Sunday, March 29, 2020

Bunker with a bowling alley: How the rich are running from coronavirus


By Jack Flemming, Los Angeles Times 2/25/2020 






a living room filled with lots of furniture: Vivos' Indiana bunker boasts earthy tones and space for 80 people.1-4/8 SLIDES © Courtesy Vivos/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Vivos' Indiana bunker boasts earthy tones and space for 80 people.

Hand sanitizer? Sure. Face masks? Fine. But as the coronavirus spreads, the rich are investing in a much more extreme way to ward off the disease: bunkers.

Inquiries and sales are skyrocketing for bunkers and shelters across the country.

Most come equipped with special air-filtration systems, which buyers believe will come in handy to keep out a virus that can reportedly linger in the air for several hours. And for those fearing a broader societal collapse down the road, a secure safe room with a year’s worth of food can provide peace of mind.

Bunkers are nothing new; tens of thousands of Americans built private fallout shelters as Cold War tensions rose in the early ’60s. Tornado country provides a steady demand for wind-resistant shelters — above or below ground — that typically cost about $3,000 to $11,000, according to HomeAdvisor.com.

But in an age ruled by capitalism, manufacturers are pumping out safe spaces with amenities usually reserved for mega-mansions.

Gary Lynch, general manager of Texas-based Rising S Bunkers, said the phone has been ringing nonstop since last week.

“As unpopular as coronavirus is, it’s getting the publicity of a Backstreet Boys hit in the ’90s,” he said. “People have an infatuation with it.”

One of the first people to call in bought a bunker the same day. Soon after, a customer from Japan ordered 1,000 of the company’s custom-made NBC air-filtration systems. At $3,000 a pop, it was a $3-million sale.

Similar to the ones used in hospitals, their standard NBC systems (which stands for nuclear, biological and chemical) suck in air and remove harmful particles such as bacteria or nuclear fallout dust, providing clean air for up to 15 occupants.

Encased in steel, the bunkers come with a variety of add-ons such as escape tunnels, hidden doors, bullet-proof glass and pepper spray portals. For those with a bit more coin, Lynch and his team will make the bunker feel like a home.

“Movie theaters are common,” he said. “We built one in California that has a shooting range, swimming pool and bowling alley.”

Related video: Head of NYC Prepper's Network explains how to prepare for a self-quarantine (provided by Business Insider)

The company has 24 standard options, with the smallest being 8 by 12 feet. Complete with a bunk bed, air filtration system, kitchen counter and toilet, it costs $39,500.

Other models include a 2,400-square-foot bunker for $539,000 called the Eagle and a complex with 42 bunk beds, 15 private bedrooms, a gun room and panic room for $1.009 million called the Fortress.

The one with the most amenities is the Aristocrat. Priced at $8.35 million, it has a gym, sauna, swimming pool, hot tub, billiards room, greenhouse and garage.

Lynch said it takes six to eight workers one to two months to build a 10-foot by 50-foot unit. To keep up with orders, he’s hiring a second shift.

Buyer demographics change frequently. He’ll see a flurry of young conservatives one month and liberal, middle-aged women the next. The most common buyers, he said, are self-made business owners.
a sign on the side of a building: Vivos xPoint boasts 575 military bunkers once used to store bombs in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

The Aristocrat floor plan includes a bowling alley, gun range and swimming pool.

Rising S Bunkers general manager Gary Lynch is hiring a second shift to keep up with demand.
“In 2008, I talked to a guy for four-five months who was thinking about purchasing a shelter. I think he probably used the coronavirus to convince his wife, because he finally just bought one,” Lynch said. “That’s how most buyers are; they’re not in it for one single reason.”

Ron Hubbard, CEO of Atlas Survival Shelters, echoed the sentiment, saying the outbreak has helped buyers on the fence decide to order a shelter.

He’s promoting a model called the Safe Cellar, which is a secret space installed under a 28-inch concrete slab inside a house. It can be tucked under the kitchen, living room, closet or garage and boasts a safe room, wine cellar, gun room and tornado shelter.

Afraid of getting lonely during the apocalypse? Vivos has you covered. The company — which translates to “living” — sells exclusive spots in community shelters in secure locations around the globe.

Its underground shelter in Indiana has room for 80 people with 120 square feet each. For $35,000, it promises one year of autonomous survival with queen-sized bunk beds, a 30,000-gallon fuel tank and food for 12 months. Built during the Cold War, the once-gray shelter now boasts a 12-tone color palette of earthy shades that touch up spaces such as a lounge, dining area and kitchen.

“It’s cozy,” Vivos CEO Robert Vicino said. “We’re providing people a sense of comfort.”

Vivos inquiries and applications are up 1,000% year-over-year, and sales are up 400%. Over that same span, their average buyer has shifted from middle class to upper class.

These days, the accommodations are locked with no residents, Vicino said, but he and his staff have a daily conversation on when to activate the shelter.

“We don’t need the shelter for the quarantine. We’ll need the shelter for all the other bad things that are going to happen. We may open it tomorrow, I don’t know.”

In the Black Hills of South Dakota lies the company’s other U.S. bunker community, where people can take refuge in one of 575 military bunkers once used to store bombs. Secluded in soil, each dome spans 2,200 square feet and can fit 10 to 24 people.

The units cost $35,000 (plus a yearly lease of $1,000), and Vivos will comfortably outfit them for $25,000-$75,000.

Guests will need to fly to Germany to access the firm’s flagship bunker. Called Europa One, the 76-acre compound was carved from bedrock under a 400-foot mountain by the Soviets during the Cold War. Vicino calls it a modern-day Noah’s Ark.

In addition to pools, theaters, gyms and bars, it includes 228,000 square feet of secure living areas, 43,000 square feet of above-ground space and three miles of tunnels. Private apartments start at ?2 million euros, or nearly $2.2 million.

