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      in US Politics

      Biden move to refund UN population agency is 'ray of hope for millions'

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      The decision by US president Joe Biden to refund the UN population fund, UNFPA, offers “a ray of hope for millions of people around the world”, said the agency’s executive director.
      Dr Natalia Kanem said the announcement on Thursday would have an “enormous” impact on the agency’s work, particularly as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.
      In 2017, the Trump administration halted funding to the UNFPA, claiming it supported coercive abortion and involuntary sterilisation – claims strongly denied by the agency.
      The US was one of the agency’s largest funders. In 2016, it provided $69m (£50m) to support its work in more than 150 countries.
      “Ending funding to UNFPA has become a political football, far removed from the tragic reality it leads to on the ground. Women’s bodies are not political bargaining chips, and their right to plan their pregnancies, give birth safely and live free from violence should be something we can all agree on,” said Kanem.
      She added that the pandemic had hit particularly hard the vulnerable communities in which the UNFPA works. “US support will be instrumental in helping us build back better and fairer.”
      US secretary of state Antony Blinken said his department would appropriate $32.5m to support the UNFPA this year.
      “UNFPA’s work is essential to the health and wellbeing of women around the world and directly supports the safety and prosperity of communities around the globe, especially in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
      Blinken also confirmed that the US would withdraw its support for the “Geneva Consensus Declaration” – an anti-abortion policy introduced last year by the then secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and signed by more than 30 countries, including Brazil, Hungary and Uganda.
      “The United States is re-engaging multilaterally to protect and promote the human rights of all women and girls, consistent with the longstanding global consensus on gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights,” said Blinken. More

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      in US Politics

      Joe Biden axes 'global gag rule' but health groups call on him to go further

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      Health groups around the world are celebrating the end of a harmful policy banning US funding for overseas aid organisations that facilitate or promote abortion, which was scrapped by the US president, Joe Biden, in a presidential memorandum on Thursday.Reproductive rights advocates are urging the new administration to now go further and permanently repeal the Mexico City policy – known as the “global gag rule” – to prevent it being reinstated by a future Republican president. The policy has been blamed for contributing to thousands of maternal deaths in the developing world over the past four years.The gag rule prevents overseas organisations that receive American aid from using their own money to provide information about abortion, or carry out abortions. First adopted by the Reagan administration in 1984, it has been repealed by every Democratic administration and reinstated by every Republican one in the years since.In a short appearance in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon, Biden said he ended the policy as part of an effort to “protect women’s health at home and abroad”.But Donald Trump went further than previous Republican presidents. The policy usually applies to family planning organisations. But the Trump administration expanded the policy to include all global health programmes, including programmes that address HIV, nutrition, malaria and cholera.Widening the rule increased the pool of aid funds it affected from roughly $600m to about $12bn (£8.7bn), according to the Guttmacher Institute, a health policy research group.“We can breathe,” said Serra Sippel, the president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity, of Biden’s plans to repeal the policy. “There’s just so much hope and optimism in Washington DC right now. We have a lot of work to do, but it’s so much better.”The consequences of Thursday’s memorandum will ripple out from Washington into more than 70 countries including some of the poorest places in the world, where essential women’s health operations were abruptly halted or scaled down after Trump reinstated the rule in January 2017.In Zimbabwe, a women’s health team run by Abebe Shibru, from the organisation MSI Reproductive Choices, cut its operations by 60%. “We reduced our outreach from 700,000 women to about 300,000,” Shibru, who now heads the organisation’s Ethiopian operations, told the Guardian.“Women missed out on information, they had no access to family planning, and in return they were exposed to unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion, which contributed to higher maternal mortality.”Zimbabwe’s teenage pregnancy rate increased by 2% over the past four years, according to Unicef data, a trend Shibru said was exacerbated by cuts as a result of the gag rule.“We were not providing services to rural women, so they had no choice but to get pregnant against their wish,” he said.Pledging conferences attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from governments and private groups to try to bridge the gap in American funding, but could not meet the total shortfall.An assessment of the rule’s impact released last year, surveying health organisations in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Nepal, found a sector in “crisis” with confusion over what was banned and permitted using US aid, a growing stigma around reproductive health services and widespread closures and scaling downs of programmes.Trump’s ban also spawned a new wave of activism, including a new grassroots movement, SheDecides, which is pressuring policymakers around the world to commit to upholding reproductive and sexual health rights.Zara Ahmed, the associate director of federal issues at the Guttmacher Institute, said repealing the gag rule “is just the first step in undoing [the US’s] current status as the greatest global hindrance to reproductive health”.“We are glad that the Biden-Harris administration is addressing the global gag rule …… But let’s be clear, repealing the global gag rule is the bare minimum this administration can do to address the harm caused by the previous administration’s coercive and spiteful approach to foreign policy,” she said.“The Biden-Harris administration can, and must, take a comprehensive approach to unravelling the dangerous, punitive and coercive policies the outgoing administration has woven into our foreign policy, and it must take action to address longstanding harmful policies like the Helms amendment.”The Helms amendment has been widely misinterpreted as a total ban on US funding used for abortion overseas, when in fact it can be used to support abortion in cases of rape, incest or a woman’s life being in danger. A bill to permanently repeal it was introduced last year.On Thursday, the Global Health, Empowerment and Rights Act (Global HER Act) to permanently repeal the global gag rule will be introduced for the third time in Congress. The bill, cosponsored by the new vice-president, Kamala Harris, has received cross-party support, and hopes are high it will pass.“It’s not automatic and it’s not going to be easy but we’re starting in a very strong place to get the act passed,” said Sippel. “If not the bill itself, but the language of the bill incorporated into another bill. Getting rid of the GGR, that’s what we’re striving for.”Sippel also called on the Biden administration to disavow the “Geneva consensus declaration” – an anti-abortion policy Trump promoted last year – to “signal to the world that abortion and LGBTQ rights and sexual and reproductive rights are important, and to state that loudly to the world”.She added that some activists wanted the Biden administration to issue a formal apology for US policies on sexual and reproductive health and rights over the past four years.Biden also ordered funding restored to the UN population fund, UNFPA, which Trump stopped.The agency’s executive director, Natalia Kanem, hailed the “enormous” impact of the decision.“Ending funding to UNFPA has become a political football, far removed from the tragic reality it leads to on the ground. Women’s bodies are not political bargaining chips, and their right to plan their pregnancies, give birth safely and live free from violence should be something we can all agree on,” she said. More

