Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Coronavirus News (112)

Will the coronavirus pandemic open the door to a four-day workweek? The world is watching New Zealand. ....... what once in many quarters would have come across as a fringe notion no longer seemed so unthinkable. ........ spent time in offices that had implemented the policy in Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea the United Kingdom, the United States and Scandinavian countries to track why they were making the shift. “It’s not just touchy-feely social democracies that are doing it,” he said, but

also countries where “overwork is the norm.”

........ workplace productivity and satisfaction go up under a shorter, more compressed schedule. ....... 64 percent of leaders of businesses with four-day workweeks saw an increase in staff productivity, while 77 percent of workers linked it to a better quality of life ....... before the pandemic, Karen Jansen, a researcher on organizational behavior in the U.K., estimated a major shift toward the shorter workweek wouldn’t happen before 2030. Now, she said,

the coronavirus is “accelerating” that timeline

. ........ Much like remote work, four-day weeks, even if they gained widespread traction, would not likely be available to all workers evenly. There are different models for the shortened week, some of which envision the same output condensed into fewer hours while other simply imagine longer hours spread over fewer days. ......... The crisis has also amplified inherent inequalities between workers in formal jobs, with set contracts and hours, and those in the gig and informal economy. ........ the three-day weekend would become a “bubble” like remote work, encompassing a growing number of people and professions while excluding others....... women worldwide bear the brunt of child care and other domestic responsibilities under lockdowns and work-from-home orders, which exacerbate preexisting dynamics. In contrast, he argued, a four-day workweek could normalize a pattern in which people of all genders split their time more evenly between home and the workplace, removing an entrenched barrier to female professional advancement. ......... “You’re never going to get women at the top unless you get the guys out of the office,” Barnes said. “It makes it okay [for men] to spend time at home, to look after kids, to have care responsibilities.” ....... a mix of office and remote work moving forward




EARTH’S MAGNETIC FIELD IS MYSTERIOUSLY WEAKENING, CAUSING SATELLITES AND SPACECRAFT TO MALFUNCTION A localised region of weakness is 'developing vigorously', scientists warn ......... Scientists studying the phenomenon observed that an area known as the South Atlantic Anomaly has grown considerably in recent years, though the reason for it is not entirely clear. ....... the area of the anomaly dropped in strength by more than 8 per cent between 1970 and 2020. ....... The challenge now is to understand the processes in Earth's core driving theses changes ...... One possibility, according to the ESA, is that the weakening field is a sign that the Earth's magnetic field is about to reverse, whereby the North Pole and South Pole switch places. ....... The last time a "geomagnetic reversal" took place was 780,000 years ago, with some scientists claiming that the next one is long overdue. Typically, such events take place every 250,000 years. ......... the process is not an instantaneous one and could take tens of thousands of years to take place....... magnetic field observations from Swarm are providing exciting new insights into the scarcely understood processes of Earth's interior.

Coronavirus: Migrant Crisis is Due to Poor Planning, Not Poor State Capacity Some believe that the migrant crisis unleashed by India’s lockdown was inevitable. But the government’s own track record proves otherwise. It already has the infrastructure and capacity to respond, including several assets that are not currently being used. .........

Social media is awash with posts documenting the inhumane suffering of homebound migrant workers, many of whom are travelling hundreds of miles home on foot.

........ a failure of policy and have questioned the haste with which the government implemented the lockdown. .......... the government should have predicted the exodus ........ the disaster mitigation policy adopted by the government in the wake of Cyclone Fani in 2019. The government shifted more than a million people from low lying areas to cyclone shelters and ensured that there was minimal loss of human life. ..........

The government feeds more than 100 million children through its midday meal program.

The infrastructure for this distribution of food is still in place but not currently in use, since most children are now at home. The government could have used the midday meal infrastructure and augmented it with other initiatives to ensure that all migrant workers were provided for in the cities. .......... Over the last few years, through the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan, thousands of schools have been constructed. These schools – presently also closed – could have been used to increase the housing capacity of the existing shelter homes. ......... public transport systems (such as railways and buses) are not presently being utilised fully and could have been used to transport the migrants home after screening them. .......

there is no coherent national plan

......... The reason for this lack of planning lies in political apathy and not in a lack of state capacity. ......... a large section of the Indian middle class, many of whom incorrectly believe that the government does not have the resources or tools to deal with the scale of the migrant crisis. ........

India’s challenge is not one of poor state capacity but of low levels of empathy among many middle-class voters.



How COVID-19 Will Impact the Indian and Global Economies apart from its tragic human consequences, COVID-19 is likely to cost around $1 trillion to the global economy ........ COVID-19 will likely contract the global economy in 2020 by 2.5 per cent – the recessionary threshold for the world economy. ........ with the spread of COVID-19 having been fuelled by international migration and travel, globalisation may itself take a hit in the post-pandemic world. ...... Each day, countries get more restrictive, requiring more people to be quarantined upon arrival. ......... Unskilled and semi-skilled migrant labours are among the worst hit by the ongoing lockdown. It has tightened a job-scarce economy into a no-work economy – leading to the mass exodus of millions of daily wage workers from the big cities to the towns and villages...... Health of a population boosts the national economy through higher productivity and greater access to education and employment, which may otherwise be blocked by poor health. A growing health sector also provides gainful employment to many. By promoting mental health, we reduce conflict in society.........

Expenditure on healthcare includes expenditure on public health, family welfare, water supply and sanitation. India needs to spend more in these areas to create a resilient healthcare infrastructure and counter any potential future pandemics.

........... Cash transfer measures are set to benefit farmers, rural workers, poor pensioners, construction workers, low-income widowers and other marginalised people in the country. ....... The central bank has also permitted all lending institutions to allow a 3-month moratorium on the payment of instalments on term loans.


Inter-Religious Harmony in India Amidst the Coronavirus there is an outbreak of anti-Muslim hate during the nationwide lockdown. ........ In Indore, in the second week of April, when Draupadi Bai Verma died, her relatives refused to touch her body out of fear of contracting coronavirus. In response, a group of ten Muslim neighbours arranged for her last rites and carried her body to the cremation ground. Abdul Rehman Sheikh, a Muslim who carried her bier, said, “This is the purpose of humanity, to serve each other.” In Bulandshahar, Uttar Pradesh, when Ravishankar died, his relatives similarly feared contracting coronavirus and didn’t turn up for his last rites. Ultimately, a group of Muslims carried his bier to the cremation ground, chanting Ram naam satya hai.







Cummings’ contempt for lockdown rules makes the public feel like fools The ordinary treachery of saying one thing and doing another – there will be £350m extra every week for the NHS; there will never be a border in the Irish Sea – is mother’s milk to them. Perhaps because it is so habitual or because they are so used to getting away with it, their sense of how it works has become dulled. They missed the crucial fact that this time it’s different. This time it’s personal. ............ the rules for collective survival in a pandemic are not ironic. They are intimate. They are embodied. They are the detailed texture of the lives we live every day. ..........

To use the Blitz analogy that England apparently cannot escape, it’s fine to leave your lights on during the blackout if you’re an important person with documents to read.

..... an unpardonable snigger of elite condescension.

No comments: