Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Coronavirus News (167)


Kamala Harris For The People 





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Coronavirus News (166)


The Second Great Depression At least four major factors are terrifying economists and weighing on the recovery. ........  In Texas, the bars are packed. And in Vermont, the stay-at-home order has been lifted. People are still frightened. Americans are still dying. ........  no one knows enough about consumer sentiment and government ordinances and business failures and stimulus packages and the spread of the disease to make solid predictions about the future ........  The Trump administration and some bullish financial forecasters are arguing that we will end up with a strong, V-shaped rebound, with economic activity surging right back to where it was in no time. Others are betting on a longer, slower, U-shaped turnaround, with the pain extending for a year or three. .........  absent dramatic policy action, a pandemic depression is possible ..........  the American economy will generate $8 trillion less in economic activity over the next decade than it projected just a few months ago, and that a full recovery might not take hold until the 2030s. ......... At least four major factors are terrifying economists and weighing on the recovery: the household fiscal cliff, the great business die-off, the state and local budget shortfall, and the lingering health crisis. ..........   Nearly 40 percent of low-wage workers lost their jobs in March. More than 40 million people lost their jobs in March, April, or May. .........  The bad: It left out roughly 15 million people in immigrant families, many of whom were working essential jobs stocking grocery shelves, delivering takeout, and drawing blood in hospitals. And the ugly: The big helicopter drop was a onetime thing, and the unemployment-insurance expansion was time-limited. ..........   The Paycheck Protection Program and other federal initiatives shoved an oxygen mask on many companies. But the PPP was scaled to help businesses through a short, intense disruption, though the economy is expected to remain sluggish for months and months. ..........   Students are not willing to pay as much for online learning as in-person instruction. .................    The federal government does not have to balance its ledger year to year, and perpetually spends more than it takes in. Yet every state but Vermont and most cities and towns are required to remain in the black. Right now, sales taxes, real-estate-transfer taxes, income taxes, fines and fees—they are all collapsing, leaving local governments with a budget gap expected to total $1 trillion next year. Without help from Washington, this will necessarily mean massive service cuts and job losses: namely, an estimated 5.3 million job losses. ..............    The shrinking of the government at the state and local level has already started ...........  A fiscal cliff for families. Rolling business failures. A budget crisis for state and local governments. Each is bad enough. Each might be a big-enough headwind to tip the economy into recession alone. But the last element is the true alpha and omega of our worst-case scenario: the catastrophe of the American government’s management of the novel-coronavirus pandemic. ............    it wasted the time these extreme measures bought, because the government failed to set up a strong test-and-trace regime. ........  Countries including South Korea and New Zealand crushed the coronavirus. The United States merely patted it down. The country is reopening with the disease still spreading and maiming and killing, as several states experience a dramatic surge in caseloads. ............   Never getting the pandemic under control means never unleashing the economy. Just look at the casinos in Las Vegas: open, yet half-empty. ........    localities might end up having to return to extreme social-distancing measures over the summer and fall. And it means fear and mistrust: depressed consumer confidence, ruined faith in government, and concerns about the economy’s ability to recover. ........... Ending the pandemic would have been the single best thing the federal government could have done to preserve the country’s wealth, health, and economic functioning. The Trump administration, in its hubris, obstinacy, and incompetence, failed to do it. .............  Congress could extend unemployment insurance, offer new help to flailing businesses, send monthly cash grants to poor families, offer fiscal relief to the states, and implement a nationwide test-and-trace program.

Trump’s response to Bolton: No, you’re the threat The coordinated attack is ultimately an attempt to counteract Bolton’s central thesis as he promotes his book: Trump poses a threat to the country. 

People hold signs on Brooklyn Bridge during a protest against police brutality and racism in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd in New York, US, on June 13, 2020 [Caitlin Ochs/Reuters]

OPINION/RACISM If Black Americans were to seek asylum, they could qualify I have evaluated countless refugee cases. The oppression Black Americans face in the US would qualify as persecution. ........  people become refugees because they are oppressed. Their rights are violated because of discrimination. ........  A searing report from The Sentencing Project to the UN found the US in violation of Article 2 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights for pursuing policies that allow racial disparities in its criminal justice system. ...........  Black people are nearly twice as likely to be imprisoned as Hispanic people and five times more likely than white people. One in 10 Black children spends part of their childhood with one parent behind bars. ...........  What accounts for mistaken links between race and crime is more an outcome of urban poverty and racialised policing, which forces individuals into a vicious cycle of crime and incarceration. At the same time, racial bias - implicit and explicit - causes white Americans to overestimate crime committed by Black people, contributing to racial profiling. The fact that African Americans are victims of crime disproportionately more than other groups is usually overlooked. ............   Redlining - policies which limit access to means of upward mobility such as banking, insurance, better schools and housing, through the practice of districting neighbourhoods - although banned, still affects Black communities. ..........   Systemic income inequality has made white Americans 20 times richer than Black Americans. Black communities face stark inequalities in both healthcare and education. Implicit bias and racial disparities cause Black Americans to receive lower-quality healthcare than white Americans. In schools in minority and Black communities that are chronically underfunded, Black students are suspended and expelled from school at a rate three times higher than white students and school policing makes Black students more vulnerable to the criminal justice system and higher dropout rates. ............. "the historical, cultural and human depth of racism still permeates all dimensions of life of American society". .........  The US may pride itself on being a bastion of human rights, but it is clear Black Americans are not receiving their fair treatment, access or share. The country needs to undertake major policy reforms immediately if it is to wipe this shameful stain from its democratic reputation.  

NY Democrats brace for primary night stunners  “The sum total is that if turnout is high you could see incumbents losing their seats.”  .......   The progressive star has spent more than $6 million defending her seat this cycle and has one of the largest campaign operations of any House member.   

Coronavirus cases surging in Florida and Texas as states barrel ahead with reopening plans "When young people get infected, they go home and they infect their parents," said Dr. Charles Lockwood. "They will kill people by giving vulnerable people the virus."   



