Travel in a time of virus

 Airport at 7:15 am...

Check in: Where are you flying?

Passenger: Narita.

Check in: OK. Passport, booking reference, covid test result, health test QR code, and pledge. Got those?

Passenger (hands over a file of documents): Here. Any chance of a seat with the next one unoccupied?

Check in: We’re only 10 percent full. Almost have the plane to yourself.

________

Voice-over

It was a pleasant flight. Mask changes were brought every three hours. Nice food. An atmosphere of calm, unhurried efficiency. Were that travel always like this, at the airport, or on the flight. Just that it took a week to get the paperwork together.

Station Eleven

A tale of a faster, deadlier pandemic…
Kirsten: It was a woven tale.
Miranda: Meaning?
Kirsten: It started in the present, or at least, a present, jumped forward and back. Characters died and came back to life in earlier times.
Miranda: I read the premise: a post-apocalyptic story about a virus which almost eliminates human life.
Kirsten: Yes, yes. Takes out 99% of the population and kills in a day or so. Not like Covid which is much less lethal and almost languid.
Miranda: Reading such a book in the middle of a pandemic?
Kirsten: Unsettling. Highlights the fragility of human life, and the unsustainability of our civilization.
_________
Voice-over
“Survival is not enough” is a theme of Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven. Published in 2015, it seems as prescient as scientists warning that Covid is just a precursor of pandemics yet to come.

Gender correlation... or country size?

A cause and effect discussion… 

Undergrad: Countries most affected by this coronavirus include the USA, Brazil, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy and France. The countries that are recognized as having managed the crisis best are Germany, Taiwan, New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Could we conclude that women leaders are more competent at handling a health crisis?

Tutor: That’s one interpretation. But the average population of those male-led countries in round figures is 130 million. The average population of the female-led countries is 20 million. It would be only 8 million if you didn’t include Germany.

 

Undergrad: Hmm. So generally, smaller countries manage the coronavirus crisis better?

 

Tutor: Perhaps. Or maybe smaller countries have political systems that facilitate female leadership more easily?

__________

Voice-over

It’s complicated. As we have to keep reminding people, a correlation does not necessarily mean that a change in one variable causes a change in another variable. It can, but discussion, experimentation and testing comes first.

Countering the microchip for monitoring conspiracy theory

 What some people will believe…

Sara: When can we get back to our lives do you think?

Kristin: Well, a vaccine might be ready by the end of the year, then there’s the four stages of clinical trials, taking months, so it won’t be able to be widely deployed until next year.

Sara: And that is from?

Kristin: A webinar featuring Bill Gates.

Sara: And he’ll put tracking devices in the vaccine?

Kristin: You seriously believe that?

Sara: Well, 28% of Americans do.

Kristin: Ha, ha! Stealth through Health?

__________

Voice-over

Add to that half Americans won’t take the vaccine, and the virus could linger for a lot longer yet. Factcheck: The belief seems to lurk in the fact that RFIDs could be attached to the syringes and tagged to the mobile phone number of the person vaccinated. It’s not as though the vaccine itself carries a chip into your body so you can be tracked as you walk around. Anyway, your mobile phone number is linked to PCR tests and other medical tests already.

Armchair Travel

A trip might be nice...

Travel in a time of virus…

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Perry: It palls after a while.

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Grendel: What?

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Perry: Being at home. Looking at the view. Watching migratory birds starting to depart on journeys. Leaving behind us flightless humans. Feet start itching so I read a travel book. Took trips to Ethiopia, Nepal, Tibet and India last week.

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Grendel: Armchair travel?

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Perry: The chair arms hold your book up, and as you read you vicariously experience the pleasure and the pain of travel.

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Grendel: Ah. Schadenfreude. Pleasure in reading about the pain of others.

__________

Voice-over

Evidence of accompanying Pico Iyer through his Tropical Classical. Not just about travel but meeting exceptional people like the Dalai Lama, hearing Iyer's views on what books by Indian, British, Japanese, and American writers really meant, and smiling at his deconstructions of languages, dramas, genres and punctuation.

...

White Rabbit wishes for whiteware

Lockdown becomes looser

Cautious Rabbit goes cyber

for carrot stocking.

Also window shopping

for perhaps a freezer.

WHITE RABBIT

WHITE RABBIT

WHITE RABBIT

A year after retirement...

Much has changed…

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Those were the days...

Basil: This was the final function I attended: the university graduating students party. March 27, 2019.

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Riquito: Now here it is, a year later. How do you feel?

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Basil: Seems so long ago and far away. Two, three years back.

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Riquito: Don’t you miss it? Couldn’t we ask you to come and teach a class or two?

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Basil: Nope. Not because I don’t want to, you understand. Things have changed. A year ago classes were face to face. Now, if you don’t have your stuff online, and PPTs, and films, and a website with spiffy content, you’re dead in a click. Or may as well be.

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Riquito: It’s a scramble, yes.

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Basil: So I’m positioning myself for the post-covid world.

__________

Voice-over

The post-covid world may reward those who have managed to land on their online feet. And the Singularity may arrive before Kurzweil predicted it! Those of us beyond teenhood are going to have to devote half each day to coping.

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How to extend a lockdown

Stats

Behind closed doors…

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PM: So do we end it or extend it?

