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President Laurentino Cortizo, forced by the popular pressure of more than 50 community protests in the last week of April and the widespread pailazo on Sunday, May 3, on the one hand; and on the other, by allegations of corruption in the purchases of respirators and other supplies to combat COVID-19, wherein citizens called for the resignation of Vice President José Gabriel Carrizo; was forced to partially sign a moratorium on debts and payments to public utilities that popular organizations demanded. The groups insisted on a little reliev from the critical economic situation of thousands of working families that are affected by the COVID pandemic.
It was a partial victory because Cortizo signed Bill 295, concerning the moratorium on the payment for public services such as water, elecriticy and telephone. It also called off the evictions of families who cannot afford their house rents in these circumstances. All of which is a relief that people rightly celebrated. However, that was not a gift from the government, but the product of public pressure.
The president did NOT sign Bill 287, on mortgage payment, loans, credit cards, etc.
On the contrary, Laurentino Cortizó announced his veto to this latest bill to rejoice from bankers who control the Panamanian economy.
Instead of signing Law 287, Cortizo bowed to the economic power of the financial sector, which at all times refused to be regulated by the state in any way. What was presented to the country, instead of a law, was a “deal” with the National Banking Association that establishes a moratorium until next December.
The moratorium agreed by bankers is undoubtedly a relief for employees who have lost their jobs, for professionals and small business owners whose economic lives have been paralyzed. But this debt relief is momentary, partial and controlled by the banks themselves. New conditions need to be individually negotiated.
It should be borne in mind that in January debtors will have to face payments for 2021 plus the accumulated capital and interest of 2020, regardless of whether they have managed to recover their jobs or restored their businesses to normal.
The gift for bankers has been huge, because the president announced that the “sacrifices” they would allegedly make with the moratorium until December would be compensated with $500 million from an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, which all Panamanians will end up paying.
Take into account that the Cortizo government, early in the COVID-19 crisis, allowed bankers to use $1.3 billion from the reserve fund to respond for the withdrawn deposits of savers leaving these without that backup. Panamanian banking had previously announced 2019 profits of more than $1.8 billion. That is, the people sacrifice everything and the bankers nothing.
In the face of protests about the inefficiency and political patronage in the Panama Solidarity Plan, with poorly distributed bags and bonuses that do not provide a basic survival diet, the government extended the payment of the “solidarity voucher” through the cedulas of tens of thousands of people. The program still doesn’t reach tens of thousands in need. A bit of lime, a bit of sand.
Do not forget that these partial achievements are a victory of thousands of people who took to the streets, despite fear of contagion, to demand a response from the government suitable to the drama of the moment through which we live. Let’s not forget that several of those protests were harshly repressed and their participants prosecuted, which will require a solidarity campaign to lift the processes.
The capitalist system of class exploitation is incapable of practicing human solidarity — not even in tragic situations such as those that humanity is experiencing right now with the pandemic. Capitalists always seek to take advantage and do business at the expense of public health. They’re already overcharging for medicines and medical equipment, in one way or another passing the bill onto working people.
Once again it is shown that we will only have solidarity and a humane society when we remove the corrupt oligarchs from power and establish a government that responds to the needs of those who are now exploited.
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The quarantine has been hard on people, especially those left without work and off of the lists of those who get such pitiful government assistance as there is. So people who can’t feed their animals are abandoning them, or partially so by letting them out to scrounge what they can.
There are some better off and kindly neighbors who are taking in, or better yet feeding and sending home, hungry animals in their communities. But no individual has the ability to tackle all that much of the problem. The curfew restrictions make it harder to try. The police rescue a lot of hungry, wandering animals but they also have limited resources and other pressing duties.
Why not pool public and private resources to address the problem? There are known dog and cat feeders. Over the years Spay Panama and its offshoot groups have often been partners with them to spay and neuter homeless dog and cat populations that would otherwise explode. Why not reactivate these networks, for starters by giving people who do this work limited salvoconductos to feed and rescue animals? Why not give those with horses but not much land a bit of extra time to take their animals out to graze?
