Jävla (Fucking) Coronavirus

Operation rimfrost har inte lyckats pressa ner skjutningar, sprängningar, dödade och skadade. Tvärtom har antalet ökat både nationellt och i Region Syd där insatsen startade. ”Rimfrost verkar inte bita på gängkriminaliteten”, säger M:s rättspolitiske talesperson Johan Forssell. /SvD

Bortskämda ungar

Inställt studentfirande har väckt ungdomars vrede. Den attityden får mig att undra varför de ens sökte in på gymnasiet.

Josefin Holmström

Sommaren är i antågande, skolan snart avklarad och den ljusnande framtid är vår!

Ja, eller inte. Utbildningsminister Anna Ekström (S) bekräftade på tisdagseftermiddagen det som många gymnasister redan visste: årets studentfirande ställs in på grund av covid-19. Inga stora utspring, inga stora baler, inga champagnekladdiga studentflak som pumpar discomusik i city.

Beskedet var förstås inte oväntat, eftersom sammankomster med fler än 50 personer sedan länge varit förbjudna. Men det har inte stoppat en veritabel klagokör av frustrerade tonårssuckar.

Den senaste tiden har det till exempel rapporteras om besvikna studenter i Helsingborg som hotat med att ”göra kaos”, som det heter i HD (21/4). ”Ingen fucking student ska bli inställd i Helsingborg, låt oss fucka denna staden.”

De lite mindre anarkistiskt lagda ungdomarna på Hvitfeldtska gymnasiet i Göteborg beklagade sig i DN (24/4): ”De har tagit bort moroten och har bara piskan kvar”.

Den attityden får mig att undra varför de ens sökte in på gymnasiet. För att vänta tre år på att hålla en stor fest? Fester kan man ju ställa till med ändå, utan att plåga sig igenom sex terminers kemi, funktionsanalys och skolmat.

Men studentvrålet väcker sympati. Programledaren Jenny Strömstedt drog nyligen en lans för studenterna på sitt Instagramkonto, där hon uppmanar Stockholms stad ”gör om, gör rätt”. Strömstedt är inne på samma linje som ungdomarna på Hvitfeldtska – studenten är den stora belöningen efter tolv års hårt arbete.

Drömmen om flakdans, cavaberusning och obekväma finkläder är tydligen motorn i svenska skolan: ”argumentet ’snart tar du studenten, tänk på allt kul som kommer, håll ut, kämpa’ [har] varit det enda som hållit studiemotivationen uppe när det varit tungt”.

Hon skriver att hon inte vet vad hon ska säga ”till den vars klänning redan hänger på galgen och vars mössa är beställd och klar”.

Tja, man kanske kan ge dem ett Bob Hund-citat? ”Festen är över.”

Utan att låta alltför moralistisk kan jag väl tänka att man pluggar för att nå någonstans, få utbilda sig vidare, kanske få ett bra jobb och en trygg framtid. Men så låter det inte riktigt.

Studenter skriver insändare om hur de nu går miste om en av de roligaste och mest traditionstyngda dagarna i livet, och deras föräldrar är minst lika upprörda över att behöva avboka cateringfirmor och lämna tillbaka flaskor till Systemet.

Jag ser framför mig hur hela familjer gemensamt sörjer mösspåtagning, fotografering och skrålande vid Uppsalas valborgseldar. Därmed kan vi effektivt avliva den segdragna myten om att svenskar inte bryr sig om kultur och traditioner: studentfirandet är heligt, och därmed basta!

Men visst: jag kan förstå impulsen att ställa till med party mitt under en pågående pandemi som hittills redan skördat fler än 200 000 liv globalt och fler än 2 000 i Sverige. Den är djupt mänsklig. Det kan kännas som Roms sista dagar när man följer nyhetsrapporteringen, och just den där ödesmättade stämningen leder lätt till en upprorisk längtan efter att göra precis allt man inte borde. Vilket inte minst trängseln på Stockholms uteserveringar vittnar om.

När det blir för jobbigt stänger människan av, låtsas som ingenting och korkar upp rosévinet.

Nu får ungdomarna i stället chansen att lära sig den mest brådmogna och tråkiga läxa som finns: det blir inte alltid som man tänkt sig.

Den osjälviska uppoffringen är en ofrånkomlig del av vuxenlivet och hela den mänskliga tillvaron. När mor- och farföräldrarna ligger och kämpar för sina liv på överfulla intensivvårdsavdelningar blir vi alla tvungna att prioritera om. Utspringet blir en stillsam promenad nerför en tom trappa, balunsen en mindre middag med mamma och pappa.

Å andra sidan har alla de som fick sin student 2020 inställd en bra historia att berätta för barnbarnen. Vad gjorde du under coronapandemin, farmor?

Jag offrade min studentfest för att hjälpa andra.

