Category: Uncategorized

Image Credit:https://www.expresspharma.in

MAURICE, A VACCINE HERO

Dr. Maurice Hilleman, a vaccine designer swabbed throat of her daughter Jeryl Lynn, drove to his lab at Merck to pick up some equipment. He refrigerated her sample back at his lab and soon got to work weakening her viruses until they could serve as a mumps vaccine. In 1967, it was approved by the FDA. All researchers want a miracle to happen as incase of mumps, but it seems a tough virus to be vaccinated. 

To vaccine makers, this story is a legend, as it still holds the record for the quickest delivery of a vaccine from the lab to the clinic. Vaccines typically take ten to fifteen years of research and testing. And only six percent of the projects that scientists launch reach the finish line.

For a world in the grips of Covid-19, on the other hand, this story is the stuff of nightmares. No one wants to wait four years for a vaccine, while millions die and economies remain paralyzed. Some of the leading contenders for a coronavirus vaccine are now promising to have the first batches ready in record time, by the start of next year. They have accelerated their schedules by collapsing the standard vaccine timeline.

They are combining trials that used to be carried out one after the other. They are pushing their formulations into production, despite the risk that the trials will fail, leaving them with millions of useless doses.

WHAT WORLD IS DOING FOR AN ANTI-COVID19 VACCINE

ISREAL CLAIMS MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH 

Defence Minister of Israel, Naftali Bennett had declared that the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) developed an antibody to neutralise the virus responsible for COVID-19. It can attack the virus within the bodies of the infected. The institute started testing the antibody on rodents last month. Besides, the second research team, MigVax has completed the first phase of developing the COVID19 vaccine and has secured USD 12 million investment. However, he did not specify of conducting any trials on humans. Bennett appreciated the efforts for this terrific development. A spokesperson for the Yeruham local council confirmed that Israel plans to establish the first coronavirus vaccine production facility. IIBR, in collaboration with the international pharmaceutical company, will set up the facility in Yeruham to manufacture tens of millions of vaccine units. Mass production to ensure self-sufficiency in times of pandemic in the country.

ITALY TOO CLAIMS OF DEVELOPING COVID-19 VACCINE 

Rome’s infectious-disease Spallanzani Hospital stated that they are on an advance stage of checking vaccine on humans. Also, Italian researchers have described the results beyond expectations. The vaccine testing is on five candidates with a brief electrical impulse that helps the vaccine break into the cells, activating the immune system. Consequently, the antibodies generated by all five candidates affected the virus. However, the researchers are working on trial versions to see if the virus accumulates mutations and becomes invisible to the immune system.

 CHINESE BILLIONAIRE APPROACH HARVARD

 As the crisis began last year Chinese billionaire Hui Ka Yan approached Harvard Medical School to carry out research on an anti-novel coronavirus vaccine. He arranged to give roughly $115 million to be split between Harvard Medical School and its affiliated hospitals and the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases for a collaborative effort that would include developing coronavirus vaccine. “We are not racing against each other, we are racing the virus,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, the director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a professor at Harvard Medical School who is also working with Johnson & Johnson. “What we need is a global vaccine — because an outbreak in one part of the world puts the rest of the world at risk.”

INDIA’S SERUM INSTITUTE 

In India, the Serum Institute — the heavyweight champion of vaccine manufacturing, producing 1.5 billion doses a year — has signed agreements in recent weeks with the developers of four promising potential vaccines. Adar Poonawalla, the company’s billionaire chief executive, told Reuters that “at least initially” any vaccine the company produces would have to go to India’s 1.3 billion people. The tension between those who believe a vaccine should go where it is needed most and those dealing with pressures to supply their own country first is one of the defining features of the global response.

1,000 SCIENTISTS AND MILITARY IN CHINA

 In China, the government’s wants to showcase the country’s growth into a technological power capable of beating the United States. There are nine Chinese Covid-19 vaccines in development, involving 1,000 scientists and the Chinese military. China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention predicted that one of the vaccines could be in “emergency use” by September, meaning that in the midst of the presidential election in the United States, Trump might see television footage of Chinese citizens lining up for injections. “It’s a scenario we have thought about,” one member of Trump’s coronavirus task force said. “No one wants to be around that day.”

TRUMP APPROACHES GERMAN COMPANY 

The US administration, in the month of March approached a German biotech company to acquire its vaccine research or move it to American shores, has awarded grants of nearly half a billion dollars each to two U.S.-based companies, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna. Johnson & Johnson, though based in New Jersey, conducts its research in the Netherlands.

Paul Stoffels, the company’s vice chairman and chief scientific officer, said in an interview that the Department of Health and Human Services understood “we can’t pick up our research and move it” to the United States. But it made sure that the company joined a partnership with Emergent BioSolutions — a Maryland biological production firm — to produce the first big batches of any approved vaccine for the United States.

