Tag: map

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Health

Map reveals newest outbreak in mainland China as delta instances rise

Map shows latest outbreak in mainland China as delta cases rise

In recent weeks, new pockets of Covid-19 cases have surfaced in parts of mainland China as the highly contagious Delta variant spreads across the country.

So far this month, locally transmitted cases reported in mainland China have risen to 878 – more than double the 390 cases recorded for the entire month of July, according to the CNBC daily statistics from China’s National Health Commission.

To be clear, the number of reported infections is much lower in China than many countries – including the US, where an average of about 100,000 new cases a day, and Southeast Asia, where daily cases have risen sharply.

Still, Chinese authorities have imposed targeted bans, tightened movement controls and ordered mass tests to curb the recent resurgence in Covid cases.

Impact on China’s Economy

Economists have raised concerns about China’s zero tolerance for Covid. The government has insisted on stamping out any flare-ups in Covid cases, even as many countries around the world – including the UK and Singapore – have started to accept that the virus will never go away.

The recent resurgence of Covid cases in China is due to the fact that some economic growth engines continue to lose momentum while domestic consumption struggles to fully recover, HSBC economists said in a report on Wednesday.

The economists found that the number of new infections reported in China is the highest since an outbreak in northern China in December 2020.

“As a result, many provinces and cities have tightened social distancing restrictions and bans on travel between cities and provinces,” the report said.

“These measures will inevitably weigh on growth, especially domestic consumption, which has not yet seen a full recovery to pre-pandemic levels,” the analysts said.

HSBC said mounting economic pressures could lead Beijing to adopt “more supportive” fiscal policies. This could include major infrastructure spending and tax cuts for small and medium-sized businesses, the bank said.

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World News

Friday’s jobs report is a wild card, with economists’ estimates all around the map

Friday's jobs report is a wild card, with economists' estimates all over the map

A worker works on a screed tower connection at the Calder Brothers facility in Taylors, South Carolina, USA on July 19, 2021.

Brandon Granger | Calder Brothers Corporation | Reuters

According to the Dow Jones consensus estimate, the economy is projected to add around 845,000 workers in July as the American workforce gradually recovers from its heavy pandemic job losses.

But the uncertainty of Covid – which is spreading again at a rapid pace – has become a wild card for the job market, as well as for the entire economy. The number of new infections in the US is increasing to 100,000 per day, faster than last summer, when there were no generally available vaccines.

Wall Street’s predictions for the July Employment Report, due to be released Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET, are sweeping. The Wilmington Trust economists, for example, expect only 350,000 payrolls, while the Jefferies economists forecast 1.2 million new jobs.

“The range is from 1.2 million to 350,000. That just says these numbers have very little confidence,” said Michael Schumacher, director of interest rate strategy at Wells Fargo.

Employment growth has not lived up to earlier expectations of economists, some of whom forecast several months of growth in excess of a million this spring and summer. Instead, employers are struggling with vacancies and the situation is not expected to improve significantly until schools reopen and extended unemployment benefits expire in September.

The fast-spreading delta variant of Covid may not have affected the July report. However, economists say that if individuals are afraid to move back into the economy, new restrictions are put in place, or schools should be closed again, it could slow the rate of economic growth and affect employment.

The employment data is also critical to the Fed’s decision on when to slow its bond purchases, the first step in rolling back its loose policy and a precursor to rate hikes. Fed chairman Jerome Powell said last week he would like some strong employment reports before the Fed begins slashing its $ 120 billion monthly government bond and mortgage purchases.

CNBC Pro’s Stock Picks and Investment Trends:

“We won’t know much about the balance in the labor market until the job report comes out in October,” said Schumacher.

According to the Dow Jones, the unemployment rate is said to have fallen from 5.9% in June to 5.7%. Average hourly wages are expected to have increased 0.3% month-over-month or 3.9% year-over-year. 850,000 jobs were added in June.

“The reason I have such a high forecast for July is because we’ve lost additional unemployment benefits in 25 states and claims have fallen sharply in those states,” said Jefferies finance economist Aneta Markowska. She added that there is usually a large seasonal decline in July that may not show up this year.

