zdnet | The media regularly refers to "exponential" growth in the number of
cases of COVID-19 respiratory disease, and deaths from the disease, but
the numbers suggest something else, a "small world" network that might
have power law properties. That would be meaningfully different from the
exponential growth path for the disease.
Is the spread of the respiratory infection known as COVID-19 happening in an "exponential" fashion?
However,
the data on COVID-19 has a lot of puts and takes, and one of the
factors not entirely considered is the graph of the infection. Graph
theory has a lot to say about how phenomena can grow, such as the spread
of infectious diseases. There are different graphs, or networks, of
relations, and they can affect things such as the rate of propagation.
One particular recent work calls into question the notion of the exponential growth of the disease.
Scholars Anna Ziff and Robert Ziff, respectively of Duke University and the University of Michigan, earlier this month posted on the medrXiv pre-print server
their curve-fitting exercise for COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths,
both in China and in the rest of the world, titled "Fractal kinetics of
COVID-19 pandemic."
As the authors write, "in standard epidemiological analysis, one
assumes that the number of cases in diseases like this one grows
exponentially, based upon the idea of a fixed reproduction rate."
But that standard epidemiological view is not born out by the
data. They found that while the numbers "display large growth, they do
not, in fact, follow exponential behavior." Rather, the authors observed
a period of initial exponential growth, followed by what's called a "power law," which is not the same thing.
slate | Last weekend, 110,000 people attended the “Vive Latino” music festival in Mexico City,
which took place as scheduled despite several confirmed cases of
COVID-19 in Mexico’s capital. At the same time, while governments
worldwide took drastic measures to slow down the spread of the disease,
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, traveled
to the south of Mexico and met with adoring crowds, shaking hands and hugging and kissing supporters.
During his daily press conferences, AMLO has insisted that his honesty
and moral rectitude protect him from the virus and that the threat of
COVID-19 is greatly exaggerated. “I have great faith that we will move
our dear Mexico forward, that misfortunes and pandemics won’t affect
us,” he told reporters at a press conference on Sunday.
The number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Mexico may seem
low, but it has grown exponentially over the last week, from eight to
118, and the first death from the disease was reported on Wednesday night. Moreover, Mexico has very limited testing capabilities, and the official statistics are not a reliable indicator of the actual number of cases
in the country. Although the government’s position is that Mexico is
still in “Phase 1” of the pandemic, meaning all diagnosed cases of
COVID-19 are people who caught the virus while traveling abroad, most
experts agree the virus is already rapidly spreading within Mexico and
that the government’s nonchalance about the situation could have
disastrous results.
“We need political leaders that are properly advised and understand
the gravity of the situation,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the
Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. “A lot of
people in Mexico would die unnecessarily unless the government gets very
seriously prepared for this.” Getting seriously prepared means taking
drastic measures to curb the spread of the virus, bolstering the
hospital system, and helping people cope when the economy grinds to a
halt.
The Mexican government has not yet imposed any travel restrictions nor
encouraged people to stay home, and it seems very unlikely that the
public health system, which suffered drastic budget cuts and shortages last year, will be prepared for the magnitude of the imminent crisis.
“The current guidelines are ‘wash your hands, don’t touch your face,
and avoid people who are coughing,’ ” said Gordon McCord, a professor at
the School of Global Policy & Strategy at the University of
California San Diego.
Guardian | Southern California
homeless shelter residents say long-running unsanitary and inhumane
conditions now put them at severe risk of death amid the rapid spread of
the coronavirus.
As California officials this week urged millions of residents to stay inside and avoid physical contact to slow the spread of Covid-19, people living in several overcrowded homeless shelters
in Orange county say they continue to sleep in rows of beds within a
few feet of each other, and that they often lack basic hygiene supplies
and amenities.
The residents report a variety of serious problems, including empty
soap dispensers, a lack of toilet paper, no hot water, broken sinks, no
working thermometers, blood-stained walls and infrequent cleaning. They
worry the shelters are ill-prepared to cope once the spread of the virus
intensifies in the US.
“It’s appalling. One person gets a cough and everyone gets it,” said Wendy Powitzky, 49, who has been living at the La Mesa shelter in Anaheim in southern California for months. “We’ve already been passing around a standard cold.”
Some days, the soap containers in the bathroom go empty: “Most people
don’t have their own. So I guess everyone else is just washing their
hands with water.”
California has the largest homeless population
in the US, with more than 40,000 people living in shelters on a given
night. Advocates and shelter residents have warned for years that many
of the facilities are underregulated and underfunded, and that
conditions in some may pose significant health hazards. Amid the
coronavirus crisis, they fear, those circumstances could make the spread
of the virus in shelters near-inevitable.
CTH | Predictably odd, generally sketchy, and Tucker Carlson favorite, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, suspended her campaign for the 2020 democrat presidential nomination today while endorsing Joe Biden. According to her brother posting on Facebook, Bernie Sanders refused the accept an endorsement. Go figure.
Announcement
– “[T]oday, I’m suspending my presidential campaign, and offering my
full support to Vice President Joe Biden in his quest to bring our
country together.”
I will continue to advocate for a 21st
century foreign policy. One based on mutual respect and cooperation
instead of confrontation, where we as a community of nations can work
together to overcome the challenges that our people face — preventing
and stopping pandemics like the coronavirus that is now affecting all of
us, tackling climate change, combating terrorism, and removing the
existential threat of nuclear war which hangs over the heads of all of
us.
