The Government’s War on Coronavirus: The Great COVID-19 War from Ground Level

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Economics and society,, Environmental, Futurism, Media & Communications, Medical history, Science and society

(Source: www.thesummitexpress.com)

A few years ago one of the incumbents of the revolving door that is the Australian prime ministership intoned: “these are the most exciting times to be alive”… well, for “exciting” substitute “worrying and challenging” and you have the status quo, 2020. We are getting bombarded daily, even hourly it seems, with mixed messages from news sources – it was okay to go to the football last Sunday and mingle with crowds of much more than the 500 limit but somehow it’s not okay to do this on Monday, the day after (what changed?!?); the medical experts warn us to keep a distance of one-and-a-half metres from anyone else, yet it’s fully expected that people will still travel on trains and buses which will generally make that an impossibility; the government tells us not to fly overseas but it’s still okay to fly within Australia (a lifeline to the national carrier?). 

(Image: www.nature.com)

Every day media outlets offer up a doomsday book of horror stories…”London faces stricter lockdown after coronavirus advice ‘ignored’” |”Italy coronavirus deaths rise by record 475 in a day” |”All of us have to assume we have the virus’: COVID-19 infections rise past 300 in NSW” |”Yes, young people are falling seriously ill from Covid-19” |”Trump spent weeks downplaying the coronavirus. He’s now pretending that never happened” | “Stay home’. Grey nomads unwelcome as Top End coronavirus tensions grows’ | “Coronavirus UK: Boris to impose FOUR-MONTH quarantine for elderly under ‘wartime’ measures” | “China blaming US for coronavirus? It refuses to come clean about origin” | “Privacy fears as India hand stamps suspected coronavirus cases” | “Coronavirus: One dead every 10 minutes in Iran as government faces backlash over late response” | “Spring Breakers Pack Some Florida Beaches, Ignoring Social Distancing Warning Amid Coronavirus“ | “Italy overtakes China in coronavirus toll”. Panicked consumerism born of exaggerated fears of limited resources➀, foolhardy apathy as the young party on regardless in fatalistic Titanic style (‘Millennialmania’), doom and gloom, finger-pointing recriminations, the media has been full of it for two months…sorry, we don’t do calm, rational, measured responses here. 

A corona red world, March 2020 (Credit: www.abcnews.go.com)

It’s a climate ready-made for rumour-mongering and this is not confined to the West…China is rife with rumours ‘explaining’ the epidemic’s origin starting with the fiction of it’s supposed transmission from bats in January. The rumours soon became more fanciful and more conspiratorial, ranging from coronavirus being deliberately released to cull excess numbers of pensioners in society to it being a bio-weapon brought to Wuhan by the US Army to it being the consequence of the zodiac signs being out of harmony in the Year of the Rat!

The pandemic has caused divisiveness. Not just between rival countries trying to shift the blame and score political points, but at a grass roots level. We’ve seen the spectacle of shoppers in supermarkets fighting over the providence of a single pack of toilet roll➁.We’ve got incorrigible prepper-minded hoarders boasting online of their Fort Knox-sized storage bunkers of stockpiled household essentials, counter-balanced by the shopper-shaming of overzealous buyers queueing up with 150 rolls of toilet paper in their trolly (human behaviouralists tell us that buying ridiculous quantities of toilet rolls gives us reassurance, a warm and fuzzy feeling in a time of fear). The supermarkets, one of the very few sectors doing spectacularly well out of the crisis, have responded (too late) with partial war rationing to head off the panic buyers. War rationing seems apt as democratic governments across the world channel their inner Churchill and rush to set up “war cabinets” to deal with the extraordinary and unprecedented situation.

