Corona Daily 143: A Raid and an Ambush

The coronavirus vaccines have become a precious commodity. Not for their value, but for the perception they make a difference between life and death, between economic recovery and chronic recession.

Brexit has happened, and the sovereign UK has managed to vaccinate 40% of Britons, while only 10% of EU citizens have received the first shot. The Oxford/AstraZeneca is manufactured in Belgium and shipped to the UK. How can you ethically justify vaccinating a 30-year-old Briton, while keeping a 70-year-old Belgian waiting, asks the EU’s trade commissioner.

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Last weekend, the Italian paper La Stampa reported a police raid on the Catalent factory in Angani near Rome. The EU commission suspected the plant was hiding vaccine stocks for shipment to the UK. Tipped by them, the Italian police raided the place and found 29 million AstraZeneca doses “hidden”. After four days of investigation, it was confirmed yesterday the facility was a legitimate one for quality control. The doses were made outside the EU and brought here to be filled into vials. After the quality control, 13 million will be dispatched to Covax, for distribution to poor nations. The other 16 million were earmarked for Europe.

The European commission, satisfied, will still likely announce a ban on export of vaccines from the EU, particularly to the UK.

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In an incident on another continent, on Monday, 22 March, at 09.00 a.m. three unmarked white vans left an armory in Lubbock, Texas. Eleven uniformed soldiers from the Texas National Guard were given the responsibility of transporting coronavirus vaccine stocks in those vans. Some of the soldiers were so young, they could be mistaken for fresh trainees. After driving for ten miles, the vans stopped at a gas station across the highway for drinks. The guards were aware of the precious packages they were carrying.

After leaving the gas station, one of the three drivers noticed a truck trying to bully the vans off the road. This road rage went on for a few minutes. Finally, the truck swerved into oncoming traffic and blocked the convoy. A white bearded man in his late sixties, flashed a colt 1911 pistol .45 Caliber. He ordered the 11 soldiers to stand on the side of the road, hands raised above their heads. The bearded man had an additional loaded magazine on his person. On that small town highway road there were hardly any witnesses to this bizarre event.

The man said he was a detective, and that he wished to inspect the three vans. While he examined the first van, a young soldier managed to call 911.

In a few minutes, the Idalou Police Chief Eric Williams arrived with his team on the scene. He was made aware the vans contained the precious coronavirus vaccines. From a distance, the police chief saw the eleven captive soldiers and the bearded elderly gunman.

At the sight of the police, the man surprisingly put his pistol back in his trouser pocket. Before he could blink, the police had overpowered and handcuffed him.

The man’s name was Larry Harris, a 66-year-old from Alabama. A third magazine and more ammunition were found in the truck. He said he chased the vans on the suspicion that a woman and a child were being kidnapped. He is arrested on the charges of assault with a deadly weapon, unlawful restraint of eleven soldiers, impersonating a public servant, and interference with Texas military forces. The police chief said Larry Harris appeared to be mentally disturbed.

After the arrest, the three vans moved without any further incident and delivered the vaccines to the town of Matador, seventy miles further.

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In the Texas story, I found it interesting that the 66-year-old truck driver, possibly mentally disturbed, was armed to the teeth, while the eleven American soldiers had absolutely no weapons.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 144: Unidentified Flying Objects and Covid

In November 2004, David Fravor, the fighter pilot commander of a large US navy warship saw an object on his radar. He described it as white and oval, like the mint Tic Tac, probably forty feet long. It was hovering above the ocean. A team of fighters took off to investigate. One of the pilots recorded the UFO (unidentified flying object) on an FLIR, an advanced infrared camera.

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On 27 December 2020, Donald Trump signed a $2.3 trillion Coronavirus Relief and Government Funding legislation. The massive Act is 5593 pages long. Hidden among those pages is a demand that the US intelligence agencies and Defence Department tell the Congress and general public all they know about UFOs. They must report on UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, also called “anomalous aerial vehicles”), including observed airborne objects that have not been identified. All documents must be submitted within 180 days (by June 2021) in unclassified form, in other words open in the public domain. A classified annex to the report is allowed as a concession.

