Out of the first wood

The coronavirus team at the FT have not yet been stood down, but we do look to be out of the woods, at least as far as deaths involving or attributable to the plague are concerned. At least for the time being. Maybe now is the time to start building back, putting the health service in better shape for what might be coming next. While the truss, no doubt, is keener on cuts to service to match her promised cuts to tax. Never mind the plague to come, the punters - that is to say the voters - must have more refrigerators and more ice cream now.

Down to around 1,250 deaths a day, with over half of those looking to be in Europe or the US. Reflecting, I suppose, our business (in the sense of being busy) and our incessant mixing, rather than our population, which, looking at the graphic above, looks to be less than a quarter of the world total.

A graphic which comes from reference 2, said to be unavailable in this country. But reference 3 though gets me to the Chicago Tribune OK. For a provincial newspaper, it looks pretty good, if well festooned with advertisements once you start clicking on things.

Rather more girlie pictures than you get in the FT, but in among the slender girls you had the rather overweight boys above. The bar at the bottom is something to do with the cycling of the four (?) pictures in the slot concerned.

As far as I have got in reference 4, the order might ape the vocabulary of our freemasons, but is more of a trade union or staff association. Very into the welfare of its members and their families.

'The Grand Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police is a non-profit organization that was formed under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on November 17, 1915. On January 7, 1963, the Grand Lodge granted a charter to Fraternal Order of Police, Chicago Lodge No. 7, establishing Lodge No. 7 as a subordinate lodge with full power under its jurisdiction for the City of Chicago. The organization was known as The United Chicago Police Association, Lodge No. 7 of the Fraternal Order of Police, governed by President Joseph J. LeFevour and Recording Secretary Richard Lis...'.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/03/out-of-woods.html.

Reference 2: https://www.tribpub.com/gdpr/chicagonow.com/. 'Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism'.

Reference 3: https://www.tribpub.com/#.

Reference 4: https://www.chicagofop.org/.

Group search key: FT, graphic.