Virus Corona (COVID-19) masih terus mewabah di Indonesia. Ikatan Alumni Departemen Matematika Universitas Indonesia (ILUNI Matematika UI) membuat permodelan yang memprediksi akhir wabah ini. Bagaimana hasilnya?
Pemodelan COVID-19 ini menggunakan sebuah model sederhana yang dikembangkan dengan model SIRU, Infected dan Unreported Case. Tim pembuatnya adalah Barry Mikhael Cavin, Rahmat Ali Kafi, Yoshua Yonatan H dan Imanuel M Rustijono.
Data yang digunakan untuk simulasi merupakan data kasus kumulatif dari tanggal 2 Maret hingga 29 Maret yang dipublikasikan oleh kawalcovid19.id. Data ini kemudian dihampiri dengan kurva eksponensial dan diestimasi dengan parameter X1, X2, X3. Asumsinya banyak orang yang terjangkit namun tak bergejala.
"Kita meyakini bahwa sebenarnya banyak orang yang terinfeksi namun tidak menunjukkan gejala, seperti yang terjadi di negara lain," tulis Tim ILUNI Matematika UI dalam penjelasannya.
Selain itu, mereka menyebut 1 orang bisa menginfeksi 2 hingga 3 orang baru. Jumlah yang terinfeksi diprediksi bisa mencapai ribuan jika physical distancing tidak dijalankan dengan disiplin.
"Berdasarkan data, 1 orang positif COVID-19 bisa menularkan penyakit ini pada 2-3 orang baru. Dengan jumlah penduduk terinfeksi yang mencapai ribuan orang, jika implementasi physical distancing tidak dilaksanakan secara disiplin, maka akan banyak orang tertular dan menjadi reporterd case," paparnya.
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Bisnis maskapai penerbangan dan perhotelan terpukul. Destinasi wisata dunia pun sepi. Dalam skala global, virus corona membuat industri perjalanan mengalami krisis. Lalu, bila wabah berlalu, bagaimana manusia berpelesiran?
"Orang-orang tidak berubah karena mereka masih ingin pergi ke suatu tempat, tetapi mereka tentu akan jauh lebih berhati-hati tentang apa yang mereka lakukan," kata Adam Blake, seorang profesor ekonomi dan kepala penelitian di Departemen Pariwisata dan Perhotelan di Universitas Bournemouth di Inggris, sebagaimana dinukil dari CNN Travel.
"Dan wisatawan bukan hanya butuh aman untuk bepergian, tetapi mereka harus melihat perubahan fisik agar mereka yakin, perubahan itu membuat perjalanan lebih aman," imbuh Blake. Menurutnya, begitu krisis kesehatan membaik, para pelancong diperkiarakan bakal melihat penurunan harga yang tajam untuk membuat mereka pelesiran lagi, kata para analis.
Berikut beberapa hal yang jadi tren saat industri pariwisata mulai pulih, sebagaimana dinukil dari CNN Travel.
Paket kapal pesiar menjadi lebih murah
Kapal pesiar akan sangat murah, bahkan bagi mereka yang pertama kali berwisata dengan kapal pesiar, “Wisatawan yang merasa nyaman dengan pelayaran, akan menemukan harga yang sangat rendah karena layanan pelayaran dimulai kembali,” kata Christopher Anderson, profesor bisnis di Hotel School Cornell University di Ithaca, New York.
Menurut Anderson, tantangannya adalah menarik pelanggan baru ke perjalanan pelayaran, "Perusahaan pelayaran kapal pesiar membutuhkan penumpang, yang akan sangat penting untuk bertahan hidup," katanya. Mafhum, berita mengenai virus corona juga mengabarkan wabah virus corona di kapal-kapal pesiar, pembatasan pelayaran, dan ditolaknya kapal-kapal pesiar di pelabuhan panggilan.
Kapal pesiar Sun Princess membawa 1.988 orang wisatawan mancanegara dan 862 kru berlabuh di Pelabuhan Gili Mas. Dok. Pelindo III
Anderson menyarankan bahwa perusahaan kapal pesiar mengatur konfigurasi ulang beberapa kapal baru yang masih dalam konstruksi. Misalnya, dengan kabin yang lebih besar dan kepadatan penumpang yang lebih sedikit -- mungkin merupakan cara untuk menarik pelanggan baru.
Ia menyarankan juga, kapal pesiar mengurangi layanan makanan prasmanan dan lebih condong ke arah makan a la carte untuk meyakinkan wisatawan yang skeptis tentang perjalanan pelayaran, katanya.
Kebersihan akan ditangani lebih banyak orang
"Semua orang, apakah itu yang menjalankan wisata, penginapan atau hotel, harus mengubah cara mereka memantau dan membersihkan lingkungan yang berinteraksi dengan konsumen dan berkomunikasi dengan para tamu, untuk meningkatkan tingkat kenyamanan mereka," kata Anderson.
Jan Freitag, wakil presiden senior Lodging Insights untuk firma analisis perhotelan STR, menggarisbawahi sanitasi akan jadi perhatian khusus wisatawan. Langkah-langkah baru yang terlihat, harus dilakukan para pebisnis pariwisata, untuk untuk menunjukkan betapa bersihnya properti mereka.
Petugas membersihkan meja sebelum sidang pleno bulanan di Parlemen Eropa yang terlihat sepi akibat virus corona (COVID-19), di Brussels, Belgia, 10 Maret 2020. REUTERS/Johanna Geron
“Apakah itu berarti pembersih tangan di mana-mana atau secara teratur mendisinfeksi permukaan keras, akan ada aturan yang dikomunikasikan dengan jelas untuk memberi tahu pelanggan: inilah yang kami lakukan untuk membuat Anda tetap aman," kata Freitag.
Menurut Freitag tarif hotel di Amerika Serikat turun 30 persen, dan tarif pasti akan turun sebelum naik kembali. Secara historis, di masa ketidakpastian besar seperti pada tahun 2001 setelah serangan 9/11 atau setelah akhir resesi pada tahun 2009, dibutuhkan dua kali lebih lama agar tarif kamar normal kembali.
Wisatawan mungkin merasa lebih aman di hotel daripada kamar sewaan
Anderson mengatakan, usai wabah virus corona, adalah berkah bagi hotel. Menurutnya, wisatawan tidak nyaman dengan pilihan penginapan alternatif, seperti Airbnb dan situs sewa kamar lainnya. Pasalnya, properti seperti itu mungkin kesulitan untuk berkomunikasi dan membakukan standar pembersihan yang ketat.
"Saya menginginkan safety dan keamanan dalam protokol pembersihan yang saya dapatkan dari penyedia penginapan yang sudah mapan," kata Anderson. Mengkomunikasikan kebersihan bakal jadi dampak negatif jangka pendek bagi penyewaan seperti Airbnb dan sejenisnya.
Kamar hotel lebih meyakinkan ketimbang kamar sewa bagi wisatawan, usai wabah virus corona. Dok. Hotel Indigo Bali Seminyak Beach.
Cari harga yang lebih murah dan pesawat agak kosong
Menurut Anderson, wisatawan lebih nyaman bepergian dengan pesawat jika penumpangnya tak terlalu penuh, "Jika kita benar-benar ingin membalikkan keadaan ini, maskapai harus terbang dengan kursi tengah kosong dan harga jauh lebih rendah dari biasanya," katanya.
Beberapa operator minggu lalu mengumumkan rencana untuk menghilangkan beberapa layanan makanan dan minuman, serta mengurangi kursi tengah untuk memotong biaya dan mengurangi interaksi di atas pesawat.
Terkait penerbangan, Anderson melihat perjalanan bisnis meningkat, diikuti oleh perjalanan liburan domestik, “Namun perjalanan trans-oseanik cenderung menurun,” katanya.
Perjalanan bisnis dapat memacu pemulihan bagi maskapai
Sementara banyak bisnis mungkin merasa lebih nyaman dengan melakukan pertemuan secara virtual, Anderson berharap keinginan untuk bertransaksi secara pribadi akan membantu memacu pemulihan bisnis maskapai.
