Asia

Where things went right: Bhutan and COVID-19

Photo by Kinshuk Bose on Unsplash

After so much bad news about COVID-19 globally, it helps to hear about a place that managed to vaccinate its entire population. Bhutan not only did so, but this remarkable job was done in weeks. Fortunately, this task was completed before the Delta variant of COVID-19 washed over both India and Nepal. But the story of this vaccination campaign -which was timed based on the advice of astrologers and guidance from monks- is a remarkable one, as is Bhutan’s health care system. I want to thank Paula Heimberg, a doctor who volunteered in Bhutan, for this interview in my podcast, Dispatch 7.

Shawn Smallman

Food and Identity in Taiwan: a podcast episode

I’ve just posted a new podcast episode on Dispatch 7, global trends on all seven continents. In this episode I talked with my former Honor’s student, Cassidy Pfau, about her field research on food and identity in Taiwan. In particular, Cassidy talked about night markets, Indigenous cuisine, and the history of Taiwan’s food culture. Cassidy’s Honor’s thesis on this topic has been downloaded from the PSU library nearly 3,000 times now, so I think that this is a topic that attracts a lot of interest. You can listen to this episode here.

Shawn Smallman

Forests and folklore during the Vietnam War

Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Dr. Blofeld / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

I love folklore and mysteries, which led me to write a book about an evil spirit in Indigenous belief in Canada and the United States. After many years of reading about folklore from the Amazon to Hong Kong, I thought that I had heard about every mythical being. And then I came across this brief, carefully-researched video by Mark Felton on Vietnam’s legendary rock apes: “Vietnam War Rock Apes – Bigfoot or Big Fraud?” Since Mark Felton is best known for carefully researched histories of military events during World War Two, this YouTube video surprised me. But if you’re curious to hear the stories American GI’s told about encountering strange animals during the Vietnam War, this might be the video for you.

If you are curious, you can find my own posts about Japanese demons, British ghosts, and a Canadian mystery ship here. Lastly, if you haven’t heard the podcast Death in Ice Valley, about a woman’s strange death in Norway, I highly recommend it.

I know that this Halloween most families in both Canada and the United States won’t be trick-or-treating, given the pandemic. Whatever you and your family do to celebrate Halloween, stay well and have fun.

Shawn Smallman

Labor Migration in India

I want to thank my colleague Dr. Pronoy Rai, who joined me on my Dispatch 7 podcast to discuss labor migration in India. I enjoyed hearing about how he does fieldwork with the migrants. Towards the end he talked about COVID-19, and how it’s impacting labor migrants in India now. You can find the podcast episode here.

Shawn Smallman

Subhrajyoti07 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Tips to avoid Coronavirus/避免冠状病毒的提示

Sign to SARS memorial in Hong Kong

This week my Mandarin homework was to write tips to avoid novel coronavirus. I cheated and used Google Translate at points, so don’t think that my Chinese is this good. Here is what I wrote (after editing from my teacher) in Chinese first and then English.  More importantly, please remember, I am not a doctor or scientist. I have written this assuming that the reader lives in a place with active coronavirus cases in their local area:

新型冠状病毒是一个严重的问题. 那些事情可能有助于保护您和您的家人. 

  1. 避免虚假新闻。会有很多谣言。听专家
  2. 如果附近有新的冠状病毒病例,请进行社交隔离。尽量在家工作吗?
  3. 经常洗手。避免触摸眼睛。
  4. 尽可能多的睡眠。照顾好自己的身体
  5. 注射流感疫苗。这将有助于您在流行病期间远离医生办公室。它还将帮助您避免同时感染新型冠状病毒和流感
  6. 如果您六十五多岁或患有哮喘,请与您的医生谈谈肺炎疫苗。

In order to keep you and your family safe from coronavirus, you should:

  1. Be careful to avoid Fake News, especially on social media. There are many rumors. It’s best to trust experts.
  2. Practice social isolation. Work from home if possible. If not, try to keep more distance from people at work.
  3. Wash your hands frequently.  Avoid touching your eyes.
  4. Get as much sleep as you can. Take good care of your overall health.
  5. Get a flu shot. This may keep you out of the doctor’s office where people are sick. It will also help to keep you from catching both the flu and the novel coronavirus at the same time.
  6. If you have asthma (or another respiratory disease) or are sixty-five or older, talk to your doctor about the pneumonia vaccine. This will help you to avoid pneumonia (and meningitis and other infections) even if you are never infected with the new coronavirus.

For the record, I have no tie to (or investments in) any company that makes vaccines for pneumococcal vaccines. You can also see the Center for Disease Control’s advice on this topic here. And you can see my blog post about nCoV and quarantine here. 

Shawn Smallman, 2020

 

Coronavirus data visualization

The South China Morning Post has an amazing data visualization related on the novel coronavirus outbreak and how it compares to the SARS epidemic. The data visualizations include a map of cases over time, graphs comparing the number of infections to SARS, point visualizations to illustrate the health status of coronavirus patients in China, maps to demonstrate the distribution and fatality rates of different infectious diseases compared to nCoV, an image of a person with a display of symptoms by body area, and a fascinating visual display showing where people from Wuhan traveled between the start of the lunar New Year and the imposition of quarantine, a map of the area around the seafood market where the outbreak began, a chart of the top ten international travel destinations from Wuhan, images of the kind of animals sold in the live market (who knew that it sold the Chinese giant salamander; and why are they selling the scolependra?), a labeled photograph of a live market vendor at work butchering a frog, a map of railway lines from Wuhan, a map of Chinese cities and lockdown and more. The page shows how data visualizations can be combined with art to convey information. Impressive work.

