Some people see the world as an infinite number of prize fights, each with one winner and one loser. For them life is an unending series of these zero-sum games.
One example of something that is not a zero-sum game is a global pandemic. Someone else’s sickness is for me not a gain but a threat. No nation gains from the toll in another nation. To fight against the contagion, the main weapon is cooperation, on all levels, from interpersonal to international. On the international level, sharing resources and information is essential, because any vulnerability of any nation threatens the people of all other nations.
The nations fighting one another in World War I thought the opposite. So each one, including the US, treated the growing epidemic of 1918 as a military secret. The existence of the killer virus became public only because Spain, which was not one of the warring nations, refused to censor news about the disease. Estimates of death from the 1918 pandemic range from 17 million to 100 million. The war directly killed 53,000 Americans. The virus killed between 500,000 and 675,000 Americans. A deeper look would reveal that the ravages of the war, together with the perverted culture of war, were the pandemic’s greatest enablers, if not its causes.
Today we no longer fight wars on the grand scale of World Wars I and II, the Korea War, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War, at least for a couple of decades. We mainly fight what are called, euphemistically, low-intensity wars and trade wars. The United States in particular has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to destroy the economy and infrastructure of entire nations, even such developed nations as Venezuela and Iran, using only subversion, bribery, boycotts, sabotage, disinformation, and tariffs.
Today's virus is not manufactured by human madness but by human eating behaviour.
Nevertheless, our health and our safety are both in the hands of our chiefs of state.
Nevertheless, our health and our safety are both in the hands of our chiefs of state.
The story of two outbreaks of the disease called COVID-19 - Italy's and South Korea's - illustrates a difference in approach similar to war strategies; which, in the end, can either preserve or destroy lives and either lose or win critical battles for the final Victory.
Wars are about soldiers and the fight against Coronavirus is about civilians; however, in the end, it's Always about human beings. I'm not a cientist, I'm a journalist. I Don't understand anything about virus, but I understand Something about geopolitics and about polititians making good or bad decisions for their own people. For either clear or unfathomable reasons. That is why these two ways of tackling this common biological enemy interests me.
In Italy, millions are locked down and more than 1,000 people have died from the coronavirus.
But in South Korea, which was hit by the disease at about the same time, only a few thousand are quarantined and 67 people died.
Italy started out testing widely, then narrowed the focus so that now, authorities do not have to process hundreds of thousands of tests. But there's a trade-off: They can't see what's coming and are trying to curb the movements of the country's entire population of 60 million people to contain the disease.
In South Korea, authorities are testing hundreds of thousands of people for infections and tracking potential carriers like detectives, using mobile phone and satellite technology.
Both countries saw their first cases of the disease called COVID-19 in late January.
South Korea has since reported nearly 8,000 confirmed cases, after testing more than 222,000 people.
In contrast, Italy has more than 12,000 confirmed cases after carrying out more than 73,000 tests on an unspecified number of people.
Epidemiologists say it is not possible to compare the numbers directly. But some say the different outcomes point to an important insight: Aggressive and sustained testing is a powerful tool for fighting the virus. Extensive testing can give countries a better picture of the extent of an outbreak. When testing in a country is limited, he said, the authorities have to take bolder actions to limit the movement of people. I'm particularly uncomfortable with enforced lockdown-type movement restrictions. China did that, but China is able to do that. China has a population that will comply with that because people there are used to restriction on movement and on décisions.
Italy and South Korea are different. These countries are both democratic and not as big as China. They are more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km) apart, but there are several similarities when it comes to coronavirus.
Both countries' main outbreaks were initially clustered in smaller cities or towns, rather than in a major metropolis - which meant the disease quickly threatened local health services.
Both confirmed their first cases after doctors decided to ignore testing guidelines.
South Korea, which has a slightly smaller population than Italy at about 50 million people, has around 29,000 people in self-quarantine. It has imposed lockdowns on some facilities and at least one apartment complex hit hardest by outbreaks. But so far no entire regions have been cut off.
Seoul says it is building on lessons learned from an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2015 and working to make as much information available as possible to the public.
South Korea is also enforcing a law that grants the government wide authority to access data: CCTV footage, GPS tracking data from phones and cars, credit card transactions, immigration entry information, and other personal details of people confirmed to have an infectious disease.
The authorities can then make some of this public, so anyone who may have been exposed can get themselves - or their friends and family members - tested.
In addition to helping work out who to test, South Korea's data-driven systems help hospitals manage their pipeline of cases.
People found positive are placed in self-quarantine and monitored remotely through an app or checked regularly in telephone calls until a hospital bed becomes available. When this occurs, an ambulance picks the person up and takes them to a hospital with air-sealed isolation rooms.