The Environmental Police got into the dog and cat protection business because of all the heartless people who abandon animals in the national parks. The police have veterinarians who take care of the force’s dogs and horses. Why not send them on missions to where animals are being abandoned, bringing food, medicine and advice to support hard-pressed families with dogs and cats that are going hungry, and to support the work of the communities’ feeders?
Why not mobilize private donations from folks of all sorts for such work? The English-speaking community could play a special role here, as to many British and American subcultures dogs and cats are seen not so much as property but as members of families, such that the spay organizations have long had many supporters from these ethnic groups. The Hindus and some other denominations are also well represented among the stray animal feeders, as a matter of their faith.
Make the lockdown more bearable for humanity’s four-legged partners and you ease the discomfort of a lot of people. Let’s do this as an affirmation of our common decency.
Their liability should be no more
limited than anybody else’s
The world’s richest man, reaping his profits as e-commerce becomes one of the few businesses left standing, knew his workers were coming in sick and had them work without proper protective gear and with no paid sick leave benefits. When employees advocating a union objected to the unsafe conditions, he fired them. Under no circumstances should he be exempted from liability for what he did. Nor should any respectable Democrat consider his newspaper any sort of worthy publication of record.
Some owners of private nursing homes, well paid by government programs, figured that the residents were just senile old folks sent there to die. A number took few precautions in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. There was a huge death toll of people under their care. It will be a nightmare to prove anything in the courts, except that there is the old Roman legal maxim res ipsa loquitur – the thing speaks for itself. No way should the cost cutters be exempt from payment for the consequences of their neglect.
The aftermath of this catastrophe would best not be litigated in the courts. Better to settle at labor-management negotiations where working people have revived and enhanced the power of the unions. Better to legislate Medicare for All instead of sue over who pays the medical bills. Better to replace failed private health care schemes with strong public systems.
President Trump and the Congress have given their gifts to the billionaires. Now the Republicans are demanding exemptions from liability for what businesses do to people before they will consider any more funding to resist the COVID-19 plague.
Will the GOP pick up Democrat votes in the House? That’s why there are Democratic primaries. Will Republicans be able to sell their intransigence to their constituents? That’s why we will have a general election in November.
So many things will be changed by the current crisis. Americans will have blown it if among them are no clearer and better understandings of what is just and decent, and on the other hand what is obscene.
Our freedom must be had at all hazards. If the men of property will not help us they must fall; we will free ourselves by the aid of that large and respectable class of the community – the men of no property.
Theobald Wolfe Tone
Bear in mind…
Arise and warn!
Al-Muddaththir 74:2
Sometimes we don’t even realize what we really care about, because we get so distracted by the symbols.
Tom Wolfe
That little man in black over there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.
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Sally Hemmings and Thomas Jefferson, doubts about their relationship having been clarified in recent years by DNA tests on their progeny.
Democrats: the way we were
by Eric Jackson
It was a complicated and scandalous tale about the relationship between America’s third president and founder of the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson, and Sally Hemmings, the mixed-race slave who was mother to six of Jefferson’s children.
Jefferson was a polymath genius, who the way it’s taught in US schools is mainly described as the scribe who drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But he was of far greater significance than that to the rise of the United States of America. An unchurched but ecumenical man, a freemason, he championed the right of people to believe whatever they want and to freely express their beliefs in speech and in writing. That included his tolerance for lurid tracts speculating about or exposing his relationship with Hemmings, which he declined to discuss with the press or otherwise for the record.
The relationship began when Jefferson was a widower. Hemmings, Jefferson’s slave, was also the younger half-sister of his late first wife. Jefferson, born into a slave-owning family, expressed distaste for the system, ensured that his children by Hemmings were educated as skilled craftspeople and sent as adults to states where there was no slavery. Hemmings herself was freed by Jefferson. But his will, which included the manumission of the rest of the slaves on his plantation, was not carried out because he died in debt and creditors auctioned off the slaves to be repaid.
