I try to give an insight in my own life and dealings with rosacea. I also try to gather information that might be useful for everyone with rosacea, especially subtype 1 with burning, flushing and skin redness. I happen to be a bit unfortunate in that I have this condition for a long time already, and unlike many others, I haven't been able to get it into remission. I know it is more uplifting to read about someone who has beaten rosacea, but I like to write about the struggles that come for those who haven't achieved this. I also blabber here about everyday life topics.
May 10th 2020
I read an interesting explanation from Dr Zania Stamataki of Covid19, a senior lecturer in viral immunology 
A successful spy must be a master of disguise, and so it is with viruses: if they want to evade recognition by immune cells, they must change their protein coat frequently. This is achieved via tiny alterations in their genetic material called mutations. The Goldilocks principle applies here: if the mutations are too subtle, the viral coat will be easily identified by existing antibodies, whereas if they are too drastic they might simply inactivate the virus. The mutations that allow viruses to fly under the radar fall somewhere in between. Influenza viruses, which use rapidly evolving ribonucleic acid (RNA) as their genetic material, are experts at this game. History teaches us that influenza mutations can result in pandemics with millions of deaths, so we’ve learned to keep a watchful eye on them. As flu evolves over the months, virologists respond by producing seasonal vaccines that remain effective – for a time, at least. Coronaviruses have RNA genomes too, but they are very large. That means that there are many more opportunities for mutations to go wrong – from the virus’s point of view. As a result, they have developed a sort of “proof-reading” mechanism that edits out mutations – meaning that they change a lot less rapidly than flu does. This is good news for us, and for vaccine development. But we still need more information to determine just how long a vaccine might be effective for.
This is the hallmark of viral success – it doesn’t kill us quickly, mutates often, and is easily transmitted. This virus seems capricious and unpredictable, which plays a major factor in its success. Some people may not be affected at all and so be unaware they are carrying it. But they may infect others. Some people may suffer mild symptoms and mistake it for a winter cold. Some people it kills. And then there is the element of the virus causing blood clots in the lungs or lung periphery. The blood vessels push liquids into the lungs. Intravascular coagulation is often associated with bacterial sepsis (blood poisoning is the old term). And we know that small vessel coagulation is driven by activation of our own immune system (and specific types of cell death). Its paradoxical, but dampening down the fires that are started by our immune system to fight the virus, could be critical to prevent the excessive responses in the patients that end up in ICU. We need to understand the immune response to this virus and the immunopathology that results..... it's not always about fighting the pathogen.
Songs of the day
May 9th 2020
Politics wise, I think I have written some thoughts before here about the FBI and their shameful antics lately. Small update, the general who was set up, then arrested with incredible force, shamed and who had his life destroyed, General Flynn... well his case has been dropped now. And we have been given new insight in the disgraceful handlings of this case by the FBI. We now have the documentation that Comey/Obama/FBI (and Joe Biden was also in on all this) discussed setting him up, purposely falsifying his claim of not being a spy and changing it into the opposite, then threatened his son if he didn't plead guilty (now recanted), and pressurizing him to lie under oath. And the most gob-smacking thing of all? Left wing news outlets still manage to twist and turn the facts now and instead of heckling the FBI and the politicians who were behind this, they pretend that the prosecutor is corrupt in dropping the case.. Barr got an independent lawyer/attorney to look into the Flynn case, Jensen, but you wouldn't know about that reading mainstream media. Jensen, not Barr, did the review and ultimately concluded that it was "just" to withdraw the case, but all you hear the majority of the media about is how Barr did it all. Because they want to blame Barr. Nothing about the DOJ’s written report being damning. Nothing about the hand written notes from the interview with Flynn contradicting the official 302 memos. Nothing about the initial 302 memo having gone 'missing' in the FBI files. They have no idea that Lisa Page was editing and falsifying the second 302 for Peter Strzok and that the whole premise of the interview was flawed. Because nothing in the critical call with Flynn was suspicious. There was no pretext for a crime and no reason to interview Flynn other than to set him up. Flynn was the fox in the open hunting season who played a part in the bigger Russiagate investigation. Flynn also previously opposed Obama, for instance when it came to his poor decision to send weapons and arm to the 'Syrian rebels', which turned out to be ISIS. Obama openly advised Trump not to work with Flynn, because Obama didn't like him. And regarding the by then building Russia Collusion case; Flynn was head of the defense Intelligence Agency and knew exactly how the FBI worked. So in order for the FBI to continue to investigate and spy on Trump not just before he was elected but also after - during his administration -, a competent and intelligent person like Flynn who reported to Trump and who did not get on well with Obama and had cleared up political military lies in the past, was kind of an obstruction. Flynn was a national security adviser and loyal to the president, after all. Flynn would have found out about the illegal investigations, the falsely acquired FISA court allowance to spy on Trumps campaign. So Flynn had to be set up and get fired, one way or another and after that squeezed to falsely admit subverting the political process (because that was what the Russia investigation had turned into by then; no longer collusion with Russia, which proved incorrect, but suddenly and silently the investigation was steered towards subverting the judicial process). And it has now become public that he was set up with lies. It was damning that on the very day Strzok wanted to organize a meeting, investigations on Flynn had come back all clear and they were going to close the investigation that day. No clear indication as to why Flynn was under investigation in the first place. 
The report written by Barr outlines the Flynn decision and zooms in on three main issues. Firstly, that the FBI had no legitimate legal reason to interview Flynn in the first place. You cannot just start FBI investigations on anybody without some legal basis for them. Here this was acknowledged in writing, but bypassed, which lends weight to the notion that Flynn was set up. The FBI sidestepped a modest but critical protection that constrains the investigative reach of law enforcement: the predication threshold for investigating American citizens. Secondly by then FBI director James Comey broke protocol and ignored the AG's request to follow protocols Thirdly it was found that FBI agents at some point had the transcript in their hands and were confident Flynn didn't lie.In more detail: The Unites States department of justice, the DOJ, found that the pretext to interview Flynn on the "Logan Act" was illegitimate (a 221 year old archaic act which was dragged into this case on purpose to confuse and set up Flynn). And listening in on his call with the Russian ambassador, then transcripting Flynns words, was done without a warrant and also illegal. The DOJ and FBI warned Comey about this and given that Comey already had a transcript of the call with the Russian diplomat, showing that US National Security Advisor Flynn didn't lie, the Logan Act was not a sufficient reason to then go on to interview (interrogate) Flynn. What was said in the transcript was fine and not illegal. The FBI said “the is no valid reasons to investigate Flynn”. And then they continued to investigate. Comey ignored warnings and concerns from the FBI and DOJ's Sally Yates and went ahead anyway. Because the FBI was eager to interview Mr. Flynn irrespective of any underlying investigation. What also lends weight to the "entrapment" part, is that the interviewing agents failed to issue the common Section 1001 admonitions about lying to investigators. It is also undisputed that the agents breached the common practice of arranging for the interview through the White House Counsel. DOJ officials wanted Comey to warn and brief the White House (aka Trump) of the nature of the interview, but Comey along with Brennan refused. This caused "frustration" for Sally Yates (DOJ) who later demanded Comey to brief White House officials, which Comey continued to ignore. Comey also bypassed the DOJ. And the FBI also didn't show Flynn the transcript of the conversation with him.
What was going on with this transcript? The FBI desperately fought for Flynn's lawyer to NOT see the FBI's hand written notes. The original tape of the call is still in the hands of the FBI, but they 'lost' the important original 302 (official document memorialisation the meeting), which is a record of the interview and the answers from Flynn. But the hand notes are still there from the agent and the hand notes say "I don't remember", however the edited 302 says something different. Of course, the suspicion is that the original 302 also has the FBI agents hand written answer of "I don't know" for Flynn. But we do know that Strzok got Page to edit that 302. Background context here is that the FBI - incredibly enough - still don't actually record and store interviews. They still rely solely on written notes from the interview (!!) And in this Flynn case, these written notes contradict the official memo (302) which was edited by Page. Unbelievable, right? So, the original 302 got 'lost' but the hand written notes that are still there show "I don't remember". Only the edited Lisa Page version says something different. Therefore the lost original 302 would have been kind of vital to prove there really was originally noted down :"I don't know" as Flynns answer. The FBI desperately covered this up and didn't want Flynn's lawyer to see these hand written notes because they proved Flynn wasn't lying. The original hand notes from the interview say that Flynn didn't remember. But the edited 302 said something different. Because Lisa Page illegally edited the phone call transcript to suggest that Flynn DID lie. But Flynn didn't lie. He said, "I don't remember" The first agent wrote that down. But between the agent who first hand listened to the call and who wrote it down, and the FBI member who did the 302, something went 'wrong'.
Later Flynn admitted to the FBI that "you already have the transcript" of the call. When asked whether he asked (Russian diplomat) Kysliak to not "escalate the situation", Flynn answered "Not really, I don't remember". This contradicted the FBI's record of him saying "DON'T DO ANYTHING". FBI agents had the transcript of the call and reported to their leadership that Mr. Flynn exhibited a “very sure demeanor” and “did not give any indicators of deception.” At this time FBI did not open a criminal investigation based on Mr. Flynn’s calls with Mr. Kislyak, predicated on the Logan Act. The FBI never attempted to open a new investigation into Mr. Flynn on these grounds. Mr. Flynn’s communications with the Russian ambassador implicated "no crime"
Regarding this Logan Act: the FBI really looked for anything to bring Flynn down. Flynn was part of the transition team at the time. A Barr found, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the phone call and Flynn was doing what anyone in his position has done throughout the last 200 years. That's also why no one has been charged. Obama's DOJ was actually angry at the FBI for using this ploy, stating that he thought it was important to treat Trump like they treated Obama. Sally Yates, acting AG, was no happy with the "Loagan Act" and got even angrier when Comey ignored her and broke protocols to get to Flynn. The FBI not only got Flynn fired, but they also bankrupted him then, starting trials based on these very dubious charges, costing him immense sums of money in lawyer costs. On top of this, Flynn was threatened by agents that his son would be investigated and charged over wrongly filled in documents, unless Flynn admitted to lying. Mueller knew all this, but he kept it from Flynn's lawyer and prosecuted him anyway. Why did Mueller and FBI hide the written notes? Why did Lisa Page edit the 302? Where is the original 302? And why did the FBI tell congress Flynn didn't lie and then suddenly months later, they changed their statement and said that he did lie?
The Flynn case has now been dropped by the state prosecutors themselves, because there was no predication: Flynn should never have been interviewed over the "Logan Act". You need a valid legal reason to interview someone like that and their's was not valid (and worse; it was politically motivated, not legally, a no go for the FBI and Obama who was leaving the White House by then). Also the case was dropped because protocols were broken to get to that interview. There is also not sufficient proof that Flynn lied. All damning stuff, this. The FBI even spoke about keeping Flynn relaxed and not in the know. That is; against the law they did not inform him that he was being interviewed over a perceived crime. They even didn't warn him, as thy legally should, because thy didn't want to "tip him off" about what they were doing. That's bang out of order and illegal. Aside form illegal interviews and practices, the Flynn case has also been dropped by the state prosecution because the government cannot explain, much less prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury, how false statements are “material” to an investigation that seems to have been undertaken only to elicit those very false statements and thereby criminalize Mr. Flynn. The FBI agents “had the impression that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying.” And the statements in question were not by their nature easily falsifiable. In his interview, Mr. Flynn offered either equivocal (“I don’t know”) or indirect responses, or claimed to not remember the matter in question. The evidence unearthed creates reasonable doubt as to whether Mr. Flynn knowingly and willingly lied to investigators during the interview. And the FBI illegally spied on Flynn to get this phone call. Political opponents as it now seems illegally obtained Flynns phone call with the sole purpose of entrapping him to lie. That is all why the case against Flynn was dropped. The FBI was way out of their legal rights and abused their powers, breaking the law. Let that sink in, anyone screaming 'Yeah but Flynn Lied!'. Don't be a partisan and always try to look at the law and the factual reasonings behind a case like this being dropped, no matter how much you may hate Barr and Trump. (Thanks B for always highlighting the latest updates on all this to me).
As my trusted and ever up-to-date friend puts it: Unfortunately this sordid Flynn affair is linked to that other FBI travesty; The Mueller investigation. Which is looking like a cover-up for the FBI. Who knew the Russia dossier was fake. There are interviews with the sub source for the dossier who said it is just full of “Bar talk”: it was not to be taken seriously. This same person was the source for Christopher Steele to compose the dossier. So the FBI knew the dossier was just full of “bar talk” well before they used it to start spying on Trump. The FBI also received a letter from the UK warning them about Christopher Steele and his credibility. There are also email exchanges from people at the DOJ questioning Steels credibility. The FBI also have it on record that Christopher Steele wanted to take down Trump. Therefore it was politically motivated. The FBI knew the dossier was fake. The IG reported that the dossier was “central and essential“ for gaining warrants to spy on Trump officials. In short the dossier was the only thing that the FBI had. Enter Mueller many months later. Who does Mueller investigate and take down in crimes totally unrelated to Russian collusion? Mueller manages to charge Paul Manafort for Tax evasion from 12 years ago. He raids and arrests Trump’s personal lawyer and charges him with taxicab medallion fraud. He goes back after the FBI, clears Flynn of wrong-doing (months prior) and brings him in for interrogation. Then threatens his son and gets Flynn to admit to lying after bankrupting him first, based on very dubious charges where written notes from the FBI agents in the meeting contradict the official 302 (official document memorialisation the meeting). A note which just so happened to be edited by Lisa page, who wasn’t even in the meeting herself. The initial 302 is conveniently lost by the FBI.
George Papadopoulos is detained at the airport and surprisingly has his bags searched upon arriving in the USA by the FBI. George was given $10k cash only a week before but smartly left the money with his lawyer in Greece. The FBI still takes George for questioning where he gets the dates wrong in a meeting and admits to lying to the FBI. All of those people were named in the bullshit Steele dossier. Mueller knew the dossier was bullshit. By the time Mueller came in it was as clear as day. Even Andy McCabe under oath said at the time they couldn’t verify it. Comey specifically said in front of Congress that the dossier was “salacious and unverified”. There are about 10 separate pieces of very good evidence that they knew it was bullshit and they knew Hillary had paid for it.So what did Mueller do? He targeted and arrested every person named in that dossier. Because he needed to cover up for the FBI because he knew that it would come out that it was fake. Mueller targeted every person mentioned in that dossier and found charges so that he could give the dossier some credit. Muellers goal was to cover up the corruption of the FBI and if he could arrest Michael Flynn, people would accept that while the dossier was wrong about Flynn, the FBI and Mueller were correct in arresting him. Every person Mueller arrested was in the dossier. The only person they couldn’t arrest was Carter Page. The dossier said that he was an agent for Russia. The FBI got caught doctoring a report from saying “Page was a US asset”, to “Page was NOT a US asset”. The FBI sent Stefan Helper into Page but they couldn’t pin anything on him. The dossier also said that Trumps lawyer Michael Cohen met Russians in Prague. Problem is, Cohen has never been to Prague. What did Mueller do? He raided Cohen, got him on fraud charges over taxi medallions and then tried to make him flip on Trump and Cohen tried with secret recordings but he didn’t have enough. It is easy now to spot that Muellers whole objective was to cover up FBI corruption . He didn’t even bother investigating Joseph Mifsud, he didn’t care about the fusion GPS meeting with a Russian lawyer before and after the Trump Tower meeting. He didn’t even bother investigating Hillary paying a foreign agent to interfere in the election and he didn’t bother investigating the fake “black ledger” which was organised by the Dems with Ukraine that helped take down Paul Manafort. Mueller’s job was to put lipstick on the pig. The FBI weren't going to get caught using a Hillary paid dossier to take down Trump, because they were convinced Hillary would win the elections. But Trump won and by then the FBI started to panic. They knew the dossier was fake and it would have been a massive scandal if that news got out. Enter Mueller to take down the people named in that dossier to make it look credible. Sure sound like “an insurance policy”. And Adam Schiff has been desperately hiding documents of testimony over the Russian collusion. He knows that it is damaging, especially because he parroted that he had evidence for the past three years. Obama knew all about Flynn.
So the real timeline was 1) ICA and Sanctions 2) No Russian response 3) discovered call 4) kept case open 5) LEAKED CALL but not what was said 6) administration denied sanctions were discussed 7) interview Flynn 8) get Flynn fired. It's huge, this is Watergate scandal levels but of course the mainstream media and NYT first are refusing to report honestly and give it all a nasty turn, as if justice was failed. As if him admitting guilt is the red line here, while omitting the parts where Flynn was blackmailed to do so. They don't even inform their readers with the main facts. I can't believe and understand Americans have to live in such polarizing media madness. It is just plain unfair and it really makes me sad that even quality papers have given in to partisan decisions. These are the same media that told their readers for three years that Trump was going down because of Russian collusion. Here is a very very long list of proven fake news, something he always complaints about. News outlets and journalists should always try to bring the news objectively. I guess that is an idle dream these days, because also over here this news was NOT breaking. And has anyone heard left wing news outlets ask Obama or Comey or Biden even one single question about this scandal and the newly unearthed damning evidence? Nope, they deflect deflect deflect. This episode I just described is waved away by some as 'Trumps attempts to deflect from covid19'. Sure sure.... More like you didn't look into this matter. A friend of mine who is a democrat said they should burn that party to the ground and rebuild it from scratch. That's one possible way to look at it I guess. Why would you constantly allow your own politicians to get away with corruption? (Goes for Republican voters too of course). What's with this mind-numbing hypocrisy of one rule for themselves and another for the opponent? Do as I say, not as I do? The predictable message that "we need to heal the nation and move on" (only when it benefits corrupt Democrats)? Instead the media just continue their never ending campaign of mocking Trump and highlighting all his errors. You wouldn't know the scandals surrounding the Flynn case if you'd only read progressive newspapers. Why doesn't that outrage intellectuals? Of course, with all media in the States being in the hands of about 6 people, you will not find a lot of difference of opinion in the mainstream media. Again, I am not a right winger myself but have grown increasingly irritated with the manner in which politics is covered by the media I used to trust. As I said before; if organizations like the FBI (and their equivalents worldwide) can break an innocent man's life like that, we should all be concerned. More on this topic. [Update May 2022: "WASHINGTON, DC — Hillary Clinton personally authorized her campaign to share since-debunked computer data linking Donald Trump with a Russian bank, according to bombshell testimony from her 2016 campaign manager Friday. Robby Mook, testifying as a witness in defense of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, told jurors that he discussed the matter with the Democratic nominee shortly before Election Day."]
April 15th 2020 - welcome to the era of the Great ConfinementGuess most of you are still trapped in the same Covid nightmare as I am. Hope everybody is able to keep up some sort of normalcy in your life. I am self isolating to the T. Working a bit from home. Following the news... The covid statistics. Humans reduced to numbers, it's sad. Here in Europe the other day, Emmanuel Macron held another speech for his nation. Highest viewing numbers in French history, nearly 37 million people watched it. Another month of complete lockdown was announced. And for mostly all of the rest of Europe lockdown measures also remain in place. Spain and Italy have been loosening their radical lockdowns a bit from the start of this week, but their infection numbers are soaring again today. Same for Sweden, who have hardly any lockdown in place. We may be in for the long run here. It's getting so long on a personal level also... Police everywhere, not even allowed to leave the house for exercise during daytime hours in some big cities, everything but essential shops closed. Of course, if a cop pulls you over and talks to you, he can pass the virus on. But cops are everywhere now suddenly, even patrolling sleepy tiny villages. In case of being interrogated by a cop when in my car, I'd probably open the window just a tiny bit, just enough to speak through. Could try to ask the cop to stand at 2 meters distance.. Of course, such orders are best shouted in German 😉. See if that has more impact.