“Buyers want the same fit and finish as a private yacht. People have to not only survive, but psychologically survive,” Vicino said.

He said more than 1 million people have shown interest in the bunkers, and there are spaces available in all three.

“We don’t create fear. We resolve it. The true elite all have backdoor plans. They’re jumping on planes and flying to islands,” he said. “We give people the peace of mind that they have their own backdoor solution for when it’s time to take shelter.”

The company is currently developing its largest shelter yet — a 3-million-square-foot underground complex with 30-foot ceilings and room for between 5,000 to 10,000 people. Planned amenities include baseball, golf and a 400-foot underground lake.

“As long as time permits, we will continue to build bunkers. This world won’t be safer tomorrow.”

Jack Flemming covers luxury real estate for the Los Angeles Times. A Midwestern boy at heart, he was raised in St. Louis and studied journalism at the University of Missouri. Before joining The Times as an intern in 2017, he wrote for the Columbia Missourian and Politico Europe.

Saturday, March 28, 2020

EARTHQUAKE TODAY 📡 Live earthquake today🌍

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The Earthquake Today live radar map shows all earthquakes which are happening or happened in the past all around the world. Every day happen a lot of earthquakes around the globe, but luckily only very few are very strong.

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Quick links: Most recent quakes | Recent major quakes | News | Top 20 quakes past 24 hours | Country / region lists | Quakes near volcanoes | Past earthquakes | Monthly reports | NEW:Fast Twitter alerts (Mag>2.8) | Twitter alerts (Mag>4) | Twitter alerts (Mag>5) | NEW:Earthquake stats
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On the global map, only larger quakes are included (otherwise, there would be thousands of points). If you are interested in complete lists including smaller earthquakes, please navigate to a specific region from the menu.


How the coronavirus is impacting US farmers. 
Could the weather help?


By John Roach, AccuWeather staff writer Mar. 27, 2020 

Last year's flooding hit farmers hard. In this file photo, Jeff Jorgenson
 looks over a partially flooded field he farms near Shenandoah, Iowa. 
About a quarter of his land was lost last year to Missouri River flooding. 
(AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

The 2020 U.S. crop season was lining up to be an excellent bounce-back year, which was welcome news for farmers eager to recover from 2019’s disaster. Then things changed in America very quickly in March because of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The impact of the outbreak has affected both the overall U.S. and agriculture-specific economies, most notably in falling commodity prices, and a lower demand for corn-based ethanol because of plummeting oil prices.

“The slowdown in the economy … has presented a never-before-seen challenge to those in the grain and livestock business,” long-time Nebraska farmer Edwin C. Brummels told AccuWeather. “Patience and understanding are going to be required in marketing and by those having a financial stake in each grower’s operation for the foreseeable future.”

The good news for U.S. farmers: AccuWeather still foresees a record-setting corn crop, a significant year-over-year increase in soybean production and cotton production that could be the best in a decade. The forecasted warmer spring and summer weather also should be beneficial for wheat production.

AccuWeather is predicting U.S. corn production in 2020 will reach 15.486 billion bushels (393.344 million metric tons), based on 87 million acres harvested with 178 bushels per acre. The U.S. record for annual corn production is 15.15 billion bushels, set in 2016.


Bernie Rayno gives the latest update on the coronavirus. Chicago is restricting long runs and bike rides and an elderly woman in Italy made a full recovery.

U.S. corn production was 13.69 billion bushels in 2019, the lowest since 2015 (13.601 billion bushels). The 13.1 percent increase AccuWeather is predicting for this year would be the largest year-over-year increase since 2013 (28.5 percent increase from 2012).

AccuWeather also is predicting U.S. soybean production will see a strong comeback, with production estimated to be 4.258 billion bushels (115.886 million metric tons), based on 83.5 million acres harvested with 51 bushels per acre.

That would be a 19.6 percent increase from 2019’s total of 3.558 billion bushels, which was the lowest total since 2013 (3.357 billion bushels). Such an increase would be the largest year-over-year improvement since 2004 (27.3 percent increase from 2003).

“Any farmer who is living on the edge will at the very least consider the risk of growing a crop which may not be profitable,” said AccuWeather senior meteorologist Dave Samuhel. “That could lead to more conservative acreage then what the market may have dictated before the virus hit.

“However, last year was a record number by far for prevented plant acreage – 18 million acres combined for corn, soybeans and wheat – so farmers are going to be eager to get back into action,” Samuhel added.

Thanks to good starting growing conditions, AccuWeather predicts cotton production will reach its highest output in a decade: 19.85 million (480 lb.) bales from 10.95 million acres yielding 870 pounds per acre. U.S. wheat production (winter and spring) in 2020 is predicted to reach 1.874 billion bushels, based on 38.1 million harvested acres with 49.2 bushels per acre (51.016 million metric tons).

The weather in spring and summer looks to be a boon for farmers. AccuWeather is forecasting higher-than-normal temperatures over the next three months throughout the United States. “There is almost no part of the country that we are predicting to be below normal in any of the three months, which is unusual,” said AccuWeather Founder and CEO Dr. Joel N. Myers. “This may be a first.”

“The big thing is getting the sun out at this time of year,” said AccuWeather commodities consultant Jim Candor. “If you get that April sun, it’ll warm the topsoil pretty fast. Right now, it’s wet. But that’s why getting a dry week in the first half of April is pretty important.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will release its World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) on April 9. Its estimates in March were: corn: 15.458 billion bushels; soybeans: 4.194 billion bushels; wheat: 1.836 billion bushels; and cotton: 19.5 million bales.

