The Waterloo of governments, healthcare systems, and large health organizations To the editor In our humble opinion, the current corona-virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis presents the modern Waterloo of western authorities at multiple levels, both at the administrative, the scientific, and the social level. The aim of this letter to the editor is not to engage into a blame game; it is to highlight several black boxes in order to be avoided by rather unaffected countries or during the case of a second wave of the disease.The COVID-19 crisis started in China at the end of December and peaked in February. During this two-month period, both European and North American authorities severely underestimated the danger involved in this new respiratory virus. For example, in the words of President Donald Trump: "Because of all we've done, the risk to the American people remains very low. When you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That's a pretty good job we've done." (February 2020). This attitude towards the invisible threat of corona-virus resulted in the lack of or the delay in taking precaution measures, applying traveling restrictions, and acquiring necessary supplies.Another type of governmental strategy towards the pandemic was the adoption of "herd immunity", mainly by the UK, the Netherlands, and Sweden [1]. These countries did not take restrictive measures, at least initially, to reduce the financial consequences from the restriction measures based on the assumption that after a short time more than 50-70% of inhabitants will be infected, thus providing a protective immunity shield to the whole society. This assumption carries two fundamental drawbacks: a) confronts the value of human life with the financial cost, b) neglects that many elderly individuals are at high risk, cannot be isolated, and are dependent by younger individuals (who may be asymptomatic carriers).Even however in countries which adopted restrictive measures very early (like my home country, Greece), many holes remained uncovered. For example churches remained open for 10-15 days after large gatherings were restricted, and while direct flights from Italy, Spain, and UK were forbidden, passengers from UK and elsewhere could come to Greece through other countries. Therefore, although Greece has to be applauded for the early implementation of restriction measures, it is a pity that small holes may blur the whole picture.The rapid spread of the corona-virus and the unprecedented number of deaths so far proved that the healthcare systems were not ready for this pandemic. The number of intensive care units (ICU) beds was not adequate or even close to cope for the needs created by the pandemic (Fig. 1). Therefore, physicians in Italy and Spain had to improvise and take advantage of every possible inch to increase the number of ICU and "pseudo-ICU" beds.Likewise, a significant shortage of respirators has been observed in countries heavily affected by the pandemic, which seems to be ex-
In 1788, a Dutch-born minister in upstate New York named Lambertus De Ronde translated the U.S. Constitution into Dutch. Five years later, a legal scholar in the Netherlands, Gerhard Dumbar, produced another Dutch translation of the U.S. Constitution. De Ronde's translation was printed on at least two separate occasions in 1788, and scores of editorial changes between the two printings demonstrate that De Ronde was working to make the text appealing and understandable to his audience. Dumbar, however, disparaged De Ronde's translation for its amateurish character. Dumbar claimed, furthermore, that a legal education, and not experience in an American context, was essential for understanding the Constitution. In an analysis of the context and language of these two early Dutch translations of the Constitution, this article contributes new perspectives on the transnational character and influence of the U.S. Constitution. This article argues that for the Dutch in New York, debates about ratification and interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, were as much concerned with local character and transnational currents as with national politics.
Trees and graphs are relevant to many online tasks such as visualizing social networks, product catalogs, educational portals, digital libraries, the semantic web, concept maps and personalized information management. SpicyNodes is an information-visualization technology that builds upon existing research on radial tree layouts and graph structures. Users can browse a tree, clicking from node to node, as well as successively viewing a node, immediately related nodes and the path back to the ""home" nodes. SpicyNodes' layout algorithms maintain balanced layouts using a hybrid mixture of a geometric layout (a succession of spanning radial trees) and force-directed layouts to minimize overlapping nodes, plus several other improvements over prior art. It provides XML-based API and GUI authoring tools. The goal of the SpicyNodes project is to implement familiar principles of radial maps and focus+context with an attractive and inviting look and feel in an open system that is accessible to virtually any Internet user.
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