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Covid-19 proved bad indoor air quality makes us sick. We can fix that.

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If a waiter at a restaurant brought you a murky, stinky glass of water, that would be unacceptable. But yet, many waiters — at least before the Covid-19 pandemic hit — were forced to breathe poorly ventilated air in restaurants and other indoor spaces where people packed together.
And still today, “if anybody asks a restaurant owner, ‘what’s the ventilation here?’ they will probably look strangely at them,” says Lidia Morawska, a physicist and an aerosol expert at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia who has advised the World Health Organization on the spread of airborne pathogens.
In the post-pandemic world, Morawska wants all of us to ask the question — “what’s the ventilation like in here?” — more often. And not just of restaurant owners, but of the managers of the crowded indoor spaces we visit. We should expect to breathe in clean, virus-free air just like we should expect to get clean water in a glass. And it’s not just up to individuals to demand better air quality — governments and engineering associations need to set new standards to ensure clean air for all.
The pandemic has made clear we can be infected with respiratory viruses more easily in poorly ventilated spaces, where the virus people are breathing out of their nose and mouth can linger in the air longer. Ventilation works by either replacing stale, potentially infectious air with fresh clean outdoor, or passing that stale air through a filter.
Earlier in the pandemic, Morawska led a group of air quality experts who asked the <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/7/13/21315879/covid-19-airborne-who-aerosol-droplet-transmission-cdc">WHO to recognize</a> that the coronavirus can spread in aerosols across long distances (as opposed to just occurring in close contact situations of 6 feet or less). Eventually, the WHO and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognized this more explicitly in their scientific guidance.
But when the pandemic is over, we’ll still need better ventilation to prevent future outbreaks of respiratory diseases including coronaviruses, but also the cold and flu.
Last week, Morawska and a few dozen other air quality experts put out a manifesto of sorts in Science, calling for <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/689">“a paradigm shift to combat indoor respiratory infection.</a>”
“Governments have for decades promulgated a large amount of legislation and invested heavily in food safety, sanitation, and drinking water for public health purposes,” Morawska and her co-authors write. “By contrast, airborne pathogens and respiratory infections, whether seasonal influenza or Covid-19, are addressed fairly weakly, if at all, in terms of regulations, standards, and building design and operation, pertaining to the air we breathe.”
Recently, I spoke with Morawska about what the public needs to know about indoor air and how we can use carbon dioxide monitors to quickly determine ventilation quality in a space. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
You and your co-authors write there needs to be a “paradigm shift” in how we think about ventilation in infection prevention. What’s the shift?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
We compare the shift in thinking, and action, in relation to clean water. There was no clean water [standard] before a 19th-century movement started. People accepted that water could be contaminated, or they could get sick drinking water.
So there was a paradigm shift. This is the same thinking: We don’t have to accept that we get sick due to respiratory [viruses that spread easily in poorly ventilated indoor air]. We should do something about it.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
So we now have a centralized system for cleaning water and taking pathogens out of it: treatment plants, distribution. For air, there’s no centralized system for distributing it in a community the way there is for clean water. Is this problem a lot harder than water quality?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
It is harder, but it’s not unresolvable.
With water, the point is if water was contaminated, and then you get sick quickly after [drinking it], the whole neighborhood would make a big fuss about it. But you don’t know if the air in the building is contaminated or not. If you come down with a cold or flu three, four days later, you don’t know whether you contracted it in the building.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
So how could we do better in making sure air in indoor spaces isn’t contaminated?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
We don’t really need to come up with some new technologies. We just need to use them. The simplest (though perhaps over-simplistic) would be a display of CO2 concentration. [Either via handheld CO2 monitors or CO2 monitors mounted in a public, visible space.]
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
And CO2 concentration would tell you that there’s a lot of people breathing in this room and what they’re exhaling isn’t being cleared out very quickly?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
That’s right.
There are standards for CO2 concentrations, though in many buildings no one checks. But if it was mandated [to display CO2 concentrations in an indoor space] individuals could see the ventilation is bad.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
I would imagine there would have to be a lot of education to do there. I don’t have an intuitive sense of what a high CO2 concentration is. And it might be confusing, because CO2 is a few steps removed from the thing you actually want to know which is: Is this air contaminated?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
This technology has been used in Europe particularly in Germany for at least 10 years if not longer, in schools. It’s not just a CO2 meter, it also has this traffic light system: green, yellow, and red. The students and the teachers don’t have to look at what the concentration is, they see the color.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
And if you saw red, you’d open a window or something.
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
Yeah, you’d know there is a problem. But in places where there are no windows, either you leave, or go to the manager, boss, or whoever and say “there’s something wrong here.”
[Right now,] if anybody asks a restaurant owner, “what’s the ventilation here?” they will probably look strangely at them. So this question needs to be asked at all levels and in particular with the government.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
If we address air quality, we would have fewer sick days?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
If there’s a lower probability of infections, there will be fewer infections. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t [work].
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
On the most basic level, what should be the standard for ventilation in indoor spaces when it comes to preventing infections?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
The most important thing is the purpose of the standard. If you read the purpose of the ASHRAE standards [The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, which writes standards for building ventilation systems], the purpose doesn’t include infection prevention. So the most important one is simply, include infection prevention in the purpose of the standard.
There are already existing standards and ventilation guidelines, but none of them take into consideration infection transmission. So this has to be added.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
Does any country currently recognize this in their indoor air quality standards?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
Working with a very large group of colleagues from around the world, no one has ever said that ‘in our country, buildings are designed to take care of this.’ We can confidently say this is not taken into account anywhere.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
So how do the standards change?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
One way is to be prescriptive: saying each space requires this many [air] exchanges [exchanges meaning completely replacing the air in the room with fresh air], or this many liters per person per second. And there are already some recommendations or ideas about this.
But there are also tools for risk assessment that consider the specifics of the environment in terms of the number of people and in terms of the activities conducted there. This is important, because when we are sitting and quietly breathing in a library, we exhale significantly less than if we are talking or singing.
There won’t be one specific value for a gym because gyms vary in terms of size and number of people.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
It will cost money to implement this.
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
It will cost money in an initial investment, but as we try to assess the cost, this would be incomparably small to the cost of infection.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
Would there be downsides to these higher standards? I understand that if you’re bringing in more outside air to a building to ventilate it, you need to use more energy to heat or cool that air. Is there some acknowledgment that increasing ventilation and addressing these problems might also lead to more energy use?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
If we were just taking the fresh air, outdoor air — that has to be treated to be cooled down or heated up depending on the climate. This will significantly increase energy consumption. But sometimes there are hybrid systems that use natural ventilation and mechanical ventilation.
The [already heated or cooled] air can still be recirculated. It has to be properly filtered to remove the contaminants [i.e. viruses] so effectively we’re bringing back to the room the same air, but you are cleaning it.
<h4>Brian Resnick</h4>
Would it be a shame if we don’t use the pandemic as an instigator to make some of these changes?
<h4>Lidia Morawska</h4>
It would be more than a shame, I’d say it would be a tragedy. We don’t know how many lives could have been saved if there were proper ventilation systems in the buildings now.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22436152/covid-19-airborne-air-quality-ventilation">https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22436152/covid-19-airborne-air-quality-ventilation</a>

vox Covid-19 proved bad indoor air quality makes us sick. We can fix that.

