Monday, April 27, 2020

Coronavirus News (58)



From the Irish Times.
OpEd By Fintan O'Toole.

US president Donald Trump has claimed he was being sarcastic and testing the media when he raised the idea that injecting disinfectant or irradiating the body with ultraviolet light might kill coronavirus.


Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.



However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.

Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode?

The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.

As the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic,

“The United States reacted ... like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”



It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide

a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.



If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process,

the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.

Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?

It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.

Abject surrender

What used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.

Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3rd that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.

In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1st, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities”.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1st, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”

This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic. It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus.

It draws on

a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providentialism

(God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.

Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralysed by

a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.



The contradiction was made manifest in

two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.



But this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it.

The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.



There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy.

They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.

Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.

And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.

That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.

And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind.

If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.



Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again."

Via Kim Leslie
















The scientific advances we need to stop COVID-19 The coronavirus pandemic pits all of humanity against the virus. ..........

This is like a world war, except in this case, we’re all on the same side.

.......... I see global innovation as the key to limiting the damage. This includes innovations in testing, treatments, vaccines, and policies to limit the spread while minimizing the damage to economies and well-being. ........ It can also sound like we have all the scientific advances needed to re-open the economy, but in fact we do not. ............ The number of infections was doubling many times every month. If people’s behavior had not changed, then most of the population would have been infected. By changing behavior, many countries have gotten the infection rate to plateau and start to come down. .......... Exponential growth is not intuitive. If you say that 2 percent of the population is infected and this will double every eight days, most people won’t immediately figure out that in 40 days, the majority of the population will be infected. The big benefit of the behavior change is to reduce the infection rate dramatically so that, instead of doubling every eight days, it goes down every eight days..............

If every infection goes from causing 2.0 cases to only causing 0.7 infections, then after 40 days you have one-sixth as many infections instead of 32 times as many. That’s 192 times fewer cases.

............ Exponential decline is even less intuitive. A lot of people will be stunned that in many places we will go from hospitals being overloaded in April to having lots of empty beds in July. The whiplash will be confusing, but it is inevitable from the exponential nature of infection. ............ as behavior goes back to normal, some locations will stutter along with persistent clusters of infections and some will go back into exponential growth. The picture will be more complex than it is today, with a lot of heterogeneity. ........

It is reasonable for people to ask whether the behavior change was necessary. Overwhelmingly, the answer is yes.

........... The change allowed us to avoid many millions of deaths and extreme overload of the hospitals, which would also have increased deaths from other causes. ......... The economic cost that has been paid to reduce the infection rate is unprecedented. The drop in employment is faster than anything we have ever experienced. Entire sectors of the economy are shut down. ............ The ability to do testing well explains a lot of the variation. It is impossible to defeat an enemy we cannot see. So testing is critical to getting the disease under control and beginning to re-open the economy. ............ India and Nigeria ......... With luck, some factors that we don’t understand yet, like how weather might affect the virus’s spread, will prevent large-scale infection in these countries. ........... the less developed a country’s economy is, the harder it is to make the behavior changes that reduce the the virus's reproduction rate. If you live in an urban slum and do informal work to earn enough to feed your family every day, you won’t find it easy to avoid contact with other people. ...........

Tragically, it is possible that the total deaths in developing countries will be far higher than in developed countries.

............ Almost all respiratory viruses (a group that includes COVID-19) are seasonal. This would mean there are fewer infections in the summer, which might lull us into complacency when the fall comes. ............ we see the novel coronavirus spreading in Australia and other places in the Southern hemisphere, where the seasons are the opposite of ours, we already know the virus is not as seasonal as influenza is. ......... if there are a lot of people who are asymptomatic but infectious, it is much harder to open up without a resurgence in cases. ............ even if young people don’t get sick as often, they might still spread the disease to others. ............ We need to target the tests we have at the people at greatest risk since we don’t have enough tests for everyone. ........... In places without good sanitation, there may be spread from fecal contamination since people who are infected shed the virus. ..............

older people are at much greater risk of both severe illness and death.

......... One urgent activity is to raise money for developing new tools. I think of this as

the billions we need to spend so we can save trillions

. Every additional month that it takes to get the vaccine is a month when the economy cannot return to normal. However, it isn’t clear how countries will come together to coordinate the funding. ............ During World War II, an amazing amount of innovation, including radar, reliable torpedoes, and code-breaking, helped end the war faster. This will be the same with the pandemic. I break the innovation into five categories: treatments, vaccines, testing, contact tracing, and policies for opening up. ............. If our best treatments reduce the deaths by less than 95 percent, then we will still need a vaccine before we can go back to normal. .............. For the novel coronavirus, the leading drug candidate in this category is

Remdesivir

from Gilead, which is in trials now. It was created for Ebola. If it proves to have benefits, then the manufacturing will have to be scaled up dramatically. ..................... Vaccines have saved more lives than any other tool in history. Smallpox, which used to kill millions of people every year, was eradicated with a vaccine. ........... the only way to return the world to where it was before COVID-19 showed up is a highly effective vaccine that prevents the disease. ............ the typical development time for a vaccine against a new disease is over five years. This is broken down into: a) making the candidate vaccine; b) testing it in animals; c) safety testing in small numbers of people (this is known as phase 1); d) safety and efficacy testing in medium numbers (phase 2); e) safety and efficacy testing in large numbers (phase 3); and f) final regulatory approval and building manufacturing while registering the vaccine in every country. ................... Researchers can save time by compressing the clinical safety/efficacy phases while conducting animal tests and building manufacturing capacity in parallel. .......... Of particular interest is whether the vaccine will protect older people, whose immune systems don’t respond as well to vaccines. ............ An RNA vaccine essentially turns your body into its own vaccine manufacturing unit. .......... Once a vaccine is ready, our partner GAVI will make sure it is available even in low-income countries. ............ The goal is to pick the one or two best vaccine constructs and vaccinate the entire world—that’s 7 billion doses if it is a single-dose vaccine, and 14 billion if it is a two-dose vaccine. The world will be in a rush to get them, so the scale of the manufacturing will be unprecedented and will probably have to involve multiple companies. ............... The governments that provide the funding, the countries where the trials are run, and the places where the pandemic is the worst will all make a case that they should get priority. ............

