Huddled under blankets and thermal shields, dozens of elderly patients shivered on gurneys outside a hospital serving one of Hong Kong's poorest communities -- a grim tableau for the city as its health system buckles under an Omicron-fuelled coronavirus wave. "We call this the fever zone," a nurse in full-body protective gear told AFP, declining to be named. "Don't get too close." Hong Kong is in the throes of its worst coronavirus outbreak, and record new daily infections have pushed hospitals in the finance hub to the breaking point. On Monday, Caritas Medical Centre in Sham Shui Po district started setting up isolation tents outside its facilities -- initially limiting one Covid patient per tent. But by nightfall Wednesday, entire families were crammed into the tents, while about 50 others languished in the February chill on hospital beds wheeled outside. "Some of my colleagues say we are now in battlefield mode," said David Chan, an emergency room nurse at Caritas who is also the acting president of Hong Kong's Hospital Authority Employees Alliance. "We are worried that the patients' conditions will worsen later this week," he told AFP, calling the situation "very undesirable". One of Chan's big concerns was the forecast for wet weather. Later that evening, rain began to fall.
Unvaccinated elderly Like mainland China, Hong Kong has adhered to a zero-Covid strategy, which has largely kept the virus out but left the business hub cut off from the world. Until the most recent outbreak, all patients were treated in dedicated Covid isolation wards, and close contacts were sent to a quarantine camp. But the extremely contagious Omicron virus variant has left authorities scrambling and exposed shortcomings in plans to deal with a major outbreak. On Wednesday, the daily caseload hit a record 4,285 confirmed infections with a further 7,000 preliminary positives in the densely packed city of 7.5 million. Before the latest wave, Hong Kong had recorded just over 12,000 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Health experts say the daily case numbers could rise to 28,000 by March. Especially vulnerable are Hong Kong's vaccine-hesitant elderly. Despite ample supplies, only 43% of those aged 70-79 and 26% of over-80s opted to get jabbed. Last week, the government said people with mild cases could isolate at home but by Wednesday, there were still 12,000 people waiting to be hospitalised. 'No plan' At Caritas, the wave of patients has left staff "exhausted, stressed out and helpless", Chan said. "It's so painful that we have been working non-stop but we still cannot take care of every patient properly," he told AFP, adding that the current crisis outpaced what they faced at the beginning of the pandemic. "Back then, we did not know the virus well and we were short of equipment," he said. "Two years on, we expected the Hospital Authority to have better plans -- but there turned out to be none." City leader Carrie Lam ruled out a hard, China-style lockdown on Tuesday. But the following day, Beijing-controlled newspapers carried an order from President Xi Jinping telling Hong Kong authorities to take "all necessary measures" to control the outbreak. Yet it remains unclear whether Hong Kong could ever make it back to zero Covid cases, given the rapidly increasing number of infections in the territory. 'Sandcastles in a tsunami' The government has opened temporary Covid clinics and plans to build a makeshift mega-hospital. It also plans to requisition 3,000 unoccupied public housing apartments and is looking into whether hotels can house some cases. But whether those measures will come in time remains to be seen. In the Caritas parking area past the "fever zone", a worried mother cradled her two-year-old -- trying to keep the toddler comfortable as they waited in the 15 degree Celsius chill. "I kept calling the (government Covid) hotlines but none of them connected," the woman, who provided just her surname Chau, told AFP, adding that her daughter was running a high fever. When they arrived two hours prior, nurses instructed her to get tested -- which could take hours as she joined some 120 people waiting outside Caritas. "They have no wards for you, so you have no choice but to go home," Chau said. Healthcare professionals have long warned that Hong Kong's public hospitals were underfunded and unprepared for a coronavirus surge. Even during previous flu outbreaks, hospitals had "buckled", said Siddharth Sridhar -- a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong -- in a tweet Wednesday. "Now, with a disease that is more transmissible/severe than flu, and requires exposed staff to quarantine, HK's hospitals are sandcastles in a tsunami."