Jefferson did not have the option of marrying Hemmings. Until the 1967 US Supreme Court case of Loving vs Virginia, interracial marriages were illegal in his state. With the education of his children by Miss Hemmings Jefferson actually committed a crime – in the wake of the 1831 Nat Turner slave revolt, Virginia law prohibited the teaching of a black person to read. That law lasted until overturned by the Civil War in the 1860s
As against those who would make Jefferson’s complicated personal life the beginning and end of his story, consider the enduring effects of his public policies:
– The Virginia statute on religious freedom that he wrote and which passed when he was governor, his advocacy of the Bill of Rights when the Constitution was being debated and his opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 set certain baseline principles of how human rights are perceived in American culture:
– His embrace of the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius’s ideas about the existence high seas that are international waters which the ships of any nation might freely navigate quickly led to naval hostilities with North African powers but in the longer run set one of the cornerstones of the US status as a global trading power;
– His Louisiana Purchase from France expanded the United States from a strip of Atlantic seaboard states to a continental power;
– The Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the territory that America had bought, the earlier establishment of the University of Virginia, and his initial donation of books that grew into the Library of Congress laid some of the foundations for the United States to become a scientific and educational power.
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Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, right, has his temperature taken as he arrives at Ruhenda airport in Butembo in eastern Congo, June 15, 2019. AP Photo/Al-hadji Kudra Maliro
Why the WHO, often under fire, has a tough balance to strike in its efforts to address health emergencies
The Trump administration recently declared, in the midst of the coronavirus emergency, that it would suspend the United States’ financial support for the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency that coordinates a wide range of international health efforts. The United States typically contributes more than US$400 million per year to the organization, roughly 15% of its annual budget.
In announcing the suspension of US funding, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that WHO had failed to provide “real information about what’s going on in the global health space.” President Trump suggested that the agency had colluded with the Chinese government in withholding information about the nature of the outbreak: “I have a feeling they knew exactly what was going on,” he said. And he sought to deflect blame for his administration’s disorganized response by pinning responsibility on global health officials: “So much death has been caused by their mistakes.”
To assess these claims, it is important to understand the context in which WHO officials make critical decisions at the early stages of a disease outbreak. As I explore in my recent book, “Unprepared: Global Health in a Time of Emergency,” WHO is constrained in its ability to gather knowledge about disease outbreaks and to intervene in national settings. It must rely on national governments for information about an outbreak and for permission to send investigators to learn more details. The agency’s power is limited to providing technical assistance and issuing recommendations.
A woman wearing a mask talks on her mobile phone outside the H1N1 swine flu screening centre at the Government Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad on Aug. 7, 2010. Noah Seelam/AFP via Getty Images
Critical moments of decision
In January 2020, infectious disease experts scrambled to understand key aspects of the novel coronavirus, such as its rate of transmission and its severity. At that point, it was not yet possible to know exactly what was going on with the disease. Nonetheless, WHO officials had to make urgent decisions – such as whether to declare a global health emergency – in a situation of uncertainty.
More generally, much critical information about what is happening in the global health space can be known only in retrospect, once data on the event has been gathered, analyzed and disseminated by the scientific community.
Two other recent global health emergencies are instructive: the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the 2014 Ebola epidemic. In the aftermath of each of these outbreaks, WHO was sharply criticized for its early response.
When a novel strain of H1N1 influenza was first detected in the spring 2009, global health officials feared that it could spark a catastrophic pandemic. Within weeks of the virus’s appearance, WHO officially declared a global health emergency. The declaration urged countries to put their existing pandemic preparedness plans into action. In response, a number of national governments implemented mass vaccination campaigns, making advanced purchases of millions of doses of H1N1 vaccine from pharmaceutical companies.
