Global problems faced by mankind today are impacting individuals and nations rapidly. Climate change, famine, war, epidemics of deadly diseases and environmental pollution contribute to the long list of global challenges we, as humans, need to promptly addressbefore an eventualcatastrophe swiftly becomes inevitable.

Regardless of political philosophy, religious beliefs, or social customs, all socio-economic systemsultimately depend upon natural resources, such as clean air and water, arable land, and the necessary technology and personnel to maintain a high standard of living.

Modern society has access to highly advanced technologies and can make available food, clothing, housing, medical care, a relevant educational system, and develop a limitless supply of renewable, non-contaminating energy such as geothermal, solar, wind and tidal.

It is now possible to have everyone on Earth enjoy a very high standard of living with all of the amenities that a prosperous civilization can provide. This can be accomplished through the intelligent and humane application of science and technology.

Individuals and interest groups are governed by lawsthatdemandmaximum profit where possible. These laws are inherent in the monetary system prevalent in most countries today capitalism. The basic principles of capitalism demand exponential growth at all cost causing financial cataclysms such as the 1929s Great Depression in the United States and the recentfinancial crisisof2007-08.

We are separated by borders and beliefs which make it impossible for us to arrive at relevantsolutionswhile being divided ideologically. Most of our problems today are technical but we are still looking forsolutions through political means.We need toacceptthat eliminatingthese global threatsrequiresthe employment ofmethodologies rather than personal opinions.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.~ Albert Einstein

The Venus Project proposes a holistic approach with a global socio-economic system that utilizes the most current technological and scientific advances to provide the highest possible living standard for all people on Earth. The proposed system is called Resource Based Economy. The term and meaning was coined by Jacque Fresco, the founder of The Venus Project.

In a Resource Based Economy all goods and services are available to all people without the need for means of exchange such as money, credits, barter or any other means. For this to be achieved all resources must be declared as the common heritage of all Earths inhabitants. Equipped with the latest scientific and technological marvels mankind could reach extremely high productivity levels and create abundance of resources.

Resource Based Economy concerns itself with three main factors, namely Environmental, Technological and Human. We invite you to investigate further into these factors and discovermore about The Venus Project and Resource Based Economy.

Similarly to all other living creatures, ourbehavior is determined largelyby the factors inourenvironment. The combination of influences throughout the countless events in our lives build our character and we assume []

Read More

Many people believe that there is too much technology in the world today, and that technology is the major cause of our environmental pollution. This is not the case. It []

Read More

Our present culture is driven by technically incompetent politicians, scarcity-oriented economics and a system of obsolete values. In order for us to make the transition to this new, more humane []

Read More

Read more from the original source:

Resource Based Economy | The Venus Project

WHAT IS A RESOURCE BASED ECONOMY?

The term and meaning of aResource Based Economywas originated by Jacque Fresco. It is a holistic socio-economic system in which all goods and services are available without the use of money, credits, barter or any other system of debt or servitude. All resources become the common heritage of all of the inhabitants, not just a select few. The premise upon which this system is based is that the Earth is abundant with plentiful resource; our practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant and counter productive to our survival.

Modern society has access to highly advanced technology and can make available food, clothing, housing and medical care; update our educational system; and develop a limitless supply of renewable, non-contaminating energy. By supplying an efficiently designed economy, everyone can enjoy a very high standard of living with all of the amenities of a high technological society.

A resource-based economy would utilize existing resources from the land and sea, physical equipment, industrial plants, etc. to enhance the lives of the total population. In an economy based on resources rather than money, we could easily produce all of the necessities of life and provide a high standard of living for all.

Consider the following examples: At the beginning of World War II the US had a mere 600 or so first-class fighting aircraft. We rapidly overcame this short supply by turning out more than 90,000 planes a year. The question at the start of World War II was: Do we have enough funds to produce the required implements of war? The answer was no, we did not have enough money, nor did we have enough gold; but we did have more than enough resources. It was the available resources that enabled the US to achieve the high production and efficiency required to win the war. Unfortunately this is only considered in times of war.

In a resource-based economy all of the worlds resources are held as the common heritage of all of Earths people, thus eventually outgrowing the need for the artificial boundaries that separate people. This is the unifying imperative.

We must emphasizethat this approach to global governance has nothing whatever in common with the present aims of an elite to form a world government with themselves and large corporations at the helm, and the vast majority of the worlds population subservient to them. Our vision of globalization empowers each and every person on the planet to be the best they can be, not to live in abject subjugation to a corporate governing body.

Our proposals would not only add to the well being of people, but they would also provide the necessary information that would enable them to participate in any area of their competence. The measure of success would be based on the fulfilment of ones individual pursuits rather than the acquisition of wealth, property and power.

At present, we have enough material resources to provide a very high standard of living for all of Earths inhabitants. Only when population exceeds the carrying capacity of the land do many problems such as greed, crime and violence emerge. By overcoming scarcity, most of the crimes and even the prisons of todays society would no longer be necessary.

A resource-based economy would make it possible to use technology to overcome scarce resources by applying renewable sources of energy, computerizing and automating manufacturing and inventory, designing safe energy-efficient cities and advanced transportation systems, providing universal health care and more relevant education, and most of all by generating a new incentive system based on human and environmental concern.

Many people believe that there is too much technology in the world today, and that technology is the major cause of our environmental pollution. This is not the case. It is the abuse and misuse of technology that should be our major concern. In a more humane civilization, instead of machines displacing people they would shorten the workday, increase the availability of goods and services, and lengthen vacation time. If we utilize new technology to raise the standard of living for all people, then the infusion of machine technology would no longer be a threat.

A resource-based world economy would also involve all-out efforts to develop new, clean, and renewable sources of energy: geothermal; controlled fusion; solar; photovoltaic; wind, wave, and tidal power; and even fuel from the oceans. We would eventually be able to have energy in unlimited quantity that could propel civilization for thousands of years. A resource-based economy must also be committed to the redesign of our cities, transportation systems, and industrial plants, allowing them to be energy efficient, clean, and conveniently serve the needs of all people.

What else would a resource-based economy mean? Technology intelligently and efficiently applied, conserves energy, reduces waste, and provides more leisure time. With automated inventory on a global scale, we can maintain a balance between production and distribution. Only nutritious and healthy food would be available and planned obsolescence would be unnecessary and non-existent in a resource-based economy.

As we outgrow the need for professions based on the monetary system, for instance lawyers, bankers, insurance agents, marketing and advertising personnel, salespersons, and stockbrokers, a considerable amount of waste will be eliminated. Considerable amounts of energy would also be saved by eliminating the duplication of competitive products such as tools, eating utensils, pots, pans and vacuum cleaners. Choice is good. But instead of hundreds of different manufacturing plants and all the paperwork and personnel required to turn out similar products, only a few of the highest quality would be needed to serve the entire population. Our only shortage is the lack of creative thought and intelligence in ourselves and our elected leaders to solve these problems. The most valuable, untapped resource today is human ingenuity.

With the elimination of debt, the fear of losing ones job will no longer be a threat. This assurance, combined with education on how to relate to one another in a much more meaningful way, could considerably reduce both mental and physical stress and leave us free to explore and develop our abilities.

If the thought of eliminating money troubles you, consider this: If a group of people with gold, diamonds and money were stranded on an island that had no resources such as food, clean air and water, their wealth would be irrelevant to their survival. It is only when resources are scarce that money can be used to control their distribution. One could not, for example, sell the air we breathe or water abundantly flowing down from a mountain stream. Although air and water are valuable, in abundance they cannot be sold.

