The Kerala COVID-19 Template: How to Lead in the Fight against a Pandemic

Comparative politics, Natural Environment, Politics, Public health,

When the coronavirus pandemic eventually reached India, it was always going to pose a challenge of epic proportions for a country of 1.3+ billion people, with such a dense population domiciled  in such close quarters, and with a widespread underbelly of poverty. The Spanish flu of 1918 inflicted a death toll on India in the many millions, something no doubt in the back of the minds of public health officials. So, two or three months into the crisis, on paper, India’s COVID-19 record, on paper, doesn’t look as frightening as many other nations. As at 17-May-2020, so far it has had a shade under 91 thousand confirmed cases and a total of 2,872 deaths (www.worldometers.info).

10D13447-6663-4F6D-9AD9-DBCF18F47F5E

(Photo: Indranil Mukherjee / Agence France-Presse – Getty Images)

There is a perception within medical circles however that these figures don’t portray the full extent of the outbreak. India’s urban areas are packed with masses of people living face to face, beset with poor sanitation conditions, up to 100 people sharing the same toilet in some cases, adding up to a recipe for catastrophe in plague time. Obtaining a test for coronavirus in India has tended to not be straightforward, thus the level of testing has lagged woefully behind what is desirable, eg, by well into March India was averaging only five tests per ten lakhs (one million) people, compared with South Korea which had managed 4,800 per ten lakhs.

FEA14576-4FB7-40F2-902D-CB14B95FC9CD

Too many migrant workers waiting for too few buses to take them home after the lockdown was announced (Photo: Yawar Nazir – Getty Images)

Containment measures have been far short of perfect, and with some glaring omissions…there has been passive resistance to the lockdowns from sceptical Indians, and the ban on public gatherings has from time to time been skirted round (some ‘scofflaw’ political parties continue to hold mass rallies). Although India’s borders were closed fairly promptly, some have been critical of the procrastination of Indian leaders’ during the crucial early days of the crisis, one Indian epidemiologist characterised it as a “let’s wait till tomorrow” attitude [‘India Scrambles to Escape a Coronavirus Crisis. So Far It’s Working’, (J Gettleman, S Raj, KD Singh & K Schultz), New York Times, 17-March-2020, www.nytimes.com]. This early reticence to act emanated from Delhi. The Modi BJP government, initially seemingly more concerned with the impact on India’s under-performing economy, issued no public health warnings or media briefings at the onset of the pandemic [‘What the world can learn from Kerala about how to fight covid-19’, (Sonia Faleiro), MIT Technology Review, 13-Apr-2020, www.technologyreview.com].

776067EA-29C5-4453-8379-1B7A7AB04BAF

(www.anayahotels.com)

Kerala, leading from the periphery
Kerala is one state that these general criticisms of Indian public health efforts against COVID-19 cannot be levelled. The small southwestern Indian state is one of the most picturesque parts of the land with its coconut trees and irenic and serene back-waterways. Known as a tourist mecca, Kerala, population 35 million, is more affluent than many parts of India (GDP per capital GB£2,200). 20% of India’s gold is consumed here, and it produces over 90% of the country’s rubber. Literacy is nearly 20% higher than the overall Indian average, and life expectancy too, is higher (www.holidify.com). All of these were contributing factors buttressing Kerala’s capacity to cope with the disease when it came.

Local vulnerabilities to the epidemic
Kerala was coronavirus “ground zero” for India’s very first patients. Three students returning from Wuhan were tested positive and hospitalised (in all 70% of the state’s total virus patients have come from outside India). Certain preconditions pertaining to the state exacerbated the risk of disease outbreak, including a large number of Keralite migrant workers in the Gulf states, a huge expat population (working in Kerala from other Indian states), porous borders, and an early summer monsoon season (contributing to Kerala’s high rate of annual communicable diseases) [‘Coronavirus: How India’s Kerala state flattened the curve’, (Soutik Biswas), BBC News, 16-Apr-2020, www.bbcnews.com].

