📰 Letter #72 - Airbnb announces global party ban / India becomes 3rd country to reach 3 million / Infections spike again in Europe

Hi. Here’s 5 point updates about what’s happening with COVID-19 in India and across the world.

It took India just over two weeks to jump from two million cases of COVID-19 to three million cases. Only the US and Brazil have reached that milestone. Meanwhile, the total number of deaths linked to COVID-19 reached 800,000 on Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University. - Twitter

Coronavirus infections are surging again across much of Europe and governments are racing to prevent a full-fledged second wave of the pandemic —without resorting to the kind of broad lockdowns that devastated their economies in the spring.

The seven-day rolling average of reported new daily cases has more than doubled since the end of July in the five largest European countries, nearing 11,000. That is the biggest sustained rise on the continent since it beat back the virus’s initial spike in March and April.

Outbreaks are multiplying around vacation hot spots, shopping centers, parties and some workplaces. Authorities are also reporting that many cases have no known origin, undermining efforts to use contact tracing to contain the virus and indicating relatively wide community spread.

The problem is particularly acute in Spain, where around 4,800 new cases a day were detected on average over the week ending Aug. 17, more than at any point since April. In neighboring France, new daily coronavirus infections surged roughly 50% in the week ending Aug. 17, compared with the prior week, averaging around 2,400 a day and reaching their highest levels since the country emerged from lockdown in May.

For years, Airbnb has been under fire for allowing unauthorised parties of all kinds on the wildness spectrum—from open-for-all orgies to ones that have even ended in fatal shootings. Now, in the middle of a global pandemic and with local residents and governments being exasperated by Airbnb’s perceived lack of accountability, the home rental company has finally come out with a new policy: It has banned house parties in all of its rentals worldwide, for an indefinite amount of time. read more from airbnb

COVID-19 is on the rampage and even international leaders know that they are not immune to it. Social distancing being the norm means that certain gestures and protocols must be kept in check when interacting with one another. That became apparent when French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel greeted each other with a fluent ‘namaste’. Merkel was at Macron’s Mediterranean holiday retreat for talks, as per a report in India Today.

Instead of the customary handshake, Macron folded his hands, bent forward in the traditional namaste style. Merkel did just the same and it was an official greeting. Namaste is surely going global.

Macron had earlier used the same gesture when he greeted Spain’s king and queen in March.

But this is not an isolated incident, nor is it exclusive to Macron. The likes of Donald Trump and Prince Charles used it. PM Narendra Modi promoted it as the new international way to greet and Benjamin Netanyahu had told Israelis to use namaste instead of shaking hands.

This newsletter is created by - @salmanmushir, from Bangalore, India. I host a podcast called Salman Needs A Job, and I create content about jobs on my Instagram and YouTube.

Next one on Thursday.