Over the next several months, as the vaccine was manufactured and vaccination campaigns were implemented, epidemiological studies revealed that H1N1 was a relatively mild strain of influenza, with a case fatality ratio similar to that of seasonal flu.
In many countries, when the H1N1 vaccine finally became available in the fall 2009, there were few takers. National governments had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on campaigns that immunized, in some cases, less than 10% of the population.
Critics in Europe accused WHO of having exaggerated the pandemic threat in order to generate profits for the pharmaceutical industry, pointing to consulting arrangements that the agency’s influenza experts had with vaccine manufacturers. According to one prominent critic, the WHO declaration of a health emergency in response to H1N1 was “one of the greatest medical scandals of the century.”
A later investigation exonerated the WHO experts from wrongdoing, noting that the severity of the disease had not yet been determined when vaccine orders were made, and that “reasonable criticism can be based only on what was known at the time and not on what was later learnt.”
A COVID-19 press briefing in which Dr. Tedros addresses the US withdrawal of funding.
Retrospective criticism
Five years later, in the aftermath of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, WHO officials again found themselves under sharp attack for their initial response to a disease outbreak. This time, officials were accused not of acting too hastily but rather of having failed to act in time.
At the earliest stages of the epidemic, in Spring 2014, the agency’s experts did not consider the event to be a “global emergency.” Based on prior experience, they felt that Ebola, while dangerous, was easily containable – the disease had never killed more than a few hundred people, and had never spread much beyond its initial site of occurrence. “We know Ebola,” as one expert recalled the early stages of response. “This will be manageable.”
It was not until August 2014, well after the epidemic had spun out of control, that WHO officially declared a global health emergency, seeking to galvanize international response. By this point it was too late to avoid a region-wide catastrophe, and multiple critics assailed the agency’s slow response. “WHO’s response has been abysmal,” as one commentator put it. “It’s just shameful.”
Whose failure?
Today, as the world confronts the coronavirus pandemic, the agency finds itself again under a storm of criticism, now with its very financial survival under threat. To what extent can we say that the agency did not provide adequate information in the early stages of the pandemic – that it failed to “do its job,” in Secretary of State Pompeo’s scolding words?
It is worth remembering that we are still in the early stages of the event as it unfolds, still seeking answers to critical questions such as how quickly the virus spreads, what its severity is, what proportion of the population has been exposed to it, and whether such exposure confers immunity. We also do not yet know whether the Chinese government fully informed global health officials about the seriousness of the initial outbreak. We do know, however, that while WHO made its most urgent call for vigilance by national governments in late January, with the declaration of a global health emergency, it was not until nearly two months later that the U.S. began – haltingly – to mobilize in response.
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What’s she screaming about now? On the occasion of this particular National Assembly video, it was about how terrible it is that people who took money from Odebrecht are not in prison. As the legislative session ended, she was pointing out the horrible conspiracy proven by her exclusion from the list of people getting food assistance during the coronavirus crisis. There is actually a good argument for making such programs universal instead of means-tested or based on political patronage. But the $100,000 she took from Pandeportes without explanation covers 1,250 months of the benefits coming to those left without income due to the crisis, and HER legislator’s salary isn’t cut off.
A small measure of peace between assembly sessions
by Eric Jackson
“We have proof that shows that she [Harding] stated in various media that she saw people fighting and got into the fight and later she invented a crime that never existed, trying to tarnish the honor of the deputy [Salazar].”
A lawyer representing Jairo “Bolota” Salazar
Until July 1, we are spared all of the shrieking, paper waving and physical assaults at the Legislative Palace. Unless Nito gets desperate or foolish and calls for a special legislative session. Some committees might meet and perhaps provide fireworks shows in the May 1 to June 30 recess. But mostly, a measure of peace on that front, as the nation quietly or not so quietly suffers.
Legislators, mayors and represetantes of the PRD and MOLIRENA alliance – some of them – continue with sticky fingered public assistance games. Others complain about being left off of the gravy train. Finger-pointing at “others” continues.