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The mystique around UFOs goes back several decades. The CIA holds a massive trove of documents related to UFO sightings over the last 70 years. Various US agencies have been collecting information on UFOs using geospatial intelligence, signals, human intelligence, all information held in secret. The US government was officially very active between 2007 and 2012, with Pentagon running a program to look for threats from space. In the $600 billion annual defence department budget, the $22 million budget for this program was cleverly hidden.

Last April, after the start of the pandemic, the Pentagon officially acknowledged three UFO incidents and released the videos. The first was the 2004 tic tac incident, the other two were from 2015. The Pentagon spokesman said release of these videos didn’t compromise any investigations or sensitive information.

It is not clear what the unidentified objects are. The rational explanation is some kind of drones by earthly rivals (Russia, China, Iran, North Korea?) seeking to gather intelligence, rather than the more exciting extra-terrestrials usually associated with UFOs.

In August 2020, a Navy-led UFO task force was created. Its mission is to detect, analyze, catalogue UAPs (official term for UFO) that could potentially pose a threat to US national security.

Though the deadline is June, already nearly 3000 documents have been declassified. For those who take interest in UFOs, the documents can be found on the black vault website.     

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Several newspapers and TV channels have asked as to why the congress demand for declassifying UFO materials should be part of the Coronavirus Relief legislation. Nobody has answered that question.

Marco Rubio on the Senate Intelligence Committee has pushed aggressively for systems and transparency. He says the American public deserves the right to know as much as possible and the matter should not be kept secret simply because of the stigma associated with the term UFO. Rubio’s explanation doesn’t answer why the measure was pushed through the covid bill.

On the signing of the Covid bill, Republicans expressed joy saying they had ensured “safeguards to prohibit illegal aliens from receiving payment.” It is possible they took the term illegal aliens in its widest sense.

A senator opposing the bill may offer a clue. Senator Wyden mentions the costs of “digital classification” are ever rising, and now exceed $18 billion a year. $18 billion for keeping information secret. Year after year, the USA keeps increasing the mountain of classified information, spending billions of dollars. The classified information is generally useless for protecting national security as 9/11 showed.

The system of classification and declassification are broken. They are hugely expensive. It is possible this initiative was added to the Covid relief legislation, because it is easier to hide billions among trillions.

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Whatever the answer to the mystery, 2021 is a bonanza for UFO lovers. They can spend their lockdown time reading UFO records from the last seventy years.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 145: More on Bottlenecks

Vaccine developers are secretive about sharing the exact formula. Vaccines are patented products. Manufacturers have not shared the inventory of ingredients. But the supply chain has other critical products. The world is racing to have enough syringes to administer the vaccines.  USA and EU have been asking for more. Brazil has restricted exports of syringes and needles.              

In pre-covid years, the world used about 16 billion syringes a year. But only 5%-10% of them were meant for vaccination. In 2021, 10 billion syringes will be needed for covid vaccines alone.

Not any syringes will do the job. They must be smart, the auto-disable type (after using them once, they automatically become disabled.)

To maximise the output from a vial of the Pfizer vaccine, a syringe must carry an exact dose of 0.3 millimeters. The syringes also must have the so called low dead space – that minuscule distance between the plunger and the needle after the dose is fully injected- in order to minimize waste. Japan learnt this the hard way. It had paid for and secured 144 shots of the Pfizer vaccine for 72 million Japanese, assuming each vial contains six doses. But since Japan had standard syringes and not the “dead space” ones, they could extract only five doses per vial and vaccinate 60 million instead of 72 million.

USA and China are the biggest producers of syringes. But now, companies from other countries are entering the business. Mr Nath from Hindustan Syringes calls it a “bloodsucker” business, where upfront costs are astronomical and profits marginal.

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Lipid nanoparticles, the fat droplets used to deliver RNA into cells are a crucial piece of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that use the mRNA technology. In the past, this substance was used for research and a single approved treatment for a rare disease. Now it is suddenly in urgent demand for production of billions of vaccines.

Scaling up production of lipid nanoparticles has been identified as one of the most complex challenges. The Biden administration marked their shortage among “urgent gaps” in the vaccine supply chain. In December, the USA agreed to use the Defence Production Act to help Pfizer gain access to more lipids. Moderna has invented its own ionizable lipid and is also in a rush to build production capacity.