self-swab approach is faster, protects health care workers from the risk of exposure, and should let regulators approve swabbing in virtually any location instead of only at a medical center

. ................. the number of tests alone doesn’t show whether they are being used effectively. You also have to make sure you are prioritizing the testing on the right people. For example, health care workers should be able to get an immediate indication of whether they are infected so they know whether to keep working. People without symptoms should not be tested until we have enough tests for everyone with symptoms. ............. the results from the test should come back in less than 24 hours so you quickly know whether to continue isolating yourself and quarantining the people who live with you. In the United States, it was taking over seven days in some locations to get test results, which reduces their value dramatically. .......... Testing becomes extremely important as a country considers opening up. You want to have so much testing going on that you see hot spots and are able to intervene by changing policy before the numbers get large. You don’t want to wait until the hospitals start to fill up and the number of deaths goes up. .................

there are two critical cases: anyone who is symptomatic, and anyone who has been in contact with someone who tested positive.

............ if you have older people in close quarters at your house. ............. you don’t necessarily have to be in the same place at the same time to infect someone—you can leave the virus behind on a surface. ........... the second phase of the epidemic ....... semi-normal. People can go out, but not as often, and not to crowded places. ........ Picture restaurants that only seat people at every other table, and airplanes where every middle seat is empty. ............ One example of gradual reopening is Microsoft China, which has roughly 6,200 employees. So far about half are now coming in to work. They are continuing to provide support to employees who want to work at home. They insist people with symptoms stay home. They require masks and provide hand sanitizer and do more intensive cleaning. Even at work, they apply distancing rules and only allow travel for exceptional reasons. China has been conservative about opening up and has so far avoided any significant rebound. .................... restaurants can keep diners six feet apart, but will they have a working supply chain for their ingredients? Will they be profitable with this reduced capacity? The manufacturing industry will need to change factories to keep workers farther apart. .......... Schools offer a big benefit and should be a priority. Large sporting and entertainment events probably will not make the cut for a long time ............. There is one other factor that is hard to account for: human nature. Some people will be naturally reluctant to go out even once the government says it is okay. Others will take the opposite view—they will assume that the government is being overly cautious and start bucking the rules................. Melinda and I grew up learning that World War II was the defining moment of our parents’ generation. In a similar way, the COVID-19 pandemic—the first modern pandemic—will define this era. No one who lives through Pandemic I will ever forget it. ............ there are so many heroes to admire right now, including the health workers on the front line. When the world eventually declares Pandemic I over, we will have all of them to thank for it.

States outline plans to reopen
The pandemic's most hazardous jobs With only 29% of Americans able to work from home, healthy social distancing isn't a luxury all workers can afford ....... Dental workers, respiratory specialists, sports medicine physicians and frontline health care workers are among the most at risk. Other notable occupations include bus drivers and cashiers, whose workers have been providing essential services throughout the pandemic.
What shape will the recovery take? with countries with more tech and manufacturing seeing a V-shaped recovery (where the rebound might be as quick as the slump), and countries that are tourism-dependent may see an L-shaped recovery (where the virus would continue through the second half of the year). They say the big unknown is how quickly customers will come back given concerns over their health and job status.

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Coronavirus News (57)



69 PERCENT OF AMERICANS WANT MEDICARE FOR ALL, INCLUDING 46 PERCENT OF REPUBLICANS, NEW POLL SAYS
US telcos resigned to Huawei rip-and-replace law but want clarity on Washington’s reimbursement programme
Coronavirus infects China-US relations as blame game over pandemic intensifies The global health crisis has killed tens of thousands of people, battered economies and put a severe dent in Beijing’s relations with other countries ..... In the face of a possible global backlash, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the country must be prepared for unprecedented external adversity and challenges ....... The new coronavirus has caused a global disease epidemic and all but turned the lights out on much of the world’s economy. The next ripple effect could be a new Cold War, this time between China and the United States. ..... China’s “deepest economic contraction in nearly a century”, the restructuring of global supply chains and threats to Beijing’s colossal Belt and Road Initiative. ...... “The health crisis will have a detrimental impact on US-China relations beyond anything we have seen so far” ........ deepening distrust and antagonism on both sides might be “the true casualty” of the coronavirus pandemic. .......... Beijing had launched its well intentioned medical aid diplomacy but then stumbled with a propaganda campaign when

it said its system of government was behind its success in containing the virus at home

.......... both Xi and Trump were “nationalist in ideological orientation” and showed little inclination for cooperation. ..... “Increasingly, they talk past each other and live in parallel universes. The widening perception gap presents the greatest threat to the bilateral relationship” ..........

For many China commentators, the Trump administration’s underwhelming performance in the Covid-19 fight has strengthened their belief that China’s one-party rule has some advantages to help outcompete the US in the long run

....... China, the largest investor and trade partner for the African continent, may also have to write off billions of dollars in debt at the request of countries devastated by Covid-19. ........... China has pumped an estimated US$143 billion into Africa, mostly on infrastructure projects from railway lines and motorways, to ports and airports to power stations ...... “In the coming summer, the world will be engaged in blame games instead of Olympic Games and this will create a uniquely toxic international environment.”
Coronavirus: they’re only answering Xi Jinping’s call but are China’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomats doing more harm than good?
Beijing recalls vice-premier from outbreak duty as Wuhan marks zero coronavirus patients in hospital
‘Corona divorce’ trends in Japan as couples in lockdown grow fed up with each other The term has become widely used on Japanese social media sites as couples forced to stay home air grievances about their marriages ..... Many of the posts are frustrated wives venting about inconsiderate or demanding husbands

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Pandemic Prophecy In The Ramayana?