Zombie atmosphere everywhere... People swerve in a wide angle around you while exercising😋 Almost as if you were having the plague. Which you could, sort of... technically.. Grocery shopping has become an outing to look forward to. Despite the Keep Distance lines, the waiting times, people disinfecting trolleys before you get one and despite cops checking if no couples enter a shop. Even while waiting in line to pay, you have to be vigilant now about personal space. When you bend forward to pick something from a shelve nearby and you enter someone else's 1,5 meter space, you can expect angry looks and hisses now. Respect My Personal Space! Stay out of my aura. But here we're all told that life pre-Covid may not return any time soon. 1,5 meter distance rule will stay in place for a long time to come. I have no idea how the restaurants and cafe's will cope with that new distancing rule, while no vaccine is ready. Or sport events. Planes, trains.. The only bonus I can think of is that those ghastly 2 or 3 kisses as greetings over here may finally be a thing of the past.
Bad as this crisis is, I am starting to change my mind to be honest about the full lockdown... It is clear we're having a monster recession ahead here and life has come to a near standstill. But statistically, young people are hardly running any risk of getting really sick. (Aside from the fact that many seem to flout the rules here anyway, thinking they aren't at risk). The few who do are a minority... Am starting to wonder if it may be a wise thing to gradually allow the young and healthy to get the economy going again.
I keep an eye on the American news and developments too and know that on paper, things are dire there also. A country like France has many casualties, but the United States even more. Strangely enough (or is it not so strange?), the States' number of casualties is said to be made up of up to 80% African American people. What a disparity.. Wonder why that could be? Maybe because over there, African Americans have statistically higher chances of suffering from poverty and health conditions? Generally more overweight, living in crowded conditions, more risk of suffering from underlying health conditions like diabetes and heart issues... So this notion of Covid-19 being 'the great equalizer' is really far from the truth clearly.... Such an enormous gulf between the rich and the poor in this lockdown and death numbers/statistics.
Celebrities
Ricky Gervais tweeted about celebrities whining from their wealthy compounds to shut the f up. That he doesn't want to hear celebs complaining from their villa's and swimming pools anymore, using this crisis for even more attention. Or singing 'Imagine' ('Imagine no possessions', sung from their multi-million mansions, sitting on a mountain of dollar bills). 'You can see in their eye - "I could cry at the beauty of my personality, I'm just so beautiful for doing this" and everyone sees that - we get it.' Ricky thinks the nurses and doctors out there are the real heroes. I agree. It's become clear now that the severity of someone's (covid)illness can be directly linked to the amount of virus someone has been subjected to. Putting health care workers at high risk in more than one way. So many hundreds of doctors and nurses have already died in many EU countries as a result. And still they go out to care for the sick, despite not even having reliable protection gear often. Celebs loooooove to stay in the limelight though, showcasing their villa's and gated compounds and pretending to be just like you and me (despite flouting the lockdown rules and jetting all over the place in their private jets anyway). Soooo humble, so normal, suffering just the same. As if..
Despite feeling bored, anxious about the lack of clarity about when this is all going to improve again and frustration with the whole thing (plus being afraid to catch the virus), I'm also lucky in a sense I guess, having no lack of space in the house, not having lost jobs, not struggling to feed myself, generally not all alone and forgotten (sniff..). So, all well and good, except for those who are in fact losing jobs, who were already on zero hour contracts and now relying on universal credit, living in crowded blocks of flats with a herd of children and no garden, having no pension plans and little else other than possibly five or more years of crippling recession to come. Aside from those poor people dying in hospitals, there is this other group within the population; those who are in isolation and are wrecked by worries and who are not enjoying this free time and leisuring around the garden all day, I suppose. No equalizing in sight therefore.. I can definitely see how this months long lockdown now can cause strain on relationships. It's not just "spending a month or two together", in many cases it's also not knowing if you'll be homeless in a month's time, or seeing your bank balance go into overdraft, or never having an hour of adult time away from the kids when you have a family, or grieving a sick or dead loved one, or anxiety about catching the virus because you have a risk factor that increases your risk of death from it, etc. Fiends with kids admit that they struggle with the unwavering energy required to handle all those kids, which usually are in school or out playing with friends. Living together 24/7 with others can be very demanding, when you are not used to it and have no way to escape to for a while, now and then. This lockdown is fast becoming an elite class case of virtue signalling, denying any recognition of the looming shadow. For some individuals and families this is an opportunity to relax, become more introspective and ponder on what was wrong with their previously busy lives, their families, the larger society, our values and priorities, blah, blah. But there is a much larger group who's concerns will overwhelmingly be about survival, rather than attending online gym sessions, virtual visits to art galleries, acquiring new hobbies or how to bake a cake without eggs or flour. Of course, there will always be people who are better off than others, and those people will usually come out the other side in a better position, and that's life. But for rich celebs to use the airspace to wallow in their 'prison life' now, stating how much they are just like the rest of us... just sod off for a month or two.
Skin
My skin is all over the place. Some days it looks fine, others I am so red and flushed. Pollen season has started and with my allergies it is really spiking my histamine related flushing, unfortunately. But as usual in spring... (Sorry for the looks of utter glum and misery, I'm down from all the covid-changes in life and am generally a miserable bastard and bad at smiling).
Is there anything positive to report? Perhaps there isYes, there may be new silicone skin in the making! I ALWAYS imagined this to become reality some day! A second artificial skin, lightweight, protecting our sensitive rosacea skin and masking all redness and imperfections. This one is made from silicone and perhaps it will irritate my mega sensitive ridiculous skin, but in the future a perfectly organic bio-matchable second skin may become reality. A thin layer you can put over your real skin in the morning, protecting yours and making you look perfect 😇
"Scientists Just Invented a Silicone "Second Skin" That Makes You Look Younger". "A team of chemical engineers and medical researchers led by Robert Langer at MIT just developed a wearable second skin. It's a breathable, silicone-based film that's effectively invisible to the human eye. Called XPL (for crosslinked polymer layer) the film is durable and elastic yet fits taut to the skin, with a pressure that reduces the appearance of wrinkles when applied. The invention is outlined toady in the journal Nature Materials, in a paper titled "An elastic second skin". XPL is applied onto the skin in two steps. First, a material called polysiloxane—think of it like a see-through silicone plastic—is carefully coated onto the skin in a exceedingly thin layer. That layer is then cured by a second material, called a platinum catalyst, which pulls the polysiloxane tight by ordering its molecules into a rigid grid. Measuring only 70 micrometers at its thickest, a freshly applied layer of XPL is only about half as thick as a crisp new dollar bill. You can peel away XPL harmlessly at any time... although doing so looks eerily like peeling away skin a day after a bad sunburn. But you wouldn't need to worry about the second skin ripping while you're wearing it, as XPL tears at just below the same pressures and forces that would otherwise break human skin. In their experiments, the research team applied XPL to human subjects in a variety of different pilot studies. They found XPL had a marginal benefit in helping dry skin stay moisturized, and a fairly striking effect in hiding age-related skin changes, such as covering over wrinkles and bags under the eye. Using 3D photography that analyzed skin-level surface area, the researchers compared the under-eyes of subjects before applying XPL and then four hours after putting on the silicone second skin. With the XPL applied, the applicant's skin was pulled almost twice as smooth. It's pretty astonishing.
Rox Anderson, a medical researcher with the research team at Massachusetts General Hospital, forecasts a future in which his silicone skin has benefits beyond the cosmetic. For instance, he imagines layering ultraviolet light-blocking materials or dermatological creams into the skin for a healthier you. "For eczema or sun protection, as examples, this second skin platform [could] serve as a reservoir for trans-dermal drug delivery or SPF ingredients," he says."
I understand why some people are so pissed off with the WHO I know I myself wrote some words of praise about China's tackling of the crisis in their own country, but now that we're a bit further down the road and more news has come out, I'm retracting. China has been covering up and misreporting from the get go. And it's shocking how the WHO allowed China to cover up this pandemic - the worst of the past century - and spread false information. China didn't warn the public of a likely pandemic for six key days after detecting the new coronavirus, investigation now reveals. Officials held on to the information of a likely pandemic for almost a week in January. Despite the WHO first hearing about clusters of unusual cases of pneumonia in Wuhan on December 31st of 2019, a mass banquet was held in Wuhan and millions began travelling in the next two weeks. President Xi finally warned the public on the seventh day, Jan. 20, documents revealed. During that time, from January 5 to January 17, hundreds of patients were appearing in hospitals not just in Wuhan but across the country. The delay came on top of almost 14 days during which no cases were registered, although there were in fact thousands of real Covid-19 cases already in China. The WHO accepted these flawed data from China, just as they accepted their nonsense information about 'not having clear evidence from investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities that there was human to human transmission of the new corona virus'. A World Health Organization official said Monday that she suspected human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus “right from the start,” beginning on Dec. 31, 2019. But WHO officials echoed Chinese authorities and denied any suggestion of human-to-human transmission for weeks after Dec. 31. Chinese doctors, meanwhile, were reported to have known for weeks prior that the virus could be transmitted between humans. You'd expect the WHO to have top notch virologists and scientists on board. But this is what sort of blatantly false information was tweeted by them on January 14th (!so, weeks later!):
WHO also refused to call it an epidemic, and instead kept downplaying the virus infections. And the WHO did not recommend Chinese travel bans. In fact, they advised AGAINST travel bans. The one thing that would have spared the rest of the world from this pandemic. It also advised against travel or trade restrictions on China. They played along with China, sat back and watched this local virus spread over the world, turning into a worldwide pandemic. Top officials secretly determined that they were likely dealing with a major health crisis on January 14, but President Xi only warned the public of the emergency on January 20, new evidence suggested. Thousands of people were believed to contract the deadly disease during those weeks of silence, in mid-January, after the government kept the information from them. The Chinese medical staff and doctors who were whistle-blowers about the first covid outbreak, were punished, died or disappeared entirely, never to be seen again. Party officials interrogated and punished Chinese doctors who tried to warn others as the virus began to spread... they even sat on evidence showing the virus could be transmitted between humans. China's attempt to walk a line between alerting the public and avoiding panic set the stage for a pandemic that has infected almost two million people and taken more than 126,000 lives. Yet, WHO's Dr Tedros said he had spoken with the Chinese Minister for Health, and praised the government for its ‘invaluable’ efforts to halt the virus. On January 23rd Tedros said he had decided not to declare the virus a public health emergency of international concern, praising China’s ‘cooperation and transparency’ in tackling the virus. It's ridiculous and a disgrace really, this goes beyond a mere misjudgment... Only on Jan 30, so a month later, the WHO Emergency Committee declared a public health emergency of international concern. It comes after confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission in Germany, Japan, Vietnam and the US. Dr Tedros again praises China for ‘setting a new standard for outbreak response’ with its lockdowns, and says the small number of cases outside the country – 98 – is ‘thanks to their efforts’. Yeh, sure.... And how about the two million cases by now? Is that also 'thanks to China's efforts'? And the day after China admitted that the virus was transmissible between humans, China tried to patent the antiviral drug Remsvidir, used for some corona patients. On January 21 a patent for commercial use of Remdesivir was filed in China. Wow, whát a coincidence.....
New virus or not, coronaviruses as a whole are not new and there was also back then already so much information available about its strains and history and the way in which such viruses are spread. To tell the world that there is no evidence for human to human spreading is just outrageous. Especially when it was reported in December already by doctors and specialists what was going on with this virus, and its infectiousness levels and methods. (And last month the South China Morning Post unearthed a report which suggested the government were aware of an outbreak as early as November). Wuhan doctor Lu Xiaohong for instance told China Youth Daily that by Christmas she had already heard of doctors becoming infected with the virus. The Wall Street Journal similarly reported that Chinese doctors were aware of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19 since late December, though Chinese authorities censored those who spoke out. Even back then people knew this was a ridiculous statement from the WHO, based on supposed Chinese 'research'. Purely an attempt to not create widespread panic. They dragged their feet, and did the complete opposite of what they were supposed to do and for which the West pays them royally. The WHO also ignored the very early warning from Taiwan that there was a pandemic starting up. Taiwan informed the WHO well before China did. But of course the WHO does not recognize Taiwan in any shape or form (being an enemy of China) and their warnings were ignored and even erased from the annals. Instead, the WHO kept telling the world that we (other countries) should not panic and that China was putting everything under immense control.World renowned expert Professor Petr Chumakov claims that Wuhan laboratory scientists 'did absolutely crazy things' to alter coronavirus and enabled it to infect humans. He told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper: 'There are several inserts, that is, substitutions of the natural sequence of the genome, which gave it special properties. 'It is interesting that the Chinese and Americans who worked with them published all their works in the open (scientific) press. 'I even wonder why this background comes to people very slowly. 'I think that an investigation will nevertheless be initiated, as a result of which new rules will be developed that regulate the work with the genomes of such dangerous viruses. - Now the World Health Organization is under fire, after Taiwan released the contents of the December email inquiring about the person-to-person spread of COVID-19, which it says was ignored by the WHO, which also denied to provide adequate information about how to fight the virus. But now the facts are coming out, on the WHO also. "China was 'not truthful' about initial coronavirus outbreak, ex-FDA boss Gottlieb says." Around the same date as this tweet, the National Health Commission distributed a 63-page set of instructions to provincial health officials, obtained by the AP. The instructions, marked 'not to be publicly disclosed,' ordered health officials nationwide to identify suspected cases, hospitals to open fever clinics, and doctors and nurses to don protective gear. 'All localities must prepare for and respond to a pandemic,' it said. In public, however, officials continued to downplay the threat. Yet, 'The risk of sustained human-to-human transmission is low,' Li Qun, the head of the China CDC´s emergency center, told Chinese state television on January 15. I mean.... monster Robert Mugabe was a Goodwill Ambassador for the WHO... You cannot make it up. China needs to divert a sizable portion of its astounding growth over the last 20 years to compensate the global population for this catastrophe. You cannot run a virus generating "wet market" without consequences. The eventual damage to global economies will run in the tens of trillions of dollars for this wave of pathogen alone, and China bears full responsibility. Especially given that the original SARS outbreak happened in exactly the same way and was also covered up by China initially; they need to face some sort of consequence. Once is understandable but twice is carelessness.
Love him or hate him (or hate him with a blinding vengeance), Trump, despite all his errors in his approach and preparing for the virus, was the only one who imposed travel restrictions on people coming from China, back on January 31st already. In Europe, Chinese can still land in several major airports today (and still the WHO does not recommend bans on trade or travel and our borders are still wide open). And thanks to this total mismanagement of both China and the WHO, we're all in a living nightmare right now. My stepfather has been diagnosed with kidney cancer already 4 months ago, but he cannot be operated because hospitals are full with corona patients and everything else which can be delayed is delayed. As it stands now until June, the earliest. People are suffering physically, mentally, financially. It's infuriating to me how this all panned down, when anyone with half a brain could have seen this coming early on. Why did Europe not close airspace right away for flights and travellers coming from China? Why was the winter sport ski holiday not cancelled for everyone? Because the WHO, run partly by politicians these days, played it down for a whole critical month. Incompetence? Corruption? or both? Why don't they force China to close those wet (exotic wildlife) markets, known to be potential sources of these type of viruses which jump from animals to humans? Why doesn't the WHO force China to be more transparent about what they know of the exact origin of this covid-19 virus? Info they are currently withholding and obstructing investigations into? Why is the USA paying 500 million dollars every year towards the WHO while China, the richest country with the most inhabitants, pays less than 50 million(aside from possible sinister under the table donations we do not know about of course)? And still they dominate things and refuse to share all they know. Countries such as all EU countries and the US have been contributing mostly all the funds to the WHO, to ensure that if a large scale health scare such as a pandemic arises, we are warned in a timely and reliable manner. So that we all have sufficient time to take appropriate measures. This clearly has not happened and the WHO have been seriously negligent. They and the Chinese Government have been complicit in delaying the release of damaging information, resulting in the virus gaining a foothold in other parts of the world with all of the resulting consequences. This warrants a full investigation. The only way changes are forced upon (as it was done to the UN a few years back, with success), is by withholding any further funding to the WHO. Fact of the matter is that China's economy hardly endured a dent from this pandemic, whereas many European counties and of course the United States are looking at years of serious financial crisis, recession and yet another Great Depression. Let's see which country is going to benefit from this, worldwide. 
And I'm not even talking about their atrocious wet markets and abuse of animals - kept under unacceptably horrible conditions and torturing them needlessly with no respect for animal rights of swift painless slaughter. It really makes me sad.. We've known for so long now about the risks of virus leaping from wild animal to other animals and then humans... And how such virus can ravage humans. How many examples does the world need? China has known this too and were the ground zero of more than one such virus outbreak. The government there has been told repeatedly, for decades in fact, about the risks posed by their endangered species wild animal markets. Year in, year out China has been warned by virologists that it was only a matter of time before a new lethal virus would break out, risking a global pandemic and financial meltdowns. Yet they do nothing about those markets. HIV, SARS and Corona have all come from eating wildlife. Stop this practice now which will also save our dwindling wildlife.
And China are not automatically to be taken for their word here. The official death toll (3341 supposedly) they gave to the WHO is most likely highly flawed. Specialists abroad mostly all agree that the REAL Chinese death numbers are suppressed and is expected to be a lot higher, in fact by a factor of 40. They probably glee at the sight of the USA having overtaken them already in the covid casualty number race.. And they even have the nerve to try to pass the blame for the whole outbreak on Italy and the USA. The Global Times reported that Italy may have been to blame, producing no evidence whatsoever for the irresponsible claim. And China's foreign minister tweeted about the possibility the "US military brought the virus to Wuhan"... The country where the virus by all reliable science and sources originated lied, covered up and spread misinformation about its role. Not an apology in sight. And then they 'help' by sending aide to western countries in the shape of medical supplies.... of which half turned out last week to be useless, because they fail to meet professional quality and had to be rejected as substandard and potentially dangerous to use. Or they provide corona antibody tests worth millions that don't work. I hope countries are going to seriously reconsider their economic relations with China after this pandemic is hopefully curbed. I'm myself boycotting all products coming from China. And I know others who do too. I don't care anymore if it is PC or reasonable or not. This was mishandled, covered up and life as we know it is ruined here. We all know where this virus originated from, yet again.
on China Lab In Focus Of Coronavirus Outbreak. Remember, liberal newspapers for months accused anyone asking critical questions of being a right wing, xenophobe conspiracy nutcase. The Washington Post called the Republican Senator Tom Cotton a conspiracy theorist for three months and he was attacked by all of the left wing media for suggesting that the virus came out of a lab. Now the same paper breaks this story: "State Department cables warned of safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses" By Josh Rogin. April 14, 2020. "Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet to emerge."
There are increasingly more reports and facts coming out that the Covid-19 virus could theoretically have originated from a lab in Wuhan, where the Chinese were experimenting with bats and coronavirsuses. And that by human error it escaped there (I myself don't really believe in a chemical attack (yet) where it was let loose on purpose..). Sequencing of the COVID-19 genome has traced it back to bats found in Yunnan caves, but it was first thought to have transferred onto humans at that now infamous wildlife animal market in Wuhan. But a doctor at the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital (Cao Bin), highlighted research showing that 13 of the first 41 patients diagnosed with the infection had not had any contact with the market, and that this Wuhan food market was not the only origin of the virus. Yet, there is also a lab nearby, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where Chinese were experimenting with bats and coronavirsuses. It's only based twenty miles from the Wuhan wildlife market. Media saw documents which prove that this lab is partially funded by a $3.7 million grant from the US government by the way. Pretty shocking, considering what sort of 'dangerous and cruel animal experiments' take place at this Wuhan Institute. Scientists there experimented on bats supposedly as part of a project funded by the US National Institutes of Health, which continues to licence the Wuhan laboratory to receive American money for experiments. Other U.S. partners include the University of Alabama, the University of North Texas, Harvard University, and the National Wildlife Federation. As part of the NIH research at the institute, scientists grew a coronavirus in a lab and injected it into three-day-old piglets. Some say that scientists at the institute could have become infected after 'being sprayed with blood containing the virus', and then unwantedly and unknowingly passed it on to the local community. A second institute in the city, the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control – which is barely three miles from the market – is also believed to have carried out experiments on animals such as bats to examine the transmission of coronaviruses. It keeps more than 1,500 strains of deadly viruses and specializes in the research of 'the most dangerous pathogens', in particular the viruses carried by bats. (Chinese officials decided to build it after the outbreak of SARS in 2002 and 2003). American biosecurity expert Professor Richard Ebright said that COVID-19 could easily have escaped from this Wuhan laboratory while it was being analyzed. He saw evidence that scientists at the Centre for Disease Control and the Institute of Virology studied the viruses with only 'level 2' security, instead of the recommended level 4, which provides only minimal protections against infection of lab workers. There is always some risk of infection when people start collecting virus, culture and isolate it. Lab accidents happen. Horrid times.. Stuck in the house, waiting for this nightmare to be over.
