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  • UK PM listened to his scientists about Covid-19, but they were slow to sound the alarm

    UK PM listened to his scientists about Covid-19, but they were slow to sound the alarm

    UK PM listened to his scientists about Covid-19, but they were slow to sound the alarm 1

    LONDON: It was early spring when British scientists laid out the bald truth to their government. It was “highly likely,“ they said, that there was now “sustained transmission” of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom.

    If unconstrained and if the virus behaved as in China, up to four-fifths of Britons could be infected and one in a hundred might die, wrote the scientists, members of an official committee set up to model the spread of pandemic flu, on March 2. Their assessment didn’t spell it out, but that was a prediction of over 500,000 deaths in this nation of nearly 70 million.

    Yet the next day, March 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was his cheery self. He joked that he was still shaking hands with everyone, including at a hospital treating coronavirus patients.

    “Our country remains extremely well prepared,“ Johnson said as Italy reached 79 deaths. “We already have a fantastic NHS,“ the national public health service, “fantastic testing systems and fantastic surveillance of the spread of disease.”

    Alongside him at the Downing Street press conference was Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser and himself an epidemiologist. Whitty passed on the modelling committee’s broad conclusions, including the prediction of a possible 80% infection rate and the consequent deaths. But he played them down, saying the number of people who would be infected was probably “a lot lower” and coming up with a total was “largely speculative.”

    The upbeat tone of that briefing stood in sharp contrast with the growing unease of many of the government’s scientific advisers behind the scenes. They were already convinced that Britain was on the brink of a disastrous outbreak, a Reuters investigation has found.

    Interviews with more than 20 British scientists, key officials and senior sources in Johnson’s Conservative Party, and a study of minutes of advisory committee meetings and public testimony and documents, show how these scientific advisers concluded early the virus could be devastating.

    But the interviews and documents also reveal that for more than two months, the scientists whose advice guided Downing Street did not clearly signal their worsening fears to the public or the government. Until March 12, the risk level, set by the government’s top medical advisers on the recommendation of the scientists, remained at “moderate,“ suggesting only the possibility of a wider outbreak.

    “You know, there’s a small little cadre of people in the middle, who absolutely did realise what was going on, and likely to happen,“ said John Edmunds, a professor of infectious disease modelling and a key adviser to the government, known for his work on tracking Ebola. Edmunds was among those who did call on the government to elevate the warning level earlier.

    From the outset, said Edmunds, work by scientists had shown that, with only limited interventions, the virus would trigger an “overwhelming epidemic” in which Britain’s health service was not going “to get anywhere near being able to cope with it. That was clear from the beginning.”

    But he said: “I do think there’s a bit of a worry in terms you don’t want to unnecessarily panic people.”

    Johnson, who himself has sickened with the virus, moved more slowly than the leaders of many other prosperous countries to adopt a lockdown. He has been criticised for not moving more swiftly to organise mass tests and mobilise supplies of life-saving equipment and beds. Johnson was hospitalized on April 5 and moved to intensive care the next day.

    It is too soon to judge the ultimate soundness of the UK’s early response. If history concludes that it was lacking, then the criticism levelled at the prime minister may be that, rather than ignoring the advice of his scientific advisers, he failed to question their assumptions.

    Interviews and records published so far suggest that the scientific committees that advised Johnson didn’t study, until mid-March, the option of the kind of stringent lockdown adopted early on in China, where the disease arose in December, and then followed by much of Europe and finally by Britain itself. The scientists’ reasoning: Britons, many of them assumed, simply wouldn’t accept such restrictions.

    The UK scientists were also mostly convinced – and many still are – that, once the new virus escaped China, quarantine measures would likely not succeed. Minutes of technical committees reviewed by Reuters indicate that almost no attention was paid to preparing a programme of mass testing. Other minutes and interviews show Britain was following closely a well-laid plan to fight a flu pandemic – not this deadlier disease. The scientists involved, however, deny that the flu focus ultimately made much difference.

    Now, as countries debate how to combat the virus, some experts here say, the lesson from the British experience may be that governments and scientists worldwide must increase the transparency of their planning so that their thinking and assumptions are open to challenge.

    John Ashton, a clinician and former regional director of Public Health England, the government agency overseeing healthcare, said the government’s advisers took too narrow a view and hewed to limited assumptions. They were too “narrowly drawn as scientists from a few institutions,“ he said. Their handling of COVID-19, Ashton said, shows the need for a broader approach. “In the future we need a much wider group of independent advisers.”

    Michael Cates, who succeeded Stephen Hawking as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, is leading an initiative by the Royal Society, the UK’s leading scientific body, to bring modellers in from other scientific disciplines to help understand the epidemic.

    “Without faulting anyone so far, it’s vital, where there is such a lot at stake, to throw the maximum possible light on the methods, assumptions and data built into our understanding of how this epidemic will develop,“ he told Reuters.

    In a statement to Reuters, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said the government was delivering “a science-led action plan” to contain the outbreak. “As the public would expect, we regularly test our pandemic plans and what we learned from previous exercises has helped us to rapidly respond to COVID-19.”

    A LOW RISK TO THE PUBLIC

    When news came from China in January of a new infectious disease, Johnson had reason to believe his country was well prepared. It had some of the world’s best scientists and a well-drilled plan to deal with potentially lethal pandemics. Perhaps, some scientists say in hindsight, the plan made them slow to adapt.

    For many years, the Cabinet Office – a collection of officials who act as the prime minister’s direct arm to run the government – took the threat of pandemics seriously. Presciently, it rated pandemics as the Number 1 threat to the country, ahead of terrorism and financial crashes.

    At the centre of planning was a small group of scientists, among them Edmunds. His research group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine runs one of the two computer modelling centres for epidemics that have mostly driven government policy. The other is at nearby Imperial College. Edmunds remembers that early in the outbreak, the data from China were sketchy, in the period “where the Chinese were trying to pretend that this wasn’t transmissible between humans.”

    Edmunds and his colleague at Imperial, Neil Ferguson, were part of an alphabet soup of committees that fed advice into the Cabinet Office machinery around the prime minister. Both were founders of the flu pandemic modelling committee, known as SPI-M, that produced the March 2 report warning of more than 500,000 deaths. This committee had met together for nearly 15 years.

    Ferguson did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this article.

    Edmunds and Ferguson were also part of NERVTAG, the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group. Both too were members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, known as SAGE, that advises the government in times of crisis. SAGE reports directly to Johnson and the government’s main emergency committee, COBRA.

    At first, when NERVTAG met on January 13, it studied information from China that there was “no evidence of significant human to human transmission” of the new virus, according to minutes of the meeting. The scientists agreed the risk to the UK population was “very low.”

    The evidence soon changed, but this wasn’t reflected in the official threat level. By the end of January, scientists in China began releasing clinical data. Case studies published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, showed 17% of the first 99 coronavirus cases needed critical care. Eleven patients died. Another Chinese study, in the same magazine, warned starkly of a global spread and urged: “Preparedness plans and mitigation interventions should be readied for quick deployment globally.”

    Edmunds recalled that “from about mid January onwards, it was absolutely obvious that this was serious, very serious.” Graham Medley, a professor of infectious diseases modelling at the London School and chairman of SPI-M, agreed. He said that the committee was “clear that this was going to be big from the first meeting.” At the end of January, his committee moved into “wartime” mode, he said, reporting directly into SAGE.

    Dr Jon Read, a senior lecturer in biostatistics at the University of Lancaster, also a member of SPI-M, said by the end of January it was apparent the virus had “pandemic potential” and that death rates for the elderly were brutal. “From my perspective within the sort of modelling community, everybody’s aware of this, and we’re saying that this is probably going to be pretty bad,“ he said.

    But the scientists did not articulate their fears forcefully to the government, minutes of committee meetings reveal.

    On January 21, scientists on NERVTAG endorsed the elevation of the UK risk warning from COVID-19 from “very low” to “low.” SAGE met formally for the first time the following day about the coronavirus threat. So did COBRA, which was chaired by Matt Hancock, the health secretary, who would contract the virus himself in late March. He told reporters after the meeting: “The clinical advice is that the risk to the public remains low.”

    In response to questions from Reuters, the government’s Department of Health declined to clarify how the risk levels are defined or what action, if any, they trigger. In a statement, a spokesperson said: “Increasing the risk level in the UK is a belt and braces measure which allows the government to plan for all future eventualities.”

    Two days later, China put the city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began, into a complete lockdown. Hubei, the surrounding province, would follow. But already, 17 passenger flights had flown directly from Wuhan to Britain since the start of 2020, and 614 flights from the whole of China, according to FlightRadar24, a flight-tracking service. That meant thousands of Chinese, some of them potential carriers, had come to Britain. On April 5, scientific adviser Ferguson said he estimated only one-third of infected people reaching Britain had been detected.

    As they watched China impose its lockdown, the British scientists assumed that such drastic actions would never be acceptable in a democracy like the UK. Among those modelling the outbreak, such stringent counter-measures were not, at first, examined.

    “We had milder interventions in place,“ said Edmunds, because no one thought it would be acceptable politically “to shut the country down.” He added: “We didn’t model it because it didn’t seem to be on the agenda. And Imperial (College) didn’t look at it either.” The NERVTAG committee agreed, noting in its minutes that tough measures in the short term would be pointless, as they “would only delay the UK outbreak, not prevent it.”

