Coronavirus and the new normal

 

Sunlight destroys virus quickly

Yahoo News April 2020

Preliminary results from government lab experiments show that the coronavirus does not survive long in high temperatures and high humidity, and is quickly destroyed by sunlight, providing evidence from controlled tests of what scientists believed — but had not yet proved — to be true.

A briefing on the preliminary results, marked for official use only and obtained by Yahoo News, offers hope that summertime may offer conditions less hospitable for the virus, though experts caution it will by no means eliminate, or even necessarily decrease, new cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The results, however, do add an important piece of knowledge that the White House's science advisers have been seeking as they scramble to respond to the spreading pandemic.

The study found that the risk of "transmission from surfaces outdoors is lower during daylight" and under higher temperature and humidity conditions. "Sunlight destroys the virus quickly," reads the briefing.

Ex-PM calls for global government to tackle coronavirus

The Guardian 26 Mar 2020 

Gordon Brown has urged world leaders to create a temporary form of global government to tackle the twin medical and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The former Labour prime minister, who was at the centre of the international efforts to tackle the impact of the near-meltdown of the banks in 2008, said there was a need for a taskforce involving world leaders, health experts and the heads of the international organisations that would have executive powers to coordinate the response.

A virtual meeting of the G20 group of developed and developing countries, chaired by Saudi Arabia, will be held on Thursday, but Brown said it would have been preferable to have also included the UN security council.

Global Lord’s Prayer “united for humanity”

Oikumene 24 March 2020

World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit invites all member churches for a joint prayer, saying the Lord’s Prayer together on Wednesday 25 March at noon.

Pope Francis has extended an invitation to all Christian leaders, including the World Council of Churches (WCC), to join in praying the Lord’s Prayer simultaneously on 25 March at noon Rome time, or noon local time at any location across the world.

In a letter of invitation, Cardinal Kurt Koch expressed his hope that all will join “this initiative in which all Christians invoking together the graces from heaven, will ask for the end of this pandemic, trusting in the power of God.”

WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit welcomed the invitation and the opportunity for so many people to participate in a united prayer for all of humanity as the world faces the pandemic of COVID-19.

“As people across the globe are in their scattered working places at home, we will have the opportunity to unite our voices in praying to God with the words that our Lord Jesus Christ taught us” said Tveit. “At this challenging time, prayerful activities that unite us are a reminder that we are one human family.”

UN Chief Calls For 'Global Ceasefire' To Unite Against COVID-19

Abplive 24 Mar 2020

United Nations: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has made an emotional plea to put all "armed conflicts on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives" against coronavirus.

Calling for a "global ceasefire," he said at a news conference on Monday, "The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. That is why today, I am calling for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world."

He was overcome by emotions as he started to speak and broke off and gathered himself to start again to speak to a world where conflicts rage even as it is engulfed by coronavirus.

In keeping with the UN headquarters directives and New York City regulations against gatherings, Guterres held the news conference via interactive teleconferencing.

Guterres also appealed for a coordinated international response to the coronavirus pandemic.

"We need a much stronger coordination, coordination in suppression of the disease, coordination in making sure that not only the developed countries can respond effectively to the disease but that there is massive support to the developing world not to let the disease spread like wildfire in the developing world," he said.

Bill Gates always seems to know when it’s time to go

Computer World   Mar 16, 2020

Bill Gates resigned from Microsoft’s board of directors last week, pretty much ending his official ties to the company he co-founded. He says he’s still available as a technology adviser to CEO Satya Nadella and other Microsoft leaders, but otherwise he’s devoting himself completely to his other pursuits, like philanthropy.

Gates and the company he started very nearly 45 years ago with Paul Allen transformed the computing landscape. Throughout the period of Microsoft’s early growth and maturation, Gates was at the helm as CEO, demonstrating business leadership and competitiveness that, even more than technology, were keys to the company’s success.

The competitiveness eventually led to Microsoft’s antitrust issues. The technology world was changing (I’ll go through some of that history in a bit), and the leader who had made Microsoft a tech giant was perhaps no longer tuned in to the changes as he once had been. That happens a lot with founders. What rarely happens is that the founder sees the writing on the wall and takes a step back. But Gates did. He resigned as CEO, staying on as chairman of the board.

Not everything Gates did was brilliant. By the time the internet had become a force in the tech world, Gates and Microsoft had made a series of missteps that almost made the company irrelevant. And in resigning as CEO, Gates left Steve Ballmer in charge. Ballmer clearly had earned the right to lead Microsoft as CEO, but he wasn’t right for the job, and Gates eventually had to remove him. The men had always been close, and it couldn’t have been easy to do it, but he did.

Founder power

This is the third step back from Microsoft that Gates has taken. He dropped his day-to-day duties as CEO in 2006, and gave up ultimate oversight as chairman of the board in 2014. Now he has relinquished his seat on the board.

This is actually a remarkable record. Founders have extraordinary power at a company, and they often don’t know when to step down, sometimes doing the company so much harm in their later years that the firm doesn’t recover. Even if they step away from day-to-day activity, they often step in and exert their influence at critical times, undermining the sitting CEO and setting the company up for failure. As chairman, Gates seemed to have refrained from that sort of thing, until the day came when Ballmer had to go.

The China That Emerges After Coronavirus Will Be A Cashless Society

Wealth Advisor  

Freezing cross-province transfers and replacing $86 billion in paper yuan is only consolidating a process of surveillance where Beijing can monitor all transactions.

It’s still getting bad in China, where reported coronavirus cases are doubling every 7-10 days. Until that exponential contagion curve flattens out, we just don’t know how far the outbreak spreads or how fast the government will ultimately be able to contain it.

The society that emerges is going to play by different rules. And it starts with Beijing locking down even more of the second-biggest economy in history. 

Cash was already going away in China. Now it turns out that the virus shows up on old paper money and can live there for days.

Every time every one of those infected yuan notes moves from hand to hand, it’s another infection vector. If you handle the wrong money, you’re literally carrying the plague.

Naturally that makes people much less eager to accept cash. Luckily there are payment apps to keep everything clean and digital.

But coincidentally enough, the big apps from Alibaba and We Chat already work hand in glove with the central bank. There’s no privacy there. The transactions are open to surveillance.

And with true crypto driven deep underground, cash was the best way left to operate in the country without leaving a transparent digital trail. 

Is it any wonder Beijing has started impounding yuan notes in the quarantine zone while stopping transfers between provinces? 

Old currency just isn’t getting replaced. Instead it’s being withdrawn from circulation so it can be sterilized. In theory, new money will take its place.

Actress Julia Roberts Shares Poem on Shabbat Observance

Algemeiner March 16, 2020

Amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis, US actress Julia Roberts posted on Instagram on Sunday a poem about quarantining and social distancing that begins by discussing Shabbat.

“What if you thought of it as the Jews consider the Sabbath — the most sacred of times?” the poem by Lynn Unger asked. “Cease from travel. Cease from buying and selling. Give up, just for now, on trying to make the world different that it is. Sing. Pray. Touch only those to whom you commit your life. Center down.”

Unger wrote the three-paragraph poem, titled “Pandemic,” last week. She said thinking about the “restrictions” observant Jews face during Shabbat helped her form her poem.

“We generally think of restrictions as being a negative,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “But the idea of the Sabbath is that accepting these restrictions — you can’t exchange money, drive a car, work — can be a spiritual discipline that is a source of beauty, a source of the holy, as opposed to just being a pain in the ass.”

Is this the event leading to the big event?