Farmers are dealing with the coronavirus pandemic as another reality that must be managed. “Obviously, we take extra precautions when needed,” said Nebraska farmer Justin Mensik. “I think the vast majority of us will be just fine. We see more cows than people in a day.” 

(DON'T COUNT ON IT 
CORONAVIRUS IS A ZOONOTIC DISEASE MEANING IT IS PASSABLE BETWEEN ANIMALS, AND ANIMALS AND HUMANS, KISSING CAMELS BY HUMANS LED TO THE MERS OUTBREAK)

---30---
6.1 magnitude earthquake strikes Philippines Thursday night

Courtney Spamer

Around 11:30 p.m. local time on Thursday night (March 26), an earthquake was detected at the southern tip of the Philippines, off the shores of the island of Mindanao.

According to USGS, the earthquake was a magnitude of 6.1 on the Richter Scale, located 8 km (5 miles) southwest of Baliton, in the Glan region of the southern Philippines. The epicenter was also approximately 53 km (33 miles) south of the General Santos City.

© Provided by AccuWeather
The above map shows the approximate epicenter of the earthquake that took place Thursday night, local time, off the coast from the city of Baliton (Photo/USGS).

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) issued a preliminary report that the organization expected damage from the earthquake and aftershocks to follow.

The southern island of Mindanao was likely to bear the brunt of the damage, given its proximity to the epicenter.
Power, equality, nationalism: how the pandemic will reshape the world

Covid-19 has intensified the rivalry between the US and China – but it has also strengthened international co-operation. Will nations be more united or divided, more – or less – free?


Simon Tisdall Sat 28 Mar 2020 21.58 GMT
 
US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping: 
trade has been a major focus for both men till now, but Covid-19
 is likely to change this dramatically. 
Photograph: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty


The global impact of the coronavirus pandemic poses a fundamental question: is this one of those historic moments when the world changes permanently, when the balance of political and economic power shifts decisively, and when, for most people, in most countries, life is never quite the same again?

Put more simply, is this the end of the world as we know it? And, equally, could the crisis mark a new beginning?

Genuinely pivotal global moments, watersheds or turning points (pick your own terminology) are actually quite rare. Yet if the premise is correct – that there can be no return to the pre-Covid-19 era – then it poses many unsettling questions about the nature of the change, and whether it will be for better or worse.

For countless individuals and families, normal life has already been upended in previously unimaginable ways. But how will the pandemic influence the future behaviour of nation states, governments and leaders – and their often dysfunctional relationships? Will they work together more closely, or will this shared trauma further divide them?

Some analysts see grounds for optimism, for example in beneficial environmental effects in northern Italy and China. Countries hitherto at odds, such as Iran and the UAE, are cooperating, at least temporarily. In the Philippines, the crisis prompted a ceasefire with Communist rebels. Global interdependence and the importance of collective, multilateral approaches have been vividly underscored.

But there is also a more pessimistic view, typified by Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University. “The pandemic will strengthen the state and reinforce nationalism. Governments of all types will adopt emergency measures to manage the crisis, and many will be loath to relinquish these new powers when the crisis is over,” he wrote in Foreign Policy magazine.

Walt continued: “Covid-19 will also accelerate the shift in power and influence from west to east. The response in Europe and America has been slow and haphazard by comparison [with China, South Korea and Singapore], further tarnishing the aura of the western ‘brand’… We will see a further retreat from hyper-globalisation, as citizens look to national governments to protect them and as states and firms seek to reduce future vulnerabilities.

“In short, Covid-19 will create a world that is less open, less prosperous and less free.”

Is Walt right? The cop-out answer is only time will tell. Yet the outcome is not preordained. The responses of everybody, from presidents and prime ministers to ordinary citizens, to the myriad challenges and upheavals arising from the pandemic will help determine what happens next.

It’s a chance to reset both global and personal landscapes. Notwithstanding present feelings of powerlessness, there are choices to be made about what kind of future awaits. After Covid-19, everything could be up for grabs.
Balance of power

After early blunders, China’s government is working hard to turn Covid-19, first detected in Wuhan in November, into a national success story. It claims draconian measures to suppress the disease have largely worked. Now, by offering assistance to Italy and other badly affected countries, China is reinforcing its credentials as a global leader. The virus has become a soft power tool to overtake its superpower rival, the US.

If the US remains absent without leave, China may take the crisis as an opportunity to start setting new rulesMira Rapp-Hooper, US Council on Foreign Relations

“A critical part of this narrative is Beijing’s supposed success in battling the virus. A steady stream of propaganda articles, tweets and public messaging, in a wide variety of languages, touts China’s achievements and highlights the effectiveness of its model of domestic governance,” wrote commentators Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi in Foreign Affairs magazine.

In contrast, Donald Trump is struggling to dispel a widespread perception of gross incompetence. “The US government’s pandemic leadership has been its own special brand of catastrophe…. [It] has placed its own citizens in unnecessary peril, while sidelining itself from acting as a global crisis leader,” wrote Mira Rapp-Hooper of the US Council on Foreign Relations.

“This domestic and international governance crisis could change the nature of the international order in several ways …. If the US remains absent without leave, China may take the crisis as an opportunity to start setting new rules according to its own global governance vision,” she continued.

Authoritarianism and democracy

China’s challenge to US hegemony was already strengthening on many fronts before the Covid-19 crisis erupted. The pandemic may accelerate this shift. For US-allied democracies that value open governance, civil rights and free speech, this is a worrying prospect.

The trend towards centralised, authoritarian rule evident in countries such as India, Brazil and Turkey, and typified by China and Russia, has coincided with the rise of rightwing nationalist-populist governments and parties in Europe. Some are now following China’s lead in attempting to weaponise the virus for political ends.

