Corona Daily 329: Rule of Six

England has a festive atmosphere this weekend. Large groups of drinkers have gathered in bars, pubs and restaurants in London, Manchester, Nottingham, Portsmouth and Leeds. Triathlons were held on Saturday. Music and loud conversations could be heard at Saturday’s all-night parties. At the time of writing, London’s West End is packed with thousands of people, young and not sober, singing and dancing. It is difficult to find an empty table in Soho.

The English are celebrating their last day of freedom. In a few hours, from midnight, Boris Johnson’s “Rule of Six” comes into force.

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Johnson made two important announcements this week – the “Rule of Six”, and “Operation Moonshot”. He said rules had become complicated and confusing, and government was simplifying them.

How many people can gather outdoors? Six. How many indoors? Six. Simple enough. This is the UK government advice. However, UK is not one but four nations. They are not involved, or evolved, but devolved. What Johnson says applies only in England. In Scotland, children under 12 don’t count (in England, they do). Because Wales has its own mind, the rule of six allows 30 people outdoors. Northern Ireland allows 15.

What is the social distance? It is 2 meters, except in Wales, where children under 11 are exempt. From tomorrow, England specifies a distance of “1m plus”. It means where you can’t keep a 2 m distance, do something extra – like wearing a mask, or washing your hands for 60 seconds.

Indoors, six is a limit, but Scotland and Wales don’t count children. Scottish and Welsh children possess immunity that English and Irish children lack.

This doesn’t mean you will see only six people on Oxford Street tomorrow. The rule of six applies to households, a single or those forming a social bubble. Englishmen are fair and thorough. So every rule has exemptions. The limit doesn’t apply to schools, colleges, offices or other workplaces. Up to 30 people are allowed at weddings and funerals, but without dances.

If a group of 12 friends or family wants to eat out, they must sit at different tables and pretend not to know one another. The waiters are tasked with measuring temperatures and taking contact details of customers. Now they must keep an eye on the group size.

Waiters and shop assistants, by the way, are not required to wear masks. Police officers are also exempt, given it will interfere with their ability to serve the public.  

It is important that the novel coronavirus understands all these nuances.

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Breaking the new rules attracts fines. First time, you are fined £100. A promotional discount of 50% is offered if fine is paid within two weeks. The fine keeps doubling with each offence, the second time £ 200; third time £400 until you reach £3200, the cap. Covid marshals will be guarding the streets, and police are authorized to enter premises to enforce the rule of six.

UK is a law-abiding nation. Only its Prime Minister is entitled to break the law on international treaties signed by him.

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Operation Moonshot is that Prime Minister’s pet project. UK will spend more than £100 billion (equal to NHS, England’s annual budget) to reach 10 million tests every day. (Currently 350,000 a day). That way, every week the whole kingdom will be tested. The results available in 20 minutes will allow everyone to let the “negatives” in, and the “positives” home. The grand plan was presented by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), with no involvement of scientists or health experts. (BCG alone can ensure the £100 billion are quickly spent). The only shortcoming of this fantastic project is that the testing technology doesn’t exist.

Ravi

Corona Daily 330: Office on Deathbed

For most white-collar jobs; offices, office towers, specially designed city centers were already unnecessary for the past twenty years or so. In the nineteenth century, steam power brought machinery and workers to factories. Offices were created for paper work – records, ledgers, vouchers, memos, invoices, files to record a company’s transactions and its interactions with outsiders. That required office employees to conduct the paperwork in one place.  

There is little evidence proximity of workers improves collaboration or innovation. In the last decade, I have visited several offices that are graveyards with employees staring at their respective screens. Their co-working silently in a super-expensive property made no financial sense. It continued as a matter of inertia, because companies had signed fifty-year leases, and because a company is part of a customer-supplier-employees jigsaw puzzle.

I will offer an analogy to explain what I mean. In Europe and USA, divorces are common, so are remarriages. In a society where a large percentage is divorcing, anyone can remarry at any age, because the available pool is large. In India, with a low divorce rate, the pool available for remarriage is tiny. Through inertia, people continue to carry on even through unhappy marriages.

Covid-19 managed to send companies, their customers and suppliers online in one go. With everyone working from home, the long overdue experiment has been conducted, and appears to be successful; judging by how little international trade was affected even during lockdown.