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Monday, June 22, 2020

Coronavirus News (165)

Motorola, LG Commit to Making Some of the First Cheap 5G Phones  The 5G is provided by the Snapdragon X51 5G modem where you have sub-6Hz support and max download speeds of 1.2Gbps ........... We could see a Moto G 5G at some point too.  


Qualcomm Snapdragon 690

Trump is losing it The incumbent US president launched psychological warfare in Tulsa. .........  If the US elections were held today, he would lose "bigly", and that is just driving him crazy. .........  anointing himself a "war president" to fight the pandemic. .........   referred to himself as the "law and order" president during the civil unrest ...... He even played God's special messenger during the early days of the civil unrest, brandishing a copy of the Bible he had not read in front of a church he had not attended to defend a faith which was not under threat. ...........  The pandemic has taken the lives of 120,000 Americans and rising. The economy is in the deepest recession since World War I, and society is in turmoil. Even religious leaders are not buying into his insecure machismo. ..........  what began as a bleeding of support a few months ago has now turned into serious hemorrhaging. ........   Trump slammed the "shameless hypocrite", "sleepy Joe" Biden, warning if he is elected president, "our country would be destroyed". And he dissed the "radical left" Democrats, especially "hate-filled, America-bashing" Ilhan Omar and "socialist" Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He also demonised the "negative", "radical", "fake news" media, and the subversive radical left that holds Biden hostage. .............  the relatively poor attendance of his much-publicised rally turned the hype into humiliation. .........  Clearly, many of his supporters are not dying to hear his grievances and falsehoods during the pandemic. ....... An increasing number of Republicans, including former generals and aides, are deserting his sinking ship; some out of fear for the party, not to mention the country's future in case of a Trump second term. Some reckon he poses a "danger to the Republic". This leaves the incumbent president no choice but to double down on incitement against his opponents, before defections snowball.  ....... A desperate and humiliated Trump may do just about anything.

Lack of leadership 'greatest threat' in coronavirus fight  WHO warns pandemic accelerating as it reports record daily global case rise while outbreak surges in Brazil, India.


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Coronavirus News (164)

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   
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 ..........  
 



Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen via video link in Beijing on Monday. Photo: Xinhua

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.

Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, and his wife, Lady Edwina Mountbatten, ride in the state carriage towards the Viceregal lodge in New Delhi, on March 22, 1947 [File: AP]

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Coronavirus News (163)

Iraqi hospitals become nexus of infection as coronavirus cases rise dramatically among doctors   On the front lines, Iraq's doctors are contracting the coronavirus by the hundreds, as a rising wave of infections threatens to crush the country's health-care system. ..........  “Our hospitals are meant to treat people. Instead, they’re breeding the infection” .........   “My doctor friends who get it now wait 10 days for test results, even though they know they have it. The management doesn’t care about our safety, they just care that the staff is working.” ...........  Poor medical infrastructure, shortages of personal protective equipment and public skepticism about the severity of the threat are all to blame for the increasing cases across Iraq .............    “I dreamed all my life of being a doctor. I regret that now.” .............   He said his cousin, a doctor in the eastern province of Diyala, died in March, begging for an ambulance to take him back to a facility that would treat him. ........  many in Iraq worry it could bring an already staggering health system to its knees. ...........  “Don’t breathe too much,” said a security guard at the door. “Covid is everywhere here.” ............ In 2019, Iraq allocated just 2.5 percent of its national budget to health care. .........  Zena al-Rubaia, a technician in the Baghdad laboratory that runs coronavirus tests, woke up May 28 to find her limbs were too heavy to move, she recalled in an interview. In the next room, her mother was calling out with a fever. Days later, both tested positive for the coronavirus, and Rubaia felt sure that her work had brought it home. She was hospitalized for a week, and at the height of her pain, she feared her lungs would give up. ..............    Her mother’s breathing was ragged and her limbs were turning blue. Rubaia sat at her bedside for days in the hospital, feeling ridden with guilt as she watched her final breaths. .........  “I am the one who did this to her,” she wrote on her Facebook. Days later, her father died, too.

In countries keeping the coronavirus at bay, experts watch U.S. case numbers with alarm  “It really does feel like the U.S. has given up”    




Trump claims the coronavirus pandemic is ending. Data and the experts disagree.  “Nasdaq hit 10,000 for the first time, an all-time record,” Trump said. “Nasdaq, that was three, four days ago. In the middle of the pandemic, not in the middle, toward the end of the pandemic.” That’s where Trump would like to think the country is: at the tail end of the pandemic. This isn’t really a new impulse for Trump, who has consistently played down the scale of the spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States. ...........   In February and March, such efforts were mostly in service of not spooking the markets, which got spooked anyway. It seems quite possible that Trump’s motivation now is the same, that he seeks to maintain the sense that the country is ready to see a return to normal economic activity to make the outcome self-fulfilling. ........... “If I didn’t act, we would have had 3 million deaths,” Trump claimed. “And instead we’re at 110,000. And we could be heading to a number that’s, you know, higher than 150,000 to 200,000. It could be ending all now depending on how it goes.” .............. Fauci’s broader point wasn’t that there’s been a new surge in coronavirus cases. “We’re still in the first wave,” he said, “because even though there’s variability throughout the country, where some places, like New York City, are going very nicely down, staying down so that they can start to reopen, simultaneously, we’re seeing in certain states an increase in cases and even now an increase, in some of the states, of hospitalization.” .................   Over the entire duration of the pandemic, about 5 percent of those who contracted the virus have died.  .........  If the number of new cases each day holds near 25,000, the eventual toll will depend on how often those cases are deadly. If the mortality rate moving forward is as low as 2 percent, that means we’ll land at 500 deaths per day — or 15,000 more deaths each month. ........... more than 200,000 deaths by Oct. 1. .........  the model predicts an increase in the number of deaths per day toward the end of the summer, when students go back to school and parents are then better able to return to work ......... The efforts to contain the virus that halted the economy, for example, are estimated to have prevented 60 million additional coronavirus infections. .......    One, Trump’s, is based on hope and optimism, while the other, Fauci’s, is based on the data. ........ Time eventually weighed in. The subject of the dispute was the drug hydroxychloroquine, and Fauci and data won the debate.





