January 1934. King Features Syndicate had managed to hire Dashiell Hammett to write an original daily comic strip, starring an unnamed government detective. As the nation's top author of hard-boiled detective novels, Hammett was surely a crowd puller, whose work could easily compete with Chester Gould's 'Dick Tracy'. Raymond proved to be capable of visualizing the seedy underworld as well. After crafting four storylines, Hammett left the feature and was replaced by Don Moore and then by 'Saint' author Leslie Charteris. To keep up with the workload of producing six daily strips and two Sunday features, Austin Briggs was brought in to assist Raymond on 'Secret Agent X-9'. Raymond however left the strip on 16 November 1935 to fully concentrate on 'Flash Gordon', 'Jungle Jim' and his ambitions of becoming a magazine illustrator. 'Secret Agent X-9' continued to run in newspapers until 10 February 1996; from 1967 onwards under the title 'Secret Agent Corrigan'. Artists who have drawn the feature after Raymond were Charles Flanders (1935-1938), Nicholas Afonsky (1938), Austin Briggs (1938-1940), Mel Graff (1940-1960), Bob Lubbers (1960-1967), Al Williamson (1967-1980) and George Evans (1980-1996). The later stories have been written by Max Trell (1936-1945, under the King Features house-name Robert Storm), Mel Graff (1945-1960), Bob Lubbers (1960-1967), Archie Goodwin (1967-1980) and George Evans (1980-1996).

RUBE GOLDBERG

Reuben Garret L. Goldberg (July 4, 1883 - December 7, 1970) was an American cartoonist. The Reuben Award of the National Cartoonists Society is named after Rube Goldberg, who earned lasting fame for his Rube Goldberg machines, complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways. In 1948 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his political cartooning.

Goldberg graduated from Lowell High School in San Francisco in 1900 and earned a degree in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1904. Goldberg was hired by the city of San Francisco as an engineer, however, his fondness for drawing cartoons prevailed, and after just a few months, he quit the city job for a job with the San Francisco Chronicle as a sports cartoonist. The following year, he took a job with the San Francisco Bulletin, where he remained until he moved to New York City in 1907.

He drew cartoons for several newspapers, including the New York Evening Journal and the New York Evening Mail. His work entered syndication in 1915, beginning his nationwide popularity. A prolific artist, Goldberg produced several cartoon series simultaneously; titles included Mike and Ike, Boob McNutt, Foolish Questions, Lala Palooza and The Weekly Meeting of the Tuesday Women's Club.

Professor Butts

While these series were quite popular, the one leading to his lasting fame involved a character named Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. In this series, Goldberg drew labeled schematics of the comical "inventions" which would later bear his name. In 1995, "Rube Goldberg's Inventions," depicting Professor Butts' "Self-Operating Napkin," was one of 20 strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative U.S. postage stamps. The "Self-Operating Napkin" is activated when the soup spoon (A) is raised to mouth, pulling string (B) and thereby jerking ladle (C) which throws cracker (D) past parrot (E). Parrot jumps after cracker and perch (F) tilts, upsetting seeds (G) into pail (H). Extra weight in pail pulls cord (I), which opens and lights automatic cigar lighter (J), setting off skyrocket (K) which causes sickle (L) to cut string (M) and allow pendulum with attached napkin to swing back and forth, thereby wiping chin. After-dinner entertainment can be supplied with the simple substitution of a harmonica for the napkin.

Rube Goldberg

Later in his career, Goldberg was employed by the New York Journal American and remained there until his retirement in 1964. During his retirement, he occupied himself by making bronze sculptures. His work appeared in several one-man shows, the last one during his lifetime being in 1970 at the National Museum of American History (then called the Museum of History and Technology) in Washington, D.C.. Goldberg died at the age of 87; he is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

In addition to his 1948 Pulitzer Prize, he received the National Cartoonists Society Gold T-Square Award in 1955, their 1969 Reuben Award and their Gold Key Award (posthumously in 1980).

Rube Goldberg machine

A Rube Goldberg machine is a complex apparatus that performs a simple, easy task in an indirect and convoluted way. The best examples of his machines have an anticipation factor, as the machine makes slow but steady progress toward its goal.

The term also applies as a classification for a generally over-complicated apparatus or software. The corresponding term in the United Kingdom is "Heath Robinson" (machine or contraption), after the British cartoonist with a similar focus on odd machinery. The term "Rube Goldberg machine" first appeared in Webster's Third New International Dictionary with the definition "accomplishing by extremely complex roundabout means what actually or seemingly could be done simply."

Rube Goldberg's inventions are a unique commentary on life's complexities. They provide a humorous diversion into the absurd that lampoons the wonders of technology. These satires of man's ingenuity resonate in modern life for those seeking simplicity in the midst of a technology revolution. Goldberg's machines can also be seen as a physical representation of the pataphysical, carrying a simple idea to a nonsensical, ornamented extreme.

Comics have given many now-familiar words and phrases to the English language — "Dagwood sandwich" from Blondie, "goon" and "jeep" from Popeye, "yellow journalism" … from The Yellow Kid, to cite but a few. But only one cartoonist has enriched our linguistic heritage by the donation of his own name. Even people who have never seen the work of Rube Goldberg know what a "Rube Goldberg device" is. Nor is that the only phrase that contains his name. Not as many people know about The National Cartoonists' Society's Reuben Award. But of those who do, a great majority know who it was named after, and who designed the zany-looking statuette — the NCS's first president, Reuben Lucius Goldberg.