    That limited approach mirrored the UK’s longstanding pandemic flu strategy. The Department of Health declined a request from Reuters for a copy of its updated pandemic plan, without providing a reason. But a copy of the 2011 “UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011,“ which a spokesman said was still relevant, stated the “working presumption will be that Government will not impose any such restrictions. The emphasis will instead be on encouraging all those who have symptoms to follow the advice to stay at home and avoid spreading their illness.”

    According to one senior Conservative Party politician, who was officially briefed as the crisis unfolded, the close involvement in the response to the coronavirus of the same scientific advisers and civil servants who drew up the flu plan may have created a “cognitive bias.”

    “We had in our minds that COVID-19 was a nasty flu and needed to be treated as such,“ he said. “The implication was it was a disease that could not be stopped and that it was ultimately not that deadly.”

    While the UK was prepared to fight the flu, places in Asia like China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea had built their pandemic plans with lessons learned from fighting the more lethal SARS outbreak that began in 2002, he said. SARS had a fatality rate of up to 14%. As a result, these countries, he said, were more ready to resort to widespread testing, lockdowns and other draconian measures to keep their citizens from spreading the virus.

    Scientists involved in the UK response disagree that following the government’s flu plan clouded their thinking or influenced the outbreak’s course. The plan had a “reasonable worst case” scenario as devastating as the worst predictions for COVID-19, they note.

    Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, and a member of the SPI-M committee, said COVID-19 did behave differently than an expected pandemic flu – for example school closures proved to be far less effective in slowing the spread of the coronavirus. But, broadly, “the government has been consistently responsive to changing facts.”

    By the end of January, the government’s chief medical adviser, Whitty, was explaining to politicians in private, according to at least two people who spoke to him, that if the virus escaped China, it would in time infect the great majority of people in Britain. It could only be slowed down, not stopped. On Jan 30, the government raised the threat level to “moderate” from “low.”

    The country’s medical officers “consider it prudent for our governments to escalate planning and preparation in case of a more widespread outbreak,“ a statement said at the time. Whitty did not respond to questions from Reuters for this article.

    A TIME TO PREPARE

    On the evening of January 31, Boris Johnson sat before a fireplace in 10 Downing Street and told the nation, in a televised address: “This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama.”

    He was talking of finally delivering Brexit, or what he called “this recaptured sovereignty.” Until that moment, Johnson’s premiership had been utterly absorbed by delivering on that challenge.

    With Brexit done, Johnson had the chance to focus on other matters the following month, among them the emerging virus threat. But leaving the European Union had a consequence.

    Between February 13 and March 30, Britain missed a total of eight conference calls or meetings about the coronavirus between EU heads of state or health ministers – meetings that Britain was still entitled to join. Although Britain did later make an arrangement to attend lower-level meetings of officials, it had missed a deadline to participate in a common purchase scheme for ventilators, to which it was invited. Ventilators, vitally important to treating the direst cases of COVID-19, have fallen into short supply globally. Johnson’s spokesman blamed an administrative error.

    A Downing Street aide told Reuters that from around the end of January, Johnson concentrated his attention increasingly on the coronavirus threat, receiving “very frequent” updates at least once per day from mid February, either in person or via a daily dashboard of cases.

    In the medical and scientific world, there was growing concern about the threat of the virus to the UK. A report from Exeter University, published on February 12, warned a UK outbreak could peak within four months and, without mitigation, infect 45 million people.

    That worried Rahuldeb Sarkar, a consultant physician in respiratory medicine and critical care in the county of Kent, who foresaw that intensive care beds could be swamped. Even if disease transmission was reduced by half, he wrote in a report aimed at clinicians and actuaries in mid-February, a coronavirus outbreak in the UK would “have a chance of overwhelming the system.”

    With Whitty stating in a BBC interview on February 13 that a UK outbreak was still an “if, not a when,“ Richard Horton, a medical doctor and editor of the Lancet, said the government and public health service wasted an opportunity that month to prepare quarantine restriction measures and a programme of mass tests, and procure resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment for expanded intensive care.

    Calling the lost chance a “national scandal” in a later editorial, he would testify to parliament about a mismatch between “the urgent warning that was coming from the frontline in China” and the “somewhat pedestrian evaluation” of the threat from the scientific advice to the government.

    After developing a test for the new virus by January 10, health officials adopted a centralised approach to its deployment, initially assigning a single public laboratory in north London to perform the tests. But, according to later government statements, there was no wider plan envisaged to make use of hundreds of laboratories across the country, both public and private, that could have been recruited.

    According to emails and more than a dozen scientists interviewed by Reuters, the government issued no requests to labs for assistance with staff or testing equipment until the middle of March, when many abruptly received requests to hand over nucleic acid extraction instruments, used in testing. An executive at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford said he could have carried out up to 1,000 tests per day from February. But the call never came.

    “You would have thought that they would be bashing down the door,“ said the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. By April 5, Britain had carried out 195,524 tests, in contrast to at least 918,000 completed a week earlier in Germany.

    Nor was there an effective effort to expand the supply of ventilators. The Department of Health told Reuters in a statement that the government started talking to manufacturers of ventilators about procuring extra supplies in February. But it was not until March 16, after it was clear supplies could run out, that Johnson launched an appeal to industry to help ramp up production.

    Charles Bellm, managing director of Intersurgical, a global supplier of medical ventilation products based outside London, said he has been contacted by more than a dozen governments around the world, including France, New Zealand and Indonesia. But there had been no contact from the British government. “I find it somewhat surprising, I have spoken to a lot of other governments,“ he said.

    Countering such criticism, Hancock, the health minister, said the government is on track to deliver about 10,000 more ventilators in the coming weeks. One reason Britain was behind some countries on testing, he said, was the absence of a large diagnostics industry at the outbreak of the epidemic. “We didn’t have the scale.”

    GAME OVER

    It was during the school half-term holidays in February that frontline doctor Nicky Longley began to realise that early efforts to contain the disease were likely doomed.

    For weeks now, doctors and public health workers had been watching out for people with flu-like symptoms coming in from China. Longley, an infectious diseases consultant at London’s Hospital for Tropical Diseases, was part of a team that staffed a public health service helpline for those with symptoms. The plan, she said, had been to make all effort to catch every case and their contacts. And “to start with, it looked like it was working.”

    But then, bad news. First, on Wednesday the 19th of February, came the shock news from Iran of two deaths. Then, on Friday the 21st, came a death in Italy and a bloom of cases in Lombardy and Veneto regions. Britain has close links to both countries. Thousands of Britons were holidaying in Italy that week.

    “I don’t think anybody really foresaw what was happening in Italy,“ Longley said. “And I think, the minute everybody saw that, we thought: ‘This is game over now.’”

    Until then, Longley said, everyone felt “there was a chance to stamp it out” even though most were sceptical it could be done long-term. But after Iran and Italy, it was obvious containment would not work. The contact tracing continued for a while. But as the cases in London built up, and the volume of calls to the helpline mushroomed, the priority began to shift to clinical care of the serious cases. “At a certain point you have to make a decision about where you put your efforts as a workforce.”

    Edmunds noted that Iran and Italy had hardly reported a case until that point. “And then, all of sudden you had deaths recorded.” There was a rule of thumb that, in an outbreak’s early stages, for each death there were probably 1,000 cases in a community. “And so it was quite clear that there were at least thousands of cases in Italy, possibly tens of thousands of cases in Italy right then.”

    Amid the dreadful news from Italy, the scientists at NERVTAG convened by phone that Friday, 21st February. But they decided to recommend keeping the threat level at “moderate,“ where it had sat since January 30th. The minutes don’t give a detailed explanation of the decision. Edmunds, who had technical difficulties and couldn’t be heard on the call, emailed afterwards to ask the warning to be elevated to “high,“ the minutes revealed. But the warning level remained lower. It’s unclear why.

    “I just thought, are we still, we still thinking that it’s mild or something? It definitely isn’t, you know,“ said Edmunds.

    A spokesman for the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, didn’t directly respond to Reuters questions about the threat level. Asked whether, with hindsight, the scientists’ approach was the right one, the spokesperson said in a statement that “SAGE and advisers provide advice, while Ministers and the Government make decisions.”

    HERD IMMUNITY

    On Sunday, March 1st, Ferguson, Edmunds and other advisers spent the day with NHS public health service experts trying to work out how many hospital beds and other key resources would be needed as the outbreak exploded. By now, Italian data was showing that a tenth of all infected patients needed intensive care.

    The following day, pandemic modelling committee SPI-M produced its “consensus report” that warned the coronavirus was now transmitting freely in the UK. That Thursday, March 5, the first death in the UK was announced. Italy, which reached 827 deaths by March 11, ordered a national lockdown. Spain and France prepared to follow suit.

    Johnson held out against stringent measures, saying he was following the advice of the government’s scientists. He asserted on March 9: “We are doing everything we can to combat this outbreak, based on the very latest scientific and medical advice.”

    Indeed, the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, SAGE, had recommended that day, with no dissension recorded in its summary, that the UK reject a China-style lockdown. SAGE decided that “implementing a subset of measures would be ideal,“ according to a record of its conclusions. Tougher measures could create a “large second epidemic wave once the measures were lifted,“ SAGE said.