The novel coronavirus has compelled the most conservative parts of society to go online. Who would have thought judges and advocates will run trials sitting at home?

Take the case of banks. Why do banks require large office buildings? Only if their retail and corporate customers are not savvy enough to conduct the operations online. Accounts can now be opened without going to banks. In India, a person can prove his identity online by pressing his thumb on a biometric device at home.

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True, at times employees will need to interact physically. Brainstorming in person may be preferred. But lavish all-employee offices making everyone endure the daily commute is not an answer. People can meet in a small office, and take turns. Or they can meet in Starbucks or McDonalds and the company could pay for the coffee and big Macs.

Technology is advancing so rapidly that in five years time, a near-perfect simulation of an office is predicted.

Commercial property owners are very afraid. This fear is quantified by the crash of the shares of most realty companies.

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Governments will have to play the catch-up game while the concept of office stays in the ICU. The current labour laws and tax laws assume people are in physical offices. Job ads such as “eligibility: only EU citizens can apply” will become outdated once work becomes remote. Income taxes are based on physical residence. What happens when a Brit moves to Dubai and works for the British employer? In the USA, tax laws vary from state to state.

Most countries still specify maximum number of office hours per week. How will they be measured? Should the employer compensate for the employee’s (home) workplace? Equipment? Pay for airconditioning and heating? If the employee injures himself at home while working, who covers the expenses? If companies begin selling office buildings, and terminating leases, what happens to the city center design? Its cafes and restaurants?

Governments can’t run away from these issues by urging workers to come back to offices. The death of offices as we know them is inevitable. The world must start planning for the office-less future.

Ravi  

Corona Daily 331: Big Brother is Recording Everything

Half a year of working from home has resulted in many surveys. On an average, WFH employees worked 48.5 minutes more every day, and the number of meetings went up by 13%. Internal emailing has increased. These are the quantitative findings of a large survey that covered 3.1 million employees from 21000 companies from 16 big cities of the world.

How could they organize such a large survey in a lockdown era? Very easily. All the data was procured online through an official surveillance software.

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Many companies ask employees to have their webcams and microphones on all the time. In some cases, employees must check-in thrice a day. In the name of IT security, employers are downloading surveillance tools into employees’ homes, computers and phones. If an employee uses a company laptop, the monitoring is considered absolutely legitimate. In other cases, employees’ consent is sought. Fearful of losing jobs, employees are permitting all demands made by their salary payer.

ActivTrak, HubStaff, Time Doctor, Teramind, Awareness technologies and other companies are unashamedly marketing their surveillance products. These apps monitor, time track and control employees- the twenty first century equivalent of Chaplin’s Modern Times. Their customer base and earnings have shot through the roof this year.

InterGuard can be installed on employees’ computers secretly. It has a brilliant feature of creating a minute-by-minute timeline of every website and app viewed by the employee, classifying each into ‘productive’ (e.g. company website, customer chat), and ‘unproductive’ (e.g. Netflix, YouTube). The system generates productivity scores, and ranks employees based on the scores. During an employee’s browsing, if the software comes across suspicious words, such as jobs, vacancies, LinkedIn, the employee’s superior immediately receives an alert.

InterGuard can record all emails, messages and keystrokes. It has a provision to take pictures of the employee every five seconds. The boss can sit and literally watch a movie of what his underling did during the day.

Zoom had an “attention tracking” setting that alerted the meeting host whenever an attendee focused his attention elsewhere. After thousands of complaints, Zoom recently removed it.

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Pragli app’s default setting sends an alert every day at 9 am. “Time to go to work!” Pragli monitors keyboard and mouse uses. If either is inactive for more than 15 seconds, the employee’s status changes from ‘active’ to ‘idle’. With that idle status visible to everyone, any boss can immediately start a video chat. One common question reported by many workers: “What are you working on exactly?” In a normal office, an employee could lie, here he can’t. Whatever he is working on is recorded minute-by-minute.

One unnamed employee (understandably most feedback is anonymous) said when she leaves her room briefly; she can hear the voice of her boss through her computer asking where she went. Another overwhelmed and exhausted employee said: ‘I am not working from home. I am living at work.’

