Going down in flames
In announcing the most far-reaching restrictions on personal freedom in the history of our nation, Boris Johnson resolutely followed the scientific advice that he had been given. The advisers to the government seem calm and collected, with a solid consensus among them. In the face of a new viral threat, with numbers of cases surging daily, I'm not sure that any prime minister would have acted very differently.
But
I'd like to raise some perspectives that have hardly been aired in the past weeks, and which point to an interpretation of the figures rather different from that which the government is acting on. I'm a recently-retired Professor of Pathology and NHS consultant pathologist, and have spent most of my adult life in healthcare and science - fields which, all too often, are characterised by doubt rather than certainty.
There is room for different interpretations of the current data. If some of these other interpretations are correct, or at least nearer to the truth, then conclusions about the actions required will change correspondingly.
The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month?
Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York, is moving up in the
betting odds for getting the Democratic presidential nomination, even though he is not running. The reason is that binge-watching newshounds have noticed something about his comportment during this crisis. He seems just slightly struggling to know what's true. Sometimes he is even honest.
Consider this. On Thursday March 26, Cuomo dared question the orthodoxy that has wrecked countless businesses and lives. He revealed what actual experts are saying quietly all over the world but had yet not been discussed openly in the endless public-relations spin broadcast all day and night.
He
said the following:
If you rethought that or had time to analyze that public health strategy, I don't know that you would say quarantine everyone. I don't even know that that was the best public health policy. Young people then quarantined with older people was probably not the best public health strategy because the younger people could have been exposing the older people to an infection.
As the coronavirus outbreak continues to grow, misinformation in the form of fake news, rumors, and gossip have continued to feed mass hysteria and panic over the deadly disease.
In Peru, this has resulted in locals attempting to fight CoViD-19 by attacking communities of bats despite the fact that the novel virus still hasn't been decisively proven to have originated from the winged creature.
On Wednesday, the Peruvian government issued a statement warning residents to stop killing bats after authorities were forced to intervene when roughly half a thousand of the flying mammals came under attack by gangs of peasants hoping to exterminate what they believed were carriers of the disease,
reports Peruvian network América Noticias.
Roughly 300 of the creatures were killed in the arson attacks that took place in the small village of Culden, which lies in the Cajamarca region, after mobs attacked the caves where the bat communities dwelled, Peru's National Service of Wild Forests and Fauna (SERFOR) announced.
The coronavirus pandemic has rippled through society, disrupting and transforming lives in myriad, unpredictable ways.
However, amid the crisis people have gone out on a limb not only to help each other but also to help homeless pets find temporary housing as animal shelters feel the impact of lockdown orders throughout the country.
Organizations like the Asheville Humane Society in North Carolina have had to
suspend volunteer care jobs, forcing them to find alternatives to their traditional methods of finding foster parents for homeless cats and dogs.
However, after launching an online appeal to recruit temporary foster families, the humane organization found that their community was more than willing to step up and help take care of foster pets in need.
RTSun, 29 Mar 2020 05:35 UTC
© Walmart
If the Covid-19 infection does not get you thanks to government prevention measures, the downside is that these steps may deprive you of fresh food, including fruit and vegetables.
While people rushed to stock up on toilet paper and other supplies as the coronavirus crisis escalated,
some countries decided to enforce protectionist measures, including export bans for certain products, to satisfy growing domestic demand."The worst that can happen is that governments restrict the flow of food," Maximo Torero, chief economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, told the
Guardian, adding that
we may face the consequences of these steps soon.For example, Russia halted exports of buckwheat and other grains for 10 days starting from March 20. Neighboring Kazakhstan followed suit and introduced restrictions on shipments of wheat flour, buckwheat, sugar, several types of vegetables, and sunflower oil.
The UN official warns that protectionist measures and trade barriers only make the situation worse, creating "extreme volatility." Another problem is that
some countries now lack the workforce to harvest the crops due in part to border closures and domestic lockdowns.
Comment: While the coronavirus has been designated and treated as a pandemic of global proportions, the looming crisis is 'what is not in the pan'! Global food shortages are already here and on the rise, harbingers of the approaching ice age. Lessons on the surface remind us to look for deeper lessons underneath - and do it quickly!
Tom Slater
SpikedThu, 26 Mar 2020 00:01 UTC
Those who rush to denounce others often reveal their own ignorance.More than
500,000 Brits have signed up to be NHS volunteers to help vulnerable people through the coronavirus epidemic, smashing a 250,000 target in just 24 hours. It's a welcome reminder of how good people are, and we needed it. In recent days you'd be forgiven for thinking we are all feckless idiots who aren't taking this virus thing that seriously because we are simply too thick or too selfish to care. At least, that has been the message pumped out by the self-important of social media.
'Covidiots' is the ugly coinage that has been used to shame anyone who some nosey sort deems to have erred. We may not, to the chagrin of many in the media, be in a full continental-style lockdown, in which police are demanding papers and soldiers sit on every street corner.
But we do at least have public denunciations and snitching, via an army of the smartphone-wielding self-righteous, ready to pap and shame anyone with too much loo roll in their trolley or too little distance between themselves and other joggers in the park.
Comment: Jordan Peterson warned us that, given the right circumstances, we wouldn't be that different from the guards at Auschwitz. This isn't far off. People evidently need little incentive to become Gestapo rats, joyously snitching on their fellow citizens.
The coronavirus outbreak is proving to be the Trojan horse that justifies increased digital surveillance via our smartphones.
