Coronavirus News (164)

We need smart solutions to mitigate the coronavirus’s impact. Here are 46.  

This X-Ray Map of the Entire Sky Is a Psychedelic Dreamworld If you thought space was black, think again. ........  Most of the bright X-ray objects, around 77 percent, are active galactic nuclei, or supermassive black holes that are actively absorbing material at the center of galaxies. In between, there are clusters of galaxies that give off shining halos due to trapped gas caused by huge concentrations of dark matter. ....... “With a million sources in just six months, eROSITA has already revolutionized X-ray astronomy, but this is just a taste of what’s to come”   

RESEARCHER: SECOND COVID WAVE MAY BE PSYCHOLOGICALLY DEVASTATING A RESURGENCE MAY "PROVOKE A WHOLE NEW AND PERHAPS DEEPER SENSE OF FEAR AND UNCERTAINTY."   ...........   “I think a second wave would be devastating for a lot of people........ There is a sense that we have been through a really terrible, traumatic time, and we are now in a phase of reopening and recovery.”  ...........  the U.S. never really beat its first outbreak, compared to other countries which stamped it out decisively. It’s all part of one, long, unconquered pandemic. ........  living in lockdown has led to an increase of reported anxiety and depression   

A 47-year market vet explains why he sees the economy's 'super-cycle' hurtling towards depression — and lays out his case for an 80% stock plunge later this year

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) April 24, 2020

YOUR CORONAVIRUS ANTIBODIES MIGHT FADE AFTER JUST A FEW MONTHS NEW RESEARCH SHOWS THAT THE CORONAVIRUS MIGHT BE EVEN MORE PERNICIOUS THAN WE THOUGHT. ............  the antibodies our bodies develop against COVID-19 can fade away in just two to three months — especially for those who had mild cases. .............   That poses a problem for governments that banked on developing herd immunity — resistance to future infections at a societal scale ........ doling out “immunity passports” will only complicate the situation ..........  

 

Equations that changed the world. 🧠 pic.twitter.com/SRIB0s9KV2

— Richard Feynman (@ProfFeynman) June 22, 2020

European Union leaders urge Xi Jinping to reconsider Hong Kong national security law https://t.co/vPDlzChMBy

— SCMP News (@SCMPNews) June 22, 2020

With #AllEyesOnKentucky, there's only one farmer running for Senate that has the ability to compete against Mitch in Nov in all 120 counties instead of only hoping to get enough votes in Louisville + Lexington. That candidate is @MikeForKY. Vote for Mike. Retire Mitch. Win UBI.🤠 https://t.co/Ujp0FwJ3PN

— Scott Santens🧢🤠 (@scottsantens) June 22, 2020

European Union leaders urge Xi Jinping to drop Hong Kong national security law, or risk ‘negative consequences’ ‘China risks very negative consequences’ if it imposes national security law, says European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen But she sidesteps questions as to the exact measures the EU would take .........   Xi, on his part, fended off the EU’s categorisation of China as a rival, pledging to work together with the bloc on cooperation and upholding multilateralism. ........  “The European Union is in touch with our G7 [Group of Seven] partners on this, and we have made our position very clear to the Chinese leadership today and urge them to reconsider,” she said. “Of course they have a different standpoint than us, but this is our very clear standpoint we conveyed to the Chinese leadership.” ...........   “We continue to have an unbalanced trade and investment relationship … ....  the Chinese leader focused on partnership with the EU at a time when Beijing is facing ongoing confrontation with Washington. ........  “China is a partner, not a rival,” Xi told the EU leaders, according to Chinese state media. “China and the EU do not have fundamental conflicts, and cooperation is far bigger than competition.” ............  China and the EU, Xi said, “should respect each other, create common grounds and accept the differences”. ..........  Hong Kong’s national security law is like ‘anti-virus software’, top Beijing official says

CDC: SECOND WAVE OF COVID-19 COULD BE EVEN WORSE A WAVE OF CORONAVIRUS COINCIDING WITH FLU SEASON COULD PUT AN "UNIMAGINABLE STRAIN" ON THE US HEALTH CARE SYSTEM.  .........  a second wave of coronavirus during the next flu season could be catastrophic — even potentially eclipsing the severity of the first wave. ..........  “There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through....... And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.”  ..............    “We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time” ...........  Luckily, this first wave came after the last influenza season had mostly faded. ..........  urged the importance of social distancing, and said that COVID-19 testing needs to be scaled up massively. .........   The words of warning seem to have fallen deaf ears. A number of US states have decided to gradually reopen, just as the total number of cases and deaths in the country is approaching its peak. ...........  the importance of getting flu shots so that hospitals won’t be hit as hard