"Saya percaya orang membutuhkan interaksi, dan ada kemungkinan jeda yang berkepanjangan dalam transaksi bisnis reguler, dapat mendorong pebisnis memulai perjalanan udara karena orang-orang ingin kembali ke bisnis dan menciptakan peluang," katanya.
Kabin pesawat yang tak terlalu padat bakal disukai wisatawan pascawabah virus corona.
Seain itu, pelancong udara akan memiliki lebih banyak mendapatkan fleksibilitas pemesanan. Maskapai diperkirakan memperpanjang opsi pemesanan ulang, dan lebih fleksibel terhadap pembatalan dan biaya perubahan untuk jangka waktu tertentu.
Namun, kata Anderson, semuanya kembali normal memasuki tahun 2021, di mana pembatalan dan perubahan penerbangan akan dikenakan biaya.
TEMPO.CO, Depok - Sejumlah pusat perbelanjaan atau mal di Kota Depok tutup sementara untuk mengantisipasi kerumunan orang dan penyebaran virus corona COVID-19.
Kepala Dinas Perdagangan dan Perindustrian (Disperdagin) Kota Depok Zamrowi Hasan mengatakan beberapa mal yang telah melakukan penutupan yaitu Depok Town Square (Detos), Trans Studio Cibubur, Margo City, ITC Depok, Pesona Square, dan Cimanggis Square.
"Enam mal ini sudah mulai tutup untuk sementara waktu selama dua pekan ke depan," katanya di Depok, Rabu, 1 April 2020.
Detos dan Trans Studio Cibubur ditutup sejak 27 Maret hingga 9 April dan Margo City pada 29 Maret hingga 11 April 2020. Diikuti ITC Depok dan Cimanggis Square sehari kemudian atau 30 Maret 2020 hingga 13 April 2020.
Zamrowi menegaskan, walaupun beberapa pusat perbelanjaan mulai menerapkan penutupan sementara tetapi pasar modern di area mal tetap beroperasi. Semua itu dimaksudkan agar tetap menyuplai kebutuhan pokok masyarakat.
"Supermarket, toko obat, bank dan ATM yang ada di lingkungan mal tetap buka. Masyarakat jangan khawatir karena kebutuhan pokok tetap tersedia," jelasnya.
Sejumlah warga Depok menyambut baik penutupan pusat perbelanjaan tersebut karena adanya kerumunan orang di mal dapat meningkatkan jumlah penyebaran orang yang terinfeksi COVID-19.
"Penutupan merupakan antisipasi yang bagus karena kita semua ingin wabah corona ini cepat berlalu," kata warga Depok Joko.
Ia mengatakan jumlah orang yang terinfeksi COVID-19 di Kota Depok semakin hari semakin bertambah ini tentunya memerlukan langkah-langkah bijak bagi para kalangan pengusaha. "Semoga saja wabah corona cepat berlalu dan semua aktivitas bisnis bisa berjalan normal kembali," katanya.
Nilai tukar dolar Amerika Serikat (AS) terhadap rupiah selama sepekan terakhir cukup volatile. Sejak menembus level tertingginya pada 23 Maret lalu di Rp 16.620, pergerakan dolar AS terpantau naik-turun.
Pelemahan rupiah berbanding lurus dengan semakin meluasnya penyebaran virus corona di Tanah Air. Saat ini pasien positif corona di Indonesia telah mencapai angka 1.528 orang.
Mengutip data perdagangan Reuters, Rabu (1/4/2020), nilai tukar dolar AS pagi ini ada di level Rp 16.290. Angka tersebut tercatat lebih tinggi dibandingkan posisi penutupan perdagangan kemarin di level Rp 16.273.
Hingga pukul 09.25 WIB, dolar AS tercatat bergerak di level Rp 16.290-16.300. Sementara secara point to point dibandingkan setahun yang lalu, pergerakannya berada di rentang Rp 13.565-16.620.
Dalam sepekan terakhir, pergerakan dolar AS berada di rentang Rp 16.140-16.500. Posisi dolar AS sempat kembali melemah di Rp 16.140 pada 27 Maret 2020 namun berbalik menguat setelahnya hingga hari ini.
Dari data RTI, dolar AS tercatat masih berada di level Rp 16.310. Dolar AS tercatat unggul terhadap yen Jepang, dolar Singapura, dan baht Thailand.
Sementara rupiah melemah terhadap dolar Australia, yuan China, euro, dan poundsterling.
Simak Video "Rupiah Keok Dihajar Dolar AS, Tembus Rp 14.500" [Gambas:Video 20detik] (eds/eds)
TEMPO.CO, Riyadh -Pemerintah Kerajaan Arab Saudi mengimbau umat Muslim untuk menunda pelaksanaan ibadah Haji sampai kondisi penyebaran virus Corona mereda.
Hal itu disampaikan Kementerian Haji dan Umrah Arab Saudi, seperti dikutip dari reuters.com pada Rabu, 1 April 2020 waktu setempat.
Setiap tahun, ada sekitar 2,5 juta umat Muslim dari seluruh dunia yang mengunjungi kota Mekah dan Madinah untuk melaksanakan ibadah Haji.
Ibadah Haji biasanya dimulai pada akhir Juli, namun wabah virus Corona mengancam ibadah tahunan itu ditunda karena kekhawatiran penyebaran virus Corona yang lebih parah karena adanya kerumunan.
Sebelumnya, pemerintah Arab Saudi juga sudah menunda ibadah Umrah karena mewabahnya virus Corona. Arab Saudi telah melarang penerbangan internasional dan menutup sejumlah kota, termasuk Mekah dan Madinah.
Sebanyak 1.563 orang Arab Saudi telah dinyatakan positif COVID-19, sepuluh di antaranya meninggal. Sementara virus ini telah menjangkiti lebih dari 800 ribu orangsecara global dan membunuh 38 ribu.
Pemerintah resmi menerbitkan Peraturan Pemerintah (PP) tentang Pembatasan Sosial Berskala Besar (PSBB). Ada sejumlah syarat dan prosedur yang harus dilakukan pemerintah daerah untuk memberlakukan PSBB.
Hal tersebut diatur dalam PP Nomor 21 Tahun 2020 tentang Pembatasan Sosial Berskala Besar Dalam Rangka Percepatan Penanganan Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), seperti dilihat detikcom, Selasa (31/3/2020). PP bertanggal 31 Maret 2020 itu diteken oleh Presiden Joko Widodo (Jokowi).
Syarat untuk pemda bisa memberlakukan PSBB tertuang dalam Pasal 3. Dalam pasal tersebut ada dua kriteria yang harus dipenuhi untuk menerapkan PSBB, yakni jumlah kasus dan/atau jumlah kematian serta kaitan epidemiologis dengan kejadian serupa.
Pasal itu berbunyi:
Pembatasan Sosial Berskala Besar harus memenuhi kriteria sebagai berikut:
a. jumlah kasus dan/atau jumlah kematian akibat penyakit meningkat dan menyebar secara signifikan dan cepat ke beberapa wilayah; dan
b. terdapat kaitan epidemiologis dengan kejadian serupa di wilayah atau negara lain.
Dalam Pasal 4 dijelaskan PSBB paling sedikit meliputi peliburan sekolah dan tempat kerja, pembatasan kegiatan keagamaan, serta pembatasan kegiatan di tempat atau fasilitas umum. PSBB dilakukan dengan mempertimbangkan pemenuhan kebutuhan penduduk.
KOMPAS.com - Gara-gara masalah parkir sepeda motor, seorang kakek pencari rumput di Lampung, PMJ (75), nekat membacok tetangganya, S (56), hingga tewas.
Dari informasi yang dihimpun, pelaku menyerang korban dengan celurit yang sering dia gunakan untuk mencari rumput.
S dilaporkan langsung tersungkur di tengah jalan dengan enam luka serius di tubuhnya.
"Korban mendapat luka bacok sebanyak 6 bacokan (celurit), yakni di bagian pinggang dan bahu," kata Kapolsek Way Pengubuan Iptu Widodo Rahayu, dilansir dari Tribunnews.
Saat diperiksa di kantor polisi, PMJ menjelaskan, kejadian itu berawal saat dirinya hendak mencari rumput, lalu melihat sepeda motor korban menghalangi jalannya.
