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* Don’t Have Everybody “Stay Home” Too Long4
http://www.hsvg.org/ Guahan Global Foundation
Guahan Global Foundation P.O. Box 206, Hagatna, GU 96932, USA
(November 15, 2024)Urge worldwide action to save the Pacific Lots of evidence recently suggested that islanders’ voices on climate action have finally been heard and brought to the global stage. We look forward to seeing leaders, experts, and activists from the Pacific community move further at the 29th United Nations Climate Conference, commonly referred to as COP29 and now happening in Azerbaijan, to facilitate more significant worldwide climate action to protect those on the frontlines.   Many people must have noticed that the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made a rare appearance at the opening of 2024 Pacific Islands Forum in August. According to UN’s press release, he declared in the opening remarks that “plastic pollution is chocking sealife. Greenhouse gases are causing ocean heating, acidification and rising seas. But Pacific islanders are showing the way to protect our climate, our planet and our ocean.”   Mr. Guterres stressed that the region urgently needs more financial support, capacities and technology to speed up the transition to clean energy and so countries can invest in adaption and resilience.   He also added, while the Pacific region is doing what it can, the Group of 20 (G20) most industrialized nations – the biggest emitters of carbon – must step up and lead by phasing the production and consumption of fossil fuels and stopping their expansion immediately.   “If we save the Pacific, we save the world,” the UN chief said.   The UN also released two reports on the sidelines of the forum. A regional report compiled by the World Meteorological Organization showed sea-surface temperatures in the south-west Pacific have risen three times faster than the global average since 1980. It also found that marine heatwaves in the region had roughly doubled in frequency since 1980 and become more intense and longer-lasting.   In addition, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2021 that the global mean sea level was rising at rates unprecedented in at least the last 3,000 years as a result of human-induced global warming. And, the new UN report titled “Surging Seas in a Warming World” indicated “emerging research on climate ‘tipping points’ and ice sheet dynamics is raising alarm among scientists that future sea-level rise could be much larger and occur sooner than previously thought.”   The Pacific Islands Forum leaders eventually issued an official communique that emphasized “climate change continues to be a matter of priority to the Pacific region” and recognized “sea level rise is a sever manifestation of climate change that threatens Pacific communities.” Accordingly, leaders agreed to elevate the issue of sea level rise “politically,” including at the UN General Assembly.   2024 UN General Assembly in September literally arranged a high level plenary meeting on sea level rise. Leaders and experts recognized in the meeting that the existential threats, for example, livelihoods are destroyed, families gradually move, community cohesion is tested, and heritage is lost, are the hard realities many people in small island states and low-lying countries experience today, not the projections of a coming future. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres therefore called for a strong financial outcome at COP29 to cope with threats caused by sea level rise.   Regarding financial outcome at COP29, it is worth noticing that this year’s conference is actually being called the “finance COP.” Following the historic agreement of creating a loss and damage fund at COP27 to compensate climate-vulnerable countries, COP28 has officially launched the fund. The finer details will be figured out at COP29 before the money actually starts flowing to nations in need next year.   Countries will also need to agree with a new global climate finance goal, known as the New Collective Quantified Goal. In addition to its total figure, COP29 will see discussion on several important terms of the NCQG, including who the donor base and recipients will be, how much will come from public and private sources, and whether it will be in the form of grants or loans.   As a member of the Pacific community, our foundation certainly looks forward to a global financial mechanism helping all Pacific islands’ climate mitigation and adaptation. However, we, together with many climate experts, also want to remind the world that the Nationally Determined Contributions, which outlines how a country will curb emissions, must be renewed every five years under Paris Agreement and the next round due is February 2025. So, COP29 is a crucial moment for countries to raise the bar and hold each other to account.   Nonprofit organization Climate Group also declared at its Climate Week NYC, taking place during the UN General Assembly in September, that the urgent and concrete action is needed to address the emission gap between what scientists say is needed to avoid disastrous climate change and what governments and business are delivered. They therefore called for governments, businesses, and the global climate community to focus on bolder annual to-do lists of climate action.   Their first Global To-Do List that governments and businesses can start taking action to drive results in the next twelve months consists of seven items including support workers to power down coal, unleash renewables, ban relining of coal-based steel furnaces, get serious on methane, stop ignoring energy efficiency, buy clean, and tax fossil fuels to fund the transition.   The UN chief Antonio Guterres actually also warned at the Pacific Islands Forum that the global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – built around the 17 goals or SDGs – “is faltering.” Climate Group also reminded the world that we have Net Zero carbon emissions milestone to be accomplished by 2050 as well. The representatives of Pacific islands must make sure that COP29 focuses on what the whole world needs to do right now to get on track.   http://www.hsvg.org/hot_503561.html *Urge worldwide action to save the Pacific 2024-11-17 2025-11-17
Guahan Global Foundation P.O. Box 206, Hagatna, GU 96932, USA http://www.hsvg.org/hot_503561.html
Guahan Global Foundation P.O. Box 206, Hagatna, GU 96932, USA http://www.hsvg.org/hot_503561.html
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Home ﹥ News > News > * Don’t Have Everybody “Stay Home” Too Long