Goldberg was born on the Fourth of July, in 1883. He showed an early interest in cartooning, but like many later-famous artists, was discouraged by his parents, who preferred he prepare for a more practical way of making a living. They figured he could use his drawing ability in a lucrative career in engineering, and to that end, got him enrolled in the University of California's College of Mining. He graduated in 1904 as a full-fledged mining engineer.

Like Gelett Burgess before him, Goldberg did very little with his engineering degree before moving on to his true career. After six months of boredom, he took a job in the art department of The San Francisco Chronicle. At first he mostly tidied the place up (and allegedly, while emptying wastebaskets, figured out what had happened to his own earlier cartoon submissions), but soon became one of the Chronicle's sports cartoonists. He moved to The San Francisco Bulletin in 1905, replacing Thomas A. "Tad" Dorgan (Silk Hat Harry), who had gone to New York to make his fortune. Goldberg followed Dorgan in '07, when he moved to The New York Evening Mail. It was there that he started on the road to fame with his regular feature, Foolish Questions, in which he would suggest silly answers to such annoyingly obvious queries as "Windy, isn't it?" and (said by a hotel clerk) "Do you want a room, sir?" This Goldberg original was echoed decades later in Mad magazine's regular feature, "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions", by Al Jaffee.

It was in 1914 that Goldberg created the series that brought him lasting fame — a series that was inspired by his academic studies. Recalling the so-called "Barodik", an incredibly complex contraption for determining the mass of our planet, cooked up by Goldberg's analytical mechanics instructor, Professor Frederick Slate, Goldberg drew a convoluted and highly improbable "Automatic Weight-Reducing Machine" for the Evening Mail.

Many syndicated features followed, some of which, including Boob McNutt, Lala Palooza and Mike & Ike (They Look Alike), became reasonably well known in their own right — but he continued to create his unlikely engineering stunts for the duration of his cartooning career. They became such a part of American culture, that in 1995, in company with Little Nemo in Slumberland, Barney Google, Li'l Abner and several other immortal newspaper comics, they were commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp.

Goldberg became an editorial cartoonist in 1938, when The New York Sun hired him to fill that position (which, by the way, had been vacant at the Sun since 1920). His political cartoons were distributed nation-wide by The Bell Syndicate (Mutt & Jeff, Sad Sack). The one he drew for the July 22, 1947 edition, about the world on the brink of nuclear destruction (back when that was a new topic), won a Pulitzer Prize in '48.

By the time he was 80 years old, Goldberg grew tired of cartooning. Instead of retiring, however, he embarked on a new career as a sculptor — and, typically, excelled at it. In fact, it was for his humorous sculpture that, in 1967, he finally won the award named after him.

Rube Goldberg died in 1970, revered by his peers in the cartooning community for his lifetime of extraordinary achievement.

www.flickr.com/photos/deconstructing-roy-lichtenstein/395...

www.tnr.com/blog/spine?pid=49858

davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html

www.flickr.com/photos/deconstructing-roy-lichtenstein/

www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/10/18/lich...

mass.live.advance.net/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-6/11...

web.archive.org/web/20030310054018/www.newmassmedia.com/a...

MILT CANIFF

The King of the Comic Strips

Milton Caniff

From The Early Years To Terry and the Pirates

Milton Caniff, to most comics fans, will always be regarded as the major leading light of the syndicated comic strip. He was a pioneer of a visual style of story telling that's widely imitated but seldom achieved, establishing innovations that would become a yardstick for all that followed in his footsteps. No major comics artists today remain untouched by his influences.

Milton Caniff was born on February 28, 1907 in Hillsboro, Ohio. His art career began in a significant way when, as a young boy, he discovered a trunk containing drawings by the early newspaper cartoonist, John T. McCutchen. "This was my first inspiration as an artist in wanting to draw pictures at all, " Caniff would recall. The trunk discovery was significant in another way, in the kind of coincidence that usually only happens in fiction, because years later McCutchen helped to launch the famous Terry and the Pirates!

It's likely that Caniff would have become a cartoonist without the trunk. From the very beginning he displayed a talent for art that was amply displayed in school journals and by the eighth grade he had already had a cartoon published in a local paper. By high school he was already freelancing for a newspaper art department, and by the time he reached college Caniff was providing art on the side for the Dayton Journal, the Miami Daily News, and the Columbus Dispatch, while still finding time to attend classes and participate in theatrical productions.

After graduating college Caniff found full time work at the Dispatch, spending nights working on a few abortive comic strip attempts. The new job only lasted a short time when the Depression struck, forcing the Dispatch to downsize.

Caniff's unemployment only lasted a short while; fortunately the Associated Press of New York had noticed clippings of the young artist's work and offered him a job. The timing was right; Caniff arrived in the Big Apple just in time for 1932's Presidential campaign, and his published portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt appeared in papers all across the country, his first national exposure. While at AP the artist met a fellow worker who would equal his own success as a cartoonist, Al Capp. (Appropriately enough it was on April Fool's Day.) The two men became life-long friends and when Capp left the unfunny strip he had been assigned, Mr. Gilfeather, Caniff inherited the feature, turning it into the more palatable The Gay Thirties.

In addition to the single panel feature on life in America, Caniff was given a multi-paneled adventure strip to work on, Dickie Dare. The strip began in July 1933 and featured Dickie's daydreams of fighting along side Robin Hood and his Merry Men, hunting treasure with Long John Silver, and adventuring with Robinson Crusoe. Caniff lasted a year on the strip, which was to continue on until the late fifties, capably handled by Coulton Waugh and his wife, Mabel "Odin" Burvik.

Caniff had gotten a better offer from Colonel Patterson of the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate in the fall of 1934. The new job offer came about thanks to another cartoonist who had noticed Caniff's clippings, John McCutchen, the same artist who drew the inspirational cartoons that Caniff had discovered in his mother's trunk!

