Category Archives: Medical history

Physician Heal Thyself … Literally! The Fusion of Surgeon and Patient Together in a Polar Wasteland

December 21, 2024Built Environment, Coastal geology & environment, Geography, Literary & Linguistics, Medical historyAntarctica, Dr Leonid Rogozov, Novolazarevskaya Station, Pioneering surgery, Soviet Antarctic Expedition 1960–62, Soviet Order of the Red Banner of Laboursabinebuena

Twelve men from the Soviet Union on a scientific expedition to the remotest part of planet Earth, Antarctica, in 1961, found themselves on the horn of an incredible dilemma. One of their number, none other than the expedition doctor, suddenly became acutely stricken with appendicitis. What to do? No one else was medically trained and outside medically help was thousands of kilometres away, the patient couldn’t be transported there and waiting would prove fatal. So the surgeon, Leonid Rogozov, did the only thing he could do to try to save his own life…as mind-numbingly inconceivable as it sounds he operated on himself!

Novolazarevskaya Station, Antarctica, in winter (Photo: Sky News/Getty Images)

Auto-appendectomy was virtually unheard of, let alone performing such an impossibly dangerous procedure in a non-hospital environment, but Dr Rogozov rolled the dice. Firstly, he planned the operation systematically and meticulously (despite being in agonising pain), choosing two members of the expedition to be his surgical assistants, their roles were to hand him surgical instruments and hold a mirror to avail him of a view of his abdomen. The degree to which he prepared the operation exceptionally well can be seen in that he had the foresight to assign a third man to be present in the makeshift operating “theatre” in the event that one of the assistants fainted. As Rogozov needed to stay conscious he submitted only to a local anaesthetic and proceeded slowly in excruciating pain. Finding the inverted view of the mirror more a hinderance than an aid he dispensed with it and operated instead by touch with his bare hands.

The Soviet Union’s pioneering auto-appendectomy (Source: Vladislav Rogozov)

Somehow after nearly two hours the doctor succeeded in removing the offending appendix (while noting that its gangrenous appearance indicated it in all likelihood would burst the following day). Operation successfully completed, Rogozov stitched up his gaping wound and even had the presence of mind to instruct the assistants on how to wash the instruments properly and hygienically clean the room, before finally allowing himself a dose of antibiotics and sleeping tablets to induce sleep. After just two weeks rest the extraordinary doctor was, true to form, back at work. Truly remarkable, real Ripley’s “believe it or not” sort of stuff! [Sara Lentati, “The man who cut out his own appendix”, BBC, 05-May-2015, www.bbc.com].

Dr Rogozov recuperating after the operation (Source: Vladislav Rogozov)

The Antarctic ordeal wasn’t entirely over for Dr Rogozov. Mission completed, the expedition was meant to be picked up by a Soviet vessel about 12 months after the doctor’s self-appendectomy, however exceptionally bad weather and thick sea ice prevented it from getting close enough. Consequently there was a further lengthy delay before all the explorers were eventually evacuated by single-engine aircraft, a distinctly hairy manoeuvre in the treacherous polar conditions. Back in the USSR Leonid Rogozov was hailed as a hero of the Motherland and honoured with the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, although the good doctor did his utmost to shun the huge publicity focused on him, preferring simply to return to his medical clinic work in Leningrad.

Leonid I Rogozov in happier times during his Antarctic stay (Source: Vladislav Rogozov)

ᨎᨐᨏᨃᨑᨎᨐᨏᨃᨑᨎᨐᨏᨃᨑᨎᨐᨏᨃᨑᨎᨐᨏᨃᨑ

Footnote: As a consequence of the 1961 Soviet expedition’s medical quasi-catastrophe, several countries including Australia made appendectomies mandatory for Antarctic explorers about to embark on an expedition to the farthest southern continent.

North Head Quarantine Station: Shielding Sydney and Surrounds from the Importation of Communicable Diseases

September 7, 2021Coastal geology & environment, Heritage & Conservation, Medical history, Public health,, Regional HistoryAlderman Percy Nolan, Bussorah Merchant, Covid-19, European cholera pandemic, Gayamagal people, Governor Ralph Darling, Kosovar refugees, Manly NSW, Melbourne, New South Wales, North Head Quarantine Station, Port Nepean Q-Station, Quarantine Act 1832, Spanish Flu 1918-20, SS Ticonderoga, Sydney, Vietnamese refugeesE Curb Nottus

〝 The principle of preventing the spread of infectious disease by which people, baggage…likely to be infected or coming form an infected place are isolated at frontiers or ports until their harmlessness has been proven…〞
~ Port Nepean Q-Station‘s definition of ’Quarantine‘

Since the initial strains of Covid-19 turned the world upside down and inside out early last year, the word ‘quarantine’ has found a renewed vigour in the lexicon. In a previous blog the history of Sydney’s early animal quarantine station for imported livestock was outlined – ‘Sydney Foreshore’s Animal House of Detention and Segregation on Hen and Chicken Bay’, 21-Apr-2018. Human quarantine in Sydney has a much longer history. The story starts with governor of the colony of New South Wales Ralph Darling. In response to the cholera pandemic sweeping Europe and the risks of ship-borne disease being transported on vessels coming to the colony, Darling initiated a Quarantine Act in 1832 “subjecting Vessels coming to New South Wales from certain places to the performance of Quarantine”❅.

Darling set aside the entire North Head peninsula (277 hectares)—on indigenous Gayamagal country in Manly on Sydney’s northern beaches—for the grounds of the quarantine processing centre. The exact site chosen for the Q-station, Spring Cove, overlooking Sydney Harbour, was already housing an infected and quarantined merchant ship, the Bussorah Merchant.

In the early years of the station’s operation, the practice was to keep sick passengers on board the vessels on arrival at Spring Cove. After complaints from the merchants about the delay and cost of keeping the ships tied up at North Head, the authorities started bringing the sick onshore to free up the transport ships, this required the construction of more substantial permanent accommodation and storage facilities at the Q-Station to replace the original makeshift buildings [‘North Head Quarantine Station’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Q-Station longevity
The old Quarantine Station enjoyed a surprisingly long lifespan at the North Head site, surviving albeit with decreasing utilisation until 1984⌖, this despite periodical calls for its closure…as far back as 1923 Manly Council alderman and later mayor Percy Nolan was advocating for the Q-Station’s removal in favour of open public space [Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Quarantine Station. Proposed Removal’, 31-May-1923 (Trove)].

First class expectations
Conditions and facilities at the Q-station were regularly under scrutiny from the better-off passengers. First class passengers were not slow in bringing deficiencies in housing to the attention of the authorities, leading in the 1870s to the building of a new section of Q-Station passenger accommodation in what was known as “the Healthy Grounds” (Wiki).

A 1881 smallpox epidemic resulting in a large number of internee deaths❧ at North Head facility exposed major shortcomings in the management of the Q-Station, including the lack of a medical superintendent with a grasp of infection control; no clean linen and towels, soap or medical supplies for patients isolated with smallpox [Allen, Raelene, Smallpox epidemic 1881, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/smallpox_epidemic_1881, viewed 06 Sep 2021].

Bulwark against plagues, viruses, bacteria, etc.
Over the decades the Q-Station at Manly has housed the victims of numerous diseases including smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever, measles and the bubonic plague, as well as victims of natural disasters. The Q-Station provided a refuge for returning WWI veterans suffering from TB and VD. At war’s end it served as the frontline defence against the lethal assault of the Spanish Flu.

Gradual obsolescence
Post-WWII, as air travel gradually replaced passenger ships, the Q-Station’s role diminished in importance. In its final decades of operation the quarantine station was put to diverse use…housing the unvaccinated (eg, pregnant immigrants), accommodating Vietnamese orphans and as a temporary abode for women and children evacuated from Darwin after Cyclone Tracy decimated that city in 1974 [‘The plague, smallpox and Spanish flu: How Sydney quarantined sick travellers throughout history’, Sarah Swain, 9 News, 2020, www.9news.com.au; ’Q Station on Manly’s North Head echoes with history of pandemics past’, Kathy Sharpe, Mandurah Mail, 21-Jul-2021, www.mandurahmail.com.au].

No longer a quarantine station, the surviving 65 heritage buildings are set against the beautiful natural bush land of the Sydney Harbour National Park. Today the old Q-station is converted into a hotel complex (104 rooms including nine self-contained cottages, managed by Accor) with all the tourist trappings, including sleepovers and nocturnal “Ghost and Paranormal tours”.

Footnote: Port Nepean, North Head’s counterpart
In Melbourne, that city’s historic quarantine station can be found on the Heads of Port Phillip Bay. Port Nepean Quarantine Station can point to a similar eventful history to that of the North Head facility. Like it, the Melbourne Q-Station owes it’s existence to an infected immigrant ship…the arrival of the SS Ticonderoga in 1852 with 300 passengers stricken from disease, necessitating the ship’s quarantining at Port Nepean, which led to it’s establishment as a Quarantine Station (originally called “the Sanitary Station”). By the 20th century Port Nepean Q-Station had developed a number of innovative processing features including the memorably named “Foul Luggage Receiving Store”. The station’s Disinfectant and Boiler buildings also became models for other quarantine stations in Australia [‘Quarantine Station’, Parks Victoria, www.parks.vic.gov.au]. At one point animals were also quarantined at the location. By 1978 Port Nepean had ceased operating as a quarantine facility and was closed in 1980. Subsequent uses of the site and holdings include a military encampment and a temporary refuge for 400 Kosovar refugees fleeing the Bosnian War in the early 1990s.

➿➿➿➿➿➿➿ ➿➿➿➿➿➿➿

❅ “to prevent the introduction of the disease called the malignant Cholera and other infectious disease”

⌖ during that one-and-a-half centuries the Q-Station was the initial home in Sydney for an estimated 13,000 passengers

❧ and the need to build a third Q-Station cemetery to accommodate the rise in mortality

Carleton Estate, Summer Hill: History of a Mansion-cum-Special Needs Hospital

April 14, 2021Heritage & Conservation, Local history, Medical historyAshfield Racecourse, Benevolent Society of NSW, Carleton Estate, Charles Carleton Skarratt, Deinstitutionalisation, Grosvenor Centre, Grosvenor Hospital, Henry Hinder, Henry Kable, James Underwood, Kable’s Farm, NSW Department of Ageing, NSW Mental Health Act 1983, Renwick Hospital for Children, Richmond Report 1983, Summer Hill NSW, Underwood EstateE Curb Nottus

Summer Hill, seven kilometres west of the Sydney CBD, is a small suburb with a village feel to it. Since the 1970s it has seen an increase in the concentration of medium density apartment blocks, though many Federation-era houses have been retained. One of the largest heritage properties, 46–56 Liverpool Road, a historic mansion converted into an exclusive estate, represents one of the suburb’s most interesting back stories.

In 2014 this former grand residence-cum-hospital underwent redevelopment as the Carleton Estate, the mansion, stables and grounds, were converted into 78 individual apartments located in four buildings. The gated estate offered residents a communal garden (and the option of garden plots to grow vegetables), billiards room, swimming pool, gymnasium and parklands.

What interests us though is the one hundred and thirty years preceding the creation of Carleton Estate. In 1879 Summer Hill got its own railway station on the main suburban line, prompting an influx of new residents to the suburb✱. One of these was Charles Carleton Skarratt, a prominent local hotelier (Royal Hotel, Sydney) with diverse business interests in transport, mining, insurance and a brewery. After the land here (part of the Underwood Estate) was subdivided, Skarratt amalgamated nine of the suburban lots and built the original mansion (1884) on this 12,000 sq m block on the corner of Liverpool and Gower Streets (RPA Heritage News , Vol III, Issue III (Oct 2012).

Prior to Skarratt acquiring the property it was part of the old Ashfield Racecourse, and going right back to origins this was part of Cadigal (Eora) land before 1788. The first white owner was ex-convict and jailor Henry Kable who was the recipient of early land grants (1794, 1804). Kable’s Farm was located on this property. Kable, like Skarratt, had diverse interests, merchant trading, other land holdings, a hotel, etc and was at one stage in partnership with James Underwood, an early owner of the Summer Hill estate.

CC Skarratt

After Skarratt’s death in 1900 ownership of the Victorian Italianate mansion and grounds passed from the family to leading Sydney surgeon Henry Hinder. Just after the Great War it was purchased by the Benevolent Society of NSW as the new site for its Renwick Hospital, to replace the old premises in Thomas Street, Ultimo. Officially opened in 1921 as a “lying-in hospital and a hospital for children whose parents could not afford to pay for their medical care” (‘Renwick Hospital for Infants, Summer Hill, 1921 – 1965’, https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/nsw). Patient care centred round the main building and an auxiliary building in nearby Grosvenor Crescent (“Queen’s College”). Two more treatment buildings were added to the complex in 1928 and 1930. By 1937, it was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, the hospital at Summer Hill had treated as many as 20,000 children (‘New Block at Renwick Hospital for Children, SMH, 24-June-1937).

In 1964 the state government bought the hospital from the Benevolent Society…from 1965 it was renamed the Grosvenor Hospital. It had a dual function – as an in-patients facility for children, and as an out-patients facility which “provided for the diagnosis and assessment of mentally retarded persons of all ages” (‘Find and Connect’).

There were sweeping changes to the institutional approach to the mentally ill in NSW following the Richmond Report and subsequent Mental Health Act in 1983. The new emphasis was on downsizing to small community resident units. The Summer Hill hospital was streamlined with a progressive reduction over the following years in the number of patient admitted. Renamed the Grosvenor Centre in 1985, the facility’s stated mission was the treatment of children with a “developmental disability of mind” (www.records.nsw.gov.au).

The NSW government was committed to a policy of deinstitutionalisation by 2010 and the writing was on the board for the Grosvenor Centre. From the late 1980s to the early 2000s responsibility for the Centre was shuffled from one government department to another – Health to Community Services to Ageing, The coup de grâce came in 2009…disregarding appeals by parents of the Centre’s 20 remaining child residents for a “stay of execution”, the governmenttransferred the residents to purpose-built houses and the institution was closed (‘Find and Connect’). The path was now clear for redevelopment of the post-hospital space and the eventual creation of a gated community in the Carleton Estate.

︼︼︼︼︼︼︼︼︼︼︼︼︼︼︼

✱ the three decades from 1880-1910 saw the Summer Hill populace take on more of an upper class character with a stream of professionals especially from the fields of banking and finance moving to the suburb (‘Summer Hill’, Wikipedia)

Coronavirus 2.0: Déja Vu Europe – Post-Summer Fallout, Relaxing of Controls and Self-Control, Emerging New Hotspots

September 30, 2020Medical history, Public health,‘Second wave’ outbreak, Belgium, Coronavirus hot spots, COVID-19 pandemic, Disease – suppression vs eradication, Europe, France, Italy, Madrid, Marseille, Montenegro, Netherlands, Odessa, Paris, Spainfunambulator@live.com

Late September, COVID-19 has reached the inevitable, undesired milestone of the one millionth death worldwide from the disease. With the summer holidays behind them, Europeans on a trajectory to winter are facing the backlash of a resurgence of the coronavirus. Many countries in Europe are already in the grip of what is to all intents and purposes the second wave of the 2020 pandemic. In early September infection rates in Europe as a whole passed that of the season benchmark, the USA [‘Europe overtakes U.S. as COVID-19 hotspot as infections surge’, (Thomas Mulier & Bloomberg), Fortune, 10-Sep-2020, www.fortune.com].

*Pop-up statue honouring Madrid health care workers* (Photo: Getty Images)

The familiar patterns are there and yet inconsistencies exist from country to country. Several countries such as Montenegro❋, North Macedonia, Albania, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria are seeing higher case numbers now than they experienced early on in the outbreak. This shouldn’t be altogether surprising as one clear explanation for such a jump simply points to the increased levels of testing now being conducted. [‘Coronavirus second wave: Which countries in Europe are experiencing a fresh spike in COVID-19 cases?’, Euronews, 29-Sep-2020, www.euronews.com].

Daily case numbers in Europe and the UK are spiking again in cities with high urban density—especially Madrid, Paris, Marseille, Brussels, Amsterdam and The Hague—leading the way◰ [Netherlands among Western Europe’s biggest Covid hot spots’, (Jasper Bunskoek), NL Times, 28-Sep-2020, www.nltimes.nl].

*Paris* *Central* (Photo: AP: Kamil Zihnioglu)

Authorities have put the recent surge down to a general relaxation over summer of measures to curb infection. Workers returning to work in many European cities after the break are suspected of dropping their guard against the pandemic. Health officials have also pinpointed young people being a significant factor in flouting the rules (noting the existence of a recorded spike in new European cases for those aged 25 to 49)[‘Coronavirus: How it all went wrong (again) in Europe as 2nd wave grips continent’, (CNN) (via 9 News), 30-Sep-2020, www.nine.com.au].

