Posts Tagged ‘pandemia’
Death and life
03
Nov
Pablo Picasso is right in saying that “death is not the greatest loss
of life. The biggest loss of life is what dies inside us while we live ”, but in the face of a pandemic that threatens everyone, in the face of a second wave that promises to be even worse, Makron and other governments in Europe have already said, we must face the theme.
Where was All Souls’ Day, remembering more parents and some people who are no longer here always made me a lull in the face of life and death, what we came here to do in this short passage, should be the question of these days.
The pandemic could have taught us more, at least it managed to stop the frantic life of the Society of Tiredness, but the vast majority of people behave as if there were not many people dying and that they too may be suddenly at a crossroads, which I think so , it will not only be personal, but the whole planet.
I read in one of Edgar Morin’s last books: “instead of being nobody’s land, we could be everyone’s land”, it is not what still happens, today is election day in the USA, without polarizing it can be said whether he won his life or death, I do not speak of government policies either, but the threats of war that always hang over humanity in times of war.
All of us will one day abandon our dreams, promises and the good things we have done, it will be time to give an account if not to God, to those who believe, future generations about the legacy we have left.
Living life and being happy should always have the happiness of others as a complement, if I am not a cause of happiness around me, my own may be compromised, and at the end of the journey only what we have done will be left and that those who stay will be happy to remember.
The relationship with the Other and with Nature, which is also another, must be modified so that we have hope for a promising future for those who are born.
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.
Vaccines are in the testing phase
26
Oct
All vaccines are in the testing phase, only the Russian vaccine with
its mega emperor Putin has approved vaccines, but no one trusts it.
The American group of Modern biotechnology, one of those conducting tests in phase 3 in the United States promising results for December, was asked in September to give more transparency in its reports, almost always delivered to the government in a “confidential” character, reveals the pressures on the FDA (American Medicines Agency) because the election is close and could favor the government, but the company itself does not believe in short deadlines.
Another laboratory at Pfizer, one of the most promising vaccines, sparked controversy this week due to the infection and death of one of the people recruited for testing, a Brazilian volunteer who died, but according to the Bloomberg website the boy was in the group of test placebos and did not receive the active dose of the vaccine.
Clarifying the tests are called double blind, that is, neither doctors nor patients know which version was applied, in some a placebo is applied and in others the vaccine itself, this being one of the most reliable forms of testing, only in cases such as this from the death of a volunteer the dose is revealed.
The controversy of the Chinese vaccine, still without approval and with a deadline for October 2021, is one of the consequences of the politicization of the vaccine that we already warned in last week’s post, social polarization makes any issue, even those that should be everyone’s concern. regardless of ideology.
The problem of mandatory vaccination must be dealt with democratically, and the controversy does not help the public consensus, which in this case is already unlikely, the politicization of the issue is regrettable, judicialization is even more regrettable, I remember the case of drug addicts whose involuntary hospitalization has not been approved.
The testing phase, according to experts and the WHO itself, should continue for 2021, any premature anticipation of the vaccine will be as serious as the pandemic itself, and the result can be disastrous and subject to lawsuits.
We hope that the vaccine will come, that there will be a worldwide consensus on its validity, that the politicization of the theme will decrease and that we can emerge less polarized from the pandemic, is an altruistic theme, but we need to hope for a better humanity, if not so much suffering in a disastrous year that it was worthless.
Digital transformation beyond Buzzword
21
Oct
We alerted and problematized in the 10 years of this blog the
transformation that was being led by digital changes, social, educational, industrial and even behavioral aspects, most of the skeptics reacted, mocked or despised a real change that was happening.
The pandemic has shown that more than necessary tools can build bridges, establish new relationships, energize companies and avoid wasting time, money and especially in these times, endangering health.
Now everyone lives in the digital reality, companies have survived through online services, families, social groups, public services and meetings of various types depend on digital tools, shows depend on lives, meetings or posts on social media tools.
A buzzword emerged very strongly called the “digital transformation”, but the danger of opportunism is great for companies and sites that exploit and mystify these services and charge dearly for it, so some concepts are necessary, first what happens differently in generation Z of previous call of millennials, those who were born at the beginning of the millennium, therefore before the year 2000, which is now 22 to 37 years old.
