July 1, 2021. New York Times. Coronavirus stuff.

July 1, 2021

An informed guide to the pandemic, with the latest developments and expert advice about prevention and treatment.

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The New York Times

By Amelia Nierenberg and Jonathan Wolfe

The Delta variant is not driving a hospitalization surge in England, health data shows. Digital Covid certificates aimed at facilitating free movement in the E.U. came into force across the bloc. The Biden administration is expected to advance a law to protect patients from surprise medical bills. Get the latest updates here, as well as maps and a vaccine tracker.

The view from New Zealand

Countries across the Asia-Pacific region — including Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Bangladesh — are scrambling to slow the spread of the Delta variant. Many governments are reimposing restrictions. For societies that had just begun to reopen, it’s a jarring reminder that the pandemic is far from over.

For insight into the situation in Australia and New Zealand, we turned to Natasha Frost, who writes the Europe Edition of the Morning Briefing.

Natasha: When I returned from New York to my home country of New Zealand in October, it was like slipping through a portal into another world — one where people casually brushed past strangers while waiting in line, routinely went without a mask and even shared plates of fries.

A few months later, Auckland went into lockdown because of what would eventually total 15 Covid cases. In most of the world, so few cases would have been cause for celebration. In New Zealand, it was a sign that something had gone drastically wrong.

It’s a similar story in Australia, where a recent outbreak of over 200 cases has led to about half the country being placed under heavy restrictions. (In the U.S., new cases routinely exceed 10,000 a day.)

Having decided almost from the outset to pursue an elimination strategy, Australia and New Zealand have undergone a radically different experience of the pandemic from the rest of the world. As well as having shorter lockdowns and fewer restrictions, we’ve been insulated from much grief and suffering.

Still, it hasn’t always been easy. Closing borders has cut many people off from their families, decimated our tourist industries and prevented some citizens from returning home from overseas. But few would choose the alternative. Our total deaths from the coronavirus are in the dozens.

The latest chapter of the pandemic, where many people in European and North American countries are vaccinated and societies are steadily opening up, is different for us yet again. Our inoculation campaigns have been sluggish. Our borders remain firmly shut even to our citizens. And though we have far fewer cases than in most of the rest of the world, lockdowns remain an active tool.

Our approach post-pandemic is also likely to be different. Some countries like Singapore are already planning to handle Covid-19 as a new endemic disease, to be managed rather than eradicated. But having invested so much in a zero-Covid strategy, Australia and New Zealand seem likely to continue their hard line, even after most people have been vaccinated.

“Now that we have really effective vaccines and public health measures,” said Michael Baker, an epidemiologist at New Zealand’s University of Otago, “we will aim for no transmission in our community.”

Frontline workers speak out

Outside of hospitals, especially in places with high vaccine rates, people have started to change the way they talk about the pandemic.

“Once this is all over” has become “now that this is all over.” Friends talk about a “post-pandemic” world, exhaling in a shared agreement that “things are back to normal.”

But not frontline workers.

Doctors and nurses are reeling from rising Covid-19 cases in parts of the U.S. But even where cases are in sharp decline, they’re also coping with burnout and prolonged stress from a pandemic that, for them, seems never-ending.

It’s not just frustration, exhaustion or post-traumatic stress. The pandemic worsened chronic staffing shortages, as thousands left the field or died on the frontlines.

In the South and Mountain West, where the transmissible Delta variant is gaining traction among the unvaccinated, staff members share a familiar sense of dread and frustration. Last time, they watched their neighbors refuse to wear masks or socially distance. This time, people refuse to get vaccines.

“People think they are exercising their rights by refusing to get vaccinated, but in reality, they’re exposing themselves and others to risk,” said Dr. Clay Smith, an emergency room doctor who travels between two distant hospitals in South Dakota and Wyoming.

In Missouri, caseloads increased more than 40 percent from two weeks earlier. In Springfield, the CoxHealth Medical Center had to reopen the 80-bed Covid unit it had shuttered in May. There, the Delta variant comprised 93 percent of all cases last week, said Dr. Terrence Coulter, a critical care specialist.

