Arquivo para a ‘Recursos comuns’ Categoria
Civilization crisis and death
05
Nov
Returning to Pablo Picasso’s thought that the worst loss of life is
not dying, but dying while we live is the one that best explains the civilizing state, even those who owe fraternity, dialogue, the planet as a common home seems hopeless and therefore tired , not that tiredness of the Society of Tiredness that is also a crisis, but that of those who have failed to find what unites, the positive and the true.
To speak of the post-truth, the sophistry is pre-Socratic, and the public lie has also been conveyed by newspapers and television channels, according to the political side they take, in the end everyone agrees that if you are not on the politically correct side, it is not true, so we remain in relativism and dualism, even those who preach against it, Edgar Morin is right is a crisis of thought, and Peter Sloterdijk is also “not a favorable time for thinking”, it is easier to take a side, although there are mistakes and successes on several sides, because there are only two.
I saw on Instagram that two very popular videos are of a young artist who makes puppets with skeletons, birds and funeral figures and another of a girl whose hair was decorated like a cemetery (figure above), it is a sad reality the post-Goths seem to dominate youthful fantasy.
In a BBC report on October 31, poor banker Muhammad Yunus stated: “We need to redesign the system by guaranteeing a new economy of three zeros: zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero net carbon emissions. And we know how to do it. The problem is that we are very lazy and we are very comfortable in the system we have, we don’t want to leave our comfort zone ”, is a new thinking may not work, but without a doubt people, the poor and the planet need answers, the old ones create more polarization and misunderstandings, in addition to post-truths, in this case with a new meaning, from an ideological point of view they were once true, today they are post-true.
There are situations and I think that the planet itself can react, an aortic reaction, the inorganic one over the organic one, after all we came from the dust, from some chemical reaction and certainly if we don’t change the route we will go back to the dust, not that life’s fatality physical personal death, but dying in life.
The question that remains is whether this reaction from the inorganic planet could change something in the human organic, your mind, your being, for something better.
Second wave or is it another Cov-2
02
Nov
In a recent article “Emergence and spread of a SARS-CoV-2 variant
through Europe in the summer of 2020” published on October 28 on the medRxiv website, they reported the spread, presumably from Spain, of a variant of the Covid virus -19, which would already be 80% of recent infections, the article will still have peer review, but the scientific community has already raised the alarm, the article will still have peer review.
Since the beginning of September, Europe had already seen an increase in cases of infection and resumed the distance measures, it was the end of the summer, now in October the measures have become irreversible, and the President of France even declared: “the virus circulates at a speed not foreseen even by the most pessimistic forecasts… we are all in the same position: invaded by a second wave that will undoubtedly be more difficult and more deadly than the first ”, England has already decreed lock-down and we are still in the fall, the reverse this year promises to be strict.
Germany, Prime Minister Angela Merkel made an agreement with the local governors to make a “lockdown light”, but by the end of November bars, restaurants, theaters and gyms will have to close, it will be a domestic Christmas and with many restrictions in Europe.
In Italy, the government of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has determined that at the beginning of November bars and restaurants across the country will only be open until 6 pm, gyms, swimming pools, theaters and cinemas cannot be opened.
The measures impacted the stock exchanges that had a sharp drop, from 2% to 4% in Europe, and more than 4% in Brazil, today holidays here, the stock exchanges abroad recover, but the apprehension now turns to the scheduled American elections for tomorrow, however many votes have already been anticipated and there will be a record of votes.
The companies that develop the vaccines promise to speed up, but experts point out that this is not possible and for this variant it should also be tested.
So the last ones will be the first ones
25
Sep
It doesn’t matter that you show that you do things well, that you keep
up appearances, that you are always in a prominent place, even in politics and in religious services and celebrations, the real conscience is that the intention is linked, and the intentionality is the consciousness directed to “something”, says phenomenology.
So that the new normality, not that of the post-pandemic, but that of the post-civilization crisis and everything indicates that it is on its way, can reverse the logic of the wickedness of the powerful, the oppressors and the Pharisees, only true solidarity will count, only it will be able to sustain the new course, which may not come from a new normality, because it was already distant before the pandemic, just read the serious literature that is not that of the media.
The fragile and the defenseless have become even more fragile in the pandemic, but the logic of power will be inverted by an aortic phenomenology, that which comes from the inorganic over the organic, comes from nature to the human, and from the cosmos to the planet, as stated Morin in his “introduction to complexity” the whole is in the part, the cosmos and nature in each individual, as the part is in the whole, we are responsible for everything that happens in Nature.
It is in cosmology and not in the systemic view, it is in aorganic holism and not in Cartesian holism, it is in mystique and not in pharisaism or ideology linked to religion, which is another type of religion without asceticism, the change comes from a long night of humanity, but you can concentrate on a visible night.
The poet Hölderling stated “where there is fear there is salvation”, and the moment of apprehension of humanity waiting for a vaccine must think of a vaccine that will remove the blindfold from the blindness of thought, Edgar Morin advocated this evening, and Peter Sloterdijk stated that it is not a favorable time for the exercise of thought, we are petrified in systemic and doctrinal logic that does not allow us to perceive a new one over the horizon.
That is why the last will be the first, simple people have the intuition of this possible change, the true sages want it, not as the powerful want it, but as the fragments of the social pandemic, irrational doctrine and closed in their bubble´s dream .
Those who blaspheme against religions affirm as the prophet Ezekiel said in the old testament (Ezek. 18,25): “You are saying: the Lord’s conduct is not correct. Hear, you of the house of Israel. Is it my conduct that is not correct, or is it your conduct that is not correct? “, the humbles can understand.
This is how the last will be the first, and the workers of the last hour will be, as the biblical parable says, those who called at the end of the day went to work and received the same payment as those who arrived at the beginning of the day, had not just gone because they had not been called (Mt 21: 28-32).
The Covax vaccine agreement
21
Sep
The agreement of several countries to streamline the vaccine
(Covax), including Brazil that signed at the last minute on Friday, provides for a minimum vaccination of 10% of the population (the option of Brazil) up to a maximum of 50% of the population , which once signed could not give up the compromised values, so Brazil signed at least, but this gives 42 million doses, it is not small and the risk is evident by the non-compliance with the whole testing protocol.
The government has not given up on the agreement already signed with AstraZeneca with the so-called “Oxford” vaccine that has the participation of the prestigious Brazilian Institute of FioCruz, while the government of the State of São Paulo promises to accelerate the process of the vaccine that is developed in China with participation USP – Butantan Institute.
The Brazilian agreement however provides that if the Oxford vaccine reaches the market first it may choose to maintain the bilateral vaccine purchase agreement, giving up the supply by the alliance, but it is likely that in the rush the Covax alliance will arrive first, then we will have to accept vaccination, which is fearful.
WHO director´s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on August 13 that “COVAX already has nine vaccine candidates in its portfolio, which are in phase 2 or 3 of the trials”, but interestingly Janssen Pharmaceutics and Pfizer vaccine are not there.
To work the alliance needs U $ 38 billion, but it has less than U $ 3 billion, so it may be that this falls on the shoulders of countries that enter the alliance just to comply with international agreements, also in the social and economic aspect the agreement it’s w orrying.
A priori the agreement is so that the poorest countries have the same access as rich countries to the vaccines that are most likely to succeed, less than 10 are in the testing phase, and the financial volume can make the game of interest more serious. , as well as letting the use in poorer countries not have the concern of rich countries, these would be a kind of guinea pig, the WHO claims the opposite says that “it is to guarantee the access of poor countries”.
Brazil will receive 42 million vaccines, if there are any problems who will be responsible for this, it is clear that they will say that it is the country itself, by signing the agreement, it becomes “aware” of the “risks”, although they are not mentioned.
Even if it is very camouflaged it is a game of interests that seems very clear, it is likely that the less wealthy countries will receive doses of the vaccine first, and if verified safe will be used in rich countries, it is not an easy thesis to be proven, but the pressure in the less wealthy countries it was huge and Brazil signed at the last minute without saying the real reason.
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela are among the countries that signed the agreement, and the Covax agreement is only part of the “Covid-19 Tool Access Accelerator”, or simply ACT Accelerator, which is the mechanism for response that WHO created for the pandemic, despite the term “accelerator” being avoided in interviews.
I hope to be wrong, but the economic game continues to prevail over the health of the population, especially the poor.
Because the issue of poverty is not resolved
16
Sep
It is not only due to the factors of inequality, the flow of wealth that
always runs in one direction depends on the imbalance of areas such as education, infrastructures not only for health, but also for transport and sources of regional and national wealth, and for this external assistance is essential.
The relationship between foreign aid and combating global poverty is positive and effective, say reports from many forums.
Perhaps some of the strongest examples of the effectiveness of foreign aid are the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, but the goals have not been achieved, domestic corruption and inefficient foreign aid.
These goals, proposed by the United Nations and ratified by all countries in the world, aimed at: reducing poverty, hunger and child mortality, but local and regional development plans were timidly attacked.
The so-called Borgen Project was actually aimed at the actions of local capitalists and outside interests,
The objectives proposed and ratified by all were:
– reduce poverty, hunger and child mortality;
– achieving universal primary education, gender equality and environmental sustainability;
– improving general health, fighting treatable diseases; and
– act as a global partnership for development.
They seem praiseworthy and hardly anyone would fail to support these plans, but the local application was to reduce birth rates, environmental sustainability without development, and treatable diseases are not really attacked, still childhood diseases persist, malaria is common in many regions of the country. Africa and there is a risk now of the pandemic.
There remains the fundamental problem of the global partnership for development, where one must look at interests, culture and what is socially valued locally, and unfortunately the colonialist mentality still prevails, the so-called decolonization comes to face this issue.
A process that contemplates this new process must be considered, observing authors and local cultures.
Effective aid to poverty
15
Sep
If, on the one hand, emergency aid is necessary, mainly because the
pandemic prevents informal work and many families have saved with domestic workers, a medium and long-term recovery plan is needed to avoid even worse degradation and income distribution than the one that already exists.
Economist Muhammad Yunus is known throughout the world as “the banker of the poor”, but he is not really a banker in the conventional sense, as he assists people who have never had access to any banking system, what he fosters is an entrepreneurship, especially among women, and their results are surprising. It is true, however, that he founded a bank, the Grameen Bank in 1983 in Bangladesh, but today what he does most are lectures, he is one of the most requested speakers on the planet, and received among other awards, the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
In his lectures, he censors and criticizes bankers who aim only at easy profits, exorbitant interest and little or nothing look at the social reality in which they live, one of his well-known phrases says: “Dealing with economic theories in the face of people dying ], for me it was a joke ”, this is even more true in a pandemic.
Utilitarian productivism, production is necessary mainly in essential goods, is one that targets only the most attractive sectors where profit is high and the social impact is not always so high, with regard to the poor, and in the case of education and health, it is necessary even if profit is not considered, as it is an investment.
The idea that invaded several sectors, and unfortunately also in education and public health, that these sectors need to be productive is nothing but a reproduction of a savage capitalism incapable of managing the current crisis, and is only on the rise because of disinformation of the population, in dark times authoritarian theories gain a voice.
What Yunus says about jobs is very interesting: “An essential issue is the idea of employment. Who said we were born to look for a job? The school? The teachers? The books? Your religion? Your parents? Someone put this on people’s heads.
The educational system repeats: ‘You have to work hard’. Human beings were not born for this. The human being is full of creative power, but the system reduces him to a mere worker, capable of doing repetitive work. This is shameful, it is wrong ”, here we must also overcome left´s-wing economism.
The digital world in which anyone can have an online system and work in it, where “informal” jobs can make people from any location, including the periphery entrepreneurs, goes against Yunus’ proposal, to make “services” closer to the population periphery is made possible by the ubiquity of digital.
Entrepreneurs exist in all social strata, I even venture to say that they are concentrated in the periphery, the problem is who risks putting capital there, who could finance these “microentrepreneurs” from the periphery, there is a solution, the number of jobs can grow quickly and circulation of goods and income in fragile environments
Mystery is not ignorance
25
Aug
Stories of cultures, of cultural traditions that involve the imaginary
, and the imaginary itself are shrouded in mysteries, but they should not be confused with ignorance or superstitions, this is what can be read in the book of the almost centenary Edgar Morin “Knowledge, Ignorance and Mystery ”. there is a lot about knowledge, something about ignorance and the essentials about mystery, Morin’s dosage is perfect and a good remedy for the pandemic.
He is preparing a book for the pandemic, but as he always anticipates the story I hope to read and I believe he is one of the few who can talk about the new name or the post-pandemic precisely because he emphasized in one of his conferences that the health crisis caught us by surprise and put us on our knees.
