Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Thoughts from Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain: 22.4.20

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.   
- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain*
COVID-19 ROUND-UP

General
o Home-made face masks slow coronavirus spread, say scientists
Hopes of a swift exit from national lockdowns were dealt a blow in Europe, America and Asia yesterday as studies indicated that even in hard-hit regions vast numbers of people remained susceptible to the virus. Relatively few appeared to have developed the antibodies that would be expected to prevent infection and a second wave - far short of the 60-70% likely to be needed for a population to acquire herd immunity.

Spain 
o Spanish kids will be allowed to leave their homes from April 26 but only to accompany an adult engaged one of the very few permitted activities, not to run around, ride a bike, skate, or meet and play with friends. Words used by angry Spanish to describe the development:- Half-measures; a complete joke; incredibly disappointing; crazy; absolutely ridiculous; madness; and, completely unreasonable. Clearly, you can displease all the people all the time. Or the vast majority anyway.
More than a thousand healthcare workers in Spain have been isolated and thousands more will have to be tested for coronavirus after using faulty face masks from China. See El País on this here.

Singapore: A worrying development in one of the most successful countries . . . Singapore has gone from leading global Covid-19 efforts to having the most cases in South-East Asia. The surge has been attributed to silent clusters in overcrowded workers' dormitories.

Germany 
Is aiming to sample its entire population for antibodies in the coming months.
o The Oktoberfest has been cancelled.

Italy: The daily number of new cases fell yesterday to fewer than 4,000, down from around 6,000 in late March. For the first time in a month, new deaths dropped below 500 on Saturday.

FranceThe police fear that lockdown frustrations may explode into violence. Especially in the banlieues, I guess.

The UK: The first British human trials of a coronavirus vaccine will start tomorrow, with the country “throwing everything” at being the first to develop a successful inoculation.

Denmark: Yesterday allowed children return to elementary school - the first country in the Western world to do so since the pandemic began. The move, a bold step toward normal life for the Danish government, is a test for how schools can function in the age of contagion. 

The USA: Concern is rising re duff tests. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed about 90 companies, many based in China, to sell tests without government vetting. The tests are often inaccurate, mistakenly showing antibodies in blood when none exist, and some doctors are misusing them  

ChileWill become the first country to issue “immunity cards” to those who have antibodies, starting next Monday. Critics say the research is still unclear on whether recovered patients are truly immune.

Life in Spain in the Time of Something Like Cholera
  • María's Chronicle Day 38, and counting.
  • HT to Lenox of Business Over Tapas for his citation of this map of the different Spanish regions are affected. Murcia by far the least of all.
  • Driving to the supermarket yesterday, I had to pause behind a police car, while one of the occupants grilled this woman, who was pushing her garden produce somewhere on her bike. But I have no idea of the outcome of the 'discussion'.

Real Life in Spain
The USA
  • More from the world's insanity hot-spot.
  • And another impersonation of the sad, solicitous OFC. 'Trade mark pending' . . .
  • And here's the real McCoy on the same subject. Not quite beyond parody.
The Way of the World 
  • See the article below on the acceleration by the virus on the 8 'mega-trends' of the moment. Probably more accurate than most crystal-ball gazing.
Spanish
  • Words of the Day:-  
Discutir: To argue. Not To discuss
Asistir: To be present at. Not To help/assist

Finally . . . 
  • This was a poster used during the World War 2 and allegedly brought out again now because of anti-German attitudes in Italy, born of Berlin's refusal to countenance the eurobonds which Italy and Spain want/need:-


GERMANY IS TRULY YOUR FRIEND 

THE ARTICLE

Coronavirus has accelerated 8 mega-trends the will transform everything. William Hague, The Telegraph.

Our daily experience of the Covid-19 crisis is that it slows down our lives. Jobs are on hold, holidays not booked and travel unthinkable. We have more leisure time whether we like it or not. For people not on the frontline of the NHS or essential supplies, the lockdown is a slowdown.

Yet what is really happening is that the forces that will shape all our futures – the global tensions, the economic policies, the political ideas, the new technologies – are being sped up. Huge decisions and great controversies that might only have come to a head over the next couple of decades are suddenly upon us. We are about to experience the next twenty years in twelve months, and we need to get ready for it.