The current upward trend of infections has placed governments in a dilemma. To try to rein in the burgeoning case numbers, the unwelcome prospect facing them is the need to reintroduce unpopular restrictions on communities and gatherings. In this light one thing governments are desperate to avoid at all costs is to go back to a national (or even sectional) lockdown scenario and expose their country to a redux of the crippling effects on the economy. In Madrid the Castilian authorities have already relented and opted to introduce selective lockdowns in certain urban districts [‘Europe’s coronavirus hot spot Spain to introduce selective lockdowns in Madrid’, Daily Sabah, 16-Sep-2020, www.dailysabah.com].

On the positive side mortality rates from COVID-19 being recorded now in Europe are a fraction of the death tolls of six months ago, weekly averages in September are around 13% of the peaks recorded during April (CNN/Johns Hopkins University). Having long ago parked the idea of eradication until the emergence of an effective vaccine, governments and health authorities plumped for suppression…a reality check in this “second wave” is an understanding of just how difficult it is to keep a lid on community outbreaks, let alone stamp it out entirely (Mulier/Bloomberg).

Endnote: Odessa – beautiful one minute … hot spot the next

As summer was ushered in at this much-in-demand Ukrainian resort spot on the Black Sea, people flocked to the sanatoriums and beaches. Similarly, nightclubs and restaurants in the city were packed with vacationers. The folly of flagrantly disregarding social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines resulted in an entirely foreseeable outcome – over 12,000 virus cases erupting in the city, ⅔ of which are tourists and visitors, some of these compounding the predicament by then carrying the virus back with them to their home cities and towns [‘In Ukraine’s Odessa, summer crowds ditched their masks. It’s now a hot spot in Europe’s “second wave”’, (Natalie Gryvnyak and Robyn Dixon), Washington Post, 28-Sep-2020, www.washingtonpost.com].

𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪𝄪

❋ Montenegro catapulted to the top of hotspots on the continent with 305.4 cases per 100,000 people infected in the week of 14-20 September [‘Coronavirus: Where are Europe’s infection hotspots?’, Sky News, 24-Sep-2020, www.news.sky.com]

◰ right through this month France and Spain have vied with each other for the ‘gong’ of worst-performing country in Europe for virus hot spots. Italy conversely is one country that has managed to buck this trend, so far resisting the pandemic’s resurgence – attributed to a more concerted adherence to government health guidelines this time [‘As Covid-19 Fatigue Fuels Infections in Europe, Italy Resists Second Wave’, (Eric Sylvers & Margherita Stancati), Wall Street Journal, 22-Sep-2020, www.wsj.com]

International Conference on the Great Manchurian Plague: A Pioneering Blueprint for Public Health Advances and Safeguards

May 7, 2020International Relations, Medical history, Public health,, Regional HistoryCoronavirus 2020, De Wu Lien-teh, Dr Richard P Strong, Great Manchurian Plague 1910-11, Harbin, International Plague Conference 1911, Japanese and Russian imperial ambitions in Manchuria, League of Nations Health Organisation, Manchurian Plague Prevention Service, Mukden (Shenyang), North-East China, Pneumonic plague, Prof Kitasato, Public health crises, Third Plague Pandemic, United States, WHOfunambulator@live.com

Once the authorities in Manchuria had secured a firm handle on the plague outbreak in Heilongjiang, Kirin and Fengtian provinces by February 1911, little time was wasted calling for a conference of international medical specialists to enquire into all aspects of the epidemic and promote the advancement of future disease control. Scientists including disease specialists from many countries were invited to attend the location chosen for the conference, Mukden (Shenyang), which was one of the cities in North-East China hardest hit by the pneumonic epidemic.

B1888135-B036-4C07-9615-30CB41114CBE Despite the pressingly urgent need to canvas expert international input into the dire health catastrophe, China must have had some reservations about what it was doing. Both Russia and Japan with undisguised Manchurian ambitions already held firm footholds in N.E. China (control over railway lines, ports, territorial concessions, etc), plus other Western powers controlled Chinese treaty ports further south. But with no politicians taking part in the conference and all attendees pledging that it’s focus was to be on scientific investigation and not about imposing any further external controls on China, the central government pushed on with it [‘In 1911, another epidemic swept through China. That time, the world came together’, (Paul French), CNN, 19-Apr-2020, www.cnn.com]. Dr Wu Lien-teh, the “plague fighter-general” of Harbin, was appointed conference chairperson. There were a few “nationalistic frictions” with the Japanese mainly resulting from some anti-Chinese remarks injudiciously made by the Japanese delegate, Professor Kitasato, before leaving Tokyo for the conference, but this did not impede the cohesion of the conference [Eli Chernin (1989). “Richard Pearson Strong and the Manchurian Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague, 1910—1911” (PDF). Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 44(3): 296–319. doi:101093/jhmas/44.3.296. PMID 2671146].

🔻 Safety precautions at Harbin plague site

A congress of international disease experts
The International Plague Conference (IPC) was a ground-breaking series of ‘firsts’, the first international scientific symposium held in China, the first time in modern history of a multi-nation approach focusing on disease control. The conference also anticipated the purpose of later world bodies dedicated to international health maintenance, the League of Nations’ Health Organisation (LNHO), established in 1923, and it’s successor, the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO), created after the Second World War.

Scientists from ten countries joined host China at the Plague Conference in the repurposed Shao Ho Yien palace – the US, UK, France, Russia, Japan, Italy, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Netherlands and Mexico, an indication of how seriously the international medical community took the Manchurian outbreak and its implications. The delegates were drawn from several relevant and related fields including epidemiologists, virologists, bacteriologists, tropical medicine specialists and illness consultants.

🔻 Contemporary coverage of the conference in ‘The Lancet’

The conference, getting into the “nitty-gritty’
High on the conference’s agenda was the question of aetiology, what were the Great Manchurian Plague’s causal factors? American delegate Richard P Strong, who arrived prior to the conference, undertook pathological experimentation which verified the infectious role played by tarbagan marmots in the plague (which he published in the Philippine Journal of Science, 1912). The experts had to sift through a raft of unhelpful faux-scientific beliefs and assumptions to get to “the scientific root of the bacteria”, again underlining the IPC’s emphasis on science and medicine. Containment was another key issue at the conference. The discussion was around what worked best in the plague? Measures like ‘blanket’ quarantines, travel bans, face masks and ad hoc plague hospitals (swiftly assembled to isolate the infected from the healthy), all got a big tick…an endorsement of Dr Wu Lien-teh’s positive measures in the war against the pneumonic epidemic, deemed by the conference delegates as essential tools in the fight against future outbreaks and waves of plague (French).

🔺 The admirable Dr Wu

Seeds of a nationwide public health service
One of the conference’s finest and far-reaching achievements was to establish the Manchurian Plague Prevention Service (under the helm of Dr Wu). The MPPS and Wu identified medical education as the “holy grail”, the service’s role was to disseminate materials to the public, promote the efficacy of sanitary conditions and health in the community, and overall playing a leading role in adopting Western medicine (Xīyào) and methods of disease control in China. MPPS provided the model for a future Chinese national health service (French).

The follow-up to the three-and-a-half week International Plague Conference put Chinese medicine on the path to modernisation. Many of the country’s medical advances began here …. the IPC laid down a blueprint for handling future plagues which included the use of autopsies, instructional dissection and cremation, all of which became institutionalised practice afterwards (Chernin).

Medicine and health before politics
The Mukden IPC in April 1911, conducted in an atmosphere free of politicising, demonstrated the cooperative humanitarian efforts of a group of medical professionals…when left to it by the politicians, they showed single-minded unity of purpose, what could be achieved, collectively and internationally, to counter the danger of a disease with immediate and future global ramifications for public health. I need not emphasise the stark contrast with the management of the world’s current pandemic in which some of the major powers, distracted from the only really important priority, are happy to engage in a ”political blame game” over the coronavirus‘ origins, instead of co-operating with each other to meet a pernicious and deadly health risk to the planet head-on and in unison.
68AB1396-87F8-4C65-85CC-6A6CF4F990FD

Endnote: Lessening future shock
The gains in medicine and public health protection coming out of the conference were soon put to use in China. Disease re-emerged in the 1919 malaria epidemic and the 1921 plague (again in Harbin) which was to test China’s embryonic national quarantine system. Dr Wu again took charge to guide China through these medical crises. The improvements in public health since 1911, it is estimated, reduced casualties in the second outbreak of pneumatic plague by four-fifths [‘Portraits of a plague: the 19th-century pandemic that killed 12 million people’, History Extra, 21-Jul-2015, www.historyextra.com].

Manchuria 1910-1911: North-East China’s End of Empire Frontier Plague

May 5, 2020International Relations, Medical history, Political geography, Public health,, Regional History1st Sino-Japanese War, Boxer Rebellion 1900, Changchun, China Eastern Railway, China famine, Chinese famine 1907, Coronavirus, Dalian/Dairen, Dr Wu Lien-Teh, Fuchiatien, Great Manchurian Plague 1910-11, Harbin, Imperial Railways of North China, Japan’s Manchurian interests, Manzhouli, Mukden, North-East China, Qing Dynasty, Russia’s Manchurian interests, Siberian marmot, South Manchurian Railway, Third Plague Pandemic, Trans-Siberian RailwayE Curb Nottus

In 1910 the 265 year-old Qing Dynasty in China was fasting approaching its denouement. The following year it would be deposed and replaced with a republic. Over the years leading up to this point, Imperial China had been in long drawn-out decline, suffering a series of reversals – a disastrous defeat in the (1st) Sino-Japanese War (1894-95) and ensuing loss of territorial sovereignty in Manchuria; the crushing of the Peking Boxer Rebellion in 1900. In 1907 China had been beset by the latest (and one of the worst) of a series of famines (“Third Plague Pandemic”), losing an estimated 25 million of it’s population. And in late 1910, Manchuria in the midst of a tense political situation—China having to share the region with competing Russian and Japanese aspirations—a plague broke out.

FDA0880F-AA83-4106-9454-5939A414DD1A The plague was first noticed in the Inner Mongolian town of Manzhouli on the Chinese-Russian border, where Russian doctors began treating patients with fever and haemoptysis symptoms. Thus began the Great Manchurian Plague which eventually took up to 60,000 lives in less than six months – with a mortality rate very close to 100 per cent [William C Summers, The Great Manchurian Plague: The Geopolitics of an Epidemic Disease, (2012)].

Vector from the rodent family
Because of a past pattern of bubonic plague in China, rats and fleas were initially suspected to be the source of human infection. 50,000 rats were examined but the results proved negative [CHERNIN, ELI. “Richard Pearson Strong and the Manchurian Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague, 1910–1911.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, vol. 44, no. 3, 1989, pp. 296–319. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24633015. Accessed 5 May 2020]. The disease was eventually traced to the Siberian marmot (Marmota sibirica) or tarbagan, found in Inner Mongolia, eastern Siberia and Heilongjiang. Later research by Dr Wu (see below) and others established that the plague, like the present coronavirus, was pneumonic, transmitted animal to human by respiratory droplets, and not bubonic.

A roaring trade in fake mink
The European fashion for mink and ermine furs can be ‘fingered’ for being at the bottom of the preconditions leading to the 1910 plague. Mink’s popularity as one of the most prized materials for clothing accessories made it’s cost prohibitive to all but the richest Europeans. Things changed when it was discovered that the fur of the marmot when dyed passed very convincingly for mink fur. After the pelt price for marmot fur soared from 12 cents to 72 cents a hide, hordes of Chinese hunters from the central provinces swarmed into the region to join the lucrative hunt for the now in-demand creature. Mongol and Buryat hunters, long experienced in marmot-hunting knew how to select only tarbagan marmots which were not diseased for culling. The inexperienced Chinese trappers however didn’t practice safe hunting methods, failing to discern the difference, they hunted marmots indiscriminately. Thus, the infection was passed on to humans from the pelts of the disease-ridden rodents (Chernin; ‘Manchurian Plague 1910-11’, (Summers; Iain Meiklejohn), Disasterhistory.org, (April 2020), www.disasterhistory.org].

Spreading the plague by rail
Manchuria at the time was equipped with an extensive network of railroads, thanks to the vested interests of the Russians and the Japanese which the Qing Dynasty had, reluctantly, conceded. Russia controlled the Trans-Siberian Railway (TSR) and the China Eastern Railway (CER), Japan controlled the Southern Manchurian Railway (SMR)⌖. The time of the year was an important factor. From November/December, as the weather turned arctic-like, the Chinese hunters and agricultural migrant workers started to return to their home regions. The foremost consideration was to get back before the Chinese New Year. The hunters and the labourers, huddled together infecting each other in the bitter cold of the train carriages, carried the plague along the railway lines. In a short time the plague travelled from its origin point to large cities on the Dongbei line, Harbin, including the central district of Fuchiatien (Fujiandian), Changchun and Mukden (today Shenyang). Compare this to what happened with the coronavirus outbreak which spread from Wuhan to other Chinese cities by airplane.

5EC44B3F-9EA7-477C-8AE9-C2BFEEE17955 In the disease’s wake mortality proceeded at an alarming rate, Harbin in the far north was the initial epicentre. In November 5,272 died in the city. It then spread along the tracks to cities further south, Mukden recorded a death toll of 2,571 by January 1911, and Changchun was losing over 200 a day to the plague (Meiklejohn). The plague was sustained and promoted by the prevailing conditions it encountered – dense population, high human mobility and poor hygiene environments (Cornelia Knab, cited in Meiklejohn). Eventually the plague reached Peking and as far as central China〲.

Enter Dr Wu
The authorities, in desperation, turned to a migrant, Penang-born doctor working at the time in Tianjin, Wu Lien-Teh. Cambridge-educated Wu took immediate charge of the medical emergency in Harbin. Enforcing a strict quarantine in the city, Wu put in place a series of comprehensive measures to contain the disease, including:

● converting railway freight cars to makeshift quarantine centres and turning a bathing establishment into a plague hospital

● establishing “sanitary zones” in the city

● closing down the railways in Manchuria, impose blockades, border controls and so stop infected people from travelling (Wu needed to secure the co-operation of the Russian and Japanese rail companies to achieve this)

● burning the lodgings of those infected

● monitoring the population by checking households for new cases

● advocating the wearing of face masks (Wu had more effective masks with extra gauze padding made)

● carrying out mass cremations of the infected dead (considered a sacrilege in Chinese society, Wu had to petition the emperor for permission)✪

● undertaking post-mortem examinations of the victims (again, a Chinese taboo that Wu had to overcome objections to)✲

Temperature check, Fuchiatien ⟱
(www.Flickr.com)

With no vaccine for pneumatic plague available, Wu’s quarantine measures involved isolating people for a five to ten day period, if no symptoms present, they are released with a wire band attached to their wrist signifying they have been cleared of the disease [‘In 1911, another epidemic swept through China. That time, the world came together’, (Paul French), CNN, 19-Apr-2020, www.cnn.com; ‘The Chinese Doctor Who Beat the Plague’, (Jeremiah Jenne), China Channel, 20-Dec-2018, www.chinachannel.org].

⟱ Old plague hospital, Harbin. When the epidemic was suppressed, the hospital was burnt down to eliminate any residual risk of contamination

(Photo: www.avezink.livejournal.com)

Keeping the ports plague-free
The concerted efforts of Japanese, Russian and Chinese managed to prevent the epidemic from reaching the eastern seaboard. Several towns close to the major port city Dalian reported cases, but Dalian itself (by this time under Japanese control, known as Dairen), initially undertook mass inspections of train and ship passengers, before closing the South Manchurian line altogether. With such strictures in place Dalian was wholly spared from the plague (French). The Russians were able to similarly stem the outbreak’s movement along the CER rail line and stop it from reaching Russia’s vital Pacific port, Vladivostok.

Racing against catastrophe
What added even more pressure to Wu’s task in trying to control the plague was that he was working against a tight deadline. The plague needed to be contained before 30th January which was Chinese New Year’s Eve. Thousands of migrant workers would be returning home to their families for this most important annual celebrations in China via the Manchurian railway network, which Wu knew would make it almost impossible to rein in the outbreak. The conscientious and thorough measures implemented in northern China made it possible for Wu to be able to declare the epidemic virtually suppressed by the end of January. Decisive action in N.E. China also prevented the plague from spreading to near-by (Outer) Mongolia and Russian Siberia. By March all the region’s shops, factories and schools were reopened and the only lingering infection was confined within the specially established plague hospitals (Meiklejohn).

Endnote: Dr Wu
Many Chinese medical personnel including epidemiologists and other physicians contributed to preventing the plague spreading throughout China, and to suppressing it all together within a short period. But if anyone should be called a hero of the Great Manchurian Plague of 1910-11, certainly that mantle should land on Dr Wu Lien-Teh, whose decisive leadership, organisation and enterprise saved China’s North-East provinces from a much higher casualty toll and from the regional plague developing into a nationwide epidemic.

