Corona Daily 421: The 4-3-2-1 Football Game

The 91-year old La Liga is Spain’s top football league. Even if you are not a football fan, the names Lionel Messi or Real Madrid would sound familiar. Messi is the all-time top scorer of La Liga. Real Madrid and Barcelona generally compete for the season’s trophy.

Some six months ago, on 15 December, a league game was played between Rayo Vallecano and Albacete. Rayo is a Madrid club, and this was a home game played at the Vallecas stadium in Madrid. Rayo fans are traditionally left-leaning, anti-fascist, and more aggressive than average football fans (meaning they won’t stop at anything). In that game, the opponents Albacete had a Ukrainian player called Roman Zozulya. Rayo fans, for reasons best known to them, think Zozulya is a Nazi supporter.

They turned for the match with posters saying “this is not a place for Nazis.” When the game began, they started chanting anti-Zozulya songs, with ‘Nazi’ in the refrain. Referee Jose Toca’s whistles could occasionally halt the game on-field, but they couldn’t stop the chanting. The relentless abuse continued throughout the first half. Eddy Israfilov, an Albacete player, was shown a red card and sent back. Other than that nothing happened in the 45 minutes of play. The score was 0:0.

During the interval, Zozulya’s team decided they couldn’t take the mass musical abuse any more. Rayo Vallecano agreed with them. The referee gave his consent to halt the game, and resume it in future once a mechanism was found to control the crowd’s emotions.

*****

The logistics of La Liga are complex, and the day on which the game was set to resume fell on a day after the Spanish lockdown. Already thousands of Spaniards were hospitalized, and hundreds dead, when La Liga came to a complete stop. For nearly three months, no football would be played.

On 8 June, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gave the green signal for La Liga’s resurrection. It is noteworthy that schools and universities in Spain remain shut, but football has resumed. Spain understands life’s priorities well. Of course, the games can be watched only on television, no spectators please.

Officials discussed the unprecedented resumption. Playing after three months of inactivity, no pre-season and no fans. And we jump straightaway into a full football game?

No, said one clever official. Not a full game. Let’s start with the unfinished half-game.

*****

On Wed. 10 June, La Liga’s first resumption match took place between Rayo Vallecano and Albacete.

Players from both sides arrived at the stadium wearing masks and gloves. Their temperatures were checked. Unlike in Germany, they were not tested for corona. A special team was busy disinfecting every ball their feet would touch.

Eddy Israfilov tried to argue he should play. In fact, he had played a few games after the suspended December game. Shouldn’t a red card have an expiry date, he asked. He was being punished for his offence six months ago, was it fair? Yes, it was, said the referee. As a result, Albacete played with 10 players, Rayo Vallecano with 11. Rayo scored a single goal and won the game.

Roman Zozulya played for the entire 45 minutes. There was nobody in the stands to abuse him.

The title “The 4-3-2-1 football game” doesn’t refer to any field formation. The game took 4321 hours from start to finish, becoming the longest game in football’s history.

Ravi

Corona Daily 422: Quarantine Pod

Months of social distancing showed that despite whatsApp and Zoom, we remain social animals. We miss meeting people in person. How closely we interact with known and unknown people became clear when we tried to keep the absurd two meters distance from others.

For a long time, we may continue to be confined in some ways. Jail inmates who interact with one another are happier than those in isolation cells.

On 4 June, researchers from Oxford suggested three distancing strategies for gradually moving out of isolation.

First, they recommend limiting interaction to a few repeated contacts, by forming a social bubble. To give an analogy: rather than eating once in five different restaurants, eat at one trusted restaurant five times. You will intake the same calories, sacrifice variety, but reduce the risk of food poisoning.

Second, seek similarity across contacts. The closer they live from you, the better. Age, interests, political views or children of similar ages may be a factor. Employers can form a workers’ bubble, and schools a teacher/students bubble.

Third, strengthen communities using triangular strategies. Meaning, choose bubble partners with whom you may have lots of common friends. In Facebook language, those with whom you have maximum mutual friends. That way your interaction outside your bubble becomes less risky.

*****

Forming of social bubbles is called strategic distancing. Instead of a total self-isolation (risk for sanity), or a free-for-all mixing (virus risk); the proposal emphasizes on similar, community-based, repetitive contacts. The Oxford paper recommends that teams of doctors at a Covid hospital should also be formed into bubbles, given the same shifts, and kept away from other doctors to reduce transmission risk.

Belgium, with the highest per capita death among developed nations, allows every house to invite up to four guests. New Zealand allowed meeting with up to 10 people. This does not mean meeting any ten people, but forming a bubble of ten people. Meet with them repeatedly, and try not to meet anyone else. As the situation improves, you keep increasing the size of the bubble.

*****

“Social bubble” or “quarantine pod” (even quaranteam) is a Covid buzzword.

Once you or your family decide to form a bubble (pod) with another family, the other party’s willingness needs to be judged. A bit like a marriage proposal.  If the other party accepts, both sides need to agree many things in advance. Does everyone wear a mask? How do you wash groceries? The procedures you follow on returning home. Do you order any takeaway food? How often do you go out, in what form of transport, and why. (Sounds like a pre-nuptial agreement). This agreement is based on trust. The bubble is as safe as its least safe member. And the price is high. Any member getting infected sends both families into 14-day isolation.

Would it be offensive for someone to reject a bubble offer from friends? Not necessarily. Just like we keep marriage and friendships separate, it is possible to keep social bubbles separate from friendships. The closest friends may be located too far for bubble-forming.  Not very likely, but some people may prefer to form bubbles with relatives.

If, for some reason, the bubble bursts, the ethical thing for both sides is to have a 14-day cool-down period before switching over to a new bubble. And then start all over again.

Ravi

Corona Daily 423: Mum or Girlfriend

To the delight of the English people, Boris Johnson explained the concept of “Support Bubbles” to be operational from Saturday, 13 June. For nearly three months, singles in England (and there are more than 8 million of them), have been deprived of company. They have not met their families, friends, and lovers. Forming support bubbles offers an opportunity for a reunion. The rules are exclusively for the English, not Scottish, Irish or Welsh. The kingdom doesn’t unite in loneliness.

Support bubbles will allow any two houses to form a bubble, provided one of the two houses has only one adult (the lonely adult who needs support). Forming a bubble makes them a de facto single household. They can meet, eat together, stay overnight, and come as close as required by their relationship. Children are not counted, meaning a single mother staying with two children is still one adult. She can combine with any household of any size. In this fashion, Saturday onwards, every English person comes out of solitary confinement.

That’s the carrot. Now the stick. Once you form a bubble with another house, both the households can’t form bubbles with a third house. Such pandemic infidelity is not permissible. If one member of either house gets infected or tests positive, both houses go into quarantine for fourteen days.

English media is abuzz with readers seeking clarity on the new rules.

One set of grandparents haven’t seen their grandchildren for three months. Can they see them now? No, sorry, says the advisory. Grandparents living together don’t qualify. If one of them was a widow or a widower, by all means that person could form a bubble with his/her grandchildren’s family.

But, the advisory cautions, if the widowed grandmother has several children, she can choose only one of them. If she chooses John over Eddie and Martha, then she is allowed to mix only with John’s family, and hug only John’s children.

Two romantically involved singles can form a bubble, live in the houses of each other, and stay overnight. However, it is important to remember the rule of one single party in a bubble. If four young boys are sharing a house, only one of them (say Ian) can meet with his girlfriend (say Emily). As soon as Ian does, the remaining three automatically become part of that bubble. And if Emily is sharing her house with another girl, then Ian is prohibited from forming a bubble with Emily. Because neither Ian nor Emily is living alone.  

All English people face tough choices. Some men have not met their mother or girlfriend, at least not officially. Now they must choose between the two. Single men can form a bubble either with mum or girlfriend- not both.

And the process doesn’t end once you decide. The person or the house you want to form a bubble with must agree to bubbling with you. For all you know, they may prefer to form a bubble with someone else.

*****

Having a PM who has studied at Eton and Oxford usually results in super-intellectual regulations. Of course, in a democracy like England, nobody takes them seriously.

However, forming Social Bubbles (unlike support bubbles) is an interesting concept, which I will discuss tomorrow.

Ravi

Corona Daily 424: Honda Hit by a Virus

On Monday, 8 June, Honda admitted their control systems had been attacked. The company was unable to access its own servers or use emails. Production and shipments, already hit hard by the lockdown, stopped. Honda employees worldwide were asked to go home.

Honda, the Japanese company, is the world’s leading motorcycle maker for the past sixty years. Always in the top ten carmakers’ list, its turnover is $150 billion. It is an excellent target for cyber crime.

*****

Experts believe Honda has been attacked by the Ekans ransomware. (Read Ekans backward to understand its toxicity). First observed in December 2019, it encrypts data and leaves a ransom note. Industrial control systems usually shut down as a result of the attack.

Imagine on returning home, you find someone has locked it. You can’t get inside. A note left at the doorstep asks you to pay money in order to get the key to re-enter your house.

To put pressure on the victim, the cyber criminals can auction some of the stolen data online. In such auctions confidential cash flow analyses, company’s future plans, distributor lists, vendor agreements and images of employees’ driving licenses have been sold. If our bank or our government’s tax department were to be hacked, we may find our most intimate financial details sold to criminal gangs.

*****

Is this related to the pandemic? It probably is.

Work From Home (WFH) is an absolute nightmare for IT managers. Any individual employee can be lured to download a link he shouldn’t. Since the beginning of the pandemic, thousands of Covid-links, ‘helping the poor’ sites and dashboards have been used by cyber criminals. Johns Hopkins University had to issue a public statement on malware disguised as a Covid-19 map. Unfortunately a few thousand non-suspecting people had already downloaded the impostor map.

Several poly-criminal, multinational gangs now give priority to cyber-crime. When wildlife trafficking stopped in March and April, some organized crime groups switched over to cyber-crime.

Because they operate in cyberspace, it is difficult to catch the operators. Like Al-Qaeda in the real world, these operators are often known by the ransomware they promote. DoppelPaymer and Maze are large organizations that deploy and facilitate the payment of ransomware. They are happy to take payment in virtual currencies like bitcoin, making it even more difficult to trace them. On 18 March, in a press release, Maze promised to stop attacking health organizations (but not pharma companies, because they are for profit). Most cyber criminals have said if they accidentally target hospitals, nursing homes, or health agencies, the victim should contact them (contact details are given anyway to enable ransom payment).  They will decrypt for free.

*****

Times are such that we need to protect both ourselves and our gadgets from viruses. Your devices must have strong anti-malware protection. It is best to avoid downloading anything non-essential. You may think of it as internet social distancing if you like. If you are working from home, your employer’s safety is in your hands.

However, if you own a Honda vehicle, your contact details may already be in the hands of a cyber-gang.

Ravi

Corona Daily 426: Brazilian Miracle

Brazil, at 212 million, is the world’s sixth most populous country. Its coronavirus infections and deaths are second only to the USA. Testing is abysmally low. The University of Sao Paolo and other researchers have published studies suggesting the real cases are 16 times the reported cases. Cities like Amazonas with lack of health care are burying five coffins at a time in mass graves. Hospitals around the country are shattered and in a mess. Since the beginning of June, daily deaths have exceeded 1000. But soon, starting today, all this is going to change. It’s possible in a few weeks; Brazil will be virus-free. The credit for the transformation must go to Jair Bolsonaro, its president.

*****

For those who don’t know him, he is best described as Brazil’s Donald Trump, but worse. (Yes, such a thing is possible). He is an ex-military man. Since the beginning of the pandemic, he has called Covid-19 a “little flu”. It’s a media trick, global mass hysteria. Jobs and the economy are more important, and as Brazil’s president he opposes any lockdowns. When asked about the high mortality, he said death is everybody’s destiny. Some will die because such is life. However, God is Brazilian, the cure is right here.

Just like the USA, Brazil has a federal structure. Governors and mayors have the authority to take certain steps for their states. But as president of the nation, Bolsonaro has been opposing lockdown policies, arranging rallies of his own and shaking hands, encouraging his supporters to oppose closing factories, tweeting to say Brazil should remain open.

Luiz Mandetta was Brazil’s sensible health minister, believing in science, health experts and data. He advocated lockdowns, social isolation, testing, tracing. Bolsonaro sacked him on 16 April. Nelson Teich, the new health minister, was expected to be loyal to the president. Despite his objections, Bolsonaro was publicly marketing Chloroquine, a malarial drug, for Covid-19. Behind Teich’s back, Bolsonaro signed a presidential decree opening all gyms, beauty salons and barbers across Brazil. The decree termed them as essential services. On 15 May, Teich resigned. Every health minister gets sick of Bolsonaro’s company. Now the president has filled the ministry with army generals, with no health minister appointed yet.

*****

Bolsonaro doesn’t like cumulative numbers. Because no matter what, they always go up.

The Brazilian miracle began last week. In a daily bulletin on TV at 7 pm, the health ministry updates Brazilians on the coronavirus situation. The bulletin includes total infections and deaths, new infections and deaths and other relevant data. On Wed. 3 June, the ministry postponed the bulletin from 7 pm to 10 pm. We can get better data by 10 pm, it said. On Friday, 5 June, the ministry’s official website was cleaned up. All past data regarding infections and deaths was wiped out. Bolsonaro tweeted that in future new adapted data would be presented. The cumulative data will not be shown any more, because it doesn’t portray today’s situation.

On Saturday, 6 June, the Johns Hopkins dashboard removed Brazil, but reinstated it on Sunday, until further clarity is obtained.

Please don’t be surprised if in a few days you hear the news of Brazil becoming free of coronavirus. No numbers, no problems.

Ravi

Corona Daily 427: Novel Life of an Air hostess

A friends’ elderly parents are trapped in Mumbai, while their son lives in New York. They usually stay with him, but happened to be in Mumbai during the lockdown.

Another friend, M., is an air-hostess with Air India. AI flies a Mumbai-Newark non-stop 16 hour service. The 93-year old man, and his 85-year wife, would like to take that flight when an opportunity presents itself. I wanted to know how well they would be taken care of on the flight. I called M. to check.

*****

M answered.

“Are you home or abroad?” That’s the first question I always ask M.

“I am in Mumbai.”

“Great. A. must be happy to see you.” A. is M’s school-going son.

“Haven’t met him yet. I am in Mumbai, but not at home.”

“Oh, on the way from the airport?”

“No, in a hotel. Haven’t got my results yet.”

“What results?”

“On arrival, they take our swab test. Then we are sent to a hotel, where we wait for the results. If it’s negative, we can go home. Takes at least 48 hours. I should get it tomorrow.”

“You will go home tomorrow then.”

“It depends. We also have to do a test before departure. Until that result comes through we can’t fly out. I may have another flight soon. Without going home I can use the arrival test and fly out.”

“Looks strict.”

“Yes, you know what happened to the Moscow flight, don’t you?”

Yes, I knew. On Saturday, 30 May, when flying the AI plane to Moscow, its pilot received a message saying his test result was positive. The plane was above Uzbekistan. He immediately turned around and brought the plane back to Delhi. A human error, somebody had read his result as negative.

*****

I explained to M the situation with the 93/85 couple. They will have a business class, maybe a first class ticket. They will be taken good care of, won’t they, I asked M.

“The class doesn’t make any difference. We are not allowed to service any passengers.” M explained. “We don’t go anywhere close to them. The passengers must have Arogya setu (India’s contact tracing app) on the smartphone. Without that they can’t travel. On the 16-hour flight, meals in boxes and drink bottles will be kept on their seats in advance. Also gloves, mask and a sanitiser. They must wear the mask and gloves.”

I imagined the Indian air-hostesses in sarees wearing masks and gloves. Do you also wear them, I asked M.

