Corona Daily 281: This is not a Drill. You are Under Attack.

This week, ransomware hackers started their attacks on American hospitals.

Wiser after the 2016 experience, the USA was worried about hackers attacking the November elections. Trickbot is a computer virus, popular with top class hackers. The attacker can encrypt the files, corrupt or lock the data, stop the functioning of the computers. Then the hacker asks for a ransom to restore access. This can be done to disrupt elections, distort or delay results.

Keeping that in mind, in September, Microsoft started disabling Trickbot servers. To its surprise, Microsoft found the US cyber command doing the same. (The two could have coordinated and made the operation more efficient). Microsoft said more than 90% Trickbot servers were taken offline.

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This was like building a fence so as to prevent a burglar from entering your house. Unfortunately, when you build a fence it hides the burglar on the other side. By disabling the Trickbot servers, the cyber-detectives were no longer able to detect the activity of the hackers. Not known if the hackers behaved like wounded animals, and attacked the hospitals in retaliation. Or they may be simply too desperate. There are limits to how low terrorists or crooks can go. Many hijackers let women and children go before holding men hostage. Reportedly, in March, there was a “gentleman’s agreement” among hackers not to attack hospitals during the pandemic. That promise was broken this week.

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Healthcare hardware like MRI machines, ventilators, microscopes are actually computers. Like our laptops, they come with software that needs to be supported, updated and protected. Inertia makes many hospitals continue with old software. That makes machines vulnerable to hackers’ attacks. Such medical devices are dangerous for the patients. In September, a ransomware attack on a German hospital resulted in the death of a woman seeking emergency treatment.

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As usual, Russian hackers are named as the prime suspects.

Earlier this month, UK confirmed the Russian attempts to disrupt the 2018 winter Olympics as well as the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The alleged organizer was GRU unit 74455. GRU is Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency. On Monday, 19 October, USA indicted six Russian military intelligence officers for the Olympic plan as well as attacking a Pennsylvania hospital with the “NotPetya” malware. Colloquially known as the “Sandworm team”, the GRU hackers work from “the Tower”, the GRU head office in Moscow.

The US justice department in its 50-page indictment estimated the total worldwide damage by “NotPetya” to be more than $10 billion, inflicted on 300+ victims.

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This week’s affected hospitals have not been named by the US government officially. However, Sonoma valley hospital (California), two hospitals of St Lawrence Health system (New York) and Sky Lakes medical center (Oregon) announced they were crippled by the cyberattacks. Computer systems had to be shut down, ambulances diverted, surgeries delayed and several medical records no longer available.

Hold security, a company that tracks online criminals, reports one hacker saying “we expect panic” in Russian. Reportedly, the ransom rates have gone much higher, in one case more than $5 million in bitcoins. (My article on bitcoins, if you don’t know what it means). Alex Holden, the founder of Hold security said hackers use the traditional Russian formula of charging 10% of a victim’s annual revenue. (In the old days, that percentage was donated to the church.)

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Reports say the hackers plan to attack hundreds of American hospitals, while America is busy with elections and their aftermath. Unless urgent countermeasures are taken, the hospitals will not know which virus to deal with.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 282: Proposition 20 Part II

The “Yes” campaign focuses on the 22 crimes that escaped being classified as “felonies” in the early propositions. Proposition 20 can now fix them, and ensure the perpetrators are given the sentences they deserve. The theft threshold is proposed to be brought down to $250, thereby widening the net to catch felons. The bill allows collection of DNA. Repeat offenders can now be classified as felons. The proposition is devised by the Law enforcement/police authorities, sponsored by retail chains, and supported by the Republican party.

The “No” campaign calls it regressive. Money will be diverted from education and rehabilitation into wasteful prison spending. Making $250 theft a felony would make California the most draconian state in America. Teenagers, blacks, Latinos and the poor will be locked up for years. Not surprisingly, the civil liberties union, league of women voters and the Democratic party is against the proposition.

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As a neutral observer, I will offer my perspective.

What can be wrong in being tough on crime? Should someone stealing your wallet or car go unpunished? Not at all. But the punishment should always be in line with how civililised we are.

Saudi Arabia amputates a thief’s right hand. Highway robbers, if caught and not executed, may get their hands and legs amputated. Why don’t we support such initiatives? Because we would like to be civilized, certainly far more civilized than Saudi Arabia. Sentences must be proportional to the crime. Depending on the circumstances, the criminal must have a possibility of rehabilitation.

