However you slice it, there was never an instance where COVID-19 was milder than theflu. We've never, ever in the history of the pandemic, in all our studies from the beginning until now, have found that COVID-19 is equally risky to the flu. ~ Ziyad Al-Aly
"If we did so poorly with something like COVID-19, you can imagine how poorly we would do with something like a1918-level event," Adalja said, referring to theinfluenza pandemic of 1918 that killed an estimated 50 million people around the world, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Another major lesson from COVID-19 is the importance of transparency, Adalja said. "I think what we see now is this distrust between infectious disease physicians, public health practitioners and the general public, because what happened is politicians injected themselves into this," he said. "People may not actually be receptive to the protective actions that are being recommended by public health officials."
"However you slice it, there was never an instance where COVID-19 was milder than theflu," says Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly ofWashington University in St. Louis, who has done research comparing COVID to the flu. "We've never, ever in the history of the pandemic, in all our studies from the beginning until now, have found that COVID-19 is equally risky to the flu," Al-Aly says. "It's always carried a higher risk."
و وباء #كورونا يجتاح العالم مهددا للبشريةندعو مجلس الأمن والأمين العام للأمم المتحدة انتونيو غوتيرش @antoniojuterres لايقاف القوى المعتدية عن عدوانها على الشعب اليمني وفك الحصار عليه فالوباء ينتشر بكافة أنحاء العالم ويجب أن تنعم شعوب العالم بالسلام وتتمكن من مكافحة الوباء الخطير
As Coronavirus has invaded the world and is threatening humanity, we askUN security council and also theUN secretary generalAntonio Guterres to stop aggressive forces from attackingYemeni people and endthe siege of the country. The virus is spreading all over the world and nations of the world should have peace to fight with this dangerous virus.
The hands of theDoomsday Clock remain at 100 seconds to midnight, as close to midnight as ever. The lethal andfear-inspiring COVID-19 pandemic serves as a historic ‘wake-up call,’ a vivid illustration that national governments and international organizations are unprepared to manage the trulycivilization-ending threats ofnuclear weapons andclimate change. ~ Rachel Bronson
We need to take the news about coronavirus coming out ofChina very seriously, about which China has released very little information in recent times
Manyhealthcare workers in our study had no prior illness, but of 172 such participants, 19 were still symptomatic at follow-up and off work at a median of 180 days.
Organ impairment in long COVID has implications for symptoms, quality of life and longer-term health, signalling the need for prevention and integrated care for long COVID patients.
You know, one of the things that continues to bother us in the way in which the moderators don’t even bring up an issue that, before COVID-19, was impacting 43% of this nation. A hundred forty million people, before COVID, were poor and low-wealth, and 62 million people working for less than a living wage. And since COVID, we know that millions have been added to thepoverty and low-wealth numbers. We’re well over 50% because of the new poor. We know we had 87 million people before COVID that were either uninsured or underinsured, and now some 20 million people have been added because of people who have lost their insurance because they’ve lost their jobs. Forty percent of the jobs that make $40,000 a year have been lost.
We have to stop saying things were well before COVID. It’s almost as though we give that away to theTrump andPence. The reality is,Wall Street was well. The reality is, those who gothis tax cuts were well. The reality is, though, that before COVID, they were trying to overturnhealthcare. Before COVID, they were blockingliving wages. Before COVID, we were not addressing the issue ofpoor and low-wealth people.
When we look at COVID-19, we know that the fissures ofsystemic racism andsystemic poverty have actually allowed this pandemic to have a greater hold on ourAmerican society. We know that when we talk about death, we have to be exact, that it’s not just people are dying, poor people are dying. People who make less than $50,000 a year are dying. People are dying who are among the poor, whether it be white,Black —disproportionately among Black and Brown andIndigenous people, and that COVID has killed more people in the U.S. than Americans were killed in battle in five of our most recent wars —Korea,Vietnam,Iraq, theWar in Afghanistan and thePersian Gulf War. I mean, this is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about this devastation that’s happening among poor and low-wealth people.
Allow me to break down the facts of hunger as they stand right now. 811 million people are chronically hungry. 283 million are in hunger crises — they are marching towardstarvation. And within that, 45 million in 43 countries across the globe are in hunger emergencies — in other words,famine is knocking on their door. Places likeAfghanistan.Madagascar.Myanmar.Guatemala.Ethiopia.Sudan.South Sudan.Mozambique.Niger.Syria,Mali,Burkina Faso,Somalia,Haiti and on and on and on. The world has often experienced famine. But when has it ever been so widespread, in so many places, at the same time? Why? Three reasons. First, man-made conflict. Dozens of civil wars and regional conflicts are raging, and hunger has been weaponized to achieve military and political objectives. Second,climate shocks /climate change.Floods,droughts,locusts and rapidly changingweather patterns have created severecrop failures around the world. Third, COVID-19. The viral pandemic has created a secondary hunger pandemic, which is far worse than the first.Shutdowns destroyed livelihoods. Shutdowns stopped the movement of food. Shutdowns inflated prices. The net result is the poor of the world are priced out of survival. The ripple effect of COVID has been devastating on theglobal economy. During the pandemic, $3.7 trillion inincomes — mostly among thepoor — have been wiped out, whilefood prices are spiking. The cost of shipping food, for example, has increased 3 – 400%. But in places of conflict andlow-income countries, it is even worse. For example, inAleppo, Syria — a war zone, where I just returned from — food is now seven times more expensive than it was 2 years ago.The combined effect of these three — conflict, climate and COVID — has created an unprecedented perfect storm.
TheCenters for Disease Control and Prevention has been caught on numerous occasions engaging in statistical manipulation in order to drive up a perpetual state of fear among Americans – all with the aim of coaxing people to get the Covid-19 ‘vaccine.’ But one thing the CDC appears entirely unwilling to do is to document the ways that natural immunity has made the vaccines redundant at best, and harmful at worst, for those who were previously infected.
It is these very conditions that facilitate the emergence of newinfectious diseases and that also inflict horrific harms onanimals — being kept in confined conditions and then butchered. Simply put, the coronavirus pandemic is a result of our grossmaltreatment of animals.
.. the ban, pending government approval, would last 14 days. Officials hope that within that period there will be more information on how effectiveCOVID-19 vaccines are againstOmicron, which was first detected inSouth Africa and has been dubbed a "variant of concern" by theWorld Health Organization
Like humans, pathogens do not respect species boundaries. Overall, nearly eight billion people, many with advanced technologies and rapacious appetites, are tearingecosystems apart and within these ecosystems live millions of different kinds ofviruses,bacteria, and other pathogens. AsSonia Shah observes in her bookPandemic, society operates with an erroneous paradigm ofdisease, treating diseases as foreign invaders into our territory (a mentality she describes as “microbialxenophobia”), when in fact we are the invading species encroaching on the habitat and communities ofanimals andecosystems. It is wrong to say that these diseases are happening to us, rather they are the unintended results of what we are doing to the natural world. Speculations about accidental laboratory origins of outbreaks and COVID-19 conspiracy plots ofbioterrorism draw attention away from actual systemic structures and dynamics of human exploitation of nature, especially as driven by the growth-addicted world system ofcapitalism. Hardly unexpected or accidental, viral outbreaks are the inevitable consequences of human growth and expansion. All too often, we are the causes, not effects, the culprits, not victims, of pandemic-inducing pathogens.
What we shouldn't forget is how little we understood about this disease. There was a moment we were very unclear about whether domestic pets could transmit the disease. In fact, there was an idea at one moment that we might have to ask the public to exterminate all thecats inBritain. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?
From the beginning ofmy presidency, I’ve been very clear-eyed that we need to attack this virus globally, not just at home, because it’s in America’s self-interest to do so. The virus knows no boundaries. You can’t build a wall high enough to keep it out.
I've been in this (infectious diseases) business for 30 years. I've been through MERS,SARS,Ebola, the first Gulf war and the second, and I don't recall anything like this (Israeli being into unnecessary panic due to COVID-19). There's unnecessary, exaggerated panic. We have to calm people down. People are thinking that there's a kind ofvirus, it's in the air, it's going to attack every one of us, and whoever is attacked is going to die. That's not the way it is at all. It's not in the air. Not everyone (who is infected) dies. Most of them will get better and won't even know they were sick, or will have a bit of mucus.
