Corona Daily 032: Run but Slowly

This week the South Korean government has introduced some novel coronavirus restrictions. Novel refers to the restrictions, not the virus. Violators face fines of up to 100,000 won ($87).

The residents of Seoul and its suburbs have gotten accustomed to the variety of rules introduced in the last eighteen months. Last week, the number of cases exceeded one thousand every day. That made the government particularly worried.

Nightclubs are shut, but gyms are allowed to stay open – with conditions.

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Two key novel restrictions relate to the runners’ speeds and the music played at the gyms.

From Monday this week, treadmill speeds are capped at 3.7 miles per hour (under 6 km/ hour). Many Korean gym-goers walk faster to the gym. Once they enter the gym, and get on the treadmill, they will need to reduce their speed.

After extensive research and prolonged consultations, the government has also regulated the speed of the music at gyms. Gyms are now forbidden to play songs that exceed 120 beats per minute (bpm).

As a regular gym-goer, I would like to explain what this means. A tempo of 60 beats per minute signifies one beat per second, while a tempo of 120 beats per second is two times faster, signifying one beat every half a second. Fans of classical music may remember the Italian terms Allegro (Cheerful), Andante (walking-pace) or Presto (quickly). Korean gyms can play Andante, but not Allegro or Presto any more.

For the benefit of gym administrators, newspapers have given examples of songs and their BPMs. Call me maybe (Carly Rae Jepsen) can be played. Born in the USA (Bruch Springston), Bad Romance (Lady Gaga), Respect (Aretha Franklin) and the apt New Workout Plan (Kanye West) are permissible. Boombayah (Blackpink) at 123 bpm becomes illegal.

Thousand (Moby) holds the Guinness record for the fastest tempo at 1015 bpm. You can listen to it here to understand the dangers of such speeds in pandemic times. (Listen to it only if you are not inside a Korean gym.)

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Yesterday, gym-goers in Seoul said they were relieved gym facilities were not shut entirely. Every gym-goer is required to wear masks all the time, even if fully vaccinated, and class size is limited. Nobody is allowed to use the gym showers.

Kang Seung Hyun, a teacher and former Rugby player said his gym had opted to shut off the treadmills. That will save some electricity, and save the runners from the effort to adjust to the novel speeds. The cardio bikes are open, and members are using them at speeds faster than usual, in the process sweating profusely. The new regulations apply only to treadmills but not to bikes or other cardio equipment.

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When fitness freaks talk about bpm, they generally refer to the resting heart rate. The beats per minute are the beats of the heart. Resting heart rate for an average person could be around 72. Marathon runners would have it lower, around 50. Elite athletes such as Federer or Usain Bolt may have it in their 30s. The lower the resting heart rate, faster the heart pumps, which is healthy.  

Ralph Yun, a crossfit Korean coach said listening to music at a pace similar to your heart rate doesn’t necessarily make you work harder.

Costas Karageorghis, a professor in London, said he understood why the Koreans had selected the speed of 120 bpm. It is the common rate of walking. Wedding DJs have told professor Karageorghis they use 120-beat songs to entice people onto the dance floor. The disc jockeys offered the example of I wanna to dance with somebody (Whitney Houston) to prove their point.

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Son Young-rae, the spokesman for the Ministry of Health, defended the new measures. He acknowledged that masks, mandatory in gyms, were effective. However, the delta variant is more easily transmissible, he pointed out. “When you run faster, you spit out more respiratory droplets, so that’s why we are trying to restrict heavy cardio exercises.” He said.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 033: Why is China Covid Free?

In the last fifteen months, there has not been a single covid-19 death in China.  This week, newspapers reported cases arising (not rising) in China. What are the numbers? 23, 26, 24, 27, 29 new cases each for the past five days. Many foreigners are mystified or bothered by these facts.  Has China been suppressing cases and hiding deaths for over a year? Was coronavirus really a bio-weapon that China unleashed on the rest of the world, with full knowledge of how to keep itself safe?

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I have been trying to read what ordinary young Chinese have posted on the internet. I quote here TsehNan Chin, a young guy living in Guangzhou. He graduated from Chicago, spent a few years in the USA and Germany, but has lived in China throughout the pandemic. This entry was written on 26 June and updated two days later.