[…] “I want to extend my best wishes
to my friends Senator Bernie Sanders, his wife Jane, Nina Turner and
their many supporters for the work they’ve done. I have a great
appreciation for Senator Sanders’ love for our country and the American
people and his sincere desire to improve the lives of all Americans.” (link)
opendemocracy | The US Federal Reserve has chosen to pump $1.5tn
into Wall Street to reinflate the stock market, while millions of
Americans go without insurance or continue to go to work despite
sickness, because they can’t afford a day off. That’s a political
choice.
The governments of Ireland, Finland and France have chosen
to pay out millions to their citizens and to cancel mortgage and rent
payments. Those, too, are political choices.
The poor are much more likely to die
from COVID-19 than the rich, because they have other illnesses thanks
to their poverty. The staggering increase in homelessness rates in the
UK means thousands have nowhere safe to go. The failure to tackle
domestic violence across the world means that millions of women will be
living in fear as they self-isolate. All of these problems are products
of the failures of our politics.
Wealth and power will define who
is bankrupted and who isn’t, who becomes sick and who doesn’t, who gets
the care they need and who suffers, how many of us will live and how
many will die. But we will be told that we’re not allowed to talk about
these things, because they’re political.
For a decade,
progressives across the Western world have been pointing out that our
healthcare systems are being torched on the altar of the market. But now
we’re all paying the price of that sacrifice, we won’t be allowed to
mention it. Because that’s political.
For a generation, the left
has developed policy ideas to ensure the protection of everyone in an
increasingly precarious economy. But we will be told off for calling for
them. Because that’s political.
More broadly, politics is how we negotiate how we live together. And
so there is absolutely nothing on earth that is more political than a
pandemic, when disagreements over resources and priorities and behaviour
define who will live and who will die, not through the slow playing-out
of the long symphony of history, but in the coming weeks and months.
Health
is always a social affair, and never more so than with infectious
diseases. As a species we live in groups. Everybody’s health relies on
everybody else’s. The survival of each depends to some extent on support
for all. There is no such thing as an isolated individual decision in a
pandemic.
There is no doubt that our world will not go back to
what it was before, As Naomi Klein pointed out more than a decade ago,
big money has long used disasters to advance its agenda of cuts,
privatisation and deregulation, securing unpopular policies when people
are too overwhelmed to resist.
nakedcapitalism |JERRI-LYNN SCOFIELD: Could you summarize some of the prison conditions that facilitate COVID-19 spread?
MICHELE DEITCH: Prisons and jails are so densely
populated, and it is impossible for people in custody to keep a social
distance from each other. There are usually two or more people in a
small, shared cell and oftentimes there are large dormitories. There are
shared open toilets and sinks, often part of a single fixture, and
often located adjacent to the bunkbeds. The chow hall has shared tables
and long lines, with food doled out cafeteria-style by incarcerated
workers. Lines are everywhere inside a facility: the pill line; the
commissary line; the line for showers. Work assignments involve close
contact with fellow workers. There are lots of group activities: school,
vocational training, programs, recreation. In short, unless you are in
solitary confinement (which is incredibly harsh and definitely something
to be avoided), you are in constant close proximity to lots of other
people.
JERRI-LYNN SCOFIELD: More than 2 million prisoners are
incarcerated in the US. Yet prisoners are not the only potential victims
of prison spread. COVID-19 will also hurt prison staff, who will
further spread infections back into their wider communities. What can
you tell us about these risks?
MICHELE DEITCH: Prisons and jails are already facing
lots of staffing challenges, with many facilities severely understaffed
and with high turnover rates. Staff are usually poorly paid, and many
have difficult working conditions.
Of course, COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate between staff and prisoners,
and once the virus is in the facility, it will affect everyone
regardless of their position.
With this new challenge, we need to make sure that staff are
protected as well as people in custody. And we certainly need to make
sure that they are not coming to work if they are sick, because the
consequences could be disastrous.
JERRI-LYNN SCOFIELD: I understand that reducing the prison
population is one policy that can mitigate potential COVID-19
consequences, both keeping people from entering the system, and
accelerating release of existing prisoners. Please tell me a bit
more about this.
MICHELE DEITCH: Prisons and jails are at especially
high risk for the spread of COVID-19, because they are so densely
populated and there is little ability to implement social distancing
strategies. When (not if) the virus hits these facilities, it will
spread like wildfire, with disastrous consequences.Thus it is urgent for
all places of detention to immediately reduce the number of people who
are incarcerated, both to make social distancing a bit easier and also
so that incarceration doesn’t mean a death sentence for people in
custody who have little ability to protect themselves in these
circumstances.
There are two ways to reduce the population. Think of these
institutions as bathtubs. First, we have to turn off the spigot, to
reduce the number of people entering the facilities; and second, we have
to open the drain, to accelerate releases of people who are already
incarcerated.
JERRI-LYNN SCOFIELD: What is being done across the country to
reduce the number of people entering the prison system? I know some
jurisdictions are increasing pre-trial release, particularly for
non-violent offenses and other low-risk prisoners, and Fox reports that
Philadelphia is now delaying arrests, Philadelphia police to delay arrests for certain non-violent crimes.
MICHELE DEITCH: Experts and advocates around the
country are correctly urging law enforcement officials to limit the
number of arrests, and wherever possible, issue citations in lieu of
arrest. No one who is medically vulnerable or pregnant should be brought
to the jail. People charged with non-violent felonies and misdemeanors
should not be brought to the jail’s booking area unless they present a
serious risk to public safety. Each person who comes into the jail is a
potential vector for transmission of the virus. Beyond that, warrants
for minor offenses should be suspended. Probation and parole should not
be revoked for technical violations of conditions. And anyone charged
with misdemeanors or low-level felonies, and those presenting little
risk to the community, should be released on personal bonds. All people
sitting in the jail because they can’t raise money for bond should have
their cases reviewed immediately.
reason | What if we arrested fewer people in the first place, that way we
don't have to panic about exposing people behind bars (and the guards
who take care of then) to the coronavirus? It's a shift we're beginning
to see in some municipalities.
