Domenico De Masi – 22.3.2020

[RESUMO] Sociólogo italiano narra situação dramática em seu país e argumenta que as imposições em decorrência da pandemia, como o trabalho em casa, a solidariedade e o papel da esfera pública, demonstram que é possível e desejável mudar a lógica mercadista da economia e criar modos de viver mais racionais e proveitosos para o mundo contemporâneo.

A Itália de onde escrevo, um dos países mais vivazes e alegres do mundo, é hoje apenas um deserto. Cada um dos seus 60 milhões de habitantes acha que é imortal, que o vírus não o tocará, que irá matar não ele mas alguma outra pessoa. Porém, no silêncio do seu coração, cada um sabe que essa ilusão é pueril e que essa pandemia misteriosa, abstrata e tangível ao mesmo tempo, escolhe suas vítimas ao acaso, como numa roleta russa.

Em algum tempo vamos saber se o vírus pode ser debelado ou se nos matará em massa, assim como fez no século passado a famosa gripe espanhola, que matou 1 milhão de pessoas por semana durante 25 semanas seguidas.

Moro há 50 anos no centro de Roma, na rua mais movimentada da cidade, que leva da praça Veneza à Basílica de São Pedro.

Normalmente, essa rua está 24 horas por dia entupida de trânsito, de turistas e peregrinos. Há duas semanas, está muda e deserta. Só de vez em quando ouve-se o grito de uma sirene de ambulância e algum sem-teto passa. A cidade inteira está fantasmagórica como a Los Angeles de “Blade Runner”. Aqui, porém, desapareceram até os replicantes extraterrestres.

Fechados os lugares públicos, as escolas, as fábricas, as lojas, as estações, os portos e os aeroportos, a Itália é agora um país separado do resto da Europa e do mundo. Cada cidade está parada, cada família trancafiada em casa. Quem sai à revelia dos pouquíssimos motivos permitidos é interceptado imediatamente pelas rondas policiais que aplicam penas bastante severas.

Os gregos antigos consideravam que, quando algo é indispensável e todavia impossível, a situação é trágica. Foram necessários 50 dias, milhares de doentes e mortos para que os italianos entendessem que a situação é, enfim, irremediavelmente trágica.

O que significa uma pandemia como essa para Roma, para a Itália, para a humanidade como um todo? Como ela age nas mentes e nos corações de todos nós que, armados com tecnologias poderosas e inteligência artificial, até poucas semanas atrás nos sentíamos os senhores do céu e da terra?

Subitamente nos descobrimos frágeis pigmeus diante da onipotência imaterial de um vírus que, por vias misteriosas, escapou de um morcego chinês para vir matar homens e mulheres em nossas cidades.

A sujeição a um vírus desconhecido, para o qual não há nem cura nem vacina, transformou a Itália numa enorme caserna blindada e os 60 milhões de italianos noutros tantos dóceis soldadinhos empenhados num gigantesco exercício militar no qual estão obrigados a aprender a verdade que antes ignoravam obstinadamente. O que não quer dizer que irão apreendê-la.

Numa Europa onde, até ontem, era permitida a livre circulação de pessoas, mercadorias e dinheiro, agora cada país, em vez de abraçar uma colaboração ainda mais solidária com os demais, tranca suas próprias fronteiras, iludindo-se de forma cínica e infantil que seja possível deter o vírus com barreiras aduaneiras.

Contudo, hoje, mais do que nunca, os soberanismos parecem tentativas fantasiosas contra a globalização. Hoje, mais do que nunca, a difusão da pandemia e sua rápida volta ao mundo demonstraram que deter a globalização é como se opor à força de gravidade. Nosso planeta já é aquela “aldeia global” da qual falava McLuhan, unida por infortúnios e pela vontade de viver, precisando de uma direção unitária, capaz de coordenar a ação sinérgica de todos os povos que desejam se salvar. Nessa aldeia global, nenhum homem, nenhum país é uma ilha.

Talvez tenhamos aprendido que o caso agora é de vida ou morte e que ninguém pode enfrentar sozinho um vírus tão ardiloso e potente. Por isso, são necessários recursos, inteligências, competências, ações e instituições coletivas. Coordenação e coesão geral. É necessária uma cabine de comando, um governo competente que tenha autoridade, uma equipe formada por um vértice político de grande inteligência e apoiada pelos máximos representantes das ciências médicas, da economia, da sociologia, da psicologia social e da comunicação.

Talvez tenhamos aprendido que os fatos e os dados devem prevalecer sobre as opiniões, a competência reconhecida deva prevalecer sobre o simples bom senso, a prudência e a gradualidade das intervenções devem prevalecer às tomadas de decisões arrogantes e à improvisação imprudente. Por outro lado, é necessário tolerar os erros de quem possui a responsabilidade terrível de tomar decisões, líder que deve ser generosamente amparado para que sejam melhoradas.

Talvez tenhamos aprendido que, perante um vírus desconhecido, assim como diante de um problema complexo, as decisões sobre a pandemia não apenas devem ser tomadas pelas pessoas competentes mas também ser comunicadas de forma unívoca, com autoridade, prontamente, de forma abrangente e clara. Todo o alarmismo, todo o exagero, toda a subestimação é terrível porque confunde as ideias e nos faz perder um tempo precioso. Carência e excesso de informações são parâmetros nocivos. Talk shows superficiais e fake news delirantes levam ao cinismo e à desumanização.

Talvez tenhamos aprendido que, nos países civilizados, o bem-estar é uma conquista irrenunciável. Por sorte e pela sabedoria dos nossos pais, a Constituição italiana de 1948 considera a saúde como um direito fundamental de cada ser humano. Já a reforma sanitária de 1978 instituiu um serviço nacional universal que considera a saúde não como meramente a ausência de doença, mas como o bem-estar físico, psíquico e social completo.

Graças a esse regime de saúde, todos os residentes (e também os turistas) fruem dos cuidados médicos sem qualquer custo. Isso nos possibilitou descobrir e curar prontamente os contágios e reduzir o número de mortes.

No país mais rico e mais poderoso do mundo, os EUA, onde o bem-estar é estupidamente mortificado, os suspeitos de Covid-19 precisam desembolsar o equivalente a 1.200 euros pelo teste. O vírus corona, ao se difundir, causaria uma verdadeira hecatombe entre 90 milhões de estadunidenses que, desprovidos de seguro-saúde, seriam cinicamente rejeitados pelos hospitais.

A propaganda neoliberal, que se alastrou sob a bandeira insana de Reagan e Thatcher, desacreditou tudo o que é público em favor do setor privado. Porém, pelo contrário, nessas semanas trágicas, a reação eficiente dos hospitais e dos funcionários públicos diante do surgimento da pandemia nos ensinou que a nossa saúde pública, da mesma forma que outras funções públicas, dispõe, muito mais do que o setor privado, de pessoas preparadas profissionalmente, motivadas e generosas até o heroísmo.

Toda noite, às 18h, todas as janelas da Itália se escancaram e cada um canta ou toca o hino nacional para agradecer aos médicos e a todos os profissionais da saúde.

A pandemia está nos ensinando que o pensamento de Keynes permanece precioso. Em 1980, o prêmio Nobel Robert Lucas Jr. observou: “Não é possível encontrar nenhum bom economista com menos de 40 anos que se diga ‘keynesiano’. Nas universidades, as teorias keynesianas não são levadas a sério e provocam sorrisinhos de superioridade”.

Hoje, essa crise histórica, com seus mortos e com suas tragédias, se porum lado nos leva à recessão, por outro nos lembra que, para evitar uma crise irreparável, em vez de políticas de austeridade, é preferível dar lugar aos investimentos públicos maciços e “open-ended”, ainda que isso leve ao déficit público.

Talvez tenhamos aprendido tudo isso e várias outras coisas com aquilo que ocorreu fora do recinto doméstico, isto é, entre o governo e todo o povo do país. Entretanto, hoje, a nossa vida está segregada entre as paredes domésticas. Todos estão restritos entre as quatro paredes da própria casa: não só as famílias que vivem em harmonia e acordo, mas também os solitários, os casais em crise e os núcleos familiares em que o diálogo entre pais e filhos há muito tempo andava claudicante.

A sociedade industrial nos habituara a separar o local de trabalho do local de vida, nos fazendo passar a maior parte do nosso tempo com chefes e colegas nas empresas: os que a sociologia chama de grupos “secundários”, frios, formais, nos quais as relações são quase exclusivamente profissionais. Uma parte mínima do nosso tempo nos via reunidos em família ou com os amigos, ou seja, com grupos “primários”, calorosos, informais, envolventes.

De repente, o descanso compulsório em casa nos obrigou de forma inédita ao isolamento total, a uma convivência forçada que para alguns parece agradável e tranquilizadora, mas que para outros é invasiva e até opressora. Os mais sortudos conseguem transformar o ócio depressivo em ócio criativo, conjugando a leitura, o estudo, o lúdico com a parcela de trabalho que é possível desempenhar em regime de “smart working”.

Sabíamos teoricamente que essa modalidade de trabalho à distância permite aos trabalhadores uma preciosa economia de tempo, dinheiro, stress e alienação; e às empresas, evita os microconflitos, despesas na manutenção do local de trabalho e promove incremento da eficiência, recuperando de 15 a 20% da produtividade; à coletividade, evita a poluição, o entupimento de trânsito e despesas de manutenção das estradas.

Agora que 10 milhões de italianos, forçados pelo vírus, rapidamente adotaram o teletrabalho, minimizando seu sentimento de inutilidade e os danos à economia nacional, nos perguntamos por que as empresas não haviam adotado antes uma forma de organização tão eficaz e enxuta. A resposta está naquilo que os antropólogos definem como “cultural gap” —lacuna cultural— das empresas, dos sindicatos, dos chefes.

O tempo livre que, até um mês atrás, nos parecia um luxo raro, hoje abunda. O espaço, que nas cidades vazias se dilatou, por sua vez falta nas casas. Por isso, estamos apreciando a ajuda que nos chega da internet, graças à qual, mesmo permanecendo forçosamente distantes, é possível nos reunirmos virtualmente, nos informarmos, nos confrontarmos, nos encorajarmos.

Nessa reclusão, os jovens têm a maior vantagem, graças à sua facilidade com os computadores, enquanto os velhos têm mais vantagem por serem mais independentes, mais acostumados a estar em casa, fazendo pequenos trabalhos e jogos sedentários, contentando-se com a televisão.

Em todos se insinua o medo de que, mais cedo ou mais tarde, possa terminar o abastecimento dos mantimentos. O colapso da economia torna-se cada vez mais inevitável, já que tanto a produção como o consumo encontram-se bloqueados.

Há alguns anos, Kennet Building, um dos pais da teoria geral dos sistemas, comentando a sociedade opulenta, afirmou: “Quem acredita na possibilidade do crescimento infinito num mundo finito ou é louco ou é economista”. E Serge Latouche acrescentou: “O drama é que agora somos todos mais ou menos economistas. Aonde estamos nos encaminhando? Diretamente contra um muro. Estamos a bordo de um bólido sem piloto, sem marcha a ré e sem freios que irá se chocar contra os limites do planeta”. Latouche propõe abandonar a sociedade de consumo com um decrescimento planificado, progressivo e sereno.

A marcha a ré e os freios que a cultura neoliberal se recusou obstinadamente a usar agora foram desencadeados: não graças a uma revolução violenta, mas sim a um vírus invisível que um morcego soprou sobre a sociedade opulenta, obrigando-a a se repensar.

“A Peste” (1947), obra-prima profética de Albert Camus, talvez possa nos ajudar nesse repensar. Naquele romance, a ciência era protagonista, ou seja, o médico Bernardo Rieux, ocupado até o fim, como médico e como homem, de socorrer os contagiados, enquanto “o cheiro de morte emburrecia todos os que não matava”.

Hoje, nós também, como o nosso tão humano irmão Rieux, estamos presos num limbo entre o pesar e a esperança, no qual temos que aprender que “a peste pode vir e ir embora sem que o coração do homem seja modificado”; que “o bacilo da peste não morre nem desaparece nunca, que pode permanecer adormecido por décadas nos móveis e nas roupas, que espera pacientemente nos quartos, nas adegas, nas malas, nos lenços e nos papéis, que talvez chegue o dia em que, infortúnio ou lição aos homens, a peste acordará seus ratos para mandá-los morrer numa cidade feliz”.

Domenico De Masi, sociólogo italiano, é autor dos livros “Ócio Criativo” e “O Futuro do Trabalho”.

Tradução de Francesca Cricelli.

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Coronavírus: Médicos defendem ‘abordagem cirúrgica’ em vez de lockdown indefinido (Brazil Journal)

23/03/2020UncategorizedCOVID-19, Distanciamento social, Economia, Estados Unidos, Liberalismo, Pandemia, Thomas Friedmanrenzotaddei

Geraldo Samor e Pedro Arbex – 22.03.2020

Thomas Friedman, um dos colunistas mais influentes do mundo, ouviu três médicos e escreveu o artigo mais contundente até agora sobre o risco do lockdown global se estender por muito tempo.

No texto, publicado hoje à tarde no The New York Times, Friedman nota que os políticos estão tendo que tomar “decisões enormes de vida ou morte, enquanto atravessam uma neblina com informação imperfeita e todo mundo no banco de trás gritando com eles. Eles estão fazendo o melhor que podem.”

Mas com o desemprego se alastrando pelo mundo tão rápido quanto o vírus, “alguns especialistas estão começando a questionar: ‘Espera um minuto! O que estamos fazendo com nós mesmos? Com nossa economia? Com a próxima geração? Será que essa cura — mesmo que por um período curto — será pior que a doença?’”

Friedman diz que as lideranças políticas estão ouvindo o conselho de epidemiologistas sérios e especialistas em saúde pública. Ainda assim, ele diz que o mundo tem que ter cuidado com o “pensamento de grupo” e que até “pequenas escolhas erradas podem ter grandes consequências.”

Para ele, a questão é como podemos ser mais cirúrgicos na resposta ao vírus de forma a manter a letalidade baixa e ao mesmo tempo permitir que as pessoas voltem ao trabalho o mais cedo possível e com segurança.

Friedman diz que “se a minha caixa de email for alguma indicação, uma reação mais inteligente está começando a brotar.”

Ele cita um artigo publicado semana passada pelo Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis, um epidemiologista e co-diretor do Centro de Inovação em Meta-Pesquisa de Stanford. No artigo, Ioannidis diz que a comunidade científica ainda não sabe exatamente qual é a taxa de mortalidade do coronavírus. Segundo ele, “as evidências disponíveis hoje indicam que a letalidade pode ser de 1% ou ainda menor.”

“Se essa for a taxa verdadeira, paralisar o mundo todo com implicações financeiras e sociais potencialmente tremendas pode ser totalmente irracional. É como um elefante sendo atacado por um gato doméstico. Frustrado e tentando fugir do gato, o elefante acidentalmente pula do penhasco e morre.”

Friedman também cita o Dr. Steven Woolf, diretor emérito do Centro Sobre a Sociedade e Saúde da Universidade da Virgínia, para quem o lockdown “pode ser necessário para conter a transmissão comunitária, mas pode prejudicar a saúde de outras formas, custando vidas.”

“Imagine um paciente com dor no peito ou sofrendo um derrame — casos em que a rapidez de resposta é essencial para salvar vidas — hesitando em chamar o serviço de emergência por medo de pegar coronavírus. Ou um paciente de câncer tendo que adiar sua quimioterapia porque a clínica está fechada.”

Friedman complementa: “Imagine o estresse e a doença mental que virá — já está vindo — de termos fechado a economia, gerando desemprego em massa.”

Woolf, o médico da Virgínia, afirma no artigo que a renda é uma das variáveis mais fortes a afetar a saúde e a longevidade. “Os pobres, que já sofrem há gerações com taxas de mortalidade mais altas, serão os mais prejudicados e provavelmente os que receberão menos ajuda. São as camareiras dos hotéis fechados e as famílias sem opções quando o transporte público fecha.”

Há outro caminho?, pergunta Friedman.

Para ele, a melhor ideia até agora veio do Dr. David Katz, diretor do Centro de Prevenção e Pesquisa da Universidade de Yale e um especialista em saúde pública e medicina preventiva.

Num artigo publicado sexta-feira no The New York Times, o Dr. Katz diz que há três objetivos neste momento: salvar tantas vidas quanto possível, garantindo que o sistema de saúde não entre em colapso, “mas também garantir que no processo de atingir os dois primeiros objetivos não destruamos nossa economia e, como resultado disso, ainda mais vidas.”

Como fazer isso?

Katz diz que o mundo tem que pivotar da estratégia de “interdição horizontal” que estamos empregando agora — restringindo o movimento e o comércio de toda a população, sem considerar a variância no risco de infecção severa — para uma estratégia mais “cirúrgica”, ou de “interdição vertical”.

“A abordagem cirúrgica e vertical focaria em proteger e isolar os que correm maior risco de morrer ou sofrer danos de longo prazo — isto é, os idosos, pessoas com doenças crônicas e com baixa imunidade — e tratar o resto da sociedade basicamente da mesma forma que sempre lidamos com ameaças mais familiares como a gripe.”

Katz sugere que o isolamento atual dure duas semanas, em vez de um período indefinido. Para os infectados, os sintomas aparecerão nesse período. “Aqueles que tiverem uma infecção sintomática devem se auto-isolar em seguida, com ou sem testes, que é exatamente o que fazemos com a gripe. Quem não estiver sintomático e fizer parte da população de baixo risco deveria voltar ao trabalho ou a escola depois daquelas duas semanas.”

“O efeito rejuvenescedor na alma humana e na economia — de saber que existe luz no fim do túnel — é difícil de superestimar. O risco não será zero, mas o risco de acontecer algo ruim com qualquer um de nós em qualquer dia da nossa vida nunca é zero.”

SAIBA MAIS

O custo econômico do shutdown global (e a busca por alternativas)

Texto original

O coronavírus de hoje e o mundo de amanhã, segundo o filósofo Byung-Chul Han (El País)

23/03/2020UncategorizedAutoritarismo, Ásia, Bid data, China, Ciberautoritarismo, COVID-19, Democracia, Europa, Liberalismo, Vigilância tecnológicarenzotaddei

Países asiáticos estão lidando melhor com essa crise do que o Ocidente. Enquanto lá se trabalha com dados e máscaras, aqui se chega tarde e fecham fronteiras

Byung-Chul Han – 22 mar 2020 – 20:01 BRT

Um oficial de polícia vigia diante de um cartaz dia 23 de janeiro em Pequim.Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

O coronavírus está colocando nosso sistema à prova. Ao que parece a Ásia controla melhor a epidemia do que a Europa. Em Hong Kong, Taiwan e Singapura há poucos infectados. Em Taiwan foram registrados 108 casos e 193 em Hong Kong. Na Alemanha, pelo contrário, após um período muito mais breve já existem 19.000 casos confirmados, e na Espanha 19.980 (dados de 20 de março). A Coreia do Sul já superou a pior fase, da mesma forma que o Japão. Até a China, o país de origem da pandemia, já está com ela bem controlada. Mas Taiwan e a Coreia não decretaram a proibição de sair de casa e as lojas e restaurantes não fecharam. Enquanto isso começou um êxodo de asiáticos que saem da Europa. Chineses e coreanos querem regressar aos seus países, porque lá se sentem mais seguros. Os preços dos voos multiplicaram. Já quase não é possível conseguir passagens aéreas para a China e a Coreia.

A Europa está fracassando. Os números de infectados aumentam exponencialmente. Parece que a Europa não pode controlar a pandemia. Na Itália morrem diariamente centenas de pessoas. Retiram os respiradores dos pacientes idosos para ajudar os jovens. Mas também vale observar ações inúteis. Os fechamentos de fronteiras são evidentemente uma expressão desesperada de soberania. Nós nos sentimos de volta à época da soberania. O soberano é quem decide sobre o estado de exceção. É o soberano que fecha fronteiras. Mas isso é uma vã tentativa de soberania que não serve para nada. Seria muito mais útil cooperar intensamente dentro da Eurozona do que fechar fronteiras alucinadamente. Ao mesmo tempo a Europa também decretou a proibição da entrada a estrangeiros: um ato totalmente absurdo levando em consideração o fato de que a Europa é justamente o local ao qual ninguém quer ir. No máximo, seria mais sensato decretar a proibição de saídas de europeus, para proteger o mundo da Europa. Depois de tudo, a Europa é nesse momento o epicentro da pandemia.

As vantagens da Ásia

Em comparação com a Europa, quais vantagens o sistema da Ásia oferece que são eficientes para combater a pandemia? Estados asiáticos como o Japão, Coreia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan e Singapura têm uma mentalidade autoritária, que vem de sua tradição cultural (confucionismo). As pessoas são menos relutantes e mais obedientes do que na Europa. Também confiam mais no Estado. E não somente na China, como também na Europa e no Japão a vida cotidiana está organizada muito mais rigidamente do que na Europa. Principalmente para enfrentar o vírus os asiáticos apostam fortemente na vigilância digital. Suspeitam que o big data pode ter um enorme potencial para se defender da pandemia. Poderíamos dizer que na Ásia as epidemias não são combatidas somente pelos virologistas e epidemiologistas, e sim principalmente pelos especialistas em informática e macrodados. Uma mudança de paradigma da qual a Europa ainda não se inteirou. Os apologistas da vigilância digital proclamariam que o big data salva vidas humanas.