“The pandemic unquestionably presents an era-defining challenge to public health and the global economy [but] its political consequences are less well-understood,” the independent monitor, International Crisis Group, warned last week. “Unscrupulous leaders may exploit the pandemic to advance their objectives in ways that exacerbate domestic or international crises – cracking down on dissent at home or escalating conflicts with rival states – on the assumption that they will get away with it while the world is otherwise occupied,” the ICG said. 

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, may be tempted
 to use the pandemic to keep his country in a state of 
emergency. Photograph: Isopix/REX/Shutterstock

One example cited by the report was Vladimir Putin’s recent attempt to indefinitely extend his presidency in Russia (although the virus has since forced him to postpone a vote that could have allowed him to stay in power until 2036). Another was a bid by Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s nationalist leader, to renew a state of emergency “that prescribes five-year prison sentences for those disseminating false information or obstructing the state’s crisis response.”

Governments such as Egypt’s have followed China’s example in expelling foreign journalists, restricting media access and curtailing public discussion. Like Boris Johnson and many European leaders, Trump has also assumed emergency powers. From Bolivia, India, Sri Lanka and Iraq to the US, UK and France, elections have been postponed, parliaments suspended, and lockdowns and curfews imposed.

Most people may support such measures in the short term. But what if the crisis is protracted, with a “second wave” running into next year? And what if the new controls are not relaxed or withdrawn after it ends? This is what Harvard’s Stephen Walt meant about the danger of “less free” post-pandemic societies.
Globalisation and multilateralism

Unprecedented government aid packages for businesses and workers, intended to mitigate the disease’s economic and financial impact, have led some analysts to suggest “the state is back” – and that the limits of the postwar neoliberal, free market model have finally been reached.

What the crisis has shown, it is argued, is that when the challenge is truly existential, only the state can offer holistic and equitable solutions. A natural corollary is that the high-water mark of globalisation has arrived. These are radical paradigm shifts. Will they endure?

“The pandemic could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back of economic globalisation,” wrote Robin Niblett, director of the Chatham House thinktank. The architecture of global economic governance established in the 20th century was at risk, he warned, raising the prospect that political leaders may “retreat into overt geopolitical competition”.

For Robert Kaplan of the Eurasia Group, “coronavirus is the historical marker between the first phase of globalisation and the second …. Globalisation 2.0 is about separating the globe into great-power blocs with their own burgeoning militaries and separate supply chains, about the rise of autocracies, and about social and class divides that have engendered nativism and populism …. In sum, it is a story about new and re-emerging global divisions.”

The pandemic is a powerful reminder of two things: the shared challenges of our global village, and the deep inequalities we must grapple with to fight themDavid Miliband, International Rescue Committee

If that’s true, few will mourn the passing of the globalisation era. And support for Kaplan’s theory may be found in increased post-pandemic protectionism if, as some predict, countries attempt to limit future exposure to global threats. The UN warned last week of worldwide food shortages caused by lack of workers, tougher immigration controls, sanctions and tariffs – and called for a new, more open approach.

The weakening of multilateral forums and institutions, evident before the crisis, is another sign of a shrinking world. Trying to revive their collective clout, the wealthy G20 countries belatedly pledged last week to do “whatever it takes” to fight the virus. But it remains largely unclear what that entails in practice, and who will take the lead.
Fragile world

The pandemic and its aftermath could be a game-changer for poorer countries with limited resources and means of recovery, and for refugees and people in conflict zones – but probably not in a good way.

The ICG report is blunt: “The global outbreak has the potential to wreak havoc in fragile states [and] trigger widespread unrest …. If the disease spreads in densely packed urban centres, it may be virtually impossible to control.” This is precisely the fear stalking South Africa’s townships right now.

The report said the dramatic global economic slowdown would disrupt trade flows and create unemployment in commodity-exporting poorer countries. “Its implications are especially serious for those caught in the midst of conflict if, as seems likely, the disease disrupts humanitarian aid flows, limits peace operations, and postpones diplomacy.”
Displaced Syrians wait for hot meal in Idlib,
 Syria, last month. The pandemic and global 
economic slowdown will make life in conflict
 zones even harder. Photograph: Burak Kara/Getty

War-afflicted Syrians, Afghans, Somalis, South Sudanese and Yemenis could be especially badly affected. That’s why the UN last week launched an appeal for $2bn in humanitarian aid. Its secretary-general, António Guterres, wants trillions more in global financial stimulus to prevent “millions” of deaths. “Covid-19 is threatening the whole of humanity and the whole of humanity must fight back,” he said.

“The pandemic is a powerful reminder of two things: the shared challenges of our global village, and the deep inequalities we must grapple with to fight them,” said David Miliband, who heads the International Rescue Committee. “Coronavirus is not just a problem for rich countries. We are only as strong as our weakest health system.”

Whether the international community heeds this and similar calls will be a key test.
Resilience and paranoia

The crisis has exposed an endemic lack of resilience, symbolised by chronically under-resourced healthcare systems in even better-off countries. The decision of many governments to call in the armed forces to help with logistics and manpower partly reflects fears that weakening social cohesion may lead to disorder on the streets.

“If governments have to resort to using paramilitary or military forces to quell, for example, riots or attacks on property, societies could begin to disintegrate. Thus the main, perhaps even the sole objective of economic policy today [rather than supporting financial markets] should be to prevent social breakdown,” wrote Branko Milanović, a professor at the London School of Economics.

Yet, looked at differently, this kind of national mobilisation can be seen as a positive development rather than a threat to civil liberties – and as a more beneficial use of military power. In Britain as elsewhere, the call to arms has created new legions of NHS volunteers. This renewed sense of national sharing and identity is a much-needed antidote to the regressive nationalism of recent years.