Reason's Zuri Davis has reported
on the mechanisms some courts and jails have been using to release
prisoners early, particularly those who are being jailed for low-level
crimes, in order to stop or reduce the spread of disease among people in
jail.
But many cities are also reconsidering whether the police
actually need to arrest people for certain minor crimes and bring them
to jail for processing in the first place. This is yet another temporary
shift in behavior that might be worth considering even when the
coronavirus is not such an omnipresent threat.
In Philadelphia,
Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has set forth new guidelines to
stop police officers from arresting people accused of a host of
nonviolent misdemeanor crimes. Instead, they'll briefly detain the
suspect to confirm identity and fill out arrest warrant paperwork, then
release the suspect. The arrest warrant will be served at a later time
when the coronavirus risk has faded.
The
list of crimes that will no longer lead to people being processed into
jail includes prostitution and all narcotics crimes. (We should hope
this prompts the city to realize they should have never thrown people in
jail for these crimes in the first place.) The list
also includes vandalism, several different types of thefts, burglary,
and even car theft. So while these aren't violent crimes, they also
aren't victimless crimes. This doesn't mean those people won't
be held accountable by the justice system eventually and be ordered to
make amends to their victims, by they're not going to be tossed in jail
for now. Vehicle impoundments are also being suspended.
After making the announcement Tuesday, Outlaw clarified
today that an officer "still has the authority to utilize discretion,
and take an offender into physical custody for immediate processing, if
the officer and supervisor believe the individual poses a threat to
public safety."
Arresting fewer people who aren't dangerous is a
great way to keep jail populations down and reduce chances for the
coronavirus to spread. But it's honestly something that we should have
started doing earlier, unprompted by pandemic, because we have too many
people in jail who don't really need to be there, and because jail time
disrupts many lives in unnecessary ways.
CTH | …there had to be a point where the value of the Wall St economy surpassed the value of the Main St economy… Part I Here
We now look forward, and consider the
question: How would the multinational underwriters, the multinational
financial systems, reset all transactional tables (the bookkeeping
systems underneath the valuation) if the U.S. stock market was ever
forced to re-value economic nationalism over multinational globalism?
To first answer the “how” question, we
must visit the “why” question. Why would the multinational financial
underwriters want to reset their valuations?
Obviously, the global financial system
does not act altruistically. What would motivate the global wealth
valuation authority (various market investment indexes) to want, or
need, a reset.
The answer to the “why” question might not be as challenging as it appears.
First, there has been a seismic shift in
how the world looks at the economic exploitation of multinational
systems, or globalism. See Bernie Sanders? See those yellow vests in
France? See what happened with the U.K. Brexit referendum? See the
shrinking EU influence? See the open/public confrontation and push-back
against China? See Trump? All examples are consequences of the rise of economic nationalism.
Secondly, the original Wall Street
corporate motive (during decades of mergers and acquisitions) to shift
product manufacturing to Southeast Asia (ASEAN nations) was driven by a
lower cost of overall business, higher profit margins and greed.
As a direct outcome economic wealth was
shifted from the U.S. to ASEAN nations, and particularly China. Low
wages, low regulation, cheap operational costs, incentives and subsidies
from Asia equals cheap TV’s, sneakers, furniture and durable goods.
Even with high fuel prices and overseas
shipping costs, there was a big difference between U.S. and ASEAN
manufacturing costs. As hundreds of U.S. Wall Street multinationals
chased profits the rust-belt was created.
Independent |France
has deployed 100,000 police and set up checkpoints across the
country as the country begins a 15-day lockdown to combat the spread of
the coronavirus pandemic.
The army has also been ordered to assist with efforts, transporting infected patients to alleviate saturated hospitals.
Under the new measures, which went into effect at midday on
Tuesday, people are only permitted to leave their homes to buy food or
medicine.
Certain workers are also allowed to travel but will need to carry
a “sworn statement” detailing their journey and the nature of their
work, while exercise is also permitted if done alone.
All “non-essential” public places have also been closed, including shops, restaurants and cafes.
reuters | Officers from China’s top internal security force - the People’s Armed
Police – joined Hong Kong police on the frontlines to observe
anti-government protests that peaked last year, according to a senior
foreign diplomat and an opposition politician.
Hong Kong police took PAP officers to monitor the protesters and
their tactics as part of a wider effort by the paramilitary force to
deepen its understanding of the Hong Kong situation, they said.
“I’m
aware that Hong Kong police officers have taken Chinese security forces
to the front during protests, apparently in an observation role,”
veteran democratic legislator James To told Reuters.
To said he had reason to believe the Chinese forces included members of locally-based PAP units.
The
foreign diplomat, who requested anonymity and declined to be quoted due
to sensitivity over commenting on security matters, also said PAP
officers accompanied police to the frontlines.
Responding to
questions from Reuters, the Chinese Defence Ministry said the PAP was
not stationed in Hong Kong, while a Hong Kong police spokesman said they
“stress that there is no such visit or observation by any members of
the mainland law enforcement agencies”.
The State Council
Information Office and the Central Government’s Hong Kong Liaison Office
did not respond to Reuters’ questions.
The diplomat and three
other foreign envoys, however, estimated that China’s government had
ramped up the paramilitary People’s Armed Police (PAP) presence in Hong
Kong to as many as 4,000 personnel - far more than previously known
estimates.