Patterson had been looking for something similar to Dickie Dare, and exotic adventure strip that featured a leading adult and a youthful sidekick. Caniff filled that bill with Terry and the Pirates, which first appeared on October 22, 1934. The continuity opened with the story of Terry Lee, an American boy, his adult pal Pat Ryan, and a clever Chinese servant named Connie, "chief cook and philosopher." The three set out for an abandoned treasure mine but soon find themselves stranded and penniless in a China swarming with brigands, warlords, and hostile Japanese troops.

Caniff's early work on the strip was good enough for the times but crude in comparison to what would come later. A big boost in his evolution as an artist came from teaming up with another young comics legend, Noel Sickles, the artist on the AP Scorchy Smith strip.

The two men, who had once shared a studio in Ohio, worked in tandem, writing and drawing for each other's strips, in the process developing a novel and time saving method for indicating detail, using a impressionistic brushwork technique known as "chiaroscuro." The technique became Caniff's trademark. As Jules Fieffer once said, "Black is Milton Caniff's primary color."

Caniff's mastery of light and dark, his talent for action scenes and camera angles, and his flair for dramatic storytelling all contributed to the popularity of Terry and the Pirates. Another strength of the strip has been its reliance on realism.

Caniff realized that potential fan interest must be immediately captured in a strip's first year. "Since a person must read the balloons to get the story," Caniff once said, "I thought I could catch them with vivid color and illustrations rather than straight cartoons. This meant that there'd have to be absolute authenticity."

Caniff worked long hours to achieve his goal, consulting with experts in every field. In one sequence involving an amphibious invasion, Caniff dug into thirty-eight books in order to nail down such details as to what military hospitals looked like and whether or not Japanese bombers veered to the right or left when launched from aircraft carriers.

Caniff read every book he could find the Orient, becoming more concerned with the problems China faced from the Japanese invaders, predicting in his strip that an inevitable conflict would break out between the U.S. and Hirohito's Imperial forces.

Pat and Terry shared the strip with an intriguing cast of supporting characters. To name just a few, there was Captain Judas, Burma, Big Stoop, Chopstick Joe, Dude Hennick, Cherry Blaze, Cue Ball, and one of the greatest of femme fatales, The Dragon Lady, who often played both sides of the fence. Caniff was a master of characterization; readers really got to know and care about many of his cast.

This point was amply illustrated in a famous 1941 episode, the death of Raven Sherman. A full week of continuity passed as Raven, wounded by the treacherous Captain Judas, slowly ebbs away on a lonely trail in China until finally, "as it must to every one," she dies. And then, as Caniff says, "The roof fell in!" Caniff was flooded with flower deliveries, mock memorial services, petitions of condolence signed by disparate groups as factory workers and entire colleges, as well as a lot of irate letters. For years afterwards the cartoonist would continue to get black-edged cards on the anniversary of Raven's death. Proving that perhaps, as Caniff put it, "the impacts of both picture and words drives more deeply into human awareness than any anthropologist has yet cared to note."

Perhaps so. But Caniff also noted that Raven was killed in October 1941. "If it had happened two months later, nobody would even remember her name today." Milton Caniff, to most comics fans, will always be regarded as the major leading light of the syndicated comic strip. He was a pioneer of a visual style of story telling that's widely imitated but seldom achieved, establishing innovations that would become a yardstick for all that followed in his footsteps. No major comics artists today remain untouched by his influences.

Two months after Milton Caniff's famous death-of-Raven sequence, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States' role in the Second World War had begun. Caniff had depicted Japan's aggression in China (as well as Japanese-Nazi collaboration) in Terry and the Pirates years before war broke out. "There was no general realization of impending war between Japan and the United States," said Caniff, "but anyone who could read newspapers could put it together. The Sino-Japanese war just served as a beacon for future sequences. I foresaw a terrific struggle for the Allies."

Terry joined in that struggle, having finally grown to young adulthood, and got his wings, becoming a pilot in the air force in China. Pat Ryan, his buddy and mentor, was phased offstage to join the Navy, replaced by another father figure, Colonel Flip Corkin. With the change Terry Lee finally became the sole lead in the strip bearing his name, but the "Pirates," like Pat Ryan, also disappeared.

Caniff stepped up the wartime action, with Terry occasionally joining forces with his old nemesis, the Dragon Lady ("tough as a hash-heavy top sergeant"), as well as a new friend in the strip, the very hip, wise-cracking Hot-Shot Charlie.

Terry and the Pirates soared in popularity during the war years, thanks to Caniff's storytelling and his incredible attention to detail (once buying film reels from the Army Signal Corps to check on a detail about aircraft carriers). Voluntary informants, readers from around the world, aided the artist. Men and women in the armed services provided invaluable information on anything thing from logistics to military uniforms. Caniff returned the favor by designing countless logos and insignias, designing a large number of instruction manuals and posters, and winning numerous citations from the Navy, War, and Treasury Departments.

If Terry and the Pirates helped the war effort by informing and entertaining the civilians, Caniff's Male Call did wonders for the guys in uniform. The strip, which ran uncensored in service newspapers, was heavy on cheesecake and featured the voluptuous Miss Lace, a kind of volunteer Morale Officer, who did her best to cheer up the men, usually by dressing in very low-cut outfits.