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Coronavirus News (162)




Half of the ENTIRE city budget goes to policing while education, hospitals and mental health services are left with crumbs. We cannot continue this way.

Posted by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday, June 22, 2020

 

Elites in Beijing see America in decline, hastened by Trump    Mr Trump and Mr Biden may share a capacity for talking (and talking) in pursuit of a deal. But Mr Xi’s grim, security-first worldview leaves little room for foreign friendships, let alone with garrulous Americans. ..........  Mr Trump is called ignorant, erratic and tiresome, but not without his uses. He is praised for an apparent indifference to ideology. He is complimented for his reluctance to condemn Chinese repression in such places as Xinjiang. People familiar with the thinking of Chinese generals assert, approvingly, that Mr Trump dislikes military adventures abroad. ............... Chinese leaders initially mistook Mr Trump for a pragmatic tycoon, a type they have met before. Now he is called a narcissist who cares only about his own interests, starting with his re-election. ..........   Satisfying Mr Trump has effectively parked America’s bipartisan demands for structural reforms. That does not make Chinese elites relaxed, though. They fret that Mr Trump has been “kidnapped” by the truly ideological China hawks who surround him. .............  As for Mr Biden, in Beijing he is called a member of the former ruling establishment that saw economic interdependence with China as a source of stability, not danger. Mr Biden was a player in Obama-era campaigns to seek China’s help in tackling climate change and other global challenges. Yet, in China, there is strikingly little nostalgia for those days. Some grumble that such engagement rested on a mistaken American belief that China would converge politically with the West as it grew richer. ...............  The view in China is that its best scientists and tech firms are busy disproving such boasts, tipping America into a crisis of confidence and anti-China hysteria. ..............    Just as bipartisan opinion in Washington has coalesced around alarm at China’s rise, an elite consensus has emerged in the Chinese capital. Especially in this summer of pandemic and street protests, America is called a nation in decline: a rich country too divided, selfish and racist to keep its citizens safe. Chinese elites see Mr Trump as a symptom and an agent of that decline. ..............    Chinese netizens mockingly call him Chuan Jianguo, or “Build-up-the-country Trump”. Their joke, that he is a double-agent wrecking America to make China strong, prompts lines like “Comrade Chuan Jianguo, don’t blow your cover!” ................   elites focused on the economy fear the premature collapse of a global trading order that has profited China mightily. That prods some to hanker for Mr Biden  


Why China bullies It sees a world distracted by covid-19, and too economically weak to hold it back  .......  China is often called a country in thrall to nationalism. ..........   Chinese nationalism is often compared to a tiger which Communist Party bosses have fed for years—and which they are now condemned to ride, for fear of being eaten if they dismount. .............   In reality, popular nationalism resembles a deep, man-made reservoir, created by the damming-up and channelling of long-existing forces. Most of the time, Chinese leaders can restrain or unleash public rage at will. Only in the biggest crises do they feel constrained to open the floodgates to ease dangerous pressure. ................   Often dismissed by Chinese as poor and chaotic, India is not in the rogue’s gallery of imperialist bullies that China’s young learn about at school. Vitally, two-way trade with India is rather modest: 11 countries are larger trade partners for China. All those factors leave Chinese rulers free to downplay a crisis with India. For even when China appears reckless, it is calculating rewards and risks. .............. China uses coercion “when the need to establish a reputation for resolve is high and the economic cost is low”. ............  China especially likes to inflict asymmetric economic pain, as when it banned imports of bananas from the Philippines during a territorial dispute in 2012, devastating Filipino farmers but barely hurting its own consumers. ..............   Recent Chinese boycotts have targeted things like Australian beef or Houston Rockets games, but not more vital commodities. ..........  Beyond its readiness to skirmish on the Indian border, it has decided to impose a draconian national-security law on Hong Kong, slapped trade boycotts on Australia and other Western nations, and sent coastguard ships to sink or harass foreign vessels in the contested waters of the South China Sea. It is also true that the world is geopolitically distracted. It is hard for governments to chide China over democracy in Hong Kong, say, while also negotiating to buy Chinese ventilators. ..............  Chinese officials are betting on domestic demand to drive their country’s recovery from covid-19. ........ China is also being unusually assertive. ........ having limited economic ties with China may not make other countries safer. India is the latest country to be confronted with that dilemma. It will not be the last.



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Saturday, June 20, 2020

Coronavirus News (161)

Image: A Chinese soldier gestures as he stands near an Indian soldier on the Chinese side of the ancient Nathu La border crossing between India and China.

China claims disputed valley where Chinese, Indian troops engaged in a deadly brawl The confrontation in the Galwan Valley, part of the disputed region along the Himalayan frontier, was the deadliest in 45 years..............   Soldiers brawled with clubs, rocks and their fists in the thin air at 14,000 feet above sea level, but no shots were fired ..........   the fatalities were caused by severe injuries and exposure to subfreezing temperatures. ..........   Modi said India was “hurt and angry” about the deaths of its troops. He said India wanted peace and friendship, but had the “capability that no one can even dare look towards an inch of our land.”

Several U.S. states see coronavirus infection spikes, Wall Street unnerved  the lag time between a positive test and severe illness or death. “The real concern is what is coming up for us in the next week or two.” ............    placed the Southwestern state on track to surpass New York at its peak on a per-capita basis. ............  The World Health Organization considers positivity rates above 5% to be especially concerning, and widely watched data from Johns Hopkins University shows 16 states with average rates over the past week exceeding that level and climbing. ..........  Arizona at 17%, Alabama at 12%, Washington state at 11% and South Carolina at 10%. .......   Florida, one of the last states to impose stay-at-home restrictions and one of the first to begin lifting them, reported 3,822 new cases, a daily record. Its latest positivity figure was 10% ...........  the spike in cases was not just due to more testing but indicative of an “underlying outbreak of unknown size.” ............   “The more community transmission there is, the larger the risk that it infects somebody who is vulnerable. There are quite a lot of old people in Florida and in Arizona” ........  assembling thousands of shouting, chanting people inside the BOK Center and an adjacent convention hall poses the risk of creating a “super-spreader” event for the highly contagious coronavirus. .......  “We can’t be afraid of this China virus or whatever you guys want to call it. I’m not afraid of it at all,” he said. “And I am so honored that President Trump wants to do a trade for us as citizens, you know, to give us our rights to be normal again.” 

