up and down

No one knows how safe it is to still have sports events on going during the time of pandemic. As we all know cases are rising on daily basis and yet tournamets are all still on going. Referring to this news we have players who are positive covid yet still allowed to play on in tournaments. https://bwfworldtour.bwfbadminton.com/news-single/2021/01/12/update-on-positive-covid-19-cases-at-asian-leg-of-hsbc-bwf-world-tour/ Badminton World Federation (BWF) and Badminton Association of Thailand (BAT) can confirm three of the four players who tested positive for COVID-19 earlier today at the Asian Leg of the HSBC BWF World Tour have been cleared to take their place in the YONEX Thailand Open. They are confirmed as Saina Nehwal (India), HS Prannoy (India), and Jones Ralfy Jansen (Germany). The fourth player, Adham Hatem Elgamal from Egypt, has been withdrawn. Only 1 player withdrawn from the tournament while the other 3 players allowed to play as usual. Strange part here is all the other players within the same team are close contacts of those players during the tournament and all the players within the same team are allowed to play as normal which is definitely risking the life of other players from other countries. The outcome of this is the opponent who had to play with Saina Nehwal in the first round of the tournament wear face mask all the time while playing. So horrible. Within the same week this is what happened after that. https://bwfworldtour.bwfbadminton.com/news-single/2021/01/13/bwf-confirms-two-support-personnel-positive-for-covid-19/ Badminton World Federation (BWF) can confirm that one German coach and a team entourage member from France who are participating in the YONEX Thailand Open as part of the Asian Leg of the HSBC BWF World Tour in Bangkok, Thailand are positive for COVID-19. Both produced a positive result to a mandatory PCR test conducted on Tuesday. Coaches from German and France found to be positive covid. Yet all the players from German and France allowed to play in the tournament just as usual. So horrible. They forgot that the coaches are always together with the players and all the players might have been infected from their coaches. This resulted in the withdrawal of the Mixed Doubles player from Hong Kong in the second round. Tang Chun Man / Tze Ying Suet withdrawn staged a walkover and refused to play in the second round because they need to play versus the German XD player who is close contacts to their coach who is positive covid. This is what happened the next week. https://bwfworldtour.bwfbadminton.com/news-single/2021/01/19/bwf-confirms-positive-covid-19-case-at-toyota-thailand-open/ Badminton World Federation (BWF) can confirm India player Sai Praneeth B. has tested positive for COVID-19 and has been withdrawn from the TOYOTA Thailand Open. The player produced a positive result to a mandatory PCR test conducted on Monday. It is confirmed positive. The player has been taken to hospital for further observation and testing, and is required to stay in hospital for a minimum of 10 days. BWF can also confirm Sai Praneeth B. had been rooming with teammate Kidambi Srikanth at the official hotel. In line with BWF protocols, Kidambi has been withdrawn from the TOYOTA Thailand Open and is in strict self-quarantine. However, Kidambi tested negative on Monday’s test and has returned negative results since arriving in Thailand. As a result of this Sai Praneeth is no longer allowed to play but his room mate Srikanth has been told to go for self quarantine. Then this week Srikanth is allowed to play in BWF World Tour Finals. So here is the main issue now. Srikanth may have probably been infected with the virus without himself knowing it since he is staying in the same room with someone who is positive covid. Yet he is allowed to play on. Conclusion: To have tournaments during pandemic time is really like a joke as it is risking the life of all the athletes from various different countries. Players who are found to be positive covid or have close contacts to positive covid players and coaches are still allowed to play on. By right all the players from India, German, France and Egypt should be banned and not allowed to play but this is not happening. Looks like the tournament organizer is a failure here to allow the players from the country with positive covid cases in the tournament to continue playing. In the end it risks the life of so many players from other countries. Question: Is it safe to have tournaments during pandemic time? What is the answer?

You are right.

