The coronavirus pandemic has passed its landmark moment, as over one million people worldwide have tested positive for the disease, according to figures from multiple sources including news agency AFP and the John Hopkins University. More than 51,485 people have died worldwide from the virus.
Now, the U.S. is the most-affected country, surpassing China. In Europe, Italy, Spain, Germany and France were hit the hardest, with each having more than 40,000 cases.
By April 1, close to half the world’s population – most of North America, Europe and India – had been ordered to stay at home, in hopes of slowing or stopping the spread of the contagion.
In many places, the rapidly spreading virus has overwhelmed local healthcare systems. Doctors have struggled with shortages of hospital space and medical equipment, including testing kits and protective gear.
China said it had turned the tide on the spread of the coronavirus by late March, as the number of new domestic cases decreased significantly, prompting officials to gradually ease travel restrictions in Hubei.
The U.S. leads the world with more than 234,000 confirmed cases. More than 5,600 Americans have died from the virus.
U.S. jobless claims soared to record 6.65 million, according to data released by the U.S. Labor Department Thursday morning.
Spain
Coronavirus, officially COVID-19, cases in Spain rose above 100,000 as it recorded its biggest one-day death toll from the outbreak on Wednesday.
The country records world’s highest number of COVID-19 deaths in a day. The death toll has climbed by 950 to more than 10,000.
The country now has 10,003 deaths and more than 110,000 infections.
UK
The United Kingdom saw its biggest daily jump in deaths as the overall toll surpassed 2,000.
Britons cite ‘shocking’ lack of testing and advice after landing back in U.K.
Britons returning to the UK from abroad have lambasted the “shocking” lack of testing and medical advice upon arriving back on home soil following the coronavirus outbreak.
Some passengers told the PA news agency other countries appeared to be taking the COVID-19 pandemic much more seriously, with medical questionnaires and health checks at land borders and travel terminals.
Canada
Canada Officials announced Thursday that there have been more than 10,000 confirmed coronavirus cases in Canada, with 127 deaths.
Provinces and territories around the country have ramped up their testing, leading to an increase in cases, but also delays in results that may not reflect the most recent measures that have been applied by officials and citizens, such as social distancing.
Germany’s infections rise to 79,696
Germany’s coronavirus infections have risen to 79,696, with 1,017 deaths, statistics from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Friday. Cases rose 6,174 from the previous day, while the death toll climbed by 145, the tally showed.
Lessons from California and Washington
A few bright spots have started coming from various sources including internet-connected thermometers; smartphone GPS data; a study by private researchers in Bellevue, Wash.; state-by-state projections from the University of Washington; and reports from hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area.
All of this new information points to the same hopeful, if tentative, conclusion. In areas of U.S. that caught the coronavirus early in its trajectory — and quickly implemented the sort of strict, sweeping social distancing measures recommended by public health officials — the curve may be starting to bend. The virus may be starting to spread more slowly. Staying home may be starting to work.
Louisiana is tipped to be the next coronavirus epicenter
The U.S. state of Louisiana is poised to become the next epicenter of the coronavirus crisis, White House officials said Thursday, citing new data that shows that 26 per cent of the tests for coronavirus in that state in recent days have come back positive.
That is the second-highest rate of infection in the U.S., behind New York and New Jersey, where 35 percent of coronavirus tests have been positive.
10 million Americans lost jobs
An AP report said: Nearly 10 million Americans have lost their jobs and applied for unemployment benefits in the past two weeks — a stunning record high that reflects the near-complete shutdown of the U.S. economy.
Job losses related to the coronavirus are sure to rise further in the coming weeks, with economists saying the U.S. unemployment rate could reach as high as 15%, well above the 10% peak during the Great Recession. As recently as February, the unemployment rate was just 3.5%, a 50-year low. For those who have suddenly lost jobs, it’s a difficult time.
Thailand
Thai inmates sparked jail riot, and set prison ablaze over fears of coronavirus.
U.S. Navy captain fired after pleading for coronavirus help
U.S. Navy Capt. Brett Crozier was relieved for loss of confidence Thursday. Four days earlier, the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt pleaded for help for the crew of the nuclear-powered ship struggling with the coronavirus. Around a quarter of the 4,800 crew members onboard were tested for COVID-19 and 93 were positive.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly reported Thursday that there are presently 114 coronavirus cases aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt.