Some more quotes from the Washington Post article: "In January 2018, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing took the unusual step of repeatedly sending U.S. science diplomats to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had in 2015 become China’s first laboratory to achieve the highest level of international bioresearch safety (known as BSL-4). WIV issued a news release in English about the last of these visits, which occurred on March 27, 2018. The U.S. delegation was led by Jamison Fouss, the consul general in Wuhan, and Rick Switzer, the embassy’s counselor of environment, science, technology and health. Last week, WIV erased that statement from its website, though it remains archived on the Internet. What the U.S. officials learned during their visits concerned them so much that they dispatched two diplomatic cables categorized as Sensitive But Unclassified back to Washington. The cables warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab and proposed more attention and help. The first cable, which I obtained, also warns that the lab’s work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.
“During interactions with scientists at the WIV laboratory, they noted the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high-containment laboratory,” states the Jan. 19, 2018, cable, which was drafted by two officials from the embassy’s environment, science and health sections who met with the WIV scientists. (The State Department declined to comment on this and other details of the story.) The Chinese researchers at WIV were receiving assistance from the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch and other U.S. organizations, but the Chinese requested additional help. The cables argued that the United States should give the Wuhan lab further support, mainly because its research on bat coronaviruses was important but also dangerous. “Most importantly,” the cable states, “the researchers also showed that various SARS-like coronaviruses can interact with ACE2, the human receptor identified for SARS-coronavirus. This finding strongly suggests that SARS-like coronaviruses from bats can be transmitted to humans to cause SARS-like diseases. From a public health perspective, this makes the continued surveillance of SARS-like coronaviruses in bats and study of the animal-human interface critical to future emerging coronavirus outbreak prediction and prevention.” The research was designed to prevent the next SARS-like pandemic by anticipating how it might emerge. But even in 2015, other scientists questioned whether Shi’s team was taking unnecessary risks. In October 2014, the U.S. government had imposed a moratorium on funding of any research that makes a virus more deadly or contagious, known as “gain-of-function” experiments. As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But that is not the same as saying it didn’t come from the lab, which spent years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.“The cable tells us that there have long been concerns about the possibility of the threat to public health that came from this lab’s research, if it was not being adequately conducted and protected,” he said.
There are similar concerns about the nearby Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab, which operates at biosecurity level 2, a level significantly less secure than the level-4 standard claimed by the Wuhan Insititute of Virology lab, Xiao said. That’s important because the Chinese government still refuses to answer basic questions about the origin of the novel coronavirus while suppressing any attempts to examine whether either lab was involved. Sources familiar with the cables said they were meant to sound an alarm about the grave safety concerns at the WIV lab, especially regarding its work with bat coronaviruses. The embassy officials were calling for more U.S. attention to this lab and more support for it, to help it fix its problems. “The cable was a warning shot,” one U.S. official said. “They were begging people to pay attention to what was going on.” Inside the Trump administration, many national security officials have long suspected either the WIV or the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab was the source of the novel coronavirus outbreak. According to the New York Times, the intelligence community has provided no evidence to confirm this. But one senior administration official told me that the cables provide one more piece of evidence to support the possibility that the pandemic is the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.“The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and there’s almost nothing on the other side,” the official said. As my colleague David Ignatius noted, the Chinese government’s original story — that the virus emerged from a seafood market in Wuhan — is shaky. Research by Chinese experts published in the Lancet in January showed the first known patient, identified on Dec. 1, had no connection to the market, nor did more than one-third of the cases in the first large cluster. Also, the market didn’t sell bats. [..] The Chinese government, meanwhile, has put a total lockdown on information related to the virus origins. Beijing has yet to provide U.S. experts with samples of the novel coronavirus collected from the earliest cases. The Shanghai lab that published the novel coronavirus genome on Jan. 11 was quickly shut down by authorities for “rectification.” Several of the doctors and journalists who reported on the spread early on have disappeared."
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This news story is not just about blame. It’s a legitimate question that needs to be investigated and answered. It’s crucial to understanding how the novel coronavirus pandemic started because that informs how to prevent the next one. The Chinese government must be transparent and answer the questions about the Wuhan labs because they are vital to our scientific understanding of the virus. Perhaps now that the Washington Post published this information, instead of... lets say the Daily Mail, people will take this information more seriously. This is shocking news but is what had been discussed some weeks ago. Accidents do happen but this matter is so alarming to all that it really does need absolute proof from somewhere and as soon as possible. I believe that it could be a realistic scenario that this corona virus indeed escaped from the wuhan lab. As the Washington Post now proposes. It may have happened accidentally, or it may have been done on purpose. It brings up so many questions, just the notion of this scenario. Why have such a laboratory situated in a hugely populated area in the first place? Shouldn't it be situated in a desert area away from people and city life, in order to lessen the likelihood of accidents or disasters like the one we currently endure from happening? Right now China managed to (inadvertently?) destabilize the world economy. While their own economy is going strong. The fact that almost all PPE and ventilators need to be imported from China now, shows how stupid and shortsighted governments have in the West have become. Which I partly blame on the landslide privatizations everywhere. Making governments themselves no longer responsible for these things. And when you leave these things to the free markets, then business and wealth and greed is what dominates worldwide from east to west. China is a dictatorship that oppresses its people, but we trade with them for cheap labour anyway, out of greed for greater profit. This disaster is once more showing how dependent and reliant Western Economies and democracies have become on China. And how well the Communist State can quickly react and shut things down to deal with the crisis, while our economies crumble. Yet in China they can switch their production and manufacturing lines to meet new demands and requirements, right away. Imagine, starting a problem and ALSO being the one to 'save' the World with export of PPEs etc. Also listen to what EU minister said about China buying up companies that are struggling under the economic crash. They do so all over Europe as well.
But the chance of China admitting anything that is remotely truthful about this is less than zero. China deliberately denied that this virus was a problem and had Doctors arrested back in November and certainly didn't think to mention it to the world until the end of January. Begs the question how much on purpose all of that was? A lot of people openly doubted that the origin of this covid-19 virus was the wet market (even though it could very well be!); thought for months already that it originated from a bat that lives 1000 miles away. Which new research documents now confirm. How did the bat get to Wuhan? The same way all animals used for research get to the lab, they're transported there. Or... in the Batmobile perhaps ;) But it could well have been transported and used in those Wuhan labs (which the US also partially funded by the way...). I'm afraid the West is very much tied firmly to China. They literally make everything we buy. Big business controls it all and they have too much invested in China to let it die. China have no brand, they only have cheap prices through cheap labour. That's what's given them growth and that's why most western populations will continue to buy from then when this is over, unfortunately... Could the U.S. possibly start by pulling Apple out of China? Allegedly Samsung have shut all their manufacturing plants there. We have become far too reliant on the "made in China goods. And China seems anything but sorry...their economy is booming because the rest of the world has to buy PPE from them which is shoddy like the rest of the crap that comes from there. And the WHO should have been all over this from the word go, but their Director General is so heavily compromised it was never going to be them who get to the bottom of it. He's an absolute disgrace and should resign immediately or be thrown out on his ear.
April 6th 2020
Some videos that made me smile or dance,
just a bit of distraction from all the coronavirus horrors and stress.
March 29th 2020
Tough times.. I have had a very sore throat for weeks now 😡 Also mucus build up, heavy chest feeling, nausea. But a sore throat most of all. However, it's most likely just some very mild allergy symptoms or maybe even a normal seasonal flu. No worries about Covid-19 because frankly I haven't left the house for weeks, other than a nightly walk through town when everyone else is sleeping. Also don't have a fever, nor coughing. So I'll just be 'under the weather'. The common flu/cold is also going round here. I am not worried about it either; the thermometer is my safety net in the morning and evening, and with normal body temperature, I forget about it further. And my rosacea has been bad all week also 😢. Burning, red, angry. I need to get my hormones checked with my dermatologist, but they cancelled my appointment this week, due to it not being an emergency and in order to stop the spread of Covid-19. It brings me down, having to cool my face all the time and being so limited in every way. (Photos taken at the absolute palest moment all week; been much more red the majority of last week). What also does make me really down is the lack of socializing, or even shopping. I always used to mock 'extroverts' for being so depending on other people in that respect. No, me? I'm happy as a clam in my house with my books and computer and cats and such. But now that all of that has become mandatory, and not so much a free lifestyle choice (also forced upon me by my rosacea), it does start to feel claustrophobic. And I;m saying this despite being the biggest supporter of complete Covid-19 lock-down and radical quarantining. But even I am getting slight cabin fever by now, without my weekend outings, visiting of cafe's or the beach or even grocery shopping with others and cycling through town. I am feeling low on energy, every day looks like the previous one and I struggle keeping up with my normal disciplined working system. Instead I just sleep way too long and get distracted for hours on end, procrastinating while reading all the latest doom and gloom news. Not being able to go out with people, going for a drink or a walk over the market is getting claustrophobic at this point. It's a strange atmosphere. And the fact that predictions about how long this will last vary wildly, isn't helping. It makes me cranky about those countrymen and -women who break the rules and who go out anyway. They make this lock-down fail and will only lengthen the whole ordeal. With great ramifications for people's psychology and the economy also.
As the Guardian put it: "The past few weeks have brought considerable reason to question the purpose of human existence. Between the examples of influencers licking toilets during this pandemic and the people who think it’s funny to cough on food at the grocery store, are we seriously still supposed to believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution?" - The general population here in Europe does not have the discipline and obedience you see in many Asian countries. In countries like Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea they contained this coronavirus in record time, because the population is obedient and actually stick to the rules when their governments orders them to. Everyone of them. Taiwan has 10 million masks a day, widespread tracking, and just 1 death despite being close to the outbreak. "Taiwan’s anti-coronavirus strategy utilizes a combination of early vigilance, proactive measures, and information sharing with the public, as well as applying technology in the form of analyzing big data and online platforms. All this is done with an impressive level of public transparency and engagement. Taiwan took measures early on, including inspecting plane passengers coming from Wuhan starting Dec. 31, banning Wuhan residents on Jan. 23, suspending tours to China on Jan. 25, and eventually banning all Chinese visitors on Feb. 6. Taiwan’s government stopped exports of surgical face masks on January 24 while requesting local companies to step up production. Daily production is set to reach 10 million soon, divided between the public, medical, and industrial sectors. The authorities have also moved quickly to track down infected persons and map the cases to show the sources of infection. Educating the public on the risks of the illness and precautions to take through television notices and posters is also a big part of anti-coronavirus efforts." (source). It may be a cultural thing; the people there stick to the rules and don't sabotage their own virus approach. The governments of those Asian countries also do things by the book; they test anyone and everyone; they impose strict quarantine of all infected and their families. And because nobody flaunts the rules, these countries have kept their economy going. They kept restaurants and shops and businesses open. Because everyone who needs to be quarantined sticks to it, and when people are told to keep 2 meters distance between one another, they actually obey to it. Without exception. Their population takes an order for an order and as a result, many of the Asian countries by now have this Covid-crisis as good as contained. WE in the 'free West' on the other hand stick up our middle finger. Do not blindly accept and follow orders from our authorities. Don't even know sometimes what real discipline is. Besides, we are friendly requested here, not ordered. Even the state leaders leave a lot of room for personal interpretation, which is.... not wise in a crisis situation. Many over here in Europe flaunt the new rules, unable to give up their modern lifestyles overnight, and not used to following any orders that are detrimental to their freedom and what they want in life. So we think we know better than the authorities. And the authorities fail as well, unable or refusing to 'test test test', as is basic rule number one with such pandemics. This is a disaster unrolling right in front of our eyes for many European countries, because of our attitude. The whole anarchistic independence self awareness (and self-entitlement) serves us right when standing up to dictators and dictatorial regimes, but right now during a virus pandemic, it is kind of counter productive..
Interesting: how Asian countries approached this virus successfully
Plus 3D images of corona lungs:
Plus 3D images of corona lungs:
I read a lot of cases of youngsters dying here.. Beautiful 16 year old girl without known health conditions, many 20-somethings.. It now is becoming more and more apparent that the story that Covid-19 only kills the old and the sick is not quite correct. Yes, they have statistically the highest risk of dying from it, but this virus can have the same effect on those with overly active immune systems. Just like the Spanish Flu had, only in much smaller numbers with corona. Either the immune systems of the victims are too weak (the elderly) or they are too strong and overact in a cytokine storm fashion. That last thing can happen to those with auto-immune diseases, or to those who simply never knew that their immune system would or could go into overdrive when confronted with such a virulent virus. The youngest known European victim for instance is this 14 year old Portuguese boy, who had psoriasis, which is an auto-immune disease and as such he was classed as having 'underlying health conditions' which put him at risk for Covid-19. Many people have auto-immune diseases, may it be allergies, asthma, psoriasis, arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, thyroid disease etc. Please be aware that you 'may' be at higher risk of complications from this coronavirus.. (I myself have inflammatory bowel disease, allergies, arthritis and histamine issues unfortunately). I think anyone basically needs to take good care right now not to catch this or ending up in hospital right now..
If memes are your thing, here are some that made me smile and which try to make light of this very strange and stressful moment in time:
March 26th 2020When it comes to Trump, it is astounding to me how the media over here only reports on Trump when he does something dumb on a personal level. A tweet that wasn't phrased as it should, a smirk that didn't sit well. His bad manners, or rash out-lashings. Him speaking out against the Venezuelan villain (well thát was a new thing for the USA, I applauded). You just don't hear about any achievements on Dutch TV and from what I understand mainstream media also likes to ignore that part. For instance, Obama called very low growth or low GDP the “new normal”. The media mocked Trump for saying that he would get 3 to 4% GDP growth. One of the “leading economists” who writes for the New York Times said that Trump couldn’t do it, but he did it after one year in office. He got 3% virtually straight after that article and hasn’t stopped. Of course now all you hear is that this was already in the pipeline and Obama's doing lol. They all said that Trump would devastate the economy with his trade war. But the US economy is in the lift, more so at least than under Obama. Even the BBC had to admit this week that Yes, the economy in the States is doing well since Trump is in charge.. Trump has China on the ropes and has done something about the unfair import and export tax rate differences between these two countries (always favouring China's economy in the past). America’s economy is improving. He rightfully attacked the disproportionate UN costs for the USA. Media also said that he would never be able to renegotiate NAFTA, that agreement between the USA, Mexico and Canada. He’s got that done. No new wars under him and plans to get out of existing ones, coordinated and professionally. I never understood why a billionaire businessmen who deals with China and other countries all the time with business, wouldn't do better in theory than a professional social worker like Obama. What would Obama (who armed and helped 'the rebels' in Syria for years, until they turned out to be ISIS.. yes this is true unfortunately) know about business? Trump dealt with the Chinese nearly daily in various ways for the past 40 years. Anyway, he also did some shitty stuff, especially his take on climate change and controlling national CO2 emissions sucks I think. Nature preservation and taxes are also not his strong points from what I understand, among other things. I'm peronally no fan of the 1% rich enclaves that are allowed to sprawl in the USA, while such a large group of the population lives below the poverty line. Luckily over here in Europe the rich get properly taxed and so do big companies, or at least in theory they do (am sure they find loopholes and all that in reality). I always hated 'the right' as a student, but aside from the pretty vital differences on tax views, the left in my eyes have become extremely annoying and hypcritical over time with their gaslighting, abuse of media power, woke opinions and lack of proper condemning of violence. And in the end, news should report on news, all the news, not just the news that fits their own political conviction and thus not just his fuck-ups.
Something else that is Trump related (and I've read up on this thanks to my friend who is into this whole thing and read reliable source material): it will all come out in due time (unless the Democrats win the elections and will cover it all even more up) and there are already investigations started now into it all after the Russian Hoax debacle from the Democrats exploded in their face, but this has to do with the presidential election process, when Hillary Clinton was still in the race and used contacts with the FBI and CIA to get a secret, illegal rapport going on Trump. She paid for it all of course and wanted to find dirt on him, in particular proof that he had received help or money from the Russians to win the elections (now debunked with the Mueller rapport on this Russian hoax thing). Very dodgy. A few conservative commentators have been talking about this Russian Issue for over a year. Basically, they say it is a travesty what the media and the left have done to back Trump into a corner with Russia. Don’t forget CNN even had that corrupt guy John Brennan, the former CIA boss, saying that Trump committed Treason because he sided with Putin by saying he believed him when he said Putin didn’t interfere with their election. Also the New York Times called Trump a Russian agent not long ago (unfounded, no proof) and the leader of the democrats all said recently that Putin has something on Trump. No proof, once more. Empty rhetoric. Now debunked officially, but the media ran with these lies for years. Trying to undermine his presidency based on lies. This is all a propaganda campaign. The special counsel has spent $30 million, investigated every bit of Trump’s life, done the unethical by raiding Trump’s lawyer, all of the warrants and even the special counsel lead back to a fabricated dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton and they have no hard evidence to pin him to anything. Hillary and some of her FBI cronies also had tapped all Trumps communications already during the presidential campaign phase, and the FBI even sent spies into his campaign. It is hard to believe that in the USA, Obama’s FBI spied on Trump during his presidential campaign and it was all based on a fake, unverified dossier, paid by Hillary to infer that Trump was colluding with Russia. It is mind blowing what the FBI, CIA and DOJ have done, going by the information available by now. If true, then this is 3rd world shit regardless of what you think of Trump as a person or president. It rocks the foundations of democracy. If we'd see it happening in rogue states across the world, we would all condemn it, well most of us would and the western media certainly would. Unless it happens in the USA and is Democrat-orchestrated? Does noone see the hypcrisy and madness in this?
