Radiation across the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone spiked 17x as firefighters over the weekend battled a 250-acre forest fire, reported NBC News.
More than 100 firefighters, several Antonov AN-32P Firekiller air tankers, and a Mil Mi-8 helicopter were dispatched near the village of Vladimirovka to fight the fire. Ukrainian emergency services said firefighters battled the blaze over the weekend and wrapped up operations by Monday.
VIDEO: A forest fire is underway in the restricted zone around Chernobyl, scene of the world’s worst nuclear accident, but Ukrainian government agencies have denied an official’s claim that the fire caused a spike in radiation levels pic.twitter.com/EOyG0XG4QD
“There is bad news – radiation is above normal in the center of the fire,” ecological inspection chief Yegor Firsov wrote in a Facebook post alongside a video of a Geiger counter. “As you see on the video, the appliance indicators are 2,3 at ok 0,14. But such a situation is only in the fire.”
Firsov said the spike in radioactivity was observed in the proximity of the fire. He wrote in a Sunday post that nuclear experts recorded no increase of radiation levels in the capital, Kyiv, about 60 miles from the exclusive zone.
Vladimirovka is part of a 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone, which was deserted in 1986 after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant explosion, which exposed millions of people to radioactive materials across Europe. The region is the most radioactively contaminated area in the world.
We’ve noted in the past that “radioactive fallout has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) acknowledges only 56 deaths among firefighters who suffered and died agonizing deaths in the disaster’s immediate aftermath.”
Earlier this year, we showed how certain types of fungi are attracted to radiation. And the radioactive site of the abandoned Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant has seen an abundance of fungi growing on it over the years.
As for wildfires that are occasionally sparked in the exclusion zone, Firsov outlines the area lacks prevention measures to mitigate forest fires considering nature has taken over the region. He also blames “careless citizens” who venture into the area, sometimes setting fires.
“The problem of setting fires to grass by careless citizens in spring and autumn has long been a very acute problem for us,” he wrote. “Every year we see the same picture — fields, reeds, forests burn in all regions.”
Firsov is currently calling for new laws that would impose harsher penalties for anyone starting fires in the exclusive zone.
“There are relevant draft bills. I hope they will be voted in. Otherwise, large-scale fires will continue to occur every autumn and spring,” he wrote.
Against this backdrop of unprecedented uncertainty, as tenants of shops, bars, restaurants and offices refuse to pay their rents en masse and almost all commercial property deals fall through, it’s all but impossible to put an accurate price on the current value of commercial real estate.
Virtually no one can escape the economic fallout from Covid-19. Not even the owners of commercial real estate, who benefited so handsomely from the central bank-engineered bailouts and property bubbles of the past decade, are immune.
In the UK, a decision by the government to grant retail tenants a three-month moratorium against eviction — an essential lifeline for many businesses that have seen their incomes dry up or drop dramatically as a direct result of the lockdown — has shifted the locus of immediate financial stress from tenants to property owners and their lenders.
The shuttered bars and restaurants in central London are a case in point. Early last week, they received a collective quarterly rent bill of around £500 million. But most of the bars and restaurants took advantage of the government’s moratorium: Instead of paying their rents, they decided to use the freed-up cash to try to weather the crisis. Now, it’s their landlords who are suddenly short of money and who may, as a result, struggle to pay their staff and meet fixed costs such as quarterly interest payments to lenders.
The same is happening across the retail landscape. Some commercial landlords received less than a third of their expected rent on Wednesday.
They include Intu, the embattled owner of dozens of semi-shuttered malls in the UK, as well as a handful in Spain, which revealed it had collected just 29% of expected first-quarter rent, even after offering a deferral and cutting service charges. That compares to 77% during the same period last year, which was already low.
Even before the virus crisis, the company was already on its last legs having endured wave after wave of retail restructurings, resulting in soaring vacancies and plunging property values. In mid-March, two weeks before the UK government initiated a generalized lockdown of the retail sector, Intu warned it was on the brink of bankruptcy after declaring losses of £2 billion for 2019 and a debt of £4.5 billion. Its shares are now worth just four pennies a piece, having tumbled by 96% over the past year.
Intu is now threatening to take legal action against non-paying tenants, saying it would not “bankroll” retailers that have “just decided they don’t want to pay their rent.” Many other retail landlords are reportedly doing the same, despite the fact that many of their tenants have had to halt the lion’s share, if not all, of their business activity, decimating their earnings for the foreseeable future. Even before this crisis hit, many of these retailers were already struggling in the face of slowing sales, high costs, low profitability and rising competition from online rivals.
Intu is also frantically lobbying the government to grant it access to the £330 billion of state-backed loans and guarantees the government has pledged to roll out in support of businesses affected by the lockdown. If the government caves, Intu may have a fighting chance of renegotiating the huge loans it owes to its lenders before the covenants on some of those loans are broken.