More than 22.3 million Americans were laid off in March and April 2020 when the economy abruptly shut down. In June total employment was 7.13 million below the level of February 2020.

“I was looking for a pretty healthy number, around 850,000 to 900,000, and a drop in the unemployment rate to around 5.7%,” said Kathy Jones, chief fixed income strategist for Charles Schwab. “The main reason we expect a pretty large number is that we expect some of the education jobs to come back. July is a little early, but we’ll see some of those numbers. That could add about 400,000. The seasonal adjustment is likely to make that worse too. “

Jones said she expected the mindset to be strong for the next couple of months.

“We expected the July, August and September period between reopening, schools reopening … job restoration to be quite strong as a result of the American bailout. All of that should make for a pretty strong July, August, September series of numbers, “she said.” Of course the Delta variant is the wild card.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the US reports a seven-day average of nearly 94,000 new cases on Aug. 4, a 48% increase from a week.

Wilmington Trust chief economist Luke Tilley said his low forecast was based on signs of slower growth he is seeing in high-frequency data. “We believe the execution rate is around 500,000 right now. The last month seems a bit over cooked, ”said Tilley.

Other recently released data show a mixed picture for employment.

BMO bond strategist Ben Jeffery said the half-dozen actions he watches tend to be a strong number and the others suggest otherwise. For example, ADP’s monthly payroll report for June was weak with 330,000 jobs versus an expected 683,000. But employment in the ISM service sector rebounded from 49.3 to 53.8. Anything over 50 indicates expansion.

“That [nonfarm payrolls] was always one of the hardest numbers to predict before the pandemic, and you add up all the nuances of the current hiring landscape. That makes it even more difficult, “he said.

Jeffery said the government poll week for the July report, which covers July 12, may not reflect the impact of the Delta variant concerns. “Whatever the number, it is greatly constrained by the fact that concerns about the Delta option weren’t as high during survey week as they are now or during the August survey period,” he said.

Because of this, he doesn’t expect big moves in the bond market unless the report is closer to one end of the forecast range or the other.

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Health

‘X’ Marks the Spot: Officers Map a Route Out of the Pandemic

‘X’ Marks the Spot: Officials Map a Route Out of the Pandemic

At their regular pandemic response meetings over the past year, officials in Suffolk County, N.Y., found themselves returning, again and again, to questions of geography.

“One of the common questions I used to get was, ‘Where is it bad?” said Dr. Harsha Rajashekharaiah, the senior project coordinator for the county’s Covid-19 response. “Where is the Covid transmission bad? Where is the testing bad? Where should we improve? Where should we invest our resources?”

To find answers, Dr. Rajashekharaiah used geospatial data, brandishing brightly colored maps that pinpointed the exact neighborhoods where cases were rising or where testing rates were lagging.

And after inoculations began, he started using digital mapping tools — commonly known as geographic information system, or G.I.S., software — to explore how vaccination rates varied across the county and how they correlated with a variety of demographic factors.

Several patterns soon emerged on the color-coded maps. In March, for instance, magenta splotches on the western side of the county made it clear that vaccination rates were low in neighborhoods with a high share of residents who did not speak English well. After he presented the map to his colleagues, they quickly added Spanish and Haitian Creole language assistance to their county vaccine hotline.

Over the next few months, as vaccination rates rose in these neighborhoods, portions of the map turned to yellow or even green. “I cannot sit here and conclude that our G.I.S. system is the reason that this has happened,” Dr. Rajashekharaiah said. But, he added, “G.I.S. has been a very, very powerful tool for us to communicate these barriers.”

Amid the highly uneven rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, many health officials and community organizations are drawing upon geospatial data to plan their vaccination campaigns and track their progress in fine-grained detail. Esri, a California-based company that makes widely used G.I.S. software, says that hundreds of organizations around the world — including many U.S. states and more than 20 national governments — are using its digital mapping tools to help them get shots into arms.

“G.I.S. and mapping tools have been really important to helping these health departments get people vaccinated — to be more organized in the process, more streamlined and strategic and even tactical,” said Dr. Este Geraghty, the chief medical officer of Esri.

By allowing officials to quickly spot vaccine deserts, pinpoint high-risk populations and target their resources more efficiently, digital maps have become crucial tools in the effort to ensure that vaccination campaigns leave no neighborhood behind.

