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Myanmar's military staged a coup on Monday, detaining democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and declaring it had taken control of the country for one year under a state of emergency.

The intervention followed weeks of rising tensions between the military, which ruled the country for nearly five decades, and the civilian government over elections in November last year that Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won easily.

Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were detained in the capital, Naypyidaw, before dawn, party spokesman Myo Nyunt told AFP, just hours before parliament was meant to reconvene for the first time since the elections.

"We heard they were taken by the military... with the situation we see happening now, we have to assume that the military is staging a coup," he said.

The military then declared, via its own television channel, a one-year state of emergency and announced that former general Myint Swe would be acting president for the next year.

It justified the coup by alleging "huge irregularities" in the November polls that the election commission had failed to address.

"As the situation must be resolved according to the law, a state of emergency is declared," the announcement said.

The military moved quickly to stifle dissent, severely restricting the internet and mobile phone communications across the country.

In Yangon, the former capital that remains Myanmar's commercial hub, troops seized the city hall just ahead of the announcement, according to an AFP journalist.

Countries with high COVID-19 2wk avg case/day increase

#Cameroon: 229%

#Thailand: 198%

#Ghana: 190%

#Rwanda: 94%

#Malawi: 71%

#Kazakhstan: 69%

#SaudiArabia: 51%

#Qatar: 48%

#Portugal: 45%

#Cuba: 44%

In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.

Countries with high COVID-19 2wk avg deaths/day increase

#Malawi: 139%

#Ecuador: 122%

#Portugal: 106%

#Peru: 100%

#Spain: 100%

#Lebanon: 85%

#Sudan: 81%

#Bolivia: 68%

#Ireland: 65%

#Israel: 38%

Conclusions

Three recently detected SARS-CoV-2 lineages (B.1.1.7, B.1.351, and P.1), are unusually divergent and each possesses a unique constellation of mutations of potential biological importance.16,  17,  18 

Of these, two are circulating in Brazil (B.1.1.7 and P.1) and one (P.1) was detected in Manaus on Jan 12, 2021.16 

One case of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection has been associated with the P.1 lineage in Manaus19 that accrued ten unique spike protein mutations, including E484K and N501K.16 

Moreover, the newly classified P.2 lineage (sublineage of B.1.128 that independently accrued the spike E484K mutation) has now been detected in several locations in Brazil, including Manaus.20 

P.2 variants with the E484K mutation have been detected in two people who have been reinfected with SARS-CoV-2 in Brazil,21,  22 

and there is in-vitro evidence that the presence of the E484K mutation reduces neutralisation by polyclonal antibodies in convalescent sera.15

“If you think you’re going to simply vaccinate your way out of this, it’s going to be like whack-a-mole,” said Susan Butler-Wu, director of clinical microbiology at L.A. County-USC Medical Center.

“We’re shining a flashlight around in the dark, hoping we spot dangerous variants,” said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at UCLA. “What we really need to do is flip on the lights.”

In revising up its world economic growth forecast to 4.3 percent for 2021, the IMF appears to be overly sanguine about the substantial downside risks to its forecast. 

Indeed, the only real downside risk that it highlights is the current race between the Covid-19 vaccinations and the Covid-19 mutations. 

The IMF acknowledges that should the mutations win that race, there could be considerable downside risk to its forecast.

Among the more obvious downside risks that the IMF fails to mention is the risk of a major debt crisis in the emerging market economies, which now account for around half of the world economy. 

This omission is all the more surprising considering that, in the wake of the pandemic, these countries’ public finances and debt levels have never been as troubling than they are today. 

It is also all the more surprising considering that the World Bank keeps warning us that it is only a matter of time before we will have a major wave of emerging market debt restructurings.  

Euro 1.2128

Dollar Index 90.531

Japan Yen 104.663

Swiss Franc 0.8918

Pound 1.3746

Aussie 0.7655

India Rupee 72.83

South Korea Won 1116.145

Brazil Real 5.4623

Egypt Pound 15.7186

South Africa Rand 15.11032

Actives -18.28% below record high Print of 520,000

• New cases = 5 297

• New tests = 41 540

• Test positivity = 12.8% 

• New deaths = 318

• Active cases = 112 364

In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.

Over the past two weeks, three senior Cabinet officials in Zimbabwe (including the Foreign Minister and the Infrastructure Minister) have died from Covid. Not gotten sick. Died. 

More broadly, reported Covid cases and deaths have exploded in this country of 15 million just in the month of January. 

The unreported numbers are certainly much higher, as about 90% of Zimbabwe’s population works outside of the formal economy, and the majority of Zimbabweans have little to no access to the healthcare facilities that report these official case and death numbers.

The societal unraveling that is taking place in Zimbabwe – a desperately poor country where per capita GDP is less than $1,500 and declining – is staggering.

Historically, such pandemics had the capacity to overtake “the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their duration” and, in the process, challenged their “power and curtailed their [rulers’] influence...” 

Rulers who are only concerned with the well-being of their “inner circle and their parties” are an incurable “disease”. 

States with such rulers can get “seized by senility and the chronic disease from which [they] can hardly ever rid [themselves], for which [they] can find no cure”

“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street, where for a moment it stops being a cog in the technical machine and itself becomes a motor (machine of attack), in other words, a producer of speed.’

Ethiopia which was once the Poster child of the African Renaissance now has a Nobel Prize Winner whom I am reliably informed

PM Abiy His inner war cabinet includes Evangelicals who are counseling him he is "doing Christ's work"; that his faith is being "tested". @RAbdiAnalyst

@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province.