Shame of the nation

Worldwide (Map) 
March 31, 2022 - 485,581,100 confirmed infections; 6,135,050 deaths
February 25, 2021 -128,260,000 confirmed infections; 2,805,000 deaths
February 25, 2020 - 112,534,400 confirmed infections; 2,905,000 deaths
January 21, 2021 – 96,830,000 confirmed infections; 2,074,000 deaths

US (Map) 
March 31, 2022 - 80,022,500 confirmed infections; 978,700 deaths
February 25, 2021 - 30,394,000 confirmed infections; 551,000 deaths
February 25, 2020 - 28,335,000 confirmed infections; 505,850 deaths
January 21 2021 - 450,000 confirmed infections; 406,100 deaths

SA (Coronavirus portal) 
March 31, 2022 - 3,715,390 confirmed infections; 99,976 deaths
February 25, 2021 - 1,547,000 confirmed infections; 52,790 deaths
February 25, 2020 - 1,507,450 confirmed infections; 49,525 deaths
January 21, 2021 – 1,370,000 confirmed infections’ 38,900 deaths

Post from March 29, 2021: Fall days 

News blues

Whither Covid?
Three years of pandemic World Health Organization states the BA.2 variant of coronavirus now represents nearly 86% of all sequenced cases. Even more transmissible than its highly contagious Omicron siblings, BA.1 and BA.1.1, evidence suggests that it is no more likely to cause severe disease.

As with the other variants in the Omicron family, vaccines are less effective against BA.2 than against previous variants like Alpha or the original strain of coronavirus, and protection declines over time.

Read an explainer >> 

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This week, the Biden administration launched a new website to provide a clearinghouse of information on COVID-19. This is part of a continuing effort to prepare Americans to live with the coronavirus >> 

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On War:
The Gini index or Gini coefficient is a measure of the distribution of income across a population. Developed by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912, it often serves as a gauge of economic inequality, measuring income distribution or, less commonly, wealth distribution among a population. South Africa - with a Gini coefficient of 63.0 - is currently recognized as the country with the highest income inequality. (The World Population Review attributes this massive inequality to racial, gender, and geographic discrimination, with white males and urban workers in South Africa earning much better salaries than everyone else.)
Income inequality coupled with greed, endemic corruption, incompetence, and a pandemic result in South African children malnourished and, indeed, starving.

In the past 15 months, 14 children under the age of five starved to death in Nelson Mandela Bay and another 216 new cases of severe acute malnutrition were confirmed in the Eastern Cape’s biggest metro, where more than 16,000 families were left without aid because of a bureaucratic bungle by the provincial Department of Social Development.
Another 188 children received in-patient treatment at the metro’s hospitals for severe acute malnutrition and in February 11 children were hospitalised with severe acute malnutrition.
The impact of dire food shortages, including a shortage of nutritious food in communities, is, however, much larger. The University of Cape Town’s Child Institute estimates that 48% of child hospital deaths in South Africa are associated with moderate or severe acute malnutrition.
…This comes after the Eastern Cape Department of Social Development forfeited R67-million meant to assist those worst affected by poverty in the province.
During a sitting of the provincial legislature last week, members of the legislature were told that the department had been unable to spend the money, which was meant for families who were unable to meet basic needs.
“It is unfathomable and simply unacceptable that the department, under the leadership of MEC Siphokazi Mani-Lusithi, was unable to spend R67.076-million that was meant for the most vulnerable in our province. These funds are now lost forever, while the people of this province go hungry,” said Edmund van Vuuren, the Democratic Alliance’s spokesperson on social development.
[He added,] “In Nelson Mandela Bay alone, 16,634 beneficiaries were denied social relief of distress, in the form of food parcels, because Mani-Lusithi’s department chose to appoint service providers that did not have the capacity to deliver.”

Nelson Mandela would weep with shame.

Read “The shame of the nation…” >> 

Along the same lines of income inequality coupled with greed, endemic corruption, and incompetence:

• The Life Esidimeni tragedy (also called "the greatest cause of human rights violation" in democratic South Africa). This company is still in business, promoting itself as “in the business of caring for the most vulnerable members of our society”…
• ”Unknown individuals, most likely working from inside the aspiring state-owned Postbank, stole millions through the social grant system late last year. The breach, which has been kept a secret, is the second time the Sassa payment system has been compromised since Postbank took charge of the social grant payment system in 2018.” >> 

Related… just days after South Africa tried to sell itself as an investment destination, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), released the latest employment data. South Africa’s economy is in dire straits.