If starving or stealing food is the only choice a person has, it may be the government’s crime. Particularly in pandemic times, it is the governments’ responsibility to make sure people don’t have to steal food. If a homeless person is sleeping on the pavement, there is no moral ground to imprison him, simply because the law says it. In England, until 2012, squatting (encroaching and living in a vacant house) was not a crime. If I am not mistaken, even today, a homeless family in England can squat in vacant commercial property, it’s not a crime. Such humane measures go back to the post World War catastrophe. A pandemic may create similar situations.

The state of Seattle is drafting a bill that makes hunger or homelessness a defence, by adding it to the “duress” law. Sometimes, circumstances compel a person to commit a crime. Under the existing laws of California, the person in jail will have a facility to appeal to the parole board for an early release. The parole board listens to each case and decides whether it is worth releasing the prisoner early. Now proposition 20 wants to take this right of appeal away. Felons, irrespective of circumstances and conduct, would languish in overcrowded prisons for years, making their rehabilitation unlikely.

Harsh sentences don’t eliminate crimes. Even in countries that allow capital punishment, rapes and murders don’t stop. A “tough on crime” mentality gradually makes the state a police state. In the name of safety; surveillance, DNA collection, police brutalities become commonplace. Prisons become concentration camps.

If the past bills were badly drafted (allowing 22 felony crimes to escape), the state of California should re-legislate them. What the law enforcement authorities have done is to take that loophole, and bundle it with several other issues such as cancelling parole, collecting DNA. This is not the job of a voter, but of the legislative organ. Hopefully, California will say no to proposition 20. At any time, it is a wrong initiative. More so during a pandemic.

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Ironically, on the same day the American voters will seal the fate of America’s best-known, highest-ranking criminal. His case shows that America’s desire to become ‘tough on crime’ is selective and not equitable.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 283: Proposition 20

In pandemic times, what do you do when a hungry man orders a meal at a café, and after finishing it, runs away without paying the bill? Or a couple who steal baby diapers from the supermarket? Or a family evicted for not paying the rent breaks in into a vacant house, and lives there illegally? How do you classify their crimes? How long should their sentences be? These are not hypothetical questions for a philosophy student. On Saturday, residents of California are required to vote on them.

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The world knows about the Trump-Biden election. But that is one among many. On Saturday, 3 November, American citizens in California are asked to vote 16 times. To be precise, four of them are elections. From among the choices, the Californian voters will vote for: 1. President 2. House of representatives 3. State assembly and 4. Senate. In addition, they will answer 12 referendum questions, called propositions 14-25. Each proposition, as a rule, requires a yes/no answer. Today, I will talk only about proposition 20.

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The supporters of Proposition 20 call it the “Reducing Crime and Keeping California Safe Act”.

Technically, thefts are classified into misdemeanors and felonies. Misdemeanors are non-violent, less serious. The amount stolen also plays a part. Stealing diapers from the shop would be a misdemeanor. Felony is a more serious crime, and accordingly gets a longer sentence.

USA has a legal distinction between prisons and jails. A prison, usually operated by a state or the federal government, holds people for longer periods of time, sometimes for years. A jail is operated by a local government, and holds people for a shorter duration. Jails host people with short sentences, as well as detain accused before trial or conviction. Thieves convicted of misdemeanor would normally land in jails.

Proposition 20, the tough-on-crime bill, wants to elevate certain non-violent thefts, currently misdemeanors, to be charged as felonies, no matter how little was stolen. It also creates two new crimes – “serial theft” and “organized retail theft”, that could be charged as felonies, and punished with imprisonment up to three years.  

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California, America’s most populous state, has overcrowded prisons. Ten years ago, the US Supreme Court expressed its displeasure at the way prisoners were treated in California. Prisons held nearly twice the maximum capacity. Some inmates were placed in “telephone-booth size cages without toilets”. A day wouldn’t pass without a prisoner dying in a Californian jail. The enraged Supreme Court asked the state to find ways to reduce the prison population, or the Court would be forced to order release of a certain number, the Court threatened.

The reforms began with change in legislation in 2011, called “realignment”. It shifted the responsibility for non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual offenders from state prisons to local jails. This was the first building block for later reforms.

Proposition 47 (2014) converted many felonies into misdemeanors. For drug possession or shoplifting below $900, one could no longer be a felon. A new measure allowed the inmates to apply for rehabilitative programs, and also request the parole board to release them early. The release was not guaranteed, but the parole board could examine the context and the prisoner’s conduct. This enabled thousands to cut short their sentences.

