One down, one to go?

On February 13, 2020 South Africa declared a “national state of disaster” due to COVID-19. President Ramaphosa said, “Given the scale and the speed at which the virus is spreading, it is now clear that no country is immune from the disease or will be spared its severe impact.”
Back then, South Africa had confirmed 61 cases of the disease. Ramaphosa said 50 of those cases were contracted by people who had traveled abroad, but the rest were contracted within South Africa. “It is concerning that we are now dealing with internal transmission of the virus.”
The disease, the president said, could have a “potentially lasting” effect on South Africa.
Midnight tonight, one year ago, South Africans began the first full day of what was then planned as a three-week nationwide lockdown aimed at stemming a potential pandemic. At that time, deaths from the new and lethal SARS infection topped 900. News from that day
Who could have guessed, back then, that numbers of infections and deaths would reach the rates shown below?
Worldwide (Map)
March 25, 2021 – 124,894,200 confirmed infections; 2,746,000 deaths
January 28, 2021 – 100,920,100 confirmed infections; 2,175,500 deaths
December 31 – 82,656000 confirmed infections; 1,8040100 deaths
November 26 – 60,334,000 confirmed infections; 1,420,500 deaths 

US (Map) 
March 25, 2021 – 30,011,600 confirmed infections; 545,300 deaths
January 28, 2021 – 25,600,000 confirmed infections; 429,160 deaths
December 31 – 19,737,200 confirmed infections; 342,260 deaths
November 26 – 12,771,000 confirmed infections; 262,145 deaths 

SA (Tracker)
March 25, 2021 – 1,540,010, confirmed infections; 52,372 deaths
January 28, 2021 – 1,430,650 confirmed infections; 42,550 deaths
December 31 – 1,039,165 confirmed infections; 28,035 deaths
November 26 – 775,510 confirmed infections; 21,2010 deaths

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• Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide 
• South African experts to follow for up-to-date and accurate Covid information… 

Healthy planet, anyone?

Rainforest Action Network, the Sierra Club, the Indigenous Environmental Network and several other nonprofits recently published “Banking on climate chaos” and indicate that,

…the world’s largest banks have funneled $3.8 trillion into the fossil fuel industry over the last five years [and that banks have] … provided more financing to oil, gas and coal companies in 2020 than they did in 2016, the year countries signed the Paris climate agreement and committed to rapidly reducing emissions to keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees Celsius.
Financing was 9% lower overall in 2020 than in 2019 because the pandemic cut demand for fossil fuels. But the first half of 2020 saw the highest level of fossil fuel financing in any half-year since the Paris Agreement.
“Major banks around the world, led by U.S. banks in particular, are fueling climate chaos by dumping trillions of dollars into the fossil fuels that are causing the crisis.”
JPMorgan Chase provided $51.3 billion of fossil fuel financing in 2020 — 20% less than 2019 but enough to keep its position as the world’s biggest fossil fuel financer. The bank, which has called climate change “the critical issue of our time” and says it has “long supported the goals of the Paris Agreement,” has provided nearly $317 billion to fossil fuel companies since 2016.
Citigroup is the second-largest financer, providing a total of $237.5 billion from 2016 to 2020.
[Both JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup declined to comment on the report.]
Though U.S. banks dominate fossil fuel financing, European banks are also big.
French bank BNP Paribas, which has pledged to be a leader in climate strategy, provided $40.8 billion in fossil fuel financing in 2020, an increase of 41% from the previous year. Since 2016, the bank’s fossil fuel financing has risen 142%, according to the report. A BNP Paribas spokesperson said: “During the Covid-19 crisis, all sectors of the economy needed support and BNP Paribas, like other banks, played an important stabilizing role…. However, BNP Paribas supported the oil and gas sector to a lower extent than other sectors of activity.” …
A striking finding … was the increase in financing for the 100 biggest companies that are expanding fossil fuels — including those involved in controversial pipeline projects.
The report examined financing by sector and found a mixed picture. Financing for the top 35 companies involved in tar sands — one of the most environmentally destructive fossil fuels to extract and process — decreased 27% since 2019, to $16 billion.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Raining again. Not that I’m complaining. KZN summer rain is a joy: warm, often accompanied by thunder and lightning – even hail – and water, water, everywhere.