If a waiter at a restaurant brought you a murky, stinky glass of water, that would be unacceptable. But yet, many waiters — at least before...

The human cost of Biden’s travel ban on India

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For the more than <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/indian-immigrants-united-states-2019">2.7 million</a> Indian immigrants who have put down roots in the US, President Joe Biden’s decision to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/us/politics/india-travel-ban.html">ban most travel from their home country</a> as its health system collapses under a surge of coronavirus cases has come at a price.
The ban, which went into effect on May 4, is similar to those imposed on travelers from other countries, including China and the UK. But Indians who have lived in the US for years told Vox that, as a result of the ban and visa processing delays, they have been stranded abroad, barred from bringing their family over, and unable to travel to India, even to care for or grieve for their parents, fearing that they will not be able to return. (Names have been changed to protect their immigration cases.)
There are narrow exemptions for American citizens and green card holders, their spouses, minor children or siblings, and the parents of citizens or green card holders who are under the age of 21. But people who don’t fall into those categories are essentially barred from traveling.
The justifications for such a ban have been debated. It is intended to protect the US from Covid-19 variants spreading in India and the country’s extraordinarily high caseloads. But it’s not clear how effective it will be, given that the travel ban does include exemptions and that the US does not have a robust system for quarantining upon entry.
“President Biden has promised to take every measure necessary to keep Americans safe and defeat the pandemic, and this was a step recommended by the medical experts, the COVID-19 Response Team, and National Security personnel across the US Government,” a White House official said in an email, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
For the US’s large Indian American community, it has effectively cut them off from family members back home who need their support more than ever. For some, it has also jeopardized their immigration status and prevented them from returning to the US, which they now consider home.
It’s another layer of complication on top of what was already a dysfunctional process of immigrating to the US for Indians, who often have to wait years if not decades for green cards.
“We are stuck with a broken process for people who have been completely legal from day one,” Rahul, a dual citizen living in Seattle, said. “It’s not a new story.”
Green card holders and US citizens still have the right to travel back and forth from India. But the process of bringing their family members to the US has been exceedingly difficult for months. Now that Biden has enacted a travel ban, Indians who had applied for visas and green cards will have to wait even longer.
For Rahul, who grew up in a suburb of Delhi, that delay means that he likely won’t be able to see his ailing mother one last time. He has been trying to bring her and his father over from India since 2018, when he became a US citizen and was able to begin the lengthy process of applying for their green cards.
Their applications were held up by pandemic-related visa restrictions enacted by the Trump administration, which prevented parents of US citizens from joining their children in the US, as well as backlogs caused by the pandemic. Biden <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/2/24/22300182/biden-trump-immigration-ban-visa-green-card">lifted those restrictions</a>, but now that he has imposed a travel ban on India, their applications are not likely to be approved in the near future.
His mother’s application has passed the initial stage of screening, but there hasn’t been any movement on his father’s case for a year. Had their applications been approved, Rahul might have been able to bring them to the US before India’s second wave of Covid-19 hit. But his parents are now stuck in the middle of the world’s worst outbreak, with cases topping <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indias-daily-covid-19-deaths-rise-by-record-4205-2021-05-12/">23 million</a>, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/mass-cremations-india-faces-tsunami-covid-19-deaths-n1265592">round-the-clock mass cremations</a>, and hospitals running out of oxygen, open ICU beds, and basic supplies.
After following US immigration laws and paying taxes for more than a decade, he feels let down by his adopted country and has even entertained the idea of leaving.
“Sometimes I just scratch my head. What’s the advantage of following the legal process? Might as well just cross the border and jump over,” Rahul said. “Had I been able to bring my parents here, things would have been very different. Now, they’re fighting for their lives.”
His father fell ill with the virus, but was able to recover, even at age 74. His mother, on the other hand, has been on a ventilator and under intensive care in the hospital. From afar, Rahul hasn’t been able to get through to the overwhelmed hospital staff to get updates on her condition. But he has been sending money to his family to pay for her medical care, as well as arranging grocery deliveries for his father, who has mobility issues.
Though he could travel back and forth between the US and India as a dual citizen, Rahul made the difficult decision not to get on a plane and see his mother. His father warned him against risking his own well-being in coming to India given that he has two young children at home who depend on him.
The decision is tearing him apart. He said he hasn’t been able to sleep, eat, or work for the past few weeks, and his children haven’t had his attention.
“It’s excessive, being torn between my own kids and my parents,” he said. “I’m here with such a tough decision that I might not see them ever again. I hope nobody else has to face it.”
While green card holders and US citizens are still allowed to travel from India to the US, many Indians with temporary visas, including H-1B visas for high-skilled workers, have been stranded abroad due to the travel ban. Now they have no idea when they will be able to return, which, in some cases, has jeopardized their employment and immigration status.
Denisha is an H-1B visa holder who arrived in the US a decade ago and has since settled in Boston. She was forced to return to Mumbai after her application to renew her visa, which expires after six years, was caught up in processing delays amid the pandemic. She needs an official at the US Consulate to stamp her visa in order for her to return, but that won’t happen for the foreseeable future due to the travel ban.
“It’s been a bureaucratic hell just making it through the immigration machine,” she said. “And this is coming from someone who’s trying to do everything right. I’m still at the risk of losing everything.”
Denisha is now paying for two apartments: one in Mumbai in the same apartment complex as her parents, and the other in Boston. She has been working remotely, still keeping East Coast hours and often working till 1 am. But her employer told her that if she isn’t able to come back to the US by mid-July, she will lose her job, and since her immigration status is tied to her job, she will lose her visa, too.
“I came to Mumbai with two suitcases,” she said. “Everything is in Boston. I have an apartment with all my belongings. I have a car that I just purchased a year and a half ago. I have loans. I have rent. If I lose this job, there’s no way for me to go back and I don’t know what to do with all of that. I am cut off from my life.”
As a queer woman who hasn’t come out to her father, she also fears having to remain in India, which only <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-45429664">decriminalized gay sex</a> in 2018. <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/web-exclusive/story/20190204-motn-same-sex-marriage-lgbt-rights-section-377-india-1439545-2019-01-25">Most people disapprove</a> of same-sex marriage, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has actively campaigned <a href="https://time.com/5926324/india-lgbtq-marriage-case/">against legalizing it</a>. For those reasons, she views her chosen family, the community she has created in Boston, as her true family.
“I left because I’m a queer woman. I can’t live in India. It’s illegal for me to just be who I am here, so it’s impossible for me to continue living here and it’s impossible for me to get back,” she said. “There’s a no acceptance even for straight couples who are from different castes. There is a constant fear of persecution.”
Given the status of the Covid-19 crisis in India, it’s not clear whether Biden will lift the ban in time for her to keep her job. There is a lawsuit in DC federal court challenging the “<a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/ys6d0skourhqnvr/Kinsley%20complaint_Redacted.pdf?dl=0">total, inescapable ban</a>” on temporary visa holders from India, as well as China, the Schengen Area, the UK and Ireland, Brazil, and South Africa. But it’s not clear whether the judgment in the case will come soon enough for Denisha.
“I can’t grieve for my nation because I am still just trying to sort my own life out. I don’t have the brain space for it,” Denisha said.
Pandemic-related visa processing delays and the travel ban have prevented Indians from being able to grieve with their family back home.
Anna came to the US about 15 years ago from Chennai, India, and after getting her PhD, she went on to work for a tech company in Seattle on an H-1B visa. She and her husband have since applied to become permanent residents, but they are facing a years-long wait before they are issued green cards due to lengthy backlogs.
Her father died suddenly of Covid-19 in October. He had chronic kidney disease, which put him at a higher risk of complications from virus. But after seeking medical care, he had initially appeared to be recovering and was discharged from the hospital without needing a ventilator. Once he arrived home, however, his condition quickly deteriorated.
Anna wanted to go back to India immediately to join her mother and brothers in mourning. But because her H-1B visa had expired and US consulates in India were not processing visa renewals, she had no guarantee that she would be able to return once she left the country.
Instead, she sought emergency permission to travel to India on the basis of her pending green card application. But at an appointment with an immigration officer in the US several months later, her petition was rejected.
“The officer essentially said, ‘Your father passed away in October. It’s not not really an emergency anymore,’” she said. “I honestly just started crying in front of the immigration officer.”
She tried to compensate by calling her family in India more often. But it wasn’t a substitute for being there in person, which she hopes will be a possibility later this year.
“It’s been about seven months, and I really want to just give my mom a hug,” she said. “The thing that was most painful for me was not being able to travel in that first month or so right after he passed because that’s when I really wanted to be there for them, for the family. ... I’ve learned to cherish the family I have.”
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22429083/biden-india-travel-ban-covid-crisis">https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22429083/biden-india-travel-ban-covid-crisis</a>

