The US was sick long before coronavirus          

At the end of Marchi, as coronavirus deaths in the United States began to spiral out of control, President Donald Trump broadcast some important news on Twitter. Displaying his signature pathological attachment to unnecessary capitalisation, the president boasted that - according to the New York Times - the "Ratings" of his "News Conferences etc" were so off the charts as to rival "Monday Night Football" and the finale of "The Bachelor".  Granted, car accidents also get a lot of views - which does not mean they are good.

As if things were not bad enough, Trump's coronavirus performance quickly became an even more horrifying spectacle with the ascension of Jared Kushner - first son-in-law and preferred presidential adviser - to the position of de facto commander of the US response to the pandemic. And how are Kushner's own "ratings"? Well, at least he is keeping viewers on their toes.

'Shadow' taskforce 

After initially reportedly assuring Trump that coronavirus was no big deal, Kushner was naturally deemed to be the best person to attend to the ensuing disaster - despite his own role in fuelling it and his utter lack of qualifications in any relevant field. (Judging from Kushner's numerous other assignments resolving everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the opioid crisis, "qualifications" are perhaps no longer a thing.)

He is now heading up a "shadow" coronavirus taskforce, not to be confused with the official coronavirus taskforce headed by Vice President Mike Pence. Kushner's force involves his own former roommate - current US foreign investment tsar Adam Boehler - as well as a bevy of private-sector executives.

By all lucid accounts, the Kushner group's manoeuvrings have simply bumped an already chaotic government response up to obscene new levels of confusion. Kushner is furthermore "essentially operating without accountability", as Jordan Libowitz - communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington - pointed out in an April 6 article for NBC News. The shadow taskforce is being run "off the books, with closed-door meetings and private email accounts" - which, Libowitz suggests, could potentially be a good way to "steer emergency government funds into your family's bank account without people finding out". After all, there is no better time than a global pandemic to make the rich richer.

Kushner will 'get us all killed'

Kushner's latest enterprise has prompted news headlines like: "Lawmakers Want to Know: WTF Is Jared Kushner Doing?" As for his known activities, these include scoffing at New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's claim of a ventilator shortage (New York now has almost 20,000 coronavirus deaths) and throwing a hissy fit over the outrageous presumption by individual US states that they might somehow be entitled to access the national stockpile of medical equipment.

In a super-sketchy sequence of events, a health insurance company linked to Kushner and his brother was tasked with developing a coronavirus website for the US government - before the project was "mysteriously scrapped".

As it so happens, the Kushner family real estate business could also "be a prime beneficiary of a provision in the federal [coronavirus] recovery bill that allows owners of apartment buildings to freeze federal mortgage payments on low- and moderate-income properties", according to a Politico analysis. 

In the midst of Kushner's coronavirus machinations, even the New York Times felt compelled to run an op-ed titled "Jared Kushner Is Going to Get Us All Killed" (though the heading was later toned down). 

But while this concern is certainly valid, we should not forget that the US has been in the business of killing people for a long time - and that the prioritisation of profit over human life far predates the existence of Kushner, as transparently repugnant a figure as he may be. 

All sorts of death sentences

Beyond the matter of the US's predilection for waging wars that have slaughtered unthinkable numbers of people across the globe, it is worth recalling that the US military is also one of the primary polluters on the planet - and as such has made significant contributions to climate change, which was what was getting us all killed before the coronavirus interlude.

Meanwhile, the fact that the US throws gargantuan sums of money at its military killing machine rather than at, you know, domestic healthcare programmes or other more helpful endeavours is itself effectively a death sentence for many Americans.

It is also how we end up with US nurses wearing rubbish bags to protect themselves from coronavirus - and the news that uninsured Americans could be slammed with $75,000 in medical fees if hospitalised for the disease. 

Of course, poverty - another defining feature of the landscape in one of the world's "richest" countries - has long been proved to be deadly. And sure enough, coronavirus has hit low-income communities the hardest. "Above all," a Bloomberg editorial notes, "it disproportionately kills black people."

Over at the Wall Street Journal, a short dispatch on "coronavirus capitalism" and its "darker side" laments that, in March, a two-pack of Purell hand sanitiser was listed on Amazon for $99.95. The author concludes that, while epidemics may come and go, "human nature, unfortunately, stays the same" - a rather sweepingly inaccurate assessment given that the history of the world shows plenty of good examples of non-capitalist human populations. 

But in the US, capitalism is not just dark; it is a veritable plague.