Given the company already failed spectacularly in its bid to raise fresh funds from investors earlier this year, the banks may end up deciding not to throw yet more bad money after bad, even if the government agrees to guarantee up to 80% of any new loans. After all, once the lockdown begins to be lifted, the UK’s bricks-and-mortar sector will be in an even more parlous state than it was before the crisis, as evidenced by department store Debenhams’ announcement Friday that it is filing for bankruptcy, less than a year after being rescued by lenders, which wiped out its stockholders.
There’s no way of knowing how many more retail chains and store will follow in Debenhams’ doomed footsteps. Against this backdrop of unprecedented uncertainty, as tenants of shops, bars, restaurants and offices refuse to pay their rents en masse and almost all commercial property deals fall through, it’s all but impossible to put an accurate price on the current value of commercial real estate.
This is the rationale being used to justify gating most of the UK’s large open-end property mutual funds, trapping over £20 billion of investor funds. The first wave of closures, in mid-March, affected around a dozen mutual funds that offer daily withdrawals to their (predominantly retail) investors, even though the funds’ core investment — offices, industrial property and retail parks — is extremely illiquid, often taking months to offload. Between them, these funds manage some £11 billion of assets, equivalent to around a third of the total assets under management in the UK’s property fund sector.
At the end of March, a fresh wave of gatings hit, as the £3.4 billion BlackRock UK Property, the £2.4 billion Schroder UK Real Estate funds and five institutional funds managed by Royal London and Legal & General, including one with assets of £3.4 billion, announced they were suspending redemptions for the foreseeable future. Unlike the earlier round of closures, these funds have quarterly or monthly redemptions and are typically held by institutional investors with a more long-term investment approach.
“The basic issue is the same: there’s fundamental uncertainty over the net asset value,” said independent property consultant John Forbes.
“That’s compounded if the rent income doesn’t arrive. That potentially makes the valuation more challenging.”
In times of extreme financial stress and uncertainty, it’s not unusual for real estate to be plagued by acute liquidity issues. In June 2016, in the aftermath of the Brexit vote, six commercial real estate (CRE) funds suspended redemptions. But never before have so many real estate funds shut the doors on so many real estate investors.
Those investors are likely to have to wait quite some time before they see any of their money again. Material uncertainty “is still going to be here on June 30. I’m incredibly doubtful that we’ll be through this on September 30. [The funds] can’t resume trading until then,” said Mr Forbes. If the recent experience of the gated (and eventually wound down) Woodford Equity Income fund is any indication, by that time the investors may suddenly find that the value of their investment has significantly shrunk.
World’s First F-Bomb Was Dropped By Bored 16th Century Scottish Student, Locked-Down By Plague
Experts have found the origin of the F-word can be traced back to a Scottish manuscript penned by a student who was in lockdown due to a plague in the 16th century, reported The Scotsman.
An hour-long BBC Scotland documentary, which airs on Tuesday, will show the Bannatyne Manuscript, which was written by George Bannatyne in 1568, while he sat in quarantine at his Edinburgh home.
The manuscript contains The Flyting Of Dunbar And Kennedy, an alleged account of a dual between poet William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy in Edinburgh before the court of King James IV of Scotland in the early 1500s.
In the documentary, Dr. Joanna Kopaczyk, a historical linguistics at Glasgow University, tells viewers:
“In the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, when Kennedy addresses Dunbar, there is the earliest surviving record of the word ‘f***’ in the world.”
Kopaczyk says there is “some very juicy language” in Bannatyne’s collection and that Dunbar and Kennedy exchange insults with one phrase that said: “wan fukkit funling.”
She adds: “We are looking at a 500-year-old object. It’s a very precious manuscript and you can see the actual handwriting.”
Bannatyne Manuscript is believed to have the earliest written record of the F-word anywhere in the world. h/t JPIMedia
Actress and theatre-maker Cora Bissett says in the documentary: “It might never quite make the tourist trail, but here in the National Library we have the first written ‘f***’ in the world. I think that’s something to be proud of.”
A spokeswoman for the National Library of Scotland, which is where the collection of literature is stored, said: “The Bannatyne Manuscript is a collection of some 400 poems compiled by the young Edinburgh merchant George Bannatyne in the last months of 1568, when an outbreak of plague in Edinburgh compelled him to stay indoors. It is one of the most important surviving sources of Older Scots poetry.”
“The manuscript remained in his descendants’ possession until they gifted it to the National Library’s predecessor – in 1772.
“It has long been known that the manuscript contains some strong swearwords that are now common in everyday language, although at the time, they were very much used in good-natured jest.
“In particular the great slanging match between the poets William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy has been infamous for giving us the earliest known examples of these terms in written form,” the spokeswomen said.
And with quarantines around the world, we wonder what new words will people create today. Already we’ve documented one, that is, “Covidiot.”