“Looking ahead, governments will have to decide whether to support more cooperative approaches to handling the crisis, not only in global public health terms but also as a political and security challenge,” the ICG said. “All leaders face pressure to focus on domestic priorities, and in particular to ignore conflict risks in weak states …. But there will be a day after.”

It's possible that, over the longer term, democracies will come out of their shells to find a new type of pragmatic internationalismJohn Ikenberry, Princeton University

While there is concern the pandemic could deepen divisions between countries and, for example, exacerbate anti-migrant sentiment, there is a fighting chance it will boost international cooperation, support for the UN, and a willingness to pursue dialogue rather than military and economic confrontation. The future need not be a globally debilitating US-China fight for supremacy.

Elisabeth Braw of the Royal United Services Institute warns of a moment of extreme geopolitical vulnerability. “The coronavirus is a perfect opportunity for the west’s adversaries to watch how countries cope – or don’t cope – with a major crisis,” she wrote. But John Ikenberry, professor of international affairs at Princeton University, is less fearful, pointing to the US-led recovery after the 1930s Depression.

Intensifying great power rivalry in a fractured, damaged, poorer world might indeed be the future that awaits, Ikenberry suggested. But it was equally possible that, “over the longer term, the democracies will come out of their shells to find a new type of pragmatic and protective internationalism”.

In other words, after the nightmare, a fresh start.
Five events that changed the modern world

Never again: Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, 
the ceramic poppies at the Tower of London that marked
 the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war.
 Photograph: Alamy


The Versailles peace conference
The 1919-20 conference that followed the first world war was a historic turning point. It marked the formal demise of the German, Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, the advance of democratic, representative governance in Europe, and the start of what came to be known as the American or transatlantic century.

The Great Depression
The Great Depression, the biggest worldwide economic calamity of the 20th century, began in the US in 1929 after the Wall Street crash. In the ensuing three years, global GDP fell by about 15% (compared with under 1% in the 2008-09 Great Recession). Things did not really pick up again until the second world war – a drastic remedy.

The battle of Stalingrad
Fought on the banks of the Volga in southern Russia in 1942-43, the close to seven-month battle, the biggest in history, proved to be a pivotal moment in the second world war in Europe. For the first time, Hitler’s armies were halted and beaten, and the myth of German invincibility destroyed. About 2 million combatants died.

The fall of the Berlin Wall

The peaceful fall in 1989 of the Berlin Wall, the actual and symbolic dividing line between the Soviet bloc and the west, in effect ended the 44-year-long cold war. The ensuing implosion of the Soviet Union triggered the collapse of Russian-backed regimes around the world, leading the US to proclaim itself the sole global superpower.

The 9/11 attacks
The attacks launched by al-Qaida on New York and Washington DC in September 2001 punctured American illusions of invulnerability and prompted George W Bush to declare a “global war on terror”. This led directly to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the ensuing expansion of anti-western jihadism typified by Islamic State.


Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus?
The Observer
Coronavirus outbreak

Scientists are tracing the path of Sars-CoV-2 from a wild animal host – but we need to look at the part played in the outbreak by industrial food production

Laura Spinney Sat 28 Mar 2020 
 
A Chinese poultry farm. China stepped up
 surveillance after bird flu outbreaks. 
Photograph: China Photos/Getty Images


Where did the virus causing the current pandemic come from? How did it get to a food market in Wuhan, China, from where it is thought to have spilled over into humans? The answers to these questions are gradually being pieced together, and the story they tell makes for uncomfortable reading.

Let’s start at the beginning. As of 17 March, we know that the Sars-CoV-2 virus (a member of the coronavirus family that causes the respiratory illness Covid-19) is the product of natural evolution. A study of its genetic sequence, conducted by infectious disease expert Kristian G Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and colleagues, rules out the possibility that it could have been manufactured in a lab or otherwise engineered. Puff go the conspiracy theories.

The next step is a little less certain, but it seems likely that the original animal reservoir for the virus was bats. Andersen’s team showed – like the Chinese before them –that the sequence of Sars-CoV-2 is similar to other coronaviruses that infect bats.

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Since other bat coronaviruses have transited to humans via an intermediate animal host, it seems likely that this one did too. That animal was probably one that some Chinese people like to eat, and that is therefore sold in “wet” markets (those that sell fresh meat, fish, seafood and other produce). This animal may have been the scaly mammal called a pangolin. That can’t be conclusively proved, but several groups have found sequence similarities between Sars-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses that infect pangolins.

If this is indeed the route the virus took to humans, it has two critical interfaces: one between us and the intermediate host, possibly a pangolin, and one between that host and bats. Most of the attention so far has been focused on the interface between humans and the intermediate host, with fingers of blame being pointed at Chinese wet markets and eating habits, but both interfaces were required for the pandemic to ignite. So where and how did the spillover from the bat to the pangolin – or other wild or semi-wild intermediate host – occur?

“Our study does not directly shed light on the geographical origin of the virus,” says Andersen. “However, all the available evidence shows that it was inside China.”

Case closed then, and President Trump is right to call Sars-CoV-2 the “Chinese virus”. Well, no, because if you want to understand why this pandemic happened now and not, say, 20 years ago – since Chinese people’s taste for what we in the west consider exotic fare is not new – you have to include a number of other factors. “We can blame the object – the virus, the cultural practice – but causality extends out into the relationships between people and ecology,” says evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace of the Agroecology and Rural Economics Research Corps in St Paul, Minnesota.

The closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market
 in Wuhan, in China’s Hubei Province, in January.
 Photograph: Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images


Starting in the 1990s, as part of its economic transformation, China ramped up its food production systems to industrial scale. One side effect of this, as anthropologists Lyle Fearnley and Christos Lynteris have documented, was that smallholding farmers were undercut and pushed out of the livestock industry. Searching for a new way to earn a living, some of them turned to farming “wild” species that had previously been eaten for subsistence only. Wild food was formalised as a sector, and was increasingly branded as a luxury product. But the smallholders weren’t only pushed out economically. As industrial farming concerns took up more and more land, these small-scale farmers were pushed out geographically too – closer to uncultivable zones. Closer to the edge of the forest, that is, where bats and the viruses that infect them lurk. The density and frequency of contacts at that first interface increased, and hence, so did the risk of a spillover.

It’s true, in other words, that an expanding human population pushing into previously undisturbed ecosystems has contributed to the increasing number of zoonoses – human infections of animal origin – in recent decades. That has been documented for Ebola and HIV, for example. But behind that shift has been another, in the way food is produced. Modern models of agribusiness are contributing to the emergence of zoonoses.


Take flu, a disease that is considered to have high pandemic potential, having caused an estimated 15 pandemics in the past 500 years. “There is clearly a link between the emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses and intensified poultry production systems,” says spatial epidemiologist Marius Gilbert of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.

A pangolin, the scaly mammal thought to be
 a possible intermediate host for the coronavirus.

The reasons, many of which were documented in Wallace’s 2016 book Big Farms Make Big Flu, include the density with which chickens, turkeys or other poultry are packed into factory farms, and the fact that the birds in a given farm tend to be near genetic clones of one another – having been selected over decades for desirable traits such as lean meat. If a virus gets introduced into such a flock, it can race through it without meeting any resistance in the form of genetic variants that prevent its spread. Both experimental manipulations and observations in the real world have demonstrated that this process can result in a ratcheting up of the virus’s virulence. If it then spills over into humans, we are potentially in trouble.

In a paper published in 2018, Gilbert’s group reviewed historical “conversion events”, as they call them – when a not-very-pathogenic avian flu strain became much more dangerous, and found that most of them had occurred in commercial poultry systems, and more frequently in wealthy countries. Europe, Australia and the US had generated more of them than China.

That doesn’t let China off the hook. Two highly pathogenic forms of avian flu – H5N1 and H7N9 – have emerged in that country in recent decades. Both infect humans, though not easily (yet). The first human cases of H7N9 were reported in 2013, and there were small annual outbreaks thereafter. But, says Gilbert, “nothing was done until the virus turned out to be pathogenic for chickens as well. Then it became an important economic issue and China started to mass-vaccinate its poultry against H7N9, and that ended the transmission to humans.”

A banner reading ‘We are all pangolins’ hangs 
on a balcony in Bordeaux, France. The entire 
country has been on coronavirus lockdown 
since 16 March. 
Photograph: Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images

China is one of the world’s major exporters of poultry, but its poultry industry is not wholly Chinese-owned. After the recession of 2008, for example, New York-based investment bank Goldman Sachs diversified its holdings and moved into Chinese poultry farms. So if China has its share of responsibility for spillover events, it isn’t alone. That is why Wallace insists on talking about relational geographies rather than absolute geographies, when it comes to identifying the causes of disease. Or as he puts it: “Follow the money.”

Not everybody sees a straightforward link between factory farming and new and dangerous forms of flu. Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, points out that before they were brought into factory farms, poultry were kept outside. The factory model may ramp up virulence, he says, but it probably protects a flock from being infected by a virus in the first place.

Still, Worobey doesn’t doubt that farming and other human-animal interactions have shaped our disease ecology. His group collects the sequences of flu viruses from a range of animal hosts, including humans, and plots them on a family treeto try to understand how flu has evolved over time. Flu is constantly mutating – that’s the reason the seasonal flu vaccine has to be updated each year – but it mutates at different rates in different hosts, which means that his flu family tree is informative both about the parentage and intermediate host of each strain and about the approximate timing of past spillover events.

It’s possible – though by no means certain – that flu first became a disease of humans after the Chinese domesticated ducks about 4,000 years ago – drawing that animal reservoir into human communities for the first time. But humans can also catch flu from, and give flu to, pigs – another animal we have lived alongside for millennia. A few years ago, Worobey suggested – controversially – that birds might not always have been the main intermediate host for human flu viruses. Until about a century ago, he reported, people may have caught flu from horses. Around the time that motor vehicles supplanted horses as transport, poultry farming was expanding in the western hemisphere, and it’s possible, Worobey argued, that birds then took over as the main intermediate host of flu for humans.

Not everyone buys that scenario. Wendy Barclay, a virologist at Imperial College London, says that if horses were once the main intermediate host for flu, “most avian viruses would contain the mammalian adaptation”, and they don’t. David Morens of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, thinks that it is more likely that the horse was a temporary detour, and that the main intermediate host of flu for humans has always been birds – especially wild ones. But all agree that humans have shaped these host-pathogen relationships, through our use of land and other animal species. And as Worobey points out, the sheer size of the human population today means that in the 21st century, we are doing so on an unprecedented scale. He estimates, for example, that domesticated ducks probably outnumber wild ones by now.

Traders selling bat meat at a market in Tomohon 
City, Indonesia. 
Photograph: Ronny Adolof Buol/Sijori 
Images via Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock


And we’re not just talking about birds. Gilbert believes a ratcheting up of viral virulence is happening in pig herds, too. Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), a disease of pigs that was first described in the US in the late 1980s, has since spread to herds across the worldand strains detected recently in China are more virulent than the early American ones. A 2015 study carried out by Martha Nelson of the US National Institutes of Health and colleagues mapped the genetic sequences of swine flu viruses and found that Europe and the US – the largest global exporters of pigs – are also the largest exporters of swine flu.

There have been claims on social media, sometimes posted by vegans, that if we ate less meat there would have been no Covid-19. Interestingly, some of these have been blocked by mainstream news organisations as “partly false”. But the claims are also partly true. Though the links they draw are too simplistic, the evidence is now strong that the way meat is produced – and not just in China – contributed to Covid-19.

