Time Machine (Coronavirus 2020 Journal #1)
commentary by Chitown Kev
There’s a part of me that’s sick and tired of COVID-19 news which seems to be breaking every minute.
On the other hand, it is, in my opinion, the story of the millenium to this point in time. So it’s fascinating. And exciting.
Usually, my mind tends to want to look back in time for any applicable precedents and/or lessons from history...and the coronavirus pandemic currently in progress is not an exception to that rule.
For example, I opened up my Sunday Pundit Round-Up with the ancient account that I know best: Thucydides’ account of the Plague in Athens at the start of the Athenian War with Sparta in his History of the Pelopennisian War...but there’s something else that I noted in Thuycidides account: his guesses as to the origins of the plague:
It began, by report, first in that part of Ethiopia that lieth upon Egypt, and thence fell down into Egypt and Africa and into the greatest part of the territories of the king. It invaded Athens on a sudden and touched first upon those that dwelt in Piraeus, insomuch as they reported that the Peloponnesians had cast poison into their wells (for springs there were not any in that place). But afterwards it came up into the high city, and then they died a great deal faster.
There has been highly disputed speculation that the Plague in Athens can be identified as an early Ebola outbreak (this 1996 NY Times article is archived and might be behnd a paywall for many).
Dr. Patrick Olson, an epidemiologist at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, and his colleagues wrote about their Ebola theory in the most recent issue of the journal ''Emerging Infectious Diseases.'' They argued that Ebola's symptoms in modern-day Zaire mirror those of the Greek plague reported by Thucydides in his ''History of the Peloponnesian War,'' the most complete account that has survived.
The researchers noted that most victims in ancient Greece, like those in modern Africa, died in seven to nine days, and the Athenian caretakers, much like African doctors, fell ill, while the Spartans laying siege a few hundred yards away survived. That indicates that the ancient disease was, like Ebola, spread by blood, saliva or feces, rather than by airborne microbes.
Thucydides also asserted that the disease was African, from somewhere south of Ethiopia. Ebola also has African origins. And there is even evidence that suggests the way the virus might have traveled from Africa to Greece in ancient times. On Santorini, a port island near Athens, a Minoan fresco depicts African green monkeys, which are known to be modern carriers of Ebola. Even more intriguing is the report of hiccuping among 15 percent of the victims in Kikwit, Zaire, Dr. Olson noted. Thucydides mentions hiccups.
Or...let’s take the infamous Antoine Plague that hit ancient Rome from 165-180 CE that pandemic seems to have originated in the Near East with Roman soldiers being both its first victims and eventual carriers of the disease to Rome: there is some scholarly speculation that it may come from as far away as China.
The bubonic plague which caused the Black Death in Europe in the mid-14th century: originated in various places including China and Mongolia and even parts of Africa.
Europeans brought smallpox to what has come to be known as the Americas and it killed off an estimated 90-95% of the native populations already here..
The origins of the infamous influenza pandemic of 1918 (about which I will have more to say in a minute): origins are unknown and are thought of as varied as Kansas, France, and China.
Bottom line: Whenever and whereever you have increased intercultural trade and intercultural communications, events like pandemics are subject to happen.
Human beings will never stop being curious about one another or trading with other peoples and/or cultures. For our own safety and peace of mind, it is best that we adapt and be prepared as opposed to lash out in xenophobic tantrums that do nothing but blame and, if anything, facilitate further spreading of diseases. Period.
2) I, too, heard the “race-based coronavirus misinformation” that dopper links to in his news round-up below and I rightly dismissed it. But it did get me to wondering: there was that influenza outbreak in 1918. How did black people react to that?
Because of library closings in my neck of the woods, I have not been able do the research into the full answer to that question that I’d like (the topic of black folks and the reaction of the influenza panic of 1918 was going to be my topic for today). But so far I’ve learned that surprisingly, there are some similarities between black reactions to the influenza pandemic of 1918 and the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.
From the two scholarly articles that I am now reading, “There Wasn't a Lot of Comforts in Those Days:” African Americans, Public Health, and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic” and “Race and 1918 Influenza Pandemic in the United States: A Review of the Literature”, the available evidence does seem to show that in spite of the overall greater suceptiblility of black people to other diseases (causes which can primarily be attributed to poor health care because of racism throughout society), most scholars of the period state that blacks were actually less suceptible to the “Spanish flu” outbreak of 1918 than whites. The topic was of great interest to white and black medical scholars and journalists at the time.
