Good Wednesday morning. I have to keep checking the calendar to remember what day it is. Four-day weeks really mess with my head.
I have my first seasonal cold, and let me tell you, I am not at all happy about it. It is the harbinger of not good things to come. But I also can’t say I’m surprised. I usually am in for some sort of illness when the weather starts to change.
It turns out that the common cold – a catch-all phrase for a family of some 200 viruses that are very easily spread, though rhinoviruses is the most frequent culprit – actually leads to more visits to healthcare providers and absences from school and/or work every year than any other illness.
According to the interwebs, cold season starts as early as late August and lasts through March or April. The increased incidence of these illnesses has nothing to do with the weather, per se, but could be attributed to the fact that people tend to be indoors and closer to one another once the weather turns colder.
The lower humidity of winter does dry out the mucus membranes, which does, in fact, make them more hospitable to viruses and other infections.
So, one thing you can do to protect yourself against getting sick is keep yourself – and your mucus membranes – well hydrated.
Start by drinking a lot of fluids, but also consider investing in a humidifier for the bedroom while you sleep, and also look into a Neti pot, or, if that’s too extreme (not everyone loves the feeling of pouring water in their nostrils, I get it), an over-the-counter saline nasal spray will do the trick.
Here’s your daily PSA: Remember: Always ONLY put sterile, distilled, or boiled and cooled water in the Neti pot, bulb syringe or other nasal irrigation tool and clean it properly between uses. Tap water can contain even a low level of organisms, which makes it unsafe to squirt up your nose. Stomach acid deals with these just fine, but there’s none of that to be found in the sinuses.
Another surefire way to minimize your cold-catching capabilities: Wash. Your. Hands. A lot. Full stop. You would think that after the whole COVID crisis, we would have internalized this by now. Sadly, I see many of us slipping back into our old, pre-pandemic ways.
You know who you are.
Of course, the best way not to get sick is to avoid interacting with other people.
Colds are most often spread through infection-laden droplets that a sick person coughs or sneezes into the air. (Cover your coughs, and your sneezes – or, better yet, don’t go out at all when you’re not feeling well). Also, if a sick person touches a surface like a doorknob or a subway turnstile or a weight machine at the gym
Cold viruses can survive on indoor surfaces for up to a week. Hardy little buggers. However, they are usually only infectious for about 24 hours or so. They do last longer on hard, nonporous surfaces (ie: the aforementioned gym equipment), and have a shorter lifespan on things like tissues and blankets.
The other thing you can do – probably with the most bang for the least among of buck, given the long-term benefits – is to prioritize taking care of yourself. Don’t unnecessarily stress your immune system out with too much processed food, sugar, caffeine, alcohol and not enough rest, exercise, leafy greens and vitamins.
Oh, and also, get the flu vaccine. And hey, while you’re at it, why not throw the latest COVID vaccine in there for good measure? Bet you’ll be glad you did. I certainly was planning on doing so, but now that my immune system is down fr the count, I’ll have to wait.
Today is not going to be optimal for getting your daily dose of Vitamin D the good old fashioned way – from the sun. We’ll have mostly cloudy skies and temperatures in the mid-60s. Jacket weather.
In the headlines…
As Israeli soldiers retook two dozen towns and villages near Gaza from Hamas fighters, the scale of the atrocities visited on civilians was coming into focus.
In Washington, President Joe Biden said more than 1,000 civilians had been killed by Hamas fighters, including women, children and elders, acts he characterized as “pure unadulterated evil.”
“Let there be no doubt,” Biden said. “The United States has Israel’s back. We’ll make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow as we always have.”
On X, formerly known as Twitter, Biden posted a short statement that read: “The brutality of Hamas, the blood-thirstiness, brings to mind the worst rampages of ISIS. This is terrorism.”
Hamas “firmly” rejected Biden’s remarks on Israel, calling it an “inflammatory statement” that aims to “escalate the tension by the barbaric Zionist regime against the Palestinian people,” according to a written statement published yesterday.
