Skip to main content

COVID-19 Update 2 - What Works?



the new facebook look


I enabled the new facebook format the other day and I am getting used to the new format now. In these days of social distancing and balancing what it means to interact with other people but still survive the encounter, we have arrived in a watershed. Social interaction for its own sake and for what, for the Likes? For the hits? It's not the same world anymore.

I watched a youtube clip of a father coming home to his son. His son ran towards the father but was abruptly made to stop with a wave of the hand. The boy's energy disappeared and the father fell on his knees unable to take the situation. It is the threat of COVID-19. The father is a medical worker.

The trolls are still here. Here in my tweeter feed and my facebook timeline, they still fester. Those that forward fake news still do. My hope is that those who know better survive these apocalyptic times. Italy just hit a 10,000 deaths daily level in their fight with the virus. I can't imagine living in a place where 10,000 people die in a day. If experts are right about the COVID-19 trajectory the rest of the world will follow Italy in 2 weeks. 

South Korea is having much success in handling this pandemic without using draconian measures like restrictions in travel and socializing. What they did however happened before the virus struck. They learned from SARS and quickly adapted their system of healthcare to quickly respond to viral outbreaks. First they did away with privacy when it comes to community health issues. Then they tested aggressively. They have personal protective equipment ready for their frontliners. If a citizen is showing symptoms, he visits a test kiosk. All relevant contact tracing information are extracted from him. The test results are sent to him via sms but most importantly all individuals he came in contact with are also notified to go to a test kiosk for testing. The South Korean economy doesn't have to take a beating. It's hospital system is able to handle 9,600 cases (so far) with only 152 deaths. 

I live in the Philippines. Here the government chose to close the shops and malls. No public transportation. There were travel restrictions especially in Luzon, the biggest island. Food trucks are allowed. But basically, in the Philippines, if you disrupt the public roads and highways, you will get distribution problems. We have 1,418 cases and 71 deaths. These numbers are too low when you compare it to the total population. We are not testing citizens. Certainly not in big numbers to have a good feel on where we stand right now. A prolonged community quarantine will further drive the economy down. The low wage workers, the daily workers are feeling very scared now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mailvelope, Encryption for Webmail

Encryption is the topic of week. I wrote about it in a related post here. While encryption is a very good idea, doing it and doing it every day as part of your work flow is another thing. My view is that if you're already using an email client then it is easier, simpler and more convenient to adopt encryption. That is not the case if you're using a webmail service. If you are using the browser to check, compose and send your email, what are your options? The answer is: it's complicated. Looking for a way to do encryption with Google Chrome and Gmail, I found this. I also read that Google just released code for email encryption as open source. But it's a long way to being used by end users. The extension for Google Chrome works fine if the recipient also uses Google Chrome. But I went ahead and check this on Evolution.
Post a Comment
Read more

Donald Trump Is The 45th President of the United States

     and he is preparing to move with his transition team into the Oval Office. His election is a shock to many political observers and the world in general. Donald Trump, the president-elect, ran against Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and for many the most qualified candidate for the presidency in many years. This has led to many post election analysis of how this upset happened. The numbers of votes for each candidate and the comparisons with previous presidential elections point to the fact that the white vote for Mr. Trump is solid all throughout but the minority and black votes did not come for Mrs. Clinton. This is what happened in crucial States like Michigan and Florida. The Republicans kept Congress and the Senate. It is quite notable that Russia and in particular, Vladimir Putin, is happy that they are going to talk to Mr. Trump rather than Mrs. Clinton. It is also a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Webapps in Unity

So it has been 4 months since Ubuntu 14.04 came out. This is LTS and supported for 6 years by Canonical. The first mobile device with Ubuntu pre-installed is promised to come out later this year, 2014. It's time to check out how the apps perform so far. It is a good idea. I use Gmail and Twitter and Facebook. Why not a webapp in a desktop? So I start the Twitter and Gmail webapp. So far it has crashed my computer 6 times. Not a very good sign. On the other hand it does work but not as stable as opening them in Firefox. -- Use my PGP key if you want to encrypt your replies/messages to me. You are invited to also send me your PGP keys so we can communicate in private.
Post a Comment
Read more