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COVID-19 by the numbers
New Mexico health officials yesterday reported 959 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the statewide total so far to 272,855. DOH has designated 241,090 of those cases as recovered.
Bernalillo County had 217 new cases, followed by McKinley County with 87 and San Juan County with 77. Santa Fe County had 39 new cases.
The state also announced 15 additional deaths, including a man in his 20s from Santa Fe County who had been hospitalized; there have now been 170 fatalities in Santa Fe County and 5,027 statewide. As of yesterday, 389 people were hospitalized with COVID-19.
Currently, 81.9% of New Mexicans 18 years and older have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 72.3% are fully vaccinated. Among that demographic, 8.2% have had a booster shot. In the 12-17-year-old age group, 62.4% people have had at least one dose and 54.2% are fully inoculated. In Santa Fe County, among those 18 years and older, 92.8% have had at least one dose and 82.3% are fully vaccinated.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
Health officials say NM at “uncomfortable plateau” with COVID-19
Grim statistics from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic governed yesterday’s weekly update from state health officials, both at the global and local level. State epidemiologist Dr. Christine Ross provided an overview from the World Health Organization, noting there have been more than 244 million COVID-19 cases worldwide and nearly 5 million deaths. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports more than 45 million cases thus far and more than 736,000 deaths. “These numbers are staggering,” Ross said. “It’s a very unbelievable public health crisis that we’ve been dealing with.” While nationally, there are indicators of declining case rates in parts of the country, New Mexico, she said, continues “to sit at an uncomfortable plateau.” Daily cases remain high in most regions of the state and are rising in some. Hospitals remain full and with no relief in sight for at least a few weeks, according to modeling. On somewhat of a bright side, Acting Health Secretary Dr. David Scrase said daily deaths may be plateauing. The state also is readying for vaccine availability for children ages 5-11, expected in early November pending federal approval. DOH Deputy Secretary Dr. Laura Parajón said the state has created a new electronic consent form for child vaccinations, which is available online now.
SF Sheriff thinks Baldwin fired real bullet in fatal shooting
Santa Fe County Sheriff’s investigators said yesterday morning so far evidence indicates actor and producer Alec Baldwin fired a bullet from a Colt .45 caliber revolver containing a live bullet on the set of his new Western, Rust, last week, killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injuring director Joel Souza. But conclusions are pending forensics and ballistics reports from the FBI, according to Sheriff Adan Mendoza, who briefed dozens of local, national and international reporters alongside First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies. Mendoza said his detectives have thus far collected about 600 items of evidence, including about 500 rounds of ammunition and the “lead bullet” recovered from Souza’s shoulder, which is believed to be the same projectile that killed Hutchins. Mendoza drew a distinction during the news conference between “dummy rounds,” “blanks” and bullets, saying all three had been collected at the scene and that it had been the latter fired by Baldwin—an assertion borne out in a newly released search warrant affidavit, which also seeks permission to search a truck that was on the movie set. As to whether criminal charges will be filed, Carmack-Altwies says it’s too early to say as the investigation is ongoing. “All options are on the table,” she said. “No one has been ruled out at this point.” In addition to ballistics and forensic analyses, the Sheriff’s Office also has more interviews to conduct. Mendoza said the 16 people who were in the vicinity of the shooting have all been interviewed, but approximately 100 people were on set and their interviews are ongoing. Assessing the set’s safety protocols—which statements from the most recent search warrant indicate were not followed—will be addressed in those interviews, Mendoza said.
Mark Ronchetti running for gov
Albuquerque meteorologist Mark Ronchetti, who ran a failed bid for US Senate last year on the Republican ticket, announced yesterday he’s running for governor in the GOP gubernatorial primary; he will be the eighth candidate vying to face Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. Ronchetti resigned last week as chief meteorologist at KRQE, and the station noted in a brief statement that he had announced his intentions to run for governor. Earlier this month, the Democratic Governors Association sent the station a letter warning that Ronchetti’s presence on air could subject the station to the Federal Communication Commission’s equal opportunities for candidates rules. In his announcement, Ronchetti begins by saying “the politicians we’ve elected don’t represent us anymore and they don’t even listen. I’m a proud New Mexican, but I’m not proud of our politicians and the direction they’re taking the state.” Ronchetti takes specific aim at crime in the state, describing it as “out of control” and references New Mexico’s newly enacted Civil Rights Act, which, among other provisions, removed qualified immunity for police officers. “It’s not bad luck,” Ronchetti says of violent crime in the state as a picture of Lujan Grisham flashes on the screen. “It’s bad policy. We have weak laws that benefit criminals: laws that allow our police officers to be sued while criminals are turned right back out on the street.” Democratic Governors Association Executive Director Noam Lee released a statement yesterday regarding Ronchetti’s announcement that reads, in part: “Failed candidate Mark Ronchetti has sided with Donald Trump over New Mexicans at every step, and for a meteorologist, he engages in a troubling amount of science denialism.”
Listen up
Halloween and Día de los Muertos are two ways we honor death during this liminal time of year. Today’s 8 am installment of KUNM’s Let’s Talk New Mexico program will explore old traditions and new ways of honoring grief, with guests Nicolasa Chávez, deputy New Mexico State historian; Alexandra Jo, culture and content manager for Parting Stone; Matthew Martinez (Ohkay Owingeh), interim director for the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture; New Mexico Humanities Council Program Officer Bethany Tabor; and Gail Rubin from A Good Goodbye. KUNM asks: “Do you take part in Día de los Muertos by celebrating the lives of your past relatives? Have you considered the more historical roots of Halloween as a time to honor the dead while guarding against evil spirits? Maybe you’ve thought about your own death and a natural or green burial as a way to rejoin your physical self with the earth?” Email LetsTalk@kunm.org, tweet #letstalkNM or call in live during the show at (505) 277-5866. Listen at 89.9 FM or online.
Awareness brings money, help to Native Americans
Financial donations to help Native American communities surged to unprecedented levels during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to nonprofit organizations. The outpourings reflected growing awareness of the degree to which Native Americans were disproportionately impacted by the virus, and were three times as likely to die from the disease. The New Humanitarian reports at least $8.7 million poured into GoFundMe campaigns for Native communities between March and October 2020 alone, and Native Americans in Philanthropy also received a “multimillion-dollar” donation from MacKenzie Scott, former wife of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. “I’m very optimistic,” NAP Chief Executive Officer Erik Stegman (Carry the Kettle First Nation—Nakoda) says. “There’s this consciousness in the public, across the board, that didn’t used to be there.” A story examining the impacts of the philanthropy touches down in Gallup, where Krystal Curley (Navajo Nation), 31, and executive director of Indigenous Lifeways, prepared to deliver blankets and pallets of canned water donated by actor Sean Penn’s organization CORE to the Navajo Nation. Curley says funding to her organization increased eight times over during the pandemic as she and others worked around the clock to bring help to people who needed it on the reservation: “I just want for my community to have jobs, to have a roof over their head, to have clean water, to have clean energy, to have food at their table,” she said. “For so long, so many generations, we had to live without all of that.”
Chocoholics, take note
More New Mexico love from Forbes magazine, this time aimed at Taos, where “Chokola’s admirable bean-to-bar mission makes it a popular destination in New Mexico’s coolest town. (Sorry Santa Fe, I love Taos best.)” Bygones. Forbes says while Chokola offers bonbons, truffles, single origin bars and pastries, it also hosts a mousse bar that serves various flavors of French-style mousse made in-house. The chocolate mousse, they proclaim, is “so brilliant you can’t help wondering why there aren’t more mousse bars in this world.” Seriously. Founders Deborah Vincent and Javier Abad met in Venezuela nearly 20 years ago and founded Chokola in Taos in 2015; their bean-to-bar approach “involves sourcing from farmers who grow cacao using organic, sustainable practices.” Artwork plays a role at Chokola, with local artists such as SFR favorite Erin Currier designing work featured on the shop’s bars, such as a recent piece for a bar made with beans from Bolivia. The bars you can buy online, but that mousse bar is going to require a trip to Taos (done!).
Wind and smoke
Today, like yesterday, will be windy (north wind 10 to 20 mph), but it will also be sunny and a scant warmer with a high near 60 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. And, yes, the fire on the mountain yesterday came from a controlled burn in the Santa Fe Municipal Watershed in the Aztec Springs area. The Santa Fe National Forest says the operation is complete, officials will be monitoring over the next few days and smoke may linger into the weekend. Here’s what it looked like 22,000 miles above the Earth.
Thanks for reading! The Word found this NYT assemblage of scary movies arranged as micro-fictions clever, but if you want some actual Halloween reading, here you go.