इन दिनों COVID-19 की फैली इस महामारी के विषय में पढ़ते हुए दूरदर्शन पर प्रसारित रामायण भी देखता रहा , बाद में अचानक ऐसी...

Posted by Surendra Sharma Shivpuri on Monday, April 20, 2020


इन दिनों COVID-19 की फैली इस महामारी के विषय में पढ़ते हुए दूरदर्शन पर प्रसारित रामायण भी देखता रहा , बाद में अचानक ऐसी प्रेरणा हुई रामचरित मानस पढ़ी जाए, संयोगवश कहें या ईश्वर की कृपा, जब रामचरित मानस को खोला तो उत्तरकाण्ड का दोहा १२० से १२१ वाला पृष्ठ खुला पढना शुरू किया तो आश्चर्य चकित था I
गोस्वामी तुलसीदास जी इस महामारी के मूल स्रोत चमगादड़ के विषय में उत्तरकाण्ड दोहा १२०-१२१ में वर्षो पहले की बता गये थे, जिससे सभी लोग आज दुःखी है I
"सब कै निंदा जे जड़ करहीं। ते चमगादुर होइ अवतरहीं॥
सुनहु तात अब मानस रोगा। जिन्ह ते दु:ख पावहिं सब लोगा॥14॥"
इस महामारी के लक्षणों के बारे में वे आगे लिखते हैं जिसमे उन्होंने ये बता ही दिया है की इसमें कफ़ और खांसी बढ़ जायेगी और फेफड़ो में एक जाल या आवरण उत्पन्न होगा या कहें lungs congestion जैसे लक्षण उत्पन्न हो जायेंगे,देखिये -...
"मोह सकल ब्याधिन्ह कर मूला। तिन्ह ते पुनि उपजहिं बहु सूला।।
काम बात कफ लोभ अपारा। क्रोध पित्त नित छाती जारा।।15||
गोस्वामी जी इसके आगे ये भी बताते हैं की इनसब के मिलने से "सन्निपात " या टाइफाइड फीवर होगा जिससे लोग बहुत दुःख पायेंगे -
प्रीति करहिं जौं तीनिउ भाई। उपजइ सन्यपात दुखदाई।।
बिषय मनोरथ दुर्गम नाना। ते सब सूल नाम को जाना।।16|
जुग बिधि ज्वर मत्सर अबिबेका। कहँ लागि कहौं कुरोग अनेका।।19||
और इसके आगे लिखते हैं :
"एक ब्याधि बस नर मरहिं ए असाधि बहु ब्याधि।
पीड़हिं संतत जीव कहुँ सो किमि लहै समाधि॥121 क॥"
जब ऐसी एक बीमारी की वजह से लोग मरने लगेंगे , ऐसी अनेको बिमारियां आने को हैं ऐसे में आपको कैसे शान्ति मिल पाएगी ???
"नेम धर्म आचार तप ग्यान जग्य जप दान।
भेषज पुनि कोटिन्ह नहिं रोग जाहिं हरिजान॥121 ख॥"
नियम, धर्म, आचार (उत्तम आचरण), तप, ज्ञान, यज्ञ, जप, दान तथा और भी करोड़ों औषधियाँ हैं, परंतु इन सब से ये रोग जाने वाले नहीं है....
इन सब के परिणाम स्वरुप क्या होगा गोस्वामी जी लिखते हैं :-
एहि बिधि सकल जीव जग रोगी। सोक हरष भय प्रीति बियोगी॥
मानस रोग कछुक मैं गाए। हहिं सब कें लखि बिरलेन्ह पाए॥1॥
इस प्रकार सम्पूर्ण विश्व के जीव जीव रोग ग्रस्त हो जायेंगे , जो शोक, हर्ष, भय, प्रीति और अपनों के वियोग के कारण और दुखी होते जायेंगे । गोस्वामी जी किहते हैं की मैंने ये थो़ड़े से मानस रोग कहे हैं। ये हैं तो सबको, परंतु इन्हें जान पाए हैं कोई विरले ही॥1॥यानि सबी में थोडा बहुत तो सभी में होगा पर बहुत कम लोगों को ही ठीक से detect भी हो पायेगा ...
आज हम देख की रहे हैं की इस जगत की बड़ी बड़ी हस्तियाँ भी इस रोग से ग्रसित होती जा रही है , इसमें आम लोगों की बात ही क्या की जाए ..इस विषय के बारे में भी गोस्वामी जी ने पहले से लिख दिया था -
जाने ते छीजहिं कछु पापी। नास न पावहिं जन परितापी।।
बिषय कुपथ्य पाइ अंकुरे। मुनिहु हृदयँ का नर बापुरे।।
प्राणियों को जलाने वाले ये पापी (रोग) जान लिए जाने से कुछ क्षीण अवश्य हो जाते हैं, परंतु नाश को नहीं प्राप्त होते। विषय रूप कुपथ्य पाकर ये मुनियों के हृदय में भी अंकुरित हो उठते हैं, तब बेचारे साधारण मनुष्य तो क्या चीज हैं॥2॥
यानी रोग पहचान लिए जाने पर या रोग के लक्षणों द्वारा रोग की पुष्टि हो जाने पर उन लक्षणों का इलाज किये ज
हम यदि देखे तो चाइना में जो लोग ठीक हो कर घर चले गये उनमे भी कुछ दिनों बाद पुनः इस रोग के होने की पुष्टि हुई वो भी कईयों को तो बिना लक्षणों के ....
अब सभी ये जानना चाहेंगे की इससे महामारी से हमे मुक्ति कैसे मिलेगी -- तो इस विषय पर गोस्वामी जी लिखते हैं -
"राम कृपाँ नासहिं सब रोगा। जौं एहि भाँति बनै संजोगा॥
सदगुर बैद बचन बिस्वासा। संजम यह न बिषय कै आसा॥3॥"
रघुपति भगति सजीवन मूरी। अनूपान श्रद्धा मति पूरी॥
एहि बिधि भलेहिं सो रोग नसाहीं। नाहिं त जतन कोटि नहिं जाहीं॥4॥
यदि श्रीराम जी की कृपा से इस प्रकार का संयोग बन जाए तो ये सब रोग नष्ट हो जाएँ। सद्गुरु रूपी वैद्य के वचन में विश्वास हो। विषयों की आशा न करे, यही संयम (परहेज) हो॥3॥
श्री रघुनाथजी की भक्ति संजीवनी जड़ी है। श्रद्धा से पूर्ण बुद्धि ही अनुपान (दवा के साथ लिया जाने वाला मधु आदि) है। इस प्रकार का संयोग हो तो वे रोग भले ही नष्ट हो जाएँ, नहीं तो करोड़ों प्रयत्नों से भी नहीं जाते॥4॥
साभार्
जय जय सीता राम