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As if this was not enough, the employee is asked to attend game nights, lunchtime chats, company happy hours, and other teambuilding activities and events. During and after work hours, he is bombarded with the latest covid-19 advice, what he and his family should and shouldn’t do. This falls under employee welfare. The company website says “We are online 24/7”, making employees wonder if it applies to them individually.

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Corporations were based on the military model. That is why they have hierarchies, spans of control, superiors and subordinates. Conservative companies believe in monitoring and controlling, rather than trusting their staff. With physical control gone, insecure bosses become more insecure. In offices, there are ways and times to avoid your bosses. Unfortunately, that seems impossible now.

Ravi

Corona Daily 332: Chief Remote Officer (CRO)

The coronavirus pandemic has given birth not only to new words, but to new job titles. Companies have started advertising for a “Head of Remote Work”. Quora, the Q&A social platform is seeking one. Sixty percent of its employees confirmed they would rather work from home after the pandemic is over. HP (printers that don’t work) with 60,000 employees, has established a team of ten senior executives to handle this job.

Facebook has posted an ad for: Director, remote work. Facebook has offered the choice of working from home to all its employees. As I mentioned in an earlier article, FB will adjust their pay depending on the cost of living of the location where they are physically based. Director, remote work is an important strategy post. It will transform the company into a remotely working one.

The person must be a strategic thinker, perhaps with an HR background. Must be a skilled communicator, and adept at technology. The strategy may include writing guidelines for reducing the number and duration of meetings, managing time zones, coordinating with legal and tax people to resolve issues for digital nomads, planning online events to keep the company culture alive. Should the company have set working hours? Should there be an online gym?

The FB ad expects the person to understand distributed and virtual teams, to be an outstanding relationship builder, and a change agent. 15+ years experience in leading people teams and remote workforce is required.

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GitLab is an interesting case study. With 1304 employees in 68 countries, GitLab has been a remote company since 2011. It doesn’t have an office as such. Darren Murph, its Head of Remote, has created a Remote manifesto.

The company hires from all over the world instead of from a central location. The traditional recruitment usually happens on nationalist and racial lines. GitLab has no set working hours. It focuses on work and results, rather than the hours put in. It has replaced verbal explanations by writing and recording knowledge and processes. Most communication is expected to be asynchronous (emails, voice mail) and not synchronous (phones, zoom). Fast and reliable internet is generally all that is needed.

GitLab is worth studying in detail for people who wish to apply for a Head of Remote job.

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GitLab or Facebook are essentially technology companies with young employees.

I feel there is a key difference between the pandemic related work-from-home culture, and the Remote Working culture. They sound similar, but they are not.

In the last six months, most companies are trying to convert the physical workplace into a virtual one. Older employees above 40 have experienced the corporate environment of well-dressed people, water cooler gossip, the daily ritual of commuting, and a sense of a corporate family, with all attached joys, stress and shortcomings. Yes, they may enjoy avoiding traffic, more time with the family, but on the whole, converting them to remote workers is not easy. Just like the Eastern Europeans who grew under communism found it difficult to alter their mentality after its collapse. Tomorrow, I will talk about why many workers-from-home are suffering currently.

Remote work is here to stay. It will probably be the single most dramatic transformation caused by the virus. As technology advances and spreads further, working remotely will become the norm. In one hundred years from now, office buildings will not exist. That revolution will happen with the young. Those who are happier to stare at a screen and interact virtually.

Ravi

Corona Daily 333: Tooth fractures

An interactive chart ranks professions according to the coronavirus risk they face. Measured against two parameters, “exposure to diseases” and “physical proximity to others”, dentists are identified as carrying the highest risk.

In March, most dentists around the world shut their clinics. In April, YouTube posted some horrible clips about how to extract teeth by the DIY method.

Last month, WHO once again recommended delaying all “routine” dental care. American dental association vehemently disagreed with the advice.  It argued oral conditions are related to overall health. Routine visits can find diabetes, cancer or liver illnesses. Gum disease is linked to increased risk of stroke, respiratory disease, heart disease, diabetes, ulcers and arthritis. At the global level, an estimated 3.5 billion are affected by oral disease. Untreated dental caries in permanent teeth is the most common health condition in human beings.

And most of those 3.5 billion humans have not visited the dentist for the past six months. Increased intake of sweets and fizzy drinks have made our mouths dirtier.

