Continued from page 3.

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The Spanish Flu Pandemic, January 1918 - December 1920;
estimated number of deaths: 17 - 50 million worldwide.
Most victims were young people.

The name is thought to be misleading. The virus appeared first in a US army camp in Kanas in March 1918. It appeared in France, Germany and England in the following month, April 1918. But the virus was first reported later in Spain.

'Ah. . . ah . . . ah . . . choooooo!!'

  

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

                  

102 years after the world was devastated by the Spanish Flu pandemic (1918 - 1920), the world was struck by another virus, the Coronavirus, or Covid-19.  

In seventeen months, from January 2020 to 11 June 2021 (04:25 GMT), the virus killed 3,788,723 people worldwide.

In nineteen months, from January 2020 to 3 August 2021 (06:19 GMT), the virus killed 4,249,399 people worldwide.  

About 17% of the deaths   -   614,007   -   occurred in the United States (11 June 2021; 04:25 GMT).

As of 3 August 2021, 629,862 deaths   -   14.82 %   -   occurred in the United States.  

Four countries account for almost half (44%) of the recorded deaths by the virus in the world   -   the U. S., Brazil, India and Mexico (in that order)   -   as of 3 August 2021. 

 

Deaths by Covid-19 as of

10 April 2021             31 April '21    8 May' 21         2 June '21

World  2,928,782      3,186,785      3,292,205          3,576,062

U. S. A.   574,840        589,285        595,047              610,446  

Brazil      348,934        401,417        419,393              465,312

Mexico    206,145        216,447        218,657 (4th)     263,568 (#4)

India        168,467        211,058        242,398 (3rd)     366,144 (#3)

                -----------        -----------        -----------              -----------

             1,298,386      1,418,208     1,476,395           1,685,470

                                                           

           / 2,928,782    / 3,186,785   / 3,292,205

           =  44.3 %       =  46 %         = 45 %                    = 47 %

Deaths by Covid-19 as of

3 August '21

World            4,249,399

U. S. A.             629,862  (14.82 %)

Brazil                557,359  (13.12 %)

India                 426,228  (10.03 %)

Mexico             241,279    (5.68 %)

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- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus (SARS-CoV-1) 

caused the SARS pandemic (2002 - 2003).

The source of SARS-CoV is unknown.

It is assumed the virus originated in an animal, or it was picked up and carried by an animal, most likely bats, and spread to domesticated wild animals, like cats (the civet), or wild animals sold in markets as pets, and then spread to humans.  

The first SARS-CoV infection was detected in humans in the southeastern Chinese province of Canton (Kwantung / Guangdong) in late 2002.

The infection was carried to Hong Kong, Taipei (capital of Taiwan / Formosa), Singapore, Hanoi (capital of Viet Nam), and eventually to the city of Toronto in the Canadian province of Ontario.

The flu was generally called the 'bird flu' because it was believed to have been carried out of China by infected birds.  

- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoronaVirus (SARS-CoV-2)

caused the COVID-19 pandemic (2019 - 2021).

 

SARS is assumed to have come from bats.

 

It spread from bats to civets (cats) to humans.

 

COVID-19 may have spread from bats

to pangolins and from pangolins to

humans.

 

Wuhan, China 

 

The Coronavirus (CoV) Disease ((CoViD) virus was first reported in the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province of central southeast China in December 2019 (COVID-19).

Wuhan reported the virus to the headquarters of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland on New Year's Eve   -   31 December 2019.

However, Wuhan medics may have been aware of the virus by October or November 2019, and even earlier, in August or September 2019. There was a steady increase in patients since August displaying the same symptoms seen later in victims of Covid-19.    

There are claims of evidence of the virus in Italy in 2019.

Samples of the virus were found on 18 December 2019 in Milan and Turin and 29 January 2020 in Bologna (not in humans).

               

         ?

Wuhan Market, the 'wet market' where the coronavirus is believed to have made its first appearance. A 'wet market' or 'public market' sells fresh meat and fish, other fresh food produce and perishable goods. A 'dry market' is a 'dry goods market', selling non-perishable products such as fabrics and electronic supplies.   

The P4 laboratory, Wuhan Institute of Virology

Some believe there is evidence that lab technicians in Wuhan created the coronavirus. One of the technicians caught the virus and spread it to others.

See:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52318539

     

December 2019

It is believed that five million Chinese from Wuhan spread the disease to the rest of China when they travelled from the city to visit friends and relatives throughout China during December 2019 and January 2020  -   in the month before Chinese Lunar New Year, which was on 25 January 2020.

The virus was detected outside China for the first time in early January 2020   -   in Thailand.

January 2020

 

Map of the virus in East Asia as of 16 February 2020.

 

Most victims of Coronavirus world-wide have been elderly people.

