Deeply unsettling

News blues

As Covid takes hold across China,

… cities are locking down their residents, supply lines are rupturing, and officials are scrambling to secure the movement of basic goods - as the largest ever recorded outbreak of Covid-19 threatens to spiral into a national crisis of the government's own making.
At least 44 Chinese cities are under either a full or partial lockdown as authorities persist in trying to curb the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant…
In Shanghai, the epicenter of the country's latest outbreak, scenes once unimaginable for the hyper-modern financial capital have become part of the daily struggle for 25 million people. There, residents forbidden to leave the confines of their apartments or housing blocks for weeks have been desperate for food and freedom….

Read more >> 

Shanghai’s Covid outbreak is China’s most serious since the beginning of the pandemic, with 200,000 cases reported – and likely far more not reported - since the outbreak started in March.

While the government touted its Zero Covid strategy, its system of containment using intensive testing and tracing, combined with partial or complete lockdowns when a case is detected, as keeping case counts and deaths low over the past two years, the reports coming out of Shanghai suggest that the local government was unprepared for an outbreak in the country’s economic center and cast doubt on the feasibility of Zero Covid at this point in the pandemic. That’s translated into serious struggles for residents, including hours-long ambulance wait times, dwindling savings, and inadequate or rotten food supplies, among others. Although the central government is reportedly stepping up efforts to get supplies to the city, the overall policy is driving many residents to criticize the government’s policy — and Shanghai’s implementation of it — despite serious potential risks to their safety and freedom by doing so.
[Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations said recently,] “Even the authoritarian governments… still have to take this mass reaction into account, or else will lose the cooperation from the society. We’re going to expect that [the central government] is going to improve the policy implementation, even though the policy itself is not going to change.”

Read more >> 

Across the US, evident rise of BA.2 variant >> 

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The Lincoln Project: Affinity  (0:32 mins)

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On war…

Russia Resumes Attacks On Kyiv >>

War of words: Across the U.S., law makers are writing and presenting insidious anti-gay and anti-transgender bills – essentially, to outlaw a facet of humanity that includes human sexuality and human love. Missouri bill 2140 is one of 50 similar bills being presented in state capitals around the U.S.
Thank the gods for Missouri Representative Ian Mackey who confronts this direction. In this clip, Ian Mackey confronts a colleague in a beautiful, heartfelt speech. (2:15 mins) 
You go, Ian Mackey! Eventually, you will be proved right: these bills and the people who write them will lose. It’ll take time for the pendulum that is American politics to swing from its current extreme right position to something more humane, but it will swing. Sadly, people will suffer in the meantime. I, like millions of other Americans, can hardly wait for the swing.
May We the People see more Ian Mackeys sharing heart and love and humanity and generosity of spirit….

Healthy planet, anyone?

The Amazon Rainforest, a critical global ecosystem, is on the ballot in Brazil.
Far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has presided over record deforestation of the Amazon – as unclear-on-the-concept humans stood by and watched.
As Bolsonao’s reelection campaign begins, can this essential-to-life rainforest can survive 4 more - any more - years of Bolsonaro in office?
Can humanity survive him?
A deeply unsettling reality: Forcing one country’s 2.126 million people to vote for life or death of the entire planet and 7.753 billion humans.
Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Yet more rain in…
KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 6:19am
Sunset: 5:38pm

San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:30am
Sunset: 7:46pm

Shanghai-d

News blues

China’s strict zero-Covid policy means all positive cases have to be hospitalised. But in the last few weeks, as case numbers have risen sharply and 26 million people entered a harsh lockdown, mainland China’s most important financial hub has come to a standstill. The number of new daily positive cases exceeded 10,000 for the first time on Monday. Although 38,000 health workers have been shipped in from around China to help, medical resources are overwhelmingly diverted to combat Covid, leaving it difficult for non-Covid patients ... to access them.

Read “This is inhumane” >> 

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Even as South Africa surpasses the milestone of 100,000 confirmed Covid deaths, the government – strict about restrictions until now - still plans to end lockdown "soon", despite scientists’ warnings that a fifth wave is imminent. Last week, April 5 – that’s today – was the day to end restrictions. As of now, no certainty nor update on this deadline.