    On March 12 came a bombshell for the British public. Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, announced Britain had moved the threat to UK citizens from “moderate” to “high.” And he said the country had moved from trying to contain the disease to trying to slow its spread. New cases were not going to be tracked at all. “It is no longer necessary for us to identify every case,“ he said. Only hospital cases would, in future, be tested for the virus. What had been an undisclosed policy was in the open: beyond a certain point, attempts to completely extinguish the virus would stop.

    The same day, putting aside his jokey self, Johnson made a speech in Downing Street, flanked by two Union Jacks and evoking the spirit of Winston Churchill’s “darkest hour” address. He warned: “I must level with you, level with the British public – more families, many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”

    For most Britons, it came as a shock. Several of the next day’s newspapers splashed Johnson’s words on their front pages.

    Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, who chaired SAGE, said in a BBC interview on March 13 that the plan was to simply control the pace of infection. The government had, for now, rejected what he called “eye-catching measures” like stopping mass gatherings such as football games or closing schools. The “aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not to suppress it completely.” Most people would get the virus mildly, and this would build up “herd immunity” which, in time, would stop the disease’s progress.

    But by now, the country was rebelling. Major institutions decided to close. After players began to get infected, the professional football leagues suspended their games. As Johnson still refused to close schools and ban mass gatherings, the Daily Mirror’s banner headline, summing up a widespread feeling, asked on March 13: “Is It Enough?”

    The catalyst for a policy reversal came on March 16 with the publication of a report by Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College team. It predicted that, unconstrained, the virus could kill 510,000 people. Even the government’s “mitigation” approach could lead to 250,000 deaths and intensive care units being overwhelmed at least eight times over.

    Imperial’s prediction of over half a million deaths was no different from the report by the government’s own pandemic modelling committee two weeks earlier. Yet it helped trigger a policy turn-around, both in London and in Washington, culminating seven days later in Johnson announcing a full lockdown of Britain. The report also jarred the U.S. administration into tougher measures to slow the virus’ spread.

    Ferguson was now in isolation himself after catching the virus. Testifying by video link to a committee in Parliament, he explained why he and other scientific advisers had shifted from advocating partial social-distancing measures to warning that without a rigorous shutdown, the NHS would be overwhelmed. The reason, he said, lay in data coming out of Italy that showed large numbers of patients required critical care.

    “The revision was that, basically, estimates of the proportion of patients requiring invasive ventilation, mechanical ventilation, which is only done in a critical care unit, roughly doubled,“ he said.

    Edmunds had a different explanation for the policy shift.

    What allowed Britain to alter course, said Edmunds, was a lockdown in Italy that “opened up the policy space” coupled with new data. First came a paper by Edmunds’ own London School team that examined intermittent lockdowns, sent to the modelling committee on March 11 and validated by Edinburgh University. Ferguson’s revised Imperial research followed.

    Woolhouse, the Edinburgh professor, confirmed the sequence.

    Edmunds said these new studies together had demonstrated that if the British government imposed a lengthy period of tougher measures, perhaps relaxed periodically, then the size of the epidemic could be substantially reduced.

    Still, without a vaccine or effective treatments, it’s going to be hard to avoid a substantial part of the British population getting infected, said Edmunds. “Until you get to a vaccine, there is no way of getting out of this without certainly tens of thousands of deaths,“ he said. “And probably more than that.”

    Now subject to intense public scrutiny, the modelling teams at universities across Britain continue to work on different scenarios for how the world can escape the virus’s clutches. According to Medley, the chairman of the SPI-M pandemic modelling committee, no one now doubts, for all the initial reservations, that a lockdown was essential in Britain.

    Medley added: “At the moment we don’t know what’s going to happen in six months. All we know is that unless we stop transmission now, the health service will collapse. Yep, that’s the only thing we know for sure.” – Reuters

    UK PM listened to his scientists about Covid-19, but they were slow to sound the alarm
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  • MAZPA appeals for aid for wildlife

    MAZPA appeals for aid for wildlife

    MAZPA appeals for aid for wildlife 2

    KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Association of Zoological Parks and Aquaria (MAZPA) is appealing to the government to consider the plight of private zoos, and to provide aid which would enable them to continue surviving to look after the welfare of their wildlife.

    Its vice-president Gerard Wong Woon See said if these zoos were not given aid during current difficult times, they may find it difficult to continue operating.

    “Wildlife (care) is in the list of essential services during the Movement Control Order period, enabling zoological parks to continue caring for them.

    “The wildlife have to be fed and managed by workers during the usual working hours. The private zoological parks will continue to give the best service for their care even in times of crisis but the remaining funds are very limited,” he said in a statement here.

    He added that MAZPA was very worried about its members, especially the private zoological parks, some of which have been operating for more than 30 years.

    The parks which have been badly affected are the Penang Bird Park, Penang Entopia by the Penang Butterfly Farm, Langkawi Widllife Park, Selangor Farm In The City, Selangor KL Tower Mini Zoo, A Famosa Safari Wonderland, Melaka Butterfly and Reptile Park, and the Melaka Crocodile and Recreation Park.

    Wong said many of the private zoological parks were involved in wildlife research, breeding and conservation efforts, and a huge amount of money was spent on building laboratories, conducting research, employing and training laboratory staff, veterinarians and zoologists.

    He added that the zoological parks also worked with the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) in efforts to care for the wildlife and share critical information on conservation programmes involving species which are nearing extinction in Malaysia.

    “For instance, the A Famosa Safari Wonderland which has 19 Malayan Tigers’ is an important partner in the effort to preserve the gene pool of the species,” he said. –Bernama

    Pix for representational purpose only.

    MAZPA appeals for aid for wildlife
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  • EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Asks Sacked Nurses To Deny SaharaReporters’ Story Before Being Reinstated Into Service

    EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Asks Sacked Nurses To Deny SaharaReporters’ Story Before Being Reinstated Into Service

    EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Asks Sacked Nurses To Deny SaharaReporters’ Story Before Being Reinstated Into Service 3

    EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Asks Sacked Nurses To Deny SaharaReporters’ Story Before Being Reinstated Into Service 4

    EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Asks Sacked Nurses To Deny SaharaReporters’ Story Before Being Reinstated Into Service 5

    EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Asks Sacked Nurses To Deny SaharaReporters’ Story Before Being Reinstated Into Service 6


     

    Following several stories by SaharaReporters on the unjust sacking of six nurses attached to the University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital, Ondo State, the state government has now told the affected persons to deny the reports by the online news publication before being reinstated into service.

    In a letter signed by Adeeyo Babatunde, Director of Administration for the Chief Medical Director, Dr Oluwole Ige, and seen by SaharaReporters, the management of the hospital gave a number of other stringent conditions to five of the affected individuals before they are to be reinstated. 

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    EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Asks Sacked Nurses To Deny SaharaReporters’ Story Before Being Reinstated Into Service 7

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    EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Sacks Nurses For Demanding Payment Of Accumulated Salaries

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    The letter reads, “The management of the teaching hospital has considered your letter of apology on the matter and has approved your re-absorption into the services of the teaching hospital on the  following conditions:

    “That you submit two letters from two guarantors that are not less than the grade of a director in the state public service.

    “That you submit a letter that you would be of a good conduct while in the service of the teaching hospital.

    “That you should show evidence of your rebuttal of the malicious publications currently circulating in an online news media.

    “Please note that the effective date of your re-absorption shall be the date you resume duty in your department and the period of your absence will be treated as leave without pay.

    “By this letter, you are hereby instructed to report back to your department after complying with the above stated conditions.” 

    EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Asks Sacked Nurses To Deny SaharaReporters’ Story Before Being Reinstated Into Service 8


    Recall that after forcefully removing them from service for protesting the non-payment of their salaries, the hospital’s management also coerced them into writing letters of apology after SaharaReporters exposed the injustice and victimisation of the affected nurses.

    The latest twist is however, another way the hospital’s management intends to put fear into the affected nurses to prevent them from demanding their rights while still in the employ of the state government.

    EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Asks Sacked Nurses To Deny SaharaReporters’ Story Before Being Reinstated Into Service 9


    A source on Tuesday confirmed to SaharaReporters that the nurses were summoned to the office of the CMD a few days ago where the letters containing the new conditions were listed. 

    “Although, I cannot really state the outcome of the meeting between the sacked nurses and the management last week, but I am sure it was because of the story over their (affected nurses) sack by the hospital. The management was not really happy about it especially the bashing from the public.

    “Out of the six nurses that were sacked by the management, the hospital still refused to reinstate one of the guys among identified as Peace.

    “He is one of the best hands in his department at the hospital but he is being victimised to leading others to demand for their rights.

    “The hospital’s management is committing this evil despite an order from Governor Rotimi Akeredolu for the nurses to be unconditionally reinstated.”

    One of the affected nurses, who spoke with our correspondent, said he has rejected the conditions attached to the reinstatement.

    He said, “They gave five of us the letters and left one person out but as for me, I see those conditions as a way to further punish us for demanding for our rights.”

    CMD of the hospital, Dr Ige, did not respond to calls or text messages sent to him when contacted by SaharaReporters to react to the issue.

