THE LAST OF THE TWO WHITE RHINOS...OR NOT?

On Thursday, a friend mentioned that the following list should have indicated cases, not deaths.  Thus, again:

From WHO, most covid (not deaths) cases:

• #1      USA  103,436,829
• #2      China  99,238,850
• #3      India  44,997,710
• #4      France  38,997,490
• #5      Germany  38,437,756
• #6      Brazil  37,717,062
• #7      S. Korea  34,571,873
• #8      Japan  33,803,572
• #9      Italy  25,977,012
• #10    UK  24,704,113

Then I took a closer look at the data, and said to myself, there is no way that the USA had more covid cases than China.  For example, at the end of December 2022 CNN reported 250 million in infections, just that month, which would be double the total of the U.S. for the entirety of the pandemic.  More so, The Guardian reported in January of this year that Eight in 10 People in China caught COVID since early December, Say Officials.  That would be 1.14 billion cases, more than ten times that of the USA, and only from the end of last year into January.  What is the truth?  Probably some figure between CNN's and The Guardian's.  In any case, the odds are high that China is not telling the truth, and WHO is mollycoddling them.

So what is happening?  Well, the Trump administration did notice and decided to withdraw from WHO.  However, WHO required a year before anyone can quit, and in came the Biden administration, which retracted Trump's decision.  However, Republican Congressman from Florida Vern Buchanan reacted by co-sponsoring legislation to freeze financial support of WHO, specifically for its role in helping China cover up the coronavirus.  He is that guy with the red tie next to Trump.  The USA pays from $200 million to $600 million annually to WHO, depending on the year, and usually 20% of all expenses, twice as much as China.  Congress did not act.

Well, then, what about the largest country in the world, India (1.429 billion people versus China's 1.426 billion)?  The BBC reported in May of 2022 that more than 4.7 million people in that country--nearly 10 times higher than official records suggest--are thought to have died because of Covid-19.  In September of 2021 The Lancet reported that India had 6 to 7 times more deaths than reported.  Here some other countries.

In any case, looks like India had five times more covid cases than the USA.

Speaking of deaths, Sudan, the last male white rhinoceros, died in 2018.  Here, with Joseph Wachira, a keeper at the conservancy in Kenya.

Now, only two females are left, Najin, the mother, and daughter Fatu. 

Are they dead rhinos walking?  Is the white rhino sure to become extinct?  Maybe not, as scientists are exploring a controversial way to continue the species.  This research has been ongoing now for seven years:

• At the start of the 20th century, northern white rhinos were common throughout the savannas of eastern and central Africa.
• Then came poaching, habitat destruction and armed conflict in the region.
• By the 1980's only 15 of them were alive.
• The standard processes for invigorating the species did not work for this animal, for it turned out that they just did not breed well in captivity.
• The BioRescue Project was thus formed, involving cell biology and the creation of test tube rhinos.

• Leading the effort is Thomas Hildenbrand, who heads the department of Reproduction Management at Leibniz-IZW at the Free University Berlin, who is also associated with University of Melbourne in Australia.
• They were able to collect and freeze semen from Sudan, and three other males who died before him.
• These specimens were introduced to both Najin and Fatu, but they failed to become pregnant.

• 
  So now they are attempting in vitro fertilization (IVF), which involves the fusion of egg and sperm in a dish to create a test tube embryo.
• However, Najin is elderly and has an ovarian tumor and cannot provide eggs.

• 
  Fatu is 22 years old and looked like their only hope.  
• They performed 11 procedures since 2019 and collected 164 oocytes, creating 24 embryos, now frozen awaiting introduction into one of the females.
• But Najin's back legs are too weak to carry a pregnancy and Fatu's uterus has defects.

• 
  The solution was to use females from a close relative, the southern white rhino, and there are around 16,000 of them.
• The plan is for Hildenbrandt's team to fly to Kenya and implant one of the northern white rhino embryo into one of these surrogates.
• The pregnancy will last around 18 months, so the first calf could be born by 2025.
• The science is promising, but the elephant in the room is how to have these calves mature and mate.  Inbreeding is feared.
• 
  So, they have turned to the Frozen Zoo run by the San Diego Wildlife Alliance to gain access to more genes.
• The biggest problem, though, could well be in calming critics who believe that this work is wrong and immoral.

Did you know there is a World Rhino Day?  That was yesterday.  Here is a one-hour video of this day and Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where Najin and Fatu live.

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