but you know, when we were hit by a bad typhoon and lost power for a week, it meant no water or ATM/Bank or computer or TV... but our cellphones worked as did my portable short wave radio.
but we had a generator as long as the local gas station could supply us with fuel for the generator to run our water pump and charge our cellphones. That last part is important: within a day the local shops not only were selling bottled water, but had signs outside saying "cellphone charge 25 pesos" (fifty cents). So people could get in touch with relatives, and also get on line to get the news, or to play games or surf the net.
A solar flare could affect cellphones, but the impact depends on the flare's strength and the phone's exposure. Solar flares release bursts of electromagnetic radiation and charged particles, which can disrupt satellite communications, GPS signals, and power grids,...
However, a strong flare could interfere with cellular networks by disrupting satellites or ground-based infrastructure, potentially causing signal loss or dropped calls. For example, a massive solar flare in 1859, known as the Carrington Event, disrupted telegraph systems, and a similar event today could affect modern tech...
when the typhoon hit, the roads were blocked but we are rice farmers and could buy produce locally. Everyone has a motorcycle or tricycle (motorcycle with side car) so food delivery was not badly affected. But what about trucks? Trucks would be needed to deliver food to cities...
So would a solar flare disrupt the computers that run our cars and trucks, either those with computerized carborators or electric cars and trucks etc.( here in the Philippines we are starting to switch to e-jeepneys and e-tricycles, replacing the old pollution emitting engines).
Yes, a solar flare could potentially disrupt computerized car engines and electric cars, but the extent depends on the flare's intensity and the car's design.
Key Factors:
Flare Strength:
Only powerful flares (e.g., X-class) pose significant risks.
Shielding: Automotive electronics are designed with some EMI protection, but not necessarily for extreme solar events.
Infrastructure Impact: Both types of vehicles could be indirectly affected if flares disrupt power grids or communication networks.
No specific data on recent flares is provided here, but I can search for real-time solar activity to assess current risks if you’d like.
Yup. even modern cars are computerized, so might be affected which is why we keep our old jeep just in case. And of course we grow rice, and even if we had no cars, we could use a bicycle to get supplies...But in an advanced country, this could result in cities not getting food or supplies. How many people are prepared for this?
The example of what could happen was seen in the March 1989 geomagnetic storm when not only communications were affected, but the power grid of Quebec went down:
Residents of quake-hit isle in southern Japan begin evacuating
Residents of Akusekijima island in the remote and sparsely populated Tokara chain began evacuating voluntarily early July 4 following a strong earthquake the evening before.
The southern Japan island chain has been hit by an earthquake swarm over the past two weeks.
earthquakes are common in Japan but this one is making experts worry:
and then you have this manga prediction making some who believe in prophecies worried;
.....
so should we here in the Philippines worry? if there was a superquake in that area, it would affect not just Japan but Taiwan and the Northern Philippines.
What is happening seems to be a slow slip earthquake...
The article notes that these small earthquakes are not only in the Tokara Isalnd area but in the in Southwest Japan, because the news notes that an earthquake swarm continues near Ryukyu Island
The earthquakes are making the government advise people to take precautions but there already has been an impact: Lost tourism.
“The real disaster will come in July 2025,” followed by “the ocean floor between Japan and the Philippines will crack,” aren’t exactly very comforting words to see on a book said to have previously and accurately predicted natural disasters.
“The Future That I Saw” by Ryo Tatsuki, first published in 1999, gained notoriety after a baseless premonition, “massive disaster in March 2011,” ended up coinciding with the 2011 TÅhoku earthquake and tsunami, which resulted in the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
the good news?
seers don't always get things right: One famous lady predicted the big one for Manila in 2024, only to have a minor tremor occur, which of course these minor tremors happen all the time...but of course if the prediction is vague enough or you make enough predictions, eventually one will happen.
well, anyway, right now the problem is a tropical storm bringing oodles of rain into Luzon, and we are worried the rain will wash away the rice seeds that we recently planted.
Traditionally farmers plant seedlings for the main harvest, but the price of rice is so low that we literally can't afford to buy and plant (by hand) the seedlings. But even the farmers who planted seedlings could see their crop endangered:
Sigh.
oooooooooooooooooooooo
follow up: Lots of small earthquakes but no major earthquake or tsunami yet as of July 9--
ScottAdams (Dilbert) comments about recent reports that Measles is capable of wiping out immunity for other diseases and wonders if Covid might do the same thing.
Uh, Scott Scott Scott: the effect of measles on the immune system has been known for years:
A JAMA article in 1932 noted that children with measles often had their latent Tuberculosis become active. And when I worked in Africa 40 years we knew this: Often the kids who didn't die of measles would develop TB or croup/RSV a couple of weeks later. Indeed, a recent article in Nature wrote about this in 2019
In the podcast, he discusses long covid and wonders if this is also associated with immune problems, but mainly he wonders how common is long covid, where people are weak, tired, and have various symptoms that interfere with their ability to work.
But actually a lot of diseases do this: the problem of mononucleosis causing severe fatigue in college students is well known. And I've seen it after viral/mycoplasm pneumonia. And now there are reports from India about a similar problem after having Dengue.
So is my lack of energy due to lazyness, or long Dengue?
