Unimportant Talk: Just give them the damn trophy

Many sports leagues were late in their seasons or just beginning when the pandemic was declared.  For leagues which have playoffs, the entire year could be nullified and no champion crowned because of corona.  (See what I did there?)

Most football (soccer) leagues aound the world don’t have playoffs.  They play a double round robin against every team in the league, home and away once each.  The team with the most points wins.

In the English Premier League, teams have played 28 or 29 games, nine or ten remaining.  Liverpool (27 wins, 1 tie, 1 loss) leads the league by a staggering 25 points, a lead rarely seen in football leagues.

Only second place Manchester City can mathematically catch them. For that to happen, Liverpool would have to lose ALL nine remaining games and Man City win nine of ten, or win eight and tie two.  A single Liverpool win would clinch it.  With the exception of West Ham (near the bottom of the league), all the Premiership teams voiced support for giving Liverpool the trophy if the season is cancelled.

This is a near insurmountable margin, not a close five point lead.  Although sports are low of the status of importance, this is one where almost everyone who follows football (seriously or casually) can say Liverpool deserves their first championship in thirty years.  Just give them the damn trophy already.

The Door Slammed: Taiwan has barred entry to ALL new foreign nationals

I expected this, but not so soon.  I could leave and come back, but I have no plans to.

Sadly, this means friends of mine who planned to return won’t be able to.

Taiwan to bar entry of foreign nationals to combat virus

Taiwan will bar all foreign nationals from entering Taiwan starting Thursday, with some exceptions, as it intensifies efforts to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said Wednesday.

Health Minister and CECC head Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), announced the new restrictions at a CECC news conference Wednesday, and said it was necessary after seeing a spike in confirmed cases among Taiwanese who had traveled abroad recently.

Among the foreign nationals who will not be subject to the ban are those who hold Alien Resident Certificates (ARCs) or documents proving they are in Taiwan for diplomatic or other official purposes or to fulfill business contracts, as well as those who have received special permits, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said.

Freight ships continue to come and go (imports and exports), but the crews are not permitted to leave the ships while in port.  They can be unloaded by machine without human contact.

[Addendum]

Other unsurprising developments:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will not grant any extensions to foreign nationals with visitor visas. Force majeure (other than COVID-19), a lack of available flights, quarantine or a total lockdown on the foreigner’s home country are the only exceptions for remaining past the expiry date.  I guess we’ll find out who the illegal workers are when they can’t do visa runs anymore.

The government plans an NT$100 billion (~US$3b) stimulus package in expectation of a 2% drop in the local economy over the next year. Foreigners did not receive any in 2008, so it’s unlikely we will this time either. I’ll just be glad to keep my job, residency visa and health care card.

Trans People Targeted: Who will save us from the cops?

A few weeks ago, there were news items from Manila of Transgender women being rounded up by the cops.  Initial reports gave the impression it was the national government and Duterte giving the order.  Later items show that it was just two individual cops misusing an anti-sex trafficking campaign to abuse and harass people.  Both of them have been fired.

The two cops were targeting Transgender women, falsely luring them into police stations then holding them under the false pretense of “preventing sex trafficking”.  If they wanted to do that, they would shut down the SOGO three-hour hotels which operate openly all over Manila.  (Are there any Transgender sex workers in Manila?  Probably, but I never met any.  But I did meet and see several Transgender people just going about their days, working in stores or partying in bars.)

LGBTQ+ groups hit Oplan X-Men’s ‘targeted harassment’ against transgender women

Camp Queer points out ‘Oplan X-Men’ is only one example of the routine denial of transgender people’s right to exist in public spaces

LGBTQ+ groups were up in arms about the alleged profiling of transgender women in Makati City, caught especially in a viral video that circulated online on Friday, February 14.

It was in the video where two cops, Patrolman Timmy Paez and Police Corporal Juliel Atal, can be seen accosting Anne Pelos and inviting her to go to their headquarters for “profiling.”

Pelos said she was on her way home along Makati Avenue when the police stopped her.

In a now deleted Facebook post, Makati City Police dubbed their alleged profiling of transgender women in the city as “Oplan X-Men” in a bid to “rescue ladyboys” from exploitation and human-trafficking.

However, Makati City police chief Rogelio Simon said “Oplan X-Men” – the alleged profiling of transgender women in the city – was not a part of any police activity in Makati.

Simon confirmed to Rappler that Paez and Atal were relieved from their posts.

[Read more…]

Political Distance: Will Taiwan eventually close the island?

In the wake of new cases brought back to Taiwan, the government has announced travel restrictions for school teachers and all students below college level (i.e. not adults).  Infections worldwide have been much lower amongst children, so this is likely less about protecting kids than kids’ poor handwashing habits, bringing the disease back home with them.