Via Ram P Sah

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Sunday, April 26, 2020

Coronavirus News (56)



France, Italy and Spain prepare to ease coronavirus lockdowns Several other EU countries have already announced a tentative easing of restrictions
Global coronavirus death toll passes 200,000
Kashmir, Under Siege and Lockdown, Faces a Mental Health Crisis Years of strife left a generation traumatized. India’s clampdown disrupted daily life. Now the battle against the coronavirus has further isolated and scarred a people with little access to help. ........... Since her son was arrested, Ms. Begun has become gaunt and unsteady, but she and her family say her worst afflictions have been mental and emotional. She now takes sertraline and lithium, both antidepressants. She tried twice to commit suicide, once by consuming rat poison and again by jumping into a river. .......... a state of hopelessness has morphed into a severe psychological crisis. Mental health workers say Kashmir is witnessing an alarming increase in instances of depression, anxiety and psychotic events. ......... a rise in suicides and an increase in already disturbingly high rates of domestic abuse. ............ One season is marked by the corpses of teenage boys felled by Indian forces. Another brings an epidemic of dead eyes, as Kashmiris refer to protesters left blind after being struck in the eyes by pellets fired by police officers. ........... Security forces flooded the area, cut off roads, shut down landlines, cellphone lines and the internet, and arrested thousands of Kashmiris, from students to top elected officials. Some have been released, but many remain in jail. Though some phone and internet service have been restored, they remain nothing close to pre-crackdown levels. .......... Many Kashmiris, who used social media to socialize because it was dangerous to hang out in the streets, now feel completely isolated. Children have remained out of school for months. ............ He is being held in a jail hundreds of miles away on vague charges of being a “threat to peace,” family members said. They don’t have money to visit. When the cellphone network was switched back on in October, the authorities promised a video call. That has not yet happened. .............

Ms. Begum, increasingly demoralized, said her son had been “stolen” from her. Ms. Begum says she sees her son in dreams, his face covered in bandages, his hands shaking in fear. He begs for water, but she feels chained, unable to move.

........ Bilal Sultan, a politician, was placed with hardened criminals, he said. He slipped into depression. In February, he said, he was set free because his doctors were afraid he might kill himself. ..........

“I was a very strong man,” Mr. Sultan, 55, said recently at his house in Srinagar. “Now I fear my own children.”

........

Nearly 1.8 million Kashmiris, or nearly half of all adults, have some form of mental disorder

......... teenagers traumatized by violence; mothers too worried about their incarcerated children to sleep; businesspeople owing a mountain of debt that is climbing higher and higher under a lockdown that has shuttered nearly everything. ......... Last year, Ms. Rehman visited a psychiatrist, who diagnosed acute depression. She doesn’t sleep for days. She found some relief by spending hours with a caged parrot, Noor, that her family kept. ............. So is Ms. Begun, the mother of the imprisoned Mr. Mir. As days get longer and weather begins to warm, she finds herself staring at a tractor parked outside her house. Mr. Mir bought it on a loan. The bank is now threatening to seize the family’s home. ............. The desperation has incapacitated her. She can’t even cook .........



Fresh air at last! Spanish children go outdoors for first time in six weeks
Five things to know about the turmoil in the oil market

Richard Branson races to find Virgin Atlantic buyer Sir Richard Branson has set a deadline of the end of May to find a buyer to save stricken airline Virgin Atlanic from collapse



Facebook takes on Zoom with 50-way video calls in Messenger Rooms
Introducing Messenger Rooms and More Ways to Connect When You’re Apart Over the years we’ve focused on how to help people feel present with one another even when they’re not in the same place. Today, video helps most of us bridge the distance. Tomorrow, we’ll be turning to more immersive platforms like AR and VR. ........ Spending time with each other should be spontaneous, not strained. So to help people feel like they’re together, even when they are — or have to be — physically apart, we’re announcing features across our products that make video chat and live video easier and more natural. ...... Rooms will soon hold up to 50 people with no time limit. ...... You can start and share rooms on Facebook through News Feed, Groups and Events, so it’s easy for people to drop by. Soon we’ll add ways to create rooms from Instagram Direct, WhatsApp and Portal, too. ........ If you have the Messenger app, you can play with AR effects like bunny ears, and new AI-powered features like immersive 360 backgrounds and mood lighting. ......... Messenger Rooms is rolling out in some countries this week and will expand to the rest of the world in coming weeks. ........ Soon you’ll be able to have group voice and video calls with up to eight people on WhatsApp. ....... If you have limited data or a spotty connection, you now have the option to listen to the audio only. ....... most public live videos are now available on the web and some Pages can share a toll-free number that lets you listen to the audio through any telephone. ......... To help you support some of your favorite creators, we’re expanding Stars to more Pages and more countries. Once you buy Stars you can send them to creators while they’re streaming, and they’ll earn 1 cent for every Star. ........ To help people find meaningful relationships even when they can’t meet in person, we’re adding an option in Facebook Dating to invite people to a virtual date. When they accept, you’ll start a video chat in Messenger to get to know each other. This will roll out in the coming months.