There is an ongoing rumor that very likely Tokyo Olympics will not be held in year 2021. Japan is no longer interested to hold the Olympics in year 2021 due to pandemic. However Olympics 2024 will be held in Paris as planned and Olympics 2026 will be held in Los Angeles as planned. Therefore Japan will make its bid to host the Olympics in year 2032.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/09/melania-trumps-ex-aide-pens-scathing-op-ed-in-wake-of-capitol-siege/ Melania Trump’s ex-aide pens scathing op-ed in wake of Capitol siege An ex-aide of Melania Trump — and once a good friend — has penned a scathing op-ed about the first lady, accusing her of just standing by while the president destroyed America. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff wrote her piece for the Daily Beast, prompted by the rioting at the Capitol. Five people were killed, including a Trump supporter who was fatally shot and a Capitol Police officer who died of head injuries after he was bashed in the head with a fire extinguisher. Wolkoff calls the violence “shocking, awful, disheartening and shameful.” “It was an assault on human life and our great democracy. Unfortunately, our president and first lady have little, if any, regard for either.” She labels herself as “Melania’s enabler,” just one in the first couple’s orbit who “stoked and massaged their egos and wittingly agreed to the falsehoods and poisonous lies, veiled as truths, that built this house of mirrors.” Wolkoff speaks of how the president’s role in the Capitol attack doesn’t surprise her, but how the first lady’s silence does — even though she is at her best reading from a teleprompter. The Trumps, writes Wolkoff, “lack character, and have no moral compass. Although my intentions to support the first lady in the rollout of her initiatives were always pure, I’m disheartened and ashamed to have worked with Melania.” Wolkoff, who once pulled off Anna Wintour’s parties, and the first lady became friends almost 20 years ago. She was there when Melania married Donald and was at Barron’s baby shower, The New York Times reported. She went to work for the first lady shortly after the president’s inauguration, which she helped plan, but resigned after only a year when the Times reported the inaugural committee paid millions of dollars to the company she started. Then, Wolkoff laid out everything on paper, writing a tell-all titled “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady.” The book came out in September. Melania lashed out, calling her ex-friend a “dishonest opportunist.” In her op-ed, Wolkoff talks about how the first lady will leave behind “no legacy or profile to be proud.” “Melania is no better than Donald is in terms of needing attention. She wasted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a platform to make a difference in the lives of so many children and didn’t provide any of that. …. In her free time she took up ‘albuming’ and made scrapbooks filled with photographs of herself. Melania is simply an extension of her husband, just as hypocritical, speaking out of both sides of her mouth, when it suits her best.” She goes on: “What does a mother do when a father is an abuser? Many still believe that Melania is powerless, but don’t be fooled; she is an abuser too, of the worst kind. The kind that speaks kindly to children. The sickness is under the skin. Melania knows and supports Donald and his viewpoints. If you hit him, he’ll hit you back harder. He’s the brass knuckles, aggressive guy, and she elects to grin and bear it. She turns a blind eye. The truth is she’s actually encouraging him to go for it. Be aggressive. She’s his biggest cheerleader.”

The disappearance of Jack Ma is a widely discussed topic these few days. Question is where is Jack Ma? Where has he gone to? Where is he hiding now?