vox The human cost of Biden’s travel ban on India

For the more than 2.7 million Indian immigrants who have put down roots in the US, President Joe Biden’s decision to ban most travel from ...

The FCC’s high-profile bet on Elon Musk

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Derrin Carelli’s <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/lp3tkb/i_cannot_believe_this_is_a_reality_internet_at/">Reddit post</a> couldn’t be a better advertisement for Starlink, the satellite internet service brought to you by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
In a short video, Carelli shows off the breathtaking view from his cabin, nearly 11,000 feet up in the Colorado Rockies. The camera pans down to a tiny satellite dish perched on the edge of a cliff, then Carelli walks into his cabin, where he taps on his iPad. A YouTube video of Joe Rogan interviewing Musk comes up and loads immediately. High-speed, low-latency internet in the middle of nowhere. Carelli gives the camera a thumbs up.
Carelli’s cabin is truly off the grid — he told Recode that cell service (and the nearest grocery store) is 30 miles away, and the nearest landline is five. There are no power lines, no water lines, no sewer hookup, and no roads. Carelli has to hike about a mile just to reach his cabin, which he calls Wolf Lodge. He wanted that isolation, but he also wanted to be able to communicate with the outside world in case there was an emergency.
But, like millions of Americans who live in remote areas, he didn’t have many options. There was no terrestrial broadband. No 5G. Satellite internet was too expensive and slow. That’s a problem the government has been trying to <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/9/10/21426810/internet-access-covid-19-chattanooga-municipal-broadband-fcc">solve for decades</a>; the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has made it <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/about-fcc/fcc-initiatives/bridging-digital-divide-all-americans">one of its mandates</a>. And the agency has awarded SpaceX a lot of money to help close the digital divide with its new Starlink internet service, which is slowly rolling out to a small group of beta testers.
When Carelli heard about Starlink’s so-called “<a href="https://www.satellitetoday.com/broadband/2020/10/28/spacex-launches-better-than-nothing-public-starlink-beta-with-99-month-service/">better than nothing</a>” beta program, he says he became “obsessed with everything Starlink,” even watching for its satellites in the night sky and “giggling like a little kid as they went by” while he waited for his chance to become a beta tester. In February, he got his satellite dish: Dishy. (Yes, the company assigned a cutesy name to it. Dishy’s full name is Dishy McFlatface.) And it’s safe to say that Carelli certainly thinks Starlink is better than nothing.
“The feeling I got from plugging in Dishy and receiving internet at my cabin is similar to what it must have been like for cavemen to discover fire,” Carelli said. “A feeling of ‘Wow, civilization is advancing!’”
Carelli is one of more than 10,000 Starlink beta testers globally. Another 500,000 people have signed up and paid their $99 deposits to get the service when it’s available in their area, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/04/spacex-over-500000-orders-for-starlink-satellite-internet-service.html">according to the company</a>. Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1389691848906747905">tweeted</a> that he anticipates having “several million” users in urban areas as well as rural ones — though he also acknowledged it will be a “challenge” to serve them all. The Starlink subreddit Carelli posted his video to is full of stories similar to his: people whose remote location made it difficult or impossible to get adequate broadband internet before, and who are very happy with the service they’re getting from Starlink now. They post photos and videos of unboxing and setting up their new Dishys, screenshots of internet speed tests, and, in one case, a poem dedicated to their “crappy rural DSL provider” that they could finally leave behind now that they had Starlink.
But not everyone is thrilled with Starlink or SpaceX, which did not respond to numerous requests for comment. <a href="https://www.theverge.com/22435030/starlink-satellite-internet-spacex-review">Some</a> <a href="https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/starlink">reviews</a> complain that the service is unreliable and can be slow. Astronomers are concerned that the thousands of satellites that Starlink and similar services plan to deploy will obscure their vision of the sky; others worry that the satellites will add to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20991798/space-debris-low-earth-orbit-satellites-mega-constellations-collisions-graph">space</a> that is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/peter-ward-consequential-frontier-excerpt/596641/">already</a> too <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/07/business/rocket-lab-debris-launch-traffic-scn/index.html">crowded</a>, and increase the risk of collisions. Rivals have accused SpaceX of overpromising Starlink’s capabilities to get nearly $1 billion in government subsidies from the FCC, money that was part of a program that has also been controversial.
It remains to be seen if Starlink can live up to its potential. But it certainly has a lot of potential.
We’ve had satellite internet for decades now, as my colleague Adam Clark Estes <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/9/26/21457530/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-satellite-broadband-amazon-project-kuiper-viasat">explained last fall</a>. Traditional satellite internet, provided by companies like Viasat and HughesNet, puts a few satellites in high Earth orbit — about 22,000 miles up — orbiting it at the same rate as the planet rotates. This is called a geosynchronous, or GEO, orbit. At that height, just a few of them can cover most of the Earth’s surface, and they’re what many people in America who don’t have terrestrial internet have to rely on to get connected.
But GEO satellite internet has a reputation for being slow and expensive, and it wasn’t designed for data-heavy real-time applications where low latency is crucial. The distance that signals have to cover from the Earth to the satellite and back causes a significant lag for things like Zoom meetings, video games, and streaming videos. So many of the things people use the internet for today — things that are essential for school, work, even health care — are difficult or impossible to do. And that puts those people at a distinct disadvantage to those who do have high-speed, low-latency internet. The pandemic made that disadvantage very apparent.
Starlink is different. SpaceX will put thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit, or LEO. Most of them are about 350 miles up. Here, they form an interconnected constellation around the planet. Because they’re closer to the users, data has less distance to cover and the lag is significantly reduced. It’s speedy, too: SpaceX says it can provide 100 megabits per second download speeds and 20 Mbps upload to users and plans to bump that up to 1 gigabit per second or even 10 Gbps. Compare that to HughesNet, which only offers 25 down and 3 up — the FCC’s bare minimum standard for broadband — and Viasat, which offers up to 100 Mbps download speeds for its most expensive plan but only 3 Mbps up.
SpaceX isn’t the only company trying this. Among its competitors are Amazon’s <a href="https://www.govtech.com/news/amazon-internet-program-project-kuiper-to-launch-satellite.html">Project Kuiper</a> and OneWeb, which recently emerged from bankruptcy. But Starlink is currently the only LEO satellite broadband service up, running, and beaming internet to residential customers: a proof of concept that’s actively being added to. There are about 1,500 Starlink satellites up there now, and plans for a constellation of as many as <a href="https://www.space.com/spacex-30000-more-starlink-satellites.html">42,000</a> of them (in the nearer future, SpaceX plans for an array of <a href="https://spacenews.com/fcc-approves-starlink-license-modification/">4,408 satellites</a>).