“The country has started the end zone dance before we cross the goal line,” Dr. Coulter said. “The truth is we’re fumbling the ball before we even get there.”

Vaccine rollout

Amid lagging vaccination rates, Romania is looking to offload doses before they expire. Seven countries in the E.U. have approved India’s Covishield as an acceptable vaccine for travel, the BBC reports. In the U.S., the people you live with are likely to share your vaccination status.

See how the vaccine rollout is going in your county and state.

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What else we’re following

An outbreak is crashing over Myanmar and doctors are on strike to protest the junta, which has neglected the pandemic. Mexico’s death toll from Covid-19 could be 60 percent higher than official numbers, Reuters reports. Indonesia, which is especially hard-hit, announced restrictions for parts of Java and Bali islands in an effort to contain the Delta variant. Almost five out of every six virus cases went undetected in the first months of the pandemic, The Los Angeles Times reports. The W.H.O. said crowds for European Championship soccer games are driving infections in Europe. Queens, N.Y., was once the epicenter of the virus. Many neighborhoods, although alive with hustle, are struggling to rebound. As weddings restart, officiants add pandemic protections. Indoor smoking will return in to casinos in Atlantic City, N.J. on the Fourth of July. A new study suggests that pets often catch Covid-19 from their owners, the BBC reports. The Washington Post has advice for taking a pandemic-purchased pooch on its first road trip.

What you’re doing

In March 2020, we moved my 89-year-old mother from a senior residential community to our home. Our two grown sons also moved home, thinking our little farm was a safe place to ride out the pandemic. Then we all got Covid, brought home inadvertently by the N.Y.C. son. We got through it, but preparing meals for five people, while ill, was grueling. . The kitchen looked like a bomb went off for weeks. Fifteen months later, and I am tired of the trivial family disagreements and grown kids assuming they know more about everything — because their parents are now supposedly “over the hill”! I am also tired of my mother being sassy. I am dreaming of simple dinners for two with my husband, less toilet paper, loving our adult children from a distance, and a mother who is safe and cared for by someone else most of the time. I know I will miss this close family time someday, and I am extremely grateful to have become re-acquainted with my adult children, and that my mother was not locked up in an institution for a year. But right now I just want to get back to living a simple life. It is time. — A tired mother, wife and daughter, Bucks County, Pa.

"More than two months since the military seized power in a coup and unleashed a campaign to suppress protests, the Myanmar economy is collapsing."

Wall Street Journal

ASIA

Myanmar’s Economy Is in a Free Fall, With Empty Factories, Closed Banks, Failing Internet

Experts expect a double-digit contraction of an economy that had made strides in the last decade in reducing poverty and attracting foreign investment.

By Jon Emont

April 10, 2021

SINGAPORE—Bank branches in Myanmar are closed and government employees are boycotting work. Factory workers have fled to their rural homes and foreign companies have flown their overseas employees out. The internet is largely cut off.

More than two months since the military seized power in a coup and unleashed a deadly campaign to suppress protests, the economy is collapsing, with the World Bank and others expecting a double-digit contraction over the course of this year. The upheaval is erasing the large gains that the country had made in reducing poverty and is frightening away foreign businesses and tourists that had done much to lift Myanmar over the last decade.

It is already one of Asia’s poorest countries. Six million people live on less than $3.20 a day, a poverty threshold for lower middle-income countries like Myanmar. A fourth of the nation’s children are far too small for their age because of inadequate nutrition.

There is a reason for this: For half a century, Myanmar was ruled by military generals who enacted disastrous policies. The picture began to steadily change over the last decade as a democratic opening brought a partially civilian government to power and more international investment flowed in. By one measure, poverty declined to 24.8% in 2017 from 42.2% in 2010, according to World Bank data.

The progress of the past decade is now being reversed. After the coup, which toppled an elected government, the World Bank says the number of people living on less than $3.20 is expected to rise by 30% in 2021. That is 1.8 million additional poor people in one year.