Another proposition, Proposition 57 (2016) changed the state constitution and made concessions to inmates convicted of non-violent felonies.

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Proposal 20 (2020) is in essence a bill to reverse the work done in the past ten years on prison reforms in California. Tomorrow, I will present views of the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ campaigns.

Ravi

 

Corona Daily 284: The Altered Spirit of Halloween

Halloween 2020 was expected to be a rare event. This year, 31 October falls on a Saturday and on a full moon day. Not just a full moon, but a blue moon, meaning the second full moon in the same month. (1 October was also a full moon day). On Halloween night, most countries which celebrate it will end the daylight-saving time to usher in winter. This once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence had elated the tourism and confectionary industry, until the pandemic began.

This ancient Celtic festival, coming from around Ireland and Scotland, is now hijacked and super-commercialized by the USA. Last few years, American consumers have been annually spending nearly $9 billion on Halloween. Social media – Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter- has fueled the spending. In 2019, Americans spent $3.2 on costumes, $2.6 billion on candy, $2.7 billion on decorations and $390 million on greeting cards.

The top three Halloween costumes worn by children were the Princess, Superhero and Spiderman. Adults preferred to dress as witches, vampires and superheroes. Thirty million people dressed up their pets, the preference being a pumpkin costume, a hot dog and superhero.

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The data for 2020 will be very different. The second coronavirus wave, as expected, is gripping North America and Europe. CDC has issued guidelines. Carving and displaying pumpkins is fine. Parents can organize a scavenger hunt in the house or garden. A virtual costume contest is safe. A horror movie night can be spent with your own family or virtually with friends. Houses can be decorated with spooky scenes.

“Trick or treat”, an annual ritual where kids in costumes go from door to door asking for food or money (treat) or threatening a prank (trick) will have to be diluted or cancelled. Masks, gloves, sanitisers are recommended. Some people plan to leave the candy baskets outside to avoid contact. Naively, kids are expected not to touch the candies until they return home and wash hands with soap. Of course, no screaming indoor parties please.

Traditional Halloween parades are cancelled. In some towns, drive-in movie theatres will show safe-to-watch-from-cars horror films. At home, you can rent the latest horror films on Amazon prime, Netflix or Hulu. Or listen to horror podcasts around midnight. The Harvard global health institute has created a colour coded map that tells you how safe it is to celebrate Halloween in your locality.

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Halloween is the candy industry’s biggest selling season, followed by Christmas, Easter and Valentine’s. This year, Hershey has tied up with Google search. Google is selling them data that allows Hershey to send targeted ads. For example, if a person google searches business hours for a store nearby, or browses for vacation ideas, Hershey knows her family is likely to go out. Those people intending to go out will be shown ads of masked kids and adults going door-to-door for candy. Other people who are browsing say horror films on Netflix are likely to stay home. Hershey shows them clips of people eating KitKat in the living rooms. Hershey has increased digital media spending by 160% over last year, with e-commerce shoppers being their prime target.

Hershey has also created a creepy rolling robotic door. These singular doors will traverse through American neighborhoods via remote control and bring candies to the doorstep. The child simply has to say trick or treat. The door then dispenses king size Reese’s Peanut butter cups. This hands-free device tries to keep the Halloween tradition alive.

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Every year, those who celebrate Halloween know the theatrical nature of the celebrations. Mature children know that the thrill they seek is not real.

This is the first time when hundreds of thousands will feel a real sense of fear and unease during the Halloween celebrations.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 285: They Don’t Want to be Heroes

Few professions are as dominated by women as nursing. As a result, nursing remains underpaid, underappreciated and little protected. Philippines is a major provider of nurses worldwide. USA has about 150,000 Filipino nurses. In California, every fifth nurse is a Filipino. In April, Philippines banned its nurses from travelling abroad. Seven nurses with work visas to the UK were deplaned before take-off.

Health secretary Duque said the government was appealing to the nurses’ sense of nation, sense of people and sense of service.

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A Filipino nurse earns $5000 a month in the USA, $2000 tax free in the Middle East. Germany gives them $2800 plus free language training, and they are unionised. Even in war zones like Yemen, nurses get free lodging and insurance, allowing them to save most of their salary. Abroad, the nurses are not required to do any non-professional work like sweeping floors. Over the years, most nurses are able to buy a house and a car for their families.