The LEO constellation concept isn’t new, but we’re seeing multiple efforts now because it’s become cheaper to produce satellites and get them into orbit, technology has advanced, and, the demand — the need, really — for better satellite internet and universal connectivity has never been higher, Jeff Loucks, executive director of the Deloitte’s Center for Technology, Media & Telecommunications, told Recode.
For SpaceX, which owns and operates the rockets that send its Starlink satellites into space — and has made them partially reusable — getting into orbit is even cheaper. Starlink could be a nice little revenue source for SpaceX. Or it could be a massive drain on the company’s finances.
One government agency has already decided that Starlink has enough promise to give it funding, so some of your money is riding on this. SpaceX was of the biggest beneficiaries of the FCC’s recent $9.4 billion <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/implementing-rural-digital-opportunity-fund-rdof-auction">Rural Digital Opportunity Fund</a> (RDOF) auction, winning nearly $900 million to provide low latency internet service with “above baseline” speed (defined as 100 Mbps download and 20 upload) to roughly 640,000 locations across 35 states.
It was a surprisingly large amount awarded to a company that was given a major break <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/10/spacex-gets-fcc-approval-to-bid-in-16-billion-rural-broadband-auction/">at the last minute</a>, when the FCC decided that it qualified for the low latency tier. That gave SpaceX a huge advantage over the traditional satellite internet companies (Viasat got nothing; HughesNet got just $1.3 million) and even some terrestrial providers who needed more money to build out connections to those locations.
But that award was also decided when the FCC was chaired by Trump appointee <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/11/30/21726645/ajit-pai-fcc-chairman-leaving-net-neutrality">Ajit Pai</a>, whose tenure was marked by a pro-free-market, anti-regulation approach that matches well with <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-regulators-crash-11619624227">how Musk does business</a>.
“Pai decided to go all-in on this,” Harold Feld, senior vice president at the open internet advocacy group Public Knowledge, told Recode. “When you don’t want to actually do anything in terms of regulating the existing incumbents, you bet on new technologies.”
The FCC is now led by acting chair Jessica Rosenworcel, who previously criticized the RDOF auction, saying that the maps used to determine which areas needed high-speed broadband internet access weren’t accurate.
“We are spending billions of dollars without the facts we need,” Rosenworcel <a href="https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-362739A1.pdf">wrote in a partial dissent</a> in February 2020. “We have not done a single thing to fix our dubious broadband data or address our inaccurate broadband maps.”
As some have <a href="https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/insights-opinions/space-x-broadband-coming-empty-traffic-island-near-you">pointed out</a>, the FCC awarded funds to companies to cover areas that don’t appear to need internet service or that already have sufficient access to it. To give just one example: I was surprised to find that the FCC deemed one of my hometown malls eligible for RDOF subsidies (though not the surrounding homes or hospital), as well as a small section of my other hometown mall, most of which was its parking lot. SpaceX was the winning bidder for both of them, granted several thousands of dollars in subsidies. Neither is in an area anyone would consider to be rural or remote.
These concerns are echoed by some lawmakers, too. Shortly before Pai stepped down from the FCC as President Biden entered office, a bicameral, bipartisan group <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Bicameral%20Letter%20on%20RDOF.pdf">sent him a letter</a> asking that the RDOF awardees be thoroughly vetted in a transparent process before any disbursements are made — which the FCC told Recode it intends to do.
“FCC staff are carefully reviewing long-form applications for the technical, financial, and operational capabilities to make sure that the winning bidders can deliver on their commitments,” spokesperson Will Wiquist told Recode. “This review will be completed before any support is disbursed.”
But the commission did not respond to follow-up questions about reexamining the locations it deemed eligible to receive subsidies (specifically, my hometown malls and their parking lots), or about when the funds will begin to be disbursed.
There are also <a href="https://www.benton.org/blog/fccs-rural-digital-opportunity-fund-auction-was-supposed-significantly-reduce-americas-rural">concerns</a> that areas awarded to SpaceX now won’t get any investment in terrestrial internet, since the subsidy those providers say they need to make such connections cost-efficient isn’t there. That’s fine if the location is so remote that no terrestrial internet company was ever going to spend the money to connect it anyway. It might not be so fine if it means your home is now relying on Starlink to emerge from beta mode, work correctly, and be affordable, when a subsidy to a terrestrial provider would have gotten you connected much sooner.
“I think a billion dollars is not necessarily a bad bet,” Feld said. “But at the same time, we need to be pushing for a much bigger investment in rural infrastructure. … We need to be much more supportive of having fiber [internet] to the home, even in rural areas.”
He added: “I’m glad they’re doing it. I support it. What I worry about is people thinking that this means that we’ve solved the problem when we really haven’t, and we don’t even know if this is going to be as good as it says it’s going to be.”
In Starlink’s favor, possibly, is that <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/21557495/biden-fcc-digital-divide-net-neutrality-section-230">the Biden-era FCC</a> has said closing the digital divide is a priority, with President Biden <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22363028/biden-infrastructure-broadband-american-jobs-plan">allotting $100 billion</a> to connect all Americans to affordable high-speed internet in his $2 trillion infrastructure plan. LEO internet could help with this, especially for the remote places where terrestrial broadband is just not a reality.
“The Internet Society would prefer to see funding made available to new service providers, including community and municipal networks,” Mark Buell, the Internet Society’s regional VP for North America, told Recode. “However, for communities where fiber may not be possible, LEO satellites can work with community-driven solutions.”
If Starlink can’t ultimately deliver on the promises it made to the FCC, it wouldn’t be the first time a government program to get internet to under- and unserved areas — or <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/ywkn4b/study-throwing-taxpayer-money-at-giant-isps-hasnt-fixed-americas-broadband-problem">one of the companies</a> it gave money to — fell short. The government has been trying for years to connect the country through various initiatives and policies. Clearly, it has not. RDOF’s predecessor, the Connect America Fund, saw at least two established terrestrial internet providers that were given hundreds of millions of dollars, Frontier and CenturyLink, <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/01/centurylink-frontier-took-fcc-cash-failed-to-deploy-all-required-broadband/">repeatedly</a> <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/centurylink-frontier-missed-fcc-broadband-deadlines-in-dozens-of-states/">fail</a> to meet deadlines. Despite this, both companies were awarded hundreds of millions of dollars more at the RDOF auction.
But there are already concerns about whether SpaceX and Starlink will be able to deliver on all their promises once the service finally emerges from its limited beta mode.
