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How Chinese Kids Return to School
By Shlomo Maital
US President Donald J. Trump wants American schools to open – now! He rejects the CDC guidelines to schools as expensive and burdensome. (For once, CDC refused to rewrite them, as he ordered). He offers no aid to schools, already facing huge deficits, for the costs of safely opening.
It is unthinkable for the US to learn from other countries – how can the greatest nation in the world learn anything from, say, Canada, Finland, Taiwan, Singapore, and, heaven forbid, China?! But in the unlikely event anyone in the US is listening – here is how the Chinese re-open their schools: * And keep in mind: China’s GDP per capita is $10,000, one-sixth that of the US ($62,000).
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3654737014543735&id=1381450335205759
- Children enter the school one by one. Their hands are disinfected; their bodies; and the soles of their shoes.
- They have partitions between each desk. They practice social distancing.
- And they wear masks. Including small children.
- They disinfect again when they leave school – completely. Let’s face it. China is a rule-making society. Long before the Communist Party, China’s culture focused on ‘the greater good’ — collective responsibility. My friends in Asia simply cannot understand why Americans rebel against wearing masks, as an invasion of freedom. Schools should be re-opened. Kids need the social contact, more even than the knowledge. But it has to be done right. Israel did it – wrong. And we are now third in the world for new cases (as % of population).
- There is a simple point to be understood. You cannot save jobs, save the economy, restart the economy, while the novel coronavirus is raging. This will kill people. You have to support those who have lost all their income, restart very very cautiously, phase by phase, and first largely conquer the virus before you declare the economy open. IF you don’t, you get a second, third, fourth wave… and if we have a new wave on top of the Fall flu, which in Israel floods hospitals and puts people on beds in corridors – the bad news we have today will seem like a picnic in September. If you open schools stupidly, you will pay a very heavy price. We in Israel already are.
- America is a rule-breaking society. Proof? The gun laws, which allow automatic weapons. This has proved to be literally fatal, during the pandemic, when one rule-breaker can be a super-spreader. And basically, the POTUS, President of the United States, is metaphorically a super-spreader, denigrating masks, and spreading false optimism. Burdensome? Impractical? What in the world is so difficult, about making many thousands of plexiglass partitions, between school desks? Burger chain Shake Shack got $10 million in US emergency aid – the furor that resulted made them give it back, because, they did not need it in the least. Why can’t schools get the same deal that Shake Shack gets?
Sherlock Holmes: On the Trail of Coronavirus
By Shlomo Maital
Why didn’t we think of it sooner? Let’s enlist the famous detective Sherlock Holmes to track down the coronavirus. I know – he’s a fictional character, invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But wait – Sherlock is real!
Not exactly the London sleuth. But Sherlock Biosciences, the hi-tech company specializing in CRISP-R technology in diagnostics. Sherlock Biosciences has a test for COVID-19 that is fast, accurate – and may be a game-changer.
The Sherlock™ CRISPR SARS-CoV-2 kit is the first US FDA emergency use authorization (EUA) CRISPR-based diagnostic test intended for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid from SARS-CoV-2.
So – first, what is CRISP-R? It’s a technique for editing genes – using an amazing enzyme, CRISP-R snips a specific gene out of DNA – in order to study it, or replace it or repair it or detect it.
Sherlock’s founders gathered their team together, early in the pandemic, and told them, Pivot! (change direction). Can we use our technology, used to diagnose a variety of afflictions, to test for COVID-19? And literally, physically, the scientists pivoted – swiveled their chairs, turned to their computers – and went to work.
And they succeeded!
Here is how it works. CRISP-R snips out a piece of the Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) from the coronavirus swab, if that RNA exists. The technology then identifies the presence of that RNA and signals that the test is positive – yes, the patient does have the coronavirus. It first multiplies the snippet of RNA, so there is a lot of it – and then tests for its nature.
There is a huge problem with current COVID-19 tests. They take a very very long time to produce the results, as labs are over-burdened, and many have excessively large false positive and false negative. False positive is unpleasant – false negative is downright dangerous, leaving people to walk around and spread the virus, unwittingly.
Sherlock is a Cambridge MA based bioscience company, linked to MIT. I hope they will willingly and rapidly share their technology widely, so that the world – waiting for a vaccine – will at least be able to test instantly and accurately whether people are ill..
Famine After Virus
By Shlomo Maital
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in Christian faith, appearing in the New Testament’s final book, Revelation, an apocalypse written by John of Patmos, as well as in the Old Testament’s prophetic Book of Zechariah, and in the Book of Ezekiel, where they are named as punishments from God. They are Pestilence, Famine, War and Death.