A consciência crítica diante da vigilância digital é praticamente inexistente na Ásia. Já quase não se fala de proteção de dados, incluindo Estados liberais como o Japão e a Coreia. Ninguém se irrita pelo frenesi das autoridades em recopilar dados. Enquanto isso a China introduziu um sistema de crédito social inimaginável aos europeus, que permitem uma valorização e avaliação exaustiva das pessoas. Cada um deve ser avaliado em consequência de sua conduta social. Na China não há nenhum momento da vida cotidiana que não esteja submetido à observação. Cada clique, cada compra, cada contato, cada atividade nas redes sociais são controlados. Quem atravessa no sinal vermelho, quem tem contato com críticos do regime e quem coloca comentários críticos nas redes sociais perde pontos. A vida, então, pode chegar a se tornar muito perigosa. Pelo contrário, quem compra pela Internet alimentos saudáveis e lê jornais que apoiam o regime ganha pontos. Quem tem pontuação suficiente obtém um visto de viagem e créditos baratos. Pelo contrário, quem cai abaixo de um determinado número de pontos pode perder seu trabalho. Na China essa vigilância social é possível porque ocorre uma irrestrita troca de dados entre os fornecedores da Internet e de telefonia celular e as autoridades. Praticamente não existe a proteção de dados. No vocabulário dos chineses não há o termo “esfera privada”.

Na China existem 200 milhões de câmeras de vigilância, muitas delas com uma técnica muito eficiente de reconhecimento facial. Captam até mesmo as pintas no rosto. Não é possível escapar da câmera de vigilância. Essas câmeras dotadas de inteligência artificial podem observar e avaliar qualquer um nos espaços públicos, nas lojas, nas ruas, nas estações e nos aeroportos.

Toda a infraestrutura para a vigilância digital se mostrou agora ser extremamente eficaz para conter a epidemia. Quando alguém sai da estação de Pequim é captado automaticamente por uma câmera que mede sua temperatura corporal. Se a temperatura é preocupante todas as pessoas que estavam sentadas no mesmo vagão recebem uma notificação em seus celulares. Não é por acaso que o sistema sabe quem estava sentado em qual local no trem. As redes sociais contam que estão usando até drones para controlar as quarentenas. Se alguém rompe clandestinamente a quarentena um drone se dirige voando em sua direção e ordena que regresse à sua casa. Talvez até lhe dê uma multa e a deixe cair voando, quem sabe. Uma situação que para os europeus seria distópica, mas que, pelo visto, não tem resistência na China.

Na China e em outros Estados asiáticos como a Coreia do Sul, Hong Kong, Singapura, Taiwan e Japão não existe uma consciência crítica diante da vigilância digital e o big data. A digitalização os embriaga diretamente. Isso obedece também a um motivo cultural. Na Ásia impera o coletivismo. Não há um individualismo acentuado. O individualismo não é a mesma coisa que o egoísmo, que evidentemente também está muito propagado na Ásia.

Ao que parece o big data é mais eficaz para combater o vírus do que os absurdos fechamentos de fronteiras que estão sendo feitos nesses momentos na Europa. Graças à proteção de dados, entretanto, não é possível na Europa um combate digital do vírus comparável ao asiático. Os fornecedores chineses de telefonia celular e de Internet compartilham os dados sensíveis de seus clientes com os serviços de segurança e com os ministérios de saúde. O Estado sabe, portanto, onde estou, com quem me encontro, o que faço, o que procuro, em que penso, o que como, o que compro, aonde me dirijo. É possível que no futuro o Estado controle também a temperatura corporal, o peso, o nível de açúcar no sangue etc. Uma biopolítica digital que acompanha a psicopolítica digital que controla ativamente as pessoas.

É possível que no futuro o Estado controle também a temperatura corporal, o peso, o nível de açúcar no sangue

Em Wuhan se formaram milhares de equipes de pesquisa digitais que procuram possíveis infectados baseando-se somente em dados técnicos. Tendo como base, unicamente, análises de macrodados averiguam os que são potenciais infectados, os que precisam continuar sendo observados e eventualmente isolados em quarentena. O futuro também está na digitalização no que se refere à pandemia. Pela epidemia talvez devêssemos redefinir até mesmo a soberania. É soberano quem dispõe de dados. Quando a Europa proclama o estado de alarme e fecha fronteiras continua aferrada a velhos modelos de soberania.

Não somente na China, como também em outros países asiáticos a vigilância digital é profundamente utilizada para conter a epidemia. Em Taiwan o Estado envia simultaneamente a todos um SMS para localizar as pessoas que tiveram contato com infectados e para informar sobre os lugares e edifícios em que existiram pessoas contaminadas. Já em uma fase muito inicial, Taiwan utilizou uma conexão de diversos dados para localizar possíveis infectados em função das viagens que fizeram. Na Coreia quem se aproxima de um edifício em que um infectado esteve recebe através do “Corona-app” um sinal de alarme. Todos os lugares em que infectados estiveram estão registrados no aplicativo. Não são levadas muito em consideração a proteção de dados e a esfera privada. Em todos os edifícios da Coreia foram instaladas câmeras de vigilância em cada andar, em cada escritório e em cada loja. É praticamente impossível se mover em espaços públicos sem ser filmado por uma câmera de vídeo. Com os dados do telefone celular e do material filmado por vídeo é possível criar o perfil de movimento completo de um infectado. São publicados os movimentos de todos os infectados. Casos amorosos secretos podem ser revelados. Nos escritórios do Ministério da Saúde coreano existem pessoas chamadas “tracker” que dia e noite não fazem outra coisa a não ser olhar o material filmado por vídeo para completar o perfil do movimento dos infectados e localizar as pessoas que tiveram contato com eles.

Chineses, todos de máscara, fazem fila no ponto de ônibus em Pequim, em 20 de março.Kevin Frayer / Getty Images

Uma diferença chamativa entre a Ásia e a Europa são principalmente as máscaras protetoras. Na Coreia quase não existe quem ande por aí sem máscaras respiratórias especiais capazes de filtrar o ar de vírus. Não são as habituais máscaras cirúrgicas, e sim máscaras protetoras especiais com filtros, que também são utilizadas pelos médicos que tratam os infectados. Durante as últimas semanas, o tema prioritário na Coreia era o fornecimento de máscaras à população. Diante das farmácias enormes filas se formaram. Os políticos eram avaliados em função da rapidez com que eram fornecidas a toda a população. Foram construídas a toda pressa novas máquinas para sua fabricação. Por enquanto parece que o fornecimento funciona bem. Há até mesmo um aplicativo que informa em qual farmácia próxima ainda se pode conseguir máscaras. Acho que as máscaras protetoras fornecidas na Ásia a toda a população contribuíram decisivamente para conter a epidemia.

Os coreanos usam máscaras protetoras antivírus até mesmo nos locais de trabalho. Até os políticos fazem suas aparições públicas somente com máscaras protetoras. O presidente coreano também a usa para dar o exemplo, incluindo em suas entrevistas coletivas. Na Coreia quem não a usa é repreendido. Na Europa, pelo contrário, frequentemente se diz que não servem para muita coisa, o que é um absurdo. Por que então os médicos usam as máscaras protetoras? Mas é preciso trocar de máscara frequentemente, porque quando umedecem perdem sua função filtradora. Os coreanos, entretanto, já desenvolveram uma “máscara ao coronavírus” feita de nanofiltros que podem ser lavados. O que se diz é que podem proteger as pessoas do vírus durante um mês. Na verdade, é uma solução muito boa enquanto não existem vacinas e medicamentos.

Está surgindo uma sociedade de duas classes. Quem tem carro próprio se expõe a menos riscos

Na Europa, pelo contrário, até mesmo os médicos precisam viajar à Rússia para consegui-las. Macron mandou confiscar máscaras para distribui-las entre os funcionários da área de saúde. Mas o que acabaram recebendo foram máscaras normais sem filtro com a indicação de que bastariam para proteger do coronavírus, o que é uma mentira. A Europa está fracassando. De que adianta fechar lojas e restaurantes se as pessoas continuam se aglomerando no metrô e no ônibus durante as horas de pico? Como guardar a distância necessária assim? Até nos supermercados é quase impossível. Em uma situação como essa, as máscaras protetoras realmente salvariam vidas humanas. Está surgindo uma sociedade de duas classes. Quem tem carro próprio se expõe a menos riscos. As máscaras normais também seriam de muita utilidade se os infectados as usassem, porque dessa maneira não propagariam o vírus.

Nos países europeus quase ninguém usa máscara. Há alguns que as usam, mas são asiáticos. Meus conterrâneos residentes na Europa se queixam de que são olhados com estranheza quando as usam. Por trás disso há uma diferença cultural. Na Europa impera um individualismo que traz atrelado o costume de andar com o rosto descoberto. Os únicos que estão mascarados são os criminosos. Mas agora, vendo imagens da Coreia, me acostumei tanto a ver pessoas mascaradas que o rosto descoberto de meus concidadãos europeus me parece quase obsceno. Eu também gostaria de usar máscara protetora, mas aqui já não existem.

No passado, a fabricação de máscara, da mesma forma que tantos outros produtos, foi externalizada à China. Por isso agora não se conseguem máscaras na Europa. Os Estados asiáticos estão tentando prover toda a população com máscaras protetoras. Na China, quando também começaram a escassear, fábricas chegaram a ser reequipadas para produzir máscaras. Na Europa nem mesmo os funcionários da área de saúde as conseguem. Enquanto as pessoas continuarem se aglomerando nos ônibus e metrôs para ir ao trabalho sem máscaras protetoras, a proibição de sair de casa logicamente não adiantará muito. Como é possível guardar a distância necessária nos ônibus e no metrô nos horários de pico? E uma lição que deveríamos tirar da pandemia deveria ser a conveniência de voltar a trazer à Europa a produção de determinados produtos, como máscaras protetoras, remédios e produtos farmacêuticos.

O presidente da Coreia do Su, terceiro na imagem, em 25 de fevereiro.South Korean Presidential Blue House/Getty Images / South Korean Presidential Blue H

Apesar de todo o risco, que não deve ser minimizado, o pânico desatado pela pandemia de coronavírus é desproporcional. Nem mesmo a “gripe espanhola”, que foi muito mais letal, teve efeitos tão devastadores sobre a economia. A que isso se deve na realidade? Por que o mundo reage com um pânico tão desmesurado a um vírus? Emmanuel Macron fala até de guerra e do inimigo invisível que precisamos derrotar. Estamos diante de um retorno do inimigo? A gripe espanhola se desencadeou em plena Primeira Guerra Mundial. Naquele momento todo o mundo estava cercado de inimigos. Ninguém teria associado a epidemia com uma guerra e um inimigo. Mas hoje vivemos em uma sociedade totalmente diferente.

Na verdade, vivemos durante muito tempo sem inimigos. A Guerra Fria terminou há muito tempo. Ultimamente até o terrorismo islâmico parecia ter se deslocado a áreas distantes. Há exatamente dez anos afirmei em meu ensaio Sociedade do Cansaço a tese de que vivemos em uma época em que o paradigma imunológico perdeu sua vigência, baseada na negatividade do inimigo. Como nos tempos da Guerra Fria, a sociedade organizada imunologicamente se caracteriza por viver cercada de fronteiras e de cercas, que impedem a circulação acelerada de mercadorias e de capital. A globalização suprime todos esses limites imunitários para dar caminho livre ao capital. Até mesmo a promiscuidade e a permissividade generalizadas, que hoje se propagam por todos os âmbitos vitais, eliminam a negatividade do desconhecido e do inimigo. Os perigos não espreitam hoje da negatividade do inimigo, e sim do excesso de positividade, que se expressa como excesso de rendimento, excesso de produção e excesso de comunicação. A negatividade do inimigo não tem lugar em nossa sociedade ilimitadamente permissiva. A repressão aos cuidados de outros abre espaço à depressão, a exploração por outros abre espaço à autoexploração voluntária e à auto-otimização. Na sociedade do rendimento se guerreia sobretudo contra si mesmo.

Limites imunológicos e fechamento de fronteiras

Pois bem, em meio a essa sociedade tão enfraquecida imunologicamente pelo capitalismo global o vírus irrompe de supetão. Em pânico, voltamos a erguer limites imunológicos e fechar fronteiras. O inimigo voltou. Já não guerreamos contra nós mesmos. E sim contra o inimigo invisível que vem de fora. O pânico desmedido causado pelo vírus é uma reação imunitária social, e até global, ao novo inimigo. A reação imunitária é tão violenta porque vivemos durante muito tempo em uma sociedade sem inimigos, em uma sociedade da positividade, e agora o vírus é visto como um terror permanente.

Mas há outro motivo para o tremendo pânico. Novamente tem a ver com a digitalização. A digitalização elimina a realidade, a realidade é experimentada graças à resistência que oferece, e que também pode ser dolorosa. A digitalização, toda a cultura do “like”, suprime a negatividade da resistência. E na época pós-fática das fake news e dos deepfakes surge uma apatia à realidade. Dessa forma, aqui é um vírus real e não um vírus de computador, e que causa uma comoção. A realidade, a resistência, volta a se fazer notar no formato de um vírus inimigo. A violenta e exagerada reação de pânico ao vírus se explica em função dessa comoção pela realidade.

Espero que após a comoção causada por esse vírus não chegue à Europa um regime policial digital como o chinês.

A reação de pânico dos mercados financeiros à epidemia é, além disso, a expressão daquele pânico que já é inerente a eles. As convulsões extremas na economia mundial fazem com que essa seja muito vulnerável. Apesar da curva constantemente crescente do índice das Bolsas, a arriscada política monetária dos bancos emissores gerou nos últimos anos um pânico reprimido que estava aguardando a explosão. Provavelmente o vírus não é mais do que a gota que transbordou o copo. O que se reflete no pânico do mercado financeiro não é tanto o medo ao vírus quanto o medo a si mesmo. O crash poderia ter ocorrido também sem o vírus. Talvez o vírus seja somente o prelúdio de um crash muito maior.

Žižek afirma que o vírus deu um golpe mortal no capitalismo, e evoca um comunismo obscuro. Acredita até mesmo que o vírus poderia derrubar o regime chinês. Žižek se engana. Nada disso acontecerá. A China poderá agora vender seu Estado policial digital como um modelo de sucesso contra a pandemia. A China exibirá a superioridade de seu sistema ainda mais orgulhosamente. E após a pandemia, o capitalismo continuará com ainda mais pujança. E os turistas continuarão pisoteando o planeta. O vírus não pode substituir a razão. É possível que chegue até ao Ocidente o Estado policial digital ao estilo chinês. Com já disse Naomi Klein, a comoção é um momento propício que permite estabelecer um novo sistema de Governo. Também a instauração do neoliberalismo veio precedida frequentemente de crises que causaram comoções. É o que aconteceu na Coreia e na Grécia. Espero que após a comoção causada por esse vírus não chegue à Europa um regime policial digital como o chinês. Se isso ocorrer, como teme Giorgio Agamben, o estado de exceção passaria a ser a situação normal. O vírus, então, teria conseguido o que nem mesmo o terrorismo islâmico conseguiu totalmente.

O vírus não vencerá o capitalismo. A revolução viral não chegará a ocorrer. Nenhum vírus é capaz de fazer a revolução. O vírus nos isola e individualiza. Não gera nenhum sentimento coletivo forte. De alguma maneira, cada um se preocupa somente por sua própria sobrevivência. A solidariedade que consiste em guardar distâncias mútuas não é uma solidariedade que permite sonhar com uma sociedade diferente, mais pacífica, mais justa. Não podemos deixar a revolução nas mãos do vírus. Precisamos acreditar que após o vírus virá uma revolução humana. Somos NÓS, PESSOAS dotadas de RAZÃO, que precisamos repensar e restringir radicalmente o capitalismo destrutivo, e nossa ilimitada e destrutiva mobilidade, para nos salvar, para salvar o clima e nosso belo planeta.

Byung-Chul Han é um filósofo e ensaísta sul-coreano que dá aulas na Universidade de Artes de Berlim. Autor, entre outras obras, de ‘Sociedade do Cansaço’, publicou há um ano ‘Loa a la tierra’, na editora Herder.

Texto original

‘It’s OK to feel anxious.’ How a professor in China faced coronavirus disruptions and fears (Science)

23/03/2020UncategorizedChina, COVID-19, Distanciamento social, Educação à distância, Epidemia, Saúde mentalrenzotaddei

By Kai Liu – Mar. 17, 2020 , 9:00 AM

In early February, I was working from home when I received a message informing me—and all the other professors at my university in China—that courses would be taught online because of the novel coronavirus. I was already feeling anxious about the mounting epidemic, and my university had locked its doors a few days earlier. Then, when I realized I’d have to teach students online, my anxiety level grew. I didn’t have any experience with online teaching platforms. I was also skeptical about how effective they’d be. “How will I gauge the students’ reactions to my lectures through a computer screen?” I wondered. “Will they learn anything?”

I live in Xuzhou, China—roughly 500 kilometers from Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike Wuhan, my city isn’t on lockdown, but residents have been discouraged from going outside and many businesses and institutions are closed. I’ve spent most of the past 2 months at home, along with my wife and daughter, fearful of the future and wondering when life will get back to normal.

Thankfully, none of my family members, friends, or colleagues have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Working from home is also possible for me because my research doesn’t involve lab work. But the spread of the virus and the rapidly rising death toll have weighed heavily on my mind. I’ve found it difficult to sleep. I’ve also had trouble focusing on work. One day early in the outbreak, I sat down at my computer intending to write a grant proposal. But all I could do was stare at the screen.

Years ago, I’d heard that Taoism philosophies were helpful for finding internal peace. So, I decided to listen to a few recordings. One instructed listeners to “govern [yourself] by doing nothing that goes against nature.” That resonated with me because I realized that I’d been trying to push my anxieties aside and force myself to concentrate on work—an approach that wasn’t working because it didn’t feel natural. From then on, I told myself that it was OK to feel anxious, even if it impeded my work. That helped to lessen my internal struggles.

Over the past 2 months, I’ve also learned how to teach courses online, and I have found unexpected joy in that process—even though I struggled at first. There were multiple online teaching platforms to choose from, and I didn’t know which one was best or how to use it. I opted for a platform that had a large server, thinking that it would cope better with heavy usage. My university provided some helpful guidance, and I also learned through trial and error.

I’ve spent most of the past 2 months at home … wondering when life will get back to normal.

My first lecture was especially difficult because I couldn’t see the students’ faces. I was accustomed to lecturing in front of an audience. Online, I felt like I was speaking at my students but not getting anything in return. I communicated with a few of them afterward to get their feedback and they agreed with me, saying that I needed to find a way to make my lectures more interactive. So, I started to encourage my students to leave questions for me in the platform’s comment section during my lectures.

Almost immediately, my students started peppering me with questions. I was surprised by the level of engagement. In a normal classroom setting, they are afraid to raise their hands; most wait until after the lecture is over to approach me and ask a question. But online, students were more comfortable sharing their questions in front of the entire class. That was a great outcome because if one student has a question, it’s likely that another student has the same question and would benefit from hearing the answer. I’ve also been pleased to see from the homework assignments that they are following my teaching well.

China was the first country to close its universities, but over the past month, universities in Italy, the United States, and elsewhere have made similar moves. I hope that my story can provide inspiration for academics who are fearful of what’s to come. It’s OK to feel anxious. But I’d also recommend staying open to change. You never know what you’ll learn.

Original publication

Epidemics, empathy, and social change

20/03/2020Uncategorizedrenzotaddei

Renzo Taddei – March 18, 2020

There is a post circulating on Facebook that tells the following story: someone once asked the famous American anthropologist Margaret Mead what she considered the first evidence of human civilization. This was a heated debate in the mid-20th century in anthropology. Some authors said that the mark of the rise of civilization was the appearance of symbolic language (the ability to use metaphors, for example). Others said that the starting point was the emergence of the perception that some forms of behavior – such as incest – were unacceptable. Others, the invention of hunting tools. Still others, the creation of religious artifacts. Margaret Mead’s response was surprising: she said that the beginning of humanity was represented in a femur, found in an archaeological site dated 15,000 years ago. This bone had the mark of a fracture that had been healed (this story is narrated in the book The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life, Avery, 2012).

Mead’s explanation was as follows: no animal, in wild conditions, is able to survive with a fractured femur bone. Such an animal would be killed by another animal, or by the likely infection, before the bone could be repaired. In this way, the existence of a cured 15,000-year-old femur means that the individual to whom the bone belonged was helped by her peers, who cared for, protected, and provided her food for a long period of time, so that calcification of the bone was possible. Mead’s argument was, therefore, that the hallmark that defines human civilization is care for those who are sick or in a situation of vulnerability. To be human is to empathize with others.

It happens, however, that the journey of Western civilization – the most materially rich and powerful in the entire history of mankind – ended up producing, from the 19th century on, ways of life guided by individualism and hedonism (which is the idea that the purpose of human existence is to enjoy life, to have pleasure). Individualism and hedonism together produce selfish ways of understanding the world and life.