As coronavirus surges across South and West, Texas mayors plead with residents to wear masks  “The virus is here.....Infections are rising. Hospital capacity is filling up. This isn’t meant to scare you, but it is meant to be very honest. The virus doesn’t leave just because our collective urgency has gone away.”  ......   “the world is in a new and dangerous phase” as the global pandemic accelerates. The world recorded about 150,000 new cases on Thursday, the largest rise yet in a single day .........  Mask mandates gain traction in many of the biggest cities, counties in Arizona, Texas ..........   Black leaders in Tulsa are outraged by Trump’s rally during a pandemic ........ Brazil tops 1 million confirmed coronavirus infections, second only to U.S. .........   Iraqi hospitals become nexus of infection as coronavirus cases rise dramatically among doctors .......   South Carolina reports record number of new cases and warns that young adults are increasingly contracting the virus ..........    Pence’s sunny approach ignores possibility of dark days ahead, health experts warn .......  with questions swirling about a potential surge in cases in parts of the country, Pence penned an op-ed with an optimistic headline: “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave.’ ”  ..............   WHO says origins of recent Beijing market outbreak still unknown, likely human-to-human contact  .........  China says vaccine under development will not be ready until at least 2021 ........   There are more than 10 possible vaccines currently being tested around the world ...... So far, no vaccines globally under development have passed what is known as phase 3 — large-scale trials with thousands of participants. .........  “Within China, the issue of the vaccine has taken on a symbol of whether China is going to be the leading power in the world”  .......  Tenn. House officially congratulates citizens for ‘clearly seeing that the mainstream media has sensationalized’ covid-19  .........   Van Huss has taken issue with the national media before the pandemic. In January, he introduced a bill to officially deem CNN and The Washington Post “fake news.” ..............  California sets another record in reported cases .........  California sets another record in reported cases ..............  some parts of the state have seen localized spikes in hospitalizations, indicating that the surge in infections may not be solely the result of expanded testing or a backlog in reporting. ....... Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Thursday ordered all Californians to wear face masks in public. .......   Apple closing 11 stores back down in four states, citing coronavirus concerns ...........  Florida reports another record high in new cases ........  In final daily briefing, Cuomo says New York City will enter Phase 2 of reopening plan ..........   “Over the past three months we have done the impossible,” Cuomo said. “We are controlling the virus better than any state in the country, and any nation on the globe. … I am so incredibly proud of what we all did together and as a community. We reopened the economy and we saved lives — because it was never a choice between one or the other. It was always right to do both.” ..............   “But covid isn’t over,” Cuomo said. “We have to watch out for a second wave.” ..........   Under Cuomo’s four-phase reopening plan, the second phase includes allows outdoor dining at bars and restaurants; retail, hair salons and barbershops to reopen, and office-based jobs to welcome employees back at 50 percent capacity and with physical distancing measures and face covering protocols ..........  WHO warns of ‘new and dangerous phase’ as pandemic accelerates; Americas now hardest hit ............   Countries may be at differing phases in the pandemic, but the global spread of the novel coronavirus is accelerating overall ...........  “The virus is still spreading fast, it is still deadly, and most people are still susceptible.” ..........     U.S. traffic has rebounded to about 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels, analysts say .......  CDC predicts U.S. death toll could reach 145,000 by July 11  .........    Ahead of Trump’s Tulsa rally, Fauci again stresses risks of attending large gatherings ..........   Earlier in the week, Fauci said he would not personally attend the rally because, at 79, he faces a high risk of severe or fatal infection. ..........  Health officials in Tulsa, including the city’s health director, have warned that the event poses significant health risks to attendees and the president himself.  .......  In countries keeping the coronavirus at bay, experts watch U.S. case numbers with alarm ..........    many wondering why virus-stricken U.S. states continue to reopen and why the advice of scientists is often ignored. ..........  “I can’t imagine what it must be like having to go to work knowing it’s unsafe,” Wiles said of the U.S.-wide economic reopening. “It’s hard to see how this ends. There are just going to be more and more people infected, and more and more deaths. It’s heartbreaking.” ...........  Hang on to your nickels and dimes, the pandemic has created a coin shortage ........  Nation’s cancer chief warns delays in cancer care are likely to result in thousands of extra deaths in coming years ............    America’s new $600 billion rescue program for small businesses is off to a rocky start ........  Trump claims the coronavirus pandemic is ending. Data and the experts disagree. ..........   “Nasdaq hit 10,000 for the first time, an all-time record,” Trump said. “Nasdaq, that was three, four days ago. In the middle of the pandemic, not in the middle, toward the end of the pandemic.”  ....... Brazil faces the coronavirus disaster almost everyone saw coming




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Coronavirus News (160)

Robert Reich

Trump stokes division with racism and rage – and the American oligarchy purrs    The president is the best thing that ever happened to the corporate elite, a distraction on the lines of the old Jim Crow ...........  JPMorgan has made it difficult for black people to get mortgage loans. In 2017, the bank paid $55m to settle a justice department lawsuit accusing it of discriminating against minority borrowers. Researchers have found banks routinely charge black mortgage borrowers higher interest rates than white borrowers and deny them mortgages white applicants would have received. .........  BlackRock is one of the biggest investors in private prisons, disproportionately incarcerating black and Latino men. ............  Starbucks has prohibited baristas from wearing Black Lives Matter attire and for years has struggled with racism in its stores as managers accuse black patrons of trespassing and deny them bathrooms to which white patrons have access. ............   behind the scenes – in the halls of Congress and the corridors of statehouses, in fundraisers and in private candidate briefings, in strategy sessions with political operatives and public-relations specialists – the CEOs who condemn racism lobby for and get giant tax cuts and fight off a wealth tax. ............  As a result, the nation can’t afford anything as ambitious as a massive Marshall Plan to provide poor communities world-class schools, first-class healthcare and affordable housing. ..............    The CEOs resist a living wage and universal basic income. They don’t want antitrust laws jeopardizing their market power, thereby requiring consumers pay more. They oppose tighter regulations against red-lining or prohibitions on payday lending, both of which disproportionately burden black and brown people. ..............  Since the start of the pandemic, the nation’s billionaires have become $565bn richer, even as 42.6 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits. ............    The rich know that as long as racial animosity exists, white and black Americans are less likely to look upward and see where the wealth and power really has gone. ........  Half a century ago, Martin Luther King Jr observed much the same about the old southern aristocracy, which “took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man.” ...............   The only way systemic injustices can be remedied is if power is redistributed. Power will be redistributed only if the vast majority – white, black and brown – join together to secure it. Which is what the oligarchy fears most.