Coronavirus Pandemic and U.S. Life Expectancy

As the virus raced across Wisconsin in the spring of 2020, officials in Milwaukee County became concerned about its unequal toll. In late March and early April, for instance, Black residents accounted for 69 percent of the Covid deaths in the county despite making up just 27 percent of its population, according to a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee report.

These disparities were front of mind when the Covid-19 vaccines were finally authorized. “We wanted to make sure that we were equitably distributing this vaccine,” said David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive.

They began categorizing census tracts according to their vaccination rates and their scores on a national “social vulnerability index.” The index uses data on 15 different social, economic and demographic factors — including the age, minority status and education levels of residents, as well as local poverty and unemployment rates — to calculate how susceptible a given community would be in the event of some kind of disaster, like a hurricane or a pandemic.

Then the officials displayed the results online on a color-coded map. In mid-March, when the county first released it, much of the city of Milwaukee was colored dark orange, signaling that the area had high levels of social vulnerability but low vaccination rates.

On the other hand, the suburbs, where the population is wealthier and whiter, were shaded a pale yellow, indicating that they had low scores on the vulnerability index but climbing vaccination rates. “And so there was this story of the haves and have-nots, or two different cities,” said Dr. Ben Weston, who oversees the medical aspects of the county’s Covid-19 response.

County and city officials began pouring resources into deep orange neighborhoods, prioritizing those residents for vaccine appointments, adding more vaccination sites in those areas and creating pop-up sites and events at churches, food pantries, libraries, schools and cultural centers. They also started a community ambassador program — the Crush Covid Crew — to train volunteers from those deep orange census tracts to talk to their neighbors about the vaccines and dispel misinformation about them.

Although vaccination rates in the most vulnerable areas still lag behind, they have more than tripled since mid-March. “The darkest orange communities are now gone,” Dr. Weston said. “So we’re making progress.”

Updated 

Aug. 1, 2021, 11:42 a.m. ET

The Count Me In initiative in Georgia — which was created by Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia Democratic candidate for governor — has taken a similar approach. But instead of focusing on vaccination rates, it mapped vaccination sites across the state and then overlaid data on potential barriers to vaccination, including a lack of computer access and low rates of car ownership.

The map revealed numerous potential trouble spots, particularly in rural, southwest Georgia. “We saw this very large concentration of folks that had very limited vaccine access,” said Ali Bustamante, a senior research associate at the Southern Economic Advancement Project, which runs the initiative with the nonprofit organization Fair Count. “There were very few vaccination sites, while at the same time they were facing huge access constraints.”

The groups partnered with vaccine providers to send mobile clinics to some of these vaccine deserts and began an all-out canvassing effort, borrowing the tools of a political campaign to encourage people to get shots. Volunteers ultimately made 79,000 phone calls, delivered vaccine information to 17,000 doors and helped book 4,500 vaccine appointments. “Particularly in rural areas, we have seen the vaccination gap close considerably,” Dr. Bustamante said.

Geospatial data is also critical for logistics. Carto, a cloud-based platform for analyzing geospatial data, has helped dozens of logistics companies around the world optimize their vaccine storage and transportation networks to get the shots distributed more quickly and efficiently, said Luis Sanz, the company’s chief executive.

And in Clackamas County in Oregon, G.I.S. data has become the backbone of efforts to vaccinate people who are homebound. “Because we are a large county with somewhat rural areas, we do have some transportation issues and access is a challenge for many of our residents,” said Kim La Croix, a public health program manager for the county. “Those mass vaccination sites were just not accessible to homebound seniors and homebound people with mental, developmental or physical disabilities.”

Understand the State of Vaccine Mandates in the U.S.

When residents call or email the county to request an at-home vaccination, staff members log their location, which pops up on a digital map. Then, when assigning specific appointment slots, they review the map, which displays the number and type of vaccines that have been requested across the county. The goal is to reduce nurses’ travel time, maximize the number of shots they give in a day and to minimize waste, by ensuring that the number of doses a nurse gives in a shift matches the number of doses in a vial.