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      in World Politics

      The Science of Rebuilding Trust

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      During his inauguration, President Joe Biden appealed to us, American citizens, repeatedly and emphatically, to defend unity and truth against corrosion from power and profit. Fortunately, the bedrock tensions between unity, truth, power and profit have newly-discovered mathematical definitions, so their formerly mysterious interactions can now be quantified, predicted and addressed. So in strictly (deeply) scientific terms, Biden described our core problem exactly right.

      Can We Build Social Trust in an Online World?

      READ MORE

      I applaud and validate President Biden’s distillation of the problem of finding and keeping the truth, and of trusting it together. Human trust is based on high-speed neuromechanical interaction between living creatures. Other kinds of trust not based on that are fake to some degree. Lies created for money and power damage trust most of all.

      A Moment of Silence

      As Biden showed in his first act in office, the first step toward rebuilding is a moment of silence. Avoiding words, slowing down, taking time, breathing, acknowledging common grievances and recognizing a common purpose are not just human needs, but necessary algorithmic steps as well. Those are essential to setting up our common strategy and gathering the starting data that we need to make things right.

      The next step, as Biden also said, is to recognize corrupting forces such as money and power — and I would also add recognition. The third step, as I propose below, is to counter those three forces explicitly in our quest for public truth, to do the exact opposite of what money, power and careerism do, and to counter and reverse every information-processing step at which money, power and recognition might get a hold.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Instead of using one panel of famous, well-funded experts deliberating a few hours in public, employ a dozen groups of anonymous lone geniuses, each group working separately in secret for months on the same common question. Have them release their reports simultaneously in multiple media. That way, the unplanned overlap shows most of what matters and a path to resolving the rest — an idea so crazy it just might work.

      Since I’m describing how to restore democracy algorithmically, I might as well provide an example of legislation in the algorithmic language too. To convey data-processing ideas clearly, and thereby to avoid wasting time and money building a system that won’t work, technologists display our proposals using oversimplified examples that software architects like myself call “reference implementations” and which narrative architects like my partner call “tutor texts.”

      These examples are not meant to actually work, but to unambiguously show off crucial principles. In the spirit of reference implementations, I present the following legislative proposal, written to get to the truth about one particular subject but easily rewritten to find the truth about other subjects such as global warming or fake news: The Defend the Growing Human Nervous System With Information Sciences Act.