In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, we see the Western world torn between selfish tendencies and the ability to empathize with those at risk. Selfish tendencies are visible when, for example, someone runs to the supermarket and buys all available bottles of alcohol gel, before others do it; or when the (usually healthy) young person thinks that, because she has a very high chance of recovery if infected, she does not have to worry so much about contracting the virus. Empathetic behavior is visible when someone offers to shop for the old couple who live in the condo, so that they do not need to leave home; or when the young person, who is generally healthy, stays at home when she realizes that she has the symptoms of the virus, so that medical attention and test kits for detecting the disease are used in those who are really in serious condition. Or even when someone realizes that many children in public schools need the food they receive there, and if they stay at home they will go hungry, and organize food collection and distribution for the families of such children.

Historically speaking, major epidemics have tended to turn the scales towards empathy (even though most people remain in a state of selfish panic). An article published in 2018 in the British newspaper The Guardian (https://bit.ly/39Y7L2p) described how the Spanish flu that killed more than 10 million people in 1918 was important in creating the welfare state in Sweden, and resulted in the fact that the country, one of the richest on the planet, has very low social inequality. The high mortality of the Spanish flu has disorganized society in such a way that injustices and inequalities that existed but were invisible came to the fore.

We can say that the epidemiological crisis can be understood, among many other more dramatic things, as a great sociological experiment. In other words, it is possible to observe things and behaviors that, in more “normal” situations, would not be visible. In this experiment, one could observe how this clash between individualistic selfishness and empathic behavior is unfolding in each location. Is there a turn towards empathy, or what characterizes most collective behavior is individualistic selfishness? What could be done so empathetic attitudes are promoted and amplified? And will people who feel more stimulated to be supportive and behave empathically continue to behave this way after the end of the crisis? In other words, will the epidemic produce real changes in society, as occurred in Sweden in 1918?

Another interesting thing that may help us think about the current crisis in different keys is that epidemics have important roles in the formation of contemporary civilization. Yuval Harari mentions that in chapter 5 (“The biggest fraud in history”) of his book Sapiens. Epidemics started to be part of human life at the time when plants and animals were domesticated, and most human groups started to live on the same land, practicing agriculture. Cities emerged, throughout history, without sanitary infrastructure, and this favored microorganisms that lived more or less in balance with the local ecology to start causing epidemics. From the invention of agriculture in the Middle East to the invasion of the Americas by Europeans, 10,000 years have passed. In these 10,000 years, epidemics of all types have overwhelmed the populations of Eurasia. What is the result of this? Natural selection: the European human being of the 15th century had immunity to a large number of microorganisms to which the indigenous populations of the Americas were not immune. This is one of the reasons (not the only one) why it was Europe that invaded the Americas, and not the Americas that invaded Europe. More than 90% of the entire indigenous population of the Americas died in the next 150 years, almost all due to epidemics brought by Europeans. There are authors who suggest that the carnage that victimized the original peoples was so intense that, when the forests grew on the rubble of decimated civilizations, they sequestered so much carbon from the atmosphere that it caused the planet to cool down (an event that became known as the small medieval ice age – see https://bit.ly/38TeoBC).

The interesting and delicate point here is the idea that epidemics can have other effects on populations besides simply causing a part of them to die. In fact, this is a poorly understood question of Darwin’s natural selection: the “advance” of a species, through adaptation to an ecosystem, depends on the death of a large number of individuals. Harari puts the question sharply in his book: evolution works for the species, not the individual. Of course, almost all of humanity’s efforts since it emerged have focused on disabling the mechanisms of natural selection. If we go back to our 15,000 year old ancestor, with a broken femur, whose colleague decided that, instead of letting her friend die and keep her food, she would donate her energy, time and resources (food, water, fire) so that the companion could recover, we will see that, at that very moment, humanity began to walk away from pure and simple natural selection, towards empathy. In fact, Darwin himself stated that empathy is a human quality that maximizes the survival of the species (today we know that many animals also experience feelings of empathy).

There are many interesting things to be discussed here. One is that, even if things are to be understood scientifically, one cannot approach the world from the point of view of the navel of humans concerned only with themselves.

Forgiveness and reconciliation should be part of our survival kits

20/03/2020Uncategorizedrenzotaddei

Renzo Taddei – 19 March 2020

Everyone is making the necessary arrangements for the difficult period that has started. One suggestion is that, in the list of things to be provided, between alcohol gel and toilet paper, one should insert something that, it seems to me, is extremely important, but few people have thought about it: it is time to resolve that fight that made relatives break up and stop talking to each other; it’s time to put pride aside and forgive father, mother, grandmother, grandfather, sister, brother, son, daughter, friends, neighbors, and whoever else, of whom we parted, it doesn’t matter the cause of the issue.

I don’t know if people realized what is coming. I’ll put it in numbers, and you do your math. Today I have 2600 friendships on Facebook. If the medical authorities’ projections are correct, 80% will be contaminated: 2080 friendships. If we repeat the history of Italy, about 8% will die: 166 friendships. Perhaps I have an effective personal relationship with about 1/3 of this group: 55 people. Add to that that most people over 60 that I know don’t have a Facebook account. Roughly estimating, there may be another 100 people. Chinese data suggest that for the 60 to 69 age group, the average mortality is 4.6%; 70 to 79, 9.8%, 80 and above, 18%. Estimating an average of 10%, of the 100 people I mentioned, probably 10 will die. Adding to the 55 I mentioned above, the result is 65.

The question is: am I prepared for 65 people in my affective circle to die in the next two months?

It is not about the number, the percentages. There is a much smaller group of people with whom I am viscerally connected, and where someone will certainly die.

Unfortunately our world has spent the last century and a half preaching productivism and meritocracy, transforming our perception of the body and life so that we now see them as productive resources. The West and its satellites (like Brazil) have become more affluent, and at the same time immensely less able to make sense of the experience of death. Look inside universities and see where there is something that prepares someone for death. Perhaps the only thing to be found is, in anthropology, the information that a great number of non-Western(ized) peoples on the planet have philosophies, ethics and pedagogies for death. They are less affluent, but their cultural context gives them tools so that they, if they know how to use them well, have a good death. The very strangeness caused by the expression “good death” shows us how unprepared we are for what is coming.

There is no time for great philosophical-existential revolutions now. But there is time for the individual to pick up the phone, call the father, mother, son, etc. with whom she or he no longer speaks or for whom she or he feeds rotten emotions, and resolve the issue. And the resolution is not to revive the fight, but to forgive.

We all have to do this, wholesale, before it’s too late. We may not know how to die, but at least we can give each other the chance to die in peace.

Cuba’s Interferon Alpha 2B, Successful in Treating COVID-19 (TeleSur TV)

18/03/2020UncategorizedCOVID-19, Cuba, Medicamentosrenzotaddei

This molecule has been used for different purposed against several conditions hepatatis A and B, also all kinds of leukemia, dengue, explained the professor in an exclusive interview with teleSUR. | Photo: teleSUR

Published 17 March 2020

For 40 years, Cuba has been using a molecule named Interferon Alpha 2B , which has successfully been used to combat the new Coonavirus in China and elsewhere.

“The world has an opportunity to understand that health is not a commercial asset but a basic right,” Cuban doctor Luis Herrera, the creator of the Interferon Alfa 2-B medication, one of the most successful medications in the fight against COVID-19 told teleSUR Tuesday.

Interferon has been known for more than 40 years: first, it was produced from original sources in local sites, then nationally and later in the United States and even Finland.

“At the beginning of the 80s, an important professor from Houston came to Cuba and advised our President Fidel Castro than the Interferon we had here was a very interesting molecule for a different purpose,” Herrera told teleSUR.

“Then a group of people went to Finland to get training in the production of interferon,” while people were also producing Interferon from recombined sources using genetic engineering.

The first one was Beta Interferon in Japan, and the second one was the family of Alpha Interferon by Genetec in California, according to the Cuban doctor.

“One year later in Cuba, we cloned different genes of Interferon from local sites, and we started to produce Interferon in 1981 and 1982, which we used in the outbreak of dengue fever, and we presented the results in the United States in California.”

One of the ways the virus can multiply inside the cells is by decreasing the levels of Interferon naturally produced in human cells. The molecule thus, through a different metabolic way, can create conditions to limit the replication of the virus.

During the MERS-CoV epidemic three years ago – another type of coronavirus – people realized that Interferon was decreased during the replication of the virus, highlighted Herrera.

Watch video on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teleSUREnglish/videos/1107413969608473/

In China, practically a few weeks after the beginning of the outbreak, people started to use Interferon in a way to avoid complications in people infected with the virus. According to Herrera, this molecule has “some side effects but not too critical.”

“The main idea of Interferon is just to avoid complications,” he told teleSUR. “Young people and people with a good immuno-response perhaps don’t need the medicine or people who won’t have complications and respond to the virus-like any other flu, but old people or people susceptible to have a bad immuno-response will have better chances of avoiding complications by using Interferon.”

He concluded that Cuba must participate in this solidarity movement with other nations, just “the same way other countries have had solidarity with Cuba, especially with Latin American and African countries.”

“We have more physicians working abroad than practically any other country in the world, not because we are exporting anything but simply because we want to participate in building a world with better health conditions and living conditions.”

Watch video on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teleSUREnglish/videos/493745461551023/

Does Italy Have More COVID19 Deaths Than South Korea Because They’re Not Prescribing Chloroquine? (Medium)

18/03/2020UncategorizedCoréia, COVID-19, Itália, Japão, Medicamentos, Organização Mundial da Saúde, Protocolo de tratamentorenzotaddei

Adrian Bye – Mar 16 2020

As of March 15¹, Korea has 8162 infections, but only 75 deaths, a death rate of 0.91%. By comparison, Italy has 24,747 infections and 1809 deaths, a death rate of 7.3%.

The WHO is distributing inadequate Coronavirus treatment guidelines for worldwide use, which Italy is following.

The Italian government health website (archive) updated on March 4 states:

There is no specific treatment for the disease caused by a new coronavirus.. Treatment is based on the patient’s symptoms and supportive care can be very effective. Specific therapies and vaccines are being studied.

However, both Korea and China have been treating infections with drugs known as Chloroquine (long known to treat malaria) or Kaletra (used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, contains lopinavir/ritonavir ).

The Korean guidelines were published on February 12, 2020. The Chinese have repeatedly told us they are using both these drugs. At this point, Chinese sources have made it clear they believe this situation is under control. Informally 5 of my Chinese friends have confirmed this is true, only that non Chinese are still restricted from moving around in China.

Xi Jinping visits Wuhan as China declares success in fight against coronavirus. China’s Communist Party signaled confidence in its fight against the coronavirus on Tuesday when the party’s general…www.latimes.com

The New York Times ran a major story of two 29 year old female Wuhan medical professionals, one who died, and one who lived. The one who lived was treated with Kaletra. The one who died was not treated with either chloroquine or Kaletra.

Two Women Fell Sick From the Coronavirus. One Survived. The young mothers didn’t tell their children they had the coronavirus. Mama was working hard, they said, to save sick…www.nytimes.com

The New York Post has a similar story of a New Jersey healthcare worker who was on the verge of dying. He was only saved because Chinese family members reached out to doctors in Wuhan who told them to begin immediate treatment with either chloroquine or Kaletra.

He said “Fortunately I have the resources and knowledge about it. I would be dead and gone already. Most medical providers here don’t know about it. Medical providers need to communicate with Chinese medical teams.”

New Jersey patient James Cai recovering from coronavirus. The New Jersey health care worker who was the state’s first coronavirus case says he’s on the mend – adding that he…nypost.com

In the (now removed / archive) WHO public guidelines for coronavirus treatment published 13 March 2020, there is no mention of either chloroquine or Kaletra.

Instead the WHO guidelines state:

“There is no current evidence to recommend any specific anti-COVID-19 treatment for patients with confirmed COVID-19”

We find the same from the CDC in the USA. In the official CDC clinical guidance (archive) published on March 7, 2020 Chloroquine is only mentioned in an unrelated footnote and Kaletra is not mentioned at all. The CDC states:

“There are currently no antiviral drugs licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat patients with COVID-19.”

The Australian government has 95 documents about coronavirus on its website, however there is no information about hospital treatment (archive). A link inside one of its PDF guidelines (archive) is supposed to take us to advice on hospital care of patients but redirects to a PDF containing recommendations for protective equipment for hospital workers (archive). It includes no treatment information.

Since three major countries (Italy, USA, Australia) appear to be following incorrect WHO treatment guidelines, it likely means that this is a problem in most other countries as well.

Why aren’t our usual medical channels getting this information themselves?

This is a problem from the top down. Western healthcare has already become very complex and government employees are risk averse. They are not used to situations where critical drug treatments need to be made available within a few weeks. China made it a national priority to solve the problem, so normal drug market approvals were waived. WHO was also very delayed² in declaring a pandemic. WHO also didn’t do a good job on the ebola outbreak.

WHO Acknowledges Failings of Ebola Response. Leadership at the World Health Organization has admitted to being “ill prepared” to handle the Ebola outbreak in a…time.com

In addition, WHO has been reported to spend³ more than $200M/year on travel expenses, more than it spends on fighting many major problems.

If Italy had the same treatment success rate as Korea, with only 0.91% of people dying instead of 7.3%, then there would be 227 deaths in Italy instead of 1809. 1582 more people would be alive now.

How many people will be dead when the next exponential waves of the virus hit worldwide?

In fact all these deaths aren’t the real problem

The real problem from this pandemic is that because the virus is so infectious, even though it is fairly mild for most people, a large number become severely ill and require hospitalization. This large number of severely ill people overwhelms the entire hospital system. The population is then forced into quarantine to slow down the rate of infections, which can lead to a total breakdown of society.

Using these treatment options, the majority of people will be kept out of hospital entirely. Both the Koreans and Chinese guidelines make it clear that people should be treated very early if the infection progresses beyond a mild case.

This is likely the reason the medical system in Italy is currently overwhelmed.

The most important thing you can do is make your local healthcare system and government aware of this problem. If you’re successful, you’ll save lives.

What if you get sick?

Korea is one of the countries with the most experience with the virus and their treatment has proven results.

If you get sick I suggest you closely study the official Korean medical guidelines (archive) and find a doctor that will treat you according to those guidelines. Don’t self-treat, as these are powerful drugs that have side effects and interactions with other drugs. You could easily overdose and die. Many people died of aspirin overdose during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic⁴. Only in an emergency would I use this information to treat myself (and I certainly would if I had no other choice).

In addition, it appears we now have 3 additional treatment options, giving us a total of 5 treatment choices depending on individual tolerances and availability.

These come from a set of guidelines published by a Spanish healthcare association. A medical researcher on twitter made an english translated version. Show this to your doctor along with the official Korean treatment guidelines.

You don’t need to get these drugs yourself. Chloroquine is readily available to your doctor and it is an inexpensive, off patent drug that has been used clinically since 1947. It can be easily produced in massive quantities even if there are temporary shortages⁵.

About me

I used to work in Silicon Valley tech. I’m now interested in using Chinese philosophy to find truth in complex situations. I lived at Wudang Mountain, Hubei Province, China from 2014 to 2016. I did this research because my mother is in a high risk category in Australia.

Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/adrianbye

Telegram group chat: http://t.me/virusscience

Thanks to Frodi, Matt, Aaron, Doug, J, Athena and Majko for reading drafts of this.

Sources

[1]https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-11/who-s-pandemic-declaration-came-too-late-brazil-says

[3]https://apnews.com/1cf4791dc5c14b9299e0f532c75f63b2/AP-Exclusive:-Health-agency-spends-more-on-travel-than-AIDS

[4]https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091002132346.htm

[5]https://www.ashp.org/drug-shortages/current-shortages/drug-shortage-detail.aspx?id=640

Fallacy Taxonomy and Icons available via Wikimedia (Skeptical Science)

17/03/2020Uncategorizedciência, Negacionismorenzotaddei

Fallacy Taxonomy and Icons available via Wikimedia

Posted on 16 March 2020 by BaerbelW

Many of you will already be familiar with the FLICC graphic which shows the 5 main characterstics of (climate) science denial, namely fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, cherry picking and conspiracy theories. It was first introduced when our MOOC “Denial101x – Making sense of climate science denial” launched in April 2015.

In the five (!) years since, John Cook and colleagues have been busy refining and enlarging this fallacy taxonomy as explained in a series of three new videos for Denial101x. Here is the first of them:

Part 2

Part 3

While working on the Cranky Uncle book and app, John Cook added even more icons to the taxonomy and gave people a chance to get to know them via several FLICC quizzes published on social media. They are still online and you can access them via these short links: http://sks.to/quiz1, http://sks.to/quiz2 … http://sks.to/quiz9.

We recently received an email from a current Denial101x student suggesting to make the fallacy icons available as emojis to have them readily available when responding to comments on social media. While this might not be quite as easy as it sounds (anybody know?), it gave us another idea: make the current set of fallacy icons available on Wikimedia commons! So, this is what we did! The significantly larger taxonomy makes for a good entry point:

The individual icons can be found on the page listing all of our uploaded files (which we plan to add to soon with more fallacy icons as well as other graphics from our large collection – please feel free to help us decide which ones to upload by posting a comment!).

And to state the obvious: these fallacies not only plague climate science but also many other scientific discussions. It for example didn’t take long for them to appear with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic as John Cook noted in a recent tweet sharing the taxonomy graphic:

“Seeing the same fallacies & science denial techniques proliferate with coronavirus as they do with climate science denial inspired me to post the latest version of the FLICC taxonomy, documenting many of the techniques found in science misinformation.“

The individual icons will therefore hopefully come in handy to call-out fallacies regardless of the topics they show up with!

What if this Coronavirus is Nature’s way of Eliminating the Human Virus? (Elephant Journal)

17/03/2020UncategorizedÍndia, Espiritualismo, Humanos são vírusrenzotaddei

Elyane Youssef

Editor’s note: We are not a virus, unless we act like one. Read: Basic Goodness. ~ Waylon, ed.

Renowned Indian spiritual teacher, Preethaji, spoke of the coronavirus a few weeks back.

What she said in her Facebook video might not be what we want to hear, but it’s absolutely what we need to understand.

For millions of years, every single species has had its role in the universe. However, we are the species who has done the most damage on Earth and, unfortunately, continues to do so. Preethaji eloquently explains how we kill other species for pleasure and superiority rather than survival.

Throughout all our undesirable actions, we forget the consequence. But it would seem that nature’s living intelligence does not. Perhaps, as Preethaji puts it, the coronavirus—like many natural disasters and diseases—is eliminating what doesn’t support the whole.

The death toll from the coronavirus is increasing by the day. It’s sad to see how many families and nations are affected by this tragedy. Nevertheless, in order to live a brighter future on earth, we must examine our contribution to life’s continuity.

Ask yourself today:

How are my actions affecting me and others?

Do I understand that I’m part of the whole and not a separate entity?

What can I do to create a more awakened and conscious future?”

It’s time to change our toxic habits and patterns. May this virus outbreak help us forge a healthier lifestyle and an awakened state of mind.

author: Elyane Youssef

Editor: Marisa Zocco

ISIS tells its terrorists not to travel to Europe for jihad — because of coronavirus (NY Post)

17/03/2020UncategorizedCOVID-19, Estado islâmico, Terrorismorenzotaddei

By Laura Italiano

March 15, 2020 | 1:36am

A woman, wearing a face mask amid coronavirus fears in Iraq.

A woman wears a face mask amid coronavirus fears in Iraq. Getty Images

After years of urging its terrorists to attack major European cities, ISIS is now telling them to steer clear due to the coronavirus.

Any sick jihadists already in Europe, however, should stay there — presumably to sicken infidels, according to a “sharia” directive printed in the group’s al-Naba newsletter, the Sunday Times of London reported.

The “healthy should not enter the land of the epidemic and the afflicted should not exit from it,” the newsletter advised.

The newsletter instructs jihadists that the “plague” is a “torment sent by God on whomsoever He wills.”

Iraq, where most of the surviving fragments of the group remain, had 110 reported coronavirus cases on Sunday morning, 10 of them fatal, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the contagion.

O coronavírus e as desigualdades raciais e de classe (Fórum)

17/03/2020UncategorizedClasses sociais, COVID-19, Desigualdade, Visibilidade, Vulnerabilidaderenzotaddei

por Dennis de Oliveira ‌

Opinião Quilombo 16 de março de 2020, 23h12

Foto: Marcelo Casal Jr/Agência Brasil‌ ‌‌‌ ‌ ‌

A epidemia do coronavírus no mundo está evidenciando as desigualdades sociais, apesar de aparentemente o vírus contaminar todos e, neste primeiro momento, pessoas das classes média e alta que viajaram para o exterior. De fato, o que salta aos olhos neste momento da epidemia é o fato dela ter tomado uma dimensão na cobertura jornalística muito maior que outras epidemias que ainda hoje vitimam mais pessoas, como a dengue e o sarampo.

