*** FUTURE POSTS WILL ALSO APPEAR AT 'NOW AND NEXT' : https://rolfnorfolk.substack.com
Monday, March 09, 2020
Panic buying: and so it begins... by Wiggia
“Even if there are no food panics requiring police or army at supermarket checkouts for rationing, emergency services are already planning to triage what they can provide with tough restrictions on their services. “
A short paragraph from Polly Toynbee’s latest Grauniad article attacking the current government and spreading more fear about the coronavirus outbreak.
Attacking the government for ‘not doing enough’ is standard practice for those of another political persuasion regardless of the gravity of the subject, but governments don’t exactly cover themselves in glory about the same events. Matt Hancock the Health Minister has assured the nation that food supplies will not suffer from any shortages and measures are in place; not that the food industry has heard anything about these measures, in fact several of the senior figures in the food industry have denied any contact with the government has taken place ! They will just do all they can to maintain supplies as normal.
The press as always are guilty of ramping up the doomsday scenario with figures of likely deaths way off the radar and no proof to back them up. The Express had the likelihood of millions catching the virus and the NHS has proclaimed measures are in place to contain the spread, extra facilities are being made available with the government's help... Of course, if the Express doomsday scenario comes to pass the NHS will have something like 6 million extra patients to deal with. The NHS has difficulty accommodating an extra six hundred in the winter. Nurses and doctors are coming out of retirement to help in the crisis; perhaps getting those who are on a three-day week to do more would be more fruitful, or is that a step too far?
The threat of millions being infected is at this stage totally unfounded, yet news(?)papers like the Express headline this as a probability. Why they should want to provoke the inevitable panic buying is a mystery yet they do it every time. Those of us who remember the fuel crisis will also remember the cars being filled after waiting hours in a queue, with 1 gallon of petrol, and when the crisis was over it was estimated that most cars had full tanks even if they were going nowhere .
We are what we are, or at least a fair number fit the profile. I am old enough to remember when chocolate came off rationing after the war and people cleared out local shops of the stuff and could be seen carrying bags of chocolates home. This is a ifferent situation for sure, but the same mentality.
Today there is also the problem, should a cordon sanitaire be imposed on people who really believe it has nothing to do with them? Human rights has a lot to answer for as many actually say (as a couple in a hotel did when spied outside their room by the pool) that they were on holiday and nothing was going to stop them getting a tan, or words to that effect. The population today is not of the Blitz mentality, more's the shame, and any closed-off areas are going to be hard to police - shooting chancers is not an option these days, where human rights come into play.
The limiting by numbers of public gatherings is also subject already to breaches. In Italy a mosque which ignored the ruling was raided, emptied and the imam arrested; I can’t see that happening here somehow. The containment used in China comes from a regime and a people who are used to that style of imposition, not so in the West.
So what will happen? Nobody really knows; all the guesses are educated and otherwises, though speculation so far is not exactly tempered, hence back to the panic buying.
I had a small taste of the rush for ‘staples’ and, with another trip and anecdotal stories from others, a small but useless compilation of the state of play in the local supermarkets. For reasons unknown, Sainsbury's came bottom of the list of the big supermarkets, with no loo rolls and no cheap pasta - cheap seems to be sold out everywhere but the more expensive remains untouched, for now. Asda only had Plenty toilet rolls (geddit?), the Co-op had dregs of everything, Morrissinghs had sold out of all bumper packs of toilet rolls, Waitrose don’t do bumper packs at all stores but still had stocks in some and Tesco locally at least seemed to have an endless supply, which is just as well as the buyers of all this paper must be planning for at least a fortnight of self-isolating on the old porcelain trombone.
Aldi, I was told, only had loose toilet rolls for sale and they were mainly on the floor: not unusual for our local Aldi as there is always plenty of stock being kicked down the aisles so toilet rolls just add to the mix. Terrible store, this one at least, why anyone goes there is a mystery.
My own trip to Waitrose showed, upon getting out of the car, a lot of people exiting with bumper (or any at all) loo roll packs, all looking suitably grim: a sort of Last Supper but with loo rolls. Inside, the pasta section, true to form, had been hollowed out of the ‘essential’ range and all else remained intact; cans of beans various were spied in quantity in many baskets and cut bread in wrappers was in abundance. The canned fish seemed normal so far, as did the packet and pot noodles - sold out everywhere in China, I’m told!
At the check-out the lady in front with the same glum face of impending national wipe-out imminent, had no loo rolls I could see, but twelve cut loaves, a large pile of cans various (at least thirty in total and , yes I did count them), and twenty packs of blueberries - is there something in that I have not been told about, or is it or just a strange taste?
It has been suggested that should loo rolls completely vanish, cutting a paper towel roll in half will suffice, or failing that the Guardian cut into squares with a piece of string through one corner is a neat alternative; and should that option fail B&Q have at the moment plenty of Vimura wallpaper. All are preferable to the awful Izal of old which I believe is still made, for who I can only guess.
Personally if the worst comes to the worst my cellar is overflowing, I shall in desperate times self isolate down there with some glasses and a corkscrew and see it all out; if there is anyone left after the allotted time please ring a bell to let me know.
Sunday, March 08, 2020
Covid-19, the magic microbe
Let’s look at WuFlu in computing
terms. China has (belatedly) chosen to be like my laptop (Windows 10/Chrome): clogging
the system with compulsory protection, spying on every move and constantly interrupting
with tailored messages. However, the annoying interference has resulted in a
slowing of the rate of new Covid-19 cases to below the UK’s when you adjust for
the size of their population, which is 21 times greater than ours.
Now let’s look at the West. Our
idea of panic is amassing unfeasible quantities of bog roll and stealing hand sanitisers
from hospitals, where if the staff can’t ensure their hygiene we are all in
deep doo-doo; hence no doubt the obsession with toilet tissue. (Though behind
us at the Lidl checkout a family was stocking up on pasta, handwash – and a
stone weight of white sugar. Priorities!)
In contrast to such pathetic
prepping, get this: a relation who works in the NHS tells us that a theatre
nurse who had just returned from Thailand was asked for a throat swab to check
she wasn’t infected – and she refused, forcing the administration to send her
home. Operating theatre – patients with open wounds - sterile environment ultra-important
– highly trained nurse fully cognizant of implications – my mind is on Planet
Boggle.
Or how about Italy’s possible ‘Patient
Zero’, who had come from abroad and tested positive for the coronavirus? He was
told to self-isolate but ignoring the instruction, continued his work delivering
food from a Chinese restaurant until the carabinieri sent him home and closed
the business. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=https://www.adnkronos.com/fatti/cronaca/2020/02/29/coronavirus-positivo-test-viola-quarantena-consegna-cibo-domicilio_JSYcH3sUwZ5TatMYxiUgWM.html&prev=search
Then there’s VICE News’ reporter
Julia Lindau, who came back to the USA from northern Italy and tweeted her
amazement at walking through JFK’s customs barrier without being asked any health-screening
questions. https://twitter.com/julialindau/status/1235714275752267776?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Is it that viruses aren’t
perceived as real? After all, we can’t see them, not even with an optical microscope.