Their assessments were based on intense
scrutiny of the security forces’ response to the pro-democracy protests,
which began last June, but have ebbed this year amid the ongoing
coronavirus crisis.
Reuters had reported in September that an
unknown number of PAP were among a surge in Chinese security forces
moved quietly into bases across the city last year as Hong Kong’s
government struggled to contain the mounting political unrest.
The
rapidly-modernized PAP is the mainland’s core paramilitary and
anti-riot force and operates separately from China’s People’s Liberation
Army (PLA).
Under 2018 reforms, both the PAP and PLA are under
the ultimate command of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who sits at the
apex of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission.
salon | "It's not just the 'Terrorist Surveillance Program,'" agrees Gregory
T. Nojeim from the Center for Democracy and Technology, referring to the
Bush administration's misleading name for the NSA's warrantless
wiretapping program. "We need a broad investigation on the way all the
moving parts fit together. It seems like we're always looking at little
chunks and missing the big picture."
A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the
Bush administration's alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its
domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government
insiders as "Main Core," the database reportedly collects and stores --
without warrants or court orders -- the names and detailed data of
Americans considered to be threats to national security.
According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive
knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current
incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on
Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions
and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other
agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as "an
emergency internal security database system" designed for use by the
military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the
Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is
derived from the fact that it contains "copies of the 'main core' or
essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced
by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community."
Some of the former U.S. officials interviewed, although they have no
direct knowledge of the issue, said they believe that Main Core may have
been used by the NSA to determine who to spy on in the immediate
aftermath of 9/11. Moreover, the NSA's use of the database, they say,
may have triggered the now-famous March 2004 confrontation between the
White House and the Justice Department that nearly led Attorney General
John Ashcroft, FBI director William Mueller and other top Justice
officials to resign en masse.
The Justice Department officials who objected to the legal basis for
the surveillance program -- former Deputy Attorney General James B.
Comey and Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel
-- testified before Congress last year about the 2004 showdown with the
White House. Although they refused to discuss the highly classified
details behind their concerns, the New York Times later reported
that they were objecting to a program that "involved computer searches
through massive electronic databases" containing "records of the phone
calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans."
According to William Hamilton, a former NSA intelligence officer who
left the agency in the 1970s, that description sounded a lot like Main
Core, which he first heard about in detail in 1992. Hamilton, who is the
president of Inslaw Inc., a computer services firm with many clients in
government and the private sector, says there are strong indications
that the Bush administration's domestic surveillance operations use Main
Core.
Hamilton's company Inslaw is widely respected in the law enforcement
community for creating a program called the Prosecutors' Management
Information System, or PROMIS. It keeps track of criminal investigations
through a powerful search engine that can quickly access all stored
data components of a case, from the name of the initial investigators to
the telephone numbers of key suspects. PROMIS, also widely used in the
insurance industry, can also sort through other databases fast, with
results showing up almost instantly. "It operates just like Google,"
Hamilton told me in an interview in his Washington office in May.
Since the late 1980s, Inslaw has been involved in a legal dispute
over its claim that Justice Department officials in the Reagan
administration appropriated the PROMIS software. Hamilton claims that
Reagan officials gave PROMIS to the NSA and the CIA, which then adapted
the software -- and its outstanding ability to search other databases --
to manage intelligence operations and track financial transactions.
Over the years, Hamilton has employed prominent lawyers to pursue the
case, including Elliot Richardson, the former attorney general and
secretary of defense who died in 1999, and C. Boyden Gray, the former
White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush. The dispute has never
been settled. But based on the long-running case, Hamilton says he
believes U.S. intelligence uses PROMIS as the primary software for
searching the Main Core database.
nature | Epidemiologists say China’s mammoth response had one glaring flaw: it
started too late. In the initial weeks of the outbreak in December and
January, Wuhan authorities were slow to report cases of the mysterious
infection, which delayed measures to contain it, says Howard Markel, a
public-health researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“The delay of China to act is probably responsible for this world
event,” says Markel.
A model simulation1
by Lai Shengjie and Andrew Tatem, emerging-disease researchers at the
University of Southampton, UK, shows that if China had implemented its
control measures a week earlier, it could have prevented 67% of all
cases there. Implementing the measures 3 weeks earlier, from the
beginning of January, would have cut the number of infections to 5% of
the total.
caitlinjohnstone | It’s interesting how the virus which might knock
down the most powerful government in the world behaves so much like that
government: dominating world affairs and killing the most vulnerable
members of the populations it attacks. Nations which are being smashed
with US sanctions have already been watching their frail and elderly die of inadequate medical care and malnutrition, and now with the coronavirus they’re experiencing those same exact effects squared. Which is why places like Iran are being hit so uniquely hard. America is like if COVID-19 was a country.
Also interesting is watching people react to the way so many of the corporate and government policies which have been causing ordinary human beings to suffer great pains are now simply being canceled all around the world in response to the pandemic. This Slate article documents
a number of the changes which have been made just in America, like how
for people being thrown in jail for minor offenses, “San Antonio is one of many jurisdictions to
announce that, to keep jails from being crowded with sick citizens,
they’ll stop doing that. Why were they doing it in the first place?” Or
how “Trump has instructed government agencies who administer loans to waive interest accrual for the duration of the crisis. But why on earth is our government charging its own citizens interest anyway?”
We’re
seeing immense burdens lifted from people with an easy “Oh, that’s
making the pandemic worse? Okay we’ll stop that then.” And we’re seeing
people react with fully justified indignation with, “Well why were you
doing that to me in the first place??”
