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TAMPA All over the country, the groups have grabbed headlines, storming state capitols, dramatically staring down law enforcement officers while forcefully declaring what they believe to be their rights.

Not so in Florida.

Sure, there have been rallies. In late April, some 200 showed up to a Tampa television station toting messages like Quarantine for the sick. Vitamins for the rest and End quarantine now! For hours, they waved signs on Kennedy Boulevard and disregarded social distancing recommendations.

There are Facebook groups: About 10,000 are signed onto a page called Reopen Florida.

But Floridas reopen movement has been a more modest affair compared to those that have disrupted other states. An analysis by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a non-profit watchdog of far-right extremists, found that Facebook groups dedicated to reopening Florida have just a fraction of the following of other states groups. For example, Michiganders against excessive quarantine had some 382,400 members as of Friday.

And unlike other states, such as Michigan or Ohio, denunciations of the governors safer-at-home order havent come from one of the states highest political offices.

Devin Burghart studies these movements for a living as the president of the institute. He said Gov. Ron DeSantis, a staunch conservative, hasnt gotten much pushback from the reopen crowd because he has built up years of good will fighting for many of their causes.

You have a much more sympathetic governor to these causes, Burghart said.

DeSantis has dedicated substantial portions of recent news conferences aiming fire at a favorite target of Trumps base: reporters and the experts they quote. He says they stoked panic at the pandemics outset. If the Reopen Florida Facebook group is any gauge, thats music to the ears of the most conservative Floridians some of whom doubt the coronavirus is any more dangerous than the seasonal flu. (It is.)

Yet, DeSantis record in handling the crisis shows hes taken the disease seriously. He did issue a shutdown order on April 1, after all. And, at least at first, DeSantis actions to reopen the state were more cautious than the recommendations from the White House and other Republican-led states. Movie theaters, for example, are still closed under the governors executive order. Not so in Texas.

Some in the Reopen groups have picked up on DeSantis caution.

Im not fully satisfied with his response, said Tara Hill, a moderator on the Reopen Florida Facebook group. However, I think his intentions are toward reopening the state.

So far, that viewpoint from the right is an exception. FreedomWorks, a conservative advocacy nonprofit that played a major role in the Tea Party movement, actively promotes Reopen protests on its website. Earlier this month, the group put out a scorecard which graded Americas 50 governors on their reopening plans. It was essentially a qualitative assessment: the better a governor balanced the health needs of their state with the daunting economic reality, the higher they scored. DeSantis was one of nine governors to score an A. Eight were Republicans. (Washington D.C. and its mayor were also included in the scorecard.)

Adam Brandon, the president of FreedomWorks, said the grades are subject to change with the evolving executive orders. But so far, Brandon says, DeSantis has closed what needs closing and started to open what can be safely opened.

You have to be smarter than just these blanket approaches, Brandon said. Its pretty clear when you look at the graphs who gets sick and who doesnt.

Although the state has significantly ramped up its testing capacity in recent weeks, experts say Florida is still not testing enough people to fully reopen the economy. Last week, the state tested about 18,600 people per day. Dr. Charles Lockwood, the dean of University of South Floridas College of Medicine who has said he supports the governors approach to reopening, said in April the state needs to be testing about 33,000 people every day.

Such numbers are unpersuasive to the reopen crowd.

A primary reason for that is the economic desperation brought about by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Burghart said. But, like the Tea Party before it, theres also more at play.

National conservative groups like Freedomworks are happy to help grassroots activists who align with their small government message. (Brandon said Freedomworks has not spent money to help organize the Reopen protests.) And like the Tea Party, the movement is uniting disparate factions skeptical of Big Government: Donald Trump superfans, conspiracy theorists and anti-vaccine crusaders.

However, there is one major difference between the two movements: timing. The Reopen campaign has already amassed an online following of over 2 million Facebook users across hundreds of groups, according to the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights analysis. It took months for the Tea Party to accomplish what the Reopen movement has in weeks.

Burghart said even if the Reopen movement isnt dictating the conversation in Florida yet standard bearers of the right like Ron DeSantis may have to tread carefully. If one lesson can be applied from the Tea Party, its that conservatives alienate the grassroots base at their own risk.