Competitors <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-satellite-internet-project-is-too-risky-rivals-say-11618827368">have been vocal</a> about perceived shortcomings in the company and its technology, with several of them — including Viasat, Amazon, DISH Network, HughesNet, and OneWeb — protesting SpaceX’s recent request to the FCC to modify its license so its satellites could operate in an even lower orbit. Their concerns were largely waved off or left unaddressed by the FCC when it <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-grants-spacexs-satellite-broadband-modification-application">decided in April</a> to grant SpaceX’s request, saying it was “in the public interest” and that the modification would “improve the experience for users of the SpaceX service, including in often-underserved polar regions.”
As Viasat pointed out in filings provided to the FCC and viewed by Recode, Starlink isn’t consistently meeting its 100/20 goal, according to <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/news/tested-spacexs-starlink-satellite-internet-service-is-fast-but-itll-cost">some</a> <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlink-here-are-the-download-speeds-you-can-expect-across-north-america#:~:text=The%20investigation%20shows%20that%20Starlink's,California%2C%22%20the%20company%20says.">speed tests</a>, and Viasat’s research indicates that Starlink will not be able to surpass various legal, technical, and economic hurdles.
“I’ve been in the industry for 33 years, and I’ve seen many systems come and go,” Viasat’s head of global government affairs, John Janka, said. “And I would say it isn’t the first time I’ve heard these pie-in-the-sky promises. … Everybody got excited. And then they couldn’t deliver.”
While it’s easy enough to dismiss Viasat’s complaints as those of a jealous rival — as Musk <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1343880709157474304">pretty much has</a> — Starlink’s competition isn’t the only one making them. The Verge’s Nilay Patel, who was part of the beta tester program, said in a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/22435030/starlink-satellite-internet-spacex-review">recent review</a> that Starlink was “unreliable, inconsistent, and foiled by even the nearest suggestion of trees.” Sometimes, Patel said, it worked as promised. But a lot of times, it didn’t. And while this is a beta test, Starlink already has about a third of its initial planned network of satellites in the sky, which are servicing just a fraction of the number of customers SpaceX promised the FCC it would. It seems the company still has a lot of work to do.
There have also been <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22396388/space-x-elon-musk-starlink-too-bright-astronomy-stars-pollution">concerns from astronomers</a> that the number of satellites and their proximity to Earth required for constellations like Starlink will make the night sky too bright or block their view. We could be looking, literally, at tens of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit if SpaceX, OneWeb, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper get their way, or hundreds of thousands of other companies join in. And this vastly increases the amount of <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/centers/hq/library/find/bibliographies/space_debris">space debris</a> and the chances of a collision, especially if those satellites <a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-10-starlink-satellites.html">malfunction</a> and can’t implement their collision avoidance systems. SpaceX and OneWeb’s satellites have <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/9/22374262/oneweb-spacex-satellites-dodged-potential-collision-orbit-space-force">already had</a> one near miss (although, <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-there-was-no-near-collision-between-starlink-and-oneweb-satellites">according to SpaceX</a>, OneWeb was exaggerating the threat).
“There is something called the Kessler effect, which is essentially a collision chain reaction that renders space non-usable due to it being filled with debris,” Gabriel Rebeiz, an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) fellow, told Recode, adding that it’s “not yet clear at this point” what the effect of so many more satellites in that orbit will be.
In the meantime, LEO is becoming increasingly crowded. SpaceX’s most recent launch, on May 15, added 52 more satellites to it. It came just a week after a May 9 launch of 60 satellites.
Even if Starlink can provide access, affordability might remain an issue — both for the customers and for SpaceX. Beta testers pay $499 for a Dishy and $99 a month for unlimited data. That’s cheaper than other satellite internet services (depending on how much data you use), but it’s still not cheap. There’s also no guarantee Starlink’s prices won’t go up from there. The sheer number of satellites LEO internet needs and their relatively short life span means SpaceX will constantly be replacing its satellites to keep its constellation up and running. The discount it gets from using its own rockets may not cover the expense of constantly having to launch them.
“These are pretty advanced pieces of equipment, and they’re relatively new,” Loucks, of Deloitte, said. “It just remains to be seen how robust and reliable they’re going to be.”
Meanwhile, SpaceX is already losing money on Dishys. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/06/spacexs-shotwell-no-plan-for-tiered-starlink-internet-pricing.html">said in April</a> that they cost the company $1,500 each to make, even though it charges the consumer $499. In other words, SpaceX loses $1,000 on every Dishy. If and when Starlink scales up to the millions of customers SpaceX hopes to have all over the world, those costs may well go down and the company will have its path to financial viability. But, as with many things Starlink, it’s still an open question — <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/4ayz3d/spacexs-starlink-wont-fix-americas-broken-broadband-market">some research from last year says</a> that Starlink’s constellation simply won’t have the capacity to service even 500,000 customers with 100 Mbps speed internet simultaneously, let alone several million.
Musk also tweeted that Starlink was not yet financially viable and that he could only “hope” it would be able to do what previous attempts at LEO satellite internet couldn’t: not go bankrupt.
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none">
SpaceX needs to pass through a deep chasm of negative cash flow over the next year or so to make Starlink financially viable. Every new satellite constellation in history has gone bankrupt. We hope to be the first that does not.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1359024384200101888?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 9, 2021</a></blockquote>
</div>
Points for honesty, but it’s not exactly a vote of confidence.
In the meantime, other LEO and GEO satellite internet companies are trying to play catch-up, either by getting their own constellations up or by improving on their existing services with new generations of higher capacity satellites.
As for Carelli, his enthusiasm has not wavered, three months into his beta test. He’s hoping to use that service to livestream a sunset from Wolf Lodge on his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/WolfLodge33/featured">YouTube channel</a>. But he’s being held back not by internet service but by YouTube’s rules: He doesn’t yet have the 1,000-subscriber minimum to livestream. In the meantime, he says he’s been “really satisfied” with Starlink’s service.
“The greatest pioneer living today and the person working most toward helping our species become a multi-planetary species is Elon Musk,” Carelli said. “When it comes to the price of Starlink, I’d gladly pay three times what it currently costs.”
Now it remains to be seen just what that cost will be.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22431261/starlink-spacex-elon-musk-fcc-satellite-internet">https://www.vox.com/recode/22431261/starlink-spacex-elon-musk-fcc-satellite-internet</a>

