Family news

Kuya is at the farm drying the last rice crop.

Joy is busy repacking rice and trying to get a driver to deliver it to our customers in the Manila area. The usual driver has a baby and refuses to drive, but she will probably find another driver and helper to do the deliveries.

The problem is not just the risk of catching the virus, but the long lines and hassles going through checkpoints mean the usual 3 to 5 hour trip could take a day or more.

My bank says they are not sending checks to Manila, (usually I transfer my pension/SS by depositing two personal checks each month.Now, the checks can't be sent to Manila to be sent to the USA... meaning if things don't change, I will have to arrange wire transfer of my pension from my US bank to my Philippine bank. I've done this before but it's a hassle but much faster than waiting 21 business days for the checks to clear.

they only let two people inside the bank at at time (I took the secretary with me to help, so we were three), and the lobby of the bank was separated by ceiling to floor clear plastic from the tellers etc. We had to wait outside for our turn: Presumably the hot air and sun and wearing a mask makes it less dangerous for us outside...

Dr. Angi was here to give salary to our cook (the cook sleeps at the clinic as a "security guard" with her daughter... no, the cook is not strong, but since she is related to half the tricycle drivers in town and has friends in the NPA I doubt anyone would bother her).

Dr. Agni said quite a few doctors have died of the Wuhanflu in Cebu, and that three local doctors are sick. She was asking me about Chrloroquin, and I told her about the pros and cons and side effects (prolonged QT syndrome can kill you, but it's rare)

(I took it when I worked in Africa, but got a mild case of falciparum malaria anyway, because that's when FM started to become resistant)... however, I didn't know the dosage... I took one pill a week to prevent the disease, and you gave one twice a day for five days to treat it.

India has been using chloroquin to protect their medical personnel, and the dosage they are using is similar.


India is on lockdown, and this could be terrible for the poor people there, as it is for the poor people here in the Philippines: Not the virus, but because they are living on the margin already, have few savings, and now food is getting harder to obtain.

And Joy adds: VietNam is having a drought so their crop is lower, and they might  not be exporting cheap rice (which is where the Gov't often buys the cheap rice to sell at a discount rate to the poor).

translation: The news mainly complains of the US economy, but for the third world, it will mean hunger for many.


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just a note: earlier I wondered if the genetic differences would lower the rate of the virus in the African diaspora: Well, Africa is having an epidemic but of course the numbers are not accurate, but there was a report of many from a funeral in the Southern USA who caught the wuhanflu (no link) (?from a "super spreader?) and most of them were African Americans, so this observation might not be true. Why is the rate so high in Georgia? Many middle aged/elderly people have high blood pressure and diabetes...

a "super spreader" is a person who sheds a lot of the virus despite the fact they might not be feeling sick (yet). 

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update: Strategy page on the ongoing epidemic of lies about the epidemic, which is still going on in China and how the government is pushing propaganda that it's all the fault of the west.

they note that maybe the reports of numbers of infected folk in China are now much lower because they either didn't test a lot of folks or because the tests were giving false negative results.

Yes, those test kits from China were defective and not just in the Philippines (wonder if those other countries were pressured to "apologize" for releasing this information).

read the whole thing, since the US MSM is not good at reporting a lot of this data, and much of it is reported in a fragmented manner on medical sites.