(April 13, 2020)

Don’t Have Everybody “Stay Home” Too Long


European Commission announced a concept of short-time work on April 1 as an initiative of helping people keep their jobs and go back to full work as soon as the lockdown will be over. We welcome this initiative and would like share our evidence-based analysis reminding that healthy adults should be allowed to resume their daily lives as soon as possible to have a fully-operated system efficiently tackle the pandemic.

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New data in the U.S. showed 17 million Americans filed for unemployment in the past four weeks. The spike in new jobless claims is believed to result from the pandemic control lockdowns that have kept Americans from their workplaces and forced many companies to shutter or to lay off employees. We all know that unemployment could not only affect people’s finance but also ruin their ability of taking care of their health.


In addition, the “stay-home” order in some states within the U.S. has also affected certain senior care operations, for example, free meal delivery to the seniors got delayed or rerouted, while the elderly is actually a group of people who need extra care most during the pandemic. It is better that healthy adults are allowed to resume their routines soon to help the community get back to normal early.


According to a report published by Italy National Health Institute on March 17, 96.3% of fatal victims in Italy were patients over 60 years old. 99.2% of Italy’s coronavirus fatalities were people with at least one chronic medical condition, such as hypertension, diabetes and heart disease. Based on the demographic, we suggest the system should have the vulnerable stay home and, more importantly, offer them extra care. Young and middle-aged adults without serous health conditions should keep their routines to maintain the community’s full operations and, in addition, to help many households avoid the miserable economic consequences of workplace shutdown.


Only when the system is fully-operated, we are able to take good care of the vulnerable and to end the pandemic. It is worth to notice that Hong Kong and Taiwan seem to have contained the spread pretty well and Japan and South Korea have been seeing a good trend of calming down the epidemic. All countries mentioned above did not place a nationwide lockdown or “stay-home” order at all.


Germany has not shut down daily life either. Only food and entertainment outlets have been closed since the end of March. Germany has been conducting intensive testing and strictly quarantined sick people and their contacts. It has also got the medical system ready for a pandemic. Therefore, as of April 12, Germany has 127,459 confirmed case and 2,996 deaths recorded. Its case fatality rate (CFR) is 2.35% and this figure is considerably lower than fellow EU members Spain (10%), France (10.8%) and Italy (12.7%). More impressively, Germany has started taking care of patients flown from Italy and France.


What Germany is doing is actually flu control protocols. Although COVID-19 is not flu, the coronavirus appears to be showing its highly contagious nature and “flu-like pandemic pattern” after so many countries around the world reported cases. Thoroughly follow “modern” flu control protocols is therefore the most relevant and sustainable measure for most countries.


What does “modern” flu control protocols mean? The protocols should include a surveillance network that asks clinics and hospitals to report patients with flu-like symptoms for further virus testing and early advanced treatments. Furthermore, It adjusts resource allocation to help medical community get ready for a huge amount of patients to save the vulnerable, and reminds healthy people to practice good hygiene all the time as well as implements home or institutional quarantine on sick people and their contacts to flatten the epidemic curve.


Lockdown was probably working well during the 1918 flu pandemic, but not now. Lockdown probably helped China, but it does not fit all countries. We are looking forward to seeing European Commission helps its member countries ease their lockdowns as soon as possible. We are also hoping the EU shows the world a good leadership and helps countries in other regions copy with the pandemic together in the near future.



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