Our outreach staff from Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona put together this video for the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Anna and Esther did a wonderful job. Thank you!
I wear a sweater that my mom knitted some 15 years ago before she had grandchildren. She had more time for art back then.
When the COVID pandemic started I thought it might continue with world war III. Has it? I hope not. But I am not sure. My friends from the US write me messages of condoleances as if Romania was already lost. Is there some hidden napkin that has redivided the world? or is it a digital drawing in Ms. Paint shared on Zoom?
I look at the news and my children play with cars. They see the Russians as the bad guys. So they have a toy car that's Russian and hits the other cars. James is 5. So he sometimes takes the bad car and throws it out of the room. Ira is 1 and 1/2. He can say a few words. One of them is shoe, another is war. Edward is 11. But the young men and women from the military are never all bad or even bad on average. They are young people doing their job. I am in Spain now, but I have a ticket to return to Romania for a few weeks in March. Will the conflict escalade by then? Will it stay in Ukraine? Will I be able to go? will I be able to return?
What do I think of world politics? I think political decisions range from shameless to criminally shameless. I can say that about
-- the Monica Lewinski scandal.Why give weapons to civilians? I am not a politician or an expert in anything other than the physics of stars and that of dead stars. But it seems such an awful thing to do. It justifies the murder of civilians in any number by the ocuppying army. It will lead to murders. People could shot each other by mistake. They could shoot their neighbors (some might be of Russian origin so why not shoot them dead, some might be Nazis, or Jewish, etc), their wives (there has been an increase in domestic violence during the pandemic), their children, their pets. It's like saying there are not enough deaths. We want more theater, more people to die, and yes, Ukraine will fall, its fate is decided in advance, but we want the bloodshed, we need it. Why? Russia installed pro-Russian goverments in most of Europe (e.g., in Hungary) and in the US (e.g., president Trump). It's hard to imagine they could not do so in Ukraine where they speak Russian and part of the population is of Russian origin. Is it to scare Western Europe? Russia produces 40% of Europe's gas and several pipes run through Ukraine. Who could benefit from war in Europe? China?, the US? whoelse? perhaps Russia but only if it suceeds in re-expanding?
Shouldn't the world stop the various wars and focus on dealing with climate change? i.e., work together to tackle climate change? Any kind of destruction of infrastructure is yet another proof we don't give shit about the climate. Or about each other, about freedom or human rights. War is a degradation beyond words. It's a return to a period before the stone age where people are turned into something worse than beasts. They kill each other so that some weapon manufactures get richer and so that the class divide grows even more.
My colleague, Valeriu Predoi, has drawn some brilliant cartoons that represent his take on the Ukraine conflict. They are the best I've seen to date, and quite representative for what's going on. He's got untapped talent!
My take: The US is weak, the EU has been beheaded through Brexit and disheartened through the retirement of Angela Merkel, and so the world is being split between Russia and China with China dominating world-wide for the COVID-19 pandemic perdiod and Russia taking over parts of Europe now to make up for its pandemic losses. The increase in oil and gas prices is just not enough for them. The media said the invasion will start on Wednesday. How nice of them to announce ahead of time so that the US citizens and the Brits can get out in time. The US and the UK are making sure their boots are out of the way, while claiming they support Ukraine. Luckily, Ukraine's president is a former comedian, and seems a level-headed person who might somehow find a way to diffuse the conflict. Of course, like all wars, this one is being spear-headed by the media, which goes as far as them making up a date for when the Russian forces would enter Ukraine. China has already increased its influence in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
I am so afraid of war. It leads to such destruction at a time when we should worry about the climate and NOT blow up things. It never makes sense to kill the best and the brigthest just for the heck of it. I have three boys. I can't imagine any of them going off to war, which is a temporary return to the stoneage. I can't imagine anything worse than having young men and women out there in the cold trying to kill or maim each other and more often than not maiming and killing civilians around them. Blowing up bridges, roads, cars, and homes makes just as little sense. All those take energy to rebuild. So, how to resolve conflict? If I could, I'd put all world leaders in a room, and let them fight it out for as many years as they chose with any weapons they care to have at their disposal.
At the beginning of the year, I argued that the epidemiological situation warrants lifting all restrictions by the end of January.
This is for 2 reasons
(1) Omicron is mild, and doesn't kill
(2) Omicron is unstoppable, making restrictions pointless.
Denmark is an example of a country following my advice. Restrictions have been lifted, despite infections being at all times high and deaths pretty high as well.
For a country of 5 million people, Denmark is counting about 40 000 infections a day and 1.7 million positives overall, most of them during the latest Omicron days. As not all infections are documented and not all people test or choose to declare a home test, this means that the number of infected people is likely not far from the total Danish population. The virus obviously does the same thing everywhere. The Danes are just better at testing.
What do these numbers mean? Well, let's assume people live about 30 000 days (think of a round number a bit under 100 years x 365 days/year). A death occurring within a month of a positive test is generally counted as a COVID-19 death, regardless of other conditions. If 30 000 randomly chosen people are diagnosed today, one of them is expected dead by the end of the day and one more every day forever. Thus, a virus running at 30 000 positives a day should be running at 30 daily deaths without even doing anything as an infection.
This is strange, as any illness, no matter how mild, is expected to kill some people. The people who are supposed to die next month, should die now if they catch a cold or Omicron. Strangely, this is not what we see in the Danish data. Omicron seems to cause no deaths at all.
This is even stranger, as you expect dead people to be more frequently tested than live ones and, thus, undetected Omicron infections to be more frequent among the living than among the dead.
Sure, Denmark has a population which is well educated, well vaccinated (80% vaccinated, 60% boosted) and a good health care system.
In countries without a good medical system, you expect
-- fewer tests
-- more deaths, vaccinations are low and unvaccinated are more likely to die
-- a higher death ratio, as having fewer tests makes it more likely to miss infections in healthy people than in the dead or dying,
This we see, for example, in India where Omicron appears to infect a relatively small fraction of the population, like Delta appears to have done. This seems impossible, as the wave is going down. The only plausible mechanism is that most people are infected and therefore immune. Next wave will come when the virus mutates enough to evade immunity (antigenic drift).
Running at 100 000 cases, if the virus does nothing, we should see roughly 100 deaths a day. In India, we see about 1000, as, unlike Denmark, a lot of cases go undetected. This is not because the virus is more deadly in India: It isn't. It is most likely, less deadly, due to India's young population and poor medical system (e.g., weak people are long dead, and don't wait for COVID-19 as they do in western countries).
Conclusion: Like I said at the beginning of the year, Omicron's high transmission rate signals the end of the pandemic. We should have a restrictionless spring and summer! I am so looking forward to it.
I note that like most boring educated people, who want to travel from time to time, I am vaccinated and boosted, as are my mother and sister.
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