Money is only important in a society when certain resources for survival must be rationed and the people accept money as an exchange medium for the scarce resources. Money is a social convention, an agreement if you will. It is neither a natural resource nor does it represent one. It is not necessary for survival unless we have been conditioned to accept it as such.

See original here:

RESOURCE BASED ECONOMY | Future by Design

To transcend these limitations, The Venus Project proposes we work toward a worldwide, resource-based economy, a holistic social and economic system in which the planetary resources are held as the common heritage of all the earths inhabitants. The current practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant, counter-productive, and falls far short of meeting humanitys needs.

Simply stated, within a Resource Based Economy we will utilize existing resources rather than money to provide an equitable method of distribution in the most humane and efficient manner. It is a system in which all goods and services are available to everyone without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.

To better understand a resource-based economy, consider this. If all the money in the world disappeared overnight, as long as topsoil, factories, personnel and other resources were left intact, we could build anything we needed to fulfill most human needs. It is not money that people require, but rather free access to most of their needs without worrying about financial security or having to appeal to a government bureaucracy. In a resource-based economy of abundance, money will become irrelevant.

We have arrived at a time when new innovations in science and technology can easily provide abundance to all of the worlds people. It is no longer necessary to perpetuate the conscious withdrawal of efficiency by planned obsolescence, perpetuated by our old and outworn profit system. If we are genuinely concerned about the environment and our fellow human beings, if we really want to end territorial disputes, war, crime, poverty and hunger, we must consciously reconsider the social processes that led us to a world where these factors are common. Like it or not, it is our social processes political practices, belief systems, profit-based economy, our culture-driven behavioral norms that lead to and support hunger, war, disease and environmental damage.

The aim of this new social design is to encourage an incentive system no longer directed toward the shallow and self-centered goals of wealth, property, and power. These new incentives would encourage people toward self-fulfillment and creativity, both materially and spiritually.

See more here:

What is a Resource-Based Economy? | The Venus Project

A short video to give a very brief description of a Resource Based Economy. We hope to release more short presentations like this to share with others who wouldn't sit through a longer one but may pique their interests to explore further.

The Venus Project proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable but as totally unacceptable. Anything less will result in a continuation of the same catalog of problems inherent in today's world.

Learn more at http://www.thevenusproject.comOfficial store: https://www.thevenusproject.com/store/Official FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/TheVenusProj...Official Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/thevenuspro...Official Pinterest page: https://www.pinterest.com/thevenuspro...Official Twitter page: https://www.twitter.com/TheVenusProjectDonations: https://www.thevenusproject.com/donat...

See the original post here:

Introduction to a Resource Based Economy

The Facts will change its business model in response to the historical effect COVID-19 is having on the local, state and national economies and the newspaper industry, company officials announced today.

On May 1, The Facts will begin a five-day-a-week publishing schedule with an expanded weekend edition and a new focus on digital news coverage and features, company leaders said.

Print editions of The Facts will be distributed to subscribers and single-copy readers Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. The larger weekend print edition will appear Saturdays.

The Facts will continue to publish local news seven days a week through its digital edition, thefacts.com.

This change is a direct result of COVID-19 dramatically disrupting our lives and economy, Editor and Publisher Yvonne Mintz said. Our mission is vital, bringing news to our communities in the best and most trying of times. Still, we are much like any other small business. When the local economy suffers, we suffer.

The Facts generates 75 percent of its revenue from advertising, primarily from local businesses. The balance comes from subscriptions and other products.

When the economy came to a grinding halt in mid-March, most all of the businesses who depend on the paper to reach their customers suddenly found themselves in turmoil, either with their supply chain disrupted, their doors ordered closed or both.

Many of them have pulled their advertising, through no fault of their own, of course, drastically reducing our papers revenue and leaving us searching for ways to cut costs to survive this dangerously thin window, Mintz said. Our advertisers will be back, and our economy will rebound, but none of us can be sure what that will look like or how long it will take.

Meanwhile, the demand for local news intensified, with more readers than ever seeking our news out online.

The Facts is a vital community resource, Mintz said. We have to do whatever we can to preserve it.

The decision to change print frequency did not come easily for the newspaper. However, doing nothing was not an option in this challenging economic time, Mintz said.

We take very seriously our commitment to serving our community, especially in times of crisis, Mintz said. I have to be mindful of the financial realities of running this business, though. This change positions The Facts to continue our legacy of quality community journalism for the long haul.

The announcement comes at a time when the U.S. newspaper industry, which already was facing headwinds, is being especially hard hit by the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and response to that.

Publishers and newspaper companies across the nation are taking similar steps to cut costs and increase efficiency as they work to develop new sources of revenue and continue to serve their readers in a time of global crisis, Mintz said.

The new production schedule will allow The Facts to cut newsprint expenses in order to help the paper preserve employees, she said.

Generating quality local news is not free or inexpensive, Mintz said. Our employees get paid and enjoy good benefits. They live and shop and volunteer locally and are vital members of our communities.

We want to take whatever steps we reasonably can to keep them on the job and serving our readers.

The Facts was founded in 1913. The newspaper is locally managed and independently owned and operated by Texas-based Southern Newspapers.

This is a big change, especially for our print-only readers, Mintz said. We realize it will be hard to adjust your habits. We are committed, though, to providing you all the news and features you have come to rely on, just on a slightly different print schedule.

Sunday comics and crosswords will be delivered in the expanded weekend edition on Saturdays, for you to enjoy at your leisure throughout the weekend, she said. We are also adding features to that weekend package, to make it an even better read.

The first weekend edition, to be delivered Saturday, May 2, will include another installment of the puzzle book the paper debuted last month. And starting May 9, the weekend paper will include Parade Magazine.

Online readers will notice expanded offerings.

This is not a change we wanted to make, Mintz said. But we will adapt and do our absolute best to serve readers well through this hard time and beyond. We will get through this trying time together and remain committed to supporting local businesses and the community we love.

Excerpt from:

Facts adjusts print schedule to adapt to changing economy - Brazosport Facts

How and when states reopen their economies will look different from one state to the next state depending, in part, on where that state is in the trajectory of its coronavirus illnesses. In this Q&A from The Conversation, Hilary Godwin, dean of the University of Washington School of Public Health, explains why, and why it makes sense for groups of states, such as Washington, Oregon and California, to coordinate their plans.

Governors are walking a tightrope as they try to figure out how to safely ease off social distancing restrictions and restart their economies without triggering a new surge in coronavirus cases.

Do they start allowing businesses like restaurants, theaters and hair salons to reopen, as Georgia plans to do by Monday despite more than 20,000 COVID-19 cases there so far and opposition from several mayors? Is it OK to reopen beaches and stores, like South Carolina did this week? Or do they take a more cautious approach, as Massachusetts is doing by keeping schools closed through the end of the school year?

These decisions arent simple.

At this point, we expect to see some rise in cases when economic and social activities restart. We dont want to wait until there is no chance that would happen people would literally go stir-crazy in their homes and it would decimate the economy.

What we want is to be confident that we have the capacity to identify coronavirus cases quickly and control the spread through contact tracing and isolation when we see them start to emerge again.

Under our countrys federalist system, protection of public health and safety is reserved to the state, so it is up to each governor to choose a path forward.

The White Houses plan provides a helpful starting point by offering a least restrictive path, but it suggests removing restrictions much more quickly than many public health people feel comfortable with.