Unemployment in Q4 last year rose to 35.3% from 34.9% in the previous quarter. This was the highest level since the start of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey in 2008. The youth unemployment rate remains at a staggering 65.5%.
Under the expanded definition which includes discouraged job seekers, the unemployment rate declined to 46.2% from 46.6%. You know things are pretty bad when this is the “good news”.

Read more >> 

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The Lincoln Project: Partner  (0:40 mins)

Last week in the Republican Party - March 29  (1:50 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Wildfires have been igniting in Colorado and Texas, and have burned hundreds of thousands of acres in the past few weeks alone >>

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

After the untimely death of our gardener this time last year, I’ve occasionally hired a “day laborer/labourer” to assist with painting exterior walls, some gardening, and light handiwork. It’s been going well enough despite his lack of English skills and my decrepit abilities in Zulu. As a child I managed alright with pidgin Zulu. As an adult, I’m embarrassed to express myself in error-prone Zulu. This is a new wrinkle in my attitude: in past situations involving an unfamiliar tongue I’ve enjoyed immersion: fumbling through the language until I get it right. Immersion has allowed passing “well-enough” in Hebrew in Israel, French in Belgium, and Dutch in Nederland.
Today, with trepidation deriving from our apparent inability to communicate, I asked the day laborer to accompany me in the “bakkie” – my late mother’s Chinese lightweight pick-up Chana.
Rather than struggle, however, we enjoyed a confused and confusing couple of hours during which he expressed a desire better to speak English and I, more courage to express Zulu. 

I learned I’d been mispronouncing numbers one to ten. I also learned the respectful term for a person’s death. Until yesterday, I’d used the less respectful term to communicate my mother had died. 
Our jaunt in the Chana also culminated in him asking me to teach him to drive the vehicle. 

I won’t do that. (The Chana is for sale, and I cannot risk damaging it.)

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Water is a wonderfully mysterious and generative element. Despite too much water in one section of the garden – the overflowing stream near the blocked culverts – I’m rehab’ing the decrepit grotto fishpond located near the carport.
In the past, I’d set up this pond with a handful of golden comet fish, lilies and duckweed, and a filter/fountain. Alas, I’d returned to SA to find “an accident” had killed all life in that pond.
Until last week, I’d not had the stomach to try again.
Then, I tested the pond’s concrete lining for leaks.
There were many.
Yesterday, I began plugging them.

Locating and cleaning leaks.

Figuring out what materials will fill cracks
so large they expose the plastic underlining.

Overly ambitious, I'll also sift the silt that's built up around
the river pebbled landscaping. This is a big job with an advantage:
pulling out deeply embedded weed roots.

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Crisp evenings and nights signal autumn here:

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 6:09am
Sunset: 5:57pm

San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:55am
Sunset: 7:31pm

100 Weeks

News blues

One hundred weeks of Covid-19 and some level of Lockdown in South Africa. I arrived here in January 2020, a month or two after the novel coronavirus sought refuge in the first of its human hosts. I began these pandemic-centric blog posts on April 9, 2020 (see the complete list of posts) and, 100 weeks later, I’m still at it. Fully vaxed, I don’t take ivermectin, and, so far, haven’t contracted Covid. Happy Days!
One hundred weeks later:
Coronavirus restrictions ease across Europe despite high case rates 
…and…
As California prepares to live with Covid, laying out plan to fight future surges, it aims to pick up rising viral transmission early and sequence new variants to determine whether vaccines and therapeutics are still effective. 
The millions of people stuck in pandemic limbo: what does society owe immunocompromised people? 

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The Lincoln Project:
Uh oh, Donald  (1:04 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

“How better animal welfare could stop millions of people dying,” by Damian Carrington for Down to Earth  presented here as it encapsulates the essential issue of our time: how to live cooperatively and simply on our planet to ensure survival for all living creatures.