They have an outsized influence on the dialogue, Burghart said.

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The movement to reopen Florida has been somewhat subdued. Why is that? - Tampa Bay Times

This May 24 long weekend, dont settle for the standard 2-4 of lager. Instead, step up your fancy cocktail game with two special recipes from Whitney Rorison, co-author of Craft Cocktails and hospitality manager of Dillons Small Batch Distillers.

The Tea Party is the perfect cocktail for brunch if youre tired of the old mimosa, says Rorison. Plus, its so fitting for a weekend that celebrates Queen Victoria. You can use either gin or vodka depending on your preference, along with some of your favourite Earl Grey tea, simple syrup, fresh lemon juice, bitters and lavender. Its even one of those drinks that you can prepare ahead of time and chill in the fridge if youd rather have a lie-in on the long weekend.

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This is the ultimate spring cocktail using fresh rhubarb, says Rorison. It takes a bit more time to prepare as you need to make a rhubarb syrup and candied rhubarb garnish (completely optional garnish option, though), but the flavour combinations and taste are unbelievable. The Rhubarb Sour is gin-based, but you can easily sub in vodka, and it has the most refreshingly sweet but not-too-sweet taste. I would drink these all year if rhubarb was available in the dead of winter!

1. Prepare the candied rhubarb. Preheat the oven to 440 F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Trim the ends off the rhubarb stalks, wash them (but dont dry them), and cut them into finger-length pieces. Pour the sugar onto a small plate. While the rhubarb pieces are still damp, roll them in the sugar, making sure that they are covered evenly. Arrange the sugar-coated rhubarb on the baking sheet, leaving space between each piece. Bake for 1 hour, or until almost all of the liquid from the rhubarb has evaporated and the stalks start to look crisp. Let cool on the baking sheet. The rhubarb pieces can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

3. Make the rhubarb syrup. Combine the rhubarb, sugar and water in a medium pot and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Remove the pot from the heat and leave the rhubarb to steep in the liquid for at least 1 hour, pressing the rhubarb occasionally with a wooden spoon to extract additional flavour. Once cooled and steeped, the liquid should have a pink hue to it. Strain the syrup into an airtight container. Stored in the refrigerator, it will keep for up to 2 weeks.

4. Make the cocktail. Add the gin, syrup, lime juice and bitters to a cocktail shaker. Add the ice and shake for 10 to 15 seconds.

5. Strain the cocktail into a rocks glass or a mason jar filled with fresh ice. Top with soda water and garnish with a piece of the candied rhubarb.

Keep them simple and fun. Crafting cocktails at home should be easy and relaxed. If you have a well-stocked bar cart and some fresh citrus, fruit and fresh herbs at home, there are so many wonderful cocktails you can make. If the weather is warm, its the perfect way to spend a long weekend: enjoying a tasty bevvie outside in the sun. Gin and/or vodka with some muddled fruit and herbs in a highball with loads of ice and a topping of soda water or sparkling wine sounds pretty good for a relaxing long weekend.

Balance. Making sure that your cocktails have a good balance of flavours on the palate is the most important thing. Make sure you have a sour and/or bitter component, a sweet note, and you definitely want to taste the spirit in the drink, too. Having a nice versatile set of bitters at home is always a smart option; you can change the flavour and balance in a cocktail so easily with the additions of a few dashes of bitters.

A well-curated home bar should have the basic spirits and the ones you use most often: gin, vodka, whisky, some sort of aperitivo (like Aperol or Campari), vermouth (sweet and dry), a nice rum and a good tequila/mezcal, a few liqueurs like our Rose Gin, Cassis or a sweeter schnapps and bitters. For tools, you should invest in a few pieces like a jigger (to help measure), cocktail shaker and mixing glass (although even a mason jar can work in a pinch), some fun vintage-style glasses and cocktail picks for garnishes. A good peeler from the kitchen comes in handy too for citrus peel and twist garnishes, because you want the drink to look as good as it tastes!