     

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    EXCLUSIVE: Ondo Government Asks Sacked Nurses To Deny SaharaReporters’ Story Before Being Reinstated Into Service
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  • Women in the New Age

    Women in the New Age

    42. The Transvaluation of Values

    The gradual emancipation of ladies that has been happening for the final century has nonetheless a protracted technique to proceed earlier than they’re wholly delivered from their conventional burdens and so stand away from the oppressions of males. But already, it should be plain, they’ve made monumental progress—maybe greater than they made within the ten thousand years previous. The rise of the commercial system, which has borne so harshly upon the race normally, has introduced them sure unmistakable advantages. Their financial dependence, although nonetheless adequate to make marriage extremely enticing to them, is nonetheless thus far damaged down that giant lessons of ladies are actually virtually free brokers, and fairly impartial of the favour of males. Most of those girls, responding to concepts which can be nonetheless highly effective, are but intrigued, after all, by marriage, and like it to the autonomy that’s coming in, however the truth stays that they now have a free alternative within the matter, and that dire necessity now not controls them. After all, they needn’t marry if they do not need to; it’s doable to get their bread by their very own labour within the workshops of the world. Their grandmothers had been in a much more troublesome place. Failing marriage, they not solely suffered a merciless ignominy, however in lots of instances confronted the menace of precise hunger. There was merely no respectable place within the economic system of these occasions for the free girl. She both needed to enter a nunnery or settle for a disdainful patronage that was as galling as charity.

    Nothing might be plainer than the impact that the rising financial safety of ladies is having upon their entire behavior of life and thoughts. The diminishing marriage fee and the much more quickly diminishing delivery charges present which manner the wind is blowing. It is frequent for male statisticians, with attribute imbecility, to ascribe the autumn within the marriage fee to a rising disinclination on the male aspect. This rising disinclination is definitely on the feminine aspect. Even although no appreciable physique of ladies has but reached the particular doctrine that marriage is much less fascinating than freedom, it should be plain that giant numbers of them now method the enterprise with far better fastidiousness than their grandmothers and even their moms exhibited. They are tougher to please, and therefore happy much less usually. The girl of a century in the past may think about nothing extra beneficial to her than marriage; even marriage with a fifth fee man was higher than no marriage in any respect. This notion is progressively feeling the opposition of a opposite notion. Women normally should desire marriage to work, however there may be an rising minority which begins to understand that work could supply the better contentment, notably if it’s mellowed by a certain quantity of philandering.

    There already seems on the planet, certainly, a category of ladies, who, whereas nonetheless not genuinely averse to marriage, are but free from any idea that it’s needed, and even invariably fascinating. Among these girls are an excellent many considerably vociferous propagandists, virtually male of their violent earnestness; they vary from the man-eating suffragettes to such preachers of free motherhood as Ellen Key and such skilled shockers of the bourgeoisie because the American prophetess of birth-control, Margaret Sanger. But amongst them are many extra who wake the world with no such noisy eloquence, however content material themselves with finishing up their concepts in a quiet and respectable method. The variety of such girls is way bigger than is usually imagined, and that quantity tends to extend steadily. They are girls who, with their financial independence assured, both by inheritance or by their very own efforts, mainly within the arts and professions, do precisely as they please, and make no pother about it. Naturally sufficient, their superiority to conference and the frequent frenzy makes them extraordinarily enticing to the higher form of males, and so it isn’t unusual for certainly one of them to seek out herself voluntarily sought in marriage, with none preliminary scheming by herself—certainly an expertise that only a few odd girls ever get pleasure from, save maybe in desires or delirium.

    The previous order changeth and giveth place to the brand new. Among the ladies’s golf equipment and within the girls’s faculties, I’ve little doubt, there may be nonetheless a lot debate of the previous and foolish query: Are platonic relations doable between the sexes? In different phrases, is friendship doable with out intercourse? Many a girl of the brand new order dismisses the issue with one other query: Why with out intercourse? With the decay of the traditional idea of ladies as property there should come inevitably a reconsideration of the entire intercourse query, and out of that reconsideration there should come a revision of the mediaeval penalties which now punish the slightest frivolity within the feminine. The notion that honour in girls is completely a bodily matter, {that a} single aberrance could convert a girl of the best deserves into a girl of none in any respect, that the only real invaluable factor a girl can convey to marriage is virginity—this notion is so preposterous that no clever particular person, male or feminine, truly cherishes it. It survives as one of many hole conventions of Christianity; nay, of the levantine barbarism that preceded Christianity. As girls throw off the opposite conventions which now bind them they are going to throw off this one, too, and so their advantage, grounded upon fastidiousness and self-respect as an alternative of upon mere concern and conformity, will grow to be afar extra laudable factor than it ever may be below the current system. And for its absence, in the event that they see match to get rid of it, they are going to no extra apologize than a person apologizes immediately.

    43. The Lady of Joy

    Even prostitution, in the long term, could grow to be a roughly respectable occupation, because it was within the nice days of the Greeks. That high quality will certainly connect to it if ever it grows fairly pointless; no matter is pointless is at all times respectable, for instance, faith, modern clothes, and a information of Latin grammar. The prostitute is disesteemed immediately, not as a result of her commerce entails something intrinsically degrading and even unpleasant, however as a result of she is presently assumed to have been pushed into it by dire necessity, towards her dignity and inclination. That this assumption is normally unsound is not any objection to it; practically all of the pondering of the world, notably within the area of morals, is predicated upon unsound assumption, e.g., that God observes the autumn of a sparrow and is shocked by the autumn of a Sunday-school superintendent. The fact is that prostitution is without doubt one of the most tasty of the occupations virtually open to the form of girls who have interaction in it, and that the prostitute generally likes her work, and wouldn’t trade locations with a shop-girl or a waitress for something on the planet. The notion on the contrary is propagated by unsuccessful prostitutes who fall into the fingers {of professional} reformers, and who assent to the imbecile theories of the latter as a way to domesticate their good will, simply as convicts in jail, questioned by tee-totalers, at all times ascribe their rascality to alcohol. No prostitute of something resembling regular intelligence is below the slightest duress; she is completely free to desert her commerce and go into a store or manufacturing facility or into home service each time the impulse strikes her; all of the prevailing gabble about white slave jails and kidnappers comes from pious rogues who make a dwelling by feeding such nonsense to the credulous. So lengthy as the common prostitute is ready to make an excellent dwelling, she is sort of content material together with her lot, and disposed to distinction it egotistically with the slavery of her virtuous sisters. If she complains of it, then you might ensure that her success is under her expectations. A ravenous lawyer at all times sees injustice, within the courts. A nasty doctor is a bitter critic of Ehrlich and Pasteur. And when a suburban clergyman is pressured out of his treatment by a vestry-room revolution he virtually invariably concludes that the sinfulness of man is incurable, and typically he even begins to doubt among the typographical errors in Holy Writ.

    The excessive worth set upon virginity by males, whose esteem of it’s primarily based upon a mix of vainness and voluptuousness, causes many ladies to protect it in their very own individuals with a jealousy far past their non-public inclinations and pursuits. It is their idea that the lack of it could materially impair their probabilities of marriage. This idea isn’t supported by the information. The fact is that the girl who sacrifices her chastity, all the pieces else being equal, stands a significantly better probability of creating a creditable marriage than the girl who stays chaste. This is very true of ladies of the decrease financial lessons. At as soon as they arrive into contact, hitherto socially troublesome and typically virtually unimaginable, with males of upper lessons, and start to tackle, with the curious facility of their intercourse, the refinements and tastes and factors of view of these lessons. The mistress thus gathers allure, and what has begun as a sordid sale of amiability not uncommonly ends with formal marriage. The variety of such marriages is enormously better than seems superficially, for each events clearly make each effort to hide the information. Within the circle of my essentially restricted private acquaintance I do know of scores of males, a few of them of wealth and place, who’ve made such marriages, and who don’t appear to remorse it. It is an previous commentary, certainly, {that a} girl who has beforehand disposed of her advantage makes an excellent spouse. The frequent idea is that it’s because she is grateful to her husband for rescuing her from social outlawry; the reality is that she makes an excellent spouse as a result of she is a shrewd girl, and has specialised professionally in masculine weak spot, and is thus extra-competent on the conventional enterprise of her intercourse. Such a girl usually reveals a really magnificent sagacity. It could be very troublesome to deceive her logically, and it’s unimaginable to disarm her emotionally. Her revolt towards the pruderies and sentimentalities of the world was proof, to start with, of her mental enterprise and braveness, and her success as a insurgent is proof of her extraordinary pertinacity, resourcefulness and acumen.