Underlying conditions

Although Trump and his co-star Kushner are certainly committed as can be to the darkest sides of capitalism - eg, a willingness to throw countless Americans onto the coronavirus pyre to save the economy - it turns out they are not even that good at managing the system to effect their nefarious ends.

In a recent email to me, evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu, remarked that, while bourgeois political economy dictates that the state "act as capital's handmaiden", Trump & Co are dropping the ball: "A family who has had every underwear picked up by ill-paid staff can't even envision what's involved in servicing the logistics and infrastructure capital needs to accumulate from one side of the world to the other."

American power, he wrote, is "on the hook for cleaning up pandemics" that capital helps to create, thereby keeping the world on the same catastrophic developmental path. But as it currently stands, we are down to Jared Kushner, who, "reading a couple articles, is cleaning up the COVID fix with what is tantamount to mass murder." 

Ultimately, though, Kushner's pathologies could be diagnosed as symptomatic of the US's underlying conditions. Long before coronavirus, the country was critically ill.

by Belen Fernandez

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/sick-long-coronavirus-200505090657572.html

CORONAVIRUS: Difficult to explain
D.A.

After 2 months of the global coronavirus pandemic, data that are difficult to explain are observed if one takes into account the fact that the health conditions of the most affected countries (Europe and United States/New York) are generally acceptable, but they present numerous cases of contagion and death, compared to information collected in countries with less adequate sanitary conditions and a very high population density.
We observe in particular the data of the 5 most affected countries in Europe (Spain, Italy, France, United Kingdom and Belgium) to which we add the State of New York to the USA.
In these 6 countries, the cases recorded are around 650,000 with nearly 90,000 deaths.
For comparison, we note that (until 16/4/2020) in 5 countries that we take as examples, which have a larger population, a population density and generally less adequate sanitary conditions (Nigeria, Indonesia / Java, Egypt , Bangladesh and India) and that in total they have 2,000 million inhabitants, especially in large cities, the cases recorded were around 23,000 and the deaths less than 1,500 people (these figures are those observed until April 16, 2020 and may of course change)
So (for now) in these 5 countries with high population density and fewer health guarantees, the impact of the disease has been up to 60 times less.
Explaining these differences is an outstanding challenge.

A) Main European countries affected by coronavirus
Population, area, registered cases and deceased persons (04/16/2020)
ITALY
It has 60 million inhabitants over 301,000 km2
Recorded cases: 165,000 died 21,645
FRANCE
It has 67 million inhabitants over 643,000 km2
Cases recorded: 147,000 people died 17,167
SPAIN
It has 46 million inhabitants over 506,000 km2 Registered cases: 183,000 people died 19,130
UK
It has 68 million inhabitants over 242,000 km2 Registered cases: 103,000 died 13,729
BELGIUM
It has 11.5 million inhabitants over 30,500 km2 Registered cases: 35,000 people died 4,857
NEW YORK
It has 19.5 million inhabitants over 141,000 km2, registered cases: 214,648 deceased 11,586

B) The densest countries and regions of the world where health conditions are less appropriate and the levels of involvement of the coronavirus (04/16/2020): -
1) EGYPT
It has 195 million inhabitants, over an inhabited area of ​​40,000 km2 (the rest is desert). The capital Cairo has 20 million inhabitants. It rains less than 30 mm per year. Cases registered: 2505 Deceased persons: 183
2) NIGERIA
It has 206 million inhabitants. Main city, Lagos: 21 million inhabitants: Registered cases: 407 Deceased: 12
3) INDIA
Has 1,353 million inhabitants. Urban areas: Delhi region: 45 million, Mumbai region: 25 million. Cases registered: 12,759 Deceased: 423
4) INDONESIA / JAVA ISLAND
It has 150 million inhabitants, over an area of ​​128,000 km2; main city: Jakarta: 28 million. Recorded files: 5516. Deceased persons 496
5) BANGLA DESH
It has 161 million inhabitants over 147,000 km2. Cases registered: 1,572 Deceased persons: 341
We separate the case of China because it is difficult to make a comparison due to the special characteristics of this country. In all cases, we include the data for information purposes.
CHINA
It has 1.4 billion inhabitants: Pearl River Delta: 120 million; Shanghai: 25 million; Beijing: 22 million. Recorded cases: 82,341. Deaths: 3,342

Disobedience, because of you I will survive

By Maria Galindo

I have coronavirus, because although it seems that the disease has not yet entered my body, loved ones have it; because the coronavirus is going through cities I've been through in the past few weeks; because the coronavirus has changed with a trill of the fingers as if it were a miracle, a catastrophe, a tragedy without remedy, absolutely everything. Where you tread is, where you arrive has arrived before and nothing can be thought today, nor done, without the coronavirus in between. It seems that not only do I have coronaviruses, but we all have it, everyone, everyone; all institutions, all countries, all neighborhoods and all activities.