An aggrieved Trump blames press for furor over disinfectant comments
Trump says briefings 'not worth the effort' amid fallout from disinfectant comments The president remained behind closed doors after advisers reportedly warned him that the briefings were hurting his campaign
Debacle of Trump's coronavirus disinfectant comments could be tipping point The US president plans to ‘pare back’ his daily coronavirus briefings after falsely claiming his suggestion to inject cleaning products had been ‘sarcastic’
Coronavirus live updates: US cases top 900,000, Birx says social distancing will last through summer
Biden should let Trump self-destruct
Publicly traded firms get $365M in small-business loans
Thousands gather without social distancing to protest Wisconsin's stay-at-home order

Oil markets hit a historic first this week when prices dropped so low they went negative, falling to as little as negative $40 a barrel.

........ oil companies are running out of space for their product. ...... traders rushed to free themselves of contracts for oil they weren’t physically able to take possession of. ....... The negative price reflected traders’ willingness to pay others to take their oil contracts and figure out what to do with the product. ........ there may be only 21 million barrels’ worth of free storage left in a country still producing 12 million barrels of oil a day ......... Nearly all oil in the U.S. is produced using the controversial method of pushing water and chemicals deep into rock crevices to push out oil. ....... The process itself is more expensive — it might cost as much as $10 million to drill a fracked well versus $2 million for one with a conventional bobbing derrick. ........ Gas was selling at an average price of about $1.80 a gallon this week and fell as low as $0.78 at a gas station in rural Minnesota earlier this month. ....... the economic impacts of job loss within the 10 million-employee industry.



USDA let millions of pounds of food rot while food-bank demand soared State officials and growers say Trump’s Agriculture Department has been woefully slow to respond to farm crisis caused by coronavirus. ........ Tens of millions of pounds of American-grown produce is rotting in fields as food banks across the country scramble to meet a massive surge in demand, a two-pronged disaster that has deprived farmers of billions of dollars in revenue while millions of newly jobless Americans struggle to feed their families. ....... “It’s not a lack of food, it’s that the food is in one place and the demand is somewhere else and they haven’t been able to connect the dots. ......... Images of farmers destroying tomatoes, piling up squash, burying onions and dumping milk shocked many Americans who remain fearful of supply shortages. ....... Blueberry prices are about half of what they were this time last year ........

the coronavirus catastrophe has laid bare just how tied up in red tape the USDA’s commodity buying system can be

. The process typically takes months from start to finish. And the department has historically focused on buying foods that can be stored for long periods — like canned fruit and meats and cheeses — and so is not accustomed to handling an influx of fresh food. ........ “There is no reason these high-quality, nutritious, farmer-grown products should be left in facilities to rot when there are so many American families who are suddenly faced with food insecurity” ........ The precipitous drop in demand left many growers with no choice but to trash excess food or leave it in the fields because the cost of picking, packing and storing the crops would only put them further in the hole. Some with more resources in hand took on the cost of harvesting and donating the food themselves, but the gut-wrenching reality is that crops are being abandoned on an unprecedented scale. .......... A handful of states, including Florida and California, set up online clearinghouses to try to match up excess food with need in their area, but the high volumes of surplus produce often can’t be absorbed by local food banks alone, making national distribution important for making even a dent in the waste. ........ Paul Allen, co-owner of RC Hatton Farms, is currently disking hundreds of acres of cabbage — a process that grinds crops into the soil — because there’s simply no market for it. It's heartbreaking to watch, but the cabbage he grows is typically used for coleslaw at restaurant chains like KFC. Allen estimates he’s left about 8 million pounds of cabbage and 4.5 million pounds of green beans in the fields. ....... “We’ve been devastated,” Allen said. His company has already donated hundreds of thousands of pounds of vegetables to food banks. .......... Farmers in Florida, which provides much of the fresh produce to the eastern half of the U.S. during the winter and spring, left about 75 percent of the lettuce crop unharvested, along with significant portions of the state’s sweet corn, cabbage and squash. Up to 250 million pounds of tomatoes could end up left in the fields ........

"We are attempting to move at lightning speed," David Tuckwiller, director of commodity and procurement at the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, said last week.

The department is greatly compressing its typical procurement timeline with the goal of shipping the first food boxes by May 15, officials said. .........

At that point, it will have been two months since the food service supply chain blew up.

......... DiMare’s company, DiMare Fresh, has donated over a million pounds of tomatoes to food banks in his area, but he still had to leave some 10 million pounds in the field ....... Some growers have gotten creative. When Idaho farmer Ryan Cranney suddenly found himself with millions of potatoes he couldn’t sell, he decided to pile them up outside and invite the public to come take what they’d like for free.



Antibody surveys suggesting vast undercount of coronavirus infections may be unreliable confirmed COVID-19 cases are an even smaller fraction of the true number of people infected than many had estimated and that the vast majority of infections are mild ...... some of the researchers are on record advocating for an early end to lockdowns and other control measures, and claim the new prevalence figures support that call. ....... Some observers warn the coronavirus’ march through the population has only just begun, and that even if the antibody results can be believed, they don’t justify easing controls. “You would have hoped for 45% or even 60% positive” ........ “That would mean that there is lots of silent transmission, and a lot of immunity in the population. It now looks like, sadly, that’s not true. Even the high numbers are relatively small.” ....... the study suggested the virus kills only 0.37% of the people infected. (The rate for seasonal influenza is about 0.1%.) The team concluded in a two-page summary that “15% of the population can no longer be infected with SARS-CoV-2, and the process of reaching herd immunity is already underway.” They recommended that politicians start to lift some of the regions’ restrictions. ......... the virus is less serious than feared and that the effects of long shutdowns may be just as bad if not worse than the damage the virus could do. ......... no meaningful conclusions could be drawn from the antibody study based on the limited information Streeck presented. Drosten cited uncertainty about what level of antibodies provides protection and noted that the study sampled entire households. That can lead to overestimating infections, because people living together often infect each other. ........ “If policy makers were aware from the outset that the Covid-19 death toll would be closer to that of seasonal flu … would they have risked tens of millions of jobs and livelihoods?” ........ they collected blood samples from 200 passersby on a street corner. That evening, they processed the samples—and shared the results with a reporter from The Boston Globe. Sixty-three were positive—31.5%. ..... Even if the antibody surveys show a COVID-19 death rate well below 1%, says Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, control measures will be needed for a long time to avoid overwhelmed hospitals. “The seroprevalence data only confirm the challenge we face. The data [these studies] are generating … is just showing how hard this is.”