For example, one trigger for the first phase of lifting restrictions is a downward trajectory, with 14 days of decreasing numbers of new COVID-19 cases. At that point, the White House plan says there can be large gatherings including at sports events and movie theaters, provided social distancing is followed.

Washington state has probably met that two-week threshold, but dont expect Washington to allow large gatherings soon. Statistically, the chance of someone asymptomatic and infectious being at one of those gatherings and exposing a large number of people is pretty high. Thats a risk many states arent going to take.

A number of different models, including by researchers at Harvard Chan School of Public Health and Kathryn Peebles at the University of Washington, have suggested that you need to wait longer than just seeing 14 days of a downward trajectory to be confident you wouldnt get a large resurgence of cases. That could mean three or four weeks Im not saying months and months and months. But 14 days seems really short based on what Ive seen of the coronavirus case curves and where most places are on that trajectory.

Going into the first phase of lifting restrictions, states need to have enough testing and contact tracing capacity to be confident they can manage the cases that will still turn up. Even if a state isnt seeing cases spreading within communities, travelers are still coming in from places where the pandemic is active.

Right now, we dont have that capacity, even in Washington, and we have better capacity that most of the country.

Thats one reason partnering with other states makes sense.

When Washington partners with California and Oregon, we can pool our resources for developing testing capacity and contact tracing capacity. That bumps up the timeline for getting enough resources in place that we can be confident we can start lifting restrictions. It should take us much less time if were working together, and thats huge.

Another big advantage is consistent messaging across a region where people cross state lines all the time.

Read herefor coronavirus updates

For states to coordinate, its helpful if theyre at similar stages in the epidemic. Thats part of why it makes sense for a few states to coordinate on the same plan rather than having one plan for the entire country.

New York is having such a different experience right now that it would be difficult for that state to coordinate reopening plans with Washington or California. In Washington, when the cases numbers plateaued, we were able to send extra ventilators to other regions that needed them. New York needs to be taking different steps at different times and has different resource challenges.

In Washington, Oregon and California, we also have similarities in how people and the governors weigh public health risk versus economic risk in a situation like this. Part of the reason Washington has done well after the early outbreak was that our local health departments were good about jumping on contact tracing and preparations, so by the time we did have community-level transmission, they had been preparing for weeks. We also have elected officials who have worked hand in hand with their public health officials.

It is possible that we wont see a second peak. There are things that could keep that from happening.

Having a vaccine widely available or a treatment people could take to prevent transmitting the disease could help the country avoid another surge in cases. Its also possible, as we saw with MERS and SARS, that once we are able to contain everything and get it to a low enough level, the coronavirus could die out on its own.

But we dont want to count on that and not prepare for the possibility it comes back, particularly since so many people havent been infected. We still have a lot of people who are really vulnerable, so if were not careful enough about how we bring economic and social activities back online, we could have a resurgence.

Now read:The future of successful coronavirus response: Mass testing at work and in church and self-administered tests

Hilary Godwin is the dean of the University of Washingtons School of Public Health. This was first published on The Conversation Why there isnt a one-size-fits-all plan for states to reopen their economies.

More:

Reopening the U.S. economy is like walking a tightrope and Trumps guidelines may be too lax - MarketWatch

I appreciate Mike Szydlowskis insightful article, Clearing the Air, in the April 15 issue of the Tribune. It was helpful to read his data revealing the relationship between the COVID-19 death rate and air pollution.

I was reminded of Adam Russell Taylors article in the May issue of Sojourners magazine, entitled We hear the planet crying, I Cant Breathe. He says: America constitutes 5% of the worlds population but burns 25% of the worlds fossil fuels. These and other trends of conspicuous corruption and abuse are driving us toward global catastrophe. He continues, Through floods such as Katrina and Harvey, we hear the planet gasping, I cant breathe. Amid out-of-control wildfires in California and Australia our planet is hollering, I cant breathe.

Each in their own way confirms what I have been thinking and saying for decades the earth cannot afford our lifestyle. Through the years I have thought of this mostly in terms of our USA consumption of fossil fuels and our extravagant, wasteful way of life. However, in recent weeks influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become very clear to me that our global human family is all in this together. Scientists are predicting that our global human family will number about nine billion by 2050. The earth is crying out against our terrible pollution and abuse of our planet home. I remember the floods of 93. Supposedly that was a once in 500 years event. How many more such record-breaking climate events have happened since then? We have experienced massive hurricanes and tornadoes, unheard of flooding, horrendous wildfires, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and now a worldwide pandemic.

As we begin thinking about reopening our economy and moving into the future, I am reminded of Lester Browns book, Plan B 3.0, written in 2008. Brown was a 1956 graduate of Rutgers University Agriculture College and then lived six months with farm families in India as a delegate of the 4-H sponsored exchange program, International Farm Youth Exchange. It changed his life. Instead of returning to the family tomato farm in New Jersey, he began working with USDA in Washington, D.C. Then, in 1974, he left USDA and founded Worldwatch Institute, and in 1997, Earth Policy Institute. He devoted his life to research and writing about world hunger and caring for the earth.

On page 266 of Plan B 3.0 he summarizes three key elements: We know from our analysis of global warming, from the accelerating deterioration of the economys ecological supports, and from our projections of future resource use in China that the western economic model the fossil-fuel based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy will not last much longer. We need to build a new economy, one that will be powered by renewable sources of energy, one that will have a diversified transport system, and that will reuse and recycle everything.

Now that COVID-19 has our attention, perhaps we can hear our beloved planet home crying out, I cant breathe. Perhaps we can turn away from denial of global warming and climate change and develop an earth-friendly, earth-saving economy for the sake of our children and grandchildren and all the other creatures who call earth their home.

Please God. Let it be so.

Cleo Kottwitz, Columbia

Read more:

Letter: The Earth can't breathe - Opinion - Columbia Daily Tribune

The lack of capacity in health care today is obvious from the hard time hospitals around the world are having handling large waves of COVID patients requiring medical attention at the same time as providing their regular services to non-COVID patients. Although health systems remain a highly labour-intensive sector, capital has been increasingly important as a factor of production of health services over recent decades, and especially under pandemic situations when a large number of patients require emergency attendance.

On average, health capital expenditure which includes health infrastructure (buildings, machinery, IT) and stocks of vaccines for emergency or outbreaks only accounts for 0.2% of countries national production, equivalent to less than $0.5 trillion globally. Even OECD countries expenditure on health care does not reach 0.5% of their GDP. Investigating these figures further across time, we learn that they have not changed much in the past two decades, especially health capital (see Figure 1). This is alarming given that the total annual expenditure on health infrastructure ($0.5 trillion) is much lower than the loss endured by the public in case of a pandemic. UNCTAD (2020), for example, predicts a $2 trillion loss in global income due to COVID.

Figure 1 Health expenditure over time

Data source: WHO.

The failure to invest in public health and access to health care means much of the world remains ill-equipped to detect viral threats, protect frontline health care workers, and treat those who fall ill. Because of such factors, the kill rate of a virus depends in significant part on the quality of health care in a country, while its contagiousness is enhanced when government response is slow and insufficient. Figure 2 demonstrates the relationship between health expenditure per capita and number of hospital beds with the case fatality rate (CFR) the ratio of fatalities to infections, which appears to be negative for both. This means countries that invest more in their health capital are likely to face a lower CFR, however, the weak relationship is a clear indicator that a strong health system alone cannot be sufficient.