What is clear is that the coronavirus, rather than a disease, appears to be a form of multi-government police and military world dictatorship.

Coronavirus is a fear of contagion.

Coronavirus is a confinement order, however absurd it may be.

The coronavirus is an order of distance, as impossible as this is.

The coronavirus is a permission to suppress all freedoms, which for protection is extended without the right to reply or question.

The coronavirus is a qualification code for the so-called essential activities, where the only thing that is allowed is that we go to work or that we work in telework as a sign that we are alive.

The coronavirus is an instrument that seems effective to erase, minimize, hide or put in parentheses other social and political problems that we have been conceptualizing. Suddenly and magically they disappear under the carpet or behind the giant.

The coronavirus is the elimination of the most vital, democratic and most important social space in our lives, such as the street, that outside that we should not virtually cross and that in many cases was the only space we had left.

Coronavirus is the domain of virtual life, you have to be attached to a network to communicate and know yourself in society.

The coronavirus is the militarization of social life.

It is the closest thing to a dictatorship where there is no information, but in portions calculated to produce fear.

The coronavirus is an apparently legitimate weapon of destruction and prohibition of social protest, where we are told that the most dangerous thing is to get together and get together.

The coronavirus is the restitution of the concept of the border to its most absurd form; They tell us that closing a border is a security measure, when the coronavirus is inside and such closure does not prevent the entry of a microscopic and invisible virus, but rather prevents and classifies the bodies that may enter or leave the borders.

The Schengen space, which is where the coronavirus has spread to this part of the world, where I live, closes its border to the circulation of bodies outside that space and finally fulfills the fascist dream that others they are the danger.

The coronavirus could be the holocaust of the 21st century to generate a mass extermination of people who will die and are dying, because their bodies do not resist the disease and the health systems, they have classified them under a Darwinian logic as part of those who do not they are useful and therefore must die.

The millions of euros of bailout of their colonial economies appear to solve rents, utility bills, salaries, when all that proletarian mass was cutting the sky, saying that there was nowhere to pay the social debt. Now that they are scared to death, obedient and secluded, they are rewarded with the sweet consolation that they will settle their accounts, after having settled those that matter, which are those of corporations and states.

"Socialists" like those who govern Spain, speak of a war that we will all win together. They like the word, they believe that it serves to make body and make disease the supposed ideal enemy that unites us. There is nothing more fascist than declaring a war against society and against democracy, taking advantage of the fear of disease. Nothing more fascist than to make people's houses their jails. Nothing more neoliberal than proclaim the save yourself who can as a tutored solution.

And what happens when the coronavirus crosses the border and reaches countries like Bolivia?

Let us begin by saying that here the coronavirus was already awaited at the door by dengue, which has been killing in the tropics –without headlines in the newspapers– malnourished people, the Wawas, those who live in unhealthy suburban areas. Dengue and coronavirus greeted each other, on one side was tuberculosis and cancer, which in this part of the world are death sentences.

The hospitals built most of them at the beginning of the 20th century with the rise of tin and later modernized, in the seventies of the last century, with the rise of developmentalism, are mamotretos that collapsed a long time ago and where the bad habit of healing people

Since there is a curfew, are all those who make a living from working at night prohibited from subsisting?

Bolivian society is a proletarian society, without wages, without jobs, without industry, where the great mass survive on the streets in a giant and disobedient social fabric. Not a single one of the copied measures fits our real living conditions, not only for debts, but for life itself. Each and every one of those measures copied from economies that have nothing to do with ours, do not protect us from contagion, but rather try to deprive us of forms of subsistence that are life itself.

Our only real alternative is to rethink contagion.

Cultivate contagion, expose ourselves to contagion and disobey to survive.

It is not a suicidal act, it is common sense.

But perhaps in that common sense is all the most powerful sense that we can develop.

What if we decide to prepare our bodies for contagion?

What happens if we assume that we will certainly catch it and go from that certainty processing our fears?

What if, faced with the absurd, authoritarian, and idiotic state response to the coronavirus, we consider the social self-management of disease, weakness, pain, thought, and hope?

What happens if we make fun of border closings?

What happens if we organize ourselves socially?

What if we prepare to kiss the dead and to care for the living and the living outside of prohibitions, that the only thing they are producing is the control of our space and our lives?

