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Britain has opted to take the approach of South Korea and Taiwan, where the app developed for contact tracing adopts a centralized approach sending information to a central server.  The Google Apple app is taking a decentralized approach where the information on who has the virus and who they came into contact with is not sent to a central server. Asian countries with success in lifting lockdowns have adopted a centralized approach as this has given proven results in allowing the rest of society to function smoothly without lockdown, by isolating a few people who have or have come into contact with people with virus. In a crisis of this magnitude with the huge risks involved democracies such as South Korea and Taiwan, other Asian countries, and now Britain, see less risk in relying on the centralized approach, because it works more effectively to accomplish the task of limiting spread and letting society function without lockdown.

 

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Washington Post Analysis and reporting shows Russian economy is now sensitive to cuts in oil purchases by India. Russian economy with $213 billion a year in the war effort would suffer from higher inflation and interest rates higher than current 18% if India cuts Russian oil purchases of about $119 billion a year. A shift may be already taking place as India buys more from Saudis, UAE and Iraq. Studies by CLSA cited in the Economic Times show India gaining only about $1 to 3 billion by buying Russian oil. India has much more to gain by shifting away from Russian oil. Russian inflation is at 9% and the economic growth is about 0.4%.  A further increase in interest rates from 18% in a war time economy could kill the civilian economy say experts in Russia the Washington Post has talked to. About 17% of Russian refineries production is removed by Ukrainian strikes on refineries in Russia, leading to higher prices for oil. More crude oil is being exported instead of refined product as a result. This explains why the US under president DJT decided to take the difficult step to deter India from Russian oil purchases as it would not have been able to get China to reduce its $136 billion Russian oil purchjases each year the way it could for India. This was done to end the war even though it is little understood in India.  ...

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Water desalination plant in San Diego area and trading some of its Colorado river water allocation for investment in desalination by states that are short of water.

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As part of Gandhi 150th the Hindustan Times gives pictures from archives of the independence struggle and Gandhi's efforts to get the British to quit India. After a period of 21 years in South Africa as a lawyer for rights of indentured laborers (coolies the British term) and of Indians in South Africa, Gandhi returned to India in 1914. He followed the program of personal responsibility starting with himself, that he had written in "Hind Swaraj" on a steamship from Britain to South Africa in 1910, for the next 20 years. He did not blame the British, and asked Indians to take responsibility for what had happened, and write a new chapter.   A period of home rule in the provinces with Congress party administrations in the 1930's ended by 1938. Gandhi launched the Quit India movement in 1942 with leaders Sardar Patel, Rajendra Prasad, and Jawaharlal Nehru. The end of the war and the rejection of Churchill in Britain's post war election in 1945 led to a Labour government led by Clement Atlee that sent Lord Mountbatten to negotiate British withdrawal from India. Gandhi saw clearly that in a country largely of rural labor in subsistence agriculture, getting people to learn about their own dignity was a first and indispensable step.  Once this was done, home rule administrations could pick up the experience of local government  (Hind Swaraj). His idea was that a few tens of thousands of Britishers focussed on trade as the British were a nation of shopkeepers, in the midst of hundreds of millions of people with a new found  sense of dignity and participation in political life, would make the British realize there was little advantage in staying. By the end of the war in 1945 experts looking into the archives show John Keynes advising the British government to withdraw because the cost was too great for Britain to remain, particularly after the war had drained a lot of Britain's wealth. ...

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WHy did NHS Test and Trace fail to contact no more than 50% of the persons who tested positive. Why was it not able to followup with the people who needed to be visited in their homes to ensure isolation. Why was NHS associated in the name when the NHS had not been consulted and involved in the design of this service. In fact it ignored lessons from Germany where the contact tracing was entirely from local, started very quickly with the key being local or state employees who were diverted to this task and were skilled and motivated to do it. Why was this critical task simply handed out to outsource it to private companies.  Germany's example was there very early in March-April and it was working. Why reinvent the wheel. Setup quickly and entirely local it required only a desk, a desktop PC, and a national database to which PC was connected, the skilled caller being the key to getting people to talk to and cooperate. About 80% of those testing positive needed to be contacted. NHS Test and Trace was reaching about 50% and many that needed to be visited at home could not be followed up quickly. The shift is only now being made to go local. It worked in Leicester and other places but the learning came the hard way, as with many things during this pandemic. ...