Figure 2 Health capacity and CFRs

Data source: WHO and World Bank.Note: There are two fundamental issues with any COVID-19 data: (i) the figures might be intentionally or unintentionally miss-reported; (ii) the number of cases recorded is in part a function of how much testing is carried out and fatality data might be misattributed. Therefore, using CFR is preferred as it could be more universal.

Outbreaks are inevitable. Whether they become pandemics the uncontrolled spread of contagious diseases across countries and continents depends on our response. To control a disease outbreak, two forces should work simultaneously: (i) controlling the spread of the disease (lowering R_0), and (ii) treating the infected people (lowering the CFR). The former is directly managed by the government through guidance and/or enforcing containment policies and can influence both infection and fatality rates. The latter only influences fatality rates and is dependent on the capacity of the health system, which is proxied by budgets and capital expenditure (for example, the number of hospital beds, especially critical/intensive care beds). It is therefore surprising to learn that number of available beds is falling in many countries. Most EU member states, for example, have reported a decrease in the availability of hospital beds over the past few years (Eurostat 2019).

Scholars at the University of Oxford have recently introduced the Stringency Index, a measure of government responses across the globe constructed using publicly available data on a number of indicators including school closings, travel restrictions, bans on public gatherings, and other interventions to create social distancing or to augment public health provision. Augmenting this measure with rate of COVID infections and fatalities, as well as the number of hospital beds, allows us to compare the current state of affairs in some of the most affected countries.

We already know that rapid and rigorous containment policies are advised to control the spread of an outbreak. However, each country must solve a different optimisation problem given their underlying constraints, namely, their health capacity and the economic cost of enforcing containment measures. In other words, the most cost-effective intervention for two countries with similar infection rates but dissimilar health capacities is different. For example, Figure 3 shows that Germany started responding to the growing rates of the virus much faster than the US. This includes screening/testing and taking social distancing measures. The lack of screening in the US in the first month of the outbreak is clearly seen in the bump in the CFR figure, as this means there were much more infected people as expected at that point. This late response was also amplified by a lower health capacity and resulted in a very sharp growth in both infected and death cases. Comparing the remaining two cases in Figure 3, we can see that not only does South Korea benefit from a significantly greater health capacity, it also started mass testing across the nation relatively early on compared to the UK and the US. A mix of rapid containment policies and high health capacity created a proper head start and made South Koreas intervention exemplary. When comparing Ireland to the UK two comparable nations with similar health capacities yet very different government responses we can see that although the outbreak in Ireland happened some weeks after the UK, it is expected that its rates will stay much lower. Even though Irelands population is lower than that of the UK, its CFR is still substantially lower. This is mainly due to a rapid response by the Irish government (e.g. school and college shutdowns only two weeks in, where this took the UK more than a month).

Figure 3 COVID-19 pandemic case studies

Data source: OECDand Hale et al. (2020)Note: Total hospital beds include acute care beds, rehabilitative care beds, long-term care beds. The number of ICU/CCU beds are much less than what is reported above. However, under shortfall situations a standard bed augmented with a ventilator could be used as an alternative. Overall, the bar above is drawn on the assumption that 10% of total number of hospital beds could be counted as available and adequate.

Going through other most affected cases, it appears most governments were somewhat slow in responding given their health capacity constraints, even though they were aware of the outbreak and there was no doubt the virus was highly contagious based on Chinas experience. This is partly justified on the grounds that such measures do not come cheap, but the true explanation is that politicians tended to wilfully ignore the deteriorating situation and to wait until the last critical moment to break the bad news. Also, unpreparedness and a lack of established evidence-based interventions which assure cost-effectiveness are noticeable.

In terms of the economic cost, the IMF predicts a 3% drop in affected countries annual GDP for every month that nonessential services stay closed, as they account for about one-third of output (IMF 2020). And thats before other disruptions and spillovers to the rest of the economy are taken into account. A recent study predicts a 11% year-on-year contraction in the US economy in the fourth quarter of 2020, more than half of which is due to COVID-induced uncertainty (Baker et al. 2020). Therefore, containment measures should be put in place rapidly and must be accompanied by market-stimulating policies, so that they can be at least partially lifted as soon as the situation has stabilised. This would help get the labour force back to work as quickly as possible (Baldwin 2020a).

In the immediate term, increasing government expenditure is a strategy that is endorsed by most financial authorities and economists (IMF 2020, UNCTAD 2020, Baldwin, 2020b). While this prevents the economy from a total meltdown, mass supplies of masks and testing would allow the labour force to gradually return to work while keeping the risk of another spread low (Greenhalgh 2020, Baldwin 2020c).

Given the substantial costs that pandemics impose on the global economy, it is essential to explore further mitigation strategies to minimise their likelihood and consequence, otherwise we will keep moving from one epidemic to another still unprepared. Evidence suggests that the likelihood and frequency of pandemics have increased over the past century because of increased global travel and integration, urbanisation, increased interactions between animals and humans, weak health systems and greater exploitation of the natural environment. Malaria, for instance, took millennia to jump from primates to humans. Yet in the last 50 years, more than 300 pathogens have appeared or reappeared across the globe (Jones 2008). Therefore, we should start planning to prepare for the next pandemic from this very moment, as even if containment limits the spread of disease, other outbreaks will keep happening as long as diseases keep jumping from animals to humans. Public health experts say that it is not a matter of if another pandemic will happen, but when.

It is also quite clear that flattening the curve becomes much easier the higher the health capacity bar is set. Unlike the government response, which can be put into practice almost immediately, increasing health capacity in incremental and time-taking, arithmetic in opposed to the exponential growth of the disease, and it takes much more time in advance. Further capital investment is therefore advised to give health systems a head-start to reduce the response shortfall a standard phase in pandemics where there is not enough capacity to admit everyone in need.

Lastly, there is a dire need for evidence-based approaches to what can and will work in different settings with different types of constraints and challenges. Without understanding the impact and cost of mitigation strategies, it is difficult to find the most cost-effective and sustainable response tailored to each countrys context and available resources. There are, however, not many economic studies on health interventions that target epidemics and disease outbreaks. For example, Chalkidou et al. (2020) finds only one study about COVID mentioning the term cost-effectiveness.

Baldwin, R (2020a), Remobilising the workforce for World War COVID: A two-imperatives approach, VoxEU.org, 13 April 2020.

Baldwin, R (2020b), Keeping the lights on: Economic medicine for a medical shock, VoxEU.org, 13 March 2020.

Baldwin, R (2020c), COVID-19 testing for testing times: Fostering economic recovery and preparing for the second wave, VoxEU.org, 26 March 2020.

Baker, S, N Bloom, S Davis and S and Terry (2020), COVID-induced economic uncertainty and its consequences, VoxEU.org, 13 April 2020.

Chalkidou, K, A Gheorghe and C Krubiner (2020), Strategic Investments for COVID-19 and Future Epidemic Threats, Centre for Global Development, 20 March.

Eurostat (2019), Healthcare resource statistics beds.

Greenhalgh, T, M B Schmid, T Czypionka, D Bassler and L Gruer (2020), Face masks for the public during the covid-19 crisis, British Medical Journal 369.

Hale, T, A Petherick, T Phillips and S Webster (2020), Variation in government responses to Covid-19, Blavatnik School Working Paper, BSG-WP-2020/031.

Jones, K E, N G Patel, M A Levy, A Storeygard, D Balk, J L Gittleman and P Daszak (2008), Global trends in emerging infectious diseases, Nature 451(7181): 990-993.