What happens if we go from the individual supply to the contagious and festive common pot as we have done so many times?

They will say once again that I am crazy, and that it is best to obey isolation, seclusion, non-contact and non-response to the measures when it is most likely that you, your lover, your friend, your neighbor, or your mother are contagious.

They will say once again that I am crazy when we know that in this society there were never the hospital beds we need and that if we go to their doors right there we will die praying.

We know that the management of the disease will be mostly at home, let's prepare ourselves socially for that.

What if we decide to disobey to survive?

We need to feed ourselves to wait for the disease and change our diet to resist.

We need to look for our kolliris and manufacture these non-pharmaceutical remedies with them, try our bodies and explore what suits us best.

We need coquita to resist hunger and cañahua flour, amaranth, quinoa soup. All that they have taught us to despise.

Let death not catch us huddled in fear by obeying idiotic orders, let us catch kissing, let us catch making love and not war.

May he catch us singing and hugging us, because contagion is imminent.

Because contagion is like breathing.

Not being able to breathe is what the coronavirus condemns us to, rather than due to the disease of seclusion, prohibition and obedience.

Nosferatu comes to mind that in an unforgettable scene, when death is already imminent and the plague embodied in rats has invaded the entire town, everyone sits at a large table in the square to share a collective banquet of resistance. So find us the coronavirus, ready for contagion.

Helen Álvarez Edition - Journalist

* Member of Mujeres Creando

Paradigm shift
The globalization of pandemics is showing that capitalism is more vulnerable than it seemed

Globalization seemed to be the maximum expression of neo-capitalism, a fictional world of "stock markets", of immediate electronic financial flows, of almighty corporations, of concentration of powers and political wills in a few world governments.
Globalization also generated concrete physical contacts between people from very diverse geographical environments: hundreds of millions of tourists constantly move between countries and continents. From a biological point of view, humanity is transforming into one, and the first novel and aggressive microorganism ends up encompassing the entire planet and threatens to bring down the whole capitalist system that is proving to be much more vulnerable than we imagined.
So this question raised by Slavoj Zizek is particularly relevant. Below is a fragment of an article where this topic is raised.

"Is a fiercer capitalism coming or a renewed communism?
Philosophy and the coronavirus, a new ghost that travels the world
Slavoj Zizek threw the first stone when he wrote that the option, after the pandemic, will be "barbarism or some form of reinvented communism." Byung-Chul Han replied: "The virus will not defeat capitalism." Other thinkers, such as Giorgio Agamben, Franco "Bifo" Berardi, Srećko Horvat, Judith Butler and Alain Badiou, add to the debate glances that run from the news of the minute by the minute.
Byung-Chul Han, Judith Butler and Slavoj Zizek, three lucid pens to tackle a complex subject.
It is already evident that it is shaking the markets. But in the long run, could the coronavirus topple capitalism? The ever-fast reflex Slavoj Zizek has just published what is surely the first coronavirus essay. Pandemic's thesis! Covid-19 shakes the world (pandemic! Covid-19 shakes the world) is that the current health crisis exposed the weaknesses of liberal democracies and that the world is heading towards a positive political effect. “Barbarism or some form of reinvented communism”: such is the dichotomy that the Slovenian finds in this crude and complex historical setting, also unpublished.
In a context where information saturates and invades minds and homes, it can be healthy or even rich to enter into glances that run from the news from minute to minute. Several contemporary thinkers have looked at the pandemic: Italians Giorgio Agamben and Franco "Bifo" Berardi, Croatian Srećko Horvat, American Judith Butler, French Alain Badiou and South Korean Byung-Chul Han are some of those who expressed themselves about. The question about the evolution of the world economic scenario is in almost all approaches.
Zizek's new material is short, 120 pages, available both on paper and in digital format through OR Books. It is in tune with theories explained in a previous article for the RT portal, in which Zizek - Marxist, movie buff - defined the pandemic as "a blow to the Kill Billal capitalist system", in another of his usual conversations with popular culture . It was an article that made noise on social networks - it would be what many wanted to hear - and that sparked a response from Byung-Chul Han. “Zizek is wrong. The virus will not defeat capitalism, ”he sentenced in a column for the newspaper El País.
As the new ghost travels the world, leaving more and more dead and infected, in Pandemic! ... Zizek states that a "communist approach" - renewed, of course - is the way out of the crossroads. Nation-states placed at the service of the defense of the weakest. The virus showed that we lived with another virus inside, naturalized: capitalism. It is an opportunity to break free from the "tyranny of the market". But at the same time the author is not "utopian": he does not believe that the conflict will grow "solidarity among peoples". Because these days solidarity is more of a "survival instinct" and, as such, "rational and selfish."
They resonated "speculations that point to the fall of communism in China, in the same way that Gorbachev said that the Chernobyl tragedy led to the end of Soviet communism", but the paradox -always according to Zizek- is this: "The coronavirus forces us to reinventing communism based on trust in people and science. "The roles of the press and governments are not without their analysis. Although in his opinion China managed the coronavirus better than Italy, it criticizes the concealment of negative data by On the other hand, it lashes out at the United Kingdom and the United States for their efforts to keep citizens calm and to show control through lies. "The media repeatedly send us the message of 'no panic ' and then they have a series of data that necessarily lead us to panic" he questions. 
(to continue)
Author María Daniela Yaccar
Reference:
https://www.pagina12.com.ar/255882-la-filosofia-y-el-coronavirus-un-nuevo-fantasma-que-recorre-