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Symptoms

How the virus is transmitted

Contamination

- Some people who had the virus earlier were re-infected later. A person who has had the virus has immunity for eight months.

- It is possible to contract the virus without detection.

- It is possible to contract the virus without experiencing or displaying any symptoms.

- It is possible to contract the virus without ever testing positive.

- It is possible to carry the infection undetected and yet infect others.

- The virus can cause long-term damage to internal organs, particularly lungs (air sacs), brain (causing strokes, seizures and temporary paralysis) and heart (muscle).

- The virus may increase the risk of heart attacks, dementia and blood clots.

People react to the infection differently. Two people may be infected by the same source at the same time and yet one may never know it and the other may die within hours.

Infected persons do not die from the virus itself but from complications, usually respiratory, caused by the virus. 

Protection

A virus can be transmitted from person to person. The closer and longer a healthy person is exposed to an infected person, the more likely the healthy person is to catch the flu. The virus can spread from person to person on crowded busses, on motorscooters and in long queues.

The virus can be transmitted by touching contaminated surfaces.

A virus also travels through the air, with the breeze.

  

Essentially, surgical face masks are designed to protect other people from the wearer if the latter is ill. Wearing a face-mask might offer the wearer some protection against those who are ill. 3M respirator.

There are different types of respirators. They filter the air you breathe. They do not supply air. About US$40.

To be sure, wear a full-body chemical protection suit and a respirator.

'Social distancing' in Hanoi in May.

One patron per table. The pandas are actually children's toys. The patron sits opposite the panda.  

Fresh air and proper ventilation.

Avoid stuffy rooms. Avoid stale and stagnant air. The air might be contaminated.

Ventilate the room. Open the windows. Stale air goes out, fresh comes in. 

'Social distancing' in subway and Sky train stations in Bangkok.

'Social distancing' on the subway and Sky train.

Wash the wrists, too.

Wash your hands often.

Wash with soap and water.

Wash with 60% - 80% alcohol disinfectant or gel.

Wash before and after shopping.

Wash hands for 20 seconds at least. Avoid touching the face.

Latex gloves offer some protection.

      

Clean all surfaces often.

Pay digitally

Wash food wrappings and containers with household bleach before opening food packets.

Food is generally safer in international chain stores and restaurants than locally owned stores.

Eat hot, cooked foods. 

Two minutes in a microwave kills the virus.   

Get Vitamin C.

Oranges have lots of Vitamin C.

Other fruits and vegetables with a lot of Vitamin C:

banana
guava
dark green leafy vegetables
pepper
broccoli
strawberries
kiwi fruit
papaya
tomato
peas
parsley
mango
cantaloupe
gooseberries
cauliflower

Do not eat cut (pre-cut) (pre-sliced) fruit and vegetables. Buy whole fruits and vegetables, wash well with water and peel and slice them yourself.  

Get lots of sunshine (Vitamin C).

Sun bathing in Indonesia to fight the virus in April. Sunshine kills the virus.  

Take Vitamin C tablets.

Exercise often.

Many countries have closed city parks for various periods during the pandemic. This is to limit physical contact between people. This is obviously a mistake. People need sunshine and physical exercise. Otherwise, they atrophy and die.  

England wisely kept city parks open.   

Joggers in Victoria Park in London.

 

Keep streets safe by spraying with disinfectant.

Remember!  Hospitals are not the cleanest places in the world.

 

Vaccination

- There are vaccines that provide limited immunity against the virus.

Vaccines are injected in a liquid form.

Vaccines, in a series of two shots (the primary and the booster) administered three weeks apart, provide 50 to 95% immunity for only six to eight months, perhaps longer   -   one year or more. In general, the prime prepares the body for the booster. Immunity begins a fortnight after the booster.

A third shot, a booster, taken once a year, may be developed soon.

A pill may be developed soon.  

(See below.)

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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

   

Viviane Castro in 2008

 

Carneval

21 - 28 February 2020

 

The first case of Covid-19 in Brazil was recorded in Sao Paulo on 26 February 2020.

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Disneyland Paris

 

Due to the Coivd-19 pandemic, Disneyland Paris closed on 3 March 2020.

The park reopened on 15 July and closed again on 30 October.

On 2 April 2021, the park closed until further notice.

Disneyland expects the park to restore full operations in 2022. 

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Curfew in Los Angeles on 15 March 2020

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Olympic Games Postponed

On 23 March, Japan postponed the summer Olympic Games for one year, to July 2021.

This was the first postponement in the history of the Olympics.  

The Olympic Games have been rescheduled and will begin on 23 July 2021.

If the virus is still present in early 2021, the Games will be cancelled.

On 20 March 2021, Japan announced that foreign visitors will be barred from attendance at the Games.

British Prime Minister survives infection.

On 27 March 2020, the British PM, Boris Johnson, tested positive for the virus.