In the production process of the mRNA vaccines, a machine shoots two streams of solution – one containing mRNA and one containing lipids – into a high-speed collision. Such machines didn’t exist before the pandemic. The Biden administration has promised the use of the DPA to help Pfizer procure more specialized industrial machines. Pfizer and Moderna are committed to produce 300 million doses each for the USA till the end of July, and hundreds of millions more for Europe.

It is difficult to know the extent of possible shortfalls, because these companies don’t reveal such details. Though the USA has pumped millions of dollars into them, the vaccine makers have kept the raw materials supply chain secret, citing proprietary licensing deals and confidential contracts. Lipids were made in grams or kilograms pre-covid, now in tons.

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I will offer some basic figures to understand the vaccine production challenge.

Pre-covid, the world’s annual vaccine production capacity was 5 billion doses. One hopes that this capacity will not be diverted to covid, allowing resurgence of diseases like meningitis or HPV.

In 2020, the vaccine makers promised to produce 837 million covid vaccine doses. In reality, 31 million were produced (-96%)

In 2021, to vaccinate 75% of the world population with two doses, 11.5 billion doses will be needed.

With the existing capacity, expansion, no wastages, best-case scenarios, and a miracle, the production target is 9.5 billion (-18% of what is needed).

The first quarter (Jan-March) has produced 500 million doses. On a straight-line basis, if you multiply it by four, you get 2 billion for the year, much short of the 9.5 billion promise. That shows the level of the challenge.

In short, vaccination alone is unlikely to take us out of the pandemic in 2021. Share prices of AstraZeneca or Pfizer can shoot up suddenly, not their production capacities.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 146: Bottlenecks

On the fifth of March, my parents got their first shot of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine (called Covishield in India). They were told to get the second shot four weeks later. Today, the Indian government asked the states to increase the gap between doses to 6-8 weeks. Reportedly, the Oxford vaccine will henceforth be given only as a second dose. Anyone coming for the first dose will be given Covaxin, a locally developed vaccine by Bharat Biotech.

The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine producer, has informed several countries of possible delays in supply. The European Union, embarrassingly lagging in vaccination, is considering banning export of vaccines. UK’s ambitious plans have suddenly hit a roadblock.

Why are the vaccine shipments getting delayed everywhere?

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Anyone who has worked in the manufacturing industry knows how complicated supply chains can be. The i-phone, the size of our palm, is assembled in China with components coming from over 27 countries. Each product has suppliers for equipment and raw materials, and the suppliers in turn have other suppliers. The logistics of this entire pyramid must work as planned. Even in our personal lives, we know the wide variance between our plans, our desires, and reality.

Industries get close to their targets after decades of trial. But covid vaccine production is an infant.  A year ago, the USA invested billions of dollars to develop the vaccines, but not enough attention was paid to the supply of the raw materials.

The raw material suppliers had full sets of orders from pharma companies for items totally unrelated to covid. Now suddenly, they have been asked to set everything aside, expand their capacities, build new equipment, employ skilled workers, and refuse supplying to their earlier customers.

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A new production facility for a vaccine like Oxford can take six to nine months. The biggest issue, unrelated to raw materials, is with yields. Yields depend on the health of the underlying cell culture. Quality control issues, such as those relating to temperature, humidity or compromised sterility, lead to less vaccine at the end of the process. Surprisingly, at two identical facilities, the yields can vary by a as much as an order of three. Human nature, particularly in an emergency, tends to take the best-case scenario. Even running three shifts doesn’t help when the output can vary wildly.

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A shortage of any critical item results in irreplaceable shortage of vaccines. Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax vaccines use bioreactor tanks. If it was a restaurant kitchen, you could call them containers for vaccine soup. The bioreactor tanks need giant disposable plastic bags as sterile liners. Without them the vaccine may get contaminated. In EU and some other countries, this has emerged as a production bottleneck. The sterile plastic bags are produced by a small number of suppliers, and vaccine producers have struggled to source them. Merck has now announced expansion plans to address this issue.

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Or take the case of vials. The liquid vaccine has to be put into vials before it can be distributed. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require ultra-cold temperatures to preserve them. Normal glass vials would break in the super-freezers. Just a single damaged vial can ruin an entire batch of doses and stop the production line. Corning, the US manufacturer, was asked to supply special super strong Pharma grade glass called Valor.