Spanish flu, bird flu, Marburg virus, Lassa fever, Ebola, HIV, Nipah, West Nile, Sars, Chikungunya, Zika and Covid-19. That is just a partial history of the viruses that have spilled over from animals to humans in the last century. The outbreaks are coming more frequently, as humanity’s growing population drives its destructive path further into wild areas. An average of 3 million people a year die from these zoonotic diseases.
But the world’s focus on preventing the next pandemic has so far been confined to boosting the detection of new diseases after they have infected humans and speeding the development and rollout of vaccines. That is of course necessary, but it is not sufficient.
Since the Covid-19 outbreak, there have been repeated warnings that action to stop spillovers at source is also vital, and extremely cost-effective. That means ending the destruction of forests that brings people and wildlife into contact, and a crackdown on the wildlife trade. Inaction has left the world playing an “ill-fated game of Russian roulette with pathogens”, experts say, and protecting nature is vital to escape an “era of pandemics”.
But tacking spillover is not mentioned in reports and strategies from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), a joint initiative of the World Bank and the World Health Organization, or from a G20 high-level panel on financing for pandemic preparedness.
A new report from experts at the International Union for Conservation of Nature provides another angle on the issue. While all zoonotic diseases ultimately come from wildlife, the IUCN report says few spillover into people directly. More commonly the diseases transfer via livestock, or animals like rats that thrive in places despoiled by humans.
So culling wildlife could not be justified, and could perversely make viruses spread more rapidly and animals flee. The IUCN report also says its examination of the scientific evidence suggests that tougher rules, or a ban, on the trade in wildlife would not have much impact on preventing future epidemics. Such moves could also harm the livelihoods of indigenous peoples and local communities, unless alternative ways to make a living are provided.
But the IUCN report comes to the same broad conclusion as the previous reports: preventing increasing rates of outbreaks is feasible, especially if “primordial prevention issues, rather than just preparedness and rapid response” are addressed. “The challenge rests in better understanding how our domesticated animals and human-dominated landscapes create opportunities for the emergence of infectious diseases,” says Jon Paul Rodríguez, chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission.
So what is the livestock industry doing to cut pandemic risk? Not nearly enough, according to another new report, which rates two-thirds of 60 major meat, dairy and fish companies as “high risk”. The analysis is based on seven, criteria including welfare conditions for both animals and workers, waste management and deforestation.
“Intensive farming environments, housing most of the 70 billion farm animals reared every year, are a known breeding ground for disease,” says Jeremy Coller, chair of the FAIRR Initiative, which produced the report and is backed by investors managing $48 trillion of assets.
“Aggravating factors like low genetic diversity, cramped enclosures and poor conditions for workers that do not offer adequate sick pay amplify [the pandemic] risk many times over,” he said. “It’s time for meat companies and policymakers to learn from Covid-19 and to invest in preventing the next pandemic.”
Another take on pandemic risk is on its way from Bill Gates in his new book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic. “The plan is three elements,” he says. “First is to constantly improve health systems. The second is to build a global pathogen surveillance capacity so that no matter which country it shows up in, we can apply resources and understand what’s going on very quickly. And finally, innovation across diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines that will get us far better tools far quicker than we did this time.”
“I think it’s exciting that we have this opportunity to use our best ideas to stop pandemics for good,” Gates concludes. But there’s no mention of what is to my mind the very best idea of all – trying to stop pandemics at the source. The same was already true of reports from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), a joint initiative of the World Bank and the World Health Organization, and from a G20 high-level panel on financing for pandemic preparedness.
Tackling the root of the issue by protecting forests and wildlife would cost just a tiny fraction of the terrible losses caused by pandemics, and such action is of course already vital for ending both the climate and biodiversity emergencies. “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity,” said Albert Einstein. But the world has yet to grasp the opportunity presented by Covid-19.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

With South Africa’s official unemployment rate at 35 percent and the actual rate much higher,  people scramble to afford basic food and housing. One young local man apples maximum creativity to earn a living: he sweeps debris back into potholes.
I’d noticed this young man standing near a four-way intersection offering what I assumed was a bunch of herbs to sell. He’s manned his post everyday over the past 10 days holding the same vegetation. Yesterday, I saw him using the flora to sweep small, loose stones back into a nearby pothole and tidy up loose debris.
I assume he’s working for tips although it has taken me 10 days to figure it out. Perhaps he needs signage: Sweeping for Rands?
It is heartbreaking to see so many people - young and old - so desperate.