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Dental associations argue many dentists have been wearing Personal Protective Equipment, masks, gloves, goggles since 1980s, after the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Now additional precautions are practiced. Fewer patients are given appointments, aerosols in the room are given time to settle before taking another patient, patients are spaced in the waiting rooms. Some dentists use rubber dams to cover the patient’s mouth, only exposing teeth that require work. Clinic ventilation is improved; expensive PPEs are bought for assistants. A 45 page document that recommends a re-opening plan for dentists worldwide is worth reading for any dentist, as well as for patients who need reassurance.

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In yesterday’s NYT, Dr Tammy Chen raises a new issue from her practice. She talks about an epidemic of tooth fractures. In the past six weeks, she has seen more tooth fractures than in the last six years. She gives two main reasons.

One is the stress. The pandemic related anxiety or coronaphobia leads to clenching and grinding, damaging the teeth.

Secondly, work from home has resulted in people working on sofas, beds, kitchen counters. The employee is sometimes C-shaped, bending to look at the smartphone. Dr Chen explains that the nerves in the neck and shoulder muscles lead into the TMJ (temporomandibular joint), which connects the jawbone to the skull. Bad posture during the day translates into a teeth-grinding problem at night.

Most people aren’t getting restorative sleep. Restlessness and insomnia are on the rise. Instead of resting and recharging, the body stays in a battle-ready state, and that tension is expressed through the teeth. Most of Dr Chen’s patients are unaware of their teeth grinding. (Heavy snorers also deny they snore).

Are your teeth currently touching, Dr Chen asks us. They shouldn’t, throughout the day, except when eating and chewing. To protect, a device called night guard or retainer can be held between the teeth. Better to crack a night guard than a tooth, says Dr Chen.

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Based on my reading, a summary:

·     Unless you are among the most vulnerable Covid-19 group, please visit your dentist, including for a preventive routine check.

·       Call to check precautions taken by the clinic and expected from the patients.

·       The pandemic may last for a long time. Not visiting a dentist for more than a year can create health problems worse than Covid-19.

·       Check your posture when working. Get a proper ergonomic chair and a table. When seated, your shoulders should be over your hips, and your ears should be over your shoulders. Computer screens should be at eye level.  

Ravi

Corona Daily 334: The Spy Wars

There is not one vaccine race but two. One race is to develop it; the second to steal it.

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According to the American intelligence agencies, Chinese hackers have been trying to steal American research work on vaccines. The hackers have focused their efforts on Universities and schools where research is conducted. They are softer targets than the pharmaceutical companies. The University of North Carolina was among those where Chinese hackers tried to break in. Agents are offering education to those bodies as to how to protect their data and research better.

China works on several fronts. Their operatives extract information from the World Health Organization. There is some truth in Trump’s accusation of China’s disproportionate influence on WHO. (Taiwan is not allowed in the WHO meetings despite all other countries supporting its inclusion). China allegedly uses that influence to understand which vaccine research efforts are more promising. (Steal only what is the most promising).

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On 21 July, two Chinese hackers, Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi, were indicted by the US justice department. They sometimes worked on behalf of the Chinese state, and sometimes as private freelancers. In 2015, Obama and Xi had signed a pact promising to stop the theft of technological knowhow. Its effect lasted 18 months. Then Li and Dong became active. As early as 27 Jan, 2020, the pair hacked a Massachusetts biotech firm researching a vaccine. In February, they breached a Californian company researching a coronavirus drug. In May, they burgled another Californian firm developing virus testing kits.

The Chinese hackers first broke into the networks of employees or customers. Then impersonating them, they gained access to the pharma companies. They could smoothly steal the source codes from the software companies. Li and Dong rummaged through the “recycle bins”, where files are available but rarely seen by the system administrators. The hackers can also manipulate or corrupt the data by changing the file names or the data itself.

Though the American justice system held them guilty, of course they suffer no sentence. They are based in China, well paid by the Chinese government. China has no extradition treaty with the USA.

On the next day, Trump administration closed the Chinese consulate in Houston, Texas accusing the Chinese staff of spying.

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Russian hackers are the other menace. Chinese generally focus on stealing intellectual property and technology. Russia’s cyber espionage aims on things like election interference, thereby weakening its geopolitical rivals.

