Do wash your hands
frequently and thoroughly. This is the smartest thing you can do to
prevent the spread of viruses.
Do make sure that if you are able to buy a
lesser-known brand of hand sanitizer, it’s made of at least 60% alcohol, as
recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (C.D.C.) That
rules out some of the so-called “botanical” options and popular kid-friendly
options.
Do make sure that if you decide to try and
make your own hand sanitizer, it also contains at least 60% alcohol. This recipe
(two parts rubbing alcohol, one part aloe) sounds like it should achieve 60%
alcohol. Keep in mind that some recipes call for using liquor (like vodka),
which is usually 40% alcohol, and might not reach the threshold you need. For
instance, Tito’s Vodka has been urging people not to use its product in DIY
sanitizer solutions.
Do dry your hands
before applying any hand sanitizer. A 2019 study published in the American
Society for Microbiology’s publication, mSphere, found that wet mucus protected
the influenza A virus, rendering hand sanitizer less effective.
Coronavirus
Has Caused a Hand Sanitizer Shortage.
What Should You Do?
Using hand sanitizer helps prevent the spread of coronavirus.
So what do you do when it’s sold out?
WASHINGTON — For five years Robert Bergdahl waged a father’s
war for the return of his soldier son.
He accused the Obama administration of stalling talks for his release. He made
his own contact with the Taliban to try to find out more. He pressured the State
Department and Pentagon during frequent trips to Washington, where in 2012 he
spoke in anguish to a crowd of 100,000 on Memorial Day.
A father’s war came to an end on Saturday with the freeing of Sgt. Bowe
Bergdahl, 28, who had been America’s only known prisoner of war. But Sergeant
Bergdahl, a skier, expert marksman and ballet dancer from rural Idaho, will
remain one of the more unusual members of the American military — and the
central character in a bizarre disappearance in Afghanistan that set off a
frantic search with Predator drones, Apache attack helicopters and military
tracking dogs.
On Saturday, in a statement from both of the sergeant’s parents, Mr. Bergdahl
and his wife, Jani — written after President Obama telephoned to tell them of
their son’s release — the tone had changed: “We were so joyful and relieved when
President Obama called us today to give us the news that Bowe is finally coming
home!” they wrote. “We cannot wait to wrap our arms around our only son.”
Bowe Bergdahl grew up as an outdoorsy free spirit in Hailey, Idaho, a town of
some 6,000 people that provided many of the self-described “worker bees” for the
expensive resorts of Ketchum and Sun Valley to the north. His father, an
anthropology major who had dropped out of college, drove a delivery truck for
United Parcel Service. His mother home-schooled Bowe and his elder sister, Sky.
The family lived in a small cabin that had 5,000 books but no telephone, a
close-to-nature existence that fed Sergeant Bergdahl’s wanderlust. After a
series of odd jobs, including as a crew member on a large sailboat and dancing
the role of the Nutcracker in the Sun Valley Ballet, he turned to the Army to
try to find focus in his life, friends and family say. He was lured by the
promises of Army recruiters that he would be helping people in other parts of
the world, his father said in an interview two years ago, and had come to see
the military as a Peace Corps with guns.
Those dreams were dashed soon after Bowe Bergdahl arrived in Afghanistan, in May
2009, when American forces were stretched thin. As a machine gunner with the
First Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade Combat Team,
25th Infantry Division, he was sent to a small combat outpost in Paktika
Province, on the eastern border with Pakistan.
At first his emails home were cheerful, his father said, full of stories about
“how beautiful it was, how wonderful the people were.” The tone of the emails
quickly darkened, said Robert Bergdahl, who declined in the interview to say
what specifically set off the change. But in an interview with Robert and Jani
Bergdahl in Rolling Stone magazine in June 2012, the parents described morale
and discipline problems in the unit and quoted from what they said was their
son’s last email to them, three days before his capture.
“I am sorry for everything here,” Sergeant Bergdahl said in the email, according
to Rolling Stone. “These people need help, yet what they get is the most
conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they
are stupid, that they have no idea how to live.” He then described what his
parents believed may have been a formative, traumatic event: seeing an Afghan
child run over by a heavy American military vehicle. “We don’t even care when we
hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with
our armored trucks,” Sergeant Bergdahl wrote.
Sergeant Bergdahl’s superiors first noticed he was missing on the morning of
June 30, 2009, when he failed to show up for the unit’s 9 a.m. roll call.
Initial military reports said Sergeant Bergdahl had simply walked off his post,
but in a Taliban video released after his capture, Sergeant Bergdahl said he had
lagged behind on a patrol.
His parents have not said publicly what they believe happened, but Robert
Bergdahl has discounted accounts in classified Afghan war logs, made public by
WikiLeaks, that suggest insurgents grabbed Sergeant Bergdahl while he was in a
latrine.
However he disappeared, a furious hunt, described in cold military detail in the
war logs, was quickly underway.
The military deployed unmanned Predator surveillance drones overhead, searched
nearby villages with dogs, set up checkpoints and raided suspected enemy
outposts.