“The political reality is that it would be very, very hard for any government to allow a vaccine made in their own country to be exported while there was a major problem at home,” said Sandy Douglas, a researcher at the University of Oxford. “The only solution is to make a hell of a lot of vaccine in a lot of different places.” The Oxford vaccine team has already begun scaling up plans for manufacturing by half a dozen companies across the world, including China and India, plus two British manufacturers and the British-based multinational AstraZeneca.

WUHAN COMPANY ALSO IN VACCINE RACE 

The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products is also in the race to come out with a vaccine. It is despite the fact that the company in 2018 was involved in a scandal in which ineffective vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, and other conditions were injected into hundreds of thousands of babies. The Chinese government then had confiscated the Wuhan institute’s “illegal income,” fined the company, and punished nine executives. But the company was again allowed to continue to operate. It is now running a coronavirus vaccine project, and along with two other Chinese groups has been allowed to combine its safety and efficacy trials. Several Chinese scientists questioned the decision, arguing that the vaccine should be shown to be safe before testing how well it works.

He was a non-entity on the political canvas of China until 2010. Within ten years, 1953 born, the trailblazer leader has swiftly made the entire power in his country synonym to him; as head of the Communist Party, Military and the State and also established as a tallest leader among the powers that be in the world.

As his meteoric rise can’t be explained (in a short writing), we dissect his exuberant life full of action, at a time when he’s in the midst of a controversy and blamed for global spread of life subsuming COVID19 disease.

The high-profile leader belonging to China’s elite family, lived in a cave as an exiled farmer in farthest countryside, to becoming nothing short of a dictator who now is not bound by any time deadline to remain at the country’s top post. After taking up the top posts of General Secretary of the Communist Party and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, he became the President in March 2013.

KNOW MORE ABOUT JINPING THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN WORLD

1.     Educated by a farmer in a remote village when he was a teenager, Jingping made nine unsuccessful attempts to become a member of the Communist Party. In 1974, he succeeded in his tenth endeavor.

2.     In 1975, the 22-year-old Jingping was admitted to Tsinghua University, Beijing to study chemical engineering, and later worked at the Central Military Commission as former defense minister Geng Biao’s secretary. Over the next two decades, Xi advanced his political career through various counties, municipal, and provincial leadership positions across the country.

SECOND TIME MARRIED LADY MORE POPULAR THAN HIM

3. He married a singer Peng Liyuan, ten years younger to him, 33-years ago. She’s referred to as “Mama Peng” by the Chinese population out of love and respect. For many years after their marriage, Peng was more popular than her husband. This was Xi’s second marriage, his first wife remains unknown.

4. Peng remained major-general in a musical troupe of People’s Liberation Army and is also the World Health Organisation’s Ambassador for tuberculosis.

5. Xi and Peng have a daughter called Xi Mingze, born in 1992 under the one-child policy, studied at Harvard University under a pseudonym. Many in Harvard say her father’s real identity was not revealed.

6. Son of a powerful communist revolutionary Xi Zhingxun, he builds a nationwide narrative in his favor as one who grew as a cave-dwelling farmer. That helped him with validation to rise steadily to the top of the Chinese Communist Party.

HIS FATHER’S SON

7.  As the son of former vice-premier Xi Zhingxun, who fought alongside Mao Zedong in the Chinese civil war, Jinping is no stranger to politics, Jingping was referred as a ‘prince’ who later declared an outcast when his father was punished in 1962 for supporting criticism of Chairman Mao.

8. Xi accepted that initially he wasn’t accustomed to countryside hard work, and after just three months fled back to Beijing where he was locked up for half a year as a penalty.

9. In 1969 his only option to escape was to return to Liangjiahe village in Yan’an, the famous revolutionary base, where he spent the remaining six years in poverty, doing labour and adjusting to living in the cave homes that were dug into the hillsides.

JINPING BECAME ‘OVERALL’ INCHARGE

10. Xi managed a constitutional amendment in March 2018 that removed the country’s ten-year presidential term limit, to make him rule until he’s alive. His political theory was inserted into the constitution, which no other leader has done in the past.

11. Unlike his predecessor Hu Jintao, who chose to keep himself relatively “faceless”, Xi used life story for larger acceptance, mud cave where he lived now is a place of pilgrimage for the population of the hardcore communist nation.

12. Earlier Jinping served across four provinces and in the municipality of Shanghai at different levels. One of the more prominent positions Xi held was as party chief of Zhejiang province, from 2002 to 2007, where he supported local private enterprises and oversaw strong economic growth.

13. His achievements in Zhejiang won him the support of political elites, and when former Communist Party head of Shanghai Chen Liangyu was sacked in one of China’s corruption scandals of 2006, Xi was chosen to replace him

14.  Xi’s appointment as vice-president in March 2008 ascertained his climb to post, positioned to succeed Hu as President. His tirade against corruption made him enormously popular among the Chinese people, and simultaneously created many enemies among the elite.