Most vials need rubber stoppers. In autumn 2020, tropical storms in Thailand, Vietnam and India led to rubber shortages.

United States of America is now hoarding rubber. Both Trump and Biden used a 1950 act from the Korean war times called “the defence production act”. This allows US presidents to order a private company to divert manufacturing to what the State needs. A year ago, for example, General motors was ordered to produce ventilators. Biden is likely to use this act to use the scarce rubber for vaccine needs.

Rubber gloves are recommended to administer a vaccine. Except the USA, all other nations are likely to face shortages of rubber.

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More on the bottlenecks tomorrow.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 147: Two Lonely Generations

At the beginning of this month, I came across ShareAmi, a website that connects French language students with elderly people in France. With the pandemic, many foreign students learning French had their internships, summer camps, cultural exchanges cancelled. They were worried about losing touch with the language. ShareAmi has managed to link nearly 7000 students with elderly native speakers, many in Parisian care homes. The Zoom calls have proven mutually beneficial. Students reported that finding subjects for conversation was much easier than they had imagined. (My own experience when learning foreign languages is that the older generation has superior phonetics and diction. Elderly ladies are the easiest to understand for a foreigner).  

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Last week, I came across a study conducted in the USA. Based on the interaction with 950 Americans, the study finds that the loneliest group in the pandemic is age group 18-25. Even before the pandemic, young adults were shifting to virtual interactions. The pandemic has made them lonelier. Their main grievance, the study finds, is that nobody sincerely bothers about how they are doing.

The second loneliest group is the elderly 70+.

It seems the pandemic has further widened the gap between those two groups.

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I must point out this is an American study. Its results may apply to rich nations and rich households. In countries like India, where three generations routinely live together, this is not a problem, before or during the pandemic. As a child, I was raised by my grandmother, while my professor mother taught at the university.

The elderly possess a certain wisdom and life-long experiences about love, work, friendship, mortality they can share with the young. Young people, on the other hand, can teach them technology, have more pronounced views on racism or climate change. The grandparent generation produced lots of children, but the youngest have better sex education. My daughter can explain LGBTQ+ to my mother. The elderly have lived through wars and epidemics. They find it easier to believe the pandemic is temporary and will pass. During the Spanish flu, multigenerational households were a global norm.

Covid-19 is the first pandemic where millions of elderly and millions of young people are lonely. Loneliness is a pandemic itself that is getting worse.

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Like the ShareAmi French language initiative, there are other reports about these two lonely generations connecting with each other.

18-year-old Ella Gardner volunteered to shop and do chores for the elders. For her anthropology paper, she extensively Zoom interviewed her grandfather. Ella was always nervous about getting old. Her interaction during the pandemic has convinced her ageing is a natural process, and that older people can be very happy as well.

Sam Cozolino, 14, decided to use the lockdown to build a family tree. He started contacting his relatives in the USA, and Italy where his ancestors came from. This made Sam’s life busy and full of social interactions. His paternal grandmother told him stories about the family growing up in poverty in the USA during WWII. After hearing them, Sam realized the pandemic was not half as bad.

In many countries, teenagers are volunteering to book vaccine appointments for the elderly. Where vaccines are scarce, getting an online appointment may require technical expertise and perseverance.

In Boston, a company called Nesterley has started a home sharing service. Elders with extra rooms are matched with young people looking for affordable accommodation. Nesterley has some uplifting stories. In one home share that started during the pandemic, Michael Nelson, 28, a Harvard student from Denmark rented a room from Laurinda Bedingfield, 67, a retired civil engineer. Michael now bakes bread and cooks vegetarian meals for Laurinda. They go for walks together. Once she gets both her shots, she has promised to teach him photography and art.

“I feel much less isolated knowing that Michael is nearby. I have a friend who lives on my property and I can call him any time if I need help.” Said Laurinda.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 148: Living in the Right Place

To get a covid vaccine, where you are is as important as who you are. An article by Allison McCann and Lazaro Gamio in yesterday’s NYT illustrates the point well. Here are its main points with my additional analysis and comments.

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As on 18 March, a 16-year-old in Israel, a 16-year-old in the American city of Mississippi, or an 18-year-old in Shanghai could get a vaccine.  