Preparation and planning
Kerala was prepared for COVID-19 before the onset of the disease. The earlier Nipah viral outbreak (NiV) In Kerala (2018) proved a good trial run for the health service, giving the local authorities an opportunity to iron out chinks in it. Kerala’s communist-left coalition  government had established a strong social welfare foundation, investing in the state’s infrastructure with a focus on health and education, and on tackling the state’s poverty. [‘How the Indian State of Kerala flattened the coronavirus curve’, (Oommen C Kurian), Guardian,  21-Apr-2020, www.theguardian.com].

Minister Shailaja (Source: www.manoramonline.com)

B2E20FBF-77CE-4ADA-81DF-901D82E34F63

Shailaja ‘Teacher’, a woman with a plan
When the epidemic arrived in Kerala, the proactive state health minister KK Shailaja took charge. With the full backing of Kerala chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, she had already organised a rapid response team to focus on targeted clusters, and liaised with the provincial councils. Kerala adopted the WHO protocols of test, trace, isolate and support. Rigorous contact tracing was employed, utilising detailed “route maps”. Testing of suspected carriers was decisive, with a quick, 48-hour turnaround of the result [‘Kerala has best coronavirus test rate in the country, but is it enough?’, (Vishnu Varna), The Indian Express, 01-Apr-2020, www.indianexpress.com], allowing them to move quickly on to the quarantine phase. 17,000 people were quarantined under strict surveillance, the poor without quarantine facilities were placed in improvised isolation. Recovered patients were duly released back into the community. Quarantine compliance was achieved through an admixture of phone monitoring (>340,000 calls and a neighbourhood watch system [‘The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala’s rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19’, (Laura Spinney), The Guardian, 14-May-2020, www.theguardian.com; Kurian].

One of the sternest challenges, very early on, came from the district of Pathanamthitta. A family returning from Italy tested positive, but refused to disclose their movements upon return to Kerala. The civil servant in charge of the district, PB Nooh, and his team, worked round this obstacle by accessing the family’s GPS phone data, allowing them to trace all of their contacts (almost 300 people!). Nooh’s staff then tested the contacts for infection, thus shutting down the risk of the virus being exponentially transmitted to others in the community, ie, “breaking the chain” (Faleiro).

The coronavirus certainly didn’t miss Kerala, one-fifth of all Indian cases of the disease have occurred in the state. Under Shailaja, Kerala hit the ground running, before the end of January, screenings of arrivals at all four of the state’s international airports was introduced. The government imposed a lockdown even before the national lockdown was called…schools, malls, cinemas, public gatherings, were closed down, and the lockdown was stricter and longer than the national one (Kurian). Face masks were distributed to slum dwellers. Planning was precise and focused, a state stimulus package of Rs20,000 crore was directed towards the economic and medical crises.The medical task force was mobilised (doctors on leave were recalled, others asked to delay their leave). Those suffering hardship included migrant workers from other states were provided with free lunches by the state.

B04DBE9E-3431-45D1-BEAC-30319F69C38A

Communication with citizens informing them about all aspects of the crisis was clear and consistent (“Break the Chain” campaign which emphasises public and personal hygiene). Accordingly, community participation, both voluntary and active, was forthcoming. Some Keralites made accommodation available (including vacant homes in some instances) to those in need when requested to by the government [‘The Kerala Way of Tackling a Pandemic’, Times of India, 20-Mar-2020, www.timesofindia.com].

The Kerala government’s campaign against the virus has been aided by the polity’s decentralised nature of it’s structures. The coordination achieved allows the local councils to follow through on a lot of the public health measures needed to be implemented in the crisis (Biswas). The result of all this detailed planning and effort by Kerala – 587 confirmed cases and only four deaths and apparently no significant community transmissions (17-Apr-2020).