WATER GUZZLER RICE IS THE CULPRIT, ONE KILOGRAM TAKES 3,367 LITERS OF WATER

Ever imagined Asia’s food bowl, land of lush green fields, Punjab will soon have sand dunes all over. As the environmental experts say, this transformation would take place in just a short span of 15 years times.

Fearing worst ever the ecological disaster in this part of the world because of degradation of agricultural areas may become a severe problem, the government of India has started a survey to know how much water state’s has under the ground, by mapping of aquifers the underground beds or layer yielding groundwater, up to 300 meters deep.

Many of original natives of this area who have migrated to other countries may not find the lush green fields when they visit home next time.

What is contributing to the loss is water guzzling rice grown over 75 lakh acres every year. The colossal loss of water could be imagined from the fact that a kilogram of rice requires 3,367 litres of water and by an estimate every year 12,000 million kilograms of rice grows in the state. The water consumed in growing the amount of rice can be imagined: 40,404,000 million litres.

Data from the department of agriculture shows that of 35.78 billion cubic metre water extracted from the ground, 96.65% water is used to grow paddy, while 0.53% is used by industry, and 2.82% is used for domestic purposes.

Punjab is one of the biggest producers of wheat and paddy contributing upto 60 percent of country’s total food requirement. After it exhaust its water, it would not be able to grow any crop

The state agriculture department forecasts that if the rate of fall continues, water up to the depth of 100 meter will finish in 12 years while the water available at 300 meters will finish in 20-25 years. Pulling out water from lower levels would not be practically possible to irrigate the fields, says the experts.

Different national and state level agencies have already predicted a grim scenario for Punjab, with over a majority of the state four-fifth over-exploiting its sub soil water.

If the annual rate of fall in sub soil water, currently 51 centimeters every per year, continues, the state would empty all its water reserves soon, turning the country’s food bowl into a desert. From being a food producer, the state would become a consumer.

According to a study by the Central Ground Water Board of the country, 10 districts: Bathinda, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Moga, Pathankot, and Patiala are the worst affected. Here, the fall is very severe, nearly one metre a year. The fall is evident from the fact that tubewells in these districts are dug as deep as 300 feet to get water fit for irrigation.

Adding to the worry is 1.3 million tubewells in the state for which farmers are getting free electricity these tubewells keeps digging out subsoil water during parched weather of June and July when heat and evaporation is at peak. Three-fourth of Punjab is dependent on subsoil water for agriculture and one-fourth on the canal water.

“We don’t want to come at a juncture where there is no groundwater left. It’s a matter of livelihood, so to save ourselves from the ensuing crisis, we have started mapping of the subsoil water, particularly in Punjab and Haryana, which are food bowls of the country,” said a functionary of central ground water board as head of the study. He said by using aquifer maps, it coiuld be explained to farmers that depleting water table and ask them to look for an alternative to water-guzzling paddy. Gamma mapping and electrical resistance techniques are used to study the amount of water under the soil.

The government agencies have been continuously measuring the groundwater level, but it for the first time that mapping is being undertaken to quantify the available groundwater resources. It will give block-wise figures so conservation plans and crop patterns could be planned.

DRASTIC FALL

The groundwater depletion in Punjab was 55 centimetre in 2015. As per seasonal fluctuations recorded by the CGWB between January and May, 2016, 73% of wells monitored — covering 60% area of Punjab — witnessed a fall in the water level. Barring some isolated pockets, the water table goes down by 2 meters in the state annually. Figures by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States of America, the groundwater level in the state is depleting at an average of one metre every three years.

APPREHENSIONS RAISED ON US-SINO TRADE DEAL OF JAN 2020

US President Donald Trump hinted at sending a bill to China claiming damages caused by the coronavirus epidemic to his country. He said on April 28, referring to a bill calculated and printed by a daily, that he would charge a “lot more money than the amount a German news publication has sought for Germany in a mock bill published recently”.

Trump has repeatedly termed the novel coronavirus as China Virus, as the Chinese administration has initially said that the deadly virus was spread by US Army soldiers.

The fate of the trade deal signed between the countries is also uncertain. In a partial trade pact signed between two countries on January 15, 2020, it was said that it would help check the economic struggle between two countries, as Trump administration aims to resolve some longstanding American concerns about Chinese trade abuses.

Trump on April 28 said his government is conducting “serious investigations” into China’s failure to stop the coronavirus at the “source” and present it from spreading to the rest of the world. Republicans in the US to which Trump belongs, are pushing for sending a bill to China claiming the damages.