 On the other hand, a 70-year-old in Shanghai, 80-year-old in Kenya or 90-year-old in South Korea can’t get vaccines. In China, trials were conducted only on those below sixty, so China is reluctant to vaccinate the elderly. Kenya’s very few vaccines are reserved for medical workers. Koreans older than 75 are not yet eligible.

In 67 countries, mainly African, nobody can get vaccines, because they are not available.

Covax, a global vaccine sharing project, was conceived to distribute vaccines equitably around the world. The rich nations, however, placed direct orders with the vaccine makers, and grabbed more than enough doses. USA currently holds millions of AstraZeneca doses in storage, which they don’t use because the vaccine is not approved. In Brazil, where it is approved, more than 2000 people are dying daily partly because of vaccine shortage.

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Anyone who can pay $13,000, is above 65, and with comorbidities can book a three-week holiday to the UAE and get vaccinated in Dubai.

Any member of Congress in the USA has top priority irrespective of age, health or gender.

In Manaus, the highly infected capital of Brazil, friends of Virgilio Neto, the mayor of Manaus can easily get vaccinated. The same with Lebanon lawmakers and military leaders in Spain. Families of ministers in Peru and some other Latin American countries qualify.

A smoker in Illinois can get it, because he is a smoker. But a smoker in Georgia doesn’t qualify. A grocery worker in Oklahoma can, but one in Texas can’t. A postal worker in North Carolina is allowed, but not one in California. The state of Connecticut doesn’t prioritise a diabetic, whereas the United Kingdom puts diabetics ahead in the line.

A pregnant woman is allowed to get a vaccine in New York. Germany doesn’t allow pregnant women to be vaccinated. However, two close contacts of a pregnant German woman get the vaccine to keep her safe.

Belgium has a high covid death rate per million. But teachers in Belgium have no priority, whereas all teachers in Mexico do.

Correctional officers working in Tennessee prisons are vaccinated, but the prisoners they deal with are not eligible because they have committed crimes.

Refugees in Germany and illegal immigrants in the UK can get the vaccines, because the virus has shown little respect for a person’s legal status.

France prioritises chauffeurs and taxi drivers. Japan gives priority to people with a body mass index of more than 30.

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Israel is the best vaccinated country with half its population fully vaccinated. However, Palestinians who live in the lands occupied by Israel don’t get the vaccines, unless they hold a work permit to work in Israel.

A gorilla or orangutan in the San Diego zoo can get the vaccine.

In total, 43 rich countries, mainly from North America and Europe, will complete their vaccination campaigns this year. Low-income countries, 148 of them, are looking at 2023 and beyond.

USA has given at least one shot to 23% of its population, UK 39%. South Africa has lost 52,000 people (870 per million). It has vaccinated 0.3%. Iran with 61,000 deaths (728 per million) has so far managed 10,000 doses for the whole nation. Peru is another country with a high number of cases, and hardly any vaccinations.

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In India, you get a vaccine if you have internet access, are above 60, or above 45 with comorbidities. However, I know Indians as young as 37 who have managed to get the shot.

If you live in the right place, then it becomes important to have the right connections.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 149: A Bahraini Prince in Kathmandu

This week, on 15 March, a Bahraini prince and Royal guard of sixteen landed at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan international airport. Their luggage contained oversized and overweight metal boxes that drew everybody’s attention. The royal delegation, in fact, posed with the blue containers, taking a few pictures.

The Nepali customs officials politely asked the prince, Sheikh Mohamed Hamad Mohamed al-Khalifa, about the contents. He proudly said it was a gift for the residents of a Nepali village. The boxes contained 2000 vaccine doses, a goodwill gesture from the Bahraini royal family.

This caused a confusion too massive for the Kathmandu airport. Nepal strictly bans imports of drugs or vaccines without prior approval. An exporter must submit in advance detailed documents, explain the cold chain, and mention expiry dates. Only on verification and approval of the documents can the exporter send the shipment. In this case, the airport had no information.

A drug inspection team was appointed to investigate. This entire week, Nepal’s drug authorities have been investigating the affair of the royal gift.