À primeira vista, isto ocorre justamente por uma questão de classe: como o epicentro atual do coronavírus é a Europa e não o continente africano ou latino-americano, a visibilidade desta epidemia é muito maior. Uma lógica que também esteve presente quando a mídia hegemônica em todo o mundo, inclusive o Brasil, mobilizou os sentimentos de consternação no ataque do grupo terrorista Exército Islâmico à Paris em 2015. O grupo Boko Haram praticou ataques terroristas até mais violentos em 2019 na Nigéria sem a mesma repercussão. ‌ ‌ ‌

Mas o classismo e o racismo também estão neste caso do coronavírus. E é importante este alerta porque há ideias entre algumas pessoas da periferia de que se trata de “doença de gente rica” e, portanto, não deveria ser objeto de preocupação da população da quebrada. Se não ficarmos atentos, pode-se em pouco tempo haver um deslocamento do epicentro da doença para a periferia e, por conta disto, sem a visibilidade que ela tem agora.

Uma análise de algumas medidas de contenção do vírus: a ordem é sair pouco de casa, procurar trabalhar em “home-office”, transferir as atividades didáticas de escolas e universidades para a modalidade online, suspender viagens internacionais, entre outros. Note-se que os atores atingidos por estas medidas protetivas são aqueles que não estão na maior parte do trabalho precarizado e informal. Se nas universidades as aulas foram suspensas e algumas adotaram o sistema de ensino à distância, como ficam os funcionários operacionais terceirizados? Evidente que eles continuarão trabalhando. ‌

Há o caso relatado pelo colunista Lauro Jardim, do Globo, do empresário e sua esposa que contraíram o vírus em uma viagem, se colocaram em quarentena no apartamento deles porém obrigaram a empregada doméstica a continuar indo trabalhar desconsiderando o alto risco dela se contaminar. ‌

Com isto, em um primeiro momento, observa-se que tais medidas, ao mesmo tempo que visam proteger um determinado segmento da sociedade, deixam o outro completamente desprotegido. Estes trabalhadores operacionais e precarizados se deslocam para suas casas de transporte coletivo, um ambiente potencialmente explosivo para uma contaminação massiva. ‌ ‌

Esta situação se agrava por dois motivos conjunturais: o primeiro é a desregulamentação do trabalho imposta pela direita em todo o mundo e aplicada no Brasil com maior intensidade no ano passado. A lógica desta proposta é: o ganho depende de quanto trabalha e não de quanto é necessário para sobreviver. Empregadas domésticas, faxineiras, trabalhadores de aplicativos, ambulantes, flanelinhas, motoboys, cicloboys, entre outros teriam que optar entre ficar sem dinheiro ou sair as ruas em busca de trabalho. Ainda que estes trabalhadores contraiam o vírus e fiquem doentes, a tendência é que eles continuem trabalhando pois no mercado informal não tem nenhum tipo de proteção. Imagine este cenário de pessoas com o COVID-19 nas ruas entregando comida, dirigindo Uber, motos, vendendo coisas nas ruas, limpando casas… Imaginem estas pessoas andando nos trens, ônibus, metros lotados. O vírus vai para a periferia, mas volta com tudo pois estas pessoas atendem justamente estes que se julgariam protegidos. O risco é intensificar comportamentos de cunho fascista, racista, xenofóbico.

O segundo motivo é o desmonte do sistema público de saúde que está enfraquecido para o enfrentamento massivo desta epidemia. Este é o momento que mais se precisa do SUS e todo o seu arcabouço de atendimento, prevenção, medicina da família, entre outros. E da estrutura dos laboratórios públicos de pesquisa das universidades e institutos como o Fiocruz, Manguinhos, FURP e das universidades públicas. ‌ ‌

Só para lembrar: 47,3% dos trabalhadores negros estão no mercado informal, 80% dos usuários do SUS se declaram negros. Em outras palavras, estamos falando de situações que atingem a população negra na sua maioria.

Daí que é o momento ímpar para se retomar a pactuação político-social da Constituinte de 1988 e barrar as mudanças de cunho neoliberal que tem sido feitas desde o golpe de 2016. É necessário revogar a emenda constitucional do teto de gastos, fortalecer o SUS e os laboratórios públicos e centrar a política de Estado não no “equilíbrio fiscal para obter a confiança dos mercados”, mas na capacidade de atendimento social massivo para garantir o bem-estar de todos os cidadãos. ‌ ‌

*Este artigo não reflete, necessariamente, a opinião da Fórum

Mike Davis: O coronavírus e a luta de classes: o monstro bate à nossa porta (Blog da Boitempo)

17/03/2020UncategorizedClasses sociais, COVID-19, Desigualdade, Mike Davis, Visibilidaderenzotaddei

O perigo que a atual epidemia do COVID-19 representa para as populações pobres de todo o mundo vem sendo quase completamente ignorado pelos jornalistas e governos do ocidente.

Publicado em 16/03/2020

Por Mike Davis.

O coronavírus¹ é o velho filme que temos assistido repetidas vezes desde que o livro Zona Quente, de Richard Preston, nos introduziu em 1995 ao demônio exterminador nascido em uma misteriosa caverna de morcegos na África Central e conhecido como Ebola. Aquele foi apenas o primeiro de toda uma sucessão de novas doenças irrompendo no “campo virgem” (esse é o termo adequado) dos sistemas imunes inexperientes da humanidade. Depois do vírus da Ebola, logo se seguiu a influenza aviária, que os humanos pegaram em 1997, e a SARS, que surgiu no final de 2002. Em ambos os casos, a doença surgiu primeiro em Guangzhou, o polo manufatureiro mundial.

Hollywood, é claro, abraçou com tudo esses surtos e produziu uma série de filmes para nos provocar e amedrontar – Contágio (2001), dirigido por Steven Soderbergh, se destaca pela precisão científica e pela sua espantosa antecipação do caos atual.) Além dos filmes e dos inúmeros romances lúgubres, centenas de livros de milhares de artigos científicos responderam a cada surto, muitos deles sublinhando o estado deplorável da prevenção e preparação emergencial global de se detectar e reagir a tais doenças novas.

Caos numérico

Assim, o coronavírus atravessa nossa porta da frente como um monstro já familiar. Sequenciar seu genoma (aliás muito semelhante ao de sua irmã, a amplamente estudada SARS) foi moleza. Ainda nos faltam, no entanto, os pedaços mais vitais de informação. À medida que os pesquisadores trabalham noite e dia para conseguir caracterizar o surto, eles enfrentam três enormes desafios. Em primeiro lugar, a continuada escassez de kits para diagnóstico da infecção viral, especialmente nos Estados Unidos e na África, tem impedido a projeção de estimativas precisas de parâmetros-chave, tais como a taxa de reprodução, o tamanho da população infectada e a quantidade de infecções de caráter benigno. O resultado vem sendo um completo caos numérico.

Alguns países, contudo, dispõem de dados mais confiáveis a respeito do impacto do vírus em certos grupos. E as informações são muito assustadoras. A Itália, por exemplo, registra uma espantosa taxa de mortalidade de 23% entre as pessoas maiores de 65 anos de idade; na Inglaterra, a cifra atualmente se encontra no patamar dos 18% para esse grupo. A “gripe corona” que Trump menospreza representa um perigo sem precedentes para populações geriátricas, com um potencial saldo de mortalidade na casa dos milhões.

Em segundo lugar, assim como as influenzas sazonais, o vírus está sofrendo mutações à medida que atravessa populações dotadas de diferentes composições etárias e condições de saúde. A variedade que os estadunidenses têm mais probabilidade de acabar pegando já é ligeiramente diferente daquela identificada no surto original em Wuhan. As futuras mutações do vírus podem tanto ser benignas quanto alterar a distribuição de virulência, que atualmente cresce vertiginosamente a partir dos cinquenta anos de idade A “gripe corona” de Trump representa no mínimo um perigo mortal ao quarto dos estadunidenses que são de idade, possuem sistemas imunes fracos ou problemas respiratórios crônicos.

Em terceiro lugar, mesmo se o vírus permanecer estável e sofrer poucas mutações, é possível que seu impacto sobre coortes etários mais jovens difira radicalmente em países pobres e entre grupos de alta pobreza. Considere a experiência global da gripe espanhola de 1918-19, que, estima-se, matou cerca de 1-2% da humanidade. Nos Estados Unidos e na Europa Ocidental, o vírus original do H1N1 teve maior índice de letalidade em jovens adultos, e a explicação que geralmente se dá para tanto é que seus sistemas imunes relativamente mais fortes acabavam reagindo com demasiada intensidade à infecção e atacarem células pulmonares, o que acarretava uma pneumonia viral e um choque séptico. Mais recentemente, contudo, alguns epidemiologistas levantaram a hipótese de que adultos mais velhos podem ter adquirido “memória imune” por conta de um surto anterior ocorrido na década de 1890s que teria os protegido. De todo modo, é sabido que o vírus original da H1N1 encontrou um nicho privilegiado em acampamentos do exército e em trincheiras de batalha, onde ele ceifou a vida de dezenas de milhares de jovens soldados. Esse tornou-se um fator importantíssimo na batalha entre os impérios. Chegou-se a atribuir o colapso da grande ofensiva alemã na primavera de 1918, e portanto o resultado da guerra, ao fato de que os Aliados, em contraste com seu inimigo, tinham condições de reabastecer seus exércitos doentes com tropas estadunidenses recém-chegadas.

Já a gripe espanhola em países mais pobres teve um perfil diferente. Raramente se leva em conta que 60% da mortalidade global (e isso representa ao menos 20 milhões de mortes) ocorreu em Punjabi, Pompéia, e em outras partes da Índia Ocidental onde exportações de grão para a Inglaterra e práticas brutais de requisição coincidiram com uma seca generalizada. As escassezes alimentares que resultaram disso levaram milhões de pobres à beira da fome. Essas populações tornaram-se vítimas de uma sinistra sinergia entre subnutrição, que suprimia sua resposta imune à infecção, e surtos desenfreados de pneumonias virais e bacterianas. Em outro caso semelhante, o Irã sob ocupação inglesa, tendo passado por muitos anos de seca, cólera e escassez alimentar, além de um surto generalizado de malária, precondicionou a morte de, estima-se, um quinto da população.

Essa história – especialmente as consequências desconhecidas das interações com subnutrição e infecções existentes – deveria nos alertar que o COVID-19 pode tomar um caminho diferente e mais letal nas favelas densas e insalubres da África e do Sul Asiático. Com casos agora sendo reportados em Lagos, Kigali, Addis Ababa e Kinshasa, ninguém sabe (e nem saberá por um bom tempo por conta da ausência de testes para diagnóstico) de que forma ele pode entrar em sinergia com as condições locais de saúde e as doenças da região. O perigo desse fenômeno para as populações pobres de todo o mundo vem sendo quase completamente ignorado por jornalistas e governos ocidentais. O único artigo publicado que li nesse sentido argumenta que por conta do fato da população urbana da África ser a mais jovem do mundo, a pandemia deve produzir lá apenas um impacto ameno. À luz da experiência de 1918, essa não passa de uma extrapolação tola. Assim como a suposição de que a pandemia, assim como a gripe sazonal, irá recuar diante de climas mais quentes. (Tom Hanks acabou de pegar o vírus na Austrália, onde ainda é verão.)

Um Katrina médico

É possível que daqui a um ano vejamos com admiração o sucesso da China em conter a pandemia, e que fiquemos horrorizados com o fracasso dos EUA. (Estou aqui fazendo a suposição heróica de que a declaração da China de que a taxa de transmissão está diminuindo rapidamente é mais ou menos precisa.) A incapacidade de nossas instituições de manter fechada a Caixa de Pandora, é claro, não é surpresa para ninguém. Desde o ano 2000 temos repetidamente visto colapsos na linha de frente do atendimento de saúde.

Tanto temporada de gripe de 2009 quanto a de 2018, por exemplo, sobrecarregaram hospitais em todo o país, expondo a chocante escassez de leitos hospitalares depois de vinte anos de cortes na capacidade de internação movidos pela maximização dos lucros (a versão do setor hospitalar para a gestão de inventário just-in-time). A crise remonta à ofensiva corporativa que levou Reagan ao poder e converteu lideranças do Partido Democrata em seus porta-vozes neoliberais. De acordo com A Associação Hospitalar Estadunidense, o número de leitos hospitalares sofreu um espantoso declínio de 39% entre 1981 e 1999. O objetivo era elevar os lucros através de um aumento no “censo” (calculado a partir do número de leitos ocupados). Mas o objetivo da gerência de uma taxa de ocupação de 90% significava que os hospitais não tinham mais a capacidade de absorver um influxo de pacientes em situações de epidemia e de emergência médica.

Hospitais privados e de caridade fechando as portas e carências de enfermagem, igualmente provocados pela lógica de mercado, devastaram os serviços de saúde em comunidades mais pobres e em áreas rurais, transferindo o fardo para hospitais públicos subfinanciados e instalações médicas do Departamento de Assuntos de Veteranos dos EUA. Se as condições do atendimento emergencial em tais instituições já são incapazes de dar conta de infecções sazonais, como esperar que elas deem conta de uma iminente sobrecarga de casos críticos?

No novo século, a medicina emergencial continuou a sofrer reduções no setor privado por conta do imperativo de se preservar o “valor dos acionistas”, buscando o aumento de dividendos e lucros de curto prazo, e no setor público por meio de austeridade fiscal e reduções nos orçamentos estaduais e federias de prevenção e preparação emergencial. O resultado disso é que há apenas 45.000 leitos de UTI disponíveis para lidar com a avalanche projetada de casos graves e críticos de coronavírus. (Em comparação, os sul coreanos dispõem de três vezes mais leitos por milhar do que os estadunidenses.) De acordo com uma investigação feita pela USA Today “apenas oito estados teriam leitos hospitalares suficientes para tratar os 1 milhão de americanos de sessenta ou mais anos de idade que podem adoecer de COVID-19”.

Ao mesmo tempo, os Republicanos vem rechaçando todos os esforços de reconstruir as redes de segurança destruídas pelos cortes orçamentários da recessão de 2008. Os departamentos municipais e estaduais de saúde – a primeira (e vital) linha de defesa – dispõem hoje de equipes 25% menores do que crise financeira doze anos atrás. Além disso, ao longo da última década o orçamento dos Centros de Controle e Prevenção de Doenças caiu 10% em termos reais. Desde a coroação de Trump as insuficiências fiscais só se exacerbaram. O New York Times recentemente noticiou que “21% dos departamentos municipais de saúde registraram reduções nos seus orçamentos para o ano fiscal referente a 2017.” Trump também fechou o escritório de pandemia da Casa Branca, uma diretoria instituída pelo Obama depois do surto de Ebola em 2014 para garantir uma resposta nacional rápida e bem-coordenada para novas epidemias.

Estamos nas fases iniciais de um Katrina médico. Ao desinvestirmos em prevenção e preparação emergencial médica no exato momento em que todas as avaliações de peritos recomendam uma expansão generalizada dessas capacidades, nos encontramos em uma situação em que nos faltam tanto suprimentos elementares quanto funcionários públicos de saúde e leitos emergenciais. As reservas nacionais e regionais de mantimentos hospitalares vêm sendo armazenadas em condições muito inferiores às orientações epidemiológicas. Por isso, a débacle de kits para testes de diagnóstico coincidiu com uma escassez crítica de equipamentos protetivos básicos para trabalhadores de saúde.

As enfermeiras militantes, nossa reserva nacional de consciência social, estão garantindo que todos nós compreendamos os graves perigos provocados pelo armazenamento inadequado de mantimentos protetivos essenciais tais como máscaras faciais N95. Elas também nos lembram que os hospitais tornaram-se ambientes ideais para micro-organismos super-resistentes a antibióticos, tais como o C. Difficile, que podem tornar-se seríssimos agentes mortais secundários em alas hospitalares superlotadas. Ainda mais vulneráveis porque invisíveis são as centenas de milhares de trabalhadoras de lares de repouso e as equipes de enfermagem domiciliar, operando em condições de sub-remuneração e sobrecarga de trabalho.

A divisão de classes

O surto expôs instantaneamente a marcada divisão de classes no atendimento de saúde, que a Nossa Revolução colocou na agenda nacional. Em suma: quem dispõe de um bom plano de saúde e também tem condições de trabalhar ou lecionar de casa está confortavelmente isolado, contanto que siga com prudência as diretrizes de segurança. Funcionários públicos e outros grupos de trabalhadores sindicalizados que gozam de uma cobertura decente terão de fazer escolhas difíceis, optando entre renda e proteção. Enquanto isso, milhões de trabalhadores de baixa renda do setor de serviços, trabalhadores agrícolas, desempregados e sem teto estão sendo atirados aos lobos.

Mesmo se Washington eventualmente der conta de resolver o fiasco dos testes e fornecer um número adequado de kits para diagnóstico, aqueles que não dispõem de plano de saúde ainda terão de pagar médicos ou hospitais para que estes apliquem os testes. As contas médicas familiares gerais vão disparar, ao mesmo tempo em que milhões de trabalhadores estão perdendo seus empregos e os planos de saúde fornecidos pelos empregadores. Poderia haver defesa mais forte e mais urgente da proposta de se estender o Medicare para todos?

Mas, como todos sabemos, cobertura universal em qualquer sentido minimamente eficaz requer provisão universal de ausências remuneradas por motivo de saúde. Quarenta e cinco por cento da força de trabalho atualmente tem esse direito negado: essas pessoas são portanto virtualmente compelidos a transmitirem a infecção ou abrirem mão da renda mensal. Da mesma forma, quatorze estados governados pelo Partido Republicano se recusaram a implementar a Affordable Care Act³, que expande o Medicaid aos trabalhadores pobres. É por isso que um em cada quarto texanos, por exemplo, não dispõe de cobertura e só pode contar com a sala emergencial do hospital municipal se precisar se tratar.

As contradições mortais dos planos privados de saúde em uma era de pragas são talvez mais visíveis no setor de enfermagem domiciliar e cuidado assistido, que administra 2,5 milhões de estadunidenses de idade – muitos deles dependentes de Medicare. A situação há muito constitui um escândalo nacional. Trata-se de um setor altamente competitivo, capitalizado em salários baixos, falta de pessoal e cortes ilegais de custos. De acordo com o New York Times, 380.000 pacientes de casas de repouso morrem a cada ano por conta da negligência dessas instalações diante de procedimentos básicos de controle de infecções. Muitas dessas casas de repouso – particularmente em estados do Sul do país – calculam ser mais barato arcar com as multas por violações sanitárias do que contratar funcionários adicionais e treiná-los adequadamente.

Não é de surpreender que o primeiro epicentro de transmissão comunitária foi o Life Care Center, uma casa de repouso em Kirkland, situada nos subúrbios de Seattle. Conversei com Jim Straub, um velho amigo que é líder sindical nas casas de repouso da região de Seattle e está atualmente escrevendo um artigo a respeito do tema para o The Nation. Ele caracterizou a instalação como “sendo uma das piores equipadas em de quadro de funcionários em todo o Estado” e descreveu a totalidade do sistema de casas de repouso de Washington como “o mais subfinanciado do país – um oásis absurdo de sofrimento de austeridade em um mar de dinheiro da indústria de tecnologia de ponta.”

Além disso, ele assinalou ainda que os oficiais de saúde pública estavam ignorando o fator crucial que explica a rápida taxa de transmissão da doença do Life Care Center para dez outras casas de repouso nas proximidades: “trabalhadores de casas de repouso situadas no mercado imobiliário mais caro dos Estados Unidos via de regra trabalham em mais de um emprego, geralmente atendendo em múltiplas casas de repouso.” Ele diz que as autoridades foram incapazes de descobrir os nomes e as localizações desses segundos empregos e assim perderam todo e qualquer controle sobre a disseminação do COVID-19. E até agora ninguém está propondo compensar a remuneração de trabalhadores expostos para que eles permaneçam em casa.

Agora, como nos alerta o exemplo de Seattle, mais dezenas, talvez centenas, de casas de repouso em todo o país deverão se tornar pontos de foco do coronavírus e seus funcionários, muitos deles recebendo o salário mínimo, optarão racionalmente por permanecer em casa a fim de protegerem suas famílias. Numa situação dessas, o sistema poderia entrar em colapso – e ninguém há de esperar que a Guarda Nacional venha cuidar da reposição dos coletores de urina.

Solidariedade internacional

A cada passo de seu avanço mortal, a pandemia promove uma defesa de uma política de cobertura universal e ausência remunerada no trabalho. Enquanto Biden se concentra em arranhar a popularidade de Trump, os progressistas precisam se unir, como propõe Bernie, para vencer a convenção com sua pauta de Medicare para Todos. Juntos, os delegados de Bernie Sanders e Elizabeth Warren têm um papel a desempenhar no Fiserv Forum em Milwaukee em meados de julho², mas o resto de nós possui uma tarefa igualmente importante nas ruas, começando agora com lutas contra despejos, demissões e empregadores que se recusam a compensar trabalhadores ausentes (Está com medo de contágio? Permaneça a dois metros de distância do próximo manifestante e você ainda garante uma imagem mais poderosa para a TV. Mas precisamos reivindicar as ruas.)