The strip's popularity peaked during the war years. During that time Terry had been adapted to radio and comics, and in 1940 James W. Horne directed a movie serial version (in the 1950s there was also a Terry TV series). After the war ended Caniff ran into contractual problems with his syndicate and went over to King Features, with a hefty salary increase and the added bonus of owning whatever strip he created. On December 29, 1946, the last of Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates appeared. George Wundar inherited the strip, which would continue on (in some years inked by E.C. artist George Evans) for another 25 years, finally folding in 1973. In 1995 Tribune Media Services resurrected Terry, which was written by Michael Uslan and illustrated by Greg and Tim Hildebrandt, later replaced by comics veteran

Dan Spiegle.

Steve Canyon, Caniff's new strip, debuted on January 7, 1946, opening simultaneously in 125 papers throughout the country, a unique distinction for a new strip, but understandable given Caniff's reputation. Steve was a compulsive hero ("the kind of guy who doesn'tlike to see people kicked around"). As Caniff described him in a Time magazine interview, Canyon was intended to be a "sort of modern Kit Carson, the strong silent Gary Cooper plainsman type. He'llhave lots of gals, one at every port."

Canyon was to be, in Caniff's words, "a picaresque novel," like Cervantes' Don Quixote; a traveler moving from one adventure to the next, accompanied by a friend the hero can talk to (and talk to the reader). In this case, Sancho Panza turned out to be a scrappy oldster, Happy Easter. Caniff also decided to bring in another Terry figure, the teenage Reed Kimberly -- after all, if Steve ever settled down to married life, Caniff needn't abandon any boy-meets-girl plot riffs.

Canyon did meet a lot of women. Many of them, like the cold-blooded Copper Calhoun (a nasty version of Daddy Warbucks), Cheetah (a totally amoral bargirl who would steal Reed's heart and then cheerfully step on it), the hapless Summer Olson (hopelessly in love with Steve and always abused by Ms. Calhoun, her employer), and cousin Poteet Canyon (a teenage version of Happy Easter). "Ninety-five percent of the interest in any fiction is what happens to the women, not what happens to the men," Caniff believed.

Like many other comic strip adventurers, Steve Canyon went on to become a Cold Warrior with the advent of the nineteen fifties, reentering the air Force after the outbreak of the Korean war. Steve found time between adventures in various Third World hotspots to finally marry Summer Olson in 1970 and after the Vietnam war became entangled in a number of marital problems that eventually resulted in a separation.

The Vietnam war also caused a number of problems for the strip itself, as the mood of the many Americans was definitely not in tune with military adventures. And as newspapers around the country began to shrink the panel size of their strips to make room for all-important advertising, Caniff's strip, like most realistic strips, began losing its effectiveness. As the aging Caniff began experiencing health problems, he was forced to drop penciling chores, which were then handled by Dick Rockwell (nephew of illustrator Norman Rockwell) and concentrate on writing and inking it.

Although ill heath couldn't keep the artist from the drawing board, he finally succumbed to lung cancer in 1988. Steve Canyon survived him by several weeks, after 41 years of continuity. Caniff's awards, which included two Reubens for his two strips, were numerous but the last Steve Canyon, dated June 4, was a final, wonderful tribute: it was two panels, one drawn by the legendary war cartoonist Bill Mauldin, the other signed by 78 fellow artists of the field he loved. Milton Caniff will be long remembered.

--Steve Stiles

www.stevestiles.com/caniff1.htm

www.stevestiles.com/caniff2.htm

Milton Caniff

Birth nameMilton Arthur Paul Caniff

BornFebruary 28, 1907

Hillsboro, Ohio

DiedMay 3, 1988 (aged 81)

New York City

NationalityAmerican

Area(s)artist

Notable worksDickie Dare

Terry and the Pirates

Steve Canyon

Awardsfull list

Milton Arthur Paul Caniff (February 28, 1907-May 3, 1988) was an American cartoonist famous for the Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips.

Early life

Caniff was born in Hillsboro, Ohio. He was an Eagle Scout and a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America. Caniff had done some cartoons for local newspapers as a teenager, while studying at Stivers School for the Arts. Shortly after matriculating at the Ohio State University, from which he graduated in 1930, Caniff began a career in journalism by applying to the Columbus Dispatch. There he worked with the noted cartoonist William "Billy" Ireland until Caniff's position was eliminated.

While at Ohio State, Caniff joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity, and later provided illustrations for The Magazine of Sigma Chi and The Norman Shield (the fraternity's pledgeship/reference manual).

Cartoonist

In 1932, Caniff moved to New York City to accept an artist position in the Features Service of the Associated Press. He did general assignment art for several months, then inherited a panel cartoon called Mister Gilfeather in September 1932 when Al Capp left the feature. Caniff continued Gilfeather until the spring of 1933, when it was retired in favor of a generic comedy in a panel cartoon called The Gay Thirties, which he produced until he left AP in the fall of 1934. In July 1933, Caniff began an adventure fantasy strip, Dickie Dare, influenced by series such as Flash Gordon and Brick Bradford.[1] The eponymous central character was a youth who dreamed himself into adventures with such literary and legendary persons as Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe and King Arthur. In the spring of 1934, Caniff changed the strip from fantasy to "reality" when Dickie no longer dreamed his adventures but experienced them as he traveled the world with a freelance writer, Dickie's adult mentor, "Dynamite Dan" Flynn.