IMF (2020), Europes COVID-19 Crisis and the Funds Response, The IMF and Covid-19 blogs, 30 March 2020.

UNCTAD (2020), The coronavirus shock: a story of another global crisis untold and what policymakers should be doing about it, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Read the original here:

We need a better head start for the next pandemic | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal - voxeu.org

Sacramento, CA, April 24, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Greater Sacramento Economic Council (GSEC) launched a free interactive tool to help businesses large and small through this economic downturn. The resource called SizeUp,provides custom market research and data to empower companies to make strategic and data-driven decisions on their next move. This will assist businesses that are struggling or those that have closed, have access to hyperlocal information to help them get back to work.

This is an amazing tool for our business. It helps gauge where my business is compared to my competitors. I think anyone starting a business should use this resource, said Rico Rivera, CEO of Silicon East Real Estate based in Sacramento.

SizeUp is a web-based tool that incorporates large numbers of timely data sets that help businesses analyze the market and business costs. GSEC is providing it at no cost to the Greater Sacramento region to give organizations the support they need during this critical time.

The service found at SelectSacramento.com/SizeUp provides companies with:

Successful businesses make data-driven decisions. This technology allows small businesses the same advantage as large corporations with business intelligence at the fingertips of local companies.

Entrepreneurs and managers of companies dont always have access to data that can set them on the path for strategic growth. This is an incredible tool that will push businesses in Rancho Cordova and the Greater Sacramento region forward or help them to pivot during this pandemic. Its helping to level the playing field, said Amanda Norton, Economic Development manager of Rancho Cordova.

This is when our leadership is the most critical. GSEC is at the heart of revitalizing and rebuilding the Greater Sacramento economy. Few businesses actually know how their performance compares to their industry competitors because big data analysis is too expensive. We want to provide the best data and resources for the region to be the first to get back into the swing of things, said Barry Broome, President & CEO of GSEC.

The Greater Sacramento Economic Council has created a short online tutorial to explain the benefits of this tool and walk new users through a demonstration of its uses. This tutorial can also be found at SelectSacramento.com/sizeup. In addition, this tool is available to local Chambers of Commerce and economic development professionals across the region as a way to connect with and offer support to their local small businesses. GSEC has also launched a resource page during this crisis, to provide startups and established companies with links to local, state and federal aid.

We are in a moment of time where its make or break. The steps taken now are going to be vital for the future health of our economy. We want to provide every possible advantage to businesses big and small so that we come out of this on top, said Broome.

As we all remain at home during the COVID-19 crisis, events held by the Greater Sacramento Economic Council to advance the regional economy will be moving to a virtual/online platform. Visit the GSEC website at SelectSacramento.com for information on upcoming events or programs, and register for the GSEC COVID-19 weekly email updates sent every Friday - when visiting thesite.

We are here for the long haul. As long as we continue to support and invest in our business community, we will get through this, said Broome.

About the Greater Sacramento Economic Council

The Greater Sacramento Economic Council is the catalyst for innovative growth strategies in the Capital Region of California. The organization spearheads community-led direction to retain, attract, grow and scale tradable sectors, develop advanced industries and create jobs and investment throughout a six-county region. Greater Sacramento represents a collaboration between local and state governments, market leaders, influencers and stakeholders, with the sole mission of driving inclusive economic growth. The Greater Sacramento region was founded on discovery, built on leadership and fueled by innovation.

Read the original:

Free interactive tool launched to help businesses through COVID-19 - GlobeNewswire

The loneliness reported by many people with intellectual disabilities has been exacerbated by quarantine.

The lockdown means sudden deprivation of specialized services and work opportunities.

Issues over rationing of care further increase the current worry and fear.

My brother was supposed to move into his first independent home in mid-March. In his late 20s, and a person with an intellectual disability, he had finally gathered up the courage and the will to move out of our family home and live in a group home. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, my brothers move is now delayed indefinitely, and his world remains mostly his bedroom. He cant go to his part-time job, the library, or to church.

My brother and many others with intellectual disabilities face the additional burden of increased loneliness during COVID-19. While many people are experiencing isolation, anxiety and loneliness during this challenging time, we know that prior to COVID-19, 45% of people with intellectual disabilities reported feeling lonely (thats compared to only 10.5% of the general population). The increased pressures living in quarantine can result in challenges to mental health, sleep disruptions and mood swings.

We know that loneliness is correlated with serious health risks such as heart disease, weakened immune systems and stroke. For people with intellectual disabilities who had already long experienced loneliness and social ostracization, what significant impacts might this have on their mental and physical health? Many COVID-19 patients die alone. For people with intellectual disabilities already experiencing severe loneliness, this fact seems particularly cruel.

People with intellectual disabilities often utilize resources such as home health aides, day programmes, drop-in centres, family respite services and group homes. For health and safety reasons, many of these services are now unavailable or closed, increasing the responsibility of family members, affecting the routine of people with intellectual disabilities and significantly impacting their independence. My brother is not able to go to his state-funded part-time job, removing his interaction with others outside of our immediate family and taking away the sense of purpose he felt by doing work.

These COVID-19-related service changes also reveal the complex interdependencies with families, caregivers and staff that most people with intellectual disabilities depend on in their day-to-day lives. In China, a family made headlines when a teenager with cerebral palsy died in Wuhan after his father and brother, diagnosed with coronavirus, were quarantined in a treatment facility and unable to care for him.

Some people with intellectual disabilities are not able to quarantine alone or stay with their families due to their enhanced medical or behavioural needs. Remaining in group homes or similar long-term care facilities can allow people with intellectual disabilities access to the care they need, but may put them at a much greater risk of infection. For people with intellectual disabilities who live independently or semi-independently but rely on home health aides, they and their families weigh the risk of exposing themselves to infection or not receiving the daily life supports they need.

In addition to all of the health and safety guidelines we all must decipher and follow, people with intellectual disabilities face increased challenges when it comes to staying safe during COVID-19. My brother and many like him have had their daily routine disrupted completely, a challenge for many people with intellectual disabilities. Understanding the rapidly changing information about COVID-19 or updates to public health guidance can be puzzling, and people with intellectual disabilities may struggle to communicate without non-verbal cues.

In Saskatoon, Canada, some people with intellectual disabilities were so confused about the public health guidance to social distance that they went without groceries or other necessities. It is unlikely that my brother really understands the importance of washing his hands or remembers how to do so correctly, even after seeing a video or reading a detailed pamphlet.

The power of business and leadership

The World Economic Forum Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society aims to close the disability inclusion gap by driving business action, capturing and disseminating learnings, and leveraging leadership for scale. It serves as an accelerator for the Valuable 500, a global initiative putting disability on the business leadership agenda.

The value of 1.3 billion people

1.3 billion people across the world live with some form of disability representing 17% of the global population, this is the largest minority group worldwide. 80% of disabilities are acquired between the ages of 18 to 64 i.e. during working age. People with disabilities are often deprived access to employment and the current global employment rate for disabled people is half that of non-disabled people. People with disabilities who are in employment often experience unequal hiring and promotion standards, unequal pay for equal work and occupational segregation. Only 4% of businesses are focused on making offerings inclusive of disability.

Beyond the moral imperative, there is a strong business case for disability inclusion. The cost of exclusion of people with disabilities represents up to 7% of GDP in some countries. With 28% higher revenue, double net income, 30% higher profit margins, and strong next generation talent acquisition and retention, a disability-inclusive business strategy promises a significant return on investment.