Philippines Department of Heath offers a starting salary of $650 a month. This year it pays an additional $10 per day as Covid-19 hazard allowance. Private nurses make as little as $100 a month. The shortages make the nursing staff work up to 36 hours per shift. Protective gears are in shortage, nurses can’t get tested regularly. Hospital beds are not reserved when they get sick. Inside Philippines and abroad, most nurses are concentrated in bedside and critical care – the exact opposite of social distancing. Filipino health workers have fallen victims to covid-19 at home and abroad. They would still prefer to die abroad, just as they prefer to live abroad.

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As per WHO, the world has under 28 million nurses, at least six million fewer than it needs. Working conditions in the Philippines have made matters worse. Earlier, hospitals established volunteer positions with no pay. Later, nurses were paid a nominal stipend under schemes called “in-hospital training programmes”. Most nurses who serve abroad have spent the first two mandatory years working in the Philippines. Only about 20% of the annual 100,000 nursing graduates find jobs abroad. Others look at the conditions and pay, and prefer to work in call centres or hotels instead.

“I have served my country already.” Said one of the nurses stopped from going abroad. “I don’t want to be a hero again. I am looking out for the future of my children.”

The Filipino nurses not allowed to go abroad are called the “priso-nurses”.

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To understand why Filipino nurses are such a major force in the USA, we must go back to 1898, the year in which America colonized the Philippines. Wars being a regular feature of life, America wished to create a cheap, docile class of nurses in large numbers. They opened nursing schools where American teachers taught western medical practices to Filipino students. English was taught along with nursing training. The program was euphemistically called the ‘benevolent assimilation.’

Filipino nurses looked after American soldiers during the two World Wars. But after 1946, when Philippines became independent, America began giving the nurses non-immigrant visas. They could work for years, without becoming citizens. This changed in 1965, when immigration policy became softer. Filipino nurses were still given the most unpleasant jobs in health care, but now they could raise their families in the USA. Marcos, the Filipino dictator in the 1980s started looking at them as an “export product”. Indeed, in 2019, Filipinos abroad sent $35 billion back home, making it the world’s fourth largest recipient of overseas remittances. A majority of the 13000 nurses who leave Philippines every year to work abroad go to the USA.

One hopes USA and the other countries will one day appreciate the unsung heroes of the pandemic.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 286: Getting Airline Refunds in Covid Times

Many of my friends, great planners, are still carrying air tickets for their well-planned holidays that never happened. Some have spent so much time on phone calls to the airlines, they could have travelled the world in that time. By May 2020, US airlines owed travelers $10 billion. Complaints went up by 900%, most of them about refunds. In a large customer satisfaction survey, Ryanair scored -89% and Virgin Atlantic -88%.

For those still waiting for a refund, here are some tips.

First, during the pandemic, always insist on a refund, not a voucher. If the airline goes bankrupt, the voucher may become garbage. If the airlines cancelled your flight, rather than you cancelling it, you are in a better position. You should try to recover the money in any case.

Second, never feel sorry for the airlines. You are a person; your loss is a genuine personal loss. An airline is abstract. If you feel crazily charitable, first claim the refund, then donate it to a pilot friend who has lost his job.

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The USA offers protection to all passengers scheduled to leave or arrive at a US airport. If you have such a ticket, send an email giving your reservation number to the airline’s customer service saying you will be filing a complaint with the Department of Transportation (DoT). This usually brings you to the front of the queue.

Second step is to make good your threat. File a complaint with the DoT. DoT will send you a reply with a cc marked to the airline. From that moment, the airline must acknowledge the complaint within 30 days, and answer it in 60 days. That’s the law in the USA.

Similar procedures exist in Europe. The European commission offers much better protection for passengers.

The third step is to send emails to the senior management of the airline. The airline’s website will usually give you some names. A Google search will produce many more email addresses. It will still take less time than calling the airline and getting trapped in a lengthy musical loop. Airlines’ senior management usually have assistants. Bureaucracy always rewards the aggressive complainants, and tries to corruptly pocket the money of the lazy lot.

Fourth, if you paid with a credit card, file a claim with your credit card company. Whenever you pay by credit card, you are expected to receive the product or service in exchange. When you don’t, the credit card company can reverse the entry, and then pursue the airline. Visa or Mastercard will be more effective in recovering the money, and even if they don’t, they can afford to lose it more than you can.

Fifth, take your complaint to social media. Make a case out of it, and make it viral on WhatsApp, Facebook. One passenger managed to get a refund from British Airways this way, so anything is possible.