Deserted departure lounges 🔺

Whole industries grind to a halt, workers laid off with mortgages and bills that won’t disappear, while those of us investing in the stock market have taken an instant massive hit and the Aussie dollar plunges ever lower. Border closures, tourism industry bottoming out, small businesses going to the wall, nightlife, restaurants, bars, cafes, shows, movies, public events, etc…all nix! The hackneyed T-shirt slogan “Keep calm and carry on” is now “Keep calm, stay home and don’t go anywhere”. Lockdowns, compulsory home quarantine for targetted groups of the population, Pacific cruising virus-traps, a safe and effective vaccine for the virus still up to 18 months away. Talk in the UK of prioritising “herd immunity” uncomfortably evokes the spectre of eugenics. Some have called for the euthanasia of family pets, which is drawing a long bow even if you accept the possibility (far from definitively proven at this stage) that the virus was transmitted to humans by pangolins (scaly ant-eaters) in a Wuhan wet market. What next, euthanasia vans going round the suburbs to collect the weak and elderly? Reality at the moment looks increasingly like an unbelievable dystopian novel or movie! Welcome to the scary new world of indefinite uncertainty. 

Thanks to COVID-19 we’re learning a slew of new buzzwords, for a start social distancing and elbow bump (sounds and looks dorky but it’ll catch on, trust me), and us non-statisticians in the community are already tired of hearing TV expert commentators rabbiting on about the merits of “flattening the curve”. I am waiting to hear (and am surprised not to have heard it yet) the adjective “Orwellian” uttered in the current crisis. 

Bay County beach, Fla. (Ya Photo: WJHG/WECP)

I don’t know anyone who envies the governments or the frontline health care sector at the moment, but the government responses do have their critics? To take the scenario I am most familiar with, Australia…on the credit side the mortality rate is low (so far) though the morbidity rate is climbing fast and winter and the flu season are on the near horizon. However, under the government’s partisan “war cabinet” a coordinated approach to the crisis seems to be missing. We are looking for more systematic and less chaotic here! One example, the distribution of scarce essential goods depleted by panic buying is held up by a failure to get councils involved so they can free up the delivery schedule. Some medical and communications experts have asked where the government’s public awareness campaign is? Unlike some other countries, we are bereft of the myriad of community billboards and the television and social media advertisements which can raise awareness in the public of the disease. Overcoming ignorance is a first step to diminishing fear and apathy.

As with something this truly extraordinary, of such novel complexity and uncertainty, despite (or perhaps because of) the deluge of information, more questions than answers remain…should we lockdown cities or not? What are we not doing here to stem the crisis that appears to be working overseas? Face masks, yes/no?➂ Test for virus or not test? Can I be infected, recover and be infected a second time? What’s the shelf life of an infected surface? What do I do if I’m at high-risk and social distancing is not a viable option? Should we let the grandparents babysit our pre-schoolers any more? And then of course there’s the greatest imponderable of all, when is this whole nightmarish scenario going to end?

No issues with social distancing here (Photo: AP)

All the punter at ground zero can do is listen to the official medical advice➃, make sure we inform ourselves about Coronavirus 101 and get the basics down pat. This means identifying the likely symptoms—persistent cough, sore throat, runny nose, headache, (and more seriously) fever, shortness of breath, difficulty in breathing—all the usual suspects. Understand that coronavirus can be either symptomatic or asymptomatic, that it can be mild as well as severe, and that lethality generally (but not universally) hinges on considerations of age and serious pre-existing health conditions. Learn how to avoid contagion, what to do with the lethal weapons which are our hands – washing and drying them the correct way, eschewing the convention of shaking hands with people and start guesstimating our own personal space in public➄, sneezing into your elbow, not your hands, cleaning and disinfecting surfaces and door handles, using hand sanitisers, etc. Thus armed against ignorance, and hopefully the pandemic too, we will bunker down for the long haul, tough it out and try (very hard) not to add to the growing count of national virus statistics.

⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕

➀ and thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy
➁ almost as unedifying was the sight of Aldi staff hurling blocks of toilet paper into the air so that demonic shoppers could jostle and wrestle each other for the prized commodity (classy look!)
➂ surgical masks have become a bit of an “us and them” issue, adding to the emerging divisive atmosphere…the war cabinet’s medical experts (in line with WHO’s recommendations) have pooh-poohed the wearing of masks for the general populace as not beneficial and unnecessary, saying they only need to be worn by people diagnosed with the disease. Given that the Chinese community in Australia tend to wear the masks sometimes for cultural reasons as much as protection, this leaves them open to wild and inaccurate assumptions about their health status as a group
➃ this will probably require a judgement call as some of the medical advice has been contradictory
➄ the latest edict in the social distancing caper from the war cabinet limits indoor gatherings of 25 in a space of 100sq m (one person to every 4sq m). I can’t wait to see police officers turning up in clubs and pubs armed with measuring tapes

⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎⍎

PS. All the big business houses and major financial institutions have started sending out “touchy-feely, look we really are human” messages, along the lines of we’re here to help “our people” get through COVID-19 … excuse me while I go and bolt down my raging cynicism to the floor.

Inter-war Shànghâi: A Cocktail of Espionage, Rapid Wealth Creation, Opulent Grandeur and Glamour—in a “United Nations“ of Competing Interests

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Economic history, Economics and society,, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Regional History

Shànghâi by the late 1920s, and 1930s, was an exemplar of cosmopolitanism. The city’s pluralism, including a significant interracial element, made it stand out not just from the rest of a largely homogenous China, but from just about anywhere else on the globe. A key ingredient in Shànghâi‘s cosmopolitan character at this time was the trifurcation of the city. As a consequence of the city’s vicissitudes in the 19th century, Shànghâi, notwithstanding China’s retention of sovereignty over the city, was formally divided into three sections, two of which were foreign controlled.

French Concession

The smallest section was the French Concession (Fàguó zūjiè), in the puxi (west) part of the old city (roughly corresponding to the districts of Luwan and Xuhui in contemporary Shànghâi)—best known today as a prized residential location and the stylish centre of retail fashion in the city. The French, following suit from the British, extracted a concession from the territorial governors in 1849 and engaged in extra-territorial expansion over the ensuing decades. The French Concession had a consul-general appointed from Paris and maintained its own force of gendarmes. 

(The SMC flag, with a motto which preached ‘togetherness’)

Shànghâi International Settlement

Originally both the British and the American Wàiguó rén (foreigners)—the Shanghailanders as they styled themselves—had their own separate concessions, but the two enclaves merged in 1863 to form the International Settlements. The international communities, in the main dominated by the British and to a lesser degree the Americans (but also comprising smaller communities of other nationalities, mainly Germans, Italians, Dutch and Danish) who had their own police and fire services. The British and American expats, when they felt that their highly lucrative interests were threatened (as was the case in the 1927 political crisis), did not hesitate to call in the British Army and the US Marines. Both the British/International and French jurisdictions relied heavily on local Chinese for the bulk of their forces [‘The Shanghai Settlements’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Chinese Greater Shànghâi

The third and largest section was the area given over to the Chinese themselves and run by the Chinese Municipality of Greater Shànghâi. Basically, this area surrounded most of the foreign concession territory (especially to it’s south and west) and comprised the parts of Shànghâi that the British et al and the French were not interested in, having already had their pick of the prime locations for themselves, close to and along the Bund [‘The Shanghai International Settlements’, Wiki].

(Cartography: Bert Brouwenstijn, VU University, Amsterdam)

 A fourth concession, the “Japanese concession”

In effect, the large and increasing numbers of Japanese living in Shànghâi by this time (including armed garrisons), had resulted in the creation of an unofficial ”Japanese Concession”. This de facto concession was located in the Hongkew (now Hóngkôu) district of Shànghâi (just north of the Whangpoo’s (Huangpu’s) confluence with the Soochew (now Suzhou) Creek). Ultimately, after the Pearl Harbour attack, the Japanese extended its hold over the rest of Shànghâi except the French Concession which Nazi Germany allowed it’s Vichy French ‘puppet’ allies to retain (until 1943 when the Vichy were forced to hand it over to Imperial Japan).

