Good Morning,
Covid Variant Threat
“Its a big jump in evolution” say scientists and a disturbing rapidly spreading variant of Covid-19. The new variant B.1.1.529 was identified on Tuesday and has a "very unusual constellation" of mutations that according to Britain’s Health Secretary Sajid Javid as the UK moved to stop flights from 6 countries from South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho and Eswatini.
Why is there concern? The variant has a significant number of mutations, "perhaps double the number of mutations that we have seen in the Delta variant" said Javid.
What’s the fear? Experts say it may well be more transmissible and the current vaccines that we have may well be less effective***.
The markets in Asia started to fall especially for travel companies and airlines, just as many countries have reopened. The World Health Organization has called a special meeting for Friday to the discuss the new variant and what it might mean for Covid treatment and vaccines.
A lot of genetic sequencing is being done by the best science labs in the world but as one Israeli scientist Prof. Cyrille Cohen, head of the immunology lab at Bar-Ilan University, said the variant is presenting the highest number of mutations ever recorded.
“We are talking about something that is extremely different from what we have known so far,” he said.
The Politics of Channel Refugee Deaths
27 people including a pregnant woman and several children died Wednesday when a rubber dingy they had paid smugglers to ride on for France to England sank in the English channel.
It’s a horrible grim disaster, but it occurs often in smaller numbers, and some of those cases never are reported or even known about. I’ve been to the refugee camps in Calais, France where people fleeing conflict in Iraq, or Syria, or Afghanistan come to find a new life in England. Some of them have relatives in the UK, but they all come out of desperation bound by the hope if they can just get across the English Channel they can start a new life. And I can tell you they will do anything to get to England.
On BACK STORY with Dana Lewis podcast, I will have two great interviews on what this is all about and why people are in harms way as they risk everything to cross the English Channel. That’s later today.
The British Government of Boris Johnson came to power selling BREXIT (the exit from the European Union), as a way of controlling the borders. Some of the rhetoric was anti immigration and whipped up fears of Britain being flooded by refugees.
So any talk now is of course about getting tougher on people trying to cross the Channel and blaming France. Britain has suggested joint patrols with the French who will of course not allow British Police to patrol their shores. Already the two countries cooperate by paying millions of dollars to build fences and increase patrols to dissuade refugees from climbing into trucks and trains crossing the Channel by ferry. I can tell you Calais France looks like a maximum security prison as you near the Channel.
Getting tougher has in fact forced refugees into forests and make shift camps along the coast of France, and then to climb into unsafe boats and cross the Channel in the dead of night braving one of the biggest shipping lanes in the world.
What the British need to do, is stop the anti immigration campaign, and accept some of these people through safe routes, and then determine if they can stay or be sent home. The British Home Secretary has considered extreme methods like buildings nets and even push backs with British patrols, shoving rickety rafts back to the French side of the Channel and increasing the dangers. It’s inhumane and ineffective and likely illegal.
The deaths of these latest refugees, should jolt the UK Government into taking more humane approaches for the homeless and desperate. It appears based on the Governments statements yesterday largely blaming the French, it has had the opposite effect.
Other News…
-Angela Merkel Germany’s Chancellor says the EU must be ready to punish Russia with more sanctions if it attack Ukraine again
-A gas buildup and explosion in a Siberian coal mine about 2,200 miles east of Moscow killed at least 52, including six rescuers, the country’s worst mining disaster in over a decade
-Defenders of Russia's most prominent rights group Memorial urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to dismiss a case to shut it down. Dark days in Russia as the Kremlin silences free speech
Have a good Friday everyone. Enjoy the Black Friday sales!
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Dana
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59424269
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/25/uk-ministers-urged-to-stop-playing-politics-over-channel-crossings
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20211125-merkel-says-russian-aggression-against-ukraine-should-lead-to-eu-sanctions
https://www.themoscowtimes.com