And the answer is very
simple: because until now, your suffering wasn’t exacerbating a virus
which does not discriminate on the basis of class. Politicians and
billionaires are just as capable of losing their lives and loved ones to
this virus as anyone else, as the CEO of Universal Music Group just learned
with his COVID-19 hospitalization. Simply not causing needless human
suffering wasn’t enough to get them to stop crushing people; it had to
actually show up on their doorstep to make a difference.
nydailynews | Kentucky Fried Chicken is suspending its signature slogan — for obvious reasons.
On
Friday, the fast food chain announced it would suspend an advertising
campaign focused on its famous “finger lickin’ good” motto amid the
coronavirus crisis.
According to The Independent,
Advertising Standards Authority — the self-regulatory agency focused on
the British advertising industry — received 163 complaints about the
U.K.-based television ads that started running in February.
“Our
team in the UK didn’t feel like it was the right time to be airing this
particular advertisement, so they’ve decided to pause it for now,” a
KFC spokesperson told the Daily News Monday evening.
Weeks
ago, the American-headquartered fried chicken giant announced a search
for a “professional finger licker” willing to show off their skills with
a widespread billboards campaign that went up across Britain.
With
health officials all over the world stressing the dire importance for
hygiene and hand-washing, the idea of any kind of finger-licking doesn’t
quite strike the right tone.
For the time being, there won’t be any ads featuring people licking
their fingers after eating the company’s flagship product. The slogan
was trademarked by KFC, also known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, in 1956,
fox5ny | One police department in Oregon posted a reminder on their Facebook
page, asking the public to not call for an emergency if they run out of
toilet paper due to the coronavirus outbreak.
"It’s hard to believe that we even have to post this," police in
Newport, Oregon wrote. "Do not call 9-1-1 just because you ran out of
toilet paper. You will survive without our assistance."
The post then pointed out the different methods used throughout
history before suggesting other items that could be used in lieu of
"your favorite soft, ultra plush two-ply citrus scented tissue."
Among their suggestions: grocery store receipts, newspaper, cloth rags, magazine pages, cotton balls and even leaves.
"Be resourceful. Be patient. There is a TP shortage. This too shall
pass. Just don’t call 9-1-1. We cannot bring you toilet paper," the post
concluded.
APNews | Israel has long been
known for its use of technology to track the movements of Palestinian
militants. Now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to use similar
technology to stop the movement of the coronavirus.
Netanyahu’s
Cabinet on Sunday authorized the Shin Bet security agency to use its
phone-snooping tactics on coronavirus patients, an official confirmed,
despite concerns from civil-liberties advocates that the practice would
raise serious privacy issues. The official spoke on condition of
anonymity pending an official announcement.
Netanyahu
announced his plan in a televised address late Saturday, telling the
nation that the drastic steps would protect the public’s health, though
it would also “entail a certain degree of violation of privacy.”
Israel has identified more than 200 cases of the coronavirus. Based on
interviews with these patients about their movements, health officials
have put out public advisories ordering tens of thousands of people who
may have come into contact with them into protective home quarantine.
The new plan would
use mobile-phone tracking technology to give a far more precise history
of an infected person’s movements before they were diagnosed and
identify people who might have been exposed.
In
his address, Netanyahu acknowledged the technology had never been used
on civilians. But he said the unprecedented health threat posed by the
virus justified its use. For most people, the coronavirus causes only
mild or moderate symptoms. But for some, especially older adults and
people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness.
wandtv | Champaign Mayor Deborah Frank Feinen has issued an executive order declaring an emergency in the city.
City
officials said the emergency is related to the COVID-19, which is
anticipated to cause an impact on the health of community members.
Champaign Municipal Code allows the mayor to declare an emergency for a
limited time.
Included in the executive order are ordinances that would give the city extraordinary powers to the Mayor.
Violating parts of the Open Meetings Act
Ban sale of firearms and ammunition
Ban sale of any alcohol
Closing of all bars, taverns, liquor stores, etc
Ban
sale or giving away of gasoline or other liquid flammable or
combustible products in any container other than a gasoline tank
permanently fixed to a motor vehicle
Direct the shutoff of power, water, gas, etc
Take possession of private property and obtain full title to same
Prohibit or restrict ingress and egress to and from the City
"The
executive order allows the city to be flexible to properly respond to
the emergency needs of our community. None of the options will
necessarily will be implemented but are available in order to protect
the welfare and safety of our community if needed," Jeff Hamilton the
City of Champaign's Communications Manger told WAND-TV.
nbcchicago | Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker declared a disaster proclamation Monday
over the coronavirus outbreak as an additional four cases were reported
in Chicago.
A total of 11 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Illinois while
more than 24 deaths and 600 total cases have been reported in the U.S.
Along with Illinois, 13 other states have declared states of emergency
amid the outbreak, Pritzker said.
"We will have all the tools at play and rapidly available to deploy," he added.
The disaster declaration announced Monday, Illinois' version of a
state of emergency, is the first step toward obtaining federal funding
to help with the outbreak.
At a news conference Monday, Pritzker urged residents to help themselves, their families and communities.
"We are one community here in Illinois, and community members take
care of each other," Pritzker said. "Don't let fear replace
level-headedness. You have responsibilities during this crisis too, and
it's important to live up to them."
theatlantic | On a blustery Baltimore night in the late
1980s, I went to hear Louis Farrakhan speak to a packed crowd at Morgan
State University, a historically black college. For more than five
decades, the Nation of Islam leader has railed against Jews, variously
describing them as “satanic,” “bloodsuckers,” and “termites.” He was at
the peak of his influence at the time. As the editor of the weekly Baltimore Jewish Times, I wanted to experience firsthand the impact his hate-filled invective had on audiences.