Though serious questions are being raised about China’s handling of the outbreak that started in Wuhan in December month of 2019 and has now infected more than 3.06 million people worldwide and killed over 212,000, the American president has been seen escalating attacks on China to deflect criticism of his administration’ failure to respond aggressively to the crisis, stemming mostly from his own reluctance to acknowledge the gravity of the situation.

“Germany is looking at things and we are looking at things,” Trump said Monday in response to a question from a reporter about a mock bill published last week by a German newspaper, Bild, seeking USD 141 billion (Euros 130 billion) from China as damages. “And we are talking about a lot more money than Germany is talking about,” Trump added. However, the German government has disowned the bill and had rejected it as a conjecture.

A Republican senator from Missouri Josh Hawley moved a resolution in March that seeks to hold China “accountable” for the pandemic and “design a mechanism for delivering compensation from the Government of the People’s Republic of China to all affected nations for the harm caused by its decision to hide the emergence and spread of COVID–19 during the initial weeks of the outbreak”. Missouri State in the US has already claimed damages from China.

Trump is also pressure for initiating punitive measures against the eastern nation. He has been suggested by lawmakers to withhold payment of a debt owed to China which as proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham, a close Trump adviser; cut dependence on Chinese supply chains. Several legislations have been moved or are under process.

But, President Trump did not indicate as to how he proposed to bill the Chinese for the spread of the virus in America. He only said that the US “can do something much easier than” the German mock bill. “We have ways of doing things a lot easier than that,” he added.

Trump had previously raised questions about the numbers of infections and fatalities reported by China, which are also being investigated by the US.

The American president has also suspended US funding of the World Health Organization accusing it of helping China conceal the true extent of it’s, while he also slammed the world body for mismanaging the pandemic, and for opposing the January ban on travelers from China. Simian Mistreanu has recently written on Forbes.com that COVID19 would dampen the US-China trade pact. The US-China seemed to be starting the year after the pact, signed between Donald Trump and China’s vice-premier Liu He touted to put end to two years of a trade war.

Within days after the pact, deadly virus that started from Chinese city Wuhan started spreading tentacles in other cities of the eastern nation and then into outside nations. It led to falling on China’s exports by over 17% in January-February months as compared with the corresponding time of the previous year 2019. Mistreanu, adds that the country reported a rare trade deficit of USD 7.1 billion, since March 2018.

The trend questioned China’s ability to purchase, as agreed in the trade deal, USD 77 billion worth of goods from the US this year including agricultural and energy products, services, and manufactured goods. COVID-19 also adds to the uncertainty of U.S. companies operating in China, which we’re hoping for a respite from the countries’ trade frictions.

The trade war between the US and China escalated when in March 2018 Trump announced a $50 billion tariff on Chinese goods, and Beijing also responded by increasing tariffs by up to 25 percent on 128 US products. China imposed a 25 percent tariff on products including US pork and aluminum scrap and 15 percent tariffs on products: wine, steel pipe, and foods including grapes, apples, and walnuts.

China has been a critical market for US manufacturers and tariffs on US imports there would almost certainly impact demand. Apple earned more than 20 percent of its total sales from China in the most recent quarter. Other companies with a big presence in the Chinese market include Texas Instruments, Intel, 3M, Qualcomm, and Nike. The United States and China are the world’s two largest economies; China is the world’s largest exporter and the United States is the World’s biggest importer. They have so far been important pillars for the global economy.

DONALD TRUMP RIDES THE BEAST US President who vests the might of entire world rides, while in his country and on tours abroad, is the cause of curiosity for everyone. When on road he travels in General Motors manufactured Cadillac, which is transported to the country he visits, along with the rest of the security paraphernalia. The world leader doesn’t believe in anything less than that, even if the host country is capable of doing that. A special convoy of ‘the Beast’ arrives before President reaches the host country. 

1. The United States’ Presidential state car is the ‘Beast’ model of General Motors manufactured Cadillac-One. It is also called the Stagecoach. Currently, Donald Trump travels in latest model launched in September 2018
2. It costs USD 1.5 million and weighs 9,000 kilograms. It’s an armored car, bullet, and blast resistant, having five inches thick armory made of a combination of ceramic, steel, titanium, and aluminum, making it capable of breaking down all incoming projectiles towards the US president’s car. It is perceived to be safer than an armored tank
3. The doors are armor-plated and is eight-inch thick, making it as heavy as a cabin door of a Boeing 757 jet. When closed, the doors create a 100 percent seal to protect the president even from a chemical attack
4. The windows are a combination of five layers of glass and polycarbonate and can withstand piercing bullets. The Cadillac has a number of features to protect the US President and has earned the title of the safest machine moving on Earth.
5. The tyres are Kevlar reinforced which makes it shred and puncture-proof along with steel rims underneath that enables it to escape in case the tyres are destroyed. Kevlar is a heat resistant and a strong synthetic fiber 
6. The fuel tank, too, is armour plated and covered with a thick layer of foam to prevent a blast even if directly hit
7. The interiors of the Beast are even more interesting than what is outside. The car is equipped with a pump action shotgun, tear gas cannon, fire fighting systems and tear and smoke screen dispensers. The car has a satellite phone that connects passengers directly to the Vice-president and the Pentagon
8. Interestingly, the car also always carries blood sample of the president, if he needs a transfusion. The car is also equipped with a tear gas launcher just below the headlights and sports night vision cameras on the bonnet
9. The car can seat four passengers and has a glass partition that only Trump can lower. The car has a panic button and its own oxygen supply
10. The Beast is maintained by the US Secret Services, who also train the chauffeur to cope with the most demanding driving conditions, including escape and evasion along with a 180-degree