In 1934, Caniff was hired by the New York Daily News to produce a new strip, Terry and the Pirates, the strip which made Caniff famous.[1] Like Dickie Dare, Terry began the strip as a boy who is traveling in China with an adult mentor and freelance writer, Pat Ryan. But over the years the title character aged and by World War II he was old enough to serve in the Army Air Force. During the twelve years that Caniff produced the strip, he introduced many fascinating characters, most of whom were "pirates" of one kind or another--Burma, a blonde with a mysterious possibly criminal past; Chopstick Joe, a Chinese petty criminal; Singh Singh, a warlord in the mountains of China; Judas, a smuggler; Sanjak, a lesbian; and then boon companions such as Hotshot Charlie, Terry's wing man during the War years; Connie and Big Stoop, a Chinese Jeff and Mutt (in stature) who followed Terry and Pat Ryan around the country; and April Kane, a young woman who was Terry's first love. But Caniff's most memorable creation was the Dragon Lady, a pirate queen; she was seemingly ruthless and calculating, but Caniff encouraged his readers to think she had romantic yearnings for Pat Ryan.

During the war, Caniff began a second strip, a special version of Terry and the Pirates without Terry but featuring the blonde bombshell, Burma. Caniff donated all of his work on this strip to the armed forces -- the strip was only available in military newspapers. After complaints from the Miami Herald about the military version of the strip being published by military newspapers in the Herald's circulation territory, the strip was renamed Male Call and given a new star, Miss Lace, a beautiful woman who lived near every military base on the planet and enjoyed the company of enlisted men, but not officers. Her function, Caniff often said, was to remind service men what they were fighting for, and while the situations in the strip brimmed with double entendre, Miss Lace was not, as far as she appeared in the strip, a loose woman, but she "knew the score." Far more so than civilian comic strips which portrayed military characters, Male Call was notable for its honest depiction of what the servicemen were up against: one strip showed Miss Lace dating a soldier on leave who had lost an arm; another strip had her escorting a blinded ex-serviceman. Caniff continued Male Call until seven months after V-J Day, ending it in March 1946.[2]

The year 1946 also saw the end of Caniff's association with Terry and the Pirates. While the strip was a major success, it was not owned by its creator but by its distributing syndicate, the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News, a common practice with syndicated comics at the time. And when Caniff was offered the chance to own his own strip by Marshall Field, publisher of the Chicago Sun, the cartoonist left Terry to produce a strip for Field Enterprises. Caniff produced his last strip of Terry and the Pirates in December 1946 and introduced his new strip Steve Canyon in the Chicago Sun-Times the following month.[1] At the time, Caniff was one of only two or three syndicated cartoonists who owned their creations, and he attracted considerable publicity as a result of this circumstance.

Steve Canyon

Like his previous strip, Steve Canyon was an action strip with a pilot as its main character. Canyon was originally portrayed as a civilian pilot with his own one-airplane cargo airline, but he re-enlisted in the Air Force during the Korean War and remained in the Air Force for the remainder of the strip's run.

Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon, although not gaining the popularity of Terry and the Pirates, nevertheless enjoyed greater longevity.

While Steve Canyon never achieved the popularity that Terry and the Pirates had at its height as a World War II military adventure or the cult fame Terry generated over the years, it was a successful comic strip with a greater circulation than Terry ever had. A short-lived Steve Canyon television series was produced in 1958, marking the height of the strip's fame. The title character's dedication to the military (Steve Canyon was often termed the "unofficial spokesman" for the Air Force) produced a negative reaction among readers during the Vietnam War, and the strip dropped in circulation as a result. Caniff nonetheless continued to enjoy enormous regard in the profession and in newspapering, and he produced the strip until his death in 1988. The strip was continued for a couple months after he died, but it soon expired, too, in June 1988.

Recognition and awards

Caniff was one of the founders of the National Cartoonist Society and served two terms as its President, 1948 and 1949. He also received the Society's first Cartoonist of the Year Award in 1947, nominally for his new comic strip, Steve Canyon, but since the award covered work published in 1946, it embraced Terry and the Pirates as well. Caniff would be named Cartoonist of the Year again, receiving the accompanying trophy, the Reuben, in 1972 for 1971, again for Steve Canyon. He was also named to the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1988. He received the National Cartoonist Society Elzie Segar Award in 1971, the Award for Story Comic Strip in 1979 for Steve Canyon, the Gold Key Award (the Society's Hall of Fame) in 1981, and NCS has since named the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in his honor.

Caniff died in New York City.

Followers

Along with Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, Caniff's style would have a tremendous influence on the artists who drew American comic books in the first half of the 20th century. Evidence of his influence can be clearly seen in the work of comic book artists such as Jack Kirby, Frank Robbins, Lee Elias, Bob Kane, Mike Sekowsky, Dick Dillin,John Romita,Sr. and Johnny Craig to name just a mere handful.

www.flickr.com/photos/deconstructing-roy-lichtenstein/395...

www.tnr.com/blog/spine?pid=49858

davidbarsalou.homestead.com/LICHTENSTEINPROJECT.html

www.flickr.com/photos/deconstructing-roy-lichtenstein/

www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/10/18/lich...

mass.live.advance.net/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-6/11...

web.archive.org/web/20030310054018/www.newmassmedia.com/a...

Andy Uhrich

12 December 2008

Copyright, Legal Issues, and Policy

H72.1804

Prof. Rina Pantalony

Now We All Live in Negativland: The Normalization of Copyright Tomfoolery

In many ways both legally and culturally 1991 was a different world. Most obviously and essentially, it was before the rise of the World Wide Web and its transformative revolution in how information, creative expression and commercial products are distributed, experienced and sold. This was an economic world then, before the rise of Napster and file sharing with its, to say the least, shattering effects on the business model for the content industry. It was a legal environment before the 1998 expansions of copyright in the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Term Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which brought copyright into the on-rushing digital world, but in a way designed to benefit commerce at the expense of fair use. However, by then there were a steadily growing number of artists and musicians who were creating new works based on appropriated sounds and images. Not surprisingly this got a number of them sued for copyright infringement. In the fall of 1991 sound art pranksters Negativland were sued by U2’s record and publishing companies over the uncleared samples and allegedly deceptive packaging of Negativland’s single called, provocatively, U2. Re-examining, from the viewpoint of our current digital impasse, these entertaining but dishearteningly complicated legal wranglings allows for a critique of the content industries legal response to the digital culture, a study of the origins of the counter-response by the advocates of free culture and fair use, and a reinforcement of the virtue of a purposefully imprecise copyright law.