By the way: There is a huge Dengue epidemic in Asia going on right now. But it is being ignored in the western press because most people don't die of it, and it is not spreading so far to the west.
Yes, there is a vaccine for Dengue but it has potential lethal side effects, something that the Philippines learned about only after they were used as guinea pigs to test the vaccine. And no one wants to publicize this embarassing episode for fear of making people distrust vaccines that actually save lives. We saw this in the Philippines, where parents hearing about the problem refused to get their kids routine immunizations, so kids died of measles and other diseases that routine baby shots prevent.
Sigh.
----------------------------------------------
If you liked Covid, you'll love the next "we are all gonna die" epidemic:
Bird flu is resulting in the death of millions of chickens and other birds, but Nature magazine notes it now is spreading mink to mink at a farm in Spain and the problem is that minks are mammals. What happened?
Genetic sequencing showed that the animals were infected with a new variant of H5N1, which includes genetic material from a strain found in gulls, as well as a genetic change known to increase the ability of some animal-flu viruses to reproduce in mammals. The new variant puts bird flu in “uncharted territory”, says Wendy Puryear, a virologist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. Researchers have warned that, without careful precautions, the disease might eventually spread among people.
the same scientists who still insist that covid came from nature, not a lab leak, (and condemning you if you dare to suggest otherwise), are now on record defending bird flu manipulations. To save live of course.
The government really has a strong interest on behalf of all of us, in the public, in knowing when researchers want to make a virus more lethal or more transmissible, and understanding how that would be done and why that would be done, and whether the benefits are worth it," says Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Oh, but scientists would never manipulate bird flu to make it more transmissable to humans, so why worry.
Except they already have.
...in 2011, there was an outcry after government-funded researchers altered a bird flu virus that can be deadly in people. Their lab work made this virus more contagious in the lab animals that are stand-ins for people.
italics mine.
Critics said they'd created a super flu. Proponents said that viruses sometimes have to be manipulated in the lab to see what they might be capable of; in nature, after all, mutations occur all the time and that is how pandemic strains emerge.
and these same scientists are annoyed that the US Government dares to try to stop them from similar experiments in the future.
...Ron Fouchier, the virologist at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, whose lab did the bird flu experiments over a decade ago, said in an email that he'd hoped the experience of going through a pandemic would simulate more research, not "unnecessarily delay or restrict it."
why? Because SCIENCE.
"I am avidly, absolutely pro-science and pro-research, and in particular pro-infectious disease research," says Inglesby.
But he says there's a very small part of that research "where there is the potential for very high risk if things go wrong, either by accident or on purpose. And so we have to get the balance right, between the risks that could unfold and the potential benefits."
update: The Houston NPR article has been edited yesterday, but the original one can still be found on Miami NPR:
this video is from 8 years ago:
Murphy's law says that if anything can go wrong, it will.
And lab accidents releasing pathogens are so common that there is a Wikipedia page about it.
Captain Trips call your office. They are at it again.
If you have a scientific background you might want to read the whole thing.
Virology under the Microscope—a Call for Rational Discoursetranslation: IF you question our positionn, you are irrational.
But they do list a lot of success stories by similar research.
The problem? Few of these examples were gain of function research that mutated viruses to make them more lethal or more easily transmissable. Much of the examples are about making the viruses weaker, or how to use viruses to enhance the immune response for vaccines (as was done for the British AZ vaccine and some of the Ebola vaccines).
The Biden administration is trying to invoke a civil war/uprising by sending armed FBI agents in the middle of the night to invade Trumpie boy's home to get supposedly 16 boxes of documents that might contain secret stuff he isn't allowed to have.
I guess just asking for them politely by knocking on the door with a subpeona is too hard for them.
And it was justified because apparently someone in his staff (a mole perhaps) noticed a torn photograph in his toilet, the suggestion being that if the FBI didn't quickly raid his home with armed agents in the middle of the night to examine these so called secret papers, that Trump might finally, after 16 months, get around to personally flushing 16 boxes of secret papers down his toilet.
What, no shredders available? Duh.
The implications is that a busy president stole them deliberatly. So he had nothing better to do than pack up these papers (what, no staff)?
And if the staff did this, given the huge percentage of moles among his staff, onc has to wonder: could it be a set up?.
For that matter, why papers at all, when emails and top secret stuff could be scanned to hard drives, which of course could be destroyed after they are subpeonad, or ignored, as is being done to Hunter Biden's computer and the client list of Epstein.
Ironically, the right wing conspiracy sites say it isn't about the papers: it is the FBI trying to invoke the right wing nut cases to do something rash, like shoot up the Senate baseball game or try to shoot a Supreme court justice... oh, sorry. Those things were done by nut cases inspired by the rhetoric of the left.
This is the theatre of the absurd, and you know that it is absurd when even ex Gov Cuomo says WTF.
------------------------
StrategyPage has a nice summary of the problems facing the Philippines: Mainly corruption and China, who is behind a lot of the corruption and behind the drugs here of course.
China has been trying to bribe the Philippines with "help" so we don't notice they are decimating the fish stocks in the West Philippine sea, not to mention trying to steal our petroleum resources there.