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Most of these steps are valid for flights starting or ending in North America or Europe.

Indian Supreme Court on 1 October has issued an order making Airlines and others liable to refund the money to passengers. If your travel agent has received the money from the airline, then by the court order, he is obliged to give it to you immediately.

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Even if you hold a voucher, follow all the steps above insisting on a cash refund. You may just be lucky.

If you couldn’t travel on an Air China or Ethiopian airlines because of the lockdown, don’t waste your time. Just consider yourself lucky your flight was cancelled.

Ravi   

Corona Daily 287: Please Answer the Call

By now, you probably know contact tracing is an effective tool to check the spread of the virus. A person testing positive gets a phone call, is asked about his movements, and people he came in “close contact” with. To make life easier, America’s CDC (Centers for Disease Control) had defined a close contact as anyone within 6 feet of an infected person for 15 minutes or more. If you had the misfortune of qualifying as a close contact, you must quarantine yourself.  South Korea and China very effectively used the test-trace-quarantine mechanism.

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Billings Public Schools belong to the largest school district of Montana. The administrators devised a brilliant, innovative scheme. In every classroom, the teachers started shuffling the students every 14 minutes. Greg Upham, the superintendent of the 16500-student district said the movement idea was not intended to “game the system” (which meant it was). Kelly Hornby, principal of Billings West High school, wrote an email to the staff saying moving students around every few minutes and then returning them to their original desks would help dissipate airborne droplets containing the coronavirus, to the point “where the risk of being contaminated is greatly reduced.”

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The scientists at CDC were understandably traumatized on reading the reports. Schools are imparting education, what about common sense?

This week, on 21 October, CDC issued amended guidance. Now a “close contact” is someone within 6 feet for a total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period. A 20-year old prison employee who had multiple brief interactions with prisoners before infecting them was offered as the official reason. But I suspect the clever ploy devised by the school principals was the key trigger.

Under the new definition co-workers who spend a few minutes in the elevator, at a water cooler, then at lunch will qualify for quarantine as long as they spent a total of 15 minutes with an infected colleague during the working day.

You would think this will now improve the contact tracing in the USA. No chance. None of these regulations have any relevance. Why?

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On my last trip to the USA, my family had flown in to San Francisco from Toronto. One of our suitcases didn’t arrive. I wanted to warn my waiting relatives we would get delayed. Being an educated Indian, I have more than forty relatives in the Bay area. Meticulously, I was carrying all the phone numbers. Since our bag was misplaced, the airline kindly allowed me to use their phone. I tried each number in the list. Not a single person answered. Prima facie, it looked like a conspiracy or prank at best. Finally, when I confronted my uncle who met us, he said: “In America, we never answer unknown numbers.”

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Robocalls, phone calls made in millions by computer programs, are a real menace in America. In 2019, Americans received 58.5 billion robocalls. They try to steal the caller’s information, passwords, identity. The more innocent calls may advertise a product or ask a person to vote for Trump. Since March, scammers are preying on pandemic fears, offering bogus testing or covid information. In September alone, 3.8 billion calls were made, which is an average 12 calls per person per day.

To combat this, the state of Louisiana sends letters by snail mail. (By the time the correspondence is over half of Louisiana is infected).  Washington residents who feel suspicious about the contact tracing call are asked to visit the nearest police station, and have an officer take a detailed report. (The authorities forget they may be sending an infected person to the police station).

Till today, more than 230,000 Americans have lost lives to Covid-19. The virus of spam and fishing calls has greatly contributed to that number.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 288: The Mysterious Myss Keta

She has been described as the mysterious Queen of Milan’s nightlife. An Italian rapper, playing electronic music, with a punk attitude and platinum hair; she is known simply as Myss Keta. Nothing more is known about her. Not her age, real name, or biography. All sorts of urban legends exist – that she grew up in Columbia, used drugs, travelled with Sophia Loren in Courmayeur, and was Salvador Dali’s lover. In her interviews, Myss Keta doesn’t deny any of the rumours though all of them sound patently fictitious.

How does the rapper’s identity remain disguised? Because nobody has ever seen her uncovered face. In 2013, the persona of Myss Keta took birth in Milan, with the release of her song: Milano, Sushi & Coca. She wore a mask during the performance. After the first few concerts, her group decided to stick with the disguise. In the last ten years, she has never left her house without covering her face with a mask or a veil.