For survivors of severe COVID-19, beating the virus is just the beginning COVID-19’s immediate assault on the body is extensive. It targets the lungs, but a lack of oxygen and widespread inflammation can also damage the kidneys, liver, heart, brain, and other organs. .......... Although it’s too early to say what lasting disabilities COVID-19 survivors will face, clues come from studies of severe pneumonia—an infection that inflames the air sacs in the lungs, as COVID-19 does. Some of these infections progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), in which those sacs fill with fluid. That condition sometimes leads to scarring that can cause long-term breathing problems, Ferrante says, but studies show that most ARDS patients eventually recover their lung function. ........ After any severe case of pneumonia, a combination of underlying chronic diseases and prolonged inflammation seems to increase the risk of future illnesses, including heart attack, stroke, and kidney disease ........... people hospitalized for pneumonia have a risk of heart disease about four times as high as that of age-matched controls in the year after their release, and about 1.5 times as high in each of the next 9 years. COVID-19 might prompt “a big increase in these sorts of events” .......... 67% of reported COVID-19 patients from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland receiving “advanced respiratory support” died. A study in a smaller patient group in China found that only 14% survived after going on a ventilator. ........ even when people are well enough to leave the ICU or the hospital, many still have the virus ......... Another risk for hospitalized patients is delirium—a state of confused thinking that can lead to long-term cognitive impairments such as memory deficits. “What we’re finding in COVID is that there’s a ton of delirium” ........... this coronavirus, like the ones that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome, can directly infiltrate and damage the brain. And bodywide inflammation caused by the virus can also limit blood flow to the brain and kill brain cells. ............ people who have cognitive impairment after being hospitalized for a critical illness, which he describes as “Sudoku and Scrabble on steroids.” ........

Others are preparing for a surge in mental health problems, among them anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder following the psychological stress of severe disease.

A study of people hospitalized for SARS found that more than one-third had moderate to severe symptoms of depression and anxiety 1 year later. ....... “This we’re-all-in-this-together attitude around coronavirus may actually provide hope that wasn’t there before.”





How Is the Coronavirus Pandemic Affecting Climate Change? Sure, emissions have fallen. But a closer look at how the global crisis is influencing the environment reveals some surprising dynamics. ........ It tricked nations into blaming one another—the US being the primary antagonist—instead of working together to stop it. ........ It is the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, and it is climate change. The two are intimately linked: As you’d expect, emissions have fallen as people drive less and industries grind to a halt. But dig deeper into how the pandemic is influencing the climate, and surprising and often counterintuitive dynamics begin to emerge. ....... we can expect economies to roar back with fervor to make up for lost income ......... This Is Our Chance to Reinvent Cities ....... Cars killed over 6,000 pedestrians in 2018 in the US, and air pollution kills perhaps 200,000 more here each year. ........ But maybe our suddenly clearer skies don’t have to be temporary. We’re getting a taste of how much more livable our cities would be if we designed them for people, not cars. Closing roads to cars altogether—as cities like Boston and Oakland, California, have done during the crisis—means people can walk and bike in safety, itself a boost to public health. ......... a clearer picture of what we’ve slowly kind of numbed ourselves to. Cities are profoundly dominated by vehicles ........ Every Nation Needs a Big, Bold, New Green Deal

Global coronavirus death toll hits 200,000
TRUMP HINTS AT CANCELLING CORONAVIRUS PRESS BRIEFINGS: 'WHAT IS THE PURPOSE?'
Trump goes into hiding
California heat wave draws large crowds to beaches despite stay-at-home order "We've had very good compliance," a lifeguard said. "People are spreading out."

Distance Learning Isn’t Working Instead of trying to move classes online, schools should support parents in educating their children. ........ It’s exhausting for parents with one kid, but with three or four, it’s practically impossible. Many of these parents have told me they’ve ended the day in tears—or spent the entire day in tears. .......... She told the camera, “Listen. It’s not working … this distance-learning thing. It’s impossible!” She was “falling to pieces,” she said.

“If we don’t die of corona, we’ll die of distance learning …

Please. Turn it down. Foot off the gas. Leave them be.” .............. That’s why many homeschoolers call what they do “home education,” not homeschooling. Home education involves an understanding that children can learn while doing everyday tasks; baking can teach math, science, and home economics. Sitting on the couch reading Charlotte’s Web to kids in grades five and three and kindergarten counts as “school.” So does taking a nature walk and creating a nature journal. ............

One-size-fits-all education barely works in a classroom, but it is completely unmanageable with kids spread out across their various households working independently.

......... Most kids aren’t going back to school this calendar year; school districts have already conceded as much, as have many universities. Parents are in this not just for a few weeks, but for a few months. .......... “This is a major conflict in our family because we do not believe in this amount of screen time, and the kids thrive without it. Yet it is expected in order for online learning to occur.” ....... When I chose home education for my children, I had the benefit of years of reading about educational theory and philosophy and best practices, in anticipation of teaching my children when they became school-age. Parents across the country have been thrown into the deep end of the pool, and they could use much more support. ......... Parents, teachers, and administrators need to understand the unique nature of education at home. Every family looks different and has different needs. .... Parents, not teachers or administrators, are the ones in the trenches—and so parents, not teachers or administrators, need to set the schedule and priorities.