"Saya bilang gitu (geser motor), dia justru memukul saya dengan sebatang bambu," kata PMJ, Selasa (31/3/2020).
Tindakan korban itu membuat pelaku naik pitam. Dirinya langsung mengambil celurit yang dia pakai untuk mencari rumput untuk menyerang korban.
Tak akur
Pelaku dan korban diketahui adalah tetangga dekat di Kampung Purnama Tunggal, Lampung. Keduanya juga diketahui warga sekitar sering cekcok.
"Sudah lama berselisih, ya karena persoalan yang kami sendiri kurang paham, karena antara korban dan pelaku ini kan bertetangga dekat, mungkin kemarin (saat pembacokan) itu lah puncaknya (emosi pelaku)," kata salah seorang warga yang enggan disebut namanya.
Sementara itu, atas perbuatan pelaku, polisi menjeratnya dengan Pasal 351 ayat(1), (2) dan (4) atau Pasal 184 ayat 1 dan ayat 2 KUHPidana dengan ancaman 5 tahun penjara.
President Trump likes to refer to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus,” and in so doing he’s popularizing an image of the pandemic as a foreign invasion. He’s not the only one.
Although we are (hopefully) not using a racist term to refer to this virus, many of us have unwittingly bought into a particular paradigm for understanding pandemics. Call it the paradigm of invasion: the idea that we’re being attacked by an onslaught of foreign pathogens that come from animals, and we’re just passive victims.
But what if we, the humans, are the ones staging the onslaught? What if the real story of modern pandemics is not about how animals and their germs are invading our human realm but about how we’re invading theirs?
That’s the argument of Sonia Shah, author of the 2017 book Pandemic. She says the paradigm of invasion — or “microbial xenophobia,” as she calls it — often fails to explain why a microbe that’s existed for ages suddenly turns into a pandemic-causing pathogen. After studying outbreaks ranging from cholera to West Nile virus to Ebola, she’s found that human activities play a huge, and hugely underrecognized, role.
Our environmental and social policies — like cutting down forests or failing to address a housing crisis — make it much likelier that a previously harmless microbe will cause a devastating outbreak.
Shah is not alone in advocating for a paradigm shift in how we understand pandemics. The One Health movement, an interdisciplinary way of thinking espoused by some global public health authorities, emphasizes the connections between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment. It’s pushing for this change, too.
I talked to Shah about how this approach can help us better understand the true origins of pandemics. A transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.
Sigal Samuel
The reigning narrative in a lot of people’s minds is that “exotic” animals are to blame for the coronavirus crisis — that they’re dirty and infested with tons of pathogens that just can’t wait to kill us. What’s wrong with this narrative?
Sonia Shah
First of all, we all have lots of microbes inside of us. Humans give animals microbes that turn into pathogens all the time, so we are also the source of disease for other species. But we don’t talk about that.
Species everywhere are full of microbes, but if they stay in the bodies in which they’ve evolved, they don’t cause disease. Ebola doesn’t cause disease in bats. Neither does coronavirus. They cause disease in our bodies because they’re new to us — they’re exploiting a new habitat.
Sigal Samuel
So why are they exploiting that new habitat, namely us humans?
Sonia Shah
It’s because we are building roads between wild animals and human bodies. We’re using up a lot of land — for our cities, our mines, our farms — and while doing that, we’re destroying wildlife habitat. That’s why 150 species are going extinct every day. And the species that are remaining have to squeeze into these tiny fragments of wildlife habitat that we leave for them.
When you cut down the forest where bats live, they don’t just go away; they come roost in the trees in your backyard or farm. That means it’s easier to have casual contact with their excretions.
If a little kid goes outside and plays near a tree where bats roost, they might pick up a piece of fruit that has some bat poop or bat saliva on it and put that in their mouth, and then you’ve created an opportunity for the microbes that live in the bat’s body to enter into a human body. We know that with Ebola, there was a single spillover event — the first case was a 2-year-old child in West Africa who was playing near a tree where bats live.
These are accidents waiting to happen. Now we have this amazing flight network, so even if pathogens emerge in a place where there aren’t a lot of transmission opportunities, they can easily get to somewhere where there are. We’re also urbanizing in an ad hoc fashion, so we have a lot of places where people are being exposed to each other’s waste. There’s not a lot of infrastructure in many of the places that are rapidly urbanizing. All these factors combine to increase the risk that a microbe will spill over into human bodies and then start to spread.
Sigal Samuel
What strikes me is that when you talk about the origins of pandemics, you talk on this macro level — like our environmental and social policies — rather than on the micro level. What kind of explanatory power does this approach give you, in terms of explaining the origins of previous outbreaks?
Sonia Shah
We often look at an outbreak as a foreign problem — like Ebola and SARS and Zika are coming from outside and encroaching upon us. That’s the traditional narrative: the germ invading from outside. I call it microbial xenophobia.
But these are things that are happening right here in the United States. So for example, West Nile virus is a virus of migratory birds from Africa. They’ve been landing in North America for hundreds of years, but we never had West Nile virus here until 1999. Well, why is that?
It turns out that when you have a diversity of bird species in your domestic flock, you don’t get a lot of West Nile virus because birds like woodpeckers and rails are really bad carriers. So as long as you have a lot of those diverse bird species around, even if you have an introduction of West Nile virus from a migratory bird, you’re not going to get a lot of virus overall.
But what happened over the last 20 years or so is that we lost a lot of that avian biodiversity. Woodpeckers and rails became rare in a lot of environments. Instead, we have a lot of birds like crows and robins, which are generalist species that can live in any kind of degraded environment, and they’re really good carriers of West Nile virus.
So the fewer woodpeckers and rails you have around, and the more robins and crows you have around, the more West Nile virus you have around. And the more likely it becomes that a mosquito is going to bite an infected bird and then bite a human.
Sigal Samuel
Since tick-borne diseases are a huge problem in the US, I’m curious: Is there a similar story to be told about Lyme disease?
Sonia Shah
Yes, it’s a very similar story with Lyme. When we had intact forests over the northeast, we had a diversity of woodland species that lived in those intact forests — like opossums and chipmunks — that helped control the tick population. But over the past 50 years or so, suburbs have expanded into the forest and broken it up into little patchwork quilts, so opossums and chipmunks have become [relatively] rare.
Instead, we have a lot of white-footed mice and deer, and it turns out that white-footed mice don’t control tick populations well. A typical mouse destroys about 50 ticks a week, compared to a typical opossum that will destroy hundreds and hundreds of ticks a week just by grooming.
So the fewer opossums you have around and the more white-footed mice you have around, the more ticks you have around. And the more likely it becomes that you’re going to have outbreaks of tick-borne disease like Lyme.
Sigal Samuel
I think that really helps make the case that our interaction with the environment — for example, deforestation — has major impacts on human health. Social policies can also affect the risk of an outbreak, right?
Sonia Shah
Right, so, when dengue broke out in South Florida in 2009, it was immediately considered an invasion from some foreign place. We coated the environment with insecticide and staged a military-style assault on these mosquitoes. But it turns out the mosquitoes that carry dengue have been in South Florida for a long time. That wasn’t new.
What was new was the foreclosure crisis. It had shuttered all these houses. The epicenter of the dengue crisis was also the epicenter of the mortgage crisis.
And of course in South Florida people have a lot of swimming pools. So with all these homes closed, these swimming pools were vacant. Lo and behold, it starts to rain and these empty pools fill up with water and it creates these little pockets around the garden that mosquitoes can breed in. And then we have this “unprecedented” outbreak of dengue.
Nobody thought to address the housing crisis as a possible driver of the outbreak.
Sigal Samuel
It sounds like what you’re advocating for is a more holistic approach, a systems-thinking approach. How much of an outlier are you in that?
Sonia Shah
There’s a whole movement in global health called One Health. It’s the idea that human health is connected to the health of our animals — pets, livestock, wildlife — and our ecosystems and other societies. All these things are connected and we have to look at these broader drivers because that’s going to get to the root of the issue. Otherwise, we’re constantly just mopping up problems that are going to keep erupting again and again.