Josefin Holmström är litteraturkritiker. Läs fler texter på svd.se/av/josefin-holmstrom

Worst Economy in a Decade. What’s Next? ‘Worst in Our Lifetime. /NYT

Den svenska krisberedskapen har varit hett debatterad och SvD har mött landsbygdsminister Jennie Nilsson, som är huvudansvarig för den svenska livsmedelsförsörjningen. Hon säger att det inte råder någon matbrist i Sverige och att regeringen för en tät dialog med matvarujättar som Ica, Coop och Axfood för att undvika det. Men ransonering är inte heller uteslutet, säger ministern till SvD

Responding to Covid-19 — A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic? (

(Instead of  drinking today, we practice a little English. Supervisor:  Bill Gates:)

Bill Gates 

In any crisis, leaders have two equally important responsibilities: solve the immediate problem and keep it from happening again. The Covid-19 pandemic is a case in point. We need to save lives now while also improving the way we respond to outbreaks in general. The first point is more pressing, but the second has crucial long-term consequences.

The long-term challenge — improving our ability to respond to outbreaks — isn’t new. Global health experts have been saying for years that another pandemic whose speed and severity rivaled those of the 1918 influenza epidemic was a matter not of if but of when. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed substantial resources in recent years to helping the world prepare for such a scenario.



Now we also face an immediate crisis. In the past week, Covid-19 has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about. I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise.

There are two reasons that Covid-19 is such a threat. First, it can kill healthy adults in addition to elderly people with existing health problems. The data so far suggest that the virus has a case fatality risk around 1%; this rate would make it many times more severe than typical seasonal influenza, putting it somewhere between the 1957 influenza pandemic (0.6%) and the 1918 influenza pandemic (2%).2

Second, Covid-19 is transmitted quite efficiently. The average infected person spreads the disease to two or three others — an exponential rate of increase. There is also strong evidence that it can be transmitted by people who are just mildly ill or even presymptomatic. That means Covid-19 will be much harder to contain than the Middle East respiratory syndrome or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which were spread much less efficiently and only by symptomatic people. In fact, Covid-19 has already caused 10 times as many cases as SARS in a quarter of the time.

National, state, and local governments and public health agencies can take steps over the next few weeks to slow the virus’s spread. For example, in addition to helping their own citizens respond, donor governments can help low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) prepare for this pandemic. Many LMIC health systems are already stretched thin, and a pathogen like the coronavirus can quickly overwhelm them. And poorer countries have little political or economic leverage, given wealthier countries’ natural desire to put their own people first.

By helping African and South Asian countries get ready now, we can save lives and slow the global circulation of the virus. (A substantial portion of the commitment Melinda and I recently made to help kickstart the global response to Covid-19 — which could total up to $100 million — is focused on LMICs.)

The world also needs to accelerate work on treatments and vaccines for Covid-19.  Scientists sequenced the genome of the virus and developed several promising vaccine candidates in a matter of days, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations is already preparing up to eight promising vaccine candidates for clinical trials. If some of these vaccines prove safe and effective in animal models, they could be ready for larger-scale trials as early as June. Drug discovery can also be accelerated by drawing on libraries of compounds that have already been tested for safety and by applying new screening techniques, including machine learning, to identify antivirals that could be ready for large-scale clinical trials within weeks.

All these steps would help address the current crisis. But we also need to make larger systemic changes so we can respond more efficiently and effectively when the next epidemic arrives.

It’s essential to help LMICs strengthen their primary health care systems. When you build a health clinic, you’re also creating part of the infrastructure for fighting epidemics. Trained health care workers not only deliver vaccines; they can also monitor disease patterns, serving as part of the early warning systems that alert the world to potential outbreaks.

We also need to invest in disease surveillance, including a case database that is instantly accessible to relevant organizations, and rules requiring countries to share information. Governments should have access to lists of trained personnel, from local leaders to global experts, who are prepared to deal with an epidemic immediately, as well as lists of supplies to be stockpiled or redirected in an emergency.

In addition, we need to build a system that can develop safe, effective vaccines and antivirals, get them approved, and deliver billions of doses within a few months after the discovery of a fast-moving pathogen. That’s a tough challenge that presents technical, diplomatic, and budgetary obstacles, as well as demanding partnership between the public and private sectors. But all these obstacles can be overcome.

One of the main technical challenges for vaccines is to improve on the old ways of manufacturing proteins, which are too slow for responding to an epidemic. We need to develop platforms that are predictably safe, so regulatory reviews can happen quickly, and that make it easy for manufacturers to produce doses at low cost on a massive scale. For antivirals, we need an organized system to screen existing treatments and candidate molecules in a swift and standardized manner.

Another technical challenge involves constructs based on nucleic acids. These constructs can be produced within hours after a virus’s genome has been sequenced; now we need to find ways to produce them at scale.

Beyond these technical solutions, we’ll need diplomatic efforts to drive international collaboration and data sharing. Developing antivirals and vaccines involves massive clinical trials and licensing agreements that would cross national borders. We should make the most of global forums that can help achieve consensus on research priorities and trial protocols so that promising vaccine and antiviral candidates can move quickly through this process. These platforms include the World Health Organization R&D Blueprint, the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium trial network, and the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness. The goal of this work should be to get conclusive clinical trial results and regulatory approval in 3 months or less, without compromising patients’ safety.

Then there’s the question of funding. Budgets for these efforts need to be expanded several times over. Billions more dollars are needed to complete phase 3 trials and secure regulatory approval for coronavirus vaccines, and still more funding will be needed to improve disease surveillance and response.