“I can tell you with great certainty there’s going to be more. It will probably be in the hundreds,” he told reporters at the Pentagon.
The updated case numbers followed an announcement that Modly had decided to relieve Capt. Brett Crozier, the commanding officer aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, due to a loss of confidence.
The acting secretary of the Navy said Thursday that he suspects the number of coronavirus cases aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt will eventually be “in the hundreds.”
The ship is currently in Guam, where the Navy is in the process of removing thousands of sailors from the ship and testing the entire crew.
Brett Crozier, the ship’s CO, wrote a letter warning that “the spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating.” He called for the removal of the majority of the crew from the ship as soon as possible. “Sailors do not need to die,” he wrote.
The letter leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle and then quickly made headlines everywhere.
The acting Navy secretary accused the CO of mishandling information by distributing the letter outside the chain of command in a way that made it susceptible to being leaked. He said that Crozier exercised “poor judgment” and that his letter caused unnecessary panic among sailors and military families.
U.S. nurses union blasts lack of preparedness
NBC News said: The National Nurses Union, which represents 10,000 registered nurses at 19 U.S. hospitals managed by HCA Healthcare in California, Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nevada and Texas, is demanding that the hospital chain provide optimal personal protective equipment (PPE) for nurses and other staff.
Nurses at HCA’s Mission Hospital in Asheville, N.C., will deliver a petition to hospital managers with their concerns about hospital preparedness in the battle the coronavirus.
Some nurses at HCA hospitals have reported that they have had to work without proper protective equipment and are told to unsafely reuse masks.
Nurses at Central Florida Regional Hospital in Sanford, Florida, said they were told they could not wear masks while working because it “scared the patients,” according to Jean Ross, a registered nurse and president of National Nurses United.
“Protecting our patients is our highest priority, but it becomes much harder when we don’t have the safe protections which puts us in danger of becoming infected,” said Angela Davis, a registered nurse who works in a unit dedicated to treating coronavirus patients at Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo. “If we are no longer able to be at the bedside, who will be there to care for our patients?”
The union president said HCA Healthcare can afford to properly prepare for the pandemic, noting that over the past decade, the hospital chain has made more than $23 billion.
“For the wealthiest hospital corporation in the United States to show such disregard for the health and safety of its caregivers, is disgraceful and unconscionable,” Ross said.
Two years before coronavirus, the U.S. CDC warned of a coming pandemic
Two years ago, some of the nation’s top public health officials gathered in an auditorium at Emory University in Atlanta to commemorate the 1918 influenza pandemic — also known as “the Spanish Flu” — which had killed as many as 40 million people as it swept the globe.
Among the organizers of the conference was Dr. Daniel Jernigan, who heads the Centers for Disease Control’s flu division. He later hosted a webinar entitled “100 Years Since 1918: Are We Ready for the Next Pandemic?” Viewed today, that presentation comes across as a disturbing preview of what the entire world is facing in 2020, with close to a million people infected with the coronavirus and more than 44,000 dead.
Dr. Fauci’s security expanded as infectious disease expert faces threats in the U.S.
Security detail for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the 79-year-old infectious disease expert who has become a calm, reassuring foil to President Trump at coronavirus briefings, has been expanded amid threats..
Trump administration ended pandemic early-warning program to detect coronaviruses
A Los Angeles Times report said on April 2, 2020:
Two months before the novel coronavirus is thought to have begun its deadly advance in Wuhan, China, the Trump administration ended a $200-million pandemic early-warning program aimed at training scientists in China and other countries to detect and respond to such a threat.
The project, launched by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2009, identified 1,200 different viruses that had the potential to erupt into pandemics, including more than 160 novel coronaviruses. The initiative, called PREDICT, also trained and supported staff in 60 foreign laboratories — including the Wuhan lab that identified SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
Field work ceased when the funding ran out in September, and organizations that worked on the PREDICT program laid off dozens of scientists and analysts, said Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a key player in the program.
On Wednesday, USAID granted an emergency extension to the program, issuing $2.26 million over the next six months to send experts who will help foreign labs squelch the pandemic. But program leaders say the funding will do little to further the initiative’s original mission.