There was the infamous Trump Jnr tower meeting, which was the media’s and FBI’s “holy grail” of catching Trump. The Russians that Trump Jnr met with, had also met with Fusion GPS - who created The Dossier. They met with Fusion GPS the night before actually, and the day after the Trump Jnr meeting. The 4th in charge of the DOJ’s wife worked at Fusion gps, which was all kept a secret and was never supposed to come out. She was feeding the dossier and other fake info to her husband at the DOJ. That fake info was then given to the FBI where they then used that fake info to fool the courts into getting a warrant to spy on Trumps campaign. This is the Fake Dossier, and it had serious implications. In the USA they have what is called a “Two Hop” rule. It means that if you get a warrant to tap an Americans phone, you can do “two hops” from that person which means if one person in the campaign speaks to two others, you can listen in on them or read their communication too. In short, it allows you to spy on whoever you want. So, getting back to Fusion gps and the Trump Jnr meeting with the Russians who also met with the Dossier creator the day before and after the meeting. The Russians gave Trump Jnr nothing and talked about something called the Narivski act or something like that, about the regulations regarding adopting kids. But they got their warrant thanks to this, based on fake info, so basically an illegal judicial power was gathered. Hillary paying for this fake dossier is pretty much common knowledge and undisputed by all sides now. The DOJ lawyer and his wife who worked for Fusion GPS (the dossier creator) is indisputable also because both the husband and the wife confessed their involvement under oath to congress behind closed door hearings. The Russian lawyer meeting with Fusion GPS the day before and the day after the Trump tower meetings are also not up for debate as the lawyer has admitted it. The owner of Fusion GPS who concocted the fake dossier disclosed this to congress: 
Fusion GPS’ Glenn Simpson Dined With Russian Lawyer Before & After Her Meeting at Trump Tower
Transcripts released Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee say that Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, had dinner with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya both the day before and the day after she met with Donald Trump, Jr. at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016. Veselnitskaya, however, told the committee that “no,” she did not have contact with Glenn Simpson on June 8, 9, or 10, 2016. In written responses to questions from the committee, she disputed a news report saying she met with Simpson before and after the Trump Tower meeting. Trump Jr. had never heard of Veselnitskaya, either, before he met her; and he said he was not aware that Fusion GPS was conducting opposition research on his father when the meeting took place. (Source)
What was going on here is that the FBI was trying to manufacture fake collusion contacts with the Russians and tried to frame Trump. It was a set up. They used FBI informants such as Stefan Halper and Greenberg, while Natalia Veselnitskaya was a Fusion GPS plant. She was let in on a special visa from Obama and tried to frame the Trumps. Simpson lied to congress here. It turns out that in an email chain about “talking points“ for the Trump tower meeting, a prominent Clinton lawyer was also included. This same lawyer met with the main Russian from the meeting, on that day and immediately after the meeting. In summary, this was an attempt to entrap Trump so that the FBI has dirt on him to say he was colluding with Russians. Let’s not forget the FBI chief of counter intelligence saying that he had an “insurance plan to ensure Trump doesn’t get elected", and his text messages with his FBI lover lawyer are damning. A British intelligence spy was also involved in it all. The fake dossier started with Christopher Steele (former top British secret service spy) who worked for Fusion GPS. All of the players in this set up from Britain, all have links to Christopher Steele. Coincidentally, this man tried to organize meetings between Russians and Trump campaign people, that went nowhere. Why would an FBI spy try to set up meetings with Russian people for the Trump staff? Isn't that illegal to try to entrap people? And doesn't this sound like an "insurance plan"? Stefan Halper set up meetings for other key Trump players who the media accused of collaborating with the Russians. In other words, this Stefan Halper was trying to get Russians to talk to Trump people. Even the New York Post had to report on it. The FBI naturally didn't want anyone to know about this Stefan Halper spy. It looks ever so likely that Halper was trying to set up Trump people by trying to get them to have meetings with Russians. This then would give the FBI reasons to investigate Trump. In other words; entrapment. The media went from "Don't be so ridiculous - it is a conspiracy theory that FBI spies were planted in the Trump campaign" to "The FBI had good reasons to plant a spy in the Trump campaign". Stefan Helper is the spy and of course the media then tried to play it all down. And like I said, the fake dossier started with Christopher Steele who worked for Fusion GPS, the (former British) spy. He is intertwined in all of the intel. people. In other words, to repeat it again; all of the players in this set up from Britain, all have links to Christopher Steele. It looks pretty much a given that the US and British intelligence, along with an Australian broke protocol and were setting up Trump. Sounds too unbelievable almost, I know, but there is too much evidence to deny it.The two hop rule and the spying on the Trump campaign is not in any doubt by the way. The NYT and CNN nevertheless said for a long time that the Trump camp was never spied on, but then turned around and did stories basically saying "Ok, yes, he wás spied on, but for good reasons." Nice back-flip. Then the 2nd in charge of the FBI admitted under oath that without the fake dossier they would not have gotten FISA warrants no less than 4 times to spy on Trump. This is pretty much indisputable no matter how much CNN or the NY Times try to cover it up. Don't forget that all of the major leaks for the FBI have been to CNN and NY Times. CNN miraculously were present for a 27 man FBI raid of one of Trump's associates recently. 27 FBI agents with guns at 6 am for a 66 year old man who has cooperated for 2 years and is charged with lying about things that he did AFTER the election, ie nothing to do with Russian collusion. But now even the more left leaning news organisations confirm it and it is pretty much common knowledge and indisputable that the fake dossier – paid for by the Clintons – was the crux for the warrants to spy on the Trump camp. During the presidential campaign already, which is truly shocking, especially coming also from the FBI itself which shouldn't meddle in democratic presidential elections.
This is what Comey said himself about the dossier: that it was not verified and that information that it was fake was conveniently ignored by the FBI before handing it in to the judge to get their much wanted spying warrant:"The failures of Comey’s remarkably turbulent and short tenure as FBI director were on display again Friday on Capitol Hill, when he was interviewed in a closed-door session by two House committees. Republican lawmakers were aghast at his sudden lack of recollection of key events. He didn’t seem to know that his own FBI was using No. 4 Justice Department official Bruce Ohr as a conduit to keep collecting intelligence from Christopher Steele after the British intel operative was fired by the bureau for leaking and lying. In fact, Comey didn’t seem to remember knowing that Steele had been terminated, according to sources in the room.
“His memory was so bad I feared he might not remember how to get out of the room after the interview,” one lawmaker quipped. Lamented another: “It was like he suddenly developed dementia or Alzheimer’s, after conveniently remembering enough facts to sell his book.”
But lawmakers were relieved when Comey could remember one fact that is essential to understanding if his FBI acted appropriately in the investigation of Donald Trump and Russia. The towering ex-FBI boss confessed that the FBI had not corroborated much of the Steele dossier before it was submitted as evidence to a secret court to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the final weeks of the election. And Comey admitted much of the dossier remained uncorroborated more than six months later when he was fired by President Trump. I won’t waste too much time harping on the enormity of this confession. Everyday Americans now know that the FISA court process is an honor system and that the FBI may only submit evidence it has verified to the judges. Comey now has confirmed what Republican lawmakers like Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) have warned about for months – that the FBI used an unverified dossier, paid for by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party as political opposition research, to justify spying on the duly nominated GOP candidate for president just weeks before Election Day."
Comey’s confession: dossier not verified before, or after, FISA warrant. Comey, the disgraced (and sacked) FBI boss. There is so much that the mainstream media won’t report. But imagine if this had been done to a democratic candidate; it would have been the new Watergate. Worse even than Watergate in some respects. It is damning for the FBI and some people don’t even realize that up to 10 of the highest FBI management leaders have either been sacked or demoted, and the second highest from the FBI is currently set on 3 criminal charges. James Comey FBI boss - sacked. Andrew McCabe (2nd in charge of the FBI) - sacked and has 3 indictments against him for lying and is part of the text message about "that insurance plan that we spoke about in Andy's office to stop Trump" between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Peter Stzrok - Boss of counter intelligence. Sacked. His text messages leave little doubt about his involvement to take Trump down, including the "insurance plan" and his text telling his lover (Lisa Page) "to not worry, I will stop Trump from becoming president". Lisa Page (head lawyer FBI) - sacked. Famous for her texts which give evidence of willingness to take down Trump. James Baker - top FBI lawyer who was part of the plot and frequently leaked information to the media to try to set Trump up. Demoted and then forced to resign. Bruce Ohr (senior lawyer DOJ) - demoted. Secretly had wife (Nellie Ohr) working for Fusion GPS to create the fake dossier. Nellie Ohr - the wife of DOJ lawyer who worked for the Clinton paid for Fusion GPS fake Dossier. Nellie Ohr used "spousal privilege" to not disclose much. All secretive until the media exposed their links. Even CNN hád to report it: "Ohr, whose husband is a senior Justice Department official, is facing scrutiny over what role she had with the opposition research dossier on then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia commissioned by Fusion GPS, which Republicans and the President charge is at the heart of alleged DOJ misconduct during the 2016 election. Bruce and Nellie Ohr are in the middle of allegations that the Justice Department misused the dossier in order to obtain a foreign surveillance warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page."
It is basically one of the worst corruption stories in US history to 1. Stop Trump from winning 2. Attempt a bloodless coup by destroying his presidency after he was democratically elected. The media over there (USA) scream Russia Russia Russia every day, 24 hours a day and there was not one ounce of evidence after two years of investigations in the full force of the government stacked against Trump. All they have are some process crimes, which are crimes that occurred after Trump got elected and are for little things like people involved in Trump circles not telling the truth or not remembering things. For nearly 2 years the media laughed of, scoffed at the notion of Trump being spied on. They called Trump mentally ill for saying his campaign was being spied on through surveillance - but it ended up true. Then after the media blowing all of that off, it turns out that not only were the FBI tapping phones and reading communications, they also sent in spies. I am pissed off tbh that even in this day and age of globalism with the internet ensuring more transparency (on paper), the media are so biased and unreliable. Of course CNN and the NYT who initially called it all BS, then did a 180 degree turn and started giving reasons why the FBI needed to spy on the Trump camp during the election.
So getting back to Trump and Putin, what can Trump do now? They have ruined any positive relationship that Trump can have with Russia, because the Democrats in the media are corrupt and tried to fix the election. Trump can’t do anything good with Russia because they will call him a Russian spy or a puppet of Putin when he does. Meanwhile - and here comes the true hypocritical side show of this - it is Clinton who agreed to sell 20% of their uranium to Russia, it was Bill Clinton who received $500,000 for a speech to a Russian bank, the same Russian bank that did the deal with several Russians who did the uranium deal. Then the same Russians gave the Clinton foundation $145 million after the deal went through. It is Hillary Clinton who has ties to all of the Russian oligarchs and that whenever something happens or whenever Trump gets blamed for something, all roads lead back to the Clinton’s. I even wonder if this special counsel into the Trump and Russian collusion could be a massive Smokescreen to cover up for Clinton. Btw, Bob Mueller, the same one from the Hoax investigation, was also involved in the decision process with Clinton to sell uranium to Russia. He also appointed 12 investigators for his special counsel and every single one of them are registered high profile Democrat lawyers with one being the lawyer for Hillary in her email scandal. Donald Trump interviewed this Bob Mueller for the job of the FBI boss at some point. Trump did not appoint him. The very next day after their meeting bob Mueller was appointed the lead of the special counsel into investigating Donald Trump. If that is not the biggest conflict of interest then I don't know what is. I mean love him or loath him, but if this proves to be true about the interference with Trumps campaign, even if partially true, that should be unacceptable in politics in general.. Anyway, I could go on for a few more hours with more details and twists and turns in this story, but lets summarize it for now as dirty games :) Oh, and no collusion between Trump and the Russians was found.. Despite 2,5 years and 30 mln. Mark my words, this will explode in the future, they will make movies and TV series about all this. It's pretty much an attempt on a coup on a democratically chosen, sitting president. Unheard of. Again, I am not a republican, I'm not even American, just coming from a fairly neutral point of view. I know that a lot of people love to demonize the current American president (his tweets, oh his tweets), and place a lot of trust in Joe Biden and Kamala - the Heyena - Harris, but I fear that Biden has dementia and is worse than a straw doll, while harris is insincere and unqualified in every way. There, I said it. 
Coronavirus should be a wake-up call to our treatment of the animal worldBy Cyril Christo
(source) "The coronavirus did not manifest from nowhere. Our sadistic treatment and manipulation of animals for centuries has come back to haunt us. It is time for humanity to absorb the lessons of the animal world. From the Orient the world has inherited a civilization upending event, this coronavirus feeding on the human strain. It is perhaps not a coincidence that it has manifested at the very time the UN is trying to form a Convention on Biological Diversity to protect what remains of the organic world. The contagion is the karmic result of our own ignorance and disregard of other species that began in China and that has visited us before. As Erin Sorrell, microbiologist at Georgetown, exclaims, 70 percent of zoonotic diseases come from wildlife. As the 2003 SARS virus already proved. Then the culprit may have been Asian palm civets. Today’s pandemic may have been caused by pangolins. The scale-covered mammals are kept in caged conditions in markets in Asia in criminally appalling realities, reserved for dinner menus. Most animals in these markets are dying and thirsty and kept in squalid containers moved and shipped around as if they were simple commodities. The conditions are a nightmare and have even prompted many Chinese to close the animal trade. How we treat animals affects entire ecosystems and habitats, the only real wealth we as a species have. China’s ban on wild animal markets may well be the one silver lining in this ensuing global tragedy, but it should become a permanent ban, not a temporary palliative, because other viruses may well ensue in the not distant future given climate change is upon us.
Major conservation groups have also pleaded for Vietnam to take stringent measures to close its wildlife markets. Vietnam's prime minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered the ministry of agriculture and rural development to ban the consumption of wildlife. We can only hope these initiatives manifest quickly and foster a new relationship to what remains of the Mekong basin's wildlife. Vietnam's actions will hopefully prevent not only new outbreaks in the future but also keep even more potentially virulent viruses from overwhelming the globe. Wall Street has had the jitters, tens of millions in China have been as impacted as when the Mongol Golden Horde swept into the Middle Kingdom in the 13th century. But whatever deaths have overtaken our species in the last few months, deaths that number in the thousands, we should not forget the root source of this scourge, humanity’s revolting disregard, manipulation, and outright slaughter of our fellow beings, the animals of earth. The deafening silence of absent species marks our time as singular. What extinctions are happening will become more impactful than WWI, WWII or the Great Depression combined, because now we have an enormous, almost unfathomable ecological tab to reckon with, and not just the folly of an economic system run amuck. The entire spectrum of nature’s syllabus is being played out. Our relationship with the sentient world will have to reverse or we perish. The coronavirus is the tip of the iceberg. Animals were always considered cardinal spiritual, sentient and even intellectual beings in the lives of indigenous peoples and many civilizations past. But as colonial and technological powers overran the world, indigenous peoples were treated no better than the buffalo, or whale or pangolin or bat. And now our disregard of the others bears a karmic component we cannot ignore. The criminal neglect and dismantling of Nature over the last century has led us to a point where globalization itself will have to be rapidly reappraised. Wall Street may have lost some ground, but the mounting possible extinction toll is many magnitudes more vital than the arbitrary machinations of the Dow. The death toll on millions of acres of rainforests lost, coral reefs bleached and species eradicated the world over has brought us to this point. It is the invisible aura of loss we have inherited. It is the karma our species is inheriting. The locust invasion of east Africa is a Biblical cohort to the virus of East Asia. Now our entire immune system as a species and that of the planet is under siege.
Paul Shepard, the eloquent ecologist who wrote triumphantly about the importance of animals, wrote in “The Others: How Animals Made Us Human,” “People are asked to rely on faith in the invisible and intangible, repudiating the beasts on which primal peoples depend as intermediaries, embodying spirits, affirming death, giving form to the mystery of the multiple truths of mortal existence, and acting as vehicle to other realms.” It is not coincidental that this “Christian-” based society has so neglected its first teachers, the animals, for several thousand years and put so much faith in invisible gods and the afterlife, intangibles that have divorced us from life and the very soil on which we depend for our survival. We have in Henry Heston’s words become “cosmic outlaws.” If we lose the animals, we will become inconsolable orphans. This most minute but insidious of beings, the coronavirus is a wake-up call to our unconscious selves. We have wrapped ourselves in a cocoon of technological, synthetic and decorative cultural achievement burdened with pride that strains and depletes our full values as sentient beings. In the process we have ignored the suffering and sentience of others. The physiologist Rene Dubos once wrote that humans could adapt “to starless skies, treeless avenues, shapeless buildings, tasteless bread, joyless celebrations, spiritless pleasures — to a life without reverence for the past, love for the present, or poetical anticipations of the future, but it is questionable that man can retain his physical and mental health if he loses contact with the natural forces that have shaped his biological and mental nature.” How we converse and conduct ourselves in the next year or two will morph into a different realm of relating, and hopefully into a more respectful species. We may need to grow roots under our feet once again and cultivate what Levi Strauss called an “ecological civicism.” We may need more than a pause from the pace of globalization that began to convulse the world two generations ago. Will we return to the same numbers game of outlandish growth, and greed when already much of the pollution from northern China seems to have dissipated from the map? Is not our entire fixation on profit a psychic numbing that has divorced us from ecological coherence? Maybe the coronavirus is a warning sign, the first real test of our global community that has emerged from the Pandora’s box of an increasingly incorrigible species. Amazon-size ecosystems are in jeopardy. This insidious half live, half un-live being called corona has taken over our sleep and waking life like an alien invasion. Let us be grateful the next time we see a flock of birds flying miraculously overhead, or the next time we see a koala holding on to a branch for dear life, or the next time we see a dolphin dancing over the waves. And know these beings did not have to die a merciless, hapless, sick death in some market of central China where this virus originated. The virus has given us a fever, yes, just as we have imposed a fever on the climate of the earth. Milan Kundera in the “Unbearable Lightness of Being” reminds us in one of the most poignant lines ever written, “Humanity’s true moral test, its fundamental test, which is deeply buried from view, consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.
And in this respect humankind has suffered a fundamental debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.” And it is possible that the coronavirus may be just another contagion in a long line of lessons we will have to inherit from our fellow creatures. Recently a wolf’s head was discovered by mammoth tusk hunters in Siberia dating from 30,000 years ago. What viruses are embedded in its flesh? What strains will invade our civilization like ghosts from a forgotten Pleistocene seeping out from under the crying and collapsing torrent of glaciers up north, seeping slowly onto our shores? Will we learn the lesson that the pangolin, one of the most trafficked and severely abused mammals on earth, the one that has filled so many markets in Asia, is teaching us now across the time zones of the world? Will we make sure now that it does not go extinct? Even its exquisite plates, the only armored mammal on Earth, could not protect itself from the diabolic hunger of our species. Will the coronavirus humble us to the reality that humans make up just .01 percent of life on Earth? Will we have to absorb a virus so virulent, so complete in its ability to create havoc from the melting permafrost in the Arctic that humanity will become irreparably crippled? The coronavirus in its all-pervasive pandemonium is a wake-up call, not just to our well-being and souls but also how we had better conduct ourselves towards the other species of this Earth, they who enable life as we know it. The coronavirus is a karmic test that we need to pass, so that we as a species can transcend our conduct on this planet we have maligned and mistreated for far too long. One immensely vital and fragile bioregion that promises potentially lethal pathogens is the Arctic. The great thaw at the top of the world, with ice melting at an extraordinary rate, with polar bears, whales and many other beings having to survive the immune breakdown of the region, is the main reason Shell and other mining and fossil fuel industries should stay clear from the region. Five years ago French scientists discovered a "giant virus" in a 30,000- year-old sample of permafrost in Siberia that had retained its infectivity. If we industrialize these areas and ride roughshod over the roof of the world we risk waking up pathogens we thought we had eradicated or help foster the spread of things even worse than smallpox, said researcher Jean Michel Claverie. Jean Malaurie, the remarkable French geologist and explorer of the Arctic who fought for the preservation of the Inuit from the contrivances and pollution of Western man, once expounded, "Men of science, like men of state have a duty imposed by ethics. The Earth is living: it can and will avenge itself: already there are portents. The Earth has no time left for man's ignorance, arrogance, sophistry and madness."
Oh and some alternatives for toilet paper during the toilet apocalypse we are in 😁
March 24th 2020
A little silver lining to this coronavirus drama; some animals seem to flourish. On my morning walk I passed several large hares, squirrels and a buzzard. They were much closer to human civilization than normal. Squirrels even run through the streets now. A few days earlier I passed a fox. Apparently fish have returned to the canals in Venice and ducks are right now breeding out their eggs on a deserted San Marco square there. Pollution levels have reduced in all the corona-affected areas and vapid or mindless consumerism is going down, now that most if not all non-essential shops are closed. My parents love every phone call they get, sometimes multiple times a day, whereas they normally are rushing from here to there in their busy pensioners lives. Kids are playing football in the streets again, where normally speed demons usually knock them off their feet. The rest of town is.. quiet. Silence. Of course the wheels will begin to spin as never before, the moment this virus is expelled. A friend asked me if he detect a weird Hannibalesque admiration for this thing (covid-19) with me? I'm not sure about that, but a fascination it is for sure. Isn't it interesting how these viruses keep mutating and how such a microscopically small particle can knock down modern life the way it does now. All those movies and TV series lately about apocalypses and deserted cities and an overturn of the status quo. And now we live through such a thing for real. I have written enough already about the horrors of this virus below, but seeing the world and the people in it slow down has something special too, if you look out for it.