The millenials followed the evolution of the Web (the pages, websites and blogs), they were born in a reality in which computers were an appliance, so they were only used at home and optionally at school, while generation Z through cell phones took the digital world to everywhere, create chat groups and behave differently with the credibility of websites, blogs and media networks, create their own relationships and idols, in general different from everything that is known.
Although more closed and with a tendency to have little social relationship, they are more critical than millennials, who are more anxious, more efficient and more demanding.
Thus, relations with the market are very different, they return to prefer shopping in physical stores and select well what they buy, less impulsive and already have the technology with excellent support, although very connected they already know the limits of technology.
Major economics magazines like Forbes and Fortune have done generation Z analyzes to understand the necessary market transformation, Forbes says it represents 25% of the current world population, digital is a natural part of their lives, like TV and the radio of past generations, while Fortune claims that 32 of generation Z are striving for a job of their dreams and rule out taking on any job, although temporarily accepted to lift the future.
Thus the old CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) do not work and many criticisms and analyzes made for the millennial generation are outdated.
According to Kasey Panetta, a researcher at Gartner, 5 new concepts are emerging: Composite architectures, agile and responsive architectures, Algorithmic trust, products, links, websites and reliable transactions, Beyond silicon, the limits of Moore’s law of the evolution of computers, now technologies smaller and more agile are sought, Formative Artificial Intelligence (AI) adaptation to the client, customization of services, times and location, and the Digital Me concept, a kind of passport to the digital world, tools and websites that already know the client and their needs, forms of behavior and preferences.
So the entire digital universe that seemed stable is also going to collapse and much of what is called “digital transformation” is just a digital mystification.
Panetta, Kasey. 5 Trends Drive the Gartner Hyper Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2020. Available at: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/5-trends-drive-the-gartner-hype-cycle-for-emerging-technologies-2020, Access: September 15, 2020
Vaccine politicization and care
19
Oct
Last Wednesday (10/14) the Ministry of Health of Brazil presented
to the states’ health secretaries a vaccination schedule against the covid-19 that would start in April 2021, the forecast is for the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed in partnership with the University of Oxford, which is in the third testing phase and should be produced in Brazil by FioCruz, in Manguinhos, in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Some governors, in particular the state government of São Paulo, have interests in the Chinese company Sinovac, although China is also betting on the Oxford vaccine, this vaccine is being tested by the Butantan Institute of the University of São Paulo, and the Secretary of Health of São Paulo Jean Gorinchteyn told newspapers in São Paulo that “vaccines are not being treated in a republican way by the Ministry of Health, since the Chinese vaccine may have 46 million doses available in December and another 14 million by February 2021 and 40 million by June 2021.
But the dispute does not stop there, the American giant Pfizer announced on Friday (16/10) that it can apply for an “emergency” authorization for its vaccine against covid-19 until the end of November, said Albert Bourla, CEO of the group in a letter published on social media: “Let it be clear, assuming the data is positive, Pfizer will request an emergency use authorization in the United States shortly after the security step, in the third week of November, which indicates that it also wants to participate in the dispute, although it starts vaccination in the USA.
Because of a request from the German partner BioNTech, there was a request for a 2-month wait for the second dose of the vaccine (this vaccine is in two doses), but Albert Bourla shows politicization by stating that “we could know if our vaccine is effective or not at the end of October ”, I remember that the American elections take place on November 3, and this would be an asset for Donald Trumph.
According to the World Health Organization, and infectious disease Claudio Stadnik da Santa Casa, only 10 vaccines are in phase III, and the forecast if the schedule is followed, only vaccines from AstraZeneca / Oxford, Sinopharm (China) / Wuhan Institute of Biological Products (China) and Sinopharm (China) / Beijing Institute of Biological Products (China) would be ready in July 2021 while Moderna (USA) and Sinovac / Biotech (China) in October 2021.
So politics aside, this would be the real picture following the sanitary and medical precepts, to anticipate is to give possibility to error and lives are at stake.
See the graphic above: Source: World Health Organization and Cláudio Stadnik, infectologist at Santa Casa Hospital in Brazil.
Pandemic fatigue and vaccine rush
12
Oct
WHO in its Europe office has released a document explaining
a “pandemic fatigue” estimating that 60% of the population is already at this stage.
Hans Henri Kluge, WHO´s regional director for Europe, says tiredness was already expected at this stage of the crisis: “since the virus arrived on the European continent eight months ago, citizens have made enormous sacrifices to contain the covid-19 , the cost was very high, something that exhausted us all, regardless of what we live or what we do. In these circunstancies it is easy and natural to feel listless, unmotivated, to feel tired”, he said to BBC News.