Caixin (this link is to global edition) and the South China Morning Post are doing outstanding work covering this epidemic. The New York Times has an excellent article talking about the Chinese media coverage of the epidemic in a broader context.

For anyone interested in more recent updates about this epidemic, you can also follow my Twitter feed. Lastly, I have a blog post about nCoV and quarantine here. 

Shawn Smallman, 2020

Coronavirus and Quarantine

Health education poster, Hong Kong. Photo by Shawn Smallman

As I write these words nurses in Hong Kong are on strike to protest the fact that the Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, will not close the border to China. To be clear, the executive has sharply restricted entry to Hong Kong, closed most crossings, and forbidden entry from the most affected Chinese state, Hubei.  But there are still strong calls for a complete border closure coming from within Hong Kong’s medical community.  Similarly, the United States has restricted flights from China to U.S. citizens only; some U.S. airlines had already canceled service to China. All such quarantine measures are controversial.

On social media, such as Twitter, and in the press, a number of experts have denounced all quarantines as being not only ineffective but also in violation of WHO guidelines. These authors worried about panic overcoming good judgement, the economic costs of restricting travel, the stigma imposed on those from affected areas (Chinese in particular, but also all Asia), and the importance of upholding International Health Regulations. These are valid and important points. Some authors have also pointed to studies based on computer models showing that quarantines are ineffective with highly contagious respiratory diseases.

Recently the tone has shifted in the discussion, as it has become clear that some cases of the virus are being spread asymptomatically. The number of cases has grown quickly. Some apparent facts (such as no human to human transmission) that seemed true in mid-January are no longer true. So the stridency of the debate about quarantine has declined, but the debate continues.

So is there any role for quarantines to manage such a pandemic? And is there some other way to make a judgement that relies less on computer models? I would suggest that looking at the past history of respiratory pandemics, such as the 1918 influenza pandemic, might be useful. Can history suggest particular circumstances in which quarantines may work? …

Maps and the coronavirus outbreak

Hong Kong Harbor. Photo by Shawn Smallman, 2017

As we track the spread of the coronavirus outbreak, it’s helpful to have maps and other data visualizations to understand the data.

One useful site is Ncov2019Tracking, which says that it: “taps into the Twitter Streaming API and monitors tweets mentioning keywords related to the Novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) outbreak. A machine learning system trained with the supervision of experts filters informative tweets. Geographical entities mentioned in tweets – such as country and city names – are identified using the GeoNames database and used to place tweets on a global map.” This tool provides a useful means to track where people are discussing the epidemic on Twitter. It’s very clear (based on the map on January 31, 2020) that there is a lot of discussion related to the coronavirus taking place that concerns Indonesia and the Philippines.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering have also created an excellent map and dashboard which shows the geographical location of 2019-nCoV cases (we need a better name). A dashboard also shows total deaths (213 at today’s right), the total number of recovered (222 today) and the total number of confirmed cases (5,806). On the left hand side of the screen there is the total count of cases (9,925) and their geographical locations. At this time, there are 9,783 cases in mainland China, 19 in Thailand, 15 in Japan, and 13 in Singapore. There are also an eclectic group of countries that have a single case: Cambodia, Finland, India, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Sweden.

While technology has made it easier to track the outbreak, authorities in China are reportedly also using drones to chastise people who go out in public without masks, as this video purportedly shows. Lastly, you can read a blog post about quarantine and nCoV here, with some historical context on this question based on the 1918 influenza pandemic. 

Shawn Smallman, 2020

 

China’s Population in Global Context

This map allows us to understand China’s growing power from not only a financial but also a demographic standpoint. It’s also just fun to see which country has an equivalent population to a Chinese province. As someone who grew up on Canada, it was interesting that Canada’s population is roughly equivalent to that of Shanxi. And Germany’s population is roughly equivalent to that of Sichuan. Of course, in the long term China faces a future defined by a declining population, so this map lacks some context.

Shawn Smallman, 2019

Wet Markets and Avian Influenza

Map of Hong Kong by Shawn Smallman, Apple pencil in Procreate

This week I had an article published: “Wet Markets and Avian Influenza: Public Policy Decisions in Hong Kong.” Because the Journal of International and Global Studies is open source, you can read the article by clicking on the link above if you are interested. You can also read the abstract here:

After the emergence of H5N1 avian influenza in 1997 Hong Kong implemented a sophisticated system to regulate live poultry markets. While this system is well designed and thorough, it also has limitations. The rise of H7N9 avian influenza (which is typically acquired through contact with poultry, including in live markets) makes this an appropriate time to revisit the ethical and practical issues related to this trade. Based on data from field observations of live markets in Hong Kong, and interviews with experts in the field, this paper recommends that the government of Hong Kong create a committee to examine the pros and cons of ending live poultry markets in this Special Administrative Region.

Shawn Smallman, 2018

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