Essay: America has decided it’s over the virus
May 29, 2020 

THIS MAGICAL THINKING CONTINUES 

EVEN NOW JULY 2022

By
Dan Zak
The Washington Post

We’re over it. The masks, the kids, the Lysol. Over it. The tragic hair, the diminished hygiene, the endless construction next door, the Zoom meetings from hell, the mind games with the unemployment office, the celibacy, the short tempers and long evenings, the looking forward to the mail, the feeling guilty about the mail carrier working double time, the corporate compassion pushing products we didn’t need even before the world went funky and febrile. The now-more-than-everness, the president-said-whatness. Over it. Does 99.1 count as a fever? Over it. Some of us have reached the outskirts of Netflix, and we’re over it. Some of us can’t make rent; over it. And so we are deciding to have a summer after all, it seems. A summer of playing freely, of living dangerously. One hundred thousand dead, 40.8 million jobless claims. Not past it, but over it.

“We can’t keep fighting the virus from our living room,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, R, clearly over it, said Wednesday.

“There is a pent-up demand” to resume normal life, said President Donald Trump, also over it, in the Rose Garden on Tuesday. “And you’re going to see it more and more.”

“I think everybody is kind of over it, you know what I mean?” says a Realtor named Toni Mock, on the phone from Jacksonville, Fla.

Her 2019 was better than any of her 25 years in the business. She wants that roaring Trump economy back. One thing that helped her get over it was the “boaters for Trump” flotilla May 16. She hopped in a friend’s 40-foot sportfishing boat with some chicken wings and Corona beers (lol) and joined a fleet of vessels in the Intracoastal Waterway. The sun, the breeze, the “Trump 2020” and “Stop the Bulls—” flags, the kayaks and jet skis, the boats dubbed with carefree puns like “Knot to Worry” — it was “almost biblical,” according to Mock.

“It’s all a part of getting out there and letting everybody know we’re not going to die from this.”

And what if the coronavirus surges back, because we’re all over it and having a summer, and we do die from this?

“I have God in my heart, so God could take me out any day,” Mock says. “He can take me out in any way he wants to. And if it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go. I don’t think anyone I know is personally concerned. None of us are afraid, because we have God in our souls and God in our hearts. And we don’t watch CNN.”

Boaters around Jacksonville are hoping to do another flotilla June 14, in honor of President Trump’s 74th birthday, and why not? Duval County is populous but has only 44 confirmed COVID-19 deaths; that’s 0.005 percent of the population.

If you render a pandemic in hyperlocal statistics, it can look like nothing. It can look like it’s time to get over it.

If you meet a pandemic head-on in a hospital, it can look like everything. It can look like we won’t be over it for a while. A few weeks ago, at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Mass., a nurse named Marlena Pellegrino donned her protective gear to check on a 100-year-old COVID-19 patient, who had been alone in a room for too long because of a staffing shortage.

“I’m blue,” the old woman, who had dementia, told Pellegrino.

At first, Pellegrino thought she was being literal. Blue? Her lips? Skin? A lack of oxygen? Just cold? The woman clarified that she was lonely.

“That was like a knife in my heart,” Pellegrino says. Even in her fog and confusion, the woman was communicating the hard truth of the pandemic: that many people are suffering, and dying, alone. And just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean we should be over it.

“People out in these states without masks on … — to nurses, that’s like, ‘What do these people not understand?’ ” — Marlena Pellegrino, nurse

“People out in these states at water parks and beaches and boardwalks without masks on, gathering 200 people in a pool — to nurses, that’s like, ‘What do these people not understand?’ ” says Pellegrino, walking in a park Thursday in Worcester, Mass., before her 3-to-midnight shift at St. Vincent. “This is about protecting community, protecting society. People are just discarding what is still a major health-care crisis. A pandemic means we need to be safeguarding one another. We’re going to be needing to protect ourselves for months — if not years — to come.”

The District is over it — the lockdown, anyway. The citywide stay-at-home order lifts today. Over your scraggly bangs? You can get your hair cut by appointment, but you can’t get it waxed or zapped off. Over eating every meal at home? You can order food and drink outside at a restaurant, but your party cannot exceed six people. Gyms, though, remain closed. This makes sense — for now — to Melody Feldman, owner of D.C.’s CrossFit MPH, whose 135 members are working out together virtually, on Zoom. But she very much hopes to be open by July.

“I was literally on Zoom calls for seven hours yesterday,” Feldman says. “I felt like I had so much anxiety and irritation at the end that, no, I can’t do that forever. That’s not healthy or natural. And I think that a lot of people are feeling a similar way. We’re willing to stay here for a while for the greater good, but it’s definitely taking a toll on everyone emotionally, socially. It’s not a place we can live forever.”


It’s definitely taking a toll on everyone … It’s not a place we can live forever.” — Melody Feldman, gym owner

Protesters in state capitols have been over it for a while. Last weekend a woman in Sacramento was so over it that she held a sign conveying her yearning for movie-theater popcorn. A man in Lansing was so over it that he held a sign May 14 that said, “I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” Now the rest of the country is beginning to grant their wishes. Disney World is hoping to begin a phased reopening July 11. In Las Vegas, the Bellagio and MGM Grand will reopen Thursday.

