Corona Daily 114: Hair We Share

In pandemic times, even those who are struggling financially have one asset that grows every day.

In the lockdown last year, most men and women missed their usual scheduled trip to the hairdresser. Some used the rare opportunity to grow ponytails or long hair. When salons began to open, the risk of exposure prevented people from rushing for a haircut. In the USA and UK, some women with 14 inch braids are now fully vaccinated. They are looking forward to getting rid of their burden, and head to the beach with new summer cuts.

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On Long Island, Suzanne Chimera runs a company called “Hair We Share”. She asks people to donate their long hair. Wigs made of donated hair are given free to adults and children with medical hair loss. Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy need wigs. Wigs are expensive everywhere, a good wig with human hair can easily cost between $1000 and $3000. This expense added to the cost of the treatment is an unfair burden on a cancer patient.

Suzanne encourages potential donors to keep growing their hair before donating. In the pandemic, her donor base has increased by 230%. Men ask her how they can donate their wild, unkempt hair. The minimum length for donation is 8 inches long. With eight inches of hair, wig makers end up making a 4-6 inch wig. Majority of those needing wigs are women, who prefer long hair. Many men agreed to wait until their hair was sufficiently long.

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In the pandemic, organizations such as Hair We Share are making compromises, such as accepting grey or highlighted hair. Jerika Nguyen, 28, managed to grow hair till her haunches. Last month, she donated nine inches of her hair to Children With Hair Loss, one of the few charities that accepted her highlighted hair. Jerika compared her experience to blood donation. You give up something knowing you are going to get it back, and what you give up helps the one who receives it.

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Locks of Love, one of the better known charities, tells us that as much as 80% of the hair donated may by unusable for wigs. Many people don’t read the guidelines, and send in hair that is wet, moldy, short, gray, or too processed. This has to be thrown away.

Donors ask if they could see the photo of a person who is wearing the wig made of their hair. Usually the recipients prefer to be anonymous. Even if they allow, the logistics make it difficult to identify which hair is part of which wig. To make a nice, thick wig the manufacturers may look for 20 identical ponytails, each at least eight inches long, and combine these to make a wig.

Paul Frasca, co-founder of Sustainable Salons, in Australia, said hair donations were down almost 70% last year. But a welcome surprise this year is receiving high quality “virgin” long hair coming from men.

In India, at least Hyderabad and Mumbai have hair-wig double donation agencies.

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In China, the wig industry market is booming. USA is China’s largest export destination for wigs. Every time the Trump administration sent stimulus checks to American families, wig exports from China to the USA grew. China prefers to import human hair from India, it is cheaper. And Indians seldom dye their hair, so the quality of hair is good.

In Japan, the demand for men’s wigs has grown nearly three times during the pandemic. While no large scale study is available, wig makers believe the Zoom conferencing is responsible. Japanese men watch themselves endlessly during the Zoom call, feel restless about the image of their crown, and order a nice expensive wig before the next meeting.

Ravi                                                          

Corona Daily 115: Running on Empty Cylinders

India reported 315,000 new cases yesterday, a pandemic record. More than 2100 officially died of covid-19, an Indian record. Many deaths are attributed to the shortage of oxygen. Doctors are required to play god by choosing whom to give oxygen to and letting the others die.

On 16 April, Vijay Shrivastava, 65, a journalist, posted on twitter a photo of his oxymeter showing 52, instead of the required 90 plus. The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister’s advisor replied asking him to provide full details. By then his oxygen level had fallen to 31. On 17 April, he died. His son said he tried to get an oxygen cylinder everywhere but couldn’t.

Yesterday, in a city of Maharashtra, at least 24 patients died in a matter of minutes when the oxygen supply to their ventilators suddenly stopped due to a leak.

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Six hospitals have gone to the Delhi High court. On 21 April, the high court judge said, “this is ridiculous. We want to know what the center is doing with regard to oxygen supply across India.”

Today, India’s Supreme Court has entered the battleground. Beg, borrow, steal but get the oxygen, a judge reportedly said to the government. The court wants the government to show the national plan for oxygen supply.