We have to take their existence on trust from scientists and medics, like the
crazy stuff physicists give out about ‘hexaquarks’ and ‘dark matter’ https://www.space.com/hexaquarks-big-bang-form-universe-dark-matter.html
; and precautions against infection can resemble magic gestures to ward off
demons, as e.g. the disinfectant-spraying in this Chinese training exercise (why
the outside of the car?) https://observers.france24.com/en/20200228-china-video-police-fishing-net-arrest-coronavirus-covid-fake-news
. Perhaps singing Happy Birthday twice while washing one’s hands is a form of
incantation.
So, many Americans must have been
reassured when the White House told them (or more importantly, the stock
markets) that the US had it all under control https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-coronavirus-control-us-problem/story?id=69198905
, only later having to admit to a national shortage of testing kits https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51761435
so that the apparent concentration of cases in Washington State was likely a
dangerously comforting illusion. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/us/coronavirus-in-washington-state.html
In the UK, England’s Chief Medical
Officer tells us there is now a “very slim to zero” chance of avoiding a
worldwide pandemic; accordingly, we are moving from mostly attempting to
contain the virus to a “mainly delay” response to slow its spread. https://inews.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-uk-death-elderly-patient-hospital-spread-2106832
Although fatalities are much more likely among the old and/or those with
certain underlying health conditions, the real challenge for the NHS is the
possibility of being overwhelmed with critical cases. As an intensive care unit
(ICU) doctor explained in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/03/icu-doctor-nhs-coronavirus-pandemic-hospitals
, thirty (but it could be up to sixty) per cent of the population could become
infected, with perhaps one in thirty-five of those needing an ICU bed. The
maths of that means over half a million acute cases – when the country has only
some 4,000 ICU beds and those are already 90% committed to other needs. Even if
the danger has been overestimated by a factor of one thousand, the NHS faces a
potentially impossible challenge. Charles Hugh Smith points out that this lack could
contribute to a higher death rate among severe cases. http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-gathering-storm-could-covid-19.html
In preparation, our NHS relative tells us, BOC are producing more oxygen
bottles, and Army Medical Corps personnel are receiving training in ICU nursing,
so somebody up there is still trying to plan responsibly.
Ironically, where at first we
feared the spread of Covid-19 from China, now, thanks to major efforts at
containment that have not been abandoned as hopeless, the Chinese are worrying instead
about the possibility of reimporting the disease from abroad. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/china-worries-coronavirus-surge-infected-arrivals-200304062507995.html
There will be no casual strolling through airport customs there.
Among the rest of us, the reactions
vary from sanguine (‘M.D.’ in Private Eye says ‘We’re all going to die, some
much sooner than others’) to the sanguinary ‘Darwinian thinning out of the herd’
(forgetting that the most vulnerable demographic will have bred at least one
succeeding generation already.)
Covid-19 has raised a key debating
point: who gives a stuff about the old, anyway?
Friday, March 06, 2020
FRIDAY MUSIC: I'm With Her, by JD
More Americana/roots/folk music, this time from a trio of ladies you may not know. Sara Watkins is new to me but Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O'Donovan are familiar faces (and voices) from their appearances on the BBC series Transatlantic Sessions.
https://www.transatlanticsessions.com
Collectively they record as "I'm With Her."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_with_Her_(band)
....comment on the first video - "I heard that they had to put them in different rooms in the studio, not because of sound but because if you put so much talent and perfect pitch in one room, the studio spontaneously combusts." .... now ain't that the truth. three very talented musicians as individuals become almost perfect in harmony!
https://www.transatlanticsessions.com
Collectively they record as "I'm With Her."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_with_Her_(band)
....comment on the first video - "I heard that they had to put them in different rooms in the studio, not because of sound but because if you put so much talent and perfect pitch in one room, the studio spontaneously combusts." .... now ain't that the truth. three very talented musicians as individuals become almost perfect in harmony!
Thursday, March 05, 2020
Salisbury poisonings (Skripal case) and Operation Toxic Dagger
Two years after the kerfuffle over the alleged attempted novichok poison assassination by two Russian agents of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter - a story full of curious anomalies https://www.theblogmire.com/the-salisbury-poisonings-two-years-on-a-riddle-wrapped-in-a-cover-up-inside-a-hoax/ - a detail comes up that could connect the dots in a different way.
The Off-Guardian https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/04/the-skripal-case-two-years-on/ says that while the two Russian suspects were crashing around seemingly trying hard to draw attention to themselves, there was a major multi-agency military training exercise ongoing, focused on our preparedness for chemical warfare:
Were the Skripals somehow part of the exercise, and of a more complex play?
I prefer spooks and their games to be confined to the covers of John Le Carré books.
(For more on Toxic Dagger, see also https://www.gov.uk/government/news/exercise-toxic-dagger-the-sharp-end-of-chemical-warfare)
The Off-Guardian https://off-guardian.org/2020/03/04/the-skripal-case-two-years-on/ says that while the two Russian suspects were crashing around seemingly trying hard to draw attention to themselves, there was a major multi-agency military training exercise ongoing, focused on our preparedness for chemical warfare:
- The person who found them was the most senior nurse in the British Army (likely in the area as part of Toxic Dagger, the British Military’s landmark chemical weapons training exercise which began Feb 20th and ran on until March 12th).
- The nurse and her family administer “emergency aid” to the two alleged poisoning victims. Neither she nor anyone else on the scene, nor any of the first responders, ever experience any symptoms of nerve agent poisoning. Neither do any of the other people the Skripal’s came into contact with that day.
Were the Skripals somehow part of the exercise, and of a more complex play?
I prefer spooks and their games to be confined to the covers of John Le Carré books.
(For more on Toxic Dagger, see also https://www.gov.uk/government/news/exercise-toxic-dagger-the-sharp-end-of-chemical-warfare)
Wednesday, March 04, 2020
Covid-19: Getting A Grip
As cases of Covid-19 approach six
figures globally and have passed the half-century in the UK, our government has
released its Action Plan https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-action-plan
(3 March). Before we look at it, let’s consider some other points.
We’ve been relatively lucky here
and in the US. The virus reached us towards the end of the winter flu season
and thanks to a reasonably cleanly populace and alert medics ready to jump on
new cases and take the more serious to specialist facilities, the situation has
the appearance of being so well under control that wiseacres are telling us
we’ve been over-reacting https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/coronavirus_stay_calm_and_avoid_the_hype.html
and pass the port, old boy.
However, we could be in a Phoney
War period. It seems that although Covid-19 is fatal to a small percentage, the
potential scale of deaths relates more to the number of possible infections and
nobody has an immunity. It’s not just a Chinese illness: early on, a Chinese
study was released saying that East Asians might be more liable to contract the
disease because of a genetic difference in their lung cells; yet as of 4 March
16:27 GMT https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
, in Iran 92/2,922 have died, in Italy 75/2,502 – a death-to-case ratio of
three per cent in each case.