Como sabemos, a cobertura universal é apenas um primeiro passo. É desapontador, para dizer o mínimo, que nos debates das primárias do Partido Democrata nem Sanders nem Warren chamaram atenção para como as grandes corporações farmacêuticas [Big Pharma] abriram mão de investir em pesquisa e desenvolvimento de novos antibióticos e antivirais. Das dezoito maiores empresas farmacêuticas, quinze abandonaram totalmente o campo. Medicamentos cardíacos, tranquilizadores viciantes e tratamentos para impotência masculina são alguns dos produtos mais lucrativos do setor, e não a defesa contra infecções hospitalares, doenças emergentes e doenças letais tradicionais dos trópicos, como a malária. A vacina universal para a influenza – isto é, uma vacina voltada para as partes imutáveis das proteínas de superfície do vírus – já é uma possibilidade há décadas, mas não é lucrativa o suficiente para ser considerada prioridade.

À medida que a revolução dos antibióticos retrocede, velhas doenças deverão reaparecer ao lado de novas infecções e os hospitais se converterão em ossuários. Até mesmo alguém como Trump pode esbravejar oportunisticamente contra os custos absurdos dos medicamentos de prescrição. O que precisamos, no entanto, é de uma visão mais audaciosa voltada para quebrar os monopólios farmacêuticos e fornecer ao público uma produção de medicamentos vitais. (As coisas já foram assim um dia: durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, o exército convocou Jonas Salk e outros pesquisadores para desenvolverem a primeira vacina de gripe.) Como escrevi quinze anos atrás em meu livro O monstro bate à nossa porta: a ameaça global da gripe aviária:

“O acesso a medicamentos vitais, incluindo vacinas, antibióticos e antivirais, deveria ser um direito humano, universalmente disponível a preço zero. Se os mercados não tiverem condições de fornecer incentivos para produzir tais drogas de maneira barata, então os governos e as organizações sem fins lucrativos deveriam assumir a responsabilidade por sua manufatura e distribuição. A sobrevivência dos pobres deve sempre ser prioridade sobre os lucros do grande complexo farmacêutico [Big Pharma].”⁴

A atual pandemia expande o argumento: a organização capitalista agora parece estar biologicamente insustentável na ausência de uma infraestrutura verdadeiramente internacional de saúde pública. Mas tal infraestrutura jamais existirá enquanto movimentos de pessoas não quebrarem o poder das grandes corporações farmacêuticas e de um sistema de atendimento à saúde organizado em função do lucro.

Isso exige um projeto socialista independente para a sobrevivência humana, que vai além de um Segundo New Deal. Desde a época do movimento Occupy, os progressistas vem colocado a luta contra a desigualdade econômica e de renda na ordem do dia, um grande feito. Mas agora os socialistas precisam dar o próximo passo e, tendo as indústrias farmacêutica e de saúde como alvos imediatos, lutarem pela propriedade social e a democratização do poder econômico.

Mas precisamos ter uma avaliação honesta de nossas fraquezas políticas e morais. Por mais que tenho visto com entusiasmo a evolução à esquerda de uma nova geração e o retorno da palavra “socialismo” ao discurso político, há um elemento perturbador de solipsismo nacional no movimento progressista que é simétrico ao novo nacionalismo de direita. Tendemos a falar apenas da classe trabalhadora estadunidense e da história radical dos Estados Unidos (talvez nos esquecendo que Eugene V. Debs era um internacionalista até o último fio de cabelo). Às vezes isso passa perto de uma versão de esquerda do bordão “América em Primeiro Lugar”.

Diante dessa pandemia, os socialistas devem aproveitar toda ocasião para lembrar os outros da urgência da solidariedade internacional. Concretamente, precisamos mobilizar nossos amigos progressistas e seus ídolos políticos a fim de reivindicar um aumento massivo na produção de kits para diagnóstico, equipamentos de segurança e medicamentos vitais para serem distribuídos gratuitamente a países pobres. Cabe a nós garantir que o Medicare para Todos torne-se uma tanto uma política externa quanto uma política doméstica nos EUA.

* Texto enviado pelo autor diretamente para o Blog da Boitempo. A tradução é de Artur Renzo.

^NOTAS

¹^{Tem havido muita confusão a respeito da terminologia científica: o Comitê Internacional de Taxonomia de Vírus denominou o vírus de SARS-CoV-2. COVID-19 refere-se ao surto. (Nota do autor).}² ^{O autor refere-se aqui à Convenção Nacional Democrata de 2020, que definirá o candidato que o Partido escolherá para enfrentar Donald Trump nas eleições presidenciais deste ano. A disputa, como se sabe, atualmente entre Joe Biden e Bernie Sanders, e o apoio da base da candidata progressista Elizabeth Warren é um fator crucial para a vitória do Sanders. (Nota da tradução.)}³^{O “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” é}^{a “Lei Federal de Proteção e Cuidado ao Paciente”, apelidada de “Obamacare”, sancionada pelo presidente estadunidense em março de 2010. (N. T.)}⁴^{Edição brasileira: O monstro bate à nossa porta: a ameaça global da gripe aviária (São Paulo, Record, 2006). (N. T.)}

***

Mike Davis nasceu na cidade de Fontana, Califórnia, em 1946. Abandonou os estudos precocemente, aos dezesseis anos, por conta de uma grave doença do pai. Trabalhou como açougueiro, motorista de caminhão e militou no Partido Comunista da Califórnia meridional antes de retornar à sala de aula. Aos 28 anos, ingressou na Universidade da Califórnia de Los Angeles (Ucla) para estudar economia e história. Atualmente, mora em San Diego, é um distinguished professor no departamento de Creative Writing na Universidade da Califórnia, em Riverside, e integra o conselho editorial da New Left Review. Autor de vários livros, entre eles Planeta favela, Apologia dos bárbaros e Cidade de quartzo. O autor também colabora com o livro de intervenção Cidades rebeldes: passe livre e as manifestações que tomaram as ruas do Brasil.

Italians over 80 ‘will be left to die’ as country overwhelmed by coronavirus (The Telegraph)

17/03/2020UncategorizedCOVID-19, Desastre, Itália, Morte, Políticas públicas, Saúde públicarenzotaddei

Hardest-hit region drafts new proposals saying who will live and who will die

By Erica Di Blasi Turin 14 March 2020 • 4:38pm

Coronavirus victims in Italy will be denied access to intensive care if they are aged 80 or more or in poor health should pressure on beds increase, a document prepared by a crisis management unit in Turin proposes.

Some patients denied intensive care will in effect be left to die, doctors fear.

The unit has drawn up a protocol, seen by The Telegraph, that will determine which patients receive treatment in intensive care and which do not if there are insufficient spaces. Intensive care capacity is running short in Italy as the coronavirus continues to spread.

The document, produced by the civil protection deparment of the Piedmont region, one of those hardest hit, says: “The criteria for access to intensive therapy in cases of emergency must include age of less than 80 or a score on the Charlson comorbidity Index [which indicates how many other medical conditions the patient has] of less than 5.”

The ability of the patient to recover from resuscitation will also be considered.

One doctor said: “[Who lives and who dies] is decided by age and by the [patient’s] health conditions. This is how it is in a war.”

The document says: “The growth of the current epidemic makes it likely that a point of imbalance between the clinical needs of patients with COVID-19 and the effective availability of intensive resources will be reached.

“Should it become impossible to provide all patients with intensive care services, it will be necessary to apply criteria for access to intensive treatment, which depends on the limited resources available.”

It adds: “The criteria set out guidelines if the situation becomes of such an exceptional nature as to make the therapeutic choices on the individual case dependent on the availability of resources, forcing [hospitals] to focus on those cases in which the cost/benefit ratio is more favorable for clinical treatment.”

Luigi Icardi, a councilor for health in Piedmont, said: “I never wanted to see such a moment. It [the document] will be binding and will establish in the event of saturation of the wards a precedence code for access to intensive care, based on certain parameters such as potential survival.”

The document is already complete and only approval from a technical-scientific committee is needed before it is sent to hospitals. The criteria are expected to apply throughout Italy, government sources said.

More than 1,000 people in Italy have now died from the virus and the number is growing every day. More than 15,000 are infected.

Italy has 5,090 intensive care beds, which for the moment exceeds the number of patients who need them. It is also working to create new bed capacity in private clinics, nursing homes and even in tents. However, the country also needs also doctors and nurses – the government wants to hire them – and equipment.

Lombardy remains the most critical region. However, the situation is also serious in neighboring Piedmont. Here, in just one day, 180 new cases were recorded, while deaths numbered 27. The trend suggests that the situation is not about to improve.

Roberto Testi, president of the coranavirus technical-scientific committee for Piedmont, told The Telegraph: “Here in Piedmont we aim to delay as long as possible the use of these criteria. At the moment there are still intensive care places available and we are working to create more.

“We want to arrive as late as possible at the point where we have to decide who lives and who dies. The criteria relate only to access to intensive care – those who do not get access to intensive care will still receive all the treatment possible. In medicine we sometimes have to make difficult choices but it’s important to have a system about how to make them.”

Autonomous Groups Are Mobilizing Mutual Aid Initiatives to Combat the Coronavirus (It’s Going Down)

17/03/2020UncategorizedAjuda mútua, Anarquismo, Coletivos autônomos, COVID-19, Estados Unidosrenzotaddei

Donate to IGD March 14

In the span of just a few weeks, the coronavirus has completely changed life as we know it, while also exposing the vast array of contradictions firmly entrenched within capitalist society. America has been laid bare as to what it always has been, a settler-colonial project that is the sole property of those who own it, as John Jay, one of the ‘Foun ding Fathers’ once argued. In the face of this disaster, Trump has predictably doubled down on painting the pandemic with a xenophobic brush as his supporters use it as yet another excuse to push half-baked conspiracy theories in order to defend the dumpster fire that is his administration. Meanwhile, outside of the gaze of neoliberal TV pundits who now pander to studios with empty audiences, across the so-called United States, autonomous groups are mobilizing to provide mutual aid to their neighbors and those hit the hardest by the exploding virus.

From Pandemic to Class War

For millions of poor and working people, life in this country is going to change – and change very quickly. Already, many companies are starting to lay off workers as the economy slows and things begin to shut down. Low wage workers, many already living just on the edge of eviction and homelessness, now find themselves with even less money coming in and with young children, recently forced out of school, to watch and feed.

In many ways, the coronavirus has accelerated all of the trajectories of modern capitalism that have hurdled us towards our current position: rapidly gentrifying cities, automation and the gig economy displacing workers into precarious forms of employment, the rising cost of living, and lack of access to affordable healthcare, education, and daycare for children. To make matters worse, soon the US will be rocked by a flood of very sick people attempting to access a broken health care system that is unprepared to handle a wide-scale pandemic.

Already there are signs of growing anger. Students in Ohio rioted after police attempted to push them off the streets following a 24-hour eviction notice at their campus in Dayton and students at MIT protested when they were forced to leave as well; some with no idea as to where they would go. Fiat auto workers in Canada walked off the job over coronavirus concerns and fast food workers across the US have picketed and demanded paid sick-leave.

In the face of this growing class anger which threatens to boil over into a potentially insurrectionary wave, elites have already begun to loosen a few chains out of fear. From talks of a stimulus package, to a moratorium on paying interest on student loans, police suspending arrests for minor offenses and scaling back patrols in general, the push to release non-violent offenders, AT&T ending the cap on data, the suspension of evictions in many cities, and Detroit turning water back on to residents who have unpaid bills. In short, poor and working people everywhere should recognize that those in power – are afraid.

Seize the Time

In this moment, everyday people have to seize the initiative and get organized; before a new normal takes hold and the State can re-solidify its authority. The Trump administration will try and do this through blunt violence and police orders, as already the national guard is streaming into various cities. Democrats and the neoliberal media on the other hand will push for the country to “come together” behind Joe Biden – assuming that the November 2020 elections even are held.

If poor and working people see within the coronavirus not only a pandemic that will possibly leave in its wake a massive death count, but also the very real crisis that is modern industrial capitalism, then we must mobilize for our own interests, push back, and actually fight. This means demanding not only bread and butter: free housing, access to food, an end to evictions, and clean water: but also building new human relationships, new forms of actual life. This means creating ways of meeting our needs, making decisions, and organizing ourselves and solving problems outside of the State structure and the capitalist system.

Towards this end, we are encouraged by the explosion of grassroots and autonomous mutual aid projects that are springing up across the US. Not since the early stages of the Occupy Movement have we seen this growth of spontaneous mobilization in the face of a crisis. These efforts must continue to organize themselves, grow, network, and deepen their connections within working-class and poor neighborhoods.

What follows is both a collection of resources and links, as well as a list of active mutual aid projects that are currently mobilizing in the face of the coronavirus. We are also including a short reading list, and information on how to participate in phone-zap campaigns in support of prisoners and migrant detainees.

To have your group or mutual aid project listed, email us at: info [at] itsgoingdown [dot] org

Prisoner and Migrant Detention Phone-Zaps

Organizing and DIY Resources

Organizing Guide

Pacific Northwest

Washington:

Puget Sound COV-19 Mutual Aid: Seattle based collective well-being through class solidarity, disability justice, anti-racism, abolition. Resource guide here. Donate here. Instagram.
Tacoma Mutual Aid Collective: Tacoma Mutual Aid Collective works in solidarity with Tacoma communities to support resource, knowledge, and skill sharing across our neighborhoods. Currently organizing free food programs for kids hit by school closures and beyond. Support via PayPal. Grocery program sign-up form.
Olympia Mutual Aid: We are coordinating food and supply drop offs to people’s front doors. Please use this form if you would like to help make deliveries. Facebook.
Common Stash: Mutual Aid in So-Called Olympia: We are not afraid of sickness—many of us are already sick, and those of us who are not yet sick will one day become unwell. But we are afraid of not getting cared for, of not getting what we need and of those we love not getting what they need, so we are coming together, collecting and redistributing herbal remedies, over the counter cough medication, and other supplies to our friends and neighbors. Instagram.

Oregon:

Portland-area COVID-19 “Offer Support”: We are an all-volunteer grassroots group operating in the territories of the many tribes who have made their homes near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, including Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla. Instagram and Facebook.
Portland Coronavirus Mutual Aid Fund: We are currently forming a coalition of groups to coordinate grassroots response to the coronavirus.
South Willamette Valley Mutual Aid Network: As things get harder, we show up for our neighbors. We advocate collective liberation through class solidarity, disability justice, anti-racism, abolition, and horizontal mutual aid as we reside on stolen Kalapuya land. We are trying to build a network of many neighborhood pods across Lane County. Instagram. Facebook.

Bay Area & Northern California

California:

West Oakland Punks With Lunch: Oakland based nonprofit, non religious, DIY organization that hands out lunches, harm reduction supplies, and more to our neighbors in West Oakland. Works largely with houseless community. Instagram.
People’s Breakfast Oakland: Free Breakfast and community outreach program in Oakland. Donate here.

South Bay Area Mutual Aid: We are coordinating food and supply drop offs to people’s front doors during the COVID-19 quarantine.
SF Bay Area: The idea behind this is to crowd source some mutual aid for folks in the SF Bay Area, who are affected by Covid-19 or the current situation.
East Bay Disabled Folks: Are you a disabled person (especially prioritizing BIPOC) in the East Bay needing extra support re COVID19?
Berkeley Mutual Aid Network: Board for people needing help and those in need.
Monterey Peninsula Aid: Please fill out this form if you live on the Monterey Peninsula and have specific needs due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Also use this form to indicate that you can help provide for the needs of other people.
Pandemic Solidarity Support: Chico mutual aid coordination.

Southwest

California:

Los Angeles Mutual Aid: Ground Game LA is an all-volunteer grassroots group operating in Los Angeles, connected with multiple coalition partners throughout LA. Mutual aid resources and links.
Mutual Aid Los Angeles Fundraiser: Mutual Aid Action Los Angeles (M.A.A.L.A.) would like your support to continue our work and keep growing. We are committed to providing a wide range of services and support to anyone who comes through our doors and beyond. We practice Mutual Aid to live our solidarity.
Los Angeles Mutual Aid Fund: Providing mutual aid to communities in need of supplies such as drinks, food, sanitary products, clothing, and other things needed. We feel it’s up to us to provide for our communities and we must come together in solidarity in times of crisis. Any amount of donations will help and we thank you for your support!
Mutual Aid San Diego: We will be sharing this list with trusted groups doing mutual aid in San Diego, county-wide, who are organizing mutual aid. We will not use or share the info you provide for any other purpose.

Nevada:

Las Vegas Mutual Aid: Please fill out this form if you are in the Las Vegas area and are interested in offering support to people impacted by COVID-19 *OR* are requesting support for yourself/a family member.

Utah:

Salt Lake Valley: Mutual aid in the Salt Lake Valley area.

New Mexico:

Albuquerque Mutual Aid: In Response to COVID-19, we’re organizing mutual aid to respond to those that are often not included in conversations about public health.
Santa Fe Mutual Aid: Times seem really wild and unpredictable right now and we can isolate and hoard or possibly find a way to stay in community and help each other out. Safe distancing is important, but so is solidarity.

Arizona:

Tucson Mutual Aid: We are coordinating food and supply drop offs to people’s front doors. Please use this form if you would like to help make deliveries. Thank you!! This is a live document that will continue to change and update as we move forward.

Central

Nebraska:

Lincoln/Omaha Mutual Aid: This group is intended to be a forum for people to request and offer help specific to needs related to the COVID-19 pandemic in our area.

Montana:

Bozeman Solidarity: The volunteer will drop off the items outside of the residence, in an effort to reduce exposure.
Missoula Mutual Aid: In Missoula, we have created a COVID19 Community Organizing group, which aims to organize material support. Immediately we are providing grocery and supply deliveries. We are preparing to expand this to running errands, dog walking, childcare, caregiving, and mental/emotional support among people impacted by the pandemic. Donate here.

Colorado:

Front Range Mutual Aid: Front Range Mutual Aid Network is setting up a distribution network to get supplies to people who need them during the COVID-19 crisis.
Northern Colorado Mutual Aid and Defense: Northern Colorado Community Mutual Aid and Defense is organizing a supplies distribution service and will get your overstock to people who need it in the Greeley/Evans area. Facebook. Donate here.
Aurora Mutual Aid: A group of out of work librarians have come together to create an emergency supply kit distribution group for the elderly or families with children out of school. We have created kits that include: pasta, rice, sauce, seasonings, canned tuna, canned chicken, canned veggies, fruit cups, cookies, oatmeal, handsoap, bar soap, and toilet paper. We are targeting the North Aurora community which is our own community and are hoping to start distributing starting this morning. What we aim to do is we have set up a hotline number for those in need to call and we will drop off supply kits at the door step so they don’t have to leave the house. Call: 720-477-0406. Email: AllHandsOnDeckAurora@gmail.com
Denver Service Worker Solidarity: Many of us can not afford to miss a single shift, much less a month and a half of shifts. We need to demand an immediate moratorium on rent collection and evictions, city wide. Alone we are weak, but together we can stand strong and assure that we all make it through this difficult time, together. More details will follow, but it is important that we get our network started IMMEDIATELY. Please share this post far and wide. Bartenders, Servers, Chefs, everyone in this industry: Y’all are some of the baddest motherfuckers in the world. Let’s go!

Texas:

San Antonio Mutual Aid: Scary times require us to better support one another. Resources for San Antonio residents.
Primrose Community Care: Primrose Community Care is a mutual aid group in Austin, Texas.
Aid Network of Denton County: Aid Network of Denton is a coalition of organizations and individuals seeking to provide community support in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. Donate here.

Midwest

Ohio:

Cleveland Pandemic Response: CPR aims to provide mutual aid & community support in the NEO area during the COVID-19 crisis. Intake form. Facebook.
Mutual Aid Central Ohio: We are building a network of people who can support their neighbors through mutual aid in Central Ohio. Facebook.
Mutual Aid Dayton/Miami Valley: We are building a network of people who can support their neighbors through mutual aid in Dayton and the Miami Valley. Facebook.
Mutual Aid Southeast Ohio: We are building a network of people who can support their neighbors through mutual aid in Southeast Ohio. Facebook.

Illinois:

Chicago Mutual Aid Volunteers: This list is being compiled to share with groups that are doing mutual aid work around COVID-19 in Chicago.
Brave Space Alliance: Brave Space Alliance will be operating a crisis food pantry for queer and trans folks on the south side of Chicago during the pandemic.
Rockford Mutual Aid Volunteers: This is for members of the Rockford community to offer skills, resources, supplies, space and time to community members who are affected by COVID – 19 and those most vulnerable among us. Facebook.

Indiana:

Bloomington Mutual Aid: Are you homebound and in need of help getting access to groceries and other supplies? For your friends and neighbors who are homebound and quarantined, are you willing to help make grocery deliveries and supply runs? Spreadsheet.

Michigan:

Kalamazoo: This list is being compiled by Kzoo Covid-19 Mutual Aid to share with groups that are doing mutual aid work around COVID-19 in Kalamazoo.
Grand Rapids Mutual Aid: Grand Rapids Area Mutual Aid Network is a hub for folks to share resources to keep each other safe and healthy. Facebook.
Huron Valley Mutual Aid: This group is for the purposes of sharing resources, needs, and info about mutual aid work that people are doing at this time.
Lansing Mutual Aid: Online hub for various resources.
The Mutual Aid Network of Ypsilanti: We believe that as a community we are stronger when we work together to help each other out. Our purpose is to help facilitate as much cooperation and aid as possible. Particularly focusing on the most impacted and marginalized members of our community.

