‘The virus will be back’: Preparing for the second wave of Covid-19 Where are the dangers, and how can a new wave be turned into a ripple, not a tsunami? .......... Epidemics of infectious diseases can be unpredictable but they often come in waves. History has left hard lessons showing that a virus can quickly return – and with deadlier force. ......... Just over a century ago, the three-wave Spanish flu pandemic that claimed at least 50 million lives, killed more people in the more virulent second wave in the autumn of 1918 than in the first that spring ........... The risk is particularly high given that a vaccine to eradicate Covid-19 is some time, possibly years, away and seroprevalence studies which measure past rates of infection show little “herd immunity”, leaving large swathes of populations still susceptible to the virus. ............ I don’t know what we’re going to learn about this virus over the next six months ............ a second wave is “not inevitable” ........... “This virus will almost definitely come back again. It is not a case of ‘if’ it is almost guaranteed that it will be a case of ‘when’” .......... the virus will be circulating in the world for the foreseeable future, possibly for between five and 10 years, and that the State has to become better at keeping coronavirus out and, if it is discovered again in the community, identifying it quickly and managing its suppression again. ............. “If we do a really good job, it might be a second ripple rather than a second wave and there might be a second and third and fourth ripple. We might deal with it better. If we do a really bad job, it will be a second tsunami and then we have learned nothing” .......... as restrictions lift, there is a full expectation that there will be a second wave ......... In Asia, large second waves were averted by such targeted, quick actions. Nationwide lockdowns being replaced by ones on regions or sectors and the partial reimposition of restrictions. ........... The infection of more than 100 people was linked to a single person attending three clubs over one weekend. ........... The risk of a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic coinciding with an outbreak of other infectious diseases, such as seasonal flu or measles, raises the potential for a “double wave”. ........... “The big challenge now with any surge is that we now have to run non-Covid work in parallel with Covid and our hospitals will really, really feel that strain. .......... there is now no situation that carries zero risk from Covid-19 and hospitals “need to find workarounds and doing the new normal” and to move beyond “this paralysed, rabbit-in-the-headlights of Covid” that is preventing the return of some regular healthcare. .......... stringent restrictions on visitors, social distancing, hand hygiene and the wearing of personal protective equipment.
Second Covid-19 wave ‘would wipe out economic recovery’ Global economy expected to contract 6% this year before rebounding in 2021, says OECD ......... the economy will contract by 8.7 per cent this year with little or no sign of recovery in 2021 if a coronavirus outbreaks reoccurs. ........... the global economy would contract 6 per cent this year before bouncing back with 5.2 per cent growth in 2021, providing the coronavirus outbreak is kept under control. .......... the global economy will suffer the biggest peace-time downturn in a century before it emerges next year from the coronavirus-inflicted recession. ......... The US economy, the world’s biggest, is seen contracting 7.3 per cent this year before growing 4.1 per cent next year. In the event of a second outbreak, the US recession would reach 8.5 per cent this year and the economy would grow only 1.9 per cent in 2021 ............ Britain is expected to experience the worst downturn among the countries covered by the OECD ..... A second outbreak could trigger a slump of 14 per cent this year followed by a rebound of 5 per cent next year
Racial Repression Is Built Into the U.S. Economy One hundred fifty years after the Civil War, the color of money is still white. ......... In 1957, Becker published the first economic theory of racial discrimination, which until then had been the domain of sociologists and lawyers. He likened it to an employer’s taste, like the preference for a certain food or beverage, except with evil consequences. .............. a society that’s torn apart by race and remains damaged by the legacy of slavery, America’s original sin. ......... the U.S. was built on the backs of enslaved Africans—and that leading thinkers of the day defended slavery on economic grounds. If not slaves, who would harvest the cotton, rice, and tobacco? .......... the new field of “stratification economics,” which places race at its center. .......... how developing countries get stuck in a “middle-income trap.” .......... racial discrimination is a feature of the white-dominated economic system, not a bug, or a taste, or a statistical error. In other words, stratification economics treats racism as rational, albeit reprehensible. That places it more in the mainstream of economic thought, oddly enough, than explanations that lean on emotions or mistakes. ........... patenting by African Americans declined during historical periods of lynching and white race riots. ......... The Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery but not the maltreatment of blacks. ............ Black Americans are steered into costlier home and auto loans. ............ More than 60 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision, black students continue to attend inferior public schools on average and are less likely to attend college. Black college graduates have less wealth on average than white high school dropouts, calling into question the idea that they can pull themselves up by the bootstraps through more schooling. .......... Far more than other wealthy nations, the U.S. solves its social problems with prisons ........... 2010, census takers recorded that 44% of black men from the poorest families in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles were incarcerated. ........... In 99% of counties, boys from black families will earn less as adults than boys from white families who come from the same neighborhoods and have the same parental incomes .......... The idea that racial discrimination is alive and well is hard to absorb for people in the majority ........... “corporations collected over 500 billion dollars in stimulus money while everyone else was left with a $1200 dollar check and having to decide if they pay for food or rent.” ................ When segregation became illegal, the zoning code took its place, restricting 70% of the city’s residential land to single-family housing, which was unaffordable to many black families. In Minnesota as a whole, the difference in the poverty rate between white and black residents is the nation’s third-widest ............. racism is embedded in the structure of society, made more harmful by the fact that it doesn’t require deliberate hostility to persist. ............. Even the triumphant launch of SpaceX’s manned spacecraft on May 30 to resupply the International Space Station was tinged with sadness. To those with long memories, it recalled the 1960s, another time when American cities burned while astronauts flew in space. Has the U.S. made no progress in more than half a century? ............. Trump is seizing on the riots to cast himself as a law-and-order president, threatening to deploy active-duty troops in cities. ......... What’s clear is the need for the power structures of economics and business to grapple with life as it’s lived, not as the textbooks specify.
How Densest Asia Slum Chased the Virus Has Lesson for Others India’s Dharavi, the continent’s most crowded slum, has gone from coronavirus hotspot to potential success story, offering a model for developing nations struggling to contain the pandemic. ............ Authorities have knocked on 47,500 doors since April to measure temperatures and oxygen levels, screened almost 700,000 people in the slum cluster and set up fever clinics. Those showing symptoms were shifted to nearby schools and sports clubs converted into quarantine centers. Fresh daily infections are now down to a third compared with early May, more than half the sick are recovering, and the number of deaths plummeted this month in the tenement where as many as eighty residents share a toilet. .......... Dharavi’s dogged approach to “chase the virus” could be a template for emerging markets across the world, from the favelas of Brazil to shanty towns in South Africa. ....... “It was next to impossible to follow social distancing,” said Kiran Dighavkar, assistant commissioner at Mumbai’s municipality, who is in charge of leading the fight in Dharavi. “The only option then was to chase the virus rather than wait for the cases to come. To work proactively, rather than reactively.” ........... “We were able to isolate people at early stages,” Dighavkar said. “Unlike in the rest of Mumbai, where most patients are reaching hospitals at a very late stage.” ........... A strict lockdown and accessible testing was part of Dharavi’s strategy. If someone was not feeling well and wanted to get tested, just get institutionally quarantined and on-site doctors will take care of it. .......... none of this would be possible without gaining the community’s trust. Home to nearly a million people where a family of seven may be living in a 100-square feet hutment, word travels fast in Dharavi and small gestures help. ......... Everyone in the isolation centers also received round-the-clock medical supervision free of cost ......... Once word got around, people would volunteer themselves to be quarantined as soon as symptoms appeared .......... authorities must test everyone with symptoms like fever or a cough ......... Once shelter-at-home restrictions are fully lifted in Mumbai and the bustling city goes back to work, there’s a risk of a second wave of infections.
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