Month: June 2020

Covid-19 is the pandemic that took the whole world by storm. First it was on the news for being a virus that went around being very contagious. Next, it blew up into a massive phenomenon that caused the entire world to shut down. Yet, we still are not sure about where it originated. Some say it started in China’s wet markets, others say it originated in the US, and some are just not sure at all. Nonetheless, it’s here; and it has taken a toll on the world.
Covid-19, known as the Coronavirus, has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths throughout the entire world. However, the United States is being hit especially bad. Earlier on, though, China and its neighboring countries were suffering the most. China’s death toll was almost as high as the number of people who had the virus–which was very high. Although, sooner than the rest of the world, China started to rehabilitate. This was thrilling news, except for the fact that at the same time that China was getting better, the US was getting worse and worse. Especially the states: New Jersey, New York, and California. These were the states that had it worst.
There were other states who were lucky, such as West Virginia, who was the last state to have any Covid-19 cases. Other states such as Florida, Colorado, and Wyoming are already starting to reopen everything. It was a huge responsibility because the virus was still going around, but the state officials deemed it appropriate to reopen those states.
Another aspect of Covid-19, besides getting sick, is the death rate. It is at around 2-3%. Given, that is a small percentage; however, when there are 6.26 million confirmed cases, that is about 350k deaths which is an enormous number. When thinking about how many got the virus, how many people are on this earth, and how many people died, we question whether it was appropriate to reopen the states.
With the Covid-19 death toll, comes death certificates and lots and lots of physicians. There is a shortage of doctors and first responders because the number of cases are just so high. There are many deaths and the physician responsible for the death of his or her patient has to sign off on the death certificate. Because of how busy the physicians are, it is difficult to rule out every single death. It is difficult to determine whether that person died of the virus, or simply died of a different cause yet they had the virus. Because of such unsureness, we can’t help but question if it was right for Colorado and Florida to open.
In order for a state to open, they would most likely need a low death toll, and a low virus number. It is said that Florida faked the numbers of deaths and submitted less than the actual amount. There could be terrible things in Florida; more virus-ridden people than ever expected. Which is why it was immature to reopen the entire state. Colorado on the other hand, they actually over reported the number of deaths caused by the virus. It shows a slight bit of immaturity because though they submitted a higher amount of deaths, they still reopened the country.

Being yourself is what they tell you, but many of us do not take that information in seriously. We look up to famous people, strong leaders, people with special talents, people who look amazing and are amazing, but when we look up to them, we are not necessarily looking up to them to the way we should. Sometimes, our mind even makes us believe that we want to be them and ditch the way we were made and designed to be by this universe, and really what I want to say through this passage is being yourself is the best decision you can make.
To dig deeper into what I mean by being yourself or choosing to be yourself, and listening to yourself, I mean that being yourself is much better than hiding in someone else’s skin. As Caroline mentioned, the most successful people all have something in common, which is nothing ironically. Being yourself is beautiful because everyone on this earth is different, which is the beauty of being yourself. You are one in the whole population consisting of almost eight billion people. There might be people who have similarities and common interests as you, but there will never be a person that is you. Each person pursues their own dream, some fail, and some succeed. Some people succeed without being themselves. They disguise themselves into this whole other person with these characteristics that are totally opposite of their true self, which is not only damaging themselves mentally, but guiding them to thinking how and what they exactly should be, which is wrong. There is no law or rule that says who everyone should sought out to be, sure there are the role models who you look up to, but there is nothing telling you who to be, which is sad that people actually want to ditch who they are and set out to become this whole new person that nobody recognizes.
Some fail being themselves, which at first might be sad and heartbreaking, but as time goes on, they realize that maybe they were meant for something else. Not everyone will succeed perfectly sadly but succeeding with a fake skin or costume is terrible because you are not who you are, and you know it. You always have to put up an act for the sakes of fitting in or succeeding, which ruins the purpose of yourself. Each person on this earth was given a gift, because he person has his or her on talent to give and share, but more importantly, each person was made differently which is what makes being yourself such a beauty and why it is said to us when we were younger. The words be yourself is such a warm combination of encouragement, and it is very important that we do be ourselves instead of hiding behind our fake selves.