Sigal Samuel
It occurs to me that this also has implications for how we do science. Given that so many of our modern pathogens cross disciplinary boundaries, do we need more doctors working with veterinarians, more biomedical experts collaborating with social scientists, and so on?
Sonia Shah
Absolutely. We have siloed everyone and you can see how that’s impacted the way we responded to some of the zoonotic pathogens. With West Nile Virus, veterinarians at the Bronx Zoo noticed, “Oh, all these birds are getting sick with something.” But they didn’t tell the doctors, so the doctors just said, “Oh, all these people are getting sick with something! What’s happening?”
We’ve blinded ourselves to the crossovers by making it so these groups don’t talk to each other. Part of the One Health idea is that we need to be multidisciplinary and bring all these experts together.
Sigal Samuel
The fact that the coronavirus likely came from a wild-animal market in China makes me wonder about factory farms in countries like the US. It’s not the same, but animals in these farms are also packed very close together. Should the coronavirus crisis prompt us to revise how we think about meat production here, too?
Sonia Shah
That’s absolutely part of it. When I was writing my book, I asked my sources what keeps them awake at night. They usually had two answers: highly drug-resistant forms of bacterial pathogens and virulent avian influenza. Both those things are driven by the crowding in factory farms.
These are ticking time bombs, and they’re still going to be there when we’re done cleaning up the mess we’ve gotten ourselves in with this current virus.
Sigal Samuel
In your book, you write about paradigm shifts, and one line that jumped out at me was: “Modern biomedicine’s fundamental approach to solving complex problems is to reduce them to their smallest and simplest components.” Do you think this reductionist approach is failing us now?
Sonia Shah
The reductionist approach in biomedicine comes from a good place. Modern germ theory really made a big difference. Before we had germ theory, people thought cholera, malaria, and so on were caused by miasmas floating in the air or an imbalance of humors in your body. Germ theory helped us in a lot of ways, so it makes sense that that’s the paradigm.
But we’ve lost the bigger picture, the connections between social and political health and environmental health. So what we’re seeing right now is an intense amount of reductionism.
Moving forward, what we have to see is that pandemics, climate disasters, all of these are related to our huge footprint on the planet. We’ve been using up a lot of natural resources and now the bill is coming due. We’re going to lurch from disaster to disaster to disaster until we start to really change the fundamental relationship between us and nature.
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletterand we’ll send you a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling the world’s biggest challenges — and how to get better at doing good.
Future Perfect is funded in part by individual contributions, grants, and sponsorships. Learn morehere.
VERO BEACH — At 67, Mimi Kuriger prepped for her first ever Zoom video call the only way she knew how:
"I wore my Barbara Bush pearls to hide my wrinkles," laughed the now-retired nurse living in Vero Beach.
Kuriger is among the 92 graduates of Mount Saint Joseph Academy, an all-women school in Flourtown, Pennsylvania, who had been planning their 50th class reunion weekend for over a year. The town is about 11 miles outside Philadelphia.
The Class of 1970 planned to converge March 27 from around the country to share nostalgic conversations over breakfast and, as the day progressed, trade belly laughs like the Golden Girls over a few cocktails in the evening.
But as is the case for most people around the world who have altered or cancelled travel in the midst of a global pandemic, the novel coronavirus shuttered their plans.
More: St. Lucie County tennis pro still seeing symptoms after testing positive for coronavirus March 20
"We were all so excited for it, and then it couldn't happen," Kuriger told TCPalm Tuesday. "So, we had to try something new."
Instead of an in-person meetup, 25 women from Saint Joseph sipped from their glasses of wine and martinis (or several) and gathered virtually Saturday night.
For most of the women involved, this was the first time a video software had ever been used, Kuriger said.
"We were all probably sitting in our pajama pants, but we were dressed to the nines up top," Kuriger said. "It was like the Brady Bunch."
Kuriger said the reunion's planning committee organized the meetup, and personally created Zoom accounts for every woman who didn't have one.
The school "felt so bad" when it heard about the cancelled reunion, the faculty provided online discussion prompts like "Who was your favorite teacher?" and "What do you remember eating from the cafeteria?" Kuriger said.
The online conversation ran for two hours and went on without a hitch, Kuriger said. Some ladies pulled out their 1970 yearbooks and pointed to pictures from five decades ago, while others brought up the academy's nuns.
The virtual meetup was nostalgic — and sometimes emotional — as everyone came together from the comfort of their own homes to reminisce on the glory days.
At one point, an in-depth flashback took place to the old 110-year-old academy outfits: blue wool sweaters and white collars that had to be starched and ironed, Kuriger said.
More: 2020 hurricane forecast predicts 'above-normal' season with 2 to 4 major hurricanes
There was, however, one topic the women refused to discuss.
"We covered ever gamut except politics," Kuriger joked. "Everyone realized that we weren't going to agree."
The "die-hards" of the group stayed online the full length of the call, while others trickled in and out as the night went on, Kuriger said.
"We did sing our alma mater at the end of the call," Kuriger said. "After two glasses of wine, we still remembered it."
As a former nurse and the mother of a nurse, Kuriger said the threat of COVID-19 remains ingrained in her mind. In her spare time, she stitches face masks for health care workers to use on the front lines battling the spread of the virus.
There were a few physicians on the reunion call — most in the northeast region of the United States — who reminded everyone to take the necessary precautions, Kuriger said.
"We were wishing each other well. We are the prime age group to contract this virus, so in reality, it was the smartest thing we could’ve done," Kuriger said. "Everyone was very aware of the virus, especially the women in Philadelphia. They’re going through what we’re probably going to be going through."
More: IRCSO asks for public's help in locating missing woman last seen Friday in Vero Beach
The Class of 1970 changed their plans, like so many on the Treasure Coast, to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines and maintain social distancing.
As schools have enacted virtual learning and hospitals turn to telehealth to limit person-to-person contact, virtual communication is becoming a prevalent reality for all ages.
"We are so grateful that we had something like Zoom," Kuriger said. "If a bunch of old ladies can figure this out without screwing it up, anyone can."
Max Chesnes is a TCPalm breaking news reporter for Indian River County. You can keep up with Max on Twitter @MaxChesnes, email him at max.chesnes@tcpalm.com and give him a call at 772-978-2224. For more news, follow Max Chesnes on Twitter by clicking here.
President Trump likes to refer to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus,” and in so doing he’s popularizing an image of the pandemic as a foreign invasion. He’s not the only one.
Although we are (hopefully) not using a racist term to refer to this virus, many of us have unwittingly bought into a particular paradigm for understanding pandemics. Call it the paradigm of invasion: the idea that we’re being attacked by an onslaught of foreign pathogens that come from animals, and we’re just passive victims.
But what if we, the humans, are the ones staging the onslaught? What if the real story of modern pandemics is not about how animals and their germs are invading our human realm but about how we’re invading theirs?
That’s the argument of Sonia Shah, author of the 2017 book Pandemic. She says the paradigm of invasion — or “microbial xenophobia,” as she calls it — often fails to explain why a microbe that’s existed for ages suddenly turns into a pandemic-causing pathogen. After studying outbreaks ranging from cholera to West Nile virus to Ebola, she’s found that human activities play a huge, and hugely underrecognized, role.
Our environmental and social policies — like cutting down forests or failing to address a housing crisis — make it much likelier that a previously harmless microbe will cause a devastating outbreak.
Shah is not alone in advocating for a paradigm shift in how we understand pandemics. The One Health movement, an interdisciplinary way of thinking espoused by some global public health authorities, emphasizes the connections between people, animals, plants, and their shared environment. It’s pushing for this change, too.
I talked to Shah about how this approach can help us better understand the true origins of pandemics. A transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follows.
Sigal Samuel
The reigning narrative in a lot of people’s minds is that “exotic” animals are to blame for the coronavirus crisis — that they’re dirty and infested with tons of pathogens that just can’t wait to kill us. What’s wrong with this narrative?
Sonia Shah
First of all, we all have lots of microbes inside of us. Humans give animals microbes that turn into pathogens all the time, so we are also the source of disease for other species. But we don’t talk about that.
