Easter Monday

News blues

Covid news roundup: Pfizer and BioNTech reported preliminary clinical data supporting use of their Covid-19 vaccine as a booster in children ages 5 to 11. And, one vaccine developer won marketing authorization in Europe while another faces a regulatory setback.
Read more >> 

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China’s strategy for managing their recent Covid outbreak in Shanghai, population more than 25 million, has been a tight locked down since last month; only last week did they begin to ease onerous restrictions.
The Biden administration eschews lockdowns while it continue its strategy of vaccinations, boosters and treatments… and urging a seemingly reluctant Congress to take up a multibillion-dollar funding package upon its return from recess.
Read more >> 

Our World in Data – global Covid tracker >> 

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On war…

Photo essay >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

As I stepped into the bathtub last night the house plunged into darkness.
What to do?
First, wonder – not for the first time – if I have the fortitude to live in South Africa. Unlike thousands of others, I’m choosing to live here. Is that the wrong choice? Why am I choosing the inconvenience and the ineptitude that accompanies almost every facet of daily life here? 

After I donned my jammies, I tried to determine if the problem is local – confined to the house – or widespread. My recollection was that Escom called off loadshedding. Electrically power wi-fi doesn’t operate without power so accessing Escom’s loadshedding app with its schedule was out of the question. 

Shining my heavy-duty emergency light on the main distribution board, I ascertained no fuses had tripped. Rather, the whole neighborhood was dark.
Escom's just-in-time schedule - no warning - again.

However, Our World In Data’s fossil fuel energy tracker map presents interesting data on global electricity sources. 

 

Source: Our World In Data based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy & Ember.
© OurWorldInData/energy 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

A recent SMS offered easy-to-get money that may be an invitation to participate in money laundering.

Do you need a loan with a low interest of 5% which there is no credit check Blacklisted, Debt review and Court order are eligible and accepted. T & Cs applies… [sic]
1. PERSONAL LOANS
2. SECURED LOANS
3. INSTALLMENT LOANS
4. STUDENT LOANS
5. HOME LOANS
6. BUSINESS LOANS
7. PENSION LOANS
8. PAYDAY LOANS
Loan Amount From R5,000 up to R10 Million Interested kindly contact our South Africa branch for more details on how you can apply. [sic]
S.G RESERVE BANK LITHUANIA AFFILATED WITH SOUTH AFRICAN RESERVE BANK.

Info on how to contact sender included email address, phone, Whatsapp, and customer service numbers, along with another “call number”.
If I was desperate enough to apply for such a load would the S.G. Reserve Bank of Lithuania, affiliated with the SA Reserve Bank, give me precise measurements for the size hose to use to ensure efficient vacuuming of money out of / into my bank account?
“Bob’s story: During the Zuma years, a friend “Bob” – who speaks fluent isiZulu and is known to and liked by provincial chieftains who occasionally visited his country home - called an ambulance after the daughter of a KZN politician was involved in a vehicle accident.
Soon after, the woman’s father called Bob and asked for a bank account number into which to deposit a financial thank you. Caught between common sense (never share your bank account number with a politician) and local politics (don’t antagonize local chieftains) Bob reluctantly presented a seldom used bank account number. A day later, very large sums of money began to flow in and out of that account. Bob said nothing, did nothing, and never touched one penny of those funds. (FYI: One US penny is equivalent to 10 SA pennies.)
Corruption R Us?
As KZN residents suffer severe flooding, someone realistic recognizes the temptation presented by funds for flood victims. She or he determined that the SA Human Rights Commission will monitor the distribution of the SA government’s R1-billion emergency relief package. “The commission says it will ensure the resources reach those who need them most. The Public Protector will also send a team to make sure there is no maladministration or corruption.” .

Hmmm. Will this avert the usual money grabbing?