On 21 May this year a case was identified in Canton, Guangzhou. It caused an outbreak (by China’s standards), with 153 people testing positive. In a month’s time, on 21 June, Canton didn’t have a single case.

The local authorities put all positive cases under quarantine and treatment immediately. In total, 119 people who had come in contact with them were taken to the quarantine hotels. All communities where infected people lived were locked down. Health workers and volunteers conducted regular tests throughout the community. Government officials and volunteers provided food and other necessities to people in isolation.

A mass testing campaign tries to test as many people as possible on a single day. Three such test campaigns were conducted in May and June. For the city of 18.68 million residents, 36.02 million tests were conducted between 21 May and 12 June.

Eating places could deliver, but eating-in was prohibited. Indoor sport centers and swimming pools were shut.

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Nobody was allowed to enter a shopping mall or metro without showing a green code on the smartphone. The green code means you have taken a vaccine and tested negative in the past 48 hours. Everyone’s temperature was measured before entering a mall or a station.

All vaccines are free. All tests are free. Quarantine is free for those who test positive and those who were in close contact with them.

Irrespective of the level of sickness, treatment is free.

Those who have been in close contact with a covid positive person, and try to hide it; are arrested, charged and tried after making certain they test negative.

If one is covid positive, and tries to avoid quarantine or treatment, the person is forcefully quarantined and treated. Once recovered, he/she is arrested, charged and tried.

For the last eighteen months, the same rules have been followed. TsehNan Chin, the blogger, says most Chinese people are happy to cooperate and abide by these regulations.

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Assuming all this is true, and there is no particular reason to doubt the stated modus operandi to crush the pandemic, would we like this practice to be adopted everywhere?

This is a delicate and difficult question. China, the most populated state, has avoided a health catastrophe and economic damage. Before any other big nation, China was back on its feet. Do authoritarian measures justify the great results?

If you ask me, they don’t. I will paint an extreme scenario. If a dictator decides to kill every person who tests positive, he may succeed in eliminating the virus. It may even make mathematical sense to kill a few thousands to stop the spread and stop virus mutations. The health system will not be overwhelmed either.

Most of us would immediately reject this scenario. A dictator has no moral right to kill covid patients, no matter what the trade-off is.

For me, it is the same thing with arresting people. Civil law and criminal law are different. The state may fine people for committing civil offences (not wearing a mask etc), but to criminalise their actions, and put them behind bars makes me uncomfortable.

Does that mean we should suffer hundreds of thousands of covid deaths and economic damage? Yes, unfortunately. That is the choice made by India, USA, UK and other democracies.

Ravi    

Corona Daily 034: Threat of a Scamdemic

UK’s cybersecurity agency took down more scams during the pandemic than in the previous three years combined. Fraudulent online campaigns grew 15 times. Experts found 43 fake NHS covid-19 apps hosted outside the official app stores. In the USA, Federal Bureau of Investigation said complaints rose by 69%, reaching a record 791,790.

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Phishing was a term coined in 1996 by hackers using email lures, setting out hooks to “fish” for passwords and financial data from the “sea” of internet users. Twenty five years later, the lexicon is richer.

Spear phishing is custom-made messaging or emails. The scamster will take data from your social media account, and send you a personalized phishing message. Smishing is phishing done through SMS.

David Robson, the author of the intelligence trap: why smart people make dumb mistakes, in a BBC article calls the global wave of scam attacks a “scamdemic”.

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Smartphones have made the job of fraudsters easier. On the small screens, details are rarely scrutinized. While emails may sit in our laptops for days, we tend to read and respond quickly to phone messages. The smartphone users are multi-tasking, watching a film, chatting with friends, forwarding Whatsapp pictures, switching between apps. Some people read and respond to messages while driving, endangering their life expectancy.

One research monitored fifty smartphone users, and found they switched apps an average of 101 times a day, though they looked at the screen for 2 hours 30 minutes. With such lack of focus, a smartphone user is prone to become a phishing victim.

We instinctively feel it is easier to dupe elderly people. But their use of technology is limited, and they are more suspicious. The young, on the other hand, have no fear. Without thinking, they can quickly open links, order online, fill forms, and give information they shouldn’t. Smartphones put the millennials and generation Z at a higher risk.