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Oxygen is used in industries. It is used in hospitals. We are familiar with oxygen cylinders traditionally used in hospitals. But there is a relatively modern technology called “pressure swing adsorption (PSA)”. Broadly speaking, this production process uses the normal air, and by applying changes in pressure separates the oxygen. This oxygen is supplied continuously to the hospital through pipes. The technology avoids the complications of storage and transport of liquid oxygen. The PSA plants are built close to a hospital or are attached to it.

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Last year, on 14 March, India declared covid-19 to be the national health emergency. It was known India was likely to experience huge shortages of beds, PPE, ventilators and oxygen. The central government decided to build 162 Pressure Swing Adsorption Oxygen plants in 162 district hospitals across the country. India then went into a national lockdown.

For reasons never explained, the tender was issued on 21 October. It took more than seven months to prepare a tender in a national emergency.

These plants are relatively inexpensive. The 162 plants would cost Rs 200 crore ($27 million). They were going to be financed by the PM-CARES fund, an opaque instrument that uses the photo of the prime minister, government website domain, but is kind of private, not open to public scrutiny. Indians had donated Rs 3,000 crore ($400 million) to that fund in the first four days. Money, therefore, was not a problem to build the oxygen plants.

The website of the PM-CARES fund, till today, doesn’t mention how the collected funds have been allocated. It doesn’t mention the plan to build the PSA oxygen plants.

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Scroll, an independent online newspaper carried out an independent investigation by calling the potential hospitals. They called over 60 hospitals across 14 states, and found that only 11 units were installed, and five were operational.

After Scroll’s article was published, India’s health ministry hurriedly issued a series of tweets. They confirmed that out of 162 planned oxygen plants, 33 have been installed. Before May-end, the plan is to install another 47.

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India has now gone into management by crisis mode. Production and supply need to match. A big state like Madhya Pradesh has no oxygen manufacturing. More cryogenic tankers will need to be produced. Their production can take up to four months. Though an oxygen exporter, India plans to import 50,000 MT of oxygen. The logistics of import and distribution around the country are challenging. Industries have been asked to divert oxygen to hospitals.

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Journalist Shrivastava who died on 17 April lived seven km from the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Civil hospital. It was one of the 162 hospitals waiting for the oxygen generation plant. Had it got one as was planned a year ago, Mr Shrivastava might be alive today. Along with thousands of others.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 116: Haredi Jews: Out for Change (Yotzim)

21 year old Racheli Ohayon worked in a Jerusalem phone center. She was raised in an ultra-orthodox household. Even at work, she wore the most conservative black dress, and strictly observed the religious directives, no matter how stifling. With the onset of the pandemic, she was off work, crammed in the house with seven siblings. She had a lot of time to think. With what was happening around her, she realized rabbis were no doctors. In a few weeks, she took a decision, the most shocking in the Haredi community, to quit the community and go out in search of a secular lifestyle.

Racheli had attended an ultra-orthodox girls’ school where the only history taught was Jewish history. Her school had computers, but they were not linked to the internet. Chief Rabbis had prohibited it. She had never seen a movie, and never worn a pair of jeans. For the first time, she bought a smartphone and started browsing Google and listening to music on YouTube. She joined the local library in Petah Tikva and started reading secular literature, novels which were off-limits for her. Earlier, Racheli had thought Haredim were special and different people. She found out she was not different. She feels her decision to leave was absolutely right.

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In the Haredi community, marriages are arranged. Dedi Rotenberg and his wife Divan had one such marriage. They soon realized both felt this particular type of religion was suffocating them. In 2020, they took the decision to move out of Bnei Brak for a secular life in the south of Israel. Dedi said it took him many months to adapt to his new friends and neighbours. Their slang, the subject matter were different. For a few weeks, he had no idea what people were talking about, though they shared a common language.

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They are called Yotzim (those who leave). In the ultra-orthodox community, there is no question of being able to stay at your home after giving up the orthodoxy. In extreme cases, parents of those who leave sit shiva, meaning observe the traditional mourning as if their children were dead.

Many leavers don’t wish to abandon Judaism, but are seeking individualism, and freedom to make their own choices in life. But leaving their family, community and lacking any secular education, they are not equipped to adapt to the new world. As mentioned yesterday, Haredi boys are not taught math, science or English. Many of them study Torah full time and rely on government aid. Most Haredi women work in low-grade jobs to support their families. They are responsible for raising the large number of children as well.

