Tuesday, November 30, 2021
t's an unfortunate reality, but it's my reality. And I understand it, and I accept it.
Tiger Woods says he does not expect to return to the tour full time following his car accident in February.
The 15-time major champion had surgery on open fractures to his lower right leg and sustained further injuries to his foot and ankle.
Earlier this month Woods, 45, said he was "making progress" and shared footage of him playing golf for the first time since the accident.
But he said "getting all the way to the top" is not a realistic expectation.
"Pick and choose a few events a year and you play around that. That's how I'm going to have to play it from now on," he told Golf Digest.
"It's an unfortunate reality, but it's my reality. And I understand it, and I accept it."
Woods' car left the road at about 85mph and flipped several times during the accident in California.
The former world number one was the sole occupant in the vehicle and was wearing his seatbelt, with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department saying he was "fortunate to be alive" following the incident on 23 February.
"I have so far to go," Woods said.
"I'm not even at the halfway point. I have so much more muscle development and nerve development that I have to do in my leg.
"There was a point in time when, I wouldn't say it was 50-50, but it was near there if I was going to walk out of that hospital with one leg."
Woods has not played since December 2020 when he partnered his son in an event at the PNC Championship.
In 2019 he recovered from spinal fusion surgery two years before, and a string of further injuries, to win a 15th major at the Masters.
He had a fifth back surgery shortly before his car accident.
"After my back fusion, I had to climb Mount Everest one more time," Woods said. "I had to do it, and I did.
"This time around, I don't think I'll have the body to climb Mount Everest and that's OK.
"I can still participate in the game of golf. If my leg gets OK, I can still click off a tournament here or there.
"But as far as climbing the mountain again and getting all the way to the top, I don't think that's a realistic expectation of me."
Saturday, October 30, 2021
Friday, October 29, 2021
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
Friday, September 24, 2021
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Wednesday, September 01, 2021
have a good rest
alas. often it is only when our dearest mother was gone forever that we treasure her presence which is gone forever.
alas. how i loves you but you are not here.
Saturday, May 29, 2021
A 35-year-old woman who was found dead with her five-week-old daughter at the foot of a block last year had been suffering from postpartum depression and was unable to cope with caring for her baby, a coroner's court has found.
was an account executive who was married with two daughters, the second of whom was born on Sept 20 last year. The family lived in a flat on the 10th floor of a public housing block.
At about 5pm on Oct 29 last year, a passer-by at the block heard the sound of bamboo poles breaking followed by two loud thuds. He turned and saw the woman and the baby on the ground. He called the police.
Officers found the deceased woman lying on the ground next to the rubbish chute and the child nearby. Other items found near them include baby shorts, baby socks, a diaper and a pair of broken spectacles.
here were no signs of struggle in the flat and a voice recording addressed to her husband was found on the woman's phone.
In the recording, the woman said that she should not have had the baby as she did not know how to take care of babies or her family. She said that she was not a good mother and wife and had let the family down.
She asked her husband to take good care of their older daughter and expressed regret that she would not be around to watch her grow up. She gave her husband the password to her bank account and ended by saying that she has no other way as her mind was not working.
Both mother and baby were certified to have died from multiple injuries consistent with a fall from height.
Medical reports indicated that the woman had gone to Gleneagles Hospital on Sept 20 last year to induce labour. She was diagnosed with maternal distress during labour and delivery.
She was discharged well three days later with no obstetrical complication other than gestational diabetes. There was no symptom of postnatal depression and the woman did not mention any suicidal ideation.
The woman's husband said that they had their first child in 2016 and all was well then. His wife was healthy after the delivery last year, he said.
During the first month after the baby was born, a confinement nanny cared for the mother and child. About five days after the nanny left, the woman told her husband that she was stressed over having to take care of two children.
She said she had forgotten how to take care of children, and her husband reassured her, saying that his mother would care for their older daughter during the day. He told his wife that she did not have to do anything except rest and take care of the infant.
During her pregnancy, the woman had told her husband that she wanted to quit her job as she was feeling stressed. He told her that it was normal to feel stressed at work and that she should be thankful to have a job during the Covid-19 pandemic.
