Ignorance... and stupidity, kills

Trump in an abundance of stupidity and ignorance, tweeted that a combination therapy of hydroxychloroquine, a less toxic derivative of chloroquine, and the antibiotic azithromycin — which was administered to six patients who recovered from Covid-19 this month in France — has “a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” 

Dr Anthony Fauci warned, “what we don’t know, is when you put it [chloroquine, which is used to treat malaria, arthritis, and lupus] in the context of another disease, whether it’s safe.”

But people heard Trump.

And someone believed him enough to try to self-medicate.

Update and Comment on Covid19

The stats as at 24 Mar 2020 0121 GMT, Italy is second with almost 64,000 cases, and US is firmly in 3rd with almost 44,000 cases (update: 46,000+ at 0446 GMT) after over 10,000 new cases were identified.

China of course still has the most cases (over 81,000), though their death toll has plateaued at 3,200.

Italy had long surpassed China's death with over 6000 deaths as of this writing.

US deaths are still relatively low at over 500.

Germany has over 29,000 cases but they have managed to keep their deaths to just over 120.

Fear leads to stupidity...

There are as of this writing (23 Mar 2020, early hours), almost 24,000 confirmed Covid19 cases in Germany. The numbers reported for the US is more than 30,000. But the deaths reported in Germany is 93. So how many deaths are there in the US?

100?

120?

388.

Conspiracy Theory on the Coronavirus

The coronavirus that causes Covid19 is quite selective. It is quite mild in children and young people, and most of those who died from it or complications from it, are older people.

The virus originated in China.

China's one-child policy has resulted in an ageing population. And this top-heavy population pyramid will mean that each working adult will have to support many elderly.

China's "social support" system will not be able to support an ageing China.

If only there were some way to... reduce the burden from an ageing population...

Some thoughts of the US Presidential Elections 2020

As of this writing, the Democratic candidates are down to Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Biden has a lead and is likely to hold the lead and win the nomination. Which will be a sad thing. But understandable.

Politics are conservative.

Until it is not.

Malaysian Political Drama Feb 2020

I need to include a date in the title or you might ask, "political drama? which one?" So this one, as reported in brief by The Washington Post:

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamad, the world’s oldest national leader, resigned.“Under Malaysia’s constitution, the entire cabinet must be dissolved if the prime minister resigns,” Shibani Mahtani and Jonathan Edward report. “As the prime minister’s office announced Mahathir’s intent to resign, his political party, the Malaysian United Indigenous Party, known as Bersatu, said it would be leaving Malaysia’s ruling coalition. About a dozen other prominent members of parliament also left to form an independent bloc in the Southeast Asian country’s legislature. The king, Sultan Abdullah of Pahang, has not commented publicly on the matter. The political drama on Monday appeared to thwart one of Southeast Asia’s most celebrated democratic transitions, and returned Malaysia to a time of backdoor political plotting and palace intrigue. The move also appeared aimed at preventing [Anwar Ibrahim] from taking over as leader.”

Washington Post 

25/2/2020

Daily 202, News email 

China in the Year of the Metal Rat 2020

So this is the Year of the Metal Rat (from Jan 25 2020).

But for some, it is also the Year of the Golden Rat, and it starts on 4 Feb 2020.

And this Rat Year is especially auspicious as it is a double spring year.

Tell that to China who is dealing with the Covid19 , a.k.a. the  "Wuhan virus".

Technically, that virus/epidemic started in Dec 2019 (the Year of the Earth Pig), and lingered into the new year.