The person or people behind 'The Illuminator' just emailed Boing Boing to say they staged a large-scale public projection in Manhattan on Saturday night to make several demands on local, state, and federal governments during this COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

Here are images of the socially distant protest in light.

View this post on Instagram

We are in a crisis. These are not radical demands. These are a list of basic needs, needs that must be fulfilled if we are to survive both this current outbreak and the fallout that is soon to come. We cannot conduct business as usual. Business as usual is killing us. It is killing our friends, it is killing our family members, and it is killing our future. NYC has empty streets, quiet except for the ambulance sirens now. We need federal aid - help with medical supplies, testing, rent and debt relief. Be kind to one another, show up however you can. Our heroes are on the frontline and our eyes are on the people in power. #covid19

A post shared by The Illuminator (@the.illuminator) on Mar 30, 2020 at 8:16am PDT

From the collective:

The Illuminator, an art-activist collective, staged a large-scale public projection in Manhattan on Saturday night, March 28, at 8:00pm to make several demands on our local, state, and federal governments during this COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The protest was conducted with social distancing guidelines in mind, and the projection was beamed out of the window of an apartment.

As of Friday afternoon, the CDC reported 85,356 total cases and 1,246 total deaths in the US.

Read the rest

Trump on Sunday said he's extending COVID-19 social distancing guidelines until April 30.

"[Trump is] so attentive to the scientific literature & the details & the data. I think his ability to analyze & integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit.” Read the rest

“They are putting us directly in harm’s way while profiting greatly. We cannot let this be considered normal.”

My, how the tables have turned.

Many Americans are relocating from their homes to far-flung places to escape the coronavirus outbreak.

This, public health officials tell us, only worsens the outbreak -- they can carry the virus without any symptoms.

A growing number of people in Mexico want their government to crack down on the reportedly growing number of American citizens who are fleeing south to escape Trump's colossal mismanagement of the worsening U.S. outbreak. Read the rest

Canada is not super cool with plans by impeached U.S. president Donald Trump to send a thousand (maybe fewer) U.S. troops to the U.S.-Canada border. Trump says militarizing the border is good because he's worried things will become so desperate in the U.S. with the pandemic, Americans will flee north to escape the oncoming coronavirus hellscape. Read the rest

White House plans to label counties across America as "high-risk, medium-risk, or low-risk"

“You can’t just come in and say let’s close up the USA,” Trump said, again falsely stating coronavirus is no worse than flu.

• Trump demands economy reopen by Easter amid pandemic • Medical experts & disaster movies tell us this would be bad

“I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter," is a thing that Donald Trump just said during a Fox News virtual town hall. Read the rest

Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced its largest gain in a single day since 1933. Read the rest

Now he says he tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19.

• Sex criminal and former film producer, who is serving 23 years, now isolated from other prisoners and shows no symptoms

Hackers tried to break into the World Health Organization earlier in March, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread, Reuters reports. Security experts blame an advanced cyber-espionage hacker group known as DarkHotel.

A senior agency official says the WHO has been facing a more than two-fold increase in cyberattacks since the coronavirus pandemic began. Read the rest

• Three manufacturing plants of Ipca Laboratories get exemption • Agency had cited ‘systematic data manipulation’ at one plant Read the rest

The number of coronavirus cases in New York sharply increased to nearly 8,000 cases on Friday, a result of increased testing and the continuing uncontrolled spread of the virus that causes the respiratory illness COVID-19.

This is 10 times higher than what was reported earlier in the week.

New York now has half of all coronavirus cases in the US.

In a startlingly quick ascent, New York was closing in on 8,000 positive tests, about 1/2 the cases in the country. The # was 10x higher than what was reported earlier in the week. The sharp increase is thrusting the medical system toward a crisis point. https://t.co/SPPe5PESWT

— Adam Goldman (@adamgoldmanNYT) March 20, 2020

“The healthcare system is already getting overrun. Hospitals are running out of ventilators. Doctors are reusing masks,” says the New York Times' Brian Rosenthal.

Excerpt:

The sharp increase is thrusting the medical system toward a crisis point, officials said.

In the Bronx, doctors at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center say they have only a few remaining ventilators for patients who need them to breathe. In Brooklyn, doctors at Kings County Hospital Center say they are so low on supplies that they are reusing masks for up to a week, slathering them with hand sanitizer between shifts.

Some of the jump in New York’s cases can be traced to significantly increased testing, which the state began this week. But the escalation, and the response, could offer other states a glimpse of what might be in store if the virus continues to spread.

Read the rest

They told the public everything would be okay with the virus outbreak. Then they privately dumped stocks.

Over the past 24 hours, news has spread that various U.S. lawmakers received advance private briefings about the severity of an oncoming coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic -- then, they sold stocks before the public knew how bad it would get, and how the economy would suffer. Read the rest

Impeached United States President Donald J. Trump said something awful again today that would end any other man's presidency in any timeline but this hellscape we're in. Read the rest