Debra Jeffries, a cocktail server at a Las Vegas casino, has a routine these days at her home in Henderson, Nev.: morning coffee, then two hours trying — and failing — to get ahold of someone at the unemployment office, then doing work for her union to advocate for safety standards. She’ll be over this whole thing when she’s satisfied that casinos are reopening responsibly.

“To tell you the truth, I’m scared,” says Jeffries, 65. “I wait on people from all over the world. And the smoking bothers me in a casino. That’s an aerosol, when they’re blowing out smoke, and that’s penetrating a mask.” She has been a cocktail server for 40 years, and suspects that the remainder of her career will not be the same.

Rising college senior Eric Mendoza knows his career won’t be the same, even though his career hasn’t even begun. He was elected student-body president at Texas A&M University three weeks before the pandemic locked down the country. This summer he was supposed to work in Dallas for a consulting firm, but instead he’s home in Houston with his parents and sister. Three months in, he’s over it, but he also realizes that “it” is actually a step forward.

“Because everything has changed, everything will change,” Mendoza says. “I have friends that planned out their life for the next few years, and now they have to do a whole new thing. I think a lot of students, myself included, are trying to release ourselves from expectations of what might have been, and grapple with reality.”

Reality means grappling with the idea that the coronavirus might stalk us for years, even if scientists come up with a vaccine. Reality means wondering how much more we can take. Who wouldn’t want to be over it? Beats being under it.

The percentage of American adults experiencing depressed moods has doubled during the pandemic, according to an emergency weekly survey conducted in April by the Census Bureau. Nearly half of adults in Mississippi reported symptoms of anxiety or depression; no state had a higher percentage.

This makes sense to Michael W. Preston, a marriage and family therapist in Jackson, Miss.: The lower your socioeconomic class, the higher your anxiety and susceptibility to mental illness. Preston, whose sessions are exclusively online for now, finds that his patients are frustrated either because others are not taking the pandemic seriously enough, or because they’re taking it too seriously. Over the past three months he has seen the balm of togetherness replaced by the irritant of politics, made worse by the fact that there’s nothing to do but sit in it.

“There’s been a spike not necessarily in anxiety related to COVID, but related to being stuck,” Preston says. “People are just at the end of their wits. ‘Michael, I cannot stay home for another day.’ They will and they do, but I think most people are talking about being stuck.”


“People are just at the end of their wits.” — Michael W. Preston, marriage and family therapist

Preston advocates grace. Show yourself grace. Show your spouse or your family grace. Permit and excuse each other’s shortened fuses and little conniptions. We may not be able to control time, but we can control space. And we should give each other that.

“Sometime on Monday, around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, I thought, “If I hear one more whining tone, I’m going to go bananas,” says Preston, a father of three children under 7. “And it’s not that my kids were being especially whiny; it’s just that I haven’t gotten a break from it, like I normally would, in weeks.”

So he excused himself, shut the door to his bedroom, and sat for a few minutes until he was over it.

This story was originally published at washingtonpost.com. Read it here.

As the BA.5 variant spreads, the risk of coronavirus reinfection grows

Joel Achenbach -

© An Rong Xu/For The Washington PostAs the BA.5 variant spreads, the risk of coronavirus reinfection grows

America has decided the pandemic is over. The coronavirus has other ideas.

The latest omicron offshoot, BA.5, has quickly become dominant in the United States, and thanks to its elusiveness when encountering the human immune system, is driving a wave of cases across the country.

The size of that wave is unclear because most people are testing at home or not testing at all. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past week has reported a little more than 100,000 new cases a day on average. But infectious-disease experts know that wildly underestimates the true number, which may be as many as a million, said Eric Topol, a professor at Scripps Research who closely tracks pandemic trends.

Antibodies from vaccines and previous coronavirus infections offer limited protection against BA.5, leading Topol to call it “the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.”

Other experts point out that, despite being hit by multiple rounds of ever-more-contagious omicron subvariants, the country has not yet seen a dramatic spike in hospitalizations. About 38,000 people were hospitalized nationally with covid as of Friday, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. That figure has been steadily rising since early March, but remains far below the record 162,000 patients hospitalized with covid in mid-January. The average daily death toll on Friday stood at 329 and has not changed significantly over the past two months.Has coronavirus disrupted your vacation or other travel plans? Share your experience with The Post.

There is widespread agreement among infectious-disease experts that this remains a dangerous virus that causes illnesses of unpredictable severity — and they say the country is not doing enough to limit transmission.

Restrictions and mandates are long gone. Air travel is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. Political leaders aren’t talking about the virus — it’s virtually a nonissue on the campaign trail. Most people are done with masking, social distancing and the pandemic generally. They’re taking their chances with the virus.

“It’s the Wild West out there,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “There are no public health measures at all. We’re in a very peculiar spot, where the risk is vivid and it’s out there, but we’ve let our guard down and we’ve chosen, deliberately, to expose ourselves and make ourselves more vulnerable.”

Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, would like to see more money for testing and vaccine development, as well as stronger messaging from the Biden administration and top health officials. She was dismayed recently on a trip to Southern California, where she saw few people wearing masks in the airport. “This is what happens when you don’t have politicians and leaders taking a strong stand on this,” she said.