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Pandemic filled people with anxiety and stress, making them more vulnerable. In the lockdowns, we became more reliant on online communication and smartphones. Psychologists talk of a Pavlovian behavioral loop. Every sound of a new notification lifts our mood a little. It triggers a desire to read and respond.

Security experts advise us to not respond to any message immediately. Wait. Ask yourself: Is this real? Don’t automatically click on links. (The way we accept “terms and conditions” without reading them). Clicking on links may put your personal data in the hands of a cyberscammer. If you don’t know the sender, or trust the link, it is better to manually type out the address. That way, you can spot anomalies in the URL.

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The list of coronavirus scams is long.

On Facebook, some people proudly post their vaccination photos as well as the vaccination card. Scammers can steal your name, birth-date and other information to easily impersonate you. Don’t ever post your vaccination certificate on social media.

There have been covid-19 testing, vaccine, and treatment scams. Since vaccine is a scarce item in many countries, you may be offered early access to it. All you need to do is to fill a form giving your details. Don’t.

Fake charities have mushroomed. Your screen will show crying children, distressed widows, dying patients. The pictures move our hearts, but they are often from crooks. Scamsters are also using real charities to perpetrate their attacks.

If you think human beings can’t be viler, let me tell you about funeral assistance scams. Scammers call family members of people who have just died. (Probably steal the information from the hospital). They claim to be from the government’s funeral assistance programme. In USA, many such “funeral directors” have stolen family members’ social security numbers.

Those working from home have been cyberattacked not for their own money, but to attack the employer. BEC (Business email compromise) attacks involve a hacker gaining control of legitimate email accounts to steal company funds.

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During the pandemic, and after it, it is a good practice to assume nobody is immune to phishing attacks. Never give your personal and banking details. Slow down your response speed on smartphones. Don’t open untrusted links.

The coronavirus pandemic will get over, but the scamdemic will continue.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 035: Everyone under One Roof

Before the pandemic, the different generations of the Crafts family couldn’t meet each other without flying.

Trevor and Ellen Crafts, the young couple, lived with Riley, their five year old daughter in California. Trevor’s parents, Edward and Heather Crafts lived in Texas. Ellen’s mother, Jackie Chirico lived on her own in the state of Nevada.

For the first time in their memory, Trevor and Ellen couldn’t meet their parents for a whole year. Christmas came and went with all restrictions intact. Riley couldn’t go to a playgroup, nor was it recommended to hire a child caretaker. Trevor and Ellen both worked online. It was a juggling act to take time off their laptops to look after Riley. On weekends, sometimes more often, they called their parents. Both grandmothers complained Riley had grown a year older without them kissing her once.

In March 2021, together they hatched a revolutionary plan. They listed their respective houses in California, Texas and Nevada for sale. They had heard the US housing market was hot. Soon they understood how hot. Within a week, all three houses got sold at prices higher than their expectations. Their combined windfall was $2.6 million.

In May 2021, with that sizeable amount, they bought an 8.5 acre property in Connecticut, a state none of them had ever lived in. It was a truly grand house (see picture) with five bedrooms, a guest house, a barn with a studio.

Trevor and Ellen began their zoom calls in peace. Riley was happy to be pampered by the grandparents. In the evenings and on weekends, the large family started having meals together. Their isolation ended, the grandparents could hold Riley in their arms and kiss her every day.

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In the USA, single family homes are shooting up in prices. Many families want extra rooms as offices to work from home. With remote work, people are happy to move to bigger houses in suburbs. In fact, properties at the top end, such as the $2.6 million villa bought by the Crafts are easier to find.

With stories of the number of deaths in nursing homes, people were worried about their aged parents. Particularly in Asian and Latino families, multi-generation living went up. In a national US survey, during the first virus wave (April-June 2020), 15% of home buyers said they bought multi-generational homes, a record in the last decade.

Those who had babies during the pandemic found co-living with their parents mutually beneficial. With schools shut, children were entertained by their grandparents, while the parents worked.

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The average price of an American home went up by 24% to $350,300. The earlier trend was accelerated during the pandemic. May 2021 was the 111th consecutive month of year-over-year price increase.