For an obvious example of this, take a look at the eurozone. Some of us have argued for years that it cannot work in its current form. To put it crudely, Italians will not work as productively as Germans, and Germans will not agree to pay off the debts of Italians. Without this crisis, such a fundamental chasm in the foundations of the euro would have continued to be a troubling but not imminent problem. Now it has yawned wide open. When Italy has looked north in its hour of need, it has found belated sympathy and precious little help. Suddenly, the EU faces an existential crisis.

Or think about the drift to great power rivalry between America and China, already gathering pace in recent years. Covid-19 threatens to speed that up, with both countries trying to shift blame on to the other. In a US election year, candidates will vow to take a hard line on ensuring American technology is separated from that of China. Other Western capitals and company headquarters will conclude they cannot be dependent any longer on supplies from one country, in a world where borders close at the first hint of trouble. 

And so the process of “deglobalisation” – more of what we consume being made closer to home, even if it is more expensive – will accelerate. Instead of happening slowly as developments like 3D printing change manufacturing techniques, it will happen quickly driven on by political and security imperatives.

Even so, the Asia Pacific economies look likely to get through the coming months with considerably less damage than most in the West. They prepared for a pandemic that was like SARS, whereas we Westerners expected something more like Spanish flu, if we thought about it at all. So they have the ruthless quarantining and tracing systems to suppress the virus while we have the long agony of trying to live with it. As things stood, 2020 was already going to be the year in which Asia’s GDP overtook the rest of the world combined. It was already going to account for 90% of new middle-class people in the next decade. Perhaps we can revise that up to 95% now. The Pacific century is going to arrive faster than anyone thought.

It is not only in the West that we experience a sudden fast-forwarding of what is to come. Countries dependent on oil production already faced forecasts that petroleum demand would peak and fall before 2030. Today they are receiving the sharpest possible demonstration of what that will mean, as oil prices plunge far below the point at which any of them balance their budgets. The need for Saudi Arabia to diversify away from energy production just got starker, and the funds for doing it smaller. For others like Russia, living rather complacently on huge oil and gas revenues, the warning signals are getting louder.

These accelerating trends in world affairs might seem distant from us, but they will be accompanied by the rapid intensification of political arguments that will affect us all over inequality, debt and state power. Tens of millions of people across the developed world alone are losing their jobs or livelihoods, and they are predominantly those who are already less well off. It has been the natural tendency of the new technologies of recent decades to widen inequality, increasing the returns to capital rather than labour and leaving poorly educated people out of the booming global economy. Here comes the sharpest recession of our lives on top of that. It will push to the forefront of politics fundamental issues about the taxation of wealth, the case for basic incomes provided by governments, and the responsibility of companies for their employees.

With young people the most severely affected socially and economically – the year they are losing can never be restored and the jobs they were hoping for will be in shorter supply – the issue of how to handle the vast debts now being accumulated will shoot to the top of election agendas. Political parties will campaign for debt forgiveness and write offs, and for the cancelling by central banks of money borrowed by governments, with inflationary consequences for the future.

Most suddenly of all, the immense questions about who owns data about each of us, and what use the state can make of it, are coming in weeks instead of over many years. Once we are all carrying around an app on our phones to show where we have been and who we have met, pressure will grow to use that information for other purposes. Do we use it to stop a terrorist attack? To solve a murder? To detect a spy? If the answers are yes, what is the new boundary between the state and the individual?

Most of these trends, speeding up as I write, are profoundly disturbing, but at least we can be better equipped for them if we can see them racing towards us. More optimistically, they have one positive companion – the massive incentive this crisis provides for innovation. New ideas about healthcare and communications have become dramatically more urgent, and some of them will change our lives more quickly and positively than would otherwise have happened. If any of the dire trends I have listed can be slowed down by this crisis being defused, that will happen because of new drugs now being trialled, new tests being invented and new healthcare devices being planned.

But be in no doubt as the long days at home seem to pass ever so slowly. In its effect on societies, politics and the distribution of power in the world, Covid-19 is on track to be the Great Accelerator.

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