Who is Jack Ma? Where the Alibaba co-founder came from and disappeared to Jack Ma, a member of China's Communist Party who famously started out as an English teacher, hasn't been seen in two months. Jack Ma mystery continues with report he’s just laying low Chinese billionaire hasn’t been seen in over two months China cracks down on billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Group Ant Group’s $37 billion IPO suspended, shocking investors For years, nobody flew higher in China than Jack Ma, the pixie-faced founder of the $500 billion powerhouse e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba, the Amazon of Asia. Now he’s vanished and no one knows where he is. Ma, a member of the Communist Party who famously started out as an English teacher, symbolized the high-tech “China Dream” until he ran afoul of the political leaders who once lionized him. He hasn’t been seen in public for two months. “China used Jack Ma and Alibaba as well as some of the other big fintech companies to show the world what great leaders they were,” Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told The Post. “But these private sector companies were operating without government controls and Jack got a little too far out ahead of his skis. You only have to step out of line once and they’ll get you. He’s probably been smacked pretty hard.” Insiders told The Post it’s highly unlikely that Ma, 56, has been permanently disappeared to one of China’s feared “black sites” reserved for the country’s dissidents. Nor is he in Singapore, per some rumors. Instead he’s probably cooling his heels either at home or in a “very cushy location” where one expert said he may be reviewing “Marxist lessons” with party officials, a process called “embracing supervision.” While building his company into a behemoth almost bigger than China itself, the free-spirited Ma, who’s married with three children, traveled the world. He hobnobbed with stars like Tom Cruise, Daniel Craig, Kevin Spacey and Nicole Kidman, lunched with President Obama and former UK Prime Minister David Cameron and swanned around Davos — all while speaking the fluent English he learned as a kid. He even dressed up like Elton John or Michael Jackson and performed their songs onstage while cracking jokes before thousands of adoring Alibaba employees at company functions. He acted more like an American billionaire than even the dour, low-key Jeff Bezos — and that was his mistake, say China analysts. In keeping with his outspoken ways, Ma mouthed off at a conference in Shanghai in October about how backward the country’s state-owned banks and regulators were — just days before Ma’s financial tech firm ANT Group was readying what would have been the world’s biggest IPO. “Today’s financial system is the legacy of the Industrial Age,” Ma declared in the now infamous speech. “We must set up a new one for the next generation and young people. We must reform the current system.” Among other things, Ma blasted the country’s bankers for having a “pawnshop mentality.” Ma’s wings were abruptly clipped. He vanished from the public eye, ANT’s IPO was cancelled reportedly at the behest of Chinese president Xi Jinping — and China has launched an antitrust probe into Ma’s enormous company. “This is Icarus, a classic case of hubris,” Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China,” told The Post. “In Jack Ma’s mind he was a rock star, maybe not more powerful than Xi Jinping but bigger than the Central Bank. So the Party decided to take him down. They ran over Jack Ma and hope it sends a message.” It’s a hard fall for the man born Ma Yun to parents who were traditional musicians in Hangzhou, in the southeastern part of China, about two hours from Shanghai. Ma was a scrappy boy in a poor family who taught himself English at a young age by befriending Western tourists, as described in “Alibaba: The House that Jack Built,” by former Morgan Stanley employee Duncan Clark, who met Ma in 1999 in the small apartment where he founded Alibaba. Ma met Ken Morley, a tourist from Australia, and his family when he was 14 and it led to a lifelong friendship. The Morleys took Ma to Australia in 1985 for a visit and Ma said the trip “changed his life. I learned to think for myself.” Ma’s new worldliness and ambition didn’t help him in school, however. He failed China’s notoriously difficult college entrance exams twice. He finally made it on his third try and went to Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute, from which he graduated in 1988 with a degree in English. Ma met his future wife, Cathy, at college, and they married in 1988. They live with their three children in their hometown of Hangzhou. He encountered more obstacles after college, reportedly being turned down for more than 12 job openings, even one at KFC. He was eventually hired as an English teacher at $12 an hour. He also started up a translation company, but it was on a visit to the US in 1995 that he discovered the Internet and began trying online startup companies when he returned to China. After several misfires, he formed Alibaba out of his small apartment in Hangzhou in 1999 with 17 friends. The initial concept — online shopping for small businesses — attracted $25 million from investors in its first year. Alibaba today is by most estimates the world’s largest online commerce company. Besides shopping, it also includes banking, technology and cloud computing. Ma’s played up how different he is than most egghead Internet billionaires who are math, science or coding geniuses. He prefers the kind of wild publicity stunts associated with Richard Branson, which is why, insiders say, he began to take to the Alibaba stage at corporate celebrations. He put on a blond wig and headdress to sing along to “The Lion King” in 2009. In 2017, he preened atop a motorcycle in a mask and a Michael Jackson outfit while dancing to “Billie Jean” and then joined a “formation-style” performance with backup dancers. Today, Ma isn’t an executive or board member at either Alibaba or ANT but he’s the largest Alibaba shareholder with shares worth at least $25 billion. Alibaba lost more than $110 billion in market value Dec. 24 when China officially launched the probe. China’s government also told state media to censor reporting on the investigation into Alibaba back in December, the Financial Times reported Thursday. It’s not unusual for China to yank some of their most prized tycoons and celebrities from public view for some infraction, and to show them who’s boss. The country’s biggest movie star, Fan Bingbing, disappeared in 2018 for alleged tax evasion and was out of sight for months. She eventually wrote a fawning apology to the Communist Party on her social media pages and reportedly paid a tax bill of at least $70 million. No one knows where Bingbing disappeared to but one source told Vulture that she had been kept under “residential surveillance at a designated location” described as a holiday resort in the coastal province of Jiangsu. In Ma’s case, he was a no-show as a judge in the finale of a game show for entrepreneurs called “Africa’s Business Heroes” which is sponsored by his philanthropic organization in Africa. Alibaba spokesmen said there was a “scheduling conflict” that kept Ma off his show. While some reports out of China say Ma’s just keeping a low profile while Chinese regulators parse Alibaba’s vast books and order a restructuring of ANT, the situation appears serious, if not sinister. Some say the West opened young Ma’s eyes up too much and now he’s gotten what he deserved. “Jack Ma is a gangster,” Peter Navarro, the White House director of trade and manufacturing policy and the author of the 2011 book “Death By China: Confronting the Dragon,” told The Post. “He runs a company called Alibaba. Finish the thought: Forty thieves. He set up an enterprise with stolen goods, using our eBay business model. He stole all the e-commerce technology from us.” But for all his shrewdness, Ma failed to see what should have been obvious to him and everyone around him, Navarro said. “Xi’s been consolidating power for the last four to five years.” “He’s doing the same thing to Chinese oligarchs as Putin did to Russian oligarchs. They get money and fall in love with the West and forget where they come from. Then they get slapped down. There’s a Chinese expression called ‘kill the chicken, scare the monkey’ which means to make an example of someone. That’s what they’re doing to him. They’ll probably let him come back but his marching orders will be to just shut up and make money.” Singleton agreed. “He will re-surface and will have to publicly repent but not on his terms,” Singleton said. “But I bet Jack Ma will comply because he doesn’t want to see this massive thing he built blew up. He’s a strategic thinker and he’s still someone to be reckoned with.”