In addition to planetary books like “Terra Pátria”, about epistemology “The Method” in six volumes, it is one of the rare ones that ventured to tread new paths in our global dilemmas through “To Exit the 20th century” and “Before the Abyss” However, in this 2018 book, your leap is over the mystery without slipping through the easy paths of belief and ignorance, questions both the fetish of reason and materialistic determinism, among its various works are the Transdisciplinary Studies done in a Center of these studies in Paris with the philosopher, important for the digital world Michel Serres, recently deceased, and proclaims that with discipline and excessive specialization we can move towards a new “obscurantism”.
He clearly separates ignorance from mystery, for him “ We can only apprehend the real through representations and interpretations. The reality of the outside world is a humanized reality: we do not know it directly, but through our human spirit, translated / reconstructed not only by our perceptions, but also by our language, our theories or philosophies, our cultures and societies ”, and for him, the mystery is equated by transdisciplinarity as “the contradiction to which all in-depth knowledge arrives is not an error, but the last conceivable truth”.
He values mystery as a path of discovery and knowledge: “Complex knowledge is the necessary path to reach the unknowable. Otherwise, we remain ignorant of our ignorance. The mystery in no way detracts from the knowledge that leads to it. ”
He calls our current environment as having a “culture of cancellation”, a more resentful half-sole in the old ideological patrols, and they now seem to intensify with the return of ideological polarization, which in the post-war created a constant tension in all of humanity. Which reminds you when children cover their ears and emit mimetic chants (he calls gutturals) so as not to hear interlocutors who contradict them (if you never know that you may be wrong, you will be right forever), so the polarization and radicalization seems to come from nursery education. It is not only the natural environment that needs biodiversity, the cultural environment and democracy also needs it, as Morin says, in fact “they depend on biodiversity”, we are willing to live with what is different or we want to eliminate it, the answer given in global scale is frightening, it is no mystery to ignorance and contempt for the Other.
Morin, Edgar (2020). Conhecimento, Ignorância, Mistério (Knowledge, Ignorance, Mystery). 1st. edition. BR: Bertrand do Brasil.
A vaccine is difficult this year
24
Aug
There are three phases for a vaccine to be released, in Brazil the 
body responsible for evaluating and approving requests for conducting clinical research for the purpose of registration and requests for registration of immunobiological products developed in the pharmaceutical industry is made by Anvisa (Agência Nacional de Health Surveillance), there are ethics committees that monitor the stages of the studies, the Research Ethics Committees (CEPs) and / or the National Research Ethics Commission (CONEP), so there are criteria and care.
In phase 1, small groups of volunteers are selected, normally healthy adults, are evaluated to verify the safety and determine the type of immune response caused by the vaccine, in phase 2, a greater number of individuals are included and the product is administered to individuals representative of the population with lower immunological protections (children, adolescents, the elderly and people with compromised immunology), already in the third phase it is necessary to apply to a large number of individuals and ensure the minimum possible adverse reactions and contraindications, in this stage the number of volunteers must be large.
The company will only request the registration of products with studies in phase 3 in progress, so the data from steps 1 and 2 must be consolidated and their efficiency demonstrated with high therapeutic and / or preventive efficiency, and there is no alternative therapy comparable to that stage of disease, here comes the play of economic interests that can be taken to the political field and even to dispute markets, however it is to be expected that in the case of Covid-19 there is some ethics in this process.
There are 26 vaccines in an advanced stage, but the four vaccines with potential use in Brazil are based on four different techniques: the viral vector is the technique of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which has the collaboration of FioCruz Brazilian Lab, the one from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac has participation from the Butantan Institute USP-Brazilian, BioNTech – Wytech / Pfizer has private laboratories in Brazil and announced that it could be ready in October, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals (Johnson & Johnson) adopts the adenovirus vector technique (see techniques and collaborations in the figure).
Sinovac with the virus inactivated technique may be ready for next year, Janssen has not made big announcements yet, but it is known that it will go to the third phase, and the most promising one is that of Oxford is in phase 3, but it should not be available until at best in December.
According to Anvisa, the deadline for the manifestation on the vaccine is up to 60 days, although Anvisa has accelerated the ordering process for medicines and vaccines in the case of Covid-19, it instituted a Committee for the Evaluation of Clinical Studies, Registration and Post-registration of Medicines, which includes vaccines.
Thus, even if the request is sent in October, the probable approval is for December, until production begins and the health agencies must make it available, they should be ready to start the vaccination in mid-January, before this care, prevention and maintaining hopes.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, we are paralyzed at a level of a thousand daily deaths.