The hordes of fake social media pesonas, bots and hired call center trolls are still deployed. However it seems that their displays during the last legislative recess (November 1 though January 2, but disrupted by a special session that was a spectacular failure) were so crude that Facebook and Twitter eliminated a bunch of the spurious accounts.
Before they went, shouting and accusations in the National Assembly chamber, as the deputies got their personal intervention times. Raúl Pineda spinning tales of oppression by Panama province’s presidentially appointed governor, Judy Meana, for acts or omissions he never made quite clear. Zulay Rodríguez with a factoid purportedly in a sheaf of papers, spinning a conspiracy theory out of the clumsily run emergency food program. Bolota running his trip. A bunch of deputies with thoughtful observations, which got bumped off of the news by all the histrionics.
The worst of them like to rail against foreigners, against queers, against intellectuals. The funny thing is how many poses, expressions and political styles they crib, indirectly as usual, from people they profess to hate. Wait a minute! Bolota and his lawyers didn’t learn that scene from Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samuari! They cribbed their photo op from The Magnificent Seven! Or from one of the countless other politicians who has assumed the position since. Anyway, as the legislature was shutting down for two months, the action shifted a few blocks uphill. Bolota and his entourage of six lawyers strode into the Supreme Court to file criminal charges against fellow PRD deputy Kayra Harding, with the “right” journalists duly summoned to record the posed event.
See, it was like this, we are told. There was a caucus of deputies from the PRD and MOLIRENA alliance. They were arguing about legislation related to forgiveness or mere delay of certain debts during the crisis. Bolota slugged a colleague because, he alleged, said deputy’s a queer. Then he started throwing bottles of water at people. One of which, it is explained to us, whizzed by the intended target and nearly hit deputy Kayra Harding. Who had the audacity to complain before the Supreme Court that Bolota had assaulted her. Libel at its most vile, the lawyers say. Meanwhile Bolota’s Internet trolls are not getting into that issue but emphasizing the point that the legislator from San Miguelito is actually a carpetbagger from Arraijan. EVERYBODY who’s into gangster politics needs to know whose turf is which, you see….
Leave it to the high court to determine what gets dismissed and how.
So, who should feel relieved? For starters, a number of figures from the executive branch won’t have to come to show and tell. That’s because the deputies couldn’t cram it in before the session ended on April 30.
Health Minister Rosario Turner is able to put off an appearance before Zulay Rodríguez’s committee to be blamed for Panama being neither materially nor organizationally prepared for the pandemic. Education Minister Maruja Gorday de Villalobos, Housing Minister Inés Samudi, Social Security Fund director Enrique Lau Cortés and utilities authority (ASEP) director Armando Fuentes also avoid the legislative Romper Room. Or they probably do until sometime after July 1.
In the larger scheme of things the legislative and judicial branches of government are withering in this crisis, while the presidency and the police have amassed much greater power. If there is an alternative to the power shift, there is little demand for the National Assembly to reassert itself at this time.
To be sure, there is important legislative business, some of which has been done. Several bills about delaying or canceling debts accrued during the crisis passed and it’s not entirely clear what President Cortizo will do about them. He has a line item veto. He has an entourage of business figures who want to be paid every penny they are owed, sooner rather than later. He has the sense to know that if the state of emergency is lifted and immediately everyone has to pay back rent, utility bills and so on but does not get his or her old source of income back, there will be terrible upheavals. Plus, he has previously shown reticence to getting dragged into the legislators’ demagoguery after being burned over constitutional reforms.
This reporter expects that Cortizo will continue to rule by executive decree over next two months, leaving it to the legislators’ own devices to attract attention to themselves in this interim. They can’t constitutionally have a special session unless he calls it.
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The oldest part of the US government, America’s postal service, was founded before there was a United States of America. But the relevance of that historical tradition arguably pales before the reality of a killed or crippled US Postal Service leading to the mass disenfranchisement of many US citizens who live abroad.