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to the “Chinese virus” when talking about the pandemic. Many of his critics insist the term is racist, echoing official Chinese talking points. Others, such as U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler say that crisis shouldn’t be politicized by pushing blames, but focus be on building a common fight against a global disease that makes no distinction between people and recognizes no borders.

Contrary to that, the crisis is inherently political because it was caused in part by incompetent, malicious, and corrupt politicians. To ignore the political dimension of the coronavirus pandemic is an excellent way to ensure it happens again. If we do not want another global pandemic, we have to hold accountable the politicians responsible for making it worse, chief among them Chinese President Xi Jinping.

He did not create the novel coronavirus, but his government’s missteps are directly responsible for its global transmission and uncontrolled spread, with all its terrible consequences to populations and economies around the world.

A global pandemic is not a blind force of nature independent of human agency. It is a failure of governance. An analogy with famines is useful. Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has explained in his book, Development as Freedom, that famines are not the absence of food, but absence of information about food, with problem of transportation. There is, physically speaking, enough food on the planet for everyone. If you know where food is and where hungry people are, and you can get the one to the other, people do not starve. That is why established free-market democracies, which allow the free flow of information and markets, have no famines.

Similarly, a global pandemic does not happen every time a novel infectious pathogen emerges. It happens when there is an absence of accurate information about the pathogen and a failure of basic public services—in this case, the failure to regulate food and marketplaces to prevent the transmission of pathogens, and the failure to shut down transportation and control movement once it spreads. When authorities regulate public health, share information about a pathogen, and cooperate to control its movement, diseases are contained and pandemics are unlikely.

These are problems of governance, not science. Governments have to act like they are responsible for public health. They have to welcome transparency, willingly share information (even about their failures and ignorance), and order their bureaucracies to cooperate with one another, with international health organizations, and with foreign governments.

Good governance responds to public demand, rewards the free flow of information, including bad news, and rewards cooperation in the public interest, even when it goes against parochial bureaucratic self-interest. Bad governance does the opposite.

Unsurprisingly, authoritarian governments, such as China’s, do not like sharing news about their ignorance and do not like cooperating with other governments. As Danielle Pletka a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, recently argued, Xi’s “prime concern was not lives at risk, or containment of the virus, but rather the nation’s and his reputation, place in the global supply chain and his grip on power.” By contrast, “democratic leaders are not afraid of information, and as a result, can judge the efficacy of their efforts, can fine tune and adjust, and can respond to the flow of news in a way that optimizes life saving.” She cataloged how Chinese leaders lied and tried to cover up the emergence of the coronavirus in December ’19 and January to save face.

But the problem goes deeper. Because the Chinese government is not accountable to its people, it has never bothered to police the safety and cleanliness of food and food markets effectively, which the United States and other developed democracies started doing in response to public and media pressure a century ago. Chinese policymakers never have to face the voters, which is why, for example, there was little lasting reform or meaningful accountability after a scandal in 2008 in which tens of thousands of Chinese infants fell ill and required hospitalization after drinking contaminated milk.

The Chinese government, beginning in late 2019, lied and directly contributed to the creation of a global pandemic, the deaths of thousands of people, and a global economic collapse, is evidently true, and they deserve blame and accountability for it.

But the Chinese government’s record in the recent crisis is only the tip of an iceberg. The same government is responsible for genocide against the Uighur people, violating international law in the South China Sea, wholesale intellectual property theft from and cyber-espionage against the United States and its allies, one of the worst records of environmental pollution in the world, the invention of a new type of technology-powered totalitarian surveillance state.

The Chinese government, not the wet markets, is the most thoroughly diseased and decaying institution in the world. It is the most powerful institution on the planet that daily opposes human freedom, human flourishing, and human dignity. Was it surprising that, by its very nature, it would aid and abet a global crisis that will kill thousands, sicken millions, and impoverish billions?

Regardless of what we call the virus (I’m partial to naming it after the Chinese Communist Party and calling it the “CCP virus”), blaming China is not the thing that “politicizes” the COVID-19 pandemic, because the pandemic is already political. The political dimension of this crisis means we must seek accountability to prevent its recurrence—and accountability begins with casting blame where it is due.