~~꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙꧙~~꧙
⌖ China for it’s part controlled the Imperial Railways of North China, which linked Peking with Mukden

〲 one case was recorded in Shanghai, 2,000 miles away

✪ thousands of bodies were still above ground in coffins because the relatives were waiting for the spring thaw to bury the dead…ideal incubators for the plague bacillus to magnify the contamination [‘Dr Wu Lien-Teh, plague fighter and father of the Chinese public health system’, (Zhongliang Ma & Yanli Li), www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov; Jenne)

✲ Wu performed the first autopsy in Harbin, identifying the disease as the bacterium Yersinia pestis of the pneumonic variant [‘Wu Lieh-Teh: Malaysia’s little-known plague virus fighter’, Star Online, 11-Feb-2020, www.msn.com]

Pandemic Pastimes: Armchair Epidemiology 101 – Curiouser and Curiouser

May 3, 2020Medical history, Popular Culture, Public health,, Science and society, SportArmchair epidemiologists, Britain, Contextual data v dangerous data, Covid-19, Dunning-Kruger Effect, Italy, Pandemic psychology, Pop culture sociology, Social media memes, Sport Deprivation Syndrome (SDS), USAE Curb Nottus

For most of us the coronavirus crisis is, if not all-consuming, at the front and centre of just about everything at the moment. This pandemic, this pandemocracy, is all over social media, and one of the most curious by-products is how the emergence of this novel virus has spawned a novel social media and sociological phenomena called the armchair epidemiologist… instant experts with their own special take on how COVID-19 should be handled, what it’s all really about, the whole thing de-mystified and unravelled in a nutshell. As you will see below, it is unfortunate at this pivotal moment that the practice of responsible social distancing hasn’t always been matched by the practice of responsible social media distancing.

Why is armchair epidemiology a burgeoning sub-industry at the moment? One general explanation lies in the character of the pandemic itself. It’s a troubling time right across the globe, people are naturally anxious about the disease—especially if you are unlucky enough to be living in a country that is one of the major hotspots at the moment—so talking about it can be a calming mechanism of sorts, working it all out in your head so it makes sense. As Noah Feldman neatly puts it, “one way for humans to cope with anxiety is to seek rational mastery over observable phenomena”. This becomes doubly the case in this situation because of the nature of this particular ‘beast’. The lack of “concrete empirical data” on the disease, the shortcomings in the science as it stands now, means that even amongst the genuine experts, uncertainty reigns (‘Will the Armchair Coronavirus Experts Please Sit Down’, Noah Feldman, Bloomberg: Opinion, 25-Mar-2020). The experts have disagreed over which is the correct strategy to follow in the fight to contain the virus, what works, what doesn’t, full lockdowns, “let it rip” herd immunity, whether or not to use face masks, etc✱. Add to this the questionable way some countries have handled their outbreaks—eg, the slowness of for instance Italy, the US and Britain to take decisive steps in the early phase of the pandemic—the result, a critical failure to get on top of COVID-19 before the curve took off on it’s rapid skyward trajectory. Into this void the amateur epidemiologists have been only too happy to step.

Mandatory hibernation: Too much time on their hands? Of course another reason for the house-bound commentariat directing its focus and energies towards the COVID-19 debate, could be sheer boredom. There’s only so much time on any given ‘Groundhog’ day you can spend bingeing on modish, ”must see” television series before you start to suffer mental fatigue and withdrawal symptoms.

(Image: www.rfclipart.com)

Another explanation of Feldman’s that I am taken with is armchair epidemiology expert as a substitute for armchair sport expert. The suburban “Weekend Norms” of the world ritually delight in analysing the games of football and other sports they watch on the ‘box’ and on Fox, but courtesy of the pandemic the sporting calendar is denuded, the presence of live sport on our screens is already a fading memory. The average punter, Feldman suggests, may simply, by necessity, have switched from analysing sport to analysing the coronavirus phenomena (the only game in town!).

(Image: www.geneticliteracyproject.org)

Some observers of the armchair epidemiology contagion have noted an element of the Dunning-Kruger Effect at work here – “a cognitive bias in which people overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific domain” (‘Psychology Today’)◇. This contends that someone’s legitimate expertise in another field “gives them a false sense that their speculation and predictive powers are more informed” than the general person…and thus in this time of global upheaval, they don’t hold back in telling everyone (‘Elon Musk is the Ultimate Armchair Epidemiologist’, Alex Lauer, Inside Hook, 01-May-2020, www.insidehook.com). Tim Requarth’s example are certain Silicon Valley “data wonks” who have produced “superficially convincing but flawed epidemiological analyses” and “sweeping predictions” of the pandemic to arrive at a conclusion that the emergency restrictions are an overreaction, contradicting the advice of public health experts. The criticism of much of the amateur epidemiology indulged in by non-public health professionals is that they tend to throw data round randomly, get the basic principles skew-whiff and make faulty assumptions. Spare us from the “good intentions” of a plague of DK-19 experts! (‘Please, Let’s Stop the Epidemic of Armchair Epidemiology’, Tim Requarth, Slate, 26-Mar-2020, www.slate.com).

⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗⥗

✱ or perhaps, like President Trump, they just don’t trust experts, medical or otherwise

◇ described by one cynic as “people lacking the ability to understand their lack of ability”

Not Missing the Human Touch: Robots Stepping Up in the Time of COVID-19

May 1, 2020Medical history, Public health,, Science and societyChennai, China, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Delivery robots, Drones, Humanoid robots, Japan, Lombardy, Medtech, Northern Italy, Pandemic, Police robots, Robotic engineering, Tokyo, Tunis, UVD robotsfunambulator@live.com

Intelligent design, AI, artificial humanoids, bionic life, androids, cyborgs, have all moved outside of the cloistered environment of the lab and the science fiction genre and are all embracing the day-to-day functions of human existence. Well, perhaps not all of these products of imagination and creativity – but with the restrictions placed on human communication in the all–enveloping cloud of the coronavirus crisis, automatons are the new “white knights” coming to the rescue (or relief) of humans.

The sudden emergence of the pandemic has propelled Medtech companies into the war on COVID-19. Drones as well as robots are being enlisted in the fight, taking the load off medical professionals and health care systems. Delivery robots are used as a way of circumventing the danger of human-to-human contagion. UVD robots are employed to kill viruses and bacteria in rooms to avoid the need for human involvement [‘Robots And Drones Are Now Used To Fight COVID-19’, (Bernard Marr), Forbes, 18-Mar-2020, www.forbes.com].

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‘Xenex’ Germ-zapping robots (CBS News)

As healthcare experts and governments search for the optimum strategy to contain and suppress the coronavirus outbreak, other intelligent humans are finding new applications and roles for intelligent non-humans in the health emergency crisis. It starts, appropriately enough for a public health disaster, at the medical coal face, in the ICU wards where doctors and nurses have been overwhelmed, physically and emotionally, with the skyrocketing workload of coronavirus-affected patients. In Lombardy in northern Italy, one of the first hotspots of the pandemic outside of China, six robot nurses have been fast-tracked into hospital service in Varese where they help lighten the human nurses’ face-to-face load and reduce their risk of personal infection. The robots man the wards, monitor the medical equipment and communicate remotely with doctors. Similarly in India, at a hospital in Chennai, ‘Zafi’ the robot does the rounds, transporting food and medicine to virus patients to lessen the risk to hospital medical staff [‘Tommy the robot nurse helps keep Italian doctors safe from coronavirus’, (Flavio LoScalzo), Reuters, 02-Apr-2020, www.reuters.com].

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Pepper the robot (Photo: Reuters)

Japan is using humanoid robots as reception staff at hotels to greet patients with mild coronavirus symptoms. Robots like ‘Pepper’ at Kyogoku in Tokyo greet arriving patients and instruct them how to check-in while reassuring them with warm and positive messages [‘Pepper the robot set to greet COVID-19 patients checking in Tokyo hotels’, Hindustan Times, 01-May-2020, www.hidustantimes.com].

F7B63809-366E-419A-841C-4877B4C8EB38

With the need for pristine clean surfaces in public spaces to prevent the spread of the virus outbreak, a number of countries now employ robots as cleaners. At Hong Kong International Airport autonomous cleaning robots known as “Intelligent Sterilisation Robots” use UV light and air sterilisers to routinely clean and disinfect key operational areas of the airport [‘Clean me up, Scotty: Hong Kong airport debuts cleaning robots, disinfection booth in fight against COVID-19’, Coconuts, 30-Apr-2020, www.msn.com].

Such medical uses of robots have been replicated across a range of countries hit by the pandemic. With people confined to their homes under quarantine orders and required to maintain a distance of at least 150 cm from other humans, robots on wheels are being increasingly used to deliver products to them, or to deliver food to overworked NHS workers (Britain).

317FA68A-0615-4E8A-BE14-D5F386CF4125
(Photo: www.uk.news.yahoo.com)

Singapore has brought into service a robot with the decidedly unsexy name of “O-R3”, whose job it is to patrol the city’s parks and monitor the behaviour of joggers. This ever vigilant robot spots transgressors and warns them about the need to practice social distancing in public [‘Robot in Singapore tells joggers to stay home’, SBS, 28-Apr-2020, www.sbs.com.au]. Joggers and walkers in Singapore need to ultra-alert around the parks as the city has a second social distancing-monitor robot, Boston-built Spot the robotic dog (Robocop?)…if O-R3 doesn’t nap the violators, Spot (below) might.

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(Photo: CNA)

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Tunisia’s ‘Robocop’ looks more like a military style armoured vehicle (Photo: AFP)

Tunisian authorities have had a similar idea to curtail the incidence of virus infection in the capital Tunis. The police have been using a robot (a ‘Robocop’) who ‘walks’ the city beats, stopping and questioning people who it suspects should not be on the streets during lockdown. The Robocop asks people to produce their IDs which can be scanned by the robot’s in-built computer [‘Coronavirus: Tunisia deploys police robot on lockdown patrol’, (Rana Jawad), BBC News, (03-Apr-2020), www.bbcnews.com].

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Robot Cop (Source: The Hindu)

Chennai Police (southern India) are on the same wavelength as Tunis’, deploying it’s new “Robot Cop LD v5.0” equipped with a two-way intercom to surveil citizens in coronavirus hotspots in the city during containment. The Robot Cop is un-humanoid in appearance and has been described as “an oversized box on wheels” [‘Chennai Police Deploys “Robot Cop” in COVID-19 Hotspot’, (Kishalaya Kundu), Beebom, 01-May-2020, www.beebom.com].

2B4E0997-28E8-41CD-BC77-D94201400F01
(Photo: BBT University)

Robotic engineers in Japan have produced avatar robots who can stand in for university graduands in virtual graduation ceremonies. BBT University in Tokyo uses ‘newme’ robots dressed in black graduation gowns and caps with mobile screens showing the student’s face attached to a motherboard. The robot proxies line up to be officially presented with a testamur by the university president while the actual graduate watches via Zoom from a safe distance at home [‘BBT University in Japan has graduates attend ceremonies via robots in light of Covid-19’, (Guan Zhen Tan), Mothership, 02-Apr-2020, www.mothership.sg].

The National Health Emergency ‘Tyranny’: The Lockdown Through Libertarian Eyes

April 27, 2020Medical history, National politics, Politics, Society & Culture“Rust-belt” states of the Midwest, American Tea Party, Betsy DeVos, Civil disobedience and tyranny, Coronavirus, Disease mortality V economic devastation, Donald J Trump, Federal V states’ rights, First Amendment, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Gov. Kristi Noem, Gov. Ron DeSantis, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Libertarianism, Michigan state, National epidemic, Operation Gridlock, Red states V Blue states, The ‘Republican’ South, Vietnam WarSloane Snodgrasse

The majority of countries where coronavirus infection rates have experienced an upward curve have resorted to locking down the community to varying degrees. In the USA, more than elsewhere, this has tested the faith of those of a libertarian disposition. In recent weeks we have seen the mega-massive jolt to the economy and enforced closures of businesses resulting in millions of workers finding themselves in the dole queues. Many libertarians, albeit with reluctance, accept the inevitability of the present state intervention as the only means available of providing the fiscal stimulus to keep people and businesses afloat.

Its when it comes to the matter of mandatory quarantine as a counter-virus measure, then the issue becomes more thorny for libertarians. The classic libertarian position would see voluntary self-isolation as the ideal solution in an ideal (ie, libertarian) world… compulsory quarantine is the last resort to them. Some of a libertarian mind would reject it outright – on ideological grounds, while also claiming it to be an ineffective measure as a social curative. Others accept it as a legitimate move given the uniqueness of the Covid-19 crisis situation, but with a very clear rider that the measures taken need to be temporary only. As shown below, this aspect of libertarianism is a “hot-button” issue currently for many in the US with skin in the game [‘What libertarians would do in response to coronavirus’, (Bonnie Kristian), The Week, 13-Mar-2020, www.theweek.com].

77219ACF-02F8-44A2-BD57-C9B96FAF1226 — *Gadsden flag: associated with libertarianism & the American Tea Party*

Social distancing as an imposed, mandated practice during the pandemic, fails the libertarian test. The pure libertarian much prefers to see voluntary compliance by the individual, in the expectation (or hope) that most people will ultimately do the right thing [‘Libertarianism and the Coronavirus Pandemic’, (Andy Craig), Cato Institute, 25-Mar-2020, www.cato.com]. Accordingly, a small minority of US states (five?) have not enforced the distancing and stay-at-home edicts, their leaders pledging to hold fast to the “sacred liberties” of their citizenries. But most everywhere else the pandemic has hit, certainly in urban areas, the civil authorities have gone for some form of lockdown.

Escape from Lockdown 13
For the average “Joe and Joanna Citizen” in Main Street, Anywheresville, being locked down inside four walls indefinitely is one of the hardest things to cop. For most people “cabin fever” will inevitably set in…confined at home, unable to congregate and socialise in cafes, eateries and bars with friends and colleagues or do road trips. In First World societies such as the US, Western Europe or the Commonwealth of Nations, freedom of movement is such an inherently natural expectation, once deprived, resistance to these rigid controls can reach a tipping point which easily spills over into increasingly bold attempts to subvert or defy the government’s edicts. Recently we have witnessed this perhaps at its apogee in the Midwest and Southern states of the US. Protest groups, the new scofflaws of Trumpian America, have mushroomed in particular in “rust-belt” states such as Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia✷.

6AAAB648-00F5-4BC3-B466-97729CE4274D — Pro–Trump demonstrators trying to intimidate Democrat Gov. Whitmer (photo: AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

As the lockdowns extend from weeks into months bunches of pro-Republican conservatives∎ have more and more blatantly violated the stay-at-home orders of mostly Democratic governors (in contrast serving GOP governors like South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, continue to play the libertarian card, steadfastly refusing to implement a stay-at-home order regardless of virus outbreaks within the state). For the protesters, egged on by the schizophrenic tweets❂ of President Trump, a call to “Liberate Michigan” (Virginia, etc) and amplified by the Fox press, one prime target of their vitriol has been Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer who has mandated a strict ”stay home, stay safe” executive order to counteract the virus. This month organised gatherings of protesters have assembled outside the Capitol building and the governor’s home, flaunting the restrictions and demonstrating their displeasure at Whitmer’s policies. Some of the dissenters have been armed with AR-15s and AK-47s, very few wearing face masks but brandishing Confederate and Gadsden flags and even Nazi emblems (loosely equating the state “governor/tyrant” with Nazis). Some protesters have held up signs such as “The cure is worse than the virus” (which, if you have watched the president’s coronavirus press briefings ‘sideshow’, has a faintly familiar ring to it).

(Photo: REUTERS/Alyson McClaran)

This orchestrated “Operation Gridlock”, in Michigan and elsewhere, is organised by a conservative patriot/militia group with connexions to Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos. One of its objectives (successful) was to grind city centre traffic down to a standstill, including the blocking of ambulances conveying patients. Protesters in various states have also tried to intimidate health workers engaged in the frontline of the fight against the pandemic. So far Whitmer has remained resolute in maintaining a strict state lockdown, pointing to the gravity of the state’s health predicament (Michigan has had 37,778 confirmed cases and 3,315 deaths due to coronavirus, as at 27-April-2020) [‘Conservative group linked to DeVos family organises protest of coronavirus restrictions in Michigan’, (Igor Derbyshire), Salon, 16-Apr-2020, www.salon.com; ‘Trump Supporters Are Staging Armed Protests to Stick it to Coronavirus’, (Caleb Ecarma), Vanity Fair, 16-Apr-2020, www.vanityfair.com].

🔻 Gov. Whitmer (Photo: U.S. News & World)

What’s motivating the scofflaw behaviour?
Researchers at the University of Maryland have concluded that “quarantine fatigue” has set in. Increasing numbers of fed-up or plain bored Americans are venturing outside of “the box” in defiance of state stay-at-home orders. Many of these are exercising, or as the weather gets warmer, going to the beach (most of the escapees are doing these things without bothering to practice safe distancing)⌖ [‘Quarantine fatigue is setting in: Smartphone data shows thousands are fed up after weeks under lockdown’, (Ralph R Ortega), Daily Mail, 27-Apr-2020, www.dailymail.com].

The inalienable right to be ‘selective’
The gatherings of those discontented with the status quo in America have exercised their right to protest against their state’s political leaders. Interestingly, their decision to protest on this occasion, as has been noted, does not signify their endorsement of the right to protest per se – a perfectly admirable and consistent libertarian trait. Previously when sectors of the Left in America took to protesting issues such as climate change and police brutality, these Right-wing elements were vigorously supporting the conservative politicians’ endeavours to bring in legislation to outlaw protests [’The hypocrisy of the anti-lockdown protests’, (Anthony L Fisher), Business Insider Australia, 22-Apr-2020, www.businessinsider.com.au].