In The Fortunes of Africa, author Martin Meredith describes a Dutch sailing ship that dropped off a load of laundry for the Khoikhoi, the local inhabitants of the southwestern cape of Africa whom Europeans called Hottentots. The year was 1713. The Khoikhoi washed the laundry and were duly paid.
But the laundry was carrying smallpox. Over the next year, the community was laid to waste. Nine out of ten Khoikhoi died, and the tribe eventually disappeared from the Cape.
Once again, a foreign pathogen is threatening Africa. The full impact of COVID-19 will be felt there later than in the rest of the world, but the financial markets have already exacted their toll. Even before the virus has made much headway on the continent, African currencies, sovereign debt, and public equities have fallen dramatically, in many cases experiencing losses far greater than in developed or other developing and emerging markets. The impact on African equity markets has already been worse than in the depths of the global financial crisis.
But, if managed properly, the pandemic may prove to be a loud hiccup on the way to realizing the African Century. As an investor and philanthropist in Africa for more than a decade, I have been focused on the unparalleled opportunity that the continent represents. As former South African President Thabo Mbeki put it in his 1999 victory speech, “The people of our country have given an unequivocal directive that we must work together for the African Renaissance, for the emergence of the 21st Century as the African century.” Strong underlying growth, attractive demographic trends, improved governance, stability, and transparency imply enormous opportunity over the long run, with the potential for tens of millions to be lifted out of poverty.
Africa’s population, growing at 2.5% per year (about twice the pace of India), is expected almost to double within the next 30 years. By the end of this century, Africa will surpass Asia in the number of working-age adults.
With this growth come challenges. Millions of able-bodied African young people will require education, jobs, housing, health care, and other social goods that their countries today are largely unable to provide. While the coming youth bulge holds great promise, it could jeopardize geopolitical stability if it is mishandled. A generation of under-educated, under-employed, and economically frustrated youth is a powder keg that could disrupt societies not just in Africa, but across the globe.
COVID-19 will interrupt the African Century in the short term. Lockdown enforcement may cause social unrest. Already, there have been protests and near-riots in Nairobi, Johannesburg, and elsewhere.
Lockdowns in large African cities are not the same as in China, Italy, or the United States. Housing settlements are informal and population densities are higher. Food and other essentials must be bought and consumed daily – often from open-air markets and kiosks, with cash earned the same day. Social distancing is impossible when five or more household members are sleeping in a single poorly ventilated room. Washing hands frequently is difficult when water has to be fetched from an unprotected community source down the road.
Hunger speaks louder than government edicts.Most African workers are involved in primary agriculture and must be able to plant, harvest, and process their crops. After all, there is no point in living now only to starve later.
African leaders will continue to look abroad for support. Many African governments, having tilted easily and early to the Chinese sphere of influence, have begun seeking alternatives elsewhere. But China will seek to capitalize on the crisis. For example, China will offer financial, medical, and other assistance, as it has with Italy. And China’s aggressive and decisive actions to combat the pandemic at home will be seen by many as a paradigm for Africa, given Europe and America’s disjointed and inept responses so far.
But Africa could emerge from the pandemic with less lasting damage than many fear. Leaders have learned important lessons from epidemics, notably Ebola. Warm climates, a mostly young and rural population, and lower rates of regional travel may slow the spread of the virus and hold down its mortality rate.
True, African institutions are too frail and under-resourced to cope with the pandemic and its economic fallout, and the continent’s medical systems are woefully unprepared. But financial and institutional support from Europe and the US will help mitigate the harm, particularly if solutions focus on delivering much-needed education, supplies, and infrastructure to where the needs are greatest.
In order to realize the promise of the African Century in the not-too-distant future, African countries cannot do it alone. As Ken Ofori-Atta, Ghana’s finance minister, recently told the Financial Times, this is “a break the glass moment” for the continent – an emergency in which international actors need to take drastic action if the world’s poorest region is to avoid a human and economic catastrophe. Recognizing Africa’s unique population, circumstances, and geopolitical significance is essential.
We cannot permit COVID-19 to halt Africa’s progress. The continent’s leaders and its developed-country partners can and must contain the pandemic. The Khoikhoi’s fate is a warning. It must not become a prologue.
China has distributed nearly 4 billion masks to foreign countries as it ramps up production of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), a move to restore its image as a global leader focused on humanitarian relief amid the COVID-19 pandemic that originated in its country and spread across the world.
However, The Spectator provides a new account of how China’s latest diplomacy has turned out to be an absolute ‘disaster,’ in the latest example with Italy and other European countries.
China told the world that it would donate tons of PPE to Italy to slow the virus outbreak. Reports now indicate that China actually charged Italy for PPE, instead of donating. It also turns out the PPE China sent over was the same equipment that Italy donated to China earlier in the year. What a mess…
“Before the virus hit Europe, Italy sent tons of PPE to China to help China protect its own population. China then has sent Italian PPE back to Italy — some of it, not even all of it … and charged them for it,” a senior Trump administration official told The Spectator.