The state of Kerala and Shailaja ‘Teacher’ (so known because her occupation before entering politics was that of science teacher) are not resting on their laurels, being very mindful of the chance of a second wave of COVID-19 due to impending factors—Prime Minister Modi’s anticipated ending of the national lockdown, which will trigger a mass return of Kerala’s migrant workers based in the Gulf, and the approach of the tropical wet season in Kerala (June) [‘Kerala Lays Down Specific Plans To Tackle Monsoon Amid COVID-19 Pandemic’, NDTV, 15-May-2020, www.ndtv.com]. Minister Shaijala has been making preparations for such an event, many of the state’s teachers have been retrained as nurses to cope with a new upsurge in virus hotspots (Spinney).

2A2FC331-A536-4476-B682-D925116408D1

EndNote: No time for Kerala complacency but a most worthy blueprint on offer 
The threat of new clusters emerging in Kerala remains very real, especially coming from outside, with a spike as recent as this past Friday—imported from neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra as well as from overseas—reminding Shailaja and Co that the battle’s still far from won. Nonetheless, for elsewhere in India and beyond, there are lessons from Kerala‘s formidable achievement to be had from the state’s “nimble-footed, community-oriented, cautiously-aggressive approach” to the outbreak [Kurian; ‘Kerala reports 11 new Covid-19 cases’, (Ramesh Babu), Hindustan Times,16-May-2020, www.hindustantimes.com].

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

the Kerala government is Marxist in ideology but pragmatic in practice, it’s policies are moderately social-democratic, with a highly-privatised public health system (Kurian)

What Happens to the World’s Airplanes After they are Grounded During the Pandemic?

Aviation history, Commerce & Business, Public health,, Travel

think most people, outside the industry, think the answer to this question would be “not a lot”. Unfortunately for the airlines, being grounded, being not able to utilise their assets to realise revenue, is only the start of the problems. In April it was estimate by the industry researcher Cirium that there were over 16,000 commercial passenger aircraft no longer flying – around 62% (the numbers would not have decreased since then) [‘Here’s What You Do With Two-Thirds of the World’s Jets When They Can’t Fly’, (Anurag Kotoky, David Stringer & Ragini Saxena), Bloomberg, 17-Apr-2020, www.bloomberg.com]. The severity of the blow to the airline industry internationally can hardly be understated, coming soon after IATA (International Air Transport Association) predicted (in December 2019) a US$29.3bn net profit for 2020 [http://airlines.iata.org].


F0FBD932-CCD8-4872-ADB2-B9941F6BC79C

The norm under coronavirus: flights with a handful of passengers  (Photo: Jennifer Flowers / AFAR

Put simply, while the primary income from the airlines’ raison d’être, the loss of paying passengers, dries up, the fixed costs, the invariables, don’t go away for both the airports and the airlines. Let’s take the airports first, they make look deserted when you glimpse images of them on the internet or television, but they haven’t closed down altogether, they haven’t morphed into ghost towns. Airports still have infrastructure and most still run at least a limited service of domestic flights, and on the international scene, though closed for tourism, emergency flights still happen. So, with people and the coronavirus still around, the airports need upkeep. Surface cleaning with virus and bacteria killing disinfectants, hand-sanitising stations, etc. 

6AD69C98-099E-4BA6-BF70-9A21C212D6CB

A Californian “desert dormitory” for grounded jets (Photo: Mark Ralston / AFP via Getty Images)

The immediate problem for airlines in the Covid-19 crisis is where to put the multitude of grounded jets. The optimal place, leaving other considerations aside for a minute, is determined by climate. Aircrafts on the ground, exposed to the elements for any significant length of time, will do best in a dry climate with low humidity. This places the major airlines of Eastern Asia with their wetter, steamier climes at a disadvantage. Conversely, Australia’s great interior continental deserts are a favourable location. QANTAS and some other international airlines have accordingly parked their jets in Alice Springs (Central Australia)✫. In America [‘Parking in a pandemic: Grounded planes scramble for storage space’, (Paul Sillers), CNN, 22-Mar-2020, www.cnn.com]. Similarly, in America, US airlines have sought out long-term storage facilities in the hospitable desert environments of western USA [‘What It Takes for an Airline to Ground Its Fleet Amid Coronavirus’, (Jessica Puckett), Conte Nast Traveler, 31-Mar-2020, www.cntraveler.com].