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There are two major organizations in Israel that take care of the leavers: Hillel and Out for Change.

Hillel empowers the leavers to build meaningful self-determined lives. Their dedicated staff provides full assistance during the first critical 3-5 years in the transition period. They  offer hotline and drop-in services, counselling and treatment, transitional housing, housing subsidies, education and employment help, free legal aid, emergency shelter, care for single parents and children.

During the pandemic, Hillel noted a 50% increase in the number of leavers. Experts attribute the increase to a breakdown of supervision and routine, disillusionment with the community leaders, a rise in internet use, and more time for questioning and self-discovery.

Out for Change offered leavers the option of formal registration, so as to legalise their status with the authorities. The labor and social affairs ministry recently began defining ex-haredim as a special category eligible to receive vouchers for special vocational training courses. During the pandemic, though traumatized by the break-up from the family, more than 1300 leavers signed up.

This was something that the rabbis had feared. This was one of the reasons why they were insistent on keeping the religious schools open no matter what. A leading rabbi said boredom leads to sin and puts girls in severe spiritual danger.

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Under a different name, and different religion, each country has such communities whose decrepit old male leaders trap its members into extreme orthodoxy. Israeli organisations such as Hillel and Out for Change are good role models that show how to bring those people back into civilization.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 117: Haredi Jews: State within a State

The Israel-Palestine hostility is well known. A lesser known conflict is the one between secular Israelis and Israel’s Haredi Jews. Haredim are ultra-orthodox, custodians of traditional Judaism. They consider themselves to be the truer Jews. They believe in the strictly orthodox Rabbi leaders, many of whom are above 90, and in the Torah, Hebrew Scriptures.

David Ben-Gurion, the founding prime minister of Israel, had the difficult job of negotiating between the proposed secular state and the Haredi community. From Ben-Gurion to Netanyahu, every prime minister has pandered to the community for political support. To please them, Ben-Gurion exempted them from military service, made Saturday the official weekly holiday, made kosher food mandatory in state canteens, and forbade civil marriages in Israel. Haredi communities are allowed to run Yeshiva, their own religious schools, funded by the state, which don’t teach core subjects like mathematics, science or the English language.

Nearly half of Haredi males choose not to work at all, relying on state funding and philanthropic aid to feed their large families. About 42% of Haredim live below the poverty line.

Haredi Jews make up 13% of the Israeli population. But the percent will grow because Haredi women have on average 6.6 children, secular women 2.2.  60% of Haredi Jews are under 20, at least ten years younger than the national average. Believe it or not, many Haredim call Israel an anti-Semitic state.

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The coronavirus pandemic reveals and highlights many conflicts. Since the first lockdown, Haredi Jews refused to wear masks. Religious schools continued teaching when all other schools were shut. Yaakov Litzman, Israel’s health minister a year ago, is himself a Hasidic Jew. When Netanyahu first ordered a shutdown of public gathering places including yeshivas and ritual bathhouses, Litzman persuaded Netanyahu to exempt the Haredim from the general lockdown. He argued that there was a higher law to consider. Netanyahu agreed because another election was looming in a few months.

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 Bnei Brak, just east of Tel Aviv, is a concentration of Haredi Jews. It is the poorest and most densely populated city in Israel.

Last April, it became clear Bnei Brak enjoyed no divine protection from covid-19. The crowded study halls in the yeshivas and jam packed ritual public baths turned Bnei Brak and other Haredi concentrations into hot zones.

Keeping kosher in quarantine was a challenge. The Israeli government tried to isolate coronavirus patients by carrying them in ambulances to designated hotels. The residents of Bnei Brak refused to be evacuated. They demanded written proof that food in the hotels would be kosher as certified by their trusted rabbi.

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On 31 January, during Israel’s third lockdown, Rabbi Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik, 99 years old, died of covid. He was the head of an elite school for ultra-orthodox Jews. A grand funeral was arranged. Later on the same day, Rabbi Yitzchok Scheiner, 98 years old, also succumbed to the virus. Another mass procession followed through Jerusalem.