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Early hydroxychloroquine but not chloroquine use reduces ICUadmission in COVID-19 patients10/2/2022 China’s most important holiday — the Spring Festival — falls between January 31 and February 6 this year and might appear a bit different than usual. Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s festival is unlikely to prompt the world’s largest human migration (millions of people travel thousands of miles across China to their homes during the Lunar New Year), unlike years past. In fact, this holiday’s travel rush is likely to be the least busy of the past seven years, with an estimated 280 million railway passenger trips. Locals who want to travel home will confront multiple challenges, including targeted pandemic prevention and control efforts aimed at securing the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. As such, the Spring Festival certainly won’t be as lively this year. But will the economy suffer from it?
In the past, locals used to pay in-person visits to relatives and friends, bringing them presents to celebrate Spring Festival. However, China’s COVID-free plan is reshaping this tradition. Since local governments and businesses have encouraged residents to stay home to minimize a virus spread and keep supply chains stable, the country’s travel economy is likely to get dampened. But this could allow other industries to flourish. Shoppers might spend less money on presents and have more money for self-rewards. Therefore, personal care and luxury are likely to benefit from this trend. Meanwhile, the stay-at-home economy will see a boost, further fuelling livestreams, e-commerce sites, and takeaway options for people reducing time outside their homes. So, if Maisons want to celebrate positive Spring Festival sales, their marketing activities should reflect those trends by doubling down on digital and personal goods. Yet, the brands that give back to the community during this challenging time through initiatives that comfort families who cannot reunite are sure to fare very well in China this year. Preliminary research from Israel suggests that a fourth COVID-19 mRNA vaccine booster shot may be ineffective against breakthrough infection from the Omicron variant. The authors of a study that looked at the effectiveness of a fourth Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shot against Omicron said they were releasing data early on Monday to keep the public up to date with the latest developments in vaccine research. “Despite a significant increase in antibodies after the fourth vaccine, this protection is only partially effective against the Omicron strain, which is relatively resistant to the vaccine,” Dr. Gili Regev-Yochay, the lead researcher on the study, told reporters Monday (January 17, 2022). The study included 154 health care workers at Sheba Medical Center who received their fourth Pfizer shot. Another 120 workers received a fourth dose of the Moderna vaccine, and a control group of 6,000 workers were not given a fourth booster shot of either vaccine.
Regev-Yochay said that a third shot resulted in "much higher antibodies, neutralization and the antibodies were not just higher in quantity but also in quality" than the second shot — but the fourth shot did not produce similar results. "These are very preliminary results. This is before any publication, but we're giving it out since we understand the urgency of the public to get any information possible about the fourth dose," Regev-Yochay explained. "We have a follow-up of the Pfizer vaccine for two weeks now, and we have a follow-up of the Moderna vaccine just for one week at this time point. And what we see is that the Pfizer vaccine, after two weeks, you see an enhancement or increase in the number of antibodies and neutralizing antibodies — a pretty nice increase. It's even a little bit higher than what we had after the third dose," she said. "Yet, this is probably not enough for the Omicron." Regev-Yochay added that slightly fewer infections were observed among those who got the fourth vaccine shot compared to the control group, which may indicate there's a small benefit to letting the people most vulnerable to COVID-19 get a fourth booster. "I think that the decision to allow the fourth vaccine to vulnerable populations is probably correct," she said. "It may give a little bit of benefit, but probably not enough to support the decision to give it to all of the population, I would say." International bodies are warning governments and public health authorities against requiring a fourth vaccine shot. At a press briefing last week, the European Medicines Agency said there was no need for a second booster, even warning that repeated vaccine doses could actually weaken people's immune systems. Boosters “can be done once, or maybe twice, but it’s not something that we can think should be repeated constantly,” Marco Cavaleri, the EMA head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy, said, according to Bloomberg. “We need to think about how we can transition from the current pandemic setting to a more endemic setting,” Cavaleri added. The EMA advised countries to leave more time between booster programs and to tie them to the cold season on each hemisphere. The World Health Organization has also warned that repeated booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines are "not a sustainable global strategy," raising concerns about the supply of vaccine doses. “With near- and medium-term supply of the available vaccines, the need for equity in access to vaccines across countries to achieve global public health goals, programmatic considerations including vaccine demand, and evolution of the virus, a vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable,” the WHO said last week. Armed riot police in southern China have paraded four alleged violators of Covid-19 rules through the streets, state media reported on Wednesday (Dec 29), leading to criticism of the government's heavy-handed approach. China banned such public shaming of criminal suspects in 2010 after decades of campaigning by human rights activists, but the practice has resurfaced as local governments struggle to enforce the national zero-Covid policy.