Im sure we all know that the red chief was truly a really crazy and hyper active kid, but what if he wasn’t? There are some loose strings that need to be attached but it’s possible. When I first started reading the story, I initially thought that the red chief kid was faking being crazy. It would have been a smart move to get out of the kidnapping. The red chief mentioned to the his kidnappers about how he did not want to return home. The kid could have said this so he would let the billl and sams guard down of him escaping. There are some loose strings to this tho. For example when bill was going crazy and decided to let the red chief go home, if he truly was faking his excessive behavior, then he would’ve went straight home. On the other hand if the kid wasn’t faking it, it’s very hard to believe that a kid is so dumb to not know he’s getting kidnapped. It could have been a very interesting plot twist if the red chief was faking it.

I chose The Ransom of Red Chief. The story was about two guys want to kidnap a boy whose father was rich. And they did. But they find the boy was super annoying and he freaked them out. So they returned the bot back without asking the money and they even paid for it. For the racial undertones part, I am not much sure about that. But I can see there were somethings about Indian and American things. The story is an irony. It gave readers a very interesting thought that who was the actual kidnapper? The two guys or the bot’s father?

I think what the story wanted to teach us is do not make money through wrong way. If you do the bad thing, there must be some pulishment give to you. The story just told the truth by a funny way and make more sences to readers. So be a good guy and never do wrong things.

Native American culture, although poorly represented, works in the background of the Ransom of the Red Chief. Since there was a perception that Native Americans are savages, Johnny is referred to as the “Red Chief” because he is also wild and untamed. He tried to literally scalp Bill, burn Sam, and threw giant rocks at them. When asked if he wanted to go back to the town, he said that he wants to stay out in the forest. This is comparable to how the Indian doesn’t want to go into civilization, and he prefers to live in the wild.

However, that isn’t the only thing that occurs frequently in the short story. Irony is a major part of it, and it comes up everywhere. First, the name of the town is Summit, although it is described as the flattest place imaginable. Second, the roles of the kidnapper and the kidnapee are flipped. Normally, the one being kidnapped wants nothing to do with their abductors and hopes to return home. In Ransom of the Red Chief, it is the opposite. Bill and Sam towards the end desperately want to get rid of Johnny, while the boy enjoys the time with his captors. Last, the roles within the ransom scheme are reversed as well. Instead of Ebenezer paying Bill and Sam, he proposes that they pay him. Surprisingly, they agree, and Ebenezer reluctantly takes his son back.

This is why the kidnapped boy in O . HENRY’s “The Ransom of Red Chief” is the weirdest person ever.

First of all, when he gets kidnapped, instead of running away or frantically asking for help (Like I would’ve done), he decides to throw a brick at the kidnapper’s eye. But when you take a step back and think about it, he’s just a ten-year-old. With a brick. There are two kidnappers and they both are way older than the happy little boy playing with bricks out on the street. And they probably have a lot of experience to aid them in capturing the boy as well because they have, as the story says, “stood by [each other] without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood—in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones” (19). … So just attacking his kidnappers with a brick is a really weird decision to make.

Second of all, this boy thinks taking the scalp off of Bill is a good idea. I mean, if he was Make Believe-ing, then I suppose that would be all right, but when Sam wakes up abruptly to find Bill screaming like a girl and the boy on him, holding a knife to his head, that’s… a bit weird (and disturbing too). I even found a quote for this one: “[Sam] was awakened by a series of awful
screams from Bill … and [Red Chief] was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before” (15). Ten-year-olds may not be old enough to attack two grown men, but ten-year-olds sure are old enough to know that that first night was a much better opportunity to escape than to further convince the kidnappers that they need to keep an eye on him at all times. Like I said, weird. But, the boy doesn’t seem to want to go back to his home either, which leads to my next point.

Third of all, the boy needs to know that it’s a lot safer in his own house than outside in the wilderness with two kidnappers who are only keeping you for money. I just can’t believe that he would rather stay in the cave and try to damage the kidnappers even more than go home and play with his family and possibly even friends. He literally says, “I never had such fun in all my life” (14). Oh yes, definitely, I would love to camp out with my kidnappers and play games with them and eventually even try to take the scalp out of one of them! It’s still really weird how he’s enjoying all this.