      The Defend Act

      Over centuries, humankind has defended its children against physical extremes, dangerous chemicals and infectious organisms by resolute, rational application of the laws of nature via technology and medical science. Now is the time to use those same tools to defend our children’s growing nervous systems against the informational damage that presently undermines their trust in themselves, their families and their communities. Therefore, we here apply information science in order to understand how man-made communication helps and hurts the humans whom God made.

      The human race has discovered elemental universal laws governing processes from combustion to gravitation and from them created great and terrible technologies from fire and weapons to electricity grids and thermonuclear reactions. But no laws are more elemental than the laws of data and mathematics, and no technologies more universal and fast-growing than the mathematically-grounded technologies of information capture, processing and dissemination. Information science is changing the world we live in and, therefore, changing us as living, breathing human beings. How?

      The human race has dealt with challenges from its own technologies before. Slash-and-burn tactics eroded farmland; lead pipes poisoned water; city wells spread cholera; radioactivity caused cancer; refrigerants depleted ozone. And we have dealt with epidemics that propagated in weird and novel ways — both communicable diseases spread by touch, by body fluids, by insects, by behaviors, by drinking water, by food, and debilitating diseases of chemical imbalance, genetic dysregulation, immune collapse and misfolded proteins. Our science has both created and solved monumental problems.

      But just as no technology is more powerful than the information sciences, when deployed against an immature, growing, still-learning human nervous system, no toxin is more insidious than extractive or exploitive artificial information.

      The Defend the Growing Human Nervous System With Information Sciences Act aims to understand first and foremost the depth and texture of the threat to growing human nervous systems in order to communicate the problem to the public at large (not to solve the problem yet). This act’s approach is based on five premises about the newly-discovered sciences of information.

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      First of all, there is an urgent global mental-health crisis tightly correlated over decades with consuming unnatural sensory inputs (such as from TV screens) and interacting in unnatural ways (such as using wireless devices). These technologies seem to undermine trust in one’s own senses and in one’s connections to others, with the youngest brains bearing the greatest hurt.

      Second, computer science understands information flowing in the real world. Numerical simulations faithfully replicate the laws of physics — of combustion, explosions, weather and gravitation — inside computers, thereby confirming we understand how nature works. Autonomous vehicles such as ocean gliders, autonomous drones, self-driving cars and walking robots, select and process signals from the outside to make trustworthy models, in order to move through the world. This neutral, technological understanding might illuminate the information flows that mature humans also use to do those same things and which growing humans use to learn how to do them.

      Third, the science of epidemiology understands the information flows of medical research. Research has discovered and countered countless dangerous chemical and biological influences through concepts like clinical trials, randomization, viral spread, dose-response curves and false positive/negative risks. These potent yet neutral medical lenses might identify the most damaging aspects of artificial sensory interactions, in preparation for countering them in the same way they have already done for lead, tar, nicotine, sugar, endocrine disruptors and so on. The specific approach will extend the existing understanding of micro-toxins and micro-injuries to include the new micro-deceptions and micro-behavioral manipulations that undermine trust.

      Fourth, the mathematics of management and communication understands the information flows of businesses. The economic spreadsheets and prediction models that presently micromanage business and market decisions worldwide can, when provided with these new metrics of human health and damage, calculate two new things. First, the most cost-effective ways to prevent and reduce damage. Second, such spreadsheets can quantify the degree to which well-accepted and legal practices of monetized influence — advertising, branding, lobbying, incentivizing, media campaigns and even threats — potentially make the information they touch untrustworthy and thereby undermine human trust.

      America has risen to great challenges before. At its inception, even before Alexis De Tocqueville praised the American communitarian can-do spirit, this country gathered its most brilliant thinkers in a Constitutional Convention. In war, it gathered them to invent and create a monster weapon. In peace, it gathered them to land on the Moon. Over time, Americans have understood and made inroads against lead poisoning, ozone destruction, polluted water, smog, acid rain, nicotine and trans-fats. Now, we need to assemble our clearest thinkers to combat the deepest damage of all: the damage to how we talk and think.

      Finally, we humans are spiritual and soulful beings. Our experiences and affections could never be captured in data or equations, whether of calorie consumption, body temperature, chemical balance or information flow. But just as we use such equations to defend our bodies against hunger, hypothermia or vitamin deficiency, we might also use them to defend against confusion, mistrust and loneliness, without in the process finding our own real lives replaced or eclipsed. In fact, if the human nervous system and soul are indeed damaged when mathematically-synthesized inputs replace real ones, then they will be freed from that unreality and that damage only when we understand which inputs help and hurt us most.

      Informational Threat

      The Defend Act tasks its teams to treat the human nervous system as an information-processing system with the same quantitative, scientific neutrality as medicine already treats us as heat-generating, oxygen-consuming, blood-pumping, self-cleaning systems. Specifically, teams are to examine human informational processing in the same computational terms used for self-driving vehicles that are also self-training and to examine our informational environments, whether man-made or God-made, in the same terms used for the “training data” consumed by such artificial foraging machines.

      An informational threat such as the present one must be met in new ways. In particular, the current threat differs from historic ones by undermining communication itself, making unbiased discussion of the problem nearly impossible in public or in subsidized scientific discourse. Thus, the first concern of the Defend Act is to insulate the process of scientific discovery from the institutional, traditional and commercial pressures that might otherwise contaminate its answers. Thus, the act aims to maximize scientific reliability and minimize commercial, traditional and political interference as follows.

      The investigation will proceed not by a single dream team of famous, respected and politically-vetted experts but by 10 separate teams of anonymous polymaths, living and working together in undisclosed locations, assembled from international scientists under international auspices; for example, the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will collaborate with the World Health Organization.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Each team will be tasked with producing its best version of the long-term scientific truth, that is of the same truth each other team ought to also obtain based on accepted universal principles. Teams pursuing actual scientific coherence thus ought to converge in their answers. Any team tempted to replace the law of nature with incentivized convenience would then find its results laughably out of step with the common, coherent consensus reported by the other teams.

      Choosing individual team members for intellectual flexibility and independence, rather than for fame or institutional influence, will ensure they can grasp the scope of the problem, articulate it fearlessly and transmit in their results no latent bias toward their home colleagues, institution, technology or discipline.

      Each team will contain at least two experts from each of the three information-science fields, each able to approximately understand the technical language of the others and thus collectively to understand all aspects of human informational functionality and dysfunctionality. To ensure the conclusions apply to humans everywhere, at least one-third of each team will consider themselves culturally non-American.

      Each team will operate according to the best practices of deliberative decision-making, such as those used by “deliberative democracy”: live nearby, meet in person a few hours a day over months in a quiet place and enjoy access to whatever experts and sources of information they choose to use. Their budget (about $4 million per team) will be sufficient for each to produce its report in one year, through a variety of public-facing communications media: written reports, slide decks, video recordings, private meetings and public speeches. Between the multiple team members, multiple teams and multiple media, it will be difficult for entrenched powers to downplay inconvenient truths.

      Released simultaneously, all public reports will cover four topics with a broad brush:

      1. Summarizing the informational distractions and damage one would expect in advance, based only on the mathematical principles of autonomous navigation mentioned above, including not only sensory distractions but also the cognitive load of attending to interruptions and following rules, including rules intended to improve the situation.

      2. Summarizing, as meta-studies, the general (and generally true) conclusions of scientifically reputable experimental studies and separately the general (and generally misleading) conclusions of incentivized studies.

      3. Providing guideline formulae of damage and therapy, based on straightforward technical metrics of each specific information source such as timing delay, timing uncertainty, statistical pattern, information format, etc., with which to predict the nature, timescale, duration and severity of informational damage or recuperation from it.

      4. Providing guidelines for dissemination, discussion and regulatory approaches most likely not to be undermined by pressures toward the status quo.

      Within two years of passing this act, for under $100 million dollars, the world will understand far better the human stakes of artificial input, and the best means for making our children safe from it again.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 163 Shares149 Views

      in UK Politics

      Coronavirus: Government ‘could pay £500 to everyone who tests positive’ to encourage self-isolation