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Earlier I wrote about the closure of Mount Everest treks during the pandemic. Nepal made an exception for a Chinese delegation in May 2020. Another exception was made in Sept/Oct 2020. Bahrain’s royal mountaineering delegation, which included a prince, was given special permission. That group climbed Mount Manaslu (8163 meters) and Mount Lobuche (6119 meters). Bahrain’s flag was raised on both summits. The world has only fourteen mountains taller than 8,000 meters. Manaslu is one of them. Pleased by the royal prince conquering it, Nepal renamed the mountain as “Royal Bahrain Peak”.  (With 25,000 Nepalese working in Bahrain and remitting money back regularly, it is an important relationship).

That expedition was a dress rehearsal for climbing Everest. This week’s mountaineering group has arrived for eighty days. While climbing, they will pass Samagaun, a village with 1000 residents close to the Royal Bahrain Peak. The 2000 doses are meant to vaccinate the 1000 villagers.

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The Bahrain group had sought permission from the Nepali Ambassador in Bahrain, and he had given it (without having any authority to do so). He had then forwarded the information to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But that was the wrong ministry. Ministry of Health is the approving authority. The Ministry of foreign affairs sent it to the Ministry of Health – by post. The post hasn’t arrived yet.

Local newspapers said the vaccines were Sinovac, the Chinese make. Only Oxford-AstraZeneca is approved in Nepal. The Nepali ambassador’s letter confirmed this was AstraZeneca. This letter, it is learnt, was based on oral (incorrect) information given to him in Bahrain. It is now suspected the vaccines are Sinopharm, another Chinese make.

Investigation also revealed that the Bahrain delegation expected to be received by the health ministry representatives at the airport, who would then take charge of the vaccines. That didn’t happen. Hurriedly, the vaccines were taken by an ambulance to a local Kathmandu hospital. Shocked at the sight of 2,000 doses, the hospital sent it back to the airport. The Tribhuvan international airport has no refrigerators to store the vaccines. Investigators are, therefore, concerned as to the state of the vaccines.

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The Bahrain delegation contains seventeen strong males. None of them is a doctor or a nurse. They couldn’t answer who would administer the vaccines to the villagers. In any case, Nepal currently allows only 65+ to be vaccinated. The Nepali media is debating the ethics of vaccinating an entire village with different age groups. This would certainly set a bad precedent.

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Meanwhile, basic research by diligent reporters (including myself) reveals the King of Bahrain has four wives and twelve children, including seven sons. There is no prince by the name of Sheikh Mohamed Hamad Mohamed al-Khalifa. Reputed newspapers, in their electronic versions, are hurriedly replacing the headlines, changing “Prince” for “Sheikh”, which is less exciting.

The investigation team has sent its report today to the Ministry of Health. Further directions are awaited from the ministry. The Bahrain Sheikh and other sixteen members are in a Kathmandu hotel for a weeklong quarantine as is required under the Nepalese law.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 150: Dinosaur Bones

Niger, the largest country in West Africa, has two thirds area in the Sahara desert. Niger gained independence in 1958, after decades of French rule.

In the 1960s, a French atomic energy team carried out digging in Niger, to find Uranium. Instead, they stumbled upon something huge, bluish and stony; identified later as the vertebral columns of a dinosaur.  This fortuitous find was only a beginning. It inspired several paleontologists to visit Niger and look for fossils from the Mesozoic era.

Professor Paul Sereno, a paleontologist from the University of Chicago, has been digging in Niger for the past thirty years. He calls Niger the best exposed but the least explored. Sereno has been credited with discovering nine species of dinosaurs previously unknown.

The Europeans and the Americans have found diverse fossils: flying reptiles, armored dogs, eleven species with long necks not yet identified. They roamed the desert nearly 200 million years ago. Excavations that can take months have found dinosaurs, mammals, even a Neolithic woman wearing an ivory bangle. Niger is so rich with fossils, an archeologist accompanying Sereno went behind the bushes for a comfort break, and spotted a 10,000-year-old human skull. In 2019, a man on a moped led the scientists to a hulking Spinosaurus (spine lizard).

In prehistoric times, the climate of the Sahara desert was wet, fertile and habitation-friendly, a phenomenon archeologists call the ‘Green Sahara’. It provided favourable conditions for hunting, agriculture and livestock breeding. (This example, by the way, shows what climate change can do to the places we inhabit today).