Minnesota:

Twin Cities Queer and Trans Mutual Aid: The idea behind this is to crowd source some mutual aid for queer/trans/nonbinary folks in the Twin Cities area, who are affected by Covid-19 or the current situation.
Twin Cities Mutual Aid: Add yourself to a list of people willing to help each other in case of quarantine or self isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. This information will be used to reach out of interested individuals willing to provide assistance if needed.

Wisconsin:

Milwaukee Mutual Aid: This form will help us provide support to each other!
Madison Mutual Aid: We are using the model of mutual aid practices- basically that we can help each other in times of crisis. Facebook.

Missouri:

St. Louis Mutual Aid: Communities are safer and stronger when its members check in on one another and pitch in in whatever ways they can. This concept is called mutual aid.

Southeast

Tennessee:

Nashville Anarchist Black Cross: Direct mutual aid in the Nashville, Tennessee area.
First Aid Collective of Knoxville: We are an autonomous first-aid/wound collective based in Knoxville, TN. Our practices mainly focus around harm reduction, but we also supply street medicing for actions and practice mutual aid. Instagram.

North Carolina:

Chapel Hill Food Not Bombs: Offering to-go food on Saturdays at Nightlight in Chapel Hill. 430-530pm.
Along with hygiene products, cleaning supplies, harm reduction. Offering delivery & drive up service. Everything is free. No questions asked. Email: foodnotbombs919@gmail.com. Instagram.

Mutual Aid Carrboro: In the coming weeks, potentially millions of workers will be sent home without pay. For the most precarious, that could mean evictions, utility shut-offs, missed payments, and other economic catastrophes. That’s why Mutual Aid Carrboro is partnering with NC Piedmont DSA to create the COVID-19 Mutual Aid Relief Fund. Donate here.
Surry County Mutual Aid Network: Our goal is to help get needed supplies to people to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 into Surry County NC.
Asheville Survival Program: In any kind of crisis we are always strongest when we work together. We can overcome our fears and the urge to isolate and hoard, to instead be part of a meaningful community wide response. Information sharing is a critical first step, from there we can work together as neighbors and friends to ensure everyone has what we need.

Atlanta:

Food 4 Life: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, we are operating a grocery delivery program in Atlanta, Georgia to ensure that those impacted by the virus will not be forced to choose between decent food and their health. Food is a human right, we must help each other! Donate here. Website.
Atlanta Mutual Aid: Students at Emory, Morehouse, Spelman, and Georgia State are facing removal and even eviction from their dorms in the response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Many students, such as international, LGBTQIA+, and out-of-state students do not have an immediate place to move to or store their belongings. Tens of thousands of students are being displaced and are in immediate need of resources and support.

Washington DC:

Takoma DC Community Care and Mutual Aid: Times that are potentially scary require us to better support one another. In the same way that we bring casseroles to grieving families and baby clothes to celebrate newborns, we can come together as a community to help each other through this difficult time.
East River Mutual Aid Fund: In the wake of the COVID-19, the people of D.C. are mobilizing to launch and expand real grassroots mutual aid efforts. Facebook. Spreadsheet.

Alabama:

Birmingham Mutual Aid: In these fast moving and uncertain times, it’s important to show up for each other and remember that we are not alone. Mutual aid is a powerful way to build strong connections – we all have something to offer and we all have something we need.

Kentucky:

Lexington Mutual Aid: We are building a network of people who can support their neighbors through mutual aid in Lexington, Kentucky.
Louisville Mutual Aid: We are building a network of people who can support their neighbors through mutual aid in Louisville, Kentucky.
Kentucky Mutual Aid: With the current uncertainty, it’s important that no one falls through the cracks. Facebook.
Youth Mutual Aid Fund: For young folks in Kentucky and Appalachia experiencing income loss or food and housing insecurity due to COVID-19. We’re also providing social events and general trainings to keep folks busy via video and phone calls and are available to chat with folks who are looking for social connection and need help finding resources. In the next few weeks, we’ll be expanding to ensure young folks get fair treatment from universities. Donate here.

Arkansas:

Mutual Aid Northwest Arkansas: We are building a network of folks who can support their neighbors through mutual aid in Northwest Arkansas.
Free Store Pantry in Fayetteville, Arkansas: A working food bank at 647 W. Dickson St. in Fayetteville AR. as the ongoing COVID-19 crisis continues. All donations will be to help those who do not have the means or access to food.

.@DSA_of_NWA has opened out emergency mutual aid pantry for the #COVID19US pandemic pic.twitter.com/eIypIzsQdh
— Blanca Estevez (@best__ev) March 13, 2020

Louisiana:

New Orleans Mutual Aid: As the city and country shuts down over the coming days and weeks, it is crucial that we build robust mutual aid networks that can support the elderly, the immunocompromised and the vast group of hospitality workers who have no safety net. Instagram.
Bvlbancha Collective: If you are local to the Bvlbancha area and you or a neighbor could benefit from fresh garden herbs, or plant medicines, pls contact us through email or the contact us portion of our page!!! We have herbs for immune-boosting, respiratory health, lymphatic support & working with fevers. Fresh & dried herbs for teas & steams, syrups, & some tinctures on hand. We also have a limited supply of stress relief herbs/elixirs. And more brewing right now. Plus, everything in stock from our website. No one will be declined due to lack of funds as long as we have supplies on hand. We are happy to do porch/mailbox drops as time allows. Also, we have homemade hand sanitizer! Pls, don’t hesitate to reach out! We’re in this together!

Florida:

Tampa Mutual Aid: In response to the COVID-19 epidemic, Tampa Dream Defenders and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief are partnering to support the most vulnerable in our community.

Northeast

Maryland:

Mutual Aid and Emergency Relief Fund: Food, Clothing & Resistance Collective – Maroon Movement is doing a mutual aid & emergency relief fundraising drive, and pop-up distributions, for anyone who may need some “extra assistance” to stock up food, toiletries and medical supplies in Baltimore during this still very early stage of an emerging pandemic (Covid-19), in the middle of another pandemic (Influenza). Twitter.
Baltimore Mutual Aid: Spreadsheet hub for mutual aid in Baltimore, Maryland.

Pennsylvania:

Pitt Mutual Aid: We‘re a team of student leaders dedicated to providing up-to-date information and resources for the COVID-19 pandemic. Check out our resource guide here.
Neighbors Helping Neighbors: We are simply neighbors helping neighbors. The aid provided comes from community support and solidarity thus we cannot guarantee to meet each request but we will be trying our best to do so . We are not funded, we are not a government or medical agency, we are simply neighbors connecting neighbors to neighbors who can help (and we happen to be organizers). Facebook.

Neighbors Helping Neighbors in Philadelphia

Massachusetts:

Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville: In these fast moving and uncertain times, it’s important that we show up for each other and remember that we are not alone. Facebook.
Charles River Mutual Aid: We will be pooling funds in a Mutual Aid Fund to purchase food, medical supplies, and other necessities, and organizing to provide these resources to the community.
Tufts Mutual Aid: Tufts is closing due to COVID-19, and are compiling resources for students who need it. Fill out the form if you have resources to give, and reach out to those who have resources you need!
Solidarity Supply Distro: Solidarity Supply Distro is a coalition of leftist and anti-capitalist organizers in Boston who are building community resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic. Donate here. Facebook.

Rhode Island:

Providence Mutual Aid: Project LETS is working to support the Providence, RI community during times of increased fear, isolation, and need.
Mutual Aid Jamaica Plain & Roxbury Network: Mutual aid is a powerful way to build strong connections – we all have something to offer and we all have something we need.

New Jersey:

Central New Jersey: This form originally was asking for volunteers too, but we have enough for now! We’ll ask for more as requests come in.
North New Jersey Mutual Aid: This group is for the purposes of sharing resources, needs, and info about mutual aid work that people are doing at this time. Facebook.

New York:

Friends of Westcott Mutual Aid Group: Many of us in Westcott (Syracuse, NY) are looking for ways to help those in our neighborhood who may be affected by Covid-19. Some people in our community may have health risks. Others may be financially affected due to social distancing. This includes employees at the several businesses in our neighborhood that rely on people going out to eat and drink.
NYC United Against the Coronavirus: Massive collection of mutual aid projects and resources throughout the New York area. Includes many localized mutual aid groups.
NYC Mutual Aid Network: Mutual aid is a powerful way to build strong connections – we all have something to offer and we all have something we need.

Vermont:

Mutual Aid Hubs in Vermont: These Mutual Aid links each consist of a spreadsheet with multiple tabs for different categories of need (food, transportation, housing, emotional support, etc) and are specific to different regions of Vermont.

New Hampshire:

Seacoast Mutual Aid: Spreadsheet of information on needs and volunteers.
Manchester Mutual Aid: Spreadsheet of information on needs and volunteers.

Canada

Reading List

Against Quarantine, The New Inquiry
Against the Coronavirus and the Opportunism of the State, CrimethInc.
One Way Or Another, One Day We’ll All Wear Masks, CrimethInc.
Social Contagion: Microbiological Class War in China, Chuang
The Threat of Contagion, Ill Will Editions
When Every Community is Ground Zero: Pulling Each Other Through a Pandemic, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

Coronovírus: mensagem espiritual de Bezerra de Menezes (Chico de Minas Xavier)

17/03/2020UncategorizedBezerra de Menezes, COVID-19, Espiritismo, Karcecismorenzotaddei

on 16 de março de 2020

By chicodeminas

Coronovírus: mensagem espiritual de Bezerra de Menezes

Durante a 22ª Conferência Estadual Espírita, neste domingo, 15, em Curitiba (PR),. Bezerra de Menezes proferiu linda mensagem espiritual de fé e força neste momento que a Terra enfrenta o Coronovírus através de psicofonia pela mediunidade de Divaldo Franco.

Ele reforça a necessidade de aprendizado e amor ao próximo neste momento de mudanças e reflexões no mundo, com ações em escalas planetárias para combater do Coronavírus.

‘Nunca houve tão bela e nobre consciência’, diz em psicofonia Bezerra de Menezes, que afirma que esse momento consequentemente será compreendido pelos nossos corações.

Confira abaixo a íntegra da psicofonia de Bezerra de Menezes:

Bezerra de Menezes observa, também, a necessidade de precaução, obedecendo as leis vigentes de contenção da pandemia. E lembra que Jesus precisa de todos nós neste momento, unindos através do ‘amor responsável’.

Amor que doa sem receber

Através da psicofonia, Dr. Bezerra de Menezes lembra de como devemos amar, nos doando, sem desejar receber nada em troca.

‘Os céus enviam seus embaixadores para quem o intercâmbio se faça com mais facilidade. Tenha cuidado para que suas ondas mentais sincronizem as mentes que administram as vidas’, ressalta, para evitarmos a agonia.

Mudança de padrão de pensamento

Em outras palavras, alerta para a mudança de padrão de pensamento e energético que precisamos desempenhar para auxiliar os trabalhadores encarnados e desencarnados no combate ao Coronavírus.

Exemplo: dedicar no final de suas preces diárias energias para toda a humanidade. Portanto, busque a serenidade, encarando esse momento como aprendizado e cura.

What Might Africa Teach the World? Covid-19 and Ebola Virus Disease Compared (African Arguments)

17/03/2020UncategorizedAfrica, COVID-19, Ebola, Pandemia, Políticas públicas, Saúde públicarenzotaddei

By Paul Richards March 17, 2020

A medical official outside an emergency tent installed for patients infected by COVID-19 in Poland- Credit Sky News

Covid-19 is a flu-like illness (symptoms include fever, cough, and breathing problems) caused by a corona virus (SARS CoV-2). Like Ebola, the virus causing Covid-19 circulates within populations of bats and crossed over to humans via the bush meat trade. The first human cases were identified in China in December 2019, and the infection has now (March 2020) reached more than 100 countries.

The disease is now recognised by the World Health Organization as a pandemic. Up to 80 percent of the population of some countries might eventually become infected. Most cases will be mild, and recovery spontaneous. About 5 percent of cases will be life-threatening. Death rates appear to be around 1-2 percent. The elderly are most at risk.[1]

Currently, attention is focused on reducing the rate at which Covid-19 spreads. One aim is to delay the peak of infection beyond the winter flu period in the northern hemisphere, when medical help is stretched. Slowing the epidemic also allows more time for preparation of health systems to cope with large numbers, and for work on vaccine development.

Predictably, some politicians have demanded border closures against immigrants and refugees, even though spread is associated with tourism and normal business travel. Africans internationally stigmatised by Ebola might feel aggrieved that cases of Covid-19 have been introduced from Europe and Asia. But in a globally connected and inter-dependent world blaming and stigmatising helps no one. It is better to share ideas about what can be done to protect.

This is where Africa’s experience of Ebola has something to offer. Communities experiencing Ebola in West Africa in 2014-15 rapidly learnt from scratch how to cope with a deadly new infection, and this provides the rest of the world with important information on strategies to address novel disease threats more generally.

Like Ebola, Covid-19 is a family disease, in the sense that many infections occur in the home. Restrictions on travel can slow the spread of the disease, but it also helps if individuals and families understand infection pathways and implement domestic precautions. This is something in which West Africans confronted by Ebola have had much experience.

History of Pandemics – credit Virtual Capitalists

The name for Ebola in Mende, one of the main languages of Sierra Leone, the worst affected country in 2014-15, was bonda wote, literally ‘family turn round’. In other words, it was clearly recognised that this was a disease requiring families to change behaviour in major ways, especially in how they cared for the sick.

Covid-19 will require similar changes at the family level, especially in terms of how the elderly are protected. The buzz words for epidemic responders include self-isolation and social distancing, but the details of how to implement these vague concepts have been left to local social imagination.

Answers are required for both the uninfected elderly, and for others who are sick.

Should grandpa be packed off to a shed in the garden away from the family for his own protection? What happens when grandma gets lonely and wants to see the grandchildren? Who does the shopping? How does the daily-paid worker ‘self-isolate’ when there is no sick pay? Who collects the children from school when a single mum is sick?

Much depends on actual family arrangements and housing stock. So African solutions for Ebola will not work directly in other parts of the world. But it is important to know that under the challenge of Ebola local people showed much inventiveness in devising solutions to such problems.

Evidence shows that ways can be found to reduce family risks of infection, even with a disease 30 times more deadly than Covid-19.[2]For Ebola, these ranged from the elbow knock that replaced shaking of hands as a public greeting, to the appointment of a single carer in the household to look after the sick while waiting for help, to the carefully choreographed ‘safe and respectful’ funerals that allowed some element of local ritual back into the burial process, a major source of infection.

Every encouragement should be given to this local adaptive creativity, and the authorities should listen carefully to information from below about what would help to make a difference.

However, Covid-19 is not Ebola, and differences have to be taken into account. Some of the major questions about how the disease spreads are as yet unknown, and citizens and households need to be listening for this information as it becomes available and helped to adapt to its implications in real time.

This implies having very good means of two-way communication. In Sierra Leone a telephone helpline, ‘117’, played an important part in arranging emergency Ebola response, but it was much poorer at harvesting feedback from communities about what could be done better.

It seems that the lesson has not been learnt with Covid-19. In Britain, the National Health Service helpline, ‘111’ has now been ‘stood down’ for Covid-19 enquiries relating to domestic testing, since the epidemic is deemed to have passed into a new phase. How then are the authorities to have a conversation with families about the resources most needed for adaptation at household level?

Case-handling is a second area of difference. Ebola does not spread easily. The virologist Peter Piot put it well when he stated that he would have no problem sitting next to someone with Ebola provided they were not vomiting over him. Infection spreads only through contact with body fluids. Covid-19, however, spreads through the air, as well as via bodily contact, and case numbers will be much higher.

With Ebola in West Africa the number of cases turning up at specialist Ebola care facilities at the height of the epidemic numbered in tens or hundreds per week. With Covid-19 the numbers of cases requiring intensive care at the peak of the epidemic may amount to hundreds of thousands.

Even if stretched out over several months infection on this scale implies a large extra demand for medical care.

Ebola taught that epidemics cause deaths from other diseases through their impact on health systems. In all there were about 12,000 Ebola deaths in Upper West Africa (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone) in 2014-15 but many additional fatalities resulted from, for example, closure of facilities such as maternity clinics.

So contingency planning is required. A key challenge for Covid-19 is how health system care should best be organized, without severely disrupting other forms of health provision.

For Ebola, the first response was to build large field hospitals (Ebola Treatment Centres).[3]These were seen as the safest option. But they were shunned by families, because so few patients came out alive. They were also often in the wrong place (built behind, not ahead, of the epidemic).

Information started to filter through that some communities were taking their own steps to reduce infection and bury the dead. This raised the question whether there was more scope for community care.

Family do-it-yourself responses proved controversial. International responders were adamant that there would be nothing resembling home care; it was too dangerous. Local communities were equally adamant that there would have to be some form of home care; they could not stand by and watch family members die, when an ambulance to take a patient to an ETC might take days to arrive over bad or non-existent roads.

Families saw it as their duty to be involved in care of the sick. So, they repeatedly asked what to do while waiting for help to arrive. Could they not prepare food for the sick? Could they not be trained to safely bury the dead?

No, they were told. Ebola required specialist management.

Communities answered back. They pointed to areas at the outset of the epidemic, where the epidemic was rolled back with only local resources. In Kailahun District, for example, an intense initial outbreak was reduced to a trickle of cases by local responders organizing quarantine and burial with improvised resources. That cases then declined without outside help implied either that the disease burnt out more readily than anticipated, or that local improvisation worked better than expected. There is evidence to support both interpretations.[4]

Experts knew that Ebola control required prompt diagnosis, before the ‘wet’ symptoms of the disease became apparent. Something had to be done to speed up the presentation of cases. The answer was to build much smaller community care centres (CCC) close to where active transmission was taking place.[5]This also changed the relationship between families and Ebola responders from fear to active cooperation.

Staff of CCC were for the most part local volunteers – trained nurses who had not been absorbed on to the payroll of the Ministry of Health, or villagers willing to take on high-risk chores for a decent wage. The fact that staffing was local meant patients saw familiar faces, and this built trust. CCC also normalized Ebola by bringing treatment within a framework of general medical assistance.

As a result, patients were presented more promptly than was the case with the distant ETC. Ebola (indistinguishable from malaria or typhoid in its early phase) was more rapidly identified and isolated. One study estimates that CCC contributed up to one third of the infection control ending the epidemic in Sierra Leone.[6]

This example of responders modifying their approach to infection control better to accommodate family requirements may hold lessons for Covid-19.

Specifically, cases may have to be kept out of main hospitals as much as possible, Thus, there may be a need for field treatment facilities not dissimilar to CCC, as a half-way house between home isolation and intensive care. In effect these facilities would isolate and triage the most vulnerable cases, as was the case with Ebola CCC.

There is also a possibility that any such facilities might be run up by military personnel[7]and staffed by medically trained ‘volunteers’ (retired doctors and nurses), as in Sierra Leone.

Interesting to note, the chief medical advisor for England was previously one of the proponents of the introduction of CCC in Sierra Leone, and we may be about to see some lessons directly transferred.[8]

Quarantine for Ebola in Sierra Leone is also an issue from which Covid-19 responders might wish to draw lessons. Much of it was organised and imposed by the state, and was at times heavy-handed. But communities also organised their own quarantine. They understood that self-isolation was in their own interest, and this sometimes worked surprisingly effectively.

Use was made of an approach used during the civil war of 1991-2002 of mobilising community youth to identify infiltrators. Visitors who might have been carrying the virus were turned away. But in other cases the approach was more focused on sequestering those who were well. Rural families sometimes decamped from villages with outbreaks to settle down for a few weeks in their farms, where sleeping quarters were sometimes built for the purpose.

In this respect, Sierra Leonean rural communities showed a clear appreciation of the fact that there were two distinct kinds of quarantine – self-isolation and protective sequestration. Both kinds are being used as part of the response to Covid-19, but at times without adequate discussion of how the two types differ and have different social motivations – self-protection and altruism towards neighbours. It is not wise to talk about self-isolation for the sick and the elderly in the same breath. The different motivations need to be more clearly explained.

In conclusion, it is also important to say something about what Africa can learn from its own experience of Ebola. The point made above should be reiterated – about the differences as well as similarities between Covid-19 and Ebola.

Prompt case finding, contact tracing and quarantine are being applied to Covid-19 as they were for Ebola.[9]Good hygiene practices, such as hand washing, also remain applicable. African countries with experience of Ebola know how to do these things, and this will be helpful in dealing with early cases.

However, African countries also have to be prepared to learn to adapt to the specific features of this new disease as more data emerge. This will pose more of a challenge, since this will require rapid knowledge-based domestic adaptation to new information on how Covid-19 spreads (perhaps most notably, why it affects the old more than the young, and how older people might be best protected from its effects).

The main lesson for both Africa and other parts of the world from Ebola for Covid-19, however, is that shared learning between communities and medical professionals is a key aspect of human adaptive response to emergent diseases. In any disease in which community mobilization is an important aspect families need to think like epidemiologists, but equally epidemiologists need to think like families.