This coronavirus has now hit Africa,
South America and the Middle East, where health screening and treatment systems
are not universally well-developed. A coronavirus simulation exercise conducted
a few months before the real outbreak concluded that on average, the world’s
nations were only forty per cent prepared to deal with a pandemic https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/11/06/event-201-health-security/?fbclid=IwAR36gEPN_cBanQvewvO19pWHifTMP-aZ5PWea8B2GpjygFe2LVc1YTANuMY
. ‘WuFlu’ could go on to brew away among the billions in the southern
hemisphere, where autumn is on its way. There is also the Islamic community,
for whom pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the Five Pillars of religious duty,
incurring a ‘super-spreader’ risk as noted by Shahul H Ebrahim and Ziad A
Memish in the Lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30466-9/fulltext
(27 February). Moreover, there are many other holy sites visited by millions of
pilgrims, including internally within Iran, so flight restrictions do not
completely solve the problem.
A great global reservoir could be
building up, and we shall know what we’re facing when Britain comes again to
seasonal flu time. Paradoxically, the fact that for many the illness will be
mild, even unnoticed, makes the situation worse because those people will
likely go about as normal and stand to infect others. We should use our Phoney
War period to plan and rearm.
So we shall. Tony Blair was fond
of the phrase ‘joined-up government’, although in practice, joined-up writing
looked like a bit of a stretch, except where systemic socio-economic and
constitutional vandalism were concerned. Johnson’s first big test has turned
out to be, not Brexit but disease. I don’t know whether it’s quite fair to
suggest that Etonians generally have a penchant for delegation to ‘little men
who do that sort of thing’ but BoJo’s appointee Dominic Cummings has arrived
just in time to try out his own theories in respect of the effective management
of public affairs, and I assume this ‘Coronavirus: action plan’ document has
his fingerprints on it.
The challenge is to strike a
balance between showing the government is prepared, and scaring us. It’s not so
much a death-puppet that waggles at us, but the prospect of overburdened
hospitals and health services, and significant disruption to daily life.
At present, for every person who
dies in hospital (thankfully, nobody in Britain, yet) there are several more in
intensive care, plus further numbers within hospitals and even more at home.
The team has thought of this (point 2.7) and estimates that at its peak the
disease may cause up to a fifth of workers to be absent from duty. This has
been repeated in the news media and BoJo has undertaken to allow Statutory Sick
Pay to be paid from the first day of illness. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-news-boris-johnson-statutory-sick-pay-self-isolation-a9374696.html
The general treatment strategy
(2.9) is fourfold: Self isolation, managing symptoms, support for patients with
complications, but most people to manage at home.
The wider strategy (3.7) is to
Contain, Delay (to allow time for more clement weather, for research and the
development of a vaccine – but paragraph 4.25 notes the need to weigh the
‘social costs’ of implementing actions), Mitigate the consequences, and
continue with Research. À propos the last, the document notes (4.32) King’s
College London’s work on ‘Emergency Preparedness and Response’ and (4.33)
Imperial College’s unit developing Modelling Methodology.
The plan also reminds us of the
complexities of devolved government, so HMG is taking that into consideration.
Let’s hope that TV interviewers think twice before macho, pen-twiddling ragging
of central government ministers about matters for which regional government is
responsible https://conservativewoman.co.uk/narky-newman-plumbs-new-depths/
.
A point that is both reassuring and
worrying is in (4.8): ‘new powers for medical professionals, public health
professionals and the police to allow them to detain and direct individuals in
quarantined areas at risk or suspected of having the virus.’ Let us hope the
Opposition will keep a beady eye on the potential for abuse of such powers, and
insist on periodic reviews and sunset clauses.
The paper reminds us that Dad can’t
do it all for us, and the advice is worth quoting in full:
4.34 Everyone can help
support the UK’s response by:
• following public health
authorities’ advice, for example on hand washing
• reducing the impact and
spread of misinformation by relying on information from trusted sources, such
as that on www.nhs.uk/ , www.nhsinform.scot, www.publichealth.hscni.net , https://gov.wales/coronavirus-covid-19
and www.gov.uk/
• checking and following
the latest FCO travel advice when travelling and planning to travel
• ensuring you and your
family’s vaccinations are up to date as this will help reduce the pressure on
the NHS/HSCNI through reducing vaccine-preventable diseases
• checking on elderly or
vulnerable family, friends and neighbours
• using NHS 111 (or NHS 24
in Scotland or NHS Direct Wales) (including online, where possible), pharmacies
and GPs responsibly, and go to the hospital only when you really need to. This
is further explained on the NHS website - www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/nhs-services/urgent-and-emergencycare/when-to-go-to-ae/
and http://www.choosewellwales.org.uk/home
• being understanding of
the pressures the health and social care systems may be under, and receptive to
changes that may be needed to the provision of care to you and your family.
• accepting that the
advice for managing COVID-19 for most people will be self-isolation at home and
simple over the counter medicines
• checking for new advice
as the situation changes.
So far, so good – it feels as
though intelligent management is in charge. ‘Keep calm, and carry on.’
Tuesday, March 03, 2020
Filthy: the treatment of Julian Assange
‘To this day,’ wrote the
journalist and humourist Patrick Campbell in 1967 https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9781851453160/Life-Easy-Times-Patrick-Campbell-1851453164/plp
, ‘I remain pretty well unmoved by politics... But when something happens
today, as it often does, that has the flavour of Berlin, in 1933, I’m very
liable to describe it as ‘filthy’. It’s the nearest I can get to making a
protest on behalf of humanity.’
The way that Julian Assange has
been and is being treated, is filthy. With what anger and shame must we read of
the extradition proceedings that make British justice stink like an unburied
corpse – see the account Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan and
himself a whistleblower, gave last
October https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/assange-in-court/
:
‘The charge against Julian is very specific;
conspiring with Chelsea Manning to publish the Iraq War logs, the Afghanistan
war logs and the State Department cables. The charges are nothing to do with
Sweden, nothing to do with sex, and nothing to do with the 2016 US election; a
simple clarification the mainstream media appears incapable of understanding.’
Even the Swedish authorities
wanted to drop the rape allegations, only for the UK’s Crown Prosecution
Service to email them with ‘Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!’ (The triple
exclamation marks, sic. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/feb/11/sweden-tried-to-drop-assange-extradition-in-2013-cps-emails-show
)
The Australian Embassy refused to
assist their citizen https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18546082
, so Assange went to the Ecuadorian Embassy, disguised as a courier, and had to
stay there on the first floor overlooking Harrods, for seven years, effectively
in solitary confinement, while our Government, playing Pussy, waited for him
outside his hole, blowing £11 million in police costs in the first three years https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3131882/Arrogant-Julian-Assange-condemned-refusing-leave-Ecuador-s-embassy-face-justice-rape-allegations-Met-Police-reveal-cost-11million.html
.