[Addendum below the fold]

Virus Outbreak: Students, teachers barred from traveling overseas

The government has decided to prohibit students and teachers at high-school level and below from traveling abroad until the end of this semester due to the recent increase in the number of imported COVID-19 cases, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday.

Following discussions with experts, the Executive Yuan and other government agencies, the center decided that overseas travel would be inappropriate during the pandemic and made a recommendation that the Executive Yuan require that students and teachers at institutions below tertiary level not go abroad, said Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center.  The requirement would be in effect through the final day of classes, Chen said.

Summer vacation would allow ample time for self-quarantine.  Further down the item it says:

Prior to the CECC’s announcement, the National Students’ Rights Seminar in Taiwan, in response to the several local government following New Taipei City’s ban, said in a statement that it believed the local governments’ travel restrictions were in violation of Article 10 of the Constitution, which guarantees the “freedom of residence and of change of residence.”

Freedom of residence?  Their movement within Taiwan is not being restricted.  This nonsense isn’t going to fly, nor should it.

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Disease Soaked: Communal virus communion

The Greek unorthodox cult have decided that they will continue having “communion”. But unlike the catholics and wafers placed into mouths by hand, the Greeks drink from the same spoon.  Only the first person drinks from a clean spoon – if it’s washed and not handled.

In era of coronavirus, Greek church says Holy Communion will carry on

Greece’s Orthodox Church said that Holy Communion, the partaking of wine soaked in bread from the same chalice for atonement from sins, would continue despite the coronavirus outbreak.

Debate has raged in deeply religious Greece on whether it would be prudent for the Church to continue the ritual, where worshippers sip from the same spoon.

The Greek Orthodox Church attempted to put a stop to the chatter on Monday: “This cannot be the cause of the spread of illness,” the Holy Synod, the ruling body of the Church, said in a statement.

In other COVID-19 news, Taiwan’s health ministry announced the total cases are now 59, the newest all traced back to Taiwanese people who returned from vacations.

One of them was in Greece.

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What If This Happens: A hypothetical

Here’s a thought:

In the first three days after the 2001/09/11 attacks, the US’s air quality improved and pollution dropped.

What environmental effect will there be after close to a billion people in industrialized countries stop consuming fossil fuels and natural resources for a month or two?  Will we finally wake up and realize how much damage we’ve done, and how quickly we can change it?

I hope it’s a silver lining.

Anagram Play: Ha! Claiming one parent

Did you know the komodo dragon is a parthenogenic animal?  (See the title.)

I didn’t.  I also didn’t know it has W and Z chromosomes.  Females are WZ and males are ZZ, so only male parthenogenic offspring are viable.

A Komodo dragon with no male partner gave birth to three hatchlings

Charlie, a female Komodo dragon at the Chattanooga Zoo in Tennessee,

has proved to be the ultimate independent lady after successfully giving birth to three hatchlings without a male partner.

Even though Charlie and a potential mate named Kadal were placed together in hopes of breeding, the first-time mother produced the three brothers, named Onyx, Jasper and Flint, on her own through a phenomenon called parthenogenesis. It’s extremely rare among vertebrates: Only 70 backboned species can do it, which is about 0.1% of all vertebrates, according to Scientific American.

Komodo is definitely not an anagram of kodomo (child *, in Japanese).  They are aggressive and hostile, even within their own species.

[* corrected]

How To (And Not To) Respond: Putting money where empty mouths are

Talk about a hearwarming act of altruism and decency.

The ticket workers, concession staff, custodians and others who are paid hourly at NBA games will lose a lot of income during the shutdown.  The NBA players voluntarily (and NBA team owners after being shamed into it) have agreed to cover the lost income of workers at their arenas.  For a league that generates billions of dollars in annual revenue, this is a drop in the bucket, but will make a big difference to thousands of people.

Compare that with Cheetolini’s inept decision to pump a US$1.5 trillion giveaway to businesses on the stock market.  It was eaten up and disappeared in 30 minutes.  No explanation has been given for how this will be paid for except by continuing to cut off food stamps to 700,000 people . . . until a judge blocked the move because of COVID-19.

As some have noted, $1,500,000,000,000 works out to US$4200 per person in the US.  For working people, a $4000 cheque would have been enough to keep them going while the entire country shut down for one to four months.  If those earning over US$200,000 per year (8% of americans) were excluded, the 300 million remaining would have cost $1.2 trillion and kept the economy going, recouped lated by taxes and the multiplier effect.  Instead the money was thrown into a bottomless pit, never to be seen again.

What does it take to prove to people how incompetent Cheetolini is?  That so-called “wealth gain” on the stock market since 2016 (only for the rich) has completely gone.