The World Bank, which before the coup predicted 2% growth for the 12 months through September 2021, now expects gross domestic product to decline by 10%. Others say the drop could be sharper, with analytics firm Fitch Solutions projecting a 20% decline as people buy less and low tax collection causes government spending to crater.

Since the coup, the streets of Myanmar have been filled with protesters demanding a return to democracy, but they have been met with violent oppression from the military.

More than 600 people have been killed so far, including children struck by bullets in their yards or homes, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a monitoring group.

The economic disruption is in part deliberate. Civil servants, bank employees and factory and port workers aren’t going to work, in an effort, they say, to make it impossible for the military regime to govern. KBZ, the nation’s largest privately owned bank, has just 14 of its more than 500 branches open due to worker strikes, according to its website.

“Without having enough staff and human capacity, it is not possible to run the economy,” said Kaung Htet, a 30-year-old relationship officer at a retail bank, Myanmar Oriental Bank, who hasn’t come to work since February.

On Wednesday, the leader of the coup and head of the armed forces, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, was quoted in a state-run newspaper saying the civil disobedience movement is “country-destroying.”

The central bank has threatened to levy fines against banks that don’t reopen, according to two people who work in the banking industry. Last month, KBZ sent a notice to employees saying it is in a “no-win situation where if we do not open, the regulator will step in and open the bank for us,” according to a copy seen by The Wall Street Journal.

But the central bank is having trouble getting its own staff to show up. About 300 central bank employees have been suspended by the institution in Myanmar’s two largest cities for refusing to work and some have moved back to their family villages, said a senior bank official who has been absent from the office since February. She fears she might be detained by police amid widespread arrests, she said.

Striking government workers have formed teams to make lodging and financial support available for colleagues who also refuse to work and have been expelled from state housing as a result. Zaw Wai Soe, a surgeon and prominent leader of the movement, has said some supporters are selling land to raise funds and that wealthy citizens abroad are contributing.

The goal is that “step by step the military machinery falters and stops,” he said in a speech posted last month on his Facebook page.

Some citizens staying home, however, are starting to feel the pressure. One parliamentary staff member said he had dipped into savings, but colleagues with large families were weighing whether to resume work. A 30-year-old employee working in finance in Yangon said his company has instructed employees to return in May.

Economic pain is widespread. The garment industry, which accounts for about a quarter of the nation’s goods exports, is losing business as major brands like Sweden’s Hennes & Mauritz AB and Italy’s Benetton pause new orders. Protests and violent crackdowns in industrial areas have driven factory workers back to their villages, leading to severe shortages.

Large-scale internet restrictions, including nightly blackouts and major disruptions to mobile and wireless broadband connectivity during the day, are crippling businesses ranging from finance to hospitality. One restaurant owner in Yangon said he had relied on online orders to weather the pandemic, but those orders have now all but stopped, reducing sales by 70%.

International tourism, which quintupled over the last decade, is reeling. The struggling restaurant owner, who also runs a travel agency catering to European and North American visitors, said he had avoided staff layoffs during the pandemic, instead paying employees half their standard wages for reduced hours. Now, he is preparing to let people go.

I prefer America's inches, miles, and ounces. Virtually every other country uses kilometers and milligrams but I'm never leaving the United States so I don't have to know that stuff.

Wikipedia

Although U.S. customary units have been defined in terms of metric units since the 19th century, as of 2021 the United States is one of only three countries (the others being Myanmar and Liberia) that have not officially adopted the metric system as the primary means of weights and measures.

Nobody cares.

World Alert March 27, 10:49 a.m. EDT

More than 90 people killed in Myanmar protests as military marked Armed Forces Day, media reports Deadly clashes flared around the country in what appeared to be the bloodiest day since a military coup last month. The online news site Myanmar Now reported at least 91 people were killed on the day Myanmar’s military staged a parade and other celebrations. The U.S. ambassador to Myanmar, Thomas Vajda, called the bloodshed “horrifying.” Read more