It might be tempting for some to look at this pre-Information Superhighway era with a glint of nostalgia, almost as a simpler fin de siècle time where copyright infringement was easy to enforce, record labels where free to charge whatever they wanted for their product, and they didn’t need to sue grandmothers and teenagers for illegal downloading. Copyright law mainly had the regulatory role of promoting a free economy by preventing content providers from ripping off each other’s protected materials. It essentially required the economic and technological base of the entertainment industry to create a copy that was exact enough to infringe and that was distributable on a mass scale. Consumers could only consume.

To be sure there had been some earlier disruptions in this one way, top down commercial model of distributing culture. While these new technologies afforded the public some ability to control how and when they experienced pre-packaged culture, through time shifting or creating a mix-tape for a friend for example, the imperfect nature of analogue reproducibility limited the extent of the impact of the use. The content industry was either forced to accept and eventually reap huge profits from them, i.e. home videotape recorders, or while widely complaining about the effects – the British Phonographic Industry’s easily ridiculed “Home Taping is Killing Music” ad campaign – rather easily absorbing the minor market effects. It took digital technologies, with their stunning ease of perfect reproduction, alteration, and immediate and widespread dissemination, to truly upset the balance between content provider and consumer. This has had the by now well documented , contradictory effect of turning the wider public into felonious pirates plundering the wealth of the unexpecting entertainment industry and into activated and creative producers of a new digital folk culture. It has also brought copyright out of the purely economic sphere into our day-to-day lives regulating how we interact and experience the world around us.

Over the last century artists have played the role of the canary in the coalmine on this issue both in conceptually locating the human impulse to manipulate the increasingly mediated cultural environment and through the development of the actual methods of doing so. For the former the obvious touchstone is Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the readymade. Duchamp asserted that the true artistic act was not the previously conceived of final artwork such as a painting or a sculpture, but the mental decision of calling something “art”. The artist makes an artwork from appropriating images, objects and ideas from the world around them and it’s the conceptual gesture of doing so that transforms them from the prosaic and the natural into the aesthetic. As Duchamp showed, it didn’t matter if the original object was a urinal, a bottle rack, or the Mona Lisa suggestively detourned with an added moustache. Everything is fodder: high art, popular culture and the utilitarian.

In 1972 artist, musician and provocateur Genesis P-Orridge took Duchamp’s concept of the readymade into the realm of the copyright with his performance and related book entitled Copyright Breeches. Besides creating a punningly humorous pair of oversized trousers emblazoned with dozens of copyright symbols, instead of merely declaring already existing objects art as per Duchamp, P-Orridge asserted his copyright over them in a declaratory act of peremptory claiming . While it was obviously farcical for P-Orridge to claim copyright over things which he has no proper and legal ownership, his piece criticizes the acquisitive nature of the artists and the way the business world exploits the creative works of others. Astutely, P-Orridge highlights how the concept of what has become to be known as intellectual property undergirds and conjoins both worlds. Further, whether purposefully or not, it augurs the clashes to come between free expression and copyright control.

Until the ease of digital technologies it required the skill and drive of the artist to create a work that would irritate a copyright holder enough to claim infringement. One couldn’t just cut and paste an image of Mickey Mouse to raise the legal wrath of Disney, but you had to be a talented enough cartoonist to draw and publish a satirical and patently offensive underground comic involving trademarked and copyright protected cartoon characters as the Air Pirates did in 1971 . Or you had to have the ability to paint like Roy Lichtenstein who subtly repurposed copyrighted images from trashy pulp comic books into intentionally vague but incredibly valuable pop art objects .

Similarly, new recording technologies like videotape recorders and samplers were originally expensive enough and required enough training to limit the possibility of copyright infringement by the wider public. But with each new technology artists were immediately devising new methods of capturing the world around them, subverting and transforming the images and sounds they appropriated in manners that could not avoid infringing copyrights. According to the apocryphal origin myth of video art, in the fall of 1965 Nam June Paik purchased one of the first home video recorders – the Sony TCV-2100. Right away Paik set about recording televised images of politicians, popular figures and rock stars off the air that he manipulated and distorted . He did this as a comment on the media landscape with its emerging cult of the celebrity and as raw material for creating his cathode tube paintings where the TV screen became a new electronic canvas.

In the music world, the release of digital samplers in the late 1980s transformed the ease with which artists and musicians could use previously recorded sound as a raw element for new compositions. DJs in the hip hop world used the new technology to dramatically expand on the previously turntable-based musical form into the creatively dense soundscapes such as Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back . In an example presaging the troubles of Negativland, in 1989 composer John Oswald was forced to destroy the copies of his Plunderphonics CD. The CD, which featured a cheeky collage of Michael Jackson’s head on the nude body of a woman which certainly played a part in the actions against Oswald, was a cut-up clashing jumble of samples from musicians such as Dolly Parton, Metallica, the Beatles, James Brown and Michael Jackson. Oswald’s composition is clearly an act of musical critique and commentary in the way it collapsed previously held critical notions on the differences in musical genres and styles. Oswald, who distributed the CD for free, was threatened by the Canadian Recording Industry Association to turn over the existing copies and master tapes or face criminal proceedings. Lacking the financial means to battle the CRIA in court, Oswald complied . In a manner which builds on P-Orridge’s concept of the interwoven nature of art and commerce in relation to copyright, after the Plunderphonics debacle Oswald was hired twice by the music industry to create remix CDs: one celebrating the 40th anniversary of Elektra records (label to Metallica, one of the artists on Plunderphonics) and a double disc re-imagining of the Grateful Dead’s psychedelic freak out jam “Dark Star” . This suggests that the underlying issue is not the act of manipulation of the copyright protected work that disturbs the content industry, but doing it without their permission.