In low and middle-income countries, basic geospatial data — about how many people need to be vaccinated and where they live — has been critical to the success of prior mass vaccination campaigns. About a decade ago, for instance, government officials and global health experts realized that polio vaccination teams in northern Nigeria were using inaccurate, hand-drawn maps.

“There were missing settlements, wrong settlement names,” said Emilie Schnarr, the Nigeria project manager for the Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic Data for Development, or GRID3, program. “And that was one of the reasons children were being missed.”

Credit…Inuwa Barau et al., Journal of Infectious Diseases

Without reaching these children, the highly contagious polio virus was likely to continue circulating. So in the years that followed, the Nigerian government, in partnership with several global health organizations, used satellite imagery and local field teams to create detailed, high resolution maps, filling in missing buildings, settlements, and local points of interest.

The maps helped Nigeria eradicate polio, which the country finally achieved last year. And GRID3, which grew out of these efforts, recently distributed updated maps to local officials across Nigeria, who are using them to help plan and track their Covid-19 vaccination campaigns.

They’re not alone. In March, five organizations that specialize in geographic data and information management — Alcis, CartONG, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, iMMAP and MapAction — joined forces to launch the Geographic Information Management Initiative for Covid-19 Vaccine Delivery. Their goal is to help 15 low-income countries, including Haiti, Sudan and Bangladesh, fill gaps in their geospatial data and then harness that information to get vaccines out to their residents.

The work, the say, will be of use not just for this pandemic, but for the delivery of all sorts of essential services, ensuring that local health authorities know where their citizens live and can help them meet their needs.

“To be on the map is to be acknowledged,” said Ivan Gayton, the senior humanitarian adviser to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. “Every community in the world should be able to put themselves on the map.”

Categories
Politics

Democrats See Early Edge in 2022 Senate Map

Democrats See Early Edge in 2022 Senate Map

Three other Republicans in the running outperformed Mr. Greitens: Rep. Vicky Hartzler, Attorney General Eric Schmitt, and Mark McCloskey, best known for waving his gun outside his St. Louis home when protesters marched last year. Some national Republican strategists fear that if Mr. Greitens survives a crowded primary, he could prove toxic even in a heavily Republican state.

Scott has promised to remain neutral in the party’s primary election, but Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, has long preferred promoting candidates he believes can win in November.

“The only thing that matters to me is eligibility,” McConnell told Politico this year. With Mr. Scott on the sidelines, a McConnell-sponsored super-PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, is expected to handle most of the interventions.

Mr. Trump, who often argues with Mr. McConnell, has been particularly involved in the races in Arizona and Georgia, largely because of his own narrow losses there. He has publicly urged former soccer player Herschel Walker to run in Georgia – Mr Walker has not signed up to a campaign – and attacked Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey, even after Mr Ducey said he was not running for the Senate is running. Some Republican agents continue to hope to pull Mr. Ducey into the race.

Mr. Trump gave early Senate approval to North Carolina MP Ted Budd, who raised $ 953,000, which is less than the $ 1.25 million withdrawn from former Governor Pat McCrory. Some Republicans see Mr. McCrory as the stronger potential candidate because of his track record in winning nationwide.

In Alaska, Kelly Tshibaka is running as a pro-Trump challenger for Senator Lisa Murkowski, who voted for Trump’s conviction after his second impeachment. Ms. Murkowski, who has not officially said whether she will run again, more than doubled Ms. Tshibaka in the most recent quarter, from $ 1.15 million to $ 544,000.

In Alabama, Trump gave MP Mo Brooks another early endorsement and recently attacked one of his rivals, Katie Britt, the former chief of staff for retired incumbent Richard Shelby. Ms. Britt entered the race in June, but she raised Mr. Brooks by $ 2.2 million to $ 824,000. A third candidate, Lynda Blanchard, is a former Trump-appointed ambassador who loaned $ 5 million to her campaign.

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Health

This is a map displaying the place low vaccination charges meet excessive case counts as infections surge

Here's a map showing where low vaccination rates meet high case counts as infections surge

In more and more US states with low vaccination rates, Covid cases are rising, exposing residents to the risk of “unnecessary” infections, hospitalizations and possibly death as the Delta variant rips across the country, according to US health officials.