Ame Agaru and pandemic
19
Aug
The film by an assistant to Akira Kurosawa, Tadashi Koizumi, has this
name “After the rain” (Ame Agaru, 1999) was a script by Kurosawa that Tadashi inherited, the first point that can be highlighted in this film is the relationship between man / nature that limits human action and they are stuck in the middle of a path waiting for the rain to pass, like many others also have a samurai.
But he will have to perform a task that is not very worthy of a samurai, to get money for people who stay there can eat, this is my analogy with the pandemic, from the time when everyone is trapped in the house, an analogy I make with social isolation.
The protagonist of the film is a character of the type “jidai-geki” (the films that are inspired by the history of Japan), it could also be a film about the “autumn of a samurai”, there is another script film made by Kurosawa’s heirs called “Rhapsody in August” (1991), in this the director was Kiyoko Mura.
This worldview of not conceiving man apart from nature, in times when ecology was still a marginal topic, now with the rediscovery of nature we have an interesting analogy to be made, nature limited us behind a virus, and yesterday we saw temperature spikes low in the south of the American continent, temperatures have been 20ºC below zero in Rio Grande (Tierra del Fuego), according to data from the National Meteorological Service (SMN) of Argentina.
In the USA where it is summer, the high temperature record was in the “death valley”, 54.4ºC a record very close to the highest temperature ever recorded in the region, which was 56.9ºC in 1913, according to the National Meteorological Service ( American NWS), nature shows its signs of reaction to the pandemic ecological action of centuries.
Returning the rain in the middle of a forest where poor people pass, at a certain moment the samurai finds himself in the condition of helping those people due to the long period they are isolated, and when he leaves he is faced with a murderer that the samurai will prevent a a duel that could end in death, and for this reason the feudal lord who owns those lands decides to employ him as a swordsman, there remains a qualm that is to accept money, which is dishonorable for the samurai.
The Samurai decides to do it for a noble purpose, which is to have food for those people who are retired there, almost all of them poor because they were making that way through the forest, when they were prevented from proceeding by the rain.
If the message at that time was little appreciated, today with the economic situation that we will have after the pandemic, the message is noble and social.
Below a link to see the film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=1mR0KV-c9EY
#LockDown didn’t happen, brazilians didn’t do our homework
25
May
The social isolation rate rose to 51% in the State of São Paulo and 53% in
the Capital, which is very close to the advance of Covid 19, although the numbers indicate they are stabilized at a level around a thousand deaths, the fall may be very slow if there are no ways to increase the level of social isolation, today is also an anticipation´s holiday in São Paulo.
Little by little we are drawing harsh lessons from the pandemic in Brazil, even with the government meeting with governors the already planned day after happened and in the worst possible way, the video of the ministerial meeting caused perplexity across the country and increased the distance between powers and the government. with governors and mayors. The cold also came, although it is still autumn in the southern hemisphere, and Latin America is already the new epicenter of the pandemic
While Europe is slowly returning to its new normality (Spain have any problems), and with hopes of eliminating the infection rates from falling further.
Health´s deds in the capital are running out, they reached 91% occupancy on Sunday, so either a tough measure is taken or a new breakthrough in the death curve will be inevitable.
The hope of the vaccine advances in the pharmaceutical AstraZeneca of England, its CEO Pascal Soriot affirmed this Sunday (24) that the United Kingdom will be able to have access to the vaccine in September of this year if the tests are successful, now with 10 thousand volunteers that begin to be vaccinated.
Although social isolation is below what is necessary, its effectiveness is proven, the curve that is exponential for deaths and infections, must be analyzed on a logarithmic scale (see figure), where it can be observed, decreasing inclinations that may remain on a horizontal inclination when this number stops at a level, which would be desirable to not exceed the limit of the Health system, depending on the #LockDown measure we can vary from 30 to 100 thousand deaths.
About São Paulo, the scientists evaluate, the analysis was made by researchers from USP according to the G1 portal, which instead of having a peak may have a plateau where the maximum peak remains for several days before retreating, this would also exhaust the system already at a high rate.
Some states already show an attenuation of the curve, as is the case of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catariana, but Amazonas remains serious, while Ceará and Maranhão State due to #LockDown had improvements while Pará still not even with radical isolation, and Amazonia has many problems.
