Many believe Covid-19 to be curtailed quickly but I doubt it and just thinking about the global setbacks keeps us up at night. The sheer level of fear, who will be standing after the fact is most scary. Take Covid-19 very seriously as we come to realize it has a life of its own, and until they find a treatment it is all hell breaking loose.

I wonder how long we can go on in isolation in preparation for return to our daily lives. I watched Boris Johnson’s address to the public, it is accurate and honest and well done. Isn’t it time Dr. Evil starts to face up to reality and not just his own nonsense, what planet is he living on….

Life as a prisoner in a single room for many at home and Americans (20 million) without the internet, that’s only a minor part of the problem. I sympathize with those who will be held as a real hostage as people watch their savings get decimated.

Now take the collateral damages the idea of people in need of immediate care and the disruptions to the healthcare sector. I hope Americans can join in unison and find a reasonable way to manage the crisis as quickly as possible.

So many doctors and healthcare workers at their limits, the management of the crisis is as important as the crisis itself. But many just fail to comprehend the eventual outcome and watching Trump speaking about vaccines is mythological.

We can have hope but Corona has a high mutation rate and such viruses are moving targets for therapeutic intervention and frequently develop resistance to vaccines and antiviral drugs.

It seems the whole world is fragmented even in such times, we cannot agree to disagree and the interdependence between trade partners will likely be reduced as we search for domestic growth. I wonder if this is the start of a failed global economy, the test of time. Many governments including Australia are suggesting people spend at home policy and bolster their own economy.

I watched Trump calling it a “Chinese Virus” and even if it’s true, there are a time and a place to point the finger, and this is not the right time. The virus originates from Wuhan and has it is true travelers carried over the globe but let’s just say any Trump rhetoric creates more tension.

Then he contradicts himself a day later by saying it is not the Asian’s fault.

Chinese people are not the type to take insults lightly and each time Dr. Evil opens his mouth it has an impact beyond comprehension. Do you think it’s by coincidence North Korea is shooting rockets again?

It appears Dr. Evil wants to take on China, but it isn’t a movie, he has untangled his ego-wrestling match, he will win the war and lose the battle. It is all about diplomacy, especially in difficult times and in Asia we use “Tatamae” and “Honne”

In Japan, Honne is a person’s true feelings and desires and tatemae are the behavior and opinions one displays in public, a built in front, or what we refer to as a “façade”.

Honne may be contrary to what is expected by society or what is required according to one’s position and circumstances, and they are often kept hidden.

Tatemae is what is expected by society and required according to one’s position and circumstances, and these may or may not match one’s honne. In many cases, tatemae leads to the outright telling of lies in order to avoid exposing the true inward feelings.

The fact is coronavirus is everywhere and it spreads both by the neglect of Government and their citizens who do not take the correct and pre-emptive precautionary measures. It is a global problem and so finger-pointing may make you feel better. In Tokyo, if the Japanese continue to act recklessly the Major will impose a lockdown.

We have global economies yet no real initiative has been taken to have a global community and help one another. Similar to the way 20th-century religion works; we all maintain our own beliefs, protect them and claim exclusive ownership.

The truth is everyone is out for themselves and the common denominator is the stock market, the only indicator of how people are feeling and right now they are scared shitless.

The common denominator “fear” is driven by three things: spread rate, fatality rate, and time duration of the Covid-19. The fear in part on the fear of what is happening and what will happen leaves us paralyzed and it could result in a mass exodus of Dr. Evil’s supporters.

Now the eye is off China as they carried forward a plan of suppression and it stopped the virus spread, or at least that is what we are being told. Then the leader of the Free World (Dr. Evil) rates himself a 10 out of 10 when asked how he thinks he is handling the Covid-19 crisis.

It proves American politics is going to fumble the ball and eventually flop badly, millions infected, fatalities out of control, and they will enter a stage of slow recovery in trying to save millions. I am crossing my fingers tight for America and I hope they’ll get it right, if not we will be a blood bath.

So does the strategy of suppression widely accepted practice work? I believe it is key to our survival even if we cannot separate positive and negative. We can test but it is quite impossible to keep testing and re-testing unless we are prepared to separate humans to contain a virus using segregated camps. That won’t work will it as supply and production chains are dependent on groups not single individuals.

Covid is likely people will continue to infect each other until the virus runs its course and so the fatalities will become part of everyday life. Eventually, we begin to accept the new norm, we understand the severity of the disease and the effects.