Species everywhere are full of microbes, but if they stay in the bodies in which they’ve evolved, they don’t cause disease. Ebola doesn’t cause disease in bats. Neither does coronavirus. They cause disease in our bodies because they’re new to us — they’re exploiting a new habitat.
Sigal Samuel
So why are they exploiting that new habitat, namely us humans?
Sonia Shah
It’s because we are building roads between wild animals and human bodies. We’re using up a lot of land — for our cities, our mines, our farms — and while doing that, we’re destroying wildlife habitat. That’s why 150 species are going extinct every day. And the species that are remaining have to squeeze into these tiny fragments of wildlife habitat that we leave for them.
When you cut down the forest where bats live, they don’t just go away; they come roost in the trees in your backyard or farm. That means it’s easier to have casual contact with their excretions.
If a little kid goes outside and plays near a tree where bats roost, they might pick up a piece of fruit that has some bat poop or bat saliva on it and put that in their mouth, and then you’ve created an opportunity for the microbes that live in the bat’s body to enter into a human body. We know that with Ebola, there was a single spillover event — the first case was a 2-year-old child in West Africa who was playing near a tree where bats live.
These are accidents waiting to happen. Now we have this amazing flight network, so even if pathogens emerge in a place where there aren’t a lot of transmission opportunities, they can easily get to somewhere where there are. We’re also urbanizing in an ad hoc fashion, so we have a lot of places where people are being exposed to each other’s waste. There’s not a lot of infrastructure in many of the places that are rapidly urbanizing. All these factors combine to increase the risk that a microbe will spill over into human bodies and then start to spread.
Sigal Samuel
What strikes me is that when you talk about the origins of pandemics, you talk on this macro level — like our environmental and social policies — rather than on the micro level. What kind of explanatory power does this approach give you, in terms of explaining the origins of previous outbreaks?
Sonia Shah
We often look at an outbreak as a foreign problem — like Ebola and SARS and Zika are coming from outside and encroaching upon us. That’s the traditional narrative: the germ invading from outside. I call it microbial xenophobia.
But these are things that are happening right here in the United States. So for example, West Nile virus is a virus of migratory birds from Africa. They’ve been landing in North America for hundreds of years, but we never had West Nile virus here until 1999. Well, why is that?
It turns out that when you have a diversity of bird species in your domestic flock, you don’t get a lot of West Nile virus because birds like woodpeckers and rails are really bad carriers. So as long as you have a lot of those diverse bird species around, even if you have an introduction of West Nile virus from a migratory bird, you’re not going to get a lot of virus overall.
But what happened over the last 20 years or so is that we lost a lot of that avian biodiversity. Woodpeckers and rails became rare in a lot of environments. Instead, we have a lot of birds like crows and robins, which are generalist species that can live in any kind of degraded environment, and they’re really good carriers of West Nile virus.
So the fewer woodpeckers and rails you have around, and the more robins and crows you have around, the more West Nile virus you have around. And the more likely it becomes that a mosquito is going to bite an infected bird and then bite a human.
Sigal Samuel
Since tick-borne diseases are a huge problem in the US, I’m curious: Is there a similar story to be told about Lyme disease?
Sonia Shah
Yes, it’s a very similar story with Lyme. When we had intact forests over the northeast, we had a diversity of woodland species that lived in those intact forests — like opossums and chipmunks — that helped control the tick population. But over the past 50 years or so, suburbs have expanded into the forest and broken it up into little patchwork quilts, so opossums and chipmunks have become [relatively] rare.
Instead, we have a lot of white-footed mice and deer, and it turns out that white-footed mice don’t control tick populations well. A typical mouse destroys about 50 ticks a week, compared to a typical opossum that will destroy hundreds and hundreds of ticks a week just by grooming.
So the fewer opossums you have around and the more white-footed mice you have around, the more ticks you have around. And the more likely it becomes that you’re going to have outbreaks of tick-borne disease like Lyme.
Sigal Samuel
I think that really helps make the case that our interaction with the environment — for example, deforestation — has major impacts on human health. Social policies can also affect the risk of an outbreak, right?
Sonia Shah
Right, so, when dengue broke out in South Florida in 2009, it was immediately considered an invasion from some foreign place. We coated the environment with insecticide and staged a military-style assault on these mosquitoes. But it turns out the mosquitoes that carry dengue have been in South Florida for a long time. That wasn’t new.
What was new was the foreclosure crisis. It had shuttered all these houses. The epicenter of the dengue crisis was also the epicenter of the mortgage crisis.
And of course in South Florida people have a lot of swimming pools. So with all these homes closed, these swimming pools were vacant. Lo and behold, it starts to rain and these empty pools fill up with water and it creates these little pockets around the garden that mosquitoes can breed in. And then we have this “unprecedented” outbreak of dengue.
Nobody thought to address the housing crisis as a possible driver of the outbreak.
Sigal Samuel
It sounds like what you’re advocating for is a more holistic approach, a systems-thinking approach. How much of an outlier are you in that?
Sonia Shah
There’s a whole movement in global health called One Health. It’s the idea that human health is connected to the health of our animals — pets, livestock, wildlife — and our ecosystems and other societies. All these things are connected and we have to look at these broader drivers because that’s going to get to the root of the issue. Otherwise, we’re constantly just mopping up problems that are going to keep erupting again and again.
Sigal Samuel
It occurs to me that this also has implications for how we do science. Given that so many of our modern pathogens cross disciplinary boundaries, do we need more doctors working with veterinarians, more biomedical experts collaborating with social scientists, and so on?
Sonia Shah
Absolutely. We have siloed everyone and you can see how that’s impacted the way we responded to some of the zoonotic pathogens. With West Nile Virus, veterinarians at the Bronx Zoo noticed, “Oh, all these birds are getting sick with something.” But they didn’t tell the doctors, so the doctors just said, “Oh, all these people are getting sick with something! What’s happening?”
We’ve blinded ourselves to the crossovers by making it so these groups don’t talk to each other. Part of the One Health idea is that we need to be multidisciplinary and bring all these experts together.
Sigal Samuel
The fact that the coronavirus likely came from a wild-animal market in China makes me wonder about factory farms in countries like the US. It’s not the same, but animals in these farms are also packed very close together. Should the coronavirus crisis prompt us to revise how we think about meat production here, too?
Sonia Shah
That’s absolutely part of it. When I was writing my book, I asked my sources what keeps them awake at night. They usually had two answers: highly drug-resistant forms of bacterial pathogens and virulent avian influenza. Both those things are driven by the crowding in factory farms.
These are ticking time bombs, and they’re still going to be there when we’re done cleaning up the mess we’ve gotten ourselves in with this current virus.
Sigal Samuel
In your book, you write about paradigm shifts, and one line that jumped out at me was: “Modern biomedicine’s fundamental approach to solving complex problems is to reduce them to their smallest and simplest components.” Do you think this reductionist approach is failing us now?
Sonia Shah
The reductionist approach in biomedicine comes from a good place. Modern germ theory really made a big difference. Before we had germ theory, people thought cholera, malaria, and so on were caused by miasmas floating in the air or an imbalance of humors in your body. Germ theory helped us in a lot of ways, so it makes sense that that’s the paradigm.
But we’ve lost the bigger picture, the connections between social and political health and environmental health. So what we’re seeing right now is an intense amount of reductionism.
Moving forward, what we have to see is that pandemics, climate disasters, all of these are related to our huge footprint on the planet. We’ve been using up a lot of natural resources and now the bill is coming due. We’re going to lurch from disaster to disaster to disaster until we start to really change the fundamental relationship between us and nature.
Sign up for the Future Perfect newsletterand we’ll send you a roundup of ideas and solutions for tackling the world’s biggest challenges — and how to get better at doing good.
Future Perfect is funded in part by individual contributions, grants, and sponsorships. Learn morehere.
Solidaritas sosial masyarakat di tengah pandemi Covid-19 (Corona) terus bergulir. Kepedulian antar sesama demi meminimalisasi dampak penyebaran virus tersebut semakin digaungkan.
Salah satunya yang dilakukan PT Jasa dan Kepariwisataan (Jaswita) Jabar yang merupakan Badan Usaha Milik Daerah (BUMD) Provinsi Jawa Barat dengan menyiapkan sejumlah paket makanan pokok untuk diberikan kepada petugas kesehatan dan warga yang mengais rezeki dari sektor informal.