“Look at the name: Our efforts were to predict this before it happens. That’s the part of the program that was exciting — and that’s the part I’m worried about,” Daszak said.
“It’s absolutely critical that we don’t drop the idea of a large-scale, proactive, predictive program that tries to catch pandemics before they happen. Cutting a program that could in any way reduce the risk of things like COVID-19 happening again is, by any measure, shortsighted,” he added.
It is unclear whether another five-year grant would have dulled the impact of the current pandemic. But the Trump administration has come under increased criticism for its past moves to downgrade global health security, including proposals to slash funding to science agencies and the elimination of the National Security Council’s key global health post.
A spokesperson for USAID said PREDICT was “just one component of USAID’s global health security efforts and accounted for less than 20% of our global health security funding.” He also said a new initiative to stop the spillover of viruses from animals to humans is scheduled to be awarded in August.
The PREDICT project, which operated on two five-year funding cycles that formally concluded last September, enrolled both epidemiologists and wildlife veterinarians to examine the types of interactions between animals and humans that researchers suspect led to the current outbreak of COVID-19.
The pandemic “didn’t surprise us, unfortunately,” said Jonna Mazet, executive director of the One Health Institute in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, who served as the global director of PREDICT for a decade. “The work had been ongoing for some time. And when the crisis hits, everybody stands up and takes notice and says, ‘OK, we believe you.’”
The PREDICT project, launched in response to the 2005 H5N1 “bird flu” scare, gathered specimens from more than 10,000 bats and 2,000 other mammals in search of dangerous viruses. They detected about 1,200 viruses that could spread from wild animals to humans, signaling pandemic potential. More than 160 of them were novel coronaviruses, much like SARS-CoV-2.
They also took blood samples from people in rural China, and learned that, in living among wildlife, they had been exposed to coronaviruses — a clear sign that, if those viruses spread easily among humans, they could take off. That “raised the red flag,” said Mazet.
“Coronaviruses were jumping easily across species lines and were ones to watch for epidemics and pandemics,” she said.
The program also trained nearly 7,000 people across medical and agricultural sectors in 30 countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East to help them detect deadly new viruses on their own. One of those labs was the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the Chinese lab that quickly identified SARS-CoV-2, Mazet said.
The Wuhan lab received USAID funding for equipment, and PREDICT coordinators connected the scientists there with researchers in other countries in order to synchronize tracking of novel viruses before SARS-CoV-2.
The project’s second funding cycle concluded on Sept. 30, 2019, less than two months before the new coronavirus probably began spreading. It was granted a zero-dollar six-month extension — through March 2020 — to write up final reports.
Dennis Carroll, a widely respected scientist who headed USAID’s emerging threats division, oversaw the initiative for its duration, but retired around the time it was shut down. Carroll did not respond to an inquiry from The Times, but told the New York Times last year that by January 2019, the program had “essentially collapsed into hibernation,” and that its conclusion was due to “the ascension of risk-averse bureaucrats.”
Other members of the consortium included Columbia University’s Center for Infection and Immunity and several institutes that manage major U.S. zoos.
Earlier this year, as COVID-19 took off, U.S. lawmakers expressed frustration over the program’s end.
“Addressing and preventing the spread of coronavirus and potential pandemic disease outbreaks is a serious matter that requires adequate resources for and cooperation between experts throughout the federal government,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Angus King wrote in a letter to USAID’s administrator earlier this year, asking for details on the decision.
On Wednesday, the PREDICT program was extended through September to offer emergency technical assistance to foreign labs battling the coronavirus pandemic. To date, PREDICT-supported labs in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are actively testing for coronavirus cases, Daszak said, and he has been sending reagents and other supplies to assist them.
Meanwhile, in Rwanda, scientists who had been trained in the PREDICT program triggered early social distancing measures, Mazet said. “I do think that what we were doing has changed the outcomes for a lot of countries,” she said.
“But unfortunately, not our own,” she added.
Daszak said he is eager to further examine the hundreds of wildlife samples collected during the PREDICT initiative over the years, looking to identify whether any of them could have been intermediate hosts for the virus currently sweeping the globe.
But with the limited budget and timeline, efforts to continue in-depth field work under PREDICT will be minimal. Most of the extension funding will be focused on squelching the current outbreak, not preventing the next.
