Covid-20 - The New British Disease

 Covid-20 - The New British Disease

European Union officials will be discussing at GMT 10:00 of a co-ordinated response to the new, more infectious coronavirus variant in the UK (to be known as the British Covid-20) which has already led many countries to impose travel bans.

UK Health officials say the new variant is up to 70% more transmissible, and there is no evidence that it is not more deadly.

There is also no evidence yet to suggest that it does not react differently to vaccines.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the new variant was "getting out of control" while Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands announced they had already detected it.

The speed at which governments have announced their bans on travellers from the UK shows the scale of the alarm.

More and more countries are imposing travel band to/fro UK. So far the countries that have taken the precautionary measures to impose UK travel ban include Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Denmark, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Morocco, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey.

The new variant was first detected in September. In November it made up around a quarter of cases in London. This reached nearly two-thirds of cases in mid-December.

Three things are coming together that mean it is attracting attention:

1. It is rapidly replacing other versions of the virus.

2. It has mutations that affect part of the virus likely to be important.

3. Some of those mutations have already been shown in the lab to increase the ability of the virus to infect cells.

All of these come together to build a case for a virus that can spread more easily. However, we do not have absolute certainty. Nobody will ever have.

New strains can become more common simply by being in the right place at the right time - such as Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, The Hague, Hongkong, London, New York, Singapore and Sydney.

This variant is unusually highly mutated. The most likely explanation is it emerged in a patient with a weakened immune system that was unable to beat the virus.

There is no evidence yet to suggest the variant does not make the infection more deadly, and whether the hastily developed vaccines will be able to work effectively against it.

If the virus so changes until it is able to dodge the full effect of the vaccine, then "vaccine escape" happens, and this is the most frightening concern to humans.

Lesson learned: Don't belittle a tiny thing. It can be smarter than millions of scientific brains combined. It can also make smart politicians into blue-ass flies, running round and round in circles, like clowns in the circuses trying to conjure up tricks to make us laugh.


SSO - 21 Dec 2020

Trump and Pompeo spreading contradictory lies on cyber attack by mere guessing

 WASHINGTON: Contradicting his secretary of state and other top officials, President Donald Trump on Saturday (Dec 19) suggested without evidence that China - not Russia - may be behind the cyber espionage operation against the United States and tried to minimise its impact....He also claimed the media are “petrified” of “discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!)."

There is no evidence to suggest that is the case. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said late Friday that Russia was “pretty clearly” behind the operation against the United States.

“This was a very significant effort and I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity,” Pompeo said in the interview with radio talk show host Mark Levin....It is not clear whether Pompeo got that message before his interview, but officials are now scrambling to figure out how to square the disparate accounts....

If the hackers are indeed from Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency, as experts believe, their resistance may be tenacious.  AP

This is probably the first time the two top liars in America have come out and contradicted each other, and both did not have any concrete evidence but simply guessing and assuming. Pompeo insisted that the attack was from Russia.  Trump discounted it and suggested it was likely to be China. 

This is their standard tactics, anyhow accused, anyhow attacked without the need for proof or evidence. Remember WMD to murder Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq leading to the destruction of that country and hundreds of thousands of death and maimed? No war crimes, no condemnation by the righteous and arrogant western media, just another day, another episode of American aggression, just a cup of tea.

With Trump's ship sinking and Pompeo aiming to be the next President, it is time for him to show his colour, to prove who is the smarter idiot of the two. Pompeo is now outright going against Trump, showing to the daft Americans that he is the smarter clown, smarter than clown Trump.

Without any evidence, as the experts acknowledged, they just accused, like all the accusations against China and Huawei. How to trust these rogues as leaders of the most powerful evil Empire not to do harm to the rest of the world with their lies and guess works?

And it is also good to note that their cybersecurity is in shit. 18,000 organisations being attacked, probably more that were unknown. Now what is so great about American technology and IT? Antique, outdated. The enemies are many times more advanced and could hack into their systems at will and they could do nothing about it, not knowing who did it and barking and snarling at shadows.

This is how great America has become, counting from the bottom. Did Trump make America great? Would the clueless sleepy Joe do better?  He would probably blindly continue the work Trump designed and plotted for him to do to outdone clown Trump. The decline of the evil American Empire is a forgone conclusion, inevitable, unstoppable, only how fast.

To the evil Americans, if they cannot win in anything, just cheat, lie, steal or kill the other parties, brand them as a threat to their well being, to their national interest, to their dominance as the number one  Empire.

Another report in Yahoo News confirming that the Americans did not have a clue who did it but guessing. Read what they said, 'I don't think...' All the time the Americans have been spreading lies based on nothing but their biased imagination.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There is no question that Russia is behind the recent hacking campaign against the United States, the head of the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence panel said on Sunday, warning that President Donald Trump's effort to play down Moscow's role and point to China was a threat to U.S. national security.

"Based on what I've seen, I don't think there's any question that it was Russia," House intelligence committee Chairman Adam Schiff told MSNBC in an interview. "It just uniformly destructive and deceitful, and injurious ... to our national security," he said of Trump's Saturday comments.

PS. Trump's avoidance in attacking Russia is a clear sign that he is in Putin's pocket. He has been paid by the Russians for decades, bankrupt and saved by the Russian banks.

COVID-19: Coronavirus Can Mutate, Vaccines Can't!

 COVID-19: Coronavirus Can Mutate, Vaccines Can't!