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She says she feels freer and powerful performing with her face covered. In fact, wearing a veil or a burqa which she does for a few numbers, she finds her spirit completely liberated. Everyone these days wants to show their face, on social media, in video calls. Selfies. Selfies. Selfies. The world is obsessed with self-face-displaying. Myss Keta’s approach is exactly the opposite. Call it a protest if you like. An anti-selfie performer.

She says she didn’t invent this idea. The Greek theatre was the inspiration. In ancient times, many characters in Greek plays wore face coverings. That immediately allowed them to immerse into the character. And the audience found it easier to attach themselves to the characters rather than the performers.

I don’t think there is anything great about Myss Keta’s music or performances. But I liked her thought about faceless performances. I wonder if stage fright is reduced if a performer’s face is fully covered. It is possible for a writer to use a pseudonym and remain unknown for years. Myss Keta deserves admiration for keeping her identity hidden for so long.

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Myss Keta’s house is a museum of masks. Surgical. Cloth. Vinyl. Silk. Metal. Designer masks.

Milan was the hardest hit Italian city when the pandemic began. People were dying in hundreds every day. Masks were in shortage. Myss Keta provided her needy friends with as many masks as she could.

The pandemic has altered her life in two ways. One good and one not so good.

Constant use of sunglasses and a mask was her identity. Milan’s clubbing community knew her as such. In the clubs where she performed, some of her loyal fans wore masks. But otherwise, on the roads, she was recognizable instantly. That is the reason she needed to be very careful when leaving the house. She didn’t wish to show her face, neither did she want people to recognize and accost her.

For the first time, she can now walk freely around Milan. There are hundreds of girls wearing sunglasses and masks. She is just one among the crowd now. That is the positive impact of the coronavirus.

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On the other hand, the universality of masks has crushed her singular identity. She doesn’t think the audience would appreciate her performances any more.

The mysterious Diva of the Milan nightlife is currently busy drawing plans to create a new identity for herself.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 289: The Gym Rebellion

Outside of UK, the older generation associates Liverpool with Beatles, and the younger with football.  The English people, particularly those living in the Liverpool region, know its never-give-up fighting spirit.

Trying to balance the contradictory goals of containing the virus, and protecting the jobs (eat out to help out), England has attracted the second wave. Alarmed, Boris Johnson issued more rules and restrictions on 12 October. Depending on the level of infection, England is now divided into three tiers – medium alert level, high alert level and very high alert level.

Liverpool was the first place to be put in the most severe tier- the very high alert level. That means people in different houses can no longer meet. Pubs should close unless they serve meals. Creative English people have found a bypass by ordering a slice of pizza or a small dessert, keeping it on the table, and keeping on drinking. There is no standard definition of meals.

The other diktat from Westminster was to close all the gyms in Liverpool.  Unlike USA or India, UK charges fines for breaking rules. Now, not wearing face masks will attract £200 the first time. Fines keep doubling for subsequent offences. If you exclude Boris Johnson, British people believe in the rule of law.

The three-tier system is clearly harsher for the North of England. (Johnson and his cabinet lives in the South). With Brexit, Johnson has managed to break UK away from Europe. Through extreme populism resulting into no deal, he will facilitate the loss of Northern Ireland and Scotland in the next few years. His divisive mind seems to have found North-South of England as the new target.

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Liverpool was ordered to shut down all its gyms. But Lancashire, a few miles away, also in the very high alert tier, was allowed to keep them open. All cities in a tier were equal, but Lancashire was more equal than Liverpool.

The gyms in Liverpool decided not to close. On 14 October, an unnamed member of the public (they exist in every place) called the police and complained about a gym being open, illegally. At 08.35 am, eight police officers carrying firearms entered the Body Tech Fitness Gym. Being English, they were civil. They asked the owner to close the gym immediately, or they would charge a £1000 fine.

A lot of members were training, some running on treadmills. The owner refused to stop their exercise. The police issued a £1000 fine. They would return after three hours, and fine £2000 if the gym was still open. £4000 six hours later.

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An online petition was signed by 400,000 people. (Probably the number of gymgoers in the region). A GoFundMe page was started to help gyms pay the fine. It collected £50000 in one day. Liverpool’s mayor Joe Anderson protested against the closure of gyms. To complicate his life further, on 16 October, the mayor’s brother died of covid-19.

PureGym, UK’s biggest gym chain with seven gyms in Liverpool, decided to take legal action against the government.

A letter was sent directly to Boris Johnson, asking him politely to produce scientific evidence as to why gyms in Liverpool should be shut. In fact, they were essential to keep people fit, fight obesity and improve mental health. Gyms, anyway, were in a bad financial state, having closed for four months during the national lockdown.