    Even probably the most lowly prostitute is healthier off, in all worldly methods, than the virtuous girl of her personal station in life. She has much less work to do, it’s much less monotonous and dispiriting, she meets a far better number of males, and they’re of lessons distinctly past her personal. Nor is her occupation hazardous and her final destiny tragic. A dozen or extra years in the past I noticed a considerably amusing proof of this final. At that point sure sentimental busybodies of the American metropolis during which I lived undertook an elaborate inquiry into prostitution therein, and a few of them got here to me prematurely, as a sensible journalist, for recommendation as to the way to proceed. I discovered that each one of them shared the frequent superstition that the skilled lifetime of the common prostitute is simply 5 years lengthy, and that she invariably ends within the gutter. They had been enormously amazed after they unearthed the reality. This fact was to the impact that the common prostitute of that city ended her profession, not within the morgue however on the altar of God, and that those that remained single usually continued in follow for ten, fifteen and even twenty years, after which retired on competences. It was established, certainly, that absolutely eighty per cent married, and that they virtually at all times obtained husbands who would have been far past their attain had they remained virtuous. For one who married a cabman or petty pugilist there have been a dozen who married respectable mechanics, policemen, small shopkeepers and minor officers, and a minimum of two or three who married well-to-do tradesmen {and professional} males. Among the 1000’s whose careers had been studied there was truly one who ended because the spouse of the city’s richest banker—that’s, one who bagged the perfect catch in the entire group. This girl had begun as a home servant, and deserted that harsh and dreary life to enter a brothel. Her experiences there polished and civilized her, and in her previous age she was a grande dame of nice dignity. Much of the sympathy wasted upon girls of the traditional occupation is grounded upon an error as to their very own angle towards it. An educated girl, listening to {that a} frail sister in a public stew is anticipated to be amiable to all kinds of bounders, thinks of how she would shrink from such contacts, and so concludes that the precise prostitute suffers acutely. What she overlooks is that these males, nonetheless gross and repulsive they could seem to her, are measurably superior to males of the prostitute’s personal class—say her father and brothers—and that communion with them, removed from being disgusting, is usually relatively romantic. I effectively keep in mind observing, throughout my collaboration with the vice-crusaders aforesaid, the delight of a girl of pleasure who had attracted the discover of a police lieutenant; she was intensely happy by the concept of getting a consumer of such haughty manners, such sensible costume, and what appeared to her to be so dignified a occupation. It is at all times forgotten that this weak spot isn’t confined to prostitutes, however run by the entire feminine intercourse. The girl who couldn’t think about a bootleg affair with a rich cleaning soap producer and even with a lawyer finds it fairly simple to think about herself succumbing to an envoy or a duke. There are only a few exceptions to this rule. In probably the most reserved of recent societies the ladies who characterize their highest flower are notoriously complaisant to royalty. And royal girls, to finish the circuit, not sometimes yield to actors and musicians, i.e., to males radiating a glamour not encountered even in princes.

    44. The Future of Marriage

    The transvaluation of values that’s now in progress will go on slowly and for a really lengthy whereas. That it’s going to ever be fairly full is, after all, unimaginable. There are inherent variations will proceed to point out themselves till the top of time. As girl progressively turns into satisfied, not solely of the potential for financial independence, but in addition of its worth, she’s going to in all probability lose her current overmastering need for marriage, and tackle herself to assembly males in free financial competitors. That is to say, she’s going to tackle herself to buying that sensible competence, that prime expertise for puerile and mainly mechanical expertness, which now units man forward of her within the labour market of the world. To do that she must sacrifice a few of her current intelligence; it’s unimaginable to think about a genuinely clever human being turning into a reliable trial lawyer, or buttonhole employee, or newspaper sub-editor, or piano tuner, or home painter. Women, to get upon all fours with males in such silly occupations, must commit non secular suicide, which might be a lot additional than they are going to ever truly go. Thus a shade of their current superiority to males will at all times stay, and with it a shade of their relative inefficiency, and so marriage will stay enticing to them, or in any respect occasions to most of them, and its overthrow might be prevented. To abolish it completely, as sure fevered reformers suggest, can be as troublesome as to abolish the precession of the equinoxes.

    At the current time girls vacillate considerably absurdly between two schemes of life, the previous and the brand new. On the one hand, their financial independence continues to be stuffed with circumstances, and however they’re in revolt towards the immemorial conventions. The result’s a normal unrest, with many signs of extravagant and unintelligent revolt. One of these signs is the looks of mental striving in girls—not a striving, alas, towards the real pearls and rubies of the thoughts, however one merely towards the acquirement of the rubber stamps that males make use of of their so-called pondering. Thus we’ve girls who launch themselves into get together politics, and fill their heads with an enormous mass of ineffective information about political methods, customs, theories and personalities. Thus, too, we’ve the girl social reformer, trailing alongside ridiculously behind a tatterdemalion posse of male utopians, every with one thing to promote. And thus we’ve the girl who goes in for superior knowledge of the kind on draught in girls’s golf equipment—in short, the form of knowledge which consists completely of a physique of beliefs and propositions which can be ignorant, unimportant and unfaithful. Such banal striving is most prodigally on show within the United States, the place superficiality quantities to a nationwide illness. Its reputation is because of the comparatively better leisure of the American individuals, who work lower than another individuals on the planet, and, above all, to the comparatively better leisure of American girls. Thousands of them have been emancipated from any compulsion to productive labour with out having acquired any compensatory mental or creative curiosity or social obligation. The result’s that they swarm within the girls’s golf equipment, and waste their time, listening to dangerous poetry, worse music, and nonetheless worse lectures on Maeterlinck, Balkan politics and the unconscious. It is amongst such girls that one observes the periodic rages for Bergsonism, the Montessori methodology, the twilight sleep and different such follies, so pathetically attribute of American tradition.

    One of the evil results of this tendency I’ve hitherto descanted upon, to wit, the rising disposition of American girls to treat all routine labour, notably within the residence, as infra dignitatem and therefore insupportable. Out of that notion come up many lamentable phenomena. On the one hand, we’ve the spectacle of a large number of wholesome and well-fed girls engaged in public actions that, 9 occasions out of ten, are meaningless, mischievous and a nuisance, and however we behold such a decay within the home arts that, on the first onslaught of the late conflict, the nationwide authorities needed to import a overseas professional to show the housewives of the nation the veriest components of thrift. No such instruction was wanted by the housewives of the Continent. They had been merely informed how a lot meals they may have, and their pure competence did the remainder. There is rarely any avoidable waste there, both in peace or in conflict. A French housewife has little use for a rubbish can, save as a depository for uplifting literature. She does her finest with the means at her disposal, not solely in conflict time however always.

    As I’ve stated over and over on this inquiry, a girl’s disinclination to accumulate the intricate expertness that lies on the backside of fine housekeeping is due primarily to her lively intelligence; it’s troublesome for her to pay attention her thoughts upon such silly and meticulous enterprises. But whether or not troublesome or simple, it’s clearly vital for the common girl to make some effort in that course, for if she fails to take action there may be chaos. That chaos is duly seen within the United States. Here girls reveal certainly one of their subterranean qualities: their deficiency in conscientiousness. They are fairly with out that dog-like constancy to obligation which is without doubt one of the shining marks of males. They by no means summon up a excessive pleasure in doing what’s inherently unpleasant; they at all times go to the galleys below protest, and with vows of sabotage; their basic philosophy is nearly that of the syndicalists. The sentimentality of males connives at this, and is thus largely accountable for it. Before the common puella, apprenticed within the kitchen, can choose up a fourth of the culinary subtleties which can be commonplace even to the cooks on eating vehicles, she has caught a person and want concern herself about them no extra, for he has to eat, within the final evaluation, no matter she units earlier than him, and his lack of intelligence makes it simple for her to close off his tutorial criticisms by bald appeals to his feelings. By a straightforward course of he lastly attaches a optimistic worth to her indolence. It is a proof, he concludes, of her fineness of soul. In the presence of her lofty incompetence he’s abashed.

    But as girls, gaining financial autonomy, meet males in progressively bitterer competitors, the rising masculine mistrust and concern of them might be mirrored even within the enchanted area of marriage, and the husband, having yielded up most of his previous rights, will start to disclose a brand new jealousy of those who stay, and notably of the fitting to a good quid professional quo for his personal docile trade. In transient, as girls shake off their historic disabilities they will even shake off a few of their historic immunities, and their doings will come to be regarded with a soberer and extra exigent scrutiny than now prevails. The extension of the suffrage, I consider, will encourage this awakening; in wresting it from the reluctant male the ladies of the western world have planted dragons’ tooth, the which can presently leap up and gnaw them. Now that girls have the political energy to acquire their simply rights, they are going to start to lose their previous energy to acquire particular privileges by sentimental appeals. Men, going through them squarely, will think about them anew, not as romantic political and social invalids, to be coddled and caressed, however as free opponents in a harsh world. When that reconsideration will get below manner there might be a normal overhauling of the relations between the sexes, and among the truthful ones, I believe, will start to marvel why they did not let effectively sufficient alone.

    45. Effects of the War

    The current sequence of wars, it appears seemingly, will proceed for twenty or thirty years, and maybe longer. That the primary conflict was inconclusive was proven brilliantly by the preposterous nature of the peace lastly reached—a peace so synthetic and dishonest that the signing of it was virtually equal to a brand new declaration of conflict. At least three new contests within the grand method are plainly perception—one between Germany and France to rectify the unnatural tyranny of a weak and incompetent nation over a powerful and enterprising nation, one between Japan and the United States for the mastery of the Pacific, and one between England and the United States for the management of the ocean. To these should be added numerous minor struggles, and maybe one or two of just about main character: the trouble of Russia to regain her previous unity and energy, the trouble of the Turks to place down the slave rise up (of Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, and so on.)which now menaces them, the trouble of the Latin-Americans to throw off the galling Yankee yoke, and the joint effort of Russia and Germany (maybe with England and Italy aiding) to do away with such worldwide nuisances because the insane Polish republic, the petty states of the Baltic, and maybe additionally many of the Balkan states. I cross over the chance of a brand new mutiny in India, of the rising of China towards the Japanese, and of a normal battle for a brand new alignment of boundaries in South America. All of those wars, nice and small, are possible; most of them are humanly sure. They might be fought ferociously, and with assistance from harmful engines of the utmost effectivity. They will result in an unparalleled butchery of males, and a big proportion of those males might be below forty years of age.