“It’s common sense to know your enemy,” Daszak said. “Instead, we’re all hiding inside our houses as we wait around for a vaccine — that’s not a good global strategy to battling a dangerous virus.”
The U.S. economy is entering the deepest recession on record
Economists at Bank of America Global Research believe the broader economic downturn we’re entering will result in the worst recession in modern U.S. history.
“The recession appears to be deeper and more prolonged than we were led to believe just 14 days ago when we last updated our forecasts, not just in the U.S. but globally as well,” said BofA economists led by Michelle Meyer.
“We now believe that there will be three consecutive quarters of GDP contraction with the US economy shrinking 7% in 1Q, 30% in 2Q and 1% in 3Q. We expect this to be followed by a pop in growth in 4Q. We forecast the cumulative decline in GDP to be 10.4% and this will be the deepest recession on record, nearly five times more severe than the post-war average.”
In 2008, the economy experienced a cumulative recessionary decline in GDP of 4%, the most since World War II. BofA is expecting the 2020 recession will be more than twice as severe in terms of the total GDP decline.
Bank of America expects that up to 20 million people will lose their jobs through the third quarter with the unemployment rate potentially peaking north of 15%.
“The shock is unlike anything we have experienced before with part of the economy effectively put into an induced coma,” BofA adds.
“The pain is sudden and acute. But we think there is a recovery on the other side. The first step is to solve the public health crisis and stop the spread of COVID-19. The next step is to slowly open the economy with businesses returning and people going back to work.”
Bank of America expects that GDP will pop 30% in the fourth quarter. But the firm still believes “this will be a slow recovery overall as many workers will be displaced and businesses adapt to a period of lost revenue.”
And indeed, just under 70% of GDP growth comes from consumer spending. Since the fourth quarter of 2013, no single quarter has seen U.S. consumer spending rise less than 3%.
But this trend looks set to come to an end.
Using its proprietary data that tracks spending from Bank of America debit and credit cardholders, Meyer and her team note that by the end of March about 20% of consumer spending categories had declined more than 40%.
“It makes sense that the consumer cut back [in March],” Meyer and team write.
BofA also notes that capturing the extent of the economic fallout from the coronavirus poses several challenges.
That is particularly true given the speed and magnitude of the changes mandated by lawmakers and the lag on which economic data is reported.
Cruise ship allowed to dock in Florida
The Dutch cruise ships holding sick passengers will now be allowed to dock in Port Everglades, Fla. Holland America, the company holding the Zaandam and Rotterdam boats, reached a deal with Florida officials Thursday.
Trump threatens 3M over facemasks
U.S. President Donald Trump slammed 3M in a tweet late on Thursday after earlier announcing he was invoking the Defense Production Act to get the company to produce facemasks.
Capitalism is facing at least three major crises. A pandemic-induced health crisis has rapidly ignited an economic crisis with yet unknown consequences for financial stability, and all of this is playing out against the backdrop of a climate crisis that cannot be addressed by “business as usual.” Until just two months ago, the news media were full of frightening images of overwhelmed firefighters, not overwhelmed health-care providers.
This triple crisis has revealed several problems with how we do capitalism, all of which must be solved at the same time that we address the immediate health emergency. Otherwise, we will simply be solving problems in one place while creating new ones elsewhere. That is what happened with the 2008 financial crisis. Policymakers flooded the world with liquidity without directing it toward good investment opportunities. As a result, the money ended up back in a financial sector that was (and remains) unfit for purpose.
The COVID-19 crisis is exposing still more flaws in our economic structures, not least the increasing precarity of work, owing to the rise of the gig economy and a decades-long deterioration of workers’ bargaining power. Telecommuting simply is not an option for most workers, and although governments are extending some assistance to workers with regular contracts, the self-employed may find themselves left high and dry.
Worse, governments are now extending loans to businesses at a time when private debt is already historically high. In the United States, total household debt just before the current crisis was $14.15 trillion, which is $1.5 trillion higher than it was in 2008 (in nominal terms). And lest we forget, it was high private debt that caused the global financial crisis.