Responding to questions posed in parliament, Deputy President David Mabuza said, “We think (forcing people to vaccinate) would be crossing the red line'. All we can do is encourage our people to go and vaccinate."
Despite a wide range of initiatives to encourage large-scale vaccination, there has a been a great reluctance to do so, spurred on by optimism after the government relaxed regulations that enforced mask-wearing in public, and opened up sports and entertainment facilities to increased spectator and audience numbers.
Mabuza said the easing of these regulations announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa last week was part of attempts to convince citizens to take the vaccine voluntarily, as they would be required to show this when attending events.
Mabuza also said plans announced by Ramaphosa for amended health regulations to replace the much harsher 'State of Disaster' laws that have been in place for over two years now were underway, despite warnings from experts about the risk of a fifth wave.
He confirmed the views of some scientists that this wave would be less severe than previous ones, because the population had reportedly developed a level of herd immunity.

Read more >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

Off planet, an amazing opportunity to glimpse a giant planet evolve. It is still ‘in the womb’ yet nine times the mass of Jupiter.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Practicing the tactic “apply pressure through channels (culverts?) but let things evolve”, I contacted the ANC’s councilperson for this area to request attention to clear blocked culverts. After the ANC were voted out in favor of the DA, I contacted the new councilperson for this area. She stepped up and did what she could. Indeed, she managed to get a backhoe out here and the driver backhoed and scooped and pushed and pulled. But he did not touch the actual culverts; hard to do that with a backhoe. He implied he'd be back to finish the job.

That was two days before the national holiday, Human Rights Day. Since then? 

Nothing. 

Nada. 

Dead quiet on the eastern front. 

Lots of rain though, so flooding continues.
Finally, yesterday, after trying to “do the right thing” – for 6 years! – I phoned the regional big boss. He’d been informed the problem was resolved. I explained it had not – that the culverts have never been directly dealt with, only the area surrounding the culverts had been graded or backhoed.
He copied me on an email to the crew in charge of roads in this area:

Colleagues, Please urgently attend to the blocked culvert on D 292 at xx Road. Please make contact with [the resident cc'd here] to advise when it will be done.
I suggest you use a TLB and VRRM Labour in cleaning out the silted pipes.

His colleague in charge responded:
Good day
Note two weeks back MS Zondi was opened that drain at D292 with a TLB. Thanks

I responded:
Thank you for including me in this email... Here are yesterday's photos of the blocked culverts on "my" side of the road [photos posted yesterday] ... As you can see, the quality of the silt now flowing into the area when it rains shows the silt is also draining into the area from the district road.
Let me know if you want photos of flooded area taken over the last weeks AND the last four years that show the continuing evolution of this problem.

What happens now?
We wait.
Meanwhile, the flooded area of the garden continues….

The damp in the house continues.
Thank the gods for water as it allows me to soothe my simmering anger by clearing lilies and pond weed. As I work, I contemplate next steps: Now that I have email addresses, I continue direct pressure. I also write an article for the local paper. Then another article. I also visit the local animal rehab center, Free Me and, 1) explain the disappearance of fresh water otters in this wetland and how the blocked culverts may contribute to otters’ demise, 2) encourage them to apply pressure to the roads department to clear the culverts and encourage the return of otters, and, 3) explore whether they’d consider re-introducing otters into the waterway. Otters in the waterway would benefit my pond, too: they’d make short work of the runaway growth of the lilies by gobbling them up. Yum, tender lily root salad for otters.

