Corona Daily 251: The Highest Stake Exams

Leaving school is a momentous event in everybody’s life. In most cases it coincides with adulthood. Children can trash school uniforms, and sense freedom for the first time. In developed countries, children usually leave school and home at the same time. An independent journey begins now.

The price to achieve that liberation is a high-stake exam in the final year of school. It may happen on a state or a national level. Depending on the size of the population and the degree of cut-throat culture, students may prepare for this exam for years. Besides the formal school, they may attend coaching classes or have tutors. The final years are filled with anxiety and stress.

As if that was not enough, the coronavirus pandemic began before most of the final exams. Worldwide, education was disrupted for more than 1.5 billion students. Schools shut down, and exams were postponed.

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China’s National College Entrance Exam (NCRR) is better known as “gao kao”. More than 10 million students register for it. A high score in the exams is the ticket to a top university, a lucrative career and upward mobility. The exams, held in June, last for two or three days. Most young children are told over the years that gao kao would be the most important task for them to complete. A typical high school student studies from 7 am to 9 pm. The exam becomes a family focus, with many activities dropped to let the child concentrate on studies. Unless you are a Chinese student preparing for gao kao, it is difficult to imagine the level of stress on hearing the news that the coronavirus may postpone the June exam.

In fact, the exams were held a month later, on 7/8 July. All exam centers had quarantine sections for students with even the mildest symptoms.

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In terms of student stress, South Korea is not much behind China. Its CSAT (College Scholastic Ability Test) known locally as Suneung, is taken by more than half a million students. The exam was scheduled on 19 November, but is now postponed to 3 December. This is a special day in the life of South Korea. Stock markets open late, public transport runs additional buses and subway trains to make sure students reach in time. During the exam hours, planes are grounded so as not to disturb the examinees. Police cars escort students running late. Some families gather outside the test centers until the children come out.

Students sleep for five hours a night during the year. More than 200 commit suicide every year.

On 3 December, the Suneung students will give the exams wearing masks. A special squad will deliver the exam papers to candidates in hospitals.

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In Europe, Germany managed to conduct Abitur as scheduled. Italy cancelled written exams, but allowed orals. Austria and Hungary did the opposite. Spain held them under trying circumstances. Britain, France and Ireland cancelled exams.

In the United States, the College Board offers AP (Advanced Placement) exams in May. This year, the exam for each subject was converted into a 45- minute online at-home exam. Students were allowed to use textbooks, class notes, or any other non-human help during the 45 minutes. Testing was conducted simultaneously across the world. American children abroad, particularly at the military bases, ended up giving the exams at odd hours. In Europe, they gave exams around midnight, and in Japan they began at 02.00 in the morning.

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More on these high-stake exams tomorrow.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 252: Flowers of Hope

The Kenya flower council founded in 1996 has a mission of making Kenya the home of the world’s best flower growers. Tambuzi Limited, one of its 130 producers, grows eight million flowers a year on 22 hectares. Located 180 km north of Nairobi, on the rainy foothills of Mount Kenya, Tambuzi exports to sixty countries, including the UK, Holland, Russia, Australia, USA and China.

Twenty years ago, it started with just twenty amateur people growing roses outdoors. Now it employs over 500 people, and supports 5000. It grows 80 flower varieties, including roses, gypsophila and ammi, and bouquet fillers like rosemary, mint and lavender. Its biggest known specialty, though, is the David Austin scented rose. Austin was a British breeder of exquisite roses. Tambuzi chooses roses from breeders and runs trials on the farm. The specialists look for a scent they love, the number of petals, the flowers’ tolerance to pests and disease, the colour and the yield.

After eight weeks, workers bend the chosen rose stems so shoots can sprout. At twenty weeks, they are harvested by hand, by 67 workers, all women. The women cut the stems and put them into a solution of nutrients, where they continue to grow. The stems then go into a 4 C cold storage, are sorted into bunches and after packing sent in a refrigerated lorry to the Nairobi airport.

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Tambuzi is a Fairtrade flower organization. Like an author’s royalty, a Certified Fairtrade farm must pay 10% of the sales price to the workers. Kenya, Ethiopia, Ecuador and Tanzania account for 98% of the certified Fairtrade production. Kenya is at the top. The European buyers call the roses from Kenya large, multi-petalled and voluptuous, their fragrance extraordinary.

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Around Valentine’s day, 2020, the Tambuzi farm managers heard something was wrong. They had learnt about the virus from China, and talks about various flight cancellations. In March, as the orders collapsed, and the air traffic shut, Tambuzi first cleared ten hectares of gypsophila flowers and planted food crops instead. The farm had 500 employees and no money to pay their salaries. With tears in their eyes, they dumped thousands of roses in the pit.

