The Daily Valet. - 3/4/20, Wednesday
✔️ Why Can't I Stop Touching My Face?
Wednesday, March 4th Edition
Try as I might, I can’t stop touching my face ...
Cory Ohlendorf , Editor ⋯ @coryohlendorf
Today's edition is presented by
Today’s Big Story
The Race Narrows
Sanders wins top prize, California; Biden surges nationwide
Super Tuesday is the biggest day on the primary calendar, and the results are likely to reshape the Democratic presidential race in ways few could have predicted a couple weeks ago, reports the Associated Press.
It's hard to overstate the speed and depth of the comeback of former Vice President Joe Biden. He was embarrassed in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, and left many Democrats looking for an alternative.
But according to NBC News, he came back strong Tuesday, winning Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Minnesota and Massachusetts primaries—sweeping the South with his strength among black voters and making an inroad in the upper Midwest after a key endorsement from Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
The race in Maine hasn't been called, but Biden has a slight lead.
Bernie Sanders claimed the night’s largest trophy, California—a state where he had committed substantial time and effort. He also picked up Colorado, Utah and Vermont. It's a measure of how strategic the Sanders campaign has been, and why he remains so formidable.
As for Elizabeth Warren, she struggled to amass delegates after a string of disappointing showings, losing her home state of Massachusetts to Biden. Mike Bloomberg spent $92 million in the 11 states that have all been called for his opponents—he said he plans to huddle with aides today and decide his path forward in the race.
↦ FYI A candidate must earn 1,991 delegates to become the Democratic nominee.
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates to Combat Fears
It’s the first cut of its kind since the 2008 financial crisis
The Federal Reserve announced an emergency rate cut Tuesday in response to the economic impact of the coronavirus spread, trimming the nation's benchmark borrowing rate by half a percentage point, reports the Wall Street Journal.
The central bank has typically reserved such moves for times when the economic outlook has quickly darkened, as in early 2001 and early 2008, when the US economy was heading into recession.
But according to NPR, the emergency interest-rate cut failed to mollify investors worried about an epidemic, and stocks started falling again. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended down 786 points—a drop of 2.94% after an especially volatile trading day.
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Why Can’t I Stop Touching My Face?
The key recommendation to stop the spread of coronavirus, the flu or a mere cold ... is hard
How are you doing keeping those hands clean? Are you washing frequently and using the last of your in-demand hand sanitizer to ward off COVID-19? Yeah, us too.
After all, the World Health Organization says hand-washing is the most important habit in the prevention of the spread of contractible illnesses like the flu or coronavirus. But hands get dirty fast. Just writing these last few sentences, I've grabbed my phone and computer mouse, a coffee cup and pulled a tube of lip balm from my pocket.
That's why the CDC is urging us all to stop touching our faces. Because wiping your mouth, rubbing your eyes, and scratching your nose is exactly how you infect yourself. Most viruses have been shown to last for days on surfaces. And that gives our grimey little fingers plenty of opportunities to pick it up and put it directly onto our face’s mucous membranes.
Of course, there's not much we can do to break such an innate habit. According to data from the National Institutes of Health, we touch our faces 23 times an hour. Anything you do that much (and that involuntarily) is going to be tough to quit. You might as well ask me to give up checking Instagram. So I guess I better keep my hands clean then.
↦ Reminder: COVID-19 is most dangerous for those over 80 or with suppressed immune systems. For the rest of us, contracting the virus would likely feel similar to a cold.
Plastics Are an Even Bigger Problem Than We Thought
How Big Oil and Big Soda kept a global environmental calamity a secret for decades
Every human on Earth is ingesting nearly 2,000 particles of plastic a week. That's the sobering statistic that kicks off Tim Dickinson's Rolling Stone exposé.
These tiny pieces enter our unwitting bodies from tap water, food and even the air, according to an alarming academic study sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, dosing us with five grams of plastics—many cut with chemicals linked to cancers and other scary health concerns.
Just how much plastic are we investing? About a credit card's worth, according to Senator Tom Udall, a New Mexico Democrat who helped introduce the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2020 to Congress.
The story also examines how plastics became the lifeblood of an American culture of speed, convenience and disposability that’s conquered the globe. What's more, plastic pollution is on pace to double by 2030.
↦ FYI: Since 1950, the world has created 13 trillion pounds of plastic waste. And 91% has never been recycled.
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Ghost Kitchens Are on the Rise ...
But is that a good thing or a bad thing?
You've likely heard about ghost kitchens, sometimes called "cloud kitchens." Driven by the rise in food delivery apps, they're stripped-down kitchens for delivery-only restaurants and other concepts that don’t require a physical dining room.
The format, which is popping up in cities all across the country, is banking on the meteoric growth of the online food delivery market—set to reach $24 billion by 2023, according to a report published in QSR.
But while more delivery options always seem like a good idea, there are a lot of people opposed to the growth. Eater reports on how ghost kitchens can put mom-and-pop operations out of business by cutting into their already-slim margins.
Mel magazine just called them "the latest face of creeping, deliberate gentrification." And the New York Times criticizes a business model that does away with communal eating places in favor of solitary delivery, further diminishing the already disappearing social aspect of dining out.
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