The next level of covid escalation is questioning the justified existence of citizens that refuse to bevaccinated. It is with some irony that we are seeing the expert class increasingly sound like dissident political punditStefan Molyneux: “The time for arguments has passed.” Any concerns that once existed about the individual rights of those concerned aboutcovid vaccines—including those who have a natural immunity to the virus from prior exposures—are quickly being dismissed by those in power.
When theUN security council and theG7 group sought to agree a global response to the coronavirus pandemic, the efforts stumbled on the US insistence on describing the threat as distinctively Chinese... the focus on labelling the virus Chinese and blamingChina pursued by theUS secretary of state,Mike Pompeo, helped ensure there would be no meaningful collective response from the world's most powerful nations... For some US allies, the fixation on words at a time when theinternational order was arguably facing its greatest challenge since thesecond world war encapsulated the glaring absence of US leadership. And that absence was illustrated just as vividly by news coverage of planes full of medical supplies from China arriving inItaly, at a time when the US was quietly flying in half a million Italian-made diagnostic swabs for use in its own under-equippedhealth system andDonald Trump was on the phone to theSouth Korean president pressing him to sendtest kits.
The hands of theDoomsday Clock remain at 100 seconds to midnight, as close to midnight as ever. The lethal andfear-inspiring COVID-19 pandemic serves as a historic ‘wake-up call,’ a vivid illustration that national governments and international organizations are unprepared to manage the trulycivilization-ending threats ofnuclear weapons andclimate change.
The pandemic shutdown has shown us the problem. It has revealed what the world looks like without as much pollution, without the chaos and roar of mostly meaningless "work" performed by the exploited, using materials stolen from the abused, for the benefit of the pampered and oblivious. Another world is possible, and we've just gotten a glimpse of it. ~Lee Camp
This pandemic is not just a crisis, it's also a gift. It allows us theoxygen to notice the things we've been ignoring were the truly essential: –Learning andcreating – Enjoying cleanwater, cleanair, cleanfood, and making sure everyhuman has that right – Forming a world that will last longer than anNFL season – Spending a lot of time with your beautifulfamily (or a little time with an unsightly one) Point is — the stuff that truly matters is the stuff we were completely ignoring, blithely pushing it to the back of our minds asour planet is eaten for corporate profit. But now, during "life on hold" the natural world reclaims spaces. Beaches around the globe teem with millions ofbirds and wildlife, no longer flooded by undulating masses of fleshyapes with our frisbees, and snorkels, and beer coolers and entitlement.
Likecancer,capitalism grows until it murders the host body. During this pandemic shutdown, it's not getting the growth it needs and parts of it are becoming benign... For years...we've been lost in the frenetic pace of lives based on non-events, never pausing to reassess or recess. The spastic motion of avoidance filled the ether — afraid if we stop to truly think about it, we may find our scant few years ofconsciousness are pissed away as slaves at often meaningless jobs. They, the pustulant corporate owners, suck away our lives... And now, with life on holiday, we see almost none of it was essential... As our planet disintegrates under the weight ofconsumption andgreed, most people are trapped in extreme poverty. And that's how the system of capitalism is designed. Slightly altering capitalism will not change this reality... If we take away the false promises of capitalism and just say to people, "Private luxury is only for a few humans. You will never have it and won't even have the chance at getting it" – if we admit that – then the entire justification for capitalism evaporates... The pandemic shutdown has shown us the problem. It has revealed what the world looks like without as muchpollution, without the chaos and roar of mostly meaningless "work" performed by the exploited, using materials stolen from the abused, for the benefit of the pampered and oblivious. Another world is possible, and we've just gotten a glimpse of it.
TheCoronavirus is serious enough but it's worth recalling that there is a much greater horror approaching, we are racing to the edge of disaster, far worse than anything that's ever happened in humanhistory... the corona virus is a horrible... can have terrifying consequences but there will be recovery, while the others won't be recovered... If we don't deal with them we're done.
The scale of the plague is surprising, indeed shocking, but not its appearance. Nor the fact that theU.S. hasthe worst record in responding to the crisis. Scientists have been warning of a pandemic for years, insistently so since theSARS epidemic of 2003, also caused by acoronavirus, for whichvaccines weredeveloped but did not proceed beyond the pre-clinical level. That was the time to begin to put in placerapid-response systems inpreparation for an outbreak and to set aside spare capacity that would be needed. Initiatives could also have been undertaken to develop defenses and modes of treatment for a likely recurrence with a related virus. But scientific understanding is not enough. There has to be someone to pick up the ball and run with it. That option was barred by the pathology of the contemporarysocioeconomicorder.Market signals were clear: There’s noprofit in preventing a futurecatastrophe.
Covid-19 has revealed glaring failures and monstrous brutalities in the currentcapitalist system. It represents both a crisis and an opportunity. Contests for controlling the narratives around the meaning of this pandemic will be the terrain of struggle for either a new, more humanecommon sense and society or a return to the status quo ante. The outcome of those contests is uncertain; everything depends on the actions that people take into their hands.
Noam Chomsky and Marv Waterstone,Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance (2021), p. 344
Put your hand on thattelevision set. Hallelujah. Thank you, LordJesus. He received your healing. Now say it: "I take it. I have it. It's mine. I thank you and praise you for it. [...] I consider not symptoms in my own body, but only that whichGod has promised. Only that what the Word has said. And by His stripes, I was healed. And by His stripes, I am healed now. I am not the sick trying to get healed. I am the healed, and theDevil is trying to give me the flu!"
You may qualify for up to two weeks of health-related financial assistance IF you have been active on theDoorDash platform for at least 30 days AND have completed at least 30 deliveries in the last 30 days (counting back from the date medical documentation was acquired) AND you fulfill at least one of the following health-related requirements...
Sweden, a country which never imposed significant lockdown measures, has officially declared that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over” and announced that it will be lifting all remaining restrictions.
Children born during the pandemic score markedly lower on standard measures of verbal, motor, and overall cognitive ability, US researchers have found.
"COVID is a much more seriouspublic health issue than isinfluenza," Fauci says, noting this is especially true for older people, the group at the highest risk dying from the disease.
Amarathonrunner does not stop when the finish line comes into view; she runs harder with all the energy she has left. So must we. We can see the finish line, we are in a winning position, but now is the worst time to stop running. Now is the time to run harder and make sure we cross the line and reap the rewards of all our hard work. ~Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
"We have all been questioning, 'When does COVID look likeinfluenza?'" says Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at theUniversity of California, San Francisco. "And, I would say, 'Yes, we are there.'" Gandhi and other researchers argue that most people today have enoughimmunity — gained fromvaccination,infection or both — to protect them against getting seriously ill from COVID. And this is especially so since theomicron variant doesn't appear to make people as sick as earlier strains, Gandhi says. So unless a more virulent variant emerges, COVID's menace has diminished considerably for most people, which means that they can go about their daily lives, says Gandhi, "in a way that you used to live with endemicseasonal flu."
Humanity continues to suffer as COVID-19 spreads around the world. In 2020 alone, this novel disease killed 1.7 million people and sickened at least 70 million more. The pandemic reveals just how unprepared and unwilling countries and the international system are to handle global emergencies properly. In this time of crisis, governments too often abdicatedresponsibility, ignored scientific advice, cooperated or communicated ineffectively, and consequently failed to protect the public health and welfare of their citizens.
Amarathonrunner does not stop when the finish line comes into view; she runs harder with all the energy she has left. So must we. We can see the finish line, we are in a winning position, but now is the worst time to stop running. Now is the time to run harder and make sure we cross the line and reap the rewards of all our hard work.
The most commonly reportedmainstream media account of the creation of the Coronavirus suggests that it was derived from an animal borne microorganism... But there appears to be some evidence to dispute that... Because of that and other factors, there has also been considerable speculation that the Coronavirus did not occur naturally through mutation but rather was produced in a laboratory, possibly as abiological warfare agent. Several reports suggest that there are components of the virus that are related toHIV that could not have occurred naturally. If it is correct that the virus had either been developed or even produced to be weaponized it would further suggest that its escape from theWuhan Institute of Virology Lab and into the animal and human population could have been accidental. Technicians who work in such environments are aware that "leaks" from laboratories occur frequently.