Since March 1, China has exported 3.86 billion masks, 37.5 million pieces of PPE, 16,000 ventilators, and 2.84 million test kits across the globe, according to the New York Post.
Many countries who have received masks and other medical equipment from China have complained about the quality does not meet medical standards. China has apologized for quality issues and blamed its defective equipment on others.
Last week, we noted that the Netherlands was forced to recall 1.3 million face masks produced in China because they did not meet safety standards.
In Spain, the Ministry of Health on March 26 revealed that 640,000 COVID-19 tests that it had purchased from China were defective.
On March 28, the French government, which has several weeks of medical supplies left, announced it had ordered one billion face masks from China. It remains to be seen if the masks will be defective
“It’s so disingenuous for Chinese officials now to say we are the ones who are helping the Italians or we are the ones who are helping the developing world when, in fact, they are the ones who infected all of us,” the senior administration official said.
“Of course, they should be helping. They have a special responsibility to help because they are the ones who began the spread of the coronavirus and did not give the information required to the rest of the world to plan accordingly.”
The official also said China’s disinformation campaign to downplay the severity of the virus delayed the administration’s response to prepare the country for an outbreak by at least a month.
“The disinformation that China has put out is crippling responses around the world… We’re operating on some level with a hand-tied behind our back.”
The revelations surrounding Italy and faulty medical equipment shipments to European countries are fueling distrust among Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is attempting to position himself as the world’s new humanitarian superpower.
As the coronavirus unleashes economic shockwaves across Europe, the European single currency, the most visible symbol of European unification, is facing collapse.
The eurozone – a monetary union of 19 of the 27 Member States of the European Union that have adopted the euro as their common currency – is being buffeted not only by the prospect of a deep and long-lasting recession. Northern and Southern European countries are also feuding over possible financial support for Italy and Spain, the EU’s third- and fourth-largest economies, which have been especially hard hit by the coronavirus.
On March 13, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde dismissed calls by Italy for financial assistance to help it cope with the pandemic. After her comments rattled financial markets, Lagarde quickly reversed course and said that the ECB was “fully committed to avoid any fragmentation in a difficult moment for the euro area.” Italian President Sergio Mattarella replied that Italy had a right to expect solidarity from beyond its borders rather than obstacles.
On March 18, the ECB announced that, in an effort to calm sovereign debt markets, it would spend €750 billion ($810 billion) to purchase bonds issued by national governments. Lagarde tweeted: “Extraordinary times require extraordinary action. There are no limits to our commitment to the euro.” Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of the Guardian newspaper, wrote that the ECB’s announcement was evidence that, without a massive support package, the eurozone was in danger of collapse:
“The situation is immensely more dangerous — both economically and politically — than it was when spiraling Italian and Spanish bond yields prompted Mario Draghi’s [President of the European Central Bank between 2011 and 2019] “whatever it takes speech” in 2012. With people dying in their thousands, borders closing and activity collapsing, the entire European project is at risk.”
On March 26, EU leaders, during a virtual summit held by video conference, were unable to agree on an economic response to the coronavirus. A day earlier, nine eurozone countries — Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain — called for a common debt instrument, called “coronabonds,” to mitigate the damage caused by the coronavirus crisis. “We are all facing a symmetric external shock, for which no country bears responsibility, but whose negative consequences are endured by all,” they said in a letter.
Austria, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands, dubbed the eurozone’s “frugal four,” rejected the idea of issuing joint debt to finance economic recovery in Southern Europe. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that issuing joint debt would be “crossing the Rubicon” because it would turn the eurozone into a “transfer union” in a way that was not foreseen by the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union and laid the foundation for the single currency. “I cannot foresee any circumstance under which we will change our position,” he said.
Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra, in a letter to parliament, warned that coronabonds would introduce the threat of “moral hazard” by disincentivizing economic reform in debt-ridden Southern Europe. He also called on the European Commission, the EU’s administrative arm, to investigate why countries such as Italy and Spain have not made adequate economic reforms since the 2008 financial crisis.
A European diplomat quoted by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrantdescribed Hoekstra’s comments as a “serious insult” to Southern Europe. Another diplomat said that the comments were a “Dutch middle finger to the south.”
Southern European countries have the option of tapping funds from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the eurozone’s bailout fund, which lends money under strict conditions. Those countries are reluctant to use the ESM because they would be saddled with long term debt that would be hard to repay, and because the conditions would impinge on national sovereignty.
Writing for the Wall Street Journal, correspondent Marcus Walker explained the dynamic:
“Northern offers of loans with strings attached strike the south as punitive and inadequate. Southern clamor to issue joint bonds sound to the north like a demand to use its credit card….