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Boris Johnson and his gang discussed the letter, scratched their heads to find a rationale to shut gyms only in Liverpool, and finally gave in.

From today, all Liverpool gyms will be open legally. The fine charged will be reversed, and the money raised donated to a charity. The rebellion succeeded.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 290: Disease X

In 2009, a project named PREDICT was launched. Its main purpose was to identify the sources of zoonotic diseases, by studying different places and practices. Wildlife animals should be in the wild. When they come in contact with human beings, it leads to the risk of a deadly pathogen. For ten years, the PREDICT consortium studied biology and the behavior of animals and humans to predict the risk of a spillover of a virus from the animal kingdom into the human race. It was a small but critical health security operation that cost only $200 million over ten years.  In September 2019, the fieldwork stopped, because the Trump administration announced it doesn’t wish to run the project any more. The timing of closing PREDICT was so spooky, no good fiction writer would include such an event in his novel.

But this was only part of the pattern. World Health Organisation (WHO) has been publishing “Pandemic Preparedness plans” each year. After the start of the pandemic, Trump accused it of being corrupt and in China’s clutches. On 7 July, 2020, the Trump administration formally notified the USA was withdrawing from the WHO.

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Why is the USA so important in the world order? For one, it was considered to be the world’s best prepared nation to face a pandemic. It has the monetary and military power, but also a large pool of great scientists. Most international organisations including the UN and WHO have been mainly financed by the USA. As a de facto leader of the world, other nations look at it for guidance in matters such as a global pandemic. With its super-surveillance ability, USA is expected to be the first to learn about a risky virus.

Some people feel it was unfortunate Trump happened to be the US president precisely at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. The anti-science Trump might have managed to convert SARS or Ebola into global pandemics. A critical element of the strategy is to nip the pandemic risk in the bud. The USA knew the gravity of the novel coronavirus in the first week of January. And yet, in the last week of February, Trump was in India gloating in front of 100,000 people. This month, a detailed post-mortem report has been published about how things managed to go so wrong for the best prepared nation.

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The concern is not about Trump, though. Yes, his one-man bullying has exposed big holes in America’s checks and balances. USA is the leader of the free world, or I should say a ‘relatively free world’. With America first or some similar nonsense slogans, the risk is moving that leadership mantle to China. But Trump is likely to be replaced soon, USA will restore its membership of WHO, and the next presidents will hopefully act as adults. The concern is different.

In Feb. 2018, a WHO panel had created a list of pandemic-scale disease threats: Ebola, SARS, Zika… Disease X. That disease X has got a name now: Covid-19.

The global population growth, deforestation, agriculture and mining activities encroaching into animal habitats now make the risk of zoonotic diseases inevitable. It doesn’t have to happen in a Chinese wet market. Man’s incessant encroachment in wildlife is predicted to make viruses jumping from animals to humans a frequent event.

The same WHO list included disease Y and disease Z. That is the reason the world needs to closely study all pandemic preparedness plans. Post-mortem of the current pandemic will not be enough.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 291: The Crisis That Came Out of Nowhere

“The crisis is an unforeseen problem that came out of nowhere.” (Trump on 6 March). “We’re having to fix a problem that, four weeks ago, nobody ever thought would be a problem.” (Trump: 11 March) “It’s something that nobody expected.” (Trump: 14 March).

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Yesterday, I talked about Event 201, a major pandemic exercise run in October 2019. A month before that the White House economists had published a study that warned of a pandemic disease that could kill half a million Americans and devastate the economy by inflicting a damage of $3.8 trillion. Tomas Phillipson, the Trump administration economist, presented the 41-page report to senior Trump officials. It was ignored, and they threatened to fire Phillipson. Phillipson left his job in June and resumed his teaching role at the University of Chicago.

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Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, presented the threat assessment to Trump twice, in Feb. 2018 and Jan. 2019.

“A novel strain of a virulent microbe that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat, with pathogens such as the MERS coronavirus having pandemic potential.” He wrote in 2018.

“We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or large-scale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy and strain international resources.” He wrote in 2019.

In July 2019, Dan Coats was fired by Trump through a tweet.

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“Trump: master of disaster? The president is not ready to handle a global crisis.” I urge you to read this March 2017article by Jeremy Konyndyk, a former director of USAID (United States Agency for International Development), who had handled H1N1, Zika and Ebola crises.