There is, of course and inevitably, another theory. There has been some speculation that as theTrump Administration has been constantly raising the issue of growing Chinese global competitiveness as a direct threat to Americannational security and economic dominance, it must might be possible thatWashington has created and unleashed the virus in a bid to bringBeijing's growingeconomy and military might down a few notches. It is, to be sure, hard to believe that even the Trump White House would do something so reckless, but there are precedents for that type of behavior.
“There was amental health crisis before the pandemic — it just didn’t catch everyone’sattention the way it does now,” said Dr. Cori Green, the director of behavioral health education and integration inpediatrics atWeill Cornell Medicine inNew York City. Still, Dr. Green said that she is seeing more of her young patients test positive on screenings fordepression. “The pandemic led to moresocial isolation — arisk factor for depression,” she said.
The coronavirus pandemic and the environmental crisis share the same roots: humans' success as a species in arrogating global resources for themselves and the consequent ecological disturbance. This is increasing viral exchanges – first from animal to human, then from human to human – on a pandemic scale. Our environmental footprint is too large for the planet, leading toaccelerated species extinctions and atmospheric chaos. Both the Covid andclimate catastrophes are not misfortunes that befell us. They are part of a pattern ofdecisions that we humans are taking. We need to make differentchoices.
[A] pandemic thrives on humaninequities and it is inextricable from the society, economy, knowledge, and politics of human existence. During anyinfection outbreak such as COVID–19, it is thepoorer and weaker fractions of a society that remaindisproportionately affected and ultimately bear an additional burden of early death.
This is not theflu, likeSajid Javid seems to suggest. Please tell me when flu has led to 400,000 people having chronicdisability in a period of 16 months ... why would we want to expose so much of our population to herd immunity through natural infection when we have safe and effectivevaccines that could be given to them in the coming weeks.
Sadly, the deadly impact of the pandemic has been made worse by the absence of a global coordinated effort. In the memory of those two million souls, the world must act with far greater solidarity
The arrival of theCOVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, unfolding around the world as I write these words, will likely be remembered as an epochal shift. In this extended winter,as borders close, aslockdowns andquarantines multiply, as peoplesuccumb and recover, there is a strong sense that, when the spring finally arrives we will awaken in a drastically changed landscape.
Those of us now inisolation, in spite of our fear and frustrations, in spite of our grief — for those who have died or may die, for the life we once lived, for the future we once hoped for — there is also a sense we are cocooned, transforming, waiting, dreaming. True: Terrors stalk the global landscape, notably the way the virus — or our countermeasures — will endanger those among us whom we, as a society, have already abandoned or devalued. So many of us are already disposable. So many of us are only learning it now, too late. Then there is the dangerous blurring of the line betweenhumanitarian andauthoritarian measures. There is the geopolitical weaponization of the pandemic. But when the Spring comes, as it must, when we emerge from hibernation, it might be a time of profound global struggle against both the drive to "returnto normal" — the same normal that set the stage for this tragedy — and the "new normal" which might be even worse. Let us prepare as best we can, for we have a world to win.
After months of chaos, isolation and fear, the desire to return to normal, even if normal is anabusive system, may be extremely strong. The stage is set for this desire to be accompanied by a franticrevanchism. Will we want someone to blame, especially those of us who lose loved ones? Must there be blood, figurative or literal?: a baptism by fire so that the old order — which, of course, created the conditions ofausterity andinequality that made this plague so devastating — can be reborn in purified form. Of course, things will never be "normal" again: some of us, theprivileged and wealthy, may be afforded the illusion, but this illusion is likely to be carried on the backs of the vast majority who will work harder, longer and for less, suffer greater risks and fewer rewards. Thedebts of the pandemic, literal and figurative, will have to be repaid. On the other hand — or maybe at the same time — we can also expect that, amongthe powerful and among the rest of us, there will be calls to reject the "return to normal," but in order to embrace something even worse. It is likely that the chaos and deaths of the pandemic will be blamed on too muchdemocracy,liberalism andempathy. Now that states are flexing their muscles andtaking full command ofsociety, there will be many who do not want the sleeve to be rolled back down. We may yet see, in this crisis, the use ofrepressive force oncivilians — as it is already being used onmigrants andincarcerated people — and I fear that it will be seen by many as justified, ahuman sacrifice to feed the Gods offear. In the wake of the pandemic we can be sure thatfascists andreactionaries will seek to mobilize tropes of — racial, national, economic — purity, purification, parasitism, and pollution to impose their long-festering dreams on reality.
Against all these fateful outcomes there will be those among us who refuse to return to normal, or to embrace the "new normal," those of us who know that "the trouble with normal is it only gets worse." Already, in thestate of emergency that the crisis has unleashed, we are seeing extraordinary measures emerge that reveal that much of theneoliberal regime's claims to necessity and austerity were transparent lies. The God-like market has fallen, again. In different places a variety of measures are being introduced that would have been unimaginable even weeks ago. These have included the suspension ofrents andmortgages, the free provision ofpublic transit, the deployment ofbasic incomes, a hiatus in debt payments, the commandeering ofprivatized hospitals and other once-public infrastructure for the public good, the liberation of incarcerated people, and governments compelling private industries to reorientproduction to common needs. We hear news of significant numbers of peoplerefusing to work, takingwildcat labor action, and demanding their right to live inradical ways. In some places, the underhoused areseizing vacant homes. We are discovering, against the upside-down capitalist value paradigm which has enriched the few at the expense of the many, whose labor is truly valuable: care, service, and frontline public sector workers. There has been a proliferation ofgrassroots radical demands for policies of care andsolidarity not only as emergency measures, but in perpetuity.
Meanwhile, the quarantined and semi-isolated are discovering,using digital tools, new ways to mobilize to provide care andmutual aid to those in our communities in need. We are slowly recovering our lost powers of life in common, hidden in plain sight, our secret inheritance. We are learning again to become acooperative species, shedding the claustrophobic skin ofhomo oeconomicus. In the suspension of a capitalist order of competition, distrust and endless, pointless hustle, our ingenuity andcompassion are resurfacing like the birds to the smog-free sky. When the Spring arrives, the struggle will be to preserve, enhance, network and organize this ingenuity and compassion to demand no return to normal and no new normal. [...] We have learned how to bring a capitalist economy to its knees throughnon-violent protest in the face of overwhelming, technologically augmented oppression. We are learning how to become ungovernable by either states or markets. Equally important, we have learned new ways to care for one another without waiting for the state or forauthorities. We are rediscovering the power of mutual aid and solidarity. We are learning how to communicate and cooperate anew. We have learned how to organize and to respond quickly, how to make collective decisions and to take responsibility for our fate. Like the heroes of all good epics, we are not ready, our training was not completed, yet fate will not wait. Like all true heroes, we must make do with what we have: one another and nothing else. As the world closes its eyes for this strange, dreamlike quarantine — save of course for those frontline health, service and care workers who, in the service of humanity, cannot rest, or those who have no safe place to dream — we must make ready for the waking. We are on the cusp of a great refusal of a return to normal and of a new normal, a vengeful normalcy that brought us this catastrophe and that will only lead to more catastrophe. In the weeks to come, it will be time to mourn and to dream, to prepare, to learn, and to connect as best we can. When the isolation is over, we will awaken to a world where competing regimes of vindictive normalization will be at war with one another, a time of profound danger and opportunity. It will be a time to rise and to look one another in the eye.
The best way to describe COVID right now is as endemic but with these periodic epidemics. And those epidemics can vary in terms of their timing and magnitude. And that’s exactly why ongoing vigilance and surveillance is critical.
In this sense, the COVID-19 crisis has sharply underscored the irrational nature ofhealth care systemsstructured aroundcorporateprofit — the almost universal cutbacks topublic hospital staffing and infrastructure (includingcritical care beds andventilators), the lack ofpublic health provision and the prohibitive cost of access to medical services in many countries, and the ways in which theproperty rights ofpharmaceutical companies serve to restrict widespread access to potential therapeutic treatments and thedevelopment of vaccines. However, the global dimensions of COVID-19 have figured less prominently in much of the left discussion. [...] Even inside Europe there is extreme unevenness in the capacity of states to deal with this crisis — as the juxtaposition ofGermany andGreece illustrates — but a much greater disaster is about to envelop the rest of the world. In response, our perspective on this pandemic must become truly global, based on an understanding of how thepublic health aspects of this virus intersect with larger questions ofpolitical economy (including the likelihood of a prolonged and severeglobal economic downturn). This is not the time to pull up the (national) hatches and speak simply of the fight against the virus inside our own borders.