This year, Russia is focused on stealing research by Oxford/AstraZeneca. British, American and Canadian agencies complained about the Russian hacking. On 16 July, the National Cyber Security Center published a 16-page detailed advisory.

Russia has two hacker groups, with wonderful names. Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear. You may remember them from the 2016 US presidential election. They are believed to be connected to different offshoots of KGB. Cozy bear is part of Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR). Fancy bear is linked to the military intelligence agency GRU (whose agents went to Salisbury to admire a cathedral).

A Kremlin spokesman denied the accusations, saying he didn’t know who could have hacked the research in Britain. But then, the same spokesman didn’t know who poisoned the Skripals or Navalny either.

After the Russian vaccine announcement, the Oxford scientists expressed surprise at the resemblance between their vaccine approach and the reported work of the Russians. If the Oxford suspicions are true, Russia wouldn’t need to conduct large scale trials. They can simply rely on the Oxford trial results.

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Ravi

Corona Daily 335: Bye Bye Mink

When I worked in Moscow, many Russian girls in my office wore mink fur coats. The coats looked elegant and warm, offering protection from the severe cold. They came in many colours, and discussing their prices was part of the office gossip. A British colleague, a woman, scorned at the wearers. In her country, it was illegal to make anything with mink. Until then, coming from a tropical country, I had no idea mink was an animal.

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Several countries have special mink breeding farms. Denmark, China, Poland, Netherlands and the USA are the top five producers. Mink is the most farmed furry animal, with more than 50 million minks bred every year. Minks breed in March, and have one litter per year. With a 45-50 day gestation, they give birth in May. With 6-10 kits per litter, the mink population grows dramatically by May. In November and December, they are killed, and in the following year worn by the elite women of the world.

For several decades, animal rights activists have been fighting against the cruelty of mink farming. In farms, minks are placed in small metal wire cages that restrict their ability to move. Such imprisonment is said to create abnormal behavior and repetitive actions. It is possible to create fur products with synthetic fibers (made from petroleum oil). The obsession to use natural fur is criticized and made illegal in some countries.

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Netherlands has more than 170 mink farms. On 23 and 25 April, two coronavirus outbreaks were reported at farms with 12000 and 7500 minks. More minks were dying than usual, and some were breathing with great difficulty. They had contracted it from farm workers who had covid-19, a case of zoonosis in reverse. Once the virus reached a mink farm, it spread like wildfire, though minks were housed in separate individual cages. Scientists suspect it moved via infectious droplets, on feed or bedding or in dust containing fecal matter.

That was just the beginning. More and more farms reported the epidemic among minks. Feral cats, roaming the farms, and stealing the minks’ food were found to be infected as well. In June, authorities in the Netherlands began gassing hundreds of thousands of minks, including new-born pups. They were culled using carbon monoxide. Until today, more than 2 million minks have been gassed.

Denmark and Spain reported few cases. But Utah, a major mink breeding American state has reported a number of infections in August. American scientists are worried that the virus could mutate and amplify in mink populations, before making a jump back into humans.

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Last week, Netherlands announced that the mink farming must end by March 2021. That nation was planning to stop it in 2024 for moral reasons. Coronavirus has forced the Dutch to bring that deadline forward by three years. The unaffected farms can still produce mink fur in November and December (by killing the uninfected). But they will not be allowed to replace them. After 31 March 2021, mink farming will be illegal in the Netherlands. The nation had closed down fox and chinchilla fur production in the 1990s. Closure of mink farms will end all fur farming on its soil.

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The next few months will show if the story sees repetition elsewhere. If severe epidemic among minks becomes universal, an industry considered immoral could become illegal for ever.

Ravi

Corona Daily 336: The French Connection

Benoit Paire, the controversial and therefore entertaining Frenchman, was seeded 17th in the 2020 US Open. Of course, winning the tournament was beyond him. But with many big names dropping out, perhaps he might make it to the quarters. Perhaps even semi-finals. He had been in a New York bubble since 18 August.

On 29 August, Paire received a call. He had tested positive. That he was asymptomatic didn’t matter. The strictest protocol was activated. For the next two weeks, he should not leave his room. His name was withdrawn.

