COVID CORNER
Tragedy in Brazil, ignorance in Iran, and another unusual Covid cure fails in India
LAST OF THE JUMA
The last surviving male from an exterminated Brazilian indigenous group has died from complications associated with Covid-19. Aruká Juma died in February aged between 86 and 90, the last Juma man who remained from a tribe once numbering 15,000 people. Repeated massacres in the 20th century meant that by 2002, just five Juma people were left – Mr Juma, his three daughters and a grandchild.
At the start of the pandemic many indigenous groups sought to cut themselves off from the outside world by closing roads and turning away visitors. Unfortunately, these attempts at isolation failed, and the coronavirus is now widespread among indigenous communities. 162 tribes from a total of 305 have been affected. Brazil’s indigenous population is thought to number 900,000, of whom at least 50,000 have been infected, with nearly 1,000 deaths, according to Government figures.
Brazil’s indigenous groups are particularly vulnerable to Covid-19 because of their isolation, communal way of life and poor healthcare provision. The country’s federal indigenous health service, Sesai, may have contributed to the problem, with reports claiming that in at least three regions the virus was introduced by infected Sesai workers, many of whom were forced to work without adequate protective equipment or access to testing. Indigenous groups, many of whom have remained officially ‘uncontacted’, are threatened by encroachment from miners and agricultural businesses, which have grown worse under President Bolsonaro’s government.
As a teenager in the 1960s, the late Mr Juma witnessed a massacre of his people when rubber tappers and tropical nut traders intruded on their land, killing over 60 people and leaving only seven Juma alive. Over subsequent decades he campaigned for federal recognition for the Juma’s land, and his eldest daughter Borehá Juma intends to continue her father’s struggle.
“I want to become like him now, to fight like my father,” she said. “My father was a warrior. He was chief, I was chief and now the lineage is over.” D.Telegraph, 19 Feb; nbcnews.com, 12 Mar 2021.
LOCKDOWN WOE FOR SPIES
Ken McCallum, the new head of MI5 (Britain’s domestic security service) has said Britain’s spies have found it harder to track suspects during the pandemic and lockdowns because of a lack of crowds in city centres caused by fewer people travelling in for work, shopping or entertainment. “You wouldn’t expect me to get into detail, but common sense will tell you that covert surveillance is not straightforward on nearempty streets,” he explained, addressing the impact of the pandemic on the intelligence agency. “Our people are showing huge dedication and imagination in continuing to provide the essential service the country needs from us.”
At a virtual press conference, McCallum told journalists that terrorists had adjusted their targets as a result of the pandemic. “The big shifts in everyone’s lives – reduced travel, more online, and the rest – mean shifts in how our adversaries are operating,” he said. “Fewer crowds mean terrorists look at different targets; online living means more opportunities for cyber hackers; and so on.” cnn. com, 15 Oct 2020.
“Don’t go near those who have had the COVID vaccine,” wrote Iranian cleric Ayatollah Abbas Tabrizian on the social messaging app Telegram. “They have become homosexuals.” LGBTQ campaigner Peter Tatchell criticised the remarks, saying: “Ayatollah Tabrizian combines scientific ignorance with a crude appeal to homophobia,” and Iranian dissident Sheina Vojoudi described Tabrizian and his fellow Iranian clerics as “suffering from lack of knowledge and humanity. Actually,” she continued, “his goal of spreading nonsense is to try to scare people off getting vaccinated, while the leader of the regime and other officials got Pfizer, and they don’t provide it for the people with the excuse that they don’t trust the West.”
Ayatollah Tabrizian has made other controversial statements about Western medicine. A video disseminated in January 2020 showed him burning the US textbook Harrison’s Manual of Medicine, while claiming that Islamic medicine rendered such books “irrelevant”. Homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran, and it is thought that thousands of gay people have been executed in the country since the 1979 revolution. Ayatollah Tabrizian has almost 210,000 Telegram followers. D.Mail, 9 Feb 2021.
MESSING IN A MAZDA
Police issued a £200 fixed penalty fine in February 2021 to a man found sitting naked in his car without a reasonable excuse for breaching Covid stay-at-home regulations. They also fined another man who was sitting clothed in another stationary vehicle in the same car park near Calke, Derbyshire. The naked man claimed he had taken several wrong turns after making a journey to buy a pack of wet wipes. In an attempt to underline the message that people should only make essential journeys, the police safer neighbourhood team detailed the incident in a Facebook post with the heading ‘Naked man found messing in a Mazda’. The post described how officers “challenged the nude male, asking him why he was in a closed car park. The male was unable to provide a reasonable excuse of [sic] why he was stark naked in the car park during the height of a national lockdown.” Police said he did not have any mental health problems. He was also issued with a Community Protection Notice warning, insisting he wears clothes in public places.
The same policing team also issued £200 fixed penalty notices to a “courting couple” who had enjoyed a “peck in a Peugeot” at Staunton Harold Reservoir. The man had travelled more than 100 miles (160km) from Lancashire to his girlfriend’s home in Leicestershire to pick her up; they then drove to the Derbyshire beauty spot. The safer neighbourhood team’s Facebook page recounted how the couple’s private moment was interrupted when challenged by officers. The fines were issued as the couple were not in a support bubble and their journey not deemed an essential one. The busy police team also posted about fining a couple who were enjoying a “fumble in a Fiat” at Mercia Marina. Officers pointed out to the couple that they were “not involved in essential exercise”. BBC News, 8 Feb 2021.
MUDDY PUDDLE MUDDLE
A politician from Rajasthan state filmed himself sitting shirtless in a puddle of mud while blowing a conch shell, claiming these actions would aid immunity to coronavirus. He has subsequently tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Indian MP Sukhbir Singh Jaunapuria had claimed that a more natural approach to life would boost the immune system. “Go out, get wet in the rain, sit in the dirt, work on the farm, blow a conch... and eat ‘desi’ [indigenous Hindi] things. One gains immunity from doing these things,” he says in a video he shared on his Facebook page a month prior to testing positive for coronavirus, one of 24 Indian MPs to do so. The country has now reached over 11.5 million infections, with more than 159,000 deaths.
But Mr Jaunapuria is not the only politician to have proposed an unusual cure for coronavirus. Belarus president Alexsander Lukashenko said in 2020 that riding tractors, drinking vodka and taking saunas would prevent Covid, before he too tested positive. Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that he was carrying amulets that protected him from the disease, while Puebla Governor Luis Miguel Barbosa Huerta claimed that poor people were immune. Suman Haripriya, another Indian politician from the state of Assam, suggested that cow urine and dung could be used to sterilise infected areas, while Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, proposed the regular practice of yoga as a cure. D.Mail, 17 Sep 2020.