🔺The ‘tyranny’ avengers
(Photo: Nikolaus Kama/AFP via Getty Images)

These insurrectionists and those who facilitate and encourage them, argue that they are motivated, nay compelled, by the (temporary) loss of their basic liberties… evoking the First Amendment and the Founding Fathers, they portray Whitmer and other governors as tyrants, preventing their right to come and go as they wish, to work and leisure untrammelled. Thus, it comes back to that same nub at the core of libertarian values, the right to do as one pleases — (with the rider)…so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. This added qualifier is fundamental to the credo of libertarian theory.

“Inviolable freedom”…so long as it doesn’t harm harm anyone else
The casualty toll of the Covid-19 health crisis in the US—the worse in the world by far—is rapidly overtaking that of the total of American lives lost in the ten-years of the Vietnam War. Disproportionally, the pandemic everywhere is killing the older and the most vulnerable, people with co-morbidities. Coronavirus, the epidemiologists have shown us, is transmitted from a human host to a human recipient, the more people interacting with each other, the more likelihood of transmission, the greater the incidence of morbidity and mortality from the virus, simple as that!

An unavoidable trade-off
The temporary suspension of liberties is the price to pay to preserve lives. Yes, the measures are inconveniences and hardships on individuals, but they’ve been imposed on the population for a health safety reason – the greater good of the community and the health of all. Yes, the libertarians have some grounds to quibble, a few of the measures taken have been over-the-top and seem disproportionate. Even Gov. Whitmer, a rising Democrat star on the national political scene, has at times pulled the wrong rein (eg, barring people from purchasing garden equipment and baby restrainers for cars seems to be over-zealous) [‘Quarantine Protesters Are No Heroes of Civil Disobedience’, (Jonah Goldberg), National Review, 22-Apr-2020, www.nationalreview.com].

🔺 Colorado protesters visualising a totalitarian pivot by their governor?
(Photo: AP)

FN: Heat in the kitchen
Democrat governors in “swing states” like Gov. Whitmer—caught in a pincer of intimidatory Scofflaw defiance, demands from business to re-open and constant sniping from a divisive chief executive at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave—are not the only ones feeling the mounting pressure of the moment. Florida’s GOP governor, Ron DeSantis, has copped plenty of flak himself. He was very late in issuing stay-at-home orders, having rejected calls to close Florida’s crowded beaches, citing the libertarian manta of free choice. When the lockdown finally came, church services got a “go free” card from the restrictions. Consequently, the state’s coronavirus ‘scorecard’ is now 32,138 confirmed cases and 1,088 deaths (27-April-2020). The current virus “hot spots” in Florida don’t augur well for a lifting of it’s restrictions any time soon. On top of this gloomy prognosis, Florida, being a ‘bellwether’ state, Trump will be expecting DeSantis to deliver it to the Republicans in the November elections [‘Anti-quarantine protests, Trump pressure on governors on political tightrope over coronavirus’, (Deidre Shesgreen & Maureen Groppe), USA Today, 23-Apr-2020, www.amp.usatoday.com].

~~⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿~~

✷ the protests have by no means been confined to these states – such happenings have been increasingly the done thing from Pennsylvania to Nebraska to California. Nor have lockdown protests been confined to America, ‘Berlin police anti-lockdown protestors accusing Angela Merkel of “banning life”’, SBS News, 25-Apr-2020, www.sbsnews.com.au
∎ the same kind of pro-Trump people that Hillary Clinton (unwisely) labelled a “basket of deplorables” in the 2016 presidential campaign
❂ ”schizophrenic” because at the same time the president at his daily podium is officially asking Americans to adhere to the prescribed Covid-19 safety measures
⌖ there’s obviously other underlying factors in the tendency towards civil disobedience in Midwestern states and perhaps more so in the South – greater religiosity (and associated with that) scepticism towards scientific evidence and government experts, and even the “Siamese twins” attachment of many Americans to car culture (especially in suburbia and rural regions), ‘The American South has resisted social distancing measures — and we’re all going to pay the price’, Raw Story, 03-Apr-2020, www.rawstory.com

Behind the 24–Hour Cycle Coronavirus Counts, How well do the Numbers Stack up?

April 24, 2020International Relations, Media & Communications, Medical history, Natural Environment, Politics, Public health,Africa, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, China, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Global health statistics, Harvard University, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Russia, South-East Asia, Soviet Union, WHO, World oil price 2020funambulator@live.com

Every day we are reminded of the global reach of the novel coronavirus crisis. We know it’s a pandemic because WHO and other health agencies publish data showing that 211 countries and territories have been affected by the disease. The international media coverage tends to focus largely on the unenviable “big five” chart-toppers who have been most affected – the US, Italy, Spain, France and the UK. A number of sites publish constantly updated lists of the growing toll of Covid-19 casualties, a sort of sombre “score card” listing all the countries who have recorded instances of the disease.

Confirmed Coronavirus Cases: Globally tracked, country-by-country – as @ 23-Apr-2020

Country	Total cases	Total deaths	Region
USA	850,000	47,700	Americas
Italy	188,000	25,500	Western Europe
Spain	208,500	21,750	Western Europe
France	160,000	21,500	Western Europe
UK	134,000	18,300	Western Europe

Sources: WHO http://covid19.who.int/;
http://worldometers.info/

When we scroll through the world tables of where the pandemic has landed, it’s instructive to look at the comparative totals by continent – Europe has a bit over 1.28 million confirmed cases recorded, and the Americas, 995,510 (predominantly from the US), compare these to South-East Asia, a bit more than 38,572 and Africa, a mere 18,234 cases✺✺.

(Source: www.vietnamcredit.com.vn)

From a statistical standpoint we might wonder if the published data gives a true impression of the extent of of the pandemic? It needs to be kept in mind that the numbers we have are those that have been reported to the World Health Organisation. Population differences aside, it is clear that the low numbers in South-East Asia and Africa (examples: Cambodia 122 cases, zero fatalities✺✺, Myanmar 139 cases, five fatalities✺✺, Ghana 1,279 cases, 10 fatalities✺✺, Ethiopia 117 cases, three fatalities✺✺) mask the full impact of the catastrophe. They are a product of limited testing by countries in these regions … widespread poverty, surplus populations, lack of resources and infrastructure mitigate against the capacity to take corrective, safety monitoring measures.

(Photo: www.theborneopost.com)

Limited testing capacity and weak surveillance
The small numbers of recorded cases and handful of reported deaths in Africa and S.E. Asia (the Caribbean is another such case in point) can engender a false security and justify a lack of action by such already economically and health-challenged countries, thus the risk of infections spreading is magnified. In the early phases of the outbreak some S.E. Asian states were slow to acknowledge the risks…even as late as mid-March, Myanmar’s government was still attributing it’s low number of cases to the superior “lifestyle and diet” of the locals. The fight against Covid-19 by Third World countries is further retarded by a failure to test widely and in the numbers necessitated by the crisis. It shouldn’t be overlooked that some of these countries have quite repressive regimes that don’t rank the goal of a universal healthcare system as their highest priority [‘Experts Doubt Low Coronavirus Counts of Some Southeast Asian Countries’, (Zsombor Peter), VOA, 29-Mar-2020, www.voanews.com].

(Photo: www.upnews.info.com)

For the bulk of African countries the story is similar. A by-product of their lack of development is that their health systems are fragile before the onset of coronavirus hits them. Awareness of the inability to cope with a full-blown health crisis, had led some leaders to advocate so-called “miracle cures” for the virus (eg, Madagascar’s president’s championing of untested traditional plant remedies). Nigeria (Africa’s largest nation by population) shows only 981 confirmed cases and 31 deaths✺✺ to date but is looking as vulnerable as anyone in Africa. Oil exports are the hub of Nigeria’s economy and the fall of the world’s crude oil price to a record low will hamstrung the country’s efforts to contain any future eruptions of the disease [‘Coronavirus: How drop in oil price affects Nigeria’s economy’, (Michael Eboh), Vanguard, 17-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com]. The outbreak of pandemic hotspots in Nigeria could be devastating, especially in the north, given the country’s population of nearly 200 million people and it’s inadequate healthcare capacity⋉.

(Photo: www.newswirenow.com)

Too good to be …
Some countries have reported being lightly or relatively lightly touched by the onslaught of the coronavirus, these results have surprised outside observers. One such country that raises eyebrows in this respect is Russia. The republic has 146 million people and shares long borders with China⤱, yet it fesses up to having had only 68,622 cases✺✺ (well under half of that of the UK) and suffered only a comparatively low 615 deaths✺✺ from the epidemic (most of those since the start of April). If you cast aside the anomalies, on paper it’s an excellent result! But whether Soviet or post-Soviet, there’s always an air of suspicious doubt about Russian information. The Russian Bear has had form in the past with cover-ups…a prime example—the Soviet Union throwing a tarpaulin over the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the 1980s —indicative of a less than honest response to major disasters [‘The Very Low Number of Russia’s Reported COVID-19 Cases Raises Questions of a Cover-Up’, (Rick Moran), PJ Media, 22-Mar-2020, www.pjmedia.com].

Image: www.asianews.it

Russia, if it so erred, is not “Robinson Crusoe” in deliberately underreporting the pandemic’s effect. China for nearly three months from the initial outbreak didn’t include asymptomatic patients in the official stats, and only rectified this oversight on April Fools Day [‘China acknowledges underreporting coronavirus cases in official count’, (Mark Moore), New York Post, 01-Apr-2001, www.nypost.com]. For six weeks after WHO declared a global health emergency Indonesia did not report a single Covid-19 case (unlike most of it’s S.E. Asian neighbours). Considering the republic’s population size (more than 270 million) and it’s close links with China, this aroused widespread suspicion of underreporting and criticism in a Harvard University study which seemed to belatedly jolt Indonesia into disclosure. The first notification by Djakarta of coronavirus cases occurred on 2nd March, and from then on Indonesia’s curve has been on an upward trajectory – currently 8,211 cases, 689 deaths✺✺ [‘Why are there no reported cases of coronavirus in Indonesia?’, (Randy Mulyanto & Febriana Firdaus), Aljazeera, 18-Feb-2020, www.aljazeera.com].

Doubting a hermetically-sealed “Hermit Kingdom”
North-East Asia’s renegade, secretive state, North Korea, can be added to the list of countries purporting to be Covid-19–free. Pyongyang‘s official line has been met with disbelief from several external sources such as South Korea and Radio Free Europe which asserts that disclosures from within North Korean military circles confirm the occurrence of coronavirus cases in the border areas [‘What Is the Coronavirus Doing to North Korea’, (Nicholas Eberstadt), New York Times, 22-Apr-2020, www.nytimes.com]

Addendum: (Coronavirus as @ 0130 hrs EAT time, 25-April-2020)
USA 890,200 cases | 50,403 deaths
Italy 189,973 cases | 25,549 deaths
Spain 219,764 cases | 22,524 deaths
France 158,183 cases | 21,856 deaths
UK 143,464 cases | 19,506 deaths

໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱

✺✺ figures as @ 0130 hrs EAT time, 25-Apr-2020

⋉ just over the last week the African continent experienced a sudden surge in infections, ‘Africa’s 43% jump in virus cases in 1 week worries experts’, (Gerard Zim Rae), ABC News, 23-Apr-2020, www.abcnews.go.com

⤱ although Russia did close its eastern border with China after the virus breakout

Revisiting the Coronavirus Origin Theories

April 19, 2020Medical history, Natural Environment, Public health,, Regional History, Science and society2019 Wuhan Military Games, Bat transmission, Bill Gates, Chinese pangolin theory, Conspiracy theories, Covid-19, Donald J Trump, Fox News, Hua’nan markets, Hubei province, MERS 2009, Pangolin transmission to humans, SARS 2003, US media, WHO, Wuhan, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Zoonotic origin of Coronavirusfunambulator@live.com

(Image: KPBS)

China notified the World Health Organisation on 31 December 2019 of a series of “pneumonia-like” cases popping up in Wuhan, however it took some time for peripheral parts of the country to get wind of the burgeoning health crisis. Information from the government, when it did come, was pretty sketchy in the early stages of the outbreak. Soon after Chinese migrant workers began returning home from Wuhan, rumours of what might have caused the virus started to circulate in the regions.

Zoonotic source
As the infection rates in Wuhan and Hubei province started to steeple in early February, there was lots of speculations about animal transmission to coronavirus’ “Patient Zero”. Civets, snakes, seafood, wolf cubs, rats—all live wildlife sold at the Wuhan ‘wet’ markets—got mentions as possible candidates for transmission. The story most heard and retold at the time was that it was bats that had transmitted the pathogen to humans at the Hua’nan markets⌧ (‘How It All Started: China’s Early Coronavirus Missteps’, (J Page, WX Fan & N Khan), WSJ, 06-Mar-2020), www.wsj.com). The Rhinolophus bat (Horseshoe bat) has been identified as the specific type of bat likely to have carried the infection (‘Coronavirus animal origin’, Crikey, 16-Apr-2020, www.crickey.com.au). A few weeks later there was a new prime suspect – the pangolin, the world’s most trafficked mammal. Chinese virologists⚘ had traced the virus to pangolins being sold at those same seafood markets in Wuhan (‘Mystery deepens over animal source of coronavirus’, (David Cyrenoski), Nature, 26-Feb-2020, www.nature.com).

(Image: Frans Lanting / National Geographic)

The inevitable conspiracy theories: Genetically-engineered virus
Since February China and the US have exchanged accusations that Covid-19 was deliberately created as a biological weapon—all without foundation (‘No, COVID-19 Coronavirus Was Not Bioengineered. Here’s The Research That Debunks That Idea’, (Bruce Y Lee), Forbes, 17-Mar-2020, www.forbes.com). Chinese officials have also made the wild claim that the US Army brought the virus to Wuhan when it participated in the Military Games in the city in October last year.

🔺 Wuhan markets (Photo: NOEL CELIS /AFP via Getty Images)

Over the last couple of months, another story disseminated by southern Republicans has been doing the rounds of the conservative media in America. It espouses the view that coronavirus originated not from a wet market but from a biosafety lab in Wuhan (Wuhan Institute of Virology), from an accidental leakage. Again this view is bereft of any hard evidence to support it but this hasn’t stopped President Trump and his allies at Fox from seizing on it!✱ (“’Biological Chernobyl’: How China’s secrecy fueled coronavirus suspicions”, (Q Forgey, D Lippmann, N Bertrand & L Morello), Politico, 17-Apr-2020, www.politico.com).

While Covid-19 continues to wreak its trail of carnage worldwide, media and social media platforms will no doubt continue to throw up theories about the causes but until China releases the clinical and epidemiological data on the Wuhan outbreak, the pandemic’s precise origin cannot be scientifically determined (Politico). 3747AFE1-BAC3-4B1C-8F33-BF283C622CD2

🔺 Exporting America’s homegrown “Gates-gate”conspiracy – ‘Covidiocy‘ to Melbourne
(Photo: AAP/Ricky Barbour)

______________________________________________
⌧ bats are major reservoirs of many viruses, and prevalent in both the SARS and MERS outbreaks
⚘ scientific evidence for the pangolin as the culprit is based on a high match of its genome sequencing with that of SARS-CoV-2, however the research remains unpublished and therefore unreviewed; it is thought that pangolins may have been intermediate hosts for the disease …
bat ⇝ pangolin ⇝ human
✱ these are only the less implausible theories, a raft of other ludicrous and wacky conspiratorial notions have been floated purporting to explain the epidemic’s genesis – ranging from Bill Gates having manufactured the virus to establish himself as the ‘Czar’ of US health care, to Covid-19 being caused by the installation of the 5G cellphone network (‘Coronavirus spawns conspiracy theories’, (David Knowles), Yahoo!news, 18-Apr-2020, www.yahoonews.com)

Covid/Ovid 2020: Crisis (Mis)Management – How the World’s Leaders are Responding?

April 2, 2020Media & Communications, Medical history, Natural Environment, PoliticsAndrew Cuomo, Angela Merkel, Belarus, Boris Johnson, Brazil, Coronavirus 2020, Covid-19, Donald Trump, Gavin Newsom, Germany v Italy, Herd immunity, Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro, Jay Inslee, López Obrador, Mexico, President Berdymukhamedov, Radio Free Europe, Religious Right (US), Reporters Without Borders, Rise in Authoritarianism, SARS Epidemic 2003, Sweden, Swine Flu 2009, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Viktor Orbán, White HouseE Curb Nottus

Lockdown immediately, quarantine everyone, isolate the virus? Close the borders! Go hard, go fast! Make haste slowly! Laissez-faire? Test as many as you can! Watch and wait, hold off, preserve the economy, keep people working! Half/half?Herd immunity? As the experts—both recognised and putative—come out of the woodwork, a plethora of different approaches to the 21st century’s greatest crisis are thrown up, causing ever deeper descent into confusion for those of us watching from the sidelines.