The CDC said it has urged people to monitor community transmission, “stay up to date on vaccines, and take appropriate precautions to protect themselves and others.”Covid deaths no longer overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated as toll on elderly grows

Nearly one-third of the U.S. population lives in counties rated as having “high” transmission levels by the CDC. Cases are rising especially in the South and West.

Many people now see the pandemic as part of the fabric of modern life rather than an urgent health emergency. Some of that is simply a widespread recalibration of risk. This is not the spring of 2020 anymore. Few people remain immunologically naive to the virus. They may still get infected, but the immune system — primed by vaccines or previous bouts with the virus — generally has deeper layers of defense that prevent severe disease.

But the death rate from covid-19 is still much higher than the mortality from influenza or other contagious diseases. Officials have warned of a possible fall or winter wave — perhaps as many as 100 million infections in the United States — that could flood hospitals with covid patients. Beyond the direct suffering of such a massive outbreak, there could be economic disruptions as tens of millions of people become too sick to work.


© David Zalubowski/APTravelers wade through long lines at security checkpoints in Denver International Airport on July 5, 2022.

“It feels as though everyone has given up,” said Mercedes Carnethon, an epidemiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Carnethon said she also isn’t as cautious as she used to be. She wears a high-quality mask on airplanes but doesn’t wear a mask at the gym. She is worried that she’ll contract the coronavirus again — she caught it during the omicron wave last winter. But she doesn’t think a “zero covid” strategy is plausible.

“I feel there is a very limited amount that I can do individually, short of stopping my life,” Carnethon said. “It’s risky. I’ll be catching covid at an inconvenient time. I can hope it is milder than the first time I caught it.”

Many experts concerned about ongoing transmission have also pushed back against online fearmongering and apocalyptic warnings about the virus; people are not routinely getting infected every two or three weeks, Rasmussen said.

Population-level immunity is one reason the virus remains in mutational overdrive. The risk of reinfections has increased because newly emergent subvariants are better able to evade the front-line defense of the immune system, and there is essentially no effort at the community level to limit transmission.They got covid. Then, they got it again.

Al-Aly, who is also chief of research and development at Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, has scoured VA’s vast database to see what happened to the nearly 39,000 patients infected with the coronavirus for a second or third time. What he found was sobering. In a paper posted online last month, but not yet peer-reviewed or published in a journal, Al-Aly and his co-authors reported that people with multiple infections have a higher cumulative risk of a severe illness or death.

It’s not that the later illnesses are worse than, or even as bad as, earlier cases. But any coronavirus infection carries risk, and the risk of a really bad outcome — a heart attack, for example — builds cumulatively, like a plaque, as infections multiply.

“Reinfection adds risk,” he said. “You’re rolling the dice again. You’re playing Russian roulette.”

Vaccination remains an important, if still underused, weapon against the virus — even if it’s not that effective at stopping new infections.

Omicron blew through the largely vaccinated population last winter with stunning ease, and since then the subvariants have arrived in rapid succession, starting with BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 in the spring, and now BA.5 and its nearly identical relative BA.4.

Vaccines are based on the original strain of the virus that emerged in Wuhan, China in late 2019. The Food and Drug Administration has asked vaccine makers to come up with new formulas that target BA.5 and BA.4. Those boosters could be ready this fall.

But there is no guarantee that these latest subvariants will still be dominant four or five months from now. The virus is not only evolving; it’s also doing so with remarkable speed. The virus may continually outrace the vaccines.

“I worry that by the time we have a vaccine for BA.5 we’ll have a BA.6 or a BA.7. This virus keeps outsmarting us,” Al-Aly said.The lucky few to never get coronavirus could teach us more about it

“We are in a very difficult position with regard to the choice of vaccine for the fall because we’re dealing with a notoriously moving target,” Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s top adviser for the pandemic, told The Post in June, a few days before he, too, announced that he was sick with the virus.

Already there’s another omicron subvariant that has caught the attention of virologists: BA.2.75. First seen last month in India, it has been identified in a smattering of other countries, including the United States. But it’s too soon to know whether it will overtake BA.5 as the dominant variant.

There is no evidence that the new forms of the virus result in different symptoms or severity of disease. Omicron and its many offshoots — including BA.5 — typically replicate higher in the respiratory tract than earlier forms of the virus. That is one theory for why omicron has seemed less likely to cause severe illness.

It’s also unclear if these new variants will alter the risk of a person contracting the long-duration symptoms generally known as “long covid.” The percentage of people with severely debilitating symptoms is probably between 1 and 5 percent — amounting to millions of people in this country, according to Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University professor of medicine.

His colleague, Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunology and expert on long covid, said in an email that she believes the world is not sufficiently vigilant about the disease anymore. She is often the only person masking in a crowd, she said.

“I understand the pandemic fatigue, but the virus is not done with us,” she said. “I fear that the current human behavior is leading to more people getting infected and acquiring long covid. I fear that this situation can lead to a large number of people with disability and chronic health problems in the future.”Tracking U.S. covid-19 cases, deaths and other metrics by state

The precocious nature of the virus has made infectious-disease experts wary of predicting the next phase of the pandemic. Topol warns that a new batch of variants could come out of the blue, the same way omicron emerged unexpectedly in November with a stunning collection of mutations already packaged together. Omicron’s precise origin is unknown, but a leading theory is that it evolved in an immunocompromised patient with a persistent infection.