Songs of the day
March 23rd 2020
Our grandparents sacrificed their lives for our freedom. Now we will sacrifice our freedom for their lives #stayhome. I read that the UK are getting the same stringent lockdown rules from tomorrow onward as most of Europe has had for over a week now. Not allowed to leave the house, unless for emergencies or groceries and in France and Italy you need to have a sworn statement on a state offered form with you explaining why exactly you are leaving your house. Army and police are patrolling and pull their guns at the least of offense. There are big fines or prison sentences if you are caught outside without good reason. It works, streets are empty. I was a bit miffed when seeing in the media/newspapers) the English and the Dutch flock out to the beaches and markets and parks this last weekend, with not a care in the world. Corona-holidays! Probably best that the new and more stringent measurements have been put in place by Boris Johnson? Seemed he had perhaps been dilly dallying a bit the past week, with his open-ended, non-committal 'advise' on staying home. While at the same time telling people they could go out for exercise. Tories seem to have an illogical belief in free choice and to think that everyone is rational and responsible and that giving them the right information will automatically mean that everyone will make the right, self sacrificing decisions. However, many people are self serving and hasty. There are some people who will always spoil things for everyone else. Just look at all these heroes panic buying and clearing the shelves in Blitz spirit, so the elderly and vulnerable and Healthcare workers get nothing at the end of the day.
Although I do wonder if Bobbies with batons will be able to contain the masses? Get the feeling there is a specific independence thing going on with some people. Too much of Keep Calm and Drink Tea? I wonder if British police could get laughed at or punched when trying to keep order. How can they enforce a lockdown with just some silly CS gas and a baton? Like the Netherlands, the UK follow the 'herd immunity' ideology. Keep economy going, survival of the fittest. A human 'herd' ... Right out of Boris' mouth. Doesn't exactly sound like the words of people filled with compassion and humanity. Saves on paying out pensions too. But Herd immunity is a tricky gamble because it isn't even known yet if immunity works for this specific new virus. Nor that people cannot get it twice or even three times in a row; some did already in Asia. And then there is the risk of virus mutations, making previous immunization.. useless. Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist working in chronic disease in Sydney, Australia, and he has strong opinions on Herd Immunity as a current Covid-19 strategy: "If 70 percent of your population is infected with a disease, it is by definition not prevention. How can it be? Most of the people in your country are sick! And the hopeful nonsense that you can reach that 70 percent by just infecting young people is simply absurd. If only young people are immune, you'd have clusters of older people with no immunity at all, making it incredibly risky for anyone over a certain age to leave their house lest they get infected, forever. It's also worth thinking about the repercussions of this disastrous scenario – the best estimates put COVID-19 infection fatality rate at around 0.5-1 percent. If 70 percent of an entire population gets sick, that means that between 0.35-0.7 percent of everyone in a country could die, which is a catastrophic outcome. With something like 10 percent of all infections needing to be hospitalised, you'd also see an enormous number of people very sick, which has huge implications for the country as well. Yes, it [herd immunity] may eventually happen anyway, but hoping that it will save us all is just not realistic. The time to discuss herd immunity is when we have a vaccine developed, and not one second earlier, because at that point we will be able to really stop the epidemic in its tracks." - So, Herd-Immunity seems now mostly a political ploy to refrain from doing the maximum in terms if lock-down. And it is becoming painfully obvious by now that government and scientists didn't prepare for this outbreak correctly. By the time scientists wanted to start testing SARS treatments and vaccines in the past years, the virus already had stopped being active and so.. they saw no immediate market for it and dropped the investigation. Fuck.. Market forces at their finest.
March 22nd 2020
Patients gasping for air. Italian doctor: "No, it's not like the flu. It's a totally different thing.
In most cases it is a very severe form of pneumonia. A very severe chronic pneumonia." For those ending up on Intensive Care, it's a 50/50 chance whether you'll live or die. In other words; take this virus seriously. "Have you ever seen someone gasping for their last breaths? Not many have, but for those who have experienced it, you never forget the horror. I wish I could forget all the faces of the dying I saw last week. The look of panic across every face, the chugging sound people make as they desperately try, and fail, to get oxygen in their lungs. It doesn't leave you. According to one graphic I have seen shared on social media, Covid19 is little worse than the winter flu. But let me tell you, it is so very much worse. Many of you reading this might have assumed that the virus is only serious for those with 'underlying health issues'. It is a clever term, for it works to distance many of us from it. Yet I have seen first-hand how quickly it spreads. Me? I am asymptomatic, but I have been exposed to it – frequently. I am, therefore, most likely carrying it, as are most medics up and down the country. As a doctor you should be saving lives. But for the first time in my career I have to face the fear that as a doctor I could be a silent killer. I have no choice but to block out that fear and just get on with it. Towards the end of last week, it became apparent that there is very little we can do to halt the spread of this aggressive and unrelenting virus. Many patients simply do not respond to treatment and oxygen masks and we are left with no choice but to make them 'comfortable'. Even with morphine and the sedative midazolam to help numb pain and ease breathing, the deaths have been excruciating. Once a patient is in a critical condition with this virus, there is never more than a couple of hours before it kills." (source) - "As the body’s immune system shifts into high gear to battle the infection, the resulting inflammation may cause those organs to malfunction, he said. As a result, some patients may endure damage that is inflicted not just by the virus, but by their own immune system as it rages to combat the infection." (source)
March 16th 2020
Been having a very sore throat the past days and some sort of ulcers on the inside of my lips and throat. No fever so fingers crossed it's just a flu virus or low immune function... Because the numbers of infected and critically ill keep doubling every two days still over here (Netherlands but also France and Spain for instance), all those countries have decided to install a state of emergency and close all schools, cafes, restaurants, clubs, everything. In Spain the army is out to send anyone out and about back home; you cannot sit at the beach anymore, or in a park there. They use drones and the police force to patrol and send everyone back inside. France is considering the same, as the Parisians are still flocking to parks and the border of the Seine, now that they are home from work. Only those working in critical professions can continue to go to work, so doctors, nurses, police, firefighters and such. The rest has to work from home. My mums husband was planned in for fairly urgent cancer treatment this month, but it was cancelled because the hospitals are full with corona patients 😞 And in France, the situation has taken a drastic turn today, as nobody is allowed to leave the house anymore, except for visits to a doctor, pharmacy or very occasionally for grocery shopping. Over the weekend, people ignored the call to stay home, and flocked to public parks and gathered in the city centers for social activities. Despite all cafes, restaurants, clubs etc already having been closed previously. Shame it's not a virus that attacks the stupid.. The French government is livid and had to put extreme measures into place. Nobody is allowed out and about anymore and if you do leave the house, you need to sign and print a special document from the state website, or face hefty penalties. Also the borders are closed, nobody is getting in or out anymore, except for returning French natives.Really invasive measurements. Over here in Europe, world leaders are follow a different tactic than China did. China has the infrastructure and mentality to successfully quarantine all victims, and to let the virus run its course in those who don't die from it. Now there are no more new coronavirus patients within China, they say. Now they have to make sure that tourists and visitors do not bring the virus back INTO the country. So anyone flying in is put into a 2 week mandatory quarantine. But once tourists from, say, Italy come to China again, one can reintroduce the virus all over again in China. Although I read other opinions too, virologists who say that in China the virus is simply fading out now anyway, as a result of the strict lockdown of the country. And China managed to protect a lot of vulnerable and old people, by eliminating the virus. Over here, this is pretty much an impossible tactic. We have open borders, an open economy and a population unwilling to go to such extremes. We cannot prevent the virus from re-entering the country due to free travel and tourism. That would requite Korean style approach of testing everything and anyone and instantly isolating positive coronapatients and their loved ones. Works well there at the moment! But over here there is hardly any testing done and the government follows a very different approach. here they try to aim at 'herd immunity' and 'flattering the curve'; preventing that there is a mass peek of corona patients, which would cause major problems for the hospitals. So the government flat out says and predicts that 50 to 70% of all people will get the coronavirus, but they want to spread this over time, so hospitals can cope. Between 10 and 15% of those infected with coronavirus have to be taken into Intensive Care as it stands. And we simply do not have the intensive care capacity for this. That is why schools are closed and cafes and such are closed and people are mostly staying at home. In order to slow down the rate at which people get sick and at which a fraction of them will have to be treated in hospital. And on top of that they are hoping for herd-immunity: when the majority of the population has caught and gone through the virus infection, and as a result have developed immunity to this virus. That means that if a second or third wave of the virus engulfs the nation, the virus cannot latch onto many people. And cannot spread as easily. That way, an 'invisible wall' is built around the most vulnerable people; old persons and younger people with chronic illness or reduced immune function. So the fit and healthy are helping the sickly by going through the virus. Hopefully with little symptoms. The only thing I haven't heard the PM about, is what will happen if this virus mutates and people have to go not once, but twice or three times through a genetically altered (and thus different) virus. Or the fact that some people in Asia caught the coronavirus not once but twice. Sometimes even three times (and each time they got very sick, some care workers and doctors had extreme illness because of how much virus they had been exposed to). Also, this is a brand new virus and the WHO criticizes countries like the Netherlands for their approach of aiming at herd immunity. Because nobody even knows yet if herd immunity will take place here; there is not enough data at the moment about this virus and how it behaves. We don't yet have the evidence to prove that if you are infected once, you would be immune for life. So... expecting up to 80% of the population to get infected, as a means to slow the virus' spread, is a RISKY move. Especially combined with my countries' absolute lack of testing and quarantining corona victims and their families. I'd much rather see the Netherlands go all out like many other European countries, and impose draconian isolation measures: nobody allowed to leave the house unless to see a doctor, the pharmacy or to get groceries once a week. Then use the army and police force to make sure people stick to the rules.
Over here people will continue to be paid wages when they stay home or work from home, because it is an emergency situation. The French state has axed all monthly costs people have for electricity, water, taxes, rent etc. The state also pays for the extra childcare needs for those people working in Critical Jobs (doctors, nurses etc), and pay for their kids' childcare. Companies and entrepreneurs who are facing big financial losses because they have been told to close their shops and cafes, are eligible to get special state funding and taxes and such are temporarily stopped. The state also offers interest free temporary loans. In other words; major state investments, which we can afford due to the higher taxes people pay. I wonder how countries like the USA will do this? I understand a portion of the population literally cannot go without a month of wages; they'd be evicted from their homes otherwise. And that is without even mentioning the dreaded health insurance situation in the USA.... Dreaded for the non-rich, that is. Over here people all have health insurance, by law, and that covers for everything; from corona testing to treatments. We all pay a monthly fee for it (currently about 140 euro's a month for me, plus an own risk of 350 euro), but it is affordable for mostly everyone and those with lower income get subsidies from the state to compensate some of the costs. A country like France has free healthcare for everyone earning less than a certain amount. But how about the USA? I read that there is very limited testing done for corona, for instance, because there aren't enough tests, or they are too expensive. And CDC's standards for testing being so stringent that many people who are infected don't get tested either. So legions of people do not know whether or not they are infected and thus don't know if they should self-isolate to stop the spread of the virus.. Is it every man for himself? This is perhaps not a good time to be a capitalistic society..
There are currently more infections and deaths in Europe combined than in China. And no signs of it slowing down, with numbers doubling and doubling and doubling several times per week. It remains to be seen if we can get that virus under control as fast as they did. The French are defiant and won't be told what to do, the English are even worse and many don't even support the closing of schools. And the Dutch are standing in long lines to fetch their last big batch of weed and recreational drugs haha:
It's also way more contagious than the media say.. Scientists studied one man in China who passed the virus to 13 people in total. On the bus, germs jumped as far as 4.5 metres to other travellers. It lingered in the air for up to 30 mins, after the original man had got off the bus. People who wore masks on the bus were not infected, the study found. Coronavirus bugs also stayed on surfaces for days, especially when it was hot. Scientists said their findings show face masks are useful protective measures. A man infected with coronavirus spread the virus to nine other people on his bus, raising fears the killer infection can jump between people far easier than initially thought in confined places. A study found two victims sitting 4.5 metres (14.7ft) away from the man were later diagnosed, which is four times what is considered a 'safe distance' to stand near an COVID-19 patient. Countries including Italy and the UK have implemented one to two metre distancing between people to limit outbreaks. The virus has been thought to spread via cough or sneeze droplets, but the study found germs can linger in the air for long periods of time. One traveller caught the coronavirus half an hour after the initial COVID-19 carrier got off, according to the scientists. None of the people who wore a face mask on the bus ride were diagnosed with COVID-19, indicating that those taking extra precaution on public transport are protected. In total, the man led to 13 others being infected. At the time, a crisis had not been declared in the country, where the virus originated. Now more than 114,400 cases and 4,000 deaths have been confirmed worldwide. The study also found the coronavirus can last for days on a surface, particularly in warmer temperatures, on plastic, fabric and metal. The findings shed light on the importance of extreme measures to prevent clusters of cases. It also throws into question who 'close contact' of confirmed cases are, considering complete strangers were infected by the man. 
Some people I know are heckling the media, who are said to be too sensationalistic. It's true that some media are creating quite a stir over this virus thing, and are scaremongering as such. I look a bit differently at it all, bc I always have health issues to worry about anyway. And my sister also has asthma, so is in the risk group. Not as much risk as people of old age though. But it seems old news that mainly very old people end up in hospital. A Belgian emergency doctor, Ignace Demeyer, started to a newspaper that: "We see people here on the emergency with no medical history who are very seriously ill. We've had very few older people in so far. We now have people between the ages of 30 and 50 who come in." According to Demeyer, they all have the same complaints: "They have been sick for a week, stayed home with the flu. The flu attack is over, they think. They feel fine for two days. And then they report complaints of a dry cough and shortness of breath." A very low oxygen saturation then rings the alarm bell for the doctors, although people usually do not initially feel sick. "They just walk in, but they are terribly affected by the virus," said Demeyer. “The X-ray images we've taken are downright terrifying. These alveoli contain 80 to 90 percent inflammatory fluid, which builds up into a kind of mass that is forming a scar. ” In reality, the virus acts like a partially loaded revolver. It hurts some, it misses others. Age and compromised immune system, long term health issue, all increase the chances of fatality. Younger people with undiagnosed health issues believe themselves safe, except for a weekend with flu. The reality is, everyone over the age of 20 is at risk. Some won't survive, and as we are finding, some of those dying are a lot younger than 70. People are mistaking statistics, to immunity. More older people will perish, but other age groups are not guaranteed to survive.
And I read about a Japansese dude who was infected and purposely went out to bars to infect others. Would that qualify as a biological attack? I wonder how many people there are who know they are infected and who had humanity and just say FUCK YOU ALL I'm going to infect as many as possible? Quite drastic, but then there are the legions of young(er) people with whom just asking them to stay at home was too much asked. They know they are in the lower risk group statistically and thus they continue going to bars, concerts, parks and marathon runs. So the government here has made the choice for them; this weekend it was party galore again with even Belgian people crossing the border, because in Belgium all cafes and places of fun were already closed, so they all came to Holland for some partying.. Cool.. Government here said enough is enough, we also close everything. So now every cafe, bar, restaurant, theater, cinema and coffee shop is closed. People are told to work from home or stop working for X amount of time. All except for those in critical functions, such as doctors, nurses, police etc. And I understand that young people with robust health find it all a bit exaggerated perhaps. The indestructibles eh, the youth. But young people also end up on Intensive Care here. I understand that many younger people think it is all a bit exaggerated and a sign of mass hysteria. That the old have to die of something in the end, and it's true that natural selection is of all times. But there are so many people in society with auto-immune diseases, or recovering from cancer treatments for instance; why should they be sacrificed, just so that the healthy ones (luck of the draw more often than not) can continue to do exactly as they please? Youth in former generations were asked a lot more sacrifice; serving in world wars for instance. All that is asked now is to refrain from social activities for a month, maybe two at the most, and enjoy yourself with your x-box and Netflix. In order to show unity and let the virus run its course, without causing death and suffering for a weaker segment of society. Countries like Italy and Spain now need to install the army to reinforce the new rules. Being free-thinking and anti-establishment somehow starts to sound selfish at the moment. Now it starts to look like people are just unwilling to make sacrifices for the greater good of humanity. If it doesn't affect them, and they'll just get a bit of a cold, they don't care about anyone else.
Nevertheless, Nature tends to act eventually as the ultimate equalizer, ensuring all things return to balance, be it via viruses, droughts, tsunamis, an asteroid, or Darwin Awards. Nature has eliminated the weakest of species throughout history, but now (luckily) we have modern medicine to keep people alive much longer. It's a tombola lottery anyway, where you are born and with what genetics and whether you are born 'sickly' or not. Although it makes - evolutionary - sense that the 70+ patients appear to have the highest chance of dying from this coronavirus. But when you'd say my parents had it and were about to die, alone in isolation in a hospital, choking for breath and without anyone allowed to hold their hand or say goodbyes, I'd say fuck natural selection.
Most patients with severe pneumonia in
intensive care are around the age of 50, sometimes 40:
Not getting sick is not just a matter of doing yourself a favour, but also the chronically ill and also the already overworked medical staff. This is also about full hospitals, sleep deprived and overworked staff who are risking their own health and that of their families. Anyway, statistics are excellent for us lot at or under the age of 40. There is a very high chance of not getting anything serious from this virus. But I would try to avoid infection nevertheless.. especially those of us with underlying immune issues for instance. And many of us should be OK I think, being less social anyway :)
Promising therapies that are currenly being tested
Here, are some of the drugs that experts believe have potential:
Chloroquine phosphate (Malaria) 
Hydroxychloroquine (Malaria)Chinese scientists investigating the other form of chloroquine penned a letter to a prestigious journal saying its 'less toxic' derivative may also help. In the comment to Cell Discovery – owned by publisher Nature, they said it shares similar chemical structures and mechanisms. The team of experts added: 'It is easy to conjure up the idea that hydroxychloroquine may be a potent candidate to treat infection by SARS-CoV-2.' But the Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists admitted they are still lacking evidence to prove it is as effective as chloroquine phosphate. Wuhan Institute of Virology scientists admitted they are still lacking evidence to prove hydroxychloroquine is as effective as chloroquine phosphate. Hydroxychloroquine, sold under the brand name Plaquenil, causes side effects such as skin rashes, nausea, diarrhoea and headaches. Drug giant Sanofi carried out a study on 24 patients, which the French government described as 'promising'. Results showed three quarters of patients treated with the drug were cleared of the virus within six days. None of the placebo group were treated. French health officials are now planning on a larger trial of the drug, which is used on the NHS to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis as well as malaria.Ivermectine Not the 'horse dewormer', but an antiparasitic drug that has been used safely for many decades in humans, all over the world and received the Nobel Prize in 2015. It seems to have the potential to help treat covid19 infections early on, by making it more difficult for the virus to replicate. When used in the appropriate doses, linked to body weight, it has little or very mild side-effects, which is a promising feat.
Lopinavir/ritonavir (HIV) Lopinavir/ritonavir, marketed as Kaletra and Aluvia, is an anti-HIV medicine given to people living with the virus to prevent it developing into AIDS. Lopinavir/ritonavir, marketed under the brand names Kaletra and Aluvia, is an anti-HIV medicine. The drug has shown promise as a way of tackling coronavirus, scientists say, because it is able to bind to the outside of the coronavirus. It is a class of drug called a protease inhibitor, which essentially stick to an enzyme on a virus which is vital to the virus reproducing. By doing this it blocks the process the virus would normally use to clone itself and spread the infection further. In a clinical trial application submitted in the US from Asan Medical Center, in Seoul, South Korea, scientists said: 'In vitro [laboratory] studies revealed that lopinavir/ritonavir [has] antiviral activity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).' Chinese media reported that the drug was successfully used to cure patients with the coronavirus, but the reports have not been scientifically proven. US-based manufacturer AbbVie has donated free supplies of Kaletra to health authorities in China, the US and Europe – it is not clear whether the UK is included. The drug is available on the NHS and was prescribed around 1,400 times in 2018, either as Kaletra or ritonavir on its own.