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Until the late 1980s, anyone could take the loot back to their own country and did. This also had practical reasons. The bones require preservation under controlled temperature to avoid their crumbling. Niger’s top museum is infested with termites. Many Niger bones are located in private collections in the USA, France and Italy. The British museum in London and Sereno’s Chicago lab hold a few specimens.

It was acknowledged by all parties that the dinosaur bones from Niger should return to Niger. A joint venture was conceived. Two new museums, one in the capital city of Niamey and another in the desert region of Agadez were planned. Niger earmarked the land. The project was called “the Niger Heritage”. It was estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars. The World bank and some other donors had expressed interest.

Archeologists, paleontologists, historians, architects and urban planners from America and Europe along with Niger leaders would develop the design concepts for the two sites. The Niamey museum would house dinosaur fossils, human burials and artifacts from pre-dynastic cultures. Agadez museum would preserve the language, art, music and customs of the nomadic people.

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In April last year, everything froze. Worse, some 20 tons of bones now sit in the middle of the Sahara.  Sereno’s team had crafted temporary coverings for many skeletons out of plaster. Sand was brushed over to hide them. Passersby would mistake anything protruding up for rocks. It is common for paleontologists to rebury dig sites before returning with movers. Sereno meant to come back to relocate the bones, but hasn’t managed to visit Niger for a year now.

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Niger is a dangerous place. Only this week, Islamic State militants killed 58 civilians including teenagers. In January, they had killed more than 100. Sereno and his team always move with armed bodyguards.

The Niger government has sent soldiers to guard the expanse from looters. Bandits roam these areas. Nomads have been recruited to keep an eye on the dinosaur bones and send regular text updates to Sereno. Coronavirus is spreading as well. Niger’s current museum made about $370 a day from visitors. Now it struggles to make $20 even on a weekend.

Professor Sereno is waiting for the end of the pandemic. He can then revive the Niger Heritage project. The dinosaur bones can return to Niger. Tourism can boost Niger’s economy. Until then, he also hopes bandits and terrorists won’t come anywhere near the twenty tons of bones in the desert.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 151: The Case of the Vanishing e-books

Most of us are familiar with e-books, which we read on Kindle. Fewer people know or use e-books from public libraries. USA has the best system to borrow e-books. An American can simply feed the (physical) library card number into an app called Libby, and instantly gain access to millions of titles. Overdrive, which runs that app, is the leading digital platform for public libraries and schools.

The good news is that the pandemic turned 2020 into a record year for digital lending in public libraries. Readers worldwide borrowed 430 million e-books, audiobooks and digital magazines in 2020, an impressive 33% increase over 2019. Children and Young Adult genre checkouts rose by 80%. Audiobooks, which were growing dramatically before, declined. Not surprising since commuting stopped during the lockdowns.

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The arrangements for e-book lending are very different. For an e-book we may buy for $5 on Kindle, libraries usually pay between $40 and $60. A popular audiobook will cost $100 when a library buys it. Unlike print books, which libraries can lend to the same person repeatedly, e-books usually come with digital locks. After a certain number of loans or after a predefined period of time, the e-book expires by itself.

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Amazon, our favourite lockdown bookseller, has been killing bookshops. This is well known. Last year, bookstore sales in the USA fell by 30%. Every week, at least one bookstore closed down for good.

Amazon is also a big publisher. It publishes books and audiobooks under three brands: Lake Union (fiction), Thomas & Mercer (crime thrillers) and Audible (audiobooks). Amazon has almost completed its vertical integration. It is the largest bookstore in the world, it owns the reading device Kindle, and it publishes books. You can easily buy the e-books or audiobooks published by Amazon in seconds. But you can’t borrow them.

Amazon doesn’t allow its published books to be borrowed. Libby App or any public library has no access to any of the Amazon published e-books and audiobooks. From your local library you may borrow Obama’s A Promised Land, because it is not published by Amazon. But you can’t borrow an audiobook for Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime.

As one journalist said, Amazon doesn’t accept a library card, only a credit card.

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Living in Mumbai, I don’t have access to e-borrowing from Overdrive or another platform. True, Amazon offers its own library Kindle Unlimited. I subscribed to it for a few years, before realizing it specialized in not offering a single book I wanted to read. One may also subscribe to Audible to listen to Amazon audiobook exclusives.