Four masked suspects in hazmat suits - carrying placards displaying their photos and names - were paraded on Tuesday in front of a large crowd in Guangxi region's Jingxi city, state-run Guangxi News said. Photos of the event showed each suspect held by two police officers - wearing face shields, masks and hazmat suits - and surrounded by a circle of police in riot gear, some holding guns. The four were accused of transporting illegal migrants while China's borders remain largely closed due to the pandemic, the newspaper said. Jingxi is near the Chinese border with Vietnam. The public shaming was part of disciplinary measures announced by the local government in August to punish those breaking health rules. Guangxi News said the parade provided a "real-life warning" to the public and "deterred border-related crimes". But it also led to a backlash, with official outlets and social media users criticising the heavy-handed approach. Although Jingxi is "under tremendous pressure" to prevent imported coronavirus cases, "the measure seriously violates the spirit of the rule of law and cannot be allowed to happen again", Communist Party-affiliated Beijing News said on Wednesday. Other suspects accused of illicit smuggling and human trafficking have also been paraded in recent months, according to reports on the Jingxi government website. Videos of a similar parade in November showed a crowd of people watching two prisoners being held while a local official read out their crimes on a microphone. They were then seen marching through the streets in their hazmat suits, flanked by police in riot gear. And in August, dozens of armed police were seen marching a suspect through the streets to a children's playground. Going by the Greek alphabet, the next names should have been "Nu" and "Xi" but the WHO skipped them and went on to call the latest coronavirus variant "Omicron". But why? Was it to avoid similarities with Chinese President Xi Jinping's name? Before the World Health Organization named Omicron as a variant "of concern" on Friday, the last identified variant was the Mu variant, named after the 12th out of 24 letters in the Greek alphabet. Nu and Xi, the 13th and 14th letters, were next in line. But in a statement to Associated Press on Saturday, the WHO said: "'Nu' is too easily confounded with 'new', and 'Xi' was not used because it is a common last name." It said its "best practices for naming disease suggest avoiding causing offence to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups".
The naming of the virus has been controversial in the past, with former US president Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly referring to the coronavirus as the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus" despite protests from Beijing that the name would "stigmatize" the country and contribute to anti-Asian sentiment. On Saturday, Trump's son Donald Trump Jnr tweeted: "As far as I'm concerned the original [name] will always be the Xi variant." Republican Senator Ted Cruz also suggested in a tweet that Omicron's name showed that the WHO was "scared of the Chinese Communist Party". The WHO has faced various accusations that it gave in to pressure from China over the coronavirus, which was first reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December, 2019. Controversies ranged from whether the WHO pushed China enough to provide data, to the exclusion of Taiwan, which Beijing sees as a breakaway province, from key meetings related to pandemic control. The health body announced its adoption of the Greek alphabet system to describe variants of coronavirus strains in May this year, saying these labels were simple and easy to say and remember. It also noted that associating variants with places was "stigmatizing and discriminatory". In China, a number of Chinese characters which would be pronounced as "Xi" in different tones are used as surnames. According to data from the Ministry of Public Security in February, the Chinese president's surname is the 296th most common family name in the country. Two other surnames that would also be read as "Xi" but read in different tones were more common, ranking 169 and 228 out of the top 300 surnames in China. Dutch authorities scrambled on Saturday to see if 61 passengers from South Africa who tested positive for Covid-19 have the new Omicron strain, as the shutters came down around the world to contain the new variant. Germany became the second European country after Belgium to find a suspected case of the highly infectious new variant, which has sparked fears of a major setback in the global effort to end the coronavirus pandemic. Alarm grew after the World Health Organization said the new type, originally known as B.1.1.529 and subsequently renamed Omicron, was a “variant of concern” and more transmissible than the dominant Delta strain. Australia and Thailand joined the United States, Brazil, Canada and a host of other countries around the world restricting travel from southern Africa where the strain was first discovered. Anxious travellers thronged Johannesburg international airport, desperate to squeeze onto the last flights to countries that had imposed sudden travel bans. Many had cut back holidays and rushed back from South African safaris and vineyards. “It’s ridiculous, we will always be having new variants,” British tourist David Good told AFP, passports in hand. “South Africa found it but it’s probably all over the world already.” “I think we got the last two seats,” said Briton Toby Reid, 24, who had been watching the sunrise on Cape Town’s Table Mountain with his girlfriend when the ban was announced.