Sweden: Personal responsibility to do the right thing, fingers and toes crossed
At one extreme there’s the “hands-off” non-interventionist line adopted by Sweden…”a relatively relaxed strategy, seemingly assuming that overreaction is more harmful than under-reaction” – in other words, keep calm and carry on. The Swedish government’s goal being to build up a “herd immunity” of the population to (they hope) forestall further waves of infection. The blueprint involves letting the virus spread slowly while sheltering the old and weakest elements of society until the bulk of the population become naturally immune. So schools, restaurants, bars and gyms remain open, all places that many other countries have ’hot-spotted’ as potential petri dishes (to use of the media’s current favourite buzzword in the virus crisis). Critics of the Swedish voluntary approach have stressed the risks it is exposing itself to – a danger of overwhelming the health system’s capability and precipitating large numbers of premature deaths [‘Inside Sweden’s Radically Different Approach to the Coronavirus’, (Bojan Pancevski), Wall Street Journal, 30-Mar-2020, www.wsj.com; ‘Sweden under fire for ‘relaxed’ coronavirus approach – here’s the science behind it’, The Conversation, (PW Frank & PM Nilsson), 30-Mar-2020, www.mamamia.com.au]. While Sweden persists in it’s “long game”, Sweden’s death toll from coronavirus has reached 239❈, a far-from-inconsequential figure for a small population nation like Sweden (and more than double the next highest total of fatalities in the Nordic region, that of Denmark). Not happy, Scandinavian neighbours of Sweden!

🔺 Boris in isolation – self-sacrificing crash-test dummy for the nation, gauging the coronavirus level of virulence: “taking one for the nation!” (Picture: No 10 Downing Street/AFP)

Boris, not dancing
The UK government in the early stages of the crisis, along with the Netherlands, flirted with adopting Sweden’s herd immunity approach, but subsequently (and belatedly) opted for lockdown. The UK number of cases and mortality rates continue to rise alarmingly (2,352 dead❈) and it’s citizens can draw little reassurance from the antics of its erratic Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson. At the onset the insouciant Johnson downplayed the epidemic and declared that he was all for shaking hands with as many people as he could (his Churchillian bluff AKA confidence-building strategy?) This didn’t prove a good move, personally for the prime minister, as he was soon struck down with the virus (recalling wistfully whilst in self-quarantine that shaking hands with some people at a hospital, who with hindsight probably had coronavirus, probably wasn’t a good idea).

(Photo: AP)

China’s southern neighbours
Taiwan and Singapore both got early warning of the outbreak in China, which helped them get an early start on their countries’ protective measures. Taiwan, at the get-go, posted health workers at airports – incoming passengers from Wuhan (the virus’ origin-point) were checked for symptoms before they exited the planes. Singapore on January 3, inside four days of China’s notification to WHO of an unknown virus, which later was confirmed to be the COVID pathogen, was temperature screening passengers arriving from Wuhan. Taiwan and Singapore were also in a better state of preparedness (than say northern Asian countries bordering China like South Korea and Japan which initially struggled with their respective outbreaks) The two southeast Asian micro-states had learned invaluable lessons from the 2003 SARS and the 2009 swine epidemics. That the Singaporean and Taiwanese governments were upfront and transparent with the public, also got everyone in society quickly on board with the “national project”. The death toll for both Taiwan and Singapore stands well short of double figures❈ [‘How Taiwan and Singapore Have Contained the Coronavirus’, (Chloe Hadavas), Slate, 11-Mar-2020, www.slate.com].

(Photo: AP)

Continental contrast
The European comparison of how different countries have handled the virus focuses largely on a Germany v Italy correlation – unfortunately to the great disadvantage of the latter. Angela Merkel and Germany have been able to restrict their coronavirus fatalities thus far to 931❈, compared to Italy’s out-of-control, frighteningly catastrophic 13,155 deaths❈. The reasons for the size of discrepancy are manifold. First as with Taiwan Germany was ready at the outset, comparatively Italy wasn’t. Germany went to social distancing and lockdown early while Italy prevaricated, and Italy was also slow to seal it’s borders. Anticipation paid off for Germany, it had developed a favourable type of test for the virus before it hit. They then tested fast and widely. Italy was slower off the mark, and it’s testing regime was (and is) half or less that of Germany’s capacity. Integral to Germany’s edge is its medical infrastructure, the ratios are stark: Germany has 33.9 hospital beds for every 100,000 of population, cf. Italy, only 8.6 per 100,000. So, by the time Italy got its testing into full swing, the country was swamped with way too many corona-patients requiring critical and urgent treatment. Italy’s age demographic, skewed towards the geriatric end of the scale (second oldest population in the world after Japan) was also a decisive factor in the extremely high mortality rates it has experienced [‘How one country got months ahead of its neighbours in coronavirus fight’, (AP), Yahoo!News, 02-Apr-2020].

Life on Planet Trump
In the US a reasonable expectation the citizens of the world’s leading democratic-capitalist state might normally entertain in such a disastrous crisis, would be to have mature, insightful national leadership. Instead, they have Trump! Countless reems of pages of news-copy have been wasted on the US president, but to briefly summarise his Covid-19 performance: at the start in January we got the glib and blasé Trump – “the virus was one person coming from China and we’ve got it under control”; by February it was, we had “pretty much shut it down” (somehow he thought it was over before it had hardly started taking root!?!); next he opined “warm weather will kill it in April”; “the numbers are going down” (said after public health officials had advised the White House that the virus was spreading); by late February it was “we have lost nobody to coronavirus” (there had already been US fatalities). In March Trump, rebuked for repeatedly spreading misinformation, resorted to “it’s the Democrats’ new hoax”; then, “it will disappear one day – like a miracle!” which perhaps demonstrates one of Trump’s rare threads of consistency, drawing a link to the president’s later assertion (completely tone-deaf to the message of social distancing and ignorant of realistic timeframes) that he wanted to see the churches in America full at Easter!✪ [‘Coming Soon: Donald Trump As the Hero of COVID-19”, (Richard North Patterson), The Bulwark, 23-Mar-2020, www.thebulwurk.com].

🔺 Trump impersonating a giant bully rabbit (Photo: CBS News)

Perhaps the most striking and alarming example of Trump’s off-the-cuff and off-the-rails raves is his wilful and flagrant ignoring of the professional advice of his top medical advisers, eg, “anyone who wants a test can have one” (wrong); “we’ll have vaccines relatively soon…they’re coming” (even the non-scientific layperson knows it will take at least one to one-and-a-half years to be publicly available); “we have tremendous control of the virus”, completely contradicting Dr Fauci’s starkly realistic warning that the worst is ahead of us. The consequences of Trump’s disregarding scientific truths provided by medical experts in favour of convenient misinformation has been downright dangerous. His advocacy of an unproven coronavirus treatment (chloroquine phosphate) still being scientifically reviewed was a causal factor leading to the death of a man who tried to self-medicate using the ‘treatment’.

Trump, master of the ad hominem at the lectern, recently on TV seems bored with the subject, maybe looking round for a new focus (Iran?). Trump as president takes no responsibility. When he should be uniting all the key cogs in a coherent national response to the corona-crisis which is killing hundreds of Americans every day, he has been his divisive worst, brawling with the media, attacking medical workers for supposedly hoarding supplies, shifting blame to state governors. Fortunately, governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom and Washington’s Jay Inslee, recognising the gaping gap in leadership and the lack of support coming from the White House, have risen to the mammoth and increasingly desperate challenge facing the country and taken the lead in the crisis [‘History’s verdict on Trump will be devastating’, (Michael D’Antonio), CNN, 30-Mar-2020, www.cnn.com].

(Photo: Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The “Trump of the Tropics”
Trump’s abject performance, his “epochal incompetence” (to quote Michael D’Antonio), in the crisis, is bad enough for the risks he has exposed Americans to, but his influence as a “role model” for far-right leaders in other countries, is helping to undermine those countries’ fight against the virus. One such leader is Brazil’s authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro who expresses profound admiration for Trump (hence his nickname above), whose skepticism for the virus’ threat Bolsonaro mirrors. Bolsonaro has publicly dismissed the coronavirus as “a little cold”, refuses to isolate and continues to attend public events, irresponsibly mingling with crowds of his supporters, shaking hands with all❖. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has tended to “flip-flop” on the epidemic, lunging erratically from urging Brazilians to show caution in avoiding transmission of the disease (do as I say, not do as I do!) to calling for an end to the quarantine restrictions and removal of the shackles on the economy.

When confronted with the danger of the virus to Brazilian society, Bolsonaro rivals Trump in loopy explanations, eg, Brazilians possess a “natural immunity” which means that they cannot be infected by diseases❅ (part of the Bolsonaro fantasy playbook!) So far, despite these unique ‘antibodies’ claimed by Bolsonaro, some 244 Brazilians have died from coronavirus❈. The Brazilian president has also exhibited the Trump trait of disbelieving the medical experts and the official statistics. When São Paulo recorded a sharp spike in deaths from the virus, Bolsonaro was quick to cast doubts on the numbers. The governors of São Paulo and Rio are two of the most vocal critics of his lax approach to the crisis, in return Bolsonaro blames the state governors for their concerted measures to halt the disease, labelling their efforts ‘criminal’ [‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro makes life-or-death coronavirus gamble’, (David Biller), Sydney Morning Herald, 29-Mar-2020, www.smh.com.au].

🔺 Bolsonaro, unsafe at any distance?

Some analysts have noted the element of political calculation in Bolsanaro’s hard line on the epidemic. The Brazilian leader’s may feel that if he can take the economy (still feeling the severe effects of the 2015/16 recession) to the next elections in good health, the voters may be less concerned about the country’s death toll from coronavirus (David Biller). Mexico’s president, López Obrador, is singing from a similar hymn-sheet as Bolsonaro. Obrador contends that the severity of the virus has been overstated, and has been quoted as saying that personally he would rely on his (lucky) amulets to keep him safe [‘In Brazil and Mexico, Leaders Downplay Dangers of Virus Outbreak’, Latino USA, 26-Mar-2020, www.latinousa.org].

🔺 President Lukashenko, national leader, sportsman, tractor enthusiast

Belarus, 2020 global sporting capital
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko is another head of state professing an admiration for the US president and similarities in style can be observed. Lukashenko has launched the small East European country on a novel path to (supposedly) combat the deadly virus – a cocktail of sport, cold, vodka and saunas. The Belarus government has vetoed lockdowns and social isolation to counter coronavirus, and it is just about the only place in the world that hasn’t discontinued sporting events. The Tokyo Olympics have been canned for 2020 but crowds still flock to football matches in Belarus. The remarkable leader himself, leading by example, recently participated in an ice hockey game. Likewise, the annual victory parade scheduled for May is still all systems go! In addition to spruking sport (and would you believe, “tractor-riding” in the countryside⊞) as antidotes to the virus, the Belarusian president recommends drinking vodka and taking saunas, whilst reassuring Belarusian citizens that God will protect the country from the global pandemic, adding the rider that Belarus’ icy cold climate will also do the job [‘“Reckless” World Leader says vodka and saunas will protect people from coronvirus’, (James Hawkins), The Mirror, 30-Mar-2020, www.mirror.co.uk].

Postscript: Crisis climate – encroaching on democratic rights?
While the pandemic continues to rage, the politics don’t abate. All countries trying to restrict the movements of their citizens have enacted emergency measures to try to confine the pathogen. Most countries have closed their borders and some have legislated the power to detain people. The fear for advocates of civil liberties is that the more authoritarian states may use the new arrangements to move towards martial law. Regimes cross the globe have enacted new powers, ostensibly to protecting the public, but at the same time with the effect of protecting themselves from public and press scrutiny and accountability [‘”Coronavirus” profound threat to democracy’, (Noah Millman), The Week, 01-Apr-2020, www.theweek.com]. In Hungary the right-wing Orbán government has suspended existing laws, by-passing the parliament to allow president Viktor Orbán to rule by decree (with no end date). Thailand has taken the opportunity to censor the nation’s news media (suing and intimidating journalists who criticise the government’s handling of the crisis). Turkmenistan has taken the unusual approach to the pandemic of banning all use of the word ‘coronavirus’ by it’s citizens and state-controlled media✧. According to Radio Free Europe‘s Turkmenistan watch group, people talking about the virus or wearing masks in public could be arrested by the authoritarian regime which claims to have had no confirmed cases of the virus…as Turkmenistan shares a border with coronavirus-ravaged Iran this claim is viewed from outside with extreme skepticism. President Berdymukhamedov✜, not to be outdone for whacky coronavirus remedies, has recommended inhaling smoke from a burning desert-region plant (Vanguard) [’For Autocrats and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’, (Selma Gebrekidian), New York Times, 30-Mar- 2020, www.nytimes.com; ‘Coronavirus: The unusual ways countries are managing lockdowns’, BBC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.bbc.co.uk].

🔻 President Berdymukhamedov, safe distancing not on the agenda here! (Photo: AFP/Igor SAFIN)

<╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍^╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍>

❈ as at 1000 hours, Greenwich M-T, 02-Apr-2020

◘ faced with an overwhelming dose of reality, “Flip-Flop Man” Trump has been forced to pivot 180° away from this…now the White House is acknowledging the health authorities’ dire, nightmarish predictions, (‘US predicts up to 240,000 deaths even with social distancing’, ABC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.abc.net.com.au)

✪ the secular and materialistic lifestyle Trump follows, nay revels in, contrasts conspicuously with the image he tries to sow in the minds of the American public and especially the Religious Right, of him as piously religious

❖ Bolsonaro himself has apparently tested twice for coronavirus but won’t publish the results – transparent governance at its finest!

❅ including the notorious assertion by Bolsonaro that they “can swim in raw sewerage and not catch a thing” – in effect this is what he is doing to Brazilians with his cavalier policy

⊞ the Belarusian president was quoted as saying: “There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone.” (tractors are apparently something of a fetish item in Belarus!)(‘Belarusian president proposes ‘tractor’ therapy for coronavirus’, Vanguard, 16-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com)
✧ Turkmenistan is ranked by Paris-based RSF (Reporters Without Borders) as the country with the least press freedom in the world
✜ Berdymukhamedov has an exalted status in Turkmenistan, being seen as the Arkadag (protector of the people)

The Fight against the Coronavirus Pandemic: Reflecting on the Numbers

March 31, 2020Geography, Media & Communications, Medical history, Natural Environment, Political geography, Public health,Coronavirus, Covid-19, India, Pandemic: statistical significance, Russiafunambulator@live.com

The war against the coronavirus outbreak is indeed global, infecting to date 199 countries and territories and every continent with the possible exception of (largely and seasonally unpopulated) Antartica. Every day the apps on social media and the news broadcasts inform us of the rising tally of coronavirus cases and of the fatalities, but what we do know is that these totals do not convey a true picture of the populations affected by the virus. They are often an indicator only, a way of charting the trajectory of the elusive curve that every health service and provincial and national government strives to flatten.

Distribution of Covid-19 cases worldwide, 31-Mar-2020 (www.ecdc.europa.eu)

The complexity of the disease partly explains the inexactness. That being infected with coronavirus can be asymptomatic and remains recordable for those never tested, highlights this problem. On a country by country basis the uncertainty over numbers magnifies. Some countries (a lot in Africa for instance) have no or minimal records of testing, which is not the same as saying they have no coronavirus cases! The reason for this might lie in the fact these predominantly impoverished countries have not the wherewithal nor the infrastructure to test even significant numbers of the population, they simply can’t cope. Thus their true numbers are never ascertained. There are other countries in the world who are motivated by reasons other than capacity to report the incidence of infection and mortality, eg, a desire to mask the extent of the calamity for domestic or external purposes.

Geographical distribution of Covid-19 cases worldwide, 31-Mar-2020 (www.ecdc.europa.eu)

The media’s daily servings, the table of virus mortality and morbidity gives us the bare bones of the depth of the human catastrophe — Italy a disaster, Spain a disaster, China a disaster but seemingly over the hump, Iran shockingly bad, France shockingly bad, USA very bad but likely to become even more catastrophic, UK and Netherlands, both worsening, etc. But of equal curiosity is those countries positioned much lower on the ladder of gloom that stand out as demographic anomalies, their numbers almost too good to believe…indeed! Two such are Russia and India. Russia, a vast country with around 145 million people has fessed up to just 17 deaths⋇. On face value a result that would hearten the most pessimistic, but you have to wonder about the level of reportage? India, with 1.3 billion-plus people has so far recorded a mere 32 deaths⋇ (compared to Italy with 60 million people which has lost just shy of 11,600 lives⋇). With India, the lowness of the figure is overshadowed by the inevitability of magnification…the sheer mass of humanity confined within such an acute density of space means that for the substrata of Indians, the poorest classes, no matter how earnestly their prime minister entreats them, they simply cannot physically isolate themselves. The directive from on high to keep a “social distance” from others to ward off the virulent effect of the epidemic remains for the vast masses a pipe dream. That many, many of these unfortunate souls will not escape infection and worse—either recorded or unrecorded—remains inevitable.