 
More worries that KZN disaster relief funds will be looted: report 

The corrupt recognize no boundaries and no need other than their own. Amid a global pandemic, for example, billions were stolen from funds to address Covid in Africa and South Africa. 
Indeed, SA health minister Zweli Mkhize, his ‘family friend’ and ex-private secretary pocketed Covid-19 cash via R82m Department of Health contracts. 
Amanpour and Company recently interviewed Frank Vogl, anti-corruption expert and author of The Enablers: How the West supports kleptocrats and corruption – endangering our democracy (18:00 mins).
An excerpt:

Isabel Dos Santos, the daughter of Angola’s former dictator, had a personal fortune of more than $2 billion; 40% of Angolans live on less than $20 a month. And Vladimir Putin has stolen so much from Russia and its citizens, that he — not Bezos, Musk, or Gates — may be the richest person alive. As Frank Vogl shows in his deeply researched and damning new book, laundering the dirty cash of kleptocrats into safe investments could not happen without the help of Western bankers, lawyers, accountants, and realtors – these are the enablers.

Read the review and buy the book >> 

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Yet more rain…
KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 6:19am
Sunset: 5:37pm

San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:29am
Sunset: 7:47pm

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

MeerKAT

News blues...

Covid, schmovid! Let’s celebrate something out of this world – and first spotted by South Africans:

This record-breaking megamaser is the most distant one ever observed at 5 billion light-years away from Earth.
The light from this space laser traveled a whopping 36 thousand billion billion miles (58 thousand billion billion kilometers) to reach our planet.
An international team of astronomers, led by Marcin Glowacki, observed this light, using the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory's MeerKAT telescope. (MeerKAT is shorthand for Karoo Array Telescope, preceded by the Afrikaans word for "more.")
Glowacki is a research associate at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia.
Megamasers are created when two galaxies crash into each other. It is the first hydroxyl megamaser that MeerKAT has observed,,,,

Read more >>

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(c) Zapiro

Reviewing the aftermath of recent flooding in Durban, President Ramaphosa said, “…climate change is serious, it is here… We no longer can postpone what we need to do, and the measures we need to take to deal with climate change.”

Good for Ramaphosa. The reality, however, more complex. Where does a country like South Africa, burdened with ongoing massive corruption at the highest levels of government, get the funds needed to competently address the growing effects of climate change. Moreover, South African police used stun grenades to disperse a crowd in Durban, suffering catastrophic flood damage, calling for more and better official aid for flood victims.
Read more >> 
(See below, more on climate change action.)

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The Lincoln Project: Abbott’s Wall  (0:55 mins)

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On war…

Alla Gutnikova's speech at the Dorogomilovsky court. She is one of the editors of the Moscow student journal DOXA, and facing prison sentences for "inciting minors to take part in illegal opposition protests”. But the speech, “Be Like Children. Repeat: 2+2=4. Black Is Black. White Is White.” is about so much more. 

Read Alla Gutnikova's speech at the Dorogomilovsky court >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

Twenty-five scientists affiliated with Extinction Rebellion, arrived at Westminster, London, and

... pasted pages of scientific papers to the windows of the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and glued their hands to the glass to highlight the climate science they said the government was ignoring.
This, a week after the government published a new energy strategy that promised to continue the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas, failed to set targets for onshore wind, and gave nuclear power a central role.
Dr Aaron Thierry, a 36-year-old ecologist said, “Last week the world’s scientists released a report that sounded the final alarm for the planet. It said we must end our addiction to fossil fuels now. The UK government’s response a few days later was to announce it will increase its exploration for oil and gas with the intention of extracting every last drop.
“Science tells us that this approach will condemn our civilisations to destruction. We will not stand by and let this happen. Scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades but have been ignored by governments.”
…[Another scientist said} ““At both the domestic and international policy level, there are very powerful actors who don’t want our society to decarbonise.
“There are people who are very wealthy and powerful from the way that the world is set up now and they don’t want that to change, they don’t want to decarbonise because that will limit their opportunity to generate money from fossil fuels.
“As a result we have government departments making decisions that will lead us to calamity, and as a scientist I know what impacts this has, I can see that coming, and I can’t be passive, I can’t just let that happen. I need to act.