When Ecuador’s President, the
anti-globalist Rafael Correa, ended his third term of office he continued to
support the cause of the ‘Maus’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus
but last April the new incumbent, Correa’s former deputy Lenín Moreno invited Scotland
Yard into his diplomatically immune territory to take Assange by force. Correa
tweeted: ‘Moreno is a corrupt man, but what he has done is a crime that
humanity will never forget.’ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/apr/11/rafael-correa-ex-ecuadorian-president-slams-succes/
Some may think I have failed under
Godwin’s Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
by drawing a comparison with the totalitarianism of the Thirties and after; but
my mother was there at the time, in high school. She loved to read in the
school’s library but one day she went in and the shelves were full of big gaps:
the socialist and Jewish writers and philosophers had been removed. All the
teachers had joined the Party; and her classmates, too, but Opa (our granddad)
wouldn’t let her – a gentleman farmer, he considered the movement full of scum.
Mum had to fight boys in the playground but being sporty and thickset, won her
battles. For the rest of her life she opposed all forms of what she called
‘fanatism.’
The conduct of the proceedings has
to be read to be believed – Murray is reporting regularly https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/03/the-armoured-glass-box-is-an-instrument-of-torture/
. They are now taking place in Woolwich Crown Court, almost a granny annexe for
the top-security Belmarsh Prison that was designed to hold the country’s most
dangerous terrorists. Bearing in mind the fact that Assange attends court in a
bulletproof glass cubicle where he finds it hard to follow what is said and
cannot communicate freely with his lawyers, the prison management’s behaviour
is also scarcely credible https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/feb/25/julian-assange-handcuffed-stripped-naked-claim-lawyers
:
‘Julian Assange was handcuffed 11 times, stripped
naked twice and had his case files confiscated after the first day of his
extradition hearing, according to his lawyers, who complained of interference
in his ability to take part.’
When did you last hear of counsel
for the prosecution having to support the defence https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/02/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-2/
in their attempts to persuade the magistrate that ‘it was common practice for
magistrates and judges to pass on comments and requests to the prison service
where the conduct of the trial was affected, and that jails normally listened
to magistrates sympathetically’?
The Guardian is something of a
repentant sinner: having made liberal use of Assange’s outfit’s information,
they published a crucial password https://www.theguardian.com/media/2011/sep/01/wikileaks-prepares-unredacted-us-cables
in their book on Wikileaks that could be used to crack open the encrypted
documents that have so embarrassed the United States and some of its allies.
In 2010 the Guardian wanted him to
go back to Sweden to face charges (with the risk of being seized and taken to
the US) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/dec/19/julian-assange-wikileaks-sex-offences
; they said his fight against authoritarianism was ‘simplistic, hypocritical, as
much an authoritarian conspiracy as the United States government is; we should
disavow Assange's perspective entirely; the ends do not justify the means’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-julian-assange
.
Well, as William Randolph Hearst
said, ‘News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is
advertising.’ https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/77244-news-is-something-somebody-doesn-t-want-printed-all-else-is
The Guardian’s staff have finally realised comment is not free: that if they
support what is beginning to seem like a show trial of a fellow journalist, the
cats may come for them too, one day. So their line is now, ‘Don’t do it.’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/20/the-guardian-view-on-extraditing-julian-assange-dont-do-it
Assange does not have to be Simon-pure
for us to support him (the terms ‘journalist’ and ‘ascetic’ are rarely found
together). In fact, it’s not him alone we are or should be championing: it is
justice, the unbiased independence of the judiciary – independence even against
a powerful foreign ally - and our blood-bought, centuries-old culture of
freedom. Welcome back, prodigal sons of the Manchester Guardian: we shall
fatten the calf for you.
USA: Central bank intervention reinflates stock markets
'On Monday, all three major stock indices skyrocketed higher on news that global central banks would aggressively lower interest rates in response to the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic. The benchmark Dow Jones Industrials were up more than 5% or 1,293 points, the biggest point gain in history.'
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/dead-cat-bounce-central-bank-easing-sends-stocks-into-the-stratosphere/
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Covid-19: keep calm and make a plan
While some of the Press produce
shouty headlines for fun and profit and others affect armchair insouciance, the
truth lies somewhere in between: no, it’s not going to kill us all; no, it’s
not just flu; no, it’s not going away.
This week’s Spectator adopts the
postprandially relaxed position. Martin Vander Weyer reassures us https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/coronavirus-is-a-chance-to-buy-cheaper-but-it-comes-with-a-health-warning/
that the recent stockmarket reverses (btw, in percentage terms nothing remotely
like the Dow’s one-day drop in 1987 https://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/31/us/dow-jones-industrial-average-fast-facts/index.html ) may offer buying opportunities, particularly
in pharma firms seeking a vaccine for Covid-19, though (chuckle) investors
should ‘wash hands and don a face mask’ before placing their bets. Well yes, I
think the frail, twisted state of the world’s financial system is currently
much more of a real and present danger to shareholders and pensioners; but
we’ll come back to vaccines in a moment.
The Speccie’s Ross Clark https://www.spectator.co.uk/2020/02/the-most-dangerous-thing-about-coronavirus-is-the-hysteria/
also seeks to allay our ‘hysteria’ about coronavirus, but his downplaying
doesn’t quite work for me. Like so many, he makes the comparison with influenza
in the winter of 2017-18, quoting the Office for National Statistics’ figure of
50,000 fatalities, but must have missed the British Medical Journal’s comment (referencing
Public Health England’s study): ‘the ONS seem to have exaggerated the risk to
the public by in the region of 150 times.’ https://www.bmj.com/content/361/bmj.k2795/rr-6
. The fatality rate from seasonal flu is something like one in a thousand; The
Guardian (28 February) says Covid-19 is ‘ten times more deadly.’ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/28/coronavirus-truth-myths-flu-covid-19-face-masks
. Clark tells us that SARS (9.6% fatalities https://www.businessinsider.com/china-wuhan-coronavirus-compared-to-sars-2020-1?r=US&IR=T
) and H5N1 (60% death rate https://www.who.int/influenza/human_animal_interface/avian_influenza/h5n1_research/faqs/en/
) ‘hardly justify’ being called epidemics, let alone pandemics; and ‘If China
had not taken such dramatic steps to stop the [Covid-19] disease, we wouldn’t
be half as worried.’ Au contraire, the Chinese should have acted earlier
and faster and they are certainly not overreacting now; the dropped match that
might have been doused quickly at the start has become a blaze requiring all
available appliances.
Covid-19 is much less fatal than
SARS, but has a similarly high level of transmission from person to person. The
threshold contagion rate for an epidemic is R1, i.e. on average each person
passes the disease on to one more; MERS https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-(mers-cov)
and the highly deadly H5N1 https://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/h5n1-people.htm
were below this rate, but SARS was in the region of R2-R3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4558759/
and Covid-19 is now thought to be similarly infective https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/01/how-fast-and-far-will-new-coronavirus-spread/605632/
, though earlier estimated at R4 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.27.20018952v1.