At 26-Mar-2020 (Source: Newsweek Statista)

_______________________________________________________________________

⋇ as at 1515 hrs, Greenwich Mean-time, 31st March 2020, ‘Confirmed Cases and Deaths by Country, Territory, or Conveyance’, www.worldometers.info/

The COVID-19 Crisis: Are We Creating a Whole Generation of New Scofflaws?

March 26, 2020Environmental, Literary & Linguistics, Medical history, Public health,‘The Plague’ (Camus), Australia, Delcevare King, Pandemic panic and survival, Prohibition USA, Scofflaws, Social distancing, The War on Coronavirusfunambulator@live.com

Scofflaw: (n) as neologisms go, the word scofflaw has an interesting back story. It is a portmanteau word, derived by combining scoff + law. Scofflaw’s origin came about in 1923 when Massachusetts banker Delcevare King offered up a prize of $200 in gold to the American public for the best word which described “the lawless drinker”.. America being knee-deep in the era of Prohibition at the time and King being one of Prohibition’s greatest zealots. The winning entry (in fact ‘entries’, as two separate entrants submitted the same word), came from Henry Irving Dale and Kate L Butler (who herself was a Anti-Saloon Leaguer) who shared the prize. ‘Scofflaw’ beat a field of over 25,000 entries which included ‘boozocrat’ and ‘boozshevik’ (“DELCEVARE KING, BANKER, 89 DEAD; Prohibitionist’s Contest Led to Coining of ‘Scofflaw’ “, New York Times, 22-Mar-1964; “Ken Burns & Lynn Novick: Prohibition”, PBS, broadcast 2011, www.pbs.org). So, it’s original meaning was someone who drinks illegally (earning the opprobrium of prohibitionists like Mr King) or someone who mocks (scoffs) or ridicules anti-drinking laws. Over time scofflaw was extended to mean “a person who flouts the law, especially by failing to comply with a law that is difficult to enforce effectively”…in the US since the 1950s the word has largely been applied to individuals who habitually violate laws of a less serious, non-criminal nature, especially traffic violations (‘Scofflaw’ Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/; www.thefreedictionary.com/).

Prohibition: confiscating barrels of illegal grog in America (Source: Pinterest)

As part of the government mantra directed towards us home-front civilians in the war on coronavirus, we are asked by our leaders, entreated even, to practice safe social distancing. In the early days of the war against the invisible biological enemy we were told to immediately implement social distancing from others at all times. Later this was quantified and codified – 1.5 metres distance outdoors from others, no congregations of people of more than 500, indoors a four to one ratio, no more than 25 people in a room 100 square metres. And yet at the same time—this is where the mixed messaging starts to gain traction—we were told we can keep using public transport to go to work or school or uni or TAFE. So we pile onto crowded buses, trains and LRVs like the George Street ‘Snail’, at peak time. We shop in scarcity-hit supermarkets teeming with increasingly chaotic shoppers, we sit in class rooms and cafés and pubs and restaurants, or line up in the ever-lengthening queues of the recently unemployed outside Centrelink offices – in all instances numerically and spatially infringing the prescribed limits✱. We should all, even the politicians, shout as one – “I’m a violator!” All of us at some point have been or will be violators – by design or default!

Bondi: defying the coronavirus warnings (Source: AAP)

Scofflaws and recusants of the world unite!And what of those other violators of social distancing in this time of pestilence, the beach-going masses whose capers—from Sydney all the way to Florida—the media have revelled in? The beach-goers at Bondi and other popular summer-time beaches who are either indifferent or wilfully tone-deaf to the authorities’ daily mantra of abstinence or are pleading ignorance of the messages on the grounds of being Generation X, Y, Z, Millennials, Xennials (or whatever term you prefer) and therefore invincible. We can add peripatetic domestic tourists currently roaming around the country to the list of sloth-minded transgressors. Whether the violators are blatantly snubbing their noses at society and authority or are forced by circumstance into breaking the government’s edicts, the trajectory of the crisis suggests that a new generation of scofflaws is in the making. These multitudes, theses new scofflaws or recusants, some with a very deliberate rationale of defiance, will undoubtably continue to breach government warnings and (now) rules on social distancing and contact as the crisis continues⊞, replacing the traditional notion we have of scofflaws – unrepentant recidivists who accumulate unpaid parking fines or debts, ignore summonses or graffiti public or private property.

Given the sheer impossibility of compelling all citizens to maintain social distances in public (considering the scale of the enterprise and the limitations of the enforcement agencies), it will probably come down to the will and commitment of governments and bureaucracies to enforce these rules. The stick is already out…the NSW police minister has announced that individuals breaching the social distancing guidelines will be instantly fined $1,000 or even jailed (this second option however is highly implausible in the present health climate which sees the country’s prisons under fire for crowding too many inmates in together!) (‘Breaking social distancing rules will lead to on-the-spot fines of $1,000’, ABC News, 25-Mar-2020, www.abcnews.com.au). Tough talk✬ but it remains to be seen how thoroughly this threat to act will be prosecuted or how practical it will be to implement. You can also expect the civil libertarians of the community to come out in earnest support of the Covid scofflaws, defending to the last adjective their right to freedom of movement. Watch this space.

Footnote: Of course the opposite could also happen – if recent reports of public reactions to self-isolation are an indication. We may witness a whole lot of people coming out of the woodwork, channeling their inner Oliver Cromwell and dobbing in their scofflaw neighbours to the local constabulary for breaching their two week home quarantine.

Postscript: Tips for occupying some of the 960 minutes a day of stay-at-home time you are awake

The more realistic and level-headed of us who are not still spending our days at the beach (yes there are scofflaws still trying to circumvent the barriers now in place at popular beaches) are hunkering down for the long haul during the pandemic. So if you are looking for some light reading material while in mandatory hibernation for the winter, there’s always that classic allegory of unrelentingly grim reality, Camus’ The Plague☌, or if you want something more apocalyptically contemporary, try The Road or Station Eleven.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

✱ even more unfathomably bizarre, after the latest round of war cabinet lockdowns, is the circumstance of hairdressers and barbers – they have been allowed to stay open and serve the public, whilst still observing the 1.5 m gap. How that will be expected happen remains a mystery to all except the inner workings of the war cabinet I surmise (robotic arms and 150cm-long scissors may be the answer!)

⊞ the best the government can hope for is to minimise the non-compliance of this cohort so that the numbers of them who are infected and the numbers that they infect are kept as low as possible

✬ certainly a considerably more substantial deterrent than the drop in the ocean £30 Boris has announced he’ll fine scofflaw Britons

☌ incidentally, sales of Camus’ book about a disease-infested 1940s Algerian town have soared during the pandemic (The Economist, April 2020)

The Government’s War on Coronavirus: The Great COVID-19 War from Ground Level

March 20, 2020Economics and society,, Environmental, Futurism, Media & Communications, Medical history, Science and societyAustralian war on COVID-19, Biological disaster, Chaos, Conspiracy theories, Coronavirus, Doomsday preppers, Dystopia, Eugenics in straitened socio-economic times, Herd immunity, Hoarder mentality, Human behaviour and scarcity in a crisis, Pandemic, Sino-US relations, WHOBonza Rottwheeler

(Source: www.thesummitexpress.com)

A few years ago one of the incumbents of the revolving door that is the Australian prime ministership intoned: “these are the most exciting times to be alive”… well, for “exciting” substitute “worrying and challenging” and you have the status quo, 2020. We are getting bombarded daily, even hourly it seems, with mixed messages from news sources – it was okay to go to the football last Sunday and mingle with crowds of much more than the 500 limit but somehow it’s not okay to do this on Monday, the day after (what changed?!?); the medical experts warn us to keep a distance of one-and-a-half metres from anyone else, yet it’s fully expected that people will still travel on trains and buses which will generally make that an impossibility; the government tells us not to fly overseas but it’s still okay to fly within Australia (a lifeline to the national carrier?).

(Image: www.nature.com)

Every day media outlets offer up a doomsday book of horror stories…”London faces stricter lockdown after coronavirus advice ‘ignored’” |”Italy coronavirus deaths rise by record 475 in a day” |”All of us have to assume we have the virus’: COVID-19 infections rise past 300 in NSW” |”Yes, young people are falling seriously ill from Covid-19” |”Trump spent weeks downplaying the coronavirus. He’s now pretending that never happened” | “Stay home’. Grey nomads unwelcome as Top End coronavirus tensions grows’ | “Coronavirus UK: Boris to impose FOUR-MONTH quarantine for elderly under ‘wartime’ measures” | “China blaming US for coronavirus? It refuses to come clean about origin” | “Privacy fears as India hand stamps suspected coronavirus cases” | “Coronavirus: One dead every 10 minutes in Iran as government faces backlash over late response” | “Spring Breakers Pack Some Florida Beaches, Ignoring Social Distancing Warning Amid Coronavirus“ | “Italy overtakes China in coronavirus toll”. Panicked consumerism born of exaggerated fears of limited resources➀, foolhardy apathy as the young party on regardless in fatalistic Titanic style (‘Millennialmania’), doom and gloom, finger-pointing recriminations, the media has been full of it for two months…sorry, we don’t do calm, rational, measured responses here.

A corona red world, March 2020 (Credit: www.abcnews.go.com)

It’s a climate ready-made for rumour-mongering and this is not confined to the West…China is rife with rumours ‘explaining’ the epidemic’s origin starting with the fiction of it’s supposed transmission from bats in January. The rumours soon became more fanciful and more conspiratorial, ranging from coronavirus being deliberately released to cull excess numbers of pensioners in society to it being a bio-weapon brought to Wuhan by the US Army to it being the consequence of the zodiac signs being out of harmony in the Year of the Rat!

The pandemic has caused divisiveness. Not just between rival countries trying to shift the blame and score political points, but at a grass roots level. We’ve seen the spectacle of shoppers in supermarkets fighting over the providence of a single pack of toilet roll➁.We’ve got incorrigible prepper-minded hoarders boasting online of their Fort Knox-sized storage bunkers of stockpiled household essentials, counter-balanced by the shopper-shaming of overzealous buyers queueing up with 150 rolls of toilet paper in their trolly (human behaviouralists tell us that buying ridiculous quantities of toilet rolls gives us reassurance, a warm and fuzzy feeling in a time of fear). The supermarkets, one of the very few sectors doing spectacularly well out of the crisis, have responded (too late) with partial war rationing to head off the panic buyers. War rationing seems apt as democratic governments across the world channel their inner Churchill and rush to set up “war cabinets” to deal with the extraordinary and unprecedented situation.

Deserted airport departure lounges 🔺

Whole industries grind to a halt, workers laid off with mortgages and bills that won’t disappear, while those of us investing in the stock market have taken an instant massive hit and the Aussie dollar plunges ever lower. Border closures, tourism industry bottoming out, small businesses going to the wall, nightlife, restaurants, bars, cafes, shows, movies, public events, etc…all nix! The hackneyed T-shirt slogan “Keep calm and carry on” is now “Keep calm, stay home and don’t go anywhere”. Lockdowns, compulsory home quarantine for targetted groups of the population, Pacific cruising virus-traps, a safe and effective vaccine for the virus still up to 18 months away. Talk in the UK of prioritising “herd immunity” uncomfortably evokes the spectre of eugenics. Some have called for the euthanasia of family pets, which is drawing a long bow even if you accept the possibility (far from definitively proven at this stage) that the virus was transmitted to humans by pangolins (scaly ant-eaters) in a Wuhan wet market. What next, euthanasia vans going round the suburbs to collect the weak and elderly? Reality at the moment looks increasingly like an unbelievable dystopian novel or movie! Welcome to the scary new world of indefinite uncertainty.

Thanks to COVID-19 we’re learning a slew of new buzzwords, for a start social distancing and elbow bump (sounds and looks dorky but it’ll catch on, trust me), and us non-statisticians in the community are already tired of hearing TV expert commentators rabbiting on about the merits of “flattening the curve”. I am waiting to hear (and am surprised not to have heard it yet) the adjective “Orwellian” uttered in the current crisis.

Bay County beach, Fla. (Ya Photo: WJHG/WECP)

I don’t know anyone who envies the governments or the frontline health care sector at the moment, but the government responses do have their critics? To take the scenario I am most familiar with, Australia…on the credit side the mortality rate is low (so far) though the morbidity rate is climbing fast and winter and the flu season are on the near horizon. However, under the government’s partisan “war cabinet” a coordinated approach to the crisis seems to be missing. We are looking for more systematic and less chaotic here! One example, the distribution of scarce essential goods depleted by panic buying is held up by a failure to get councils involved so they can free up the delivery schedule. Some medical and communications experts have asked where the government’s public awareness campaign is? Unlike some other countries, we are bereft of the myriad of community billboards and the television and social media advertisements which can raise awareness in the public of the disease. Overcoming ignorance is a first step to diminishing fear and apathy.

As with something this truly extraordinary, of such novel complexity and uncertainty, despite (or perhaps because of) the deluge of information, more questions than answers remain…should we lockdown cities or not? What are we not doing here to stem the crisis that appears to be working overseas? Face masks, yes/no?➂ Test for virus or not test? Can I be infected, recover and be infected a second time? What’s the shelf life of an infected surface? What do I do if I’m at high-risk and social distancing is not a viable option? Should we let the grandparents babysit our pre-schoolers any more? And then of course there’s the greatest imponderable of all, when is this whole nightmarish scenario going to end?

🔺 No issues with social distancing here (Photo: AP)

All the punter at ground zero can do is listen to the official medical advice➃, make sure we inform ourselves about Coronavirus 101 and get the basics down pat. This means identifying the likely symptoms—persistent cough, sore throat, runny nose, headache, (and more seriously) fever, shortness of breath, difficulty in breathing—all the usual suspects. Understand that coronavirus can be either symptomatic or asymptomatic, that it can be mild as well as severe, and that lethality generally (but not universally) hinges on considerations of age and serious pre-existing health conditions. Learn how to avoid contagion, what to do with the lethal weapons which are our hands – washing and drying them the correct way, eschewing the convention of shaking hands with people and start guesstimating our own personal space in public➄, sneezing into your elbow, not your hands, cleaning and disinfecting surfaces and door handles, using hand sanitisers, etc. Thus armed against ignorance, and hopefully the pandemic too, we will bunker down for the long haul, tough it out and try (very hard) not to add to the growing count of national virus statistics.

⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕ ⍕

➀ and thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy
➁ almost as unedifying was the sight of Aldi staff hurling blocks of toilet paper into the air so that demonic shoppers could jostle and wrestle each other for the prized commodity (classy look!)
➂ surgical masks have become a bit of an “us and them” issue, adding to the emerging divisive atmosphere…the war cabinet’s medical experts (in line with WHO’s recommendations) have pooh-poohed the wearing of masks for the general populace as not beneficial and unnecessary, saying they only need to be worn by people diagnosed with the disease. Given that the Chinese community in Australia tend to wear the masks sometimes for cultural reasons as much as protection, this leaves them open to wild and inaccurate assumptions about their health status as a group
➃ this will probably require a judgement call as some of the medical advice has been contradictory
➄ the latest edict in the social distancing caper from the war cabinet limits indoor gatherings of 25 in a space of 100sq m (one person to every 4sq m). I can’t wait to see police officers turning up in clubs and pubs armed with measuring tapes

⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎ ⍎⍎⍎

PS. All the big business houses and major financial institutions have started sending out “touchy-feely, look we really are human” messages, along the lines of we’re here to help “our people” get through COVID-19 … excuse me while I go and bolt down my raging cynicism to the floor.

The 1918 Spanish Flu: History’s Most Deadly Pandemic

March 6, 2020Environmental, International Relations, Medical history, Military history, Public health,, Regional History, Science and societyAsian Avian Flu, China, Coronavirus, Étaples (France), Ft Riley (Kansas), Medieval Black Death, Pneumonic influenza, SARS, Spanish Flu 1918-20, Swine Flu 2009, US WWI troops travel to Europe, WB Yeats, World War Ifunambulator@live.com

The ongoing fight to contain the outbreak of COVID-19, the Coranavirus—now entering a new stage of transforming itself into a global epidemic—gives rise to recollection of another virus that swept the world just over one hundred years ago, the so-called Spanish Flu✺. For most of the rest of the 20th century, the Spanish Flu (sometimes known as La Grippe) was largely neglected by researchers and mainstream historians, and study confined to actuaries, specialist epidemiologists and virologists and medical historians [Laura Spinney, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World, (2017)].

(Credit: CNN International)

Why did such a devastating pandemic fly under the radar for so long? The timing of the outbreak goes a good way to explain this. After having suffered four long years of a unique world war, people tended to treat the Spanish Flu as a footnote to the Great War conflagration. Moreover, the war, concentrated in Europe and the Middle East, had a limited geographical focus for people, contrasting with the pneumonic influenza outbreak which was truly global [The Spanish Flu Pandemic’, (L Spinney), History Today, 67(4), April 2017]. As catastrophic events go, the two stand in stark contrast. With today’s scientific and medical advances experts estimate that the Spanish Flu killed at least 50 million people worldwide, some estimates put it as high as 100 million [NP Johnson & J Mueller 2002;76: 105-115 (‘Updating the accounts: Global mortality of the 1918-1920 “Spanish” Flu pandemic’, Bull Hist Med)]. Estimates of World War I casualties—military and civilian–—sit somewhere in the range of 20 to 22 million deaths [‘WW1 Casualties’, (WW1 Facts), http://ww1facts.net]⌖. By the late 20th century and early 2000s outbreaks of new viruses like SARS, Asian Bird Flu, Swine Flu, etc, spurred mainstream historians◙ to look afresh at the great global influenza of 1918-20.