After the birth, the woman again said that she wanted to quit her job, but her husband told her to rest during her maternity leave and not think about work. She did not speak about quitting her job again and her husband thought that everything was all right, the court heard.
On Oct 29 last year, the day began as usual, the woman's husband said, and he left for work at about 7am without noticing anything unusual about his wife. He only found out what happened when the police called him.
The deceased woman's colleague said that she had not complained of any difficulties in caring for her first child.
On the day of the woman's death, the colleague sent her a phone text message asking if she was well. The woman replied that she was not feeling very good and she did not know how to take care of babies anymore.
She added that she did not know what her baby wanted, or why she was crying and could not sleep. Her colleague suspected that she could be suffering from postnatal depression and advised her to get help and employ a domestic worker.
The woman replied that she was not inclined to spend money to hire a domestic worker, and did not express any intention to end her life.
Her childhood friend also testified during the coroner's inquiry, saying that she did not notice anything unusual when she visited the family at their home.
She later heard that the deceased was feeling depressed, and when she asked her friend about it, the latter said that she did not know how to take care of babies anymore.
A day before the suicide, the friend visited the woman, who told her that her baby would cry whenever her older daughter cried. She also said that she did not know how to make her children stop crying, and her friend consoled her, saying that it was normal for babies to cry and gave her some advice on how to care for infants.
She suggested that the woman employ a domestic worker, and observed that the deceased did not seem to have much appetite and did not sleep well. She appeared depressed and kept repeating that she was lost and did not know how to care for her baby.
Police investigations found that the deceased was having difficulties in caring for the baby when she no longer had a nanny to assist her.
Her friends suspected that she was suffering from postnatal depression and suggested that she get hired help, but she was concerned about the cost.
She also appeared anxious about coping with work after her maternity leave, and although her husband reassured her and made alternative care arrangements for their older child, the woman's concerns and anxiety persisted.
Wednesday, May 19, 2021
30th September 1999
the incident of Tokaimura Nuclear Power Plant is relevant. An unfortunate incident took place on 30th September 1999. An employee, named Hisashi Ouchi who worked in the Tokaimura Nuclear Power Plant and was entrusted with the task of reprocessing Uranium by a company called JCO. That company never followed the SOPs to deal with the processing of Uranium. They were accused of unsafe transfer practices and use of out dated equipment. Above all, the employees were never provided any training to handle any unforeseen events or critical work related emergencies.
On the date of ill-fated incident, Hisashi Ouchi was performing the task of pouring a mixture of uranyl nitrate into a containment tank. Unfortunately that tank was not well equipped to handle the amount radioactive material that it was supposed to handle. Ultimately, the tank reached its point of critical mass and nuclear fission chain reaction was started.
Hisashi Ouchi was performing the task and a large portion of his body was directly extended on the tank. There were two other people in the room who were effected according to their distance from the Tank. Yutaka Yokohawa was viewing the incident from a distance of fifteen feet along with another colleague, Masato Shinohara. They all narrated the incident to investigators that they heard a large banging noise and room was filled with a blue flash which was generating large amount of neutron beams and gamma radiation.
Before he could be rescued and moved away from the incident cite, Hisashi Ouchi had been exposed to seventeen Siverts of nuclear radiation. It was double to the radiation level that has been considered fatal. It has also been said that Hisashi Ouchi was exposed to the highest level of radiation that a human being has ever been.
This nuclear exposure has a fatal effect on Hisashi Ouchi’s health. He struggled for 83 living in excruciating agony before finally passing away. Initially, he felt dizziness, nausea, vomiting and a feeling of being light headed. He could have died earlier but the doctors wanted to study the effects of radiation on his organs to make a breakthrough in the medical Science. Another employee Masato Shinohara also had the symptoms of dizziness, nausea, vomiting and a feeling of being light headed but he survived a little longer due to being on a distance. The only survivor of that unfortunate incident was Yutaka Yokohawa that was also being on a distance of fifteen feet.