As with all so-calledhumanitarian crises, it is essential to remember that the social conditions found across most of the countries of the South are the direct product of how these states are inserted into thehierarchies of theworld market. Historically, this included a long encounter withWesterncolonialism, which has continued,into contemporary times, with the subordination ofpoorer countries to the interests of the world'swealthiest states and largesttransnational corporations. [...] Foregrounding these historical and global dimensions helps make clear that the enormous scale of the current crisis is not simply a question ofviralepidemiology and a lack ofbiological resistance to anovel pathogen. The ways that most people acrossAfrica,Latin America, theMiddle East, andAsia will experience the coming pandemic is a direct consequence of aglobal economy systemicallystructured around theexploitation of the resources andpeoples of the South. In this sense, the pandemic is very much a social andhuman-made disaster — not simply a calamity arising from natural or biological causes. One clear example of how this disaster is human-made is the poor state of publichealth systems across most countries in theSouth, which tend to be underfunded andlacking in adequate medicines, equipment, and staff. This is particularly significant for understanding the threat presented by COVID-19 due to the rapid and very large surge in serious and critical cases that typically require hospital admission as a result of the virus (currently estimated at around 15–20 percent of confirmedcases). This fact is now widely discussed in the context ofEurope and theUnited States, and lies behind the strategy of "flattening the curve" in order to alleviate the pressure on hospitalcritical care capacity.
Yet, while we rightly point to thelack of ICU beds,ventilators, and trained medical staff across many Western states, we must recognize that the situation in most of the rest of the world is immeasurably worse.Malawi, for example, has about 25 ICU beds for a population of 17 million people. There are less than 2.8 critical care beds per 100,000 people on average acrossSouth Asia, withBangladesh possessing around 1,100 such beds for a population of over 157 million (0.7 critical care beds per 100,000 people). In comparison, the shocking pictures coming out ofItaly are occurring in an advancedhealth care system with an average 12.5 ICU beds per 100,000 (and the ability to bring more online). The situation is so serious that manypoorer countries do not even have information on ICU availability. [...] Of course, the question of ICU andhospital capacity is one part of a much larger set of issues including a widespread lack of basic resources (e.g., clean water, food, and electricity), adequate access to primary medical care, and the presence of othercomorbidities (such as high rates ofHIV andtuberculosis). Taken as a whole, all of these factors will undoubtedly mean a vastly higher prevalence of critically ill patients (and hence overall fatalities) across poorer countries as a result of COVID-19.
Debates around how best to respond to COVID-19 inEurope and theUnited States have illustrated the mutually reinforcing relationship between effective public health measures and conditions of labor,precarity, andpoverty. Calls for people toself-isolate when sick — or the enforcement of longer periods of mandatorylockdowns — are economically impossible for the many people who cannot easily shift theirwork online, or those in the service sector who work inzero-hour contracts or other kinds oftemporary employment. Recognizing the fundamental consequences of these work patterns for public health, many European governments have announced sweeping promises around compensation for those madeunemployed or forced to stay at home during this crisis. It remains to be seen how effective these schemes will be, and to what degree they will actually meet the needs of the very large numbers of people who will lose their jobs as a result of the crisis. Nonetheless, we must recognize that such schemes will simply not exist for most of the world's population. In countries where the majority of the labor force is engaged ininformal work or depends upon unpredictable daily wages — much of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Asia — there is no feasible way that people can chooseto stay home or self-isolate. This must be viewed alongside the fact that there will almost certainly be very large increases in the "working poor" as a direct result of the crisis.
Without the mitigation effects offered throughquarantine and isolation, the actual progress of the disease in the rest of the world will certainly be much more devastating than the harrowing scenes witnessed to date in China, Europe, and the United States. Moreover, workers involved in informal and precarious labor often live in slums andovercrowded housing — ideal conditions for the explosive spread of the virus. [...] Similarly disastrous scenarios face the many millions of people currently displaced through war and conflict. The Middle East, for example, is the site of the largestforced displacement since theSecond World War, withmassive numbers of refugees andinternally displaced people as a result of the ongoing wars in countries such asSyria,Yemen,Libya, andIraq. Most of these people live inrefugee camps or overcrowded urban spaces, and often lack the rudimentaryrights to health care typically associated withcitizenship. The widespread prevalence ofmalnutrition and other diseases (such as thereappearance of cholera in Yemen) make these displaced communities particularly susceptible to the virus itself.
One microcosm of this can be seen in theGaza Strip, where over 70 percent of thepopulation arerefugees living in one of the mostdensely packed areas in the world. The first two cases of COVID-19 were identified inGaza on March 20 (a lack of testing equipment, however, has meant that only 92 people out of the 2-million-strong population have been tested for the virus). Reeling from thirteen years ofIsraeli siege and the systematic destruction of essential infrastructure, living conditions in the Strip are marked byextreme poverty, poorsanitation, and a chronic lack of drugs and medical equipment (there are, for example, only sixty-two ventilators in Gaza, and just fifteen of these are currently available for use). Under blockade and closure for most of the past decade, Gaza has been shut to the world long before the current pandemic. The region could be the proverbial canary in the COVID-19 coalmine — foreshadowing the future path of the infection among refugee communities across the Middle East and elsewhere.
It is not enough to speak ofsolidarity and mutualself-help in our own neighborhoods, communities, and within ournational borders — without raising the much greater threat that this virus presents to the rest of the world. Of course,high levels of poverty,precarious conditions of labor andhousing, and a lack of adequate health infrastructure also threaten the ability of populations across Europe and the United States to mitigate this infection. Butgrassroots campaigns in the South are building coalitions that tackle these issues in interesting andinternationalist ways. Without a global orientation, we risk reinforcing the ways that the virus has seamlessly fed into the discursive political rhetoric ofnativist andxenophobic movements — a politics deeply seeped inauthoritarianism, an obsession withborder controls, and a "my country first"nationalpatriotism.
As the coronavirus epidemic stretches on, working people are facingan economic collapse, the likes of which have not been seen since theGreat Depression. Organizing to fight for an immediate ban on all layoffs has to be an essential part of any program to protect theworking class and to make the capitalist's pay for their crisis.
as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the official Covid narrative is finally falling apart, or is being hastily disassembled, or historically revised, right before our eyes. The “experts” and “authorities” are finally acknowledging that the “Covid deaths” and “hospitalization” statistics are artificially inflated and totally unreliable
There’s still a lot of unpredictability with this virus. And a lot of scientists including myself think it’s going to take at least a decade for SARS-CoV2 to really find this really predictable pattern. I hope that over time that it will fade into the background. But we’re just not there yet.
“We’re not trying to go forzero Covid,”Ashish Jha, dean of theBrown University School of Public Health, told me. “The question becomes: When do, in most communities, people feel comfortable going about their daily business and not worrying, excessively, about doing things that are important and meaningful to them?”
If you are up-to-date on yourvaccines today, and you avail yourself of the treatments, your chances of dying of COVID are vanishingly rare and certainly much lower than your risk of getting into trouble with theflu.
Vladimir Putin's government has also been accused of downplaying the severity of the outbreak. Officially, there have been 2,337 casesin Russia—very low by international standards—but low testing rates make it hard to know for sure. Critics suggest that a suspiciously nationwide uptick inpneumonia cases in recent weeks actually consists of undiagnosedCOVID-19 cases. Aggressive measures put in place to punish the spread of "false" information on the outbreak online may also be preventing media outlets from publishing accurate information. After moving much more slowly than other governments to order lockdowns and social distancing measures,Russia is finally implementing new rules as the number of cases has grown rapidly in recent days. Putin, who was highly visible while touting the government's efforts to contain the disease's spread early on, was conspicuously absent when it was time to deliver the bad news. The impending crisis has not stopped Russia's government from scoring apropaganda coup by shipping medical supplies to other countries—including the U.S.