Government funding is needed because pandemic products are extraordinarily high-risk investments; public funding will minimize risk for pharmaceutical companies and get them to jump in with both feet. In addition, governments and other donors will need to fund — as a global public good — manufacturing facilities that can generate a vaccine supply in a matter of weeks. These facilities can make vaccines for routine immunization programs in normal times and be quickly refitted for production during a pandemic. Finally, governments will need to finance the procurement and distribution of vaccines to the populations that need them.

Billions of dollars for antipandemic efforts is a lot of money. But that’s the scale of investment required to solve the problem. And given the economic pain that an epidemic can impose — we’re already seeing how Covid-19 can disrupt supply chains and stock markets, not to mention people’s lives — it will be a bargain.

Finally, governments and industry will need to come to an agreement: during a pandemic, vaccines and antivirals can’t simply be sold to the highest bidder. They should be available and affordable for people who are at the heart of the outbreak and in greatest need. Not only is such distribution the right thing to do, it’s also the right strategy for short-circuiting transmission and preventing future pandemics.

These are the actions that leaders should be taking now. There is no time to waste.









This article was published on February 28, 2020, at NEJM.org.

MARKETS. Asian markets climb after Wall Street’s rally. Millions more jobless claims are expected to be reported on Thursday. Wall Street shakes off bad economic news as data on antiviral drug lifts hopes. After Tesla’s profit plummets, Elon Musk calls California’s lockdown ‘fascist.’ GLOBAL. For some governments, a happy new milestone: a day with no new local cases. In its war of words with the U.S., China finds a target: Mike Pompeo. The White House and the stock market latch onto hopeful signs, but doubts remain. A Covid-19 cluster is reported in Yemen, adding to its woes.

Vem förvånas ?

I Sverige kan en månad av renare luft ha sparat 300 liv, enligt CREA:s beräkningar. Halterna av kvävedioxid och partiklar har minskat med ungefär en fjärdedel. Framförallt på grund av mindre trafik och transporter.

Luftföroreningarna kan också göra oss mer mottagliga för virus genom sämre lungkapacitet och andra kroniska sjukdomar.

– Siffrorna visar att det finns alla skäl att minska föroreningarna,

CREA = Helsingforsbaserade centret 
  för forskning för energi och ren luft

’Keep your voice down’: Trump berates female reporter when questioned over Covid-19 response

– Sverige sätt att agera kan vara framtidens modell för hur man ska möta en smitta. Det sa Michael Ryan, Världshälsoorganisationens ansvarige för WHO:s krisberedskap på onsdagen. Det var på en fråga om Sverige kan ha en bättre chans att klara sig från en andra våg av smittspridning, eftersom flera personer nu exponerats för smittan, som Michael Ryan lyfte fram Sverige som ett gott exempel i samband med en presskonferens på onsdagen: – Det finns en uppfattning om att Sverige inte har vidtagit några kontrollåtgärder utan bara låtit smittan sprida sig, inget kan vara längre från sanningen. Sverige har lagt en mycket stark policy när det gäller folkhälsan, det handlar om fysisk distansering och hur man ska skydda äldre på olika vårdhem och mycket annat. Vad man har gjort annorlunda är att myndigheterna lutar sig mot sitt förhållande till sina invånare och deras villighet att genomföra fysisk distansering och att själva reglera. Man har litat på sina invånare. Om det kommer att lyckas helt det får vi se. Michael Ryan berömde också Sverige för att ha klarat trycket på sjukvården: – Sverige har testat, man har utökat kapaciteten att ta hand om iva-patienter ordentligt och sjukvårdssystemet har klarat sig inom sin kapacitet. /DN

Tom Hagen (70) varetektsfengsles i fire uker.

OSLO — The police arrested one of Norway’s wealthiest people on Tuesday and charged him with killing his wife, the latest twist in a case that has riveted the nation since reports of her kidnapping emerged more than a year ago.

The police, saying they now believe the abduction was fabricated, arrested the husband, Tom Hagen, 70, a energy and real estate multimillionaire, on suspicion of murder or conspiracy to commit murder.

His wife, Anne-Elisabeth Hagen, disappeared from their home in a quiet suburb of Oslo, the Norwegian capital, 18 months ago. Her body has not been found, but investigators have suggested for some time that they believed Ms. Hagen had been killed.


When news of Ms. Hagen’s disappearance first broke in January 2019, the police said that she had been kidnapped and that a hefty ransom, to be paid in cryptocurrency, had been demanded. /New York Times



Politiet fikk dermed medhold i kravet om fire ukers varetekt, som ble begrunnet med bevisforspillelsesfare.

- Etter rettens syn har siktede reell mulighet til å ødelegge eller forspille bevis, for eksempel ved å fjerne eller ødelegge bevis på steder politiet ennå ikke har undersøkt, eller vil undersøke igjen, eller samordne forklaring med andre involverte, heter det i kjennelsen [domen]. /Extrabladet





Tom Hagen, född 1950, är en norsk affärsman och miljardär samt en av Norges rikaste personer.