A US citizen, a Democrat, living in Panama?
CLICK HERE to register for today’s Democrats meeting
Democrats Abroad Panama meet online today at 1 p.m.
It’s the annual general meeting, important within the global Democrats Abroad organization because if we fall short of a quorum we can lose our status and representation as a country chapter. Also important because this is a presidential election year and, with the our global primary over, it’s time for Democrats to get together to organize our general election campaign in a year with special difficulties.
There will be at least two resolutions to be voted upon, both in their own ways controversial.
The first, by vice chair Eric Jackson, is about saving the US Postal Service:
Whereas, in 1753 Philadelphia postmaster Benjamin Franklin was appointed by British authorities as one of the two people in charge of organizing postal services in the North American colonies. Franklin devised many of the practices that became worldwide standards in postal services, which became globally famous before the British fired him in 1774 for his revolutionary activities.
Whereas, on July 26, 1775, almost a year before the formal independence of the United States of America, the Second Continental Congress created the Post Office and made Benjamin Franklin the first Postmaster General.
Whereas, US postal services have a reputation for heroic dedication and well organized precision in part because hiring practices that favor veterans have many disciplined former members of the US Armed Forces working at post offices.
Whereas, just as a pandemic that calls for postal voting as an urgent matter of public health is upon us, a long Republican campaign to destroy the US Postal Service is on the verge of eliminating that long American tradition, such as to make it expensive and difficult to impossible for Americans living abroad to cast our absentee ballots.
Whereas, we are also in a situation in which we don’t know if Americans in Panama will be allowed to send in our ballots this year via diplomatic mail at the American Consulate.
Therefore, be it resolved, that Democrats Abroad Panama:
– Calls upon Congress to fund the US Postal Service;
– Calls upon the US State Department to make the diplomatic pouches at US embassies and consulates available for American citizen to use to send in their ballots; and
– Supports and will promote and participate in political, legal and community efforts to ensure the rights of Americans to vote by mail.
There is a proposed amended version, by secretary-treasurer Joyce Kinnear, which goes like this:
Whereas, on July 26, 1775, the Second Continental Congress created the Post Office.
Whereas, US postal services have a reputation for heroic dedication and well-organized precision in part because hiring practices favor veterans. Many disciplined former members of the US Armed Forces are employed by the US Postal Service.
Whereas, just as a pandemic that calls for vote by mail as an urgent matter of public health is upon us, a long Republican campaign to destroy the US Postal Service is on the verge of eliminating that long American tradition, such as to make it expensive and difficult-to-impossible for Americans living abroad to cast absentee ballots.
Whereas, US citizens living in Panama are also in a situation in which they don’t know if Americans in Panama will be allowed to return ballots this year via diplomatic mail at the American Embassy or through the Panamanian postal service.
Therefore, be it resolved, that Democrats Abroad Panama:
– Calls upon Congress to fund the US Postal Service;
– Calls upon the US State Department to make the diplomatic pouches at US embassies and consulates available for American citizen to use to send in their ballots; and
– Supports and will promote and participate in political, legal and community efforts to ensure the rights of Americans to vote by mail are maintained.
The second resolution, also by vice chair Eric Jackson, speaks to the organization’s tasks in the months ahead. Chair Kim Antonsen objects that it’s impractical given our situation and resources:
Whereas, with the quadrennial presidential primary over, it is time to turn out the vote for Democrats in the fall. The special difficulties this year, in voter suppression in some states, uncertainty about the use of the embassy’s diplomatic mail and a Republican attempt to destroy the US Postal Service.