An observer tweeted, “The government’s insane, and I don’t know what to do, other than to do this, to try and get the attention that we need to wake the public up.”
Read more >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

More clouds, more rain…
KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 6:18am
Sunset: 5:39pm

San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:32am
Sunset: 7:45pm

Persistence

Worldwide (Map) 
April 14, 2022 - 501,095,900 confirmed infections; 6,186,310 deaths
April 15, 2021 – 138,278,420 confirmed infections; 2,973,058 deaths

US (Map) 
April 14, 2022 - 80,483,900 confirmed infections; 986,510 deaths
April 15, 2021 – 31,421,361 confirmed infections; 564,402 deaths

SA (Coronavirus portal) 
April 14, 2022 - 3,734,000 confirmed infections; 100,116 deaths
April 15, 2021 – 1,560,000 confirmed infections; 53,500 deaths

News blues

The world surpasses half a billion known coronavirus cases, amid concerns about testing. 

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The Biden administration announced it is extending the nationwide mask requirement for airplanes and public transit for 15 days as it monitors an uptick in COVID-19 cases.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was extending the order, which was set to expire on April 18, until May 3 to allow more time to study the BA.2 omicron subvariant that is now responsible for the vast majority of cases in the U.S.
I’m intending to wear masks every moment of my return trip to California anyway, but… 

Read more >> 

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The Lincoln Project: Last week in the Republican Party - April 13, 2022 (2:12 mins)

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Healthy planet, anyone?

How much greenhouse gas emissions the world emits in the coming decades is unknown. … It will depend on what people around the world will do now and in the future.

In this situation, it’s helpful to create scenarios that cover a range of possible futures. This is what the ‘Shared Socioeconomic Pathways’ (SSPs) are. SSPs are the possible futures that climate researchers in the IPCC consider in their models.
SSPs do not tell us what the world will look like. Instead, they tell us what the world could look like.

Read more and use the IPCC Climate Scenario Explorer >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

That heavy rainfall that fell on KZN? Those predictions of flooding?
They were very real yesterday. Video clips of flooding in and around Durban  (3:00 mins)
Flood aftermath: view 1 (2:17 mins) and view 2 (3:54 mins)
More than 300 dead >> 

Stormwater drainage infrastructure
Many in the business community say the damage was made worse by a failure on the part of the provincial government and the Durban municipality to maintain drainage infrastructure and prepare for eventualities such as these.
Now, the Durban Chamber of Commerce has called for the government to undertake a “serious review” of the stormwater drainage system along the road networks.
It wants the local and provincial governments of eThekwini to share their disaster management plans, including their programmes of infrastructure maintenance and development to improve drainage and traffic congestion.
“There needs to be a serious review of stormwater drainage systems related to our local and provincial road networks to ensure that rainwater can easily drain away,”

Read more >> 

Indeed, there really “needs to be a serious review of stormwater drainage systems - all infrastructure - related to our local and provincial road networks to ensure that rainwater can easily drain away.”
My “timely” - 6 YEARS – nagging the local roads department to attend to the blocked culverts paid off, albeit in miniscule fashion. 

Plenty more nagging ahead. 

Frankly, I doubt that public entity – supported by residents’ property taxes, including mine - will ever devote the people power needed to address infrastructure problems, including my small one: clearing the second totally blocked culvert and removing silt that continues to threaten to rise to levels that block water from draining.
Nevertheless, their recent small efforts helped. This, after I kvetched to local council people then to the head guy in Pietermaritzburg. His terse email to the local office to get the work done galvanized the local team. Had I complained with less dedication, this house’s downstairs would be under water.
The good news? The sheer volume of water pushing into the open culvert cleared out debris and silt. Water is flowing better than it has for some years. The overflowing stream banks, last week not visible, are still overflowing, but the water level has dropped after reaching a depth in the lower garden of more than 1 meter (3 feet).
Alas, the sump formed by the backhoe operator is now a convex hump rather than a hole, due to silt runoff from the dirt road.
I will continue kvetching to the roads department although their workload increased exponentially with the flooding across the province. I will write another email, in report format and accompanied by photos and video clips, to the head guy in Pietermaritzburg. He’ll send a terse email to the local team. The local team will show up, mill around, scrape debris here and there, depart. And the cycle will be unbroken  (4:00 mins)
And… amid the flooding, Escom – South Africa’s parastatal electricity company – is “load shedding” again. Our electricity schedule: two hours off at 8:00 pm. 

Try pumping away massive amounts of excess water without electricity.