What makes the latest coronavirus
more dangerous is that it seems to have a longer incubation period https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/as-coronavirus-spreads-many-questions-and-some-answers-2020022719004#q2
than SARS’ 2-7 days https://www.cdc.gov/sars/about/faq.html
, so there is a greater chance that it will slip through basic screening
measures at airports etc. It also vastly expands the network of possible
contacts before and after a case of infection, so containment becomes
exponentially more difficult. The UK’s twentieth case, appearing in Surrey on
Friday, is the first to have occurred here through secondary or tertiary
transmission but given a prolonged pre-symptom period the trail can easily go
cold. https://news.sky.com/story/first-case-of-coronavirus-confirmed-in-wales-and-two-more-in-england-11945201
Paradoxically, a quick and deadly
disease is less of a threat, since it can be spotted early and eliminates its
host fast before it can find many new ones; Covid-19 may go on to claim lots
more victims overall because it kills a small percentage of a much larger
number. Interviewed by The Atlantic magazine, Harvard epidemiology professor
Marc Lipsitch opines, ‘I think the likely outcome is that it will ultimately
not be containable,’ so rather than an epidemic or pandemic it will be endemic:
a new regular seasonal illness like colds and flu, but one for which – as with
other coronaviruses - there may be no long-lasting immunity, and which is more
fatal than flu. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000
In the same Atlantic article, the
CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness points out that even though a
vaccine may be developed by Spring or summer this year, testing for safety and
effectiveness may mean it is not publicly available until 12 – 18 months from
now.
Meanwhile, we can begin to analyse
and quantify the risk factors of Covid-19, based on cases identified so far.
Worldometer https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
combines information from two authoritative sources to estimate the likelihood
of dying if infected, according to age, sex and pre-existing medical
conditions. The initial indications are:
1. Below age
50, the risk of death is 0.4% or less; after that, it goes from 1.3% to above
10% at age 80
2. Men are significantly more vulnerable than women,
BUT most cases so far are Chinese and in China, men are much more likely to be
smokers (as this study confirms https://jech.bmj.com/content/71/2/154
)
3. In descending order, the following conditions
significantly increase mortality risk: cardiovascular disease; diabetes;
chronic respiratory disease; hypertension; cancer.
On the basis of the above, we can
begin thinking about public and individual strategies to cope with the
challenge of Covid-19.
First, timing: we need a plan to
get through the next 18 months to two years, by which time a vaccine may become
available. During this time, we all need to be extra-cautious, not only to
evade the virus personally but to avoid spreading it to others. Perhaps all
public places – e.g. schools, shops, offices, places of worship and mass
entertainment – should have wall-mounted hand sanitisers as is standard in
hospital wards. We need to wash hands frequently. Masks, says the government’s
advice to transport workers https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-for-staff-in-the-transport-sector/covid-19-guidance-for-staff-in-the-transport-sector
, ‘do not provide protection from respiratory viruses [but should] be worn by
symptomatic passengers to reduce the risk of transmitting the infection to
other people.’ One reader suggested shopping off-peak if possible; others may
have more ideas to offer.
Then, focus: the elderly and infirm
are clearly much more at risk. Maybe the NHS Secretary could authorise doctors
and pharmacies to allow the old and weak to stockpile essential medicines so
that if there is a local outbreak they can self-isolate in order to avoid
contracting the disease; and their carers and visitors need to be much more
scrupulous in hygiene precautions (think of sheltered accommodation and nursing
homes.) There may need to be safer arrangements for them to access GP and
hospital services. Those who still work may be permitted to do more at home.
Health advice and initiatives may increase their stress on reducing smoking,
excess body weight (dieting can beat diabetes in some cases), blood pressure
etc. How about preparing varied food packs and menus to make it simpler for the
vulnerable to have adequate and appropriate nutrition to endure a viral siege?
(We need a new Lord Woolton and Marguerite Patten!)
Any more ideas?
Friday, February 28, 2020
FRIDAY MUSIC: Mandolin Orange, by JD
Mandolin Orange is an Americana/folk duo based out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The group was formed in 2009 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and consists of the group's songwriter Andrew Marlin (vocals, mandolin, guitar, banjo) and Emily Frantz (vocals, violin, guitar).
"Mandolin Orange’s music radiates a mysterious warmth —their songs feel like whispered secrets, one hand cupped to your ear. The North Carolina duo have built a steady and growing fanbase with this kind of intimacy, and on Tides of A Teardrop, due out February 1, it is more potent than ever. By all accounts, it is the duo’s fullest, richest, and most personal effort. You can hear the air between them—the taut space of shared understanding, as palpable as a magnetic field, that makes their music sound like two halves of an endlessly completing thought. Singer-songwriter Andrew Marlin and multi-instrumentalist Emily Frantz have honed this lamp glow intimacy for years."
http://www.mandolinorange.com
There was a comment beneath one of their videos which compared them to Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris and that is high praise indeed: Listen to Parsons/Harris singing 'Love Hurts' to understand why.
... Tim O'Brien's was the first version of Pretty Maid that I heard and its origin is 17th century and has changed over the years, as ancient folk songs often do -
https://terreceltiche.altervista.org/fair-maid-in-the-garden-the-ballad-of-john-riley/
"Mandolin Orange’s music radiates a mysterious warmth —their songs feel like whispered secrets, one hand cupped to your ear. The North Carolina duo have built a steady and growing fanbase with this kind of intimacy, and on Tides of A Teardrop, due out February 1, it is more potent than ever. By all accounts, it is the duo’s fullest, richest, and most personal effort. You can hear the air between them—the taut space of shared understanding, as palpable as a magnetic field, that makes their music sound like two halves of an endlessly completing thought. Singer-songwriter Andrew Marlin and multi-instrumentalist Emily Frantz have honed this lamp glow intimacy for years."
http://www.mandolinorange.com
There was a comment beneath one of their videos which compared them to Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris and that is high praise indeed: Listen to Parsons/Harris singing 'Love Hurts' to understand why.
... Tim O'Brien's was the first version of Pretty Maid that I heard and its origin is 17th century and has changed over the years, as ancient folk songs often do -
https://terreceltiche.altervista.org/fair-maid-in-the-garden-the-ballad-of-john-riley/
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Covid-19: die another day
The following is a riposte to some commenters at The Conservative Woman, where a version of yesterday's post was published: https://conservativewoman.co.uk/prepare-for-the-worst-coronavirus-could-kill-hundreds-of-thousands-here/
Covid-19 a scare story? Pace
a number of commenters on the last piece: no. You will recall that Professor
Ferguson was quoted as saying the risk of infection in the UK could be 60% and
the fatality rate 1%, meaning (given the size of our population) a possible
400,000 victims.
That is simply logic. If the
coronavirus spreads easily and nobody does anything, many people will catch it.
The point is to change our behaviour to reduce the risk. Some of those changes
can be a matter of individual choice, some collective.