Direktur Utama PT Jasa dan Kepariwisataan Jabar Deni Nurdyana Hadimin mengatakan, pihaknya melalui Sanpedo, salah satu anak perusahaan yang bergerak di bidang katering, menyiapkan ratusan bungkus makanan untuk petugas medis dan warga membutuhkan. Adapun paket makanan yang disiapkannya adalah nasi kotak lengkap dengan menu yang telah memiliki kecukupan gizi standard senilai Rp20 ribu.
"Kami memiliki unit usaha yang bergerak di bidang katering dan jasa boga, makanan. Kami akan maksimalkam produksinya, untuk disalurkan kepada mereka yang membutuhkan," kata Deni kepada wartawan di Bandung, Selasa (31/3/2020).
Kesehatan para petugas menjadi prioritas penyaluran bantuan karena selama ini merekalah yang berjuang di garis depan dalam penanganan wabah virus Corona ini. "Mereka senantiasa bersiaga di rumah sakit di Jawa Barat," imbuhnya.
Selanjutnya, kata Deni, prioritas penyaluran berikutnya adalah para pekerja sektor informal. Ia menuturkan mereka turut terdampak wabah ini karena aktivitasnya dalam mencari sumber penghidupan terganggu.
"Pekerja sektor informal yang terus berjuang di tengah penyebaran wabah ini harus dibantu, agar tetap mendapatkan penghasilan," ungkapnya.
Jaswita Jabar pun membuka donasi bagi seluruh warga Jawa Barat yang ingin membantu dalam bentuk paket makanan. Ia berharap bisa meningkatkan rasa persaudaraan dan solidaritas sosial.
"Donasi dapat dikirimkan melalui rekening bank bjb, nomor 0010030233633 atas nama Jasa dan Kepariwisataan PT. Ini adalah bentuk kepedulian kita semua," pungkasnya.
KONTAN.CO.ID - JAKARTA. Kasus penipuan yang dilakukan orang tidak bertanggungjawab dengan menggunakan nama dompet digital menjadikan Gopay turut mengambil langkah. Head of IT Governance and Information Security Gopay Ganesha Putra mengatakan pihaknya mengecam segala bentuk kriminal itu.
Ia menyebutkan, untuk menjamin keamanan transaksi pengguna Gopay dan Paylater, pihaknya memiliki Gojek SHIELD sebagai sistem keamanan yang andal dan didukung pengembangan teknologi yang dilengkapi dengan fitur canggih.
“Sehingga nantinya jaminan saldo GoPay kembali. Hal ini merupakan sebuah perlindungan khusus sebagai wujud komitmen #AmanBersamaGojek,” Kata Ganesha kepada Kontan.co.id, Selasa (31/3).
Ia menjelaskan, pengguna yang telah melakukan verifikasi di akun Gojek dapat mempercayakan seluruh transaksinya melalui Gopay. Sebab, Gopay telah didukung jaminan proteksi saldo GoPay yang nantinya akan dikembalikan jika hilang di luar kendali pengguna.
Ganesha bilang, untuk mengaktivasi fitur jaminan saldo Gopay kembali dan meningkatkan keamanan dalam bertransaksi, pihaknya menghimbau kepada seluruh pengguna untuk melakukan verifikasi akun gojek dan langkah edukasi JAGA, yaitu Jangan bayar di luar aplikasi, Amankan data pribadi, Jangan bagikan kode OTP, Gunakan PIN serta Adukan hal yang mencurigakan kepada customer service Gojek.
“Untuk mendukung kenyamanan dan keamanan transaksi pengguna, Gopay mempersilahkan menghubungi customer service melalui 0221-5084-9000,” ujarnya.
Ia menambahkan, apabila saldo Gopay maupun PayLater hilang maka pihaknya akan menjamin pengembalian saldo hilang sepenuhnya. Namun, perlu dicatat hal itu sesuai dengan syarat dan ketentuan yang ada.
Ganesha juga menghimbau kepada pengguna untuk mengamankan akunnya dengan tidak memberikan data rahasia termasuk kode OTP kepada orang lain sekalipun kepada pihak yang mengatasnamakan Gojek.
“Selanjutnya jangan mudah percaya dan menuruti anjuran seperti melakukan transfer dari pihak yang mengaku Gojek atau rekan usaha Gojek dengan alasan apapun. Sebab, transaksi di Gojek hanya dilakukan dengan pilihan tunai, GoPay atau PayLater,” Papar Ganesha.
Tak hanya itu, ia turut menghimbau korban penipuan dapat dengan segera melaporkan kepada pihak kepolisian, platform digital tempat bertransaksi juga penyedia jasa pembayaran yang dipakai.
Asal tahu saja, Gopay siap untuk bekerjasama dengan berbagai pihak agar kasus penipuan dapat ditindak dan diproses sesuai dengan aturan hukum yang berlaku.
“Gopay juga menghimbau untuk waspada untuk melakukan transaksi hanya di marketplace atau platform digital yang terpercaya serta berhati-hati ketika klik pada tautan atau situs yang disebarka. Sebab, bisa jadi situs phishing yang meminta data pribadi yang bisa disalahgunakan,” imbuhnya.
Pengadilan Tindak Pidana Korupsi (Tipikor) Jakarta bersama KPK mulai mengelar sidang melalui teleconference atau telekonferensi. Begini tata cara sidang melalui telekonferensi tersebut.
"Untuk Pengadilan Negeri Jakarta Pusat direncanakan hanya majelis hakim dan panitera pengganti tetap di ruang sidang di Pengadilan Negeri Jakarta Pusat. Pihak lain yaitu jaksa penuntut umum KPK, saksi-saksi dan terdakwa berada di gedung KPK dengan ruangan terpisah dan alat yang sudah disiapkan. Sedangkan, penasihat hukum bisa di gedung KPK bersama terdakwa ataupun dari tempat masing-masing sesuai kesepakatan," kata Plt Jubir KPK Ali Fikri kepada wartawan, Selasa (31/3/2020).
Ali mengatakan sidang itu berlaku untuk semua agenda mulai dari pembacaan dakwaan, tuntutan, putusan hingga pemeriksaan saksi-saksi. Ali menjelaskan untuk pemeriksaan saksi, KPK akan menyiapkan ruang di gedung KPK untuk melakukan telekonferensi.
"Sejauh ini rencana saksi dari gedung KPK," sebutnya.
Ali mengatakan saksi yang tidak bisa hadir ke KPK bisa melakukan telekonferensi di luar gedung KPK. Namun, syaratnya saksi itu harus mendapat persetujuan dari majelis hakim, jaksa dan penasihat hukum terlebih dahulu.
"Jika tidak memungkinkan hadir, saksi bisa juga dari tempat lain dengan persetujuan majelis hakim, JPU dan penasihat hukum. Jaringan dan peralatan yang dimiliki saksi juga harus cukup memadai untuk bisa vicon," tuturnya.
People travel by canoe in a poor neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria. Lockdowns have begun in Africa as coronavirus cases rise. Nigeria on Saturday announced it is closing airports to all incoming international flights for one month. Nigeria, the most populous nation on the continent, has reported just over 100 coronavirus cases, though the actual number is likely much higher. Sunday Alamba/APhide caption
toggle caption
Sunday Alamba/AP
So far, the coronavirus has hit hardest in wealthy countries. But the pandemic now appears poised to explode in many parts of the developing world — which has far fewer resources to combat the virus.
The virus initially traveled outward from China to places that had the most interaction with China. These are the richer parts of East Asia — South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore — along with Europe and the United States. All these places had lots of flights, business dealings and tourism with China.
Of the 24 countries with the most coronavirus cases, all but a couple are from the developed world, according to a comprehensive chart maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
But now, several months after the virus first appeared, it appears poised to explode in many lower-income parts of the world — which has far fewer resources to combat the virus.
"There are a lot of other countries at lower-income levels that already have significant coronavirus outbreaks," said Mira Rapp-Hooper of the Council on Foreign Relations. Due to limited testing, the overall scope is "very likely going undetected or under-detected while the pandemic continues to spread in those countries."