Be it therefore resolved that the chair shall appoint and direct or delegate the direction of a committee with these tasks:
– Making contacts with the US Embassy to inquire about and advocate voting through the diplomatic mail this year;
– Exploring use of a private courier and Panamanian post office alternatives in case there will be no voting through the embassy;
– Keeping current with changes in and litigation about current voting rights law, possibly by having Democrats Abroad Panama or one or more of its members becoming parties to lawsuits in favor of voting rights. (This would entail following and perhaps making contacts with different Democratic Party organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice.).;
– Formulating proper and useful responses to this year’s voter suppression tactics by the beginning of September, so that voters can be advised on how to ensure their votes get delivered and counted; and
– Recommending activities to observe this July 26 as the 245h birthday of the US Post Office, as well as to defend the US Postal Service.
Tocumen Airport is not about to get BUSY again anytime soon. We don’t even know if it will be the preferred air facility at first. But on April 30 President Cortizo ordered and easing of restrictions on civil aviation to allow more humanitarian flights — both the return of Panamanians and resident foreigners to the isthmus, and the repatriation of foreigners to their countries of origin if that is their wish. There are also fewer obstacles to air freight for supplies related to coronavirus disaster relief, which given current arrangements would mostly come into Howard. Banking Superintendent archive photo.
Foreigners who want to get out, and citizens and foreign residents who want to get back in, will find it easier
by Eric Jackson
So, you’re an American who got stuck in New York City but your home is in Panama and want to get back? Executive Decree 605 eases the absolute ban on flights back to Panama, but there is enough discretion left in it that travelers from one of the world’s worst COVID-19 hot spots may not be allowed to return just yet, or may be allowed back but go from the plane to a mandatory isolation facility for two weeks or more.
One of the first contemplated repatriation flights will be some 250 people returning from Spain on May 10. These folks would likely go into quarantine facilities before being allowed to return to their homes.
Distraught British ravers may be allowed to return from their party at a beach in the jungle, perhaps not through the metro area but a special flight from David or somewhere else closer to where they are. Will gringos in the beach communities who can’t stand the quarantine be able to get out on special evacuation flights out of Rio Hato? Perhaps. The new decree, one of several cautions quarantine easing steps, has great flexibility built into it.
Other restrictions that are being loosened or are expected to soon be are very selective reopenings of certain industries and stores and the partial lifting of the total blockade around the Arraijan neighborhood of Koskuna.
The general quarantine is likely to be with us for weeks and perhaps months to come. There is still a lot of dangerous contagion out there. What’s different now from when the lockdown was begun is not a general lessening of the danger of infection, but that we have more resources to resist the pandemic now than when Nito slammed the door. At the time there was the immediate danger of our hospitals and first responders being overwhelmed. Now more of our vulnerable workers have protective gear. Tere is a new hospital in Albrook. There are more respirators in the country. Doctors have better ideas about how to save lives by treating coronavirus symptoms. Still, there is no cure, there is no vaccine and there are many important biological facts about COVID-19 yet to be determined.
To fend off hackers, organized trolls and other online vandalism, our website comments feature is switched off. Instead, come to our Facebook page to join in the discussion.
Para defendernos de los piratas informáticos, los trolls organizados y otros actos de vandalismo en línea, la función de comentarios de nuestro sitio web está desactivada. En cambio, ven a nuestra página de Facebook para unirte a la discusión.
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When you cut through the memes and anger on social media one thing remains – removing Donald Trump from the White House.
Please join like-minded people for the Democrats Abroad Panama Annual General Meeting via Zoom on Saturday, May 2 at 1:00 PM. We will discuss what we have done in the past year and the issues and ideas for winning the White House, the Senate, and keeping the House in November.
A big concern this year is the threat from the White House to discontinue the US Postal Service. Only 33 states have the ability to receive and return ballots from abroad via email. Eliminating the US Postal Service eliminates the low-cost method for voters to receive and return their ballots. Bills to bring electronic voting to all states has so far been unsuccessful.
Please join us via Zoom to join us in voting for a resolution to keep the USPS running.
You need to register for this Zoom meeting. You will receive the link and password by return email.
We look forward to seeing you on Saturday at 1:00PM
Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, right, has his temperature taken as he arrives at Ruhenda airport in Butembo in eastern Congo, June 15, 2019. 