The wrong collective action may
result in worse outcomes. The ‘Diamond Princess’ cruise ship had some 3,700
souls on board when ten passengers were diagnosed with the illness https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/21/brits-coronavirus-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-to-fly-home
. In quarantine, the number of cases has risen to 691 (as of 26 Feb 12:25 GMT https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
). That is about 18 per cent of passengers and crew, not the 60 per cent that
the Professor speculated; on the other hand, these were frightened people
keeping in their quarters, trying very hard not to be the next patients. Sadly,
the ship’s ventilation system could have helped spread the virus https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/13/coronavirus-cruise-spread-room-room-air-conditioning-12236176/
, in a way similar to Legionnaire’s Disease https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/legionnaires-disease/
.
Of those infected, only four (less
than one per cent) have died so far; but the passengers on a luxury sea voyage
will be well-nourished, well-cared-for people, and the seriously ill were taken
to Japanese hospitals, presumably among the best in the world. Globally (but so
far, overwhelmingly in China), 3.4 per cent of cases have resulted in death, 37
percent have recovered and 59 per cent are still fighting the illness; so it is
too early to say what the true ratios will finally turn out to be.
However, let’s say for the sake of
argument everybody decides to ignore all risks and precautions and the
Professor’s estimate is exactly correct. Result: 0.6 per cent of the UK
population dies; but by the same token, that means 99.4 per cent will not
die of Covid-19 (though many may suffer a period of unpleasant illness.)
What we need is neither panic nor blasé
complacency; we need perspective. In 2017 the UK population was (officially)
65.6 million https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/ukpopulation2017
, and 607,172 people died from all causes https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/avoidablemortalityinenglandandwales/2017
– less than one in a hundred. In fact, the average person’s risk of dying in
the next twelve months stays below one per cent until they hit their late
fifties http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html
. You have to be in your mid-eighties before the chance of meeting the Grim
Reaper gets higher than ten per cent – good odds!
Why all the fuss then? you may
ask. The issue is avoidability: the Office for National Statistics https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/avoidablemortalityinenglandandwales/2017
estimates that almost a quarter of those 2017 deaths – i.e. over 140,000
fatalities – could have been avoided, either by ‘timely and effective
healthcare’ or ‘public health interventions’ (and there are three big things we
can do personally to improve our chances of a long life https://web.archive.org/web/20121122110650/http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2009-releases/smoking-high-blood-pressure-overweight-preventable-causes-death-us.html
.) A laissez-faire approach to Covid-19 could add up to 400,000 unnecessary
deaths to the total – quadrupling the toll.
We can’t leave everything to our
chronically inept government. Apart from anything else, we have to think what
we would do if, say, some lockdown was imposed and shop shelves were cleared in
panic buying, as has happened in Italy https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8045987/Shoppers-fight-food-supermarket-Italys-red-zone.html
– our worst enemy could be other people’s behaviour. It’s no good waiting till
then: as the ancient Greek saying goes, there is no borrowing a sword in time
of war.
Not only are there practical
things we can do to protect ourselves, we have a good idea who is most at risk
so we can give them extra help. For example, we can ensure that an elderly or
infirm relative has enough goods in the house not to have to go out if the
virus has come nearby; and that visitors, carers and medical staff are firmly
reminded to check who they’ve been in contact with recently and to sanitise
their hands frequently. Alternatively, if you’re impatient for Granny’s worldly
goods, take her out for a bus ride daily at schools chucking-out time; or a
cruise.
We all have to go sometime, but if
we plan the right course of action it is likely we will die another day, not
today; that should provide us with a quantum of solace.
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Covid-19: be prepared
Things are
moving fast in this outbreak. On February 22 I said there were five cases of
Covid-19 in Iran, two of whom had died; now (25 Feb 16:50 GMT) the Johns
Hopkins tracker https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
records 95 cases and sixteen
deaths. In Italy, seven have died (none, a few days ago) out of 283 cases so
far; the government has imposed travel restrictions on a dozen northern cities.
Why should the UK (13 cases, no deaths to date) escape the
scourge? Or rather, how?
We are only two months into the crisis and aside from
frantic research to find a vaccine (that may take a very long time), teams are trying
to estimate the likely spread of the disease. The standard model uses an
analysis known as ‘SEIR’: what proportion of the population is Susceptible
to catching it, how many of those will be Exposed to it, how many Infected,
how many will Recover.
There are only two of those categories that are amenable to
intervention: giving prompt, good medical treatment (but as we have seen, even
high-quality hospitals cannot always save the elderly and infirm); and better
still, preventing contagion. As to the latter, a Hungarian study published on
February 19 https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/9/2/571
looks at how the international spread of
Covid-19 could be limited, and concludes that countries with less frequent
connections to China should focus on entry screening or travel restrictions,
whereas those (like the UK) that have a high level of such connections should
focus on further measures to control infection after arrival.
The bad news from that paper (see Figure 4, right hand
graph) is that for us, even if numbers
of visitors from China are halved and the rate of exposure to others once they
are here is cut significantly, the probability of a major outbreak in the UK
rises above 50 per cent as total cases in China (outside Hubei province) exceed
600,000. The authors’ graph implies that we are more at risk even than Germany,
France and Italy.
In a world that is economically interconnected, the
authorities are conflicted, trying to balance safety precautions with the need
to keep the trading show on the road. We saw the World Health Organisation
first argue against travel restrictions https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-05/who-coronavirus-update-china-travel/11930752
and then warn us that the virus was a ‘serious and imminent threat’ https://www.euronews.com/2020/02/10/coronavirus-outbreak-uk-declares-virus-serious-and-imminent-threat-to-public-health
; now it is telling us that the epidemic has peaked in China https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8039517/Coronavirus-epidemic-PEAKED-China-says-World-Health-Organisation.html , despite the culture of secrecy there that
means we might not know the whole truth.
In the UK, the government attempts a similar compromise: its
advice to transport workers https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-for-staff-in-the-transport-sector/covid-19-guidance-for-staff-in-the-transport-sector
assures them that they ‘are not considered to be at a heightened risk of
contracting coronavirus as a result of their work’ and that ‘staff are not
recommended to wear respiratory masks. They do not provide protection from
respiratory viruses.’ Passengers arriving via direct flights from specified
areas will be given ‘health announcements [… and] a general declaration 60
minutes before landing on any passenger health issues or suspected cases’; and
so on. The latest advice for arrivals from northern Italy is that they should
self-isolate https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51625733
.
The British approach may seem too soft-handed, but the
alternative strategy of grasping the nettle tightly could be doomed. Although
Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, was officially locked down on January 23,
this Twitter user https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd/status/1231374535250841600
says cellphone data shows that nearly 140,000 people escaped the city in the
first two weeks of February alone. MedPage Today says https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/publichealth/85027
that it is possible for the illness to be transmitted by carriers who show no
symptoms themselves; they describe a case of a young Chinese woman who inadvertently
infected five members of her family. A report from Imperial College, London https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/195564/two-thirds-covid-19-cases-exported-from-mainland/
says that two-thirds of Covid-19 cases that have left China may have gone
undetected. In Europe, others may also choose to break quarantines, like that
set on northern Italian towns https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-life-around-italys-quarantined-red-zone/a-52513830
- for example, just across the border in Hohenturn, Austria, a brothel services
hundreds of visiting Italians every weekend https://kaernten.orf.at/stories/3036029/
(htp: ‘Raedwald’ https://raedwald.blogspot.com/2020/02/covid-19-living-with-threat.html
) and, it seems, Austrian law does not permit the State to impose Italian-type cordons
sanitaires. New Scientist magazine says that battle may already be lost https://www.newscientist.com/article/2234967-covid-19-our-chance-to-contain-the-coronavirus-may-already-be-over/
.