Johnson preferred to remain in his office at 10 Downing Street and run the government by video conferences.

Johnson experienced a persistently high temperature and cough.

Johnson was taken to Saint Thomas Hospital in London on Sunday, 5 April and placed on oxygen.

On the following day, Monday, 6 April 2020, Johnson was placed in the intensive care unit (ICU). He remained on oxygen without ventilation for three nights. Two nurses remained at his bedside for 48 hours.

On 9 April 2020, Johnson left the intensive care unit.

Johnson left hospital three days later, on Easter, 12 April 2020, for Chequers, the official country residence of prime ministers, northwest of London in Buckinghamshire, to rest and recover. 

The PM was not expected to return to work before mid-May, but he was back at 10 Downing Street on Monday, 27 April 2020.

                     ----------

The Queen

We shall see it through.

In a rare television address   -   the fifth in a 68-year-reign   -   from Windsor Castle, on Sunday, 5 April 2020, Queen Elizabeth II urged the British people to remain steadfast and resolute.

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Repairing Notre Dame

Repairs to Notre Dame de Paris, destroyed by fire in April 2019, were delayed by Covid-19.

It is hoped that the cathedral will be ready before the summer Olympic Games in Paris in August 2024.

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In Britain, Wimbledon cancelled its annual tournament on 1 April 2020.

First cancellation since the Second World War.

In the U. S., the Masters golf tournament was postponed to 12 - 15 November 2020.

In France, in April, the start of the Tour de France was postponed for two months from 27 June to 29 August 2020. 

First postponement since the Tour began in 1903.

Cancelled in the First World War (1914 - 1918) and Second World War (1939 - 1945).

The French Open (tennis) was rescheduled from May and June to late September and mid-October 2020.

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Due to the Coronavirus and the ban on gatherings, Pope Francis broadcast Easter Mass in 2020 from Saint Peter's Basilica instead of Saint Peter's Square.

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In Thailand, the annual three-day New Year festival, Songkran, the biggest event of the year (it is also the wildest), celebrated in mid-April, was cancelled. (2017 photo.)

The event was moved to September 2020 and held without festivities. No merriment.

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Fast food joints and convenience stores offered deliveries. 

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They left a healthy Earth . . .

The Soyuz MS-15 mission to the International Space Station (ISS)

 

The launch crew: two astronauts and one cosmonaut. 

A cosmonaut from the United Arab Emirates (left); the commander, a Russian cosmonaut (centre); an astronaut with dual Swedish and American citizenship (right).

   

The laumch from Russia's Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on 25 September 2019. 

   

Astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station.

Soyuz MS-15 mission returns to Kazakhstan with two American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut on 17 April 2020.

The landing crew: an American astronaut (left) joined the mission at the ISS for its return to Earth; the Swedish-American astronaut (centre), and the commander, the Russian cosmonaut (right).  

. . . and they returned to an unhealthy Earth, in the grips of a pandemic, the most serious since the Spanish Flu.

See Page 5 for more about the ISS, now in its 22nd year.

                         -------------

. . . as the Chinese announced the second wave of the virus.  

The second wave of Coronavirus began in late May 2020.

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Indy 500 

The annual Indianapolis 500 car race held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana, was postponed in 2020, due to Covid-19.

The race was rescheduled from 24 May to 23 August 2020.

The postponement was the first in the history of the 500-mile race, which began in 1911.

The race was held without spectators.  

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Climbs of Mount Everest cancelled

       

North Face of Mount Everest, Tibet

Due to Covid-19, China and Nepal cancelled all scheduled mountain climbing expeditions in 2020.  

China celebrated the 60th anniversary of its first summit of Everest, in 1960.

   

On 27 May, a team of ten Chinese surveyors climbed to the summit from Tibet. Six Tibetans fixed ropes to the summit the day before. This was the only climbing expedition on the mountain in 2020.

The survey was the third of Everest by the Chinese. Previous surveys were conducted in 1975 and 2005.

British surveyors calculated in 1856 that the peak of Mount Everest was 8,840 metres (29,000 feet) above sea level.

Ninety-nine years later, in 1955, Indian surveyors determined that Everest was 8,848 metres (29,029 feet) above sea level. They included the snow cap.

In 1975, the Chinese reached the summit a second time. Chinese surveyors agreed with the 1955 Indian survey.  

In 2005, the Chinese measured the mountain at 8,844 metres. The Chinese did not count the snow cap.

In 2010, China and India agreed to the measurements with and without the snow cap.

In a joint-announcement on 8 December 2020, the Chinese and Nepalese declared that Everest is 8,848.86 metres (29,032 feet) high. The snow cap was counted.

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Boston Marathon Cancelled

The annual Boston Marathon, scheduled for April 2020, was postponed to September.

But on 28 May, the event for this year was cancelled.

It was the first cancellation in the event's 124-year history.