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      Everyone testing positive for coronavirus could be paid £500 by the government to self-isolate, under plans reportedly being considered by ministers.The scheme, which would cost up to £450m a week, aims to encourage more people to take a test and to persuade those who test positive to stay at home, regardless of their financial situation.The proposal, which is likely to alarm the Treasury ahead of Rishi Sunak’s budget, is said to be the “preferred position” in detailed policy paper at the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and leaked to The Guardian.Polling, the paper added, suggests many self-employed workers fear they will lose out financially if they comply with advice to self-isolate. It also indicated that only 17 per cent of people with symptoms are coming forward for testing.An existing scheme offers £500 but only to those already registered to receive a means-tested benefit. Councils also have a discretionary fund, but strict eligibility rules mean few Covid patients have got a payout.Research by The Independent revealed that in Liverpool 76 per cent of applications for the £500 were rejected.Pressed on the reports, the environment secretary George Eustice said the government was considering “all sorts” of policies in an attempt to try and help individuals stick to the government’s self-isolation rules.“We always had the £500 support payment for those that are on certain benefits,” he told the BBC. “We have always kept this under review and we know that it is sometimes quite challenging to ask people to isolate for that length of time.“At the moment we are in full lockdown anyway so while people can leave to work, in many cases people will be staying home anyway. We constantly keep this under review. We have got to consider all sorts of policies.”Last night the Department of Health and Social Care declined to deny the reports and a spokesperson said: “We are in one of the toughest moments of this pandemic and it is incumbent on all of us to help protect the NHS by staying at home and following the rules.“All local authorities’ costs for administering the Test and Trace Support Payment scheme are covered by the government, and each authority is empowered to make discretionary payments outside of the scheme.”Fifty million pounds was invested when the scheme launched, and we are providing a further £20m to help support people on low incomes who need to self-isolate.”The Resolution Foundation, a think tank which has previously calculated that only one in eight workers qualify for the financial support currently offered to those told to self-isolate, welcomed the proposal.Researcher Maja Gustafsson said: “The current approach is not fit for purpose with statutory sick pay among the least generous of advanced economies and far too few people eligible for the £500 support payments.”Swiftly putting in place a much more universal and generous system will make a real difference to controlling the spread of the virus.” More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in UK Politics

      Covid: Boris Johnson approves pilot for 24 hour vaccine hub, report claims

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      Boris Johnson has reportedly approved a pilot of a 24/7 coronavirus vaccine service to see if the provision will speed up the rollout of the jab.The PM has come under increasing pressure to increase the pace of the rollout which has so far seen more than 2,430,000 people given the first round of the vaccine.However after Downing Street initially pushed back on the idea of of a all-hours service to get people in to vaccine hubs, the PM has given his approval to a pilot scheme for such a service to check its effectiveness, according to The Financial Times.A Downing Street spokeswoman referred back to Matt Hancock’s comments earlier this week that such an offering would “absolutely” go ahead if necessary.“We will do whatever it takes to get this vaccine rolled out as fast as possible”, she told The Independent.The government has pledged to vaccinate 13m of the highest-priority individuals by the middle of February – a target it is a month and just under 11 million jabs away from.And Labour’s Sir Kier Starmer has urged the government to oversee “a really round-the-clock vaccine programme, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in every village and every town, in every high street and every GP surgery”.Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has reportedly been advising Mr Hancock among others, has also been an advocate for rapid rollout of the vaccine – writing in the Independent that instead of prioritising those at risk “the aim should be to vaccinate as many people as possible in the coming months”. However earlier this week the prime minister’s press secretary Allegra Stratton said there had not been a “clamour” for late night vaccinations from the public.“If you go and have a chat with the NHS, they will say that when they are asking the people who are being offered vaccinations, they’re asking them when it would suit them, what time”, she said.“If people come back and say they would like an appointment over 8pm then that is something they will consider.“My understanding is at the moment there’s not a clamour for appointments late into the night or early in the morning.“If it was the case, then it is something the NHS could well consider.“They are doing their absolute utmost to get the jab into people’s arms as quickly as possible.” More

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      in World Politics

      How COVID-19 Stole Christmas

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      Heinrich Heine is one of Germany’s most famous poets. He is best known for his poem, “Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen” (“Germany, a Winter’s Tale”) and for the first line of his poem “Nachtgedanken” (“Night Thoughts”), which has become what Germans call a “geflügeltes Wort,” a popular saying: “Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht, bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht” — “Thinking of Germany at night, just puts all thought of sleep to flight.”

      Over the past several weeks, anyone who has been closely following how Germany has been dealing with the second wave of COVID-19 could see that it wasn’t going well — not very well at all. Winter in Germany, particularly before Christmas, is associated with Christmas markets, Glühwein (mulled wine), and Lebkuchen (gingerbread), preferably from Nuremberg. These days, the run-up to Christmas is associated with record numbers of COVID-19 infections, overburdened intensive care units, and political leaders not up to the challenge — and that is putting it kindly. Germany’s winter tale has turned into a nightmare, and anyone concerned about the country certainly has a hard time falling asleep.