I went with a fellow editor from the paper, and ours were among a
handful of white faces in the large crowd. In one of his long and angry
tirades that night, Farrakhan focused his venom on white people, Jews,
and the media.
Taking
notes as surreptitiously as possible, my colleague and I exchanged
worried glances, keenly aware that we represented a trifecta of evil in
Farrakhan’s world. We sensed some hard stares from those around us, and
as the gifted orator ratcheted up his pitch, rousing his listeners, we
feared for our safety. A word from the reverend and the crowd might have
turned on us. But then, as he neared the end of his rant, his pace
slowed, his voice lowered, and he called on his listeners to show their
pride and dignity when encountering television reporters outside the
auditorium.
Farrakhan’s words had an immediate calming effect. I remember feeling
a tug of gratitude for the shift in his tone and message, and noted how
quickly a crowd can be stirred up or calmed down.
Amid the
terrifying wave of anti-Semitism in the United States of late, I have
thought of that scene and wondered what has stirred up such anger
against Jews now.
How do we explain Jews being shot to death at
Shabbat prayer in their synagogue by hate-filled white nationalists in
Pittsburgh and Poway, California; and visibly Orthodox men and women
violently attacked in Brooklyn and Monsey, New York, and shot down next
door to a synagogue in Jersey City, New Jersey?
These
headline-grabbing incidents are part of a broader pattern. The
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) began tracking anti-Semitic hate crimes
four decades ago. This past year brought the third-highest spike on
record. Jews make up less than 3 percent of the American population, but
the majority of reported religiously based hate crimes target Jewish
people or institutions. In a new study by the American Jewish Committee,
35 percent of American Jews said they had experienced anti-Semitism in
the past five years, and one-third reported concealing outward
indications of their being Jewish.
nih | MacDonald
argues that a suite of genetic and cultural adaptations among Jews
constitutes a “group evolutionary strategy.” Their supposed genetic
adaptations include, most notably, high intelligence, conscientiousness,
and ethnocentrism. According to this thesis, several major intellectual
and political movements, such as Boasian anthropology, Freudian
psychoanalysis, and multiculturalism, were consciously or unconsciously
designed by Jews to (a) promote collectivism and group continuity among
themselves in Israel and the diaspora and (b) undermine the cohesion of
gentile populations, thus increasing the competitive advantage of Jews
and weakening organized gentile resistance (i.e., anti-Semitism). By
developing and promoting these movements, Jews supposedly played a necessary
role in the ascendancy of liberalism and multiculturalism in the West.
While not achieving widespread acceptance among evolutionary scientists,
this theory has been enormously influential in the burgeoning political
movement known as the “alt-right.” Examination of MacDonald’s argument
suggests that he relies on systematically misrepresented sources and
cherry-picked facts. It is argued here that the evidence favors what is
termed the “default hypothesis”: Because of their above-average
intelligence and concentration in influential urban areas, Jews in
recent history have been overrepresented in all major intellectual and
political movements, including conservative movements, that were not
overtly anti-Semitic.
Keywords: Jews, Anti-Semitism, Group conflict, Gene-culture coevolution, Kevin MacDonald, Culture of critique
In
the 1990s, Kevin MacDonald wrote a trilogy of books arguing that
Judaism is a “group evolutionary strategy,” and the pursuit of this
strategy by Jews had far-reaching consequences for world history. In A People That Shall Dwell Alone: Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy (1994)
he proposed that, since its inception, Judaism has promoted eugenic
practices favoring high intelligence, conscientiousness, and
ethnocentrism. As a consequence, the contemporary Jewish population (at
least the Ashkenazi population) is marked by a high level of these
traits, including a mean IQ of 117 (weighted on verbal intelligence). In
Separation and Its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism (1998b)
he argued that anti-Semitism is a reaction by gentiles to competition
for resources with less populous but more organized and competent Jewish
groups. In The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of
Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political
Movements (1998a),
he argued that post-Enlightenment Jews who abandoned the religion of
Judaism invented a substitute: liberal political, intellectual, and
scientific movements with the same social and organizational structure
as Judaism, and the same ultimate purpose to promote the evolutionary
success of Jews.
According to The Culture of Critique,
the most influential of these intellectual movements—Boasian
anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Frankfurt School critical
theory—were headed by charismatic and authoritarian leaders (analogous
to rabbis), they placed great value on verbal brilliance and internal
consistency rather than testability or agreement with external reality
(analogous to Talmudic scholarship), and they promoted Jewish group
interests at the expense of gentiles. The movements advocated separatism
and ethnocentrism for Jews, discouraged ethnic identification among
white gentiles (in order to prevent group consciousness among white
gentiles that might lead to a sense of competition with Jews and thus
anti-Semitism), undermined and destabilized traditional European culture
to weaken resistance to Jewish control, “pathologized” anti-Semitism,
and denied that Jewish behavior plays a role in anti-Jewish attitudes.
MacDonald
argues that Jewish intellectual and political movements were
responsible for major trends in twentieth-century scientific, political,
and demographic history. These movements, he says, were responsible for
the rejection of Darwinian thinking among most mainstream social
scientists, and also for large-scale nonwhite immigration to European
and European-colonized countries (the United States, Australia, etc.).
nakedcapitalism | I have had a lifetime to think about why I acted (unsuccessfully) and so many others do not.
I remember once reading about inner city police corruption which
seems to come and go in cycles. The article proposed credibly that 90%
of policemen were essentially followers and would follow the existing
culture of their institutions. The key to eliminating corruption is in
the other 10%. People like me.