What Amazon has succeeded in doing is creating two parallel literary universes. The public and the Amazon private. Don’t be fooled by Amazon’s bestseller list for 2020. It is entirely different from Overdrive’s most borrowed list for 2020, that includes titles such as Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, Becoming by Michelle Obama and Educated by Tara Westover. Amazon’s Kindle list of ten books includes six books published by Amazon itself.

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Reading is gradually shifting from paper to e-reading. I haven’t read a single newspaper or magazine in paper format for the last fifteen years. During research on a particular subject, a researcher wants to borrow hundreds of books, read what is important and return them. Surely, no researcher would think of buying all the books. Or restrict the research to books by certain publishers.  

Libraries are critical for students, who can’t be expected to buy hundreds of textbooks. The public libraries in London or New York are magnificent and well-stocked. In a place like Mumbai, with the library culture disappearing, my dream is getting an e-library card that allows me to borrow any book in the world. I am willing to pay a high membership fee for that virtual library, as long as every publisher, including Amazon, is compelled by law to make its books available for lending.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 152: Pandora’s Box

In 1990, I was working and living in Moscow. A Japanese executive working in the same office had requested me to mediate in a delicate assignment. The Japanese government knew or believed hundreds of Japanese paintings were lying in the basement of St Petersburg’s Hermitage, Russia’s greatest museum. They probably made their way to Russia during the war. The Japanese wished to explore the possibility of repatriation of the paintings. Of course, the Japanese government would pay the right price for this invaluable treasure.

The Japanese gentleman and I conducted two informal meetings with a Russian curator from the Hermitage. The paintings were lying in the basement for years, they were more valuable to the Japanese, and in 1990 a Russian museum should have been delighted to get foreign currency.

“No.” the Russian curator said. “You have no idea what it is like to sell a museum’s paintings. To sell to Japan, the bureaucracy will take fifty years, but I will lose my job immediately when I suggest it.”

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I remembered that incident when I read a news report last week. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially known as the Met, is America’s largest museum. More than 150 years old, it is among the top museums in the world. Last week, it approved a policy that allows selling of its art works to pay salaries and overhead costs.

Deaccessioning is the term used when a museum sells its painting or art work. It is generally taboo. Under certain conditions, paintings can be sold to acquire other paintings, but not to pay salaries. Even in financial distress, if a museum sells a Monet or Picasso, or the Louvre were to sell the Mona Lisa, we intuitively feel it can’t be right.

The pandemic shattered the financial well-being of art museums. Most museums were shut for six months; fund-raising galas, other events, and ticket sales stopped. A closed zoo must still retain staff and spend on maintenance to keep the animals alive and well. Similarly, a closed museum must continue to take care of the paintings and other art works. The fixed expenses remain high.

AAMD (Association of Art Museum Directors), a regulatory body in America issued a statement last April. Considering the historic nature of the crisis, it allowed museums to sell art to take care of the “cost of direct care”. This concession is offered for two years, till April 2022.

Museums across America responded by announcing deaccessioning plans. But in October, the Baltimore Museum of Art invited public ire by announcing it will sell three major paintings to raise $65 million. It is an accepted convention that museums should never sell masterpieces or works by living artists. Baltimore’s plan had proposed both.

Community members and former trustees signed letters of protest, board members resigned, and donors cancelled their planned donations. After a month of non-stop pressure, Baltimore cancelled the auction at the last hour.

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The Metropolitan Museum is short by $150 million. It has reduced its staff by 20% in the wake of the pandemic. Still, operational costs are high. Curators and conservators need to be paid. Money is needed to care for the more than two million items in the museum’s collection. The admission fees, exhibition rental fees, shop sales are gone. Grants and gifts have disappeared.

Some of the museum trustees are super rich. In the pandemic, the wealth of most billionaires has grown by 40%. Why can’t they use the windfall to sponsor the distressed museum, ask some art lovers. (If they wished, they could have done that. Instead, they have approved the new policy allowing the sale of paintings).

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It is difficult to give a verdict in this debate. An irony that these institutions with financial survival at stake are the custodians of paintings and artifacts that are valued in millions.

The Art world is more worried this two-year window allowing museums flexibility to sell art to pay their bills may continue post-pandemic. The Pandora’s Box is already open.

Ravi