Unfortunately, over the past decade, many countries have pursued austerity, as if public debt were the problem. The result has been to erode the very public-sector institutions that we need to overcome crises like the coronavirus pandemic. Since 2015, the United Kingdom has cut public-health budgets by £1 billion ($1.2 billion), increasing the burden on doctors in training (many of whom have left the National Health Service altogether), and reducing the long-term investments needed to ensure that patients are treated in safe, up-to-date, fully staffed facilities. And in the US – which has never had a properly funded public-health system – the Trump administration has been persistently trying to cut funding and capacity for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other critical institutions.
On top of these self-inflicted wounds, an overly “financialized” business sector has been siphoning value out of the economy by rewarding shareholders through stock-buyback schemes, rather than shoring up long-run growth by investing in research and development, wages, and worker training. As a result, households have been depleted of financial cushions, making it harder to afford basic goods like housing and education.
The bad news is that the COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating all these problems. The good news is that we can use the current state of emergency to start building a more inclusive and sustainable economy. The point is not to delay or block government support, but to structure it properly. We must avoid the mistakes of the post-2008 era, when bailouts allowed corporations to reap even higher profits once the crisis was over, but failed to lay the foundation for a robust and inclusive recovery.
This time, rescue measures absolutely must come with conditions attached. Now that the state is back to playing a leading role, it must be cast as the hero rather than as a naive patsy. That means delivering immediate solutions, but designing them in such a way as to serve the public interest over the long term.
For example, conditionalities can be put in place for government support to businesses. Firms receiving bailouts should be asked to retain workers, and ensure that once the crisis is over they will invest in worker training and improved working conditions. Better still, as in Denmark, government should be supporting businesses to continue paying wages even when workers are not working – simultaneously helping households to retain their incomes, preventing the virus from spreading, and making it easier for businesses to resume production once the crisis is over.
Moreover, bailouts should be designed to steer larger companies to reward value creation instead of value extraction, preventing share buybacks and encouraging investment in sustainable growth and a reduced carbon footprint. Having declared last year that it will embrace a stakeholder value model, this is the Business Roundtable’s chance to back its words with action. If corporate America is still dragging its feet now, we should call its bluff.
When it comes to households, governments should look beyond loans to the possibility of debt relief, especially given current high levels of private debt. At a minimum, creditor payments should be frozen until the immediate economic crisis is resolved, and direct cash injections used for those households that are in direst need.
And the US should offer government guarantees to pay 80-100% of distressed companies’ wage bills, as the UK and many European Union and Asian countries have done.
It is also time to rethink public-private partnerships. Too often, these arrangements are less symbiotic than parasitic. The effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine could become yet another one-way relationship in which corporations reap massive profits by selling back to the public a product that was born of taxpayer-funded research. Indeed, despite US taxpayers’ significant public investment in vaccine development, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, recently conceded that newly developed COVID-19 treatments or vaccines might not be affordable to all Americans.
We desperately need entrepreneurial states that will invest more in innovation – from artificial intelligence to public health to renewables. But as this crisis reminds us, we also need states that know how to negotiate, so that the benefits of public investment return to the public.
A killer virus has exposed major weaknesses within Western capitalist economies. Now that governments are on a war footing, we have an opportunity to fix the system. If we don’t, we will stand no chance against the third major crisis – an increasingly uninhabitable planet – and all the smaller crises that will come with it in the years and decades ahead.
Mariana Mazzucato is Professor of Economics of Innovation and Public Value and Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is the author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy, which was shortlisted for the Financial Times-McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award.
Originally published in Project Syndicate
Cuba has slammed the U.S.’ “criminal blockade” of the country after the embargo stood in the way of the delivery of Covid-19 test kits and ventilators donated by Chinese e-commerce tycoon Jack Ma.
“The criminal blockade of the imperial government violates the human rights of the Cuban people,” tweeted Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermúdez on Wednesday.
Cuba’s envoy to Beijing, Carlos Miguel Pereira, explained that an American firm was hired to deliver medical goods necessary to fight Covid-19, which were donated by a fund run by Jack Ma, Chinese philanthropist and owner of e-commerce giant Alibaba. However, the firm refused to deliver the shipment “at the last minute,” Pereira said.
According to the Xinhua News Agency, the company had specifically worried about the possibility of violating the 1995 US Helms-Burton Act, which strengthened sanctions against Cuba.