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Stephen of Stats: The model shows if we hold on for another two weeks we can come down to almost zero. We have a good chance of eliminating the virus.

Health

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Doc of Health: We’ve got pretty low numbers. Businesses want to get back to work. Their protests are getting louder.

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PM: We need a spin on this. Stephen, how about you go on TV and radio first thing in the morning, saying we need two more weeks. Then I’ll make the afternoon announcement saying we’ll extend for one week. I’ll start by saying what a grand job everyone’s done, how patient they’ve been. Then I’ll bury the extension about Minute 8. And then Doc, I’ll hand over and you back me up.

PM

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Doc of Health: Queen's Knight to f3?

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Stephen of Stats: That's the story.

__________

Voice-over

Classic PR crisis management communication. Leak bad news early on. Follow up with good news that the curve is flattening. Bury the less good news that we need to keep pushing it down. Game it. End with a sports analogy. We’re only at half-time. Need to keep up the pressure. We’re all in this together. We can do it.

...

An Online Easter

A digital Easter…

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Susan: How was Easter for you this year?

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Maria: Well, we elderly and vulnerable were not supposed to go out.

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Susan: You missed church?

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Maria: Saw some great entertainment online instead. Jesus Christ Superstar.

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Susan: Andrew Lloyd Webber?

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Maria: Stunning cast. Superb cinematography. Only accessible for 48 hours. But then today guess who sang in the Milano Duomo? With no audience?

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Susan: Andrea Bocelli?

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Maria: A little older, a little thinner, but still he's Bocelli. Intercuts of empty streets of Milano, Paris, London and NY echoing him singing in the deserted duomo; nice production!

___________

Voice-over

Shopping online, education online, great entertainment online. The virus is a black swan heralding disruption in society as we know it.

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Isolation and online learning

How’s it going in self-isolation…

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Einar: Well, it’s a weird experience. I can go outside the house and do home maintenance. That’s good. Delivery service of food boxes dropped on the doorstep followed by a sharp rat-tat-tat-tat at the door. I open it, delivery man keeping his distance takes my photo or my driver licence placed on doorstep, then flees.

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Rahim: Do the police check on you?

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Einar: Have had almost daily telephone calls checking that I’m isolated, administering questionnaires and so on but no further visits yet.

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Rahim: Psychologically?

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Einar: I have bursts of enthusiastic activity. Then a sort of zombie-like slowdown for a few hours.

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Rahim: Work?

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Einar: School’s closed so I have to put all my classes online. The school is woefully behind in online learning. It doesn’t use Zoom, it has its own system which is most unintuitive. Most teachers can only use email but students only use LINE. There’s an app gap.

________

Voice-over

Teachers are encouraged to make their class content visually attractive. Not just talking heads. To simplify, and to entertain. It’s the age of memes. If lessons are to be delivered by email teachers might resort to greater use of emojis. Like emoji film quizzes. Would that result in students sending in assignments using LINE stickers? That might be a perfect match of meme exchange. With this new virus rampant, schools are dumping lessons online holus-bolus and willy-nilly. For a model math lesson, see...

https://youtu.be/BSxM6_zEw2k

...

Risk management traveling in a time of virus

...through a mask darkly…

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Kleinman: In viral times like these, plans are useless but planning is essential.

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Drusilla: (wearing a black mask): So you planned?

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Kleinman: Plan A, B AND C.

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Drusilla: Which were?

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Kleinman: Plan A was to go to the airport and buy a ticket on the last flight. B was to use an existing ticket for the next day claiming to be an essential service person for that restricted flight. C was to stay put in Tokyo.

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Drusilla: So you went to the airport. Didn’t that have a degree of risk?

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Kleinman: There were three masked people on the 45 seater bus to Narita. Negligible risk. The airport was almost deserted because of all the cancelled flights. The flight itself had only 25 masked people on a 300 seater Airbus. OK, shall we say 10% risk? And at the airport on landing, masked biosecurity and police outnumbered arrivals Negligible risk again.

___________

Voice-over

Risk management pack

Travelling in viral times hinges on risk management odds and preparation. Mask, ethyl alcohol spray for surfaces, sanitizer, stay a couple of meters from others. A 10% risk? Then self-isolation. That restricts it to negligible risk. Plan C, staying in a densely populated Tokyo reliant on public transport. Hmm. What if the infection rate soars? Risk is then less easily managed.

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Covid 19: How long does it last?

A virologist on Covid 19…

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Reporter: Some of the most common questions about the virus begin with “How long…?”

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We don't know...

Dr Fei Fei: Right. There is the question of how long is it contagious in the air, and how long will this pandemic last.

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Reporter: So when someone coughs or sneezes, how long does the virus stay active on a surface?

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Dr Fei Fei: On plastic or stainless steel, it could still be detectable after a couple of days. On cardboard a day.

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Reporter: And how long do you think before we can go back to normal life?

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Dr Fei Fei: That’s hard. It’s a new virus. It’s not the same as the flu, it’s not the same as SARS. It will pass, but we don’t when. Best guess is it will last months and just maybe next year it will have died down.

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Reporter: About the time when a vaccine is readied?

_________

Voice-over

Numbers add up to pictures and predictions. It’s complicated. Cases per million of population: Japan: 7, Italy: 600. Case fatality rate: average 2% (but higher in elderly and people with underlying health conditions: 10-30%). Country by country, case by case.

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