For some landlords, tenants stopped paying rents and simply left. Those landlords often opted to invite their families to fill up those apartments to bring everyone under the same roof.

In April 2021, a Google search for “when is the housing market going to crash” went up by 2500% compared to March 2021. This is now the most popular search question in the USA. It is followed by “should I buy a house” and “sell my house”. Earlier it was typical to wait for at least 60 days since the first advertisement, before the house could find the buyer. Now houses are sold within 20 days on average.

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In India, three generations living under one roof is the norm. In rich nations of Europe and North America, family units are increasingly becoming smaller, often logically ending in a person living alone.

The pandemic and the resultant shutdowns have done a great service to make people understand the comfort, convenience and happiness of living in multi-generational homes. Of course, there are challenges being close to your parents (or children) on a daily basis. But in $2.6 million homes, those challenges are easier to manage.

With all its difficulties, multi-generational living may bring greater happiness than living on your own. It took a pandemic for many families to realize this.

Ravi

  

Corona Daily 036: Will Tobacco Save Us?

In April 2020, just at the start of the pandemic, an announcement caught my eye. It was from my former employer British American Tobacco, the maker of brands like Lucky Strike, Dunhill, and Benson & Hedges. BAT through its subsidiary had jumped into the vaccine developing race. The vaccine would be produced using a tobacco plant. Most people found it counter-intuitive that tobacco should be used to save lives.

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Conventional vaccines are expensive to make, their technology is complex. They need trained human resources, strict quality control. In non-pandemic times, it is difficult to find investors for vaccines. As we know; cold chain, maintaining a constant temperature from the factory to the human arm, is essential. Vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna require specialized freezers making them unsuitable for the developing world.

What is the solution? Use plants to make vaccines.

The theory was developed some thirty years ago. For proof-of-concept, scientists have used potatoes, rice, spinach, lettuce, corn and other plants to make vaccines for dengue, polio, malaria and plague. In 2006, a vaccine was approved for a disease infecting poultry. But no vaccine is yet successfully developed for humans.

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Conventional vaccines need lab-controlled live cells (from monkey kidneys, insects, hamster ovaries etc.). These cells are infected with a virus or a viral genetic code that tricks the cells to make copies. The cell lines are incubated in large, metal bioreactors for weeks. Later, they undergo a lengthy and complex purification process before the vaccine soup is packaged into vials.

These bioreactors are expensive and need specially trained staff to handle them. The risk of contamination is high, so bio-reactors require a separate building and tightly controlled sterile conditions.

Plants eliminate the need for bioreactors, because they themselves are bioreactors. Plants can be grown in greenhouses to keep them safe from pests, but they don’t require sterile conditions. Plants were known to be a rich source of pharmalogically important compounds. But only recently, thanks to biotechnology, plants can be modified in a targeted way. This is called “pharming”. The modified plants are the lab mice of the plant science world.

If this technology succeeds, vaccines can be mass produced in any part of the world, fairly cheaply.

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Two biotech companies, one in Canada and the other a BAT subsidiary in the USA, are using the tobacco plant, Nicotiana benthamiana as bio-factories.

To make the vaccine, tobacco seeds are first planted in a greenhouse. When the plants are 25 days old, they are dipped into a solution containing agro-bacteria. These are micro-organisms to infect plants. Under the current project, they are modified to contain instructions for making a protein from the coronavirus. The plants follow these instructions.

Seven days later, the plant is harvested. It goes through an extraction and purification process, and at the end of the cycle, produces 99.9% pure protein.

Another set of plants produces a tiny particle for packaging the viral protein. The two components are chemically attached to each other. The resulting compound can be injected into a human as a vaccine. When presented to the body, it looks and generates a response like a virus, though it has no genetic material inside.

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Why tobacco? Tobacco has all the properties to become an ideal pharming platform. It grows quickly, is leafy, and is a widely known plant internationally. In laboratories, it has managed to produce antibodies against HIV and Ebola.

With the cigarette markets shrinking in the developed world, tobacco farmers are worried. They want to maintain their profits, and de-stigmatise the crop if possible.