Apathy

News blues

Shanghai, China’s biggest city and metropolis of 25 million people, will lock down its eastern half from Monday until Friday. The phased lockdown is expected to curb the Omicron-fueled Covid-19 outbreak and has in recent days become the leading hotspot in a nationwide outbreak that has hit China with its highest caseloads since the early days of the pandemic.
Read more >> 

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Americans have been deeply divided ideologically about a multitude of issues - healthcare, immigration, voting rights, gun reform, climate change, on and on – for years. The pandemic has exacerbated rifts, pushing Americans further apart on key pandemic response efforts. Last year,

[s]urveys from Pew Research Center,  found that in the early months of the pandemic, about 6 in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents believed the virus was a major threat to the health of the U.S. population, compared to only a third of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents. That 26-point gap would ultimately grow to approximately 40 points by the fall…

Read “For red and blue America, a glaring divide in COVID-19 death rates persists 2 years later” >> 

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On War:
War makes unpleasant bedfellows…
South Africa as a political entity has been sitting on the fence regarding Russia’s invasion and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. Now, it may become clear why this is so: the confluence of Escom’s decades-long mismanagement (Escom, remember, is SA’s coal-driven electricity parastatal), the potential for Russian-built nuclear power plants in our future, and Russian natural gas. And, “daar lê die ding” - Afrikaans for something like “that’s the thing” or “the truth is revealed”….

Amid a war in Ukraine and soaring gas prices, South Africa wants to urgently secure access to vast amounts of natural gas.
Gazprombank, owned by Russia’s state-owned gas supplier, confirms it is considering a bid for what is potentially a multibillion-rand contract — which, if awarded, would raise questions on whether South Africa’s stance on Ukraine is being influenced by its thirst for gas.
The Central Energy Fund (CEF) released a tender last month, looking for a gas aggregator to help secure liquified natural gas (LNG) for various gas-to-power projects planned for the Coega special economic zone in the Eastern Cape.

Read more >> 
And more >> 
And yet more >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

© Joel Pett | Copyright 2022 Tribune Content Agency

 Shawn Heinrichs grew up along South Africa’s coasts. His protective instinct for life beneath the waves inspired a career investigating its mistreatment by humans and campaigning for change.”
Today, he photographs oceans and ocean creatures and says, “'Apathy is one of our biggest problems'”.
See his photos >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Readers may know my penchant for Marmite. For the gustatorily ill-informed, Marmite, it is a black, salty goop invented by German scientist Justus von Liebig and originally made in the UK. South Africans who enjoy eating this black goop spread it on bread, toast, savory biscuits, etc.
Marmite threads through my memories of childhood so I overcome the gross factor and tuck in. For example, I attended an all-girl high school as a “day scholar” (not a “boarder”) and wore uniforms with a tie, brown lace up shoes with bobby socks, etc., etc.
One memory of those days involved the trays of Marmite sandwiches (“sarmies”) set out for “boarders” for a first “break” snack. I and a girlfriend – also a “day scholar” - found it the height of daring to sneak up on the trays and snatch half a marmite sandwich. We’d scarf up the morsel, only half conscious that the snatching added to the taste.
Oh, what daredevils! Good times! 
Marmite was on my grocery list today.

Alas, no Marmite.
Marmite is made from brewers’ yeast. Apparently, the pandemic played havoc with SA’s Marmite production affected by shortages of brewers’ yeast and the shortage continues. Plenty of Bovril on store shelves. Bovril is a salty, black goop but it doesn’t entice.
Back in October of last year, makers of yeast-extracted Marmite said production was to start up again. No sign of the goop at Pick n Pay.
Boo hoo!

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The goodish news?
The hard work I’ve mentioned over the last weeks is paying off. I’ve accomplished much. Not so the electrician who, despite his statements to the contrary, has still not installed the pre-paid electrical meter downstairs. A month ago he assured me he’d have installed both meters within two weeks. That hasn’t happened. Indeed, I’m troubled by the dearth of completion on any of the jobs he’s working on at this house. (The laundry washing machine unexpectedly burned a fan belt that’s been extraordinarily difficult to replace. It’s an older workhorse of a machine, so I wait and wait and wait…. Maybe, like Marmite the fan belt shortage is a product of the pandemic, too?) 

The workload is exhausting – cleaning in preparation for painting, painting, cleaning up after painting… weeding the pond… harassing the culvert/road workers … weeding the pond... sorting through “stuff” … keeping the house running… this, that, and the next thing… 

But we’re getting there!

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Crisp evenings and nights signal autumn here: 

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 6:08am
Sunset: 5:59pm

San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:58am
Sunset: 7:29pm