The main countries targeted by the shutdown include South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini (Swaziland), Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. But in a sign of the how difficult it is to contain the virus, the Netherlands found that almost one in ten — 61 out of 539 — people who had arrived on Friday from South Africa were positive for Covid-19. The infected people, who flew in on two KLM flights from Johannesburg, were being kept quarantined in a hotel near Schiphol airport, one of Europe’s biggest international air hubs. “The positive test results will be examined as soon as possible to determine whether this concerns the new worrisome variant,” the Dutch Health Authority said in a statement. Europe is already struggling with a coronavirus surge that has forced several countries including the Netherlands to tighten restrictions, and a new variant threatens to worsen the situation. A German regional official said on Saturday that health authorities have identified the first suspected case in the country, in a person who returned from South Africa. “The Omicron variant has with strong likelihood already arrived in Germany,” tweeted Kai Klose, social affairs minister in the western state of Hesse. Belgium on Friday became the first country on the continent to identify a case, a young woman who had returned from Egypt via Turkey on Nov 11. Scientists are now racing to determine the threat posed by the heavily mutated strain, and whether the current coronavirus vaccines should be adjusted. Markets and oil prices around the world plunged on Friday as news of the latest setback in the fight against the pandemic sank in. US President Joe Biden said countries should donate more Covid vaccines and give up intellectual property protections to manufacture more doses worldwide to stem the spread of the virus. “The news about this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations,” he said. The WHO said it could take several weeks to understand the variant and cautioned against imposing travel curbs while scientific evidence was still scant. South Africa’s health ministry called the global rush to impose travel bans “draconian” and the foreign ministry said it was “akin to punishing South Africa for its advanced genomic sequencing and the ability to detect new variants quicker”. But with memories still fresh of the way global air travel helped the spread of Covid after it first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, countries clamped down on the new variant. Australia became the latest to act, banning all flights from nine southern African countries. Thailand restricted flights from eight countries, as did the United States, Brazil, Canada and Saudi Arabia. EU officials agreed in an emergency meeting to urge all 27 nations in the bloc to restrict travel from southern Africa, with many members having already done so. The new strain was already having an effect, though. Next week’s World Trade Organization ministerial conference, the global trade body’s biggest gathering in four years, was called off at the last minute on Friday due to concerns about the new variant. Vaccine manufacturers have however held out hope that they can modify current vaccines to target the Omicron variant. Germany’s BioNTech and US drugmaker Pfizer said they expect data “in two weeks at the latest” to show if their jab can be adjusted. Moderna said it will develop a booster specific to the new variant. Pfizer said Thursday it will sell 10 million Covid-19 treatment courses to the United States government for US$5.3 billion, pending approval from regulators. The pharmaceutical giant asked the US Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday for emergency use authorisation for its Paxlovid antiviral pill which has been shown to cut hospitalisation or death by nearly 90 per cent among newly-infected high risk patients treated within three days of the onset of symptoms.