Demonstrators march during a protest against police brutality, at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, 6 June

Why protests aren't as dangerous for spreading coronavirus as you might think    The protests are a visible example of public crowds, and the ideal scapegoat for problems that are far more complex. ........  the answer is largely in favour of the outdoor protests over other large gatherings planned, such as indoor campaign rallies. .........   wearing a mask can substantially lower the risk of spread and severity of illness ....... research suggests that outdoor activities are much safer than indoor ones. ............  if you’re going to be in a crowd, a mobile one is better than a stationary one. ........  there is a serious risk and grave public health cost to not addressing systemic racism against black people in America. Racism and police violence against black people is an epidemic, and the black community has faced the worst of coronavirus – both in mortality rates and economic fallout. ..................  the vast majority of infections occur in so-called super-spreader events, almost all of which take place indoors. The risk of infection from outdoor protests is further reduced by the striking consistency with which demonstrators wear masks, and often make efforts to maintain personal distance .........   if people adhere to these practices, mass demonstrations will produce more coronavirus cases, but not an avalanche. ..............  Some US states with rising rates of infection, such as Arizona, Texas and Florida, began easing the lockdown before the recent protests began, without having met the federal government’s reopening criteria for reopening, including downward trends in cases and rates of positive tests. ..............   scientific evidence suggests that the risk of returning to offices and shopping centres is probably greater than participating in large demonstrations. The crucial exception, of course, is when they are met with mass arrests. Throwing peaceful protesters into police vans and jails is unquestionably a recipe for mass infection. ...............  Systemic racism has innumerable health consequences ......   one in 1,000 African American men is killed by the police ......... We must explicitly acknowledge the public health impacts of both the pandemic and systemic racism. Protests will lead to infections, but our public health communications should clearly emphasise that the risk can be mitigated with symptom checks and tests (where available) before participation; masks, eyewear, and distancing, where possible; and testing and self-quarantine, where possible, afterwards. We should be actively sharing guidance on How to Protest Safely .............   If we are to confront systemic racism, such mass demonstrations seem “essential” .........  History teaches us that civic protests are how nations get better. Now, more than ever, they are essential.





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Friday, June 19, 2020

Coronavirus News (159)

AMC reversed itself, saying it had consulted with scientific advisers and would require masks in theaters nationwide when it reopens on July 15.

‘A new and dangerous phase’: W.H.O. issues a dire warning as cases grow in 81 countries. the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, and noted that Thursday was a record day for new cases — more than 150,000 globally.  ........  “Many people are understandably fed up with being at home. Countries are understandably eager to open up their societies and their economies. But the virus is still spreading fast. It is still deadly, and most people are still susceptible.” ..........  81 nations have seen a growth in new cases over the past two weeks, while only 36 have seen declines. ..........  continue to maintain distance from others, to cover their noses and mouths with masks when appropriate and to wash their hands ..........  nations must continue to find, isolate, test and care for every person infected with the virus, and to test and quarantine every contact ..........  In India, which initially placed all 1.3 billion of its citizens under a lockdown — then moved to reopen even with its public health system near the breaking point — officials reported a record number of new cases Wednesday. And the virus is now spreading rapidly in nearby Pakistan and Bangladesh as well. ...........  It took Africa nearly 100 days to reach 100,000 cases, the W.H.O. has noted, but only 19 days to double that tally. .........    Scientists generally agree that wearing face masks can help curb the spread of the virus. For politicians and businesses, however, the decision of whether to require masks is growing increasingly contentious ............  Trump’s rally has the potential to become a “super spreader” event .............  Italian scientists report traces of virus in sewage samples collected in December. ................   by the time the authorities were aware of an outbreak, the virus was already more widespread than initially believed. ............  South Korea reported 49 more cases, as a second wave of infections continued to spread in the Seoul metropolitan area. ...........  Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ended his run of more than 100 consecutive daily news conferences ............ in the race to find drugs and vaccines, a substantial proportion of studies may be excluding older subjects, purposely or inadvertently, even as 80 percent of American deaths have occurred in people over age 65. ...............   There is a long history of older people being excluded from clinical trials, even when the diseases in question disproportionately affected this group. ..........  the new outbreak in the Chinese capital, a cluster of more than 180 infections at the vast Xinfadi wholesale market that emerged after 56 days of no new locally-transmitted cases. ..........   prevent “splash contamination” by not rinsing raw meat or seafood directly under the tap. ......... seafood vendors at the Xinfadi market had suffered the most infections and showed symptoms earlier than those who sold beef and lamb. ............  low temperatures and high humidity in the seafood and meat areas may have contributed to the virus’s spread   

As Covid-19 Hits Developing Countries, Its Victims Are Younger Demographics, underlying conditions and weaker health-care systems affect pandemic’s impact  

SpaceX Wants to Build Floating Spaceports for Daily Starship Launches  The coronavirus pandemic stopped a lot of things, but it hasn’t done much to slow down SpaceX and Elon Musk. ...........   The offshore platforms would serve primarily to launch the company’s massive Starship rockets, which are being built and tested in Brownsville, a small city in southern Texas near the border with Mexico. ...........  At 394 feet tall by 30 feet wide, the rocket outsizes all those previously used in spaceflight, including the Saturn V used in NASA’s Apollo program. But the most impressive feature of the Starship, which consists of a 160-foot spacecraft plus a 230-foot booster, is that it’s being designed to be fully reusable. Last November Musk estimated Starship launches could cost as little as $2 million, which is about 1 percent of what NASA launch costs average. ..........   the launches and landings had to be “far enough away so as not to bother heavily populated areas.” The company’s plan to eventually carry out up to three launches and landings per day would certainly necessitate putting some serious distance between the launch site and people; most of us could only handle about one sonic boom a month, if that. .............   Rather than building the launchpads from scratch, it’s possible SpaceX would refurbish existing oil rigs; the bigger rigs are about the size of two football fields, and there are plenty of them in the Gulf of Mexico ..........  Given the ailing state of the oil industry, especially after the pandemic, it’s likely there will be rigs to be had for cheap.  