Chaim Kanievsky, 93 years old, is another prominent rabbi. He refused to shut the religious schools and reportedly said: we don’t care what the law says, we are not going to obey.

Earlier the secular and Haredi communities lived as if on two islands, each in their areas, rarely mixing. Bnei Brak was closed for Sabbath, and a Gay Pride parade could happen in Tel Aviv. The infectious disease showed Israel has no islands, everyone is connected and can affect one another.

Haredi Jews are 13%, but had 36% of the infections. One out of every 100 ultra-orthodox Jew over 60 died from covid, three and a half times more than the general population. This was not a chance event. London has 23,000 ultra-orthodox Jews. In London, the community had 64% infections, one of the world’s highest rates of covid-19 infection. UK average was 7%.

What was the positive impact of the pandemic on some of the younger Haredi Jews? I will discuss that tomorrow.

Ravi                                                                                                               

Corona Daily 118: A Day in the Life of Alison Forde

Alison Forde checked the latest figures before leaving for the Royal London Hospital. At 6 am, 30 patients in a&e (accident and emergency) required a bed, half of them covid patients. Six people had been waiting for more than four hours. An 82 year old man arrived yesterday was waiting for 15 hours. The risk of dying increases if a patient is not treated inside six hours.

Alison’s team was shrinking. Out of her core team of eleven, three were off sick, and one was isolating with covid symptoms. In the early months, the hospital had suspended all routine work, including cancer treatment. In January, the sickest covid patients were earmarked for Royal London.

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As the Head of Site Operations, Alison’s main job is to allocate patients to key areas of the hospital. A&E is the clearing house for admissions. From there, she moves patients to respiratory wards to give oxygen via masks or nasal tubes. Or to intensive care which now has three floors (earlier one). Every day Alison was confronted with a brutal fact. There weren’t enough beds. The hospital chain had only ten spare intensive care beds. The entire system was on the verge of grinding to a halt. People who could be cured in pre-pandemic time may not survive now.

After ten months, survival rates had improved, which had aggravated the situation. People now stayed on life support for long, which made intensive care beds scarcer. Earlier, death was the primary mechanism of discharge.

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08.30 am was huddle time for Alison’s team. Here they planned the day. Now, with social distancing, the team occupied the entire corridor. Some members struggled to hear what was being said.

NHS in general, and Royal London in particular, has set capacity benchmarks. The number of ambulances waiting to offload patients, waiting patients, bed occupancy, staffing rates and such. The system triggers alarms. For example, a patient waiting beyond certain time will be sent to another hospital. But now, with all hospitals overflowing, those alarms made no sense. Alison had simply changed the parameters.

The 82-year old fortunately got a bed at 07.15 after waiting for 16 hours.

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Novel tasks were added as a result of covid precautions. Every day, piles of clinical waste from intensive care, including heaps of soiled personal protective equipment had to be disposed. They packed the store rooms to the ceiling. The logistics of disposing the waste mountains was looked over by Alison.

At lunchtime, Alison felt overwhelmed. She sat in the corner and cried a little. Her team was a little surprised to see her state. She is known as the cool cucumber.

When the pandemic started, Alison was extremely worried about contracting coronavirus. Every day, each doctor would visit her office to get three or four death certificates signed. Some hospital employees died as well. Every time she coughed, she thought she had covid. To avoid the Tube, she started cycling to the hospital. She fell off, fractured her jaw, cut her lip, ligament and wrist, and needed two operations. But her fear of covid disappeared since.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

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The hospital is considering adding another unit. That would mean diluting the nurse-patient ratio further. Normally one nurse for two is the maximum allowed; now one nurse takes care of four.

At 4.30 pm, 31 patients were waiting for more than four hours in a&e. By 8 pm, more than sixty.

Alison’s 12 hour shift finished at 08.30 pm, but she can never leave before 9 pm. She caught the bus home, had a cup of tea, a quick cold sandwich. She did a bit of cleaning, more to distract herself. After checking the morning alarm, she went to bed.

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P.S. For 1843 magazine, Simon Akam interviewed Alison Forde, who described her 15 January 2021. This article presents it in a compressed form. For health administrators in Brazil, India and other developing countries, working days are even more terrible. Fortunately for Alison, the situation in London has now improved.  