Nations across Europe have imposed UK travel bans over a new strain of the Coronavirus found in late September in Wales. This new strain is 70% more transmissable. It has already spread throughout UK, except North Ireland.

According to UK experts, it is known to have been exported to the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Spain and as far south as Australia.

It may also have been exported to South Africa and India, and other countries that are popular travel/working destinations for the British people.

UK's Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that the new strain "was out of control. We have got to get it under control", admitting that this was "an incredibly difficult end to, frankly, an awful year".

Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium are all halting flights. The measures are temporary but a more co-ordinated approach will be determined by the EU today.

UK PM Boris Johnson has introduced a new Tier 4 Restrictions for those areas affected and cancelled the relaxation of rules for Christmas celebrations announced earlier.

The new strain is said to be a mutated variant of the COVID-19 which is totally different from those found in Wuhan, China. It is also known now that the variant that is found in Europe are different from those found in China. This is evidence that China did not spread the Covid19 to Europe and UK, and by extension, also the US.

Now, let's talk about the newly minted vaccines. The questions every user or jab receiver should be asking are:

1. How effective will the vaccines be?

2. How long will the vaccines last once inside the body?

3. Will the mutated coronavirus render the vaccines ineffective?

4. Can I sue for compensation if anything untoward happened to me after I have been vaccinated?

5. What is the government's stand on the above?

SSO

Covid19 vaccines, price leaked, the world is not supposed to know

 Contractual prices of Covid19 vaccines leaked by a tweet by a junior Belgium minister, from a report by AFP posted in CNA.

The tweeted information gave the following price per dose for each vaccine maker, in either euros or US dollars according to the respective contract:

1. AstraZeneca: €1.78

2. Johnson & Johnson: US$8.50

3. Sanofi/GlaxoSmithKline: €7.56

4. Pfizer/BioNTech: €12.00

5. Curevac: €10.00

6. Moderna: US$18.00

Separately, on Thursday, the European Commission announced a seventh contract with US biotech company Novavax for 100 million doses, the price of which was not given under the confidentiality agreement.

How much will third world countries have to pay now that they know how much the rich western countries are paying? Would the third world countries be paying more than the rich western countries?

It is good to show that they are selling to their rich western countries first. The rest of the world can wait. And they will accuse China for trying to capitalise on offering its vaccines to the rest of the world, especially the third world, and would mischievously allege that China did not do it for altruistic purpose but to gain political influence. And they would keep their vaccines for the white countries and maybe later when they have had their shares, sell it at higher price to the rest of the world. Third world countries that cannot afford, sorry, no money no talk. They would not do it for altruistic reasons but for profit. 

And some silly third world countries would believe their lies and attack China for offering the vaccines to them when the western countries would not or at a higher price and put them at the end of the queue. China is offering to the third world countries first but would be accused as a political move, bad, by the whites.

This leak is another act of God to stop profiteering and taking advantage of third world countries. Now it is difficult to make the third world subsidise the rich western countries for these vaccines. God is great to make sure they cannot cover up this ruse to exploit the poorer people of the world. It is all within HIS grasp and plan.

The next industrial revolution in Singapore is food and hawker centres

The Big Read: With UNESCO listing in sight, will new breed of 'hawkerpreneurs' rejuvenate or erode hawker culture?

Meet Mr Onion: Why this Singapore chef wants you to give vegetables a chance.

Commentary: Lab-grown meat approved for the first time in Singapore – but will people bite?

Above are the headlines in CNA Online news on 7 Dec. Food, food, food, hawker food, Michellin Stars food, lab grown food...these are headline news in Singapore. Looks like food is the future going forward for Singapore and our reporters would be experts in writing about food and chefs, no longer writing about pets, cats and dogs.

What about 5G, AI, new technology, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, leading edge technology, IOT, going to the moon? Oh, lab grown food is new tech. Good. With food and hawker fare as the future, the new frontier to drive Singapore's economy and tourism, the ITEs, maybe tertiary institutions as well, should reorganise their courses to be relevant so that the students on graduating could find jobs in the food industry, as cooks, chefs, waiters and waitresses and the sikit atas wine smelling and wine tasting sommeliers.

More hawker centres and food courts and restaurants should be built to cater for the growing food industry. The listing of hawker centres in UNESCO is a good start. Next would be food courts and 5 star Michellin restaurants and we will have new heroes, entrepreneurs and celebrities like world famous chefs and world famous hawker centre cooks.

This must be the new innovation and creative spirit of Singapore.  When we cannot compete in high tech and science, find out own niche, in food and hawker centres. Graduates should be encouraged to become hawkers and 'zi char' stall owners and make big money. No need to have a degree for sure. And our reporters would have a lot of things to write and report about hawker centres, food courts and best dishes, best recipes, best cooks. There will be so many things to write about, never short of material, and our newspapers could be 40 pages thick, and full of hawker advertisements, more profits for sure.

Perhaps I shall write more about hawker centres, food courts, food and chefs in mysingaporenews too. And now with UNESCO listing, Singapore everyday can talk and write about hawker food and cooks. Other countries can talks about going to the moon, IT, IOT, science and technology, we talk about how to cook good hawker food, where to find the best hawker food, how to attract tourists to see our hawker centres and taste our hawker food.

Singapore will now be world famous for hawker centres and hawker food. Great achievment. Next target, get Orchard Road to be recognised as the best shopping belt in the world. India can take a leaf from Singapore by putting up its Dabbawalla to be recognised as an Indian heritage.  Malaysia can try Teh Tarek as a Malaysian specialty that has gone to the International Space Station.

What do you think?