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Angela Merkel said that contact tracing was "above all else" in importance in tracking down infection chains. Apps would not work in Germany because tracking movements and recording information is a sensitive subject in Germany with its history of communism and fascism. Germany still did it but very early on adopted a low tech way that so far is working. Staff from provincial administrations have shifted to do contact tracing work as other work is slow or suspended. Volunteers also have taken up the work. Germany's goal is 5 contact tracers for every 25,000 people- or about 16,000 for a population of 83 million. All the contact tracers have is the phone and a central database of information on the desktop computer as shown here in this report in the Washington Post. There is no advanced technology or software.  Most important say experts is social skills - to talk to people in a way that makes them feel comfortable to share information about how they are and their contacts in a very informal friendly setting, that even includes some humor. Here a contact tracer in Reinikendorf describes the work she is doing and a typical day. There are about 75 contact tracers for 260,0000 people in her area. When she calls someone she notes down what contacts they have had and puts them in Category 1,  2 , or 3 depending on the need for quarantine. The calling is mainly about asking the contact about his or her movements. A contact for more than 15 minutes is Category 1, less than 15 minutes Category 2. The whole conversation is for 10 minutes. Then someone from the health department will call the person contacted everyday. Reickendorf began building up contact tracing in March after an outbreak in a kindergarten was too much for the usual number of health officials to handle. The German trace and quarantine approach, home grown, low tech,  and based on what resources are available, the most important thing being start immediately, has its flaws. Yet it has worked to limit infections and deaths.  In about 65% of cases health authorites have no idea how a person was infected. Asymptomatic carriers are not detected. In some area the resources are limited.  This effort has helped control the virus first cluster in Bavaria at a car part manufacturer. Sixteen people had tested positive and hundreds were quarantined. The German approach is that testing is fine but if you are in quarantine testing is not going to make a difference in spreading. Testing with a negative result is also not helping as it could be that its too early for the infection to register because of the incubation period. ...

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Russia's largest trading partner is China with $51.8 billion imports from China and $35.7 billion in exports. Netherlands is the largest destination for Russian exports with $76.8 billion, with Germany second at $35.6 billion, Italy third at $32.4 billion. Russian imports from Germany are $38.3 billion, followed by Japan at $15.7 billion, and the U.S. at $15.3 billion. Sources are the Russian State Statistics Service and the German Federal Foreign Office.

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How much of the rise in price of oil is from speculators? About 20%. How much money is chasing oil? About $85 billion or thereabouts. What is causing the volatility, price shock atmosphere? Losses in production in Venezuela after a strike, Nigerian production in a backward region (issues of redistribution of wealth and periodic violence), and Iraq (Sunni insurgency). And now the Iran standoff with the USA over nuclear proliferation. According to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy consulting firm owned by IHS, Iraq is 900,000 barrels a day below its prewar output; Nigeria has shut 530,000 barrels a day; Venezuela is still 400,000 barrels below its prestrike production; and the Gulf of Mexico remains down by 330,000 barrels a day. In all, this amounts to more than two million barrels of disrupted oil, Cambridge Energy estimates. The impasse with Iran on nuclear proliferation is the latest factor in oil prices. One analyst says the hedge funds have come into this commodities market in a big way and are willing to take risks. Energy funds make up 5 percent of the global hedge fund business, with about $60 billion in assets, according to Peter C. Fusaro, principal at the Energy Hedge Fund Center, an online research community. The gains on the oil market have attracted a fresh class of investors: pension funds and mutual funds seeking to diversify their holdings. Their investments have been mostly channeled through a handful of commodity indexes, which have ballooned to $85 billion in a few years, according to Goldman Sachs. Goldman's index holds more than $55 billion, three times the amount in 2002....