A quasi-geographic view of the coronavirus pandemia

When one analyzes the geographical distribution and the season of the year in which the coronavirus developed, one notices that the most affected countries were in the winter season. 

Most of them (I would say, all of them) are in the northern hemisphere in some of the coldest months (february through march).

China, Korea, Italy, Spain were (are) coming out of winter. In Italy the focus is on the north (colder) eg Lombardia and principally Milán. There are less cases in the south (Sicily, Campania). In the US most cases occur in some of the "colder" states (New York, Seattle in the state of Washington).

It is by no means the only cause, but it seems quite clear, "winter" creates environments to facilitate the development of the virus and contagion. In winter respiratory diseases abound, the air in closed environments is less renewed.

Also, people in "winter" countries (for economic reasons because they are generally wealthier countries) people travel more (internationally).

Some data shows that this virus moves more in environments of "travelers", which are often people with more financial resources. For these reasons we notice that many highly influential political or aristocratic figures (J. Trudeau’s wife, Prince Charles, J., Tom Hanks and wife, Pedro Bordaberri (in Uruguay) etc.) have tested positive.

In Sub-Saharan Africa there are far fewer cases. Sanitary conditions are much worse, the health systems are not very good, but however the virus did not expand much.

Same with India, with a population of 1.3 billion people, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc.

There are some cases in these “tropical countries” but far less.

In many Latin-American countries, which are also located in tropical latitudes (or in the south, coming out of the summer season), the virus mainly spread among travellers, their families and their closest social environments. It is the case in Argentina and Uruguay (in this last country the upper-class neighbourhood Carrasco dominates the statistics).

Another thing is lethality. 

There you have to take into account the efficiency and coverage of health systems (obviously the Canadian health system is better prepared and has wider coverage than the US) and the German system is more efficient than the Italian or Spanish systems.

We will see if and how the new data confirm or not this very preliminary quasi-geographic analysis. 

D.A.

A theory that seems far-fetched but it may explain a few things about life and the possible contribution of microbes that may regularly arrive to earth hitchhiking meteorites

The coronavirus may have come from space according to  N. Chandra Wickramasinghe and Edward J. Steele 

With a new corona virus making the headlines and causing personal distress to many and extending its realm of havoc into the financial and business world the truest cause of this and other similar pandemics needs to be honestly explored. The main facts relating to the onset and spread of this pandemic can be summarised as follows: • On October 11 2019 a meteoritic bolide (probably fragment of a comet) explodes in a brief flash in Nth East China. We think it probable that this bolide contained embedded within it a monoculture of infective nCoV-2019 virus particles that survived in the interior of the incandescent meteor seen in Fig 1. From the broad range of arguments we shall develop later on in the article we consider the seemingly outrageous possibility (no doubt outrageous to many readers) that literally hundreds of trillions of infective viral particles were then released embedded in the form of fine carbonaceous dust from the flash-exploded bolide. 