    As a consequence there might be a scarcity of husbands in Christendom, and as a second consequence the survivors might be appreciably tougher to snare than the lads of immediately. Every man of agreeable exterior and straightforward means might be pursued, not merely by just a few dozen or rating of ladies, as now, however by entire battalions and brigades of them, and he might be pushed in sheer self-defence into very sharp bargaining. Perhaps in the long run the state must intervene within the enterprise, to forestall the potential husband going to waste within the turmoil of alternative.

    Just what kind this interference is prone to take has not but appeared clearly. In France there may be already a wholesale legitimization of kids born out of wedlock and in Eastern Europe there was a clamour for the legalization of polygamy, however these gadgets don’t meet the principle downside, which is the encouragement of monogamy to the utmost. A plan that means itself is the amelioration of the place of the monogamous husband, now rendered more and more uncomfortable by the legal guidelines of most Christian states. I don’t assume that the extra clever form of girls, confronted by a deadly scarcity of males, would object severely to that amelioration. They should see plainly that the current system, whether it is carried a lot additional, will start to work powerfully towards their finest pursuits, if solely by significantly reinforcing the disinclination to marriage that already exists among the many higher form of males. The girl of true discretion, I’m satisfied, would a lot relatively marry a superior man, even on unfavourable phrases, than make John Smith her husband, serf and prisoner at one stroke.

    The legislation should finally acknowledge this truth and make provision for it. The common husband, maybe, deserves little succour. The girl who pursues and marries him, although she could also be moved by egocentric goals, needs to be correctly rewarded by the state for her service to it—a service certainly to not be flippantly estimated in a navy age. And that reward could conveniently take the shape, as within the United States, of statutes giving her title to a big share of his actual property and requiring him to give up most of his revenue to her, and releasing her from all obedience to him and from all obligation to maintain his home so as. But the girl who aspires to increased sport needs to be fairly prepared, it appears to me, to resign a few of these benefits in compensation for the better honour and satisfaction of being spouse to a person of benefit, and mom to his kids. All that’s wanted is legal guidelines permitting her, if she’s going to, to resign her proper of dower, her proper to upkeep and her immunity from self-discipline, and to make another phrases that she could also be led to treat as equitable. At current girls are unable to make most of those concessions even when they might: the legal guidelines of nearly all of western nations are rigid. If, for instance, an Englishwoman ought to agree, by an ante-nuptial contract, to submit herself to the self-discipline, not of the present statutes, however of the elder frequent legislation, which allowed a husband to right his spouse corporally with a stick no thicker than his thumb, it could be competent for any sentimental neighbour to set the settlement at naught by haling her husband earlier than a Justice of the Peace for carrying it out, and it’s a secure wager that the Justice of the Peace would jail him.

    This plan, nonetheless novel it might appear, is definitely already in operation. Many a married girl, as a way to maintain her husband from revolt, makes roughly disguised surrenders of sure of the rights and immunities that she has below current legal guidelines. There are, for instance, even in America, girls who practise the home arts with competence and diligence, regardless of the plain indisputable fact that no authorized penalty can be visited upon them in the event that they failed to take action. There are girls who comply with exterior trades and professions, contributing a share to the household exchequer. There are girls who obey their husbands, even towards their finest judgments. There are, most quite a few of all, girls who wink discreetly at husbandly departures, overt or in mere intent, from the oath of chemical purity taken on the altar. It is a commonplace, certainly, that many completely happy marriages admit a celebration of the third half. There can be extra of them if there have been extra girls with sufficient serenity of thoughts to see the sensible benefit of the association. The hassle with such triangulations isn’t primarily that they contain perjury or that they provide any basic offence to the spouse; if she avoids banal theatricals, in truth, they generally have the impact of augmenting the husband’s devotion to her and respect for her, if solely because the fruit of comparability. The hassle with them is that only a few males amongst us have sense sufficient to handle them intelligently. The masculine thoughts is instantly taken in by specious values; the common married man of Protestant Christendom, if he succumbs in any respect, succumbs to some meretricious and flamboyant creature, bent solely upon fleecing him. Here is the place the cruel realism of the Frenchman reveals its superiority to the sentimentality of the lads of the Teutonic races. A Frenchman would no extra consider taking a mistress with out consulting his spouse than he would consider standing for workplace with out consulting his spouse. The result’s that he’s seldom victimized. For one Frenchman ruined by girls there are a minimum of 100 Englishmen and Americans, even supposing 100 occasions as many Frenchmen have interaction in that form of recreation. The case of Zola is typical. As is well-known, his amours had been rigorously supervised by Mme. Zola from the primary days of their marriage, and in consequence his life was wholly free from scandals and his thoughts was by no means distracted from his work.

    46. The Eternal Romance

    But no matter the way forward for monogamous marriage, there’ll by no means be any decay of that agreeable adventurousness which now lies on the backside of all transactions between the sexes. Women could emancipate themselves, they could borrow the entire bag of masculine methods, they usually could treatment themselves of their current need for the vegetable safety of marriage, however they are going to by no means stop to be girls, and as long as they’re girls they are going to stay provocative to males. Their chief allure immediately lies exactly in the truth that they’re harmful, that they threaten masculine liberty and autonomy, that their sharp minds current a menace vastly better than that of acts of God and the general public enemy—and they are going to be harmful for ever. Men concern them, and are fascinated by them. They know the way to present their tooth charmingly; the extra enlightened of them have perfected an outstanding strategy of fascination. It was Nietzsche who known as them the recreation of the warrior—not of the poltroon, keep in mind, however of the warrior. A profound saying. They have an infinite capability for rewarding masculine trade and enterprise with small and irresistible flatteries; their acute understanding combines with their capability for evoking concepts of magnificence to make them incomparable companions when the intense enterprise of the day is finished, and the time has come to increase comfortably within the interstellar ether.

    Every man, I daresay, has his personal notion of what constitutes good peace and contentment, however all of these notions, regardless of the elemental battle of the sexes, revolve round girls. As for me—and I hope I could also be pardoned, at this late stage in my inquiry, for intruding my very own persona—I reject the 2 commonest of them: ardour, a minimum of in its extra adventurous and melodramatic features, is just too thrilling and alarming for therefore indolent a person, and I’m too egoistic to have a lot need to be mothered. What, then, stays for me? Let me attempt to describe it to you.

    It is the shut of a busy and vexatious day—say half previous 5 – 6 o’clock of a winter afternoon. I’ve had a cocktail or two, and am stretched out on a divan in entrance of a fireplace, smoking. At the sting of the divan, shut sufficient for me to succeed in her with my hand, sits a girl not too younger, however nonetheless handsome and well-dressed—above all, a girl with a delicate, low-pitched, agreeable voice. As I snooze she talks—of something, all the pieces, all of the issues that girls speak of: books, music, the play, males, different girls. No politics. No enterprise. No faith. No metaphysics. Nothing difficult and vexatious—however keep in mind, she is clever; what she says is clearly expressed, and sometimes picturesquely. I observe the positive sheen of her hair, the gorgeous lower of her frock, the glint of her white tooth, the arch of her eye-brow, the sleek curve of her arm. I take heed to the beautiful murmur of her voice. Gradually I go to sleep—however just for an immediate. At as soon as, observing it, she raises her voice ever so little, and I’m awake. Then to sleep once more—slowly and charmingly down that slippery hill of desires. And then awake once more, after which asleep once more, and so forth.

    I ask you severely: may something be extra unutterably stunning? The sensation of falling asleep is to me probably the most beautiful on the planet. I enjoyment of it a lot that I even stay up for demise itself with a sneaking marvel and need. Well, right here is sleep poetized and made doubly candy. Here is sleep set to the best music on the planet. I match this example towards any that you just ran consider. It isn’t solely enchanting; additionally it is, in a really true sense, ennobling. In the top, when the woman grows prettily miffed and throws me out, I return to my sorrows one way or the other purged and glorified. I’m a greater man in my very own sight. I’ve grazed upon the fields of asphodel. I’ve been genuinely, utterly and unregrettably completely happy.

    47. Apologia in Conclusion

    At the top I crave the indulgence of the aesthetic reader for the imperfections essentially seen in all that I’ve right here set down—imperfections not solely resulting from incomplete data and fallible logic, but in addition, and maybe extra importantly, to sure basic weaknesses of the intercourse to which I’ve the honour to belong. A person is inseparable from his congenital vanities and stupidities, as a canine is inseparable from its fleas. They reveal themselves in all the pieces he says and does, however they reveal themselves most of all when he discusses the majestic thriller of girl. Just as he smirks and rolls his eyes in her precise presence, so he places on apathetic and unescapable clownishness when he essays to dissect her within the privateness of the laboratory. There is not any e book on girl by a person that’s not a stupendous compendium of posturings and imbecilities. There are however two books that present even a superficial need to be trustworthy—”The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage,” by Sir Almroth Wright, and this one. Wright made a gallant try to inform the reality, however earlier than he obtained half manner by his job his ineradicable donkeyishness as a male overcame his scientific frenzy as a psychologist, and so he swiftly washed his fingers of the enterprise, and affronted the even handed with a half baked and preposterous e book. Perhaps I’ve failed too, and much more ingloriously. If so, I’m stuffed with honest and indescribable remorse.