Shànghâi, the fabled metropolis

By the early 1930s Shànghâi had established itself as one of the most exceptional and distinctively dazzling societies on earth. It’s population had hit three million (making it the fifth largest city in the world[𝕒]), of which somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 were foreigners. The Thirties also witnesses two huge influxes of refugees into the city—European, mainly German, Jews fleeing the murderous repression of the Third Reich and reactionary White Russians fleeing Bolshevik retribution in Stalin’s Soviet Union and republics. Both of these ’stateless’ exo-groups were the fortunate beneficiaries of Shànghâi’s status as an open door city…neither passports or visas were required to enter the city [‘Shanghai in the 1930s’, World History, http://world history.us].

🔺 Sassoon’s ‘Cathay’ , a Bund icon but a slightly(sic) over-the-top self-comparison (Source: P Hibberd, The Bund Shanghai: China Faces West (2007))

Economics and architecture: A modern city

The early ‘30s, the Great Depression may have been ravaging the world but Shanghai was prospering…Shànghâi’s flourishing affluence meant rapidly made fortunes and a privileged lifestyle – for some at least within Shànghâi society…most notably and obviously for the advantaged foreigners. Businessmen such as Victor Sassoon (financier and hotelier) and the Renwick brothers (Jardine Matheson), profited from cheap local labour, laying the foundation for their fabulous stores of wealth[𝕓]. Brits like Tony Renwick and Anglophile American Stirling Fessenden also controlled the Shànghâi Municipal Council ensuring that local public policy in the Internationals’ concession would be favourable to Anglo business interests [‘Shanghai Municipal Council’, (International Settlement 1863-1941), www.links4seo.com/].

A further, external factor which allowed Shànghâi to prosper was that, unlike the rest of China which was divided up between different regional warlords, the city was monopolised by the foreign merchant class (World History). The warlords (and Republic of China leader Chang Kai-shek) were not able to penetrate this localised power base.

The Bund‘s modernity

And the wealth realised was certainly of the conspicuous kind, one glance down the Bund (Wàitān), the riverfront promenade, confirmed that. It was replete with grand financial and trading houses, hotels and nightclubs, many in elegant Art Deco or Neo-Classical style [𝕔]. The Bund symbolised the city’s new wealth and modernity – and contained Shànghâi’s version of ”Wall Street”. Shànghâi, even at this time, had more skyscrapers than anywhere outside of the US (World History). In nearby Nanking Road (now Nanjing Rd), was the commercial heart of Shànghâi, housing the leading retail merchants of the city such as the Sincere Company Ltd and Wing On. Fashion in Shànghâi echoed the city architecture’s modernity, the latest in-vogue styles were all the rage for the Shanghainese [‘Shanghai History’, Lonely Planet, www.lonelyplanet.com].

Nightlife and recreational pursuits

Shànghâi’s business nouveau rich, when they weren’t celebrating or listening to jazz music at one of the Bund’s many nightclubs, Ciro’s, Casanova’s, the Paramount Dance Hall or at the Canidrome Ballroom in the French Concession (originally a greyhound racing track!), could often be found at the Shànghâi Jockey Club racecourse betting along with thousands of others, Chinese and foreigners, on “the strange little Mongolian ponies” especially imported for racing (World History).

Espionage in Shànghâi: something of a free-for-all

With so many different nationalities in Shànghâi at the same time, all with competing and vested interests, it is hardly surprising that the city was a hotbed of espionage especially as the Thirties drew on inexorably towards world war. Spies and counter-spies abounded…most of the main players were actively working on the ground (or under it) in Shànghâi at this juncture – the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), as well intelligence units from Russia, Japan, France, Germany and the US [Bernard Wassermann, Secret War in Shanghai: Treachery, Subversion and Collaboration in the Second World War (2017, 2nd Ed.)].

In the next blog piece I will turn my attention to the other, seamier side of the Shànghâi story of the interwar period – the city’s association, you might say preoccupation, with sin and crime, another face of Shànghâi’s decadence in the Twenties and the Thirties.