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Two steps forward, one step back with the sale of the house.
One sales agreement is out for signatures by the proposed buyers; another, far better offer is purported on its way from another set of buyers for my review; today, the realtor will bring yet another set of buyers to view the property.
Alas, none of this means anything until bond/mortgage applications are processed, approved, signed, and funds on the way to the conveyancer (title company). Even then, it takes at minimum 3 to 4 months to hand over the property to the new owner(s). Considering conditions accorded by the pandemic - municipal offices responding with days-long shutdowns, and rumors of a third or a fourth wave of infections, and maybe vaccinations on the horizon - next year? the year after? - paperwork could drag on beyond 5 to 6 months.
Keeping this and my own life’s needs in mind, I meet today with a local attorney who can more easily respond to needs dictated by changing conditions as well as meet with my mother in the Care Center. (The office of the attorney handling my mother’s estate is at an impractical distance from this town. If, for example, I’m in California, who will drive paperwork to/from that office without further delaying the process?)
My mother is making remarkable progress although she’s not convinced that the Center’s morning exercise program is conducive to her better health. (Even before her fall she refused to join the group.)
While it’s unlikely she’ll ever gain enough strength to walk again, she can almost reach out, pick up, and carry to her mouth the small containers of fruit juice I bring her. That’s progress: drinking fluids is key to flushing her system of meds from surgery.
She’s also easier to understand although she continues to whisper. (That’s not new: talking softly has been her MO for years.)

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South African days getting shorter while nightfall happens earlier:
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 17: sunrise 5:xxam; sunset 6:1xpm.
March 22: sunrise 6:03am; sunset 6:05pm.
March 25: sunrise 6:05am; sunset 6:03pm.

Equality

News blues…

When does the right to health care become an empty promise? 

Excerpts from a letter to SA’s minister of health from concerned citizens regarding the collapse of Eastern Cape’s health care system:

When does the right to healthcare become an empty promise, minister? Is it when 66% of patients at a rural hospital die of Covid-19 related illnesses because help doesn’t come in time? Or was it when you discovered they were lying about the true death rate in the province – what doesn’t get reported can’t hurt anyone, right?
…Premier Oscar Mabuyane defended the wrecking ball that was Health MEC Sindiswa Gomba to the end, saying she did her best – and while this probably is best practice in South African politics it has done nothing to protect the right to healthcare.
…There is a resignation that has set in under the people of the province, that having to deal with the Department of Health has become yet another burden on lives already burdened by poverty, extreme levels of unemployment and crime. The year 2020 added Covid-19 and its brutal death toll to the list. It has pushed a health system teetering on the edge over the cliff.
...Primary healthcare has become a battlefield with pensioners describing their battle to get their chronic medicine as the “survival of the fittest”. Often the cost of transport is the cost of healthcare – and that is not free.
… Mobile clinics are operating without water and electricity – with no stock of antiretrovirals and TB medicine, and with patients having to relieve themselves in the veld or ask residents in nearby homes to use their toilets. When patients line up and wait in vain for a doctor to arrive, they are told that they must try again on another day or write a letter to put in the suggestions box. Patients at district hospitals often don’t get food.
Another patient was recently sexually assaulted by a nurse.
… When will the government say enough is enough?
Emergency medical services remain in crisis. Many hospitals have lost their managers after run-ins with the unions.
At maternity units, exhausted doctors are presented with A4 handwritten lists of more than 20 Caesarean sections that must be done “immediately” because they are life-threatening, but in theatre they have no proper gowns and not a pair of surgical scissors that works. They have to run the theatre for 24 hours a day and due to a shortage of porters, the few specialists left now also fetch and return their own patients.
Nurses must cut open the sleeves of the gowns because they would otherwise not be usable. ... As an act of desperation and with dire staff shortages, as fatally high as 60% in some units, heads of tertiary units in Nelson Mandela Bay were forced to refuse taking in medical students due to start their rotation at the end of the month. …
…The drainage system at Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha’s Provincial Hospital has become infested with superbugs and there is nothing anybody can do as the head office in Bhisho has refused to replace it for the past 10 years.
…When will you intervene? Will it be when someone finally realises that a lot is going wrong in a province that has to pay R920-million in medico-legal claims in a single year? Or will it be when the medical waste company finally refuses to collect medical waste due to non-payment, creating a public hazard? Will it be when you see the open bags of hazardous medical waste lying on the grounds of a hospital?