“Inevitably we could see a new Greek letter family like omicron,” Topol said. “There’s still room for this virus to evolve. It has evolved in an accelerated way for months now. So we should count on it.”

 THEY OVER LOOKED CANADA

What does gun control look like in wealthy nations?

The assassination of ex-Japanese Prime Minister Abe is the latest gun violence incident to make international headlines

Deutsche Welle

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Deutsche Welle   |   Published 09.07.22, 01:51 PM

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The assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is the latest incident of gun violence to make international headlines. As shootings continue, DW looks at policies covering firearms in select countries.Friday's shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Japan — a country known for its strict firearm regulations and low rates of gun violence — has sent shock waves across the world. Other countries with strict firearms laws have also experienced recent high-profile incidents of gun-related violence. DW looks at the laws in a handful of countries where gun violence is rare, but real.

Japan

"No one shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords" is the wording of Japan's weapons law. The country has some of the world's most stringent regulations on private gun ownership. Other than the police and the military, no one is allowed to possess a handgun. Only shotguns and air rifles are available to civilians.

Even buying those weapons in Japan is a long and challenging process. A prospective gun owner must attend mandatory all-day classes and pass a written test and shooting-range test with an accuracy of at least 95%.

Applicants must also undergo a mental health evaluation followed by a police background check — including the backgrounds of their relatives — to make sure that neither the applicant nor the people in their immediate circle have criminal records.

The license is valid for three years. After obtaining a gun, the owner must retake the class and the exam every three years to renew their license. The weapon must be registered and inspected by the police once a year.

Japan last saw the shooting of a politician in 2007, when Iccho Itoh, the mayor of Nagasaki, was shot and killed by a yakuza member. After the assassination, the country tightened the restrictions even further and raised punishments for illegally possessing firearms.

Gun violence is extremely rare in Japan. According to the National Police, there were only 10 shootings in 2021. In the United States, by comparison, 321 people are shot daily, and 111 of them die, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Denmark

After six people were killed in Highland Park, Illinois, on July 4, US conservatives seized on a shooting in Denmark on July 3 to argue that strict gun laws fail to prevent such tragedies. Opponents of this argument point out that Denmark has only had three mass shootings since 1994, whereas the US has already seen more than 300 mass shooting incidents in 2022.

GunPolicy.org, an international database run by the University of Sydney, categorizes the regulation of guns in the Scandinavian country as "restrictive." Firearms in Denmark are regulated by the Justice Ministry.

Civilians cannot own fully automatic firearms; semiautomatic weapons and handguns (pistols and revolvers) are only allowed with special authorization. People who want to purchase firearms must provide a reason such as collecting, hunting or target shooting. Police conduct background checks to determine whether it is safe to grant an applicant a permit. A record of each privately held firearm's acquisition, possession and transfer is retained in an official register.

According to GunPolicy.org, Denmark's estimated rate of private gun ownership was 9.9 weapons per 100 people in 2017.

New Zealand

A white supremacist gunman killed 51 people and wounded at least 40 others in 2019 in Christchurch. The government took action within a month, introducing a nationwide ban on semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles. Parliament voted almost unanimously in favor of the change, with a single dissenting vote.

This rapid reaction to the mass shooting was a unique one. In May, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Stephen Colbert on "The Late Show" that the change was a "pragmatic" response, in which "we saw something that wasn't right, and we acted on it."

Germany

In the wake of the terror attacks in Paris in 2015, the European Commission drafted a reform that was incorporated into Germany's weapon laws in 2020. Since then, authorities have had to check with domestic intelligence agencies to see if the applicant is known to be an extremist before issuing a gun permit.

Authorities must also check every five years whether a registered gun owner has a "legitimate need" to own a weapon. This usually means that the police check whether a gun owner is a shooting club member or has a hunting license.

Whether this measure would be sufficient to prevent extremist attacks has been a matter of debate. Tobias R., the Hanau perpetrator, who killed 9 people in 2020, and neo-Nazi Stephan E., who murdered a local governor Walter Lübcke in 2019, were both members of shooting clubs.

Germany's Interior Ministry revealed that as of December, 1,561 right-wing extremists still legally possessed weapons in Germany. This shows a significant increase of almost 30% compared to the previous year, when authorities recorded 1,203 right-wing extremists with legally-owned guns. At the end of 2020, 550 Reichsbürger (a conspiracy movement that rejects the legitimacy of the German state), still held weapons permits.

The Interior Ministry is drafting a new bill to expand the scope of the background checks authorities must make before granting or renewing a gun license.

Switzerland

Switzerland has one of the most heavily armed populations in the world, with more than 2.3 million privately owned guns in a population of 8.5 million.

Gun culture in Switzerland is essentially linked to its army. Military service is mandatory for all male citizens, who after finishing their service can keep the gun assigned to them at home.

The high number of weapons doesn't come without regulations. To own a gun, you must get a license from local authorities, which means undergoing several background checks.

Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, but is in the Schengen Area and has a close relationship with the EU, governed through a series of bilateral agreements. Consequently, a referendum was held in 2019 to tighten the country's gun laws to conform with new EU regulations. Almost 64% of voters agreed to tougher restrictions on semi-automatic and automatic weapons.