Footnote: Shànghâi, location, location …
Foreign trading powers like the British had initially preferred the port of Canton[𝕕] to Shànghâi, but by the late 19th century the latter had become the big trading nations’ principal “treaty port” in the Far East. Shànghâi‘s geographical position was fundamental to its eventual prominence: it had become by this time “the central clearinghouse of waterborne trade between the entire Yangtse River system and the rest of the world”, accounting for 50% of China’s foreign trade. It’s port comprising 35 miles of wharves could accommodate >170 ships and 500 sea-going junks at a time (Wassermann).

 

Canidrome Ballroom🔺(“canine track”)

 

⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼⟼⟻⟼⟻⟼

[𝕒] behind London, New York, Paris and Berlin

[𝕓] the wealth of the Shanghai foreign elite had its genesis in the aftermath of the Opium Wars. The European and North American powers used the springboard of the “unequal treaties” to extend their existing privileges to their countries’ merchant classes. Within the designated enclaves foreigners could carry out their business in accord with their own laws, free from Chinese taxes and with the added bonus that the Chinese courts and bureaucracy couldn’t interfere with or impede their commercial activities (Wassermann).

[𝕔] the line-up on the Bund included the Jardine Matheson Building ( early opium traders), Sassoon House, (Standard) Chartered Bank, H & S Bank (now HSBC), Union Building, APC Club, the Shànghâi Club, the Cathay Hotel, Paramount Dance Hall and the French, US, German and British consulates

 [𝕕] modern day Guangzhou

 

Zimbabwe, Who Wants to be a Trillionaire?

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Economics and society,, Racial politics, Regional History

It was ten years ago to the decade this happened. We had done what we wanted to do on the Zambian side—dog-paddled from Livingstone Island across the Zambezi River blissfully oblivious of crocs and hippos, summoned up the courage to take the big leap down into the deep but small Devil’s Pool on the precipice, inches away from an unthinkable 208 metre drop to the rock-strewn bottom of the great falls. We had seen what we wanted to see on the Zambian side—the best viewing points to survey the majestic Mosi-oa-Tunya from; the statue of explorer/evangelist Davie Livingstone. Now, having wrestled with our ethical demons and overcome them, we decided to buy a day tripper visa and cross the bridge into Zimbabwe, swayed by the lure of it supposedly having superior vantage points for seeing Vic Falls.

(Photo: www.victoriafalls.net)

As we approached the checkpoint at the Zambian end we skirted round an African kid waving copper bracelets in our face (copper bracelets are one of the few items dirt-poor Zambian youngsters have to barter in exchange for South African rands). After completing the immigration stuff we didn’t dilly-dally around at the check-point, I had read that the local troop of baboons here could be quite aggressive with tourists (just before we came to Zambia 🇿🇲 I had read that one unfortunate tourist had fallen over the falls to his doom trying to avoid the pressing attentions of a baboon who had taken a fixedly determined interest in the bright orange bag he was carrying).

(Map: Lonely Planet)

We tip-toed very cautiously onto the bridge, avoiding eye-contact with the bulky and menacing guard on border duty brandishing an AK-47, save for a single furtive glance in his direction to catch his cold, expressionless countenance. There was none or minimal passing foot traffic as we did the 1.8km bridge trek into the Zimbabwe tourist township. This bridge apparently is famous for being the site of a formal “pow-wow” between the white UDI regime representatives and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF rebels which signalled the end of the long Rhodesian Bush War (I could be wrong about this as it might be the other one, the nearby railway bridge, where the icing was put on the cake of peace?)

Not long after passing the customs point, having got a set of fresh new Zimbabwe stamps in our passport, we encountering our first Zim local keen to barter with the tourists. We managed to out-walk most of these but finally we relented and stopped for one particularly persistent guy who just wouldn’t take ‘NO!’ for an answer. As it turned out this Zim street trader did have something we were interested in – some Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 bank notes. These were not any old legal tender that you might get back in change at the nearby Victoria Falls Town shops when you buy some souvenirs of Zimbabwe, these were examples of the fiat currency that the Mugabe regime was infamous for!

