Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate activists are distressed that their push to make 2020 a big year for international climate agreements is being thrown into disarray by the Covid-19 Chinese Coronavirus outbreak disrupting all the lead up international meetings they normally attend.
How Coronavirus Could Set Back the Fight Against Climate Change
BY JUSTIN WORLAND MARCH 10, 2020 2:52 PM EDT
This year was supposed to be a big one in the international fight against climate change. But the fast spreading new coronavirus disease, COVID-19, is posing a triple-threat to action that could derail the Paris Agreement effort to combat global warming, worried experts say.
The disease is a challenge for climate change action on multiple fronts. COVID-19 has already disrupted crucial negotiations ahead of a November conference in Glasgow that could determine the Paris Agreement’s success in reducing emissions. The outbreak may supplant climate concerns in the minds of the public, weakening political will at a key moment. And it may encourage burning fossil fuels in hopes of restarting the global economy.
“Everybody’s going to be putting safety first right now,” says Matthew McKinnon, an advisor to a group of countries especially vulnerable to climate change. “And whether or not safety first aligns with climate first is going to vary from place to place.”
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To lay the ground for the Glasgow summit, international climate and environmental policymakers planned to hop between a series of important meetings and conferences that would set the stage and, they hoped, allow the world to finally bend the curve on emissions. But, as international travel has ground to a halt, the important work of climate diplomacy has suffered as in-person meetings have become impossible and a series of important conferences have been canceled, from the World Oceans Summit in Japan to CERAWeek, perhaps the most important energy conference, in Houston. The United Nations’ climate body has called off all meetings through the end of April, citing health and safety of attendees as well as the inability to muster a quorum.
Rescheduling meetings has proven hazardous. The Convention on Biological Diversity, which is trying to broker a landmark deal to protect nature by October, moved a meeting from Kunming, China to Rome, to escape the coronavirus. But as the meeting progressed delegates were slowly recalled as news spread of a coronavirus outbreak in Italy. “We left around the middle of the week,” says Lina Barrera, vice president of international policy at Conservation International. “Some people didn’t come at all.”
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Read more: https://time.com/5795150/coronavirus-climate-change/
In 2014 University of Washington academics submitted expense claims for enough airmiles for a return trip to Mars. We can only imagine how the need for academics to fly to conferences has grown, as efforts to clamp down on activities which produce CO2 emissions have gathered momentum, only to see those hopes dashed at the last minute.
Let us hope someone introduces them all to teleconferencing software before it becomes too late to save this year’s climate agreements.
The usa armed forces will be given Remdesivir free of charge for anybody who falls ill….
If the armed forces are using it, could it mean that the drug actually works??
Could anybody confirm this to be true please.
https://londonbulletin.co.uk/us-troops-to-get-coronavirus-drugs-free-of-charge-p9382-362.htm
No, it means the drug manufacturer is getting a basically free trial for its drug.
It works by reducing virus replication. It even lessened severity of Ebola significantly and showed promise in a couple of Chinese studies. It can even work generally as a preventative. There are a lot of questions, however, especially around side effects. The following discusses its mechanism of action.
https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/56798/mechanism-of-action-revealed-for-remdesivir-potential-coronavirus-drug/
I’ve been investigating the possibility that tuberculous pneumonia is being misdiagnosed as WuFlu, i.e., viral pneumonia. I knew Iran, another WuFlu hotspot, has an endemic problem with drug-resistant TB, now I find this:
Italy Is Second Country With Coronavirus Outbreak Preceded By A Tuberculosis Epidemic
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/no_author/italy-is-second-country-with-coronavirus-outbreak-preceded-by-a-tuberculosis-epidemic/
Remember how polluted the air is in Wuhan?
Association of air pollution with the risk of initial outpatient visits for tuberculosis in Wuhan, China.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31300562
China has the second largest burden of TB in the world. I haven’t been able to find a comparison of incidence rates among its various provinces, but Hubei’s (Wuhan) are fairly high.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3819319/
Icisil
There are two hotspots in the world for coronavirus infections: Wuhan, China (Hubei Province) and Italy. Both of these geographic areas were grappling with tuberculosis outbreaks prior to the eruption of the mutated COVID-19 coronavirus. Strangely, coronavirus appears to spread to the rest of the world from these hotspots via airplane travel. But the infection remains in those infected and may spread within a household, but not into the community. Other geographical outbreaks must be questioned as there are too many false positive tests to confirm COVID-19 coronavirus, which at this point in time may be nothing more than a passenger virus that accompanies tubercular infections.
The COVID-19 epidemic in Italy, which has that country in a lockdown, is worthy of investigation because of the politics and migration in that country.
In a prior report I cited the pre-coronavirus outbreak of tuberculosis in Wuhan China coupled with culling and incineration of herds of pigs infected with African swine flu that created aerosolized pig waste particles that infected humans with a Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is largely a lung disease that kills 1.7 million humans annually. TB may be the origin of this deadly infection as normally coronavirus produces mild infections. Tuberculosis fills the lungs with fluid and the patient drowns in their own secretions. That is what is happening in Wuhan.
The prevalence rate of TB among screened asylum seekers in Italy is huge – almost as high as the Philippines (554 per 100,000, the highest on earth). Notice the TB screening happened in N Italy, where the WuFlu cluster is located.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/65/8/1407/4096481
TB is bacterial and not likely misdiagnosed, and as you point out it preceded CV and is well characterized. Nothing says you can’t be hit by a truck and a car, however.