Tom Hagen grundade elbolaget Elkraft AS 1991, där han är majoritetsägare, och utöver det har han ägnat sig åt handel med fastigheter och investeringar i energisektorn. Magasinet Kapital beräknade 2018 att hans förmögenhet var på 1,7 miljarder norska kronor. Mellan 2009 och 2020 tjänade han via sitt företag Holding 2 över en miljard norska kronor. Han äger även en hotellverksamhet vid en stor skidanläggning i Kvitfjell i Norge.

Den 31 oktober 2018 försvann hans fru Anne-Elisabeth Falkevik Hagen, och efter att ett påstått krav på en lösensumma om 9 miljoner euro framställts, antog norsk polis att hon blev kidnappad av personer för ekonomisk vinning. Betalningen uppges ha krävts i kryptovalutan Monero, vilket offentligjordes av polisen i januari 2019.

Den 28 april 2020 häktades Tom Hagen misstänkt för att ha mördat, eller medverkat till att ha mördat, sin fru  /Wikipedia

U.S. Economy Shrank at Fastest Rate in a Decade, With Worse to Come / New York Times

Webtips.

>> https://www.svtplay.se/video/26535330/himlens-morkrum/himlens-morkrum-bilder-ur-arkivet-sasong-1-avsnitt-1?start=auto

Man blir rörd vid tanken på våra nu avlidna landsvänner som en gång gjorde vårt Sverige till ett så fint land. Jag skulle så gärna vilja tacka dem alla.

”Planetens mest föraktade ledare” - "The planet's most despised leader"

BOLSONOR, Brasiliens galne president; omgiven av några tomtegubbar

Fucking coronavirus - Jävla coronavirus

With the United States leading the world in both deaths and infections, the image of the country has taken a beating around the world, and Americans have been forced to re-examine their own self-image. The country has watched the president speak about the pandemic almost every day in ways that were alternately misleading, resentful, insulting, dangerous and, often, sown with self-praise./NYT

Sweden did not enforce a lockdown, trusting its people to voluntarily follow the protocols

Vetenskapliga studier och en ny FN-rapport ger en samstämmig bild att barn och unga i Sverige rör sig för lite idag. Med tanke på den avgörande betydelsen som fysisk aktivitet i unga år har för hälsa kan såväl mänskliga som samhällsekonomiska effekterna när de ”stillasittande” generationerna växer upp bli ohållbara. Rörelse i unga är exempelvis avgörande för att bygga upp ett starkt skelett. Redan idag ligger Sverige sämst i världen vad gäller förekomsten av benskörhet. Hur läget kan bli när dagens stillasittande barn når mogen ålder är skrämmande att tänka på.

Dödslägret i East River. Den amerikanska fängelseläkaren Ross MacDonald kallar covid-19-spridningen bland fångar och fängelseanställda för ”en folkhälsokatastrof”. Hur gör man i ett land där nästan var hundrade människa sitter i fängelse?

Hva skjedde i Tom Hagens hode da han så politibilene? Hva tenkte han da han klokken halv ni tirsdag morgen oppdaget blålyset, at de hadde sperret veien og sto og ventet på ham? Skalv han kanskje, da han måtte forlate den grå Forden på fortauet og stige inn i en av politibilene? Banket hjertet ekstra hardt? Var han overrasket? Eller kanskje lettet? Dette vet ingen. Men vi kan anta at Tom Hagen (70) bare noen minutter før, noen hundre meter unna, kom ut av den brune, nøkterne eneboligen i Sloraveien 4 i Lørenskog og trodde at han var på vei til en ganske vanlig tirsdag i sin nye hverdag. /Aftenposten

FBI, New Scotland Yard og tyske Bundeskriminalamt har hjulpet norsk politi i jakten på de politiet tror kan ha bistått Tom Hagen i få drept Anne-Elisabeth Hagen.

Miljardären Tom Hagen

I dag klockan 12 ställs den norska miljardären Tom Hagen inför häktningsförhandling i Nedre Romerike tingsrätt i Lillestrøm.

Hagen är misstänkt för mord alternativt medhjälp till mord på sin sedan länge försvunna hustru.

Is the universe conscious?

Maths can describe all manner of natural phenomena with peerless clarity. Now, some mathematicians are wondering if it can succeed where all else has failed by answering the question of how brains light up with experience, known as the “hard problem” of consciousness. It’s a big ask. Experience is, after all, inherently subjective. And sure enough, the first mathematical model of consciousness has generated fierce debate about what, if anything sensible, it can tell us. But as mathematicians finesse their approach, they are confronting an eye-popping possibility that to achieve a precise description of consciousness, we may have to ditch our intuitions and accept that all matter has it, and maybe even the universe as a whole. 

Bortskämda gymnasister praktiserar "Armlängds avstånd"

Students in Stockholm celebrating the completion of their secondary education last  week. Gatherings of more than 50 are banned /NEW YORK TIMES
Inför innebörden av "Eget ansvar" på skolschemat. 