So we need to make a very wise decision by ourselves. To take the vaccine or not it is all up to us.

https://www.facebook.com/ZDoggMD/videos/would-i-take-a-covid-vaccine-a-doctor-explains/1534678620047440/ Should we take the vaccine?

Vaccine will not work. Many doctors said so.

Hope your test result is negative.

Thanks for the updates.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/23/us-2020-election-highest-rate-voter-turnout US 2020 election could have the highest rate of voter turnout since 1908 Data from the US Elections Project predicts a record 150m ballots, representing 65% of eligible voters, for this election

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/10/23/2020-election-us-date-when-day-how-voting-work-covid/ US election 2020: What date is it, how does voting work, and when will we get a result? Will Donald Trump defeat Joe Biden to win a second term in the White House? Everything we know about the 2020 presidential election so far

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54646533 Coronavirus: France extends overnight curfew as cases surge Situation is rather worrying for France. A surge in number of cases for these few weeks.

Latest news. https://www.france24.com/en/france/20201022-in-france-mistrust-of-a-covid-19-vaccine-is-to-be-expected

The virus is really getting out of control. The whole world is suffering from the effects.

Thank you very much for your reply. All the best.

The whole world cases is on the rise again. It is predicted that the virus will spread evenv faster in the cold season. Somehow the virus is getting more and more dangerous because it gets mutated hence the rate of spreading is extremely fast.

So sorry for the late reply. Anyway hope India dan bring the whole virus under control. Cheers.