Although the strong gun culture and rates of firearm ownership in Switzerland bear similarities to those of the United States, the number of mass shootings is incomparable. The last mass shooting in Switzerland took place in 2001, whereas Gun Violence Archive recorded 692 mass shootings in the US in 2021 alone. This is the highest figure since the nonprofit research group started tracking shootings in 2014.

UK and Norway

The UK has come a long way in restricting gun ownership, now having some of the strictest firearms laws in the world. Shortly after the devastating Hungerford massacre in 1987, which left 16 people dead, the government took a big step in banning ownership of semi-automatic rifles and introducing new restrictions on the use of shotguns.

The 1996 Dunblane massacre, in which 16 children and one teacher were killed at a primary school, led to further reforms on gun laws in the United Kingdom. The Firearms (Amendment) Act of 1997 prohibited civilians from possessing all but the smallest-caliber handguns, which were then also banned under Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government the following year.

According to GunPolicy.org, the United Kingdom has one of the lowest rates of gun ownership (five guns for every 100 residents). The majority of the UK police also do not carry guns.

The situation looks slightly different in Norway, where 77 people were killed in a terrorist attack in 2011. In 2021, a decade after the attack, semiautomatic weapons, which had been used in the attack, were banned. Norway still has a high firearms ownership rate compared to other European countries (28.8 guns per 100 people, according to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey), but gun-related violence is very low.

Italy relocates hundreds of refugees from its Lampedusa centre

Around 600 refugees will be distributed to different regions in southern Italy to disburden the refugee centre, says Interior Ministry.

Migrants are rescued off the coast of Lampedusa on Tuesday Jan. 25, 2022. (AP)

The Italian navy has begun relocating the first 600 asylum seekers from the Sicilian island of Lampedusa after its refugee identification center became overwhelmed with new arrivals and photos circulated of filthy conditions.

July has seen a sustained uptick in daily refugee arrivals in Italy compared to recent years, according to Interior Ministry statistics.

Overall, arrivals are up sharply this year, with 30,000 would-be refugees making landfall so far compared to 22,700 in the same period in 2021 and 7,500 in 2020.

Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than mainland Italy, is often the destination of choice for Libyan-based refugee smugglers, who charge desperate people hundreds of dollars apiece to cross the Mediterranean Sea on packed, dangerous dinghies and boats.

The Italian navy’s San Marco ship was taking an initial 600 refugees from Lampedusa to another center in Sicily and from there they will be distributed elsewhere in Italy, the ministry said on Saturday and the transfers would continue on Sunday.

READ MORE: Mali refugees 'drown', 'dehydrate' to death off Libya coast



'No, it is Italy'

Lampedusa’s former mayor, Giusi Nicolini, posted what she said were photos and videos taken in the center in recent days, showing new arrivals sleeping on the floor on pieces of foam and bathrooms piled high with plastic bottles and garbage.

“There are 2,100 people packed in the Lampedusa welcome center,” which has beds for 200, she wrote on Facebook. “These could be photos from Libya, but no, it’s Italy. And these are the ones who survived.”

Right-wing lawmakers were quick to seize on the overcrowding, blaming the left-wing parties in Italy's government for being too soft on migration.

“And this would be the left's famous humanitarian model?” Georgia Meloni of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, tweeted along with the images. “Saying no to mass illegal immigration also means saying no to this.”

READ MORE: Several migrants drown as boat capsizes off Italy's Lampedusa

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‘Data Is the New Strategic Commodity of the 21st Century’: Arthur Herman on China’s Chip Race

CHINA IN FOCUS

Tiffany Meier

Jul 9, 2022

In this special episode, we sat down with Arthur Herman, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of the Quantum Alliance Initiative. While microchips have been making the rounds in news headlines, there’s a recent report by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University titled “Managing the Chinese Military’s Access to AI chips.” But what are AI chips, and what happens if China’s military gets a hold of these?

Herman said: “China is not only way ahead of us in terms of developing AI as an important tool for government and for understanding its antagonist—its main antagonist, namely the United States—they’re also thinking about AI as an important technology in a strategic way. And we need to spend more time thinking about that as well, and to understand that AI can be a very powerful, positive tool for America and for American life.”

As for how China gets these chips, Herman noted that “export control laws are complicated because it isn’t just the Chinese who buy these chips. And you don’t want to be in a situation in which you sort of say, ‘Okay, we’re not going to sell these chips anymore to China and we … want to make sure that no one else sends them to China either, or resells them, or repackage them in any kind of way to the Chinese military or Chinese intelligence services or even Chinese universities’—because whatever it is they get, the government says, ‘That’s ours,’ and they’ll help themselves to it. So you don’t want to be in a situation where you’re denying friendly countries, or even neutral countries, chips that are part of their perfectly legitimate AI applications, the way in which they work, in the commercial area or the government.AI is an ever-present technology.”

He added that “data has become the new strategic commodity in the 21st century. It will be as important and as decisive in who is it that prevails in the geopolitical contest between the United States and China, between the free world and what I call the new axis—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. It’ll be as decisive as coal and steel was in the wars in the 19th century, and as fossil fuels were decisive in the wars in the 20th century, and in our own era. It’s the future strategic commodity. We need to think about that, plan for it. Otherwise, we are going to find ourselves in a very serious situation where a technology we originated—machine learning and artificial intelligence comes out of American labs and American companies—is used decisively against us by our worst enemies. That’s not a situation we want to be caught up in. And we need to think about that in a very serious way, starting now.”