vox The FCC’s high-profile bet on Elon Musk

Derrin Carelli’s Reddit post couldn’t be a better advertisement for Starlink, the satellite internet service brought to you by Elon Musk’s...

Dodger Stadium’s violent origin story

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZJ7EwkOWc2cL29r2yEYMTfptJTc=/0x38:1920x1043/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22518981/Thumb_clean.jpg" /></div>
Before Los Angeles had Dodger Stadium, it had Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop. They were three neighborhoods that made up the thriving, predominantly Mexican American community in what is now known as Chavez Ravine. And it was one of few places, due to redlining and racist land covenants, that Mexican American families could buy property and build wealth in Los Angeles.
But things changed in the late 1940s. The city characterized the area as “blighted,” setting the stage for a decade-long battle by residents to preserve the community against threats of eviction. The majority of residents were forced out so the city could build a public housing project. They were given little to no compensation for their properties — and were also told they could live in the public housing project once it was built. But ultimately, after public housing was deemed “a socialist plot” amid the Red Scare politics of the 1950s, the city’s plans for a public housing project fell through. Instead, the final, violent evictions of the 1950s cleared the way for Dodger Stadium.
The result is a complicated legacy. Through interviews with several former residents of the area, we explore the story of their neighborhoods in the video above. It’s one that’s often missing from the history of Los Angeles and has created a double-edged relationship for some Dodger fans.
If you want to learn more about the story, check out the oral history and archival project, “<a href="https://www.chavezravinela.com/home">An Unfinished Story</a>,” Eric Nusbaum’s book, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51205963-stealing-home">Stealing Home</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/10/31/561246946/remembering-the-communities-buried-under-center-field">an NPR article</a> on Chavez Ravine, or listen to 99 Percent Invisible’s <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/beneath-the-ballpark/">episode</a> on Chavez Ravine.
This is the second installment in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ8cMiYb3G5fR2kt0L4Nihvel4pEDw9od">Missing Chapter’</a>s season two, where we revisit underreported and often overlooked moments of the past to give context to the present. Our first season covers stories of racial injustice, identity, and erasure. If you have an idea for a topic we should investigate in the series, send it via <a href="http://bit.ly/2RhjxMy">this form</a>!
You can find this video and all of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLXo7UDZvByw2ixzpQCufnA">Vox’s videos on YouTube</a>.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2021/5/17/22439387/dodger-stadium-chavez-ravine-history">https://www.vox.com/videos/2021/5/17/22439387/dodger-stadium-chavez-ravine-history</a>

vox Dodger Stadium’s violent origin story

Before Los Angeles had Dodger Stadium, it had Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop. They were three neighborhoods that made up the thriving, pre...