The flower workers with a great sense of urgency planted beans, maize, potatoes, kale, onion and tomatoes in the cleared plots. By June, the vegetables were ready to harvest. They were distributed among the employees. The great team-building exercise which brought the farm owners, directors and workers together helped everyone survive.

Tambuzi is already thinking of diversification. It has faced floods and droughts in the past. To counter that, it harvests rainwater, uses solar panels and some production has been moved indoors. But coronavirus crushing the demand and halting the supply lines was an unmatched event. Now Tambuzi is thinking about building resilience, and other lines of income such as livestock breeding.

To see the Tambuzi farm with your own eyes, I recommend the 23-minute BBC clip that shows the flower farm’s usual operations, and their actions during the pandemic.

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Not all roses were thrown away. The Kenyan rose farms and Kenya Airways on 28 April sent 300 bouquets to the UK as a gesture of support and empathy. UK had already lost 20,000 people to coronavirus. The campaign was called “flowers of hope”. In the UK, the aromatic bouquets were distributed to doctors and nurses.

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It’s not just about flowers or roses. The pandemic has highlighted several global supply chains we were not aware of. Can Europe live without flowers coming from Africa? The world is interlinked by Americans wearing Bangladeshi jeans, and European weddings decorated with Kenyan roses.

It shows how profoundly bogus the “Make America great again” or “Brexit” or other “My country first” campaigns are. It is in the interest of the human race to acknowledge our interdependence and make trade freer by removing borders.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 253: The Withering Flower Trade

Flowers are an essential component of human happiness. They please our visual and olfactory senses. They connect us, decorate us and our surroundings. None of us could fall in love or marry without flowers being a part of that journey.

The global cut flower industry is worth $18 billion and growing rapidly. The five bestselling varieties are rose, carnation, lilium, chrysanthemum and gerbera. In the UK and USA, flowers are bought in supermarkets, in the EU from florists. India sells fresh flowers and garlands on the streets and local markets.

The flowers you buy in London’s Covent garden could have come from the Netherlands, but they possibly grew in Kenya. Kenya, Ethiopia, Ecuador and Columbia are the world’s biggest growers and exporters. This has a fifty-year-old history. In the 1970s, the oil crisis prohibitively increased the cost of heating greenhouses. It made sense to move the flower production to sunny countries in the south. Kenya and Ethiopia became the supply centres for Europe, Ecuador and Columbia for the USA. The four countries had high altitudes with cool nights, ideal for flowers. They also had maximum sunlight and cheap labour. Instead of the seasonal production earlier, now it is 365 days a year. Every third rose in the European Union is imported from Kenya.

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When we talk of Tulip gardens, we think of the Netherlands. Netherlands runs a global auction trade for flowers. In an incredibly efficient operation, the Royal Flora Holland, the auction company, sells 20 million stems every day. This is the Wall Street of flowers. It trades in 22,000 different varieties.

In the beginning of March this year, tulip growers put their wares up for sale. Tulip season usually lasts for eight weeks. International women’s day 2020 escaped the coronavirus. However, on Friday 13 March, the Dutch auction collapsed. When the prices for roses and tulips hit zero, the auction house stopped trading. Weddings, parties, events, cruises were cancelled.

For the perishable commodity that flowers are, its supply is based on cold chain logistics (the term often heard for vaccines now). At a constant temperature, the flowers from a Kenyan farm must reach the London supermarket in 48 hours. The vase life is just 12-15 days at best. Flowers lose 15% value every day.

Demand for Kenyan flowers is so high, Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International airport has a dedicated flower terminal. Suddenly in the second week of March, the airport shut its doors. Flowers are Kenya’s second biggest export after tea. The Kenyan flower trade has grown ten times in the last thirty years. By May, 50,000 Kenyans lost their jobs. Livelihood of two million Kenyans was indirectly affected. It was called a humanitarian crisis. All roses and other flowers had to be composted.

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In the Netherlands, coronavirus crushed 400 million flowers including 140 million Dutch Tulips. Tulip growing is a long process. In July 2019, the farmers had dug up the bulbs, given them the right treatment and planted them in October 2019. Later they were moved to the greenhouse. The quality of tulips this year was excellent. March to May is the high season, with Easter holidays and Mother’s Day. The Dutch tulip industry sells an average of $30 million flowers daily. This year they had to destroy all tulips.

Keukenhof, the largest flower park in Netherlands, usually welcomes 1.5 million visitors during the tulip season. The park had to be shut throughout.

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Since May, things have improved a little. The Kenyan flower council fought for starting the flights again. The Dutch auction has reopened but still shut for visitors. In some places, business has recovered about 70%, but in value terms still down in the absence of lavish weddings, parties and other events. All flower traders are worried about the impact of the latest wave.