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Coronavirus News (158)

A medical worker in PPE coveralls seen outside the emergency ward at AIIMS, on June 11, 2020 in New Delhi, India.

India shut down its economy to contain the coronavirus. It’s now one of the most affected countries  India is the fourth worst-hit nation in the world, with cumulative infection numbers over 320,000 — behind only the United States, Brazil and Russia ..........  some saying their loved ones died on the doorsteps of medical centers that refused to take them in .......... “Last two, three weeks have seen a very significant increase in the number of cases every day” ......... many districts are now demarcated into low-risk and high-risk zones. In low-risk areas, economic activity is resuming slowly, while the high-risk zones activities remain restricted. ......... has been appealing to people not to think “everything has returned to normal” — just because the lockdown has officially ended. He cautioned against “moving out and mingling in large numbers.” .......  He also implored people to wear face masks if they have to step outside and maintain social distancing. “Presume every other person to be infected and maintain at least a meter distance from them,” he said, adding that people should keep washing their hands as frequently as possible. ..........  Gross domestic product grew 3.1% in the three months between January to March — reportedly the slowest pace in at least eight years. The situation is expected to deteriorate further in this quarter. .........  India’s top 5 states accounting for 68% of daily new cases compared to around 80% in mid-May .........  Maharashtra remains the worst affected Indian state, with its latest cumulative cases at 104,568.........  “Even as confirmed cases would likely rise further, continued improvement in recovery rate and a low mortality rate would be key factors for the economy to open up as India ‘learns’ to live with the virus.”    

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Modi seen together during a meeting in September 2014.

A border dispute with China may push India closer to some of Beijing's top rivals   During British colonialism, India was the source of opium foreign traders forced onto Chinese markets, sparking war between the UK and the Qing Empire that ended in humiliation for China. ............   This week, that border blew up into renewed conflict, in the bloodiest engagement in 40 years, which left more than 20 soldiers dead after a brutal fight with fists and clubs high in the mountains amid freezing temperatures and scant oxygen. ............  While both governments are now scrambling to deescalate, the conflict could provide the final push for a pivot already begun by New Delhi, away from Beijing and towards China's traditional rivals, the United States and Japan, as well as a growing regional one, Australia. As India seeks to push back against what many in the country view as Chinese aggression, it will rely on these allies more than ever. ..............   "China wants to limit New Delhi's power and ambition; it wants India to accept Beijing's primacy in Asia and beyond." ..........  New Delhi should "double down on its partnership with the US, make Quad ... a more permanent arrangement, and be a part of any club that seeks to contain Chinese power." .......  US, Japan, Australia and India .......   While not a formal military alliance like NATO, it is seen by some as a potential counterweight to growing Chinese influence and alleged aggression in Asia-Pacific. .........  Potentially, an anti-China bloc led by the US could be far larger than the Quad. ........... Greater Indian participation in both the Quad and other military alliances with the US would have benefits for Washington .........  "India's strong foothold in the Indo-Pacific provides a counterbalance to China's growing footprint in the Indian Ocean." .........  the latest conflict could "portend the development of a Sino-Indian situation that reflects an 'ugly stability' between India and Pakistan: persistent low-level conflicts and political-military crises that simmer below the threshold of conventional war." .............  Together, the two countries account for 17.6% of the global economy. But although China is India's largest trading partner, their estimated $84 billion bilateral trade in 2017/18 was a mere fraction of the US-China trade volume, which stood at almost $600 billion. ............  Between 2008 and 2017, Islamabad purchased more than $6 billion of Chinese arms ........... China has also invested billions in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an integral part of Xi's Belt and Road trade and infrastructure mega-project. ..............  China has made diplomatic and economic inroads in countries traditionally considered as within Delhi's sphere of influence, including Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. ...........    The willingness of Nepal, in particular, to work with Beijing has led to concerns in Delhi of potential geopolitical realignment. Nepal, which is sandwiched between India and China, and has recently butted heads with its southern neighbor over a decision to approve a revised map that includes areas claimed by Delhi. ..........  If relations continue to worsen between Beijing and Delhi, however, they may seem like nothing compared to the nightmare of geopolitical complications that could arise across all of Asia-Pacific.

Pangong Lake, Leh, Ladakh. India will have to reconsider its entire geopolitical posture. Engagement with China is essential and should continue. But there can be no appeasement. Policymakers need to go back to the drawing board and examine ways to build leverage against Beijing