“The specter of a divided eurozone remains. Unless the economic shock of lockdowns is quickly overcome, Italy and Spain are in danger of emerging from the coronavirus crisis as poorer countries. A renewed depression in Southern Europe would also be bad news for northern nations, whose industries and banks profit from the overall health of the region’s economy.”
In other words, if the coronavirus crisis eventually causes Italy to default on its debt, the reverberations will be felt across Europe — and the globe. Italy, with a GDP of nearly $2 trillion, is said to be “too big to fail, too big to bail.” Desmond Lachlan, a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted:
“Unlike Greece, Italy is too big an economy to fail for the euro to survive and too big and costly an economy for its European partners to save….
“In gauging Italy’s systemic importance to the global economy, one should bear in mind that its economy is approximately 10 times the size of that of Greece and that it is the eurozone’s third-largest economy.
“Equally important is the fact that after the United States and Japan, Italy has the world’s third-largest sovereign debt market with more than $2.5 trillion in outstanding government debt.
“It is difficult to conceive of a scenario where an Italian debt default would not trigger a European banking crisis. Were that indeed to occur, it must be expected to have global economic and financial market ramifications.”
The Associate Editor of the UK-based newspaper Independent, Sean O’Grady, wrote that the coronavirus crisis could catapult Italy into bankruptcy:
“Italy’s crisis is Europe’s. When Italy catches a cold, Europe will catch pneumonia. The euro cannot permit a major economy (Italy is the eurozone’s third-largest) to collapse in a disorderly mess.”
In Spain, which recently overtook Italy as the epicenter of the coronavirus in Europe, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez committed €200 billion ($215 billion) — 20% of the country’s GDP — to alleviate the economic and social consequences of the pandemic. When asked how he would pay for that amount of spending, Sánchez replied that he was counting on financial help from “Europe.”
Meanwhile, the coronavirus crisis is wreaking havoc across the eurozone, which suffered an unprecedented collapse in business activity in March 2020, according to IHS Markit, a London-based information provider. “Business sentiment about the year ahead has plunged to the gloomiest on record, suggesting policymakers’ efforts to date have failed to brighten the darkening picture,” it wrote. A survey by McKinsey & Company forecast that eurozone GDP will fall by 10.6% in 2020, and will not return to pre-crisis levels until the end of 2024.
On April 6, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire warned that France is likely to see its deepest recession since the end of World War II this year because of the coronavirus crisis. “The worst growth figure in France since 1945 was in 2009, after the great financial crisis of 2008: -2.2%. We will probably be far beyond -2.2% this year,” Le Maire told the Senate Economic Affairs Committee. “This shows the extent of the economic shock we are facing,” he added.
France, the eurozone’s second-largest economy after Germany, imposed a nationwide stay-at-home order since March 17. The lockdown will last until at least April 15. One month of confinement would cost France around 3 points of GDP over a year, and two months of confinement around 6 points, according to French Statistics Agency INSEE.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned his fellow EU leaders that the coronavirus outbreak risked undoing the bloc’s central pillars if they failed to show solidarity in this crisis. “What’s at stake is the survival of the European project,” he said.
Achim Truger, a member of the German Council of Economic Experts, said that he believes that coronabonds are necessary to prevent a collapse of the euro:
“All countries in Europe are being hit by the epidemic — Italy and Spain particularly hard. All countries, including Germany, must therefore be able to make the necessary health expenditures and take measures to bridge the economic crisis. This is only possible through additional government debt, and this must be guaranteed to prevent another euro crisis. If the debt loads of Italy and Spain rise sharply, they will be pushed into budget cuts, thus economic, social and political crises, which would ultimately lead to a sovereign debt crisis and a collapse of the euro and the EU. Therefore, there must now be a joint, solidarity-based solution.”
Oliver Hartwich, a German economist and prominent commentator on European affairs who is the Executive Director of the Wellington-based think tank The New Zealand Initiative, summed up the European predicament:
“Today, not a single European country is doing well which means there is limited willingness for European countries to come to each other’s aid. They are busy dealing with their own crises. Just witness how Italy has been left alone with its crisis by Europe and now rather gets its medical support from China….
“An almighty economic earthquake is in the making. In a few weeks or months, several large European economies will require bailout and assistance packages. These will be several times larger than anything Europe has seen. Yet no country, central bank or institution will be eager or even able to provide them. Even the gargantuan sums on the table now will not be enough.
“Incidentally, forget about the International Monetary Fund. It was already stretched when it got involved with Greece last time. It cannot bail out all of Europe when the euro collapses.”
Putin Tested Regularly For COVID-19, Controversially Resumes In-Person Meetings
Russia saw its single biggest one-day spike in COVID-19 cases Monday, at 954 new cases – amid a current total of 7,497 confirmed cases and 59 deaths – most centered in Moscow.