As to how the Kenyan flower growers survived, I will write tomorrow.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 254: AstraZeneca Vaccine – Trial and Error

On Mon. 9 November, Pfizer released its vaccine news an hour before the opening of the US stock market. Pfizer’s CEO unloaded $5.6 million worth of Pfizer stock at a 52-week high price. Inspired by this, a week later, Moderna announced its 95% effective vaccine on Monday morning. Not surprisingly, AstraZeneca soon followed suit.  On Mon. 23 November, it was the third company to declare the arrival of its vaccine. However, while Moderna’s shares have gone up 22% since its announcement, AstraZeneca fell by 7%. Why did this happen?

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In fact, the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine was awaited more than the earlier two. The freezing storage requirement means Pfizer and Moderna are unlikely to be used outside North America and Europe. AstraZeneca, on the other hand, apparently costs less than a cup of coffee. Easy to make, easy to store in a normal refrigerator. India’s Serum Institute has gambled and produced 40 million doses already. Narendra Modi will visit the Indian factory tomorrow. AZ/Oxford vaccine will be the savior of the developing world. UK’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, has already ordered 100 million doses. Boris Johnson said the vaccine has the makings of a wonderful British scientific achievement.

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Pfizer and Moderna had quoted 94-95% effectivity figures. The bar was high. Depending on which newspaper you read, AstraZeneca vaccine was 62%, 70% or 90% effective. Investors rushing to trade didn’t understand what this meant.

The scientific route is to publish the data and results in a reputed medical journal, and get them peer reviewed. This allows the scientists and health authorities to ask relevant questions. All three vaccine companies have opted instead to talk to the Wall Street journalists and offer interim results, before the public or scientists can see the data. In the absence of data, curious people asked: why three figures? And why such a large variation?

Sir Mene Pangalos, the British executive VP at AstraZeneca explained the two versions of the double-dose trial. In one trial, participants received only half a dose the first time, in the other, a full. The second dose was full in both trials. The first trial produced 90% effectivity. The second 62%. The weighted average was 70%.

Rather embarrassingly, the half dose trial produced 90%, and a full dose 62%. Scientists and other people with common sense were puzzled. Then it transpired this half dose trial had happened by accident. It was a manufacturing error made by a contractor. The company explained this as a lucky scientific break.  Who would have guessed half a dose is far more effective than a full dose? (A question that can be set in a SAT test: Effectivity: full dose: 62%, half dose: 90%, no dose:?)

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Meanwhile, Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed, fortunate to have access to the data, noted that AstraZeneca had limited the half dose trial to those below 55 years of age. This 90% effective vaccine will be first given to doctors and nurses (who may be 55+ as well) and the elderly, but the trial had nobody above 55. With increasingly red faces, the AstraZeneca directors said this was true. All the 2800 participants in the smaller dose regimen were below 55. But there were older people among the 8900 participants who had received two full doses.

The tiny size of the 90% effective trial – 2800 participants – came as another shock. A quick emergency authorization in the USA looked out of question. (It could be the USA vs UK politics as well). Serum institute of India (SII) has produced only the full doses. Hurriedly, SII said it would be ok with the 62% effective vaccine. UK would also be willing to overlook the small matter of half a dose.

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AstraZeneca has now announced it will conduct another global trial with the half dose/full booster regime (90%). At the same time, it will apply for an emergency authorization for the two full doses (62%) regime.

Is it any wonder that the anti-vaxx movement keeps growing?

Ravi   

Corona Daily 255: The Canine Year

Among the few businesses booming in the pandemic is the “Pet business”. Parents and children are home, working and learning remotely, socially distancing themselves. Particularly in Northern America, people are buying, adopting and fostering companion animals for mental and emotional support. Dogs followed by cats are the leading choice, but you also read about the purchase of guinea pigs, birds, fish, even reptiles. Even in the strictest lockdowns, one can take a dog for a walk legitimately.

CDC, the American health body, lists several medical benefits of owning a pet: decreased blood pressure, cholesterol, triglyceride levels. The American Heart Association associates pet ownership with lowered risk of heart disease. If true, it sounds like a good remedy in coronavirus times.

Fortunately, till date, there is no real evidence that coronavirus passes to or from dogs or cats. While you must keep distance from people, it is safe to cuddle the pet. Cuddling is an essential physical need; a puppy or kitten is more easily available and more practical than having a baby.

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Having said that, pet owners know children and pets are not really different. In America, pet merchandise is one of the top gift-giving categories in the holiday season, with people planning to spend $90 on average. Walmart said it will sell more than 3 million pet beds this season. Chewy offers gift cards and personalized mugs, blankets and bandanas for pets. PetSmart carries fancy attires including Santa costumes for dogs. Dogs are getting scans done, getting hip replacements, cancer care and eye exams.