Prepared cocktails, whether in a can or bottle, even in kegs are big right now. We released a bottled Negroni last year and its been so well received. We took a different approach with our first prepared cocktail and went down the stirred cocktail road, which you dont see as much of quite yet (there are so many great light spritzy ready-to-drinks on the market right now). A well-crafted, balanced RTD cocktail allows the consumer to enjoy the best of the best, without all the fuss or work. I also think we are going to see more cocktails with a drier, bitter or acidic flavour profilemore salty, umami-like vibes. I personally love cocktails that focus on deep flavours with less sweetness. Adding anise and fennel notes to cocktails with fruit or citrus, garnishing with coarse salt, something like that is what Id love to see.

Link:
Fancy Cocktails You Can Make at Home This Long Weekend - The Kit

Marie Curies famous Blooming Great Tea Party is going virtual this year and the charity needs hosts more than ever before to make up for the devastating effect the coronavirus crisis has had on its income.

It is hoped people across Forth Valley will host a virtual tea party with family and friends as a fun way to stay in touch with loved ones and support nurses working on the frontline of the crisis.

In homes all over the district, the charity is caring for people with terminal illnesses, as well as people with Covid-19, and is protecting the NHS by keeping

patients away from hospital.

However, as the charity has stepped up its support for the nation, its fundraising income has been devastated by the impact of lockdown measures it had to cancel its Great Daffodil Appeal in March and closed all its charity shops shortly after.

The charity needs to raise a quarter of a million pounds to fund its Scottish services.

That is why the charity and its celebrity ambassador, Mel Giedroyc, are encouraging everyone to connect virtually with friends and family while raising some money at the same time.

Mel said: You can bake it, fake it, brew it or stew it whatever your cup of tea, Marie Curies Blooming Great Tea Party is going virtual this year and its a simple way to keep in touch with your chums, while raising money for a wonderful cause, which, I think youll agree, we all need right now".

Marie Curie needs to raise a massive 2.5 million each week to care for the tens of thousands of people who need its nursing and hospice care. This year, the amazing nurses and frontline staff need you more than ever, as the fundraising events they rely on have all been cancelled.

Ive met their nurses before. They are inspiring, kind, caring and loving people who are currently caring for people at the end of their lives and keeping people out of hospital,helping the NHS cope with the coronavirus crisis.

Every last crumb of the money you raise will help people at the end of their lives. So please join me by raising a cuppa, and some money, in your lounge or garden for the Marie Curie Nurses on the front line.

Jim Stewart, community fundraiser for Forth Valley, said: Our Blooming Great Tea Party looks a little different this year but I think everyone needs an excuse to meet up with their friends and family online of course and check in on the people they love. If you can do that while raising some money for Marie Curie, then your generous donations will enable us to help even more people at the end of their lives get the care they need in this time of uncertainty.

We rely on the support of the amazing public to ensure our nurses can keep caring for people. And while the coronavirus crisis has badly impacted our fundraising events, we hope by going virtual well be able to raise the vital funds we need to keep supporting people in our communities across Forth Valley.

To register as a Blooming Virtual Tea Party host visit here or call 0800 716 146 for you fundraising pack.

Read more here:
Marie Curie charity hopes Falkirk tea lovers will host a virtual party - Falkirk Herald

What I objected to was the failure to lay off the Its the End of Civilization As We Know It nonsense. The Ladies Tea Party agreed. Here was the PMs opportunity to present Covid as a nasty disease which had tragically taken the lives of over 30,000 of our fellow citizens a bloody gash in the national psyche, no doubt - but which, in all honesty, poses little threat to most of the population who will either have it mildly or remain asympomatic. Boris could have broken the good news that, according to Oxford University, Coronavirus is no longer an epidemic in the UK. Yes, really. Just 0.24 per cent of adults - thats 136,000 people - currently have the virus. Transmission in the community is very low with most new cases coming from care homes and hospitals. He could have gone on to say that, while we must continue to shelter the most vulnerable and maintain sensible hygiene measures, it really is safe to go to work and to take the kids to school. Not just safe, but absolutely vital if we are to preserve jobs and spare the country an economic depression that will cause infinitely more suffering.