Efforts to reduce the Chinese threat includes reducing corrupt Chinese influence in the Philippines. That is the main reason why the new Filipino government is canceling three Chinese financed railroad construction projects worth nine billion dollars. This was part of a $24 billion Chinese proposal for projects that improved Filipino ports and transportation networks. Cancelation of these projects has been under consideration for over a year because of vague loan terms and Chinese failure to perform. The Chinese are believed to be using the loan program as a weapon to coerce the Philippines into making concessions in the South China Sea....
the greens here who are opposing investing in fossil fuels (i.e. don't let local businesses pressure the gov't to pressure China to let them drill in our traditional waters). This group of greens include the Catholic bishops, one does wonder if China is sort of encouraging this idea.
I mean, it is an open secret that the Vatican's deal with China (arranged by the pedophile McCarrick) went through because China bribed them with money to betray the Catholic believers and let the communists take over the church.
Sigh. So much corruption in so many places.\
---------------
The latest monkey pox news is that someone "discovered" you could use a smaller dosage of the vaccine by giving the vaccine subcutaneously. Well, duh.
Did the US get around to importing the millions of dosese they stored in Denmark? Who knows.
Just like no one knows why it is taboo to say it is being spread by promiscuous MSM, or that the government that closed churches for 2 years won't close raves and other places where this is being spread.
1986
Jan. 23: Mayor Dianne Feinstein told a U.S. Conference of Mayors session on AIDS that gay organizations in San Francisco "will regret" opposing her campaign to close the city's bathhouses. "It has been established that the bathhouses contribute to the spread of AIDS and they ought to be closed," Feinstein said. She said that her two-year campaign to close the bathhouses has been blocked by courts and gay groups "who have turned this into a civil rights issue rather than a public health issue.
As for the kids who caught it: well, if you have a lesion and don't wash your hands, you can spread it to kids.
so maybe those diagnosed with lesions, or those with lesions who suspect they might be infected, should just self isolate?
Or should the government legally impose isolation on those who are still infectious: i.e. people with active disease, as we used to do for scarlet fever, measles, etc. and indeed do with those exposed to Covid (here in the Philippines,
For example, here in the Philippines, Dr. Angie had to self isolate three times last year because she was exposed to someone, and the bank had to close down twice last year fot the same reason. Ruby, on entering the Philippines, had to go into ten days of strict isolation even though she had been vaccinated in the USA.
Ideally, people with monkeypox would remain in isolation for the duration of illness, which typically lasts two to four weeks. However, if a person with monkeypox is unable to remain fully isolated throughout the illness, they should do the following:
they then list obvious things like wearing a mask for a disease that is spread by skin to skin contact.
But of course unless there is someone checking that the patients are actually staying isolated, and this includes arresting those who break quarantine, the precautions are nonsense.
A scientific journal published by top Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers shared studies appearing to engage in gain-of-function type research, a controversial method of studying pathogens that can increase their lethality.
no, she isn't trying to make a bioweapon: She just was changing the virus and giving it to animals to see what makes it worse.
Such mutations occur in nature, of course, but given the poor safety record of her level 3 lab, it does make one wonder.
-Bird flu naturally spreads via migrating birds, and since the Philippines is not on a usual migration path, we were bird flu free for years, until somehow they found some infected birds.
Probably in smuggled in chickens that were infected but sold to us anyway.
The animal rights folks blame the chicken farms: but you know, we monitored our chickens closely, and they were raised inside a shelter so migrating birds could not infect them.
But free range chickens and small farmers who raise chickens are the real risk: they handle the birds personally, and might not monitor or vaccinate them. And of couse they might eat a bird who they didn't know was sick.
Eating infected chickens can give you bird flu, as can close contact e.g. those destroying infected chickens are at risk, as are those who handle fighting cocks...
for awhile Jakarta banned having chickens within city limits: some people have a couple of chickens to provide eggs, but what is more common is men who raise a few fighting cocks in their backyards, under umbrellas or on a leash. Ironically the stray dogs avoid them: they are vicious. But of course, migrating birds who seek their food could spread the disease to these birds.
there is a vaccine for the chickens, which is used for some chicken farms that produce eggs and for fighting cocks, but it is too expensive for small farmers who only have a few chickens. And the broiler chickens, like we used to raise (until the typhoon blew the buildings over) have a short life before they are sent off to Col Sander's heaven, so they are not usually vaccinated.
so if you get it in your broiler chickens, you cull them.
Captain Trips call your office, the chicken lady has a job for you
Agriculture Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo told a parliamentary hearing on Monday 20,723 head of livestock had been infected in 16 provinces as of last week. He said these provinces had a total livestock population of around 13.8 million.
Lawmakers at the hearing urged the government to investigate where the infection originated from, slamming authorities for being "careless" in letting the virus spread across the country for the first time since around late 1980s.
The infections have spread at a time when Indonesia was already facing rising prices of meat and ahead of Eid al-Adha, one of the most important Islamic holidays, where Muslims traditionally slaughter animals and share the meat with the poor.
Lawmaker Anggia Erma Rini said vaccines were urgently needed to tackle the outbreak.
and until the vaccines were available, they are isolating and inspecting people traveling from these areas.
-------------------
And of course African Swine Flu is back: we have had cases on and off for the last few years, and one of our neighbors had to kill all his pigs on his small farm... one result is that we are eating a lot less pork... For the first time in ten years, we are eating beef.