Analysts caution that it's impossible to predict with certainty which countries will be hit hardest and which may be able to mount an effective defense.
But a list of vulnerable nations includes countries with huge populations and widespread poverty, such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan.
So far, few cases
To date, the number of confirmed cases in these countries have been relatively low, ranging from fewer than 5,000 in Brazil to just over 100 in Nigeria.
But all these nations have lagged behind wealthier countries in responding to the threat, and their options are far more limited.
In India, the world's second most populous nation with 1.3 billion people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a 21-day lockdown last week. By Sunday, he was on nationwide radio acknowledging the hardships.
"I would firstly like to seek forgiveness from all my countrymen," Modi said. Impoverished Indians will "definitely be thinking what kind of prime minister is this, who has put us into so much trouble."
But Modi said there was no other option. The number of confirmed cases in India has just passed 1,000, though in the absence of widespread testing the actual number is likely much higher.
Indians line up to buy medicines in Hyderabad on Sunday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologized for imposing a three-week national lockdown, but said it was "needed to win" the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. Many developing countries have had relatively few confirmed cases so far, but it now appears the number is expected to rise sharply. India just surpassed 1,000 cases in recent days. Mahesh Kumar A/APhide caption
toggle caption
Mahesh Kumar A/AP
The measures imposed in wealthier countries may not be realistic in poorer ones, says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Outbreak Observatory at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Health Security.
"It's one thing for us here in the United States to sit at home and telework for weeks or months," she says. "But it's another thing to ask people in countries where their sole income may be from going out into the streets and selling things, to tell them to stay home for weeks and months and potentially not earn an income to feed their families."
Indians head to villages
Modi's moves in India sparked a mass migration, with millions of the urban poor fleeing for their home villages.
Nuzzo sees this as extremely dangerous.
"The last thing you want in these circumstances is to increase the geographic footprint of your epidemic," she says. "I do really worry that when governments announce an intention to implement lockdowns, it winds up scattering cases and it becomes much harder to control when you don't know where everyone went."
Experts say there are no easy, low-cost solutions that poorer countries could adopt. Like wealthier countries, they need more tests, more protective equipment for doctors and nurses, more hospital beds — and have no clear way to get them.
As many wealthier countries struggle to contain their own coronavirus cases, it's not clear if the U.S. and other developed countries will be able to help orchestrate a strong response, as they have done for previous international health crises, like the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Nuzzo did cite one glimmer of hope. She was part of a study, published just last October, on how well countries were prepared for a pandemic. The results did not track strictly along national income levels. Past experience mattered, she said, citing two examples from Africa.
Nigeria did much better than expected when hit by Ebola in 2014, Nuzzo says. The health system functioned, and the disease was brought under control.
"They were able to contain it quickly and it didn't become the nightmare scenario that we predicted," she says.
In East Africa, Uganda and neighboring countries were the first countries ravaged by HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s. As a result, they've built public health systems that perform well above what their income levels would suggest, she notes.
Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him@gregmyre1.
Suara.com - Dampak virus corona di seluruh dunia memunculkan imbauan untuk berada di rumah saja, kecuali untuk melakukan hal-hal penting seperti berobat, berolahraga, atau belanja kebutuhan sehari-hari.
Berbelanja merupakan aktivitas berisiko tinggi, karena selain berada dekat dengan orang lain, Anda juga berisiko membawa produk-produk yang mungkin sudah terpapar dengan virus tersebut.
Charlotte Baker, DrPH, MPH, asisten profesor epidemiologi di Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine mengatakan bahwa risiko terbesar kita adalah kontak dekat dengan seseorang yang sedang sakit. Maka dari itu, penting untuk menjaga jarak sekitar dua meter dari orang lain.
"Jangan takut meminta orang lain untuk mundur apabila terlalu dekat dengan Anda saat mengantre. Atau tunggu beberapa saat untuk mengambil barang jika orang lain berada di tempat barang tersebut," katanya, dikutip dari Healthline.
Organisasi Kesehatan Dunia (WHO) menambahkan bahwa selain kontak dekat, orang-orang juga bisa tertular virus dengan menyentuh permukaan yang terkontaminasi dan kemudian menyentuh mata, hidung, atau mulut mereka.
Baker mengatakan, bahwa saat berbelanja, asumsikan bahwa semua permukaan di sana telah disentuh oleh orang yang sedang sakit. Termasuk produk barang belanja dan makanan.
"Hanya sentuh barang-barang yang akan Anda beli, usap pegangan troli atau keranjang dengan tisu basah disinfektan, dan cuci tangan atau gunakan hand sanitizer setelah Anda selesai," lanjutnya.
Ketika sampai di rumah, berhati-hatilah dalam menangani barang belanjaan Anda. Hal ini dimaksudkan untuk mengurangi penularan virus ke orang lain ataupun di permukaan rumah Anda.
Menurut Elizabeth L. Andress, PhD, profesor pangan dan gizi di University of Georgia, minimal Anda harus mencuci tangan setelah membereskan dan menyimpan barang belanjaan Anda. Anda juga bisa melakukan langkah tambahan seperti mengelap atau mencuci kaleng, kotak makanan sebelum menyimpannya, atau membuang kemasan yang bisa dibuang.
Setelah selesai, ia menyarankan Anda untuk mencuci meja, pinggiran meja, atau permukaan lainnya yang tersentuh tas belanjaan dan isinya lalu cuci tangan Anda lagi.
Jika Anda menggunakan tas kain, cuci langsung setelah berbelanja dengan deterjen di mesin cuci dan keringkan dengan baik sebelum menggunakannya kembali.
Andress tidak menyarankan untuk mencuci buah dan sayur menggunakan sabun karena berisiko tertelan, sehingga lebih baik cuci bersih saja dengan air sebelum menyimpannya.
Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Bank Indonesia (BI) mendorong para pengusaha untuk melakukan lindung nilai atau hedging lewat transaksi Domestic Non-Deliverable Forward alias DNDF sehingga aktivitas bisnis bisa terjaga dan terhindar dari risiko nilai tukar rupiah yang terdepresiasi atas dolar AS.
"Kami mengimbau kepada korporasi, luar negeri, kala ada kebutuhan dolar AS lihat kebutuhan itu segera apa tidak. Kalau segera [mendesak], maka tidak semua dengan spot, lakukan lindung nilai, tak perlu nubruk-nubruk, lakukan hedging melalui DNDF," kata Gubernur BI Perry Warjiyo, dalam update perkembangan ekonomi RI, lewat video conference, Selasa (31/3/2020).
"...sehingga aktivitas bisnis terjaga, dan risiko nilai tukar bisa terlindungi, tidak harus nubruk-nubruk dan ada kepanikan," tegas Perry.
DNDF adalah transaksi forward yang penyelesaian transaksinya dilakukan secara netting dalam mata uang rupiah di pasar valuta asing domestik.
BI sudah mengeluarkan aturan tentang transaksi DNDF di dalam negeri. Dengan adanya transaksi pasar DNDF, maka antara bank dengan nasabah dan/atau pihak asing dapat melakukan transaksi lindung nilai atas risiko nilai tukar rupiah.
BI dalam pernyataannya menyebut, penerbitan ketentuan DNDF ini ditujukan untuk memberikan alternatif bagi pelaku ekonomi dalam melakukan lindung nilai di pasar valuta asing domestik, melengkapi instrumen lindung nilai yang sudah ada saat ini.
Hal ini juga dimaksudkan untuk meningkatkan keyakinan bagi eksportir, importir serta investor dalam melakukan kegiatan ekonomi dan investasi melalui kemudahan transaksi lindung nilai terhadap risiko nilai tukar rupiah.Ketentuan yang mengatur mengenai transaksi DNDF dituangkan dalam PBI Nomor 20/10/PBI/2018.
BI juga belum lama ini sudah memperbaharui aturan tersebut melalui Peraturan Bank Indonesia Nomor 22/2/PBI/2020 tentang Perubahan Kedua atas Peraturan Bank Indonesia Nomor 20/10/PBI/2018 tentang Transaksi DNDF (PBI DNDF). Aturan ini guna mempercepat berlakunya ketentuan penggunaan rekening rupiah dalam negeri (Vostro) bagi investor asing sebagai underlying transaksi DNDF.