Addendum:

Ottawa is planning a stimulus package for Canadians, but it is small businesses and individuals who will receive it.

In 2008, Taiwan issued coupons that could be spent as cash, with a limited time period to redeem them.  I expect the same might happen again if necessary.

 

WHO Lives And WHO Dies: Italian doctors are faced with a horrible task

Conditions are dire in Italy.  The resources and medical personnel needed are insufficient for the task.  The Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care (SIAARTI) has told them to treat patients as if they were in a war zone: Treat those who are easy to save, and give palliative care to the rest.

This was preventable, but politicians kowtowed to China for money.

The Atlantic: The Extraordinary Decisions Facing Italian Doctors

There are now simply too many patients for each one of them to receive adequate care.

Now the Italian College of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care (SIAARTI) has published guidelines for the criteria that doctors and nurses should follow as these already extraordinary circumstances worsen.

[…]

“Informed by the principle of maximizing benefits for the largest number,” they suggest that “the allocation criteria need to guarantee that those patients with the highest chance of therapeutic success will retain access to intensive care.”

The authors, who are medical doctors, then deduce a set of concrete recommendations for how to manage these impossible choices, including this: “It may become necessary to establish an age limit for access to intensive care.”

Those who are too old to have a high likelihood of recovery, or who have too low a number of “life-years” left even if they should survive, would be left to die. This sounds cruel, but the alternative, the document argues, is no better. “In case of a total saturation of resources, maintaining the criterion of ‘first come, first served’ would amount to a decision to exclude late-arriving patients from access to intensive care.”

In addition to age, doctors and nurses are also advised to take a patient’s overall state of health into account: “The presence of comorbidities needs to be carefully evaluated.”

The doctors will be forgiven for choosing who lives and who dies.  Those who put them in this situation should never be.

By Leaps And Bounds: Do they only get a quarter of the birthdays?

I was debating whether to talk about February 29th and my annual calendar reform rant.  Real life kept me from that, and what I said on facebook didn’t seem noteworthy enough for here.

Then on March 7, Henri Richard died, age 84.  He died a week after his birthday, February 29, 1936.  Richard won eleven Stanley Cups in a twenty (*) year career is the second most successful in North American pro team sports, bettered only by the NBA’s Bill Russell (11 titles in 13 years).

(* correction, not fourteen)

Another famous person who was born on a leap day and died in a leap year was Louise Wood (Feb. 29, 1920).  She was the head of the US Girl Scouts from 1961-1972.  She died in 1988.

Other notable leap day people (good and bad) include:

  • 1840: John Phillip Holland, inventor of the modern submarine (from Ireland)
  • 1860: Herman Hollerith, inventor of the first tabulating machine used in the 1900 US census and founder of the Tabulating Machine Company (which later became IBM)
  • 1904: Jimmy Dorsey, jazz band leader
  • 1928: Joss Ackland, actor
  • 1940: Gretchen Christopher, singer of The Fleetwoods (#1 hits “Come Softly To Me”, “Mr. Blue”)
  • 1956: Aileen Wuornos
  • 1960: Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker
  • 1984: Cam Ward (2006 Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe Trophy, 2007 World Chamionshipship)

Sure, none of this is life changing, but it’s for the curious.

One thing I recently learnt about leap year babies: most people assume that in other years, their birthday is celebrated on Februry 28.  Maybe individuals do, but governments treat March 1st as their birthday.  When your eighteenth birthday approaches and it’s February 28th, you’re not legally eighteen until the first.  This will likely also apply to sixteen year olds wanting to drive in 2100, but….

Don’t Breathe: There’s a life form that doesn’t require oxygen

From the realm of the really cool:

Henneguya salminicola is a species related to jellyfish, a multicellular animal that does not need oxygen to live.

H. salminicola is a parasite that lives in fish.  It’s harmless to people, but leaves white spots on the fish it infects.

Animal that doesn’t need oxygen to survive discovered

24 February 2020

by Michael Le Page

Breathing oxygen is seen as a fundamental characteristic of multicellular animals, but we have found at least one that can’t do it.

“It has lost the ability to breathe oxygen,” says Dorothee Huchon at Tel Aviv University in Israel. It remains a mystery how this animal, a parasite that infects salmon, gets the energy it needs without oxygen, she says, but it probably steals it from its host.

All plants and animals were thought to use oxygen to generate a fuel called adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which powers cellular processes. The generation of ATP from oxygen takes places in structures called mitochondria.

Each mitochondrion has its own tiny genome that is separate from the main genome in the cell nucleus. But when Huchon and her colleagues sequenced the DNA of Henneguya salminicola, which is related to jellyfish, they thought they had made a mistake because they found no mitochondrial DNA at all.