Despite the Russian capital by far seeing most cases, nearly all of Russia’s 140 million plus citizens are currently in “home isolation” even though some regions have yet to see a single case in the geographically expansive country.
Meanwhile, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that President Vladimir Putin is being tested regularly for COVID-19 after previously shaking hands with Moscow doctor Denis Protsenko, himself shortly after confirmed for the virus, which caused Putin to work remotely in isolation since the March 24 encounter.
Image via EPA/TASS
Speaking of Putin, Peskov said, “[He gets tested] as often as his doctor sees fit,” without going into details. “I do not deal with the matters of the president’s medical care,” he added.
The response arose after Putin appeared to loosen up his self-isolation regimen, given on Monday top officials from the country’s far east traveled to the Kremlin to meet with Putin in person.
According to TASS, “Peskov noted that Putin’s decision to hold a meeting with Presidential Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yuri Trutnev and Minister for the Development of the Far East and Arctic Alexander Kozlov at the Kremlin is not a violation of the self-isolation regime.”
“Yes, he [Putin] did come to the Kremlin yesterday,” Peskov said, while adding the president “does not visit public places and does not meet a large amount of people.”
Putin’s visit to a Moscow hospital March 24, via Sputnik.
Peskov emphasized this includes not only Putin himself being subject to regular tests, but anyone in his presence or who enters his office for a meeting. “All precautionary measures are being taken.”
In a speech to the public outlining the extension of a national paid work stoppage on Monday, Putin said some less-impacted regions will be able to loosen policies as local conditions see fit.
“There are regions where not a single case of the disease has been identified, although there are fewer of them as time goes on,” noted Putin.
Moscow hospital director Denis Protsenko, later confirmed for coronavirus, shaking hands with the Russian president in late March, via TASS.
No doubt, Russian leaders are closely watching the condition of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was moved to intensive care yesterday. Johnson is significantly younger (at 55) than the 67-year old Russian president.
“I would like to express my sincere support at this difficult moment for you,” Putin was quoted as saying in a Tuesday message to Johnson. “I am sure that your energy, optimism and sense of humor will help to defeat the disease.”
Living under lockdown restrictions, prevalent in nearly every state, is about to get a whole lot worse. The government in the United States and Canada has decided to take away the guesswork in the stores that are still open and decide for you what’s “essential” and what’s not.
When I have gone to the store to pick up groceries (I’m still getting fresh produce while I can), I also like to pick up a couple of things that are pleasant diversions: magazines, a crossword puzzle book, coloring pencils, some craft supplies. It’s nice to have some things that are enjoyable on hand to keep lockdown from feeling so grim and torturous. If the store is already open, getting a sunny yellow pillow for the living room is a pick-me-up, not a frivolous jaunt to a place I wasn’t already going. When we had a birthday in the family, we even picked up a few small gifts on our regular trip to the grocery store to provide a sense of normalcy.
But the days of getting a random item to brighten a family member’s day may be numbered. The government (at least in some places) wants to make this already unpleasant time as dismal as possible for us all.
Vermont has started a worrisome trend.
Vermont has decided to choose for you what is essential and what is not, banning the sale of non-essential items at stores like Target, Walmart, and Costco.
The Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD) is directing large “big box” retailers, such as Walmart, Target and Costco, with in-store sales of food, beverage and pharmacy, as well as electronics, toys, clothing, and the like to cease in-person sales of non-essential items in order to reduce the number of people coming into the stores.
“Large ‘big box’ retailers generate significant shopping traffic by virtue of their size and the variety of goods offered in a single location,” said Agency of Commerce and Community Development Secretary Lindsay Kurrle. “This volume of shopping traffic significantly increases the risk of further spread of this dangerous virus to Vermonters and the viability of Vermont’s health care system. We are directing these stores to put public health first and help us reduce the number of shoppers by requiring on-line ordering, delivery and curbside pickup whenever possible, and by stopping the sale of non-essential items.” (source)
Retailers are asked to close certain areas of the stores, rope them off to deny access, or pull non-essentials from their shelves.
So a store you’re already at is telling you that grabbing some hand lotion to soothe your dry, cracked skin from the constant application of hand sanitizer is non-essential? Getting a book to read while you’re locked down is against the rules? You can’t do a home improvement project while you’re stuck at home?
I fail to see how this is going to stop the spread of a coronavirus if the shopper is already at the store and the employees are also already at the store.
In fact, it seems to me that this would be helpful to our gasping and dying economy. But what would I know? Dinesh Iyer, Assistant Professor of Management at Rutgers School of Business-Camden, says the stores don’t need our frivolous little purchases.
“I think the economy can wait,” he said. “Most corporations have access to debt and finances that are not available to the common folk.”
Corporations can “leverage their assets and tide through difficult times” by borrowing larger sums of money at lower interest rates and more frequently than you or I can,” he said.
“We have an opportunity to do all the things around the house that we have been putting off, spend time with family, learn a new skill,” Iyer said.