In late November to early December 2019 first human cases nCoV-2019 appear in the Wuhan region and environs (by all accounts unrelated to Wuhan meat and seafood market). • 

Isolates of virus now studied in many laboratories show very low or no mutation indicating that the incoming virus is essentially a “monoculture”. This is dramatically different to the picture one gets if the main spread of the virus was through affected victims replicating the virus and spreading copies which inevitably would show mutations over a broad sample of isolates. Everyone in the Wuhan region would have been exposed to essentially the same virus (including many animals , such as mammals, snakes and even perhaps vegetation) • Unsubstantiated claims that people pass on the virus to others without, or before, they show any symptoms implies a very strange pattern of epidemiological behaviour forcing difficulties with the straight forward infective model of human-to-human transmission. On the other hand the meteorite hypothesis is consistent with a wide regional “environmental” contamination which may include clothes, hair, cars, side-walks, trees, grassland, surface water pools and water reservoirs. • From a crude look at the evidence it is amply clear that human-to -human transmission might have occurred yet it is low or difficult or confined to intimate family contacts. In the latter instance the contact transfer model is somewhat confused by the fact these intimate social units may have shared or sampled the same infected space. • A very wide area in China is “suspect” and this area is now quarantined – an operation that would probably have been done rationally based on Chinese government sampling for nCoV-2019 RNA sequences. The strong localisation within China is the most remarkable aspect of the disease, the first cases of which probably began to show up from November 2019 onward. The fatalities reported so far appears to be confined to individuals, particularly the elderly, with underlying health problems, and the death toll so far is said to be less than the thousands who have died in the US in the past 3 months from seasonal influenza. Links of this outbreak to a Wuhan wild life market have been highlighted, but detailed studies conducted thus far have not seriously strengthened the case. It appears that a range of wild animals including bats and snakes had become host species for a very similar corona virus but a causal connection again does not hold up to rational scrutiny. ( Our full scientific analysis of the data with our colleagues is in our letter submitted to The Lancet. The text can be found at viXra.org site viXra:2002.0039 at http://viXra.org/abs/2002.0039?ref=11076818) Readers would need to be reminded that a fireball of the kind shown in Fig. 1 is a meteoroid probably many tens of metres across. Although larger fragments meteorites would fall to the ground almost at once, micron-sized dust released in the troposphere above China would take several weeks to drift to the ground. If these particles became the nuclei of rain drops the transfer to ground level as rain and mist could be protracted and last many weeks. Such a line of thinking might sound bizarre to the uninitiated reader, but not so to anyone who has elected to take an objective view of the rapidly accumulating body of evidence to support the theory that life (all living forms on Earth) have an external origin – the theory known by the name “Panspermia”. Panspermia – an idea originally discussed by the pre-Socratic Geek philosopher Anaxoragas in the 5th century BC - challenges the idea that life originated de novo on the Earth. This theory refutes the idea of Spontaneous Generation as first enunciated by Aristotle in the 3rd century BC, and revived in the 20th century in the form of the primordial soup theory. Despite over 50 years of experiments in numerous laboratories there is no evidence to support this theory, and a large body of scientific evidence from biology, geology and astronomy actually contradicts it main tenets. The support for the alternative view that life is a cosmic phenomenon stems mainly from the fact that the information content of life at a genetic and molecular level is super-astronomical; and this needs at least an astronomical or cosmological setting. Thus, the idea is that life’s information, now locked largely in the form of bacteria and viruses, are everywhere in space being carried mainly in comets. Comets have radioactive heat sources in the interiors and serve as both distributors and amplifiers of cosmic life – bacteria and viruses. The panorama of life on Earth is the result of the assembly of such bacterial and viral genes that has come to be assembled like pieces of a gigantic jig-saw puzzle over some 4.2 billion years. Whenever a planet on which cosmic life has become established is struck by asteroid and comet impacts some of this life is of course destroyed – as happened for instance 65 million years ago with the extinction of the dinosaurs on Earth. But a small and significant fraction of the resident life on the planet is actually blasted off into space and would survive space travel to seed a nearby habitable planet. It is only relatively recently that scientists have been able to fully grasp the enormous magnitude of the microbial and viral content of the terrestrial biosphere. We now know that a typical litre of surface seawater contains at least 10 billion microbes as well as some 100 billion viruses—the vast majority of which remain unidentified and uncharacterized to date (https://www.the-scientist.com/features/an-ocean-of-viruses39112?archived_content=9BmGYHLCH6vLGNdd9YzYFAqV8S3Xw3L5). Two years ago an international group of scientists collected bacteria and viruses that fell through the rarefied atmosphere near the 4000 metre peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains of Spain. They arrived at an astonishing tally of some 800 million viruses per square metre per day and an associated slightly smaller tally of bacteria - all of which would of course ultimately fall to the Earth’s surface (eg. Reported in https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/13/science/virosphere-evolution.html). The assumption normally made is that all such viruses and bacteria necessarily originate on the Earth’s surface and are swept upwards in air currents; but in such a model many difficulties associated with the upward transport process are ignored. In our view, a significant fraction of this vast number of falling microbes must originate outside the terrestrial biosphere and come from cometary sources – viruses and bacteria that are actually expelled from comets. Further supportive evidence for this point of view has come from sampling the stratosphere for its bacterial content. From a sampling of the stratosphere at a height of 41 km, using balloon borne equipment which was carried out in 2001, we already arrived at an estimated input from this height of 20-200 million bacteria per square metre per day, and 10 to 100 times more viruses, falling downwards to the Earth. If we take into account all the facts available to date we cannot avoid the conclusion that vast numbers of bacteria and viruses continue to fall through the Earth’s atmosphere, and it seems inevitable that a significant fraction is of external origin. We are also beginning to get hard evidence pointing to the first signs of bacterial life being lodged in rocks that formed 4.2-4.3 billion years ago when the Earth was being relentlessly bombarded by comets. The strong indications are that comets carried the first bacteria to our planet at this time, and moreover that the entire subsequent evolution of life on Earth took place against the backdrop of comets regularly introducing new genes. Comets have been regarded with awe and trepidation in many ancient cultures of the world. Almost without exception they have been regarded as bad omens – bringers of pestilence and death. The evidence for comets being implicated in the origin of life on Earth was intensely controversial when these ideas were first discussed by one of us and the late Sir Fred Hoyle. Now there is a growing consensus that this is inevitable in some form. In this article we argue that even today the periodic influx of cometary dust and debris could be responsible for waves of epidemic disease – such as the recent corona virus - that sweep our planet from time to time. As a life-bearing comets makes its repeated orbits around the sun its volatile substances are progressively vaporised and eventually we end up with what could be recognised as large carbonaceous meteorites. The number of close perihelion passages that a comet can survive before becoming completely stripped of volatiles is probably a few hundred. Carbonaceous chondrites could represent materials from comets denuded of volatiles but retaining a residue of silicates and more refractory organic structures. From time to time such objects find ingress into the Earth.

