Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Quick notes: Fly free | Mutations...

  • The entitled fly free: Air India rescued over 640 Indians from Wuhan in two consecutive flights on Jan 31 and Feb 1. This alone cost the govt Rs 6 crore. Later in Feb, Air India rescued 119 Indians and five foreign nationals on board the cruise ship Diamond Princess. Around the same time, IAF brought back 76 stranded Indians from Japan. In March, Air India brought back 481 passengers from Italy on two separate flights.

    "GoI bears the cost of all such evacuations of Indian citizens. And that has been the practice from the past and continues till date”.


  • Criticism worked? US returnees to pay Rs 1 lakh


  • Bring in the best brains: Telemedicine to be next big thing in post-COVID-19 era. . . The next big opportunity?


  • Be wary of Chinese investments: China is interested in India's infrastructure sector, with ventures for manufacture and distribution of trucks, cranes and other construction and transportation equipment. The Chinese are now moving in a significant way into the solar energy sector in Andhra Pradesh. Chinese companies have pledged investments of $3 billion in wind and solar energy development, in India. But it is the telecom sector that has seen the largest Chinese presence in India.

    The Chinese have a track record of not transferring knowledge, knowhow, technology, spares, or even maintenance instructions, for their projects. China does not transfer knowhow and manufacturing skills, to enable its partners to stand on their own feet.


  • Gifting land: India offers land twice Luxembourg's size to firms leaving China. . . . take back land from non-productive industries. BTW, this will go nowhere without emphasis on skills.


  • Kirana Linker: Buy from your local grocers online in Telangana.


  • C-virus has acquired mutations: Could substantially change its ability to cause disease.


  • Mutating very fast: Now that all the countries are isolated, the virus is becoming independent, which means each country has a different mutant virus. The problem is, if this isolation continues for a longer period, a person coming from say the US will encounter a newer virus in India and vice versa.  So, it will not be the same COVID-19. It will be COVID-19a, COVID-19b, COVID-19c, etc


  • Annalisa Chiusolo: Italian scientist says she discovered main mechanism behind COVID-19


  • A tragedy that does not have to be: Every year more than 6 million birds die as they migrate from the US and Canada to Central and South America


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