Unvaccinated should reflect on their duty to society, Merkel says

Latest News World/World News: People who are still not vaccinated as the fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic takes hold in Germany must understand they have a duty to the rest of society to protect others, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel wears her protective mask after a news conference following a meeting with the leaders of the country's 16 federal states to discuss COVID-19 measurements in Berlin, Germany, June 10, 2021. Michael Kappeler/Pool via REUTERS

Merkel, speaking at the invitation of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at an Asia-Pacific business summit, said it was the task of politicians to make the case for serious interventions by being honest with the public.

Coronavirus case numbers have surged across Europe in recent weeks, with experts worrying that health systems risk once again being overwhelmed, in part because unvaccinated people are still spreading the disease to the older and more vulnerable.

"We have to make it clear that I have the right to get vaccinated, and that is a great fortune, a huge achievement of science and technology," Merkel said over a video link. "But I also have a certain obligation to contribute to protecting society."

While many of the unvaccinated are in age groups that are statistically likely to experience less severe cases of COVID-19, they can pass the virus to older people with weaker immune systems, who can then end up in intensive care even with a vaccination.

Merkel, who was being interviewed by Microsoft president Brad Smith, added that the challenges of the pandemic and of climate change were similar, since they were both exponential processes whose severity was hard to recognise at the start of a growth curve. 

"When you see the start of an exponential increase you have to act immediately, and an understanding of what exponential means isn't widespread in our societies," Merkel said.

"That's also why we have been so unconcerned about climate change - that also has exponential growth and we have to act at a time when it is not at all visible how the numbers will grow."

News Source: Reuters

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China jails citizen-journalist for four years over Wuhan virus reporting

World News/Covid-19 : A Chinese court on Monday handed down a four-year jail term to a citizen-journalist who reported from the central city of Wuhan at the peak of this year’s coronavirus outbreak on the grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, her lawyer said.

Image Source: Google

Zhang Zhan, 37, the first such person known to have been tried, was among a handful of people whose firsthand accounts from crowded hospitals and empty streets painted a more dire picture of the pandemic epicentre than the official narrative.

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“I don’t understand. All she did was say a few true words, and for that she got four years,” said Shao Wenxia, Zhang’s mother, who attended the trial with her husband.

Zhang’s lawyer Ren Quanniu told Reuters: “We will probably appeal.”

The trial was held at a court in Pudong, a district of the business hub of Shanghai.“Ms Zhang believes she is being persecuted for exercising her freedom of speech,” Ren had said before the trial.

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Critics say that China deliberately arranged for Zhang’s trial to take place during the Western holiday season to minimize Western attention and scrutiny. U.S. President Donald Trump has regularly criticised Beijing for covering up the emergence of what he calls the “China virus”.

The United Nations human rights office called in a tweet for Zhang’s release.

“We raised her case with the authorities throughout 2020 as an example of the excessive clampdown on freedom of expression linked to #COVID19 & continue to call for her release,” it said.

Criticism of China’s early handling of the crisis has been censored, and whistle-blowers such as doctors warned. State media have credited the country’s success in reining in the virus to the leadership of President Xi Jinping.

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The virus has spread worldwide to infect more than 80 million people and kill more than 1.76 million, paralysing air travel as nations threw up barriers that have disrupted industries and livelihoods.

In Shanghai, police enforced tight security outside the court where the trial opened seven months after Zhang’s detention, although some supporters were undeterred.

A man in a wheelchair, who told Reuters he came from the central province of Henan to demonstrate support for Zhang as a fellow Christian, wrote her name on a poster before police escorted him away.

Foreign journalists were denied entry to the court “due to the epidemic”, court security officials said.

A former lawyer, Zhang arrived in Wuhan on Feb. 1 from her home in Shanghai.

Her short video clips uploaded to YouTube consist of interviews with residents, commentary and footage of a crematorium, train stations, hospitals and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Detained in mid-May, she went on hunger strike in late June, court documents seen by Reuters say. Her lawyers told the court that police strapped her hands and force-fed her with a tube. By December, she was suffering headaches, giddiness, stomach ache, low blood pressure and a throat infection.

Requests to the court to release Zhang on bail before the trial and livestream the trial were ignored, her lawyer said.

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Other citizen-journalists who have disappeared in China without explanation include Fang Bin, Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua.

While there has been no news of Fang, Li re-emerged in a YouTube video in April to say he was forcibly quarantined, while Chen, although released, is under surveillance and has not spoken publicly, a friend has said.

News Source: Reuters