We will likely watch many businesses fail, economies come to a halt, unemployment even if Japan and China are looking promising they too rely on the west. The population of the world will be altered very little, and small countries will bear the brunt of it without much hope for crisis management.

If China eradicated the virus we should be able to do the same right? If we use and simulate the same strict protocols used in China we should have an equal success rate or are their statistics fake?

I am not sure the same approach will be full-proof because the virus will affect Asians differently I suppose and if we start to see profiles of this it will propel conspiracy theories. I did read on the internet recently it is manmade but not much proof and if you look at transmission (below) it would be tough to point the finger.

I heard recently from a friend in Italy all foreigners are falling to the virus and there is a theory about tuberculosis vaccinations.

Thanking you because you are always attentive to what surrounds us, I would ask you to consider this hypothesis on Coronavirus.  He writes: “Throughout Lombardy, where I live, I consulted the Civil Hospitals of Brescia, Cremona, Chiari, and … in almost all hospitals there is no non-EU citizen with Coronavirus. In Borgo San Giacomo, the Italians took the Corona and why? There are 5000 inhabitants including 3,500 Indians and 1,500 Italians, young and old, and what the Indians tell me, we don’t get pneumonia because we’re vaccinated against tuberculosis.  Only you Italians who are no longer vaccinated (the vaccine lasts 20 years and if there is no vaccine recall becomes exposed to pneumonia again) from tuberculosis you get sick, first of flu but then of pneumonia. So, Italian children do not fall ill because they are vaccinated against TB.  A vaccine that lasts up to 20 years. But Think Lombardy has the highest concentration of non-EU citizens, Senegalese, Bengali, Egyptians, Moroccans, Romanians, Albanians, Tunisians, Algerians and there is no one with pneumonia. How is it possible?“

I have no position on this theory and I share it as general information and it isn’t meant to be factual or reliable. I do believe there is a way to slow corona down and certainly, social distancing decreases the transmission although in some cases there has been no travel or direct contact with those who contracted Covid-19. Our focus must be on treatment delivery and crisis management to help those infected. And sanitizer is helpful, masks and washing hands. I have a friend who was at Massatrict art fair and had contact with a Covid-19 infected person: he didn’t contract it and kept social distancing and used hand sanitizer. I have the impression if you are using “good practices” and stay away from social gatherings you have a chance to avoid it.

But life goes on and one way or another and we have data on a large number of medically important viruses, including HIV, hepatitis C virus, and influenza, all of which have RNA genomes. These viruses replicate with extremely high mutation rates and exhibit significant genetic diversity. This diversity allows a viral population to rapidly adapt to dynamic environments and evolve resistance to vaccines and antiviral drugs.

For the last 30 years, quasispecies theory has provided a population-based framework for understanding RNA viral evolution. A quasispecies is a cloud of diverse variants that are genetically linked through mutation, interact cooperatively on a functional level, and collectively contribute to the characteristics of the population. Many predictions of quasispecies theory run counter to traditional views of microbial behavior and evolution and have profound implications for our understanding of viral disease. Because RNA viruses exist as swarms of similar variants that are continuously regenerated by mutation of related sequences, our ability to predict the outcome of an infection or a therapeutic intervention from studies of isolated clones is limited.

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1001005

Governments and their political leaders are in a hyper pandemic panic mode except Dr. Evil, and in the free World, there will be lots of debate about the best approach and I hope it doesn’t delay the process too much.

The process that worries is how the virus copies the viral RNA genome to evolve to evade attack by our immune system. While influenza viruses change all the time due to antigenic drift it happens less frequently. Influenza pandemics occur very rarely there have been four pandemics in the past 100 years and this is one of those historic moments.

Do not underestimate the spread rate or consequences, it is terrible. We have a close friend, a healthy Doctor living in Europe who suffered 10 days with high temperature and couldn’t really move, shortness of breath. She refused to go to a Corona center and become a statistic, so she isolated herself bearing the risks.

Eventually, she did get to a private hospital for some bloodwork and a chest x-ray as she was having trouble breathing. She has post-inflammatory collapse affecting part of her lung. This is a very scary way to die, lack of oxygen and you suffocate to death.

Sadly many Italian families haven’t had the chance to say good-bye to a loved one, stuck in isolation they fear the phone call from the hospital.