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One research found that 37% of those surveyed had brought a new pet home during the pandemic. Dogs’ and cats’ fostering and adoptions boomed. Some shelters managed to empty their kennels of adoptable pets. In New York, pet food sales grew 260% in March. Despite the lockdowns, JustFoodForDogs began night shift production of pet food. E-commerce orders grew 400%. In Canada, sales of dog diapers went up 202%. Sales of crates, feeding bowls, leashes, toys and treats surged. Chewy started a subscription service, called the Autoship program that regularly delivers refills of pet food, cat litter and other pet necessities home. It has also launched a telehealth service, where pet parents can consult vets through video calls. As a result, Chewy saw its share price more than double during the pandemic.

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In North America, buying a dog ($3000) is usually more expensive than adopting ($1300) from a shelter. Annual costs can range from $1000 to $2300, including vaccinations ($400), neutering ($500), and food ($900). Only the rich can afford fresh food for dogs ($4800 a year). A dog-walker costs $20 a walk. Cats are cheaper, about $1000 initial costs, and annual expense of $1200. (If it was practical, India should export pets to the USA. Mumbai is flooded with stray dogs and cats, free to adopt).

Some Americans are also surrendering their pets, because they can no longer afford to keep them. However, since pets are family members, the surrender happens as a last resort.

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In the pandemic; buying, adopting and fostering pets has suited the owners as well as the pets. During the stay-at-home, pet owners, particularly singles and the elderly are enjoying the pet companionship. But bringing home a puppy or a kitten is a 15-year commitment. Hopefully, the pandemic will be over by 2022. What happens then? The adults in the house go back to work. The kids start going to school.

The pet dog has helped reduce the owner’s loneliness and depression in pandemic times. Post-pandemic, the danger is that the pandemic pets will go into depression by having to spend the whole day in loneliness at home.

Ravi   

Corona Daily 256: Lessons from Thanksgiving, 1918

“See that Thanksgiving celebrations are restricted as much as possible so as to prevent another flare-up.”

This message is not from today. An American newspaper Omaha World Herald ran it on 28 November 1918. It was a Thanksgiving Day during the Spanish flu pandemic. It is fascinating to read the 1918 newspaper archives. History can teach us so much.

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American Thanksgiving is a 400-year-old tradition. Historically, it was a harvest feast after a successful growing season. Families sat together to thank the Lord and eat well-bred Turkeys.

This day, the fourth Thursday of November, is America’s heaviest eating day. Tomorrow, American families will sit at a table and eat Turkeys with stuffing, sweet potatoes, buttered rolls, peas, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie with whipped cream and coffee for dessert. This year, it is incredibly cheap, the cheapest since 2010. The whole menu for ten people will cost just $46.90.  

In 1918, the Turkey meal was exorbitant. The First World War, at that time called the Greatest War Ever, was over only sixteen days before Thanksgiving Day. People were euphoric, filled with patriotism. In his Thanksgiving proclamation, president Woodrow Wilson didn’t mention a word about the pandemic. In California, on 21 November, after a month of mandatory masks, the mask order was lifted. The jubilant crowds tossed out their masks on the streets. “After four weeks of muzzled misery, San Francisco unmasked and ventured to draw its breath. Despite the published prayers of the Health Department for conservation of gauze, the sidewalks and runnels were strewn with the relics of a tortuous month.” Said a newspaper.

American families celebrated Thanksgiving 1918 together, and then celebrated the Christmas holidays in person, too.

And the flu came back with a vengeance. San Francisco’s death toll doubled in January 1919. And yet in mid-January an “Anti-mask league” rally was held with 2000 people. The mayor James Rolph was against masks, and was fined $50. When the flu surged, Rolph blamed outsiders coming to San Francisco, after the city had successfully stamped it out.

When we call current times unprecedented, they are not exactly unprecedented.

By January, USA was engulfed in its third wave. The virus infected one third of the world’s population. It killed 675,000 Americans before subsiding in the summer of 1919.

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In 1918, there was no testing. Medical science had not yet advanced enough. Masks were mandatory in earlier waves. Social distancing was called “crowding control”.

By Thanksgiving Day, few vaccines were already available and administered. Unfortunately, the world didn’t know about viruses until then. The vaccines were made against bacteria, which were thought to be the cause of the influenza pandemic. The vaccines were crude and not very effective, because they were developed for the wrong organism.

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On the 1918 Thanksgiving, Americans were happy the war was over. In 2020, they are happy that effective vaccines will end the pandemic next year. However, vaccine announcements don’t protect, vaccines do.

