Hefty Sanctions Should be Imposed to Supporters of Fake Medicine in Costa Rica

Other than just forbidding the advertising and selling of fake medicine like chlorine dioxide, economical sanctions against parties involved in these grounds should be dictated by law. In addition, this should be stated as a crime, and be punished with heavy prison sentences. Costa Rica shan't be pliant with the punishment against this myriad of crooks and imbeciles.

Chlorine dioxide and disinfectants aren't a cure against coronavirus or other diseases. They are indiscriminate killers.

Google Posts Decline in Revenue Amid Pandemic

Due to the economic slowdown produced by the coronavirus pandemic, it was foreseeable that retailers would significantly cut advertisement spending. At last, Google felt the blow, and reported a decline in revenue for Q2.

Follow Up on "Reopening and Testing Capacity"

For further reference, check out the ratio of positive tests over daily tests in the United States.

Reopening and Testing Capacity (and Scientific Capacity)

Yesterday, on July 24th, in Costa Rica's daily press conference on coronavirus, it was reported that at the beginning of the pandemic the testing capacity was 2000 tests a week. That number has risen since to 2000 a day.

Over the past two weeks, about 400 through 600 new confirmed daily cases have been reported through testing. The authorities announced that around 24% of daily tests have come out positive in the last few days on average. Taking the data of July 23th, we've got $\tfrac{768}{2000}$ daily positive cases over daily testing capacity; that is 38.4% daily tests that came out positive.

Therefore, we are either doing a really small amount of testing (and pretty localized too), or the 'real' amount and increase of cases is much higher.

Week after week, authorities report some of the difficulties to get tests in the international markets.

Clearly, our failure is testing. Some months ago, a plan to develop Costa Rican made tests was announced. Nowhere to be heard again as of yet.

Let's focus on testing capacity. What went wrong?

Let's take a brief look at South America. Uruguay has 3 million inhabitants and could allocate human capital and infrastructure to develop their own COVID PCR test, now amounting to 20000 daily tests (locally-made!). That is 10 times what Costa Rica has.

Costa Rica has five million inhabitants and is required by its constitution to spend annually 8% of its GDP in education. Sadly, and this crisis severely shows this, resources are misallocated. There is an abysmal waste in that 'education' spending. Has it all gone towards education? No!

That spending has paid eccentric salaries even to university janitors, and many of the resources are allocated to majors that don't contribute much (or any at all) to economic or scientific development. Seriously, we are not educating enough scientists and engineers. The available resources are not going where they ought to go. PCR exists since 1986!

Further questioning shall be made on the subject. Moreover, the Instituto Clodomiro Picado has been developing a serum from coronavirus recovered patients, as a treatment against coronavirus. But reading what BioTech companies and other universities around the world can do regarding the production of antivirals, I dare say we are stuck in the 1920s.

Without enough testing, reopening is doomed. Countries that could reopen, or stay open amid the pandemic, owe it to their testing capacity, to their scientific capacity.

A Clear Example of Artificial Satellites Ruining the Sky

Here there is a brief overview of how are massive satellite networks (such as Starlink) interfering with astronomy. The article shows an attempt to capture Neowise, only to be surrounded with several dashes of orbiting satellites.

Draconian Measures Amid Coronavirus

I think it was Wednesday when on the daily news briefing, by the national health authorities, a dramatic increase on new Covid cases was announced. New measures were to be announced the next day, rolling back most reopenings in the urban areas, and upon announcement the website of the executive branch of government was collapsed.

But these cases, what drove them that high? Well, there was a external factor, yes, irregular foreigners who would deliberately break mandatory quarantine due to confirmed coronavirus presence, and would later agglomerate in multiple places. Calculating the difference from one day to the next, some times they accounted for up to one third of the new daily cases.

The other one is is on us...obedience. People making new physical contacts with third parties for social purposes, just worsened it all. Large gatherings or small ones, the virus might be present. But come on, they are not placing just themselves at risk but the entire country. The government didn't want to apply draconian measures from the start, yet not choice is given but to do so soon.

I initially thought that Costa Rica would quickly go Italy-like on coronavirus cases, fast spread and critical health system saturation. To my wonder we didn't; we were going through the pandemic as civilized people. But at the end, was my faith bad placed upon the start? I just hope people realize the danger they do, not just to health, but to the whole country and its economic welfare. The government stated from the very beginning their goal, to protect lives. Disagree? Harsher lockdowns might be announced.