Paul Richards’ Ebola book front cover, part of the African Arguments book series

References:

[1]Xu, J., Zhao, S., Teng T., Abdalla, A.E., Zhu, W., Xie, L., Wang, Y., Guo, X. (2020) ‘Systematic comparison of two animal-to-human transmitted human coronaviruses: SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV’, Viruses 12, 244.

[2]Richards, P. (2016) Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic, London: Zed Books.

[3]Richards, P., Mokuwa, E., Welmers, P., Maat, H., Beisel, U. (2019) ‘Trust, and distrust, of Ebola Treatment Centers: a case-study from Sierra Leone’, PLoS ONE14(12): e0224511. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224511.

[4]Glynn, Judith R. et al. (2017) ‘Asymptomatic infection and unrecognised Ebola virus disease in Ebola-affected households in Sierra Leone: a cross-sectional study using a new non-invasive assay for antibodies to Ebola virus’,Lancet Infectious Diseases17(6), 645-653. On local case finding, quarantine and burial procedures see Richards (2016) op. cit.

[5]Mokuwa, E.Y., Maat, H. (2020) ‘Rural populations exposed to Ebola Virus Disease respond positively to localised case handling: evidence from Sierra Leone’, PLoS Negl Trop Dis 14(1): e0007666. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0007666.

[6]Pronyk, P., Rogers, B., Lee, S., Bhatnagar, A., Wolman, Y., Monasch, R., Hipgrave, D., Salama, P., Kucharski, A., Chopra, M., and on behalf of the UNICEF Sierra Leone Ebola Response Team, (2016) ‘The effect of community-based prevention and care on Ebola transmission in Sierra Leone’,American Journal of Public Health 106, 727–32, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.303020.

[7]Aaaron Walawalkar and Jamie Grierson, The Guardian,8 March 2020, 14.12 GMT.

[8]Whitty, C.J.M., Farrar, J., Ferguson, N., Edmunds, W.J., Piot, P., Leach, M., Davies, S.C. (2014) ‘Tough choices to reduce Ebola transmission’, Nature515, 13 November, 192–4; see also Ian Sample and Lisa O’Carroll ‘Prof Chris Whitty – the expert we need in the coronavirus crisis’, Guardian,4 March 2020.

[9]Hellewell, J. et al. (2020) ‘Feasibility of controlling Covid-19 outbreaks by isolation of cases and contacts’, Lancet, 28 February 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30074-7.

The Coronavirus Called America’s Bluff (The Atlantic)

17/03/2020UncategorizedAutoritarismo, China, COVID-19, Decadência, Estados Unidos, Japão, Visibilidaderenzotaddei

Like Japan in the mid-1800s, the United States now faces a crisis that disproves everything the country believes about itself. March 15, 2020

Anne Applebaum Staff writer at The Atlantic

A coronavirus patient in quarantine — Jason Redmond / Reuters

On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy sailed into Tokyo Bay with two steamships and two sailing vessels under his command. He landed a squadron of heavily armed sailors and marines; he moved one of the ships ostentatiously up the harbor, so that more people could see it. He delivered a letter from President Millard Fillmore demanding that the Japanese open up their ports to American trade. As they left, Perry’s fleets fired their guns into the ether. In the port, people were terrified: “It sounded like distant thunder,” a contemporary diarist wrote at the time, “and the mountains echoed back the noise of the shots. This was so formidable that the people in Edo [modern Tokyo] were fearful.”

This is the story of an unnatural disaster.

But the noise was not the only thing that frightened the Japanese. The Perry expedition famously convinced them that their political system was incapable of coping with new kinds of threats. Secure in their island homeland, the rulers of Japan had been convinced for decades of their cultural superiority. Japan was unique, special, the homeland of the gods. “Japan’s position, at the vertex of the earth, makes it the standard for the nations of the world,” the nationalist thinker Aizawa Seishisai wrote nearly three decades before Perry’s arrival. But the steamships and the guns changed all that. Suddenly, the Japanese realized that their culture, their political system, and their technology were out of date. Their samurai-warrior leaders and honor culture were not able to compete in a world dominated by science.

The coronavirus pandemic is in its early days. But the scale and force of the economic and medical crisis that is about to hit the United States may turn out to be as formidable as Perry’s famous voyage was. Two weeks ago—it already seems like an infinity—I was in Italy, writing about the first signs of the virus. Epidemics, I wrote, “have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact.” This one has already done so, and with terrifying speed. What it reveals about the United States—not just this administration, but also our health-care system, our bureaucracy, our political system itself—should make Americans as fearful as the Japanese who heard the “distant thunder” of Perry’s guns.

Not everybody has yet realized this, and indeed, it will take some time, just as it has taken time for the nature of the virus to sink in. At the moment, many Americans are still convinced that, even in this crisis, our society is more capable than others. Quite a lot was written about the terrifying and reckless behavior of the authorities in Wuhan, China, who initially threatened doctors who began posting information about the new virus, forcing them into silence.

On the very day that one of those doctors, Li Wenliang, contracted the virus, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission issued a statement declaring,“So far no infection [has been] found among medical staff, no proof of human-to-human transmission.” Only three weeks after the initial reports were posted did authorities begin to take the spread of the disease seriously, confirming that human-to-human transmission had in fact occurred. And only three days later did the lockdown of the city, and eventually the entire province, actually begin.

This story has been told repeatedly—and correctly—as an illustration of what’s wrong with the Chinese system: The secrecy and mania for control inside the Communist Party lost the government many days during which it could have put a better plan into place. But many of those recounting China’s missteps have become just a little bit too smug.

The United States also had an early warning of the new virus—but it, too, suppressed that information. In late January, just as instances of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, began to appear in the United States, an infectious-disease specialist in Seattle, Helen Y. Chu, realized that she had a way to monitor its presence. She had been collecting nasal swabs from people in and around Seattle as part of a flu study, and proposed checking them for the new virus. State and federal officials rejected that idea, citing privacy concerns and throwing up bureaucratic obstacles related to lab licenses.

Finally, at the end of February, Chu could stand the intransigence no longer. Her lab performed some tests and found the coronavirus in a local teenager who had not traveled overseas. That meant the disease was already spreading in the Seattle region among people who had never been abroad. If Chu had found this information a month earlier, lives might have been saved and the spread of the disease might have slowed—but even after the urgency of her work became evident, her lab was told to stop testing.

Chu was not threatened by the government, like Li had been in Wuhan. But she was just as effectively silenced by a rule-bound bureaucracy that was insufficiently worried about the pandemic—and by officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who may even have felt political pressure not to take this disease as seriously as they should.

For Chu was not alone. We all now know that COVID-19 diagnostic tests are in scarce supply. South Korea, which has had exactly the same amount of time as the U.S. to prepare, is capable of administering 10,000 tests every day. The United States, with a population more than six times larger, had only tested about 10,000 people in total as of Friday. Vietnam, a poor country, has tested more people than the United States. During congressional testimony on Thursday, Anthony Fauci, the most distinguished infectious-disease doctor in the nation, described the American testing system as “failing.” “The idea of anybody getting [tested] easily the way people in other countries are doing it? We’re not set up for that,” he said. “Do I think we should be? Yes, but we’re not.”

And why not? Once again, no officials from the Chinese Communist Party instructed anyone in the United States not to carry out testing. Nobody prevented American public officials from ordering the immediate production of a massive number of tests. Nevertheless, they did not. We don’t know all the details yet, but one element of the situation cannot be denied: The president himself did not want the disease talked of too widely, did not want knowledge of it to spread, and, above all, did not want the numbers of those infected to appear too high. He said so himself, while explaining why he didn’t want a cruise ship full of infected Americans to dock in California. “I like the numbers being where they are,” he said. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”

Donald Trump, just like the officials in Wuhan, was concerned about the numbers—the optics of how a pandemic looks. And everybody around him knew it. There are some indications that Alex Azar, the former pharmaceutical-industry executive and lobbyist who heads the Department of Health and Human Services, was not keen on telling the president things he did not want to hear. Here is how Dan Diamond, a Politico reporter who writes about health policy, delicately described the problem in a radio interview: “My understanding is [that Azar] did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that’s partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear—the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential reelection this fall.”

Once again: Nobody threatened Azar. But fear of offending the president may have led him to hesitate to push for aggressive testing nevertheless.

Without the threats and violence of the Chinese system, in other words, we have the same results: scientists not allowed to do their job; public-health officials not pushing for aggressive testing; preparedness delayed, all because too many people feared that it might damage the political prospects of the leader. I am not writing this in order to praise Chinese communism—far from it. I am writing this so that Americans understand that our government is producing some of the same outcomes as Chinese communism. This means that our political system is in far, far worse shape than we have hitherto understood.

What if it turns out, as it almost certainly will, that other nations are far better than we are at coping with this kind of catastrophe? Look at Singapore, which immediately created an app that could physically track everyone who was quarantined, and that energetically tracked down all the contacts of everyone identified to have the disease. Look at South Korea, with its proven testing ability. Look at Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to speak honestly and openly about the disease—she predicted that 70 percent of Germans would get it—and yet did not crash the markets.

The United States, long accustomed to thinking of itself as the best, most efficient, and most technologically advanced society in the world, is about to be proved an unclothed emperor. When human life is in peril, we are not as good as Singapore, as South Korea, as Germany. And the problem is not that we are behind technologically, as the Japanese were in 1853. The problem is that American bureaucracies, and the antiquated, hidebound, unloved federal government of which they are part, are no longer up to the job of coping with the kinds of challenges that face us in the 21st century. Global pandemics, cyberwarfare, information warfare—these are threats that require highly motivated, highly educated bureaucrats; a national health-care system that covers the entire population; public schools that train students to think both deeply and flexibly; and much more.

The failures of the moment can be partly ascribed to the loyalty culture that Trump himself has spent three years building in Washington. Only two weeks ago, he named his 29-year-old former bodyguard, a man who was previously fired from the White House for financial shenanigans, to head up a new personnel-vetting team. Its role is to ensure that only people certifiably loyal are allowed to work for the president. Trump also fired, ostentatiously, the officials who testified honestly during the impeachment hearings, an action that sends a signal to others about the danger of truth-telling.

These are only the most recent manifestations of an autocratic style that has been described, over and over again, by many people. And now we see why, exactly, that style is so dangerous, and why previous American presidents, of both political parties, have operated much differently. Within a loyalty cult, no one will tell the president that starting widespread emergency testing would be prudent, because anyone who does is at risk of losing the president’s favor, even of being fired. Not that it matters, because Trump has very few truth-tellers around him anymore. The kinds of people who would dare make the president angry have left the upper ranks of the Cabinet and the bureaucracy already.

But some of what we are seeing is unrelated to Trump. American dysfunction is also the result of our bifurcated health-care system, which is both the best in the world and the worst in the world, and is simply not geared up for any kind of collective national response. The present crisis is the result of decades of underinvestment in civil service, of undervaluing bureaucracy in public health and other areas, and, above all, of underrating the value of long-term planning.

Back from 2001 to 2003, I wrote multiple editorials for The Washington Post about biological warfare and pandemic preparedness—issues that were at the top of everyone’s agenda in the wake of 9/11 and the brief anthrax scare. At the time, some very big investments were made into precisely those issues, especially into scientific research. We will now benefit from them. But in recent years, the subjects fell out of the news. Senators, among them the vaunted Republican moderate Susan Collins of Maine, knocked “pandemic preparedness” out of spending bills. New flu epidemics didn’t scare people enough. More recently, Trump eliminated the officials responsible for international health from the National Security Council because this kind of subject didn’t interest him—or very many other people in Washington, really.

As a nation, we are not good at long-term planning, and no wonder: Our political system insists that every president be allowed to appoint thousands of new officials, including the kinds of officials who think about pandemics. Why is that necessary? Why can’t expertise be allowed to accumulate at the highest levels of agencies such as the CDC? I’ve written before about the problem of discontinuity in foreign policy: New presidents arrive and think they can have a “reset” with other nations, as if other nations are going to forget everything that happened before their arrival—as if we can cheerfully start all relationships from scratch. But the same is true on health, the environment, and other policy issues. Of course there should be new Cabinet members every four or eight years. But should all their deputies change? And their deputies’ deputies? And their deputies’ deputies’ deputies? Because that’s often how it works right now.

All of this happens on top of all the other familiar pathologies: the profound polarization; the merger of politics and entertainment; the loss of faith in democratic institutions; the blind eyes turned to corruption, white-collar crime, and money laundering; the growth of inequality; the conversion of social media and a part of the news media into for-profit vectors of disinformation. These are all part of the deep background to this crisis too.

The question, of course, is whether this crisis will shock us enough to change our ways. The Japanese did eventually react to Commodore Perry’s squadron of ships with something more than fear. They stopped talking about themselves as the vertex of the Earth. They overhauled their education system. They adopted Western scientific methods, reorganized their state, and created a modern bureaucracy. This massive change, known as the Meiji Restoration, is what brought Japan, for better or for worse, into the modern world. Naturally, the old samurai-warrior class fought back against it, bitterly and angrily.

But by then the new threat was so obvious that enough people got it, enough people understood that a national mobilization was necessary, enough people understood that things could not go on that way indefinitely. Could it happen here, too?

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is a senior fellow of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Her latest book is Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine.

Derek Thompson: America is acting like a failed state
Anne Applebaum: Epidemics Reveal the Truth About the Societies They Hit

“A Time to Rethink America”: Sanders Sets Tone at Coronavirus Debate (Truthout)

16/03/2020UncategorizedBernie Sanders, Capitalismo, COVID-19, Desigualdade, Eleições americanas, Joe Bidenrenzotaddei

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders takes part in the 11th Democratic Party 2020 presidential debate in a CNN Washington Bureau studio in Washington, D.C., on March 15, 2020.

By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout

Published March 16, 2020

The final Democratic presidential debate of 2020 was a dispiriting affair for reasons that went far beyond the politics of it. The specter of COVID-19 lent a stark gloominess to the occasion, as did the seeming emptiness of the room itself: three CNN moderators, two men and the cameras. I never thought I’d miss a debate audience, but the energy was gone from that room, and the brightly lit set could not make up for it.

And then there’s this: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that events of 50 people or more not be held for about two months,” Bloomberg News reported on Sunday. “For the next eight weeks, organizers should cancel or postpone in-person events of that size throughout the U.S.”

Primaries are scheduled to be held on Tuesday in Arizona, Ohio, Illinois and Florida. These contests were set to be decisive before the CDC’s recommendation — if Joe Biden wins them all, his delegate lead over Bernie Sanders would become all but insurmountable — and may be all the more so now. These four primaries could be the last of the season. Georgia has postponed its primary, which was slated for next Tuesday, and Louisiana’s April 4 primary has likewise been delayed.

It’s quite simple: If we are listening to the CDC’s recommendations, the remaining primaries will probably be put on hold at some point, either until this thing burns itself out, or altogether depending on the circumstances. The primaries this Tuesday may happen, or they may not, but no one should be surprised if they are the last ones for a long while.

“Election dates are very, very important. We don’t want to be getting into the habit of messing around with them,” Sanders told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a post-debate interview. “I would hope that governors listen to the public health experts, and what they are saying is … ‘We don’t want gatherings of more than 50 people.’ I’m thinking about some of the elderly people sitting behind the desks registering people to enroll, that stuff. Does that make a lot of sense? I’m not sure that it does.”

A cancelled primary election season would be the worst of all possible outcomes, and not just because Joe Biden would basically become the Democratic nominee by default. We do elections in this country, because if we don’t, we have lost all semblance of democracy. That all-important sentiment falls to ashes in the face of the coronavirus, which has the potential to lay waste to the nation’s older and immunocompromised population if not contained.

Authorities not named Donald Trump have been warning us this situation would bring sweeping changes to our lives, and they haven’t been wrong. A shortened 2020 Democratic nomination process may soon become part of that change, so the ability of either candidate to increase their nomination chances felt blunted by the same circumstances that led them to debate each other in that bright, empty room.

Joe Biden is fortunate that Bernie Sanders was feeling conciliatory under the circumstances, because Biden lied, lied and lied throughout the evening.

Sanders was strong throughout, opening the evening with a broadside against Wall Street and the wealthy, who were taken care of by the Federal Reserve in fine style on Friday. The Fed conjured $1.5 trillion in magic money and dumped it into the banking system so businesses can still borrow without breaking themselves financially. By the end of the weekend, the interest rate had been cut to basically zero.

“Bottom line from an economic point of view,” said Sanders, “what we have got to say to the American people, if you lose your job, you will be made whole. You’re not going to lose income. If Trump can put, or the fed can put a trillion and a half into the banking system, we can protect the wages of every worker in America.”

Biden, for his part, came into the evening looking to survive without damaging himself too badly. In this, he had help from an unlikely source: his opponent. While Sanders repeatedly sought to hold Biden’s feet to the fire on various aspects of the former vice president’s voting record, it became clear early on that Sanders was not out for blood.

“I know your heart is in the right place,” Sanders said to Biden on more than one occasion, a rhetorical fig leaf intended to convey the sense that Trump is the main enemy, and these two presidential candidates share many areas of common ground. “We talk about the Green New Deal and all of these things in general terms,” said Sanders toward the end of the first hour, “but details make a difference.”

Joe Biden is fortunate that Bernie Sanders was feeling conciliatory under the circumstances, and more fortunate the CNN moderators appeared unwilling to do their jobs, because Biden lied, lied and lied again throughout the evening. When tasked to defend his serially gruesome legislative record, Biden sailed off into the land of self-serving fantasy so often that #LyinBiden and #LyingJoe were top trends on Twitter all night long.

Biden has been lying about his stance on Social Security for months now, but found a whole new gear last night. He lied straight into the camera about statements he has made and votes he has cast, as if he’d forgotten that the internet exists and such brazen bullshit artistry doesn’t fly so well anymore.

Biden was similarly slippery on his support of the bankruptcy bill, on the Hyde Amendment and reproductive rights, on his vote for the Iraq War, on the Defense of Marriage Act, and on any and all areas where his record fails to meet the standard Sanders set simply by being in the room. One of the two candidates last night spent the last 30 years being right on the signal issues of the day, and it showed.

“A time to rethink America,” indeed.

“The fact is that the idea that I in fact supported the things that you suggested is not accurate,” was a typical Biden response to Sanders throughout the evening. The CNN moderators didn’t bother trying to call Biden on his loose relationship with the truth, but Sanders persistently did so.

Biden’s most newsworthy moment of the evening came when he flatly declared that he would select a woman to serve as his vice president. “I commit that I’ll pick a woman to be vice president,” said Biden. “There are a number of women who are qualified to be president tomorrow, I would pick a woman to be my vice president.”

This was, among other things, Joe Biden paying a debt to Rep. Jim Clyburn, whose endorsement before the South Carolina primary resurrected Biden’s moribund campaign. Clyburn has made it clear that he wants Biden to select a woman for a running mate, and preferably a Black woman. Biden’s announcement last night was a “Yes, sir” telegraphed to the House majority whip via live television broadcast.

For Sanders, this debate was perhaps his last, best opportunity to make the case for his vision for the presidency as clearly as possible. As usual, he did not disappoint:

In this moment of economic uncertainty, in addition to the coronavirus, it is time to ask how we get to where we are, not only our lack of preparation for the virus, but how we end up with an economy, with so many about people are hurting at a time of massive income and wealth inequality. It is time to ask the question of where the power is in America. Who owns the media? Who owns the economy? Who owns the legislative process? Why do we give tax breaks to billionaires and not raise the minimum wage?

Why do we pump up the oil industry while a half a million people are homeless in America? This is the time to move aggressively, dealing with the coronavirus crisis, to deal with the economic fallout, but it’s also a time to rethink America, and create a country where we care about each other, rather than a nation of greed and corruption, which is what is taking place among the corporate elite.

“A time to rethink America,” indeed. A great many sacred cows — most especially capitalism and its deleterious effect on health care — are on their way to the coronavirus slaughterhouse. Whether or not we proceed with the remaining primaries, we will be other than what we are as a nation when we come out the far side of this. Bernie Sanders told us as much last night, just as he has for the full term of his public life. If and how we heed him, finally, will be up to us in the end.

William Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America’s Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with Dahr Jamail, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.

How Spanish flu helped create Sweden’s modern welfare state (The Guardian)

16/03/2020UncategorizedAtivismo, Desastre, Desigualdade, Discriminação, Estado do bem-estar social, Gripe espanhola, Políticas públicas, Suéciarenzotaddei

The 1918 pandemic ravaged the remote city of Östersund. But its legacy is a city – and country – well-equipped to deal with 21st century challenges

Brian Melican

Wed 29 Aug 2018 07.15 BST Last modified on Mon 3 Feb 2020 12.47 GMT

Archive black and white picture Östersund — Spanish flu reached Östersund a century ago. Photograph: Alamy

On 15 September 1918, a 12-year-old boy named Karl Karlsson who lived just outside Östersund, Sweden, wrote a short diary entry: “Two who died of Spanish flu buried today. A few snowflakes in the air.”

For all its brevity and matter-of-fact tone, Karlsson’s journal makes grim reading. It is 100 years since a particularly virulent strain of avian flu, known as the Spanish flu despite probably originating in America, ravaged the globe, killing somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people. While its effects were felt everywhere, it struck particularly hard in Östersund, earning the city the nickname “capital of the Spanish flu”.