A new standard for workplace equality

The Valuable 500 aims to engage 500 national and multinational private sector corporations to be the tipping point for change and to unlock the business, social and economic value of the 1.3 billion people living with disabilities across the world. Leveraging the collective force of committed businesses, the Valuable 500 work together to:

The initiative was launched at the World Economic Forums Annual Meeting in Davos in 2019 and has more than 200 companies committed to date.

Organizations that support and advocate on behalf of people with intellectual disabilities are working hard to continue to provide services and resources, even amid reduced revenue and logistical challenges. Inclusion Europe has produced an easy-to-read instructional guide about coronavirus, designed for people with intellectual disabilities, available in several languages. The UN has produced resources about how to include marginalized and vulnerable people, including those with intellectual disabilities, in risk communication and community engagement. The International Disability Alliance has issued specific recommendations for a disability-inclusive COVID-19 response.

People with intellectual disabilities face the prospect of navigating a healthcare system that is rationing care. During a time of resource scarcity, like the one many countries are experiencing during COVID-19, there simply arent enough resources for every patient that needs them. When this occurs, medical professionals need to decide which patients receive these resources, thus rationing out the care that is available.

In Italy, there are many stories of hospitals too overwhelmed with patients to ventilate every person who needs it medical professionals are forced to make heartbreaking choices about who receives care.

In the United States, the disability community, including the American Association of People With Disabilities, has advocated strongly against guidance in disaster preparedness plans such as those released by states like Washington, Kansas, Tennessee and Alabama that recommend end-of-life decisions that could disadvantage people with disabilities, including some that do not recommend providing ventilators to those with severe mental retardation. Disability advocates assert that these policies directly impact civil rights. In response, the director of the federal health departments civil rights office has begun investigations, and some of these states, including Washington and Kansas, are in the process of updating their guidelines to ensure they do not implicitly or explicitly condone discrimination.

Still, the fear and uncertainty associated with rationing of care is deeply disturbing to people with intellectual disabilities, who are worried that medical professionals, forced to make quick decisions and without a full understanding of their capacity and medical history, might prevent them from receiving medical resources.

People with disabilities and their advocates rightly point out that doctors may make assumptions about people with disabilities based on bias. These fears are supported by research that ableism in medicine does exist. People with intellectual disabilities and their family members remember unethical medical research done on people with intellectual disabilities in the name of science, like those experiments done on unwilling participants at Willowbrook State School in New York. People with intellectual disabilities are still subject to forced sterilization around the world.

A new strain of Coronavirus, COVID 19, is spreading around the world, causing deaths and major disruption to the global economy.

Responding to this crisis requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community, which is at the centre of the World Economic Forums mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

The Forum has created the COVID Action Platform, a global platform to convene the business community for collective action, protect peoples livelihoods and facilitate business continuity, and mobilize support for the COVID-19 response. The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.

As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.

For now, I am grateful that my brother doesnt seem to understand all the fuss around COVID-19 and Im relieved that hes stuck at home. I hope that he doesnt feel too lonely. When I think of the inevitable time when we are allowed to return to our community, I wonder if my brother will follow hygiene guidelines. Will he stay away from people who are coughing? Will he tell us if he has a fever? For now, if he has to go to the hospital, I have to hope that his life is considered as valuable as someone without a disability.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.

Written by

Kara Eusebio, Global Shaper, Ottawa Hub, Invest Ottawa

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

More:

Why COVID-19 confinement is hitting people with intellectual disabilities hard - World Economic Forum

Some southern states, including Georgia and South Carolina, are among the first in the country to ease restrictions to try get back to business despite factors that make the South particularly vulnerable to the coronaviruspandemic.

And pressure is mounting on other southern governors to get their economies back up and running. Outside the Alabama Capitol this week, a few dozen protesters drove by honking their horns, chanting freedom and demanding to get back towork

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has issued a stay-at-home order through April 30. Paralegal Melissa Kirby from Athens, Ala., says shes hadenough.

If she was worried about safety she could let the people who are actually in danger self-quarantine, wash their hands more, Kirby says. But to force businesses to shut down, thats not hercall.

From inside the capitol, Ivey says no one wants to open the economy more than she does, but the state must first increase its testingcapacity.

Remember all of our decisions that Im going to make are based on data, not desired date, Iveysays.

She is taking a more cautious approach than neighboring states Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and Mississippi, where Republican governors have all moved to reopen at least parts of theireconomies.

I think that we could be heading for a macabre game of whack-a-mole, says Thomas LaVeist, dean of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans. He worries that Louisiana an early hot spot for COVID-19 could see a resurgence in cases as surrounding states eastrestrictions.

Unless the states in the South can coordinate the way the states in the North, East, the West, and the upper Midwest are striving to do, were going to have problems, hesays.

LaVeist says longstanding policy decisions, and population characteristics in the South already put the region at risk in a health pandemic. He points to high poverty rates, large numbers of uninsured residents, lower minimum wages, and general health and well-beingmeasures.

The south is the epicenter for health inequities in this country, LaVeist says. We call the South the stroke belt higher rates of all kind of chronicconditions.

Conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and kidney disease have all been identified as factors in COVID-19deaths.

LaVeist says rural communities in the South are not really resourced to manage an outbreak given the number of rural hospitals that have closed or downsized in recentyears.

You add all of that together and youve got sort of this toxic mix of political decisions, policy decisions, resource limitations that just create an opportunity for a pandemic to really just rage in the south, LaVeistsays.

Another disturbing trend is the high proportion of coronavirus cases and deaths amongAfrican-Americans.

The early evidence of that is from Louisiana, where the death toll has now surpassed that of Hurricane Katrina. African-Americans are 56% of reported COVID deaths, but just about one-third of the states population. Other southern states show similar disproportionate impacts on African-Americanresidents.

In New Orleans, there are clusters of cases in predominantly black neighborhoods where people mostly work in the tourismindustry.

This virus has exposed the social and economic fragility of working families, says New Orleans Mayor LaToyaCantrell.

She points to a tyranny of policies that leaves families without a living wage or access to healthcare.

All of this is embedded in really what were seeing across the board in the city of New Orleans, Cantrell says. And really the state of Louisiana is on the front line as it relates to thesematters

Southern states are also subject to natural disasters. This month, there have been deadly tornadoes and flash floods; hurricane season starts June first; and theres spring flooding on the MississippiRiver.

In the river town of Greenville, Miss., Mayor Erick Simmons says theyre still reeling from record floods last year with some residents still displaced, and nowthis.

In a city that has a 38.6% poverty rate, this COVID-19 is exacerbating all of the issues that were having, Simmons says. The acute nature of the pandemics economic downturn is felt more here than many otherplaces.

Simmons says demand at food pantries and soup kitchens has nearly tripled in the MississippiDelta.

Regionwide, eight of the 10 states with the biggest jumps in unemployment claims are in theSouth.

The pandemic is also renewing calls for expanding Medicaid coverage. Nine of the 14 states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are in the South. Of them, Texas has the highest number of uninsuredresidents.

Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, fears those numbers are on the rise based on calls to his office from constituents who have lost their jobs and their healthinsurance.

So now, more than ever, we need to push to expand Medicaid, he says. To provide a backstop to our health care coverage for many working people who desperately needit.

Allred, whose congressional district includes Dallas, is pushing legislation that would offer more federal money to states that expand Medicaid, in an effort to sway mostly Republican legislatures and governors to reconsider their repeated rejection of a key part ofObamacare.

Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., is behind the bill. He says expanding Medicaid would help protect everyone in these uncertaintimes.