It may not just be dictatorships that are playing this game. Given its proximity toChina, highelderly population, and highsmoking rate,Japan would seem to be highly vulnerable to the coronavirus. Yet the number of cases and deaths in the country has been conspicuously low until recent days—perhaps suspiciously low. Japan, which has not adopted widespread testing or the kinds of strict social distancing measures seen elsewhere, saw the number of cases spike dramatically since it was announced last week that the2020 Olympics wouldbe postponed.
Dr.Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, highlighted that the virus is still “ intensely circulating” around the world and that the agency believes that case numbers being reported are an underestimate. “We expect that there are going to be future waves of infection, potentially at different time points throughout the world caused by different subvariants of Omicron or even different variants of concern”, she said, reiterating her previous warning that the more the virus circulates, the more opportunities it has to mutate. However, she said, these future waves do not need to translate into “waves or death” because there are now effective tools such as vaccines and antivirals specifically for COVID-19.
WhileMalaysians are concerned about the spread of the (COVID-19) virus to our shores, we are equally sympathetic towardsChina, especially given that the two countries share deepcultural andbusiness ties which have been built over decades.
Is the current death toll — of more than 1,500 a day, or equivalent to more than 500,000 deaths a year — too much? Many people would say, of course, it is. But in the middle of a delta variant surge, Americans may be revealing their preferences as restaurant reservations are now around the pre-pandemic normal — a sign the country is moving on. ~ German Lopez
The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedentedglobalhealth, social and economic crisis. Historical comparisons are few, particularly in recent decades. This tragedy constitutes nothing less than a trial for allhumanity. The two meanings of theFrench word"épreuve" captures the dual significance of what we now confront:épreuve in the sense of an ordeal, an immense and painful undertaking, but also a test, an evaluation, or a judgment. The pandemic, in other words, is now testing the capacity of ourpolitical andeconomic systems to cope with a global problem situated at the level of ourindividualinterdependence, which is to say at the very foundation of our social life. Like adystopia made real, the current situation provides us with a glimpse of what soon awaits humanity ifglobal economic andpolitical structures are unable to radically and rapidly transform in order to confront theclimate change crisis.
First observation: around the world, we are all willing to rely on thesovereign power of thenation state to respond to this global epidemic in two more or less complimentary ways: on the one hand, we count on the state to enactauthoritarianmeasures tolimit personal contact, largely by establishing "states of emergency" (whether officially declared or not) as inItaly,Spain,France and elsewhere. On the other hand, we expect the state to protect citizens by preventing the virus being "imported" from abroad. Social discipline and nationalprotectionism are thus the two primary weapons deployed in our fight against the pandemic. Here, we see the two faces of state sovereignty: internaldomination and external independence.
What we have witnessed so far is cause for alarm. Theinstitutionalxenophobia of the state form is becoming especially manifest just as we are gaining increasing awareness of the lethal danger the virus poses for all humanity. TheEuropean states responded to the initial spread of the coronavirus in a totally uncoordinated fashion. Very quickly, most European states —Central Europe in particular — locked themselves behind theadministrative walls of their nationalterritory in order to protect their population from the "foreign virus," and the first countries in Europe to cloister themselves in were also the mostxenophobic. This set the tone throughout Europe and the rest of the world: every state must look after their own — to the delight of theextreme right in Europe and elsewhere. And nothing has been more abject than the lack ofsolidarity with the most affected countries.Italy's abandonment by France andGermany — who pushed selfishness to new heights by refusing to send Italy medical equipment andprotective masks — sounded the death knell for a Europe built on a foundation of generalizedcompetition between states.
TheWHO has beenfinancially weakened for the past several decades, and is now largely dependent on private donors, with 80 percent of its funding coming from private businesses orfoundations. But despite its weakened condition, the WHO could have still provided an initial framework for globalcooperation in the fight against the pandemic, not only because of the reliable information it had gathered since the beginning ofJanuary, but also because its recommendations for radical and earlycontrol of the epidemic were ultimately correct. According to theDirector-General of the WHO, the choice to abandon systematictesting andcontract tracing, which were effective inKorea andTaiwan, was a major mistake that contributed to thespread of the virus in virtually every country. The ultimate cause of this alarming delay were strategic choices. Italy was quickly forced to adopt a strategy of absoluteconfinement in order to halt the epidemic, asChina had previously done. Other countries waited far too long to react, largely on the basis of thefatalist and crypto-Darwinian strategy of "herd immunity."Boris Johnson'sUnited Kingdom was entirely passive in its initialapproach, and other countries equivocated and delayed their restrictive measures, such as France and Germany, not to mention theUnited States.
By adopting a strategy of "mitigation," or epidemic delay by "flattening the curve," these countries have de facto renounced any serious attempt to keep the virus under control from the start through the use of systematic screening and general confinement of the population, as was done inWuhan andHubei province. According to the forecasts of the German and French governments, the strategy of collective immunity necessitates 50 to 80 percent contamination across the entire population. This amounts to accepting thedeaths of hundreds of thousands — even millions — of people who are supposedly the "most fragile." All the while, the WHO's recommendations were very clear: states must not abandon systematic screening and contact tracing of anyone who tests positive for the virus.
What has since become abundantly apparent is the destructive influence ofbehavioral economics and the so-called "nudge theory" of politicaldecision-making, which relies onincentives andstimulito steer individual behavior, rather thancoercion or restraint. We now know that the "nudge unit," or the "Behavioural Insights Team," that advises theBritish Government successfully convinced the state of their theory that individuals who are too quickly constrained by severe measures will tire and relax their discipline when theepidemic reaches its peak, which is precisely when discipline is needed most. Since 2010,Richard Thaler'seconomic theory — which he outlines in the bookNudge (2009) — is widely thought to be the best means for producing "efficient state governance." This approach tells us to encourage people, without coercing them, to make the best decisions through the use of "nudges": by using gentle, indirect, comfortable and optionalinfluences upon individuals who are still ultimatelyfree to make their own choices. The application of this "libertarian paternalism" in the fight against the epidemic has been two-fold: (a) the rejection of any coercive measures to regulate individualbehavior and (b) a preference for "barrier gestures":keep your distance,wash your hands,cough into your elbow,self-isolate if you have a fever and all for your own benefit. This wager to rely on soft, voluntary measures was risky: there is no scientific or empirical evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach in the context of an epidemic. And it is now all too clear that this approach entirely failed.
Thepublic service is a mechanism by which the governors become the servants of the governed. These obligations, which are imposed on those who govern as well as the agents of government, form the basis of what Duguit calls "public responsibility." This is why the public service is a principle of social solidarity, one which is imposed on all, and not a principle of sovereignty, inasmuch as the latter is incompatible with the very idea of public responsibility. This conception of the public service has largely been suppressed by the fiction of state sovereignty. But the public service nonetheless continues to make itself felt by virtue of the strong connection citizens feel toward what they still consider to be afundamental right. For thecitizen's right to public services is the strict corollary of the duty or obligation of state representatives to provide public services. This why the citizens of various European countries affected by the current crisis have demonstrated, in diverse ways, their attachment to public services in their daily fight against the coronavirus: for instance, the citizens of numerousSpanish citieshave applauded theirhealthcare workers from their balconies, regardless of their political attitude toward thecentralizedunitary state. [...] Two relations must therefore be carefully separated here: the citizenry’s attachment to the public service, andhealthcare in particular, in no way suggests adherence to publicauthority or public power in its various forms, but rather suggests an attachment to services whose essential function is to meet the public's need. Far from disclosing an underlying identification with the nation, this attachment gestures toward a sense of a universal that crosses borders, and accordingly renders us sensitive to the trials our "pandemic co-citizens" are enduring, whether they are Italian, Spanish, or live beyond European borders. We are extremelyskeptical ofMacron's promise to be the first leader to question "our developmental model" after the crisis is over, and there are plenty of reasons to think that the drastic economic measures currently in place will eventually share the same fate as those enacted during the2008 economic crisis: we will likely see a concerted effort to "return to normal" — i.e., return to our otherwise uninterrupteddestruction of the planet amidst increasingly conditions ofsocial inequality. And we fear the enormousstimulus packages designed to "save the economy" will once again beborne on the backs of thelowest-paid workers andtaxpayers.