“After several weeks of falling case numbers followed by a long plateau, we are now seeing an increase in the number of cases in many parts of the country,” said Dr. Jay Butler, CDC assistant director, infectious diseases, on a call hosted Tuesday by an industry group. Hospitalization rates, which tend to lag behind confirmed cases, are similarly starting to rise, he said.

A CNBC analysis of US vaccination rates and Covid cases shows that there are 463 counties in the United States with high rates of infection – which have reported at least 100 new cases per 100,000 residents in the last week – more than double the US rate . The majority of these counties, 80%, vaccinated less than 40% of their 23 million residents, analysis shows data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Johns Hopkins University.

More than half of the counties in Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana have low vaccination rates and increased Covid cases, according to CNBC analysis. These three states had some of the highest cases per capita in the country in the past seven days as the spread of the Delta variant increased in southwest Missouri.

“There will continue to be an increase in cases among unvaccinated Americans and in communities with low vaccination rates, especially given the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant,” Jeff Zients, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, told a news conference last week . Virtually all Covid hospital admissions and deaths, 99.5%, occur in those who have not been vaccinated, US officials say.

In fact, nationwide cases are on the rise again as the highly transmissible delta variant asserts itself as the dominant strain in the US. The seven-day average of newly confirmed Covid cases has risen to about 23,300 per day, almost double the weekly average, according to data from Johns Hopkins before.

The rise of the Delta variant has spurred officials in some states like Mississippi to issue new calls for masking and social distancing, especially among older and more vulnerable residents.

“When the Delta strain emerged (in Utah) it quickly became the dominant strain, and by dominant I don’t mean 50%. For the last full week of data, more than 80% of the sequence viruses were Delta viruses and so far this week are it is 92% of all variants, “said Dr. Andrew T. Pavia, director of the Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Utah School of Medicine, in a call hosted Tuesday by the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

“If you think about what it means to have such a rapid virus takeover, it means that it is the most suitable virus, that it spreads more efficiently, that it spreads in unvaccinated pockets, and many diseases cause a lot of stress inside” , he added.

Mississippi has given at least one injection to just 37% of its population, making it last in the country. Officials there urged people over 65 and immunocompromised residents to avoid indoor mass gatherings in the next two weeks in the event of “significant transmission” of the Delta variant in the coming weeks.

“We don’t want anyone to die unnecessarily,” said Dr. Mississippi State Health Commissioner Thomas Dobbs during a news conference Friday.

According to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as successful in preventing serious illness, hospitalizations and deaths from the Delta variant.

Breakthrough infections are rare, and around 75% of people who die or are hospitalized after being vaccinated with Covid are over 65 years old, according to the CDC.

“Preliminary data for the past six months suggests that 99.5% of deaths from Covid-19 in the states have occurred in unvaccinated people … the suffering and loss we see now are almost entirely preventable,” Walensky said Earlier this month.

In addition to the risk of disease for Americans who have not yet received a vaccination, unvaccinated sections of the population could threaten the country’s ability to control the pandemic. Continued transmission of the virus means additional opportunities for new variants to emerge with the ability to bypass vaccine protection.

While 48% of Americans are fully vaccinated, the pace of daily vaccinations has slowed significantly in recent months. According to CDC data, an average of about 515,000 vaccinations were administered daily for the past week, after a steady decline from the peak of more than 3 million daily vaccinations.

President Joe Biden renewed his administration’s efforts to increase vaccination rates after failing to meet his July 4th goals, with a focus on youth and increasing availability in places like doctor’s offices and work environments.

Nearly 1,600 counties in 40 states with 72 million people have vaccinated less than 40% of their population, according to CNBC analysis. Six states where vaccination data were not available at the county level were excluded from the analysis.

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Business

California units a street map for theme parks to restart, placing Disneyland on observe for reopening.

California sets a road map for theme parks to restart, putting Disneyland on track for reopening.

The teacups could be spinning again soon: Disneyland, which has been closed for a year, is about to reopen this spring.

On Friday, California officials announced that theme parks in the state could reopen on a limited basis as early as April 1. However, the eligibility depends on the statistics on the transmission of coronaviruses in the individual counties.