"We were thrilled with the recent results of our Phase 2/3 interim analysis, which showed overwhelming efficacy of Paxlovid... and are pleased the US government recognises this potential," Pfizer chairman and chief executive Albert Bourla said in a statement. "It is encouraging to see a growing understanding of the valuable role that oral investigational therapies may play in combatting Covid-19, and we look forward to continuing discussions with governments around the world to help ensure broad access for people everywhere." Pfizer will start delivering the treatments to the US government later this year through the end of 2022, the statement said. The company has also entered into advance purchase agreements with several other countries and has initiated bilateral outreach to approximately 100 countries around the world, and is committed to working on "equitable access" for the treatment at an affordable price. On Tuesday it announced a deal with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) to sub-license production for supply in 95 low- and middle-income nations covering around 53 per cent of the world's population. The move comes a few weeks after Merck also approached the FDA seeking a green light for its antiviral capsule against the coronavirus. The World Economic Forum just had their Davos Agenda 2021 meeting in January. Now The Great Reset has been something talked about in detail since the pandemic started. But are we seeing The Great Reset happening right before our eyes? I think we are starting to see the slow implementation of The World Economic Forum's Great Reset right now. It's like a chess match, nothing happens right away, many moves are made before the endgame.
The Great Reset that was proposed by the World Economic Forum is looking to forgive all the world's debt and has us live by the slogan, "You'll Own Nothing, And You Will Be Happy". Now first and foremost, we are starting to see a slow implementation of a universal basic income. It was actually what the World Economic Forum talked about and advocate for in the Davos agenda 2021 meeting that happened a few weeks back. Starting with the continual stimulus packages that we have received in the past few months to help stimulate the economy, seems like a slow inoculation into government dependency. Since we can't work where are we going to get our money from? Secondly, The Great Reset talks about how having ALL of our debts forgiven. Well who's going to buy them? The Federal Reserve? Sure, but with the sale of debt, comes the control of the debt. And whoever controls debt, controls YOU! The great reset is all about debt forgiveness but then we won't be able to own anything ever again......and we will be happy about it. I'm not completely convinced that the World Economic Forum is looking to do this for the good of the people. They literally said, "You'll Own Nothing and Be Happy" about it. Would you like to NOT own your home, car, business? I sure would like to own all of the things I've worked very hard for and I can speak on behalf of most people who own those things. Lastly, the Davos agenda 2021 got into cryptocurrency. Currently crypto is decentralized and lacks certain regulation from major regulatory bodies. That is a beautiful thing, but the World Economic Forum has already spoke about crypto in their Davos agenda 2021 meeting that happened a few weeks back. With the Great Reset, the fiat currency will crash because of the reckless printing from The Federal Reserve. So expect to see heavy regulation and government intervention with crypto. There is a very worrying trend that has been accelerated under the veil of fear and confusion, and that trend has been drastically intensified…
The corona crisis has already taken a very high toll and caused deep damage in our societies and our economies, the extent of which is yet to become apparent. We have seen its impact on productivity, on unemployment, on social cohesion and on political division. However, there is another very worrying trend that has been accelerated under the veil of fear and confusion that the pandemic has spread. The war on cash, that was already underway for almost a decade, has been drastically intensified over the last few months. The “problem” Over the last years, and as the war on cash escalated, we’ve gotten used to hear certain arguments or “reasons” on why we should all abandon paper money and move en masse to an exclusively digital economy. These talking points have been repeated over and over, in most western economies and by countless institutional figures. “Cash is used by terrorists, money launderers and criminals” is arguably the most oft-repeated one, as it’s been widely employed in most debates about the digital transition. Just a couple of years ago, it was also used by Mario Draghi, to support the decision to scrap the 500 euro note. We didn’t get any specific information or data about how many terrorists were actually using this high-denomination note, but we do know a lot of law-abiding citizens were using it to save, as did small business owners for their operational liquidity needs. Now, however, the corona crisis has introduced a whole new direction of anti-cash rhetoric and fresh arguments in favor of a digital economy. Even in the early stages of the pandemic, when essentially nothing was concretely