Favipiravir (flu) Favipiravir is the active ingredient in a flu drug called Avigan which is sold in Japan. Doctors in China have claimed it was 'clearly effective' in patients with the coronavirus after they gave it to 80 people in the cities of Wuhan and Shenzen. Favipiravir is the active ingredient in a flu drug called Avigan which is sold in Japan. They said it sped up patients' recovery, reduced lung damage and did not cause any obvious side effects. It is also used to treat yellow fever and foot-and-mouth. According to local media, patients who were given the medicine in Shenzhen had negative results for the coronavirus an average of four days after being diagnosed. This compared with 11 days for those who were not treated with the drug. It is not clear what the results were of the trials in Wuhan, the worst-hit part of China. The drug is an anti-viral medication which neutralises a vital enzyme that viruses use to reproduce. It is called a RNA polymerase inhibitor. It is not used by the NHS. It's produced by the Japanese company Fujifilm Toyama Chemical.
Remdesivir (Ebola) Remdesivir is an anti-viral drug that works in essentially the same way as favipiravir – by crippling the RNA polymerase enzyme, stopping a virus from reproducing. It was developed around 10 years ago by the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences with the intention of it destroying the Ebola virus. It was pushed aside, however, when other, better candidates emerged. But it remained an anti-viral drug with the ability to destroy various viruses in lab tests, scientists said. Doctors in the US tried it on three hospitalised coronavirus patients but results were mixed. The drug is now being trialled on coronavirus patients in China and at the University of Nebraska, CNN reports. Doctors writing in a study led by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature last month, said: 'Our findings reveal that remdesivir [is] highly effective in the control of 2019-nCoV infection in vitro.' They added that, since the drug is proven to be safe in humans, it 'should be assessed in human patients suffering from the novel coronavirus disease'. Remdesivir is not prescribed on the NHS. It is also expensive and comes with potential very serious side-effects, for instance on the liver. 
Sarilumab or Tocilizumabor (Rheumatoid arthritis) Sarilumab, a rheumatoid arthritis drug which is marketed as Kevzara in the US, is set to be trialled on patients in the US. Sarilumab, a rheumatoid arthritis drug which is marketed as Kevzara in the US, is set to be trialled on patients in the US. Pharmaceutical companies Sanofi and Regeneron plan to give the medication to people with the coronavirus to see if it can help calm their immune response. The drug works by blocking part of the immune system which can cause inflammation, or swelling, which is overactive in people with rheumatoid arthritis. Inflammation is the body's natural response to infection but, in patients with coronavirus, it can get out of control, making symptoms significantly worse and even trigger multiple organ failure. Regeneron, which makes the drug, said Chinese doctors say it has worked for their patients, the Financial Times reported. He said the drug could provide 'temporary support' by reducing the severity of patients' symptoms to help hospitals to cope. John Reed, from Sanofi, told the FT: 'We expect to rapidly initiate trials outside the US in the coming weeks, including areas most affected by the pandemic such as Italy'. Tocilizumab, marketed as Actemra, is taken by patients with rheumatoid arthritis to lower inflammation. Chinese doctors gave it to 20 patients during the peak of the country's epidemic, and claim 19 were discharged from hospital within two weeks. (source).
Piers Morgan going all out on selfish millennials
PIERS MORGAN: If coronavirus killed young people like it does the old, we would have shut down society weeks ago - so the least dumb, selfish millennials like Vanessa Hudgens can do is stop partying and like, wake the f*ck up"I’ve wondered for a long time how the millennial generation would cope with a real crisis. Not one of the myriad crises many of them claim to have every second of every day, triggering the biggest explosion of ‘anxiety’ and ‘triggering’ the planet has ever seen. No, a real one. One that impacts every one of us, one that causes genuine hardship and strife, one that causes huge numbers of deaths and rips the global economy to pieces and, one that is a proper valid reason to feel anxious because it’s indisputably frightening and none of us, not even the world’s top scientific experts, knows how bad it will get before we come out the other side. Well, now I don’t have to wonder because it’s happening. And whilst some millennials are being perfectly stoic and sensible, recognizing the gravity of the situation, some are behaving like complete and utter cretins. I couldn’t believe the idiocy of so many Spring Break students flocking to the beach in Florida, hugging and kissing each other like it was VE-Day. Or the crass stupidity of all those flocking to bars on St Patrick’s Day around Britain and America yesterday, when even Ireland shut down every pub in the country and cancelled all the parades beloved by every town in the country. Or all the blinkered arrogance of all the cocky young chumps bombarding me with ‘Stop being so f*cking hysterical, it’s just the flu!’ abuse on Twitter every time I try to warn them of how bad this pandemic may get, and how urgent it is that they take it more seriously.
What kind of mentality, I pondered, makes people so brainless when the we’re in the grip of the greatest potential threat to our existence since World War 2?
For the answer, turn to High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, 31. Yesterday, she turned on her Instagram live ‘story’ and broadcast her thoughts on the coronavirus to her 38.4 million followers, many of them young and impressionable. Reacting to the news that the virus may still be wreaking havoc through the summer, she said: ‘’Til July sounds like a bunch of bullsh*t. I’m sorry, but like, it’s a virus, I get it, I respect it. But at the same time, like, even if everybody gets it, like, yeah, people are gonna die. Which is terrible, but like inevitable? I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this right now.’ You, like, THINK? As understandable outrage greeted this staggeringly tone-deaf response, Hudgens dug an even bigger hole by deciding to further clarify her position. Naturally, this involved blaming everyone else for all misinterpreting her disgustingly callous jabberings, and immediately positioning herself as a victim to try to draw the sting out of the vitriol pouring down on her stupefyingly dumb head. Hey guys,’ she whimpered, flicking her hands through her frizzy hair like a ditzy dimwit, ‘so yesterday I did an Instagram Live and I realized today that some of my comments are being taken out of context. It’s a crazy time, it’s a CRAZY time and I am at home and in lockdown, and that’s what I hope you guys are doing too, in full quarantine. And staying safe and sane. Yeah, I don’t take this situation lightly. By any means. I am home.’ Then Hudgens gave the obligatory millennial vacuous smile and peace sign to the camera and concluded: ‘So stay inside, y’all.’ Unsurprisingly, this disingenuous load of self-protective crap did little to dampen the furore.
Hard to believe this one has passed the age of 30... Talking like a teenager, "Like and I think like" With sounding in the background the song 'Fever', oh the irony.
So, an hour later, her publicist presumably took charge and ordered Hudgens to issue a grovelling new mea culpa statement saying: ‘I’m so sorry for the way I have offended anyone and everyone who has seen the clip from my Instagram live yesterday. I realize my words were insensitive and not at all appropriate for the situation our country and the world are in right now. This has been a huge wake up call about the significance my words have, now more than ever. I’m sending safe wishes to everyone to stay safe and healthy during this crazy time.’ In the general scheme of things right now, the thoughts of someone like Vanessa Hudgens shouldn’t matter. But when someone with 38.4 million followers who hang on her every word is spewing such dangerous nonsense, it actually does matter. It can literally mean people live or die. And her casual, self-absorbed gormlessness explains why all those Spring Break students are partying on the beach, why so many others are still hitting any bars and club still open in Britain and America, and why they’re so furious at their holidays being cancelled, or their gyms being closed, or their favorite sport being canned.
This is a woefully entitled generation that’s grown up whining about absolutely everything - yet has so little to legitimately whine about given how much safer, healthier, less war-ravaged and more prosperous the world is now compared to any other time in recorded history. They mock and scorn the ‘Boomers’ (people born between 1946 and 1964 – I don’t quite qualify, having been born in 1965, but this doesn’t stop them calling me one) for being old, out-of-touch, boring and narrow-minded. But one thing my generation knows is the horror of World War 2 because our grandparents who lived through it told us about it. My own grandmother was in her late teens when WW2 started, and I had many conversations with her about what life was like for young people during that tumultuous period. She said it was very very tough, obviously, but it also taught everyone to be strong, resilient, selfless and caring. ‘We were all in the same boat,’ she said. ‘So, everyone helped each other. We had no choice.’ It also taught that generation perspective. Millions of young men had to go and fight for the country, and many didn’t come back.
Today, the biggest sacrifice we’re being asked to make is not go to the pub or beach and sit at home for a while watching TV.
Is that really too much to ask? The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hasn’t enforced measures as draconian as most other countries because he doesn’t think we’d have the patience to stay inside for months on end. In other words, we don’t have the stomach for the fight. I find that notion offensive, and his worryingly vague strategy of half-social-distancing very wrong – perhaps disastrously so - but sadly he’s probably right about many millennials judging by the ludicrous antics of people like Vanessa Hudgens. Fortunately, there are some people of her generation who DO get it. Take pop superstar Ariana Grande, who four days ago tweeted the following message to her 72 million followers: ‘I keep hearing from a surprising amount of people statements like “this isn’t a big deal”, “we’ll be fine”, “we still have to go about our lives”, and it’s really blowing my mind. I understand that is how it felt weeks ago but please read about what’s going on, please don’t turn a blind eye. It is incredibly dangerous and selfish to take this situation lightly. The “we will be fine because we’re young” mindset is putting people who aren’t young and/or healthy in a lot of danger. You sound stupid and privileged and you need to care about others.. like, now.’ Ariana added: ‘Like, your hip hop yoga class can f*cking wait, I promise. This a national emergency and a pandemic of global proportions.’
Heroes come in many forms at moments such as this, but Ariana Grande is a true hero for grasping the severity of this situation and taking action to properly inform her massive army of young fans as to what the right response should be. We need a lot more Arianas on hugely influential social media right now and a lot fewer Vanessas. This Coronavirus crisis is a war and everyone needs to grow the f*ck up and understand just how serious it is. Especially those young people who still don’t get it. To them,
"I can only say that every one of your parents and grandparents is incredibly relieved this is a virus that predominantly kills members of our age-groups and not that of our kids. But if it WAS the other way round then I can assure you we wouldn’t be taking a single reckless chance with YOUR lives".
So, stop taking a chance with the lives of those older and more vulnerable than you. It’s time many millennials stopped being so bloody selfish and asked themselves the question President John F. Kennedy asked in his 1961 inaugural address: ‘And so my fellow Americans,’ he said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you - but what you can do for your country.’ Before it’s, like, too late y’all."
Afraid I have to agree with Piers Morgan here. Selfish people in pubs.. With a portion of the population being absolute f#-+ing idiots. Same over here, with football fields full with young people who state to journalists that 'they won't get the virus anyway because they're young enough'. Or large groups of youth hanging out together outside, despite the new rules who forbid this. They think their 'religion will protect them from coronavirus'. And with pubs closed now, they will find other places to congregate. Parents seemingly having no control over their offspring, who do exactly what they want to. People have to be forced to comply to the rules, unfortunately. France uses the army and prison sentences to force people off the street and back in their homes. And they don't have these problems as much in countries like Singapore or Taiwan where the virus is effectively sucked dry. Because the population respects the rules. Utterly selfish behaviour over here from people who just can't go without their social pleasures and instant gratification addictions, not even when the health systems are about to burst under the coronapatient load. Just over 100 years ago men your age were coming home from the trenches, and women were doing men's jobs and bringing up kids....never complained, just got on with it. The same year that 50 million plus people died of the Spanish Flu epidemic. Now they can't even stay home on the sofa. Better not compare today's people with the previous generation as it is an insult. Enjoy your beer muppets. Enjoy it till your lungs collapse.. These snowflakes haven't a clue about anything, they only think of their own enjoyment and sod everybody else. But just wait till it hits them, then it will be help me me me, and sod everyone else again. Everybody, just do your bit. Stop bleating about how you want this and that at this moment in time; just comply to the social distancing and self-isolation rules without whining and self-entitlement. If you carry it or develop Covid-19, you may survive. But if you pass it on to another person, he or she may not be as lucky. Lead by example. And if you're not thinking of your own loved ones, think of that front line doctor or nurse who has to pick up the link in the infected chain. It's all a big laugh until your grandfather is choking on his final breath, your mother's chemotherapy treatment is on the back burner due to a shortage of medical staff, your otherwise fit and healthy sibling is desperate for an intensive care bed but they were taken up weeks ago and your child's concussion isn't deemed critical enough for A&E staff to take a look at. As an NHS nurse wrote today: "I was looking after a patient today who was only out partying last weekend....this weekend they are ventilated and fighting for survival. I know this as when I spoke to the family, via a phone to update them, they told me the shock of how well this person was last weekend. You see I had to call them to update them as this patient is positive for COVID-19 and they're now all having to self isolate, they can't be with their loved one at the most terrible time. Before you think this is a cold or a quick bit of socialising won't hurt here and there - think of this family. If this carries on this phone call will be repeated over and over again, the only change will be we don't have enough ventilators to be able to say to every family ' we will do our best we promise.' For the sake of your NHS I beg you all to stay and home and be safe. Us NHS staff want most is for you all to be safe in your homes. We can't stay at home but you can. We can get a grip on this virus if we all do our bit now."
Songs of the day
March 12th 2020I cancelled my travel plans, call me a hypochondriac but I do not feel relaxed about this coronavirus. Have been reading up on it and will share some info below, in case you are interested. I also visited my GP and made an early morning appointment on purpose, after the assistant had told me there were suspected Covid19 cases in their practice. Made me worried, in true hypochondriac fashion, because the GP here gets to see all the coughing old folks and may himself be infected already, for all I know. Incubation time of this virus is 5 to 7 days, and new science has proven that the virus is highly infectious from day 1, well before the patient develops any symptoms. So well, who knows. Oh and this nasty virus can stay alive and circulating in the air for up to three hours, brand new research shows, and live on some surfaces for as long as two to three days. Although you can't prevent everything I guess. But I did make an appointment as early in the morning as possible, because in the morning there have not been that many people in and out of the office yet, thus hopefully less virus particles floating around. The GP wasn't too bothered (yet..), said for young people like me it acts like a case of the flu mostly. I had a scarf wrapped around my mouth anyway. But then felt so self conscious about it (doc was not protected at all) that I kind of let it drop down most of the time. I didn't touch the door handles there however, didn't shake hands and washed my hands as soon as I could. Of course now, the next day, I am having a sore throat and blocked nose... Just me being too worried most likely, may just be the normal flu. But unlike some others, I do worry about that coronavirus. In general, and also a tiny bit for myself, having underlying immune illnesses and just seeming to catch every single winter flu virus that's circulating every year, for the past five years already. I never used to get the flu before that. Now the past winters I have dealt with recurrent bronchitis/ pneumonia at clockwork and not being able to breath well is really horrible. Being so short of breath that you can't do much but rest, is frightening.
Covid19 is more than a 'boomer remover'I hear people and even the GP say that this corona virus is for many just the same as the flu. But I'm not buying that. Italian doctors have shared details about the patients there who end up on Intensive Care and even pass away from this virus, and they have significant numbers op young patients, under age 50, significant percentages are in their 40s or 30's - even teenagers - of which many had no underlying health problems beforehand, and were fit. Over half of the people currently in IC in the Netherlands are under age 50 and some are teenagers also. Over half of the critical patients currently in intensive care in France (over 300) are younger than 60. This doctor in Italy also warns that it are not just the old who die from the virus, but also younger patients and those with underlying health issues. And don't forget that 'underlying health issues' can also include diabetes and asthma for instance and put young(er) people also at considerable risk. Unfortunately the virus is also mutating over time and Europe currently already has a more deadly variety than China endured a month or two ago. This Covid19 virus is not the same as the common flu. Flu also doesn't typically cause as much severe pneumonia (bilateral interstitial pneumonia), nor organ failing. It can, but statistically the chance is much lower. Flu kills about 1% or lower annually, whereas the statistics are much higher for corona, up to 8% chance of dying in a country like Italy at the moment. The average amount of people with seasonal flu who die is just about 1 out of every 1000 who catch it. With Coronavirus, the average amount of people with it who die is 60 out of every 1000 (WHO official figures), and those numbers have already been upscaled as the virus keeps spreading and developing. 12,5%, meaning 1/5 of all active cases of corona, end up on the intensive care. There are several strains of coronavirus circulating, which mainly differ in infectivity and which cause separate diseases: Covid-19A, Covid-19B, -19C, etc. Estimations are that there are currently about 5 to 6 different variants around the world. Some countries have the most aggressive Italian version (countries like The Netherlands, Belgium, France and Spain, where currently also high numbers of casualties are counted). And as a result, the severity of this corona-induced type of pneumonia, bilateral interstitial pneumonia, can also differ. The virus makes the body attack itself, creating a lot of fluid and mucus in the lungs, drowning the unlucky ones from the inside out. No antibiotics will help here, nothing helps. When I had bronchitis from the flu, penicillin did help, because bacteria from the nasal cavity (snot, mucus etc) had ended up in my lungs, and the penicillin helped clean out the bacterial component to the problem. But with the coronavirus, the virus attaches itself way down the respiratory tract and makes the bodies immune system create these lung problems itself. More on that below. So once (vulnerable) people develop pneumonia from the coronavirus, a certain portion of them dies. The latest stats say 50%. Which is a horrible death. They did autopsy on some of the bodies, and found lungs filled with a glue-like substance. Lungs all stuck together. Horror. Those people who keep saying stop flapping, it's just like winter flu, are incorrect. The disease may look like just the flu for the lucky majority, but scores of people (also previously healthy and also under the age of 50) are currently fighting for their lives in IC units, with severe pneumonia. And the ones who die, die alone :( Isolated. Kids are not allowed to hug their dying parents, it's really tragic. This story for instance. I feel terribly sad for the thousands of desperately ill, who are left at hospital doorways, with doctors deciding who will be treated and who will be left to die. For all those people (also folks in their 30s and 40s and 50s) who will never enjoy their pensions and who die in total isolation, with nobody to hug them or hold their hand or say goodbye. Choking to death from the pneumonia.