What I found disgusting and really distressing ... was not just the travel ban being implemented by theUK and Europe but that that was the only reaction, or the strongest reaction.
There was no word of support that they're going to offer toAfrican countries to help us control the pandemic and particularly no mention of addressing this vaccine inequity that we have been warning about all year and [of which] we are now seeing the consequences play out
This coronavirus, they're just — all of this panic is just not warranted. This, I'm telling you, when I tell you — when I've told you that this virus is thecommon cold. When I said that, it was based on the number of cases. It's also based on the kind of virus this is.
Three years ago, experts were saying that bat coronaviruses could become a new pandemic. Almost two months ago, experts were saying that the new virus inWuhan was potentially a global threat. One month ago, experts were saying that it was likely to be pandemic, andthe White House's response was that this was under control, despite the fact thatthe US'stesting was demonstrably giving a false picture of the extent of infection. This was foreseeable, and foreseen, weeks and months ago, and only now is the White House comingout of denial and heading straight into saying it could not have been foreseen.
Are 30,000 to 40,000 deaths a year too many? That’s generally what the country sees with gun violence and car crashes — and American policymakers, at least, haven’t been driven to major actions on these fronts. Are as many as 60,000 deaths a year too many? That’s what Americans have tolerated for the flu. Are 90,000 deaths a year too many? That’s the death toll of the ongoing drug overdose crisis — and while policymakers have taken some steps to combat that, experts argue the actions so far have fallen short, and the issue doesn’t draw that much national attention. Is the current death toll — of more than 1,500 a day, or equivalent to more than 500,000 deaths a year — too much? Many people would say, of course, it is. But in the middle of a delta variant surge, Americans may be revealing their preferences as restaurant reservations are now around the pre-pandemic normal — a sign the country is moving on.
Sweden is now down to 50th in the ranking of total Covid deaths per capita since the pandemic began. Almost every other country ranked above Sweden had lockdowns, mask mandates and draconian restrictions. Sweden meanwhile, largely kept its society open and freedoms intact. ~ James Melville
The Covid-19 pandemic has jolted everyone into a renewed interest inenvironmentalism,sustainability, andconservation. In fact, nature is celebrating in the wake of the pandemic. Animals have been found roaming the streets of numerous cities around the world because humans have temporarily retreated.Fish are being seen in rivers previously too polluted to support life, and theskies have cleared up ofpollution. It is unfortunate that humanity needed this hard knock to give back nature its share, at least in the short term. But this wakeup call could also be an opportunity to bring spirituality back into people’s lives in a big way.
Malhotra, R. (2021). Artificial intelligence and the future of power: 5 battlegrounds. New Delhi : Rupa, 2021.
The pandemic appears to have given a boost to the China-likecommand societies and economies in times of disaster when the pragmatics of rapid decision-making and implementation take priority over aesthetic values likeindividualism andfreedom.
Malhotra, R. (2021). Artificial intelligence and the future of power: 5 battlegrounds. New Delhi : Rupa, 2021.
[Kiribati’s industry is taking the time to get even better prepared for reopening. On Friday, some staff will set sail for remote areas ofKiribati’s Line Islands to deliver the training to operators there.]“ nstead, of sulking we are taking this as an opportunity to really restart better.
And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently. And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal. And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.
Sweden is now down to 50th in the ranking of total Covid deaths per capita since the pandemic began. Almost every other country ranked above Sweden had lockdowns, mask mandates and draconian restrictions. Sweden meanwhile, largely kept its society open and freedoms intact.
Governments around the world say they’re engaged in a war against the coronavirus. [...] This kill-or-die idiom is more than casual rhetorical overkill. Many governments are symbolically but very deliberately calling, in this time of fear and uncertainty, for generalconscription alongmilitary lines. This is so they can, while pointing to an insidious foreign enemy, aim their firepower against some of the most valuable institutions of domestic public life. They have been very successful so far. [...] In addition toeconomic and militarymobilization,wartime measures typically encourage a high degree of political, social and intellectualconformity. The general idea is that, in the face of an existential challenge from a viciousenemy,criticism of the government ought to cease. Themedia tends to become morepatriotic, as do formerpolitical partisans. Such was the case in theUnited States during the early stages ofits wars inAfghanistan andIraq, when most journalists and evenDemocratic politicians rallied around theRepublicanGeorge W. Bush administration. The trouble is that the "war" against Covid-19 is actually not a war at all. And no one should feel obliged to sign up for it. The loss of, and separation from, loved ones, and the fear andanxiety that is devastating many lives is not an opportunity to fantasize about heroism in battle. The pandemic is, primarily, aglobal public health emergency; it is made potentially lethal as much by long neglected and underfunded socialwelfare systems as by a highly contagious virus. A plain description like this is not as stirring as a call to arms — and doesn’t justify the moreextreme actions governments have taken against critics during the crisis. It does, however, open up a line of inquiry thatjournalists ought to pursue, now as well as in the future.
Awakening late to the pandemic,authoritarian or authoritarian-minded leaders have turned it into an opportunity both to shore up their power and to conceal their stunning ineptitude. To fail to see through their manufacturedfog of war, as many in the media are doing, can only further endanger the long-term moral and political health of their societies.
During the pandemic, many of us have begun to discover how much of ourtravel is unnecessary.Governments can build on this to create plans for reducing the need to move, while investing in walking, cycling and – when physical distancing is less necessary –public transport. This means wider pavements, better cycle lanes, buses run for service not profit. They should invest heavily ingreen energy, and even more heavily in reducing energy demand – through, for example, home insulation and better heating and lighting. The pandemic exposes the need for betterneighbourhood design, with less public space given tocars and more topeople. It also shows how badly we need the kind of security that a lightly taxed, deregulated economy cannot deliver.
Let's have what many people were calling for long before this disaster hit: agreen new deal. But please let's stop describing it as a stimulus package. We have stimulated consumption too much over the past century, which is why we face environmental disaster. Let us call it a survival package, whose purpose is to provide incomes, distribute wealth and avoid catastrophe, without stoking perpetual economic growth.Bail out thepeople, not thecorporations. Bail out the living world, not its destroyers.
There are two ways this could go. We could, as some people have done, double down ondenial. Some of those who have dismissed other threats, such as climate breakdown, also seek to downplay the threat of Covid-19... Or this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed bybiology andphysics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life.
To counteract all this, we are told that big government must now return, to regain control,redistribute resources and, with enlightened industrial policy, steer resources to particular national industries andgreen technology. This is what the debate looked like even before the pandemic. When the new coronavirus ravagedthe planet, suspicion of the outside world andfree trade exploded. Governments began to close their borders and demand that supply chains be repatriated. ‘I don’t want to talk about a victory lap,’Trump’s rather enthusiastic business secretary said about the ravages of the virus, but ‘I think it will help to accelerate the return of jobs toNorth America.’Financial Times’ global business columnist Rana Foroohar declared that ‘Globalisation as we’ve known it for the last forty years, has failed.’Governments, meanwhile, decided that the way to protect the economy was bailouts for everyone – first for the financial sector, then for everybody else. People got used to the idea that gains are to beprivatized but a growing share of losses are to be covered bytaxpayers or central banks. When they run out of money, they just print more and when this creates inflation, people need another round of bailouts to compensate for higher prices. And so on.
Johan Norberg,The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World (2023)
Thepandemic, explained theSwedish Prime MinisterMagdalena Andersson, was the definitive ‘end of theneoliberal era inaugurated byThatcher andReagan’. We don’t just hear that fromSocial Democrats these days. Now right-wingpopulists,journalists andeconomists also claim that ‘the Reagan/Thatcher era is over’. These two leaders are often used as symbols of the era ofeconomic liberalization in the early1980s, and I agree that it feels an awful lot like that era has come to an end.Donald Trump’s advisorStephen Moore declared that the Republicans are no longer Reagan’s party but Trump’s, and that’s exactly how the party comes across in their recent agitation againstfree trade,immigration andtech companies, not to mentionlies about election fraud. (Reagan once called the peaceful transfer of power the ‘magic’ of the free world.) Thatcher’s Tories have abandoned theEuropean single market she was once instrumental in developing, and have simultaneously abandoned many other economic orthodoxies, toying with more active industrial policies and ‘Buy British’ slogans – a new attitude thatBoris Johnson in an unguarded moment happened to summarize as ‘fuck business’. His short-lived successor,Liz Truss, who famously declared that large-scale imports ofcheese were ‘a disgrace’, tried to invoke the Iron Lady, albeit through her boldness rather than her policies. Instead, Truss railed against the ‘consensus of the Treasury, of economists, with theFinancial Times’ that budgets should be balanced and went on to doom her premiership with a massive, unfunded package ofenergy subsidies andtax cuts, whichmarkets refused to finance.