How did it get here, when pork products from infected countries are banned? Smuggling... and mislabling pork products. Probably from China.
It's not the Chinese government per se that is the problem: it is the culture of corruption.
I was just reading about the DRC (aka the Congo) on StrategyPage, to find out the latest news there. Yup. the usual. An attempted kidnapping that killed an Italian official. War. Mahem. A new railroad that might help matters in the long run. A few new cases of Ebola virus in North Kivu province mining town.
And then this:
February 19, 2021: In northeast Congo (Ituri province) Congolese health officials believe that over the past three months at least 31 have died from a bubonic plague outbreak. Over 520 cases have been confirmed...
The two variants are pneumonic (spread via air from a plague victim or has the plague in their lungs) and septicemic (catching plague from exposure to the blood of a plague patient). Before the mid-20th century Bubonic plague was still a major killer, but was one of the many diseases treatable with antibiotics, developed in Britain just before World War II.
For later reading: The Bubonic plague epidemics (Justinian Plague and the Black Death) that affected Europe also were a major cause of death in Africa. LINK
And although I never treated any cases, the docs in the IHS Navajo area see a couple cases a year, and they have an extensive prevention program. This old articleis about cases there in the recent past and the response of the IHS to control it...
Tony Hillerman's novel The First Eagle, describes the prevention program (accurate when I worked a short time near there in the 1970s, but it could be out of date by now). and this recent article discusses how a nearby prairie dog colony might stop the opening of a camp ground.
the real problem in the Navajo area is a big outbreak of Covid virus: Starting when a superspreader attended a church revival. The population is at risk, not just because of genetic variability but because of the high rate of diabetes and the fact that people live in multigenerational homes. The Navajo Times report that they are busy giving out the vaccine so hopefully things will settle down soon.
Speaking of vaccines:
For some reason, the Philippines, which has the largest number of cases in the area, has been the last one giving out the vaccine to it's own people. Officially that is (This AlJ article says that the big shots and military already got their shots, and that article notes that China gave 100 thousand of their citizens the vaccine illegally last year). Those doses had been smuggled in illegally, so hints that some people might also start smuggling in vaccine doses for their areas is probably already being done... and hey, the smugglers are quite efficient here. so why not.
The Chinese vaccine (50 percent efficient) is now being given out in Manila to high risk and caregivers etc.
why so slow? (The government official in charge just didn't get around to signing the paper work (liability protection?), so the Pfizer vaccine that the USA arranged to be sent to use in January couldn't be legally sent here, and for some reason the other vaccines haven't been bought either. On the other hand, the Sinovax company has been known to bribe people, but hey, bribery is illegal here in the Philippines.)
Here the social media is full of anti vax propaganda (after the Dengue vaccine scandal, that is not surprising, but one does wonder how many are Chinese bots who post such stuff all over the world)...
, so a lot of people say they will refuse the shot (but one doubts that, because poverty...why worry about a vaccine that might kill a few folks when your kids are hungry?_). On the other hand, the latest news says most Pinoys won't get the vaccine until next year.
I am not sure how those of us who are ex pats (US citizens living here, working, retirees or like myself with a local spouse) or Balikbayans (returning Filipinos with US citizenship like my late husband and his relatives) will be given the vaccine: Too early to tell. But one does wonder if the US government is worried about us.
Q: Given assurances by both President Trump and President-Elect Biden that access to the vaccine for all Americans will be their priority, why isn’t the State Department ensuring U.S. citizens abroad get vaccinated? Why are you vaccinating your own personnel but not private Americans?
A: The Department of State does not provide direct medical care to private U.S. citizens abroad. We are committed to providing all possible consular assistance to U.S. citizens in need overseas, including by providing information on local medical resources when appropriate.
China ignored the law and gave all of their citizens working here their vaccine illegally late last year, but when I asked our local "Democrats Abroad" organization if the US government planned to do the same for us, I was told
"according to information I have gathered from multilateral developmental banks and companies here, there's not much they can do until the high priority people like health care workers get vaccinated".
In other words, they are following the rules.
One is tempted to say: Hey if China can vaccinate their own folks here, why can't the USA bribe China to give some vaccine to US citizens here by asking Duterte's government for a waiver? (an alternative would be a gift to the right official here, but hey, that wouldn't work because as we all know, Filipino officials never take bribes)...
So in the meanwhile, I guess I'll just have to stay inside for a couple more months.
............
Update....this article might explain why the Philippine government did not sign papers for Pfizer...
Yes it was about liability lawsuits, and the company insisting poor countries pledge their assets to cover the cost.
Heads up from the crazy Jeremiah, Ann Barnhardt, who is about as antivax as they come but does tend to dig up corruption in the church, big business, and the stock market.
while checking StrategyPage for updates on Central Africa/DRC, to see how their Ebola epidemic is going on (112 cases, 25000 vaccinations to stop the spread), and a Covid outbreak in a refugee camp (not much detail given), I noted this observation.
September 9, 2020: In Congo medical authorities reported a monkeypox outbreak in the has so far infected 141 people and killed ten. All 141 cases are confirmed cases. Monkeypox has symptoms similar to the small pox virus, though far less severe.