      The Perils of Federalism in Time of Pandemic

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      On December 11, Germany posted a record of new infections, close to 30,000 that day. At the same time, COVID-19-related deaths reached a new high. ICU staff sent out a cry for help, with capacity on the verge of reaching a tipping point if not already beyond. In the meantime, the country’s top political authorities were still engaged in heated debates about how best to deal with the looming crisis threatening the health care system, and this without turning into the Grinch who ruins Christmas for everybody.

      How did we manage to get to this point? This is the question that Germany’s major news outlets have been asking for the past several weeks. The answer? Vielschichtig — multi-layered — as we like to say in German when we are unsure and don’t want to offend anybody.

      Certain Facts

      There are, however, certain facts. Like elsewhere in Western Europe, during the summer months, when infection rates were way down, the government largely neglected to take the necessary precautions to prepare for the fall. And this in a country where children routinely learn La Fontaine’s fable of the ant and the cricket. Apparently, German authorities failed to take the moral of the tale to heart — a fatal mistake.

      Germany counts around 25 million inhabitants who fall in the “especially at risk” category. This has a lot to do with the fact that Germany is an aging society, with a relatively skewed age pyramid where a growing number of seniors confront a declining number of young people. According to official statistics, almost 90% of those who have so far died of COVID-19-related complications were older than 69 at the time of their death; around 40% were between 80 and 89. Against that, among those under 50, the death rate was roughly 1%. Yet, once again, German authorities proved rather insouciant. As the prominent news magazine Der Spiegel has put it, German authorities missed the opportunity during the summer to develop innovative measures to protect the country’s seniors and save lives.

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      Once the weather turned cold in late October, the rate of new infections started to surge. Toward the end of the month, new infections were quickly approaching the 20,000 mark, with daily increases of more than 70% compared to the previous week. In response, federal and Länder political leaders reached a consensus, promoted as “shutdown light,” starting in early November. This entailed the closing of restaurants, hotels, museums, cinemas, sports stadiums, bars and cafes, saunas and fitness centers. The idea was that a relatively short lockdown would “break” the second wave and allow Germans to go on with their lives and celebrate a relatively “normal” Christmas.

      The idea drew inspiration from British researchers who proposed “limited duration circuit breaks” as a means to control the spread of the virus. The strategy was supposed to feed two birds with one scone. As the researchers put it, these “’precautionary breaks’ may offer a means of keeping control of the epidemic, while their fixed duration and the forewarning may limit their society impact.”

      Germany’s political authorities were enthusiastic. A leading proponent of stringent measures to combat the virus went so far as to hail the strategy a “milestone” that would break the second wave “as if straight from the textbook.” Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her confidence that the strategy would allow Germany to return to a limited modicum of normalcy in December. In hindsight, this proved to be the arguably “biggest political miscalculation of the year,” as the lead article in Der Spiegel puts it in the most recent print edition.

      In any case, it was a big flop. “Shutdown light” did little to reverse the infection rate. On the contrary, in a number of Länder, among them Saxony and Bavaria, it actually rose. By the beginning of December, the virus was out of control, and Germany’s top political leaders had to admit that they had underestimated it.

      The German Model

      COVID-19 has brutally exposed the limits, weaknesses and shortcomings of the German model. That includes the country’s federal structure. In Germany, the protection against infections is to a large extent in the hands of the Länder, which jealously guard their relative autonomy. This means that during this pandemic, virtually every state has followed its own rules, some strict, some not so. In Bavaria, for instance, which has always prided itself in its laissez-faire approach of “Leben und leben lassen” — “live and let live” — authorities were relatively lenient when it came to the public consumption of alcohol, until “live and let live” turned into “live and let die.” In response, in early December, the Bavarian government issued a general ban on the outdoor sale of alcohol.

      Germany is certainly not alone in discovering the pitfalls of federalism in an intense crisis situation. Switzerland has had similar experiences when it comes to implementing protective measures against the virus, with equally dramatic consequences. Where Germany’s shortcomings are particularly conspicuous is with respect to the level of technological preparedness.