USA has registered nearly 13 million cases, and 266,000 deaths. Now every day is a record in the number of cases, exceeding 200,000 a day. Daily, 2000 Americans are dying. Until Biden’s inauguration in January, 100,000 more may die.

Dr Fauci has asked whether people really want to travel in cold weather and sit indoors with 10-20 people for a Thanksgiving meal.

The answer to that question seems to be “yes”. The American Automobile Association projects that across the USA, 50 million Americans will travel by cars, buses, trains and air during the Thanksgiving holiday period from 25 November to 29 November. It is worth remembering that the initial global transmission of the novel coronavirus started with five million people from Wuhan travelling to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year with their families.

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History can teach us much only if we are willing to learn from it.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 257: The Takeaway Pizza Story

The Indian cricket team, currently in Sydney, is training with pink season balls. The first test match between India-Australia will be a rare day-night affair at Adelaide where pink balls will be used. Last week, the scary news from Adelaide meant the venue would be shifted. Sydney and Melbourne offered themselves as candidates.

On Wednesday, 18 November, the State of South Australia announced a draconian 6-day lockdown. On 1 November, Australia had zero cases nationwide. Despite rigorous testing, South Australia has had only 557 cases and 4 deaths so far. But now some traveller had brought from the UK a super-contagious virus - spread by merely touching the delivery boxes.

Following the emergency order, Adelaide international airport was closed. Other Australian states closed borders for people from South Australia. Weddings and funerals were cancelled, elective surgeries banned. Schools and universities were hurriedly shut, any celebrations scrapped. All pubs and restaurants were shut, compelling them to waste perishable food. Most businesses were closed. Vast traffic jams were seen, particularly across Adelaide, with residents queuing up for hours to get themselves tested. 1.7 million people were thrown into one of the world’s strictest lockdowns. 4000 people were sent into quarantine centres. As is typical of an Australian state, the area of South Australia is more than 1 million sq km. Except for the presence of police, the streets, the city centers were completely barren.

A public health alert was issued urging anyone who had ordered food from Adelaide’s Woodville Pizza Bar over a ten-day period to immediately isolate and seek a coronavirus test. The Chief Public Health Officer was already worried the virus seemed to be reproducing rapidly.

As to the economic damage caused by the lockdown, varying estimates are in millions of Aussie dollars.

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On the third day, Friday, Steven Marshall, the South Australian premier, appeared on TV to give an update. In the press conference, he looked grim, angry, confused and embarrassed.

The facts were simple: a security guard at the Woodville Pizza bar was infected with Covid-19. A worker at hotel Stamford was also infected. When the contact tracers spoke to the hotel worker, he said he had ordered a takeaway pizza from the Woodville Pizza bar. This led to the suspicion that virus can be transmitted simply by touching the pizza box, something unheard of anywhere before. To prevent the pizza pandemic, a strict circuit-breaker lockdown was necessary.

The authorities later found out that the hotel worker had simply lied. He was actually working at the Woodville Pizza bar, his second job. As to why he deliberately lied is not known. Police were not allowed to reveal his name for his own safety, but they revealed it was a 36-year-old male from Spain, on a graduate visa. It is possible he didn’t want the contact tracers to know he was working in two places. His single deliberate lie threw an entire state into lockdown.

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Police issued 337 cautions and 157 fines for breaches of lockdown measures. Paradoxically, the 36-year-old Pizza liar can’t be charged or fined, because lying is not a crime. His electronic devices are confiscated. The Police are scrutinizing them to find out if he can be charged under any crime. Under some pretext, he can be sent back to Spain when his visa expires in December.

A message on the Pizza Bar’s Google review page reads: “Incompetent staff. They forgot my garlic bread. They also put the whole state into lockdown.”

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Following the premier’s TV conference, the lockdown ended. The Indian cricketers have started training with the pink balls. In the coming days, if every South Australian is truthful with the contact tracers, the first cricket test match will happen in Adelaide as scheduled.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 258: How Lockdown Affects Our Memory: Part Final

My last four articles discussed a variety of ways in which our memory can get affected in the lockdown. What can be done to limit the damage?

Firstly, give structure to life. Even in the lockdown, I precisely know the day of the week, because of set routines. In the last fifteen years, Mondays and Thursdays have been my rest days from gym/running. My long runs happen on Sunday mornings. In the last eight months, none of this has changed. (When lockdown was strictest, I ran for two hours around my apartment block, still only on Sunday mornings). Whether you are working or not, establishing routines keeps your body and mind alert.

It is useful to create a calendar for events, however minor. They could be unpleasant ones like filing a tax return, or dull like a passport renewal. Put a date, and since there is not much else, treat them as big events to look forward to.  Making timetables, lists, setting alerts helps create a structured life.