For example, theme parks in counties where the virus threat remains the most severe (on the purple level under the state system) must remain closed. Parks in areas where the risk of infection has decreased somewhat (red level), however, may be reopened with a capacity of 15 percent. A capacity of 25 percent enables even less threat (orange level).

Participation is restricted to visitors from within Germany.

Disneyland is located in Orange County, which is on the purple row. However, if coronavirus cases in Southern California continue to decline at the current pace, the county could fall into the orange category by the end of April. The Walt Disney Company said last year that reopening a park with less than 25 percent capacity would not make economic sense. A Disney spokeswoman declined to comment on a specific reopening schedule on Friday.

“We’re encouraged that theme parks now have a way to reopen this spring and get thousands of people back to work,” Disneyland president Ken Potrock said in a statement.

Disney announced it would take at least four weeks to hire employees and train them in new coronavirus safety procedures. Before the pandemic, around 32,000 people worked at the 486-acre Disneyland Resort, which includes two separate-ticket theme parks, three Disney-operated hotels, and an outdoor mall. Most of the Anaheim complex has been closed for a year.

Disney had hoped to reopen its California attractions in July. However, unions representing Disneyland employees criticized this schedule for being too fast and pressured Governor Gavin Newsom to withhold approval. He joined the unions and urged fans to attack him online. (“Open Disney or we’ll take your hair gel away.”)

In contrast, Florida allowed Disney to reopen its Orlando parks in July. The company received less and less criticism for this, but strict security procedures, including mandatory masks, resulted in an environment that was more secure than expected.

“It was a success story,” said Julee Jerkovich, a United Food & Commercial Workers official, in October. “As a union representative, I don’t say that lightly.”

In addition to Disneyland, California’s theme parks include Universal Studios Hollywood, Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knotts Berry Farm, and the Santa Cruz Boardwalk.

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World News

Squealing Kids and Noisy Neighbors? There’s a Map for That

Squealing Children and Noisy Neighbors? There’s a Map for That

Noisy kids skateboarding in the streets. Couples quarrel in their homes. People gathered on the sidewalk and clapped for hours. Some people would describe these activities as noise pollution. A new website in Japan put the perpetrators on a map and sparked debate about those who are disturbing the peace.

The DQN Today website describes itself as a crowdsourcing guide to help house hunters avoid neighborhoods where “stupid parents let their children play in the streets and parking lots”. It is populated by maps depicting the Dorozoku or the “street tribe”. This term applies to people who block the path or wreak havoc in public.

Local residents who find noise unbearable have found a point of sale on the website that collects anonymous information about neighbors and records each complaint on an interactive map to create a detailed record of the irritating sounds and sights of Japan.

Noise complaints have increased in the capital, Tokyo, and police saw a 30 percent increase between March and April last year. At that point, the government closed schools and advised residents to work remotely because of the coronavirus, which led some to become all too aware of noises in their home country that they had previously paid little attention to.

Outside, most of the parks have remained open and crowded, although some play areas were cordoned off during the Japanese state of emergency.

The website creator initially responded via email to questions about the website on Wednesday but declined to provide his full name. He said the map was a less subtle clue to residents – they know who they are, although they’re never named – and to government officials, whom he hoped would look out. The creator, who describes himself as a freelance web developer based in Yokohama, Japan and using the Twitter handle @hotaniya, later stopped responding to emails.

The site started in 2016 and initially had a few hundred users. It has grown exponentially since then, as it fueled debate, especially about what experts say appears to be society’s growing intolerance of the sounds of children playing.

While many on social media have praised the site for shedding light on the problem of noise, some parents find their approach problematic and fear a growing gap between families with children and neighbors they can’t stand. Among the 6,000 wide-ranging complaints covering topics such as parking violations, excessive swearing, or stray cats scratching car tires, there are many entries that single out areas frequented by unsupervised children.

Saori Hiramoto, 35, an activist who successfully campaigned for the Tokyo metropolitan government in 2019 to allow strollers on crowded trains, said the card showed a breakdown in communications and the rupture of a society that was once interdependent.

“I really find it so difficult to raise children,” she said. “People say parents should be responsible for childcare, but it’s very difficult, especially for single parents.” We have reached our limits.

“I think society or community should observe and raise children as members of society,” she added.