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British American Tobacco’s covid-19 vaccine is undergoing stage III trials. The company expects to offer the vaccine for approval later this year. There are more than a billion smokers in the world. If they learn the vaccine is made from a tobacco plant, they may happily come forward to take a shot.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 037: A Glass of Useful Orange Juice

In the UK, many school children are testing positive and missing schools.

UK has made testing easy and less expensive. The lateral-flow tests, rapid antigen tests, were known earlier for their common use in pregnancy testing. In that test, they detect presence or absence of a hormone in a woman’s urine. The simple device can also analyse other body fluids like blood or saliva.

To detect covid-19, one can take the sample of mucus from the nose or throat using a swab. This can be done at home. The sample is then mixed with the liquid solution given as part of the test. The diluted sample is placed at the end of a porous strip in a cartridge. The strip has a line of antibodies. As soon as those antibodies recognize the presence of the covid-19 virus, they cling to it. Just like a positive pregnancy test, a coloured band appears on the strip to indicate a covid-19 infection.

The tests are speedy and simple. Results are ready within fifteen minutes. The more common PCR tests look for the virus’s genetic sequence, these tests don’t. For a soccer match or a stadium concert, such tests can be done at the entrance. They are good at catching highly infectious individuals.

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Every school in the world has children who dislike going to school. Particularly, after staying at home for more than a year, it is a shock for some to restart hectic school life.

Some British children, perhaps with a scientific bend of mind tried different experiments. These were inspired by TikTok videos. They used fresh orange juice, coca-cola and other fizzy drinks and found they were getting a “positive red”. Delighted, they produced the results of tests done at home. In some schools, the bubble policy sent the entire class home.

Children, not aware of the government regulations, realized their quarantine and joy were short-lived. UK government requires that anybody producing a positive result in a rapid test must undergo a more robust PCR test in a lab for confirmatory result.

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Mark Lorch is a chemistry professor at the University of Hull. He read about this epidemic of fake positive tests. He had also seen an Austrian politician performing a Coca-cola positive test in the Austrian parliament to claim that those rapid antigen tests were worthless.

Professor Lorch decided to find out for himself. First, he tested with bottles of cola and orange juice. Just like the school children, he was able to get the red lines.

Antibodies are incredibly discerning. The sample collected by the swabs includes all sorts of things. Antibodies, focused on the virus, ignore them all. So why were they reacting to the ingredients of a soft drink, wondered the professor.

The most likely explanation was that something in the drinks was affecting the function of the antibodies. Fruit juices and colas were both strongly acidic. In these harsh conditions, antibodies were unable to function.

In fact, the liquid solution that comes as part of the kit serves to maintain the functioning of antibodies. What the school children and the Austrian politician had done was to not use the liquid solution at all.

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Professor Lorch knew antibodies are capable of regaining their functionality under the right conditions. He took a “positive” test with cola and washed it with the liquid solution. The immobilized antibodies functioned again, and gave a negative test result. It was like washing away the school children’s sins.

The professor has applauded the ingenuity of the truant schoolchildren. He has requested them to test his hypothesis by carrying out experiments. He promises to publish the results in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 038: The Ideal Pandemic Sport

With most other sports shut down by the coronavirus pandemic, one sport that prospered was golf. It was the safest sport, played outdoors, with more than the required social distancing and the players still able to compete athletically.

Across the USA, in 2020, the rounds of golf were up 32%. Golf clubs said they had never seen the tee sheets fill up as far in advance. As per the records of the National Golf Federation, 3 million new golfers across America hit the course for the first time. Many people dusted off their golf clubs, unused for several years. Now they had time on hand. Grips, shafts, club heads, even push cart sales boomed. Like for bicycles, buyers needed to wait for a few weeks to get the ordered push cart.

In the UK, 2.3 million extra golfers got on course. The average age of participants went down by five years to 41. Golf is one game that can be played till the end of one’s life. The pandemic brought many young people to the golf course. Those who could afford golf found it better for mental and physical health. 25% of female golfers in the UK tried it for the first time because of the pandemic.

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Lucas Herbert, 25, is an Australian professional golfer. A two time winner of the European tour, he won the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open this week.

When the pandemic started, Lucas was in Orlando, Florida. His coach Dominic Azzopardi lives in Queensland, Australia. Australia’s strict regulations made it impossible for Lucas to go back. He was separated from his coach for the first time.