known about the virus itself or its transmission, the seeds of new fears were already planted by sensational media reports and fear-mongering political and institutional figures. The insidious idea that “you can catch Covid through cash” might have been prematurely spread, but it did stick in most people’s minds. This is, of course, understandable, given the extremely high levels of uncertainty and anxiety in the general public. Wanting to eliminate potential threats was a natural instinct and so was the urge to take back at least some control over our lives, after they’d been suddenly thrown into utter chaos in the wake of the global economic freeze. Another factor that concretely helped the shift away from physical cash was an entirely practical one. Given the lockdown measures and the new “social distancing” directives that were enforced all over the world, it became difficult to use cash, even if you really wanted to, or had no other means of transaction, as is the case for billions of people. With physical stores being forced to shut down and with more and more online shops offering contactless delivery (either as a choice or as a service requirement), the need for cash very quickly gave way to digital payments. For most of us, who have access to online banking, cards or other digital payment services, this introduced no real inconvenience and we probably didn’t even give it a second thought. However, for many of our fellow citizens it was a serious impediment, which in some cases blocked their access to basic goods and essential supplies. Contrary to the glowing promises of the digital economy, of financial inclusion and convenience, the fact remains that there are still millions of people who simply do not have access to this brave new world. According to figures by the World Bank, globally there are 2.5 billion people with no bank account, with a high concentration in the developing world. In the West too, however, there is a very large part of the population that is unbanked and/or has no access to digital solutions, while the elderly are also to a very large extent “locked out” of the digital economy. For all these millions of people, cash is the only way to save, to transact and to cover their basic needs. The “solution” With cash being presented not just as a danger to society and to national security, but also as a direct health hazard due to the coronavirus, the push towards digital alternatives has been massively reinforced over the last few months. Both international organizations and individual governments have actively participated and encouraged this push, some through public guidance statements and others through the blunt enforcement of direct rules and measures that leave no real room for their citizens to make their own choices. The CDC in its official guidance to retail workers recommenced that they “encourage customers to use touchless payment options”, while a report by the Word Bank highlighted the need to adopt cashless payments for the sake of “social protection”. The UAE Central Bank encouraged the use of online banking and digital payments “as a measure to protect the health and safety of UAE residents”, and the Bank of England has acknowledged that banknotes can hold “bacteria and viruses” and recommended that people wash their hands after handling money. In March, a report from Reuters revealed that the U.S. Federal Reserve was quarantining dollars that it repatriated from Asia and so did South Korea’s central bank, while banks in China were forced by the government to disinfect bills and keep them in a safe for up to 14 days, before putting them in circulation. A highlight, however, came in May, when the World Economic Forum published an article in its “Global Agenda” strongly supporting the mass adoption of digital payments, for the sake of public health. In it, the authors argue that “contactless digital payments at the point of sale, such as facial recognition, Quick Response (QR) codes or near-field communications (NFC), can make it less likely for the virus to spread to others through cash exchanges.” They also applauded the efforts of China in digitalizing payments and appeared to hold the country and its measures as a model to be emulated: “China’s path to enabling digital payments should provide some lessons to other countries eager to follow suit.” Since a number of Western governments may indeed be “eager to follow suit”, let us take a closer look at this bright example and examine what it really entails. Fiat money 2.0 The digitalization drive in all aspects of the Chinese state, society and economy is nothing new and it certainly predated the emergence of Covid-19. The country’s infamous “social rating system” has made headlines years ago and the government’s eagerness to use technology, the internet and all sorts of digital systems to track its citizens’ behaviors and affiliations has long attracted International criticism and widespread condemnation by human rights organizations, privacy advocates and free speech supporters. Now, however, the state has been given a reason to accelerate its efforts in the mass adoption of digital payments and the abandonment of cash. To a large extent, this digitalization of payments task was much easier in China, as digital payments there are already very widespread in the population. More than 