And we also sat down with David Goldman, deputy editor for Asia Times.

Goldman said, “For the most part, the military does not use the most advanced state-of-the-art chips. What you have in your, if you have a recent model, iPhone or Android, that has much more sophisticated chips in it then go into a jet fighter, for example. The military tends to use older ships, as there are a great many out there and many ways of getting them. So for the vast majority of military applications, stopping China from buying the top of the line chips is not going to make a great difference.”

He added: “Now, what the United States has tried to do recently is to hold back China’s development of its own chip-making capacity. The United States has a great deal of intellectual property in chip manufacturing equipment. And to make a chip, there are a dozen types of different machines, each of which may have 100 different technologies in it. It’s the most incredibly complex and difficult thing that human beings have ever done by the way of manufacturing. China has been scrambling to try to develop its own chip-making industry, but it’s still very much dependent on imported equipment, particularly from the Netherlands. And the United States last week asked the Netherlands to place yet additional restrictions on exports to China.”

Former Gov. Bill Richardson to travel to Moscow for talks on freeing Brittney Griner: Source

Richardson played a role in achieving the release of former Marine Trevor Reed.

ByPatrick Reevell
July 09, 2022, 

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is planning to travel to Russia in the near future for talks aimed at finding a deal to free the detained WNBA star Brittney Griner, a source with knowledge of the proposed trip told ABC News.

Richardson, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, played a role in achieving a prisoner exchange in April that saw Russia release former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed after nearly two and a half years in captivity.

He is expected to go to Moscow in the next couple of weeks, according to the source, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Russia has repeatedly suggested it's interested in trading Griner for Russians held in U.S. prisons. The new trip appears aimed at seeing if a similar deal to the one that freed Reed could be produced for Griner.

Richardson’s office did not confirm the potential visit, telling ABC News “we are unable to comment on this at the moment.”

“What I can say (and is publicly known) is both the Whelan and Griner families have asked us to help with the release of their loved ones,” Mickey Bergman, executive director at the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, told ABC News in an email.

Richardson is currently representing the Griner family as well as the family of Paul Whelan, the other former Marine held by Russia for three and a half years.

Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in basketball, has been in detention in Russia since mid-February after she was stopped at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and accused by Russian authorities of having vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage.

MORE: Biden, Harris speak to Cherelle Griner, wife of detained WNBA star Brittney Griner

This week, Griner told a Moscow court she would like to plead guilty to the charges, saying she had brought the vape cartridges into Russia unintentionally, explaining she had not meant to leave them in her bag.

The Biden administration has classified Griner as “wrongfully detained” and American officials believe Russia seized her, like Whelan and Reed, to use as bargaining chips with the U.S.

Richardson’s possible trip comes amid speculation whether the U.S. would be willing to make another prisoner swap to free Griner. The Biden administration has said it is committed to negotiating with Russia for Griner’s release but it has refused to comment on whether it is considering any trade.

In this Nov. 16, 2021, file photo, former U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York.
Craig Ruttle/AP, FILE

Asked to comment on Richardson's potential visit, the White House National Security Council told ABC it was in contact with Richardson and valued his efforts, but declined to say more.

“NSC leadership are in touch with Bill Richardson. We appreciate his commitment to getting Americans home and are pursuing the release of Brittney and Paul through government channels,” NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, said she had requested Richardson's team's help and would support a trip if it took place.

“We asked the Richardson Center to help and I’m encouraged that he might be going,” Cherelle Griner said in a statement to ABC through Griner’s agent Lindsay Colas.

Richardson has a long history of working to free Americans wrongfully detained overseas. Through his nonprofit, the Richardson Center, he has helped return U.S. citizens imprisoned in Iran and North Korea among others.

His team represented Trevor Reed’s family and spent months engaged in shuttle diplomacy trying to outline a possible deal to free him.

Richardson even flew to Moscow on the eve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in a last ditch effort to persuade Russia to make a trade.

Richardson does not represent the White House. In Reed’s case, he approached Russia’s government and the Biden administration separately to try to feel out what both sides might accept as any possible deal. He then relayed what he had heard back to both sides.

In the end, the prisoner trade the White House made for Reed was the same one Richardson had been advocating for: releasing Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a U.S. prison sentence for drug smuggling.

Richardson has since encouraged the Biden administration to consider making similar deals for Griner and Paul Whelan.

U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner, who was detained in March at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and later charged with illegal possession of cannabis, is escorted before a court hearing in Khimki, outside Moscow, Russia July 7, 2022.
Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters

Following Griner’s court appearance on Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it was "going to do everything that we can to bring home Brittney Griner safely, and to also make sure that we bring Paul Whelan back home as well." Jean-Pierre said Griner's guilty plea would have "no impact" on the efforts to negotiate her release.

MORE: Paul Whelan’s brother speaks on his Russian detention, US government response

Russian state media and officials have repeatedly floated trading Griner or Whelan for Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer, dubbed “the Merchant of Death” in the media and who is currently serving a 25 year sentence on narco-terrorism charges.