But, it was Hisashi Ouchi who had the worst in this event. After he was rescued from the incident cite and transported to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, he seemed stable except a few initial symptoms and the doctors and nurses expected his quick recovery and discharge from hospital. But the next few days proved that his ailment will be long and he might not be able to survive long. Study of his bone marrow exhibited that his chromosomes and white blood cells were completely destroyed. Doctors were trying hard to cure him and keep him alive.
For this they adopted multiple treatments which included a test of stem cell therapy but none of it was working. He was being kept alive through different experiments and treatments. The radiation poisoning which he had been exposed to, this sad incident had destroyed his vital organs which resulted in organ failure. After three weeks of the incident, his intestines started hemorrhage and the doctors had to give him ten blood transfusions in the short span of time of twelve hours. His skin started sweltering and pieces of his flesh started falling off in front of doctors.
Fluids were pouring out from the places where the skin had fallen off. Blood was pouring out even from his eyes and it felt as if he was crying blood. He was drained of all his body fluids in a single day. Blood transfusion was being administered along with other fluids to keep him alive. Skin transplant was being executed where his body has shed off the skin. But it never worked. He started shouting in pain and requested doctors to stop their efforts of keeping him alive.
Doctors put him on a short coma to give him some relief from the pain. After two months of the incident his body continued the hemorrhages and there was no sign of improvement. His heart rate was at 120 pm due to heavy stress on it. Finally, after 83 days of the incident, on 27 November his heart stopped beating. Before that he was resuscitated three times despite his requests to end his sufferings.
Thursday, April 22, 2021
Saturday, February 20, 2021
A timeline of Trump's key Covid denials
22nd January 2020: ‘It’s going to be just fine’
A self-assured Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernen that the coronavirus was just ‘one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.’
January US deaths: 19
23rd February 2020: ‘We have it very much under control’
The then president held a briefing on the South Lawn of the White House, telling reporters: ‘We're very — very cognizant of everything going on. We have it very much under control in this country,’ Reiterating this same notion - and air of confidence - in a tweet sent the following day, he explained: ‘The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.’
February US deaths involving Covid-19: 16
27th February 2020: ‘One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear’
Trump told attendees at an African American History Month reception at the White House that ‘like a miracle’ the virus would likely vanish. When? ‘Nobody really knows.’
10th March 2020: ‘It will go away’
As the former President finished up a meeting with Republican senators, he relished bragging to reporters how the US government was ‘doing a great job’ with tackling the virus and, really, we should all just ‘stay calm. It will go away.’
March US deaths involving Covid-19: 7,079
23rd April 2020: ‘I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute... is there a way we can do something like that…’
Another of Trump’s bizarre claims that had scientists up in arms was his ‘disinfectant theory’ floated at a White Conference press conference. Dr Deborah Birx, Trump’s coronavirus task force co-ordinator who was sitting a few feet away, didn’t look too pleased.
April US deaths involving Covid-19: 65,167
29th April 2020: ‘It’s gonna leave. It’s gonna be gone’
On being asked by a reporter why he believed the disease would ‘be gone’, even without a vaccine, Trump replied non-plussed and optimistic as ever: ‘It’s gonna go. It’s gonna leave. It’s gonna be gone. It’s gonna be eradicated.’
17 June 2020: ‘It’s fading away’
In an interview with Fox News, Trump sounded as convinced as ever: ‘It’s fading away. It’s going to fade away. But having a vaccine would be really nice.’
June US deaths involving Covid-19: 17,902
8th October 2020: ‘Now what happens is you get better’
During an appearance on Fox Business' Mornings With Maria, Trump sung the praises of antibody drug Regeneron, along with suggesting that after being ill with Covid-19, ‘Now what happens is you get better, that's what happens you get better.’
October US deaths involving Covid-19: 24,045
Friday, February 05, 2021
Speaking to CNA at her family home in East Java province on Wednesday (Feb 3), Ms Parti, 46, said she hopes what happened to her can motivate other migrant workers to keep on fighting if they did not do anything wrong.
“If you’re innocent, you have to defend yourself and fight. Don’t give up.