80% of consumers already used mobile payments in 2019, according to management consultancy Bain, a sharp contrast with the US that had adoption rates of less than 10%. So, as the population has already accepted a new way of payment, the new initiative sought to dominate the means of payment too. Thus, a new “digital yuan” was introduced. This new fiat currency, that has been in development for over 5 years, was rolled out in April in four Chinese cities with a plan for national adoption soon, so that it eventually replaces the physical legal tender. This so-called Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) will be put into circulation through China’s big four state banks and citizens will be able to receive and use it by downloading an electronic wallet application authorized by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), which will be linked to their bank account. On the surface, it appears to work just like the old currency. It is issued and backed by the PBOC, it’s valued the same as the physical banknotes and, thanks to partnerships with Alipay and WeChat Pay, that control 80% of the country’s payment market, it will be used to get paid by anyone and to pay for anything. In fact, some public servant salaries and state subsidies are already being paid out in this new digital yuan, arriving in their intended recipients’ digital wallets. According to China’s state media People’s Daily, the new currency is meant to simplify domestic transactions and trade, but it will also facilitate and ease cross border transactions. The implication there is clear: It is yet another attempt to challenge the global dominance of the USD, after the Belt and Road initiative failed to really move the needle as the Chinese state had hoped. The strategy of spending of huge amounts of Chinese money abroad did provide some leverage over developing countries, but it didn’t come anywhere near “dethroning” the Dollar and internationalizing the Renminbi. Perhaps, this initiative will fare better, especially as it now has the “first-mover” advantage. Entering this “digital fiat” arena first is hugely important and the timing of the currency’s launch was no coincidence. The development and the rollout plan were significantly accelerated following Facebook’s announcement of the Libra, as the Chinese state wouldn’t have the private tech giant beat them to the punch. In fact, the digital yuan resembles the Libra in many ways. Most importantly, neither of them is a cryptocurrency, which is decentralized by design and allows for peer to peer transactions without the need of an intermediary or third party. In this case, the issuer is the third party and all transactions go through a very centralized system that controls and has access to all the data. In another non-coincidence just a few years back, China’s government banned initial coin offerings and placed great burdens on cryptocurrencies and crypto-investors making it very hard to operate in the country, thereby dismantling the threat of potential competition from the private sector and clearing the way for its own digital coin. In recent times a lot of people have been talking about this specific patent online. It has made lots of rounds on Reddit and many people are drawing their own conclusions in regard. Patent 060606 is owned by Microsoft and is a world patent. People are blown away by the fact that the numbers associated with this patent happen to include three sixes which is thought by many to be a ‘devil number.’ Now, this patent basically covers a device that is worn on the body and is linked up to some kind of cryptocurrency system from there translating things digitally and collecting data. While that might sound a bit vague, the patent itself is a bit vague overall.
Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified. Along with that specific abstract, an image or illustration is also included which you can see below. While many are, as noted above freaking out and calling this a sign of the ‘mark of the beast’ others are not so concerned. Many believe this new concept of crypto mining might be well worth looking into. On one Reddit thread, many were going back and forth on this being nothing more than an advanced ad insight plan and some were very much comparing it to Sweatcoin, an app that ‘pays’ you for walking. That being said there are as usual tons of people saying the patent doesn’t exist because it’s not a US patent. However, it can be looked up if you go through the European Patent Office leading us to believe it is an actual patent, you can click here to see it.
While I don’t think we have much to worry about in regard to this, that won’t stop people from freaking out over the numbers and coming to their own conclusions. For more information on this feel free to check out the video below that being said keep in mind nothing is processed through completely yet, this is just a patent and the things people are saying mostly are all speculation about how this will turn out. Do you think this could end up being some kind of basic app or is there more to it that we are not able to see yet? Lecture by Marc Van Ranst, Belgian Flu Commissioner, at the ESWI/Chatham House Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Stakeholders Conference on 22 January 2019.
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