COVID CORNER
Magnetic people, Kim Kong-un’s pigeon panic and Canada’s scary Covid Queen
STATUE MASKS UP
In Aizuwakamatsu in central Japan, a 57m (187ft) statue of Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, has been given a giant face covering. Temple managers intend to keep the statue masked until the pandemic is brought under control. BBC News, 17 Jun 2021.
STOP THE PIGEON!
Officially, North Korea claims to have had no cases of Covid at all, but that has not stopped Kim Jong-un from announcing extreme measures to keep the disease from spreading. Fearing that pigeons flying in from neighbouring China could be bringing in the virus (despite no evidence that birds spread Covid), he has decreed that people in the border districts of Hyesan and Sinuiju should shoot every pigeon they see, prompting international media to compare his efforts to the 1970s Dastardly and Muttley cartoons, which revolved around the villains’ attempts to stop a carrier pigeon. With slightly more justification, Kim has also ordered the elimination of all cats – they have been shown to be able to catch the virus, but not to transmit it to humans. Allegedly a family in Hyesan have been detained in an isolation camp for telling the authorities their cat had died while secretly keeping it alive. Sun, 29 May 2021.
DOG DETECTORS
It has long been known that animals can detect some diseases in humans through smell (see FT393:8-9) and recent research has shown that trained dogs are more effective than the widely used lateral flow tests at detecting Covid infection, even in people showing no symptoms. Researchers at the University of Durham and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that under experimental conditions dogs could detect Covid in body odour samples from patients’ clothing with 94 per cent accuracy after eight weeks of training and were able to do so very quickly. Lateral flow tests are, at best, 77 per cent accurate, while the most accurate lab tests using PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) are 98 per cent accurate. The success of the dogs raises the possibility of using them at airports and other public buildings to rapidly screen large numbers of people, identifying likely infections which could then be confirmed with PCR. Scientists are now moving on to the next phase of the trials which will see if the dogs can reach the same level of success in realworld situations. D.Mail, 24 May 2021.
ANAL INNOVATION
In Japan, researcher Takanori Takebe has come up with a way to get oxygen to Covid patients with breathing difficulties by oxygenating them anally, allowing the gas to diffuse into the blood through the intestinal lining. Her research showed that mice being infused with oxygen anally survived for up to 50 minutes in low oxygen environments and that while that particular method would not be possible for humans, using oxygen-rich liquids known as oxygenated perfluorocarbons anally would be feasible. D.Mirror, 15 Apr 2021.
COVID QUEEN OF CANADA
A woman who has announced that she is in fact the Queen of Canada has rapidly gained an active following of several thousand in Qanon-linked circles
there, some of whom have taken to the streets to harass health workers and others involved in the fight against Covid.
Romana Didulo, a British Columbia woman in her 50s, is the self-proclaimed leader of the Canada1st Party. She started posting videos about her policies in late 2020, but did not get much traction until she crafted her rhetoric to more closely match Qanon tropes. After that, she was promoted by wellknown Qanon figures Charlie Ward and Whiplash347, gaining 20,000 followers on Telegram. In February, she distributed a video saying: “Hello, Canada, I’m Ramona Didulo. I’m the founder and leader of Canada1st. As of February this year, 2021, I am the head of state and commander in chief of Canada, the Republic. The people who appointed me are the white hats and the US military, together with the global allied troops and their governments – the same group of people who have helped President Trump.” In the video, featuring her sitting on an old sofa in front of a blank beige wall, she goes on to explain that she is also the “Queen of Canada, replacing Queen Elizabeth II of England who has now been executed for crimes against humanity.” Followers feel this is corroborated by “Romana Didulo” being an anagram of “I Am Our Donald.”
Having claimed leadership of the country, she began using her position to fight the vaccine rollout in Canada, rousing her followers to file hundreds of “cease-and-desist” notices demanding that government, police and businesses stop all anti-Covid measures. Supporters have formed local groups that email out their demands, send them through the post, or hand them out at shops, schools and police stations.
In her videos Didulo has backed up the cease-anddesist orders with threats to execute anyone who ignores them, saying, “Let’s keep this simple – death is the penalty for crimes against humanity,” and threatening the health care workers and politicians behind the vaccination rollout. One of her videos makes her intention clear: “At the firing squad, the military firing squad, you will receive not one, but two bullets on your forehead for each child that you have harmed as a result of injecting this experimental vaccine.” Her followers believe she is carrying out executions in secret. Didulo does not yet seem to have attracted police attention for issuing such threats of violence. Vice, 17 June 2021.
MAGNETIC VIRUS
Videos of people demonstrating how they can now stick magnets to their arms after having a Covid vaccine have been doing the rounds on social media (hashtag #magnetchallenge), with the claim that this demonstrates that the vaccines contain tracking microchips. As has been demonstrated in some previous cases of claimed “magnetic people”, it is perfectly possible to stick quite substantial items to your body with sweat or adhesive, so it is unlikely to be the result of any vaccination, particularly as: a) it would be difficult to fit a functioning microchip transmitter into the volume of vaccine that is routinely administered, and b) microchips do not contain magnetic components anyway.
In a further mutation of this meme, antivaxxer Sherri Tenpenny explained in evidence to the Ohio House Health Committee that Covid vaccines make you magnetic so that you can stick cutlery to your head, saying: “I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the Internet of people who have had these shots and now they’re magnetised. They can put a key on their forehead. It sticks. They can put spoons and forks all over them and they can stick... people have long suspected that there’s been some sort of a yet to be defined interface between what’s being injected in these shots and all of the 5G towers.” Forbes.com 18 May; BBC News, 22 May; boingboing.net, 9 June 2021.
FURTHER ZOOM DISASTER
After the zoom faux pas in which he accidentally undressed in front of colleagues ( FT407:9), one would have thought that Canadian MP William Amos would have learned to be more careful on video calls. However, he followed up his previous slip by being caught on camera urinating into a cup midmeeting. He described this latest incident as “unacceptable” but “accidental” and has said he will step away from some of his duties temporarily to “seek assistance”, although without saying what this would involve or exactly what the assistance is for. BBC News, 28 May 2021.
The world’s oldest known bird, a 70-year-old Laysan albatross known as Wisdom, hatched a chick on 1 May 2021 in the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge, three tiny islands 1,000 miles north of Hawaii. Wisdom has produced more than 30 offspring during her long life after first being ringed as a young bird in 1956. She has outlived several partners, as well as Chandler Robbins, the ornithologist who first ringed her, and has survived tsunamis and extreme weather conditions. Researchers are not sure whether Wisdom’s longevity is exceptional or whether they simply don’t having enough data about the lifespan of albatrosses. , 6 Mar 2021.