An abnormal spike in morbidity and mortality
The Spanish Flu was truly global, like the Coronavirus its lethal reach touched every continent except Antartica, both are novel (new) respiratory illnesses. Similarities have been noted between the responses to the two outbreaks, eg, the issuing of instructions or recommendations by the authorities for the public to wear masks, avoid shaking hands (part of social distancing), good hygiene, quarantine, an alarmist overreaction by the media [‘Coronavirus response may draw from Spanish flu pandemic of 100 years ago’, ABC News, (Matt Bamford), 05-Mar-2020, www.amp.abc.net.au]. The great flu of 1918’s morbidity and mortality rates were frighteningly high and far-reaching…one in three people on earth were affected by it✪. Between 2.5 and 5% of the world’s population perished, including India a mind-boggling 17M-plus, Dutch East Indies 1.5M, US (up to) 675,000◍, Britain 250,000, France 400,000, Persia (Iran) (up to) 2.4M, Japan 390,000-plus, Ghana (at least) 100,000, Brazil 300,000, USSR (unknown, but conservatively, greater than 500,000)⊞.

While densely crowded communities were thought the biggest risk of mass infection, the Flu caused human devastation even in remote, isolated corners of the world, eg, in Oceania, Samoa bereft of immunity, lost 22% of its population in two months, the Fijian islands lost 14% in a 16-day period⌀. The kill rate was something around 2.5% cf. a ‘normal’ flu outbreak a rate of no more than 0.1% would be expected [‘The Spanish Flu Pandemic’, (Spinney, History Today ; ‘The Spanish Flu’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/].(Source: National Library of Australia)

If the Spanish Flu didn’t originate in Spain, where did it originate?
No one knows for sure is the short answer…but there has been much speculation on the topic. At the time of the epidemic a popular notion was that the Flu started in China, but China experienced low rates of infection compared to other regions of the world. The explanation for this perhaps lay in that China was subjected to an initial, mild flu season which gave its citizens an acquired immunity to the disease when the more severe strain of the virus hit them.

🔺 Red Cross volunteers: caring for the sick during the Spanish Flu fell overwhelmingly on women (volunteers and professional nurses) who bore the brunt of the work at quarantine stations and camps, as well as exposing themselves to great personal risk

🔻 Influenza-ravaged Ft Riley soldiers in hospital camp

The military, mobility and zoonosis
Another theory attributes the Spanish Flu’s beginnings to the movements of the combatants in WWI. Virologist John Oxford favours the village of Étaples in France as the centre of the 1918 influenza infection. From a hospital camp here, 10,000 troops passed through every day…with their immune systems weakened by malnourishment and the stresses of battle and chemical attacks they were susceptible to the disease which was probably transmitted via a piggery and poultry on the same site. Once contracted, it’s dissemination was likely facilitated by mass transportation of troops by train.

Another view that has gained wide currency locates the Flu’s genesis in America’s Midwest. In recent times, historians led by Alfred W Crosby have supported the view that the epidemic started not in Europe but in a US Army base in Kansas in 1917 (America’s Forgotten Pandemic). According to adherents of this theory soldiers training at Fort Riley for combat in Europe contracted the H1N1 influenza virus which had mutated from pigs. The infected troops, they contend, then spread the virus via the war on the Western Front. Whether or not the virus started with WWI fighting men in France or in the US, it is undeniable that the soldiers moving around in trains and sailors in ships were agents of the Flu’s rapid dissemination [‘Spanish Flu’, History Today, (Upd. 05-Feb-2020), www.historytoday.com]. A recent, alternative origin view by molecular pathologist Jeffrey Taubenberger rejects the porcine transference explanation. Based on tests he did on exhumed victim tissue, Taubenberger contends that the epidemic was the result of bird-to-human transmission [‘Spanish flu: the killer that still stalks us, 100 years on’, (Mark Honigsbaum), The Guardian, 09-Sep-2018, www.theguardian.com].

(Image credit: Guia turístico)

Demographics: differential age groups
The pattern of Coronavirus mortality points to the disease being most virulent and most fatal to elderly people (the seventies to the nineties age group). This accords with most flu season deaths, although unlike seasonal flu outbreaks Coronavirus contagion has (thus far) had minimal impact on children, in particular the under-fives (Honigsbaum). But the pattern of Spanish Flu was markedly different, the records show a targeting of young adults, eg, in the US 99% of fatalities in 1918-19 were people under 65, with nearly 50% in the 20 to 40 age bracket (‘Spanish Flu’, Wiki). Statistics from other countries on the 1918 outbreak conform to a similar trend.

🔺 Conveying the health message to the public (Source: www.shelflife.cooklib.org)

The Flu in a series of varyingly virulent waves
The first wave of the Flu in early 1918 was relatively mild. This was followed by a second, killer wave in August. This mutated strain was especially virulent in three disparate places on the globe, Brest in France, Freetown in Sierra Leone and Boston in the US. There were myriad victims, some died (quickly) because they had not been exposed to the first, milder wave which prevented them from building up immunity to this more powerful strain [‘Four lessons the Spanish flu can teach us about coronavirus’ (Hannah Devlin), The Guardian, 04-Mar-2020, www.msn.com]. The second wave was a global pathogen sui generis. The bulk of the deaths occurred in a 13-week period (September to December). The lethality of the disease, and especially the speed with which it progressed, was the scariest part✧.

2nd wave curve in the US, 1918: note the different mortality peaks during Oct-Dec 1918 for St Louis (imposed a stringent lockdown) vs Philadelphia (much less restrictive approach)
(Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007)

The symptoms of this murderously effective strain were unusual and extreme, eg, haemorrhaging from mucous membranes, bleeding from the eyes, ears and orifices, etc. The extreme severity of the symptoms were thought to be caused by cytokine storms (overreaction of the body’s immune system) (‘Spanish Flu’, Wiki) [‘Spanish Flu’, History, 12-Oct-2010, www.history.com]. The third and last strain of the Flu, in 1919, was markedly milder by comparison to the second, but still more intense than the first.

Many parallels exist between the 1918 flu outbreak and the present pandemic – of a positive nature, the widespread advocacy of wearing masks to limit the spread of disease and mandatory lockdowns. Plenty of negative parallels too – the disregarding of science and medical expertise on how to tackle the outbreak; countries engaging in playing the “blame game” against each other rather then co-operating on a united approach to the pandemic. There was especially, but not only in the US, a repetition by some of the denial at the national leadership level to square up to the pandemic and give it the complete seriousness it demanded.

✥ ⌯ ✥ ⌯ ✥

In 1919 in the middle of the flu crisis, Irish poet WB Yeats wrote in a poem the line for which he is perhaps best remembered: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…”

✥ ⌯ ✥ ⌯ ✥

Footnote: The health authorities’ inability to check the juggernaut of the 1918 virus was exacerbated by misdiagnosis – at it’s onset the Spanish Flu was widely believed to be a bacterium like the Black Death, not a virus. Misreading the symptoms, the influenza outbreak was variously and erroneously diagnosed as dengue, cholera or typhoid (Spinney, ‘History Today’; ‘Spanish Flu’, History).

(Photo: State Archives & Records, NSW)

PostScript: The lessons of a global catastrophe
The Spanish Flu in its vast human decimation rammed home lessons for post-WWI governments and health practitioners in its wake. Being helpless to prevent or halt the virus once in full swing, the vital need to develop vaccines to counter pandemics was subsequently understood. Advanced countries started to restructure their public health systems to try to cope (such as the United States’ NIH – National Institutes of Health, which emerged about 10 years after the Spanish Flu) [‘The great influenza The epic story of the deadliest plague in history‘ (JM Barry), Reviewed by Peter Palese, (JCI), www.ncbi.nim.nih.gov]. And of course the 1918 flu virus had other, indirect, outcomes…it led to universal healthcare, alternative medicine, intensive care facilities and a modern preoccupation with the benefits of healthy exercise under clean, clear skies (‘Pale Rider’).

⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴⌴

✺ the name is a misnomer. The Spanish association came about thus: with the Great War still raging other combatant European nations such as France and Germany had imposed censorship restrictions on the reportage of the flu outbreak, whereas Spain being neutral in the war did not. When the Spanish press freely reported a serious eruption of the Flu, people outside the country unquestioningly assumed that the influenza came from Spain

⌖ to further break that down, more American troops died from the Spanish Flu than in combat during WWI (‘Pale Rider‘)

⊞ the numbers cited tend to be approximations given the paucity of adequate record-keeping at the time

◙ part of a new multidisciplinary approach to the subject including economists, sociologists and psychologists

◍ consequently life expectancy for Americans dropped by 12 years in 1918, and for the first time since Britain commenced recording data, the death-rate in 1919 exceeded the birth-rate (Honigsbaum)

✪ Pandemic: pan ⤑ all ║ demos ⤑ the people (not literally but fairly close)

⌀ although isolation did prove beneficial in some instances, such as in Australia where the virus didn’t arrive until 1919 and entry was closely monitored with a maritime quarantine program. As a result Australia’s death-rate of 2.7 per 1000 of population was one of the lowest recorded [‘Influenza pandemic’, National Museum of Australia, www.nma.gov.au]

✧ Philadelphia alone experienced 4,597 influenza deaths in a single week

Eyes on the Prize: Callan Park, a Modern Saga of Development Vs Conservation

December 19, 2015Built Environment, Creative Writing, Heritage & Conservation, Medical history, Politics, Public health,Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic, Callan Park Mental Hospital, Deinsitutionalisation, Frank Sartor, Leichhardt Council, North Eveleigh development site, Richmond Report, Rozelle Hospital, University of Sydneyfunambulator@live.com

In 1976 the NSW state government consolidated the two mental health care facilities in Lilyfield, Callan Park Mental Hospital and Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic, into one body, called Rozelle Hospital (the word ‘Psychiatric’ was quietly excised from the name). Drug and alcohol and psycho-geriatric services were added to the psychiatric care and rehabilitation roles of the hospital.

A watershed moment in mental health with profound and long-lasting repercussions for Rozelle Hospital occurred seven years later in 1983. The Richmond Report recommended a policy of de-institutionalisation, moving patients of mental hospitals back into the community. From the 1960s, with overcrowding in state mental hospitals rife, there had been isolated attempts to deinstitutionalise starting to happen but the Report advocated that the government accelerate the process on a more systematic basis.

The Report’s blueprint advocated moving patients out of the psych wards and into the community at large. They were to be given support through a network of community-based agencies. As well, the plan was to open up new special units in mainstream general hospitals and accommodation facilities to take care of the needs of the former inpatients. In reality however these measures have never been properly supported by successive NSW governments, Labor or Liberal. Cynically but unsurprisingly, the parties in power have tended to manipulate the program to cut back on existing bed numbers and close wards in the mental health care system.

New specialised mental health wards were eventually opened, such as in Western Sydney hospitals Nepean and Liverpool. But the cost of caring for the former patients, providing them with the services and housing they needed once released, has not been adequately met by the authorities. As a consequence, the state’s prisons have returned in practice to a traditional role they had filled in past centuries, acting as de facto psychiatric institutions. Government research points to a high percentage of prisoners (90% female and 78% male) experiencing a psychiatric disorder in the year preceding their incarceration [R Pollard, ‘Out of Mind’, Sydney Morning Herald, February 12, 2005].

A conspicuous side-effect of de-institutionalisation at Callan Park was the physical deterioration of wards and other dwellings on the site. As wards closed, their upkeep was not maintained and many fell into various stages of dilapidation, some were found to contain very significant levels of asbestos. In 1991 an extensive DPWS Heritage Study was undertaken by the Department of Public Works with every building, evaluated zone-by-zone, to determine if it should be preserved, repaired or removed. Bizarrely, some of the buildings deemed suitable to be demolished were in satisfactory condition and still being utilised, such as the NSW Ambulance Service!?! Many of the old buildings earmarked for removal were subsequently pulled down but fortunately, somehow the Ambulance building complex survived [‘DPWS Heritage Plan’, (1991), www.leichhardt.nsw.gov.au].

The fallout from the policy to deinstitutionalise continues to be felt in the community. NSW Health’s 2007 ‘Tracking Tragedy’ report identified that there had been some 113 suicides by former psychiatric patients plus a number of patients who had committed homicides upon release [‘Final Government Response to Tracking Tragedy 2007’ (3rd Report)].

By the early ’90s the Kirkbride Block was being phased out as a psychiatric institution (the nearby wards however were retained for patient relocation) and a deal was struck with Sydney University (USyd) to lease it from 1996 as the site of its College of the Arts (SCA). The University then injected 19 million dollars into upgrading the facilities to make it suitable as a tertiary education campus. At the same time the nearby Garryowen House was repaired to become the new home of the NSW Writers Centre.

Uncertainty about the Government’s future plans for Callan Park led concerned citizens to form the Friends of Callan Park (FOCP) in 1998. Their concerns were well-founded as the Carr Labor Government in 2001-2002 produced a draft Master Plan for the land which included the sale of significant chunks of the site for residential development and the shift of psychiatric services to Concord – all formulated without having consulted local residents (this followed an earlier clandestine arrangement made by Carr to provide land in the Park gratis for a Catholic retirement village). FOCP and Leichhardt Council mobilised community support against the Government’s plan, resulting in a huge backlash from residents of the municipality.

Embarrassed, the state government backed down, ditched the Master Plan and enacted the 2002 Callan Park (Special Provisions) Act which guaranteed that the entire site would remain in public hands to be used strictly for health and education purposes only [‘Callan Park – a Tribute to the Local Community’, (FOCP), www.callanpark.com]

Later, Labor planning minister Sartor (again covertly) offered the the central core of the whole site (an area of 35HA) to Sydney University whose expansion plans for the SCA site envisaged increasing the student numbers to 20,000 and providing for up to 7,000 places in residential accommodation. USyd received a 99 year lease from the Government on the 35HA land. The University was planning to move the Sydney Conservatorium of Music from its present location in the city onto the Lilyfield site (the Conservatorium itself was very lukewarm about this proposal, as it turned out). This over-the-top development would have required 16 new buildings (some up to 4 storeys high!) to be built, which would have been a breach of the 2002 Act. Again, after a backlash and significant pushback from the public, the Government backed down [Sydney Morning Herald, October 21, 2002; Inner West Courier, November 6, 2007] (see also PostScript].

Recently USyd has been murmuring about the prospect of pulling out of the Rozelle campus, citing financial difficulties as the reason. It has already flagged its intention to move the Fine Arts School to the main Camperdown site [‘Sydney University abandons art school at Callan Park’, Sydney Morning Herald, November 25, 2015]. The uncertainty about Callan Park’s future has prompted critics like FOCP to suggest that the Baird Government may follow the same path as Labor did in trying to sell off part of the site for commercial gain. FOCP has accused the Government of taking a “demolition by neglect” approach to Callan Park, this will be a fait accompli, they contend, especially if USyd leaves Rozelle as the buildings will no longer be maintained and inevitably fall into disrepair [‘Callan Park in danger of being “demolished by neglect”, (23-04-15), www.altmedia.net.au].

The next signpost in the Callan Park story occurred in May 2008 when the Government moved the psychiatric patients out of Broughton Hall and relocated them at a new, purpose-built psychiatric unit at Concord Hospital, six kilometres down the Parramatta River. The Friends of Callan Park had campaigned to retain the psychiatric facility, the late Dr Jean Lennane advocated that, rather than closing down Callan Park, the bed numbers needed to be increased as deinstitutionalisation had led to an increase in homelessness among the mentally ill, or had seen them end up ‘warehoused’ in gaols, or tragically, dead, after being turned out. FOCP also called for an extension of outdoor recreational activities available to the patients, eg, establishment of a city farm on the grounds with the patients tending the animals as part of their therapuetic regime.

Leichhardt Council also voiced its disapproval of the Government’s plans for Callan Park. Despite the chorus of opposition, the NSW Government went ahead with the closures. The Council persisted with its criticisms and the NSW Government in late 2008 granted the Council care, control and management of 40 hectares of Callan Park (roughly two-thirds of the area) under a 99 year lease (previously the “physical fabric” of Callan Park as a whole had been managed by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA) on behalf of the Government)

[http://callanparkyourplan.com.au/]

Sensing the need to be more proactive, Leichhardt Council prepared its own “Master Plan” for Callan Park, which, in a poll conducted by the Council, elicited 87% approval from municipality residents. The plan provides for greater use of the land for a broad cross-section of the community, with new sporting fields and skate parks and other activities.