414BCC0B-08AA-4593-8FB9-EEBFB67BB331

Delta jet, Pinal Airpark (reliever airport), Arizona (Photo: Rebecca Sasnett, Arizona Daily Star)

A lot of European airlines are not so lucky, forced to use the local airports in Europe where some of the runways have been decommissioned to make way for the grounded planes. Aircraft parking in some of the European hubs can also be exorbitantly expensive, charging up to US$285 an hour (although the cost varies greatly from location to location). Sometimes the remotely located (long-term) storage facilities are referred to as aircraft ‘boneyards’❈ [‘Aircraft Boneyards, MRO & Storage Facilities in Europe’, Airplane Boneyards, www.airplaneboneyards.com].

Thwarting the nesting birds (Photo: Reuters / Elijah Nouvelage)

F804542B-0FC6-4C79-9815-4470B65E03DC

When happens with the planes taken out of service and parked? Although not in current use, they still have to be maintained so that they are ready when the airways open up again. Planes are subjected to regular, heavy mechanical maintenance checks, the hydraulics and the flight control system needs to be finely monitored. When the aircrafts are being stored long-term, the process followed has been described as a kind of ”aeronautical embalming” (Sillers) – fluids require to be drained (to prevent rusting of the landing gear), as the jets are housed al fresco everything needs to be covered and/or protected – the engine intakes and exhaust areas, external instruments, the tyres, the windows, the entire airframe (to prevent corrosion). Maintenance staff also have to check the planes for bird-nests and incursion from insects (grilles are sometimes affixed to keep birds outs). Every two weeks the wheels need to be rotated and the batteries reconnected (Sillers; Kotoky et al). Yes, it’s true to say that aircraft maintenance and storage firms are busy at the present time.

056ACC10-ADAC-4CA2-87AD-A4965630A7F4

To try to offset, at least partly, the crippling hit from of the coronavirus crisis, the loss of multi-billion dollars by the industry, some airline companies have switched their (unused) passenger jets to become freight-carriers (in addition to using their usual freighters). Scoot, for instance, in February commenced bi-weekly hauls from Singapore to Nanjing and Guangzhou transporting air cargo only. Cathay Pacific carries freight on passenger-less flights from Hong Kong to three Chinese cities∅ [‘Airplanes Without Passengers Start Coronavirus Recovery’, (Will Horton), Forbes, 10-Mar-2020, www.forbes.com]

 

EndNote: In March, even after extensive international flight restrictions had come into effect, a number of airlines were still undertaking their scheduled flights with zero passengers on board. One of the reasons for such a seemingly nonsensical practice was to abide with EU regulations which require the airlines to fulfil their allotments or risk losing the flight slots [‘Why Airlines Are Flying Empty Ghost Planes’, ((Caroline Delbert), Popular Mechanics 11-Mar-2020, www.popularmechanics.com].

 

____________________________________________________________________
✫ north of five billion dollars’ worth of aircraft enjoy the arid air of Alice Springs Airport (from SilkAir 737s to Singapore 380s) [‘How expensive will air travel be after the Covid-19 crisis?’, (Cynthia Drescher), CNN, (14-May-2020), www.cnn.com]
❈ quite apt for housing a lot of the older, less-efficient planes, which will be retired and either be sold-off or used for parts and then scrapyarded
∅ there’s precious little upside for the airline industry at the moment, but one positive for the jets still in the air is the record low world oil prices at the present

The Animal World and Coronavirus: The Puzzling Question of Interspecies Transmission and Animals Invading Human Space