The thing that this pandemic has really brought home to people is that our health is dependent on our neighbors health more than we like to have thought about in the past, Jonessays.

A test of that dependency is coming with some southern states now on the brink of reopening.

Explore Nearby Adventures

Read the original post:

The South's Handling Of Coronavirus Could Be 'A Macabre Game Of Whack-A-Mole' - OPB News

Social distancing is saving lives every day. But the physical and psychological toll of the lockdown is not spread evenly among us. Care home residents, prisoners and children in the care of the state are just some of those whose health and wellbeing have been disproportionately endangered for the common good. And the enforced social isolation of a lockdown is a particularly terrifying prospect for victims of domestic abuse and their offspring.

Abusers so often rely on isolating their victims from friends, family and colleagues in order to prolong and worsen the impact of their abuse. The lockdown has aided and abetted them in their mission to terrorise. Around 6% of adults report having experienced domestic abuse in the last year, the overwhelming majority of them women; two women a week are killed by a current or former partner. Since social distancing restrictions came into force last month, there are alarming signs that domestic abuse has surged; the National Domestic Abuse helpline has seen a 25% increase in calls, and the Metropolitan police have reported a 24% increase in charges and cautions for domestic abuse. The pandemic also makes it more difficult for women to access help: not just because they may be constantly monitored at home, but because three quarters of domestic abuse services have reported having to reduce their services, because of staff self-isolating and social distancing requirements.

This week, the long-delayed domestic abuse bill will return to parliament for its second reading. It comprises some welcome measures, including the creation of a statutory definition of domestic abuse, which includes emotional, coercive and economic abuse as well as physical violence, and the legal establishment of a domestic abuse commissioner. But it goes nowhere near far enough in tackling the hurt that is going on behind closed doors.

The nature of domestic abuse means that properly addressing and preventing it is relatively resource intensive: it is not simply a matter of removing a woman and her children from an unsafe situation. Domestic abuse survivors need ongoing support first, to be able to leave their abuser, and then to process the trauma that years of damage can inflict. Evidence-based perpetrator programmes are required to reduce the risk of them reoffending, either with their former partner or a new one. None of that comes cheap.

Yet the bill provides nowhere near the level of resourcing that is needed to keep women safe. Like all locally funded services, those for domestic abuse have faced significant funding cuts over the last decade. The extra funding announced by government in February for refuge services will not fill the gap the number of refuge spaces in the UK is almost a third lower than that recommended by the Council of Europe and there has been no extra funding allocated for community services, which are accessed by most domestic abuse survivors. While the legislation would give the police greater powers to enforce domestic abuse protection orders, the government is planning no resources or training for already stretched law forces.

The bill also does nothing to recognise that the government is complicit in the abuse of migrant women through its hostile environment policies. Many have no recourse to public funds and so are unable to access statutory support, leaving them trapped in life-threatening situations. Abused women whose migrant status is insecure are put off from seeking help from the police because it can result in their deportation and separation from their children; too often abusers know this and use it as yet another weapon of intimidation. All victims of domestic abuse and their children should be entitled to support, regardless of their immigration status.

The cost of properly resourcing domestic abuse services pales in comparison to its huge societal cost, which the government estimates at 66bn a year. It is small change compared with the vast sums that have been rightly found to protect the economy through the pandemic. For abuse victims and their children, the lockdown has only tightened the security of the domestic prisons in which they are trapped. Yet they continue to fall through the cracks of the governments Covid-19 response.

Original post:

The Observer view on the domestic abuse bill failing women trapped in lockdown - The Guardian

Last month, Twitter did something striking and almost unprecedented: It deleted two tweets from a world leader.

The social media platform removed the posts both from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro because they violated a new company policy on disinformation involving the global Covid-19 health crisis. One showed him defying the rules of isolation advocated by his own health minister and the World Health Organization; in the other, he defended the controversial use of an unproven drug to treat Covid-19.

Under Twitter's new policy, anyone caught denying established facts about the disease, propagating false or misleading information, denying scientifically established facts, or posting alleged cures for Covid-19, will have their tweets deleted.

Bolsonaro, a far-right politician, had long sought to deny or minimize the dangers of Covid-19 and encouraged businesses to remain open to save the economy. In early March, for instance, the president called the pandemic a "fantasy" and "hysteria." On March 20 and again on March 24, he described Covid-19 as a "little flu."

Bolsonaro isn't alone. In recent weeks, Twitter has also deleted misleading statements on Covid-19 from Venezuelan president Nicols Maduro and Rudy Giuliani, one of U.S. President Donald Trump's lawyers. Noticeably absent from the list: President Trump himself. On April 17, Trump posted a series of Tweets in support of public protests in Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia. All three tweets appear to violate Twitter's new Covid-19 rules, which don't allow posts "actively encouraging people to not socially distance themselves in areas known to be impacted by Covid-19 where such measures have been recommended by the relevant authorities." The protestors, many of whom did not wear face masks or practice social distancing, were gathered to push back on guidelines by their state governments to limit social interaction. All three states have active Covid-19 cases.

Advertisement:

The global pandemic is also far from the first time that dangerous disinformation campaigns have flourished on social media platforms, including those promoted by world leaders. So why, experts are asking, is Twitter acting now? Will it make a difference? And why not censure Tweets from other leaders, including Trump?

Anna Brisola, a Ph.D. candidate in information sciences at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, points to a growth in pressure from society and even from some politicians to find a solution to the problem of fake news. In the past, she wrote in an email to Undark, companies like Twitter would "hesitate in the repression of fake news" because it can "generate a lot of likes, a lot of sharing, a lot of debate, a lot of data. And that means money."

But "with the pandemic frightening the world, threatening the economy and, especially, lives, fake news and rumors have become also a public health problem, standing between life and death," she adds. Media companies likely don't want to be held responsible for not acting or the potential economic fallout. Already, there are more than 2.6 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide and the disease has killed more than 180,000 people, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. In such a crisis, Brisola says, the platforms don't want "to be labeled as the one that has no credibility."

A different economic calculation may be at play when it comes to Trump, however. Twitter is based in the U.S., and the Trump administration has more potential power over the company compared to Bolsonaro and other world leaders, Brisola says. It's unclear, she adds, whether Twitter will ever take down a post from Trump: "Are they willing to touch this hornet's nest?"

Still, Twitter's new policy may not be enough to contain disinformation related to Covid-19, particularly if the company only targets certain leaders. It also many not help even in cases like Bolsonaro's. After all, in Brazil, Bolsonaro's false claims still appear on other media, including on television. And they could still be shared on WhatsApp, one of the country's main social media platforms for spreading disinformation. To address this, the Facebook-owned messaging app has taken steps to reduce the spread of disinformation by limiting the number of times people can share frequently forwarded messages from five to only once. It has also limited the forwarding of messages to a single chat at a time.

* * *

Under its new policy so far, Twitter says it has removed more than 1,100 tweets containing misleading and potentially harmful Covid-19 content and required more than 1.5 million suspicious accounts to verify contact information or complete a reCAPTCHA test.

On March 25, Venezuelan president Nicols Maduro became the first state leader to have a tweet deleted under the policy. In response, Maduro denounced Twitter, saying the platform "censored" one of his posts in which the leader claimed to have received some articles from a Venezuelan scientist that included a supposed cure for Covid-19: a mixture containing, among other ingredients, honey, lemon, and pepper. (A previous instance of Twitter pulling a world leader's Tweet happened in February 2019, but it wasn't for disinformation: The company removed a message from an account that reportedly belongs to Iranian leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei reinforcing a 1989 call for the murder of writer Salman Rushdie.)