Mourning my grandmother — and India — from across the ocean

I never did manage to say “I love you” to my grandmother before she died last November, but my aunt read her <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2020/10/insults-are-my-familys-love-language.html">an essay</a> I wrote about our family as she lay in bed, down to skin draped over bones, a body ravaged by cancer. The day before she died, she had called my father, her son-in-law, in a panic that she was falling. I overheard the call, overheard him telling her not to be scared, and I cowered in the next room, also trying not to be scared. It was the middle of the night for her in India, the middle of a winter afternoon for us in Ithaca, New York. My two toddlers built a Magna-Tiles castle in front of me. I reached for them as I listened. They shrugged off my hands.
Like so many families during this excruciating last year, we had a video funeral — our family in India by my grandmother’s body, the rest of us scattered around the world from America to Australia. We watched in tiny boxes. I caught a glimpse of her body covered with white cloth on a stretcher on the ground, waiting to be loaded into the ambulance to the crematorium. For a few moments, nobody was there with her body. She was alone.
I lowered my screen, rushed down the stairs away from my family, and cried like an animal. I didn’t return to the video funeral. I couldn’t stand it. I sat alone in the dark dining room, fairy lights that we had set up for Diwali and Christmas twinkling cheerfully behind me. A few hours later, I looked at my screen again. The body takes hours to burn naturally, and it was almost down to ash on the funeral pyre as dawn broke. As the sun rose in India, it was bedtime in America.
I went to sleep and awoke knowing, intellectually, that the world now existed without one of my favorite people.
But I have not grieved. The pandemic life I am currently leading never had my grandmother in it. But my non-pandemic life was filled with her. And now I am vaccinated and a return to non-pandemic life was starting to come into sight. But the problem with a pandemic is that it isn’t over for anyone until it’s over for everyone, and right now, for Indians around the world, it’s not over.
Every day, I am greeted with endless images from India that remind me of my grandmother — bodies wrapped in sheets, faces invisible, everything tucked away, lest the virus escape. The cremation grounds and burial grounds are overflowing, lines of dead bodies wait outside in the heat, loved ones and workers wear PPE and grieve and work in fear. I look at the images and my own experience immediately becomes both intimate and vast, incomprehensible from a distance either way.
<div class="c-float-right">
<aside><q>Every day, I am greeted with endless images from India that remind me of my grandmother — bodies wrapped in sheets, faces invisible, everything tucked away, lest the virus escape</q></aside>
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My Indian friends around the world and I share stories, condolences, updates, all of us isolated, little islands of sadness around the world. We are all afraid. But many of us are also in countries that are starting to see the end. Vaccines course through our bodies, and our local friends invite us out for unmasked drinks as beautiful spring weather rolls in. We have one foot in hope, one in dread, and we hover in between, lonely.
The last few years, my husband, children, and I had been living in Mumbai, India, where our house still sits empty since we left last year for New York, about the same time that Covid-19 hit. We had optimistically, foolishly, expected to be back within a month. Back then, my grandmother was living in Delhi, less than a two-hour flight away, and I saw her at least every two months.
I would fly to her, she would fly to me. When I reached Delhi by 6 pm on the first day, we would both be wearing her colorful kaftans, drinking wine, eating fried fish, and catching up. Like all good grandmothers, she gossiped about others but defended our family to the bone.
She had lived in the same home since 1986, and I grew up next door. I got my first period on her bed, waking up terrified at the large red stains on my yellow nightdress. She had wireless internet installed at her house so I could work. I set up an iPad for her so she could do video calls with the rest of our family around the world. If I slept past 8 am, she would speak loudly to the maid just outside my door so I would wake up and we could have a day out.
Many evenings, she volunteered at the community library in the housing complex. There, the only books that were new were mine — my grandmother had given them stacks of my novels, making sure all the neighbors read my work. In the housing complex and in the library, we would see all the people I have known since I was 3. Some of them now had walkers, many had hearing aids and could still barely hear, the children and grandchildren had moved on to different cities and countries. Spouses had died, tragedies had been survived, joy had been experienced.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1621281722_7439_2678" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22520053,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/b-8_GgsUiixpgmLGKGeQN5GglJg=/0x0:1024x768/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fRNthGmd_VOgnuveGkFJnCTmqRo=/0x0:1024x768/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tmW9dmOHc3cm6Q8pamvVVqTemdw=/0x0:1024x768/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/n494OTSsm9AahVHUoND1PD-vQS0=/0x0:1024x768/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/93-31JTwTuPZLIYQLIUO7i08NGY=/0x0:1024x768/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/f648REeNYYQYpw91IyFoev7iDAM=/0x0:1024x768/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3i2R0FsBivQHd-cpGjbYvjiUN3Q=/0x0:1024x768/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VsHcdep9DSM_gsBAOKR4hAdjBbk=/0x0:1024x768/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fxpMatsRMuzeiBLpMqYCLykN_cg=/0x0:1024x768/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="1024" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HcA_nC1iISO1_FKu8EoHmd0fyPw=/0x0:1024x768/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Lh3muwsZ1yAbW3AZ80mbOofP5s0=/0x0:1024x768/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/RFwfVghsepY-v1iQRf-D8j2qHgE=/0x0:1024x768/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/STKs7TlPvZ9zuMbtmulyik-sHrQ=/0x0:1024x768/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ifpGpgvIuS3Ebm8L8Y__nFqYYxA=/0x0:1024x768/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xhp7hRsS0V0bsci5raVlkHSAP2Q=/0x0:1024x768/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/996tsWnSMeYoessg4JzUUGwIrsY=/0x0:1024x768/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9XK2xkT_O5eTopkh7BYKT_nbzRk=/0x0:1024x768/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zCG-tPpwARHIZLRsOUs4jV184NI=/0x0:1024x768/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/us1srlyGOCKKFEQUbDbJA6yHQs8=/0x0:1024x768/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:1024x768):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520053/image0.jpeg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>The author and her grandmother in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 2006.</figcaption>
<cite>Courtesy of Diksha Basu</cite></figure>
This housing complex, this world, these people, are a part of my blood and bones. And now all that ties me to it is my grandmother’s empty home, gathering dust, waiting for us to be able to travel safely to India to do what? Empty it out, I suppose. I am desperate to get there first and to get there alone, but that privilege and burden belongs to my mother and her sisters, the immediate kin. Grief, unfortunately, has a hierarchy.
They have also grieved from a distance. My family is close in many ways but reserved in just as many, and we have not spoken much about our mourning. I have shouted my grandmother’s name into a gorge on a hike. I have cried in my husband’s arms and then wiped my tears and faced my parents. They have done the same. But none of us say any words. I text my brother about it sometimes. He texts me back. He is also in this horrible limbo, unsure where his grief is. But when we call each other, we share jokes and professional updates. I come close to having the conversation with an aunt in Texas. She tells me about how she’s been painting more in memory of her mother. I tell her I taught myself knitting in the same memory. We both talk about how much we want to be like her. My kids barge in and throw a ball at my head, and I hang up, my aunt and I promising each other we’ll chat more regularly.
Every day now is now marked by a series of disjointed conversations and thoughts. A friend in Delhi sends me a WhatsApp message that a common friend, our age, is in the ICU. I look at my phone, unsure how to respond, and set it down before joining a Zoom work meeting in which we all raise a toast to vaccines and a better summer ahead. Another friend messages me asking if I have any contacts at the hospital in Mumbai where our younger daughter was born. I don’t, I tell him, but I send him the number of the doctor who did the delivery and tell him to message her. Then I remember that I haven’t checked on her these past few weeks ... I hope she and her family are all okay.
The last time I went to see my grandmother was in early 2020, just as the pandemic hit the news. We went out to lunch at her favorite Café Lota at the Crafts Museum. It was quite a distance from the car to the café, and the guard asked us if we would like a wheelchair. I turned to my grandmother, who immediately scolded the guard and said, “I’m not that old yet.” She held my hand and walked all the way, and we ordered far too much food. I left the next morning, fingering the mask in my pocket, slightly worried about this new illness but with no idea of what was to come. I promised her I would try to visit again the following month.
“Or maybe I’ll come,” she said. “Spend some time with my great-granddaughters.”
She pressed a thousand rupees into my palm. No matter how old or successful her grandchildren became, she would always pay for our taxi ride to the airport after we visited her.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1621281722_8247_2679" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22520057,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Mwo-lsu862j-m5lVZ6OChTs8_7c=/0x0:640x640/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bU_U1Ep34PZYlv3GtrS2bdnb3Cg=/0x0:640x640/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FX67Nqlv9kvQe437ITzouURWCRI=/0x0:640x640/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/N64a_-DEz_F2cgvQ-veKl3_t0Vc=/0x0:640x640/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bwWu1DCO_7r6WX8Fr0b6V6jA5TA=/0x0:640x640/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ZhS7MsnDOYmr38OQU7qMBbjt8Mc=/0x0:640x640/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tR2QCZAaiKuQVnMqq3jcyJVEL8I=/0x0:640x640/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/D2KLgwuEFefFfKySG6brZk5YphI=/0x0:640x640/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/eS0NzcdjPwb-qBDbA6E-K6k8rWk=/0x0:640x640/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="640" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9Y6YOByJuNlPt9quLXssyAGss2k=/0x0:640x640/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kmQxisUk2vNxk5EnM14sY6IfSmA=/0x0:640x640/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6-ukDHcdRMXOgnPxxkXynQPPOpU=/0x0:640x640/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8Oc_vN4D_dOueIEj0hb2ecniTQ0=/0x0:640x640/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/OV_LBlLc2nRE2RHfiEhr6uNh2u4=/0x0:640x640/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GSA_ZlbC3eUoJ_UKJtpjn1RP_1o=/0x0:640x640/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8Qtz-E-YobOzBdaUoT0c2asM8ds=/0x0:640x640/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zrCHIHZ3PM-sCpTWjuVks47WmtU=/0x0:640x640/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-_EyaE_J5U2JEGaxBVpL6osOlAo=/0x0:640x640/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HDsmuN4FqO5pxBYa1nr-NE4n-Ng=/0x0:640x640/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:640x640):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22520057/image0__1_.jpeg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>The author (center), her grandmother, and mother in Manhattan in 2017.</figcaption>
<cite>Courtesy of Diksha Basu</cite></figure>
Then the world came to a halt. Now it’s slowly getting back in motion and nothing has changed and everything has changed and my grandmother is dead.
Two months ago, my husband and I whispered in the darkness that maybe it was time to get back home. India seemed under control, we were vaccinated, our children are low-risk. Let’s go back to Mumbai, we said.
I think I want to go to my grandmother’s house alone, I said. Once we’re settled, I could go to Delhi for a few nights and ...
I trailed off. Stay in my grandmother’s house?
I need to think about it, I said.
I meant I needed to think about where I would stay in Delhi, but my husband thought I meant I needed to think about whether or not we were ready to return to India. We fell asleep, woke up, and the children had urgent and constant needs. We didn’t book tickets and a few weeks later, India’s second Covid-19 wave came in crashing like a tsunami.
I sleep restlessly all night, waiting nervously for messages from loved ones like I did just months ago for messages from my aunts sitting at my grandmother’s bedside.
I feel guilty that I can’t be there. I feel guilty that I am safe. I feel guilty that I’m grateful.
I will return to an India completely changed. There will be more empty apartments, more empty chairs at family dinners. I will return to friends still struggling with long Covid, friends left without parents and parents-in-law. I don’t know when I will return but eventually, once we settle in and get over the jet lag, I will go to Delhi and the library to see my grandmother’s friends, those who survive the pandemic. Some have already died.
They will hug me and tell me they miss her and I’ll nod. To comfort me they’ll say at least she died of cancer, and not alone at home breathless with Covid. She was one of the lucky ones, they’ll say. At least she didn’t have to wait for hours to be cremated.
I’ll promise them that I’ll still visit often, but I know that I won’t. In my mind, I will promise them all that I will write about them — in some form or another, I will keep them all alive. With my grandmother gone, my own words are all I have left of that life.
<a href="https://twitter.com/dikshabasu">Diksha Basu</a> is the author of the novels The Windfall and Destination Wedding.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/first-person/22436498/india-covid-19-pandemic-crisis">https://www.vox.com/first-person/22436498/india-covid-19-pandemic-crisis</a>