Natural Environment, Popular Culture, Public health,

40DA9124-D490-4457-86AA-A6C0DBDB4F5C 

(Source: www.wwf.org.uk)

We all know that those much maligned flying mammals, the bats, were at the centre of the COVID-19 outbreak. With definitive evidence still proving elusive however, the jigsaw is still incomplete. Did the bats, as some experts hypothesise, transmit the disease directly to humans? Or did bats tag-team with an intermediary host—the keratin-armoured pangolin is the most likely suspect for some other experts—who in turn transmitted the infection to humans? The non-experts on the other hand, particularly those in the vicinity of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, cling to an alternative view which sees the coronavirus escaping, either accidentally or deliberately, from a biotech lab in Wuhan – a theory that does not entirely let the much-besmirched bat off the hook as the lab was known to be experimenting with the creatures.

528190E2-32C4-43F0-B606-3FD01B4888AF(Source: www.theatlantic.com)

How have other animals, the ones not blamed for the virus outbreak, fared in the time of pandemic? One of the most intriguing developments first reported back in March (seems a long time ago now!) is the curious phenomena of human-to-animal transmission of the virus…a case of the humans fighting back? The Bronx Zoo in New York, in the midst of all the human carnage triggered by the outbreak, reported that nine of their non-human residents had tested positive for COVID-19. Five tigers and four lions—including the animal world’s patient zero”, a Malayan tiger called Nadia—apparently contracted the disease from an asymptomatic handler. The zoo was closed to the public on 16th March (‘Seven more cats tests positive for coronavirus at Bronx Zoo’, (Natasha Daly), National Geographic,  22-Apr-2020, www.nationalgeographic.com). Since then, some domestic cats and dogs (in Kong Kong and Belgium) have also tested positive for the disease. Veterinarians have said that all of the affected Bronx Zoo felines were expected to recover.

0DF13788-2040-41A6-B323-768B53518C84

Unfortunately there are concerns for other members of the Felidae family in the US from the novel coronavirus. This involves a bunch (an ‘ambush’?) of tigers at the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma. The Tiger King” zoo, formerly owned by the notorious, and now imprisoned, “Joe Exotic”, recently reopened after the lifting of pandemic precautions. Visitors are now being offered the chance to participate in (pricey) tiger cub petting sessions and the punters are doing so in droves, all day, raising concerns after the Bronx outbreak that the operators are placing the baby felines in distinct danger of the virus (as well as upping the contagion risks for the huge crowds of humans attending) (‘Tigers, humans at risk for coronavirus as ‘Tiger King’ zoo reopens’, (Teresa Bergen), Inhabitat, 12-May-2020, www.inhabitat.com).

AE121FCA-65B8-4B93-BEC2-3B8F69DD43F9

(Photo: Getty Images)

The pandemic has resulted in a very different, “feel-good” story concerning the world’s fauna. Twitter is awash with videos of animal sightings in unexpected places. City centres, once teeming with tourists and vendors, are now massively de-peopled due to the lockdowns. These instant “ghost towns” have not gone overlooked in the animal kingdom. All manner of wild fauna have swarmed in to claim the run of the towns, and almost certainly driven to do so in search of food. We have seen penguins waddling through empty Cape Town streets, coyotes roaming through a largely deserted San Francisco, wild boars taking over the Centro of Barcelona and the streets of Bergamo, Italy (probably not the same wild boars), Kashmiri mountain goats nonchalantly strolling through Llandudno (where?) in Wales, and so on and so on (‘Wild Animals have taken over the streets of major cities because of the coronavirus’, (Chris Ciaccia), Fox News , 03-Apr-2020, www.foxnespws.com).