So there are very different messages coming at us about this virus. China warns everyone to take the virus very seriously and to go all out on isolating the patients and stopping all contamination options. So far it seems to be working for China, where official patient numbers have been dropping for some time now. The peak of the epidemic has passed for China, with only a trickle of new cases and the number of new patients in Hubei province falling to single digits for the first time yesterday. But it didn't happen by itself, it took very dramatic action. "Draconian measurements", as I read in newspapers over here. Not sure I agree with that. Because the outbreak is worsening outside China and was yesterday declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation. Italy has it very very bad at the moment with 12.500 official patients and over 800 deaths. Numbers for many countries are in reality much much higher, as many people do not get tested. For instance, in the UK they won't even test people with suspected coronaviruses unless they directly travelled from Iran, China or Italy. Never mind that this virus is highly contagious even in the first days of having it, when there are not even symptoms yet for patients. So everyone who gets into contact with these people, have a chance of developing it too. Without any further link to countries like China or Italy. But these people do not get tested. Not yet at least. Same in the Netherlands where relatives of corona patients are just told to self isolate, and they are not counted. So official numbers are seeming deceptively low still. Italy also started with only 3 patients, about two and a half weeks (!) ago. Every day the numbers rose with around 30%. Until the current count of over 80.000 patients. And this is the exact same situation for many European countries, like Spain, France, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands; their numbers keep rising with around 30% daily. Right now they may seem to handle the crisis better, but it is important to emphasize that they are just two to three weeks behind Italy. In every other sense their situation is exactly the same. And in 2 weeks from now, we will all be facing much higher numbers of infected and dead. Maybe not as high as Italy, because Italy has quite special circumstances in some ways (more on that in a minute). But there may be 10,000 plus cases by the end of the next fortnight. Without any social distancing, that is the usual rate. We'd have had to be as proactive as Taiwan and Japan to manage things any better. There is likely to be unbearable pressure on our already overstretched healthcare. But with all these other European countries favouring the No Panic message and the protection of the economy over radical measurements, we're all heading in the same direction. "Business as usual" strategy is irresponsible I think and they should have banned travel three weeks ago. Everyone coming from infected countries should have been quarantined under force. Schools and public life should have been closed right away. Patients should have been monitored and the state should have ensured that they and their relatives were kept in quarantine. That way they can only infect the people living in the same house and not, say, 65 other people they meet outside of the house. Then you let the virus run its course, without exposing millions of people to the virus and overburdening the hospitals and healthcare system. China is looking at us European counties with disbelief, about how terrible and wishy-washy we are handling this virus. Beijing medical adviser and epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan said at a news conference today: 'If all countries could get mobilized, it could be over by June.' Zhong, who is credited with helping to combat the SARS outbreak in 2003, warned that the current crisis would 'last longer' if countries 'do not treat the infectiousness and harmfulness seriously'. 'I'm particularly worried about... the complacency and slow motion process that would be demonstrated by the fiscal authorities of the euro area in particular. My advice is calling for all countries to follow WHO instructions and intervene on a national scale.' 'My estimate of June is based on scenarios that all countries take positive measures,' he said. 'But if some countries do not treat the infectiousness and harmfulness seriously, and intervene strongly, it would last longer.'
In order to avoid a crisis such as in Italy right now, I think leaders really should make the tough decisions and stop international flights, see to very strict isolation of the infected (state controlled, because otherwise many people just do as they wish) and cancel all activities such as sports, festivals. They already started such serious measurements in Israel, where the count for coronavirus patients is 'only' 100 at the moment. But Bibi Netanyahu is taking no risks and has ensured that any foreigner coming into Israel, first gets quarantined for 14 days. This virus is quickest under control and with the least amount of casualties, when governments go all out, isolate patients and their families and close schools and ban all gatherings. In China they have brought things under control in two months in this fashion. Half baked measurements will mean the virus takes months longer to be contained, with all additional costs and risks. Meanwhile in Australia there is panic and doctors complain about the chaos, the long lines in front of hospitals of patients and people wanting to be tested for the virus. The thing is; crisis hit China two months ago already. The world could watch and see how the virus behaved in China, how the situation escalated in no time there with coronavirus patients skyrocketing to 80.000 patients and over 3000 deaths, and you'd think that the rest of the world would use those two months of extra time to take precautions and set prevention plans into motion. But no. Economy comes first here unfortunately, and only after the hit hits the fan will most leaders implement necessary action. Just asking people in epicenters to not go out the door will solve this thing, the prime minster thinks over here. And our western-European population, maybe all of Europe even, are probably not as law-abiding as residents of China, Singapore, Japan and such places. So leaders feel that they need to gradually implement changes. Not too much too quickly, because then the people may not agree with it and refuse to follow orders. Of course, there are always measurements possible to make sure that people follow the new laws; in Italy you risk significant prison sentences if you go against new laws, thereby endangering the health and lives of others. People who are ill and do not self-isolate risk a prison sentence of 21 years for 'malicious murder'.
Situation in Italy
Italy appeared well ahead of the curve when the coronavirus outbreak began to spread outside of China. The first three coronavirus cases detected in Italy, at the end of January 2020, were two Chinese tourists and an Italian man who had been in contact with a friend who had just returned from China. The patients were isolated in a hospital in Rome. Their contacts were traced, it was established that the two Chinese tourists in Rome had visited Parma, and Italy then cut all transport links with China. Prime minister Giuseppe Conte was confident that Italy had contained the threat, stating on 31 January that: “The system of prevention put into place by Italy is the most rigorous in Europe.” In reality, as would become clear in February, the virus had since mid-January been circulating unnoticed in northern Italy via other local chains of infection. Only now we start to understand how extremely infectious this virus is, and that it can remain airborne for many hours. Another error made by Italy, is that they followed a protocol which said that only people who had a connection with China should be tested for coronavirus if they showed symptoms. Italians who had no ties with China, but did have unexplained fevers and respiratory complaints were not tested. Then on 18 February, a fit 38-year old with no apparent links to China fell ill in Codogno. He has become known as Patient Zero. He saw his GP and visited his local hospital several times, but his symptoms were not picked up on and they kept sending him back home. Three times. When he was finally admitted to hospital, he tested positive but had been interacting freely with other people in the days prior. Believing his GP in that he just had the flu. So by the time he was isolated in hospital, he had already infected a number of medical personnel and other contacts over a period of days.
So the first two (Chinese) coronavirus cases in Italy were linked to Parma, a place they visited. Authorities then went on to shut down 10 towns linked to the initial cluster of cases in the northern provinces of Lombardy and Veneto. The local lockdowns, which began on the same day that Patient One was confirmed as infected, were hailed in some quarters at time as "speedy and decisive". They would help in isolating the corona cases in the specific towns and villages where the patients resided. But the lockdown didn't last long enough and the geographical scope of those initial quarantines turned out to be far too limited. And for other northern places, which are the economic and industrial heart of Italy, it was “business as usual”. Unfortunately, the virus spread very fast among the northern regions first, and by now all over Italy in fact. And Italy also decided early on to stop flights to and from China. The problem with this was that those flights would have provided the authorities with a clear indication of who was arriving from that country, making health checks easier. Now instead, Chinese came to Italy with intermediary stops in other European countries, making it impossible for the Italian authorities to further identify and tag them. Now the whole country has been put in lockdown as we speak. No more travelling is allowed, shops are mostly all closed, cafes are closed and all of normal life has come to a standstill. People are asked to self isolate. They risk prison sentences when they go against the orders and do organize meet ups or parties or start driving in their car without a special permission, or anything like that. There have been a lot of Italian corona cases and deaths in the past month. 12.500 official cases (and many more in reality as only a fraction of patients get tested) and nearly 850 official deaths (also more in reality). Italy is extra susceptible, because it is a country of old people. People get old on average in Italy, and the country is ageing. But Italy is also one of the most beloved tourist places in Europe. So it attracts many tourists from all over the world, who help spreading the virus, both to Italy itself, and away from Italy again.
Hospitals in Italy are struggling to help everyone. Hospitals are overwhelmed by Covid-19, doctors have stopped all routine, all operating rooms have been converted to intensive care units and they are now diverting or not treating all other emergencies like trauma or strokes. Doctors have been forced to cancel mostly all other operations and even have to make life or death decisions about who gets treated and who doesn't. Meaning hospital staff sometimes leaving the elderly to die. Doctors tell the media that there are hundreds of patients with severe respiratory failure and many of them do not have access to anything more than a reservoir mask. One doctor stated that "Patients above 65, or younger with comorbidities, are not even assessed by [intensive care], I am not saying not tubed, I'm saying not assessed." "Staff are working as much as they can but they are starting to get sick and are emotionally overwhelmed. They see people dying in front of them and they can only offer some oxygen." The medic added that Lombardy, the area of northern Italy at the centre of the crisis, was 'the most developed region in Italy and has extraordinary good healthcare'. "Don't make the mistake to think that what is happening is happening in a third world country," they said. These doctors are warning other European countries, who are about two to three weeks behind with the virus eruption, to take this thing serious. It starts with a few cases, before spiraling into a major crisis where intensive care units are overloaded. Doctors and hospital staff are at high risk and many get sick themselves, so it gets difficult to cover for shifts. And people who need urgent hospital treatment for other health problems are also put at risk, because the hospitals just cannot cope. The Italian doctor urged his fellow Italians to please stick to the state imposed quarantine orders: "So be patient, accept that you can't go to the theater, museums or gym. Try to have mercy on that myriad of older people you could exterminate. Please, listen to us - try to leave the house only to indispensable things."
And I also saw this, he is an actor from a series called Gomorra. When Luca Franzese's 47-year-old sister Teresa died of corona, he was locked up with her corpse in the house for more than 36 hours because no funeral company wanted to pick her up so she could be buried. "My sister is dead in bed, and I don't know what to do," says Franzese in the video. "I can't give her the last credit she deserves, because the institutes have failed me. I called everyone, but no one could answer me. " Even when she got sick, nobody came to help them. Despite him calling emergency services and the GP; everyone refused to come. Because they are overwhelmed. He himself has the virus probably too but he isn't tested. he tells that he gave his dying sister mouth to mouth breathing, and thus probably has the virus too now. Very sad this. And he is in Naples, so far away from the epicenter in the North of Italy.
What did China do which curbed their corona crisis situation?
China has gone to extreme measures to halt the coronavirus, even using a 'social nuclear weapon'. Some in the west say that China has gone too far with the limiting of individual human rights, but many scientists and Chinese actually disagree. China used technology to make sure that infected people were quickly traced and isolated, and that they stayed isolated. The Chinese government can track its citizens very precisely, by their trail of bank payments. On January 23, the Chinese authorities imposed radical movement restrictions on provinces of over 930 million people. Then in early February, at least 48 cities and four provinces in China were put in lockdown. Residents of a community had to be registered before they were allowed to go in or out. Highways were shut as well as railways and public transport systems. When people wanted to get back in, their body temperature was checked, cars were disinfected and only one person per household was allowed to leave the house at set times to buy food. Of course, everybody had to wear masks and protective gear. In many regions, workers who could not do their normal job were retrained and redirected to deliver food to the public. All schools were closed and kids were taught at home with the help of Skype. The Chinese stuck to the rules and were also ushered to do so through posters and leaflets with state imposed Chinese collectivist slogans such as 'It is everyone's responsibility to fight the virus'. Or: 'Let's unite together to fight the virus in this special period.' In the elevator, the sign reads: 'No more than four people in the elevator. Please be patient and wait for the next elevator.' Authorities would also apply tape to section elevators into four equal parts, so that people keep an appropriate distance from each other. And a Chinese company has developed the country's first facial recognition technology that can identify people when they are wearing a mask, as most are these days because of the coronavirus, and help in the fight against the disease. People returning from countries like Italy, Iran and South Korea are put straight into a 2 week long quarantine in China. No risks are taken. 
These are some comments below a New York Time article on the coronavirus, defending China's method of action;
Shawn from Shanghai, March 7th 2020: "The Chinese have put the full power of their surveillance state behind stopping the thread of this virus. I’m called frequently by someone in my “neighborhood committee” asking about my movements and health. I’m required to input my temperature into an app twice a day. If I leave the apartment I must show a government QR code that shows I’m considered healthy to get into many establishments or office buildings. Anyone coming from anywhere outside Shanghai (domestic or international) is being asked to stay away from work for 14 days once they are back in shanghai. The local citizens have done a great job heeding the government’s call to self isolate, even when healthy, and the streets are pretty empty and even restaurants and shops that have reopened are mostly serving one or two customers. If the goal is to completely eradicate the virus then the approach of the CCP seems most effective. Unfortunately it comes at a huge economic cost. Nobody will ever know if the eventual economic repercussions will be worse than the virus hit if they hadn’t put in the restrictions here in China. We may, however, get a view on how putting the economy first and virus control second will fare with the current reaction in the United States where I don’t think there is the will to take measures the Chinese have taken due to fear of disrupting the economy. I really don’t know what’s the right choice but my chance of catching COVID here in Shanghai is now less than in California."
Xenophon from Shanghai wrote on March 8th 2020: "As an American who stayed in Shanghai throughout the whole epidemic, I have to say that the epidemic controls since February have been impressive, even if control of the initial outbreak was horribly bungled. One has to split apart the initial failures, which would be unacceptable in anywhere, with the followup controls, which have many impressive elements:
- Everyone can get a colored QR code (the green/yellow/red codes) which is generated from a combination of travel history, cell phone tower data, contact with infected individuals and trains/ planes, and big data. To reopen a company or go to many restaurants, you need a green code, which 99% of people are getting. This is pretty Big Brother, but is also the most advanced form of contact tracing I've heard of.
-99% of people on the streets wear masks, and all indoors venues require masks and temperature checks to enter. There's government distribution of very inexpensive surgical masks every few weeks. It's only 5 masks every time, but it's something. 3M N95 masks, made in Shanghai, are now available in stores as of a week ago for 20 yuan, which is 1/7 the price of $20 N95 masks I'm seeing on eBay in the US.
-The neighborhood committee volunteers are nowhere as scary as the NYT is making them seem. They're mostly white-collar office workers who help with finding delivery packages, which are left at the gates, and collect info on folks returning to Shanghai."
Ben from nyc wrote on March 7th 2020: "I don’t understand how the author (of a NYT opinion piece) can remotely reasonably suggest that the cure may be worse than the disease. Yes liberties and human rights have been compromised (more than usual) with China’s heavy handed approach in suppressing the spread of the virus. You know what is worse than not having all the liberties and rights? Being dead because the government didn’t clamp down hard enough on the virus."
Jason from Nanning, China wrote on March 7th 2020: "Let's not forget that, when China initiated the aggressive response to the outbreak, people had very limited knowledge about the virus: how it spreads, how deadly it is, how much resource is needed... Most cases were from Wuhan at that time, where the situations appeared to be much worse than elsewhere, painting a grim outlook. Facing a novel virus, huge uncertainty, and a big stake, what China did is very responsible and not short-sighted."
Ken from Portland wrote on March 8th 2020: "The situation described in this article can be summarized as: "Drastic Chinese measures to limit the spread of the CoVid-19 infection are saving thousands of lives but hurting economic growth statistics. OK, which is more important? Also, 80,000 cases seems less "staggering" when you consider the population is 1.386 billion. That's 1 case out of every 17,000 people."
The argument here is that it is a choice between controlling the virus while trashing the economy, or allowing the virus to spread and presumably the economy will hum along as usual. But is this realistic? Do we think when hospitals are overwhelmed, and thousands of people are dying, that life will still go on as usual? Would people still go shopping in malls, go to cinemas, restaurant, or even go to work as usual? I would argue that if the virus is not brought under control with measures that are painful in the short term, the epidemic will still lead to the same economic impact, but probably even more severe and prolonged. These measurements are radical in the eyes of the west, but China has spared no costs to curb this outbreak. And it was probably also China's unique political and social environment is what has helped it to combat the virus so efficiently. By now, President Xi Jinping has stated to reporters that the coronavirus outbreak has been 'basically curbed' in Hubei province and Wuhan. China has 80,796 confirmed (official) infections and a death toll of 3,169. China is gradually lifting restrictions. China understood that if you do not act quickly, the infection can get out of hand very quickly. Unfortunately, the Netherlands (and many other European countries) are not willing to follow a similar plan of approach. They prefer to usher to "No Panic" and to not interfere with the economy, if possible. They want to contain the spread of the infection with the most minimal of measurements. Therefore we are walking behind the facts, unfortunately. Our own Prime Minster now tells the public not to shake hands anymore. A little too late, if you ask me. We would be wise to trace down every single infected person, just like they did in China, and isolate them. And to have controls in place to check if they truly do so. The same applies to their family members who live in the same place. Over here in the Netherlands, patients are instead advised to stay inside (self-imposed quarantine) but nobody is checking and other people living in the same house as the patient are free to go and do as they wish. How illogical and impractical is that? It is nearly impossible not to get infected when you live in the same place, China has showed that without a shadow of a doubt. The virus is super contagious, from the first day of infection patients emit over 1000 times as many viral particles from their throat as someone with active flu does. There is a case example in China where a woman was infected with the coronavirus and she had two young nieces live with her. They did everything they could to contain the virus; aunt had her own room of which the door was always closed. the nieces put her food in the hallway and never were in direct contact with the aunt. But they got infected anyway. The virus floats through the air for hours. And even touching a door knob can pass the virus on. - And when we look at places like Taiwan and Hongkong; they had success with less stringent measures. Hongkong had travel restrictions in place for everyone coming from risk areas. Therefore they limited and controlled the import of contamination. The population all wears face masks, have been asked to avoid social gatherings and to work from home. Maybe it is typical for Asia that the population actually obeys to those requests, whereas over here we have stubborn people who 'won't be told what to do", and often accuse governments of hysteria. But Hongkong so far has only had 130 cases of coronavirus and these numbers have stabilized. The authorities know exactly where the patients are located, who their relatives are and they are all put in strict isolation. That's how you handle and shut down an epidemic.
More in detail about this coronavirus and what it does exactly
Corona virus work in your cells like a hand blender. These viruses are incredibly small. A virus compares to a bacterium like a rowboat to an aircraft carrier. In essence, a bacterium is still a small organism, but a virus is no more than a wrapped string of genetic material, with the inscription: COPY ME. The virus sends that message to your body, hoping that your cells will do the job. They are actually very small, extremely complicated molecular machines. A virus does not think, does not feel, does not hesitate. It just does. But without a host they can't multiply. And the mission of a virus is to go to the next host. It all starts when some virus enters your body. By inhalation, perhaps through the eyes: because a virus is a ten thousandth of a millimeter small, there is always a way in. Once there, the virus particles tumble and float through our airway. Until they bite. For this the coronavirus uses one of the petal-like protrusions that surround it and with which the virus scans its environment and which give it the name "coronavirus" (after the "crown" of spikes of the protrusions). They use these spikes to attach to the outside of human airway cells (called ACE2). Contact. That is when the virus allows your body to wrap it up in a fat vesicle, which also contains useful nutrients. As such, it gets transported into a cell of yours. There the cell begins, unsuspectingly, to unpack the package. With numerous busy hands, proteins strip the fat vesicle from the coronavirus and break open his outside. That is how its content is released; his genetic material telling the body to COPY ME.
Coronaviruses are different from most other viruses due to their genetic code; their genome. The polio virus for instance contains a genome of 7,500 chemical letters; in contrast, the new coronavirus has 29,903 letters of genetic instructions. All these extra chemical letters don't make the coronavirus necessarily more dangerous than the polio virus, but it does allow the virus to have more tricks up his sleeve. The coronavirus multiplies more refined and smoothly within the cell, for instance. So, in the cells of your airways, the coronavirus begins to unroll its massive genome. Written in chemical code language, a long string of genetic material ("RNA"). Slavely, as a tool of the devil, the protein factories in your cells begin to follow the building instructions on the RNA. They create sixteen parts. These virus components then start to click together. Until a huge, complex protein complex called "replicase" is created. Those sixteen products are parts of a copy machine, and once these 16 parts find each other, they actually turn into a copy machine. Genetically the coronavirus is simply a SARS virus. First there is a big gene: COPY ME. Behind it comes a somewhat smaller gene, which indicates how the spike protein should be made: HOW TO MAKE MY SPIKES. And behind that come seven shorter genes, containing the instructions on how to make the shell of the virus and genes used to enable the virus to run its course more smoothly. Coronavirus is like SARS the 2nd (about 80% identical), but the improved version. One improvement for instance is a small gene called "ORF 8". SARS also had it, but there it was broken (29 letters had been dropped from its code). Therefore scientists at the time thought it couldn't have been a very important gene. But now with coronavirus, we see the same gene back, but now fully intact. And it turns out that this repaired (intact) gene IS very important in fact. It gives the virus a huge boost and increases the copying speed of the virus by more than twenty times. This may be part of the answer as to why the new coronavirus spreads so quickly. It seems this ORF 8 gene plays a role in avoiding the bodies defense mechanisms, and has been refined through natural mutations.