    Extract from IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN by H. L. Mencken

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  • Nigeria’s Unhealthy Healthcare In Eye Of Coronavirus By Runcie C.W. Chidebe

    Nigeria’s Unhealthy Healthcare In Eye Of Coronavirus By Runcie C.W. Chidebe

    Nigeria’s Unhealthy Healthcare In Eye Of Coronavirus By Runcie C.W. Chidebe 10

    Nigeria’s Unhealthy Healthcare In Eye Of Coronavirus By Runcie C.W. Chidebe 11


    Coronavirus (COVID-19) is right here to show us a lesson; I hope we be taught. Nigeria’s healthcare is unhealthy. But as an alternative of fixing it our rulers have been busy flying up and down to profit from different nation’s productive well being system. With Coronavirus, actuality is upon us. No extra operating abroad for medical trip. Our rulers can’t journey to the United Kingdom, United States of America or India anymore for medical care. These nations are additionally hanging on their final breath, battling to outlive the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    In 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari spent 103 days in London receiving medical therapy for an undisclosed sickness, spending taxpayers’ cash as an alternative of investing within the nation’s healthcare. Thousands of Nigerians died in the identical interval from totally different sicknesses. More than 3,000 girls died of breast most cancers, greater than 2,000 girls died of cervical most cancers and greater than 1,500 males died of prostate most cancers, in line with World Health Organization (WHO) figures on annual most cancers mortality.  

    I had hoped that on his return to Nigeria, President Buhari would declare a state of emergency within the nation’s well being sector. Painfully, nothing of such occurred. Nigeria’s funds allocation to healthcare has remained lower than 5% of the whole funds for the previous 5 years. Simply put, in 2020 the federal authorities budgeted N2,000 (£4.2) for every Nigerian with a complete of N427.Three billion as funds allocation to the well being sector whereas the United Kingdom budgeted £2,159.6 for every citizen with a complete well being funds of £143.4billion. It is similar dismal story within the states throughout Nigeria. Healthcare isn’t a precedence. In some states in Nigeria, a hospital is a 20-minute boat journey and an hour-long automobile journey. Because many poor Nigerians don’t personal boats, a girl in labour may bleed to loss of life earlier than she reaches the hospital.

    On March 22, 2018, Bill Gates, founding father of Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, criticized Nigerian authorities’s poor funding of healthcare within the nation. In his phrases, “One in three children is chronically malnourished.” This tragedy has large implications for the economic system. According to the World Bank, addressing the stunting disaster in Nigeria would add virtually $30 billion to Nigeria’s GDP. It is painful that regardless of Mr. Gates assertion, nothing has modified. Nigeria has remained one of many nations on this planet with the worst healthcare system with over 60 deaths per 1000 stay births. Nigeria has one of many worst most cancers survival charges on this planet, with solely 2 to three most cancers radiotherapy machines working at any time and fewer than 70 oncologists for a inhabitants of over 200 million. 

    COVID-19 is exposing the insensitivity of our leaders to issues that matter most to us. That Nigerians are disobeying the federal government’s security recommendation on COVID-19 is a transparent reflection of residents’ distrust for his or her leaders. Many Nigerians belief their non secular leaders greater than they belief our political leaders. Successive governments have failed the nation, and it doesn’t appear like factor will change anytime quickly. 

    Nigeria is a rustic the place our rulers make legal guidelines as we speak and break the identical legal guidelines tomorrow. The Nigeria Centre for Diseases Control (NCDC) adopted the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline and strongly inspired all Nigerians coming from sure nations to self-isolate and monitor themselves, as a method to comprise or to delay the unfold of COVID-19. The president’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, returned from Germany and as an alternative of isolating himself he was leaping from one state to a different, attending occasions and conferences with totally different folks, breaching the federal government’s personal advice and inserting the lives of different Nigerians in danger! 

    Now that COVID-19 is in Nigeria we have to face it with all that we’ve. But can we? The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) is now the nation’s solely perceived hope. Many Nigerians have been calling NCDC scorching traces, criticizing NCDC for not testing sufficient folks. But we must always face the music and never the dancer. NCDC is crippled and never effectively outfitted to guard Nigerians from the illness. 

    In 2016, NCDC budgeted N3.7m for its recurrent and N248m for capital allocations. That is a complete of N251.7m. Out of this, solely N155m was launched to the centre. In the identical 12 months, 1,166 Nigerians died of Cerebrospinal Meningitis. In 2017, the NCDC had a funds of N1.5b. Only N782m was launched. In the identical 12 months, greater than 120 Nigerians contracted Monkeypox and 7 folks died from the illness. That identical 12 months, the Presidency budgeted N77m for Aso Rock lease, N1b for journeys and sitting allowances, and N94m for meals. In 2018, the NCDC had a funds of N1.9b. Only N654m was launched. In the identical 12 months, N7.2b was proposed for Presidential Air Fleet. N440m was proposed for necessary improve and set up of stay TV and web service within the presidential aircrafts, N375m for brand spanking new cabin administration, N418m for the touchdown gears. In whole, over N1b was budgeted for the presidential aircrafts which is used for medical tourism and frequent journeys overseas. 

    On November 12, 2018, the NCDC institution invoice was signed by President Muhammadu Buhari, because of the efforts of Senator Mao Ohuabunwa, the then Chair, Senate Committee on Primary Healthcare and Communicable Diseases. On this premise, the NCDC was empowered with a laws for its work in stopping and making ready for outbreaks of infectious illnesses. Interestingly, the NCDC acquired the worst funds in 2019, the 12 months following the passage of the NCDC Act. The Centre had a funds of N1.4b, however solely N224m was launched. In the identical 12 months, over 472 Nigerians have been identified with Lassa fever and over 110 folks died from this viral hemorrhagic fever. Clearly, NCDC can’t carry out magic. They need assistance. Nigeria is grossly under-testing for COVID-19, the laboratories usually are not sufficient, and NCDC and its affiliate businesses wouldn’t have sufficient manpower and sources. 

    Months in the past, being unwell evoked empathy; as we speak being unwell evokes concern. The concern of COVID-19? No! It is the concern of not gaining access to the care that you just want, the concern of absence of ventilators, the concern of a damaged well being system. It is the concern of loss of life. Our political leaders have stolen from the sick by corruption. Many Nigerian governors construct non-functional hospitals of their states. Usually, after the commissioning of those hospitals, all of the CT Scan, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and different medical machines—a few of them faux—are returned to the place they have been bought or left to rot. 

    Hospitals in Nigeria are among the worst on this planet. Our educating hospitals at the moment are museums the place lower than 5% of medical trial and analysis is occurring due to poor laboratory. Medical tourism has due to this fact grow to be the norm. Dubai hospitals, Saudi Arabian hospitals, and so on., are promoting in Abuja and Lagos for Nigerian sufferers. They are recruiting Nigerian docs, together with consultants. Nigeria isn’t solely going through “brain drain,” we’re additionally going through “patient drain.” Our docs and nurses work within the worst situations. Hazard allowance for well being staff is about N5,000 whereas wardrobe allowance for members of the National Assembly runs into hundreds of thousands. 

    Now is the time for Nigeria to confront its healthcare disaster. The Nigerian authorities should settle for its failure. Our political leaders should brace as much as their duty and critically replicate on the issue their greed has delivered to Nigeria. This is the time to put money into a result-oriented healthcare system. Health is wealth because the saying goes. healthcare system is the muse of any nation. 

    If we survive COVID-19, we have to contemplate a legislation to limit all public officers from searching for medical care overseas. It could also be perceived as strict, however it can save future generations since we don’t know which pandemic would come subsequent and when. 

    Let’s give each Nigerian an area to stay and a not probability to die. 

    Runcie C.W. Chidebe is Executive Director, Project PINK BLUE. He is at the moment a Commonwealth Scholar on Transforming and Leading in Health Care at Birmingham City University, United Kingdom. He tweets @runciecwc

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  • Hospital Management In Delta Forces NYSC Doctors, Nurses To Work In Coronavirus Isolation Centre

    Hospital Management In Delta Forces NYSC Doctors, Nurses To Work In Coronavirus Isolation Centre

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    Doctors, nurses, pharmacists partaking within the necessary National Youth Service Scheme in Asaba, Delta State, have been compelled to work with out protecting gear in an isolation for Coronavirus sufferers, findings by SaharaReporters point out.

    At the Asaba Specialist Hospital, a listing containing names of individuals, who by no means indicated curiosity to work as volunteers on the isolation centre, has been launched by the administration.

    As a outcome, these named together with NYSC members shall be compelled to work with out correct orientation, protecting gear or plans for remuneration.

    “Of the about 50 consultants who work within the hospital, solely three volunteered due to the situations of labor within the hospital. 

    “This made the management forcefully include the names of NYSC nurses, doctors and pharmacists,” a supply on the hospital instructed SaharaReporters on Friday.

    The incident has raised considerations and apprehension amongst corps members in Asaba, who expressed worry that they may very well be contaminated with the virus.

    “We are not happy with this development. We hope the state government and NYSC management can intervene and save us from contracting the virus because there is nothing to protect us,” one of many affected individuals instructed our correspondent. 