6804A2F4-87C2-4A66-BCAA-4AE9C56FC0BC

Siberian husky visits Beluga whale  

(Photo: www.wtnh.com)

The most touching coronavirus animal story is the upside from the closure of zoos and aquariums – the opportunity for new animal interactions. During the enforced downtime some zoos are allowing non-dangerous animals (including visits from shelter animals) to roam around the enclosure, coming face-to-glass with other animal inhabitants (‘While aquariums are closed amid the coronavirus, animals get to play.” (Joshua Bote), USA Today News, 04-Apr-2020, www.usatoday.com).

While many zoo residents have experienced loneliness with the disappearance of human visitors, Hong Kong Zoo’s giant panda couple luxuriated in the new privacy so much that they overcame their typical reticence and mated for the first time in a decade (‘Two pandas tried to mate for a decade. With the zoo closed due to coronavirus, they finally did it’, (RW Miller), USA Today News, 08-Apr-2020, www.usatoday.com) 

68E65151-1850-4A45-985E-9BB1942A6BCF

(Photo: Antony Dickson, AFP/Getty Images)

⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿⟿

cross-contamination back to humans from the tigers has been ruled out by medical experts
✴  some of the alleged sightings of animals have turned out to be bogus claims, such as the myth of Russian President Putin unleashing 500 lions onto Russian streets to ensure people observed lockdown

Life on Planet Covid-19: Sometimes a Wacky Notion, a Glimpse into the Bizarre in the Time of Coronavirus

Politics, Popular Culture, Public health,, Society & Culture

The Coronavirus outbreak has brought out both the good and bad in human nature, but as everyone tries with varying success to cope with the strange and new reality of lockdowns, closures, social distancing and restrictions on movement, it has brought out the downright weird and bizarre as well.  In 1929 when Wall Street collapsed, triggering the Great Depression and a devaluing of the money currency, there was a run on the banks as people desperately tried to salvage their evaporating savings. In March when people in the ‘burbs heard the pandemic was not likely to go away any time soon, there was a run on the supermarkets, efficiently stripping the shelves bare (like locusts in a corn field) – of toilet paper! Somehow, the crux of what is needed for civilisation to sustain itself during an enforced hibernation has been reduced to this, apparently now the most precious of household commodities in a lockdown survival strategy. Widely circulated media footage of shoppers coming to blows in supermarket aisles over the providence of a single roll of loo paper and profiteering hoarders trying to flog bog rolls on eBay at an insane $100 a shot, is surely proof of the arrival of a new and dynamic currency (what price the toilet roll futures market?).
4F51C3BF-28EC-4428-841C-B17A4089E626

(Source. www.mix1023.com.au)

Once the epidemic got in full swing, the demand for face masks, especially in those countries with a culture of wearing protective masks, quickly outstripped supply. Accordingly some people have resorted to ‘improv’, mask substitutes – scarves and bandanas, face shield visors and so on. Sometimes people are a bit creative, eg, converted bras, vacuum bag filters, and sometimes grossly inappropriate (and utterly gross) or bizarrely impractical.

4F5592CC-0190-4A97-AAD7-39DCAB114F32

KKK hood shopper, an injudicious choice of replacement for a face mask, San Diego, Ca. (Image: Tiam Tellez (FB))

9B341A92-E3B0-454B-96AE-C9A951CC1854

A comfy 15L plastic bottle-head in lieu of face mask (Source: www.dailystar.co.uk) 

Agencies tasked with enforcement all over the world struggle to come to grips with the need to make everyone social distance. India’s efforts at least have resulted in some comical outcomes (light relief perhaps from all the descending gloom). In India’s west coast tourist spots, foreigners found at the beach by local police have been forced to write out apologies 500 times for breaching the stay-at-home rules. Elsewhere, in southern India, in one village the mandated use of umbrellas outside (in any weather) is the prescribed method for enforcing social distancing.