Ravi 

Corona Daily 119: The Unusual Royal Funeral

British planners excel at contingency planning for the death of a Royal. When the Queen eventually passes away, the Prime Minister will get a code-worded call saying “London Bridge is down” which will trigger press releases, BBC protocols, the lowering of flags in Canada and New Zealand, and detailed funeral arrangements. Loyal watchers of The Crown know this. The code for Prince Philip’s death was “operation Forth Bridge”. Had the British planners shown such zeal and meticulousness during Brexit or Covid-19 planning, Britain would be a much better place now.

Unfortunately, the best-laid plans of men often go awry in a pandemic.

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The original plan called for the coffin of the Duke of Edinburgh to move through the streets of London on a gun carriage with hundreds of thousands lining up on both sides to bid goodbye. This is normally a journey of 22 miles from Buckingham palace to Windsor castle. Instead, Prince Philip’s converted Land Rover made a trip of only a few hundred yards.

The protocol number of attendees is 800. The pandemic reduced it to 30. That meant mainly the immediate family. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip are third cousins, with Queen Victoria as their common great-great-grandmother. That could have eased some pressure on the list. Boris Johnson wisely withdrew, and pregnant Meghan was advised not to travel by her doctors and counsellors. The vacant seats allowed the Queen to invite the German relatives of Philip (his mother was German). In 1947, as a consequence of WWII, Germans could not be invited to the royal wedding. The German royals and Harry flying from abroad went into quarantine. There were enough palaces for each of them to isolate in. A small print exception allows mourners to exit quarantine on the funeral day.

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The Queen had to decide on the dress code. Usually, male royals wear military uniforms. The Queen opted for civilian clothes. Black. Black. Black. Queen Victoria, after her husband’s death wore black every day for forty years.

Avoiding military uniforms, though prescribed in the planning book, was a shrewd decision. Harry has sort of renounced royal life, so despite serving in Afghanistan he was no longer eligible. And Prince Andrew exiled for his association with a sex predator didn’t qualify either.

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When operation Forth Bridge was activated, on BBC, presenter Martine Croxall interrupted the programme to announce the Duke’s death. While the channel showed his photographs, she quickly removed her necklace, and changed into a black dress.

Over the next week, you could switch from one BBC channel to another, but couldn’t escape knowing more about the life of the Royal Consort. The civilized kingdom has a platform for people to complain about BBC. This week BBC received more than 100,000 complaints, an all time record, for its wall-to-wall coverage. Some people, presumably anti-monarchists, likened the programming to what might be expected in North Korea.

This is surprising. The Duke’s death was a respite from the wall-to-wall coronavirus coverage. Like sport events played to empty stadiums, but televised worldwide, the BBC coverage offered the worldwide mourners a live viewing opportunity.  

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Inside the castle’s St George’s chapel, every attendee was required to wear a black mask, and not sing. They needed to keep a gap of two meters. The queen dressed in black, wearing a mask, sitting alone in a corner, looked more a widow than a queen.

There was no eulogy and no sermon. A choir of four, the number cut seriously by the pandemic, standing far from the attendees, sang hymns.

Viewers glued to their TVs scrutinised the royal family members to see how much each of them was faithful to the Netflix series.

Prince Philip’s casket was lowered in the royal vault. Only a living royal or a dead royal is allowed to enter the vault. This is a transit stop for Philip. When his wife dies, he will be moved and the couple will be buried side-by-side at the King George VI memorial.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 120: Patents Kill Millions

In 2021, the USA would have produced and reserved one billion doses to vaccinate its 260 million adults. Biden administration has said such large quantities are essential to have vaccines for children, booster doses for variants, and any unforeseen events.

Currently USA is holding 30 million doses of AstraZeneca, not even approved yet. To its south, Brazil is losing 4000 people daily to covid-19, and has approved AstraZeneca, but has no access to these doses.

Of the vaccine doses given globally, 75% have gone to 10 countries. Africa has 17% of the world’s population, and has barely administered 2% of vaccine doses. A healthy 20-year old American can soon be fully vaccinated; whereas hundreds of unvaccinated doctors and nurses have died in Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.