Trevor Reed and his family have called on the Biden administration to exchange Bout if it would free Whelan and Griner.

Speaking to ABC News this week, Reed urged President Joe Biden to do more.

"I hope that President Biden and his administration will do everything possible to get both, you know, Brittney and Paul out of Russia, and that they will do that immediately," he told ABC News. "Because every day that, you know, they sit here and wait to make a decision is one more day that, you know, Paul and Brittney are suffering."

Argentine anti-government protests build as president calls for unity

Protest against Argentina's President Alberto Fernandez's administration, on Independence Day, in Buenos Aires









Sat, July 9, 2022 
By Lucila Sigal

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentine President Alberto Fernandez called for unity on Saturday as protesters marched in the capital to the gates of the presidential palace, lambasting his government over soaring inflation and a crushing national debt.

The center-left president is facing a rising challenge from a militant left-wing of the ruling coalition that wants more state spending to ease high poverty levels and inflation. Two key moderate allies have left his Cabinet in the last month.

The South American country, a major producer of soy and corn, is grappling with inflation running at over 60%, huge pressure on the peso currency and spiking gas import costs that are draining already weak foreign currency reserves.

In a speech to mark the anniversary of Argentina's declaration of independence, Fernandez called for "unity" and asked different factions to work towards it.

"History teaches us that it's a value we must preserve in the toughest moments," he said, adding the country needed economic responsibility with low foreign currency reserves and soaring global inflation "seriously damaging" the local economy.

"We must walk the path towards fiscal balance and stabilize the currency."

Argentina, which has cycled through economic crises for decades, struck a $44 billion debt deal with the International Monetary Fund earlier this year to replace a failed 2018 program. Many blame the IMF for tighter economic policies.

In the streets of Buenos Aires thousands of protesters marched on Saturday afternoon with banners saying "breakaway from the IMF" and "Out, Fund, out". Marchers criticized the government and called for debt payments not to be made.

Parts of the government, including powerful Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, have called for more spending to alleviate the impact of COVID-19 and of the war in Ukraine, which have lit protests in countries globally such as Sri Lanka.

"There is a monumental crisis within our country," said Juan Carlos Giordano, a socialist lawmaker who joined the march.

"Argentina is a capitalist semi-colony in the chains of the IMF. Today we are here to say we need a second independence. Argentina must break its ties with the IMF which is the Spanish Empire of the 21st century."

Fernandez's government was thrown into turmoil a week ago with the abrupt resignation of moderate Economy Minister Martin Guzman, a close ally to the president who had spearheaded talks with the IMF. He was replaced by economist Silvina Batakis.

Batakis, seen as closer to the left-wing of the ruling coalition than Guzman, spoke with the IMF on Friday and has pledged economic stability despite concerns over a populist policy shift that have dragged down bonds and rattled the peso.

"The resignation of the economy minister showed there is an economic and financial collapse that is affecting the lives of workers, of the whole the population," said Workers' Party member Marcelo Ramal.

"We must consider that this year we'll have around 80%-90% inflation with wages that aren't rising as fast."

(Reporting by Lucila Sigal; Additional reporting by Claudia Martini, Horacio Soria and Miguel Lo Bianco; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Sandra Maler)

 

PETITE BOUREOISE

Dutch farmers 'freedom convoy' takes aim at climate change net zero regulations

9 Jul, 2022 07:00 PM

Farmers block a highway on the Dutch-German border, in protest against the Dutch government's nitrogen plans. Photo / AP

Daily Telegraph UK

By Joe Barnes

Lauded by Mick Jagger and vilified by their own prime minister, Dutch farmers are giving Europe a taste of the backlash the Continent faces in its drive towards net-zero emissions.

Huge protests have swept the Netherlands triggered by the introduction of new laws designed to cut nitrogen and ammonia emissions, by up to 95 per cent in certain areas, from its agricultural sector.

Inspired by the "freedom convoys" which began in Canada and saw truck drivers bring major roads to a standstill in protest at Covid vaccine mandates, tractors are blockading supermarkets and industrial complexes across the Netherlands, at a cost of tens of millions of euros to businesses and the economy.

The demonstrations, some of which have turned violent, materialise with little notice and are organised via secretive channels on the Telegram messaging app.

Huge protests have swept the Netherlands triggered by the introduction of new laws designed to cut nitrogen and ammonia emissions. Photo / AP

They are a sign of the growing discontent among European farmers faced with spiralling fertiliser costs owing to the war in Ukraine and demands to cut down on emissions. In Britain, unions have urged Downing Street to give them more time to overhaul their businesses to make them more sustainable.

MILLIONAIRE PETTY BOURGEOISE ARE NOT WORKING CLASS (YET)

The working-class uprising has not only won over the support of the Rolling Stones frontman and popular conservative broadcasters in the US, but the Dutch public is also siding with the farmers.

Recent polling showed the Farmer-Citizen Movement, formed three years ago in response to the climate laws, would secure 11 parliamentary seats if a general election was to be held now. Dutch fishermen have also joined the protests, blockading ports.

Earlier this week, police opened fire on Jouke Hospes, a 16-year-old who was driving one of his father's tractors, and two others, at a demonstration in the Friesland region

Farmers blocked the entrance to Groningen Airport. Photo / Getty Image

On Friday, when The Telegraph visited the Netherlands, hundreds of businesses across three towns were brought to a complete standstill by three separate demonstrations, which came and went with very little warning.