The war logs also describe how the American military intercepted communications
among members of the Taliban, who discussed their attempts to sabotage the
search by lining the roads with homemade bombs.
“Yes we have a lot of I.E.D. on the road,” one of the members of the Taliban
said in the intercepted communications, referring to improvised explosive
devices.
Three hours after that communication was intercepted, military intelligence
confirmed that “a U.S. soldier has been captured.”
The militants were overheard saying that they believed the Americans were using
many resources to try to find the missing soldier. “I think he is a big shot,
that is why they are looking for him,” one of them said.
Photo
Yellow ribbons adorn many of the trees along Main Street in Hailey, Idaho, the
Bergdahl family’s hometown. Credit Bill Schaefer for The New York Times
The documents also describe how the military talked to local tribal elders who
said they had been asked by the Taliban to arrange a prisoner swap with the
Americans. The elders told the Americans that the Taliban wanted 15 of their
“brothers in U.S. jail and some money in exchange” for Sergeant Bergdahl.
The military had numerous indications after Sergeant Bergdahl’s capture that he
was still alive, mostly from videos released by the Taliban. (At the time of his
disappearance, Sergeant Bergdahl had the rank of private. The military promoted
him twice during his captivity.)
The first video surfaced in July 2009, another the following December. In that
video, Sergeant Bergdahl criticized the United States and said that unlike
prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay and in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, he had been fairly
treated and was not tortured.
“One of the biggest illusions that the Army gives us coming over here as a
soldier, as a private in their Army, is that we’re coming over here to fight a
terrorist group of men,” he said in that video. In an April 2010 video, Sergeant
Bergdahl was shown begging to be released, and appeared in additional videos in
December 2010, February 2011 and this past January, when he seemed in declining
health.
His future in the Army remains unclear. But if
Sergeant Bergdahl did in fact
walk off his post, there has been no indication from the military that he will
be punished for doing so. Any penalty appeared even more unlikely on Saturday,
when Robert and Jani Bergdahl appeared in the Rose Garden with Mr. Obama, who
embraced them and welcomed their son home.
As he stood at the president’s side, Robert Bergdahl said that his son was
having difficulty with English after spending so much time with the Taliban,
then said “bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim,” a common Arabic phrase meaning “in the
name of God, most gracious, most compassionate,” and then spoke a few words in
Pashto, a language of Afghanistan.
Hours earlier on Saturday, while Sergeant Bergdahl was on an American military
helicopter after his release, he wrote on a paper plate with a pen — because the
noise was so loud — “S.F.?” for Special Forces, seeking to find out who was
taking him away.
The men on the helicopter yelled back, “Yes, we’ve been looking for you a long
time!”
At which point, according to a senior defense official, Sergeant Bergdahl broke
down crying.
Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Singapore.
A version of this article appears in print
on June 1, 2014,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Lesson for a Prisoner’s Father: Men Sometimes
Do Come Back.
Q: In San Diego, Nevada, Arizona, Republicans were the targets of
investigations, and those U.S. attorneys were removed. Does that not give the
appearance —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't — it may give the appearance of something, but I
think what you need to do is listen to the facts, and let them explain to — it's
precisely why they're going up to testify, so that the American people can hear
the truth about why the decision was made.
Listen, first of all, these U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the
President. I named them all. And the Justice Department made recommendations,
which the White House accepted, that eight of the 93 would no longer serve. And
they will go up and make the explanations as to why — I'm sorry this, frankly,
has bubbled to the surface the way it has, for the U.S. attorneys involved. I
really am. These are — I put them in there in the first place; they're decent
people. They serve at our pleasure. And yet, now they're being held up into the
scrutiny of all this, and it's just — what I said in my comments, I meant about
them. I appreciated their service, and I'm sorry that the situation has gotten
to where it's got. But that's Washington, D.C. for you. You know, there's a lot
of politics in this town.
And I repeat, we would like people to hear the truth. And, Kelly, your question
is one I'm confident will be asked of people up there. And the Justice
Department will answer that question in open forum for everybody to see.
If the Democrats truly do want to
move forward and find the right information, they ought to accept what I
proposed. And the idea of dragging White House members up there to score
political points, or to put the klieg lights out there — which will harm the
President's ability to get good information, Michael — is — I really do believe
will show the true nature of this debate.
And if information is the desire, here's a great way forward. If scoring
political points is the desire, then the rejection of this reasonable proposal
will really be evident for the American people to see.
Ministers must engage
with the public more intelligently
if they are to sustain
support
in an open-ended struggle with terrorism
Andrew Rawnsley
Sunday July 24, 2005
The Observer
Here is the paradox: they blame his war, but they rate him more. Pollsters are
reporting that a majority of people think there is a connection between the war
in Iraq and terror in London, however stridently and insistently Tony Blair and
his ministers refuse to acknowledge a link. And yet the Prime Minister who took
Britain into Iraq is also enjoying the best approval ratings he has had since
before the war. They judge him to be good in a crisis even when they think he
bears some responsibility for that crisis.
