Suchergebnisse

The sharp increase in the number of new COVID-19 cases in late 2021 and early 2022, which is associated with the spread of a new strain of coronavirus - omicron - is of great concern and makes it necessary to make at least approximate forecasts for the pandemic dynamics of the epidemic. As this rapid growth occurs even in countries with high levels of vaccinations, the question arises as to their effectiveness. The smoothed daily number of new cases and deaths per capita and the ratio of these characteristics were used to reveal the appearance of new coronavirus strains and to estimate the effectiveness of quarantine, testing and vaccination. The third year of the pandemic allowed us to compare the pandemic dynamics in the period from September 2020 to January 2021 with the same period one year later for Ukraine, EU, the UK, USA, India, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, and in the whole world. Record numbers of new cases registered in late 2021 and early 2022 once again proved that existing vaccines cannot prevent new infections, and vaccinated people can spread the infection as intensively as non-vaccinated ones. Fortunately, the daily number of new cases already diminishes in EU, the UK, USA, South Africa, and Australia. In late January - early February 2022, the maximum averaged numbers of new cases are expected in Brazil, India, EU, and worldwide. Omicron waves can increase the numbers of deaths per capita, but in highly vaccinated countries, the deaths per case ratio significantly decreases. Highlights: Vaccinated persons can get and pass the new coronavirus variants. The probability of death is much lower for vaccinated persons.

The term "freedom of expression" is quite broad and holistic. It includes, within its ambit, not only the conventional freedom of speech and freedom of media, but also the freedom of thoughts, cultural expression, conscience, and intellectual inquiry. Freedom of expression ensures an individual's right to express his/her views openly within the domain of constitution, which also contains the right to be criticial of the prevailing injustices, illegal, anti-social activities, and incompetence and failure of ¬¬¬the government. All this is with a guarantee of safety and without any apprehension or fear of retaliation. Freedom of expression, in contemporary times, also embraces the right to be informed and seek information by the public, to express opinions, and advocate amendments, including changing the regime without resorting to violent means through peaceful measures available in the public domain, with reasonable restrictions. In the past decade and half, Turkish experience as a transitional democracy presents an interesting case study to explain as to how the state of freedom of expression is causally related to the failure of the EU-driven reform process undertaken by the ruling AKP (Turkish: Adaletve Kalkınma Partisi) since the year 2002, when the party won the Parliamentary elections in Turkey for the first time. The issue about the press freedom and freedom of expression in Turkey has for very long time, attracted a great amount of scholarly attention and provoked extensive debate both inside and outside Turkey. Although Turkey remains one of the rare democracy in the West Asia, a region with strong monarchic and semi-monarchic tradition of government, a series of development in the past years has raised several interrogations about the qualitative and quantitative aspects of democracy in Turkey under the AKP.