vox Mourning my grandmother — and India — from across the ocean

I never did manage to say “I love you” to my grandmother before she died last November, but my aunt read her an essay I wrote about our fam...

Recent Singapore Virus Cases Tied To India-Dominant Variant

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Recent Singapore Virus Cases Tied To India-Dominant Variant" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-05/08dtomj4_singapore-coronavirus-afp_625x300_17_May_21.jpg" title="Recent Singapore Virus Cases Tied To India-Dominant Variant" /></div>
People wearing face masks walk along the promenade at Marina Bay in Singapore. (FILE)
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The highly transmissible strain of Covid-19 that surfaced in India has become more prominent among Singapore's growing number of unlinked cases, in a sign that hidden chains of transmission of the variant have existed for some time.
Of the 17 unlinked cases identified on Sunday, six patients whose ages range from 29 to 57 years old preliminarily tested positive for the strain known as B.1.617, according to updated Ministry of Health data published overnight. Among them is a driver who was tested for the virus after developing a runny nose, an auxiliary police officer who had body aches, and an unemployed Malaysian national who saw a doctor after experiencing fever and cough. Among them, two had gotten their first vaccine dose already.
There have also been cases tied to the variant detected in India in the infection clusters seen at the country's airport and a large public hospital.
All in, Singapore reported 38 new cases of Covid-19 infection in the community on Sunday, the highest number in more than a year. The spike in unlinked local cases -- which increased to 32 cases in the past week from six cases the week before -- comes as Singapore returns to the lockdown-like conditions it last imposed a year ago, banning dining-in and limiting gatherings to two people. While the outbreak is smaller than the one last year centered on migrant workers, it is being driven by new variants, which are causing fierce new waves and outpacing vaccination progress in many places around the world.
On Sunday, Singapore further announced it will stop most in-person school classes this week, with its education minister saying some of the variants appear to attack younger children.
Countries like the UK have said the strain could lead to a major surge in cases and is accelerating its vaccine rollout. Meanwhile, Singapore's inoculation pace has been limited by supplies. The city-state is now studying holding off the second vaccine shot so that more people can get at least the first dose.
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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="tm94m748" class="lozad" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-05/tm94m748_singapore-bloomberg-chart_625x300_17_May_21.jpg" /></div>
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"If supply is limited, then giving more people a single dose while waiting for more supplies is a good strategy because the protection from the mRNA vaccines after one dose is quite high, said Raina MacIntyre, a professor of biosecurity at the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
Vaccination Pace
She co-authored a study last month looking at requirements for herd immunity in Australia's New South Wales, which has a population size comparable to Singapore's. If using a vaccine of 90% efficacy against all infections, it finds you need 66% of the population to be fully vaccinated. So far, Singapore has vaccinated 1.9 million people, or a third of the population, with the first dose. About 1.3 million have received both doses.
"All precautions must continue while the vaccination program continues," she said. MacIntyre said that if the Indian variant, that is more transmissible, is dominant, "achieving herd immunity will require higher vaccination rates - maybe 75-80% vaccinated."
Singapore's virus situation could be more dangerous than it was just before a similar lockdown last year, warned David Lye, an associate professor at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, according to the Straits Times. The many cases with no linkage suggest that the spread to the community from the outbreak at Changi Airport may be "wide and far," he said, according to the paper.
Singapore has reacted aggressively to the flareup linked to the variant by barring visitors from India last month and extending quarantines at government-designated facilities to three weeks.
"New strains of the Covid-19 virus seem to have slightly different characteristics from the previous strains," Chan Chun Sing, the new education minister said at a briefing on Sunday announcing the new school measures. "But one of the things that we have seen seems to be -- at least from our numbers -- there are more children who seem to have contracted this virus, so of course that is an area of great concern."
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/covid-19-recent-singapore-virus-cases-tied-to-india-dominant-variant-2443643">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/covid-19-recent-singapore-virus-cases-tied-to-india-dominant-variant-2443643</a>

news world Recent Singapore Virus Cases Tied To India-Dominant Variant

People wearing face masks walk along the promenade at Marina Bay in Singapore. (FILE) The highly transmissible strain of Covid-19 that s...