2E2840AC-D9A6-4DF1-AA34-E51E9EC5696D

(Photo: Hindustan Times, source: UGC)

Meanwhile, officials in the Swedish city of Lund, confronted with the Herculean task of stopping the multitudes ignoring voluntary social distancing guidelines, have gone for the unorthodox! To discourage people from crowding together in outdoor recreational areas, a frustrated Lunds Kommun (city council) has resorted to the somewhat “left-field” measure of dumping chicken manure all over the city’s main park.

174520C6-E245-47B6-AC95-072C269C1CE6

(Source: www.internewscast.com)

Has any other natural or unnatural phenomenon ever inspired such an array of whacky bizarre headlines (a la “Ripley’s believe-or-not!”) as this minuscule spiky particle pathogen has? In an atmosphere heightened by anxieties over a sense of that which we cannot control, “miracle cures” have saturated social media channels, everything from Llama Antibodies Could Help Scientists Stop the Coronavirus Pandemic? to Does JK Rowling’s breathing technique cure the coronavirus? to Colloidal silver toothpaste will fix your Covid virus. Then there’s the “contributions to the debate” from the White House, a kaleidoscope of quack cures being incredulously recycled by “The Donald” who continues to be in the thrall of non-scientists sprouting convenient opinion to him (“UV light and disinfectant injections killing the virus inside human bodies”, “hydroxychloroquine and bleach“,  etc). The Covid-19 pandemic has been somatotropin for conspiracy theorising, with no handbrake applied to how asinine they can get…the 5G network is an ‘accelerator’ of coronavirus; Bill Gates Foundation’s COVID-19 Vaccine is a Satanic Plot; Not a pandemic but a plan-demic; Coronavirus hoax is an Agenda 21 plot to microchip us; etc. ad nauseum. (‘Miracle ‘coronavirus cures’ haven’t changed in 700 years’, (Jennifer Wright), New York Post, 18-Apr-2020, www.nypost.com).

Suspicious-looking 5G mobile towers 

6A0A0A65-26AD-4075-BDD9-8262A1424535

PostScript: the coronavirus crisis leads to some surprising scenarios. A report on a news bulletin a couple of weeks ago disclosed the trials of tribulations the super rich have had to endure at this time. Because of social distancing measures, many of society’s wealthy burghers have for safety concerns dispensed with the services of their house maids and auxiliary staff. This has resulted in grievous  inconvenience and vexation for the plutocrats as they are now forced to learn for themselves how to use washing machines and other appliances in their palatial homes…ahh, those eternal First World problems – they just never let up.

⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤

when Covid-19 first hit the US, eight of the eleven states in which cannabis is legal, declared ongoing access to the narcotic an essential service for medicinal and recreational users. This prompted, in microcosm, a similar run to that on toilet paper, on marijuana outlets by aficionados of the weed. Consumers flocked to their local dispensers to stock up on essential ‘pot’ for the long, hard days of confinement ahead. This panic-buying of cannabis led some with a vested interest in the industry to talk up the prospects of a medicinal marijuana-led recovery of the US economy once the cloud of coronavirus disperses (‘Aurora Cannabis and Tilray set to detail hoarding of marijuana during COVID-19’, (Max A Cherney), Market Watch, 09-May-2020, www.marketwatch.com

plucking supposed panaceas out of the ether in time of pandemic has been ever thus…in the Black Plague they tried onions to ward off the disease, in the coronavirus crisis the equivalent recommendation is garlic (same degree of effectiveness)

 the authors of these expressions of coronavirus denial, once thought largely confined to the United States, are spreading to different parts of the world, ironically enough, like a virus in themselves. They are drawn from different groups of society—anti-vaxxers, 5G truthers, sovereign citizens, QAnon believers and other Alt-Right, fringe conspiracy theorists—that have through ”cross-pollination” of their beliefs, converged into “a virulent if not entirely coherent umbrella movement against coronavirus lockdown measures“ (’Why Are Australians Chanting “Arrest Bill Gates” At Protests? This Wild Facebook Group Has The Answers’, (Cameron Wilson), BuzzFeed, 11-May-2020, www.buzzfeednews.com.au)