I never saw this disease in Africa, but I remember reading about it when there was an outbreak in the USA back in 2003, due to imported animals from Ghana... actually these imported animals gave the MP to prairie dogs, and the people who bought prairie dogs for pets got infected, usually via cleaning the cages when you had a small wound for the virus to enter, or by being bitten by the Prairiedog.
in other words, you can get it not just from monkeys but from small rodents.
However that epidemic was not spread person to person.
. Usually only spread via close contact with infected animals, although a few cases of human to human transmission have been reported in those in close contact with someone with lesions or maybe from close contact from respiratory spread. There is treatment, but usually prevention by small pox vaccination is the way to stop transmission...
ironically, since smallpox has been eradicated, people no longer receive small pox vaccine, so now are vulnerable to smallpox's weaker cousins in the pox family. This might explain why the public health authorities are seeing periodic outbreaks of money pox in various African countries.
presumably this is not going to cause a major outbreak, but it does show how diseases can move from animals to humans and spread quickly if not stopped.
Personally, I'm more worried about bird flu, (H5N1 avian influenza virus) which has killed a couple hundred people in Asia who were in close contact with chickens etc., but luckily has not taken the last step that makes it possible for human to human transmission.
and all the conspiracy types who think that because a "war game" simulation was done for a covid type virus last year, that this was related to the covid outbreak:
And for all the hysteria and conspiracy theories on covid, the dirty little secret is that it is too weak to be a deliberate bioweapon release, since the morality is low, not to mention it killed quite a few Chinese (how many? who knows. They are keeping it secret).
However, the good news about covid is that it has given the world expertise on how to handle the next outbreak, so if a lethal disease should again jump from animals to human, people will be prepared.
Heh. I was just perusing my youtube videos and ran across Trumpieboy announcing he is closing flights to Europe to keep out their Corona virus infected types (the UK is okay for now). link2 includes this "Must criticize Trumpieboy" paragraph:
The White House has struggled to execute a cohesive plan to stop the spread of the virus. The president has careened back and forth between insisting the coronavirus is no worse than a common flu and demanding that Congress pass drastic financial relief, including a proposed payroll tax holiday.
so which is it? a "WAGD" (we're all gonna die) infection, or just another flu like epidemic that will kill a couple thousand (mainly older) folk but not a big deal? uh, both and neither. As I have stated several times in past posts, since it is a new virus, it will hit everyone at once, and could collapse the hospital/medical system if it does so. Slow down the spread, and it is easier to manage: fewer cases spread out over a longer time. the worst case scenerio is 150 million who could catch it in the US (sort of puts that part about "lack of test kits into perspective). in the past, schools and nursing homes have been shut down to slow the spread of influenza, and I'm old enough to remember when they actually quarantined cases of scarlet fever and measles. Trumpie boy seems to be in front of the curve here: He stopped travel from China before many other countries, and now will try to stop it from spreading from Europe (how many cases came on with elites?). AlJ reports that many unniversities are shutting down their classes (and some students are mad, by gum). and even the USSurpreme court is getting into the act, sort of, by saying it's okay to keep migrants out of the country while they wait an asylum hearing. What is going on? Uh, maybe because the elite have realized they might catch it. That priest who had it but shook the hands of 500 people was at a Washington DC Episcopal church where a lot of the government elites attend. (Full story at WaPost behind a paywall). for those of you outside the US, the Episcopal church is traditionally the church of the rich white elites that ran America, although their numbers have gone down this is still true in the US Capital area. So where did the guy get infected? From visiting the homeless or from a traveler from Europe? and it's not just the clergy to the elite who seem to be spreading the germ: A Boston scientific conference was behind most of the cases there, and then there are the airport screeners who tested positive. =============== in the meanwhile, here in the Philippines, not much is going on: Rappler reports (March 11)
68 - admitted to hospitals 662 - discharged from hospitals The tracker also reflected only 33 confirmed cases, but by Wednesday afternoon, DOH announced 16 more cases.
Of the 49 confirmed cases, 46 are currently admitted to hospitals, two have been discharged, and one has died.
but maybe a lot of cases are being overlooked because they also note here that 6 people who left the Philippines came down with the virus after returning home (to SoKoreaa, Singapore and Japan). Meaning they caught it somewhere from someone who might not have been very sick. Most of the local cases are in SanJuan in Marakina, an affluent city in the Metro Manila area. and one case presumably was infected at a prayer meeting which means he might have caught it from a local, not an visitor. They have shut down schools in the area. most of the 445 cruise ship personnel/tourists who returned here were in quarantine however were cleared to go home (only 2 cases tested positive). Duterte is being tested, as are a lot of the government VIPS. Rappler report has a little list and notes the Senate is in lockdown. and the schools in the Metro Manila were closed this week, though March 15. and as I noted earlier, the trade fair that Joy and Kuya planned to attend (and exhibit our rice) was postponed. Here, things are going along normally: schools here haven't closed down yet. But we are close to Manila, and many locals have family members who work there and come home on weekends, so it's just a matter of time. and if a lot of folks get sick and die, Duterte, who is friendly with China, will get a lot of the blame (probably incorrectly because flights to and from there were stopped on Feb 2) but hey politics here is worse than the USA). ------------------ other countries are suffering but not getting into the news. Iran, alas, thanks to sanctions by the west, was friendly with China and so was slow in stopping flights and contacts. And now the explosion of cases is overwhelming their hospitals. but I worry about sub Saharan Africa, which like Iran has many ties to China and may not have wanted to anger China by stopping travel to and from that country. But ironically, most of the cases diagnosed there so far seem to have been from Europe: maybe because tourism is spreading the disease, or maybe because many are immigrants who live there and were coming home to visit. There are a million Chinese living in Africa (see BBC article below) but I suspect many live and work isolated from the locals (in gated communities, as do the elites and did the whites in the colonial era..think neo-colonialsm and you get the idea), whereas the tourists would spread the disease to tourism guides and hotel/airline workers, and of course, those visiting relatives will infect their extended families (which in Africa, like here in the Philippines, tend to be huge). Maybe China has stopped folks who have been in contact with the disease from traveling to Africa. or maybe they just aren't testing the right folks. BBC article discusses:
The continent has close links to China, where the infection originated in late December, but the cases in Africa have all so far been linked to Europe.