Chinese government is most directly responsible for the governance failures that have now unleashed untold suffering and economic collapse on the world. Its mendacity and incompetence should cause politicians, policymakers, and business leaders across the world to reconsider their willingness to engage and do business with China until it proves itself a responsible actor on the world stage.

In the lockdown days since the pandemic broke, the way we defined sex has changed. It’s imagined, monogamous, Zoomed or Skyped. And nude selfies have become one symbol of resilience, a refusal to let social distancing render us sexless. Nude selfies are no longer foreplay, a whetting of a lover’s appetite, but the whole meal.

Though the debate about art versus pornography has never been settled, a case can be made that quarantine nude selfies are art. Some of us finally have time to make art, and this is the art we are making: carefully posed, cast in shadows, expertly filtered. These aren’t garish below-the-belt shots but, are solicited or spontaneous. They are gifts to partners in separate quarantines, friends who aren’t exactly friends, unmet Hinge matches, and exes.

After face-touching became potentially lethal, nude selfies are a fad.  Kat, an artist in Arizona who just lost her uncle to Covid-19, has been enjoying the creative process of making and sending sexy selfies over a secure app called Wire to a bartender she met overseas just before the coronavirus stopped nonessential travel. “Not to distract from feeling my feelings,” she said. “This is just the human experience, isn’t it? Love. Death. Sex.” Diana Spechler, a novelist writes in the New York Times.

Historically, she wrote, if the nude form in art suggested power in men, think of the ancient Greek sculptures of athletes, and sexuality in women, think Goya’s nude paintings, nude selfies, especially now, imbue the subject with both. The sexuality component is obvious, the power component contextual: the power to seduce without touch, to connect when physical contact is life-threatening, to impress while we’re home and unemployed and to stir up a strong reaction miles away.

Beyond our Wi-Fi, we don’t have much in the way of connection. Many of us are alone and live in small spaces. We lack the distractions we’re accustomed to and the routines we rely on. But some of the most famous self-portraiture resulted from a dearth of resources. Rembrandt was his own subject in large part because he couldn’t afford a model. Frida Kahlo began painting herself when she was unwell and bedridden and all she could see was a mirror.

The nude human form as a subject of art dates back tens of thousands of years to explicit cave carvings and a woolly mammoth tusk-ivory sculpture: Though headless and small enough to wear as a pendant, gravity-defying breasts and some semblance of a vagina. She might be 40,000 years old. But nude self-portraiture, especially of women by women wrestling free from the male gaze to play both artist and muse, didn’t become popular until the beginning of the 20th century.

In these disorienting times, we are psychologically naked, but our nudes are aspirational: We are breasts propped on pillows and Faceted. We are headless, proof that we’re not overthinking or panicking. We are free, cast in a single ray of sunlight, not stuck inside with a vitamin D deficiency. We are taking a risk at a time when we are not allowed to take risks, baring our bodies with no guaranteed reaction. We hit send and hold our breaths, silently asking until we receive the reply, am I safe am I safe am I safe?

 

WEEK & FRAIL MAHESH CYCLES 1,050 MILES IN SEVEN DAYS TO REACH HOME

India’s twenty-plus, Mahesh Jena wearing a boyish look, is a symbol of grit and determination. When the entire world is in lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus that has already spread tentacles in the entire world and he cycled to reach his home Jajpur in Odisha from industrial town Sangli in Maharashtra.

Cycling across the breadth of the country, he became a role model for everyone fighting the corona battle.

To cover 1,050 miles, that roughly equals a distance between New York and Arkansas, he cycled 150 miles a distance equaling New York to Rhode Island, each day for a week.

To overcome the uncertainty and fear that had gripped Jena and his coworker’s migrant laborers working in the metal and plastic factories in Sangli ever since India-wide lockdown was announced on March 24, he on April decided to ride a cycle back home. Hindustan Times devoted a full page to report Jena’s tryst with cycle.

To support his adventure he had a backpack having a blanket, some clothes, biscuits, tiffin, some bottles of water, and money equal to USD 40. He had no maps, and no phone and he owned no fear or doubt. His was clear — he would keep going till he reached home.

As all factories were shut, workers in the industrial town were left to fend for themselves, with no food and money for survival. As everyone was toying, the idea to walk to their homes even if sitting hundreds of miles away, Jena thought cycling a faster and more reliable, alternative. He decided not to tell anyone else. His plan was simple: following the same route he took from Odisha to Sangli but in the opposite direction.

On April 1, a week after the lockdown Jena stated his cycle odyssey. By the time the sun was out, Jena had picked up a pace. For hours, he rode at a steady pace past the sugarcane fields. The first river he crossed was the Agrani, a stream that was successfully revived for a drought-prone area. When evening came, Jena found that he was not tired. In fact, he was enjoying the unhurried cadence of his cycling, the solitude of the road. He kept going.