Read the letter >> 

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• Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide 
• South African experts to follow for up-to-date and accurate Covid information… 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Another step closer to Skyping the agency that’s held my return ticket to San Francisco since the pandemic shut down international flights.
I’m allowing myself to feel optimism. Nestled in that feeling, though, is worry and, yes, guilt. Can I really skip back to my life in California, my family and friends, my houseboat, a short-term job, vaccination against Covid-19… and leave my mother (feeling abandoned) in the Care Center?

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Staying with the theme of today’s post – SA failing health care system – a closer look into that system as I try to understand what ails the gardener. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, he’s been ill for more than six weeks: stomach pain, extreme fatigue, aching legs and knees, extreme loss of weight….
While health care is “officially” free to South Africans who cannot afford or do not have access to private health care, the health care system is overwhelmed and, like too many SA institutions and bureaucracies, under-funded with an overall lack of bureaucratic competence.
After paying, yet again, market prices for the gardener to visit a doctor – as opposed to days-long visit to the local, over-whelmed hospital where he’ll run the risk of exposure to Covid-19 (see article, above) – I received a response from the doctor on the letter that accompanied the gardener. Among other things, I’d asked for more information on his illness and what he could and could not eat (given the initial diagnosis of gastro-enteritis).
I received back a note of pablum – a list of aliment that included sebaceous dermatitis and candida - and, tucked in amid that list, a recommendation that he be “tested to rule out retrovirus”. In other words, HIV.
Gulp.
This is a 38-year-old man with stay-at-home wife and two young children.
What happens to them if he has HIV?
It’s a hideous thought.

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While today is not the officially recognized equinox - day and night of equal duration –but it is that day.**
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 18: sunrise 5:00am; sunset 6:11pm.
March 21: sunrise 6:02am; sunset 6:07pm.
March 22: sunrise 6:03am; sunset 6:05pm.
** March 24: sunrise 6:04am; sunset 6:04pm.

Thoughts and prayers

News blues…

Amid a pandemic, the American Way of Life is returning: Another mass shooting  - that’s 2 in 2 weeks.
Other than offering “thoughts and prayers” there’s little to indicate Congress will tighten gun laws across the country.

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• Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide 
• South African experts to follow for up-to-date and accurate Covid information… 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I’ve no wireless connection at my mother’s house so I must drive to my new place to access the Internet. Lack of Internet connection is very apparent in this country. Only someone privileged enough to usually have easy Internet access can understand the experience of how cut off from the rest of world one feels when Internet connection is sparse. Internet is addictive.

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Things in my life might be looking up. I met with one realtor today regarding clarifications and modifications to a purchase offer on my mother’s house. It included an in-depth discussion of continuing the sales trajectory if I returned to California. That makes me feel very hopeful. And hopeful is good.
And also got word from a different realtor that her client is interested in purchasing too. An asking price offer.

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Shorter days, longer nights. It’s real!
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 21: sunrise 6:02am; sunset 6:07pm.
March 22: sunrise 6:03am; sunset 6:05pm.

Mixed metaphors

News blues…

Cresting the third wave between a rock and a hard place?

SA’s deputy health minister Joe Phaahla recently admitted the department would not meet its target of vaccinating 1.5-million health-care workers. Instead, he said it was likely that 700,000 would be vaccinated by the end of April.
Professor Glenda Gray, a co-lead investigator for the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine trial, predicted this week that 500,000 health-care workers would be vaccinated by the end of April - if there were no delays.
With fears of a third wave likely to erupt at the end of April, this means most of SA's health-care workers will still be unprotected. 

