(UN News)* — Disturbing details have emerged from dozens of countries that a “toxic lockdown culture” against the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted drastically on society’s most vulnerable members, the UN human rights Office (OHCHR) said on Monday [27 April 2020].
The development follows UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s call last week for States not to use the COVID crisis as a pretext for repressive measures, in which he urged Governments to recognize that the threat was the “virus, not people”.
27 April 2020 (UN News)* — With many European health services struggling to deal with an influx of COVID-19 patients, many refugees and migrants with experience in the sector, are being drafted in to help respond to the crisis.
Centre hospitalier d’Argenteuil | The Mobile Emergency and Resuscitation Service (SMUR) is on the front line in the fight against coronavirus
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Refugee workers are often delayed from being able to join the labour force in Europe despite having expertise, because the diplomas and certificates they received in their home countries are not recognized. But a recently adopted scheme to fast-track acceptance of their qualifications, is making it easier for highly regulated health services to take advantage of their skills.
We are hearing more and more about the “stimulus packages” that the government is putting forward to address the impacts of COVID-19 on our economy. If you’re like me, you get hives just thinking about the plan that was put forward in 2008 following the financial crash that basically “rewarded” the executives and companies who had caused the crisis, and left behind regular people who lost savings, retirement funds and their homes. ADD MY NAME TO BAIL-OUT WORKERS
Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, the fourth reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. 34 years later, Chernobyl radioactivity is still circulating. The long-lived radionuclides released by the accident mean the disaster continues decades on.
(Greenpeace)* — The wildfires started on April 3rd, due to abnormally hot, dry and windy weather. They are now the biggest fires ever recorded in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. What is one of the largest wildlife areas in Europe will take years to recover.
The memorial to the firefighters of Chernobyl, a monument that pays tribute to the first responders to the disaster in April 1986. Many of these firefighters were exposed to large doses of radiation in the minutes and hours following the accident. Photo: Dana Sacchetti/IAEA
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26 April 2020 (United Nations)*— An explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 spread a radioactive cloud over large parts of the Soviet Union, now the territories of Belarus, Ukraine and the Russian Federation.
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Nearly 8.4 million people in the three countries were exposed to the radiation.
25 April 2020 (Wall Street International)* — For a lot of people there is a fair amount of difficulty with letting go of control or at least admitting to a lack of control, especially when it comes to getting results. Some of us find it hard to come to terms with the fact that many things in life, and the people we surround ourselves with, are out of our control.
Once we realize how much it actually hurts others, and the outcome that we want to create, we can start taking action toward letting go of that controlling mentality and stop wanting to force our will onto others.
As the elite coup against humanity continues to gather pace – see ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully’ – it is invaluable to observe the way in which the dysfunctional and violent psychology of the global elite, including those of its members who have a significant public profile such as Bill Gates, is revealed more starkly.
Robert J. Burrowes,
At the same time, it is interesting to observe the vast number of fearfully submissive people who are willing to accept, or even ask for, greater constraints on our rights, freedom and economic security, ostensibly to ‘protect’ them from a virus.
Sadly, too, the fear of these people plays a critical collaborative role in both advancing the elite coup and condemning millions of others to death as the economic consequences of the destruction of the global economy inflicts its devastating impacts on those least able to cope with it.
25 April 2020 (UN News)* — The UN World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that there is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.
UN Photo/Evan Schneider | Ambulances line up outside Bellevue Hospital in New York City as part of the coronavirus response.
In a scientific brief issued on Friday [24 April 2020], the UN health agency said there was no proof that one-time infection could lead to immunity, and “laboratory tests that detect antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 [the virus that causes COVID-19] in people…need further validation to determine their accuracy and reliability.
I support family in Ethiopia, have to pay my Lebanese sponsor who keeps my passport – and my cleaning work has stopped with lockdown. #HumansofCOVID19
“My employers fear that I might infect them because I share an apartment with other people | Selam Abebe
24 April 2020 (openDemocracy)* — I am a domestic worker. I clean people’s houses. I am from Ethiopia but I came here to Lebanon nine years ago. I could only finish grade nine at home and then I had to start working. But I was earning a very low salary in a beauty salon back home in Ethiopia, so I came to Beirut.
24 April 2020 (UN Environment)* — In this video, Bernard Bett discusses the delicate relationship between humans, wildlife and the pathogens that circulate among them in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Bett leads research on neglected and emerging infectious diseases at the International Livestock Research Institute as part of the research portfolio under the Improving Human Health flagship.
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His studies of zoonoses–diseases that are transmissible between animals and humans–informed the UNEP Frontiers 2016 Report and drew attention to the issue that now concerns just about everyone.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 