10% will act according to their own perception of right and wrong.
90% will imitate the culture that surrounds them. Those ten percent can
be as easily agents for bad as agents for good. I would not make the
claim that some of us are intrinsically good or bad. I have made many
bad choices in my life, despite appearing to make myself the hero of
this story. I could easily see myself as one of the mavericks who turned
a police force corrupt.
But even among the 10%, I think I am part of an even smaller group. I
think only 1% are fearless enough to buck the dominant culture. When a
police force goes bad, 9% are leading the bad behavior, and 1% are
trying to reverse it. Similarly, when a police force is good, 9% are
leading the good behavior, and 1% are trying to reverse it. Often the
key to protecting an institution is crushing people like me by
“hammering the nail that is sticking out.”
Throughout my life I have been the rare person trying to change the
culture wherever I go. Usually I am unsuccessful. When I am successful, I
sometimes do more harm than good. We should be glad there are not more
mavericks in the world. It would be anarchy. We should be glad that 90%
of people fundamentally work to protect their institutions, even if
those institutions are flawed.
Returning to the role of the enabler, let’s talk about Hillary and
Jim Jordan. Of course, both people are part of the 90%. Of course, the
Secretary of State, and a coach at a major university, have primary
responsibility to protect their institutions. Protecting the institution
is the very definition of those roles. Despite the significant power
that they could have used to thwart evil, doing so would have undermined
their primary roles. And like the Tuck Dean in my story, I am not even
convinced they had anywhere near enough insight (if any) to have taken
credible action.
In my case I may have done some good, even though it did not feel
like it at the time. Although the parents I approached vociferously
defended my father, I do know that my fathers’ access to him decreased,
and had the situation continued there was less likelihood of those
parents remaining enablers. I also know that word got back to my father,
and although we broke off any further relationship, he had to be aware
that people were watching him.
Years later I discovered that there was open communication amongst
our family about my fathers’ predation, which surprised me. I always
thought it remained a hidden secret. Maybe my actions had something to
do with this. The life lesson for me is that speaking out is effective
for would-be enablers despite the violent push-back and self-doubt. It
sets the tone for everyone else in your system.
wikipedia | The FBI Indexes are a system used to track American citizens and other people by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) before the adoption by the FBI of computerized databases. The
name signifies that the lists were originally made on paper index cards,
compiled by J. Edgar Hoover before he became director of the FBI.[1] The Index List was used to track U.S. citizens and others believed by the FBI to be dangerous to national security,
and was subdivided into various divisions which generally were rated
based on different classes of danger the subject was thought to
represent. There is no indication the FBI stopped adding names onto its
Index List before September 11, 2001.[citation needed]
After September 11, 2001, the date which the FBI folded its Index List into the Terrorist Screening Database
(TSDB) is unknown, while the FBI consolidates the TSDB from other lists
and manages its information. The TSDB is currently available to all
U.S. national security agencies, while select information contained on
the TSDB is forwarded to other nation states and international security
agencies.
The Security Index pertained to the FBI list of dangerous individuals
who might commit acts inimical to the national defense and public
safety of the United States in time of emergency.[11]
The list also included those who could be arrested upon the order of a
U.S. President invoking the Emergency Detention Program. The Reserve
Index, on the other hand, listed all left-wingers and individuals
suspected of being a Communist. By 1950s, for instance, there were 5,000 names under the Security Index while the Reserve Index had 50,000 in the Chicago field office.[12]
An individual in the Reserve Index could be transferred to the Security
Index if such individual posed a threat to U.S. interests in a period
of national emergency.[13]
A difference between these indices involved their color scheme. The
files of those under the Security Index were all in white while the
Reserve Index varied in colors depending on the occupation of the
subject.[12]
Prominent figures listed in the Security Index include Martin Luther King. The FBI had been monitoring his activities with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
since 1957 and by 1962, he was finally listed in the FBI index due to
the involvement of two of his advisers with the U.S. Communist Party,
although he failed to meet the criteria for inclusion in the Security
Index.[14]
The Security Index itself was merged with the Agitator Index and
the Communist Index. Renamed to the Reserve Index in 1960, this index
included a Section A for teachers, doctors, lawyers, entertainers, and
other people considered influential and not politically conservative.
Hoover had Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. added to the Reserve Index,
Section A, in retaliation for his civil rights work and worldwide
popularity.[15]
Just
check out this crazy viral xenophobic theorizing that ties the
disruption caused by corona closures to Russia and Putin. It’s pushed by a respected liberal academic — someone who regularly gets space in the New York Times. Americans love their insane nativist conspiracies about foreign plots by shady asiatics. Don’t deny them this basic right!
This stuff is infectious and has already led to sporadic violence against Chinese-Americans and people from Asia in America. But this nativist blaming isn’t just happening here.
Channelling Brass Eye, the host of the news program laid out his logic
like this: China is America’s greatest enemy. “Corona” means “crown.”
And Donald Trump “crowned” the winners of his Miss Universe pageant. It
all added up. Trump unleashed a bioweapon. The clue is in the etymology!
And really, who knows? Maybe the virus is some shadowy American chemical warfare program that backfired. It wouldn’t the first.
I’m sure that xenophobic panics have always followed pandemics and
outbreaks of disease, going back to origins of human history. It’s a
natural response when faced with a mysterious, deadly calamity. You
blame the out-group — a different ethnic or religious or minority group.
You blame whoever your official enemy is, or whoever it is most
politically useful to blame. It happened during the Spanish Flu that
decimated humanity a century ago. And it hasn’t changed today — in our
age of supposed rationality.