Among the main targets for the farmers are supermarket warehouses, which has resulted in empty shelves.

Yosemite’s giant sequoias: California wildfire threatens world’s largest trees

 July 11, 2022, NPR



A growing wildfire in California is threatening the largest grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park, the BBC reports.

The Washburn Fire has doubled in size over the past 24 hours, and it is now estimated to have burned 1,591 acres.

Firefighters are working in difficult terrain to protect some of the largest and oldest redwood trees in the world.

Residents and campers near the fire have been evacuated, and thick smoke has worsened the region’s air quality and obscured the park’s scenic views.

The blaze, which started on 7 July, threatens at least 500 giant sequoias in the Mariposa Grove, including the famed Grizzly Giant which is thought to be around 3,000 years old.

For now, none of them have been destroyed by the fire.

The Yosemite fire and aviation management department said it was “proactively protecting” the grove by setting up a sprinkler system to increase humidity around the trees and by removing potential fuels from the site.

 

Yosemite wildfire threatens grove of iconic sequoia trees

Giant Sequoia trees are seen in a meadow in the at Sequoia National Park near Visalia, Calif. on Friday Sept. 11, 2015. Researchers are studying how California's drought is affecting the Giant Sequoias, some more than 3,000 years old and 90 metres tall, making them among the oldest and largest living things on Earth. (AP / Rich Pedroncelli)

Published Saturday, July 9, 2022 7:48PM EDT

The largest grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park remained closed Saturday as firefighters battled a blaze that threatened the gathering of the iconic trees and forced hundreds of campers to evacuate.

The rest of the park in California remained open, though smoke that hung in the air obscured some of the most scenic vistas and views.

More than 500 mature sequoias were threatened in the Mariposa Grove but as of Saturday afternoon there were no reports of severe damage to any named trees, including the 3,000-year-old Grizzly Giant. Some of the massive trunks were wrapped in fire-resistant foil for protection as the blaze burned out of control.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

Beyond the trees, the small community of Wawona, which is surrounded by park and a campground, was under threat, with people ordered to leave their homes and campsites on Friday night.

The fire was proving difficult to contain, with firefighters throwing “every tactic imaginable” at it, said Nancy Phillipe, a Yosemite fire information spokesperson. That included air drops of fire retardant as well as the planned use of bulldozers to create fire lines, a tactic that's rarely used in a wilderness setting like Yosemite, Phillipe said.

The bulldozers would primarily be used to put in fire lines to protect Wawona, she said. About 600 to 700 people who were staying at the Wawona campground in tents, cabins and an historic hotel were ordered to leave.

Though firefighters were facing hot and dry conditions, they didn't have to contend with intense winds on Saturday, said Jeffrey Barlow, senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Hanford. Given the relatively small size of the fire and minimal winds, smoke impacts were not expected to stretch far beyond the park, he said.

The giant sequoias, native in only about 70 groves spread along the western slope of California's Sierra Nevada range, were once considered impervious to flames but have become increasingly vulnerable as wildfires fueled by a buildup of undergrowth from a century of fire suppression and drought exacerbated by climate change have become more intense and destructive.

Lightning-sparked wildfires over the past two years have killed up to a fifth of the estimated 75,000 large sequoias, which are the biggest trees by volume.

There was no obvious natural spark for the fire that broke out Thursday next to the park's Washburn Trail, Phillipe said. Smoke was reported by visitors walking in the grove that reopened in 2018 after a $40 million renovation that took three years.

The fire had grown to about 1.1 square miles (2.8 square kilometers) by Saturday morning.

A fierce windstorm ripped through the grove a year-and-a-half ago and toppled 15 giant sequoias, along with countless other trees.

The downed trees, along with massive numbers of pines killed by bark beetles, provided ample fuel for the flames.

The park has used prescribed burns to clear brush around the sequoias, which helps protect them if flames spread farther into the grove.

Meanwhile, most evacuation orders were lifted Saturday in the Sierra foothills about 80 miles (128 kilometers) to the northwest of the Yosemite fire, where a fire broke out on July 4. The Electra Fire that began near Jackson was mostly contained, and only areas directly within the fire's perimeter remained under evacuation orders, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

 

US introduces new sanctions over failure to provoke uprising in Cuba — Foreign Ministry

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said that the introduction of new sanctions by Washington is an attempt to discredit society’s resistance to US’ aggression

HAVANA, July 10. /TASS/. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla said that the introduction of new sanctions by Washington is an attempt to discredit society’s resistance to US’ aggression.

"In view of failed attempt to provoke popular uprising in #Cuba in 2021, the US government & its Secretary of State are seeking to discredit people’s victory over imperialist aggression. Their repeated coercive measures violate International Law & UN Charter," he wrote on Twitter.

On Saturday, the US administration introduced visa sanctions against 28 Cuban officials whom Washington accuses of suppressing domestic disturbances last July as well as of restricting access to information. The US Department of State did not list any specific names of those sanctioned.

Last July, disturbances broke out in several Cuban towns, and President Miguel Diaz-Canel urged his supporters to take to the streets to prevent provocations against the government. The Cuban authorities held the US responsible for organizing the riots.