M A R K E T S: Asian stocks rise as sentiment improves. Airbus reports a loss of more than $500 million, citing ‘gravest crisis.’ Samsung says demand for its smartphones is weak. Simon plans to open dozens of U.S. malls, with restrictions. G L O B A L: A study finds the coronavirus in tiny airborne droplets in Chinese hospitals. Sweden did not enforce a lockdown, trusting its people to voluntarily follow the protocols. As the U.S. infection rate passed 1 million, shopping malls in several states said they will reopen. /NEW YORK TIMES

"Sweden did not enforce a lockdown, trusting its people to voluntarily follow the protocols"

MARKETS: A stock market rally falters, with Asian markets mixed. Oil prices resume their plunge. A troubled oil market is only one reason. The S.B.A. system crashes as a new round of small-business loans opens. Seoul offers a sneak peek at a recovery in the art world. GLOBAL: Argentina extends strict flight ban to September. Nigeria could ease lockdowns in Lagos and Abuja next week. States cautiously move ahead with plans to reopen. Some students return to school in China’s major cities. /NYT

Helvetet San Salvador i El Salvador

Fängelse (källa: El Pais, Spanien)

C.D.C. Adds New Symptoms to Its List of Possible Covid-19 Signs

Chills, muscle pain, sore throat and headache [ Swedish:frossa, muskelsmärta, halsont och huvudvärk] are among the ailments now considered potential indicators of the disease.

Nervous Republicans See Trump Sinking

Morse

Samuel F.B. Morse, in full Samuel Finley Breese Morse, (born April 27, 1791, Charlestown, Massachusetts, U.S.—died April 2, 1872, New York, New York), American painter and inventor who developed an electric telegraph (1832–35). In 1838 he and his friend Alfred Vail developed the Morse Code.

"A wonderful world"

South Korea Confident That Rumors of Kim Jong-un Illness Are Wrong /NYT

Guayaquil, Ecuador

>> https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-04-26/no-more-bodies-on-the-streets-but-coronavirus-illnesses-deaths-batter-ecuador

Manaus, Brazil

>> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8252459/Bodies-piled-Brazilian-city-Manaus-coronavirus.html

No modern American politician can match Mr. Trump’s record of false or illogical statements, which has invited questions about his intelligence./New York Times

Gå på museum.

Om du alltid har drömt om att strosa runt på de berömda muséerna men aldrig kommit dit kan du ta chansen nu. Med Gogles app Arts & Culture kommer du in på museer runt om i världen och kan till exempel se impressionisternas verk på Musée dÒrsay i Paris. Samma app tar dig till Pompeii och andra historiska platser.

Du tar dig fram genom att klicka på skärmen och ser uppåt och nedåt genom att röra skärmen i rätt riktning. 

Stockholms smittskyddsläkare Per Follin har fattat beslut om att stänga fem krogar i huvudstaden. Detta efter att inspektioner visat att de inte följt coronareglerna. – Den slutgiltiga bedömning är att de inte uppfyller kraven och då stänger man tills felen och bristerna har åtgärdats, säger han.

Tjockskallar har lättare för språk

En tjock hjärna kan främja förmågan att lära sig språk. Det upptäckte språkforskare när de mätte hjärnsbarkens tjocklek på 44 personer - och sedan testade hur bra de var på att greppa grammatiken i ett påhittat språk. Man mätte ett specifikt område i hjärnbarken: Brocas centrum, även kallad talcentrum, som är en del i pannloben i vänster hjärnhalva.
Källa: Språktidningen

Covidiot

Covidiot. Nytt ord. 
Covidioter tycks främst finnas på uteserveringarna i Stockholm.

Africa (Covid-19)

In South Sudan, all schools and churches have been closed to promote social distancing. In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a 3-week total lockdown of his country’s 57 million citizens. In Uganda, pop star Bobi Wine’s newly recorded song “Sensitise to Sanitise” is playing on radios throughout the country to raise awareness about reducing coronavirus transmission. At the large regional hospital in Kisumu, Kenya, teams of health workers have set up tents to provide information on Covid-19 and to take visitors’ temperatures and log their travel histories before they enter the hospital. The coronavirus is coming to Africa, and with creative actions, large and small, Africans are aiming to meet it head on.

As the Covid-19 pandemic sweeps the globe, causing tens of thousands of deaths and massive economic disruption, Africa has so far been largely spared the kind of impact that has thrown China, the United States, and Europe into chaos. As of April 13, there were about 14,000 confirmed cases on the African continent, as compared with 160,000 in Italy and more than 560,000 in the United States. But rather than inviting relief or complacency, the numbers from Africa are like the early drops of rain before the clouds open up. Despite the slow arrival of Covid-19, a storm is building, and the 1.2 billion (1.2 miljarder [en miljard = 1000 miljoner] ) people living in Africa are at tremendous risk.

Most African countries remain woefully unprepared for what’s coming. Kenya, for example, has only 200 intensive care beds for its entire population of 50 million. Compare that to the United States, which has 34 beds for every 100,000 people. Countries from Mali to Liberia have only a few ventilators for millions of people. In urban communities throughout Africa, health facilities tend to be overcrowded and understaffed, while in rural areas, poor roads and unreliable transport make it difficult for people to access care. Advanced health care is sorely lacking in nearly every country.

But the obstacles are not limited to care and treatment of people who are sick. In many communities, people live together in close quarters, which makes social distancing, a critical prevention strategy, more difficult. Millions of people live without access to clean running water, which makes frequent handwashing all but impossible. Adding to these concerns, winter is coming to the Southern Hemisphere, where most of Africa lies, and some experts worry that drier, colder weather may increase viral activity.