Lebih lanjut Perry menegaskan saat ini terjadi gangguan lantaran virus corona (COVID-19) yang menyebabkan pelaku usaha untuk sementara belum bisa ekspor dan impor ke berbagai negara.
"Berkaitan dengan eksim [ekspor impor], ekspor turun karena gak bisa ekspor ke berbagai negara, juga para usaha gak bisa impor karena terganggunya mata rantai perdagangan dunia, logistik dan juga langkah [berbagai negara] mencegah COVID, dengan mengurangi drastis interaksi antar manusia. Ini sebabkan gangguan aktivitas ekonomi, akan berdampak juga ke konsumsi masyarakat dan pertumbuhan ekonomi," jelasnya.
BI pun memperkirakan kinerja perusahaan-perusahaan besar, menengah, dan UMKM berpotensi turun pada tahun ini lantaran terjadi penurunan aktivitas bisnis di tengah pandemi virus corona.
"Secara keseluruhan kinerja perusahaan baik UMKM, menengah, besar, menurun, karena aktivitas usaha menurun. Tidak hanya gangguan mata rantai perdagangan, tidak bisa eks-im [ekspor impor], tapi dalam negeri juga kita lakukan pembatasan pencegahan COVID-19," kata Perry.
Dia mengatakan di tengah situasi yang penuh tekanan ini, BI bersama Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK), juga berkoordinasi dengan pemerintah pusat, untuk memberikan stimulus yang diperlukan oleh pelaku pasar guna mengurangi beban dari masyarakat kecil.
"Tentu saja ini kemudian menjadi paket kebijakan yang akan dilakukan bersama," katanya.
Adapun khusus perbankan, Perry mengatakan kondisi sektor perbankan saat ini jauh lebih kuat saat ditanya soal kekhawatiran penurunan kinerja perusahaan di RI bakal berdampak pada kredit bermasalah atau non performing loan (NPL) bank-bank di Tanah Air.
"Saya harus sampaikan di awal bahwa kondisi perbankan RI saat ini jauh lebih kuat dari 2008, apalagi dibanding tahun 97-98, CAR [rasio kecukupan modal bank] kita 23 persen, NPL [kredit bermasalah] rendah 2,5 persen gross dan 1,3 persen net. ketahanan industri perbankan kita, saya tidak katakan COVID tidak berdampak ke perbankan," tegasnya.
Perry juga mengungkapkan bahwa BI telah membeli obligasi obligasi pemerintah dalam jumlah besar untuk stabilisasi nilai tukar rupiah. Sejak awal 2020, nilai pembelian Surat Berharga Negara (SBN) oleh bank sentral mencapai Rp 172,5 triliun.
"BI berkomitmen melakukan stabilisasi di pasar spot, DNDF, dan pembelian SBN di pasar sekunder. Secara year-to-date, BI telah membeli SBN sebesar Rp 172,5 triliun," kata Perry.
MH Thamrin, lanjut Perry, menyerap obligasi yang dilepas oleh investor asing. Nilainya mencapai Rp 166,2 triliun.
People travel by canoe in a poor neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria. Lockdowns have begun in Africa as coronavirus cases rise. Nigeria on Saturday announced it is closing airports to all incoming international flights for one month. Nigeria, the most populous nation on the continent, has reported just over 100 coronavirus cases, though the actual number is likely much higher. Sunday Alamba/APhide caption
toggle caption
Sunday Alamba/AP
So far, the coronavirus has hit hardest in wealthy countries. But the pandemic now appears poised to explode in many parts of the developing world — which has far fewer resources to combat the virus.
The virus initially traveled outward from China to places that had the most interaction with China. These are the richer parts of East Asia — South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore — along with Europe and the United States. All these countries had lots of flights, business dealings and tourism with China.
Of the 24 countries with the most coronavirus cases, all but a couple are from the developed world, according to a comprehensive chart maintained by Johns Hopkins University.
But now, several months after the virus first appeared, it appears poised to explode in many lower-income parts of the world — which has far fewer resources to combat the virus.
"There are a lot of other countries at lower-income levels that already have significant coronavirus outbreaks," said Mira Rapp-Hooper of the Council on Foreign Relations. Due to limited testing, the overall scope is "very likely going undetected or under-detected while the pandemic continues to spread in those countries."
Analysts caution that it's impossible to predict with certainty which countries will be hit hardest and which may be able to mount an effective defense.
But a list of vulnerable nations includes countries with huge populations and widespread poverty, such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria and Brazil.
So far, few cases
To date, the number of confirmed cases in these countries have been relatively low, ranging from fewer than 5,000 in Brazil to just over 100 in Nigeria.
However, all these nations have lagged behind wealthier countries in responding to the threat, and their options are far more limited.
In India, the world's second most populous nation with 1.3 billion people, Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a 21-day lockdown last week. By Sunday, he was on nationwide radio acknowledging the hardships.
"I would firstly like to seek forgiveness from all my countrymen," Modi said. Impoverished Indians will "definitely be thinking what kind of prime minister is this, who has put us into so much trouble."
But Modi said there was no other option. The number of confirmed cases in India has just passed 1,000, though in the absence of widespread testing the actual number is likely much higher.
Indians line up to buy medicines in Hyderabad on Sunday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologized for imposing a three-week national lockdown, but said it was "needed to win" the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. Many developing countries have had relatively few confirmed cases so far, but it now appears the number is expected to rise sharply. India just surpassed 1,000 cases in recent days. Mahesh Kumar A/APhide caption
toggle caption
Mahesh Kumar A/AP
The measures imposed in wealthier countries may not be realistic in poorer ones, says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Outbreak Observatory at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Health Security.
"It's one thing for us here in the United States to sit at home and telework for weeks or months," she says. "But it's another thing to ask people in countries where their sole income may be from going out into the streets and selling things, to tell them to stay home for weeks and months and potentially not earn an income to feed their families."
Indians head to villages
Modi's moves in India sparked a mass migration, with millions of the urban poor fleeing for their home villages.
Nuzzo sees this as extremely dangerous.
"The last thing you want in these circumstances is to increase the geographic footprint of your epidemic," she says. "I do really worry that when governments announce an intention to implement lockdowns, it winds up scattering cases and it becomes much harder to control when you don't know where everyone went."
Experts say there are no easy, low-cost solutions that poorer countries could adopt. Like wealthier countries, they need more tests, more protective equipment for doctors and nurses, more hospital beds — and have no clear way to get them.
As many wealthier countries struggle to contain their own coronavirus cases, it's not clear if the U.S. and other developed countries will be able to help orchestrate a strong response, as they have done for previous international health crises, like the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Nuzzo did cite one glimmer of hope. She was part of a study, published just last October, on how well countries were prepared for a pandemic. The results did not track strictly along national income levels. Past experience mattered, she said, citing two examples from Africa.
Nigeria did much better than expected when hit by Ebola in 2014, Nuzzo says. The health system functioned, and the disease was brought under control.
"They were able to contain it quickly and it didn't become the nightmare scenario that we predicted," she says.
In East Africa, Uganda and neighboring countries were the first countries ravaged by HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s. As a result, they've built public health systems that perform well above what their income levels would suggest, she notes.
Greg Myre is a national security correspondent. Follow him@gregmyre1.
Kapal pesiar Sun Princess membawa 1.988 orang wisatawan mancanegara dan 862 kru berlabuh di Pelabuhan Gili Mas. Dok. Pelindo III
Petugas membersihkan meja sebelum sidang pleno bulanan di Parlemen Eropa yang terlihat sepi akibat virus corona (COVID-19), di Brussels, Belgia, 10 Maret 2020. REUTERS/Johanna Geron
Kamar hotel lebih meyakinkan ketimbang kamar sewa bagi wisatawan, usai wabah virus corona. Dok. Hotel Indigo Bali Seminyak Beach.
Kabin pesawat yang tak terlalu padat bakal disukai wisatawan pascawabah virus corona.
/data/photo/2014/04/02/1955106ilustrasi-pembunuhan-3780x390.jpg)