The measures that aim to continue the efforts to obtain a common center to seek common sense in the solution of the issue: understand the people who are doing it regularly and involve communities in debates and decisions, allow people to live their lives, but risks and seeking creative solutions, as it has been like virtual meetings, such as deliveries of food and consumer products, especially to vulnerable people.
The other worrying issue is a race for the vaccine, which should follow exclusively medical routes, but already point to a specific formation of profit with people, so the first vaccine to arrive on the market will not necessarily be the best, and to make politicians worse try to take advantage of this race.
Brazilian doctors are cautious, like Dr. Álvaro Furtado costa, infectious disease physician at HC-FMUSP: “everyone is very optimistic, but the study of the vaccine is very complicated, most of them stop in phase 3 of clinical tests, due to the problems that appear. It is important to discuss this possibility (of not having a vaccine) ”, and reaching stage 3 does not mean that it is nearing the end, as most vaccines stop at this stage, as are the cases of HIV and chikungunya.
What should be done in this case is to continue the search for medications that decrease the mortality rate and, therefore, recover those infected, for example, by the SARS-Cov-2 virus, and the clinical trial is also developed in Brazil by FioCruz , which partners with Solidarity International, from WHO, and in the country are in 18 hospitals in 12 states, with research on different medications.
The final stage of phase 3 is much more difficult to reach and it is not the political propaganda that solves it, but the health control agencies of the drugs.
The party and the guests
09
Oct
Babette’s party is an allegory to a divine party, and the mysterious 
cook who humbly works for a long time in a house until she can announce and hold the party, although suspicious guests accept and feel their lives renewed.
What we live in pandemic times is the absence of the party, but the real party to which we have all been invited is that of fraternity for all and a greater balance in the distribution of incomes, in the treatment of different cultures and respect for human dignity. far from being a party.
Who were the guests, primarily those who claim to have these principles and who are not always practiced, that is, they participate more in the parties of wealth, power and their benefits than promote the party that everyone could participate.
The pandemic should be an awareness, deprived of the party, we should think about those who have always been deprived, and not try to promote even in the pandemic our private party where friends participate.
The biblical parable (Mt, 22,1-14) of the wedding feast in which a king calls the guests and they make excuses for not attending, is a good explanation for what happens to those who were invited and who were not and the excluded who are called to the party and they go, we would say one last awareness.
The guests, we would say in biblical terms the elect, were not, so the king sends his servants to go to the squares, at the crossroads of the paths and call as many as they find for the party, but at the party he still notices someone who is not wearing the right clothes (picture is engraved of Jan Luyken).
The biblical allegory is to say that among those who are not invited there are also those who are not worthy to participate in the divine feast
And if the pandemic continues
05
Oct
Fredric Jameson drew attention years ago about the possibility of a
cosmic catastrophe (an asteroid that threatens life on earth or a virus that matters to humanity), and the threat would awaken global solidarity, small differences are overcome and everyone works together to find one. solution in real life, now the pandemic shows whether this is possible or not, if the question were asked today the clear answer would be no, we are divided and not very sympathetic.
The speculations about the new normal were exhausted, in the political polarization curiously the two poles are seriously wrong, one in stating that the pandemic is the sign of exhaustion of the society we live in and so we will go for a utopian change, and the other that insists on saying that the pandemic does not exist, they lack realism.
An example of this utopian change is in the “Wuhan Soup” in which several famous authors on the left pointed to a “collapse of capitalism” due to the pandemic.
Jameson’s logic is to understand postmodernity as a “cultural logic” and that this would be a third phase of expansion of capitalism, the so-called late capitalism, what he seeks is behind the cultural manifestations of our time to understand what kind of “logic” they have, without the necessary criticism of them.
The discussion by Daniel Bell and Jean-François Lyotard are points of reference in this discussion from the 1970s onwards, because Bell placed the position of understanding that the new economic phase has put the notion of industrial capitalism in the past, and Lyotard has unveiled a change in the statute of science and technology from the computerization scenario in developed societies, but conventional criticism was stuck with a superficial criticism of the so-called “techno-science”.
What both advocate and here give strength to a third way of change, neither capitalism nor socialism, is a split with modern thought and with the very experience of modernity, something that is linked so much to the impact of scientific and technological revolutions from the 1960s, and that collapsed all modern narratives, which are historically situated at a point in the past of recent history and do not point to a clear future.