All this can be understood, if not admired. America’s vaccine nationalism wants to make America absolutely safe, before doing anything for outsiders.

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Poor countries will not be able to vaccinate their populations before 2023 or 2024. And if vaccination becomes an annual requirement, it will be a race that can never be won.

What is less known is that vaccine production can be dramatically expanded across the world. Millions of vaccines can be produced in Bangladesh, African countries or developed countries like Canada. Over the years, Asia and Africa can produce enough vaccines to vaccinate their entire populations. Why is this not done?

Because Pfizer, Moderna and other vaccine manufacturers refuse to share their patented technology and know-how. Their patent restrictions prevent other countries from producing their vaccines.

This is usually justifiable because innovation is rewarded by legally enforceable patents. But in this case, the US and the European governments gave those pharma companies billions of dollars. These were not loans, but grants. If the vaccines had failed, the governments couldn’t recover that money. The sponsoring governments should have either kept the patents to themselves, or included a clause in the contracts making them available equitably. When the Gates foundation gives grants, it includes such clauses. Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed said the program was US-centric. Patent sharing was never discussed.

Last year, WHO tried to create a “Covid-19 technology access pool”, a platform to help developing countries make coronavirus vaccines. Not a single vaccine manufacturer agreed to join it. Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, called the concept “nonsense”.

India and South Africa have pushed for patent waivers. Biden has sided with the drug companies. In March; USA, Britain, the EU and Switzerland rejected the push for waivers.

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In effect, you have rich nations investing billions in Pharma companies, letting them retain the patents and block production expansion around the world; and allowing them to reap profits year after year. Moderna was entirely funded by taxpayers’ money, but is most restrictive on sharing knowhow. The Trump administration’s badly drafted contracts allowed this.

US federal law permits the president to seize patents and use them as it sees fit. Last month, Biden “persuaded” Merck to make Johnson and Johnson vaccines. He used wartime procurement powers. Of course, this was done because Merck was American. But if Biden wishes to think globally, he can apply the same powers to let a Bangladeshi factory acquire the knowhow free, and produce American vaccines.

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This week, dozens of Nobel Laureates and former heads of states have written an open letter to President Biden urging him to waive IP rules for covid vaccines. Hundreds of thousands of African lives were lost because of patents on HIV lifesaving drugs. In 2001, WHO had successfully managed to procure an exemption for public health emergencies. That was in the context of HIV.

Is Covid-19 not a grave enough public health emergency? It is equivalent to a World War. And in World Wars, nobody should talk about patents. Does America really think it will remain absolutely safe, while the rest of the world remains unvaccinated? American Pharma giants wish to protect American innovation. They should note that most innovators of the current vaccines are immigrants. (Pfizer’s Bourla who called patent waivers nonsense is also an immigrant).

If nothing is done, just like the coronavirus, American patent laws are likely to kill millions in the pandemic.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 121: Utopia 56

This is why I love France.

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Aziz and Sima fell in love in Teheran. Both had fled Afghanistan as children. Aziz’s father was killed and Sima’s family threatened by the Taliban. In 2017, in their early twenties, they decided to marry. Sima’s family refused because Aziz as a construction worker didn’t earn much. If you try to run away with him, we will find you and kill you, Sima’s parents told her.

A year later, they secretly married and with enough savings to pay a smuggler, fled Iran. A 500 mile risky journey brought them to Turkey. Within a few months, they smuggled themselves into Greece, where Sima gave birth to a daughter. Over the next eighteen months the homeless family travelled through Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia to arrive in Paris. It was January 2020, Paris was cold and rainy.

They spoke only Dari, and knew of the landmark: Eiffel tower. They joined the thousands in Paris who sleep under the bridges, in the metro stations, on the pavements.

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As a rule, the residents, the sons-of-the-soil hate illegal immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees. They often forget that many refugees were driven away from their homes by violence perpetrated by the rich countries. A wave of refugees has arrived in Europe from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan – countries occupied, bombed and terrorized by the USA and NATO.

Asylum supporters are often asked: You are talking about the country taking them in; will you take them in your house?