It would have taken moral courage to tell a frightened populace that their fears are out of all proportion to the actual risk and its time to start living again. Boris ducked it. This was not his Finest Hour, it was a disappointing thirteen minutes.

Generally, Im not too fussed whether its men or women who are taking the decisions so long as theyre highly competent. On Sunday night, I was acutely aware that no mother could possibly have been privy to the content of Boriss statement. It revealed a startling lack of emotional intelligence (EQ). If you tell 29 million viewers that they must go to work if you can, you dont have schools as an afterthought. Schools will have been foremost in the minds of all parents watching and wondering, How on earth can I go to work if the kids are still at home? The so-called quad - Sunak, Raab, Hancock, Gove seem to think of work purely as work, it isnt. Work is people. Do our leaders really not understand how people think or how they live? All I can say is you know that men are in charge when the golf clubs are open and the hairdressers closed.

Simon from Essex spoke for baffled parents everywhere when he asked a question of the PM at Mondays briefing. Were people like him allowed to use the schools that had stayed open for key workers? If not how do you propose these people return to work if theres no childcare available?

I think its only fair to regard that as an obvious barrier to their ability to return to work and Im sure employers will agree with that, answered the PM without answering at all.

Nor did he have a defence for the frankly laughable proposition that people will be able to see one parent out of doors, but not both. Natasha from Richmond asked How is it logical that I as a primary schoolteacher can mix with the many returning children but seeing my relatives is still not allowed?

Dont go expecting logic, here, love. Were living in the Age of Anti-Reason. So, under the new rules, people can see their boss, but they cant see their dad/grandchild/girlfriend? Trust me, that is going to infuriate pretty much everyone.

What happened is some pointy-head at SAGE did the maths and worked out that if an individual sees just one extra person outside their own household that will stop R (the reinfection rate) going up too much. What pointy-heads cant compute is that if you drive to, say, Nottingham from London to see your mum and dad, a non-pointy person is not going to just invite their mother out the front for a chat and then drive home again. Being human, and possessed of the full complement of unscientific feelings, they will end up seeing both parents, whether together or separately.

I actually have huge sympathy for the Prime Minister as he tries to pull off this supremely difficult balancing act of suppressing the virus while coaxing the country back to life. Its as if the Prince hacked his way through the thorns, scaled the palace walls, blew Sleeping Beauty a kiss from the other end of the bedchamber and, when she awoke, cried, Prithee, stay right there, beloved, and keep two metres away from me at all times!

To make a tricky situation even worse Boriss enemies, still smarting from their Brexit defeat, have no qualms about using a national crisis as a proxy war. Somehow, the PM must plot a course through the Scylla of a shamelessly opportunistic Nicola Sturgeon and the Charybidis of the trade unions who rather like having half of all adults on the state payroll and so set an impossible standard of 100% safe before members can return to work.

Read more:
Come on Boris, tell a frightened nation that its fears are out of proportion - Telegraph.co.uk

The COVID-19 crisis is far from over, but governments everywhere appear to have either relaxed lockdown parameters or will do so soon. The curve may have been flattened, but there will be a greater risk now of being infected.

Containing COVID-19 and restoring our economies requires not just good policy decisions and medical advice; it also needs continued compliance with the recommended behavioural changes that in many ways go against social and cultural conventions. Daunting as they may seem, the drastic changes in behaviour being called for can indeed be brought about. The science of social marketing uses known marketing principles and behaviour change theory to influence peoples behaviour for the benefit of both the target audience and of society. Public health, safety and environmental concerns are some of the areas where social marketing can have huge impact.

The Health Belief Model (HBM), developed by Irwin M. Rosenstock others suggests that a persons health-related behaviours ultimately stem from the desire to avoid illness. The two most important constructs of the model are: perceived benefits the effectiveness of actions available to reduce the threat of the disease, and perceived barriers the obstacles to performing a recommended health action. The model also recognises the importance of cues to action or triggers which set into motion the process of adopting the desired behaviours. These cues, typically, are emotional, not just informative or educational. The HBM presumes that knowledge or education alone is grossly insufficient to change a persons behaviour. Cigarette sales, for example did not decline significantly for years despite the ills of smoking having been widely publicised.