We are currently confronting Pestilence. And that’s bad enough, right? But now, Oxfam, the global organization that confronts hunger, warns that Famine is on the way and it may be worse.
Here is the Oxfam report, issued today.
“More people could die from hunger linked to coronavirus than from the respiratory disease itself, Oxfam has warned. In a report, entitled The Hunger Virus, the charity cautions an estimated 122 million more people could be pushed to the brink of starvation this year as a result of the social and economic fallout from the pandemic including through mass unemployment, disruption to food production and supplies, and declining aid. This equates to as many as 12,000 people dying every day, Oxfam warned, 2,000 extra fatalities per day than when the virus was at its peak in April 2020.”
And shockingly, while this is ongoing, capitalism is pouring fuel on the famine fire:
“The report also said that eight of the world’s biggest food and beverage companies, including Coca Cola, Unilever and Nestle paid out £14.3 billion ($18 billion) to shareholders as new global epicentres of hunger emerge. The pay-outs by the companies are 10 times more than what was requested in the UN’s Covid-19 appeal to stop people from going hungry, Oxfam said.”
There HAS to be a plan to confront famine and hunger, at the same time we are working to confront the novel coronavirus. The Oxfam numbers, even if exaggerated, are terrible, and I do not believe they are exaggerated.
Is anyone listening?
Four Facts You Should Know about COVID-19
By Shlomo Maital
(based on The Daily, a New York Times podcast, by a respected science writer).
- COVID-19 is not a kind of respiratory flu attacking mainly the lungs. Ordinary flu attaches to the receptors in the lung, so we cough and feel heavy chests. But COVID-19 is a vascular disease – it attacks the small blood vessels everywhere, in the lungs, in the kidneys, intestines, even in the brain. This is why there are so many and varied symptoms. True, it does severely attack the lungs – but this is because it destroys the blood vessels in the lungs that carry oxygen to the rest of the body. And because it attacks the blood vessels, it quickly spreads throughout the body, and wreaks havoc in a wide variety of ways. Perhaps this is why those on ventilators do not have a high survival rate….because it is not just the lungs that are damaged.
- Mutation: COVID-19 has mutated. The original Wuhan, China, strain spread, and then at some point, probably in Italy, it mutated. And spread abroad. How? It became less virulent, less fatal, but more transmissible. The novel coronavirus mutates a lot, like all viruses…but most mutations are not viable. But this mutation, in Italy, was highly successful. Why? It killed fewer people – but that meant more people lived, to pass on the virus. Which is what the virus wants. It wants to spread. So we are dealing with a less deadly, but more virulent, virus, that spreads more easily. In part this explains why fewer are dying, but more people are being infected, in the US, Brazil and elsewhere… where many people don’t wear masks or practice social distancing. Both SARS and MERS viruses were lethal, killing 50% of more. That’s bad news. The ‘good’ news: It meant that they both spread far far less quickly and easily than COVID-19. Same for the 1918-19 pandemic. The initial flu killed a lot of people. It stopped, paused, mutated – and then came back a year later as a new version, less lethal but far far more transmissible, in the second wave.
- Outdoors/indoors: COVID-19 does not spread well outdoors. Even small amounts of wind disperse the aerosol, tiny drops, that contain tiny bits of the virus, when we breathe, shout, sing, or cough. This is in part why the massive outdoor social protests that sprang up, across the US, did not seem to directly cause massive hotspot outbreaks of virus. In contrast, the virus spreads far more easily indoors….
- Schools: Young children are less affected by it, though not all, and they are less dangerous in spreading the virus. Children seem to have smaller ‘loads’ of virus, and the smaller the load, the less likely it is to spread to someone else. When considering whether to open schools, this should be taken into account.
Learning from Angela Merkel
By Shlomo Maital
It was all over for Angela Merkel. She announced her retirement as head of the Christian Democrats, in Germany, and more or less disappeared as Chancellor.
And then – came the pandemic. Writing in the New York Times, Anna Sauerbrey * explains how Merkel is hugely popular, her party leads by far in the polls – and Germany has weathered the pandemic far better than the US, for instance, where President Trump, a born misogynist, persistently mocks “Angela”. [The New Yorker reported: The first Trump-Merkel encounter in the Oval Office began with almost comically awful optics: Merkel offered a ceremonial handshake for the cameras, which Trump seemed to rebuff. After the photographers left the room, Trump reportedly announced, “Angela, you owe me one trillion dollars.”].”.
Here is a selection from Sauerbrey’s piece: “Now, in early July 2020, Ms. Merkel is riding high. The country, with a notably low fatality rate and a high-functioning test and trace system, has contained the pandemic — a success many attribute to the chancellor. In a recent poll, 82 percent of Germans said that Ms. Merkel was doing her job “rather well.” And the Christian Democratic Union is once again far ahead of its challengers.”