How bad could it get? On 12 February Professor Neil Ferguson
told Radio 4’s Today programme https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/13/coronavirus-medical-chief-says-uk-hopes-to-delay-any-outbreak-until-summer
that if the disease got out of control in the UK, potentially 60 per cent of
the population could be infected and if the fatality rate is one per cent the
toll could run into hundreds of thousands. The latter may well be an under-estimate;
outside mainland China it’s over 1.5 per cent (42 deaths out of 2,690 cases,
and many of those still sick have yet to recover) and on the Chinese mainland
it’s about 3.5 per cent (2,705 deaths from 77,660 cases.)
As with flu generally, old people with underlying health
problems are most at risk, but that does not mean the rest of us can be
sanguine. Imagine a country where 60 percent of teachers, medical and emergency
staff, port workers, passenger transport staff, delivery drivers etc are off
sick, even if only on a rolling basis of infection (and possibly even
re-infection) over months. The disruption to the economy could be far greater –
and far closer to home - than temporary swoons on the stockmarkets https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/stock-markets-around-the-world-slide-as-coronavirus-outbreak-becomes-potential-pandemic?utm_source=breaking_push&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=push_notifications . The modern system of just-in-time resupply could become
too-late, please-wait.
Hope for the best, but prepare for
the worst: prudent citizens may have to do more than just wash their hands.
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
ART: Interference Paints, by JD
A few more paintings:
Looking for something in the untidiness of my cupboards I found something else, as often happens, which diverted me and now I have forgotten what I was looking for in the first place!
But that something else was a few tubes and jars of 'interference' paints, paints which give a tint to a colour depending on the source of the light.
So I decided to play around with them and see what effects could be achieved. These are all acrylic paintings on 2" x 2" canvas. The half dozen here are the result.
The first canvas, top left, was covered completely with interference gold and then the scene was painted over loosely with bright normal colours and the underpainting shows through in places. Below is an enlarged portion of it; not sure if it can be seen clearly in the image. It shows partially in the tree and on the shore line next to the figures.
A few more with varying success. The dervish is painted with interference copper effect and I think it shows more clearly than the others (I'm not entirely satisfied with the figure so I'll have another try some time.)
The sky behind the line of trees is painted with a fluorescent blue over a yellow background and is very striking in reality, not sure about in the screen image. The ground around the trees is purple mixed with yellow. I might change the shadows at a later date (or not.)
The third image is one of several similar which I did before Christmas, the others given to friends as Xmas presents!
I think I have done about two dozen of these minis over the past two weeks but when I was in Poundland the other day I couldn't see any more. Perhaps they no longer sell them and in fact their art materials are now sparse compared to last year. Perhaps I should 'upgrade' - painting teacher No3 told me ages ago I should be painting 'big' pictures. She is right but I would need a bigger house! I shall continue painting, whatever the size, because...... well, because I can't and do not want to stop. As noted previously, when I am 100 I might be getting the hang of it!
Looking for something in the untidiness of my cupboards I found something else, as often happens, which diverted me and now I have forgotten what I was looking for in the first place!
But that something else was a few tubes and jars of 'interference' paints, paints which give a tint to a colour depending on the source of the light.
So I decided to play around with them and see what effects could be achieved. These are all acrylic paintings on 2" x 2" canvas. The half dozen here are the result.
The first canvas, top left, was covered completely with interference gold and then the scene was painted over loosely with bright normal colours and the underpainting shows through in places. Below is an enlarged portion of it; not sure if it can be seen clearly in the image. It shows partially in the tree and on the shore line next to the figures.
A few more with varying success. The dervish is painted with interference copper effect and I think it shows more clearly than the others (I'm not entirely satisfied with the figure so I'll have another try some time.)
The third image is one of several similar which I did before Christmas, the others given to friends as Xmas presents!
I think I have done about two dozen of these minis over the past two weeks but when I was in Poundland the other day I couldn't see any more. Perhaps they no longer sell them and in fact their art materials are now sparse compared to last year. Perhaps I should 'upgrade' - painting teacher No3 told me ages ago I should be painting 'big' pictures. She is right but I would need a bigger house! I shall continue painting, whatever the size, because...... well, because I can't and do not want to stop. As noted previously, when I am 100 I might be getting the hang of it!
Saturday, February 22, 2020
Covid-19 outside mainland China: update
... while passing on the disease, of course: https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18242077.thirty-brighton-doctors-coronavirus-isolation-says-clinician/ |
According to the Johns Hopkins
tracker the total number of confirmed cases now approaches 78,000 of which over
600 are outside the Chinese mainland. https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
. Of the latter, only 12 have died so far.
However, it is clear that the
virus is lethal to more than East Asians. Two days ago, a couple of Iranians
succumbed; and it seems they had not travelled outside their country. They died
in Qom (90 miles from the capital, Tehran), and two other patients have been
diagnosed there since, plus one in Arak (who happens to be a doctor from Qom),
bringing the total cases to five. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/iran-qom-coronavirus-covid19-religious-gatherings-cases-12455638
Qom is a magnet for pilgrims, so
there is some question as to whether piety may outweigh prudence. 20 million
visitors (both domestic and foreign) come annually because it is not only a
holy city but ‘the largest centre for Shiʿa scholarship in the world’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qom
Conversely, millions of Shi’ite pilgrims travel from Iran to Iraq each year to
see the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala; Iraq has now taken the precautions of
suspending flights to Iran and closing their mutual border https://www.timesofisrael.com/iraq-closes-border-with-iran-over-coronavirus-fears/
but we shall see how effective and sustained these measures will be.
And today we hear of a fatality
in Italy (see below).
Here is the toll to date, in
sequence, for the world outside mainland China:
(1) 02 February: a 44-year-old
Chinese tourist from Wuhan, Hubei province died in hospital in Manila, the Philippines; he was ‘thought to have had other
pre-existing health conditions.’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-51345855
(2) 04
February: a 39-year-old Hong Kong man dies there
of heart failure, having been diagnosed on 31 January with the virus. He is
said to have had a ‘long-term illness.’ https://agbrief.com/headline/coronavirus-live-updates-2020/
(3) 13
February: a woman in her eighties died in a Japanese
hospital where she had been kept since February 1; her son-in law is a taxi
driver and has also been confirmed infected. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/13/japan-reports-first-coronavirus-death-as-44-more-cases-confirmed-aboard-cruise-ship
(4) 15
February: an 80-year-old Chinese tourist from Hubei province died in Paris, France after weeks in hospital. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/world/europe/france-coronarivus-death.html
(5) 15
February: a 61-year-old male taxi driver from central Taiwan
died in hospital there from Covid-19-related pneumonia and sepsis; he had a
history of Hepatitis B and diabetes. Many of his fares had come from China,
Macau and Hong Kong.