Confronting epidemics is not new to Africans, and their experience may prove to be an advantage. Responding to infectious diseases for generations has sensitized governments and communities to the dangers and to the need for rapid, proactive measures to save lives. Moreover, a substantial number of countries in Africa have benefited from previous global initiatives to strengthen health systems to address HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and Ebola. In addition, the Africa Centers for Disease Control has accelerated its work to enhance diagnostic and surveillance capacity on the continent. As a result, health infrastructures are less fragile than they have been in the past.

The biggest advantage, of course, is time. Heads of state, ministries of health, hospitals, clinics, and community health organizations are taking immediate action. As the pandemic makes its first inroads, several countries have vigorously pursued containment efforts involving identifying, assessing, and isolating people with suspected cases and close contacts of each infected person. Countries are also mobilizing virtual learning networks to disseminate information to health and community workers. From Angola to Zimbabwe, governments are putting in place mitigation measures by closing borders, shuttering markets, suspending internal flights, and instituting limits or outright bans on social gatherings.

But despite these intensive preparations, we should have no illusions that Africa can confront this threat alone. Coordinated global support is essential in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the time to act is now. We believe that during the next few weeks, countries around the world should take concrete steps to assist Africa in staying ahead of the curve, even as they confront their own epidemics. These steps may include donations of coronavirus test kits, personal protective equipment, ventilators, and other life-support equipment or, at a minimum, ensuring that African countries are not priced out of the market for these commodities. Support is urgently needed for real-time Covid-19 surveillance systems and for surveys to determine the scope of the epidemic and to inform decisions about how to respond. Funding and technical support are also needed to run national information campaigns to promote safe behaviors and to counter the stigma that often arises against the people thought to be causing the epidemic. Vulnerable populations, particularly the poor and people engaged in the informal economy, will need to be supported during periods when movement of people is restricted. Finally, it is critically important that resources and attention not be diverted from the continent’s ongoing threats from other infectious diseases, such as HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria.

When HIV spread like wildfire across the African continent, it took decades for the world to mobilize a response. Tens of millions of people were infected and many millions died as the epidemic took root — and it persists to this day. Epidemics know no borders, and success in controlling the epidemic in any one country will be limited if epidemics continue to rage elsewhere. Today, we have the chance to avoid a repeat of history. Africans are doing their part. Now is the time for us to do ours.

Kim Jong-un’s Absence and North Korea’s Silence Keep Rumor Mill Churning Rumors about the North Korean leader’s health — and speculation over his possible death — have only increased over the past two weeks.

Mr. Kim, center top, attending a Politburo meeting in Pyongyang, the capital, on April 11, in a photo released by the official Korean Central News Agency.Credit...

Det råder ingen brist på scenarion där världens vanvett kan eskalera ännu mer än vad det redan gjort. Vårt svar måste bli detsamma som nu: att lyssna på vetenskapen, förbereda oss för det otänkbara och omvandla vår existentiella förtvivlan till politiskt förnuft. /DN

Gunnar Sträng

En färgstark politker (jag saknar färgstarka svenska rikspolitiker - bleka finns det gott om t.ex. kulturministern med sitt fågelbo i huvudet

"Det finns de som urgerar en limitering av bostadsbyggandet" /F.d. bostadsminister Gunnar Sträng

Författaren PO Enquist är död

Unforgettable Hubble
Space Telescope Photos

APRIL 23, 2015

On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the launching of the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA released the new image below. We asked astronomers and others involved in the telescope's groundbreaking and occasionally rocky story to tell us about their favorite photos taken over the years. 

Photo

CreditNASA and European Space Agency

“This is a really new birthplace of stars,” Jennifer Wiseman, senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, said of the new image, which shows a cluster of 3,000 stars known as Westerlund 2 in the constellation Carina. “The cluster is only about two million years old, which in stellar terms is very young. And it contains some of the galaxy’s hottest, brightest and most massive stars that we know of.”

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   This was one of the first images taken by an upgraded camera installed in 2002. CreditNASA and European Space Agency

   Tadpole Galaxy, 2002
   John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for science, NASA
   Mr. Grunsfeld is best known as the Hubble repairman for journeying to space to make repairs on Hubble three different times.

   This is a really interesting spiral galaxy that has only recently had an encounter with a dwarf galaxy. It perturbed the spiral structure, but you can see it's still an intact spiral and going out a hundred kilo parsecs is this huge tail. And in that tail are brand new star-forming regions, incredible activity caused by shocks traveling through this tadpole tail.

   Finally, with Hubble, we were able to see the universe with the same kind of resolution that we see with our eyeballs. In the background, virtually every pixel that is lit up, is another galaxy.

   You could pick any small region of the image — not the tadpole. You could pick any other small region and do great science.

   This is why I risked my life, to be able to allow the Hubble to provide this level of wonderful science. This is the image I have hanging up in my home.

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   The top series shows the spherical aberration model, which matched what Hubble was actually seeing, bottom series. A sort of contact lens was later installed to fix the problem. CreditSandra Faber

   Proof of Blurriness, 1990
   Sandra Faber, professor of astronomy and astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz
   Soon after the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in 1990, astronomers and engineers discovered that images taken by Hubble's camera were not as clear as they should have been. The telescope's mirror had been ground to the wrong curvature, making it near-sighted.