“A major new global health crisis is a question of when, not if.” He says. “Every president dating back to Ronald Reagan has dealt with major and unexpected outbreaks – AIDS, SARS, Bird flu, Ebola, Zika. Fortunately, the past outbreaks were either highly contagious or highly fatal but not both at once. At some point a highly fatal, highly contagious virus will emerge.”

Bush and Obama handled the outbreaks extremely well. Obama had appointed Ron Klain as a full time Ebola czar.

In May 2018, Timothy Ziemer, the top White House official responsible for leading the US response in the event of a deadly pandemic, was pushed out. The global health security team he oversaw was disbanded. Tom Bossert, the White House homeland security advisor, who had called for a comprehensive biodefence strategy against pandemics, was fired.

Konyndyk, the author of the 2017 article, called the firings a rollback of progress on US Health security preparedness. US has actively unlearnt the lessons learned over the last 15 years. The moves make us materially less safe, he added.

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Every big corporation has a contingency planning bible. In Obama’s time, a “pandemic playbook” was created for the US presidents. Although they couldn’t have known about Trump becoming a president then, the playbook was an ‘idiot’s guide’ giving step-by-step instructions at the sign of a pandemic. It was not for public distribution, but for the office of the US president. Even a barely literate president should be able to read its forty pages and take appropriate actions.

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When you read the above documents, it becomes clear Trump has not read any of them. He is like a person who doesn’t take health insurance, because he has never fallen ill before. Or like a person who refuses to write a will because he has never died before.

More on the subject tomorrow.

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Ravi 

Corona Daily 292: Event 201

On 18 October, a pandemic discussion took place for three and a half hours at Hotel Pierre in New York. It was called “Event 201”. Three parties jointly hosted it. The Johns Hopkins Center for Health security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Bill Gates was not present himself. However, he was represented by one of the foundation’s presidents.

The invite-only event included medical professionals, policy experts, business analysts, people from public health and civil society. Directors of CDC, USA as well as CDC, China (Centers for disease control and prevention) were present. The varied group included directors of Marriott hotels, Lufthansa, Johnson & Johnson, ANZ bank group, and media experts. A select invited audience of 130 people attended. A livestream of the event was available to everyone.  

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The group discussed how important it was for governments to join hands with private companies. What should be done with supply chains for rapid and equitable distribution of medical measures. The importance of all countries working together with transport companies to maintain travel and trade. Ways of combating mis- and dis-information. The CDC, China person raised the issue of countering possible rumours that the coronavirus was man-made. All participants agreed consistent health messaging was important. The final recommendation urged international cooperation both in preparing and handling a severe global pandemic.  

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Nobody in the hall was wearing a mask. Everyone shook hands. People who knew each other well, hugged. The distance between two panelists was just one foot or so.

Confused? Event 201, the pandemic conference, happened on 18 October 2019, not 2020. The event was held just six weeks before the start of the current pandemic.

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Event 201 was a simulation exercise that discussed the dilemmas and a possible response to a hypothetical severe, worldwide pandemic. It talked of a coronavirus that would start in a single country, and then spread across the whole world. The panel feared the pandemic would bring profound economic consequences. Travel bookings would go down by 45%. GDP would be down by 11%, and stock markets between 20% and 40%. Faith in governments would be shattered, and distrust towards social media would grow.

The model projected 26000 deaths after a month, 660,000 deaths after three months. The fictional scenario ends after 18 months, with 65 million deaths.

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It is worthwhile to browse the Event 201 website. So close to the actual pandemic, it provided ammunition to conspiracy theorists. After the actual pandemic started, the Event 201 organisers had to issue a statement clarifying its model was not talking of the covid-19 virus, and that 65 million deaths should not be construed as a prediction.

Since 2015, Bill Gates has been talking about Global Pandemics being the biggest threat. Johns Hopkins had organized similar simulation exercises that portrayed fictional scenarios of a smallpox attack (remember Russia and the USA both still hold live samples of the smallpox virus). In May 2018, an event called ‘the Clade X exercise’ had discussed preventing a pandemic.

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The point is that the Covid-19 pandemic was not as unpredictable or improbable as it is made out to be. In the last few years, the number of viruses causing epidemics has grown dramatically, and averages about 200 a year. Fortunately, none of them had so far caused a severe global pandemic. What if the next virus did? That was why the exercise was called Event 201.

The threat of a pandemic has been at our doorstep for many years. This week, I will write more on the specific warnings and pandemic-prevention-projects that existed.

Ravi