Accurate TB diagnosis takes time – up to 4 weeks, and twice that to develop drug resistant treatments. Sputum tests can be done quickly, but they only catch cases with a lot of bacteria present, so infections can easily fly under the radar. It’s impossible to diagnosis TB via just clinical and radiological criteria. Overworked healthcare workers in Wuhan may not even be testing for TB being caught up in the panic that everything is WuFlu.
Seems its true
The usa armed forced wouldn’t use a risky unproven drug on this service members?
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/03/10/army-signs-agreement-with-drug-giant-gilead-on-experimental-covid-19-treatment/
Don’t be naive. Of course they would.
Republic of Ireland (pop.5 million) has 43 confirmed cases and one dead, now they are closing all schools and colleges until the end of this month.
In my IT outfit we’ve been told to stay home and work remotely if getting to the office would involve the use of public transport for any distance. We all accept this, and for those of us still going to the office (I don’t have to travel far, and cycle) it’s blissfully quiet and I’m getting heaps done.
The COP-26 meetings and spin-offs could all be done by teleconference and electronic document exchange. There is no need at all for face-to-face meetings at all. In fact, the participants and organisers could lead by example and signal their virtue by announcing a complete renunciation of all travel for this pointless charade.
But wait. That would mean no visits to nice places like Italy , with good food, and wine, dancing girls, no spousal supervision, etc.. All at the taxpayers’ expense of course.
I’ll wait for the announcement, but I won’t hold my breath.
The fact that
a) they’re bleating about travel restrictions, and
b) they haven’t announced a plan to get round it by teleconferencing
reveals their true colours.
The outcome doesn’t matter, it’s the (all-expenses-paid) process that matters.
…And to add insult to injury, Saudi Arabia and Russia have begun fisticuffs which has seen the price of oil fall off a cliff – which suddenly makes the claim about ‘renewables’ being ‘as cheap as fossil fuels’ seem a bit optimistic…
Don’cha just love it when reality trumps (sorry) dodgy economics..?
First swine fever and mass pig culling and then corona. Both from china at the same time, corona killing people, and swine killing mass herds of pigs..
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/business/china-pigs-african-swine-fever.html
The guy in the article I linked to above claims that they incinerated swine carcasses. He didn’t provide supporting info for that claim, and I haven’t been able to verify that. If they did incinerate carcasses that opens up the possible vector of avian tuberculosis in pigs becoming airborne. Couple that with the heavy particulate pollution in Wuhan, which exacerbates TB infection, and … who knows?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4983314/
UK tests about 1200 people daily, latest number is 590 have tested positive for the coronavirus, an increase of 134 compared to 2pm yesterday, that makes it 29% increase in total in 24 hours or about 150% up on the day before. The UK is tracking Italy’s progression with about 10-12 day delay. Grim!
Very changeable weather in Europe. I predict the peak of infection at the turn of March and April.
At least they are not still flying “Ghost Flights” any more.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/10/eu-airlines-ghost-flights-coronavirus-fightback-airport-landing-rules-empty-planes
For more on ghost flights see:
If the global warming scaremongers aren’t hopping on planes to attend conferences for fear of COVID-19, they are reducing their CO2 emissions, and helping their cause. It took a virus to bring them to their senses.
At the today’s press conference with the UK’s PM Boris Johnson, the government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance said: “There are currently 590 cases that have been identified in the UK. If you calculate what that really means in terms of the total number, it is much more likely that we have between 5,000 and 10,000 people infected at the moment. ” He said number may rise until early May, but could not provide a number of cases expected.
This graph shows actual rise in numbers
However, from the above it is difficult to estimate number of cases in about 7 weeks time.
Here I’ve plotted numbers on logarithmic scale and extended with a likely trend line
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/UK-COVID-19.htm
showing about 70,000 confirmed cases, while a real number according to the government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance “If you calculate what that really means in terms of the total number, it is much more likely that we have between” seven hundred thousand and one and half million, in the first half of this cycle.
This is at the worst less than 2.5% of the total UK population. If in the second declining half of the cycle similar numbers follow (the bell curve) then total number of the UK population getting affected and acquiring immunity would be at the most in order of 5%.
I shall update the graph as we progress towards the peak and adjust numbers as required.
“…as international travel has ground to a halt…”
Well … can we detect a corresponding decrease in CO2 at Mauna Loa?
Absolute disgrace !
UK abandoning testing and quarantine of all except those who are hospitalised in critical condition.
This will seriously hide extent of pandemic spread in that UK, making numbers look good.
This is case of ‘hide expansion’.
“Millions of Britons will need to contract coronavirus in order to control the impact of the disease which is likely to return year on year”, the government’s chief scientific adviser said.
Case of the postnormal science ?!
From economy point of view it makes perfect sense.
Unproductive older and weak people will be eliminated, reducing stress on NHS, social services, dementia homes, state pension finances, council housing and any home-care productive members of families can be otherwise gainfully employed.
Younger, healthier and productive members of population after a week or two of work will gain immunity, go back to work, pay taxes and keep the cunning well paid political class happy. If China can do it, the UK could do it even better.
What’s not to like.
Some people just HAVE TO die of something.
Normally it’s a non entity called “the flu”.
… and which age group are you?
Age mortality rate
0–9 – 0%
10–19 – 0.2%
20–29 – 0.2%
30–39 – 0.2%
40–49 – 0.4%
50–59 – 1.3%
60–69 – 3.6%
70–79 – 8.0%
80+ – 14.8 %