So is the pandemic, the absence of a clear future, it challenges us to rethink the future without conventional narratives, and the second cycle of the pandemic crisis is already the logic that points to the future, without changing social attitudes and behaviors the future it will not be promising, regardless of the appearance of the vaccine, other viruses may come and we will not accept a moment of pause, isolation and less haste in everyday life, we are stuck with the logic of industrial production and consumption.
There is a deeper logic that is the aortic relationship, the inorganic about the organic, that Sloterdijk defends and that Hölderling spoke about, some mystics too.
Nets and Bubbles
02
Oct
A society that already lived in bubbles, be they cultural, political or 
religious, found itself even more stuck in its leaves with the pandemic and social isolation, although this had a positive aspect of recovering intra-bubble relations, however extra bubbles appear to have ended up being harmed.
The pandemic has shown that it is impossible to live in isolation, even though in many places rigid measures have been taken, and I defend them as necessary in many cases, the virus has no boundaries, race or limits that it cannot reach, and the end of social isolation it may not be as beneficial as one imagines, the health risks and also the social problems aggravated by the pandemic create a complex scenario.
We need to review intra-bubble thinking, one that causes social isolation, voluntary or involuntary, as is the case with discrimination of all kinds and I do not exclude religious ones, and it is necessary to heal the extra-bubble relationship, the one that leaves our security group, takes us to meet the Other.
Social networks are an encouragement, always remembering that social media are not exclusively media, the concept is broader, it is precisely in the analysis of these outlines of bubbles that the potential of networks is manifested: the importance of weak links, the analysis of “small worlds” and even the pandemic can be viewed from a social network perspective, helping to analyze contagions and helping control plans.
Looking at history, it was people and situations that created new situations and solutions, those conditions that are at the limit or outside the bubbles, that are important and that as a rule society and conservative thinking exclude them, because somehow destabilize the “bubble”.
Prophets and oracles in antiquity were rejected, including by the bubbles to which they belonged, are the iconic cases of Jesus and Socrates, for example, but in history there are many cases that are within this limit, and one must identify who these cases are at present, to be on the lookout for new and really creative solutions.
It is symbolic to explain this situation the evangelical parable of the vintner that when the time of the harvest arrives, he sends employees to his vineyard to receive what was needed in Mateus (Mt 21,33-43), the employees are beaten, stoned and killed, after two shipments, the owner of the vineyard decides to send his own son, and he awakens an even greater greed and is killed, and then these bad wine producers had the lesson they deserved.
It is important to note that it is the ones who take care of the vine that do these perverse attitudes, that is, they are inside the bubbles, so the first contradictions are born inside the bubbles and then reflect outside, having an open attitude helps to solve problems and prevent situations limit.
Work on pandemic network analysis
01
Oct
Chinese scientists have proposed a method of visually showing, in
a simple way, the risk of a pandemic in regions with different degrees of connection, from the databases of infection cases (reported and confirmed by COVID-19) using network analysis, in article published by Elsevier in Journal of Disaster of Infections.
Network analysis has already been used in medical research for studies on gene coexpression, disease co-occurrence and topologies of the dynamics of the spread of infectious diseases.
The study looked at confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China from late January to March 2020 and these cases were divided into 9 time periods.
The graphs of networks constructed based on the correlation of changes in the number of confirmed cases between two geographic areas (for example, in the provinces of China), if the correlation was greater than 0.5 meant that the connected areas were in a network.
The pandemic risk was analyzed based on the frequencies in different regions connected in the network graphs, with this it was possible to assess the levels of co-evolution between the regions and, with this, to take measures according to each case.
What the study demonstrated was not just relying on reported and confirmed cases of COVID-19, network analysis provides data for a powerful and clear view of pandemic risk and network analysis can complement traditional modeling techniques, and seconds the authors of this data can provide more timely evidence to inform future preparation plans.
Future work quantifying the network connection should be considered in research and pandemic plans.
Soa, M.P.K; Tiwarib, Agnes; Chud, Amanda M.Y.; Tsangd , Jenny T.Y.; Chan, Jacky N. L.. Visualizing COVID-19 pandemic risk through network connectedness Mike. International Journal of Infectious Diseases, 96, 2020, p. 558-561. Available in: https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30317-9/fulltext , Access: sept. 2020.