The contact tracers’ interrogation lasted for more than two hours. Paire had won a few matches in shorter time.

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Kristina Mladenovic won her first match, and was hugely depressed. Contact tracers had established a list of seven players, five French and two Belgian, who had come in contact with Paire. As a special concession, they would be allowed to continue playing, but only after signing a new agreement.

Kristina had practiced once with Paire, but they were on the opposite sides of the court. That didn’t count. She had spent 30-40 minutes in the hotel lobby playing cards with a group of players, including Paire. Though all of them had worn masks, the 40 minutes of card-playing changed everything.

She would be tested every day from now on. Nobody was allowed in her room. Meals would be delivered to her room. Henceforth, she was responsible for changing the bedsheets and cleaning her room. Used towels and sheets should be dropped outside. She would leave her room at pre-determined time, and would be escorted. No using the elevator.  She must use the stairs along with the escort. Every day, on returning to the hotel, her credential (badge) will be confiscated. (Without it players can’t move inside the hotel).

On the ground, Kristina would no longer have access to locker rooms and dining areas. She would have a separate area for the warm up. The key to her isolation area will be with the tournament staff.

This was described as “a bubble inside a bubble”.

On Wednesday, 2 September, Kristina was leading 6-1, 5-1, 15-0 against Varvara Gracheva, a debutant Russian. It should have taken her another five minutes to finish the match. Instead she mentally collapsed. Her opponent saved four match points. Kristina couldn’t win a single game in the third set and lost the match.

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On Friday, 4 September, Adrian Mannarino was ready to go to the court, when the tour manager came to him and said the New York State didn’t approve of him playing. Mannarino was one of the seven players in the contact tracers’ list. He was already in a bubble inside another bubble. His opponent Alexander Zverev was told the match may or may not happen. New York City health authorities were ok with the match, but the New York State authorities had overruled them. Djokovic, on hearing this, tried to contact Cuomo, but couldn’t get through. Cuomo is a busy man.

After three hours’ toing-and-froing between New York City and New York State, finally the match happened. Like musicians, tennis players “tune” their rackets to suit the weather. Zverev’s rackets were strung with a higher tension for the afternoon heat. He had to readjust them for the evening. Zverev won against the Frenchman.

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Kristina Mladenovic has had 37 negative tests. “I have the impression we are prisoners or criminals.” She said. “For the slightest movement, we have to take permission. It’s abominable. The conditions are atrocious.” Kristina is the no. 1 seed in doubles. All other French players are knocked out. However, none of them will be allowed to leave the room or the country until 12 September.

Ravi

Corona Daily 337: A Closed US Open Tournament

The US open that started in New York this week is usually the year’s last grand slam tennis tournament. In 2020, Wimbledon was cancelled, French Open postponed, and US Open doubtful with the ever-rising infection numbers in New York. A few months ago, the National Tennis center was turned into a field hospital with sirens and ambulances instead of cheering fans.  

Annually 850,000 spectators from all over the world attend it, with some American celebrities given front view seats. The 80 luxury suites are sold to corporate sponsors for $500,000 for the fortnight.

This year, players were tested before they left for New York. On Long Island, they are provided two rooms in official hotels. Players must wear masks unless they are practicing or playing or working out. Last year’s winners Nadal and Andreescu withdrew. Nick Kyrgios tweeted he would travel in a Hazmat suit, and then spend two weeks in quarantine on his return to Australia. He wasn’t exactly joking. The legendary Brian twins, earlier meaning to make it a swansong, retired before the tournament.

Djokovic and Serena Williams are renting private houses paid for by themselves. They also had to pay for the USTA-approved security guard who monitors their movements. Absolutely no player is allowed to go anywhere except between the home and the tournament.

Not a single spectator is allowed. The smell of hamburgers and waffle fries is missing. A handful of lucky bartenders, laundry workers and security are the only people watching. And players watch one another’s matches because they have nothing better to do. Ball boys are not allowed to touch a towel. Nadal made it a ritual to ask for a towel after each point. But now players must fetch a towel themselves, from the colour-coded boxes. They are allowed 25 seconds between points. Even Djokovic received a warning for a towel-time violation.

Most line judges are gone. Hawk-eye live, the electronic system, makes all line calls. So as to feel familiar, the hawk-eye talks in male and female pre-recorded voices shouting “out”, “fault” or “foot fault”.