Please recall that Merkel is a highly trained scientist – a quantum chemist, someone who understands deeply both physics and chemistry. A perfect person to lead a nation through a crisis that demands deep scientific understanding.
Now, let’s assume that the United States has a President who is wise, open-minded, modest, humble, intelligent, and desperate to lead his country through the crisis in an admirable fashion. The US and Germany have much in common. Both have a federal structure – the 50 states in the US, and the German federal states. Both in Germany and the US, the state governments have major powers. The wise US President says, let’s find out why and how Germany is doing so well, and adapt its policies.
Here, the similarity ends. In the US, Republican ‘red’ states [Florida, Arizona, Alabama, etc.] have opened prematurely, triggering a disastrous wave of new infections. In Germany, Merkel’s knowledge and background gave her credibility, and she deftly coordinated policy, so that the German states followed her guidance carefully. No “Florida’s” or “Arizona’s” in Germany.
The federal government in Germany manages and directs the test and trace system, with massive resources and trained personnel. A model of excellence.
Not so in the US. And the US President? His shocking, racist speech at Mt. Rushmore barely mentioned the pandemic. Maybe, he thinks, if I ignore it – it will just go away.
The people of Germany are fortunate to have Merkel in a strong leadership position during the pandemic.
The hapless people of the United States are desperately unlucky to have Trump leading them, even though three million more people voted for his rival.
* How Germany Fell Back in Love With Angela Merkel. New York Times, July 8, 2020.
Mission Accomplished? Uh, Whoops, Not Quite!
By Shlomo Maital
Bush’s Mission Accomplished speech
A small bit of 17-year-old history: In his “Mission Accomplished” speech (named for a banner displayed above the speaker) United States President George W. Bush spoke on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003. Bush stated it was the end to major combat operations in Iraq. We won. Yay!
Bush’s claim —and the sign itself—became controversial after warfare in Iraq increased during the Iraqi insurgency. The vast majority of casualties, both military and civilian, occurred after the speech.
Fast forward. In the Wall Street Journal, Vice-President Mike Pence declares, just two weeks ago: “There Isn’t a Coronavirus ‘Second Wave’. With testing, treatments and vaccine trials ramping up, we are far better off than the media report.” Meanwhile, the US is among world leaders with some 50,000 new cases daily. And President Trump? CNN reports: in mid June, “ when U.S. health officials reported nearly 27,000 new Covid-19 cases, President Trump said in a television interview that the virus was “dying out.” He brushed off concerns about an upcoming rally in Tulsa, Okla., because the number of cases there is “very miniscule,” despite the state’s surging infection rate.”
Mission Accomplished? A victory lap? Not quite. And people are dying as a result.
My country Israel is no exception. We are among world leaders in new cases per 1,000 population. And the numbers are rising. A bloated coalition cabinet is like a carving I once saw, a two headed snake, one head trying to eat the other. This, after our Prime Minister took ‘credit’ for Israel’s astounding success in defeating the coronavirus.
And it is no second wave. It is the continued first wave, of a sneaky wily piece of ribonucleic acid that is humiliating the vaunted brainpower of humans, 86 billion brain cells for each of the 8 billion or so people on earth. Two to zero, in favor of the virus.
No, mission not accomplished. And the arrogance of claiming that it is, is itself criminal.
Build Back Better – Toward an Emergence Vision
By Shlomo Maital
In the US, Israel and other nations, we are seeing a disastrous collapse of leadership. There is no vision regarding the future, and how we are to emerge from the pandemic. Churchill once said, if you’re going through hell – keep going. But where? How? Our leaders shrink into the shadows and fall silent. Let someone else take the blame.
Here is a blueprint for emergence. Start with a mantra – three words. Build back better. No, we will not go back to the ‘good old days’, they actually weren’t that good, as the virus proved. We will build back – but better.
How? We start with a careful audit, by experts. What were the range of social, political, educational and economic failings before the pandemic? Inequality, apathy, ill health, poor schools… write the entire list.
Second, strategic plan. How can each of these ills be repaired? And most important, how can we use creativity, with minimal resources, to tackle the problem? Schools can shift to project-based learning – that won’t require huge new resources, kids will thrive.
The Bible says (Psalms) in Hebrew, without vision, a nation literally falls to pieces:
. אין חזון יפרע עם
So Give us a vision. Build a strategic plan. Tell every part of society where they fit into it and what they must do. Do it bottom up – canvas all of society for ideas. Get people to pull together. Today, in Israel, each interest group – small business, artists, performers – demonstrates on their own, with the guiding principle: the squeakiest wheel gets the most grease. A bad system.