So, after a very short bargaining session, in exchange for a handful of wrinkled RSA rand notes✳, we walked away with three crisp, new looking Zimbabwe bank notes. They were, respectively, a Z$20 billion note, (which we discovered was merely petty cash compared to) a Z$50 trillion note and, la crème de la crèam, a mind-boggling fresh, ‘new’ Z$100 trillion note! Talk about collectors’ items! When I enquired of the street trader what exactly could I buy with the Z$100 trillion note, he produced his default smile and replied, “one loaf of bread”! But I can happily report that on checking later I discovered he was wrong…for the Z100Trn note I could get three loaves of bread – at least…and probably a few buns thrown in as well!

Yes, I had heard about Zimbabwe’s notorious mega-inflation. Back in high school history classes I had learnt about the troubled Weimar Republic in the 1920s and it’s crazy, runaway hyperinflation which led to workers being paid every day, twice a day (morning and afternoon) and having to cart away their ‘soft’ mark currency notes in wheelbarrows! But I didn’t appreciate the full dimensions of Zimbabwe’s economic calamity until I came here. In 2008 the country’s insouciant and haphazard economic mismanagement had resulted in a tsunami of hyper-inflationary escalation which peaked at a staggering 231 Million percent. At its year’s worse, prices were doubling every 24 hours [‘Where is the next Fiat Currency Revaluation?’, (Andrew Henderson), Nomad Capitalist, Upd. 28-Dec-2019, www.nomadcapitalist.com]. A worthless, disposal nappy of a currency. Zimbabwe – welcome to the world of the “starving billionaires” as the Zimbabwe cynic (ie, realist) would put it!

As well as adding naughts to the money denominations at an alarming rate of knots, Zimbabwe in a currency-printing frenzy went paper money crazy – they started issuing notes for all the coin denominations too. At one point they even had a one cent note! In the hyper-inflationary swampland that is Zimbabwe, imagine the lunacy of printing a 1₵ note! Then again, perhaps we are underestimating the government’s capacity for irony…or maybe it was an artistic statement, theatre of the absurd, surreal farce, that sort of thing!

Within two years the out-of-control inflation reached even more embarrassing stratospheric heights – 89.7 sextillion percent. Finally the Zimbabwe government arrived at a solution of sorts, it jettisoned the worthless local dollar currency for the US dollar. It began trading principally in US$ and South African rands (today the country accepts up to eight other foreign currencies as legal tender—including the Botswana pula—in place of the valueless Zim $).

Sadly, the economic situation in Zimbabwe today is not much better. In 2019 the economy took another sharp downturn and hyperinflation rose again like an exploding thermometer…at this point Zimstat (the Zimbabwe stats office) stopping releasing inflation data (in a desperate attempt to cover the government’s own scandalous ineptitude). However the IMF put the level of Zimbabwe inflation in August 2019 at 300 per cent. Bread was now something like US$10 a loaf. The annual inflation rate as at December 2019 was sitting around 521 percent! Venezuela could happily reclaim second place in the world’s worst stakes [‘IMF: Zimbabwe has the highest inflation rate in the world’, (29-Sep-2019), www.zimbabwesituation.com; ‘Zimbabwe Inflation Rate’, www.tradingeconomics.com].

000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000……

Footnote:Trillions, Quadrillions, Sextillions, Septillions, Octillions, etc.—ultimately it’s a numbers game of theoretical interest only

The dubious honour for having printed the world’s highest numerical value banknote goes to postwar Hungary – 1 sextillion pengö back in 1946. Zimbabwean financial control suddenly doesn’t look quite so bad!

𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠 𝕠

✳ and my wife’s plastic tube of hand-sanitiser gel, which the guy’s infant kid had taken a fancy to