What matters most is health of real economy, not fiscal deficit: Rajan The government has to think about a staggered restart to the economy, former RBI Guv said.
प्रहरीले जाहेरी दर्ता गर्न मानेको छैन : राजेन्द्र महतो नागरिकको जीवनरक्षा हुन्छ भनेर कसरी पत्याउने ? : बाबुराम भट्टराईको प्रश्न
Face Masks Can Prove Tricky for Those With Eyeglasses Science offers solutions for when your specs fog up

GOP Gov. Hogan to Trump: Stop coronavirus 'misinformation,' saying 'whatever pops in your head'
Coronavirus updates: CDC adds 6 new possible symptoms of COVID-19 Previously only fever, cough and shortness of breath were possible symptoms.

'No evidence' recovered virus patients are immune: Live updates WHO warning over 'immunity passports' comes as death toll from coronavirus pandemic reaches 200,000. ....... The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations' outbreaks. ......... Digital contract tracing has been used in China, Singapore and South Korea. ...... Apple and Google plan to release their contact-tracing apps in May.......... "Anybody, any state, any city that doesn't pay attention to those factual health care indicators that evidence is endangering themselves and their people and the whole idea of having a restart to have an economy again, recover, it could all backfire because the disease reasserts." ........... De Blasio said the recovery must address the "structural racism" and disparities that have been exposed during the pandemic, announcing the city would create a "Fair Recovery Task Force" to help New Yorkers recover from the crisis. ........ "Around 2008, we lost 8.7 million jobs and the whole thing. Right now, we're losing that many jobs about every 10 days," he said. "And so … the economic lift for policymakers is an extraordinary one." ......... there were 75-100 people at the "The Surf's Up Shred the Tidal Wave of Tyranny" protest Saturday morning ....... Dubbed "A Day of Liberty San Diego Freedom Rally" ........ These symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure to the virus:

• Fever
• Cough
• Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• Chills
• Repeated shaking with chills
• Muscle pain
• Headache
• Sore throat
• New loss of taste or smell

'No evidence' recovered virus patients are immune: Live updates WHO warning over 'immunity passports' comes as death toll from coronavirus pandemic reaches 200,000.

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Saturday, April 25, 2020

Coronavirus News (55)



#VIDEO: तेजस्वी यादव ने कहा- हवाई जहाज वाले बीमारी लाए, भुगत रहे पैदल वाले

When Denver backed off social distancing in the 1918 pandemic, the results were deadly It was 1918 and Denver Mayor William Fitz Randolph Mills bowed to business leaders and decided to back off social distancing. Armistice Day seemed like a perfect day to do it. The city had been all but locked down for five weeks and now there was something worth celebrating -- the end of the First World War. Grateful citizens streamed into the streets of the city on November 11, 1918, soon after Denver's Manager of Health William H. Sharpley declared the "plague under control!" ......... Even in those early days of public health, with limited scientific remedies, social distancing and masks were understood to help stem the tide of pandemic. In the town of Montrose, Colorado, as the Denver Post recounted, a health officer named Isaiah Knott warned his fellow citizens that "if you are sick and do not stay away from social gatherings, you have the heart of a hun," using a derogatory term for the Germans the US was fighting at the time. But superstition often overwhelmed science, as officials recommended that people avoid wearing tight shoes and recommended people have a "clean mouth, clean heart and clean clothes." Quack "cures" proliferated, peddling their wares to the gullible and the desperate, as we see today in all kinds of coronavirus scams and pseudo science. ........... by the end of the pandemic, an estimated 675,000 Americans died, primarily in the fall of 1918 ......... But folks were bristling at being asked to stay indoors in the picturesque autumn and businesses -- especially movie theaters -- were irritated at losing so much money because of what seemed like a relatively isolated pandemic. They argued it was better to simply quarantine those who showed symptoms and let everyone else go about their business. ......... Despite the name Spanish flu the disease is believed to have begun at US Army Camp Funston in Kansas earlier that year before spreading across the world, killing an estimated 50 million ............... Wealthy socialites flouted social distancing requirements with little recourse. ........ By backing off social distancing too early, they utterly failed to flatten the curve, and suffered a second bump, as this graph of cities by National Geographic shows. ........ By November 22, deaths were spiking and Denver officials scrambled to reinstate bans on public and private gatherings and requiring masks for all commerce. .....

But the damage had been done. Five days later, Denver Post headlines blared the bad news: "All Flu Records Smashed in Denver in Last 24 Hours," claiming that more Denver residents had died of influenza than Coloradans killed in the First World War

. ............. That didn't stop business owners from marching on City Hall, protesting that they were losing tens of thousands of dollars a week, similar to the protests we've seen around the country over restrictions to help flatten the Covid-19 curve. ......... As Harry Truman said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." .

Coronavirus: WHO row between US, China sees G20 leaders summit called off at last minute, source says The Group of 20 (G20) planned to hold a second virtual leaders’ summit on Friday, to be attended by President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump ..... But the video conference was called off amid US-China row over World Health Organisation (WHO), but could happen in near future ......... “China thinks the US ordered a halt in funding for the WHO to get rid of the poor leadership in combating the coronavirus and try to blame China, but the US thinks the WHO was partial to China and that China should be responsible for the heavy losses in the US” ............... “China-US relations have sharply deteriorated and it’s very worrying, The future will become worse.” ......... “American taxpayers provide between US$400m and US$500m per year to the WHO; in contrast China contributes roughly US$40m a year, even less,” Trump said on Tuesday. “As the organisation’s leading sponsor, the United States has a duty to insist on full accountability.” ......... On Thursday, China announced it would provide a further US$30 million to the WHO ....... “It should be an opportunity for the two countries to work together to respond to the virus, but the US puts the blame on China, and China’s response gave it a reason for intensifying the confrontation” ......

if Trump was reelected in November, relations between China and the US may escalate into an all-out confrontation.