Johan Norberg,The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World (2023)
Why not take advantage of theknowledge of theGlobal South? If wework together this way, then we canprotect the whole globe. ~ Tulio de Oliveira
You might remember Covid! It's theStephen Miller of diseases, in that we were all very worried about it a few years ago and have since moved on even though it's still extremely dangerous.
John Oliver,Last Week Tonight with John Oliver -- "Pig Butchering Scams" (March 3, 2024)
In fact, de Oliveira says that compared to thewealthynations of theGlobal North,countries of the Global South actually have a leg up: "We have moreexperience dealing withepidemics in the Global South," he says. He gives a rueful chuckle. "It's one of our onlyscientific advantages." It's whyBrazil has some of the foremost experts onmosquito-borne outbreaks likeZika andChikungunya. WhyUganda is so good onviral hemorrhagic fevers likeEbola. InSouth Africa the scourge has beenHIV. To deal with it de Oliveira didn't just study up ongenomicsurveillance, he helped pioneer its use. "Yeah, very early on," he says. "Probably in 1995. When the field was just starting." In other words, it wasn't a fluke that South Africa stood up their COVID genomic surveillance so fast. They were building onyears of priorwork.
De Oliveira says those early efforts included developing methods to minimize the number of samples thatclinics would need to send in so thatSouth Africa's already strappedhealth workers could contribute. And yet, de Oliveira says, the burden those health workers face is something many of his Global North colleagues overlook. "They come with these greatideas of setting up these really advancedcomputer systems in the clinic." De Oliveira's response: First try spending aday at one of our rural clinics. "Most of them just burst intotears during the process," he says. "And they're like, 'Oh! I didn't realize that that clinic would have like, 500 people in the queue. And like, people almost dying and the doctors didn't have the tools. And that if I put in an advanced computer system that tries to get [hundreds of samples], not only is it going to have no effect, but it will disturb the clinicians who are overworked.' "
And so as theworld mobilizes to catchfuturepandemics, de Oliveira has a request: Let the Global South take the lead. "Why not take advantage of theknowledge of the Global South?" he says. "If wework together this way, then we canprotect the whole globe."
The situation with the coronavirus is different from theCharlie Hebdo incident, because this is neither a religious nor a political conflict. In 2015, the political opposition was looking for a way of stirring up an uprising in order to be able to overthrow the government of the day, and the Church was a handy scapegoat. But I believe that with the coronavirus they will not venture to attack the Christians in the same way.
The whole messaging of this pandemic is you're stuck at hometeleworking, that must be really tough so here are some recipes for sourdough starter, and here's what you should catch up onNetflix. ~ Nick Papageorge
"The whole messaging of this pandemic is you're stuck at hometeleworking, that must be really tough so here are some recipes for sourdough starter, and here's what you should catch up onNetflix," Papageorge said. "But what about the people who aren't teleworking? What are they going to do?" People with access to the outdoors at home were 20% more likely to maintain social distance. "It's not shocking that if you don't live in a comfortable house you're going to be leaving your house more often," Papageorge said. "But the point we want to push is that if I'm a policymaker maybe I really need to think about opening city parks in a dense neighborhood during a pandemic. Maybe that's something that's worth the risk. This is why we want to understand these details -- they can eventually suggest policies."
Apandemic has been declared, but not for the 24,600 who die every day from unnecessarystarvation, and not for 3,000 children who die every day from preventablemalaria, and not for the 10,000 people who die every day because they are deniedpublicly-funded healthcare, and not for the hundreds of Venezuelans and Iranians who die every day because America'sblockade denies them life-saving medicines, and not for the hundreds of mostly children bombed or starved to death every day inYemen, in a war supplied and kept going, profitably, by America and Britain. Before you panic, consider them.
Even among the experts I’ve spoken to over the past few weeks, there’s wide disagreement on how much risk is tolerable, when milder precautions like masking are warranted, and at what point harsher measures, like lockdowns and school closures, are needed. There’s not even agreement on what the endgame is; some say that, from a policy standpoint, the goal should be to keep caseloads manageable for hospitals, while others call for doing much more to drive down Covid-19. One big problem identified by experts: “I don’t think we’re having those conversations enough,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist atGeorge Mason University, told me. Instead of the public and officials openly discussing how much risk is acceptable, the public dialogue often feels like two extremes — the very risk-averse and those downplaying any risk of the coronavirus whatsoever — talking past each other.
If I had to sum it up, I would say sheer madness. It's obscene. It's strictly political, really, an attempt to divert from what we all know has been a gross mismanagement of the prevention phase of this in the United States and the response phase, and it's tragic because theWorld Health Organization now is moving into a phase where it is going to try to help avert a catastrophe in the developing world. If we think about how difficult it has been for us in the United States with our sophisticated healthcare system to manage this crisis, imagine living in a slum in a developing country or in a refugee camp. And in places like that, the only place you really have to turn for expertise and for financial support is the World Health Organization when governments themselves can't provide the resources. So the timing of this is particularly catastrophic because it is just about to wallop parts of the world in vulnerable communities that really can't handle it. I mean, Trump has a point about aspects of the World Health Organization's response that have been problematic. The problem is his very criticisms are ones that you could levy just as easily at him, overreliance on China, flattery of China, sucking up to China, to put it in an undiplomatic way. I mean, that's something that we saw it characterize the early phase of the U.S. response led by President Trump, and downplaying the crisis until it was too late, missing the month of February, as he did, to get the testing apparatuses in place and put in place the kinds of guidelines that we have now but at the time when it's already spread across the country.
Samantha Power, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, on PresidentTrump's plan to halt the half a billion dollars to the WHO, interview inCNN'sNew Day on 15 April 2020.Transcript online atCNN.
The moment that the Chinese scientists and doctors announced that thecoronavirus could be transmitted between human beings on Jan. 20, 2020, thesocialist governments went into action to monitor ports of entry and to test and trace key parts of the population. They set up task forces and procedures to immediately make sure that the infection would not go out of control amongst their people. They did not wait till the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic on March 11. This is in stark contrast to governments in the United States, the United Kingdom,Brazil,India, and othercapitalist states, where there has been a hallucinatory attitude towards the Chinese government and the WHO. There is no comparison between the stance of Vietnam’s Prime MinisterNguyen Xuan Phuc and U.S. PresidentDonald Trump: the former had a sober,science-based attitude, while the latter has consistently laughed off the coronavirus as a simple flu as recently as June 24.
If the government continues with its ‘zero-COVID’ policy,Foxconn would only be the beginning. There is Foxconn today, but otherfactories will face similar situations
People inoculated against Covid-19 are just as likely to spread the delta variant of the virus to contacts in their household as those who haven’t had shots, according to new research.
Vaccines against the coronavirus may impair the body’s ability to produce a key type of antibody, thus potentially limiting the immune system’s defenses against mutated strains of the virus, a new study suggests.
Successful vaccine rollouts have failed to stop Covid transmission, with new data showing the prevalence of the virus increasing in fully jabbed individuals, according to a medical study in The Lancet. Examining new infections inGermany, researchers found that the rate of cases among fully vaccinated individuals aged 60 and older has risen from 16.9% in July to 58.9% in October.
I think it's reallyimportant people have an accurate sense of thereality in order to go about theirlives. If theirrisk assessments are being driven by or influenced by these overestimated hospitalization and death rates, I think that'sproblematic.
COVID-19 is a terrible warning against complacency in the face of global threats to all human life. The past twelve months have served to reinforce the messages that theBulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been saying for decades: that it is only through collective action and responsible leadership that we can secure a peaceful and habitable planet for future generations. The newPresidency of Joe Biden has a chance to reassert US commitments to the values and institutions ofmultilateralism; there is no other way for humanity to overcome the dangers posed by pandemics, climate change and the risk ofnuclear war.
