scholarly journals The Estimated Time-Varying Reproduction Numbers during the Ongoing Pandemic of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in 12 Selected Countries outside China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fu-Chang Hu
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South Korea ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Estimation Method ◽  
The United States ◽  
Time Varying ◽  
Epidemic Curve ◽  
Almost All

Background: How can we anticipate the progression of the ongoing pandemic of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)? As a measure of transmissibility, we aimed to estimate concurrently the time-varying reproduction number, R0(t), over time during the COVID-19 pandemic for each of the following 12 heavily-attacked countries: Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Iran, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Belgium, United Kingdom, the United States of America, and South Africa. Methods: We downloaded the publicly available COVID-19 pandemic data from the WHO COVID-19 Dashboard website (https://covid19.who.int/) for the duration of January 11, 2020 and May 1, 2020. Then, we specified two plausible distributions of serial interval to apply the novel estimation method implemented in the incidence and EpiEstim packages to the data of daily new confirmed cases for robustly estimating R0(t) in the R software. Results: We plotted the epidemic curves of daily new confirmed cases for the 12 selected countries. A clear peak of the epidemic curve appeared in 10 of the 12 selected countries at various time points, and then the epidemic curve declined gradually. However, the United States of America and South Africa happened to have two or more peaks and their epidemic curves either reached a plateau or still climbed up. Almost all curves of the estimated R0(t) monotonically went down to be less than or close to 1.0 up to April 30, 2020 except Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Iran, and South Africa, of which the curves surprisingly went up and down at various time periods during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the United States of America and South Africa were the two countries with the approximate R0(t) ≥ 1.0 at the end of April, and thus they were now facing the harshest battles against the coronavirus among the 12 selected countries. By contrast, Spain, Germany, and France with smaller values of the estimated R0(t) were relatively better than the other 9 countries. Conclusion: Seeing the estimated R0(t) going downhill speedily is more informative than looking for the drops in the daily number of new confirmed cases during an ongoing epidemic of infectious disease. We urge public health authorities and scientists to estimate R0(t) routinely during an epidemic of infectious disease and to report R0(t) daily to the public until the end of the epidemic.

scholarly journals The colonial matrix of power: Image ontology and the question of blackness

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Itumeleng D. Mothoagae
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Black People ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global South ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

The question of blackness has always featured the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and class. Blackness as an ontological speciality has been engaged from both the social and epistemic locations of the damnés (in Fanonian terms). It has thus sought to respond to the performance of power within the world order that is structured within the colonial matrix of power, which has ontologically, epistemologically, spatially and existentially rendered blackness accessible to whiteness, while whiteness remains inaccessible to blackness. The article locates the question of blackness from the perspective of the Global South in the context of South Africa. Though there are elements of progress in terms of the conditions of certain Black people, it would be short-sighted to argue that such conditions in themselves indicate that the struggles of blackness are over. The essay seeks to address a critique by Anderson (1995) against Black theology in the context of the United States of America (US). The argument is that the question of blackness cannot and should not be provincialised. To understand how the colonial matrix of power is performed, it should start with the local and be linked with the global to engage critically the colonial matrix of power that is performed within a system of coloniality. Decoloniality is employed in this article as an analytical tool.Contribution: The article contributes to the discourse on blackness within Black theology scholarship. It aims to contribute to the continual debates on the excavating and levelling of the epistemological voices that have been suppressed through colonial epistemological universalisation of knowledge from the perspective of the damnés.

scholarly journals Burrow casts from the Lystrosaurus-Procolophon Assemblage-zone, Karoo Sequence, South Africa

Koedoe ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
G.H. Groenewald
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Desiccation Cracks ◽  
Assemblage Zone

Five types of burrow casts from the Lystrosaurus- Procolophon Assemblage-zone (Palingkloof Member and Katberg Formation, Triassic, Karoo sequence. South Africa) are associated with casts of desiccation cracks and red mudstone. Vertebrate remains of Lystrosaurus sp. and Procolophon sp. indicate that these animals probably made the burrows during the Triassic. It is possible that burrowing was an adaptive advantage during periods of severe and unfavourable climatic conditions. Similar burrow casts were found in the Dicynodon-Theriognathus Assemblage-zone, suggesting a burrowing habit for fauna represented in this zone. In structure, the burrow casts resemble those of Scoyenia, Thalassinoides, Histioderma, Gyrolithes and Planolites reported from Germany, France, Asia, Ireland, Spain and the United States of America.

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