Negativland used a similar technology to create the two songs on their U2 single. They sampled U2’s hit song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and mixed it with clandestine outtakes of a furious Casey Kasem swearing during an un-aired dedication to the very same U2 song. Packaged in a cover emblazoned with the letter U and number 2 and an image of the spy plane, Negativland released the single as a conceptual goof on the music industry, the nature of appropriation (does the band U2 owns the phrase U2 with its Cold War connotations?) and the not so deeply veiled insincerity of an industry predicated on the commoditization of emotional connections.

Within weeks of the single’s release, on storied underground record label SST, lawyers representing U2’s label and publishing company – but not the band themselves – filed a lawsuit requesting an ex parte temporary restraining order to halt Negativland’s “exploitation” of their record. The lawsuit alleges that the single constitutes “nothing less than consumer fraud” due to the cover’s oversized U and 2 “which is so deceptive as to create the false impression that the recording of is a genuine U2 record”. The lawyers accuse Negativland of violating §43(a) of the Lanham Trademark Act and of “attempt[ing] to usurp the anticipated profits and goodwill to which plaintiffs are entitled from the exploitation of recordings and musical compositions by U2” . Once again, the lawyers were protecting the profits of the label and publishing company, not the musicians in U2.

The second part of the complaint focused on Negativland’s unauthorized use of the song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” The lawyers called it a “blatant case of copyright infringement” under §101 of the Copyright Act justifying the request for the restraining order and compensation . The judge agreed with the request and issued the temporary restraining order to SST and Negativland on September 5th with a hearing set for the 15th of October.

Reading the lawsuit now – from a non-legal standpoint it must be emphasized – reveals the absurdity of presenting the U2 trademark as one easily damaged. In fact, in the narrative that the lawyers furnish to establish Island and Warner-Chappell’s as legal exclusive rights holders to sell and publish U2’s music constantly mentions the overwhelming success of U2. They state that for 11 years Island records has been “manufacturing, marketing, promoting, advertising and selling millions of records by the enormously popular recording group known as ‘U2’” . They go on to recall that U2’s The Joshua Tree album, which included the song that Negativland sampled, sold over 5 million copies alone in the United States and that album was made even more important by its winning a Grammy . The lawyers relayed an account where one of the world’s most popular bands and brands, that has sold millions and millions of records, can be usurped by a band who has pressed ten thousand copies of an album that if not stopped would “flood the shelves of record stores with the infringing recording […] creating massive confusion among the record buying public” . “Thus, some unwitting consumers, upon purchasing and listening to the ‘U2 Negativland’ recording, might well conclude that U2 has made a poor quality and offensive recording, thus further unlawfully tarnishing the band’s reputation and image, and the enormously valuable “U2” name and mark” .

Clearly, this is a hyperbolic legal form of writing designed to make an overwhelmingly convincing point in court. The point of bringing this up is not to suggest that there is some cut off point of damages under which pirates and bootleggers can operate outside of the law or that the plaintiffs were outside of their right as copyright holders. Instead it is to highlight that the lawyers, who were not required to prove damages or that any unwitting customers actually purchased the Negativland record thinking it was the new U2 record to request compensation, developed a legal case that might prevail in court but in the public arena ended up making U2 the heavy and Negativland the aggrieved party. This tin ear for judging the public opinion would return in their policy of litigation that the recording industry levied on individuals accused of illegal downloading a decade later .

Similarly to the Oswald case, SST settled with Island and Warner-Chappell stating at the time that the $90,000 of losses and fines incurred by settling out of court would be significantly less than the expected $250,000 in legal fees that a defense would cost, regardless of whether they were successful or not . The label agreed to hand over all copies of the recording and refrain from in any way infringing on U2’s trademark or copyright. The settlement effectively gave Island Records the rights to Negativland’s recording.

Instead of what should have been the end of a rather unfortunate audio prank became even more tortuous as Negative decided to continue fighting for their cause in the public arena. First, they parted ways with their label as SST was insisting the band was responsible for all of the damages. They kept their case on the media radar via attempts to convince Island founder Chris Blackwell to release the record as a b-side to a U2 record since “interest in the single is higher than ever” , entreaties to Casey Kasem, and ambushing U2’s the Edge in an interview where they hit him up for a loan to pay off their legal fees and release a new record .

In August of 1992 they released a magazine which compiled all the documents of the case – the original lawsuit, settlement, press clippings, letters and faxes between the parties, and the interview with the Edge – and a CD of an audio collage mixing together purposefully infringed copyright protected material and a treatise on fair use. SST immediately sued them for copyright infringement based on unauthorized publication of internal SST documents. The band and SST eventually settled out of court by allowing the label to release an essentially unauthorized live recording of Negativland and any parodies of Negativland if it so desired. Through a combination of relentlessly irritating Island records, appealing to U2’s better artistic impulses, and garnering the Irish band bad press over the suit Negativland had by the summer of 1994 convinced Island and U2 to return the offending recordings back to Negativland. While insisting that any contract indemnify U2 and Island from any legal actions that Kasem might take, according to U2’s manager Paul McGuinness the main condition for the return was “that you [Negativland] stop writing us” .