It is clear that to prevent or at least slow the emergence of new zoonoses, as Fearnley and Lynteris have argued, China’s wet markets will need to be better regulated. But we also need to look behind those markets, at how our food is produced globally.

Though it may not feel like it now, Wallace says, we have been lucky with Sars-CoV-2. It appears to be far less lethal that either H7N9 – which kills around a third of those it infects – or H5N1, which kills even more. This gives us an opportunity, he says, to question our lifestyle choices – because chicken isn’t cheap if it costs a million lives – and vote for politicians who hold agribusiness to higher standards of ecological, social and epidemiological sustainability. “Hopefully,” he says, “this will change our notions about agricultural production, land use and conservation.”
Wild animals reclaim cities deserted by coronavirus
26/03/2020

IN THE PAPERS © FRANCE 24

By:Dheepthika LAURENT

IN THE PAPERS - Thursday, March 26: We take a look at wild animals reclaiming deserted cities and anger in the Spanish press as the death toll from coronavirus rises.

There's anger in the Spanish papers as the death toll from coronavirus surpasses that of China with over 3,400 mortalities. After 738 deaths were recorded on Wednesday, the Spanish daily ABC says the government knew about the risk of the virus in late February but continued to allow public events. Now, it says, they must be held responsible for their "mistakes and abuses".

The US Senate, meanwhile, approved an historic $2 trillion stimulus package to help struggling businesses impacted by coronavirus. But not everyone's approving. One columnist for the Washington Post is pretty critical of the move, calling it a make-believe world to think the government can help everyone and saying it marks the US’s move from free market capitalism to democratic socialism.


Finally, French daily Libération looks at how wild animals have reclaimed deserted cities. A puma was spotted roaming in the Chilean capital of Santiago recently. In Italy and Spain, wild boars have returned; on the Italian island of Sardinia, dolphins have come back in the absence of ferries and in the empty French ski resort of Courchevel, a wolf was recently spotted. Proof that humans' misfortune is an opportunity for animals!

Will an old malaria drug help fight the coronavirus?

20/03/2020

A packet of Nivaquine tablets containing chloroquine, a commonly used
 malaria drug that has shown signs of effectiveness against coronavirus,
 according to a study conducted in several Chinese hospitals.
 © Julien Gerard, AFP

Text by:Sébastian SEIBT

Hydroxychloroquine has been used for around 70 years to treat malaria, rheumatic conditions and other ailments. Now its potential use in the fight against coronavirus has become a source of hope for many, following encouraging results from a clinical trial in France on Monday. But experts caution that there is still uncertainty about its effectiveness.

A very old drug is coming back to the fore. The successful testing of hydroxychloroquine for use against the coronavirus in France’s second city Marseille on March 16 created high expectations amid this surging epidemic – especially in light of Donald Trump’s announcement on Thursday that the US Food and Drug Administration has approved its use for this purpose

Didier Raoult, director of a university hospital institute in Marseille, explained that he had conducted a clinical trial in which he treated 25 Covid-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine. After six days, he said, only 25 percent of patients who took this drug still had the virus in their body. By contrast, 90 percent of those who had not taken hydroxychloroquine continued to carry the Covid-19.

In the wake of this announcement, French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi offered to donate millions of Plaquenil (a trade name for hydroxychloroquine) to continue the tests, while the French government’s spokesperson Sibeth Ndiaye hailed the “promising results” and promised to expand clinical trials for this treatment.

Well-known and inexpensive

In France, some pharmacies have reportedly been overwhelmed by demand for the drug over the past few days. However, many voices soon pointed out that people should not jump to the conclusion that hydroxychloroquine is a proven miracle cure.

“This study seems promising, but we have to be really careful before raising hope when it comes to a virus as new as this one, for which we don’t yet have a lot of data,” said Sarah D’Alessandro, a professor of molecular medicine at the University of Milan and a malaria specialist who has worked on hydroxychloroquine.

This drug is regularly touted as a potential solution whenever a new virus appears. One “possibility is that chloroquine may alter the ability of the virus to bind to the outside of a host cell in the first place (which is an essential first step for entry) ”, noted Robin May, a professor of infectious disease at Birmingham University.

Seeing as it has been available and used for decades, hydroxychloroquine is “very well known, inexpensive and can be rapidly produced in large quantities”, D’Alessandro added. In light of these qualities, 25 clinical trials have been conducted or are underway in China to see whether or not this treatment should be used to treat Covid-19 patients. That’s while research was carried out into hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness against SARS, MERS and Zika when these diseases first flared.

It was a Chinese study published on March 9 that first put the spotlight on this anti-malaria drug in the context of the current pandemic. Researchers at the University of Beijing demonstrated its effectiveness in an in vitro trial – that is to say, an experiment on cells in a laboratory.

‘Difficult’ to interpret results

But when it comes to human trials, the picture is foggier. “Tests on human patients [except for malaria] have so far produced contrasting results that are difficult to interpret,” D’Alessandro observed.

Hence the interest in Didier Raoult’s work in Marseille: he is the first scientist to have carried out trials with human patients that seem to have produced conclusive results. But there are still doubts: the precise data from the clinical trial have not yet been published in a scientific journal, and so have not yet been subject to peer review, noted MedScape, a specialist publication for healthcare professionals.

Another reason for caution is that the trial was “only carried out on a few patients”, D’Alessandro emphasised. The Chinese study on March 9 was criticised by many in the scientific community because it was carried out on a group of “only” 100 patients – four times more than the experiment conducted in Marseille. The French government’s spokesperson highlighted this point, stressing the importance of carrying out trials on a larger scale before trying to reach conclusions on hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness.