“Looking back through contemporaneous accounts was quite creepy,” says Jim Hedlund at the city’s state archive. “As many people died in two months as generally died in a whole year. I even found out that three of my forbears were buried on the same day.”

There were three main reasons why the flu hit this remote city so hard: Östersund had speedy railway connections, several army regiments stationed in close quarters and a malnourished population living in cramped accommodation. As neutral Sweden kept its armed forces on high alert between 1914 and 1918, the garrison town’s population swelled from 9,000 to 13,000.

By 1917, when navvies poured in and construction started on an inland railway to the north, widespread food shortages had led to violent workers’ demonstrations and a near mutiny among the army units.

The city became a hotbed of political activism. Its small size put the unequal distribution of wealth in early industrial society under the microscope. While working-class families crowded into insalubrious accommodation, wealthy tourists from other parts of Sweden and further afield came for the fresh mountain air and restorative waters – as well as the excellent fishing and elk hunting (passionate angler Winston Churchill was a regular visitor).

“The catastrophic spread of the flu was in no small part down to the authorities’ bewilderment and often clumsy reactions” – Hans Jacobsson, historian

“Many of the demonstrators’ concerns seem strikingly modern,” says Hedlund, pointing to a copy of a political poster that reads: “Tourists out of our buildings in times of crisis. Butter, milk and potatoes for workers!”

It wasn’t just the urban proletariat demanding better accommodation. At Sweden’s first ever national convention of the indigenous Sami peoples held in Östersund in early 1918, delegates demanded an end to discriminatory policies that forced them to live in tents.

Social inequality in the city meant the Spanish flu hit all the harder.

As the epidemic raged in late August, when around 20 people were dying daily, the city’s bank director Carl Lignell withdrew funds from Stockholm without authorisation and requisitioned a school for use as a hospital (the city didn’t have one).

View of Ostersund — ‘You can drop your kids off at kindergarten on the way to work and be out hiking or skiing by late afternoon.’ Photograph: Sergei Bobylev/TASS Advertisement

“If it hadn’t been for him, Östersund might quite literally have disappeared,” says Hedlund. For a brief period, Lignell worked like a benevolent dictator, quarantining suspected cases in their homes – and revealing the squalor in which they lived.

As his hastily convened medical team moved through Östersund, they found whole families crowded into wooden shacks, just a few streets away from the proud, stone-built civic structures. In some homes, sick children lay on the floor for want of beds.

The local newspaper Östersunds-Posten asked rhetorically: “Who would have thought that in our fine city there could be such awful destitution?”

People of all political convictions and stations in life started cooperating in a city otherwise riven by the class divisions of early industrial society. Östersunds-Posten itself moved from simply reporting on the epidemic to helping to organise relief, publishing calls for money, food and clothing, and opening its offices for use as storerooms. The state had proven itself inadequate, as historian Hans Jacobsson wrote: “The catastrophic spread of the Spanish flu in 1918 was in no small part down to the authorities’ bewilderment and often clumsy reactions.”

“After the epidemic, the state made tentative steps towards a cooperative approach to social reform” – Jim Hedlund, archivist

He cites the fact that Stockholm High Command refused to halt planned military exercises for weeks, despite the fact that regimental sickbays were overflowing. “What is interesting is that, after the epidemic, the state dropped investigations against Lignell and made tentative steps towards a cooperative approach to social reform. Issues such as poor nutrition and housing were on the political agenda,” says Hedlund. Anyone trying to date the inception of Sweden’s welfare state cannot overlook the events of autumn 1918.

One hundred years on, there are few better places than Östersund to see the effects of Sweden’s much-vaunted social model. The city is once again growing rapidly, but nothing could seem further away than epidemics and political radicalism. The left of centre Social Democrats have been in power in city hall since 1994, and council leader AnnSofie Andersson has made housing a priority – new developments are spacious, well-ordered and equipped with schools and playgrounds.

“There’s nothing that shows confidence like building stuff,” she says. “In fact, our local authority building partnership should, in my view, keep a small excess of flats in hand, because without a reserve people won’t move here.”

Östersund attracts a net inflow of people from southern Sweden. “It’s partly a quality of life issue,” says Andersson. “You can drop your kids off at kindergarten in the morning on the way to work and be out hiking or skiing by late afternoon.”

The city has recovered from the relocation of the Swedish armed forces fighter jet squadron in the 1990s by playing to its strengths: sports and tourism. A university now occupies the old barracks with a special focus on sports materials and technology. The airbase has become a thriving airport, handling half a million passengers a year.

Despite the net inflow of working-age people however, Östersund is facing a demographic challenge as baby boomers begin to retire. The shortages are being felt most acutely at the regional health authority, which occupies the Epidemisjukhus – the building hastily converted into wards during the Spanish flu by Carl Lignell. Clinical staff are proving hard to find and retain, and the region’s health service is underfunded. Some residents still suggest solving that lack of funding from central government “the Jämtland way”, like Lignell once did.

History doesn’t repeat itself identically, though. Sweden’s consensus-orientated political model now tends to defuse conflict even in proud cities with a liking for mavericks. One of Andersson’s strategies for dealing with the approaching lack of labour, for instance, is cooperating with local and national institutions to train up the young refugees the city has welcomed since 2015.

“School starts tomorrow – for the last time,” confides Karl Karlsson to his journal on 4 September 1918. “I leave in spring and it feels melancholy. I like farming, but I would still prefer to continue at school and study. But it’s impossible.” Ten days later, he notes that his family’s food stores are running low. “We’re almost out of flour and bread, the barley hasn’t dried yet, and we shan’t get any more rations, everything is being requisitioned.”

One hundred years later, a city – and a society – once unable to educate or even feed its youth is now one of the world’s wealthiest and fairest.

Amazon rainforest reaches point of no return (Climate News Network)

16/03/2020UncategorizedAmazônia, Desmatamento, Incêndio florestal, Mudanças climáticasrenzotaddei

March 16th, 2020, by Jessica Rawnsley

Satellite mapping of the devastating fires that swept through the rainforest in August last year.
*Image: NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens*

Brazilian rainforest expert warns that increased deforestation under President Bolsonaro’s regime is having a catastrophic effect on climate.

LONDON, 16 March, 2020 – Antonio Donato Nobre is passionate about the Amazon region and despairs about the level of deforestation taking place in what is the world’s biggest rainforest.

“Just when I thought the destruction couldn’t get any worse, it has,” says Nobre, one of Brazil’s leading scientists who has studied the Amazon – its unique flora and fauna, and its influence on both the local and global climate – for more than 40 years.

“In terms of the Earth’s climate, we have gone beyond the point of no return. There’s no doubt about this.”

For decades, he has fought against deforestation. There have been considerable ups and downs in that time, but he points out that Brazil was once a world-leader in controlling deforestation.

“We developed the system that’s now being used by other countries,” he told Climate News Network in an interview during his lecture tour of the UK.

“Using satellite data, we monitored and we controlled. From 2005 to 2012, Brazil managed to reduce up to 83% of deforestation.”

Dramatic increase

Then the law on land use was relaxed, and deforestation increased dramatically – by as much as 200% between 2017 and 2018.

It’s all become much worse since Jair Bolsonaro became Brazilian president at the beginning of last year, Nobre says.

“There are some dangerous people in office,” he says. “The Minister of Environment is a convicted criminal. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is a climate sceptic.”

Nobre argues that Bolsonaro doesn’t care about the Amazon and has contempt for environmentalists.

His administration is encouraging the land grabbers who illegally take over protected or indigenous tribal land, which they then sell on to cattle ranchers and soybean conglomerates.

For indigenous tribes, life has become more dangerous. “They are being murdered, their land is being invaded,” Nobre says.

In August last year, the world watched as large areas of the Amazon region – a vital carbon sink sucking up and recycling global greenhouse gases – went up in flames.

Nobre says the land grabbers had organised what they called a “day of fires” in August last year to honour Bolsonaro.

“Half of the Amazon rainforest to the east is gone . It’s losing the battle, going in the direction of a savanna.”

“Thousands of people organized, through WhatsApp, to make something visible from space,” he says. “They hired people on motorbikes with gasoline jugs to set fire to any land they could.”

The impact on the Amazon is catastrophic, Nobre says. “Half of the Amazon rainforest to the east is gone – it’s losing the battle, going in the direction of a savanna.

“When you clear land in a healthy system, it bounces back. But once you cross a certain threshold, a tipping point, it turns into a different kind of equilibrium. It becomes drier, there’s less rain. It’s no longer a forest.”

As well as storing and recycling vast amounts of greenhouse gas, the trees in the Amazon play a vital role in harvesting heat from the Earth’s surface and transforming water vapour into condensation above the forest. This acts like a giant sprinkler system in the sky, Nobre explains..

When the trees go and this system breaks down, the climate alters not only in the Amazon region but over a much wider area.

Time running out

“We used to say the Amazon had two seasons: the wet season and the wetter season,” Nobre says. “Now, you have many months without a drop of water.”

Nobre spent many years living and carrying out research in the rainforest and is now attached to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE).

The vast majority of Brazilians, he says, are against deforestation and are concerned about climate change – but while he believes that there is still hope for the rainforest, he says that time is fast running out.

Many leading figures in Brazil, including a group of powerful generals, have been shocked by the international reaction to the recent spate of fires in the Amazon and fear that the country is becoming a pariah on the global stage.

Nobre is angry with his own government, but also with what he describes as the massive conspiracy on climate change perpetrated over the years by the oil, gas and coal lobbies.

Ever since the late 1970s, the fossil fuel companies’ scientists have known about the consequences of the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“They brought us to this situation knowingly,” Nobre says. “It’s not something they did out of irresponsible ignorance. They paid to bash the science.” – Climate News Network

Jessica Rawnsley is a UK-based environmental journalist. She has written stories on the Extinction Rebellion movement and police tactics connected with demonstrations. She has a particular interest in campaigning groups and their influence on government climate policies.

Coronavírus e as quebradas: 16 perguntas ainda sem resposta sobre impacto da pandemia nas periferias (Periferia em Movimento)

16/03/2020UncategorizedClasses sociais, COVID-19, Desigualdade, Discriminação, Políticas públicas, Solidariedaderenzotaddei

Publicado porThiago Borges – 12 de março de 2020

Precisamos falar sobre o novo coronavírus, mas sem pânico.

Nesta quinta-feira (12/03), o Brasil acordou com 52 pessoas infectadas pelo coronavírus e foi dormir com 69 casos confirmados. Em todo o mundo, são 122 mil casos confirmados e mais de 4.500 mortes registradas. A Organização Mundial da Saúde (OMS) declarou pandemia, isto é, o vírus deixou de ser restrito determinadas regiões e passa a ser uma questão de saúde pública global.

A taxa de mortalidade do novo vírus, ainda sem vacina, é considerada baixa – em torno de 3% dos casos – e atinge principalmente pessoas com maior vulnerabilidade, como idosos ou com doenças pré-existentes (como diabetes, câncer, etc.).

Com mais de 50 casos no País, o Ministério da Saúde do governo de Jair Bolsonaro alerta que a transmissão deve se dar de forma geométrica – isto é, deixa de ser restrita a pessoas que se infectaram em outras regiões do mundo e passa a acontecer no próprio território.

Segundo o Instituto Pensi do Hospital Infantil Sabará, após atingir 50 casos confirmados o total de infectados no Brasil pode aumentar para 4.000 casos em 15 dias e cerca de 30.000 depois de 21 dias.

Com isso, o vírus deve se expandir rapidamente nas próximas semanas e o Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) precisaria de 3.200 novos leitos em UTI (Unidade de Terapia Intensiva) para dar conta da demanda – 95% dos 16.000 leitos de hoje já estão ocupados.

Dito isso, nós moradoras e moradores de periferias urbanas, povos da floresta e marginalizados em geral, precisamos nos atentar com as medidas de prevenção (confira no gráfico abaixo) mas também com efeitos colaterais dessa pandemia no nosso dia a dia.

Muito se fala no impacto da pandemia sobre a economia global. Mas em um País marcado por desigualdade social, machismo, racismo e LGBTfobia, com cortes em políticas públicas e desemprego recorde, o coronavírus tem potencial de impactar não apenas nossa saúde como também nossa frágil convivência em sociedade. Precisamos de solidariedade e vigilância nesse momento.

Por isso, a Periferia em Movimento faz 16 perguntas ainda sem resposta (a lista continua em atualização) sobre esse novo cenário:

1. As periferias vão receber recursos da saúde de forma proporcional às nossas necessidades?

2. O governo vai adotar medidas de confinamento ou restrição de circulação de pessoas?

3. Como fazer quarentena em área de aglomeração, como periferias e favelas?

4. Os governantes vão acionar a Polícia Militar pra controlar a população nas periferias?

5. Se rolar quarentena, quem vai dirigir os ônibus, fazer o pão de cada dia e entregar a comida do ifood no apartamento da classe média?

6. Com o desemprego recorde e o mercado informal em alta, pessoas que vivem de bico vão conseguir fazer dinheiro como?

7. Se as aulas forem suspensas, com quem ficarão as crianças que frequentam creches em período integral?

8. Sem aulas, sem merenda: estudantes em situação de insegurança alimentar vão passar fome se não forem pra escola?

9. Ainda sobre a suspensão das aulas, qual é o risco da explosão de casos de violência sexual contra crianças e adolescentes – que passarão mais tempo em casa?

10. O maior tempo em casa também aumenta o risco de mulheres sofrerem violência de seus companheiros?

11. E com mais pessoas com circulação restrita, o risco de conflitos em comunidades também aumenta?

12. Como os governantes avaliam as possibilidades de aumento em todos os tipos de violência com essa pandemia?

13. Como idosos em situação de vulnerabilidade serão assistidos pelo governo?

14. De que forma, a pandemia deve impactar a população em situação de rua?

15. Como ficam os presidiários, que já vivem em situações de aglomeração, tortura e com doenças que estão controladas no mundo externo?

16. E como serão atendidos os indígenas, que necessitam de estratégias específicas de saúde devido à menor imunidade a doenças transmitidas desde a invasão europeia ao continente americano?

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A modest proposal (15/15\15)

16/03/2020UncategorizedAuto-conhecimento, Compaixão, COVID-19, Empatia, Mudanças climáticas, Turismo predatóriorenzotaddei

By Miguel Brieva, originally published by 15/15\15

March 15, 2020

ARTIGO: Pandemia de coronavírus é um teste de nossos sistemas, valores e humanidade (Nações Unidas Brasil)

16/03/2020UncategorizedCompaixão, COVID-19, Discriminação, ONU, Políticas públicas, Vulnerabilidaderenzotaddei

Publicado em 13/03/2020. Atualizado em 13/03/2020

Em artigo publicado na imprensa internacional, a alta-comissária da ONU para direitos humanos, Michelle Bachelet, e o alto-comissário da ONU para refugiados, Filippo Grandi, afirmam que a doença provocada pelo novo coronavírus, a Covid-19, é um teste não apenas de nossos sistemas e mecanismos de assistência médica para responder a doenças infecciosas, mas também de nossa capacidade de trabalharmos juntos como uma comunidade de nações diante de um desafio comum.

“É um teste da cobertura dos benefícios de décadas de progresso social e econômico em relação aqueles que vivem à margem de nossas sociedades, mais distantes das alavancas do poder.”

Um jovem refugiado lava as mãos em Mafraq, na Jordânia, onde um sistema de aquecimento movido a energia solar, instalado com o apoio da IKEA Foundation e da Practical Action, ajuda a fornecer água quente. Foto: ACNUR/Hannah Maule-ffinch

Por Michelle Bachelet e Filippo Grandi*

Se nós precisávamos lembrar que vivemos em um mundo interconectado, o novo coronavírus tornou isso mais claro do que nunca.

Nenhum país pode resolver esse problema sozinho, e nenhuma parcela de nossa sociedade pode ser desconsiderada se quisermos efetivamente enfrentar este desafio global.

O Covid-19 é um teste não apenas de nossos sistemas e mecanismos de assistência médica para responder a doenças infecciosas, mas também de nossa capacidade de trabalharmos juntos como uma comunidade de nações diante de um desafio comum.

É um teste da cobertura dos benefícios de décadas de progresso social e econômico em relação aqueles que vivem à margem de nossas sociedades, mais distantes das alavancas do poder.

As próximas semanas e meses desafiarão o planejamento nacional de crises e os sistemas de proteção civil — e certamente irão expor deficiências em saneamento, habitação e outros fatores que moldam os resultados de saúde.

Nossa resposta a essa epidemia deve abranger e focar, de fato, naqueles a quem a sociedade negligencia ou rebaixa a um status menor. Caso contrário, ela falhará.

A saúde de todas as pessoas está ligada à saúde dos membros mais marginalizados da comunidade. Prevenir a disseminação desse vírus requer alcance a todos e garantia de acesso equitativo ao tratamento.

Isso significa superar as barreiras existentes para cuidados de saúde acessíveis e combater o tratamento diferenciado há muito tempo baseado em renda, gênero, geografia, raça e etnia, religião ou status social.

Superar paradigmas sistêmicos que ignoram os direitos e as necessidades de mulheres e meninas ou, por exemplo, limitar o acesso e a participação de grupos minoritários será crucial para a prevenção e tratamento eficazes do COVID-19.

As pessoas que vivem em instituições — idosos ou detidos — provavelmente são mais vulneráveis à infecção e devem ser especificamente incluídas no planejamento e resposta à crise.

Migrantes e refugiados — independentemente de seu status formal — devem ser plenamente incluídos nos sistemas e planos nacionais de combate ao vírus. Muitas dessas mulheres, homens e crianças se encontram em locais onde os serviços de saúde estão sobrecarregados ou inacessíveis.

Eles podem estar confinados em abrigos, assentamentos, ou vivendo em favelas urbanas onde a superlotação e o saneamento com poucos recursos aumentam o risco de exposição.

O apoio internacional é urgentemente necessário para ajudar os países anfitriões a intensificar os serviços — tanto para refugiados e migrantes quanto para as comunidades locais — e incluí-los nos acordos nacionais de vigilância, prevenção e resposta. Não fazer isso colocará em risco a saúde de todos — e o risco de aumentar a hostilidade e o estigma.

Também é vital que qualquer restrição nos controles das fronteiras, restrições de viagem ou limitações à liberdade de movimento não impeça as pessoas que possam estar fugindo da guerra ou perseguição de acessar a segurança e proteção.

Além desses desafios muito imediatos, o coronavírus também testará, sem dúvida, nossos princípios, valores e humanidade compartilhada.

Espalhando-se rapidamente pelo mundo, com a incerteza em torno do número de infecções e com uma vacina ainda a muitos meses de distância, o vírus está provocando ansiedade e medos profundos em indivíduos e sociedades.

Sem dúvida, algumas pessoas sem escrúpulos procurarão tirar vantagem disso, manipulando medos genuínos e aumentando as preocupações.

Quando o medo e a incerteza surgem, os bodes expiatórios nunca estão longe. Já vimos raiva e hostilidade dirigidas a algumas pessoas de origem do leste asiático.

Se continuar assim, o desejo de culpar e excluir poderá em breve se estender a outros grupos — minorias, marginalizados ou qualquer pessoa rotulada como “estrangeira”.

As pessoas em deslocamento, incluindo refugiados, podem ser particularmente alvo. No entanto, o próprio coronavírus não discrimina; os infectados até o momento incluem turistas, empresários internacionais e até ministros nacionais, que estão localizados em dezenas de países, abrangendo todos os continentes.

O pânico e a discriminação nunca resolveram uma crise. Os líderes políticos devem assumir a liderança, conquistando confiança através de informações transparentes e oportunas, trabalhando juntos para o bem comum e capacitando as pessoas a participar na proteção da saúde.

Ceder espaço a boatos, medos e histeria não apenas prejudicará a resposta, mas poderá ter implicações mais amplas para os direitos humanos e para o funcionamento de instituições democráticas responsáveis.

Atualmente, nenhum país pode se isolar do impacto do coronavírus, tanto no sentido literal quanto econômico e social, como demonstram as bolsas de valores e as escolas fechadas.

Uma resposta internacional que garanta que os países em desenvolvimento estejam equipados para diagnosticar, tratar e prevenir esta doença será crucial para proteger a saúde de bilhões de pessoas.

A Organização Mundial da Saúde (OMS) está fornecendo experiência, vigilância, sistemas, investigação de casos, rastreamento de contatos, pesquisa e desenvolvimento de vacinas. É a prova de que a solidariedade internacional e os sistemas multilaterais são mais vitais do que nunca.

A longo prazo, devemos acelerar o trabalho de construção de serviços de saúde pública equitativos e acessíveis. E a maneira como reagimos a essa crise agora, sem dúvida, moldará esses esforços nas próximas décadas.

Se nossa resposta ao coronavírus estiver fundamentada nos princípios de confiança pública, transparência, respeito e empatia pelos mais vulneráveis, não apenas defenderemos os direitos intrínsecos de todo ser humano; usaremos e criaremos as ferramentas mais eficazes para garantir que possamos superar essa crise e aprender lições para o futuro.

*Michelle Bachelet é a alta-comissária da ONU para direitos humanos. Filippo Grandi é o alto-comissário da ONU para refugiados. Este artigo foi originalmente publicado no site The Telegraph.