                      ----------

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Royal Ascot

England's biggest annual horse racing event

April

Postponed

Held 'Behind Close Doors'

16 -20 June 2020

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 Miss Universe

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U. S. President Donald Trump wore a face mask   -   only the second time in public   -   during a visit to veterans at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland on Saturday, 11 July 2020.

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In 2020, the annual Tour de France, which begins in June, was postponed in April.

The race started on 29 August in Nice on the Riviera and ended in September in Paris.

     

Nice

 

Paris

  

Rafael Nadal of Spain won.

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The President and First Lady Survive the Infection

Donald and Melania Trump Test Positive and Enter Quarantine

Thursday, 1 October 2020

A presidential aide on the presidential plane, Air Force One, tested positive for Coronavirus.

So the President and First Lady took tests and entered self-quarantine.

The test results were positive.

The President and the First Lady returned to Washington, D. C.

"We will get through this together!”

The President and First Lady began a quarantine of fourteen days in the White House.   

In the evening of the next day, Friday, 2 October, the President boarded the presidential helicopter, Marine One.

Marine One flew to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

 

The President entered Walter Reed for tests and observation.

The hospital has a presidential office.

The President was put on oxygen briefly.

   

The President went for a short ride in a presidential van to wave to well-wishers gathered outside the hospital on Sunday, 4 October

 

The President was discharged from Walter Reed on Monday evening, 5 October, and returned to the White House.

The White House was turned into a hospital.  

 

The President went back to work in a day or so.

The First Lady reappeared in public, with the President, on 23 October 2020.

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Are they just talkin'?

Hydroxychloroquine?

Golfing partners Jack Nicklaus and US President Donald Trump caught the virus in 2020. Both survived.

The President claims the anti-malarial drug hydroxochloroquine can cure Covid-19 sufferers.

Nicklaus recalls that he caught the virus, took hydroxochloroquine for two days and the virus was gone.

The professional medical world, however, has warned against using the drug to treat Covid-19 and expressed concern that it could cause side effects.

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Two More Years?

When the virus first appeared in December and January 2020, some medical experts pointed out that it could last for two years.

Changi Airport in Singapore is considered the best airport in the world   -   and Singapore Airlines one of the best airlines, if not the best. Its flight crews come from Singapore and Malaysia.

Changi (Changi Beach) is the site of a notorious PoW camp, commanded by the Japanese, from 1941 to 1945. Many of the Allied PoWs held in Changi were sent to work on the railway in Siam and Burma.  

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The winter flu

A tremendous spike

The 'Second Wave'

Europe locks down in late October 2020

Closures, Curfews.

French President Macron, above left, announced a second national lockdown on 28 October 2020, to last through the month of November.

German Chancellor Merkel, above right, also announced a new partial lockdown for Germany for November. 

The chancellor warned that it will be a long hard winter of four months.   

On 30 October, the British government announced that pubs, restaurants and retail stores would close from 4 November to 2 December 2020.

Voting day in the U. S., 3 November 2020.

Voters infected with Coronavirus drive to the voting place and hand their ballots to voting officials wearing full-body protective suits.

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At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns fell silent. 

At 11 a. m. on 11 November 1918 the Great War ended. The armistice took effect. Armistice Day. Remembrance Day.

Remembrance Sunday

8 November 2020

Remembrance Sunday is the second Sunday of November.

Queen Elizabeth visited Westminster Abbey on 4 November, to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider on the centenary of his burial.

Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, right, with his eldest son, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, left.

Prince Charles lays a wreath at the Cenotaph war memorial in London.

This year, the British stayed at home and watched the event on TV.

Armistice Day

Wednesday, 11 November 2020

Armistice Day, Arch of Triumph, Paris, France

President Macron of France lays a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier and rekindles its flame.

Veterans Day

United States

Parades cancelled

The President and the First Lady visit Arlington National Cemetery to honour dead 

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The Masters Tournament

Augusta, Georgia

Australian Dustin Johnson wins the Masters with a record 20-under-par on 15 November 2020.

Last year's winner, Tiger Woods, awards this year's winner, Johnson, with the traditional green jacket.  

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Coronavirus rages in the U. S.

BBC, 16 November 2020                          

                      First Wave        Second Wave       Third Wave

Infections reach a record level  -  150,000 in one day.

Michigan orders lockdown

18 November - 8 December 2020

High school and college classes to be conducted remotely.

All office work to be performed remotely (unless it must be done in person).

Forbidden:

Indoor dining in bars and restaurants; fitness classes; and organised sports (with the exception of professional and college sports).

Closed:

Theatres, cinemas, stadiums, arenas, bowling alleys, skating rinks, Indoor water parks, bingo halls, casinos and arcades.

Michigan officials fear 1,000 to 20,000 deaths per day! by February if the lockdown regulations are not observed.  

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