“Don’t think because you have a family (to take care of), you have to quit. Don’t be like that. Hopefully, there won’t be any case like this again in Singapore,” she said, adding that she has no regrets.
Ms Parti told CNA that her relationship with the family was initially cordial. She said that she barely spoke with Mr Liew Mun Leong as he was rarely at home.
But one day, there was a disagreement as she was ordered to clean Mr Karl Liew's home, which he had moved into sometime in 2016, said Ms Parti.
After being terminated, Ms Parti decided to return to Singapore to seek employment, but was shocked when she was arrested at Changi Airport upon arrival on Dec 2, 2016. The accusation was that she had stolen from the Liew family.
During the trial, the East Java native was helped mostly by the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME). The NGO helped to get her a translator and paid for all her expenses as she was not able to work after being arrested.
“I stayed at HOME’s (shelter) and was given allowance for personal needs. Everything was provided by HOME for four years and until I left on Jan 27; they also accompanied me to the airport,” said Ms Parti.
There were other migrant workers in the shelter who also had problems and Ms Parti spent her days helping them. She said that helping others saw her through the tough times.
She remembers helping to accompany a fellow Indonesian migrant worker to the airport, manpower ministry and police station. “I had many activities. I didn’t want to stay put and just wait until my case ended. I was busy.”
Apart from HOME, the Indonesian embassy also checked on her regularly and a representative was present during the trial.
Looking ahead, she hopes what happened to her can be an eye-opener for employers.
“Hopefully, after my case, Singaporean employers will not accuse their maids arbitrarily. Even though they are maids, don't look down on them,” she said.
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
A year ago, the Chinese government locked down the city of Wuhan. For weeks beforehand officials had maintained that the outbreak was under control - just a few dozen cases linked to a live animal market. But in fact the virus had been spreading throughout the city and around China.
This is the story of five critical days early in the outbreak.
By 30 December, several people had been admitted to hospitals in the central city of Wuhan, having fallen ill with high fever and pneumonia. The first known case was a man in his 70s who had fallen ill on 1 December. Many of those were connected to a sprawling live animal market, Huanan Seafood Market, and doctors had begun to suspect this wasn't regular pneumonia.
Samples from infected lungs had been sent to genetic sequencing companies to identify the cause of the disease, and preliminary results had indicated a novel coronavirus similar to Sars. The local health authorities and the country's Center for Disease Control (CDC) had already been notified, but nothing had been said to the public.
Although no-one knew it at the time, between 2,300 and 4,000 people were by now likely infected, according to a recent model by MOBS Lab at Northeastern University in Boston. Cases the outbreak was also thought to be doubling in size every few days. Epidemiologists say that at this early part of an outbreak, each day and even each hour is critical.
30 December 2019: Virus alert
At around 16:00 on 30 December, the head of the Emergency Department at Wuhan Central Hospital was handed the results of a test carried out by sequencing lab Capital Bio Medicals in Beijing.
She went into a cold sweat as she read the report, according to an interview given later to Chinese state media.
At the top were the alarming words: "SARS CORONAVIRUS". She circled them in bright red, and passed it on to colleagues over the Chinese messaging site WeChat.
Within an hour and a half, the grainy image with its large red circle reached a doctor in the hospital's ophthalmology department, Li Wenliang. He shared it with his hundreds-strong university class group, adding the warning, "Don't circulate the message outside this group. Get your family and loved ones to take precautions."
When Sars spread through southern China in late 2002 and 2003, Beijing covered up the outbreak, insisting that everything was under control. This allowed the virus to spread around the world. Beijing's response invoked international criticism and - worryingly for a regime deeply concerned about stability - anger and protests within China. Between 2002 and 2004, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) went on to infect more than 8,000 people and kill almost 800 worldwide.
ver the coming hours, screen shots of Li's message spread widely online. Across China, millions of people began talking about Sars online.
It would turn out that the sequencers made a mistake - this was not Sars, but a new coronavirus very similar to it. But this was a critical moment. News of a possible outbreak had escaped.