Reference:

https://www.academia.edu/42041228/Comments_on_the_Origin_and_Spread_of_the_2019_Coronavirus

Coronavirus will expand much faster among street people and other disadvantaged social groups and with much higher letality

Seattle, Washington - Lovey faces a dilemma. If she finds hand sanitiser, she can either use it to clean her hands, or she can drip it in a can of fibres to light a fire for a night's worth of warmth in her tent that sits next to a highway in Seattle, Washington.

"You get pneumonia just by living in these tents," said 53-year-old Lovey, who preferred not to use her real name.

Temperatures often drop close to freezing during the winter in a city also known for frequent rains. Lovey had pneumonia a few years ago, and she is coughing up green phlegm from a sinus infection now.

Nearly two weeks ago, the hospital towering over her encampment was the site of the US's first death from the novel coronavirus that has taken almost 4,000 lives worldwide.

The Seattle area has the country's third largest concentration of citizens like Lovey, experiencing homelessness, and the city has become the centre of the US's battle against the spread of the novel coronavirus that has already led to at least 27 deaths, 22 of them in Washington state.

"It's really clear we've been in a public health crisis," said Alison Eisinger, executive director at the Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness.

"Honestly the most pressing need is housing, but that was also the most important need before a pandemic hit," Eisinger told Al Jazeera. "The immediate need is for dollars."

Almost half of Seattle’s homeless live unsheltered in tents, vehicles or on the streets.

Scientists say homeless communities, like the encampment where Lovey lives, are some of the most at risk of transmission and contraction of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Many deal with multiple diseases, malnourishment from food insecurity, mental health problems and violence.

"There are just so many competing, unmet needs, that it makes it that much harder
for homeless to contend with all of this," said Elise Riley, an epidemiologist at the University of California-San Francisco, who has studied infectious diseases in homeless populations.

In a city with one of the highest concentrations of homeless people, it's "only a matter of time" before the city's homeless are affected, Riley told Al Jazeera.

Almost half of Seattle's homeless live unsheltered like Lovey, in tents, vehicles or on the streets. Only New York and Los Angeles have more homeless people.

"I'm very distressed to hear about [Lovey]. I'm worried about a lot of people," said Eisinger. "Things are cold in Seattle right now. It is very clear there are thousands of people left outside after the shelters are full."

Step one: Provide housing

The three states on the west coast - California, Oregon and Washington - have seen the most dramatic rise in homelessness as tech companies have made the region a bustling hub of apartment skyscrapers and high salaries and rents.

"They may be doing the best they can, keeping their hands clean, keeping their distance from others," Riley said. "But there's so many risk factors and unmet needs. It's going to be extraordinarily hard for homeless folks to take the precautions that others are taking."