American youth, meanwhile, parties on…”
Miami Beach Police fired pepper balls into crowds of partiers and arrested at least a dozen people late Saturday as the city took extraordinary measures to crack down on spring breakers who officials have said are out of control.

Saturday night, hundreds of mostly maskless people remained in the streets well after the 8 p.m. curfew. With sirens blaring, police opened fire with pepper balls - a chemical irritant similar to paint balls -- into the crowd, causing a stampede of people fleeing 

India reports 46,951 new coronavirus cases, the highest single-day rise since November 12 and the sixth consecutive daily increase in infections….

The country has recorded a total of 11,646,081 cases, including 159,967 fatalities, since the beginning of the pandemic.
The jump in infections comes almost a year since India's first nationwide lockdown.

Brazil experiences a surge of Coronavirus cases with the country's health systems increasingly overwhelmed. In nearly every state across Brazil, occupancy rates in intensive care units (ICUs) are at or above 80%. Some of them are at or above 90%, and a few have have exceeded 100% occupancy, forcing them to turn some patients away.

State governors, city mayors and local medical personnel now say they are running out of supplies to treat even the Covid-19 patients who have been allocated precious ICU beds. Stocks of medicines that facilitate intubation could vanish in the next two weeks, according to a report from the National Council of Municipal Health Secretaries. And Brazil's National Association of Private Hospitals (ANAHP) has predicted that private hospitals will run out of medicines necessary for intubating Covid-19 patients by Monday.

The president of the country advises Brazilians: “Enough fussing and whining. How much longer will the crying go on?” 
And I thought Donald Trump was awful! (Hint: he was. Birds of a feather and all that...)

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• Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide 
• South African experts to follow for up-to-date and accurate Covid information… 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Plotting my getaway. I’ve still have too little information to make a firm decision about returning to California next month, but I’m trying out various possibilities. One possibility is hiring a house-sitter. Another is offering free accommodation to a manager type person. This option is risky. Manager type people tend to not manage, or over manage, as soon as one’s back is turned. They tend also to refuse to depart when the agreed upon departure date arrives (claiming “squatters rights” is legitimate in SA).

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South African days getting shorter while nightfall happens earlier:
March 20 was the formal southern hemisphere equinox.* 

Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 16: sunrise 5:59am; sunset 6:13pm.
• March 20: sunrise 6:01am; sunset 6:08pm.
March 21: sunrise 6:02am; sunset 6:07pm.
March 22: sunrise 6:03am; sunset 6:06pm.

New plan afoot

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• Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide 
• South African experts to follow for up-to-date and accurate Covid information… 

Healthy planet, anyone?

Enjoy science photos of the year 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

This fifty-second week of lockdown in South Africa is an opportunity to reflect on the goal of this blog – and to modify my posting schedule.
Posting every day for 360 days has allowed a way to focus my mind and practice self-discipline. It’s kept me going during rough times.
A brief recap: I’d initially planned on visiting my mother for a couple of months, organizing her past and future affairs as I’ve done for the past decade, then returning to California to earn an income and live my life.
After the pandemic set in, South Africa locked down, and international flights were cancelled, I’m grateful that I started recording day-by-day events.
This unique opportunity allowed met to explore:

• how local and international media presents information to Americans and South Africans
• tools to understand the intersection between our increasingly over-populated planet and the stress it places on our natural environments
• conclude that humans must collectively and coherently address our planet's ability holistically to support life.

I will continue to post every day until Day 365 – one full year. After that, I’ll post two or three times per week.
Thank you for following me on this journey.

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South African days getting shorter, nightfall last longer:
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 16: sunrise 5:59am; sunset 6:13pm.
March 20: sunrise 6:01am; sunset 6:08pm.
March 21: sunrise 6:02am; sunset 6:07pm.

Still a ways to go...

A male houbara bustard dances to attract females for
mating in the United Arab Emirates’ al-Dhafra desert.
Photograph: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images.  

Another wonderful photo essay below. 