Biden reportedly urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call to minimize civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip as Israel continues its massive aerial campaign and readies for a potential ground incursion in response to Hamas’s terror onslaught.
A European regulator issued Elon Musk a stern warning about the spread of illegal content and disinformation on X, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict. Failure to comply with rules around this could result in fines worth 6% of a company’s annual revenue.
The first supply of US weapons since Israel faced a devastating attack by Hamas arrived in Israel late yesterday evening, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.
The horrors committed by Hamas on Israeli civilians are all but certain to mark Netanyahu’s legacy no matter the outcome of the war.
Biden is facing mounting Republican pressure to take action against Iran in the wake of the latest violence in the Middle East, even as U.S. officials say they don’t have a smoking gun proving that Tehran played a direct role.
Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy criticized Democratic leaders for not condemning more forcefully Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D-Mich.) statement calling on the US to halt aid to Israel after the country suffered the deadliest terror attack in its history by Hamas.
Republicans toiled yesterday to unite around a candidate for speaker but appeared no closer to consensus on the eve of an internal party contest that has highlighted their divisions and deep uncertainty in the House of Representatives.
Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi officially announced his campaign for his old Long Island congressional seat, currently held by GOP Rep. George Santos, which Suozzi gave up last year to run unsuccessfully for governor against Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Suozzi launched his campaign on X and said a formal kickoff will come after next month’s local elections next month, adding: “The madness in Washington, D.C., and the absurdity of George Santos remaining in the United States Congress is obvious to everyone.”
Santos was hit with additional criminal charges for inflating his campaign’s fundraising numbers in a bid to qualify for financial and logistical support from a Republican Party committee.
The new accusations came in a 23-count superseding indictment that laid out how Santos charged his donors’ credit cards “repeatedly, without their authorization,” distributing money to his and other candidates’ campaigns and to his own bank account.
Exaggerating the size of Donald Trump’s Manhattan penthouse on financial documents was just a minor mistake, his longtime finance chief testified, waving off one of the key claims in the New York attorney general’s fraud case against the ex-president.
Federal prosecutors asked a judge to force Trump to tell them months before he goes to trial on charges of seeking to overturn the 2020 election if he intends to defend himself by blaming the lawyers around him at the time for giving him poor legal advice.
Trump endorsed Kari Lake, an ardent supporter of his, in the Arizona Senate race.
Lake, a former TV news anchor who refashioned herself as an ally and protégé of Trump, officially announced she was running for the Senate in Arizona, offering a dark vision of America and pitching herself as a fighter ready to take on the media and the left.
The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is weighing a subpoena of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo if he snubs their final request for records about his decision to place COVID-infected patients in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is facing a political firestorm after the organization promoted a pro-Palestine rally in the wake of Hamas militants’ attacks on Israeli communities.
The city DSA released a new statement on its promotion of a pro-Palestine rally, apologizing for the “confusion our post caused and for not making our values explicit.”
“It should not be hard to shut down hatred and antisemitism where we see it. That is a core tenet of solidarity,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of six DSA members in Congress, said in a statement late Monday – her first comments on the rally.
“The bigotry and callousness expressed in Times Square on Sunday were unacceptable and harmful in this devastating moment,” the congresswoman continued.
The president of New York University’s student bar association sent an incendiary pro-Hamas message to the school, cheering the terror attack on civilians and blaming Israel for the bloodshed.
A prominent international law firm has rescinded its job offer to NYU Law School Bar Association student president Ryna Workman over “inflammatory” comments regarding the deadly weekend attacks on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
A diversity and inclusion director at Cornell University has come under fire over disturbing social media posts supporting Hamas and dismissing the terror group’s slaughter of innocent civilians as a “resistance.”
“This is not a time for nuance. People who have been dancing on nuance, it’s going to be really, really hard,” said Stu Loeser, a leading adviser to New York Democrats on Jewish issues. “It is an important which-side-are-you-on moment.”