Here is some latest information to be shared. https://theconversation.com/smoke-from-wildfires-can-worsen-covid-19-risk-putting-firefighters-in-even-more-danger-145998 Smoke from wildfires can worsen COVID-19 risk, putting firefighters in even more danger Two forces of nature are colliding in the western United States, and wildland firefighters are caught in the middle. Emerging research suggests that the smoke firefighters breathe on the front lines of wildfires is putting them at greater risk from the new coronavirus, with potentially lethal effects. At the same time, firefighting conditions make precautions such as social distancing and hand-washing difficult, increasing the chance that, once the virus enters a fire camp, it could quickly spread. As an environmental toxicologist, I have spent the last decade expanding our understanding of how wood smoke exposure impacts human health. Much of my current research is focused on protecting the long-term health of wildland firefighters and the communities they serve. Air pollution and lingering COVID-19 damage People have long understood that the air they breathe can impact their health, dating back more than 2,000 years to Hippocrates in the treatise “On Airs, Waters, and Places.” Today, there is a growing consensus among researchers that air pollution, specifically the very fine particles called PM2.5, influences risk of respiratory illness. These particles are 50 times smaller than a grain of sand and can travel deep into the lungs. Italian scientists reported in 2014 that air pollutants can increase the viral load in the lungs and reduce the ability of specialized cells called macrophages to clear out viral invaders. Researchers in Montana later connected that effect to wood smoke. They found that animals exposed to wood smoke 24 hours before being exposed to a pathogen ended up with more pathogen in their lungs. The wood-smoke exposure decreased the macrophages’ ability to combat respiratory infection. Coronavirus research now suggests that long-term exposure to PM2.5 air pollution, produced by sources including wildfires, power plants and vehicles, may make the virus particularly deadly. Scientists at Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health looked at county-level data nationwide this spring and found that even a small increase in the amount of PM2.5 from one U.S. county to the next was associated with a large increase in the death rate from COVID-19. While small increases in PM2.5 also raised the risk of death from other causes for older adults, the magnitude of the increase for COVID-19 was about 20 times greater. The results were released before the usual peer review process was conducted, to help warn people of the risks. Taken together, these findings suggest that air pollution, including wood smoke, could increase the risk that wildland firefighters will develop severe COVID-19 symptoms. Doctors have also found lingering heart and lung damage in some COVID-19 patients, raising additional concerns for people in physically demanding jobs like firefighting. Lessons from ‘camp crud’ The risk of the virus spreading probably doesn’t surprise seasoned firefighters. They’re already familiar with “camp crud,” a combined upper and lower respiratory illness accompanied by cough and fatigue that has become common in firefighting camps. The illness seems to ramp up at the end of the season, which is in line with the idea that repeated exposure to smoke may suppress the immune system and make the body more vulnerable to infection. Firefighters take a break at a fire camp. Further evidence that wildfire smoke may impact the risk of viral infections can be found in an influenza study that looked at 10 years of air pollution data in Montana. The results indicate that wildfire smoke exposure influences flu rates months later. How to protect firefighters from COVID-19 So, what can be done to avoid the spread of COVID-19 among wildland firefighters? Guidance released in May from the National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates wildland firefighting resources in western states, acknowledges that wildfire smoke “may lead to an increased susceptibility to COVID-19 infection, worsen the severity of the infection, and pose a risk to those who are recovering from serious COVID-19 infection.” The National Wildfire Coordinating Group encourages fire teams to make sure personal protective equipment is available and to maintain records of symptoms so illnesses can be tracked and the virus contained. Its guidance also calls for camps to be outfitted for better hygiene, such as adding hand-washing stations and mobile shower units, as well as providing access to medical care, making isolation possible and coordinating cross-agency communication about the public health risks. Single-person tents would also allow for more effective social distancing. All of that is harder to carry out during quickly changing fire conditions. Fire camps may include hundreds of personnel. One administrative control being implemented is to create firefighter “pods” or small groups that work, eat and bunk together away from other similar pods. This limits opportunities for spreading the virus and makes containment easier if a positive case is identified. Camp personnel can also help stop the spread by having coronavirus test kits on hand and following protocols for pre-screening, quarantining and removing infected firefighters from the field. Researchers recently modeled the benefits of pre-screening and social distancing for preventing the spread of COVID-19 in fire camps. They found that screening techniques may work for fire camps that are established for a few days, whereas social distancing was more effective in fire scenarios that lasted weeks or months. Wildland firefighter numbers are already down in many areas due to pandemic-related complications, but these numbers may become particularly strained as the fire season progresses. There is a fear that COVID-19 cases along with cases of camp crud, which could be mistaken for COVID-19, could severely deplete firefighter numbers. The safety of rural western communities depends on the wildland firefighters and their ability to respond to emergencies. Protecting their health helps protect public health, too.