Since the whole show is arranged for television, sound system provides background noise and crowd cheering taken from the 2019 matches. The public address system introduces players with highlights of their careers. There is nobody at the venue who doesn’t know those details.

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In this knockout tournament, losing in the first round is cruel. But every year, those unlucky players still retain a free room for two weeks at a midtown Manhattan hotel and enjoy the nightlife and shopping. This year, they must continue to stay in a boring bubble.

Damir Dzumur travelled from Belgrade and spent 16 days in a bubble before losing in a second round of an earlier tournament. With a world rank of 109, he has been spookily unlucky; his US open first round opponents for the last three years were Federer, Wawrinka and now Djokovic. He duly lost in less than two hours. For three matches in New York, he has already spent three weeks in seclusion and travelled 9000 miles wearing a mask.

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US Open started in 1881. It is the only grand slam tournament that was never cancelled. During the world wars; Wimbledon, French and Australian were cancelled but not the US open. After the bombing of the Pearl Harbour (1941) president Roosevelt insisted it is held as a morale booster.

This uninterrupted record looks like the main reason why a spectator-free, bubbled- players tournament is held this year.

Ravi

Corona Daily 338: A King and Twenty Women

The king of Thailand Vajiralongkorn, also known as King Rama X is the world’s richest royal. Richer than the kings of Brunei, Saudi, UAE, Morocco and Queen Elizabeth II, he is worth at least $30 billion. Among his jewellery is a 545-carat Golden Jubilee Diamond, the world’s largest cut diamond. During the coronation ceremony, the king was carried on a golden platform in a spectacular six-and-a-half hour procession through Bangkok’s historic quarter.

The king has an estate on Lake Starnberg, near Munich. In March, when the pandemic began, for logistical reasons, he decided to move with his entourage to a hotel. The Grand Hotel Sonnenbichi in the resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen was closed for all other guests, but couldn’t say no to the King of Thailand. This hotel has a great view of the Bavarian Alps. The fourth floor is reserved for the king and his harem of twenty sex soldiers. The harem is ostensibly assembled as a military unit. But their objective is to please rather than protect the king.

According to the German authorities, the king and his harem were given special permission because they are “a single, homogenous group of people with no fluctuation.”

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King Rama X, now 68, has been married four times, and has seven children. He always needs a young wife irrespective of his age. He divorced his third wife and sent her relatives to jail. Then in May 2019 he married again. His wife was a former flight attendant. In two months time, though, he declared a girlfriend as his concubine. The king awarded her the title of a “Royal Noble Consort”. However, in three months, when she started to behave like an official queen, her title and ranks were removed and she was sent to prison.

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While King Rama X lived at the Munich hotel with his harem, his official wife lived at his house in Switzerland.

Since the lockdown, Thai Airways has banned all international flights except to Munich and Zurich. On April 5, the king took off in his plane. He picked up his wife from Switzerland and landed in Bangkok to celebrate an annual event. Every year, Thailand celebrates the coronation of Rama I and the establishment of the Chakri dynasty, of which the current king is tenth in line. As a king, he had convinced the German government quarantine was not necessary for him. And he has diplomatic immunity. At the Bangkok party he said, “This pandemic is not the fault of anybody. The government must solve the problem by understanding its causes.” Saying this, he immediately went back to the plane, and flew back to Germany. He sent his wife back to Switzerland. Between March and today, that was the only day he spent in Thailand.

This week, on 2 September, possibly bored with the harem, the king ordered the release of the Noble Consort (concubine), and brought her to the hotel in Germany.

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King Rama X is protected by the strictest Lese-Majeste laws. The criminal code says anyone defaming, insulting or threatening the king will be punished with imprisonment of three to fifteen years.  

Nationwide protests are happening in Thailand for the last two months. They are against the government, but the king is not spared. #WhyDoWeNeedAKing has been a trending twitter topic. When life outside prisons is as rotten, and life is as miserable as death, protestors have nothing to lose. The King of a mismanaged country with a collapsed economy lives abroad with a harem viewing the Bavarian Alps.   

Will political protests in pandemic times succeed in removing dictators or kings? Let’s wait and see.

Ravi