When he finally stopped for the night — at a temple had cycled more than 100 miles. The only problem he faced on Day 1 was a puncture in the tire. He was helped by a group of villagers on hearing his story.

The first day set a pattern that would repeat itself with a regularity that is extraordinary in itself. In covering the breadth of India alone on a cycle, Jena was barely troubled. He was lucky to be helped everywhere he asked for it. He cycled all day and well into the night.

On Day 2, from Solapur past the massive medieval fort of Naldurg with its beautiful lake, past shuttered sugar mills, past the corpses of dogs killed in road accidents, crossing into Karnataka. On Day 3, he was into Hyderabad India’s silicon city. On Day 4, Jena reached Vijayawada. Jajpur was still nearly 900 km away, but by now Jena was in a trance. It was him, his cycle, and the road. For the next few days, he even forgot about the one thing that he usually obsessed about — where will the money come from? Without a phone, he did not even have the distraction of making or receiving calls, or watching videos, or listening to music, or taking photographs. The route was beautiful, often densely forested, hilly, by the Krishna river and Kondapalli reserve forest.

Jena said heat exhaustion was taking a toll on him, but it was not a reason for him to get distracted. He was determined to reach home.

He would cycle for almost 16 hours a day. Four days after he started his journey, he called his family members with a mobile phone, borrowed from a stranger. His family was very concerned and advised him to take precautions. “During nights he would look for safe places like temples, schools, and dhabas for a halt.

He began Day 6 by going past Srikakulam and crossing the bridge over the Nagavali river. By the end of the day, he crossed into Odisha, near the nondescript village of Gudipadar in Ganjam district. It was at Bhubaneswar on Day 7, that he finally felt the relief of being on home turf. There was still 60 miles to go. On April 7, he reached hometown Jajpur, two miles behind his village, where he was stuck for a 14-day quarantine.

12 YEARS OLD GIRL JAMLO MADKAM SUCCUMBS 30 MILES SHORT OF HER HOME

          Image Credit: https://www.dailysabah.com

           “Image Only for description purpose”

Jamlo Madkam, had left her home in Chhattisgarh for the first time two months ago to work at a chilli farm in Telangana with relatives and friends, but as destiny has another plan, she died on way back amidst the lockdown.

The tribal girl died due to electrolyte imbalance and exhaustion on April 18, having walked for over three days, covering over 62 miles with 13 others. Her family could not be informed by the group as only one among the 13 had a phone whose battery had died.

Jamlo tested negative for coronavirus. Her death is just one more added to the long list of migrants who have died trying to make their way back home amid the lockdown after the certainty of them sustaining in cities was put under question due to the lockdown that halted all activity in a bid to curb the coronavirus.

Over 22 migrant workers have died on their way back home trying to escape the hunger that stared them in the face of the shutdown. They wanted to return to their families, to the safety of their homes. However, many are still cramped in shelters in cities with no scope of social distancing, with meager meals, with no news of their families back home, no money; only waiting to reunite with their families.

World Sikhs Organisation, a progressive body of the Sikhs is behind the safe passage of Sikhs and Hindus who are stuck in terror torn Afghanistan. The March 25 killing of pilgrims inside a Kabul Gurdwara has led to the demand of bringing back the Sikhs to a safer place: Canada or India.
“We have started working at a fast pace in the direction to evacuate them,” Gian Singh Sandhu a former WSO President told Dissect it. Not, now, in the past also, we have helped 21 families of Afghan Sikhs to come to our country, said Sandhu who is based in Canada, adding that a large number of Sikh families well settled in the North American were have come forward for help.
However, the Afghan Sikhs are unable to take a decision for taking refuge in India or the North American country Canada. The Indian government is also pushing to bring these families of India.
Justin Trudeau’s government is positive towards the community and according to Sandhu bringing these families would not be a problem. “It’s a matter of time. Due to lockdown to save spread of COVID19, things have been halted” he said.
Sandhu said WSO has approached United Nations for giving refugee status to Afghan Sikhs, and on getting the status WSO would approach the Canadian government to bring them to Canada on political asylum. “The whole process takes more than one year,” said Sandhu.
In forty years from 1979 when Russian forces moved into Afghanistan, then a peaceful, fun-loving and business-oriented nation, the number of Sikhs and Hindus were 100,000 plus, the number now have shrunk to 700, in about 150 families. They are living in Kabul and other parts of the terror torn country.

Once strong business community, flush with money and resources Sikh community has been reduced to a countable and hapless who are dependent on the Gurdwaras for safety and security as the Afghanistan government has virtually given in to the pressure from terror groups.