In 1995, Negativland released an expanding book version of the magazine that had earlier got them into legal trouble with SST. The book, Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2 includes paper records that document the events after the earlier magazine and an appendix with essays on fair use, artistic appropriation, and the Supreme Court ruling on the 2 Live Crew Case. The book, with its in-depth paper trail of records from all sides, allows for a fascinating study of the legal and economic issues that result from copyright suits. Further, read from the vantage of the digital now, the book is a legal and cultural time capsule of a transitional era where just emerging technologies, which as the Negativland case shows were already roiling the legal waters, were on the cusp of completely transforming the relationship between producer and consumer.

Negativland and the book have played no small role in that transformation given their role in the free culture and fair use advocate groups that have arisen to counter what they see as the overreaching power grab by the content industry. Through the course of the book it is interesting to see Negativland adopting the tenets and cause of fair use whereas their original response was one of the freedom of artistic appropriation and first rights amendments. At some point after the lawsuits they became acquainted with Lawrence Lessig and the legal decision on the 2 Live Crew case ; both of which seems to have catalyzed their thinking on fair use and copyright. Without overplaying them or the books importance, it should be noted that their advocacy for fair use and their legal problems brought the issue to the underground independent culture, many of whom later became strong proponents of the freedom of artistic expression. An example of this would be someone like Carrie McLaren who at the time of the 1991 U2 Negativland lawsuit was a college radio music director and in 2002 curated the Illegal Art exhibit which featured work by Negativland and other artists stretching the boundaries of copyright . Negativland have continued their crusade against corporate control of expression; in 2003 they developed the sampling license for Creative Commons and just this fall Negativland member Mark Hosler lobbied members of Congress for copyright law revisions for the Digital Freedom Campaign .

In addition the book offers an opportunity to study a pre-Internet case of copyright infringement for the purposes of charting the origins and transformations of the current legal response by the music industry to the overwhelming flood of peer-to-peer copyright violations. One point that becomes quickly obvious regards whose benefits the lawsuits are designed to protect. As discussed earlier the lawsuit against Negativland was filed by U2’s record label and publishing company. Obviously, it is the norm in the industry for musicians to assign their label and publishing company the right of representation in legal matters, but seeing the business relationship laid out so starkly as it is in the lawsuit is revelatory. According to Eric Levine of Island Records: "record companies' primary assets are rights - copyrights, exclusive rights for recording services, names, trademarks etc” . So it’s not the actual songs or musicians that the music industry are selling, but the right to access and use them.

In both the Negativland case and the current lawsuits the goal of the content industry is to use its legal power to tamp down on behavior that it deems economically threatening. The content industry has the financial advantage of being able to pay for lawyers that Negativland didn’t and most defendants still don’t. Since the vast majority of these cases are settled out of court , this has the incredibly dangerous effect of limiting the discourse of copyright to one that favors corporate interests, as most cases do not reach the level of adjudication that might rule on issues such as fair use. This has the effect of criminalizing behavior that has not been proven so in court; it diminishes the presumption of innocence that the legal system is predicated on .

The entertainment industry’s campaign, while in no means effective , certainly shocks those on the receiving end of a lawsuit. When asked in 1995 if the lawsuit has forced Negativland to consider legal issues in a way that might limit their creativity, Hosler responds “Yeah, to some degree we probably will. It's just hellish to get sued” . In 2008, the mother of a college student who was sued for copyright infringement and was chastened by the $220,000 court ruling against Jamie Thomas said “I'm just so scared. I think we're just probably going to settle. I don't even want to go to court” . Stephanie Lenz, whose case is discussed below, states:

“[When recording home videos] I’m constantly thinking about what’s going on in the background, what’s on the TV, what’s on the CD player, the characters on my kid’s clothes, the characters on the toys they are playing with. I’m cognizant of what’s going of what’s going on at every step, instead of focusing on my kids, which is where my attention should be” .

One important lesson from the Negativland case is that while they were crushed into complying with the original lawsuit’s demands, in the end they essentially won. Through pleading their case in the media and doggedly pursuing U2 and Island Records Negativland got their supposedly illicit recordings returned to them. The results of that return contradict the lawsuit’s hysterical claims that allowing Negativland’s recording to be distributed would cause irreparable harm to U2’s image and record sale; clearly no such thing has happened. Negativland re-released the recordings in an expanded form in 2001 and has had absolutely no effect on U2’s market share or trademark.

While this example does not necessarily pertain to the lawsuits against peer-to-peer file sharing, it is directly germane to the industry’s response of re-used and re-mixed copyright protected content that shows up, among other places, on YouTube. Yes, such behavior is unauthorized, but not only is there no proof of actual economic harm, but in this era of splintering audiences the content industry should instead take advantage of this new form of marketing. In the case of the Stephanie Lenz video where her infant son dances to “Let’s Go Crazy”, Prince and Universal instead of issuing a take down notice to YouTube could have leveraged the video and its audience by placing an ad for a new Prince album or a link to a site with a discounted mp3 of the now 24 year old song . Lenz, who is being represented by the Electronic Freedom Frontier, may not win her countersuit against Universal, but her case has resulted in a potentially significant ruling dictating that copyright holders must take into account issues of fair use and market impact before issuing take down notices .

That the economic and legal power resides with the content industry, but the social and moral power is with the public is just one of the ironies that the Negativland case unveils. Another is the fact that, as mentioned, the recordings were eventually returned to Negativland implying a fluid subjective nature to ascribing copyright infringement. These recordings are now available for free from Negativland’s website with a reproduction of the original cover or for sale in the expanded form from iTun

Buddha Statue - 2 by Manfred Sommer

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