All over the world, starting with China - the suspected origin of the COVID-19 outbreak - governments are increasing surveillance of citizens using their smartphones. The trend is taking off like wildfire; in China citizens now require a smartphone application's permission to travel around the country and internationally.
The application is AliPay by Ant Financial, the finance affiliate controlled by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder Jack Ma, and Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s WeChat. Citizens now require a green health code to travel,
Yahoo News reported.
RTSun, 29 Mar 2020 17:12 UTC
© Thomas Peter / ReutersA Hainan Airlines plane taxies at Beijing Capital International in Beijing, China, March 13, 2020.
Beijing has allowed civilian air travel in its Hubei region, where the Covid-19 outbreak originally began, after a strict lockdown was lifted in all of its major cities except for Wuhan.
The first domestic passenger flight took off at midnight on Sunday as all cities in China's central Hubei Province,
with the exception for Wuhan, resumed regular civilian air travel, local media reported.
Officials earlier said that airports in the major cities of Xiangyang, Enshi and Shennongjia - all of which had been quarantined in January - are among those to reopen for domestic flights this week.Wuhan's Tianhe Airport will start passenger flights from midnight on April 8,
when the quarantine is expected to be lifted from the city. Wuhan was the original epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, which prompted Beijing to enforce a strict lockdown in the area.
The number of new Covid-19 cases has since dropped significantly in Hubei as authorities began to gradually ease travel restrictions and prepare the cities for the resumption of normal life.
Comment: While China has declared victory over the spread of the coronavirus within China, they are also
warning of the possibility of a second outbreak caused by imported cases. Thai inmates sparked a
jail riot over fears of catching the virus. Singapore, which has one of the lowest rates of case-doubling in the world so far,
nullified a man's passport for violating a self-quarantine order. Germany registered fewer new cases than they did in the last few days -
under 4k. But German officials are still
issuing dire warnings, e.g., that the health care system could buckle like in Italy. Spain saw another record day of tallied deaths (allegedly Covid-related), but the rate of new infections
dropped, as in Germany. Italy's economy minister
clashed with European Commission chief von der Leyen after she said the EU would not issue "corona bonds" to help affected countries:
"The commission president's words were a mistake and I regret that she made them," Italian Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri told reporters at a news conference on Saturday, stressing that Europe needs "a great Marshall Plan" to keep its economy afloat.
...
In an interview with DPA, von der Leyen did not rule out the idea of 'corona bonds' but said that they were "not the plan" the EU was working on. "The word corona bond is actually just a buzzword," she said. The option was similarly dismissed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said that creating 'corona bonds' was "not... the view of all EU countries."
Trumps Covid advisor, Dr. Fauci, is also issuing dire
predictions, presumably pulled out of thin air (or somewhere less pleasant):
New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut residents have all been
advised to avoid non-essential travel for 14 days. The
husband of a Netanyahu adviser reportedly tested positive. Iran
confirmed 2,901 new cases, and IRGC chief Salami
issued the following advice to the U.S.:
The American leadership should "really care about the lives of their people in New York and the states involved with coronavirus rather than thinking about Hollywood scenarios and killing people in Iraq," Major General Hossein Salami, Chief Commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), pointed out.
...
Salami reminded his audience that Washington has already "tested the power" of Tehran and "knows very well how Iran will react to any efforts to undermine it." Claims by some US officials that they will continue to "carry out limited operations against the Iranians" were "nothing more than a political bluff."
So, instead of causing havoc around the globe and only "deteriorating its own power," the America had better keep its military at home "like Iran, which has used its armed forces to fight the coronavirus," IRGC chief said.
The rate of deaths in the UK
dropped today, but the
first UK healthcare worker died from the virus. Russia's emergency plan
may cut into their economic growth.
Moscow issued a stay-at-home order for the city (just short of full quarantine). Mayor Sobyanin
said:
"The situation with the spread of the coronavirus has entered a new stage. More than 1,000 cases of have been recorded in Moscow already. No one is safe [from getting infected]," Sobyanin wrote on his blog on Sunday.
...
"Please, stay safe. All Moscow residents must stay home in the coming week. If you are on the street or at the store, maintain safe distance," he warned. "Everyone is seeing what is happening in Italian and Spanish cities, in New York where tens and hundreds are dying daily."
Just because things are particularly bad in Italy, that doesn't imply that things will be that bad elsewhere. For whatever reasons (in addition to the mere presence of the virus), Italy seems hardest hit.
See also:
Police with batons and guns have moved in to protect supermarkets on the Italian island of Sicily after reports of looting by locals who could no longer afford food.
The novel coronavirus has claimed more than 10,000 lives across the Mediterranean country, about a third of the world's total, creating the worst emergency Italians have known since World War II.
Simultaneously, it has eroded the economy, which had been the third-largest in the European Union before the new illness reached Italian shores from China last month.
A lockdown designed to curb contagion
has shut almost everything across the country since March 12, depriving millions of steady incomes.
RTSun, 29 Mar 2020 13:52 UTC
© Facebook / Department of Health (Philippines)Philippines officials load medical supplies into the Westwind jet several days before its crash.
A medical evacuation flight has crashed at Manila Airport in the Philippines, killing all on board. The IAI Westwind jet was reportedly chartered by the Philippine government to evacuate a sick patient to Tokyo.
The jet, which had the registration number RP-C5880, was scheduled to take off from Manilla's Ninoy Aquino International Airport at around 8pm on Sunday.
Before making it off the tarmac, the plane caught fire, overshooting the runway as flames billowed from its wrecked hull. Fire crews extinguished the blaze within an hour.
Comment: See also: