Corona Daily 389: The Dishwashing Lady

57-year old Mary Daniel from Florida is the founder and chief executive of ClaimMedic – a small company that helps people deal with their health care bills. The company kept her busy. She drove across Jacksonville to meet customers every day.

From 3 July, she has taken up the job of a dishwasher with Rosecastle at Deerwood. This is a residential facility for senior citizens, retired or suffering from dementia or other disorders. The dishwashing job will pay Mary $9 per hour.

Before joining, she had to subject herself to a detailed background investigation, biometrics check by FBI and the Florida police. She underwent a 26-hour training on various subjects. She attended an induction and orientation program that explained how to interact with residents. Her dishwashing job didn’t require much of it, but it was all part of the eligibility requirement.  

She gave Covid-19 tests a few times, and fortunately was negative each time. Also a TB and a drug test. A 20-hour video training included information on infectious diseases.

Having legally qualified to do the job, Mary has started scrubbing dishes, mopping floors, cleaning the kitchen. This is the first time she has taken up a manual job.  

***** 

Mary’s husband, Steve, used to work as an orange juice salesman. A very sociable person as salesmen are expected to be. At 59 years of age, he prematurely developed Alzheimer’s. Mary took care of him. In July 2019, when it became impossible to leave him alone at home, Mary moved him to the care centre Rosecastle at Deerwood. He was healthy, moved around the center, chatted with people, and continued to recognize Mary, his companion of 24 years. After Mary finished her ClaimMedic work, she would visit him, watch TV with him, help him get ready for bed each night, and lovingly tuck him in bed before driving home.

On 11 March, Mary was told she can’t visit the center any more. Florida governor’s order prohibited visitors to all care homes.

*****

Through March, April and May, Mary tried everything. She reached out to the governor’s office more than a 100 times, but received a mechanical response pointing to the order. She promised to wear a full PPE before going to see her husband. The governor’s office refused.

She tried window visits. When she stood on the street outside Steve’s room, a thick glass separated them. Steve cried. With dementia, he couldn’t understand why Mary comes to the window, tries to talk, and instead of meeting him, walks away to her car. She stopped for fear of making it worse for him. Facetime didn’t work either.

She wrote to the director of the care center. Could she volunteer please? Could she bring a therapy dog? Could she get a job at the center – any job?

*****

After more than 100 days of separation, Mary heard about the dishwashing vacancy. She jumped at it. After working, she would be able to see her husband. That was the perk.

On 3 July, after washing the kitchen, she went to Steve’s room. Steve recognized her even with her mask on. Mary, he said, and hugged her. Both of them cried. Later they watched TV. Mary made his bed, and tucked him in.

Ravi

Corona Daily 390: Data Slower than the Disease

Yesterday’s New York Times has a report that sounds fictional, but is not. Set in the USA, year 2020, the report narrates the various ways in which test data is transmitted and processed.

Across America, coronavirus test results arrive at the public health departments by phone, email, post (!), and more commonly, fax. Fax complies with the American privacy standards for health information. The Austin city office receives 1000 faxes every day, many of them duplicate. Some are sent to the wrong address. If sent through a server to a computer, the health department prints the report for someone to manually enter it in a database later.

Fax machines are so overwhelmed, they frequently run out of paper. Office floors are overrun with paper. Washington State called 25 members of the National Guard (a military unit) to enter data manually.

Nationally, 80% of the results are missing demographic information, and half don’t have addresses. The Trump administration has stated that laboratories should report patients’ age, race, and ethnicity, but the rules will come into force only August onwards. Laboratories should also furnish patients’ address and phone number, but this is optional.

When reports come in duplicate, on the fax pages on the floor, the department employees, if physically present, pick the pages up. Most records come only with the patient’s name and birth date. With the address and phone missing, employees start calling the provider or going through directories.

The doctors, labs, and health authorities have different systems; they don’t talk to one another. (Like one Apple charger not fitting another Apple device.) Information is expected to move from the doctor to the lab to the public health authority and back to the doctor. It doesn’t always. Errors are possible when dealing with blurry printouts and analog data.

Many health offices get the necessary information about a test result 11 days after the test. By which time the patient has managed to infect hundreds. Health officials are advising people to assume they are positive, since the faxing system makes the process nearly as long as quarantine itself.

The report has a beautiful quote from a Health department director. “The data is moving slower than the disease.”

*****

In a 2017 interview, Barack Obama admitted this to be the biggest failure of Obamacare. His administration had desperately tried to get doctors to move from paper to digital, but couldn’t. $27 billion were pumped in to improve the medical system buried under mountains of paperwork. A special HITECH act was passed in 2009. Many American hospitals have some sort of electronic medical system in place, but they can’t transfer the data to another hospital outside their system. In countries like the UK or Canada, a patient has a unique ID number, which makes aggregating data easier. In the mid-1990s, the USA congress passed laws preventing the federal government from creating new ID numbers.

*****

UK’s National Health Service (NHS) was, until two years ago, the world’s largest buyer of fax machines. By the end of 2018, with more than 11,000 machines in use, the health secretary said he was ashamed of this backwardness. By sheer chance, NHS was ordered to get rid of all fax correspondence and go digital by 31 March 2020. In India, I don’t recall seeing a fax machine in the last ten years.

*****

Before a national rollout of 5G, the USA may be better off getting rid of their fax machines.

Ravi

Corona Daily 391: The Blue Blooded Savior

We belong to an ecosystem where our lives may depend on a tiny creature called the horseshoe crab – or to be precise, on its blue blood. No Covid-19 vaccine will be approved unless it passes the blue blood test.

Horseshoe crabs have existed for 450 million years. Unlike us, they may have coexisted with dinosaurs at one time. Which is why they are called living fossils. Horseshoe crabs have nine eyes- two compound, and seven simple. Their name is deceptive. They are closely related to spiders and scorpions. The world’s largest population is concentrated in the Delaware Bay off the coasts of New Jersey and Delaware.

They are useful in at least three ways. First, they are used as fishing baits. Nearly a million are caught and killed in the bait fishery every year. Secondly, they help migrating birds survive. Guided by the full moon, hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs gather on beaches across the US mid-Atlantic to lay their eggs. The 9000 mile travelling birds, particularly the Red Knot, are totally dependent on the fat content of those eggs to maintain the energy required to fly further north.

The third, the most important use for us, is their ability to detect harmful bacteria in drugs and vaccines.

*****

These primordial creatures are first transported to labs. A horseshoe crab is plucked from the water tank. Its helmet-shaped shell is bent in half to reveal a soft white membrane. A needle is inserted in to draw blood. The blood is pure blue, because of its copper content. Nearly 30% of blood is drawn out in this involuntary donation.

This blood has an invaluable talent for finding infection. As soon as it comes into contact with endotoxin (a poisonous substance), the blood clots. Since the 1970s, this property has been used to apply a test known as LAL (Limulus Amebocyte Lysate). This distinctive blood test is used for injectable drugs such as insulin, implantable medical devices such as knee replacements, hospital instruments such as scalpels and IVs. The presence of endotoxin, even in small amounts, in drugs or vaccines can be fatal.

About 70 million endotoxin tests are performed every year in a $ 1 billion market. The blood is so critical that its current price is $16,000 per liter. Not jokingly, some refer to it as Blue Gold.

*****

This is the only natural thing known to us that can test the safety of drugs and vaccines. In 2016, a synthetic alternative has been developed in Europe. However, on 1 June 2o20, the American Pharmacopia, which sets the standards for drugs and vaccines in the USA, declined any alternatives, saying their safety is still unproven. Any Covid-19 vaccine, (and currently hundreds of projects are working on it), to be sold in the USA must be tested with the horseshoe crab blue blood.

***** 

After drawing one third of the blood, the horseshoe crabs are sent home – back to the ocean. Even with the utmost care, the journey to the lab and back takes its toll. Nearly 30% die. The females’ ability to spawn may get impaired. Some studies have found the bled crabs becoming disoriented and debilitated for a long time. Environmentalists have expressed concerns that excessive blood testing may endanger this valuable species.

It is in our own interest that we take every measure to ensure the survival and growth of horseshoe crabs.

Ravi

Corona Daily 392: Van Gogh Kidnapped

The Dutch museum ‘Singer Laren’ had organized an exhibition “Mirror of the Soul” to run from January to May 2020. Museums routinely borrow famous artworks from other museums to make exhibitions more attractive. The Groninger museum lent “The parsonage garden at Nuenen (1884)” better known as the “Spring Garden” to Singer Laren. This was the only Van Gogh Groninger had, and the museum was delighted the rare piece would be viewed for five months. Indeed, until 13 March, hundreds of art lovers admired it at Singer Laren. Then the museum and the nation went into lockdown.

On 30 March, at 03.15 am, an unexpected visitor, face fully covered, smashed a glass door with a sledgehammer, went inside, picked up the Van Gogh, and left in his vehicle. The entire operation, caught on CCTV, took less than two minutes. The shrill alarms went off loudly, and the police arrived a couple of minutes too late.  

The Spring Garden is oil on paper on panel, 25 cm X 57 cm, easy to carry under arms. It is not known if the thief had targeted that particular painting. 30 March was the birth anniversary of Van Gogh, which simply may be an uncanny coincidence. This early picture of Van Gogh, before Arles and before Paris, is darker and less recognizable. Still, it is valued at $ 6.6 mn.

Usually, in a few weeks, the art thief learns how difficult it is to sell a stolen painting. No art lover would want to hang it in his living room. A casual thief becomes frustrated and destroys the stolen piece, the only evidence of his crime. After two months neither the painting nor the thief was found, and art lovers mourned the disappearance. Destroyed paintings and killed human beings never come back.

***** 

Arthur Brand is a Dutch art crime detective. During his career, he has recovered more than 200 art works, including a Picasso and a Dali. As part of his work, he maintains contacts with the underworld. In June, he got one photograph from a source he can’t disclose.

The photograph shows the stolen painting, now taken out of its frame, a New York Times of 30 May next to it, and a biography of Octave Durham, an art thief who in 2002 had stolen two Van Goghs worth $100 million.

Brand was happy to find this “proof of life”. Like in a kidnap situation, a newspaper front page is attached to show how recent a photo is. The museum has confirmed the painting is genuine. Because the thief has also attached a photo of the label behind the painting, not available in any catalogue. The other clue, the Durham biography, is not yet well understood. Durham was in hospital when the robbery happened.

*****

Such stolen paintings can only be sold to criminal networks. The maximum price fetched can be between 2% and 10%.  Mafiosi buy them not for display, but as a bargaining chip. The two Van Goghs stolen in 2002 were recovered in 2016 from an Italian mafia boss. Raffaele Imperiale had tried to offer the paintings back in exchange for a reduced sentence.

The art world is happy Spring Garden is alive. It will be recovered at some point. If it means some mafia man spending less time behind bars, art lovers wouldn’t really mind that.

Ravi

Corona Daily 393: You Can’t Stay at Home

Yesterday, I talked about employees fortunate enough to retain their jobs by working from home. At the other end of the spectrum are those living in rented houses, who have lost their jobs. Low-income, daily wage workers are the worst affected. They risk being kicked out of their homes.

USA, England and Wales (not UK), were quick to announce a ban on evictions (landlords removing tenants) and foreclosures (banks confiscating the house for non-payment of a mortgage). In August, the moratoriums will come to an end.

In India, informal requests were made to landlords to be compassionate and delay or waive rent. No ordinance has been passed. This was one reason why daily-wage migrants desperately tried to return to their villages. Reserve Bank of India allowed delay of mortgage payment, though warning that interest for delayed payment will be charged.

*****

Evictions have now started in the USA. In the middle of May, the Texas Supreme Court ordered resumption of evictions and debt collection. The Sheriff of Oklahoma County tweeted: “This is difficult… Deputies will start serving judicial eviction notices this week and enforcing evictions on May 26. Once the order is served, tenants have 48 hours to leave. We will be compassionate & respectful during evictions.”

One institute estimates 28 million renters risk evictions (22.5% of American households). Undocumented and illegal migrants prefer to be evicted, rather than deported, by letting the authorities know about them. The dreaded scenario of an eviction notice on the door, a knock from the sheriff’s deputies, and family possessions landing on the street is already happening. Evicted people are worried about being taken to homeless shelters. These crowded shelters are infamous for being Covid-19 hotspots.

UK has 8 million tenants, of whom 4.5 million have private landlords. Others rent from councils and housing associations. England moved the moratorium from 25 June to 31 August. (The expression kicking the can down the road was made famous by Brexit).

Rent is not waived in any country, only eviction delayed.

*****

It is generally assumed that the landlord is wealthier than the renter. That is not always the case. For some widows, property rent is their only income for survival. Many house owners have hefty mortgages to pay. In England buy-to-let is quite common. Reportedly, these mortgages are not covered under the moratorium.

This is one of the pandemic’s irresolvable issues. To be fair to renters is to be unfair to landlords. And those two have a contractual relationship. In a domino chain, the tenant pays rent to the house owner, who may be paying mortgage to the bank. The bank has lent that money from the depositors’ savings. In similar crises, banks may end up with lots of foreclosed (confiscated) properties which are not sellable. Liquidity is affected, and depositors may not be able to withdraw their own money.

*****

With campuses and hostels shut, students have moved back to their parents’ houses where possible. With no government support, evicted Indians will need to move to the houses of their relatives/friends or be homeless.

For renters without jobs and savings, eviction is only a matter of time. USA and UK will have to stop issuing stimulus checks at some point. The moratorium on evictions and foreclosures ends in August.

From September, we may see a flood of evictions and an epidemic of homelessness.

Ravi

Corona Daily 394: Compensating Workers From Home

In recent weeks, a Switzerland Supreme Court decision has been hotly debated, not only in Switzerland. The court had ruled that if an employee was required to work from home, his company must pay a share of his rent. In that particular case, it was determined as $150 per month. The verdict was given on 23 April 2019. But the judgment has become very relevant now.

This compensation is comparable to an employer reimbursing business-related expenses incurred on an employee’s personal car or phone. Currently, many employees are happy saving on the commute, in some jobs productivity has gone up; introvert workers are enjoying working solo. This is the first major pandemic where working without leaving the house is possible. Are the employers taking over the workers’ living spaces without compensating them? Andy Merrifield calls this parasitic capitalism, where companies are trying to increase corporate profits by squeezing the public and employees, rather than generating new value.

Companies like Shopify have announced their workforce will work from home even after the pandemic. It is estimated the company will save $10,000 per employee per annum by converting his bedroom/kitchen into office space.

*****

If it’s remote work anyway, why should the worker live in an expensive town? He can move to a cheap city, or rent a shack on the beach.

Mark Zuckerburg, being Mark Zuckerburg, has warned that if a Facebook employee moves to a cheaper location, his salary will be proportionately reduced. Salaries have a relationship with the cost of living. Employees are asked to notify FB by 1 Jan. 2021 about any change of residence. Zuckerberg has asked them to be honest about it. (Even if they are not, surely he can easily trace their location.)

*****

Work from home was thrust unexpectedly this time. Many unprepared employees are working at their kitchen table, or in bed. In future, if it becomes the norm, an employee may need to rent or buy a house with an extra bedroom. The office space at home needs to be maintained, heated or air-conditioned, made soundproof. In a survey, employees mentioned their top three requirements: ergonomic chair, dual monitor and faster wifi. This is followed by a long list: Standing desk, office equipment, food allowance, garden office, childcare and noise-cancelling headphones.

Australian tax authorities have come up with a short-cut calculation. Australian employees are allowed to claim 80 cents for each hour they work from home between March and July 2020.

*****

Co-working space near the employee’s house is an interesting compromise. A residential building can have office space in the lobby or a particular floor. Residents can rent a desk for their remote work. That way they avoid home distractions, save on the commute, and still be among people who work for their respective companies. Such co-working happens quietly in a Starbucks or McDonalds, where buying a cup of coffee or a hamburger gets you a working space, wifi and air-conditioning. On their laptops the salesmen sell, the traders operate the stock market; analysts prepare and dispatch their reports.

*****

Rents in San Francisco have started falling. What happens if companies move a large chunk of work to their employees’ homes? The commercial real estate will crash. Buying a house in California requires a good ten years’ salary for a well paid executive. Why live in California if you are working from home?

The pandemic promises a real upheaval in the real estate market over the next ten years.

Ravi

Corona Daily 395: Pandemic Beards and Bras

The April-June wardrobe for the world was joggers, pyjamas, t-shirts, shorts, sweatpants and gowns. A few sets of wash and wear, comfy clothes worn repeatedly. People working online focused more on tops; the same dark pair of trousers could be worn even when it mismatched with the shirt. With no weddings and no evening parties, why would anyone buy elegant clothes?

The lockdown lifestyle of less exercise and more food makes wearing skintight clothes difficult anyway. When belts are no longer needed to hold up trousers, it can be depressing. Loose clothes offer comfort, both physical and psychological.

The clothes customers order from home during this lockdown are usually for home use. Tapestry’s stores cancelled 500 million dollars worth of orders for handbags, jackets and dresses. Chanel, of the famous no. 5 perfume, announced the next two years will be tough for its top luxury brands. Before international travel’s downturn, duty-free shops were the main sales avenues for luxury brands.

*****   

Many women, including models and actresses, have reported not wearing bras for three months. Liberation from tyranny, they call it.  Despite a legitimate bra need for health reasons or sports activities, the lockdown has provoked a bra-less movement. Articles titled ‘death of the bra’ are probably an exaggeration. But where sales have re-started, non-wired bras are replacing push-ups, balconettes and slinky lacy varieties.

A byproduct of this liberation is women making face masks out of their bras. Japanese model Yumeno Asahina gave tutorials on how to convert bras into masks. Although not as protective as the N95 masks, they are colourful and aesthetically more pleasing.

***** 

Lipstick is another casualty. Why apply lipstick, if you have to wear a mask on top? Women who tried it complain of the mask smudging the lipstick. Unless a girl is Zoom dating, lipstick has lost its purpose. Beauty advisors now advise women to focus on the eyes. Use mascaras, false eyelashes, eye liners, bold and glamorous brows.

Women in Saudi Arabia invest much time on makeup and perfumes. Wearing an expensive burqa and a heady perfume is a fashion statement for an invisible Saudi woman. Women will be women; they will find ways through masks and lockdowns.

*****

Lockdowns have also affected the shaving patterns of men. (I can talk with greater authority about beards than bras). With no hairdresser around for months, grooming was abandoned by many.  And if after a clean shave and a Gillette-smooth chin, one has to wear a mask to cover it, why shave regularly? Why apply an aftershave if nobody except your house inmates can smell it?

In the absence of dyeing, many heads and beards are showing their true colour. Some men have opted to sport ugly-looking, untrimmed beards. Shabby clothes, an uncombed hairdo, and graying wayward beards tell us how men take their families for granted.  

*****

Will some of these habits continue post-pandemic? I don’t think so. The world is a theatre, and currently most theatres are shut. Offices, discos, weddings, parties, award ceremonies are different stages where we play roles. Theatre is more effective when actors perform in the right costumes. Post-pandemic; elegant bras, clean-shaven faces, custom-made suits, glowing lipstick will all return.

The theatre of life has never stopped because of a mere pandemic.

Ravi

Corona Daily 396: Will Live Classical Music Die?

Worldwide, concert halls, ballet and opera theatres are silent. In the UK, the National theatre has made 30% staff redundant. 
Unless the government can come up with an urgent rescue package, 70% of the British performing arts are expected to go out of business by the end of 2020. Royal Albert Hall and South Bank are in a catastrophic situation.

Recently, Beethoven’s symphony no.7 was performed as a quarantine clip by orchestra musicians performing at their homes, wearing everyday attire. Such gimmicks don’t pay the bills. On YouTube, the London Philharmonic orchestra gets around 200,000 views a day. Its annual income from online streaming is 30,000 pounds, enough to cover the cost of a single rehearsal. Streaming services pay per clip, not duration; the same for a 2-minute song, and a 2-hour orchestra.

Classical music differs from sport. Football and cricket can be played in empty stadiums. People are accustomed to watch the game on TV. Live concerts and operas are a grand experience to be shared by the performers and audience sitting in the same room.

London’s Royal Opera House, whose survival Prince Charles is now worried about, has 100 people on stage, another 100 in the pit, and 2700 in the audience. It breaks even when 95% of the tickets are sold. Ticket sales are that important. UK government gives it a 20% subsidy, much less than the 80% in Germany.

The Berliner ensemble has removed 70% seats for social distancing. It plans to reopen in September. Opera Australia plans temperature checks. The Melbourne theatre company promises to share seating and contact details of every audience member with the government. Edinburg’s Royal Lyceum has announced going into hibernation.

Production club, a design studio in Los Angeles, has been more creative. It has developed a personal protective suit especially for concert-goers. Ventilation is inbuilt, also a facility to allow drinking. The suit gives the wearer an option to mute people in real life. It covers only the top half of the body, so visiting the loo is not a problem. Called Micrashell, it looks like a spacesuit.

Audience is not the only issue. Orchestra members sit very close to each other. Violin and cello players can wear masks, but not woodwinds or the singers. Brass musicians and singers continuously generate large clouds of aerosols.

*****

Indian classical music is more of a solo affair than a group performance. For survival, Indian performers are re-focusing on teaching online. In India, the lockdown seems to have renewed interest in learning classical singing.

*****

In many aspects of life, coronavirus highlights the defects of the existing business models. Classical music in places like London and New York are so expensive that it attracts a particular section of the society – older, rich, corporate, and showy.  Where subscription seasons are run, only those who can afford to pay for a year’s tickets in advance can attend.

Something good may come out of the current crisis. Classical music will be forced to perform online, or sell last minute tickets, or perform outdoors. For classical music to survive in the long term, younger audiences must develop a taste for it. The pandemic may compel orchestras and operas to pay more attention to the young.  

Ravi

Corona Daily 397: En Primeur or Wine Futures

Every spring, around 5000 journalists travel to Bordeaux in France, visit wineries, interview vintners and taste hundreds of barrel samples, a sweet perquisite of the writing profession. Negociants (wine merchants) gather, taste, and reach a consensus on the quality of the new vintage. Winemakers throw lavish parties and dinners for the guests.

En Primeur, essentially a Bordeaux term, is the concept of buying future wine today. (Like finding a young gymnast who can bring an Olympic gold, and investing in her years in advance). Wine reporters and traders taste fresh wine from barrels. They need to speculate on its taste two years later, after it has matured in the barrels. During the ageing time, flavours in the newly blended wines knit and settle together, tannins in red wines soften and white wines become richer and more full-bodied. Ageing in new oak barrels can add aromas and flavours of vanilla, spice and smoke. The winemakers sell at a lower price today than two years later, because it helps their cash flow and secures sales.

If you are lucky, wine can be as worthy an investment as stocks, houses or gold. The 1982 Chateau Latour was presold at $40 a bottle in the 1983 futures. Today the same bottle is priced at $1500. Between 2003 and 2018, red Burgundy gave returns of 497% vs 279 % for S&P 500 (US stock market).

Normally the En Primeur campaigns begin in May and continue through June. Bordelais assess the mood and issue the price lists. Having done the job for the future, they head for their summer vacation.

None of that happened this year. Autumn 2019 autumn was harvest time, when wine was made. But before a single guest could arrive for wine futures, France went into lockdown. Meetings were arranged on Zoom, but wine cannot be tasted online. Wine-makers couriered samples around the world, but after travelling a few thousand miles at 40,000 feet, wine may not taste like it tastes from a fresh barrel. At least one prominent wine author refused the samples, citing peril for the health of the wine and health of the recipients.

Based on the journalists’ who tasted the couriered samples, the 2019 vintage has been described as elegant, delicate, charming, precise, pure, rich with fine ageing.

*****

Based on the virtual campaign, Bordeaux winemakers have gone ahead and declared the futures price list for the 2019 vintage. They have offered on average an attractive 30% discount.

Even before Covid-19 uncertainty, the European wine industry was facing a variety of issues. USA, China and UK are its main markets. US has imposed 25% tariffs since October 2019, and threatens to raise it to 100%. (Believe it or not, this is in retaliation to Europe offering subsidies to Airbus, Boeing’s competitor). China has its own problems. And UK will be out of the EU by the time the wine matures. In normal times, 30% discount in wine futures is unheard of. It upsets those who bought expensive stocks last year. The pandemic is a legitimate excuse for such a gesture.

*****

Rich people have their own problems in the pandemic. How to preserve and grow their wealth if the equity or real estate bubbles burst? Other than gold, wine may be an option for them. Wine has an added advantage. If your bet doesn’t work, and the prices actually fall in 2022, you can always drown your disappointment by drinking your purchase.

Ravi

Corona Daily 398: A Lot of People Are Saying

A friend of mine believes wholeheartedly that 9/11 was an American plot to attack Muslim lands. CIA managed the operations, and the story of the 19 hijackers is a concocted one. Another friend believes coronavirus was made in a Wuhan lab. As irrefutable evidence, he sends to everyone a long WhatsApp essay by a Chinese scientist who allegedly worked in that lab. The essay by the Chinese is not a translation. It is written in English so beautiful that many native English speakers would be unable to match the articulation of the Chinese man. Both these friends are intelligent, the second one is a double degree holder in engineering. It is futile to argue with them. Their conviction in theories is stronger than my conviction in the scientific method.  

*****

If any profession has prospered as a result of the coronavirus, it is that of the conspiracy theorists. The Chinese think Americans have created this as a bioweapon. Americans accuse the Chinese of the same. In Iran they predictably talk about Zionist elements developing it against Iran. Jews created it to cause the stock market collapse. In the pandemic, the more alcohol you drink, the safer you are. Vegetarians are immune. (In India, probably all corona deaths were among the meat eaters). The list is too long to be covered in a short article.

Why are the conspiracy theories booming? First, because they are akin to fairytales for adults. Like fairytales, they have villains, a motive, and an intricate plot to harm good people. (Meaning those believing in the conspiracy theories). Many adults retain their childhood innocence in late adulthood. They continue to trust fairy tales.

Second, in crisis times, such theories help establish a certain logic to the events. It is psychologically comforting. When scientists say they don’t know everything about the virus, there is a knowledge gap. That void can be filled with a nice conspiracy theory.

Third, when people like Trump talk against science, public mistrust gets a boost.

*****

It is tolerable if a conspiracy theory remains just a fairy tale. It becomes dangerous when the believers start acting on it.

Since January, social media has linked coronavirus to 5G technology. In the UK, during the lockdown, anti-5G protestors were busy vandalizing 5G masts. Razor blades were hidden behind anti-5G posters on telegraph poles. Between April and June, there were 264 incidents of verbal and physical abuse against 5G engineers. 99 telecom masts have been set on fire.

Similar attacks and arson acts took place in New Zealand as well.

*****

In the UK, 60% of those who believe 5G causes coronavirus said they got their information from YouTube. Social media is the biggest source and disseminator for conspiracy theories. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are unregulated platforms. Almost anything can be said and distributed on them. Due to pressure, they have now removed hundreds of thousands of videos and posts related to Covid-19 that could lead to imminent harm. In the UK, FB has attached warning labels to 50 million pieces of Covid-19 related content. Amazon removed more than a million products claiming to cure or prevent Covid-19 from their catalogues.

*****

Just because a lot of people say something, it doesn’t become the truth.

Ravi