In the end, even the kidnappers would relinquish their dream of receiving two thousand dollars just to give him back to his father, Ebenezer Dorset (And he knows that no one can stand living with the boy). Surely, this means that the kidnapped boy in this story is truly, truly, weird.

You may have seen information about the number of deaths or number of people infected by COVID-19. However, how exactly do they get these numbers? One thing that happens when someone dies is that they get a death certificate. This is the main thing that the people use while counting the amount of deaths. The cause of death is also described on the certificate. These gets signed by doctors or other people in charge of it. Autopsy also helps determine whether someone’s cause of death is COVID-19 if they died before a doctor could check them. One big problem that makes the exact number inaccurate is that the definition of a coronavirus death may differ between states. There are people who die with the virus and people who die from the virus. People can die from other diseases while having COVID-19, but does that count as a coronavirus death?

The Ransom of The Red Chief is a short story about how two men want to earn some money, so they kidnap a boy to get a ransom. The characters in this story include of Sam and Bill, two “criminals”, Johnny, the 10 year old boy who is kidnapped, and Ebenezer, the father of Johnny. I personally think the main theme of the story is to not try to find the easy way to success, or to get money. This is the theme, because when Bill and Sam attempted to earn money by kidnapping a boy, it resulted in getting their plan backfired, as they kidnapped a little rascal who was too much of a pain to keep with them. The story starts off with Bill and Sam kidnapping Johnny, and driving him off to a cave. The two criminals soon begin to learn that Johnny is quite annoying and bratty. Johnny forces they two men, especially Bill, to play games with him. While they play his games, Johnny has a fun time hurting Bill which frustrates Bill. Later on in the story, Sam leaves Johnny with Bill so they can send off a ransom letter to Ebenezer. As Bill endures Johnny , he eventually gets sick of Johnny and sends him back home. When Sam returns from sending off the letter, Bill finds that Johnny had followed him back to the cave. The climax of the story starts when they receive their letter back from Ebenezer offering them a deal. The deal consists of them returning Johnny back to Ebenezer while also paying him 250 dollars to have Johnny off their shoulders. In the end, Johnny is returned and the two men find that their plan had been backfired. I recommend this short story because it is quite funny and has a exciting plot twist and lesson learned.

Coronavirus has swept through the United States and many schools had been shut down. Even when a pandemic like this is happening there are still many people who have been infected due to lack of testing. For example, to have an official count of coronavirus, they will have to test every one first. However, data shows that the cases in the United States are probably being undercounted rather than overcounted. There are three reasons why that has happened.

primarily, In “How are COVID-19 deaths counted?” by  Stephanie Pappas stats that. “Death certificates can be signed by a physician who was responsible for a patient who died in a hospital, which accounts for many COVID-19 deaths.” This means that the counts counted a great number of people that have died, died in a hospital. Therefore it means that a lot of people have not been counted because that did not get identified. Same with getting the vires.

following, the next reason that this has happened was that “Contributing factors such as heart disease, diabetes or high blood pressure would then be listed further down. This has led to some confusion by people arguing that the “real” cause of death was heart disease or diabetes, Aiken said, but that’s not the case.” says Stephanie Pappas. And this causes people to not count some of the cases that they knew. It also makes people believe that COVID-19 is not that dangerous.

The last reason that the counts for COVID-19 were undercounted was that the leader of a state or country sometimes does not tell the real count. The reason for that is so they will not make their country look bad. In my opinion, that was not a smart house because people need to have a consequential number, in this case, to get alerted. And understand how dangerous COVID-19 really is.

To draw things to a close, the numbers of COVID-19 counts need to be accurate to keep people alerted, so they can keep themselves safe.

Who are you?

Take some time to ponder

Why do you exist?

You think and wonder

What is the meaning

The solution, the answer

Of the reality of you

However it may occur

Are you a human

A dog, a cat, or a mouse

Do you live in a tent

A mansion, or a house

Do you enjoy rice

Or oatmeal, or bread

Do you prefer running

Or brainstorming the head

Love yourself

Set goals in your life

Be proud yet modest

Work very hard and strive

Know thyself

Said an wise old man

Continue to learn about yourself

As much as you can!