(6, 7) 19 February:
two Iranian citizens died in Qom, northern Iran;
both were elderly and with underlying health conditions. They ‘were not known
to have left Iran’ but as said above, Qom is a major religious destination for
pilgrims and scholars. https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-first-deaths-reported-in-middle-east/a-52436966
(8) 19
February: a second Hong Kong victim dies there –
a 70-year-old man with ‘underlying illnesses.’ He had previously visited
mainland China on 22 January via the island’s border checkpoint at Lok Ma Chau.
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2020/02/19/breaking-70-year-old-dies-bringing-hong-kong-coronavirus-death-toll-two/
(9) 19 February:
a 63-year-old local man died in a hospital in South
Korea and was diagnosed posthumously with the virus. Many new cases have
been registered in the South Korean city of Daegu, where a South Korean woman
is thought to have infected the congregation of a Christian sect; she is said
to be in her early 60s and with no recent record of overseas travel. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3050517/coronavirus-how-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-became
(10, 11) 20
February: two Japanese citizens died in a hospital in Japan,
having been taken off the ‘Diamond Princess’ cruise
ship (quarantined near Yokohama) the previous week. ‘Both were in their
80s with underlying health conditions.’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-51568496
The infection may have been spread by a Hong Kong resident who had briefly
visited the Chinese mainland prior to boarding the ship at Yokohama on 20
January https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3050517/coronavirus-how-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-became
; he disembarked at Hong Kong on January 25, reporting to a hospital on the
island, where he was diagnosed with coronavirus. The ship’s itinerary from 1
December 2019 on is here: http://crew-center.com/diamond-princess-itinerary
- the latest cruise was to have been 29 days long, starting in Singapore. https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3050517/coronavirus-how-diamond-princess-cruise-ship-became
(12) 22
February: a 78-year-old man died in Padua, Italy.
The first arrival of the virus in the country is traced to China: ‘The
"index case" - or patient zero - was reported to be a 38-year-old man
from Codogno who is believed to have caught the virus from a friend who had
returned from China in January.’ https://news.sky.com/story/italy-reports-first-coronavirus-death-as-infections-worldwide-pass-77-000-11940004
The pattern of
lethality is similar to that for ‘ordinary’ flu: Covid-19 hits the old and
infirm disproportionately. That said, we also see how easily it seems to
spread, and (thanks to modern communications and mass travel) how far – not
only across the Far East but the Middle East, Australasia, Europe, North
America, India, Egypt… So far, nothing reported from sub-Saharan Africa, or
central and southern American states; but we are hardly three months into this
outbreak and not all countries may as quick to diagnose cases correctly.
There is no
room for complacency, as Charles Hugh Smith explains. http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/02/covid-19-pandemic-complacent-are.html
Friday, February 21, 2020
FRIDAY MUSIC: Caroline Shaw, by JD
Earlier this year on BBC 4 Stewart Copeland host a three part series called Adventures in Music; https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000db8m
These were three exceptionally good documentaries in that they didn't follow the usual formula but asked the question - "How does music work? What exactly is this thing that brings us together, moves us and binds us, communicates stories like no other art form, and which seemingly has transcendental powers?"
Among the various people Copeland spoke to in his search for the 'magic ingredient' was the American composer Caroline shaw. Perhaps a bit too unorthodox for most tastes but I thought her music was excellent!
It was also good to see a couple of very hostile commenters beneath her videos make fools of themselves by declaring their own musical qualifications and pedigree; their professional jealousy in other words!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Shaw
"How do you capture the tragic, beautiful loneliness of existence, and the complete, ecstatic joy of existence?" asks Caroline Shaw. Shaw was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2013, making her the youngest ever recipient of the award. She explains in this video that music helps her tackle some of life's loftiest questions."
These were three exceptionally good documentaries in that they didn't follow the usual formula but asked the question - "How does music work? What exactly is this thing that brings us together, moves us and binds us, communicates stories like no other art form, and which seemingly has transcendental powers?"
Among the various people Copeland spoke to in his search for the 'magic ingredient' was the American composer Caroline shaw. Perhaps a bit too unorthodox for most tastes but I thought her music was excellent!
It was also good to see a couple of very hostile commenters beneath her videos make fools of themselves by declaring their own musical qualifications and pedigree; their professional jealousy in other words!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Shaw
"How do you capture the tragic, beautiful loneliness of existence, and the complete, ecstatic joy of existence?" asks Caroline Shaw. Shaw was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music in 2013, making her the youngest ever recipient of the award. She explains in this video that music helps her tackle some of life's loftiest questions."
Thursday, February 20, 2020
This just in...
Are we off-air now?
-
Yes.
‘Cause you know what I said was all bollox, don’t you?
-
Sorry?
That stuff about ability to speak English being dog-whistle
politics.
-
Yes, but surely Labour is in favour of immigration?
That was just an angle, you know the game we’re playing and
you love it. Actually this points system is the best news I’ve heard since I
was a kid.
-
Amazing! Why?
Think, for goodness’ sake. What’s going to happen when we
can’t bring in loads of poor people to do essential services like elderly care?
-
There’ll be a shortage and old people won’t
be looked after.
There’ll be a shortage and care workers’ pay will have to go
up, at last. And then there’ll be a recruitment drive, more employment.
-
But healthcare costs will go up, won’t they?
And about time. Our country has been exploiting the
labouring classes for far too long. Besides, yes, there might be more taxes to
raise, but there’ll be more people earning enough to pay taxes too. And they’ll
spend more, and create more profits and employment elsewhere.
-
Excuse me for saying it, but that sounds like
right-wing economic thinking.
Right economic thinking, you mean. Why do you think Jeremy
and I have always wanted us out of the EU?
-
But that wasn’t Labour policy, was it? You’ve
opposed Brexit before and after the Referendum and the last General Election.
I’m surprised you don’t know the difference between policy
and strategy. You know we’ve had to ride two horses in the Party, same as the
Tories. Half our voters haven’t a clue, they’re teddy-huggers who really do
think money grows on trees.
-
Wow, you’re a secret Tory!
Let’s get this straight. You vote Labour, don’t you?
-
Well, at the BBC we maintain impartial-
Just say yes, it’s quicker.
-
Erm…
And what do you think you’re voting for us for? You get,
what, a six-figure salary? The person who lifts your poor old nan out of her
bed doesn’t get a fifth of your pay, while the heaviest thing you lift is a
sticky bun in the BBC canteen.
- - Tahini wrap, actually…
Never mind. Workers take care of your olds, dead cheap, so
you can go clubbing and stick happy sherbet up your nose. Is that your idea of
socialism?
-
Blimey, if you’re going to be like that I’m
voting Tory next time.
So am I, if we can’t change our strategy, ‘cause obviously
it’s failed in the North. Meanwhile, let’s stay together for the sake of the
viewers, darling, shall we? Let’s do a bit more on racism next time, okay?
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