Dr Pendo Mwaiteleke Blog: May 2020

Tuesday, 5 May 2020

Great BBC Podcast on Digital Surveillance Technologies amidst Covid-19 Pandemic and Beyond

Here is a link to a fantastic BBC analysis of unfolding digital surveillance technologies, absolutely worth your time. The program was also broadcast on Australia’s ABC Radio. You may want to grab a cup of coffee, happy listening.

BBC Podcast Link

Title: Coronavirus: Is mass surveillance here to stay?

Governments are deploying new technologies to fight coronavirus. But at what cost?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszcms

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cszcms

Contributors

Shoshana Zuboff - Author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Stephen Roberts - Fellow in global health policy at the London School of Economics

Yuan Yang - Beijing technology correspondent for the Financial Times

Tanzania President Questions Covid19 Testing Integrity and Calls for Thorough Research as Pawpaw, Goat, Quail Test Positive

Courtesy: gardenclinic.com

International media Aljazeera and Voice of America (Reuters News) this week drew attention to shocking and strange revelations about samples from the plant and animal kingdoms testing positive to Covid-19 as revealed by the President of Tanzania Dr Magufuli (see YouTube link).

The Government of Tanzania and security intelligence presented samples to a top referral Lab in the country for Covid-19 testing. The Lab was unaware the items for testing included pawpaw, sheep, goat and jack fruit extracts amongst others. The blind samples were submitted under pseudo everyday Tanzanian human names and age identification.

The Tanzanian President said while people need to take precautions to prevent Covid-19 infection, but from outcomes of the top lab tests in the country ‘clearly something unusual is going on’. He challenged the integrity of some testing kits and motives for those that send aid in a form of questionable testing kits.

To paraphrase & translate some bits from Swahili aired speech, the President says there are disturbing questions raised by what tests are revealing:

“We submitted samples of goat, sheep, pawpaw extracts, motor oil and other things without the knowledge of the Lab officials doing the testing”
You have “pawpaw sample testing positive”
You then have to consider “are there issues with tools?”
You also consider “is it sabotage because this is war”
“The motor oil came negative, for jack fruit extracts gave what they labelled ‘inconclusive result’, quail came positive, rabbit they said indeterminate result ”
“You have to postulate that either there are issues of integrity with scientists or integrity of swabs, integrity of reagents, even the cotton used in swabs comes from overseas”
“Strange things going on within the lab…strange things going on in the land – do we isolate goats, pawpaw”, etc.
“There are opportunities for our local academic research institutions to undertake research”
“So WHO [World Health Organisation] must do its work and elaborate on what’s going on…if corona is positive in goats, jack fruit and paw paws…!”

Courtesy: pickpik.com

I have attached a link to VOA News & also Aljazeera. But for those versed in Swahili you will get a lot more granular info on scientific puzzles at play and more.

What also makes this interesting is that this President has a science background with Masters and Doctorate in chemistry. Swahili speakers would note the methodical way he goes about challenging the integrity of the testing regime and why he is also taking WHO to task asking they take a thorough approach in establishing what exactly is going on.