This approach comes at the cost of some privacy. South Korea's system is an intrusive mandatory measure that depends on people surrendering what, for many in Europe and the US, would be a fundamental right of privacy.
"Traditional responses such as locking down affected areas and isolating patients can be only modestly effective, and may cause problems in open societies, says South Korea's Deputy Minister for Health and Welfare Kim Gang-lip. In South Korea's experience, lockdowns mean people participate less in tracing contacts they may have had. Such an approach, is close-minded, coercive and inflexible."
I can't tell which country is right because I'm neither a scientist nor a psychic to foresee the consequences of each approach. What I can see is that the corona virus has no interest in false economies or nonsensical patriotism. It can’t tell if it’s chomping into a billionaire or a homeless individual. It’s egalitarian in that sense—of course the wealthy can somewhat mitigate their risks, but as the incoming reports of sports superstars as well as Hollywood elites testing positive for the virus shows–they are simply pending germ factories to hijack, just like the rest of us.
The coronavirus is harsh, kills, but it is utterly democratic.
I can't tell which country is right because I'm neither a scientist nor a psychic to foresee the consequences of each approach. What I can see is that the corona virus has no interest in false economies or nonsensical patriotism. It can’t tell if it’s chomping into a billionaire or a homeless individual. It’s egalitarian in that sense—of course the wealthy can somewhat mitigate their risks, but as the incoming reports of sports superstars as well as Hollywood elites testing positive for the virus shows–they are simply pending germ factories to hijack, just like the rest of us.
The coronavirus is harsh, kills, but it is utterly democratic.
PALESTINA
"Palestinians are holding their breath as they wait to see if the Palestinian Authority’s desperate attempts to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) to the city of Bethlehem is working.
Panic grew on Monday after the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced that there was one confirmed case of the virus in the northern occupied West Bank city of Tulkarem, the first case of the virus outside of Bethlehem.
Local media reported that an unidentified Palestinian man from Tulkarem contracted the virus while he was working in Israel, but that he was quarantined immediately along with his entire family — none of whom tested positive for the virus.
In Bethlehem, the number of confirmed cases had risen to 28 on Tuesday. All of the confirmed cases were reportedly being held in quarantine at different locations across the city, except for one who was reportedly being held in a hospital after his health deteriorated.
So far, the ministry of health has reported that all the 29 people in Palestine, except for one, who tested positive for coronavirus were in good health, and displaying little to no symptoms.
Across the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, 2,900 Palestinians were being held in self-quarantine — six of them in Jerusalem, and 605 people in Gaza who had recently returned from performing the Umrah pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
As the number of cases in both Israel and Palestine continued to rise, both governments escalated efforts to contain the virus.
Israel announced on Monday that it would be enforcing a 14-day quarantine for every single person entering the country, including Israeli citizens and foreign nationals. So far, there have been at least 50 confirmed cases of the virus in Israel, and no deaths.
Meanwhile, Palestinian and Jordanian authorities have been floating around the idea of closing Palestine’s only border with the outside world, the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge, between the West Bank and Jordan.
After a number of reports claiming the border had been shut, PA spokesman Ibrahim Melhem said that the border was still open for the time being, but could be closed “at any moment” in coordination with the Jordanian and Palestinian governments.
The Times of Israel reported that while the border was still open to Palestinians traveling to and from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Jordanian government had decided to close the border to any non-Palestinians.
While most tourists have been evacuated from Bethlehem and other tourist hotspots in the West Bank, the closure of the bridge could present an issue for the hundreds of foreign nationals living and working in the West Bank who use the bridge exclusively to travel outside of the country.
In Bethlehem, the epicenter of the outbreak in Palestine, the PA has stepped up its security at entry and exit points around the city, preventing anyone from the city from leaving its municipal boundaries.
It has been reported that only special cases with approval from the governor of the Bethlehem district have been allowed to leave the city.
Schools, universities, banks, and government offices have remained closed, and hotels, restaurants, and dozens of souvenir shops across the city have kept their doors shut.
The streets of the city have remained relatively empty as the ministry of health continued to urge people to stay in their homes and avoid contact with people outside their immediate family as much as possible.
While the virus has yet to spread to other districts, save one case in Tulkarem, other districts across the West Bank are stepping up preventative measures in the hopes that they can avoid the same fate as Bethlehem.
The governor of the Ramallah district Leila Ghannam ordered on Tuesday that all restaurants, cafes, gyms, and sports facilities be closed indefinitely. She also suspended all indoor and outdoor public gatherings.
In Hebron, health workers were deployed across the city to fumigate public areas like municipal facilities, public parks, bus and taxi stations, and mosques.
Similar measures have been employed in Jericho and the Jerusalem district of the West Bank as well." Mondoweiss
Daily Life Under Occupation
BRASIL
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