A European programme of large-scale clinical trials was launched on March 12, aiming to test the effectiveness of four treatments that have already proven themselves against other viruses, such as Ebola. Hydroxychloroquine was not chosen.

A particular risk is that it does not work well with other medicines that may be necessary for certain patients with pre-existing health problems, particularly some autoimmune conditions. Hydroxychloroquine also presents risks of poisoning, and can be fatal if incorrectly dosed. Even if this danger is rigorously controlled in a hospital, the risk of an accident cannot be completely ruled out.

However, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, which is piloting the European clinical trial programme, has said that if there is additional proof in human patients of hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness, it could be added to the list of drugs used in Europe’s large-scale clinical trials.

This article was adapted from the original in French.


France sanctions use of chloroquine for certain patients with coronavirus

27/03/2020
Professor Didier Raoult, the head of a university hospital 
institute in Marseilles, France. © france 24 screengrab

The French government has officially sanctioned prescriptions of chloroquine to treat certain coronavirus patients. Speaking about chloroquine, Jérôme Salomon, France's director general of health, said: "This ensures continued treatment of patients who have been treated for several years for a chronic condition with this drug, but also allows a temporary authorization to allow certain patients with coronavirus to benefit from this therapeutic route."
How does the coronavirus compare to the Spanish flu?


Modified: 20/03/2020
Londoners wearing face masks to protect themselves from the 
Spanish flu in early 1919. © Collections La contemporaine

Text by: Stéphanie TROUILLARD

The coronavirus crisis inevitably prompts comparisons with the last epidemic that shook the world: the Spanish flu. Although the Great War overshadowed it in the public consciousness, this outbreak killed at least 30 million people worldwide – with some estimates even putting the figure at 100 million from 1918 to 1919. But are the two epidemics really comparable?

As the coronavirus outbreak accelerated after first emerging in the Chinese city Wuhan at the end of 2019, there have been more comparisons with the Spanish flu a century ago.

“People are talking about the Spanish flu right now because at the time, it was shocking; the biggest health crisis the world had ever known in terms of how it affected the demographic balance,” noted Anne Rasmussen, a historian at the EHESS university in Paris. “Of course, there was the Black Death [which caused between 25 and 34 million deaths in Europe from 1347 to 1353], but the Spanish flu was on a much more global scale.”

“But at the same time, the Spanish flu and the coronavirus are not really comparable,” Rasmussen continued. “Things are completely different today. One has to be very careful to avoid using comparisons that create more fear than illumination.”

Two very different diseases


Although the two diseases are both respiratory infections with common symptoms such as a runny nose and fever, they belong to different families of viruses. “Pneumonia and pleurisy caused a lot of death in 1918; people were suffocated – they felt like they were drowning,” said Rasmussen. “With regard to the coronavirus, France’s director general for health Jérôme Salomon emphasised how different it is from the influenza virus; the clinical profile, the severity, the biological signs are all different.”

The coronavirus is also more threatening to very different age groups from those who were hit hardest by the Spanish flu. The former affects the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions most severely. By contrast, the latter was most deadly for young adults – a rare phenomenon that continues to intrigue epidemiologists.

“We’re still trying to explain it, especially seeing as we now have the decoded DNA of the 1918 virus,” Rasmussen said. “One factor that may help explain it is that the flu had already circulated over previous decades, particularly during the 1889 epidemic. People who were alive at that point could have found themselves to be partially immunised when the Spanish flu broke out three decades later.”

Another fundamental difference lies in the level of knowledge about the two diseases, Rasmussen said: “At the time of the Spanish flu, people didn’t know the influenza pathogen, and without this knowledge, it wasn’t possible for them to create a vaccine. They knew they were dealing with a flu and that it was contagious, but they weren’t able to see the viruses because they were too small. That subsequently became possible with the electron microscope.”

Scientists did not isolate the particular virus strain that causes influenza in humans until 1933. Of course, scientific knowledge is much more advanced today. “We decrypted the RNA of the coronavirus within a few days, whereas for HIV/AIDS it took a few years,” Rasmussen said.

‘Let’s not create more fear’

The Spanish flu killed more people in 24 weeks than HIV/AIDS killed in 24 years, hitting countries ravaged by the Great War as it accelerated to become an epidemic. It acquired its name not because it originated in Spain – there is not enough epistemological data to definitively pinpoint its place of origin – but because the Spanish media were relatively free to report it in a neutral country, unencumbered by the censorship present in combatant nations.

The disease spread like wildfire in overcrowded army camps and hospitals, then spread to the rest of the world after raging through Europe. Patients did not benefit from modern resuscitation techniques or the antibiotics necessary to treat the complications the disease caused.

There was a divergent range of responses to the epidemic. In France, where the Spanish flu killed 240,000 people, there were bans on some gatherings and some public places were closed – but nothing like the current coronavirus lockdown. The focus was on the war effort.

“They were going through the final stages of the war, with decisive moments in a series of offensives and counter-offensives,” Rasmussen said. “You couldn’t stop people moving around because that would have hindered military operations.”

Despite the terrifying scale of the Spanish flu, it was not until 1948 that the World Health Organization was founded to co-ordinate the prevention and detection of disease outbreaks on a global scale. There were several outbreaks in the ensuing decades: the 1957 Singapore flu, the Hong Kong flu in 1968 and H1N1 in 2009.

“We learned a lot of lessons from each of these epidemics, with a much more efficient monitoring system – and we’re even better prepared today,” Rasmussen said. “Let’s not create more fear; the current state of affairs already provokes enough anxiety. It’s a different world now from the one that saw the Spanish flu. Things are done on a different scale now, with much more research and a much more efficient approach to dealing with diseases. There are great reasons for hope.”