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The eastern part of Ukraine, Donbas is full of ethnic Russians that have access to the Russian market and want to join Russia, not even sure if Ukrainians will want to liberate them. Note that half of the Ukrainian army is also ethnic Russian, who may not have the willingness to fight their fellow kinsmen. If given the choice I'm sure many desert or switch sides than face the bombardment of Russian artillery and MLRS. Afterall some are merely in the military for their salary.
Russia will have air superiority which will lead to ground base fire support. We need Biden to call Putin on his bluff and raise the cost, escalate to de escalate. By stationing more troops and assets near Ukraine and raising the morale of the Ukrainians. Appeasement will only further encourage Putin and he will be around for much longer than any democratically elected leader.
Covid causes long term damage with each and every infection. The fibrosis in the lungs and heart are permanent and C19 is adept at forming synctium that contribute to this. When you get covid the ACE2 rich epithelial cells that line the blood vessel die, stiffen up and it forms scare tissue especially when there's high blood pressure. C19 is coagulogenic and could make the blood twice as sticky, the original Wuhan strain was able to increase stroke risk nine folds higher than the flu. The heart will be forced to push partially coagulated blood through these stiffened arteries, this is the ideal environment for aneurysm formation and enlargement of the left ventricle. Men already have a greater cardiac risk than women, the viral load can be upto 10 folds higher in the heart tissue than women, myocarditis is much more prevalent and susceptible in young men and post menopausal due to the relatively high androgen to estrogen ratio.
Any damage to the kidneys is going to be very difficult to recover from, whether it is due to Covid induced hypoxia, increase blood pressure, inflammation, oxidation or blockage of the tiny blood vessel. The renal medulla has very little capacity for regeneration, the low ribosome count, high salinity, low oxygen, numerous dense and delicate capillaries network for blood filtration makes it near impossible without risking renal cancer. Repairs in renal cells have a much higher risk faulty protein folding and DNA proof reading due to the environmental conditions. The foundation structure of kidney are developed in utero and 1 year of life when sodium and thus salinity is low with the placenta doing the heavy lifting during development. The institial spaces and network of capillaries of the lungs are formed in utero in low oxidative environment in absence of oxygen with less mucus and low bacterial environment. In short covid can do as much damage to the kidneys, lungs and heart as in a fortnight than years of drinking and smoking. This is going to drive up organ transplants due to the near irreversible decline in organ health, people will need to organ transplant much younger than without covid.
This is not a virus that should be let loose to run through the population, it will reduce the quality for life, deteriorate organ function contributing to a significant health burden.
When you compare Flu deaths to Covid deaths your comparing apples to oranges. Most Flu deaths are estimated, very few are actually clinically tested for it. Generally all Flu deaths are lumped in together with pneumonia deaths that can be caused by other viruses (i.e respiratory syncytial virus RSV), funguses(I.e Aspergillus) or bacteria (i.e treptococcus pneumoniae). Even in the Spanish flu the main killer was secondary bacterial infections. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2599911/
Whilst the Flu does not really kill directly, it weakens the immune system and allow for secondary latent and opportunistic pathogens to flourish. The Flu's Hemagglutinin could active nagalase which is a immunosuppressant.
SARS-COV2 can kill directly, luckily nowhere as dangerous as it's cousins MERS and the original SARS since it's better at evading immune detection and response via reduction in interferon and general shift of immune resources and response to fighting extracellular threat by increasing Th-2 activity. Immune resources are scare and there are a limited population of naive CD4 cells, that can either specialise into Th-1 intracellular threat focus such as viruses or Th-2 extracellular threat focus such as fungus/parasites. Whilst doing this it T-cells (Thymus derived) will be exhausted after covid-19, and the thymus will be depleted with every bout of infection. In the older population the more likely it is that their thymus glands are depleted, dysfunctional and replaced with fatty triglycerides, same applies to the bone marrow where B-cells come from. Red blood marrow become yellow fatty bone marrow with age and physical decline. Young people in the first wave of covid will have much higher reserves due to healthier thymus that can take a lot more inflammatory and oxidative damage.
SARS-COV2 can blockade the ACE2 receptor, which are normally cardioprotective. The spike protein itself is a neurotoxin with potential environmental concerns especially for amphibians which have porous skin and already under threat worldwide. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.11.425914v1.full
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-00771-8
There is a worldwide shortage of microchips, TSMC based in Taiwan account for half the global production, they have been working their staff longerhour without holidays to fullfil global demand. A significant amount of their staff has been lured away by the Chinese Communist Party with higher salaries and bonuses for the development own domestic semiconductor manufacturing companies. TSMC manufactures most of the chips used in our electronics including those used by the militaries across the world. America is coaxing TSMC to set up a fabrication plant in America, in the meantime the US & it's allies will have to defend and support Taiwan to avoid losing their technical edge over china. TSMC is currently making 5nanometre chips and on schedule to making 3nanometre chips intel has yet to release their 10nm chips. The smaller they are the less electricity they used and more processing power due to the density of transistors.
You get kudos points for standing up to China and may jump ahead of the queue a bit. UK has sent a Aircraft Carrier battle group to the South China Sea and are going to permanently based two warhips in the Asia Pacific. Japan tried to back Taiwan only to have China threaten it with nukes, but the UK isn't scared and has hard power (Think nukes/aircraft carrier) to back up it's soft power. China depends on some vital shipping lanes for their survival, all only takes is a few military assets to essentially blockade the Malacca straight or Sunda straight. It's about capabilities and a blockade would be easy, highly asymmetrical and disadvantageous to China. Even the prospects of it will collapse the Chinese export industry, which Taiwan would highly appreciate.
So microchips have skyrocketed in price, with a huge back log, due the drop in demand last year especially from automobile sector, but increased significantly as more people required laptops and computers to work at home. It's a bottleneck for global GDP recovery.
If Novacyt were expecting to make 1000 promates for the NHS they would of ordered early and be in the front of the queue for these chips when their was a drop in demand for vehicle due to global lockdowns. Now newer competitors will find it difficult to source their chips for their point of care diagnostic devices on time as they will have to wait in the queue like everyone else and they'd have to pay a exhortionate fee for being late comers. Currently Novacyt doesn't have much competition in regards to these POC devices, it's likely the price may even go up due to chips prices rising 10-20+ fold higher.