Write a diary every day. Before going to bed, or the next morning. Reflect deliberately on the day. You will always remember yesterday better than the day before. I have been writing a diary for the last 34 years. Though every day in the lockdown feels similar, when I looked back at my March-April entries this year, I found many interesting things I had already forgotten about.

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The world has been facing a “loneliness pandemic” before Covid-19. People can be lonely without being alone. Go out for long walks. One hour in the open air is relatively safe and healthy. Set a weekly day to take your family for a drive around town. Walking or driving, change routes, take unfamiliar streets. Don’t use GPS. If buses are safe, take a bus at random and go till the last stop. Try to absorb and appreciate what you see outside.

Be a tourist in your own town. Usually foreigners and Lonely planet guides know more about your town than you. Use the lockdown to really explore the city you live in. Better still on foot or a bicycle.

Stop online shopping. With precautions, visit a variety of shops and markets.

Many people working from home are sick of video calls. For audio calls, leave your desk, walk outside. In any case, talking on the phone with the laptop screen in front of you is bad multitasking, unethical as well. Usually, the other person figures that you are not listening.

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Unless you are absolutely vulnerable, try to meet people. Physically. It may not be possible to meet the people you want to meet. In that case, meet those who are available. I meet my fellow runners every morning at the local park. They may not be my closest friends, but they are accessible. We share stories, rumours and gossip.

If meeting three-dimensional people is not possible, make a list of thirty people (ideally from outside family/work) you really enjoy talking to. In the calendar, put a date against each name, and call them in that sequence. Set aside an hour to talk daily. Finding an hour is not difficult, you have saved that much on commuting any way. You will be surprised at the level of happiness the call generates.

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Try memorizing poems. Or a series of dialogues from a play or movie you love. In school days, we memorized poems, but stopped after. Lockdown is a great opportunity to try and see how much time we take to memorise a single poem.

Reduce as much stress as is practically possible. Not everything is beyond our control. If your internet/Wi-Fi connection is a source of worry (because four family members must use it every day now), take two or three different connections. It is money well spent. Reduce clutter from your life. Take a break from Facebook for two weeks. Switch off your WhatsApp and see if it really makes a difference to your life.

To preserve memory and sanity, we must reduce the cognitive overload.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 259: How Lockdown Affects Our Memory: Part IV

Earlier, I talked about people in lockdown unable to remember today’s date or day. It happens even to those working online. Why?

We usually follow two systems – a 24-hour clock and a 7-day week. The twenty-four-hour clock is natural, biological, the time earth takes to rotate around its own axis. The seven-day week is completely artificial, man-made. We could have constructed a week with 5 or 10 days as easily. Then we split the 7-day week into weekdays and weekend, to denote work and rest. The two-day weekend is an outcome of another historic crisis, the Great Depression. US president Herbert Hoover, instead of laying off thousands of workers, decided to reduce the working week to a 5 day-40-hour week. (I recommend the world uses the pandemic to reduce the week to 4-day-20-hours. We have an incredibly unequal situation with some of us overworked-from-home, and others out-of-work).

The time system is relatively new. In 1883, the USA had 300 different local sun times. Only the following year, a global 24-hour time zone system was introduced with the adoption of GMT.

Our memories and our life are built around these time systems. As a child, my Sunday mornings were defined by my dressed-up Catholic neighbours leaving for church.

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Psychologists talk about the concept of “time stamping”. A young baby lives in the present. She cries when hungry, she smiles when happy, but she has no concept of the future. As we grow, we start time stamping our biography. Our life memories have associations with public and personal events. Our past connects us to the future. Aristotle described memories not as archives of our lives, but as tools for imagining the future. People who hate their jobs imagine their wonderful post-retirement life.

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As we have often experienced, time is relative. Chatting with your girlfriend/boyfriend for 20 minutes is much shorter than waiting in a queue for 20 minutes.

When we return home from a 10-day exotic holiday, it feels like we spent 30 days out. Because everything was new and exciting. In the lockdown, it is the reverse. Eight months in lockdown feel like 4 months or less. Because all days are like one another. Catherine Loveday, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Westminster compares it to “playing a piano that has no black keys to help you find your way around.”

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Cutting short our future horizon is a great shock for our cognitive ability. For the past several years, by December, I had confirmed my family’s travel plans for the next summer (school holiday), with all bookings done. This November, I know nothing. It’s like a driver on a long journey suddenly reaching a dead end.

Lera Boroditsky, a researcher says roughly half of us see the future coming towards us, while we are static. The other half sees themselves moving towards the future. To find out which group you belong to she asks a simple question: “Next Wednesday’s meeting has been moved forward two days. What day is the Wednesday’s meeting now?”