Further studies confirmed the finding. When the team stained H. salminicola with a blue fluorescent dye that binds to DNA, no DNA was visible in cells outside the nucleus. By contrast, when they stained a closely related parasite, blue dots corresponding to mitochondrial genomes were visible outside the nucleus.

So while the cells of H. salminicola have structures that look like mitochondria, they can’t make the enzymes needed to use oxygen to produce ATP. “These are not true mitochondria,” says Huchon.

Age Out: Is this ‘The Plague’ in real life?

In their latest attempt to incite panic and sell ad space, the talking heads on Chicken Noodle News (CNN) are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of mass deaths in countries with less developed health care systems.  You can almost see the glint in their eye, hoping that much of the population in countries like Iran will be wiped out.  But given that about 80% of Iran’s population is under 54 years old, that’s unlikely.  It’s times like this I’m glad I live on an island that can isolate itself.

COVID-19 is peculiar in who it affects the most and least.  The average age of those who die is 75, and the vast majority of those who died were over 50 and had other health issues (e.g. diabetes, cancer, heart conditions, etc.).  Those least affected have been children under 10, youths under 20, pregnant women and women in general.  I have not seen any mention of deaths among pregnant women and those under age 20, and reports said less than 200 children worldwide were sick.  It makes you wonder if there’s something specific about age and resistance to the disease.  Medical staff in China who contracted the disease and died were younger (in their 30s), but they were constantly exposed and in close proximity, on top of working 16+ hours per day without days off since they began working.

If COVID-19 becomes a worldwide pandemic, it’s likely not poor countries or countries with large populations of young people that will be hardest hit.  Rather, those with aging populations and “first world lifestyles” will likely suffer the most.

Study of 72,000 COVID-19 patients finds 2.3% death rate

Stephanie Soucheray | News Reporter | CIDRAP News | Feb 24, 2020

Researchers from China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention today describe the clinical findings on more than 72,000 COVID-19 cases reported in mainland China, which reveal a case-fatality rate (CFR) of 2.3% and suggest most cases are mild, but the disease hits the elderly the hardest.

The study, published in JAMA, is the largest patient-based study on the novel coronavirus, which was first connected to seafood market in Wuhan, China, in December, and has since traversed the globe.

Death rate in critically ill: 49% or higher

A total of 72,314 COVID-19 cases, diagnosed through Feb 11 were used for the study. Of the 72,314 cases, 44,672 were classified as confirmed cases of COVID-19 (62%; diagnosis based on positive throat swab samples), 16,186 as suspected cases (diagnosis based on symptoms and exposures only), 10,567 as clinically diagnosed cases (from Hubei province only, diagnoses based on symptoms, including lung x-ray), and 889 as asymptomatic cases (diagnosis by positive test result but lacking typical symptoms).

“Most cases were diagnosed in Hubei Province (75%) and most reported Wuhan-related exposures (86%; ie, Wuhan resident or visitor or close contact with Wuhan resident or visitor,” the authors said.

Eighty-seven percent of patients were aged 30 to 79 years (38,680 cases). This age-group was the most affected by a wide margin, followed by ages 20 to 29 (3,619 cases, or 8%), those 80 and older (1,408 cases, or 3%), and 1% each in ages less than 10 and 10 to 19 years.

Of the confirmed cases, 1,023 patients—all in critical condition—died from the virus, which results in a CFR of 2.3%. The CFR jumped considerably among older patients, to 14.8% in patients 80 and older, and 8.0% in patients ages 70 to 79. Among the critically ill, the CFR was 49.0%.

A smaller study today based on 52 critically ill patients at a Wuhan hospital confirms this finding. Thirty-two of the 52 critically ill patients (61.5%) died, and older age and acute respiratory distress syndrome were correlated with mortality.

The authors of the smaller study also found that 30 (81%) of 37 patients requiring mechanical ventilation had died by 28 days.

I’m mostly joking when I ask if this is “The Plague” come to life.  Mostly.

Schadenfreude Felt: I wonder what Winnie The Pooh will say now

Winnie the Pooh (a/k/a Xi Limping, as he limps from one crisis to another) has manipulated the WHO and UN to prevent Taiwan from having information on COVID-19.  Taiwan has been getting information third hand from the US’s CDC.

The mass murdering regime in Beijing continues to fumble, mishandle and make the coronavirus situation worse.  Prisons in three different provinces have reported at least 500 cases of COVID-19.  Given the dictatorship’s attitude towards human rights (“you are property of the state and disposable”) and the appalling conditions in China’s prisons, I doubt they will receive any medical care.  I would not put it past them to lock the doors and leave everyone to die.

On Friday, came the first sign of hope: a company named Adimmune has announced they are developing a vaccine based on the COVID-19 virus.  Care to guess which country Adimmune is based in?  Click to read more….

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