In fact: in that first paper that I list, “There Wasn’t a Lot of Comforts,...” one black newspaper, in particular, is taken to some account: the Philadelphia Tribune:
Those two passages, based on a review of the relevant paper archives, do sound like a distant cousin of the “race-based coronavirus misinformation” that we see nowadays (although hopefully that has ended!)
I just started reviewing some eof this material and I do find it fascinating...and it is nice to know that, perhaps...maybe...I can give a little nudge to someone expereinced in….oh, I don’t know, medical anthropology to periodically assist me in wading through some of this material.
I mean, I know that I will be off of work until at least March 30 (and a bit past that, I suspect) so I have time and I certainly have the social distance to be able to do it so…
How’s everyone doing? Yes, I know these are scary times for everyone as well as for me...just trying to hook up a little lemonade to get through it all.
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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Congressman Rep. Bobby Rush is not here for the spreading of misinformation regarding the coronavirus crisis—particularly, race-based misinformation.
CNBC reported that Rush lashed out at the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter on Friday for allowing their digital spaces to be used as propaganda hubs for false and often racist information mentioning, specifically, the debunked claim that black people are immune to the virus.
“I have been profoundly disappointed to see countless examples of misinformation and downright lies propagated on your platforms,” Rush wrote in a letter to both CEOs asking how they are combating “race-based targeting and harassment.” “Furthermore, much of this misinformation has also conveyed racist themes and language — literally adding insult to injury.”
Rush also spoke of the repercussions people of color face as a result of these false claims being spread.
“Such characterizations have led to race-based violence around the world and have attempted to lull certain racial groups into a dangerous, false sense of security regarding their susceptibility to this disease,” Rush wrote.
Rush pointed to a Friday tweet by British-American computer programmer and businessman John McAfee saying “Coronavirus cannot attack black people because it is a Chinese virus.”
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We all wish him a speedy recovery. In a statement released on Sunday, the former Florida governor candidate said the incident involving an alleged overdose was a 'wake up call for me.' The Grio: Andrew Gillum enters rehab for alcoholism following Miami hotel incident
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Andrew Gillum, the former Democratic candidate for governor of Florida, announced on Sunday evening that he is entering a rehabilitation facility following a recent incident inside of a Miami Beach hotel.
In a statement provided to theGrio, Gillum, 40, said the incident was a “wake-up call for me,” after authorities responded to an alleged meth overdose in a hotel room where Gillum was found with two other men.
Police said in their report that Gillum was “unable to communicate due to his inebriated state.” However, he left the room and returned home “without incident.”
“Since my race for governor ended, I fell into a depression that has led to alcohol abuse,” Gillum stated. “I witnessed my father suffer from alcoholism and I know the damaging effects it can have when untreated. I also know that alcoholism is often a symptom of deeper struggles.”
The frequent CNN contributor said he wants to focus on himself and his family and would be stepping down from all public-facing roles for the “foreseeable future.”
“I want to apologize to my family, friends and the people of Florida who have supported me and put their faith in me over the years,” he added. “I ask that you respect my and my family’s privacy during this time. Thank you.”
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While standing on the site Formosa Plastics wants to build a $9.4 billion facility on, Sharon Lavign, community director of Louisiana’s predominantly Black RISE St. James Parish, announced the release of a new report through the Center for Constitutional Rights, showing that Formosa knowingly chose to build on the graves of the Black bodies chained to the land more than a century ago.
In a Facebook video uploaded March 11, Lavign alleges the company “has repeatedly searched in the wrong place for the burial sites,” making her “doubt that Formosa Plastics is serious about locating and preserving our ancestors.”
The report, which was prepared by the environmental and archeological services firm Coastal Environments, Inc., (CEI), discovered as many as seven cemeteries that may be burial grounds of enslaved people. The sites, which also included a cemetery on the former Buena Vista Plantation, were discovered by CEI researchers who were first told of two cemeteries on the Formosa site by the Louisiana Division of Archaeology. CEI was able to locate these burials with the help of detailed maps from 1877 and 1878 and a process known as cartographic regression.