Also in March, Twitter deleted a post from Giuliani, who advocated the use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria remedy with uncertain effectiveness in treating Covid-19 the same unproven drug being promoted by Bolsonaro. In Brazil, the platform deleted tweets from Brazilian Sen. Flvio Bolsonaro (one of the sons of President Bolsonaro) and Environment Minister Ricardo Salles for spreading disinformation related to Covid-19.

According to Iria Puyosa, a political communication scholar from the Central University of Venezuela, the global pandemic has given "social media platforms an opportunity to establish more ironclad controls on the information disseminated by public figures, particularly political leaders."

Twitter's approach follows similar attempts by other social media platforms. In 2019, for instance, YouTube which is owed by Google changed its recommendation algorithms after a scandal in which the algorithms were manipulated by pedophile networks. According to Yasodara Crdova, a World Bank agile/civic tech fellow and former senior fellow of Harvard's Kennedy School, Twitter has other projects underway, including a "new 'tag' for manipulated content," defined as media that is altered in order to mislead or deceive and that could result in serious harm "which seems to be having some effect."

But even without the new Covid-19 policies, President Bolsonaro appears to be losing ground. Some supporters are starting to criticize how the president has handled the crisis. According to Raquel Recuero, a professor of communication at the Federal University of Pelotas, who has conducted a study on the engagement of the pro-Bolsonaro online network on Twitter, "the pro-Bolsonaro online nucleus has greatly emptied," although she adds that the president's smaller following which still includes many bots it is still active.

* * *

Social media platforms have long been a resource for spreading dis- and misinformation for example during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, where there was Russian interference, the 2018 Brazilian presidential election, which was challenged by fake news, the 2019 U.K. electoral campaign, and the 2019 Indian electoral campaign. Some world leaders have continued to post false or misleading statements on such topics Trump, for instance, has posted such messages about the Russian election interference on Twitter, as reported by the Washington Post. And critics have also long called for Twitter to delete posts or accounts containing dangerous or false claims including those from world leaders.

Social media companies haven't indicated why they've changed tack in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. One reason could be the sheer size of the problem: While other disinformation cases may have been dangerous for specific countries or regions, Covid-19 is affecting the entire world. "Unfortunately," wrote Crdova, "we need a global disaster to remember the importance of rationality in public discourse."

"For issues that are considered local," Crdova wrote, platforms like Twitter or Facebook, "have less power [to enforce measures], not least because they often involve issues considered cultural." Crdova gives the example of racist speech. In Brazil, such speech is a heinous crime; in the U.S., where Twitter and Facebook are based, it is protected under freedom of speech laws. "For these companies to effectively think about implementing localized legislation, we need to regulate first," Crdova adds. "And this is not going to happen where governments take advantage of rumors."

And while disinformation may have gone unchecked during the 2016 U.S. election, social media companies have since responded if a little late. After the election and subsequent congressional investigations in 2018, says Puyosa, "social media companies decided to take measures to monitor and somehow try to control the spread of propaganda and misinformation on their platforms, in particular political propaganda and electoral processes."

The companies are motivated to put their own rules in place, she says, because it gives them more control than if they were to wait until governments impose what could be even stricter regulations. "They are to self-regulate and take the initiative before regulations are imposed on them," she says, also noting that the measures were too timid.

The Covid-19 crisis is also, in part, regaining public confidence in professional journalism, wrote Crdova. Social media companies, she adds, are contributing to this by taking a more active role in curbing falsehoods. But the companies could do more by "calibrating algorithms to give space to the traditional press, opening space for rational moderation on issues that emerge from sites specialized in conspiracy theories," she says. But the platforms stop short of cutting off tweets from Trump, she adds, because "Trump goes up to a limit, but he never goes beyond the interpretation of the American constitution."

Even in the face of a global pandemic, some critics worry that curbing dis- and misinformation on social media could have unintended consequences. According to Joo Brant, a communication rights activist, by censoring speech from a public authority, the platforms limit the access of information for Brazilians "who should have the right to know the position of their highest authority on the crisis, which also implies a problem of sovereignty."

Brant believes that platforms should perform content moderation "under criteria defined in a public way, aligned with international standards and supervised by independent agencies."

Carlos Affonso, director of the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro, noted in an interview to newspaper Folha de So Paulo that greater transparency is needed. Companies need not only clear and transparent rules, but also consistency in implementation and they have no such history of transparency and consistency, he pointed out.

* * *

Even if Twitter's new policy works, it won't curb all dis- and misinformtion. Public figures and world leaders will still get airtime on other media. After one of Bolsonaro's Covid-19 speeches was broadcast live on television, for instance, many Brazilians decided to get out of isolation, putting their lives and others' at risk. Policies like Twitter's also won't matter much unless more social media platforms follow suit. In Brazil, as in Venezuela and several other countries, WhatsApp is a "fundamental communication tool," especially in low-income communities, explains Crdova. Because it is so widespread, it is "therefore more likely to be instrumentalized by pre-existing networks of exploitation," she adds.

In fact, observes Puyosa, WhatsApp appears as the main tool for spreading dis- and misinformation, followed by Twitter and Facebook and, increasingly, Instagram. In Brazil, for instance, rumors of Covid-19 miracle cures proliferate on WhatsApp and put people's lives at risk.

Reports have revealed the reach of the disinformation networks in support of Bolsonaro, either on Twitter, with its thousands of bots, or on WhatsApp, with illegal mass messaging financed by allied entrepreneurs. On March 29, a joint study from the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the University of So Paulo suggested that among the 20 audio clips with the greatest circulation on WhatsApp, five deny the severity of Covid-19. And of those five, four are among the 10 most shared on the platform.

Crdova writes that it is extremely difficult to monitor and control what circulates in WhatsApp without violating users' privacy. Pablo Ortellado, a professor of public policy management at the University of So Paulo, points to solutions that would help minimize the problem, such as "removing mass forwarding capabilities, transmission lists, and limiting large groups." Crdova also suggests the platform should "take out of circulation the invitation link function, which opens a loophole for people to join groups massively, changing the speed of news sharing in chat apps, and hide the phone number of group participants."

Both experts also point out that WhatsApp mainly delivers private messages between users' phones. Other social media platforms keep users' posts more or less public, such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, giving these companies more control over managing their networks.

While most of these platforms have put at least some policies in place to curb dis- and misinformation, Facebook announced recently that it would increase collaboration with health authorities and improve anti-spam filtering on WhatsApp.

Even if policies like Twitter's can help reduce the reach of fake Covid-19 news, experts point out it is not coming soon enough. "If the companies had actively collaborated" with academics in the past, wrote Crdova, "we might have been able to do much more."

Media consumers also have a role to play, she says, which will require more education on how the digital world works. Puyosa agrees: "It would be much more useful and healthier for public debate to educate citizens on information consumption." There needs to be "an effort to regain citizen confidence on the media and journalists," she says.

* * *

Disclosure: The author of this story is a member of Global Voices, a nonprofit organization that describes itself as "an international and multilingual community of bloggers, journalists, translators, academics, and human rights activists." Iria Puyosa, who was quoted in this piece, is also a member.

Raphael Tsavkko Garcia is a Brazilian journalist who specializes in Brazilian and Spanish politics, technology, and their intersection with human rights.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Read the original here:

Harmful tweets from high places: Why Is Twitter acting now? - Salon