The first step to combatting any one of a number of compounding pressures on the lives of homeless people, researchers and officials say, is providing housing.

"The City of Seattle is facing a public health emergency with national implications, which requires a national response, including the financial resources to bring more of our unsheltered neighbours inside," Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan told Al Jazeera in an email.

Scientists say homeless communities are some of the most at risk of transmission and contraction of COVID-19 [Ian Morse/Al Jazeera] 

Eisinger was less confident in the city's commitment to addressing the needs of vulnerable people experiencing homelessness, noting that the policies that routinely displace residents are continuing.

"The city of Seattle has a policy of forcing people in public places to move without good reason," Eisinger said. "They're exacerbating health problems and making it harder for people to take care of themselves and each other."

"In King County and in cities across the country, concerns about specific risks to homeless populations underscore the need to address what we've long known is the only effective and durable solution to homelessness: housing first and foremost, along with case management to make sure folks are safe and have access to the support and services they need," Seattle City councillor Teresa Mosqueda told Al Jazeera.

Mosqueda called for emergency response authorities to address the need for homeless people and volunteers to have access to sanitation sites and adequate information about prevention in multiple languages. Money, Eisinger said, is urgently needed to support staff and supplies.

"Homeless service providers are frontline first responders," Eisinger said.

"Just as people think about needing to make sure firefighters, medical care providers, EMTs, and police are adequately staffed, the same thing is true for people who run services for communities experiencing homelessness."

The city government plans to open three locations with another 100 beds to provide housing.

King County, where Seattle is located, continues to seek more isolation sites for people who are travelling or who cannot be at home.

Local government also helped the Downtown Emergency Service Center move its beds into a large exhibition hall so clients could ensure at least six feet between each bed, reducing the likelihood of disease spread, said Daniel Malone, executive director of the centre.

Volunteers and the food they donated were in short supply as some city residents have begun staying indoors to protect themselves from the outbreak. On Monday, shelter providers were racing against the clock to secure safe and clean housing.

There has been local pushback, however, against the expansion of space for homeless people. When the county bought a motel in Kent, south of Seattle, its mayor feared it was a "pretext" for a long-term facility for homeless individuals or a quarantine facility.

Needs compounded

The needs for those experiencing homelessness compound quickly. Homeless people are ageing, which can make them more susceptible to viral diseases, and drug use can weaken immune systems.

In a survey last year, an estimated 27 percent of homeless people in Seattle and King County had a chronic health problem, and almost 4,000 or roughly 30 percent were above 50 years old.

Just last year, a report from a local medical group found that homeless people represented a "previously unrecognised" population at increased risk for problems with respiratory infections.

"In addition to finding housing in a city where there is no affordable housing, women are also trying to dodge violence, which can mean choosing crowded sleeping situations to avoid sleeping alone on the street," said Riley.

Scientists believe the novel coronavirus is less harmful to younger people, but conditions like stress and malnourishment can exacerbate vulnerability. In Washington state, the number of school-age children experiencing homeless has in the last decade increased sharply, now standing at roughly 40,000 students. A fifth of those are in Seattle and King County.

Eisinger has been in urgent meetings to arrange 24-hour housing to help the city's thousands of residents on the streets meet federal recommendations for disease prevention.

"I'm confident that Seattle has a strong and experienced health department," Eisinger said, "but what I'm not confident about is that everyone understands what needs to be done to address the needs of those experiencing homeless."

Companies in the area have shut down their offices, and some universities have told students to go home. But for many working low-wage jobs, paid sick leave or working from home is not an option. Business is not as usual, and some workers have had to decide between staying safe and paying rent.

In addition to getting people who are currently experiencing homelessness housed, we also need to remember the importance of keeping currently housed people where they are through things like rental assistance and programmes that facilitate rapid rehousing.

Similar conditions, fewer paycheques and unpaid rent led many into homelessness in the first place.

"In addition to getting people who are currently experiencing homelessness housed," said Riley, the epidemiologist, "we also need to remember the importance of keeping currently housed people where they are through things like rental assistance and programmes that facilitate rapid rehousing."

Lovey, who sleeps in a tent sandwiched between a highway and hospital, said she does not know where to go for medical help. Topping off her list of needs were rubbish bags and toilet access.

"We have to be conscientious about supporting people who don't have shelter," Eisinger said. "People outside need information, resources and they need to be evaluated themselves."

Reproduced from:

Al Jazeera

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/homeless-coronavirus-outbreak-200311121536154.html