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  • Interior Minister, Aregbesola, Holds Meeting With Malami Over Prison Decongestion

    Interior Minister, Aregbesola, Holds Meeting With Malami Over Prison Decongestion

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    Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola, has held a gathering with the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), on steps to be taken to make sure the decongestion of correctional centres (previously prisons) in Nigeria.

    This is coming three days after inmates on the Kaduna Correctional Centre tried a jailbreak following the worldwide outbreak of Coronavirus.

    The assembly was additionally attended by the Chief Judge of FCT, Justice I.U Bello.

    “Minister of Interior, Ogbeni @raufaregbesola held a midnight assembly on the method and process to radically decongest @CorrectionsNg’s custodial centres with AGF and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami; Chief Judge of FCT, Justice I.U Bello and different authorities officers,” a tweet by the Ministry of Interior reads. 

    The minister has beforehand held comparable conferences to deliberate on the right way to handle the custodial centres.

    Recall that 5 inmates on the Kirikiri Correctional Centre died of electrocution, which investigation by the Controller-General of the Nigeria Correctional Service, Ja’afaru Ahmed, revealed that the incident was attributable to overpopulation of the correctional centre.

    Civil society organisations are additionally calling on the federal government to make sure the decongestion of correctional centres and police cells to include the unfold of the virus.

    Currently, the nation has 74,127 inmates in 244 centres throughout the nation with 52,226 awaiting trial.

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  • BREAKING: Lagos Discharges 11 Coronavirus Patients

    BREAKING: Lagos Discharges 11 Coronavirus Patients

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    The Lagos State Government has discharged one other 11 Coronavirus sufferers after they examined unfavourable to the illness.

    This was introduced by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Thursday night. 

    He mentioned, “I’m completely happy to interrupt to you, my good individuals of Lagos, the information of the discharge immediately of 11 extra sufferers from our facility in Yaba. 

    “They have totally recovered and have examined unfavourable to COVID-19 and have been allowed to return dwelling to their households.

    “The patients include two females and nine males. Their results came out negative in two rounds of tests.”

    The governor thanked the well being staff, who labored to make sure these confirmed with the virus are nicely handled.

    He additionally urged Lagosians to stick to all pointers to curb the additional unfold of the virus.

    He added, “I wish to use this chance to as soon as once more thank our frontline well being staff and different professionals for his or her service.

    “Let me reiterate that this isn’t the time to loosen up however to keep up our vigilance in opposition to #COVID19 due to the neighborhood an infection that we’re starting to see.

    “Again, I assure you that at the end of it all, we will hoist a flag of victory – with your cooperation and by the grace of the Almighty.”

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  • Buhari: An Illiterate Jubril? By Ozodinukwe Okenwa

    Buhari: An Illiterate Jubril? By Ozodinukwe Okenwa

    SOC Okenwa
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    Buhari: An Illiterate Jubril? By Ozodinukwe Okenwa 18SOC Okenwa


     

    “President Buhari is an illiterate, he does not know what restructuring means, he is less concerned about the future of Nigeria, he is only bothered about his cows.”— Pa Ayo Adebanjo, Afenifere Chieftain and elder Nigerian statesman.

    Illiteracy is outlined by the dictionary merely as the lack to learn and write. Someone unable to learn or write might categorical themselves orally however when it comes all the way down to placing pen to paper or studying a guide or newspaper, as an illustration, their incapacity is uncovered to their disgrace. Nigeria boasts of tens of millions of instances of analphabetism particularly within the rural areas. While 1000’s graduate yearly from the colleges increasingly more numbers be part of the illiteracy class.

    Analphabetism is a harmful phenomenon given the ignorance it propagates. An illiterate is as harmful to themselves as they’re to the society at giant. That is why it’s mentioned that schooling will endlessly govern ignorance! Serious-minded and well-governed societies make investments closely in schooling as a result of it ensures each improvement and the longer term.

    President Muhammadu Buhari, even previous to his common election in 2015 and controversial ‘re-election’ final 12 months, had been embroiled in educational scandal bothering on his WAEC certificates. To the opposition he by no means possessed any; maybe he by no means sat for one. As a septuagenarian Buhari’s technology could possibly be mentioned debatably to have had little or no educational data, so his claims and counter-claims of the opposition concerning his academic profile are comprehensible.

    Litigations over his educational qualification for the presidency lingered for years with none definitive judicial pronouncement. He had as soon as claimed that his CV was with the navy excessive command! Yet the difficulty right here just isn’t whether or not he was certified to vie for the presidency or not however whether or not he dedicated perjury by affirming what he by no means possessed.

    A patriotic devoted ‘illiterate’ who demonstrated uncanny skill to offer management could also be preferable to a PHD holder who manifested crass incompetence in main a brand new technology of Nigerians. Former President Goodluck Jonathan was mentioned to be a PHD holder but his presidency was riddled with corruption and ineptitude. So the place is the educational hyperlink to sound management right here?

    We usually are not advocating for a Barkin Zuwo as President right here. Sound schooling and management has one thing in widespread globally however sure elements might present an avenue for ‘divorce’ particularly within the African political context.

    Is President Buhari a Jubril from Chad or Sudan? Nnamdi Kanu and his proscribed IPOB “terrorists” assume that the Buhari we knew earlier than he went for medical tourism that lasted months in London some years again had ‘died’ and was instantly changed surgically with a Jubril from Chad or Sudan. Why Sudan or Chad and never Niger or Guinea? The so-called Jubril might have come from elsewhere!

    Personally this commentator has by no means believed such wild declare as a result of there was by no means any tangible proof to help identical. It may be very low cost to allege that the primary citizen of a nation was useless and chirurgically changed with a look-alike with out the key leaking in a digitally-powered world.

    Telling us that proof existed within the President’s head coated all the time with cap is like asking us to replay Thomas biblically by seeing earlier than believing. Pray, how might anybody aside from the First Lady, Aisha, or the distinguished members of the infamous Aso Villa cabal ever see Buhari with out his customary cap? Or can we rent a detective to do the job for us by planting a digital camera in his toilet or bed room?

    A former Head of State, former Minister and former Chairman of the Petroleum Trust “Fraud” (apology to Ray Ekpu) can’t ordinarily be mentioned to not be certified to be President, one democratically elected. When he led us by the Jackboot within the early 80s nobody of their proper senses dared questioned his educational credentials. But that’s irrelevant.

    His case just isn’t distinctive in a continent the place barbarians and cannibals just like the late Idi Amin Dada of Uganda had dominated their nations ignorantly for many years. It is nothing particular in our continental political house the place the likes of ex-President Yahya Jammeh dictatorially caged the Gambians for many years; the place the likes of Dadis Camara dominated their Guinean animal kingdom.

    Is President Buhari an illiterate Jubril? Or higher nonetheless, is he a glorified illiterate? A Jubril from Sudan or Chad? Well, all issues thought-about we refuse to simply accept that our President can’t learn and write if sure educational indices are utilized. He couldn’t have been as good as Prof. Wole Soyinka in class or Alassane Ouattara as President however he ‘troopers’ on taking us all down the abyss of despair.

    To begin with it might quantity to uncharitable insolence to insinuate {that a} retired General who has put in a long time into the Nigerian navy service is barely educated or an outright case of analphabetism. It can’t stand any mental crucible.

    You don’t rise by the ranks and file in your chosen career as an illiterate, do you? Besides, he did navy programs overseas and these research had been carried out in English and never Hausa, Fulani or Fulfulde. It is subsequently disingenuous to say that Buhari is something close to illiteracy!

    The President could also be grammatically challenged; he might not be fluent sufficient, he could not possess the required presidential grit and charisma to guide an ideal nation like ours however that’s secondary in our reckoning. He could also be sluggish to taking selections and might not be conversant sufficient with world realities (Covid-19 pandemic for instance) however he has been ‘elected’ twice to offer management on the nationwide stage — though such management is manifestly missing in our embattled nation.

    The President might not be used to hiring and firing as circumstances dictate however nothing much less might have been anticipated from an outdated health-challenged lacklustre chief. The cabal led by Mamman Daura and Abba Kyari might have seized the chance to avoid energy by taking presidential selections on behalf of Buhari. But, happily, the ship of state continues to be afloat, not but run aground.

    SOC Okenwa

    soco_abj_2006_rci@hotmail.fr

     

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  • Covid-19: List of fake news as of 7pm today

    Covid-19: List of fake news as of 7pm today

    Covid-19: List of fake news as of 7pm today 19

    KUALA LUMPUR: The following are the replies made by the related businesses to the Quick Response Team of the Communications and Multimedia Ministry (KKMM) on fake news that went viral on social media as of 7pm today.

    >> The National Security Council (MKN) has denied claims a 3rd section of the Movement Control Order (MCO) can be carried out from April 15 to May 15, 2020.

    >> The MKN has additionally denied allegations that summonses can be issued, with out discretion used, by the authorities through the MCO interval, such RM300 for travelling in a automobile with multiple individual, RM200 for not sporting a face masks and RM150 for leaving residence after 10 pm.

    >> The Hulu Langat District Health Office has denied that it had despatched a brief messaging service (SMS) textual content to inform {that a} supervisor at Sungai Ramal Shell station had examined constructive for Covid-19. — Bernama

    Covid-19: List of fake news as of 7pm today
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