   Here is the actual figure that Jon Holtzman, then at Lowell Observatory, and I produced for NASA that clinched the diagnosis of spherical aberration. We got the project to run the telescope through focus and take images as a test. The top series is our set of model through-focus images. The bottom series is the set of real through-focus images.

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   A 50-light-year-wide panorama of the center of the Carina Nebula shows a region of rapid star birth and death. CreditNASA and European Space Agency

   Carina Nebula, 2007
   Pam Jeffries, graphic designer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Hubble
   This large panoramic image of the Carina Nebula is my favorite Hubble image because of the sweeping visual movement combined with compelling and interesting tiny details. Hubble has taken many close-up shots, and each detail is its own masterpiece. I loved it when I first started working with Hubble images in 2010, and I still love its breathtaking iconic appeal. It is always humbling to think about the birth of other stars and how they mirror our own. The time, distance and forces involved always put your stress and self-importance in perspective.

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   The slice of the Orion Nebula, only 0.14 light-years wide, shows young stars enshrouded in disks of dust and gas. CreditNASA and European Space Agency

   Baby Planets? 1994
   Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   This striking 1994 Hubble Space Telescope image shows the rich tapestry of a small region of the Orion Nebula, a stellar nursery 1,500 light years away. Newborn stars are seen with surrounding disks of raw planetary materials – protoplanetary disks or"propylids" – that will likely evolve into planets. This image is my favorite because even more astonishing than the beauty is the implication – one that came well before exoplanets orbiting nearby stars was established – that protoplanetary disks around newborn stars are abundant and that planet-forming processes (and hence planets) should be common in the Milky Way Galaxy.

   
   

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   In December 1995, Hubble stared at one patch of the night sky. From 342 exposures over 10 days, the Hubble Deep Field image revealed a dazzling array of almost 3,000 galaxies. CreditNASA and European Space Agency

   The Hubble Deep Field, 1996
   Robert Williams, former director, Space Telescope Science Institute
   The prevailing opinion before Hubble telescope’s launch was that a very long exposure with the telescope was not likely to reveal distant new objects. Any would be too faint to be detected. One of the unique features of astronomy is that one can directly look back into the past because of the finite speed of light, and there is no better way to piece together the changing nature of the universe than to detect the most distant objects. They represent the ancestors of all that we see around us. A deep field with the Hubble simply had to be tried.

   When we announced to the science community that we would attempt to take a long series of exposures for a "deep field," a number of our colleagues were very troubled by our plans. Lyman Spitzer, who along with John Bahcall was one of the essential advocates to bring about Hubble, was serious, but muted in expressing his concerns.

   On several occasions he asked me at council meetings, “Are you sure you want to do this?” His colleague John Bahcall was much more vocal in working to prevent what he believed to be a much too risky venture, coming so soon after Hubble’s embarrassing spherical aberration had been fixed by the historic NASA Shuttle servicing mission. His concern, certainly understandable, was that if a large segment of time on the telescope produced little or no useful results, which would no doubt become public, the fallout could tarnish the mission of the telescope beyond repair.

   Scientific progress requires risk, so we executed the observations over a two-week period in December 1995. The resulting Hubble Deep Field image yielded a wondrous display of galaxies, many of them very small, faint, and distant. The image is really a core sample of the universe.

   The Hubble Deep Field has truly opened up the entire universe of galaxies to study and interpretation by simple imaging, turning the pretty faces of those galaxies into true talking heads that have helped us understand how structure formed and evolved over time in the universe.
   This image was created in 1995, but released in 1996.

6. Photo

   
   

   The spiral shape is the result of two galaxies colliding and merging. This is a preview of what might happen when our Milky Way galaxy collides with the approaching Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years. CreditNASA and European Space Agency

   The Antennae, 2005
   Brad Whitmore, astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute
   The Antennae are the most famous example of a colliding pair of galaxies, a phenomenon that results in some of the favorite Hubble images due to their great diversity and graceful appearance.
   
   For astronomers, they are also a wonderful laboratory for studying the formation of stars, since the collision ignites a starburst that lights up the galaxy like a display of fireworks. A surprise was that most of the star formation is in the form of star clusters — some of which survive to form the equivalent of the ancient globular clusters in our own galaxy — but most of which dissolve, their stars spreading out to form the stars that make up the galaxy as a whole. The contrast between the very bright blue stars formed in the starburst, the red light from hydrogen gas emission and the intricate dark dust structures result in spectacular images as the galaxies go through their gravitational dance and eventually merge to form an elliptical galaxy.

7. Photo

   
   

   This image was part of a survey to detect infant galaxies, some of which existed when the universe was less than 2 billion years old. CreditNASA and European Space Agency

   A Black Hole in Every Galaxy, 2003
   Meg Urry, professor of astronomy, Yale University, and president of the American Astronomical Society
   My very favorite is the very deep image from the GOODS survey, which I designed while still at the Space Telescope Science Institute (along with Mark Dickinson and Mauro Giavalisco). It’s quiet and perhaps not as dramatic as many other Hubble Space Telescope images but it tells us about the history of the universe, including the growth of supermassive black holes — one in every galaxy, like a chicken in every pot — and the assembly of galaxies. So much information from such a little picture. (GOODS was an acronym we came up with: Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey. “Great Observatories because the full multiwavelength survey used Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra, i.e., what NASA referred to as the Great Observatories; “Deep Survey” because it was the deepest multiwavelength survey ever done at that time, about a quarter the size of the full moon; and “Origins” because without another letter the name was pure hubris.)

