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Koshy Thomas, Publisher, Voice of Asia

“You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson M any of us were blessed enough to immigrate to the United States in the 1960s and 70s, built our futures and our fortunes, and the futures and fortunes of our children and our grandchildren on the generosity of a country that opened its arms to us. Many of us Indians came to the United States to pursue higher education with the initial aspiration of going back to India. Some went back with their hard earned degrees while others stayed in the United States and used the economic advantages offered to them for their benefit. These same individuals are now physicians, attorneys, business tycoons and multimillionaires. To be clear, there is nothing wrong in working hard and enjoying the fruits of your labor. This is not a criticism of upward mobility.

Now, the United States, our country is hemorrhaging hour by hour due to an enemy lethal, but invisible to the naked eye. This enemy, a virus for which there is no known cure, has left untold damage, death and destruction in its wake. Even more frightening is the scientific data that predicts even more death, perhaps upwards of 200,000 American lives. In addition to the lives ripped apart by death are the lives upended because of the shuttering of businesses across every sector. Hardest hit is the service industry that employed millions of hotel workers, cooks, waiters, bartenders, living paycheck to paycheck who now find themselves destitute almost overnight.

In the midst of our comfort and ivy adorned walls, it is all too easy to forget a not so distant past when, one of the only reason millions of Indians in India did not starve to death was due to the financial generosity of the United States. In fact, American assistance to India totaled $10 billion (yes, 10 billion) from 1950 to 1971, the largest amount of aid given to any country. The aid included 50 million tons of emergency food, largely sent in the 1960s to avert famine. In the aftermath of the Gujarat earthquake in 2001, India received aid from multiple countries ranging from Australia to Vietnam. The United States gave India upwards of $5 million in relief supplies. Lest we think these acts of generosity are things of the past, USAID, the organization started by President John F. Kennedy, still partners with India to provide financial and other aid.

These facts become inconvenient truths when we want to pretend we got where we are all by ourselves, with no help from anyone.

I urge all businesses, 501C corporations, and employers to rise to the occasion and help the millions of Americans who are out of work and hurting. Perhaps one of the larger 501C corporations can take the lead and come with at least a million dollar package in the name of the Indian community to support the United States in its hour of need. We need everything from masks to ventilators to meals for the millions of children who relied on school breakfasts and lunches as their only source of sustenance that have vanished with the premature halt of the school year.

History will remember us as those who either, stepped up and helped, or those who simply looked the other way.

Just imagine, If not now, when? If not us, who?

Koshy Thomas is the Publisher and CEO of Voice of Asia

by Laurence Kotlikoff and Michael Kotlikoff O ur country desperately needs a coronavirus end game. Putting the country into another month’s quarantine, as the president just announced, is not an end game. If after a month the infection and death rates are down, which they surely will be, and we release everyone back into the wild, the rates will go right back up. To prevent that we need to test the “healthy” as well as those with symptoms.

The main reason for testing the sick is to isolate those who don’t have the disease from those who do. As for those who are infected, the test doesn’t much matter. At this time, their therapy is little different from that applied to patients with other respiratory diseases.

Testing the “healthy” is vital for two reasons.

First, the “healthy” may be infected and asymptomatic, yet still spreading the virus. Hence, testing the “healthy” can help us quarantine those who are infected but so far asymptomatic. Such individuals can choose to quarantine by themselves or with their household members. Second, the “healthy” who test negative can be allowed to return to work, attend school,

The US and China have much to sort out — but not during this pandemic

by Christopher R. Hill C hina’s foreign ministry — not unlike the U.S. State Department’s own checkered reputation in the United States — has a reputation among some in China for too often apologizing to foreign government positions and, in these fraught times, for committing the crime of excessive reasonableness. The foreign ministry’s strategy for mitigating such accusations, not surprisingly, is to employ a spokesperson who can protect the ministry from such critics, and demonstrate that the foreign ministry is not full of apologists as it is often accused, but rather is one that can fight back, and fight back hard. Enter foreign ministry spokesperson Zhou Lijian.

On March 11, a lightyear ago in coronavirus time, Zhou Lijian tweeted that “it might be the US army” that brought the disease to China, an accusation that had been making its way across China’s very active blogosphere where just about anything goes, provided it doesn’t include criticism of the Beijing government. What could Zhou have been talking about? Back in October 2019, Wuhan played host to the 7th World Military Games, which did not earn much publicity in the U.S. or on ESPN’s SportsCenter, but which were well known in China. The Military Games, opened by Chinese President Xi Jinping, attracted 10,000 soldier-athletes from 109 countries. With 300 members, the U.S. had one of the largest contingents, behind China’s team of 553 and Brazil’s 329. A total of 230,000 volunteers were mobilized locally from Wuhan to assist in the games. In terms of medals won, the U.S. team finished in 35th place, between Finland and Austria.

What Zhou Lijian was spreading, without evidence of course, was that the U.S. team members had somehow and for some reason brought the disease with them to Wuhan.

The U.S. response was swift to condemn Zhou and his outrageous claim, while, in typical form, the Chinese government was slow to muzzle one of their own, especially one who had delighted Chinese audiences in the past with his gritty defense of all things Chinese. Instead, the Chinese government doubled down and pushed out some of the most knowledgeable U.S. journalists in China.

Indeed, it took 10 days before a Chinese official spoke out clearly and forcefully against Zhou’s obnoxious tweet. China’s ambassador to Washington, Cui Tianki, could see from his front row seat the damage Zhou had caused in the U.S.-China relationship. Cui is an impressive career diplomat who, over the course of his career, has held such key positions as ambassador to Japan and key drafter of the agreement in the Six Party Talks that clearly called on North Korea to abandon all its nuclear programs. Cui said in an U.S. television interview it would be “crazy to spread such theories” (of a U.S. Army role in bringing the disease to China), and that such “speculation helps nobody.” He said the job of finding the source of the virus is one for scientists, “not diplomats.”