In 1980s Sikhs were known to be astute businessmen dealing in foreign currency, construction, dry fruits, opium, textile and import-export. Most of the Kabuli-Sikhs, as they are commonly referred, have shifted base to India, Europe, England, US and Canada. Those who are left behind to fend for themselves are poor, doing odd jobs and run small businesses. They have abandoned their houses, properties, shops and businesses.

A large number of Sikhs who landed in India after the Russian occupation of 1979 have migrated to India, Canada and other European countries. “We are confused because lots of Sikhs in India’s Punjab are migrating to Canada. So why not if we should also try to be in Canada,” said a Sikh from Afghanistan sharing his viewpoint with dissectit. You too can share your views on dissect it.

KNOW MORE ABOUT WSO:

1. Ottawa, Canada headquartered World Sikh Organisation (WSO) was formed in July 1984 post the Operation Bluestar in Darbar Sahib, Amritsar that led to colossal damage to the sanctum sanctorum of the highest spiritual seat of Sikhs.
2. Currently led by Canada born Tejinder Singh Sidhu, the organisation is known for fighting the human rights of Sikhs as its major area of work and providing aid to Punjab. The organization’s aim is: “to provide an effective and credible voice to represent Sikh interests on the world stage”.
3. Canada based Gian Singh Sandhu is a founding president of WSO, though not actively involved in day to day functioning now, but he’s still a key figure in WSO and is consulted on important matters.
4. A huge congregation of Sikhs was organized in 1984 in Madison Square, New York, to form Sikh’s organization. US based millionaire farmer Didar Singh Bains was also actively involved in setting up of the organisation.
5. WSO helped Justin Trudeau’s (now Canadian prime minister) Liberal Party campaign before the federal polls.
6. It successfully fought cases of Sikhs for wearing articles of faith in government and public organisations in Canada. The cases contested in a Canadian court led permission for Sikhs to wearing the turban in the Royal Canadian Mounted police.
7. The WSO has wings in different countries and in India, but the Canadian wing is most active. Most of the members in the WSO are second and third generation Sikhs.
8. It is said that WSO initially stood for Khalistan a separate Sikh state, however later shifted focus towards building a strong Sikh intellect and diaspora, and groom young Sikhs to be at commanding positions in the World. Majority of Sikhs in Trudeau cabinet including defense minister Harjit Singh Sajjan owes allegiance to WSO.

A meeting of World Health Assembly, the top decision-making body of World Health Organisation (WHO), scheduled for May 18 is heading for a face-off, since after US President Donald Trump is openly blaming WHO World chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for playing into China’s hands over novel coronavirus disease and have already stopped funding to the world health body.

To the discomfiture of Donald Trump and the US lawmakers, WHO has been praising China for its efforts to combat the spread of COVID19 contrary to former’s accusations that Beijing had underreported the threat and muffled the voice of professionals; doctors and journalists for speaking about the seriousness of the disease.

The top body of WHO may not take a clear cut stand on the matter however there would be increasing pressure on China to respond to criticism as to why and how that it wasn’t transparent about the disease.

The Ethiopian microbiologist Tedros was elected to the top position of WHO in 2017 with the support of Chinese premier Xi Jinping’s. He’s gathering support for himself from African and most Non-Aligned countries. According to WHO’s diplomats in Geneva where the annual meeting of the assembly though video would take place, a resolution calling for a global fight against the spread of COVID-19 is expected to come up and all 194 members of WHO are expected to make statements.

So far the European countries and the UK which have been hit the hardest by the coronavirus have desisted from criticizing WHO director-general, saying this isn’t the time to play politics but fight the virus.

Trump had also warned Xi of consequences if it was found that it had deliberately suppressed facts about the virus that originated from Wuhan. The US charges against WHO were largely summed up by the Committee on Oversight and Reform of the US Congress, which in a letter on April 9 to Dr Ghebreyesus made it clear that the organization was “no longer serving the needs of the world and instead of taking its cues from China.”

 The US position is in contrast to the stand taken by the African Union and countries and the Non-Aligned Movement. Dr Ghebreyesus hails from Ethiopia, which has been a member of the movement for nearly 40 years.

The US is unhappy that as late as January 14, 2020, the WHO denied that there was community transmission in Wuhan despite warnings of human to human spread by a Taiwan who is not a member of WHO.

 The WHO, the Trump administration believes, was late to declare COVID-19 as a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020.

By this time the disease had infected almost 10,000 people. In fact, Dr. Ghebreyesus congratulated the Chinese government for taking extraordinary measures to contain the outbreak.

The WHO, despite declaring COVID-19 an emergency of international concern with strong evidence of transmission through travel, did not warn any country against travel, to or from China. Between December 31 and January 31, as many as 430,000 people flew on direct flights from China to the US. COVID19 was only declared a pandemic on March 11 after it had raced around the world, sickening nearly 120,000 people in 110 countries and killing close to 4,400.