Crises produce new leaders. I eagerly await the new leaders who will step and bring us their vision – and help us implement it.
One Terrible Picture – Worth Thousands of Words
By Shlomo Maital
New COVID-19 cases in the United States, daily, from early March
The graph above shows new COVID-19 cases daily, for the United States, up to date. It speaks for itself. (The graph is from the New York Times).
This is what happens to a country with inept criminal leadership, or lack of leadership, and a politicized pandemic where wearing masks is ‘unconstitutional’, where political leaders buckle under popular pressure and open the economy too soon – and then find they can’t close it again. Go back to Memorial Day weekend, Monday May 25 – and the crowds that gathered at beaches and parks – and you can see the second wave 14 days later. And no, President Trump and Vice-President Pence, this is NOT because of increased testing!
So nations of the world! Look at this closely. If you make the mistakes the US has made, heaven forbid, this is what awaits you.
As I write this, new cases in Israel are exploding. But very little is being done.
The World is Unstable: Surprise!
By Shlomo Maital
In my previous blog, I quoted experts who warned that in a globalized world, an epidemic will spread quickly via travelers – quoted in a book published two decades ago by a brilliant science writer Mark Buchanan * and in an article published in the leading science journal NATURE in 1998.
It is worth another short blog to describe Buchanan’s main message in his book.
Economics is all wet; beware. The world is inherently unstable, including financial markets; markets are not efficient and no, supply does not always balance demand and no, prices do not always and everywhere reflect true underlying value. The opposite: There are frequent ‘avalanches’, and infrequent but massive huge crashes. Earthquakes are unpredictable; because the plate tectonics that cause them are unstable. So are financial markets. A vast industry, and an army of misguided economists, exist based on an enormous fallacy – prediction is possible. Data prove otherwise. Post hoc explanations of crashes are simply amusing; they are ad hoc, not just post hoc. Both physical and human systems are simply – inherently unstable. It is the way of Nature.
There is an important personal lesson in Buchanan’s fine book (he has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics). If the world is unstable, then be prepared to adapt to major, sudden crises. Keep a small reserve of resources on hand. Forewarned is forearmed; if you anticipate avalanches, if you are aware they happen, you may be less shocked when they occur. If you are head of a family or a parent, embrace this in your family setting. If you are a junior or senior manager, prepare your organization.
If you are a political leader, start now – with ‘build back better’, and ‘prepare for an avalanche’ — but, probably, given US, UK, and Brazilian loser-leaders, that is way too much to ask.
- Mark Buchanan: Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen. Three Rivers Press, New York: 2001.
The Real Culprit of the Pandemic: Globalization
By Shlomo Maital
Nov. 9, 1989. The Berlin Wall falls. The two Germany’s unite quickly. The European Union expands. And the age of globalization begins.
December 2019. Wuhan. A novel coronavirus is identified. It spreads globally.
Has the age of globalization ended? And – is globalization the true underlying culprit?
I’ve been reading a remarkable book, two decades old, by a brilliant science writer Mark Buchanan: Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen. Three Rivers Press, New York: 2001.
In Chapter 8, Buchanan recalls the “six degrees of separation” discovery of social psychologist Stanley Milgrom, in 1967 – in which any two people anywhere can be connected, by no more than six direct links, each link comprising someone you know personally. Based on Milgram’s work, Buchanan writes, two scholars, Watts and Strogatz, modeled such ‘networks’ as a tool for modeling the spread of infectious diseases. [Duncan Watts and Steve Strogatz. “Collective dynamics of small-world networks”, Nature 393, 1998, pp. 440-442.]
Their finding: (in 1998): “Watts and Strogatz also modeled the spread of infectious diseases on small-world networks, and found that they spread much faster than they would on ordered networks. What’s more, only a very few shortcut links are necessary to make this happen. This has disturbing implications for how dangerous diseases might be able to spread over the world, carried to or from remote places by just a few long-distance travellers”.
Explanation: “ordered networks” are regular ‘grids’, where your links are your immediate neighbors. Small-world networks are like ‘six degrees of separation’ disorderly ones, like the kind Milgrom discovered – in other words, real networks as they are in the real world.
Globalization has massively expanded trade and travel. The benefits have been massive. Emerging markets, especially in Asia, have grown wealthy. Western consumers have been flooded with inexpensive goods from Asia.
But apparently, the price is the current pandemic. When the whole world is interconnected by flows of goods, people and information, it grows wealthy and prosperous (though not everyone of course) – and also becomes highly vulnerable to pandemics.
I am, and have been, a big fan of the benefits of globalization. But as often happens, we ignored the attendant risks. We were told in 1998 and in 2001. I guess we were not listening too closely.
TIMnovate 