The land and structures of Callan Park continue to be owned by the NSW Government now under the agency of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (although the SHFA website still confusingly lists Callan Park on its website as one of the “places we manage” [www.shfa.nsw.gov.au]). Some of the wards and halls (those remaining ones not riddled with asbestos) get rented out for film and television shoots from time to time, one building permanently houses a film production unit (building Callan 201) whose management harbours its own designs to expand further into the Park and create an international film production hub (again which would be a flagrant breach of the 2002 Act if it was ever allowed to happen)[‘Premiere plan for Callan Park film hub’, (20-06-13) www.altmedia.net.au]. Other current tenants of Callan Park include the Ambulance Service and a host of NGOs, eg, AfterCare, WHOS, SIDSKIDS and Foundation House.

With Sydney University’s future campus expansion plans looking elsewhere (closer to the city, North Eveleigh has been mooted as the spot to expand into) [University of Sydney, Campus 2020 Masterplan], Leichhardt Council seems to be running most of the debate currently. Very recently, the Council approved (over opposition from the Greens and Liberals) a motion to use the complex site to house some of the 7,000 Syrian refugees due to be settled in Sydney next year, ‘Leichhardt Council approves plan to resettle refugees at former mental hospital’, ABC News, 09-12-15, www.mobile.abc.net.au]. This produced a predictable if minor furore from some quarters of the community, demonstrating that land use in the area known locally as “The Lungs of Leichhardt” continues to be a divisive and hotly contested issue within the community.

PostScript: North Eveleigh trade-off
Frank Sartor’s biography❈ shed more light on the machinations: according to him the NSW Keneally Government secretly planned to compensate Sydney University for the ‘loss’ of Kirkbride by offering it the North Eveleigh site in Redfern for the new location for SCA. The deal fell through though because the North Eveleigh site was valued at about A$100 million, whereas USyd was only prepared to pay $30 million for it [‘Sartor: Keneally discusses plan for North Eveleigh with Sydney Uni’, Redwatch, [www.redwatch.org.au].

~~•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••~~

❈ FE Sartor, The Fog on the Hill – How NSW Labor Lost its Way, (2011)

Callan Park 1900-1965: A Stop-gap Era of Tinkering around the Edges and a Delaying of Genuine Reform

December 14, 2015Heritage & Conservation, Medical history, Public health,, Social History1955 Stoller Report, 1961 Royal Commission, Callan Park Mental Hospital, Dr Harry Bailey & Chelmsford, North Ryde Psychiatric Centre, NSW Mental Health Act 1958funambulator@live.com

After the Kirkbride complex at Callan Park started as a hospital for the mentally ill in the 1880s, patients held at Gladesville Asylum and other psychiatric institutions in Sydney were routinely redirected to it. Kirkbride had been carefully planned by the hospital’s collaborators, architect Barnet and superintendent Manning, and purpose-built from the start to hold a maximum of 666 patients. But such was the demand for its services that the hospital’s patient population had reached close to 1,000 within three years of its opening (1888), and continued to grow unchecked. By 1960 Kirkbride contained something close to 2,000 patients resident there and in the adjoining auxillary wards.

Unfortunately, political support for care of the insane from around the turn of the 20th century started to diminish, with predictable adverse consequences for mental institutions generally. Without a much-needed injection of capital expenditure from government—a reflection of public apathy about the plight of mentally ill at the time—the essential new building infrastructure required to keep pace with the increasing demands of psychiatric care was stifled. Hospitals like Callan Park, with fewer resources and too many patients, were forced to resort to medical treatments (surgical, chemical and mechanical interventions) to cope with the sheer numbers [M Lewis, Managing Madness. A Social History of Insanity 1788-1980]. The financial stringency occasioned by the Depression and World War was a further blow to hopes for increased funding for mental health.

During the first half of the century there were the occasional, tentative inquiry into the deteriorating conditions in state psychiatric institutions, but these, like the 1948 Public Service Board enquiry, never really went anywhere. In terms of the overcrowding at Callan Park, measures that were at best only stop-gap were employed from time to time, eg, additions to the existing buildings at Kirkbride and Garryowen … which were architecturally out of step with the original Barnet and Manning designs [Peter Reynolds and Ken Leong, “Callan Park Mental Hospital”, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/callan_park_mental_hospital, viewed 07 December 2015].

There were some positive signs, finally, in 1955 with the Stoller Report which forced the Commonwealth Government to provide funds for mental health care in Australia. 1958 marked a watershed year for mental health with the passage of the NSW Mental Health Act, the first significant legislation in the field of institutional psychiatry for 60 years (replacing the 1898 Lunacy Act). The 1958 Act, in an long-overdue enlightened step, legislated that insanity should no longer be viewed as a criminal offence. It also made provisions for welfare officers to do follow-up visits of patients after their release. A further consequence of the Act was the construction of North Ryde Psychiatric Centre, the first such NSW institution in 35 years!

Within three years of the new act a Royal Commission on Callan Park was undertaken (in 1961), the first detailed investigation into mental health in NSW for 60 years. The Royal Commission was in part triggered by revelations of staff delinquency and dereliction of duty made by Dr Harry Bailey (newly appointed medical superintendent of Callan Park) in early 1960. The reformist-minded but over-zealous Bailey impetuously went over his superior’s head in presenting a report directly to the head of the PSB. Bailey’s act of ‘whistle-blowing’ concerned allegations of staff cruelty to and neglect of patients, and the discovery that staff were withholding food and groceries from patients with the purpose of profiting from these stolen supplies.

Bailey’s action provoked a revolt amongst the workers with staff members of the Nurses Association and the Hospital Employees Union taking industrial action. Bailey, who was later universally reviled for his central role in the horrific Chelmsford Hospital “Deep Sleep Therapy” scandal, was ‘scapegoated’ and pressured by the government into resigning the following year. But, with the newspapers demanding answers, the health minister was forced to initiate a Royal Commission into Callan Park, which confirmed many of Bailey’s charges but found others to be grossly exaggerated [“A history of medical administration in N.S.W. 1788-1973] Public Health Administration: Chief Medical Officer – Director General of Public Health, (2003),http://www0.health.nsw.gov.au/resources/aboutus/history/pdf/pt2cmo.pdf; Stephen Garton, ‘Bailey, Harry Richard (1922–1985)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bailey-harry-richard-12162/text21793, published first in hardcopy 2007, accessed online 12 December 2015].

The Commission’s predictable findings brought to the attention of the public what was commonly known by anyone who had regularly visited the facility. Callan Park (Kirkbride Block) was too large, too overcrowded, with low standards of accommodation. The orientation at Kirkbride was custodial rather than rehabilitative, there was evidence found of cruelty, neglect and corruption … Callan Park had, as it is standard to say today of such matters, failed in its “duty of care”, it had become “a byword for all that was bad in mental health care” [Tanner Architects, Callan Park Rozelle Volume I, Conservation Management Plan, www.callanparkyourplan.com.au].

One of the specific findings of the Royal Commission into the Callan Park complex identified a group of male nurses and attendants who were bashing, starving, verbally abusing patients, as well as neglecting their state of cleanliness. Sadistic nurses were a recurring feature of Callan Park, going back to the institution’s infancy, ex-patients had testified as to the cruelty meted out by these “mechanical, inhumane creatures” [“Sydney’s shameful asylums: The silent houses of pain where inmates were chained and sadists reigned”, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 3 March 2015].

The incidences of illegalities and misdemeanours unearthed by the Royal Commission hinted at the deep, structural problems that had plagued Callan Park since its early days. Bailey’s actions in exposing malpractice at Callan Park, though injudicious in method (Bailey secretly taped a conversation he had with NSW health minister Sheahan), ensured that the institution’s activities stayed in the public’s mind and in the media’s gaze in the years after 1961.

Callan Park: The Kirkbride Experiment, a Microcosm of “Good Intentions”

December 5, 2015Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, Medical history, Public health,, Social HistoryCharles Moore & Botanical Gardens, Dr Frederick Manning, Garryowen House, James Barnet, John Brenan, Kirkbride, Peter Careyfunambulator@live.com

Up from the water’s edge, the staggered hills, fields, woods, bush and scrubby vegetation, form the grounds that used to be known as Callan Park. On the pathway below, cyclists speed and joggers and walkers scurry along the popular Bay Run which skirts Sydney’s Iron Cove. Further up the undulating slopes of the park’s environs, the primary daytime activity seems to be the exercising of all manner of dog breeds by the local denizens.

Callan Park is six kilometres west of the Sydney CBD, a broad area of some 61 hectares of largely park and woodland with scattered pockets of bush. If you stroll round its numerous, roughly concentric and hilly streets and walkways, you will find a very pleasant, tranquil parkland with an undulating landscape, gently sloping down till it reaches the foreshore of Iron Cove on the Parramatta River. The only residual sign of the presence of the area’s indigenous custodians, the Wangal clan (of the Eora tribe) who for thousands of years moved up and down its ridges and through its dense forests of Blackbutts and Ironbarks, are some traditional rock carvings out on the point of the Cove.

The sense of tranquility that the visitor gets is joined by a second sense, that of a pervading air of abandonment. When I first explored the area with only a vague grasp of these old cottages and workshacks being somehow part of Callan Park, the disused, dilapidated buildings left me with the initial impression that I had stumbled onto some sort of industrial wasteland, much like you might encounter in Peter Carey’s early short stories, but with decrepit, crumbling, asbestos-ridden buildings replacing the decrepit, rusty dismantled cars of The Fat Man in History. So many of the old brick-and-stone buildings jotted across the land are in varying degrees of decay, some boarded up to prevent assault from vandals, for others it is too late – they are already showing the pockmarks of wilful destruction … countless broken windows and doors and graffiti everywhere. Almost all of the structures bear the familiar yellow-and-black warning sign “DANGER ASBESTOS” or more ambiguously, “MAY CONTAIN ASBESTOS”.

At least since the beginning of the 20th century it’s been an urban cliché in Sydney to hear the name “Callan Park” casually thrown around … people suspected of aberrant thoughts or exhibiting the slightest deviance from the norm would regularly be on the receiving end of a comment like “You should be in Callan Park!”. This often would be in a flippant tone but sometimes the intent was more threatening, or at least, definitely condemnatory. Such is the stigma of Callan Park’s long-held reputation as a place to dump the mentally ill.

The first significant European use of the land at Callan Park flowed from local land grants made by Governor Macquarie in 1819-20. Land speculators moved to try to acquire the smaller plots and consolidate them into larger estates. In the 1830s two men in the colony with influence and means led the way in this. At the southern end of the park Deputy Surveyor-General Samuel Perry acquired an estate known as Spring Cove (now in Leichhardt North) where he built an impressive mansion home he called Kalouan, around 1840-41.

At more or less the same time, John Ryan Brenan, the colony’s Crown Solicitor and Police Magistrate, consolidated his holdings at the northern part of the land where he constructed an elegant Georgian stone home which he named Garryowen (the closest pub to Kirkbride, just over from the park in Darling Street, is named after this pioneer home). Brenan also acquired land near Perry’s estate and built a second, more palatial home called Broughton House. By the mid-1860s Brenan, facing bankruptcy, was forced to sell his properties and holdings. At this point any idea that the land might be used as an asylum hadn’t been contemplated. The new owner of the Garryowen Estate, businessman John Gordon, renamed the estate “Callan Park” with the idea of subdividing it to create a bayside suburb. Gordon’s plans were trumped by the NSW Colonial Government after colonial architect James Barnet persuaded Premier Henry Parkes to purchase the whole site for £12,500 in 1873.

The government was coming under community pressure to address the increasingly critical overcrowding in public asylums, especially in the main Sydney asylum at Tarban Creek (Gladesville). By 1876 Callan Park’s first in-patients were transferred into Brenan’s former homestead, Garryowen House from Darlinghurst. This was only a stopgap measure and Barnet together with the Medical Superintendent of Tarban Creek, Dr Frederick Manning, eventually convinced the government to seek a more permanent solution for the burgeoning numbers of the mentally ill. Barnet and Manning persuaded the Parkes Government as to the wisdom of building a brand new hospital. Both men wanted to create a more humane environment than that prevailing in the appalling, gloomy, prison-like conditions of Tarban Creek (which frankly wouldn’t have been hard, so parlous was the state of the Gladesville asylum!) A site was chosen, directly across from Garryowen, to construct a very large complex intended as a state-of-the-art psychiatric hospital providing a curative and therapeutic environment.

Between 1880 and early 1885 some 33 graceful sandstone buildings in the Victorian classical style were erected on a raised rock and earth platform and then enclosed within four sandstone perimeter walls. The complex was eventually named ‘Kirkbride‘ (often referred to as the Kirkbride Block) was named in honour of an influential American psychiatrist who advocated that pleasant surroundings for patients were conducive to “moral therapy”. The hospital’s first director of mental health, Dr F Norton Manning (also the NSW Inspector-General for the Insane), shared the prevailing moral therapy view of insanity as sinful, a character flaw that could be cured (or at least ameliorated) by preoccupation with work (outdoor gardening and trades for men and domestic service for women). If you coupled that with an attractive physical environment and religious instruction, this was the pathway to recovery, according to its advocates [S Garton, Medicine and Madness. A Social History of Insanity in NSW 1880-1940]

The Kirkbride complex, with its Free Classical style sandstone design, was the work of colonial architect James Barnet. It was the largest building project completed to that time in the colony (in fact the largest undertaken until the 20th century) at a then enormous cost of £250,000. Barnet collaborated with the hospital’s), whose designs for Kirkbride were based on the Chartham Downs institution in Kent. Kirkbride was designed with spacious, pavilion wards and sun-lit verandahs and connecting courtyards. To compliment the aesthetic virtues of Kirkbride, an attractive lawn setting and a tree-lined picturesque (sunken) garden was constructed below the block. The appealing garden and the spaciousness of the Hospital was meant to break down the effects of the patients’ natural feelings of confinement by affording them more scope for movement.

These grand, pleasure gardens were designed by Charles Moore, the Director of the National Botanic Gardens, with which they share some stylistic similarities. The gardens also contain something of a cross-cultural curio, a war memorial in the Spanish mission style [Graham Spindler, Uncovering Sydney, (1991)]. The eastern part of the park, near to Balmain Road, is lined with Port Jackson fig trees. At the northern end of Kirkbride, near where North Crescent circles round to become Central Avenue, are a couple of massive ancient Moreton Bay figs with the most amazing, gigantic root system.

Before taking up his post as Superintendent of Kirkbride Manning travelled overseas, researching the most modern methods of treating the insane. As well as creating the right aesthetic environment, his philosophy focused on the need to engage patients in meaningful work and recreational activities, such as growing their own produce and other farming pursuits (in this sense Manning was something of a harbinger in advocating the use of “occupational therapy”, a term and concept not in vogue until the 20th century) [Callan Park Conservation Management Plan, www. Leichhardt.nsw.gov.au.

Dr Manning also placed an emphasis on the quality of staffing, and played a key role in advancing the professional status of psychiatric nurses in Australian institutions. He insisted that nurses and attendants at Callan Park have proper training to be competent in working effectively in an asylum, and advocated that they be appropriately remunerated for their work.

A highlight of the architecture of the Kirkbride Block is the decorative Venetian “clock tower”(sans clock – it was never installed for some reason!). The tower is part of Kirkbride’s built-in reticulation system, on top of the tower is a tidal ball copper spire which indicates the water level of the underground reservoir below. Rainwater from the run-offs is collected in two underground tanks and pumped to the wards (one tank is reserved for any fire emergency). The surrounding walls of the complex employed a device called a “Ha-Ha” Wall. Barnet would have learned this from the work of 18th century English landscape architect ‘Capability’ Brown. A Ha-Ha Wall is where a steep ditch is dug along the inside of the wall to prevent patients scaling it, whilst at the same time retaining the exterior view (allowing patients views from their verandahs extending to the Blue Mountains)[“Rozelle Hospital Heritage Study” 1991 report (PDF), www.callanparkyourplan.com.au ; “Kirkbride Past & Present”, SCA, www.sydney.edu.au].

The 5.1HA block was designed to be entirely self-contained, with its own kitchens, separate dining halls, capacity for 666 patients (with an even 333 split for each gender) in the rooms and dormitories (male and female were segregated at opposite ends of the block with other sections in the middle). The complex also contained staff residences, bathhouses, laundries, bakery, workshop, lecture halls, library, chapel, morgue and administration block. To the south of the tower is a furnace stack which was used to generate steam required for the laundries.

Manning’s successor as Inspector-General Eric Sinclair was also ahead of the game! He introduced more specialised (special admissions) wards, such as the Female Cottage Hospital, to treat curable cases through early intervention, and advocated to have treatment of mental disease put on a more scientific basis [Peter Reynolds and Ken Leong, “Callan Park Mental Hospital”, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/callan_park_mental_hospital, viewed 05 December 2015].

Sadly, over the course of the next century, Manning’s vision of an enlightened psychiatric hospital using modern scientific methods to care for those unfortunate enough to suffer from mental illness, floundered on a sea of inadequate government funding, staffing problems and chronic overcrowding, and until more recent times, met largely with public indifference. The overcrowding was a contributing factor in Kirkbride patient treatment becoming less rehabilitative in emphasis and more custodial as time went on.

Just blogging away…doing the hard blog

Continuing the search for signs of Intelligent Life in the University.