Ambassador Cui’s adult-like statement, however, may have come too late. President Trump has a reputation for planning little in life, except for whom to blame when things go wrong. And with pressure building, he went to work to blame China in a familiar way: He tried to rename, or rebrand, the coronavirus as the “China virus,” or — precision with words not being one of his hallmarks — the “Chinese virus.” President Trump faces considerable criticism for being late to respond to the virus’s spread in the U.S. For that he blames China for being slow to report the virus to international health authorities after discovering it in late 2019. In any crisis, even in the midst of a pandemic, there is a moment where everybody might benefit from taking a deep breath and thinking clearly about the way forward. The U.S. and China have much to sort out, but a pandemic whose grip seems to be tightening is no time for such rivalries. Instead, China and the U.S. should get on the same page, help each other, work with international organizations and help the rest of the world. Coronavirus may be the challenge of our lifetime, and blame games are not going to help us get to the other side.

How to get the economy safely back to work in just 2 weeks

shop, frequent restaurants, etc. What’s more, they’ll do so knowing they aren’t coming into contact with infected individuals.

Indeed, the goal, as discussed in this column, is to test every American at a single point as often as needed to identify those who are and who are not infected and to isolate those who are infected. This will stop the rampant spread of infection in its tracks. If we reach a point where the infection rate begins to rise because the population has not yet acquired herd immunity or been vaccinated, we could repeat the group testing that we propose as frequently as needed. Being tested, even on multiple occasions, is a small price to pay to get out of quarantine and return to a normal life.

This policy can start immediately thanks to group testing. Group testing is enormously more efficient than individual testing, as it dramatically reduces the number of tests required to sample the entire population and is feasible in a timeframe necessary to isolate infected individuals. We propose a universal testing scheme based on voting districts, not dissimilar to universal voting. On each universal testing day, each individual would be swabbed twice at their assigned testing station, using two separate swabs. One swab from each individual would be pooled with approximately 1,000 other swabs of other individuals whose identities would be recorded by the government.

The pooled sample would be tested immediately. If the pooled sample is negative, we would know, with just one test, that all 1,000 people were virus free. Alternatively, if the sample is positive, each of the 1,000 remaining second swabs would be tested individually to determine precisely who within the group are the positives. With complete compliance, we’d identify each positive individual in the country while reducing the required number of tests to a number that could be performed in a day — roughly 330,000 pooled cohort tests assuming the infection rate is 1/1000, followed by a few million tests to identify the positive members of the groups. In short, we could test the entire U.S. population essentially overnight, and quarantine all infected individuals immediately so that they would no longer spread the infection. The quarantine could be of the individual or of all members of the household, but would require strict oversight, food delivery and medical monitoring.

The size of group tests should be smaller in hot spots, larger in cold spots, and could be adjusted over time based on population disease prevalence data. A second factor would be confirming the sensitivity of PCR reactions for the largest swab sample sizes and adjusting the extraction procedure — details that could quickly be worked out in centralized laboratories. PCR is an exquisitely sensitive

testing method, as it exponentially amplifies the viral genetic material.

Group testing is so efficient that millions of people will be cleared to return to society within a few days. Those not cleared will remain in quarantine. And repeat testing would ensure that false negatives are quickly found and that the virus is very quickly contained. This plan will save hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of lives and avoid another Great Depression.

Of course, not everyone will or will be able to comply. This is an important limitation of our proposal. But even if we identify only 70 percent of the current infected, universal group testing will have an enormous impact on the spread of the disease and will have empowered millions of Americans to return to their normal lives.

The president should set up a Department of Molecular Biological Defense within the Department of Defense and assign appropriate logistical and health experts, as well as military personnel as needed, to operationalize this national testing protocol. This is fully in line with his role as a wartime president.

Laurence Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University. Michael Kotlikoff is the provost of Cornell University and a professor of molecular physiology. - The Hill

SCORE Houston offering free assistance to small businesses with recently approved corona virus aid

SCORE Houston Chapter with over a hundred certified and committed Mentors is offering FREE assistance to small businesses with recently approved Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Congress has allocated $350 billion to help small businesses keep workers employed amid the pandemic and economic downturn.

Small Businesses (less than 500 employees) should go to SBA (Small Business Administration) website (www.sba.gov/ disaster) for more information. They can also contact SCORE (SBA resource partner) at 713- 487-6565 or website (www. houston.score.org) to schedule an appointment with a Mentor over the telephone or Email. SCORE will be offering many FREE workshops on this subject throughout the Houston area. Small business owners should take advantage of this free and confidential education and mentoring service.

GOPIO condemns at- tack on Sikh commu- nity in Afghanistan

Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO) has condemned an attack on March 25th on a Sikh temple in Kabul in which at least 26 people are reported to have been killed and many more injured. The attack was carried out by a single gunman, ministry officials have said, although multiple attackers were involved in the assault, which lasted hours as Afghan security forces struggled to track down and neutralize the assailants in the complex and its neighboring residential area.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the raid. GOPIO, in its statement said that the Afghan Government must provide security and protection to all minority religions. It’s not the first time that the Islamist militant group has attacked the Sikh community in Afghanistan. In 2018, at least 19 people — mostly Sikhs — were killed by a suicide bombing claimed by ISIS in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

Afghanistan’s dwindling Sikh population, numbering fewer than 10,000, has long complained of discrimination and harassment by the Muslim majority.