Reset ties with China Beijing crossed a threshold. India must be strong  With its aggression in the Galwan Valley, Ladakh, China has crossed a threshold and pushed the relationship with India to a dangerous low, with long-lasting consequences. Chinese soldiers used the opportunity of a negotiated withdrawal operation to viciously attack a supervisory Indian contingent. ..............  it is clear that China — under President Xi Jinping — believes the time has come to assert its power on the international stage. This has translated into China violating international norms and law (South China Sea); engaging in predatory, almost colonial, economic practices (Belt and Road Initiative); being brazen, rather than introspective and transparent, about its role in causing crises with global impact (the coronavirus pandemic); encroaching upon the sovereignty and territorial integrity of neighbours (Japan and India); intervening in the politics of democracies (from European nations to Australia); exporting its own ideological worldview to other countries (especially in South Asia); and becoming even more repressive at home (Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong) . .............  it wants to impose costs on India for deepening ties with the United States (US); and it wants to continue using Pakistan, which has now becoming almost its client State with the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, to inflict terror on India. ............  making it clear to Beijing that its intervention will lead to heavy costs across all spheres of the relationship ..........  the possibility of inflicting costs on China in other theatres (including business and trade) while keeping the conflict within limits. It must also mobilise international opinion to expose Chinese aggression at a time when a humanitarian, economic and health crisis (originating in China) has engulfed the world. ..........  India should consider taking a stronger position on Tibet. It must double down on its partnership with the US, make Quad (which also includes Japan and Australia) a more permanent arrangement, and be a part of any club that seeks to contain Chinese power. India needs to economically re-examine its trade, technology and investment ties with China, for all these appear to have benefited Beijing more than Delhi. It needs to ramp up its military modernisation, identify vulnerabilities across sectors, and prepare for a two-front situation — which may have seemed unthinkable some years back but will need to be considered now. .............. As India battles the coronavirus pandemic and a recession, the security threat from China has added to the challenge. 

‘Will seriously impact relations’: Jaishankar asks China to take corrective steps India has conveyed to China that the development in the Galwan Valley will have a serious impact on ties between the two countries...........  the Chinese side took “premeditated and planned” action that was directly responsible for the resulting violence and casualties including deaths of 20 Indian soldiers. .........  according to the agreement reached on June 6, the two sides had agreed for de-escalation and disengagement, which was being followed through regular meetings between ground commanders last week before the Chinese side sought to erect a structure.   

An understanding of AI’s limitations is starting to sink in  artificial intelligence (ai) will add $16trn to the global economy by 2030 ..........   Sundar Pichai, Google’s boss, has described developments in ai as “more profound than fire or electricity”. ..............   Clever computers capable of doing the jobs of radiologists, lorry drivers or warehouse workers might cause a wave of unemployment. .........   Modern ai techniques now power search engines and voice assistants, suggest email replies, power the facial-recognition systems that unlock smartphones and police national borders, and underpin the algorithms that try to identify unwelcome posts on social media. ..........  machine learning is a general-purpose technology—one capable of affecting entire economies. It excels at recognising patterns in data, and that is useful everywhere. Ornithologists use it to classify birdsong; astronomers to hunt for planets in glimmers of starlight; banks to assess credit risk and prevent fraud. In the Netherlands, the authorities use it to monitor social-welfare payments. In China ai-powered facial recognition lets customers buy groceries—and helps run the repressive mass-surveillance system the country has built in Xinjiang, a Muslim-majority region. ..............  “it’s quite obvious that we should stop training radiologists,” on the grounds that computers will soon be able to do everything they do, only cheaper and faster. Developers of self-driving cars, meanwhile, predict that robotaxis will revolutionise transport. ............  ai could accelerate research, helping human scientists keep up with a deluge of papers and data. ..........   An ai firm called BlueDot claims it spotted signs of a novel virus in reports from Chinese hospitals as early as December. Researchers have been scrambling to try to apply ai to everything from drug discovery to interpreting medical scans and predicting how the virus might evolve. ...........  Self-driving cars have become more capable, but remain perpetually on the cusp of being safe enough to deploy on everyday streets. Efforts to incorporate ai into medical diagnosis are, similarly, taking longer than expected: despite Dr Hinton’s prediction, there remains a global shortage of human radiologists. ...........   “the state of ai hype has far exceeded the state of ai science, especially when it pertains to validation and readiness for implementation in patient care”. ..............   covid-19 is mostly being fought with old weapons that are already to hand. Contact tracing has been done with shoe leather and telephone calls. Clinical trials focus on existing drugs. Plastic screens and paint on the pavement enforce low-tech distancing advice. ...............   although modern ai techniques are powerful, they are also limited, and they can be troublesome and difficult to deploy. ..........  The machine-learning revolution has been built on three things: improved algorithms, more powerful computers on which to run them, and—thanks to the gradual digitisation of society—more data from which they can learn. Yet data are not always readily available. ............   They are powerful pattern-recognition tools, but lack many cognitive abilities that biological brains take for granted. They struggle with reasoning, generalising from the rules they discover, and with the general-purpose savoir faire that researchers, for want of a more precise description, dub “common sense”. The result is an artificial idiot savant that can excel at well-bounded tasks, but can get things very wrong if faced with unexpected input. ...............   Self-driving cars, which must navigate an ever-changing world, are already delayed, and may never arrive at all.  

CHINA-HEALTH-VIRUS

CHINA-HEALTH-VIRUS

Flights canceled, communities fenced off as coronavirus' return plunges Beijing into "soft lockdown"   Now flights are being canceled, schools have been told to shut back down, and entire communities near the market, or with known COVID-19 cases, have been closed off and their residents barred from leaving. So far 29 neighborhoods have been completely fenced off. .............    Across much of the capital, residents have found themselves under what many are calling a "soft lockdown." .........  The national railway operator is allowing passengers to and from Beijing to refund their tickets without fees. All outbound taxi and car-hailing services and most long-distance bus routes from Beijing were canceled. ............   Most people are still able to go to work and socialize, albeit under strict social distancing guidelines. ............ China has halted European salmon imports after the coronavirus was detected on a chopping board used for imported salmon in the Xinfadi market. Chinese experts have said genetic tracing suggests the virus strain now spreading in Beijing may have come from Europe. .............  the outbreak probably really began spreading quietly a month before it was detected .................  the quick reaction should make it controllable. .............  "I can understand Beijing's strict measures — the stricter they are, the better it is for the rest of the country."   