The Wuhan Health Commission was already aware that there was something going on in the city's hospitals. That day, officials from the National Health Commission in Beijing arrived, and lung samples were sent to at least five state labs in Wuhan and Beijing to sequence the virus in parallel.
ow, as messages suggesting the possible return of Sars began flying over Chinese social media, the Wuhan Health Commission sent two orders out to hospitals. It instructed them to report all cases direct to the Health Commission, and told them not to make anything public without authorisation.
Within 12 minutes, these orders were leaked online.
It might have taken a couple more days for the online chatter to make the leap from Chinese-speaking social media to the wider world if it wasn't for the efforts of veteran epidemiologist Marjorie Pollack.
The deputy editor of ProMed-mail, an organisation which sends out alerts on disease outbreaks worldwide, received an email from a contact in Taiwan, asking if she knew anything about the chatter online.
Back in February 2003, ProMed had been the first to break the news of Sars. Now, Pollack had deja vu. "My reaction was: 'We're in trouble,'" she told the BBC.
Three hours later, she had finished writing an emergency post, requesting more information on the new outbreak. It was sent out to ProMed's approximately 80,000 subscribers at one minute to midnight.
31 December: Offers of help
As word began to spread, Professor George F Gao, director general of China's Center for Disease Control [CDC], was receiving offers of help from contacts around the world.
China revamped its infectious disease infrastructure after Sars - and in 2019, Gao had promised that China's vast online surveillance system would be able to prevent another outbreak like it.
But two scientists who contacted Gao say the CDC head did not seem alarmed.
"I sent a really long text to George Gao, offering to send a team out and do anything to support them," Dr Peter Daszak, the president of New York-based infectious diseases research group EcoHealth Alliance, told the BBC. But he says that all he received in reply was a short message wishing him Happy New Year.
Epidemiologist Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York was also trying to reach Gao. Just as he was having dinner to ring in the New Year, Gao returned his call. The details Lipkin reveals about their conversation offer new insights into what leading Chinese officials were prepared to say at this critical point.
"He had identified the virus. It was a new coronavirus. And it was not highly transmissible. This didn't really resonate with me because I'd heard that many, many people had been infected," Lipkin told the BBC. "I don't think he was duplicitous, I think he was just wrong."
Lipkin says he thinks Gao should have released the sequences they had already obtained. My view is that you get it out. This is too important to hesitate."
Gao, who refused the BBC's requests for an interview, has told state media that the sequences were released as soon as possible, and that he never said publicly that there was no human-to-human transmission.
That day, the Wuhan Health Commission issued a press release stating that 27 cases of viral pneumonia had been identified, but that there was no clear evidence of human to human transmission.
It would be a further 12 days before China shared the genetic sequences with the international community.
The Chinese government refused multiple interview requests by the BBC. Instead, it gave us detailed statements on China's response, which state that in the fight against Covid-19 China "has always acted with openness, transparency and responsibility, and … in a timely manner."
1 January 2020: International frustration
International law stipulates that new infectious disease outbreaks of global concern be reported to the World Health Organization within 24 hours. But on 1 January the WHO still had not had official notification of the outbreak. The previous day, officials there had spotted the ProMed post and reports online, so they contacted China's National Health Commission.
"It was reportable," says Professor Lawrence Gostin, Director of the WHO Collaborating Center on national and global health law at Georgetown University in Washington DC, and a member of the International Health Regulations roster of experts. "The failure to report clearly was a violation of the International Health Regulations."
Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, a WHO epidemiologist who would become the agency's Covid-19 technical lead, joined the first of many emergency conference calls in the middle of the night on 1 January.
"We had the assumptions initially that it may be a new coronavirus. For us it wasn't a matter of if human to human transmission was happening, it was what is the extent of it and where is that happening."
It was two days before China responded to the WHO. But what they revealed was vague - that there were now 44 cases of viral pneumonia of unknown cause.
China says that it communicated regularly and fully with the WHO from 3 January. But recordings of internal WHO meetings obtained by the Associated Press (AP) news agency some of which were shared with PBS Frontline and the BBC, paint a different picture, revealing the frustration that senior WHO officials felt by the following week.