The two started using Skillest, a golf teaching app. The app filmed Lucas’s swings. For live sessions, Lucas was swinging at 08.30 in the morning, while Dominic, his coach watched the live session late at 10.30 pm. The system worked surprisingly well. The coach could see the swings on the app, draw lines on them, and do a voiceover. The time zone difference turned out to be a blessing. Dominic had enough time to analyze what Lucas was doing right and wrong. His detailed feedback would reach Lucas much before the following morning session. It was different from the instant feedback that the two were accustomed to over the years.

The Skillest app also allowed the coach to save all the videos of Lucas’s swings, go to that library and analyse when he was playing well and when poorly. Even professional players have bad days, sometimes bad seasons. The library had everything: putting, chipping, everything else.

The use of this app has tripled during the pandemic. Elite players usually seek daily coaching. The stay-at-home orders forced them to seek feedback remotely. It also opened up new avenues for coaches and players to seek anyone from the world. Some players admitted they had not thought of paying for a foreign coach, because before the pandemic, the thought of a smartphone coach was not popular.

Golf coaches are traditionally not as hands-on as the coaches in soccer or tennis. They use their eyes, and analytical brain. Last year, many of them started using the camera instead of eyes.

It is not only the elite players, but also the novices who benefit from having coaches. The online golf coaches belong to a rare profession that flourished during the pandemic.

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Golf clubs are hoping that a sizeable chunk of the golf newcomers would continue playing golf after the pandemic. For those who get hooked, golf can be as addictive as any other sport.

Ravi   

Corona Daily 039: Out with Bolsonaro

This is the story of how Indian vaccines may bring down the Brazilian president. I have written earlier about Jair Bolsonaro. He is Donald Trump with a military background.

Covaxin is a 100% Indian vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech. The company representatives visited the Brazilian ministry of health in November 2020. Covaxin was not yet approved in India, the phase III trials had just started. On 3 January 2021, the Indian government gave Covaxin an accelerated approval (given before trials were complete). The data submitted by Bharat biotech was patchy.

 The same week, a team from Brazil’s Precisa Medicamentos visited the Bharat Biotech facility in India. Bharat biotech signed a deal to export the vaccine to Brazil.

Pfizer has proven to be one of the more effective covid vaccines. The Pfizer management had been offering Pfizer to Bolsonaro. Reportedly, the offer was never taken up.

On 4 Feb 2021, the Brazilian government declared it would buy Covaxin for public use. Private hospitals in Brazil could buy it once it was approved by ANVISA, the Brazilian regulatory authority. A deal was signed. The Brazilian health ministry would pay $324 million to Precisa Medicamentos, Bharat Biotech’s representative in Brazil, for 20 million doses. Covaxin had not yet completed the phase III trials.

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On 20 March, Luis Claudio Miranda, a lawmaker from Bolsonaro’s party, and his brother Ricardo Miranda, a health ministry official, met Bolsonaro privately. They warned him about a series of irregularities in the Covaxin deal. They expected the president to start an investigation.

Towards the end of March 2021, ANVISA denied permission to import Covaxin. Its officials found that the factory in Hyderabad did not meet GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) requirements. Without that an emergency authorization cannot be given.

In April, when asked about ANVISA’s report, Bharat Biotech’s managing director Krishna Ella said “it was a product of Brazilian nationalism, and a desire to keep an Indian vaccine out of the country. Each country wants to defame (sic) the other countries and their vaccine strategies. It’s a global phenomenon. We don’t have to worry about it.”

The Indian magic or the Brazilian compassion worked. On 4 June, ANVISA gave Covaxin an Emergency Use Approval. The approval had certain conditions attached. Bharat Biotech should export only 4 million doses. ANVISA would analyse the data before allowing any further imports.

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A congressional commission dealing with covid-19 became suspicious of the whole affair. They gave several reasons. (1) Brazil had ignored repeated offers from Pfizer, an established company that had offered millions of doses. The Covaxin deal was speedily signed. (2) Covaxin had not yet completed clinical trials. (3) Prices were higher than initially quoted and (4) the sale was effected through a middleman.