And what’s politically useful today
about blaming the coronavirus on a specific country? It helps obscure
the real origin of the pathogen — which is not national, but
international. It’s economic and political.
jerusalempost | Israel is going to use counter-terrorism technologies to track
coronavirus carriers, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday as
the government enacted new restrictions including the closure of all restaurants, cafes and theaters, and called for offices to have employees work from home.
“We are at war with an enemy: the coronavirus,” the prime minister said, “an invisible enemy.”
Netanyahu said that he had been given the green light by the Justice
Ministry to use Intelligence tracking tools to digitally monitor
coronavirus patients without asking them, which the prime minister
admitted Saturday night infringes on personal privacy. But he argued
that by using these means, “we will be able to see who they were with,
what happened before and after [they were infected], and we will be able
to isolate the coronavirus and not the entire country.
"We
are one of the few countries with this capability, and we will use it,”
he said. "We must do everything, as a government and as citizens, to
not become infected and not to infect others.”It was later clarified that these tolls would not be used for enforcement or monitoring of isolation guidelines.
As the number of coronavirus patients in the country neared 200
at press time, the government rolled out further restrictions that
would go into effect Sunday morning. Kindergartens, nurseries, daycares,
all special education learning centers and all recreational and leisure
establishments will close.
Workplaces will remain open, but staff will
be asked to work from home. Gatherings will be limited to no more than
10 people.
kansascity | Kansas and Missouri hold sweeping, authoritarian-like powers to separate from their friends, families and communities anyonewho has coronavirus or has been exposed to it.
Health officials can order you to stay in your
home or keep you in a secluded location. Neighborhoods and even entire
cities can be locked down. You can be prosecuted for non-compliance.
Neither state has invoked these broad powers so far. But measures that just a few weeks agoseemed to be the stuff of dystopian novels and movies arebecoming reality in the United States and around the world.
New York state has established a “containment zone” around the New
York City suburb of New Rochelle. Italy, a country of 60 million people,
has been brought to a standstill.
As COVID-19 spreads around the United States, Kansas and Missouri officials are implementing increasingly tough restrictions.Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has barred gatherings of more than 1,000 and Friday Sedgwick County banned groups of more than 250. Governors of Kansas and Missouri have declared states of emergency, giving them expanded legal and budgetary authority.
All of it raises the possibility that as the
virus spreads as experts project — potentially infecting millions and
killing thousands nationally —authorities will resort to even
more aggressive measures available under seldom invoked laws. These
include steps that will challenge fundamental American notions of
personal freedom and civil liberty.
“The public health emergency powers are
astonishingly broad,” said Wendy Parmet, a professor at Northeastern
University School of Law in Boston, who specializes in public health
law.
“The word I tend to use is they’re awesome, in that more primeval sense of the word.”
Because quarantine and isolation is so rarely
used, modern courts have had relatively few chances to assess whether
these laws strike the right balance between public protection and civil
liberties.
“We are deep into uncharted territory. We’re not at the edge of it,” said Parmet.
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article241176436.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article241176436.html#storylink=cpy
yalebooks | COVID-19 surged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December 2019, and by
January 2020 it had hit Hubei province like a tidal wave, swirling over China
and rippling out overseas. The Chinese state rolled into action to combat the
spread and to care for those infected. Among the thirty medicines the Chinese
National Health Commission selected to fight the virus was a Cuban anti-viral
drug, Interferon Alpha 2b. This drug has been produced in China since 2003, by
the enterprise ChangHeber, a Cuban-Chinese joint venture.
Cuban Interferon Alpha 2b has proven effective for viruses with
characteristics similar to those of COVID-19. Cuban biotech specialist Dr. Luis
Herrera Martinez explained, “its use
prevents aggravation and complications in patients, reaching that stage that ultimately
can result in death.” Cuba first developed and used interferons to arrest a deadly outbreak of
the dengue virus in 1981, and the experience catalyzed the development of the island’s
now world-leading biotech industry.
The world’s first biotechnology enterprise, Genetech, was founded in San Francisco in 1976, followed by AMGen in Los
Angeles in 1980. One year later, the Biological Front, a professional
interdisciplinary forum, was set up to develop the industry in Cuba. While most
developing countries had little access to the new technologies (recombinant
DNA, human gene therapy, biosafety), Cuban biotechnology expanded and took on
an increasingly strategic role in both the public health sector and the
national economic development plan. It did so despite the US blockade
obstructing access to technologies, equipment, materials, finance, and even
knowledge exchange. Driven by public health demand, it has been characterized by
the fast track from research and innovation to trials and application, as the
story of Cuban interferon shows.
Interferons are “signaling” proteins produced and released by cells in
response to infections that alert nearby cells to heighten their anti-viral defenses.
They were first identified in 1957 by Jean Lindenmann and Aleck Isaacs in
London. In the 1960s Ion Gresser, a US researcher in Paris, showed that
interferons stimulate lymphocytes that attack tumors in mice. In the 1970s, US
oncologist Randolph Clark Lee took up this research.
Catching the tail end of US President Carter’s improved relations with
Cuba, Dr. Clark Lee visited Cuba, met with Fidel Castro, and convinced him that
interferon was the wonder drug.
Shortly afterwards, a Cuban doctor and a hematologist spent time in Dr. Clark
Lee’s laboratory, returning with the latest research about interferon and more
contacts. In March 1981, six Cubans spent twelve days in Finland with the
Finnish doctor Kari Cantell, who in the 1970s had isolated interferon from
human cells and had shared the breakthrough by declining to patent the
procedure. The Cubans learned to produce large quantities of interferon.
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4/3
43
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What day?
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My birthday
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...
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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He ...