Cuba has 212 confirmed Covid-19 cases, with six deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Ma announced last month that his foundation would donate emergency medical supplies to Cuba and 23 other Caribbean and South American nations. The donation was said to include 2 million masks, 400,000 test kits, and 104 ventilators.
The US has maintained a trade embargo against Cuba since 1960.
Continue work to combat COVID-19 with rigor and precision
At the meeting held March 31 by the Cuban government to review the COVID-19 situation, decisions were made to reinforce measures to contain infections, including the suspension of arrivals to the country of all passenger aircraft.
A report by Yaima Puig Meneses in Granma on April 2, 2020 said:
President Miguel DÃaz-Canel called to continue work to contain the coronavirus with great precision and rigor, and with the support of the population since the success of our efforts to confront the pandemic depend on these principles, during the March 31 meeting of the Cuban government, to review the COVID-19 situation in the country, make decisions to advance the effort, and evaluate those made previously, as has become the norm every afternoon.
Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz commented that some 230 government measures have been adopted, and implementation is moving forward as projected.
He stated that, given the advance of the pandemic globally, and in line with Cuba’s prevention and control plan, the decision was made to request the withdrawal of all foreign vessels from our territorial waters.
He noted that, as the Revolution has taught us, if any situation arises regarding the health of crew members or passengers, technical problems, or fuel supplies, our government will, of course, respond as needed.
The current context also demands the suspension of arrivals to the country of all passenger aircraft, regularly scheduled or charter flights, he stated, since this poses an additional risk for our people.
In this case and as previously announced, exceptions will always be made, for our international brigades, the delivery of donations from another government, an emergency that requires facilitating airport services, or the arrival of needed supplies and merchandise, etc.
May Day parade suspended
A Granma report said:
The First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, presided over a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party, during which the decision was made to cancel May Day parades, and postpone the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP) Congress.
These decisions were made in compliance with measures that the country has adopted, as part of the COVID-19 Prevention and Control Plan.
During this meeting, the President called on the Federation of Cuban Workers (CTC) to make proposals for May Day celebrations in accordance with current conditions, so that International Workers Day is not overlooked.
Coronavirus, which has claimed more than 45,000 human lives across the world, may not be discriminating between races, but it has given an opportunity to bigots to scapegoat Chinese people and those with Oriental facial features.
The virus which originated in Wuhan, China has now spread to more than 150 countries, including Canada and the US. India, which shares a border with China, is no exception.
The disease has created a lot of fear, and with uncertainty prevailing because of lockdowns, economic crisis, and health emergencies in many parts of the globe, some vested interests are trying to capitalize on it.
All this has led to a spike in racism against the Chinese community, especially in countries like US and India. With extreme right wing leaders and governments with an axe to grind against China due to trade and territorial issues respectively, the hostility is getting out of hand.
So much so, US President Donald Trump himself is inciting hatred against Chinese people by repeatedly describing COVID 19 as “China virus”. Under such circumstances, Chinese people in North America are facing backlash.
In India, which has many longstanding issues with China, things are becoming more challenging under the right wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government that wants to turn the country into a Hindu theocracy. Attacks on religious minorities have already grown under this government ever since it came to power in 2014.
Apart from many BJP supporters calling for boycotting Chinese goods, people from north eastern states of the country are being targeted across the nation known for its cultural diversity. Just because residents of these states bear oriental facial features, they are taken as Chinese and being assaulted because of coronavirus.
A case in point is a woman from Manipur who was spat on in New Delhi – the national capital of India – by someone who called her “corona”. If this was not enough, Nagaland students were stopped from entering a grocery store in Mysuru. Such incidents have forced Mizoram Chief Minister Zoramthanga to ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and stop racial abuse against North-eastern people. He also tagged fellow Chief Ministers from other North-eastern states on twitter.
To be fair though, people from North-eastern states in India have always faced discrimination in other parts of the country. It’s a shame that the Indian mainstream has largely failed to embrace them adequately and have always seen them as “outsiders”.
Caste-based prejudices, regionalism and religious divisions have existed in India for years.
Nevertheless, coronavirus has made things more difficult, and Trump’s anti-China rhetoric has further fortified such hatred. With Modi being Trump’s ally and having a huge following, the trickle-down effect of such fear mongering is not hard to understand.