Qualcomm Snapdragon 690



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Thursday, June 18, 2020

Coronavirus News (157)



Covid-19 infections are rising fast in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan Hospitals are already struggling to cope .........  The freeing of 1.7bn people—more than a fifth of humanity—from varied restrictions will bring relief to the region’s battered economies. Alas, it promises no relief from the pandemic itself. .........  With some 350,000 confirmed cases and fewer than 9,000 deaths so far, the region’s toll looks relatively modest. Yet those numbers disguise both widespread undercounting and a rate of growth that was frightening even before the lifting of restrictions. At the current pace, the numbers are doubling every two weeks, suggesting that by the end of July, when some models predict the outbreak will peak, the official number infected may reach 5m and the death toll could approach 150,000. .............   Low levels of testing mean that the real numbers could be far worse. One foreign health official in Pakistan reckons the death toll is between two and three times the government’s count. ......... Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, may already have as many as 750,000 cases, even though the official national tally is less than 60,000. .......... Three medical interns at another hospital in the centre of Mumbai recently released a video claiming that they had been left for hours in sole charge of 35 seriously ill covid-19 patients, with no doctors, nursing or cleaning staff to help. ...........  In Delhi, the capital, some 600 health workers have tested positive for covid-19—including 329 at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, the country’s grandest government hospital. ...........  Overall, India has a ratio of doctors and nurses to population that is half China’s and a quarter of Europe’s. And the virus has now spread from better-served cities to poor rural states such as Jharkhand, where there is one doctor for every 6,000 people. ........... In normal times, the region’s rich can largely insulate themselves from the implications of decades of puny public spending on health. “If they so much as sneeze they flee to Thailand, Singapore or India,” says a doctor at a private hospital in Dhaka. Now, she says, it is “almost impossible” to gain admission to Bangladesh’s elite hospitals, whether for covid-19 or other illnesses. ............ Delhi has relaxed a ban on traditional funeral pyres made of wood, instituted to reduce pollution, because there are too few gas-fired ovens to meet the spurt in demand. .......   Perhaps the most egregious errors were made by India’s government. Despite imposing the most stringent and heavily policed restrictions in the region, the government failed to foresee that its measures might prompt a mass exodus from cities of tens of millions of migrant workers made suddenly destitute. ............   In Bihar, a state whose 110m people are among India’s poorest, more than two-thirds of covid cases identified so far have been among returning migrant workers. 





In the bureaucracies of Bangladesh and Pakistan, the Raj lives on Recruits are taught Victorian table manners .........  One too many slices of carrot on the fork: another two points lost. When Sarim was training to become a civil servant in Pakistan, he was graded on his table manners. Everyone in his class was so cautious during the test that they would barely eat, he chuckles. ...........   During six months living and studying at the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (bpatc), future civil servants must eat with knives and forks, says Mehbub, a successful graduate. A watchful instructor is quick to chastise anyone who reverts to eating directly from the right hand, as is customary for most South Asians. ..........   Another section explains in depth the art of “managing bread and rolls”. .........  The bpatc’s injunctions not to dip bread in sauce and to stand whenever a woman comes or goes from the table would seem impossibly stuffy to most contemporary Britons. .........   When posted abroad, the Indian official often found himself overdressed compared with Americans and Europeans. “My Pakistani friends were even more so,” he laughs. .........   The formal etiquette helps the bureaucracy set itself apart, in her view. In hierarchical places like South Asia, bureaucrats are the top of the pile .....  Rigid decorum adds to their sense of importance. ......   Mehbub thinks it will take “another hundred years” for Bangladesh’s civil service to lose its Britishness and become purely Bengali.

Blood types may play role in which COVID patients get sickest   Scientists who compared the genes of thousands of patients in Europe found that those who had Type A blood were more likely to have severe disease while those with Type O were less likely. ........ Many researchers have been hunting for clues as to why some people infected with the coronavirus get very ill and others, less so. Being older or male seems to increase risk, and scientists have been looking at genes as another possible "host factor" that influences disease severity. ..........  People with Type O are better able to recognize certain proteins as foreign, and that may extend to proteins on virus surfaces ....... During the SARS outbreak, which was caused by a genetic cousin of the coronavirus causing the current pandemic, "it was noted that people with O blood type were less likely to get severe disease" ......... Blood type also has been tied to susceptibility to some other infectious diseases, including cholera, recurrent urinary tract infections from E. coli, and a bug called H. pylori that can cause ulcers and stomach cancer

'S. Africa may use dexamethasone for COVID-19 patients' Experts say steroid can be considered for use on critically ill patients, President Ramaphosa tells citizens  ........ “The Department of Health and the Ministerial Advisory Committee has recommended that dexamethasone can be considered for use on patients on ventilators and on oxygen supply,” the president said. Researchers at the UK’s University of Oxford have found that dexamethasone reduced deaths by about one-third in patients on ventilators and one-fifth in patients who require oxygen. .............. the virus’ transmission slows down if people start wearing medical or cloth masks and cover their mouths and noses in public places.  

Coronavirus cases are spiking across the country and experts say Florida has the makings of the next epicenter  "The potential for the virus to take off there is very, very nerve-racking and could have catastrophic consequences" because of the state's aging population and the prevalence of nursing homes and retirement communities ...... "more complacency" in Southern and Southwestern states not initially hit hard by the virus has led to "full-blown outbreaks." ...........   Despite the rising number of cases, the White House has downplayed the risks, with President Donald Trump saying Wednesday in an interview with Gray TV that the virus is "dying out." .......  With the White House narrative at odds with the data, health experts including Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci have been absent from many public updates. Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University, told CNN it's because "they tell the truth." .........  "And the truth is that the pandemic is still very, very active in the United States and that we're not getting back to normal and there are difficult things that the public has to do" ..........  Fauci warned about an "anti-science bias" contributing to case spikes in the country. ..........  States reporting spikes in new cases will have to re-implement "significant levels of social distancing" to contain the spread .......  Los Angeles County, which accounts for almost half of California's cases, reported Wednesday another single-day high of new cases. But officials attributed the county's increase to a lag in test reports. .......  Earlier this week, nine Texas mayors, including those in Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, urged Gov. Greg Abbott to give them the authority to require masks be worn in public "where physical distancing cannot be practiced."  .......... an estimated 230,000 to 450,000 cases of the virus were prevented in states that required mask use between April 8 and May 15. .......  Oklahoma, one of the states reporting a record-setting number of new cases, is scheduled later this week to host a campaign rally for Trump.  

A medical worker in PPE coveralls seen outside the emergency ward at AIIMS, on June 11, 2020 in New Delhi, India.





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