      This is especially glaring with regard to digitalization. It is revealing that in April, a leading representative of Germany’s digital economy noted that COVID-19 was a “wake-up call to massively accelerate digitalization.” Eight months later, Germany was still snoozing, seriously hampering serious efforts to deal with the pandemic. As a recent article noted, most local public health departments are still relying on phones and fax machines to inform people that they had been in contact with somebody infected with COVID-19.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Under the circumstances, contact tracing is difficult. To be sure, Germany has the Corona-Warn-App that has been around since June. It should have come much earlier, but technical problems and concerns about privacy delayed the launch. Once it was ready to download, it proved suboptimal. One reason was that most hospitals and other labs could not be connected to the app. As the head of one of Germany’s largest hospital laboratories admitted in October, his lab lacked the devices that would allow him to scan COVID-19 test results.

      Or take the case of distance learning. At the beginning of the pandemic, when schools closed their doors throughout the country, Germany’s public state-owned international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, noted that there was “hardly any country in Europe as ill-prepared for e-learning as Germany.” According to EU data, only a third of German schools were prepared for the lockdown. In the meantime, digital progress has been slow and met with significant resistance, the result of widespread skepticism toward digital learning.

      Rude Awakening

      With COVID-19, Germany is paying the price for years of negligence with respect to new technologies. As so often, in the face of rapid technological innovation and progress, Germany banked on its traditional strengths, improving core sectors such as automobiles, instead of investing in the future. In the process, it fell behind its international competitors. While American and Chines universities turn out thousands of IT specialists, in Germany, the education sector suffers from “financial problems, a lack of digital concepts and a lack of digital competence.” As the head of the German Association of Industry put it several years ago, when it comes to new technologies, Germany is a “Schnarchland” — a country snoring away.

      The pandemic has provoked a rude awakening. A few days ago, the German government, confronted with a runaway infection rate, pulled the emergency brake, ordering a hard lockdown over the holiday season and into the new year. In German, we have a word, “Spassbremse,” — a brake on any kind of fun. If there has ever been a publicly-ordered Spassbremse, this is it. Among other things, the new measures ban public gatherings and fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Whoever has had the opportunity to visit Berlin over New Year’s will understand what this means: tote Hose (dead pants), as we like to say in German.

      There can be no doubt that these measures will put a huge damper on the holiday spirit. Remarkably enough, Germans appear to be rather sanguine. In fact, a survey from early December found that roughly half of respondents wanted tougher measures. Only 13% thought they were exaggerated, with support for tougher measures almost 20% higher than in October. What this suggests is that the problem in Germany is not with the public but with the political establishment, which over the course of this pandemic has failed on numerous occasions to step up to the challenge. And yet, in a recent representative survey, three-quarters of respondents expressed satisfaction with Angela Merkel while two-thirds said they were happy with the governing coalition. Well then, merry Christmas, everyone.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in UK Politics

      Coronavirus: Freight crisis as new strain leads France and European neighbours to ban travel from UK

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      The UK faced a freight crisis as Christmas week dawned, after France and other European countries locked down their borders in a bid to prevent the spread of a new, virulent strain of Covid-19.
      Businesses feared drivers would be stranded in Britain, and that goods would be blocked from either leaving or entering – causing food shortages and potentially forcing them to close.
      The disruption caused to businesses has led the SNP and the Liberal Democrats to urge the prime minister to extend the negotiation period, with Nicola Sturgeon saying it would “unconscionable” for him to “compound” the UK’s current coronavirus woes with Brexit.After Boris Johnson imposed strict tier 4 coronavirus restrictions on London and southeast England on Saturday, the UK’s neighbours responded by banning British travellers from crossing their borders for fear that the novel virus variant would spread. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, admitted on Sunday it was “out of control” within the UK.France’s block will last for at least 48 hours and has forced Dover’s ferry port and the Eurotunnel to close to traffic leaving Britain. Germany, Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy and Belgium also have restrictions in place; late on Sunday Saudi Arabia reportedly announced its own crackdown.It left Westminster scrambling on Sunday night. A No 10 spokesperson said: “The prime minister will chair a Cobra meeting tomorrow to discuss the situation regarding international travel, in particular the steady flow of freight into and out of the UK.“Further meetings are happening this evening and tomorrow morning to ensure robust plans are in place.”Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, urged the public and hauliers to avoid driving to ports in Kent where he said ministers expected “significant disruption”. The government also advised hauliers and customers to delay the shipments of goods or seek alternative routes.The Food and Drink Federation’s chief executive, Ian Wright, warned of possible food shortages as a result of the border closure.He said: “Tonight’s suspension of accompanied freight traffic from the UK to France has the potential to cause serious disruption to UK Christmas fresh food supplies – and exports of UK food and drink.
      “Continental truckers will not want to travel here if they have a real fear of getting marooned. The government must very urgently persuade the French government to exempt accompanied freight from its ban.”
      Retailers also demanded a rapid resolution to the escalating chaos. “This is a key supply route for fresh produce at this time of year: the channel crossings see 10,000 trucks passing daily during peak periods such as in the run up to Christmas,” said Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium.“We urge the UK government and the EU to find a pragmatic solution to this as soon as possible, to prevent disruption for consumers.”Immediate shortages should be averted because shops have stocked up on goods ahead of Christmas, he said.
      “However, any prolonged closure of the French border would be a problem as the UK enters the final weeks before the transition ends on 31 December,” he added.“Shoppers should not panic buy,” said Alex Veitch, general manager at Logistics UK. “Retailers will be making every effort to ensure there is stock within the system, including fresh produce,  and it is important that we remember that inbound traffic still has access to the UK.“We are maintaining close contact with UK government to ensure that supplies of fresh produce are available throughout Christmas and the New Year.”Logistics UK said it was urgently seeking more information from its members to ensure drivers are safe.
      Shortly after midnight on Monday morning, Kent Police tweeted that it would implement Operation Stack, a procedure that allows lorries to form queues along part of the M20, in order to avoid gridlock in the county.Tier 4 could last months, Hancock suggests as he links to vaccine rolloutLabour’s shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, Rachel Reeves MP,  said the closure of trade routes to mainland Europe was “deeply worrying”. She added: “The country needs to hear credible plans and reassurance that essential supplies will be safeguarded, including our NHS, supermarkets and manufacturers with crucial supply chains.“We cannot afford the same slowness this government has displayed throughout this pandemic. The prime minister must urgently explain what he is doing to get a grip on the situation.” More