Akihiko Watanabe, a professor in the Faculty of Education at Shiga University near Kyoto, said in an interview on Wednesday that the card has the potential to harm children and adolescents by revealing places they hang out unsupervised. But some parents become defensive about complaints about their children, making it difficult for others to reach out to them with concerns, he said.

“In the past, parents have apologized and disciplined their children,” he said. “But now parents are becoming hostile to people who scold.”

Between March and April last year, at least 1,500 new users registered to use the card. One complaint reads: The assemblies “are terribly talkative and loud. I stared at each other for a long time, but they didn’t stop. Children are also left unattended and make strange noises. “

Another says, “Three or four kids gather and play loudly on vacation, and a high-pitched voice echoes around the neighborhood.”

“I forgot this was a road,” wrote another user of an asphalt track frequented by teenage skateboarders.

The Dorozoku website isn’t the first digital map to cause controversy over the details. Oshimaland logs “stigmatized real estate” in Japan and around the world where murders, suicides and fires have occurred. Recently, new users of the Dorozoku card have attempted to log complaints about public harassment in Taiwan, Portugal, Germany and the UK. However, the publication is restricted to Japan for legal reasons.

The mapping page does not allow comments aimed directly at private homes or schools, but does allow references to unsupervised children playing on nearby streets and points out that it was ultimately the responsibility of parents and schools to supervise children at all times.

Over the years, residents in different parts of the country have opposed the building of kindergartens, even though parents have called for cheaper day care options. Kobe residents sued a kindergarten for playground cacophony in 2016, but the case was dismissed in 2017.

Experts see a growing intolerance of children playing as some in the country’s aging population become less familiar with the sounds of young children. Over the years, residents of various counties have opposed the building of kindergartens, despite parents calling for cheaper daycare options and economists fear that people in Japan with the oldest population may not have enough babies.

Public parks have signs prohibiting all types of activity in response to complaints from local residents. Nishi-Ikebukuro Park in Toshima, Tokyo, has drawn attention for its bans on 45 different activities such as skateboarding, jumping rope and soccer. A local official said the bans were due to a decade worth of complaints.

Ko Fujii, founder and executive director of Makaira Public Affairs Agency and visiting professor at the Center for Regulatory Strategies at Tama University in Tokyo, has seen incidents in recent years where disgruntled commuters harassed mothers who were carrying babies on public transport.

The father of two young children, Mr. Fujii, said he put a sticker with the slogan “We love babies, it’s okay to cry” to show support to other parents.

“I think some people are so frustrated with city life that they can get so insidious,” he said.

There is no shortage of noise disputes between neighbors in Japan. A 38-year-old construction worker was stabbed to death at his parents’ apartment in Tokyo in May by a 60-year-old resident of the building who told police he “couldn’t stand the loud footsteps and voices”.

On Wednesday, a couple in Kyoto won a case against six neighbors who had sued them for harassment over noise disputes involving their children. When one of the plaintiffs, Shu Murayama, was reached by phone, he said he saw the map as a helpful resource for others.

“You can avoid problems with it,” he said, adding that he had noticed complaints in his own neighborhood.

Categories
World News

New World Map Tries to Repair Distorted Views of Earth

New World Map Tries to Fix Distorted Views of Earth

Most of the world maps you have seen in your life have passed their prime. The Mercator was designed by a Flemish cartographer in 1569. The Winkel Tripel, National Geographic’s preferred map style, dates back to 1921. And the Dymaxion map, hyped by architect Buckminster Fuller, appeared in a 1943 issue of Life.

Enter a new map of the world that vies for global supremacy. As with sports, the card game can get stale at times when top competitors stick to the same old strategy, said J. Richard Gott, a Princeton astrophysicist who previously mapped the entire universe. But then comes an innovator: think of Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors splashing 3-pointers out of areas of the court that the rest of basketball didn’t think were worth guarding.

“We have kind of reached the limit of what you can do,” said Dr. God. “If you wanted a major breakthrough, you had to use a new idea.”

Dr. God’s version of Steph Curry’s wait-you-could-shoot-from-there-3? Use the back of the page as well. Make the world map a double-sided circle, like a vinyl record. You can put the northern hemisphere on top and the southern hemisphere on the bottom, or vice versa. Or to put it another way: You could empty the 3D earth in two dimensions. And if you do, you can blow the accuracy of previous maps out of the water.

Of course, no flat map of our round world can be perfect. First you need to peel off the skin of the earth, and then nail it down. This mathematical taxidermy leads to distortions. For example, if you have a Mercator projection on the walls of your classroom, you might think Greenland is as big as Africa (not even close) or Alaska is bigger than Mexico (also no). This distorted worldview could even subconsciously lead you to underestimate most of the developing world.

Shapes also change in map projections. Distances vary. Straight curve. Some projections, such as Mercator, aim to solve one of these problems, which exacerbates other errors. Other cards compromise, like the Winkel Tripel, because it tries to strike a balance between three types of distortion.

From 2006, Dr. God and David Goldberg, a cosmologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, developed a scoring system that can summarize these different types of errors. The Winkel Tripel beat out other main competitors. One major source of the distortion remained, however: a mathematical cut that often runs from pole to pole in the Pacific. The resulting shape can never again be stretched and retracted into the unbroken surface of a sphere. “This is what makes the world violent,” said Dr. God.

His new type of double-sided card featuring Dr. Goldberg and Robert Vanderbei, a mathematician at Princeton, completely skips topological violence. The card simply continues over the edge. You could stretch a string across the side; An ant could go there. In a study draft, the team reports in a draft study that the card’s Goldberg-God distortion value blows all other cards currently in use out of the water without any reduction.

Cartographers who regularly study world maps – perhaps fewer than 10 people – now have time to react. “It never crossed my mind that it could be done this way,” said Krisztián Kerkovits, a Hungarian cartographer who works on developing his own projections.

While the new card works great against distortion, Dr. Kerkovits also introduced a new weakness. In contrast to Winkel Tripel and Mercator, you can only see half of the planet at a time. This undermines the basic requirement to hide the whole world for inspection on a single page or screen.

For Dr. God is no different from the 3D globe itself. But Dr. Kerkovits is not entirely sure: after all, you can always easily rotate a globe to see the neighbors of any point. But in the double-sided card, you may have to flip the whole thing over.

Ultimately, the success of a card depends on what applications it is used for and how its popularity grows over time. Dr. God, whose article also features double-sided projections of Jupiter and other worlds, envisions the new map style as a physical object that you can flip over in your hands.

You could cut one out of a magazine or keep a whole stack of them in a thin case that shows different planets or different layers of data. And he hopes that you may be tempted to use the appendix to his paper to try to print out and make your own.

“Tape it back to back with double-sided tape – I think that’s better than Elmer’s Glue, but you can use glue,” said Dr. God. Then cut it out. “Maybe use card stock,” he added.

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Health

New map reveals the place China’s newest virus circumstances are clustered

New map shows where China's latest virus cases are clustered

More than half a year since Covid-19 halted its spread in mainland China, new clusters of cases have appeared in and around the capital Beijing in recent weeks.

The number of newly reported cases is nowhere near as high as in many countries outside of China, including the US. Hebei, the worst-hit province, has reported more than 800 new confirmed cases since January 1. Here’s a look at the provinces that have reported confirmed coronavirus cases since December 1, with darker shades representing areas with higher numbers of cases:

The ongoing spread of the virus, particularly in Hebei province surrounding Beijing, has led authorities to lockdown several regions and urge people across the country not to travel during the upcoming New Year celebrations. The holiday officially falls in mid-February this year.

“Given the rapid response from local governments, efficient testing and tracking systems, and the ongoing adoption of vaccines, we believe the situation will eventually be brought under control,” said Ting Lu, Nomura’s chief economist, China, in a January 18 note . “However, the unusually cold weather and the upcoming Lunar New Year (LNY) rush could make the task of containing the virus more difficult.”

“The hospitality sector is expected to slow while the industrial sector may remain solid,” said Lu, adding, “Markets may need to lower expectations of strong pent-up consumer demand during the upcoming LNY vacation in mid-February.”

Hebei Province started an increase in coronavirus cases earlier this year, with daily numbers topping 90 last week. The numbers don’t include the many asymptomatic cases found by mass testing.