They have mushroomed in the last week, which is of particular concern as it is feared that poorer countries on the continent may struggle to cope if it does spread.
: Wikipedia already has a webpage for the epidemic in South Africa. The SADailyMaverick reports that most of the cases came from Europe. And the "dog that didn't bark" is found in one of their comments:
The effect of Coronavirus on immunocompromised TB and HIV patients will be devastating.
on the other hand, in warmer climates, people live out doors a lot more, so one suspects the spread will be lowe thanks to the sunlight and wind on airborne droplets. But of course I haven't seen many studies on this. The bad news is that it will still spread indoors, in schools, shops, malls, hotels, buses, etc. Sigh. ---------------- strategyPage has a long report on the virus in North Korea, link
----------------- update 2: Joy was going to represent the Philippines at a agri conference early next month in Japan, and she is waiting to hear if they will cancel it. I told her to stay home: Not only the danger of getting sick (she can do that here) but the expense if she ends up in quarantine for two weeks. ------------------ relapse of patients seen in China? (Non peer review) PDF
The SCMP is a Hong Kong newspaper and has a long report, including the time line, of the outbreak of the Corona virus in Wuhan China. read the whole thing. As a whole, China responded to the epidemic well, and the massive shut down of many cities has slowed the spread, but their clamp down on information early in the epidemic (i.e. Dec and early Jan), and the fact they denied that person to person infections occurred resulted in a delay at putting contacts (including medical personnel) into isolation etc. was one reason the disease spread to outside cities and the world.\\ ================== update: NEJM editorial on the corona virus.
Despite the number of deaths associated with Covid-19, SARS-CoV-2 appears to have a lower case fatality rate than either SARS-CoV or Middle East respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus (MERS-CoV).
translation: not as bad as SARS.
Compromised respiratory status on admission (the primary driver of disease severity) was associated with worse outcomes...
translation: If you are chronically ill already you will get a lot sicker than healthy people and have a higher chance of dying.
We found a lower case fatality rate (1.4%) than the rate that was recently reportedly,1,12 probably because of the difference in sample sizes and case inclusion criteria....
Translation: Because they only tested sick people at first, the rate looked high. But this ignores that a lot of folks weren't sick enough to get tested: Meaning that as they test more mild cases, they will find the rate of dying is a lot lower than the early cases suggested.
Since patients who were mildly ill and who did not seek medical attention were not included in our study, the case fatality rate in a real-world scenario might be even lower.
Early isolation, early diagnosis, and early management might have collectively contributed to the reduction in mortality in Guangdong.
translation: by isolating people, fewer people caught it. -------------------- cultural explanation of Asian wet markets. I should mention that here in Asia, a "wet" market is the open air meat/fish/ produce market, where independent sellers have meat etc. on open display.
this is in contrast to American style supermarkets, where the meat is wrapped in cellophane, or behind glass in a refrigerated box where the vendor will take out the meat, cut it up, weigh it and then wrap it for you. and a "dry market" is the area of the palengke/open market where independent vendors sell dry goods. This might include dry groceries (i.e. canned goods, noodles) but also includes clothing, school supplies, soap/shampoo/ plastic goods, etc. the poor and bargain hunters go to the Palengke: the next step up is the small stores that sell things, and for the middle class, we now have American style supermarkets. MikeBustos has a video about Philippine palengkes: The "wet market" of selling meat is seen at 0.41.
one reason I haven't been posting a lot about the Wuhan Flu aka Coronavirus, is that the news is not accurate: The dirty little secret is that no one knows how many cases are out there. Not only are many mild cases and asymptomatic cases or early cases being missed, but a lot of reporting is "iffy". and it makes you wonder: why the panic if the mortality rate is low: 2 percent of diagnosed cases die, according to the latest statistics. But then you wonder if the number is artificially high because mild cases which are not diagnosed? Or maybe people are dying at home, or in isolated villages, and/or are old, so not counted...so it's a lot worse than is being reported... and the question no one is asking: is China lying about it? (yup. I expect Chinese trolls to fill my comment box on that statement). Because China's attitude seems to be: Only report sweetness and light or we'll get back at you. For example, this Feb 3 story notes that China condemned the USA for raising the alarm and causing panic. Global voices notes that certain blogs have disappeared from the internet for their reports on Wuhan flu:
popular online media outlet posting high-quality commentary, suddenly vanished from the Chinese internet after it published an article headlined “The 50 days of Wuhan pneumonia: Chinese people are all paying the price of the death of media”.