"'There's been no evidence of human to human transmission' is not good enough. We need to see the data," Mike Ryan WHO's health emergencies programme director is heard saying
The WHO was legally required to state the information it had been provided by China. Although they suspected human to human transmission, the WHO were not able to confirm this for a further three weeks.
"Those concerns are not something they ever aired publicly. Instead, they basically deferred to China," says AP's Dake Kang. "Ultimately, the impression that the rest of the world got was just what the Chinese authorities wanted. Which is that everything was under control. Which of course it wasn't."
2 January: Silencing the doctors
The number of people infected by the virus was doubling in size every few days, and more and more people were turning up at Wuhan's hospitals.
But now - instead of allowing doctors to share their concerns publicly - state media began a campaign that effectively silenced them.
On 2 January, China Central Television ran a story about the doctors who spread the news about an outbreak four days earlier. The doctors, referred to only as "rumour mongers" and "internet users", were brought in for questioning by the Wuhan Public Security Bureau and 'dealt with' 'in accordance with the law'.
One of the doctors was Li Wenliang, the eye doctor whose warning had gone viral. He signed a confession. In February, the doctor died of Covid-19.
The Chinese government says that this is not evidence that it was trying to suppress news of the outbreak, and that doctors like Li were being urged not to spread unconfirmed information.
But the impact of this public dressing down was critical. For though it was becoming apparent to doctors that there was, in fact, human-to-human transmission, they were prevented from going public.
A health worker from Li's hospital, Wuhan Central, told us that over the next few days "there were so many people who had a fever. It was out of control. We started to panic. [But] The hospital told us that we were not allowed to speak to anyone."
The Chinese government told us that "it takes a rigorous scientific process to determine if a new virus can be transmitted from person to person".
The authorities would continue to maintain for a further 18 days that there was no human-to-human transmission.
3 January: Secret memo
Labs across the country were racing to map the complete genetic sequence of the virus. Among them was a renowned virologist in Shanghai, Professor Zhang Yongzhen who began sequencing on 3 January.
After having worked for two days straight, he obtained a complete sequence. His results revealed a virus that was similar to Sars, and therefore likely transmissible.
On 5 January, Zhang's office wrote to the National Health Commission advising taking precautionary measures in public places.
"On that very day, he was working to try and get information released as soon as possible, so the rest of the world could see what it was and so we could get diagnostics going", says Zhang's research partner, Professor Edward Holmes an evolutionary virologist at the University of Sydney.
But Zhang could not make his findings public. On January 3, the National Health Commission had sent a secret memorandum to labs banning unauthorised scientists from working on the virus and disclosing the information to the public.
"What the notice effectively did," says AP's Dake Kang, "is it silenced individual scientists and laboratories from revealing information about this virus and potentially allowing word of it to leak out to the outside world and alarm people."
None of the labs went public with the genetic sequence of the virus. China continued to maintain it was viral pneumonia with no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.
It would be six days before it announced that the new virus was a coronavirus, and even then, it did not share any genetic sequences to allow other countries to develop tests and begin tracing the spread of the virus.
Three days later, on 11 January, Zhang decided it was time to put his neck on the line. As he boarded a plane between Beijing and Shanghai, he authorised Holmes to release the sequence.
The decision came at a personal cost - his lab was closed the next day for "rectification" - but his action broke the deadlock. The next day state scientists released the sequences they had obtained. The international scientific community swung into action, and a toolkit for a diagnostic test was publicly available by 13 January.
Despite the evidence from scientists and doctors, China would not confirm there was human-to-human transmission until 20 January.
At the beginning of any emerging disease outbreak, says health law expert Lawrence Gostin, it's always chaotic. "It was always going to be very difficult to control this virus, from day one. But by the time we knew [the international community] it was transmissible human to human, I think the cat was already out the bag, it already spread.
"That was the shot we had, and we lost it."
As Wang Linfa, a bat virologist at Duke-Nus Medical School in Singapore, says: "January 20th is the dividing line, before that the Chinese could have done much better. After that, the rest of the world should be really on high alert and do much better."
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