“Oh, we wear everything. We wear Hazmat suits, masks, face shields and gloves. Wearing all of it, we just sit quietly through the flight. What a nightmare. Hot, humid and suffocating. And you can’t imagine the acrobatics when we go to the loo. Some pursers have started wearing diapers. On arrival, the Hazmat suits are disposed off.” M said the suits had a price tag of Rs 3000 ($40) printed on them.

“With so much protection, why do they need to test you on arrival?” I asked.

“Protection is not guaranteed. Some pilots and air-hostesses tested positive. In Mumbai, they are then sent to the Raheja hospital. They stay there until they test negative.”

“M, you are like frontline soldiers. Are they compensating you for that?” I asked.

“Well, we continue to get our salaries.” M said with pride in her voice.

*****

Ravi

Corona Daily 428: Patient 91 in Vietnam

The Vietnam government publishes information about each Coronavirus case. For privacy reasons, patients can’t be named, only numbered. In March, for example, newspapers mentioned that patients 88, 89 and 90 were Vietnamese girls studying in Europe or the US, who had flown to Ho Chi Minh City.

Patient 91 was a 43 year old British male, living in district 2 of Ho Chi Minh City. A pilot with a Vietnamese Airline, Ho Chi Minh was his base. Between 13 and 18 March, he ate and drank at different bars and restaurants. The well known Buddha bar and grill is close to his house. On 14 March, he attended a party there. On 16 March, he piloted VN 272 to Hanoi and VN 607 back on the same day.

On 17 March, he felt feverish, tired, and started coughing. On 18 March, he was admitted to the hospital of Tropical Diseases. His X-ray showed damage to the right lung tissue. As per procedure two swab samples were taken. Results of all tests were positive. Immediately local authorities locked down Ascent apartment, where he lived with 764 residents, including 158 foreigners.

On 8 April, the British pilot began to deteriorate. Vietnam’s Ministry of Health appointed its best experts to look after the case. The government sought a rare coagulation (blood clotting) drug from abroad. By mid-April, patient 91 went into coma. He was put under ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) intervention, actively resuscitated with mechanical ventilation, put on antibody-filtered dialysis and given antibiotics and anti-fungal drugs.  

On 15 May, Nguyen Van Vinh Chau, the hospital director said the pilot’s lungs were seriously damaged and a transplant was essential. Vietnam mounted an all-out effort. More than 50 people offered to be lung donors. Patient 91’s parents are not alive. The Vietnamese hunted down his closest relatives in the UK to get permission for a lung transplant.

Then doctors discovered patient 91 suffered from cytokine storm syndrome, where the immune system overreacts to the virus and releases too many cytokines (proteins released by white blood cells), damaging the organs. The doctors kept treating each condition. In total, Vietnam spent $215,000 treating patient 91.

On 27 May, he awoke from coma. He had been on life support for two months. When checked, his lungs were working 20-30% as compared to the earlier 10%. Drinking sugar water, his limb strength began improving. His latest Corona tests were negative. Soon he was off dialysis.

On 3 June, he was disconnected from the ECMO machine, after 57 days. He cried when he saw the nurses and doctors around him. On 5 June, the doctors declared he was safe and on his way to recovery.

*****

This saga may remind you of Spielberg’s film Saving Private Ryan. Did Vietnam take this effort because the patient was British? A foreigner? Luong Ngoc Khue, the medical director was surprised at the question.

It had nothing to do with his nationality. Vietnam borders China. Since the pandemic began, it has aggressively pursued testing, tracing, isolation. It is the only large population country (97 million) with zero Corona deaths.

 ‘A corona death will be a stigma on our overall effort,’ said Luong Khue. ‘We must do absolutely everything to avoid the first death in Vietnam, and that’s all we did.’

Ravi

Corona Daily 429: Living with a Pandemic

Two months of pandemic make it easier for the world to understand the life of many gay people. Frequent HIV testing is second nature to them. Forty years since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, no vaccine or definite cure has been found. Gay men determine the frequency of blood testing based on their sexual practices. But the days, hours, minutes before the result is a nightmare every time.

Gays are comfortable about knowing their HIV status and letting the partner know about it. In Gay language, not knowing the status means converting uncertainty into risk. Recently, immunity passports have been proposed as a way to segregate Covid-19 infected people from others. This may be done by way of a certificate on your smartphone. Straight people in Germany, UK and Brazil expressed shock at the concept, comparing it to Fascism or Nazism. But Gays supported the idea, because they are used to disclosing private health information to others.

*****  

Talk about AIDS began in the early 1980s. It was transmitted by primates, perhaps chimpanzees, to humans. The AIDS pandemic didn’t shock the world the way the current pandemic does. Primarily because initially it was stigmatized as affecting only homosexuals. This was not true. Though the rock star Freddie Mercury was gay, Arthur Ashe, the tennis champ, was not. He got HIV through blood transfusion during an operation.

AIDS resulted in a slow, subtle but permanent behavioural change. Before AIDS, a single syringe could be used for several patients. Then blood donors made sure the syringe was disposable. In India, where trust in immunity and God is more important than hygiene, customers in barber shops started demanding fresh razor blades. Worldwide, the sale of condoms skyrocketed. Earlier the condom was used mainly for contraception. Multiple partners, some of them casual, some of them paid, meant the risk of HIV transmission existed in each sexual encounter. The world became more careful, if not more moral, following AIDS. It is said that the risk of getting HIV is reduced by 85% by the use of a condom. It was a condom for that pandemic; it is a mask for this one.

*****

Currently some 40 million people, including 2 million children (below 15) are living with AIDS. (Many African girls are infected as a result of sexual violence). At least 34 million have died. In the 1980s/90s, there was a horrible period of 15 years of unmitigated death, with absolutely no treatment. Although some drugs are available now 800,000 people died in 2018 alone.

AIDS had given rise to xenophobia, racism and homophobia. For 22 years, 1987-2010, USA had banned entry to all non-citizens with HIV. (Though in the 1980s, USA itself had the highest number of HIV infected people).

With the Coronavirus, some Chinese Americans have been attacked, and all Chinese airlines have been banned from flying to the US.

*****

The HIV virus and the novel Coronavirus are different in terms of transmission and mutation. We must hope their trajectories and life expectancies are different as well. The HIV/AIDS raises an uncomfortable question. Why has mankind failed to produce a vaccine for forty years? What makes us think we will achieve it quickly for Covid-19?   

Perhaps AIDS can teach us how to coexist with a virus.  

Ravi

Corona Daily 430: Zen Enlightenment

In the mountains of Vermont, surrounded by unending acres of forest, is the Monastic Academy founded by one Soryu Forall. He runs the institution in the Rinzai Zen tradition. An apprentice pays $6000 and can live for a year or more to transform himself and the world. The academy’s aim is classical enlightenment.

One of the staff members is a young and enthusiastic Daniel Thorson, 33. A few years ago, he had organized the Occupy Wall Street movement. He joined the academy to be able to serve the world better in times of crisis. Daniel is a podcaster and online philosopher. Silent meditation and retreat from the day-to-day world are said to be one of the highest paths to enlightenment. Daniel had been waiting for a couple of years to get to do a solo retreat. Its purpose was to understand true awakening and enlightenment. This year he finally got the golden opportunity.

On 13 March, he tweeted he would be offline for the next 75 days. He then switched his phone off, and entered his log cabin retreat, to begin life without a smartphone, Wifi, TV, or newspapers. Most of his awaken hours were spent meditating with eyes shut. Twice every day, he silently walked to the kitchen to pick up the vegan meal provided by the Academy. Interaction with humans was prohibited. Days, then weeks, began to pass without Daniel speaking or hearing a single word.

On Tues. 23 May, he rejoined the material world. He switched the phone on, but had no time to look at the thousands of Twitter messages. Before going out of the cabin, he posted a single tweet: “I am back from 75 days of silence. Did I miss anything?”

Daniel decided to visit the nearby supermarket. Buy things he hadn’t seen for 75 days. For some reason, he felt everyone in the supermarket was staring at him. He wondered if his face shone with enlightenment. Then he noticed the masks. Why masks? His hand inadvertently stroked his long unshapely beard.