Thanks for sharing this information. How is the latest situation in India? Is it getting better?

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/indonesia-doctors-die-covid-19-wife-grieving-husband-photos-13059734 Stark photos highlight plight of Indonesia's vulnerable doctors A doctor grieves after her husband, a doctor and chair of the West Papuan doctors' association in Indonesia, died of COVID-19 in Makassar, South Sulawesi Province in Indonesia in this picture obtained from social media on Aug 27, 2020. (Photo: IKATAN DOKTER INDONESIA/via REUTERS) JAKARTA: Photographs of a grieving wife bent over the coffin of her dead husband, an Indonesian medical doctor, have drawn attention to the high death toll of healthcare workers in the Southeast Asian nation. The photographs, taken at Wahidin Sudirohusodo hospital in Makassar, South Sulawesi, on Thursday (Aug 27) morning, and shared with Reuters by Indonesia's Medical Association (IDI), have been widely shared on social media. They show a woman, whose face is barely visible, dressed in a pink hazmat suit, gloves, and turquoise mask, alone as she rests her head on a white coffin. The Indonesian medical association said the woman's husband, Dr Titus Taba, who was head of the IDI in West Papua, was the 94th Indonesian doctor to die from COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Halik Malik, spokesman for the association, said that the limited amount of protective equipment, isolation rooms and low screening of patients, had led to a high fatality rate among doctors. "The number of doctors dying in Indonesia is still relatively high, even increasing in the past two months," he said. Indonesia is grappling with one of the worst outbreaks of the virus in the region. In India, a country with more than three times the population and more than 3 million cases, almost 200 doctors have died from COVID-19, the Indian Medical Association told local media in early August. Indonesia reported its biggest daily increase of coronavirus infections on Thursday, with 2,719 new cases. It has recorded 162,884 coronavirus cases and 7,064 deaths, the highest death toll in Southeast Asia.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/at-least-100-doctors-die-of-coronavirus-in-indonesia/1958600# At least 100 doctors die of coronavirus in Indonesia Fatalities among doctors increase significantly over last 2 months, according to doctors union JAKARTA, Indonesia At least 100 Indonesian doctors have died of the novel coronavirus since the pandemic started in March, a doctors association said on Monday. "There have been 100 doctors who died while handling COVID-19. Likewise, the number of other health workers who have died also climbed,” Daeng Faqih, chairman of Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI), said in a statement. Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Halik Malik, the association spokesman, said the number of doctors who have died increased significantly over the last two months. As of Aug. 4, the doctors association recorded deaths of 74 doctors, and the number climbed by 26 over the last 27 days. He said the actual number could be higher than the recorded as not all of the fatalities were reported to the association. The association urged authorities to release official numbers so it can carry out a more comprehensive analysis of risk factors and preventive measures. The case-by-case analysis conducted by the association showed that not all of health facilities in the country are ready to impose strict protocols. Noting that periodic examinations of health workers have not been consistently conducted, Halik said hospitals were overwhelmed by the rising number of infections and fatalities among health workers. “The infected staffs have to be in isolation and the healthy ones are exhausted from working overtime,” he added. Meanwhile, the number of cases and the occupancy rate of isolation rooms in the country continued to grow. Indonesia confirmed 2,743 new infections on Monday, pushing the nationwide tally to 174,796. The country has reported 7,417 fatalities so far, while recoveries reached 125,959.