Following the article's publication, the website of Tencent Dajia and its WeChat public account disappeared from the internet. Both Tencent Dajia and WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging and social media app, are owned by China’s biggest tech giant Tencent.
The takedown happened on February 19, the same day three Wall Street Journal reporters were expelled from China in response to the publication of an opinion piece referring to China as “the real sick man of Asia.”
and the Chinese social network site Weibo, is full of happy happy Chinese folks making comments and posting happy happy videos to counter the reality of what's going on.
We Will Make Them Better” – Popular Online Video Promotes Chinese Unity in Times of COVID-19 Chinese state media are spreading more hopeful and positive online content in times of coronacrisis.
Just move along, folks, nothing to see here... and rumors of the failure of government to confront the disease spread is complicated by HongKong's pro democracy demonstrations:
(unrelated note: Iran is holding an election this weekend and the opposition is boycotting it. I wonder if they will spin the low turnout by blaming the virus). I'm not sure where I should be getting news about this: The most recent CDC report was posted on Feb 7 and is probably out of date. But it should comfort you to know the CDC is busy doing their thing, because since then they have released reports on the percentage of adults over 25 who saw a dentist this year, discussing a program that encourages people to take their BP medicines, a single case of Chaga's disease in Missouri who didn't catch it from travel, This is a headsup meaning it might be spread by local insects (probably an under reported disease thanks to the many unscreened illegal immigrants entering the US), a survey of which states prohibit teenagers from buying tobacco products, and a report that the seasonal influenza shot doesn't work very well. And in the recent past: Lots of stuff about Vaping. When you read complaints about Trumpieboy cutting their funding, remember that it is this stuff that he is trying to cut, not the actual investigation of infectious diseases etc. but wasting lots of money on stuff about lifestyle and social problems: things that used to be called sin before the PC made sin a dirty name. ------------- here in the Philippines, the big stories are about the Chinese bribing immigration officials for visas. The whistleblower is in hiding, and unlike American "whistle-blowers" who raise money and get interviews on CNN with their claim of threats, here whistle-blowers and witnesses do tend to disappear one way or another. The story mentions 2000 Chinese enter the country every day, but doesn't mention if that has changed. So we have cases of Wuhan flu here, mainly in Chinese tourists: But the real crisis is among Filipinos working in cruise ships: 52 have been diagnosed in one ship alone. Sigh. And you know and everyone here knows that when things get bad, it will not be China helping the Philippines, but the USA who is offering China and other countries money to help stop the disease. I'm so old that I remember when the World Health organization said don't close borders
GENEVA, Switzerland – The World Health Organization cautioned Friday, January 31, that closing borders was probably ineffective in halting the transmission of the deadly novel coronavirus from China and could even accelerate its spread. If you close official border crossings, you can "lose track of people and cannot monitor (their movement) anymore," WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva.
Right. And that worked well, didn't it? the other news is the Senate is opposing Duterte stopping the US/Phil joint military training agreement. Local politics in this one, but Duterte is pissed at suspected CIA money supporting his opponents and the human rights types in the US Congress and UN are trying to stop the (very popular) war on drugs here. But even though locals dislike the idea that they are supposed to obey the US in these things, the dirty little secret is that outside of the elite bubbles, the average folk hate hate the Chinese and the way they bribe the elite and ignore custom and visa laws. John Bachelor had this from the Daily Beast about China trying to bribe their way to make a base in the Philippines.
well, nothing new: The Chinese even have printed articles in their press that quoted a General insisting that Luzon should be part of a Greater China. But one wonders how the spread of Wuhan flu will affect China's territorial aggression and it's bribery/threats to influence the Philippines: I suspect it won't make them popular here. ------------ update: criteria if you are in trouble according to the CDC.
Interview with the guy who revealed China's forced abortion laws at a time when no one in the MSM noticed what was going on. He suspects they are lying here too
latest from the NEJM: asymptomatic patients can spread the disease. A report of German travelers coming home from China.
In this effort to evacuate 126 people from Wuhan to Frankfurt, a symptom-based screening process was ineffective in detecting SARS-CoV-2 infection in 2 persons who later were found to have evidence of SARS-CoV-2 in a throat swab. We discovered that shedding of potentially infectious virus may occur in persons who have no fever and no signs or only minor signs of infection.
I usually keep an eye on Canadian Mrs Gay Caswell's blog, because she is an ex politician and a Metis who lives in an indigenous area in western Canada and many of the social problems she discusses (and the problems against a corrupt political establishment) are very similar to what I had to cope with in Minnesota. But this post made me sit up and say WTF:
On July 06,2013 Death was riding the rails from Nantes, Quebec, Canada . No crew, no mechanical controls were giving its direction.. A runaway train hauling 72 tankers filled with crude oil derailed as they approached the centre of Lac Megantic. The tank cars exploded and the oil caught fire killing 47 people and destroying many buildings in the town.
The train was from North Dakota, U.S.A.
I never heard about that disaster. Did it get headlines, or did it happen when we were offline and not following the news? (a common problem here). Wikipedia has a very long discussion of the Lac-Megantic rail disaster.