News blues…

In the US, the Covid-19 infection rate has begun to plateau rather than continue a downward trajectory. Dr Fauci warns this could indicate “a high risk that we’re going to get another resurgence. … We’ve seen that with previous surges. The other three that we’ve had in this country.” We “still have a ways to go….” 

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• Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide 
• South African experts to follow for up-to-date and accurate Covid information… 

Healthy planet, anyone?

© Our World in Data – whose mission is to make
data and research on the world’s largest problems understandable and accessible.

People are becoming increasingly aware that their diet comes with a climate cost. But just how much of our greenhouse gas emissions comes from food?
… The chart above groups emissions into comparable parts of the food chain: 

• Land use: this includes deforestation, peatland degradation and fires, and emissions from cultivated soils. 
• Agricultural production: this includes emissions from synthetic fertilizers (and the energy used to manufacture them); manure; methane emissions from livestock and rice; aquaculture; and fuel use from on-farm machinery. 
• Supply chain: this includes all emissions from food processing, packaging, transport, and retail, such as refrigeration. 
• Post-retail: this is all the energy used by consumers for food preparation, such as refrigeration and cooking at home. It also includes emissions from consumer food waste. …

 Read more on the complexities of how much of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food? >> 

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Photo essay: the week in wildlife 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

It’s official – my daughter arrives early April from San Francisco. Exciting! I’m dying to see her. Terrifying! All that virus floating around the planet.
Learned yesterday that the first people who made an offer on this house, ZAR200,000 less than the asking price, bought a place in the same town, different neighborhood. That much of a reduction seemed outrageous then. Now? Not so much. Had I accepted it, I could have planned and perhaps executed my getaway by now. Imagine: a purchased ticket for a seat next to my daughter on the return flight to SFO. Instead, here I am: doing the best for my mother’s investment in this property, but stuck, stuck, stuck! Grrrrr!

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South African days getting shorter while nightfall happens earlier:
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 16: sunrise 5:59am; sunset 6:13pm.
March 20: sunrise 6:01am; sunset 6:08pm.

New year, new wave?

New strains  (1.35 to 2:30 mins)

Another week and South Africans would have spent one full year under some form of Lockdown. This, as the tracking project reports a fourth coronavirus wave is likely under way in the US state of Michigan. It’s the clearest sign that the pandemic’s reprieve could be faltering >> 

News blues…

Terms such as coronavirus mutation, strain, and variants are often used interchangeably, but what’s the difference?
Mutations are changes - basically typos - that occur in the genome of the virus as it makes copies of itself and moves from person to person.
Variants are a particular version of the virus that has a specific combination of mutations across its genome. A variant is of concern when we start to see it rising in frequency over the population, over a period of time. The variant first discovered in the U.K., the variant first discovered in South Africa, and the one found in Brazil. Reports now indicate that new variants have also been discovered in California and New York.
Read a basic breakdown on what we know so far about how these variants compare with each other ― as well as with the original version of the coronavirus >> 

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COVID-19 has inflicted devastating losses. It has also delivered certain blessings. 3 Ways the Pandemic Has Made the World Better >> 

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• Tracking Covid-19 vaccinations worldwide 
• South African experts to follow for up-to-date and accurate Covid information… 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

One day of cool, wet weather… and we’re back to hot, humid weather.
Counteroffer made to one interested house purchasing party. If that’s accepted, the paperwork goes to the lawyer to sign. (My mother is currently incapable of signing the documents.
I continue to figure out how to load assorted items onto the Chana (truck) to deliver to the recycling center, or the dump, or somewhere else. I’m increasingly reluctant to take on more heavy work as an injury could set me back in untold ways. Moreover, I do not have medical insurance in this country. Actually, my medical insurance ran out in the California, too, which means I’m out of affordable and effecting medical care anywhere on this planet. (Best not to dwell on that reality.)

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South African days getting shorter while nightfall happens earlier:
Feb 26: sunrise 5:47am; sunset 6:33pm.
March 2: sunrise 5:50am; sunset 6:29pm.
March 9: sunrise 5:55am; sunset 6:21pm.
March 16: sunrise 5:59am; sunset 6:13pm.
March 19: sunrise 6:01am; sunset 6:09pm.