Gurpreet Singh is a journalist
The old adage should say : Nothing is certain but death and taxes… and Karma. Karma is as real as it gets. The various holy books made sure to state that ‘ What ye sow so shall ye reap’ AKA ‘ What goes around comes around.’ Karma has many flavors, but the end result is always the same: What one does will eventually come back to revisit in some form or manner.
In 1914 the whole of Europe and parts extended were in a world war. This war was not what was advertised as ‘ Good vs. Evil’ . No, it was a war between major imperialist, colonialist nations for increased power and control. The propaganda was such that the USA got itself involved to back up our British ally, or should I say our British ‘ Big brother’ at the time. The negative energy generated by this ghastly war saw millions of young men ( and women ) dead, with devastating physical destruction throughout the region. As it is with major weather changes, energy, which can be positive or negative, does influence our atmosphere… for good or for bad. Well, the Spanish Flu from 1918-20 saw 500 million people infected, as the war had already reached its devastating peak. Coincidence, or an expression of Bad Karma? That war was not at all what many historians like to classify as ‘ Just War’ . It was simply a power grab war initiated by one group of super rich against another. Period!
My nation has had such Bad Karma going back to what we did to the Native Americans and then to the Mexicans, as we gobbled up their lands. Think about this: Who now owns and operates ( with help from the super rich corporations ) most of the gambling casinos nationwide? The Indians! All those problems with the undocumented ( AKA ‘ Illegal Aliens’ ) center around areas that were part of our imperialist ‘ Manifest Destiny ‘. These actions were in lands that were once Mexican: Lower California, New Mexico, Arizona and of course, the home of the Alamo, Texas. Karma dictates that we took their lands by force and now we have to deal with those people, like it or not! We dropped two A-Bombs on Japan, unnecessarily, occupied that country, and then THEY outcompeted us as economic adversaries for years to come. Which of the two countries made the better cars being driven in the USA during the 60s, 70s and right into the present time: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler… or Honda, Toyota and Nissan?
If one wants to speak about Bad Karma, just look back to 2002- 2003 and our most disgraceful, illegal and immoral invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq . Our nation’s economy and moral compass are still reverberating from those heinous deeds, which still eat up over HALF of our federal taxes going for military spending.That was the start of the Bad Karma created by ourselves and our NATO partners in crime. Then, factor in the horrendous carpet bombing of Libya and our excursion into Syria, and you have the present day refugee crisis that is affecting Europe and the Middle East. One additional outgrowth of this has been the rise of tremendous Neo Nazi right wing movements throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand and even the Southern Hemisphere. Who has been the greatest ‘ kick starter’ for this Bad Karma? As Sinclair Lewis put it so succinctly: ” Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag”. Others later on added ” …. and carrying a cross.” The bottom line is that this incessant American exceptionalism has been the rallying point for the Super Rich who run things to hammer home to their minions. Thus, WE are the mess that We created with Bad Karma.
The new pandemic that the entire world is suffering from slowly reached our shores. Another example of Bad Karma is how this current administration manhandled things from the get go. Instead of preparing to better protect its citizens, especially the front line medical and hospital community, our ( so called ) leaders called it a HOAX for weeks on end… while the Chinese and Russians practiced due diligence. Imagine if Amerika had stocked up on protective masks, ventilators, hand washing solutions and of course medicines that the Chinese found to be helpful. Imagine if, at the very beginning of this Pandemic USA, our Congress and administration would have instituted what the Universal Basic Income advocates were trumpeting for years? Then, by today April 2nd 2020 the FED would have created checks of $ 1000 per citizen per month, in addition to extended unemployment insurance and loans to small business. Funny how, when the Sub Prime bubble burst in 2008, despite the right wing wolves’ threats about our terrible deficit, the FED electronically created the money to bail out the banks. Once again, they have electronically created the money for this stimulus. Yet, when Bernie Sanders and millions of others have been calling for Medicare for All… they yell ‘ We can’t afford it!!’
So, as our citizens are dying for lack of proper care, and ditto our economy , the Bad Karma keeps on rolling along. Time for the mega millions of us to start taking control of the conversation and create some Good Karma.
Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘ It’s the Empire… Stupid ‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at paf1222@bellsouth.net.
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