“The online shopping can wait,” Iyer said. “But if you must, you can always add the items of interest to your wish-list. And after the crisis, if you still need it, go for it. In the meantime, conserve the resources. You will be saving lives.” (source)
It’s rather curious how Iyer thinks us “common folk” will be able to do those things around the house and learn new skills without the supplies to do so.
One of the most alarming things is that garden supplies are considered non-essential.
Of all the times in the world you need most to plant a garden, now is the time. But in Vermont’s directive, even the sale of garden supplies is non-essential.
…showrooms and garden sections of large home improvement centers should be closed. (source)
And readers shared this photo from a store in Vermont.
The government of Vermont says that it isn’t really accurate.
Recent pictures circulating on social media appear to be from a box store which has roped off access to “non-essential” areas of the store, per guidance from ACCD, with various seed packets behind the roped-off section. As stated above, agricultural seeds have been deemed “essential” in Vermont per the Governor’s executive order, however a homeowner’s access to seeds has been modified to meet the Governor’s executive order.
We’re hoping that retailers and consumers alike restrict in-person shopping to items that need to be purchased in-person and are of a time sensitive nature. While the state recognizes the importance of gardening as a source of food for many Vermonters, the ability to browse for seeds and purchase them in person doesn’t outweigh the risk of spreading the virus. Retailers can continue to make seeds available online, delivery and curbside. (source)
Okay. You can just buy them online…or can you?
Buying seeds online isn’t an option either.
Almost every seed company readers in the preparedness community have tried to make purchases from has said, sorry, but we’re just selling to commercial operations this year.
Johnny’s Select Seeds has the following announcement on their home page:
Here’s what you can expect as of March 31st, 2020:
At this time, we are accepting new orders only from commercial farmers shipping to the U.S. and Canada and international wholesale customers. We plan to resume taking orders from all customers on April 14th. This restriction applies to all orders placed via our website, phone, and email. This was a difficult decision and we apologize for the inconvenience.
Commercial Farmers only: Please login to your website account before placing your order or call our contact center at 1-877-564-6697 for assistance. If you have forgotten your password, you can find information on resetting your password here.
Orders placed with our standard shipping option prior to March 31st, 2020 may experience a shipment delay of 5–10 days. Commercial orders placed on or after March 31st, 2020 may experience a shipment delay of 1–2 days.
You may experience a longer than usual response time when you phone in your order, call on us to answer growing questions, or email us to make inquiries.
We have closed our retail store in Winslow, Maine, and will not be hosting farm tours until further notice.
We remain honored that you have chosen Johnny’s. Whether you have been buying from Johnny’s for 25 years or this is your first order, please know that we care deeply about helping you through the challenges of this coronavirus outbreak. Call or email us if you need growing advice or help finding products. (source)
So…you can’t get seeds from your local Walmart garden center if you’re in Vermont and you can’t order seeds from seed stores. Good luck with that garden you were hoping would help see you through this disaster unless you’ve already got seeds put back from previous years.
What can we expect?
I think it’s extremely likely that Vermont’s idea will catch on and spread across the country. Just like lockdowns began in a couple of areas then spread state by state, don’t be surprised when this trend does also. The province of Ontario in Canada has just closed all their hardware stores and is limiting purchases only to curbside pick-up. Here’s what you need to be prepared to see:
Don’t expect that you’re going to be able to pop over to Lowes or Home Depot to pick up seedlings – or even seeds – for your summer garden.
Don’t expect that you’ll be able to replace your children’s flipflops or sandals for the summer regardless of the growth of their feet – this could be considered “non-essential.”
Don’t expect to be able to replace clothing for growing children – at least not in person.
Don’t expect to get any summer toys for the kids to play with while they’re in the back-yard – non-essential.
Don’t expect to be able to buy a bigger size of pants because you ate all your quarantine candy. You’re going to have to squeeze yourself into your old pants.
Don’t expect to be able to get the fabric to make masks – remember? Craft supplies are non-essential.
Really, don’t expect anything. Because for some reason, it seems like governments want to make an already difficult and stressful time even worse by taking away the possibility for any kind of pleasant past-time unless you already have all the supplies you need for that.
This senseless crackdown not only makes things even more unpleasant, but it takes away even more streams of revenue for struggling businesses. And more than that, it’s limiting our ability to be as self-reliant as possible, leaving people to fight it out at the grocery store for dwindling resources with few options for creating our own food supplies.
Those living in Vermont have unfortunately missed their window for anything but mail order. For the rest of us, if there are some things you were hoping to get – be it new curtains, paint for the living room, tile for the bathroom, pots for your container garden, or the supplies to make a new chicken coop – you’d better get it now before your state follows the lead of Vermont.
“Historic Moment” – Robo Van Shuttles COVID-19 Tests At Mayo Clinic In Florida
At a time when America’s hospital systems are overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases and deaths, one hospital system in Florida is using autonomous vehicles to transport medical supplies and test kits.
The Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, recently announced that self-driving shuttles would transport COVID-19 tests from a drive-in testing clinic to the processing lab.
Autonomous shuttles help transport COVID-19 tests at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida
According to Mayo’s press release, “health care resources and staff are stretched thin,” and the hospital system believes robots can help limit exposure to the virus and free up healthcare workers’ time.
Mayo says four shuttles have been in operation since March 30. The program is in partnership with the Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA), Beep, and NAVYA, all working together to ensure autonomous vehicle safety.
“This development is a historic moment for the Jacksonville Transportation Authority,” said Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr., CEO of JTA.
“Along with our partners, Beep, NAVYA, and Mayo Clinic, we are leveraging our learnings from three years of testing autonomous vehicles through our Ultimate Urban Circulator program. Our innovative team saw this as an opportunity to use technology to respond to this crisis in Northeast Florida and increase the safety of COVID-19 testing.”
Kent Thielen, MD, CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida, said, “Using artificial intelligence enables us to protect staff from exposure to this contagious virus by using cutting-edge autonomous vehicle technology and frees up staff time that can be dedicated to direct treatment and care for patients.”
The proliferation of autonomous vehicles to transport infectious disease tests and medical supplies suggests that the pandemic could be the trigger for major hospital systems across the US to embrace an age of automation. We’ve noted on several occasions that robots will displace at least 20 million jobs through 2030. However, the virus crisis will likely speed up this transformative period, and instead of happening over ten years, it could come a lot quicker.
It’s been found that seven years ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci expressed that he was encouraged by lab tests involving a combination of drugs that included hydroxychloroquine in antiviral experiments on a SARS-like coronavirus that had emerged at the time.
Some observers are seeing that as puzzling…
Fauci, NIAID director and current Coronavirus Task Force rock star, has long been widely looked to as the nation’s ultimate authority on infectious diseases. As such, his record and history of public comments are especially subject to scrutiny and critiques at a time such as the current societal upheaval sweeping the globe.
An ongoing point of contention being amplified by the media is Fauci’s cautious present-day perspective on the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, while so many others are eager to embrace the encouraging indicators of its potential effectiveness against today’s novel coronavirus.
“We don’t have to start designing new drugs,” a process that takes years, Fauci says. “The next time someone comes into an emergency room in Qatar or Saudi Arabia, you would have drugs that are readily available. And at least you would have some data.”
“Even though the treatment hasn’t gone through definitive trials, Fauci says, “if I were a physician in a hospital and someone were dying, rather than do nothing, you can see if these work.”
Fauci, now so sour on hydroxychloroquine (+/- azithro) for covid19, despite its clinical promise, gushed in 4/2013 when a coronavirus [MERS] antiviral combo [ribavirin /interferon-alpha)] tested “only in cells in lab dishes” prevented viral replication! https://t.co/c9aN1b0nvZpic.twitter.com/KBTLDUeIUW
President Trump has repeatedly expressed his hope for hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), even as Fauci has been careful to temper Trump’s enthusiasm for the drug’s prospects.
On Friday, Fauci provided a nuanced explanation of his views on HCQ as a coronavirus treatment when he appeared on “Fox & Friends.”
Brian pushes back, saying civilians & drs in some countries are taking HCQ for coronavirus, and wondering if people already on it are getting the virus. Fauci says “we really don’t care” if people *think* it works, “that’s not the issue,” & we should protect those already on it. pic.twitter.com/iPDDBLDhRV
The Fox News hosts directed Fauci’s attention to a recent Sermo poll of more than 6000 physicians in 30 countries in which 37 percent rated HCQ as the “most effective therapy” in treating the novel coronavirus.
“We don’t operate on how you ‘feel,’” Fauci commented, pointing out that the survey measured feelings or opinions.
“We operate on what evidence is and data is.”
“Fox & Friends” also played a clip of Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Öz directly asking for Fauci’s thoughts about HCQ’s promise as suggested in a “Chinese study from Wuhan, reflecting statistically significant improvement in recovering from fever, from cough, and from pneumonia as well.”
“That was not a very robust study,” Fauci replied. “It is still possible that there is a beneficial effect, but the study that was just quoted, on a scale of strength of evidence, that’s not overwhelmingly strong. It’s an indication, a hint of it.”
He added:
“So although there is some suggestion that there is a benefit there, I think we’ve got to be careful that we don’t make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug. We still need to do the kinds of studies that definitively prove that any intervention, not just this one, but any intervention is truly safe and effective.”
“But when you don’t have that information,” the doctor added, “it’s understandable, and I grant that … it’s understandable why people may want to take something anyway, even with the slightest hint of it being effective, and I have no problem with that.”
The 79-year-old Fauci has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, having served under six U.S. presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan.