COVID COULD BE MAKING PEOPLE SO LONELY THAT THEY’RE GETTING SICK IT'S NOT JUST YOU.  .......  the toll extended isolation takes on our minds and bodies. ........  Extended loneliness can have serious psychological impacts, like exacerbated depression, anxiety, and increased irritability ....... “We have to deal with our environment entirely on our own, without the help of others, which puts our brain in a state of alert, but that also signals the rest of our body to be in a state of alert.” ...........   Loneliness has been linked to all sorts of medical problems, like cognitive decline in old age, cancer, and heart disease  

How Britain stole $45 trillion from India And lied about it.  .......  Drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, Patnaik calculated that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938. ...............   $45 trillion is 17 times more than the total annual gross domestic product of the United Kingdom today. ..........   Prior to the colonial period, Britain bought goods like textiles and rice from Indian producers and paid for them in the normal way - mostly with silver - as they did with any other country. But something changed in 1765, shortly after the East India Company took control of the subcontinent and established a monopoly over Indian trade. .........   The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, "buying" from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them. ...............  It was a scam - theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware of what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was not the same as the one who showed up to buy their goods. ..........  Some of the stolen goods were consumed in Britain, and the rest were re-exported elsewhere. The re-export system allowed Britain to finance a flow of imports from Europe, including strategic materials like iron, tar and timber, which were essential to Britain's industrialisation. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution depended in large part on this systematic theft from India. .........  anyone who wanted to buy goods from India would do so using special Council Bills - a unique paper currency issued only by the British Crown. And the only way to get those bills was to buy them from London with gold or silver. So traders would pay London in gold to get the bills, and then use the bills to pay Indian producers. When Indians cashed the bills in at the local colonial office, they were "paid" in rupees out of tax revenues - money that had just been collected from them. So, once again, they were not in fact paid at all; they were defrauded. .............  London ended up with all of the gold and silver that should have gone directly to the Indians in exchange for their exports. ...........  even while India was running an impressive trade surplus with the rest of the world - a surplus that lasted for three decades in the early 20th century - it showed up as a deficit in the national accounts because the real income from India's exports was appropriated in its entirety by Britain. ..............  Some point to this fictional "deficit" as evidence that India was a liability to Britain. But exactly the opposite is true. ............  India was the goose that laid the golden egg. .........  Meanwhile, the "deficit" meant that India had no option but to borrow from Britain to finance its imports. So the entire Indian population was forced into completely unnecessary debt to their colonial overlords, further cementing British control. ..........  Britain used the windfall from this fraudulent system to fuel the engines of imperial violence - funding the invasion of China in the 1840s and the suppression of the Indian Rebellion in 1857. And this was on top of what the Crown took directly from Indian taxpayers to pay for its wars. As Patnaik points out, "the cost of all Britain's wars of conquest outside Indian borders were charged always wholly or mainly to Indian revenues." ..........  not only the industrialisation of Britain but also the industrialisation of much of the Western world was facilitated by extraction from the colonies. ........ If India had been able to invest its own tax revenues and foreign exchange earnings in development - as Japan did - there's no telling how history might have turned out differently. India could very well have become an economic powerhouse. Centuries of poverty and suffering could have been prevented. ..........  The conservative historian Niall Ferguson has claimed that British rule helped "develop" India. While he was prime minister, David Cameron asserted that British rule was a net help to India. ..........  according to a 2014 YouGov poll, 50 percent of people in Britain believe that colonialism was beneficial to the colonies. .........  during the entire 200-year history of British rule in India, there was almost no increase in per capita income. In fact, during the last half of the 19th century - the heyday of British intervention - income in India collapsed by half. The average life expectancy of Indians dropped by a fifth from 1870 to 1920. Tens of millions died needlessly of policy-induced famine. .......... Britain didn't develop India. Quite the contrary - as Patnaik's work makes clear - India developed Britain. ...... We need to recognise that Britain retained control of India not out of benevolence but for the sake of plunder and that Britain's industrial rise didn't emerge sui generis from the steam engine and strong institutions, as our schoolbooks would have it, but depended on violent theft from other lands and other peoples.