India is one of the few countries that appears to have recognised the power of deliberately crafted emotive cues to action such as the Prime Ministers call for a voluntary Janata Curfew, exhorting citizens to show that they care for themselves and their loved ones, and to display their patriotism. People were asked to stay indoors but, at 5 p.m., to also applaud health-care workers and others who are a part of the pandemic battle. The blend of fear, patriotism and gratitude extolled by the Prime Minister appeared to have been just the right buttons to push and people did stay indoors. Yet at 5 p.m., while many applauded from their balconies, hordes of others congregated in large groups, throwing social distancing to the winds. Fear, patriotism and gratitude, even if they were effective as initiating cues to action, were insufficient to sustain behaviour change and needed to be periodically rekindled. The Prime Minister later called upon citizens to switch off lights at 9 p.m. for 9 minutes on a chosen day and light lamps to go from darkness to hope. As is well known, the number 9 and lighting lamps are powerful positive symbols in India.

In Singapore, the government, perhaps taking a cue, supported an event, Sing Together Singapore. People at home were encouraged to sing as well and wave a torchlight as gratitude for frontline and migrant workers.

Going back to the main constructs of the HBM, to be effective, the social marketing message would present the benefits as applying direct to the individual, not just indirectly to society at large. And, messaging about barriers should not make the change appear too difficult to engage in or make the cost of adopting the behaviours appear too high. Supportive measures should facilitate the adoption of the desired behaviour.

Here is an example to illustrate this. In the 1970s, Bangladesh undertook an ambitious family planning campaign keeping in mind the countrys limited resources. Research showed that while the women were able to readily see the benefits, the men, who were the decision makers at home, could not.

The campaign became successful after social marketers decided to empower women by making female contraceptives available through women rural medical practitioners who made house calls. The marketers also designed a communications programme directed at men highlighting benefits such as better health for their wives, thereby enabling them to look after their husbands and children better.

This writer conducted informal interviews (not scientific by any means) in Chennai to gauge receptivity to recommended behaviours during the pandemic. Here are the findings in relation to some of the recommended behavioural actions and possible messaging and support measures.

Many were not quite convinced of the threat posed by asymptomatic others merely because they were close by. The perceived direct benefits of social distancing were thus moderate at best. Further, one does not have the luxury of observing physical distancing in many situations (especially in densely populated areas). Telling someone to stand away is also difficult because it could be considered rude. Hygiene instructors often ask an audience to colour their hands and then show the imprints they leave everywhere to demonstrate how germs can spread. Would a social marketing campaign that paints a picture of the virus jumping onto you if you are close to an infected person work? This needs to be supported by physical barriers wherever possible to promote social distancing.

The recommendation to hand wash often or use an alcohol-based hand rub was unrealistic for too many people even though they saw the merit in it. The two options have been presented as equivalent, but from a behavioural change point of view they are not. Even those who had fairly easy access to soap and washing facilities found it rather inconvenient to interrupt whatever they were doing to frequently head to a hand wash station. If alcohol-based hand rubs were available within arms reach, people had no need to interrupt their work and drying their hands was not a problem since they would swiftly dry on their own. This suggests high payoffs from a decision by governments to focus on increasing the supply of hand rubs and absorbing or highly subsidising the costs of making hand rub bottles readily available to supplement hand washing with soap and water.

We know that shame is a powerful disincentive to undesirable behaviour. This writer has considerable experience in projects to make villages open defecation free through the use of Community-led Total Sanitation, a technique that liberally and successfully uses naming and shaming to achieve its goals. It is not hard to visualise messaging that shows bystanders strongly disapproving of those who do not comply with the COVID-19 recommendations.

A well-crafted social marketing campaign would help address the COVID-19 crisis and set foundations that will help ameliorate the adverse consequences of future pandemics. Let us build policy from science in the effort to save lives and to put the local and global economies back on track.

S.N. Srikanth is Chairman and Managing Director of the Hauer-Diana Group of Companies of India

Link:
The pandemic and the challenge of behaviour change - The Hindu