“The enslaved people in these gravesites had no choice in where they lived, where they worked, where they died, and where they were buried,” Lavigne said in a press release. “Our ancestors are crying out to us from their graves—they are telling us to not let industry disturb their burial sites. Formosa Plastics did not inform the citizens of St. James or the parish council of the existence of the graves when they knew—they don’t care, they just want to profit from St. James Parish.”
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Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli, has little sense of irony. He marked International Women’s Day by tweeting that his government wants to help women “fulfil [their] responsibilities effectively”. Those responsibilities evidently do not require an education: his government expels girls from school if they become pregnant. Mr Magufuli sounds less than empathetic when discussing the matter. “After calculating some few mathematics, she’d be asking the teacher in the classroom: ‘Let me go out and breastfeed my crying baby’,” he once complained.
Aghast, the World Bank withheld a $300m loan in 2018 that was intended to fund secondary education. After some toing and froing, Mr Magufuli promised to expand a programme to teach young mothers. The bank once again offered a loan, this time of $500m.
Many people think it was wrong to do so. One pundit dubbed the new deal “separate but equal”, in a nod to the era when schools for blacks and whites were segregated in America. The analogy holds. There are not always enough places for young mothers in Tanzania’s parallel schooling programme, which, moreover, teaches an outdated curriculum and is staffed by ill-prepared teachers.
Under pressure from Tanzanian campaigners, the World Bank again delayed issuing the loan in January. Yet the controversy also illustrates a quandary often faced by donors trying to help poor people ruled by unpleasant governments.
Some activists argue that the bank should simply withdraw the loan. But that would mean hobbling the education of about 6.5m children in an attempt to protect a much smaller number. (Some 5,500 pregnant girls were expelled in 2017.)
A second option would be for it to offer the loan with strings attached. But such “conditionality” is often ineffective, in part because donors fail to enforce it, notes Haley Swedlund of the Centre for International Conflict Analysis and Management at Radboud University in the Netherlands. “The incentive is always to disburse,” she says.
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Exactly six years ago, in mid-March 2014, Liberians woke up to texts, calls, and screenshots that all suggested the same thing: Trouble was coming. It wasn’t the sort of trouble we were used to—namely, war—but it was the kind of trouble that could be spread through the simplest of affectionate gestures or through the dutiful expression of one’s faith. No one had yet heard of the thousands of people who had died of unknown causes in Gueckedou, Guinea, just a few hours east of Liberia’s border town of Foya. And no one knew that the virus causing these deaths had spread rapidly across Guinea in the months before. What we did know on that morning was that samples sent two months before to Lyon,France, had finally yielded results. It was the Ebola virus disease.
The more than 60 percent of Liberia’s population under the age of 35 hardly remembered the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the mid-1990s. Even if they had been born then, they would have been busy dodging bullets. Panic peaked that morning. A woman said to be carrying the virus had crossed border into Liberia’s Foya district. She was making a beeline for Kakata, anhour’s drive outside of Monrovia, and the authorities were hard-pressed to intercept her. That panic dissipated as life went on. Weeks went by without news. Those in Monrovia—nearly a third of the country’s population—and those in neighboring cities saw no cause for alarm. They thought it was a hoax. Among such a youthful, optimistic,and largely undereducated population, one case of Ebola can become ten thousand.
Those first days of the 2014 Ebola outbreak and Liberia’s response from that point on can offer important lessons to European and North American governments in light of the World Health Organization’s announcement that the new coronavirus is now a pandemic—and the evidence in rising caseloads from Madrid to London to New York.The Liberian government’s reaction to the crisis and the approach we took in Liberia could serve as a model for how Western countries, many of which are underprepared fora crisis of this magnitude, can respond.
First and foremost, leaders must communicate with citizens effectively. The success of the response in Liberia, a deeply religious country, hinged on our ability to resolve a confrontation between faith and science that was extremely fraught. People had flocked for refuge to their places of prayer and come out infected. Our Islamic communities had been hit hardest: Ebola had spread through the performance of burial rites for the dead,which mandate washing the body and burying it within 24 hours—a pillar of Islam. As a government, we stood no chance of addressing the crisis if we could not engage effectively with the Inter-Religious Council of Liberia and its diverse interfaith clerical figures to make the case for caution.
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