The static lot, who wait for the future to come towards them, answer “Monday”. Those moving towards the future answer “Friday”. The study found the answer may defer based on the context. In airport departures, bored and waiting, people tended to answer “Monday” more, while in arrivals, moving and active, people answered “Friday” more often. Psychologists wonder if in the lockdown, many of us will become Monday people waiting for the future to come to us.

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Time is an intrinsic part of our cognition. Losing a sense of time can result in losing a sense of self. Our personal identity is built over time, the fourth dimension if you like. We have developed a time structure to stamp our past and future. Without structure, people can go crazy.

Tomorrow, in the final chapter on “Memory”, I will discuss the possible remedies to minimize the damage, to keep ourselves sane.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 260: How Lockdown Affects Our Memory: Part III

Psychologists research something or the other all the time. Once the pandemic is over, there will be a torrent of studies comparing our memories before and after the pandemic. For the time being, in a survey conducted by the Alzheimer’s Society, half of relatives said their loved ones’ memories had gotten worse since they went into isolation. At the other end is a species possessing HSAM (Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory).  They can recall the weather on a particular day eight years ago, what they were wearing, what they ate and whom they met on that day. The monotony of quarantine is dulling their recall faculty as well.

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Episodic memory is our memory of every day events. Those working at a corporate office know its social club aspect. We talk to the family at home, colleagues at the office, friends outside, and people or strangers at parties. Episodic recall starts with something like ‘… you know what happened yesterday….’

My father who is 86 years old meets his friends at a local park every morning. In the evening, he has a drinking club with members’ ages ranging from 25 to 86. In between, he has us, his family. He has been telling stories and anecdotes his entire life. His memory is fantastic, because he has told every story hundreds of times. Last year, I wrote an article describing his chatting groups. It appears prescient now, with me explaining why virtual meetings can never replace real conversations.   

In 2009, as an experiment I played a lead role in a full-length amateur play. I was not looking for a new career. I was merely curious to know how actors remember the entire script. After rehearsing it for two months, I didn’t miss a single line.

Our episodic memory is about recalling a specific event or experience. Some may be better, some not so good, but all of us are inherently storytellers. Now, with no events, no birthday parties, no office gatherings; there are no episodes, no stories. Making new memories is one problem. And in isolation, there is no new person we can tell the story to. When theatre actors don’t perform in a certain play, the dialogue memory starts decaying.

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Flashbulb memory talks about a memory of an emotionally charged moment. It could be of a public event such as the 9/11 terrorist attack. We remember who gave us the news first, the setting, and most of our activities on that day. Death of somebody close is always emotionally charged and creates flashbulbs. Though we are not Federer or Nadal, each of us has our moments of triumph in life. We remember them vividly. The setting, people around us, the way we smiled. It can be a photo or a short video.

I don’t think in a lockdown and in-home isolation, flashbulb photography happens. You need ambience, people around, and a supercharged emotion. I can’t recall a single flashbulb memory from skype or zoom.

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In another research, scientists found we gossip for 52 minutes every day - mainly talking about someone who is not present. The scientific study had attached to the participants portable recording devices (with permission), and later analyzed the conversations. It was not all negative, much of it was non-judgmental chitchat.

It is human to gossip. A and B can talk about C in his absence, but equally A and C can talk about B, and B and C about A behind their backs. Gossip is a psychological need, and it is actually healthy to spend those lovely 52 minutes every day.

That is another lockdown casualty. On Zoom, you will not gossip about your boss, because the boss may have access to your chat. Gossip requires privacy and confidentiality. Virtual platforms don’t offer either.

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Memory is a vast ocean. More on it tomorrow.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 261: How Lockdown Affects Our Memory: Part II

Many of us have been exposed to the concept of “short-term memory” through games or experiments. Our short-term memory can usually retain around five to seven things at a time. During the lockdown, I have been doing the groceries for my parents. Over the phone, as my mother’s list extends beyond five items, I start noting them down. I don’t want to tax my brain. I don’t think anyone tries to remember ten-digit mobile numbers anymore. They are too long.

An Australian psychologist John Sweller had developed the Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), which may explain why our minds and memory can be in a mess during pandemic times. When we are dealing with a task or working on a problem, particularly an unfamiliar one, we depend on our “working memory”. Working memory has limited capacity. When you are an expert at a certain task, most of what you need to know is stored in the long-term memory, and you can complete the task on auto-pilot. For a new or unfamiliar task, you depend on your working memory.

As the lockdown began, our part-time maid stopped visiting our house. My wife, daughter and I split her tasks amongst us. Putting up the washing to dry on ceiling-high rods became my responsibility. (This skill doesn’t require a doctorate.) In the first few weeks, I realized that my running dry-fit clothes were slipping from the aluminum rod. Like a circus artist, sometimes I had to try many times before hanging a slippery t-shirt. I was using my working memory, taking an extra cognitive load. Our semi-literate maid is an expert, and her hands do the job without taxing her brain.