By now, in your cells, the virus has started the next phase. The virus starts blowing bubbles. A kind of foam is created in the cell, from double-walled bubbles. An essential part of the replication cycle. They are like cocoons, interconnected by a kind of web of wires. The virus is building a nest. New strands of virus RNA are starting to form in and on the cocoons, and new spike proteins are now also starting to grow. New virus parts are growing and new viruses are formed. Thousands per cell. Within ten to twelve hours the first viruses start to leave the cell. On their way to the next cell, instructing that cell also: COPY ME! COPY ME! COPY ME! Meanwhile the hijacked and used cell of our body looks like a ravaged mess, as if butchered by a kitchen blender. And everywhere there are loose spikes, idle RNA strings and discarded proteins that the virus has left behind. That is not all, because spikes also stick to the outside of the cell. As a result, cells start to stick together, food molecules and signal substances can no longer pass and entire tissues become diseased. Until the cell self-inflates, or is broken down by immune cells or gets eaten by a passing by bacterium. You cough and as a result the bacteria, the waste ánd the healthy virus particles fly around in the air. Ready to infect the next person.
This is now the third time this has happened recently, this century, after SARS (in 2002-2003) and MERS (2012-2013) epidemics. Every now and then we are punished for our carelessness when it comes to disturbing the balance in nature. Then the virus takes its chance. That won't happen just any day. But if you give him a million times the chance, it should work at some point. As it now stands, some antiviral medication and these meds may help patients with Covid19.
Germans try to approach
the matter with humor:
Spanish flu
A fascinating docu on the Spanish Flu; the big epidemic killing up to 50 to a 100 million people
between 1918 - 1920, of which the majority were young and previously healthy people.
between 1918 - 1920, of which the majority were young and previously healthy people.
About the Spanish Flu, in comparison with the coronavirusThe Spanish flu was the cause of one of the most dramatic massacres of the 20th century. In 1918 and 1919 it killed more (young) people than the First and Second World Wars combined. The numbers are very rough estimates: between 20 and 100 million, with modern day scientists leaning more to the highest number. The world wars claimed 17 million and 60 million lives respectively. The Spanish flu came in three waves. The first developed in the spring of 1918. Most deaths occurred during the second wave, in the autumn, between mid-September and mid-December 1918, just before and after the end of the trench warfare (WW1). A third wave in 1920 claimed relatively few casualties. We can largely reduce the hereditary material of the Spanish flu virus to viruses that occur in animals. The virus probably came to humans through birds and pigs at the time. Epidemics that have emerged in recent decades - ebola, zika, sars, mers - also all had their origins in the animal world. Now with the coronavirus, the same thing happens, as coronavirus probably comes from bats. It first erupted in Wuhan. China, where people eat bats, as well as snakes, badgers and exotic animals. This way, the virus can spread from animals to humans. In the case of the feared Spanish flu, the epidemic died down two years after the virus emerged. The virus disappeared when immunity had developed among the population. It was found in the lung tissue of frozen bodies in the ice of Alaska in the 1990's. That made it possible to crack the genetic code of the virus. In 2005 American scientists brought the virus to life for research. They identified it as influenza A, subtype H1N1. Animals that have been tested and were given this virus, died quickly, with the same symptoms as humans at the time. The virus now lives on in a highly guarded biological laboratory.
The Spanish flu virus is fundamentally different from the corona virus. The influenza virus can undergo much more genetic changes in a short time than the coronavirus. Influenza viruses are a champion in metamorphosis. They have a larger bag of tricks. They mutate. Coronaviruses do the same, but influenza viruses also have the ability to exchange gene segments. If you get two viruses from two infected animals or humans, chances are that segments of one virus will be shuffled with segments of the other virus. For example, an influenza virus can not only mutate quickly, but can also exchange genetic material and become more dangerous as a result. Many patients who received the Spanish flu died quickly and miserably. Many died within 24 hours of the first symptoms. People who were fine one day were dead in bed the next. The virus directly affected the lungs. It caused an infection that caused the alveoli (small air sacks in the lungs) to leak. Leaks occur in the lungs, causing the lungs to fill up with blood. Then you can no longer get oxygen. People turned blue. You are drowning, as it were. The Spanish flu virus also led to more serious complications than previous flu viruses. Many additional bacterial infections were fatal. This was in a time where penicillin hadn't been discovered yet. Or someone's lungs were damaged so badly with scar tissue, that breathing became impossible. In addition, the virus could cause a total dysregulation of the immune system (called a 'cytokine storm'), resulting in fatal kidney- or liver failure. Unlike the corona epidemic, relatively high numbers of young people succumbed to Spanish flu. Most deaths from the coronavirus so far are the elderly or those weakened by other diseases. A striking number of people between the ages of 15 and 30 died with the Spanish flu. That was because people in this age group had built up little or no immunity to the virus. The elderly were likely to have a greater resistance because they had been in contact with previously circulating influenza viruses more often. And many survivors of the Spanish Flu had mental illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia. Even children who had been subjected to Spanish flu in the womb had more health problems later on. They were a weakened generation. Luckily science has evolved since. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, the first drug that could protect humans from deadly bacteria. Virology, the study of viruses, has established itself as a serious discipline, the first flu vaccines have since become available. Now scientists are working on a vaccine and treatment for the coronavirus.
My own great-grandparents (my grandfathers family) had 16 children of which they lost 6 to the Spanish flu! Here they are pictured with their 10 surviving kids.
Song of the day
March 5th 2020I am a bit worried about the coronavirus (Covid19) to be honest :( Seems that some people are, while others do not personally worry and highlight that A. there is still a small chance you catch it and B. it won't likely kill people my age or younger. But the infection numbers are shooting up in Holland too. Started with 1 case, then 3, now 82 with numbers having doubled every day for the past days. Germany has 350 cases, within one week, and France has nearly 300 cases. It is frightening to me how very fast and easy it can spread. Over here in Europe many cases stem from one 'patient zero' who had contact with a friend who had just returned from China and got infected there. He didn't know that of course at the time, but this Italian patient zero did get sick. Went to his Italian GP doctor three times, and got sent home with anti flu medication every time without being tested for coronavirus. And thus infected a dozen or so friends and family members. By the time he did get tested, it had spread around already and now there are nearly 3100 cases in Italy (107 deaths) and most other European cases can all be led back to northern Italy. Before they started to infect their inner circles in these other parts of Europe, that is. So people who were on holiday in northern Italy, hundreds of them got infected. I do wonder how exactly, because they wouldn't have kissed or even shaken hands with the local Italian infects. It must be through coughing or touching infected surfaces or door handles and then touching your face or mouth or nose or eyes. But just shows how super infectious this virus is. And in the Netherlands one of the very first patients had been treated in a Dutch hospital for a week already (!) for severe unresponsive pneumonia, and not once did any doctor there think about or decide to test the patient on the coronavirus. Why not? Because the Dutch state "protocol" didn't tell them to do so. Shocking.. A protocol dictates the bare minimum of what is needed; it does not prevent specialists to test people when they have a suspicion. What does it cost to do a quick test? Makes me angry, why specialists and hospitals are such slaves to the protocol. Even in their official statement they kept hammering on about the protocol. "Yes but we have followed the protocol, and according to protocol, we decided against, in accordance with the protocol yadayadablabla". It's like hearing a lawyer talking. All about accountability and passing responsibility to Big Brother. In the meantime that patient had to be transferred to the intensive care and had contaminated other hospital workers. There is a bit of hysteria in the media here but then again, this virus is at least 3 times more contagious and deadly than the flu, which also kills a lot of people annually. I read it are mainly the older people above 50 or 60 who are at risk of dying from this, or people with immune disorders. Age-wise I am not a risk group of course but I do have auto-immune diseases and am generally 'sickly', as they would have called it in the Victorian times. But even if you don't die from it, this whole Corona illness must be very painful when you go through the motions of it, I read. With high fever also and aches and pneumonia. My worst nightmare, aside from actually dying of it, must be to get forcefully locked up and isolated in a hot hospital with no possibility to open a window or have the aircon on, I really want to avoid this thing. Deadly or not. But I have to use public transport a lot in the next week. May just wear gloves and wrap a scarf around my mouth and nose. Oh and not to make light of this serious virus, but sometimes you also need a smile about things, added are some very creative and inventive ways people try to protect themselves. I read that unless you have a top notch gas mask on, or one with side boxes like the professionals wear, none of these masks protect you, because the virus is a thousand times smaller as a particle than a bacteria and also passes through surgical masks or anything really that allows you to have airflow in still. Just have to say: great idea, using a plastic bag over your head to stop coronavirus..... What could possibly go wrong :) More people will die of suffocation than the actual virus.
In many countries outside of China, the numbers of infected cases are still fairly low, but people are already hoarding. Shops empty etc. Just in case this virus balloons and explodes. I hope they can isolate all infected people and prevent spreading, but our economy and globalized society makes it super easy for viruses like these to spread. And I know people who still board planes to holiday in Italy, as we speak, despite the Dutch government having decreed that only in absolutely urgent cases should people travel to North Italy at the moment. On the other hand, viruses attack mostly every winter, and usually we end up just fine. This coronavirus is only deadly to a small percentage of patients, up to 4% I just read, which mostly involves elderly or people with weak health. I can understand that some people (looking at things from a global point of view, not an interpersonal one) that with world population of 7.7 billion, the Earth needs Nature to act up now and then with a pandemic or epidemic virus or diseases here or there. Spanish flu, Black Plague; weed out the weakest and the old. Although the Spanish flu had a preference for young, otherwise healthy people with very strong immune systems... Nearly all of its victims were under 65 years old and half of them between 20 and 40. Quite cruel to wipe out between 17 and 50 or even 100 million of the strongest people of that time. The rest of the strong men probably died in the trenches of WW1 back then.. Nevertheless: Nature as the ultimate equalizer, ensuring all things return to balance, be it via viruses, droughts, tsunamis, an asteroid, or Darwin Awards. Nature has eliminated the weakest of species throughout history, but now (luckily) we have modern medicine to keep people alive much longer. It's a tombola lottery anyway, where you are born and with what genetics and whether you are born 'sickly' or not. But it makes - evolutionary - sense that the 80+ patients appear to have the highest chance of dying from this coronavirus. Must also say that I am a bit upset with the footage of those life food markets in China, Wuhan in this case, and the way eating exotic animals like snakes, or bats, has transmitted this virus to humans, as it is stated now at least. I understand people used to be very poor in rural China and ate whatever they could, and some will still be poor, but these days there is enough food available, there are McDonalds everywhere too, I mean these days those live animal markets are not because people have no money or chance to eat anything else. I really hope the Chinese government stops those markets right away and bans exotic animals from eaten, sometimes while still alive. Badgers, bats, snakes, even koala's are traded there I saw on footage and of course they eat dogs and cats, who are first tortured often. I couldn't sleep after seeing photos of that, best to never watch such things, it's really sad and angering. Surely now this virus has hit globally and also affects the economy the way it does, China will force through changes I hope. I mean, again one such a virus is coming from China and can be led back to their wild animal eating habits, same story and reasons with the SARS virus in the recent past. Can't continue to happen, companies are going bust here as we speak, events are all cancelled, thousands and thousands of people died, the global economy is affected (that's usually when world leaders start to take things seriously). Hopefully changes will happen in China and it will be forbidden to trade and eat exotic wild animals on their food markets very soon from now.
Otherwise I've been feeling a bit low, my skin is red and burning a lot, and am getting tired of leading the same sort of life day in day out. I read about people who were extremely upset and struggling with the doctor-imposed 2 weeks of quarantine (even though recent research shows that the virus can live in patients for 5 weeks; 2.5 times as long as the mandatory two-week isolation period required by most healthcare experts). Where they had to stay in their house for 14 days without being allowed to leave it or invite other people over. And some people are struggling and trying to break out their houses anyway, because they cannot keep the self isolation up. I can be 'self isolated' due to the sore rosacea for months, years.. (Same for you I think?) Do see people of course but not every day, sometimes there are weeks of just not doing anything else but the daily chores and work and certainly no parties or social gatherings or anything like that. Just interesting to know that it is for some people a super hard thing to achieve; not mingling with the rest of the world. Ok some more creative photos. I would do the same if I were living in Wuhan!! Don't mind the 'normal' people eyeing you up, just do your thing :) 
By coincidence I also last month read The Plague (1947), a book by Albert Camus. Interesting and details the spread of the plague infection in a fictional place somewhere at the middle of the 20th century. It is a detailed novel slash thesis on the plague, also called the Black Death, and details what it is like to go through one, and what an epidemic also does to everyday life. How rulers try (and usually fail) to contain it. In real life, the plague wiped out up to 200 million people in Europe and Asia in the past, and is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population in the 14th century. I really liked the book, although it wasn't a traditional novel with traditional protagonists and story line. But well written and interesting topic. In real life Camus was a charismatic man. Died in a car crash at a relatively young age. At that time he was married but also had a long standing extramarital affair with a beautiful feisty actress. Half Spanish lady. And they had been writing for many years, corresponding. Love letters, every day letters. The old penpalling, as I love to do too. And as often is the case, their correspondence had gone through a lull at some point; the high from receiving post had worn off and fizzled out a bit. But they loved each other dearly. But the disappointments about not being physically together had taken over. And just the day before he died, Camus had written her that he had made a decision and that they would meet again that week or very soon from then, and that they would rekindle their romance again and move on together. That he loved her. But Camus was still married with his wife and after returning from a holiday with her in the days leading up to his planned rendez-vous with the actress he loved, he planned to go back to Paris by train. He always traveled by train because he had a fear of cars and car accidents. But this time he accepted the offer of his publisher to drive along with him in his car, instead of with his wife and kids by train. One of the few times he accepted to be driven in a car. And the car crashed against a tree.... Camus sat in the passenger seat, not wearing a seat belt, and died instantly. They found his unused train ticket still in the pocket of his coat when they searched his body.
I selected some parts of The Plague, which I liked. Will add a few passages here. Here Camus describes the psychological effects once the town was isolated from the rest of the world, and also some scenes which we also see right now taking place in a city like Wuhan: "From now on, it can be said that plague was the concern of all of us. Hitherto, surprised as he may have been by the strange things happening around him, each individual citizen had gone about his business as usual, so far as this was possible. And no doubt he would have continued doing so. But once the town gates were shut, every one of us realized that all, the narrator included, were, so to speak, in the same boat, and each would have to adapt himself to the new conditions of life. Thus, for example, a feeling normally as individual as the ache of separation from those one loves suddenly became a feeling in which all shared alike and, together with fear, the greatest affliction of the long period of exile that lay ahead. One of the most striking consequences of the closing of the gates was, in fact, this sudden deprivation befalling people who were completely unprepared for it. Mothers and children, lovers, husbands and wives, who had a few days previously taken it for granted that their parting would be a short one, who had kissed one another good-by on the platform and exchanged a few trivial remarks, sure as they were of seeing one another again after a few days or, at most, a few weeks, duped by our blind human faith in the near future and little if at all diverted from their normal interests by this leave- taking, all these people found themselves, without the least warning, hopelessly cut off, prevented from seeing one another again, or even communicating with one another. For actually the closing of the gates took place some hours before the official order was made known to the public, and, naturally enough, it was impossible to take individual cases of hardship into account. It might indeed be said that the first effect of this brutal visitation was to compel our townspeople to act as if they had no feelings as individuals. During the first part of the day on which the prohibition to leave the town came into force the Prefect's office was besieged by a crowd of applicants advancing pleas of equal cogency but equally impossible to take into consideration. Indeed, it needed several days for us to realize that we were completely cornered; that words like "special arrangements," "favor," and "priority" had lost all effective meaning. Even the small satisfaction of writing letters was denied us. It came to this: not only had the town ceased to be in touch with the rest of the world by normal means of communication, but also, according to a second notification, all correspondence was forbidden, to obviate the risk of letters carrying infection outside the town. In the early days a favored few managed to persuade the sentries at the gates to allow them to get messages through to the outside world. But that was only at the beginning of the epidemic, when the sentries found it natural to obey their feelings of humanity. [..] At first, telephone calls to other towns were allowed, but this led to such crowding of the telephone booths and delays on the lines that for some days they also were prohibited, and thereafter limited to what were called "urgent cases," such as deaths, marriages, and births. So we had to fall back on telegrams. And since, in practice, the phrases one can use in a telegram are quickly exhausted, long lives passed side by side, or passionate yearnings, soon declined to the exchange of such trite formulas as: "Am well. Always thinking of you. Love."
[..] Also, after some days, when it was clear that no one had the least hope of being able to leave our town, inquiries began to be made whether the return of people who had gone away before the outbreak would be permitted. After some days' consideration of the matter the authorities replied affirmatively. They pointed out, however, that in no case would persons who returned be allowed to leave the town again; once here, they would have to stay, whatever happened. Some families, actually very few, refused to take the position seriously and in their eagerness to have the absent members of the family with them again, cast prudence to the winds and wired to them to take this opportunity of returning. But very soon those who were prisoners of the plague realized the terrible danger to which this would expose their relatives, and sadly resigned themselves to their absence. [..] For most people it was obvious that the separation must last until the end of the epidemic. And for every one of us the ruling emotion of his life, which he had imagined he knew through and through (the people of Oran, as has been said, have simple passions), took on a new aspect. Husbands who had had complete faith in their wives found, to their surprise, that they were jealous; and lovers had the same experience. Men who had pictured themselves as Don Juans became models of fidelity. Sons who had lived beside their mothers hardly giving them a glance fell to picturing with poignant regret each wrinkle in the absent face that memory cast upon the screen. This drastic, clean-cut deprivation and our complete ignorance of what the future held in store had taken us unawares; we were unable to react against the mute appeal of presences, still so near and already so far, which haunted us daylong. In fact, our suffering was twofold; our own to start with, and then the imagined suffering of the absent one, son, mother, wife, or mistress. Under other circumstances our townsfolk would probably have found an outlet in increased activity, a more sociable life. But the plague forced inactivity on them, limiting their movements to the same dull round inside the town, and throwing them, day after day, on the illusive solace of their memories. For in their aimless walks they kept on coming back to the same streets and usually, owing to the smallness of the town, these were streets in which, in happier days, they had walked with those who now were absent. Thus the first thing that plague brought to our town was exile. It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile, that sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire. [..] In short, we returned to our prison-house, we had nothing left us but the past, and even if some were tempted to live in the future, they had speedily to abandon the idea anyhow, as soon as could be, once they felt the wounds that the imagination inflicts on those who yield themselves to it."
People were trying to figure out the probable duration of their exile. Then the next torture came; if people had set their minds at an exile of 6 months maximum, then some friend would bring in an article in a newspaper, a vague suspicion, or a flash of foresight that would suggest that, after all, there was no reason why the epidemic shouldn't last more than six months; why not a year, or even more?
"At such moments the collapse of their courage, willpower, and endurance was so abrupt that they felt they could never drag themselves out of the pit of despond into which they had fallen. Therefore they forced themselves never to think about the problematic day of escape, to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak, their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet. But, naturally enough, this prudence, this habit of feinting with their predicament and refusing to put up a fight, was ill rewarded. For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when by conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress. Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose. Even the past, of which they thought incessantly, had a savor only of regret. For they would have wished to add to it all that they regretted having left undone, while they might yet have done it, with the man or woman whose return they now awaited; just as in all the activities, even the relatively happy ones, of their life as prisoners they kept vainly trying to include the absent one. And thus there was always something missing in their lives. Hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those whom men's justice, or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars. Thus the only way of escaping from that intolerable leisure was to set the trains running again in one's imagination and in filling the silence with the fancied tinkle of a doorbell, in practice obstinately mute. [..] And, in these conditions, it was rare for them not to detect their own shortcomings. [..] In normal times all of us know, whether consciously or not, that there is no love which can't be bettered; nevertheless, we reconcile ourselves more or less easily to the fact that ours has never risen above the average. But memory is less disposed to compromise. And, in a very definite way, this misfortune which had come from outside and befallen a whole town did more than inflict on us an unmerited distress with which we might well be indignant. It also incited us to create our own suffering and thus to accept frustration as a natural state. This was one of the tricks the pestilence had of diverting attention and confounding issues."
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