Well, in France, in Paris, they do.

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Every evening, hundreds of refugees spend the night out in the open, in Paris, Calais and all over France. The vulnerable crowd includes single women, children, families, unaccompanied minors. With or without the pandemic, they try to hide themselves from the gaze of the police.

Yann Mazi, his wife and son have founded a voluntary organization called Utopia 56. They never doubted the generosity of the French. Through their website and WhatsApp groups they began asking Parisians and others: Do you want to open your door? For one evening, for a week, for a month?

Like Airbnb, Utopia 56 has created a framework to match the hosts and the guests. When someone volunteers to take people in, Marwan Teiebi, the coordinator makes a home visit. He conducts background criminal checks on the hosts. The hosts also must sign a form absolving Utopia 56 in case they or their guests contract covid-19. Hosts usually share meals.

Francois Lemeille, 26, became a host in the autumn after three of his roommates left Paris during the lockdown. He made pumpkin lasagna for an Eritrean couple. When his roommates returned, they used cupboards to separate the space. They continue to host different families. “It seems impressive, but when you see the reality, it’s not,” said Lemeille. “We offer a comfortable place, a shower and warm tea. That’s it.”

Since the pandemic started, Parisians have hosted more than 3000 people through Utopia 56.

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“Tea Shop” is a place near the Gare d’Austeritz, in the southeast of Paris. It’s a day center where asylum seekers and refugees can shower, do their laundry and eat a warm meal. The refugees call 115, an emergency hotline for temporary accommodation. During the pandemic, the line was overwhelmed with more than 1000 calls a day.

In November, Guillaume and Therese first considered volunteering as hosts. That month the police had used tear gas to evict migrants from roadside tents. At Tea shop, Aziz and Sima were told that a couple across the city would host them. The Utopia 56 volunteer travelled with them by metro for an hour. Around 8 pm, they reached a brick building. Guillaume and Therese welcomed the family. They had prepared rice and lentils for dinner. In the 450 sq ft apartment, they showed Aziz and Sima the living room, where a sofa bed had been prepared for them and their baby. The couple smiled their thanks.

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This is why I love France.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 122: Women Don’t Belong in Science

You can name any inequality, rich and poor, white and black, male and female – the coronavirus pandemic has made it worse. In the last seven days, I wrote about two great women scientists, one credited with mRNA technology, and another a top expert on the role of bats in propagation of coronaviruses. And today, to my surprise, I find tons of articles about how the pandemic has hit women scientists very hard. Women published fewer papers, led fewer clinical trials, and received less or no recognition for their expertise.

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These are not perceptions, but facts based on quantitative studies. In a medical journal medRxiv, the gender gap between authors grew from 23% in January 2020 to 55% in April 2020. Women academicians and scientists were evidently fulfilling the role of caring for children. Women in faculty with children up to 5 years completed fewer peer reviews, attended fewer funding panel meetings, and submitted fewer first authors’ articles compared to pre-pandemic. Male professors with children up to 5 years had hardly any effect on productivity.

Less than one third of covid-19 related clinical trials were led by women, half the proportion of non-covid trials in the same period. It reveals imbalances in women’s access to research activities and funding during health emergencies.

In the coronavirus coverage, female scientists and doctors are cited less, interviewed less, invited less to policy debates. Men continued to be given leadership roles and the job of speaking to the media.

A Gates foundation researcher analysed online corona coverage in the UK, USA, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and India. Women were four times less likely to feature as experts or commentators. During lockdowns in France, more than 83% front page photos were of males. Most opinion pieces were written by men as well. In Switzerland, out of the 30 scientists most frequently cited during corona coverage, 28 were men.

This data is particularly interesting, because 69% of health professionals around the globe are women. Since 2000, in the US and most developed countries women have earned more than 50% of the science and engineering degrees, and doctorates. Once women earn their PhDs, they receive 39% of available fellowships and 18% of professorships. In the USA, a typical Health research grant is $41,000 larger for a man. The gender gap is $68,800 at Yale, and $76,500 at Brown.

Women excel in studies, research, medical practice so that men can make more money, more presentations and give expert views on TV.