Pandemic plays havoc on our mental function by taking us out of our auto-pilot zone. Women are great at multi-tasking. With a dish in the microwave, clothes in the washing machine, a woman may quickly add a few likes on FB, watch a WhatsApp video and giggle, and keep an eye on the TV. Now suddenly her two children are attending school on two laptops. They must be fed at lunchtime. Instead of escaping to the office, she has to worry about the planned Zoom call, and wonder if the Wi-Fi, laptop and Zoom audio will all work as required. All these routines are a great burden on the limited mind capacity, causing utter exhaustion. In many activities, we are like novices, not experts.

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Research has shown that anxiety and stress further reduce the working memory capacity. A bright student performing badly due to exam nerves is a good example. Pilot of a passenger plane, and pilot of a military fighter plane share the same basic technical competencies. But in a war zone, the fighter pilot is super alert and under constant pressure.  

In the pandemic, we are like that fighter plane pilot.

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We usually can cope up with a new situation, develop expertise, reduce load on the working memory. I can now hang clothes proficiently. But the novel pandemic disruptions are unstoppable.

Earlier, when leaving the house, we carried a wallet/purse, handkerchief, house keys, car key, mobile. In most cases, this was a matter of reflex with no load on our memory. Now we have to carry a mask and wear it. Some carry a sanitizer bottle. By the time we practiced and remembered to wash surfaces, door handles, vegetables, coins; it transpired the virus may be transmitted through air in badly ventilated enclosures. It is a strain on our memory to forbid our reflexes to shake hands or hug.

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It is important to be aware of the activities and anxiety that are loading our limited cognitive capacity.  I will discuss in another part the remedial strategies to reduce that burden.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 262: How Lockdown Affects Our Memory: Part I

In the last few months, some of my friends have wondered if their memory is getting worse. Talking about myself, I can’t confidently say the date unless I check it. In the B.C. (before coronavirus) era, I was good at knowing today’s date precisely. On the other hand, I still know the day of the week exactly. (Later this week, I will explain why.) Many people struggle when asked: What’s the day today? This week, I will try to list the different ways in which our memory can get affected in the lockdown and why. 

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Places play a big role in our memory. If you visit your school after many years, and take a walk inside, memories will come flooding in. Just as if those files were lying dormant in your brain, reactivated by the visit.

I had a strange experience in my twenties. I was living and working in Moscow. Only landlines existed then, with six-digit phone numbers in Bombay, and seven-digit numbers in Moscow. I was proud of my memory, and never wrote down a single number. Though not a switchboard receptionist, I easily remembered more than a hundred numbers each in Bombay and Moscow. International calls were very expensive. One year when calling became cheap following the Rouble’s collapse, I decided to call my Indian friends from Moscow. But as I started to dial with the receiver in hand, I was fumbling. Other than my parents’, I had difficulty recalling most numbers. However, when I returned to Bombay, I could recall all Bombay numbers with precision. Now the Moscow numbers had become foggy.

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In the last nine months, I have slept every night in the same house, in the same bed. It must be a personal record of some kind. Cognitive psychologists talk about the lack of cues to aid our memory. If you work in an office, there is the journey from the house. Whether you drive or use public transport, there is a change of scenery. The lift, garage, car, metro, trees on the street, building security gate, coffee machine in the office, all of them are daily milestones. I am not even talking of the people, the enormous number of strangers you come across in public transport, or while walking on the street. You may think of the commute to office and back as hell, but what it does is to train your memory all the time. With each place, some memory files are getting added to your brain. Your brain absorbs the background colours, the giant hoardings, the expressions of fellow travellers. Even when you know the names of all stations on your underground line, every time you travel, the names get reinforced in your memory.

Now, people working from home are in one place. The desk, the chair, and the computer screen. Little wonder the location-related memory power is inactive. The brain is not expanding.  

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Our brains have a seahorse-shaped component called the Hippocampus. (In fact, that’s the Greek word for seahorse). Thanks to the Hippocampus, we are able to find our way back home when we go out. This spatial ability, the skill to navigate is a critical memory function.

Some veteran London Black Taxi drivers boast of knowing every small lane in London. To verify this, one study actually invited them and scanned their brains. Without fail, all those drivers had much larger hippocampi compared to the average Londoner. People who for convenience use GPS or similar SatNav don’t allow their hippocampi to expand.

In one research neuroscientists found that if people’s lives become more confined and repetitive as they age, their use of the hippocampus decreases. The study didn’t see the current pandemic coming, but its conclusion is applicable to all of us, irrespective of age. In the lockdown, our use of the hippocampus is decreasing.

More on the subject tomorrow.

Ravi