A stormy debate began in parliament. Luis Claudio Miranda was called as a witness. He wore a bulletproof jacket when giving his testimony. He narrated the March meeting with the president. He described the extraordinary pressure on the health ministry to buy Covaxin.

The committee found no evidence that the president had ordered any investigation.

On 25 June, a Supreme Court Judge requested and the attorney general’s office began an investigation into president Bolsonaro’s role in the vaccine corruption scandal. A group of 100 legislators presented draft impeachment articles.

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President Bolsonaro didn’t dispute government officials may have acted unlawfully. But it had nothing to do with him. “I have no way of knowing what’s happening in the ministries.” He said. “I am incorruptible.”

On 26 June, several Brazilian cities had large scale protest marches shouting “out with Bolsonaro.” One large sign said: “The people only take to the streets in the middle of a pandemic when the government is more dangerous than the virus.”

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On 29 June, the Brazilian government announced suspension of the contract. On 30 June, Bharat Biotech released a statement saying the procurement process was misrepresented in the media. The company had followed its standard procedure and had offered the standard price.

In India, people wondered how Bharat Biotech planned to export vaccines when India has an export ban due to domestic shortages.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 040: Cuba: Museum of Communism

I call Cuba the museum of Communism. My Russian friends, who have visited Cuba, confirm it. Unlike China, Cuba has remained faithful to the Soviet communist model. The fall of USSR in 1991 was the first big shock to Cuba. The Soviets were always willing to finance and subsidize the island situated so close to their arch-enemy. The second great shock was last year, when the pandemic began.

Currently, Cuba faces an unprecedented food crisis. Grocery shops are empty. People try to find food in the black market, online or offline. 70% of the food is imported. With the Cuban peso going down, prices are prohibitive. Farmers refuse to sell because they want to eat the food they grow.

On 24 June, the UN general assembly condemned US sanctions on Cuba. All countries except the USA and Israel condemn the sanctions. Such condemnation changes nothing for ordinary Cubans. This annual ritual has been going on since 1992.

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In 2001, sanctions exempted food. US became the largest exporter of food to Cuba. In the last twenty years, exports were the lowest in 2020. Because the Cuban government has no hard currency to pay for food. Cuba relies on more than 4 million foreign tourists to bring in respectable currencies. Tourism, 10% of Cuba’s GDP, disappeared in the pandemic. Till last March, there were ten daily flights between Miami and Havana. Now, one needs to search for a flight.

As if this was not enough, Cuba suffered a drought last year. Dollar shortage already meant fertilizer and fuel shortage. Sugar harvest, Cuba’s main export, was the worst in the last 100 years.

Food producing companies in Cuba earn in Pesos, pieces of paper that are worthless outside Cuba. But the same companies must pay for imports in hard currency. Farmers, by law, must sell their harvest to the government at uncompetitive prices.

State owned bakeries, and most of them are state owned, are replacing imported wheat flour with local corn, pumpkin or yucca. Consumers complain bread now tastes like soggy corn. Some cities have banned sale of biscuits to save on flour imports.

Fuel and trucks are both in shortage. Domestic transport of the imported food is a challenge. What took two weeks from the USA in the past now takes four months. In the process, wastage is high.

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Government is becoming desperate for American $. Since February, foreigners and some Cubans must pay the seven day mandatory quarantine stay in US $. Cubans living abroad are encouraged to pay online in dollars to buy food or gifts for their relatives and friends in Cuba. (One consultant commented that Cuba has 11 million hostages, and Cuban exiles are asked to pay the ransom.)

On 10 June, the central bank of Cuba announced Cubans were prohibited from depositing US$ into accounts from 21 June. In a communist country, US$ is the currency of the black markets as well as savings of the ordinary people. The panicked Cubans queued outside banks for days. This was the government’s attempt to suck all the dollars into the banking system.

Cuba owes some $3.5 billion to foreign lenders. For the last two years, Cuba has been unable to make payments. In June, Ricardo Cabrisas, Cuba’s deputy prime minister, was in Paris trying to renegotiate the debt. An ultimatum from the creditors was possibly the reason behind Cuba trying to collect US $ from ordinary citizens.