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“Clear” weather predicted today. Alas, more rain predicted for the Easter Bunny weekend:
KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 6:16am
Sunset: 5:41pm

San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:35am
Sunset: 7:43pm

Reality checks

News blues

According to Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the way we were thinking about transmission of Covid-19 - surfaces, large respiratory droplets – “was missing the point”.

Two-plus years into the Covid-19 pandemic, you probably know the basics of protection: vaccines, boosters, proper handwashing and masks. But one of the most powerful tools against the coronavirus is one that experts believe is just starting to get the attention it deserves: ventilation.
If you're indoors, you could be breathing in less fresh air than you think.
"Everybody in a room together is constantly breathing air that just came out of the lungs of other people in that room. And depending on the ventilation rate, it could be as much as 3% or 4% of the air you're breathing just came out of the lungs of other people in that room," Allen said.
He describes this as respiratory backwash.
"Normally, that's not a problem, right? We do this all the time. We're always exchanging our respiratory microbiomes with each other. But if someone's sick and infectious ... those aerosols can carry the virus. That's a problem."

Read “This invisible Covid-19 mitigation measure is finally getting the attention it deserves” >> 

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U.S. universities nationwide reinstate mask mandates amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases >> 

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On war…

Photo essay >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

© UN FAO

It’s one thing to live in the bubble associated with “modern” life: a cozy fire on cold and wet days, contradictions of ideology alongside the need for physical safety, a functional security system, a vehicle for trips to the grocery store, and so many other taken-for-granted conveniences that allow one to view others’ struggles from a distance.
It’s uncomfortable to look outside the bubble for reminders of what life is like for the planet’s vast majority.
Yesterday, in front of the fire, when I looked outside the bubble, I learned how my late mother’s former staff and their families struggle for a semblance of comfort. This, alongside world news reporting dire events affecting peoples’ day-to-day lives:

• Flooding: Zululand, South Africa (see photos of my flooded garden, below). Ramshackle houses around KZN buckle under constant rainfall. Australia 
• Drought: southern Africa  (Eswatini is former Swaziland), Afghanistan, Iran 
• Fire: southern Europe and western US 
• Famine: Yemen 
• Food shortages:

  “On March 24, 2022, President Biden warned of food shortages due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “It’s going to be real,” he said of food shortages. “The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia; it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country [US] as well. Both Russia and Ukraine have been the breadbasket of Europe in terms of wheat…just to give one example.”

  In truth, it’s not only Russia causing food shortages; a badly managed pandemic and simple lack of care for our world’s most vulnerable are included. Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Peru , South Africa,
• War: Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic
• Xenophobia: South Africa  and “deadly denial” 
• Pandemic hotspots: China, Washington, DC and think of the effects of the ‘claw back’ of $5 billion in funding for the global vaccination effort that the US had previously proposed .

Personal reality check: Back in August 2020, I described the son of my mother’s faithful domestic worker threatening to kill me.  Back then, guided by prescience, I stated, “I’m tempted to write, “finished and klaar” but nothing really is, is it?”
While I’m currently no longer harassed by that man, he continues to wander, always drunk, around this neighborhood, harassing his fellow humans; retaliation has put him in the hospital more than once. Now, I learn his sister – whom I’d always thought married a decent, hardworking man – married a hardworking but regularly drunk man who spends his earnings on maintaining a constant level of alcohol in his bloodstream. His desperate wife, ironically named Happiness, begs money to purchase food for her three children – and one grandchild. Her oldest daughter, 13, is a mother, too.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Yesterday, former president Jacob Zuma was due back in the Pietermaritzburg court. Last year when he was to appear in court, Gauteng and KZN were wracked by riots. (It was during that time, July 12, although not related to the protests and riots, that my mother passed away peacefully.)
Today’s Zuma-related concern?
Our faithful domestic worker begins her first fulltime holiday since the beginning of the pandemic. She will take a taxi to Pietermaritzburg, then a bus ride for 30 km to her home in a rural village.
Alas, the courthouse is around the corner from the taxi rank and bus station.
Worrisome.
Heavy rainfall, flooding predicted, and possible riots and/or protests associated with Zuma’s trial.
Bon voyage?
As it turned out, no serious protests and Zuma’s trail postponed, yet again.
Flooding, however, continues.