If the disaster sounded familiar, because we watched the film Unstoppable which has the plot of a similar run away train: a 2010 movie that was filmed in Lolo's old stomping grounds of western Pennsylvania. In that film, the heroes Denzel Washington and Chris Pine managed to stop the train before it took out the center of a fictional town. but the plot was based on a very real near disaster:
Unstoppable was inspired by the 2001 CSX 8888 incident, in which a runaway train ultimately traveled 66 miles (106 km) through northwest Ohio.
Knowlton and Forson successfully coupled onto the rear car, and slowed the train by applying the dynamic brakes on the chase locomotive. Once the runaway had slowed to 11 miles per hour (18 km/h), CSX trainmaster Jon Hosfeld ran alongside the train, climbed aboard, and shut down the engine.
Alas, in the Lac-Megantic, the cabin had had a fire which had to be put out, but no one noticed the train no longer had brakes nor did anyone notice it started to go downhill on it's own, without an engineer. No one noticed until a fire fighter who had fought the original fire saw the train go by without lights and too fast: ten minutes before the derailment. in other words, despite the fact that both a previous disaster and a major Hollywood film outlined the case what happens when there is only one engineer on a train, and when something happens that causes the air breaks to fail, no one seemed to be worried about safety, hence the the train was disaster waiting to occur. As I said: not my area of expertise, nor do I have knowledge about pipelines. But Mrs C. does have an opinion: she questions two things about the disaster: Why was the oil from the USA being transported via Canada on inferior rail lines by a company that had a poor safety record, and a company that ignored the rule about two engineers per train. The second question is why do the environmentalist oppose pipelines which are in rural area and a rupture would not cause a major loss of life... and she questions why these activists use indigenous "leaders" to push their (i.e. white environmentalists) agenda. well that sounds familiar: often the MSM can't tell the difference between an activist who parrots the progressive agenda and the actual tribal leaders who are elected by the actual tribal members. Every time I read such propaganda, all I can do is shake my head at the MSM ignorance of AmerIndian politics. Heck, the press hasn't even notice Elizabeth Warren got a job as a "minority" without showing a CDIB card, which is the proof of your tribal connections (yes, many Americans have AmerIndian ancestors, but the affirmative action is for those living traditional ways, often in poverty from very real discrimination, not a white person living a middle class main stream life with few social disadvantages and little or no knowledge of tribal customs or tribal customs). the poverty on the reservations is very real, and as a physician, I had to cope with the understaffed and underfunded hospital/clinic, (a bit improved now that the tribes have taken over their health care and are using the casino money to improve the facilities and hire staff in a more efficient way). But working there we had to cope with real problems like alcoholism and drug abuse from the stress of poverty and stress of living in two cultures and the collapse of the family often due to substance abuse, and too often the do gooders trying to help treat you like a child instead of a warrior. As for progressive "green" groups hiring professional "indigenous" activists to push the "green agenda": Do any of them notice if these ideas were implemented it would be a disaster for rural dwellers of all races. As Mrs. Caswell writes:
Being in the North- West without a truck is like being in the Wild West without a horse. Trucks are run by fossil fuel usually called gas. No one gets to a medical appointment by dragon boat , not even a canoe. We get there by air ambulance filled with fossil fuel, a fifteen passenger van or a personal truck filled with fossil fuel.
yup. Been there, done that: when I worked in northern Minnesota, our nearest referral hospital was 35 miles away, but for specialty care (e.g. major trauma) we had to air evac them 200 miles, usually by helicopter but if the weather was bad, by fixed wing from the airport 30 miles away. Until you get "safe nukes" or efficient alternative energy that is cheap, ordinary folks will have to rely on fossil fuel for transportation. Yes, electric cars are the future, but what happens when the electric company turns off your current, as is now happening in California due to the fire hazard? At least here in the Philippines, most middle class folk have a generator, and we have our own well which was lifesaving when we were hit by a typhoon and flooding that contaminated the city water supply. Ah, but what would happen if we couldn't get diesel? Presumably we'd be able to cope with biodiesel from coconut oil, but that might take time. Oh well: we still own one waterbuffalo to pull a cart so we could get rice to eat from our farm.... but cities rely on fossil fuel, and there are lots of disaster movies about what happens when the infrastructure collapses. but in the meanwhile, finding oil, fracking, and transporting petroleum will be a logistical imperative if you don't want civilization to collapse. and that means you need an infrastructure to drill/frack, and to refine the product, and a way to transport the petroleum to the refinery and then to the local gas stations etc. So as Mrs. Caswell reminds one:
Fossil fuel needs development of oil patches and pipe lines. Pipe lines do not go through towns and cities like Lac Megantic. They don’t need tankers, box cars and rail roads that are often old and need repair.
Once the pipe line is in place there is less need for work crews and staff...There is a 43 per cent increase in rail road workers testing positive for drugs.
Pipe lines don’t toke up . A lot of railroad workers do.
On the other hand, self righteous social justice warriors are more likely to sabotage pipelines. because oil evil, don't cha know. at least it's "evil" to all those affluent white kids in the US and Europe who never had to confront poverty or reality of the modern world. Could they cope with the logistics of the modern world, be it growing and transporting rice to the market (as our family does), air evacuating a patient by a helicopter (as my son in law does), or as ordinary people risking their lives to cope with a potential disaster:
