Coronavirus News (29)

Coronavirus taking toll on nurses, doctors around the globe two nurses had committed suicide as a result of the emotional trauma ..... “I can understand those who look death in the eye every day, who are on the front lines, who work with someone who maybe is infected, then a few days later you see him in the ICU or die,” he said. “It’s [an] indescribable condition of stress.”

Will coronavirus reverse globalisation? Globalisation has been one of the buzzwords of the past 25 years. ...... the pace of change in the global economy over just the past 17 years has been profound. ...... Globalisation helps to explain while nearly every major car plant in the UK has shut down - they are dependent on sales and components from around the world. When both collapsed, they just stopped making cars. ..... "risks have been allowed to fester, they are the underbelly of globalisation". ..... can be seen not only in this crisis, but also in the credit crunch and banking crisis of 2008, and the vulnerability of the internet to cyber-attacks. ...... While it has helped raise incomes, rapidly develop economies and lift millions out of poverty; that has come at the increased risk of contagion, be it financial or medical. ...... Western manufacturing industry will start bringing work back home, or re-shoring it as it is called. ....... A great deal of globalisation is not about moving manufactured goods around the world, but moving people, ideas and information ...... The idea that globalisation is just about moving manufacturing or supply chains to cheaper Asian countries is too simple. It has also led to massive increases in foreign students willing to pay to study at our colleges and universities, and a huge influx of wealthy tourists who want to spend money here, to name just two service sector businesses. ............ We could, like after 1918, get weak or weaker international organisations, the rise of nationalism, protectionism and economic depression. Or, as followed 1945, more cooperation and internationalism, like Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, the UN and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade...... "We can be optimistic, but we are not seeing leadership out of the White House certainly," he says. "China can't step up to the plate, and Great Britain cannot lead in Europe." ...... "The London G20 Summit of 2009 agreed a $1tn (£800bn) package of international cooperation, even Germany joined in. But now there is no leadership in the G20, and the USA is absent from the international scene." ...... Will we learn to spot, control and regulate the risks that seem to be an integral part of globalisation? Because the cooperation and leadership necessary to make that happen seem to be in short supply.

A president unfit for a pandemic

Much of the suffering and death coming was preventable. The president has blood on his hands.

......... “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” wrote W.B. Yeats in 1919. A century later, it’s clear: The epicenter cannot hold. Catastrophic decisions in the White House have doomed the world’s richest country to a season of untold suffering. ...... As the American public braces itself for the worst of this crisis, it’s worth remembering that the reach of the virus here is not attributable to an act of God or a foreign invasion, but a colossal failure of leadership. ....... And it demanded a leader who would put the country’s well-being first, above near-term stock market returns and his own reelection prospects, and who would work with other nations to stem the tide of COVID-19 cases around the world. ...... a president epically outmatched by a global pandemic. ...... A president who spent a good chunk of a recent press conference complaining about how hard it is for a rich man to serve in the White House even as Americans had already begun to lose their jobs, their health care, and their lives. ......... Timing is everything in pandemic response: It can make the difference between a contained local outbreak that endures a few weeks and an uncontrollable contagion that afflicts millions. ....... the president, in his near-daily addresses to the nation, embodies callousness, self-concern, and a lack of compass. Dangling unverified cures and possible quarantines in front of the public like reality TV cliffhangers, he unsettles rather than reassures.

You may be able to spread coronavirus just by breathing, new report finds
Your coronavirus grocery questions, answered by experts
Coronavirus lockdowns have caused the Earth to effectively stop shaking With travel effectively ground to a halt, seismologists around the globe have reported a drop in seismic noise....... Researchers say the drop in activity, usually only seen to this magnitude around Christmas, could help experts find smaller earthquakes and monitor volcanic activity more effectively. ...... As of Sunday morning, more than 1.22 million coronavirus cases have been diagnosed worldwide, more than 312,000 of which are in the U.S., the most impacted country.
Trump calls on India to release potential Covid-19 drug
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