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In November 2020, a study was published by three scientists, two of them women. The paper concluded that having female mentors would hinder the career of young scientists. It recommended steering graduate students to male mentors. This was like saying no woman can become the president of the USA, because all successful presidents in the past have been males.

A petition signed by 7600 scientists, men and women, was submitted to express their anger and disgust. On 21 December, the paper was retracted, though it continues to be available online.

Rockfeller University has a wall exclusively made of white men affiliated to the university. They are winners of Nobel and other awards. Many such “dude walls” exist in American universities, ignoring women from the same universities who had won prestigious awards.

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In August 2020, Rita Coldwell, a senior scientist shared her experience in the Atlantic. During her six decades in science, she was told sometimes subtly, but often openly that women don’t belong in science. When she applied for a graduate fellowship to study bacteriology, the male professor said the department didn’t waste such positions on women.

Once the pandemic is over, female scientists will have to start their battle with the hypocrisy all over again.

Ravi   

Corona Daily 123: More on China’s Bat Woman

On the evening of 30 December 2019, when Shi Zhengli returned from Shanghai, she immediately began work on the unexplained pneumonia samples received from Wuhan Jinyitan hospital. For the next 72 hours, Shi’s team worked without a break. They survived on instant noodles because the institute canteen was shut. By 2 January 2020, the whole genome sequence of the new coronavirus was determined.

By 5 January, the virus strain was isolated. By 7 Jan, Shi’s team had confirmed the new virus had indeed caused the new disease – based on analyses using PCR and antibody tests, full genome sequencing, and the virus’s ability to infect human lung cells in a petri dish. The genomic sequence was 96% identical to that of a coronavirus Shi had identified in horseshoe bats in Yunnan. The virus sequence was submitted to WHO on 11 January. Many non-Chinese experts acknowledge that this work was thorough and extraordinarily fast.

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Since the time she left Shanghai, Shi was bothered about one issue. Was it possible this virus was a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology? While her team was analyzing the samples, Shi was frantically but meticulously engaged in another exercise. She went through her lab’s records from the past few years to check for any mishandling of experimental materials, especially during disposal. She was relieved when the results of the new virus came back. None of the sequences matched those of the viruses her team had sampled from the bat caves. This was indeed a novel coronavirus. That night she could sleep for the first time.

When Wuhan lifted its lockdown on 8 April, Shi was in low spirits. Social media in China and mainstream media abroad continued to talk about the possibility of an accidental leak from her lab. On 24 April, the White House recommended stopping funding to the EcoHealth Alliance in New York, a grant that included bat virus research at WIV. “We don’t understand it and feel it is absolutely absurd.” Said Shi.

The biosecurity level 4 laboratory in which she worked was the highest security facility in which work is done on the most dangerous pathogens. The lab never had an incident of accidental leaking. Not a single staff member of the institute or the labs was infected by the new virus. And Shi knew none of the sequences matched the sequence of the novel coronavirus.

Professor Dashak of the EcoHealth Alliance, who has worked with Shi was for a long time describes her as social, open, honest, frank. A sort of goodwill ambassador for China at meetings, Shi speaks in English and French. (She is also a renowned singer of Mandarin folk songs).

To a repeated question about a formal investigation, Shi said, “I would personally welcome any form of visit based on an open, transparent, trusting, reliable and reasonable dialogue. But the specific plan is not decided by me.”

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Other than being termed the “Bat Woman” by the Chinese media, the 55 year old Shi was also included in Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2020. Till today, Shi has published eight articles, the highest in the world, on covid-19 research.

When the pandemic started, she called it the “revenge of nature of human beings”. She still defends that view. Through constant expansion, urbanization and intensive farming the human race has caused damage to the whole ecosystem. The damaged ecosystem makes it possible for a virus from the wild to get transmitted to humans. It is not the virus attacking us, it is our behavior that causes the constant outbreak of emerging infectious diseases, Shi says. 

“The coronavirus is just the tip of the iceberg. If we want to prevent human beings from suffering the next outbreak, we must go ahead and learn about these unknown viruses carried by wild animals. Bat-borne coronaviruses will cause more outbreaks.” Shi said in a TV interview with the tone of a scientist’s certainty.

“We must find them before they find us.” She added.

Ravi