The pandemic-related economic slowdown temporarily reduced the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. But over the coming decadefossil fuel use needs to decline precipitously if the worst effects ofclimate change are to be avoided. Instead, fossil fuel development and production are projected to increase. Atmosphericgreenhouse gas concentrations hit a record high in 2020, one of the two warmest years on record. The massivewildfires andtropical cyclones of 2020 are illustrations of the major devastation that will only increase if governments do not significantly and quickly amplify their efforts to bringgreenhouse gas emissions essentially to zero.
A lot has been written about how this pandemic is exacerbatingsocial inequalities. But what if it's because oursocieties are sounequal that this pandemic happened? There is aschool of thought that, historically, {pandemics have been more likely to occur at times of social inequality anddiscord. As thepoor get poorer, the thinking goes, their baselinehealth suffers, making themmore prone to infection. At the same time they are forced to move more, insearch of work, and to gravitate to cities. The rich, meanwhile, have more to spend on luxuries, including products that hail from far-flung places. The world becomes more tightly connected through trade, and germs, people and luxury goods travel together along trade routes that connect cities. On paper, it looks like a perfect storm.
Pandemics don't always triggersocial unrest, but they can do, by throwing into relief the very inequalities that caused them. That's because they hit thepoor hardest –those in low-paid orunstable employment, who live incrowded accommodation, have underlyinghealth issues, and for whomhealthcare is less affordable or less accessible. This was true in the past and remains so today. During the2009 flu pandemic the death rate was three times higher in thepoorest fifth ofEngland's population than in therichest.Covid-19 is showing no signs of departing from the pattern, which, because of the way the socioeconomic dice fall, also has aracial dimension. But there is something brand new about this pandemic, which has never been seen before in the history of humanity – and that is our unprecedented global experiment inlockdown. These lockdown measures are designed to slow the spread of the disease, relieve the burden onhealth systems and ultimately save lives – and it looks as if they may be doing that. But they may also be exacerbating social inequalities themselves.
InIndia there have been reports of deaths amongunemployedmigrant workers returning homein search of food; many countries, including the US, have seenworkers taking industrial action, and anger has been expressed in rural communities over wealthy city-dwellers retreating to their second homes for the duration. Governments should keep an eye on these developments, in weighing up when and how to lift the lockdown, because even if it's difficult to argue today that the cure is worse than the disease, the cure might provoke an entirely different malaise – and history teaches us that no society is immune to that. That's thesymptomatic treatment. In the long term, of course, they – and we – should address the dreadful inequality in our societies, which this pandemic is picking apart with a lethal scalpel.
We believe that Spain will not have, at most, beyond a diagnosed case. Hopefully there will be no local transmission. If there is, it will be very limited and very controlled
Humans wield more power over the planet than ever before. In the wake of COVID-19, record-breaking temperatures and spiralinginequality, it is time to use that power to redefine what we mean by progress, where our carbon and consumption footprints are no longer hidden.
During lockdown... and hedgehog walkabouts were a lot safer
David SuzukiNature of things (November 12, 2021) a video with this explanation:When humanity hits pause, nature reboots. Scientists discover the surprising ways pandemic lockdowns affected our planet (youtube video not available yet)
The Corona crisis will shrink the inflow of dollars. Hopefully, this is temporary, no more than a few months. CBN can allow some downward pressure on the naira without energetically intervening to defend the exchange rate. Only if and when the rate seems that it might dip precipitously should the CBN intervene.
If one word could sum up the experience of 2020, it would be disbelief. BetweenXi Jinping’s public acknowledgment of the coronavirus outbreak on January 20, 2020, andJoseph Biden’s inauguration as the 46thpresident of the United States precisely a year later on January 20, 2021, the world was shaken by a disease that in the space of twelve months killed more than 2.2 million people and rendered tens of millions severely ill. As of the end of April 2021, when this book went to press, the global death toll exceeded 3.2 million. The danger it posed disrupted the daily routine of virtually everyone on the planet, stopped much of public life, closed schools, separated families, interrupted travel both within and between countries, and upended theworld economy. To contain the fallout, government support for households, businesses, and markets took on dimensions not seen outside wartime. It was not just by far the sharpesteconomic recession experienced sinceWorld War II, it was qualitatively unique. Never before had there been a collective decision, however haphazard and uneven, to shut large parts of the world’s economy down. It was, as theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF) put it, “a crisis like no other.”
Adam ToozeShutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy (2021)
And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? So it'd be interesting to check that.
His Majesty the (Bhutan) King'sleadership and guidance have been key to thevaccination program's success. Earlier this year (2021), Bhutan was able to inoculate more than 80% of the total population (12 years old and above), with timely and generous support from countries in the region,Europe and theUnited States. And currently, Bhutan is preparing for a nationwide third, booster, dose. Despite being a resource-constrainedeconomy, Bhutan did not compromise on the quality and standards ofCOVID-19 measures. With strict containment measures and successful vaccination programs, Bhutan did not have any positive cases from the community as of mid-December 2021 and was also able to open the economy for business. The good news is that the economy is estimated to achieve 3%GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth in 2021 from –10.8% in 2020.
In an interview withThe Economist last month,Bill Gates stated that millions of people in developing countries would die before the COVID-19 pandemic was over. He noted, importantly, that 90 percent of the deaths would not result from the virus itself, but from “indirect” effects. These include most prominently the economic impact of the pandemic, as well as other causes such as the overwhelming of medical and public health resources, which increases fatalities from other diseases. Gates was not exaggerating at all. It’s easy to see how this horror will materialize, if we project forward from the current situation.
TheWorld Food Program projects that the number of people facing acute hunger will nearly double this year, from 135 to 260 million. This is mainly a result of the economic impact of the pandemic: as theWorld Bank has noted, this is the worst globalrecession since theend of World War II, and the worst ever (since 1870) in terms of the number of countries pushed into recession. It creates poverty,extreme poverty and food shortages for hundreds of millions of people in developing countries.
Pregnant women do not seem to be at higher risk of gettingSARS-CoV-2, the virus that causesCOVID-19. However, studies have shown an increased risk of developing severe COVID-19 if they areinfected, compared with non-pregnant women of a similar age. COVID-19 during pregnancy has also been associated with an increased likelihood of pretermbirth.
In the light of the coronavirus pandemic, I focuscriticism on capitalism and thevulnerabilities it has accumulated for several reasons.Viruses are part ofnature. They have attacked human beings—sometimes dangerously—in both distant and recent history. [...] Alternative systems—those not driven by a profit-first logic—could manage viruses better. While not profitable to produce and stockpile everything needed for a viral pandemic, it is efficient. The wealth already lost in this pandemic far exceeds the cost to have produced and stockpiled the tests and ventilators, the lack of which is contributing so much to today's disaster. Capitalism oftenpursues profit at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. In this, capitalism is grossly inefficient. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to people.
"...Who do you know that has ever said, “I’m going to get really drunk and then drive around on public roads?”; Who do you know that has ever said, “I’m going to go out in public, but I refuse to wear a face mask?”
Both these questions can end in the same result to any of us in Gadsden.....If you choose to drive a vehicle when you’re drunk,..., you are putting everyone on our highways in danger of possible injury — or even death....It’s the same as choosing not to wear a face mask in public. You’re putting everyone around you in danger by possibly exposing them toCOVID-19, ultimately leading to severe illness and even death for some....You’ll never even know that you injured someone or gave them the virus that caused their death.....I’ve heard some say, “It’sMy body, my choice.” It’s your choice for your body, but not my body, or all the general public’s bodies around you that you are exposing to the virus...."
In dealing with the Covid-19 epidemic that suddenly exploded, we have given expression to the great love that unites human beings by adhering to the principle according to which people and human life must be put first, and we have written an epic of the struggle to the epidemic with intrepidity, aware of the fact that unity is strength.
_(Lee_Camp_cropped).jpg)
.jpg)
Encyclopedic article onCOVID-19 pandemic on Wikipedia
Media related toCOVID-19 pandemic on Wikimedia Commons
Travel guides forCOVID-19 pandemic from Wikivoyage