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The silver lining is Cuba’s health system. Cuba is the world’s smallest nation to develop vaccines, not one but many. Its ambition is to produce enough to inoculate its 11 million citizens, and then export to friendly nations like Venezuela and Iran. (Enemy’s enemy is a friend).

Since Fidel Castro’s time, Cuba has invested disproportionately in public health. The government spends $300-400 per person on health care. Unfortunately, a Cuban doctor is paid $64 a month, and told he belongs to a noble profession.

Trump, in his last weeks in office, reclassified Cuba as a State sponsor of International terrorism. This has restricted its access to simple things like syringes. Cuba requires 30 million syringes for its vaccination campaign, but has managed to procure only 10 million.

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Cuba is a tragic example of how ordinary citizens suffer in a defective political system. Ideology can never feed people.

Ravi 

Corona Daily 041: Value of Life

Now that most of the world is on the descending side of the virus curve, economists have started evaluating the pandemic actions. Were the lockdowns really worth it? Was saving lives more important than saving economies? The latest Economist opens up the debate lives versus livelihoods by citing dozens of papers published during the pandemic.

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For most people from Bill Gates to a man on the street, the question was a no-brainer. The economy can bounce back; a life gone can’t be revived. Human life is priceless, said politicians before announcing total shutdowns.

Supporters of lockdowns claimed people were so scared they would have shut themselves anyway. If at your office or factory, colleagues were reporting ill every day or falling dead; would you be keen to continue working? Before the vaccines, a lockdown was the only preventive tool available, they said.

Opponents said lockdowns destroyed livelihoods, without controlling the virus spread. Officially four million people have died, and in reality perhaps 10-20 million. Many nations suffered heavy tolls despite strict lockdowns. Children in many countries will probably miss in-person classes over three academic years.

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Let me ask a hypothetical question. If covid-19 was known to be dangerous exclusively for people aged 100 and above, would the world have taken any action? Probably not. There are about half a million centenarians alive, and they have so few years left, it is not worth shutting down anything, or even investing heavily in vaccines. Evidently we are willing to sacrifice 100+ year olds (unless we are one ourselves).

Here, I would like to discuss two concepts mentioned in the Economist article. One is VSL (Value of Statistical Life).

Economists must keep aside emotions, and ruthlessly put a value on a human life. I will offer an example where we subconsciously attach some kind of a monetary value to our own life. A family of four is planning to go on vacation. A ticket on Qantas, Lufthansa or Singapore Airlines is $1000 more expensive than say on Malaysian airlines, Ethiopian airlines or Asiana airlines. The head of the family decides to buy the cheaper tickets and save $4000. By opting for a less safe (actual or perceived) airline, the family has put a lower value on their lives.

The American regulatory agencies consider the value of an American life to be $11 million (VSL). The VSL concept helps policy makers conduct the cost-benefit analysis. For example, USA can invest $11 trillion as stimulus to save 1 million American lives. The underlying assumption is that those one million Americans will be able to recover that amount by their future contribution to the GDP.

The downside of VSL is that it doesn’t differentiate between young and old. QALY (Value of a Quality Adjusted Life Year) is a better measure.

In 2008, Stanford economists had calculated $129,000 as the QALY for someone on kidney dialysis. Meaning, each $129,000 spent would add a year to the dialysis patient’s life. Once this was known, the insurance company and the state could decide whether to offer the treatment and at what cost.

For the Covid-19 pandemic, Britain has decided the QALY to be GBP 30,000 per annum. In other words, if covid death is going to take away ten years from someone’s life, the value of that saved life is GBP 30,000x 10=  GBP 300,000 ($417,000).  

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There is no official data about the value of human life. One good measure is to see how much a nation pays if its soldier dies in a war. USA pays $500,000 to the families of soldiers dying in Iraq or Afghanistan, $100,000 to those in other combats. India pays $40,000.

It should be evident that poor countries have a lower VSL. The lockdowns (statistically) become worthwhile for rich nations, because they place a higher value on the lives of their citizens. Every life saved offers a greater economic benefit.

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It is easier for economists to do these ruthless cost-benefit analyses. A lot more difficult for those who govern. However, since the pandemic is still on, governments would do well to conduct the trade-off exercise. It can improve their decision-making.

Ravi