Month: August 2021

Jair Bolsonaro – frightening statements

by Dave

Jair Bolsonaro is President of Brazil, a country with 211 million residents. He is up for re-election in 2022. He is a right-wing populist, and in many ways similar to Donald Trump.

The norms of a working democracy are that the candidate enters an election to win the approval of the people and a willingness to accept the results, if he loses. Trump’s approach was that if he won, it showed he was the better candidate and if he lost, the election was rigged against him. Thus, he solidified his base against Democrats and the new president and in doing so, undermined the election in general. It is sadly all about fund raising, to maintain the base.

Similar to Trump, Bolsonaro claimed the electronic voting machines can’t be trusted. It’s all sounds very familiar. In the US, the lawyers who made the claims for Trump, namely Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, are facing serious civil lawsuits from the voting machine companies. Sidney Powell may be face disbarment in the states where these claims and others were made, and lacking any evidence.

These lies had consequences. Five people died on January 6, 2021 as the Capitol in Washington was taken over by rioters. It was a very sad day in our history. Since the day it was clear Trump had lost the election, he was making wild claims that the election was stolen, so storming the capitol was a normal reaction of a citizenry who thought their rights to free election was being taken from them. “Stop the Steal” wasn’t just political rhetoric, it was the prelude to a violent attack on our legislators and the vice president of the United States.


Bolsonaro is following closely in Trump’s footsteps. He stated there were only 3 outcomes of the election: He would be re-elected, arrested or killed. (see link below). Another words, if he loses the election, it is because the electoral system failed, and now his enemies would come after him.

“As president, Bolsonaro is allowed and expected to take part in public discussions,” Corbo said. “What he cannot do — and has been doing — is systematically attack the electoral system by which he was elected.” Dr. Corbo is a constitutional law professor in Brazil.

Sadly, I’ve seen this before, way before Trump. Angola’s very first election in 1992, was between the current President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and UNITA’s leader, Jonas Savimbi. The election was to be a triumph of democratic process, ending a decades long civil war, which killed 300,000 Angolans. To this day, I can recall the words of Savimbi’s press secretary, in a shrill voice, calling the election a total fraud and totally lacking in credibility. So, for those that believed the party’s lie, Dos Santos was not the elected candidate, he was not their president, and no one bore any allegiance to him. The election had not been rigged. The UN had monitored the election. Savimbi had enough military equipment and soldiers to re-ignite the civil war, and violence broke out in Luanda, the capital of Angola. The war ended in 2002 with the death of Savimbi.

What Trump was looking for, was a way to legitimize his claims, through Congress, the Justice Department and each state where the Democrats won by a narrow margin (Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, to name a few) that the election results were false and he had won.

I am hoping that Brazilians deny Bolsonaro a second term, and are smart enough to see through his lies. If he’s the Brazilian Trump, then the next step will be to take whatever measures he can, to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election. I’m afraid the increase rhetoric can turn to violence as it did in the US. Or worse Angola.

Stay tuned,

Dave

Links:

CNN: Bolsonaro says he will either be arrested, killed or win Brazil’s next election

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/06/americas/bolsonaro-brazil-elections-intl-latam/index.html

Covid-19 and Understanding its spread

by Dave

The diagram above is called the disease triangle. For Covid-19, the pathogen is the virus, and the host is humans or the body’s organs susceptible to the disease. We know now it is not strictly a respiratory problem. Environment can be considered the conditions by which transmission is possible or likely. When Covid began, there was an immediate need to know how Covid invades the body and replicates. Thus, the Host – Pathogen axis was critical. Equally important was knowledge of under what conditions the disease could spread, thus Pathogen – Environment axis became important. Large gatherings of people in airports, bus and train stations, and for events, such as sporting or musical events were obvious venues for disease dispersion.

Many would include a fourth element, which would be “Human Response.” I think the fourth vertex is critical in Covid. The medical response is to find ways to interfere with a disease’s growth and spread, through effective treatments and vaccines. The Covid susceptibility is much lower in countries where there is a high level of vaccination. I believe easy access to testing and rapid results allows individuals to self quarantine and seek medical assistance.

The pathogen is not constant. The delta variant spread globally with lightening speed, and the downward trend in new cases has been reversed, with increases in many countries including the US. The understanding of the infection process is still evolving with the long term damage, termed “long Covid.”

There is a commonality in the global deadly viruses, which is asymptomatic characteristic of the disease and ease of transmission. A healthy person can be a carrier of the Covid even though there are no obvious symptoms. They are unlikely to be tested in this early phase of the disease. Covid can be transmitted either directly from someone else or from touching surfaces.

The human response has a sociality aspect as mass vaccinations need cooperation. The negative aspect is clear: vaccination hesitancy, resistance and ignorance. Misinformation via social media and politics are playing negative roles. The Trump and Biden administrations are to be commended for an incredibly rapid and effective roll out of vaccines. See former Secretary of HHS, Alex Azar comments on vaccines in links.

The human response should mean we act together in accepting restrictions, including indoor mask wearing, as it is now both a necessity and temporary. Further, we need to recognize this as a pandemic and help countries which can not afford vaccines for their populations. Otherwise, the disease will continue to re-appear in the US. We don’t know how long the immunizations will last for or what new variants might appear in the future. So, we can’t accept just reducing the new cases to a low level in the US.

We have to accept the new medical information, which is the Delta variant is spreading and new cases are on the rise. It is not as dramatic, but the cases of people in the US dying of Covid have also been rising in the last 30 days.

Stay tuned,

Dave

I Was the Architect of Operation Warp Speed. I Have a Message for All Americans. by Alex Azar

Covid-19 and the Delta variant

by Dave

On July 31, 2021 there were 78,433 new Covid-19 cases based on the 7-day average. I use the 7 day average because it tends to smooth out the data. Presumably, for some states, when the daily data hasn’t been completely tallied, the state simply doesn’t report the daily data until the next day. On June 24, 2021, things look good with 11,662 new cases using 7 day averaging. A six fold increase in about 40 days. What happened? The delta variant for one. A slowing vaccination rate for another.

More opening up, relaxed masking regulations, and just people getting out and around for another. I was in a very crowded Miami airport. Although I was wearing a mask. I took it off to get a snack. Masks don’t really offer much protection to oneself as much as to cut down the chance of transmission to others. This is the logic of requiring everyone to wear a mask indoors.

As a country, I don’t think our goal should be some arbitrary value of % vaccinated, like 70 to 80%. It should be zero new cases, and we will see zero hospitalizations and zero deaths. That’s the long term goal, because the rest of the world is far behind in getting vaccinated.

It is well documented that the Delta variant is much more contagious. Fully vaccinated people can be infected with this variant, but getting vaccinated is still incredibly important, as it reduces the chance of hospitalization and improves the chance of recovery.

Nobody ever claimed that vaccines were perfect. The take away message from the surge in new cases is everyone should get vaccinate. There is a small group of people who have allergic reactions to vaccines. They need to consult their doctors prior to being vaccinated.

I live in Florida, and the trend on new cases is definitely bad. The more reliable values are the 7 day average which show 15,818 new cases. I suspect the daily number is really two days of data. The lowest was June 18 with 1499 new cases (7-day avg), so an astounding 10 times increase in around 43 days.

I’ve seen similar increases in many other states including Missouri, Louisiana and Arkansas. I have not seen dramatic increases in Covid deaths, but usually these increases show up weeks after the new cases spike.

What to do? Get vaccinated for one. Accept for now tighter regulations regarding masking. Avoid large indoor gatherings where some may be unvaccinated.

Stay tuned,

Dave