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      in UK Politics

      Joe FitzPatrick: Scotland’s public health minister quits after drug-related deaths rise for sixth year

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      Scotland’s public health minister Joe FitzPatrick has resigned after failing to curb drug-related deaths, which have risen for the sixth consecutive year to an all-time high.The nation suffered more drug fatalities per capita than any country in Europe, and even an opioid-stricken United States, in 2019 – with figures published on Tuesday by National Records Scotland showing 1,264 people lost their lives last year after using drugs.This is more than double the number of deaths in 2014, at a rate more than three times that of the UK as a whole. Amid a fierce public backlash over Holyrood’s failure to stem the crisis, Mr FitzPatrick – who has served in the position since June 2018 – ceded to calls for his resignation on Friday night after speaking with first minister Nicola Sturgeon.“It has been the privilege of my life to serve in the Scottish government and, during that time, the most heart-breaking and difficult problems I have faced as public health minister is the harms and deaths caused by drug use,” Mr FitzPatrick said.“As the minister responsible for this area I, ultimately, take my responsibility.“It is clear that my presence as a minister will become a distraction, when we should be focused on achieving the change we need to save lives. There is nothing I can express that will ease the loss that so many families have felt due to a death from drugs use.“I can only say how sorry I am for their loss, and that hearing the experiences of the families and the recovery communities will never leave me.”The Scottish government declared the crisis a public health emergency in 2018 and established a drugs deaths taskforce in 2019, which this year received £4m in government funding. But critics have alleged that this funding was merely taken from previous budgets for alcohol and drug partnerships, while the taskforce was accused of failing to meet for four months earlier this year.And the SNP has repeatedly sought to lay the blame for the apparent inaction at the feet of Westminster, which controls drug policy and has indeed blocked recommended salves such as safer drug consumption facilities and the decriminalisation of drugs. However, there are still a number of public health interventions available to Holyrood under its devolved powers, which are yet to be explored, such as allowing quicker access to opiate substitution treatments.Experts have warned deaths may well continue to increase in 2020 despite some new measures, such as Glasgow’s new heroin assisted treatment centre and increased provision of the lifesaving overdose drug, naloxone.After leaving Holyrood’s debating chamber as a statement on the latest death statistics began on Tuesday, while devolved leaders mulled Christmas coronavirus restrictions, Ms Sturgeon on Thursday addressed criticism of her government’s handling of the crisis head-on, describing the deaths as “completely unacceptable”.“It’s on us to show we are on top of the drugs crisis and that’s what I’m determined we do,” she wrote in response to a critical Daily Record article on Friday alleging she had “taken her eye off Scotland’s other epidemic”, which she called “fair”. 
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