Writing this, the sun is yet to rise so I can’t yet see the extent of flooding in the garden. Given constant rainfall during the night, and the blocked culverts, I assume yesterday’s photos indicate continued flooding of the lower lawn. 

Memories

News blues

[US] Senators announced a deal on a $10 billion coronavirus aid package on Monday to provide additional aid for domestic testing, vaccination and treatment efforts, after dropping a push to include billions for the global vaccination effort.
The agreement requires at least $5 billion to be set aside for therapeutics and $750 million for research and clinical trials to prepare for future variants. The remaining funds will be used for vaccines and testing.
It does not include $5 billion in funding for the global vaccination effort that had previously been proposed, after senators spent the weekend haggling over a Republican demand to claw back money Congress previously approved.

Read “Senate negotiators announce a deal on a smaller Covid spending proposal without global vaccine funding” >> 

Healthy planet, anyone?

In London, UK: Climate change activists forced the closure of London's famous Tower Bridge on Friday in the latest protest ahead of what they have warned will be even more disruptive action in the British capital. Read more >> 

In Australia: protests re inaction on climate change and massive flooding >>  (0:50 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Cold and rainy today.
Cold and rain predicted for next two days.
This house has a fireplace that I’ve never used. This house also has stored firewood. Fireplace and firewood could mean a fire. Why not?
Turns out I’ve little talent for starting fires, at least intentionally. My efforts showed a basic misunderstanding of how much effort and know-how is required to start a fire in a fireplace.
With a little help from my friends, we got a fire started…and it looked great for 15 or 20 minutes…

The dog liked it.
I liked it.
Alas, left to its own devices, the flames died and the logs smoked.
Diagnosis? “Wood is damp.”
The good news? Damp wood dries out when confronted with fire and knowhow. Soon the smoke died down, the flames rekindled, dogs and humans were content.
I face a new challenge: learn to make a usable fire in a fireplace.

***

One of the delights of this locale is the presence for several months beyond Christmas of what I call Christmas Cake. Dark, moist, and thick with fruit, raisins, currents, cherries.
Americans show little interest in the dark fruit cake that pleasures my taste buds. Some Americans like a light, cakey fruit cake while most enjoy carrot cake - which is uncommon here. (A cultural factoid: South African wedding cakes present dark fruit cake, lavishly frosted with marzipan and firm icing. American wedding cakes tend toward carrot cake with moist, creamy frosting.)
The local chain grocery store/bakery combo that sells the dark, fruity gustatory delights appears, however, currently to have a less experienced baker than usual. Over the past months I’ve purchased two cakes – nothing fancy, no marzipan, no icing, shaped like square loaves - and both have been dry. Since it’s not fun eating dry fruit cake, I improvised. I purchased a bottle of cheap sherry, sprinkled it over the cake, let it soak, then – yum, snack on it over time. (I tell myself this cake is healthful – full of iron and ‘roughage’ – and that is true. It’s also delicious and addictive.)
Sipping on sherry now and again is also fun. An added bonus? Cheap sherry is self-limiting and one sherry glass full does the trick.
While I consume little alcohol, I appreciate an occasional margarita or mojito. The price of decent tequila here sounds too outrageous for me to indulge – R400 to R500 ($27 to $34) a bottle! Instead, I indulged in a bottle of moderately priced white rum – R200 to $275 – that accompanied my purchase of the bottle of cheap sherry.
Mint grows thick and fast in this garden. Cooked into mint syrup to replace sugar, it makes a tasty ingredient for a mojito at day’s end: mulled fresh mint, mint syrup to taste, ice, soda water, and a dollop of rum.
In ye olde days, white South Africans enjoyed sundowners. Family and friends gathered on the lawn under the bright rays of late afternoon sun. Ladies enjoyed a glass of wine or small glass of sherry. Gentlemen indulged in “cane and coke” or “dop en dam”. 

“Cane”, I believe, is a form of white rum; coke is regular old coca cola.
Dop en dam is brandy and water. 

Ice wasn’t necessary, perhaps considered an affectation or difficult to produce.
Ah, the memories stimulated while sitting in front of a fire on a cold, wet morning.