When he queued up at the counter, a lady ahead of him said, “Excuse me, you are standing too close.” Her tone was accusatory. Daniel’s face turned red. He took a couple of steps back, and those behind him avoided him as if he was a leper.

Back at the academy, he thought he would check the strange events in the supermarket with his camp mates. But his colleagues were meditating. He decided to check the internet first. After 75 days of silence, he must catch up on the US presidential election, Brexit, the baseball scores, Australian wildfires. Every newspaper he opened was carrying a special edition on Coronavirus. He opened his Twitter account. All messages were about a virus. His cousin had messaged him saying he had found a new girlfriend, but had not met her yet. Many friends invited him to Zoom. Zoom, where was this place?

When contacted yesterday, he was trying to figure out how the George Floyd protestors across USA were maintaining social distance to be safe. Daniel, the 75-day Rip Van Winkle, will perhaps need a few more weeks to get truly enlightened.

Ravi

Corona Daily 431: Virus Eradicated from Italy?

‘In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy.’ Announced Dr Alberto Zangrillo, triumphantly, on Sunday. He heads the intensive care unit at a hospital in Lombardy, Milan, Italy’s pandemic hotspot. Italians know Dr Zangrillo as the personal doctor of Silvio Berlusconi. ‘Experts are too alarmist about predicting a second wave of infections.’ He added.  For him, the Italian government’s plan to add another 150,000 IC beds makes no sense. Holding the country hostage to such predictions must stop. SARS and MERS disappeared, so will this virus. Dr Matteo Bassetti supported him by saying the virus had weakened and today Covid-19 was different.

Italians watching the TV interview and the Corona-skeptics slept wonderfully on Sunday night.

*****

Monday, 1 June, brought a wave of reactions from doctors and professors in the UK.

Prof. Francois Balloux, UCL, London: There is no evidence the virus has lost its ‘strength’. The outbreak in Italy is waning, but we should definitely not rule out a second wave later this year.

Dr Elisavetta Groppelli, St George’s, London: In Italy, the age of confirmed cases has been decreasing. Disease severity is less in the younger groups. The virus genome is being monitored worldwide. Consensus is there is no evidence for change in virus features.

Prof. Martin Hibberd, London: Even among symptomatic patients, 80% have mild disease. During a major outbreak, those cases are overlooked. When the number of severe cases falls, those with mild symptoms get more attention – giving the impression the virus is changing. 

Dr Oscar MacLean, Glasgow: These claims are fairly implausible on genetic grounds. Making them on the basis of anecdotal observations is dangerous.

WHO too jumped in, cautioning world leaders about reports that the virus was “losing potency”. That is not the case at all, said WHO.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO epidemiologist said: The virus has not changed either in terms of severity or transmissibility. This is still a killer virus, and thousands of people are dying daily.

*****

In April and May, the two strictest lockdown months worldwide, Coronavirus killed 6000 people every day. (Compare SARS outbreak 2002-2003 had 8000 confirmed cases and 774 people died in total).

The arrival of summer and relaxation of lockdowns create a feeling that the worst is over. But seasonality of the virus is not known yet. And when the northern hemisphere has summer, the south has winter. Last week, Mexico touched a daily 500 death figure. Yesterday, Brazil had 1232 Covid-19 deaths.

Yes, Italy is waning, but more than 50 Italians still die every day. Unless a 12-month cycle is gone through, it will be premature to claim victory. Unfortunately, every summer is followed by a winter. The cases may rise again in the fall itself.

Among politicians and masses we see many self-proclaimed virologists who equate Covid-19 to the flu, who think the lockdown business is complete nonsense, who refuse to wear masks, who recommend preventive drugs, who want the world to run as always by ignoring the virus. The virus will miraculously disappear, most likely once the sun is up, they think.

I have made a request to those skeptics. Please go to your neighborhood hospital and work as volunteers in the Covid-19 wards. Volunteers are needed desperately.

Not a single person has taken up that challenge.

*****

Ravi