Post-Covid-19: the world is facing a hunger pandemic and other disasters of biblical proportions Locusts, pestilence of livestock, disease. The 10 plagues of Egypt seem to be playing out in today’s world, as locusts invade Africa, pigs die in China and Covid-19 stalks the Earth ......... Is this not all getting very biblical? Are we not all reliving Exodus and the 10 biblical plagues? I have not quite figured out who is today’s equivalent of the pharaonic enemy, or of the people of Israel, but maybe that will soon become clear. ........... Rereading Exodus, I see eerie parallels with today. The first plague was water turning into blood: we now see deep red algal blooms in the seas off Hong Kong too often for comfort. Then, plagues No 2 to No 4 were frogs, lice and flies – with locusts eventually arriving as plague No 8. ......... Today we watch gruesome BBC footage of

billions of locusts sweeping across East Africa, into Pakistan and India, with fears they may invade 60 countries and 20 per cent of the world’s land surface

. China’s Forestry Ministry is on high alert, where they say locusts already destroy an estimated 10 million hectares of crops every year. .............. Plague 5 was pestilence of livestock: today we have hundreds of millions of pigs culled in China, victims of African swine flu, and billions of farmed shrimp succumbing to Decapod iridescent virus 1, or DIV1, across 11 Chinese provinces, on top of the almost annual cull of chickens downed by avian flu. ......... And let’s throw in the bacteria and fungi cutting a swathe through Europe’s olive orchards and the world’s Cavendish banana plantations, as well as the collapse of honey bee populations. ......... Plague 6 was boils, and here perhaps we should not be too literal, though given a choice between boils and coronavirus, Ebola or other recent epidemics, I think the Egyptians got off lightly. ....... Plague 7 was thunderstorms of hail and fire, and again I think the Egyptians got off lightly, compared with the Americans and Australians who have survived recent wildfires, and the millions falling victim every year to typhoons, hurricanes and other wild weather. .......... After locusts, the ninth plague feels familiar: “…total darkness covered all the land of Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else, and for three days no one left his place”. That sounds eerily like the lockdowns, which for many are now in their third and fourth weeks. ........ The final plague – and the one that finally got the Pharaoh to relent and give the Israelites their freedom – was the death of all firstborn sons. ..... Is there not a dreadful resonance with this week’s briefing from the UN’s World Food Programme, warning that we are “on the brink of a hunger pandemic” that could result in “multiple famines of biblical proportions” as the Covid-19 pandemic spreads, silent and deadly, to already impoverished parts of the developing world, in particular in Africa, pushing perhaps 130 million or more people “to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020”. ........

we are being punished for – and warned over – our profligate disregard for maintaining balance in our global ecosystem.

....... These are indeed biblical times, and it makes me nervous to see so many of our leaders worldwide with their eyes fixed on petty political point-scoring rather than keeping the plagues in check.



The hard truth about the global coronavirus pandemic: it can’t be fought off by countries working alone Scientists around the world are working together on Covid-19 research and possible vaccines ...... But they can’t by themselves bring the crisis under control, when the world’s leaders are blaming one another instead of strengthening multilateral cooperation ................. If there is one single lesson emerging from the terrible global Covid-19 pandemic it is that some challenges cannot be tackled alone.

However strong the urge to slam our doors, point fingers of blame, and focus our efforts on solving our own problems, the reality is that we face a global trauma that requires global cooperation and a coordinated international response.

............... “because nearly everyone is to blame … it is a waste of time for the G20 to point fingers”. ....... “Only with a concerted, cooperative, and holistic approach can the international community avoid a large-scale humanitarian tragedy – and protect the rest of the world from destabilising blowback.” ........ “National responses are vital, but in the medium term, multilateralism will be our best weapon in this fight – and our best defence against future global threats.” ....... After three years in which the Trump administration has championed “America First” unilateralism, undermined support worldwide for large numbers of multilateral institutions, encouraged “decoupling” and insinuated that “multilateralism” is a dirty word, there can be no more important moment to push back firmly. There are many circumstances worldwide where international cooperation is not only the best way of optimising gains for everyone – it is often the only way. ........ The global warming crisis may be the most obvious example, but it is not the only one. Food and energy security can only be ensured by multilateral cooperation. The 2008 global financial crash needed close international cooperation.



how badly Trump is sucking all on his own .... "nervous Republicans" are watching Trump crater and worrying he'll take the Senate majority with him. ..... his brief silence is certainly a welcome reprieve—not to mention a literal lifesaver.
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Friday, April 24, 2020

Coronavirus News (54)



Trump suggests 'injection' of disinfectant to beat coronavirus and 'clean' the lungs
Donald Trump's prescription for coronavirus: quite literally toxic
Georgia reopens hair salons, gyms and bowling alleys despite rise in coronavirus deaths statewide
White House issues revised transcript to show Birx said sunlight not a treatment for coronavirus
REPUBLICANS BLOCK PROPOSED INCREASE IN FOOD ASSISTANCE IN CORONAVIRUS AID PACKAGE
Coronavirus pandemic exposes rather than heals America's divisions
Cuomo Shreds ‘Grim Reaper’ McConnell’s Suggestion That States Go Bankrupt
Air pollution in northern India has hit a 20-year low, NASA report says
The reason Zoom calls drain your energy
FDA issues warnings on chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine after ‘serious poisoning and death’ reported
Utah has already ordered $800K of malaria drugs, could spend millions more on unproven COVID-19 treatment
The world's most-populous Muslim nation just banned holiday travel over Ramadan
US issues new guidance for small business loans, pressures public companies to return funds
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