   Happy birthday, Hubble!

8. Photo

   
   

   The Helix Nebula, located 690 light-years from Earth, is a ball of glowing gas expelled from a dying sun-like star. This image was a composite of a photograph taken by Hubble in 2002 and one by a telescope in Chile in 2003. CreditNASA and European Space Agency

   “The Eye of God,” 2003
   Barbara A. Mikulski, senator from Maryland and senior Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA
   I keep a huge print of “The Eye of God” hanging in my office. It’s the planetary nebulae nearest to Earth, extending 2.5 light-years across, making it larger than our entire solar system.

   The scientists and staff of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore autographed it and gave it to me after we saved the Hubble in 1993 during Servicing Mission 1. Every time I stand in front of it I’m reminded, not just of the insight and beauty that Hubble brought home, but also of the people – the engineers, scientists, technicians, support staff, cafeteria workers and custodians – who have all done so much to advance our understanding of the cosmos. So now not only do I have God looking down on me as I work, I have the angels of the Space Telescope Science Institute watching over me as well.

9. Photo

   
   

   A decade after the Hubble Deep Field observations, an improved camera installed on Hubble enabled a look even further back in time. In 2012, further enhancements led to the Hubble Extreme Deep Field. CreditNASA and European Space Agency.

   The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, 2004
   Steven Beckwith, professor of astronomy at University of California, Berkeley and former director of the Space Telescope Science Institute
   When we first looked at the final Ultra Deep Field on the big computer screen at the institute, the entire image was filled with galaxies: blue, yellow and red, a menagerie of different shapes and sizes. We were looking back to the time when the universe was very young. These early galaxies were not at all like the ones we see today; they were little train wrecks, clumps of stars and clusters of stars beginning to assemble the structures that would eventually become the beautiful spiral and elliptical galaxies we see today. It was a magical moment for all of us, one of those times that you never forget.

   After the loss of the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, Sean O'Keefe, then NASA's administrator, canceled the last planned space shuttle mission for another round of repairs and upgrades for Hubble, calling it too risky. Dr. Beckwith, then director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, sparred publicly and loudly with Mr. O'Keefe. Mr. O'Keefe stepped down as NASA administrator in 2004; his successor, Michael Griffin, reinstated the repair mission.

10. Photo

    
    

    The Tarantula Nebula, about 170,000 light-years away, is a turbulent star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is close enough that Hubble can make out individual stars. CreditNASA and European Space Agency

    Tarantula Nebula, 2012
    John Troeltzsch, senior program manager, Ball Aerospace
    Ball Aerospace built scientific instruments for the Hubble, including the "corrective lens" that fixed its vision in 1993.

    This image is my favorite because I used Hubble in 1990 to image this region for an engineering test shortly after launch. The image was severely degraded by Hubble’s focus problem. The modern version of Hubble took a spectacular image of the region in 2012, which shows both the beauty of a stellar nursery and the immense power of some of the most massive stars in our universe. Astronomy has come so far in the past 25 years thanks to Hubble and the people who built and operate it.

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    The biggest, brightest circle at the center is Pluto. Just to the right is Charon, the large moon of Pluto that was discovered in 1978. CreditNASA and European Space Agency

    Pluto and Its Moons, 2006
    Max Mutchler, research and instrument scientist, Space Telescope Science Institute
    My favorite, personally most exciting and meaningful, is a no-brainer: the discovery of Pluto’s small moons.

    Late at night on June 15, 2005, I was working in my office on Hubble observations of Pluto for Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, who intentionally over-exposed a series of images to try and detect faint moons. Hal is the project scientist for NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto. I thought I was merely cleaning up the raw images, so I hadn’t really begun to search them yet, when a moment of pure scientific discovery snuck up on me: Pluto has two small moons (to go with the large moon Charon discovered in 1978)!

    The actual discovery images were nowhere near as clear and obvious as this later confirmation image (which has also been heavily processed), but it was still surprisingly easy for Hubble to clearly detect not just one but two moons which had been missed in previous searches. It actually seemed too easy, and we gave ourselves many months to confirm the discovery and convince ourselves they weren’t some camera artifact (but I was 90 percent sure they were real that night).

    By 2012, the New Horizons team used Hubble to discover two more small Pluto moons, Styx and Kerberos. To me, this image represents the symbiosis of two great NASA missions working in concert to discover and explore new worlds. Hubble set the stage, and now New Horizons will fly through the Pluto system on July 14, and turn these small dots into real places for the first time.

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    More Hubble photos: "Pillars of Creation," Jupiter, a pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273 the star-forming region NGC 3603, Horsehead Nebula. CreditNASA and European Space Agency

    Just One Favorite?
    Neil deGrasse Tyson, director, Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History
    Can't do it. Like picking your favorite child. What’s certain, however, is that nobody ever required a caption to appreciate them. The images convey their own majesty and splendor without it.