As New York law enforcement officials boost resources to houses of worship in response to the violence in Israel, Gov. Hochul and Mayor Adams demanded that social media giants clamp down on dangerous speech circulating on their platforms.
Adams defended his four-day trip through Latin America as a success but refused to reveal how much taxpayer money would cover it.
“Was it successful 100%? I don’t know that. We’re not going to know,” he said when asked if he did enough to convince migrants not to come.
Adams scoffed at an early push from progressive Democrats to challenge him in the 2025 election, ridiculing the efforts as “people who are meeting in a basement somewhere” while at the same time affirming he takes every potential primary rival seriously.
Two construction workers killed in a trench collapse at Kennedy International Airport in April died while removing soil from beneath a concrete slab that the Bronx firm employing them failed to prop up, officials said.
Two police officers who entered the apartment of a Bronx man and fatally shot him after he jumped toward them while holding a knife should not be punished, according to a draft decision by a deputy commissioner who presided over the case.
One of the drug dealers in the Brooklyn crew that sold Michael K. Williams a lethal dose of fentanyl-laced heroin was sentenced to five years behind bars in the actor’s tragic overdose death.
A new court filing seeking to dismiss the case against Daniel Penny draws on grand jury testimony of subway passengers to make the case that he was defending others when he placed homeless Jordan Neely, who had a history of mental illness, in a chokehold.
Lawyers for Penny also wrote in their motion that the medical examiner who testified to the grand jury never gave any evidence that Neely had died from asphyxiation due to the chokehold.
Brooklyn Councilman Ari Kagan’s campaign manager has a history of posting and amplifying inflammatory messages on social media about African-Americans and LGBTQ individuals.
The future of Manhattan’s iconic Fifth Avenue is pedestrian…or at least “pedestrian-centered.”
Alison Esposito, a former NYPD officer who jumped into politics last year as gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin’s running mate, plans to seek the Republican nomination to challenge Hudson Valley Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan.
“I am and always will be a cop,” Esposito said. “I spent my life protecting the people of New York, and when I witnessed one-party, far-left rule turn our streets over to criminals, I knew continuing to protect my fellow New Yorkers meant doing something more.”
New York State’s beleaguered ethics commission can continue its work for now, an appeals court said yesterday, as it considers a challenge to a lower court ruling that sapped the power of the ethics body.
In a brief, unanimous order, the appellate court in Albany granted a stay that restored the power of the ethics panel and scheduled the appeal for next February’s term.
Scientists and public health officials are studying a mind-boggling fungal infection that emerged as a global threat in recent years infecting thousands of New Yorkers and is possibly tied to climate change.
New York’s top business advocacy group is touring the state to emphasize the significance of manufacturing and its economic impact.
Former Ulster County Finance Commissioner Burt Gulnick pleaded guilty to two counts of grand larceny and will be sentenced to one to three years in state prison, completing a fall that began with his resignation earlier this year.
Cambridge school officials headed to court to try to get the school’s “Indian” mascot reinstated, but a panel of judges said the case is probably moot.
Muza, a 16-year-old Eastern European restaurant near RPI that had been closed “until further notice” for the past several months announced that it is now closed “indefinitely.”
A downtown Albany juice bar was vandalized last month and a racist email followed that was sent to the business owner and copied to two city economic development entities.
State Supreme Court Justice Peter Lynch authorized the release of grand jury testimony regarding the actions of Mavis Discount Tire, the repair store involved in the Schoharie limousine crash prosecution, to Saratoga County District Attorney Karen Heggen.
The Washington Post is cutting about 240 jobs across the organization as it tries to offset challenges with digital subscriptions and advertising, according to a companywide email.
Olympic gold medalist and legendary U.S. gymnast Mary Lou Retton is “fighting for her life” in the intensive care unit battling a rare form of pneumonia, according to a spotfund account set up by her daughter.
Retton’s daughter, McKenna Lane Kelley, said on Instagram that her mother “is not able to breathe on her own” and that she had been in the intensive care unit for more than a week.
